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.