Druid Gear Upgrade

So we did the Survey The Land quest chain last night. I mainly did it to help some guildies with it, but, little did I know, I got a nice tanking gear upgrade, Leggings of Unending Assault. Yes, it looks good for DPS, but it's got pretty high +stamina and good armor. So for now, this goes into my tanking collection, putting my self-buffed armor at nearly 11k and dodge nearly 21%. I'm still weak in tanking gear, but I can do well enough as the guild's #3.

SL, SV, SV

Our guild put a beat down on Shadow Labs recently. Then last night we did a back-to-back run of Steamvault. Here's the loot received:

Shadow Labs:
Soul-Wand of the Aldor - priest upgrade
Moonglade Handwraps - vendor trash
Wrathfire Hand-Cannon - vendor trash
Greatsword of Horrid Dreams - mage upgrade
Tidefury Kilt - vendor trash

Steamvault:
Scintillating Coral Band - vendor trash
Earth Mantle Handwraps - vendor trash
Devilshark Cape - pally tank upgrade
Breastplate of the Righteous - pally tank upgrade

Steamvault:
Scintillating Coral Band - vendor trash
Mask of Penance - vendor trash since pally healer has seen this at least 3 times
Beast Lord Leggings - hunter (not me) upgrade
Incanter's Pauldrons - vendor trash as our absent mage cries

Hunter Upgrades

I got a chance to gather my last few crystals to purchase my epic bow from Ogri'la. Well, luck was on my side tonight. Our 4-man team felt confident enough splatting demons that we mowed down quite a few (about 8 I believe). I got my epic wrists and had a friendly drop. Here's the loot I walked away with:

Crystalline Crossbow
Shard-bound Bracers
Crystalhide Handwraps

Now it's time to level my crossbow skills since I was at 1/350 when I got the crossbow. And I need to find a +12 scope. Lately I only see +10, but that'll hold me until I can locate one.

Farming Some Recipes

Our shadow priest and my druid went to Scholo to farm
Recipe: Flask of Supreme Power. Well, we got it on our 6th attempt at Ras Frostwhisper. Along the way we also got Formula: Enchant Weapon - Lifestealing.

Runs With Warrior Tank

We tried a couple of runs last night with our #2 tank, a warrior. The warrior has a long standing belief he's less able to tank than our paladin, primarily because of his lack of multi-mob tanking. We decided to try it out in Steamvault with him, my hunter, another hunter, mage, and pally healer.

Mekgineer Steamrigger:
Mask of Penance - won by my hunter as vendor trash since our pally has this already

Hydromancer Thespia:
Moonrage Girdle - won by the warrior for vendor trash

Warlord Kalithresh:
Gauntlets of the Bold - warrior love, though his Felsteel gear appears better until he gets more of the set
Moonglade Shoulders - won by our pally

Overall it was a pretty good run. A few bad breaks, including one big pull with the healer being silenced by an oracle. Another got a pat that we thought we were safe from. But we got a full clear and the much needed rep to move a step closer to a heroic.

Our pally healer had to bail, but our shadow priest came on about that same time. So I switched to my holy priest to heal for us. We took a stab at Botanica to see if we could complete the Arcatraz key for our mage. This was incredibly smooth until the 2nd boss. We weren't dpsing down the little plants that spawn so we were feeling the effects of those freezes, roots, and slows way too much, especially when she transition to tree of life form. The lashers were unloading on us as we moved behind the wall to pull them. Since we were moving slow, we frequently lost a person hear making it nearly impossible. Unfortunately we stopped on this one. We were getting worse with each attempt. Here's the loot from the first boss:

Commander Sarannis:
Libram of the Lightbringer - freaking healer pally gear won't stop dropping, even when our freaking healing pally isn't there. My priest won this for vendor trash.

This little jewel also dropped for our hunter. She's about a 320 JC at the moment. I wish my hunter had been there to get it. He's at 365 but could be 370 in no time.

Design: Coronet of Verdant Flame - gratz to our hunter on this one.

Botanic Conquered

We pushed our band of merry misfits on a complete clear of Botanic this morning. No wipes, though we did lose a few on Thorngrin the Tender. The run consisted of our pally tank, pally healer, my hunter, shadow priest, and warlock.

Commander Sarannis:
Revenger - won by our pally tank as vendor trash

High Botanist Freywinn:
Enchanted Thorium Torque - won by my hunter for vendor trash

Laj:
Boots of the Shifting Sands - won by my hunter; may wear them but the vote is still out on that yet

Thorngrin the Tender:
Arcane Netherband - won by our warlock

Warp Splinter:
Warhelm of the Bold - won by our pally tank as a possible upgrade
Warp Infused Drape - won by our shadow priest as a possible upgrade
Pattern: Whitemend Hood - drop for our warlock and my priest will thank him kindly for that item once we get the mats

Additionally, our lock finished up the Arcatraz key on this run, so that is a future run for us.

AV Weekend with the 2.2 Patch

AV weekend has come and gone, and the timing of the 2.2 patch with the Report AFK option in BGs had a huge impact. There were still plenty of people trying to protect the cave, but I saw the idle -> lazy debuffs applied quickly enough. I found myself reporting people that just appeared AFK. Sometimes they weren't, but they weren't doing much. The system worked. They lost their idle buff quickly enough. So, what does 40-man AVs look like with TBC? I'd never seen it because it was more like 10-20 man with 20-30 AFKers pre-2.2. I had multiple 11-12 minute wins and a few 11-12 minute losses. I won about 60% of the AVs I participated in, and based on the /bg banter, I'm guessing that was good.

I got healbot setup to help me with healing in BGs. That was a huge improvement. For healing 5-mans, the standard UI is fine. I use F1-F5 to target and I have all my heals hot-keyed. But with BGs, even using nametags, it's tough to target the person you want to heal. I don't use healbot's auto-cast ability yet, though I'm told I should. Instead I use healbot to acquire a target and then just cast the heal I want myself. I feel like I can judge the rate of life-loss better than healbot. Tank is down to 60% but it happened instantly, I know I better flash to stop the bleeding before I follow with a greater.

Some of my new acquisitions thanks to this weekend are:
Veteran's Mooncloth Slippers
Veteran's Mooncloth Cuffs
Veteran's Pendant of Salvation

And since I had AV marks coming out my ears (I earned about 120 this weekend along with 30K honor), I also picked up:
Frostwolf Battle Standard
Horn of the Frostwolf Howler

Botanica Conque.... Well Almost

We blew through the Mech run so fast we decided to pursue Botanica. We did through the second boss on our first try with only me dying during the second boss. Praise to locks and their soul capturing abilities because bounce back I did, after a few free heals in spirit form, and we wrapped it up.

The lewtz we got for our troubles, not including turning our 70 hunter into a potion master were:

Commander Sarannis:
Prismatic Mittens of Mending - hey, what do you know? More healer love; my priest thanks thee.

High Botanist Freywinn:
Enchanted Thorium Torque - tanking necklace for our pally, but he had better so it became vendor trash.

We ran out of time, so Botanica is going to get another visit soon.

Only Bot, Arc, and Shadow Labs remains for our 5-man normal mode conquests.

Mechanar Conquered....Again

Nearly the same group as the last run, but sub out the mage for a shadow priest and sub out my hunter for another new 70 hunter. Our DPS suffered a bit, but we were still very successful. My priest healed it instead of our normal pally healer.

So the drops continue to show healer love. Since I was the healer this time, I was on the receiving end, but Blizzard continues to hate hunters. Equally lucky was that our new 70 hunter is the 70 healing pally's alt. So she felt life as me, if that makes sense.

Mechano-Lord Capacitus:
Hammer of the Penitent - much love for my priest and actually makes me reconsider where to spend my arena points; may not save that sick 1H mace.

Cache of the Legion:
Capacitus' Cloak of Calibration - no love for anyone.

Nethermancer Sepethrea:
Cosmic Lifeband - more healer love for my priest.

Pathaleon the Calculator:
Tunic of Assassination - no rogues with us to enjoy this so it was vendor trash; that's 2 for 2 on this drop. Watch when our rogue comes and we don't see it.
Mana Wrath - our warlock also gets some rare love.
Pattern: Arcanoweave Robe - our warlock tailor liked this, but sure wish it had came before he hit 375 tailoring.