11 level nineties!

I had quite a busy week last week two new level 90's joined the fold, taking me to 11! Although probably not the 11 you'd think, Ideally I would like a level 90 of each class but for the moment my Monk is 85, Death Knight is 86 and Rogue is 83 (and will forever remain at that level).

Instead this week I got my second level 90 Mage and Priest. I now have two level 90 Shamans, Mages and Priests. For the Shammy and Mage I have one Alliance and one Horde but both Priests are Alliance, just on different servers! 

Both of them leveled though slightly different methods. On my Mage I leveled from 85 to 86 in Jade Forest and then fucked that off in favor of grinding xp on the Timeless Isle as I'd done previously on my Horde Elemental Shaman. With so many level 90's now I'm beyond sick of questing in MoP. Grinding on the Isle was pretty easy as Frost but a little dicey in the beginning with missing so much but it certainly got easier as she leveled up. I leveled via the Spotted Swarmers who come in packs of around 10 and are fairly easy to AoE down, certainly with ranged classes. It was also insanely fast! 

I've heard about people doing Monkey runs where you run Stormstout Brewery in a group of five, kill all of the monkeys up until the first boss then run out and reset. There's also an area in Kun'lai Summit called Dooker Dome which has a gathering of mobs pretty close together. People tend to use the tag method and have a level 90 who isn't in their group kill them. I prefer the Timeless Isle method as I don't have to rely on anyone else! I can grind for twenty minutes and then go do something else, tab out, go AFK or stop to go tag a rare without affecting anyone else. At level 87 I was getting 32k xp per kill with rested. Pretty damn nice if you ask me!

My Priest I picked up around 83 after having been abandoned for quite a while so I leveled though instances until 85. I started questing in Jade Forest and when I hit 86 I did Temple of the Jade Serpent and Stormstout Brewery. Since she's on a PvP server I decided against Timeless Isle leveling on her, I can't imagine people taking too kindly to a level 86 free kill wandering around so I opted for pet battles instead. Something I've never done before. 

I parked her in a small area in Vale of Eternal Blossoms which has a little spot of land with around 5 pets that respawn really fast. The fights often consist of two Aquatic and one Flying so I used a Flying pet and a Magic pet along with whatever pet I was currently leveling. There is an inn right next to the spot and Aki the Chosen is also a stones throw away! I'd level though pet battles until each new level when new dungeons would pop up in my group finder which I'd do once to complete the quests then return to my battling. At 89 I quested a little in Dread Wastes just to speed things up a little. 

What's your preferred method of leveling?

Alt Appreciation Week Seven - Priest

Lae from World of Lae has come up with awesome idea of celebrating all of the classes in World of Warcraft one by one, each week! You can find out more about it and a list of participants in this thread.

Priest Week 

Priest hanging out at the Timeless Isle

It's finally rolled around to what I'll be honest was the week I was most looking forward to! Unfortunately the week so far hasn't gone as planned with my boyfriends HDD giving way he's been raiding on my computer and I've felt a bit bad playing WoW while he's not been able to! However every week is Priest week for me as my main is a Priest so it's not all bad. 

My first attempt at the Priest class didn't go so well. I'd spent a fair amount of time watching a friend play a Hunter when the time came for me to learn the Fade spell I was pretty stoked. I somehow got it into my head that it was the exact same as Feign Death. It's not. I died a lot, decided Priests were terrible and ditched her instantly. That was some time pretty early in vanilla, thankfully it wasn't the end of Priest for me. 

A few weeks before The Burning Crusade released I decided to start another Priest, Korla. 

I had no idea then that she would become the heart and soul of my account. She started life out as a Human but I never really got around to leveling her. With the first expansion coming all of my focus was on gearing up my Hunter who had just become my new main, since I'd gotten a bit tired of my Warrior. After a few weeks of BC and deciding that I hated raiding on  / was awful at my Hunter my little Priest offered me some solace and respite. 

 

Sadly not the original Korla.

Something happened while questing in The Badlands, I fell in love. Completely head over heals in love with Korla. It just hit me. I was having so much fun with her. I don't know if it was due to making some kind of break through with the game - up until that point I'd been a bit of a noob. I think it had a lot to do with me really enjoying the game for the first time. My Warrior had been my first character and everything was pointing to getting to level 60 as quickly as possible to begin raiding. That seemed to be the only point in the game in many people's opinion. My next character was my Hunter who again I rushed to level 60 as quick as I could so that she could become my new main for the expansion. 

With Korla I took my time, quested though a lot of zones I'd never been to on my leveling path with my previous characters. 

I had several friends who played healers, specifically Priest healers. Healing was an aspect of the game I was really interested in after having tanked and DPS'd in dungeons and raids. There was no such thing as LFG at that point so you had to look for people to join your group for instances. This was usually done either in the city or in the zone which the instance was located Westfall for Dead Mines, Hellfire Peninsula for Hellfire Ramparts for example. By the time I was level 60 the Armory existed but inspecting in game didn't. Duel spec also didn't exist so when I while I leveled as Shadow - when I saw someone looking for a healer I'd drop out of shadow form in order to lose my buff and tell them I was a healer. I loved healing so much more than Shadow. 

In my mind she was my main even before she hit level 70 but once I got there I started the gear grind and began raiding on her and I continued to do so until the last tier of Cataclysm. I decided to take a break from raiding after clearing Dragon Soul, I just didn't have the heart to go back though and do it on heroic. 

 

Firelands Priest Transmog

For most of my raiding career Korla has been Holy, during Wrath I raided along side a Disc Priest and there's no point in having two in a ten man raid. I finally took a Disc spec during Firelands as it was favored for a lot of the fights and I was no longer raiding with another Priest so I was free to do what I wanted. Throughout Mists I've stayed Disc as it's quite fun being able to pew pew and heal at the same time but this week I've gone back to my much loved Holy for a bit of a change and I'm really enjoying it again! It's even viable in PvP! 

About two months ago my hard drive broke. Gone. kaput. I lost all of my screen shots from Vanilla - MoP and I'm gutted. I've lost the SS of Korla completing the ICC meta achievement, I've lost the SS of Korla grinding reputation in Dire Maul when my fiance first whispered me to tell me he liked me before we'd met. I've lost the SS of Korla hitting each of the level caps and all of the adventures we've been on and that makes me pretty sad but I still have the memories. If Blizzard decided that they had to make cut backs and everyone had to delete all character bar one Korla would be the one I'd keep. I really do love her. 

Transmogs used;

First picture;

Shoulder - Hallowed Pauldrons
Chest - Fel Conquerer Raiments
Belt - Maletic Girdle
Hands - Heroes' Gloves of Faith
Weapon - Starshard Edge

Second picture; 

Shoulder - Wrathful Gladiator's Mooncloth Mantle
Chest - Brutal Gladiator's Mooncloth Robe
Belt - Wrathful Gladiator's Cord of Alacrity
Hands - Setaphic Handwraps
Weapon - Wand of Eternal Light

Third picture; 

Shoulder - Mantle of Closed Doors
Chest - Robes of Smoldering Devastation
Belt - Maletic Girdle
Hands - Heroe's Gloves of Faith
Weapon - Ko'Gun, Hammer of the Firelord

Just the two of us.

A few posts ago I mentioned moving to a new server and boy have I felt a lot better since I did! I moved two characters over leaving the rest behind. I don't possess the ability to play on multiple servers so my other characters are effectively dead to me. This is giving me time to really focus on just a few characters for pretty much the first time during this expansion.

Korla and Telnari.

Throughout MoP with having put a lot of my focus into gold making I'd gotten into a routine of doing almost the same thing every day. Logging into each of my characters to do their profession cooldowns and crafting / posting. Leaving little time for much else. By the time I was finished I seldom felt any desire to run LFR or hunt down some achievements. And with so many max level characters I never really knew where to start.

For the past three weeks I've actually been doing LFR, capping my Valor, gearing my Hunter a little better and generally having a lot more fun in game.

I've also joined a guild of people who seem really nice. As well as bumping into an old friend from BC. Of all the servers and all of guilds for me to join I just happen to end up on hers which is crazy! I'm on a trial at the moment for the next few days but hopefully I'll get a permanent spot in the guild. I've been joining in on Achievement runs at the weekend which have been super fun. It's been a while since I did anything like that so I've been really enjoying it!

Korla and Telnari are two of my oldest characters and have always had a pretty strong place in my heart. I consider my main server to be whichever Korla is on but getting back to grips with Telnari who I mained for a short time during BC has been fantastic. 

What about you - are you an altaholic who struggles to focus on just one thing or character at a time? Are you one of those few and far between people who have or have always had just one or two characters?

Leveling a new Priest!

One of my WoW related New Years resolutions was to blog more. Considering we're now into the second week of January I'd say I've not been keeping to that particular resolution very well. The holiday are always a busy period for everyone and I hope you all had an excellent time! Now that everyone seems to be back onto a regular schedule it's time to get back down to business.

lvl 56. Almost ready to head to Outlands!

I recently hit level ninety on my Mage, making her my fourth level ninety. I've been completely neglecting dailys and even gold making in favour of leveling another Priest on a different server. A server I paid to transfer off of a while back. A PvP server!

Having gotten a bit bored and restless during Cataclysm myself and a few friends decided to transfer off of our low population, PvE server in favour of faction changing and moving to a high population PvP server. For the first few weeks I enjoyed it but it gradually began to grate on me. As a player I tend to spend very little time within (the safety of) the City walls or in instances instead preferring to level alts via quests or potter around out in Azeroth. I post my auctions and I jet off somewhere. I've never been much of a PvP'er - I get panicky and flustered so being outside with people bigger and with better gear than me was horrifying. 

I transferred off of the server leaving my friends and what had become my raiding team. Not just due to being ganked multiple times by max level characters I just didn't feel at home there I really didn't enjoy the experience, I'm sure getting one shot by people didn't help the feeling of unease!

I'm much happier muddling away on my little PvE server on my own but it can get pretty lonesome. I haven't bothered to look for a guild as I'm not entirely sure I want to return to raiding. I do miss it and I miss the comradery but I don't miss the time restraints and those days where you just don't feel like it. I of course have my friends on Real ID but there are still certain things we can't do together.

So I've decided to level another Priest. I'm leveling along side my boyfriends Shaman which may be why I've seldom been attacked by people. We did get killed several times by a level 90 in Felwood but I shrugged it off and we continued questing. My plan for this Priest is to PvP. I hate having to constantly respec my main when I want to switch between doing dailys or doing Battlegrounds, heroics or LFR. I've toyed with the Idea of leveling a second Priest for a while as I have multiple max levels of other classes. I had just never felt the need for a second max level Priest. Korla was all I needed <3. However now with the introduction of Challenge modes I'd really like to have a character on my friend's server to join in with those and it'll mean having one Priest primarily dedicated to PvP and perhaps even venture back into Arena. 

You'll always be my number one Korla.

Priest Tier transmog with a difference. Part two.

This is my second part of Priest tier transmog with a difference. The bottom half of the Priest tier is often overlooked which is a shame, there are some amazing designs out there. Make sure to check out my other post if you haven't already.

Priest Tier four legs.

Legs / Chest / Gloves / Shoulder / Waist / Staff

Priest Tier eleven legs. 

I adore the colour of these leggings!

Legs / Shoulder / Chest / Gloves / Waist / Feet 

Shirt / Mace

Priest Tier transmog with a difference.

Recently I've been playing both my Warrior and Paladin a lot. Being plate wearers they have the option to transmog to some plate skirts but I tend to keep them in full pants. Tanking in a dress doesn't feel quite right to me. With that I've started looking at cloth legs a bit more. There are no Priest tier sets which don't use a robe, same with Warlock.  Mage Tier eight is the only tier set in game which uses a tunic and pants model.

There are some gorgeous legs out their for Priests especially so I decided to build some outfits around two of my favourites for today. I'll post another two in a couple of days. You can find the links to the items used under the pictures.

Priest Tier five legs.

Helm / Legs / Gloves / Shoulder / Waist / Feet / Staff / Tabard 

I chose to wear a Tabard, something I don't usually do with Clothies as I don't think they sit right with robes. I transmogged my robe into a low level green chest which wasn't a robe and added a black shirt.

Priest Tier Two legs.

   

Chest / Legs / Gloves / Shoulder / Waist / Feet

Collect all the robes, ALL THE ROBES!

I'm a collector, I love collecting things. More so in Wow than anywhere else. I love non combat pets, mounts, exalted reputations and achievement points. 

Something I wasn't quite prepared for was how transmogrification would effect me. I've always kept my Tier gear. Some I held onto because I though it was pretty, some because it held some sort of meaning or special memory. My Tier ten in particular reminds me of my best and favourite time raiding in Wow. However transmogs release transformed my simple collection of gear into an obsession!  

I own the same pair of shoes in black, pink, grey and purple. I often buy accessories in multiple colours. So it's no surprise to me that this quirk of mine would rear it's ugly head in wow in the shape of robes.  

There are multiple robes in Wow which share the same model and I've unknowingly made it my job to collect all of them but I'm quickly running out of space!

What about you, do you have any habits in your daily life you find creeping into Wow or vice versa? Do you just have to collect certain things in game?

If you'd like details of the items used in any of the images above leave a comment or send me a reply @SocoWow on twitter.

PvP week!

Reputation and achievement points have always been the driving force behind me doing shit I don't actually want to do. I'm a sucker for them especially rep (I'm sure there's a deep rooted psychological reason for this but we can explore that later).

Looking at my achievement summery it's glaringly obvious which side of the game I neglect. I'd love to get the justicar achievement. There are many others I could get along the way. So I've deemed this week "PvP Week!"  I thought giving it a title (albeit a not very good title) would make it feel more fun and interesting. It technically started on Monday the 14th of May however I've slacked several days only managing to do two or three battlegrounds so I'm starting over - or extending it to two weeks, whatever.

So what is "PvP week!"? I hear you wonder. It's a week (or two) in which I force myself to PvP my face off instead of idling around Stormwind or doing anything else remotely enjoyable in game (I jest I'm just awful at PvP).

"But wait, I thought you hated PvP so much so that you even transferred off of a PvP server?" Well that's not strictly true. I do enjoy controlled, organized PvP (especially with friends and some kind of voice communication). It feels very much like PvE in the sense that my main focus is playing whack-a-mole with Grid much like I would in a raid. Except instead of avoiding fire on the ground I'm trying to line of sight the Mage while also keeping a Rogue off of my back at the same time. I just don't like the "if it's red it's dead" attitude of many players on PvP servers. Preying on lower, lesser geared players. Hurtling after players who have been caught out while doing their daily quests perhaps already low on health and taking advantage of it. That's the part I don't enjoy dishonourable killing. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

The Justicar achievement requires you to gain Exalted with all three of the Alliance forces. My current reputation is as follows.

Silverwing Sentinels        352 / 12000 Honoured
Stormpike Guard             999/999 Exalted
The League of Arathor     5214 / 12000 Honoured

That's actually pretty depressing. I know I'm not going to get all of these to Exalted just by PvPing for an entire week (or two) I'm not that naive. These are pretty harsh grinds to do but I'm up for the challenge! While I'm really doing this for the reputation, to take my focus off of the daunting task ahead of me I've noted down a few achievements which I want to get in the process. I'll head out to obtain those and take any reputation and additional achievements I get as a nice bonus for now.

47,296 Honourable Kills.

Battleground wins need 100 of each.

Alterac Valley  52

Arathi basin  51

Eye of the Storm  21

Warsong Gulch  61

Strand of the Ancients  26

Isle of Conquest  21

Battle for Gilneas  2 (Troll face)

And 8 Tol Barad Wins.  Need 25.

Sporting the PvP recolour of Priest Tier 6 during this en devour just feels right.

Is there a side of the game you particularly avoid due to your own dislike or your lack of time/ability? Are you willing to just grin and bare it to get that achievement or last recipe you need from a reputation grind?

Want to take part in PvP week with me? Or your own version Send me an @ reply on twitter @SocoWow.

We'll meet back here in a weeks time to catch up on how things are going!

Time for a change

Since I started playing Wow something I've always struggled with is the ability to play on multiple servers. I like to stay within my own little bubble surrounded by all of my alts. Alts I have on other servers which I don't consider my main server are often left lonely, sad and abandoned.

Having played on the same server since I started playing just before patch 4.3 was released I transferred my main along with some friends hoping to find a new home on a new server.  The server was busy, crowded even - compared to our previous old, dying server. It was great to begin with so many new faces, guilds we'd never heard of. Trade chat was constantly moving with the daily hustle and bustle, achievement runs, transmogrification gear runs, Battleground premades nothing like where we'd came from. The novelty soon wore off for me as we'd decided on a PvP server. Something I hadn't quite prepared myself for. When discussing which new server we were going to chose I thought I could handle being on a PvP server but I soon found out that I was sorely mistaken. For the past few months I've felt trapped, confined within the wall of Stormwind. I hated leveling, questing for reputation, farming with what felt like the constant threat of someone hanging over me just waiting for that free honor kill.

So I'm transferring.

You jelly of my paint skills bro?

Goodbye PvP server, hello new welcoming, friendly PvE server. I've missed being able to AFK randomly without fear of coming back to my cold, lifeless goat face buried deep into the ground.

Over the past month or two I've taken steps to securing myself a new home on this server. I've leveled a Druid, Mage and Shaman to 85 with several others waiting in the wings. I've amassed multiple professions and two guild banks. Which means I can now start preparing for Mists of Pandaria with both characters and from a gold making standpoint.

I'm really looking forward to getting back into my grove, back into my bubble.

I won't miss you.

I've had to drop myself down to under 50,000g as that is the maximum amount you can transfer with. The easiest way for me to do this was with several Vial of the Sands and many stacks of gems.

I'm excited about moving. Really excited!

What kind of server do you play on? Would you ever change server? Leave a comment or you can find me on Twitter @SocoWow

Introduction

It dawned on me earlier today that I hadn't actually written an introduction post!

I'm known to most (at least around Twitter) as Soco. Prior to playing World of Warcraft I would never have considered myself a gamer. A friend introduced me to Wow and I started my ten day trial period on the 16th of  feb 2006. After a mere hour of playing an Undead Mage blissfully unaware that being Horde meant my friend and I couldn't play together - I reluctantly re-rolled a Night Elf Warrior.

Having never played any kind of MMO or RPG yet I was fairly awful it took me quite some time to get to grips with the game but I loved every minute of it. I joined my first guild at level 48 and at level 56 I made my first foray into Molten Core with them.

I raided with my Warrior as protection after hitting level 60  (which was at that point the maximum level). A friendly Warrior in the guild took me under his wing and taught me everything he could about tanking.

As vanilla Wow started drawing to a close and more information about the new expansion was released, knowing that their epic gear would soon be replaced the guild gradually stopped raiding. For me that is where alternative characters started to peak my interest.

When The Burning Crusade was released in January 2007 I knew I no longer wanted to play my Warrior as my main instead I leveled a Night Elf Hunter and started raiding Karazhan. Over the next few months of the expansion I created and leveled a Human Priest. I was instantly in love. My Warrior and Hunter were shelved!

My Priest to this day is still the character I class as my main. She's the character I collect things on, mounts, pets, achievement points and especially transmogrification items! I raided with her all the way through the Burning Crusade as well as the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Cataclysm saw me continue raiding with her until only recently having cleared Dragon Soul normal I decided that going back through doing the content on heroic just wasn't what I wanted to do this time. I wanted to take a break from raiding and focus on something else. This isn't the end of raiding for me I may pick it back up before Mists of Pandaria is released or I may not. What matters at the moment is that I'm having so much fun!

Before Cataclysm was released I was raiding Icecrown Citadel heroic weekly. Having always been a bit of an achievement and reputation enthusiast the feat of strength Insane in the Membrane sparked my interest which in turn led me to find another side of Wow I'd never even considered - making gold! I hit the original gold cap of 214k at the very end of Wrath and went on to hit the 1 Million gold cap in the middle of Cataclysm. I won't dwell too much on that here as all the information about that is on my Hall of Fame. 1M gold cap interview at Warcraft econ.Which by the way I'd love to go back in time and rewrite! Making gold is still something I love to do and hope to continue doing for as long as I can. 

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Jim Younkin of Power word gold and Farli of The Overcut for giving me encouragement to start my own blog <3 

Immaculate recovery

Blizzard claim that the loot a boss drops is randomly generated by a random number generator. I myself am not entirely convinced this is true. Instead I believe that the loot fairies control what drops and who gets it. Something I did in the past seems to have made them pretty angry but perhaps my luck is changing?

Week after week I bound into Black Wing Lair full of hope and excitement. "Maybe this time, I can feel it, maybe this'll be the week!" Drunk with power, I can almost hear their deranged cackling as Chromaggus' corpse rolls over to reveal a pair of Stormrage Pauldrons for the third week running. They'd grin, ear to ear as they watched me hearthstone out in a mist of despair. 

Look, look at me. I'm amazing.

Things changed this week though. My lovely boyfriend and I ventured into BWL on Tuesday to no avail. On Wednesday evening we decided to go back and low and behold the fairies took pitty on me, they finally caved!

Oh Transcedence. You're so beautiful. While I don't like the Tier robe. I like it teamed with the Priest Tier 11.

Here's a list of everything included in the picture.

Helm - Halo of Transcendence (Tier 2)
Shoulders - Pauldrons of Transcendence (Tier 2)
Robe - Mercurial Robes (Tier 11)
Belt -  Belt of Transcendence (Tier 2)
Gloves - Regal Gloves (BoE green)
Bracers - Fireheart Bracers (BoE green)
Staff - Rapture (BoP Ulduar)

I don't tend to transmogrify shoes as I'm actually a Draenei. I just use my Orb of Sin'dorei on every Cool down.

Lady who?

While in the Black Rock area my boyfriend asked if I wanted to tag along to Molten Core as he's after a Binding of the Windseeker to complete his Thunderfury legendary sword. Luck was again on my side when a robe I've been after for a long time dropped. It has a chance to drop off of four different bosses in Molten Core and although I'm Exalted with the Hidraxian Waterlords I'd never seen it drop!

This was the robe worn by Lady Katrana Prestor inside Stormwind Keep. Later revealed as Onyxia I had always been jealous of her. I think it's stunning!

Shoulder - Consortium Mantle (BoE green)
Robe - Robe of Volatile Power (Molten Core)
Belt - Fire-Cord of the Magus (BoP The Eye)
Gloves - Widow's Clutches (BoP Sold by Damek Bloombeard at the Molten Front)
Bracers -  Firesoul Wristguards (BoP Sold for 1,250 Justice Points in Stormwind and Orgrimmar)
Staff - Staff of Immaculate Recovery (BoP Gurtogg Bloodboil, Black Temple)

And probably most importantly I got my Staff of Immaculate Recovery from Black Temple.

Every Priest needs a Priest on a stick

How's your luck with loot? Are you mercilessly trying to get your hands of an item that just won't drop?