Well, I’ve spent a good deal of time lately mostly ignoring my main.  Things had slowed down in my guild, and I wasn’t raiding regularly as I was missing out on the signups.  I spent some time working on my Hunter, who is now reasonably geared in mostly T4 level epics.  I tell ya one thing, he sure can blow through his dailies much faster than my T5 level Resto Druid.  Sometimes I wonder if I should level HIM when Wrath hits.  But, that’s neither here nor there.

I’ve also gotten my Shadow Priest up to 62, and also worked on his trade skills.  He has tailoring at around 365 and his enchanting is up to about 320.  Two very nice trades to have, and I’m glad I picked them up.

But, as you surely know, I was in Black Temple Saturday night.  It’s time to start working on my main again.

One of the reasons he had fallen by the wayside a bit is that he’s more and more difficult to improve.  It seems the further you go in terms of gear, the more difficult it is to reach that next level.  Well, now that I’m officially in T6 content, the time to refocus is here.

For starters, I’m looking at all the badge gear that’s available, to try and find the best bang for my buck.  The healing leather chest is a nice upgrade, but not game-changing.  There is a nice ring, along with a decent pair of gloves, but neither screams out to me.  I already have the awesome pants that are available.

For pure, huge upgrade, there is really only one choice:  The Gavel of Naaru Blessings. I’ve been carrying the Shard of the Virtuous for, like, ever. I just can’t seem to get lucky with any of the other drops, like off the Prince for instance. I also have not taken Lady V down, and she carried a nice healy mace. I think I finally realized that the Gavel is just the way to go.

It’s high time I start farming badges.  It’s going to take some time to get to 150, though, and I hope I can stick with the program.  I’m sitting at 56 as of now, and the last two days have made sure to do the heroic daily.

The good thing about that is that yesterday it happened to be Shattered Halls.  I’ve never finished SH.  I  have actually only TRIED once — it was long ago, it was a pug, and we didn’t get past the gauntlet.  So it was nice to see content I hadn’t seen before, and I also made sure to pick up the quests there as well.  I still needed the Honor Hold revered head enchant, and I’ve needed it for a long time.  I just haven’t had the heart to beg for heroic HH instance runs.  Heart be damned, I’m going to be begging.

Well-geared Resto Druid LFG — anything that gives badges!

No, I haven’t seen Dark Knight yet, though I’m itching to.  Ledger just looks great as the Joker, much more frightening than the Jack Nicholson version from 1989.

Anyhow…

I don’t know about your server, but over on Whisperwind we seem to be having a bit of a tank crisis.  Take a gander at the LFG channel, and chances are you’ll see multiple groups just looking for one last piece to start a run – a tank.

Let’s face it, good tanks are hard to come by.  It’s a tough enough job running with people you know, it much be semi-nightmaric to try to tank a PUG run.  I don’t even want to get into what a Warrior’s repair bill looks like after a heroic PUG.  Ugh.

Also, in my guild one of our main tanks took a vacation for about 2 weeks and we were short a very important piece.  (Zhen, you’ve got some nerve!)  One of our other main tanks has been suffering from on again off again burnout, which doesn’t help.  Because of all that it’s been difficult to get even guild runs off the ground.

Well, I’ve been considering the unthinkable.  Respecing.  If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you’ll know that I leveled feral all the way, and spent a good 3-4 months when I hit 70 as a feral druid.  Well, I was a little afraid of trying to lead runs at the time, so I was always vying for DPS spots in instances.  That proved to be quite difficult, and my guild was also running a little low on healers.  So it was that Pummra was reborn as a resto druid.

I took to healing like a fish to water (more on that later) and haven’t looked back.  I enjoy my role as a healer, and I’ve come a long way in terms of gear and skill.  In my good healer gear, I’m sitting at about 1900 +heal – not a huge number, but more than adequate for T5 and everything below that.  Since I’ve raided SSC, Kara and Heroics so much, I’ve also slowly been amassing tanking and DPS gear.

I didn’t know how far I had come in that respect until the other night.  I knew I was close to a really good tanking set, but I didn’t know how close.  When I put everything on, I was at 10.2k health, 18k+ armor and 418 defense.  And that’s resto spec’d.  I had kicked around the idea of trying to tank again before, but I just got a couple more recent upgrades to push me over that magical 415 defense number.  I have some fantastic pieces, like the Wildfury Greatstaff from SSC.

So should I take the plunge? I very well might, and even offered to OT Kara Friday night if necessary. I don’t like the idea of paying for respecs all the time, as I still plan to raid as a healer, but I’ll live with it. I’m no longer intimidated by leading or marking on runs, so expect to see Pummra’s Big Bear Butt soon!

It’s been a little quiet around here lately, sorry about that.  I’m a key player in a HUUUUGE project at work, and our launch is this weekend.  It’s been one of those weeks.  I’m sur a lot of you out there can sympathize.  Anyhow, here’s a little bit about the latest goings on with PTD.

The Shammy Ditches the Elekk

As a lot of you know, I’ve been working my Stormwind rep so I can dump the hated Elekk with my Shammy.  I’m so sick of getting STUCK everywhere, I can’t take it anymore.  Well, the deed is done.  I conveniently saved the last couple of turnins that would push me to exalted for the mini quest hub in Elwynn where horses are sold.  The first thing I did was destroy that stupid Elekk mount.  Poor guy, don’t tell PETA.

Do I want to delete? HELL YEAH! I hopped on the cheapest horse on the lot, a beat up Pinto.

Wow, I sure look big on that thing.  I actually feel kinda sorry for that horse.  I hope he has a warranty!

So there it is.  Exalted Stormwind rep with my Shammy.  As an added bonus, I know where I’ll be vendoring and repairing from here on out!

Hunter Gears Up in Karazhan

I also put together a Kara run last night.  It seemed like it might not go off, and I actually half-cancelled it, when suddenly two of our best tanks threw their hats in the ring.  We had 2 priests, a Warrior and Pally for tanks, and a mix of DPS that included my Hunter, 2 Mages, an Enhance Shammy, Kitty Druid and a Fury Warrior.  Interesting mix, to be sure.  Luckily we had the Shammy along who made the melee DPS very strong.

We blasted through pretty much everything.  We had one wipe after the ramp leading to opera, where we accidentally pulled the whole room.  Other than that, we one shot everything, skipping only Illhoof and Netherspite.  We would have gone back, but a couple people had to bail so we called it a night.

Loot-wise, it was both good and bad for me.  I actually got one of the best cloaks a Hunter can have in the Drape of the Dark Reavers.  Nice. I also happened to pick up TWO pairs of gaunts. I got the Gloves of Quickening from Maiden and my T4 gloves, the Demon Stalker Gauntlets from Curator. I already have the Crystalhide Handwraps, so I have some thinking to do there. Anyone have any thoughts on those three? None have enchants as of yet, the Crystalhide are gemmed but with easily replaceable stuff, no epics.

Anyhow, what I REALLY wanted though was a new ranged weapon.  No dice.  No Crossbow from Attumen, no Gun from the BBW (which I REALLY want…I am a dwarf!) and no bow from the Prince.  Bah, humbug.  Someday I will upgrade from my old, blue Valanos’.  I just don’t know when.

Well, that’s about all for now.  I do have some more in depth posts brewing, I just haven’t had the time.  Next week things should start to clear up, right about the time all the adulation and cash starts rolling in at work for the great job I did on the site.  We’ll see.  Thanks for reading!

AH Insanity is killing me.  Honestly.  I had fun leveling my warrior for awhile, got him to 40, and said “yay, time for plate!”  Then I saw the AH.

You have GOT to be kidding me.  10g for a pair of level 40 plate bracers of the Wolf?  25g and up for anything of the Bear or Tiger?  SERIOUSLY??

I mean, aren’t I going to be using this for, like, 5 levels or so?  Which at the present rate of progression amounts to about a week of playing?  /scoff  I guess I’ll be rocking the mail for awhile longer, until I can get some good quest rewards or something.

What I’ve found is that the insanity is all over the place.  Yes, I realize Blizz dumped a crap load of cash into the economy with the SSO dailies, but this is getting ridiculous.  My shammy, now level 45, is still wearing bracers and gloves from level 30.   I refuse to bow to ridiculous prices, and farm with my 70 to outfit an alt.

Now, in some ways I understand the ridiculous prices for, say, level 29 BOE blues.  I know the twinkers fall all over themselves for those.  But this craziness about other sub 70 stuff must end.  How long do we spend in those midlevels anyway?

Now, people -  the only way this will change is if YOU change it!  You must agree to not bow to ridiculously priced green stuff on the AH!  If we work together, we can move mountains, you and I.  We shall overcome!

I’m the Part Time Druid, and I approve this message.