Slowly Crawling.

Spent quite a bit of time on Serpentina last night and got her to 22. I'm trying to finish out the last few Ghostlands quests before making my way to Tarren Mill. I don't think I'm going to have a lot of play time tonight on her since Forsaken is wanting me to run Kara on Mutoh. Boo!

I'm quite enjoying my little Shadowpriest so far and the leveling spec I found online is working out nicely. I'm going through levels much faster than I ever did on Telura when I leveled fully Shadow specced. 5/5 Wand Specialization makes a huge difference but I had always laughed it off before I knew just how much wanding a low level priest does. I always want to go all in to Shadow to get Mind Flay at 20 since I'm a sucker for new spells but honestly the damage sucked and apparently continues to suck until the level 36 upgrade.

At the moment I have 5/5 Spirit Tap, 5/5 Wand Specialization, 2/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain and 1/5 Shadow Focus. Apparently I should have put the 2 points from Imp SW:P in to Blackout because those extra 2 ticks never really occur since the mobs die so quick at my level. It should be included in my respec at 40 but not for a leveling build. DOH!

I can't wait to get her to 40 so I can respec for Shadowform and stop healing instances all the time. I'm sure healing instances is far from over for me but it's hard to convince a lowbie group that I can DPS for SFK just fine. I think having Shadowform truely defines to your group that you are not a healer and can hold your own in DPS.

I took a break from her for about 3 hours last night when my wife and her friends needed a DPS for normal SP and UB. I took my Fury Warrior, Adiar, and finished the quests I had inside. I haven't played Adi in quite awhile. I leveled her with an Elemental Shaman friend of mine but he stopped playing that toon to work on a Hunter alt. Soloing as a Warrior is quite possibly the most boring thing to do in WoW aside from leveling a healer so I benched her, hoping to someday come back and get her to 70.

Honestly, I can't stand melee classes. I'm a caster at heart and could easily level another caster or 2 to 70 with no problems but I just can't seem to get in to the melee classes. I leveled my Shaman as Enhancement because there wasn't any caster gear.. but once their was, I respecced him and kept him Elemental. I had a Horde Rogue at 27 for months and months until I finally deleted him. I gave the Rogue class a 2nd try but deleted him around level 12.

I've tried Hunters numerous times and even though they attack from afar it still feels too melee to me and I can't get in to them. I've deleted at least 6 around level 11. I even went as far as to go out of my way to get a pet that I think looked cool and sounded fun but it just didn't hold my interest. I don't think it was the micromanagement of the pets so much as the boring gameplay and looking at my wife's 65 Hunter, spamming a Stead Shot macro just doesn't seem appealing to me at all.

The only 2 casters left for me to level are Shadowpriests and Mages.. both of which I've tried a few times and gotten them between 35-40 but can't seem to finish them off. Not because I dislike the classes but usually due to WoW burnout phases. I'm determined to get Serpe to 70 before WOTLK but the Mage is going to have to wait. I have a 25 Blood Elf Mage that I'd consider transferring from Sisters of Elune over to Silvermoon just to save me about 3 days worth of replaying the same crap again but that won't happen anytime soon.

The bottom line is that I'll still do Kara once a week but my main priority at the moment is Serpentina. I've gotten a good welcome back on the Horde side from the friends I had that didn't reroll Alliance with us back in November so at least I'm not completely alone. Twysted has been tanking instances for me on Splendour, his Druid, and Nobs has a twink Warlock he took with us to SFK. It's been fun and it's holding my interest.. I just hope I don't burn out again too soon.

Oh yeah.. the blogs name will be changing.. to what, I don't know, but it'll be changing. Since I stopped raiding on Jandrae there will be a lot less focus on Moonkin blogging and more focus on my Shadowpriest.

When PuGs attack!

Last night I dinged 17 on Serpe but it was not without it's fair share of work.

I had some RFC quests left in my log and a group was looking for a DPS so I volunteered my services. The Mage in the group insisted on sheep pulling whenever they wanted to, regardless of who was AFK, and even pulled Taragaman. The only DPS they were doing was spamming Arcane Explosion even on one mob. The Rogue in the group seemed to know how to play but was overexaggerating quite a bit and cussing the Mage out for being stupid, for lack of a better term. It's RFC, not Kara, but yes.. it was very annoying having the Mage rush up in front of the tank, Fireblast something and then Sheep it while 2 other mobs chase after her. With her spamming AE until she was OOM it was pretty much impossible for our Concecration-less Pally tank to regain aggro.

To make matters worse, after we drop the first boss the group starts congratulating each other and starts to hearth out. Apparently they think this is the end of the instance.. all 4 of them.. all from different guilds. So that ended my first RFC run. Good times.

A T6 raider friend of mine ran me through RFC after he got out of Black Temple so I could finish my quests and then hopped on his 22 Druid to run SFK. He drug me along to heal (*GASP*) and everything went fine. I even got the Belt of Arugal to bank for 3 more levels. w00t!

That was the jest of my WoW evening. I hate lowbie pugs but they make for great stories. I'm sure I'll have a few more on my way up on Serpe!

I R Face Melter?

The move is FINALLY over. Finally I can get back to playing WoW regularly but I do plan on cutting back my play time. After taking time away from the game and actually DOING stuff thats productive IRL you slowly realize how time consuming WoW really is.

Most likely I will still raid 3 nights a week with Total Dominance on Jandrae but I've decided to do a total 180 and roll a Horde Shadowpriest to toy around with. I'm not unfamiliar with the Horde as I have a 70 Undead Warlock over there but I think it's best to go that way for now. I have some friends over there whom I haven't played with in a long time and I'd like to see the new zones when WOTLK comes out from a Horde perspective. Since I'll most likely level my Alliance Warlock to 80 I don't want to level Abigore as well.

This will also allow me to level at my own pace and knock out a few quests here and there in my free time without the hassle of having to commit to anything.

My wife and I had this talk to other day as we're both in the burnout phase of WoW. What we think that makes the game start to lose its luster is commitment. Video games are fun for people because it's something to do in your free time, but once you HAVE to be online at a certain time for a certain amount of time and HAVE to spend an hour or more per day doing dailies to fund repair costs and HAVE to farm for consumables it starts to feel more like a second job and less like a video game.

Some people strive for this but I'm starting to think it's not for me. The most fun I've had in WoW is playing with friends, either leveling alts or running dungeons but as soon as raiding came in to the picture and that dreaded "C word" became mandatory WoW slowly went downhill for me.

For my Shadowpriest I chose Horde for a change of scenery again and went with a female Undead toon. I love their casting animations and they look uber in Shadowform which is the whole reason to play a caster IMO. I started off doing the Undead quest hubs until about 11. At that point I ran around to all the capital cities and picked up the RFC quests & flight paths and headed off to Ghostlands to quest. At the moment I'm only level 12 but I haven't had to worry about being anywhere at any certain time at all so far and I'll admit it feels nice.

Do I plan on hitting 70 with the new Shadowpriest? Maybe. Am I in a hurry? Not at all. Do I HAVE to be online if I don't want to be? No sir.