Alts, Alts, Everywhere

Jah and I are going a little alt-crazy at the moment. The ease of acquiring heirloom gear and the ease with which one can level up have contributed, as well as getting a tad tired of our mains.

For myself, there's:
-Jabberwocky, my 80 resto/feral druid. She's pretty decked out from heroics and pickup Naxx10 runs, and I just recently shelled out the 1,000 gold to get her dual-spec in Feral for grinding out Northrend Loremaster.
-Rinhoel, the Obligatory Death Knight. Nearly 61. Thinking of powering her up to be another tanking toon. I <3 Blood spec.
-Einmal and Rhetannie, also known as "The Girls". Respectively a 59 mage and a 59 rogue, and the fruits of my foray into RAF dual-boxing.
-Happybubbles, the level 7 bouncing priest of *doom*. Eventually she'll be a BG twink.

Jah has his own little stable going:
-Kante, his 71 DPS warrior. Not sure if he's Arms or Fury at the moment - they keep swapping the talent trees around so much x.x
-Hoyvakt, the 69 Deathmoo (Tauren death knight). Currently taking Howling Fjord by storm.
-Jahow, 61 hunter and his original toon on the server before transferring Kante and rerolling to Soleine.
-Jandi, 61 mage - one of his RAF experiments. (Looks almost exactly like Einmal.)
-A multitude of sub-50 things he thinks are not worth mentioning. He says he's not sure what, precisely, he wants as his next alt...so he's just slowly leveling one of everything up to 60.

I sort of have a plan. Most of mine have gathering professions, with vague plans for level 80 specs and production profession choices to mesh with their intended roles nicely. Rinhoel, for example, is probably going to end up as either a Blood-spec tank or DPS and will thus have Mining/Blacksmithing instead of her current Mining/Skinning. Jabs (Jabberwocky) is a maxed-out Mining/Jewelcrafter, mainly specializing in tank and healer cuts. Ein will probably end up with tailoring and skinning, and Rhe will probably end up with skinning and leatherworking. I think Bubbles is already an engineer, for PVP fun and rockets.

I think the next one I level will be Rinhoel - after I'm done amusing myself with two dual-specced 80s who have access to a ridiculous number of dailies, funding the next alt's epic flying mount, re-gemming and re-enchanting Besh's tanking gear to within an inch of its life...

Non-alt news: Versus the World completed Heroic: The Antechamber of Ulduar in one night, starting with a one-shot first kill of Kologarn (if you don't count the two hours we spent on him last week >_>) and ending with a stress-soaked, eight-attempt kill of Auriaya at EXACTLY 11:00 PM, our scheduled raid end time. Hopefully, later today will see us down Ignis on heroic for the first time and then waltz into the Keepers of Ulduar section for some fun with Thorim and Hodir. To keep the QQ to a minimum, I'm just going to say that I'm not happy at all with how warrior class mechanics are going, and it's ever so tempting to main-swap to one of the other plate-tank classes.

YESYESYES MWAHAHAAAAA!

I got to tank a real 25man boss! And I got my Sunguard Legplates (100-badge tanking pants) to boot! (Which incidentally will last me until level 77, when I can have the Tempered Saronite Legplates crafted.)

We downed High King Maulgar after three real tries (and one accidental facepull), and Jah outbid me for the t4 shoulder token. The good news is he's no longer wearing rogue leather.

Then, on to Gruul. Our pally MT stepped down for the fight because he was worried about being able to keep up max threat gen throughout the encounter. I was silently fuming and glaring at the tank channel when Dak whispers me asking for my mitigation numbers...

"k then, looks like you're MTing gruul :)"
"MEEEP. Okay."

Craziest thing about it was I was getting rage-starved! You'd think with something that hits that hard that often, rage generation would be absolutely through the roof...but apparently not. So instead of keeping a steady ~1,000 TPS average like I've been trying to learn to do, my threat spiked between 800 TPS and 1,300 TPS. Our OT (feral druid) had trouble staying second on the threat meters, which led to Gruul hauling off and bitch-slapping lots of rogues. We had him to grow 11 and I think mid-50s percent of his health on our best attempt before we called it due to lack of DPS. (But for a 23-man raid with a mixed bag of gear and several brand new 70s along, we did AWESOME. And I had loads of fun.)

With the new pants, my tanking stats are now:
14127 HP
14510 armor
20.34% dodge
17.99% parry
25.76% block
367 block value

Plus chump change for +hit and expertise, which is going to be my next gearing project. I figure the Girdle of the Fearless, Dawnforged Defender, and (ideally) Furies Deck card will be a good start and a huge boost to my sustained TPS.

I hold the line, aggro is mine o/~

That crazy little symbol up at the end of the title is supposed to look like a quarter note. I'm not sure if it does.

Anywho, Jah's warrior (formerly Nargle, now Kante) is going to be full-time deepz since it's looking more and more like I'll be a regular on VTW's tank roster. (That's me over there! FEAR THE COW.) I OT'd the last two guild-run Karas and picked up a Panzar'thar Breastplate, Boots of Elusion, Shermanar Great-Ring, and the Choker of Discipline. This brings me up to:
-14k armor, or 57.15% physical damage reduction.
-515 defense. Yay overcapped!
-16.7 Dodge
-17.83% Parry
-22.69% Block (with successful blocks stopping 292 damage)
-13,812 HP completely unbuffed - over 14k with Commanding Shout up, finally!
-I've gone from 400-500 TPS average to 550-700 TPS average, spiking up to 1,000+ TPS on heavy-hitting bosses where I can spam Heroic Strike.

And...a grand total of 39 badges. My dilemma is whether to buy the Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker right off the bat to ditch one of my horrendous pre-BC trinkets, or save up for my original plan of Girdle of the Fearless/Sunguard Legplates/everything else. (Still working towards the theoretic 'best' set maximizing stamina, expertise/hit, and finding gear with high raw avoidance stats.)

I'm a little annoyed that I'm going to miss out on our first Gruul's attempts due to work, but I'll get a chance eventually. Meh.

Regarding the beta: I've satisfied myself that prot will still be amazing for tanking and be semi-workable for leveling, as well as druid healing still being fun. I'm pretty much done with my beta account except for the occasional respec-and-grind test. Trying to keep as much of it new and interesting when it hits Live as possible...

Reading Unbearably HoT's writeups of the Refer-a-Friend nonsense tempts me to scrape up an extra whatever dollars and powerlevel-transfer two alts on Sen'jin. However, to use the jargon my Econ professor has stuffed into my head, the opportunity cost of an RAF account + 2 new 60s + a Zhevra mount for my moocow is somewhere around a week's worth of groceries for dinner and lunch money. And since I'd rather be able to eat for a week than have easymode 60s right now, looks like that won't be happening anytime soon.