Gnomeregan and Stratholme

I spent Sunday morning on my druid, Duillnar, in Gnomeregan with my stepson's paladin. I still don't like that place - partly the look doesn't really work for me, and partly I can never find my way around. Also, how can a place that small ever have been a city for an entire race? Ironforge has a much more epic scale to it, that's what an underground city should be like.

Anyway, we got through it fine, killed the end boss for a nice quest reward, and were finished in time for lunch... :)

I really enjoyed the druid role - although I don't much like feral cat dps the versatility is great. Our tank was a level 46 paladin, who unfortunately didn't really know what he was doing yet, so gave me a chance to occasionally go bear to pull a mob off the healer. Equally I could have healed if we'd needed it.

An odd group set up though - 2 paladins, a holy priest, enhancement shaman and myself. At one point we had a death on a trash pull. "It's OK", said the tank "I can res". "Actually, we can all res" says I...! I wonder how often that happens...

For now I think I'll stick with the druid. Although I could level up my shadow priest, and could still group with the stepson's paladin knowing we just needed to find 3 dps, I like the option of being able to tank.

I then spent Sunday afternoon in Scarlet Strat, and Monday in UD Strat, finishing up some Argent Dawn quests and getting myself up to Revered. My guild wants to see Naxx before it moves to Northrend, and while I had most of the materials to get attuned at Honoured rep getting to Revered with them was unfinished business from pre-Burning Crusade. It turns out that two elemental shaman can kill level 60 elites real quick, at least until we pull too many mobs and casting pushback starts to be a pain. Two shamans and a rogue are even quicker - we built a really good pile of Bile Spewer corpses, and barely saw the Baron before 2 elementals and our own dps downed him.

Seeing the inside of Naxx almost made me wish I'd been more of a hardcore raider before. Almost...

The screenshot above is there to remind me how much I love being an orc, even while I'm dabbling with druidism!

More alliance alts

My shaman is slightly in limbo at the moment, with real life making raiding difficult. Instead I've been dabbling with alts again...

Big Bear Butt inspired me to start up a Night Elf shadow priest. I think the slightly darker, mysterious side of the NElf lore goes quite well with the class. He's level 12 currently, and I'm enjoying seeing the Draenai starting area for the first time, but I'm not sure about him long term. Having already levelled a 70 shadowpriest there's an easy familiarity to playing him (although I miss a few skills I've not got yet like Psychic Scream). But conversely he's not showing me anything new. I'll probably level him to 20 to get Mind Flay, and to see the rest of the starting quests, but then he'll probably get retired. If you got Shadowform at 20 I'd probably keep him going, because that's when the class becomes really cool, but 20 to 40 is a fair old time commitment, even these days.

The main reason he'll probably get retired though is my druid will probably take his place. I'm looking for a character to go with my stepson's dwarf paladin, and he seems to fit the bill better. Partially because he's feral, and hence in rogue gear, as opposed to the priest in a robe - he just looks cooler. Then there's the ability to do all 3 roles - tank, dps and heal - compared to "just" 2 for the priest. And while I'd rather be tanking in plate than in fur, the shapeshifting thing is rather fun.

I still have to try out my hunter in a good instance group though, just to see how that goes.

And my latest plan is to have a dwarf death knight, once they're released, to satisfy my need for a character in plate. That will also mean I have one each of my three favourite races - along with a slew of other characters I'm doing my best to leave retired.

What I want in WotLK - more caves

Black Fathom Deeps is my all-time favourite instance in the game, purely for the feel of it as you go inside. For me it invokes my old pen-and-paper RPG days in a way that no other instance quite does. Something to do with the low wide tunnels with sandy floors I think, but I'm not really sure.

Thinking about this today I decided that what I'd most like to see in the expansion is more new cave layouts. I'm not sure what's so right about BFD, but I know that the newness of some of the zones in the Burning Crusade was spoiled by the reappearance of the same old cave layouts we've been seeing all the way through the game. As soon as you go inside you know that there's on or two locations where the quest object will be. A little while ago in Searing Gorge on my hunter I came across a layout I'd not seen before and the disorientation of not recognising it immediately was very welcome.

Fully epic'd - what next...?

A run of the second half of Kara last night netted me enough badges to replace my last blue with the Necklace of Eternal Hope. Now that everyone's in epics I may be relatively only as well geared as my previous best - 2 or 3 purples and Zul Gurub blues - but it feels like some sort of milestone.

The run itself wasn't great - we're now running through second and third alts and the occasional new person. This means some characters are undergeared and too squishy, and understandable mistakes by the newbies can be frustrating. I'm was there for the badges but mainly the t4 head from the Prince to replace my only non-mail item. We didn't down him when we probably should have - the tank was a bit undergeared and didn't really have enough health, but although we got to phase 3 on our third attempt keeping both the tank and the dps alive at that stage proved too much, and we were too tired for a 4th go.

In terms of development of my shaman I'm getting towards the end until the expansion. I'm not sure I want the t4 head piece enough to clear the trash between Curator and Aran again, so I'll keep turning up to our progression raids in SSC and meanwhile do a few other goals like maxing out skills and soloing a few level 60 instances. I'm also going to move my non-resto talent points into Enhancement, purely to get instant ghost wolf. It just seems right for the character.

Apart from that I'm not really sure were to go next. I've decided to park the warlock again - it occurs to me that he doesn't really get me anything new, apart from the possibility of a high level enchanter. If I want to dps I can respec to Elemental and although they're not popular as dps for 5-mans due to the lack of crowd control a warlock is probably the next least popular choice except when there's demons around, as fear and seduce aren't highly throught of.

I might spend some time on my hunter, at least to try some Hellfire Peninsula instances as dps/cc - I want to test instancing with dwarfs and the like. Overall I prefer the Horde as a faction, due to humans being smug and gnomes being gnomes, but I feel that orcs should be in the majority as the centre of the Horde, not a tiny minority as they actually seem to be.

I might level my orc warrior, for tanking and because undead have tiny shoulder armour. This sounds ridiculous, but try comparing how the Warbringer set looks on the two races. Or perhaps (unlikely) if I decide Alliance is where it's at then a human paladin is called for.

I'm also tempted to try Eve Online for a total change.

Fantasy rather than sci-fi is where my heart is though.

One blue to go

I have my tier 4 chest, now just my neck to replace - and I can do that with 4 more badges...

It was an odd night. We had a fair bit of trouble on Maggy due mainly to clicking problems, but then got Gruul on our first attempt - perhaps we've now really got the hang of Shatters, and we kept both tanks alive throughout which is pretty rare.

Rolled 18 for the chest, but fortunately there was only one other shaman / rogue that needed it (and no paladins in the raid) and he rolled an 8... :)

Locks rock

With a few refinements to my grinding technique following feedback from some guildies the warlock is starting to look really promising.

I'm now using my imp on passive as a mana battery, for his superior regeneration rate, and using fear where possible rather than drain tanking.

I've got some +damage now, although not quite enough it seems, and grinding seems much quicker. I still need a bit more practice though, as unplanned adds can make things a bit dicey, especially caster adds. I occasionally found I was fearing one target out of two or three without having DoT'd it first.

Another advantage I discovered with having the imp out was that I could use him to nuke when necessary. I found when fighting Vilebranch Soothsayers (who heal) that even with Curse of Tongues up they'd often be able to get a heal out. My untalented shadowbolt takes an eternity to cast, so I couldn't stop them that way, and fear wasn't really an option in the surroundings. But if I attacked with the imp as they started to heal between us we could often finish the mob off before the heal landed.

I got him up to 48 at the weekend, and got his enchanting up to 125 so he can disenchant some of his older gear and useless quest rewards. Now it's time to go back to Searing Gorge, where I was so recently with my hunter.

My lock might make it beyond 60, or my warrior itch may become too strong... It's tough having a retired alt with a high level trade skill - when you occasionally need it (in this case to make an enchanting rod) you remember how much time and effort you've put into that character in the past.

Warlock alt?

I didn't get much chance to play over the weekend. What time I had was spent getting an extra level on my lock and getting my head around playing him again. Generally he proved quite fun, but I'd rate him as much less easy than a hunter to play. Part of the problem is that your crowd control (i.e. seduce) is both harder to use and less obvious when it breaks, another aspect is that with a hunter with 3 targets you'd set the pet on one, trap one and let the other hit you a bit while as a lock I was CCing one and trying to DoT and drain-tank the other 2, while having to re-apply CC as well... A bit stressful when you're learning again.

I grouped up with an enhancement shaman in STV to kill an elite troll (slightly problematic, due to add density and my noobness, although he also seemed to have forgotten he could heal himself) and a more powerful elite giant (straight forward). These couple of encounters were a steep learning curve, but also reassuring in terms of the lock's versatility. Overall it seems that while an affliction lock is just a good a grinder as a BM hunter you don't get quite such as feeling of power as the warlock - as a hunter both you and your pet are doing some big hits, while as a warlock it's more about lots of little sources of damage. On the plus side though you can summon whichever minion is the best for the task at hand, and you're much less attached to them if they have to die to keep you alive.

After prompting from my guild that I really needed some +damage instead of just int and stamina, I crafted a couple of items of the Dreamweave set. I'll get the robe when I find some Wildvine, or when the AH price for it drops from insane levels. It sounds like that will help help a lot with the grinding. It's a bit of a bonus that he already has 300 tailoring - as my first tailor to get over level 35 I trained him up ages ago so that he could make decent bags, way before I sent my now-retired priest down the tailoring route.

On the way into work this morning I was pondering if the warlock alt was such a good idea though. There are many factors to this.

Warlocks are a pretty complex class, what with having to keep account of DoT durations, the sheer number of spells (for example, you know what curse to use when, but you just need so many hotkeys for them), and having crowd control that's a little unreliable. Is this a good idea for an alt? On the other hand is there such thing as a simple class, if you want to play it well?

There's the question of what this alt is for. He's not a "tourist" alt, as he's the same faction as my main so visiting all the same places and doing the same quests. Also not a leisure / escape alt - he's in the same guild, so if I'm on him I might be asked to help out if my shaman is needed. Given that, should I just drop the idea of another alt and spend the time on my main? There's plenty of stuff for my shaman to do, even if it's less compelling than the quick rewards of levelling a new character.

There's the fact that I'll very rarely if at all be asked to bring a DPSer to a raid over a healer, even though there are some occasions when you really need a lock or two along. Not something for me to worry about really though - I'd be reluctant to bring an alt to an instance that my main didn't already have all his drops from, as it's frustrating when you see a drop you want but you're on thw "wrong" character.

Another slight worry is that I'm quite goal oriented - I'm already thinking about what gear I'll want for him when he gets to 70. I really must remember this is just an alt. Alongside this is the sheer level of competition for cloth DPS gear - one of the great things about the shaman that gear competition is very low outside of a 25 man raid, you're often the only person there who needs it when the right armour drops.

Overall though I think I'll keep him running - if nothing else my shaman's future is mainly daily quests outside of raids, which don't appeal all that much.