Return to Botanica

Well last night I returned to Botanica, with 3/5 of the group from last night. We didn't have the Warlock and healer Druid from the previous night, in their place we had a Mage and a different Warlock.

I honestly, didn't want to go to Botanica again, but the Warlock wanted to complete his quest there and since I was dragging him away from our quest group to do it, I relented. I would have preferred the Mechanar, since it's shorter and much more fun. (On a side note, the other two members from the previous night's group offerred me a place in the Mechanar run, but I refused. I may be going sane after all.)

Anyway, the run was much smoother. It wasn't perfect, but we didn't wipe and we killed all the bosses first time. The group this time was definately superior, but they also seem to have removed some of the trash mobs from the instance in the latest patch. It's still a long run, but now at least it's a slightly less annoying one.

Speaking of the patch, the changes that 2.1 have brought about to my tanking are quite nice. My Holy Shield ability can now take twice the amount of hits before it's used up. This makes an amazing amount of difference in single mob fights (it almost never runs out before it's cooldown's up). Also, my Avenger's Shield ability no longer has a minimum range. Whist I may not be able to use it as a pull move in certain situations, I can always use it as a close range burst aggro move.

At the moment, I'm getting tired of the regular instances and I'm itching to try Ulu's hand at the Heroic instances. The only problem is rep: I currently need about 2.5k rep with the Sha'tar (1, maybe 2 Tempest Keep runs), 6k rep with Honor Hold (at least three Shattered Halls runs) and 10k rep with Lower City (5 Shadow Labyrinth runs) to get Ulu's final Heroic Mode keys.

First Priority is Sha'tar which I hope to get done this weekend. After that I'll work on Honor Hold before doing Shadow Labyrinth.

Finally reader replies:

To Nibuca:

To be honest, I haven't used Seal of Righteousness since I got Seal of Vengence. SoV does more damage, and the judgement of a fully-stacked SoV is usually 2-3 times bigger than JoR. The only downside to SoV is the 20 PPM, which means I'm usually applying a stack with every other swing.

I like the "2 Hammers" guideline though and I'm gonna suggest that in the future. :)

To Peter:

Yeah, that could work. To be honest, it was easier to handle saps last night than previously. With the change to Avenger's Shield I can now frontload mucho aggro from a safe distance.