I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the Argent Tournament with Rubeola farming Champion Seals to buy heirloom items. I now have four: two cloth armor pieces, a staff, and a trinket. And I’m working to buy even more. For my trouble, I’m finding leveling my new shaman to be a breeze. He’s sailing through the content with hardly any trouble from the mobs. He’s yet to be in even a close fight (except, of course, in PVP, which is a completely different story). And the +20% to experience gains is just wonderful. Baruk is not even half way through the Bloodmyst Isle quests and he’s almost level 20.
I can’t help but wonder, though, if it all isn’t too easy. I don’t mind, really, having an easy time leveling up to 80. I do want to hit 80 as quick as I can so I can start doing end-game stuff with my guild. But it does occur to me that I don’t really know what its like to level up an elemental shaman from scratch, with no help from heirloom items and gold. I’ve leveled enhancement before, and I think that’s probably the best way to level. But I have a theory that elemental is also completely viable and I’d kind of like to test that theory.
So, I think I’m going to level a second shaman. I happen to have a level 1 shaman on a different server. I was going to use her as a bank toon (yes “her”) for a death knight I rolled on a friends server. This is a server that I have no history with, so if I level a shaman from scratch, she’ll be completely on her own. No help from heirloom items or gold or anything (well, I could cheat and send gold from my death knight, but I think I won’t for this particular experiment).
The plan, then, is to see Baruk hit 20 and get his mount. And then I’m going to switch over to my other shaman (I can’t even remember her name at the moment) and start leveling her so I can see the difference. I may decide that leveling elemental without help is just too painful. Or, I may find that it is just as much fun. I’m hoping it’s the later, and if it is, I’m going to try alternating leveling the two shaman.
A side-effect of this plan is that I’ll finally be leveling a toon on my friend’s server, which is something I’ve been threatening to do for weeks without success.
