And there are MORE of them! There are only two elites in Ghostlands (not counting in [del]Mordor[/del] Deatholme), but there are (if I’m counting correctly) at least 8 of the Sons scattered throughout Silverpine (not counting inside SFK).
When I was doing my fire honoring and desecration for the summer festival, I stopped on my main (Night Elf Warrior) to kill the hell out of a Son of Arugal I rode by, in honor of my long-abandoned first character ever (Undead Warrior, created on the account of my boyfriend at the time), whose noob ass got introduced to what that gold dragon on a portrait means the hard way.
That was the same toon where I found out about the Welcome Bears in WPL.
What? Greater heal didn’t work? 
Had fun on Isle of Conquest last night when I discovered the portal that took me to the blimp and hopped on one of the gun turrets and rained fire on my enemies…FOR 1,000,000 DAMAGE! <insert pinkie into cheek dimple>
He’s a Shammy. They’re much better at raid heals than single-target.
Ah, sounds like the quests the Argent Dawn hands out at Chillwind Camp for the Alliance. Done all that 
Cool. Couple things to keep in mind about me: I should be considered a complete and utter noob for the purpose of doing an instance in a group at-level. Just because I’ve never done it. I also don’t have Vent/headset/microphone. OTOH, I’ll be playing a ret pally, which is the same as my main over on the Alliance side, so I at least know how to kill stuff. She’s currently geared with the best stuff I’ve been able to buy on the AH.
My problems with both zones are mostly related to trying to run casters through them at-level. Were my head not shaved, I would have torn all my hair out while attempting some of the Silverpine quests with my undead mage - mainly the ones in and around that old castle on Fenris Isle. Too many mobs that respawn too quickly in relation to the frequency with which I kept running out of mana and having to stop and drink. I swear that every single time I ran out of mana, I would happen to be standing in just the right place for a mob I’d previously killed to respawn and immediately aggro on me.
In Darkshore, meanwhile, there’s that thrice-damned “Absent-minded Prospector” quest — the first link in a lengthy chain — that is nearly impossible to solo at-level with a caster. The entire problem is mana management. 1) It’s an escort quest; 2) the NPC you have to escort wanders all over the place; 3) he aggros everything; 4) he’s extremely fragile; 5) he will not help you fight anything that attacks you - he’ll just continue on his way, probably aggroing more mobs in the process; 6) you get no chance at all to stop and replenish your mana; 7) if you decide to give up and skip the quest, you miss out on the rest of the chain, and darn it, it’s an interesting chain!
And the Hannelore/Marigold raid fun continues:
Heh. Pally fun in today’s Ctrl+Alt+Del 
No problem! I’m a tank pally, Mordrin is a holy priest. Since we’re all over 50 ST should be pretty easy, depending on who we get to round out the group. And we don’t currently have a vent server anyway.
Thanks for all the new (to me at least) links to comics you guys have posted recently, my latest time sink to avoid a very dull code refactoring job…
Last night was fantastic. Firstly the new kit is a monster and Windows 7 really is a joy, well done Microsoft. I am now at Ultra graphics settings and maximum resolution and, by the Light, the game is a beauty at these settings.
We had a guild run to Stratholme to do the living side, this time we had an 80 druid with us which made it easy but it was still a lot of fun and we lost our newly respecced Holy pally (the guy I quest with all the time is my new pocket healer!) a few times, I really need to work on getting my threat back after a big heal. No good drops for me unfortunately but the achievements made up for it:
Recent Achievements
10 (16/09/2009) Got My Mind On My Money
10 (16/09/2009) Level 60
10 (16/09/2009) Defeat the evil masterminds inhabiting Stratholme.
This is my favorite-hate quest in the entire game. If it were possible to make one video game character real, for the express purpose of bludgeoning them to death, it would be that asshole. The only toon I was able to solo this on at-level was my Hunter, and only by using the strategy of letting Remtravel (that was his name, right?) go first and aggro everything, then having my pet focus on one add while I downed the other myself.
Grats!
Given the current state of Pally tanks, I 100% believe that that comic is grounded in absolute truth. WTB Ardent Defender. 
Well, they’ve said class balancing goes through highs and lows for each class. It’s a decent compromise between the unfairness of letting one class dominate always and the impossibility of striking a perfect balance. I’m sure there’ll be a time when Warriors are OP again and Pallies are struggling.
Really, though, at least for right now, fighting against the Scourge, Pallies should be an awesome class. Them and Priests. When Cataclysm hits, Shammies should get the spotlight, and when the Emerald Dream expansion hits, Druids should be brought forward. And through it all, Warriors will endure.
Oh, I know. But I highly doubt there will ever again come a time when Warriors are on top as tanks, simply because that was already how the world worked through vanilla and a good deal of TBC. The dev team’s perspective (per Ghostcrawler) pretty much seems to be, “Yeah, we fucked up by focusing on Warriors as tanks, so now we’re going to focus on making every one else more viable to ensure they’re seen as equally acceptable, and we don’t care if that puts Prot Wars SOL.”
I hope that’s not the case. But I figure as long as every tanking class can actually do the job and no class actually becomes unable to fulfill their role (as in, Warriors don’t become suited only for tanking heroics and no higher, for example), then that’s more or less acceptable enough to me.
I’ve been neglecting my Warrior for a while now. I rolled him intending to go Prot, then went Druid-crazy. I’ll go back to him when I get a heirloom or two, perhaps.
That quest was a cakewalk when I did it with a pally and with a warrior, and somewhat tougher but do-able with a druid. I think I managed it with my shammy as well. But my mage or priest? Fageddaboutit! The toughest spot for the classes I succeeded with was the last mob spawn - a caster mob and a melee mob, who immediately split up after they spawn and either of whom can kill Remtravel with two hits. And this is where Remtravel becomes even more maddening - his “won’t help you fight” goes to an extreme here. If you try to attack the mob that is attacking him (usually the melee mob) he disengages and runs to attack the other mob, and then immediately dies.
With a pally, I think at this point in the quest I turned on Devotion Aura to boost Remtravel’s armor a bit, took out the caster with two hits, quickly healed Remtravel (who was almost dead) and then whacked the melee mob.
Don’t remember what I did with my warrior or shammy.
Druid revealed the strategy I’d need to use with my mage: as soon as those last two mobs spawned I rooted the melee mob and put a HoT on Remtravel, and then took out the caster before turning my attention back to the melee mob. So when I tried the quest with my mage, I planned to sheep the melee mob. Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, I couldn’t even get to that point because mana depletion/inability to drink would result in Remtravel getting killed long before that point. Same problem with the priest.
Of course, there’s a certain amount of foolishness inherent in trying to solo the quest at-level. The quest does recommend “[2] Players” after all. But I’ve never been able to find somebody to do it with me.
I haven’t played with a Druid tank in a very long time. Are they still viable? I only see warriors and pallies, and the occasional DK.
It’s not that I think they’re deliberately **nerfing **Prot Wars: I just think they’re giving priority right now to tanking classes that have previously been overlooked, so the broken aspects to Warrior tanking just aren’t getting as much attention. Because while there **are **things that need fixing, we aren’t **completely **non-functional… just not **as **functional as, e.g., Pally tanks at the moment.
I know we’ll be picking up some buffs and they’ll be picking up some nerfs (see the latest PTR patch notes, e.g.), but that doesn’t mean I can’t whine about the imbalance in the meantime.
Definitely viable! The low population seems to be a combination of factors. Some people seeing Druid tanks as boring to play, for example. Their excellent utility as switch-hitters (able to go from tanking to doing decent DPS just by changing from Bear to Cat, without having to drop combat to change spec or gear) also means that some people who want to exclusively tank will avoid them, because they’d rather be the boss tank than the add tank. (I’m deliberately avoiding the words “main tank” and “off tank” here because there are currently a number of fights where the “main” tank has the much easier job.)
Did a heroic with a Druid tank the other day. Seemed to go fine.
Fair enough.
I almost want to try tanking with me Druid. “I’m wearing leather armor. What’s your excuse?” I’ll probably wind up focusing on DPS and healz like most of Druids, though.
I have a druid tank. Their advantages are boatloads of stamina/hp, and easy Defense capping (read: put 3 points in the Survival of the Fittest talent). My husband was playing his resto shaman and as we were running Heroic Azjol-Nerub, he kept “nagging” me to get hurt enough for him to need to heal me more. You get huge boosts to armor/health in bear form.