My Girl

Okay, I’ve been a total slacker again and it’s not really worthwhile to come to a site that never gets updated, so here goes:

I’m going to introduce you to my girl. Currant, Solid Bear of Elune.

As the story goes, I first played World of Warcraft on a 10-day trial where I made – wait for it – a Night Elf Hunter. I played for a bit, but went back to Guild Wars when it was all over and figured it wasn’t really for me.

A couple months later, a friend convinced me to play and talked me into trying a Paladin. I deleted the Hunter on the trial account and made a Paladin. Paladins are a lot of fun, don’t get me wrong (I’ve since taken this character to 70 and geared her okay), but when I got to 60, I couldn’t do what I had thought I’d be doing. I envisioned the character as a tank but couldn’t tank. People didn’t want me to heal so much as not take loot from other more valuable classes, and my damage stunk.

I was pretty disillutioned, so I turned to the character I’d made to be my healer, my Druid. I started leveling and quickly realized (pre 1.8, mind) that Feral was my best leveling option. It helped a lot that I was able to heal just with a switch of gear for everything up through Sunken Temple. Beyond that it got a little dicey, but by then, I’d found my calling.

The very act of leveling had shown me a glimpse of the power of Dire Bear form, and suddenly I realized I was playing the very tank I’d wanted. I launched into a search for all the high armor, high stamina gear I could find, and by the time I was 60, was widely known in my guild as the little Druid that wanted to tank. I wanted to tank so badly I spent a LONG time at 60 wearing Warbear gear, scrabbling for whatever gear upgrades I could snatch from the fingers of Rogues, leather-wearing Hunters, and other Druids.

I transferred servers, from Icecrown (where my Druid was named Starsong) to Scarlet Crusade (where trying to get the name Raspberry ended up with Currant as an alternative, a name I’m actually enamored of now) in order to play with some friends who’d been Horde for a while, and some other friends who’d been there all along.

In pickup raids on Onyxia and a Green Dragon, I got my first epics. The Stormrage Cover and a Feral Attack one-hander, one of only 4 such items in the game. These things were huge for me. Huge enough that I tanked in my Stormrage for a long time, and that I went back to Duskwood to find that 50 armor offhand to use when tanking. Gradually, slowly, I managed to build a better and better set (though never did I find upgrades to my Warbear gear – leading to names like ‘Bare Tank’ and ‘Jungle Girl’). I tanked BRD, ST, LBRS, and others for my friends who’d have me while I put on my dress and healed in every raid with the single exception of the Jin’Do encounter, which I got to tank fairly regularly.

My guild was VERY understanding and supportive in spite of the difficulties of a Druid wanting to do something the game didn’t support well at the time. My friends were encouraging and when word came of Burning Crusade and its changes to Ferals, I could barely contain my excitement.

I leveled as a tank, geared as a tank, and now I raid as a tank. An offtank to be sure, but a tank nonetheless. I can main tank everything I have access to, and I’m a fairly content bear.

So here I am at the end game. I tank, but my schedule is REALLY bad for raiding, so I do heroics when I can and lately, I’ve been gearing my Paladin and leveling a Hunter. But it hit me that I always come back to the Druid and how much I love that silly character. I love her enough that she’s the only character for whom I have a vanity outfit.

Voila!

I realized I wanted to feel like I’d actually gotten somewhere with her before Wrath launches, so I’m back to gearing her weak spots and making sure I’m around to help with my guild’s general need of tanks and occasional dps for a raid.

Anyway, that’s a brief, mind-numbingly boring introduction to my Druid. I’m visual so here you have some pics stripped from the Model Viewer (I’m at work and didn’t have any screenies handy, but these are accurate). I like the light blue skin she has and the facial tats are my favorites. I’m still not sure why I went with white hair – sometimes I think of her as some sort of albino elf – but I suppose that Wrath will have a solution for that. We’ll see. As it stands, I like contrast and that’s why her vanity outfit is all black…ish. So yeah…her hair…needs something maybe.

Now for the shocker: Currant is considering a respec to Resto just to give it a whirl since she hasn’t been Resto since 54 after a 2 level experiment with a Balance-Restoration healing build.

I’ll try to keep you updated.

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