Gear hunting

Okay, I took a look through Shifting Perspective's gear list, which nostalgeek suggested last time. It's a good list, though much is from heroic dungeons, which is probably beyond my part-time gatherer status.

There are many things that are easy enough to grab, though. I'm going to cut and paste a hacked version of the Shifting Perspectives list here which includes helm, neck, shoulders, chest, wrists, hands, and belt. I figured that was enough to start.

Much of the commentary is Caraway's (the post's author). I mark mine with -P. I've cut tons, though, so go "RTFA" (where F=Fabulous, I guess) for the rest of the info.

Tyler Caraway
http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/12/17/shifting-perspectives-balance-druid-pre-raid-gear-guide/#continued

Helms

• Cluster of Stars 2,200 justice points
• Helm of Reorigination Doing it the Hard Way, Halls of Origination

For your helm, the best choice to go for is honestly the Cluster of Stars. .... If you don't have enough to get it quite yet, then I would at least queue up to run normal Halls of Reorigination at least once so you can get the helm from a quest you'll find there.

Necks

• Yellow Smoke Pendant Dragonmaw / Wildhammer Exalted
• Eye of Many Deaths Jewelcrafting

Shoulders

• Spaulders of the Endless Plains Dragonmaw / Wildhammer Honored

Chests

• Wrap of the Fallen City The Fall of Neferset City, Uldum
• (There's some debate on wowhead on if the Chestguard of Nature's Fury is worth a rip or not. -P)

The quest reward from Uldum (note: This is apparently a really easy quest - P) is going to be the best chest that you can really get until you start heroics or purchase the JP one.

Wrists

• Oasis Bracers BoE drop, Lost City of the Tol'Vir

(Note that these are BoE and can be purchased on the Auction House! -P EDIT: WoWhead lists these as BoP and the comments seem to support that. Shifting Perspectives seems to have gotten that wrong. -P)

Hands

• Aessina-Blessed Gloves Guardians of Hyjal revered

To be perfectly honest, there isn't much reason to not go for the rep reward gloves, especially considering that you can reach revered merely by completing all of the quests in Hyjal. ...

Belts

• Withered Dream Belt Dragonmaw / Wildhammer exalted
• (The Lightning Lash is apparently about equal to the Wildhammer rep item, with some arguing its gem slot makes it BiS pre-raid. -P)

I'm honestly not even going to bother listing any other belts out there, because nothing compares to this belt at all. ...

Two things jump out.
1.) I should've already gotten the Aessina-Blessed Gloves but I haven't. I've finished HyJal, so I should be revered, it appears (green, above).

2.) Three of these items (and four on the whole list) are based on Wildhammer rep (yellow, above). Guess where I'm farming next?

3.) Okay, three. Wrap of the Fallen City seems easy to get iff you've done Uldum. I started there, but quickly went Highlands. I can't tell how many of these questlines you need to do, but it appears to require a few. I might not be pulling in the Wrap.

I'll admit that I'm miffed that none of this is Leatherworking craftable. /sigh There's some debate on wowhead on if the Chestguard of Nature's Fury is worth a rip or not. The Lightning Lash is apparently about equal to the Wildhammer rep item, with some arguing its gem slot makes it BiS pre-raid.

I'll add some of that and do more research.

One final bit: It looks like you might need a Finkle's Skinner to skin some bosses. It looks like The Beast is soloable now. Here's one guide. I really shoulda gotten this years ago. I'm also going to need some Pristine Hide if I'm going to craft the chestpiece instead of going to Uldum.

WoW Rookie: How to get up to speed for heroics

Wish they could name it something other than WoW Rookie, but that's the sort of guide I'd hoped to find for gearing. Not quite as detailed as I'd like, but a good start. Example...

Reputations

As we talked about a few weeks ago, Cataclysm reputations can provide significantly useful gear. There are 20 epic items available for purchase with reputations, all at item level 359. There are dozens of item level 346 items available.

This also gives decent starts to wowhead searches for, say, craftables. Here's the list narrowed to items that are Druid useable. Next, picking out what's good for Balance. Nothing gives spellpower, so it'll take a little bit of thinking.

I'd really have preferred to see a list of items by dungeon, but obviously it'd be a lot of work listing everything for each class and talent spec. I'll dig around some more and get balance specific.

Ding! 2 (for the guild!)

It finally happened. We really only have one active guild member at this point, and that's not me. I think I'm the second most active. The guild is sort of the end of a spinoff from my original guild, which split after getting serious, over-recruiting, and having the proverbial Guild Implosion (c) 2005.

It'll be nice to have a bonus 5% experience for the last half of 84, but the guild leader has already hit 85 (twice?!) so it's a little too late for him to get too excited. I feel kinda badly I put us over the edge into 2 while he wasn't on. I wonder if we all would see the Ding! on our screen. I'd imagine so... that'd be neat.

If I get geared enough to raid, I'll probably take my main to a new guild (the guild leader already did the same, so I'm not too worried that'll be a problem!). The folks in the guild are good, fun folk, but I don't see more than two on regularly any more.

Still, level 2! Woohoo!

I might also mention, since the pic is of the fishing daily in SW, that I finally bagged a Weather-beaten fishing hat, which Jal is wearing in the pic. Guess I won't feel badly about not making it to STV on Sundays any more.

And yes, I still need to clean my bags.

Does this say anything?

I'd be lamenting how few books are interactive in the expansions, but when I checked this one out in the Wildhammer inn, I figured there's at least a chance it actually says something.

Anyone know? (Clicking makes it a little bigger, I think.)

Hey, I'm famous! Sorta. In April of 2009

Look, I was quoted on WoW Insider... [1.Local]: Patch week patter:

Some readers ranted that $15 a month should provide smooth, uninterrupted service. Others felt that at something like 50 cents a day, they were getting a reasonable value.

'Interesting comments on the worth of WoW,' observed Jalindrine. 'The 50-cents-a-day logic, though, is obviously flawed. The question isn't 'Can I afford to spend 50 cents a day on a product?', but 'How many products/services can I afford to buy at 50 cents (more or less) a day?' Every so often, WoW's the one not worth it, which is much harder to realize when you're literally addicted.'

I think I got the tone right on that one. Post is here, followed by a perplexingly incoherent response. I often wish I didn't feel compelled to post on message boards, blogs, and websites, but finally realized back in my Slashdot days that it wasn't going to stop. ;^)

A UI worth considering

I usually just glance over the WoW Insider UI of the week, but this week's caught my eye. At first glance, without reading anything, I thought it was a good, clean, likely DPS UI. I liked it. Little did I know...

Hi! I have been reading the UI of the week column for a while, and since I just redid my UI for Cata, I thought I would try and share it. I started with what was essentially a blank slate, a need for simplicity and clean lines, and a desire for a functional and fairly minimalistic UI. I play a resto/boomkin druid as well as a ret/holy pally, so versatility is also very important. I need to be able to switch specs and have my UI be usable for healing as well as DPSing.

I try to stay as UI free as possible to minimize the impact of client upgrades, with only Auctioneer running as a general practice. I'm adding Recount now, but this one looks functional enough I might be induced to try it on my gaming tower.


In other news, I'm behind on posting. I hit level 84 a while back. Ding! post to follow when I'm back at home. For a second, I missed that the Tanaris quest was a breadcrumb (thought it was just for an archeology intro) and was stuck going to Vash'jr, which still, for whatever reason, doesn't do it for me. Finally got the Tanaris quest, enjoyed returning there and the start of that area, and then lucked into 84 and the mission board's move to Twilight Highlands. Things are enjoyable again. And the new headpiece for the Ulysses siren quest was both a nice upgrade and a good break from the standard quest gear sets.

Pretty high sys reqs in Highlands. I'm consistently getting 20 fps at everything set to Fair except draw distance at Ultra. Still, I'm loving the new tower's power. Anybody got $200 I could sink into a new video card to go with it?!

And, finally, I listened through all of the first podcast from Team Waffle. Not bad. A little overly hardcore for me. Talk about getting to 85 in 36 hours is, obviously, not what this blog (or my gameplay) is about. I was surprised how little time they spent on leveling -- most of it is about 45 minutes in.

It's worth listening to if you're a druid with a commute. I'll probably submit a question or two from your friendly-neighborhood part-timer. Support your local druids, d00dz. You know it takes three times as long to put together as you'd initially expect.

Ding! 84

I was only in Uldum for about an hour, but dinged while I was there. I'm not sure where my /played shot is, but I'll dig one up once the maintenance is done (I'm backfilling this post almost a month after dinging, I'm afraid).

The Uldum quests were a lot more fun than Vash'jr, but I quickly went Wildhammer, which I just recently finished.