Holy PUG Priest, Batman!
I'm quite enjoying healing in instances, overall. My Priest is now level 44.
I haven't tried tanking, but after having two DPS characters hit level 70 and facing the repeat problem amongst my friends and in pick-up groups of finding a Healer or a Tank, I decided to put real efforts into bringing up a healer so I could trade favors with the few friends I DID have who played healing or tanking characters at max level.
I've been Holy pretty much all of this Priest's existance, and really started to do PUGs a lot in my mid-30's, doing a lot of RFD (razorfen downs) runs and then doing a few Uldaman runs before heading into Zul'Farrak and Maraudon. My gear doesn't reflect the dungeons I've been in, but I've learned a lot about things that make a party successful or extremely difficult from the healer end of the spectrum - things I had never thought about before while playing other roles.
Finally Finding Friends
I finally found a "friend" on this toon - that is, a player who I partied with in a PUG at some point who advances at a level comparable enough to mine that, over a few weeks' period of time, we've been able to join each other's parties back and forth a couple of times, and are getting to know each other a little better. It sure is nice to join a group that is only a "partial" PUG because you already know that one of the people in the group is competent in their role.
Pushing Through the 40s
I'm finding the mid-40s to be slowish to advance through because there aren't a lot of parties for Zul'Farrak nor Maraudon going at any time - advancing my Rogue through there was slow as well, but I found as soon as I hit 48 and could go into Sunken Temple or think about hitting Blackrock Depths soon, parties started to be advertised a lot more regularly on the LFG line.
Thankfully with the experience-gain changes of Patch 2.3, the "grind" isn't nearly as painful as it would have been had I attempted to dungeon my way to level cap before.
Sooo, I keep my eye out as a priority for Zul'Farrak and Maraudon parties, and have found that late at night is the best time to find a quality group for it. Plus, I have a couple of friends who have toons this level and we've begun a Trading Cycle between ourselves to assist our lowbies:
Caught in the Trading Cycle
Sounds bad doesn't it? Or, evil? Immoral? Nah...
It just means that myself and two of my Casual Guild guildmates with at least one toon at 70 and a regular connection to the guild's Ventrilo server a few evenings a week have decided to trade off dungeon runs in a cycle:
First, I took their level 40's over to the Hinterlands and did the whole gamut to get the Mallet of Zul'Farrak, which takes about as long as a full instance clear when one can't sneak by much in Jintha'Alor. We had enough players and warlock alts to be able to summon all three of one guy's 38-42 toons as well as helping the Paladin get the mallet without having to run up and down to get them to the right spots.
The next evening we could get together, the Paladin hopped over to her Hunter and was going to run my Priest and our other friend's Druid tank toon through Zul'Farrak, but another guildmate friend logged in and offered to take all three of us through, so we did that instead and the Pally agreed to take her turn another day.
Then, the guy with the 3 toons right near 40 took his turn and took us through Zul'Farrak on another evening.
The agreement is that we'll just keep trading these favors amongst ourselves so our lowbies will get an excellent shot at loot and also advance more quickly towards Outland levels. We're still hopping into PUGs when the opportunity arises, but it's nice to have a friend's assistance (and be able to offer assistance of my own!), too.
Beginning The Tailoring Collection Process
My Priest is a tailor, and at level 50 she's going to be able to advance her Tailoring again for the first time since she was level 36. And it's going to be expensive.
So, I'm going to do some research and see what all materials I need to get to 350 right as soon as I hit level 50, and then I can let the advancement flow more naturally to 375 as I approach level 70.
But for now, it's time to sign off!