"I see cow and chicken and ride little horsie..."

So I started Friday night about halfway through level 33 with Ulushnar. By the time I finally logged out on Sunday night, I'd hit my goal of level 40. Jame's levelling guide provided a useful framework, but I found myself diverging from it in parts in order to do quests I found more interesting.

I've started to find my feet with the Paladin. Protection's a difficult talent tree for levelling, since you're more focussed on survival than doing damage, so each kill can take a while. A lot of Ulushnar's activate only when he's hit, so I've found the best strategy is to try and fight multiple mobs at the same time. More mobs hitting you = more chance of your abilities activating = better damage output. If the mobs are tough, then there's some downtime whilst you recover health and mana afterwards, but this is something I've found with almost all classes except maybe Beastmastery Hunters.

Anyway, this is Ulushnar just after he hit 40, in his new Plate armor and riding his new magical Warhorse:



Whilst I spent most of the weekend levelling Ulushnar, I did log Wulf on for Saturday Night's Karazhan run. I had a headache and didn't really enjoy it, and I'm questioning if I really wanna continue raiding. We were using Ventrilo to attempt better co-ordination, but our Raid Leader couldn't get his microphone working, so we had half-a-dozen "backseat tacticians" on Vent arguing about the best way to deal with each fight in a manner that was most famously parodied in the Leeroy Jenkins video. This situation only got worse with each subsequent wipe until I had to ask them all to shut up and for someone to just decide what we were doing. I left the group shortly after that and decided to spend the rest of the evening watching a film. I find Vent a useful tool, but one that encourages lengthy planning sessions before most of the fights that really don't feel necessary or useful.

I'm not sure if it's Wulf, raiding or the people on Vent that ire me so, but raids just don't feel as fun as five-mans, which just feels wrong to me. Given it's gonna be at least a month before Ulushnar's available for raiding, I'm gonna avoid raids with Wulf until that time, see if I can find some enthusiasm by entering in a new role.