Being Thwarted By the Lunar Festival

I'm a little annoyed with the Lunar Festival at the moment. You see, one of the elders is located in Gundrak, but he is a specific part of Gundrak, a part this is only accessible in heroic. I'm trying to get the To Honor One's Elders achievement as a part of my quest to complete What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, and while I've run heroic Gundrak before, there is a slight complication to this.

You see, the character that I've been doing all the world event achievements on is not Hana, but Gillien, who is currently a level 76 paladin. (My druid has flight form and to be honest will never use another flying mount unless mandatory for a quest.) I really don't have a problem spreading my achievements across different characters and the achievements they go after tend to be different. Hana primarily goes for raid and dungeon achievements. Gillien does PvP and world events.

I was making good progress on my paladin with the hope that I would hit 77 early during the festival and thus be able to fly to all dungeons required, because initially all I had to go on was the list of which dungeons the elders were in. Level 77 would let me enter any normal dungeon in-game. But now it looks like I'll have to bust a move and try to hit 80 before the festival goes away.

I'm not the fastest leveler, especially not when I'm raiding four nights a week, and a fifth night is spoken for out of game, but now it looks like I have about 15 days to do 4 levels. It doesn't sound like much to some people. One of my guildies went from 77 to 80 on his warrior in probably a little less than a week (while still raiding on his main!), but I don't know if I'll be able to do it. I probably could, but it'll be close.

Thankfully my paladin already has epic flying so once I hit 77 leveling should go a lot faster.

But still, I have to get to 80 to set foot in heroic Gundrak, and that just galls me because most of the time I can cheese my way through. I even managed Bros. Before Ho Ho Hos at level 71.

One of the fun things about the world events is generally you don't have to be in an experienced guild or even max level and still be able to have a lot of fun. You still have to be high level, but not max. And if you're enterprising enough you can get away with a lot. (One year a scrub hunter of mine who was probably 20-30ish at the time managed to get the ZG coin for the Lunar Festival.) The Fire Festival boss, Ahune, was playable in normal Slave Pens as well as heroic. Pre-70s could still fight the Headless Horseman, and I was in both pugs and guild runs that took them.

While I'm reasonably certain I can convince a few guildies to run a newly 80 holy pally into heroic Gundrak for the elder, I hate having to ask for help like that. Everything else I would be comfortable pugging.

On the bright side though, I've been wanting to get my pally to 80 for PvP, so this is one way to get my butt in gear. If I can do a level every four days I'll hit 80 by the end of the festival (since I'm about a quarter of the way into 76 right now). I'm really hoping my leveling will speed up by as much as my guildies say it will once I have my flying mount.