1 down 2 to go

Got another level on the ranger last night so he is now level 78.

We started out hitting up the starting quests in Jarsath, but it wasn’t long before we decided to put a shard group together.

I was somewhat encouraged that maybe I know what I’m doing on the ranger.  Our group was me (77 ranger who hit 78 during the second instance), a 76 ‘zerker, an 80 fury, an 80 brigand, a 79 illusionist, and a 79 dirge.

I don’t run parse software and I typically ignore the parse information that gets posted by those who do.  In all honesty, I find the whole concept of parsing DPS annoying and a recipe for poor playstyle (“I can’t debuff because it lowers my parse.”  “I’m not doing battle rezzes because it will lower my parse.”  “I’m not going to wait for assist because it will lower my parse.”)  My opinion tends to be that parsing each and every fight is a piss-poor idea that serves little real point beyond stroking someone’s ego.

But that’s just me.

Anyway, having said that, I have to call myself out as a hypocrite as well because I did find I was curious to see how the parse was going last night.

My gear is ‘meh.’  I’m wearing a full suit of t8 master crafted, using 2 t8 mastercrafted weapons and a t8 mastercrafted bow and I’m using t8 crafted arrows.  My jewelry slots, belt slot, and all other slots are using a combination of Faydwer and Kunark quested gear.  My CA’s are a mixture of the flavor formerly known of apprentice 1 and adept 3’s.  The brigand has her fabled epic, the nice scout weapon from CoA, full t2 shard gear, and a mixture of master and adept 3 CA’s.  She’s level 80 and I was 77.

I was staying real close to her on the parse most of the time.

Granted, this is not her main character and, for all I know, she was holding back so as not to pull aggro constantly, but it still felt nice and felt like I am moving in the right direction with this guy.

We knocked out 2 shard runs… Scion of Ice and Anathema.  I added those shards to the shard collection I have waiting for whenever my ranger hits level 80.  I don’t currently have enough to get him suited out in full t2 gear, but I’ll be able to make his full t1 set and most of his t2 gear.  Hopefully we’ll be hitting some more shard runs in the coming days and I can add to the total.  It would be nice to be able to put him in a full suit of t2 right when he hits 80.

All I know for certain is that I still have a lot of work to do on him and hitting level 80 is just the smallest step.