Alt Leveling Plans

So I've got nine toons at 90 right now, one hovering at 88, one at 85, and a slew of lower ones.  Someone linked this (plans for no flying at all in Draenor) today on an alt guild's Facebook page, and my gut reaction to it is that my druid is going to be abandoned.

I love flight form.  Seriously, it was my impetus for rolling a druid at all.  If you've seen the most recent Captain America movie, the scenes with the Falcon pretty much epitomize why I love it for my druid.  (Sitting in the theater, going, "That! That is what I love about my druid!")

But she's 90, and, well, high level alts get leveled.  It just happens.  Some of them will be through questing, some through dungeons, some through... other means.  But not being to to use flight form in post-90 content, basically ever?  Druid's probably getting leveled through dungeons and then probably parked unless I like the new druid healing enough to do raid finder on her.  Sure, all my characters will be grounded, but travel form isn't as fast as ground mounts.  Cat stealth is weak compared to rogues'.  Since soloing content isn't what I like about her, it's not what I'm going to do on her.

This train of thought led to other alt leveling thoughts.  My main had all the pre-Wrath Loremaster pieces done before Wrath (and achievements) hit, and she got Seeker before hitting 80; it's kind of obvious she's going to be questing out all the zones.  But my alts get narrower subsets of content.

(In the order they're on my character screen):

Alliance (Original) Hunter:  Will get leveled through the Alliance quest content, to see what's different

This was taken before I know about alt+z

Rogue:  I may see what I can do with leveling her through archaeology again, probably combined with herbalism.  I used to stealth through Azshara picking herbs for hours on her in vanilla.  There's a reason she's Subtlety.  (I maxed her herbalism at 85 long before I started actually leveling her to 90.)

This is how I leveled 85-90

Warrior:  Mix of questing and probably trying dungeon tanking again.  The warrior is usually the 3rd or 4th I level.  She's a swordsmith.

Questing as Prot

(Main)

It's not like I don't have ground mount options

Priest:  More dungeons (healing), some questing, because I always like seeing how well Disc solos in the questing environment.  Plus disenchanting quest rewards helps for enchanting materials.  The priest is usually the 2nd leveled.  (Although 4th in Mists.)

I swapped her offspec back to Shadow, alas

Baby Hunter 1:  This is my jewelcrafter & scribe, and she tends to get leveled in parallel with the warrior.  Because of how well hunters solo, I frequently quest again on her.

She does have the coolest cat

Shaman:  Probably mostly dungeons as Elemental and some questing to open up phasing/zones.  Since she's a leatherworker, I'll likely open up content I need for skinning, too - I went back and did Vashj'ir on her at 85 because I needed the skinning there.

She has the best orc hair!

Warlock:  I did all of the Lorewalker discoveries on her pre-90 (which means yes, on a ground mount), then found out I couldn't get the quests from the scrolls until 90.  This is the character that got taken on the road trip to Dalaran at 43 (to be parked there to summon people there until I got around to leveling her).  She tends to get leveled around 5th or 6th, in parallel with the shaman, so I'll probably do more map discovery/herbalism/some question/some dungeons with her.  She's my transmuter.

Apparently goblins have problems with Pandaren furniture

Baby Hunter 2: This is my flask alchemist; I'll probably level her alchemy long before she's leveled.  She's 88 right now.  I'll finish getting her to 90 probably in the next couple months.

I took ALL my 85+ through Karazhan for the pets

Paladin (bank):  My bank is 76; I've hardly touched her in terms of leveling since Mists started, partly because she's not in my main guild, and partly because I haven't gotten around to learning the paladin changes.  One day!

Stalled out bank toon? You get the BEST ride

Druid:  Like I said before: probably mostly through dungeons.  She was leveled mostly through mining, herbalism, and pet battles from the 60s on, with some dungeons thrown in.

In the Zangarmarsh

Death Knight (on a connected realm):  My death knight is 85, my second transmuter, and I've leveled her mostly through dungeons, with a smattering of herbalism and pet battles.  I really like tanking on her; I just have to get back into it for Mists content, which is a bit intimidating despite doing it on my warrior.

They took my scourgestone :(

I have a lot of baby alts (Catnome, goblin & troll hunters, orc mage) that I want to level, and have started slowly doing so, but I don't know where they're going to fit into the mix.  I also want to make an orc hunter after the new models come out.  Then I'll have one of all of them Horde-side except Pandaren, because I'm not doing the Pandaren starting zone again.

I really wish all my alts were on connected servers, because I've got about 15 others I want to level, but just am not as likely to get to without my guild.  Maybe one day.

*poke*

So, I looked at the page-view stats for this blog for the first time today, and mostly it was kind of depressing, because they're about seven times the stats for my other blog - and I haven't written anything here since June.

There's a really simple reason for that - huntering hasn't really changed dramatically over the course of the past year.  Firelands added some new pet models (and Deth'tilac, as much as I hate spiders, is very pretty), but none of them have tempted me to try taming them.  Heck, I didn't pick up Skoll until this expansion (looking for the Time-Lost Protodrake, of course).  I don't go looking for most rares for taming purposes.  (As much as I love Har'koa and the Zul'Drak quests, her boyfriend is so dead if I ever find him.)

But no, this expansion has been pretty stable for Marksman PVE.  The secondary stat numbers (haste, specifically) for when one's rotation changes (adding a Steady or an Arcane, basically) are so huge that you really don't need to think about them.  It's not like the magic 800 for swapping to stacking Armor Penetration was.

Guild drama has been minimal all summer; raiding has been good; I still don't have the Headless Horseman's pony for Duskhawk.  Brewfest threw daggers to all my toons but my rogue.

Mists of Pandaria was rolled out at Blizzcon last week, and I was stuck at work, obsessively refreshing WoW Insider's live blogs.  I like the talent changes - 3 specs that you get your special abilities just by picking the spec, and then one talent tree of fun stuff that you can put points in regardless of your spec.  I hope improved mend pet ends up a glyph or something.

In the meantime, I've been playing a baby priest Alliance side on another server to play through the quests again - an RP server, at that, although I'm far too shy to have actually done any interactive role-playing.  When I leveled my priest on Bronzebeard, I was fashion-conscious on her to the point of getting ribbed for it - there are some awesome robes out there, and I refused to have shoulders that didn't coordinate.  I also may have used her little pillbox hat from a rare spawn in Hillsbrad well into the 50s.

I'm leveling as discipline again, partly because the dot-dot-channel playstyle of shadow has never appealed to me.  I've tried shadow, briefly, at 85, so that when I want valor/justice points on my priest and there's already a guild healer going, I can still take her, but I much prefer healing - atonement healing, that is.

Anywho, a priesty-comic I did (stick figure art!) a while back, since she's the alt I'm playing right now:

Replay Value

I played through Diablo II (including the expansion) all the way to the end at least four times; I made new characters and played them into the fourth or fifth chapter quite a bit more. Diablo II was a solo player game for me, and I never did its "hard modes" - I didn't take a character I had beaten Baal on and replay the content with that same character.

I did, however, enjoy running through the game with a new character, to try out a different class, or a different playstyle. (Charged bolt sorceress! Woo! Actually, the Amazon with charged-bolt-releasing gear was probably the most fun charged bolt experiment...)

I'm bringing this up for a couple reasons. Firstly, I've got a fairly serious stable of alts: 9 characters on my main server are level 80+. WoW is so much more of a time-sink than Diablo II was; getting characters to similar levels of investment and playability would require more time than my commutes 45-minutes both ways, works 50+ hours a week life allows. Secondly, WoW, to me, is the original Diablo III.

Right, right, Diablo III is still in development, and Azeroth is most certainly not the setting for Diablo II. They're entirely separate franchises.

At the same time, there's a lot overlap in the character classes and basic user interface design; paladins have auras and can heal or tank; barbarians and warriors both have a couple of different fighting styles and utilize various shouts (although I really miss the shout that got me potions... and dual wielding throwing knives, which was awesome); assassins and rogues both use a combo point/finisher style; amazon + druid = hunter + druid; necromancers and warlocks share a few traits; and of course sorceresses and mages.

WoW built on and expanded a lot of what I was already familiar with in Diablo II, which made switching to it as my graphical game of habit fairly easy. (I was replaying Diablo II up until I started WoW, and I've still gone back to it a couple times.)

What WoW didn't initially do was make it easy for me to "replay" it; this wasn't so much a matter of the content not being accessible from scratch, and hey, I could mail my alts money! No, the problem was the time sink. Leveling took time, traveling was slow, and the barriers to entry at higher levels were pretty steep.

For the most part, Blizzard has been really good at improving on WoW's replay value: between changes to the leveling experience and the introduction of heirlooms, a new character doesn't have to repeat content I didn't like, nor do I have to slog through every kill-and-collect quest I did five years ago on another character. Running dungeons lets me collect points for gear, so if I decide to go to alt raids on a character three tiers in, I have a reasonable route to gearing her up.

The biggest remaining time-sink in alt leveling? Reputation grinds. Oh, but there's tabards! Sure, and the tabards help. But I don't run dungeons on my alts nearly as much as I do on my main, and I can hit 85 in two or two and a half zones. Hyjal is nice and fast, and Deepholm is generally the follow-up, at least until I hit a level to go to Uldum or Twilight Highlands.

Skipping out of Deepholm, however, no matter how tired I may be of some of the quests there, locks me out of shoulder enchants on my alts. In Wrath they ameliorated this problem by making reputation based enchants bind-on-account; you could just mail them to alts. It remains to be seen if Blizzard will do so again this expansion. If they don't? I'm pretty sure my alts will never have anything better than the blue shoulder enchant... once I drag them all back into Deepholm to finish the zone and open up the Therazane vendors. I don't do dailies on my alts unless it's for profession tokens.

The Sons of Hodir were the barrier to entry for non-inscription shoulder enchants in Wrath, and you couldn't just waltz into Storm Peaks and start working for them. But maybe three hours of questing and I could unlock their dailies (including turning in boatloads of tokens for fast tracking exalted, prior to the BoA change). Therazane is buried so far in Deepholm (it's the last quest chain, no?) that it takes me much longer to get to and open. The time invested/reward ratio is steeper than my patience is willing to bear six years in.

Don't get me wrong - WoW's replay experience has gotten a zillion times better than it was originally, or (ugh) in Burning Crusade, when running heroics on my alts meant a rep grind again. (Most of them weren't too bad to get to honored, but the heroic dungeons in Auchindoun seemed terrible to unlock.) But tying profession recipes to reputations? *grumble*

For the longest time, Sporeggar was my rogue's (my third most played character's) only exalted reputation... because she was an herbalist and could farm the hibiscus. (Tiny sporebat, omg.) Yeah, yeah, flask recipes on reputation vendors... no, thanks. Don't have that kind of time.

Five and a three-halves toons into this expansion, I really don't have the patience for reputation grinds anymore.

My guild...

... is awesome. :)


We can now rent cars without paying extra for insurance. >.>

So close

Last Monday, my guild hit level 23. At 23, the caps on guild experience come off, and if you're crazy about grinding raids or heroics, you can hit 25 in a very short amount of time.

We're not that crazy - two of our raid nights this week were devoted to Nefarian (a fight I am unexpectedly in love with, despite dying twice on many attempts), so we're sitting pretty about 20% into 24 as of when I went to bed last night.

That 10% discount at level 24? It applies to flight training. That was the push I needed to buy fast flying on the two toons I'm currently trading off leveling.

I took my shaman into Vashj'ir this week to try to get deepsea scales for leveling leatherworking (and guild experience from quests); I hadn't done Vashj'ir on my priest or warrior, so I haven't really touched the place in four months. I still love it. Viatrix, on the other hand, is at level 70 in the Borean Tundra. Fast flying will make Northrend much less painful, and I'm looking forward to hitting Zul'drak again.

I'm eclectic in my WoW loves - female undead animations, tauren architecture and city planning, troll lore, my orc's hair while casting (3-foot wind-whipped braid: awesome). I think most of what I like about my blood elves is that they make feminine look bad-ass.

Level 25 will bring us scorpion mounts and mass resurrection. The mass summon has been pretty awesome so far - raids, "crap, my hearth is still set to Dalaran," "crap, I'm stuck, and can't hearth," etc. It was nice when you could summon someone who fell into a bad spot in a dungeon but didn't die back to where you were, but I understand why they disabled inside-dungeon mass summoning. Mass resurrection is going to make feigning or vanishing despite a bloodlust debuff desirable again, I think.

I'm dubious about the scorpion mounts, though. The stinger is right behind the rider's head.

Baby hunter, again

I didn't realize just how much I missed having a toon to level. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when this one's maxed, because I'm really out of toons to delete on Bronzebeard.

So the new baby hunter is 25, with her cooking sitting at 380 (thank you, Pilgrim's Bounty!) and her engineering and alchemy capped at 225. I will be sad when some quest item comes along and displaces my pilgrim hat.

The new Silverpine is, like most of Cataclysm's quest changes, rather liner, but the zone finale is awesome. Hillsbrad is awesomely done, as well.

Beta Adventures, Part 6

(A shorter session)

There was a guild wipe, so I'm now in the beta SHP when my husband remade it.

Dude, Millhouse Manastorm. Was NOT expecting him like that.

The box quests are always fun.

So much ore, and I can't find a forge. Argh.

My pet's dot shows up on the minimap again. /awesome

Hahaha... Avalanchion, we meet again.

New elemental stuff stacks higher than 10. Awesome.

Bugged right now to constantly run in place. While mining, eating, bandaging, etc.

167 Agility!

Troggzor! Earthinate!

Finally got a crab for Nespirah.

Good lord, people, stop skipping the quests in Vashj'ir that get you water breathing and the seahorse.

Beta Adventures, Part 5

The notes from the 5th beta adventure session:

Nespirah's floor is glitchy. Can't do the quest to communicate with her.

Can't loot mining nodes. (Relogging to see if it fixes it.)

Ok, at least got Nespirah to work. The floor is still like Swiss Cheese, though.

Haha, Obsidian requires a forge to smelt.

Ok, the crabs have all fallen through the floor in Nespirah. Going elsewhere.

Hey, kvaldir dudes.

Ooo, Ruins of Vashj'ir.

Ok, going to go wait for a crab and see if that works. Meh, I'll go find the instances.

Oooo... IN the whirlpool.

I think I know *why* they're making 310% fly speed trainable - the old world is friggin' HUGE.

Ok, in the Throne of Tides.

Holy God, I like this new Multi-Shot AOE. It's like shooting a fistful of arrows at a group.

Hey, a cut scene.

Level 82!

Apparently the squid at the end of Throne of Tides is bugged.

Mining Elementium. :D

Whoops - alt+tab/click to move/fatigue line.

Ten minute flight paths still, heh.

Trained up, set my hearth to the Valley of Wisdom.

Into Deepholm! The obsession with whirlpools is unexpected but somehow amusing.

Mining past 500 - I can do rich elementium now.

Deleting my cache to see if I can get the bugged items to work.

Deepholm is gorgeous. I love the alabaster.

I just mined an elemental for Savage Leather. I MINED FOR LEATHER. WTF?

Holy shit, Myzrael!

Ah, damn, the Gorged Gyreworms can't be tamed.

Hahahaha... Ok, so there's a quest you're supposed to jump onto a griffin from the airship in Deepholm. I disconnected right as I jumped and sailed off into the air. Log in: Parachute Cloak for the win!

And people wonder why I want to roleplay a Dwarven Shaman. Dude!

And off to raid!

Beta Adventures, Part 4

This is Part 4 because I didn't write anything for my level 3 undead hunter (stupid missing quest mob), my premade level 85 *cough* blood elf *cough* hunter (it was my only Horde race choice at the time), or Dusk's flying tour of Uldum (cat people! camels!) after I was able to transfer her.

So we're beginning now with my flight up to Hyjal (awesome scripting on the first flight in) and my adventures in archaeology.

Discoveries:

The pet bar is currently letting me change all 10

Why the **** am I wearing my tabard of the explorer on the loading screen? It's not the one I had on!

Anyway, the pet bar is letting me change all 10 buttons around.

Oh, hey, Mabs is transferred over. (Logging in.)

...

...

...

Crashing in?

/waits

Hm, many of my old keys are gone. This saddens me.

I've learned already that the epic quiver from the Molten Core Leaf quest chain becomes a 24 slot bag. It looks like the other quivers are maintaining their bag size (although I didn't have a 28 slot quiver made for testing).

Tenuous Dreadstones all become Glinting Dreadstones (Agility + Hit Rating).

Anywho, back to Duskhawk.

Pet talents seem to be unlearning every time I log.

(Waiting to see if I crash again. Looking likely.)

Nope!

More Night Elf artifacts.

Huh, my bear can "rest" now.

Farming thorium is less painful with flying. Not that I can do anything with it, since engineering is Not Yet Implemented. /sigh

Dancing Troll Village: now with Alliance quests? o.O

Holy God, Darkshore is visually *much* more interesting. Chasms, whirlpools, vortices... Twilight Drakes? Huh.

Tree branches are still 2D, heh.

... Bear is going to sleep every time we enter combat. /Turns off Rest's autocast.

Dig sites seem to have about 3 artifact spots per site so far.

Hey, Fishing works. Just had to retrain it... like everything else. o.O

Flight paths have definitely been reworked.

You know, I got on the boat to Vashj'ir, but after hearing the speech, I'm not sure I'm still interested.

On the other hand, I kind of like Vashj'ir itself.

Huh. The crossbow off Lich King 10 has higher damage than the heroic Njorndar Bone Bow.

Lol, a Gollum quote.

And another crash.

/deletes caches

Teehee, schools of undead fishes.

Hm, I can smelt obsidian with no forge. I guess I'm gluing glass shards together?

Giant sea serpents!

Huh, a JC pattern.

Did I mention that every time I zone, my pet's talents reset?

Ooo, a fox.

Hey, Tirion. You seem shorter.

Oh, hi, Alexstrasza. Fancy meeting you here!

Ettins!

Damn, I can't mine Elementium yet.

I can't queue for any Wrath dungeons. >.> I haven't 'found' them.

Take these orbs and make snake tornadoes!

Much crashing. Almost 82. Off to fill a spot in ICC25 on (undergeared) Duskmoon for two fights.

Undergeared, sure

So Mabs hit 80 on Thursday, 5 minutes before I had to log over to Duskhawk for Icecrown-25. The guild she's in took her along to Trial of the Crusader-25 today to fill an otherwise empty slot.

Mabs is wearing mostly leatherworking blues. So, yeah, her DPS wasn't spectacular - mostly around 2k, somewhere up over 3k on the Twin Val'kyr thanks to empowerments - but I at least know how not to die.

What I do find interesting is that at that level of gear, Dusk was doing about 1300 DPS in Naxxramas. It's interesting to see how much better player I am now than I was about a year and a half ago.

We didn't get Anub'arak (the perils of an alt raid), but afterwards I was able to get the T9 shoulders for her. Not that I could find a Tenuous Dreadstone for them over there (on the Alliance side).

It may take some time to spread the Agi/mp5 gospel before Cataclysm rewrites the book.

Ah, leveling

Mabs hit 60 sometime in August 2005. Duskhawk hit 60 in May 2006. And since then my pre-60 leveling on hunters has been pretty sparse, the first 15 levels or so on the scattered baby hunters that were to try out a starting zone, or a server.

Now I'm leveling my baby hunter on Bronzebeard, the one that was to try out the blood elf zone and jewelcrafting. Having leveled one hunter 70-80 in Wrath already, I had gotten used to Volley. Uninterruptable Volley. Very used to it. Much of the past week has been an, "Oh, my God, when do I get Volley already?" haze. (At 40, apparently. Not that it's a huge help, with single-target pets and not having points in the uninterruptable talent yet.)

I soloed Shadowfang Keep on her last night at 40 (with the blue tallstrider from Ashenvale, heh) to clear out those quests from my log; sometime in the next couple days I'll probably hit up Razorfen Kraul, as well. (And hopefully get a group of some sort for Razorfen Downs, since I want the sword to offhand with the sword from the Scarlet Monastery quest.)

The early 'of the falcon' mail is stupidly expensive on Bronzebeard. Argh. I really don't have to make myself some Tough Scorpid leatherworking stuff. (I mean, seriously... Agility and Spirit? Who came up with that one?) Dustwallow has had unuseful quest rewards, though, so I'll probably hit up Tanaris (for the lucrative Zul'Farrak quests, at least) next.