T9 set

So I have now gotten my 4 piece set of T9 and my question is, where is the damn armor pen? The set is pretty good for bear and I'm happy about that, but I was hoping to use it for cat as well. The whole set only has 59 armor pen. What the heck?

I know to get some really great damage out of cat that is the stat I need the most. So I guess I have to turn to non-set pieces to get it. And yes, I know there are quite a few leather items out there with armor pen, I just am getting pissy about not having very much on the T9 set. I was running around as kitty in ToC25 the other night and was only pulling around 6K dps, but I also only had 20% armor pen. And hit rating....I can't seem to figure out how to get rid of it. Yesh.... I'm almost 100 points over cap and I'm not gemming for it. I'm wearing gear based on the other stats.

So my quandary is, why does our gear seem to have so much hit but not near enough armor pen?

Bearcat wanderings

So as I have mentioned before, I am an officer in my guild and I like my guild. But lately I'm feeling a bit caged. I feel like a tiger pacing in my enclosure.

My guild has been clearing ToC10, Ony10 and Ony25 for several weeks now but last night we finally made progress on ToC25 and downed 3/5. And hopefully we will go back tonight and finish it up!

Now here is the thing, we have some really good players, and then we have some really not so good players. Being a casual guild, it is hard to get all really good players when we don't require attendance. I'm happy we are downing ToC25 but I want more.

I want to try heroic modes, I want challenges but I just don't know that there are enough people in my guild that are up to it. I don't even have to do ToGC25 at this point. I would settle with ToGC10. But I don't want to /gquit either.

So I plan to try and put together a group soon. Til then, I pace restlessly.

Question for the interwebs....

I have a non-WoW related post for y'all that maybe ya'll can help me with.

I created my dad's website for him and I have submitted the url to the different search engines. I started the website back in July and that is when I submitted to Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. And I can see that Google has never seached his site.

Also even when I search for specific keywords that are listed, he doesn't show up in the first several pages. Does anyone have any suggestions to help with showing up higher in the search list? Especially on Google?

In case anyone is interested, the address is http://www.catfishgarysguideservice.com/

He is starting the guide service to help pay my mother's medical bills so I would appreciate any help I can get!

Thanks in advance for any help.

Work....

So I'm back at work again and I have realized that not much has changed up here and that a trained monkey can still do my job. Ugh. When you spend your day going Click, Click, Click it is boring as hell.

On the raiding front, it seems my guild is doing a few interesting things. We are running 25 man ToC, but several of the people in my guild can't seem to find their keys to save their life. When we have hunters who can't out damage me as a bear, or my Pally offtank, what the heck is going on. Now understand, they are in purples, but wow.

Then we are running 10 man ToC weekly as well, and clearing it but not a single useful thing for me has dropped. Sad....

Now on to the interesting thing. We have tried ToGC10, and while we aren't getting very far, we have a couple of people in the run who after a couple wipes starts saying they want to do something else cause this isn't fun. No, wiping isn't fun, however, you do have to do some of it to attempt new methods and such. I don't understand what the heck they are thinking. If you sign up for a progression raid, be prepared to wipe and try again.

There seems to be this attitude in my guild recently that I don't understand. I don't know why people want to just blow thru kills quickly with the experienced and geared people and not take the people that need the gear and experience. It is basically badge farming. And while I like my badges, there needs to be balance to get new folks in and still get badges.

My guild is kind of stuck in the middle. We have quite a few very good raiding people in the guild, who do the research and work on their toons. But we are also a casual guild, so sometimes we have people along on raids who don't put in the same kind of work. And while I would prefer not to take the people who haven't put in the work to at least research the fights and gotten the gear from badges and heroics to upgrade their gear, it isn't possible to fill a 25 man if we don't take some of them. And I want to do 25 mans and I want to do the heroic 10 mans. I want to put in the work but I don't know that we even have 10 that are willing to put in the work for 10 man heroic. So while I'm an officer in my guild, I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't prefer to raid in another guild. So my question is, at what point do you consider moving your main to another guild to raid in, but keeping my other toons in my current guild?

Wow.....

Okay, well, sorry for the long long delay, life has been entertaining, but not really in a good way. I'm doing better and should be back at work in the next few weeks. I didn't end up mending quite as quickly has planned, but then nothing ever goes according to plan. However, I am becoming quite fond of gaming on the laptop while in bed. Got a nice little tableish thing to put it on and a lapboard with the mouse on the right side and my G13 on the left. Quite comfy!

Wow-wise, been raiding TC10, I haven't seen any good upgrades drop for me yet, but hopefully soon. We have TC25 scheduled for this week, and I can't wait.

I have also been leveling a shaman. I have to say, I'm quite surprised by how fun Elemental is. She is currently 78 so she should hit 80 soon.

I am still working on the article for the 10 man only gear. Should be soon.

Ugh . . . I'm going to be Bald Bear Belly soon.....

So in the past couple of weeks since 3.2 hit, I haven't been able to run much at all. I have passed a kidney stone (ouch) and had the stomach flu. And when I'm that sick, I just don't like to sit at the computer for very long.

Now, on Monday, I am having a total hysterectomy. So I will be in the hospital for 3-5 days and won't be feeling up to tanking for a while. Damn. Well, at least I should have time to do dailies during my 6-8 weeks at home. Gold for the win!

I have been trying to compile a list of gear from 10 mans that would be upgrades and I hope to have that posted up here soon. If not before Monday, then probably the next week.

Patch 3.2

So the patch hit last night and I got to play around with it a bit. We went and ran the new 5 man dungeon on normal 4 times and heroic once. I am shocked that my dodge went down quite as much as it did, but that could also be because I replaced my Alchemist's Stone that had stam and dodge for the The Black Heart which has 126 stam and a chance to grant 7056 armor for 10 seconds. I don't know what the internal proc rate is for the armor bonus, but I will say I saw it quite a few times last night. Of course, the first time it happened my whole group was a bit confused. It gives an animation of wings above my character, and since we didn't have a pally in the group, we really didn't know what was going on.

I don't know how much cat dps has really gone down yet. I will have to wait and see. I tanked last night or did shadow dps on my priest so maybe this weekend I will have time to find out.

Not much changed on my Disc priest. I know Penance got a longer cooldown, which sucks, and Prayer of Healing got nerfed. But as far as actual changes, not much happened to change my rotation.

I played around on my 56 shaman a bit with the totem bars. I think that is just sweet!! I love that feature! I have been leveling her in my spare time and I fully intend for her to be my next 80.

I am hoping to get some more play time this evening, but with real life stuff going on too, I don't know that I will.

Wait, what happened here?

So I have been getting some drops out of 10 man Ulduar lately and they appear at first glance to be nice upgrades for bear. However, while my attack power, haste, crit, and dodge go up, my health goes down. I have gotten the Valorous Nightsong head and shoulder pieces. And it kills me that it actually lowered my health approximately 2000 over what I was currently wearing. (I think I switched out my hands too, but since I can't seem to remember what the drop was that I switched the T7.5 hands for, ...)

So now the question becomes, should I sacrifice health for the other stats? Now, understand the following, I am not an enchanter, or a blacksmith, or a jewelcrafter so I don't have a huge health pool to start with. I only have about 32.5K unbuffed these days so when I switched those couple of pieces out and dropped below 30K, I nearly had a heart attack. I am not happy with my health pool being at 32.5K to start with, let alone falling below that. However, I do have about 42% dodge and 40% crit with around 6ooo AP.

But still, if your armor, dodge, AP, crit and haste all went up, would you sacrifice health?

It's Hammertime!!!

I don't know exactly what the title has to do with the post, but I found it funny. Okay, so I read the Q&A about druids.

And I have to agree with GC right now, I think bears are in a pretty good place. I haven't run across anything that I just couldn't tank, not that I'm always the best tank for the job, but I don't just suck ass. Which is nice. Savage Defense is working pretty well for me, don't really have any complaints.

I can regularly pull 5-6K dps in 10 man Ulduar while in catform depending on the movement involved. While the rotation is quite complicated, I find that it makes me happy that I can kick ass and be #1 in dps. And I still do Battle Rezes and Innervates. I like being very good at my spec, I'm not the best Feral out there, but I am still quite good. And I work very hard not to be a "low contributor".

And I find it interesting that in the next patch they are moving the mana reducing talents to King of the Jungle. I find this interesting because in my feral cat spec, I have both King of the Jungle and Primal Tenacity, however in my feral bear spec, I have neither. So moving the mana reduction does not help me in the slightest. It does however make me rethink my talents for bear. So now with GC talking about wanting to make it even cheaper to switch forms, that makes me very happy. I would love for it to be less costly seeing as I only have 5500 mana typically.

And as far as the Boomkin changes, I think it would be great for them to be more viable in PVP, but I have never actually played that spec, so I don't have a lot to comment on.

As for Resto, that is my wife's department and I sure know I don't have even half the knowledge she does concerning healing as a Tree so I'm not even going to try and comment. However, I do have to say, I love to arena with her on my Disc Priest. We make a damn good healing team! And if they changed it so that Restos spent less time in Tree of Life form, I think I would totally miss seeing the Tree more!

Now, other stuff going on. Well, I raid Ulduar on weekends with my feral druid, but I have now started raiding Ulduar with my Disc Priest during the week. It is a totally different perspective. And it is one I'm enjoying. Not that I would ever change my main, but it is nice to play around with healing some. And I like the Disc Priest mechanics better than healing on my Druid.

Anyway, back to work for now. Rawr!

Rawrcast

So, I listen to podcasts at work to make the time go by quicker. And I just have to say, if you don't listen to Rawrcast with Stompalina and Hafrot, you should. The are funny funny stuff. But it is not for little kids! Give them a listen if you get a chance!!

http://rawrbitchrawr.blogspot.com/

I'm back.....

So after driving 3600 miles in 11 days, I am back home. And I had a great time, but I am extremely happy to be home and in my own bed! Some things I have to say. The Denver Zoo is quite nice. It was cool to see Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears, Arctic Foxes, Arctic Wolves and such. We don't exactly have those in zoos in Texas.... A little too hot for them. Dickinson, ND was very nice. Not too hot, not too cold. And the family reunion was a lot of fun. I really like my wife's side of the family there! We then drove to Little Chute, WI. And let me say, nothing but farmland for 800 miles from Dickinson to Little Chute. We met up with some guildies in Little Chute and had a great time! Even got to go see Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Plus got a lot of cheese. I love cheese!! Overall, it was a great vacation, but now I need to rest up!

We ran into Ulduar on Saturday and Sunday and got all the way to Yogg-Saron, and that was a lot of fun. We didn't get Yogg down but then, we really only tried twice because we were running out of time. I think we will get to Yogg quicker next week. I am still trying to catch up on all my reading about patch 3.2 so I will let you know if I have anything to say about it soon!

Vacation Time

Well, we cleared Mimiron yesterday, and that was a lot of fun. We worked on General Vezax for a bit, but just didn't have the dps and he was healing too much. I think we might have it next time, but starting tomorrow and for the next 2 weeks, Steaky and I are on vacation.

Traveling to Denver, CO to visit my brother and a couple of friends, then off to Dickinson, ND for a family reunion, and then we will be heading to Appleton, WI to meet/visit with some of the other officers in our guild. I can't wait to meet them! We have been chatting for over a year now, but none of us have met in person, so this should be fun!

Anyway, I figure by the time I get back, we should have some more news on the state of bear tanking. Ya'll keep it furry!!