The Gimp is back

Zero points for guessing what the post title references, especially if you peeked at the picture above. :)

I'm still around, mostly busy levelling the paladin trying to get him prepared to rejoin the raid crew at some point. He's just dinged 78 and entered Sholazar Basin and I hope to revisit the jungle mayhem that was Stranglethorn Vale. I've made a point of attacking any and all alliance I see regardless of level and gear and seeing the stuff he can pull off both in instances and in pvp has made me more sure than ever that I've made a good choice in choosing to bench my Warrior for now.

The timing could also not have been better for levelling an alt with the introduction of Dual Speccing, normal instance runs have been dead on my server but being able to switch specs greatly improve the chances of getting something going. More on that in a later post.



I had to mug and rob old Vads to get all the flying training purchased last evening, so it was real nice to see he's found a new occupation in Grizzly Hills, doing something he should be good at, taking punches from Vrykul. :)

In other news, I didn't manage to pay my initial ISP bill on time after I moved and they were surprisingly quick to lower my bandwidth, so I've been levelling in jerkovision playing at 200-500ms since level 73. Its pretty shocking I'm still able to rape almost any alliance I see out in the wild considering its normal these days to have 1-5 sec delays on my abilities, and as mentioned above I do play rather agressively PVP-wise. I got my salary today though so regular latency, here I come. :)

To date I've had three fights I couldn't manage, one was at 72 in Borean Thundra when a 80 Boomkin wanted to play cat and mouse (to my defence I got him to 30% after a res with my bubble on cooldown. Also despite the gross level difference he never attacked me unless I had pulled a mob or three, flying comfortably overhead waiting for me to do something), another was a 80 elemental shaman in naxx25 gear that was called in to help after I ran over a guildmate of his a few times, and finally I had a hard time against a well played frost mage at my own level no less, who knew how to outlast my bursts etc and finally got me down on our third encounter, kudos to him for that.

PVE-wise I'm having fun as well, done a lot of instances both as healer and DPS and I see a lot of potential. At level 71 I started passing a few of the DPS'ers I've had to endure in heroics on my tank and more recently at 77-78 I've started matching and passing a few DPS'ers in level 80 10-mans.

I had forgotten how fun healing can be, also.

While I would love to try raiding in these roles though there is a big possibility I'll be forced into picking up tanking again, I'm hearing on a daily basis from the guild that there is a lack of tanks. Which is somewhat amusing since there really isnt, they're out there. But granted, they're not all 100% ilvl213+ geared. If I see raid after raid failing on the tanking role though I will try to do something about it, I like the guys too much not to. :)

There's a lot more I'd like to cover but it wont all fit into one post, so expect another post a few days covering my take on Dual Specs, 3.1 changes now that we've seen them in action, and other random issues. :)

Peace outside!