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!)

I am not quite back. I am sort of quasi back. I was rather bored recently, and there was an offer of 7 free days due to having not played for months (and, apparently, the 5th Anniversary. I don’t know either), so I took it up.

I may be done University for the summer, but I don’t really have the inclination to play WoW for all of that summer. In addition, I am really, really strapped for cash. Ah, the joys of living on your own and not having found a job. But I digress. That is a topic for another blog.

In line with not being quite back, I’m playing an alt. I have popped onto all my characters to pick up the penguin pet I assume was sent due to registering a battlenet account. I did get a rather excited greeting from Yimi (OMG ELLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!) when I logged onto Ellaria, but the guild was raiding, so no real banter. Will need to pop on pre or post raid at some point for a catch up. Anyway, my character of choice for these 7 (now 5ish) days is Eisla, my troll Shaman.

I’d last played her at 20, with a cheeky little Turquoise Raptor mount, but without her Water Totem, so that was the first port of call. For said quest, you get sent all over the bloody world, which is kinda stressful when you are on a PvP server – though I’ve yet to be ganked.

20-26 was a rather uneventful experience. There’s not much you can say about grinding your way through quests in the Barrens and Ashenvale. At 26, though, I felt confident about joining BGs without (at least, in theory) being a ridiculously easy target for anyone. Unfortunately, low level Enhancement is pretty dire when it comes to actually dealing damage to other players. We’re great at hindering them, and can speed away from any battles by shifting instantly to Ghost Wolf form, but killing them? Not likely. Slow two handed weapon, only one real instant ability, which is on a 6 second cooldown – not a lot of potential for going toe-to-toe with anyone.

Still, we make quite respectable defenders in Warsong Gulch, since we can easily hinder the target who will mostly be aiming for flight, not fight. In Arathi Basin, I took the role of professional hinderer – being generally annoying to anyone I couldn’t kill who was trying to capture a point. I also had a nice little sideline going in scouting, thanks to Far Sight. When I say scouting, I really mean trying to take pretty pictures of the battle field.

Arathi Basin quickly became my favourite, in spite of the fact I remember having a preference for WSG before. Perhaps it’s the fact it’s totally outdoors – I absolutely hate not being able to ride or shift into Ghost Wolf in the forts in WSG. Plus, WSG isn’t as fun outside of the 10-19 bracket, where Shammies and Druids are totally broken, with our 40% speed boost forms. The fact it seemed to give much better Experience (perhaps due to the fact it was the Call to Arms BG?) helped, too. First time I finished it I got 13k experience! That was a surprise level up, let me tell you.

With the high EXP from battle grounds combined with a tidy cluster of quests in Thousand Needles (Involving some Grimtotem with a distinct resistance to Nature damage. So frustrating to try and interrupt a cast and have your Wind Shear resisted), it didn’t take me very long at all to get to level 30. I dinged mid skirmish, actually, which was an unpleasant surprise to the folk trying to kill me. Oh, they still managed to do so, but I lasted long enough for reinforcements to arrive thanks to the level.

Much to my annoyance, though, I didn’t get my 7k exp at the end of that match, probably because I was no longer within the bracket. Given I only  had 2k EXP to go to level, I’d have been better just grinding a few mobs instead of doing a 20 minute battle, to be honest.

I was considering doing a guide to AB in the vein of a previous post, but my AB experiences were entirely positive. Not a single loss, and the occasional pleasant BG chit-chat, compared to the losses and constant whinging of WSG. Oh, I’ve had plenty of bad experiences before, but it just doesn’t feel right to bitch and whine about a BG that was totally successful this time round!

Not sure if I could make 41 – and the delicious, fully fledged Enhancement Shaman that magical number represents – before my time runs out, but it’s worth a shot. Either that, or I’ll give Ilthiran a dusting off, see if I can try a few dungeons in Northrend, just to keep my hand in. Though part of the appeal of playing Eisla is that the furthest I’ve ever got as Horde is 32 (my Hunter on the same server), so the quests are going to new to me very soon.