Onward and Upward

Rather a lot has been happening during the past month.



Not being overly fond of Deepholm, I headed out to Vashj'ir to tackle all the underwater realm had to offer. Once I got used to the 3D environment, I enjoyed it immensely. Finished up Vashj at 84 and headed out to Uldum, which I immediately loved. Yes, it's a desert. But then, I always liked Tanaris and Uldum is very Tanaris-like, but with the added bonus of Harrison Jones. Oh, and I tanked my first instance, Blackrock Caverns, which wasn't bad at all with only one wipe when we pulled the first boss on accident. After that, it was pretty smooth sailing, especially considering only one person in our PuG had run the instance before. It did drive home the need for much better tanking gear (not to mention that I'm very rusty) so I temporarily abandoned Uldum in favor of Twilight Highlands. A few quests saw me ding 85, fourth in my guild to do so.

Despite a good first run, I was still shy of tanking randoms via LFD. E, one of my guild officers, wanted to try tanking with his DK so I popped into the AH and picked up the cheapest 2handed weapon I could find, threw some talents and glyphs into Ret for my offspec and off we went, dragging my hapless hubby (who'd just dinged 85 on his Druid) along to heal for us. We rolled a random and got Grim Batol. Neither the hubby or I had been there, so I was happy not to be tanking. It was a disaster. I now know it was a disaster mainly because we weren't using appropriate cc, but I didn't have a clue what we were supposed to do at the time and apparently neither did E; to be fair, I don't know if he'd ever been there either. I'm still amazed we managed to down General Umbriss (after more than a couple wipes, mind). E got DC'd just before Forgemaster Throngus. When he didn't come back after a few minutes, I offered to give it a go and switched over to Prot. Disaster! Again, due at least partially to not knowing what I was doing, but I was also very undergeared. After 3 wipes, we called it quits.

I hate to fail. And in an effort to not do so again, I did some research. Blogs are freaking awesome resources! I found the awesometastic tanking cheat sheets at Sword & Board and video guides at mmo champion. That just left my gear issue. I liked Twilight Highlands and made a point to run each and every quest for as much gear, rep and of course achievements as I could get outta the zone. I got some decent gear and probably would have been ok to start tanking some of the easier instances. Instead, I took some bad advice amidst a complete mental breakdown.

Shortly after the Grim Batol fiasco, E declared he was gonna tank some of the lower instances to gear up and get in the grove. Since I need to gear up myself, and que times being what they are for dps, I was more than happy to tag along as Ret. (No, that wasn't the bad advice. I'm getting there. Be patient.) We rolled Vortex Pinnacle (which is just gorgeous!) and things were going quite well until E had a family thing come up and had to log. The Grim Batol nightmare was still fresh in my mind and I wasn't ready to try tanking so I didn't even offer. Instead I waited around in the que with the other dps and quickly remembered one of the reasons I'd so fallen in love with tanking. Waiting in the LFD que sucks. Two hours and three tanks later, we finished the instance. The rest of us in the PuG spent our time in que waiting on those tanks chatting. (Yes, this is where the bad advice comes in.) After I was done lamenting our recent Grim Batol experience and my concern over gearing up, one of the other dps (we shall call him Brutus) chimes in that 'my guildie and I should invest in the Bloodied Pyrium armor set so we could que for heroics and gear up faster.'

So, dumbass that I occasionally am, I listened to this complete stranger and headed over to the AH right after Vortex Pinnacle. As even more damning evidence of my lack of intelligence, I noticed that this Bloodied Pyrium stuff had Resilience on it. I remember thinking, "Resilience? What the hell is that? I should go look it up." Do I follow through with this instinct? Why, no, I don't. For some bizarre reason I do something completely out of character and buy it anyway with the cavalier thought, "Ah, I'll just reforge it." I should know better. I really, truly should! But the stupidity doesn't stop there. No, sir. 3K gold in armor later, I then proceed to sell my old gear as I'm equipping this new armor, thoroughly pleased that I've not only managed to upgrade my gear, but I no longer have the need to carry around an rp armor set because I now match and it's nifty and dark and pretty badass looking on Cae. It isn't until I'm at the Reforger in the Mage District that I realize Resilience is a PvP thing. Huh, no wonder I never heard of it, I don't PvP. And that you cannot reforge resilience!  /cry  Now the intelligent thing to do, would have been to hit the nearest vendor and buy back all my old armor. Unfortunately, that didn't occur to me until the next day when it was far too late to do so.

Yes, this is (sadly) a true story. Why, yes, I am a natural blonde. In my defense I had a cold. And medicine head. I'm not always so dumb. Really, I'm not. I swear!

I've spent the past couple weeks patiently sitting in the LFD que as dps and slowly acquiring tank gear. Had I rolled Need on every tank drop, I'd have been geared in a week, but I just can't do it. I feel guilty rolling on tank stuff when I'm dps, so I always /w the tank first and ask if it's cool for me to Need. Most of the time I've been lucky, but when a tank says they need a drop, I just can't do it and roll Greed or Pass instead. My Mommy taught me to live by the Golden Rule. And I do believe in karma.

I think I'm pretty much set except for some decent pants. For those, I need Justice Points. Which means randoms. And I don't care what my "gear score" says, that PvP stuff is not meant for heroics!

Now, if I could only figure out why I don't have any quests in Uldum when I haven't even completed half of what should be available. After the Gnomeblitteration quests I didn't get another one and I'd really like to finish the zone.