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.

Tanking and Healing

So, the 2-piece T7 warrior bonus is awesome.

I got my gloves Wednesday-ish, and my chest Saturday. I got my badge neck yesterday after two times attempting Naxx (and clearing the spider wing and up to the four horsemen in the death knight wing). I think this brings my count down to 1 pure upgrade from heroics, and 2-3 sidegrades. I'll probably be running Pinnacle for that sword until I get the next step up in Naxx.

I think this week will give me time to work on my druid. I feel like he's been neglected lately, but tanks are so hard to find, and I'm the only tank I know that's online most of the time. Ironically, all the death knights are dps (go figure).

It's odd to me that I feel more pressure to do well as a healer. As a tank, if I die in a heroic or raid, it's because the dps or healers didn't have enough throughput. As a healer, if anyone dies, it's because I didn't have enough throughput. It's pretty funny when you think about it.

At any rate, I've read a lot about druid healing in the last few days and found one particularly good post about direct heals that helped me decide when to use Nourish vs. Regrowth. Sadly, Nourish is pretty lackluster in most situations - especially compared to a glyphed Regrowth. Now, if there were a glyph for Nourish (and there might be, I haven't seen a complete list of druid glyphs anywhere, yet) that made it gain some portion of Improved Regrowth's crit, say even 25% instead of the whole 50%, it would be a pretty good spell. But I think the only glyph for Nourish right now is the one that gives it an extra 5% healing per HoT on the target. This makes it a nice spell, but it's hardly practical. Especially when the other glyph options don't have state requirements on them. Niche spells are nice, but not when the niche is so small.

My gear is still very much a work in progress. I'm up to 1430ish healing, but I think I'll need at least 200-300 more for Naxx. There are some really great pieces from heroics I can still get, so that's what I'll be working on this week. The T7 gloves and chest are requisite, too. <3 set bonuses. I think I can get 3-5 pieces this week if I need to for Naxx, but with the severe lack of tanks on the server in general, I think I'll probably just stick with my warrior. Remember when tanks and healers could get into PuGs? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Anyway, that's about it for me. I might take to leveling my shaman just to get his professions up, but honestly I'm not that impressed with him. Or my death knight. They both feel very clunky play-wise, but very solid mehanic-wise.

WTB MOAR PROFESHUNS PER CHARAKTER

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And with that bit of insanity, I'm off to pusue merry ventures in that thing called "real life." Whatever that is.

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!