Money Spent
Let's get this out of the way. Obviously one of the goals of Project Tauren Shaman is to accumulate as much gold as possible on the journey to 80, and that means not spending any money on frivolous things such as auction house gear and vanity pets. However, I did cough up some money on necessary things such as learning to use one and two handed axes, as well as a couple Netherweave Bags for 14 gold each. Things I deem necessary. Some quest turn-ins found Spirithorn in Ratchet where he invested a few silver in some engineering plans and jewelcrafting designs and turned them into gold, thanks to the auction house. Other than that and leveling up his abilities and professions, no money was spent.
As you'll recall in Project Tauren Part 2, a couple bags dropped off of random mobs. With the aforementioned netherweave bags and another eight slot bag that dropped for me, my bag slots are now full. Eventually I'll pick up two more netherweave bags and should be set in the bags department for a while.
Money Earned
My quests didn't put me in the way of as many mining nodes as I had hoped, but I did get a few stacks which immediately went into the auction house. Same goes for herbs. It doesn't help that I can only track one thing at a time, so I'm sure I'm missing out on quite a few mining nodes and herbs. I got lucky and managed to loot a semi-rare vanity pet, the Leaping Hatchling, which netted me 158 gold in the auction house. Not bad, though if I was more patient I probably could've made more. There were at least eight other people selling them and so everybody was undercutting. I held onto it for a few days but there were never less than 7-8 people selling it. Oh well. I also signed another guild charter for an easy two gold. As of the time of this writing I probably have another 20-30 gold tied up in the auction house so things are going quite good, money wise.
Deadmines / Wailing Caverns
Spirithorn got his first taste of pugging instances as a dpser. First up was Deadmines, which is a fun instance and never really gets old. It was pretty straightforward and we cleared it pretty fast. I did a whopping 20 dps and I have no idea if that's good or bad. I think I was level 16 or 17 with one or two greens and the rest of my gear was lousy. I did get my first Satchel of Helpful Goods, which was exciting.
Wailing Caverns was a different story. A lot of the mobs in there use sleep and fear spells, sending random members of my pug running every which way and pulling other groups, or sitting idle while under the effect of very lenghty sleep spells. Eventually a wipe occured because both myself and the dedicated healer were asleep, leading to the death of the tank. This led to the group disbanding which was a shame, as we were probably ten minutes from clearing this rather lenghty instance. I was frustrated by the sleep and fear spells that had disbanded our group, as well as the fact that a lot of the mobs in Wailing Caverns are immune to nature damage, completely nullifying a lot of my attacks as well as my nature based interrupt, Wind Shear.
Then it occured to me. Tremor Totem! This little gem of a totem doesn't prevent fears or sleeps, but it does dispel them pretty quickly after they happen. I assigned it as my earth totem of choice and requeued, hoping to get Wailing Caverns again. Sure enough I did and about 45 minutes later our group was victorious, partially thanks to my awesome tremor totems. I got my first taste of the satisfying utilitarian aspect of the Shaman class, and it was tasty indeed! I threw the tank an extra heal or two when our lagging healer was too laggy to do so himself, saving the tank from certain death many times, which was extremely gratifying. I was also second on the DPS charts which I was pretty stoked about seeing as how the tank in my earlier deadmines run did more dps than I did. In my defense, said tank was a couple levels higher and in heirloom gear.
Still haven't queued as a healer as all my healing spells are not very mana efficient and have long casting times, but at level 20 I learned Lesser Healing Wave, so I'll give dungeon healing a try soon.
Side Note: As early as level 20, thanks to loot from Satchels of Helpful goods and random dungeon drops, I'm already starting to accumulate a DPS and Healing gear set. Craziness!
Fun New Abilities
First and foremost, thanks to herbalism I finally learned Lifeblood, which has saved my ass more times than I care to admit. Having an instant free heal over time when you're a lowly shaman in garbage gear is invaluable. Now, at level 20, my gear is leaps and bounds better but I'm sure it will come in handy occasionally.
At level 16 I learned Ghost Wolf which sped up my travel times in the way-too-large zone of Barrens, thankfully. It's also cool to run around as a semi-transparent wolf. Neat stuff.
I mentioned earlier that I learned a new healing spell that will make pug healing easier. Combined with the mana-regenerative goodness of Water Shield and that gives me some stuff to work with as I experiment with healing.
I feel like the longer I stick with the Shaman class the more rewarding it's going to be, which is reassuring as the first 20 levels have been pretty dull.
Glyphs
I have room for one major and one minor glyph. Not sure what I'm going to get but I'm open for suggestions. Time to do a little research. More on my glyph choices in the next installment of Project Tauren Shaman! Unless, of course, they are ridiculously expensive. Are there any scribes on Doomhammer that want to hook me up with a couple freebies? :)
Part Three Summary:
Starting level: 13
Finishing level: 20
Talent spread: 0/11/0
Mining skill: 66
herbalism skill: 118
cooking skill: 68
first aid skill: 72
Hey there,
ReplyDeletefrom your summary in the end I figure you use your meat for leveling cooking.
My tip is to sell these in the AH, because people who are already lvl 80 don't farm them, but the demand is still really high.
Could increase your income.
As you hit lvl 30-40 mageweave is going to drop, and this sells pretty good aswell.
Runecloth is always in demand because of the faction reputation turn ins.
So probably you should sell these, rather than lvling your cooking/first aid with it.
so long
Jan