It's been a while...

Wow, how time flies. I haven't posted since dinging 70... Better do something about that, don't you think? So let's see what we have for today.

Alierah

Since dinging Alierah's been keeping busy doing dailies, some BGs and a few instances when she can find them. I got her some epics - 2 rings from the headless horseman and 2 pieces of armor from the Argent Dawn for helping to stop the scourge invasion. Other than that, I'm slowly working on getting the Primal Mooncloth set (I somehow forgot about the 4-day cooldown on making Primal Mooncloth, so I only have the belt for now) and leveling up Enchanting. Tailoring is at 374, but should "ding" 375 once I make the shoulders, and Enchanting is currently at 340 waiting for some mats from my bank alt. One very nice potential upgrade I found is a PvP staff, but I need too many AV marks and honor to get it, so I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon. Still, nice to have something to strive for.

Confessions

I have some confessions to make. First, I'm cheating. Please don't tell WoW - I don't want to hurt it's feelings, but I just got LittleBigPlanet and Eternal Sonata, and they're managing to take up ridiculous amounts of my time.

Second, I've gone and done it again - I started a new alt. Cawti (yes, I sometimes recycle names, deal with it) is a Human rogue on Moonglade. It feels really good being back in Moonglade after so long - even just listening to General and Trade channels feels so much more RP and I donno... Mature? than other servers, so it's really nice. Of course, I started out practically broke there (just had enough money to get 2 Netherweave Bags), so I'm working on getting some money with Mining and Skinning*.

The last one is a little embarassing. Cawti finished up all her business in Elwynn Forest at level 11, and I decided to take her to Bloodmyst Isle to get her up to 20. So I headed to Ironforge, took care of business (like banking all my armor) and ran out to Menethil. So far, so good. When I got there, I decided I might as well get the Theramore flight point, so I did that too. But then I sort of got "stuck". I couldn't find the boat to Auberdine. I've been playing for almost 3 years, rode that boat countless times, and now I couldn't do something as simple as getting to Kalimdor. I went to the dock it was always at, and waited for 10 minutes, but the boat didn't show. Talking to the NPC standing there, he said something about getting the boat to Northrend from there. Obviously, that's not going to happen until Wrath hits, but it left me with an even bigger question - How on Azeroth do I get to Kalimdor? So I looked in the official site, but it seems it wasn't updated yet. Good thing we have WoWWiki to tell us that the boat was moved to Stormwind. So, yeah. That was a waste of time, running all the way to Menethil. /sigh

Dailies

Doing the dailies with Alierah got me thinking about several things. First, I was thinking about making a guide not so much on which quests are available or how to do them, but what order to do them in to save time. Not sure it's worth it, though, since most people (myself included) probably won't be doing them once Wrath hits.

The other thing is, it reminded me of a friend of mine. He doesn't play WoW, and every time the subject comes up he says something along the lines of "I already have a job, I don't need another one". Up until now, I could easily say that WoW wasn't work, but with dailies that's exactly what it is. Not only that, but it's work for virtual money**... So, I don't know. I'm not sure if I'll keep doing them or not.

Little Touches

The 3.0 patch notes were around the length of a regular novel, but still they did not include all the changes. Most of the things that didn't make it into the patch notes are things that don't really have much effect on most people, but are still nice. For example, boats and zeppelins now have crews. Some have vendors (or vending machines), and you can even repair there. I never liked the old "ghost ships", so personally I think that's just cool. And there are other small things like that. I don't remember them right now, but they're there, and I applaud Blizzard for taking time to put in these little touches even though they don't actually matter to 99.9% of the players.



* Yes, I know that with Inscription, herb prices should be really high right now. Still, I think I prefer Mining.

** I suppose you could say that all money is virtual. After all, the paper that bills are printed on isn't worth that much - its worth is determined by what you can obtain with it. In that sense, WoW gold does have value in that I can buy things in-game to (hopefully) make me happy. Still, it's not the same as real money.

Ding!

Yes, it finally happened - Alierah dinged 70. I finished up the quests in Nagrand with around 2 bars left to make it to 70 and didn't feel like starting a whole new zone, so instead I went trick or treating. It started with Outland, going to get all the flight points I haven't been to and continued with Kalimdor. So not only did I get the achievement and lots of candy, but now I'm probably one of the only people in the world to ding 70 in the barrens (Camp Taurajo, to be exact). That makes her my first 70 ever, second to reach the level cap (after Dorni dinging 60 pre-BC) and my 3rd in Outland.

Now, the question is "what do I do next?", as suddenly it feels like there's too much to choose from - not only is there all the level 70 content, but I have Hallow's End and the scourge invasion to take into account. Last night I finished trick or treating, respecced, went to a BG (Arathi Basin for the daily), did one SSO daily in Nagrand and was whispered by someone who was organizing a raid on Darnassus. Having never raided a capital city I decided to go for it, although it was a little disappointing. I don't know if Tyrande and the other faction leaders were balanced for level 80, or if it's just because we made a complete mess, but we wiped miserably. Twice. That was enough for most people, including me, so I left the group and went to explore Teldrassil*. Then I hearthed back, worked on my Enchanting and Tailoring for a while and called it a night. You'll notice I didn't even have time to go get my flying mount anywhere in there, but I was overwhelmed by everything I had to do and wasn't thinking straight - I'll get it first thing today.

The Spec

Finally reaching 70, I had already decided I'd respec to a more healing-oriented build. I still have a lot of solo content to see, so solo viability is important too, but I'll probably get a lot more chances to heal now (whether in BGs or instances). Instead of going with a deep Holy build, I decided to go with a 25/33/3 Disc-Holy hybrid that will hopefully give me a good balance between soloing and healing. The basic idea was to get Improved Divine Spirit in Discipline, Spirit Tap in Shadow and then go down the Holy tree, preferably with talents that affect my DPS as well as my healing. It's going to take a while to get used to this it - whether I'm healing or soloing, I have to get used to Inner Focus, to watch out for Surge of Light or Holy Concentration proccing, and just generally finding out what works and what doesn't. But hey, that's part of the fun.

So, now what? I have a lot to do with Alierah, and hopefully I'll stick to her for a while, but I also want to finally level a Rogue past its 20s. If I do, it'll probably be human - there are oh so many factions in the world, that the Diplomacy racial just gets more and more valuable. But we'll see... For now I think I have enough new toys to play with with Alierah.



* Well, I was already there, not exploring it would have been silly. If I ever decide to go for the world exploration achievements, that takes care of the most hard to reach zone on the map.

Weekend Report

So how was your weekend? Productive? Mine was... After a very disappointing start*, I managed to do a gazillion things on Saturday and Sunday.

I started Saturday at 63 or 64 (don't remember exactly) in Zangarmarsh. Did some quests and got invited on a Ramparts run, which turned into Ramparts -> Blood Furnace -> Slave Pens -> Underbog. The group consisted of me healing, a rogue, a mage, a hunter and a druid tank (2 actually. We had to replace our tank after finishing Hellfire Citadel), and everything went pretty smooth. The hunter didn't seem to speak much English, and was a little overzealous for our tanks, but I'll give him this - he was EXCELLENT. He trapped, he interrupted enemy spellcasters (Intimidation? Charge? I don't know how things work with hunters now), used every ability imaginable, whenever I'd pull aggro his boar would charge and growl the mob before it even got to me - it was amazing to watch him. Other than that, I got several compliments on my healing, which is always nice. While I didn't think too much of it in Hellfire, since I was a little high, healing Underbog at 65 without any problems was very nice. At one point, our bear commented that I did a good job, and when the mage** said "You'd never know she was Shadow, huh?" the tank was shocked. /grin It's very nice knowing I can still heal easily until I reach 70 and (probably) respec.

After that, I finished up Zangarmarsh and logged off for the night. Sunday started with leveling my Tailoring, currently stuck at 339 - the damned Bolt of Imbued Netherweave is refusing to give me that 1 final skill up to 340. The rest of the day was spent questing in Terokkar, finishing most of the quests there and logging off at 67. Yes, you heard right - 67. Alierah is now officially my highest level alt. I also found 2 Jack-o'-Lanterns, each replacing one of my Netherweave Bags and giving me another 4 bag slots (and that's not even counting the extra bank slots). Of course in between there was also some Hallow's End merriment, although I figured I'd wait with the achievements and scouring all the inns in Azeroth till I ding 70 - according to the calendar there's plenty of time left before the seasonal event ends, so I'm not too worried about that.

And that's pretty much it. This morning I finally found an Arcanite Rod so I can keep working on my Enchanting - that should be fun (and clear up some much needed storage). I am, however, starting to get "that" feeling again. You know what I'm talking about - wanting to roll a new alt (even though starting a new alt now is bordering on criminal). I'm trying to figure out why, and I think part of it is to blame on Vampiric Touch. I'll make a separate post about that, but the bottom line is that I broke down and took it, and I think it's pretty much a letdown. And now that I'm starting to see "the end" and realize that the number of talents I'll be getting is limited makes it even worse. I'm thinking about respecing, although that seems like a waste of money right now - I just had a free respec less than a week ago and the current plan is to spec Holy at 70 which isn't too far off, but if that's what it takes to make sure I actually get to 70 then it might be worth it.


* Internet was dead all Friday. While it means I didn't get to do much work, it also means no WoW.

** Who died in that particular fight, but there really wasn't anything I could have done - he was gone in a second while I was in the middle of a heal on our tank.

Outland, here I come

Last night Alierah dinged* 60, making her my 3rd character to reach Outland and the 1st on the Horde side. Like Dorni, she dinged in the Eastern Plaguelands, turning in one of Tirion Fordring's quests. Leveling her so far was actually kind of nice - I even managed to completely avoid questing in Stranglethorn Vale, which is quite an achievement**.

It's not all fun, though. As expected, entering Outlands and finishing quest I'm getting some nice quest rewards with very nice stats, except for Spirit. Not that they don't have any - they do, just not as much as my "Azeroth" gear. Now, the other stats are a huge improvement - lots more Intelligence, Stamina and spell damage, but when it gets to mana regen it looks like I'll be suffering. I guess I could start using Mana Oil instead of Wizard Oil, but it really doesn't look like it'll make that big of a difference - 8 mp5 would regenerate less than 100 mana a minute, which is practically useless.

Another thing I've noticed is that mobs hit a lot harder here, to the point where my Power Word: Shield usually isn't enough, even with Improved Power Word: Shield maxed out. That means I can't just Mind Flay quietly while sitting in a bubble, so I have to figure out how to make it through fights. I guess it's a good thing we'll all be getting a free respec soon - I might want to switch around some of my talents once I figure out which spells I actually use and which talents will be more useful. With the patch supposedly coming this week, that gives me 2 days to figure it all out.




* I wonder, is it "dinged" or "dung"? /grin

** Hmm, I wonder if there's an achievement for that in WotLK...