Batten down the hatches, it’s List Time! I don’t know if you realize this, but there are approximately 1.5 million WoW blogs out there. They cover theory, specific classes, patches, everything. So how is one to find their way amongst an ocean of reading on WoW? Well, in my own little way I’ll try to help by giving you some insight into my favorites. There are many, many more than I read, but it’s only the Top 5. The Best of the Best, at least for me. In no particular order, here they are!

1. Resto4Life

It’s best to start from the beginning. This is the first blog I ever read on a regular basis. It may have been the first blog I read period. I am a Resto Druid, after all. Her blog is also the reason that I am writing this today. If I hadn’t found her blog, I might have never started my own. Phaelia’s blog screams quality from front to back. The formatting is always impeccable, and it’s liberally sprinkled with both interesting and useful images. If you are a Resto Druid, this is one of the first places you should always go, IMO. Phaelia keeps her blog fresh by using a nice variety of posts from light, fun stuff to hardcore theorycrafting. If there is one thing I couldn’t tackle, it’s hardcore WoW math. Phaelia does it, and does it well. Phaelia even took issue with one of my posts once, but I still love her blog all the same. (And in retrospect, I may have been a bit harsh…I’ll remedy that some day soon!)

2. Big Bear Butt Blogger

If you read WoW blogs at all, there’s a good chance you already know about this one. This is usually the first blog I read, every day. Part of that is due to the alphabetization of my Google reader list, but it still counts! If he was the Really Big Bear Butt Blogger I’d probably still read him first or second. BBB is great for a lot of the same reasons that I like most blogs. Variety and quality. He’s not afraid to steer away from strictly WoW topics, and at the same time can churn out a gear-centric or strategy type post as well as anyone. His blog can also make me laugh, as few can. I’m notoriously stoic. If you’re a feral druid, or a WoW player at all really, you should read this blog. You can even hear BBB on the WoW Insider Show on WCRadio.

3. World of Matticus

Matt’s blog is one of the best, IMO, from a true “reference” stand point. If there is something I want to know about raiding, healing, or game mechanics in general, WoM is one of the first places I go. Matt has personally helped myself and my guild as we learn the ropes in SSC, and his blog has been an invaluable resource to me for quite some time. Matt’s blog is not only a great source for WoW knowledge, but also tremendously helpful if you write a blog and need some help. He’s great at both promoting and helping the WoW blogging community at large. He really knows his stuff, and his site has a unique, clean, and easily navigable design.

4. Tobold’s MMORPG Blog

If I want pure, unadulterated opinion, this is where I go. Tobold always has interesting, thoughtful ideas about both WoW and the MMORPG industry in general. Yes, I know it is not ALL about WoW, but there is a lot of great info about WoW and other games to be found here. Heck, you can even find out about Age of Conan here if you like. Now, don’t expect any nice design when you hit this blog, it’s all about the content. When you get down to it, though, he has some of the best content out there. He’s like the Bill Moyer’s of WoW, he can make anything interesting.

5. Banana Shoulders

While I Phalia’s blog was the first I ever read, Siha’s Paladin blog was the second. I know, it seems odd. Why would I read a Paladin-centric blog anyhow? Well, in my experience, Siha puts up some of the most USEFUL posts out there. if you check out her site today, you’ll find some great stuff like her guide to the 2.4 dailies (which she was putting up LONG before anyone else) and stuff like one of my most often visited posts, her Jewelcrafting Quick Reference Sheet. Heck, I read it whenever I can, and my highest level Paladin is 8. That’s got to say SOMETHING about the quality of her blog, right?

This is by no means a list of the only blogs I read. I’m sometimes intimidated when I open up my Reader and see how many new posts have stacked up over night! There are a lot of great bloggers out there, and it was tough to list just my top 5. I read blogs of every type there is, and there are at least 30 that I read EVERY post.  That says a lot both about the breadth of WoW and the WoW blogging community.  Thanks for reading!

Saturday afternoon, around 5 pm, I logged in to hit the AH for a few consumables. I had an SSC run at 9pm, and wanted to make sure I was stocked up on reagents, pots, oils and whatnot. Well, I turned to run out of the Ironforge AH, and poof. My PC shut down. Full stop.

I fired it back up again – maybe it was just bad luck, a random crash, who knows. As it’s loading I can see that the screen is covered with short 1 inch or so vertical dashes. The whole screen. Past the windows loading screen, I get nothing. No desktop, no safe mode, nothing.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Now, I’m not as tech minded as the guys in my IT department, but I know my way around the computer. I’ve been building systems for myself and friends and family for over 5 years now. I won’t bore you with the technical details, but I was eventually able to isolate the problem to one thing: my video card was dead. I just upgraded my Mobo, CPU, memory and Video card about 6 months ago, and the card was plain dead already.

I flew to my brother’s place and picked up a VGA cable. (I long since made the switch to DVI, and couldn’t find a single VGA cable around the house!) Hooked up the onboard video, and it fired up like a dream. I had to turn every little option down to the minimums, but I was able to join the SSC run. My performance wasn’t noticeably worse, either. It didn’t LOOK as good, but WoW has never really been about the “looks” for me.

Thank the Gods for Onboard Video. And thank Blizzard for making a game that you don’t need a 8800GTX to run! I’m also glad that I bought the card from Newegg.com, as I can still RMA it!

Not a long post today, but I thought I’d give you my account of our first attempt at Leotheras the Blind Saturday night.

We had roughly an hour or so of raid time left once we took down Fathom Lord Karathress, so we started our clear to Leo. Unfortunately, the raid wiped attempting to clear some of the trash in the room surrounding him. It turned out to be difficult to clear because of the fact that we entered from the Fathom Lord’s room, rather than the other way. When we came back, we elected to clear coming from the other way, and it went off without a hitch.

Leo stands on a platform, and when you enter the room he is being banished by three caster types. Leo is your typical Blood Elf, but one of the cool things is that you occasionally see the “ghost” of his inner demon while he’s banished. You start the fight by pulling the three casters, and then the fun ensues. Or all hell breaks out, depending on your perspective.

At first, the fight is standard tank and spank. Leo doesn’t seem to do all that much damage, and it’s easy to keep up our pally tank. Then he unleashes his first big nasty, the Whirlwind. He basically starts spinning around like the Tasmanian Devil, and bounces around the raid like a pinball. You’re supposed to clear out and get the HECK out of the way, and of course there is a whole raid warning.

But…ya know…it’s our first attempt. We lose roughly 3-4 people on the first whirlwind. The real problem wasn’t the whirlwind, though. After the whirlwind phase, his aggro table resets. So generally he goes after whatever DPS didn’t quit dishing out damage soon enough, or a healer. The strat generally calls for a shammy of some kind to drop searing totems, but we were without a shammy. So we ended up losing a couple more people there. Oh well.

After the whirlwind he goes into his demon phase. We had a warlock to tank him, as the strat calls for, and he did manage to get aggro soon enough. We still had enough healers to keep the raid going at this point, but we were down one or two, and we lost some DPS as well. At this point we pretty much know it won’t end well, but the key to any raid encounter is experience, and we’re getting valuable experience now, and the further we can hold on the better.

We made it to his next big nasty, the innner demons. He casts “Insidious Whisper” and a few random members of the raid get an “inner demon” summoned onto them. You MUST kill your inner demon, and only you can do it. If the inner demon is still alive when he switches back to Blood Elf form, you become mind controlled by Leo.

We had roughly 3 or 4 people who failed to kill their demons, and hence it led pretty well directly to a wipe.

On the second attempt, we did a little better. We managed to get the heck out of the way during whirlwind, and held up much longer overall. This attempt I got an inner demon twice. I managed to kill it the first time, but the second time I was already low on health due to some shadow damage from Leo, and he killed me outright. Still, I got some nice pics while I took my dirt nap!

Well, once I was down, you knew we were doomed! Leo is tough, for sure, but now that many of us have seen what you need to do, I think it won’t be long before it’s him taking the dirt nap. It was a great learning experience, and I can’t wait to take another crack at him tomorrow night! Thanks for reading!

I spend a lot of time looking at gear. I’m sure most of you do, too. Post 70 it’s really the only way to “progress” your character any further. (At least until Wrath!) One thing I’ve found in my time as a Resto Druid is that though there are plenty of resources for gear, none really FOCUS on what’s good for a Resto Druid. So I’ll do my best to occasionally break down some gear choices for you. Since I’ve been spending my time in SSC (now at 4/6), I thought this was a good place to look next. On to the gear.

Tier 5 Drops

Ohhh, exciting. SSC and Tempest Keep house the various tokens for the Tier 5 armor sets. In SSC you can get your token for the helm, gloves and leggings. Let’s take a look at the healing T5 set pieces.

[Nordrassil Gloves]

The token for these guys drops off of Leotheras the Blind. If you’re wearing [Handguards of Malorne], these are a nice, though minor, upgrade. You get a boost of 4 to stamina, 2 to intellect, 15 to healing and 2 to MP5. Sounds fair enough. The thing is this. I’m not even wearing the Tier 4 gloves, though I have them. I’m wearing [Mitts of the Treemender], and I expect to continue doing so for the forseeable future. The Mitts give me the flexibility of gem slots that neither the T4 nor T5 gloves do. After gemming, they actually have more +heal than either as well. I am losing both spirit and MP5 by hanging onto them, but, frankly, there are other things I’d rather spend my DKP or SK spot on.

[Nordrassil Life-Kilt]

Another good upgrade over the T4 equivalent, the [Legguards of Malorne]. The good things about these legs over the T4 is that they not only have higher overall stats, they also have a gem slot for flexibility. Find the spirit lacking? Gem for it. Need more raw heal? Gem for it. Now, when all is said and done, you’re certainly better off if you already have the [Pants of Splendid Recovery] or [Grovewalker's Leggings] (like yours truly – yes, I got over the fact that the 2.4 legs are really not legs at all, but a skirt.) If you don’t have either of those, however, these are a solid choice in legs.

[Nordrassil Headguard]

Let’s get one thing straight about the head piece. The token drops off the big gal naga herself, Lady Vashj. I don’t know when I’ll see these personally, but it doesn’t hurt to dream! This is a VERY BIG upgrade over the T4 headpiece, the [Crown of Malorne]. A healthy boost to stamina and spirit, a nudge to intellect, and a sizable jump in +Heal. The only real drop is in MP5, which can be made up for if you gem to make the socket bonus. Personally, I pay VERY little attention to MP5 nowadays. Since the changes to mana regen in 2.4, I find I RARELY run out of mana, even though I don’t have any huge number personally. (Around 175 while casting, I believe.) I’d use my SK slot or DKP for this in an instant. Not only because it’s a great upgrade over T4, but also because, IMO, helms are one of the most difficult areas to upgrade. Heck, I wore the [Hallowed Crown] for roughly, well, ever. When you see a slam dunk like this, you take it. All you have to do is take down Lady Vashj, how hard could it be?

Other Armor

• [Soul-Strider Boots] (Cloth) – This is one great pair of boots. The boot slot is also one of the more difficult slots to fill, IMO. Good stats including high spirit, high raw +heal, and a couple of gem slots. Don’t let the fact that they’re cloth turn you off. You go down as fast as any clothie anyhow!
• [Wraps of Purification] (Cloth) – These are nice bracers, but if you’re sporting the anything like the [Windhawk Bracers], I’d stick with those.
• [Gnarled Chestpiece of the Ancients] - Basically, whenever I come across a piece of armor for the chest, belt or bracers slot, I wonder if it’s worthing picking up and breaking up my Windhawk set. If I’m going to waste my spot or points on a piece, I want it to be significantly better than the Windhawk. I don’t think this is such a piece…greater raw +heal, a big boost to stamina…but nary a gem slot.
• [Grove-Bands of Remulos] – See above. These are a good, but not great upgrade over the Windhawk. I like the nice spirit bump, and there is a decent +heal bump as well, even taking into account the lack of a gem slot.
• [Orca-Hide Boots] – These are very close to the aforementioned cloth boots, though I might give the [Soul-Strider Boots] the nod over these due to the spirit. Still a solid choice for the foot slot.
• [Runetotem's Mantle] – I’m going to compare these shoulders to the [Gnarled Ironwood Pauldrons], and I think they come out a little ahead of those badge shoulders. You do lose a bit of +heal based on gemming, and some flexibility, but you gain in the important stat categories. Of course, you have to take down Lady Vashj if you want to get your hands on these.

Other Stuff

• [Pendant of the Lost Ages] – Not much of a healing number, I know. But that bonus affect to combat silence could be golden in some situations.
• [Idol of the Crescent Goddess] – Meh. I do use Regrowth, and more now than before, but this will not replace my Lifebloom trinket.
• [Lightfathom Scepter] - Wow. This is one of the pieces I’m most excited to see drop. The problem is it drops of Lady Vashj. I wonder what will happen first: me saving up 150 badges for the [Gavel of Naaru Blessings] or being in a group that takes down that blasted Naga, and can beat out the other healers should it drop. Hmmm.
• [Wildfury Greatstaff] – Because some day you may be in the raid where the ferals all have it. And at that time, why not pick it up just for show?
• [Coral Band of the Revived] – Darn you Lady Vashj! You have all the best stuff! Anyhow, what a ring! Huge spirit number AND huge +heal number. They may as well call it the Coral Band of the Restoration Druid. (Yes yes, I know holy priests will like it too!)

Phew! You know when you have what you THINK is a great idea, and it will be easy to pull off, but then it snowballs on you? Well, that’s what just happened to me with this post! Now I can only pray that someone, somewhere out there will get SOME use out of it! Thanks for reading!