Well I've hit level 80 over Christmas.  It was a great achievement.  Now I can begin raiding and doing heroics.  Some of my favorite things to do in WoW, especially with my guild.

First and the most important thing though is gear.  The guild may be ready to do Nax, but I may not be. My philosophy on gear is:

• Get things that are not too valuable, since they will be replaced. Don't overspend on gear that may be replaced on the first drop in that heroic/first raid run.


• Get gemmed and enchanted, but once again don't go overboard, you will replace things.  Go for the cheaper versions for starting gear.


• Get as close to your Hit Cap as possible - with three points into talents into destro and affliction hit talents you need 365 Hit to be hitcapped.  Who cares how much spell power you have if your Dots are not landing where they supposed to and your shadowbolts are flying off to the side.


• Balance your gear.  I don't believe glass cannon locks.  You're mana should be OK to cast a few things, your stamina should give you enough points to life tap occasionally and also to survive a tough fight or pull where healer may be overtaxed.  A lock is not a mage, and thus should not be bust damage then dead (no offense to our mage counterparts I hope).

When it comes to making money while leveling your WoW character, most of the people will advise to take up two gathering professions until you're way into your 40 and I would even advise to keep it into your 60's. I am actually leveling my Draeni Shaman in this manner, and boy do I have tons and tons of gold :D.  But is this a good advice, and is it the best in all cases?

If you chose to start leveling a crafting profession without having another toon to provide you with extra cash you will be a very very poor WoW soul. This I've learned the hard way when I just began my WoW journey. It is possible to enjoy the items you craft while you level, but you will be very tight on money.

So I got the set. I pushed really hard for a few days, and sacrificed a bit to push my tailoring to 375, and finally created my robe. The set is pretty cool. All of my curses and shadow bolts return a bit of life back to me. I've also re-socketed all of my pieces to add +hit bonuses for raiding and instance runs.



I will say one thing. It was a lot of work and resources to push my tailoring to 375. Tons and tons of mats. There are many people who say that it for a clothie it is almost a required choice to have tailoring to make one of the epic tailoring sets. I don't know if I agree though. Yes, the set allows you to have great gear without doing much instances or raiding. However, it is not a cheap set, and is very time and effort consuming.

Here is my main dilemma with the set. I've invested so much time and resources into it. What did I get it for? It's not a PVP set, so it's not really for PVPing. It's a PVE and Raiding set. But I am not big on doing instances and raiding. It is so time consuming, and frustrating to get a good group and for everything to go smoothly. Add to that the fact that my family members want immediate attention while I'm in a dungeon, and it equals pretty frustrating experience. So, for regular questing, I would have been fine with stuff I got as quest rewards and stuff tailors desperately sell in AH to help level their tailoring. It now seems almost like a waste to me. Maybe I've been better with an epic flyer? :(

I've been trying really hard to tailor my Frozen Shadoweave set for my Warlock. However, after spending tons and tons of money and time to either farm the primals or to buy them, I start questioning myself - is it worth the effort? It seems that I can probably find a lot of nice upgrades just doing the instances.

So far I got the shoulders and the boots, which are pretty nice. But they cost me a lot! I also made a huge mistake of making the shoulders twice ( i wanted to make the boots the second time). Finally the robe is not only very material intensive, but requires 375 tailoring. My tailoring is about 367. The only decent way to get up to 375 is to make imbued netherweave robe or tunic, which will be expensive to make and don't really sell that well.

So where am I going with all of this money talk? Don't I get enough money from questing? Well yes. However, I've set my eyes on the epic flyer, and I'm on NO BUYING policy until I get it! :( Let's hope that's soon. Until then, robe can wait, and I'll far the cloth to get my tailoring up.