It wasn't nearly as painful as I thought, though; getting from 70 to 80. I usually HATE leveling, but thanks to QuestHelper and Carbonite, it wasn't that bad. I'd highly recommend Carbonite, though. It's far more fleshed out than Quest Helper is. It gives you a quest tracker that you can move around, and by clicking on small orbs next to the quest objectives it can lead you to each individual quest objective. The closest quest/objective is always at the top of the box, too, with a readout of how many yards away you are. Also, once you start running/flying towards it, you're given an "ETA" to boot. It's great. I think my favorite part about Carbonite is the map function: You're given a small minimap that you can use to zoom out, zoom in, and click and drag to view a different area. Aaaaaaaaand it tells you where friends, groupmates, and guildmates are, if they have Carbonite. It even tells you when they level up!
QuestHelper isn't too bad, either, it just doesn't do as much. If you open up your world map, it'll give you a trail of 'ants' leading to your next objective. You follow them, complete the objective, and it tells you where to go next. It's really good about giving you the fastest route to take in order to complete all of you objectives.
Now, as far as dinging 80, I've been keeping busy since then too. Dinged 80 Monday night at about ~11:30, and then moved on to heroics yesterday. First up was Heroic Nexus; that sucked. Ormorok was a reminder to get uncrittable, and to get it NOW (which I did immediately following this). He enraged at 20%, and started clobbering me for ~10k a swing...
...and then he crit me. I was dropped like a bad habit. He then went on to beat the living tar out of the rest of the group, leading two of our DPS to leave. So, I brought in my buddies Silentstep and Desslock to help out Silentknight and I. Our healer was still kind of 'meh', though. He couldn't keep my undergeared ass alive. =( So, when he had to leave, we brought in Rethaed and we then proceeded to burn up the rest of the instance except Keristrasza, whom ate my face. We had to leave at that point, as raid was starting up. We tried to come back later, but she had despawned (???).
As far as the raid, it was awesome. Sartharion and his little buddies aren't too bad at all. We did clear out his drakes, as leaving them alive with our gear... prooooooobably not the best idea yet. We went around, beating up lizards and jumping through giant glowing circles, and then faced down the big fellow in the middle. It wasn't too hard, as the other twenty four people I was with had done it the night previous. I just followed their lead, dropping consecrations and beating up the little adds that spawned while dodging the tidal waves of lava. After kicking his ass, I got my T7 gloves, and I was rather happy indeed. Weeeeeeeeeeeee~
Anywho, next we jumped into Naxx for the first time. I learned quickly that my computer did not appreciate windowed mode in there, at all, and was damn near useless until Noth the Plaguebringer. (Took me that long to figure out how to fix my lag). But anywho, Anub'rekhan was easy. AoE the little adds, move away when he lets out his Swarm, and burn down the big adds when they come out to play. Collect loot. Dance happily. /dance
Next up we had Grand Widow Faerlina, who was quick to drop as well. There's not much to her, either. Kill the two followers that come with her, and let an offtank dance around with the worshippers. When she enrages, Mind Control a worshipper and use him to soothe her. Poison Cleansing totems are reccomended for her Poison Bolt Volley, too. Other than that, tank and spank, collect loot.
Theeeeeeen we had Maexxna. We did wipe once on her, because we ended up positioning against the wrong wall. Oops. But anywho, the only real tricks to her are to position her against the Southeast (IIRC it was the Southeast) corner, have the tank face her towards the center of the room, and then proceed to wail on her from behind her. Keep HoT's rolling on the tank to keep him/her alive during Web Sprays, destroy the coccoons quickly during Web Wrap to avoid losing raid members, AoE adds and dispel Necrotic Poison IMMEDIATELY when the tank gets it; preferably with Abolish Poison.
Last kill of the night was Noth the Plaguebringer. He kind of sucked. Not because he was extraordinarily difficult, it's because one of the offtanks (/kicks himself) was lagging too hard to pick up adds because his dumbass was playing in windowed mode. After playing in full screen to get rid of the lag, I was able to collect adds no problem. We smoked him. Oh, make sure you decurse fast too, mages/druids. Ten people are cursed every thirty seconds; dispel them all, because for every target missed, the raid takes ~23,000 damage. Yaaaaaaaaay! Have fun with that one healers. <3 href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Culling_of_Stratholme">Culling of Stratholme too. If the developer who created Meathook reads this, I hate you. No, seriously. Meathook is not cool. Healer stands in with melee, he gets interupted for four seconds every pulse of Meathooks disease. If he stands far away, he gets wrapped up in chains for five seconds at a time and takes ~9000 damage to boot. It was a PAIN IN THE ASS to get that sunuvabitch into a position where I and the melee could be healed, but the healer would be out of LoS of the chains. Once we did that, though, the instance was easy. I even got the shield. Please don't hurt me Sith. =(
