All the News that's Fit to Print

Status of Kurn:

– Level 85

– 525 Skinning/ 525 Leatherworking

– Hasn’t even done all the dungeons yet

– Spent a lot of time skinning and farming volatiles

Status of Madrana:

– Level 83 (God bless you, Holy Radiance!) and 21%

– Only healed Blackrock Caverns, Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle thus far (haven’t discovered TotT) and even pugged some of that, with halfway decent results

– Already well through revered with the Guardians of Hyjal

– Hyjal is completely, COMPLETELY done. Doing it all over the course of about a day and a half is very, very different from doing it on Beta, where I did that over the span of about three weeks. It was nice to be able to basically already know what to do for the quests, though. I nearly cried at Save the Wee Animals, though. Still hate that quest!

– I’ve replaced six pieces so far: helm, neck, both rings and both trinkets. RIP 2pc T10. You will be missed.

– Mana issues when fights drag on too long or too many people are taking damage at once. Most of the time, I’m okay, especially if I remember to judge, but sometimes it just isn’t possible.

– Using lots of CDs — HoSac, Divine Protection, BOP, Divine Shield, Lay on Hands have all seen use this weekend, and a lot of it.

– JC to 481, Alchemy to 508. Enough to have both trinkets, although I’m not using my alchemy trinket for my holy set, not yet anyways.

Apotheosis:

– 22 level 85s — 3 tanks and 3 healers in the mix.

– Guild Level 3 early this morning!

– Guild Deadmines/Heroic Deadmines/Heroic Stonecore achievements all gotten this morning/last night.

– Officers have maxed out Herbalism, Alchemy, Inscription, Enchanting, Engineering, Mining, Skinning and Leatherworking. This leaves: Tailoring (OMG, where is all the Embersilk?!), Jewelcrafting (waiting on meta transmutes) & Blacksmithing (waiting on JC to finish with the ore, basically).

I’m still unhappy with the structure of guild achievements and guild levelling and the like. I’m still unhappy with the majority of the instances I’ve seen, thus far. I’m still unhappy that since 3am on Tuesday morning, which is 5 days and 4.5 hours, I have dinged Kurn and am more than halfway through the levelling process with the paladin — it’s just too short. And we’re basically stuck with the 5-levels-per-expansion for at least two expansions, lest we ding 95 for the next one. I’m really not a fan. I couldn’t queue for Blackrock Caverns or TotT with someone who was 85 and someone who was 81 couldn’t join my queue for Stonecore, I think it was. (Maybe Vortex Pinnacle.) The levels and their requirements are really not right and everything feels compressed.

That said, I’m enjoying spending time with my guildies. I’m enjoying saying grats all the time, even if it seems like it’s every two minutes. I’m enjoying NOT recruiting right now, because we are, honest to God, all full up.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have to check up on people who are getting to 85 more slowly, or that I don’t have to check up on people’s heroic-level gear… but it means I can do stuff in-game and on the armory as opposed to on the realm forums, the WoW forums, Wowhead’s forums and MMO-Champion’s forums.

On the agenda for the next couple of days:

– Ding Madrana 85, work on her professions

– Get a BiS pre-raid gear for holy pallies post up (just as soon as I’ve had a good look at the loot tables and such)

– Record the next Blessing of Frost episode on Monday for Tuesday morning release

Oh, and somewhere in there, I should probably sleep for a bit. ;)

How’s your Cataclysm treating you so far?

7 Replies to “All the News that's Fit to Print”

  1. Sleep is overrated, Kurn… You can sleep when the raids are on farm. :)

    I agree with you though, the leveling process does seem very compressed. It doesn’t feel like it’s taken me a great deal of time or effort to get to where I am (halfway to 83 with very limited playtime). It kinda feels like we’re paying for a full expansion but only getting half of it.

    However, that being said, Blizzard did go out and deliver us a whole new game from 1-60… so maybe they can be forgiven for scaling back the high level content in this expansion. My hope is that since they only have a 5 level experience to create for the next expansion, they can have a much shorter time period between major releases and we can avoid the whole “Oh my god, isn’t Wrath over yet” problem.

    hmm… I think I smell some blog content in there somewhere… :)

  2. How Cataclysm has been treating me? Well.. not, so far.

    Those jerks from the postal service still have to deliver it, although I personally believe someone just snagged it from the mailroom and I’m just never going to get it. At least, not from them. Sigh. There goes my 70 euros.

    But what I really wanted to say is.. sleep is indeed overrated. There’s a reason they invented coffee and energy drinks you know ;)

    So, it seems your guild is pretty steady on the leveling side of things. How’s gear looking? Do you think you’ll be able to start raiding sooner then originally planned? Or maybe start some 10-mans to get a feel for things? I’d love to hear/read about it.

  3. Fannon – Sleep is a crutch, I know, I know! ;) I just woke up from a “nap”, the result of me trying to go to bed early. And now I’m wide awake at almost 5am.

    I’m not sure that I feel as though I’m only getting half of an expansion — the zones are big enough (perhaps too big in terms of quests?) that I don’t feel cheated out of new zones/content (although I have to admit it’s not quite the same as having all of Outlands or all of Northrend). I do feel as though they don’t have the levelling aspect down properly, though. The inability to group with 84s AND 81s, for example, is understandable if you expand it out to 72 vs. 78 when you’re 76, but in practice, it doesn’t work very well because of how differently everyone DOES level. A level or two difference doesn’t cause issues in 10-level expansions, but clearly does in a 5-level one. That someone at 84 can do Lost City of Tol’Vir or Halls of Origination, while someone at 83 can’t doesn’t make a lot of sense until you realize those are the “level 77-80” instances of the expansion and you’re stuck at the “level 76” instances, like Gundrak, instead of Halls of Lightning.

    So although I understand it, I sure as shootin’ don’t like it.

    I TOTALLY hear you on the “OMG, isn’t Wrath over YET?!” sentiment, by the way. Of course, its extension allowed me to pick up a bunch of amazing people and go out there and kill the Lich King on 25m as a guild, so it had its moments. ;)

    Kaboomski – Well, when you do end up playing, at least your starting zones won’t be absolutely insane…

    Yes, yes, sleep is a crutch, I know!

    We’re thinking about taking a peek in the next week or so, but the class imbalance is pretty high. Three tanks and… three healers? And a boatload of DPS. There’s not a lot of people to go running heroics with at any given time.

    Kevin – Thanks very much! Pre-raid post is hopefully incoming Monday! And I LOVE the Mace of Apotheosis! I’m not vain enough to think it’s about us — there are many other Apotheosis guilds out there — but it makes me smile to think of the possibility!

  4. Pretty good
    just finished healing my first heroic..mear mins ago, boy what a time. was a great and awsome challange, the team kept complamenting me, it felt great
    was Vortex, getting the second boss down right between you n the tank with the haste debuff n buff is so imporant, went thru about 2 tanksbefore one could figire it out

  5. I can honestly say that I will NOT be as alt happy as I have been in previous expansions and I sincerely mean that this time. I found leveling something to 85 to be extremely exhausting (but still fun) and I can’t imagine it would be any less so if I did it again – and again.

    I think my plan is to get O geared to the tooth for Heroics and do those, to be ready for January 4th (and possible 10 mans before, perhaps) and then decompress by picking my DK back up and working through Outland and Northrend with her. Then, I can take her thru the new content and call it a day.

    I’ll probably use this opportunity to work on things I’ve never done before, because I was distracted with said alts (like fishing, cooking, etc.) and maybe give Archaeology a whirl. Maybe I’ll actually bring myself to have *gasp* nights off!

    Concept!

  6. Ainsworth – You’re the pally I ran into in Deepholm last week, aren’t you? :) Nice to see you commenting! Great job on the heroic VP run — I can’t imagine that’s easy at all!

    Oestrus – I levelled a lot of alts but really “only” played a few. I only raided with Madrana, Kurn and my resto shammy, while my mage, druid and priest were relegated to 5-mans or the weekly raids. I plan to keep up with my pally and hunter and we’ll see if we have room in my life for my other toons.

    Fishing and cooking, hooray! Fish in pools to work us towards the seafood feast!! :)

    Nights off? GASP. haha. :)

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