My Class Imbalance

So. . .

I'm still plodding along with my druid and warrior. I finally got the [Essence of Gossamer] from heroic Azjol-Nerub last night and replaced my [Sonic Booster]. This puts me up to a solid 27111 health unbuffed, while keeping ~37% dodge+parry (before diminishing returns) and 20ish% block. All of the drops in Naxx-10 are either side-grades, or minor upgrades, except for tier pants and shoulders and a pair of boots.

My poor, poor druid on the other hand can't seem to get any gear to save his life. I still have a half dozen or so relatively significant upgrades from heroics that I can get, and of course everything in Naxx-10 is zomg good compared to what I'm wearing. I did manage to get my enchanting up to 440 though, so I can do all of the enchants from the shard vendor. But my pitiful 1550ish healing when specced resto, and 1660ish damage when specced balance are churning out numbers that I would yell at anyone else for having. But I can't get any upgrades from normal instances (except for a couple wonky trinkets that are too good for where they drop), so I feel sort of stuck.

I was amazed at Northrend when I leveled through it with both of my characters. It felt very natural to progress, and I never felt like I had "strayed" into a high-level zone that I shouldn't have been in. My warrior continued this progression all the way through Naxx. I've never felt like I wasn't geared enough to tank something on him. But my druid makes me feel like I missed a step somewhere. I keep looking at gems and enchants thinking that I missed a +150 spellpower upgrade. My glyphs are for resto, but I don't believe that swapping them to balance ones would increase my dps by the 500 or more that I need. All of the gear from normal instances are downgrades, but the heroic instances kill my tanks when I'm healing, or just leave me sputtering at 1500 dps. Maybe I just need more practice like my holy pally brother keeps telling me.

In any case, druid gear is what I'll be doing this week. I think another 2-3 solid upgrades, and I'll be set for Naxx.

New Gear, Just a Year Too Late

Last night my guild did an odd thing for us: we voluntarily switched up our Kara run with several alts. And we didn't have any wipes (except for a dumb mistake on my part when I pulled a group before taking out the patting Stagehands on the way to Opera). This earned us a three hour (give or take 5 minutes) run, and 22 badges.

I used those badges to pick up the last piece I need for tanking on my warrior before WotLK: [Girdle of the Fearless]. I still have the [Devilshark Cape], but I don't see that going anywhere until I hit Northrend. [Slikk's Cloak] is better, but it's also another 35 badges. And I'd lose some of my ever-dwindling block value, so I think I'll just hold out for a WotLK variant.

I'd like to scrape together another 40 badges on my druid to get some [Grovewalker's Leggings], but I'm not sure if that'll happen before I make the plunge to the Icy North.

Incidently, it looks like with the change to spellpower, healing is ending up just barely on top. Presumably the +81 healing and +40 damage enchants are the "same" ilevel, but while the +40 damage just goes straight across, the +81 healing turns into +42 (or 43, I can't remember) spellpower. Since I want to heal anyway, it won't hurt my feelings to have gear itemized for that, but it's something to keep in mind before the patch.

Here's looking forward to achievements!

Struck Down Before They Had a Chance

I just read that the Feat of Strength titles associated with reaching level 80 first on a realm have been removed. I love it! I think that this change demonstrates Blizzard's willingness to listen to its customers about what they want from the game.

I also read some changes that are planned for warriors (specifically protection) and I'm very excited to see the end results. The only problem I see so far is that it might come close to equalizing damage done for tanks compared to some dps. Now I personally don't have a problem with this, but I don't want to listen to all the dps people whine and complain about how "sum n00bz0rz warr tnak just did 2x damg then me! NERF WARR NAOW!!!!" or similar for druids/paladins/. . .death knights (I guess. . . . .bleh).

I fully expect that if a tank is well-geared and can play his character decently, a lot of dps will find themselves out of a job. Or just relegated to PvP where they'd rather play, anyway. 

This change won't bother the actual good dps (all 4 of them on our server), since they know how to play their classes and will just scale up with the changes. It will just serve to weed out the people we always seem to PuG. . . full S2 and 300 dps. >.<

Hooray for good news day!

The Secret of Not Wiping

Going through heroics this last week (and possibly the week before) with my warrior tanking has given me huge amounts of perspective on the game in general. Last time I leveled through heroics it was on my druid tank, and I thought that they were incredibly difficult at that level of gear. I felt that I was stuck between Kara and heroics, and neither one was really doable with the gear I had.

Looking back, though, I realize that I was fine gear-wise. It's very possible that I could have been so horrible that I just didn't have the skill to do things without being overgeared for them, or I could have just been running with completely hopeless groups. I prefer to think that it's the latter, just because I would hate to have been that bad.

I think the big motivator in the change has been my brother, a holy pally, who is more than willing to try anything, regardless of level. Of course now he has 2000 or so healing, so it makes it much easier for me to survive where I'm not supposed to be. :P

Just tonight I got my [Sun Eater] from heroic Mech to replace my [Inuuro's Blade], and we breezed through the instance -- even the fire lady boss we normally have a 50ish% success rate with. Now, my warrior is decked out in mostly blues so I'm not going to say that my tanking made all the difference, but at the same level of gear with my druid I was struggling to find decent tanking leather and running the same normal instance over and over for the one drop from the final boss that was a slight upgrade. Heroics were out of the question.

So either my skills have become so great that I should just start tanking Sunwell on my druid, or I've started running with better groups. We'll see what turns up from here.