Scruff, Guardian of Cenarius

I think it’s time for an end-of-expac look at my main character, Scruff. He’s a worgen restoration druid with a mild inferiority complex and a deep fear that he’s lost his humanity along with his beloved homeland. He likes good whiskey, long walks in the countryside, and timing Wild Mushroom: Bloom just right so none of the fungal goop gets in the tank’s eyes.

Gear

Scruff’s doing okay relative to his healer team peer group, sitting at an average iLevel of 545, a mix of Flexible and Raid Finder items, plus his legendary cloak and a warforged necklace from Ordos, which was a nice lucky drop. I’m a casual player and this is way better than I was expecting, honestly.

Mr Robot says my gear is within 1% of optimal based on the default settings for restoration PvE, with the Spirit cap somewhat lowered – I felt Mr Robot went overboard on Spirit, and I’ve not been having mana issues. I know, I can’t believe this entire paragraph, either.

Patch 5.4.8 just arrived, which allows upgrading gear from 2/2 up to a 4/4 bonus, so over the next couple of weeks that’ll increase his average a bit as I earn and spend VP.

Pandarian achievement

I’ve done almost everything I wanted to in Pandaria, which isn’t saying much. I still need to get the Proving Yourself: Endless Healer (Wave 30) achievement for the title before 6.0 arrives. But I said that last time I wrote about Warcraft and I still haven’t done it, so make of that what you will.

The list of things I haven’t done in Pandaria is staggering, but none of them really appeal to me: No challenge modes. Barely any of the scenarios. No Brawler’s Guild. No daily quests or flying serpent licence. Barring Wrathion, my highest reputation is with the Shado-Pan Assault, at only 2239 / 21000 revered.

I haven’t worked on the Halfhill farm. I went there, did the introductory quests, planted a few things, and then basically left it. I haven’t made friends with the pandas, or cleaned the place up, earned any of the upgrades or whatever: too much like dailies. I have too much self-respect to do dailies. This whole thing makes me vaguely uneasy about Garrisons.

I’ll be happy to leave Pandaria as it is.

Raid progression

I watermelon raid in LFR weekly with Cat and Lani and whoever else is around, and flex raid with the wider guild on Friday nights. I’m really happy with that schedule and want to carry it forward into Warlords of Draenor, *as two nights a week of dedicated Warcraft* time seems to be a sweet spot between losing interest and burning out.

At the time of writing, Waypoint are 11/14  bosses down in Siege of Orgrimmar and I’m confident we’ll get Garrosh down. We’ve made some great progress recently. A Garrosh heirloom would be nice – the caster mace / offhand or the staff. We’ll get there.

I’ve done every raid wing on LFR, many times over, and soloed a bunch of older content for mogging gear (and fun). The Helm of the Haunted Forest still refuses to drop.

Professions

Scruff started out Mists as a skinner and leatherworker, but urgh leatherworking. It was not enjoyable. Sad to say I’ve taken the easy way out, and now he’s a miner (600) / herbalist (180) and dumping what he gathers into the guild bank. I’ll fly around Pandaria gathering herbs until I hit 600 before 6.0 arrives.

Idly considering taking up alchemy. It sort of fits with his RP, actually.

His secondary professions are a mixed bag:

  • Archaeology (536) I could probably finish off one weekend if I get the urge
  • Cooking (600) is perfectly fine. Not so many of the achievements, but it’s levelled at least
  • First Aid (600) and completely unused
  • Fishing (529) is something my enthusiasm for comes and goes. I could start doing the dailies and zoning out with Netflix playing to get this done.

Not an RP guild, honest

I’ve written a few pieces of RP on a now defunct tumblr blog which I’ll possibly polish up and post here at some point. Seeing Cynwise’s Torn Apart series has been inspiring; I want to try and write a consistant story as I go through WoD.

I’m thinking of buying a race change to turn Scruff into a male night elf for WoD, as the snuffling, sniffing noises and animations of the worgen model are starting to irritate me. Perhaps this would be a good “fresh start” to really start taking not-RP with him a bit more seriously.

Some kind of conclusion

Pretty happy with my main. Changes affecting him in WoD seem reasonable. Needs some work on his professions, but nothing a few lazy Sundays couldn’t fix. Guild awesome.

Bring on Warlords.