Yesterday I decided I’d spend some time leveling my paladin. She was 52, sporting a full set of frostfell legendary gear, and I’d upgraded some spells to adept1. I headed to Living Tombs which has always been an absolute favorite zone of mine since DoF released. I just love the look of it, battling mummies and the whole underground theme of the zone of broken ruins. Shadowgeist came along, and as we made our way further into the zone it was apparent that something was different.
Remember the patch last week that said:
The master scroll drop rate in Desert of Flames has been increased to more closely match those of the rest of the game.
Well, they were not kidding. I have no idea if this is going to stay this way, but pretty much EVERY encounter in DoF (heroic) was dropping huge amounts of chests, and 1/3 would drop a master (roughly). As you can see in the screen shot above, it was pretty crazy. My paladin went in there to level and I walked out with about 60 master spells, and over 500 adepts. I know I had that many because my group completely filled up on room, and then I started transmuting the items (arysh is my handy transmuter). The 70-79 channel was filled with people selling the ancient teaching spells that don’t get upgrades for what would have in the past been considered VERY cheap prices. Percussion of stone, requiem of reflection, murderous design, etc. All of the 52’s that had no upgrade were all dropping along with a LOT of other masters.
The screen shot above was from a group of encounters that were pulled to the center of the room. Paladin and Shadowknight have a great amount of AoE dps spells, and we made short work of the groups. A chest dropped for every individual encounter, and lots of them.
After a few hours in the zone, my paladin had about 7 new master spells scribed, and had leveled from 52 to 60. I had to stop at 60 because I knew later in the day I would be doing Spirits of the Lost, which is an old raid zone that you enter from the doors of Cazic Thul.
My paladin (and every character for that matter) has been leveling very fast even without another level 80 on the account, and without any 5 year veteran reward that gives you the ability once a week to replenish your vitality. I’ve never complained about a lack of end game content, and I always have *something* to do even if I’m not sure what it is that I want to do, so I don’t mind racing through, also compounded by the fact that I already have 4 level 80’s and two high 70’s that I did experience all of the content at a rather slow pace with.
The strangest thing about all of this, is that I am actually enjoying playing my paladin. In the 7 years I’ve played MMO’s (I know, I’m still a baby) I’ve never played a tank. I did make one in Vanguard but I’ve never gotten over level 15 with them before, always going back to my healers or utility classes (I’ve never played flat dps classes either). I suppose a good portion of it has to do with the fact that I like being able to accomplish things myself, and I can when I box which is how I’ve been playing lately.
Next goal? Reach 62 and outfit her properly with some gear, and work on getting my skills up. Her aggression and spell casting skills are just fine, but her defense and parry are horribly low since she rarely does any of the tanking. Maybe before too long I’ll be able to make my own groups, and on a very plus note, Nostalgia doesn’t currently have any high level tanks for instances etc. It would be nice to have one available (though that would mean we also have no healers since I typically play those). As a random side note, we’re still recruiting as always, and /who all nostalgia will show you who’s around. We’re not big, but we’re friendly and our guild hall rocks. We also managed to ding level 32, and we’re half way through 33! I’m very proud of everyone who’s been working on getting the guild status. At level 35 we can add two more amenities to the hall, it’ll be nice to have a broker!
Hopefully Sabaki doesn’t mind me posting this here, but anyhow as you can tell from the screen shot on the right, I got a response about looking for a raid guild. I’d love to take them up on the offer, but there’s no way I could handle raiding at 3am my time (EST). Which is one of the down sides to Najena (but not really). I could handle raiding during the day time, or early morning, but 3am is a bit much. Najena is a heavy EU and Aussie populated server, which means during the day there are LOTS of people around and I really enjoy that. 
I realize that I’ll never find a guild when I don’t know who I want to play or how often I want to raid and that I’m going about this backwards. I figure there is no real point in settling down and searching until after the holidays, when people are not all off at Christmas parties and doing the family thing. This also gives me a little more time to reach 80 on the defiler and templar and perhaps narrow down the search of who to play a little more. I’ve always loved the defiler, but she’s been behind in levels, and that’s a huge incentive NOT to play her. Grinding RoK AGAIN is a slow and exceptionally painful process, especially with a healer. Thankfully I have a level 80 sage and jeweler, I can honestly say that all of my ‘end game’ characters have adept3’s of all of their spells, something I really take pride in. 
A Pixel Nomad 