Day 16 – Things you miss (post Cataclysm)

I miss a lot of things from the pre-Cataclysm world.  I know the new zone revamps are better and awesome and all but sometime I miss the hard, you have to KNOW where things are, way.  When I knew where things where (without addons), it amazed my friends.  I had the WoW atlas from Vanilla that was hard bound and very shiny. I miss that world.

I miss Dalaran and Shattrath.  They were nice hubs of both factions.  You could find anything there.  I miss the portals to the other cities.  Now I just stand in the Valley of Wisdom.  I miss standing in my 'cave' aka the Horde side bank.

I know it's stupid but I don't like change.  I get excited for new content but I like to go back and visit the old content as well.  And now that we're almost 9 months in, I'm sad for the old content.  I loved it, as frustrating as it was.

I also miss my friends who have left with the Shattering.  Tuskcuddler the death knight, Renquist the warlock, Gorakape the hunter. Melaria the rogue.  These are my real life friends who have left the game.  There are more that have left and that I miss.  Change is very lonely sometimes.

Day 15 – Your desktop background (on your computer) and why you chose it

I have a couple computers that I use and each of them has a different background.

My laptop has a WoW background from Burning Crusade.  It's of a spirit healer that is in the sky.  I love it.  It is so pretty and it makes me happy.  Also, I spend a lot of time with them.

My work computer has a standard background that is of yellow tulips.  I change that with the season.  I'm about to put a beach background on it.

My home computer has a WoW background of a tree ancient.  It feels very druidish to me.  So I claimed it.  I used to have a dancing women one.  That one was just pretty.

My desktop backgrounds are the way they are because I find them pleasing to the eye.  My computer at home has two monitors so I can see my background at home all the time.  It has to appeal to me to be there!

Day 14 – This upsets you

Oh man.  Many MANY things upset me.  I'm expecting to get upset while posting this.  So be warned.

DPS/HEALING METERS - Oh dear God.  I hate it when people constantly spam these.  I have my own, I can see what you're doing.  I don't need you to freaking post it after every kill.  Oh, you're posting for your buddy?  TEACH THEM TO INSTALL THE DAMN MOD!  ARGH!

PEOPLE WHO SIGN UP BUT THEN DON'T SHOW UP TO RAID - Jeezus guys.  If you don't show up, you're wasting 9 or 24 other people's time.  In my guild, if someone doesn't show up, we often don't get to raid. The leadership is burned out on dragging people to raid therefore we're reluctant to PUG things.  It feels like we're dragging them kicking and screaming somewhere they don't want to go.  I understand things come up.  But let someone know.  We have multiple ways to get a hold of us.  Just use them!

PEOPLE WHO AFK WHEN DEAD OR WHEN WE WIPE - Come on.  We're normally running with a druid and a death knight.  If you die, expect to get a battle rez.  Don't die and then go to the bathroom because that will be the moment I blow my cooldown to get you up.

TRADE CHAT - The level of stupidity in Trade makes me weep.  I keep it on for a few minutes when I make a new character but I usually have to turn it off about 2-3 minutes later.  I am amazed that people actually stay in it (AKA my husband and my guildleader).

EXPLOITERS - If you can't do it the right way, don't do it.  Don't use exploits to 'make things easier'.  Stupid.  STUPID.  I don't want a ban for doing something that is an exploit.  Screw you.  Find another group.

Healing for a Priest

So, a couple months ago, we got a holy priest in the guild.  He was around for a bit but then suddenly disappeared.  Well, he came back a couple days ago and signed up for raid.  We went in and took a couple swings at Nef, got him to 10-15% a couple of times and then called it for the day.  We logged our attempts and as usual, people reviewed them and we moved forward.  Our poor newish holy priest hadn't done any Cata raiding, beyond Baradon Hold, so we looked at him and analyzed his healing a bit.

So the next day, I log in and start doing my favorite thing ever.  "Pimp the new healer."  He is in mostly 346's, almost straight across, he's got a couple purples and he's saving up justice points to get his tier 11 chest.  So yay there!  I got him some enchants and gems, talked to him about his spec and glyphs and then left him alone for a while.  Later that day, instead of raiding, we did some heroics and I got to see how he heals.  I gave him some pointers (my favorite alt is a holy priest) and he seemed to be doing better by the end of the night.

I'm not some awesome healer that knows everything, but I've been a healer long enough to know how to generally heal on most healers (except paladins).  My new priest buddy was willing to take advice and was very awesome about everything.  That made me really happy.  Yay.

Day 13 – People (players/bloggers) that you admire

I need to think about the difference between liking and admiring for this post.  I like a lot of people but to admire someone is harder.  I suppose at this point I will have to start naming names.

Players that I admire are my guildleader (Alyred), who has played a mage since he started but recently switched to his warrior (Alama) so we could have a 2nd tank.  I admire my best friend who stubbornly sticks to her resto shaman (Shonokoko) despite having one of every healing class at level 85.  I admire my shadow/disc priest guildie (Bachue with a funny e) for her awesomeness.  I admire my rogue buddy (Invisigirl) for her good attitude, even though she doesn't raid.  

Bloggers I admire are Phaedra from Resto4Life, who has retired from WoW, Lissanna from Restokin, Vixsin from Life in Group 5, and Big Bear Butt (which is just an awesome name).  I've read a lot of blogs but I've not been able to find a replacement for Phaedra's blog, which I just loved.

Day 12 – A usual day in your life/online time

Since I work full time, my usual day is mostly taken up with work.  So let's go through it here:

7:00 am - Alarm goes off.  I snooze it as husband has just gotten out of the shower and I need to let the water regen before I take my own.

7:10 am - Radio alarm goes off, I drift in and out of sleep while I listen to NPR and get my morning news.

7:30 am - Husband comes in and gives me a kiss and snuggle before he leaves for work.

7:30 am to 7:40 am - Get myself out of bed and into the shower.

7:50 am - Get out of the shower, get dressed (despite cat laying on my clothes)

8:00 am - Make breakfast, check Facebook and do my fishing and cooking dailies on Karegina

8:20 am - Leave for work

8:30 am - Arrive at work, greet office cat, clean out litter box, feed office cat, snuggle office cat carefully without exposing myself to his razor sharp claws too much.

8:50 am - Actually start to work.

Noon - Eat lunch, check Facebook, check blog stats, sigh, check Livejournal, check Restokin, randomly click on links she has linked to.

12:30 pm - go back to work.

4 pm - Get off work.

4:10 pm - Get home, snuggle cat, jump on exercise bike, bike for 15 minutes.

4:30 pm - Leave to go pick up my best friend from work.

5 pm - Pick up friend, drive her home while talking about our days and WoW.  (She is my resto shaman healing buddy!)

5:40 pm - Get home, make dinner with husband.

6:30 pm - Log into WoW, do my Hyjal dailies with the husband.

7pm - Either raid, play an alt, do a random dungeon, try to not die in TB or idle while writing blog posts.  It really depends.  We raid on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.  Nothing I do is really set though.

10:30 pm - Go to bed

I have an extremely boring life ;)  It used to be more exciting, but honestly, I'll take my boring life :)

Despite not having time, I guess I still play a lot!

Our missing mage checked in yesterday!  He's doing well.  Just busy with the new baby and his wife and girls.  I'm so happy that he thinks enough of us to check in.

Other then that, I have not been spending a lot of time in WoW.  It's summer so we have weddings, BBQ's, hikes and other things to do.  However, we got into the random dungeon finder yesterday as a group of 4 and ran probably 4-5 regular heroics to get our valor points.  We're now 1 troll heroic away from our weekly cap and sounds like we'll do that tonight when J gets home from tennis.

I suppose I should talk about 'the group'.  It's our guildleader (who happens to be one of my best friends), his wife (who is my resto shaman healing buddy), my husband and myself.  We always ask if anyone wants to come with us, but everyone else had busy things to do, so it was just us.  We picked up a jerk of a mage for our 1st random.  We got almost to the end of Grim Batol, he started being an asshole (yelling at the dps who is putting out more dps then you, while we carry your ass through a heroic is not acceptable) so we kicked him and got a awesome mage who we tried to run some more heroics with.  But her computer crashes after the 1st boss of Lost City of Tol'vir so she left and we got a warlock who was nice and sweet that we ended up running with him for 3-4 more heroics.  He got some nice upgrades, yay!  And we got all the regular heroics we could so our guildleader could get some easy chaos orbs so he can make weapons.

Which is what I want him to do for me.  So I'm all for running heroics with him until he gets the needed chaos orbs.  And of course, I need to get my truegold together.  Luckily, my mage is a transmute specced alchemist!

I also spent my evening, after the heroics, getting my kitty gear enchanted.  I need to get my shaman buddy to make me the BOE epic belt.  Or I could just wait until I'm honored with Avengers of Hyjal.  I don't know what I want yet.  I'll probably wait.  Once I'm all good, I'll switch back to kitty and practice a bit there.

Still doing my Hyjal dailies every day!  We just unlocked the blacksmith.  So now we just have the ancients left!  Quite fun I guess.  As soon as my druid finishes it, I'll start doing the dailies on my priest.  I can't do them at the same time.  I'm too ugh about dailies.  Stupid dailies!

Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws

Bad habits and flaws huh?  I have a lot of them both in and out of game.

In game, I don't listen to my husband aka raid leader like I should.  I'm lazy and I don't always give my 100% into raiding, dungeons, or whatever.  I think I like to level because that doesn't take a lot of brain power.  I'm impatient and don't like to farm reps/marks/whatever because it is just so boring.

Out of game, I bite my nails, I interrupt people while they're talking, I flop on chairs (instead of just sitting), I ask my husband what my bad habits are, I'm easily defeated, I take things too personally ... I could probably go on forever.

However, despite my flaws and bad habits, I think I'm an asset to our raiding team and a helpful person.  If you can get past them!

Day 10 – Blog/Website favorites

My favorites list on my computer at home is huge.  I follow a lot of different blogs and websites.  Some WoW, some about cooking, some webcomics, and of course Facebook.

WoW Blogs/Webpages:

http://www.restokin.com/  - I check this site pretty much every day, even when I know there isn't a new post.  It's just part of my routine.
http://r4healingtouch.wordpress.com/ - Generally, I head here next.
http://treebarkjacket.com/ - Do you see a pattern yet?
http://www.cannotbetamed.com/
http://fallingleavesandwings.wordpress.com/
http://thestoriesofo.net/
http://lifeingroup5.com/
http://hellotauren.blogspot.com/

Cooking Blogs:

http://smittenkitchen.com/
http://playingwithmydinner.com/
http://greenlitebites.com/
http://steamykitchen.com/
http://www.skinnytaste.com/

Webcomics:  These are not for kids!!

http://www.punchanpie.net/
http://www.somethingpositive.net/
http://www.twolumps.net/
http://www.reallifecomics.com/
http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/
http://www.leasticoulddo.com/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/

Humor Blogs:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/
http://thebloggess.com/
http://www.motherhoodinnyc.com/
http://www.mamabirddiaries.com
http://ohrachael.wordpress.com/

Plus a whole lot more.  These are just my favorites.  I'm a fan of the humor mommy blogs.  They crack me up.  I wish I could be as witty as them!

Day 09 – Your first blog post

As I've said before, my original blog post has been lost to the Nether.  It was a rambling rant about healing meters and how not to endear yourself to existing healers by linking them and saying "And this is why you need X class."  I deleted it when I repurposed my blog.  (I will revisit the topic someday, but not yet.)  My NEW first blog post was back in February.

http://reluctantraider.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html

I wrote about a defining moment in my WoW career.  A moment that has made me doubt myself repeatedly over the years.  All because a hunter thought I was doing it wrong.  Maybe I am.  I don't know.  I've never really healed with another druid steadily.  My healing team for 10 mans has always been a resto shaman (my best friend) and either a holy pally or a priest (either holy or disc).  For 25's in Wrath and BC it was 1-2 resto shaman, 1 disc priest, 1 holy pally and me.  The resto druids we had were mostly boomkin that had an offspec we could use.

Stagnation

My raiding team is stagnating.  I'm feeling constrained by this yet I'm not sure what to do.  Last night, we had 8 people show up for raid.  Two of our members didn't sign up (everyone who did sign up, showed up!), one of them was the aforementioned mage who just had a baby boy.  The other one is our last remaining death knight.  (We had about 5-7 of them that raided back in the day but now they've all left and it's just this one.)  He's great and all I'm just concerned about him.

So, real life is kicking us in the teeth.  Yay real life.  Tonight is shaping up to be a carbon copy of last night.  Which sucks.  People are getting frustrated at our lack of raiding.  Everyone has been very gracious so far, but still.  It's very defeating every week.

However, last week I managed to cap my valor points.  This week, it looks like we might cap them again.  We did some heroics yesterday instead of raiding, and then after I went to take a break, we pugged enough to do Baradon Hold.  So that's a nice little chunk.  I'm not going to kill myself to cap each week but since I want to get some mail intellect heirlooms, I'm not too concerned about running heroics.

In the Hyjal dailies department, Husband and I unlocked the moonwell first so that I could get all my healing stuff, new relic and new offhand. Pretty pleased with that, plus I got some cool stuff for my kitty set.  That's coming along nicely!  I'm not sure what we'll unlock next, I think I'll leave that up to him.  So he can get something nice this time.

I'm just feeling very blah right now.  I need to kick myself in the butt.  Suggestions for doing so?

Day 08 – 10 things we don’t know about you

1.  I wanted to be a math teacher when I was in college but I wanted to be a music teacher when I was in high school.  However, I ended up settling for the job I have now so I could start a family with my husband.

2.  I used to be a very negative person, never seeing the good in things but recently I've been feeling more positive about things.

3.  I love to play real time strategies as a team with other people.  Some of my favorite memories of video games pre-WoW was playing Empire Earth with my husband and our best friend.  I'd do base defense, they'd make tons of offensive units.  I was awesome at base defense.  They called me Wall Girl.

4.  I hate TV but I love to watch TV sitcoms on DVD.  My favorites are Community, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, and Scrubs.  In non-sitcom shows, I like Doctor Who, and Lost. 

5.  My favorite tabletop RPG is Shadowrun.  I usually play a technomancer, which is like a magic hacker for lack of a better term.  They're basically walking, talking computers that don't need any hardware.  I love it.  But I don't like to play a 'typical' Shadowrun hacker.  I like the awesomeness that is a technomancer.

6.  I was in marching band, jazz band and wind ensemble in high school.  I played the baritone first, then switched to flute.  My sophomore year I switched to french horn and I never looked back.  My junior year, I picked up the trumpet for jazz band.  I recently tried to learn viola and failed miserably.  Stringed instruments make no sense.  (Neither do reed instruments actually.) 

7. I have always had a cat in my life.  During my mom's divorce, my husband (then boyfriend) and I got a little boy cat named Pizza.  As we were moving out on our own, we got a little girl cat named Dante.  When Pizza died, we got another girl cat named Windsday (or Wednesday if you're my husband, and if so, you are wrong, it's Windsday).  When Windsday died, we got a little boy cat named Jayne Sawyer Cobb.  Jayne couldn't play nice after a few years so he went to live with my mom and her shop cats.  He's happy there however, he's got a bunch of other kitties to play with.  So right now, we only have Dante, our aging baby girl.

8. I have two WoW accounts.  And I only have two free character slots on them on my main server.  I have at least 1 of every class Horde side, and a priest and warrior on the Alliance side.  I love to make new characters, if only to see the starting zones again!

9.  Over the last year or so, maybe less, I've really discovered that I love to cook.  I have a bunch of cooking blogs bookmarked and I check them often.  Some of my new staples are from blogs that I've read.  Also, I'm apparently a very good cook.  I haven't poisoned anyone yet!  Which is good because unlike my druid, I don't have a poison clearing spell.

10.  I love to read.  In my three bedroom house, one room is solely set aside to hold my books, and even then, my books spill over into the other rooms as well.  I have bookshelves in every room except the kitchen and if the kitchen were bigger, it would have them as well.  (As it is, I have to keep over half my cookbooks in the computer room.)  I prefer to read fantasy/sci fi but will admit to reading trashy romance as well.  I'm lucky because I married someone who reads as well.  He just doesn't read as fast as I do, so he doesn't read as much as I do.

Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name

The Reluctant Raider was originally supposed to be a place I used to kvetch about how hard it is to lead raids, run a guild and generally try to herd kittens.  In the middle of my guild raiding ICC, I was completely burned out.  I didn't want to raid anymore, I just wanted to level my alts, talk to my friends and hang out.  We were doing 25 man raids and just barely getting people to show up.  It hit a breaking point one night and my husband, in a fit of pique, broke his hand.  I had taken a break from raiding for a couple of weeks and that combined with a lot of other things made him snap and he punched a wall.

We went to Urgent Care that night instead of raiding, he was a lot calmer and I was livid.  I was mad at my guild for "giving" us this stress, I was mad at my husband for being childish and throwing a temper tantrum and I was mad at myself because I proceeded to log onto my main and curse them out for making my husband lose his temper.  It was probably my lowest moment. 

I came home that day and decided that by my not raiding, I helped contribute to my husband's stress level.  So I talked to my friends and created this blog.  I only managed to put 1 post up before I abandoned it.  I didn't want people to know that I was talking about them, and I didn't want to bad mouth my guild since I am one of the guild officers.  That original post was deleted a long time ago.  The stress of knowing it was out there was almost as bad as the stress of only have 19 people show up to do progression 25 man raiding.  (19 players was always the worst.  Not enough to do 25's, not enough to do 2 10's but WAY too many to do 1 10 man without hurting someone's feelings.)

We stopped raiding 25's about midway through ICC.  We just couldn't get a steady roster of people.  We went to 2 10 mans and progressed through ICC that way.  Eventually, we got down to one 10 man, which we then proceeded to do hard modes with.  At this point, we had enough healers that I was able to sit out and relieve some of my burnout.  However, we ended up losing more people so I ended up healing again.  We did the heroic bosses, we did the achievements but before we could get heroic Sindragosa down, we stopped putting up raids completely.  A few of us went to a PUG group and managed to complete the last two achievements to get our ICC drakes on September 25th, 2010. 

After we got our drakes, we stopped raiding completely until Cata.  It just wasn't worth it.  The stress, the heartache.  I was reluctant to raid in the first place.  The only reason I did was to make my best friends happy back in BC, I continued with it in Wrath because they needed me (and I loved to be needed).  In Cata, again, I decided I would raid, for my friends, reluctantly.

However, since Cata came out, we have gone through major roster changes.  Over half our core group has left the guild or quit the game.  Leaving just myself, my husband, our best friends and 1 other person from when we originally started our guild.  We took a break due to roster changes and to be honest, some drama.  Since then however, I have gotten some medical problems fixed.  I've been diagnosed with sleep apnea, so the doctors gave me a CPAP machine to help me breath while I sleep at night.  My other doctors have fiddled with my medication causing my anxiety disorder to practically go away completely.  To be honest, I feel like a completely different person.

My blog name doesn't really fit who I am anymore.  But I don't want to change it to something else.  It means too much to me, it reminds me that I'm at where I am now by choice.  Not because someone wants me there.

Twice a week baby

So, my guild is back up to raiding twice a week.  Apparently my husband reads my blog.  (Husband, I would like thai food for dinner tonight and a new kitten, please to be making this happen.)  I was so happy when I saw that.  We were down a person for last week so we did 2 days of Firelands trash runs.  So now 9 members of our guild are friendly with Avengers of Hyjal and we all have shiny new cloaks.

In non raiding news, I'm about ready to attack my own factions NPCs.  The zeppelin announcers in Orgrimmar annoy the everloving crap out of me.  I should have a report spam button for them.  Or at least the ability to ignore them.  I don't care that they have arrived.  Stop shouting at me!!

I'm also thinking about going back to Outlands and grinding some BC reps.  I'm halfway through Revered with Keepers of Time, and then I have Netherwing at Neutral, Ogri'la at halfway through Honored, and Skyguard at almost Revered.  I'm just lazy and hate grinding reps.  However, I want the over 9000 achievement points achievement.  Oh the grinds I'll need to do.  (Note, there is only room in my house for 1 insane achievement whore, and that's my husband.) 

Also, you might have noticed that I'm updating every day.  I figured I would while I'm doing the 20 days of WoW challenge, otherwise I'll be doing it for 10 weeks.  And I still want to make normal posts.  So I'm going to post non-20 days of WoW posts on Mondays and Thursdays, which will hopefully be my regular update days.  We'll see how good that goes :)

Day 06 – Your workplace/desk

This is my desk.  Usually it is much MUCH messier.  You can see my wide array of WoW stuff on various parts, my two plush murlocs (my best friends gave me one when they first came out and I got another one last year from another friend), my WoW game card, my collector's editions for all the expansions, my art books for ALL the games (one of my other friends got the Vanilla collector's edition and gave me the soundtrack and the art book), and my WoW card game boxes (I've never actually played the card game).  You can also see my headset, my authenticator (in a little cell phone holder that's shaped like a basketball, I love free stuff from old, now closed down, lenders), an old hard drive from work that doesn't work, a mess of other stuff, some frog figurines, my cork board that I post loot lists on (right now it has lists of the gear I should be getting on my priest) and a pile of papers that I need to file in my filing cabinet when WoW is down, IE some Tuesday morning that I'm not at work.

To my left is my husband's desk.  It looks exactly like mine, as we bought two of them and used them to create Wall of Desk in our computer room.  His is usually cleaner then mine but right now, it's covered in random crap.  Mostly old vhs tapes and things we need to clean up.  You can't see it but on the top of my desk is his blow up 'Bubble Hearthing Pally' ball.  When I got my murloc, our friends bought him a bubble hearthing pally.

Day 05 – Favourite item(s) in game

This question took me a while.  I had to think about it and really look through my bags and bank space.  But then I realized that my favorite item in the game is probably actually two items.

My moonkin hatchling and my Teldrassil spoutling.  Or as I call them, my mini-me's.

I'm not a big collector person but as soon as the Argent Tournament pets came out, I begged my husband to trade for a mini-tree druid.  He managed to get his hands on one for me and I raided through ICC with it.  I was really kinda weird about it.  It was always out, I loved the way it would snore as I was running around casting like crazy.

My moonkin hatchling was a Christmas present from my husband.  I had been dropping hints about it but I never checked my email to see if there was a code in there for me.  So all Christmas day, I'm whining about how much I want the pet and lo in my email it sat.  He eventually asked me pointedly "Did you check your email today?" and I ran off to do that.  My moonkin is out almost all the time now.  I prefer it over my mini-tree druid as until recently I didn't have the glyph of the treant.  Plus, it flys along side me, which is just about the most adorable thing ever.

Day 04 – Your best WoW memory

My favorite WoW memory wasn't something that happened in game but it was related to the game.

One day, I was walking through the house, thinking of nothing in particular, when my husband walked up to me and said "We don't do enough together.  What would you think if I started playing World of Warcraft with you?"

My husband has said that my entire face lit up and he knew at that moment he had made the right decision.  All I know is that my entire body flushed with joy and I threw myself at him, giving him a kiss and telling him that we can get him installed with my discs and then get him a trial account.  He said no and that we should just go buy the game, both Vanilla and BC (as BC was out by then) and off we went.

He rolled up a little gnome warrior named Gnoclaus, I paired his little warrior with my spacegoat priest and we went off.  We leveled up until about level 52 before we switched to Horde.  Where he made a tauren shaman.  By then, our best friends were playing too, so we leveled as a group of five.  Two tauren shaman, a blood elf mage, a tauren warrior and a tauren druid.  We went from 0-70 as that group and it was epic.  Three dps, a healer and a tank.  AWESOME!

Gearing and my bad luck

Since Ulduar, I have had bad luck with a specific gear slot.  My bracers.  My best friend didn't get the leather caster bracer pattern while we were running ToC, in fact, I want to say that it never dropped for us until we were doing ToC for fun.  However, one of our tailors did get the spirit cloth bracers pattern.  As a result, I wrangled up the mats and had the cloth bracers made for me.

I felt weird wearing cloth as I was a "only wear leather" kind of girl but hell, we hadn't downed Vezax in 10 man Ulduar before we moved to ToC, nor did we get past Hodir in 25 man Ulduar.  Not to mention that no one in ToC decided to drop their bracers for me.  As we moved into ICC, I was determined to get better bracers.  I plotted, I planned, I sacrificed undead rogues to the loot gods.  All in vain.  Festergut never dropped his bracers on 10 man and Valithria Dreamwalker, that stupid dragon, never left them in her cache for me in 25 man.  In fact, the bracers only dropped 1 time in 10 man and that was when we were doing heroics.  And I wasn't in the raid.  I was very unhappy with raiding at that point in time.  I was tired all the time and generally not feeling well.  The doctors hadn't figured out my medication yet and I had not been diagnosed with sleep apnea.  So, I begged off on running heroics.  I had them take our new resto shaman and our new disc priest instead of me.  And lo, my bracers dropped on heroic.  I whined a bit, but whatever, I was burned out and tired and sick so I didn't really care.

When The Ruby Sanctum opened, we had stopped doing 25 mans, so I never had a chance to try for bracers out of there.  In fact, I didn't do Ruby Sanctum until after Cata was out and I was 85.

So, my bracers in Cataclysm.  It's a well documented fact that there are 2 pairs of bracers for ilevel 333, 1 pair of bracers for ilevel 346 and 1 pair for ilevel 359.  At least in PVE gear.  (I don't count PVP since I'm not a PVPer.  See my earlier post on that.)  I had green bracers until my husband was in a random that had the Bracers of Caustic Purification drop.  He managed to win them for me and I got to upgrade my ilevel 318 or whatever greens.  I did some research and discovered that there are no spirit bracers from regular heroics.  I would have to farm Corla in Blackrock Caverns in order to get them.

However, I hate to farm and didn't think I could get anyone to go with me to farm Corla every day, so I stayed with my crappy 333 bracers.  I whined to my friends and my husband about how there are no spirit bracers and looked forward to the day we would be raiding and I could get pretty purples.

Unfortunately, we only downed Chimaeron two or three times before we stopped raiding and that horrible thing never dropped my bracers.  I stopped referring to him as his name and started calling him "My Bracers".  Hoping that this would help him realize that he needed to drop my bracers.  I sacrificed everything from blood elf pallies, to tauren warriors, to goblin shaman and the loot gods still did not smile upon me.

Because I hadn't found my desire for raiding when we stopped, my guild started raiding on nights that I wasn't home, in order to free me from feeling like I had to accompany them.  So, I came home one night and looked over my husband's shoulder.  I saw they were just getting ready to pull Chimaeron and I said "Kick the healer that is taking my spot and send me an invite, I want my bracers.  You know they'll drop if I'm not there."  My husband laughed and said he couldn't do that.  So I watched from over his shoulder.  It took them a few tries, but then eventually downed him and I logged off.  I didn't want to see if they dropped.  I left the room.

My husband muttered something and I called from the other room "Did they drop?"  And I got a "Yeah.  They did" in return.  My heart sank into my stomach.  It was ICC all over again.  They will never drop again while we are in BWD, I just know it.

Luckily, Blizzard put out those lovely troll dungeons at 4.1.  And one of the drops off bear boss in ZA are caster bracers!!  But once again, I don't like to push myself forward so again, the few times I've run ZA that sucker hasn't dropped his bracers for me.  But what was this?  BOE caster bracers that I can buy with valor points?  YES PLEASE!  Now I just need to actually do random heroics to get valor points.

Those bracers will be mine.  They WILL be.

Zandalari Heroics and Valor Points

I was dinking around the internet yesterday and I came across a blog post about capping your valor points each week.  It got me to thinking that since my guild isn't doing Firelands yet, maybe I should start doing those silly heroics.  I had plans when 4.2 dropped to do a bunch of heroics on the weekends (since they changed it from 1 a day to a weekly cap) but that never actually happened.

See, this last weekend, I tried to do a ZG with my guild.  But Jin'do kept bugging out.  The jumping troll spirit warriors were disappearing, sometimes in mid-jump, and we were getting over whelmed and dying.  We were in there for so long we got respawns.  Everything up to Jin'do was flawless.  but Jin'do.  Earthmother save me but I almost cried.

We went through 3 dps in that hour and a half.  We started with a guild death knight.  He had to go due to RL so we entered PUG land.  We got a hunter from our server (he was a complete tool we found out) and he wouldn't dps the chains at all.  He left after a few wipes and we got a offserver warlock.  The warlock stuck with us, but I gave up and said I'm done after a few more wipes and respawns.

It was so demoralizing.  I felt stupid and crappy and like I wasted everyone's time.  I hate that feeling.  That was Sunday.  Last night, my husband asked me what I wanted to do, so I said "I'd like to do a heroic. But only if we can guarantee that we won't get ZG."  So I asked in guild, grabbed my two best friends and our resident shadow/disc priest (whom I adore), queue up and BAM!  ZG.  *facepalm*

I'm healing, so we start off.  The run goes pretty smoothly and we get to Jin'do.  I'm nervous, husband pulls the boss and we're off.  Luckily, it seems like Jin'do is going to be nice today.  We manage to one shot him.  My first time doing that ever.  So I got my 140 valor points (or whatever it is).  It's still early, so Husband asks "You guys wanna do another, we'll get ZA this time!!"  Everyone says yes so off we go.

ZA goes well, we wipe a few times because we're in a hurry, and of course the WoW Gods like to make things hard.  But we finish that up too.  (My bracers did not drop. Again.)

But valor points.  The only way I have to get them right now is random heroics.  I probably won't get capped each week but that's okay.  We're going to hit up Nef tonight if we have 10 people, if not, we'll be starting a new BWD or maybe going back to BoT.  Soon we'll get into Firelands.  And it will be epic.

(One of our mage's wife just had a baby boy on Monday so he will probably be out this week.  His new baby is adorable.  And he says that it looks like the new baby will be a kitty druid.  Yay kitty druid!  I'll be sure to put aside the fire kitty staff so that when he's old enough he'll have a fire form!!)

Day 03 – Your first day playing WoW

My first day of WoW was so much fun.  I installed the game, downloaded the patches and made myself a little gnome rogue with Princess Leia red hair.  My friend, Sinova, brought her night elf rogue out to the gnome/dwarf starting area, tried to hand me bags and money but she couldn't because I was a trial account.  The next day, she mailed me a copy of the game.

I was in awe.  I did the starting zone quests and marveled at how beautiful the game was.  I spent a lot of my time trying to figure out the talking commands.  Everything was so new and shiny.  I figured out how to reply to whispers and talk in party chat.

I got invited to Sinova's guild, Daughters of the Alliance, an all girl guild, on Bronzebeard US.  I felt so at home and so happy. I met Wolffepsyche, who became one of my best friends. I met Amerynn, who also became one of my best friends.


I played for a couple of hours, squee-ed and forced my extremely uninterested husband to come and look at things. He made me log off and go to dinner, and that was my first day in WoW!

The PVP Newb

So, Sunday, I decided to craft myself a butt ton of PVP gear and start killing my fellow players.  Boy did that not turn out the way I was expecting.


I decided to do Tol Barad with my guild.  Did you know that if you're a primarily 10 man raiding healer with rather large frames, running a 40 man PVP raid will cause your raid frames to take up a good deal of your screen.

Yes, I have a crappy UI.  I haven't finished rebuilding it after 4.2 destroyed it.

I spent my time hanging out at Slagworks, aka "Slag" apparently.  And after standing around with my head up my ass for about 10 minutes, the Alliance started to pour in.  I managed to stay alive for the first onslaught but I quickly died and was poofed to the graveyard.  I ran back in, and died again.  This happened about 2 or 3 more times.  Then we stabilized (I think most of the Alliance left Slag and went to the mythical place called WV) and we took control again.

Once again, we stood around and captured the point, before the Alliance came and murdered us.  This was apparently a bad battle, since the Alliance had 5 holy pallies.  Also, the Alliance apparently knows how to defend their healers, and the Horde does not.  (At least on our server, this is what the the more experienced PVP healers in my guild say.) 

I have PVPed before.  I played a lot of Arathi Basins on my mage back in Vanilla and some Warsong Gulches on my druid also back in Vanilla.  I got titles for both of my characters.  (Of course, it was only Sergeant on my mage and Scout on my druid, but hey!  That's something!)  I loved it.  But then Burning Crusade came out and I lost the love.  I barely PVPed in BC, I did a little more in Wrath but never a lot.  I would only do it after I won a piece of PVP gear off the Wintergrasp raid bosses.  I have not PVPed for real since Cata came out.  (Despite the whining and cajoling of my best friends and husband.) 

So, time to brush off my PVP skills, if I had any to begin with.  Wish me luck!

Day 02 – Why you decided to start a blog

I decided to start a blog because I like to write and I love WoW.  I know I'm not going to be a theorycrafter, but I think I have a different view of WoW that a lot of people have.  They're interested in raiding but they aren't 'hardcore'.  But they're serious about it.

I have a personal blog that I keep like a journal.  I love having my online friends sharing in my life.  But I want to share my life with more people, and focus on a certain topic.

This is why I started a blog.

20 days of WoW Blogging - Day 1

I decided I'd try to do the 20 days of WoW Blogging Challenge.  Hopefully I can get used to updating on a schedule and maybe, just maybe, someone will read this.

Day 01 – Introduce yourself


I'm Becky.  I am an altoholic with a deep love for my main, a level 85 tauren resto druid named Karegina.  (I have another druid named Karagina, she's a troll!)  I've been playing since August 2005, when my brother in law gave me a trial account to check the game out.  Another one of my friends got so excited that I was playing, so she overnighted me the game.  I've been addicted ever since.


In real life, I'm a 32 year old female.  I suppose at 32 I would be considered a woman, though I still feel like a girl most of the time.  I'm happily married to my high school sweetheart, who started to play WoW about a year and half after I started.  He plays a blood elf prot pally.  We have one wonderful kitty who is 14 years old.  She's extremely skittish and some people don't think she exists.


I live in a small town in the Willamette Valley in Oregon.  I love it here and could never move out of this state. 


As I mentioned before, I have bipolar II with a touch of anxiety.  However, I am nicely medicated and that has improved the quality of my life immensely.  


My first exposure to multi player games was from a MUD named Xyllomer.  It's based in Germany and I met a lot of wonderful people, some of which I'm still in touch with.  My best friend (who also plays WoW with me) met and married her husband through Xyllomer.  She moved from Germany to the US about 7 years ago.    Xyllomer was like an gateway game.  I played Xyllomer for about 5 years, then started playing the Sims 2, and THEN I got into WoW.  


I am the oldest of 4 children, I have 2 sisters and a brother.  Both my sisters have (or are having) little baby boys.  My nephew, Andres, is going to be 10 months old and my unborn nephew is due on July 23rd.  My husband has 2 sisters as well, and one of them has a beautiful little girl who is 3 and a half.  So I'm a proud auntie.  


I love music, and often will pipe all kinds of music over the top of my husband's voice while we're raiding so I don't have to listen to him.  I then proceed to wipe the raid because I went left instead of going right with the group.  Oops ;)


Anyway.  That's me.  

Continuing on ...

My guild still hasn't stepped foot into the Firelands raid.  Our raidleader (my dear husband) wants us to clear through the old content first so we can move forward better.

So last night we went to BoT and did okay.  We got to Ascendant Council and wiped on them for a while.  We were figuring it out however, so that's a bonus.  We actually got them to like 5% on our last wipe of the night.

Unfortunately, I ended up with a headache that came on about 20 minutes before raid ended.

I'm really enjoying raids again.  My name, Reluctant Raider, comes from the fact that I was NOT interested in raids when we started doing them back in BC.  I only did them because my best friends and husband wanted to.  Now, two expansions later, I'm getting into it and looking forward to raid night.  I'm hoping we bump it up to two nights a week so we can actually get some movement.

We 9 manned things yesterday as well.  Because our 10th was not available for raiding and we didn't feel like pugging it.  Ugh.  Stupid roster problems.

I've been doing my Hyjal dailies every day with my husband.  Even on days I don't want to, he drags me out there so we can do them together.  I hear it will take 33 days to unlock everything.  Ugh.  I guess that's not a long time, but seriously Blizz, driving me crazy!!

So, we're moving forward.  Slowly but moving forward.  Yay.