26 July 2011

Hitting a plateau

The last time I posted, it was patch 4.1 still and I was completing the revamped reputation quests for my Winterspring Frostsaber ride and grinding my way through the heroic Z's. That was literally months ago; what now?

I feel like Dawg has peaked.  Not in terms of gear, mind you. When I run an analysis on AskMrRobot.com (awesome site by the way!) there are still plenty of upgrades and best in slot pieces that I do have access to (pre-Firelands). So I'm not all pimped out in terms of gear.

However, I have reached a plateau of desire; I'll log Dawg to run daily Firelands quests. When I'm free, I'll join my raid team (we've dabbled in Firelands but are concentrating on clearing up BoT, BWD and ToFW). I have yet to down the new boss in Baradin Hold. But, I'm barely running heroics despite the fact that I know I earn Valor Points from them to get new shinies.  I just don't have the desire for all the grinding.

From a progression standpoint, I am comfortable being behind the vanguard. I play WoW to experience the content. Hell, I still want to go back and clear out Wrath raid content like the achievements in Naxx, Ulduar, ToGC and ICC! My raid team handles Tier 11 content, but we need to coordinate and increase DPS a bit to be competitive in the Firelands, but I'm not in any rush to do so.

So how am I spending time in WoW?  Alt nation! I'm rediscovering the zones and instances using different classes and roles.

My stable of alts includes:
85 Priest (Holy / Shadow)
85 Shaman (Enhance / Resto)
85 Warlock (Destro / Affliction)
83 Death Knight (Blood / Unholy)
59 Druid (Feral [Bear] / Resto)
44 Paladin (Prot / Holy)
44 Rogue (undeclared)
06 Mage (undeclared)
13 Warrior (banker)

In the last two months, I leveled the Priest from 81 to 85, the Warlock from 59 to 85, the Shaman from 56 to 85.  Next will be the DK, followed by the Druid, the Pally and the Rogue.

I'm really enjoying taking a break from the hunter and learning more about the other classes. As I spend more time on these toons and actually get them to max level and even geared for heroics and the alt raids, I will likely include some posts to share my thoughts on the other classes.

My hunter is my first love. We had a guild chat discussion the other night -- on my hunter I've played 128 days (26 days at level 85). He's my primary guy.  But, a bit scarier, is that across my alts I've played WoW for 261 days.  Yeesh!

But, like anything else, a break can strengthen the enjoyment... so Dawg will cool his heels a bit while the Alts get leveled up.

The side benefit of this?  Auction House speculation with all the main tradeskills!  I look forward to seeing how that goes!