How far will your gear take you in WotLK?

The question that occurred to me as soon as I copied my character over to the WotLK beta realm was: How good is my lvl 70 gear?

No, of course I didn't level up and see what gear is replaced along the way... that would be way too easy (and time-consuming!).

Instead, I rode straight through Borean Tundra to the higher level areas... and here are my observations:

1. Phyllixia and Shadow vs Elite 74 mob: easy.

2. Phyllixia and Shadow vs level 80 melee mob: easy (I assume the skull was 80 because there were some level 79s).

3. Phyllixia and Shadow vs level 80 caster mob: would have been easy, but I accidentally aggroed a 2nd mob (a lvl 80 melee mob of the same type as shown above) and Shadow died :(

Things to keep in mind:

• Cats are Ferocity (DPS) pets, not Tenacity (tanking) pets
• Shadow was specced into Bloodthirsty
• I was specced into Spirit Bond
• I was NOT wearing my 2-set Riftstalker bonus, which would have provided extra healing (to the tune of 15% of my damage) to Shadow. I just didn't need it! :D
  

Acknowledgements: This post was brought to you by Death, and lots of it.

(In my defence, I didn't realize that you get to the higher level areas of Northrend via Borean Tundra and not Sholazar Basin, so I spent a lot of time trying to find the path :P)