Zhevra Mounted

   I have been absent from this blog for nearly a year now, and I have a pretty good excuse, but I missed it and I plan to pick it back up. The novel following this is to explain myself and my bad behavior. :(

   Mists of Pandaria was something I was excited for when it was announced, as most Warcraft fans were. A new expansion, and this time we're going to a new land again. The Theramore pre-launch event should have clued me in to how I would feel about the expansion, but I soldiered through and bought my husband and I both copies the morning of launch.

  We landed in Pandaria and began our adventure, excited about the hidden treasures to seek and interact with. I even found the Bind on Account Jade Infused Sword 30 minutes in to play. We encountered our first Rare, Morgrinn Crackfang, and were excited to find that Rare mobs were truly the Elites of old.

  Then we realized that there weren't really any instances to level with, and they certainly weren't our favorites we had ever done at that. Then we realized how many dailies there were and that they seemed, oddly, to be about the only thing available. Not many more instances unlocked at 90, professions were tied to dailies, and our guild of 6 years had moved to 10 man raids because there just weren't enough incentives to deal with the extra stress of planning around 25 people. Looking for Raid was my own personal nightmare; it was tuned way too easy to even keep you awake, better yet entertained, and populated with the same pond scum that trolled the very worst Looking for Groups.

   Needless to say, it wasn't long before my husband and I both found ourselves seeing our WoW subscriptions showing up on our bank account and realizing that we hadn't even logged in that month. We ended up cancelling our accounts and biding our time with League of Legends and joining some old guild mates on Guild Wars 2.

When the Siege of Orgrimmar patch launched, I had a guild mate tell me about Flex Raiding. We could now run raids, even current content, with anywhere between 10 and 25 raid members. It would automatically scale so people could even come and go as they pleased. I was intrigued but was going to wait it out until I saw Blizzard running a Facebook campaign for a free week of game time.

A week passed before I knew it and I was sucked back in. Guild mates were dragging me around Timeless Isle and I was able to get into Flex on any of my characters I had leveled and just enjoy the company of friends I had for years. MoP was more than tolerable. I was having fun again.

That lasted for 3 weeks. We started hemorrhaging players each week until even Flex, with all of its...well, flexibility, couldn't be run anymore. We found they were leaving for oQueue groups that required 550 iLvl. This despite the fact that we were clearing each boss on 3 or less attempts each week. They quickly turned Flex from what it was supposed to be, an opportunity to play with who you wanted to, in to another way to try to quickly devour content, get hot lootz, and move on.

Flex was a large step in the right direction, and after watching Blizzcon I have hope that the expected changes to raid types will be the final and correct one. Meanwhile, it sounds like we have another WotLK on our hands, with a massive gap between the final patch and the next expansion. In the meanwhile I believe we will be utilizing OpenRaid and I will be picking up Project Troll Roll once again. Here's hoping Warlords of Draenor will be a breath of fresh air.

Vanilla Completed!


   Well, this section has been an experience due to patch 5.0.2 dropping right in the middle of everything. I had Zen'Sera to level 54 when the patch went live, and it threw a serious wrench in the works.

The beginning of Arathi Highlands, a large chunk of the Hinterlands and most of Western Plaguelands make up levels 30-40.

The Hir'watha quests and the Lumbermill quests in Western Plaguelands were the only major drags, everything else was quick and pretty stream lined. I'm glad all 9 of my girls are Herbalists, it would make you sick to see how many herbs you had to pass up in Western Plaguelands.

• Zen'fera - Still Fury and still doing very well.
• Zen'za - Speeding up with talents, still not as fast as Survival.
• Zen'tuku - Easy to level in general, being sneaky has its perks.
• Zen'sera - Had to stay Disc all the way up to 40, I'm hoping Shadow may finally be worth it in the 40-50 bracket.
• Zen'jie - I'm starting to believe my Shamans will always be my favorite characters to level.
• Zen'kazkah - Send Pet. Dot Dot Dot. Tab. Dot Dot Dot. Repeat.
• Zen'kikii - Finally getting more points into Tiger's Fury (regain energy/more damage) has made the Druid one of the fastest classes this bracket.

I went ahead and moved on over to Hillsbrad Foothills and a little of Arathi Highlands. I have to admit that this leveling chunk started to wear me thin a lot quicker. The whole zone is fun until you get to the Stromgarde section; poor design with the whole run all the way over here, kill a couple things, run all the way back, get sent back to the same place and being forced to mow through the same mobs.


Zen'fera - 123 DPS. Joy.
Zen'za - 96 DPS. Full BoA group makes Focus hard to obtain. Better.
Zen'tuku - 112 DPS. Hemo makes the world go round.
Zen'sera - Couldn't do Shadow anymore, switched to Disc. Managed 78 DPS in dungeons. Not good, but better than it would have been.
Zen'jie - Still love my Sham. Got Stormstrike at 29, was sitting at 172 DPS in dungeons.
Zen'fi - 134 DPS. Oh Hot Streak. I love you.
Zen'kazkah - 94 DPS. Good God, Demo is amazing for leveling, but it's hard to shine when you're in with a decent group.
Zen'kikii - 132 DPS. So this would be higher if I were not so lazy and had gone to train...any of my skills.

Surprisingly is wasn't until I hit Zen'kikii (Last one on the list) that the Barrens really started to drag on my soul. After I got each of them to about 19 I went ahead a queued up for Shadowfang Keep to get to 20 and do a little experiment to see who can do what. We see people in BoA's so often now, it's easy to lose touch with what an average, new player can milk out of their character. I'm not new, I'm also not the greatest, but simply and comfortably average.

Make sure to check out the "Barrens 10-20" photo album at the top for a peek at what it's like to level in the Barrens.

• Zen'fera - (Fury) 60 DPS. I've always loved Fury. Soloing was quick and easy and the instance ran smooth.
• Zen'za - (Marks) 70 DPS. I've been a Survival Hunter since I started raiding in BC, but I was Marks before that and figured I'd give it another shot. If you get the jump then its probably going to be a one shot on things your level if you don't it's an irritating muddle of spin jumping and pin pricks of Arcane Shots.
• Zen'tuku - (Sub) 38 DPS. Shaaaaaaaame. To be fair, ambush only gets you so far when you're chain pulling an instance. Fun to solo, however, the changes to stealth speed and cooldown has made things a lot more fun.
• Zen'sera - (Shadow) 41 DPS. I forgot how much I hate low level Priests. Mana sucks and there aren't enough skills to be using as Shadow. This was the only character, out of all freakin' nine, that ever ran out of mana, and she did it frequently.
• Zen'jie - (Enhance) 57 DPS. My geared sucked at the beginning of the instance (just bad luck) but by the end I had managed weapon upgrades and it pulled it up. Shaman was refreshing to come back to after the Priest.
• Zen'fi - (Fire) 48 DPS. A little skewed by the full BoAs group I had making it impossible for me to get a cast off half of the time. She was a blast, excuse the pun, to level and will only getting better once I talent into proc'ing Pyroblast instead of Arcane Missiles.
• Zen'kazkah - (Demo) 46 DPS. Not all that amazing in instance, unstoppable soloing. Send pet. Dot next. Send pet. Dot next. Done.
• Zen'Kikii - 46 DPS. Once again, just fine in instances but you can't beat their solo abilities.

Reached level 10 so far, I note that each class is pretty even in damage and survivability. Though Cat Form and the Mage pulled out ahead from 8-10.

I love Trolls, but for some reason or another I never manage to finish leveling one. That's about to change, in 9 different ways. I'm setting out to roll each class that a Troll can be; Project Troll Roll has commenced! I'm going in class order and leveling each one in 10 level blocks then moving to the next in the interest of keeping rest.
I'm on a brand new server with no access to friends (so no high levels running me through or loaning gold) and no heirlooms.

For the sake of curiosity I'm going to be keeping record of /played times and average DPS while solo questing.

Meet the girls!

Zen'fera - Protection/Fury Warrior
Zen'za - Marksmanship Hunter
Zen'tuku - Subtlety Rogue
Zen'sera - Shadow Priest
Zen'died - Frost Death Knight
Zen'jie - Enhancement Shaman
Zen'fi - Fire Mage
Zen'kazkah - Demonology Warlock
Zen'kikii - Feral Druid

For those of you unfamiliar with the LFD (Looking for Dungeon), also called LFG (LFGroup), tool it is a fairly new feature in WoW that allows you to find people looking to join a dungeon group. You can start using it at level 15, and can either sign up for specific dungeons that are within your level range, or sign up for "random" which will do exactly as it says. When your group is ready you are automatically teleported into it, and can teleport out by leaving group or click the "eye" on your minimap. If you are DPS, expect a wait of about ~10 minutes, this depends on your server, time, and level range of course. Healers will expect a minute or two, and tanks are nearly "insta-queue", so try not to go AFK. Nothing more annoying than sitting there watching someone time out because they decided to go get a sandwich.

Word to the wise; signing up for random is both faster and usually more beneficial for you as you will get a Satchel of Helpful Goods, which contains a random enchantment blue, some gold and extra experience at the end of the dungeon. At 70 you will start to get badges from doing randoms.

As far as my experiences go, here is what you can generally expect out of the groups at certain levels. I'll update as my two lowbie alts get a little further along, as most of my alts were in Outlands or Northrend by the time LFD came out.

I've started a new project; partly because I want a new mage for a bit of battleground fun once the patch hits, and partly because I want all of the whelpling mini pets.

Meet Cryocore. She's a frost mage and I will be leveling her by grinding on Whelplings. Here's the plan; pick up skinning, good bags, and a sturdy wand.

From level 20-29 she will be grinding on the Red, Crimson, and Flamesnorting whelplings in the Wetlands. Obtain Tiny Crimson Whelpling.
Levels 33-38 she will moving on to the Dreaming and Adolecent whelps of the Swamp of Sorrows for Tiny Emerald Whelpling.
38-45 are the Scalding and Searing whelps of the Badlands for a Dark Whelpling.
Finally there is the Azure Dragonspawn, Scalebane, Magelord, and Mageweavers of Azshara from level 55-58. The final lootable whelpling, the Azure Whelpling.

Awww, Frosty is going to have a family again.

Whether you're just rolling a new alt, or considering a serious re-roll, the prospect of starting over can be especially daunting.  I'm one of those freaks that finds it refreshing, so I have managed to collect a few tricks to getting on your feet. There are some basic things that you need on a character; bags, a mount, and gold to support any professions you may want.

Through my multiple alts, I often wondered if there was a faster way to level. Then one day, inside a truly sorry Arathi Basin match, it finally hit me. It hit me in the form of five perfectly timed Lightning Bolts.
Dual-boxing has been around for quite some time now within the WoW community. Some people are against it, saying that it gives unfair advantages within PvP. While this may or may not be true, Blizzard has clearly stated that they have nothing in the ToS against dual-boxing, and that they are not concerned with its effects in PvP.
With that out of the way, we have to wonder what the pros and cons can be to running a multi-box setup. The obvious pros to multi-boxing are; leveling multiple characters at the same time, the ability to complete difficult quests (and even instances) by yourself, and coupled with refer-a-friend two and a half times experience bonuses up until level sixty. The cons depend on what set up you chose, but a few are present no matter what; it can be difficult to acclimate yourself to controlling multiple characters, paying for multiple accounts each month, and the price of purchasing the game and any expansions for each new account.