I'm terrible at this. I spend like an hour or more a day reading blogs but I can't seem to keep my own despite me always bubbling over with stuff to talk about.

So in reverse chronological order....I've been really into arena lately, mostly 2s even though the loot has been nerfed or at least, I can't get the best in 2s. I've actually started to have an idea of what's going on and it's showing, got to 1800 today for the first time ever! Means I can get my 245 mace and pick up some more resil (I'm using Guiding Star) and then my offhand next week to get spell pen capped without gemming for it. We were going to shoot for 1846 which would allow me to get both in one week, but I don't think we're up to it after doing 2s all morning. After a bit we start to get sloppy. Prior to this though we were kicking ass and taking names.
This picture proves many awesomes. Look at killing blows, that's right I ninjaed both of them. The match was a perfect cyclone cyclone blind dead combination.

On a more PvE note, downed 10m ToGC Anub'arak last night... FINALLY, and we got A Tribute to Skill. I've been min/maxing, if that's the correct term, for that fight. I don't need to save my potion CD for a mana pot so I stole some speed pots from a friend and pop them when healing get's a little out of control. In addition I glyphed Rejuv (heals for 50% more when target is under 50% health, which in theory they always should be for phase 3) which was hugely helpful. The sad but funny thing I discovered after he finally died was, I still had my PvP trinket on, and not the one with 150 spellpower, the one with resil /facepalm. No loot for me though. Eventually my luck has to turn.

The awkward first post

Hello, I'm Sem, a night elf resto druid from Mug'thol. I'm an avid reader of several WoW and druid related blogs (I won't name drop yet) and decided after reading so many blogs, perhaps I should give it a try myself. I'm a pretty casual player, I play at night and on the weekends in between keeping up with my work in college.

I'm currently level 75, and specced full boomkin. First time ever specced boomkin, I went 10-70 in the resto tree. The story behind it is that I was going to be taking some time off Sem, not buy the expansion, and level my priest. Right after Wrath came out, nobody, NOBODY was playing their low level alts, so when it came to instancing, my boyfriend would run me through stuff with his mage, and in return I'd run his pally alt through instances. All of you tree specced people know that it's more fun and easier to run damage specced, and since the whole spell power conversion, my resto gear isn't half bad for boomkin.

...and I never went back. I miss healing so much in 5 man instances, but I'm loving the ability to run into a crowd of mobs, blow starfall, pop barkskin and hurricane them all down without heals or pots. Also makes it easy to farm leather. What amuses me is topping dps in instances with zero hit from gear. I'm glad I have something like 3% from talents because I definitely am not dedicated enough to balance to socket any of my gear with hit, or lose stats switching to (still) inferior northrend blues. I'm looking forward to speccing resto again, but with my guild nagging me to get to 80 already, I'm better off staying balance in the meantime.

This all makes me VERY excited for dual speccing, possibly coming in the next patch. Seeing all those big crit numbers popping up is just as exciting as seeing the neverending stream of green numbers when I have hots on everybody and anybody in range, and while I can't wait to be healing again, it'll be nice to have another option. It'll be especially nice for doing dailies and, once again, farming leather. I won't respec freely unless they make it free for me. The only times I've respecced have been with talent resets lately...I'm just really cheap.

My current projects are trying to figure out how to get leatherworking up to 440 so I can craft my epics at 80, figuring out where to get all my 80 dungeon blues and sporadic epics, and what the heck I'm going to do with all this haste and crit...

• on leatherworking: Blizzard made it nice and difficult for us, making no new patterns between 425 and 440 so I think my only options are crafting epic leg armor until it's green. This seems terrible to me! I don't have that much arctic fur! I think I have like ten or twelve. Another downside is that the market is going to be flooded with these because they're the only thing people can make short of gear that requires tons and tons eternals. If anybody has some tips, help me out
• In terms of gear, I've been scouring the internet, Phae from Resto4Life filtered wowhead for us and gave us all the gear with our stats on it. Sydera from World of Matticus then went through the filtered gear on wowhead and wrote an article, Dressing Up Your Druid in Blues and Greens, which more or less did exactly what I'm trying to do (cheat sheet, nice). Matticus himself has a nice article on healing trinkets. Even with all of this being put out right in front of me, I've spent time analyzing lootrank, trying to figure out which blues I'll keep the longest.
• haste and crit....why?! haste has never really had me happy because it just means I go through my mana faster. With Blizzard trying to make mana an issue for healers again, this feels like something I'd try to avoid in favor of increasing my overall healing thoroughput. Also with so much of my healing being instant cast HoTs, and that I'm running WoW on a completely subpar computer seems to add up to a bad combination. In raids pre WotLK I was getting 7ish fps. With Wrath came updated minimum computer requirements, which means that the demands on computers is higher, which means I'll get fewer frames per second. Combine that with faster casting....I'm going to have no idea what's going on, just spam heals and pray. So, crit....don't have too many spells that use that, and we don't really get much of a benefit from critting. News to me, I heard whispers of a .8 second nourish after a crit, which has made me warm up to crit a little bit, but it'd still be a lot nicer if we had more than three spells in our aresenal, and two (for most of us) that we actually use (regrowth and nourish) that crit. I wish some of the budget for haste and crit went elsewhere.

On a random other note: I can't seem to find a weapon that I like. Why don't they make healer weapons with spirit?