WoW Journal 2007-05-07

As will come as no great surprise, based on the majority of my recent posts, I've been playing Alixander a lot lately. This past week was a pretty active week for me. On the Friday before last I finally got up the gumption to dump Blacksmithing. I kept hoping and hoping it would be fixed, but I finally just decided that the meager gains I could get are vastly outweighed by the amount of stuff I'd waste getting it to 375. Biggest problem for me was that Blacksmithing seemed primarily aimed at Enhancement Shamans and Warriors in general. There was the occasional piece of pally plate or a weapon with healing or spell damage, but those were the exceptions, not the rule.

Since I already had 375 mining, plus I was pretty interested in it, I switched from Blacksmithing to Jewelcrafting. At that point I was about 1,000 rep away from Honored with the Aldor, so I figured I might as well just get out there and get Honored so I can get the two gem recipes for them before I jumped over to the Scryers (better shoulder enchants, since they have higher +defense).

After I finished getting Honored with Aldor, I got jumping on working my Jewelcrafting up to 305 (what was needed for the two gems from the Aldor). I worked my way up through the various ranks and on Friday of this week I broke 300 and was able to start cutting gems (which I promptly did), and in a matter hours was over 350 (guildie donated a ton of uncommon gems to me for cutting as he got them on his character who's a JC and he was looking for the occasional rare gem).

With my immediate goal of hitting 305+ JC complete, I turned around started committing genocide on tons of poor innocent Dampscale Basilisks, for their eyes for the repeatable rep quest for the Scryers. About 300 eyeballs later, I reached Neutral with the Scryers.

Also, while I was grinding on the Basilisks, I took the plunge and changed to prot spec. I'm currently 10/38/10. Holding back points from the prot tree until the patch, so that I can get Improved Holy Shield (Two extra charges? Yes, please, and thank you!), then getting Avenger's Shield. Still getting used to the differences (no ranged spells yet. Grah!) but I definitely like it.

So I was basically free. For the last week I had the driving goal of "get to 305 JC, then Neutral with Scryers". I'm like this any time I get a major goal that I know I can plow through. But there's that day or so afterwards where I'm kinda feeling dazed, because suddenly I'm not doing anything... So after meeting my goals I kinda wandered around for most of the rest of Saturday, doing a bit of rep grinding. Had the LFG tool up looking for Mana-Tombs run since I need more Consortium rep, since that faction has a metric butt-ton of gem cutting recipes. Well, I got an invite to do Shadow Labs at 68... >.> We wiped twice before even getting to the first boss. I "disconnected" and checked on my alts. d^^;

Most of my Sunday was busy. Got home around 7ish, so I did some quests and explored a bit for the last few, hitting 69 around the same time I got an invite to Mana-Tombs. Of course they cleared to the first boss, which accounted for about 6 or more of a series of mobs I needed to kill for one of the three quests in there. *grumbles* Screwed me out of much needed Consortium rep. But otherwise it went well, since we made it all the way though with relatively few deaths.

Afterwards, did a bit more grinding, got Friendly with The Consortium, then did a fun run through Sethekk Halls. Was called in because the current tank pretty much blew chunks. I took over tanking, and he got to DPS (note: he was a prot specced Got myself the hammer from the final boss, along with a spear (for skillups) and a good +defense neck from quests. After we finished up there, I did a bit more grinding, and called it a night.