The Paladin is now 80 finally which means the process of gearing up has begun in earnest.
I had a few pieces crafted, including some top level boots, and 3 days after hitting 80 I now am ready to tank Naxx and Ulduar 25 man! Skill notwithstanding of course!
So I have run through a few heroic 5 man dungeons, and begun gathering my Emblems of Frost. I’ve also purchased a couple of pieces of level 245 gear via Triumph emblems.
Far faster than the mage, because everyone wants and needs a tank, DPS is dime a dozen and readily available.
So I have a few pieces of level 200 gear left to upgrade, and I’m picking up 1 piece of gear per day on average, with 232 gloves being the most recent gear I picked up last night.
So next week should see me ready to start taking in ICC. Tanking against higher geared players is hard, but it’s fun. Trying to keep aggro on bosses whilst DPS are putting out between 7k and 10k (seriously, in a heroic 5 man?) is quite the challenge, but an enjoyable one at that.
So far I can hold aggro against DPS pulling 6k or so. Just about. So in about a week I should be good to go for ICC10 tanking at the least.
I’ve also started soloing 5 man dungeons. Last night kicked off with Burning Crusade’s Hellfire Ramparts on normal. Piece of piss, and didn’t even break a sweat.
Might go for the classic raids solo as well :p
So the new ICC zone buff went online last week, and with it everyone, for the moment at least, gets a 5% buff to health, damage and healing.
Now that it has been implemented, Blizzard state that they can increase it at any time, and indeed it has been stated that it can go as high as 30% incrementally in 5% notches. But for the moment it’s only 5%.
So the question remains, with it being an optional buff (you can opt to play without it on a raid wide basis) do you take the help, or do it “naturally”?
IMO everyone bar the hardest of the hardcore should be using it. Why the hell not? Why make life difficult for yourself otherwise? We downed Festergut in 10 man on the day the buff went live, and it’s the first time, despite number beyond measure of attempts in both 10 and 25 man, that I have been involved in downing him.
Did the buff help? Undoubtedly. We took him down on the enrage timer thanks to a DOT effect, as the raid had wiped when he enraged.
Did we care? My Frost Emblems don’t care. The new bits of gear I’ll be picking up certainly couldn’t give a monkeys. Why the hell should I?
Sure, we only managed to do it because of the Warsong crutch. But caring otherwise would just be, as a wise man once said, “Pride fuckin with ya”.
The Lich King awaits…
This has been a while in coming this post.
I hit 80.
About 3 weeks ago infact 
After months of playing, about 530 hours of lazily levelling and farting about, I finally saw the final yellow ding glow in Utgarde Pinnacle with my guildies running in a 5 man dungeon.
Since that I have managed to massively upgrade my gear, so much so that I think I’m about ready for the hardest and highest level raids in the entire game: Icecrown 10 and 25 man raids.
I also spunked 4,000 gold on epic flying, which really hurt my wallet, as all I had was 4,181 gold :p
But I made up 1,000 gold in a couple of days through selling my alchemy produce and grinding out quests, so back up to respectable levels, although each new piece of gear needs re-gemmed and re-enchanted, which runs into hundreds of gold per item.
So thought is being given to dumping Herbalism, especially as the ability to find Frost Lotus for Flask of the Frost Wyrm is extremely low and taking up mining again or maybe jewelcrafting, as alchemy will allow me to produce the raw gem through transmutation, which I can then cut and socket myself. Saving me thousands of gold potentially, especially if I’m going to level another character to 80 (which should be a lot faster this time round!).
So I’m finally at the level cap, at least until Cataclysm hits, which looks to be in November of this year.
I ain’t been drinkin, honest officer…
I hit level 70 earlier this week, which leaves 10 left until I hit 80 and can begin gearing up for raids!
And I bought some new gear giving me an extra 2100 mana, which means I can chuck damage out permanently without running out of mana, as it takes 3 minutes to burn through the 12.2k mana I have, and with a 2 min cooldown on Evocation (a spell which refills 60% of my mana and health) that means I can sit firing out damage all day long 
I’ve also been made an Officer in Thunder, one of 3 newly promoted Officers in charge of dealing with the Guild Bank, which was done shortly before completing all the Thanksgiving event achievements to earn the Pilgrim title. I also got a pet turkey along with the title 
And as you can see in the screenshot above, my character is finally looking like a high level character, rather than looking like a pauper wearing a mish mash of different gear. Finally!
Or, APB for short 
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