+experience Heirlooms:
The heirloom shoulders, chest pieces, cloaks, helms, legs and the ring grant staking experience gains. Up to a total of 50% additional experience. Sadly the ring is only available by winning the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby.

I found this very helpful chart in a comment on WowHead. Though the costs may be off.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
?   SLOT     ?      OBTAINED FROM          ?      COST      ?
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
? Helm       ? Guild - Level 20            ?          1500G ?
? Shoulders  ? WotLK - Dal/WG Vendors      ? 2175JP or 60CS ?
? Chest      ? WotLK - Dal/WG Vendors      ? 2175JP or 60CS ?
? Legs       ? Guild - Achievement         ?                ?
? Cloak      ? Guild - Level 10            ?          1200G ?
? Ring       ? Kalu'ak Fishing Derby       ?    Win Tourney ?
? Trinkets   ? WotLK - Dal/WG Vendors      ? 2725JP or 75CS ?
? Weapons*   ? WotLK - Dal/WG Vendors      ? 2175JP or 60CS ?
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Regardless, eventually my curiosity got the best of me. I can’t stand to be kept out of an area by a silly little wall. So I wandered off to check things out.

Finding #1: The Thunder King’s tugboat is kinda spiffy looking.

Finding #2: Sheer cliff walls are sheer.

Thunder Dome

The two mini-bosses up there are pretty cool. I managed to down both of them. Of the two, the blood one (Fleshcrafter Hoku) was the more difficult. I didn’t see any Troves up there.. I don’t know if that’s because there aren’t any until the content is unlocked.. or if I didn’t see one because I’d already gotten a Trove that day. Dunno. Eventually I got bored with poking around forbidden content and went back to the new dailies.

Robo-Dinosaurs go RAWR!

My “normal” guild on Nordrassil seems to have dried up. Honestly it wasn’t ever a huge guild to begin with just a few friends .. but after I went AFK for a year it seems to have petered down to nearly nothing. My normal guild is now level 14 and, with only two people playing, I don’t really see it hitting 25 anytime soon.

It happens that the “join our level 25 guild” invite came in just after I’d figured out that I didn’t have access to some of the new account bound items because I didn’t have a toon in an active level 20+ guild. So.. it’s convenient to get an invite to a level 25 guild that after a while (after I get honored with the guild) will allow me access to some pretty spiff perks, specifically the +experience head and leg heirlooms.

The problem.. is I feel a bit guilty -using- a guild so blatantly. “I’m only here for the perks” just seems.. wrong. It makes me a user. I don’t like that feeling.

Is it “ok” to -use- a guild for its perks?

Before level 15 and especially when I did that “boss” fight in the newbie area I found it VERY annoying to use up all of my mana in offensive spell casting and then get to the end and not have enough mana left over to heal myself.. even worse when I was run completely out of mana and didn’t have enough mana to prevent myself from dying. I think that’s ridiculous in a heal-capable class. “So ok,” I thought to myself, “the way to prevent this is to go with the least mana dependent spec.. so that way if I’m fighting and I need a heal I’ll still have mana available.” So initially I spec’d Enhancement and stopped chain-casting Lightning bolt. Instead I decided to focus on shocks and .. whatever the instant weapon strike things are called and let that be what killed the mobs. It worked for the most part.

It’s a good theory.. but honestly now that I think of it.. maybe not. Now that I think of it.. even in Enhancement I’ll be using mana.. and if I know Blizz.. they’d really prefer that for very hard fights all toons end the fight at -maybe- 30% mana.. if they’re lucky. So it seems like my “save a little bit for healing” plan isn’t going to be as easy as just changing specs.

Add to that.. when I rounded up all my account-bound armor/weapon/trinkets I find a decided caster heavy set emerging. The leather pieces I have are spell leather. I didn’t buy the agility leather. I have the +mana trinket. Added bonus.. at this point I don’t have enough points to just plunk down and buy the “right” armor for Enhancement spec.

I -could- still spec Enhancement.. and just suck it up that my armor will level with me.. but will ALWAYS be wrong for my spec.. yeah right. My OCD could not handle that. So instead I’m forced to decide between leveling Elemental or Restoration.

Now my eventual goal with this toon is to heal…so for at least the last 10 levels it makes sense to level resto to pick up the -right- gear.. but is there any reason to level resto before then?

The only reason I can come up with is that I want to be able to do instances.. and it -seems- that instances, even as you’re leveling, will be easier to get into if you’re spec’d to heal and I don’t -really- want to wait 80 levels before I try out the Resto playstyle.. but I’m not sure if those are really sufficient arguments.

I suppose I can make it a moot point by buying dual spec at 30.. but I’m still waffling.

For the boss fights I thought they ran exceptionally long. My poor baby shaman is plinking away at the boss and it’s taking for-ever.. and I KNOW the boss isn’t going to kill me.. and I KNOW that my warlock could kill this puny little boss in like one dot.. but instead I spent 5-8 minutes plinking away at the big badie. I suppose if I’d done this with 101 other people in the zone that the fight would have gone much more quickly.. but as a singleton.. yeah.. that was kind of long and boring. I didnt’ even have any cool buttons to push. IN FACT!!! In one of the boss fights I ran out of mana.. and was just hitting the boss for white damage for 80% of the fight. THAT TOTALLY SUCKED! (and coincidentally made me -REALLY- miss lifetap)

For the final “heal the turtle” quest I found it very difficult to do with only a single person. In the quest you have to free healers so they can run over an heal the gaping hole in the turtle. Then you need to protect them so they can get the turtle healed. So I’d run out in the field, find a healer who was fighting off a lizard dude. Help to kill of the lizard dude. Then talk to the healer to send him over to heal the turtle.. only.. as soon as I’d start talking to the healer another lizard dude would leap through the air and attack my healer.. so I spent a VERY long time killing lizards to “relieve” a healer only to immediatly find the healer jumped by even more lizard dudes. THEN, when I finally DID get a healer freed up they’d run over to the gaping wound and they’d get jumped by four lizard dudes. Four. I’m level freaking 12 and I’m fighting a non-stop fight to kill off four lizard dudes.. and THEY JUST KEEP COMING. In fact coming so fast no only can I not keep up, they keep killing off the one healer I have finally managed to free up.

Finally, after a VERY long time I figured out that there are also healers trapped under armor bits (which as an aside.. seriously? how did healers get trapped under armor bits? I was just questing in this area and they weren’t trapped under armor bits then.) So I freed about 3 healers who immediately got jumped by four lizard dudes. I tapped all four of the lizard dudes and dragged them away from the healers and FINALLY all of the damned NPCs who are just lolly-gagging around, not doing a damn thing, notice the bad lizard dudes and beat the tar out of them.

Again.. if I’d been doing this with 101 other newbies I’m sure it wouldn’t have been an issue.. but as a singleton it was not easy.. and even then I don’t get to have that warm glow of accomplishment.. because I didn’t really manage to protect them the whole time.. instead I just made creative use of the lazy NPC loitering about.

So anyway. Regardless I choose Alliance, not because of Aysa, but because that’s where most of my toons are already located. I popped up in Stormwind, did some running around there and then they routed me over to Westfall.

I haven’t done Westfall since probably BC. For the most part I tend to level Draenei who end up on the other continent and.. well frankly I haven’t leveled a new toon in a long time. This is the first time I’ve been through Westfall since the Cataclysm.

Um.. Wow. I suppose if you haven’t gone through it the next bit would be considered spoilers.. (and if you have it’s kind of “well duh” but whatever, it’s my blog I’ll write about it anyway).

So I’m a little bit vague about the details (I have a feeling they were spelled out in Elwyn Forest which I skipped) but for some reason there are a lot of people who have fled from Stormwind to Westfall. A lot of homeless, hungry people. And it seems that Westfall, the breadbasket of the Alliance, is suffering a bit of a drought. So the hungry homeless people are just well hungry and angry.. and very much heading towards “Occupy Westfall”.

Long long ago I ran regular Deadmines. I know the end boss was Edwin VanCleef who I believe was the head of the Defias Brotherhood. I’m sure I killed him a lot on several of my toons.

In Cataclysm I ran Heroic Deadmines.. but I didn’t know the lore behind it. I didn’t get why the new end boss was Vanessa VanCleef. I mean, yes, I get that she’s probably related to Edwin.. but the connection was just kind of a guess.

In playing through the new Westfall I have an improved appreciation for the story line and the connections. I think the “incense flashback” was inspired. You’re given a quest to burn incense inside the entrance to the Deadmines instance. The quest giver is the same Draenei who gave a similar quest in Northrend. AND!! there is a breadcrumb trail of neutral NPCs leading to the entrance of the mines. No more getting lost in the tunnels. When you burn the incense you see a cutscene showing you a party of 5 alliance characters killing Edwin VanCleef. After he dies the party celebrates, gets the loot and then runs off. A few seconds later a very young girl, Vanessa VanCleef, Edwin’s daughter, comes out of the ships cabin and /mourns the death of her father.

Suddenly, right there, we can see her motivation for being the “Shadowy figure” in Westfall inciting rebellion. It totally makes sense. I am a little bit sad that low-leveled characters who complete Deadmines don’t face Vanessa. I think those characters would have a greater understanding of the story line they’re witnessing. Instead Vanessa only shows up in the Heroic.. and only to toons who leveled through Westfall LONG before Vanessa existed as a storyline.

So yeah.. I’m pleased to be playing through the new-and-improved World. I look forward to seeing other areas to experience even more of the world’s lore.

I can almost feel them /pat me on the head when I announce at the beginning of each run that “I’ve never run this Heroic before so I’d appreciate any pointers you have”.

For them, this instance is old hat. They know which way you go, where you stand, how you pull the boss, whether you spread out, stand 45 degrees off of each other or stack up. For the most part they already have the loot off the boss so they aren’t carefully scrutinizing each drop to figure out if they need it and if it’s an upgrade. They are running willy-nilly out of the room -while- I scrutinize the loot making it very difficult to keep up/know which way to go. They’ve already completed the quests.. so they’re not looking for sparkly things as they go through the instance.. nor are they completing the instance only to find that they must have missed one of the quest items (only to have that silly quest sit half finished in their quest log).

They’re also geared. Or at least more geared than I am. This means that so far there have been zero deaths in the heroics I’ve run, and thank goodness too.. because I’m not sure I could remember which direction to go to find the group if I -did- die.

Lastly, because they’re geared (and I hope it’s a gearing issue) they’re VASTLY out DPSing me. I think in my first few heroics I was bumping along at about 11k DPS.

Now keep in mind, my mind is still spinning at the fact that I’m doing 11k+ dps.. I can remember my very first dungeons EVER as a Warlock I was bumping along at 550 dps and it was a DPS wall I had a lot of trouble breaking through(Whar’s ma DPS? (Part II)). So bumping along at 11k DPS and seeing others at 57-93k DPS in the same run just spins my head a little.

I -think- I’ve decided it’s a gear issue. I got a few upgrades and enchanted a few of my pieces I expect will be around for a while and my DPS jumped from 11k to 35k. I will admit my eyes havne’t yet adjusted to DPSing in an instance. It’s taking me a while to get the swing of SB+SS multiple mobs in a big pull so that has probably also done my DPS no good. I am pleased that so far no one has called me out. I’m also a little bit pleased (and feel free to call me petty) that last night I out-dps’d a rogue in a random group. It’s good to sometimes not be at the utter bottom.

That said.. my fiance plays a paladin. Normally he’s a tank. At this point he’s quit the game. His stated reason is that the game is boring.. and the group of people we played with have evaporated and he has better things to do with his time. An underlying reason, which came out last night, is that he was also late starting this expansion.. and as painful as I’m finding it to bump along at low DPS.. it’s nearly impossible to run the instance as a tank who doesn’t know which way we’re going nor how to tank this boss as different from that boss. He’s never been behind the curve.. and I think found the experience SO frustrating that he has completely given up. This makes me sad.

At least as DPS I can catch up eventually. I think his only choice would be to queue as DPS to see the flow of the instances.. and hope to pick up tanking gear along the way.

How do you catch up when you start out so far behind?