Friday 25 January 2008

Still an altoholic

My shaman still isn't getting out much. Real life must come first! I managed to get together enough honour to buy myself the Gladiator's Salvation in time for Christmas, and then spent a fair while grinding primals for the nice healing enchant. Since then I've done one night in Karazhan which netted some nice Badges of Justice but still not Attumen's bracers or the tier token from the Curator.

Meanwhile my alts have had a few outings, which mostly just show I can't make my mind up...

My (retri) BE paladin went to Black Fathom Deeps as a healer to my stepson's (balance) druid. I'd rather have been tanking but as he was 3 levels higher than me it didn't make sense at the time, even though our specs would have better suited us being in opposite roles. I love being able to do the "I can tank or heal" thing, but I'm fairly sure I'll retire this paladin just because he's a blood elf. I don't like their overall manga feel, or their casting animations, and I've learned from my troll priest that if I spend a lot of time with a character these will irritate me more rather than less. My thought instead is to level my rogue to partner his druid which will make instancing more difficult in terms of finding a group, but the character suits me more. Stealthing, lockpicking and sapping continue to exert a pull over me.

I started a human paladin on another server, and got him to level 6 (woot!). I'm going to have to find some space on my main server and restart him on there, with some minor twinking in the form of bags and perhaps a whole gold piece to start him off. If I had my WoW time over again I'd have a paladin perhaps not as my first character but certainly in the top 4 or 5. I'm glad I've got a high level orc with a big axe; I'm glad I got to tank back when warriors were the only real tank; and who can resist creating a mage when you first see one toasting their enemies from long range, unleashing arcane missiles, or AoEing 5+ mobs at once?

My NE hunter is now level 45, and I've got his leatherworking roughly up to where it should be. This guy's my main alt at the moment - he's in a good guild and I'm looking forward to getting into Outlands and doing some instances in a DPS and CC role, rather than shouldering the burden of tanking or healing.

And finally (and perhaps foolishly) I've taken my undead warrior out of retirement and up to level 61. I tanked Hellfire Ramparts still in my Azeroth gear (about 20 minutes after stepping through the portal), and without the level 70 healer we had we wouldn't have made it. It was classic PUG tanking with DPS starting way to early, and general chaos with only the boss fights going to plan. I'm still hankering to be an orc instead of an undead warrior (the big axe again), although on reflection the undead look better in full plate than an orc does. I'm not sure I've got the patience to tank many more PUGs, or the time to gear up a tank, but on the other hand when I hear one of our guild druids lamenting that the PUG he's healing has a tank who only cares about one mob in the pull I get an urge to switch characters and pull out my sword and board.