The Old Becomes New Again…

One plus about this point of an expansion is that while I may exhaust options on my main, I also usually end up rediscovering toons I enjoyed in the past once again.  And thus is my current project…

 

Aulao – my gnome mage, currently fire.  I pulled her out and dusted her off and did a few HoT randoms and got enough gear to hit LFR quite quickly.  I wasn’t top of the meter by any stretch of the imagination but I was middle of the pack.  Typically, since BC I have not enjoyed playing caster dps toons.  I love healers, but not big on caster dps, so I was surprised to find myself enjoying it very quickly.  She still needs a bit of gear [she’s sitting there in transmogged Tier 1 from Molten Core].

So now, I’m wondering what toon I might discover I enjoy once again.  Will it be one of my forlorn forgotten disc priests?  Or rediscover that feral kitty is teh awesome?  Or will I finish leveling my druid healer and give that a whirl?  Or head back to Star Wars and ding another level in the forties on my Jedi Knight?  We shall see.  I’ll go where my notions take meh.

On Leveling a New Mage:

No, I can’t give you food until level 38.

No, I can’t buff int until level 58.

No, I can’t spell steal until level 70.

No, I can’t teleport yet… I get my first self port at level 24.

No, I can’t decurse until level 30.

No, I can’t time warp until level 85.

No, I don’t have an aoe yet – I get arcane explosion at level 22 and blizzard at 52.

No, I’m not lying about not having above things yet.

This alt MAY be more trouble than it’s worth…

Alt Update

Askevar is now 2h frost tank to collect souls for shadow’s edge.  Her threat actually seems a bit higher than in the dual wield build… not appreciably, but just a smidge.  I got just over 200 souls last week between a run of the first 4 bosses in ICC [6 of our 10 regulars were out so we snagged other random people and alts to fill] and ICC25 up through fester and rotface with a few shots at Dreamwalker – YAY ADDS!

Askalaphos – My hunter is now decked out in 4 piece t10, thanks to VoA 🙂  She’s a great example of toon in excellent gear doing mediocre dps.  On a stand and burn I can hit 5k…  with anything else I hover in the 3-4k range.  That’s fine for heroics… but yeah… the idea of raiding with her in this shape is not pleasing.  I may need to consider a respec.

Alika – My pallytank is coming along well.  I’m hoping to get her into an ICC run eventually… as either tank or dps.  I’ve snagged a couple failed pugs so far that either couldn’t clear the trash or wouldn’t listen to mechanics and wiped on Marrowgar.  But I’d love to replace her 219 tanking ring… and frankly her 219 shield as well.  Her day will come 🙂  I’ll get a pug that can hit lower spire eventually.  I’m saving up the badges for her tanking pants next.  Her ret set is pretty good, but it’s all crafted/ICC 5 mans drops.  Yes, I’m very aware that the NES isn’t the ideal trinket for her ret offspec.  Unfortunately, most of the ones she needs are in ICC…  not going to happen anytime soon and I darn well don’t need 500 hit… so the hit trinket is out.  And “facerolling” 4-5k in an offspec ain’t bad either in randoms.

Carlyn – is slowly gearing up.  I have several more things she needs via triumphs before she’s “complete” there, but she’s coming along well.  I actually managed to pull 5k on a heroic boss fight [I stink at trash – big shock I know] so maybe I’ve not forgotten too much of warlocking from back in BC.

Aulao – My mage is doing alright.  I’ve cannibalized most of her frost for saronite for Shadow’s Edge [and my poor shaman’s as well] so they’re both behind on gear, but still doing okay.  She’s been arcane for a while but I’ve been experimenting with fire – with mixed results.

Tsali – Enhancement/resto – but spends more time in healing gear than in dps gear ironically.  I heal so that I can buy her better enhancement gear…  Still having issues with resto shaman healing in some of the simplest places.  If the group is good, it all goes smoothly.  If I have jerks and people pulling for the tank… well.. we’re probably going to wipe.  I don’t have the instincts yet or the skill to do any amazing saves.

Arica – My kitty is about 20 badges from 4 piece t10 and she’s doing awesomely…  probably the best of all my dps toons.  I’m  pulling 6-7k dps on boss fights and typically end up with an overall of 4-6k.  I’m impressed and the “rotation” really clicks well with my playing style.  She’s my primary dps alt

Kintara – My primary alt and I love her so!  If I could walk away from tanking and Askevar I would be playing her as my main.  However, I still adore tanking and Askevar too much to give up.  Disc priesting is wacky bubbly fun :D.  Save for a drop in VoA25, I may never see, she’s as geared as she can be short of ICC10/25 gear.

Kalliana – Um… she’s there.  She does the weekly and is done with gearing from triumphs… just need a better ring [curse you HPOS!!]

Odyyn – He just got his first piece of t10.  I seem to fall in and out of love with warrior tanking… some weeks I like it and run his dailies… some weeks I don’t.  Of course, jerks in ICC 25 gear can test many a tank’s patience.

Now, how do I keep it straight?  I honestly don’t know…  I just do.  They are separate toons, with separate personalities… they’re individuals, so it seems easy enough.  I also have a list on rememberthemilk dot com of things I need/want/would like to do.  I mark them off when I get them done.

“But you’re making WoW into a chore!”

No, I’m not…  I have no deadlines set on the list… no requirement to get everything or anything done.  But hey, if I get in a mood to explore or grind rep, I can easily look and see who needs what, pick what I want and go.  It’s about efficiency.  Altoholic helps with that too.  But I try to make anything I do go quickly and easily.  Since I’m cutting back on my WoW time, that’s even more important.  And if I don’t touch the list for a week?  Who cares?!

Be Ye Kind To Mages!

Whilst I ponder other things, it has been noticed the role of mages in holidays.  For the first holiday event EVER I have a max level mage!  Which sort of poses a dilemma… how does that help me get my crew around Azeroth?

Easy!  Second account!!!  Make a toon on the second account a raid leader [so your toons aren’t automatically kicked from party], set them all in the same spot, turn off all your addons, have the mage toon pop a portal and then cycle through as quick as you can and have them hop through the portal – do all the quests at that location on all toons and rinse/repeat.

It also comes to mind that a lot of people take mages for granted and/or abuse the ones that exist.  Mages seem to be becoming absent more and more on the server… almost as much as the rogues [they all went into hiding I think].  Whispers such as “port me now” and “gimme port” are exactly why.  If you want to use a mage’s porting service and they AREN’T one of the ones adverting in trade, be kind to them [well be kind to those too, but you get my point here].  Most will be happy to port you somewhere if you ask nicely, and give them a tip.  1g is pretty standard but I’ve received as much as 10-20g for a single port.  I’ve had people tell me that I owe them portals because portals are free.  For those not in the know, portals use reagents and reagents do cost money, granted, not a whole lot.  The sense of entitlement is worse than it was on my warlock regarding summons.

Mages can make your life a lot easier during this event, so be kind to them!!!

In summary:

1. Be kind.

2. Ask, don’t assume.

3. Tip well.

In other news, all my toons have the Pilgrim title and pet!  Woot!

And I thought Sunwell was supposed to be hard?

Tonight since our raid broke up early [we had a lot of people not feeling good] a few of us [14 to start with] ended up tackling Sunwell.  I think we eventually ended up with 18 total in the raid.

We had several wipes, but that was mainly because we’d never seen the content and had no clue about the dances.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Felmyst was the most problematic and Kil’jadean also caused us a few wipes but for the most part it was smooth sailing.  Felmyst MCing the entire raid and killing us was admittedly… hysterical 😛  And the screams of “Kill X, they’re MC’d!” were equally funny.

Maybe it’s just because the instance was overhyped or maybe we were too tired/silly to care or maybe we had some dancing shoes on, but it honestly wasn’t as bad as we’d been led to believe [though I am certain it was back in the day on the level].
***In another happy note – my mage hit 80!!!!!  WOOT!  😀

Week in Review on my Toon Army

As we all know, Hallow’s End started this week, and I already have 2 of my toons with the title, Hallowed [my main – Askevar, and my former main – Carlyn]. Carlyn was lucky enough to also receive the [What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been] achievement… well I say lucky but I worked a lot on that :P. I hope to see that on my new main someday but that’s going to be a bit more work as well.

All the rest of my toons [save my level 25 warrior] are just a squashing, a hallowed helm, or both shy of the title, so I’ll keep trick or treating on them this week to see what I can get.

My mage is just shy of level 79 as I write and I’ve been doing tournie stuff with her and working on making her some decent PVE gear. I mainly plan to PVP with her, but eh, it’d be nice to heroic on her occasionally. I’m currently debating whether to dual spec her. With the changes coming to Frost in the next patch, I should be able to heroic with her alright in a modified pvp spec as I understand it, and I don’t honestly plan to raid on her –  must do more research.

Got my priest into a VoA10 and 25 – both ended with boss deaths, but the 25 had some… normal pug issues I guess you could term them.  No loot but achievements were had 😀  Also healed a guild pug of Ony10… well we tried to do it.  Let me say, I have new appreciation of what you healers do on that fight.  I’ve never sweated that instance as a tank… not really, but trying to MT heal was most interesting and frustrating at times.

Random Meaningless Update

Or another alt update… or something.

My mage has reached level 73 – yay! She’ll be 80 within a week I expect, depending on how much I care about grinding her and how much I PVP and whatnot for the experience.

When I finish leveling her, I’ll be focusing on the warrior next… and achievements for all my toons. As I said, a little every day and I’ll be there in short order.

Todays accomplishments:
1. Outland and/or Northrend Gourmet on several toons.
2. Got the mage another outland daily recipe and finished up Borean Tundra and started Dragonblight. She also picked up all the emotion food recipes, which I was surprised getting 3 back to back to back almost.
3. I did finally finish Classic Dungeonmaster on my shaman the other day… just have Dire Maul for the priest and then the achieve to grind for both mage and warrior.
4. I find myself more and more considering my toons and their backstory… and even talking it out a bit more with a friend. Don’t be surprised it you see a post related to my thoughts in the near future.
5. Caught my mage’s mining up so I can mine current level stuff… so I don’t have to go back later and worry with it.

The Alt Update:

First of all, my pally tank alt got in a guild Ony10 run last night.  I was kind of surprised they wanted us and I honestly didn’t feel like raiding but it was a LOT of fun!  The paladin def helm dropped and they gave it to me!  Totally not expecting that at all.  I was… well squeeing would be the best word to use lol.

Still need Classic Dungeonmaster on my shaman and priest [and upcoming mage and warrior as well].

Explored the Eastern Kingdoms on my paladin and outland on my rogue; and got the World Explorer title and achieve on my hunter.  Still got a lot to do with this for all my toons, but a little at a time is what I’m aiming for.  I should have plenty of time before Cataclysm.

Let’s see…  I’m working on collecting cooking recipes I missed/skipped on my alts right now.  I’m only a few recipes short on my priest, shaman and  mage [excluding the cooking daily only recipes of course – those add a few more].

I hit level 70 on my mage [yes already].  The battleground experience she gets is pretty insane.  I honestly haven’t worked on my warrior much of late, but eh, I’ll get him leveled eventually.

I’m a BEAST! A BEAST I tell you!

And no, I’m not making a reference to my feral druid there…

I was tooling around on my gnome mage during an officer meeting, waiting for AV to kick in and questing in Hellfire in the meanwhile.  During this,  I was doing the quest for the mines under Honor Hold and a level 59 warrior runs up, obviously doing the same quest.  He throws me an invite and we rip through the stuff like it wasn’t there.  I was just pulling back to back to back, in other words, my usual routine on the mage.  He comments “You’re a beast!”  I, taken aback a bit by the compliment, replied “Me?”  and he added “Yes you!”.  He asked a few more general questions about my mage and we parted ways a short time later.  But I was squeeing with delight.  Thanks to our healing lead [hattip to F], who also is an expert on mages, I can actually do it!  I can actually play a caster again and be halfway decent at it!  And here I thought I’d never enjoy a caster again after what they did to my lock!

I hope to eventually grind pvp gear on the mage at 80, but eh, it’ll come when it does.  I’m just going to enjoy being a beast in the 60s for now 😀

I Hate PVP.

I absolutely entirely 100% hate pvp. The only interest I’ve had has been in Wintergrasp and that was mainly for achievements and mounts, and such…

Now I’ve tried a little lower level pvp… Specifically Alterac Valley, starting at level 59… Let’s just say that four AVs later, I hit 60. I’ve been shocked at how decently easy AV is [at least for my mage]. I just follow the pack and nuke things, freeze things, sheep things, turtle things, rabbit things and the like… And I’m rewarded with achievements and a TON of experience.

So maybe PVP isn’t that bad on the right toon at the right level…

So from now on, on my mage, I’m going to sit in the AV queue whilst questing.