Smallish Update

Due to epic failure on the part of ATT, after getting back from the holidays, I had one day of fun before the internet died for 2.5 weeks. I'll skip the rage here, but maaaan that sucked >.< Sadly, that, combined with sporadic raid attendance during the hols means that I've been bumped from raider to waitlist-er. So, with ICC being conquered by other adventurers, had a bit of time on my hands =\ The good news is I've gotten quite a bit done since getting back online Tuesday.

With Khiow, other than Emblems of Frost, there's not a whole lot of progress I can do without a raid. I'll be crafting him the ICC boots early next week, and I think I'll have enough badges for the T10 helm on Tuesday. Other than one random heroic a day though, he's not seeing much action. *sadface*

Khite still had a bit of gear to get from Triumph badges, but looks like I'm done with that now. There are still 2 pieces outa Halls of Reflection she could use, but other than that, she's in the same situation as Khiow. Need more raids =\

And that brings us to the main reason for this post... Little druid Khilana *grin* And yes, she is my second 80 druid. On the same server. And yup, she's a tree too. Her offspec is kitty while Khiow's is boomkin, so a little different. I got her from 77 to 80 this week, and I've been getting her gear and sneaking into raids since then. She killed the Twins, and almost Anub (fucking 3% wipe with a pug) in ToC 25, and has been very very rapidly getting gear. I think I'll have my 4 piece T9 later today.

I know Blizzard wanted to make it easier for us to gear up new players or alts, but I think they made it a bit too easy. Khilana's been 80 for 2 days, and she's almost ready for ToC10/Uld25. And that's with only 1 crafted/BoE item. Don't misunderstand me... For me right now, this is fun. It rocks. I've got epics coming out my ass. But it's not really a challenge. When I hit 70 back in BC, it was weeks later that I got my first epic. And I had to work for that. But now? It's like they're candy.

I dunno. I like many of the changes that Blizz has made over the years, but I'm getting to the point where I want more of a challenge with some things. The hardest thing about most raids is fighting my computer =\ When they first made the changes with Emblems of Conquest dropping everywhere, I liked the idea in general, but thought they should have only bumped it one rank. IE, Valors drop everywhere, but EoC were still restricted to Uld 25, and EoT only coming from ToC. And now, with Triumphs everywhere, I'm going back to that idea. Conquest badges now would be a good stepping stone, but require people to still spend some time, effort, and blood to get ready for progression raiding.

*shrug* Just my opinions. What do ya'll think? If you've hit 80 since 3.3, how have you liked the gearing process? If you've had new players join your raiding team, do you think the lack of difficulty has been a good thing or a bad thing? Cake or pie?

...
Dammit.
Now I want cake.

Update and teh Alcohol

Biggest news is I finally left my guild... I really like many of the people in , and that's one of the reasons I left quite a few alts including my 80 DK in guild. I spent about a week really researching other raiding guilds on our server, and several caught my eye. 

Last Sunday a friend in   asked me to come heal their 10m Ulduar alt run. Apparently they've been low on trees, and I made a pretty good impression, as the GM contacted my friend a few days later and asked him to convince me to apply. Made me a very very happy tree, especially as that was my first choice guild. Of course, the pressure's really on now, especially as I don't have a single piece of gear above Ulduar 10, and they're working on Uld 25 HM and ToGC 25. 


In other news...

Farming as a Tree (Perhaps Part 1?)

For those of us that like to heal things to death, having all we need for raids and such can get to be very tiresome. Unless you have a sugar daddy, or an alt to farm with, you likely know the pain of having to farm what you need for tomorrow night's raid. I went ahead and put together a list of various farming spots and types that might come in useful for other's. While some of this is going to apply to all healers, several of the spots I mentioned are more geared towards druid farming, but take what you will =)

If you have any suggestions, questions, or if anyone knows how to make WoWHead links do that cool popup thing, please drop me a note ^.^

Potions - Unbound Dryad in Crystalsong Forest

Like:
Just north (or south for Ally) are the Crystalsong camps. You can sell, repair, take the flight path.
They drop small amounts of trash. I've gotten Frostweave, Potions, a surprising amount of greens, the standard food/drink, but very little vendor junk. The vendor trash I have gotten is largely the typical Fur Clothing Scraps, which are easy to deal with.
The drop rate on the potions is very good for pretty easy mobs.
This is close to both Dalaran and Naxx... With epic flying, I can be at either in about 2 minutes, so nice for those 15 minutes while the RL is desperately trying to find a mage.
They're level 78ish, and hit like it. Easy to kill, and no strange debuffs or attacks to worry about.
No one else farms these. Guildy was surprised that there actually were mobs in Crystalsong.

Don't like:
No mailbox at the camps.
This is not an AoE farming area, and there are often large gaps between each Dryad. As a druid, this is not as big of an issue as for a class that has to spend time mounting, but it can get tiresome.
Until you learn the spawn areas, you're likely to spend some time locating each Dryad.

Notes:
Watch out for the elites. They're elite. Nuff said. (Though they do drop lifes, if you're feeling masochistic.)





Elixirs/Flasks - Find an elixir specced friend and buy the herbs. Sadly, there's no fun mob that happens to drop Flask of the Frost Wyrm on every other kill.





Food - Shoveltusk Flanks for Tender Shoveltusk Steak - In Howling Fjord, just NW of New Agamaganamanaramagan (spelling much?) are packs of shoveltusk. The most time efficient way I found to farm these was to pull the aggressive ones solo (or duo) and then use Barkskin/Hurricane in the middle of one of the packs. Rinse and repeat, Barkskin's ready to go again for each AoE.




Repair monies - Siren's Tear - Yes, you read correctly. This little baby is a resto druid's dream. To start, you will need to do two quests: Learning to Communicate and Winterfin Commerce to unlock the vendor (Ahlurglgr) that you can exchange 100 Winterfin Clams for 1 Siren's Tear. After that, start farming away. The clams in the evil murloc camp (Western side of the bank) are very easy to farm, but I found myself getting a bit ahead of the respawn timer as I got quicker at identifying spots. If that happens, just drop into the water, hit seal form, and farm a few from the shelves in there.

Unlike everyone else that has to run, kill, loot, mount, run, kill, etc etc, we can just swoop in, ninja the clam, and fly off into the sunset. They sell for about 200g depending on your server, and I can farm one in about 15 minutes.




Dailies - Sientina over on World of Matticus made a post about dailies for healers that don't involve killing. I personally get tired of doing the same quests over and over, but until dual spec, this is an excellent list for those of us who like to see health bars go up instead of down ^.^