Brewfest

Last night my mage went to kill a new boss - the Brewfest boss, Coren Direbrew! :)

It starts with you going outside and below Ironforge to the Brewfest camp and talking to the NPC who welcomes you to brewfest (just complete the "say hi" quest and receive your free drink).

From there, ride a little distance to Dun Morogh and talk to the NPC who gives you the quest to go to the Grim Guzzler.

Ride back to IF, take the bird to Searing Gorge and ride into Blackrock Mountain and down to BRD.

As soon as you enter BRD, on your right, are some clickable boxes on the ground. Click one and it will teleport (actually, "tunnel" - it's a fun ride :)) you to the Grim Guzzler - no need to clear anything in BRD.

Return the quest to the NPC standing just outside the room where you appear and get the followup quest - the one to actually kill the boss. The boss is standing right in that room, talking with 3 NPCs (all are green and cannot be attacked until someone starts the quest).

Once the fight starts by having someone with the quest talk to the boss, the 3 (normal) NPCs are easy to kill but more will spawn periodically, making the fight a bit interesting. AOE helps a lot, and make sure your healer isn't being picked on by the new adds that spawn. The drills that spawn from the ground can interrupt spells but are otherwise not dangerous.

Adding to the fun is an elite (Ursula Direbrew) who spawns (sometimes right on-top of the boss so hard to see - use alt-tab to target) and starts throwing beer mugs on people. Make sure to drink the brew appearing in your bags. Her 8-sec disorient ability (which turns your head to a big beer keg - very funny :)) might be a problem if applied on your healer or tank, so make sure to get agro on her and down her. She has a large health pool but didn't do much damage to my mage with the thrown kegs, so she's fairly easy.

Full strategy details are on the boss's wowwiki page but really except for the elite add there's not much to do, just tank-n-spank.

We had a druid tank wearing partly greens and a disc-specced priest as healer and still the fight wasn't very hard (no one died). My hardest problem was that my gear was so much better than the tank's he couldn't keep agro on the boss. My solution was to concentrate on killing the adds mostly and only occasionally focus on the boss.

Once the boss is dead and you finish looting him, his body will despawn and a new one will appear with the same initial 3 NPCs, ready for a new fight. You can only start the fight if you have the quest so make sure all 5 people have picked it up before-hand so you can do the fight a full 5 times. No need to run outside the instance to reset or anything like that.

Alas, our group didn't get the mount to drop but at least we got the Balebrew Charm (the healer got it). Nice use effect :)

Clams now stack!

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9957005708&pageNo=2&sid=1#32

Some of the comments are really good too... epic thread :)

(this story was posted on wowinsider. I don't usually repost their stories since I'm sure everybody reads them already, but this is just sooooo worth reposting :D)

Patch 3.0.2 and the End of Cookie Cutter Builds

Solid's prediction #1 for patch 3.0.2 - your standard 'everybody but the oddball takes this' cookie-cutter build will go out the door, for most classes.

I see it in priest blogs, I see it in druid blogs - I see it for myself when looking at the mage talent calculator. There are just so many options now, so many viable talents to take, that really the old "best mage DPS" or "best druid bear build" will no longer apply.

Some people choose to see it as a sign that the new trees are "bloated" and need trimming down, consolidating. I choose to look at it in a more positive light (IMHO). I think Blizzard have given us more options and therefore more flexibility, to suit our talents to our specific gear, occasion, personal playing style, whatever. A freshly minted bear with very low mitigation will want different talents than an old veteran with a set of uber gear, who wants to focus now on more threat. A mage who prefers to PvP a little but still be raid viable will be different from a mage who wants to be 100% raid focused and on top of the damage charts. A priest might want to take a spec that complements the spec of another priest, so that the 2 of them together bring maximum utility to the raid.

I can see how some people would be put off by an abundance of talents that look "required", but that's just the thing - there no longer is a single "required" build for most classes. Of course there are many central talents which everyone will take, but the other points - well, those you'll get to place however you prefer/need.

Now I just have to decide on a spec for each of my 4 alts. Damn... ;D

Well actually, 3 alts. I just can't resist being a BM spec on my hunter - who doesn't want a Core Hound as a pet? :)

Zul'jin Impressions

We tried real hard, but could only get Zul'jin down to 9%. That's not bad for a first try and I'm sure if we keep at it we will get him down. Zul'jin is an interesting fight and although you can read all about it on wowwiki (or even see videos), I would like to give some personal impressions.

First of all in terms of group setup, we found our more successful tries to be after we switched to a more melee/hunter heavy group with fewer DPS casters. Every caster means lost DPS in phase 3 as they can only wand, and the longer that stage lasts, the more in danger you are of a healer dying. In addition, probably because our DPS is a bit low, a 4-healer group was easier for this fight. A druid was practically a must for phase 2.

So much for group setup, now the actual fight.

Phase 1 is very easy as long as healers are quick about topping off people who get the Grievous Throw debuff. We had no trouble here. Tip for casters - save your mana, don't nuke, you'll need max mana for stage 2.

Phase 2 changeover is the first place where we (and I guess others) had trouble due to the agro wipe but also due to the fact the the boss almost immediately hits the tank hard very hard and then paralyses the whole group, including priests. Even with 2 Renews on him the tank (a warrior) sometimes went down (had 21k life buffed). Once we had a druid however we had no problem as the druid's HoTs were more than enough to keep the tank up until we were released.
For the casters, this is the stage where you need to nuke all out (but watch threat) as you don't need to save mana, you'll get it all back during phase 3 when... You wand only lol :)

Phase 3 - hunters and melee can continue DPS and are advised to nuke as there is no agro and no damage from boss, only from the vortexes. I found this stage very annoying as both a mage and a priest, it was always a relief (on every attempt) to get past it. Tip - make sure every person has read the wowwiki guide and knows which abilities their class can safely use.

Phase 4 - we nearly always lost the person who was the focus of Claw Rage unless it was the tank or could FD/bubble/etc. The debuff was also nasty to heal let me tell you as you would have 3-4 people ticking for 1.5k every 2sec each. Almost every attempt that we got here, if we managed to get past it, it would be with fewer people.

Phase 5 - with the healers low on mana already from healing phases 3+4, and sometimes with dead people from phase 4, this phase was a killer. Partially people simply didn't move fast enough from the flame columns, sometimes it was because healers were simply OOM. Overall, if you compare this fight to Hakkar, or compare ZA to ZG, I would say ZA/Zul'jin are more interesting/fun than ZG. The only thing I dislike in ZA is the gauntlet. I think the boss fights in ZA are more challenging and require a greater amount of group coordination and individual ability than ZG.

Partially this is of course because ZG was build for 20man and not 10man. Furthermore I found the fight mechanics in the Zul'jin fight to be more interesting and challenging than Hakkar. For Hakkar, getting 20 people (in a non-hardcore raiding guild) to step into the poison cloud was literally mission impossible. I really don't remember any fight where at least one person did not make it into the cloud in time. So really the difficulty of the fight had more to do with coordinating 20 people and getting them all to understand what to do, more than the technical aspects of the fight. Furthermore, once you do a single cycle of dps Hakkar/cloud, the fight becomes rinse/repeat (with MC being the only really variable element). The fight becomes predictable and therefore slightly boring. With Zul'jin, each person has to change his tactics and the way he performs and this doesn't require all people doing the same thing, just people doing what they should for their class. The 5 different phases of the fight add spice and flavor to the standard 2-phase boss fight and really make the fight unique.

So even though we wiped (over 10 times I think) and didn't get the boss down, and even though we were not really well prepared, I still had a lot of fun. Heck, I got to see new content - that doesn't happen every day any more...

Malacrass Down!

For the first time in too long, my guild have taken down a new boss - or at least new for me :) I think the guild did manage to take him down once a long while ago, but since then we've been pretty slack about even trying ZA, and when we did, it was usually with some weak people/alts.

It started with our GM posting a ZA raid on GC for last night, after an officers meeting where we talked about starting official 10-man raids (pretty much given up on 25man raids, at least for now). 

I logged in early in order to be prepared. A few minutes after invites were scheduled to start, the GM still had not logged on so after a quick word with the other officers I started invites.

Fairly soon we had a full party: 2 mages (myself on Solidstate and another), 3 healers, 2 tanks, and 3 other DPS - a warlock, a hunter and a druid (acting as both DPS and OT where needed). We had to wait for a while as one of the healers had a RL problem but eventually, although late, we got started. Our goal was to get 2 bosses in time for the timed event, and see how well we do on the others.

We tried going according to the order most likely to allow you to do the entire event, as we need the practise and this is the order we'll be using eventually. So first up was the Eagle boss. I think we cleared the trash up to him fairly okay and pretty soon we were at the boss. Here in the past we usually wiped due to people not all converging in time on the boss but this time luck or skill was with us and we 1-shotted him and got the chest.

Second up was the Bear boss, he was not hard but we had taken some time on the trash leading up to him and the fight itself was a bit long, so the timer was almost up by the time we downed him. Still we got the chest and the very nice Amani Divining Staff dropped from it which I won (more on my mage gear in a seperate post coming soon :)).

From there on we knew we could not beat the timer so we took it easy. As the Lynx boss is the easier boss we went to him first and 1-shotted him as well without mishap. 

Next up was the Dragonhawk boss. The gauntlet leading up to him is, in my humble opinion, the hardest part of the entire instance (at least that I have seen), including some of the bosses (I think the first 2 are easier!). Both the Scouts and the Flame Casters are the real pain here, we usually get at least one or two Scouts that manage to call for help, leading to extra mobs. The Flame Casters require continual sheeping meaning much lower raid DPS (2 mages busy) and even then they sometimes get loose, so that the raid takes massive fire damage continually. All in all a frustrating experience, and I think we were pretty lucky to have passes that last night without multiple wipes (having the druid shift to bear and OT a loose mob or two really saved the day several times).

The Dragonhawk boss himself was relatively easy, with the paladin tank in full FR gear he could release half of the eggs of a side at a time, so in relatively short time all the eggs were cleared and we could concentrate on nuking the boss.

After the 4th boss down we were a bit tired and it was getting a bit late but also we had had such a good night, no one wanted to stop, we all wanted to see if we could down Malacrass. After clearing the trash to him our paladin put on his healing gear and so with 3.5 healers :) we started the fight. 

This time, unlike a previous attempt a few weeks ago (on which we wiped) we first cleared all the adds before attempting to nuke the boss. Clearing the adds went amazingly smooth, tank (the druid) managed to hold agro and the add didn't run around. Healers managed to keep everyone up and in short order, all 4 adds were down. The boss was still effectively at full health due to healing himself (I guess this is where the lack of a rogue in the party was felt the hardest) but everyone just gave their 100%, I guess healers were chaining mana pots like crazy :) I managed to spellsteal lifebloom and Avenging Wrath from the boss which was a hoot (mage with wings :)) Basically after the adds were down it was a race to see if the healers would OOM first or the boss would go down, luckily he went down! The only death was... yours truely, luckily when the boss was at 4% so I didn't lose a lot of DPS time :)

It was really a sweet ending to a great night, felt really good to finally take down a boss for the first time. I hope we can repeat the experience with Zul'jin :)

A scathing AoC review + Some D2 Fun

I don't, as a rule, write about any other games apart from WoW, as I want to keep this blog focused. However this AoC review/rant was just so good, I had to link to it. Some of the comments are also good or downright hilarious:

There is an endgame in AoC. It’s called the forums.

Of course, one could say the same thing about WoW and PvP, so maybe I better not expand on that ;p

So what about D2? Well as it turns out I had no Internet connection last night - some problem at the phone company preventing the ADSL connection from working. A bit bored, I thought of trying a bit of Diablo II LoD. I recently thought of Diablo after reading about D3. Anyway, remembering the crappy graphics, I didn't have a lot of expectations of having fun...

Man was I wrong, I had a blast :D

I rolled a Necromancer and started running around killing stuff and summoning skeletons. By level 7 (when I went to sleep) I had 5 skeletons, a Flesh Golem and an archer mercenary following me around. A veritable (regenerating) army that let me roll right over any opposition, pretty much doing whatever I wanted and going where-ever I wanted. "Bosses" were a bit more difficult, I had to hit them myself for a bit to help my skelies and prevent them all from dying too quickly (since I rely on dead enemy bodies, my supply is not infinite).

So what makes game so much fun, even after all these years, the dated graphics and the fact that I've played it through several times already?

1. Fast furious action.
2. You are truely epic. Nearly no mob in the game, except for bosses, can stand up to you. At least not in normal mode... :)
3. Very re-playable. There are 7 classes and each has 3 talent trees (called "skills" in Diablo) to further customize the experience. For example I played a Necro-summoner last night, letting my army do most of the work and only physically getting involved on bosses. As you can imagine (or read from the various online guides), a curses/bone+poison melee Necromancer plays the game very differently.
4. Nightmare and Hell difficulty levels add even more play options, although this is not exactly of the same quality as a WoW heroic vs. normal instance - bosses/mobs do not have different abilities, they are just harder. Of course, not all heroic mobs/bosses have different abilities, so this is, at least some of the time, a fair comparison.
5. The loot :)
6. Getting around is very easy, with the teleport pads ("way points") and town-teleport scrolls providing similiar functionality to WoW's Summoning Stones and Hearthstone. Actually getting around is almost too easy - I'm guessing the WoW devs felt the same.
   

Of course, looking at D2 (single-player mode) from the eyes of a WoW player, it's easy to see what is missing:

1. Very basic quest system - only 6 quests in the entire first act! Compare that to WoW's several thousands of quests...
2. Bag space way too small. Waaaay too small. This is just plain annoying. And unlike WoW, there is no way to scale this up. The stash doesn't help - I want more bag space when walking around, not back at town. If I go back to town I can just vendor the stupid item...
   
3. Talent trees are relatively small (fewer choices), and there is no way to respec - once you've made a choice, you're stuck with it. Kinda makes you appreciate the WoW respec option, high cost and all :)
4. A simpler character sheet. E.g. no trinket slots!
   

I could go on - but D2 was an older game and therefore it makes sense that it would be simpler. It was also at heart a single-player game, a very different beast from an MMORPG. E.g. professions make little sense in a single-player game. Battle.net adds a system for letting several people play together, including a basic barter system - but that still doesn't make D2 an MMO.

I'll say it again though, all things considered, D2 is amazingly fun. Although it will also suffer from dated graphics, I now have high hopes for Diablo III :)

A smallish rant

Last evening, while grinding AD rep (I'm already revered, yey :) - now going for exalted), I was in the LFG channel hoping for a Mech pug (for my Arcatraz key quest). Suddenly I see someone writing in the LFG channel: "LFM 1 dps for Mech".
Now I don't know about you, but when I see someone writing "LFM 1 dps", I assume the party is currently lacking only that. Otherwise, why not write "LF2M"? Of course, as you may have guessed, this party was still missing one person even after I joined. Even worse, one of the other DPS was a level 68 hunter. For Mech... without a warlock in the party...

In my opinion, someone who writes "LFM 1" when he really needs 2 people is a liar and deliberately misleading people. That may be harsh, but such a person is really mis-using the LFG channel and that annoys me.

When I asked the party leader (a warrior who was the tank) why we had a level 68 hunter for Mech, he asked me if you had to be level 70 to go there... realizing this person had absolutely no idea where he was going - and this was the tank - I bid the group GL and left. I don't mind wiping with friends but going into an instance with a PuG knowing in advance we'll wipe again and again because the tank is totally clueless was too much.

You might think this is not the right attitude to have when looking for a PuG but in my experience someone who uses the excuse "I've been away from the game for 5 months so I'm a bit rusty" when I ask him how come he doesn't know about the mount requirement for Mech, is really someone who doesn't know he has abilities such as shield-bash or spell reflect... or in other words, an eBayer ;p

I can't really say there is a rule for staying with a PuG. I've stayed with PuGs even when we wipes multiple times on trash at the beginning, if the people were nice and seemed to try their best. OTOH when I joined this particular group, not a single one bothered to reply to my "hi" and this really gave me a bad vibe. Coupled with the missing people and the obvious (for me) fact that the tank had no clue and was probably a power-leveled char, and I decided to call it quits even before the ran began. Sometimes you just want to quit while you're ahead :)

In case you're wondering what this rant was all about, it was mostly about people who:
1. Mis-use or don't give all the facts on the LFG channel.
2. Want to lead a party to an instance but have never been there or in general are clueless about it (this is bad for someone just joining as a DPS but for a party leader it spells certain doom for the party).

Thankfully I didn't finish the evening with a bad feeling - a bit after the above, I got a whisper from a friend asking if I could come heal Karazhan on my priest, they were after Curator and their priest had to leave. I don't need anything from Karazhan on my priest but my friend's Kara runs are usually pretty fun, and this one was no exception - only a single wipe due to the Chess event somehow being in-session when we pulled the first mobs from the next room. The in-game chess debuff prevents you from doing any action (including healing or dps), which resulted in a quick wipe. Nobody confessed to re-starting the event ;p I got my 15(?) badges for the cost of about 2 hours, not bad. And I helped a friend, always a worthy cause :) All-in-all a much better use of my time than wiping with a PuG in normal Mechanar...

A Good/Bad Evening

Yesterday was a mix of good and bad. I went to heroic SL followed by heroic BM with some guild-mates: Solidd as tank, a shaman healer, and a rogue, mage and hunter as CC.

On the good side, I got 2 high-end LW recipes: Pattern: Stylin' Jungle Hat and Pattern: Stylin' Purple Hat. In addition, I got a very nice tanking trinket, Adamantine Figurine. So on the loot side, I was really pleased with last evening. The tanking trinket especially is nice and I've known tanks to farm SL for a long time before it dropped, so I got really lucky there.

On the negative side, the SL run was slow and hard, we wiped many times on trash. Especially on the trash just before the 2nd boss, every time we started a fight a rogue would appear and start killing people before I had a chance to do anything. But it was also due to some stupid wipes, like me backing from a mob and getting too close to a 2nd group and pulling them, or the hunter sending him pet by mistake to a 2nd group. In terms of bosses we actually did fine (all one-shotted) till we got to Murmur. In heroic, all have to stand inside the circle, and run out when he starts his sonic blast. First time, we wiped due to healer not running out in time. Second and third wipes, I didn't run out in time. I don't even remember if we wiped a 4th time but we finally got him down.

By this time according to Recount I was ahead of the rogue in damage done during the run, and the mage was not doing too well either (~600 dps which is very low for a heroic run). So I don't know why, but I suggested going to heroic BM. The hunter (a RL friend) wants the Hourglass of the Unraveller trinket from there and I thought it would be easy (and fast) badges.

Alas, with low DPS, heroic BM was a mess of adds running around, healer going OOM every fight due to having to heal the rogue and mage like crazy and in general too low DPS. We wiped once on the first boss, waited for the instance to reset, downed both the 1st and 2nd bosses but wiped on a mini-boss in wave number 13. After that we all agreed to call it a night.

I guess the lesson is, even if you want to run with a guild mate, if their DPS is very low, don't go heroic with them. Help them gear up, perhaps go to easier heroics, but not to a place like BM where a wipe means starting over from the beginning...

Solidd gets his Kara key

Really not much to say. BM heroic was very easy and at the end I had my key :)

Well with that out of the way, I guess it's time to grinding AD rep.I might go all the way to exalted, I read somewhere that there might be an "Argent Defender" title... :)

Solidd on way to Kara key

Last night I was talking to some guild mates and happened to mention that I still need to do SL for the first Kara key fragment. I didn't have plans to do SL when I logged in last evening, but it sort of came up and as it turned out a couple of other people needed it as well - a rogue and a moonkin druid.

Well one thing led to another and soon we had a guild run set up, complete with a main-healer paladin healing normal SL, me (with pretty good gear) tanking, and 3 good DPS. Needless to say, we rocked the place and had a good time doing it. No wipes, although some people died due to agro, but as people were intentionally pulling agro like crazy, no one took it hard. Oh and the healer spent half the time doing DPS as well :)

After we had gotten the first key fragment, the rogue, myself and the moonkin continued to do stealth runs for the 2nd and 3rd fragments. The SV run was short and sweet, however the Arcatraz run was more painful. For one thing, all three of us didn't have the Arcatraz key - the rogue had to pick the door open for us.
For another, as a moonkin, the other druid didn't have the Feral Instinct talent. This led to him being seen several times and pulling, which of course led to his death. Even if the rogue and I stayed in stealth, the rogue still had to go outside to open the door for him again. So this stealth run was slightly slower. Still in the end we got the fragment and now we're all just one BM run away from a Karazhan key. No more asking for someone to open the door for us in Kara alt runs! :D

I guess in between getting more Argent Dawn rep I'll now need to find the time to do Mech and Botanica runs also, so that I can finally get the Arcatraz key also ;p

Solidd small updates

Haven't been playing that much in the last few days, only a few hours here and there. So no interesting news.

As I had quite a bit of fun doing old-world content for the Onyxia key, I decided on a whim to get exalted with another old world faction, the Argent Dawn.

Part of it is that once I'm exalted (or at least revered) I can get Solidd attuned to Naxxramas. Totally useless of course, but it's fun :) The thing is, I've been soloing Strat and Scholo a few times for the last few days, as well as doing some AD quests or simply grinding Gahrron's Withering Cauldron for the repeatable rep quest, and I'm only half-way to revered. This is harder/slower than it seems... still I'm sure I can get to revered fairly soon and as for exalted, well I'll see about that. It's not like I'm in a hurry or something :)

Another reason I'm doing this is that with the lack of raiding and my general lack of time for long play sessions, I don't really want to dedicate >2 hours to find a PuG, get everybody to the instance, suffer through AFK's, stupid wipes or just going slow due to people being in the instance for the first time or under-geared. All this for badges/gear that I will soon-ish stop using... If I had plans to raid with my druid, I would of course be pushing heroics/kara to get the badge gear as quickly as possible, like I did with my priest, solidfaith. But now that I'm not raiding, I simply don't see the point in it. My gear is already good enough for tanking heroics/kara, which is the highest level content I'm likely to see before the expansion hits.

To have fun in short playing sessions, I could go BGs - but I don't really like PvP. Grinding gold/primals/mats gets old quickly, although I will continue to do it from time to time, at least enough to keep me liquid and to have enough to cover misc expenses. I actually started to collect low-level herbs with my herbalist (solidfaith) for Inscription, but I'm taking it easy - I plan to roll a DK to take up Inscription and there is time till the expansion.
I could grind Outlands rep, but in general this has as much meaning for me as grinding old-world rep (don't really need anything from any of the remaining factions), and grinding old-world rep is faster. So for now, old-world it is :)

Part of the way to grind rep for AD is to get Insignia of the Crusade and Insignia of the Dawn (20 rep per turn in). It looks like the best way to get the first type is by turning in either 30 Bone Fragments or 30 Crypt Fiend Parts. For the second type (Dawn) my best bet is probably to turn in 30 Dark Iron Scraps. That's 150 items for 100 rep, 1500 items for 1000 rep, 31500 items for the 21k rep needed to get from revered to exalted. Ouch :) Well of course I won't be depending on these turn-ins, it will just be a way to help get a little extra rep from drops, while I grind rep in other, more profitable ways.

Since the required items for the Naxx attunement at revered are quite easy, I'll probably grind only till revered. Why stop at revered and not go all the way to exalted? Simple, I want to grind a few other old-world faction reps before the expansion, including Cenarion Circle, Timbermaw and maybe the Thorium Brotherhood.

Of course all of the above might take me a bit of time, due to my limited play hours. What with needing to gring a bit of gold/mats now and then, as well as helping guild mates once in a while or doing a normal/heroic instance, I will probably not manage all of these factions before the expansion. But I hope to at least advance a bit, and have fun while doing it :)

New Blogroll

After reading about Blogger's new "Blogroll" feature I decided to move to using it instead of the custom HTML+JavaScript solution I was using before.

On the cons side:

• It lacks the categories of my former solution.

On the pro side:

• I filled in the initial list from my Google Reader (but why can't the blogroll stay synced with Reader changes? :( ).
• The list can be sorted by last update, making it easy to see which blogs have recent posts. This is the winner for me over my previous solution. I can also see the title and date of the last post, which is even better.
  

Some features I would love to see:

• In order to update it I need to add feeds one by one (no e.g. OPML import option). Also the update window is small and there are no real management features, such as sorting the window by blog name, seeing the url, sorting by last update, etc. Very poor management features currently, in other words.
• Categories/tags for grouping feeds.
• Better integration with Google Reader (auto-update list whenever Reader changes happen).
• Some nice formatting options, like changing the background between every other line.
  

Some features I don't use:

• The ability to see a snippet of the latest post. A Blogroll is not a poor-man's replacement for a proper Reader. Having the title of the last post is one thing, but a snippet just makes the entire list too bloated and un-wieldy IMHO.

How is this all WoW related? Oh well all the feeds are of WoW blogs, some are actually very good. Happy reading :)

3-man UBRS

Yesterday I continued my Old-World attunment process on Solidd with a UBRS run. Since UBRS requires 3 people at least to activate the fire-elemental room, I looked in the guild list after logging in to see who could join me. Luckily for me there were 2 level 58 alts (a s-priest and a rogue) online and both were happy to join my UBRS romp.

Right from the start though, things didn't go smoothly. The s-priest died after getting agro from a dragonkin right at the beginning room (before even opening UBRS proper) even though I was swiping like crazy, so I had to BR him. Further on we cleared easily enough but in the Fire-elemental's room, once we had activated it, the casters there banished me and killed the rogue. Luckily the s-priest was also banished and so stayed alive while I killed the mobs and fire elemental. He actually did quite a bit of damage to me but by this time the priest was released and could throw me a bit of healing.

Progressing further, we did okay up to and including the big Rend event, but after that again one of the alts died due to an Assasin stunning me and all the mobs going for the alts. Really the mobs after Rend's room were actually hard for me as they kept stunnning/bashing me, making the fights hard to both hold agro and DPS the mobs (can't dps when stunned).

Just before The Beast the rogue said he had to go, so we gave The Beast one try, however I did not remember that he does huge knockbacks on you that throw you high into the air. Everytime he did this I took a huge amount of falling damage (~4k) and was quickly dead, leading to a wipe. He also fears so trying to tank him against a wall didn't work either.

After the wipe the rogue left. Deciding I didn't want to try Drakki or the trash on the way alone, I asked a friend from the guild who had just logged online and was not busy (a level 70 lock) if he could come to help. He came and clearing the trash went well except for one unlucky wipe as I got knocked off the bridge and down into LBRS.

Finally we got to Drakki. My plan was to have the warlock kill 1 add while chain fearing another and have him "OT" Drakki while I was conflagarated. However I didn't count on how long the conflagarate lasts, or on how hard the adds would hit on the lock, so even with his (very good) pvp gear he died.

Luckily for me (no fun doing all of UBRS just to stop at the boss I need!) a hunter from my guild came online was was willing to come help. With a hunter's pet as OT and myself as tank, the fight was finally doable (although not easy due to the only healer being a level 58 s-priest). However we managed to do it (although I did need to BR the lock) and finally Drakki was defeated.

With the hunter's pet tanking and myself healing (and the warlock DPSing), The Beast was very easy, however alas no skining knife dropped.

Overall a tough run, especially the mobs after Rend's room and Drakki fight. If I ever try that again, I will not go with less than 2 tanks and a proper healer.

Still I'm pleased as I'm now both BWL attuned and (once I return the last quest in Witerspring) Onyxia attuned. It was not easy but not too hard overall and it was fun, which is the most important thing I guess :)

Next up, Naxx? We'll see... :)

Old World Content

I spent most of yesterday doing daily quests, getting back some (most?) of the gold I had spent on the Badge of Tenacity.
After all that gold grinding, I didn't feel like logging in today and doing dailies or PvP and in the middle of the day I can't count on being long enough in front of the computer in one session to go to an instance with a group.
So instead, I decided to do some old-world content with Solidd. I started the Onyxia chain quest, and once I entered BRD I also took the time to get the Prison Cell Key and the Shadowforge Key and get myself attuned to MC.

It was surprisingly easy, and fun, to solo BRD with my druid. Both bosses and large trash group were no real problem, although I did die once when I pulled a large group wearing my DPS gear. I switched to my tanking gear after and had no problems (although mobs did go down a bit more slowely).

Once I was done in BRD (got my keys, ATC done) and had the quest to go kill Drakki, I went to LBRS in order to get the key for UBRS. You need a minimum of 3 people to do UBRS (to activate the room with the captive fire elemental) and I didn't want to count on another having the key. Turns out, this was even simpler/faster to do than BRD - I just stealthed around most of the place, only killing mobs where absolutely required. I think I finished the instance in 30 minutes, even with getting up in the middle. Druids are an amazing class :)

Finally I soloed Emberstrife and again this was no problem, and after returning to Vaelan I am now the proud owner of a Seal of Ascension :)

A Good Night

Not only did Solidd get exalted with both SSO and Scryers in the same night, I even found the Badge of Tenacity on the AH for a reasonable price and bought it. So now I have a new trinket which is much better than what I had before, and a nice new neck for tanking plus another nice neck for DPS which is also good.

I'm a happy bear tonight :)

Wrath Cinematic

http://www.wow-europe.com/wrath/movies.xml

Very awesome :)

My only complaint is, I really want a cinematic showing off a deathknight doing battle with mobs, and other classes fighting in Northrend.
Arthas is cool but I can't really relate to him, you know? It's as if the TBC cinematic showed only Illidan. Where are the shamans, warriors, Deathknights showing off their skills in glorious ray-tracing... err.. glory?
The cinematic is too short, feels incomplete. It's not... inspiring enough.

But still, if you haven't, go see it. Seeing Arthas and what he does there is still, let me just say it again, very awesome :)

SL Normal PuG

Last night I was invited to join an SL normal PuG. The group consisted of a warrior tank, shadow-priest healer, and as dps a rogue, a feral druid (Solidd) and a fury warrior. So basically, apart from the rogue's sap, we didn't have any CC. Plus our healer was not healing-specced. Nontheless, we managed to finish all of SL (caviat Murmur - more on that below).

Luckily, like most normal instances, your exact group composition doesn't matter, as long as you can keep the mobs away from the squishies. In our case, the tank simply let me OT 1 or 2 mobs while herself and the 2 other DPS took down the adds. It worked in most cases, although we did have a few wipes due to poor pulls and/or outright mistakes. Bosses were fairly easy, all going down in 1-shot except for Murmur. After the 2nd wipe on him the tank and healer elected to bring their mains just to finish the run - turns out the healer's main was a tank and the tank's main was a resto-druid :) With 2 much-better equipped chars we managed to take down Murmur.

On the face of it, a successful run. Certainly I've had much worse. The tank mostly knew what she was doing, the dps mostly did what we were supposed to do and the healer kept us mostly alive :)
However, I think the run could have gone much better. Here are my thoughts. Not to say I am/was perfect, but these are points I am pretty sure would have improved the run:

• Let's face it, if you're taking 2-2.5 hours to finish SL you've failed. Sure that includes the time till everyone accepted the summon, buffed up and was ready to go. Still that was maybe 10 minutes. The rest of the time? Just slow going, wipes, waiting for AFK people. Some of factors couldn't be controlled beforehand, some could...
• Slow going - the tank took a long while to mark mobs and pull, something which really slowed us down. Keybind those lucky charms! The tank also wiped us once due to a bad pull (she didn't run behind a corner like she was supposed to and the caster+imps who stood in place pulled more mobs from behind) and had to be shown how to correctly pull one of the patrols in the room before the 2nd boss. If you don't know the pulls, don't be afraid to ask. Wipes = lost time. If you're not sure how to mark the mobs (which to cc etc.) don't be afraid to give the job to someone else in the party.
• Low DPS - with myself as a bear we were already taking a DPS hit on the big trash pulles. Add to that the fact that the fury warrior had very bad gear and our progress in killing the trash was abysmal.
• Bad players - this is what really kills most PuGs for me. By bad players I mean players who are one or more of: clueless, inconsiderate, under-geared, don't know how to play their class, don't know how to (or don't care to) follow instructions, frequently AFK, don't know how to play as part of a group. Thankfully this PuG included only one such player, the fury warrior. Unfortunately even one such player can significantly slow down the group and this guy fitted several of the above categories. He was horribly under-geared (his DPS was barely above the tank's and way below what the rogue and I were dishing out), was clueless about the instance and about how to play as part of a group, consistently failed to follow instructions, went AFK several times. He had no idea on how to run an instance, once pulling a trash pack who wiped us and several times getting in front of the tank and nearly pulling mobs. Don't get me wrong, I know that there are players new to WoW and to 5-man groups and I have no problem with them learning the game. But most of the "noob" players I have met (this warrior included) never once tried to learn or ask questions - the simply do their mistakes and let the rest of the group suffer with them... and they rarely listen even when told what to do... My point in all this rant - for the sake of the rest of the group, don't be shy about telling a player to shape-up or even removing him from the group. If a player needs to do some learning/gearing in order to learn how to play, let him do it in easier instances and with his friends who are willing to devote the time for it. It's not required of you to teach every new eBayer how to play his new level 70 char...
  

Overall the run was actually enjoyable. I got to use my char to the fullest, switching frequently between bear and cat forms and twice using my heals to aid the party. I also battle-rezzed and innervated the priest on several occasions.
The 3 other people in the party (apart from the fury warrior) were nice people, all in the same guild. After a while they told me we had a friend in common - don't know how they found out but once they did it became almost like running with my own guildmates. Their final gesture of bringing mains to finish off the last boss was very nice of them and allowed me to finish a couple of quests that I still had for SL. I look forward to joining them for more instances in the future :)

Oh and I'm maybe one normal SL run away from honored with Lower City, after which I can finally do heroic Seth Halls and get my swift flight form, woot! :)

Solidd - not many updates

I guess it is natural that once I dinged 75, I have a lot less to report. Sure, I still do heroics, dailies and misc small stuff but without raiding and taking down new bosses, I don't find anything noteworthy enough to write down here for future reference.
Still I can summarize a bit of what I've been doing:

* Tanked Kara with my guild, all the bosses except prince. I wiped us 3 times on prince and then let another druid do it so I could see how it should be done. I think I have it now and hopefully when we go back to Kara I will be better equipped to tank him (also better geared, haha ;)). It felt good to tank Kara but let's face it even with a group of alts that place has long ago stopped being a challenge. Good way to get a lot of badges in 1 night though :)

* Speaking of Kara, I tried going to a PuG Kara with my priest, just so I could get some practice healing and see if Kara PuGs really are that horrible... they are! First of all we started at Moroes but the people who invited didn't bother to mention it before we were inside. Then we wiped because the 2nd paladin didn't buff anyone (and the first paladin buffed me with BoW instead of BoS). 2nd try, after raid leader asked the 2nd paladin to buff me with BoS, we managed to get Moroes down. We headed back to the steps outside the big hall before Moroes in order to continue to Maiden. Then the other healer (we were only 2) said he had to go AFK for 5 min. Well before all were in place (still looting etc.) the tank pulled an AoE group, I healed him, got agro and died. Rezzed, asked for BoS, didn't get it. Raid leader asked to give me buff, was also ignored. Instead of kicking the paladin or at least waiting for the 2nd healer, the tank pulls again, I (stupidly) heal and get agro, die again. This was enough for me, and I left. Bitter tase of PuG :/

* I dinged 375 LW on my druid, yey! Actually doesn't feel all that good, not like dinging 375 tailoring did with my mage, there I had the spellfire set to look forward to, nothing really at 375 LW except for very expensive single items (where the recipes usually come from higher-level raids and are expensive or impossible to get). Still it's nice to have maxed out yet another profession. Working on my various factions now in order to get LW recipes from them. Oh and I have tons of Drums of Battle that I'm slowely using up in heroic boss fights and in Kara runs, fun stuff :)

* Spent an entire evening messing around with my UI mods instead of playing. Hmm, maybe I was meta-gaming? :) whatever, most of my mods now get updated via the curse client, so hopefully that should keep most of my UI updated and (relatively) bug free. I kept having annoying bugs with the older setup and I have replaced some addons (e.g. moved from Bagnon to Tbag), removed and added others. Pretty much the most major change is that I got rid of my button replacement mod and am now using the default Blizzard buttons together with Autobar, which should by itself cover enough buttons so that I can stick to using just the Blizzard ones. We'll see, I still have to config my mage and priest and hunter, that entire evening was spent on just the druid O_O

Well that's pretty much it for now. I've been thinking of making a post listing my favourite WoW youtube videos but most are very easy to find via search so maybe such a list would be redundant. Will see, depends on how bored I am :)

Tanking Heroic SH

Heroic SH is a tough instance to tank for a druid - large pulls with very hard-hitting mobs. That place is practically made for tankadins. So when I was /w and invited to tank heroic SH PuG (I was in the LFG channel but looking for an heroic BM run) I was frankly skeptical. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained...

The group consisted of a mage, hunter and fury warrior as DPS, and a priest as healer. This made me even more uncomfortable, as having the fury warrior meant one less DPS (in an instance with already large trash pulls). The priest was very well geared but priests tend to draw a lot of agro and are very squishy.

I assigned marks, made it clear to the DPS that they had to take the Legionnaire down first and quickly, and we pulled the first 2 mobs. This pull and the following single mobs all went okay, as did the pair at the end of the corridor, just before the first room.

Now came the first challange, a 5 mob pull. Again, you have to kill the Legionnaire quickly or he summons more mobs, and with only 2 CC this meant I had to tank 3 mobs. The mage, thinking to sheep quickly, stood out front to sheep her target. Unfortunetly she didn't blink back behind me after the sheep, and the passing mobs 1-shotted her. Luckily our DPS was enough to kill the Legionnaire before the sheep released and I was able to hang on to it when it broke, together with the remaining mobs I was tanking. No one else died and the first hard pull was a success! :)

The rest of the instance was rinse-repeat - corner pull, AOE pull, MD pull, all were methods we used. Not everything was perfect, e.g. the warrior would sometimes kill a mob other than the "X" after the skull went down, drawing agro and making life hard for the priest. Luckily our priest was up for the challange and all went well.

The only wipe we had was on one of the large groups of Gladiators, they hit so hard I had to keep backing away to give time for the priest to heal me. Since I swiped less, the mage got agro more quickly, and things quickly went bad for us. So instead of the usual "pull and AOE", I treated the pack as a usual pack of mobs - 1 sheep, 1 trap, 3 tanked. Worked wonders for us and we didn't wipe again on those. Sure, the sheep healed back to 100%, but as it was the last mob killed it also went down fast.

As usual in heroics, bosses 1-3 were less trouble than the trash. However in heroic, Kargath, the 4th boss, can be a real challenge, especially when your DPS is a bit low (as ours was). Still after 2 wipes we got our act together and managed to take him.

2 hour run for 4 badges and some SH quests and rep. Maybe not worth it in terms of badges/hour but at least now I know it is possible for my druid to tank heroic SH and damn that feels good. Good feeling >> badges :D

Solidd's Rock-n-Roll Kara run

Last night I logged in fully intending to do only a few daily quests and go to sleep early. No instances, no other grinding. But as soon as I got in I got a /w from my guild master and friend if I wanted to go to Kara on my bear as OT. Did I? of course I did! So much for plans for an early sleep... :)

It was a great run. I didn't get any tanking gear but I did get some very nice DPS gear: Terestian's Stranglestaff, Chestguard of the Conniver and Ring of a Thousand Marks. More importantly, the run was really fun and fast. We cleared the entire place in ~4 hours with (I think) 2 wipes and we finished Prince just 1 minute before a server shutdown. We couldn't have cut it any closer :)

Part of the reason that it was fun was that this was my first time to tank in a raid. Another was that one of the people started playing music over TeamSpeak and at least for a while no one objected so we were taking down trash to the sound of Rock-n-Roll :) It was also a very easy run, our GM brought his very well-equipped Paladin tank and left me with very little to do. This is also easier for the healers :)

On Nightbane I started as a cat but just to be safe I stayed in bear gear - and it's a good thing I did. At around 80% the tank DC'd, but luckily he told us he was DC-ing before his character disappeared from the game. This left me enough time to go bear and get agro on Nightbane so that when the tank did disappear I was next on the agro list and Nightbane didn't go rampaging through the raid. I tanked him down to ~50% before the tank managed to log back in and tank him the rest of the way down to zero.

Another fun fight was Aran, at least for me as melee DPS. Aran is an annoying fight for a mage or healer, but as a melee DPS it's a dead simple fight. We did wipe once due to people interrupting Aran's arcane spells (in addition to the assigned frost+fire ones) which made him run around - this made us lose DPS and we also got un-lucky with the adds + Blizzard. The 2nd time though all went well and as I said it was a very simple fight for me.

In Prince we wiped once due to an Infernal dropping too close to the door but the 2nd time was okay. Only problem the 2nd time was that myself and 2 other melee-DPS died due to the debuff+explosion, so DPS was a bit low and as I said we were very close to a planned server shutdown - we were getting messages in chat from the Blizzard system, it was sort of like an enrage timer :)

All in all a fanatasticly fun night and I think well worth the time, even if I didn't improve my tanking gear. After all, I did get 22 Badges :)

Sigs

What's a blog worth if you can't post funny/amusing signatures seen on the WoW forums?

So here's the first one I'm posting. Won't be the last :)

In WotLK sap will work on pretty much everything with a brain. It's a huge nerf to Horde Rogues, since they won't be able to use it against Alliance in PvP any more.

Would be even funnier if it weren't so true (at least w/regards to my battlegroup) :(

Solidd Progress

Solidd made some nice progress since last Wednesday.

• On the rep front, got to revered with Keepers of Time and Shattered Sun Offensive (for the SSO rep I did 2 MgT normal runs in the same day). More importantly I hit exalted with Cenarion Expedition - this was due to mainly normal SV runs.
• Of course getting exalted with CE meant I finally got Earthwarden, and although I had to give up ~500 health, I gained enough armor and AP (in cat/bear form) and therefore threat that I think it is worth it. further tanking related updates - got 2 new rings, one from badges and one from MgT normal 2nd boss. I also changed my chest and back enchants from defense to +6 to stats and +120 armor, respectively. Even with these changes I'm way over the crit cap but there's nothing I can do - just the gear I have. anyway I now have ~22k armor in bear form (self buffed) which is sweet, and ~14k health. Health could be higher but I'm confident I will get it up with more newer gear.
• Actually did some PvP, e.g. yesterday played 5 AV, won the first, lost the next 4 in a row. Typical clueless-Alliance behavior coupled with some matches against premades and 2 matches with high lag. Sigh :( Even so advancing nicely towards a S2 item, I hope...
• Spent ~500g (probably more but I was careful in not notificing exactly how much gold I spent ;)) in the AH on mats to bring my LW up from 364 to 371. "Only" 4 more points till 375... sigh. Ah well, at least I did enough dailies during the weekend that I'm not broke even after this expenditure, but it's not something I'll be doing again soon in the immidiate future.

That's it for now. Good progress I think but there's still a long way to go before I can comfortably tank every heroic out there. The MgT normal runs were especially hard and I kinda dread trying out the heroic version on my tank...

Alchemical Blood

There are reports of a new passive ability in the WotLK beta called Alchemical Blood. If it stacks with my Redeemer's Alchemist Stone it will be a very nice effect.

I do wonder about the description though. Except for more mana/health from mana/health pots, what could the description mean? More int and spi from drinking an Elixir of Draenic Wisdom? How much more? The mind boggles at the possibilities... :)

I really like where professions are going so far in WotLK, e.g. the ability to sell enchants in the AH. I am really looking forward for that, not so much as a money maker but as a way to enchant my alts. Plus now this Alchemy buff will be great for my priest.

Good times. Now just buff fishing and make me happy! :)

Solidd Updates

I tanked SP Heroic 2 nights in a row.

First night was horrible, we had 2 rogues and a hunter as DPS and a Shaman as healer. The 2 sapped mobs kept breaking together, immediately make a beeline for the shaman and kill him, and wipe the party. I was using a crappy "spam taunt" tanking method and my taunt was always on CD just when I needed it. We managed to finish the run after 2 hours and so many wipes I stopped counting.

After the run the hunter, who is a friend and who's main in a paladin tank, spoke to me and educated me about when to use taunt and when not to.

Then last night I went with another group to Heroic SP, we had a paladin as a healer, and a warlock, mage and shaman as DPS. This time the healer obviously drew a lot less agro, plus I saved my taunts for when they were needed. Result- a very clean heroic run with only 1 wipe. It helped that the mage and lock could continue their CC for as long as needed.

The one wipe was due to the first pair of Defenders, we knew they hit like trucks but they killed me so quickly the healer was just surprised. After that wipe we used a strategy of having the shaman pull the other defender while using Earthbind Totem to slow it down, letting me tank only 1 defender at a time. Work beautifully :)

My point in all this:
- if at first you don't succeed, try try again :)
- if you have 2 rogues, make sure 1 remains in stealth to keep 1 mob sapped otherwise you will quickly have a dead healer.
- Earthbind Totem works well on Defenders in Heroic SP but be careful they still hit like trucks.

Oh and I managed to level to to 364 in Leatherworking. "Only" 11 points to go! :)

Best... AoC... Review.... Evah!

I don't usually post about other games but this one had me in tears it was that damn funny :) Enjoy :)

Tanking Heroic Botanica

Last evening the Daily Heroic was Botanica. A couple of guild mates (mage and fury warrior) were looking for a tank and I thought I would give it a chance.
We were joined by a healer and a hunter from other guilds but good ones, so I knew this would be a good PuG.

Even so, Heroic Botanica is a hard instance for a druid tank, with many pulls consisting of large groups (4, 5 or even more mobs). The 2 CC did the best they could of course but it was hard going all the way and the run took about twice the time a well geared group with a Paladin tank would have. The BoK and Commanding Shout buffs helped me of course, together with a Flask of Fortification and a food buff I had just over 17k life which was sufficient most of the time.

First time we wiped was while fighting a group of 3 mobs too close to the end of the path of a patroling robot. After that you can bet I made sure to stay far away from patrols :)
I don't think we wiped again on trash but we were pulling/killing a bit slowely. The low DPS worked in my favor as a tank, since I could hold agro more easily, but it didn't make the run any faster. Also sometime people died here and there and we had to wait till they were ressed and ready for the next pull.

The first boss was actually easy, our DPS was high enough so that only one group of adds had time to spawn and I managed to get agro on them so that there was no problem taking them down after the boss.

Botanist Freywinn also didn't present us with any problems, everyone knew the tactic of running to the corner so that the lashers would have to follow us, DPS was again high enough that after ~3 repetitions the boss was down.

Thorngrin wiped us once. I pulled, the fight started okay, then the paladin healer got Sacrificed. No problemo, he simply bubbled... only then the boss proceeded to Sacrifice him twice more in a row, with predictable results. After we all ressed and were ready again, I positioned the paladin out of LoS and tanked the boss in the center of the room. The frequent loss of agro right after he casts Sacrifice was annoying and I kept having to run out of the AoE fire but otherwise the fight was straight-forward and we got him down.

Another wipe was on Laj. The first time I tried him, I got up on the podium when you first see him and tanked him there. I started taking really insane amounts of damage whenever the adds would come up and so did the fury warrior (hunter and mage were assigned to the adds). After we wiped, the warrior suggested he take the add while the mage nukes the boss, making the healer's job easier. In addition, I stayed off the podium, meaning almost no damage while the adds were up (Laj goes back on top of the podium whenever adds are summoned), so the healer's job was much easier. It also helped that the hunter put up his Nature Resistance aura. Turned the fight into a very easy fight actually :) Only other thing I noticed - near end of the fight Laj did an expanding cloud/ring of poison that was centered on my location, and I started taking large amounts of damage from it, so I moved from it after a while. Maybe that was what killed me first time...

The trash just before the last boss were really impossible for me to tank, as there were just too many for swipe to be any good and therefore the others easily got agro. The poor squishy mage died twice (once per pack) but thankfully we didn't wipe on them.

Warp Splinter himself was hard, we wiped/reset 2 times before taking him down. First time, mage pulled agro, pulling the boss to the group. I taunted but the mage had already blinked to me, which put him far from healer. Since Warp does AoE damage, the mage was soon dead and our DPS became too low and we had to reset. Second time we took him down to 1% before healer went OOM and died and soon after I died too. Last time was the charm, we gave it all we had and the boss went down :)
Warp is pretty annoying to tank as he stunned me every few seconds during the fight which made it really hard to build/keep agro. This also affected our DPS since both me and the fury warrior were stunned a lot during the fight. My main mistake during the fight was not turning Warp around, his Arcane Volley did quite a bit of damage to the group meaning the paladin had to work really hard. Ah well, live and learn :)

At least in terms of badges the instance was worth it - 4 badges + 2 from daily, but sadly I didn't get any new tanking gear. Maybe next time...

Swift Flight Form

The Swift Flight Form quest line is well documented and there are even complete guides out there. From personal experience I can give the following advice regarding preparations:

1. You'll need the Artisan Riding skill in order to start the quest line. Say "bye bye" to 5k gold :)
   
2. Prepare around 1-1.5 hours for doing the chain up to the Chasing the Moonstone quest (#15), which is the last quest before having to do Heroic Seth. Halls. At least this is what it took me. A lot of it is flying around and I also spent some time going to IF in the middle of the quest line to buy some of the below elixirs. Buying everything before starting will save you time.
3. 10 Ancient Lichen and 10 Dreaming Glory for quest #2.
   
4. An Earthen Elixir shouldn't cost too much and is a big help for quest #11. Buying a nice battle elixir to boost your DPS should also help.
   

I can't talk about the last 2 quests because I haven't done them yet, but here are my impressions from the first 14 quests:

• One of the most fun chains I've done, these quests will use your druid skills to the max. One note is that it seems that as a resto you'll have some problems soloing this chain from what I've read, better bring a friend. As a feral all stages were fairly easy.
• In quest #2 I wasn't ready for the explosion and before I had time to shift to flightform I hit the ground and died. I would say about 50-75% of the plants exploded so be ready with that quick shift to flightform.
• I wasted 10 min in quest #4 because I somehow missed the spirit. When you return quest #3 don't follow the man to the alcove, follow the spirit outside! Bloody annoying :( Otherwise just make sure to cast an occasional HoT on the ghost as he really does have very low HP.
• Prowl worked well for me in quest #9 just make sure to prowl right up to the bird before casting the net since as soon as you start casting to and become visible the birds will try to fly away (and they are fast). I didn't think of pouncing and stunning the bird before casting the net but as it turns out I didn't need to, the first cast was good enough :)
• I did exactly what wowhead suggested for quest #10 and except for a few mobs I didn't have to do any fighting to this part.
• I used bear form for quest #11, plus the Earthen Elixir and Demo Roar for reducing the damage from the adds. Worked great.
  
• Cat form for quest #12 worked very well, I used Maim as suggested in wowhead to interrupt his knockback spells but otherwise I let him cast since I didn't want to waste my rage or combo points and not have enough to stop the knockback. One time I had enough combo points (stun was long enough) to shift out and heal myself, so really was a pretty easy fight even though I was a bit slow (had 11 debuffs on me at the end :)).
  
• Used caster (Night-elf) form for quest #13. Naturally #13 was the hardest for me as a feral but if I managed to do it with my crappy caster gear, I guess anyone can :) However it really is important to keep him rooted at all times, he hits hard in melee! Also make sure your gear gives you enough mana, mine (with various cloth pieces) gives me ~9k mana which was enough. He resisted my root spell several times so I had to heal myself quite a few times but again went smoothly.
  

Quest 15 should be doable/easy, I plan on using a Free Action Potion just before the start, as I don't have the PvP trinket. As for heroic Seth Halls, I've seen it done enough times to know what to expect. Will be interesting to see if I can tank it though...

Solidd Gear Plans

I've started looking at gear from instances to replace what I have. I'm a bit surprised to see that even my initial gear is pretty good for tanking, compared to what drops.
For example my 3-item crafted set seems pretty hard to replace from drops, even items from heroic instances I've seen look more like side-grades (e.g. more stamina but less armor).

I think I'll do some research while working on my CE rep. Earthwarden is a sure upgrade atleast :)

Here's what I've found so far, in no particular order:
* Forestheart Bracers - Warchief Kargath Bladefist, Heroic SH
* Band of Determination - Vexallus, Normal MgT
* Argussian Compass - The Black Stalker, Heroic UB
* Commendation of Kael'thas - Priestess Delrissa, Heroic MgT

From all that I've seen, my best bet is to get to a level where I can tank heroic instances and then farm badges since the best gear by far is all badge gear... big surprise ;)

Speaking of rep rewards, Earthwarden is about as good as it gets. Sure I want to get Honored with Keepers of Time for the PvP gloves but apart from the SSO Pendant there really isn't any rep reward worth getting. Kinda sad when you think about it - all that grinding for almost nothing...

Of course there's always the option of grinding BGs for those S2 items... but as I already said, I hate PvP.

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 :)

Solidd dings 69

I actually dinged 69 a couple of days ago but I was too lazy to blog about it ;)

I am now well on my way to 70 (~35% left to go), due to running several instances during the weekend. A particularly fun run was doing normal Arcatraz with a T5/6 Hunter and priest, with a good level 70 druid tank, and myself and a 70 warlock as secondary (and pretty low) dps.

The hunter was tanking/killing smaller mobs by himself while the druids tanked the bigger mobs and bosses. It was a fun run because I had little to worry about, it was fast, and I actually got to be useful... In the room with the 2 bosses, Dalliah and Soccothrates, there are several mobs that need to be cleared and this has to be done carefully as there are stealthed ones too (the Temptress). Anyway the druid was a little hasty and managed to pull at the same time 3 mobs, 2 of them Temptresses. Mind Control confusion abounded, and in the meyham, the priest got killed. Que your quick-thinking druid, I managed to both battle-rez the priest and to OT (in bear form) one Temptress untill the other mobs could be downed by the team. Good fun :)