Catching up…

When last we left our heroes, Sindei had helped to conquer Yogg-Saron, and Ginnger was level 70 and had gone back in Azeroth to level mining and jewelcrafting.

Our raid team is progressing nicely through ICC. We had a little trouble with Saurfang at the end of the Lower Spire, maybe  because we were three-healing the encounter to be safe. As soon as we tried two-healing it, we won the dps race and got Saurfang down. On Friday night we spent some time in the Plague Wing. Festergut didn’t give us too much trouble, but just to be a jerk, he dropped druid healing gear on a night when our druid healer was uncharacteristically absent. Rotface, on the other hand, proved a little more of a problem. I look forward to three-healing that encounter next week, because I think a third healer would help us out on it.There’s an awful lot of damage flying around in there!

In the meantime, to break things up, our team likes to do an off-night activity every other week. I took a poll of our team, and despite my efforts to institute bi-weekly Celestial Steed Parades through Dalaran, it seems everyone else wants to work on Trial of the Grand Champion instead. So we’ll take a swing at that on Tuesday.

After a lot of mining and a lot of spending gold at the Auction House, Ginnger’s mining and jewelcrafting are both leveled up to a reasonable skill for her level. Mining is at 440-ish and jewelcrafting at 430 or so. So at least she can mine where she’s leveling and get the JC daily done every day. I try to get her daily random dungeon done every day, though if push comes to shove, Sindei’s takes precedence. I got Ginnger to 74 last night, so she’ll be questing in Zul’Drak for a little while.

And I don’t want to forget about Children’s Week! Sindei wasn’t my main at this time last year, so she hadn’t done any of this achievement. I grabbed her a couple of orphans from Orgrimmar and Shattrath — sadly, the Dalaran quest seems to be bugged for anyone who did it when it was first released. Everything in the For the Children achievement is pretty easy, with the glaring exception of The School of Hard Knocks. Lucky for me, Day 1 of Children’s Week seems to be an unofficial interfaction cooperation day. Of the four battleground achievements needed, I was able to get three in battlegrounds where Alliance and Horde players worked together to get each other the needed achievements. I’m always glad to see people work together for a common goal. My one “real” achievement was capping the flag in Eye of the Storm, just moments before we were soundly defeated.

After wrapping up Hail to the King, Baby tonight, Sindei is proudly wearing her Matron title and is one step closer to her Violet Proto-Drake. I’m not sure how much of Children’s Week I’ll do with Ginnger, though I did pick up the Children’s Week quest in Dalaran for her. I generally side with the Oracles, but just to try something different this year, Ginnger has a little Wolvar companion in tow.

 

What we are up to these days

Last week, my raid team dipped its toes into ICC. Sure, we’re a little behind the curve in content, but we’re a close-knit, casual team, and we have a great time. We regularly clear ToC, and we’ve cleared most of Ulduar. We’d hoped to get Yogg-Saron down before going into ICC, but that’s taking a little longer than we expected. Yogg is a tough fight, coordination-wise. Several of our team members are relatively new to raiding, so there’s a learning curve. And the fight is complicated!

Of  course, I’m sure we’ll have him down soon, saving the minds of all Azeroth, but in the meantime, we’ve decided it’s time to head into ICC. We’ve done a bit of rep farming in there already, but after a little glitch with the Ulduar 10 raid ID we’d been saving, we took our first swing at the Icecrown bosses last week. We one-shot Marrowgar, who dropped loot for just one raid member (our pally tank/healer). How rude!  Since we didn’t expect to be in ICC that night, we hadn’t really researched the fights, so we wiped on Lady Deathwhisper’s trash before time ran out for the evening. Still, we had a good time, and I’ve no doubt it will be much smoother next go.

I’m resisting the urge to buy Sindei’s T10 gloves. She has 70 frost emblems now, but I’m holding off for a new hat. Currently, she’s wearing four Tier 9 pieces: the shoulders, the gloves, the robe, and the pants. The helm is an offset piece, the Hood of Clouded Sight. (How clouded sight makes me a better healer, I’m not sure, but that’s a question for another time.)

She has the T10 shoulders already, but then I decided not to break the Tier 9 4-piece bonus until Sin had two pieces of Tier 10. I mean, the T9 4-piece bonus isn’t all that, but a bonus is a bonus, I figure. So… if I bought the T10 gloves, she’d have a 2-piece T10 bonus right away, but no T9 bonus at all. So the plan is to go T10 shoulders and helm for the 2-piece T10 bonus, while keeping the pants and gloves for the 2-piece T9 bonus. I plan to buy an offset robe — Meteor Chaser Raiment is better overall for the Disc spec, while Ermine Coronation Robes would be more balanced for both Disc and Holy — and upgrade the T9 pants and gloves last.

Meanwhile, Ginnger continues to suffer the ill effects of my recently curtailed playtime, though I managed to sneak in enough time this morning to get her up to 54.

Soup's on, little guy!

Gin is still living in Tanaris. I wanted to do some leveling in Felwood, but there’s no place for her to live! There’s no inn in Un’Goro Crater either, but I can live in Gadgetzan and fly or run to Un’Goro easily.  Besides, I’m working on that Venomhide mount quest, so it’s convenient to have my hearthstone set there. My to-do list also includes lots of leather farming, so I can get leatherworking up to 300 by the time I hit Hellfire Peninsula. Cooking is way behind, though, and my fishing’s even worse.

I’m eager to get some real grinding time in on Gin so that I can get her moved to Outland soon, but I don’t know when that might be happening. I don’t foresee much extra playtime anytime soon, and next week will be even worse, since I’ll be focused on getting Sindei’s Noblegarden meta.