Dire Aquatic Form

...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.

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.