Season 4... Finally...

I've been pretty much AFK for the last week or so because I was helping my brother move back home from Baltimore. I don't feel like I've missed much because I Hiahotah had saved up about 4000 arena points, 74997 honor points and had saved up at least 81 marks from every battleground. I also had over 3600 arena points, 50k honor points and 50 marks per battleground on my mage and a smattering of points and marks (and 4.5k arena points) on my paladin (who, frankly, is just about as well geared as he is going to be). I was ready.

Season 4 started yesterday and I happened to be off (taking a few days off after helping my brother move... It had been 13 days of work, driving and/or physical labor for me... I needed a few days to myself) for the day. I did some errands in the morning and starting at about 1:30, I started watching the realm status bar. As soon as Bloodscalp came up, I logged onto Hihahotah and started shopping. I got:

Brutal Gladiator's Kodohide Gloves
Brutal Gladiator's Reprieve
Vengeful Gladiator's Kodohide Tunic
Merciless Gladiator's Kodohide Spaulders
Merciless Gladiator's Salvation
Guardian's Kodohide Belt

When combined with the gear I already had, that brought my +healing to 1564 (with a +81 healing to weapon enchant still to go) and my resilience to 421. I immediately respecced resto to test it out in the daily BG and... I got insta-gibbed... By about 8 people in an AV that had been running for about 3 minutes - roughly the amount of time it takes for the Alliance charge to get to the horde base. An inauspicious beginning. It took a couple of rounds - some were laggy and it took me a couple of minutes to get into the swing of healing again, but I did manage to lead a couple of rounds in healing. In one, I kept a warrior and myself alive for about 5 minutes against 6 Alliance attackers. It was ridiculous. I can definitely see where a warrior and a resto druid could be problematic in 2v2.

I also picked up the season 4 gloves on my paladin and mage, Season 4 offhand and wand and the season 2 shoulders and helm for my mage (bringing her to 971 frost damage in her regular kit and 858 in her PvP set) and season 3 helm and season 2 shoulders for my paladin for tanking. It took me a full 3 hours to buy, enchant and gem everything but I find myself really looking forward to playing.

We tried the Midsummer fire festival boss, Ahune (we tried on Monday night with no success... six really frustrating wipes) last night and downed him twice in 5 attempts. We couldn't do it with Hiahotah, but when we used Hoban (the paladin) it went a lot smoother. I think with some refining of techinques, we could probably down him every time. He dropped a really sweet tanking cloak but I passed on it so our up and coming feral druid tank could take it.

All told, I'm excited to have new gear to play with. It's frustrating to solo as resto but I'm looking forward to making things go boom on my mage and tanking