Seems ah’m hangin’ up mah boots fer a while and going back tae Ironforge tae dae some er ’secretarial’ work.  You know, stuff tae dae wi’ documents and ‘filin’ them right’ and stuff. *Ahem*

I blame The Bloggers.  I really do.  It’s all their fault.  All those resto druids and shamans, holy paladins and priests. They’ve changed me.

Chain-Healing
What am I talking about?  About a week or so ago, now, I changed my main to my shaman.  I had been getting tired and bored of stabbing things from behind - I don’t know why as I’ve always loved melee.  A couple of times, however, we were short on healers for Mount Hyjal and I offered my shaman - he’s decently geared with quite a few of the T6 quality badge loot and the pick of Kara epics (still no bloody shield though /bitter) - and was taken along.

Wow.  Just… WOW.  There was a thrill and of  a new sort. A few subs like this and it had gotten to the point where I was actively hoping a healer would drop out just so I could go heal.  When I realised I was doing that I figured it was time to ask for a main change.  It might seem weird so close to Wrath but the guild is currently a little short of healers and heavy on melee dps and here I was with a reasonably geared resto shammy and wanting to chain-heal!

I have to say - it really has put the thrill back in raiding for me.  If you’d told me a year ago I’d actively seek out a healer role I’d have laughed.  If you’d said I’d give up a melee dps spot to do it I’d have laughed doubly hard.  Yet here I am. What has changed? No clue.  I have just found that I really, really enjoy healing and that, in a raid, it engages me far more than roguery does.

Even if most of what I seen in an evening looks something like this:

Hyjal has come alive again for me - every boss fight is not the same old dps cycle, the same old trinket clicking, the same old… old.. *snooze*.  Now I have to pay attention to totems, mana, incoming damage.  Each time I heal the same boss different people take different damage and everything is so new and exciting.  I guess the other thing is that I actually feel like I make a difference.

Doing a fight like Kaz’rogal where you’re staving off mana-reducing deuffs and still having to heal your little heart out is amazingly fun.  Every boss fight feels like a small triumph - more so than whittling away at a ginormous health pool over the course of five to ten minutes.

So, what now?

Of course, that doesn’t change stuff around here.  Aurik is and will remain ‘me’.  He is the personification of my real life self - short, dumpy, scottish, hyperactive and, of course, huggable! *ahem* This has never been a rogue blog nor one which shies from posting about alts so all you might find is that any ‘I went to BT and saw this boss, wow’, posts will be shamany rather than roguey.

Durid is for haelz!

But, that’s not the only healing I’ve been up to…

Yes, the tree is yours truly.  Embracing my new-found enthusiasm for the healy side I grabbed a respec to go heal for the budding young paladin tonk you see here.  I could have healed normal ramparts as feral but I really wanted to try things tree-style with all of the available bells and whistles.  It was a blast but perhaps a bit too easy an instance to judge if I’ve been tempted away from my feral side…  I had to respec the next day to tank some instances but my respec cost at the moment is very low so I might jump the fence a few more times!

I’ve managed to pic up some pretty nice epics just from doing some heroics where noone else wanted them so I’m sitting at around 1k healing already on my druid.  My spirit is a little low, though, as is my mp5 so I’m working on that.  I’ve also not enchanted anything yet - though as I don’t expect to be healing anything difficult I think I’ll see if I can grab some more healy gear whilst tanking before I start grinding out those primal lives.

Oh and I started playing my paladin again a little bit…

a third healer in the making?

7 comments

Well, see, there’s this guy and he has some issues and he wants ye tae fix ‘em fer him.  Well, ah’m a believer o’ fixin’ things fer yerself - especially when the asker looks so shifty - so ah  wisn’t havin’ anything to do wi him but thon shaman is a bit o’ a soft touch and said he’s go do his dirty work. *grumble*  Anyways, he comes back tae me a wee while later wi’ the biggest most ridiculous hat ah’v ever seen… all proud of himself.  Well, it was all ah could do tae no laugh…

Since the patch I’ve been wanting to get my grubby mitts on [Don Carlos' Famous Hat].  I mean, come one, what could be more awesome than a full size ghost wolf pet?  Especially alongside a shaman in ghost wolf form!  After a bit of fun with Archi I grabbed a few guildies and we set off to procure our hats.

It took a little while to find him first time (he patrols the long, straight road) but when we did we unleashed all sorts of doomkin on him!  Softi tanked him whilst our enhance shammy, Az, took out his pet.  The mage (Grav) pewpew’d and I did the healzor beams thing I do.

As you can see, this pic was taken after Grav and I already grabbed our hats.  The encounter, despite being in heroic, is so easy we didn’t need our real ones.  Although killing him saves you to the instance you can zone out, set the instance to normal then heroic again, zone back in and he will have respawned.  This may be fixed in future patches so I reccomend you scoot along now to do it!  You don’t even need the quest to do this, though it will get you a basic version of the same hat (same model, no on-click wolfie).

Showing off our lineup of three gazillion wolves.  Ok, so maybe a small exaggeration but still…. can you figure out which are the shamans!? (the floaty water globes are just a small hint ;P)

Dancing with this hat cannot be beaten.  /dance

Busy, busy, busy! Ah’v been doin’ everythin’ this week an’ ah’d like tae tell ye all aboot it.  Helps me relax, ken?  After a long week o’ smitin’ all sorts ah jist feel like sittin’ back and chewin’ the fat wi’ u lot.

I feel sorry for my poor wee blog - it’s been half abandoned these last few weeks due to everything seeming to hit at once busyness wise.  So, this post may be a bit rambley and all over the place but I was to stick it down for posterity.

Rogue

I has a new hat.  It is an improvement on my old hat.  I r happy rog.  Of course, it clips my hair so I’ve turned helm off again and I’ll continue to look… exactly the same.  /sigh  I also need to drag myself into AV or something this coming week, too, as Blizz felt it was a great idea to make pve off-hand swords none-too-easy to come by in TBC.

Shaman

I have spent so much gold on my shaman this week and I need to spend more.  Having s4 coincide with your new pve gear is not nice.  Many, many primal lifes have been farmed and I’m still not maxed on what I’ll need.

I managed to grab [Light's Justice] last week - it’s nice to have something other than the s1 mace to look at - even though I did love its glowyness.

Avarix has also rounded out his gear with [Runed Scales of Antiquity] thanks to a few guildies helping me farm 2 badges after tonight’s Kara run! Now I need more primal lives and gems… Ah well, happy is me that my shammy is wearing a dress again! *Ahem*

Druid

Mushrooooom.  That is what my druids level has done since I last mentioned her (apparently much to Softi’s despair).  She’s now done what my other druid did about a year ago:

It’s such a difference to when I brought my hunter through the Portal - I had to make myself log in and dragged my way through the quests.  Now, on my druid, I’m eager to go and even enjoyed grinding Hellboars so I could quickly boost my leatherworking skill.

Learning from the past I had collected any unidentified plant parts I’d come across on my hunter and saved them.  When I dinged 60 on my druid I promptly rode to the Cenarion Expedition Outpost and handed in 360 to achieve honored status.  /cheer That grabbed me quite a number of leatherworking patterns (the all important [Strength of the Clefthoof] ones) and a nice chunk of reputation towards the coveted Exalted.

A guidlie kindly ran me through Ramparts (though I’d been asking for a same-level group to practice tanking with, hehe) and I got just about every leather / melee dps piece which can drop except the staff.  Go me.  Ever had a char which seemed incredibly lucky drops-wise? Like my other druid, Jhai seems to have a gift for getting what she wants.  I’ve probably jinxed it now, oh well.

Unfortunately, this morning my PC’s HDD gave out on me (it’s been throwing errors for weeks and I’ve got a new one to replace it… I’m just short a cable!) so I won’t be tanking until that’s sorted - I can play my shaman on my laptop but both the rogue and druid need the PC as I use mouse-button keybinds which don’t work on the laptop without disabling the trackpad…  This wouldn’t be a problem for me as I never use the damn thing but the other half uses the laptop more and prefers the trackpad.

I started using mouse button keybinds when I got a new mouse after Christmas - I staved my finger and it hurt to flex it sideways too much so I bound one of my oft-used abilites (Slice and Dice) to the mouse, leaving Sinister Strike for my other hand.  This means less flexing and so less strain on my already slightly weird fingers.  For my druid shifting to bear is on the mouse - this works for levelling as it’s a very fast way to shift into bear but I may change it as it’s not something I should be using that extensively in instances - I think I might put mangle on that mouse button, or lacerate when I get it.  I’ll need to figure that out once my new HDD is installed.

Fire Festival

My favourite writing bone to gnaw on when it comes to WoW is replayability - this means you’ll be straddled with a post about my Fire Festival shenanigans soon concerning that and other fun aspects.  *ahem*  Suffice to say, at the moment, that I’m enjoying myself.

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.

There’s acquaintances and pals and then there’s good friends - you know they’ve got yer back and you’ve got theirs and when the shite hits the fan you’ll be able to pull through or at least laugh at yer mishap.

A lot of really cool people have been writing about healer and tank synergy this week - the first two I read being that by Phae at Resto4Life and the person who had inspired her - SaladFork at Omen of Clarity. I know I’m a little late to the party (story of my blog-life) but I figured I’d go and stick up my own little view from the ‘third’ point of view - dps - specifically melee dps.

Melee dps get the least love when it comes to healing. A lot of healers tend to look down upon the poor ill-fated rogue, warrior, crittycat, shaman or retridin who has commited the heinous crime of taking damage. In 5 mans you know, as a rogue especially, that if you take aggro (it can happen for reasons other than stupidity, trust me) you’re not going to get a heal unless the healer is content that the tank is ok. You sort of accept it with a small sigh, accept your res and move on.

It’s not always the case, however. I, personally, always try my best to make myself aquainted with a healer if I’m running a pug. Water / mana pots drop? Pass ‘em to the healer. “Thanks for the heals” also goes a long way. I find if I do this, and make friends with ‘em, I get more heals. Making your healer feel loved means more heals all around. That might seem a bit feindish to most of you but I see it as win-win. The healer knows I appreciate them and I appreciate them all the more as a few more heals come my way. This works on me too - I am more inclined to heal those who take time to appreciate my efforts when on my Shammy.

However! The topic was special bonds. I think the reason, perhaps, any dps are less likely to feel a special bond with their healer is that they don’t really get assigned a healer to themselves. Noone ever says “Ok, Priest-1, you’re healing Aurik”. Unless they’re a ‘lock, mage or hunter tank most dps will never have a special healer to themselves. Melee dps, however, have their resto shammies. Resto shamans are awesome melee healers and in Burning Crusade the melee often takes a lot more damage than ranged (not always true, I know, but in general). This means having a healer assigned especially to us! As a group we love our resto shaman and she keeps us alive - we know half the time we owe our ‘lives’ and our dps (from not being dead) to her timely heals.

I have learned around how much her chain heals hit for and when they will heal me and when I should maybe step out and bandage / pot on raid-damage heavy bosses. I also keep an eye and ear out to make sure nothing’s decided she’s a tasty meal-inna-crunchy-shell. In Hyjal, with so many mobs, sometimes I’ll find a caster targeting her or a skeletal mage who’s slipped through and will do my best to stun/maim or otherwise incapacitate them - or failing that aggroing and pulling ‘em to the Pally-tonk. For us ‘our’ Shammy part of the melee team. Doubly so as sometimes she fights alongside us enhancement spec!

An in game relationship of any sort - one on one or amongst a small group - makes working with others so much easier and better. It’s all about trust and doesn’t matter, in my opinion, if you’re a tank, healer or dps. People who trust each other and know each others limits will not only do better but enjoy their time more - going a step further than they might have otherwise.

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.

Thon Draenei was buggin’ me and tellin’ me ah should write some funny-lookin’ poetry. Now, ah huvnae seen anythin’ like it before but my shaman pal Avarix assures me that it’s a well known ‘art form’ where he’s fae and he helped me tae write some while daen’ a few hisself.

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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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