Shrooms + Wrathful

Aenara finished up The Czar of Sporeggar with relative ease. In three Normal clears I picked up 82 Sanguine Hibiscus. Ran Favor out with another 143 from the bank and done! The little spore bat is fun. This puts Aenara at 68/75 for Lil' Game Hunter, 16/25 Tabards, and 24/25 Exalted Reputations.

Figure that The Diplomat will be next. Aenara murdered her way up to 3198 in Honored with Timbermaw. Kept Favor on auto-follow to soak up the free rep. Pulled in 186 feathers along with the Deadwood Ritual Totem and the Winterfall Ritual Totem. Going to take a while to finish that.

Had to stop the grind when there was talk in the guild about the Wrathful PvP items. I'd heard somewhere that the gear was going to be purchasable without the Arena rating requirements. Sadly the requirement numbers where still there. Yet someone in the guild randomly tried to buy a piece and was able! So I hearthed up immediately to pick up Wrathful Gladiator's War Staff and Wrathful Gladiator's Wyrmhide Robes. Aenara was exactly ten points short for Wrathful Gladiator's Wyrmhide Helm but managed to get a 24 points in a horrible Warsong Gulch loss. Also dropped a Great Feast for Dinner Impossible. *lol*

Flame On!

The Midsummer Fire Festival started up today. Hate how these stupid events suck up my time; Blizzard really know how to keep me reeled in. Thankfully Martini, Aenara, and Sloosh already have it done. Dragging Decimate along as Favor does the Honor/Extinguish the flames things in the old world for the Mage ports. Followed the comments in Flame Warden of Kalimdor, getting them all done including Stealing Thunder Bluff's Flame. Going to save Stealing Orgrimmar's Flame for later when it's less popular and less active.

Only had one PvP encounter when Decimate and Favor got separated. Favor didn't have the flight path so she had to hoof it from the Exodar. Crossing the bridge to Bloodmyst Isle, some stupid cow warrior, Kuitrurah, charged my Pally in full tanking gear! Killing this pathetic Arms Warrior was easy. A Shadow Priest, Fynnlee, happened upon us as I dealt the killing blow. She did manage to get me to half health, but I ended up out running her with Pally speed.

The Lord Ahune encounter is the same once started. With the cross-realm LFG tool it was pretty easy to run on all my 80s except for tanking with Faerune. All of the adds are immune to Frost which is conveniently a Death Knight's primary form of threat. The cloak drops are mostly useless but it's any easy two Frost Emblems. The only character to get the updated Frostscythe of Lord Ahune was the Warrior. Of course.

Serious Downtime

I guess today's scheduled maintenance took a serious turn for the worst. The log-in screen said the servers would be up at 6pm PST but now they say 7pm. This gave me a chance to update my initial Outland Element Shaman gear guide. Think it turned out pretty well.

Decided to start using Powered by Wowhead tooltips. In the past I've only linked to The Armory and WoWWiki, but the tooltips are pretty trendy with zero work to implement. No idea how those things load so damn fast.

The Pally tanking thing still has me excited. The WoWWiki page on WotLK Pally tanking build made a lot of sense so at 66 I'll spec Favor with nearly everything they suggest. My variance will be with picking up all three points in Improved Devotion Aura before moving over to get Deflection.

Now… if only the servers would come up…

Warp Speed Ahead!

The Recruit-A-Friend bonus is… wow! Just… wow!! *lol* Through their 20s the Shaman quickly out-paced the unlinked Hunter. Around 35 I started working on some SM runs with the Druid since the Hunter barely hit 29. Last Wednesday the Shaman hit 44 so I ran them around with the Enhancement Shaman, who was 52 with a full rested experience bar. As of this morning the Enhancement Shaman just hit 55 while all four linked Shaman are around 40-45% into 58!!

Right now this is actually working against me. I wanted to get some of the Outland intro quests done for gear yet stay in the 51-60 AV bracket. I'm not sure if the RAF bonus will continue once the Shaman hit 60. If it does, they will rocket to 61. Really shouldn't complain as my goal is still PvE for now. Yet I would like to get a taste of PvP while it's not all serious. See what I can do.

I've agonized over the Druid vs. Paladin tanking for a while now but finally decided on the Paladin yesterday. Being mana-based can be such a pain but a Paladin can still cleanse and cast while tanking along with most of their threat being passive. I tranfered Favor over to the secondary account yesterday. She's still 66 and full-up on crap gear so this will be an interesting challenge. I've never tanked on the Paladin nor have I fully groked 3.0.2—even more of a challenge! The split between physical stats and spell power is making gear selection confusing. Guess I'm going to blend Sorcerer, Beast, and Defender for the greens. The quest rewards I'll guess on.

After the Novelty

On Dual-Boxing.com's wiki entry on Boosting I noticed a link to their forums entitled: 1-60 in 1 day 10 hours. Basically it was commentary around a message on the WoW forums that began with

Gundude < Grizzly > Destromath

This hunter at lvl 61 - 1 bar from 62 has 2 days / played. Normally I get to 70 just under 4 days slash played. If really trying I'm sure it would be possible to hit 60 in 20 hours and 70 in 2 days 20 hours slash played.

The secret?

Simple.

Make your way to lvl 8 then go to RFC or Deadmines. Invite a full group (for full xp bonus) then have your lvl 70 mage friend AoE it. Enjoy lvling every 10-15 mins.

At 20.... go to SM Cath/Arm (switch between them and reset) Continue this process until lvl 40. Enjoy lvls every 30-45mins. (Use a mage with mana absorbtion to AoE it, keep a full group for full xp bonus)

At 40....go to ZF. You need to learn the pulls if using a 70 mage to AoE. LoS big groups then AoE. Make sure you have healers to in your party to heal the mage - lvling past 40 requires healers to be in the group. ALSO IMPORTANT - Bring a class such as a Druid to moonfire healing totems the trolls drop, this must be done or you will die. Enjoy lvling every 40-55mins.

At 50...go to LBRS. Now use a WARRIOR*** Warrior smashes the instance with a 2 hand and flexes. Bring a full group with healers. I perfer to bring a feral druid to say in feral form so the warrior gets 5% extra crit and heals himself. Shamans for heals and WF totem will increase your speed at clearing the instance as well. I do a set route and skip much of the instance but maintain a very fast lvl pace. Enjoy lvls every 50-60mins.

At 55....go to Ramparts. Still using a warrior - aim for the same group setup (leader of pack/WF totem/heals). Rampart runs should be 20-25 mins long and at 120k+ a hour xp is wonderfull. Enjoy lvls every 50-70 mins.

60+ I stop power lvling and enjoy questing in the outlands. Your call. Ramparts will still give 110k+ xp an hour up until lvl 64.

I don't really see the warrior happening in LBRS. The Feral druid in the group is an interesting idea. Still, there's no knowing what classes you're leveling; it's totally possible to not have a healer at all. That hole aside, his post generated eleven pages of feedback that was mostly “I want to do this!” or “the real question here is have you ever touched a snatch in your life” yet there was one handy expansion by Felsik of Drenden:

Frost shield up, rank 1 arcane explosion keeps them on you. Use mage armor instead of ice armor, you don't want frostbite procing all over the place and freezing those lowbie mobs behind you.

The easy dungeons, like RFC through to about SM armory you can do massive pulls with this style, just make sure the lowbies being powerleveled stay close, since you'll be moving very far through the instance with alot of mobs on you.

Usually there will be caster types, so when you want to 'stop' to perform the mass AOE kill, you LOS the group just around a wall so casters are forced to chase. Thats when you frost nova, cone of cold, and start spamming max rank arcane explosions for the kill.

While I'm having a lot of fun running the pack around on my own right now, I could see doing this for a second team. Since my main account is full I could use Decimate to run instances for four new ones on the other accounts. Will probably want a stronger machine to handle that level of pulling.

There were also suggestions that a Prot Pally could pull the whole armory. Favor doesn't have the gear but it might be fun to look into. Even just once it might be fun to see that level of destruction. At level 80 I'm sure it would be trivial.

29 Paladin Twink

Consulted the Wiki for initial content.

Avâtar

Farm

( ) Kill Gelihast for Algae Fists
( ) Kill Overlord Ramtusk for Corpsemaker
( ) Kill Mekgineer Thermaplugg for Thermaplugg's Left Arm
( ) Farm Razorfen Kraul for Pugilist Bracers
( ) Farm Razorfen Kraul for Avenger's Armor

Create

( ) Create the Libram of Constitution augment
( ) Engineer a Parachute Cloak
( ) Blacksmith a Shining Silver Breastplate

Auction House

( ) Frostreaver Crown
( ) Sparkleshell Mantle
( ) Tigerstrike Mantle
( ) Yorgen Bracers
( ) Pugilist Bracers
( ) Dreamsinger Legguards
( ) Crystal Starfire Medallion
( ) Holy Shroud

Quest

(√) 22: Complete The Legend of Stalvan, the chain that results in Crescent of Forlorn Spirits
( ) 28: Complete Raptor Mastery, the chain that results in Raptor Hunter Tunic
( ) 29: Complete The Crone of the Kraul, the chain that results in Marbled Buckler
( ) 29: Collect Hollow Vulture Bones in the Shimmering Flats for Load Lightening, the chain that results in Razzeric's Racing Grips