Level 48

ood grief, in all my days of leveling i have never leveled x2 in 3 hours. On top of the rested bonus, and also having the dps shoulders from the heroisim badges. And a little guidance from Carbonite and QuestUp Alliance.

At this rate, i could be level 60 by the weekend, but thats getting excitable, or is it?

I have been musing about Boomkin or Tree, im done with tanking. Been there & done that, but no doubt the urge will be there, no doubt. Already im into the swipe-swipe-swipe mode sometimes on group pulls of questing mobs. But cat is where its at. Well...hell, maybe even both with this new duel speccing, i'll have my cake, and eat it thanks Blizz.

I have to say i thought it was a great idea for the Alts gear Locked to Account shoulders idea. How many times have you thought, of if rolled a ?? instead, or what would this class be like to play....but couldnt be arsed leveling it.."Groann STV...Pfff"

I think i will need to read up on Boomkins, and see what the *work* is envolved in it, for example spell rotations, and gear. And i hope its not like a DK.

My baby Daughter continues to allow her folks to game in the evening, sleeping from 7pm until 2-3am. So that doesnt hurt the evenings as much, and even at 3 in the morning, a quick 30 minute bottle and she is fast asleep again. 10 weeks old..phew..how fast they grow

Level 46

eleted my druid during the WOTLK craze, I needed to clear out my alts and prepare myself for playing a Death Knight. Who doesn’t have one?...seriously?
After a polite ticket to a GM last night I had my druid restored. Naked, my main character was logged on and transferred some money across..
While I was at it, I bought the Locked to Account shoulders from the Hero chap in Dalaran (Aweful graphics lag).
Our little familly also increase by the size of a 7 lb baby in March, where myself and Leni took some time out from the game for about 2-3 months while we all settled in again. Being a GM, the guild managed to putter along quite happily until we returned, and the thanks goes to the officers who supported the guild during that period. And the guild members for standing with us and working together. However, since our baby girl now sleeps from 7pm until a wakeup call around 3am, WoW is now again playable in the evening, much to the rejoice of the officers and guild. And at 2 months old, our baby girl has given us much joy, and sleepless nights.
With Artemíss (note x2 s's) since I renamed my hunter Artemis put a bit of spanner in the works. My Main character is called Nuadah, so I will have to rethink, me thinks.

What a different game WOTLK is ay? On my Death Knight I have been to just about all the raids, except Malygos, which I will see on Thursday. I raid lead on Thursdays, so all the other days will be focused on my druid. …as our guild has many DK's (Tanks or DPS) and after last week I felt there were heaps of Melee DS in our guild. More later. So far I have Carbonite and QuestUp Alliance working together to get me on the leveling up fast route..

Level 43

od i hate Badlands, oddly I thought I would be in Hinterlands but I had some quests to hand in and ended up picking up new ones in Badlands. Ahwell.
The bad news, I ran out of rested bonus, and I am parked next to a skeleton waiting for buzzards to respawn. I might just abandon the quests for this area, if I don’t get much fruit from it, but never the less I dinged 43.
There is a raid on for tonight, and im hoping they will be able to do it without me. Hoping! Not wishing! So I can carry on levelling Artemis instead of tanking with Nadiastorm. At some point very soon, patch/expansion I will move her out of the guild.
I was asked, again, to tank for something last night, but they respected my wishes to not be asked to. Which was good, because it was unprompted. I think the hardest part of switching your main character and being the GM/Raid Leader & Main tank is peoples habit of asking someone they know they could depend on to come and help them out. Only the role is reversed when im 30 or so level below them.
he great thing was I did get a lot of whispers asking if I needed a boost anywhere, which was nice, but I like to quest alone mostly, as I do quests in bursts and hand them all in on mass, sometimes one at a time.
I don’t think I will be able to play until Sunday evening now, party on Friday night, Dinner on Saturday night, and on Sunday ….i cant remember that far ahead, but if I can get online I hope to god I have some rested bonus….oh and did I say I got Mace trained? Yay!
I have been reading a lot of Unbearably HoT and Resto4Life for most of the upcoming info on WOTLK, a lot of the changes and tweaks to the druid class look like they are all very fluid still, and nothing is set in stone. Its good I guess because I haven't grabbed any habits of spell rotations or abilities, and by the time I do get there, I can adapt more to the finalised tweaks blizzard has made across the class.
It's interesting to read about the nerf for druid tanks, to keep them in check with the other 3 classes for tanking. Apparently in the beta they are OP at the moment excelling at tanking due to the high armour mitigation they have, so they are dropping it by 30%. Again, I don’t know how much of a dent that makes on Druids or the ability to tank, but the concern was mana sponge, a term I was familiar with druids pre TBC. (Talk of it, not actual experience of it) DPS catform wise, it looks very promising too, looks as though the balance of feral ability being on par if not equal to rogues and fury warriors, but I didn’t read too much into that, so im giving that subject a wide birth :)

Level 42

You know what, since Friday I have forgotten what level I am? How bad is that? /checks armoury Ahh 42!
This week I would like to see me over 45+ I don’t know whether I would be able to reach 50 by Sunday evening, but that’s situational to RL commitments. I don’t play on Sunday and Mondays (Normally) and Thursdays is the big 25 man raid night, if there is one on this week. Which will mean im tanking with Nadiastorm.
I managed to reach improved leader of the pack, and that has made a real difference in catform. Leveling through mobs for quests for example. The new custom skins have had a real nice effect on playing also, keeping my interest.
Im going through Duskwallow Marsh at the moment, and managed to whip through 80% of those quests fairly quickly to jump to level 42 from 40. I think now im heading over to Shimmering Flats after that. Been there before with my warrior leveling, and that was fairly easy to whip around too, so I don’t think it will take me much time at all to hit 48. Im glad im not in STV, I still have a bunch of quests left to finish there bu im hopeful I can get away with never going back, I think after shimmering flats its Hinterslands…I think. And that place is easy too. Done in 1 hour last time, maybe even 40 minutes.
Im still on the look out for a decent staff, or Mace. I think Mace is probably the best weapon I can use for stats while leveling, I will have to check Thottbot or something to see whats out there as a quest reward, im not keen on running an instance hoping for a drop as that seems counter productive to leveling before wotlk comes out. Can I reach 70 before 13 November? Who knows, but we'll see

Announced...

I announced to my guild today that i was changing my class for good. And aiming for a tanking druid. I also have a big cheer for being relisted on Resto4Life YAY!
I was pondering through the professions, and i think i said earlier in my blog about going herbalisim and alchemy. Im not too sure whether i want to do that considering how organised my guild is at keeping the guild bank stocked with potions and flasks all the time. I took a dibble at leatherworking on google.com on some of the wotlk spoilers, but i dont have enough information to make an informed descision whether or not leatherworking would be a worth while profession to take in this expansion. Considering most professions crafted armour is outdated by raiding, but there is only a few items that are craftable they stay with you as you raid, like the engineering goggles for example. So hmmmm!! What to do?
Herbalism seems easy enough to do, and its one of the gathering professions I don’t mind doing at all. Skinning, well that’s a new one for me, and whether I remember to skin something after I have killed it is another matter all together. But I could get used to it. Thing is though, how many skinners and herbalist are on my server? Who knows..maybe inscriber might be a good thing..food for thought.

Level 39 - Slip me some skin...

Awww, I was bouncing to get home from work last night after reading some much needed catchup on Resto4Life, and caught a link to a druid skin mod'
So without delay I set about installing it as soon as I got home, while multi tasking cooking some stir fried rice as a quick meal.
It was quite a simple process, rename the files you want, and slip them into the data file. Im a little worried that I violates the game rules of blizzard, but I always was a bit of a rebel in nature and too right…the bear skin needs updating!
The file was called Druids of Azeroth - New Shapeshift Skins 08-09-08.rar, I will be adding some pics along the way as I level.
Which by the way I managed to Ding 39 over in Arathi Highlands. Still using Quest Helper, just to get pointed in the right direction after accepting each quest as I go. I find it helpful, but im sure there are less memory intensive addons out there somewhere.
Bumped into a mage in STV doing the legends quest lines, who's main was a 70 Feral tank druid, I asked a few questions and got some good answers about stats and gear, which was nice, then later had a chat with a fellow guildie playing his Alt Paladin asking me for some advice on this and that about paladin tanking. So I asked a few about Boomkin druids too. Nice little chats in exchanging knowledge last night, it was nice for a change :)
I have started with Stamina Agility items, and managed to get a half decent staff to go with it, catform is good, and I don’t seem to be struggling yet, but I will keep my eyes open on the AH for the Monkey leather items meantime.

Meanwhile the news of both the patch and WOTLK looms ever closer. And i have asked the guild to declare their classes for raiding at level 80. Im holding back my answer until later in the weekend to see what is being filled out, but thanks to Chick GM blog (Definately a good read) i was able to approach the guild with a few questions picked out of the blog. So credit there, where its due.

Time Out

Well, i have taken time out to raid on my Paladin, but now i seem to have burned myself out constantly raiding this week and last week im coming back to my druid for a bit of peace.

WOTLK got our guild in a bit of a stir, some new folk that where raiding types took the oporitunity to leave for more progressing guild a step higher than our own. But all came good in the end everyone got what they wanted, and theres only 6 weeks left to go. Some people got all shitty about it, which wasn’t nessesary at all. And rather than engaging in a flame war, I see it as a game I login and play for 2-3 hours per night to enjoy, not argue on differences of opinion endlessly. /sigh
ANYWAY!! Wotlk. Well, I logged onto the PTR, I looked i saw and I awed. Very nice patch incoming. For paladins, yay, some love, but I feel its all a bit too late for me, 2 years + of playing a paladin stuggling to be a viable tank since before TBC, and finally it arrives 12 months later. However 4 other classes are able to do the same thing, as Blizz is now blanket sweeping classes under 1 group of main tank viable classes, including the new death knight. Am I bored of paladin? Yes…im afriad to say I am now, and need to play something else before I really start looking at games like Tetris for some R&R.
Druid the answer?
I don’t see why not, I loved my druid while I leveled and PVP'ed and at level 38 atm. I also like the asthetics of a night elf and the leather animation textures. Colorful, rich tribal and detailed. My RL partner (Leni Gnome Mage) is also playing a Druid with aims to go resto. Would I play Tank, DPS or Resto? I don’t know. Still undecided, and its 50/50 Tank and Resto atm.

I have played a warrior up to 49, and tbh its the same as a paladin style of play. Hit, eat, hit some more, hit. Bandage. Druid i have a choice of pew pew, sneaky sneaky claw claw, or big bear hug of spam rejuv on someone i am grouped with. /flex