Enhancement vs. Elemental Grinding

In the time between raids this week and last I’ve been doing a pile of different things.  The biggest change was once again speccing enhance as my offspec.  About once every six months I get the urge to try the ‘other spec’ and go through my bank and various reps to see if I can get myself a decent set of kit to try it out with.  Well, this time I had collected a small pile of Ulduar-10 gear (we had no other shamans and no hunters so I was pretty much snapped up all of the dps-mail drops) – head gloves, shoulders and a belt.  I then grabbed rep legs, boots, chest and back, crafted some cheap rings and a necklace and bought a pair of BoE gloves cheap off the AH.  I was left with a ‘hybrid trinket’ and a spellpower one but I fgured that’d do for now.

The main reason for the change was that I wanted to grind some TBC rep.  Whilst it was totally possible for me to make my way through Botanica as elemental I felt that I had a hard time balancing healing and damage and that I had a lot of down-time.  I thought that enhance might be a bit less problematic for mana, would be a bit tougher and wouldn’t suffer versus spell-interruption.  Really, I think I made a good choice.  Even without having much of a clue, keeping a ‘rotation’ as enhance is so much easier versus multiple mobs and Ghost Wolves make it a lot easier to control 5-6 mob pulls (there are a few in Botanica) and were really nice on the boss fights simply as extra healing which meant I could output more dps.

Looking incredibly at home, here amongst all those crystals before taking on Thorngrim. The feral staff dropped every time I killed him… never had luck with that in TBC on my duid, of course.  I am incredibly tempted  keep enhancement as my offspec for some time – I’ll be keeping it at least until I’m done grinding reps.

Of course, this would be the week where I’ve ended up being asked to go along to a few heroics as dps since we have a baby resto shammy to train up!.  I was also asked to go along to help one of the guild’s priests to get his [Reins of the Bronze Drake] from a timed CoT: Strat run.  I had only gone on to take some screenshots for this post, but I knew he’d been trying hard for it so what the hey.  The upshot of it was (after half an hour of instance server busy) we got in, he got his shiny new drake on his 33rd attempt (gz Maca!) and karma smiled on me with a shiny new enhance fist weapon:

I’m very tempted to buy its counterpart but I think I’ll wait a little while longer to see if this enhance ‘phase’ wears off, hehe.

Moar Pets!

Whilst waiting on said instance server to stop playing silly-buggers I took the screenshots that I’d actually gone on for:

Whilst raiding last night, our GM Indigo spied two of the horde pets cheap on the auction house.  When I go to  the auction house they’re never less than 5-8k so I asked her to grab me them.  So, when I finished the raid, I had these two beauties in my mailbox – [Sen'jin Fetish] and [Enchanted Broom].  Thanks again, Indi! Now the only two I have left to buy are the scorpion and batling.  Personally, I love how the scorpion looks so that’ll probab be my next one once I actually have some gold again.  I need to save up to get my herbalist epic flying first, though, so it might be a wee while.

‘Sekrit’ Alt

Although I am levelling my herbalist (my baby priest), I’ve done a ‘bad thing’ and created another alt.  Or, really, started using an old one.  I had a bank alt whom is now my ‘peace’ character – I love being in my guild and I love my guildies dearly, but sometimes I need to be totally on my own in-game and this is the character for those times.  There’s just something so very different about the game when you play it without your guild ‘blanket’.  It makes WoW feel almost ‘new’ again.

I got a few odd looks when I turned up in the starter zone with a pink dress on, but it was quickly replaced and my baby warrior is now running around Dun-Morogh in knee-length trousers and a chain bikini-top with half-bare feet.  I know dwarves are tough but I can’t help but shiver when I see her running over snowy areas in that kind of get-up!

Shortasses

Talking of short warriors, I finally spied a certain one in-game for the first time:

/wave at Namthe.  Unfortunately I was on my (other) bank alt at the time.  Typical.