Solidd dings 70, let the gold flow!

It finally happened, Solidd dinged 70. After reaching 95% on the XP-bar from various instance runs, I went to Terokkar when 2 green quests and a few mob kills were enough to bring me the rest of the way.

Dinging 70 meant a huge cash outflow for me. First and foremost was buying the epic flying riding skill and a mount, a cool 5.2k gold right there. Then there were gems to socket new gear, mats for enchants and armor enhancements, new gear to buy from vendors... the gold just flowed and flowed. I have basically sucked all of my characters dry :)

I can really appreciate now why tanks are the first and foremost to cry about lack of gold. It's not the repair bills so much as the massive amounts of gold you spend on gear. As a dps char, it doesn't really matter if you don't immediately get the best gem. As a tank, it's practically a matter of life-and-death ;p

Even worse, every new piece of gear means not just costs for it, but costs for previously enchanted and gemmed gear. Got a new ring with +defense on it? Guess what, you just need to spend another cool 100g to replace some defense gems that are no longer needed! It's enough to make a grown bear cry... :)

For druids who wish to have a decent DPS set apart from the tanking set, it becomes even worse. I have un-gemmed DPS gear that I just don't have the gold to socket now, at least not with blue-quality gems. As for my caster gear, that's a complete joke...

Still I don't want to make this post a whine-fest. I'm happy with my druids and happy to spend the gold on a good cause. In bear form I now have around 13.5k life and 17k armor (self-buffed with MotW), 22% dodge and am crit-immune. These are great starting stats for normal instances and in fact last night I tanked SV, twice, once after the other.

There were no over-powered chars on these runs. I, a new bear, was the tank. Healer was a Shaman with good healing gear but not exceptional (~ 1.3k bonus healing). DPS for the first run consisted of 2 hunters and a mage, and both the mage and one of the hunters were level 69. Yet we only wiped once in the entire run, nor did we have any particular trouble. The only wipe was at the last boss since the DPS forgot(?) to kill the water-tank and the boss got his double-damage buff and promptly killed me.
On the second run the mage was replaced with a good 70 rogue who did great damage, that run was even faster and we finished it cleanly and without a wipe. I hit revered with CE and so have only 21k rep till my Earthwarden, yey :)

All-in-all I'm very happy. Having my own tank char is a great feeling. I will have to take some time now to grind gold, which means due to my lower play-hours that I will not be doing instances on those days. But that is not a problem and I've already proven to myself that making even 1kg per week is very doable. That should give me a nice buffer to have the gold to enchant/gem my tanking gear as required. I might even splurge and waste a bit on my DPS gear :)