Happy 1 year anniversary Alt Fanatic!

Yay, my blog is 1 year old. I am happy to have a place to share my WoW experiences, and I would like to thank the 200 or so people that stop by every week to take a look and sometimes share their comments. Its a very tiny corner of the wow blogosphere, and an incredibly small spec on the Web, but it's my spec, dammit!! I don't have much to reflect on, this blog is more a stream of conciousness than anything, if I have piqued your interest please take a look back on my blog archive.

I don't know if Alt Fanatic is still the right name for the blog, I just play a lot, and on many characters. I am also keeping myself from making any new alts until Cataclysm rolls around, so I can experience all the new lower level content and enjoy it as much as I can. In any case, Happy Birthday tooo meeeee....

Some updates:

- I hit 60 with my rogue alt. Having only played Assassination or Subtlety specs on my previous rogue (whom I retired, as the friend I played it with on a different realm quit WoW) I played this one as Combat spec. Its really refreshing to just run up to mobs and beat them down in succession, instead of sneaking up and doing an opener into a combo. It makes for faster leveling in any case.

I just had my first taste of Killing Spree. I don't like the way it changes your camera angle 5 times as the animation plays, but it sure does a lot of damage, especially against multiple mobs if blade flurry is activated as well. When I hit 80, I think I want to devote some time in PvP sneaking around and killing people/capping flags from stealth. I always enjoyed being sneaky as a druid in cat form, but I didn't have a good 'toolbox' to do much except sneak around.

I am looking forward to trying out PvP with tools like vanish, blind, sap, preparation, shadowstep, cloak of shadows, cheat death...does anyone else derive pleasure from frustrating opponents? I always get the most kicks out of cycloning, sheeping, freezing, or slowing other players. It's nice to kill them, sure, but even if I die, I imagine them raging at me for messing with them so much. I can remember one time I chased a druid, applying slow every time they shifted, I must have slowed him 20 times! Kinda silly I know, because I was too busy slowing him to cast a damage spell, but it was all in good fun. But I digress.

-I am finding myself very averse to running heroic dungeons on my druid or mage, even for the daily quests that award 2 Emblems of Triumph. I guess I'm a bit burned out on running them, and the reward, for me, isn't worth the time I put into them. On my 'fresh' 80 priest, I still have a lot of gearing to go to bring him up to speed, but even doing the daily heroic is kinda blah. And I have no interest in farming heroics for Emblem of Conquest gear, when I can run new 5-mans in 3.3 and get almost equivalent gear AND emblems of triumph.

With my priest I have stepped into Ulduar though, and successfully healed Razorscale. I am hoping to bring my priest on further farming runs into Ulduar, VOA, and hopefully runs for Onyxia or TOC10 soon. Shadow priests are getting buffed in 3.3 it looks, so I am eager to take advantage of that as well.

My paladin has languished, and I only log onto him to transmute epic gems. I want to tank and heal with him, but I simply don't have the time or need, as my druid is a much better geared tank and healer at this point. Gear-wise he has fallen behind the content so I may shelve my druid until 3.3 and gear my paladin up a bit.

I ran TOC10 twice last week on my druid and mage. The druid run went well as a tank, it was a guild run and we cleared the instance without much trouble. Only Anub took some serious concentration. On my mage, I joined a pug and we cleared the whole thing, struggling only on Anub, and we finally downed him on our last attempt of the night. 5 Bosses is also a good amount, more than once wing of Naxx, but not as interminable as Ulduar (In that all the bosses are in one environment and its hard to call when some are clamoring for one more boss before the end of the night.)

We tried TOC10-Heroic and got promptly stomped into the ground, attempt after attempt. We will need to amp up the coordination and teamwork if we want to down these bosses in their 'true' forms. Our core group is getting pretty powerful though, we 9-manned Koralon this week instead of pugging in a non-guildie.

Hmm, that's about it for now. Let's hope I get my Sinister Squashling in the next week. It's all I need for the achievement I mostly completed, fittingly enough, about one year ago.