WoW Journal - 3-July-2006

Another weekend playing my two priests, but this time the level 60 priest was more successful. I did one Onyxia raid and two Molten Core raids with him. For the first time my guild managed to kill Onyxia, after three wipes. The only annoying thing was that during the three wipes I had used Greater Fire Protection potions to good effect and had always been one of the last men standing. But on the successful attempt I had run out of potions, and died from the first deep breath in phase 2.

At least we learned one thing: the "dots, more dots" is not just a funny quote from the crazy raid leader audio file. By watching the dots on Onyxia I found that Onyxia has Decursive installed, and the dots you cast on her last a lot less long than they should. So I had to basically spam Shadow Word: Pain on her, with only a few bolts from the wand in between dot casts.

Molten Core was also relatively successful, I got my third piece from the prophecy set, the vambraces. Starting from 3 pieces one gets the first set bonus, so now my flash heals are 0.1 seconds faster. Might actually be useful, although I'm not one of those priests that just spam flash heal, I use all of my healing spells, depending on situation. Sometimes a 2.5 second greater heal is better than two 1.4 second flash heals, but not always.

In spite of all those successes I'm a bit burned out on my level 60 characters. After each raid I repair, restock potions, move to the entrance of the next raid dungeon, and log off to play my low level priest. I only play the level 60 for raiding, not because I like raiding so much, but because I'm still trying to maximize variety, and I couldn't raid with my low level character.

The other priest made it to level 28 over the weekend. He also made it to 225 tailoring skill, which is the maximum he can have at this level. So now I'm fully kitted out in self-made mageweave bags. I'll try to earn some money making those, but even on a young server making money with crafting isn't easy. But at least reaching this level in tailoring didn't cost me all that much money, often I could sell the items I made to skill up at least at cost.

Highlights of my adventuring with the low level priest this weekend were two nice dungeon trips, to Blackfathom Deeps and to Razorfen Kraul. I would have liked to find the rod of the sleepwalker in BFD, but Lord Kelris didn't drop it. But I did have the quest to get his head, and thus earned the Gravestone Sceptre as reward, which is a very nice wand for that level. I think I'll do at least one more BFD run another day, I haven't finished all the quests there yet, and there is always the chance that the rod of the sleepwalker drops next time.

Razorfen Kraul I wasn't prepared for, I just got a tell from somebody looking for a priest. Level 28 is actually a bit too low for there, but it worked out all right. Just that I didn't have the quest to kill the end boss, and the quest can't be shared, so I missed out on that reward. I didn't find any special loot in RFK either, but of course at level 28 the experience points in there are rather good, especially with a very fast group like the one I was in.

At level 28 I'm well ahead of the average level of the players on the new server. Thus the people I'm grouping with now are those who advanced faster than the average, and that often means better players. I didn't have a single "pickup group from hell" this weekend. My new guild there is nice enough, but it seems mostly younger people on summer holiday, playing WoW all day long. I'm close to the lowest level in the guild, and there are already two level 60s. The advantage of that is that somebody donated 52 mageweave cloth to me for my tailoring, which helped a lot. But the disadvantage is that I have little opportunity for guild groups before I catch up with them at 60.

In 11 days I'm going on holiday for three-and-a-half weeks. I will take my laptop, and I think I will have internet access. But I don't think I'll be playing my level 60 at all. Holidays are for other activities than just sitting in front of a computer, and the laptop is a bit underpowered for raids. But I am tempted to play the low level priest a bit, to not fall too much behind. I just have to take care not to overdo it.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:12 AM Permanent Link