Ah cannae say ah find the sight o’ the knickers o’ some big blue demon aw that appealin’ but Jhai seems tae be somewhat pleased a’ this picture she took.  Somethin’ about action shots an’ dreams and… well, ah don’t really want tae know why that lass is so keen on gettin’ hersel’ hit like that.  Druids, eh?

SQUEE I got to tank Prince, I got to tank Prince!  *ahem*

I know the screenie this week isn’t too amazing to look at but it marks a big achievement for me.  There are bigger bosses, there are badder bosses, there are more complex bosses to tank and we got about the easiest infernal drops you could hope for last night… But I TANKED PRINCE.  One of the main reasons I got so irked with my first druid / guild was being asked to sit out and dps whilst a warrior tanked.  I am not hugely fond of kitty dps (though it is growing on me now…) but I love tanking.  I wish you could have a section in the new achievements window to list ‘personal achievements’ - this is one I’d add.

I also tanked Attumen (I’ve only been on midnight before), Moroes, Maiden, Illhoof (had only done Kil’rek before) and Nightbane - and my guildies had to listen to me squeeing about tanking them each time, hehe.

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Ah know when ah’m no wanted, all them druids rompin’ their way through Karazhan and nary a dwarf nor a rogue in sight.  *Grumble*

Lightwalker’s furriest, featheriest and..barkiest? stepped into Karazhan with one aim - trash the place, druid style! I had been hoping to do this for a long time - especially after seeing Anna’s all-Pally Kara run - if those pretty-in-pink boys can do it why can’t we druids!?  We had some troubles getting things off the ground last week but this week things came together and we rampaged through the place.

There is little in Karazhan that is truly difficult for an all druid team - Aran and Romulo & Julianne require interrupts and Maiden reqires a dispell.  I managed to fraps most of it but, unfortunately, didn’t get any footage of moroes as I forgot to turn fraps on.  /crai

Please forgive the terrible youtube-quality and quickly-put-together video - I’m a newbie when it comes to recording and editing and compressing and and… yeah.  I kinda enjoyed it, though, so I’ma try to do some more and hopefully get better!

The Setup:

• 5 Ferlols
• 2 Boomkeks
• 2 Trees
• 1 HT Druid

Problems:

• No dispell
• No real interrupt
• No salvation!

Bonuses:

• 5 innervates
• 5 combat res’
• Pure, Distilled Awesome

Our guildies were mostly amused and seemed to think we’d lack dps or not be able to overcome the need for dispells / interrupts but I think, after thoroughly trashing the place, we can safely say we proved ‘em wrong.

Some notes:

Maiden we simply outhealed for the most part and combat res’d when there was just a bit too much damage going on.  Not really much trouble and in a pinch the melee could have all healed the tank (though it totally wasn’t needed with the number of hots flying).

Romulo and Julianne are actually pretty easy to interrupt - the Eternal Affection heal is a looooong cast and two feral druids can take turns standing out and waiting for it to be cast then feral charge interrupting it.

Aran is a pain in the big bear butt - we found that using the same technique as R&J meant losing far too much dps so eventually we just took the option of taking the poly.  As the video shows - druids can easily overcome this with a few tranquilities blasting!

Illoof isn’t actually too bad  You will end up with a lot of imps but we found that having a couple of swiping bears was enough to keep most of their attention and the relatively high health pool mitigated well (as well as some pretty awesome healing).

Plate will drop on every boss.  Whats not plate will usually be mail.  I think we ended up with 6 items actually going to people max… /facepalm

Dps is a bit slower than a mixed group and we weren’t setting any records but we finished in ~3 hours or so - not bad, really!

Screenies

(Oh and my little Jhai was the lootwhore of the evening, soaking up [Signet of Unshakable Faith], [Emberspur Talisman], [Aran's Soothing Sapphire], and squeefully [Gilded Thorium Cloak] (replaced my resto offhand twice in one run hehe).  I hate feeling like such a lootwh0re but, damnit, I hate seeing things sharded!)  The cloak was a really nice upgrade for me as was my new [Violet Signet] (dinged honored after downing Maiden!).

Go team druid!

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Since I didn’t manage to get a screenie up last Sunay (bah!) I’m putting up a double round this week!  A while ago I was in Darnassus on my Tauren druid, trying to take some screensfor Phae’s Arbor Day celebrations.  I ended up in trouble with the guards and spent a lot of time swimming about in the water leading to my first shot:

In other druidy goodness, last weeks Kara run was choc full of all sorts of ‘em:

Hopefully, at some point, we’re going to try a full 10 druid Kara!  Two shy people seem to have snuck off the side - or perhaps the warrior and shammy wanted to get in on the druidy goodness!

Edit: Oops, seems I pressed sumbit insteadof save… oh well, ‘Saturday’ screenies this week ;P

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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.

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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.

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