Back Again 9/11

I am back again after a little hiatus. I had some computer problems, immediately followed by hurricane problems but I have finally been able to get back on and do some playing.

I have been playing my Holy Priest Brieonna mostly, healing normals until I get back into shape and can heal heroic's again. That doesn't mean I haven't been playing my Druid Wranngar or Hunter Brieanna because I have, I have been doing Heroics and normals on those two also.

One of the unfortunate side affects of my system crashing is that I lost the thousands of screen shots I had and the hundreds of links to items from Thottbot that I had. I guess I will be starting over on that. I do have a lot of the images on a flash drive so I am not totally lost, but I didn't back up my links for some reason.

Going forward I plan on trying some raiding again. I also have my work cut out for me earning Valor Points for the 378 Valor gear that is now available.

Vortex Pinnacle - Random Daily Heroic 4/8/11

Today my daily random heroic on my Druid Wranngar was Vortex Pinnacle. I was lagging pretty bad throughout the entire dungeon and it affected my dps. We still managed to have a good run even with the lag issues which were not affecting just me.

I had to switch over to tanking once when the tank got blown over the edge fighting trash mobs. Some of the trash mobs have a blow back that they do when they die and it is a good idea to have your back to a wall at all times. Not following my own rule I got blown into another group of mobs when they did it.

The only real scary part was on the last boss when I was lagging so bad I couldn't avoid the static cling and barely made it into the grounding field each time because I didn't even see him making it until it was almost complete. We got through it tho and I collected my 70 valor points but didn't get the Chaos Orb. I have 6 orbs now but it has been a couple days since I won one so I am due.

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.

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.

Wranngar - Level 81 Feral Druid

I have started working on getting Wranngar, my last level 80, to 85. He has one advantage over the others in Vashj'ir, he can breath underwater and also has swim form which greatly increases his swim speed. I think it is faster than the seahorse mount you get from the quest in Vashj'ir but other people have said no. Until I can find someone to race I won't know, but it seems faster.

He is currently questing in Vashj'ir and will be there for a bit still. I had a bunch of gear that I sent to him from my other toons, drops mostly, and some gear he made so he is not doing too bad on gear. His dps is pretty low but I am writing that off to my not having played him in over a year. I think the last time I played him was to get him to level 80 and then some PvP to get 100000 Honorable Kills. After that I pretty much lost interest in him.

His skinning is around 480 now and his leatherworking is 501. He is making good gold off quests and drops and I am thinking about dual speccing him to Feral/Balance, so I have been keeping the caster gear he gets from quests and drops too.

I am working on him on and off so he won't be 85 tomorrow but he will get there eventually. I did have one bad moment when I hearthed from Vashj'ir and found myself in Dalaran which is a ghost town now. I had to fly back to the shore then take the boat back to Stormwind where I made sure I reset my hearth stone to.