rambling business (unedited)

I just got paid. I went to see District 9, we had sushi for lunch, I bought not one but two new drills, and the latest Clutch album. Not a bad days work! This evening, whilst waiting for the show to finish, I've been reading Zardoz' WOW datamining blog, which has all sorts of interesting statistics culled from the WoW armoury, including which professions Blood Elves find most popular, and exactly which hunter pets are the most popular. I've learned that at patch 3.1, death knights were the most popular character, followed by paladins, while warlocks were least popular, followed by rogues. this is a bit mental really, and I'm sure that this balance changes all the time, and is probably changing as we speak. I guess I find it mental because when I first rolled pala, there wasn't that many of us around, and it seemd like everyone was a rogue. I gather that when WoW first came out, everyone rolled hunters, because they were prevalent in the advertising, and warriors, because, hell, warriors kick ass in every other game.
On Nordrassil, it seems like there is plenty of everything. If someone had asked me to hazard a guess at the least popular class, I would have said Warlock, but mostly because I think they are a bit of a pain to level, and its rare that a good one will show up in an alliance BG. A few Horde ones show up, but It feels like they're in a minority, and their channeling spells are very annoying, but not all that common a killing blow for me.
This week, I am starting to level the Hunter in some earnest, and enjoying it enormously. mid twenties and going strong, but you can get to the mid 20s blindfold these days. I hope to invest some time in running AB at the 29 bracket, it will be a good exercise in panic and CC rotations, and be something of a break from the fedexing around azeroth that I am currently doing. I have a wolf and a crab in the stable, and both are ace. I am trying to complete ach's as I go, fishing, cooking, exploring and pvp, so that I don't have to wander about when he is an 80 to get a respectable ach total. It is also adding another dimension to experience gain, and I hope to establish a kind of ach level for myself every few xp levels. For example, if you can have 200 points at 18-20, is it reasonable to double that by 30? (probably doable in exploration alone) or treble it? if you then treble it, then does that expansion curve continue? as more battlegrounds open up to you, more prof and dungeon ach's appear too.
Further questions arise from this thought process. Does keeping up with these give you an efficient framework for levelling too? by having to explore an area as soon as you are feasibly able too, do you find all the quests more efficiently, or are you likely to cover the ground more needlessly than just going about your business? If you're rolling BGs throughout the levelling process, does rolling enough of them to gain the easy ach's mean you have rolled enough to get the useful honor gear too? maybe. I suspect my answer to the last question is going to be keep the honor for 50 to 59 bracket, which is probably going to be the most boring, and I may have to get stuck into AV at 56,57 in order to avoid a lot of eastern plaguelands chaos. I spent far too much time there on Noah, and i just don't like it now, unless there's a scourge invasion going on:-)
In other news, we went into Trial of the Crusader the other day and after abandoning heroic mode, we did alright. It felt like my damage output sucked, being inconsistent beyond belief. (I still don't subscribe to recount, as I don't think I need any more excuses for changing my setups every few days) for the first fifteen minutes of attempts I was just trying to get back into PVE rotations, and trying to get my omen off my bars ( I recently moved all my bars up into centre of the screen, and kind of forgot about Omen in the BG focussed rejig). I can churn out damage alright, and my CDs were going well, but my positioning was shit, and therefore when i was connecting I was stealing threat or on the front of the boss, and when I wasn't connecting, I was of no real use. It panned out a bit after a short while, but then we were more or less done, as its such a short instance. I did really enjoy dpsing in an instance, and would kill to do more of it, particularly with friends, but I should spend a bit of time at the dummy getting my twitches in order, and not automatically flicking to anti cc spells, pointlessly self healing, or watching my buddies for shields and cleanses:-)