This is a follow up post to my previous entry regarding AOE and your Alts.  I've been AOE grinding with my frost mage and my protection paladin, and all I have to say is that AOE grinding is better then ever.  The Frost Mage is a lot of fun with the fact that Blizard now crits.  With correct talent (here is the talent build I am using), and the glyph that allows for extra damage to the MOB before they break out of frost nova, that blizzard will crit quite a few times.  In fact looking at some videos from the past of a mage a bout my level (mid 40s) grinding with AOE and Blizzard I can say that my blizzard does double if not triple damage now, thus killing the MOBs on the second wave.

Paladins are even in a better situation.  It is easier to manage seals and judgements, and do additional DPS.  Plus the change to Blessing of Sanctuary to move it from DPS to mana regenaration is great, I no longer run out of mana while I'm AOE grindnign and can use more DPS abilities that relie on mana.  Here is my build for paladin.

The conventional wisdom with all the recent patches is that it's much more productive to quest then to grind.  Even when it comes to AOE grinds, it's still better to just do the quest.  Perhaps that is true.  But what if you have an alt who you just use to DE things.  He's level 44 and you don't feel like doing quests which you've already done recently with two other alts.
Well if he's a mage, why not AOE grind.  I've tried this with my mage when I was in my level 20's.  At that point I did not like it at all.  In fact I hated the whole frost things.  Now at 44 and with tons and tons of rested XP, why not AOE a bit now and then and get to level 50, while I keep leveling my main through the Northrend, and take my time there to enjoy the quests.

So I've specked my mage frost AOE, and some initial AOEing proved to be quite fun.  It's soooo nice to have the ice barrier.  Before it, it was always a very close call when I did AOE.  Now it's much more practical and safer.  I will tweak the spec tonight, and will do some more murlock killing.

At the same time, it gives me an idea to about my other alts.  My paladin can also gain a few levels this way.  In fact he was my first AOE successful experiement, I leveled him and did most of the questing using a proteciton spec.  My biggest question is can I do the same with my druid.  I've read some posts, and it may be possible to grind him as AOE.  I should try feral, and balance perhaps to see which is more viable.

Well, Amazon got it right, I've got my Wrath of the Lich King Collectors Edition today.  Can't wait to get home and play! :D

Well,  it's been a rocky week for WoW.  After all the issues with the servers, they all died after maintenance and pretty much were out for the whole day on 11/11/08.  Sad, but true.

Wrath is out tomorow.  I'm crossing my fingures it will be smooth playing.  I ordered a collectors edition from Amazon.com and I'm praying I get it tomorow :D!

I can't wait for Thursday to be here.  Wrath is coming out and I'm very exited to begin leveling my main in the new zone.  I've had the beta key for quite a while, but I've avoided playing the starter zones with the copy of my main - Moramor.  Instead I've experimented with the Blizzard premade level 80 copies.  So I've purposely missed all the content in the begging of Northrend to enjoy it better when expansion comes out.
For now, I've been doing a bit of raiding with the guild.  We've downed first three bosses in Mt. Hijal, that was fun.  I've also been leveling my druid a bit.  I just enjoy playing with him.  He's also has inscription that I'm leveling along with him.  I've been also trying to get rid of all of my stuff I've been hoarding in my banks.  So far so good.  The only thing I can't to be able to get rid of is the spell cloth.  Nobody wants it.  Primal mooncloth went well, and I'm making the 28 slot soulshard bags from the shadowweave cloth and they are selling as well.

Inscription prices are dropping like the Stock Market.  Now that there are tons of people who do inscription, there are too many glyphs in the market.  The herb prices are still high though since demand for them is now easing up at this point.  If you want to have a good bundle of cash for the Wrath, drop one of your professions and pick up herbalism and just leveling it to max.  All the herbs you gather in the process will make you rich.

As far as my copy of Wrath, i've ordered a collector's edition from Amazon.com.  It should be delivered on the release day.  I hope it is, since I took the next day off, and would have to drive to work to pick it up if it comes late.  Cross my fingers :D.

The wrath of the Leach King is only a week away (I'm very exited).  Meanwhile, since all the raid bosses got really nerfed in the patch 3.02 my guild has been running ZA in the way we've ran Kara before - like all the time :D.  I've so far completed ZA 3 times.  Here are some tips I can give to others in regards to things I've learned.  Most of these things are beyond the basic strategy, and will be more specific to warlocks and perhaps other spell ranged DPS: