[Veteran of the Wrathgate]

They were all right, it IS cool.

The chain is long, and a bit interesting along the way, but when you get to the end and the post-quests, wow.  Pretty neat.

Anyway, as yesterday was my final day of classes, I took the afternoon and evening to start getting caught up on some play time, since I haven’t been on much in the last couple of weeks.  And it was great.  I got almost a level and a half yesterday!  Like I mentioned, I finished off the Wrathgate line, as well as almost all of Dragonblight.  Next stop?  Sholazar Basin!  I can’t wait.  There is not a whole lot of skinning to be had in Dragonblight, and the blood on my [Skinning Knife] is beginning to dry up.  Not cool.

I’ve got my leatherworking up a bit more though, and when I hit 77 I will likely start some leather and elemental farming so I can make some of that pretty Swiftarrow set when I hit 78.  I spent a good couple hours on Wednesday planning out my 78 upgrades, because I realized I didn’t know anything about which factions I needed to focus on or which recipes I needed to buy, but now I can approach my next couple of dings with aplomb.  I make a point to only plan my upgrades on stuff I’m sure I can get, so quest rewards, crafted items or reputation rewards, because I don’t like to depend on drops.  And it looks like Ebon Hold is my first target, with all their shinies at Revered!

Brajana – Level 76 Troll Hunter

• Skinning: 450
• Leatherworking: 413
• First Aid: 400
• Fishing: 381
• Cooking: 400

Ferguson sells his soul for an Epic Flyer!

Part-time Face Melter

That’s right – Our dear holiest of the holy priests converted to the Dark Side temporarily this past weekend to finish off some quest grinding to save up for that epic flying skill!

Ferguson is not only my healer, but he’s also my herb farmer.  But 375 Herbalism means nothing if you are riding a flying slug.  So, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I’d skipped two entire zones when leveling, and get some nice quest gold!  But unfortunately – it seems that holy spec’d priests aren’t so great when it comes to killing stuff.  Sure, I’ve managed to Smite my way through the SSO dailies for a few weeks, but some of these quest mobs are a bit tougher, and Smite just wasn’t doing the trick.

So I snuck over to Orgrimmar and paid a quick 15g to respec.  I just made up a talent spec – I know there are cookie cutter specs out there, but they are mostly for raiding.  A shadow priest that’s not grouping doesn’t need 25% reduced threat or even Vampiric Embrace.  So I just put the points where they seemed to make sense.

And the result?  Wow.  When I was leveling, I only had enough points put in the Shadow tree to get me Shadowform, but this time I poured almost all of my points in there, and boy can I kill things FAST.  I also no longer run out of mana… like, ever.  The new gear I’ve gotten has way more mana regen than the gear I was using to level.  It also has more +dmg, even though it’s healing gear.

I must admit – I’m enjoying playing as a Shadow priest.  However, I could never see myself raiding or even instancing as shadow – just not as much excitement as I’d like.

Anyway… after a weekend in Shadowmoon Valley and selling everything I could spare on the Auction House, I managed to conjure up the 5200g required to net myself a shiny Swift Purple Windrider!

Will I stay shadow?  Well, for the rest of the week maybe.  Finish off some more quests, I won’t be raiding much this week due to a big move happening.  It’ll give me something to do.  But I’m sure it won’t be long before I miss healing, and I’ll be back at it before you can say “pugnacious!” (Yeah, I’m not reeeally using it in a sentence.  But at least it’s there!)