I’m on vacation this week and decided to post to all of my various sites that I maintain/publish rather than play WoW, so I’ll be back playing a couple of hours per week next week. I want to get him to 80 more than I do getting Gitr to 80, because who really wants to level a warrior 70-80? I’ve already got Protectr (pally) and Grimr (hunter) waiting at 80 for the expansion.

He’s making his way through the Basin in rapid-fire mode using Kopp’s Alliance Guide and has a beautiful stealthing cat from Zul’Drak by his side. It’s time to buy a new stable and get a Rok from the northern area of Sholazar Basin and also add Pitch to his stables. That should about do it until Blackmaw at level 79.

Too bad you can’t tame and hold onto everything.

We dropped 1200g on a whim upon dinging 78 to buy the complete set (minus an unavailable helm) of Swiftarrow Battlegear. It did some mad-crazy stat improvements and should hold me until 80 when we start doing heroics and dailies.

Late last night, I cracked up as I found “the hatch” in Sholazar Basin in reference to the TV show “Lost,” complete with the numbers. I have to hand it to the designers for creativity.

Personal stuff first, for those of you who actually know me or of me over the years. In September I left my military contractor company to work from home for a company who produces WordPress premium themes as their Customer Support Manager. It was a great gig… until they up and kicked me to the curb in the first week of February, stating a “change of direction” for support. Since customers were happy, I had no idea what the heck that meant and was devastated for most of February. The very next day I began working for myself and have been ever since and just formed Petersen Media Group, LLC this week to get a business bank account set up. Things are going great now, so for all of you who follow me on Twitter @jpetersen and Facebook, thank you for your support the last 2 months.

On to WoW now… I’m hooked again. I took Protectr all the way from level 66 on expansion night to 80 in under a month and he’s doing Naxx 25 both with his guild and even pugging it from time to time and is a fierce tank, even if Gitr is still level 70. Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to play a “smack me” toon again who can’t heal himself just yet. In lieu of playing Gitr, I’ve decided to level Grimr to 80 ASAP to get him into dps slots of parties and he’s about to hit level 50. I’m power-leveling him with Kopp’s Guide to see how fast the Alliance side of leveling can be compared to my experience with Joana’s on the Horde side.

Then I went to the Isle of Quel’Danas, mostly because not being able to go thru that portal was kind of bugging me.  I did not realize that there was not a portal back to Shattrath, I just wanted to check it out.  So I was stuck and I figured I might as well try to do a daily or two.  Usually I research any new areas I go to, but this time I just chose two at random. I kinda lucked out; I chose The Battle Must Go On and Know Your Ley Lines.  Know Your Lay Lines provided me with 10G 99S and Darnarian’s Scroll of Teleportation and The Battle Must Go On provided me with 10G 10S.

I know where I will be going for awhile, because I really want my flying mount and right now I am about 600G off.

The 10% gain experience buff, to me, screams play an alt. I have a level 21 druid that really needs my attention, but alas, no. I played him this weekend and I just could not play him for more than an hour. I even respec’d to Feral, from Resto. I was originally going to try to level straight resto, but that became very boring for me since I did not have a leveling buddy along the way like I did with Protectr.

So I will happily continue my almost obsessive quest to ding 70 and I’m sure once that goal is done I will gladly find a new one. Have you ever been focused on just one goal and let almost everything else fall to the way side?

…hmm that Neatherdrake mount looks kinda nice.

What has been interesting with regard to Protectr is that I went directly from abandoning Paladr (level 50 Belf protection pally) on Velen to starting a new protection pally on Silvermoon to complement Gitr for end-game raiding. I wanted a tank and a healer, but I wanted to do the dirty work as a paladin rather than a priest.

The moment I hit 59, I re-specced him to Holy in hopes of running around with a buddy and healing his mad dps/tanking and to try to get into an early Ramparts. Neither one really happened this week, so my progress was a bit slow, especially due to the adjustment of not being able to run through thickets of mobs and wear them down to get at what I want. I’m finding myself picking and choosing one on one fights and trying to do some burst damage, only to drink far too often.

Fill us in on what you have been doing with your alts. Anyone hit 60 or 70 recently?

The Story of Skychaser

/cue dramatic music

::sound of needle dragging across a record::

Right – none of that. First off – Skychaser for anyone that knows his history was an accident – an experiment in level 19 shaman twinking – and a potion vendor for my more *serious* toons. The homely white cow started life out on Thorium Brotherhood as “Remember” and what I tend to “remember” from those days was that being a level 19 shaman in a warsong gulch full of twinked rogues and hunters was a pretty painful experience. So it’s probably not surprising that I put him away in favor of my more easily accessible twinks. He languished like this for a long time – churning out speed and free action pots for my main of the month and letting dust build up on his Twisted Chanters Staff. It wasn’t until I migrated off of Thorium B. and onto the newer RP server Moon Guard that Remember (renamed Skychaser after the server move) saw the light of day again.

I dusted Sky’ off and put him to work initially because I needed better potions. The surprising thing was that I really started to enjoy playing him. Like all good things, Sky required time and patience to really learn. Shammy – like druids – are hybrids and not quite as easily accessible as the average primary color toons that make up the most played classes in the game. One thing lead to another though and the levels really started to fly by. Once the great leveling patch came along, adding extra 30′s and 40′s quests and reducing the required experience to level and pumping up quest and mob-rewards things went even faster. In no time, Sky caught up with and passed – my name sake toon (Growl) and all of my original alliance characters.

At 60 – Sky emptied the banks of all my other characters and picked up epic mount training. A long Alterac Valley grind later brought him a Frost Wolf Howler and a Warlord’s Bludgeon. As a strict dps character, Sky’ was free from having to do anything in instances other than watch his aggro and support his tank. I started running instances with abandon and in no time I was absolutely hooked on the whole “progression” thing.

Over the Xmas holidays I found myself with more game time than usual and Mrs. Growl much more pleasant about me tromping off into Azeroth for hours at a time. Skychaser pounded his way through Hellfire Peninsula and Zangamarsh – grabbed up his heroic keys for both locations and moved on to Nagrand, Terrorkar and the Bone Wastes. Over a few particularly great gaming days, Sky’ cleared the Crypts, Mana-Tombs, and even Setthek Halls – picking up his Shadow Labyrinth key and swaddling himself in loot.

Around 67 and the Blades Edge Mountains, things started to get hard. I was enjoying the questing and enjoying my character, but I learned during the holidays that I was gaming on borrowed time. As an Army Reservist, I’m slotted to deploy early in the spring and this news cast a haze of immediacy over everything I did. While my guildies continued to play alts and cruise through levels on relaxed mode, I lit my afterburners and ground on. Finally – a day or so after Xmas, Sky was burning through one of the many kill quests in Shadowmoon Valley. I was burnt – toast – the drag from 68 to 69 had truly been a long one and I was getting tired. I literally dinged 70 on some random mob and didn’t even realize it for a few moments. It wasn’t until a guild-mate who had just logged on popped open her social interface panel and noticed.

“Wow Sky’ – grats on 70!” She said. I blinked a couple times and looked up to my unit frame…well I’ll be damned. A chorus of congratulatory “woots” rolled across my chat pane. I thanked everyone and promptly let myself get caught up in the excitement. The guild had a new 70 – the level grind was over – now for a taste of this vaunted “new” end game. Arena’s – more instances – the flying mount thing.

Well, it’s been a couple weeks since I dinged and things are…odd. First off – I think I pushed a bit too hard over the holiday to hit 70. All the play time and the sudden burning need to progress toasted me up a bit on the whole enhancement shammy thing. The bad part was that I figured this out after heading (under geared of course) into the 70′s battlegrounds. Wow. What a wake up call. After destroying all comers from 40-60 (the peak of enhancement shamanic power apparently) – I rolled into my first BG’s and watched as my vaunted crit % and old-ass 60 dps maces whiffed off of gladiator geared 70′s with more resilience than Sky had INT. I was target #1 for everyone – hit with every CC imaginable and dropped in seconds. Determined to do better (and tired of questing) I dedicated myself to the battlegrounds again and in a few days had my first piece of S1 gear. A few days later I had another piece – an expensive one too – the Gladiator’s Pummeler. Things were still going poorly though and the thought of getting drubbed for days on end to get even more gear just wasn’t all that appealing.

So I blew 5G and respecced.

To resto. What the hell – I was pretty much reduced to healing my way through BG’s anyway – I might as well be *good* at it. The respec went off just fine and the added heal-ly power (in crap-tastic gear I should add) was welcome. I put away all of my considerable enhancement goodies and built a lousy resto +healing set that had me sitting around +450 healing. Back into the BG’s I went.

Lasted about a week.

Don’t get me wrong – resto shammy rock. I healed my ass off. I saved countless lives. But I also got focus fired and annihilated over and over and over. I also got zero thanks – or damn near. Finally – after being abandoned to die by one too many noob rogues in a late night Eye of the Storm – I filled my guild chat with venom and headed off to Ogrimmar to respec. To hell with healing and to hell with my team-mates. It was time to nuke something.

Reality sinks in…Dude – your gear *sucks*. Even if you *do* respec you’re still going to be a gimped ass shaman in a mix of enhancement S1 epics and left over quest rewards from level 65. Either get back to instances and hope for some good drops…(more fighting with hunters for the odd mail piece that works for us both.) Or stay resto. Or try being a caster.

Ugh.

Kinless once said that he felt it was really obvious that Blizzard wanted Shaman to be either resto or elemental based on the quest rewards and drops they’d made available for them post 60. I have to agree with this. Short of the Aldor/Scryer stuff that is spec specific – the rest of the drops are full of +mp5 and spell damage and +healing. Still burnt on enhancement I did some reading and walked away with a 40/0/21 elemental pvp build. I’ve never been a caster folks – so this was serious weird water for me to be wading in. I shuffled some gear around – changed some basic enchants and queued up. It was different I have to say. Used to playing a melee class for so long – I went back to my hunter roots and remembered to get some stand-off distance and nuke. Kiting became important and I spent a few uncomfortable Arathi Basins getting my macros in place.

Things finally came together as my crew and I hit the Alliance flag room in Warsong Gulch. I rolled in at the back of the pack to see my team-mates already mixing it up heavy. Epic weapons were hacking out great carnage while our kick-ass paladins and healing priests kept the warrior up and the rogues from blowing away in red mist. I hit my cast cycle macro for the first chain lightning – a second later it arcs downrange and chains a series of lightning overload crits as it arcs from target to target – almost on top of it another lightning bolt fires downrange and crits the same plate-wearer – I get hit and suddenly clearcasting procs. I pop natures swiftness and elemental mastery and an instant cast chain-lightning rips into the mass of alliance, lightning overload procs again suddenly my screen is filled with “Killing Blow” – “Killing Blow” – two heavy targets drop to the ground – one of our pallies grab the flag and we’re back out the door, hauling ass for the horde side of the field.

I don’t remember much of that run – suffice it to say I healed a lot and dropped a lot of annoying totems to slow down pursuit and nuke the odd-passerby. We won the game (of course) and I logged off that night with the realization that spell damage truly does rock when it comes to dealing with nasty plate wearing brutes. Sure – the lightning overload crits were a bit of happy chance – but nothing quite lights my eyes up like scrolling combat text tossing those big numbers up in bright orange for me. I was hooked.

So – tonight I’m back at it. I have two full pieces of elemental gear so far and a third piece is on the way soon. I doubt I’ll be fully kitted out before I deploy – but I’m having fun and trying something new.

70 is cool – I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to get here.