Casual Raiding

Every so often at 7:00PM Casual Raiding will bring you a description of my (and sometimes readers') experiences raiding in Wrath of the Lich King.

I've been raiding for about a month now on my Holy Priest and I'm beginning to gear up quite nicely. With only the final wing left in Naxxramas, I thought I would write about my experiences so far.

After reaching level 80 fairly fast, I easily joined a pretty hardcore raiding guild. I raided with them for about a week and decided it was not for me. After a little under a month I finally settled down with my new guild. I have been in the first 4 quarters of Naxxramas with the new guild and Obsidian Sanctum. My character sheet is quickly turning purple and it is very exciting!

Healing on a priest is amazing, I've healed with other classes and it just isn't the same. The "smart heal", Circle of Healing may be a little over powered, but I love it to death. I am really going to have to change my play style when it is nerfed with a 6 second cooldown. Obviously, Circle of Healing isn't all there is to healing as a priest. After healing on a Paladin for so long, it is nice to have a big heal that is actually efficient. Renew has lost some of its power since BC, however I still use it liberally on tanks. That is just the tip of the iceberg on all of the Priest heals. I love the fact that I have to make decisions on which heal to use, and how we have so many situational heals. It has been a major change from the Paladin.

Recruit your friends, get to 60 in a week.

Editor's Note: Just wanted to welcome our newest blogger, Dainerys.

I was hanging around in Stormwind a few weeks back when I heard something interesting on the trade channel:
My friend and I just got to level 40 in 2 days!

I thought he was kidding, but I decided to humor him and send him a tell asking how he did it. He told me about the refer-a-friend program going on at the official world of warcraft website.

I wanted to try it for myself, so I went and bought and new account.

Now if you have a friend who wants to do this it will be easier, but if you are playing solo the first thing you have to do is make a separate free email with yahoo or whatever. Next log into the world of warcraft official website and go to the recruit a friend option on your main account information page. It will ask you to send an email to a friend inviting them to play warcraft with you. Use the new email you just made.

Go to the new email and follow the link and register.

+Important Sidetrack Information+
When asked for a name for the second account, I personally put a different first and last name of a family member. The reason I did this is because; if my main account ever gets banned for some stupid reason, this account will be exempt from the chain ban. (Blizz tends to ban all accounts with the same first and last) However, you will not be able to transfer the char you level up to your main account which some people will not like very much.

Anyway, register for the 10 day free trial and you are good to go. Both accounts are "linked" now. Use your new account key you bought and add a 2 month game card to it. You will get a ton of bonuses now.

1 Free zebra mount for you main account
1 Free month of wow for you main account
1 EXP/REP buff for 3 months (Most important)
And the ability to summon your friends to you every hour.

If your computer can handle running 2 wows this is the part I am getting at with the fast leveling.

The exp buff from refer-a-friend is CRAZY! You can double box both chars up to 60 within a weeks time.

Here is my leveling speed from my refer-a-friend bonus.

Day 1
Playtime 1 hour
Level hit: 10

Day 2
Playtime 5 hours
Level hit: 25

Day 3
Playtime 9 hours
Level hit: 42

Day 4
Playtime 4 hours
Level hit: 48

Day 5
Playtime 4 hours
Level hit: 51

So now I have 2 level 51 characters who should be 60 by tomorrow. I can do this with as many characters double boxing as I want until the 3 months pass. If you wish to level up a bunch of alts at record time, this is the method for you.

You will want to send over about 200 gold from your mains to one of the characters to pay for all the mounts and training. If you want to level even faster, do NOT loot unless you need a quest item. Looting mobs adds up in time. Also, don't start doing instances until SM, and make sure someone can run you through it because groups will slow you down. However a high level chain pulling everything will get you about a level per instance run usually.

I also suggest using a healer/dps combo. Here are my combos I am planning to level:

Demon-Lock/Holy-Priest
Beast-Hunter/Prot-Paladin
Enhance-Shaman/Balance-Druid

The demon-lock needs a pure holy spec priest so he can continually life-tap and hit the light well so there is virtually no downtime. The other combos wont need as much downtime prevention so they do not need pure healing spec buddies.

Make a /follow macro on both characters for the option to follow eachother. Usually the healing buddy char will the one on follow most of the time.

Put the loot on free for all so that you can continually loot from the main dps char.

Another tip is to skip quests that require you to gather a lot of quest items. Unless the quest has tradable quest items like the westfall quests, it takes more time than its worth to keep grabbing on both characters. You will have the luxury of skipping quests because you level so fast after the 30s.

Leveling Zones

Alliance
Always bring your chars to the human starting zone. You can use the summon function, so make a level 1 char there and just summon whatever classes you need there.

Westfall
Redridge
Duskwood
Once you hit 30, stay in STV till youre 40-42, mixing in a LOT of SM runs.
Tanaris + ZFruns
If you can find a friend to start doing BRD runs at 46 for you, it will level you about 2 levels per FULL run.
52-55 Ungoro
55-60 WPL, EPL

Horde
Pretty much the same method, except I suggest bringing all the chars to Durotar and heading to the Barrens, then to STV at 30. After that just follow the same leveling process.


My last piece of advice is to not worry about updating gear so much. Unless you are a melee class your gear only needs to be updated if it is urgent. You will be leveling so fast that the gear you buy today will be obsolete by tomorrow.

Looking for Guest Blogger

Hello Readers!

If you enjoy my blog and feel like you can relate to me and the rest our readers, there may be a position for you as a guest blogger on the site!

I am looking for a guest blogger to write a few posts to help fill out the site. If I like your work, you may be able to become a regular writer for the site. The incentive you ask? Free publicity for your blog if you have one!

Please post in the comments if your interested.

Thank you!

Introduction: 73 Human Paladin

Introduction will be a regularly published column at 8:00 PM introducing one of my alts or a reader's alt.


Welcome to Introduction! Human Paladin edition!

Today I will be telling you all about my Human Paladin. My Paladin was my first serious character. It was also my main until the launch of Wrath. Although I have a new main now, I am getting back into my Paladin again. Retribution is very fun and I'm having a blast leveling up. Even with my subpar gear for Ret, I'm plowing through everything. Blizzard has made some great changes to the Retribution tree, I definitely recommend trying out a Ret Pally.



Current Level: 73

Current Spec: Retribution

Current Location: Dalaran

Reminder! We are still looking for readers that want to show off one of their characters for our Introduction column. Please post in the comments section if you're interested.

Character Update!

Hey guys, it's been a while but I'm back!

Since my last post, I hit level 80 on my priest and I'm raiding as Holy in Nax. It's been a lot of fun so far with my new guild. Currently we are in the final wing. I'll keep you updated on our progression.

In other news, I've started to level a Ret Paladin through Northrend which I will do a introduction for in the near future.

Introduction: 70 Tauren Druid

Introduction will be a regularly published column at 8:00 PM introducing one of my alts or a reader's alt.


Welcome to Introduction! Tauren Druid edition!

Today I will be telling you all about my Tauren Druid. What makes my druid so special is that he is my only Horde character at the level cap, and also he is my only character on a PVP server that is level 70. I have been playing my druid the most lately out of all my alts, however that will change with the release of Wrath of the Lich King. I do plan to level him to 80 at some point, maybe my second character to 80 after my priest. His gear is pretty bad right now as he just hit 70 this weekend, he has been my project to keep me busy before Wrath.

What did you guys do while you waited for Wrath to release? What are some of your experiences playing druids?

Current Level: 70

Current Spec: Feral

Current Location: Orgrimmar, gathering rest before he embarks on his trip to 80.

LFM: Readers That Want to Show off their Alts

I would like to make a new column that focuses on one of your (the readers') alts. In order to accomplish this, I obviously need some help from all of you. Based on interest, this could be a monthly or weekly column. Please leave a comment if you would like a spotlight of one of your alts here on the site.