Ding 70!

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The group got levels 69 and 70 via outside questing, mostly in Northrend. I completed some quests in Shadowmoon Valley so that I could skin enough mobs to finish getting the paladin's leatherworking to 350. As it turns out, the beasts in Shadowmoon Valley cannot be skinned for Fel Scales, and thus a short farming trip to the Zangarmarsh was in order. You can skin the basilisks for Fel Scales, and there is a near-endless supply of them along the west and north borders of the zone.

That all occurred on the way to level 69, and once I had that level I decided to get their tradeskills up to at least the Northrend minimums (350) and as far beyond as my available resources would allow. The end results of a few hours of farming and crafting left me with the following:

Bonuss is at 441 skinning and 365 leatherworking.
Cannee is at 385 jewelcrafting.
Xannee is at 400 herbalism and 405 alchemy.
Zannee is at 355 inscription and 385 tailoring.

My level 75 shaman, Peganna, is at 416 enchanting and 441 blacksmithing. I don't have a miner in the group, and that is fine. My hunter is a miner/engineer and my rogue has herbalism and mining. Missing out on the occasional mining deposit while questing or running an instance is of no concern. I did want to be able to have an enchanter in the group once I started running instances again. Since I'm trying to level up their professions with as little AH purchasing as possible, every lost enchanting material slows me down just a bit.

I changed the shaman's spec from enhancement to restoration. She still has a goodly number of Karazhan drops, so that she has not had to replace many items as of yet. She should be just fine as a healer in instanced zones (particularly the sub-75 ones). Since she is now part of the group, I changed the priest back to shadow spec. I have continued to tweak and fiddle with the DPS macros for the group, which takes some planning since they are different classes. I think I've got it where I want it now, so that the priest and warlock load up a mob with DoTs while the mage is cranking up a pyroblast. Anything that survives that onslaught... wait, nothing will survive that onslaught! Well, elites will, but that's just the start of the DPS rotation.

I've still got some questing to do in order to reach the quests for the level 70-71 instances. I may stay in Northrend now, because it means I won't have to worry about flying mounts until level 77, at which point I may not have to dip very far into the guild bank for the necessary funds (which may not be there anyway, at least for the expensive skill rank, as I am playing a bit less lately).