The Big Nine-O!

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to Horde and Alliance alike, that Darkbrew the Brewmaster has reached level 90!

At about 10:30 on Saturday evening I turned in a quest and — ding, I hit the big nine-O. And then I just sat there, because I had not clue about what to do next. This list of options and to-dos was instantly overwhelming. Learning to fly, leveling professions, gearing for heroics and raiding, planting a garden, and getting a cloud serpent of my very own.

To the folks in Niuzao Temple, please accept my sincere apologies for leaving you to defend yourselves against whatever horrible creatures were ravaging your beautiful temple. I ask you to please understand that Cloud Serpents are beautiful creatures and they don’t grow up overnight, and every self-respecting hero of the land needs to have one. Don’t worry, I shall return. Maybe.

Knowing that the temple could fall and all of its inhabitants killed, and being okay with this, I immediately opened up the group find to queue for a heroic. In case you were wondering, you need an average ilevel of 440 to queue. This is something I did not know.

The good news is you can get some decent ilevel 450 gear from questing in the Dread Wastes. Guess who turned 90 without having set foot in that zone? If you’re anxious to get into heroics, head to the Dread Wastes at 89 and use this zone to reach 90. I spent a good chunk of the day on Sunday plowing through this zone.

Another thing I recommend at 90 is that you go to Temple of the White Tiger and pick up the quest for the arena scenario. Once you get the quest you can just queue for it. Scenarios are designed for three players of any class and role so you shouldn’t have any issues in a pug.

You should also start queuing for Coren Direbrew at 89. Keep in mind that at current gear levels this is actually a tough fight. Don’t be surprised if you wipe.

Some of the other things I did upon hitting 90 were,

• Made my way to the new capital city. It has city portals, bank, AH, transmog, reforge and void storage.
• Trained in flying. The cost was around 2700g. Very reasonable.
• Leveled up First Aid. You should have more than enough cloth to do this.
• Leveled up Engineering and made my epic googles. I bought all of the mats and it cost about 10K to level and make the goggles.
• Reforged my gear to be hit and expertised capped.
• Made Engineering cogs for the goggles and trinket. I put hit and expertise in both for a total 1200 rating in each. This made reforging other pieces easier.
• Began doing the crazy amount of dailies to work on rep and earn back the 10K.
• Ran a couple of heroics. Much easier than Cata heroics, but a bad pug group is still a bad pug group.
• I’ve been running as BM with a Quilen. Yes I’ve had to use his battle res.
• I took Glaive Toss at 90. Not that impressed with it, and not sure where to fit this into the rotation.
• I’m learning to adjust to life without Tier 13. It’s a lot of lost focus regen.
• I still have Blink Strike but am considering changing to Crows for heroics.
• I loved Thrill of the Hunt for leveling, but may switch to Dire Beast now.

It’s been less than a week since MoP was released and I’m having an absolute blast. This expansion is some of Blizzard’s finest work, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this takes the mantle of best WoW expansion period.

Have you hit 90 yet, and what sorts of things are you doing?