The Final Countdown

I spent my last weekend in Wrath leveling my second druid.  She’s my backup-plan for working around the new “flexible” raid lockout system, because I still desperately want to do both 10 and 25 man raids with my guild.  I’m at a point with my other favorite healer, my (newly gnome!!) disc priest, that I  feel confident enough with what I’m doing to be willing to run hardmodes and more difficult fights with her.  But disc is still not ingrained and second-nature to me the way druid healing is, and it’s hard for me to imagine learning to heal challenging new raids on two different classes at once.  I love my little bubbly gnome, but I need to stick with what I do best for at least the beginning of the xpac.

Tzufit is in good shape for her final logout of Wrath tonight.  I’ve been faithfully doing her cooking and fishing dailies since 4.0.3a dropped, so I already have a few of the new cooking recipes purchased and ready to go.  I’ve also tried to be good about doing her random dungeon everyday (despite running with a guild rogue who has the bad luck of getting us either Oculus or Halls of Reflection every time), and am sitting on about 3500 justice points to get me a small head start with purchasing level 85 gear.

The Pink Kitty and I have decided to start our leveling in Hyjal, because … well … I mean, we’re druids.  His main is cat/bear speced and Tzufit is tree/boomkin for the moment, so we’ll have plenty of CC and heals if we should need it, though given our experiences with duoing Kara and a fair number of heroic WotLK dungeons, I think we should be just fine.  I’m somewhat tempted to brush the dust off of Tzufit’s cat gear and get her a feral spec again just until I hit 85.  I leveled her as a cat originally, and have realized as I’ve been leveling the second druid as feral just how much I miss the breakneck pace of questing as a cat.  Also (and somewhat stupidly), I hate that the Pink Kitty will be faster than me thanks to Feral Swiftness.  Granted, this is a pretty pointless thing to gripe about since we’ll be able to fly everywhere by then and I’m sitting on 310% flight form thanks to my Frostbrood Vanquisher, whereas he’s living with 280% for now.  Really, my guess is that everything will be dying so quickly for those first 2 or 3 levels that it’s not going to matter one bit whether I decide to level as cat or boomkin.  Maybe I’ll flip a coin.

Last night, I went along on Tzufit to pound Arthas one last time.  One of our guild tanks got a run together for a few stragglers who hadn’t managed to get their “Kingslayer” title yet and she asked me to come.  It was the first time I’ve healed that fight on the druid since the patch changes, and it was certainly different.  Lifebloom healed like an absolute champ, and I was fairly satisfied with myself that I only allowed it to bloom/expire 4 times through the course of the fight.  Not perfect, but a good start.  I also dragged Pink Kitty away from some game about Gratuitous Space Battles (/eyeroll) long enough to get him a “Kingslayer” title that he’ll never wear.  He’s enough of an achievement completionist to appreciate the effort, though.

Tonight, I’ll probably continue my leveling on the second druid unless the guild decides to do something interesting.  She’s bear/tree speced and about 20% away from level 68 – which means I’m stuck tanking or healing Sethekk Halls pretty much every random dungeon I get.  Tanking that place is still annoying as hell, and more so with the recent nerf to bear damage.  It’s insanely frustrating to heal it and watch a pally tank have absolutely no issue holding agro on packs of mobs whereas I have to constantly tab-target to keep them all from running off.  Grumble.

Regardless, I couldn’t be more excited for tomorrow!  Pink Kitty will be buying our copies of Cataclysm from his work when he leaves there around noon.  (No, we won’t be doing the midnight release thing – we both have to work in the morning.)  Until then I’ll be counting the minutes and passing the time with the most epic song ever created.  Cheers, and see you on the other side!