Hitting the wall....again

Looks like I'm running into the wall again. Well, the level of content wall. I've gotten another toon to 80, she's appropriately geared as high as I can take her without getting into a raiding group.

My DK's Be Imba! gear score has risen significantly. It's currently at 505.27 with her optimal content level showing in Ulduar25, Ulduar10 Hardmodes and Colisum10. Currently, the only way I would see any of this content is in a PUG. I don't think I'm ready for that yet. I need to know the fights from a tank prospective before I throw myself in front of those bosses with the intention of trying to tank them. That's a heavy weight to carry on her little shoulders.

So, the question becomes...what do I do now? I can't seem to find the desire to do the grind and run needed for the achievements and such that I did on my lock. It just doesn't seem as much fun the second time around.

Our Alliance side guild is trying to get the members motivated to start raiding again. Long story short, if you haven't read my back posts, they were pushing progression hard and heavy through the summer. This meant that some people (Eto and I) weren't invited to do anything above Naxx level. They had the intentions of kicking ass to get to Yogg every week and grinding on him endlessly trying to down him.

Well this soon turned people off and the raiding became less and less until now they have only gotten a raid together twice since September. Now they are re-evaluating their situation and may realize that the push, push, push attitude they had earlier isn't what people wanted. So, it's possible Eto (on his mage) and I (on my lock) could get the chance to start doing Ulduar a couple times a week.

They are proposing shorter raid nights since every one's schedules are so hectic. Look like people are in favor of doing 2 or 3 a week for about 2 - 3 hours at a time instead of 3 - 4 nights a week at 4+ hours a run.

We've been talking about trying to split our time between the Alliance toons, who I miss so very much and the Horde toons, who Eto is so fondly attached to. This may be the key to allow us to do that. So far we've talked about committing a couple nights a week to the Alliance side, to raid on our 80s, to level our druid, etc and then a dedicating a couple nights a week Horde side to running our DK and Shaman for emblems and then leveling our Hunter/Shaman combo as well.

I hate to think we need an actual "schedule" but it's beginning to look like we may need one if we go with this idea.

Race Changes!

3 posts in one day? I need to shut up already.

But! Race changes are apparently up and ready to be used. I can finally make my human lock a cute little gnome.

I've wanted Kalyina to be a gnome since about the time she hit level 20. I know I should have just rerolled at that point but it was the week before Wrath launched and I didn't want to waste any time. I wanted to get caught up as quickly as possible so that I could play the new content with my guildies and the Boyfriend.

So now, Blizzard has finally answered my pleas. I can make her a gnome!

Well, whenever I'm no longer broke. *sigh*

Kalu'ak Fishing Derby - Patch 3.3.0

Quote from: Slorkuz (Source)
Coming in patch 3.3.0, the esteemed tuskarr of the Kalu'ak are proud to introduce to Northrend the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby, a test of fishing skill with a healthy dash of luck!

Every Wednesday beginning at 8 PM players can try to catch the elusive Blacktip Shark. Elder Clearwater sits in Dalaran for one hour awaiting the return of the quickest, most experienced fisher to bring him the first catch of the night. This champion fisher will be rewarded in-kind for his or her fishing expertise. Those who aren’t able to return with the first catch will still receive just reward for getting the Blacktip Shark to Elder Clearwater before he takes his leave.

It is said that these sharks’ favorite meal are the bite-sized Pygmy Suckerfish. Perhaps a hook in their waters will do the trick. Because of the increased concentration of fish, you have an increased chance to catch a shark from fishing pools. Don't forget, in patch 3.3.0 you never catch trash from fishing pools, regardless of skill.

The derby winner will receive a substantial chunk of experience (or money at maximum level) and gain 5000 reputation with the Kalu'ak. In addition, the champion will be given a choice between two unique rewards:

Dread Pirate Ring
Binds on Account
Unique-Equipped
Finger
+34 Stamina
Requires level 1 to 80 (80)
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 53.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 29.
Equip: Experience gained from killing monsters and completing quests increased by 5%.

Boots of the Bay
Binds When Picked Up
Feet
Requires Fishing (200)
Equip: Increased Fishing +15.

Use: Whisks you away to the finest drinking establishment in Booty Bay. (1 Day Cooldown)

To keep it interesting, the Achievement "Master Angler of Stranglethorn" has been changed to "Master Angler of Azeroth." This can be earned by winning either the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby or the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza.Please bear in mind this feature will be undergoing testing on our Public Test Realms and is subject to change prior to the release of patch 3.3.0

Needless to say, there are a couple things about this that interest me. First off, I love in-game fishing. As odd as that sounds. I actually enjoy fishing in the game and hate it in life. But I am super excited about the idea of no longer catching trash in fishing pools!! I often wonder how Kaly can be such a great (maxed level) fisherman and still be catching tangled fishing line all the time.

Secondly, it's a BoA +5% experience gain to add to the chest and shoulders that I will have to level my goblin!! Who isn't excited about that. But sadly, that does mean I actually have to win it.

My biggest concern with this? "Elder Clearwater sits in Dalaran for one hour awaiting the return of the quickest, most experienced fisher to bring him the first catch of the night" He's in Dalaran of all places, we have to not only fight competition but also the constant Dalaran lag on the loading screen when hearthing back to town?!? Boooo!

So if I ever see this awesome achievement, it may be long after the Cataclysm has arrived.

Go Tank GO!!

Wow, yesterday was busy, busy, busy!!

I think I've overcome my fears. For the most part. Last night was full of enough WoW to make up for any lack I had there of this weekend.

Started off simple. Let's run H-DTK, it's the daily, and would put me 1 emblem away from my Sigil of Insolence. Would have been the last I needed, IF I had remembered to pick up the daily heroic quest before running AN the night before. But it went pretty smooth, even with the stupid server lag that keeps sneaking up lately. The funny part of the entire run? It was ALL DKs, with the exception of Eto healing. Kinda nuts. Maybe I need to /who the people that whisper me before joining. I had the first 3 people, all DKs. One dropped, so I invited the next person to whisper me...also another DK.

Anyway, finished up DTK, I did have the quest for this one! Then why not do the normal daily..on heroic, it's HoL and I still want those shoulders. Pick up a much better blended group this time. Run goes super quick. Probably the quickest HoL run I've done yet. Oh, oh, oh, they dropped!! Iron Dwarf Smith Pauldrons off of General Bjarngrim! Yay!

So, get back to Dalaran and realize I'm 1 emblem short of getting my Tier 8 chest. You know we HAVE to do a quick h-VH run! The group we got for this one was really, really low on the dps meters so portals were popping before we had the last mobs killed in the prior one. But I think that's what happens when you run with a feral tank druid in kitty form and a new level 80 warrior. Still didn't have any problems and it gave me what I needed! Dropped my enchant and crap ton of stamina gems into Valorous Darkruned Chestguard and I was finally over 32,000 health unbuffed and over 40% Dodge/Perry. *happy dance*

Our little newbie level 80 warrior asks if we want to do H-CoS. I had previously been avoiding this one but was feeling pretty good about myself so why not? Off we go, adding a lock and another DK to our group. I had no intentions of trying to make the timer for the drake. I was pretty sure with it being my first time tanking it and the low dps from the warrior, we'd never make it. So I didn't really rush but we had good placement of the groups, the DK was kicking out 3200+ DPS and I dared look up at the timer when we hit the town hall...16 minutes remaining...seriously?!? Well the time stop boss went down and we had 11 minutes left on the timer. I eased through the hall, grabbing groups of elites, finishing them off then moving on. I was trying desperately not to give Eto a heart attack. But I must not have been too hard to heal. We down the Drake boss with 6 minutes left on the timer on my first time though!!!

Only myself and the warrior needed the drake, everyone else had it. Sadly, his 91 beat my 42. But oh well, I got the satisfaction of knowing I tanked CoS, timed run, on my first attempt!

So that wrapped up my eventful evening. Eto went on to successfully heal VoA10 while I headed to bed, a very happy and content DK!

Orc today...gnome tomorrow

Well more like Draenei today...Taruen tomorrow. That's right, my pretty little Draenei Shaman is now a cow. Though I'm sure she's not too happy about this....it's done. I'll add the screen shots soon.

My pretty Draenei Shaman before....


And how the heck did I become a COW!!! (after) She didn't look too happy about the change.

(Nice glitch! I logged out on my horse and when I transferd, I logged in on it Horde side. Sadly, I lost it as soon as I dismounted...was nice while it lasted. )

Project: Quiet Weekend - FAIL

So the plan for the quiet weekend, was pretty much a failure. Well to some degree. It was a quiet weekend. So extremely quiet that I don't remember playing much at all.

Sadly, I did some farming on Saturday...but my total play time was very minimal. Maybe...3 hours? Sunday wasn't much better.

I did get brave and tank H-AN last night. Too bad it was the daily and I didn't freaking pick it up. It was the whole reason I ran that horrible instance. It would have put me 1 emblem away from my sigil upgrade. But of course, port back to Dalaran and realize, I never picked up the freaking daily. *sigh* Logged off after that.

Bring on the weekend

To say last night was quiet, would probably be an understatement. It was quiet, to the point of border line boring. That being mainly my fault. Did my JC daily, messed with my bank toon, duel spec'd my DK to unholy DPS just so she can have a ghoul all the time. Nothing major, nothing exciting.

The daily heroic was OK. Still scared of that place so we didn't do it. Maybe tonight, who knows. Have just found myself really tired lately and sleep sounded more impressive then playing. So that's what I did.

Plans are still on for this weekend to the best of my knowledge. Think we're going to faction transfer Kalyista (my shammy) as well as server transfer Kuta (Eto's hunter). Not that we will be able to play these together, since we barely find the time to play Kalyara and Eto together around work and family schedules. But it will give us both something else to do and hopefully me a little bit of relaxation tomorrow.

Wish I had more important things to blog about. Just seems my thoughts aren't running that deep as far as the game goes.

Project: Quiet Weekend

Yep, making plans. Seems I've been stressed out, both in game and in life, for the last two - three weeks. So this weekend, I'm going to concoct a game plan. It's suppose to be cold and raining, what better weather to stay home and relax with a little WoW my way. Grab the sweats, treat myself to a little junk food and a little game time.

Normally, I would have a step-by-step list of things to get done. But that adds to my stress lately so no lists. Just have some fun. Run some heroics, maybe get into a Naxx run, maybe a little Wintergrasph fun, farm a little. It's a little odd, I do admit, but farming is a relaxing event for me. I love cranking up some toons and flying around mining ore. After all, you never know what you're going to get! I also like the fishing. Still want that turtle.

Oh! I know what I'm going to do. Maybe it's time to make the jump...Kalyista to the Horde! That sounds like fun. A little mindless leveling. A toon I don't have to be so worried about. No responsibility, no aggro to hold, etc. Just a little bit of all around DPS goodness.

Hopefully the servers aren't lagging out, the housework is done before Saturday and everything lines up to give me this much needed time.

Quiet Night

Ran H-HoL last night. It went very smooth. Had a couple great pug people, including a hunter that I enjoy running with. Everyone was patient, we didn't have any wipes and finished in a timely manner even with the horrible server lag.

Sadly, my shoulders didn't drop. Guess we can keep trying. I know the instance and have completed it successfully so no need to avoid it any longer.

Next to tackle...H-CoS and H-OK. We'll see about those.

Gear Upgrades

Looks like I've been focusing on some of the wrong rep factions. I have three substancial upgrades available to me, pre raid. But it means I'm going to have to overcome my fear of two specific heroics.

Breastplate of the Solemn Council - Revered with Wyrmrest. (Sadly I am only honored)
This will provide me:
+73 Armor
-11 Strength
+14 Stamina
+2 Defense Rating
+56 Expertise

Iron Dwarf Smith Pauldrons - Drop off of General Bjarngrim (1st boss in H-HoL ahhhhh!)
I have avoided tanking this instance. Along with H-HoS and H-CoS, simply because I'm afraid of these three. But, this will provide:
+129 Armor
+24 Strength
+18 Stamina
+10 Defense Raiting
+40 Perry
-24 Expertise

Bindings of Dark Will - Drop in H-CoS.
Stats compared to my current bracers:
+75 Armor
+15 Strength
+36 Stamina
-21 Defense Rating
+30 Perry

With that being said, I could work on getting Bracers of Herald, but I'm not sure which heroic scares me more. CoS or H-OK.
Stats to compare to current on this one:
+107 Armor
+7 Strength
+45 Stamina
-16 Defense Rating
+49 Perry

Now just to make myself get in there and do those heroics. Maybe I'll need a drink or two....

Heroic from Hell

Shadow Council has been experiencing some major lag lately. I'm not talking the normal Dalaran lag. Not even the normal holiday lag. It's really bad. Click to loot and wait about 60 seconds, try to send mail and it's going to take about 3 - 4 MINUTES, need to trade...good look.

So, last night, I was all up for logging out and hitting the couch for a movie and a wow free night. However, Eto was 1 emblem away from his Tier 9 shoulders so we were going to do the daily heroic. No big deal, it's DTK, that's simple and fast, right?

WRONG!

We get the group together and into the instance we go. Yank, yank, pull, pretty smooth up to the last group of mobs in the first hallway. By this point the lag is getting so bad, the time it's taking Eto to cast heals and then for them to actually hit me, has my health meter doing crazy stuff. Full one second almost dead the next, etc. Healer reaches over to grab a drink and boom we're all dead. WTF?!?

We corpus run back, rez, rebuff and move on, clear through the next room and the boss pretty easily, nothing major. We down the boss and then poof, the DK dps drops group and just logs out. Nothing is said, no explanation, he doesn't answer our whispers, just logs off. Seriously? Ok, so lets 4 man it. It's just DTK, no biggy.

We move on through the spiders, little to no drama here and then it's the second boss. Hunter takes the top of the stairs while the mage and I take the bottom elites. The shield comes down and the mage and I go after the boss. I see boxes popping up all over Eto's screen..spell book, character sheet, talent tree, etc...he's trying to type to tell the hunter to come down and has missed the enter button to open the chat box. Mage dies, health is low, boss is almost down..Army of the Dead to the rescue! We down the boss, rez the dead and take a deep breath.

Moving on, nothing major till we get to King Dred...let me say, this was a nightmare. There is fear everywhere, he calls the raptors, mage gets aggro, we all start lagging, the next thing I know, I'm dead and Eto and the hunter are running in place. *sigh* Wipe, try again. Goes about the same, one second my health is full, the next I'm on the ground, 2 minutes to try to release. SKIP THIS BOSS!

Next couple of pulls are ok, slow casting, etc. Last pull in the hall before going up the stairs doesn't' go so smooth. I see Eto finally try to sit down to drink...I'm marking the mobs in the group when all of a sudden..*poof* the hunter pops out of thin air in front of me and is shooting the mobs. I run, try...and I mean TRY...to drop D&D..nothing happens...chasing after the mobs who are chasing after the mage who is running. I'm hitting Blood Boil, Plague Strike, Icy Touch..nothing. I'm just running in a circle chasing the mobs chasing the mage. Finally D&D drops..crap it's way over there!! Run towards the red stuff....mage dies, mobs aggro Eto, Eto dies, mobs finally aggro me..but I still can't attack...oh...nevermind..I'm dead too.

It was something straight out of a comic strip. The mage running, mobs on the mage, tank chasing the mobs..we all fall down. That DTK run took an hour an a half! Really, no kidding. We died 5 times in a lowbie heroic....wtf Blizz! Fix our server please!!!

Vault of Archavon

Yep, broke through my fear...baby steps right?

Tanked 10man VoA last night. Well more so off tanked it. There was a pug group in trade looking for a OT and healer. Just so happens I can OT and I have my own pocket healer. So, before I could let my nerves change my mind, we accepted.

It honestly went very smoothly. We had one wipe on Koralon. Which I wasn't really surprised. I figured it being my first time we'd have a death or two. We had him down to about 6% when I died and his next meteor fist strike hit the target for a lot of damage since I wasn't there to split it. Let me just say, trying to stay right on top of another player when they are moving around isn't as easy as it sounded! But it was successful, sadly he dropped Mage and Warlock items and we had neither in the party.

Emalon, oddly, was a piece of cake. I took the boss and the warrior took the adds. I found this a little unusual, I figured I would take the adds since I've always considered warriors to be better 1 target tanks. Regardless, we downed him on the first try. He did drop PvP pants for me, since I was the only DK and caster gloves for Eto, who was also the only Shaman in the group.

Now Archavon, he was a little confusing. I had seen this fight a ton of times on my lock, and pretty much knew that the tank would get yanked up and the OT would taunt when the aggro dropped. But we just went charging in and occasionally I would get a whisper that said "taunt" from the MT, then he'd taunt back off of me. I think, from what I've heard, normally the tanks keep aggro till they are yanked up, then the other picks up and keeps it till he is yanked, etc. So I assume because most people were over geared for this fight and ready to go, we just went with it. Was slightly odd that they instructed the healers to dps as well.

Anyway, I have pretty comfortable with that raid now, on 10 man at least. My next task, Naxx. I think I should be able to handle that pretty easily since my gear is pretty much above the Naxx10 level.

"The List" Revisited

Well, if I have no Motivation maybe it's time to go back to the "Before Cataclysm Strikes Bucket List" and see what's left for me to do, what I no longer wish to do and make a couple updates so here goes:

1. Kill Onyxia and do the 60 head quest - She is being vamped up to 80 in November - TOO LATE
2. Classic Dungeonmaster Achievement - Work on this Kalyara/Kalyina
3. Explore Eastern Kingdoms Achievement - Work on this Kalyara/Kalyina
4. Explore Kalimdor Achievement - Work on this Kalyara/Kalyina
5. Classic Raider Achievement - Work on this Kalyara/Kalyina
6. The Argent Dawn Achievement - Scratch this, Kalyina needed this for her title, she's Alliance side
7. They Love Me In That Tunnel Achievement - Scatch this
8. Hero of the Zandalar Tribe Achievement - Another for Kalyina and we've kinda stopped doing this too.
9. Brood of Nozdormu Achievement - Don't know about this
10. Hydraxian Waterlords Achievement - Scratch this...not enough time.
11. Reins of the Winterspring Frostsaber - Scratch this, Alliance only and running out of time.

12. Level my horde DK to 80. - DONE!!
13. Level my Shammy from 71 - 80. - Should be able to do this, she's moving Horde side.
14. Level my Druid from 71 - 80. - Hope to get around to this
15. Level a horde toon from 1 - 80. I'm up in the air on this. I hate to miss the story line, never seeing the lore from that side but I am torn on wanting to level another toon. - Tried this, didn't go so well.. *sigh*

So the list isn't going so well so far. Most of this was made when my main focus was my Alliance side toons or when we were splitting our time between the two. So, lets add some thing I can do for Kalyara..there has to be Horde stuff I want to do.

16. Exalted with all major factions (Kalyara)

17. Collect the pets that may go away when the Cataclysm hits

18. Make Kalyista a cow. Yeah, yeah..but cows are at least cutter then orcs.

19. Build up the guild/begin raiding on a regular basis. This is not going to be easy.

20. Successfully tank all of Naxx

Anyone have any other ideas?

Motivation

I'm slowly loosing motivation on my Death Knight. I'm not sure what is causing this or is it motivation on the game? This is a common reaction to me getting a toon to 80 and having her there long enough to get decent gear. I slowly, or not so slowly, loose motivation with her once she gets her gear, mounts, rep and a little gold in her stash.

The proof of this? I have an utterly awesome level 80 lock Alliance side who has pretty nice (read, a lot of tier gear and raid drops) gear, is a couple mounts away from her Albino Drake achievement, has the Ambassador title, is exalted with all her factions and the Argent Crusade, etc. What is she doing now? Just sitting in Dalaran, with her loyal demon companion passing the days away.

The same can almost be said for my 80 Priest, if I cared enough about healing to want to play her more. Honestly, I thought about blowing the dust off her and trying to get her to an acceptable level. She was my main all the way up to Wrath after all. At one point in time she too was my pride and joy. In the days of BC she was geared up, raid healing and strutting her stuff in Shatt with everything to be proud of. But I also grew tired of her.

Now, fast forward to present day and my once cute baby DK. Don't get me wrong, she's still cute but there is something missing. Oh, yeah..motivation. So this may just be the norm for me. Or it may be that I see Eto going off to do bigger and better things. Quickly bypassing me in gear, rep and over-all standing. He did Ulduar 25 Saturday night. I encouraged him to do this..."for the betterment of the guild". You know, with the one guildie that we HAD that was 80 and wanting to raid. (Said guildie also /gquit sometime in the early morning hours afterwards). But I won't get on to the guild standings, that's depressing enough. He made a pretty good impression on the guild he ran with, as he was invited to join their chat channel so he could be involved in future stuff. Future being the next day, when they invited him to do Sarth+3. Unfortunately, we were doing the Headless Horsemen boss and he didn't get to go.

But anyway, my DK now has pretty decent gear. I was able to get her awesome Spiked Deathdealers made last night. She is sitting in all epics, minus 3 pieces. I know there are still things I can improve on. Her Be Imba! score isn't so bad, 442.56. From what is suggested I need to be in 25 man content and Ulduar 10 content at this point. But guess what? Those things scare me. So, instead of tackling my fears, what do I do? I wander around Dalaran and read Trade chat. This is where I wish we had a guild with 80s that way I could move on to this content without the ramification of doing it with a pug. Pugs are very unforgiving of a baby tank in training.

Maybe our jump from Bronzebeard to Shadow Council came a little too early. A little more raid experience and confidence would have done a DK good.

Neutral Auction House Ninjas? WHA?!?

One of the main reasons Eto and I moved our Horde toons to Shadow Council was to have some kind of access to the wealth our Alliance toons were hording. (No pun intended) The idea was to be able to switch stuff, with little cost, between factions on the neutral action house.

Last night we decided to move all the frozen orbs, gems and a few crafted BS items we needed from Eto's toons over. The idea, I would stand at the AH and snatch everything he listed at a somewhat low cost.

We post the first stack on the AH, a stack of goldclover, and as soon as we hit "post" we get the message "A buyer has been found for your auction...". Needless to say, I was a little shocked. Literally, this was as soon as he hit post auction. I hadn't even had time to hit my search key to pull up the auction.

So, we assume it was some lucky person that happen to grab the item. We change the price to be 2g per stack and drop one more stack. I successfully bought this one and 8 others before it happens again.

I /who the name of the auction winner and it's a level 1 orc located in BB. Interesting. A /target finds the orc in question hiding behind the boxes at the back of the auctioneer. I whisper him with a simple "Nice AH trolling". About the same time there is a yell coming through that says:

"If you are attempting to transfer items between factions using the AH be warned there is a thief waiting to nab your stuff. Be sure to check behind all boxes around all three auctioneers before posting anything. (yes there are 3)"

After whispering the nice alerter I find out this guy has been creating 3 different level 1 toons daily for the past couple of weeks, parking them near the AH and buying out all lowly priced auctions. Luckily, I hadn't posted the orbs or crafted gear yet. Over the course of the next hour and a half, I found all three of his toons and continued to alert anyone else trying to use the AH for item faction transferring.

Seriously...how much money could this guy really be making. I added all three toons to my friends list and for the remainder of the night (about 4 hours) he was on one or the other parked in BB.

Eto woke up early this morning to see if he was still around. The toons had been deleted and there were no level 1 toons around the AH. He was finally successfully able to transfer all the items via the AH but I'm pretty sure this will be the last time we attempt this.

As much as I hate the guy, I have to say he came up with a pretty good idea. At the cost of being a total ass. How could he possibly buy out items, at random prices, that quickly without using some kind of hack? Yes, there are only 3 pages of items on the AH (201 to be exact) but even continuously hitting the search button to test his abilities, I couldn't find newly posted items fast enough to beat him to them. He can't possibly know the name of random items people are listing so how is he able to buy out without a bot?

Sheesh.

Yes...proof I really am a girl

So, I'm going to get slapped for this one I bet and "zomg, girl!" I am.

Why are Horde toons so ugly? Seriously. I have been thinking about transfer (faction transfering) one of my Alliance toons Horde side so I have some variety but...yuck!


Make my cute Draenei Priest with her adorable pig tails a Horde? Ewwwww
Make my pretty Nightelf druid, with the awesome hair a cow? Ahhhhhh
Make my Draenei Shama a....cow?...troll?....orc? *hide*
My warlock...what? Another Bloodelf.

*sigh*

Man Overboard!

Well, looks like we lost our first guild member last night. Some time late, after we had logged off. Our funny little level 80 mage jumped ship in the middle of the night. Not that I can say I blame him, or didn't see it coming, that's normally the way it goes. If a new guild doesn't grow fast enough to keep the few members it has occupied, you start loosing people.

Sadly, that was a big hit to my confidence. It doesn't help that every guild Horde size on Shadow Council seems to be recruiting these days. *sigh*

Back to the drawing board. Maybe we're going about this all wrong. Anyone have any ideas or know how to successfully grow a new guild? Apparently, what I did when I built LC doesn't work too well with only 2 people working on it.

A Time Machine

That's what I find myself wishing for tonight. Not sure why, I'm just staring at the screen wishing I could go back to the days of Burning Crusade and Last Call. The days of drunken Kara runs and crazy attempts at ZA. Those were the days that were fun. Those were the people that I miss. They were my guildies, my friends...they just made the game fun.

It's odd how at the time things seemed so bad. Guild drama, responsibilites, rebuilding...but looking back, those weren't so bad. I miss those days, I miss those people, I miss all of it. Even the crazy people..in the end, it all wasn't so bad.

Knowing this, I think everything I've been trying to do lately is somehow to get back to that. Though, I think the realization has set in that this will never be that. Those people are long gone, no longer playing, server transfers, etc. Taking a break from the game and coming back...that's all great and dandy...but I'm not coming back to the same things.

Wrath is awesome. The added zones and the DKs, the new raids and quests and instances and such...but it's just not the same.

PUGs and Such

The guild didn't see any more growth last night. That was probably because we weren't sitting in town spamming in "Guild Recruitment" or Trade or flying from zone to zone to spam in the local channels. Instead we took a break from recruiting and spent a little time with a couple guildies and ran a heroic or two.

The first one wasn't so good. We choose Nexus, because Eto "may" be able to use the mace off the last boss. Though I still think his titansteel mace is better, but anyway. We had to pug two spots for this run, we got a rogue and another DK. Surprising, my problem was with our mage and the rogue.

I wasn't loosing aggro to them by any fault of my own. Neither of them seems to understand that SKULL dies first. I was constantly having to taunt X or Square off the rogue so when our Mage drew aggro, my taunt was always on cooldown. We didn't wipe, but lost the rogue and the mage twice each. I'm still surprised that people at 80 don't understand kill order. How can you go 80 levels without understanding that? Oh well, think I need to make a macro that spams my kill order.

Second heroic was H-VH...seems I like this one. It went pretty smooth actually. No dumb-ass-Paladin in the party this time. We ran with Ben's Hunter, a pug mage and a pug boomchicken. The group went smooth, dps was low, but it was a somewhat sad group. Neither the mage, nor the boomchicken were very friendly. There went all attempts to swoon people over to our guild. Can't very well convince people I'm sweet, funny and friendly if they aren't very friendly themselves.

Another, "Omg, your 80?" surprise from the VH run. A caster ring dropped off of one of the bosses, I greed to DE and the conversation went like this:

Me: I'm greeding to DE, we can roll at the end.
Boomchicken: That's an upgrade, can I need?
Me: Sure, go for it.
Mage: Oh, can I need too?
Me: If it's an upgrade for you, both of you can need roll for it.
-Mage wins loot roll-
Me: Grats (insert Mage name here)!
Mage: huh?
Me: ...you won the roll, grats
Mage: Trade it?
Me: ...It's in your bag, it says you received the ring...
Mage Whispers: Do I give you my old ring for the DE thing?

Hmmm. Are we sure this is not a bought account, how can you be 80 and not realize that equipment is soulbound and soulbound can't be DE'd. I just wanted to hug him. Though we continued on with the pulls in a pretty quick manner, as VH usually goes, and I didn't have time to explain this to him.

What a Long Strange Journey...

I love the name of this achievement...though I think totally different when I read it.

Eto and I were discussing, as we often do over dinner, things about WoW. The topic of conversation went to:

"We've done some memorable, fun and crazy things in WoW"

So my question to you guys...wish I had more readers, since I'll love to get responses to this...what's your most fond, memorable, strange or otherwise note worthy achievements in the game. Not the Blizzard achievements, but your favorites.

Here are a few of mine:

- The night Last Call downed Curator for the first time. This was HUGE for us, a little, unknown, so very casual guild. The sound on vent that night was deafening.

- Our first down of Prince, when the only people alive for the last 5 minutes of the fight were my priest and Eto's Paladin tank.

- Downing Heigan with my lock, the tank and one healer. Long, long, looong fight! Not to mention tanking him the first time on my DK and downing him on my second try!

- Finding the baby Tauren in Dragonblight. This was too cute!

- Finding the love of my life. Yeah this one's sappy, but true. Meeting Eto, yes..in a game, is a once in a lifetime feeling. Spending the rest of my life with him, thanks to WoW, is priceless and my most memorable gaming moment. =)

- Having one of the higher end raiding guilds on our server try to recruit my lock. *grin* this was big for me.

There are so many memorable moments I could list but none that are super exciting to anyone else. But I'd love to hear from other people.

Growing Guild

Woohoo!! Faded Delusions hit 13 members last night! Ok, so that's no major feat, but I was excited. Thanks in part to 3 awesome friends who decided to faction transfer an Alliance toon to horde side to come play with us. My friend Whiteeagle, or Ben as he is really known and his new girlfriend Sarah joined us Horde side late last night. Ben and I go way back from the early days of my adventures into Last Call. He was a pugged spot into one of our first Kara runs and I snagged him that night.

To say I was excited to get Ben over to the guild is an understatement. Getting his Mom, was an even bigger thrill. Ben, though very much an adult, has one of those awesome Mom's we all wanted ours to be. Most people would see her more as his best friend then his Mom. She quickly became the guild Mom in LC and we all loved her. Ben and Iris are Puerto Rican and to them, nothing is more important then family. So have part of my extended family back in game with me, was enough to have me squealing last night!

The guilds current populations consists of the following:
80 - Dk (myself)
80 - Hunter (Ben)
80 - Resto Shaman (Eto)
80 - Mage
80 - Hunter (haven't seen this guy on much, but been warned by the mage that he could be trouble)
75 - Ret/Prot Paladin
73 - DK (Ben's Girlfriend)
39 - Warrior (Random player invite)
19 - Warlock (Ben's Mom)

That's the main roster as of now, plus a couple other random lower level toons and alts. Eto was also busy last night talking to an 80 Tauren Warrior who may be interested in joining as well as a couple of people he pugged OS10 with that may also be interested.

So, all in all, looks like we may be able to make this work. As always, if anyone reading is looking for a home, or interested in having an Alt on Shadow Council, we're always glad to have you!

Dumb Ass of the Week

another dumb ass story:

So I've been wanting the pants that drop off the last boss in H-VH for awhile. Have ran it several times and those pants had not dropped. Last night, we decided to give it another go.. this is how it went:

Me: LF1M dps for H-VH
Dumbass-Paladin: I'll dps
-Dumbass Paladin joins the group-
Dumass-Paladin: You want me to tank it?
Me: No, I'll tank it, I'm not spec'd for DPS
Dumbass-Paladin whispers: I just hope you're ready for my insane aggro, I have 5000 ap
*sigh*

We continue on with the instance, everything is going smooth. First boss, the water elemental guy, goes like this:

Me: Make sure you guys hit the switches please
First Helpful Hunter: I'll get the second one.
2nd Helpful Hunter: I'll get the third
Dumbass-Paladin: Don't pull the switches, it's fun.
Me: We're pulling the switch, please take the first one

Of course he does not pull the switch. No big deal, he's unsuccessfully too busy trying to pull aggro off of me. It's just extra needless healing for Eto to have to worry about without the switches but anyway, we survived it.

Second boss, the Consortium looking guy, that normally gets kited around the top goes something like this:

Me: Going to kite the guy around the top, let me grab him before you dps.

Everyone runs up the stairs, Eto drops totems and we're ready to rock..except...dumbass-Paladin drops consecration under the boss and proceeds to attempt to tank him. I manage to taunt aggro back off guy eventually and we down the boss...

Dumbass-Paladin whispers: Sorry, I just wanted to burn that guy, not kite him

So, again I sigh and shake me head and we continue on with the trash pulls. The next set of conversations really irked me.

Dumbass-Paladin whispers Eto: Nice heals ass
Eto: What, are you complaining we haven't died yet?
Dumbass-Paladin: you have to heal me cause I'm pulling threat
Eto: Oh you mean the non-existent aggro you're pulling? Watching Kaly's threat meters you're not pulling aggro off her

We finally finish the run, with the ret pally complaining that he doesn't understand why his dps was so low in the run, that he has 5000 AP, he should be pulling way more dps and then begins to lecture the hunters on what they needed to be doing.

*Adds Dumbass-Paladin to the ignore list*

I had to laugh a little at him. Though he was annoying and nothing but a pure ass...I felt a little sorry for him. He honesty thought he was the ubber elite Paladin and in the end..never broke 2.5K dps on my meter.

*sigh* Stroke your own ego...people can be so full of themselves sometimes.

New Gear, new guild...Now What?

It's been a pretty exciting, though very tiring, weekend.

As my previous posts have implied, we made the move from Bronzebeard to Shadow Council late Saturday night. I bought the guild charter on my DK, since I figured it would be easy to get sigs on her then on a level 1 bank toon, and headed out to the troll/orc starting area. With the help of a few great wow_ladies readers, we had the charter signed and turned in before I logged that night.

I spent most of the day on Sunday trying to find and recruit new members. Wow, I remember how much I hated recruiting in the beginning days of LC. Sadly, or happily maybe, by the end of the day I had recruited 5 new people. The level 13 undead something quit when we advised we do not promote boosting after he begged in /g for a deadmines run. Nothing lost there. But we do have a level 74 prot/ret pally, 80 something mage and a 80 survival hunter. Our 4th new member is a level 40ish warrior.

We'll see how the guild growing goes. It's a long tedious process, especially when you're starting a guild with only two people. At least when I had LC growing, I had a couple friends as officers from the beginning, that were helping us find new members.

On a happy note! I'm so glad to be back on a server were people actually use the LFG option!! Eto and I were able to pug several runs of normal ToC and a h-VH run with no problems at all. It's so nice to pop into LFG or Trade and ask for 3 dps and have them in 2 minutes flat, as opposed to sitting in LFG for 3 - 4 hours and never getting a group!

Now my dilemma. I got some pretty good drops last night. A couple really good ones actually. The problem being that now my defense is way over the cap. Currently sitting at 550 defense and feel like I'm wasting stats. Looking at my armory page (like on kalyara in the crew tap) my stats look pretty good to me, I just can't figure out where to drop the defense at.

That leads to another issues. It seems my mitigation needs to go up. Here are my stats with the new gear:

HP: 28,461 (unbuffed)
Dodge - 19.89%
Parry - 15.21%
Defense - 550
Armor - 14,347
Strenth - 855

From what I understand these are the points to keep in mind:
- Dodge is greater then Parry since parry is a direct reflection of your strength (25% gained from)
- Expertise on DKs does not effect spells and most of our abilities are therefor this stat is not as important to us as say a Warrior.

The hard part is I can't seem to find a straight answer that says, X is how much dodge percent and/or parry percent you need. I've read various post that say adding the two together and getting close to 40% is a good starting point. I've read various posts that give detailed math formulas that sound great but make little sense. And then I read further and they go on to inform that those formulas are geared more towards warriors and paladins. *sigh*

So, anyone have any thoughts or ideas to back any of this?

Faded Delusions

So the guild is up and running and currently recruiting.

If anyone is on Shadow Council and interested, we'd be glad to have you.

Faded Delusions is a newly formed guild with experienced leadership. We are a fun, casual, family friendly guild located Horde side. Currently trying to form a core 10man raid group. We believe in being able to play your toon at the spec you choose. We support your decision and will help you learn to raid as we go. If you're in need of gear, have no fear, we'll be starting at Naxx10 level for badges and loots.

We're dedicated to keeping the game fun and keeping the drama out! You can whisper Kalyara or Etolani for more details and invites. Feel free to reply to this post with comments or your toon names and we'll be glad to get in touch with you. We welcome all classes, all levels, all alts and all mains. So if you're just looking for a fun, toss around guild for your alts, we'll take that too.

Happy Hunting all!

I did what?

Main tanked Naxx...seriously? Yep, I did. Well, 2 wings at least. We started, very late, with spider wing. Cleared it in less then an hour and the only wipe came on Maxena. Honestly, I don't think this was any fault of anyone in the raid, just bad timing on the wraps and the enrage. I went down when she was at about 5%. The off tank, who was a prot warrior attempting to dps the fight with a two hander, tried picking her up and went down in two shots. So the group wiped, ran back in and took her down on the second try.

We moved on to Plague quarter next. Honestly, no big problems here but one of my all time biggest tanking highs? That's right...I tanked, successfully on my second try..Heigan. This has always been my favorite fight in Naxx. I love the safety dance. I've always done it from the caster platform as dps, and it took me a few minutes to realize I can stop attacking and run to the next zone and not try to back up to it, before I got the rotation down. The first attempt went on for awhile, with all the dps dying in the first teleport stage. It came down to me and two healers and between us we got him to about 50%. I wiped after my healers did...shhh, I'm not bragging really! Ok, so I am bragging...enough that I had to screenshot it! Cause, if there's not proof, then it didn't happen right?

With the late start, we decided to call it after the second wing and the guild was going to attempt to complete it later. I say "the guild" since I'm not longer a member of it.

We finally put our money where I mouth was and went through with the transfer. Or we're going through with it as I write this post. Patiently waiting for it to complete so we can get settled. I think this was a little more disheartening after last nights run. I think both Eto and I expected Naxx to go horribly and give us more reason to move. Fortunately..and surprisingly it didn't happen that way.

So leaving today was a little more somber then I expected. But it's somewhat necessary for us both. With Bronzebeard being a west coast server the times are just too late for us. A raid starting at 6:30 server for them is 9:30 Eastern time for us. That's pretty late when you have a family and full time jobs to account for.

On a happier note, we did decide on a guild name for the Horde side Shadow Council guild. My tiny bank toon/goblin name holder is currently the proud bearer of the guild charter for Faded Delusions. Now just to get sigs on that charter and get to work. *sigh* Oh well, no pain no growth..or is that no pain, no gain..either way..looks like we have a job to do.

Oh..and no I didn't get any drops from Naxx last night. Eto did get an awesome caster shield off of Maxina though!!

Naxx Nightmares?

Looks like Eto and I hung around long enough to do Naxx tonight. Honestly, I think I actually had nightmares about it last night. We'll see how it goes. But afterwards we are planning to transfer to Shadow Council.

I spent what little gold reserve I had on Kalyara to buy a few item from the AH to resale on the new server. Ebonweave was one of the things that was going almost double on Shadow Council. We'll see how that turns out.

I'll let everyone know how tanking Naxx goes tonight. Keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck!

Happy Hunting!

Heroic Happiness

H-DTK was the daily on our server last night! (Still on Bronzebeard for the moment). Needless to say I was a happy Tanker. It's one of the few heroics I've ran on multiple occasions and one that I am very comfortable with. I'll have to say I think last night's run was done in my own personal record time. Guess it goes to show how comfortable I am with my abilities in that instance!

As I mentioned earlier. For now we are still on Bronzebeard. Haven't made a decision yet as to when we're going to do the transfer. Personally, I'm up in the air on going before or after the supposed Naxx run. Right now there are only 5 people signed up, including Eto and I. So it may be a bust anyway. Wouldn't really surprise me with that guild. We'll see but I'd say we'll be back on Shadow Council sometime this weekend if not before.

I'm getting excited about moving my DK to Shadow Council. Probably because I know the economy there and how the AH works, Alliance side at least. I'm looking forward to having access to my farming toons again and making some more gold. Is it slightly odd that one of my favorite WoW pastimes is making money? But that would be why I had my Traveler's Tundra Mammoth pretty early on.

Oh, well..off to read some patch notes for 3.3!! I'm sure I'll have something to say about that soon!

Going Home

Been complaining about Bronzebeard for awhile now. Well, actually since I rolled on that server to be exact. The complaints being mainly about the nonexistent LFG, bad guild, lack of support from my other 80s, etc.

Events from said bad guild and even more so the annoyance of trying to find a pug for HoL for the last 3 days and failing, is finally pushing us over the edge. We've decided to transfer our toons from Bronzebeard to Shadow Council.

Originally, we had thought we would faction and server transfer and put them happily Alliance side with our other toons. After some long debate we've decided we're happy with these toons being Horde and would like to keep the support mainly for future endeavors (Goblins of course!).
So, that's going to save us some real life money! We're only going to have to pay....ahhhhhh!....$125.00 to server transfer 5 toons. *cries* Are we crazy?!? We're going to dump $125.00 into a game?!? Oh well, call us crazy if you wish. But we hate, hate, hate...or I hate, hate, hate Bronzebeard.

Now the question becomes...we are signed up to do a Naxx10 run with the so called bad guild on Friday night. Do we stay for the possible Naxx run and hope for some nice drops before we leave? Or do we go ahead and transfer ourselves off before then?

Honestly, I don't feel any remorse for leaving the guild. Yes, it's ran by a couple so called "friends" of Eto's. Yes, I have used things from the guild bank to level my professions. But in my defense, I have been donating gold to the bank, the gems I took I returned in the form of cut gems and the few enchanting mats I've used to level were returned to the bank as enchant scrolls. I think I've paid my due diligence back to them ten fold. For the last 7 or 8 weeks, I've played as much an active role as they will allow, I've giving to the guild bank, I've done instance runs for people that I didn't need, I've offered advice and assistance...but in the end I don't care to be in a guild that is full of hypocrites. I have never asked to be boosted, given freebies, etc..but I have asked in guild for dps for instances that I've needed for one item or another. Sadly, it's always been to no avail.

It's time for Kaly to go home. To a server where I know people pug..and pug well. A server where I know the AH is a true source of exchange and not a rarely used building collecting dust. Seriously, people don't trade on the AH for a profit? Shocked!

So, the plan:
1. Clear Babibank's inventory and mail everything to the DK.
2. Check the rarely used AH on Bronzebeard to see if there is any need in buying low to sell for a profit on Shadow Council. Highly doubt this, since Shadow Council has a greatly used AH and Brozebeard's economy is slightly off.
3. Drop a couple hundred gold in the said bad guilds bank for any mats I may have used that they could consider not paid back by other things I've deposited.
4. Delete some lowbie toy toons off the roster on Shadow Council.
Keep - Kalyina, Kalyanna, Kalyista, Alirah, Ash and Kalybank. That means I have 4 lowbie rarely played, somewhere below level 20 alts that can be deleted. Oh and I have to hold on to the name holder for my Goblin. Tinkabella was not available on Shadow Council so looks like the baby mage will be called Tinkabell instead. (Just love the idea of a Goblin named Tink)
5. Create the new Horde side Shadow Council guild...hmmm...do I want to be GM again?
6. Actually get my butt in action and do it.

On a side note, Eto and I did duo up to and including the first boss in normal UP last night..several times...praying she would drop her tank bracers. Sadly she did not! But, much tanky love and many thanks go out to Aelystriel for bringing it to my attention that I could be using Tempered Saronite Bracers to get me over the defense cap. See I knew I blogged for a reason....very thankful for the advise and support from my fellow lady tanks!

Tanking Fears

So I'm starting to frustrate my healer. I can see it a little more each day. He's ready to do things that for whatever reason, I don't think I'm ready for. Higher end heroics, VoA, lower end raids, just to name a few.

I'm not sure exactly why I'm so scared of these. I just don't think my gear is really ready for those encounters yet. I have a hard enough time with some of the simpler heroics. Managing heroic Gundrak is still a lot of work for me.

I am 1 point below defense cap for 80 raids. That puts me at 539. It's not gaining or holding threat that bothers me. I've proven that. My dodge and parry percents are pretty good as well but it's my health or the lack there of that worries me. Unbuffed, I range in at a little over 25,000. Trying to get my defense to cap has caused me to have to pass on some of the higher stamina items.

I know I need to farm normal HoL and hope for the defense trinket to drop again. That is easier said then done when no one wants to run normal instances...there are no emblems or epic loot to be had there, so they don't want to bother. Which I can totally understand when you're already running around in epic items, looking for emblems and deciding that normal instances are below you. But sadly, I need that trinket.

I've encouraged Eto to do the daily heroic with his friends and the guild, to go to Ony, to pug VoA..he's a healer, it's not going to take long for him to get snatched up. I can't exactly dps in tank gear and then roll on tank drops. From my experience, most pugs don't want you rolling that way. But frustrated he still is and frustrated I'm becoming.

Honestly, I'm willing to try anything once. I'm willing to try the heroics I avoid. The only exception being I want to do it with people that I know...not pug an instance and make a idiot of myself because I'm not ready. Know what I mean? Surely, I'm not the only one that doesn't want to spend forever apologizing to random strangers for causing them costly wipes, lockouts and headaches to realize you're just not ready for it.

Think it's just something I have to get over or go back to being DPS.

Tanking chaos and guild complaints

Where to start? It was a pretty..eventful...weekend.

Tanked my first raid. Yes..you heard right..though I really just off-tanked. We did OS10 Friday night with the guild. Apparently, they decided I was geared well enough to off tank. Surprisingly, it went very smooth. Except, I was getting and holding aggro a little too well. I was pulling adds off the warrior tank and I'm just not geared well enough to take that much direct damage. So, once I backed off a little it was smooth sailing. I got my T7 glove drop. That was a pretty good upgrade for me. Yay!

Have I mentioned that I hate pugs lately? So this is how it goes....
ME: LFM 3 DPS for h-gundrak, pst
Stupid Mage in whisper: I'll go
-Stupid Mage joins group-
Eto: Yay! Full group
ME: Flying that way
Stupid Mage in party: uh, who's tanking
ME: That would be me
Stupid Mage: Are you in tank gear?
ME: Yes
Stupid Mage: 25,000 health?
ME: Would you prefer to tank?
Stupid Mage: I thought tanks were suppose to have a lot of health.
ME: Your call dude, you're welcome to find another group.
-Stupid Mage leaves group-
-Not so stupid mage joins the group-
It's just Heroic Gundrak...not like I'm trying to tank Ulduar. *sigh*

We finish gundrak without any major problems. It did wipe twice. Once because I attempted to tank the snake boss in the room at the bottom of the stairs, snakes wrapped me and thus causing a wipe. Moved the DPS and healer to the top of the stairs..snake boss went down with no problems. Second wipe was on the last boss. I don't think Eto was expecting me to take as much damage as I did when he went Rhino form. But second try, popped Unbreakable Armor when he transformed and all was well.

Watched, or semi-watched, Eto heal the new Ony encounter with the guild Saturday night. I watched the first attempt, they wiped, then decided to walk away for a bit. Yeah, I was jealous. Think that was magnified after the run when I saw what Eto got off the run. Oh well. Never said I wasn't human. Well..Bloodelf..but we can be jealous too. =(

Got pulled into a Flame Leviathan run last night. I did walk away from it with Ironsoul. =D

The guild is a little odd. They aren't geared or ready in any way for Ulduar but the GM insists on skipping all the early 80 raids in hopes of getting them directly into some of the higher end content. The hidden reason for this...because he's already done everything up to and including most of the ToC10 stuff. So instead of building his guild up and showing them how to work together, which they seriously need, he'd rather skip right to the content he can use.

Sadly, most of the DPS from his so called "old friends" is well below where it should be for their level. I'm not just talking about them being under geared. I'm talking about them needing help understanding the concept of raiding. For the most part, they are pretty well geared, with emblem items and a few drops. But they aren't exactly well spec'd or using the proper rotations to get the max damage they could be doing.

Example...a destro lock, in combination T7 and T8 gear, nice weapons and trinkets, is pulling about 2000 dps. *shudder* I almost shed a tear when I saw this. Not to mention the weeping I did when I saw the Demo lock, in horrible gear, walk into the instance with her Voidwalker out. I inspect her and she hasn't talented into her Felguard. *gawk*

Those are just a few of the things I've seen going on with the DPS I've had in my 5 mans. We have decent mage damage output..but they haven't learned to control it. The raid leaders have to actually tell them when they can start dpsing. Otherwise, we have mages shooting fireballs before the tank even gets to the target.

I find myself more and more annoyed with this guild as of late. They all want to throw advise around and have the attitude that I seriously just started playing yesterday, but they can't play their own toons. Honestly, I accept your advise and thank you for it, but I'm not a noob. Really I know what that is used for and I know how to gear my toons.

I've never been the kind of person to need to stroke my own ego or prove my point. But sadly, right now, I'm ready to faction transfer my lock to the server just to prove girls can play and in this case, better then most of the guys in the guild.

Guild Personalities

GMs and those who have raided long enough will get this. The rest of you can just take my word for it. You raid with these people. You work with these people. These people are closer than your family. You should worry.

The GM- He/She’s sacrificed his health, friends, relationships and probably a couple of jobs to drag you through new content. When the guild isn’t performing, these decisions are in question. Prone to shooting sprees, forum flame wars, and the rapid advancement/gearing of whatever toon the guild “needs”. If you can keep your mouth shut and bide your time, he/she might lose it and quit before you get gkicked. Still, you do like the guy/girl. Or did. Before he/she went crazy. See drunks, below.

The GM's Significant Other - Okay, so he was going to have to quit but he tricked his SO into playing. She loves it. She's terrible. You'll effectively 24 man every boss. Count on 4 constructs in the raid, every attempt. She plays a Belf.

The Raid Leader - When you stand in the flames, he dies a little bit inside.

The Heir Apparent - When the GM goes psycho, ninjas the bank, and gdisbands, you're the guy the guild is gonna look to to to fix the mess. You see it coming. You can't decide if ritual suicide or being the new gm would be more painful.

The Positive Officer - “That was great. Just great. You know, only 5% of guilds have even made it to Supremus, and getting him down to 67% on the second attempt is hawt.” See Stoners, below.

The Negative Officer - “Jesus Christ why are there corpses under all these goddamn volcanoes? It’s Supremus for %@*@s’s sake. GET OUT OF THE DAMN FLAME!” See Drunks, below.

The Healing Officer - Has this job because, as the newest officer who plays a healer, he’s stuck with it.

The Hunter Class Lead - Will tell you that it does actually require skill and preparation to play a hunter well in the end game. Lies frequently.

Metermaid - He's got meters running. Always. Asks for meter postage whenever he's in the top 5, which is rare, as his focus on the meters is preventing him from seeing the volcano he's pathing towards. Pulls aggro. Has yet to realize that 0 health returns 0 dps. If he's healing, you might as well just put him on raid, he's gonna heal them anyway.

Stratman - Has read every strategy on the entire Internet for every boss. Unable to think critically. Knows where his talk key is. Hated by the officers. Likely to play a hunter or mage. If this is also Chick With Accent, below, guild will probably collapse.

The Gay Guy - Affects the gay accent for effect. Upgrade decisions tend to involve lengthy discussions about gear appearance. Learned to use the dressing room function before the ‘v’ key.

The Stay At Home Mom - She’s around children all day and craves adult conversation. Babbles incessantly in vent, forgetting that adult conversation doesn’t usually begin with, “So I was talking to (insert name of four-year-old child) and he says…” Well liked, but frequently muted.

Mr. Mikeless - Has a microphone. Hears the conversation and directions. Once wiped the raid because he started talking and most folks alt-tabbed to see who the hell was speaking. May be your best player.

The Kid - So, you messed up on this guy’s interview and nobody noticed that he was 12. But, he can play. And if he gets a little bit excited when boobies are getting talked about? Hey, he’s young.

The Backbone - Plays a tank. Doesn't have much to say. Made an error once in SSC, or so you heard. Will disconnect when Gorefiend is at 30% and keep aggro while offline for the rest of the fight. Has never said anything negative to the healers. Ever. GL with your progression without one of these. Hates the prima donnas.

The Other kid - Remember that accountant you interviewed for the fury warrior position? And how you wondered how he’d make time to raid during tax season? He couldn’t. His eleven year old daughter took over about that time. She’s been raiding since. Mages, that’s an eleven year-old girl owning you night after night.

The Hunter Who Doesn't Do His Homework - Always good for insightful commentary and clever observation just after a wipe. "Holy Crap Man! I was just standing and shooting and this damn VOLCANO popped on me! When did they put in those volcanoes?"

The Prophet - Kept insisting that you were going to need a melee group for BT, despite the fact hat melee was dreadful for SSC/BT. Badgered the management until they broke. Plays a rogue. Shreds. Loved by the Most Devout.

The Most Devout - This is the guy who gets to play an off-spec in a big-boy raid. He's the fury warrior, the boomkin, or the enhance shammy. He cannot believe that some fate is letting him have this much fun that he's afraid it will all come crashing down. Prays devoutly to his favorite deity that the guild won't collapse because he'll never have THIS much fun again. Ever.

The Drunks - The core of your guild. As raid progresses, their voices in vent are getting just ever so slightly slurre

Level 80 Annoyances

Well...she's 80...I should be happy right? Wrong. Honestly, I find myself wishing she were still questing for xp and levels.

Why?

Things were easier then.
- No Rep grind.
- No gear headaches
- No wondering what to do next
- Various other personal RL reasons

Tanked my first heroic last night. It went pretty smooth actually. We did wipe twice but that was because were trying for an achievement and it didn't go so well. Granted it was a pretty easy heroic for my first try. DTK is pretty simple on heroic. Eto did an awesome job keeping my butt alive.

Happily I was defense capped for heroics. I had to make a few minor changes to my armor to get that number but it was all things I was able to do myself with JCing and enchanting.

Now to just figure out how to get more stamina without loosing the defense. *sigh* I have decided defense caps for tanks is like trying to maintain hit caps for a lock...both suck!