Starcraft 2

Wow...

What an awesome single player campaign!

The story, just as much if not more than the setting, is what always drew me to the original Starcraft game. The deception, the betrayals, the grasping for life and happiness, were always so great! I'll probably get in to some speculation later on what might be coming in the Heart of the Swarm, but maybe not, since updating time has been scarce.

So anyways, what I'd really like to talk about is the multiplayer game I ran last night in the "newb ladder" with 3 other obvious new SC2 players.

It was a quick match up, with a Zerg and Terran player on each side, on some massive map that had about 18 different base locations including the starting four spots. I was running Zerg and my Terran ally didn't really know much of how to play. (Said he didn't even do the campaign yet and just wanted to jump in to a multiplayer map.) Myself, I had very limited experience with Zerg, but them being my favourite race in SC I wanted to give them a shake, so after only one match as Zerg against a computer opponent I jumped in to this match.

Now a lot of this commentary will come after looking through the replay, with sight at what everyone was doing, rather than just what I could see while playing.

So I started out, hatching drones and getting mineral production up as fast as possible, and ignoring gas until I had my first secondary base collecting minerals. This was fairly quick and simple since the expansion base was right next to the starting base, and there was an obstruction on the ramp into the whole starting zone for each team. My teammate was puttering around on his side and the opposition was fortifying their ramp with Bunkers/Seige Tanks/Missile Turrets as well as sending out a squad of Zerglings to try to rush us. Unfortunately for them my larger squad of Zerglings were ready when they broke through the ramp block. ^_^

So I continued mass-producing Zerglings and continuing expansion and climbing the tech tree, fending off small skirmish attacks while having roaming Zerglings take out a few enemy expansions while my partner managed to destroy one of the enemies larger expansions, followed by losing said area back to them, and almost getting killed by them before I could get some support to him in the form of some 'lings and Hydralisks.

That assault was a close thing, just managed to hold off a force of Thors/Marines/Banshees/Zerglings/Hydralisks at the ramp (that my partner wasn't defending at...) and so thought that there was a follow up force moments behind it to finish us off.

In the end my aggressive expansion into other areas allowed me the resources to build a big enough force of Brood Lords to break their defences. All in all a hard-fought battle that I thought I was going to lose at any moment, a very satisfying match!

What I didn't really see until the end was that the enemy didn't really branch out and exhausted their resources. They didn't have enough to pump out the unit numbers I had available, and probably couldn't have raided me successfully thanks to the Nydus Worms I had in my expansion bases.

Some good tactics from this fight:
-Roaming Zergling patrols to take out undefended new expansion nodes
-Fast Expansion for more minerals/gas
-Massed Brood Lords backed up with Mutalisks for air support
-Converting old drones to base defences after the minerals are all done

Some things I could have done better:
-Better coordination with my teammate on offence/defence
-Faster switch from ground forces to air forces when I saw which way the enemy were heading with tech
-Faster "going down" the tech tree to get Brood Lords
-Better grouping of units for "Fast Reaction" forces to attacks on satellite bases
-Better places of Nydus Worms so they don't get killed easily in bases, and secondary Worms
-More aggressive use of small groups of Brood Lords on different attack vectors

Overall tons of fun, especially when I managed to get a Nydus Worm behind their defences and take out about three quarters of the Zerg base. That was just a cool thing to do!

-LaFollet

OMG

Ok, still kicking around, lots of stuff going on, little desire to write, hence the lack of posts.

But I just ran across APB, and wow, why I haven't I seen this before?!?!

This just looks so crazy, the amount of customization and the detail in everything is just wow...

Gonna be hard to keep my hands off of it. ^_^

-LaFollet

What?!? Molten Core?!?! O_o

Real life has kinda been kicking me around lately, and it's not any one really big thing, it's a lot of little things and a few medium sized things. Hopefully everything will die down over the next couple of weeks and my life can get back to some semblance of normal. But boy how I could use some time off to just relax...

My Paladin's now Retribution/Holy, for spiciness, with her Holy set being the same set of gear she was sporting mid-Ulduar. Which is, bad gear, with a few Teir pieces I got from VoA PuGs over the months. I haven't even enchanted/gemmed it all, mostly on the basis that I could replace most of it with Triumph Badge gear. Of course I haven't replaced it either, I'm just doing Daily Randoms as a poorly geared/gemmed Holy Paladin. What that really means though is I get a challenge every once and a while, and when someone does something really stupid they'll possibly die. ^_^

I often wonder what people think about when they see the weird mix of gear I have, not a single piece over iLevel 219. I mean, to get that mix of gear now you'd have to work at it, and have people really interested in helping you get it. I've even got the Healing Mace off of Grobulus! No recent raiding (besides the weekly), and no advancement on the Ret set other than getting closer to the Frosts I need for my pants.

My Death Knight's still ticking along, a lot less progress now that I'm close enough for most weeklies and perfectly fine for the Daily Random with 30k health unbuffed. Pretty much I enjoy tanking on her a lot more than I did on my Paladin, although I'm not entirely sure why, probably just variety or something like that. ^_^

Not much gear advancement, although I have the badges to pick up another piece or two, just haven't gotten around to looking at them. The real highlight of the last bit came from a group full of bad DPS.

I mean REALLY bad...

The kind that pull themselves, start in with heavy AoE right at the start, whine you're pulling too slow but won't let you pull big groups, and generally do nothing of value at all. (Rogue that doesn't Tricks when they run in to a new group... Who does that? O_o)

They really left a bad taste in my mouth for a few days, though I did manage to kill one of them when they didn't stay behind the boss. ^_^

But when you really think about it, that's one horrid group out of a lot of good/ok runs, so the overall impression of "Randoms are Good!" should remain. Really I should start taking down statistics of how many and what quality of group I run with, just for the fun of it.

I've dual speced my Priest (currently 74) and started running Molten Core to try and get an Eye of Divinity to finally have a Benediction. So far two runs and two Petrified Leaves, clearly I should be bringing my Hunter through... >_>

Not much else going on other than the seeming stagnation of the markets I'm in on the AH. I hit 90k gold a few weeks ago and have had a horrid time trying to break 100k. I should just invest in some lower-Wrath enchants to see if the money making has moved there instead of the higher-level ones. I mean someone has to be buying something somewhere right?

-LaFollet

That Was Surprising...

Well my Death Knight finally hit 80 over the weekend, and with a little bit of pre-crafting of gear was Defense Capped for Heroics within 2 seconds of hitting 80. Her unbuffed health was already about 20k before equiping the two iLevel 245 epics I had lined up (the chest and wrists from Trial of the Crusade), so I was expecting horror and complaining upon entering my first heroic afterwards, with much need to defend my poor little tank against the accusations of my fellow group mates...

Unfortunately, or fortunately I suppose, that didn't happen.

At all.

I've done several heroics since, gotten about half a dozen or so epics now, ranging from iLevel 200 stuff from the last boss to iLevel 245 and iLevel 232 pieces from badge vendors and it's actually been a much more enjoyable experience than a lot of the tanking I've been doing on my Paladin lately. Crazy talk considering all the stories about how "Death Knight tanks are kicked all the time" and "New tanks are hounded until they leave the instance" that are floating around the WoW related forums. But then I really shouldn't expect much from what someone says on a WoW forum, or rather remember that it's still a one-in-a-million kind of thing that's going on in these stories. My DK's spec is a hybrid between a straight Frost Dual Wield tanking spec with some extra things thrown in to make Heroics easier since that's pretty much as "far" as I'll be taking her, and so far it's been pretty decent. I really need a high end one-hand to up my threat for high-geared DPS, but even then I'm decently holding against anyone who gives me half a second to gain some agro on the mobs.

My Paladin's been able to pick up another two pieces of Teir 10, netting me the 4 piece bonus. Now the only piece left is the legs, which I may just be able to pick up from a Vault of Archavon run if I ever even see the pants drop in there, otherwise it'll be a short 95 more Emblems of Frost to "finish" my Paladin's Retribution set until 85. I'm still getting in the odd raid time here and there, but I still don't have the time or incling to do much more than the Weekly and maybe one or two short raids in a week.

Other characters are mostly chilling doing what they've been doing, the Auction House schemes are still scheming, making money at a respectable pace, and generally my activities in game are "stable".

-LaFollet

Change of View

Sorry about the slow update, been busy on the RL front.

I've broken 75k, mostly doing what I've been doing all along and not really expanding things.

Post-sprees two to three times a day where I always do stocked Glyphs and Rare Gems (still not even close to all the patterns, not going to try for that) and whatever Epic Gems I have on hand (one of each cut, things that I know will be useful for me if they don't end up selling well) and whatever Enchanting Scrolls I have lying around from the last batch I made up. I really haven't done a lot of Saronite Prospecting, just a moderate batch last night (about 2k Ore), mostly my time has been spent leveling characters.

First and foremost my Paladin is still doing alright, getting close to being able to purchase 2 more pieces of T10, which I've been holding off getting the piece I can now for who knows what reason. I've also noticed that I have some really old epics still hanging around, like some iLevel 200-226 stuff that I can probably upgrade with some Triumphs or in the new Heroics, I just really haven't been looking all that deeply at that kind of stuff since my attention hasn't had to be on min/maxing my Paladin. I've been seriously giving thought to taking my Paladin's Tank spec to Holy, for no other reason than a change of pace. I've always enjoyed healing in general, and since my next highest (possible) healing character is only 73 (Druid, Priest is 72) I've really been missing keeping people alive.

Now Paladin Healing 5 Mans wasn't ever really my healing nirvana, but with the lack of other options I'm giving some serious though to dropping some surplus Triumph badges on the gear and starting to play around with it. It would even give me a little more flexibility with my guild's ICC runs since they're never short on Tanks.

My Death Knight is my biggest point of progress this week coming to within half a level of 80. I quested most of the way through the mid-70s and purposely stopped once I hit 79 to gather some some dungeon tanking gear before I hit 80. I'm also planning on using some stores of crafting mats to make some 245 epics to help ease the transition in to Heroics, but with 502 Defense with 17.5k health at 79 with clearly sub-standard gear I'm feeling quite confident about things. My main point of worry is threat in the guise of weapons. I'm using a couple of slow greens right now, but they're quite old (8 to 10 levels old) and will probably show some serious issues holding against DPSers in Heroics. I may just hold off entering Heroics until I can replace at least my main-hand with something a little heavier.

I'm getting quite good at tanking on my Druid if I do say so myself! Glyphs really help out with threat, espeically the Maul Glyph, and while Swipe isn't Super-AoE-Aggro-Fun-Time, if I can charge in and get a few off fast enough I seem to be able to hold alright. ^_^
I'm not sure if I really want to Bear Tank at 80 in Heroics, but for now since I only have one set of Leather/Cloth Heirloom Caster stuff, I'm either stuck tanking, or mailing that back and forth a lot. That'll be an issue if I end up leveling my Mage and Warlock in Cataclysm, but that's something to worry about then not now. What I'll probably end up doing is doing Tank/Healing on my Druid at 80, since I enjoy Druid Healing, but like the prospect of instant Qs rather than even 5 minute Qs.

I'm getting more comfortable with the prospect of spending the gold I've earned, in the last few weeks I've spent probably over 2k on vanity stuff, and 4k on a Greatness Deck for my Paladin, as well as starting up a Snatch list for things I use in crafting, all things I wouldn't have done even back at 50K for fear of "using up" all my "hard earned" gold, which was really just a mindset from my farming days when 14k was a huge amount of gold that took forever to get (was still thinking of getting a Chopper though, might get one at the 100k mark, maybe...) so spending on things like Ruby Shades or Argent Tournament Pets (that can just be farmed for) was unthinkable!

Which really just makes me think of how my time spent has changed from then to now. I used to log on my "main" and do dailies for gold, then log on alts to do alt things, which included doing dailies for gold/rep. Now I log on to a few characters to post auctions, then log around my characters to do dailies for badges, gold is more just something that's there, and it's a nice feeling. ^_^

-LaFollet

Milestones and Directions

Well, I suppose my biggest news is that I've broken 50k!

And when I say broken I don't just mean eked by just by the barest margin, but with enough wiggle room to continue buying raw mats and stay above 50k. ^_^ Feels really nice and somewhat annoying at the same time in a weird sort of way.

I can't really describe why it feels annoying, the really nice is obvious, but it does. It's almost like, well, I don't know. It's indescribable, but I suppose it really comes down to the progression, or lack there of really, along other lines. I've been trying to keep up with all my gold making schemes, get the daily dungeon done on all my 70+ characters (four right now, my Paladin, Death Knight, Priest, and Druid), keep all my profession cooldowns cooling (even been ignoring the cloth ones since they're going away soon and the price is falling flat, or so I tell myself so I don't have more things to juggle), do the weekly raid, and maybe even, if I have the time, raid with my guild a bit. But what it really comes down to is that I'm getting some of this done, mostly the gold/profession stuff and things on my Paladin. It does mean that my three other 70-80 characters are progressing just about in step, but none of them are doing it at any appreciable rate.

So I'm thinking I'm going to push more on one character to 80 while keeping my Paladin doing the 80 stuff cause I really want the Tier 10 Ret Set since it's so sexy. ^_^ First up for this plan is my Death Knight since she's closer than the rest, so it'll be questing/one dungeon with the "spare time" that gold making/professions leaves me with, with some mixing in the Priest/Druid when I want to do something else for a change.

We'll see how that goes...

And while that may seem like the Milestones and Directions thoughts of the title, the Directions part really refers to what my old guild is doing and the reason I moved on after the break I had taken. I'm not keen on what they're doing, or sort of how they're going about it, or I suppose who they're going about it with.

It's none of my business, which is why I'm not going to say anything about it to them, and I'm pretty sure none of them know of this blog, but it's a more hardcore direction than I'd ever want to take again. I've been there a few times briefly in my past and never liked it, in fact, quite a while ago, I came to the conclusion that if I ever end up raiding in earnest again it'll be very casual in a 10 man guild since it's so much more tight-knit than a 25 man guild. Of course me being me I'd want to be doing that with skill and focus, with equally skilled and focused individuals, but I don't think I'll get around to that again.

So anyways, the direction they're going, or at least a sub-set of the guild membership seem to want to go, is one that I'll never want to be a part of again, which is sad, since I really do enjoy their company, and if they were just as focused, but as a 10 man guild, I'd be VERY hard pressed to stay away, which would involve another faction/server change of at least one character to get back on my original server.

But I don't foresee them ever heading in that direction, it was never the direction that the guild had originally been founded under even, but it's the direction that I'd love in a raiding guild.

And I suppose that's really the melancholy behind my current mood. The complete and total understanding that there's now another group of people who I very much enjoyed hanging out with that I'll never really be a part of again...

-LaFollet

Oh Zul'jin.... What takes you so long?

Zul'jin is just about the last realm to come up after every Tuesday Maintenance. Now this is purely anecdotal, and I've only been on the realm for a couple months, but it's always last to come up. I gotta get on and post my auctions again! ^_^

Real life has been kicking my ass lately, what with four wondrous days of intense jaw pain with an infected tooth, starting right at the beginning of the weekend, the sleepless nights of pain and ice, and the lack of antibiotics until Monday to get it cleared up. Thankfully I've got a dentist appointment this afternoon so I'll be able to get the offending tooth back on to the road to recovery, but man what a pain...

Also, it's finally winter here, after months of next to no snow, we get dumped on (sort of) with lots of heavy, wet snow.

Blech...

But on to happier things in game. I'm up to about 35k in liquid gold with my typical stock floating around. My "less time posting glyphs" plan hasn't really cut in to my glyph profit, which is kinda weird, but I guess not really since I'm doubling up my glyph posts so I have a better chance of moving two of the same type in the time periods.

Enchanting scrolls are positively a gold mine, with lots of movement and never enough to stock anything. Pretty much any time I make some, it's just the best profit margin scrolls and within a week they're all gone and I'm scrounging to get more mats for new scrolls. I guess I really should up my prices and work off mats on the AH rather than try to process materials myself. Less profits, probably, but less work.

Other markets are pretty much as they were, rare gems are still moving, bags go like crazy, prism green gems are great, inscription off-hands are moving well, and now some elixirs used to level are moving well too. Overall lots of little transactions pay off well. ^_^

On the character front I've got my Priest and Druid up to 70 now, at least I think my Druid is 70, or at least 69, and my Death Knight is 72. Ironically enough I'm getting lots of complaints when tanking on my Druid or Death Knight, mostly for waiting for people to catch up to the group, or "not holding agro" against people who start AoEing right off the start, as in before mobs even get to me... I'm not sure what I can do about that on my Druid, but I'm thinking of front-loading threat more on my Death Knight by forgoing disease application and instead going straight to a Howling Blast/Blood Boil/Blood Boil opening. I saw sort of that suggestion on MMO Champion's forums, and I'm thinking of looking in to it more to satisfy the "gogogogo" DPS crowd.

I know I'll mostly be enabling their stupid behaviour, but if it works, then it works. Also still think a "Boss Fight Explanation" mod would be awesome. Gotta look to see if there's something like that out there or how hard it would be to make one...

All the other servers are up, but Zul'jin's still down...

-LaFollet

Little later than usual

So I broke, then unbroke (and probably will re-break) 30k this week. The glyph marked has contributed probably about 22k of that cash (and more of the profit since I spent 2k on two copies of Cold Weather Flying for my Priest and Druid), with the rest most likely coming majorly from Enchanting and a minor part of Jewelcrafting and Tailoring (bags). I'm looking to get one of my Alchemists up and running tonight, or by the weekend at the latest, sitting at 350 so all I have to do is level up to the Transmutes I want to consider that "done". That will probably get done tonight if I buy the mats, on the weekend if I feel frisky enough to farm them up myself.

Really I'm mostly just finding that I don't have enough time to get everything that I want done finished up. I'm usually cancel/posting on my Glyph posters two or three times a day, dealing with Saronite Ore (and soon Titanium Ore) on my Jewelcrafter, or just doing a Daily Dungeon/Weekly Raid on my Paladin. It's been really quite hard to get the time to keep everything going and smack around on an alt in some Random Dungeons, although I did get several done last weekend in-spite of how busy I ended up being.

The real time killer has been the Saronite Shuffle though. Prospecting all that ore (did 4500 ore last night...) then processing the gems in to disenchantables just takes a lot of time. So I've started scoping out the raw gem market to supply my Rare Gems and the Enchanting market to supply enchanting mats. I may have to raise my thresholds a little to ensure I don't spend more than I make for the enchanting stuff, but by carrying more enchants at once it really should balance out the load/demand of the whole thing. What it really means though is carrying a larger burden of stock in supplies or not-currently-sell able goods.

Overall though, the automation that I've been able to bring in has improved my efficiency by a huge margin, it's just I'm still pushing myself to expand in to as many markets as I can and the expansion in learning/supplying myself is starting to be a little tiring. I should just stop things for a day or two every week just to do other things in game that I want to do, like continue leveling my Death Knight who has stayed at 71 for a couple weeks now (at least a week...)

But such is the toil of an Auction House Mogul in the making, but do I really want to be that or just a supplier of stuff? We'll see what the time/reward works out to be in the end.

-LaFollet

Money, and nothing much else...

So my progress basically comes down to breaking 20k gold on my account, a few instance runs here and there, and the Valentines Day achievements (minus Fool for Love, but I have the Love Fools for it, just gotta do the leg work). Mostly my time has been very fractured as I'm nursing my poor wife through the flu right now, hopefully I'll be able to dodge that bullet myself though.

I find myself being very obsessive about the glyph market, as in I'll do some crazy things like just switch between my two Glyph Posters cancel/posting until people stop undercutting me. Which is what's been eating up most of my time, but it can also be done while I do "other things." I think people have become less inclined to fight me while I'm doing that, and more likely just to wait me out, then post their things. Since I'm still trying to establish my glyph business I'm pouring a large amount of time in to it over other things like the Enchanting Scrolls market and the Gem market, but I have been dabbling in other things to keep a diversified income source.

Which reminds me that I have to make more bags...

Over all though, I'm just really annoyed that the realms are down, since I've been logging in for AH stuff over my lunches at work, I'd really like to get things going some more, pick up some more Cloth, Herbs, and Ore, not in that order, and start converting my excess Snowfall Ink in to the epic off-hands to shard for Abyss Crystals, since they still go for about 30g-40g on my server. Someone is obviously scooping major amounts of crystals for some purpose, probably shattering them, so I need to find an alternate source. I've seen a few people advertising in trade to purchase them, so I might start doing that, see how it goes, especially since it's usually a "CoD them to me for Xg per" so it's little work for me if that works out.

I think something wonkey is going on in the Enchanting market though. I've got a snatch list set up to grab a few things here and there when prices are low, but very VERY rarely now does dust or essences show up, might have to look into adjusting my snatch/sell prices for enchanting stuff. I'll have to watch that when I start to get back in to the scroll market in earnest.

My Priest is really close to maxing Tailoring, and really needs to hit 68 to get Cold Weather Flying for cloth cooldowns, and is getting quite close to Outland level Alchemy (or might have hit 300 already, can't remember, haven't had a lot of time for her). Overall though, like I said, haven't had time to do much leveling of anything except my gold pile. Hopefully I'll be able to shake some time away from the Glyph Market (my own obsessiveness there...) so I can obsess over other things....

Joy.... ^_^

And I still have to decide about Blacksmithing, now or wait for Cataclysm...

-LaFollet

Quick Update

The Glyph market is a thing of wonder, that with my little bit of Enchanting Scrolls are pushing me up in gold quite quickly. Probably doubled my liquid assets so far this week alone. Gonna have to start keeping track of that like some other blogs... Somehow, not right now though. Much happiness even though there's some rough happenings in real life right now. Overall a very exciting time, in the Chinese proverb sense of "interesting times."

-LaFollet

Progress is.... Steady.

So my DK is about half-way through 70 just from tanking instances. I've mostly just been doing one a day to get the Emblems of Triumph, and only once have I come across a healer that couldn't keep me up. I'm not the best at Death Knight tanking, but I'm getting a lot better at popping cooldowns when appropriate, and holding agro isn't an issue at all. The issue in question was the double boss in Utgarde Keep that has a high random damage component. The healer couldn't/didn't/wasn't able to keep up with all the damage, which was weird as a Tree Druid, but the group ended up switching around tanks and worked it out. I have to say though that really peeved me off since the general consensus of the group was that it was my fault, except of course the guy that took over tanking, he didn't think it was my fault. Personally, I know all sides of that encounter (as if it's something huge and important! ^_^ ) and I'd chock it up as Healer-Tunnel Vision, something I suffer from a lot as a healer. Sometimes it's just plain hard to keep an eye on your own health when so much is going on!

I've slightly broke in to the Glyph market, which, on my server, seems to be very atypical to what I read about on other people's blogs. There's many points where Glyphs are going for 30g+ each, and it seems to cycle through a lot of the different glyphs as people undercut each other down. What I've basically done is set up one group in QA3 for my Glyphs with a Threshold of 10g and a Fallback of 60g, and from there it's cancel/post until things sell. Which has been working out well, minus the fact that I've been buying a lot of raw materials for Jewelcrafting and Enchanting... Not to mention the things I've purchased to subsidize leveling Alchemy on two different characters at once. ^_^

Overall my liquid funds are still around 5k - 10k across my characters, but my stocks of things are way up. At one point I had about 600 Infinite Dust, and I've gone through about 250 of each type of green gem since I started (almost 1500 Saronite Ore Prospects), obviously I've been rolling these mats over in to Gems, Cloth, Glyphs, and whatever else I can thing of to produce, which has resulted in a huge amount of gold flowing through me. Unfortunately it's all flowing through right now and I haven't really got a backlog of stuff that I can keep selling without producing more to just build up my gold. I know that'll happen, but it's a little discouraging to stay at the "same gold amount" after working this for a couple weeks, which is why I'm keeping track of a few things like my Saronite Prospecting. When I start to feel emo about my AHing skills, I can just look at how much product I've processed/moved through the totals I've created and know that I'm spending things to build a better business and that I'm making gold to cover all of those expenditures.

Of course if I was keeping track of my large expenditures than I'd know where it was going...

Too many things to keep track of!

-LaFollet

Never enough gold in the day.

So I've been buying things for alts, flying, Cold Weather Flying, and drooling over a few Dual Spec opportunities, and my (admittedly low) gold supplies just aren't up to the task of supporting this. So I'm concentrating a little more on my DK's professions, Saronite Shuffling and Scroll making to try to get some more gold infused into my characters. It's been going decently, but QA3 has a lot of grunt work to set up/adjust the prices for posting so many different cost items. So I've been devoting some time to working up a little program to do all that grunt work for me!

Nothing too fancy, just a little something to do the math/enter the data for me. Basically all I'll have to do is enter the price for mats then the program will, itself, calculate the lowest and highest value I'll try to sell my scrolls at. Just thinking about it right now, I can probably get away with pasting in the values myself, but eventually I'd like it to insert the values into the lua files that QA3 looks at, even query into something like the item value database that's built off auction scans to get the prices for the mats when it first starts... But that's for the future.

Other than that not much of interest going on. Been plugging away at most of my characters at once, trying to keep rested xp down by leveling through dungeons. Man, the queue for healers around 60 is just about instant, and the Tank queue is just about as fast, and pulls ahead towards 70. I'm hoping to get my DK more into tanking once I can get the Cobalt Tank set at 70, but I'm still feeling my way into a DW Tanking Frost spec. We'll see how that turns out... ^_^

But back to work for me now!
-LaFollet

Whoa...

So I've totally flaked out on a few things now while RAFing up some chars. Mostly it's been the level granting and when I should have been stopping those level grants. Also, I've had an epic math failure which will result in leveling my Hunter up more with RAF, or less and not getting to 60 fast.

I've got about 10 days left on the original 30 days and have a Priest, Shamen, Druid, Warrior, and almost Hunter to 60 (or can get there with level grants.) I've decided to forgo leveling a Rogue/something combo and save that for a Worgen alt, which leaves me without anything else to level after my Hunter. My mage is already planned to be Night Elf, and I don't like any of the race options for Warlock other than Worgen which obviously has to wait for Cataclysm. What I'll probably end up with is leveling my Hunter until I out-level the RAF bonus (4 levels higher than other character) then just drop the extra levels from making my Warrior 58 on my Hunter and just see where that ends things.

My Death Knight is now 65, Jewelcrafting at 400, Enchanting at 350. I'll probably focus on her after my Hunter to get high enough to do the JCing daily to start collecting tokens for cuts. I'm still not 100% if I'd rather prospect the Titanium Ore I get or sell it on the AH. Price cutting is pretty severe, so it might take a while to sell, but uncut gems just seem like a "waste" of money.

The one major draw-back of leveling so many characters so fast is I now have so many profession slots to fill...

Work...
Work...
Work...

-LaFollet

About a week? /NEWPOST!

So I splurged and got a Battered Hilt for my Paladin's Retribution set. Cost a bundle, 12k gold, but I figured it was worth it at the time, if just to have the sword and the experience in the end. And truth to tell, it was TOTALLY worth it. The quest line was great, with the usual WoWieness, like helping a Gnome Cloth Washer with his work, to the epic end at the Sunwell. What's even better though, is that's it's probably come close to doubling my DPS. I know, seems like an exaggeration, but it's what it feels like, and isn't too far from the truth. It's at least been a 60%-80% increase across the board. Of course the couple of upgrades I got about the same time probably helped things too... ^_^

A truly terrible Zul'Farrak PuG, followed by a truly awesome Zul'Farrak PuG both destroyed then rebuilt my faith in low-level instancing. I don't think I'll dual-box in instances again, but it certainly had it's moments. My Paladin/Shamen is 52/51 right now, just questing to finish up to 60, and I have plans to get my Hunter to about 30ish then grant levels to 60ish. Or I could just grant the current levels (after spreading the love to the characters I want) to get to about 30ish.

I think...

Unless I counted wrong...

Which is a possibility.

So I've been feeling drawn back to my old guild, who shouldn't know that I've been playing again. They've moved on to a much harder-core raiding mentality, with raids just about every night, and have lost the small-guild feel I liked about playing with the people I knew when we formed. That's what and where they were going from the beginning, I was just along because it was the people I enjoyed playing with, but at the end of my last time playing I wasn't so much as playing with them, as playing somewhere in the same group. It's a very subtle distinction, but the flavor and camaraderie that I had there just wasn't around anymore, and with the continued influx of new people it wasn't going to come back. Which is why I left and now find myself on a new server.

My Priest and Druid are kicking it Outlands style now. Random Dungeon Outlands Style!

It's been really interesting too, since as a Discipline Priest I have about a million different tools to use to shore up any group that comes up. But I've found almost the opposite to be true on my Druid. I've got a lot of different tools, several new kinds of cooldowns, but not a whole lot of breadth to my bread and butter healing tools. I know it's changes as I get closer to cap, it's just kinda weird right now.

I suppose that covers enough ramblings for now...

-LaFollet

Merry Christmas and all that stuff.

Well, it's been a while since my last post where my Priest/Hunter was at level 33. They've since completed the trek to 60 in 1 day 20 hours, right on the expected time investment from the guide I was following. Which is saying something because I wasn't super strict about not wasting time. I've since shelved both of them in the interest of my next duo, a Shamen/Paladin.

I've been leveling them in instances, Paladin tanking while the Shamen's on follow dropping totems and healing. I'm not going to say there hasn't been a few hairy moments, but overall it's been a cakewalk, the worst thing is dealing with some of the people you come across. Generally though it only takes one time of me letting them almost die/die when they pull to get them to follow my original directive of "Let me pull."

I've been switching between my Shamen and my Druid though for the last 10 levels or so, both with full Heirloom gear (for the xp bonus). It's been really weird learning two different styles of healing at the same time. I often want for my totems while on my Druid, or want to HoT up the DPS when AoE is going on when playing my Shamen. They both seem to have a lot more "Snap Tools" than a Priest or Paladin though, of course they're all fairly balanced, it's just that having access to tools that trivialize the Healing shortfalls I've fought against really is quite nice. ^_^

All that to say that the Paladin/Shamen/Druid love-triangle thing is about level 43ish (Paladin is higher, Shamen/Druid is trailing, with some level grants to keep up) and climbing fast. It's only taken me about 1 day to get to 43, with even more standing about that I did with my Priest/Hunter.

Hopefully things won't slow down much, and I can get the characters leveled that I want to get leveled. It's probably better to shoot for Cataclysm for all this plan than anything else, but who really knows how much time is left? And if I can eek out some profit in the meantime... ^_^

-LaFollet