Alteriffic – Back to Healing

Well after an hour or two on Friday night sorting out my UI (still not how i want it, but it’s playable) I decided to get back in the Shaman Groove. 

Even though I was only away for a couple of days, absence really does make the heart grow fonder !!  I would advise anyone that’s feeling a little burned out or fed up with WoW to take a few days off.  I have to admit that when I went to bed on the nights where I didn’t play WoW thinking that I actually got a lot more done (no shit Sherlock), and I think I’m going to now actively take a couple of days off every couple of weeks, both to keep myself fresh and to get more done IRL.

Chunder managed to get Herbalism up to (around) 165 from 140, and also mining up  to 272 (so close to rich thorium).  I have to say that the additional skillups from smelting helped out a great deal here, and in a couple of nodes time I’ll be able to mine anything I find in the old world.  I’ll also have to get my ass over to Outlands to get trained to mine over 300.  

Noticing that skilling up cooking past 265 is going to be considerably easier with fish, I took it upon myself to get my fishing up to 150.  I need to get hold of the book to train myself to learn upto 225 (which I think is from STV) before I can go any further with this, so that’ll be on my to do list for this evening.  I also want to get Chunder to 300 Mining tonight, before I concentrate on the Herbalism grind.  To be honest I’m thinking of waiting til 60 and my Epic Mount before starting on Herbalism in earnest.

Chunders also now at level 66, which means in theory I could probably hit outlands tonight if I really put my mind to it and focused on grinding 2 levels tonight.  That said I’m not really in any rush (unless there’s a guild run to Ramparts) so will probably just Mine, Fish and pick up a couple more FlightPaths tonight (with a couple of quests thrown in)

Once again I couldn’t be arsed to log on and mess with my UI, so it’ll have to wait til the weekend now

To be honest though I’ve quite enjoyed the little (3 day) enforced break from WoW, and I now can’t wait to get back into it.  I have played some more CoD4, a bit of R6Vegas 2 (which I really don’t like after playing CoD4 for the last few months) and some HL2 which has been nice.

I also get my bonus from work this week so I’m trying to convince my wife to let me buy a Wii (which will mean more time away from WoW, but I’ll get to play Mario & Zelda again!).

Well after verifying and installing the patch last night I logged on to find none of my addons working, despite running my WoWAce updater.

To be honest I couldn’t be arsed to reinstall and reconfigure them last night, so I just logged off and installed parallels on my MacBook Pro and Windoze XP (which I’d been meaning to do for some time).  I also cobbled together some new desktop wallpaper for my wife from the photo’s we took ever the Easter weekend (ComicLife FTW!)

I haven’t updated my UI for months, and to be honest this could be a good time to throw it all in the bin and start from scratch.  I used to love creating my own UI’s back before BC, and I think I’ve just got lazy with the introduction of so many compilations that I’ve ended up with one of them.

Looks like there’ll be hardly any playing going on tonight, and it will be mostly UI tinkering.  I’m not too fussed though, as I said in my previous post 2.4 and Sunwell really doesn’t excite me too much

Missed the boat on making gold (again)

Well when I got home last night I popped on the AH to see only 5 auctions for Void Crystals.  Lowest BO was 39 Gold (they were 10 gold last week)

I’ve been thinking about buying up a ton of these pre 2.4 and then selling them once the patch hit and you could split them into LPS, but I missed my chance.  I’m not that surprised, as everytime I thought about doing it I just thought I’d wait a few days, and it’s been my downfall.

I hope when I look on the AH tonight that they’ve not doubled in price, as although I’ve got a nice chunk of change so I’m not that fussed.  I’ve heard talk of Voids going for up to 50g which would’ve been a sweet profit had I taken advantage of the situation.

Sunwell Isle – Am I bovvered ??

Personally I can’t get myself too excited about 2.4.  While I know it’s a pretty major content update, but to be honest my main feeling is mleh.  I’m not going to bother taking my 70 there at least for a week or more, because I can’t be bothered with dealing with the lag and overpopulation of the area.  I’m not even sure I’ll venture out there at all unless there’s some nice easy quest reward upgrades for Boog.  I’m content to focus on getting Chunder to outland and get his mining\herb up for the next week or so.  Plan is to be in Outlands for the begining of April  (which is probably asking too much, given how busy I am currently both at work and home).

Well I hit 54 last night after a few more hours in Un Goro and I can feel myself closing in on Outlands. 

I really want to quest in Azeroth until I’m 60, and I’m only a few skillups from being able to mine thorium which will speed up my mining a lot as I’ve found myself having to pass up nodes more and more these last few days.

Herbalism is proving to be a bitch to level, as I can’t be arsed to go back to the completed zones to skill up.  I am going to try to make a concerted effort this week to improve this though, as I know that if my mining and herbalism were close then it would save me time.  I’ll install one of the various route mapping add ons this evening (hopefully) and see if that speeds up the process.  Hopefully it will not take too long and I can get back on the road to outlands.

I really want to level fishing as well, but knowing how mind numbingly boring this is, I’m doubtful that this will happen before I get to outlands.  Oh and there’s cooking as well !!  All my recipies are green to me now, so it’s time to hit wowhead and hunt some new ones down (and then kill, kill, kill to get some meat to cook).

From the looks of it Patch 2.4 is hitting us in the EU tomorrow morning, so I’m going to buy up all the decently priced void crystals and enchanting materials this evening (if there are any left) and post them up tomorrow in the hope I can make a few hundred gold

I didn’t quite get everything done on my Feb to do list, but I exceeded my expectations with Chunder.  Time for an update of my current short term goals

1. Get Chunder up to 300 Mining\Herbalism before going through the Dark Portal.  (if I’m honest I want to get mining up to around 315 – 330 before I leave Azeroth for good)
2. Get Bandaid to 35 and subsequently Alchemy over 225
3. Play Boog a bit to farm some more Primals and remember to log on to burn my tailoring cooldowns (Shadowcloth\Spellcloth\Primal Mooncloth)
4. Continue to play the AH so that Chunder has enough for his Epic Flyer when he hits 70.  Currently at 4.2k gold
5. Try to get enough Darkspear Troll rep for Chunder to get a Swift Olive Raptor for when he dings 60

Now not all of these are essential by any means, however the main one I’ll be working towards is getting Mining\Herbalism up to 300 for Chunder before he leaves Azeroth.  This will go hand in hand with getting Bandaid up past 225 Alchemy, as I’ll have stacks of Herbs to send to him from Chunder, which will mean I don’t need to concentrate on raising my Herbalism skill on Bandaid.  In fact I’ll probably switch Herbalism across to Skinning on Bandaid, as I’ll be able to get all my mats from Chunder (or the AH if I’m desperate for lower level materials).

I’ll (try to) update this list as I go through March and April

Last night as I logged onto Chunder I had a whisper from Mia asking if I fancied getting Bandiad out of mothballs for the night.

Well it was a simple answer, of course I did!!  Recently Mia and Kit have found that duo’ing with two DPS’ers (Shadow Priest and Lock) has made instancing (outside of guild groups which they set up) a little difficult.  That and the fact that our guild is screaming out for tanks has meant it’s ALT time for them again.  Kit’s Warrior is 22 and Mia’s Druid is 23 so, with Bandaid level 20 (and full of rested XP) we decided to 3 man WC (with the only CC being Mia’s Sleep Beasts or whatever it’s called).

I have to say it was pretty easy, I dinged 22 before we left, and while I didn’t get any loot from the instance, I did have some new gear in my bags which I was able to wear after the dings. 

I only had to stop and drink once, and that was because I was rebuffing and healing through a bugged mob which was following us through the last third of the instance, and we couldn’t see the damn thing.  It wasn’t all bad though, as the constant lightning bolts from the Druid was keeping Kit in Rage nicely.

I had a blast, and can’t wait to play him again.  I think I’m going to log on every couple of nights to see if there’s anyone in need of a healer for various instances, and maybe just run around gathering herbs and levelling up my alchemy.

I’m probably going to focus on levelling Chunders Herbalism over the next couple of nights to try to get it in line with his Mining skill, as I’m only a few levels away from Outland.  More on that in the next post

Well having leveled as Enhancement I’ve found myself really liking the run in and smack things upside the head playstyle.  Thing is I created Chunder to be capeable of healing, something which I’m now considering may not happen.

Ideally I’d like to take Chunder into instances as a healer, however with my playtime situation I’m not sure if that is going to be such a good idea.  There’s two sides to it I suppose – and it’s all dependant on what I see Chunder doing through the 60’s and while 70.

What do I actually want to do ????

• to be able to heal, not necessary heal raids, or solo heal heroics but I have to be able to solo heal most normal instance runs. 
• to be able to solo (fairly effectively) quests through the 60’s
• to be effective in BG’s\Arena (this is a secondary requirement)

The reason I feel being spec’d purely for healing might not be the best thing for me is thus.  I have a small child, and another one on the way.  This means that raiding is pretty much out for me, as my AFK’s come with little to no warning, and can last anywhere from 1 minute to an hour.  I have raided with my guild (who are very understanding, as most of the players are mature, and with families of their own) but in a DPS role whereby my AFK’s weren’t going to be a major concern.  I’d not be that fussed about being the main healer for guild runs, as they’d be with a set of good friends who would wait for me to return, but PuG’s are a different story.  With my family situation being what it is, I dont have the option of logging on and waiting an hour or so to get a group going.  For this reason I dont want to be #942859439923874 DPS waiting for a spot.  I want to bring something to a group that is desired which will limit my waiting time. 

The waiting around is probably not that much of an issue, as most instance runs will be guild groups, but I’d sooner be in a role where if needed I can take a quick AFK on trash and not be the cause of a wipe.

I think at the moment I’m definately going to have 1 points in Resto for Natures Swiftness.  This leaves me 40 points to place elsewhere.  Not sure where I’ll put these to be honest.  As I see it I have the following options  .  .  .  .

1. Say fuck it and go resto at around 65, and then just level through instances and grouping to kick through quests nice and fast
2. Stay ench until 70, then consider a respec
3. Switch to a Hybrid build which will allow me to heal my way through instances as I level up

I’m not sure whether Ench or Ele would complement the Resto tree better at this stage.  I need to do a load more reading up of the talents before I make any decisions, but as I’ve got another 8 levels before I go to outlands I should have enough time.

Well now that I’m in the 50’s, I’ve a few decisions to make.

What instances should I run (if any)?

I’m going to do ST to get my level 50 class quest done, but other than that I’m not sure if I should bother with any unless I’ve a few quests lined up, and I can either get a full guild ALT group, or a guild boost.  I’ve been to all of the old world instances before many many times pre-TBC, so I’m not going to feel like I’ve missed out.  As for gear, I know it’ll all be replaced very soon after getting it so that’s not an issue for me. 

When should I go to Outlands?

There’s a few options here,

1. should I hit it at 58 and quest there from the get go
2. go at 58 and grab a couple of the better\easier quest rewards
3. go at 58, and grind mobs til I’m factioned capped to allow easier faction gain from quests
4. go as soon as I can get summoned into Ramparts
5. stay in Azeroth for as long as I can stomach, in the knowledge that when I get there it will be considerably easier

I think it’s a given that I’m going to go there at 58, but I don’t think that I’ll be staying there.

It’s a given though that I will go there at 58 and get a couple of the easy quest rewards out of the way, and hearth in Shattrath

I don’t think I can be arsed with the mob grind past honoured before questing, even though I know it’s the sensible thing to do from a faction standpoint.  Perhaps if by the time I head to outlands I’m nicely geared in BC armour\weapons I’ll have a day or two of it, to make a bit of headway.

I think you can get summoned into Outlands at 56, so I might try to talk a couple of friends into a slight boost through Ramparts to get some gear\rep out of the way nice and early.

I reckon that the last option – staying in Azeroth as long as I can stomach is going to be the one for me (apart from the couple of quest rewards, and a possible instance run or two).  I’ve never really quested in Silithus, as I was 60 before they redone the zone and added the AQ quest hubs.  For this reason I can see myself clearing that zone out of quests.  Another great reason for this is that with some outland gear I should cut through the mobs like butter and the quest xp rewards are inline (I think) with those in Outland.  I’ll probably do Wintersring as well with Outlands gear as unlike many, I really like that Zone for some reason. 

I’m also going to try to get mining capped (300) in the next few levels so that I can get summoned to Outlands to get the next level of training which will enable me to level past 300 in Azeroth, and have a head start in Outlands. 

When I get home and on a connection where I can actually browse WoWhead and other loot websites I’ll crib together a gear progression wishlist for my journey through Outlands.