Wednesday (23 Sep) - Playing with Giants

Wednesday (23 Sep) - Playing with Giants

Well, I screwed up Wednesday night. I was out getting some errands taken care of and the time just got away from me. Wild missed the raid invite time. I'd signed up for the raid, so I made no excuses. It didn't help that there weren't enough folks to get a raid going, even if Wild had made it on time. We are really going through a bad stretch in regard to our raiding.

JB had better news to report. She DINGED! to level 75! This is a major level increase for JB because she gets Lava Burst, a powerful new spell to add to her arsenal. Her DPS has been a pretty mundane 1k or so during questing. JB really hopes the new spell, along with the Glyph of Flame Shock to complement it, will bump that up. JB is working the final quest hub in Borean Tundra, called Taunka'le Village, where there are a lot of quests. After that, though, JB will have to decide where to move to next. I'd also like to get her into some of the early Northrend dungeons, where she can get some group experience and hopefully start picking up better gear.

JB has been playing around with elemental glyphs. There have been a number of changes and additions to shaman glyphs and it was an interesting challenge to find out which three major glyphs to use. Glyph of Lightning Bolt was the clear hands down must have glyph, which JB already has. Then there are four other majors that at one time or another were considered must haves, even though there are only three slots for major glyphs, and one of those is already filled with Lightning Bolt. The Glyph of Flametongue Weapon seems to be out of vogue for pve, now, so JB dropped that off her list. There was a long discussion about when Glyph of Flame Shock should be used, ending basically in Yes, use it unless you have a Tier set bonus that would take precedence. JB has no Tier pieces, and she has Flame Shock in the bank, so that will be added. JB then had to choose one of two remaining glyphs for the last slot: Glyph of Totem of Wrath or Glyph of Lava. I liked Glyph of Lava for unscientific reasons - it worked in the background without the need for any additional casting or mana use. However, it appears that at JB's level and gear, the Glyph of Totem of Wrath is better. That suited JB as well - she already has the Totem glyph, and the Wrath glyph can't be made by Philly and is currently way over-priced on the AH. So JB ended up with glyphs are Lightning Bolt, Flame Shock, and Totem of Wrath.

JB wrapped up her questing in Borean Tundra late Wednesday night while DER was doing his own questing on the other side of the continent in Howling Fjord. There is a quest in the Fjord that involves killing a number of level 70/71 elite giants that trek through a fairly heavily populated area of the forest there. DER enlisted JB's aid to help kill them. JB had yet to visit Howling Fjord and had no flight path there, but that was no problem. JB jumped on her flying mount and navigated the several minute flight to DER's location.

DER had warned JB that the giants hit very hard, but JB had to test them herself. Used to easily killing the non-elite mobs during her own questing, JB plowed right into the giants without the least bit of subtlety - strength against strength. It worked on the first couple of giants, although the giants were battering JB hard. The extra adds from the many mobs in the area didn't help, either. We got the quest done, but not before two ignominious deaths for both of us. Kiting the giants would have worked better, or JB could have slipped into enchancement spec if she really wanted to go toe to toe, but Meh, it worked out all right. :)

DER continued on with this questing, but JB had to call it a night. She is 30% of the way to level 76.