Adventures in Kara and Paladin leveling

First I would like to thank all the quitters out there, who
effectively limited my Kara run last night to 10 badges. I would also
like to issue a special thanks to the quitters who joined the group
long enough for me to waste a shard to summon them, only to leave
moments later. You guys are the best.

I got into this Kara group last night, and it was a really good
group. Excellent feral tank, and holy priest healer. We stormed
through Attuman and Moroes without a single death. Had a few deaths
on the way to maiden when a few people started getting sloppy.
Butchered maiden, and had a relatively easy time with R&J at the
stage.

From there we went through the back door and made an attempt on
Nightbane. This is where things got confusing. I never did Nightbane
before, so I asked what I needed to do. They designated one player as
the "safe place to stand" and put a raid marker on him, similar to the
Prince fight. I can handle that. Make sure to let the tank get lots
of aggro before starting DPS, not a problem either. And when the adds
come, everyone stands in the same spot and single target attack them,
don't AoE. Not a problem there either. So the fight starts and the
first scorched earth thing appears. I figure out on my own this isn't
a good place to be standing, and I see the raid marked player moving
and follow him. Problem was, I was the only one who did. Half the
raid died standing in that same spot. This of course led to a wipe.
We make a second attempt and did pretty good. Got to the first wave
of adds. Took them out and when Nightbane came back down, tank goes
about tanking, but healer doesn't heal him. Tank dies, raid wipes.
I'm up for a 3rd attempt, feeling we've got the bull*** out of our
system now and can move on to take him out, but no one else feels that
way. One person even makes the claim that we didn't do better, which
we did do better because we lasted longer.

So, on to Curator. We get to his room and start clearing through it.
Unfortunately, the tank got a little too close and pulled Curator.
Half the raid starts trying to make a run for it. Instead of running,
I took notice that my soulstone cooldown was up, made a soulstone, and
soulstoned the priest. I ended up dieing, of course, and I got to see
a few of the people who attempted to make a run for it get teleported
back. That was kinda funny. In any case, we cleared the rest of the
room and pulled Curator. Probably the fastest I have ever seen him go
down. He only managed 1 Evocate. After that 1 evocate his health was
so low that we just DPS'd him the rest of the way. And after all
that, the T$ hunter/mage/warlock glove token drops. There is no
hunter in the group. Only my warlock and a mage to roll on it. Mage
rolls 15, I roll 85. Got my first raid tier item.

After this the mage quits the group. Hes not the first to leave, the
first left right after maiden, but that was fine, he helped find his
own replacement and told us beforehand he had to go. The mage just
dropped group and teleported without saying a word. Then we notice
our uber feral main tank and uber holy main healer have disconnected.
We wait a while and they never return. Through the whole instance one
player in the group was harrassing our off-tank in raid chat. It was
obvious they knew each other, but that the off-tank didn't know who
the other guy was. He kept trying to figure out who the guy was but
was never really able to. So we spend a while in LFG trying to get
new members. We get ourselves back to 9, but still need a good healer
to fill out the group. Then one of our replacements, who I had just
summoned less than a minute before, said "this is lame, I'm going to
run this with a friend", drops group and starts to teleport. Just as
his teleport is about to complete, the off-tank says "you're already
saved to this instance". Ha, take that waster of soulshards.

We replace that mage with another mage and decide that while we look
for a good healer to start clearing some trash. We have the shadow
priest switch to temporary healing for a bit. We pulled 1 mob and
killed it. The tank then, without telling us, ran around the corner
and pulled the next mob. No one really noticed until we saw the tank
was dead. We ran around the corner and saw what happened. We all had
a good laugh over it.

Thats when everything came crashing down though. We rez him, and
while waiting this other player who had been harrassing him all this
time ran down and pulled the group of 2 at the bottom of the ramp, on
purpose, laughed in party chat as he died, and dropped group. This
was followed by the hunter and another player as well. We're now down
to 6 people. There are no healers in LFG. The few people that are in
LFG want to do a fresh run, not join one in progress. Basically,
we're screwed. So the group ends. I walk out with 10 badges and T4
gloves. That puts me at 123 badges, only 27 more to go.

I tried for a while to get a group for a heroic but there just weren't
any groups forming. So I decided to switch to my paladin.

My horde paladin, who I started as a bank alt over a year ago when I
came to that server. For fun I leveled him, eventually getting him to
level 22 so I could get the talent Pursuit of Justice. Increased run
speed is a great talent for a bank alt. Anyway, I did a quick respec
to put points in more useful places, picked up a 2-handed axe, 2-
handed mace, and a polearm, and along with my 2-handed sword, set out
to level. I decided to hit the barrens first. I know there are some
quests that are still yellow at level 22. And I need to go to Org and
TB for axe and mace training anyway. So I spent about half an hour
traveling, getting FP's, and training. Finally make my way back to
the barrens and start questing. First order of business, get my 2h
mace, 2h axe, and polearm skills up. So I head out to fight
quillboars. I used Seal of the Crusader. It increases attack power
and attack speed, but the increased attack power degenerates over
time. I only wanted the increased speed to make weapon skilling
faster.

So I'm out "killing" quillboars, more or less hitting them for almost
no damage until I get low on health, then switching to my sword to
finish them off, heal, drink, and move on. Yes I know this isn't the
way to play a paladin, I was only trying to get all my 2-handed weapon
skills up so I can freely choose between them if a better drop arose.
So while I am out there working on my skillups, some other horde
paladin sees me "in trouble" and decides to lend a hand, as in run up
and finish the mob off for me. I politely ask him not to do that, a
request he ignores. Eventually I finish 2 quests I had that involved
killing quillboars, and leveled to 23 while doing it. Got my mace and
axe skills up, but my polearm skill is still low. Went south for
another 2 quests. Ran across a named mob that drops an item that
starts a quest, so I killed him and got that 3rd quest. I tried to
skill my polearms up a little more but the mobs here were slightly
higher level than I was, so I ended up switching to my trusty sword
and only got polearms to around 80. Killed a lot of quilboars looking
for the 3 quest items, then killed the 3 named quilboars for their
skulls. With 3 complete quests, I head back to Camp Taurajo. I turn
them in and I am given another quest to return to someone at
Crossroads. I am very close to leveling again in less than an hour.
I fly north and turn in the quest and hit 24. 2 levels in an hour,
really not bad.

Then I ran into the big issue, I don't know of any horde paladin
trainers outside of Silvermoon and UC. That led to a long trip back
to UC at 24 to train.

My goal, for the time being, is to get him to level 50. I plan on
going hedgehog pally, possibly around level 40, to hopefully speed my
leveling. It will be nice having a bank/AH alt that can DE the trash
greens I send him.
.

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