Yay, Druidic Helmet of Second Sight

Welp, finally went for the Gorefiend quests and bagged my Druidic Helm Tuesday. It's a nice enough helm, with decent heal/dmg bonus and three gem sockets. I'm not sold that it's better than my Stylin' Jungle Hat for Panzer nor my Nature's Wrath for Boom, but it made it into my farming outfit. First head armor item I've had with those danged antlers. And why does Jal's facial hair go away when he puts it on (see far left in pics below)? Must be related to the Second Sight.


The most fun part was when the 5 man all got to the mountain top to wait on Vel'khur and someone remarks, "We don't have a tank." I said, "I'll do it," the same way I said I could heal when we had four, and went bear -- but only to build confidence. When Vel'khur came back around, I swapped to Moonkin. Okay okay, the first time I missed him because I forgot the goggles, but the second time, I got on panzerkin gear, pulled with Starfire, and started wailing.

It's incredibly easy to tank a single mob as a moonkin, of course. Very easy to out-DPS everyone by Wrath spamming, Starfiring, and proc'ing a few trinkets. The shammy, iirc, kept me at 90+% health (I didn't realize shammies healed, honestly. Casual gamer, folks) and we knocked down the undead dragon easily, as in the picture, above.

Course it was hard to see jack with five folks, totems, and a summoned demon all sitting on the pinnacle of a small mountain.

Interesting on the Gorefiend quests is that my treants couldn't see the dead things, as they weren't wearing the goggles. That stunk, and I almost got myself into trouble aggroing too many mobs. Barely soloed the horsemen, and only got two down, which was embarrassing, but the trunch dropped and all was well.

Tanking Panzerkins, a Guide, a Movie, and Thoughts on the Death Knight

I'm still RL fishing as far as WoW's concerned, but thought I'd put out this guide for tanking as a Moonkin. I don't think it's nearly as controversial to consider the moonkin as a tank for relatively major encounters as it used to be even a few months ago, as this WoW Insider post helps confirm. For fun, here's the movie.



The guide linked to, above, still doesn't give us the proverbial mathes for bear vs. panzerkin threat, which I still need to get around to doing, but let's just say that unscientifically, moonkin can step in there and keep the squishies from going dry. Of course, as all of us PUG junkies know, it's just as much knowing how to tank as having the gear, talent, etc. Man, how a good tank makes PUGging more fun -- though admittedly it's not as important as lucking into a good Priest. I'm going to pause for some silent reflection. Phew, good Priests are nice.

I'll put a hard-copy of the moonkin tank guide here just because the Blizzard forum posts, even some sticky ones, disappear every so often.

Totally randomly, I'll append that the Death Knight seemed to make a lot of sense until I figured out that it could be either Horde or Alliance. I'm not totally on top of the late breaking info on the next expansion, but initially I thought having a flood of new high level Horde characters on Proudmoore would help balance out the numbers in the battlegrounds a bit and shorten waits. I will say that I'm much more likely to put some serious time into a higher level alt than a brand-spanking new Blood Elf. They're fun, and I've leveled a draenei hunter a bit, but I still don't have anyone over 10 but my main. I'm more confident now that's all the Death Knight is: An attempt to get those of us who don't want more lowbie alts but would pour in a few more months' of gameplay if the alt was as interesting as our main.

Now even after saying that a high-level alt would be attractive, note that the Death Knight seems to be a hybrid that's a lot like the Panzerkin. This is a magic using class that can tank. The difference? Well, instead of inserting an extremely round peg (those moonkin are pretty healthy, ain't they?) into a very square hole, these guys get to toss mana and rage entirely for that rune jive. Probably a smart move. Maybe something similar can happen with 'kin down the road?