2 More 85's + Other Stuff + Tips

My Druid and my Priest have now joined my Hunter and my Rogue at 85.  Now to finish topping off the professions for those characters so I have everything I need for my Hunter. 

My Druids JC will take a longest as I can only get one JC token per day to get new patterns.  Should only be a few more days before I have everything my Hunter will ever need however.

My Priest's Tailoring is 512 and Enchanting is 513 and my Rogues Leather Working is about the same but not like I can do much with it being I will never be getting any orbs on my Rogue to make gear.  Kind of sad really.

Leveling the Druid was a breeze.  Being I leveled Bear things did not die fast but I easily made up for that by killing three, four or five at the same time when I attacked.  Bear leveling was rarely a problem unless I bit off more then I could chew.  Being I am a Bear that did seem to happen sometimes however.  Leveling the third character to 85 was even faster.

Leveling my Priest to 85 was not that hard with managed pulls.  Did a few instance runs along the way and I can safely say that mana does not really become an issue until level 83.  Also, leveling does not become an issue until level 83.  As soon as you hit level 83 it is not longer DoT them up, shield, smite a couple times, pop angel to regen mana and wand to death.  Once you hit 83 you can kiss your shield goodbye.  It will no longer be of any use in most situations.  Most mobs destroy it in one hit. For only a few fights did I even still use it.  Otherwise I dropped it from my questing rotation all together.

That is where the AA spec really seemed to show it's worth.  The smite heals where the only thing that kept me going.  If it were not for that then I would have had to do the unthinkable and switch to Shadow.  I would sooner level in dungeons only then switch to shadow.

The Twilight Highlands and the ending quests in Uldum where brutal on me and I loved every minute of it.  Each fight was truly an epic battle.  I could not just ignore mechanics because I needed to avoid every but of damage that I could.  Level 85 elite mobs hit hard on cloth and even shields, renews and smite healing where not enough to keep up with it. 

The fights took a long time, took planning, took execution.  I loved it.  A real battle.  Now that is how questing should be.  I managed to do them all and never died even once.  So needless to say they are not impossible, just difficult and much much longer when doing them as a healer.

I stick by what I said after my first time through however.  Leveling is way to easy.  When I could do all these epic hard quests, on a healer, and never die or even really feel myself as being in serious trouble, the leveling process is way to easy.  While I enjoy quick, I do not enjoy easy and quick.  It was only a challenge because I leveled as a healer.  Otherwise, questing this expansion is a joke.  The rate I am getting characters from 80-85 kind of proves that when I am only playing limited time on them at best.

Next topic: Tol Barad Dailies.

Now you want to talk about hard?  The TB dailies are brutal.  I am not talking the ones outside.  While they can be difficult if you try to run past mobs and end up with 5 or 6 on you at one time, if you take your time they are doable.  One issue however.  Unless you get lucky, out running mobs in TB is nearly impossible.  I've had ghosts still firing bolts at me when I was half way across the zone.  They do not give up and their range is apparently unlimited.

The ones on the inside however are beyond brutal.  If you are questing alone there is almost no way to get some of these done in a reasonable amount of time.  For those that do not know there is usually a set of quests that require you to go to one of the dungeons and do one thing each.  Collect x items, kill x things and kill x boss.  These are the ones that become an issue because whatever it is in that dungeon you are battling through doesn't make a difference, they spawn faster then you could ever imagine.  For each one you kill two more pop up. 

If you are the only person in there then you are not getting these quests done.  At all.  You need to hope others are down there killing also or making it to the last person is a matter of luck, superior skill or dying, releasing and reviving further in.  Soloing the kill x and collect x can be done.  Getting to the end and back out alive is not.  Doesn't this seem a little extreme in comparison to what you just taught people while leveling up? 

I can get a character from 80-81 faster then it takes me to complete 12 TB dailies inside.  I guess it does not help being I am on a small server.  On a big server I might be complaining that there are not enough mobs.  All a matter of perception I always say.  For me, I think these are a little difficult for dailies. 

Pro Tip for Gold Making: There is something good about it. It is a great place to farm cloth.  Cloth is still going for 8g per piece on my server. 45g for a bolt. Pick a spot on the outside at a small distance or on the stairs going down.  You can pick off mobs and bring them to you meaning no multiple mobs and the spawn rate is so insane you will be constantly killing.  Seems cloth is a 50% drop and drops from 1 to 4 per mob.  Depending on how fast you kill, you can easily farm a stack in under 5 minutes. They also sometimes drop greens.

The funny part of those quests are that they do not say 3 people needed.  Going in with 3 people those quests would be a breeze.  For some odd reason they do call that one elite mob quest a 3 person quest. 

I don't know about you but if you need 3 people to complete that quest there is something serious wrong with you, two maybe, not three.  That one and tank the shark (says it is a 2 person quest) are easily soloable by any class in the game.  Even more so for a Hunter.  Neither mob does much damage and neither mob has much life.  How are they multi person quests yet the quests with the respawn rate from hell are not?  Makes no sense.

Next topic: Speaking of Multi Person Quests.

Remember a few days ago I was complaining about someone asking for the achievement for BH to do BH on only the second time we had it?  Well, that tard, the same one that told me I could not come along because I did not have the achievement was spamming TB looking for a group for problem.  He was spamming for a few minutes and then finally said that he found him and was following him.  Needless to say I did not whisper this retard because, well, he is a retard.  I did however go to find him and find the mob he was following around waiting for a group to kill.

I rode up, dismounted on the run, MDed and started shooting.  A few seconds later the mob was dead, I had only needed to hit mend pet once to cover anything that might have happened to my pet, and nothing did.  I looted.  Mounted back up.  Stood in front of him for a second so he could see it was me and then ran off.

Lets see.  I was not good enough to do BH because I did not have the achievement yet he was better geared then me, same class as me, and he could not solo a mob it took me only seconds to kill.  Maybe he was right, I am no good for BH, I am already better then what is needed for it.  I went along and finished my quests and left.  When I left he was still spamming looking for more for the elite.  Some people just do not get it. 

How can someone be so bad and still be an elitist?  Maybe someone should be questioning how he ever got into BH in the first place if he can not even solo one mob.  Apparently he is not very good at his class if he does not realize that in most cases Hunters can solo anything in the game.

Next topic:  Raiding

The top guild on my server is in need for a fill in DPS for tonight and asked if I was capable of pulling 20K DPS.  I told them I can do 12K-13K steady and 17K max during burn phases with heroism.  They said it was beneath what they are looking for.  I have no issues with that.  I do not even have all heroic gear yet and I am not in my raiding spec yet. 

Hell, I am not even gemming and enchanting correctly yet.  I am just using whatever my JC and Enchanter make while leveling just to have something.  It is not like I am going to be wearing any of this gear long at all and it is better to have a lesser gem in then to have no gem in at all.  So I was not offended by them saying that at all.  I am not a min/max person and I am not the best, never claimed to be.

The funny part is, about 20 minutes later they came back and asked me if I could be on call for tomorrow (tonight).  I said, sure thing.  Just give me a heads up so I can throw on some better gems and enchants. 

While I do not mind doing heroics in lesser stuff I refuse to enter a raid like that.  Even if I am not an elite player like they are I am still a serious player and I know I can not take anyone serious that can not even gem and enchant properly so I would never show up to another persons raid unless I am prepared.

I am sure if I switch to survival I can turn my 17K burn phase into a 20K burn phase.  Survival is over powered at the moment even after some patching.  The thing is I still think the utility of MM is needed more while the people in heroics are still not very good.  Even if the tanks never notice it, it is my silence shot that keeps bringing the caster to them, it is not their leet skills.  I'm not quite ready to give up MM until people in dungeons get better.

Next topic:  Heroics

Speaking of dungeons I finally got Deadmines as my random which means I got the Dungeon Hero achievement.  Ripsnarl is everything I heard about.  We wiped on him more then a few times, went through two healers and one DPS.  The one DPS seemed to be the difference.  A DK came in to replace the Paladin we had and we downed the boss with only one more wipe to our name.  As for the last boss, I had heard nightmare stories from beta about her.  I am guessing they changed it.  I've faced harder quest mobs.  She has to be the easiest boss of this expansion.

Yesterday on a guild random we ended up in Stonecore.  Nice instance.  A quicker one really.  One problem, two hunters.  Me being MM and a Survival hunter from my guild.  Normally the CC the two of us can provide with solid DPS can power a group.  Here however, the rock boss was going to pose a problem.  Either way, we went on with it.  We will deal with the issue when we get there.

We pull first trash pack.  Healer heals the tank twice and that is all.  We all die.  Healer leaves saying, you all suck.  Excuse me?  You didn't even attempt to heal anyone and the tank died so we all died.  How does that mean we suck?

Either way, we get another healer and move on.  After two trash packs and the healer going oom on each someone inspects them.  They are in mostly green gear.  One guild mate mentions that gearscore says that heroics are impossible for them. 

Someone says something and they say that all their gear is DPS gear, they are working on their healing set now.  See people, this is why I do not think that gear check thing works.  They are heroic geared for DPS, not for healing.  Either way, they are not doing all that bad.  They offer to leave and we say we are willing to give it a try.  They need to get gear and experience some way. <--- See, it is not true that all 4/5 guild runs are filled with assholes.

We make it to the boss and wipe.  Oops, healer died right off the bat.  Lets try again.  Much better, healer goes oom however and we die.  They offer to leave again and we say we are willing to try with them one more time if they want to and they say thank you.  We give it the old college try and of course we wipe.  The healer thanks us for having them along and says they are going to run as DPS for a while as they work on getting their healing gear and they leave.

Next healer is all heroic geared.  This has to mean they know something right?  First attempt.  The healer dies, we wipe.  Second attempt I went oops and died but the rest of them do okay but never get it down and wipe.  Makes it seem like if I were there it would have been fine and maybe the healer saw it that way as well so they stayed.  We get it down really low but the healer goes oom and we wipe.  Healer leaves telling us we suck.  Okay, at least with this one they stayed to see something and we did not exactly dazzle.

Next healer comes through the revolving door and we proceed to wipe almost as if we never did the fight before.  You know the saying anything that can go wrong will?  Well, we all screwed up.  The healer however did not leave us.  Amazing.  Next attempt we get it down.  No one even dies, all is well in the world.  I blame that one wipe to basic frustration.

We went on and one shot the whole instance.  Makes you wonder, to those healers that said we sucked, how come we could one shot it with a healer with only one piece of heroic gear but we could not get one boss with you?  Maybe it was not us, maybe it was you?  These in and out healers have to stop waiting until they find a group that can carry them and they need to learn to heal.  I am guessing that the full heroic geared person got all their gear that way.  Keep joining randoms and pray that they group can carry you, if you don't get one you drop and join another.

As for the rock boss, when we got there we stood there and talked for 10 minutes.  How the hell do we do this fight with two hunters.  I think it is a bug or an oversight on Blizzards part.  I doubt they purposely made it so Hunters had no way to break the paralyze.  The healer said it perfect, it makes no sense that serpent sting would not work, it is a nature damage DoT.  Ding!  Right on healer.  It should work.

Either way, while figuring out what we were going to do someone mentioned the beer in BRC that puts a DoT on you for 5 seconds.  That just might work.  None of us had a direbrew remote but the healer did.  They ported out, ported back in, dropped it, we jumped through, bought a stack of beer and went at the boss.  I miss timed it the first time around and got paralyzed.  It wears off quick, so next time I timed it better and never got caught again.  Cake walk of a fight for hunters then. 

Pro Tip for Hunters:  Doing random heroics?  Keep a stack of Sulfuron Slammer on you in case you get Stonecore as your random.  You will end the Ozruk fight piss drunk, but you will never take any paralyze damage and you will never have to run in and lose DPS time.  Even with average DPS you should need to drink no more then 5 per battle and they stack to 10.

Pro Tip for Grinding: Found a good spot to farm for leather? Cloth? Volatiles?  If you plan on grinding there for a while and have the ability you might as well make (or buy) some Potion of Treasure Finding.  You are killing and looting anyway, might as well use it to get the chance to get a chest that can contain gold, cloth and/or volatiles.  It only makes sense.