Random Daily Heroic - Vortex Pinnacle 4/17/11

Today my daily random heroic dungeon for Wranngar was Vortex Pinnacle. I did it with 2 other guild members, both dps, so we had to pug the healer and tank.

We ended up getting a good Warrior tank and Druid Healer so things went well. My dps was in top form for this one and I was leading for most of the dungeon. On the second boss, Altairus I hit 20k dps with the buff you get from standing upwind. That topped the next highest by almost 10k.


We didn't have any problems with this run, it was textbook and smooth and I got my 70 valor points but lost the Chaos Orb to a guild member. I also lost the next Chaos Orb to the same guild member but got the one after that.

I ended up running a total of four heroic dungeons last night, getting one Chaos Orb and losing on three of them. That is not too bad, I have 12 Chaos Orbs now and that is enough to make a few pieces of gear. I will be getting my new cloak, Viewless Wings, tomorrow after I complete my daily heroic.

Alterac Valley - Again

A while ago I swore off battlegrounds because QQ Premades were screwing up the queues so bad you couldn't get an evenly matched BG. Most the Alterac Valley's I was in would start off with 10 Alliance against 40 Horde. Out of the 10 Alliance 6 would be AFK so you were basically starting off outnumbered 10 to 1. The reason for that is QQ Premades loading up the battleground queues then not accepting when the queue popped. I started doing dungeons after that and liked those. It has been about a year since I was in a battleground and I didn't think I was missing it at all.

Last night I went into Alterac Valley (40x40) on Brieanna just to see how the battlegrounds were now (I was bored). It wasn't too bad actually, I had a great time and did another one after that. In my first battleground in a year I came in 4th in damage and 5th in killing blows, I guess I didn't forget too much in the year I was away.

I am going to do a few more to get the honor I need to upgrade one of my rings, my last piece of 333 gear. Once I have that I probably won't bother with any more BG's, but it was nice to get in there again for a little while.

More Dungeons

I have been doing a lot of Dungeons on Breeonna, as a matter of fact that is about all I have been doing. I have been exploring what is left of Azeroth between dungeons.

I did find something amusing in Lakeshire last night. Apparently they have bare knuckle fights in the basement of the Inn there. Last night was a dwarf against a human. There were a lot of people there just watching the fight and cheering on their favorite.

I had one Halls of Reflection last night that I didn't finish. That was the first one in a long time that I didn't finish. It was a Heroic and we died 4 times before everyone bailed. The problem seemed to be the healer not being able to keep up. But then again the whole group had some problems. We wiped for the first time on the second boss, Marwyn, in the first part. When we came back from that the tank ran to the other side as soon as the spirits came out. I thought that was a little weird but I thought maybe he had a plan. He didn't. He thought we would only have to fight the last boss and not the waves of mobs. That cost us another wipe.
Finally we got everyone on the same page but still couldn't bring down the boss in 2 more tries, that is when everyone bailed.

I had a few more dungeons that were pretty interesting. I do a lot of random dungeons because the normal randoms queue in half the time a heroic does. That way I have less wait and more play. In normal randoms you get a lot of people that are under geared and inexperienced. I learned my lesson on healing, it is usually easier to heal a heroic that it is a normal because the people in the heroic are usually more experienced. Another problem with the normals is I end up queuing into Oculus, Culling of Stratholme and Trial of the Champion a lot because a lot of the players are under 80 and those are the only ones they can get into.

Black Temple

I had the opportunity to run the Black Temple the other night. It is a level 70, 25 man raid located in Shadowmoon Valley, that I had never done before. We had a group of 21 players with about 35% level 75+. There is a lot of nice scenery in Black Temple as in most the dungeons/raids. From what I understand a lot of the older dungeons/raids are going to be changing in Cataclysm.

Here's a little history on the Black Temple:

The Black Temple is the fortress of Illidan Stormrage, the lord of the Outlands. It was once known as the Temple of Karabor and has changed hands many times over the years. This raid drops Teir 6 and also drops the legendary Twin Blades of Azzinoth. The entrance to Black Temple is not at the gates but through a breech in the southern wall.

You used to have to be attuned to run this raid but attunement is no longer required.

Before the shattering of Draenor the Black Temple was once called the Temple of Karabor which was a sacred site of the Draenei. Shortly after the formation of the Horde, Gul'dan ordered the temple to be taken and made it into the headquarters for the Shadow Council. They also named it the Black Temple in the process.

Following his defeat to Arthas Menethil, Illidan returned to the Black Temple where he resides today. Neither his activities or mental state are known at this time. While Malfurion has stated that Illidan has become mad and delusional, believing that he killed Arthas and accomplished the mission Kil'jaeden had sent him on. If Illidan has descended into madness and believes he accomplished his mission it would make no sense for him to worry about Arthas or Kil'jaeden coming after him; he would believe the former dead, and the latter appeased. But then again, those afflicted by madness rarely make sense.
**Source: WoWWiki

So that is what we walked into. Overall we didn't really have a problem and moved through it quickly and smoothly. A few of the lower level players died a couple times but we really didn't have that many deaths and no wipes. Due to the higher levels present we were able to pull whole rooms at a time. I can see how this would be a pretty tough raid if everyone was level 70, it sure wouldn't have went as fast and smooth as it did I am sure. Unfortunately the Twin Blades of Azzinoth did not drop. I have been playing WoW for 4 years (December 1st) and have yet to see a legendary drop. Here are some screen shots I took during the Campaign.

Random Dungeons 11/22/10

I have been pretty busy lately. I gave up doing my daily's because they nerfed the gold payout, and started doing dungeons instead.

I have done most of the dungeons on Breeonna and have been getting her some better gear with Justice Points in the process.

When I first enter a dungeon, first and second fights, my DPS is really poor. Usually less than 3k. Then I find my groove and it starts climbing, up to as high as 6k. That is about as high as I ever get on Breeonna but she is slowly creeping up as I get better gear on her.

In the past few days I have done every heroic dungeon at least twice, some a lot more. I just got out of a heroic Halls of Reflection that went really well. I remember when a chill would go down my spine when I would queue into it. Now I look forward to it. If you have a good group it is a cakewalk like it was today. If you have a poor group, and I have been in many, it can be pretty rough. I remember starting a lot of them I never got to finish because people bailed. I got a couple achievements on Breeonna who apparently didn't have them.

I was in a pretty funny Trial of the Champion yesterday. The Tank was a Paladin in blues and greens and had 20k HP. Did I mention it was heroic ToC? That was interesting, there were a couple wipes, and a lot of the Tank dying which would leave the tanking to me and a Rouge. But we got through it. Normally I would have bailed but the Tank and Rogue informed us at the start that the tank was a fresh 80 looking to get geared so I figured I would stick around and help out. The Priest that was healing ninja'd the Tank neck piece that dropped for some reason. It was STR and STA, not usually what a Priest is looking for in a neck. I think he did it just to be a jerk.

I stayed with them for another random which turned out to be Violet Hold. He had a lot better time in there and got a nice set of leggings. I have been seeing some new drops from these old bosses lately, ever since the last big patch as a matter of fact. I got a new shield for Breeonna the other day in Pit of Saron that I had never seen drop before. It is a pretty nice caster shield.

The bottom line is I make more gold doing random heroics than I do with my daily's now that they nerfed the payout.

Random Dungeons 11/18/10

I did some dungeons today for the first time in quite awhile. Seeing that the daily quest gold got nerfed already, I decided I could make more gold doing dungeons.

I did Nexus as my random daily heroic on Brieanna and then got Gundrak for my next random heroic. Both of them went really smooth. We had a good group in Nexus and tore through there without any problem. Being the Hunter I made sure I dismissed my pet before jumping off anything. I have been in more bad situations in Nexus, and other dungeons, because the Hunter doesn't dismiss their pet before jumping and the pet takes the long way around, aggroing everything along the way. We had no problem at all with the Bosses but I couldn't skin Keristrasza at then end. It said it required 455 skinning skill, I have 450. I am pretty sure I have skinned that Boss many times before but, oh well, times are changing.

Gundrak went smooth too. When we went to kill Eck the Ferocious I couldn't get through the entrance for some reason, I don't know why. After everyone else came back from that we finished up the rest with no problems.

I didn't do any heroics on Brieonna because it has been so long since I did any healing. That, the fact that they took away some of my stuff, and just being out of practice had me doing normal dungeons on her. My random daily dungeon on her was Utgarde Pinnacle. This was actually the first dungeon I did today which got me going on them. I didn't do too bad considering. I lost one person by the time it was over. That was a combination of line of sight, lag and being out of practice. Usually when I am healing I try to keep an eye on everyone and not let anyone get out of my sight. Well, I let someone get out of my sight and by the time I could get them back in sight and get a cast off it was too late for them. We finished up though without any more problems after that, I paid a little more attention.

My next random daily on Brieonna was Trial of the Champion which I got into already in progress. I lost one in there too. It was phase 3 of the Black Knight and too many people were taking damage at once. That's where being out of practice really hurt, normally I have no problem in there. This is why I decided to do normal dungeons on her instead of jumping right back into heroics.

My last random daily dungeon on Brieonna was The Forge of Souls. I almost bailed as soon as I queued in, I didn't think I was up to that one yet. If it was Halls of Reflection or the Pit of Saron I would have bailed, but I decided to stick it out and see what happened. We had no problem at all. It was a smooth textbook run. We had a good tank and a good group, not that there was anything wrong with the other groups. That was about all the stress I could take on Brieonna for one day so I switched over to Breeonna to do a few.

I only did randoms on Breeonna and my random daily was Forge of Souls again. We had another good group and tore through there pretty smoothly. I then proceeded to do the Pit of Saron, Halls of Reflection and Utgarde Pinnacle. We had no problems in any of those although one person died in UP. At least I wasn't healing it :). I noticed it takes about twice as long, twice as many harpoon shots, to get Skadi the Ruthless down in UP than it did the last time I was in there. The first time around I thought he was bugged but them second time took just as long.

The nice thing about Brieonna is she queues in a minute or less usually. There is no waiting for queues on her. On Brieanna and Breeonna it took about 10-12 minutes to queue in. I want to get back in Dungeon shape so I won't be lost when Cata gets here as I am going to have to regear everyone.

Daily Quest Gold

Today when I was doing my daily quests I noticed they weren't paying out what they used to. Where I was getting around 200 gold a day from the The Sons of Hodir and Knights of the Ebon Blade daily's I was doing, including drops, I now get around 100 gold. They payment for the quests dropped from 13g23s each to 7g40s each. And some of them even dropped as low as 3g70s.

This is because of the upcoming expansion. 80 will no longer be the top level so the payment for the level 80 daily's goes down. That is what happened to Burning Crusades when Wrath of the Lich King came out, the level 70 daily's dropped to about half what they were paying. The problem I have with that is Cataclysm isn't here yet! I am trying to make gold so I will be able to afford to operate in Cata and they reduced the payouts for the daily's by half already...

Personally I think they should have waited and incorporated that when they expansion goes live on the servers. 80 is still the cap and will be for another 3 weeks. This had to have happened with the patch Tuesday or the restart today because it was fine before that.

Sons of Hodir & Knights of the Ebon Blade - Daily's 11/16/10

I did my daily's for The Sons of Hodir and the Knights of the Ebon Blade on Gomorra and Brieanna today.

The Sons of Hodir had me heading to Dun Niffelem in the Storm Peaks. For them I do Blowing Hodir's Horn, Hot and Cold, Polishing the Helm, Spy Hunter and Feeding Arngrim. The only one I don't do for them is Thrusting Hodir's Spear which I determined isn't worth the gold it pays. These take me about 25 minutes and make me 66g15s plus whatever I get from drops. I also get Herbs, on Brieanna, and leather on both Brieanna and Gomorra.

From there is was off to Icecrown to see the Knights of the Ebon Blade. I used to fly right into the Shadow Vault but ever since the last patch I don't have the flight point on my map anymore. I can fly there on my flying mount and then fly out of there from the flight point, it is still there, but I can't fly into the flight point there. Now I fly into Deaths Rise using public transportation then fly over to the Shadow Vault on my own mount.

Anyway I picked up Leave Our Mark, Vile Like Fire! and Shoot 'Em Up from the Shadow Vault then flew back over to Deaths Rise and picked up From Their Corpses, Rise!, No Fly Zone and Intelligence Gathering. For awhile there it looked like they fixed Intelligence Gathering but it now seems to be back to the way it was before. By that I mean it takes forever to get the 5 documents you need. Altogether these take me about 45 minutes including getting the documents for Intellegence Gathering. These 6 daily's make me 79g38s plus whatever I get from drops. I also get Herbs, on Brieanna, and leather on both Brieanna and Gomorra.

I stopped by K3 in the Storm Peaks on Brieanna and did Overstock while I was in the area earlier. This one literally takes a couple minutes, no effort, and makes 12g96s.

Random Daily's 11/15/10

I did my daily's on Breeonna, Gomorra and Brieanna today. I am starting to get some gold together now to handle whatever Cata throws at me.

As usual I did the The Sons of Hodir and Knights of the Ebon Blade daily's. The ones I do for the Sons of Hodir are Blowing Hodir's Horn, Hot and Cold, Polishing the Helm, Spy Hunter and Feeding Arngrim. All in all these take me about 25 minutes per character. The ones I do for the Knights of the Ebon Blade are Leave Our Mark, Vile Like Fire!, Shoot 'Em Up, From Their Corpses, Rise!, No Fly Zone and Intelligence Gathering.

Intelligence Gathering seems to be going back to the way it was, it took me forever to find my 5 documents today. It took me forever just to find the first chest today. But I finally did get the 5 I needed and turned it in.

More Daily's 11/12/10

I got on today and did all my daily's on Brieanna and Breeonna. I was going to do them on Gomorra too but ran out of steam.

I did all the The Sons of Hodir and Knights of the Ebon Blade daily's. The ones I do for the Sons of Hodir are Blowing Hodir's Horn, Hot and Cold, Polishing the Helm, Spy Hunter and Feeding Arngrim. The only one I don't do for Sons of Hodir is Thrusting Hodir's Spear. I tried it a few times and could never do it so I just gave up, seems like a lot more hassle than it is worth.

For the Knights of the Ebon Blade I do Leave Our Mark, Vile Like Fire!, Shoot 'Em Up, From Their Corpses, Rise!, No Fly Zone and Intelligence Gathering. I have been doing Intelligence Gathering every day. It seems like the keys and documents are dropping a lot better now. I can usually get that done while doing the other quests without having to hang around to finish it up.

Today when I went to see Marcia Chase (53,65), by the fountain in Dalaran, she had Jewel Of The Sewers for me. The object of this daily is to go into the Underbelly, below Dalaran, and fish up a piece of Corroded Jewelry. I did it on Brieanna, Gomorra and Brieonna today. I am still hoping to get the Jeweled Fishing Pole for Brieonna but no luck yet on that. I didn't get anything worth mentioning from this daily today.

I did the daily cooking too which I got from Katherine Lee (41,65), the Grand Master Cooking Trainer in the kitchen of A Hero's Welcome. Today she gave me Cheese for Glowergold. I used to skip this daily a lot when it came up because it took forever to get the 6 Half Full Dalaran Wine Glasses you need and I find them hard to target. But I decided to do it today on Brieanna and Gomorra. It didn't take me long at all to find the 6 Half Full Dalaran Wine Glasses I needed, then it was off to One More Glass, the Wine and Cheese shop in Dalaran, for the piece of Aged Dalaran Limburger I needed. I found that as soon as I got there on both toons. I combined the wine and cheese on the platter, supplied when I picked up the quest, to make a Wine and Cheese Platter. I delivered that to Ranid Glowergold (36,28) at the Leatherworkers in the Magus Commerce Exchange but didn't get anything worth mentioning from this one either.

I did a few Cata quests too. I got them in Ironforge. They explain a little about what is going to happen when Cata hits and what we can look forward to. They are a quest chain that have you going to Stormwind and the Outlands. All in all I made about 120 gold doing these. I have done them on all my 80's but Gomorra and Wranngar so far.

Daily's 11/11/10

I did all my daily's on Breeonna, Gomorra and Brieanna today.

I did the daily cooking on Brieanna and Gomorra and the The Sons of Hodir and the Knights of the Ebon Blade daily's on all three. That got me some decent gold for the day. I also make out pretty good on drops, I loot everything (Shift + Right Click) and make pretty good gold off drops too.

I didn't get anything exciting from any of the daily's. Even the daily cooking seems to be getting cheap, most the time I only get 2 Northern Spices in my Small Spice Bag. I have been doing the daily fishing most days too, not today, but haven't gotten anything worth mentioning from that either. I am trying to get some gold together for the expansion.

I did the Random Daily Heroic Dungeon today, it was Halls of Stone. We had no problem and I didn't see any good drops. We didn't do all the bosses, it was kind of a quick run.

The Last Few Days

The last few days I have been getting reacquainted with my characters. These new talent trees they came up with removed a lot of spells I used to have on some of them. Now I am getting used to playing with the new modified spec's.

I have been doing daily's for the last few days. I have been doing them on Brieanna, Breeonna, Brieonna and Gomorra. Really all I am doing on Brieonna is the daily fishing, still trying to get her that Jeweled Fishing Pole. She still can't use it, fishing is only 271, but she is getting closer every day.

On Brieanna, Breeonna and Gomorra I have been doing the The Sons of Hodir and Knights of the Ebon Blade daily's. I have also been doing the cooking and fishing on Brieanna and Gomorra. I have gotten nothing worth mentioning from the daily cooking and fishing, just the usual stuff.

I want to get used to playing with the new talents and also make some gold so I am not broke when Cataclysm comes out. They now have a learned flying skill that will increase your flight speed to 310% on fast flying mounts and another learned skill to be able to fly in Azeroth. I am sure that these will not only not be free they will be quite expensive like everything else in this game.

Nov 4th - Picking Up The Pieces

I finally logged back in today, after downloading and installing a huge patch, and checked out the changes from the patch.

There were a lot of changes. Not only did they restore all the talent points they changed the talent trees, removing a lot of things. We also only have 36 talent points now and you must put 31 into a tree before you can split into another tree. The first couple hours were spent restoring my talents on a few characters and then hitting the trainer for additional training that became available.

Hunters seemed to have gotten hit pretty hard, what else is new? I lost a lot of my good stuff but don't seem to have any problem killing things. I didn't have my damage meter loaded so I am not sure what kind of DPS I was doing. One thing we did get was the ability to carry 5 pets with us and have another 20 in the stable. We can still only use one at a time. I think that is going a little overboard myself.

Warlocks had some changes too. I reloaded all the talents for my Lock and then got the training that was available. I can now summon a DoomGuard. That was trainable so I am not sure if it is because I am a Demon Lock or if everyone gets the ability to summon one.

I respec'd my Priest too, but didn't really spend any time on her. I heard that I don't need reagents any more for a lot of my spells on her.

I did my daily's for The Sons of Hodir on Gomorra and Brieanna and did some of the Knights of the Ebon Blade on Gom. I didn't have any flight points North of K3 for some reason, could be tying in with the expansion, not sure. They are still there and I can fly out of them, I just can't fly into them. They don't show up on my map when I talk to the flight master.

Another interesting thing I noticed is Ironforge seems to be falling apart. While I was there, there was a lot of trembling and dust falling from the ceiling.

They also did away with ammo in the game. That was just great as I had about 50,000 Iceblade arrows in stock. I got 30 silver a thousand at the vendor instead of the 5 gold a thousand I paid for them. That also means no more ammo pouch, I guess I should have seen that coming, people that use ammo have been crying about having to take up a bag space with an ammo pouch for awhile. My 28 slot ammo bag was reduced to a 20 slot and it is useless anyway. No more soul shards either. My 32 slot soul bag was reduced to 24 slot and also useless. There is some weird thing going with soul shards or whatever now, not sure what it is, still trying to figure it out.

They have prime glyphs now too. These are 3 more glyphs you can have. Once you buy a glyph, you learn it so you never have to buy it again on that character. That took me a minute to figure out after I learned one but it didn't show up. It was in the list and I needed to install it from there. I am sure there are a whole slew of things I haven't come across yet that I will stumble upon in the next week or two.

Anyway I figure it is going to take me at least a week to get everyone back in shape and figure out how to play them again. I guess it's not any worse than a lot of previous patches and better than some, there were some good things to come out of it.

Cataclysm - December 7th Release Date

Cataclysm is set to be released, according to Blizzard, on December 7th. I was told by GameStop that the release date was November 1st, obviously they lied about that unless the date was moved up. I told them at the time that a release date wasn't even set yet and they assured me that Blizzard had indeed set the date for November 1st, so I pre-ordered my copy based on that...

I haven't been playing WoW lately because I am just so bored with the content they have now. Previously I was leveling new characters to relieve the boredom but even that wasn't enough in the end, although I did end up with 5 level 80's.

Believe it or not I have been playing Diablo II Lord of Destruction lately. I really like the Diablo series and that was all I played before starting WoW back in the vanilla days. I misplaced my Diablo CD but would like to find that and play some straight up Diablo. I liked the first Diablo better than Diablo II and Diablo II LoD even though the whole thing took place in that one church. Diablo II & LoD had better graphics, better animation and there was a lot more to see but regular (the first) Diablo is still my favorite.

The only thing I don't really like about Diablo II and Diablo II LoD is that you complete the game and you are around level 33. Then you have to complete it 2 more times, once on Nightmare and then again on Hell difficulty to get to 99. It is the same content on both, just harder each time. Also you must keep logging into your characters or they disappear if you are playing on battlenet.

Gundrak - Random Daily Dungeon 9/19/10

I got on Breeonna for a little while today and did a couple dungeons. The first one I was in was Utgarde Pinnacle.

We were doing great until we got to Skadi the Ruthless. We took him down no problem but 3 of the people there must have been after the mount he drops. One of them was the healer. They left as soon as we attacked the next set of mobs, so there were only 2 of us left. Needless to say that didn't go well. I hate assholes like that, ones that leave in the middle of a fight with no warning. Anyway the group broke up and we didn't finish that one.

The next one I was in was Gundrak. We had a good group and had no problems although the Priest did get killed by the fish while swimming over to the center island. We rezzed him and finished without any problems. That got my random daily heroic out of the way. I am going to try to play more going forward.

Shealin - Level 52 Fire Mage - 9/19/10

I got on Shealin for a little bit today and got her to level 52. I did some questing in Un'Goro Crater and one dungeon, Blackrock Depths Prison.

I was having some problems with lag while we were in the dungeon but I made it through and that is where I leveled to 52. I did a couple quests you get when you first go into Un'Goro from Tanaris and made my way to the flight point and grabbed a bunch of quests there. I am still a long way from 80 and I only have a month and a half to get there before the expansion comes out.

I ported myself to Ironforge after I leveled and got my training done. I hit the auction house to see if there was anything I could upgrade but the only thing that was better than what I had, the person wanted five times what it was worth so I passed. It is really not worth spending too much gold on stuff when you are leveling because you outgrow it so fast.

Hopefully going forward I will have more time to play and will get Shealin to 80 before the expansion comes out. If not, it is not the end of the world, I still have 5 more I will have to level up to 85 and regear.

Shealin - Level 51 Fire Mage - 8/14/10

I haven't been getting on much lately and if I don't watch it I'm not going to have my Mage, Shealin, to 80 before the expansion comes out.

I am not too worried tho, it is going to start getting cold here soon so I will be sticking to the indoors more which will give me more time to play :).

I did two dungeon runs through Temple of Atal'Hakkar, A.K.A. Sunken Temple, on Shealin Saturday. That got me to level 51. We had a couple nice runs. The first group I got into was already in progress, they were about half way through. We finished up without any mishaps, then the next group I got into had the same Druid Tank and Pally in it. That run went really smooth too. I got a nice pair of gloves out of there on the second run.

The Tank in both those runs was great. The Druid was Tanking and the Pally was off-tanking and I didn't pull anything off them, they were holding aggro really well. I was running about 200 DPS more than the next highest person and finished the second run over 80K DPS ahead of the next highest overall. That is the BoA gear tho, that and a lot of AoE's which really add up to some nice DPS because you are hitting and damaging so many mobs at once.

I did a little bit of questing in Tanaris too while I was on. I have the rest of level 51 rested and who knows how much of level 52. Add the double XP to the 20% XP gain I get from killing mobs while wearing my BoA gear and it doesn't take long to level.

I am going to try and get on during the week more, there are people I used to talk to every night that I haven't talked to in awhile.

Shealin - Level 50 Fire Mage 8/7/10

I got on Shealin for a little while this afternoon and got her to level 50. It has been a couple weeks since I last logged on, I have been pretty busy.

I did a run through Blackrock Depths Prison and that got me leveled to 50. Me and another person from my server leveled to 50 at the exact same instant and everyone thought we were doing "Recruit A Friend" but we didn't even know each other, it was just a coincidence. Anyway that got me to level 50 and I teleported to Darnassus to learn to make a portal to Darnassus, then teleported to Ironforge to get my Mage training.

I did part of a quest in Tanaris while I was on too but didn't get to finish it in the time I had. I talked to a few people who were wondering where I had been. I had a lot more time on my hands before and was on all the time, now I am lucky to get on for a few hours every weekend. I am planning to get on tomorrow and get a few more hours in, I have a lot of rested XP and might be able to get to level 52.

Shealin

I didn't get a chance to get on at all during the week, but I finally had some time to get on this weekend for a couple hours.

I did a couple dungeons on Shealin and some questing in Tanaris and got her to level 49.

I did 2 runs through Maraudon Yellow and a run through Blackrock Depths. The run through BRD was a lot of fun and we kept on going after we completed the Prison so I got a lot of good XP out of it. I also had lag so bad towards the end I couldn't move most the time and ended up disconnecting a couple times before I finally gave up.

The farther we went into BRD the lower my DPS got. The reason for that was the farther in we went the higher the level of the mobs got. The higher level the mobs got the more casts I missed, resulting in lower DPS. My hit rating is pretty low even though I drink a potion to raise it by 10 for an hour. There is just not a lot of cloth gear with hit on it. I have +5 hit enchanted onto my boots and an amulet for my neck with +11 hit but that is only 16. With the potion it is 26, still not great. When I get to level 80, the gear I will be getting will have hit on it as well as some trinkets I can get. Hit cap for a caster is 17%, right now my hit rating is about 2.5%. I have a long way to go. I was missing about 1 out of 3 casts towards the end of my run through BRD on mobs that were 4 to 5 levels higher than me.

Like I have said before, I am in no hurry to get to level 80 on this one, I am going to take my time and enjoy leveling it. My job now keeps me away from WoW during the week for the most part but I get on when I can and make sure I get some time in on the weekends. I will get to 80 eventually :).

Shealin - Level 48 Fire Mage - 7/18/10

I didn't have time to play much at all this week. I got on for a half hour here, an hour there but didn't really get much done on Shealin.

I did have a few hours between last night and this morning though, and got her to level 48. I did only dungeons this morning as the wait time was really low so I could get in fast. I did dungeons and some questing last night.

I am still stuck in Maraudon for the most part. I did 3 runs through Orange and one through Yellow last night along with one run through Zul'Farrak, which we queued into, and one run through Blackrock Depths, which we queued into. I was with a pretty good group last night and we stuck together, running dungeon after dungeon. I got a lot of XP from that. I hit 48 last night.

Today I did one and a half runs though Maraudon Yellow. About half way through the first run I started getting bad lag and really high latency, around 1200ms. I stuck it out even though I thought I was going to disconnect a couple times I was lagging so bad. After I got out I logged out and back in and my latency was good again, around 300ms. I queued for another dungeon, got Maraudon Yellow again and made it about half way though that before the lag hit me again. It got so bad I would freeze up for a full minute and when I unfroze everyone would be gone, onto the next mobs. I finally made it though that one too though. When I got out my latency was normal and the lag was gone.

I decided to try one more and got Temple of Atal'Hakkar, a.k.a. Sunken Temple. That went pretty well until we got down into the middle area, then the lag hit worse than ever. After 5 minutes of that I finally disconnected and didn't bother logging in again. I might try to log on for a while again tonight, I'm not sure.