CATACLYSM!!

First off: please excuse any horrible spelling errors in this post. I'm having trouble typing tonight. I'm pretty good at catching my mistakes , but it's like my fingers don't want to cooperate with me tonight (5 typos caught and corrected already).

I know it's been a while since Cataclysm dropped, but it you've read this blog you know that I often forget about this blog for months at a time.

So, 4.1 is out now and 4.2 is rockin' away on the PTR. My priest, Zartia (I race changed her to worgen at Cataclysm launch and added an "i" to her name) is 85. Not only did she reach level cap, she's geared for the Zuls (though she's only been in Zul'Gurub and it was terrifying). I switched her to Holy one night after reaching level 85 to try it out and fell in love with Chakra. She has a disc off-spec for PVP and it's alot of fun to mana burn Horde healers and smite them while throwing bubbles and penance at my Alliance teammates. We still lose almost every BG, but it's still fun.

My warlock, Aevelyn, was the first of my characters to 85. It was a death-filled couple of days, but she was the first character in guild to ding 85 (by like a couple hours). And that was cool with me because Aevelyn is the guild master. She's been sitting in wait pretty much since she dinged 85, and I just started playing her again this week. I've spent the last 3 days reading everything I can about destruction warlocks, respeccing a couple times to get talents in the right places. The target dummies have been my friends (though I've beat them up a bunch now). I even downloaded SimCraft to see how far off my 6k dps was from what my character could theoretically be doing. The number that SimCraft spit out for self buffed moving dps was 12k average. I balked for a bit, then installed ForteXorcist and PowerAuras and set back to work destroying a target dummy. With just ForteXorcist keeping track of my buffs my dps went up to 10-11k on the training dummies. Pleased with myself, I took my warlock and her newfound DPS into a random heroic with a guildie. We got Halls of Origination, and I amazed even myself when I pumped 16k DPS into Rajh. Since then I have configured Power Auras to remind me when the Improved Soul Fire buff has fallen off so that I can recast it. It also reminds me if Bane of Doom or Corruption has fallen off my target. Those are the three I noticed myself having the most trouble keeping track of. I feel far more comfortable with my warlock in random heroics now that her DPS has made it to the Cataclysm standard.

Melaenah, my DPS DK was the second to 85, and is now tanking. She's not a full-time completely confident tank, but it's doable. She's got tanking gear and is okay tanking most of the Cataclysm regualer 5-man dungeons. She's geared enough to get into heroics as a tank (with no dps gear in her bags), but I'm not a skilled or confident enough tank for that.

My druid, Gnavie, is 85 as well. I do not enjoy her. I like leveling her as heals, and even 80-85 healing was super easy. But as soon as I hit 85 it's like all my heals got nerfed. She's always oom and her spells feel tiny. I avoid playing her as much as I can, but I need to get her rep with the guild because she's an alchemist and it's the only profession out guild is missing for a guild achievement.

My next closest to level cap is my mage, Aerialynn (formerly Erylie). SHe's level 65 and I'm playing her right now. Three of us mid-60 level characters are being pulled through Coilfang Reservoir dungeons by a level 85 warrior in guild. It's really nice because I really dislike playing my mage. Mages are like warlocks, but not nearly as cool. Sorry mage people, I don't have a problem with you. I just prefer warlocks. Leveling my mage is annoying and boring. I'm going to try respeccing her to fire or arcane, because she's frost right now and I don't enjoy it at all.

I do have one of every class on my main server, though not all of them are very loved. Some are still waiting to get some attention. My hunter has been pretty busy. She's level 46 now. She's been leveling with four other guildies. We get on at the same time and run dungeons. It's a pretty sweet group and we've been leveling together since level 15. It's an easy way to level the characters, a nice distraction from our high level characters (and sometimes soul crushing 85 pugs) and it's a fair bit of guild experience. We already have Classic Guild Dungeon Master, but it's been really easy for us to get our seven dungeons for the guild challenges.

So that's the rundown on my characters since Cataclysm. I've been pretty busy playing as many of them as I can.

Bargaining Already?

It's day four of NaNoWriMo, and I am already resorting to bargaining to get myself to do my writing. As of right now I have written 4,540 words. I promised myself that if I made the day three word count goal (5001 words) and did my homework before going bed tonight I would buy myself the Celestial Steed for WoW. I will finally have my sparkle pony. I submitted my homework over an hour ago, and I've been writing pretty steadily since (except for the break I'm taking to write this).

I was directed to this forum thread by a friend and I think that it will be what gets me through NaNoWriMo this year: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3737543. I've scrolled through the first two pages and owe over 7k words. It's helped me write 1-2k already tonight. Writing 100-200 words at a time definitely makes it more managable.

This thread is also very cool: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3821427.

EDIT (12/16/2010): I did do the writing and but myself the sparkle pony. My priest rides it everywhere because it looks so cool in shadow form. My warlock chooses to ride her Dreadsteed instead and I haven't played my druid or death knight to see if they'll be riding it.

Back to WoW

It's been a while since I really played WoW. Night before last, though, I ran 25 ICC on my warlock. I did HM Gunship and got Nibelung. I've also been working Brewfest on my three 80s and today I finished it up and got the title on all three. I spent last night doing some farming ad flask making on my druid. I put the flasks on the AH and made about 350 gold very quickly. I did some more farming and made some more of the flasks that sold well, Endless Rage and Frost Wyrm, and stuck those on the AH as well. Now I'm working on leveling Inscription on my warlock. It's been at 100-something for far too long. I'd like to get it up to 450, so that I can use all the spare Adder's Tongue and Deadnettle lying around my banks and make some money. Also, not having to buy glyphs will save me a bit of money.

Quick WoW Note

Aevelyn, my lovely destro lock hit 80 on January 30, 2010. I switched her to affliction to get better dps out of her, but with 3.3.3 she was able to go back to destro. She's not really amazingly geared, but she's been into ICC a couple times and can run any other raid that I feel like.

My DK,name-changed from Cylana to Melaenah, has been doing a lot of nothing. I got on her last week for the first time in a while and took a long look at her gear. Yeesh. It's not pretty. And I had thought she was well geared. It's going to take a lot of work and learning to get her back to being able to run raids. She's still a hundred or two points over hit cap.

Gnavie is my druid. I finally logged onto her again and switched her back to healing. Once I was able to get into groups for stuff other than the Orange Crystals side of Mara healing got a lot easier for me. I'm actually pretty good at it, but it scares me to think about trying to heal a heroic or a 10 or 25-man. She's 56 now and I was so excited to get tree form.

Erylie (name changed to Aerialynn) is my newest time drain. She's a level 21 gnome mage. I really like playing her, and she's easy to level (when I don't get called onto Aevelyn) because she's got three pieces of heirloom gear (chest, shoulders and a trinket). I've got a frost leveling spec for her and she holds her own in groups. Slow fall is a lot of fun. I've also been leveling professions as she goes which is considerably faster, easier and cheaper than leveling them at 80. She's tailoring and enchanting so that she'll be able to make herself some lvl 200 epics at 80 and get into the que for heroics. All I have to do is get her to 80.