I’m not going to go into a lot of explanation. I’m just going to say thanks to those of you that made WoW an awesome place to be. I’m not going to promise I’ll never be back; I’m not going to promise I will. Only time will tell, for now.

I’m going to leave the blog running, but I probably won’t put a whole ton of effort into keeping it up to date and such. Likely, I will eventually have to either upgrade it or bring it down due to security risks.

If you wish to get in touch with me, check out my tech blog at http://binarymuse.net. Once again, thanks a lot, and farewell.

Related posts:

1. New Blog Azeroth Rule
2. My Blog-o-Versary
3. A New Domain Name. Yes, Again.
4. My Decision about Outland
5. Ding 68!

To Do Before Patch 3.3

• Save up/smelt a bunch of Saronite Bars so I can transmute it all to titanium once the transmute has no cooldown
• Save up 8 Crusader Orbs in preparation for possibly making my death knight tank my main character (for the 245 chest) done
  
• Read up on each of the encounters in the new 5-man dungeons
• Read up on current strategies for the available Icecrown Citadel bosses
• Research gear upgrades from the new heroics

To Do After Patch 3.3

• Transmute the Saronite Bars (above) into Titanium, make Titansteel for the 245 chest (above) done
• Farm heroics for Emblems of Triumph for T9 level gear on the death knight
• Run each of the new 5-man heroics, hope to be able to start the Quel’Delar chain

What do you have planned for 3.3?

Related posts:

1. An Evening of Upgrades
2. Mod Madness: Altoholic
3. Patch 3.0.8 Notes Updated – Highlights
4. Different This Time
5. Not Joining the Bandwagon

Discipline in PvE is all about healing via mitigation. You won’t have the throughput or super-strong AoE that a holy priest is capable of, but you have plenty of tools to be a powerful healer and a very strong single-target healer. Furthermore, your used-up shields will count for zero overheal (because the damage they absorb uses up the shield before the target starts to take damage again!). Let’s go into detail.

Power Word: Shield

Power Word: Shield is the bread and butter of the discipline tree. A large number of talents are designed around making PW:S faster, more powerful, or cause additional effects. Even Weakened Soul, designed to keep you from shielding too often, ends up providing a benefit in the end. Let’s take a look at some talents in particular:

• Improved Power Word: Shield: Pretty straightforward, directly increasing the amount your PW:S absorbs.
• Soul Warding: One of the cornerstones of the discipline tree, Soul Warding completely removes the cooldown on and reduces the mana cost of PW:S.
• Rapture: Another defining discipline talent, Rapture is one of the primary ways in which you will regain mana during a fight. This is one of the reasons discipline priests gem for intellect instead of spirit.
• Borrowed Time: In addition to providing 40% more spellpower toward your PW:S (it already uses 80.68%, according to WoWWiki), it also provides you with 25% haste until your next spell–and Penance (see below) doesn’t eat the effect.

Divine Aegis

Divine Aegis is, most simply, a miniature Power Word: Shield that appears on a target after you heal them with a critical heal. The mini-shield absorbs an amount of damage equal to 30% of the amount of the heal, including overhealing. Disc priests favor critical strike chance, so this is a very nice talent. If you crit multiple times before DA is consumed, the effects will stack, but only up to 125-times-the-level-of-the-target (10,000 for level 80 targets).

Renewed Hope

Renewed Hope is a very nice raid-wide buff that gets applied whenever you cast PW:S (which is often–this buff should be almost at 100% uptime). It provides a raw 3% damage mitigation to the entire raid. Go to your WWS/WoL log for a fight, look at “damage taken by raid,” and figure out 3% of that. You “healed” approximately that much damage just by casting PW:S every 20 seconds! For my latest Mimiron 10 kill, this was just shy of 100,000 passive healing. It is important to note, however, that the buffs don’t stack with multiple disc priests.

Renewed Hope also increases the critical strike chance of Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance (your three primary throughput spells) when the target has Weakened Soul, easing the pain of not being able to shield the target again.

Penance

Penance is one of the most recognizable healing spells in the game. People who have never seen a discipline priest in action will whisper you, “What is that spell you cast that goes pew pew pew?”

Image courtesy of Wowhead

Penance is a channeled spell. It heals in three ticks, each capable of a separate crit. The first tick hits immediately, the second one second after the start of the cast, and the final two seconds after. Penance is a very strong single-target healing spell, and also stacks Grace (see below) to three stacks all by itself.

Grace

Grace is a buff that appears on a player when you heal them with Flash Heal, Greater Heal, or Penance. Grace can only be on one target per priest at a time, just one of the reasons disc priests excel at single-target healing. At three stacks of Grace, you will heal your target for an additional 9% (other healers do not benefit from the buff). As mentioned earlier, Penance can stack Grace three times on a target in a single cast.

Power Infusion

Power Infusion is a fun little spell that is pretty straightforward–reduce mana cost and increase casting speed by 20% for 15 seconds. I usually find a caster DPS who knows how to use it properly and use it on them every cooldown, complete with an addon that notifies them that they have the buff. (On a side note, it also has one of my favorite looking animations in the game).

Pain Suppression

Perfect for those predictable big-tank-hits, Pain Suppression decreases damage taken by 40% for 8 seconds. It also increases resistance to dispel mechanics, a very PvP-oriented effect.

Typical Talent Spec

Your stereotypical disc healing spec looks very similar to this 57/14/0 spec. A few of the talents, especially in the holy tree, can be moved around, but that is a discussion for another post!

Gearing and Gemming Choices

Discipline priests will focus on critical strike chance for more Divine Aegis procs and bigger heals, intellect for a larger mana pool and better mana regen via Rapture/Replinishment/Shadowfiend, and spellpower for general throughput. You won’t find discipline priests going for a lot of spirit, as it does less for us than our holy brethren. Disc priests usually aim for approximately 10% haste without raid buffs, so that the magic 15% haste (which reduces the GCD to one second) is achieved in raids.

Assessing a Disc Priest’s Performance

Any good healer knows that glancing at the healing meters is not a good way to assess healing performance; however, this is even more true for discipline priests because of the way they do a lot of their healing: via absorbs. Absorbed damage isn’t recorded in the combat logs, and thus not reported on addons such as Recount (however, there are addons and combat log analysis tools that attempt to accurately capture and display this information). For this reason, disc priests will almost always be very low on the meters.

For example, let’s take a look at the same Mimiron 10 kill I mentioned earlier.

As you can see, based on recount’s numbers, I did less healing than the restoration shaman, who was on the raid, and considerably less than the holy paladin, who was on the main tank. Had I been main-tank-healing, my effective healing would be even lower. However, let’s take a look at a graph generated from the numbers provided by World of Logs, a combat log analysis tool that takes disc shields into account:

As you can see, Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis accounted for 429,473 healing, almost 45% of my entire healing for the fight, skyrocketing the amount of healing I did. Also, remember that since shields are damage absorption, any shield or DA proc that is used up has absolutely zero overheal. Here’s a screenshot of my overall healing for the fight, so you can see how things played out a bit more:

I hope you learned something from this humble article. Disc is a very strong PvE healing spec, especially on a single target (such as a tank). Spread the word: discipline priests aren’t just for PvP anymore!

Related posts:

1. Changes to Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking
2. These are the People in your Raid
3. Foray into Multiboxing: RAF Experiment Done
4. Another Change due to PvP Balancing
5. Baby Healer Dings 80

Thus, Nice Try was born! From the Curse.com page:

Everyone knows that no-good hunter or rogue that’s always trying to get people killed by using Misdirection or Tricks of the Trade. Don’t fall prey to their wily ways–install NiceTry to automatically cancel both these buffs when they are cast on you! Watch them fumble for Vanish or Feign Death the first time you automatically cancel their buff and they proceed to attack XT-002!

It’s available for download at http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/nicetry.aspx or via the Curse Client. I will be getting it out to other addon sites eventually. If you have ideas for the addon, let me know!

[Edit] Now also available at http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/fileinfo.php?id=14476.

Related posts:

1. Mods for 2.4 Coming Around
2. Two Pugs Enter: Stupidity vs. Ignorance
3. Mod Madness: Altoholic
4. Qualitative vs. Quantitative Performance Analysis
5. A New Domain Name. Yes, Again.

I’ve been playing my new healer like crazy, as I’m really getting into the vibe of the spec and healing in general–it’s been a lot of fun. In my opinion, Trial of the Crusader is a really run raid, but I’m just getting into Ulduar for my first few times so that’s been exciting as well.

Be sure to check in for Blizzcon, as I’m sure I’ll have news–or at least commentary–on what’s announced.

PS: Here’s hoping for a Diablo III beta key! NO you can’t have it! >.<

Related posts:

1. I Can Haz BlizzCon!
2. BlizzCon, Here We Come!
3. Under Development: Ulduar
4. Blizzcon 2009: Day 1
5. BlizzCon: Day 0

The following day, I started healing heroics. I felt like I could heal H VH, and it went quite well. The group I was in decided to run CoS and asked if I could heal–I said I’d be willing to try. Somewhere along the line, the group decided to try for a drake run–I was pretty skeptical, as my gear isn’t super great–a few iLvl 200 blues, a couple crafted epics, and a bunch of 187 and lower blues–even a couple green quest rewards! But, they said “hey, let’s give it a shot and see what happens.” Not long after, and The Culling of Time is ours! No drake for me, which is fine, as Allianya can’t even fly yet! After H CoS I healed H UP and it went well also.

Yesterday included such excitement as DPSing H DTK (and I pushed just over 2000, which I was very happy with, and included Oh Novos!), and then healed H HoL (with Lightning Struck and Shatter Resistant) and a Defenseless H VH (not a big deal, I know) and an H UK (with On the Rocks).

Overall, I’m really enjoying healing, especially as Disc. The playstyle has really clicked with me and I’m having a lot of fun, and the successful runs have helped instill a little confidence, so I’m not terrified to go looking for a heroic to heal! I look forward to working on my gear pretty heavily in the near future and getting raid-ready!

Related posts:

1. Decisions
2. Why I Love Druids
3. An Evening of Upgrades
4. Preparing for WotLK
5. Foray into Multiboxing: RAF Experiment Done

However, WoW does not update the action bar for your second spec. I leveled through my 60’s mostly healing instances on my priest. Almost every time I visited the trainer, I was in my healing spec. During those visits to the trainer, I learned all my new spells, not just my healing ones. So, when at level 68 I finally switched back to my shadow spec, none of the action bar buttons for this spec had the correct rank of the spell on them. I did not notice for a level or two, after I was becoming frustrated with how hard it was to kill mobs.

So remember–if you’re leveling up with dual specs, each time you train, it’s worth it to switch to your alternate spec and check to see if any of the skills you just learned need to be updated on that particular set of action bars.

This public service announcement is brought to you by BinaryMuse.

Related posts:

1. Dual Specs Not Dead Yet
2. Clarification on Dual Specs at the Class Panel
3. The Death of the Epic Mount Quests
4. My Day as a Tree
5. Double-Specs Not Dead Yet

Overall, the expirement went really well. I took the paladin along the path of retribution and just used Righteous Fury to hold aggro, while the priest went holy for improved healing and some DPS talents like Divine Fury, Searing Light, Holy Specialization and Surge of Light, along with Glyph of Smite. Mobs died quickly, and after the paladin got the replinishment effect it was difficult to run out of mana on either toon.

At level 56, while I was in the Plaguelands leveling, a guildie offered to run me through Scholomance and Stratholme. I gathered up all the quests and off we went. By the time we were done, both characters (the priest especially) had some nice blue (and a purple!) gear, and was about 30% from dinging level 61. So, now I’m taking my time leveling through Outland, with a focus on getting professions up to speed before I set foot in Northrend.

The experiement was a lot of fun, and though I considered doing the same thing with more characters (and I might in the future), for now I’m eager to get my priest to 80 and into heroics and raids, and my budday Neal and I are still doing our RAF with other characters.

Related posts:

1. Foray into Multiboxing: Introduction
2. Foray into Multiboxing: Dual-Boxing with Recruit-A-Friend
3. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 1
4. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 2
5. Levelin’ Like a Madman

In a group, the experience awarded by mobs drops due to the fact that it was easier to kill in a group. WoWWiki covers the math in detail, but in simple terms:

XP Gained = Mob’s XP / Number of Group Members * Modifier

Modifier is a constant that changes based on the number of people in the group; it’s higher in larger groups, so as to not punish people as much for running instances with full groups, etc. While playing solo, or in a two-person group, Modifier is 1.

In the end, assuming a two-person group (which is what I was running), and also assuming both characters are the same level (which they were), each character receives half the experience that a player killing the mob alone would receive. This makes the leveling experience when dual-boxing slower, and makes questing not only more efficient than grinding mobs, but practically required to make any decent headway at all.

However, Blizzard introduced once system that flipped that world upside down: Recruit-A-Friend. It was intended to get new players up to level more quickly so they could play with their high-level friends; the high-level friend would send an invitation, and for 90 days, the two accounts would be linked. For the duration, characters on both accounts receive 300% XP from everything assuming that (1) they are grouped together (2) they are relatively close to each other, and (3) they are within 3 levels of each other (if not, only the lower character gets the 300% XP).

So, the higher-level friend would create a new alt with his new WoW-playing noob buddy, and for every mob kill get 150% normal experience (the experience is split, making it 50%, and that is tripled, making 150% total), and 300% experience for every quest.

This is huge.

A friend and I have been leveling a few alts using the Recruit-A-Friend system. It is really… really fast. The 300% XP from quests is amazing–I’ve had quests give me half a level or more worth of experience.

At the same time, I’ve decided to dual-box again, this time using Recruit-A-Friend, during the times my buddy and I aren’t playing our RAF characters. 150% XP from mobs makes it much less painful to do, ie, quests where each character has to loot a certain number of items, and the 300% XP from quests makes practically every quest worth doing. Last night I started another pally/priest combo on my new server, and when I logged off they were level 10. I’m still using the same technology from my previous posts, so if you’re interested, be sure to check out the other posts in this category.

As time progresses, I’ll post some other information, tips, and tricks.

Related posts:

1. Foray into Multiboxing: RAF Experiment Done
2. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 1
3. Foray into Multiboxing: Introduction
4. Foray into Multiboxing: Part 2
5. Patch 2.3 and the Experience Curve

Well now that brings back some memories! My WoW life pretty much started like this:

1) Roll a mage on Shadowsong-Alliance. Get him to level 6 and realize you still have no clue what you’re doing.

2) Roll a warlock on Maelstrom-Horde with some friends.

This screenshot is shortly after number two. You can also tell it’s old due to the lack of addons (even the extra action bars are missing!). Simpler times….

Related posts:

1. Standing Room Only
2. Problems with Dual Specs and Action Bars
3. My Day as a Tree
4. New Stuff in Kara
5. Just a Cool Screenshot

Click the small to make large!

Related posts:

1. A Day of (Mostly) Good PuGs
2. Screenshot Six
3. New Stuff in Kara
4. Why Can’t I Decide?
5. Patch 2.4: People are Far Too Optimistic

For those of you who don’t know this fight, from time to time walls of lava rise up from the left or right side of the island and move across, doing damage to anyone standing in the way; if any of the adds that spawn get hit by the walls, they gain a lot of damage.

As you can see, there are gaps in the walls, which the raid must stand in to keep from taking damage, and where the off tank must pull the adds to keep them from enraging. The first time we attempted this encounter, we discovered that Deadly Boss Mods keeps track of, and announces to the raid, when and how many times people fail to get out of the way of the lava. And there were a lot of them–and my DBM happily called every one of them out.

It makes it very easy for leadership to quickly see if folks are doing their job.

We make a second attempt, which fails quickly due to respawns being added to the fight (is this normal or did someone aggro them?).

So, we take a moment to repair, come back, clear some trash, type “/rw MOVE THE #@$&*% OUT OF THE WAY OF THE LAVA WALLS!” (actually, there was more discussion that than, but when it all boils down…) and engage him once more. The “lava churns,” moves across the island… and I’m silent in raid chat. Adds spawn, I pick ‘em up, my buddy the main tank does his thing, lava churns again… nothing. Nobody called out. Great!

Throughout the fight, we took maybe two or three lava waves, and though our DPS was low, we managed to bring Sartharion down.

And what should drop? Gloves of the Lost Vanquisher. And who should win the roll?

/happydance

Related posts:

1. New Stuff in Kara
2. The Shallow End of the Big Kids’ Pool
3. Patch 2.4: People are Far Too Optimistic
4. Qualitative vs. Quantitative Performance Analysis
5. A Day of (Mostly) Good PuGs

First, my prot warrior friend decided to tank VH to give me a shot at the Bolstered Legplates. They dropped, but the holy pally won the need roll (for an off set)–that’s okay, they’ll drop again (I hope–my prot warrior friend ran that place like thirty times before they dropped!).

A couple of guildies gave me two Frozen Orbs and some mats, which when combined with my mats ended up being a Tempered Titansteel Helm and Tempered Titansteel Treads. I purchased Tempered Saronite Shoulders, Tempered Saronite Belt, Daunting Handguards and Daunting Legplates. I also purchased a belt buckle for the belt, a bunch of gems, and a meta-gem for the helm.

All in all, it was a good night for my tanking set. I’m uncrittable for heroics now, but only because of the weapon enchant, which I’d like to replace if I can get enough gear.

I want to say “Thanks!!” to my guildies, especially Badas and Yoder, for the materials and instance runs yesterday!

Related posts:

1. Decisions
2. The Altoholic’s 3.3 To Do List
3. The Slightly Deeper End of the Big Kids’ Pool
4. Levelin’ Like a Madman
5. Role Consolidation, or “Great, Now I’m Useless”

Although this gives me *ton* of leeway on my way to 5000g (I have about 2000g now, after training level 80 spells), I think I’m going to go about it a bit differently this time around. Last time, I continued questing until I had achieved Loremaster of Northrend (doing basically every quest I could find in northrend). This time, my focus is going to be on heroics, professions, and getting geared for raiding.

Dinging 80 meant I got to equip my awesome Titansteel Destroyer, made for me by a guildie as a surprise.

Related posts:

1. Loremaster of Northrend
2. Preparing for WotLK
3. “What Are You Going To Do Next?”
4. My Plans for WotLK and Beyond
5. Foray into Multiboxing: Dual-Boxing with Recruit-A-Friend

Related posts:

1. Ding 68!
2. Ding 80

A guildie of mine wanted to run Azol-Nerub, a nice quick instance with a ring I wanted. So, I toss on my tank gear and off we go! The run goes smoothly. Mobs are killed in order, no one dies, I get my ring, everyone’s happy. So happy, in fact, that the group decides to move on to Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom. This run also goes rather well, save for a couple wipes on Jedoga Shadowseeker. As it turns out, if you’re not standing in her little area when you kill the initial mob of worshippers, they aggro on you as the encounter starts. Not fun. A couple folks had never done the run before, and it’s always fun to see an Old Kingdom noobie’s reaction to the final boss fight!

The run over, we go our separate ways. I have the daily dungeon quest from a couple days ago, so I decide to do Caverns of Time: The Culling of Stratholme if I can. I’m only 78, so I can’t tank it quite yet, but I figure I can do some decent DPS. So, a group gets together, and we head there. Long story short, the run goes horribly. The tank doesn’t hold aggro and everyone kinda does their own thing (in their defense, a few of us mentioned that we hadn’t been there before, but we received little to no instruction on what to do). So the group breaks up after wiping a couple times on the first boss (yeah).

Next up, a different guildie is looking for a run in Utgarde Keep: Utgarde Pinnacle. He’s tanking, another guildie of mine is healing, and we PuG in two rogues. The run goes relatively well until Skadi. I don’t think it was anything anyone did, we just had some bad luck with the casters and the whirlwind Skadi does. After several wipes, folks have to go and we call it.

Finally, I get a whisper for Violet Hold. I really like this instance–nice and short and usually pretty varied due to the random bosses. I’m DPSing as a paladin is tanking. The healer from my prior AN and OK runs is the healer for this instance–she’s after the leggings that drop from Erekem. Well, they drop, but the mage ends up with them. After the run, the tank has to go, but the rest of us are up to do it again. So we do, myself tanking–and Erekem pops out again–and his pants drop again. Our happy healer picks them up. We proceed to do VH two or three more times, since things are going so well.

Many people have commented on the “bond” between a tank and a healer (see here, here, here, and here for a few examples). The healer whispers a compliment about my tanking (it’s always nice to hear that you’re good at what you do), and I reply with one about her healing (it’s rare to find a good healer!).

Later that evening, I get a whisper from her again asking if I want to run AN once more. I accept, and we’re on the way with an 80 paladin friend of hers who, once he respecced prot and put on his tank gear, had just shy of 30k HP. Needless to say the run was pretty smooth. We proceed to have some fun wiping out some allies that attacked us, and doing some PvP dailies in Grizzly Hills.

So, here’s a shout out to my new friends, Alliniana and Aziroth–thanks for making yesterday so awesome!

Related posts:

1. Two Pugs Enter: Stupidity vs. Ignorance
2. PUGs
3. 2.4.3
4. Even a Single Kara Pugger
5. New Stuff in Kara

While I do have quite a few toons (see outdated banner image/blag name for more info) across several servers, all my high-level characters are on Shadowsong-Alliance, including my only level 80 character. Recently, I created a troll shaman on Nazjatar to play with a coworker (and good friend/BUDDAY) of mine who plays a prot warrior. Since then, I’ve gotten my shaman to about level 50. Now, I have quite the predicament–what do I want to do on this server?

I really enjoy tanking. I’ve only healed a little, and it was pretty fun, but I’m not sure if it’s what I want to do. I enjoy melee DPS, but caster DPS is a bit to passive for my tastes.

Here’s my thought process:

Option 1: Level my Shaman

My first thought was just to get the shaman the rest of the way to 80, and when dual-specs hit I could heal and DPS. Playing a healer means that my buddy and I would always be able to find a quick group for a heroic. However, I’m not sure if healing is really what I want to do, and I’m not sure if I really like the feel of shaman healing anyway. I could always just level my shaman as a DPS character.

Option 2: Level my Warrior

I have a level 10 warrior on Nazjatar as well. I’ve leveled a warrior before, and it wasn’t very easy. I found it to be one of the harder classes to level. However, I generally like the feel of playing a warrior, especially as prot. However, playing a tank of any sort means that, in heroics, I would only be able to DPS while my friend tanks, or the other way around. But, we would be able to tank raids together, which could be a ton of fun.

Option 3: Level a Death Knight

I love playing a death knight. I mean, I really love playing a death knight. I enjoy the way they tank, the way they DPS, the way they gear.  However, the tank problem mentioned in option two still applies, and there’s also the fact that Nazjatar-Horde has a lot–and I mean a lot–of death knights already, although how many of them are talented or will even stick with it is yet to be seen.

Option 4: Level a Tank/Healer Hybrid

My old main was a druid (who is now balance, but was once feral). I’ve healed with her before, and I really enjoyed the way a druid heals. However, I’m not as fond of tanking on a druid. I could also level a paladin, which I really love tanking with (in my limited paladin experience), but I am very much not fond of healing on a paladin. So really, neither of the two hybrids really excite me with their ability to tank or heal with a change of spec and gear.

So, that’s where I stand right now. Any input is appreciated!

Related posts:

1. Role Consolidation, or “Great, Now I’m Useless”
2. Why Can’t I Decide?
3. Moving Forward
4. Levelin’ Like a Madman
5. Status Update

Related posts:

1. Decisions
2. Early Spring Cleaning
3. Into the Beta
4. Foray into Multiboxing: Introduction
5. Feeling Lonely – Stay or Go?

Yesterday, I achieved the Loremaster of Northrend achievement. Now, I’m not much of an “achievement whore,” but I really enjoyed earning this one. I’ve done every non-daily quest I could find in Northrend, except the three to kill the riders in Icecrown, and then the big guy (which is the follow up). There is a ton of lore to experience, and in Wrath it’s more immersive than ever. I highly recommend anyone interested in the story–especially of Arthas–to do every quest they can in Icecrown!

Related posts:

1. Different This Time
2. Foray into Multiboxing: Dual-Boxing with Recruit-A-Friend
3. Baby Healer Dings 80
4. It’s the Little Things
5. Pressing On

Not go to Disney World. That (or, rather, Disneyland) happens next Thanksgiving.

Anyway–it is common for folks to hit the level cap, take a step back, and say those two famous words: “Now what?” Thankfully, I thought about this a bit as I was leveling, and the first answer is “nothing different.” Perhaps I should specify:

1. Continue to level. Finish the new content (still have half of Sholazar Basin and all of Storm Peaks and Icecrown to do) and earn gold for the epic flier.

2. After the 5000g is earned and spent, start to level tradeskills. My mining is 11 (thanks only to a quest) and my engineering is 1.

3a. Before finishing #1, have a concrete gear plan. I’ve already began the path to uncrittability, but I need to decide what reps to grind (after Wyrmrest) and what dungeons to farm.

3b. Get enough gear to be uncrittable for heroics and begin tanking them. Try to get some runs as DPS and nab some gear if I can before then.

During all this process, I’m going to be on the lookout for a guild to do some raiding in. I need to sit down and figure out how often I want to raid, so that’s part of the process.

Related posts:

1. Not Very Professional
2. Preparing for WotLK
3. Can I Make It?
4. Decisions
5. Foray into Multiboxing: Introduction