Yup, I did it. I hit 85 on Friday, not too shabby if I do say so myself, I was sixth in Bucklers of Swash. First being Stalkuren, the other 4 people don’t matter, so I won’t mention them. I started off my Tuesday waking up and finding out: Twas a snow day! So I quickly drove to Wal-mart to pick myself up a copy. I thought about doing the whole online upgrade but I read a post on MMO-champ that the wait was 72 hours so I quickly voted against downloading.
I arrived home and popped the DVD into the laptop and hit install. As it was installing I was instructed to go shovel the snow. I made it back in time for the last few percent to finish and I logged in for the first time of the expansion. I originally wanted to start out in Deepholm and work with my shaman buddies to prevent Deepholm from crashing into Azeroth. As it turns out you need to be 82 to make it to Deepholm. So off to Vashj’ir I went. It was horrible!
Well to be fair the zone was AMAZINGLY done, and the quests weren’t all that shabby either but the Horde, well most of you saw my tweet regarding the horde:
Dear Horde of Mug’thol, Fuck off. sincerely, Anslym.
Yeah, it was mage’s and paladins the most that were ganking me left and right. The quest hubs were 35-40:1 that one being me. While it was the mages and paladins doing the ganking I also have to mention that elemental shamans tried to take some shots at me but they fail to take aware that with a glyphed grounding totem I can make that lava burst rebound onto you. I finished Vashj’ir that day at around 82 and I quickly moved on to the zone I had been waiting for Deepholm.
The zone was amazing. The horde again weren’t. I picked up the quest line to explore the crashed Horde ship. I made it all the way to the part where you have to interrogate the ogre before the horde decided to make sure I didn’t finish that quest line. So I went to the Earthen quest line and did that one for a bit before I logged off for the night.
I wake up on Wednesday and quickly rush to the laptop to see if it was a snowday. IT WAS! I got to level 83 and 80% that day. I finished questing in deepholm, ran Stonecore once and headed off to Uldum. The horde were stationed at every quest hub and had orders to kill me on sight. Sorry, one horde. A paladin with shadowmourne made sure I didnt ‘t get anything done in Uldum so I logged for the night. I logged in after school on Thursday and quickly finished up my last 20% and headed off to Twilight Highlands. The pre-quest to Twilight Highlands was epic and juicy with lore-filled-is-ness. I wonder what the horde have to do but I guess I’ll find out soon enough (I’ll explain later).
I made it to the Twilight Highlands and did a few of the quests at Highbank before I got to the cannon and blimp quest. Which I might add it bugged out. Alright so I popped onto Wowhead and it turns out that is had happened on that day and they said you could do another quest hub instead. I flew to Thundermar and continued questing all the way to the quest “Something Stolen” which involved stealing some cloth off another blimp, guess what it was bugged. So I logged off for the night.
Fast forward through school on friday and Blizzard unbugged the quest! I proceed to do all the quest chains I couldn’t do earlier. I made it all the way to the Alexstrasza VS Deathwing and DING! Level 85.
I made a giant error not taking most of the quest rewards (spirit why would I want spirit?!?!!?) so I actually had to work to get into Grim Batol, Halls of origination, and The Lost City of Tol’vir at 85 when guild members of mine were running them already at 84. Then come heroic’s that took some work because I ran Origination at least 7 times and not a single piece of loot dropped for me until I got my cloak ninja’d from me.
Last night was the first time I started doing Heroics. First was Shadowfang keep. No biggie a few wipes here and there until we got stuck on “The Commander” seriously fuck that guy. We skipped him and finished the heroic fairly easily. Lord Godfrey was easy, his pistol barrage doesn’t even move like Mimron’s did!. Next was Heroic Vortex pinnacle. Our tank needed volatile air’s so he had a hissy fit when someone had auto-loot on and looted them (and no as I learned you can’t trade them cross realm) as we killed all the trash to the first boss he left the group. I guess the rest of the trash doesn’t drop them? We got a new tank. This tank was epic! No literally it was a female worgen deathknight named Epic. The first boss was pretty much the same although I learned what happens when you don’t move out-of-the-way. It isn’t some damage that you take, it’s a slow effect that decreases movement and casting speed.
The second boss on the other hand . . . he still has his downwind ability but now he spawns tornadoes that have a throw-up/knock back effect. I got chain thrown all the way off the platform and subsequently died 15% into the boss fight >.> go me.
The last boss fight is pretty much the same but he roots you to the ground when it comes time to run into the triangle. I got a nice cloak off of him though.
How I feel about them difficulty of heroics? I like them. They will definately get people ready for raids. My shadowfang keep run pulled 30k group damage last night. That is something on par with a 10 man early ICC run. They are pretty fun. It’s like running a 10 man WotLK raid with only 5 people. Stalkuren is the guild healer (no seriously: Resto shaman, Resto Druid, Holy priest, Holy Paladin, etc) and he loves the fact that he has something to do now. I wonder how him and the guild leaders wife (The Mrs.) are going to have they’re conversations during raids now. Now that they actually have to focus on healing.
Now about my plans as Saga asked in her ” The road to 85 ” post. I have a worgen rogue that is level 7 and a goblin warrior that is level 3-4 -I can’t remember. I want to gear out my shaman and get ready for raids. I have to level Trynda to 85 because the new arena season starts today, and I think Chmelyk might have some healing in his future. Grygor is at level 40, Maegyn is at level 32, and Gwynvere is at level 26. I gotta get them up as well. The goblin warrior, known as Fyonah will be my Horde loremaster (I have never gotten a horde character past level 20 so this is a massive new undertaking) and then will subsequently be faction changed to alliance once she gets loremaster in all the zones.
Number one on my list though is to gear out Anslym and get him decked out in T11 ASAP, the reason being? He’s ugly in his current gear.
Just as an update to my doings in Cataclysm: right now I currently have Loremaster in all of the new 80+ zones except Uldum and I have explored every zone fully. I must say that my favourite new zone comes into a tie with Vashj’ir and Deepholm. Mount Hyjal is my favourite questing zone because it actually feels like your making a difference. As for my favourite quest line? I love the maw of madness in Twilight Highlands followed by the Deathwing Vs Life-binder.
