One month today since Cataclysm night, the most anti-climactic expansion release ever! This was mostly my own fault, since I was tempted with the prospect of Christmas money and took on a big project that started launch morning. Meh. Pulling an all-nighter and *then* working hard all the next day for a new client was scary stuff.

Holyshell dinged 525 fishing at around 4am on the launch morning but alas, dinging 85 took rather more time. She got there eventually, and already has some decent PvP gear which is a lovely change! Normally it's ding > instances > heroics > raids but since raids hold no interest for her this time round she's been able to concentrate on collecting all the honour gear she can.

A couple of nights ago Lindy was a bad influence on me and convinced me to heal a random 85 instance. I'd never done any of them before and was somewhat stressing out! My "PvE" gear has over 1600 resilience on it, but in theory I had enough regen to cope. We zoned into an already-started Grim Batol where everyone was already dead, and I almost chickened out and fake dc'ed right there!

The tank and warlock were nice enough, but the shaman seemed to think it was his job to pull and hurry the move along which isn't great when you're having to drink after every other pull We made it to the pull before the last boss without any wipes (one tank death but he blamed the warlock distracting him on Vent so it's all good ) but unfortunately weren't quite fast enough to get it done before server restart. That was mostly my fault, but it seems their first healer quit on them so at least I was better than that!

Then last night we did an impromptu Mongoose Train which ended up in the longest instance known to man...Halls of Origination. Most of the bosses seemed easier going than in Grim Batol and my mana was lasting a bit better, but this is more likely due to Alaun's insistance on taking our time and making the most of crowd control, so thankyou for that and to everyone else who came because I'm much more confident in instances now

The downside is that I don't seem to be finding any drops that are upgrades from my PvP stuff, even taking reforging into account. This is bad crack because obviously if I'm pugging, the sight of me in full PvP stuff won't exactly strike confidence into people's hearts! I suspect JP gear is where it's at, unfortunately. Desperately need a new trinket to replace a level 80 one too, bahness.

All of this made me itch for more instancey healing, but that itch pales in comparison to the little voice in my ear yelling "omg do moar arena naow!" over and over again. It is an obsession lately. For 2s I'm teamed up with Dom's mage with the unspellable name, for a few games we did horribly until I invested in a +7 intellect enchant for my bracers....then we started winning about 80% of games! I've now replaced that enchant with something "better", and we suddenly started to get horrible matchups involving many warriors. If this pattern continues I shall be switching back to my lucky +7 enchant!

In 3s, my mana pool just doesn't cut it. Teaming up with Jorien and Laendriss, for the first time I have a team who can actually keep those damn warriors off me! Unfortunately my mana runs out and I die anyway, so this must be worked on before they kick me in disgust

As we all know, the Mongoose PvP Night (now known as PvPGoose) was a vague success with one decisive victory in Gilneas and a few decisive losses in anything involving flags. At least we've actually tried rated bgs and won one though, which is more than can be said for most other non-PvP guilds! Fingers crossed we can get enough for 15v15 week, cos there are a lot less flags involved in that bracket...

Thus concludes my first month Cata update, thrilling reading I'm sure you'll agree, hopefully there'll be something a bit more pro to report in a bit!