Salty & 79

Ahh, a long joyous weekend…  And now back to work.  You know, I think we’d all live a lot longer if we had 2 day work weeks and 5 day weekends all the time.  Granted, Blizzard wouldn’t be able to share that time off because they’d have to work even harder to keep up with new content since many of us would play a lot more WoW, lol.

In any event, Sthis & Galoriar both earned their Salty titles and level 79 this weekend.  We didn’t play a whole lot, so that’s saying something.  Not to mention, I now realize how hard and time consuming the Salty title is.  Just to start, look at it this way – one of the requirements is you win one of the STV Fishing Extravaganzas.  They’re once per week.  Aka, if you’re on the original Bliz server, there would be a MAXIMUM of 208 people who could have won it.  And that’s even assuming that someone won it on week 1.  So figure the server we’re on has been around closer to 3 years and you’re looking at around 156 maximum people (give or take a few from transfers).  Of those 156 people, how many people have spent hours fishing up the coins from the Dalaran fountain?  Fished for the rare X-Pound fish?  Hit EVERY type of fishing node in the game?  Fished up the bosses in both raids (old world & Outlands)?  Done ALL of those?  Yes, the Explorer title took a while to get and I’m proud of it as well.  But I must say that the Salty title is harder and more rare.  So next time you see someone with it (assuming you ever do…) give them a courtesy bow – I know I will!

And level 79.  A terribly frustrating level.

·         71 – “Sweet, I’m past 70!”

·         72 – “I’m no longer a ‘noob’ to levels past 71”

·         73 – “Hah, I’m getting there.  Now let me hit 74 for the teleport… Oh wait, I had a friend pop me there so my HS is already set.  Oh well.”

·         74 – “I can officially port to Dalaran!”

·         75 – “Just kickin’ it hoss”

·         76 – “Yay, I can almost get my flying mount back!!!”

·         77 – “We’re sorry, but Galoriar is currently unavailable.  It appears he is busy exploring Northrend.  If you would like to leave a message, he’ll consider getting back to you after the beep.”

·         78 – “No longer a noob to flying in Northrend.  See?  That extra level means I didn’t ‘just’ get my cold weather flying!”

·         79 – “Damnit…  One more f’n level and I can finally start getting lvl 80 gear.  I’m still wearing half of my lvl 70 gear because I have yet to find better…  Of course, the Icier Barbed Spear from the Champion of Anguish quest is cool, but even that still just barely beat out my axe.  Soo yeah, still leveling, no new gear… I just wanna be 80 already!!!!”

·         80 – “Woohoo!  Level 80!!!  Uhhh, ok, time to finish leveling my alts to 80…”

So my guess is Tuesday or Wednesday we’ll hit 80.  Of course, we’ll then have to spend some time on the level 80 quests for some better gear so by the time everyone else hits 80 we can start working on the dungeons.  In the meantime, we’ll get our alts up so that we have more options.  Because even though hunter-pets can tank now, people still don’t believe it.  I mean, we’re sitting there on the 3^rd boss of the Champion of Anquish questline and Mypally is tanking the boss.  Balance spec’d Druid is healing and we’re doin pretty awesome.  Have to be careful and it takes a while, but then I see a comment “His pet is tanking?!?!”.  So the guy can see it and he still doesn’t believe it!  But then I remember the other hunters I make fun of in this blog and realize that most of them couldn’t come close.

The trick?  There really isn’t much of one.  I just send in Mypally, pop a MD on him every chance I get, keep aspect of the beast on except when I need more mana, and have a continual improved mend pet on him.  That’s good for most elites, and when going on bigger targets (such as in that circle) a couple rolling heals from a druid evens it all out.