A mile in these shoes

Wow! I can't believe I finally made 70! :)
It's such a relief to have got there, and at 8 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 14 seconds I easily beat the 9 days target I'd set myself.
After the Ziggurat quests I travelled out towards Fizzcrank, stopping on the way to do all of the quarry quests. I quite liked them, only... it's not that the respawn rate is too high there, it's that there's no delay between respawn and selecting a target so you don't get the chance to avoid aggroing when they do, and they often appear in batches - I died several times and there was nothing I could have done about it.

I always find the mechanicals entertaining - it's that the gnomish comedy engineering always comes across in them, in the idle animations as well as during battle. To cap it all off I got to fly back in one of those ace flying machines from the FP in Fizzcrank! :)

Obviously this (70) is by no means the end, but it's an excellent milestone :)

Now I'm going to spend some time catching up on mining and engineering - apart from anything else I've just spent some time doing the Fizzcrank quests and wishing I could dissect the mechanicals.

Level: 70
/played: 8 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 14 seconds
Location: Fizzcrank
Theme: The Prodigy - Breathe
dps/ap/crit/hit: 284/1112/17.53%/28

All Ice in Vain

I'm very much enjoying Borean Tundra.
The Tundra area and En'kilah in particular have provided massive upgrades with relatively little effort. Whilst most are upgrades in the form of crit/AP - and in many cases also a reduction in Agility - I did get Death Knight's Anguish and the sheer DPS upgrade of Fury of the Raging Dragon. The former is an interesting one, difficult to quantify the results after only a few uses, but I did get my crit up to over 25% in one fight, impressive when you consider that's nearly +10% crit. It does seem to proc reasonably frequently too - it would be particularly useful for a hunter with talents that benefit from crit. The new gun is around +30 dps according to the tooltip I get in the character sheet - also it looks ace; I mean, that's one interesting looking gun.
If those are the greens I can't wait to get the blues and purples! :)

So I made 69. Whoah - I'm less than one level from 70 and in an area awarding more XP per mob/quest than previously. 70! The last level took around 3.25 hours, nearly half the time of the previous levels even though I knew what to do and where to go for the previous.
At this rate I'm mere hours from 70, even though I've never before done any of the quests in this area. Sure they're harder but they pay better too!

Thanks to Kristalene for the En'kilah/Ziggurat quest chain and Chosen for the final quest in the chain. You both made it fun, not to mention a lot quicker and in the case of the final quest, possible :)

Level: 69
/played: 8 days, 3 hours, 3 minutes
Location: Un'upe Village
Theme: Tori Amos - Cornflake Girl
dps/ap/crit/hit: 320/1134/18.25%/28

Northrend Ho!

Great! I've reached 68 and headed straight for the Borean Tundra, stopping only to train skills and buy 3*+16 Agi gems for my chest.
With 2 levels to go I'm still a few hours short of 8 days /played so I'm not worried about making 70 inside the time I've set myself (9 days).
I've got the void axe quest reward from the Ring of Blood quest and I have to say I really like the glowy effect, it was great to have the team to do it :)
I headed for Bladespire and did a few of the quests around there before heading back to Nagrand to finish off. I like the ogres, they seem to be good targets and I could get through them pretty quickly - that said, 'kill 30' still takes time :)
I enjoyed the last few quests in Nagrand and narrowly avoided having to go all the way to Area 52. Not that I don't like it - it's not my favourite but it's okay - but it's such a long way to travel for a few XP :)
The little I've done so far in Northrend makes me believe it will be good, but from here on I have no idea what to expect as it's all new to me!
XP has been good so far, better than if I'd stayed in Outlands so I'm pleased I decided to come here as soon as possible :)
Being so close to the 70th level I can see, not the end, but a milestone - light at the end of the tunnel :)
Once I do hit 70 I intend to take it a bit easier, explore more, raid and instance a little and generally enjoy the scenery :)
I haven't set any kind of time - not even a target - for 80 as I haven't the faintest idea how long that's likely to take. I also have no intention of setting a target as it would be a shame to ruin the content by rushing it :)

In dps news, it's certainly going up quickly over the past few levels, and I expect the green drops in Northrend to improve it further.

Level: 68
Location: Borean Tundra
/played: 7 days, 21 hours, 42 minutes
Theme: On The Hour, Series 1, Episode 4 - Chris Morris
dps/ap/crit/hit: 299/1007/12.34%/30

Everyone's a Jenkins

Another non-levelling post...
After grinding through most of my precious rested in Nagrand I got the opportunity to achieve the 'Jenkins' title. Apparently the trick is to only start the kill when you've gathered enough in one spot. Somehow it took us a while to manage it, but manage it we did :)
Somehow it seemed worth sacrificing a couple of hours for :) (Yes, I know everyone else got the title on day one of Wrath, but I don't have any at all :)

Thanks to Spárky, Sérénity and Eldurleo for the run.

btw, if you're confused by the perspective on the pic it may help to know I'd been levitated, as had Archie.

Keep On Moving

I spent the 2nd half of 65 in Terokkar killing the Shadow Council and doing a few quests in the Bone Wastes. I still haven't got around to Torgos! to get the trinket, and now I've moved on to Nagrand.
I quite enjoyed the quest to investigate the shadow council, it was kind of fun wandering around the enemy camp unmolested (at least until I stupidly tried to change my tracking so I could spot enemy hunters that can see through my disguise; apparently a tracking change breaks my disguise - well Weeks did say it was flimsy).
I never really liked the Bone Wastes and I don't like it much more this time around - there's too much threading your way through mobs in order to get to the quests and unless you're really careful (i.e. slow) you arrive with a Benny Hill style entourage - Not What You Want.

So I moved on to Nagrand and headed for Nesingwary's Safari. It was pleasant to do mindless grinding of 90+ mobs (damned wandering elementals) for a change but it completely burnt through my rested. Those are definitely a set of quests that are better for a skinner as well, I hate wasting all that leather :)
Of course I've still got another 90 harder mobs to do for the second set of quests and then the three elites. If I remember rightly I get some righteous weapon at the end :)

I like the scenery in Nagrand. I know it's boringly normal (aside from the floating islands and giant crystals, obviously) and most of it just looks like 'the real world', but it's nice to look at and pleasant to be there.

Regarding dps - it's way up this time almost entirely because I got a new bow that's 44 dps to replace the 34 dps I had. It made way more difference than I expected. I guess that's because it's the base dps and gets multiplied by anything I bring to it - I've never looked at the calculation and I'm not going to now. Perhaps tomorrow :)

Level: 66
/played: 7 days, 9 hours, 43 minutes
Location: Nagrand
Theme: R.E.M. - Drive
dps/ap/crit/hit: 245/928/10.6%/39

Wilderness

I've got my 54-quests-in-Zangar achievement and moved on to Terokkar. Progress is pretty good, I'm managing 5-6 hours per level at the moment - if I can keep that up I'll be 70 in under 9 days /played.

I've been enjoying the Arakkoa quests, which again I didn't like first time around. Perhaps I'm just getting the level to do it right :)
I managed to do one of those bone-headed quest time-wasting things - you know, the one where you kill umpteen mobs for one quest, go somewhere else for long enough for the mobs to respawn and then realise you've got to go back through them all again because you missed the local boss or a quest item in the middle of a camp. In this case it was collecting the 'eyes of ...' from the Arakkoa.

I've been playing with my macros, attempting to proc Rapid Fire and any trinkets I may have whenever they come up, just for the extra they give - however briefly. In the case of Rapid Fire a 5 minute cooldown means it doesn't proc much. Talented, between that, IAoH Quick Shots (or whatever it's called) and certain trinkets it's possible to get a lot of damage out quickly. Not having used the talents since before Wrath I don't know how these affect non-auto shots any more, if at all. That said, there're quite a few things that proc off auto-shot crits, so more in less time can only be a good thing, surely :)

One last thing. It looks like the boosted dps was due to the mobs I was fighting, as my dps is back down a lot since I moved away from Zangar to an area with higher level mobs.
*shrug* Interesting to know anyway.

And one other last thing... :)
Oto suggested I try some of the end-game content talentless, I think this might be an interesting experiment and will bear it in mind. That said, I may have to spec as soon as I hit 80 - just because I can - and unspec as and when for the experiment. For comparison I could run the same instance twice, spec'd and unspec'd.

Level: 65
Location: Terrokar
/played: 7 days, 5 hours, 18 minutes
Theme: Kirsty MacColl - In These Shoes?
dps/ap/crit/hit: 210/906/10.57%/39

(Not) What You Want

I think Archie's made his feelings clear regarding the taming of Blacksting :)
But look at the pretty colours! And it's got cool idle animations and everything!