Gomorra - Level 85 Demon/Destruction Lock 4/11/11

I worked on my Warlock Gomorra some today. I ran a couple dungeons with him once I figured out how to play him again. My dps wasn't great, I was hitting a high of 6.5k on boss fights and averaging around 5.5k overall. I got a couple pieces of 333 gear from the dungeons that I desperately needed, he is very poorly geared at this point but then again they all were at the start. I am working on his Earthen Ring rep then I will work on his Ramkahen rep as they have gear I want. At some point I will also have to work on his Hyjal rep for one of their pieces and Therazane for the shoulder chants.

I have been doing the daily cooking and fishing every day to get both of those up to 525. I have also been doing the Tolbarad and Baradin Hold Daily's every day for the past few days as well. I am now friendly with Baradin's Wardens and will keep plugging away at them until I have my trinket.

I worked on his Tailoring some today too and got his skill up to 471. I have been sending all the cloth I get to him from my other characters and have 35 stacks of Bolts of Embersilk cloth in the bank. 35 stacks, at 20 bolts a stack, is 700 bolts of cloth. That should take me a long ways towards getting his Tailoring to 525.

I also worked on his first aid some today and got that up to 518, so that is coming along. I will keep plugging away at him and get him geared eventually. I am in no big hurry as I have other characters I need to work on too, it is a never ending battle. Once I get them all geared it will be time for another expansion and I will throw away all the gear I worked so hard for and start again.

Expertise - Do You Need It?

As I am gearing my Feral Druid Wranngar I have found that expertise is playing a big role. Wranngar is a Feral Druid that fights in Cat (Kitty) Form. As with any melee character, that is actually striking it's opponent, you can't deal damage if your opponent is dodging and parrying your attacks.

When I first started gearing I wasn't worried about expertise, but as I went along I noticed how many of my attacks were being dodged and parried by whatever I was attacking. Having played ranged or caster characters for so long this was something new to me. Looking into this problem I found that the higher your expertise rating the less chance you have of something dodging and/or parrying your attacks, so I started working on my expertise. As my expertise rose so did my dps. Now I have a 0% chance of my attacks being dodged and a 4% chance of my attacks being parried by a level 87/skull mob. The only place I will be coming across a level 87/skull character is in a raid but as I plan on raiding I will have to work on that some more.

So in conclusion, if you have a melee character your expertise is going to help you do more damage by making your attacks harder, if not impossible, to dodge or parry.

Gearing Wranngar - 3/29/11

I have been working on getting my Druid Wranngar geared up the last few days. When I started working on him again on Saturday he was level 83 and his item level was 292. I got him to 85 on Saturday and as of Tuesday his item level is 338.

I have been running a lot of normal dungeons for gear and justice points and also did a BoT trash run on him where I won Dragonwreck Throwing Axe on a raid roll. I have that on the auction house now and plan to buy some 359 crafted gear when it sells.

I have been doing daily quests for Therazane, Baradin's Wardens and the Wildhammer Clan to get rep so I can buy gear from them. I have the tabards for all the factions except Baradin's Wardens, who don't have a tabard, and Hyjal who aren't even on my reputation list yet. That is ok though, Hyjal doesn't have anything I need at this point so I will level up my rep with them last.

Therazane has the top of the line Cata shoulder chants so getting rep up with them is a must. Wildhammer Clan has a pair of 359 gloves I am working towards and Earthen Ring has the 359 agility ring I have on my Hunter Brieanna, I am going to need that for Wranngar too. I gave up running GB over and over again to get the ring, I am now revered with Therazane and got the 346 ring they have instead. It is a better ring anyway.

Like I said, I will be starting heroics soon, maybe even today, to update my 333 gear with 346 gear. I will be queuing into heroic Lost City and Halls of Origination every day until I get everything I need out of those two. Once I get my item level and dps up a little more I will be queuing into Grim Batol to get the trinket out of there. I will also be getting the 359 trinket from Baradin's Wardens as soon as I have enough Commendations and my rep is exalted so maybe I won't have to do too many GB runs.

Survival Hunter

I have been playing my Survival Hunter Brieanna more lately. The reason I wasn't playing her as much was the queue time. It takes a lot longer to queue as DPS than it does to queue as a healer on my Priest Brieonna. DPS takes me anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes where Heals takes me up to 2 minutes to queue on the average.

When I first started playing my Hunter again my DPS was a little low because I was out of practice. I was hitting around 8-9k average on her when I first started and now am averaging around 11k and had a personal best of 15.9k dps on one of the boss fights. The more I play her the better it gets. I have been doing my random daily heroic on her every day lately too to get Valor points. I am over 900 now and will be getting my first piece of Valor gear soon. I am not sure if I will be getting the cloak or a trinket first, I will jump off that bridge when I get there.

I am going to try and split my time between my Hunter and Priest now so I can stay in practice on both and DPS or Heal as needed. It is a lot of fun playing a hunter, I just wish the queues were shorter. To fill in the time while I am waiting for the queue I do my Tol Barad daily's, going for the trink there, or just kill stuff and skin it for leather.

I traded my gun for a bow and am using that now. The only problem I had with the gun was all the noise it made. I know I can turn the volume off when playing to eliminate that problem but there are audible warnings in the game I didn't want to miss so this was a simple solution. It is so much nicer and quieter now :).

Don't Stand In The Fire

When you are in a dungeon, don't stand in anything. I am not going to go into a lot of detail because, as I have been told, it goes without saying.

If you are in a dungeon and you are standing in something that is killing you, move. It's as simple as that. Move. I can not get over the number of people that will just stand in something that is hitting them for 8-10k plus damage (Normal Dungeon) a second EVERY SECOND. A few steps in any direction and they could be out of it. There are very few instances where you need to stand in something that is killing you in a normal or even heroic 5 man dungeon. The last boss in Halls of Origination, Rahj, is one of the exceptions.

Now when I start healing a dungeon on my Priest Brieonna, the first thing I say is "Don't stand in anything". That is my disclaimer. Someone will always say "That goes without saying", and it should go without saying. After that if someone is standing in something I will throw them a couple heals to give them time to get out of it, and if they don't move I let them die. I am a healer, not a babysitter. It's even in the loading tips at startup: Don't stand in the fire!

More Cataclysm Random Heroic Dungeons 1/9/11

I did some more random heroics on Brieanna tonight and completed Grim Batol and Halls of Origination. Halls of Origination wasn't bad, the tank had an attitude and I was thinking about kicking him but he said he was having a bad day and apologized. We got through that one ok, but I didn't get anything out of it. I also queued into heroic Lost City of the Tol'vir to see if my new heroic weapon would drop, it didn't.

Grim Batol was another story, it is brutally hard. The third boss, Drahga Shadowburner, is anyway, the others aren't too bad. Drahga Shadowburner starts off pretty much the same as in normal but in heroic the fire adds he calls will one shot you, so you have to kill them before they get to their target and kite them if you are the target. In normal they hit for around 60,000 damage. Make sure you are not near anyone if they are going to make it to you or it will take them out too. The other thing he does that is different than normal is the dragon he gets on in phase 2 has an ability called Flame Breath that shoots out 180 degrees in front of him, you don't want to get caught in that either.

Being a ranged melee I usually stand way back when I am fighting, but that is not a good idea here. You want to stand close enough to him so you can get behind him quickly when he does flame breath. You can not outrun it. You will want to stay out of any clouds on the ground too.

The only real difference I saw with the last boss was he has an ability called knock back that isn't there in normal and he summons 2 adds at a time, after Gale Storm, instead of just the one in normal. Of course the fights last a lot longer in heroic than they do in normal but that is to be expected.

I got a new pair of boots out of Grim Batol so I guess it was worth the 26 gold repair bill.

Now I have Heroic Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, Lost City of the Tol'vir, Shadowfang Keep and The Vortex Pinnacle out of the way in my Cataclysm Dungeon Hero achievement.

Heroic Dungeons 1/8/11

I did some heroic dungeon runs on Brieanna. I completed Shadowfang Keep, Lost City of the Tol'Vir and The Vortex Pinnacle. They were not bad at all. They are a lot tougher than the normal dungeons which are hard enough but with a decent group it is not too bad. I would say the heroics are as hard, if not harder, than the Lick King 10 man raids.

I got into a Grim Batol heroic but didn't complete it. The group started out with a tank that didn't seem to be wearing any gear. I figured he had the naked buff but no, he wasn't wearing any gear. We got past the Troggs at the beginning then the tank pulled the next 3 mobs, elites, and ran out of the dungeon leaving everyone else to die. We tore him a new one and he said he would put his gear on but did it again. Then the healer and one of the DPS left. We re-queued and I told the other DPS that we would kick the tank as soon as we had a group again which we did.

We made it to the third boss in there before the group fell apart again. I decided to call it a night after that. You know how there seems to be one asshole in every group? Well, after someone else dropped we got this guy, Worgasaur. This asshole was shooting his mouth off like he was someone, you get losers like that on occasion and the best thing to do is just kick them. Other than that it was a learning experience and with a little better group I think we will have it next time. Hopefully we will get enough people in the guild to start doing guild dungeon and heroic runs then move on to raids.

Random Dungeons 1/7/11

I have been doing a lot of random dungeons on Brieanna, Brieonna and Breeonna lately to get rep with the various factions I want to buy gear from.

It seems like I end up in Grim Batol on Brieanna 9 times out of 10 that I queue on her. I am getting so sick of GB. I have gotten everything I can out of there, I still need one more trinket before all my items on her will be 333+, but the rep is good because there are so many mobs to kill. I am currently working on Guardians of Hyjal rep on her so I can buy a pair of boots they have. Her Item Level is 334 and I will start doing heroics on her soon.

Brieonna ends up in GB a lot too. She gets The Lost City of the Tol'vir a lot too but I haven't seen the cloth bracers drop in there when I am on her. They drop almost every time I am in there on my Shaman, Breeonna, and Hunter, Brieanna though. Of course they are BoP (Bind on Pickup) so that does me no good. There are a few items in Halls of Origination too that she could use if they would only drop when I am on her and not on another one of my toons. Her Item Level is 329 right now, high enough to get into heroics but I don't think I am doing the DPS on her for heroics yet.

I haven't worked on Breeonna in a little while now, I have been concentrating on the others because they have a lower Item Level. All of her items are a minimum of 333 and she has a few pieces that are 346. Her Item Level is 336. I have tried a few heroics on her but the groups usually fall apart, the main reason I stopped doing dungeons back in Vanilla WoW and went to PvP.

I can only hope that the groups in heroics will get better as time goes on. I remember the Lich King heroics seemed pretty tough the first time in there but they are nothing compared to the Cata normal dungeons now.

I have not really worked on Gomorra since getting him to 85 so I still have him to gear up too.

Wranngar is still 80. I have his Leatherworking up to 501 and that is about all I have done on him so far.

Brieonna - Level 82 Holy/Shadow Priest

I got a little bored leveling Brieanna, and I really wanted to try out Shadow Spec on Brieonna, so I started working on Brieonna.

Instead of going the usual route, straight to Vashj'ir then to Deepholm, I decided to start at Mount Hyjal. That was a mistake. I didn't like it there and there was nothing I was killing that I could skin so that wasn't working out. I did about half of level 80 there then headed over to Vashj'ir. I think knowing where all the quests are and knowing what to do in Vashj'ir had a lot to do with it. I got to level 82 no problem in Vashj'ir.

From there I headed over to Deepholm and started questing there. I will stay there until I reach level 83, then I will be off to Uldum. I discovered the entrances to The Throne of the Tides, Blackrock Caverns and Stonecore so I can start doing random Cata dungeons on her. I might switch back and forth between Brieonna and Brieanna, as a matter of fact I am almost sure of it. Get bored in one place switch and quest in another place for awhile.