Guild Services and What Not

The officers of my guild were very interested when Blizzard originally announced the upcoming Guild Transfer Services.  At the time, we were feeling beaten down and unappreciated and most importantly, burned out.  There had been a bit of guild drama (I hate guild drama), people had left and we were having a very difficult time getting our raiding feet under us again.

First, I should give you a history about my guild.  Some of us (most of the original members) started out playing around the same time.  (Except for me.)  The core of our group were 5 real life friends that included myself, my husband and our 3 best friends.  We all leveled up to level 70 together, doing all the dungeons at level  and learning our classes (we had a warrior, a druid, 2 shaman and a mage).  We didn't all level in the same places, but we were careful not to 'out level' the rest so we could continue to do dungeons together.

When they all started playing, I was in a guild with friends of my brother in laws.  I got all my newbie friends to join and after a while, we were a big part of the guild.  I mean, there was five of us and then some of our other friends started to play and we got them invited to the guild as well.  I think there were 10 of 'us' playing at one time.  (The other friends were people we met on a MUD we had played as well as my best friend's sister and her brother-in-law (her husband's brother).)

Eventually, more people joined the guild and personalities started to conflict.  The guild I'd brought them all too wasn't really a raiding guild, but because we had 10 people to raid, we did.  The GM drug her feet a bit but she pretty much let us take over and do the raiding.  Then, our warrior friend had a fight with the GM and left the guild.  He went to a raiding guild, I followed him and the group I was supposed to be raiding with all /gquit the next day, including my warrior friend.  They formed a new raiding guild (we'll call them HKL), I went to another raiding guild because I felt burned by them and it wasn't long before the rest of our friends followed our warrior friend (except my husband, he was determined to stay put).

Now it's almost the end of BC, the husband decides he wants to raid with his friends and his wife.  He leaves to join HKL, I leave my current guild because (like my husband) I want to join my friends.  And then all hell breaks loose.  The husband noticed that the GM had transferred off the server with one of the main tanks and gave GM to his alt.  The main tank and GM said they wanted to go progress and raid at a higher level.  Much shit went down and when the dust settled, the guild had splintered.  We didn't want to have the guild tag that had brought us so much drama so we decided to go off and start our own guild.  "How hard could it be?" we thought.

So, the October before Wrath dropped, we started Ascension.  In the beginning it was my 5 real life friends that live within 10 minutes of me, another 2 or 3 of our friends/family, and a handful of people from HKL (like my favorite shadow priest).  We had the goal of raiding 25's.  However, when we started raiding, we had 8 people that we would take into Naxx 10 man.  Over time, we gathered more people, absorbed a couple of other guilds and had a reputation of a drama free, quiet guild.  I loved it.

We had our hard times.  People stopped playing, most notably our GM and one of our main tanks (our RL warrior friend).  Our RL mage friend took over his position.  At the beginning, our officers were myself, my RL warrior friend (as GM), my RL mage friend and a pally we had picked up from HKL (whom my husband disagreed with regularly).  We picked up other officers as people left.  My husband started doing raid leading shortly before our warrior GM left and we forced him into an officer role shortly after Ulduar came out.

If you read between the lines here, you can see that a lot of our activities and things were planned by a group of RL friends.  When people didn't get 'chosen' to go, there were a lot of accusations of us being a clique.  We fought that label hard, but when you have a group that love each other like a family, it's hard to fight that.  Especially when, after a bad night of raiding, the 5 core people (both tanks and 2 of the healers, plus one of the best dps) head to the local all night diner to hash out what went wrong.

During this time, we started showing signs of burning out.  But we refused to give up.  All of us took breaks in one way or the other.  My husband got so mad at the attitudes of certain guild members that he actually broke a headset and his hand (from punching a wall wrong).  I was having anxiety attacks just thinking of logging on.  My best friend and her husband started fighting about the game and had to take a break for a couple weeks.  But we always came back.

We kept adding people and people kept leaving, either they'd stop playing completely or they'd ninja transfer off the server.  We felt like we were the 'gearing up guild'.  (I know of at least 1 person who was only looking for 1 upgrade before they planned on leaving the server for a better guild.)   Interest in raiding was waning, it got to the point we couldn't fill our 25's at all, we were taking people who could NOT understand the mechanics (if I had a screenshot of the Andes mountains that someone caused by moving the ice block that Sindragosa shoots at people, this would be where I would post it).  So we gave up our 25's and ran with 2 10's.

By this time, we'd absorbed another guild who my RL friends and I had been in guild with years before.  They were part of our original guild.  We also had a officer who was rather controversial. He was nice sometimes but at other times he was very cruel.  The new arrivals had huge issues with him and we eventually ended up asking him to step down.  And then a lot of drama happened, both in game and out.  Needless to say, there were arguments both with members of the guild and between my RL friends about this.

Slowly, people lost interest in running 2 10's and we ended up combining them and running 1.  And then we started having problems getting people to even sign up for that 1.  We stopped running raids sometime the summer before Cata came out.  However, some of us went outside the guild to a PUG (which is something that my server doesn't know how to do well) and got our ICC 10 man drakes before 4.0 dropped.  (This is something I'm really proud of.)

So, we head into Cata, at this time, the only officers are the 4 RL friends (myself, my husband, my best friend and her husband) who started the guild.  The expansion hasn't even dropped yet and already we're tired and burned out.  We start looking at our guild and we decide that this time, we'll just be a 10 man guild.  We set a date of sometime in January to start raiding and we barely scrap together the people.

Time goes on and each week we barely scrape together the people.  Our raid leader (my husband) is getting frustrated that people don't seem to care.  More time goes on.  A guild meeting ends up turning into a fight.  We stop raiding and people start to /gquit.  Eventually, we give up and accept that things aren't going to be the way we want them to be.  We put together a new raid group.  We start raiding again with 9 people and we start pugging our extras.  We down Nef, after the nerf with 9 guildies and 1 pug.  We then go and down Cho'gall with 10 guildies (because the pug has left his guild and joined ours).  We head into Throne of the Four Winds and clear that with 8 or 9 guildies and a pug (or 2) who used to be in our guild.

We head into Firelands with 8 guildies and cleared up through Rhyolith with 2 pugs who used to be in our guild.  However, we're now clearing Firelands content with 10 members of our own guild.  And that makes my insides warm.

So, these guild transfer services really interest us.  Before our raid team stabilized, we were entertaining the thought of transfering off server to greener pastures.  The server we are on right now has a small recruitment pool.  Really small.  And who would want to transfer there?  However, we didn't want to leave our guild that we've worked so hard on.  We got everything we want there.  And honestly, after being in charge and doing it our way for so long, how can we go back to doing it someone else's way?

I'm honestly happier about the guild transfer news then the Pokemon stuff coming up in the new expansion!!

PVP? Birthdays? PETS?

Today is my husband's birthday as well as our 16th dating anniversary.  While I have a horrible memory, it's really easy to remember that it's one of our anniversary's when it falls on his birthday!  (He's 33 by the way.)

For his birthday, I have thus far ignored him, growled at him when he came in to kiss me good morning, and shouted after him as he left the house.  The shouting was because I remembered it was his birthday and I wanted him to come back into the bedroom so I could say happy birthday.  (God forbid I actually get UP and leave the bed before 7:35am!)  I have called him at work, but I got voice mail.  I think he's screening me!

What does this have to do with WoW you might ask?  Well, my husband is an avid pet and mount collector.  He a lot of mounts (I don't know how many but it's over the amount needed for the highest achievement) and is currently collecting pets.  Last year, for Christmas, I bought him the sparkle pony.  He loved it and uses it on all his alts, but not his main since he's got much cooler mounts on that toon.  So, this year, I debated between buying him the purple lion (which I want) or some pets.  I finally decided that he needed to get the lil Ragnaros.  I wanted to buy him two (since they are only $10) but I couldn't decide which one to get.  And then it hit me!  Panda!  So now he has a Lil Rag and a Pandaran Monk in his mail box.  Hehe!  Yay!  (And I have no fear of him finding this out because he doesn't read my blog.)

On a different front, last night I took my new set of crafted PVP gear and headed into some battlegrounds on my shadow priest.  We (the husband and I) did a couple BGs before we left to go to a friend's house and we got Strand of the Ancients (I think, it's the one with the beach and the gates, like Wintergrasp?) and Battle for Gilneas.  Those two were a lot of fun.  We went up against some really poor teams and despite my handicap of not knowing what I was doing, we won both of them easily.  I had a great time and was excited to do more when I got home.

We got home around 10:30ish.  Logged in and queued for another BG.  We ended up in another Strand of the Ancients and took forever to win first.  And then the Alliance won in about 30 seconds I swear.  I didn't even know that was POSSIBLE.  We then went into a Arathi Basin where I realized just how much druid healers in PVP suck.  My husband and I followed 2 other people to Mine.  And then.  EVERYONE LEFT, including my husband who is supposed to stay and protect me.  So, I'm there all by myself, when a resto druid stealths down and somehow attacks the node.  I wasn't standing around with my head up my butt either, but by the time I was able to attack him (I can't remember what happened to me) he'd capped and the flag was just waiting to get over to their side.  I spend the next 3 or 4 minutes trying to recap and trying to hold him down, which didn't work.  All the while cussing out my husband for leaving me, a newb, at Mine alone.  The husband showed up, and the two of us took the druid down.  Then we went up against a rogue (dear lord they suck too) and a warrior (who had gag order, is that a prot talent? AND the freaking druid.  Argh!

Despite the last 2 matches, I did have a good time.  I went up against a shadow priest at about my gear level in the first Strand we did and the two of us had a little mini show down.  I beat the over loving crap out of her by myself without any help.  She barely hit me.  Which, now that I think about it, means she was probably in PVE gear.  But, I whittled her down so fast that she had to start throwing heals on herself.  If we had gone another 5-10 seconds in the match, I'd probably have killed her, but we won and the match was over.  So, my first night, I got 3 wins and 1 loss.  Yay!  That's not bad!

I've been doing some reading about Shadow Priest PVP, I just need to put it into practice!!

Peace and Quiet and Pandas?

This weekend was amazing.  The husband and I finished up my Hallow's End achievement on Asmini.  We did everything but the PVP part on Saturday.  (Did you know you can throw the pumpkins at people's heads while mounted?  Hanging around Stormwind's gates and going into Goldshire got me all the Alliance heads except the dwarf, which I have on another account.  So I logged her in and brought her out of Stormwind and BAM! Acheesement!)

We ended up queuing for Tol Barad so I could get my kills but apparently G.N.E.R.D.S are not eatable in TB.  So I got my first honorable kill there and while we lost, I had a really good time.  Shadow PVP is a lot of fun!  (And somewhere, my favorite shadow priest rubs her hands together and says "Come to the dark side!!")  We ended up in a Battle for Gilneas where I completely owned a death knight 2 or 3 times.  He was blood but with no PVP gear so I could kite him around (and everytime he'd death grip me, I'd do that psychic scream and fear him away while I would run away from him and dot him up!).  He couldn't get close to me to hit me and no one was hitting him except for me so he wasn't getting health back.  HAHAHA!  I had such a good time.  I'll probably be making myself some pvp gear now :)  But, I did get my acheesement and now I'm Asmini the Hallowed.

I ended up with a ton of gold after that.  So I started buying volatiles so I could make Karegina bigger bags.  I know, very exciting.

Another thing I got to do was take Asmini through ZG and ZA this weekend!  Apparently I'd bought/crafted enough gear to get her in there.  And gear dropped for her while she was in there too!  We went in a guild group, it was myself, my shaman buddy, her tank husband, her hunter sister and a new mage we got a couple weeks ago.  We did pretty well, one shotting all bosses in ZG up to the Panther lady.  We wiped a couple times on her because no one was interrupting her tears and I couldn't keep people alive because I'd run out of mana.  And I swear no one was using the lightwell!  Sad lightwell.

However, my shaman buddy stepped up and healed that boss for us so we could move on, I went shadow, the mage had to leave and the husband came in to fill her spot.  After we downed her (in 1 shot after that), I went back to healing and we one shot the rest of the place.  It was so fun.  We then queued again and got ZA.  We didn't manage to save more then 1 of the prisoners but we had a really good time.  I got a wand, a hat (with hit that I reforged into spirit), a ring and a chest piece from the quest.  PLUS, I got enough justice points to buy the blue shoulders from the justice vendor :)  I'm going to have my tank buddy (who was our GM but gave it up to his wife) make me the healing mace from the Molten Front patterns.

Besides that, I've spent my weekend talking to my friends and husband about the upcoming expansion.  I'm really excited for it, it looks amazingly beautiful and I'm definitely rolling a panda when it comes out.  I signed up for the annual pass on my main account and if I end up making my priest my main in this expansion, I'll move her over onto this account.

I'm a little nervous about the current set of talents for druids.  I really don't like that they are forcing us to choose to be a tree.  I rolled my druid so I could be a healing tree.  Now I'm a cow that sometimes goes into tree form.  Soon, I won't even be that?  I don't see the other druid specs having to choose to pick their form.  I'm feeling no love right now from Blizzard about this tree thing.  If we're a 'shifting' class, why do you only make 1 class shift all the time?  Why do the other specs get to sit in their different forms all the time? And telling me that they're doing it to let me see my armor?  I'm sorry, but druid armor is the ugliest armor ever!

Anyway, I could rant on that all day.  Overall, I'm happy with what I've seen for the expansion.  Don't let me down Blizz!!

Healing Baleroc and Lord Rhyolith?

In my raid group, we have been having the most problems with Baleroc and Rhyolith.  With Rhyolith, it seems like the healers are constantly chasing after the dps, to the tune of other dps dying since we're moving and not healing.  On Baleroc, we're running out of mana before we kill him and various other things.  However, last night we shifted our strategy a little bit and managed to succeed immediately.

First we hit Rhyolith, and wiped 5 times.  We (myself and my resto shaman buddy) had a hard time keeping all the dps in range.  We end up with a mage on the edge, a hunter on the other edge, the tank with adds on another edge and magma flow in the middle and we just couldn't reach everyone.  I know that at one point I was chasing the hunter and the tank but I couldn't reach either of them because while I was running after them they were moving to avoid magma flow AND volcanoes.  ARGH!  Eventually I yelled at my husband that we just can't do this, people are too spread out.  So my husband calmly explained to people that if they wanted heals, they needed to stay more in the middle.  They did and lo, we downed the boss the next try.  AND no one died.  *facepalm*  Why do our dps try to make my job more difficult?  (To any of my dps that might be reading this, I do love you guys.  But don't try to out range us!  You want heals, we want to give you heals, don't make us fight for it!)

Then we moved onto Baleroc where we wiped 4 times before getting him down.  Let me explain our strategy on this boss.  We two heal it, with a resto druid and a resto shaman.  What we've been doing is having the druid (me) heal the 1st torment shard completely, then switch and have the shaman heal the 2nd torment shard completely and so on.  This would work sometimes but more often then not, my shaman buddy would be out of mana by the 3rd time it was her turn to heal the tank.  The tank would take decimating strike, the shaman would be out of mana and the tank would splat on the ground.

What we ended up doing was switching our shard order.  The time we succeeded, I healed the tank first and my shaman healed the shard first.  When I did that, I realized that healing the tank first, without the benefit of Vital Flame is a pain in the ass.  No one my fellow healer was running out of mana.  (And resto shaman's have really crappy mana regen.  While I think holy pallies have pretty decent mana regen (at least right now), I do believe that resto druids are right up there too.  My mana regen is decent right now.)  I feel like a fool for never looking into the fight closer to see how we can succeed at this better.  So, next time, I'm going to insist that I take the first tank duty, and I want to see if we succeed in one shot.

We did end up making it through Staghelm last night.  He dropped his fire kitty staff, but we had 2 hunters in our group so I didn't get to have it.  However, the hunter who won it let me hold it for a moment.  But I didn't turn into a fire kitty upon shifting into my cat form.  So I looked it up and it turns out you have to be in combat to get the fire kitty buff.  Boo.  I gave it back and when the hunter offered to take me somewhere that I could get into combat so I could be all "FLAME KITTY", I declined and thanked him and told him I will have the staff someday.  We generally only run with 1 hunter and the other hunter we had with us got the BOE polearm when she was running with her husband's raid team.  I do love my guildies!

The husband and I finished up all our Hallow's End acheesements on our mains.  And now we're going to do them on my priest and his whoever he wants to take.  I want my priest to be Asmini the Hallowed.  I have such a good time running around doing the 'visit all these places' quests.  It's really enjoyable for me!  And now with flying, it doesn't take all day!  And maybe this weekend I can do some dungeons?  Maybe someone will come with me?

And again, all you Blizzcon go-ers, I'm really jealous!

On the first day of Hallow's End, my true love gave to me ...

And by true love, I mean Blizzard.

I got my flying kitty in a witch's hat, on a broom.  That is so awesome.  I have a soft spot for kitties in witches hats!

Other then that, the husband and I spent the evening running around the world and trick or treating.  (Obviously, since I got my kitty.)  We also did the dailies and the stand alone quests so I now have my Luggage.  I mean, my creepy crate.  Hehe.

Then we hit up The Headless Horseman.  I only did it 2 times on my main, then I switched out my holy priest (which was fun, despite my tank barely taking any damage).  I want to say I got a hit ring on my holy priest and the sinister squashling (of which I have 5 of on my main, plus the one I got when I did the achievement).  I also got a chance to take my little pally through.

The group let me tank, so I had a grand ol' time standing there looking so big and strong.  I did get one of the strength rings, which was nice.  And I'm going to keep going back because I need to get the helm for my pally!

And tonight, we go back into Firelands.  Our shadow priest is leaving tomorrow morning for Hawaii (her boyfriend is awesome and arranged a trip away without her knowing, he even got her time off work), so she won't be there tonight.  I think we have a backup though!  I hope.

So anyway.  Those of you who are going to Blizzcon, I'm really jealous :)

This is Hallow's End

And thus starts my husband's overachieving 'Gotta Catch Them All' mentality.  It's usually hidden by his complete and utter raid focus but every time a holiday comes around, I live with 2 weeks or so of constant achievement chasing.  At the end of Wrath, it was really bad.  I was actually surprised that he didn't set an alarm and get up to trick or treat every hour.  (Last night, he stayed up until the event went live on the server so he would have an extra chance at the mount.  Our best friend (our warrior tank) did the same thing.)

For example, Brewfest.  He had the achievement back in 2009 but every year he runs the boss repeatedly (because he has to have the mounts) and does all the dailies.  He even does them on his alts.  I want to say that his main and his shaman both have the violet protodrake and he is close to it on his warrior and his priest.  He actually takes time off work to grind out his holiday achievements.  (He takes every Children's Week off so he can do the PVP achievements on whichever alt he's working on.)

I'm actually quite happy with the way Hallow's End is this year.  There will be no stopping raiding every hour to let my husband (and honestly, our best friend the warrior) to go and trick or treat.  (While they never actually did this, the moment we stopped for our break during raid, both of them would hearth back to town to trick or treat and then need a summon back.)

I am also very excited about the black cat in a witches hat.  I'm going to be grinding out dailies on a couple toons to get that.  At least my druid and priest, probably my mage too.  So, I guess I can't throw too many stones.

The dailies, the trick or treating to candy buckets instead of innkeepers ... all these things show that Hallow's End will be much more pleasant this year.  Also, It will be nice to get that ring.  I don't have another 378 yet, so the 365 will make me happy.   (Also, I need the helm for my pally alt that I just got to 85 this weekend!)

Happy Hallow's End everyone!  May you get the loot and pets that you want!

Guess What?!?!?

We went back into the Firelands on Sunday and .....

Yay!  My guild is now 7/7 in Firelands.  It took us 4 tries total to down him.  And the 1st time we actually made it TO 3rd phase, we killed him.  Dear lord that was fun.  He dropped his bow (we only had a rogue in group, no hunter), some cloth gloves (I think?) and my tier piece.

I rolled a 92 and was like SQUEEEEE!!! but then the rogue rolled a 100.  Damn him!! However, both people in my tier group now have something so hopefully I will obtain the next tier piece.  If everything is fair.  Which it generally isn't.

We went in there with 2 prot pallies (one of which doesn't usually come as he works early the next day), a fury warrior (who usually tanks for us), a resto shaman, a resto druid, a shadow priest, a demo warlock, a afflication warlock, an assassination rogue, and a fire mage.  Our usual hunter wasn't there since it was Sunday and he has kids and stuff.

Also, killing Rag put most of us to 11999/12000 in Honored with the Avengers of Hyjal, well almost (we went and found some trash and killed it to get us to that, it was only 2 kills).  So first boss we down, we should get Revered (and by 'we' I mean 3/4ths of the raid).  Woo.

Question for resto druids however, is the trinket worth it?  Hell, are any of the trinkets worth it?  It's just spirit and I'm doing fine without it.  What should I do?  Do I get it or wait for one of the drops?  And for boomkins?  What about the caster dps trinket?  Is that good?  So confused!

Besides getting my Rag kill, my weekend was taken up with my pally.  She was about 3 bubbles from level 81 and has been there for about 4 months.  Well, this weekend, I picked her up, dusted her off and got her to 85.  She's a prot pally (and has been since her inception) but I put together a holy spec for her.  I also made her a full set of pvp holy gear that I will try out here shortly.  I have no clue how to heal on a pally so this should be entertaining.  I also made about 6000 gold while leveling, which I spent all of trying to level my blacksmithing.  Heh.

I did do some dailies on my priest however.  Who got exalted with the guild.  The husband bought her the valor bracers so now her only green from questing is her wand.  And I just noticed that her hands aren't enchanted.  I'll have to get on that when I get home from work.

Sunday was acheesement day.  The husband and I got a lot of acheesements from the Molten Front on my priest and his warrior.  Then, his priest and my pally got a TON of acheesements for questing in Twilight Highlands.  Plus our guildies were getting acheesements left and right.  It was epic.  And then ... we got our Rags kill!  Woo!

So yeah.  Good weekend.  Good jobs guys!

More time on Ragnaros please!

It was back into Firelands for us last night.  Which was iffy since our 2nd tank (who is also one of my best IRL friends) had unexpected surgery on his left hand middle finger.  (He had a huge lump on his middle finger that would bleed profusely if it got bumped in any way.)  When he came into my office to show it to me (I work in the small town that his doctor is in), I expressed my concern about the pain and then promptly asked "Do you think you can raid tonight?"

My boss, who had just arrived, started to laugh and said I was cold hearted.  My friend said that my question isn't bad.  He would ask the same thing.  Which then prompted us to make the following jokes: "So, you've lost your arm, do you think you can raid tonight?" and "So, I see you've lost all your fingers and your eyes, do you think you can raid tonight?"  I do love my friends.

It turned out, that yes he could raid last night.  He was fat fingering everything but I told him that's okay, he fat fingers everything.  (Nothing is sacred between us.  I love him like a brother.)  We manged to 1 shot Staghelm aka Traitor VonPoopyPants.  And then went through the trash to Ragnaros (and this time, no one died).

We managed to get 12 attempts in on Rag.  Most of the time, it was dying to stupid shit.  Like on 2nd phase, when the seeds explode and you're supposed to group up?  Yeah. there was fire in the area just before Rag, so we grouped up more in the middle of the room.  But then Sulfurus Smash happened right on us and because the tank (my darling husband) told people not to move up to Rag's belly, half the raid wiped because they didn't see the fire on the ground that told you to GTFO!  Ah, it was fun.

So, we have put up a Sunday raid for more Rag attempts.  I am really hoping that we can get him down.  I heard he called my momma a fat cow.   Which may be true as I am a tauren.  But damn dude.  Don't be talking bad about my momma!

In other news.  My priest finally got the trinket from Tol Barad.  (I hate dailies so much!)  So now I'm going to force J to work on our Molten Front dailies for my priest.  I want the ring and the trinket so bad!  I already have a nice offhand (I kinda bought the BOE one off Shannox from my guild bank).  I want to take her into dungeons but I'm afraid no one will go with me and I'm really nervous about my healing!  I don't like pugs.  They make me nervous, even on my druid.

Stress ... UGH

Everyone has some kind of stress in their life.  It can be either good or bad.  And everyone has different ways to combat stress.  When you're not succeeding at downing a boss, be it a new one or one that you have on farm, stress levels rise, people get snippy and attitudes start to tank.

What brings this up is our raid last night.  We went into Firelands, one shot Beth and Shannox, and then proceeded to spend 30-45 minutes on Lord Rhyolith.  It was only 3 wipes and then a kill but jeezus.  It felt like everything went wrong there.  Sometimes people would die because they were on the other side of the platform and somehow both the healers were standing next to each other.

I ended up gritting my teeth and plowing forward stubbornly.  I would keep an eye on my shaman buddy and trust her to keep the tank in her sights and then I ran around and tried to make sure those errant dps didn't fall off the platform or stand in magma flow.  (I swear to God that magma flow has some kind of attraction that draws people to it, even if they're on the other side of the platform!)  By the time we downed him, I was in a piss poor mood and just wanted this to be OVER.

We then went to Alysrazor and split our groups.  But everyone ended up confused and after all the dps ended up on my side a couple times, sharp words were spoken in Vent.  Nothing too bad, I think, but it was a lot of someone (either myself or my fellow healer) saying "Is ANYONE going to kill this druid?"  We managed, despite all the screw ups, to one shot her.  (I even got a new healing trinket!)

So, then we were at Baleroc.  My shaman buddy and I arranged our rotation and we pulled.  We ended up wiping because of a combination of things.  Both my shaman buddy and I ran out of mana.  And no one ever bloodlusted/timewarped.  I really think we would have one shotted him had we remembered to bloodlust.

Anyway.  That took us 3 tries but we did get him down too.  And we moved onto Staghelm (since raid time wasn't over yet).  We had 1 new person, so husband explained the fight and we pulled.  We started out okay, doing scorpion form first, then kitty.  But when we grouped up again for scorpion form, people didn't group up together, they kind of spread out around him.  And then when they would leave the group to let their seeds explode, he switched to kitty form.  ARGH.  So then since people were mostly grouped up, he switched back to scorpion!  We had probably 3 or 4 switches in about  30 second time period.

And that was raid.  It was not our best night and I will take responsibility for my own failings.  I was feeling really sick and quite tired (I didn't sleep well the night before, as I was up over half the night with sick feelings) so I was not playing my best.  I ended up logging my priest on and doing Tol Barad dailies before I went to bed to try and destress myself.

While I was doing that, husband did some 5 man arenas with some of our guildies.  By the time he came to bed, he was frustrated and stressed.  When he PVPs, he comments about things a lot.  And honestly, it makes me wonder why he PVPs if all he can do is complain about it.  I swear that 9 times out of 10, he's saying things like "WHAT?" and "How can they DO that?" and "IMMUNE? How does that even work?"

And honestly, watching him PVP makes me never ever want to do it.  Way to go husband!!

Tonight it's Staghelm and Ragnaros!  We'll get Traitor McPoopypants down pretty quickly I'm sure and then spend the rest of the night on the Firelord.  Woot.

It's already Wednesday?

My week is flying by.  Of course, technically it didn't start until yesterday (I work in the mortgage industry, so we close our office on all financial holidays) but still.  And yesterday was a very busy day at the office.  Today doesn't seem much different.  Except I have 10-15 minutes to myself every hour or so.

This last Sunday, we managed to round up 10 guildies and went into visit Rag's for 2 hours.  We got to phase 2 often, and even managed to get to the 2nd transition phase once.  Our problems seemed to be people popping magma traps just before Hand of Ragnaros and then people trying to slow the Sons of Flame instead of just killing them.

It was a good 2 hours and I was content with our progress.  I think we'll get it soon!

Other then that, I picked up my level 85 priest again.  I respecced her 2nd spec from disc to shadow so I could do dailies by myself and even go dps for our new disc priest that we got.  (I need to get her better gear.)

I also spent some time on my mage, running around the world farming herbs for our cauldrons.  Between Sunday and Monday, I farmed up something like 144 stacks of herbs and 400 volatile life.  After doing that, I went to Uldum and Tol Barad and fished up 8 or so stacks of Fathom Eels for the guild bank.  So yeah.  Busy weekend.  Lots of farming.

Tonight it's more Firelands.  We have a full 10 guildies for the next 2 days.  So we're doing good there.  Awesome!!

The Running of the Gnomes

I don't know if any of you heard about this but there was a breast cancer awareness 'fun run' on Scarlet Crusade tonight.  I heard about it through Livejournal's wow_ladies group and convinced my husband to go roll a gnome with me.

So, off we went to sport pink hair and generally kill some time while supporting a good cause.

Apparently, many people had the same thought!

Below are a few of my favorite pictures from tonight.  Here is the link to all my screenies. :)

Anyway.  I did have a good time!  Thanks people!

6/7 in Firelands!

So, we went into Firelands again last night.  Our usual hunter dps wasn't free (he had to pick up his kids and do all kinds of real life stuff) so we picked up a guildie pally tank who happened to be free.  (He was with us when we first downed the Firebird but hasn't seen any of the earlier fights.)  So we get into Baleroc and after 3 tries, boom!  He dies.  There is much rejoicing and our rogue gets some shinies as did one of our warlocks.  (We have two.)

Then it was on to Traitor VonPoopyPants.  That only took us 2 tries.  We would have downed him in 1, but the call to spread out came a little too late and he flame scythed while only 3 people were in front of him.  So BAM death.  On our 2nd attempt, the only person to die was me.  But I had a soulstone so I popped back up, innervated (I was just about to innervate when I was smooshed, by a flame scythe), and moved to my position at the edge of the circle for kitty phase.

My shaman buddy and I worked out a nice rotation for our cooldowns.  During the 1st scorpion phase, I would pop tree form and wild growth for all I was worth.  During the 2nd, she'd drop spirit link totem and I'd pop tranquility.  And by then, he was dead.  So yay there.

We got the healing trinket, a pair of mail agility hands and a druid, death knight, mage and rogue shoulder token.  Since I'd been getting all the loot, I passed on both the trinket and the token.  Boy was that hard.  I love me some purples!!  But I only have 2 pieces that are 359 (my legs and a ring) and then I have 3 that are 365 (my trinkets and my weapon).  So that's not bad.

Speaking of my toon.  I went to askmrrobot.com and did a audit on my healing spec.  I'm not too bad right now.  My enchants and gems are all in line when what they suggest.  My haste is only at 1891 but that should change if I get the haste bracers and other pieces.  (My next, and last, valor points purchase will be my tier legs.  I'm still hoping they drop in BH!)  But since it's looking like I'll actually get my 4 piece, that will be awesome!  YAY!

Anyway.  We're going to try to go back into Firelands this Sunday (despite it being Thanksgiving in Canada) and smack Rag around a bit.  I'm going to go look up videos and strategies now.  We made a couple shots at him last night but didn't get too far.  People hadn't really looked at the fight (thinking we'd spend more time on Traitor VonPoopyPants) so we got 7 tries on him  (Which was only like 40 minutes I think).

But! Two new bosses in Firelands.  Only 1 left to go.  Then it's time for heroics.  And honestly, despite this being past nerf, it's before 4.3 so I'm pretty damn happy about that!

What the hey?

So, my wonderful guild went into Firelands last night with a full crew.  No need to pull in any pugs, just us.  We hit Baradon Hold first, which let me get my valor point neck piece (the last thing I need is my pants and I'm hoping they drop off Occu'thar).

When we moved into Firelands, we hit Spider Lady first (one shot), then Shannox (who was also a 1 shot, except that he bugged out halfway through our fight so he reset and we had to pull again), then Lord Ryolith (again, a 1 shot) and finally Bird Bitch (also a 1 shot).  That had never happened before.  Our offtank/guildleader (actually, I don't know if he's still guildleader.  I think he might have passed it off to his wife, my resto shaman buddy.) started saying silly things like "I think that he *puts on sunglasses* burned himself out." when we killed them.  It was really really funny.

So, we got 3 shots in on Baleroc.  We got him to 20% but us healers weren't communicating very well.  I thought we were switching every spark, she thought we were switching every person.  The idiot raid leader (my husband) tried to get our shadow priest and our mage to take a full spark but that didn't work.  They pretty much died at the end.  So I spoke rather firmly to him and told him that until we figured this out, stop trying to 'game' it.  I was annoyed.

The mage actually died while he was in a ice block.  I don't know how that happened.  Anyway.  We still have 1 more night of raiding and I'm pretty confident that we can down Baleroc quickly tonight.  Then it's on to Traitor Jerkface.  My day will be filled with research on Fandral.  Well, not all of it.  But probably my morning.

But still, 1 shotting all the bosses we've killed so far.  I'm so proud of us!

Alts? Yes please!

Since I've been playing since 2005, I have accumulated quite a number of alts on quite a number of servers.  Every now and then, I do a mass purge where I delete all the alts off servers that didn't 'pan out'.  The only ones I don't tend to do that on are my main Horde server (Madoran) and my main Alliance server (Winterhoof).

A couple of my original alts that I had on Bronzebeard when I started (my rogue and a warlock) are now on Winterhoof, and since I spent $25 for a server transfer, they will NEVER be deleted.  Even though I have made a worgen warlock to replace the gnome warlock.  (I'm a dork.)

This weekend, I made myself a gnome priest on Winterhoof to play with my husband's gnome priest.  We look identical, except I have white hair and his gnome has black hair.  I'm a shadow priest and he's a disc priest.  We're having a great time running around, killing everything that moves and shouting 'Gnome power!' at our friends on Madoran (via RealID).

I also decided to make a night elf druid over on Bronzebeard for shits and giggles.  I have a couple other alts over there, a dwarf death knight, a couple low level (5 and below) casters, and now my level 12 druid.  I don't know what I'm going to do with her, but I'm enjoying just causally leveling through the night elf starting zone.

I've got a ton of Horde alts on my main server (I have 2 accounts and both are completely full on Madoran).  Plus 2 Alliance toons that I made so I could use the heirlooms that I have collected.

I can only really concentrate on 1 toon, my druid, but I love having 30+ alts to choose from at any time.  And they range in level from 12-81.  I only have 2 at 85 right now, well, besides my druid.  But that's what I love about WoW, I can play as many toons as I can find space for!!

WoW Stories aka Lore

I love to read.  Besides WoW, it's my favorite past time.  However, sometimes WoW eclipses it and I go for stretches where the only thing I read are blogs and strategies.  In the past 2 months, I've read about 30 some books, I would have finished more but Name of the Wind was about 662 pages and The Wise Man's Fear is 994.

Now, what does this have to do with WoW?  Well, I've read a couple of the WoW books.  When I first got started in WoW, I read the War of the Ancients trilogy by Richard A Knaak.  I liked the basic story enough that I was able to overlook Mr Knaak's writing style.  However, I didn't recommend the books to my husband when he started to play.  I told him to go find a summery and read that.

Other then that, I read the Cycle of Hatred novel by Keith R.A. DeCandido.  I honestly can't remember a lot about the book, so it didn't leave a big impression on me.  The other books didn't grab my attention until The Shattering came out.

I really enjoyed The Shattering.  I loved the Thrall storyline, I loved the Anduin storyline.  It helped flesh out the upcoming expansion for me in a way the 'preliminary events' leading up to the Cataclysm didn't.  (I think I read it after the expansion came out.  I can't quite remember.)

Shortly after reading The Shattering, I decided to pick up Stormrage.  My main IS a druid, and I hated Fandral since I started playing WoW.  (I was Alliance for the first 2 years I played.)  My guild used to go into Fandral's room and 'Rude the Druid'.  I managed to fight my way through about 90% of the book.  But I haven't been able to finish it yet.  (It's been sitting on my husband's nightstand since April.)

Instead of finishing Stormrage, I picked up Arthas: Rise of the Lich King.  Arthas was not my favorite villain in the Warcraft Universe.  I much prefer the Old Gods.  However, I did enjoy the book.  I highly recommended it to my husband (who is reading it now).  We are discussing the book as he goes through it.  (His biggest complaint is that Christie Golden keeps saying how old everyone is.)

And on Friday, my newest book arrived, Thrall: Twilight of the Ancients.  I am really excited about this book.  However, I do need to finish The Wise Man's Fear (I'm on page 451 right now) before I can start it.

Now, why did I bring up the WoW novels?  Well, like I said, my husband is reading Arthas right now, and will move onto The Shattering after that.  He and I have had discussions about how there is a lot of lore that takes place out of the game and how it sucks for people who either don't like to read or don't have the money to invest in all the outside lore-related merchandise.

I get that there are things happening in the background that we don't know about.  But sometimes I wish I could get my story in one place instead of having to branch out to a couple other places to learn why Fandral turned into a Druid of the Flames.  Maybe I should go finish the last 10% of Stormrage.  Just suck it up and do it.

With that said, I will still buy the WoW novels, if only because I love stories.  Be it in game, on tv, or in books.