Level 80! My Journey + Heroic runs!

Yup I dinged 80 yesterday after discovering an area in Icecrown which made me happy and sad. Sad because I still had 5 quest to turn in! /cry

First of all I'd like to thank my wife for supporting me in this crazy endeavour and waking me up after taking 2 hour naps to catch up on leveling =)

I have never enjoyed leveling like this before. So many fun and interesting quest. They really made it so you are the Hero. Here are my experiences

Howling Fjord 70-72

This is where I started. Really neat zones. It also gives you a nice background about the lore. Sometimes I had to fall in line for a named mob which takes anywhere from 2-3 minutes. Good thing most of the allies aren't looking for a fight. I finished the quests achievement for this zone.

Borean Tundra 72-74

This zone was packed I mean packed. Zone was not as beautiful as Howling but that did not stop me from questing there. I finished the quest achievement. I ran nexus only when I had all the quest. Finished it and I was done.

Dragonblight 74-76
Another excellent zone. I did the Wrath gate questline by accident lol. I finished the quest achievement just by following my quest.

Tip: When you get the quest from the wyrmest to ride a drake and wreck havoc. Don't turn it in till you leave the zone. It's like a free mount basically to navigate around the zone easily.

Grizzly hills - 76-77
I was all over the place on this zone. I had trouble going back and forth to do quest and turn in. I was spoiled by the earlier zones >_>. After hitting level 77 I finished the free port to dalaran quest, got the cold weather flying mount, finished some easy quest then I moved on.

Shalazar Basin 77-78
The best leveling zone in my opinion. Hunting zone really. It's Hemit Nesingwary's zone so what can I expect? Kill stuff! Also questing for an oversize amazon proved to be rewarding =P. All the quest are well done except for 1 .. the quest where you have to find the key under the water. So annoying.

You can get a whole level from this zone and finish it around 3-4 hours.

Zuldarak 77
While I was at basin I was summoned by guidies to do the arena event very much like the Ring of Blood from Nagrand. Easy xp I tell ya and the best part is you get Blue items in the end which will replace you item =P. Our healer replaced his healing mace from Sunwell and I got the 2H axe whose dps is way way up there from what I was using.

You know what's interesting? A voidwalker tanked all the bosses.

You get the quest from the Goblin under the Sewers at Dalaran. Don't miss this one!

Storm Peaks 78-79

This zone introduces you to the Vrykul's lore. One of my best memories of this zone was the quest where you are flying on a drake then you jump into an enemies drake while flying and fight to the death! Was that epic or what? This is the 2nd zone where I did not complete the quest achievement. I moved on after I hit 79. I wanted a better xp/hour zone and I know I'll get some easy xp from starting quest from Icecrown.

Tip: If you only have a handful of quest left don't abandon it. At one time I had 2 quest. This zone really has assloads of chain quest and requires you to finish some certain quest to pop up. So be patient!

Icecrown 79-80
This is one of the zones where they use their phasing system freely. Example was I was sent to a cliff, defend it, I went back to camp then turned the quest in, got another quest to go back the same cliff and BAM cliff is now a quest hub lol. This happened like 3+ times.

Do you like bombing missions? Then your in for a treat here!

Some quest can be done twice because they turn into a daily. Do it again if you felt that quest was easy.

I don't recommend going in here as 78 or lower. If you can find a partner to do some quest it will be much easier.



What can I say, Blizzard really did a good job on the leveling zones. I really had a good time. So much work has been done and it really shows. Tons of variety in quests. I still have a zone to do and I have to finish the quest line in Storm Peaks to get some Rep with Son Of Thorin or w/e.

Heroics

Well heroics are no pushover =) They hit like a truck. We finished Nexus and Az nerub last night. My group already finished UK early that afternoon so I didn't do it. I was tanking them cause we had no tanks. All of them were in Naxx.

I got a blue shield from the last boss at Nexus last night which had 7k+ armor. WOW! Goodbye Kazrogal's hardened heart. I wanna do more heroics later today to get some upgrades. Hopefully I get some tonight =).

Any tanks here know any good items from heroics? I need some upgrades!