falling behind

My blogging time (and my oh-so-precious wow time) have been impacted by happenings IRL this last week, so I'll try to catch up this weekend.

I picked a Titansteel Shield Wall off the auction house this week (which may not be a big deal to the more hardcore out there, but it's a big deal to your old pal Casual Paladin Guy) which in my mind pushed me to into viability for tanking heroics past Heroic Utgarde Keep.

Luckily I was able to run Heroic Violet Hold with some guildies this week and Bolstered Legplates dropped for me (w00t!) so I was able to upgrade from the Argent Crusade rep legs. A pretty sweet run overall.

I have to admit that while I have no problem pugging regular instances, I'm scared to death to tank any heroic pugs. It's partly not knowing which are the harder ones (there doesn't seem to be any consensus on the interweb) but I'm also afraid of being terrible! Then I read on the forums or comments on other blogs that some people hit 80 and stroll right into heroics... wtf? Am I being too cautious?

dual specs

I leveled my pally as ret (before 3.0) and decided to respec to prot once I hit 80 so that our guild would have another option at tank, plus my first time around at level cap (at 70) was with a lock and I found that I lost interest in DPS'ing really early on.

Though, now that I'm prot I'm finding that I miss the sweet sweet burst DPS as a ret pally. Don't get me wrong, prot AoE grinding is pretty awesome in its own right, but I have to admit... I like seeing the big numbers :)

Thus, Sweet Zombie Jesus I am loving the idea of dual specs and I'm excited that Blizz has finally released some detailed information in the form of a quasi-interview on their site. I'm doubly excited because it sounds like they're implementing it in a very player friendly manner.

Two of the bits that I think are the best:

1. Respecs are limited to major cities or a scribe-centric summoning ritual

I dig this because I'm a fan of limits that make sense and don't cause unnecessary hassle. It would be ridiculous to allow respecs out in the world while questing... it wouldn't make any sense and would cause certain classes (like paladins) to be completely OP. It's reasonable to expect players to think ahead when they want to respec.

2. Blizz is adding a "Gear Manager"

This is a real no brainer that I'm glad Blizz is addressing right off the top. It's these types of ideas that make me think that they've put some real thought into dual specs and are covering all their bases.

We'll have to wait until this is out on the PTR (and live for that matter) before declaring it a success, but I'm optimistic.

That's it for now. Good hunting!