Holy PUG Priest, Batman!

I’m quite enjoying healing in instances, overall. My Priest is now level 44.

I haven’t tried tanking, but after having two DPS characters hit level 70 and facing the repeat problem amongst my friends and in pick-up groups of finding a Healer or a Tank, I decided to put real efforts into bringing up a healer so I could trade favors with the few friends I DID have who played healing or tanking characters at max level.

I’ve been Holy pretty much all of this Priest’s existance, and really started to do PUGs a lot in my mid-30’s, doing a lot of RFD (razorfen downs) runs and then doing a few Uldaman runs before heading into Zul’Farrak and Maraudon. My gear doesn’t reflect the dungeons I’ve been in, but I’ve learned a lot about things that make a party successful or extremely difficult from the healer end of the spectrum - things I had never thought about before while playing other roles.

Finally Finding Friends

I finally found a “friend” on this toon - that is, a player who I partied with in a PUG at some point who advances at a level comparable enough to mine that, over a few weeks’ period of time, we’ve been able to join each other’s parties back and forth a couple of times, and are getting to know each other a little better. It sure is nice to join a group that is only a “partial” PUG because you already know that one of the people in the group is competent in their role.

Pushing Through the 40s

I’m finding the mid-40s to be slowish to advance through because there aren’t a lot of parties for Zul’Farrak nor Maraudon going at any time - advancing my Rogue through there was slow as well, but I found as soon as I hit 48 and could go into Sunken Temple or think about hitting Blackrock Depths soon, parties started to be advertised a lot more regularly on the LFG line.

Thankfully with the experience-gain changes of Patch 2.3, the “grind” isn’t nearly as painful as it would have been had I attempted to dungeon my way to level cap before.

Sooo, I keep my eye out as a priority for Zul’Farrak and Maraudon parties, and have found that late at night is the best time to find a quality group for it. Plus, I have a couple of friends who have toons this level and we’ve begun a Trading Cycle between ourselves to assist our lowbies:

Caught in the Trading Cycle

Sounds bad doesn’t it? Or, evil? Immoral? Nah…

It just means that myself and two of my Casual Guild guildmates with at least one toon at 70 and a regular connection to the guild’s Ventrilo server a few evenings a week have decided to trade off dungeon runs in a cycle:

First, I took their level 40’s over to the Hinterlands and did the whole gamut to get the Mallet of Zul’Farrak, which takes about as long as a full instance clear when one can’t sneak by much in Jintha’Alor. We had enough players and warlock alts to be able to summon all three of one guy’s 38-42 toons as well as helping the Paladin get the mallet without having to run up and down to get them to the right spots.

The next evening we could get together, the Paladin hopped over to her Hunter and was going to run my Priest and our other friend’s Druid tank toon through Zul’Farrak, but another guildmate friend logged in and offered to take all three of us through, so we did that instead and the Pally agreed to take her turn another day.

Then, the guy with the 3 toons right near 40 took his turn and took us through Zul’Farrak on another evening.

The agreement is that we’ll just keep trading these favors amongst ourselves so our lowbies will get an excellent shot at loot and also advance more quickly towards Outland levels. We’re still hopping into PUGs when the opportunity arises, but it’s nice to have a friend’s assistance (and be able to offer assistance of my own!), too.

Beginning The Tailoring Collection Process

My Priest is a tailor, and at level 50 she’s going to be able to advance her Tailoring again for the first time since she was level 36. And it’s going to be expensive.

So, I’m going to do some research and see what all materials I need to get to 350 right as soon as I hit level 50, and then I can let the advancement flow more naturally to 375 as I approach level 70.

But for now, it’s time to sign off!

Tags: Dungeons, guildmates, healing priest, holy priest, how to find a guild, how to find a pug, how to get run through's, how to make friends, instances, LFG tool, LFM Tool, making friends, maraudon, pick up group, pick up groups, priest, pug priest, pugging, pugging strategy, PUGs, rogue, run thru, run thru's, tailoring, tailoring 350, trading dungeon runs, zul'farrak

Since it’s Christmas time and I’m at my parents’ place on a 56k dial up connection, I thought to use my at-home computer time for posting some updates on the statuses and recent advancement activities of my various toons that are below level 70 (well, below level 60, actually!).

Druid Hits 27, Advancement Postponed

My Druid is Resto spec’d with a little bit in Balance. I focus mainly on healing in dungeon parties, and I’m documenting my path for others who might be interested in advancing a Horde toon/alt largely on dungeon parties, ignoring a lot of the solo content on the game.

This toon isn’t being played much at this moment, while I put efforts into getting my Rogue and Priest into Outland and to level 70 before the Expansion raises the level cap to 80 and leaves Outland a different landscape for dungeon groups than it is today.

Here’s what I’ve done so far, however:

Druid Advancement History - Solo To 12, RFC to 17

This toon I advanced solo to level 10 and then started collecting all the quests for Ragefire Chasm, using WoWWiki to chase down all the pre-requisite quests, and then I advanced myself to level 12 and parked myself in Orgrimmar near the portal. I ended up healing for about 15 Ragefire Chasm PUGs over the next while, until I hit level 17.

Let me say here that while the LFG Tool and the Dungeon itself allow player entry into Ragefire Chasm as early as level 8, it is still recommended a player reach level 12 before joining RFC pick-up groups with complete strangers. I’ve written about why I believe and recommend this to players over in this blog entry.

Using WoWWiki.com To Gather All Dungeon Quests

Occasionally I’ll get into a dungeon run with zero quests for the instance, but in that case I don’t even bother to ask other people to share their quests - I’m already “okay” with just going into the dungeon party for the experience and potential gear upgrades. Besides, there’s always someone else in the group who will ask “anyone got any quests to share?” and I can benefit then.

In general, I take responsibility for doing my own quest-gathering, and I use WoWWiki almost exclusively for the process because their site makes it so easy - from the ease of correctly guessing the URL to the specific Instance I’m looking for details on, through to how perfectly the quest chains are laid out, it’s excellent… with one flaw - if I want to look up a quest mob, I need to head over to Thottbot to find out where to go!

17 to 26

At Level 17 I went back to WoWWiki and looked up Wailing Caverns (WC) in order to repeat my steps from before: Gathering all of the quests for the dungeon and doing all of the pre-requisites required for the quest chains that ended up in Wailing Caverns. I then advanced to 18 with a quest or two from Crossroads and at level 18, got into Wailing Caverns PUGs until I hit level 20, at which point I added Shadowfang Keep (SFK) to my PUG list and at 23, I added Blackfathom Deeps (BFD) as well.

Friends Barter On Occasion

I got most of my quests done in PUGs but did take friends up on “dungeon run bartering” twice for this toon, enabling me to get all of the Fang Lords killed in Wailing Caverns and letting me have a chance at the cloth drops in Shadowfang Keep (since there were always 3 cloth-wearers in any given SFK PUG, since SFK has great cloth boss drops).

Deciding To Postpone Advancement

Recently, however, I’ve decided officially that this toon will be riding the Fourth Wave of Level Cap Advancement, and since I’m working on the Third Wave of Level Cap Advancement (First Wave: Hunter hit in Sept, Second Wave: Mage in Oct/Nov, Third Wave in Progress: Rogue/Priest slotted to hit together), I’ve only done a run or two in the last month - a couple of Razorfen Kraul (RFK) parties starting at 26 have gotten me to 27 where I currently sit.

Pondering Staying Resto/Going Feral

I am pondering turning this one from a Healer spec to a Tank spec and starting the scary process of learning how to be a good Tank in a dungeon group. Tanks and Healers are always sought after in groups, and if you’re a good one, it’s much easier for you to build a list of competent tanks/healers (whatever you are not) and damage-dealers (DPSers) because they’ll seek YOU out, too.

I wonder if it won’t be easier to learn to be a Tank where the pressures are low because the content is “old” and there’s a lot of familiarity amongst the players already (Azeroth) instead of trying to learn it on my level 61 Warrior in the Outland where bosses do things that actually need explanation! But, we’ll see, as this toon is largely parked for now.

Tags: azeroth, druid spec, Dungeons, how to find a pug, leveling through dungeons, LFG tool, LFM Tool, lowbie druid, pick up group, pugging, PUGs, resto druid, tank or heals, trading dungeon runs