Historic ambition achieved

In last week's Molten Core run I picked up two more pieces (the gloves and chest) of the Cenarion Raiment, and so have nearly a full set. I'm just missing the bracers - which I could get from the Auction House - and the helm, which doesn't seem a big deal since I already have the Stormrage Cover.

Recently I found some old screenshots from 2006 which included a Tauren shaman from one of the top raiding guilds on my server in full Earthfury. This was something I aspired to but without wanting to go through what I then saw as the niche path of the hardcore raider. And now I've pretty much assembled a set of my own from the discards of my guild, in quite a short time.

I'm lucky in a couple of ways, one in that I randomly joined what would once have been seen as a top raiding guild (but is actually fairly relaxed and casual*), and also that we run with few druids and that I'm one of them. Typically we have a druid of each spec, and it so happens that our feral druid used to be resto and so has little use for the healing drops.

* A caveat to the casual - last week our raid leader decided we should speed up from our previous 2 hour clear, aiming for an hour and a half, which we duly did. It was messier than usual with noticeably more deaths, but pretty much always in control. So perhaps we're not that casual, but are miles away from the stresses and constraints you'd expect in a "hardcore" guild.

That said I am feeling a bit constrained by my raiding spec, or perhaps looking at it differently my lack of the gold needed to respec frequently. Long term I think I'd like a bear-focused Heart of the Wild / Nature's Swiftness spec due to its great versatility and grouping potential. But for now, with Blackwing Lair on the horizon, I'll stick with where I am.