Starting Cataclysm with your ALT

You know who you are!

You're the kind of player that likes levelling, but not the grind of faction work and collecting Justice points for gear. You don't scour the Auction house for every available edge and you rarely ever use stat food or potions.

You play organically. You play for fun. You may just avoid instances and do solo content because the pressures of "group" play are kind of intense. Fight some. Skin some. Mine some. Do the next quest. Ohh look!!

Congratulations! Your character made it to level 80!

Lets move onto Cataclysm content..... And get your ass handed to you.

There is an ocean of difference between level 79 WotLK content and level 80 Cataclysm content.

There are alot of nasty nasty things with truly quick spawn times in the new Cataclysm zones. The water goblins and naga in Vash'ir or the twilight cultists and fire elementals in Hyjal. Both types will repop quickly and hit like a truck. I was getting beaten up.

Demonology spec helped. Crafted Emberweave helped. Getting out of my 200 iLevel gear helped. Apparently, my warlock was so far behind the curve, that the new expansion was daunting. My hunter was Tier 10 and ate up the mobs. My Tier 10 Enhance shaman was nearly immortal and had a blast. My DK was beastly in Tier 10.5 and never stopped.

ICC raiding "Mains" and newly minted level 80 characters are not equally sucessful against the Cataclysm starter zones. I would take Mt. Hyjal , personally. It's more player-friendly. For those of you who are making the jump from level 76 to level 80. Remember, gear gets a HUGE jump in Cataclysm but the difficulty has a HUGE hump as well.

Cataclysm Green items have 170 more STA and 170 more INT than Epics from Heroic LK instances. I have no idea why level 78-80 Icecrown blues even sell at the AH anymore. Once you outfit yourself with a full set of Cataclysm greens, you can resume dealing out dark cold justice from your fiery finger-tips. The difference is awesome.

If you can't get full crafted gear, do the first few quests until you replace at least 50% of your equipment. THEN hit the instances. You'll thank me.