Last night our little PvP guild head back into Karazhan for a few more free epics - but mainly for Badges (think of those nice PvP cloaks) and a little break from Battlegrounds and Arena. In a change from last week our Raid Leader Maestroism (Tauren Shaman of our Guild) asked me and Tristan (our main Warrior) to both spec. Protection. So I picked a reasonably standard Prot build - including 3/3 Improved Thunderclap and 2/5 Improved Demo Shout - and then all the way through the Protection tree to grab all the neccessaries.

I can't tell you what my gear levels were like before I went in - but it was around 15k armour, 11k health and less than 400 defense. We cleared through the instance in one sitting this time. Which was nice. Took a fair number of AFK breaks tho, so we could have been done before 3am I guess - but it was a good laugh.

The main feature was that we killed Netherspite this time - which we previously missed. I think that it has now "clicked" how to do it in our minds - he'll be one of the easiest to drop again as he did seem like a bit of a pansie otherwise.

I picked up a couple of items that will help my cause of tanking gear for when we do things like this (although seeing as we have no problems completing the instance in what gear we already have, I guess I don't need to gear for it - but perhaps there is a ZA run in the winds sometime...)

One of my pickings was a [Shield of Impenetrable Darkness] which I have promptly put a +18 Stamina enchant on. Although it offers less Effective Health than my [Gladiator's Shield Wall] (also sporting a +18 Stamina enchant on it) - it does pack more Block Value (in total when you add the special on it) and definately gets me closer to the 490 defense that I am lacking.

I'd also managed to grab myself a [Eternium Greathelm] - which again was a far better solution to my helm situation while tanking. I've now socketed it with 3x[Solid Star of Elune]. My final looting of the night was a [Mithril Chain of Heroism] - which isn't a tanking item I guess. But it had my name all over it and will feature (for the time-being) in all of my gear sets.

I'm now sitting far prettier at 12114 Health, 15277 Armour with 419 Defense and a total of 30.73 avoidance (if I calculated avoidance properly). Those are all unbuffed values. Stood around Orgrimmar I'm starting to get whispered requests for Heroic runs. So before I slip back into my PvP build and farm some more honour - I may try and get some more gear and some more Badges.