Orc rejoicing

Our shoulders are restored!

More Kara

Once again I could only do one day of our team's two days in Kara this week, because of work commitments. The Curator had been downed on their first visit, so our target was Aran. Sadly not to be - we had 4 attempts, which failed due to combinations of bad luck and bad timing, and then decided to do the Chess event before the trash respawned. I'd have rather we'd beaten our heads against him until he surrendered, but it turned out that easy purples where a much better option!

Fat lootz: Triptych Shield of the Ancients

I still couldn't bring myself to delete my orc warrior mule, but he's getting it in the neck when I next log in (almost certainly...).

Dithering

Not much play this weekend due to real life. I had a fairly bad LF1M: tank on friday night, just to contradict my previous optimism on the subject. After trying for a good while we gave up, and I went to level my NE hunter.

Managed to get a reasonable PUG to Shadow Labyrinth on Saturday, netted me some rep but still no Tidefury drop from Murmur. Need several more runs before I get to Revered though, so hopefully it'll drop on one of them.

I've got 9 horde characters on the server, plus the night elf. Which is a pain because it means he has no auction mule. I went to delete my level 6 orc warrior to make space, but just couldn't do it. I still have vague fantasy that I'd level him up one day to be a tank. I know this is a bad idea - I've already retired a level 60 prot warrior due to the frustrations of the class - you can't solo, tanking a bad PUG is a nightmare, the serious gear dependancy, etc. But, but... tanking is fun. Orcs are cool...

By coincidence, Kinless' recent post provided a valuable reality check / reinforcement to what I know already. Just need to keep reminding myself that I have a top-class healer, and that usually finding a group is fine.

In my maybe level stable:
Level 21 BE paladin. Can heal and tank - grouping will be easy. Also looks cool in plate armour, but I'm really not sure I'm all that keen on the class.
Level 34 NE hunter. Sure, they're common as mud. I want to see the game from the other factions view - if nothing else just strolling around Ironforge is pretty damn cool. And a hunter is perfect for this - for an alt that I'm rarely on, and who's the wrong faction so I can't keep an eye on LFG (even assuming people would want to group with him!), being a class who can solo the game is a bonus.
Level 32 NE druid. The advantages of the paladin, but can DPS as well. And stealth. I'm trying Balance at the moment, since I don't enjoy feral levelling. My gear is all wrong though, so it's not going very fast. There's also the slight issue that druids are probably the least popular healing class, due to only being able to res once every 30 minutes.

Update: Now Revered with the Mag'har.

Kara Team 3

A while back our Karazhan team 1 disintergrated, due to a combination of summer holidays and other real life commitments. It's now being re-formed, although we're now called team 3. We had our first run last night which went pretty well - over half the raid had good experience of the place (although some where on new characters) and we all seemed fairly well geared. Four bosses down last night, it will be interesting to see how far past the Curator they get tonight, although sadly I can't join them.

Fat lootz: Totem of Healing Rains

Goals - updated

Just thought I should post a revised Goals list, rather than editing the previous one and hence losing the record. Remaining goals (from that list) are -

Gear:
Complete Tidefury set (for the looks): 1/5

Mounts:
Netherdrake (to make the stepsons happy)

Faction:
Revered with Lower City (Lower City Prayerbook and key): Honoured
Revered with Thrallmar (Head enchant and key): Honoured
Revered with Mag'har (Transmute recipe): Honoured
Revered with Sporeggar (Transmute recipe): Honoured
Revered with Keepers of Time (key): Honoured
Exalted with the Violet Eye (ring upgrades): Honoured

Note: I'm no longer aiming for Revered with the Scryers, as elemental is my third-choice spec and hence the Scryer's Bloodgem isn't that desirable. Although I prefer Elemental to Enhancement as a dps build I'm pretty set on just healing. Still need an Enhancement set for when WotLK is released though.


Heroic Keys:
Hellfire Citadel.
Auchindoun.
Caverns of Time.

Misc:
Get 355 Fishing skill (so I can reliably catch Zangarian Sporefish).
Recipe: Elixir of Major Mageblood (so I can make all my own raid buffs).

PUG insanity

A very busy weekend of WoW (by my recent standards) got me to Revered with The Sha'tar, the rather nice Alchemist's Stone, and consequently made me totally skint.

It also let me put several ticks in the "stick with the shaman" box, which gives me a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling.

* Reason shamans are cool: Bloodlust on the boss fights

The Shattered Halls run I went on mainly for Thrallmar rep was one of those "LF healer, last spot" requests that we all love. The start of the run was a bit worrying - the tank and rogue didn't seem to want to wait for us mana users between fights, and the presence of an unguilded hunter always adds a slight shiver of apprehension.

However, the hunter turned out to be very competent, and it was a very quick, clean run with no deaths. Despite our first proper mana break being just before Warbringer O'mrogg.

* Reason shamans are cool: At the end of a fight you can throw a new Earth Shield on your impatient tank, then (mostly calmly) sit and drink while he starts on the next group. Just don't let him get too far out of range...

I then got a group together a group for Mechanar, with two other shamans from the guild, the hunter from the SH run, and a druid tank. It was pretty chaotic, partially because one of the shamans seemed to think the game was to win the threat meters, but with two off-healers and insane dps we got through it with a few wipes.

* Reason shamans are cool: When Pathaleon the Calculator got down to 50% all three shamans dropped their fire elementals, and the boss disappeared in a wave of orange. Scared the life out of the tank though - he thought they were boss adds!

A quick counterpoint to the "shortage of tanks" post, for the five instances I ran (Arcatraz (twice), Mechanar, Botanica and Shattered Halls) there were no problems finding a tank (two druids, two warriors and a paladin).

More healing

I'm getting increasingly confident in my ability to main heal a 5-man group, although sometimes non-guildies don't share my confidence - at least at the start of a run.

I'm still wishing for an aggro dump (die + ankh + mana pot works nicely but you can't do it often...!). And although chain heal is lovely, you need to be on your toes to move into range of the melee or the ranged groups to make best use of it. While keeping track of totems and remembering to throw the occasional Bloodlust in.

I'm going to get my paladin to at least level 40, to get the mount and plate armour, and get a better idea of what I think of the class. On the one hand I'm cautious of levelling a tank because tanks are so gear dependant - and paladins especially so - that it's harder to be ready to step into that role than it is for a healer. On the other hand although I've been concentrating on gearing up my healing set on my shaman, in the process I've collected an enhancement set that's at least as good (although I'm not going to need it until I start levelling to 80), and an elemental set that's nearly as good.

As long as I stop wavering between my characters: it's a lot easier to gear one character for two roles than it is to gear two characters!