I guess you could say my Pally doesn’t appear to be as lucky anymore. I dinged 100 and asked a couple of times for people to run normals with me for gear, noone was available, so I queued up and waited almost 40 minutes for a spot. YEURCK!
My first run was Grimrail depot. We wiped 5 times (3 on the first boss). I was complaining in guild chat and Violetknight came to my rescue offering to tank for me. So I left that group! Taxar came as well as DPS, then Nok joined us later to heal (Navi offered but was pugging BRF kills!!) We ran UBRS and Shadowmoon Burial. Taxar and Violet got about 6 pieces and I got 1 – which wasn’t really an upgrade – more of a side grade. LOL.
Being melee is something I had forgotten. I last played retribution pally in “Doom & Gloom” guild an eon ago, when the new Onyxia came out…what was that – catalcysm? Ages ago. UBRS was an all melee group as well which was kind of weird as we were all on top of each other.
Having spent 10 years, almost exclusively ranged, melee was hard. HARD!! I was almost dead so many times because of mechanics. In grimrail the tank kept leaving the mobs in the fire so we couldn’t actually attack them without dying. The healers were really struggling to keep the tank up plus all the rest of us (we went through 3 of them). It was much better with Violet tanking, and allowed me time to marvel at how truly awful I was in melee. Thank god it was normals and that Nok is an uber healing god – my repair bill would have been much bigger 
Anyway I decided after failing to get any gear from those runs I had to scope out other options, Blacksmith recipes are too expensive for the epics (the cheaper versions are too cheap as my current gear is mostly better). I bought a couple of BOE’s from the guild Doomslag Greatboots and Bracers of Visceral Force. Those two upgrades got me to 610, then I realised I could make Powerful Hexweave Cloak of the Deft on my mage! I got Haste and Mutli as the extra stats – not brilliant but not awful – I may and try to re-roll them this week. I however am now completely broke on my mage and have enough gold to last me maybe 2 months if I do not make any more. I may need to spend some time actually doing some dailies again 🙁
I also noticed I was only 3 taladite crystals off being able to make Glowing Taladite Pendant of the Fireflash – managed to get Haste and Crit as the extra stats. I had created a JC hut for gems mainly and had completely forgotten about the rings/necklaces you can make. I am now 100 crystals short of making a ring, but I am hoping if I can get some of my legendary chain done (currently needing to do skyreach) then that will bump me up a little as well.
And then, last but not least, I remembered I could make headpieces with my engineering. I was a little too low though being at about 460, I needed to get to 600 to be able to wear Razorguard Mechshades of the Deft. That got me Multi and haste which isn’t all that great either so I may re-roll them. I now have over 100 glider kits and shields (which I will send some to my mage) but I am also sitting at 617 for my ilevel!
This means I can now do LFR as ret initially and set my gear to be Holy, most of the epics I have will switch over to a holy set but if I can fill in the blanks with holy straight off that would be better – especially for weapon/OH. I am also going to give the proving grounds another attempt this week with the gear I have as perhaps the increase in ilevel will help me a little bit. I guess we will find out! Navi asked if i was going to raid with the casual/alts last night and I declined – perhaps next week I will be ready, but I am still wearing a few greens i would like to get rid of and I am completely useless when it comes to healing still.
I am not a fan of being thrown in the deep end…I would be the 1% that likely drowns 🙂