... *cough* *cough* ..... ding

Yes,

You read it here first ....

well sort of ... I did announce it in game to mates first but out side of that ... you read it here first ... well sort of ... there were those people I emailed ... okay ... so you read it blogged here first ... now that I can honestly say ...

DING!!!

:)

yes, my 'I can't tank ... I'm Resto ...' lass is all grown up and is now 80. She was my first character made about eighteen months ago and so is special to me to such a degree that I wanted to make sure she was the first character I got to 80. In fact, I have always made sure she was my highest ranked character so she is special :)

I'm not sure what to do now ... I know there are heroics and raids to work through, but you know how it is, when you are so use to working on leveling, when that goes, you get a bit lost.

still ...

DING DING wooooot DING

Thou shall research before runs ... thou shall research before ...

uhuh

Now ... how many times have I been in discussions about the importance of researching before you go on runs and how much difference this actually makes.

My woody little druid has had two experiences recently that illustrate the worth and meaningless of this advice.

We had a guild run ... our second officially organised as a guild run type event. It was into Dire Maul for a guildies Warlock mount. We'd convinced her that it would be more fun to run the quest line rather than just train it. It lead to our first ever guild run where ten people registered for a run through Stratholme. Two level 80 tanks and a collection of other high level characters made this a walk in the park. It helped that they also KNEW WHERE TO GO! We used the raid function to sort two groups then degrouped to form the two groups for the run. The only people online were the ones who were in the run. We rolled through the place having had plenty of chatter in guild chat between the two groups. The positive feel in guild after was palpable and only made us more enthusiastic to tackle the next part of the warlock quest ... leading us to Dire Maul. I had not bothered reading ... I am ashamed to admit ... assuming that the two or three runs I'd done 20 levels ago on my furry kitty druid would be sufficient and hey ... someone else would know ... wouldn't they ... ahhhh no. Again we used raid to build the groups so every one knew who was with who then split to form two running groups. The first group went in with the warlock for its quest and got to the busy part of the group. My woody druid's group went in and we all turned to each other and went ... soooo ... Who knows the way? One moment of the experience saw the five of us running around one of the rooms in confusion as we could not even see the door to the next section right in front of our noses. Much tabbing in and out got us to a point where we knew what to do for the first section when the main group announced that they had what they needed to do and we should all come and see the newly aquired horse ... ahhh if only we'd read strategy notes on Dire Maul ... even just looking at a map would have been good!

Last weekend the same woody druid had an opportunity to go on a guild run to Halls of Lightning. She'd been hinted to that this event might be coming up and spent an evening reading Halls of Stone and Halls of Lighting strategy notes as the hint had not been clear about which of the two we'd been able to go on. Friday night dawned and saw us in HoL. A very nice place, the run went slickly, again tanked by one of our level 80 tanks admirably supported by a level 80 shadow priest, a 78 shadow priest and the woody druid at 77 ... yup ... we had a 4 man guild run through HoL that was smooth and slick. ... The only problem my woody resto druid had? Despite learning from the Dire Maul trip and spending time doing 'homework' so that she would be 'prepared' ... she did not recognise a damn thing in the place until she's cleared the final boss and was running back to the entry (why she did not hearth I am not sure) when she went 'hmmm I wonder if these were the ramps and platforms the notes were talking about?'

sooo .... does she keep researching before runs, or is she better to suck it and see then go read the notes to work out what the goodness was going on?

To Enhance or not to Enhance

A chance chat with my GM the other night lead to a mention of heros of wow ... yesum, you know who I'm talking about ... and lead me to go have a look at how my resto was looking. A quick scan of the data showed that by and large she is by and large unenhanced with items such as spellthread, enchants or armor kits and lead me to think about the extent to which I should do this. 

I am intending redoing her talents when she dings 80 mainly because there are tweaks I want to make to her tree but want to do it a bit like a 'now you are all grown up' type thing. I've thought about having a mate of mine do some swish stuff and enchant her but ... well ... what is the point of doing this when I'll replace her gear when something nice drops? ... but then argh ... I level her so slowly just enjoying the trip with her that, well, to be honest, I don't get to change her gear often and so some enhancements would be good ..... argh can you see my problem? 

ah .... maybe I can tank

The feral druid stretched, muscles and joints cracking in suppleness. At 58 she was young yet and knew she needed to visit her trainer in order to learn more. He smiled at her and agreed 'A little tidy up would be good'. She sighed and handed over the gold that would allow her to rebuild her talents. As she built, she thought of an older feral who had given her guidance before allocating talents in such a way as she remembered his words. That job done she listed as tank/dps looking for group but, being the first time she'd looked to tank, added a comment that she'd prefer to dps.

Waiting for a job to come, she moved off around the Hinterlands mining and exploring. A call went out ... 'LF tank ST' ... her heart stopped and she thought ... well I do have a quest there ... It is grey ... ah I'll have a go'. A quick check on the caller showed her to be a 48 warrior. The feral druid explained that she'd like to have a go, but as it would be her first go as tank, she'd understand if people gave advice or booted her if she made too much of a mess. The warrior assured her that they would not yell and promptly invited her to a the group.

The group was made up of the warrior and the feral druid, a level 56 hunter and shaman and a 58 pally resplendent in his cloth robes to heal us where needed. The feral druid worried that she would not maintain the attention of the monsters ... holding agro ... was the term she'd heard whispered in the garden dells of Darnassus and a thing that was, apparently, difficult to do. 

The run ended, they dusted their hands wiping sweat down their leggings and turned and smiled. There had not been a single death on the journey nor a single instance where they had even looked like collapsing. The feral had known that was in part due to the work of the whole group and that they were at the higher end of the experience level for the area, however, she was secretly pleased with how she had worked. When others had picked up agro, she'd had no trouble at picking them off the warrior, pally, hunter or shaman with a quick swipe or growl.

It was, all in all, a wonderful experience where she discovered that she could bear it with the best of them.

hmmm ... that new (ish ... sorta) CoT's run

... You know the one I'm talking about ... post BC, purple swirling gate, much excitement accompanied it as it's arrival in Azeroth coincided with the opening (thoughtful of you Bliz) from Darlan to CoT finally giving an express route from AnyWhere in game world to ... Gadgetzan, ZF, Un'Goro Crater and Silthius ... provided you have a hearth in Darlan or a nice mage ... oh yeah .... it also gave us access to CoT.

... so ... last Friday dawns and in my new world of 'OMG!!! I have to manage my online time better!!!!!!!!!!', what really dawns is my main playing time. We were going to have fun ... and lots of it with Tsu, half way to 76 and her inseparable mate the shadow priest finally off to the 'new' CoT run (please don't actually expect me to remember the names). Ok, so I know I need to pay more attention to lore ... I thought I was walking into Stormwind in past years only to be told noooo and discover the truth of my destination ... but ... we wiped and wiped and wiped. I felt for the warlock who had taken pity on us, (our intrepid guildie tank and a good mate of a balance druid), to act as our guide (none of us other than her had been there). It took us a while to learn from her that you MUST keep moving and she'd end up too far ahead of us and go splat as I could not heal her without loosing track of the rest of my group. 

bah

I had given in to advice that it is good to read about my class and had spent part of that afternoon reading about spell rotations that .. apparently ... work. Although there were a lot of similarities between what I do (not completely formalised, but basically a rejuv/wildgrowth/and one other ... one of those words i forget ... i'll edit when i remember type set up and so i tried to replicate one that I'd been looking at that formalised the rotation a bit more. ... absolute flop ... I could not keep enough on anyone to avoid having to HT deeply on .. well ... on everyone. ... okay ... so forgetting ToL in the first wipe was dumb but mmm shall we just say, a run I want to try again and want to go read about the run ... like maybe figure out what it is actually even called ...

on cooking ...

Tsu is my cook. I don't really see the point of running secondary profs up on the others except for first aide when she can make everything and just distribute as needed ... but food I'd like to be able to make ..

1. Porridge .. mmmmm ... old fashioned and daggy, every drop is delicious. Add a handful of sultanas, a couple of prunes and some honey and ahhhh talk about ultimate comfort food. ... It would give a comfort buff ... making you more likable so monsters would not be so likely to want to maul you while you were farming herbs and mines.
   
2. Toffees - you know the ones Mum use to make. If she'd only boil the sugar mix for a bit it would be soft and gooey ... these ones would give a Sticky buff so that trinkets, buffs and gear would 'stick' better and last ... so things like buffs would tick off over a longer period of time. The ones she cook longer so they go hard would give a Vulnerability buff - you would throw them at your target and it would cause damage as a DoT- just like Mum's did when you tried to bite into them.
3. Hot Dogs with cheese, tomato sauce, mustard, onions .... they would make you happy and could only be eaten when sitting around a fire when in a party group.

Feral Healer ...

Some weeks ago Myst discovered that xp in BRD was sweeeeet running at half to three quaters a level for a messy run where we completed maybe a third of the place before we all went ... bah, it's late, I'm tired goodnight ... kk so we'd started at that time of night where a sane person would have gone to bed. Now that run was back when she was only JUST big enough to get in.

So, last night sees her back in LFG not too fussed if she didn't get a run as she had to do the run around in EPL finding the little girl's dolly and handing in a couple of quests at Hope's Chapel so a bit of time spent riding long leagues as she didn't have a lot of fp up that way other than the obligatory refuge, southshore and chillwind point ones from SM runs back ages ago. Riding up the road well west of HC, comes a whisper ... 'BRD yes?' ... 'sureeeee' I reply ... coool. Hand in my quests and she dings 53 ... nice. Allocate another talent point registering that mmm crap the tree looks messy reflecting her first respec into feral when I was ooo yah pure dps that began morphing into mmm maybe being a bear would be fun resulting just in a bit of confusion that would horrify most theory crafting people. One summons later sees her standing at the stone in BRD with my head spinning and rushing to catch up with people managing to agro every damn thing in the cavern before the entry portal. Dead on the ground the healer goes ...' where did you die?' In horror at my stupidity I'm 'ooo don't ask, I wont be long', run back, res and catch up looking decidedly incompetent. 

Myst was the smallest dps in the group by two levels and her dps and damage output I thought was looking shabby until I realized that I was being outpdps'ed by a lvl 57 hunter by only 100 points so I didn't feel quite so bad after that. Part way though the run, the very, very competent holy speced healer priest looks at me and goes 'Can you heal?'. My immediate thought was ...'crap my dps is so bad the healer wants to swap'. I reply, 'Well I don't have dual yet so all my points are feral but I have a bit of spirit/int gear with me, I could have a go'. 'cool' she replies 'I'm dual shadow/holy but have not had a chance to run it yet'. So we swop and I slip via Item Rack into 'something more comfortable' and manage to heal us through a couple of tight fights. :) ok, so our health dipped a lot more than it did with our seriously good healer (she has, apparently 3 80's and all healers and I can believe that with how she ran) but only one res needed so I was pleased and ooo so can't wait for that 1000g to build up so I can go feral/resto. I know resto/balance makes more sense in gear but I'm enjoying being a kitty dps and have used bear in solo work and enjoyed that - i've not been game enough to list as tank yet - think I need to ask some guildies for a favour and have a go at tanking them before I do that. 

Myst clearly was not as good at healing as the holy priest and so after a bit we swapped back at her suggestion :(. She was finding the healing a bit boring but hey, we got a long way through the place before, yet again, we all decided to go home.

Two runs in there and mmm Myst is now 2 bar of xp off 55 and needing some training. I would have liked to ding again but our tank needed to sleep and quite frankly, so did I. 

Recount .... what does it tell me????????

So I've loaded Recount as an addon :)

It makes me look hopeless at dps

Just as well I've not run one of my dps girls with it yet as I'd probably look even worse - I don't run them very often so ... well lets just use the term ... 'out of practice' and leave it at that.

The first time I did it, I had the overhealing tab open on recount and my % were what I thought were quite high... about 25% + ... I'm using that to assume that it means that I'm overhealing by about 25% of the spell or 25% of the time ... either way, I think it means I was wasting my mana and subsequent runs have been under 10% for overhealing but I'm still not really sure what it actually means ... any suggestions? ... maybe I need to go back and read the description on curse.com of what it all says.

I think what it told me was that I was improving.

It did work out nice in bg ... I have a nightelf priest who goes to bg's. She is 18 and holy specked and is part way to being as tweaked as I can (I still have to get a friend to run WC for me all the way through ... I'm thinking get in and die until it is clear) - so she has the lorekeepers ring and staff as pvp rewards (I'm a bit stingy to spend the 100g on the world drop staff) and the bronze necklace. She has the barkskin jacket sitting in her bag waiting for 19 - I went with that over the one that drops in VC as it basically has pretty good stats and was a gift and well ment one less instance run. Recount has been great for keeping track of her heals during bg's and I've enjoyed being in the top two healers on the run for the past couple of days.

Quests I wish were NOT repeatable ....

mmm you know that white cat mount you can get from Winterspring - all white with shimmery white/silver stripes called Glimmer I think? He's a stunning saber tooth vicious, elegant feline. mmm beautiful. You have to earn rep. with the trainers in Winterspring to prove yourself worthy of riding one of these beasts. Earning rep. I don't mind and you do end up feeling like you have actually achieved something ... but that quest!!!!!!!!!!!!! oooohh man! Surely they could just give you one quest that says 'Go forth, kill a mob of bears and chimera and bring back 10000000000000000 pieces of their meat.'? Getting sent out to get 5 pieces of each, taking them back to then be sent back for another 5 pieces of each ... hmmm lol.

Sigh ... I've done the first round and well the best I manage is 250 honor points out of about 2000 or something before she goes from Neutral to the trainers having Any sense of feeling towards me ... sigh ... I suppose I should not be too upset ... at least they don't hate me ey .... long road back from hate.

While I'd love to pretend that Blizzard read this post and responded by redesigning the rep quests, I'm not that foolish. I am however, very excited to note that they have changed the quests to having to over  period of 20 quests collect food, play and teach your kitten until you have it's whiskers and can gain your mount.

A big improvement.

Quests I'd love to have repeatable :)

I went online last night and found myself in the middle of a quest in Northrend I would love to do again, simply because it was a bit of fun and a variation on the usual 'Go forth and kill 30 whatevers'. Okay, so it was 'Fly forth on this trusty gryphon here and rescue 10 villagers' but hey, it was nice to do something for the cause that, for once, did not involve having to kill everything in sight. As a healer, it goes somewhat against my druid's nature to run rampantly around an area leaving a trail of destruction in her wake.

The quest in question is the Flight of the Wintergarde Defender where you fly a gryphon down to rescue 10 helpless souls from the ruins of the Wintergarde Village. These poor, defenceless souls have been invaded by the scourge and run fleeing in panic from the Carrion Fields. Much mirth was heard last night in my lounge room as we swooped down to pick a damsel in distress up from the clutches of the evil monsters while over head loomed the pyramid of darkness that dominates our Wow lives at the moment. It was sardining to see the depths of damage done by the invading monsters of the Lich King and rewarding to think that you'd contributed in a small way to the overthrowing of his legions.

Why do again, simply because it was a bit of positive fun in a game that can be a little bloody in its quest to over throw the ultimate evil.

mmm 71 and a half

:) We dinged 71 and a half on Sunday night.

Okay so I can hear you all groan ... that's not actually something to get all that excited about ... but that half a level has been done the 'hard' way by completing quests. She's not run a level dungeon run at all yet this level. The online time has been somewhat curtailed of late and I just can't promise to be on long enough to actually get the job done and so she's had to grind the level off and as you can imagine ... being resto, her offensive skills are blunted in favour of her heals and so while she can solo anything I take her too unless I'm foolish and go ... 'ooo that red monster looks fair game'... but it is a long, slow process. It is amazing to think that at 20 000 xp per run half a level can still take a long, long while.

She's been doing the runs around the Fizzcranks airstrip ... why? mmm killing evil gnomes in little black leather look-a-lilke suits just appeals to me somewhat ... and I'm finding that the leather gear that is quest rewards predominantly is feral gear ... all stam and agility gear and to get things that will boost her spirit or int. stats or spell damage/heal stats are cloth. Yes, I can hear you all going ... druid in cloth healing ... and what is so bad about that??????? Well ... the problem is that the cloth gear is not an improvement on the leather heal gear she is in at the moment (shabby as it is with 2 kara drops and a couple of other okayish bits). Rather the cloth just maintains her stats while taking the bottom out of the armor level of the gear. ... maybe I just need to trust the tanks more that they will out agro me (not that hard to do lol) and I can collect a cloth heal set. Maybe I need to move into even more snowy areas and target other drops... sigh lol or find the time to go lfg for a dungeon or two.

The Friday before last she and I did end up in a run. We got an invite to heal in a kara run that was a fair way through so after running through empty chambers to find the group and do a bit of work, the round of 'soz got to go ... ' similar to the one that lead to our invite in the first place start up ... so the group goes ... lets go lfm and get enough to go off and bang the gong. ... mmm ... finishing kara would have been better ... we trooped off to the gong and stood there banging and banging that damn thing to absolutely no end with half the group agonising that 'it's not That Hard ... our Guild got in first time' and other similar content. ... A complete waste of time and effort in which I could have been knocking off a couple more quests ... at least I would have picked up Some xp for the night. Such a waste that I have no idea what the inside of that place looks like. lol ... one positive ... well she still has all those potions and things I brewed up before we went :) so now she can pretend to be a regular girl scout next time I roll her out.

Introduction

mmm... so a blog ... amazing the way the white space looms ahead of you tempting you to fill it while terrifying in its certainty that it will record every speck you record ... mmm .... so what to record ...

On the fair thought that few will stumble across my musings I'm planning a place where I can wander through my thoughts and explore another dimension to my game.

I am, as my blog title informs us all ... a resto druid through and through and despite this, the whispers she (my main) gets ingame are generally '... LFM ... tank for .... can you do it?' ... Sigh ... to such an extent that I've come to the conclusion that I must be listed on some secret 'DruidTank Listings' in game that others have found and use and I am still yet clueless about. So ... once and for all ... 'No ... I can't tank ... I'm Resto' ... there ... it is said. She'll probably continue to be resto for a long while after the miracle that is dual spec lands on my desktop (drat, I must learn to not shut down immediately on logging out so that the patch can update ...) as the lure of a specky new mount/flight form at the princely sum attached to it far outweighs, at the moment, the lure of being able to tank as a resto druid accompanied by its associated costs of getting dual spec And having to get the gear to go with it! hmmm a market in offspec gear for a bit ... drat ... I should have gone farming/leatherworking/been drattedly rich and cleaned out the AH only to post again at ridiculous prices ....

I should also clarify the 'through and through' bit also ... my main is a resto druid ... I also have an up and coming lvl mid 40 something druid who I've just respeced off resto/balance hybrid to being a wanna be feral. That reads as ... argh ... I have no idea about being feral. In her second run out it was so hard to overcome the urge to be in elf form it was not funny. The run, however was very, very funny and :) endless gratitude to this big furry level 80 catbear of a feral for tanking/dpsing her through ZF for her pretty blue head piece and those icky scarab beetles. I did have a lot of fun the very first day hitting the training dummies who are, at her level, very good at dodging. Within minutes of respecing she found herself in an ulda run with a generous guildie who had invited her along. I warned the guildie that I'd just changed and had no idea and, well, if he could cope, I could come. 'Sure' he says 'just hit my target and you'll be fine' so off she went (dpsing in her resto/balance gear as I'd not even had a chance to hit the AH for some emergency gear) and mmm well I hope I didn't get in the way too much. I'm so use to watching omen to keep my threat levels down and healbot to watch for who needs a bit of a buzz that it was a new experience to only have to manage threat and let someone else worry about heals. (actually ... not healing and letting the quite competent priest heal was really hard to do lol ... reading the bars are almost instinct automatic these days)