40-49 is bad, 50-60 is easy.

Eh, I'm not sure. All I know is that it's taken me forever to get anything done.

Of course, that's most likely because I've been helping my friend level instead of grinding. OH WELL. *shrug*

Thats okay, 50-60 was a hell of a lot harder on my Shaman IMO. 40-50 was pretty steady, then all of the sudden, the grinding was worse than ever, the quests were too long to be worth anything, and it was impossible to get a toon that wasn't 60 into a high level instance, when there are plenty of 60s wanting your slot. I actually quit my Shaman at 57 for over a month out of frustration. When I came back, I just sucked it up and grinded for two days straight to 60.

- WraithTwo -

Your going to love 60->70 then. I heard it takes as much as from 1->60.

What you should do is start stocking up on items that give exp when you hand them in, the honor tokens from AB, WSG, AV, and those Insignia's from AQ40 for example.

my undead mage, just dinged 60 the other day. I got my Frostwolf Howler mount, pretty sweet; i must say. :)

40 to 50 is ezmode. Just run 5 man instances and you will make it. RFD from 40-42, Ulda from 42-45ish, and then Mara.

It actually didn't used to be hard to find a group in some of the instance if you weren't 60. Back before patch 1.10, you could be 55 and get inside Live Strat and in some cases UBRS. Now, no one wants to touch you unless you're 60 and if even then, they want you to be ungodly geared out. I couldn't even find a group for UD strat on my tank because when I told people I've not had much experience 5-manning it, much less tanking it and epic'd out the ass, that they would find someone else. Sure, it's also hard as balls for me to find a group on my rogue, but it would also help if I was in a damn guild that would actually pay attention to me and help me out when I'd ask for it, instead of bitching at me for not wanting to raid or ignoring me when I'd ask for help with a quest but then expect me to jump up and join their group when they need someone. (and yes, I left that guild to go to a more fun-oriented guild :tpg: )

On another note, I got Quel forged on my warrior the other day and have began my venture back into MC. But I don't know if I can take re-learning the place a 3rd time with a different group. Last night in MC for 9 hours... and that shit isn't fun and I just can't physically do it anymore. I've been offered to join an end-game guild, but two things keep me from joining. 1. well... everyone knows what one is by now. heh. and 2. There's a fucker I can't stand in the guild. He pissed me off when I ran MC with the first guild alliance we had, when I had won the Medallion of Steadfast Might and he sent hate tells about winning it and not being in the "main" guild going, as well as he complained and threw the biggest fit over Teamspeak when I rolled and won the Helm of Might (which he ended up getting because of all the moaning and groaning and whining he did). There was a second person in the guild I couldn't stand, but was told he got kicked because he didn't want to learn BWL encounters and just wanted the gear.

NO. Uldaman is utter shit. Period. Not only is it hella hard to finish (I fucking loathe that golem with the adds), but it's also insanely difficult to navigate.

I went like this: SM from 40-42, RFD every so often, then ground out to around 44 and started running Zul'Farrak, then Maraudon.

Uldaman isnt the best instance but it still can give you an easy level or two if you run it with all the quests. Problem with a few of the quests is that you have to run multiple times which to me isn't so bad because I know my way around it. ZF isn't a bad choice either as with my last re-roll my first run through the place I picked up both of those 1h swords that combine into the epic 2her. It did me no good since I am a rogue but it was funny to make people in my guild cry.

I hit 55 tonight. Got about 20% from a BRD attunement run for MC (couldn't do it because I was ONE LEVEL TOO LOW D=), then did two Mara runs, one a full run and the other a Princess run to get up to about 80%, and then did a ZF run up to Gahz'rilla and soloed a few mobs in the instance after everybody hearthed out for the last 2 percent.

Oh, and I am now the proud owner of http://www.thottbot.com/?i=13424. Some moron put it up on the AH for 20 gold and I just couldn't resist. As soon as some of my auctions sell, I'm off to Silithus to start my Tier .5 quest! :D

Horde side .5 quests start in Silithus?

The quest starts in Orgrimmar, you just have to travel to Silithus to collect the items for it. You need to get 15 Silithus Venom Samples and 20 gold to upgrade to tier .5 bracers.

OIC. Alliance side is in Ironforge and you have to collect bloods from Winterspring. I love the questline, it was challenging and epic and I enjoyed it. The rewards arent that bad especially since you don't need to raid to get the stuff. Plus...Darkmantle set is perhaps the coolest looking set in the game. Its sad that .5 armor looks 10x better than the AQ sets. Appearance wise..not stat wise.

Darkmantle looks cool, but it does not compete with Bloodfang for coolness.

Darkmantle looks pretty nice, even if it is Shadowcraft with its colors changed heh. It's the most ninja-esque of the rogue armor sets. Bloodfang gives you that evil badass look, nightslayer...ugh what a horrible looking set, especially those shoulderpads. The Transcendence set looks pretty nice as well for alliance.

I can't stand the looks of bloodfang anymore. There's so many clueless l2p rogues out there that go for full bloodfang despite some parts are laughably bad.

Take the shoulders for example...wtf is that? They went for that over nightslayer and worse, deathdealer. I just don't get that.

Yeah, the thing that really bothers me is to see people pvping in full Bloodfang. It's like, Jesus Christ, get a clue you fucking ebayer.

So classes for the new races have been announced. Here's the kicker, Blood Elves can be Paladins, mages, hunters, locks, rogues and I think priests (can't remember) however, Draenei can be Shaman, hunters, warriors, priests, mages and... Paladins. That's just crazy. Draenei can be both classes while BEs can only be one. :\

The bigger deal (to everybody else) is that the Blood Elves cannot be warriors. Until the expansion, every class has at least been able to be a warrior.

One of the non official reasons I've seen cited by other players is that if BEs had Warriors, they'd basically have everything that the Forsaken have, plus Pallies. So by not allowing Warriors it keeps them somewhat different from the Forsaken.

Although having 4 races that can be a hunter on the horde side is a bit of overkill....

I'm begining to worry that Alliance will continue to be favored for having an overall better balance of the number of races that can be a particular class.

Agreed. However, let's be honest about why Blood Elves can't be warriors:

Charge/Intercept + Hamstring + AOE Silence + Mana Drain = dead squishy.

Granted, a rogue prolly wouldn't be much better (Cheap Shot + AOE silence to prevent a mage blinking out of stun = win)... but hey, since when has Blizzard made much sense? =\

I don't buy that, simply because a Mage will probably still beat a BE War, and Warstomp > AOE Silence, and you don't see people crying about how unbalanced that is.

BTW, my guild has Rag FUCKING DOWN. Last week, we downed him for the first time, surviving 2(!) waves of Sons.
Here's was the (highly entertaining) last 10% on Google video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...15500789958318

Last night we went back for our second downing, and it was awesome. We got him to 29% before the Sons came out, and he was down in a minute after reemerging (with a total of 6 deaths IIRC).

- WraithTwo -

But the Shaman totems require you to be in their group, don't they? (I've never played horde so I'm not too positive). I know the Paladin auras only affect their group. So getting 120 fire resist by stacking a shaman and a paladin in a group pretty much balances everything since there are only going to be 3 people getting the benefit of that buff. I suppose it will be good for guilds that are learning Firemaw, but that's all I can really think of.

I will give you windfury, however, as being an awesome buff to DPS for a Shaman/Rogue/Rogue/Rogue/Warrior group that already has might. I don't think it'll get nerfed -- you have to realize that the game mechanics are going to change as a result of a substantial buff like that, and guilds are going to have to readjust their approach to a lot of encounters that are delicate on the aggro meters.

And like you said, making room in a raid for a 9th class is challenge enough in balancing the raiding game. Bringing a shaman? Well, that most likely means you're dropping a paladin, or a DPS class. Dropping one DPS for a DPS buff to one group probably isn't going to change much at all. I don't think 3 people with a windfury buff are going to do so much more damage to compensate for 1 rogue, fury warrior or mage being left out of the raid.

1) A mage can blink out of Warstomp.
2) Warstomp has a cast time. I'm not too sure on the silence, though.

But seriously, I am still somewhat surprised that Blizzard didn't give us blood elf warriors. I would've expected them to nerf the shit out of the racial, not this.