These days on my realm, there are a billion Primals on the Auction House at any one time - Water, Air, Mana, Fire, etc etc.

And they’re cheap.

I just bought 10 each of Primal Water and Primal Life for just over 10g each, and am now well-stocked for continuing to transmute Primal Mooncloth every 4 days on two tailoring toons as I swap out all my 16-slot bags for 20-slots (about 10 bags made so far, 100 to go ;) ).

It occurred to me that while the market is so flooded of these once-expensive materials (everyone getting rid of things before the expansion hits and the materials are completely outdated), that I should take advantage of it to build some gear sets that would otherwise be tremendously expensive.

Deciding On The Gear Set

My Priest has been my ‘main character’ since June or so, so I decided I’d concentrate on her and see what types of gear-ups I could get.

I thought about the Whitemend Set briefly, but since it uses the same Primal Mooncloth that my bags do, I tossed that one aside. Bag space > Gear which will be replaced soon after the expansion releases, as one of this blog’s readers so eloquently put it.

I then went to Be Imba! and looked myself up, and used their “search for gear upgrades” feature and started to look at the pieces of gear I had that were old and in need of replacement. That is, everything that didn’t have Haste as a stat on the gear, and there’s lots of that ;)

(Note, if I were a DPS Priest instead of a healing priest, I would have headed over to MaxDPS.com to find the best gear upgrades for me)

Turns out, since I have a belt and shoulders with haste on them already, there really aren’t many things I could get crafted that would help my primary set.

So, I stuck this ‘gear up while it’s cheap’ goal into the back of my mind and went back about my business of living life and playing WoW.

WTB Hearts of Darkness

This morning, while the game is down for weekly maintenance, I went back and looked over the recent applications for the guild I am vying to get into, and one part of my own application stood out to me - I have no shadow resist gear that is purposeful. And this guild takes people on trial runs in Black Temple, where for at least one of the fights, shadow resist is basically REQUIRED.

So, I started my trek of finding out what it was that I needed to get crafted to be able to improve this terrible situation. I ended up on WoWWiki’s site, looking at an article tailor-made for what I’m looking for:

Shadow resist gear for the Mother Shahraz fight in Black Temple

The article says I can get the following, which will total 370 or so Shadow Resistance:

• Night's End
• Soulguard Bracers
• Soulguard Leggings
• Soulguard Girdle
• Soulguard Slippers

So, when the game comes up, I’m going to head to the Auction House with my savings and see if the materials I need are underpriced like the Primals:

• 9x Heart of Darkness

• 5x Void Crystal
• 13x Primal Life
• 18x Primal Shadow
• 6x Bolt of Imbued Netherweave

And then of course I’ll need to get healing enchants on all the pieces, because my +heal while in that set will be neutered otherwise.

I estimate it’s going to cost around 2500-3000g of my in-game savings.

And, I still believe this to be a “steal of a deal” for this particular gear set, because I know it would have been triple that amount just three months ago.

True, I’ll need to crank up the money-earning to get it back over the next few weeks, but I hope it will be “the thing” that gets me into an official trial run with this guild I want to get into.

Wish me luck!

Tags: black temple, healing in black temple, level 70 priest gear, level 70 raiding gear, make hay while the sun shines, mother shahraz, priest healer, shadow resist gear for priests, shadow resist sets

So here we are, one month before the expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is upon us.

As usual, if you talk to people about the state of the game, if you talked to 10 different people, you’d get 10 different opinions: Some say there’s no use in playing at all, some say it’s the best time to play, some would look at you and say “huh?” and then go back to playing, because WoTLK won’t affect them very much (or so they think).

Personally, I’ve left my lowbies to sleep while I enjoy the high time of no-commitment-required PUG raids that we’re in right now.

Want To Raid? PUGs, PUGs, Everywhere!

There are Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep PUGs happening on my realm on the weekends left and right (both 25 man). Mount Hyjal PUGs, Sunwell Trash Runs, guilds in all levels of progression still looking for new members and actively trying to raid.

While my Healer sits unguilded, in conversations with what I believe to be a quality guild worth waiting for, I look around and make friends and offer my raid healing services where it fits my schedule, and continue to improve my gear to the standards of the new guild.

My Recent PUG Raids

Before the weekend’s raids, I ran Karazhan with an AWESOME group on Tuesday and did a full badge run, which was great. Then, I ran a couple of heroics a day during the week.

On Friday I got into an unadvertised Mount Hyjal PUG (25 man) on my Priest for the first time (thanks to some social contacts!!), and had a great time downing the first four bosses in the place, and while my overheal % needs work, I did well in general for overall heals and feel as if I contributed well to the group.

On Saturday after doing a few heroics and upgrading/re-gemming/re-enchanting my helm, I tried to get into a Black Temple PUG (25 man, same progression as Hyjal above) but I didn’t have any social “ins” to the group so while I made the +heals requirement by the skin of my teeth, I didn’t make the health point requirement that was in place for one of the nastier bosses in the place, and was removed in the pre-raid gear check.

Sooooo…. I vowed to improve my gear for that PUG next week, and put myself into LFG, and then got invited to a guild run going into Zul’Aman. While this wasn’t a Bear Run by any stretch of the imagination, it was another round of healing experience that I didn’t have, and can now update my “toon resume” with.

Experiences So Far

I’m really enjoying all of this varied healing experience on my Priest, but doing this wide number of raids I’m not directly familiar with means I’ve been doing a lot of reading and researching with my time, too. My AFK time on game while waiting for the raid to be fully assembled, etc, is spent on WoWWiki reading up on the fights about to come up.

In general the runs I’ve been a part of recently have been successful - well-run, or in the case of Karazhan, full of well-geared players ready to tear it up. The requirements for the 25-man PUGs I’ve been trying to get into are pretty stringent, but that’s good for the entire group.

The Zul’Aman guild run was the least successful of all the runs - but with 2 of 3 healers being geared only for Karazhan, it can’t be a big surprise that we only got Nalorakk the Bear boss down before wiping repeatedly on Akil’zon the Eagle Avatar.

Any Gear Upgrades?

Yes! Got some of those. Those aren’t my focus in raiding, however, so I mention them last.

From Hyjal, I got a couple of new pieces: Boots of the Divine Light and Angelista's Sash, but from the rest I’ve been picking up Heroics badges and the occasional off-spec piece for a Shadow set I’m putting together.

But for now it’s time to go update my Priest’s “toon resume”, before this Sunwell Trash Run I’m in starts up. Forgive me if I add it to my resume before I’ve actually completed the experience…

Tags: black temple, holy healer, priest healer, pugging raids, serpentshrine cavern, tempest keep