Hitting "the wall"

So, if you follow me on twitter, you've probably heard me grumbling slightly about this. I've been sinking a lot of time into my pally lately, and i've hit what is referred to (in a lot of varying activities) as "the wall". You have been doing so well up to a certain point, and then you just hit it. All your momentum comes to a grinding halt. You seem to run out of quests that are at appropriate levels. The dungeons at your level just... don't do it for you. Yeah, you could probably suck it up and just do them, but do you really want to? Most of the time, pugs for those places are terrible. You don't have all the tools for your class that make the places go easily. As a paladin that would prefer to tank, i'm missing Avenger's Shield, Hammer of the Righteous and Divine Plea. Mana consumption for pally tanks is far too high at lower levels especially with Consecration being your main aggro ability.

See, I have a pattern I follow while levelling an alliance toon, and that pattern always leads to a wall from 42/43-45ish. Once you hit 45, Gadgetzan is doable, Feralas is doable, Searing Gorge is doable... it's all good for a while there. Does anyone else have this problem? Where do you find is the "hard areas" to get past when levelling your alts? By comparison, where do you find the easiest levels to get past are? (Aside from the Outlands, cause you can pretty much hit 10 levels in two zones almost with any BOA gear).

What do you do when you hit these "walls when levelling"? Do you suck it up and hit the dungeon queue? And how about that, are there any dungeons you run across while levelling that you just can't be arsed to be any part of? Personally, I loathe Maraudon. Purple or orange, don't matter. Pristine Waters doesn't bother me as much because it's rather scenic and pretty to look at, but I just don't like the dungeon as a whole. I am, however, glad that the LFD tool seperates it into those 3 areas, cause that place is retarded long.


I also have serious problems doing Dire Maul or BFD, because it seems like nobody knows their way through those places, and they all end up getting lost and failing miserably... and when the group inevitably wipes, NO one knows how to get back to the dungeon enterence.

Wow, okay, I went off a lot longer than I meant to, but please, leave me a comment and tell me about your levelling experiences. I really want to read them.

See, what had happened was, I ran out of ideas...

So yeah, apparently i've not been writing in this blog as much as I had initially hoped. I really am going to try and rectify that, but I am not entirely sure that I have a lot to say other than senseless babbling.

Levelling my paladin goes well. I have him up to 35 now I think. I dunno, levelling isn't really all that bad for me, I don't guess. At least, ffs, it shouldn't be with as many toons as i've leveled. (6 80s, 3 70+s, a 60.. yeah. it's crazy) The paladin really is one of the easiest classes to level. Yeah, it can get a bit tedious at times because the consensus is that you basically auto-attack until level 50 when you can get crusader strike. There really is a lot more to it than that. One thing that people tend to overlook is that paladins have a damaging taunt. Hand of reckoning is immensely overpowered at low levels, and really makes killing things quick and rather painless. And you get it at level 16 I mean come on. I've had Hand of Reckoning taunts that crit and instantly take out more than half of a mob's health... Mobs the same level as, or higher than me. Here's the cool part. Anytime a mob "Runs away in fear" they're no longer targeting you... nuke them with your taunt before moving on to the next mob. Also, if a mob is healing himself, he's not targeting you, so bam.. nuke him with the taunt. Dead useful when you're fighting things like those bloody redridge shamans/mystics or something of that nature. And hell, once you get your pally to level 20, you get consecrate. That's the be-all end-all of aoe levelling. Don't like aoe levelling? Well, you also get exorcism. Does just as much damage as Hand of Reckoning does, give or take. Cool thing? Your taunt isn't on the GCD. You can wind up an exorcism and throw HoR at the tail end of it, and they'll both damage the mob. Instantly half dead = win.

Wow... I rambled on a lot more about pallies than I thought I would. Heh. I'm sure no one minds. Or maybe you do, idk. I don't care either really. You'll either read the blog or you won't. :) With that, though, I am going to close this out.

Oh, one last thought.. Who in the hell taught Lady Gaga the secret to music taking up permanent residence in your brain. A friend of mine was listening to "Bad Romance" and it's been stuck in my head ever since.. This was fracking almost TWO DAYS AGO. Someone help me.

Stream of unconsciousness...

Hey everyone. Sorry I haven't posted in a few days, it's been a kind of crazy week. So, i've decided to put a hold on my priest until Cataclysm in order to have at least one character to level through the new content. If you know me at all, though, you know that i'll level at least one more character after it happens. Right now, i'm working on a paladin (my effing 3rd one.. what is wrong with me? lol). I want this guy to be a tank though... but I hate the idea of gearing up a tank at 80. Anything before that is no big problem though... especially once I hit 70. Cobalt gear makes for easy tanking.

Oh, have I mentioned that I am the new hunter column writer for Horde Review? I took up the position a couple of weeks ago, but I honestly don't remember if I mentioned it on here or not. I will have an amazing interview with Brigwyn from The Hunting Lodge and Brigwyn's Corner. I will probably have to break the interview up into several parts, but I should hopefully have it up on the site within the next couple of days. (Mental note: find a better way of logging IM conversations. Took forever to edit the messanger names out of the conversation). Brigwyn is an awesome guy with a great view and unabashed opinion on all things in game. All of the old The Hunting Lodge podcasts are still up on his site (the one I linked earlier) and they're some great listens. They're not specifically FOR hunters, they're (as Brig put it) about Wow, from a hunter's perspective... or actually 2 hunter's perspectives. I would be completely remiss if I didn't mention Brigwyn's cohost Daewin. Maybe i'll try to talk to him at some point.

Anyway, I'm doing quite a bit of babblng, so I think i'm going to wrap this up for now. Thanks for listening... er... reading.. :D

Update: bahaha.. Oh man guys.. I just fixed a bad html code. I was REALLY tired when I wrote this.. guh.. fail on my part. >_<

Spoil the surprise?

I'm going to try to not be like everyone else. Cataclysm is coming. Any fool knows that. Beta is on it's way. If you haven't opted in for it, and you want in on the beta, be sure to do it now. I'm going to bring up a less-discussed topic. How do you fight these "end of expansion blues"? Some people roll alts. Some people take breaks from the game. Some people satisfy their time by devouring every single tidbit of information about Cataclysm that they can. Here's the question though, and it's something that was brought up in portion by Brigwyn on his first podcast earlier this evening.
The question is, should we obsess over every piece of Cataclysm we can get our greedy little claws on? Is it right for us to play the beta into an endless oblivions so we know all the content backwards and forwards before the live release? Or, when we do these things, do we cheat ourselves from the surprise? Do we deny ourselves the wonder of seeing the finely polished product as Blizzard intends it to be seen, when we see the beta "warts and all"? It's honestly something I hadn't thought about previously, but it really is something to consider.
Now, I've only been playing for a couple years, towards the end of Burning Crusade, and I was never involved with the beta for Wrath of the Lich King. I will never forget the first time I took my mage, Achloryn, aboard the boat from Stormwind and stepped on the shores of the Borean Tundra. Hell, even playing through the scourge invasion events prior to the launch really gave you a feel for what was coming. Read through the text of the first few quests when you arrive in Northrend. Blizzard does a magnificent job of giving you the sense that the first soliders really breathe a collective sigh of relief that you are there. YOU. The generals and commanders of the spearhead are glad to see you there.
I'm getting off topic more than I intended, but I think you get the point. Are we doing ourselves a disservice by spoiling all the surprises? Well, there's no real right or wrong answer to that, of course, because it's all in personal preferences. I'm as guilty as the next man, and probably everyone else, when it comes to reading up on the spoilers and all the other goodies. Now, however, after a lot of thought, I think i'm going to hold myself back a little bit. I want to be able to experience the new quests with my hunter on the day of the launch and experience it as amazingly as I felt when I first stepped onto Northrend.
Now, if i'm given a beta key, you better believe i'll be there.... let's not get crazy.

Ahhh Screenshot madness.

So, this idea was given via twitter by @_anea and I thought I'd play along. Basically, it is to submit a blog post with a screenshot and to attach some song lyrics with it.. I feel like I took the easy route, but since I got this computer, my screenshot library is a bit smaller... That makes me sad, but i'll have to see what I can do about it later.

Aha, fun times.

So, recently I started listening to the Warcraft Outsiders podcast. I rolled a toon on their server and joined their guild to talk to them and feel them out for a while. I must say, first off, that they were amazingly
The people in this guild (which boasts around 500 members, but that's alts and everything too) has that amazing "small guild" feel that I was afraid of losing from my last guild when I left. Now, for the record, I still have like 5 toons in that guild and I still talk to them regularly, so I didn't just abandon them. Why did I leave then, you might ask? Simple. My other guild was an RP guild, and I wanted to raid. Good news! They have a raid schedule that I can fit into as well! AWESOME SAUCE. Okay, that may not seem like a big deal, but I work the overnight shift so finding a raid schedule that I can work into is just great.


Guess what this is.. This is a screenshot of something that happened all of 2 or 3 days after I joined the guild. I'm not in the shot, but my guild downed the Lich King for the first time in 10 man.. So, a mad congratulations to them.

OMG you guys... Guys.. You guys!

CATACLYSM! Holy crap. The powers that be at mmo-champion have released an ENORMOUS amount of Cataclysm spoilers from the closed alpha. I repeat.. THERE ARE SPOILERS. Screenshots, and professions, and more screenshots. Over 200 screenshots. I went to check it out because I am a sucker for these things and I am purely drooling over the upcoming expansion to our beloved WoW.

Keep in mind, the info listed on mmo-champion isn't complete, and is highly subject to change (read: most likely WILL change at least some) between now and release.

Also - I have taken up the hunter columnist position at Hordereview.com, which is a beautifully designed website for everything wow-related. Feel free to stop by and poke around.

Raiding vs everything else.

So, I find myself in a slight dilemma over the last few days. But I suppose a bit of backstory is required first (just a little, don't worry).

First, before these last few weeks, I hadn't raided at all since 3.1 when Ulduar was end-game. If you read my last blog post then you know just a few short days ago, I took my first steps into Icecrown Citadel, and basically cleared half of the raid. I had so much fun it reminded me of why I used to raid. The problem, however, is in the fact that I am not in a raiding guild. I am in a small, but extremely close-knit RP guild on the Wyrmrest Accord server.

Now, I know you'll tell me that I could just continue to pug my way, and maybe, maybe get in a REALLY good pug who can just make their way through the whole thing when the 30% damage buff goes into effect or something of that nature. Yeah.. Maybe I could, but is that really what I want? Do I really want to wait another 3 months or so, when Cataclysm is just on the horizon, and people are simply farming Arthas like he was a heroic dungeon? No, not really. If I get the Kingslayer attached to my name, I want it to be when it still means something, or not at all.

Herein lies my problem. Short of probably a 25% damage buff, not many pugs are probably going to bring Arthas down, and even then... from what I have seen of the fight, that might still be a stretch as it's every bit a mechanical fight as much as it is a gear check. The downside is, I would have to leave all my friends in the LSC behind to find a raider's guild. Do I really want to do this though? Sure, I have all kinds of alts around Wyrmrest Accord, and I could certainly leave them in the guild and still RP with them on all my other characters, etc etc etc. But I don't know.

I realize this isn't something anyone can help me out with. I have to decide for myself what to do. I've spoken to both of the GMs and they both have been apprehensively supportive. "Whatever makes you happy," and so forth. I would almost feel guilty to leave them though, because they really ARE my friends.
I remembered the scripting to change the size of pictures, so now you can see my hunter with Skoll. :D