First I am excited to say that my Goal of Hitting Realm First! Priest was completed! That was only one-upped by the fact that I also shared Realm First! 90 as well. My friend, guildmate and hunter, Esoth, was Realm First! 90, but delayed his final quest turn-in nearly 40 minutes while my 5 man team struggled with some of the final gather X# of items quests and were getting screwed with the RNG drops.— and we all dinged 90 and shared the Feat of Strength within 30 seconds of each other. Overall the grind to 90 was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the excitement in guild chat, mumble, and my 5 man team. We were done in 13-14 hours if I recall– not too bad. (I didn’t look at the time when I dinged… I just celebrated, enjoyed my flying mount again, and started some of my dailies.) Congrats to the rest of my guild, we claimed Realm First! Priest, Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Warlock, and Mage — 6 of 11 classes.
I have to really stand up and applaud Blizzard for Mists of Pandaria; it really is probably one of their most polished expansions to date. Visually its really impressive, the story-line is fun to follow, the graphical improvements are nice, the mob polygons have been increased, and there is really SO MUCH to do…. this is where I have mixed emotions: There is almost too much to do. I know a number of people have shared similar concerns with the plethora of things to do. Beru summed up some of the concerns with the dailies nicely (here).
Aside from the few of the quests having some bugs, which will hopefully be fixed with today’s maintenance, my issue with the hubs and hubs of dailies is that, as a pretty well progressed raider (We finished 52nd US in T13) I feel obligated to do all these dailies every day, since getting access to those VP items sooner than later will be critical in staying in the top. Not starting Heroic Raids “on time” puts us off pace for the whole tier. What also needs to be underscored is that these dailies not only provide access to the VP items, but the profession patterns as well. Yes, VP is throttled so it isn’t QUITE as much of a big ordeal… you can’t buy anything with 1,000 VP (Week 1′s cap)… but you can in week 2.
Farmville –
Ok I joke when I call it Farmville… but I kinda like it. Food mats are VERY expensive since many Heroic Raiders will not settle for below 300 stat level food, which requires grinding to max level cooking in your preferred stat to craft. (For me, at least at the start of the tier, it will be Spirit, Spirit, Spirit!) The items to cook these foods will be heavily farmed, and very expensive on the AH, so being able to grow some of them on my farm has been handy. (I just hit Revered with the Tillers today, and now have 12 plots on my Priest to till). I have gone so far as moved 4 of my alts out to Halfhill to just tend their 4 plots of soil. That is 16 additional plots a day for me to farm my extra food mats.
I am camping the rare spawn location (waiting for it to rain, since that apparently is the cue for the spawn) to hopefully get the Ancient Pandaren Fishing Charm to hopefully make getting the fish I need a bit easier.
Raiding and Gearing –
Starts tomorrow (Wednesday) for us (we raid Wed/Thurs/Sun)… so I am very excited to get to see the final changes to the raids I did lots of testing on in Beta. My priest is pretty well set for the raid tomorrow, I need to finish a few minor tweaks… and hope for a couple of dungeon drops that SIMPLY DON’T EXIST, and perhaps grab a BOE or two from the AH/BMAH.
I will probably run the first week as Holy, since that is what I had spent the most time in dungeons running… and see how the raid does with only one Disc priest. (SPIRIT. SHELL. IS. THAT. AMAZING… don’t let people tell you otherwise. It really is.)
I have my Cranes deck all set to go for the Faire this weekend and will have my Relic of Chi Ji in time for Heroic Raids, which with that much spirit should hopefully make my regen concerns a moot point.
Gearing has been fun, running dungeons with my guildies… I’ve even been doing a good deal of DPSing in my shadow spec! (Lots of overlap between my Holy and Shadow Gear). Now I doubt I’ll be doing that in many (if any raids), but it is possible— and I do like the new ‘rotation’ for shadow, it is a lot more fun than the old one from Cata.
Favorite Moment –
Aside from the Realm First! spam and whispers… probably a tie between entering a Heroic Dungeon for the first time in the x-pac and my guild assembling to take down the two world bosses. What was yours?
What have YOU been doing? What do you like? What did you not like?
Don’t forget to check out the Resources section as well as the Holy and Disc Guides!
