Offspec Gear

(The UI post is coming along. I'll try to keep it from getting too out of control...)

Over the weekend we ran a heroic Utgarde Keep and the [Sharp-Barbed Leather Belt] dropped. Mattoo (our Bear tank) already had it (or better, I forget) and nobody else could wear it, so they offered it to me for my tanking offset.

Back at the bank, that led to Mattoo and me discussing my tanking gear set. He was interested to see if I could tank sometime, more for the novelty than anything. That's when I mentioned that had a pretty good tanking weapon: the [Staff of the Plague Beast]. That's one of the best Druid tanking weapons in the game. And, as it turns out, it's far better than what Mattoo has. Hm, jealous much? :)

I don't remember the details, but it was a PuG (10-man) and there was nobody around who wanted it. It's the kind of thing that I would never have considered, but the loot master sort of shoved it in my direction. Better than sharding it, at any rate.

The major irony is that it's far better than my current healing weapon. I'm currently rocking the [Gavel of the Brewing Storm]. Now, for a blue rep reward, it's an excellent mace, and I've paired it with the [Handbook of Obscure Remedies] which is darn good too. Still, there are a decent number of drops that are better; I've just not been lucky enough to get them. I haven't seen that many drops to be honest, and I've just lost rolls on those I have seen. At some point, I'll buy the [Titansteel Guardian] if nothing else drops, but for now I'll continue to hope.

But the irony continues. The next night, Mattoo was running a Naxx PuG and whispered that he'd receieved [Noth's Curse] as an offset drop. Well, of course that beats what I'm using; my [Battlemap Hide Helm] isn't bad but it's long overdue for an upgrade. So the irony returns; my tanking staff is better than the tank's, but his healing helm is better than mine.

That's life when you're PuGging raids. Progression is very much at the whim of whatever group you're in at the time. If Mattoo and I were running the same raids together, those pieces would go to the 'right' players. The good news is that I'm not feeling too limited by the gaps in my gear. Overall my stuff is solid, and for the most part I'm able to heal anything I go into. Better gear would help in challenging situations — clueless raids, poorly geared tanks, and so forth — but most of the time it's not an issue.

Still, I'll keep dreaming for a good drop. You know, dreaming [The Impossible Dream]...

How to find gear upgrades on Wowhead

I had a conversation with DK and Danny yesterday about finding gear improvements. I was a bit surprised that they weren't using Wowhead, which I've found to be the best approach, other than a specific list compiled on a wiki or blog.

There are other tools too. Most notable is of course the Armory, which will tell you improvements for your gear. I don't like their presentation, though. It's too tough to sort through different possibilities, and you never know how they're evaluating what would be an 'improvement'.

Wowhead gives you a lot more control, and it's easier to see why a given item is ranked ahead of another. Let's work through an example. In my tanking gear, I have a green belt, Manimal's Cinch. It's decent, but is there anything better I can find? Let's see what kind of better tanking belts I might track down.

1. Open Wowhead.
   
2. Using the dropdowns, select Database > Items > Armor > Leather > Waist. Wowhead shows you a list of all leather belts.
   
3. Now comes the fun part. Click on Create a Weight Scale. For this question, we'll choose Druid, Feral (Tank), and Rare gems.
   
   
4. Now look at the results. First, note that we're down to 297 results. Wowhead has screened out anything that a) druids can't use, and b) has no value to a druid tank. But that's still a lot of items. Let's rule out low-level stuff. In the first Required Level box, put 68. Now click the Apply Filter button. That limits us to items for level 68 players and up, and we end up with 57 belts. Much better.
   
   (Actually there's a better way to do this, using the Level box. This is tied to an item's iLvl -- an internal stat that tracks how powerful something is. I should write more on that sometime... but we'll keep it simple today.)

So let's look at the list! You'll now see a sorted list, with the best druid tank belts at the top. Manimal's Cinch is about two-thirds down the page — respectable for a green quest reward, but with dozens of improvements above it.

This isn't that different from the Armory list, but there are some very nice features. First, you can scan down the item names and get a good sense for where they come from, whether it's a drop (and from who, what instance, and whether it's Heroic), or PvP, or Arena, or crafting. The Armory tries to do this too, but the names are truncated and there's not as much detail.

Now look at the right-hand column. It shows a numerical score. This is a rating of the item, specific for a feral tank. That gives you a quick metric for judging how much of an improvement it is. Manimal's Cinch lists at 22.02. As an example, the [Bladeangel's Money Belt], which drops in Zul'Aman, is a 24.03 — so you know it's only a slight improvement. (Much better for Cat druids of course, but that's a different rating scale.)

What stands out on this list?

• The best tanking belt in the game is [Belt of Natural Power], with a 36.82 ranking. It's a leatherworker-crafted item... and it's BoE, so you could buy it at auction or have someone make it for you.
  
• The next best belt is the [Guardian's Leather Belt], a PvP reward that requires 17,850 honor and 40 AB marks. That's a good chunk of honor, but it's very grindable in battlegrounds.
  
• The #3 belt is [Waistguard of the Great Beast]. You can buy it from G'eras for 60 BoJ. That's grindable too... but look again at the Belt of Natural Power. The hardest materials are two Nether Vortex, which you can buy from G'eras for 30 BoJ. So if you can find a leatherworker with the pattern, that's really a cheaper use of the badges.

Of course, these rankings are a simplistic way to evaluate gear. It's very much worth looking at specific stats and judging based on that. If you're lacking in agility, for instance, the Guardian's Leather Belt is great with +37 agi. But if you need more armor, you'd probably rather take the [Guardian's Dragonhide Belt] which is much more armorful. So take this ranking with a grain of salt.

(As it happens, you can customize the rating scale to reflect your specific needs. But that will be a post for another day!)

There's plenty to explore from here. You can play with the Filter settings in Wowhead, to (for instance) only show PvP rewards, or to rule out anything with +agi less than 20. Or you could switch from belts to bracers, by switching to the Wrist slot. This is where Wowhead really starts to shine over the Armory, because you can slice and dice the results in so many ways.

The biggest limits in this approach are trinkets and idols. The stats, procs, and Use functions on these are a lot more difficult to compare. So you'll need to use other approaches here. Overall though, this is a great way to evaluate gear, and can be a lot of fun to spend time with.

Pulling multiple mobs

Tanking heroic Botanica on Friday night was the highlight of the weekend. It was not a smooth run; we had probably four or five wipes and multiple other deaths. Dralkios and Mattoo are perhaps a bit undergeared for the instance, and while Alamein's gear is good, I'm still not experienced enough at tanking. Still, we got all the way through and took down all the bosses, so we were ultimately successful. In a way, it's more satisfying to overcome adversity than it is to destroy an instance on cruise control.

(Beyond that, I mostly ran dailies with the intent of getting Sali an epic flyer; I also did a few battlegrounds and spent some time leveling a new hunter as a bit of a break.)

One of the tanking techniques I'm still working on is the pull. I spent a lot of my healing time watching Cargarios use Avenger's Shield to tag three mobs with a good chunk of threat. As a Bear, I don't have such a luxury. The prototypical pull is using Feral Faerie Fire, which is OK but only tags one mob. Firegrin will of course use Misdirect, but that's usually a one-target tool. So for a few tricky pulls we've tried a few other techniques.

Misdirection + Volley, Misdirection + Multishot: We've used this technique to get a solid aggro start on larger packs. It's a bit tricky; it seems that there's a bit of uncertainty about how many charges of Misdirection either attack will use. Still, when combined with a Feign Death, this has been a good way to pull.

Multishot does more damage, so it's best for three mobs. It will burn the remaining charges on Misdirection so use it as your third shot. Volley appears to be bugged and use zero charges, which is great. It does less single-target damage but hits everything in the area of effect so it's great for large packs.

The main challenge with Misdirection is that it makes chain-trapping a lot trickier for the hunter. (Well, and it has a cooldown too.) So in some situations we opted to use other approaches.

Barkskin + Hurricane: This can be a great way to build a ton of threat, especially on large packs of non-elites, like the plant packs found in a couple of Botanica pulls. It's not recommended if you're dealing with anything that hits very hard; Barkskin only eliminates 20% of damage, so you're not close to your Bear-form armor.

The hard part is getting all the mobs grouped and stationary for long enough that Hurricane can hit them a couple times. One way to do this is to run up to the edge of the pack (in caster form) and body-pull while starting the Hurricane. You can also position the AoE circle for Hurricane right at the edge of the pack, so that all the mobs have to run through it to get to you.

Hibernate pull: This is a specialized technique when you have one or more beasts in the pack. Select one, get to max range, and cast Hibernate. Slip into Bear form and use Feral Faerie Fire to tag the next mob. It doesn't generate exceptional threat, but it has the major advantage of Hibernating the mob well away from your fighting space.

Barkskin + Tranquility: This is purely theoretical; I've not done it. It should work wonderfully but it's tough to set up. Basically you need a situation where the party is either taking damage or starts with a health deficit.

Tranquility is a huge threat generator. It puts out 1518 healing (before any added healing) every 2 seconds over 8 seconds... for everyone in the party. That's theoretically 38,000 points of healing, or 19,000 points of threat, on every mob in the pull. If all that healing actually ticks, you'll have a huge threat lead.

The hard part is figuring out how to actually do any healing with it. You could have the party run directly in to the mob pack and melee. Dangerous -- but the good news is that with that much healing you'll be taking care of a good chunk of incoming damage to the party. It might be better used late in a fight, for instance if most of the original pull is dead but if adds have shown up and are running wild.

Those are four unconventional techniques I'm aware of. I'll try out the Tranquility approach the next time I need it, and report back any other techniques that I learn.

Mashing vs. Clicking

Didn't do so much last night. I took Sali into regular Underbog with Wyrmm, Firegrin, Mattoo, and Dralkios. We took a couple runs at Hungarfen to hopefully get Dralkios the [Totem of the Thunderhead]. We tried twice and had no luck, but it was a quick and easy run so rather relaxing and fun.

When I was close to Mattoo's tanking, I heard the sounds that were imprinted on my brain from the previous night: the sounds of a bear tank. The normal rotation is Mangle followed by 3xLacerate, and in particular Lacerate makes a distinctive "pshonk" sound.

My fingers began to hurt, in memory. I spent so much time the night before mashing those two buttons that I was sore by the end of the night. I have Mangle on the 2 key and Lacerate on 1. That's great for convenience but it means I was using the smaller fingers of my right hand to pound that sequence out again and again. I might redesign my button layout to use my index finger a lot more, saving the 1 and 2 for slightly less common stuff.

It's a switch because when healing I use very few key presses - it's all clicks on unit frames. This begins with putting my unit frames front and center of the screen. This shot is almost a year old but the visual parts of my UI haven't changed much since then:



I'm using Pitbull to put the unit frames where I can watch them closely. That's great for 5-man stuff but for raids I use Grid because it's more flexible and is already set to be very compact. The Grid box just replaces the Pitbull frames.

The other key healing component is Clique. Pitbull or Grid are important, but without Clique or something similar, I would really have a hard time healing. Basically, it allows me to bind actions to specific click combos. So I just click on a unit frame to heal it. My current setup - which I know by heart - is the following:

          Ctrl-left click    Lifebloom
           Alt-left click    Rejuvenation
         Shift-left click    Regrowth
      Ctrl-Alt-left click    Swiftmend
    Ctrl-Shift-left click    Healing Touch
Ctrl-Shift-Alt-left click    Rebirth
         Ctrl-right click    Abolish Poison
          Alt-right click    Remove Curse

Clique is very smart. These keybindings are set up as "helpful" actions — they're only used on friendly unit frames, and I can apply a whole different set of actions to enemy units. This is great for stuff like Insect Swarm or Faerie Fire. Also, I can set up a different set of out-of-combat actions. I'm currently using that for buffs (Thorns and Mark of the Wild) but it's slightly annoying for those times when I'd rather remove poison or curses after a fight.

How does it work? Awesome! I will usually start a fight with the tank targeted, and I'll stack Lifebloom and then add a Rejuvenation via clicks, just by moving from Alt to Ctrl. That's an incredibly instinctive movement for anyone who uses a keyboard. As the fight goes on I can cast other heals or decurse/remove poison when needed through the same motions. If one of the other toons gets hit, I can just click on the frame to throw a heal over there. In fact, Pitbull will highlight anyone who draws aggro; I can often start a heal before the toon takes any damage. There's no need to find the player and target them, which saves a ton of time. Pitbull will even fade the frame if the toon is out of range — though unfortunately it can't track line of sight.

I would hate to heal any other way. My only concern is that WotLK will add two new healing spells (Nourish and Flourish) to my arsenal, and I'm not sure how I'll map those to clicks.

I'm not nearly so comfortable with my tanking setup. I could use Clique but there's not much point. Unit frames can deal with just two enemies — your target and your focus — so for most mobs you're worried about targeting them anyway. So it's all about getting my key mapping set up right so that I can be most efficient. I don't have a solid system for that yet. My basic plan is that left-hand numbers are the most common attacks, while the Num Pad holds reactive stuff — taunts, long-cooldown abilities, trinkets, potions, and so forth.

I would like to set up an action bar addon to manage all this better. In particular I'd love to have a mapping that shows the Num Pad and shifts with modifier keys. I've played a bit with both Bongos and Bartender, and I might use one or the other of those. But that's a whole new level of setup and it'll take some time to figure out. Until then, I'll just have to tweak my mappings a bit... and take some Advil.

Tanking Heroic Underbog

Alamein's education as a tank continues. We ran heroic Underbog last night. I think UB is my favorite Coilfang instance. I like the brighter lighting and the pleasant nature-driven ambiance. There's also a good variety of mobs to fight.

Our participants were just about the same as with our Slave Pens run, except that healing services were provided by our Discipline priest Sedem.

The run went pretty well. We had one or two wipes and quite a few other deaths. However we never got to a point where we were beating our heads on a wall and we were able to finish it. It did take a few hours -- probably 3 I guess. My reaction speed and focus went down later on, and we had a few really messy pulls towards the end. But with another feral Druid, and three other groupmates wearing a good chunk of PvP gear, we were able to get through it. It was surprising how often we were able to finish fights with 1 or 2 players down -- even the tank or the healer on a few occasions.

I don't think I learned any major new tanking techniques, though I did hone my existing skills quite a bit. I got better at establishing threat on multi-mob pulls, especially with tab-targeting. However I was frustrated a few times with tab-cycles that didn't get me the mobs I wanted. I also learned (once again) that when in doubt, slow down and wait to pull. It's easy to try to hurry up -- both to conserve rage and to start a pull at a convenient time (because of patrols). But if I hurry, bad things often happen.

I was much better at timing taunts this time through. In particular I was happy to make good use of Challenging Roar a few times. Those long-cooldown abilities are tough to learn since you can't really practice them. But it really helped for some of the worst pulls -- even if it killed me once or twice. Similarly, I had good use of Frenzied Regeneration a couple times -- though once I also popped it too late. I also got much better at using Demo Roar and Feral Faerie Fire on a regular basis. Still to do, though, is to work on my use of Feral Charge and Bash. I don't rotate those in when needed well enough.

I was really happy with my tanking on Hungarfen. I was able to tank him around in a big circle to avoid the worst of the mushrooms. By contrast, Gahz'an was a bit of a dog's breakfast and it took two wipes for me to get it right. The tough part there was the positioning. Consensus was to fight on the bridge, and I didn't do a good job at keeping his tail out of the way. I think next time I'll use the platform instead.

Musel'ek was a tough fight, and I died fairly early while the group was burning down Claw. But we were able to finish the fight anyway. We did have a painful bug on the fight though, when Claw's knockback knocked Mattoo behind some mushrooms near the wall. He just couldn't get out -- even after the fight was over. And finally the Black Stalker was no problem.

So overall a good run, and solid for my education. I'm now at 79 badges, getting close to my 100-badge goal. The only question is how I should spend them. I've been planning to buy the [Grovewalker's Leggings], but now that I'm tanking, I'm tempted to buy a tanking item instead, perhaps the [Tameless Breeches]. In the end though I think I'll choose the healing pants... because they'll also be very good Balance pants in WotLK, and that's how I plan to level up.

Druid items - from Healing to Tanking

Due to various issues we didn't get to run anything major over the weekend. Bummed about that! But I did get a boatload of dailies in, building to my "buy Sali a fast mount" fund. My only question is whether I'll buy a gryphon first or get the mats to build the epic roflcopter.

We did kill the Blades' Edge dragons on Saturday night. It's become a quick way for us to make a good bit of gold and to maybe get some nice drops. And we got very lucky this time around, because a [Depleted Badge] dropped. This can be infused into the [Badge of Tenacity], which is one of the best Druid tank trinkets in the game.

I had moral qualms though for two reasons. First I was playing on Sali so I wasn't tanking at all. And second it's a BoE drop that sells for about 1000-1500g at auction. So I didn't feel right just rolling Need on it. Mattoo quickly said I should Need but I'd already rolled, which I felt good about anyway. He was tanking but he already has a Badge of Tenacity so it was a sell item for him.

Fortunately I won the five-way Greed roll. So I was pretty happy about that!

Gearing up Alamein to tank has been an interesting exercise. For most pieces it's been surprisingly easy, but some parts have been challenging. I began with the WoWWIki druid tanking equipment page, as well as Big Bear Butt Blogger's tank starter gear post. They are great at listing what gear you should look for, but I wanted to talk about some specific challenges. I'll cover four sources of items: drops, reputation, auction house (plus crafting), PvP, and quests.

Drops

When I first decided to switch, I assumed I'd have to run regular instances for a lot of drops. This turns out not to be true. Most of the tank gear available in normal instances is just not an improvement over the other pieces you can get. The one thing I did look for -- and got on my first try -- was the [Iron Band of the Unbreakable] from regular Old Hillsbrad. Other than that, the only drop I'd be tempted to farm is [Adamantine Figurine] from Shadow Labyrinth. We had one run in there and it didn't drop. But after running a dozen or so people through their Kara attunement -- back when it mattered -- I don't want to spend more time in Slabs than I have to!

Edit: I forgot about one great drop that I had saved: [Thoriumweave Cloak] from Mech. I'd taken that while on a Mech badge run as healer; we didn't have an enchanter in the group or we probably would have sharded it. That would be worth farming too, since it drops on either normal or heroic.

Reputation

Every guide will tell you that [Earthwarden] is the best tanking weapon you'll get until T5 at least. (I'm not Exalted with Cenarion Expedition yet so no luck there.) But one source of rep gear that both guides miss is Shattered Sun Offensive. The [Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve] is a pretty good tank amulet, and if you've been running SSO dailies regularly you're probably exalted with them. The Dragonhide Battlegear also provides a great way to pick up some pieces that can round out your set.

Auction House/Crafting

The Strength of the Clefthoof set is really where you want to start. As a skinner/leatherworker, I had the patterns and most of the materials, so this was a no-brainer. But even if you're not, you can probably get all three pieces for under 500g. That's crazy-cheap for three good pieces of tanking gear. The other key piece (if you can't get Earthwarden yet) is [Braxxis' Staff of Slumber] which usually sells around 50g. The [Stylin' Purple Hat] is pretty good too if you don't have a good helm. Which leads to my next point...

PvP Items

This was a surprising situation. In short - the healing PvP gear turns out to be better than just about anything I could get through other sources. For example, I thought I'd buy the Stylin' Purple Hat, but it's not as good as the [Gladiator's Kodohide Helm] I already had. The same was true for my shoulders. Obviously the Gladiator's Dragonhide gear would be much better, but even the Kodohide gear has a good chunk of stamina, armor, and resilience that makes it work for tanking.

The problem is that I got these pieces for healing -- so they have healing enchants and gems. Mostly it's not a huge deal, but I have the [Bracing Earthstorm Diamond] in the hat - which gives -2% threat! Not good! Fortunately the mass of blue +stamina gems I used has deactivated the meta gem requirements. So I'm still using it for now. But replacing these pieces is my current PvP priority.

There's one item I haven't seen listed in any guide but I think it's worth considering. It's really a Reputation item but it comes from Alterac Valley rep so I'll list it under PvP. That's the [Stormpike Insignia] or the Horde equivalent. It's not really great, but it does grant dodge and if you've run any AV at all you should be able to pick up one rank or another of this. (You can get the first trinket at Friendly and upgrade it with each reputation level along the way.) Consider it as a stopgap measure if you don't have any other helpful trinkets.

Quest Rewards

If you're leveling as feral, this is super-easy. The hard part is when you've leveled as another spec. Basically -- either you have the gear or you don't! I was mostly lucky but lost out in one spot. So the moral is: watch for good offspec gear in quest rewards -- and save it!

For druid tanking, there are three quest reward pieces that you should watch for. The one that I'm kicking myself on is the [Idol of the Wild]. This one really annoys me because there's no good way to replace it. It comes from an early Hellfire Peninsula quest and there's just nothing else to replace it with. I'm using my [Idol of the Raven Goddess] but it's a poor substitute. There are so few idols that it really pays to grab every one that crosses your path.

The second reward is another fairly easy quest item: [Manimal's Cinch]. This belt is also difficult to replace. It's easy to underestimate (and throw away) because it's green, but there's not much to replace it with. This comes from a soloable quest line in Shadowmoon Valley; it's possible that many druids haven't done this yet so check it out. And the third key quest reward is [Umberhowl's Collar]. Again, it's difficult to find better bracers. This quest line requires some group work so it's probably skipped fairly often.

With these easy-to-find items and a quick respec, you'll have the gear and talents to pretty much start tanking heroics. Of course that says nothing about having the skill! That's the part I'm working on now...

Tanking Heroic Slave Pens

We ran heroic Underbog last night. With our normal group setup it would have been easy, but we did it with group roles that we're not as familiar with or as geared for. The group was:

• Alamein: Druid tank
  
• Dralkios: Shaman healer
  
• Firegrin: Hunter (Marksman)
  
• Wyrmm: Rogue (Subtlety)
  
• Mattoo: feral (Cat) Druid

Firegrin and Wyrmm are experienced and well-geared but the rest of us are a bit new to our roles. Matt has a well-geared Shaman, but his druid Mattoo just dinged 70 last week and isn't geared up yet. Eric is just started in gearing up Dralkios as a healer. And I'm still new to the tanking business with Alamein.

The good news about Druid tanking is that it's pretty easy to get geared up, especially as a skinner/leatherworker. The Heavy Clefthoof set (boots, leggings, and vest) is really good gear. It's the nucleus of a set that gets you ready for heroics or Kara. Add to that some PvP pieces and I'm pretty much ready to go.

There are great resources out there to learn about tanking. My go-to article is Bear with me, I want to tank on TankSpot.

The hardest part has been learning the mechanics, starting with the pull. I'm still working out details like when Enrage is a good or a bad idea. With Firegrin and Wyrmm in particular, I'm working pretty hard to establish aggro. I'm also still working out the attack rotation. The base rotation of Mangle, 3xLacerate is pretty easy. But I still have to work out when to throw Demoralizing Roar or Feral Faerie Fire -- sometimes I forget, while other times I'm probably refreshing them too soon. And I struggle with using Bash or Maul appropriately.

Multi-mob stuff is still my weakest point, in two ways. I have a hard time getting enough aggro lead on all mobs to stay ahead of my healer -- especially if we have casters involved. And I'm not very good at taunting when it's needed either. My DPS last night was really good at knowing when to slow down, but the healer doesn't have that luxury. I need to be better at pulling mobs off him.

With those kinds of weaknesses, it wasn't going to be an easy run. We had quite a few wipes, usually due to losing Dralkios to loose mobs. But we got a lot better at it along the way. We one-shotted both Mennu and Rokmar, which was fun. Eventually we got stuck at a bad four-lobster pull on the way to Quagmirran, where the long climbing hallway opens into a larger room. We wiped there four or five times before getting it figured out, but at that point it was too late for us all and we called the run.

Even though it was a challenging run I really enjoyed it. It's a big help that I had four extremely skilled players along for the run.

Eric on Dralkios is still learning healing and he's maybe still a bit lightly geared for heroics. But he got amazingly good at it along the way. Eric is great at balancing the tactical choices involved in each fight - knowing which totems to drop, for example. I never saw him get his healing priorities wrong either -- something that I know took me a long time to learn on Alamein.

Danny on Firegrin is the exact example of what WowInsider just called The Hunter Who Doesn't Suck. To start with he was chain-trapping a mob in every pull. He's so rock-solid at it that I'd put a blue rectangle on a mob and know that I wouldn't need to touch it until everything else was dead. At the same time he'd usually be Misdirecting onto me to help me with threat issues. And with all that he was still doing more than his share of the overall damage for the group.

DK on Wyrmm is just as skilled as a rogue. He's exactly the melee partner you want in a group. He can scout ahead and use Distract and Sap to set up the pull. In a fight his stuns and kicks are perfectly timed, and he will Evasion-tank a mob to prevent disaster. He's also really heads-up in every fight, calling out problems or warnings and reminding us of the next kill. And his damage was insane; he really rocked the meter last night, without becoming an aggro menace.

Finally Matt on Mattoo is great to play with as well. His druid is still undergeared and he wasn't able to DPS to the same level. But it's a testimony to his skill that we still got as far as we did. His knowledge is encyclopedic and he knew exactly what to expect with each pull. And he did the great druid multitasking role really well -- switching to bear to pick up a loose mob or to healer to help out Dralkios any time it was needed.

And the whole group was great to work with overall. People were relaxed and laid-back even when chain-wiping. Each frustration was met with good suggestions for what to try next. But even with a laid-back joking atmosphere the whole group stayed focused and was always ready for the next pull.

That's the kind of stuff that really gets me hooked into the game: the people I get to play with. I love that stuff!