Bishamel has hit 18 and is paused there briefly while I do some other things. I’ll do a full update at 20. Suffice to say that prot paladinning is awesome, and holy crap does HoR do some serious damage at that level. I pull crap in the Ghostlands with it and it’s half dead almost immediately.

Mounts from Zul’Gurub

Valnoth confirmed yesterday that Zul’Gurub is gone as a raid instance in Cataclysm. This makes me sad – I love Zul’Gurub, and not just because of the mounts I can’t get to drop! – but if you want something from there, better get to farmin’. ZG’s lockout resets every 3 days, so you can be in there pretty often compared to other raids. Keep in mind it’s not just mounts – you’ll probably also want to get The Deadliest Catch by fishing up Gahz’ranka and Hero of the Zandalar Tribe by grinding to exalted with the Zandalar Tribe while you’re at it. (Full clears of Zul’Gurub – even ones where you don’t kill much of the trash – yield a few thousand rep. You’ll also want to kill trash for coins and bijous. Zandalar Tribe is super-easy to grind to exalted these days.)

So yeah, this is your last shot at the Swift Zulian Tiger (and its achievement) and the Swift Razzashi Raptor (also with an achievement). I ran a full solo clear last night. I’ve also decided to keep a small collection of Zul’Gurub weapons – so many of the items in there are absolutely awesome looking, and so many of the designs and models weren’t re-used (or were re-used in Outland).

Who’s ready to start farming?!

Builders League United

My guild, <Builders League United> (or BLU for short) has a few new people in it. It’s kind of comforting, having the general chatter of a small friendly guild again. If you’re interested in seeing what we’re about, and possibly raiding with a small-schedule 10-man Horde-side raiding guild in Cataclysm, I highly recommend checking our site, especially the BLU policies and "What is BLU?" pages. We totally have a bank tab and a tabard, just like those other guys in the Guild Recruitment channel.

Loopholes for silly pirates

So it turns out that those of us working on Insane in the Membrane and trying to grind up our goblin rep after sacrificing it in the name of pirate rep have a small loophole I just now got around to finding – we are not stuck solely freeing Knot Thimblejack or grinding on endless pirates and nomads. After some careful (fingers-crossed, bated breath) experimentation last night, I found that – barring the repeatable "reconciliation turn-in quests" that were made solely to raise goblin rep with one city and lower Bloodsail Buccaneer rep – it seems like as long as Booty Bay isn’t the primary rep recipient, you can safely do quests for Gadgetzan, Ratchet, and Everlook questgivers without lowering your pirate reputation (and earning spillover reputation with all the goblin cities, as well). The best part about this is that since I chose to get IitM on my death knight, he’s done basically none of the goblin quests scattered throughout old-world Azeroth. Time to see the sights before the sights go away, and work on my title!

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Mounts, loopholes, BLU, and a CYOA update

He’s a blood elf paladin. Hooray! Belfadin was the #1 vote (due in large part thanks to the campaigning efforts of Tart), and so I started with a different name and chopped off letters and rearranged them until I got this guy.

Currently, he’s rocking a fiery Bloodied Arcanite Reaper (HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO), and the PvP plate shoulders and PvE plate chest because, well, that’s what I had. He’s also got heirlooms ready for tanking or healing, should those be the path chosen for him at 10.

So now, I need 2 votes from you, while I rapidly grind through levels 1-10:

1. What spec should Bishamel take? I’m currently leaning towards Holy – it’s gotten a number of votes, healing is a role I’ve never really done past about 25 or so, and it’ll let me glom quick queue times post 15 – but I’ll go with the crowd.
2. What should his professions be? I’ve picked up Mining and Engineering just for fun, but I’ll go with the crowd on this one.

Vote fast – level 10 comes quickly!

EDIT: Closing the voting early on this one because I’m kind of eager to get back to it. Protection it is.

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CYOA: Another pretty face

A lot of people are in the beta. Not me, I’m part of the small unwashed masses deemed unworthy of a beta key.

Nope, I’m spending my time farming achievements and leveling alts.

And that, my friends, is where you come in.

Taking a page from wow.com’s book, pick a race and class for me to level and I’ll blog about it because, hell, it could be fun. Here’s the conditions:

• No death knights (can’t roll a second one, anyway), warlocks, or shamans (I have both those classes at 74, and will scoot them to 80 in good time). Everything else is fair game.
• No Alliance toons. Just, no. However, I like all the Horde races, so orcs, trolls, blood elves, tauren, and Forsaken are all fair game.

Outside of that, suggest away. I’ve got heirlooms for just about any class, so there’s not one I’m going to shy away from leveling.

FINAL EDIT: Here’s the standings as of 7:45 PM EST Sunday. This is now the final tally, and it looks like I’ll be rolling a blood elf paladin…

• Forsaken rogue: 8
• Troll hunter: 1
• Blood elf priest: 2
• Tauren hunter: 1
• Blood elf hunter: 1
• Troll priest: 1
• Tauren druid: 2
• Blood elf paladin: 13
• Forsaken priest: 1
• Troll rogue: 2

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Choose your own adventure–actually, choose mine

1. I wanted to make sure I could get Sigrat’s keybindings set up ahead of time, and
2. It’s easier to pull with a mage, on account of having a ranged attaack with a range of greater than 10 feet, and
3. There have recently been changes that made dual-boxing a melee character … well, possible.

It’s still a touch awkward (namely if you try to attack with the melee character while the monster is still running towards you), but it’s a far sight better than having to run through the mob and flip it around. Here’s the guide. (Thanks to the folks at Dual-Boxing.com for figuring this out well before I ever needed it.)

• Besides the required keystroke passing app (I use Keyclone), you’ll want to have an addon that allows auto-following after combat. I’m currently using Jamba, last time I used TwoBoxToolkit. I can vouch for both; though Jamba’s got features above and beyond TBTK, and makes configuration a lot easier (plus has some graphical niceties like a small window on my "master" character showing how close everyone on my Jamba Team list is to leveling, whether they’re following, etc.), TBTK will get the job done.
• On the character or characters who will just be following you around, turn ON click-to-move (Main Menu > Interface > Mouse > check Click to Move).
• On the same character(s), go into the key bindings and bind something to Interact With Target. As the name implies, this is essentially a keybinding for right clicking. I set mine to the same key that, on all my other characters, makes pets attack. It’s fitting.
• And last but not least, you’ll want a macro you can hit to make this character assist your "master" character. I use a simple macro that says "/assist party1" because my dwarfadin will actually be following two different people. For ease of use I actually worked this into my other macros – I macroed together "/assist party1" and Judgement of Light, for instance.
• On the "master" character, combat goes like so:
• Engage target. For ranged classes, pull, for other classes, wade into combat.
• Once the target’s positioned, hit the keybinding that corresponds to the assist macro on the follower, then the keybinding that corresponds to the Interact With Target keybinding on the follower.
• ???
• Profit!

Because of the way that assist, click-to-move and the Interact with Target keybinding work, your follower will target your target, then "right-click" it – i.e., pull out their weapon and run into melee. This way you’re not strictly limited to having a ranged follower or healbot follower for ease of use. I was actually considering having him level up holy and using my rogue to do all the damage, but it’s just more fun this way.

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Dualboxing melee

So why did I revive Kallech? It’s hard to say. I’ve been taking a greater interest in my alts lately, mostly out of a desire to try different things. After all, prior to my DK, I only really had one other main – my warlock – and so there’s a lot of things I haven’t done. I’ve never leveled a healer past the 40s, for instance! Kallech is proving to be fun, too. Just for fun, I bought a mix of greens and blues off the AH and talented him up as elemental. Why? Mercurial whims – I woke up yesterday and was, for no apparent reason, really jazzed to play an elemental shaman. Turns out the late 40s is as good a time as any to do this.

After wandering over to Ironforge to get my Totem of the Earthen Ring, and equipping my newer bigger bags and my new shiny horribly mismatched greens and blues (I’m practicing my Outland clown suit look, if anyone asks), I then took the annoying trip to the Exodar. I hopped on my slow elekk, wandered down to the tram, took the tram to Stormwind, took the boat to Darnassus, got on the boat to the Exodar, and almost made it all the way to the Exodar without anyone pointing out that I could get my fast mount at 40, what a nub.

Sigh.

So after getting equipped with fast mount, then helping some lowbies stop the horseman in Azure Watch (fun fact: it is nigh impossible to see the fire in some places in there), I went back to the Hinterlands and pew pew’d my way through wolves, trolls, slimes, and what have you. Yay!

In 3 more days I’ll be the Champion of Ironforge, which will in turn bring me all the way up to Crusader level. I believe my first purchase will be a vest and those goofy-ass elemental shoulders, and maybe even one of the weapons. (I have a lot of champion’s seals.)

Alternately? I may just buy the two heirlooms, and a pony, since Ghostcrawler finally gave us that pony he promised. 

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Because Bell did it