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Upgrading, slowly but surely
Saturday we finished the Kara raids that we had started earlier in the week. My raid downed every boss and I didn’t see a single piece of loot worth bidding on. I’m still waiting on the two T4 drops in there.
It did leave me sitting at 58 badges though. And I got to progress a few quest lines including the one that gives the Violet Badge and the one that now requires me to run Heroic Shattered Halls. I’m also now revered with Violet Eye so I got to upgrade the ol’ Violet Signet.
So Sunday, with 58 badges eating a whole in my bank, I started a Heroic Botanica group and got my badges. I made haste back to Shattrath and purchased a Waistguard of the Great Beast, then picked up two Delicate Living Rubies to socket into it. It was nice to finally replace my last green item - Manimal’s Cinch - which is honestly pretty damn good for a green.
Oh yeah, while I was in Bot I also replaced both my Dreamer’s Dragonstaff (DPS) and my Braxxis’ Staff of Slumber (Tank) with a single click of the Need button. Aside from being a super-easy heroic dungeon, another reason I like to run Botanica is that Warp-Splinter drops a really sweet Feral Druid staff on Heroic mode. And this time I got it. It’s called the Feral Staff of Lashing and it’s hard to beat.
After Botanica a Priest in our guild was looking for a group for Heroic Ramparts. He needed the Thrallmar rep so he could get his healy head glyph. Vishyna and two others from the Bot group came along. One of those others was a really well geared Rogue. I have a hard time keeping threat off of him. And in Ramps - with very few CC options - it got even worse.
In Bot we had the same Rogue for sapping and a Mage with us for sheeping and the mobs don’t hit as hard so the tree friend that was healing us was able to keep up without pulling threat. In Ramps however, it was a different story.
The Mage was out, so we had Vish to MC and the Rogue for sap. Thing is, the mobs in HeroRamps hit MUCH harder than those in HeroBot. And there are lots of big pulls. That poor priest had to heal so big to keep me up that his global threat was surpassing my swipe threat on extra mobs. And I couldn’t afford to go through each mob and lacerate them because either the Rogue or Vish is going to pull threat off of the main target. And I don’t even want to talk about how often I got stunned or just how many parries/dodges/misses there were.
Vish and the Rogue were staying so close to my threat that if I missed a maul or a mangle too close to a missed white attack, there was going to be a loose mob. And when I go to chase down that loose mob I’m no longer swiping the other targets. And when I’m no longer swiping the other targets, they kill the healer.
In the end it wasn’t too bad for anyone besides the poor Priest. He ended up getting smashed about seven times I think. I went down twice - once on trash and again on Omor when the felhounds killed the Rogue who was trying to keep them occupied then ate the Priest. Luckily Omor was already at 2% when I went down and the remaining two people were able to finish him off.
Nazan and Vazruden went down easily and guess what’s in the chest. A Tree-Mender’s Belt. Remember that other belt I just bought for 60 badges? This one is only ever so slightly less good than that one. And those 60 badges could have been spent on Footwraps of Wild Encroachment or something else I need to upgrade.
I’ve always maintained that the best way to guarantee something for a particular slot will drop for you is to spend lots of time or money getting a different upgrade for that slot. This is just further proof.
Tags: Hellfire Ramparts, Karazhan, The Botanica, Violet Eye