I was on Goldsong – dinged 65 before the last boss. Then we had a 61 priest healing, a 64 elemental shammy, a 61 fire mage, and a 61 fury warrior. We got through with no wipes although I think everyone died at some point besides me.

I found it far more difficult to keep aggro here then I did in Ramparts. Even with salvation the fire mage pulled aggro several times and needed a few blessings of protection from me. One time he ice blocked. A couple times he died.

Also making things difficult was the pace – the other 4 guys were going too fast for me. The warrior would mark and then pull unless I was real fast. A couple times he pulled while I was drinking. It didn’t matter too much on the trash but still it made things tougher. On the bosses we went nice and slow.

One of the toughest parts was before the second boss where you get 5 or so waves of 3 each. We decided to do zero crowd control to be efficient and I didn’t know which direction the next group would come from. Plus I should have been further from the rest of the group then I was.

During that stretch they told me to use consecration earlier. One thing I need to do better is keep consecration and holy shield up while still judging as often as possible. When I feel rushed like I did with those waves I forget to press buttons sometimes… Of course they could have just held off on the dps slightly longer…

I also had trouble on that boss with aggro because he ran into everyone else first (the other guys were closer to him when he came out of his little room). Plus he was kind of floating so I got several “you are facing the wrong way” messages.

Nothing dropped for me, a couple of mail items and a healing trinket did. I wanted the healing trinket for my healing set but the mage said he needed it for his main set – it had like 20 spell damage…

Well if you check out Goldsong, you’ll see he is now level 64 and IMO well geared with stuff from ramparts, the engineering helm (now complete with meta gem – 10% shield block and 12 defense – and with enduring talasite – 4 defense 6 stamina), and the Sporeggar shield.

The rest of my gear has cheap gems from the guy in Thrallmar but since things like light-touched breastplate will be replaced long before my goggles, I decided to go cheap on their gems and spend on my meta gem in the helm.

It has been a busy couple days, pugging Ramps a few times, but I think I’ll see a difference when I go back into the BGs with my extra level and improved gear.

As for pugging ramps, it wasn’t too bad. I think part of that was because I was tanking. We had some funny hunters on one run – one dude explained his sucking by saying he was on a friend’s toon – the other dude’s bow broke before the final 2 bosses. We didn’t end up wiping until that stupid dragon and we had him down to 20% or so. Well there was the one time the feral druid decided to pull like 20 guys when no one was ready. A simple “I pull” solved that issue and then we didn’t wipe until the dragon at the end.

Anyway, I know from playing Gnometosser that you don’t need to be super skilled to dps as a hunter. And I’ve done enough healing on Goldsong to know it is 10 times easier than tanking. So being the tank makes it easier to PUG because if I keep aggro off the healer he’d have to be amazingly sucky not to heal me (though that did happen when I was pugging Zul Farrak way back). And the DPSers can shoot their arrows or whatever as long as they don’t go AFK or something.

Pretty soon I’ll be pugging Blood Furnace. I think with my upgraded gear (didn’t have the meta gem and some other things for Ramps) I am 100% ready. My talents are messed up – will probably respec when I go do my 64 training – then do Blood Furnace.