It’s been a few busy days now. On one hand work is keeping me quite busy and I don’t have the time I would like for WoW. On the other, Cataclysm is nearly upon us and having seen the new green quality items available simply put me off trying to attain better gear for my paladin.

So I level up a Shaman. Never played a healer before so I cannot say what changes have come with 4.0.1 shamans, but I have rarely been stressed to heal a group. Of course, all my leveling past lvl15 is done with the LFD tool, with the occasional shared quests delivered.

I have been really surprised at how easy it is to do my job. Especially when others know their job, as in when DPS knows how not to pull aggro even if they can. I have had very nice experiences with some tanks that were capable and enjoyed their role and communicated with me to find an equilibrium between maximum mobs pulled and survivability. Communication in a team effort of any sort is key.

However, there are the cases when the tank is incapable of holding aggro due to his fault, or when the tank is lazy and/or inefficient and DPS gets impatient and pulls mobs. Then the shaman healer (of low level – sub 60) is slightly more tested and engaged. Still, it was easy. Having an Earth Shield on the tank means almost never having to heal him directly and I find that incredibly powerful and lazy. I shall wait to see in further levels if there is any difference.

Jewel crafting has been a daily effort. With the changes in the gems my prior almost full complement of gems recipes has been reduced and I have been working to relearn them all. I still don’t understand why jewel crafters are the only people that have to work for four days to learn a new recipe. Even Inscriptors can buy books from the AH at a price no more than 50g at my server. Titanium ore goes for 9 to 10g each and titanium powder for 30g. That is 30 x 10 x 4 for one jewel crafting recipe if you buy it from AH. Furthermore, we still lack a 32slot bag even though our product does not stack… Maybe we will see some improvement in Cataclysm… but I don’t hold my breath!