Dire Aquatic Form

Just a quick post, here, to let people know about an awesome resource for us WoW Bloggers: Blog Azeroth. I've been digging around there for just a little bit, and found some awesome tips on the various blogging platforms and general blog tips. My personal favorite so far? How to make your blogger blog more search engine friendly.

So, I figured I'd throw out a quick update while I wait on a couple calls at work. As far as the goals I'd set for myself two posts ago, I've fulfilled two and a half. My cooking skill is currently at 340(woot), I'm rocking over 100g once again, and I hit up Ramparts with a guild group(got my tanking ring, and Sharon got a couple upgrade items I passed on so she could have). Now I need to hit up BF for the quest, and Ramparts until I get my staff. Although, at level 62 now, I'm considering just passing on Ramparts(other than the one more run needed for the folks in my levelling group) and just waiting for my Braxxis' Staff of Slumber. They're going pretty cheap on my server, around 30g, and that would be a nice addition to both my tanking set with 550 armor and a boatload of stamina, and my cat set with all that feral AP. I plan on getting one regardless, so maybe I'll save myself some headaches, and put that energy into running Underbog and Slave Pens for CE rep for my Earthwarden.

I know, I know. Paragraphs, dude!

Me and Sharon rolled alts. Horde side, this time. She wanted to play around with a pally, and I've always wanted to get a mage above 20, especially with their 2.3.2 love. We've gotten them up to level 12, now, and I'm kinda digging it. Being all nukey is fun, especially with a meatshield there to take the hits for me. I keep calling Sharon my pet pally. She gets irked. I get amused.

Unfortunately, the pally in our levelling group was deployed a couple weeks ago, and after this weekend he will no longer be in a place where he can access WoW, so the goal is to get him up to 58 and Outland ready before that happens(he was 54 when last I logged, with about 7 or 8 Sunken Temple quests to turn in - 1.5 hour ST clear with no 70's makes me happy).

Blackmood, the group's new shammy, has hit 58, and is still going strong(that dude levels fast, maybe even faster than we did)(and we need to get him into DN)(no more notes to self in parenthesis). Solid chance he hit 59 off the Sunken Temple turn ins. I'm thinking with myself(feral tank), Sharon(swords rogue), the demo lock, a holy pally(he's going to respec at some point in the near future), and an enhancement shammy we should have a pretty solid group. Me and Sharon will be damn near the only ones competing for gear, and seeing as we sleep in the same bed, I'm sure we can come to an equitable agreement on that kind of stuff. Things are definitely looking good.

So, I've been putting some thought into specs, and how I want to end up specced at endgame tanking, and I think I've come up with a spec that makes me happy. It's a bit unconventional, because I'm aiming for a spec that I can grind in as efficiently as possible. Here it is:

My Spec

You might have noticed that I have one point unspent. That is where you, dear readers, come into play. Well, there, and one other place. Where should I put this leftover point? I'm seeing four main options, although I'm open to suggestion.


Natural Shapeshifter
Handy for shift healing while grinding and pvp

Intensity
Because rage = awesome

Feral Aggression
I don't get hit as hard, and my FB hits harder.

Nature's Grasp
For pvp.


The other thing is, am I missing anything really awesome? Is there anything I've taken that I should probably pass on? It seems like a pretty solid tanking build to me, but I may have overlooked something, and am hoping you guys can lend me a hand and be a second set of eyes for me.

So, yeah, it's been a while since I updated. Certain circumstances have conspired to create this unfortunate situation(mainly being in class for work all week, and not being able to post from work). So, there's been a lot of stuff that's happened lately.

Ran Scholo with the lock, Sharon, a 70 hunter from my guild and the GM's pally alt. It was kind of a clusterfuck the first few rooms. We overaggroed, we got three to four pulls at a time, and we generally noobed it up all over the place. Then we got our shit together, and punched Scholomance in the face. Wiped on Kirtonos(did him towards the end because we were running out to do the spectral essence chain) but that was mainly due to miscommunication of AFKness. Went from just barely 57 to, like, 5 bars off.

Next night, me and Sharon hit 58, and stepped through the Dark Portal(dun dun dun). Had some fun running around Hellfire, but apparently I, in my glee, kind of overwhelmed Sharon with it all. I really need to remember to take the stuff slow with her, and introduce her to Outlands gently, instead of pushing her all over the place and overloading her with new info and whatnot.

Rolled Yesterday is Sharon's new WoW blog. Apparently, she saw all the fun I was having not updating my blog often enough and had to get in on the action. I secretly think she just wanted a place to post all her screenshots. But don't tell her I said that.

And then, last night, after scrimping and saving and selling leather left and right and maybe a little of my soul but who needs that I got my epic mount! Screenshot coming tonight, maybe, if I remember. I went with the Great White Kodo. I'm now rocking the Outlands at a 40% rate of speed increase. And Sharon got hers this morning, so we can zoom all over Outland together. Now we need to get the lock through his epic mount quest, and we'll be set.

What I'm really jazzed about, right now, is getting the chance to tank Outlands instances once more. I've gotten some pretty sweet upgrades from the quests in HFP, and half of my tanking set at this point is merged with my dps set, because the stuff was so awesome it upgraded items in both sets. Hoping we can run Ramparts at some point tonight, or maybe tomorrow, and then Blood Furnace shortly thereafter.

And, I've gotta say, this is my first time doing Outland horde-side, and I'm really digging it. It's like a totally new perspective on stuff I've already done. It's mostly the same rewards, and similar, but with different spins. And not in the way that WPL was different, but totally sucked Horde side. Can't wait to see how Zangarmarsh and Terrokar differ.

My major goals for the next week or so is to try and get my cooking up to 300(currently at 283, and oh my god I hate fishing), hit up Ramparts and Blood Furnace, and start recovering from the hemmorhage that was my epic mount purchase. At once point, after realizing I needed repairs, I couldn't afford to fly to Thrallmar from Shattrath, and had to fly to Falcon Watch instead, leaving me with a grand total of 50 copper. Man, that sucked out loud. Getting Sharon her flying mount is going to hurt(Druids FTW!).

Anyhow, that's about it for the recent past. Back to the work grind, I guess.

As promised, here's the SS of us mounted. This is me, Sharon, and the pally. I can't really get the picture to post right, so you'll have to click it. If any of you more experienced bloggers can enlighten me on how to post screenshots so they don't look, yanno, sucky, I'd appreciate it.

Sorry for the delay in the update here, but been playing some catchup, and helping one of the people I grind levels with catch up to the rest of us. We've all got our mounts now(screenshot of me, Sharon, and the pally we roll with when I get home from work). We did a Scarlet Monastery run(the run that dinged our first person to 40), with a 39 lock, 36 pally, 38 rogue, 37 druid tanking(that's me!) and a 31 priest main healing. Yeah, 31. And we cleared all four instances with one wipe on a courtyard respawn after downing Doan, and one death for me after a bad cathedral pull. It looked like things were going to go south on Mograine before Whitemane came out, but we held it together(and Sharon learned why you don't open up on the boss when he's at 99%).

I've got my kodo, Sharon has her chicken, the lock has his felsteed, and the pally has his best damned mount in the game. I lust for blood elf pally mounts. Another spot of good news in all this is said level 31 priest. He's looking like an awesome addition to our little leveling team, and we're going to spend a bit of time playing catchup for him so we'll have a full instancing team good to go. I'm hoping, in the end, to have myself feral tanking, the pally holy main healing, Sharon dpsing(dur), the lock dpsing(dur), and the priest Shadow dpsing and offhealing. I figure that'd be an awesome group with crazy CC(seduce, banish, sap, shackle, hibernate) with the only thing missing being sheep. I can very easily live with that.

I meant to do this last night, but between work, the grinding to 40 for my mount, and trying to spend some quality time with Sharon, it slipped my mind. The druid is level 34 now, and fairly close to 35. Me, Sharon, and two awesome members of my guild that we've been running around questing and grinding with did a 4 man run on RFK, and it went pretty smoothly. We had missed Roogug, so we all went back with a menagerie of five blueleaf tuber gophers each and murderified him. Sadly, the gophers didn't make it. They met their swift and untimely demise at the cruel hands of some thunderclaps. Except for two of them. And they are now kings among gophers.

Other than that, not really a whole lot to talk about. Greatly looking forward to my mount, which I should have at some point in the next couple days. Running is the devil. The slow, annoying devil.