Growing Up Fuzzy

I've seen them, I've cuddled them and now I've rolled one... Fuzzynip started life off as a secondary bank toon since Zombiecat was stingy with spending money on extra guild tabs to hold all my stuff (she refuses to buy a fourth tab). I finally became bored chasing raids as the times on the server that I play on do not coincide with the time that I am able to play. Six level 80s later and I'm bored. Alright Fuzzy I'll get you some BoA gear (armor, trinkets and weapon) and send you on your way. You know what? Pick up herbalism and alchemy too. I want you to be a flask master to compliment my transmutation specialist. Make me proud Fuzzy!

I won't spend all that long discussing the leveling process. We've all been there and done that. Constant dps + healing = Win! When it looks bad stack HoTs and roll in bear form. Running away? Not an option... but the tools are there. Looting while in flight form? Almost feels like cheating. When it's all said and done, leveling a druid today with BoA gear = way too easy. I swear I gained three to four levels every time I logged off.

My entire leveling experience consisted of kitty fun with the occasional bear form. I dabbled in instances in both kitty and bear form, but the tools at your disposal weren't really there. Instances did help with the transition from 40-50 as I find this the most boring leveling area. As fast as I thought I was leveling I was not prepared for Outlands. I'm pretty sure that I blinked once or twice and it was all over. There was a small delay in hitting Northrend since I decided to backtrack to Azeroth and level herbalism and alchemy from 1/1 to 350/350 before heading off to the frozen North. I encountered another small delay once I hit Northrend since I elected to get epic flight form from the trainer at level 71 instead of questing for the form at level 70. Shadow meld + epic flight form = kiss my tail feathers silly mobs. Did I mention how unfair it is to loot quest items or pick herbs while still in epic flight form.

Ding, 80! Damn, my BoA gear is still nice. I've got some nice quest gear from Icecrown. I'm gonna queue for dps in a heroic! ...WTF?!1!!1! I don't have good enough gear to queue for a heroic?! With nobody to ask for a few gear runs through some heroics I decided to queue as dps in a normal random instance (through a series of events I left my guild when I was throwing a tantrum and didn't have anyone to beg for support). 17 minutes later I gave up and left the queue as dps and changed my selection to include tanking. In the queue for something like 30 seconds and BAM! I'm tanking. Holy hell I haven't tanked before (not really anyway, last bear tanking I did was maybe in my 20s). I think I Svenn said something once about swipe macroed with maul. What? Faerie fire does damage as a bear? Nice. Okay, this instance is over and I received two triumph badges. Didn't I receive two triumph badges when I queued for and instance at level 69? Why yes, yes I did. Okay I'll queue as a tank again since it's fast. Wait a second... I don't get badges for this run? I'm not going to deal with this, especially after people questioning if I'm really a tank. 21K hp not enough for a normal instance? That's silly. (see screenie). Alright, I have have a leatherworker that could use some work. It's time to grab some HPs and become a stamina stacking polar bear.

Alright here we go! I'm off to tank. Five seconds into the instance and here comes the question again (no screenie this time...) "are you really a tank?". Is this guy serious? This is a normal everyday five man heroic.This is where I should be... Anyway here we go... swipe, swipe, maul, maul, shake my fuzzy tail, shout, swipe, swipe... I can see now that bear tanking is going to give me carpal tunnel... More heroics, more badges, more questions (who the hell are these people?). How dare you question my tanking I HAZ A WARRIORZ! comparatively speaking tanking on this bear is tanking on easy mode. Defense Cap? No, I'm not chasing it as I spent a whopping three talent points. I can haz tanking! If you choose to AoE like a mad man then don't worry. Wanna single target nuke something that I'm not tanking to make your dps look better in a heroic? That's okay too. It's very difficult to focus on the mob marked with a raid skull icon. I also understand that your dps is very very important on trash mobs in an instance. It's okay that you have a 5.7k gearscore and the tank and healer have a 2.7k gearscore. I also understand that you question this tank "Hey Fuzzy, OMG, why can't you hold aggro?!". Why do I not have a problem with this? Is it because I have raiding type dps toons? Well yes that is exactly why I understand. I can even go into and instance on my descent dps raiders and not pull threat from the "undergeared" tank. I don't expect to come to his sand box and mke myself feel good since I'm in a heroic when I should be raiding. Is it because I'm a fail tank? Not, it's because I understand that you are truly fail dps as your dps is actually descent. You're just raidtarded. You know it and I know it. It's just easier to hide your fail in a 25 main raid instead of a five man heroic.

Six days into tanking heroics and I'm in full T9. Stamina gems coming out my ears and a little under 40k health. Defense cap not an issue and now the bad news. I have the Bluechicken blues. Fuzzy has tanked up to PoS heroic with little to no effort. The only reason I haven't tried HoR heroic is that Blizz has determined that I need better gear. It's been a fun but it's time for a break. On the seventh day I put Fuzzy down and decided to revisit the horde and see what Innoculated was up to. She needs lots of work so I spent Fuzzy's seventh day farming up some mats and some BoA equipment for hordie side Inno. Silly crusader mats cost way too much for how simple they are to come by. I also harassed Svenn to help mule some money over to the horde side for me. Nice loss of gold using the neutral AH (15% cut). After selling one gold plated thistle tea my hordie will be able to afford dual spec and epic flying.

I will hit up Fuzzy again soon. I did receive some "nice tanking" comments the other day from from raid geared players. These guys were not raidtards and actually wanted me to tank another instance for them. I can't complain as they had allowed me to chain pull a few instances as they effortlessly mowed down the mobs. I will write updates for Fuzzy if anything catches my attention, but I prefer to see what Svenn's thoughts are on his up and coming Warrior. You all remember the voting poll right? Well a warrior was voted for his next toon and it's creeping up to level 80.