Wranngar - Level 85 Feral Druid

I worked on my Feral Druid Wranngar today and got him to 85. He is my fifth 85 and the last of my 80's I needed to level up. I got him a few pieces of gear doing some dungeon runs and questing and got his item level from 292, when I started at 83, to 326 when I called it a night.

I got him Mirage Ring and Tia's Grace, the ring and trinket from Lost City of the Tol'vir, Hieroglyphic Vest from Halls of Origination, Swiftflight Leggings with Wildhammer rep and a couple more 333 quest pieces so he is starting to shape up. I think he has a higher item level than my Warlock Gomorra who hit 85 a while ago.

I will continue to work on him tomorrow and get him more gear. Basically Halls of Origination, Lost City of the Tol'vir and Grim Batol all have something I need so those are the ones I will be running. After my first run tomorrow I will be able to get him a piece of gear with Justice Points. I would eventually like to tank with him.

Corded Viper Belt

I picked up Corded Viper Belt for my Hunter, Brieanna, yesterday. It is a item level 359 belt to replace the 346 item level belt she was wearing. I got it off the auction house and it cost me 4500 gold. That is the cheapest I have seen it going for on my server so I figured I would grab it. That puts her item level at 349 now. So close to 350 yet so far away.

I am thinking about respecing her SV to MM to see if I can get any better dps since they nerfed SV in the last patch. I am still doing decent dps in SV, around 13k on bosses in normal, but if I can bring that up a couple thousand it wouldn't hurt.

So far I have been concentrating on gearing 3 of my toons, Brieanna, Brieonna and Breeonna. It is taking a lot longer than it did in WotLK but you appreciate the gear more when you get it now because you really have to work for it. My Priest, Brieonna, is at 345 item level and my Shaman, Breeonna is at 342 item level so they are getting there, slowly but surely.

Heroic: Halls of Origination

I healed Heroic Halls of Origination on my Priest, Brieonna, last night for the first time. I was after one of two particular items. I was after the heroic version of either Soul Releaser or Scepter of Power. I currently have the normal version of Scepter of Power.

The run went very well, better than I could have hoped. The group I got in with knew what they were doing, used a lot of CC, and went at a normal pace. I have found, from experience, that it is usually the poorly geared, inexperienced, tanks that will not use CC and like to move along at a breakneck pace. They think running from one fight to the next before the last mob has even dropped makes it look like they know what they are doing. All it does is scream inexperience and usually doesn't end well.

Unfortunately neither of the items I was after dropped so it looks like I will be queuing into H HoO every day until one of them does. I went through that on my Hunter, Brieanna, in The Lost City of the Tol'vir, trying to get the heroic version of Seliza's Spear to drop. It took me about a week of running it every day before I got it. I guess I will have to settle in and run HoO every day until one of them drops for Brieonna too.

Healing and Rezzing the Dead

I have been healing a lot of dungeons on Brieonna, my Holy/Shadow Priest, in the past few weeks. Most have been good but some have been really bad. Every once in awhile you will get a tank that is just not geared enough, can't hold aggro, and takes massive damage constantly. Those are a little more of a challenge than a tank that is correctly geared, but not impossible.

If a tank is taking massive damage and I have to spam greater heals on him, that is ok, as long as he can hold aggro. When the tank is taking massive damage and can't hold aggro, then the rest of the group takes massive damage as well (basically a group of tanks, some wearing cloth) I have to spam heal the entire group throughout every battle and that gets old fast.

When fully buffed my healer has around 121,000 health and 80,000 mana. I always get a little nervous when the tank has less buffed HP than I do. That is usually a sign they are not very well geared. As I have only been healing normal dungeons while I gear, I come across a lot of tanks that have less HP, fully buffed, than I do. I have found that skill will play a big part in what happens from there on out. I had a tank with 98k buffed HP that was easier to heal than one I had earlier with 147k HP. It really depends on how well they can play their toon, if they know how to use their CD's and when.

As I have gone about as far as I can with normal dungeon drops, Justice Point gear and rep gear I am now looking towards healing heroic's. I still have 2 more JP pieces to get for my Shadow set then I will have gone as far as I can with JP and I will need to start collecting Valor Points. I healed one heroic so far and that was Stonecore. It was brutal but we made it through. It was not only the first time I ever healed SC, it was the first time I ever did it on heroic. I queued into it by mistake.

The thing I am working on now is managing my mana better. A lot of healers over heal. I was one of them and it makes for OoM (Out of Mana) pretty quick. Currently I am using my HoT's (Heal over Time) a lot more and letting the tank get down to around 75% before I throw a regular heal (Greater Heal or Flash Heal) on him. I went from almost out of mana on trash fights in a lot of dungeons to coming out of it with 80% or more mana left. As I have high regen I am usually 100% before the next trash fight. Usually the tank will need no more than a HoT to get him through most fights. The better tanks that is, ones that are actually geared for the role they are playing.

I will be starting heroics this week, that is exciting and scary at the same time. I always have Shadow to fall back on if the healing doesn't work out lol.

The Road To 85

As posted earlier, both Gomorra and Breeonna are 85 now. Brieanna and Brieonna are both a few bars away from 84 and should be 85 this week.

I have been doing random normal Cataclysm dungeons on Breeonna to get her geared. It sucks that they were all pretty well geared before the expansion came out and I either had to sell or destroy their 245 and 264 gear, but it is garbage now. You get green quest rewards that are better than the 264 gear.

I am working on rep with one of the factions now on Breeonna so I can buy a belt they have. I got their Tabard so all rep I receive in Cata dungeons goes towards their rep. That should take me a couple days at most to become revered so I can get the belt and not much longer after that to be exalted.

I will keep plugging away on Brieanna and Brieonna to get them to 85. I am not sure what I am going to do with Wranngar, I sort of lost interest in him after I stopped PvPing.