Tuesday nights are my guilds “off” nights. As is the case with most Raiding Guilds the off nights become 10 man and heroic nights. On Tuesday nights after spending most of the evening hanging out with my wife and our pets I usually sign-on and try to run something for badges.

I was running Karazhan religiously because there were still a few gear upgrades available to me and I like it. Last night I strayed and healed for the regular Tuesday night ZA group who had lost their usual druid healer to WoW burnout.

I’ve been underwhelmed with ZA since it released for a three reasons-

  1. Loot Table- There aren’t any real gear upgrades for Resto Druids. At release there were a few decent upgrades but with the changes to mana regeneration in 2.4 I’m no longer stacking MP5 and the ZA gear is riddled with MP5 and Spell Haste neither of which are priorities of mine.
  2. Badges- Badge Count per Hour has aways been better in a Kara run. Before the announcement of 2.4 this wasn’t a priority for me as I’d already bought all the badge gear I wanted for Restoration and was buying gear for off-spec use. Now that 2.4 is here I find myself itching to pull in at least 20 badges per week. With only one night available Kara was an easy choice for this.

  3. Encounters- I don’t enjoy the Boss encounters in ZA. The mechanics might be newish, but new does not mean better or more interesting for that matter.

Just today I went through the loot table and realized that there is exactly one Healing upgrade available for me in ZA the Life-Step Belt. It still has MP5 meaning that even if I get it I’ll be looking for an upgrade somewhere else.

This brings me to a quandary: Do I ran ZA because the group leadership is good and for the most part the people going are the core guildies who are upgrading gear even if I’m not? Or do I run Kara on Tuesday because it’s fun, I’ll get more badges, probably get to roll on loot for my Balance set, and it’s so easy that with a little practice I think I could heal it solo…?

Is there some great aspect of of this instance that I am missing? Are my leafy appendages blocking the light that is the splendor of ZA?