Of farming, shards, badges and marks etc.

[Fuzzyboy]

Mostly repeating what others have already stated, but:

1) do 20-25 dailies and save up gold for the better AH epics (they're pretty cheap at the moment). The daily normal dungeon is good also (gold + emblem).

2) Create an arena team and loose 10 matches per week. You dont have to zone in, just que up and hit the "leave" button once it pops

3) Do WG whenever possible. Nice trinkets (111 SP), and good gear for practically no effort.

4) Do a round of the easier heroic bosses. The first couple of bosses in Gundrak on each side (Ssladran and Moorabi), the first boss in Drak'theron Keep (or however it's spelled), a couple of bosses in Nexus should be doable also. Don't be afraid to try Stratholme also, you may not succeed at first, but once you get the rythm down it's doable. If you do those, that's an easy 6-7 emblems per day.

5) If you don't have any professions yet, level up mining on your tank. The profession bonus is +sta and you make a ton of money off it while levelling up (vanilla and BC ores/metal sell really well). Don't waste money on professions that don't make you any money in a reasonable timeframe (which is all, except gathering professions), the exception being enchanting because you'll need someone to disenchant.

[Solon]

Thanks everyone! I'll keep up with my dailies. AH stuff will come after epic flyers lol. My tank has mining, when I'm bored I could go skill that up some more, and I have enchanting at 400, DE makes some decent cash. I have completed all the quests in Icecrown, though I know I missed some in Scholozar Basin. 5x paladins are very troublesome on the bosses that use AoE attacks and heavy spell casting (they are all immune to Arcane Torrent too), after my dailies I'll definitely be leveling up my shamans to catch up. They (paladins) were so much more interesting before Wrath anyway. I wanted to get the 10% exp shoulders and chests for the shamans before going back to leveling, but that's a huge wall to climb atm without the shamans to help.

[Gadzooks]

Thanks everyone! I'll keep up with my dailies. AH stuff will come after epic flyers lol. My tank has mining, when I'm bored I could go skill that up some more, and I have enchanting at 400, DE makes some decent cash. I have completed all the quests in Icecrown, though I know I missed some in Scholozar Basin. 5x paladins are very troublesome on the bosses that use AoE attacks and heavy spell casting (they are all immune to Arcane Torrent too), after my dailies I'll definitely be leveling up my shamans to catch up. They (paladins) were so much more interesting before Wrath anyway. I wanted to get the 10% exp shoulders and chests for the shamans before going back to leveling, but that's a huge wall to climb atm without the shamans to help.

Epic flying should be very, very, very low on your list if your intention is gearing up for Heroics - you are truly putting the cart before the horse. When you have all the badge gear you want, Heroics and ToC are money farms, you'll make the epic mount money fast.

Questing at 80 is a no-brainer, even going back to the Tundra or Fjord. It's easy money, you can knock out insane amounts of quests in an hour. There's good weapon rewards in two places - Ampitheater of Anguish in Drak will get you a decent blue, and Tirion's Gambit in Icecrown gets you an even better blue. The ampitheater can be done any time, Tirion's requires a quest chain.

Then we have dailies. There's massive cash waiting for you there. Combine that with mining and blacksmithing, and you can make VERY decent tanking and DPS and healing plate from Saronite, and Saronite is dirt cheap to buy, and easy to mine. I can do a few circuits of Storm Peaks, Icecrown and Sholozar and get several stacks of Saronite. I get so much of it I make 75 level gear to disenchant for the dust. Seriously, my pally was the cheapest to gear up for entry level Heroic gear because of the Saronite gear.

If you really push blacksmithing, you can level it and then make the Titansteel weapons, which are quite good for Heroics. They go for about 800-1k on my server, which is nothing with the amount of money to be made from dailies.

Then, spend your money on gems, enchants, belt buckles, and other goodies, and you should be able to take out the easier bosses no problem. Moorabi is tank and spank with one or two healing spots where he AOE's the team (A holy pally can heal through it NO problem), and the boulder giant guy in the Nexus is fairly easy, a tank and spank and healing through the ice spikes that come up through the floor. The first boss of HK is tricky, but not that hard, and if you can get past the initial trash packs, the first boss of DTK is a pushover. You can also try the Violet Hold, and if you get the boulder puppy first, you get an easy badge.

Keep in mind that the tactics of Heroics is vastly different from what you needed to do for questing, it's honestly two different games. You need your DPS on auto while you heal your tank while your tank kites and maintains aggro. It's a lot of work at first. Even the trash in Heroics are going to be a problem for you at first. (Halls of Stone and Lightining) Heroics are designed differently than the rest of the game, you HAVE to have a tank and healer.

It might be better that you hit the wall in ToC - if you're in quest gear, I don't think you'd have gotten past jousting, anyway - they hit pretty hard in there. Start lower - HK and Gundrak are the easiest, along with parts of Nexus. Moorabi is THE easiest boss to get, it's a free badge every day, and he takes maybe two minutes to get to, it's literally two pulls of two and three. I farm him so much I use him to test changes on now, because I know the fight so well. Tank, spank, heal the AOE, tank and spank, he's either dead, or one more AOE heal, and he's down.

[Solon]

There is a reason I posted here, this community is great, thanks all. I will make a little alteration to my earlier comment. I have completed all the non instance quests I could find in Northrend (instead of Icecrown lol), except I missed a few in Sholazar Basin. The whole Oracles vs Rageclaw just ticked me off, and I quit them. Oh, and one quest where I was supposed to control some troll in Zul Drak.

I was going to purchase faster flying to speed up my dailys. I guess the speed increase can wait.

I don't intend to push blacksmithing at this point, as I feel Cataclysm will have tons of lowbies gathering lower level mats, at which time I will consider leveling some professions.

As far as ToC jousting, just as all the vehicle combat, I found to be too easy. One simple spammable macro for any vehicle combat that assists and follows your leader while simultaneously clicking your favorite vehicle action buttons means 1 finger I win in most cases. The jousting, even in quest gear, is simple, boring, and I win, IMO.

[Velassra]

Mostly repeating what others have already stated, but:

1) do 20-25 dailies and save up gold for the better AH epics (they're pretty cheap at the moment). The daily normal dungeon is good also (gold + emblem).

2) Create an arena team and loose 10 matches per week. You dont have to zone in, just que up and hit the "leave" button once it pops

3) Do WG whenever possible. Nice trinkets (111 SP), and good gear for practically no effort.

4) Do a round of the easier heroic bosses. The first couple of bosses in Gundrak on each side (Ssladran and Moorabi), the first boss in Drak'theron Keep (or however it's spelled), a couple of bosses in Nexus should be doable also. Don't be afraid to try Stratholme also, you may not succeed at first, but once you get the rythm down it's doable. If you do those, that's an easy 6-7 emblems per day.

5) If you don't have any professions yet, level up mining on your tank. The profession bonus is +sta and you make a ton of money off it while levelling up (vanilla and BC ores/metal sell really well). Don't waste money on professions that don't make you any money in a reasonable timeframe (which is all, except gathering professions), the exception being enchanting because you'll need someone to disenchant.

"2) Create an arena team and loose 10 matches per week. You dont have to zone in, just que up and hit the "leave" button once it pops"

No shit? That gives you points? I despise Arena, but I'm not against hitting a button for points. (Reminds me of a rat hitting a lever for a little treat...)
Anyway, some helpful info for m too. I have a single boxed 80, but my first team is just approaching 79. Regular instances have been kicking my ass so don't feel bad. Some of the videos out there make it look too easy.

[Fuzzyboy]

"2) Create an arena team and loose 10 matches per week. You dont have to zone in, just que up and hit the "leave" button once it pops"

No shit? That gives you points? I despise Arena, but I'm not against hitting a button for points. (Reminds me of a rat hitting a lever for a little treat...)
Anyway, some helpful info for m too. I have a single boxed 80, but my first team is just approaching 79. Regular instances have been kicking my ass so don't feel bad. Some of the videos out there make it look too easy.

Yeah - like 340-something per week, it's pretty neat :-) It used to be that you had to zone in and get killed in order to get your 10 losses, but for some reason they changed it. I think I read somewhere it was related to que-dodging, but whatever, it works great for gearing up also.

[Meshuggenah]

Farm the argent dailys.

When you have enough gold, buy crusader orbs and crafting cooldowns for your tank. Ask in trade chat and tip someone 50G to craft you the 245 chest/bracers and 226 belt/feet.

Once your tank is reasonably well geared, focus on your healer with the same items. It shouldn't take you long to farm enough gold for these pieces (crusader orbs go for ~250G on my server now). These 4 pieces of gear will make a huge difference and are better than anything you will get outside of a raid environment.

Some tips.. Ignore armor type when gearing your shamans. Most mail is bad because it wastes a lot of itemization on MP5. Wear cloth or leather if necessary. www.wowhead.com/?item=Sash of Ancient Power for example, is much better than any leather or cloth belt that level. Infact, it's better than most 232 or 245 belts for a shaman. Get hit capped, then focus on spell power and haste.

Also, if you're running a 4 shaman group, do not gear your "Healer" as resto. Use Ele pieces, gem and enchant for DPS, not for resto. The only reason to properly gear for resto is if you plan on raid healing with that character. In a heroic, all that matters is spellpower and a well geared tank. You will never have mana problems. The time/effort you spend acquiring the resto gear will have been wasted, especially if you spend triumphs on it. This way, you can simply respec your healer as another Ele DPS when you want to try DPSing VoA/Ony. When you're capped out of heroics (meaning you have full tier9, all the relevent drops and conquest off-pieces) you won't even need a resto shaman at all. I 4x DPS heroics now because my tank simply doesn't need a healer when most heroic boss fights last less than 20 seconds. In fights where I do need heals, Ele gear is fine.