9 and counting...

As a welcome diversion from wiping on Mythic Hellfire Assault (expect a post from me moaning about that... soon), I have been slowly moving my army of alts up to 100.

There is no rush as I still think the expansion is around 6 months away, but nothing is grabbing my interest outside of raiding at the moment so the alts are getting some love.

The lazy mage has been doing some normal raiding, twice reaching 12/13 normal on the guild's 'drunken alt run'. 
It's been a lot of fun despite having some terrible luck with loot.

The Shaman feels amazingly powerful when there is a call for stacked AoE... Iskar add phases, Xhul'horac imps, Socrethar ghosts... but has troughs to match those peaks... Iron Reaver bombs, Kil'rogg and Gorefiend adds.

The Frost Mage is much more of an all-rounder.  It will never reach the highs of those AoE phases but, by the same token, I haven't found any weaknesses in the toolkit at all.

Blink, Icy Floes and the many instant cast spells combine to make it an incredibly mobile spec and it handles the fights in HFC brilliantly.

And while it can't match the big numbers on sustained AoE, it's burst AoE is excellent and is backed up by really solid single target damage.

Where the Frost Mage really does excel though is where the Shaman has problems, rapid target switches.  The mage doesn't miss a beat as it moves from target to target, instantly slowing them and hitting them with the full dps from the outset.

Other classes may be even better than the Frost Mage in this area but I have never had such an easy time on Kil'rogg and Gorefiend.

It all comes together to build what feels like an incredibly dynamic playstyle and it is so much fun to play!

The mage is not the only one to get some love though, my rogue has been having a little runout too. 

I go back to the rogue so many times during an expansion as I still love to play him but after so long as ranged and healer, I struggle when I go into melee range.

I need to be able to actually see my character, strange I know :P, to play it properly.  When things get messy, as they do in melee range, I stray out of range or in front of the boss and lose a lot of dps.

I think I would probably get used to it again if I played as melee all the time but I prefer the freedom of ranged play.

Anyway, only a couple of pugs for my rogue with little success but it was nice to get him moving along and collecting some Tomes. 

My Priest made it to 100 and dived straight into Tanaan Jungle.

As I pretty much skipped all of Nagrand, going from 98 to 100 just by collecting treasures, I was a bit lacking in gear so had to be extremely cautious in the jungle.

It added a sense of danger that had been missing on all my other chars, and the experience was a lot more thrilling.  I imagine it would have been quite intense playing this way prior to flying and I feel like I have missed out on truly experiencing the content as it was designed.

It's also strange to think that Tanaan Jungle, where most of our play is currently, will be completely bypassed once Legion is released.  It will be harder content with (maybe) lesser rewards than the first questing zones of the Broken Isles, and will soon be forgotten like Timeless Isle and others before that. 
Who goes to Quel'danas at level now?
Or Molten Front?
Or Isle of Thunder?
So much forgotten content.

Priest decided to go Disc (FoTM yeah yeah whatever) - I rarely heal on my Shaman these days and have lost a bit of the knack for it, far too reactive with my heals.

Wanting a main-spec healer and knowing that Disc priests need to be very proactive with their heals and shields, it was an easy choice.
Just like the Mage, great plans of raiding on my priest were optimistic to say the least and a couple of trips into LFR destroyed any motivation I had.

The new plan is to deck him out in Empowered Baleful gear then a trip through LFR to get used to keybinds and on to the Alt run or pugs... time permitting of course ;-)

I even logged into my Prot Paladin this week, sorted through the gear he had amassed from various follower/boat missions until I had a workable tank spec.
I queued for Hellbreach LFR as tank, cancelled the queue almost immediately and logged off... just couldn't put myself through lfr as tank, maybe next week (probably not).

The Monk made his way, mostly via collecting treasures, to 100.  It's remarkable how much XP those treasures give...
I had been questing merrily along to 96 and opened up Spires of Arak as soon as it was available (No rested XP at this point)
Open up the Brewery for the 20% XP gain
Complete Captain Taylor quests
Complete Salvage Yard quests
Then I just collected treasures. ALL the treasures!
All of the treasures in Spires and Nagrand left me 2 bars short of level 100!
Roughly 5 quests later...

DING! 
Number 9!

Only DK and Warrior to go!