My main has made great strides in the last month or so. Thanks to a very lucky Kara run, maxed Leatherworking and some other factors, Pummra is sitting nicely now, ready for SSC and beyond. On the flip side, this means that there is little I can do with him on my own. If I only have a couple hours of play time, my options are pretty limited.

• Spend some time farming. (I hate farming, I had enough of it putting together my Windhawk set)
• Do dailies or clear other soloable quests out of my log. (I’ve also never been much for dailies, the same quest over and over just doesn’t appeal to me!)
• Try to throw together a quick Heroic. (Tough to do many nights)
• Jump on an alt.

So, for the most part, jump on an alt it is. I have a vast array of alts to choose from. I have a 41 Enhance Shammy, 40 Arms warrior, 42 Combat Rogue, 30 Shadow Priest and a 20 Fire Mage, along with a few ultra low level alts.

I haven’t played Emerson, my Priest, in a LONG time. He is maxed for his level in Enchanting and Tailoring. I gave up leveling him some time ago because it was SOOO painful. If you’ve ever leveled a priest, you know what I mean. Sure, I’m damn hard to take down, but I’m not the most efficient killing machine, either.

Mind Blast –> SW:P –> Smite –> Wand –> Mind Blast

Blah, blah blah. It just plain isn’t that much fun. Sure, I could group, but I HATE PUGs, and that’s what I’m stuck with for the most part. So he’s been sitting around in IF acting as my DE mule for any lower level stuff I come across.

Well, as I’m preparing Pummra for my first foray into SSC, I spent some time reading up on Lurker and watching some videos. One was taken by a Shadow Priest, and I was in total awe. THAT looks like fun! Cool looking form, huge damage and utility. I’ve GOT to get Shadow Form. I can now see why people love to melt faces!

I log on Emerson to prepare him for his first battle in some time. I had to clean out his bags of the various enchanting junk. Then I took a look at his gear. Ugh. Total crap. I don’t even have BRACERS??!! Oh well, it’ll have to do. I spend some time messing with my UI, looking over his spells, realizing how crap my layout was. I felt like an idiot every spell I looked at. “So why do I have this on my bar? What does it do?” Heck, I couldn’t even remember how I used to fight at all with him. It’d probably been a good 9 months or more since I did any combat.

Oh well, off we go. I headed to Southshore, and took a beeline for the Murlocs to collect their fishy, stinky low-drop rate heads.

I engage the first Murloc I see, and I’m struck by both sausuage fingers and total inaction. What am I pressing? What do I use next? Why didn’t I cast fortitude? I was almost dead before I realized two things: I have a shield and I can heal. Doh! You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve been playing Whack a Mole for a good 3 months straight!

After much flailing about, I manage to take down the Murloc. Slowly things are creeping back to me. The next one only took me 2 minutes instead of 5, or so it seemed. This just wouldn’t do. Time for research.

Thank god for the blogging community. The great thing about me starting this blog is it opened my eyes to all the other great blogs out there. I hopped on over to The Egotistical Priest and World of Matticus for starters. I got some great info on both about HOW to play a priest, but what I really needed was to get my talents sorted out. Luckily I found Priestly Endeavors and a GREAT POST on Priest Talents for Leveling.

In no time flat, that post got my Priest sorted. I soon realized I was clueless when I was initially taking talents, and the blogging community really bailed me out. So if you’re ever starting a new class, or just want to learn more without all the needless QQing and trolling, check out some of the other blogs out there! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go melt some more Murloc faces.

We’ve all got em. I’ve spent some time recently leveling a Draenei warrior alt, and a few of my pet peeves have cropped up again. Here are some of my top pet peeves.

Random group invites. Often, the reason I’m on an alt in the first place is because I want to spend some quality alone time questing or grinding. I’m usually not looking for a group, but if I am the last thing I will do is accept a random invite from someone halfway across the zone.

Quest Mob Clearing. Here’s a doozy, that comes up more and more. Here I am in STV, working on bloodscalp tusks for my whirlwind weapon quest. I’m level 31, and the mobs are a little high for me, so I’m fighting slowly and methodically. Along comes a level 30 guy with a level 70 escort, and they proceed to wipe every bloodscalp in sight. Then they move onto the next spawn, and kill all of them in about 30 seconds. Ugh. I understand getting high level help to run you through in instance, but this is ridiculous. How the heck am I going to compete with a level 70?

Decimation of Far Off Towns. I play on a PvE (carebear) server. So I don’t normally have to worry much about PvP problems. (I did play a warrior to 50 on a PvP server about 2 years ago, though.) Anyhow, I’m off in Desolace heading to Njell’s Point after finishing up a round of quests. When I get there a 50 Horde Shammy is laying waste to all the NPCs in town. Great. It’s one thing if someone is wiping NPCs in Lakeshire, or somewhere alliance help can come wipe him out, but I’m in Desolace! The worst thing? I was the only alliance player I had seen in hours, just who was he griefing? Just me??

Inflated AH Prices. God I’m getting tired of this. Is any level 35 green weapon really worth 20 gold? And blues? Forget about it! Sure, I have the ability to farm out gold to my alts, but isn’t it still out of hand, when I can buy a level 65 weapon for cheaper than a level 35 weapon? Ugh!

Weapon Skill. This is coming up even more with my warrior alt. There’s nothing worse than getting a nice, shiny new [item]Whirlwind Sword[/item] and realizing your skill is at 1. Can’t I pay Woo Ping or some other weapon master 20g and have em auto level my skill? That’s a money sink I would invest in!

Barrens Chat. Not that I’m ever in the Barrens, being alliance. Why do idiots take over general chat? I remember back in beta general chat was actually useful. I wasn’t in a guild then, so I needed it and used it often. Now? Nothing but a bunch of idiots arguing over who knows more about the game or who has more 70s. I wish Blizzard could ban people for sheer stupidity, but I’m afraid they’d lose about 6.5 million players that way.

“Your Spec Sucks”. This is in some ways related to the above. There are certain morons who think if you aren’t min maxing you aren’t playing the game right. I usually just pretend I don’t speak english when these idiots come at me.

Standing ON TOP of Vendors.  Or quest guys, or innkeepers, or bankers.  Whatever.  Do you have to stand right ON TOP of them??  Do people do this on purpose generally, or what?

Looting chests/nodes/etc.  After I spent the last ten minutes carefully clearing the camp that surrounded it.  When guys run by me while I finish off the last mob or two and take my Mithril Node, I wish I WAS on a PvP server.  Hello?  Did you not SEE me here?

Weirdos.  This one is kind of vague, but I’m sure you all have your experiences.  I’m talking about the guy that keeps following you for no apparent reason.  Or the dude you helped out once who then decides to tell you his sad life story.  The worst case of this happened to me in the Night Elf starting area.  I was collecting water from a moonwell when some creep came up and emoted that he was peeing on me.  Uh, yeah…reported.

That’s all I can think of for now.  I’m sure others will come up as soon as I hit publish.    So, what are your pet peeves?