Ishnu-alah, stranger…

It’s been a long and circuitous route but my baby druid finally hit 70 three days ago. She’s also almost met my old druid’s stats 10 minutes after hitting 70 simply due to the [Strength of the Clefthoof] set, a couple of pieces of Merciless Gladiator gear and knowing which quests to target for tanking gear - such as that which gives [Umberhowl's Collar].

I got the mats together for a [Belt of Natural Power] and [Shadowprowler's Chestguard]and am working on my leatherworking level so I can craft [Boots of Natural Grace].  Oh and maybe I can buy a [Cloak of the Craft] and some [Swiftstrike Shoulders] if I suddenly find a gold tree.  The wonder of having a ’suger daddy’ main, eh?  And all of this whilst grinding my way into some nice SSO rep and golds for my epic flying form.

0 - Kara in 2 Days

So, I’ve gotten myself some decent gear together with minimal instancing.  The only gear I’ve gotten which was not crafted, quested or … honored? is my [Burnoose of Shifting Ages] (yes I know it’s a warrior cloak but it had more armor and defense than my current one) and [Dragonhide Gloves] (which require a couple of Durn/BM runs).  I’m not a huge fan of running with pugs and not a lot of people in the guild are running normal instances these days so I didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking for gear in them.  The only one I will be doing until I’m sick of it is Steamvaults for my [Earthwarden].

If you have enough gold / resources and a will to pvp whilst levelling then you can easily hit Kara-ready tanking stats soon after hitting 70.  I did the daily pvp quest every day from level 60 and usually one other game.  My dps was terrible but I took some healing kit and helped by adding a few heals here and there - this got me my shoulders.  I then spent one whole day pvp-ing to get enough to get my helm at level 69.  Even if you did this at 70 it’s still only one day.

Belt, neck, one ring and clefthoof set were crafted.  Wrist, idol and one trinket were quest and the other trinket, ring, and the gloves were bought / rep items.

So, really, it’s entirely possible to hit Kara right after hitting 70 but it does require some preparation.  Of course, I’d totally recommend doing plenty of tanking prior to hitting 70 so you’ve had experience as this is as important as just having decent gear.

Kara, really?

Yep! Though I’m not sure our raid lead agreed at first either. Oddly, this week one of the groups hadn’t finished Prince / Netherspite - they wanted to go again to finish it but didn’t have a full group.  Tanks are always short in our guild so I offered myself.  I rattled off my stats to our druid lead and he approved me to OT - he would MT Prince since his gear is, obviously, a lot better than mine.   So, off we go, get Prince down and… our druid lead had to leave.

I got to MT Netherspite two days after hitting 70.  /cheer. I know Netherspite can be tanked by a non-geared tank but I was tanking him between phases too so we could go all out on dps (low dps group).

Now, tanking one of the easier bosses in Kara (tanking wise) doesn’t mean, necessarily, you can tank all of Kara easily.  However, you could easily main tank the earlier bosses (for a guild newly starting Kara) and definately off-tank anything.  Druids are one of the easiest classes to do this with - like the tailoring casters you can hit Kara with gear which will last you a long time.  Hell, if I’d tried harder I could easily have even gotten a more druidy cape ([Thoriumweave Cloak]) and Earthwarden already.

The one big downside to this is that my kitty gear is pretty lame, still.  I’ve been concentrating almost entirely on my tanking gear and have only picked up kitty upgrades as they’ve come along.  My run in Kara yesterday, though, grabbed me some [Skulker's Greaves] so I’m on my way to getting my kitty gear on par with my tanking gear.

Netherspite

The Netherspite fight has special meaning to me.  On Mharai, my first druid, I was invited to off-tank Kara 5 minutes after getting attuned.  I hadn’t expected to go, hadn’t read tactics, had no buffs except food buffs.  I had my druid mentor with me (one of the best druids I’ve ever met) and we stood and practiced beam jumping.  It was just so much damn fun, I was doing something which was more than just ‘tank and spank’ and was getting to be the ‘main tank’ during that time.

It’s always been one of my goals since those first few Kara runs to main tank Kara and, hopefully, it won’t be long until I can fulfill that wish.

OMG DMG!

One of the odd things about going from being DPS / Healer for so long is getting used to taking damage again.   On the first pull I had this moment of “OHSHIT so much dmg!”. Then, of course, I was heal spammed.  I wasn’t actually losing that much  health but I was tanking three mobs who were higher and hitting harder than anything I’ve tanked on Jhai up until now.  It feels nice to be the focus of heals by design rather than getting them because I’m a rogue who likes to attract a little bit of special attention from the trash mobs in Mount Hyjal.  *ahem*

Upon learning to speak to the wind one must also, apparently, learn to wear the appropriate vestments. There is so much choice, though, and so little of it within my grasp. One must still work to attain that which will increase ones inherent spirituality - though I am still not sure why putting more layers on brings one closer to the elements…

Kara
Over the past few weeks the guild has started running up to two Kara runs - usually a mix of alts and mains for badges and gear. I’m often not often able to go on Wednesdays (or Mondays and Fridays) as I duly give up the computer so the other half can play Oblivion but the past two weeks things have ended up so that I have been available.

Last week the guild needed a healer for the second run or it was a no-go. ‘Sure’ said I, and dashed onto my shaman, respecced (I’d been elemental for Magtheridon, I think) and grabbed all the consumables I could think of. I posted about my phat lewts.
This week I wasn’t expecting to be on but the other half was late home. I figured I’d nip on, patch up and do my transumtes / glass / make pots and flasks for Thursdays raid. I logged on to Aurik. “You are invited to a group by G”. Eh? *DECLINE*.

I hate being ninja invited and never accept unless someone tells me what I’m getting myself into - even from guildies. A few whispers later and I hear that there’s a sort-of competition going on - two groups are getting together and each thinks they can run Kara faster than the other. I was feeling a bit headachey but I didn’t want to say no when there were such high stakes *ahem*. I jumped over to Avarix, joined a team and then proceeded to run around like an idiot, respeccing elemental, grabbing different food buffs and joining TeamSpeak whilst being disconnected from the game a few times (patch issues, I think).

We ran through Kara, finishing in about two and a half hours. Although we were slow in doing the bosses we managed to actually finish before the other team despite starting about 15-20 mins later! Ahaha. Ah well, was all fun and we even managed to 9-man Netherspite when one of our mages had to go offline. Not bad for an almost completely alt character team!

My dps was terrible but I’ll excuse myself this once, hehe. My totem bar, Yata, suddenly stopped working with the patch (no surprises) so I had to relog and configure totemtimers and was still tweaking it until after Moroes!

Totem Timers

As much as my GM and the shammie class-leader recommend totemtimers over Yata I just… don’t like it. I’d tried it before and was willing to give it another shot but I’ll be going back to yata as soon as it’s working (got it working using the pre-update files) - if for nothing else than auto-totemic recall on a right click. I also prefer its timers - which are a lot bigger and include totems other than the four you have in your bar - so I can see when my elemental and mana tide totems come off cooldown - I also like the quickly configuarable and lockable buttons!

Maybe I’m just missing something with totemtimers (or any other totems + timers addon) but… I really don’t see why it’s so much better? I would be happy to be edumacated!

Gear Mathifications

Managed to pick up a few shinies but two pieces of the healing loot I got were really druid pieces ([Forest Wind Shoulderpads] and [Mitts of the Treemender]) - which takes me to three bits of leather armour! It would be four, except that I also grabbed the [Belt of Gale Force] from Moroes!

I have a habit of grabbing any loot noone else wants if it might, possibly, be useful - I hate seeing stuff sharded when the guild bank is full of void crystals - but on second look my [Gauntlets of the Tranquil Waves] from Magister’s Terrace seem to be on par with the druid leather Mitts for me. The higher int and stamina on the mitts is tempting, though… Time to look more closely!

I use Skyhoof’s shaman healing gear thread as a base list but it’s all calculated at t5 level which puts less emphasis on int and a bit more on haste - both represented unequally on these peices of gear. Using the t4 stat weights she gives irecalculated their values:

Mitts:
+25 Stamina - 5
+22 Intellect - 22
+14 Spirit - ignored (as is socket bonus)
+64 Healing - 64
= 91

Gauntlets:
+12 Stamina - 2.4
+10 Intellect - 10
+1 mp5 (socket bonus) - 3.4
+55 Healing - 55
+24 Haste - 16.32
= 87.12

As I suspected, for my level the mitts come out as higher base but there’s not much in it. However! Each still has two gem slots.

1. (+2 x Living Ruby - 36)
2. (+2 x Royal Nightseye - 27.6)
3. (+1 x Royal Nighseye and 1x Luminous Topaz - 26.8)

Mitts with 1. = 127, 2. = 118.6, 3. = 117.8
Gauntlets with 1. = 123.12, 2. = 114.72, 3. 110.52 (would lose the socket bonus)

The reason I’m calculating the last set of gems? I have myself an [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond] which needs to be activated and it requires two yellow gems (I have another in my bracers). The value of an ISD is around 63 (at conservative estimates of it’s worth being 15mp5) So - adding the 63 to both mitts and gauntlets assuming taking the Nightseye and Topaz combination they come out as, rounded down:

Mitts: 180
Gauntlets: 173

The Magister’s Terrace loot is really nice but the stats on them are preferable for higher level content. My main gripe at the moment is lack of mp5 / mana so I think I’ll be enchanting then wearing those leather mitts and banking the gauntlets until I have higher mana regen and a bigger mana pool. Druid-shaman hybrid ftw! *ahem*

Rogue gear is so much simpler…

I was also lucky enough, though, to grab my t4 helm (hence the new meta-gem)! My alt now officially has better headgear than my main… /cry as well as some nice off-spec gear - [The Lightning Capacitor] (passed to me by a very kind warlock whose main is a shaman and insisted that I take it as he could get far better - Thank you A!) - and something for enhance-spec… though I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. I’m so enthusiastic about enhancement… *cough*.

Badge Loot Decisions

The actual point of this post, when I started it, was to look at the fact that I now have lots of badges - more than I ever expected to get on Avarix - and to figure out what I could get with them. Last week I had figured that would be my last Kara for a while and was leaning towards picking up an [Essence of the Martyr] but now I have 73 badges. That puts me an awful lot closer to some really nice, shiny stuff.

But, once again, I’m torn… I could do the badge-giving dailies for the next few days and hope for some badges, get 75 and grab myself some [Natural Life Leggings] or wait and get the [Wave of Life Chestguard] / [Runed Scales of Antiquity]. If Avarix were my main it would be a no-brainer - wait for the big ‘uns - but I cannot be guaranteed badges on my shammie. The last two weeks have been fun but I might not be in Kara for a while now. The other thing which bugs me is that a new chest would be a bigger upgrade, too, but there isn’t a 75 badge chest /cry.

I could, of course, also go for the boots, gloves or belt badge upgrades but I don’t really need those at the moment. I think I’ll maybe try a bit harder to grab myself one more Kara run if possible and then a heroic or so - that chest piece would be the biggest upgrade to my current gear and, unless they added more badge gear, would not be upgraded before WotLK.

Once again a post has spiraled out of control into something way bigger than it was meant to be, whoops.

Well, whit de ye know, ah got myself somethin’ other than a sword… Gotta say it looks pretty funky but ah’v no clue how to use it…

I’m afraid you’re going to have to suffer through another gear post - there’s something a bit more substantial in the works but, unfortunately, it’s slurping up all my blog-creativity! So, yet another shinies post. At least there’ll be pretty pictures, right?

So, tonight was Mount Hyjal and, for about the millionth time, a [Claw of Molten Fury] dropped. I think everyone and their Granny has one by now in our raid group - even the resto shammies have ‘em for offspec etc. so I picked it up for base dkp!

It’s a little better than my main-hand sword [Talon of Azshara] but I’m not sure if it’ll actually be worth taking over a sword - I’ll need to grab a respec and try Fist / Sword (which is apparently second highest dps anyway) -it might be a nice change. Of course… I’ll have to get my ‘unarmed’ fighting skill up from 246.. ouch.

I’ve been a huge swords fan since my early levels but this fist gets major bonus points for being as big as I am…

Avarix, my Shammy chain-healbot got his first full Kara run this week too - I’d previously only been up to Opera on him and so jumped at the chance when the guild mentioned they were short a healer for a second Kara group! I was in mostly blues with a few rep purples and buyables but I think I managed ok - though a little more mp5 wouldn’t hurt!

I walked out with [Pantaloons of Repentance], [Forestlord Striders], and [Cord of Nature's Sustenance] for main spec and [Rapascallion Boots], [Dragonheart Flameshield], and [Scaled Breastplate of Carnage] for offspec.

I’d just gotten myself back in all mail and once again I’m catapulted into leather and cloth for healing! I don’t mind, of course, all of the healing items were decent upgrades for me but I seem to be looking a lot more priestly / druidy since Wednesday, hehe. Very… purple, too!

As for the offspec gear? I was absoloutely tickled to get the Dragonheart Flameshield - it looks awesome!

One day I might actually get enough pieces of gear to try enhancement. *cough*

Last, but by no means least, my little ferlol, Jhai has been geting herself some gear courtesy of a guildie giving a few alts a run or three through Deadmines! I snagged myself a few peices of the Defias set and was amused to pick up both [Rhahk'Zor's Hammer] and then [Smite's Mighty Hammer] in two consecutive runs. I love two handed maces on my druid - much more funky than staves, in my opinion!

I came out of those runs with a decent tanking set - 1.7k hp at level 23! Shame noone wants to run old-world instances these days… I’ll need to see if I can grab a whole group of low-level guildies and blast through some of them for fun and old-times-sake shenanigans.

Ok, this post seems to have gone on a bit longer than intended for just a gear-splat. I think I’m just rebelling, temporarily, against writing more in the post’o'dhoom to come. Bah.

When yer adventurin’ y’need the right gear for the job an’ some stuff is just a lot better fer a particular job than others. Sometimes somethin’ comes along, though, that ye never thought ye’d get…

This post will be full of gleeful roguishness - other classes might want to flee before I start spouting stuff about all those dreadfully boring things that raiding rogues talk about.

Are they gone? Good!

A simple happy thing made me cheer yesterday. I got my t4 chest! Not the biggest or most monumental of rogueish things but, my fellow stealthy, stabby, stalkers you can maybe understand my glee when I tell you that I will now no longer have to do what I had dreaded - break my tier four, two piece bonus. Happy as a pig in muck am I !

I suppose I should add here that, up until now, luck has had it that I only grabbed myself two pieces of tier four before being catapulted into tier five / tier six content - shoulders and gloves.

This terrible, doom-bringing decision had been looming over me for the past two weeks since the guild downed Az’galor - try for tier six gloves and break the bonus or stay with that delicious bonus and hope to get an upgrade elsewhere? I had resigned myself to the fact that if I did get the gloves I would break the set - it was a big enough dps upgrade to be worth it and I badly need to catch up gear-wise to the rest of the rogues.

Currently, then, with my shiny new chestpiece (which replaced the s1 chest - blech), I have the choice of swapping in something to either the glove or shoulder slot. My inventory, happily, holds a pair of [Shoulderpads of the Silvermoon Retainer] which are a pretty nice upgrade to the [Netherblade Shoulders]. Of course, some juggling may occur if I do manage to grab the tier six gloves (I’m up against some stiff competition from the mages…) but, until that time, I can rest happy in the knowledge that my 1s/5r is safe for a little while longer yet!

/cheer

The end of Big Bear Butt’s post from a few days back kind of struck a chord with me.

In the end, my biggest advice to you is; if you want to meet someone, you are not going to do it by solo questing. You are going to have to get out there and actually meet and greet, do what it is you are interested in, and chat with the other people who are doing the same.

It can be scary, I know.

In the past, I have been in the position of wanting to have enough friends to run the 5 man instances, wanting to be in a guild that raided the 10 mans, and wishing I knew where to go to find one.

But my mistake was that I did not enter the instances on my own. I didn’t take the initiative to go PUGing. I waited to be invited into a guild, expecting to then start doing a lot more group activity.

And the truth is, the core problem I had was that I was intimidated by doing the instance. The time I expected it to take, knowing that I was going to be committing myself to be in a single run lasting an hour and a half, with other people depending on me not to screw up, was a big looming scary wall.

His post was in regards to getting yourself a nice girl guild but was relevant for me as, although I’m in a nice, cushy, wonderful guild - their level of progression is way beyond my alts and not many of them are willing to run normal instances on a regular basis. Not five guildies at the same time anyway.

So, I got out there and did it. (Headings included for those who hate reading about instance runs - y’can just skip on past them.)

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A good rogue has to know where to look fer his information. Without information y’might as well stand oot in the broad daylight, twiddlin’ yer thumbs and hopin’ the job will do itself!

Puttin’ these all in one place so that, maybe, someone won’t have to look as far and wide for the links. There are, of course, plenty I’ve ‘missed’ but these are the ones I use on a regular basis for reference, not every single useful link ever.

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Good fortune and may the elements embrace you. I hope you will not mind a small amount of reminiscing on my part… But as the wind likes to carry with it tales from other places so do I and I hope, somewhere, someone is listening as I do to that sweet susurrus. My journey is new but, I hope, not short.

These posts will happen from time to time - I love my alts and each and every one has presented new aspects of the game to me which I want to record and share for all.My usual answer to most “wtb healer for heroic x” in guild is “Would love too but Ava’s healing is still too weak”. That is, not just his gear but my experience too. Most of the guild had reccomended getting 1.4-1.5k +healing before hitting a heroic and I only had 1.3k-ish and 167 mana regen with water shield up and some rather dubious ‘healing‘ gear. I’ve only healed five or six instances and all but one of those was a guild run.

My little resto-shammie Avarix is, in my mind, still a ‘baby’ character who needs geared up before doing such scary things. I have this problem with all of my characters - the ‘fear’ of underperforming really eats at me to the point where I don’t like to join groups for things I’d really like to do due to feeling under-geared or skilled.

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