Waiting for Flying and Leveling Up

We have slowly been getting bits and pieces of information about the World of Warcraft 8.2 Rise of Azshara patch.  Blizzard has released some info of its own accord while a lot more has been data mined from content on the public test realm.

The 8.2 update splash screen

What hasn’t come out way is an actual date for the patch.  I was hoping we would see it this month, but we’re almost to the mid-point already without a word.  To my mind June works well because we haven’t had a big drop in a while, it coincides with the tail end of the six month period that Blizzard locked a bunch of people into with that special mount offer, and it is far enough out in front of the late August release of WoW Classic that some of us can get in there, get flying, and be ready to swap to the old school.

However, what I think doesn’t necessarily mean anything down in Irvine.  Blizzard will move at its own pace, which is both a luxury it enjoys as well as being a bit of a curse.

While we have been waiting I have finished up all of the prerequisites for unlocking flying.  I am exalted with everybody, the ilevel on my main is high enough that mobs in the world are easy again.  I am well over that hump.  Feeling done there, I am on to some alts.  I think all of my level 110s are at least 111 now due to various activities, but I went all in with my hunter, traditionally my main alt, and got him up to the level cap.

Tistann to level 120

I leveled him up the straightforward way, through the quest content in the expansion.  And, as with my first run through that, there clearly hit a point around level 118 where the mobs out in world were clearly getting a lot tougher relative to my own power.  Up until that point just upgrading with the gear awarded by quests was enough to keep me feeling viable, but then there is that jump for the NPCs and suddenly one add is a disaster and you wonder if something has gone really wrong with your play style.

But it isn’t you, it is the game.  I still don’t know why Blizz thinks this is a good idea, but there it is.

I did start lining up some upgrade gear for level cap as I went along.  As it turns out leather working now yields a ranged weapon, and my hunter does skinning and leather working, so I was ready to go with that.

I made myself useful gear in WoW?!?!

Fortunately the hunter class, at least in beast mastery, is somewhat resilient to bad situations.  You can always sacrifice your pet and run away or feign death.  You do spend a lot of time healing your pets… and I oddly found my tanking pets harder to keep alive than my DPS pets… but you can power through.

Once up to level 120 I was able to start gearing him up via world quests and he is pretty much over the hump and back to feeling a bit more powerful in the world.

Such is not the case with my feral druid.

As I mentioned in a past post, my druid was my first alt to 120, and I did that entirely via pet battles.  That was a mistake.

I decided to see if I could get some world quests done with the druid and, as it turns out, being level 120 with all your 110 gear is not at all viable.  Running around in cat form makes you a bit squishy to start with, but this made even single NPCs a dodgy proposition.

Of course, I figured it could just be me.  I read up on Icy Veins, got an addon to help with my combat rotation, and I still managed to die horrible way too often.  Gear upgrades via my hunter did not tip the balance.  My druid is stuck at the bottom of an ilevel hill and working my way out of it feels like more effort than I want to expend.  It could still just be me being bad, but I have leveled him up normally in the past.

However, he might just be a pet battle character from now on.

I do have a couple of tougher alts, a DK and a warrior, that might be options.  But I am not sure I am feeling it for leveling up again at the moment.  Knowing that hill is waiting for me around level 118 is a disincentive to dig into that again.