Dire Aquatic Form

OTed Kara last night for the first time, and it was a blast. We cleared through Opera(Wizard of Oz, skipped Maiden) with only one wipe on Moroes due to some bad luck with garrotes. I picked up the gloves off of Attumen, which was a pretty nice upgrade(I had been using green gloves of the bandit).

I held Attumen while the group burned down Midnight, tanked Moroes with the pally tank, and burned down Dorothea while holding Tito, then wound up tanking the Crone when the pally lost his hold on her.

Moroes was probably the most fun of all of it. We held Moroes, and burned down Crispin while he was vanished. The pally tank wound up going down partway through our second attempt, and was battle rezzed, so I wound up main tanking him, and had a blast. Picking up the Crone was fun, too. Running her around to avoid the tornado made it a bit more interesting than your standard tank'n'spank.

We also had some awesome luck on trash. Out of four trash pulls before the performers, we picked up the fire mage/destro lock belt, rogue gloves, and a soulcloth tailoring pattern. Three epics on four pulls was pretty damned cool.

All in all, it was a fun night for me. Unfortunately, due to bedtime scheduling conflicts, Sharon wasn't able to attend(Kara starts right at the kid's bedtime). I'm hoping to find a way to be able to work around this and get her in on the runs. We didn't actually start until around 9:15 or 9:20, and if this is the norm, I'm hoping we can get her in on a regular basis.

...it pours loot.

After that Old Hillsbrad run I posted about, we did Old Hillsbrad again the next night, and then Sethekk Halls the night after, and then Auchenai Crypts the night after that, and Underbog last night. Mixed in with that, got some help from the guild and we were able to open up the Ogri'la dailies for about 7-8 people(hooray for dropping raid to loot), and last night before Underbog myself, Sharon, and the lock got some help downing Zuluhed the Whacked and getting Netherwing opened up.

So, now we have ample opportunity to run our dailies and earn back the cash we borrowed(10k between the two of us). We're also fairly close to getting Ally the Shadowprowler's Chestguard(guild mate can craft it and is donating the nethers, Ally has the earths, is farming the shadows, and we're working on the Soul Essence from guild mates in kara runs). We also got her the gloves and boots from the Fel Leather set to hold her over until we can find some upgrades for her out of instances, such as the assassination or wastewalker set.

As for me, my gear is coming along quite nicely. I got my purple pimp hat crafted, got my manimal's cinch(does that make me a manimal?), my ring out of Old Hillsbrad the second time around(and found myself, for the second time, going 'ringringringringringringring' before looting), and I'm close on the Umberhowl's Collar. Next up is 35 agi for my Braxxis', 12 agi for my boots, the Verdant Gloves, and some Mechanar runs for my cloak. Oh, and some Thrallmar rep grinding for my crab design.

So, yeah. Things are looking good. I'm thinking within two weeks, I'll be Kara ready, and so will Sharon. It's just a matter of making her believe she's Kara-ready, which will hopefully come from running more instances. She actually commented on how comfortable she felt with Underbog last night, which hadn't been the case in any of our previous instance runs. Part of it was probably how overlevel we were, one 67 and four 70's running regular Underbog, but I hope part of it has also come from running more instances, and getting comfortable with the pacing I use, how I pull, what's expected from her on saps and whatnot, and just a general acclimation to being behind the swirly portal.

Oh, and a bonehead story from last night. We get past Ghaz'an, and are working on the nether ray/moth pulls, when I see the grace of air totem go down. I'm curious what this is pushing my dodge to with my new tanking gear, so I throw open the character window, looks at my defenses pulldown, and my eyes bug out and I can't stop laughing. "Hey, ?" "Yeah?" "Have you noticed me taking more damage than usual." "Nah, not really. Why?" "Because I've been wearing my dps gear this entire time."

...game, that is. Me and Sharon dinged 70 last night, doing the Manaforge Ara stuff. She's got her flier, and I picked up a flier of my own for stuff like the Skettis bombing daily quest.

I also discovered, through some of the rewards from Netherstorm, and the resilience I overlooked on the Mok'Nathal Clan Ring, that once I get my base defense skill trained up to 350, I'll be uncrittable. I still have quite a lot of items to get to be Kara ready(12k hp 17k armor 16.5% dodge right now), but I'm definitely on my way. Farming primal shadows for my hat(and for Sharon's fel leather set) is going to suck, though. We need 32 between the two of us. I'm thinking maybe I'll farm Oshu'gun while she farms Void Ridge(since I need the crystal powders, and any greens I pick up will be thrown into the shredder that is her enchanting skill) and see how many primals we can bang out in a couple hours tonight.

I've also hit this kind of wall, and I'm not sure where it came from. The "Now What?" wall. We dinged 70 last night, and I figured we should head off on the Ogri'la chain, and discovered you need to do some five mans to open the dailies up. I'm not sure why, but it kinda floored me. Not in a surprised way, but in a...now what? sort of way. Okay, we're 70...now what?

It seems silly to me, because I've been 70 before. But I've run almost no instances in Outland as of yet, and I just kind of sat there, turning in place, wondering what the hell I should do. No more xp grinding. I could have asked the guild to see if anyone wanted to lend us a hand with the Ogri'la stuff(they're usually pretty awesome with that), but to be honest it didn't even really occur to me. To be honest, I'm still a little shaky on what to do now.

I think part of the problem is one of the major reasons I haven't done most of the instances in Outland yet. I was waiting for the people I was levelling with. Problem there is, we have somewhat divergent schedules. Now, I don't mean this to sound like they're holding me back and I blame them. To be honest, the main reason I held off on trying to do instances wasn't pressure from them to do so(there was none), but...more or less feeling like I should. I don't know, it's difficult to explain.

Now, I'm at a point where running 5 mans is going to get me stuff I need to be ready to step up into the guild's Karazhan runs. Plus, I really enjoy running 5 man content, especially as a tank. I know I need to get into guild runs, maybe even start some...but even thinking about it leaves me with this vague, nagging feeling that I'm leaving my friends behind, and I'm really not sure what to do about it.

On a more positive note, I believe at some point in the next couple days we'll be getting our Ogri'la stuff taken care of. Someone in the guild brought it up, and offered to help, so that should be taken care of.

And, in writing this, I've come to a decision. Tonight, I'm tanking an Outlands instance, come hell or highwater, friends, guild run, or pug. Update tomorrow with how it went.

So, I was reading a post over at Blessing of Kings about how the endgame since pre-TBC has improved leaps and bounds for smaller guilds, and it's spot on. Those were dark days back then, when raiding consisted of 10 competent players and 30 half-afk button mashers downing bosses that took almost no strategy or skill in MC. Things got slightly better as new 40 man content was released, and the scene improved a bit with the release of 20 man raids, but it still left the smaller guilds that wanted progression without having to resort to ginvite spamming and trolling forums for new members. Dire Maul was a great addition, but sadly, it was the only one of it's type, and without new content it left 5 man and 10 man guilds with nowhere to progress except trying to field enough people for ZG and AQ20.

Nowadays, we have Kara and heroics to challenge the smaller guilds, and give them a path of content progression, and the release of Zul'Aman last month shows that Blizz cares about the smaller guilds, and providing content that more people can experience. As a casual raider, I have to say that really makes me confident with the way the game is going, and makes me question less whether or not I really want to drop the money for WotK. If things keep progressing like this, I definitely see myself staying with WoW for quite some time.