The Leather Scene

Last night was quiet for me. I only completed one quest, "The Green Hills of Stanglethorn". It's different, which is nice; this is the quest where you have to collect the missing pages of the book from random mob drops around the zone. I wonder if the designers anticipated how this really works: people sell the pages at the AH. I believe I bought all but one page at AH, probably spending about 1 gold in the process. If I were so inclined, I could auction the thick leather armor kits and still make a profit -- even aside from the experience. At any rate, it was nice to finish that off and free up bag space!

The rest of my time I worked on leatherworking. As I mentioned yesterday, I wanted to make a set of armor for grinding in cat form. Alamein is still specced for Restoration (yes, that mess is a topic for future discussion) and doesn't plan to switch to Feral. The caster/healer hybrid is pretty handy; I typically act as caster/healer for small questing groups and then as a pure healer for instances.

But that leaves soloing. As long as she's outside, Alamein can grind some difficult mobs, thanks to Entangling Roots and self-healing. But that's not ideal for everything. If she's indoors, she doesn't have Roots to lock down the mob. Perhaps more importantly, grinding as a caster is a bit slow this way. Druids don't have huge nuke spells, so a mob may require a few cycles of Moonfire-Roots-Starfire-Wrath-repeat. That takes time; it also burns mana, so she has to drink after every fight or two. It's a successful but slow approach.

There is a shortcut: cat form. When fighting mobs just a bit lower in level, she can grind very efficiently that way. The key is whether she can fight two or three mobs before needing to heal; if she can do that, then she kills maybe twice as fast as she could with spells. And that's wearing caster gear. With some additional armor, and some +agility/+stamina gear, she could be even more efficient.

Plus, cat form is fun!

So that gave me a desire to make some of that fun rogue-style armor. Fortunately I was able to find some cheap thick leather on auction to make it possible. Here's what she made:

• [Dusky Bracers] (+8 agility)
  
• [Dusky Belt] (+8 agility, +8 stamina)
  
• [Nightscape Tunic] (+15 agility, +6 stamina)
  
• [Nightscape Headband] (+12 agility, +11 stamina)
  
• [Nightscape Shoulders] (+11 agility, +5 stamina)

Not a bad set of fighting gear, though there are a few pieces missing. She doesn't have any good boot or glove patterns. So she kept her [Infiltrator Gloves of the Eagle] and bought [Huntsman's Boots] of some sort at auction. (EDIT: actually they were [Insignia Boots].) For pants, she already has the [Triprunner Dungarees] which are perfect.

That completes that set. None of these items are terribly expensive in materials other than the leather -- she only had to buy bolts of silk at auction. So she made a few extras of each to sell. And that got her skill up to 215 -- so she could also make her coveted [Big Voodoo Robe]. That will help her caster gear as well, easily replacing the Guardian Armor she's been using for some time. So, not a bad night's work of leathercrafting.

I'm curious how much the melee gear will improve Alamein's melee capability, so I'll probably try that tonight. With some Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch time coming up, I'll have to decide how I want to fight in PvP. I suspect she'll use some combination of gear to give her flexibility, and might fight more in cat form than she has before. Should be fun!