Enchanting as always, my dear

Here is the list I've scraped together for all the enchants/patches I want for my healing kit, basically entirely stolen from The Elitist Jerks Shaman Wiki but with the material costs nicely summarized.

• gloves major healing 6 Greater Planar Essence (gpe) 6 Large Prismatic Shards (lps) 6 primal life
  
• weapon major healing 8 lps 8 primal life 8 primal water
  
• bracer restore mana prime 8 gpe
  
• chest restore mana prime 2 lesser planar essence 2 arcane dust
  
• boots vitality 6 arcane dust 4 major heal pot 4 major mana pot (but this seems to drop off Kael'thas in MrT)
  
• legs silver spell thread 5 primal life 1 rune thread
  
• cloak subtlety 4 Small Prismatic Shards 2 gpe 8 primal shadow
  

That is a lot of primal life!

Just last night I got the gloves major healing enchant done on my Seer's Ringmail Gloves and I already have chest restore mana prime just on the Elemental chest Kam has, mostly because it is cheap, so why not.

Having recently got a lovely The Essence Focuser from the guild bank, I am now saving up for the weapon healing enchant. Other stuff from factions which look very good are as follows:

• head at thrallmar revered
  
• shoulder inscription at scryers honoured
  
• Seer's Ringmail Chest (PvP set) at Lower City honoured
  
• Seer's Ringmail Headpiece (PvP set) at Keepers of Time honoured
  
• Seer's Ringmail Shoulders (PvP set) at Sha'tar honoured
  

Kam is Scryer honoured, but has rubbish green shoulders, so I'm saving the shoulder inscription until I can get a blue, either the PvP ones from Sha'tar or a dungeon drop.

Which leads onto the tricky problem of reputation grinding. Getting to honoured with Cenarion Expedition and Thrallmar was no problem, quests alone were sufficient. However to be honoured with KoT, Sha'tar or LC seems much much harder. KoT is basically you must do the Caverns Of Time instances, which definitely are not soloable, so some group time is needed. Sha'tar is a bit more serious, either I can carry on handing in Sunfury Signets until honoured, or go to Tempest Keep instances. I've done all the (very few) quests in the game so its the PUG or the grind. Finally Lower City also requires instances or a ton of Arakkoa Feathers. What weighs more, a ton of Arakkoa feathers or a ton of bricks? I seem to recall this being a problem when I hit 70 with my Hunter; a lot of rep to grind and no fun way to solo it.

This, as it stands, is my in game to do list, which I dutifully refer to whenever I log in.... then I go quest for gold and fun instead, tee he he!

Soloing fun as Resto

Having levelled as Elemental I had no problem soloing, apart from needing a drink now and then. When I respecced to Resto I was expecting the worse. A holy priest friend of mine described how she couldn't solo for toffee and was basically forced to respec to shadow. So I read the WoW Insider article containing some tips on how to solo as Resto. This describes that the author's healing gear was good enough to solo in and that he kept Earth Shield up, used 2 handers and shocked and LBed stuff.

Well sadly my healing gear is currently sat at 110 mp5 (with water shield up) and only 940ish healing, with a mere 300 or so damage. Take water shield off and my mana regen goes down the pan, as it were. I tried this approach but it didn't really work out; my damage was pathetic and I went OOM faster than a laser chicken. The healing from ES was nice but without any mana to offense things... it was bad.

My elemental gear, on the other hand, is sat at 80 mp5 with water shield and around 500 damage, mainly because I levelled as Elemental so I was always snapping up the shiny +damage stuff. After trying in this gear it's not so bad; sure the lightning bolts take a second longer to cast and the spells don't have as much oomph as they used to, but its actually perfectly viable. Plus I can throw on ES when fighting casters so they don't really hurt me at all. I keep Flametongue on the 1 hander and stabbity stab away at stuff, shock and LB, plus my heals are pretty much uninterruptable so I can get them off far easier.

Of course its still not being the Elemental shaman, so quest are still taking a lot longer, but I'm refreshed that its possible to solo as Resto.

Group quest fun - forgetting my spells

Last night I and some guildies did Turning Point, the quest where you go to bash a 5 man outdoor elite. So for fun I got to heal the paladin tanking. It was ok; I kept earth shield up on him and managed to keep his health topped up. I even managed to heal the hunter in the party when he took damage.

But the mad mage, that was a different story. Apparently Socrethar does a spell reflection, so the mage's health goes from full to 1/2 and then down to 10% in like 3 seconds. I desperately cancel my current heal, target him and try to cast a healing wave, but he's dead. Doh.

What could I have done differently? Not forget Nature's Swiftness for a start, and try a Lesser Healing Wave instead. Oops. With a NS + HW I could have probably got him back to full, although he may have then just killed himself again with another fireball... Suffice to say I've put NS onto my healing bar and am considering sticking the emergency NS healing macro on there instead, as posted here.

It begins at the end

Ding level 70, now the hard work really begins. Having levelled Kam to 70 as elemental I have respecced to Resto to try to get some healing experience. I have taken an 8-0-53 spec as recommended by the elitist jerks shaman wiki entry and am starting to gear up with healing stuff. Mostly at the moment green +healing and two pieces of the netherfury set, plus a couple of the new PvP seer's ringmail pieces.

I'm currently studying the wow-loot Shaman list to see which quests to complete for some tasty resto gear, plus saving for enchantments for weapon, shield, etc.