The current strange state of play
v3.3.5
Well I have to admit I haven’t been playing my priest much of late. The guild I was in for much of Wrath officially stopped raiding a couple of months back and it, combined with burn out, was a nice chance to try something different. Enter the druid.
Firstly let me say trees healing is fun but quite over-powered. Cat DPS is the best so far and more fun than Arms ‘proc-based’ DPS and Shadow’s DoT lead priority list. Bear tanking is a dull as can be 
After warrior tanking the bears 1 button tanking in heroics (Swipe+Maul bound to my mouse wheel) is almost inane.
Anyway thats not why i’m posting. A couple of interesting things I have learned recently while in the process of gearing my druid and I thought I might share them with you.
Gear Score really does suck!
Probably one of the worst new fashions in WoW to date. As a priest in a stable raiding guild I was like “whatever” when people posted about GS before, but now i’m back to pugging, a lot, I hates it!
1) For example I sneak into an ICC25 run as cat dps and as we start pulling trash someone comments about the cat being the lowest GS in the raid. Lowest as in i’m about 5.1k GS. Not awesomely geared, but no a fresh 80 or anything. I of course ignore it. Anyway after the first few trash pulls I say in raid, “Cats not doing to bad DPS eh?”. I’m about 4th DPS on Skada, although AoE DPS with Swipe isn’t exactly rocket science.
So what happens..?
Kick!
I whisper the raid leader asking why I got kicked. To be honest I was about ready to punch him/her, but whatever. They reply, “GS too low”. I say “I was top 5 DPS!” and all they can reply is “Sorry”. I mean really?!?
2) Another time someone is looking for a druid healer for ICC10 going for 6/12 and they want 5.3 GS minimum. I whisper for an invite and link my Plague Wing achievement. I have 5.1k GS at this point. No dice. GS to low. I reply, “Your loss” and do the daily.
About 45 minutes later, after i’ve done a couple of instances and the same person is still trying to get a healer (any type now). I whisper and the conversation goes like this.
“I’m still here”
“Wut?”
“I’ll heal ICC10″
[pause]
“Sorry yur GS to low”
So the raid leader would rather waste lets say an hour of nine peoples time for the sake of 200 GS? That is just silly.
3) Last example. ICC 10 pug. Nice people half from a casual guild. We do Festerface and Rotface before it gets too late, but two things stick in my mind.
One, the almost entirely item level 264 geared hunter, who was a lovely person, pulls 4k to 6k DPS on boss fights. I bet her GS was about 5.7k. It was almost bigger than her DPS!
Two, the 251/264 geared resto shaman I two healed with managed 38% of the healing compared to my 55% in my pitiful 5.1k GS outfit.
Tress are OP, but seriously, the worlds gone crazy.
Thats not even including the “LFM ICC10 doing 11/12 5.8 GS min” people. If I had 5.8k GS, why would I be running ICC10? Frost emblems for Primordial Saronites I guess?
ToGC is harder than ICC
Serious. ICC with the 25% nerf is regularly pugged at least half way by a huge number of people. I’ve been in two (of two) ToGC pugs recently that haven’t even killed Northrend Beasts. Conversations regularly run like this.
Someone says, “Can I get might instead of wisdom”
Random, non-paladin replies, “Lets just go its only ToC”
I say “ToGC”
Random replies, “whatever”.
We wipe on beasts. About 2 to 3 people die to Gormok’s flames. Half the rest die within the first couple of breaths attacks by the worms. Two more attempts, one of which we make it to Icehowl and every single time he charges at elast one person gets hit. Rinse, repeat, disband.
These are raids with 10+ nearly fully 264 geared players. Sure there is a handful of undergeared players, but most are way over geared for the content.
Ruby Sanctum
*thumbs up*
Love the fights. Not as hard as some of the heroic ICC, but it will be demoralising random pugs at least for some time yet.
Anyway hope all you priests out there are still having fun.
Gobble gobble.
