Dyno-mite!

Thanks to my druid I actually got one of my toons VP capped earlier than Sunday night. (And thanks to Sorak for letting me heal instead of making me go boomkin and then laughing when I did less damage than a resto shammy.)

With my new VP cap it was time to go back to the warlock. His luck in LFR has been kind of hit or miss. He had some drops but was still carrying awful trinkets and rings. Those low level pieces were holding his ilevel back to 479. Does that sound familiar?

Thankfully my new best friend the upgrade guy was back in town so I was able to burn off some of that JP and make my trinkets a little less sucky. It also gave me that last point I needed. Off to kill trolls!

(*sob*)

What my warlock has over my other toons is that I’ve actually made him go to dailies. So he had some Mogu runes burning a hole in his robes. Time to spend.

First boss: gold + bonus gold. This is going well.

Second boss: gold + what’s this?

Some strange thing just dropped into my bag. Ooh a little pet. Let’s learn him.

Oh.

My.

God.

Adorable.

(He probably looks more adorable next to my creepy minion who is eyeing that female pandaren like she’s his next snack.)

I will hug him and squeeze him and call him George.

If I ever do When I get around to pet battles he will be on my team.

Oh yeah, third boss I got new robes + glove token with bonus roll, but I got an adorable dino y’all!

Not a fan

Well it is a fan. I’m just not a fan of the fan.

This is a paladin with a fan. Or course the fan dropped for her in MSV. Why would I be so silly as to think the shield would?

WTF, Blizz, why you hate me so?

Enjoy your new stupid fan, cow.

And then there were 5

No suspense here: I have 5 90s on 1 server now. Somebody please stop me.

Shaman, druid, warlock, paladin, priest…just enough to give me the achievement for 5. As I mentioned to Rep yesterday, since it doesn’t look like there are any more achievements beyond 5, it’s not looking so great for the mage right now.

Lorethos was kind of odd in that he really did very little questing. Even my paladin did most of Jade Forest. Lorethos was at level 89 and he still hadn’t gotten to that starter Hozen village. He was still sitting on that quest where you have to strap yourself to a flying machine and throw shuriken at 50 hozen or something.

He just did cooking/fishing dailies and ran instances. Not the most glamorous or efficient way to level, but he wasn’t a priority. At about 89 1/2 I finally made it out to the Vale to set my Pandaland hearth. Then a few quests to ding up and the gearing game begins again.

I’ve done this before and the routine is the same. The only difference was when Adoe logged on and changed the guild message advising everyone to cap their VP for the patch. None of my toons was capped. If I was trying to be efficient I would have concentrated on 1 until he was capped, then work on everyone else when the buff was active.

Eh, I’ve never been accused of being efficient. I decided to stay focused on the priest, running chain heroics until he was geared for LFR and hope I could get him capped first.

I ended up using the same strategy I had just used for my pally: I used my VP to buy the Shado-Pan cloak which tipped my ilevel just enough to get me into LFR. I got a ring and a new cloak (lower ilevel than the SP one, of course) and then ran back to return the SP cloak. I lost a little ilevel but it’s still enough for LFR and I got to keep my VP stash.

I think I am good with my 5 for now. I’m stubbornly refusing to use the mage for anything more than gem bitch and the next closest is my DK, who I’ll have to level almost exclusively with questing. Or I could get the monk off Panda island.

We’ll see.

One more point

All I needed was one more point to be able to queue my new pally for LFR. Since it was Monday night, I really wanted to get an attempt in before everything reset.

So I kept running stuff and I would get drops, but they were the wrong kind of drops. I got a shield in Gate of the Setting Sun (yay!) which was an upgrade, but I had the inscription fan in my bag so I didn’t give me an ilevel boost.

Why not equip the fan? Shut up shut up shut up! Pallies don’t get fans! It’s bad enough I have a shaman with a stick! That fan is for my priest.

(And yes, I know that ranting about it means LFR is going to give my pally the fan offhand instead of the shield. I accept this but I will not willingly equip a fan unless I have to!)

No drops for me, but as I was leveling my paladin I was taking advantage of the bonus faction rep for running a random each day. She was already honored with Shado Pan so I knew eventually I would just get enough VP for the cloak and that would be that. Sure I wanted to be ready sooner than that, but Blizzard hates me so that was what ended up happening.

Finally I could get into MSV LFR. I am being nice when I say that the Monday night LFR crew is not exactly the A-squad of WoW.

3 other holy paladins in with me? Yes, that sounds about right.

It’s actually kind of hilarious when I cheese my way into LFR and I am not the worst person there. The “raid leader” was one of the other holy pallies and he bragged that he had just hit 90 and was his first time there. You don’t say. He was so vocal about the “fail dps” and the “fail tanks” that I took satisfaction in staying above him on the healing charts. (AMG EPEEN!!!!!!)

For my troubles that run I got a new ring. Ok, that’s cool. Our illustrious raid leader then said that he was going to queue for the 2nd half so anyone that wanted to continue could stay.

I dropped.

Putzed around, queued up for the 2nd half. Oh, yes, I got into the raid with my new holy pally buddy. The tank promptly said he was stoned and had no idea what he was doing. So, you know, just a normal LFR run…

Elegon was a wipe when both tanks fell the first time the floor disappeared. One tank then left and we were in queue forever. I did consider leaving, but it seemed like this was the only LFR going on anyway and I really just wanted to finish. Finally one of the dps stepped up tank and he died. For that I got a new helm.

The last boss was uneventful and I was done with my first week of MSV. Yesterday, when I ran it again, it was funny how much smoother everything went.

Sadly the only drop I got was the same helm I already won. So that’s another toon with no shield. But at least I haven’t been given the fan.

Pally makes number 4

This was a very odd weekend for me. I was sick with a cold and I hate hate hate being sick. No, people don’t like being sick; but I hate it. It always makes me sleep funny and I end up awake at 6am on a Saturday despite being up until 3.

Wonky sleep schedule = random play time! Yay!

In case you have an outdated scorecard, my max toons on Drak are a shaman, a warlock and a druid. For the longest time I only had the shaman at max. It really is just recently that the warlock and druid leveled up.

Now I have a paladin.

“Zarigar, why?” you ask. “What is going on in that mohawked head?”

Who knows. I am insane.

Oh yes, it is another healer.

My paladin and my priest both got played a little more to take advantage of the bonus faction rep that you now get when you run randoms. Despite not doing more than a few quests in Jade Forest, they are both already honored with Shado Pan.

They’ve both kind of hovered at level 88 together, then the pally just pulled ahead. Before I knew it she was at 89 and I just finished her out.

So I have 4 max toons on Drak, almost to be 5. Lorethos is right behind still. I thought I wouldn’t get them leveled up until the grind from 85-90 was lowered but oh well.

Of course when I level a new toon all the other ones get shuffled to the side. I oddly like the gearing up phase where you just run chain heroics all day.

It’s interesting when you start off and they are so difficult, especially with a healer who is gasping for mana the entire run. (Bless you, random boomkin who kept putting Innervate on me.) Then it starts getting much easier as you gear up and you don’t have to drink so often.

My pally is now about 3 points away from LFR. It is my goal to get that done tonight. I realize that is insane.

But what else am I going to do? Level my mage?

Of broken carnies

Darkmoone Faire.

I love it.

I hate it.

There shouldn’t be a whole lot more to say about it, but somehow I do. One thing I’ve noticed in parading the alts through there is seeing which toons I’ve actually spent some time on and which ones are just placeholders. If you are toon with no secondary professions to level and I just send you out there to do your main profession, you’re probably just a throwaway toon. You’ll be kept around until I need your character slot for someone new.

If you don’t even have first aid, then be very afraid for your future virtual life. First aid is ridiculous now. You just need to get past the linen bandage stage and you can just work on it via healing carnies. Even my healers have first aid.

Having first aid won’t necessarily save you, but if you don’t even have that basic skill trained then it’s not looking very good for you. It’s very convenient having the broken carnies all in one place. I don’t even have to travel far from the questgiver to get it done. (I’m totally looking at you blacksmithing and fishing questgivers!)

Every time I go to heal a carnie and they say this:

I always think “well maybe you shouldn’t be trying to move your arm.” I may have the skill level to heal you, but that doesn’t mean it comes with any sympathy.

What? You want trolls to be sympathetic? This whole patch has been devoted to slaughtering them. That kind of pain can’t be erased with a few ticks of a bandage.

April fool

Apparently if you are a max cap toon in my stable I will not be content until you can queue for LFR. So Zhari the goblin lock ran eleventy million instances to gear up. He finally got the magic 460 and off he went.

Both halves of MV and he was done. He was also VP capped.

This is maybe the 2nd or 3rd time I’ve capped VP since MoP came out. I guess unless I am single-mindedly trying to gear up a toon I just can’t hit that limit. At this rate Zarigar will be collecting his 6000 VP for the Black Prince until Christmas.

Once Zhari was capped I was done with him. So the logical thing would be to play either Zarigar or Jendora, since they now have a VP bonus. I mean, that would make sense, right?

Right?

Why make sense? I’ve been alternating running Lorethos and Tenderloyne through one random a day. In my mind, I’m taking advantage of that bonus rep you get for championing a MoP faction. Unfortunately neither one has taken more than a few steps into Pandaland, so the only faction they are earning is Shado-Pan.

This is like Darkmoon Faire. Every month I log onto every toon and take them out to the Faire. They do their “monthlies” and get their 5 bonus points for their professions. I say that they are getting freebie points, when sadly if I just took some time to work on their professions I could probably max them out. Instead they get their 5 points and back to the waiting room they go for another month.

It’s not the most efficient way to do things, I know, but it’s my way. Alts are bad. They do nothing but spread you out too thin.

(But they are so much fun.)

Except for that mage. She’s lucky she’s my JC or she would be demoted even further down to bank bitch.