Pally Ho!

Got my pally alt up to level 26. It really is nice levelling an alt with the new XP changes. Feels like 3 or 4 quests per level, between the XP from the quest itself, and also from grinding the mobs to accomplish the quest goals. I'm not sure how I feel about what that would mean to me if I were levelling my first toon, but for alts, it is definitely cool. Especially for my pally who is being levelled more for the desire to hit 35 for Artesian enchanting, rather than for the joys of playing a pally. His inability to disenchant my non-selling green items has reached the point that I bought another guild vault tab exclusively to hold these items while he climbs to 35, and then gets 50 more enchanting skill points.

On that note of joys of playing pally, I actually am enjoying playing him a ton more since I re-spec'd to full Protection. It really doesn't take THAT long to kill a mob, and being able to survive just about anything is pretty cool. I was grinding on some raptors that were 2 and 3 levels above me, and also took on a level 29 "boss" raptor (non-elite) at level 25 without too much fuss. Granted, while he's not a fully equiped twink, he does have the best equipment the AH has to offer for his level, and also the best enchants his 225 allows. Plus, he's got a cute mechanical squirrel companion pet, so you can't go wrong. I'm looking forward to seeing how the survivablity increases when I get him in plate at 40.

Plus I did get into a group situation for a quest. Priest, warrior, and me the pally. I was 25 and they were both 31. And they couldnt pull aggro off me, which was pretty cool, because I was deliberatly trying to see if I could do it. Of course, not so cool because the priest was shadow and kept slamming these nuclear strikes that would pull aggro, which I can live with, but she never threw down a single heal even though we agreed that she'd be healing at the beginning. Kinda bothered me during our wipe when I looked at the combat log and didnt see any heals, but I guess it didn't bother me all that much in the end.

While talking about alts, also took up Alchemy on my lvl 20 priest. For now, just getting supplies off the AH, I have the long-term goal of having Amava farm high-level herbs for him some day, but the low level herbs are so cheap, its not worth my time farming them. Funny how times change, because when I was the lowbie selling those silverleaf stacks for a few silvers, I loved the income.

Alchemy is pretty cool. Made a bunch of armor increasing elixirs and also mana potions, so my pally was able to be a bit more aggressive, knowing that mana was easy to recover. I'm definitely excited about getting Alchemy to a high level where I can produce the high level mana potions for Amava so she will be able to sustain the fire power as long as necessary. Even though, in the end, the cost is the same whether it be the opportunity cost of using herbs I farmed rather than selling them, or directly spending gold on potions, for some reason I just can't get myself to buy potions. Some strange stubborn reaction inside me, but I just can't do it.

Especially since the herb market gets worse and worse every day. Makes the opportunity cost a bit more easy to stomach. But it'll be a long time before I get my priest up to a sufficient level to make cool potions like that.