Confessions of a Girl Gamer

Crawls Into a Hole to Hide

2011-01-31T16:25:00.002-05:00

Yes, yes, it appears we will be trying out Bastion of Twilight tonight. (blah, blah, blah...you know with all the "if I get picked to go" stuff goes here) And since I picked a feature boss last week I figured I'd do the same this week. However, this week, I went with the one I seem to be most afraid of.

Let me just say...."OMG, I'M SCARED OF HALFUS AND HIS DRAGONS!" Why, you may ask? Well it's like Omnitron Council on crack. Apparently, there are 5 dragons but only three will be active. Which dragons you get is random each week!

This is a total "If Then" fight. If this dragon is active, so this but if that dragon is active to that instead. You know, that sort of thing. Holy crap this is going to be confusing.

However, based on what I've studied, this is what I know.

The first dragon I'll talk about is the Slate Dragon. When he is up, Halfus will gain Malevolent Strikes. This applies a healing debuff, and will require the tanks to swap to drop the stacks. Releasing this dragon will cause the boss to periodically be stunned for 12 seconds.

Secondly lets talk about Storm Rider. Activating this dragon will cause Halfus to gains a shadow nova attack. It does roughly 30k shadow damage and knocks everyone back. The good thing about releasing this boss is it will allow you to interrupt the scary nova attack. The not so nice part, is it seems the first shadow nova will go off regardless and you're healers will have to deal with the damage before you're able to release the dragon and start interrupts.

Next is Nether Scion. If he's up Halfus’ attack speed will double. Releasing him will cast a debuff that will reduce his chance to hit, attack speed, and damage done by 25%.

Then there are the stupid Emerald Whelps! If they are up the dragon gains scorching breath and behaves much like the bost in Grim Bartol. You know the one that will engulf everything in front of him in a purple flame. Yep, nice repeat of the mechanic Bliz. If you release the whelps, then they case a stacking poision that reduces the dragon's damage done. But you know...don't be stupid...get out of the way! Your healer will loves you!

Lastly is the Time Warden. When active the dragon will spit random fireballs at people. *sigh* Thanks!

So that's how the adds go. From what I can find, the ideal way to handle them is to kill the 2 most annoying drakes first and then focus on the boss.

And if that's not enough, below 50% Halfus will periodically cast Furious Roar, which will deal somewhere around 10K dps to everyone in the party and knock them back.

Oh and did I mention he has a 6 minute enrage timer? Yep, fun times!

Happy Hunting everyone.

Interesting Facts...

2011-01-27T16:13:00.006-05:00

1 - We 2 shot Magmaw last night (our second time into BWD)
2 - We 6 (or 7 or 8ish) shot Omitron Council
3 - We were not prepared for anything past that - planning wise
4 - Throne of Four Winds is CRAZY!
5 - Raid bosses are rigged to not drop cloth healer lootz!

Raid night number two was a big success. Though a little shocking since we didn't know there would be a raid #2 until Tuesday night. Our all powerful, all knowing raid leaders came up with this wonderful plan to alternate Monday and Wednesday raid nights between Twilight Baston and Deathwing Decent. This was designed to allow for more people to be able to raid each week.

Both Monday and Wednesday night's raid queue had at least 15 people in it. Not to mention both filled up unbelievably fast. The idea was for those people that had not been able to attend on Monday to take preference over those that had.

Because of this, completely reasonable logic, I was pretty sure Kyn and I would not be needed last night. However, I assume they still wanted to fill the raid at least half way with people that already knew that fight and would be able to help those that hadn't.

If that was the purpose, it worked! As I said, we were able to 2 shot the boss with no problems at all. Honestly, it would probably have been a one shot except we had a ranged dps accidentally step too far away from the boss. Doing so caused the lava pillar to spawn in the middle of the ranged and melee, which as everyone knows also spawns the parasites, which caused way too many people to get infected thus caused a wipe.

It also seemed that no one expected us to down the Omnitron Council as quickly as we did since research hadn't really been done on the bosses after them. It was funny to see people standing around wondering what to do next. The suggestion was offered to end the raid early but being the adventurous people that we are, we decided to give the first boss in Throne of Four Winds a go.

Now this is normally when I would tell you how the fight mechanics work and what I learned from it. Sadly, the only thing I can tell you is there is a lot of jumping and switching and switching back and full on cray stuff going on. Basically there is 3 platforms and each holds a "boss". You divide your group up between them and when certain things happen, part of those groups have to jump from on platform to another, wait for some big event, then rush back and hope the people they left behind didn't die.

So yeah, totally CRAZY stuff. I'm sure we'll get it, and it was very fun and educational, to at least see the fight. But we'll venture in next time, a little more prepared!

Have a wonderful weekend and happy hunting everyone.

BWD In Review

2011-01-25T08:42:00.002-05:00

Well, they say pictures are worth a thousand words. So there is mine! I'm very proud of what the guild was able to do in our first Cata progression run.

I guess you're wanting details, or maybe not, but I'll give them to you anyway.

Our raid composition went something like this:
Tank 1: Druid
Tank 2: Warrior
Healer 1 and 2: Druid
Healer 3: Priest
Melee DPS: Warrior, Death Knight, Druid
Ranged DPS: Mage, Druid

Yes, you are reading correctly. There were 4 (count them again 4) druids in our raid.

We did things a little differently than what I discussed in my post yesterday. But all in all the fight went pretty much the same as everything I had been reading. Instead of having the ranged DPS and healers form a group in the back, we all stacked up with the melee.

Because we were under the understanding that Magmaw would only shoot the flame pillars under the people that were out of his melee range, it made sense to have the casters and healer to group up on the melee. We had our frost DK staying towards the back of the group so the pillars would pop under him and he was then responsible for kiting the adds around until they died.

This strategy worked very well, once we had the kiting under control. When done correctly the kiter did not take much damage at all and allowed the healers to focus on the massive damage going towards the tank.

Don't get me wrong, this was a very healer intensive fight and I was battling with my mana pool the entire time. The saving grace for me was phase 2. Phase 2 did allow me to channel my mana regen abilities. Sadly I did learn that this was just one of those bosses that my shadow fend would NOT attack so he did me no good at all. Thankfully, I found the glory of a little thing called Potion of Concentration. This was a life saver....literally! (Thanks Cart!)

Honestly, now that we've completed the fight, this guy isn't nearly as scary as I had originally expected. Yes, he's hard and it's taxing on everyone in your raid. It requires you to be able to work together and communicate. Thankfully, our guild is good at mechanical fights. We know when to move and don't take it personally if someone yells for us to GTFO of the bad stuff on the ground!

We did get a couple of good attempts in on the second fight but that will be another post for a later time.

Have a wonderful week and happy hunting!

Black Wing Decent - Enter into Hell!

2011-01-24T13:47:00.006-05:00

As it stands, today is the first venture into BWD for Whispers of the Fallen. As a guild we are schedule to make our first attempts tonight at 8:00 PM EST.

Every Monday and Wednesday for last 4 weeks or so, we've been running scheduled heroic nights as a guild. We've put together as many groups as we've had people signed up and ran for gear upgrades to prepare us for this fight.

Personally, there are a couple of items I would have liked to have had before going in but otherwise I think I'm as ready as I can be. With buff food, potions, flasks and lots of studying I'll head into the raid tonight as long as they don't choose to sit me.

As I had imaged, the first raid queue filled up with 10 people in less than 60 seconds. Last check, we actually have 15 guild members signed up.

Well, none of that is the point of today's post. Mainly, I'm going to run a break down of the first boss encounter so that I can review the differences between the strategy and the actual event tomorrow.

Based on my research I know the following;
1 - Magmaw is going to nomnom on the tanks faces
2 - Magmaw does not move for the entire fight.
3 - Magmaw is going to shoot pillars of lava from the floor
4 - All ranged need to group up and move according to the lava pillars
5 - Aggro resets after phase 2 ends and before going back to phase 1
6 - Many adds! Deal with them!

Ok, so I know more than that.

During phase 1, the raid will break into 3 groups and resemble something like this:

-------------------------------------BOSS!--------------------------------------
................Melee DPS........................... TANK!............................

.................Ranged Spot 1.................................Ranged Spot 2.....

As the fight progresses, Magmaw will use an ability that shoots lava pillars out of the ground under the ranged group. When this happens the ranged and all healers need to quickly move to their second designated area. Once the pillar spawns, a wave of Lava Parasites will spawn in the previous spot. The ranged dps has to dps them down before any of them can reach the caster group. This means using push backs, slow abilities or anything that can prevent them from reaching the dps and healers.

The second thing that needs to be handled is Lava Spew. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be avoidable and the healers will have to heal through it. Because it comes shortly after the lava parasites, it's important to kill the adds as quickly as possible.

Lastly, there is Ignition. This will fill half the room with fire that looks like it's coming out of steam vents. Obviously, we move out of this because we're all experienced and responsible raid members that will not stand in bad stuff.

The first phase of this fight seems to be a test of healer mana. There is no enrage timer, as long as there is always someone in the melee range of Magmaw, he will not enrage. So keeping everyone topped off as much as possible is key.

During phase 2, Magmaw is going to cast mangle on the current tank and do massive amounts of damage. In addition he has second ability called Massive Crash. This does exactly what it says, it will do massive damage to the already hurting tank. Again, this has to be healed through. Tanks should have mitigation techniques ready and use them during this part of the fight.

Secondly, during phase two, two of the melee dps will need to use the spikes to jump onto Magmaws head. This will allow Magmaw to remain down for 30 seconds and increase the amount of damage done to him.

During phase two, the only damage being delt should be to the target tank. This is a good time to have your healers pop their regen abilities because it may be the only change they get during this fight.

Last thing to remember is that at the end of phase 2 before the restart of phase 1, Magmaw drops aggro. This will be where the tank switch happens and dps need to allow time for the new tank to gain aggro.

Though this fight seems complex, it appears to be more about endurance and less about complexity. If the healers can make their mana last and the group is aware of what's going on, it should be easily managed.

Well that's about it for me today. We'll see how close, or far off, I was based on my actual experiences tonight!

Good luck and happy hunting everyone!

What's Expected of You?

2010-12-30T12:10:00.002-05:00

We're comfortably a few weeks into Cataclysm and I'm feeling pretty good about it. I've gotten comfortable with healing. Money is flowing in nicely, though starting to wane a little. The guild has reached level 6 (may be 7 by the time I'm writing this). My alch, inscription, herb and mining professions are all maxed out. I'm 2 points away from max tailoring. So yeah, I'm feeling pretty good with where things are going in the new expansion.

What am I not feeling good about? PUGs, of course. I still refuse to PUG a heroic dungeon. I don't doubt my ability to heal but I do doubt my ability to keep up with people that still think they can face roll though the instances.

As I've said in the past..."If you pull like this is Wrath, you're going to die. If you take damage that could be avoided, you will die".

One of my guildies made a comment the other day that is totally going to become my new signature tag line. "Healer mana pools are the new enrage timer".

Honestly guys, this is true. Healers have a very limited mana pool and Blizzard intends to keep it this way. We can't spam heals like we could in Wrath. Casting takes longer, spells cost more mana and we can't regen it fast enough. Remember a dead tank means a dead group. The days of being able to dps tank are gone.

So what can you do to help?
1. Don't stand in the bad stuff. You already know not to do it, so don't. STOP casting and MOVE immediately, don't wait.

2. Avoid all avoidable damage. Move away from stuff falling from the sky, decurse, dispel, cleanse, whatever you have. This doesn't go just for yourself but for the entire party. If you can remove whatever is ticking on the party, do it, you'll save your healer's mana enough to keep the group alive just a few seconds longer. Often times, that few seconds makes all the difference.

3. Crowd control. If you have it, use it. Speak up. Let your tank know if you can sheep, trap, slow, shackle or root that mob and don't forget to keep the CC up until the tank picks up your mob. That mob is your baby and you are responsible for keeping it under control until the tank has control of it. If a mob breaks away from the tank and you can CC it in some way, do it! If you don't that mob will wipe the group if left uncontrolled.

4. Don't pull aggro. Yes, it was no big deal in Wrath. The healer would toss you a couple of heals and you would single target or AoE your mob down before it killed you. You can't do this anymore. For two really good reasons. First, the healer doesn't have the mana to spare on trying to keep you alive. Secondly, those mobs hit a lot harder and it will take a lot less for them to kill you and then move on to the next target...your healer.

5. Buffs...if you have them give them freely. Keep them renewed on the party and reuse them when someone dies. That little bit of int or health or mp5 does wonders for your healer. I am ecstatic when I have a party with both a mage and a paladin. I get int and mp5 and I breath a sigh of relief. Those little buffs will do wonders for my mana pool and mana regen. So remember them. And for you mages out there...your healer will love you for providing them with cupcakes. Have you seen the cost of water these days. Almost 2 gold for a stack of 5 and we have to drink nearly a full 20 stack or more to make it through a heroic. We love you for your lovely cupcakes!

6. Interrupt, interrupt, interrupt! If that boss is casting something and you can stop it, please do. Help the tank mitigate their damage. The less damage they take the more mana the healer will have to toss heals around to the rest of the team when their is AoE damage going around.

7. Range. Keep in mind where your healer is at all times. If you are out of range we have to run to find you and if we don't make it in time, you're going to go splat. Every dps is important in every fight. We need you all! Please don't run away! And if you're in melee range and you're taking damage, move out. Give me a second to get you heals then run back in. It may just save you a repair bill and the group a wipe.

8. Lastly, don't slack. We need the dps, we need the heals, we need the tank. Every member in a 5 man raid counts. We don't have the dps to spare in most fights. The healer doesn't have the mana to spare and the tank can't run around trying to get aggro back from a trigger happy mage. Tanks use your ready check, healers speak up when you need to stop for mana, dps be ready when the tank pulls.

So that's it. That's my advice to all of us. I'm not ready to PUG heroics yet. I'll stick to healing my guild's tanks. I know them, they know me. We work well together and we trust each other. Hopefully in time the PUG members will get the understanding of these concepts and a PUG won't be so painful.

Until, Happy New Year and Happy Hunting. See you on the other side!

Practice Makes Perfect

2010-12-28T09:26:00.003-05:00

As we've lovingly been deemed by the other raid leader, "Team Ty" has been on a heroic run spree for the past week or so.

We've got a groove, myself healing, Kyn as DPS, our guilds MT and his boomkin girlfriend and a 5th random guild member, normally our favorite mage/Int provider/cupcake maker. The 5 of us together just seem to make a great team. I've learned the tanks quirks, he's learned mine. We know when to pop what cool downs to make sure he stays alive or that I have time to heal the party. We have awesome CC with druid roots and mage sheeps. It just seems to work, you know.

So over the last week, we've successfully ran H-HoO, H-Vortex, H-Deadmines and H-SFK several times with little to no problem. Surprisingly, out of all of those, SFK has to be my favorite instance so far. Not that it really has loot specific to me but because the fights are just plain fun.

Let me pass on what I've learned to any other holy priests out there that may not have attempted to heal this one yet.

Really the first boss is the most difficult. We were able to 2 shot him without much difficulty. Once we understood the concept of the fights, our melee dps had the interrupts down to an art. That's the most important part of this fight. There are a couple abilities that MUST be interrupted no matter what.

First off he puts a debuff on random people called "Pain and Suffering". This needs to be stopped, interrupt or dispell. It inflicts increased shadow damage on the target every 1/2 second for 8 seconds. It should more appropriately be entitled "Pain and Suffering to Your Healer".

Secondly he will cast Asphyxiate on the entire party. This will drop everyone's health to 1. Immediately following this he will start to cast "Stay of Execution" to heal himself and the party back to full. While it's nice of him to heal our health back up, we don't want him to also heal himself. So when he starts to cast this you want to have someone interrupt after 2 ticks of the spell. Why not immediately you may ask? Because those two ticks, as well as the healers AoE heals are enough to heal the party back high enough to withstand the next phase of damage without draining their mana pool. Be sure you let him get off 2 ticks of this cast before you have your melee interrupt him.

Last thing to really worry about comes at about 20% health. He will use Calamity. This inflicts massive amounts of damage on the entire party every 1 second until he is dead. The fight now becomes a DPS race against the healers mana pool and cast times. Pop your cooldowns, cast speed boosts, whatever you've got and burn him down ASAP!

Now, my advise to healers is simple. If you're a holy priest have your Chakra ready to use Holy Word: Sanctuary when he drops everyone's health to 1. This combined with a cast of Circle of Healing or Prayer of Healing will bring your entire party up above 30K health. It's not necessary or recommended to try to heal everyone back to full. It does not matter how much health they have, the next time he casts Asphyxiate, it will drop to 1. You only want to make sure your party has enough health to withstand any party damage/tank damage they take before then.

It is important however to watch the health of the boss. You want to have everyone as close to full as possible before he hits 20%. Use whatever cool downs you have and try to keep your highest dps and the tank alive long enough to kill him. Accepting that you will probably loose a person or two during the last 20% will take a load of stress off of you. I personally sacrificed myself, since I had Spirit of Redemption and knew that the unlimited mana use I had for 15 seconds would be enough to let me spam heals on all the dps and the tank while they killed him.

With all of that being said, the rest of the instance so extremely easy on a priest. There are lots of undead mobs so you are useful to shackle as well as heal. Compared to most of the other instances, this was unbelievably easy.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday and Happy Hunting!

Mini-Raid

2010-12-20T09:52:00.003-05:00

"ZOMG, HEROICS IS HARD!"

Yep, that's what I have to say on that topic.

Kyn got the last couple of points needed to be able to do heroics this past weekend. So we settle in Sunday afternoon, the first chance we really got to play, for some quality WoW and movie time.

We had planned to pop in the old Indiana Jones movies and finish up the quests in Uldum. For some odd reason, doing the Harrison Jones quests made us want to watch the old movies.

Well about 45 minutes into Temple of Doom we get asked to come along for some heroic runs with a couple of guildies. Yeah, that sounds like fun. We like this couple and the other guy that's going along. It's an all guild run, I know the tank, shouldn't be too hard, right?

WRONG! We queue up random and get heroic Grim Bartol. Really...first heroic and that's what we get? That's like Halls of Reflection on crack. Even on normal that instance isn't the easiest place to heal.

In we go. Happily running along, killing trash, casually chatting up on vent. It's already very obvious that the tank is getting hit a hell of a lot harder than when we ran this place on normal. We even have 2 druids along so two sets of roots for CC. About 3 pulls into the run, just after the dragon fly over, I'm in panic mode. The tank and the party are happily chatting away in vent about old ICC memories while I'm watching the tank's heal dropping, very quickly. Then we loose a dps. It's at this point that I begin to think I may be in over my head.

We somehow manage to make it to the first boss which promptly leads to a wipe.

"Apparently we need to run away from the blitz and somebody get those damn troggs away from the boss!"

"Oh wait, not on me...fade, fade, run to the tank...we're dead."

Lets try again. Wipe number two.

Third time's a charm right? Wipe number 3.

Last time..."shew, we made it. Not so bad, we got this under control! We're awesome!"

Kill the trash, off to boss number two.

No big deal, stay out of the falling rocks, avoid the crap on the ground....oh shit! FIRE shield! DEAD. Wipe one, wipe two, wipe three....what the hell is wrong with this Forgemaster?!?! The boomkin offers to go resto and help heal and he finally goes down.

*sigh*

Next..and I cringe. This boss doesn't seem so impossible. He's going to blow fire at the tank and the incoming fire elemental have to be killed. We should be able to do this.

Wipe, one, two, three, four, five. What do you mean we've been in the same heroic for 2 1/2 hours? 5 man raiding? No kidding, this is crazy. Massive Wrath type damage being thrown around to all the party, there is no way my mana can keep up with this. No Greater Heal, of course not, Blizzard made the spell cost 5 times the mana it use to. Heal, Heal, Heal...chakra, renew, prayer of mending, holy word sanctuary. The party is taking way too much freaking damage. I'm done. We're beating our head against the wall.

Give me a break! What the hell do you want Blizzard. Triage, isn't that the term you used? Well let me give a little insight. The party can't survive without the tank, the tank can't survive without the healer and the boss will enrage and the healer will run out of mana without the DPS to kill him. That's how this damn boss works. So who do you want me to keep alive? The tank? Myself? Let the DPS die? I can't do that, we can't down the boss with only myself and the tank alive. Not this time.

I know that this is a higher end heroic. I know that we have 3 of the 5 people in average 330ish item level gear. BUT...heroics are suppose to be possible at that level. Just this once, I'm going to QQ and say Blizzard, Drahga Shadowburner may need to be nerfed...just a freaking little.

I'm not the type to complain about things being a little difficult. I don't yell and throw a fit when Blizzard changes things. I was a child of BC. I understand the need for CC and mana conservation. I understand, accept and embrace heroics taking more than 20 minutes to clear and needing more than AoE to kill stuff. I get all this and I agree. But this guy...I really think, they went a little overboard on.

We didn't finish that heroic. We ended up taking a 20 minute break and coming back to complete Halls of Origination. There were some tight spots. I lost a dps or two to bad timing. I think we wiped three....maybe four times. But we completed it.

Grim Bartol has become my new H:MgT. I will avoid it like the plague.

Heroic Ready

2010-12-17T09:10:00.001-05:00

Well, Blizzard says I'm heroic ready. My average item level hit 329 last night simply by picking up my tier helm and switching out my neck for the one offered from Earthen Ring at revered.

Not sure I think I am ready. After some of the nightmares I have heard from our guildies (specifically the tanks and healers) I am not sure I'll ever be ready for PUG healing in Cata.

I remember when the LFG tool was introduced back in Wrath how excited I was about being able to randomly queue for heroics and not having to wait for people I knew to be on line. However, I also remember how stressed I got when I realized just how bad they could really be.

The good news...I do have guildies that I will be able to run with.

Now to get Kyn those last 5 points...

With New Joy Comes New Heartache

2010-12-16T11:25:00.003-05:00

We're a little over a week into Cataclysm and now that the leveling fun is over my excitement is slowly being replaced by anxiety.

Let me start by saying that I really do love my guild and I enjoy the people in it. I've had a great time running instances and hanging out in vent with them over the last few nights. It's a sense of belonging, of fitting in. To most that will sound silly, especially since it's just a game right? But simply remember I am a girl after all and we do stress over things that don't matter to most of you guys.

With that being said my guild is also bringing on a sense of stress.

When Cata released I had no outlined plan of how I was going to spend my time. I wanted to make sure I kept up with the guild and their leveling progression as much as I could. I had enjoyed being there for most of the progression through ICC and don't want to loose my place with them in the new content.

Now, I'm starting to feel the panic.

Our raid leaders have placed a "Heroic Roll Call" on the raid forums. As of this morning there are 7 names on that list. One of which is not mine. The guild message of the day when I logged in last night announced the plan to start heroic gear runs during raid times beginning next week. My priest is still not heroic ready. Thus produces panic attack one and two.

With the new expansion thus comes new players. Over the last couple of nights we have welcomed several new members into our ranks. This is wonderful for the guild. New people breath new life into the guild. But it also brings about panic number 3. New people also bring new bodies wanting to raid.

Again, most of you probably aren't seeing my panic in this yet. Let me give you a little background info.

When I first joined my current guild they had a pretty strong, pretty tight raiding team. Though Kyn and I were able to attend a few raids with them, there wasn't much room in the group at the time. The current raiders had been progressing and working together long before we came around. As people started to take extended breaks from the game, Kyn and I were still going strong. This opened up a few spots for us to slide into. We started raiding with the people that were still around, making friends and enjoying being part of the group.

Now I start to worry. You see, we have a very open raid sign up policy. 24 hours before the scheduled raid the queue opens up on our website and you sign up. First 10 people to sign up are the first 10 people invited to go. Based on need of course.

With the release of new content and new members, I have a feeling that queue is going to fill up very quickly. Even towards the end of Wrath, we were seeing the queue go from empty to full in less than a couple of minutes. Everyone wanted to be there for Lich King. There are only so many spots in a 10 man raid group and we're looking at more than 10 people wanting those spots already.

Thus is the cause of stress in my game. Be it a valid concern or not, it's still a concern for me none the less.

Pre-Raid Gearing for a Holy Priest

2010-12-15T09:08:00.000-05:00

Kalyanna dinged 85 last night after a couple of enjoyable instance runs with my guildies. Yay! Have I mentioned that I love my guild? I've been having a blast with them since the expansion released. Running instances, hanging out on vent...it's all been great! But that's not the point of this post.

Now it's time to start thinking about her gear and stats and gems and enchants, oh my! Everyone that knows me, knows that I'm not really the kind of person that goes into a panic over my gear. But since she is going to be healing raids for our guild, and we don't have a lot of healers to rely on, I think it's time I at least get an idea of what gear and stuff she needs from where.

First off, let's talk about my personal stat priority. Keep in mind this is my preference based on what I know so far. For me, the stats go something like this: Int -> Spirit -> Haste -> Mastery

I need Int for spell power and a larger mana pool. I need spirit to regen that mana and Haste in order to decrease my cast time. So all that makes sense to me. Then there is the gear to get those stats.

Everyone already knows you need to be at 329 to get into the heroics. And that it's pretty much just some lucky drops from instances and some rep items. I won't spend time going into that. Kaly's already at 326, so it's just a matter of getting those last 3 points.

Instead, let's take a look at what gear she can get and where it comes from. This is a list based on the stats that I prefer. Some of this gear has Crit on it and for those items I'd reforge for either Haste or Mastery.

HEROIC Instances:
Neck: Amulet of Tender Breath - Vortex Pinnacle
Shoulder: Mantle of Loss - SFK
Back: Solar Wind Cloak - Halls of Origination
Robe: Anraphet's Regalia - Halls of Origination
Wrist: Baron Ashbury's Cuffs - SFK
Hands: Dolomite Adorned Gloves - Stonecore
Boots: Hekatic Slippers - Halls of Origination
Ring: Veneficial Band - Lost City of the Tol'vir
Ring: Kibble - Blackrock Caverns
Trinket: Tear of Blood - Stonecore
Trinket: Witching Hourglass - Blackrock Caverns
Weapon: Scepter of Power - Halls of Origination
Off-Hand: Prophet's Scepter - Stonecore
Wand: Wand of Untainted Power - Grim Batol

If you prefer a staff or can't get the weapon and off hand to drop:
Staff: Soul Releaser - Halls of Origination

JUSTICE POINTS:
Head: Mask of New Snow - 2200
Waist: Belt of the Falling Rain - 1650
Legs: Leggings of Charity - 2200

REPUTATION:
Cord of Raven Queen - Hyjal Exalted
Shimmering Morningstar - Tol Barad Revered
Mandala of Stirring Patterns - Tol Barad Exalted

The last thing I'll talk about is the enchants and the gems. Most of this is common knowledge and everyone will enchant and gem differently based on their preference. I also have the advantage of being a scribe but for this purpose I'll leave those benefits out.

ENCHANTS
Head: Arcanum of Hyjal - Guardians of Hyjal Revered
Shoulder: Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone - Therazane Exalted
Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent
Boots: Enchant Boots - Haste
Legs: Powerful Ghostly Spellthread
Bracer: Enchant Bracer - Exceptional Spirit
Chest: Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats
Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect
Gloves: Enchant Gloves - Haste
Off hand: Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect

GEMS
META: Ember Shadowspirit Diamond
RED: Brilliant Inferno Ruby
BLUE: Sparkling Ocean Sapphire
YELLOW: Quick Amberjewel
PURPLE: Purified Demonseye
ORANGE: Reckless Ember Topaz
GREEN: Zen Dream Emerald

So, that's it! Looks like I've got my work cut out for me. Hope you find a little bit of useful information somewhere in here as well.

Until next time!

A Whole New World

2010-12-14T12:45:00.000-05:00

Because I know you all were singing it....

What I know today...

2010-12-14T09:20:00.000-05:00

healing in Cata isn't so hard.

So I spent last night and the night before in normal level 84 - 85 instances (as an 84 Holy priest) learning to heal again.

I was beginning to doubt my ability to change and my ability to be an effective healer in the new expansion. In the early instances of the expansion I was finding that I was running out of mana before the end of almost every fight. Yes, even some trash pulls. But I couldn't keep enough mana to make it through an entire boss encounter. I was popping my trinkets every time they were off cool down, using Shadowfiend whenever I could and even channeling the stupid priest mana regen spell, Hymn of Hope. I just couldn't figure it out.

Yes I knew from reading that they wanted me to rely more on the my Heal spell and not spam Flash Heal or Greater Heal, but the amount of health I was healing with Heal, compared to my normal comfort spells was nothing against the 70,0000 - 80,000 health pool of the tanks.

Well that was until I figured out a little, unknown to me, secret.

I had pretty much stopped using Chakra after they took away the improved renew state before the actual release of Cata. I quickly learned, over the last two nights, that I had totally underestimated the use of Holy Word: Serenity.

Alone the small amount of instant heal to your target isn't a huge boost or reason to start using your Heal spell more but added to the extra 25% crit for 6 seconds it makes a lot of sense and I've found a pretty effective way to use it.

I've learned through Cata that healing is a lot more about learning to anticipate the damage your tank is going to take and react to it accordingly. It's about knowing your tank and understanding their abilities and actions. For this reason alone, I much prefer to run with my guild's tanks because I've found that with them I can memorize the pattern and be better prepared. On the other hand, I also know that it's not always possible to run with your guild mates. If you're flexible and patient, I think you can carry these rules through to PUGs as well.

So, how do you apply the "learn and anticipate" method I've come up with? It's not exactly simple but with practice it seems to work for me. Not everything I do is totally different than the "old" days, it's just been tweaked a little.

Under normal circumstances this is how my healing will go. Before the tank pulls I will do the normal Prayer of Mending, immediately followed by Chakra. Your Chakra state lasts for 30 seconds and in all the instances I've been in during Cata, I can be almost 100% assured someone is going to take damage within that 30 seconds. The first person that takes damage gets a normal Heal. This Heal spell will activate my Holy Word: Serenity (HwS) spell. The tank then gets a Renew spell tossed on them, while I heal most of the party members with Heal. Each time I use Heal it renews the state of my HwS spell. I use the instant effects of the HwS spell on my tank.

Normally, with a good tank at least, I can keep his health at a comfortable level with only HwS, Heal and Renew. If I see that his health is dropping dangerously low (or too low for my comfort) I will pull a Greater Heal spell, if cast time permits, or a couple Flash Heals if I need to quickly get his health up.

Another shocker that I've found is that even Holy Priests can effectively use Power Word: Shield in emergency situations now. It use to be, in Wrath and even in BC, that our shields weren't really strong enough to withstand more than a single hit or maybe two on the tank. Now that the talent tree is allowing us to get a little further into the Disc side of things, I've been able to put a couple points into Improved Power Word: Shield making my shield withstand a couple more hits in emergency situations.

By no means is this going to be the perfect rotation. By no means am I saying this will work for everyone. I am simply passing along what one frustrated and worried Holy Priest has learned for more than one failed attempt at Cataclysm healing. Granted I have gotten much better gear through the successful instances I've healed. I'm also playing on a 65K mana pool now. But I can still drain that mana pool way too quickly if I'm not careful.

So, if I've helped even one mana starved Holy Priest make it through a single instance without wanting to quit and reroll as dps, than I count this thread as useful.

Happy Cata hunting and enjoy your week in Wow!

What I have learned...

2010-12-13T11:01:00.000-05:00

in Cataclysm so far...

1 - Harrison Jones is AWESOME!
2 - Mount Hyjal has the most interesting story line so far (my favorite zone)
3 - Healing is hard
4 - Pugs suck...again
5 - People don't remember how to use crowd control
6 - My guild is awesome
7 - Blizzard loves pop culture in their game..."Jaws", "Indiana Jones", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Star Wars"...

That is what I know...how about you?

It's Time!!!!!

2010-12-06T09:42:00.001-05:00

That is all.

Counting Down

2010-12-01T09:38:00.001-05:00

That's probably what everyone is doing these days I would assume.

I've finished my Kingslayer goal, several times over. Got the mounts and pets that I wanted and watched the shattering.

Deathwing still seems to be terrified of me and won't enter any zone I tend to be in, on any toon. Guess he heard what I did to Arthas and doesn't want to push his luck. Which is a little annoying when I want that dumb achievement...oh well.

I am very excited that I got the Starcaller title on my priest. I couldn't be more proud of my guild. Or love them anymore than I do now, since they all got together and took an hour out of their normal raid schedule just to do the title run for me. And even better than that, it was our second attempt on him.

So now we wait...just a few more days!

All I can say is WOW!

2010-11-24T10:13:00.000-05:00

So the world shattered last night. The fansites were right. I didn't get my raptor from ZG or my Starcaller title. Spent my last night in Azeroth doing a last minute LK title run for guildies that hadn't made it to the prior raids. *sigh* Oh well...

Regardless, the servers were up earlier than I expected last night and regardless of the fact that I was feeling like crap, I logged in anyway. And to my surprise, all I could say was WOW! Totally impressed Blizzard...nice job!

Honestly, the game was gorgeous! Stormwind was totally amazing. I spent almost an hour there running around just looking at all the revamps they did to the textures in the game. It all made me totally grateful that Kyn (Matt) got me a new computer for my birthday that could totally handle max graphic levels!

The streets and building textures..amazing! Did anyone notice how detailed the trees are now? They actually look three dimensional. The graveyard in Stormwind is totally amazing. The wedding gazeboo thing in the Cathedral district, beautiful. I'm sure there will be a lot of crazy RP going on there. (If you're into that kind of thing)

I had logged my lock out at the doors of ZG so I did get to see parts of Norther Stranglethron. It didn't feel totally different, but the changes were just enough to make it seem like something new. I was glad to see that ZG remains the same, it's just not a raid any longer. There were no mobs inside the gates so I assume that will be added later. The layout is the same but the changes to the detail made it amazing.

Ran from Stranglethron to Westfall and play around in the tornados for awhile. Did you know they will throw you up into the air if you run in to them? But be careful, you do take fall damage. Then explored Moonbrooke. Was actually amazed to see that it is now a quest hub.

Oh, did anyone else notice they added a million flight paths? There were 3 in Westfall alone. I assume that was for the benefit of the lowbies that won't have flying yet. Was a nice addition I think.

We logged to a different server for the benifit of rolling gnomes to see their new starting area. The quests were amusing. Matt and I giggled at some of quest lines and had a good time with the new changes. Made me more than a little excited to roll that goblin!

So, with that I say a huge THANK YOU Blizzard! Can't wait for the rest of Cata.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Saying Good-Bye

2010-11-18T12:33:00.000-05:00

So several of the more well known fan sites are predicting the release of version 4.0.3a for next week.

We all know that with that comes the events that will forever change Azeroth. I'm slowly coming to the reality that I'm not going to see that ZG raptor before that happens. It has successfully evaded me for well over 2 years of trying. So, if they are correct and the shattering happens next week, I'll make my last 2 trecks into ZG this week and I'll have to say good-bye.

With only 18 days left until release, it also means that 'Fallen' has 2 raid locks left to get our Starcaller title before people quickly loose interest and move on to leveling fun. That's probably not unrealistic for us since last week was our first attempt and we had him down to 15% when he de-spawned on us. So I think, if we try again, we'll easily have that one too.

Just a quick note from my side of the world. I hope everyone is enjoying their remaining time in the world we currently know and that all pre-Cata plans are going smoothly. I've been playing a lot less these past few weeks. Logging on for raids and the elemental attacks, nothing more. But I fully expect that to change in a couple weeks!

Have a wonderful week and a happy, healthy, safe and joyous Thanksgiving!

T Minus 27 and counting...

2010-11-09T16:35:00.000-05:00

Where has the days gone? We're down to 27 days and a little over 9 hours before the release of Cataclysm and 27 days and 12 hours before we make our first steps into a world that is changed forever.

Well, that's not exactly true, now is it? They are planning to release the world changing event patch before Cataclysm actually hits the shelves.

So the big question becomes...when do we think that will happen?

Well, my (un)educated guess...and it's just that...nothing more than a guess is going to be November 30th. I know, I know, that's only 3 weeks away. But think about this:

It's the last Tuesday patch day before the release of Cataclysm.
The elemental invasion is currently on phase 2 of 4
If the invasion release follows the path it's on, phase 4 will hit on the November 22nd

That leaves one week to finish the pre-Cata events and then they drop the change on us. Don't throw things or scream at me if I am wrong. I have totally been known to be wrong on occasion. But that's just my prediction.

Regardless...we're playing Cata in less than 28 days!!!

Heartfelt Memories

2010-10-19T10:30:00.000-04:00

**Warning - This one may get a little mushy...I am a girl after all, remember!**

I look back, as Cataclysm draws near, and realize that Wrath has held a lot of happy memories for me. Granted there have been ups and downs...but overall, it's been a very enjoyable ride.

I remember the night I stood in line at midnight to pick up my copy of Wrath. It was my first midnight release and though I kind of felt out of place, the excitement was contagious. The people in their costumes, the excited chatter going on around me...it all played it's part in building up the anticipation. After standing in the cold for 30 minutes, I finally got my hands on my copy and was racing home to install it. Being on the East coast, I was one of the first people on the boat heading to Northrend and one of the first guildies to step foot in the new frozen tundra. It was the beginning of a wonderful journey.

New adventures called for new toons. BC brought about the burnout for me. Constant raiding healing took it's toll and I found it the prefect time to switch mains. Thus was born Kalyina. Matt would tell you it was a very BAD time for me to decide I was ready to switch toons. We had 3 days to level a toon from 12 - 58. It meant many long nights for both of us. Countless run throughs of every dungeon I was able to enter until we were both exhausted. It wasn't until a week AFTER the release of Wrath, that we were actually able to officially experience the frozen tundra of Northrend.

It was the beginning of a new stage in the game but sadly was also the beginning of the end of Last Call. This was the bittersweet part of Wrath for me. Last Call brought Matt and I together. It was a haven of friends and fun. But it was also the stress and pains of being responsible for 100+ people. That stress was the wind that brought about the change. It was what ultimately brought about my break down and the end of my days as the GM to LC.

Wrath was a good time gap filler for Matt and I. It was 8 months after the release of Wrath that we made the move. Or should I say that Matt made the move. We were pretty certain that once we were together full time in real life that our time in WoW would slowly decrease. Oddly enough...this didn't happen. Yes we cut back on our play time since we no longer had to use it as a means to spend time together. However, we still found ourselves deeply involved in the game.

We spent time jumping from one place to another. We never seemed satisfied. This was ultimately the lead up that began my love affair with a Death Knight and the Horde. It was short lived but well played and one of my fondest memories of Wrath.

I had never spent much time Horde side. I hadn't cared much for the races or their zones. But what I was interested in was the story they had to tell. I wasn't disappointed. It was much like finding a new game. New quest chains, new stories and new characters to meet. Sadly, we weren't content to just let things be.

After jumping around from here to there we decided to try our hand at running another guild. Faded Delusions was built from this decision. Now looking back I understand that what I was looking for, what we were looking for, couldn't' be found in simply building a guild. It was the people of LC that we missed, not the guild itself. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't make Faded Delusion be what LC once was.

It took us awhile to realize our mistakes. During this phases I decided it was time for a break. A 3 month break to be exact.

Now I find myself back in the game and amazed with the changes that are occurring around me. We've seen the end of the expansion. I've watched the Lich King fall. And on the wake of that victory I'm watching as our world changes yet again.

I still hold it over Matt's head that I beat him to Northrend. This time around, we'll make the journey together. We'll both be standing in the same line and installing at the same time. We'll be there together when the loading screen plays and our toons start our on a totally new and exciting adventure.

The End of an Era

2010-10-15T14:26:00.000-04:00

It sounds kind of odd to say "we beat the game" since I know it's an MMO and can't really be "beaten". But that's what it feels like.

Matt and I both walked away from ICC last night as Kingslayers. After a lot of ups and downs, we were finally able to watch Arthas fall. The total fight took 12 minutes and 18 seconds. But a lot of practice went into that battle.

Even with the OP boost and class changes, it still wasn't what I would consider a "faceroll". It seemed like we couldn't get the defiles placed right, the valks kept coming almost right on top the defiles, people were DC'ing and locking up. We had arguments and there were fingers pointed when we wiped. We suffered through the stupid bugs left behind with patch 4.0.1; people falling to their death from their flying ghost mounts when trying to accept a rez, zoning into an empty instance, disconnecting for no apparent reason, getting stuck because teleports would randomly stop working. It took more than a couple of wipes to get it right. But we were able to do it and with a 100% guild raid.

I can't begin to express the pride and accomplishment I felt when I watched him fall and heard the vent channel go silent as they all watched the video. Most of the guild had held off on watching it, avoided it in Dalaran, in the hope that they would see it for the first time when we were able to actually kill him.

As I walked away from ICC last night, it hit me that this truly was a bitter sweet ending. It means the end of an expansion for me and the (semi) retirement of a toon.

The List:
1. King Slayer - Kalyina - DONE
2. Exalted Zandlar Tribe - Kalyina
3. ZG Mounts - TIGER DONE
4. 20,000 gold stock pile - DONE
5. Explorer Title - Kalyina - DONE
6. Reins of the Winterspring Forstsaber - Kalyina - DONE

The last thing left for her to do is finish her Zandlar Tribe rep. She's almost there actually. Just a couple thousand points away from exalted. Then that's really it. Will I get that raptor to drop. I see that goal slipping further and further away as each day passes.

But ultimately, I did what I sat out to do. I didn't want to watch another expansion pass by without seeing the end of the content.

I started playing a little ways into the BC era. Most people were already hitting up the end game raids when I got my first toon to 70. I barely knew what a raid was, let alone dreamed of getting into one. Actually, I was pretty scared of raiding. I remember telling the people I met in the game that I didn't want to raid. It sounded too hard. But towards the end of BC when we were running Kara and ZA, I was sad to see Wrath coming because there was so much content I never got to see.

So it is with mixed emotions that Kalyina boasts her Kingslayer title. At least I know when she and Zili are sitting around, relaxing by a fire in the bars of Dalaran with all the other left behind or forgotten toons, she'll have big stories to tell about her amazing adventures.

I am so OP!

2010-10-13T12:15:00.000-04:00

Or at least that is what everyone thinks now that the patch has hit. I guess it's Blizzards way of making people feel like they are awesome at least till Cata hits.

*sigh*

When did a leisure game, that you supposedly play for fun, become such a big competition? Really. It's all about gear scores and dps meters. It's about who you outgear and who you out dps. It's about being better than everyone else.

Even in my own house, of two players. It becomes dangerous if one of us out ranks the other on the WoW Hero's site. Then it becomes a long discussion about how that happened or "is it showing my latest upgrades!". After that discussion, it's a constant grind to get back on top. That apparently somehow makes you a better player than the other person.

What people forget is that it's like comparing apples to oranges. You are your own player. Are you having fun? Do you dedicate as much time as the player you are comparing yourself to? Are you the same class and spec? Most of the time, the answers to these questions is "no".

So you're raiding 10 man content and you're coming up as 4th or 5th on the dps meter. Does it really matter? Does the boss end up dead on the floor at the end of the raid? Is your group complaining at you that they can't kill the boss because of your dps? Probably not? Then I ask again, does it really matter if you're more OP than me?

Well, the next question to ask is are you having more fun being at the top of the dps chart? Does that make you feel better about yourself? Do you have a point to prove because your dps is 400 points higher than the people below you? Yes, you may spend more time working on your gear, reading Tankspot and studying everything you can find to gain those few extra points of DPS. But are you really having more fun that the person who you are comparing yourself to? Most likely not.

Why do I say that? Well because that person you're outranking probably isn't nearly as worried about it as you are. Unless you're making a point to push it in their face and trying to make them feel bad about themselves, they probably see nothing wrong with their DPS or their gear score. They are just there to have fun.

Every player in this game has their own unique play style. There is over 12 million of them now I hear. That's 12 million play styles. Granted a lot of people are similar but everyone should be playing in order to have fun. If comparing and stressing is part of that, count me out.

I'm one of those players that's there to have fun. I play a demonology warlock. That's pretty rare in a raiding environment. I like to raid. But I want to do it my way. As long as that doesn't hold back the progression of my Guild, I'm ok with being me.

Other than being in pain from an accident last night. I enjoyed toying with the new changes. So what if I changed the spirit on my gear to Haste instead of Mastery. That's my choice and I'm ok with it.

I think if more of the players in wow took a step back and agreed to let people be themselves, they would realize they were happier players as well.

So little time...so much WoW

2010-10-06T08:12:00.000-04:00

It's been a few days since my last post and a few days since Blizzard announced the release date of Cataclysm.

In that amount of time, I've managed to complete my Winter sabre rep grind, pick up 2 Brewfest mounts and almost complete my Diplomat title.

I've also been thinking a lot about my little hunter. I've been reading some of the changes to hunters in Cata and think I may want to put the needed time in to level her to 80 before the release. She's currently at 72 so that's not a huge grind but it still takes time away from the other things I've wanted to do on my bucket list.

So lets take a look at where I stand now:
1. King Slayer - Kalyina Trying for it again tonight!
2. Exalted Zandlar Tribe - Kalyina
3. ZG Raptor/Tiger - Kalyina Tiger complete
4. Pre-BC Dungeon Master - Kalyina
5. 20,000 gold stock pile (I'm odd I know) Close enough
6. Explorer Title - Kalyina
7. Winter saber Grind - Kalyina Complete
8. Diplomat Title - Kalyina
9. Hunter to 80

I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever get this stuff done, if I keep adding to it. *sigh*

On other news, I may have mentioned that Matt and I have put two of our alts into a separate guild from our mains. Kalyista (my shaman) and Minikyn (Matt's warrior tank) are now members of a Solo Act on Shadow Council.

I've never really been one to take my responsibilities in a guild lightly. To me, being a member of any type of group means I have responsibilities and obligations to those people. It's nothing different in WoW.

Solo Act is a small-ish guild trying to work their way through ICC before the end of Wrath rolls around. We went into this guild before we knew the actual release date for the expansion.

Our first weekend in we were pulled into their ICC group. I think I've posted the results of my adventure into Shaman healing in ICC. Now my thoughts for this post aren't actually on the raid itself but more on my thoughts of the type of people this guild houses.

Last night we ran the weekly raid with them. Nothing major, it was a simple Noth run in Naxx. Pretty easy right. Well, yeah it was. But the attitude of the players during this run just kind of blew my mind.

The main tank for the guild (will call her KJ) is a DK. She's not a "bad" tank by any means but her ego is a little over the top for my tastes. So even though we had two tanks in the party KJ asked Mini to go dps. Ok, no big deal. About two pulls into the wing I realize I'm also solo healing the raid. Again, no big deal. But why? If we have the classes in the raid and the instance is well below all of us in gear level, why are we worried about needing that much dps? Is there a point we are trying to prove here?

KJ had the same type of attitude with ICC last weekend as well. She is God and no one else can touch her. I kept my opinons to myself and didn't mention that she was pretty dang squishy for a DK tank at that level of progression. Just rubbed me the wrong way...you know?

Then there is the Shadow Priest who zones in to Naxx with the question "wow, am I the highest gear score here?" Ok, lets stroke our own egos for awhile. Then he commences to posting the damn dps meter after every piece of trash. Dude, seriously? Like we really care what the dps meter says on a raid that we are way over geared for. I won't go into the fact that he was the highest gear score but still fell 5th on the dps meter.

It just really amazes me that people consider themselves awesome based on their guild score. Gear score does not judge talent. This is simply proven with the Shadow Priests that thought he was the almighty but failed to notice that even though his gear score was higher he couldn't back it up with the talent needed to produce the numbers of some of the other dps.

Needless to say, I'm not sure how long we'll last in this guild. Maybe it's just that being a member of a good guild has spoiled us and sheltered us from these types of idiots.

Now don't get me wrong, the GM for Solo Act is a pretty nice (though young if I had to guess) guy. And there are a couple of nice enough people in that guild. But after being an active part of Whispers and now and officer in our main guild. I've come to realize how important it is to enjoy and respect the people you play with.

Let the Count Down Begin!

2010-10-04T15:48:00.000-04:00

December 7th...we are 63 Days, 8 Hours and 10 minutes away from the release of Cataclysm!

Now I know Blizzard reserves the right to change this day...but they did make the announcement so it officially starts the count down.

Still doubting...you can verify here:
http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?101004
and here:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/

I, for one, am so excited I can't stand it! I've been waiting since Blizzcon last year for this date! Come on December!

Oh, but maybe not...still have a few things to wrap up before the date hits.

We're currently 11/12 into ICC. I hope this doesn't kill our push to finish off Lich King with my lock's guild.

My shaman (yes you heard me right) was able to successfully heal ICC up to Blood Council. I'll be curious to see if her guild keeps chipping away at ICC too.

I know, I hated that shaman. I even remember telling you guys that. But that was before I gave resto a try. I slowly feel in love with that Holy Cow. Has anyone else ever noticed when Tauren do their jesus beam and they get a proc, your toon throws her hands up in the air like she's praising the God? Well, once I figured this out, it became a habit for me to yell "Holy Cow" every time it happened. Now that she's back to being Alliance, I miss that "Holy Cow".

It always seems that expansion time is like starting over for players. We get a chance to relearn the game, to switch toons, try out new things, new guilds, etc.

It took me awhile to decide what I was doing in Cata. But after thinking about it long and hard, I've decided I'm going back where I belong. I'm going back to my first love...healing. Kalyanna is going to be my main again. As much as I love my lock...I've just really missed healing in this expansion.

Anyway, what are you plans for the Cataclysm? Changing mains, rerolling? I'd be curious to see what people are planning to do.

ICC Updates and Newly Post News

2010-09-16T12:13:00.000-04:00

Raiding News:

ICC last night went better than I expected, especially since 2 of our raid members had to drop as soon as we walked in the door. After bringing a couple of back ups we decided to give Putricide a try and if we couldn't down him, we'd just reset.

Well we downed him, on our first try this week. Granted most of the raid had tried him a few times before but we always decided to skip him since he was such a pain. But anyway, that was a guild first.

So, we're now locked to the raid for this week, may as well give Dreamwalker a try. Guess what? We one shot that fight too...another guild first! Oh yeah, we're on a roll! Let's move on.

The gauntlet went smoothly and we're in the courtyard for Syndragosa. First try 8/10 people get phase 1 and 2 down with no problems. We have her health down below 50% when we decide to wipe it, rez our 1 dead healer and 1 dps. The RL discusses phase 3 and we give it a go again, second time doesn't' go so well, we loose 3 or 4 people in her first yank because they got them selves turned around and didn't away from her fast enough. So, wipe it up and try a 3rd time. This time we make into phase 3 and she is at about 28% health when the entire raid gets encased in a tomb of ice. *sigh*

I think we could have made it past her on the next try but one of our healers (a last minute add because of the 2 lost raid members in the beginning) had to go to work.

We've extended the raid lock out again and I feel confident we'll get Syndragosa down next week. Then it's off to visit the Lich King!!

NEWS:

Looks like patch 4.4.0 is up on the back ground down loader. That means we'll all be seeing pre-Cataclysm changes in the next couple of weeks. From my experience, things usually go up on the down loader 2 - 3 weeks before they are released. Then the pre-expansion events are usually up 5 - 6 weeks before the release of the expansion. That all plays very well into MMO-Champs predictions of a November release.

I expect we'll be hearing something from Blizzard in the way of an announcement soon. Or at least I am keeping my fingers crossed. I could totally be wrong, I have been known to be a time or two in the past, so don't quote me on anything. It all my wishful thinking.

BUCKET LIST:

My bucket list doesn't seem so large anymore but it does have somethings on it that seem impossible.

1. King Slayer - Kalyina
2. Exalted Zandlar Tribe - Kalyina
3. ZG Raptor/Tiger - Kalyina
4. Pre-BC Dungeon Master - Kalyina
5. 20,000 gold stock pile (I'm odd I know)
6. Explorer Title - Kalyina
7. Reins of the Winterspring Frostsaber - Kalyina has been gathering her mounts, would love to add this one to her collection.

That's about it for me today. Hopefully, I'll be back tomorrow to talk about more interesting things.

Happy Hunting,
~Kaly

Could it really be?

2010-09-15T14:59:00.000-04:00

I know, I know...I've been gone for AGES!

Well not really gone. As it turned out I have been playing wow. I've been dabbling around in various things here and there and ultimately I've ended up back on the Alliance side of the fence (more or less) for the last few months.

Turns out, I just wasn't happy Horde side and that was probably a huge reason I lost interest in the game. So you may (or may not) be wondering, where I am at now.

My time lately has been divided between my beloved lock, priest and my now RESTO! shammy. Yes, you heard me right that shammy that I so hated, is now resto and I love, love, love her.

The break down:
Kalyina - She's still demo. I can't bring myself to change this. And believe it or not, with our Alliance side guild, she's only 3 bosses away from her King Slayer title.

The entire guild took a raid break for about 6 weeks and we made our first run since then, last week. We decided to extend our raid lock out and tonight we have Dreamwalker, Sendragosa and the Lich King to pick up on. It's one of the only things I wanted before the release of Cata. I wanted my little gnome to have the King Slayer title. So we'll see how that goes.

Kalyanna and Kalyista - Both of them have transferred back to the Alliance side and have been happily gathering emblems here and there for their gear. I have yet to raid past ToC with either of them since I'm mainly focused on ICC with my lock. I would love to get some ICC love for my priest but with the pending release of Cata I doubt that will happen.

Now for the big topic of discussion. I'm assuming everyone has read the MMO-Champs prediction for the release of Cataclysm. For those of you that have not..they are guessing the first week of November!!

Now I'm not one to spread rumors and Blizzard hasn't announced this themselves but if anyone has been following them for long, you'd know they were spot on with the BC release. Not only BC but they have also been right about the patch release dates as well.

What does all this mean? Well, we could all be playing Cataclysm in a little less then 2 months! Even if they are off a little, well that's still pretty damn close!

So it's got me thinking about all the changes. I find these exciting and actually, a little bit sad.

Exciting for the new content and renewed excitement in the game. Excited to see all the new stuff that will come along with the changes they are making.

Sad, well for many reasons really. For the obvious, because of the things that will be going away. ZG for one. I have always loved that raid. As a matter of fact, my DK got exalted with the Zandlar Tribe last night. We've been running ZG on every reset and will continue to, in order to get our fill of a place that will soon be long gone and a chance at giving my tiny gnome a giant raptor mount as well.

Other reasons I'm sad? Well, for out of game reasons. Since my break from WoW I have been doing more of the crafty type things I love to do. I know this will decline for awhile. And then there is all the other things I want to do. Mainly, the Sims 3. I've had the game for awhile and it's sitting on my shelf calling my name.

The world doesn't give me enough to time to do all the things I want/love to do. I know I need to learn to balance it all. I also know that as the excitement of the expansion wears off that will become easier to do. However, it still makes me a little sad.

That bucket list I created awhile back...well we'll talk about that in my next post. I have lots of thought I need to put into that one. Lots of consideration for what's important in the next 6 weeks and what's just not.

Hope everyone is as excited as I am for the upcoming expansion and I hope you all have a wonderful Hump Day!

sneeks in quietly

2010-04-08T11:19:00.000-04:00

Soooo, looks like I renewed my WoW account last weekend. :-)

Not sure where the urge came from but I was driving home from work on afternoon and something triggered it. The urge to play again. I held off, didn't renew till the weekend rolled around.

I played some. Nothing major really. Cleaned up inventory, created a real Horde side bank toon since I was using my goblin name holder toon as a bank toon. Moved inventory around, figured out the emblem situation for the BoA gear, did the Noblegarden egg hunt, etc, etc, etc.

It was kind of nice. No pressure, just casually playing around in the game. Had a mailbox full of items that had been pulled out of our guild bank after one of our members account had been hacked. But other then that, really nothing guild wise to do.

Obviously we had lost a member or two in our absence. We expected that. Actually, expected the majority of them to be gone. But it was only a couple.

We did a lot of thinking...about this guild business while we were on sabbatical. I think we have both come to the realization that we can't build full time guild leaders anymore.

We finally sat down and asked ourselves..."why were we trying to build up Faded Delusions?" The sad answer...we were looking for another Last Call. The grim reality of it is, it wasn't the guild we were missing, it wasn't being GMs that we missed, it was the people, the friends, the relationships, the good times we had in the past. All of which was related to Last Call.

That's not something we can get back no matter how hard we try. Those people are long gone, no longer playing or on other servers now. We can't recreate a guild that has long been dead.

Don't get me wrong, the people we met and played with in Faded were a blast. They are all wonderful people. But it will never be the same and we have to accept that.

So, long and painful reality, in a nutshell...we're not going to push for the guild build again. We're not going to throw people out of Faded, we're not even going to quit ourselves. But the guild itself, is what it is. We have to accept that.

Most of the original Faded members are back on their home servers now, playing back on their mains and that's ok with us. Honestly, I spent most of my playing time this past weekend...Alliance side. I played on my lock and some on Tiki (if you remember from previous posts, the baby gnome mage I rolled with Matt's S-Priest on the Oceanic Server about a year ago). So my time was limited Horde side. It will probably continue to be that way.

Matt still prefers Horde. He played a lot on his Horde toons. But as for me...the only reason I'm Horde side at all is for the future Goblin. I've all but lost interest in my DK. I hate the news that was posted a couple days ago about the changes to DK tanking in Cataclysm. Not being able to tank as frost...has turned me totally off to her.

The upside, I have successfully been able to balance WoW with other things for this past week. I don't find the constant draw to play all the time there, not the way it use to be. I can play when I want and turn it off when I don't. I like this.

So for the time being...I'm back! And...happy about it. So looks like I'll be back to blogging some too.

Hopefully, I'll that post up soon about my feelings on the DK and Warlock changing coming during the Cataclysm!

Happy hunting!

Hello!!!

2010-03-12T11:43:00.000-05:00

It appears, that possibly my burn out isn't just around WoW but around MMO's in particular.

I haven't played WoW for so long I can't remember exactly when I logged in last. I haven't played Allods either. So what have I been doing?

Well, long, long, long time ago, I had an addiction to city building/tycoon types games. Zoo Tycoon, Zeus, Pharaoh, Emperor, Caesar...all of them. I played them non-stop. Any and every tycoon game I could find, I bought it. Some where good...some where just plain bad.

But the general concept was the same. Build over and over again, to make the city functional and pretty. Disaster struck, do it all again. Then I found WoW.

Well I found that I had gotten board with WoW. Three years of playing the same game and nothing more. So I tried Allods. It's a nice game, pretty graphics, fun content...but it's still an MMO. So I stop playing it too. Reload Caesar IV on my computer and start playing it again.

Then one day, I come across a game on line that looks pretty interesting.

Settlers: Rise of an Empire.

Turns out, it's REALLY good. Not your standard Tycoon/City Builder game. There is a lot more to it then that. But the graphics are unbelievable for a city building type game.

You basically are sent on various missions, helping settlers, capturing land, building armies, etc, etc, etc. It has a storyline, that is somewhat compiling. But it's very addicting.

Build up the basics for you city, promote your knight to gain rank to allow you to build more, develop your armies and then it's time to capture objectives.

It's not heavy on the battle side nor heavy on the city building side. It's a comfortable mix of the two. Yes it's a little glitchy at times. Somethings are hard to figure out and it would be great if it had better tutorials. All of this is easily overcome and after a mission map or two, you've gotten the hang of it.

Best of all, it's easy to pick up and easy to put down. So I'm able to do other things as well. Spend time with my family, play some Dokapon Kingdom with Matt and Zack, hang out with friends and just relax. There is no schedule to keep, no raids to remember, etc. Just some relaxing fun times.

Who knows, looks like I'm getting back into scrapbooking again too!

I know the big question now is..."are you ever planning on coming back to WoW?". As of now, my answer is still a resounding YES! I have preperations to make for Cataclysm, toons to prepare. But it will be awhile. I'm enjoying my break. I'm enjoying other games.

Everyone has to break for life every now and then!

Happy Friday!!

Second Chance

2010-03-01T11:38:00.000-05:00

So, decided this weekend to give Allods a second chance. Not that the game was bad the first time I played it but it was so crowded you couldn't really get a feel for the true game. It was so bad you couldn't get a feel of what the combat was really like because there were no mobs to kill. Just waltz in, pick up your quest items off the ground and walk back out again. The mobs were already dead from the mass of people that came in before you.

This weekend was a little better. Nothing like I would want it be. We were still standing around at times waiting for named mobs to spawn so we could kill them. We didn't have to kill many trash mobs to get to the quest items. But we did actually make it out of the starting zone.

I decided to reroll a healer class. Since it seems I'm never content with a straight DPS class. I opted for the humanish type race since they get a racial ability similar to a WoW priests bubble. It's not as easy to use but it's still helpful. It has a 3 minute cool down and will block ALL damage for 12 seconds. Looks and works more like an OS button.

So far the healer class isn't impressing me. My heals are very very puny. But I keep telling myself to be patient. I'm sure Kalyanna didn't have great heal ability at level 7 either. But the really cool thing? I can wear leather at level 10 and then plate at level 30! Oh yeah!

Interestingly enough, you get thrown out into the real world pretty quickly in this game. Shortly after we dinged level 6, we had finished up all the starting quests and were literally, thrown in pretty little bubbles, out of the zone.

Novogrand was our final destination. It's the major faction city for the League. It reminds me a lot of Stormwind as far as the layout goes. But that's where the similarity stops.

It's broken into districts, one for each race and a trade district. There is one central "Castle" where the king is located. (Note* As a healer, this is also where I picked up my class quest to learn to bubble)

If you ask Eto I'm sure he'd tell you I was just like a kid at Christmas. The sheer size of the city alone was enough to have me running and squealing with chants of "oh, I want to go in there", "LOOK AT THIS" and "Soooo pretty"! I'm sure it was similar to seeing Stormwind or Darnasus for the first time.

First look at professions....they are pretty basic. Alchemist, Blacksmith, Tailor, Leatherworker, Miner, Herbalism and Disassembler. Disassemblers take high quality items (green or better) and break it down into parts that can then be used by Leatherworkers and Tailors.

I haven't picked my professions yet, but it appears you can only pick one. There is a series of quest lines that send you around to visit all the profession trainers and at the end of each you visit the "Grandmaster" of the gathering profession and the creation profession. The last thing they both say to you is something like "Should you choose your path on a gathering/creation profession, come back and see me, I will have many tasks for you to complete." I'll test this tonight and update for sure.

Up to this point, here are my standings on the game:

LIKE:
Zones/Graphics/Locations - The game is beautiful and the more I explore the move I'm captivated.
Music - The music is pretty constant in the game, so if you don't like that, turn it off. But the music is very calming in nature.
Combat System - It's standard MMO as I know it, so easy to follow

DISLIKE:
Controls - Only because they are a little "sticky" at this point. I'm sure after I get use to them and realize what buttons are causing my camera angle and movement controls to jump around, they will be second nature to me.
Raid/Group Frames - It's hard, as a healer to tell who's got aggro and who's health is dropping based on the party frames in group. I hope that eventually I'll be able to easily distinguish who needs healing...or better yet, maybe someone will create a "Healbot" type mod!
Character Creation - Seriously, I would love for a game to give me the ability to really customize how my toon looks so that not everyone I pass looks just like me!
Over population! - More servers soon? I hope!

As always, when I learn more, I'll update more! Happy Monday everyone!

Traitor!

2010-02-24T15:45:00.000-05:00

*looks around guiltily* Shhhh, don't tell...I was just "trying" it out. You know, testing the waters, seeing what else was out there. It's nothing major, I would never pick another over my first love...

So, yeah lets talk a little about "Allods" .

My first impression of the MMO, wasn't anything outstanding. I'm not really "looking" for another game to play. I wasn't out actively seeking it but it happen to fall into my lap.

So we downloaded and installed it and after a few hiccups, I was able to create a character. Seems that any time they do maintenance or patches, which is pretty often since it's still in the open beta phase, they have issues with the files getting corrupted in the launcher.

Now, this was pretty easily fixed. The forums on the official website listed a step by step guide on how to force the game to download a new launcher without uninstalling it.

It's a very short process to create your account and then you're off to the character creation screen. There are 2 "factions" you can choose from. The League and the Empire. The League being the "light" side, similar to the Alliance in WoW and the Empire appearing to be more of the "dark" side, equivalent to the Horde.

Both factions have the ability to create a human type character. The League also has Elves and an adorable little class called "Giberlings". Now the Elves are whimsical creatures with wings. They look very similar to the Blood Elf race in WoW with the exception that the males doesn't look nearly as girly.

The Giberlings, on the other hand, are just plain adorable. Kudos to gPotato for developing a pretty unique looking race. When you choose to play a Giberling, you aren't exactly playing one toon as they come in groups of three. You get to control the "lead" toon while two other Giberlings follow you around and assist. They are independent of your main toon. You can customize how they look but you can not control their movements.

Sadly, the Empire wasn't blessed with a unique race of their own. They have a human type race as well as Orcs and the Arisen. Orcs look nearly identical to the model we are all use to seeing in WoW. The Arisen look like a cross between blood elves and undead. If you can imagine this. They have a very pale, slinder almost ghostly appearance to them.

Once you've chosen which faction and your race, it's time to pick your class. The interesting part here is that that the title of your class changes based on the faction and race you selected. For example, if you are a League Human mage type you are called a Magician but if you are a Empire Arisen mage type you would be called a Sorcerer. But all in all, the classes are the same that we are all accustom to. Warrior, Paladin, Scout, Healer, Warden, Mage, Summoner, Psionicist.

I don't know a lot about each class yet, since I haven't played them all but I'll give you the best understanding I have. Of course warrior, paladin and mage speak for themselves.
Scout = Hunter without a pet
Healer = Priest type
Summoner = Warlock
Psionicist = The best way I can describe this class is Shadow Priest that mind controls? Stay tuned for more info.
Warden = No clue! But based on class you could be called a Druid, Shaman or Animist if that helps any. I'll let you know more as I find it out.

I stayed simple for my first toon, she's an Archmage or League/Elf/Mage. Yeah, yeah...girl remember! I like pretty things.

She's pushing level 6 after a couple of hours of playing. And here's my good, bad and ugly on the actual game play:

Good:
1. Very familiar controls
2. Entertaining and amusing quests
3. Lots of "help" in general chat
4. The game is beautiful!!
5. Easy quests
6. Very little lag or server issues, especially for a game in beta phase.

Bad and UGLY:
1. WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE! - Open Beta for this game started a little over a week ago. I started playing 3 days after the open beta started. The were so many people that everyone was waiting in lines to kill the quest mobs. There was no wondering where to go next, just follow the masses. Sadly, ALL the races start in the same zone for the same faction. This means that every player that rolled a League toon, was in the same starting area as me.
2. Only TWO servers!!
3. Very little customization available on the UI and controls
4. Grindy - The first 5 levels felt very grindy but I hear this gets better when you are out of the starting area.
5. Lots of arguing in general chat - People are constantly arguing between two main groups...the "ZOMG, WOW ripoff!" group and the "Sheesh, give it a chance people, it's NOT WOW" group.

Now we all know, there is only one WOW. So if you're looking for an identical replica of Azeroth, don't bother. You're better off staying where you are. But if you are interesting in a game that has some of the same things to offer and some totally new things. Give this one a shot. It's not going to replace WoW by any means but I think it will appeal to a lot of the same types of players.

Remember, it's a "Free to Play" MMORPG that will eventually have the functioning "buy with real money" store. And if you can get past the Beta stage then you may just like it. And if you do give it a shot, my toon name never changes so Kalyanna's waiting to say HI!

Happy MMOing!

The time has come...

2010-02-22T08:48:00.000-05:00

I've logged in twice over the course of the last week.

Once to mill some weeds for Eto and turn them into Darkmoon cards. The second time, to do a JC daily and check on the guild. Both times, I was logged on for less then 30 minutes.

So what does this tell me? It's time for me to take a break.

In the 3 years that I've been playing, I've never hit this point where I don't want to play or when I do log in, I can't find anything to do. I've finally gotten to that point.

I think this is bothering me a little. Simply because I did love this game for so long and now I can't find anything that interests me.

I'm not saying this is goodbye for me. No way! I've been looking forward to the Cataclysm. So I know I'll be back again. Its just that I think the time has come for me to take a little break. I may or may not let the account lapse. I haven't decided on that yet. I'll still blog occasionally when the urge hits me or there is new updates to blog about.

Even as I write this, I'm torn. Part of me wants to hit the delete key. Seems that saying it out loud somehow makes things so permanent.

But it's not permanent. I'm not giving up, just taking a break and knowing me, it won't last that long anyway!

So, I'll see you all on the flip side...assuming we all survive the Cataclysm!

Happy Monday!

The State of Things

2010-02-17T13:35:00.000-05:00

It's really been over a week since my last post?

Guess that's a reflection on my current gaming situation...at least as far as WoW is concerned.

So, I'm starting to experience the oh, so familiar pains of "burn out" that seems so common these days in the blogging community. Finding myself logging in less and less. Honestly, there has been more days that I don't log in at all. The days that I do log in, it's to check on the guild or transmute or mill or disenchant things for someone.

What's causing this burn out? That's totally opinionated I'm sure. It's different for everyone but for me I believe it's the lull before the storm. It's a combination of things. It's the anticipated down time between now and the release of Cataclysm. It's the guild, it's the grind, it's the boredom...

I had such a wonderful "Bucket List" of things that I thought would help tide me over or at least help me get prepared for Cataclysm. hmmmm

So what's going on?!?!

I know how the Lich King dies, I know how the story ends...what's left to do? Push to see him die myself? Why? I've already seen it on Youtube. I've successfully tanked all of ToC over this past weekend. Found it more stressful then fun, that was another warning sign for me that I'm getting close to "burn out".

I've got a well geared tank and a well geared healer. I've got a shaman that I can't make myself gear because..well, apparently shaman just aren't my thing. Can't find any fun in her. Couldn't find it in BC, can't find it now.

I've got a lovely little gnome warlock that is slowly, ever so slowly, working on her gear and maybe a Loremaster title. If she gets it, that's great, if not I don't think I'll be too disappointed.

The guild...well this all comes down to a question asked by a reader.

"Do you think the LFG tool is killing guilds, or do your think the lack of useful guilds created the LFG tool?"

Morph posted this in the comment section of my last post a couple weeks ago and got me thinking. The result? Well, the more I think about it the more if I wonder if this isn't part of the reason for my potential "burn out"?

So which one is it, you may ask. The new LFG system or the guild?

Well, I think the answer to this question on my part is simple. I think the LFG system is the start of the end of the smaller guilds. I don't think it will totally kills guilds in general but I do strongly believe we will start to see and have already, the smaller guilds disappear.

Why? Well because you don't need a guild anymore. Think about it. It use to be that you "needed" a good guild, or any guild really, to be able to easily run instances and heroics. You needed that guild if you wanted to see the end game content.

The guild that played together stayed together. It was that simple. You kept your members by making sure they got to see what they signed up for. They were more willing to work with the guilds raiding schedule because that's the only way they could see the content. If they couldn't work with your schedule they found a guild who's schedule worked with theirs.

Back in BC and the early days of Wrath, hell even in vanilla wow, guilds used their calendars, scheduled events, talked in guild chat, made plans with members when they wanted to raid or grind out some emblems. Guild chat, at least for Last Call, was always full of chitter chatter from the members looking to put together heroic groups or world events or unscheduled raids. It was never a silent game for sure.

This "chitter chatter" that started as looking for people to form the group led to other interesting conversations. It led to people getting to know each other. People forming more then just a group...they formed friendships.

That group might have to pug a spot or two, yes. But if they needed to pug that spot, it was often the opportunity to recruit someone. That person they pugged often wasn't in a guild..thus looking for a home and on more then one occasion, we ended up gaining a member.

Yes, you had those rare people that joined for the community or for the guild chat or other benifits but mainly, guilds were needed for raiding and end game content.

Fast forward to the current day. Getting into a heroic is as easy as clicking a button and waiting a few minutes. It's even easier then that if you're a tank or a healer. Just click the button and your in. Deal with a little bit of stupidity, walk away with your loot and call it a day.

There is no reason to "chat" unless you're the social type of person that wants people to talk to while you quest or instance. Even if you are that person, you have general chat or your pug group to chitter chatter with if you like.

What about the end game content? Well, obviously you don't need a guild for that anymore either thanks to Blizzards super simple gear up policy. Push the random LFG button a few times and *poof* you're fully geared to get into Toc and ICC.

"Oh, but I need a guild for that, right?"

Nope...not anymore. Tune into the "LookingForGroup" channel on any well established server and what do you see ever 30 - 45 seconds?

"LFM, ICC 10, pst your role and gear score"

Thus the cycle is never ending. Push the button, get the loot, pick up the pug and see the end...

So tell me again, why do we need the guild when I can grind it all out in PUGs????

Exactly...and now I know why I'm looking forward to the release of Cataclysm. Give me something to do beside push the button, damn it, this isn't LOST!

Casual Hard Core

2010-02-09T08:24:00.000-05:00

"The Greedy Goblin" had an interesting article today. Normally, I glance over his stuff and pass it by since mostly is slamming this person or that, but today he actually wrote an article about raiding in his guild. Now if you follow Gevlon, you know he formed a guild a EU server where he is determined to test his theory on raiding only in blue gear.

He actually pays people 100g to join his guild then when they hit 80 they get boosted to a status of raider and given 1000g, if they pass some kind of class understanding test.

I think it's a very interesting concept but not enough that I'm willing to try it. I do however agree with today's post since it's on the concept of raiding.

"PS: many people claim that they are in a casual guild that is progressing. In these "casual" guilds the leadership and the tank/healer corps is HC. The same people tank, lead the raid or do main healing every raid. The DPS and the off-healers rotate casually. Without the HC core, the "casual" guild dies."

After thinking about this for a bit, I've realized this is so very true. Without those "core" members you just don't raid in a casual guild. There has to be dedication from somewhere that keeps you raiding when no one is required to attend.

From what I've learned from our "casual" guild...more often then not you don't have enough people to actually raid. The dedication just isn't there in a casual guild.

The way around this is seems is to over populate. Easy enough right? Well not in this day and time. Guilds are more and more becoming a thing of the past. The LFG system has seen to that.

*sigh*

Computer Envy

2010-02-05T11:57:00.000-05:00

Ok, with all the lag I've been experiencing the last couple days on my server, I'm officially jealous of people who have "instant load".

Or, well, relatively instant load times. I sit and wait and wait and wait some more for my loading screen. I could literally walk away from my computer, go make a sandwich and switch out some laundry in the amount of time it takes for me to actually be able to move around after hitting the log in option.

So, maybe not that long but seriously. Eto's computer..jealous. I have an awesome video card..but my processor can't handle the potential my card has. We can hit log at the same time and he's in, moving around and on his way well before me.

He doesn't fight the disconnects and lock ups that I do either.

Graphically, his game doesn't look much different then mine. At least not yet, we'll see how much that changes with the new 24 inch monitor he just ordered. Our video cards are very similar.

But I'm also one of those people who rarely ever spends money on myself. The only thing I've bought for myself, at least for my computer, is my video card and hard drive but only when both went out and stopped working completely.

So, my question for my fellow gamers. What parts of your computers do you splurge on? What pieces do you find it more beneficial to spend a little more money on?

Improvements!

2010-02-04T09:50:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the help of two lovely readers, I am seeing a slight improvement on the dps of my lock.

What did I do?

Nothing really major. They had mentioned that I should make sure my spec was PvE specific, research spell rotation, check my gear and practice on the dummies. So I did the research part and swapped a couple of pieces of gear for T9 since I earned some emblems.

I'm excited to say in H-VH, H-OK and H-HoS (maybe H-AN too can't remember) last night I saw my dps jump from it's normal 2800 - 3200, to 3800 - 4200. That's a 1000 dps jump.

I was top of the dps charts for 2 or the 3 or 4 runs. Not that it means a whole lot, I know. Could just mean the other dps were really low, etc. But I was excited none the less. I at least felt like I wasn't being carried any longer.

Now the Shaman, she's a different story, we'll see what happens with her this weekend. I haven't been on her to try the same with her.

How can this be?

2010-02-02T08:38:00.000-05:00

Ok, I have officially come to the realization that I am epic fail when it comes to any DPS class. I know, I know, how can anyone not be good at DPS? Well, maybe it's because I refuse to conform? I want to play the specs that aren't "popular" or aren't really high dps specs? Who knows, but check these examples...

Subject One: Kalyina - Demonology Warlock
Now I know her biggest problem is that I refuse to go affliction or destro. Why? I like demonology. I know it doesn't push the big dps numbers but even duel speccing her for destro I wasn't able to push the numbers. And it's my Zili...it's my awesome felguard bodyguard! Who doesn't love him?

I can't really blame her problem on gear either. At the time she was geared pretty well actually. At least for her content level. At the time, in the appropriate tier gear, she was doing good to push 3K dps as Demo in a 10 man raid. Blah...

Demonology locks rely heavily on the raid make up to boost their DPS. I learned this early on. Paladin buffs are a must. Especially when you rely so heavily on your Felguard for his cleave damage. Getting Might on him is very important. Sadly, most paladin's don't understand this which means you have to ask for them to buff the felguard differently. Regardless, I've always believed if you can't pull the dps on your own, you shouldn't be relying on group make up to boost it.

Subject Two: Kalyista - Elemental Shaman
This one, maybe I can blame it on gear. She is able to get into heroics now, thanks to 2 pieces of LW gear that Eto made for her. I also threw on some leather BoE blue gloves and bracers I had on my bank toon and purchased the blue BoE cloth shoulders. She's now hit capped at least for heroics. I don't intend to raid with her so heroic hit cap is all I'm really worried about.

We ran 3 heroics last night, H-OK, H-VH and H-UK. Of those three the first was H-OK and my dps was pretty bad, I wasn't hit capped and was trying to figure out what I was doing. The last was H-VH and we had a Paladin and a lock pushing 5K - 7K dps. So over the course of the night my dps started at 1.5K and ended at about 2.2K - 2.3K.

Now that does give me a little hope that with decent gear, she has the potential to push some decent dps numbers. I've researched her, thanks to you guys who recommended sites. I've learned the rotation, glyphs, changed her build around some and hope that maybe I can figure out how to enjoy playing her.

Subject Three: Kalyanna - Shadow Spec
If I want to pass this toon up on the DPS break down I'm sure I could simply because I rarely have to go shadow and when I do, it's still her off spec. But this is probably the worst. I refuse to look at her DPS number. I don't run recount on her since 99% of the time she's healing. But I know there has to be more to shadow priests then just SW: Pain and spamming the purple beam of death thingy. *sigh*

I've also tried kitty dps, hunters, unholy DKs, just to name a few. Granted the hunter and kitty were not 80 toons and the unholy was in my tank gear. So I won't comment on those.

This isn't leaving me very optimistic about my up coming mage. Can I somehow manage to actually be good at DPS?

Seriously, I am a good tank and a good healer. Probably a better healer then a tank actually. DPS is suppose to be the "easier" role to play.

I have a couple other ideas on why I can't find a good dps class.
1. I jump around on my toons too much. Making myself ok at a lot of things and really good at nothing.
2. DPS requires consistency. Spell rotations, gear, stats, moving, adjusting, etc. I'm not so good at consistency.
3. I'm not willing to conform. I choose to play them differently so I pay the price with lower dps.

Who knows? But regardless, it's given me a new respec for the dps classes. I'm in the shoes of that person in the pug who's total damage falls below the tank. I'm that person in the pug who get lectured by everyone else about how I'm doing this and that incorrectly. I'm that person who often forgets to change to tremor totem or to put the soulstone on the healer.

I have a new respect. Learning to DPS is just as stressful as learning to tank or learning to heal...

Happy Tuesday!

I can has Shaman halp?!?

2010-02-01T09:29:00.000-05:00

Seriously, is there no good blogs, websites, etc that can help this horrid shaman?

I believe this is the same problem I ran into when I was "trying" to play my shaman as elemental in BC, there is no helpful websites out there.

I needs gear! Just basic crafted or bought or normal 80 instance gear that will at least get Blizzard to "allow" me into heroics. Grrrrr

But for a noob shaman player, that has no idea what stats you need cause I've never done anything besides farm on her..that's not easily found.

So, my wonderful web friends...any suggestions on good Shaman help websites?

Embarrassments and raids and such

2010-01-31T21:50:00.000-05:00

So, I officially have been shunned...how embarrassing. Seriously, you can get a toon to 80 and not have the gear to get into Heroics? *sigh* Apparently, it IS in fact possible because I did it on my Shaman!

WHAT?

Yep, Eto and another, newly dinged 80, wanted to run a couple heroics after the weekly raid tonight and since he was a druid (healer) asked if I would dps. Since I royally suck at DPS on my priest, figured why not get a little gear for the shaman, since I never play her. Log on, join group and..."umm, it says I can't queue for heroics cause Kaly's gear is suckzo."

Nice....

*sigh* Never had that happen before.

On a brighter note. We did 2 shot Maly...
After a slightly frustrating start to the night. Planned to take our 8 into Naxx to get the key for someone and normal raid time is at 6PM server. Well, this dummy put 5PM for tonight's raid so Eto and I were 30 minutes late to our own raid. At this point 1 of our DPS was already in doing Maly and come to find out the hunter was locked from earlier in the week and had "forgot".

How do you forget you did a raid you had already accepted on the calendar on Tuesday? Grrrr.

Anyway, a few pugs and some great leading from 2 of our guildies and we have Maly under out belt. Pretty fun fight actually.

And did I mention, I healed this fight? Yeah, no tanking for me, Prayer of Healing, ftw! Apparently it's a one tank fight and we needed a healer so guess who got suckered into taking their Alt instead of their main? Yep, so Kalyanna go the achievement for killing Maly. All for the good of the guild!

Oh, and I almost forgot..the exciting news of my weekend?

Tada...

Yep, she's now a gnome and I love her!! Think it will be a long, long, LONG time before I ever consider making her a Horde!

Anyway, hope everyone had a great weekend and see you soon!

The Many Adventures of 3 Crazy Taurens

2010-01-29T12:26:00.000-05:00

So, my kiddo is starting to dabble a bit in the complex world of WoW. I'm starting to learn just how complex that world is through the eyes of a 9 year old.

We ended up handing over Eto's RaF account so he could play around in the game. Now that seems simple enough but we're talking about a kid that has no gaming experience beyond Mario and Link.

So he dabbles around a bit, rolls a warlock which he has a very hard time keeping alive, let alone understanding. Then he decides he wants to play with Eto and I. So the adventure begins. I roll a Tauren Druid because he has picked a Tauren Druid after we explain to him that he can shape-shift into bears and cats and such.

No big deal, there isn't many classes I haven't played and the idea of a boom-chicken sounds like something I'd like to try.

Eto rolls a warrior. There is no class he hasn't played. And of those the warrior class is his least favorite to level. Why, you may ask, then is he rolling another warrior. Something about Prot PvP? Anyway, he begins grinding out his starting levels (he rolled an Orc but deleted him to reroll a Tauren becuase Orc's are too short?!?) and then runs to meet us in Mulgore.

Zack and I have flown through our starting levels because our accounts are linked via RaF. We soon come to realize this is going to be an issue because Eto, even with BoA gear, levels much slower then we do.

Anyway, we pick up the quests and head off to kill some cougars and plainstriders and other such nasties. Things go pretty well, as we attempt to keep Zack on track. Teaching him to use the map and understand the quest. He tends to get lost pretty easily. After we spend 10 minutes trying to explain to him how to equip a bag and sell his trash items we're moving on to the next quest. It's time to go kill some gnolls for a guy in Bloodhoof Village.

Off we go, three new adventurers prepared to take on the world one gnoll at a time...

We pull, we attack, there are a spells and sword flying! I notice the health of both Eto and Zack beginning to drop so being the wonderful little druid cow that I am, I begin tossing out some heals.

"Woah, Mom! why am I green and glowy!?!" I hear this cry from across the room and giggle to myself as I explain to Zack that we, as druids, have the ability to heal people with our magic.

We manage those pulls and I drink something to fill up my mana while Eto runs off and grabs another mob. Little did he know that by doing so he's pulled the heart of the camp, every gnoll previously gathered around the fire begins beating on him as I frantically start healing him.

"Oh crap. MOOOOM! Matt's gonna die, Matt's gonna die, throw the green stuff on him. Don't die Matt I'm gonna help you!!!!!" and off the little druid runs to "help" save the warrior while in the process aggroing more mobs along the way.

"See the skull Zack, kill the one with the skull" Eto has thrown a raid marker on his target and Zack fumbles to try to target it as I'm now having to cast heals on both him and Eto. I get heal aggro from the mobs previously beating on Zack and my little tiny mana pool is depleted.

*SPLAT* goes the first druid.

"Mom, more green stuff on Matt, hurry, hurry!*

*SPLAT* goes the little warrior.

"Ohh, I'm gonna kill you gnolls for that" Zack begins beating on the gnolls with his level 1 staff but somehow manages to figure out which one is the healing spell and cast it on himself.

"NOOOOOOO Zack! Don't beat on them RUNNN!" Eto and I are both calling to him in unison.

"OK, OK...ohhh, Mom there are wolves where do I go, where do I go?" Zack makes a run with a trail of gnolls in hot pursuit and soon a wolf or two as well.

Somehow Zack manages to get out of aggro range and to heal himself. So Eto and I release and run back to our bodies. We are in a safe place to rez, though there is a lot of gnolls just outside our aggro range. We rez and sit to eat and drink.

Before we manage to finish, in comes a charging cow..."shew, that was kinda scary, Matt don't do that again!" We both giggle a little. "NOW, I'm gonna kill that skull"

Off the little druid charges, as we run after him picking off the mobs he is aggroing along the way...giggling the entire time.... "Noooo! Zack, come back!"

Day one down...and I had to pull him away to get him off to bed...think we have a future wow player on our hands.

*Sigh* Lesson of the day? EXPLAIN AGGRO RADIUS!

Happy Friday everyone!!!!!!!! <3

Squee!

2010-01-27T23:00:00.001-05:00

Had to share this one! Yay! Finally something exciting comes from that horrid heroic!

Go, Atl Team, Go

2010-01-27T10:32:00.000-05:00

So, I've been spending a lot of time working on my alts recently.

It seems that my DK is at a stand still until we can rebuild enough to get us back into Ulduar and ToC10. She's got all of her emblem gear and there isn't much left to do with here since she isn't' the toon I choose to work on achievements with.

With that being said, I've found a long lost love in my little priest.

As most of you know, I switched Kalyanna from her pretty little Draenei with the pigtails to the somewhat cute tiny undead girl, still with the pigtails.

This was a tug at the heart strings to say the least. Mainly because she was my first serious toon, the first to see 70 and the focus of all of my attention in BC. She was the founder of my Alliance side guild and to me was everything that was Last Call.

Due to a huge phase of "Burnout" I had officially retired her when Wrath came out to focus on a DPS toon for a change. She slowly made her way to 80, simply to be able to max out her professions and spend her days in Dalaran. I rarely played her until recently.

When I transferred her she was in her Moonshroud gear, a couple of odd and end Shadow pieces she had gotten from Alt runs in Naxx and nothing more. I waited patiently, while Eto leveled his Druid with less the high hopes of actually being able to have fun with her again.

I was so certain that the trials and tribulations of BC raid healing had forever soured me to my priest. I just knew there was no way I was going to enjoy healing again. But I was willing to give it a try since it would greatly decrease our queue times if Loki was tanking and I was healing.

Low and behold, here we are 2 weeks after dinging the druid at 80 and I'm in LOVE with my priest again. She is 73/100 into getting her pug pet. She's in 4 piece T9 and the only heroic she hasn't been able to get through is HoR. She even healed Loki through VoA10.

Now, this is no major feat to most of you I'm sure. But for a little girl that I thought I'd never play again, this makes my heart sing. It's added new excitement to the game and I'm actually enjoying healing.

This isn't to say that if I made her my full time focus again, started raid healing exclusively, that I wouldn't hit that burnout stage again. But as an alt, running randoms, she's a lot of fun.

My original plan was to try out the Disc spec. However, I've remained Holy against the persuasion of every other priest out there. Why? Holy is what I know and it has changed very little since BC. I'm sure being Disc would have gotten me through HoR but I still enjoy Holy and that's what this toon is all about...just having fun!

Now curse Blizzard for throwing me head first into HoR on random! How dare they?!? :)

As for the lock that I dropped my priest for? She's still sitting around Dalaran in her T8 gear, Alliance side. I have pulled her out with the hopes of giving her Loremaster before the big change hits her as well.

I'm reluctant, more so with her, to transfer. She is my last high level Alliance toon. In my eyes making the switch to Horde with her is going to be forever saying good-bye to them. Forever letting go of the Alliance.

I've come to realize that I'm not doing myself any justice by abandoning her over there. I loved my lock just as much, if not more, then I loved my DK. Well, not exactly, I loved her minon. Her felguard to be exact. Zili is the whole of everything that is lock-dom to me. He's the reason I never made the switch, for high dps numbers, to destro like everyone suggested. There is just no way I can ever give up my Zili.

My dream for her was always to make her a gnome. As soon as Blizzard made the option available I was going to make her a gnome. Something about a cute tiny little warlock with her big massive Felguard guardian...that's just awesome. But I have since learned that my home is now Horde side and sadly, they do not accept gnomes. So instead, she'll turn herself into either a skinny, little, wispy blood elf or a cute undead. That is, unless Cataclysm hits before I finish Loremaster...then there is a possiblity she will wait to become a goblin!

But....only after I'm ready to say good-bye...

GM Rant

2010-01-19T09:20:00.000-05:00

How many hits can on poor little raid group take? Apparently, a lot.

As of this morning, it appears we are now down a tank and healer as well as the dps spot(s) we've been trying to fill. Our OT (warrior) and party healer (druid) have run up against obstacles, in real life, that have caused them to need to let their wow time elapse.

Our once full raid group, has taken a couple pretty big hits over the last 2 weeks. But the lose of a tank and a healer, is the biggest one yet. It's hard enough to find dps.

Our line up looks something like this now:
MT - DeathKnight
OT - EMPTY
Heals - Shaman
Heals - Priest
Heals - EMPTY
DPS - Warrior
DPS - Warlcok
DPS - Mage*
DPS - Paladin*
DPS - EMPTY

I have marked the mage because just recently joined our group to see how they like it and we haven't ran anything to give them a feel yet.

The Paladin is marked simply because they are not in the guild and have other obligations to their current guild that prevents them from being able to attend all our events.

Now we do have a couple back up OTs and healers in the guild. However, by utilizing them, we would be removing them from other positions in the raid since they are alts of our raiders.

Example:
DPS Warrior = OT Prot
MT Death Knight = Holy Priest Heals
Shaman Healer = OT Druid

Regardless of what we do it's going to require us to either recruit a tank and a healer or 2 healers or 1 healer and another dps. Our warrior tank is willing to fill in as OT until we find another but does not want this to become his main raid spec. I'm very reluctant to switch from DK tanking to healing, simply because finding a MT is even harder then finding an OT.

So what is a girl to do? It's my responsibility to keep the raids going, to keep the guild on track, to keep people from becoming stagnant and wanting to quit. We all want to keep raiding, or better yet, raid consistently. That's my job as Guild Master. A job I feel like I am currently failing at.

The only thing left for me to do, that I haven't don yet, is spam trade with guild recruitment messages. Which I totally despise doing. It normally brings us the crazies, children, beggars and players otherwise scorned from other guilds for their behavior.

I have listed a message on the Shadow Council forums, listed posts on the wow_ladies forum over on LiveJournal...we have a website, we talk to, or encourage our members, to talk to people in their pug groups that are unguilded. However, this strategy doesn't work so well now that you are VERY unlikely to be grouped with someone from your own server during a pug.

We have a clear, defined definition of what we are and what we are looking for. We're a group of casual, fun, relaxed players looking for people to join our 10 man raid group. We're not worried about gear scores or experience levels, we're willing to help with that. Our only requirement is that the person be fun, relaxed and looking to have a good time while keeping the drama out of. Is that so hard to find?

Sheesh, there has to be something I'm missing...

Bitter Sweet

2010-01-18T10:49:00.000-05:00

That's how I would describe my weekend.

It was a relaxing, fun, laid back, enjoyable weekend spent (after some much needed away from wow time) doing heroics and farming FoS and PoS on my priest with Eto's druid. It was laughing, joking, teasing and playing with no real stress or purpose other then to have a good time. Guild was chatty, a couple new members joined us, just all in all a good time.

The bitter part? Well, the drama that unfolded Friday night. Of all things, loot drama?!? Seriously? In our tiny little guild of members we all thought were playing for the same reasons and with the same goals in mind?

Yes, the minor loot drama unfolded.

So here is how the story went, in short. Our normal raid night, of course fell short because of the MIA dps that we are now working to replace. So instead of the much anticipated attempt at ToC10 we opted to do the new ICC5 on heroic. Mainly because there are still weapons in there that a couple of our people can use and I'm always trying to get that dang hilt to drop.

So off we go. It's a casual, relaxed environment. Everyone is joking and having a good time. Even though we wipe a few times (or a dozen times, hehe) while one of our newer healers is learning to heal me through H-PoS. We laugh it off and finally down Lord Tyransus. Low and behold, he drops the 2 handed axe that every warrior and their brother wants these days.

Now here is where the drama unfolds. We have in group, our dps warrior in his main spec and our prot warrior in his off spec dps. The axe is a huge upgrade for both of them. The dps warrior rolls need and the prot warrior asks if he can roll for his off spec. I'm shocked. Not so much that it's an upgrade but because he's wanting to roll against a main spec guild member who can and would be using the weapon on a daily basis.

Now,I had already passed, though I could have used it for my dps set and simply said in party. "Roll if you'd like but keep in mind that's a HUGE upgrade for his main spec" and to this he replies "yeah but it's a HUGE upgrade for my off spec >.>". Ummmmm? Did I hear right?

We all wait, and eventually the prot warrior (our OT in raids) passes on the axe, congratulates our dps warrior and logs off shortly there after. We all hope that no drama is going to unfold from this event, but I'm not feeling very hopeful.

Sure enough, a day later on our website forums, a thread appears from the prot warrior complaining about how he was asked to pass on a "HUGE upgrade for his DPS". His main argument, he runs most of his random instances as DPS because he doesn't like to tank for the pugs.

Now I understand not wanting to tank for pugs but was still shocked that we were having this discussion. When our group was formed, we had our loot rules posted. Everything is need before greed, main spec before off spec. So I have not understood the purpose behind the drama, especially when it won't be the last time we run H-PoS, I'm sure.

*sigh* So this may have cost us a tank...either in the form of a rage raid quit or because he will choose to go dps. Going dps is fine, I totally support whatever spec our members decide to play but raid drama, loot drama...blah!

I responded diplomatically. Explaining the mains before off spec idea. That doing this allows for the raid group to progress at an even level, etc. Still have no response nor have seen our OT in game since.

Now we wait...what a bitter-sweet weekend.

WoW vrs Life

2010-01-15T09:15:00.000-05:00

This will probably be my most controversial post yet. Now remember, I'm not the type to fuel fires, slam anyone or otherwise stir up crap. But it's a topic that hits close to home for me and probably a lot of other gamers, regardless of the program you play. So keep this in mind before you read on, these are my views and they come from a fellow WoW "addict".

I use the term addict, though I don't use it lightly. I think for a large population of WoW players, we are all addicted in some way to the game we play.

Think about this. How many times have you done one of the following?

1. Passed up an RL invitation/obligation (i.e dinner date, party, family outing, trip to the movies, school event, a ball game, book club meeting, a once weekly night out with the guys/girls, hanging out with friends) for some game related reason (i.e raid night, needing to gain those last few bubbles to get that level, farming, running instances, etc)
2. Skipped work/school, for some game related reason (expansion release day, content patch day, just wanting to play)
3. Been late to an appointment/meeting/date because you had to finish the instance/raid that lasted longer then you had planned.
4. Sacrificed your sleep (ie stayed up all night or until the early hours of the morning) to play either because you lost track of time or because you knowingly did so without paying any mind to the following day being a school/work day (possibly leading to #2)
5. Lost track of time thus causing you to forget simple daily functions (ie, meals, laundry, household chores, trips to the grocery, etc)
6. Find that your time away from the game is still focused on the game? (ie, reading blogs, strategy, making plans, talking about the game?)

Now the question becomes how often do you do any or all of those things? Most people will begin to defend their actions here. I know I do. But I'm just as guilty of this things. It's called letting the game we love, run our life. And if I'm anywhere near close, I'd say you're reasoning's and defenses may include any one of the following:

1. I had a bad day/week, I use WoW to relax.
2. My family/spouse/partner/children/friends plays with me, so it's ok.
3. It's something I enjoy, just like anyone else's hobby. It's no different then the weekly night out with the guys or playing a sport.
4. The guild needed me, I can't abandon a raid/instance/guild run/etc.
5. Oh, I don't do that stuff very often.

Now, in part, most of those statements are true for a lot of people but now take a step back and look at yourself and your view on the game from an outside prospective. If you weren't the player, but the spouse/friend/child/parent of the player, how would you feel?

1. Do you do other things besides play? Do you spend time away from the game with your spouse, family, girlfriend/boyfriend, children, etc.
2. Is your family/spouse/partner/child/friend happy with the amount of time that you play the game together or on your own? Do you make time to do spend with them for other things?
3. It is just like any other hobby, I agree totally with this. But how much time is sunk into playing the game compared to other hobbies?
4. The guild does need you, you make a unspoken commitment when you queue for those instances, raids, etc. Are you planning for that? Making sure that the time you have isn't going to leech into other RL appointments, needs and responsibilities?
5. You don't do this stuff very often? If you can honestly say that and mean it, that's awesome!

Most of you know my history if you've been following my blog for any amount of time. Basically, Eto and I both play together. We met in the game 2 years ago, now are engaged and living together and are still playing the game. Together, we probably play about 30 hours or so a week. We're co-GM's to our guild, raid leaders and altaholics. We both work full time jobs. We are parents to my two boys 6 and 9 who live with us every other week, year around.

Now, do I say we play too much? No, not really. Do I say we fail on some of our other responsibilities? Am I one of the people that can say "Oh, I don't do that stuff very often", nope. Because I have been guilty of most of those things.

I'm a gamer yes and I'm the fiancee of a gamer. That's hard sometimes. Because even though we're both gamers, we both have feelings and sometimes those get hurt because we choose the game over each other. It's never on purpose, but it does happen. That's the reason I point these things out to you guys.

I think we have to make an extra effort to fit our real life commitments in with the game time we love so much. To keep a stable happy environment this is something we have to work on.

So I pose this challenge to you. Take a step back, look at the people and the life around you, are you balancing that out? Are the people around you happy? Are you happy? Look at those things long and hard because you don't have to loose them or your game, you just have to balance them together.

So how can you do that? There are a few simple things that you can do that will cause little to no impact on you:
1. Cut your game off an hour early every night, even 30 minutes early, and spend that time with your spouse or family or just get a little extra sleep.
2. Make a commitment to have a date with your family/spouse/friends/whoever, once every week. Even if that date is just time spent together at home, etc. Make time to do something with them at least once week.
3. Eat your meals together, away from the computer, tv, phone, etc.
4. Get out every once in a while. Like Blizzard says "Bring your friends to Azeroth but be sure to spend time outside Azeroth with them as well". Or something like that, the "tip" on the loading screen, even Blizzard knows how easy it is to loose yourself in their game.
5. Set aside time for your responsibilities. For Eto and I, it's early Saturday morning. The house work gets done, we start laundry, etc before we're allowed to play the game.

Just think about it and when in doubt ASK the people in your life, if they have complaints, then there is honestly probably reason for you to worry some. Don't stop what you enjoy but alter a little. Life only happens once, don't let it totally pass you by.

Flame away....

No really, feel free to comment good or bad, what do you guys think about your life vrs WoW?

Disappointment...

2010-01-14T08:19:00.000-05:00

So, after hours of preparation, feeling like I was really ready for the ToC encounter and it was a no go. Had 2 dps no shows, one that had a commitment to raid with their guild last night and a sick healer. =(

So instead, we took 5 people and hit up the ICC5 instances on heroic, which was very much a learning experience for our newer healy priest. Though it was all guildies so we were patient.

We'll see if we can give ToC a go on Friday. Though I think we are going to have to try to recruit 1 or 2 DPS to fill in for missing/unreliable people. *sigh* I have mentioned I hate recruiting.

Anticipation...

2010-01-13T14:35:00.000-05:00

So looks like tonight may be the big one for our little raid group. We're actually going to make our first steps in ToC10. We're behind the times but hey, we just started!

Anyway, my question to you guys is this. I've done a lot of research on the encounters in the raid and have made the following notes to help me with explaining fights, etc. So take a look and let me know if you see anything wrong or that can be done more easily. Now I doubt we'll make it all the way through but I wanted to be prepared!

Go team!

Beasts of Northrend
Phase 1
Main Tank: Gormok
Off Tank: Gormok
Ranged DPS: Adds when up, Gormok
Melee DPS: Gormok
Healers: Focus on tanks and mana conservation. There should be little raid splash damage as long as people stay out of the bad stuff on the ground.

Points of interest: Range MUST focus on the snowbolds when they spawn. The snowbold will target a player and attack their back, that player can’t single target them off. ALL RANGED stop and kill the snowbolds then back to the boss. Gormok will do a thunder stomp ability, stay at max range to avoid this. Tanks switch on 3 – 5 stacks of impale.

Phase 2
Main Tank: Acidmaw -
Off Tank: Dreadscale - Starts out mobil
Ranged DPS: Acidmaw till dead then -> Dreadscale
Melee DPS: Acidmaw till dead then -> Dreadscale
Healers: Watch the party for members with burning bile, otherwise focus on the tanks.

Points of interest: Spread out! Dreadscale will be the boss that starts off mobile, he will put a debuff on people called burning bile, that deals fire damage to you and everyone close to you. Acidmaw will put a debuff on people called “Paralytic Toxin” which will slow your movement and do nature damage. If you get paralytic toxin you can remove it by moving near someone who has burning bile on them. In the beginning of the fight, the only person who will have burning bile on them will be Dreadscales tank because he needs to tank them away from the party. So move to the tank if you get the toxin. The worms will randomly burrow under the ground and switch places, when this happens STOP dps so that the tanks can get agro back on their target. Acidmaw dies first, Dreadscale will enrage doing more damage to healers be prepared for the spike in damage to the off tank.

Phase 3
Main Tank: Icehowl
Off Tank: DPS and Emergency Backup
Ranged DPS: Nuke when boss is stunned
Melee DPS: Nuke when boss is stunned
Healers: Heal the tanks and watch the party, this can be a boring fight for healers.

Points of Interest: Icehowl has three abilities. 1st is an AOE whirlwind attack. 2nd is an Ice Cone that will deal heavy damage to everyone affected. Stay spread out to avoid this and healers must heal through it. 3rd he will throw us all back, randomly pick a target, turn towards them and howl, then charge the targer. MOVE!! He will charge the spot you were standing in so RUN to the right or left so he hits the wall. This will stun him and he will take increased damage. Burn cooldowns and whatever you have when he is stunned.

Lord Jaraxxus
Main Tank: Lord Jaraxxus
Off Tank: Adds
Ranged DPS: Adds then Lord Jaraxxus
Melee DPS: Adds then Lord Jaraxxus, 1 interrupt on Jaraxxus at all times
Healers: One on MT, one on raid, party healer focus on the person with Legion Flame/Incinerate Flesh

Points of Interest: Ok, first off, we need one interrupt that will stay on Lord Jaraxxus as ALL times. At all costs your job is to interrupt his firebomb. Everyone else, adds will spawn throughout the battle. Off tank, pick up these adds and ranged take them down, they are your top priority.

Abilities: He will do Incinerate flesh on a random target. If you get this buff please call out. Healers will need to heal this person up to 70,000 health within 15 seconds or they will blow up hurting every party member. 2nd he will attack someone with Legion Flames, if you have this debuff, move to the back wall till it goes away (or we can stand still and be healed through it to avoid flame trail)

Faction Champions
Main Tank: Keep one of the melee busy or assigned as interrupts on one of the healers. In DPS Gear.
Off Tank: Keep one of the melee busy or assigned as interrupts on one of the healers. In DPS Gear.
Ranged DPS: Nuke Healers first while throwing out CC at designated targets.
Melee DPS: Nuke Healers first.
Healers: Heal like mad and don’t get taken out

Points of Interest:
Resto Druid: Banish if possible, if not kill first. (use bloodlust here)
Shaman: Kill 1st or 2nd depending on if the druid is present, he will use heroism and buff his group with his totems.
Death Knight: Will do the most damage to your party? Should be the first damage dealing to go down?
Hunters: Will go after casters and cloth wears should die after DK or 3rd if no DK present.
Shadow Priest: Usually dies last
Paladin: CC if you can, otherwise one of the first healers to die

Use your crowd control, banish, fear, yank, frost trap, etc. Don’t be afraid to fear targets to get them off of you. Keep interrupts on the healers. Focus target. Make sure you are always killing the marked targets.

Twin Valkys
Main Tank: Lightbane
Off Tank: Darkbane
Ranged DPS: Kill opposite color twin of whatever buff they have
Melee DPS: Kill opposite color twin of whatever buff they have
Healers: One per tank and one on raid heal

Key Points:
Key abilities used once every 60 seconds at random:
Vortex: During vortex all DPS needs to switch to that twins color (ie, light or dark). Vortex does AoE damage to the entire party in the same class as their color (ie, Darkbane will deal dark AoE damage)
Twin Pack: All DPS switches to the portal color of the twin casting pack. DPS nukes down here shield and someone must interrupt her heal. Then DPS can switch back.

DO: Touch orbs that are the same effect as your portal color. This will stack a buff on you and when you reach 100 of this buff, it will give you a damage increase. Tank you mob near a portal of the opposite color, this will allow the dps to switch quickly.
DON’T: Touch orbs of a different color.

Twins share a health pool. Any damage done to one contributes to the death of both twins.

Anubarak
Main Tank: Anubarak
Off Tank: Adds
Ranged DPS: One assigned to ice clouds making sure that we have enough patch’s of ice but on boss when fine the rest on Anubarak unless little adds need AoE.
Melee DPS: Adds, big ones, little ones, medium sized ones, whatever, these DPS go on adds and then boss when they have spare time.
Healers: Only two needed, one on tanks and one on raid, in P3 make sure you don’t heal everyone up to full all the time as Anub will regain some health from this

Key Points:
Phase One: Ranged will need to shoot down the orbs hovering over the head of the boss. Orbs will leave a frost patch on the ground, there should be a frost patch down at all times. Tank, pick up the big adds and drag them onto the frost patch, this will prevent the adds from burrowing into the ground. Kill adds as quickly as possible, this will prevent the debuff from stacking up too high and increasing the party damage.

Phase Two: Anubarak will burrow under the ground, the entire party wants to huddle up on top of a frost patch. This will prevent Anubarak from impaling a player. This is importat because the falling damage can me instant death for that person. The impale will cause the frost patch to go away, move to another frost patch ASAP, if one is not available ranged shoot down an orb. Burn the adds as quick as possible, AoE the Swarm Scarabs. Once all adds are down, Anubarak will resurface and we return to phase one.

Phase Three: 30% health, Anubarak will no longer surface. At this point we need to kill any remaining adds ASAP, then bloodlust will be cast. All cooldowns and procs need to be used and nuke the boss as quickly as possible. The boss will use Leeching Swarm Releases swarm of insects that leech 10% of targets’ current health each second (minimum 250 health) and heals Anub’Arak. The target of attack will feed 10% of his/her health back to the boss every 10 seconds. Healers, keep these targets up but do NOT fill their health back to full as the more health they have the more they are feeding to the boss.

Days Gone By

2010-01-08T08:57:00.000-05:00

I got hit in the face with a wave of "I miss those Alliance" this morning.

I don't have a clue why or what triggered it but it was an overwhelming wave of...sadness? Seriously, you can be sad over something so simple as a video game?

Looks like it. You know when you spend 2 years playing one faction. You know, and love, the toons, the zones, the lore, the stories. It's a something that somehow becomes a part of you.

I don't know that I will ever get over these random spurts of regret. There were still things I wanted to do Alliance side. Play a gnome, level my druid, get the loremaster title on my lock...the list is never ending.

There are still things I want to do on my Horde toons.

I don't think it will ever fully go away.

Lets Talk Tanking

2010-01-05T09:05:00.000-05:00

I ran an instance last night...get this...as DPS...*gasp*. That's right, I put aside my tanking boots and ran a lower instance (UK to be exact) on my DPS shaman. Now, it's been a long long time since I put on my dps but honestly, I had a great time.

Now, no this doesn't mean that I'm giving up tanking but the point of this blog actually isn't about my DPS or tanking.

You see, the new LFG system paired Eto and I with a new level 72 warrior. How do I know he was new you ask? Because his tank weapon was a level 70 WHITE trash sword. His gear, also is not the topic of my post. It's more his attitude.

For once, I saw a newbie tank, with a great attitude trying to tank. At the end of the instance, he willingly admitted it was his first time tanking. Though I wasn't' surprised, simply because of the gear he was in (mostly level 70 BOE greens). Though he was knowledgeable and patient. If it had not been for the druid healer and myself back up healing when he went OOM, I'm sure this instance wouldn't have gone as smoothly.

Now, why am I bragging on this guy? Simple, he had the guts to actually play a tank. I'm sure people are gawking at me now. But it's true. The number of players willing to tank these days is pretty low. That shows with the 30 - 45 minute queue times for DPS trying to get into random dungeons. I think Eto and I waited about 30 minutes before getting this group last night and about 30 on Sunday when we got into Nexus.

Why do people not want to tank? That's also a simple, long list, of answers.

Let me see if I can break this down for those who haven't tried tanking themselves. As I do, I'm sure a lot of people will get a reality check and find themselves thinking.."oh, yeah I do this" or "Oh, I saw this happen the other day".

1. DPS and Healers have very little patience when it comes to a new tank.
2. They won't tolerate well a tank that mismarks/does not mark targets.
3. They are looking for speed runs. Constantly hearing, "go go go" even annoys the seasoned tanks. Seriously, shut up!, we'll go when our abilities are off cool down and when that person in the back that is responsible for keeping our butts alive has enough mana to do so!
4. Will bitch about a tank with low health (less than 30K). You know this is just H-UK right, now trying to tank Ulduar.
5. People don't understand that tanks don't magically get gear dropped in their laps as soon as they hit 80. They have to gear up and unless they do that as dps and off roll on tank gear, they have to run with lower stats for awhile.
6. Aggro isn't instant. DPS that start their rotation with an AoE attack 1.5 seconds after the pull will cause aggro issues and then what happens? They will blame the new tank. It isn't the tanks fault that they have to BUILD up aggro.

So, what can you do to help out those up and coming tanks, prevent them from saying "screw this" and going dps instead? Here are a few ideas.

1. BE PATIENT!! This goes a long way. Remember they are learning, you were there at one time.
2. Don't push your luck with them. Give them some space and allow them time. This means don't' pull for them, don't push them to speed up and don't keep screaming "go go go". If you don't have time for this then run with your guildies, friends or people you know. You shouldn't be queuing up for a random dungeon expecting to be done in 15 minutes.
3. Offer helpful advice, in a kind indirect way. No one wants to be told they are doing something wrong. But if you offer advice indirectly, people are going to see you as helpful more then bossy. IE - Should we kill that drake first, I remember he hits pretty hard and does AoE damage. This sounds a lot better then "Hey, kill that drake first, don't' you know that?"
4. Watch your aggro. Don't start your rotation with an AoE attack 1.5 seconds after they pull. If they aren't marking targets, kindly ask them to or tab between targets whenever you get close to the aggro level of the tank.
5. If you pull aggro, for Elune's sake DON'T RUN AWAY! Use your aggro dump abilities and if you don't have any, stop attacking and stand still or at least move towards the tank. If you keep attacking, even if they taunt you run the risk of bypassing aggro level of the taunt.
6. Learn to assist! It's a simple macro, all dps can use to help them attack only the mob that the tank is targeting.

Set focus to the tank when you enter the instance then create this macro:
#showtooltip Attack
/target [target=focustarget, harm, nodead]
/startattack

Casters change the macro to:
/target [target=focustarget, harm, nodead]

It's that simple. You can easily help the tank and not look like the jerk.

Now, tanks...there is a couple things you can do as well.

1. Be honest. Let people know you're still learning or let them know if you don't know the instance. Hopefully, there will be someone in the group willing to help you with marking targets and boss advice. If not, at least you warned them and they know from the beginning.
2. If someone pulls aggro, taunt off them once. If they continue to pull aggro without care to what you're doing, LET THEM DIE. They will learn their lesson the hard way.
3. Wait for your healers and casters to get mana. No matter how much you have that jerk screaming "go go go", take your time, you're the tank.
4. Let people know your kill order from the beginning. That way they know to kill in the order you target and have less of a chance to pull aggro.
5. Ask them not to pull the mobs for you and warn them if they continue to do it you won't taunt off of them. If they throw a fit, scream or yell, you have the right to vote kick or leave the group. You are the tank and the time it takes you to get into another random instance is a lot less then the time it will take the group to find another tank.
6. Don't play God. Just because you're the tank doesn't give you the right to be a jerk either.

Hopefully, people will take some of this to heart. Tanking is not easy, it's got a high burn out rate and a lot of people just don't like to do it. Help those new tanks when you can, you may need them tomorrow!

Happy hunting and /hug to all the other tanks out there.

A Year Full of Memories...

2010-01-04T11:57:00.000-05:00

This post spawns from a WoW_ladies post I was reading earlier.

Our Intrepid Heroes

[1:] Who/what are your mains?
Kalyara, my 80 Death Knight, frost tank would be classified as my "main" as I write this. The beginning of the year, I would have said my 80 human warlock. This saddens me a little since she is Alliance side and I am now Horde.

[2:] Which alts were your favorite this year?
Kalyara started off as an alt so I would say she was pretty popular since she is now my main. As for this currently moment, my 80 priest coming out of retirement and my 72 Elemental Shaman are my favs.

[3:] How many characters did you get to 60? 70? 80?
2 - My DK and my priest. My lovely warlock hit 80 before Jan 2009.

[4:] What character are you most proud of and why?
Kalyara, simply because anyone that knows me, knows I rarely see things through before getting bored and moving on. To have an 80 tank, sitting where she is now is a major accomplishment for me. I have a tank that is geared to play all the way through ICC10, that's something amazing.

Earlier in the year I would have said my lock because I was working so hard on her achievements. But that has since stopped.

Around Azeroth

[5:] What was your biggest/most memorable achievement(s) this year? What was the most painful?

My biggest achievement...hmmmm. As silly as it sounds, I'd have to say it was learning to be a "good tank". When I say good, I mean the kind that people rarely complain about. I take pride in proving people wrong when they classify all DKS as "dumb knights".

My most painful...the breakup of Last Call. This is still a touchy subject for me.

[6:] What has been the most fun raid/pve fight so far in WotLK?

Heh. Not easy for me to choose just one. I love Heigan, I know I'm crazy but he's probably my all time favorite fight in the game. Followed very closely by Hodir, Thaddius and Ony.

[7:] What was your favorite quest/questchain?
Wrathgate...what else do I need to say?

[8:] A lot of powerful lore has been introduced in this expansion. Any favorite bits?
The battle for Undercity and Wrathgate. I love the lore here.

[9:] The rise of the Lich King has changed Azeroth and its people so much. Who's your favorite NPC(s) in this expansion?
Lady Sylvanas, hands down. Being a Ali only girl, I knew nothing about her before joining the Horde. But she's a very awesome, very strong female figure in the game and I love her!

[10:] Which in-game holiday was the most fun this year?
Mid-Summer Fire Festival, Eto and I did this one together. It holds the best memories.

Friends and Enemies

[11:] Did you change guilds this year? If so why?
I did, twice. When Last Call finally closed its doors back in April, Eto and I joined Whispers of the Fallen on our Alliance toons. We loved the guild, loved the people but were never really happy. Soon we moved over to the Horde side and joined a guild with some old friends Eto knew when he first started playing 3 years ago. Still we were never satisfied. So we moved our Horde toons to Shadow Council and formed Faded Delusions. We've finally found our home and some great friends with it.

[12:] What was your guild's biggest/proudest accomplishment this year?
Too many guilds this year to determine the answer to this...

[13:] Did you make a lot of new friends? Any mortal enemies?
I have made some awesome new friends. All the new members of Faded Delusions have fast become family to me.

[14:] Any fun or memorable PVP encounters?
Ahhh, I hate PvP! =)

Looking Ahead

[15:] What changes are you most excited for in Cataclysm?
Wow, I don't think I have enough time to list the answers to this. The guild changes, GOBLINS!, flying in Azeroth...just to name a few.

[16:] Which new race/class combos are you going to roll? Got any names yet?
Tinkabell (my current Horde bank) is name holding for my adorable Goblin Mage! The one class I have left to play and I'm saving it for my Goblin. Would love to roll a Worgen but that will be a ways down the road I'm sure.

[17:] Where do you see your character in the next few months?
Wherever they are I'll be happy. Hopefully, Kalyara will see the inside of ICC and the growth of Faded Delusions.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope it finds you happy, healthy and surrounded by friends and family.

Here's to another great year and the hope for a Cataclysm!

Positive Progression

2010-01-04T10:30:00.001-05:00

We have officially made progress. Saturday night our guild/raid group attended our first scheduled Ulduar weekly run.

XT was the weekly raid quest again, which was the original reason we headed into Ulduar this week. Night one we got down FL, XT, Razorscale and Kologran (with 9 people present). The second night, we downed Auriaya and moved on to Ony and then OS10.

Our line up went as follows:
Kalyara - DK Tank
Kiwalski - Warrior Tank
Etolani - Resto Shaman
Savilla - Disc Priest
Raggy - Resto Druid
Merkit - Destro Warlock
Archslayer - Fury Warrior
Shayloah - Hunter
Zar - Shadow Priest
Guest - Hunter (who afked out eventually)

Now the amazing part, Arch and Sav have only been 80s for about a week. As most people know, they were a RaF couple that rerolled new toons on our sever to help out the guild. Zar was also a new 80, who was mainly in green quest/drop gear.

We had one wipe on FL, getting people to understand their position and the fight. XT went super smooth, as usual and we finished off Razorscale with only one wipe. That is totally awesome.

Now Kolo was a little more of a challenge. Most people had never seen this fight before. It took 2 wipes for us to get this guy down and we did it with only 9 people since our guest hunter had DC'd by this point.

On the second night we brought in Kirt, our hopefully, normal ret pally. With her help, we were able to down cat lady in one try. Since, I was a fail tank and didn't bring any frost resist gear to attempt Hodir, we voted to move on to Ony and then OS10.

Ony took us 4 attempts. Mainly, because again most people had never made it past phase 2. I was super excited since I finally got to do the Ony head quest! Yay!!

All I can say, is...excited!! Can't wait to do it all again.

We will officially start our normally weekly raiding on the 13th, with a Wed, Friday, Sunday raid schedule. Our focus "progression" raid will be Ulduar for now on Friday and Sunday. Wednesday is going to be a shorter raid night where we will dabble a little in ToC10, Ony, older content, etc.

I'm not sure our group is fully ready for ToC yet, but I think we could down a boss or two.

Now, my thoughts on the group as a whole. We seem to work pretty well together. Arch and Sav bring with them a pretty extensive raid background from their Alliance side toons. This proved to be a great asset in Ulduar. They have an amazing knack for working well together. I've learned pretty quickly that as MT, I can't see anything! Seems my face is constantly planted in the leg, crotch or face of whatever boss we're fighting. So having them in the back ground calling out moves, alerts and giving advice was so awesome.

We have one DPS that I seem to have personality conflicts with. Not because I think he's a bad guy but mainly because he's elitist attitude is a little trying at times. He's a good player, thought newer to the game. He does decent dps, but by no means do I think he's as perfect as he thinks he is. Given a little more time and work, hopefully he can learn to be an even better group player. But that does involve knowing your own class inside and out.

I'm extremely amazed at how far our hunter has come. When we first started playing with her she knew very little about her class and was in a lot of spell power gear. As of last night she is now in full T9 and has gear with good hunter stats on it. To see her pull 3K DPS did my heart good. I know she has the potential to do so much more, but this is a great start compared to the 900 - 1K she was doing before.

The new shadow priest is our next group project. Since he just hit 80 and was mainly healing as holy, getting him some DPS gear will put us in even a better place to start Ulduar on the 13th.

All in all, great group, we had a blast and that's all that matters. Cause if you're not having fun, then it's not worth the effort!

Happy New Year!!

Aggro Issues

2009-12-31T09:53:00.000-05:00

Grrrrr

What do you mean I have aggro issues? *sigh*

My biggest frustration with my DK at the moment. Don't get me wrong, it's not all the instances, it's not all groups. But it seems the new stuff, H-PoS and HoR are causing me major tanking woes.

Even on normal, Halls of Reflection is causing me aggro issues. The fight is a pain, credit given. But are other tanks having these aggro issues with the waves of trash that come before boss 1 and 2? It seems I can't get and hold aggro on all those mobs for the entire pull.

It goes something like this. Our last group make up was myself, Eto (as enhancement), a disc priest, arms warrior and a mage (sorry don't remember the spec). We did everything we were suppose to. Ran into the corner on the left. The mobs would make their way to us, I'd drop Death and Decay, toss out a Howling Blast to try to give a little extra glue to the mix, then start my normal rotation. Icy Touch, Plague Strike and then pass Pestilence, rinse and repeat with a blood boil thrown in here and there when it's off cooldown.

Even doing everything listed, I'm still loosing aggro on one mob or another. Normally, it's early on. I wish I could say I was loosing it to the super mage AoE or to the warrior spinney attack but I was even loosing it to Eto's off spec attacks. He's not the worst enhancement shaman but his DPS isn't that great. Not enough that I should be loosing aggro to him.

I have commonly had issues with aggro against dps in pugs that pull 6.5K or more. I've had issues with pugs that start their rotation with AoE or a big crit. Those things I can understand. I don't like them, but I can understand them.

So my concern becomes what to do now? My gear is pretty good. I have the dodge, parry, health and armor to tank but the aggro issues blow my mind. Sheesh, there has to be something I'm doing wrong.

Elitist Jerks has always been my go to for tanking troubles. But the DK tanking post is leading me to believe I've hit the content level that is going to require me to go duel wield in order to maintain my aggro level. Seriously?

Anyone that knows me knows what a creature of habit I am. Changing spec or rotation or whatever is required to duel wield, will be like learning a new character all over again. I had just gotten to the point where I thought I knew my class. Two-handed, frost tanking. That's what I am, that's what I know. Please don't' tell me I have to change to keep up.

So lay it on me. Give me your thoughts. Tank in need of a little help here!

Another Alliance gone bad...

2009-12-28T11:31:00.000-05:00

So, not much WoW been going on in my world lately. A kiddo in the hospital over Christmas didn't leave much time for relaxing and the little time I was home there was no time for the game.

However, got to spend the night at home last night and made a pretty big change in my toons.

My very first toon, my very first 70, my first 80, my pride and joy...the toon that has server transferred with me twice, my beautiful Draenei priest is now an Undead. Yep, I made the faction transfer.

Mainly because Eto transferred over his Druid to try out tanking as a bear and when he does I can heal him. But to another level of thought, because it doesn't look like I'll ever be going back to playing the Alliance.

My heart will always be blue, through and through. I'll always be an Ali girl at heart. However, the guild, my DK and my love of the goblins, will keep me Horde side for a very long time. Realizing that finally pushed me to make the jump. I will admit, I did cry when I changed her over. She went from pretty and regal to undead and sneaky. But she's still cute.

I'll post new pics as soon as I can get back home to my computer.

On other news.

Hopefully, we'll be into ToC and Ulduar in the next 2 weeks. Our warrior dps and disc priest are almost 80. I still can't believe how fast they leveled through RaF.

Well, that's it for now, sorry for the lack of post. Late Happy Holidays to all!

Damn Gear Scores...

2009-12-23T13:01:00.000-05:00

*sigh*

One of the things that I wish I knew nothing about. This seems to be the bane of every players existence right now. To get a heads up, to be just a little better then the others...

Even in my own guild, in my own relationship...it's rearing it's ugly head. My fellow guildies, healers, tanks, even my fiance...they are all striving to be better then the rest, to be on the top of the charts.

Is it really THAT important? You MUST do the daily, you MUST do the weekly raid..it's EMBLEMS OF FROST! Feeling like you have to run that last heroic, that last boss fight...just to keep up. Forsaking everything else...

I'm starting to resent the guild chatter about how "so-in-so is only 5 points from being the highest score in the guild" or "omg, he is out scoring me". Starting to find myself getting upset that it really matters that much to people.

Yes, I've always known about gear scores. I've always used it as a "jumping off point" to determine if someone is getting close to being ready for this raid or that. But not to the point that the game is longer enjoyable because it seems everything is a constant battle. A battle for your place...in a game?

So yeah...

Falling Victim

2009-12-15T08:30:00.000-05:00

Looks like on or both, Eto and I, are falling victim to the "oh, meh this is below our content level, we don't really have to try" bug.

What do I mean by this? I'm sure most of you have done it at times too. You go into a heroic or lower level raid that you have done more then a few dozen times and don't pay attention, fly through, over pulling, under healing, being distracted, etc.

Maybe it's because my gear has gone up tremendously or because I'm getting 'too easy to heal' or just because I'm overconfident in myself, but it never fails it seems in at least 1 heroic a night one of us royally screws up.

Last night it seemed to be me. On 2 heroics, UP and HoS, we wiped a total of 4 times. I can't even remember the last time I had a group wipe in a heroic.

Granted, I had never done HoS on heroic because I think that place is the devil, but still..gah! The first wipe was do to a bad pull on my part so I aggro'd 3 groups and the second was a "near" wipe, somehow the mage survived long enough to end the event with the Dwarf. Have I mention I HATE the cooldown on D&D. *sigh*

No, UP I had no excuse for. Both wipes came on the Gauntlet boss. Eto wasn't healing in the beginning we had a druid healer from the guild. Now I may do this differently then most but I run half way, kill the mobs, the gather up the rest and run into the room at the end of the hallway. Because if D&D is on cool down it's easier for me to have the mobs in a confined room so that I can blood boil and pick them up. The druid couldn't see in the room so he stayed outside. We had Eto picking up the harpoons and when he finally got the guy down on the ground the healer was out of mana so we lost the entire group. Rinse and repeat again before Eto switched to his healing gear and we downed the boss with little to no problem.

Sadly, it again puts a doubt in myself and my ability to hold threat. *sigh*

So chalk it up to silly mistakes because we are over confident in ourselves or because we're not paying attention or even because we're tired I suppose, but it's never really a good thing for the ego.

On a bright note, I ran into a guildie from the Alliance side last night on his Horde toon. He is one of the MTs in Whispers of the Fallen on his warrior and also the raid leader. he took the liberty of inspecting my gear and I was pleasantly surprised when I got praise from him. Why did this delight me so? Well awhile back I wrote about how he had politely and kindly implied that my lock's gear wasn't "good enough" to throw at their T9 progression group. So getting compliments on my gear from him was a nice change of pace. He made a couple simple suggestions, like switching out my belt, which I did and tada...Blizzard's LFR Finder says I can queue up for ICC10. You know, if I ever decide I need to commit suicide.

Besides that? We've got 9 of our 10 spots filled for our raid team! Yay! It's possible we might have the 10th spot as well I just need to talk to a guildie to find out if he is going to raid with us. The break down goes like this:
TANKS:
Kalyara - Main Tank (DK)
Kiwalski - Off Tank (Warrior)

HEALS:
Etolani - Tank Heals (Shaman)
Savilla* - Tank Heals (Disc Priest)
Raggy - Party Heals (Druid)

DPS:
Merkit - Ranged (Warlock)
Shayloah - Ranged (Hunter)
Kat - Melee (Paladin)
Crobin* - Melee (Warrior)
Reyfentasma - Melee (Rogue)

* - These toons are level 65 and very quickly leveling their way up

Happy Tuesday!

Dungeon Dummy Finder

2009-12-14T08:30:00.000-05:00

I have officially determined the new LFG system has a few major perks and a major downfalls.

PROS:
1 - I can pug a random heroic or dungeon and have little to no wait time. I think the longest I've waited for a group is 1 minutes 12 seconds.
2 - Easy way to gain extra emblems. Gaining 2 extra emblems on every heroic as long as you do random is crazy! That makes every run 5 - 7 emblems each.
3 - Getting gear is too easy!! I've gotten my second T9 piece and I'm only 19 emblems away from my 3rd. That's with me not really "grinding" the heroics. I do a couple a night then head off to do other things. So, if someone wanted, and I know a couple who have done so, they could have their entire T9 set in just a couple days of long heroic grinds.
4 - The groups are pretty well balanced. I have only had a couple groups where we've had one person be seriously over our gear level or slightly under. Meaning, we've had one or two groups where someone is pulling 2K more dps then everyone else and only 1 or 2 where someone is way under on dps.
5 - Meeting new people!

CONS:
1 - LFG Random allows idiots to get groups when everyone on their normal server has already blacklisted or put them on ignore. (examples to come)
2 - Getting gear is TOO easy! That's right, it's a pro and a con. I've seen too many people with good gear, good emblem gear, that still don't know how to play their class. Cause you know, gear can only get you so far. If you're decked out in all emblem gear and still only pulling 1K - 1.5K dps, then it's not the gear, is the player.
3 - Everyone thinks their a rock star! Or better yet they get the power of Group Lead and think they are the Almighty. (examples to come)

So, anyone else seeing these things? Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love the new LFG system because it makes getting into chain heroics no longer require you to find 4 other people that want to run them back to back and then waiting 20 - 30 minutes while people afk or while you look for replacements when someone has to go.

Now, as I said LFG seems to be Blizzards way of throwing idiots, who would not normally get to run instances/heroics, off on the rest of us who work our butts off to get where we are and did it by being NICE and knowing how to play. Why do those "idiots" not normally get to run? Because everyone on their server has already put them on ignore, won't run with them, won't guild them, etc.

Why are other players doing this to them? Because those idiots are just that - idiots. They are the mouthy, know-it all, holy-er then thou, rude, abrasive, bossy players that have no clue how to play their class.

To the other extreme, you have those people that have super dps but are only worried about pushing those high numbers and don't care what they have to do to get it. They have no regard to threat at all. They will start their rotation, pop AoE or toss their highest crit attack without waiting to make sure the tank has aggro.

These extremist, in most cases, are worse then the idiots we've found. I've had Paladins pulling 6.5K dps that pay no attention at all to their treat. They will randomly pull mobs, lay the smack down before I even have time to pass pestilence or even mistarget and decide they need to OT one of the mobs. Not to mention the mages and warlocks that will down one target and instead of loosing the proc that will ensure them the massive crits, turn and automatically cast it on a group that I haven't pulled yet, just because it's too important not to loose that boosted arcane barrage or incinerate.

So, we have the extremists and the idiots. Now I won't spend a lot of time on the ones that have just decided that having a random group of people they will never see again means they can be rude and abrasive. Those are the ones that have no courtesy and think that they don't need to watch their language or that downing other players is acceptable. This group is also where we find the "I have the power!" players. These are the ones that got designated party leader in the random build of the group and think that this give them the ability to boss everyone around, pull the mobs and bitch when the tank doesn't pull them off. This is the crazy dps Paladin pulling 896 dps in ToC who took it upon themselves to start every encounter without allowing time for the healer to get mana, etc. Sorry dude, group lead doesn't make you God!

Seriously, people! Just because you're in a random group with other players you are likely to never see again doesn't mean you can act like complete morons! What happened to courtesy and patience? If anything, having the random LFG system should reinforce that. We have to explain these fights, we have to mark the mobs because we're not use to running with each other and I'm not use to your spiky damage that may pull aggro so give me a chance to build up some cushion!

*sigh* Think I'm going to need the ability to ignore more then 50 people Blizz.

Gear Score Junky

2009-12-11T13:19:00.000-05:00

So I've officially depressed myself. =P

Gear scores are the devil! Even to those of us who use to use it to judge content level ability.

So my DK's WoW Hero's score is 2361. Her BeImba! score is 537. Not too bad, or so I thought.

Until I made the mistake of checking another frost DK on the sites. Now I greatly respect this player and consider her a friend. She's a reader of my blog and a member of my guild (on an alt) but OMG, her gear score is 2710!!

Now, don't start screaming at me. I know I really can't compare my gear score to another toon who is doing much higher content then me. But, seriously, thats enough to humbled someone! =P

Oh, well, so I've been humbled for the day. *sigh*

Happy Friday!

Like Mother...Like Son?

2009-12-10T13:21:00.000-05:00

So, I'm so extremely excited about the Christmas present that Santa is bringing to my oldest son this year. Any guesses?

He's getting a laptop! Why does this excite me so much? Because I can play WoW with him!!

I have no idea why I am so giggy excited about the idea of rolling another lowbie toon to play with him but I am.

I know this will probably be a toon I never get leveled past 20ish and seriously will never see level 80, since he will roll his toon on Eto's RaF account which doesn't even have BC, but I'm still excited. The idea of being able to spend time with him (he's 9) in the game, showing him around and seeing the world through his eyes, is awesome!

Update:
The guild is doing awesome. We got the 80 Party Heal Druid and the wonder boy OT warrior into the guild last night. Sav and Cro are into their mid 40s on their RaF toons. That puts us even closer to being able to raid consistently.

We lead our first random raid last night. It was the first time I've been a raid leader since BC. Kind of excited and scary at the same time. We only did FL and XT, since XT was the weekly raid. However, just doing those was awesome! Oh, and guess what...we did FL on HARDMODE! Yay, go us.

Afterwards Eto, Merk (the warlock), Raggy and Kiwi (druid and warrior) hit up the new 5 man instances.

Let me just they...the first time through, Blizzard really made it feel like an epic encounter. Forge of Souls and the second dungeon are pretty simple. The Gauntlet run through the tunnel in dungeon 2 can be a little tricky but otherwise pretty easy. And Merk was right Lady Sylvanis did show up to save him and us while she was at it.

HoR on the other hand was a totally different story. I HATE that place. In the first round you're in a room doing a battle similar to VH. You get 5 rounds of mobs, containing mages, priests and hunters. Sheesh, does Blizzard just hate us tanks? Then on round 5 and 10 you get a boss. The bosses are pretty easy but it's the casters that really hurt you.

Then it's off to fight a few more trash mobs on your way to save Lady Sylvanis. After you finally find her, it's another gauntlet run but this time...(shield eyes if you don't want spoilers) you're running from the Lich King. It makes for a totally epic feel to the fight. You have to periodically stop and fight while Lady Sylvanis breaks downs some wall. The whole time Arthas is coming towards you, spawning Abombs and Witch Doctors.

I highly recommend that everyone follow the dialogue on these instances your first couple times through. It's totally worth it, even if you're not so into the lore.

Icecrown 5 Mans

2009-12-08T10:48:00.000-05:00

Done some research and I think I'm about as ready as I can be to go into the new 5 man instances. Granted, no where near ready for the raid but the strategy on the 5 mans content won't be totally overwhelming for me.

Thought I'd share this research with you guys. Now I don't claim to have done these instances myself, so this is jut what I've read.

Forge Soul: There are only 2 bosses in the first encounter of the 5 man citadel instances.
Bronjahm the Godfather of Soul
This is the first boss encounter in the new 5 man content. From everything I've read he kind of works like the guardians in Ulduar with the spark that goes between thm.

Bronjahm needs to be kited around the round slightly. he will randomly rip a spirit soul from a player and draw this to him. The Tank will need to kite the boss away from the soul while the DPS focus on taking it down. If it does reach him, it will heal him for a substantial amount of health. When he reaches about 25% health he will start doing AoE damage to the entire party so this is the time to pop your cooldowns. bloodlust, etc.

Devourer of Souls
Seems the second boss encounter in the instance is going to be a little more tricky then the first.

First off, he does a "Mirrored Soul" attack. This will share any incoming damage dealt to the boss with a random party member. Luckily, it seems he will jump targets from the tank to the member who will be his victim a few moments before he casts the spell. This should give healers a heads up and allow them to focus their heals on the target.

Secondly, he will call forth dozens of intangible spirits that will attack the entire party. Sadly, there is nothing that can really be done about these because they are not targetable. So, keep your party up as best you can and carry on.

The biggest annoyance for this boss, or so it seems to me, is that he, like C'thun's Eye and Mimiron's Lasor Barrage, shoots a pew pew beam that travels counter clockwise around the room. This needs to be avoided at all costs.

Pit of Saron: There is 3 fights in the second encounter.
Forgemaster Garfrost
The first thing for tanks to be aware of is that the boss has several adds near him that when pulled, will trigger the fight.

Now this fight seems to be very similar to Volkhan in Halls of Lightning. Surprise, surprise Blizzard likes reusing their stuff, who would have thought!

He has three major things to take into consideration. He does a knock back ability, a stun and AoE debuffs that stack and increase vulnerability to frost.

The dps and healer can clear the debuff stacks by standing behind the large saronite boulders he throws at them. However, the tank can only clear his/her debuffs when Garfrost punts them backwards so that he can run to the forge to get another weapon. At this time, the tank needs to run behind the boulder in order to reduce the number of stacks he/she is holding.

Krick the Ick
Yay for the Ick.

This guy is very straightforward. Don't stand in the nasty pools of ick on the floor and run away from his bombs. How simple can you get? Just be sure to pay attention as the bombs do AoE damage when they explode, otherwise tank and spank!

The Guntlet/Scourgelord Tyrannus
So I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about why you do what you do here because it could be considered spoilers. But here is the general run down.

The tank is going to really have to prove himself/herself here. Every will be running to avoid falling objects, the tank will have to pick up the mobs while running and pull them along in order for the party to escape safely.

It is important here for the DPS to remember the tank does not have time to build sufficient aggro so DON'T DPS, just run. The same applies to the healer, heal as little as possible to avoid pulling aggro on yourself. If the tank is geared well enough, avoid Renew, Earth Shield, etc. This will reduce the amount of heal aggro generated.

Once out and adds are killed, Tyrannus becomes the focus of your dps. It's another DPS race, pop your heroism if you have it and kill him as quickly as possible otherwise your group becomes overrun with undead zombies and will be a wipe.

Well, that's the insight I have into the first two encounters in the new Icecrown Citidale 5 man. There is one wing left, Halls of Reflection, that I will update on later.

Until then, have fun!

Patch 3.3 - Changes

2009-12-08T09:02:00.000-05:00

Looks like Blizzard confirmed 3.3 will release today.

So I decided it was time to take a in depth look at the patch notes to see how they will effect me.

Just from a brief overview here is my thoughts:

•Army of the Dead: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Army Ghoul damage dropped by 50%. Cannot be used in Arenas.
Omg, I hate this and love it at the same time. I love that they are dropping the cool down from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. This is totally awesome. It's much easier to hold off 10 minutes after wiping on Black Knight because you burned you army on phase 2 not knowing you were lacking the DPS to get down his 3rd phase. Yeah, yeah...you can lecture me on better ways to do this later.

But I hate that they are reducing the army's damage by 50%! That's huge! Really couldn't they reduce it by 20% or even 30%. I don't do a lot of damage as it, I'm a TANK! but there has been a time or two that army has saved us from a wipe with a low DPS Pug group.

•Rune Strike: Threat generated by this ability increased by approximately 17%.
•Glyph of Icy Touch: Instead of granting additional runic power, this glyph now causes Frost Fever to deal 20% additional damage.

Now these I can't complain about at all. All I can say is "Thank you Blizzard!" /salute A change that actually helps us and doesn't hurt us.

•Groups using this tool will be able to teleport directly to the selected instance. Upon leaving the instance, players will be returned to their original location. If any party member needs to temporarily leave the instance for reagents or repairs, they will have the option to teleport back to the instance.

Another awesome change. You can teleport back to town for repairs or whatever and the teleport back to the instance without begging a lock to waste a soulshard to summon you!

Now I'm sure this will have it's downfalls as well. There are always people that abuse the ability and make it horrible for other people. But hopefully everyone is adult enough to use this wisely.

•Bind-on-Account Items: Players can now mail Bind-on-Account items to characters on the same account and realm regardless of faction. Please note this only applies to Bind-on-Account items. Other items or gold cannot be sent via mail to characters on the same realm and account if they are from differing factions.

This, is my all time greatest gift ever from Blizzard. Lots and lots and lots of love being sent to all the Blizzard folks this Holiday season. You guys are awesome! Finally I can send that BoA gear over to my new main Horde toons.

This is something I think EVERYONE will be happy about!

Other interesting points to be excited about:
•Occulus got some changes, so people may actually do the instance
•Players no longer need to kill the final bosses in all four wings of Naxx in order to teleport to Sapphiron. Teleportation orbs have been added to allow players access back and forth from Sapphiron's lair.
•Quest tracking may eliminate the need for Carbonite? Sweet!
•Weekly raid quests implemented. May actually see people putting together Naxx pugs again!
•Remember the ring upgrade system from Kara, well it's back for ICC now!
•New LFG system is going live. PUG pet! Yay!
•Meeting stones only require that a player be at least level 15, which means you can someone anyone over level 15 anywhere. Yay, for summoning your level 80 friend to run you through Deadmines...*sigh*

So ends part 1 of my patch blog. I am currently working on details and notes on the 5 player instances. Mainly for myself. but I hope to have that posted today as well. So, just an insight on strategy there. Stay tuned!

Excited

2009-12-07T23:06:00.001-05:00

Let me say...tonight has been a good night.

Had more fun chatting in guild with our new members then I've had in a long time.

I am so very glad to have you all!!

/wave to all my new friends.

Secondly, I got a pretty mount!

*sigh* Happy Kaly!

Shameless plug!
If anyone is interested in rolling horde side, transferring or just looking for a happy home for your alts, Faded Delusions will always welcome you with open arms. We are a fun loving guild, dedicated to keeping the game fun and the drama out. As of tonight we are a very couple friendly guild but accept members of all levels/races and experience. Looking to fill spots in our raid team as well. No prior experience needed, because everyone has to start somewhere! Why not start with us? We have experienced raiders/players willing to help you learn! Come give us a try. =)

The Birth of a New Hero

2009-12-07T09:11:00.000-05:00

Yay, what a fun, fun weekend!

Eto and I got sucked into the Refer a Friend train.

Yeah, yeah, I have no idea why. Apparently, we were bored and it sounded like fun. We have two new guild members (/wave to Crobin and Saville) that joined us from the WoW_Ladies group over on Live Journal. They responded to my plea for casual raid members and decided to roll toons on our server with their RaF account.

Now, after only a few hours of play (spread across 3 days) they went from level 1 to 24. Total play time is maybe...5 hours? Yes, RaF is crazy!

A few posts back I had mentioned wanting to try out tanking on a Paladin, since secretly, I've always wanted to play one but never leveled one up. So, when Eto and I started talking about this we immediately decided to try out the RaF to see just how fast we do level.

Thus was born, Arialana, a tiny female bloodelf and Aurael, a quirky little undead priest.

Eto and I rolled a mage/shadow priest combo on an European server a few months back and abandoned as the draw to come home, to Shadow Council, proved to be too strong. We had debated transferring those toons over with us but since I plan to roll a mage goblin when Cataclysm hits, he decided to humor me and roll the shadow priest on our RaF account.

Our progress so far? We hit level 16 last night after about 3 (none consistent) hours of play. None consistent in the fact that we spent a lot of time messing with our UIs, logging in and out trying to get Eto's account to report as a normal and not a trial account, toon hopping to get gold and bags, hearthing back for skills and just randomly AFKing for food, drinks, talking etc.

I have found at least 3 issues so far with doing RaF account leveling.
1. You out level your zone before the quests are nearly done. - Example, we were out of the Undead starting area after doing only 4 quests. The quests in our log are yellow when we pick them up and then green or grey by the time we turn them in. We've had to abandon our entire unfinished quest log on several occasions and move onto the next zone just because all the mobs we are killing have gone grey. Yes, you really do level that fast in the beginning. I suppose this will probably start to level itself out as we start getting into the higher levels.

2. You out level your gear faster then you can change it. We're both, for the most part, in the white/grey gear we got from the early starting quests/drops. With the exception of a couple of lowbie greens I had in the bank our gear is horrible. It doesn't exactly make since, at this stage at least, to spend money on getting gear from the AH, since in an hour or less we'd be back buying more.

3. You can't level professions. Not enough time. Looks like we'll have to go back and power level them once our RaF boost is over. And you can't afford to pay for your skills without the help from your other toons. You just don't loot or make enough gold to keep up with them. Thankfully, I can send gold from my other toons for us.

Now the biggest problem we are having is that we can't seem to get Eto's 2nd account to drop the temporary account restrictions. So, as of now we can't add him to the guild, I can't trade with him and he has limited chat functions.

I totally understand why Blizzard does this. It prevents account hackers and gold spammers/sellers from using the free trial accounts to aid in their misadventures. But we've paid the 19.95, which I assume is for us to get the actual game and we've set it up on a monthly subscription, what's the hold up? *sigh* Hopefully, this will be fixed by the time we get back online tonight.

**EDIT** Per Blizzard's forums, it appears that upgrading from a trial account to a standard acccount can (and usually does) take up to 72 hours for the billing department to verify payment and lift restrictions on your trial account. IF you buy the game in a retail store and have the new, unused, key code for the game it is almost an instant lift of restrictions. But since we did everything through Blizzard we are going to have to wait it out to get all but the leveling restrictions lifted. He can, at least, continue to level without the level 10 cap. Just an FYI for anyone thinking of doing RaF.

On to other news:
Spent Saturday morning leveling my city rep with Org and the Trolls. DKs really have a disadvantage when it comes to rep grinding. Having done almost no quests on either of the "Old World" continents, left me with very little in the way of starting rep for any of my factions. But I did manage to get exalted with the Trolls (yay for FINALLY getting a raptor mount on one of my toons!) and nearly exalted with Org.

However, the biggest squee for me came by way of Koltira's Pauldrons of Conquest. I finally ran enough daily heroics to save enough emblems for my T9 shoulders!

So, to feed my gear score junky side for a moment. I am super excited that my Be Imba score has gone up to 534 and my WoW Heros score is 2353. Now to just replace those pesky legs, belt, gloves, ring, trinket and cloak. /facepalm

It's a never ending battle!

-Shameless plug-
If anyone is interested in playing Horde side, rolling new toons, RaF, transferring, etc, Faded Delusions has open doors and we'd love to have you aboard. We're still in need of a few more core raid members for a very casual, very laid back raid group. But if you're just interested in a mature, fun, couple friendly, laid back, place to play and have fun look us up as well. We're dedicated to keeping the game fun and the drama out. Play your toon, your way, we'll make room!

Possible DK Tanking Changes with the Patch

2009-12-04T10:09:00.000-05:00

So I found this in a "blue" post on MMO-Champion:

Effective Health and Tanking
Too many of you are using EH (which is a very powerful concept for purposes of trying to decide how to gear your tank) as the number that indicates tank awesomeness. The higher the EH, the better tank I must be. It's just not that simple.

I have yet to see any data that suggests warriors wipe relatively more than other tanks. What so many of these posts say are:

1) I wipe a lot. It must be my class.
2) Because my EH is lower, I am guessing that I wipe more often.
3) I'm not sure if I wipe more often or not, but please just give me a buff so I feel better.

The only argument I have seen so far that seems at all reasonable is that stamina scaling or other factors might eventually lead to warriors (and DKs) having a problem, and that "eventually" could happen in Icecrown. Unfortunately that's impossible to prove or disprove at this stage since it's all speculation. It's definitely something to keep an eye on though.

So the part that is of concern is highlighted in the last paragraph.

"The only argument I have seen so far that seems at all reasonable is that stamina scaling or other factors might eventually lead to warriors (and DKs) having a problem, and that "eventually" could happen in Icecrown."

It appears from reading through the post, a lot of warriors are complaining that their tanking ability isn't as high as Druids, Paladins and possibly DKs.

I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with that statement. I believe all tanks have perks based on their class. Druids have ungodly amounts of health and armor. Paladins have great AoE ability and not to mention Lay on Hands. Deathknights have Death and Decay combined with Pestilence and Rune Strike. Warriors have shield bash in the mix of other class specific abilities.

So I'm not sure I agree with the logic behind the complaints but what does worry me is that they are talking about stamina scaling us?!? Seriously, we don't have any more stamina boost than a Paladin has. We sure don't have the amount of boosts that a druid gets.

Yes, Frost Presence does give me an added 6% boost to my stamina. 6%! That really isn't that much! I've picked enchants and gems to help it boost where I can. I currently have all epic stamina gems in my sockets...that gives me +32 stamina each. I am using 2 dragon's eye gems for stamina that gives me +52 stamina each and I have a couple stamina boost enchants.

Rightfully, I've worked hard to get my health pool up to 32,000+ self buffed. Compared to many of the other tanks I pass in Dalaran and near summoning stones for raids...I'm not nearly as high as most of them.

So with that being said, if you "scale" my stamina boosts too much, that nice little health pool that I've been trying to build up could drop back below 30,000.

I'm not sure what boosts warriors get but I'm sure they wouldn't be too happy to see their health pool dropped either.

On the reverse of this. Deathknights do have a large mitigation percentage. The idea for me is to NOT get hit but when I do, to have the health to buy time for a healer to recover me.

With a druid, their avoidance is much lower, but they can take more hits and still recover.

Paladins and warriors have the ability to block. This is a stat that I can't get. I don't have the ability to carry a shield. Not to mention Paladins want to get hit in order to help them gain threat.

All things being said and considered, this could be a big downfall for DKs more so then warriors I think. It's not unusual now to see "LF Tank for xxxx (no DKs)" in the looking for group channel. Lowering our stamina could make this even more common. We're already classified by many of our fellow gamers as "dumbknights", why give them another reason to doubt our abilities?

Maybe it's time for me to rethink the idea of rolling a Paladin.

I may be totally off here and they are talking about the nerfs that have already taken effect, and I hope that's the case. Maybe they aren't leaning towards nerfing our stamina pools again. If that's the case, then I'm ok with where my stamina pool is now, just don't lower it again!

...

2009-12-03T09:54:00.000-05:00

Looks like I can't think of a single thing to post on today...

We missed Ulduar this week. Were down a healer for the Tuesday night raid and Eto has the flu so we didn't go for Weds night either.

Haven't been able to do the daily heroics so the three days I needed for my T9 shoulders is still 3.

Logged on long enough to help a friend do the Amphitheater last night and then it was back off again.

May go beat on some ZG trash on my own tonight, who knows.

Been a lonely week.

Maybe I'll have more to discuss later.

Happy Thrusday all...

Hello...whoooooo are you?

2009-12-02T12:28:00.000-05:00

I read an interesting blog the other day. Karatheya over at Cold Comfort wrote a thought provoking article on how much we invest in the growth of other players. That starting me wondering.

The key point that I got from the article was simple. Investing in random pug players today may save us some time tomorrow.

There are several ways you can look at this.

1. His/Her point - They could be the recruits applying to your guilds in the future thus they need less work when they join then they would have if we didn't invest time to help them out a few weeks/months prior when we pugged with them.

2. They could be tank/healer/dps we find ourselves pugging with on a semi-regular basis.

3. There are only so many people you can place on your ignore list. And if we ignore every player that didn't live up to expectations....it would be a lonely, lonely place.

Pugging is a daily routine for Eto and I. We both like to do instances and like to raid. But as history, and previous blogs have shown, growing a guild isn't going so well. This leaves us needing to pug at least 3 dps every night when we do the daily heroic. Not to mention we pug for every Ulduar raid on a weekly basis.

Our Alliance toons have the benefit of not needing to pug. They are members, in good standings, of a well established, decent progression guild. This allows them to see the end content, heroics and events without ever having to pug for them.

Eto and I also tend to be the type of people that enjoy helping other players. We don't mind spending time talking gear, rotation, stats or strategy with another person that's trying to learn. But just as often as we find a player that wants help, we find just as many that don't.

So many puggers we run into really don't care that they are rolling on gear with the wrong stats for their character, or putting the wrong enchants/gems into that gear. Then they whine and complain because the other hunter/mage/warrior in the group has DPS that is twice as high as theirs and they just don't understand why. Thus, I'm sure, the reason they are pugging and not off raiding with their guild.

But for those few that do care, that really want to know why and what they can do to improve, taking the time to invest in them could save us all some time in the future.

Save you some time when they do eventually gear up and apply to your raiding guild and save me some time when they show up in my raid/heroic pug.

This has been the case with my 2 recent projects. The demonology warlock and the prot warrior. When I first met them both they were in the wrong type of gear, having issues with their gear and heading in the wrong direction. Both were new to instances, afraid of pugging because they were being ridiculed. But really, they just needed a little guidance.

I'm proud to say the little warlock previously under my wings is now pushing over 3,000 dps, as demo...that's saying ALOT. The warrior...well, he's now up to par to OT Ulduar and continuing to grow.

Either of the players are an asset to any group they join now. They are no longer a hindrance but an asset. So if you get them in your group, remember they once were the players you would have put on ignore and now they are the ones you want to have around when you need a good player to fill your pug spot.

Take a little time and help out those who need it. You will find, in the end, it benefits us all.

Murloc!!!!!

2009-12-01T16:33:00.000-05:00

This made me giggle! Enjoy!

Times they are a'changin

2009-12-01T11:44:00.000-05:00

Or so it seems.

After a conversation last night with a blogger friend that randomly decided to roll on our server and spend a little time in our lonely guild, I realized things really -have- changed in my beloved game.

From days gone by, when I was priesting my way through the Burning Crusade, healing my beloved boyfriend tank and all the guildies that I held so dear. Watching the fall of Kara and Zul'Aman. Flying over the vast plains of the Outlands. Proud created of remotely well known guild. Enjoying my place, my friends, my time...

To the adventures of a lovely little demonology lock determined to hold her own against all odds and prove she could raid with her Felguard. Everyone tried so hard to convince me that demonology locks are not meant for raiding. After some time I did come to realize they sadly, were right and thus my adventures into lockdom ended abruptly.

Now the present, a tiny little DK tank from the other side of the tracks. A little bloodelf that once I would have shunned because she came from the "dark" side. A skinny little, bouncy chick with an attitude. Constantly fighting to hold her place in the big bad world that is known mainly to the men in the game. Tanking isn't a girls job...or so she is told...

From a priest to a lock to a death knight...

From a healer to the tank...

From Alliance to the Horde...

From progression raiding to duoing the places we once loved...

From a guild full of friends, fun and excitement to a silent, lonely place.

Things they are a'changing.

What does this mean? I'm not really sure.

I miss my small, close knit guild. I miss the Alliance side. I miss healing. I miss planing the raids and celebrating the small advances. I miss the excitement of vent when we would succeed. I miss doing it all with friends. I miss the things you just can't get from a pug.

I love tanking. I love my deathknight. I enjoy the new people I meet. I like being able to duo the old content I loved so much. I like being able to slow down and enjoy things with Eto that we couldn't before when the guild took up 95% of our time.

Yes I know I can continue to progress with the pugs...but will that ever be enough? Probably not. I miss the people and try as we may, rebuilding that is not going so well. It's just not the time or we're not in the right place to build it up.

Holy Hiatus...

2009-11-30T13:00:00.000-05:00

Wow, I haven't updated in an entire week! What's wrong with me? I've been on vacation.

Though, not totally from WoW.

I did spend a lot of time trying out The Sims 3. Which, I will say, is pretty dang awesome. I was a long time Sims player, well before I found WoW. Played the original Sims and then The Sims 2 but waited a long time before trying the third one. To say the least, I am very impressed and LOVE the game.

Though my week long vacation did entail it's fair share of WoW time. Especially over the weekends while Eto was home with me.

Where to start....

Bountiful Harvest Festival -
I got my DK from 1 - 350 cooking doing nothing but cooking the silly Thanksgiving food! Wow, Blizzard must really want to give people and easy way to up the skill. Not that I'm ungrateful, just seriously in shock. I leveled my lock's cooking the old fashion way and was a little annoyed that pretty much anyone can get max cooking skill with little to no work.

Yeah, you have to kill level 1 critters to get the turkey but that's it. Then Bam! level 350 cooking and you're on your way to the Northrend stuff. Enough said.

Kalyara also got her dumb title and the crazy turkey pet. **Let me just say, standing around watching a DK kill 3 guards, in a no stat dress and hat, waiting for her health to get down to 15,000 before flagging yourself and commencing to pull out your wolves, fire elemental and your JC boar in order to prove how awesome of a Shaman you are...is so totally cool!**

Yeah I may be a little bitter about that. I had done nothing to all the Alliance toons running into our cities to sit at our tables. But then it was my own fault, as I had gone to the wrong place thinking it was the IF table causing myself to aggro three guards that I had to kill in order to sit at the table. But waiting for my health to drop, pulling out all your cooldowns and then only managing to kill me because you got the heal off before I could silence you...nice. Though I will give her credit for being smart enough to run into IF for safety before I could recover my body.

Ulduar Updates:
We actually got another fight down during last weeks Ulduar raid. We managed to get Razorscale down as well as our normal FL and XT. I'm pretty sure we could have gotten further but had a healer that had to bail on us. We had no wipes up to that point. I was very impressed and curious to see how far we get this week.

We did what?!?:
So, Eto and I had this crazy idea to attempt Kara, just for fun, with only the two of us. Well..I was very surprised that we not only managed to clear it, we managed to clear it with only 2 wipes. Neither of which, were on Price. We had a little trouble with Curator, before finally getting Eto to switch to his healy spec and then we had a little trouble figuring out how to manage Morose.

But otherwise, it was a blast!!! Thankfully, Morose was nice enough to give me Mongoose on my first attempt! =)

Next adventure....Zul'Aman. /nod

We're now adding Kara to our weekly duo raid/rep grind. Still trying for the mounts in ZG.

Well I'm sure there is stuff I am forgetting but I'll think of it later.

Ohh...3 days away from getting my Tier 9 shoulders!

and the beat goes on...

2009-11-23T09:05:00.000-05:00

Looks like it's been a few day since my last post.

Interestingly enough, I haven't played much over the past 4 days but what little I have played has been productive.

First on the Warrior-Wonderboy front:
It's a little odd who you end up making friends with. Eto and I have spent a lot of time with our new warrior tank and his boyfriend the awesome "Party Healy Druid" from the Ulduar raid.

Seems that we actually kinda like these guys. Once I spent some time talking to Raggy (the druid) I found out they were fun and interesting people. So when I said we somehow managed to lock ourselves to helping Kiwi (that's not his toons name, it's something like Kiwlaski or something but Kiwi is what I call him) get his tanking gear, I mean we locked ourselves to helping them.

Which I won't complain out. It's actually been kind of fun and I'm very proud of his progression. It's taken a little bit of education and some coaching from Eto but he's getting some really decent gear.

So far we've been using the shopping list located over on the Tank Like a Girl blog. Since I'm not a warrior and have never played one, I wasn't sure exactly how much like DK tanking warriors were. Thanks to Kadomi's shopping list we knew exactly what to start looking for.

He's gotten the helm for H-ToC, I've made him the Titanium Earthguard Ring and he's gotten enough emblems for his T8 chest. We've enchanted (properly this time) and put nice epic gems in the gear as well. I'll be excited to see what kind of gear score he has now...as soon as he logs off in his Prot gear and not in his Fury gear. =P He may just be Ulduar ready by this weeks raid after all!

So, as for myself? I got my T8 head last night. I'm pleasantly surprised at my own stats lately. My avoidance, stamina, hit, defense..they are all pretty good. I'm a little below my hit cap. Still need to work on that. But my total avoidance is over 40% now and Eto is complaining that I'm getting boring to heal.

We took the weekend off from raiding. Since we did end up raiding 4 nights last week. Naxx on our lower 80s on Monday, Ulduar on Tues and Weds and then Ulduar on Thursday with out Alliance toons.

Ulduar on Thursday went pretty well. Our Alliance side guild has most of Ulduar on far. We downed 7 of the bosses this past Thursday. The only thing they have issues with...Yogg, of course. But still it's fun to go in with them and just have some fun. Definitely, less stressful then Ulduar Horde side.

Our break from raiding, wasn't a true "break" really. We spent Sunday night 2 manning ZG. So still a raid but without the stress. And I did solo Hakar, well after I killed Eto anyway.

He has decided that getting out toons to exalted with the Zandalar tribe is a good goal to hit before Cataclysm. With the idea that we get the nifty shoulder enchant and put it on the heirloom shoulders we plan to give to our Goblins. Even though this enchant won't activate till they hit 55, but oh well. Still something to do.

Happy Thanksgiving! And have an awesome week!

The Continuing Saga...Oh, the drama!

2009-11-19T08:43:00.000-05:00

Ulduar - Part 2

The night fell, clear and cold in Northrend. Kalyara was feeling a little weary from her previous failures the night before. She couldn't let this hold her down. She had done her best, she had held her head high and done her part. She couldn't, no wouldn't, keep beating herself up. No Sir! She was going to go back in there and show them!

Maybe, just maybe tonight she would have stronger allies, surely it would go better tonight...surely...

We'll skip past the painful group formation of this raid. Since previous history proves that our raid leader, from here out known as Dr. Don't-Know, is seriously unable to form a decent group because he's trying to play the "nice" raid leader and take anyone and everyone, regardless of gear or skill.

Fast forward to the first mob encounter. Again, we're in the same position as last night, posed to try to get to Ignis because Dr.Don'tKnow read on line that we need to pull one of the Molten Colossus all the way back to XT-002's door to prevent the healers being silenced by them both back to back. Yay! No big deal right?

*face palm* The OT, our beloved, well skilled though under geared, warrior from the previous night isn't paying attention and I end up dragging both the monsters towards XT's door. Now I realize I have them, I avoid all multi-target damage so that I don't build too much aggro on the second one and stop moving. Finally, our warrior-wonder-boy, finally realizes and taunts off me but only to die an almost instant, painless death because his health is still way too low.

Now, insert the Full-of-himself-retardin, and I use this term lightly. Normally, I avoid using acronyms for any class, I don't believe in retardins, huntards or dumbknights. But this guy's attitude, if nothing else, earned him this beloved title.

Mr. Retardin, looses his patience, after one pull..which I can't blame because I was begging Dr.Don'tKnow to try to find us another OT and let Warrior-Wonder-Boy dps instead. I just did it somewhat tactfully in whispers and not openly in raid chat. And I didn't blast his gear and tanking abilities to the rest of the raid either.

So, Mr. Retardin, has a tanking set. Wow! Nice to know now, could have told us last night before the wipefest! And...it's not a bad tanking set. His stats are pretty good for a tank. Maybe..maybe...dare I say...will we make it after all?

We successfully pull the Molten Colossus and manage to kill them both with no problems! Mr. Retardin goes back to his ret set and leaves the off-tanking to our warrior-wonder-boy. The rest of the trash is no problem and we are ready to pull Ignis.

Dr.Don'tKnow, goes through is explanation, we remind him of a few things he didn't know about and I pull the boss. I'm not having any problem with Ignis himself but I'm also getting and holding the aggro on the Iron Constructs. Not surprisingly, we wipe.

No big deal, that's alright. Now the group has seen the fight. We know where to move, when to move and we got him down to 78%. My hopes are up.

*Release and run back into the instance*
Raid Warning: Let's move on to the Antechamber, we can just skip these harder bosses

What?! We are going to give the boss one attempt and pass him up for more trash and an attempt at another boss that people have never seen? Ugh! I'm all for progression but sheesh, give it at least one more go before giving up.

On to the Antechamber, trash clears go fine. We make it to the Assembly of Iron. Again, Dr.Don'tKnow explains the fight. I'm going to take on Steelbreaker while our warrior-wonder-boy takes on Stormcaller Brundir because "he'll do the least amount of damage in the first phase". I have my instructions...pull the boss to the right of the door keep him out of the blue circles, avoid getting close to the other guys, etc. Once Steelbreaker goes down I need to pick up Runemaster Molgeim. Got it.

Goes something like this -
Kalyara runs in, grabs Steelbreaker and kites him to the right of the door.
Warrior-Wonder-Boy runs in....dies...two shots.
Healers die.
Kaly dies.
Raid Wipes.
Release and run back in.
"So I guess I'm going to have to tank this too, huh?" - Mr. Retardin
"OMG, I'm sorry but there are two people in this group that I never care to play with again"
Druid Party Healer leaves the group.
Warrior-Wonder-Boy leaves the group.

Thus the drama begins to unfold...
Now to this point, Mr. Retardin had been tanking the trash, which I was unaware of. But did explain why the trash pulls leading up to the Iron Council were going so well.

As for the Druid Party Healer apparently she is the real life girlfriend of Warrior-Wonder-Boy and didn't like the fact that Mr. Retardin and the other druid had commented on him not being geared well enough to be tanking this far into Ulduar.

If that's not enough, now we have Dr.Don'tKnow pulling the drama queen (king)/oh poor me routine. "I can't handle this right now", "sigh, sorry that I took up everyone's time", "I don't pick people based on their purples, they have skills" and my favorite "if you want to be an elitist jerk then feel free to leave".

I attempt to make the point to Dr.Don'tKnow that we're not being elitist jerks but that he has thrown warrior-wonder-boy to the wolves. He knew his gear was bad. But still he brought him into something well above his gear ability and expected him to OT.

His gear was barely good enough to do heroics with. He was defense capped but that is about all he had going for him. His health pool was extremely low, 23,000 buffed, his gear score was only 355 and he was not enchanted or gemmed.

Now I'm not saying anything was wrong with the warrior. Honestly, I like him as a player. He has the potential to be an awesome tank. I commend Dr.Don'tKnow for wanting to help him gear. That's awesome but that's also what heroics, emblems and crafted gear are for. You can't bring a seriously under geared tank into something above his level.

It's easier to carry dps and even one healer, if the tanks and main healers are well geared. But you can't do that when you're the tank. Not when you are that far below.

So, thus ends our Ulduar group for the night. A few angry people because they are now locked to Ulduar and didn't down a single boss. A couple more angry people because they feel like they have been shunned. Then a few that just think the entire group is full of dumb asses.

I get a whisper from the Druid Party Heals shortly after getting back to Dalaran. Wanting to know my opinion on her boyfriend's tanking. I kindly tell her what I honestly believe. He has skill, he has potential, that's not easy to find. Now he needs the gear to back it up. That's the easy part.

And somehow...I've committed myself to helping him learn and get that gear. *sigh*

Happy Thursday!

Ulduar - Annoyance and Excitement

2009-11-18T09:13:00.000-05:00

Eto and I got hit up, by the same weekly PUG group last night, to come tank and heal for their Ulduar run.

Don't get me wrong I was very leery of going along with this guy for various reasons.
1. He doesn't really understand balanced group make up.
2. This is the group that I had the problems with Oingaboinga the previous week.
3. They did Ulduar 2 nights last week and only downed FL o.O

Now granted they had bad tanks the week previous and on the second night ended up running with 4 warriors but still. Oingaboinga was not on the line up for the night so I agreed to main tank it as long as Eto was my healer.

*sigh*

We ended up with a brand new level 80 Disc Priest. When I say brand new, I mean he hit 80 a few minutes before joining the group. The Armory still showed him as 79.

The OT that we had was "a great warrior" the RL found. Who sadly had a gear score of 355. He was pretty squishy and ultimately, ended our progression for the night when he had to start actually tanking things.

So this is how the night went:

Take 30 minutes after the group fills to finally get everyone inside the instance. Had one person afk and never come back. Wait another 15 minutes to get a replacement and get them summoned. The RL begins explaining the the FL fight and instructs people to just pick a vehicle it doesn't really matter. Who cares that gear score of the driver plays a part in the amount of health of the vehicle? "That only matters in hardmodes" so says the RL. After 3/4 of the group wipes on the trash while trying to take out the towers, we finally get to FL. Now I realize that the newbie priest and warrior are teaming up for a demolisher. The Priest informs the group that her gear may be playing a part in the health of the machine. But again the RL insists it doesn't matter. We shoot down the pyrite. Not nearly enough if you ask me but he instructs us to pull.

We pull the boss, the first two pursuits go pretty well then he goes after the priest/warrior vehicle, they die after one hit from him. *sigh* We're down a demolisher and the pyrite is gone. Insert wipe number 1.

Rinse and repeat...6 times! We wipe 6 times on FL before some how Finally we convince the RL that we MUST HAVE MORE PYRITE! Eto and I some how manage to keep FL pissed off enough that he pursues us 3 out of the 4 times, allowing everyone to finally down the damn thing.

Sheesh, Flame Leviathan really should not be this difficult.

Moving on to XT-002. I love this fight. I'm not sure if it's her silly animations and voice overs or the mechanics of it. But I love the XT fight.

The RL does his run down of the boss fight and we get started. Things go pretty smooth, loose our RL/Mage pretty early on but manage a battle rez and he's back up. The OT is keeping the bomb bots occupied, heart takes considerable damage and then boom, we loose the OT and a couple DPS.

Now we have her down to about 16% when the RL automatically starts talking about what we need to do differently next time. He wants to wipe it and start again, but did he forget we have an all powerful, all amazing feral druid among us. Now this is why I love druids! He quickly switches from kitty to bear and rounds the bomb bots back up.

XT has eaten a couple by this point and gained some of her health back but we're not giving up. I refused to give up as long as Eto was alive and keeping me up, we had a few good dps and a 3 minutes left on the enrage timer.

It's slow going, gain a little, loose a little. The druid is putting forth an amazing effort to jump between bear and kitty. Tanking the bots when he has too and still trying to dps as much as he can. We're down to about 10% and a minute or so left before she goes ape shit on me.

At this point I don't see any reason not to burn everything we have. Pop the ghoul, pop the army, burn your cooldowns, if we don't beat the enrage timer I'm toast and it will be a wipe. We have two healers up, Eto and a Resto Druid. 3 of our dps are still going at it. We can do this..we can do this....

WE DID IT!! And the awesome thing? We did it on our first attempt. This is what you call people being on the ball. The few people that knew the fight and knew their class...they were the ones that made this one possible!

Now I wish I could say we had as much luck with the rest of the attempts we made in Ulduar last night but sadly we didn't. The lack of AoE dps made Rasorscale pretty much impossible. We didn't have the DPS to down the Dark Rune Sentinels, plus the other adds, quick enough so the dragon wasn't taking enough damage while on the ground. We wiped this one 3 or 4 times, never getting him below 72%, before the RL decided to move on.

Ignis. What can I say about this one? Sadly, we couldn't make it to him. The OT didn't last more then 2 hits from the guardians before he was down.

With all that being said, I wouldn't call it a waste. People got to see a couple bosses fall and I did get the tank bracers off of FL! =)

So, we'll try again tonight and see what happens. Though I'm pretty sure I'm in for another couple hundred gold in repair bills! Fun time with Ulduar, oh my!

Weekend Revolutions

2009-11-16T15:25:00.001-05:00

So it seems I didn't spend much time in the game this weekend. Think I'm starting to hit the burnout wall again. Actually, I'm pretty sure of this since this is not the first time I've mentioned it here.

Honestly, I don't think I played more then an hour or three over the entire course of my 3 day weekend.

Most of my time was spent playing my baby Hunter. She's been my "project" since I started the game, nearly 3 years ago. She was my first toon and is now proudly sitting at level 56. It's not that I don't like her, just that I changed servers, changed toons and jumped around so many times that I completely forgot about her for awhile. Since moving her to Shadow Council, I've found a new interest in her.

I think part of my problem is she is in the dreaded "between zone" levels. I hate the 55+ zones in the old world but she's too low to go to Outlands yet. *sigh*

Anyway...I've learned this weekend that don't enjoy playing the game nearly as much as I use to when I play alone. I've gotten so use to playing with Eto that solo play is just not as interesting.

I've realized, Elemental Shaman are unGodly awesome. The one in my H-CoS pug last night was pulling 3500+ DPS!

I've realized that tanking gets really boring when you're doing the same things over and over and over again.

I've realized, I'M READY FOR SOMETHING NEW! Give me new content already. How many times can I possibly run the same instances over and over? How many Alts can I level before I want to scratch my eyes out?

So tell me...what is everyone doing lately to help them through the rut between content patches? Help me find something new and exciting to work on before I loose interest in my beloved game!

Gnome Therapy

2009-11-12T10:42:00.000-05:00

I have met a lot of really good players throughout my time in Azeroth. People that know how to play their class, know the ins and outs of the perfect rotation, the perfect gear stats and can talk to you for hours about how to tweak your character to gain that added half a percent to your damage output.

Of those people very few have the personality it takes to leave a lasting impression on me and even more so, very few become what I would consider to be a "friend".

There is, however, a few exceptions to that statement. Eto for one. Who everyone knows I love and adore. He didn't hit me with the "in my face" lasting impression when I first came into contact with him. It was more of a gradual, though quickly progressing, relationship.

The second exception to that rule is a past guildie. He's a tiny pink haired, big ego, low temper, highly comical, demon wielding warlock that I've known for practically my entire gaming life in Azeroth.

This guy not only knows his class, how to play it and play it well, but also has been known to keep all of our guild chat and/or raid chats in stitches. It's not often that I would be involved in a group with him that I didn't find myself laughing until my face was hurting. He had a way of calming people down in the worst of wipe situations, kept them motivated and did it all while keeping us entertained.

When Last Call started falling apart, we lost our beloved Warlock to bigger and better things. Eto and I left the server to try to rebuild ourselves and loose the stress that being Guild Leaders had left on us. After a month or so on another server, I logged back onto my toons on Shadow Council. The first "zomg, where have you been whisper" came from this guy. I'm not sure if it was his overwhelming persistent personality or the "there are no Sedges on no Oceanic servers, get your ass back over here where you belong" speech I got that ultimately brought me back home again. But in the end Shadow Council proved to be the place I belonged.

He's been known to keep me "grounded" on more then one occasion. When raids and guild drama would drag me down he was there to pull me back up again. Recently, this therapy has carried itself over into the real world.

Through email and chat, I now have "Gnome Therapy" on a pretty regular basis. Not only does he have a way of making people around him laugh but he does it in an amazing artistic manor. His gift with words and writing styles is enough to keep even the most professional of English majors interested.

So, my thanks goes out to him. There had been many times that I am sure I would have quit playing if it weren't for the comedy support I get from him. But also there are many days I just feel like screaming and end up laughing at some off the wall, crazy email I get from him.

To say the topic of my blog today is a little obscure would be an understatement. But for anyone that knows Sedge, they would simply laugh and agree.

And for those of you needing a laugh today, this was a conversation we had about the process of my horrible day at work:

Sedge: Hell of an attitude to do interviews with, miss.
Me: o.O I just complain to you cause you are here, I have to be sweet perky and authorative
in the interviews.
Sedge: Psh, I should move there. You could hire me, then I could do cubicle stuff.
Me: Cubicle stuff? I'm not sure what cubicle stuff is...
Sedge: Me neither. But you do cubicle stuff for a living.
Me: I do? That's interesting I need to put that on my list of qualifications on my resume.
Sedge: And apparently you're also a cubicle supervisor who does interviews. Impressive stuff.
Me: I'm proficient in cubical stuff. Ohh, my new title...."cubicle Supervisor". I sound
important
Sedge: Everyone knows that's not how you put it on the resume.
Resume's are fancy. You call it....
"Quadratic Operations Specialist. "

Now, if everyone had the joy of reading his adventures with the copy machine and the post-it notes, you'd spend the rest of your afternoon smiling!

Have an awesome day!

The Perfect Pug?! sigh

2009-11-11T11:27:00.000-05:00

Ulduar last night didn't go so well.

This was the weekly raid group, Horde side, that Eto and I were approached to join. A little background information on this group may be helpful. It's a new guild leader, never before raid leader, trying to build a raiding guild. As we all know, if you read my blog, recruitment on Horde side is a pain in the ass since there are so many new guilds.

Anyway, we pick up group and the RL starts inviting the 6 people that signed up to attend. The OT was suppose to be another Dk that we had ran Ony with the week prior. Well he informs the DK that she could DPS tonight since Oingaboinga was going to come along to tank. Oingaboinga was the warrior tank the RL had told us about before. He joined his guild, yada, yada, yada Well a couple days after joining the RL's guild, Oingaboinga did a ninja quit to join another entry level raiding guild.

So I said whatever and went about my business fishing stuff for Eto to make Fish Feasts for the raid. A couple minutes later Oinga joins the group and automatically starts instructing the RL on what classes we "must" have and advises that getting a Bear or Paladin MT needs to happen and no more DK dps.

Well, I politely advise that I am not DPS and if he is a tank then we don't need anymore tanks. This turns into a huge one way debate on his part about how we must have a druid, a paladin and a priest in the party cause we can't do Ulduar without their buffs. I switch from my fishing pole to my tank weapon to bring my health back to it's normal unbuffed state and kindly advise we are geared well enough for entry level Ulduar and that this is a pug and we can't be super picky on what classes we accept.

In the mean time the RL invites another Shaman to join the party. Oinga asks if he's DPS and is informed no he's a healer. The "I'm too awesome for you" warrior attitude continues to get worse and he insists having two of the same class healer is a waste of space so the RL boots the shaman from group...YES HE BOOTED HIM!

I was shocked. I don't even think shocked is the right word for it. Seriously, we just turned away a well geared healer because Mr. I'mtooGood thinks having two shaman healers is stupid?

Next strike against the warrior, he begins debating that the two healers we have, a priest and a shaman, need to be party heals and that we have to bring in a Paladin for MT healing. *sigh* This is what really gets me started.

I can't stand a know-it-all in the group that thinks he know exactly how every single class plays and stereotypes them based on their class. "A shaman is not MT heals, cause they can chain heal..he's on party". "A holy priest is not built for MT healing, he's on party".

Again, I advise that my holy priest does awesome at MT healing and if you don't' play the class don't assume you know what the person is good at. When it comes down to it, the class build plays a minor part in the performance of the player, yes. But in the end, it's really what the player is use to doing.

I have always healed MT as holy. Yes, my mana conservation is not as great as a Disc priest. My damage mitigation to the tank is not as awesome but I know how to conserve my mana and when to start healing the tank. Priests drop huge heals all at one time. If we know how to time those heals with our HoTs, they are better spent on a tank then tossing around in party.

This debate continues on and on, while the warrior continues to insist we get a Druid (boomkin, he doesn't want a druid healer) and a Paladin (for healing not for DPS). Now it doesn't' matter what position in the group those two classes play if you're wanting them simply for their buffs.

My entire point in this whole argument was that the group is a 100% pug. We don't have the room to ensure that we have only one of every class in the group. If we have two shaman, two druids or two DKs, so be it. As long as we have the numbers to down the bosses and keep moving, it really doesn't matter. If your gear is so dependant on the buffs of other players that you can't preform with out them...YOU DON'T NEED TO BE IN A ULDUAR PUG!

If the truth be known, which I never brought up, Oninga's gear score was only 480. He was the lowest scored member in the raid. Yes he had stamina. He had 1000 more health unbuffed then I did. But if you're valuing health over other stats, you have a more serious problem then getting paladin auras and druid buffs in the raid.

Needless to say, I politely excused myself from the raid group, wished them all luck and went back to playing my lowbie Alliance hunter.

I play this game to have fun, not to listen to a big headed, bossy ass, want-to-be raid leader turn my fun game into a job.

Wanna know what really gets me pissed off...assumptions. If you don't know the class, don't play the class and don't know the player...don't assume cause you're making and ass out of yourself!

Memories from so long ago....

2009-11-10T08:32:00.000-05:00

Well, I took Kalyanna (priest) into Naxx10 last night. It brought back a lot of memories I wasn't expecting to face again.

The raid went well. After I finally figure out my buttons, healbot and how to conserve mana. That took only about the first half of the first wing.

We started with Plague Quarter. It was suppose to be a "fun run" with the guild. It started about 30 minutes late and consisted of a few normal raiders and ton of alts. So no one was taking anything too seriously.

The first pull resulted in two deaths and a Gargoyle that wouldn't die. Lots of laughs were had by all.

We got to Heigan, as everyone knows, my favorite Naxx boss. But there was a catch to this fight. The raid leader had brought a ton of "drinks" for everyone and the point of the fight was to try to finish it completely smashed (in game of course). So we all drink the stuff, attempting to do the fight through blurry screens and messed up directional movements.

It doesn't go so well. All the melee dps (which we were very heavy in) died before the first teleport. The healers and one dps quickly follow suit and find themselves face first kissing the floor before we finish the first round of dancing. Release and run back to your body, buff up and drink again. We manage to down him the second time. Still loosing a few people along the way but Heigan goes down to a drunk raid none the less.

I managed to pick up a couple upgrades along the way. Due to the late start and the "fun" everyone was having we only cleared Plague, Spider and Military before it got too late and people had to call it a night.

Good time and good company. It got the guild back together as a group which is an improvement over the raiding they have attempted to do through September and October. They have 2 more raid night scheduled this week and hopefully the turn out for those work out as well.

I had forgotten how much I loved my priest. Healing is much more stressful then tanking or DPS but still, it's something I did for so long and quickly fell back into the routine I was so familiar with. Sometimes, dusting off and old toon is like finding an old friend.

I won't be making either of the other two Fallen raids this week but I am scheduled to tank Ulduar tonight for the Pug raid group Horde side. I'm pretty excited about this one. I've done Flame Leviathan before. That's how I ended up tanking with Ironsoul. But that's as far into Ulduar as I've taken my DK. We'll see how it goes tonight but I have high hopes of at least seeing a couple bosses down.

Now if I can just get use to the late nights and early mornings, we'll be doing good!

Weekend Adventures

2009-11-09T08:19:00.000-05:00

I tanked Ony Friday night!!!

Actually successfully Off-Tanked Ony. The pug weekly raid group I have mentioned before started Friday night with "Dragon Slayer Friday". Meaning every Friday they will do one of the short Dragon raids. This week it was Ony and we got her down on the 3rd try.

Not too bad for a pug group. I feel the need to mention though, that I HATE the whelps. But once we got people running back to the middle when they spawned, so I could pick them up easily instead of running all over the room trying to catch them, it was much easier.

Seriously, if you are DPS and doing Ony, please remember your tank is only one person and if you are spread out all over the room with the whelps spawn, you are going to get beat on.

I won the gem bag from her and Eto got a nice...something...I can't remember. The fight is a lot of fun. I'm very glad I got a chance to see it from the level 80 view since she's been my favorite dragon since I started playing.

Got pulled into a ToC10 man run Sunday morning. That was interesting. To say the least the person putting it together had no clue what was going on. He had me as MT and another DK, who's gear score was 350, as OT. Sadly, I had to bring this to his attention and give instructions on the fights since most people had never been to the raid. We replaced the 350 tank with a paladin with slight better gear. I say slight, her gear score was still only 468. We got through phase one on two attempts and would have gotten through the second phase except said "raid leader" got angry at 3 wipes and dropped group. *sigh* If you can't handle pug raids...DON'T PUT THEM TOGETHER! Seriously guys, pugs have a huge learning curve. You can't get angry at your pug if you have never done the raid either. Sheesh, patience people!

On other news. Eto's account finally got restored Saturday night. All his toons, both of my Guild Master toons and the GM from Whispers of the Fallen, received mailboxes full of stuff to replace. Sadly, he didn't get everything back. Mainly we noticed he's missing all his ruined orbs and his arctic fur. The Alliance side guild bank from our bank toons didn't get the 1200ish gold that was taken and the 500ish from the Horde side bank. But all in all I was impressed that he got back as much as he did.

He did, which I was surprised, also end up getting 32 Abyss crystals, 13 Dragons Eyes and got to keep all the PvP gems that his Paladin had in the bank when he gained control of him back. I assume, since he didn't have this before the hack, that it was the mats they got from DEing his epic gear and from trading in all his JC tokens. Blizzard also refunded back all JC tokens, emblems and his champion marks.

Started playing my holy priest some more this weekend as well. Looks like I'm taking her on Fallen's Naxx run tonight. Normally, I would be terrified to try to heal a raid with her but seeing as it's a "fun run" for the guild, everyone is already Ulduar or beyond geared, she should be fine. I might even get a few drops for her.

I've missed playing my priest. Being a healer was something I was incredibly good at in BC. Hitting the burn out stage put a quick end to that about the time Wrath came out. I haven't played her much since then. Enough to get her to 80 and level her professions. Otherwise she's sat in Dalaran, nearly forgotten. I'm looking forward to dusting her off some and seeing if I still have it in me to be an awesome healer.

Last bit of news. The Horde side weekly raid group is set to do Ulduar on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. "Dragon Slayer Friday" for a short weekly raid and then Naxx for people that need it on Sundays. Eto and I aren't interested in doing Naxx but are signed up for Ulduar. The Fallen's Ulduar night is Thursday so if we stay committed to what we have, we could be raiding 3 - 4 nights a week between our Horde and Alliance toons.

With all that being said, I doubt we will stick with that schedule. We've both agreed that we need to focus more on things outside the game. I see us possibly doing both Ulduar raids every other week and then one or the other on the opposite weeks. Conflicting real life schedules and needing time for things other than WoW would burn us out quickly if we stuck to doing 4 - 5 raid nights a week.

Happy Hunting!

Pets for real money?

2009-11-06T08:50:00.000-05:00

Looks like I'm going to hold off a little longer on making my beloved warlock into the cute adorable little gnome I've always wanted her to be. I had the intentions of race changing her this weekend. My visions of a teeny tiny little gnome followed by her massively huge Felguard as they journey around Azeroth. Him protecting her when the Cataclysm hits, yada, yada, yada.

I'll still get around to it I'm sure but instead of the race change I purchased the Mini K.T. and the Pandaren Monk. I wanted to do something special for Eto. After all he has had a pretty rough week, getting your toons stolen and all. Not to mention a (potential) new job. I wasn't sure which one he would want so I purchased them both and let him pick. Of course he picked the Mini K.T. (which was secretly the one I wanted) and I now have a cute little Kung Fu Panda that loving follows me around and randomly decides to karate chop invisible foes.

With that being said, it seems the topic of buying these pets has been pretty popular around the forums, in trade chat and such. So here is my thoughts on the subject.

Blizzard has already stated they will not be selling, for real world currency, any item that has a substantial impact on game performance. You're not likely to be able to buy yourself into the highest end game gear and weapons. That would be an unfair advantage that most players would gawk at.

Yes, you're paying money for these cute little pets. But they aren't effecting game play any. You don't have to do it to enjoy the game.

Why did I do it? Well, unlike the author of Greedy Goblin, who seems to think, I'm buying them to keep up with the masses. I don't feel that my financial status is being evaluated if I don't have them. I don't think people are going to look down on me. I just like the pets.

Seriously, I found for awhile that was the main focus of my game. To collect any and all of the pets I could find. I even, for awhile, spent time collecting the playing cards in hopes that I would find one of them there. But to no avail. So I'd much rather pay $10.00 (US Dollars) to get the pet I want then to randomly buy playing cards that may not contain what I am looking for.

Then the question becomes...How is buying these pets any different then the other "options" Blizzard offers to it's players? They allow me to pay to change my name and my server. Is that different? Maybe. I can pay to change my Draenei into a human and gain the beneficial racial bonus allowing me to increase reputation with my factions faster. Then if I choose, when it's done, I can pay to change her back. Sheesh, I can even level my toon on a PvE server get them maxed level and then transfer to a PvP server and go about my ganking business without having to worry about being ganked myself while leveling. Not to mention I can decide at any minute I want to play Horde instead of Alliance and pay Blizzard to change the factions of any toon I want. So you tell me. How is this any different then allowing us to purchase special pets or mounts? None of the things listed are required...who does it hurt?

With that being said, I do think Blizzard is again exploiting a market in their game to generate more money for their huge empire. But do I blame them? No, not really. They have found a niche into a massive community and now most other gaming companies can't even touch it.

So, if you are buying the pets to "keep up with the Joneses" then you may have problems. If you're buying them, and can afford them, because you love the little guys then I say go for it! Whatever (legally) makes your game fun.

Play your way!

UPDATE: Hacked!

2009-11-05T10:48:00.000-05:00

Well, Eto now has access to his account. As of last night, he had gotten his password changed and could log in.

The state of affairs is rather sad:
Etolani - Toon has his full healing set (which he was wearing last time he was played) All bank contents and bags were emptied and the toon was used for something, and left logged out in he middle of a random zone. We think, since he is a maxed level miner, that they were using him to do the underground mining. Why they didn't strip him of his healing set, I'm not sure, but we were thankful since it did allow him to at least be able to do dailies for some gold.

Ythane - Hacker was attempting to transfer the toon to another server, Blizzard was able to reverse it before it completed. His bags and bank were full of a few missing items from the guild and a TON of PvP gems and other PvP items. Sadly, he was not holding any of the gold that I assumed he would be. My thoughts were they were using him as the pack mule to get the gold
to another server. Since the transfer didn't make it through I was hopeful that he'd still have some of the stuff on him. But my curiosity is peaked as to why he was carrying so much PvP stuff since we checked the AH and most of it didn't appear to sell too well. Interesting indeed. Wonder what his final destination was suppose to be.

Rhatid, Deadkyn, Kynthia, Vessanna - All toons were stripped, left wearing any gear that couldn't be sold, mainly their PvP gear and tabards. Their bank and personal bags were stripped and sold as well. Kynthia attended the mandatory guild meeting last night in her PvP robes and no shoes, it was very sad.

Papagnome (banktoon) - Currently MIA. We assume this toon, as well as another level 1
name holder toon, had been deleted. Eto made a plea to Blizzard last night to get his bank toon back, since he was pretty fond of the name Papagnome.

Other Toons - None of his other toons, on any other server, had been touched. He had a couple of toons left on Bronzebeard. Mainly his level 71 Druid and a bank toon. These two were not touched. As I'm sure they weren't worth the hackers time since they didn't have anything worth much in their possession.

He did spend some time last night speaking with an in-game GM and was assured it had been escalated to a specialist for restoration. Normally, they advised, it takes between 3 - 5 days for a complete restore and all items, including guild bank items taken, can be restored. They will also investigate any missing characters so there is a chance he can have Papagnome back. Hearing this seemed to put him in a slightly better mood. I think with the addition of the authenticators we purchased yesterday, he may continue to play afterall.

Thanks for all the advice and support from here and the WoW_Ladies forum on livejournal. I do appreciate you all!

Oh - And welcome aboard Askver. We were so glad to meet you in game last night. Hope your raid went well and that we'll see you around occasionally!

Circle of Tanks

2009-11-04T13:04:00.000-05:00

So I was tagged for this one....(thanks Askevar!) This should be fun.

Circle of Tanks?
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Kalyara, Frost DK, 15/51/05

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
10 man raids, heroics

What is your favorite tanking spell for your class and why?
Wow, this is a hard question. Honestly, I love all my DK tanking abilities. My all time favorites would have to be Unbreakable Armor, Death and Decay, Obliterate and Bloodboil. Why? Well obviously Death and Decay allows me to get aggro on multiple mobs at one time and in an AoE friendly game, that's important. Unbreakable Armor because with my already high Dodge/Parry percent and that added armor I feel the ultimate power when I watch my health meter NOT move. Obliterate because even as a tank...I can generate some decent damage every now and then. Bloodboil..because it's fun! =)

What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?
Tanking spell...hmmm. Not sure I have a specific tanking spell that I use the least. I love my Army of the Dead but sadly only get to use it and my ghoul (glyphed for of course) in last ditch efforts.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?
We do not need rage or mana!! Enough said. No down time for a DK tank!

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?
This one is a hard question for me. I haven't played any other tanking class personally. I have very little to compare it to. In my opinion, from what I do know of other tank classes, DKs are pretty well balanced in the AoE and single target fields. We do decent damage and generate decent threat from it. We also have respectable Dodge/Perry numbers even if we can't get the Block value. I'd say we have few weaknesses that I have come across.

In a raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
I think this depends on the other tanks in the group. Sadly, DKs make decent OTs because we can AoE tank. I hate this. I hate people assuming we have to be OT because we can AoE tank when the warrior/druid can't. But we do also make great one target tanks. I have ran VoA and other raids with a warrior/druid who held the adds easily while I MT the one target boss. So, we can go either way...as long as people don't "assume" we have to be the OT because we can AoE tank.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?

I am going to pick a DK of course. Since playing my boyfriends Paladin once or twice in a heroic doesn't really count as tanking experience, DK tanking is all I know.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?

If I had to "guess"...I don't like the idea of having to play a warrior or a druid tank. Mainly because the idea of having to get rage before I pull sounds like a pain to me.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
Forgetting my cooldowns. Yeah I'm really bad at that. I rely on Eto (my personal pocket healer) alot when it comes to saving my ass. My second worse habit...the yank ability. It drives people crazy. I'm pretty yank happy.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
Face pulling...dps pulling..."oh I can tank it". I get very angry if we have dps in the group that decide to pull for me. I also get aggravated when other DKs decide to yank something. You know what. I'm tanking, loose your yank button unless you're pulling off the healers/casters. I might also get aggravated with trigger happy DPS. *sigh* I have a lot of tanking pet peeves.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?
Yes. We're not as simple as Paladins but I think we're all pretty equal in the end. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. That's what makes each of us an asset.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
Omen. I leave and breath Omen and grid. I want to know if I'm loosing threat before it happens. I also rely on Eto a lot to let me know if someone has aggro since he stares at grid most of the fight, he knows as soon as some else gets the aggro indicator on their name.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
Death Knights are a "give me" class. They assume all DKs are worthless noobs. That makes me sad. I agree to some degree that getting a freebie level 55 toon gave us a lot of level 80s that have no idea how to raid/instance etc. But some of us really spent the time to learn the class and how to play it well. I hate when people assume everyone in a certain class is the same. Kind of like the "Huntards"...you can't group everyone together...we're not all the same.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
I think DKs have a disadvantage on this front. You start at level 55 and do not have as much time to get use to your spec as other classes. For this reason I think it's very important for a tank DK to start and level with the spec they intent to use at 80. Learn it and live it. It's the only way you can really understand it in 25 short levels.

Effective Health or Avoidance and why?
I like to balance between the two. But in the end I love health!

What tanking class do you feel you understand least?
Druids. I have played DKs, have a boyfriend that played a Paladin through BC and was guild leader for a warrior tank that needed a lot of help. So I've read a lot on warrior tanking. Druids...they just confuse me.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
Defense, defense, defense. After that I try to balance them out. I love Dodge more then parry, not sure why. In the end I tend to lean towards stamina a lot for gems. I figure if I am defensed capped and I have a decent avoidance rate then leave the rest up to my stamina. Give the healers a little extra room when I do get hit to heal me back up.

Hacked!

2009-11-04T08:26:00.001-05:00

Looks like Eto's account got hacked last night.

He got the notification this morning that his password has been changed while he was asleep. Attempted to log onto WoW and it gave him the invalid password message. After some checking on the Armory and from my toons. All of his toons are naked, with the exception of Etolani, on the Armory and both the Last Call guild bank and the Faded Delusions guild bank have been wiped clean.

We pay Blizzard some ungodly amount of money and they can't have 24 hour support? Seriously! He has to wait until 8AM PST to get phone support. With all the money they make you'd think there would be emergency support for stuff like this!!

Grrrrr!

So question becomes, does anyone know if he will get his personal bank contents back when Blizzard fixes it? Or does he only get his toons restored?

RAID For The Cure - Cross Post

2009-11-03T20:05:00.000-05:00

This is a post from The Big Bear Butt's blog http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/11/02/announcement-world-of-warcraft-raid-for-the-cure/ and I hope it is appropriate here. A very worthy cause and I hope many of the Ladies of WoW will participate and donate. I didn't know how to imbed links here so the web address above has all the active links to the address mentioned in this post.

On October 28th of 2009, Julie, a member of the World of Warcraft guild Sidhe Devils on Kael’thas (US), revealed to us that she had been diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Her first treatment is scheduled to begin on November 9th.

To show our support and love for Julie while she takes on this new challenge, her friends in Sidhe Devils are organizing an event within the game of World of Warcraft that we’re calling the Raid for the Cure.

What it is

On Kael’thas (US), a united cross-faction walk across Azeroth will be held on Saturday, November 14th, starting at 2:00 PM Central Time (Kael’thas-US server time).

Members of both Alliance and Horde factions are invited to attend. Pink Mageweave Shirts will be handed out for all walkers, and all levels of characters will be welcome. If you’d like, bring your own shirt, or even make it a formal affair with your Festive Pink Dress!

The walk across Azeroth will not be a race of individuals, it will be a group march to show Julie our love and support.

We do want to help spread the word, and encourage donations in a cheerful way to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity, an organization that promotes information and awareness on early detection and treatment of breast cancer, and that supports funding for treatment and research towards a cure.

The Raffle

To that end, we will be holding a raffle. There will be various prizes sponsored by myself and others within the WoW blog community.

The grand prize (if prize it is) will be a guest appearance on the podcast Sidhe Devils Gone Wild, and influence on our talking points for that show.

Entry to the raffle is quite simple. Go to the World of Warcraft Raid for the Cure donation website, a website created by us but administered and maintained by Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and make an online donation, using a valid email address. Once you have received your emailed receipt of donation, just email us a copy of your receipt to tigerlordgm AT yahoo DOT com with the words Raid for the Cure Raffle Entry in the title. That’s it. One entry per person, no minimum donation necessary.

The Raid for the Cure Event Details

The event itself will take place on Saturday, November 14th on the Kael’thas (US) server. The first start time will be at 2:00 PM Central time.

We intend to have two initial teams, one for the Alliance and one for the Horde.

We also intend to support different start times for players that would like to participate, but might not get online or prepared on time.

Julie has told us that her favorite starting zone in World of Warcraft is Darnassus.

To honor her fun in the game, the first Alliance team will form up near Conservator Ilthalaine in Shadowglen, the Night Elf starting area. There will be designated event coordinators there to hand out the Pink Mageweave Shirts.

This team will leave Shadowglen at approximately 2:00 PM Central Time (Kael’thas-US server time).

The Alliance team will travel as a group to Darnassus, and then down to the dock to take voyage upon a mighty ship to the port city of Auberdine in Darkshore. The team will arrive at Auberdine at approximately 2:15 PM. There will be a break to hand out more Pink Mageweave Shirts for those joining the run at this time, and then the team will head off to Astranaar in Ashenvale.

The Alliance team will arrive at Astranaar in Ashenvale near Dalyshia, the Flight Master of Astranaar at approximately 2:30 PM. There will be another short break to hand out Pink Mageweave Shirts if needed.

Meanwhile, the Horde team will have formed up next to Grull Hawkwind in Camp Narache, the Tauren starting area in Mulgore. There will be Horde side event coordinators prepared to hand out more of the inimitable Pink Mageweave Shirts.

At 2:30 PM, both Horde and Alliance teams will depart their respective locations, Astranaar and Camp Narache, and head on foot for the Crossroads in the Barrens.

Both teams should arrive at the Crossroads nearly simultaneously at 2:45 PM server time.

At this point, the last handing out of Pink Mageweave Shirts will be performed, everyone will gather together, hopefully as one great Raid representing both factions, and between 2:45 and 3:00 PM depart Crossroads, headed for the city of Ratchet, and her infamous dock.

The cross-faction group will take ship from Ratchet for Booty Bay, and there descend as one upon that pestilential city of pirates for the wrap up, followed by a wild dance party. Bring your Pink Elekks and pony kegs!

Immediately after the completion of the march, the raffle drawing will be performed offline, and results posted on the blog for all to see.

Thank you all very much for your time in reading this post. I sincerely hope I will see you there in two weeks!

Take care everyone, and please, please keep Julie in your thoughts and prayers.

And just one more thing. If you have not as of yet done so, I respectfully request that all of the wonderful ladies amongst my readership think about visiting a doctor as soon as you can to be tested for Breast Cancer. Never forget, the earlier Breast Cancer is detected, the better!

: valynda_velen wrote in wow_ladies

Progerssion? and Alt News

2009-11-03T08:32:00.000-05:00

Friday night proved to be pretty interesting and a very LATE night. I'm not sure if I would consider it progression or not but the night started off pretty well. Did the daily heroic, another (successful timed) run on CoS and picked up a baby lockling along the way.

He seems pretty new to the game but hit my heart when he proudly brought his Felguard into the instance. nother 80 Demonology lock. It's a rarity for sure. His gear wasn't too bad. Mostly PvP gear. Our daily heroic run was his first heroic since hitting 80. He needed a little guidance and help understanding hit cap for a caster but otherwise a pretty nice guy.

We ended up bringing him along for a pug Naxx run. I have a soft spot in my heart for any demonology locks. What can I say. We created a global chat channel to explain the fights to him, since he had never been in a raid before either. Sadly we only made it through 2 wings.

I was MT and there was a lowbie Paladin running as OT. Wiped on the first boss in the Spider wing when I died early on. I'm not sure the healer was paying much attention to me. The raid was taking a lot of damage from the crypt keepers before the Paladin would pick them up. So that had the healers pretty occupied. We didn't have as much trouble the second go around and the rest of the wing went pretty well.

Plague quarter on the other hand, cause us another wipe on the gargoyle. My mistake since I ran to the next group while I still had the debuff on me. Mental note, regardless of how fast the raid leader is pushing you....watch yourself for debuffs before pulling the next group.

There were several problems with the Plague quarter. First one came with the gargoyle. The second problem came with a 26 minute Heigan fight. Yes, TWENTY-SIX minutes. First round of dancing caused us to loose everyone in the raid, except for me, Eto and another healer. So needless to say, I was nodding off by the time he finally went down. Sheesh...what a long fight. I know dancing is hard but wow, I didn't think we'd loose the entire DPS line up.

Last issue, our OT went AFK during the 26 minute Heigan fight and didn't come back. So I tanked the last boss in the quarter with no OT. Normally, this isn't a fight that requires an OT. However, when no one is killing the spores before they get to me and they are getting caught in the AoE, it causes the Tank to drop down the aggro meter. Luckily, we survived this fight and called it a night.

Not sure any of that was progression, since I've done those two wings before, but it was some raid experience. The guy leading the raid was an ass, surprise, surprise. I was so tired of hearing "go, go", "lets move", "pull!" that I could have screamed! I know you want to get through as much as you can but give me a break, I need to wait for debuffs to drop and for the healers to get mana before I pull the next group!

My post to the Shadow Council forums did produce us one interested lead on forming a weekly raid group. We'll see Friday night at the "test" Ony run how that's going to work out. We've been looking for a weekly non-guilded raid group. I know Alliance side has a group called "Positive Push" that meets up on a weekly basis for progression raid runs. This group has members from various guilds and is dedicated to teaching new raiders and getting them ready for their guilds progression level. I haven't found anything Horde side that offers this type of environment. We'll see what we think on Friday.

On the Alt front....
I was out sick yesterday (some kind of nasty stomach bug) and since any excessive movement was made it worse and I couldn't really sleep any longer, it turned into a WoW day.

My, now level 72 Shaman, dropped her Jewelcrafting and power leveled Tailoring from 1 - 400 yesterday. I did most of the cloth farming on my DK. Eto had a crap-ton of rune cloth from his rep grinding in Sithilis and I bought a lot of mageweave from the AH. Sadly, her Jewelcrafting was at 435 when I dropped it but I couldn't find any reason to have 2 JC'ers of the same faction on the same server.

Hitting the wall....again

2009-10-30T08:50:00.000-04:00

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!

2009-10-27T16:21:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-27T10:58:00.000-04:00

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!!

2009-10-27T09:02:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-26T09:32:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-23T08:59:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-22T13:31:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-22T11:01:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-21T13:48:00.001-04:00

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

2009-10-21T08:38:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-20T09:07:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-19T12:25:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-19T08:24:00.000-04:00

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?!?

2009-10-16T11:07:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-15T18:00:00.001-04:00

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!

2009-10-15T09:22:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-14T18:59:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-14T08:33:00.000-04:00

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.