Level 40… Yep, done that five times. Hit it in Dustwallow Marsh? Yep, five times… Talk about déjà vu. Of course, it’s my first Horde character to hit 40, so it is something a little bit different!

The 30-40 stretch is, in my expert opinion from having done the bloody thing twice, the worst stretch in Enhancement Shaman levelling. Getting up to 30 isn’t any more exciting, but you can power through the levels pretty quickly. At 30, the speed of levelling starts to slow right down. You still don’t have any of your signature abilities, and as enemies health goes up, your ability to deplete that health doesn’t keep pace. Levelling really becomes glacial.

Fortunately, this time, with the random dungeon tool, it was easy to get parties as a healer and get easy EXP that way. Of course, with PUGs there’s always a bit of bother. For one thing, while I’m perfectly capable of watching the health bars of five people, tanks can’t even watch one Mana bar, so I was forever shouting “MB PLEASE DAMNIT.”

They clearly weren’t paying too much attention to me, because if they were, they’d have seen that I wasn’t the kind of healer who would take any crap.

Other problems included a Warlock rolling need on the mail helm dropped by Herod, which would have been quite nice for when I hit 40, and winning – I’ve instead got a pretty boring green, though a trip through Maraudon at 41 landed me a nice blue.

As usual, I also did a bit of PvP. There was a period this morning where we were usually starting about 6-12 in Horde’s favour in AB, so we had a run of 5 cap wins, before finally being beaten (all of the earlier teams had gone by this point) after we failed to capitalise on our starting advantage, falling prey to the “herp derp, let’s not defend the farm, or the blacksmith, or the lumber mill” disease – I can only be in one place at a time, and that place was the mine.

Now that I’m in my 40’s though, it’s bliss. Even with just dual wield and Stormstrike, battles are going that little bit faster, and come 47, when I’ll have greater accuracy, Lava Lash and two points in Improved Stormstrike, not only will battles go even faster, but I’ll be able to drop my use of Water Shield (to lessen downtime) in favour of Lightning Shield for that little bit of extra damage.

If I’m really lucky, I’ll hit 58 sometime soon and get to Outland for the first time as a Hordie (Death Knights don’t count,) exciting!

Done in a similar, tongue-in-cheek, check out my 1337 stickman skills as this post, though not quite as good, I’m afraid.

Whilst I made it through the 20-29 AB on Eisla quite happily, the 30-39 bracket of PvP on the Blackout battlegroup appears to be dominated by the Allies. So I now had fresh experiences with which to draw a daft battle plan. (You will most likely have to enlarge the pictures to see them properly.)

To begin with, the basic aim of the game:

Doin’ it rite: You want to hold more bases than the enemy, so that your points go up faster.

Doin’ it wrong: LOL WE CAPPED A BASE, NEXT ONE!

AB’s big no-no – the 5 bases obsession:

Doin’ it rite: Carefully balance your attack and defence teams (unless the enemy team is filled with absolute numpties OR short on members.)

Doin’ it wrong: OMG WE NEED FIVE BASES TO WIN!!!!!111oneeleventy!!11

(Excuse the rather poor “zomg I drew a line in the wrong place quickly copy and paste paper over it” cover up.)

General Winning/Losing strategies:

Doin’ it Rite: Assuming a full 15 vs 15 match, you can really only hold three bases consistently. Split the team evenly between defending the three bases, with another similar sized group “roaming” for lone ranging enemies, providing support to bases under attack, or if feeling cheeky, attack a weak enemy base.

Doin’ it wrong: Cap the base closest to your side and two others, leave these with no or marginal defence, whilst the bulk of your team presses on to cap the enemies closest base. This leaves all three of your other bases open to easy capture even from lone or small groups.

Now, you too can contribute to stunning victories and crippling defeats in Arathi Basin!

 FOR THE HORDE, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS!

(Please, folks, PvP with sense!)