The Crossroads

v3.2.2

Been pretty busy lately so this is just going to be a post about some random thoughts.  I’ll get to the crossroads in a minute, but firstly some links.

MK @ Dwarfpriest posted after about 12 months of silence.  For those who don’t know MK wrote some of the best priest posts of 2008, especially around the 3.0.2 patch and Wrath.  S/he has been unable to play due to health issues, which many of us are sorry to hear.  Don’t make an idiot of yourself like I did and read the post before you comment.  Sorry MK I realise my comment was a bit tactless.

No Stock UI has an excellent post about moving from Fubar to DataBroker.  I made this move about 6 months ago and i’d never go back.  The post has some decent plug-ins for your favorite data broker (I use Fortress myself).

There have been lots of posts about T10 set bonuses.  My short take on them is that they have returned from awesome 4 piece Tier 8 bonus for discipline, back to the “meh” days of tier 7.  Some are excited about the 4 piece tier 10 for priests (15% chance of removing the Penance/CoH cool down on Flash Heal cast), but this isn’t that good IMHO.  I might post on them in detail when they get closer to being finalised.  Until then Rez the Weak and Duct Tape and a Prayer both have interesting takes on them.

My last shout out goes to Holyform’s post on Power Infusion.  This is a good overview and it lead to my amazing discovery of the week.  Ready for it?  Power Infusion doesn’t trigger the global cool down!  Massive, eh?  Despite using PI regularly for months and months I only just learnt that.

Ok to the crossroads.  BTW this is nothing to do with the Barrens this time.

For most of the year Turkelife has had a list of things todo (a bucketlist?) which included:

• Raid regularly and maintain a good gear level
• Do Loremaster title
• Grind Son’s of Hodir rep
• Maybe look at that tournament thingy in Icecrown
• Maybe grind some of the Outland faction reps for mounts and pets.  Maybe.

Well she’s raiding regularly and i’ve seen most of the sights.  She’s also fairly well geared (don’t look at my trinkets) and even her shadow off spec is strong thanks to Voa 25 dropping shadow gear regularly.  So thats done.  Unlike Ulduar hard modes our guild isn’t that enthused about heroic ToC raiding.  More of the same but slightly harder?  No giant robots? No thank you.  We’ve killed a few bosses in ToC 10 heroic, but no one is that excited about progressing.

Loremaster is done.  It was long it was kinda fun but now its done.

Last week i finished the Son’s of Hodir Exalted rep grind.  Actually it wasn’t that much of a grind, especially once I discovered there are actually quite a few Everfrost chips lying about if you know what to look for.

So now she’s into the maybes.  Argent tournament is still pretty “meh”.  I’ve done a bit but it’s just not doing it for me.

So i’m at the crossroads.  I’m kinda thinking of leveling a druid (currently 45), but leveling a 4th 80 isn’t motivating me, even with +20% xp.  I feel like I need a second toon at at least entry level raiding because as a guild we are doing a lot of gearing alts ATM.  We’re running 2 x ToC 25, about 4 x ToC 10, multiple heroic daily runs, etc, etc, and with one toon i’m missing out on some of the action.  The guild really needs a few more tanks as we go through them like vindaloo.  So I was thinking a resto/bear druid…maybe.

Currently at 80 I have a disc/shadow priest (my main), a elem/resto shaman and a prot warrior.  I like shaman but I find DPS fairly boring over any extended period of time and for some reason I just can’t get into resto shaman healing.  I think its the limited number of buttons to push.

So last night I pulled my finger out and dusted of Moowall my prot warrior.  He needed about 10-15 defence to reach the defence cap and normal ToC was a prime target.  In I went still trying to remember how to tank.  Once again I was reminded by the sheer number of buttons prot warriors have to push.  I think I need a lot of buttons to be happy.

Anyway normal Toc is cake.  The jousting is easier than the Grand Melee daily I was doing on Turkelife, the tanking was fairly easy, even though I suck big time at targeting in melee range and there is epics.  Epics fall from the sky like candy.  Kill a slightly harder trash pull, get a chest of epics, kill the Paltress, get a chest of epics, kill the Black Knight, you get the idea.  I didn’t get my Black Heart, but did get a couple of other upgrades (mainly for my very weak Arms off-spec).

Wow this post is getting long.  To cut a long story short I replaced my rare gems with epic gems and when I have my +75 defence Golem Sabatons on not only can I reach the 535 heroic defence cap but I have exactly 540 defence.  Rawr!  Let me tank a raid!!!

Looks like Moowall is my main alt (for now) 😉

Gobble gobble.