WoW Journal 2007-05-15

This weekend and last night I got my first tastes of tanking level 70 instances. On Sunday I did a mixed-guild/PuG run through Steam Vaults for the first time. Well I have a friend of mine from my old guild on a different server run by some friends moved here independent of me, and then contacted me since we happened to be on the same server. This friend's main alt, Tsunande, a Fury raid build warrior contacted me to see if I wanted to drag him through a level 70 instance to see if he could get to 70 or close to it (he was 69). I said sure, and then asked the rest of the guild if anyone was available. Booker, one of our primary guild priests volunteered, and I was able to grab an ex-guildie Warlock, Nekura, who went onto a full raiding guild. Using the LFG tool, I was able to find a Holy paladin who was willing to off heal. Honestly it was a very lucky thing to have that party, since the Warlock made fighting Hydromancer Thespia tons easier. The run was slick as porpoise piss. I think we had maybe one wipe for the whole thing? And that was all my fault, just because I got the final boss too close to one of the tanks and people couldn't target it. Go me. Lesson learned on that one... No good loot for me, but Tsu got the rocket gun from the second boss (Mekgineer somethingsomething I think...)

Then last night it was supposed to be FFXI night, but two people had to cut and run, so I logged in to confirm that nothing was going down, got an awesome XP ring (gives a huge XP bonus for a limited time), and logged out. Hopping onto WoW I (of all things) worked on my unarmed weapon skill. >.> Not kidding. I figured that eventually I'm going to be called upon to tank something that will disarm me. At least if I can continue to connect with my fists at least I can keep up holy damage being dealt, and keep whatever Judgment I have up. I flagged myself up on the LFG tool again, for Steam Vaults and this time Mechanar, since I finished up the prereqs to the Arcatraz Key quest. Got an invite for Mechanar, and I bebopped my way over there. Original party consisted of myself, Elemental Shaman, two Mages, and a Holy Pally. Not 20 minutes in (hadn't even gotten to the first mini-boss), the paladin goes "Sorry, gotta go!" and probably leaves. Not cool, but it was probably something like his dog was on fire. So we chilled for about 10-15 minutes, as the leader found a replacement healer, this time a very well geared healer, and we got back into it. I think we had one death the entire time, and that was on Pathaleon. Learned an interesting method of fighting Nethermancer Sepethrea. BRK already went into it, but since I rarely read his blog (good blog, just more hunter oriented...) I didn't know about it. Since we didn't have a hunter it was up to someone else (read: me) to pull Sepethrea. I almost didn't make it down the hallway, but the Shaman saw me getting pounded on and rushed out and gave me a good 2200~ crit heal for life-saving win. While I didn't get either of the three pieces of gear I wanted (Mana Wrath, Helm of the Righteous, or Dath'Remar's Ring of Defense), I did get the healing ring from Nethermancer Sepethrea, which has a decent amount of healing, and a great amount of mana regen. That puts my healing gear at 650~ +healing and 88 mana/5. ^^b Also, this gives me almost full swap gear for healing (not all of it's pure +healing, but still...). All I need now is a helm and a chest piece. Thankfully they both drop form non-heroics so I can get them fairly easily. :D

Also, Sunday night I helped one of the guild members do a full BRD run. She's a good friend from FFXI who came here and seems to be liking it. Plus she's a Mage, so if she gets to 70 at least there'll be someone to fill the void created by me changing my main to Alixander.