Saving my own hide

As I continue to play my druid through Northrend I'm remembering how to deal with certain situations, which I had forgotten over time since I had been playing other characters. One of the best things is how versatile he is when faced with various situations where most classes would either die or have to run away.

I think the most helpful is their ability to outlast an elite mob. When you come upon those quests where you have to fight an elite mob, and of course the reward is always better than normal, it's such a drag to have to skip it because you just can't find any help. On a druid things are different, because there's a pretty good chance you can solo it.

There was an elite quest I came across last night that had me kill an elite tauren and his kodo mount. I was actually saving it for later but on my way to do something else I saw him and figured I should try it and see if it's doable. First try I killed him.

Bear form is awesome. All I have to do is Mangle every time it's up, Lacerate the rest of the time to keep it going, and if I get low on health I can pop Frenzied Regeneration or if that's on cooldown I Bash, heal myself, then go back to bear form. For the most part I rarely have to heal more than once, and I'm specced for cat DPS, not tanking.

For normal questing I'm in cat form. It helps me kill things fast, and there is almost no down time. I can usually take out 5 or 6 mobs in a row before having to heal, and since cat form uses no mana I always have some available for a quick heal before getting back to work.

Then I run into those unexpected moments. The times when you've got one mob on you, then another walks up and starts beating on you, and then just when you thought you were finished with them another mob somehow aggros on you and you're already below 25% health.

At that point I have to figure out if that health will last me the rest of the fight or if I need to do something else to save myself. And it doesn't even mean healing either, I can usually just switch to bear form and the extra health and armor does it's job. Last night I had to last through 4 additional mobs and was hovering at about 15% health the whole time. It was awesome when I finally killed them all and realized that I had survived.

I've been hearing lots of talk about big changes coming to druids, most specifically armor from things such as trinkets and rings not being counted in the armor increase from bear form. Well, I might be one of the few that this could actually help. Not really being a tank, I don't have anything other than leather that provides me with armor, and since the change is supposed to compensate for that loss of armor that others will suffer, it should be a benefit to those that don't have the kind of gear it affects.

In the time I played last night I made it to level 71 and am already more than halfway to 72. These zones have so many quests, and I'm just hopping from one quest hub to another and clearing them out. All the money I get from them isn't too bad either, and I think the new gear looks really cool. I'm thinking I'll have this zone done after my next session, and then it's off to Howling Fjord.

I also sent my priest some stuff I picked up from various mobs and she now has new pants and a new wand. I had planned on disenchanting the rest, but her enchanting isn't high enough. Looks like I better get that leveled up before she heads over to Northrend.