The Next Grind

I hit level 85 late Saturday night. As usual, I was pretty far behind a majority of the people on the server. I don't mind. To me the race isn't in what order you finished, it's how you finished. I really enjoyed the quest lines throughout (though Deepholm has alot of *bleh* for me) and it made the journey to 85 quite enjoyable.
I still have quests left in The Twilight Highlands to finish out and Mount Hyjal has been untouched by Bacon Paws. So there's that little action item on my ToDo list. However, those areas (especially the Twight Highlands) have been bumped down a notch so I can start my next grind.

Another grind? Yep you heard that right. For the head and shoulder enchants in the game, the best ones are from the Earthen Ring and Therazane, respectively. Both have tabards and daily quests. So which one should I do first? It really came down to a coin toss for me and as fate would have it, looks like I'm going back to Deepholm for the Therazane rep. Oh well, at least I'll be done with it in a couple of weeks (I hope). I'm pretty sure that I can reach exalted with these guys considering I'll be wearing their tabard in heroics and the added bonus of them having 5 daily quests. Aside from them having the shoulder enchant (
 http://www.wowhead.com/item=62374 - Sly Fox Jerkin). Honored shouldn't be too hard to attain since I haven't yet quested over there. This is something I definitely want to start on in addition to the daily quests for Therazane.
Now getting honored with the Guardians of Hyjal has a spiffy chest piece (
 http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/11/30/shifting-perspectives-patch-4-0-3a-and-the-road-to-85/).
Since I've ventured over to the realm of gear by talking about the chest piece and rings, I might as touch a bit on the gear grind. Yes there's a gear requirement for entering heroics through the Looking for Group tool. Back in Wrath it wasn't uncommon to find yourself in a pug with a tank lacking defense or stamina, or a DPS pulling 700 DPS (if you're lucky). I know these scenarios quite well since my former life was a healer in Wrath and The Burning Crusade. There were a number of daily pug heroics that I had carried a tank through or suffered an agonizing long DPS fight with poor DPS. So I welcome the new gear level check on the LFG tool. However, it's also preventing me from heroics.

Currently, a player needs an average gear level of 329 to run heroics. Sadly, mine's 322. Additionally, I found some base numbers for stats on Shifting Perspectives by Allison Robert (
It looks like I need 741 hit (raiding will require a hit rating much higher), 29K armor, a hit pool of 106K, and 27% dodge. I thought this might be an issue until I reforged some gear. Unbuffed and in bear form, I have 109K+ in health and 26.72% dodge. I forgot to look up my armor number before I logged, but I'm sure I'm ok.

So now I'm all good to go for some regular instances tonight as far as gear and spec. I just hope I don't fail on my new rotation. At least the guild is more forgiving than PuGs.
　http://www.wowhead.com/item=62333 - Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz), they also have a good ring for feral tanking (http://www.wowhead.com/item=62348 - Terrath's Signet of Balance ). Granted the ring isn't real attractive, but hell, the stamina, the agility and the huge amount of hit will help in freeing up stats for dodge in other areas.

The Big Switch

Tuesday I was doing my normal routine of following up on some blogs and sites about feral tanking/DPS. See I was having some DPS problems with mobs in Deepholm and knew I needed to make some changes. Hence the research and I quickly came to the realization that it was time for me to remove the purple tinged glasses and start wearing this new quest DPS gear I was getting. But that was only the first half of the equation, I was going to have to respec and attain a more "pure" DPS build. Yes, it was time to ditch all I had done with being a resto druid.

It was a tough call, but as I have said before our guild downed the Lich King, I want to tank. I want the change of scenery. My battle cry was becoming more, "Give me more face time with the boss." and not "It's cool, I got healz covered." So last night it was time to pay up or find another class to play.

I made my way to the bank and starting cleaning house. Yeah I shed a few tears deleting my PVP healing gear (I wasn't going to last long anyway in Cataclysm Battlegrounds wearing it anyway). The real pain set in with I had to buy some Dust of Disapperance at 90 gold a pop to change out my resto gylphs for kitty power and I needed 6 of them. Geesh that hurt. I think I'm going to have to make a scribe to help offset that cost. Eventually, I got everythig squared away and I started out for Deepholm.

WAIT? DEEPHOLM? But Bacon, I thought you hated that place.

Yeah, I do. But I'm on a mission to finish that place out. I want to be sure that I can handle mobs pretty well before I head to Uldum. And the best place for me to know if I can carry the load is to go back to Deepholm.

Now the later Therazane quests get to be a little cooler. Especially one in which you have to play hop scotch with a big dragon. While I'm just halfway through level 83, I'm confident that I can head out to Uldum and carry weight in battle.

On a side note, I found a good gearing list from Elitist Jerks for Pre Heroic and Pre Raid gear. I just need to start tanking and get my mechanics down.