So Many Tanks, Not Enough Raids

Managed to get the DK into LFR on opening day. Unfortunately I did not have time to queue until the evening. Apparently there were many, many tanks and not many healers. Took almost three hours for the queue to finally pop. So, of course, I get one that already had the first boss killed. *sigh*

I was pretty anxious going in opening day. My hope was that only the hard-core people would be level 90 and have the gear score to get in. Thankfully it mostly worked that way as we face-rolled the two bosses and ate/ignored the salient mechanics. Like with Feng the stupid tank I was with kept him in the middle and didn't pick up a crystal. Then on Gara'jal no DPS went down into the Shadow Realm unless they were forced. Oh well.


Was able to get the first boss early afternoon on Friday and the Druid done Saturday morning (only an hour in queue!). Spent a few coins yet only got gold. The Druid did manage to pick up Netherrealm Shoulderpads while the DK got Bracers of Six Oxen. The rest of the bosses today. And looks like I'll be raiding 10-man with a different guild. More on that later.

Unsafe At Any Speed

Swift Flight Form is not as safe and OP as everyone claims. Sometimes you have to deploy the parachute...

Pretty Flower, Pretty Damn Rare

While none of my herbalists are max level I do get out to pick a few plants. I have harvested a total of zero Golden Lotus so far. If it weren't for planting Enigma Seeds I wouldn't have seen any since launch. At least I have the Terrible Turnip to keep me company...

A Little Extra Troll

Found a great way to troll when the Brain Food daily is up. Use Kaz'tik's Mind Control augmentation and run around with a Greatback Mushan pet. :)

Off to a Slow, Slow Start

The Monk is an interesting blend of abilities and after talking with a guildie last night I will want one at max level. While I am addicted to the Level Ding the thought of bringing up yet another character is not particularly exciting. I only find time to log mine in when my mind is numb from the daily quest rep grind.

Naturally I'll be leveling as Brewmaster, their tank spec. The concept of Stagger certainly sounds interesting as a means of mitigation. After some discussion and reading it seems their only weakness is magic damage. If their absorption and healing scales with Vengeance then that shouldn't be a problem unless it's consistent, spikey damage. I'm already in love with Monk mobility and ranged threat.

Brewmaster in PvP is fun. I can't really kill anything but with heirlooms it takes a while to kill me. And running the flag is pretty easy via Dizzying Haze spam. So long as I don't get stunned/rooted it's an amazing peel.

While I do intend to work some PvP in, possibly doing Mistweaver healing, when possible it seems a bit too slow for leveling. See how it goes...

LFR Opens Today... To Queue or to QQ

The Druid and the Death Knight are both at around iLevel 460 so I believe they will be able to queue for LFR. Not sure I will today. As a tank I have a lot more looking around and learning to do. And if I'm clueless, I'm sure 90% of the people that queue will be worse. I've been seeing DPS roll on healing items just to bump up their iLevel. *sigh*

Will try another round of manually q'ing for gear. Thankfully both have their weapons. The DK picked up a Goresoaked Headreaper last night. Not optimal but I kept losing the ones with Mastery to DPS. The Druid lucked out. All the pain of leveling Archaeology finally paid off as she managed to assemble a Spear of Xuen. Apparently it's pretty common as three other people in guild already have it. Pretty powerful weapon that will be great to hand down to a monk at level 85.

While Sco, GM of Method, claimed, "What's the easiest class/spec in the game? Guardian Druid" on his stream I would disagree. Sure, as a Warrior he has a lot of tricks available. And when he was able to face-roll heroics with a cast sequence macro it's understandable. Yet that's not how the druid works anymore. Savage Defense is completely revamped and requires active thought since it's for melee tanking while Frenzied Regeneration helps mitigate non-melee damage. The official forms and Tank Spot went over this pretty well.

Definitely enjoy both yet the tanking DK is still my favorite. Rage tanking mechanics are still pretty flakey compared to runic power generation. Rune Strike is also a guaranteed follow-up after a taunt. I do miss the mobility yet the DK's positioning is still wonderful with Death Grip and Gorefiend's Grasp along with dropping Death and Decay ranged. Admittedly tanking without a shield is still novel.

Speaking of novelty... going to level a Brewmaster monk. Dizzying Haze... seriously!?

Should Try to Get More of These Right Now

Was doing a couple of quests in Townlong Steppes to get Friendly with Shado-Pan when NPCScan rang it's bell: Lith'ik the Stalker was nearby! Had to fly around a bit to find him but eventually landed nearby. Managed to pull him without his friends... then died in seconds. *lol* Was completely unprepared for his abilities. Ended up dying three times until I could get a kite worked out. Eventually...

Whew! Unfortunately I hadn't read Lore's excellent guide on Panda rare mob loot. Went through all this trouble to have Plate Gloves drop that the Death Knight didn't need. Didn't even get a bag. Oh well. The annoyance of finding him did remind me to check on _NPCScan.Overlay. It hasn't been updated in forever but there was a fan update that I downloaded. We'll see.

I'd gotten spoiled by the ease of killing Sulik'shor. Managed to get both the Druid and Death Knight his Crystal of Insanity so I could branch out to stalk others... they're a capable team. It's also early enough in the expansion where there isn't too much competition. Yet that's not what these rares appear to be about. They seem to give items that are mostly helpful in leveling. What I'll probably do in the future is keep a 90 parked close by on the opposite account in case NPCScan pops up while questing.

Less Painful for Alts

With the ennui of daily questing quickly setting in, the thought of doing them for twelve different characters was extremely off-putting. Reputation is a major gating mechanism so there's really no way of avoiding them. Thankfully there's been enough grousing or something since Crithto announced this a few days ago:

Earning reputation with various factions has long been an important part to World of Warcraft and as time has gone on, we've made tweaks and changes to the system to make it more interesting and to give players access to unique items. For example, we recently hotfixed the game to apply a change to some reputation items which you can read about in our recently updated blog that allows players to purchase certain items much sooner. And we're not done!

Coming in a future patch, earning reputation is going to become much more fluid. Basically, once one of your characters has reached at least Revered reputation with a faction, all other characters on the same Battle.net account will then earn reputation with the same faction at twice the rate. Going one step further, and as an added bonus, your main character who reached Revered will also begin to earn double the reputation as he or she climbs to Exalted.

Here's a simplified break down:

• Any single character earns Revered reputation with a faction
• All other characters on the Battle.net account begin to earn double reputation for that one same faction
• The Revered character earns double reputation as he or she works toward Exalted
• ???
• Profit

We’ll keep you posted as this change is closer to being implemented. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your feedback!

This will seriously ease the pain though I won't know if it's enough until it's actually in-game and I'm working on a fourth or fifth alt. Going to add a comment myself.

Best to Troll By Doing

Noticed one comment about someone getting in after leaving the client going. Sure enough my character select came up eventually. Out of the goodness of my heart, I shared this information with the masses:

Fifteen Minute Restarts Mean Hours of No Connectivity

So the restart that happened about two-and-a-half hours ago has generated a troll-worthy issue. The servers did show as being back up yet very few people are able to connect. Did see one or two posts about people people getting in after leaving the client at Connecting.... for over forty minutes.

Mostly it's posts of tears. So naturally I added a number of my own trolling comments, such as:

While there's the usual outrage and demanding play-time credit or whatever, one interesting link came up over at WoWInsider. Apparently there's a Level 1 Priest able to one-shot PC and NPCs all over Stormwind and Orgrimar. The YouTube video is damn hilarious. And it looks like release, not a private server.

Ah well. There are  number of things I could be doing elsewhere but for now I'll continue to troll:

Heh.

Dirty Halfhill Community

One of the more OCD achievement-oriented guild members got done with Friends on the Farm yesterday. Just got my farm going so was a bit surprised then figured he's been farming (Ha!) Dark Soil for hours on end. Flitting about with the druid it really isn't hard to spot them if you turn Ground Clutter to Low in the graphics settings. This is the kind of thing to get done before the herd is done leveling.

Speaking of herd... I really hope Blizzard doesn't nerf the recource spawns. Granted there are always a ton of nodes up right now but I'm fairly certain that's because only 10-15% of the server is level 90. When that percentage goes up and they enable cross-server phasing the competition will be fierce. And with how everything end-game is Daily Quests ... insanity.

Anyway. For right now I will be turning in objects as follows:

Blue Feather: Old Hillpaw then Chee Chee
Jade Cat: Ella then Fish Fellreed
Lovely Apple: Jogu the Drunk then Sho
Marsh Lily: Gina Mudclaw then Farmer Fung
Ruby Shard: Haohan Mudclaw then Tina Mudclaw

While it's pretty silly I have to admit I'm enjoying the farm thing. According to Lore's video guide any character 86 or above can start farming, they just don't get faction. Will see about getting all the alts a level then the FPs. Will be able to pump out common vegetables in short order. Hopefully the higher faction seeds aren't soulbound.

Lore's video was a great introduction but for amazing, thorough information El's Anglin Tiller's Farming guide is the win.

Time To Work Out a UI

I'd been into interface add-ons since inception. Blizzard added huge amounts of longevity to WoW by having an XML-based interface with a scripting language behind it. Not only does it allow players to customize their experience but it gives Blizz a whole community of free developers to enhance their game.

Yet somewhere after Ulduar in Wrath I really gave up. It was so frustrating relying on certain "third-party tools" for healing to tanking when they caused errors or lag. So for the later part of Wrath and all through Cata I was very minimalist. Only Recount for analysis, TellMeWhen for reactives, and DBM for bosses. It made patch days a lot less awful.

With all the people I watch streaming now I've been feeling the pull back into customizing. A few days before MoP launch Lore did a Step-By-Step of his UI creation which sold me. I was already into about half of what he was doing. Now I'm going to work out the other half.

First Two 90s Done

Got a ninety leveled on both accounts now... what's next?! *lol* There is so much in this expansion it's going to take me a while to unravel everything. In my mind that means a failure on Blizzard's part. It was frustrating not to know where to train flying. Now with phasing it's difficult to know where and what needs to be done next. I don't mind losing the tabard + dungeon grinding. It certainly feels more engaging to have quests and factions to interact with. Yet there's no overall way of telling what's left to be done to engage those factions. Leveling lets you pick and choose where to go so some help would have been appreciated.

Thankfully there are external sites that address this need. For me it's all about WoWhead. Their Pre-Raid Gear Guide and Reputation Quick-Facts are priceless. The only problem there is where to begin! Need the various dailies unlocked but I want to optimize it. Neither the druid nor death knight have the required iLevel to do heroics so that will be my first priority. Thankfully Blizzard made a hotfix a few hours ago that makes the initial Justice Point gear available without having to have the Golden Lotus faction. Just need to figure out which pieces are weakest so I know what to pick up first.

I would like to get the Shaman and the Horde Warlock up to 90 now but I want to figure out how everything works first. Then I'll know where to quest and how long to instance. Been watching some guy named Archon and he seems to echo what I've heard elsewhere. Instance til 87 then start questing at the "right" place.

One thing I know for sure... it will be invaluable to have a Panda flying toon on both accounts. Since mining gives experience and skinning doesn't, the death knight hit 90 first. Train flying immediately then I was able to carry the druid around on the rocket. Makes questing a cinch!

Need Some Elevation

Was a little frustrated once level ninety arrived and I had no idea where to train Pandaran flying. The Stormwind trainer doesn't offer it so Google to the rescue. Found a WowInsider beta article with the short answer: Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Which begs the question... does the questline to open the Vale have to be done on EVERY character? *sigh*