“Increased the drop rate of Pristine Yeti Horns from Winterspring Ice Thistle Matriarchs and Patriarchs.”

…my druid is going to do this quest before the patch is out.  /cry

Ok, so ah pulled a bit o’ a fast one last night but, hell, I’m a rogue, whit dae ye expect?

I was sitting last night, playing my druid, and looking at her underwhelming leatherworking level.  You see, I’ve decided to make her a tribal leatherworker.  Yes, tribal.  She is still going to be feral but, to be honest, the elemental crafted items really aren’t worth crafting for a druid or at all - there are easy to get upgrades from quests and instances which are better.  So, I figured I’d get her tribal leatherworking so that if I ever decide to spec doomkin for fun in pvp I’d have a decent starter set.  I know you don’t need to pick a specialisation to continue levelling leatherworking but I like to do things in the right ‘order’.

Anyways, as anyone who’s levelled tribal leatheworking knows it is the most painful leatherworking profession quest.  Or, rather, it has a set of pre-quests which are just painful to do.  They start here and end up costing the following, ingredients wise:

• 8 Wildvine
• 112 Turtle Scale
• 192 Thick Leather

Not so bad, you think?  Well, let me beg to differ. See those scales? Y’can’t buy them for love nor money! Noone grinds them unless they’re doing this quest, it seems, and noone wants to grind more once they’ve done it! You’ve gotta go out and skin the buggers.  Now, the turtles in the Hinterlands drop around 90% - some drop none but some drop two.  However, being turtles it takes rather a long time to kill them if you’re of a level with them (which I was last night).  I spent about 45-55 minutes last night and got around 20-30 scales.  Bah.

Now, I think half the problem here is that I’ve done these quests twice before - on Aurik for fun as I wanted the recipes and leatherworking was new and on Mharai because I went tribal leatherworking on her for the same reason as I am on Jhai.  Now, doing it a third time, I was utterly bored. Not only that but it’s incredibly expensive to level it this way in terms of mats cost (something I wish they’d address…).

However, an idea struck me - when I had been doing alchemy on Avarix and having trouble getting BM runs for my specialisation I was tempted to spec transmute mastery (which I could solo-quest) and then change specialisations as it meant you didn’t have to do the other quest.   I was sure you could do the same for leatherworking but was not sure tribal would be available this way because the quests needed to get the tribal specialisation are pre-requisites, not just a direct quest.   I could find no info on it except one post on thotbott which did not confirm either way but suggested what I had been thinking.

The easiest, by far, to do is elemental (for me, anyway as I had the stuff in the bank).  I figured, hell, at level 49 it’s only going to cost me 25 gold to try the ‘respec’ so why not?

Quick hop to Searing Gorge, picked up Elemental Leatherworking and dropped it again for 25g (this reportedly increases to a max of 100g at level 70), flew to Tanaris and, with some trepidation clicked on “Soothsaying for Dummies”.  BINGO!  One Tribal respec done without the arduous task of completing the wild leather quests.  Hopefully they won’t patch this - it’s a pain to level leatherworking multiple times and go through that whole, irritating quest line over and over.

Of course, if you’re sensible you won’t level leatherworking in the first place.  *ahem*

Well, ah heard a wee story aboot some orc woman o’ the Darkmoon Faire lookin’ fer her pet frog - well, Jhai said tae me that we’ve goat tae help her and that the wee froggy likes having some Dark Iron Ale and that might lure it back. Well, I thought, cannae blame the wee bugger - it’s pretty good stuff is that dark iron ale (not as good as a decent Ironforge stout, mind, but nice nonetheless) . Anyway! Ah said that ah would venture intae Blackrock Depths and see if I could get me some o’ the stuff since ah wis runnin’ oot too. The barman in there’s an alright wee guy and does me a good deal if ah make sure tae avoid bein’ seen comin’ in the back door… So, ah gied Jhai her stout and she helps thon woman get her frog an, well, somehow (don’t ask me how) she ends up wi’ an unhatched Jubling egg.

Then she spied the cannon. Bloody elfs.

Unfortunately I’d forgotten to turn my ui off for this pic but I wanted to put it up. Ah well - you get to see my new ui layout - though grid is a bit off-kilter and because I’m not in combat there’s no omen / timers so some other bits may seem to be in odd places. Ah well. WHEEEEEEE the cannon at the Darkmoon Faire is fun!

Yes, I am easily amused. Totally didn’t know you could be ‘cannoned’ in forms! Ahahahaha.

After a night in Mount Hyjal, beating the unmentionables out of some over-confidant demon types ah’m feelin’ a wee bit better. In fact, a got around tae processin’ some pictures ah managed tae take this week…

So, some shiny pictures since the last post lacked them and possibly because I currently have the writing capacity of a badly trained gecko. A series of vignettes we’ll call it and that’ll make it all proper and fancy…

What could possibly be better than three shamans kicking ass together? Why, four of course!

Surely nothing could beat that? Oh wait, how about four shamans in a group where one is your tank?

The illustrious “A” has made a project of grabbing all of the tanking gear he can when noone else wanted it and was keen to test it out - ok, so it was only BF but bigger things shall come soon enough! He is a man-with-a-plan (he’s the one at the very bottom of the picture here).

On that note - see those shoulders? They make me cry because of their oogleh-ness. /cry

And bestest for last…

Softi has been drafted into Lightwalkers! /hugs for the doomkin!

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Wow, this week feels like it’s been hellishly busy…. and it’s only Wednesday! I feel like I’ve abandoned my poor little blog (despite posting a long post only a few days ago) and feel like I could use some writing therapy. I can’t even bring myself to do a little starter blurb or images this time so it’s just text-spam I’m afraid. I’ll try and make it pretty text-spam though.

So, what have I been up to?

Raiding, instancing, boosting, buying.

First of all, though, you’re going to get some recruitment spam!

Recruitment

Lightwalkers on Bloodhoof (EU) are actively looking for the following:

• 1-2 Resto Druids
• 1-2 Mages
• 1 Warlock, possibly 2
• 1 Holy pally, possibly 2

We would consider a good application from:

• 1 Elemental Shaman
• 1 Boomkin Druid

To quote the guild recruitment post:

“We’re looking for people that enjoy both raiding as well as the social aspect of the game in a stable, mature guild community, who are interested in reliably attending 3 progress raids every week, know and like their class, can handle constructive criticism when it’s needed, and come to the raids with the neccessary preparation (buffs, tactics, etc)”

You can find the website and more information at lightwalkers.net. We’ve lost a few raiders due to summer attrition and general game-apathy so we’re looking to bolster our ranks with some eager new members!

Raiding

This week my schedule looks like this: Mon: SSC, Tues: ZA, Wed: Kara, Thurs: MH, Fri: who knows. ._.! I’ll be exhausted. I usually only raid 2/3 nights so this, plus the fact I jumped in as backup last Sunday means I’ve been raiding a bit above my normal limit. Ah well!

Instancing / Boosting

Well despite my diatribe about boosting I’ve been doing and taking a lot of it this week. Myself and A (previously mentioned!) have been boosting each others alts - sometimes with the pleasant company of Softii - Softthistle’s new ferlol druid. Almost every night we’ve been hitting ZF / SM / RFD and my little druids gear is quite spiffy considering her level!

Buying

I couldn’t sleep last Sunday night so I was reading up on gear for my new baby-druid. I’d been looking to buy a few things ahead of time as no doubt when I wanted something later it’d be pricey or non-existant on the AH. I was trawling through Wowhead and found this little pretty: [Warden Staff]. OMNOMNOMNOM. So, feeling a little tired and icky I did myself some retail-therapy and hit the AH. I was in luck - 200g buyout. *yoink* Mine! It’s a pretty staff and I’ve stuck +35 agi on it (cheaper and easier to get than the pre-tbc one for me…) so my little druid is looking very twinked out. Add to that some very nice boost drops and craftables and my little tank is sitting pretty with a hefty chunk of def / armor / stamina.

Now I just need to find some groups. *ahem*

Grinding

Have you ever heard anyone complaining about not having enough grinding time? Well, that’s what I’m doing now! Because of all the extra raiding etc. I’ve ended up low on consumables, crafting mats etc. I also haven’t had time to touch my hunter and kitty or level my druid outside of boosts. Today, though, I spent a long time fishing and shooting at some bog giants to replenish my stocks and get the primals I still needed for my shadow res cloak.

And on a totally different note..

I’ve been made a guild admin in Lightwalkers. I’m happy but somewhat terrified - new responsibilities and a lot of learning in my future but I love the guild dearly and I hope I can make them proud of me!

Ye see some weird things in Outlands, ye really do..

A pic I had in my folder from a while back. Just one I think is pretty. *ahem*

I mentioned a while back ( though I cannot find the post) that I always end up getting shiny things when I just head along to help people out. “Can someone come help Q do his Kara attunement in SLabs?” “Sure, I’ll bring my hunter, y’never know I might be lucky.” So, the huntard who breaks sheeps, leaves aspect of the pack on and had to take a tank pet into an instance (no dps pet high enough level) gets the vaulted [Sonic Spear] on his very first trip to Shadow Labs. I hear the howls of furious decent hunters baying for my blood… *ahem* (At least, I know Softi seemed to be - she told me I should blog about it!)

Learning!
However, I did not only come away from it (and the other instances, we ended up doing the whole chain) with just a shiny new spear! I done had me a learning curve. The last time I’d instanced was in Ramparts - that was about it in the whole 1-70 grind except when I was being boosted. I had to suddenly contend with dps cycles, crowd control, misdirects, pet management and watching where I was standing all at once! I had warned my guildies of my nubbishness before we went in and they were forgiving of the couple of big faux pas’ I made (hitting a sheep, leaving wrong aspect on). They lol’d at my weedy dps (I was doing less than the tank - our t5/6 equipped feral druid) but were generally helpful - we had two hunters with us - one as their hunter and another on his mage alt - who I asked quick questions of (do hunter’s marks overwrite one another? was one I remember).

By the time we had gotten a little ways into Shadow Labs I was getting used to the dps cycle so I could free up my concentration to do other stuff - I had a go at misdirecting the tank on the ‘Time For Fun’ boss and was managing my pet well enough that it only took one sonic boom on murmur. *ahem* A quick blistz through the first half of arca and then onto Durnholde. Ok, I’m getting into it, I can chain trap, misdirect and my dps has increased a bit.

Into BM we go. Lets start! Oh, wait, where’s the other hunter? The one taking care of the adds?! Ohcrap he’s not even in the instance yet! Well, I learned very quickly how useless I was at kiting multiple mobs. However, I managed to hold most of them off until he had scooted into the instance and took up the job. I got into the habit of laying a frost trap at each portal to slow the mobs more for him and happily pulled a few off the healer which had gotten loose. By this time I was feeling a lot more slick (yes, I know I’m still a nub) and a little more confidant in my huntering.

In the end I gained 200dps just by getting less flustered about all my buttons (and, my goodness, hunters have so many!) and I learned some valuable lessons for if/when Dryn ever instances again. One of the hunters also let me copy his BM spec auto/steady/kill command macro (he’s surv at the moment) and recommended some others I should go get if I wanted to do more instancing.

Still can’t believe I got that spear first run. On my grind-auto-shot-bot. *cackle*

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The earth has granted my wishes and bestowed upon me a plethora of items which enable me to bring life back to my cohorts. However, it also seems to be bestowing on me an awful lot of things with which to pound the Burning Legion into the ground. The elements work in mysterious ways…

I don’t like to put too many ’srs bsnss’ posts right next to each other so you’re getting gear spam whilst I finish writing up my next long post *ahem*.

First of all the typical problem with hybrids had occurred for me on Avarix. Not only had I kept a pile of stuff ‘just in case’ for my main spec but also for both off-specs! I had been running around with three empty bag slots to my name and nothing I could dump for fear of abandoning something which ‘might be useful later’. So, time for a major clearout! I ended up dissing about a bag (20slot) and a half full of gear - yay for lots of LPS’s / essences / dust.

Kara

A while ago I posted about not really being able to do Kara’s frequently and this making gear a hard decision. Well, it’s no longer so much of a problem! The main issue I had is that I share a pc with my other half - we both have our own laptops but the PC is all that can run Oblivion as well as WoW on max graphics settings. Our newest laptop is pretty decent, though, it just has to have most of the graphics minimised. So, two weeks ago, a Kara group starts up and then another. Two groups can be made if they can find another healer. I warned ‘em I only had the laptop in case of a bit of laggyness but I’m happy to say it went pretty smoothly! So, Kara for me whilst the other half Oblivions! Bwuhahaha.

Phat Kara lewts the past few weeks for me in the last few weeks have been -

Restoration
[Jade Ring of the Everliving], [Stainless Cloak of the Pure Hearted], [Heart-Flame Leggings], [Cyclone Headdress], and [Cyclone Gloves].

Elemental

[Nathrezim Mindblade], [Shadow-Cloak of Dalaran], and [Boots of the Infernal Coven].

Plus some enhancement stuff. You can tell I’m really enthusiastic about enhancement, can’t you? Maybe once I have a full gear set I can grind some pvp axes and have a go but, for the moment, I love resto way too much!

I’ve also picked up a [Vindicator's Pendant of Salvation] and got enough badges to purchase the [Wave of Life Chestguard] I had my eyes on!

The problem with fast gear-progression? I’ve spent ages on grinding enchanting mats! D’oh! After sending my hunter-auto-grind-bot and his new kitty out to get some primal life, I enchanted everything I could with healing / mp5. I swapped my trinkets around and ended up with:

• 1996 healing
• 157 mp5
• 10.5k mana

  

Not bad - though I wants more mp5!

Healing / Kara Whining Rambling

Last night’s Kara started out with just two healers - first time I’d tried it that way as alt runs often take three. I was getting really worried - people were going down far more often than usual and at one pont the tank got insta-gibbed. “Sorry, guys, wasn’t really paying attention, was on the phone” was not what I wanted to hear from the second healer… I am not well geared or confidant enough yet to even think about Solo-healing Kara and our tank is not over-geared and a Paladin to boot. One of our other shamans (GL) respecced resto and the rest of the night’s healing was a bit of a yawn fest. Bah.

It didn’t help that one dps warrior who had refused to tank (which meant not being able to do two groups that evening) kept pulling before our pally tank or healers had finished drinking. Now, that wasn’t a huge problem for me with my regen slowly getting higher but our pally tank was having a hell of a time generating enough aggro to pull them off said dps warrior and keep them whilst we were spamming heals on the idiot who’d pulled them without a shield. Suffice to say we decided it was better for all if we didn’t heal him next time he did it *ahem*.

It’s odd running with a group you’re not used to - we’re usually a one-shot, blast through, imba group even with mostly alts. Ah well.

Regen

Speaking of regen… I had two sort-of proud moments concerning my mana. Only sort-of because both of them came out of things I’d buggered up. On Prince I died to an infernal landing on my head. I was kinda tired and it was my fault - didn’t move nearly fast enough. However! Self res, pot, water shield, mana spring. Half my mana back and the regen did the rest - I didn’t run oom until he was down. That had happened one week previously and I’d come back and barely been able to scrape my mana back off the floor.

Something had struck me as odd, though. Why was the mana I got back from my pot so low? I have an alchemist stone so using a put is often overkill mana-wise for me unless I’m down to 20-30%. Simple. For some unknown reason I’d managed to switch my trinkets around and was wearing my prayerbook instead of my alchemist stone. So, I’d done the whole evening with no stone - and my regen had still been fine! That was kind of a happy moment for me there. I’m not even past the ‘magic’ 200mp5 yet and had salv buffed instead of wisdom due to some weird bug going on with misdirects / aggro.

Realisations

I’ve come to the odd realisation that my ‘baby’ shammy isn’t a baby any more. He’s all grown up… In fact he’s so grown up he’s been given tier 5 approval and signed for an SSC run next week (for the s-res quest line). Scary. I really hope I can be worthy of a spot - I’ve been reading tactical guides for SSC for shammy healers by Anna as well as refreshing the SSC fights in my mind.

Just a quick, small update.

For a while after I started blogging I used the sidebar as a means of checking all of those cool sites I had found and wanted to read. Quickly, though, it became apparent that this was a rather inefficient method of checking up on them so I got myself a feed reader and started reading via that. So, of course, when I found a new blog I wanted to read I added it there and…. completely forgot to add it to the site.

So, late being better than never, I’ve finally updated the damn thing. I’ve had real troubles sleeping in the past few days though and updated it under the influence of this lack-of-sleep so give me a poke if I’ve misspelled or mislinked something!

I might go through at some point and put them on a page - with randomised links left at the side - as suddenly that blogroll is looking huuuuge but we’ll see if my lazyness can be overcome! *Grin*

/Zzzzz

Ah’ll show ye no prepared ye big ugly git ye! Whit dae ye mean marked by death!? Aw bugger…

I don’t often mention raiding on here, except in passing, but I have to express my joy in finally making Teron choke on his own damn words. “YOU will show the proper respect!” HAH. We’ve had a little trouble with him due to some shifting around of the raid group (new people) and having a few too many people who fall under the category of ‘That Guy’.

Anyways, pretty kill-shot (click for a very slightly bigger version):

I really, really love being there on progression nights and seeing new bosses go down.  Any time I’m not there for a first kill I feel a bit disappointed, I have to admit.  Teron was a real git to me too on these attempts… First try, I got shadow’d fourth. Three warlocks, no druid. Bah. Second try? I got doomed first. No soulstones up. BAH. Third try fourth… fourth try first… Well, lets just say it took us twelve tries and there was never a soulstone for me. Still, I didn’t mind going first as it meant being way ahead on constructs (I’m pretty fast with mine after lots of practice on the simulator and in game). However! on our last attempt I wasn’t shadowed and only died when we got to 1% with not many healers alive.

Oh well - Gurtogg next, hopefully!

I was the proud recipient, also, of the “I has been to BT lols” cloak, as modelled by myself and our Paladin tank (who was healing for the boss fight)

The boss also gave me the last token I needed for my [Tunic of the Dark Hour] so my gear has just taken a considerable upward turn - I finally feel like I’m ‘catching up’ with the others and it’ll hopefully help push up the dps for the following bosses!

Been really slow about updating and I still have a pile of stuff I want to post about but I don’t want to spam too much in one post so I’ll leave the rest for another day (or hour, at least!).

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