A Return to WoW

Real life has a way of screwing over my virtual life. Thankfully, after weeks of being sick and weeks of recovering, I'm actively playing again.

Like Riding A Bike, Only Not
Right before getting sick, I had dramatically altered my UI and promised to post about it (Ooops!) Well, the promised post isn't showing up anytime soon. Lord, it's hard enough to remember how to play. My first night back to playing Beroth, I went on a raid. The joke of the night was about me finding appropriate buttons. Thankfully, I remembered the basics like send pet, my shot macro & feign death. The rest, however, was not like riding a bike. Even though my basic structure was similar to my old UI, I didn't know it...and I hadn't looked at it for almost a month. Still, DPS was fine. I didn't drag the raid down. I didn't wipe us. We did farm content, so I generally remembered the pulls. It's all good. Tonight could be harder since we'll probably be doing stuff I haven't seen before.

Affliction: Better than Chicken Soup!
While I was sick, I would log on from time to time and try Alt'ing. I needed something mindless (no thinking and easy to do) to play. Since I already have a hunter a friend recommended Warlock. My friend even went out of his way to write me instructions (that's how sick I was) on casting rotation and talents to pick by level. If you've never played a Warlock, I suggest trying it. I thought Hunter was easy for farming. Dot, dot, drain...Oh is it dead? Well, that was easy! Rule #1: If you can fear it, you can kill it. Now that I'm feeling better, I hope I can work this toon into my play-rotation.

25 or 6 to 4!
Until yesterday, I had only been to Sunwell once. I know people who are walking around in exalted Sunwell gear and I wasn't even Friendly until yesterday. So, feeling better and having a quiet day to myself, I decided to make up for lost time. I think I went a little over-board. Instead of just doing the Sunwell dailies, I did the maximum. If you've never done 25 dailies, try it once. You can stack most, but not all of them. I made well over 300 gold before selling greens or the leather I skinned.

The key to doing 25 dailies is time-management. You can do about 15-16 dailies in under 2 hours, if you're smart. The bulk of the Netherwing & Sunwell dailies are stackable. The trick is that you'll also need to do some others. I filled up the remaining slots with the Skyguard bombing runs, the cooking daily, and the Outland-related Sunwell quests. Quests that I did but would recommend avoiding (because they are complete time-sinks) are Disrupting the Twilight Portal & A Slow Death.

Operation Alt-Squad Update
Rhus & Co are all level 58 now. We stalled when I got sick. I'm not sure if it's because I'm the tank or they are just such good friends, but they all waited for me to get better. Over the weekend, we did the tribute run in Dire Maul North. I did the run a few times back in the day. At the time, we had level 60 toons (and most had Pre-BC raid gear.) That said, it was still the smoothest tribute I've ever seen. Some of that is the 2.3 nerf. A lot is our no longer being complete n00bs. Still, I like to think some of it was my tanking skills. I really like Druid Tanking. How much do I like it? I've even wondered if I might want to swap mains in the expansion. *gasp*

Your Own Private DE'er
My other project of late is making my own disenchanter. When I farm leather or run instances, I often come out with a bunch of green-quality gear. Most is not worth the price of an auction, but the mats are valuable. Being able to DE it without mailing it to a friend would be great. Here's what you need: A level 35+ toon w/ 275+ enchanting. This will allow you to DE level 65-70 items. This can be done fairly quickly with a mage or warlock (pick tailoring and enchanting.)

How's my project going? Well, I dusted off gnome mage and finally got him to level 35. Admittedly he's stalled at 225 enchanting. I need to farm or buy silk/mage-weave to keep going. This has to take a back-burner to getting Beroth back into form. I'll keep you posted if I come up with any tricks to get from 225-275 without actually questing in the appropriate zones for the mats.

Missed this Blog
Admittedly, I missed writing in this blog and I hope I didn't lose too many readers for being gone so long. Blogging can be a tough thing. There's little to no tangible reward to doing it. You put yourself and your thoughts out there for anyone to bash. Unless you're a professional, your blog(s) aren't exactly a top life-priority. It's easy to be forced to deprioritize a beloved blog. Hopefully, we can dust this one off together.