The Reluctant Raider

Saturday is Fun Night! Sunday is pretty cool too!

2012-03-05T09:36:00.000-08:00

Tonight was raid (as usual) and we all joined together at the appointed time. We started in Dragon Soul, and got Heroic Morchok. That was fun. We almost had him once but he kept throwing his red crystal towards the back of the raid, so we ended up pulling some trash towards the beginning (waaaaay off to the side) and wiped. However, we got him down the next time and it was awesome and fun. I got my first heroic piece (the neck) which made me really happy because I'm a huge dork.

We spent sometime working on Heroic Warlord. Dear lord, that was rough. I need to do some research on that. This will be homework.

We also got Minutes to Midnight (achievement on Ultraxion) and Ping Pong Champion (achievement on Warlord). I think half the guild got the Taste the Rainbow on Yor'sahj that night as well.

Anyway, we cleared through Warmaster, and then had some lag issues for one tank and healer so we called the raid and went to 25 man Naxx for KZ and Saph. Before that, however, somehow, my guild leader, one of our officers and our DK spent like 5 minutes chasing me around the deck of the ship. I laughed so hard that I cried. The GM and officer both play orcs and they were chasing me with no pants on. Then our rogue (who is a goblin) was also nude and running around.

I ran them around and around and around the ship, up to the top, then all the way to the back. It was so fun. Really silly but fun. I have pictures that the husband took while I was afk. Apparently they tried to snuggle me. Or something. Honestly, I think the pictures look worse then they are.

Anyway, we went and killed KZ and Saph on 25 (me as my mage), then went to OS 10 for the drake (me as my mage) and then did Ruby Sanctum 10 Heroic (me as my druid). And then, we went and killed Maly 10 man (me on my druid). So yeah, good times.

On Sunday, we gathered up, finished up Dragon Soul and headed into Firelands. (I healed Spine but dpsed Madness, then continued to dps through Firelands, until we got to Domo and Rag.) We got the achievement for Beth'tilac which was a freaking nightmare since our mage kept disconnecting. So it was me and a shaman on the bottom to kill the spiderlings and I was OOM in like 5 seconds I swear. Rawr!

So we moved along through Firelands and people picked up transmog gear and other gear. And I got my heroic shoulders off Domo. So I have heroic boomkin shoulders! Woo!

By the time we finished raid, we were all really tired. So 3 of us finished up the guild dungeon challenges for the week and got us to level 11. Tonight, I'm going to play my warrior. Who I've neglected horribly for the past few weeks. This weekend was another weekend of 'only being around for raids' since I had errands to run all day on Saturday and then on Sunday the husband and I drove to my mom's new house and helped paint the kitchen and living room. (Which is like half the freaking house.) At this point, my hands hurt so bad from holding the paint brush I'm amazed I can type and hold a mouse!

And I'd like to take this opportunity to tell my one of my best friend's congratulations on his normal Madness kill! Yay!!!! :D

Silly-ness and Fun

2012-02-29T22:54:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it feels like I have a dark rain cloud over my head. And that no matter what I do, I'm a whining complaining little bitch that no one listens to. However, I can be fun and silly a good portion of the time. (At least I can when I'm not stressed out about work!)

So, fun and silly things that have happened recently...

This last Saturday, we were all gathering up for our weekly raid. And us druids (there are 3 of us) discovered we were all in Tauren Town and started our usual dance party!

The bear in the left is my fellow healing druid, the bear on the right is our druid tank and I'm the bear in the middle, though my name is not the one that I'm dancing under. There is another bear standing right there, butt facing the camera.

So, we start to giggle over vent (we are all women) and soon, people are flipping over to their druid alts to come conga line with us.

By the end, we had quite the little line going. And I was giggling so hard that I thought I was gonna have to leave the room.

So, that's what we had at the end. It was pretty funny. People were flying in just to look. Good times.

Then, last night, we went out to dinner with our best friends. It was decided that we'd go and try a bear run in ZA when we all got home. We did, and we got a bear with like 10 minutes to spare. So we went back in again tonight. After the run, I teleport back to Org and while talking to them in Vent, I start running in circles. And that's when I realize that my little moonkin hatchling looks like she's confused and wanting to get out of the circle that I'm making...

So, this is what I do when I'm bored. I run circles around my pets to torment them. I also fly loops around Org. And see how many things I can fit under as a bird.

Anyway. Those are good things. And these are reasons I love this game.

BEAR DANCING FTW!!!

Witty Title Here

2012-02-27T09:04:00.000-08:00

This is mostly just an update on how things are going in my WoW life. So, be warned.

On Friday, we had our usual "Farming" guild meeting. Except that I had farmed up a f-ton of herbs over the past week and filled up our potions and flasks. Plus, the week before, we'd farmed up a ton of fishies. So, we farmed exp for the guild by chain running heroics. So, we got into Vent and chatted while running the HoT dungeons over and over. My little mage now only has to get rid of all her spirit pieces. (They were so so so much better than what I had, I took them!)

Then, I spent Saturday at a real life event that kept me out of the house until around 5pm Pacific Time. Our raid is at 6pm, so I logged on and got ready for raid. We ended up taking two hours of shots at Heroic Morchok. We were 3 healing me with me on one side with our pally tank (aka husband), our shadow priest, our rogue and our warlock. It was difficult but I really feel like we can do this. I think we got some bad RNG sometimes but overall, I think if we just get things under control, we'll be okay.

After 2 hours, we flipped it back to normal (as we did want to do a full clear) and proceeded to one shot all the bosses. I want to say that the only deaths we had were on Ultraxion. Pretty proud of us there. We finished up DS early (even when with 2 hours of wipes we had) and grabbed a couple people and headed to ICC 10 man. (I got to take my mage!) And went through there on Heroic, getting a couple of the acheesements too. We started with the Frost Wing and then ended with the Frost Wing, since 2 or 3 of us were falling asleep.

Then it was Sunday. Husband and I woke up, got some breakfast and logged on, only to get asked if we wanted to go do Northrend Heroic dungeons for guild achievements. So, we headed to ToC and worked our way around. We managed to do almost all the achievements (except for the achievements were it's "Do X or do Y but not both"). And I got my red proto drake. (I was 3 achievements away.)

I ended up having to go lay down with a headache before raid but when it was raid time, we started out trying to do some of the achievements. We almost had the Beth one but we killed one of the drones on the bottom on accident. Then we went and tried to kill Shannox on Heroic, that didn't work so we flipped it back to normal, and moved on to Lord Rhyolith. We killed him on Heroic and moved onto Bird lady. We didn't get any achievements or Heroics from her or Baleroc (but other's got 'Share the Pain', I think?) But then we downed Staghelm on Heroic. Then it was off to Rag and we downed him in a couple shots. And, husband and I got our Avengers of Hyjal. (Which puts me 1 shy of the Exalted title.)

Anyway. That was my weekend. I don't feel like I got a lot of WoW time, since I was really busy outside of the game. But it was so much fun to do all that. And the best part? The guild got level 10 yesterday! Gonna see if I can round up people to do the BC dungeons tonight. Those level the guild nicely too.

Also, I am doing this for a guildie, and I figure I'll ask you guys too. I live very close to an AM/PM. If you want the WoW cups, please let me know and we'll work out a way to get them to you!

Break ups and Aftermath

2012-02-25T06:12:00.000-08:00

Leaving a guild is a lot like a break up or divorce.

If you've been in a guild for any length of time, you know that being in a guild is a lot like being in a relationship. There is give and there is take. Both you and the guild have common goals and dreams. You spend your time (generally a lot of time) with the guild, laughing, playing, talking. You generally grow together.

However, sometimes there comes a time when something changes so drastically that the relationship can not continue and something has to give. Sometimes this is a slow lack of interest on your part, and you end up quitting WoW completely. Other times this is a violent burst of disagreement, and you find yourself /gquit-ting or being kicked out of the guild.

I don't have a lot of experience being kicked from my guild, but as I watch myself and a lot of others go through a /gquit-ing experience, I feel I need to write about it.

In my case, my deteriorating attitude and the way this made people feel in raids, caused a tense situation in my guild. And it became clear to me that as much as I loved the majority of my guild, if I wanted to continue to play and allow them to find their own way, I would need to leave. However, for me, I didn't just want to leave the guild. Because I was sure I had a reputation, I had to leave the server. I didn't want to see or hear from anyone who might have seen me acting like a complete ass. (The first couple of times I saw my best friends, both of whom are officers in my old guild, I was nervous and uncomfortable. Because I was ashamed of how they saw me act.)

I joined my new guild, made friends, "moved on". But, as with all of my romantic breakups, I find myself looking back at my old guild, wondering what they're doing and if they miss me. I wonder what we'd be doing if I was still there. And I find myself longing to land in Tauren Town (aka Valley of Wisdom) and see my favorite little goblin shaman standing there, ready for a hug. It's familiar and it was home for many many years.

I'm very happy where I am. I get greeted when I log on, I'm still 'the new druid' and thus still a novelty. There's no baggage between me and my new guildmates. There's just the love of a game.

I don't want to transfer back to my old guild. The reasons I left are still there and aren't going to go away. My real life friends, I still see on Saturdays and random nights through the week. I still whisper them when something cool happens in WoW, and we rejoice in our awesomeness.

However, the nostalgia gets to me every now and then. And honestly, as with other romantic breakups, when I see them moving on, it's bittersweet. I'm happy that they have found renewed joy and motivation in the game, I'm just sad that I'm not there to share it.

On fuzzy animals or alts.

2012-02-24T10:11:00.000-08:00

I have been dreadfully neglecting my 2012 in 2012 progression. I have this thought in my head that 'I'm really far along, I can pick it up whenever'. Which is the first failure. Then, when I start working on an alt, I end up getting distracted by something and end up logging back onto either my druid or my mage to make a new transmog outfit. (Which, btw, I got my fire crown for my mage last night!) That is the second failure. And finally, I will set myself a 'goal' that I don't need to really meet and then bust my ass for 3 days to do it. This is the third failure.

However, I do have some questions for readers. Since bringing my mage over to Blade's Edge, I have had the opportunity to run her through heroics and pick up gear. I'm apparently 1 point away from running LFR (which is something people keep pointing out) but 3 of my pieces are spirit pieces (I've reforged them to hit and I had 318 greens in those spots before) and 2 are blues. I want to improve my mage-ry but I'm pretty mage stupid these days (despite playing a mage as my main for most of 2 expansions). Anna is a fire mage now (she's always been frost before) and I need to L2FireMage.

So, if someone could give me some good mage resources (that aren't elitist jerks) that would be great.

I'm working on getting exalted with Therazane on her currently. I hadn't even finished the zone before I moved her over here. And I haven't done her dailies this week because I've been so busy farming herbs. (3 days of herb farming! Woot!) I'll get them done tonight and see if I can get a dungeon run on her too.

I also need to update my blog. And separate things into old server and new server. Maybe I'll do that today. (Work is practically dead today so I'm taking it easy.) I also have a transmog set to post for my mage. But I need to get more of the items before I feel I can post it. So I'll work on that this weekend!!

Yay! Friday! Freaking finally! It's weeks like this that I wish I could drink.

A Temporary Tauren Druid Transmog ...

2012-02-22T22:50:00.000-08:00

I have been working on a good transmog set for my druid ever since I got my priest all completed. I'm not done (yet) with the set I'm using (I'm missing the shoulders). But this is what I've got so far.

Here we have Karegina modeling the very latest in Moonglade fashion. As you can see, the green of the outfit sets off her reddish brown fur very nicely.

Her hat is the Guise of the Tidal Lurker. It drops off High Warlord Naj'entus in Black Temple (AKA the first boss). I picked it up a long time ago before transmog was even talked about.

Her current shoulders are Spaulders of Eternity. They come from the Minor Cache of the Aspects at the end of Heroic Well of Eternity. The shoulders I will eventually replace those with are the Veil of Turning Leaves off High Nethermancer Zerevor in Black Temple (part of the Illidari Council).

The cloak is the Mok'Nathal Wildercloak. It's from regular Hellfire Ramparts, in the chest that spawns when you kill Nazan and Vazruden.

The chest is a Gypsy Tunic. I found it on the AH for like 2 gold. Thanks AH!! It also drops off low level rares and mid-teens mobs.

The gloves are Shardtooth Gloves, which are from a quest in Winterspring. You actually don't have to start the zone, you can go straight to the camp with this questline! (It's the quest line for the bears at the 'BBQ pit'.)

The belt is the Fireplume Girdle. You buy this from the Molten Front vendors. You have to have the blacksmith, Damek Bloombeard, unlocked.

The kilt is the Giant-Friend Kilt. It's a rep item you buy from Sons of Hodir (from Wrath). (It's less then 40 gold.)

Then, I went out to find a green off-hand and mace to match. And this is what I came up with!

Weapon: Main Hand Mace: Queen's Insignia. Got it off the AH for like 4 gold. It drops off high 60's and elite 70's mobs (mostly in dungeons/raids from what I see).

Offhand: Gaea's Scepter Also got this form the AH for about 5 gold. You can farm it off low 50's mobs in Winterspring, Silithius and Un'goro Crater.

And eventually, what this will look like with the correct shoulders:

Sexy isn't she? Moooooooo.

Karegina, Destroyer's End

2012-02-20T00:38:00.000-08:00

I went into my WoW weekend feeling excited and hopeful. Last week, we had come so close to downing Deathwing, I knew that we could do it ... we just had to get it all lined up right and then BAM! Acheivements.

So, Saturday night, we gather together and start the raid. We breeze through the first couple bosses, try for an achievement here and there, and stopped at Madness. We did throw a couple (4-6 attempts) at Madness but it was really late (almost midnight server time, which is also Pacific time) so the East Coasters really had to get to sleep.

During raid that night, the loot council smiled upon me and I was gifted with my 4 piece tier 13 bonus. So I used my valor points and bought my chest piece. So I went to bed really late and really happy! :)

Sunday, I got up and did some fishing. Got fishy feast made up and then went off to my old server and transferred over my mage. I had thought I would transfer over my priest, however, I neeed my herbalist/alchemist. So over she came. I set her to do some quests so she could unlock Twilight Highlands (so she could farm Twilight Jasmine) and managed to push the guild just over the line to level 9! I also respecced her from transmutation master to elixir master! Yay!

Then it was time for raid. So into Dragon Soul we go. And either 3 or 4 attempts on Deathwing later, we downed him! My first time and a new title.

On WoW Couples

2012-02-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

Hi, I'm Karegina and I have a confession. I am half of a ... WoW couple.

It didn't used to be like this. In the beginning, I played by myself. My husband hated WoW and tolerated the hours I would dedicate to this game. At the time, I didn't raid. I leveled alt, after alt, after alt. None of them were geared well, nor even in gear that matched. (My Alliance druid had int/spirit gear as well as str/stam gear AND agil/stam gear.) However, I was having a good time and really, isn't that what matters?

Then, about 2 years (or so) after I started playing, my husband asked me if I would like it if he would start playing. I squeed and jumped around and we installed the discs on his computer (both Vanilla and BC) and he rolled a gnome warrior. By now, I was raiding a little in Kara as my human mage. So, I'd level with him for a while and then flip over for raid. This went on for a couple months but then a drama bomb was dropped in our guild and our RL best friends started to play. So, off we went to "my" Horde server and we rerolled Horde.

At first, there was only 5 of us. All real life friends, all within about 10 minutes of each other. We leveled to 70 and started to raid. It was nice because in our group, we had 2 tanks and 2 healers. Who need anyone else?? As time went on, we ended up leaving our 'starter group' and branching out into different guilds. However, by the end of BC, we were all back together again in 1 guild.

Throughout Wrath, we raided as a group. By now, we had us 5, plus a extra dps that we knew from a MUD, my best friend's sister, another dps/tank that we knew from the same MUD and a handful of other people we also knew from outside the game. We had our own guild, so we could run how we liked, when we liked. It was very nice for us.

However, everyone had little quirks. I always wanted to run my first new dungeon with my RL friends first. Husband didn't care what happened with who as long as he got to go. Our best friends didn't have quirks that I can remember but my memory is fuzzy.

During ICC, I was facing really bad burn out. I didn't want to raid anymore. So I stepped back from raiding and just took a break. However, I didn't know that husband was also facing burnout and that he was relying on me to help him out while he was running the 25 man raids. One night, someone made an offhand comment that made my usually placid and calm husband fly into a rage. He jumped up from his desk, screaming about raid and then stormed off into the living room. I was on a different server, facing burn out of my own, and did not react well to my husband suddenly screaming and thumping off. So I did something I shouldn't have. I logged into WoW and told the guild that they were assholes (or something) and that Husband didn't deserve this and some other things that I can't remember. Then, I logged off and went to find him.

Turns out he'd punched a wall in his frustration and had fractured his hand. So, off we went to Urgent Care and we had a long talk. He admitted he had been relying on me too much and that it never should have gotten this far. We were there for hours (typical for ER/Urgent Care situations) so we were able to hash everything out. I came back to raiding, albeit reluctantly, but we finished up ICC and Wrath.

We aren't a couple that needs to spend 24/7 in game together. After that night, we both realized that we were letting the game get to us a little too much. This isn't to say we stopped letting the game get to us but we knew that we could talk about it before it got to be too much.

During the whole guild transfer situation, we had hours and hours of discussion. Would we stay together and try to raid together? Would we transfer off alone? Should we even keep playing? And the big question, will anyone even take the two of us together? We had been so spoiled with our own guild where we were both officers and he was the raid leader and I was one of 2 and a half healers.

Neither of us wanted any of the prospective guilds we thought about to think that they were getting one good player and one player that couldn't find their ass with both hands. And the thought that really burned me up was that I would automatically be assumed to be the bad player. I like to think I'm a good player. I read up on my class and chosen role. I bring my own consumables and water. I have a leg up on people because I have a walking, talking raid directory sitting within 3 feet of me. So, I get my own research PLUS the research he does.

The guild we landed in has other WoW couples. And I love it. The guild is serious about progression but not to the extent of not being fun. I love seeing our bear druid and knowing that soon her hubby will log on. I love that our guild has learned that 9 times out of 10, if one of us logs on, the other isn't far behind.

And honestly, I love that my husband can still go do PVP and arenas here. All those things he did without me, he can still do them now! I spend hours prospecting ore, crafting rings/necklaces and then disenchanting them. We do our dailies together, and while the last few days have been different, we generally go to bed at the same time. (I seem to have a little stomach flu or food poisoning.)

I think that anyone would be lucky to have a couple like us. Even if I am a little hard to handle sometimes!

It's raining Sixes!!

2012-02-15T21:22:00.000-08:00

So, I have been tagged (!!!) to do my first meme. (Which by the way, I pronounce as Me-Me, much to my husband's delight. He then makes fun of me for hours.)

Gnomeaggeon started a screenshot thing and it's been going like gangbusters today! I was crossing my toes and fingers to get tagged myself. And then the Earthmother answered my prayers by sending Effy of Effraeti's RP to tag me in! Yay!!

Rules are simple!

Go into your image folder.
Open the sixth sub-folder and choose the sixth image.
Publish the image! (And a few words wouldn’t hurt, though I dare say I couldn’t stop a blogger from adding a few words of their own.)
Challenge six new bloggers.
Link to them.

So, since my screenshots are not in any order at all (except the order that Blizzard put them in when I take them), I just spent an hour or so slamming them into really loose categories.

And this is what I came up with.

This is my darling Karegina, waiting for raid to start just outside the portal for Dragon Soul. I love trying to land on branches and perching there like a vulture. Once, I did a mass summon and summoned my entire raid into the branch!! Some people fell out of the tree and cussed at me, but it was soooo worth it!

As a bonus, I went into my RL images directory and pulled up my 6th folder with my 6th picture and came up with this:

This is the side of my house. We had to paint it this summer (it went from white with dark red trim to this green with white trim) and I was taking pictures of the finished product. I painted that door and the trim. That's pretty much all I did. I made the husband do the dirty work (with my step-dwarf).

Now, for tagging people. Let's see here.

Mia from Chronicles of Mia
Glow from Glow's Branches
Tzufit from Tree Heals Go Woosh
Akaeka from red cow rise
Fannon from dwarven battle medic
Katarnas from Resto is Epic

So, there! Now my cat is glaring at me so I think it's bed time!!

Transmog: The Undead Rogue Edition

2012-02-15T09:08:00.000-08:00

Back before a dragon tied to destroy the world, back before the Lich King was raging, we spent our time in OUTER SPACE!! And during this time, I met someone who became really near to my heart. I met her through one of my best friends. He had a tendency to pick up random people (usually female) and introduce them to our circle of friends. Out of all of them, I think this particular person has taken up more of my thoughts then any of the rest of them. And she never even raided!!

She is an undead rogue and I love her. When we server transferred, I mentioned her a few times (as my one regret was that I was leaving her). Anyway, enough sappy stuff (Valentine's day WAS yesterday!!). What this post is about is the transmog outfit she asked me to put together for her.

She asked for a couple things. Something that looked 'rogue-ish' and not too 'cute', as she is undead and you can see her elbows and knees. I came up with the above outfit.

The outfit I set out to make was completely different then this one. However, when I found the helm, I built this set around that. So, let's get down to the names and places these are from, shall we?

The head is the Helm of Assassination. Drops off Harbinger Skyriss in the Arcatraz.

The shoulders are Nightshade Spaulders. They're a BOE green that you an get off any mid to high 50's mob!

The cloak is Redoubt Cloak.  You have to do a tribute run in Dire Maul to get it!

The chest is the Eviscerator's Chestguard.  It's a LW-ing BOE blue from Wrath of the Lich King.

The bracers are the Plague-Infected Bracers. This are from the last boss in Heroic Culling.

The hands are Iceborne Gloves.  It's a LW-ing BOE green from Wrath.

The belt is the Death-Warmed Belt.  It's a LW-ing BOE purple from Wrath. (I chose this because there was a skull on it!!)

The pants are Dark Leather Pants. Low level LW-ing BOE green. You will probably find this on the AH for
cheap.

The boots are Riplash Boots. This is a low Wrath levels (68-72) BOE green. Drops off a lot of mobs mostly in Dragonblight, Howling Fjord and Boring Tundra!

The weapons are something extra that I thought looked cool. She has 2 daggers, a main hand and an offhand. As a result, you get these ones! (These are from the first step in the legendary quest line.)

Main Hand - Jaded Crystal Dagger  Drops of Selin Fireheart in Herioc Magisters Terrace!

Off Hand - Searing Sunblade You buy it from G'eras in Shattrath!

I don't have actual pictures of her in this outfit, but I did ask her if I could share this with people and she said yes! And that's today's Transmog post!

Updates and What not

2012-02-14T20:55:00.000-08:00

So, somehow, I got really busy. I've been unable to concentrate on things that aren't work or family.

I have a couple transmog outfits I need to post. One for an undead rogue and one for a tauren druid. I don't have all the pieces for the druid one but it's still really pretty!!

In real life, my job has picked up so much that I now have no 'down' time, plus my boss hired me an assistant. This is wearing on me because my job is really stressful in the slow times, and now that we're so busy I can't remember anything. I come home and just sit here, watching old sitcoms and doing things for the husband in WoW. (Yesterday I spent 3-4 hours prospecting a ton of ore, then cutting gems and creating green and blue quality rings and necklaces that I then disenchanted and then mailed to the husband's bank alt so he could sell them on the AH.)

Also, this past weekend, we (my parents, grandmother and husband) drove to Seattle (about a 3.5-4.5 hour drive) for a birthday party. So not much WoW time. However, I love PCC (which is a grocery store up there). They have gluten free cupcakes!!!

I did get to raid when I got home on Sunday evening. We did some good attempts at Madness and probably would have downed it but someone had to go.

And tonight, I played my baby warrior while listening to Friends. I know that this is very exciting but I'm so brain dead that I'm lucky I can even play at all. I'm having job related nightmares!! However, my warrior is now level 42! She's decked out in plate now! PLATE!!

So, I'm 1. not dead and 2. still playing. And now, I'm going to crawl into my bed and pass out. And it's not even 9pm here!!

The First Raid (tm)

2012-02-05T11:43:00.000-08:00

Last night was husband's and my first raid with our new guild. It went really well. However, I kept asking husband if he wanted me to battle ress someone and he kept telling that he's not raid leader. Took me a couple of those before I stopped asking. Old habits and all. We got a couple achievements on the first two bosses. (Don't Stand So Close to Me and Taste the Rainbow). 3 of us got Taste the Rainbow since we already had the 'hard' one (IE Yellow/Purple). It was awesome.

The raid leader/guild leader kept swapping people and out for each fight depending on who needed what of that boss. I think the only people who didn't get sat was myself and husband. It was alot of fun. We tried for a couple more achievements but if we didn't get them within 2-4 shots, we moved on. We made it through Spine and it was fun. Spine was stressful for me since I had only seen it once but not downed it (no, not even on LFR). But we one shot it and moved onto Madness. Which is a messed up fight so far. I'll get more exposure to it and figure it out though!!

I went in there with 4 piece tier 12, and was given my tier gloves and tier leggings. So now I'm 2 piece tier 13 and 2 piece tier 12. Woot! After raid, the guild leader had his officers make husband and I the crafted bracers (which are pretty much BIS for both of us I think). So yay!

Honestly, I love my purples and I love upgrades but it was so nice to see new fights. Everyone was nice and business-like but also silly too. But not to the distraction of the raid. It was interesting to me. I haven't raided as 'just a healer' or 'just a tank' since Kara days. Rather refreshing.

I also found an Alliance lantern (the Lunar Lantern) on the neutral AH for 4000 gold bid, 5500 buyout. I threw a bid on there and 2 days later it arrived in my mail box. Yay! Pretty happy about that! I do miss my horde of miners, herbalists, skinners and all the crafters I had painstakenly leveled up. (My warrior is a miner/skinner but I'm probably going to drop the skinning for something else. Maybe inscription!!)

For my 2012 in 2012, since I moved to a new server, I have the following things that I'm doing.

I have a new undead hunter (level 11), a new blood elf warrior (level 24), and a orc mage (level 8). I actually have a ton of level 1's around too but I'm not going to count them. My Alliance shaman got to level 63 recently. So, that puts my total up to 1861 levels. And since I'm 'rerolling' on a new server, I've remade a hunter and warrior. I also have a goblin warlock but I've not started leveling her yet. This will get me 3 of the my last classes for my 10 to 85. (My death knight is 1 level away, I'm going to go back to my old server and get her that last level.)

And lastly, @SerenitySaz has put together a Twitter based RealId using old raid running forum for people. And @vitaemachina has put up a public Mumble server for people to use while running things. I haven't signed up yet myself (because I'm amazingly shy about things like this) but it's an interesting concept! Do it!!

Oh. Damnit, I just remembered. I am working on a rogue transmog set for my old rogue guildie that I have mentioned before. She's undead and I've got the basics together. I just need to crank it out!!!

Starting Over

2012-02-02T10:22:00.000-08:00

I've been on Blade's Edge for a couple days now. I do like it. People are friendly, my guild seems nice (if a little quiet on weekdays) and I'm enjoying starting over.

I'm remaking my alts. So far I have Roseria (an undead hunter), Annanda (an orc mage), and a couple other level 1 alts that I need to weed out. I love making alts. And I love to level alts. I'm going to make a blood elf warrior so I can see the starting zone there again. I really haven't played it since BC. It will be a nice change of pace for me.

In two days, husband and I capped our guild rep for the week. It took us 50 dailies, 2 Elders and 2 dungeon runs. (I was actually done before the dungeon runs, I think.) However, husband has to build up a ret set for his pally. (He had been healing with our old guild.)

I'm not good with change. I'm really excited to be here and to move forward but I miss my friends. I miss my bestie. I still see her out of game but I miss seeing her name on my RealId and having the option to send her a message when I want. I suppose I could text her but that's just not the same. I've relied on this game to interact with people for so long, I don't know how to do it out of game.

My last post, I cried while writing. I tried to read it to my husband (the man who doesn't read my blog) but I kept choking up and sobbing. I finally made it through the post but he had to come stand behind me, with his hand on my shoulder as I cried. (I don't accept traditional comfort when I'm crying. I don't want to be held, I don't want someone to talk to me. I want to be left alone where I can cry/grieve in peace.)

So. Now I'm in a new place, with new people. I'm hopeful and I'm generally happy. I miss people but that is normal. There will be new people. I need to remind myself that I don't have a set number of people I can be friends with. I can be friends with more. It's not like Blizz's ignore list. I can befriend more then 50 people!

I spent some time reading Cynwise's lastest post. And I loved it. This is exactly it. Cynwise GETS it. And he has the eloquence to get it through to other people.

Characters weigh on my mind. Leveling characters, especially, but character in general. They take up mental space. They have ... presence, even when they're not doing things. I like having them around, I like having them available, I like trying out new things, but ...
Digital things can take up space.

That's it. Right there. My brain is filled with my characters. Each of them are unique and I feel different when I play them. My druid is the most comfortable but if I'm feeling sassy, I log my priest on. Who I'm playing says a lot about my mental space. It is like a canary in a mine. You can look at it and be 'ah, she's feeling alone or sad or anxious or happy or sexy'. I love that.

And now I get to start it over and find out what my new characters will bring to me. What will my undead hunter be like? My orc mage? That baby blood elf warrior? Who will be my favorite? And do I really need to decide now?

The End is Also the Beginning

2012-01-30T21:29:00.000-08:00

Six and a half years ago, I installed a video game. I walked into it with no idea what to expect, with only a single friend (that I knew from a forum) to guide me through it. That was a beginning.

Tonight, I sit here, looking at my monitor, watching the accumulated horde of crap that I have saved since Vanilla sell on the Auction House. I flip between my two bank toons and my main, then my main alt. Each flip gives me more gold and each minute brings me closer to the time I will log off. I've hunted down my heirloom pieces, I've gathered mats for bags. I wrote the single in game mail that I will send to the single person who this will probably surprise. This is an ending.

Tomorrow, I transfer my main from Madoran to Blade's Edge.

I've left a lot of servers over the years. My first Alliance server, where my friends had pretty much all stopped playing or transfered off. My first Horde server, where my guild all took the free realm transfer (and thus brought me to Madoran). My second Alliance server, where the guild drama drove my husband and myself back to Madoran. But, as you can see, it was to Madoran that we came and to Madoran that we built ourselves a home.

I have history here. And while it wasn't always good, it was my history. I learned to play here. Karegina was raised here (however, she was born on Aggramar) and my husband's first Horde toons were created here.

Over the evening, both my husband and I have started typing things into guild chat. But neither of us can tell the remaining guild that we're leaving. The words just won't come. I don't know what I would say to these people. "So long and thanks for all the fish"? And we're not completely leaving, we're only taking our mains out. However, since those are our babies, we are taking our hearts away.

Tomorrow, I will log on my bank alts, transfer what gold I have left to my druid and then server transfer her away. And it will be a beginning.

Elders and Leveling

2012-01-30T09:56:00.000-08:00

Today, the husband and I are working on getting our Elders on two of our other characters. While I'm not 100% sure of his motivation, my motivation is the lantern pet for my main. We just finished up Kalimdor and the related Cata/dungeon elders, so we started working on Eastern Kingdom. We started in Booty Bay and headed north.

Now, despite my 'Xtreme Leveling', I don't do a lot of leveling via RDF. However, I did a lot of dungeon running back in the day when you had to find a group on your server and walk there. (Because no one had mounts!) So, when I got to the Sunken Temple elder, boy was I surprised!! The instance portal is like RIGHT THERE! And there is no 'Which way do we go first'!! It's just there! I was very surprised with those changes.

In other news, I still have some sort of plague. It hasn't spread to the husband (yet) but it totally snuck up on me! One of the things it's done is turned my sense of direction off. I'm totally running into walls, mountains and shit. More then usual!

Also, in guild searching news, it appears that the husband and I have found a new home. We've been speaking to a specific guild since Friday and I'm very excited about it. He seems to be excited too, but you never can tell with husband. We're making plans to take our heirlooms when we transfer so we can level up new characters. We don't have the money to transfer all our toons. (That's $250 just for my 85s/almost 85s!) I'll probably transfer my priest in a few months. She has some things on her that I don't want to give up!

Seeing people leaving and going about their business else where is hard. Even knowing that I'm doing the same is hard. I'm not good at saying good bye to things. However, I am not completely leaving. Madoran has been my home for over 5 years now. However, there is always RealId. So at least I can keep in touch with my friends that way! Of course, those people who don't use it, well that will be sad. I'll miss my little rogue friend. She is amazing and I love her. Been playing with her for years now!

While I was writing this post, my shaman got her Elders title. Only 6 more world events to go until she gets her drake. Hehehe! (This will never happen, I hate Children's Week too much!!)

I've been trying to find an ending for this post for two days. So I'll just leave it with this: tomorrow I'll have an update on my 2012 in 2012. With one thing and another, I haven't been able to go look at all my characters, nor add my new characters to my list. (This is because of our server search, we have a couple different toons on a few other servers now.) So look for that!

And now what?

2012-01-27T15:25:00.000-08:00

I am home sick today. I came home from work yesterday around 1ish, went to the doctor and found out that 1. my MRI was normal so they don't know what's causing my headaches and 2. I do not have strep throat. And with that pronouncement, my sore throat went lower and turned into a HORRIBLE cough that causes me to do things I am not comfortable talking about. However, I do sound like a diesel truck revving up. So maybe this will attract some country boys? (Just an option if husband ever leaves!!)

And so, today I got up around 10am, grabbed a bowl of peaches and some water and sat down at my computer to get my rogue those goddamn daggers. My guildmate (who is about the sweetest girl ever) linked me to this video to get through the city. She also wrote up a bit huge long list for us to get through it with. With a second by second guide.

And with that guide, it took me .... 3 hours to get to that dickface Creed. Where I proceeded to spend over 2 hours more dying to him before I even got him down 10%. However, I can stealth my way through Gilneas like a freaking PRO bitches. I don't even have to pause half the time. I just ~~fly~~ stealth right through there! BAM!

I have got dual spec and made it a sub spec to see if that helps. Honestly, I think I just need to get her some better gear before I try this. Either that or have someone standing outside who can buff me as needed.

And also, in a different vein, I am looking for a new guild. I believe my husband will be coming with me, but he's not really doing a lot right now to show that. However, it is hard to find a guild that fits what I want. I don't want 25's and I want to stay Horde. So, yeah. wish me luck. I do have a couple feelers out but I don't know what husband thinks. I'm half afraid he's just going to quit WoW completely. And I'm not ready for that yet!!

Shared Topic Jan 23rd - 29th Expressing your Geekery!

2012-01-25T05:03:00.000-08:00

How do you express your geekery? Do you own obvious paraphernalia like a Horde-symbol bumper sticker, in-joke tshirts like the dps/ups pun, or less obviously related items like a gift from a guildie? Rather than physical indicators, do you mix nerd lingo into your everyday speech or talk/post about geekdom in non-nerd spaces? How do you advertise your nerd tendencies? Does it help you to attract new nerd friends?

Today's Shared Topic comes from Akabeko, author of red cow rise. And this is right up my ally.

I have a Horde symbol on the back of my mini van. I've had it for years now and I love it. I don't have a good picture here with me, but here's a picture of it from this summer. (I took a picture of my garage and it happened to be in the background).

Just recently, I got a ring to express my resto druid-ness. I really like it and only take it off to sleep/shower. It's basically a replacement for the wedding ring that I lost 4 years ago. (Give or take a year.)

I also have the epic druid shirt from J!nx as well as a shirt that says "I logged out for this?". I have purchased a Horde hat for my husband as well as a couple shirts. (I can't link all the ones he has, he's got one from Maintankadin, one from J!nx, one from Blizzcon, etc.) I'm almost always 'representing' in one way or another!

As far as nerd lingo, my group of friends are always throwing WoW terms around, mostly because we all either played or currently play the game. (The exception to that is my husband's coworker, his wife and our other friend's girlfriend.)

I have gotten my mother to start saying "L2Blah". My grandmother knows what epic is.

As far as attracting new people, I live and work in a small town. It is hard to get to know anyone here since there is nothing really that happens after hours and I don't like to go to the bars. I have gotten a few people to shout at me "For the Horde" or "F the Horde". It's pretty exciting.

I'd like to get a sticker for my car that says "My other mount is a windrinder" or something. I'm just like that. I wear my faction pride all over myself. Lok'tar Ogar!

What's up doc?

2012-01-24T10:22:00.000-08:00

Monica: Pheebs, you remember how we talked about saying things quietly to yourself first?
Phoebe: Yes, but there isn't always time!

That's from a Friend's episode from the first season. And it's pretty much what happens to me often. So, this is going to be hard to write. However, I want to give an update on my 2012 in 2012. But I don't want to just say "I leveled X alt for Y levels" since that doesn't really explain a lot. So, let's see how I do here.

My husband says that I've been slowly heading toward rock bottom for a couple of months now. My bipolar disorder, which despite a few flare ups when my medications stopped working properly, has been almost completely 'under control' for the last 2 or 3 years. However, this summer, one of my medications started giving me a side effect that I could not just over look. So, the doctor weened me off it and put me on lithium.

At first I seemed to be doing okay, but then, in November, I snapped. I can't remember what happened or anything but I know I was seriously depressed and the doctor's assistant (the doctor was on vacation) raised my dosage of all my medications to try and make me stable. Shortly after, I got a headache. And I am pretty sure I've mentioned that I still have this headache. (On the 30th, it will be 2 months of this headache.)

Anyway, my doctor was unwilling to try and adjust my medication while I had a headache. So (as my husband says) I've not been medicated properly since about August. And that is affecting my attitude in a very negative way.

Needless to say I have not (and am not) a pleasant person to be around. And I get wrapped up in my own head and forget that there are other people around me.

So, that brings us to now. Some stuff went down this past Friday (as Twitter knows) and as a result, I have been either unable or unwilling (depends on the way my mood flows at that moment) to spend time on my 'home' server. So, I've been spending my time on my alts that I have scattered through the different servers.

My draenei shaman that I picked up the last time I was hurting got from level 53 to level 60 with minimal playing time. I also made a tauren priest on a completely new server to level with the husband. We're going to see how long it takes us to get to 85 without heirlooms or anything. My character made 20 gold by signing a guild charter, so I have a nice little 'nest egg' at the moment. This priest just reached level 12 and we're currently debating where to go. I'd like to go to Silverpine because you can totally reach exalted with Undercity that way.

Leveling by yourself on a server where you know no one is lonely. RealId can only go so far and honestly, since I can't do any outreach on my own, I don't get anyone talking to me.

“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” - Isaac Asimov

This quote, to me, is so true. I can't think through things until I write them down. So, I've been doing a lot of writing over the past few days. Most of it in my private journal, most of it in emails to friends who are completely unrelated to this situation.

I have written and deleted this last paragraph about 10 times. I can't find a way to wrap this up that won't cause problems down the line for others. So instead, I'll leave you with part of the refrain from Stroke 9's Washin' + Wondering song.

These are my hands, these are my faults
These are my plans
These are my nasty little thoughts
I wrote 'em down for you to contemplate
At a later date

Sexy Plate Pirate Outfit - by my beloved husband

2012-01-22T11:15:00.000-08:00

My husband plays a blood elf female. In fact, all of his characters are females, with the exception of his druid, his death knight and his warlock. He says he'd much rather look at a pretty behind for the time that he's playing then anything else. So, when transmog came out, he started building a set for his paladin.

Note, none of these items are specific for paladins. They are all plate and are not Horde specific. Aka, you can slut up a warrior just as well!

The base for this set is the Bloodscale set from Outlands. He didn't keep good notes (as he didn't know I'd write a post about it) so all he can tell me is he farmed these items up off the AH and out of Blood Furnace (both normal and heroic).

For the legs, you will want the Bloodscale Legguards.
For the boots, you will want Bloodscale Sabatons.
For the chest, you will want Bloodscale Breastplate.
For the hands, you will want Bloodscale Gauntlets.

Now, for the other pieces ...

The shoulders are the Pauldrons of Swift Retribution. They drop off Nexus-Prince Shaffar in Heroic Mana Tombs. He got them the first try. He says they have a 18% drop rate.

The belt (aka 'belly chain') is the Belt of the Fallen Emperor. This drops in AQ40 from Emperor Vek'nilash, aka one of the Twins. He also lucked out here and got it the first try.

The head piece (aka the eye patch) is the Crimson Beholder Eye. This is a drop off a rare called Collidus theWarp-Watcher in Shadowmoon Valley. This is a beholder type mob (go figure).

The shield is the Shield of the Wayward Footman. This is a random blue BOE. It drops off mid-60's mobs. J found it on the AH apparently. He tried to farm it from Old Hillsbrad Foothills (normal and heroic).

Now. You will note there isn't a picture of the back. This is because J believes that melee characters should not have a cloak, as it's just something someone can grab onto in the heat of battle.

For a weapon to go with this, you can use something like Bloodskull Destroyer or Syphon of the Nathrezim. Both of these are maces however, and he doesn't usually use them. And if you are a holy pally, get Tempest of Chaos. He can't use that since it's a 'main hand' weapon. One a 'one hand' weapon. (This is why there isn't a weapon transmog link for him. He didn't transmog it!)

And Cynwise, is this enough skin for you?

Finally ...

2012-01-17T09:42:00.000-08:00

This weekend was hard. Parts were good and parts were okay. Nothing was really bad but it was hard. Why? I didn't get enough sleep. Today, I'm at work, feeling like a zombie. Well, a cranky zombie who would like to gnaw on your head instead of talk to you. So, I guess that's a normal zombie.

Just a warning, there is a massive description of my weekend below. But the WoW part is at the end.

Friday night, I stayed up until late, 2 am, which never happens anymore. However, I got up at 6am to go to breakfast with my husband's godfather (whom he had never met). Then at 9am, I had a 12 step meeting (long story). Then I came home around 10:30am and made a Orange Cranberry Upsidedown Cake which is vegan and gluten free. (Mine wasn't vegan, I used butter. But whatever!) I left the house at about 11:30am for a party at my best friend from high school's. Then I came back home at 3pm only to find that the party I thought started at 4pm actually said 3pm on the invites so people were there and I WASN'T READY! /panic By 7:30pm I was exhausted and just ready to pass out. Everyone left around 8:30ish and I was in bed and asleep by 10:30pm.

Saturday, I slept in but felt groggy as hell and my head was pounding like someone was physically hitting me. I got up, started cleaning up the kitchen and got some laundry started. Then I farmed for pieces of my Red Riding Hood outfit on my priest, stopping only around 12:30pm to get dressed and ready so I could go to my in-law's and learn how to use my new phone. We ended up watching football and I laughed while my Giants kicked the asses of my in-law's & husband's Packers. Then we came home and my husband went to bed with a headache. Really? REALLY? There was no sympathy in our house that night. He went to bed early and I stayed up until 3am farming for my Red Riding Hood outfit.

Monday was a holiday for me, so I was going to sleep in. However, the goddamn cat woke me up when husband left at 7:30am. So I got up, ate breakfast, farmed some more, getting every piece but my belt and my shoulders, and got ready to go. At 10am, I was in town getting my nails done. At 11am, I was at the tire place getting the tires rotated. I also got the oil changed and was told that the plug in the oil thing is messed up. I also told a little later that one of our tires had a screw in it and we can't just repair it, we need a whole new tire. Argh.

Then I grabbed some lunch, dropped off a box of books at the used book store (got $50 in instore credit) and went grocery shopping. I was done by 2:40pm which was just in time for a doctor's appointment. Then, I was home by 3:30pm. Where I spent half a hour unloading the car and putting away half the groceries. Then I took off to pick up my best friend from work and feed the office cat. Got home again at about 5:30, found my last piece of transmog gear on the AH and started dinner.

So, you would think that I would want to go to bed after dinner, since I got little sleep for the last little while (except for Saturday night) but NO! I wrote the previous post and hopped into a dungeon with my guildies and we capped my valor points on my main. Then I switched toons to Lil Red Riding Hood. This was my first time really doing anything 'current' on her since Wrath. We did the 5 man Dragon Soul instances and I got some nice upgrades for her. I got a JP ring, and then a ton of quest rewards (a hat, a ring, a wand, a belt and an offhand that I'm only keeping for transmog purposes). It was so fun.

I had forgotten how to disc priest so End Time was messy and hectic and there were many deaths. People were butt pulling left and right (this includes my tank husband) and I had to figure out how to smite heal again. By the time we were at Hour of Twilight, I had gotten my rhythm down and was going at it. Plus the upgrades probably helped too. My ilevel is now 369 equipped!

So, I'm so happy that I got a chance to run those dungeons. It was awesome fun and I loved it. However, I didn't get to bed until 11pm and then the husband got me up at 6am to exercise so ugh. Was so worth it though. Love my disc priest!!

Asmini's Little Red Riding Hood Transmog

2012-01-16T19:54:00.000-08:00

So. Cymre posted a 'Fairy Tales' transmog series on her blog the other day. And my head instantly went 'BOING!' As all my friends know, I love (to an unholy degree) all fairy tales. There are some I don't like as much but over all given the choice between a normal book and a book about fairy tales, I will take the fairy tales. Same with movies, tv shows, etc. (I love me some Erstwhile!)

So, I looked over the offerings that she posted and started planning out my Lil Red Riding Hood outfit. Not a partial one like she posted, which I think was just cloak, hood, robe, boots, and bracers, but the whole thing.

This is what I came up with.

As you can see, I have the traditional hood and cloak, a beautiful sleeveless white robe, a pair of red shoulders to match the cloak, white bracers to match the robe, fingerless gloves and a belt that is NOT a WWE belt. Plus, I found a staff to use to walk along the path and a lantern to light my way through the dark woods. And, as you can see, I have the Big Bad Wolf with me too. (Well, maybe cute and cuddly wolf is better.) My transmog outfit isn't complete, I'm not happy with my belt but I will get a better one. For now, I'm just happy that it's not a WWE belt.

So, to do this you'll need the follow things:

1. The ability to run some BC dungeons and raids.
2. Someone with tailoring
3. The ability to not pull your hair out while running the needed dungeons over and over and OVER again while you wait for the drops to happen.
4. Either the ability to go do quests for 2 of the items or know where to find the drops.

This was really simple for me actually. I have 2 bank toons with banks full of low level crap that just begs to be used. So, let's start with the drops and craftables.

Back - There are 3 cloaks you can use for the red cloak. I used Vengeance Wrap, which is a BOE crafted one from tailoring. I spent probably 2 hours farming up 14 Primal Air for it. But soooo worth it. You can also get one off Prince Malchezaar in Karazhan called Ruby Drape of the Mysticant or the actual Red Riding Hood's Cloak which drops off The Big Bad Wolf during the Opera event. (I didn't get it off there on my 1 time through so I made it. Because I'm impatient!)

Head - Cowl of the Grand Engineer which drops off Void Reaver in Tempest Keep. Our first time in there looking for this and it dropped. But, I just want to say that if you are the only ranged and you're two manning it, be prepared to move a lot and/or get silenced often.

Shoulder - Consortium Mantle which is a BOE green that comes in a lot of different stats (ie of the Whale, etc). I farmed a number of places for one of these but managed to find one on the AH for 3 gold. Total steal!

Robe - Mooncloth Robe - This is a tailoring BOE. You get the pattern in Dire Maul. If you go in with a group, note that there is only 1 pattern on the NPC (according to Wowhead. I didn't go look, I made my best friend's husband make all my tailoring requirements on this, except the actual cloth).

Bracers - There are two bracers you can use, either Wraps of Purification off Hydross the Unstable in Serpentshrine Cavern or Bands of Indwelling off Maiden of Virtue in Karazhan. I actually got the Wraps off of Hydross.

Hands - These were tough. It was hard to find a decent looking glove that didn't cover up the bracers. However, the Shadowy Laced Handwraps off Baroness Anastari in Stratholme did the trick!

Belt - my desired belt is the Cincture of Will off Terestian Illhoof in Karazhan, but that sucker didn't drop it. So right now I am wearing my PVP belt, Bloodthirsty Embersilk Belt. Yes, the blue quality 'intro to PVP' belt.

Feet - I went a different way from Cymre here, I got the Red Woolen Boots made because the tips are white!

My companion pet is the Worg Pup that is a drop from Quartermaster Zigris in LBRS!

As for my weapon and off-hand, I got those through quests. Luckily, I was only sitting at 62 out of 86 quests in Hellfire so I was confident I could get my lantern! And of course, she hadn't done any of the old world quests so I was able to get that easily too!

Weapon - My priest has a 1 handed mace, so I used Chopped Off Ancient Limb, which is from one of the first quests you get in Azshara for the Horde. It shares a model with Giant Club which is a drop.

Off-Hand - Deep Core Lantern which is a quest reward from the poop quest in Hellfire Peninsula.

The one thing that was indispensable while doing this was the add-on called "MogIt". The husband installed it when he was looking for an outfit for his pally and he made me install it so I wouldn't keep asking him. Apparently I bother him. Go figure!!

So, thanks so much for the inspiration Cymre! I'm going to enjoy this!!

2012 in 2012

2012-01-14T21:28:00.000-08:00

As the leveling fool that I am, I decided to accept the leveling challenge that JD Kenada has issued for this year. What you do is gain 2012 levels during this year. There are some guidelines that he wants us to follow and bam! I'm off.

The only thing is, right now I have two accounts. I was up front with him about this and I explained to him that my level 85's are split across these accounts pretty evenly. He said that was okay and he'd work with me so I can participate! Yay!

So, here is what I have right now, without toon names or servers:

85 tauren druid
85 goblin mage
85 undead rogue
84 troll death knight
76 undead warlock
74 goblin warrior
62 goblin shaman
42 tauren paladin
41 dwarf priest
17 blood elf priest
76 night elf druid
72 human mage
61 gnome rogue
56 draenei priest
53 draenei shaman
40 draenei paladin
30 gnome warlock
13 dwarf hunter
13 worgen warlock
5 gnome warrior
69 dwarf death knight
12 draenei warrior
7 gnome mage
19 worgen priest
6 worgen druid
11 night elf druid
5 blood elf paladin
5 human hunter
16 goblin warlock
6 troll druid
9 blood elf warlock
85 blood elf priest
85 blood elf paladin
85 orc shaman
80 blood elf hunter
70 troll warlock
50 orc mage
48 worgen warrior
34 troll druid
41 tauren priest
58 draenei death knight
7 dwarf shaman
43 gnome priest
4 worgen warlock

Add that together, subtract the needed amount for the extra death knights and I have 1787 as of today. (According to my spreadsheet of characters!) This means I'm 88.8% done. And I'll be gaining another 32 just in leveling the rest of my 10 toons to 85. Yay!

I'd plan more but I'm completely exhausted. Yay! Levels!!

Distractions!

2012-01-13T10:35:00.000-08:00

So, in my last post, I got completely distracted from a couple things I wanted to say by a recruitment post. Oops!

In my raid group, we have lot of people who have a number of alts. Our shadow priest just got one of each class to 85. (Note, all of them are blood elves, except her shaman (goblin) and druid (tauren).) So, when we decided to stop after downing Hagara, everyone was asked if they wanted to bring in their rogue alt before we killed her. So, myself, our sub pally tank, and our shadow priest flipped to our alts and went came into raid to pick pocket Hagara. The funny part about all this? If you try to pick her pocket right after someone else, it says her pockets have been picked.

So, our shadow priest's rogue and I are standing behind Hagara and suddenly FAN OF KNIVES! And the shadow priest's rogue lies dead at my feet. I started to laugh, tried to pick Hagara's pocket and lo, there was the ring. So the husband ressed our shadow priest and she goes back in to try to pick the pockets again, not knowing that I already did. So she ends up dead again. Poor girl.

So, now, 10K lighter in gold, my rogue will end up with really nice daggers so I can go BACK to assassination. (I went combat from 81-85 since I lost my heirloom daggers at that point.)

This weekend, I think I'll finish up my death knight to 85 and see about getting my warrior to 80. Then I need to ask the husband what he wants to level next. He might pick his rogue. Which would be fun. If I can get my troll warlock to 80 and my warrior to 80, I'll only have to level everyone through the Cata zones! Right now, everyone is at least in Wrath zones, except my 'extra' alts that I like to play.

Also, I'm resisting the siren call of my Alliance toons. I want to go level them a bit but ugh. I just can't get over there!!

Anyway, last night we went back through Firelands and managed to clear the entire place in 2 hours. Which is really good for us. We pugged two people (a hunter and a holy pally that used to be in our guild) and I went boomkin. Much to the holy pally's disappointment apparently. Heh. But. I got to boom. I wasn't great and while I was at the bottom of the pack, I was still above the tanks. I did between 15K-19K depending on the fight. Some of them I did really little because I wasn't flying around or I was unsure what to do :) And this whole avoiding vent for my headache is really sucky.

And now, I'll spend some time working on labels for my posts. Yay!

Couple of things ...

2012-01-12T10:17:00.000-08:00

Last night was raid night. As it is every Wednesday night, except for holidays. And we were short people. Again.

This time it was a warlock we were missing (he's got RL aggro) and a death knight (who cancelled his subscription but didn't tell anyone until someone said HEY! DK! Are you okay??). We begged our other pally tank to stay up late and come tank for us but that only filled 1 spot. So we raided Dragon Soul with 9 players for the first 4 bosses.

Our raid team at this point is pretty much the same week after week. However, if some one gets sick or get hurt or has a family emergency or is just exhausted and at the end of their rope, we have no one to 'sub' in. The idea of 'subs' boggle my mind. Since forming Ascension in 2008, we have rarely RARELY ever had enough people to form a full 25 or 10 man. As my favorite resto shaman says "Ascension, trying to raid since 2008". It's exhausting. If we were trying to do 25's, I'd probably have quit by now.

I just took an 'inventory of our guild via our webpage. We have 10 people raiding, we have 1 person who can come in and raid as needed if they don't have to work early in the morning. We have 5 who are active but won't raid and 1 who is active but not level capped. Then we have 15 inactive players. Mostly friends and family.

What does this mean? Well, it means we need to recruit. However, the pool of 'talent' on our server is pretty light. So that means we have to do something to shine enough to attract someone off server. And honestly, I just don't know how to do that. As Vidyala wrote yesterday, recruiting and being the leader of a guild is hard. My guild leader tried for years to pick our guild up off the ground and get it fly but it seemed that people didn't want to. They wanted to just to do enough get by, not to excel.

However, we're now down to 10 people. And they want to see the content and move forward. They're getting burned out and while running LFR is great, it's not the same as seeing the content with your guild (so I've heard, I'm still a LFR virgin).

So. If you or someone you know is looking for a guild, Ascension is recruiting. Let me give you a little blurb about us.

Ascension was formed in October 2008, just before the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. We are a guild formed by a bunch of real life friends who wanted to raid their own way. While some of us have moved on, the core is still made up by 5 of the original members. Our guild leadership has passed to Shonokoko, who is an awesome resto shaman and a wonderful person. She's my best friend and I'd do anything for her. Our healer 'core' is myself and her, while our 'tanks' are my husband, Paliclaus and either Awnia (who is our sub tank) or Alama (a prot warrior, who at this point is fury-ing up the world). We have some wonderful ranged dps in the form of Bachue (with a funny e. She's a shadow priest), Kahlanah (a warlock of some flavor, it changes daily), Pyrodoom (fire mage, in a big blue dress) and Nightimes (another warlock of some flavor). Our melee is Indale (a rogue) and Zaraing (a unholy DK). This is who we have left and I know that they would love to see more people joining us.

We have been struggling with attendance issues since Cata hit. As such, we barely got into BWD/TotW/BoT before the nerf. We did manage to down all the (normal) bosses before we moved into Firelands, where we did manage to down Ragnaros after the nerf but before Dragon Soul came out. We are currently 5/8 and were able to do 4/8 with 9 people!!

We are a Horde guild on Madoran which is a Central time server. We raid at 9pm server time and go until 12:30am. Our guildies are scattered all over the country but a bunch of us are West Coast. (Hence the late start time, some of us don't get home until raid time some nights.)

We don't have a lot of people on during the day but generally there are people on in the evenings. If you want to talk, you can roll a toon and talk to anyone in the guild. If they don't know, they can point you to one of the officers. My husband and myself are almost always on in the evenings in one form or another.

Or you can go to our website and check it out. As for recruitment needs, we're pretty much looking for anything. Ranged, caster, melee, tank, even a healer. If we get a healer that wants to heal full time, I can go boomkin and blow shit up! I don't care. I just want to raid!

Okay. Recruitment blurb over. I also have another question. I'm a complete noob when it comes to blogging. And I know that not everyone does what I do and goes to each page on a daily basis to see if there is a new post. I heard there's Google Reader or something. Is that any good? Can I get it on my phone?

Help. I'm lost and confused in the big wide world! And now, I'd best get to work.

There are no new players of WoW ... or are there?

2012-01-10T08:15:00.000-08:00

World of Warcraft has been out for over 7 years now. And a good deal of the gamer population has played it at one point or another. Sometimes it feels like everyone and their mother (and grandmother and sister and brother and grandfather and 3rd cousin twice removed) have played this game for a while, if not recently then in the 'distant WoW past, like 2005 or 2006.

However, this weekend, while my husband and I were leveling YET ANOTHER pair of toons, we came upon this elusive creature known as "The WoW Noob". This player, while high level, had never really done any questing. At level 84, they had about 700 quests completed. Their reps, the ones you would have gotten from questing in the 0-60 zones and in Wrath, were nonexistent. Yet, all the ones you can get or grind through dungeons? Nice and high, mostly high honored or revered with a couple exalted-s.

We came across her (the toon was a female) in Uldum. This toon is an scribe so I don't HAVE to go through Deepholm (again) and the husband didn't care much. We decide that we'll go through the Ramkahen quest chain first and THEN do the Harrison Jones stuff. We come across her, the first time, while trying to do the bugged out Pit of Scales quest. A little while later, the husband gets a whisper from her asking for help.

He talks back and forth with her for a while and then she asks if she can join us. I tell husband that I don't care and go afk to deal with housework. When I come back, she's joined the group. Now, she's leveling as a disc priest. Which isn't impossible these days. However, she honestly can't figure out how to do half the quests. So, we would have her link the quest to us, and then we'd take her there and point at whatever needs to be done or kill whatever needed to die.

This was about the time we realized she didn't know how to quest. At all. She had leveled via the RDF and while knowing a lot about healing in dungeons, had no idea that you had to 1. read the quest text and 2. complete the quest as the text tells you. We ended up catching her up in the quest chain and then walking her through the rest of the Ramkahen quest line. Then we started the Harrison Jones stuff, where she had 'finished' it (she said). She came along with us and couldn't figure out what we were doing. Turns out she never picked up the goggles you get from the corpse on the ground. So, we walked her through those too.

By the end, husband and I were both 84 and we had (all 3) finished Uldum. It was really adorable. She was a complete noob and it was refreshing to see the zone through her eyes. At the end of the night, we had a new (nooby) friend and I promised her that we would look her up to go through Twilight Highlands. I haven't told the husband THAT part of it yet.

However, I told my main's name (since I was on my death knight) and the husband told her his main as well (he was on his mage). It was fun to quest with someone who did NOT know what to do. It was like questing with my husband at the beginning of his WoW relationship. "Yes husband, pick that up. NO DON'T DO THAT." It turns out this will be her first 85 (kinda figured that) and she is nervous about JP and VP. I just want to pinch her little cheeks!!

Have you ever come across a total noob? Did you help them? Make fun of them? Were you that total noob?

And the Music will move you.

2012-01-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

This post was triggered by a discussion on Twitter between Cynwise and a TON of other people. He made a comment about what he should have his child do, piano or cello, and there was a lot of discussion about this. So, I want to talk about music for a little bit.

I have always loved music. One of my earliest memories is of my mom playing a song and then asking me "Did you hear that?" and rewinding the tape so I could hear the line she was talking about. By doing this, she taught me to pick out the individual lines in the music. I could hear the french horn, the trumpet, the saxophone.

When I got to be old enough (7th grade), there was no doubt that I would join the school band. The band was made up of about 10 kids and everyone played a different instrument. (I went to a TINY school, I had 20 kids in my class that year.) I picked up the baritone and lugged it around. I didn't play it for very long, mostly because I wasn't a very strong child and lugging that mother f-er around was hard. (My entire town was only a square mile but my babysitter was on one side and my house was on the other AND the school was like dead in the middle.) I ended up picking up the flute. Mostly because it was light and I could put it in my backpack.

When I moved to live with my mom (my parents were divorced), I joined the school band. This was a whole school band, not just middle school (I was in 8th grade here and had 13 kids in my class). So there was about 25 kids. However, there was no low brass, so I picked up that goddamn baritone again and pretty much played the tuba part for the band. Ompha Ompah!

When we moved again (before 9th grade), we moved to a large town and I joined the band again. I started out with flute and after getting hit in the back of the head REPEATEDLY by the girl that sat next to me (she looked like a willow tree in a wind storm), I asked my teacher if there was another instrument I could play. He said he needed french horn players. So I switched. And honestly, I've never looked back. French horn is awesome and fun and beautiful. I marched with my french horn for 3 seasons of high school marching band and 2 seasons of 'extracurricular marching band'. I also ended up picking up trumpet for our high school's jazz band. It was awesome. I excelled at brass instruments and I loved it.

After high school, my music went by the wayside. A couple years ago, I joined a pops orchestra but I didn't stick with because I ended up having severe anxiety attacks before performances. I also tried to learn how to play the viola but stopped because the idea of strings boggles my mind. (My husband played stand up bass in high school and plays electric bass, guitar and ukulele now, so he has no sympathy for me!)

What does this have to do with anything? I can hear you asking this. Well, it's like this. I would love LOVE to see Blizzard introduce a Bard class into the game. There are so many cool things you can do. The idea of walking around playing a lyre, dulcimer, guitar, ukulele, or whatever appeals to me so so so much.

I played a MUD for years (from 1999 until we bought our house in 2004) and in that MUD, there was a bard class. This class was able to do a lot of things, they could make you dance and thus make you too tired to fight them. (The dancing song was Lionel Ritchie's "Dancing on the Ceiling".) I can't remember all the other things you could but in the MUD they were noted for being awesome fencers. I think they had a song that could let them put people to sleep and there were songs that buffed their party members. It was awesome.

I don't know how you'd have to balance this with Blizz's new policy of making everyone share buffs but it would be so awesome. Maybe they could bring a fort buff since I believe it's only warriors (short duration and they can't do anything else, shout wise), imps and priests who bring that buff.

I don't know. It's just a thought I had. And that I had to get out. Btw, in that MUD? I played a rogue, a warrior and a mage. I had a couple healers but I never really played them. I preferred murdering things. (I was an evil person, except for my mage. She was too much like Mylune!)

Oh yeah, I also own a piano (inherited it from my Grandmother) but I can't do much more then play chopsticks on it. I can't see to use my left hand to play it!

The pain, it burns.

2012-01-05T22:15:00.000-08:00

It's Thursday night, after raid. This is my 3rd or 4th raid sitting here in my chair, not being in vent but listening to my husband talk to the others and watching raid chat, trying to piece together the conversations. This headache is slowly killing me. I have an appointment with a neurologist this coming Monday. I'm afraid of what they might find but mostly afraid of what they don't find.

Last night, we did wonderful, pretty much one shot-ing the Siege of Wyrmrest Temple and then moving on to Ultraxion. Ultraxion took us 6 tries but we finally got him/her down. I managed to get my first dropped piece of loot too! Yay! I love upgrades. However, the end part of Ultraxion, when Nozdormu throws out his ability and the time-y wime-y sound hits? Yeah, my head turns off and I lose it. I spent the 5 seconds that you're supposed to use to press Inner Will (before Hour of Twilight) trying to press my "Your Innervate is ready' key. Wiped our raid with 200K left on the boss. Sorry guys. :(

As a result of my darling headache, my WoW time has drastically cut itself down. PvP makes me frustrated and that makes the headache worse. Raiding is very unsatisfying at the moment because the pain makes it feel like a slog. It doesn't help that I'm a druid and share tier pieces with 3 other classes, of which we have at least 1 of each, plus extras sometimes. This is me whining at you Blizzard!

I'm not willing to give up my gaming. As a result of this, I have become very cranky and short almost everywhere else. But small things make me happy. Here is my guild gathering to start raid from yesterday. And the druid is me, with my adoptive kitten that I just got from the Darkmoon Faire.

And then, when I logged on today, I went to visit my Warchief.

He threatened to send a crew from the Warsong Lumber Camp to 'deal' with me but I will brave that!

And lastly, my guild spent the evening dealing with Warmaster Blackhorn. And I proceeded to make poems, except they don't rhyme.

I was then told not to say things like "I am the light and the dark" because that sounds wacky! I should have said that it sounds wacky because I am wacky. But then my husband told me to stop laying on the ship's deck and actually heal. I wasn't going to get to tank the floor. Spoilsport.

I'll leave with my screenshot from today's raid gathering. My guild boarding the ship.

2012 - The year that everything changes?

2012-01-02T16:55:00.000-08:00

I'm having a hard day. I've spent it alone, out of the house, doing grocery shopping and other RL weekly quests that I usually have a group for. I did meet up with the husband for lunch but he left his gold pouch at home so I bought for us.

However, I want to share a few things that make me smile.

First of all @GarroshHllscrm is probably the funniest twitter person I have ever read. His posts over at The Warchief's Command Board make me smile and honestly cheer me up no matter how bad a day I am having. I didn't like Garrosh until I started reading his blog. And now, I think I like him more then Thrall. (Sorry my best friend!!!) Go read, even if you are Alliance and he's kill on sight.

Secondly, I ordered myself a Christmas present late last week. This will be arriving in about 2-3 weeks. But honestly, this is the only piece of jewelry I wear and I'm completely jazzed about it. (For those of you who are linkphobic, here's a picture!)

It only came to about $23 total, with shipping which is awesome for something I will probably wear everyday. (Since I lost my wedding ring 4 or 5 years ago.)

So, happy New Year blog readers! I hope your year is off to a better start then mine. I've been home a total of 3 hours all day and am about to leave again. I really only came home to start dinner so I would have something yummy to eat when I got home. (Gluten-free beef stew is on the stove now. Wasn't going to be gluten-free but the doctor said that I'm off wheat for at a minimum of 2 weeks. Yay. 2nd day of the year and I'm starting a major life style change! Woot?)

Also, since Ghostcrawler did promise us all a pony, I will share with you the pony the husband got me for New Years.

Furtive Father Winter Event 2011

2011-12-30T22:04:00.000-08:00

I have been waiting on pins and needles to see what someone would write for me for our Furtive Father Winter event that is being hosted by red cow rising for Blog Azeroth! And this was worth the wait. I love it. Reading it brought tears to my eyes and I so appreciate this. Thank you so much Draccus! Also, you can find my gift to RennaissanceMan at this spot.

Karegina,
I have enjoyed and been honestly stretched beyond anything I have ever done in writing this piece for you. I pray to Elune that you enjoy and are touched by the sincere heart I have hopefully poured into it. The story is about your main character Karegina, a Restoration Druid, and the events on a special Winter's Veil night. Please let me know if you would want me to continue to write or perhaps include you into the Saga in the future.
I have attached the Word Document file, but to make sure you get the story I am going to paste the entirety of it within this email as well.
Sincerely Wish You a Merry/Happy Winters Veil,
Draccus Moonsayer

A Winter’s Veil Night

The grass plains of Mulgore basked in the Sun’s rays by day and kept the ground warm during the night. The open spaces afforded magnificent views between the tall cliff walls of this secluded valley region. It was here that the Tauren, a tribal race of Warriors, Shamans, Druids, and other classes within their society, made their home after countless seasons of nomadic living. The land had formed the tall Mesas that they would call Thunderbluff, a natural city in the sky.

Several hundred feet off the valley floor these multi level platforms held enough ground, rock, water, and resources that life could be established. A thriving people built their homes, places of commerce, and centers for learning here. Rope bridges and walkways connected the four giant pillars that crowned the surrounding landscape.

There were the three Rises that held a special place of importance to the Taurens: The Hunter Rise, The Spirit Rise, and The Elder Rise. It is on the Elder Rise where Druids of the Plains are taught, equipped, and housed when not adventuring out in the world of Azeroth or serving the Horde’s summons. While the Druids also have a home in the village of Nighthaven within the region of Moonglade, Thunderbluff would always call them back.

Tonight was no different to the hundreds of citizens and visitors passing through Thunderbluff on their travels, except for a small portion of the clan of Runetotem. This Winter’s Veil night there were tears of departure and tears of joy over a life well lived. While so many in the Horde were celebrating the season with green ribbon wrapped gifts and sugary treats, one particular clan was celebrating the greatest gift of all, family and the memories had.

A wise old sage by the name of Calmwinds Runetotem had passed on to be with the Earthmother. The rituals for his body had been attended to by the elders of the clan. The fire of his funeral pyre had been set ablaze at sunset according to customs. His ashes had been gathered up into small pouches, that he wished members of his family to carry with them as a reminder of his peace and love he had in life. Calmwinds was beloved by all and was especially important to his favorite great niece, Karegina Runetotem.

Karegina Runetotem had become a Restoration Druid and fought alongside her companions into the toughest of encounters. Her healing ability has saved the life of her mate Paliclaus as well as several others over the years far past a recordable number. She was regarded as a very promising raider and Tauren Druid before she helped slay her first dragon.

The challenges of a world constantly as war it seemed caused her a great deal of stress and anxiety. She longed for the same serene inner strength her Great Uncle Calmwinds carried with him all his life.

She sat near a small, crackling fire that warmed her against the chill of the night. In her hands she held a small pouch of ashen remains, all that was left of her hero and mentor. She looked out from her view on Elder Rise and let the tears flow down her face.

“How am I going to have your joy now that you’re gone Uncle?” Karegina whispered to the wind. She knew she had much to be grateful for and that in time the hurt would subside. “You were the Tauren that believed and encouraged me to become a Druid in the first place.”

The soft, wet muzzle of her faithful pet, Dante, nudged her arm. He was a large wolf companion that had travelled with Karegina in all of her travels. He had been found on the dry plains of the Northern Barrens when he was but a pup and her only a budding calf. Their friendship was a treasured bond between animal and master that had occurred since the dawning of life on Azeroth.

“It’s okay Dante. Mommy is just sad over losing a dear family member. You remember Great Uncle Calmwinds. He used to feed you scraps of Plainstrider meat from the table at banquets.”

“And you used to steal bits of Cornmash from the table as I recall Karegina.” A strange and gruff female voice sounded from the shadows of the nearest tent. The outline of the stranger’s body in the shadows was much smaller than a Tauren, and her voice was nothing like her husband’s race of dignified Blood Elves.

“Who goes there? Only an unkind soul would disturb another’s stolen moment of grief on this chilly Winter’s Veil night.” Karegina said standing up now and reaching for her staff.

“Peace sister I did not want to come when the rest of the family was grieving the lost of our Uncle Calmwinds Runetotem. I…… I thought it best if…… we meet alone.”

“Sister! Sister! How dare you claim to be my long lost sister!” Karegina responded with anger in her voice and a stance that a warrior might have taken against a foe.

“Annanda was my only sister. Although she was a Forsaken Mage schooled in the ways of battlegrounds and violent Arena life she had more guts and backbone to face a person head on and not slink about in the shadows like a Rogue. Show yourself!”

“Karegina please hear me out before making a rash decision or judgement. Okay? I am your sister Annanda. I have been away for a very long time and have undergone…… a rare experiment that has permanently changed the way I look.”

The person in the shadows stepped forward into the light of the fire. A Goblin woman in expensive robes stood as tall as she could and looked directly back at Karegina. The glowing dagger and wand on her belt would easily be recognized as a seasoned Gladiator’s prize.

“I am no longer Undead sister. I am nothing like my former self in body, but who I am as a person still remains. The Goblins and Forsaken have come up with a risky blend of engineering and necromancy to forever alter a person’s physical body.”

The Mage reached into the breast pocket of her elegant robes and pulled out a single ring. This ring was decorated in the finest craftsmanship any Horde jewel-crafter could make. It was a sister ring, where two rings were fitted together like vines weaving together in a locking fashion.

“I kept our ring with me during all my travels. Throughout Outlands, the frozen lands of Northrend, & even into the Elemental Plains. It has been a source of comfort and a constant reminder of the joys of family.”

The Tauren Druid reached into her belt pocket and removed an identical ring. Her sister ring. The same one she had crafted for her beloved sister before she disappeared through the Dark Portal into Outlands so many years ago.

“Annanda is that really you?” Karegina said with uncertainty in her voice. With an ember sized hope she reached for the chance that at last she would be reunited with her beloved sister.

“I am home sister. If just for the holidays, I am home.”

The two embraced in an overwhelming emotional hug. A large and powerful Tauren Druid held a small sized Goblin Mage in her arms as they both cried tears of joy. As the snowflakes began to descend and the air became colder, two sisters were reunited on this special Winter’s Veil night.

What the PvP?

2011-12-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

We ended up calling raid off last night due to the fact that we were a couple of people down (including both myself and our other main healer). So instead, my husband begged me to come to Tol Barad with him on my shadow priest. I figured what the hey, it couldn't hurt right? And if my head started to pound from all the flipping around and such, I could just go to bed afterwards.

So I get in, find where my husband was defending (Horde controlled it) and stuck with him. (He was healing on his pallly.) It was a fun match. The Alliance couldn't commit enough of their forces to take our points unless they completely abandoned one of the others, so we just went in a circle the whole round. And when we were done (we were at ICG when it ended), we went to the bridge and proceeded to make them sorry they were there. Was quite fun and good payback for all the times I was trying to leave and got deathgripped back to a metric fuck ton of melee.

Then, our best friend (the warrior), another friend of ours (who usually plays a prot pally but decided to do this on his shadow priest), my husband and I went into some BG's to get some honor and such.

I can't remember the exact order of things but we got a Strand of the Ancients (Alliance won in about a minute 45), a Alterac Valley, an Arathi Basin, a Twin Peaks and an Eye of the Storm. We won 2 of those. And Oh. My. God. How do people find this fun?

So, Strand, I really don't understand the basic mechanics here. So we're trying to stop them from getting through the gates but somehow they have super magical properties that let them fly right through the gates without slowing down? It boggles my mind. And throughout all of this I get to hear from my husband who apparently doesn't know how spell lock outs work "HOW CAN THEY LOCK ME OUT OF MY INSTANT CAST SPELLS??" Jeezus honey, they can do it, where you casting a long spell? Yes? Then bam, locked out. It's not like your spells are nature and holy, they are all fucking holy. L2heal.

But, the worst BG I have ever been in had to be that goddamn Arathi Basin. I tweeted about it last night, while it was happening. 15 players and not a single one can be arsed to stop and cap Farms. Of course, I'm one to talk, I didn't do it either but I'm a noob. I don't think there are 15 noobs on this BG team. I know the group I was rolling with was well experienced in BG-ness. And then, the moment that no one capped Farm half the team went "GG Horde, WTF didn't you cap Farm for? Losers" plus other things that I couldn't understand because my adult language filter is on (AGAIN, jeezus Blizz). And then we see "Alliance Dude has attacked the Farm" or something. And then a little while later, the Alliance are hold 3 points while we have Mines and Blacksmith. WTF, you go to Blacksmith but you can't fucking cap Farm? /headdesk

And that just went downhill from there. However, the best thing that I've ever seen happened while my team (minus my healer husband, which is typical) was guarding Mine. A pally attacks our shadow priest buddy, buddy lifegrips our warrior to him (warrior was standing next to me at the flag, priest buddy was up on the little ledge behind the cart) and I life grip the priest buddy to me. Take that pally, can't hit my priest buddy! It made me laugh my ass off. However, we still lost that match.

The funnest BG we did that night was Eye of the Storm. The ENTIRE RAID went from point to point and took them. And then we ended up leaving a few people at Mage Tower and Draeni Ruins (?) to pick the Alliance off when they ressed. So, what happened was my warrior buddy and I stood at DR and held that point the entire match. And for some reason, the stupid took over the Alliance raid and the flag carriers KEPT BRINGING US THE FLAG!!! So we'd slaughter them and return it. Also, the same toons kept coming after us, and each time we'd kill their healer and then kill them. That resto druid must have hated me by the end of that. Beat her down until she's half health, Arcane Torrent while continuing to beat her down, Silence her and then deaded. Plus her warrior friend couldn't get to me to stop it because my own warrior buddy was working him like a job. The two of us had a great time. The two PVP noobs, kicking ass. We got the 2nd and 3rd most HKs in the BG that whole time.

Then there was our adventures in Twin Peaks. We had 4 healers, the Alliance had 4 healers. The Alliance had a bear druid to carry their flag, we had a holy pally and my warrior buddy. So, our entire team, minus the flag carrier and another healer, stood in our base while the rest of our team harried the crap outta the Alliance flag carrier and kept his team busy trying to kill us. We won 2/0. We actually ran out of time. That was fun too, wasn't fun in the beginning. 2 disc priest, 1 holy priest and 1 resto druid are a PAIN IN THE ASS to kill.

And then, to round out the night, we went back into Tol Barad and defended it. Apparently my shadow priest is very threatening because the melee kept trying to grind me to death but fears and 2 healers with my back fixed a lot!

So, lessons I learned last night:

1. CAP THE MOTHER FUCKING FARM!
2. Always kill the healers.
3. BGs aren't relaxing and as a result make my headache worse. However, the adrenaline kinda counteracts that.
4. Being bait is fun. It's even more fun when you have another priest to stand behind you and lifegrip you to safety when the Alliance commits to killing you and ends up getting their ass handed to them by a warrior and two shadow priests. And a holy pally, when he was there.

One last thing. Throughout all these fights, my husband was barely ever in the same place I was. We'd say "Okay, defending Mine!" and then about 3 minutes later, we look around and no husband. He's off at Blacksmith or Stables or maybe even in another goddamn battleground. Who knows. He has left me defending a node alone before and then was like "What?" when I get slaughtered by 2 rogues. So I guess I learned something else:

5. Don't trust the husband when he says what 'the plan' is. He doesn't not mean the plan for him.

Oh yeah. and this is officially my 100th post! Yay me!

Year in Review - 2011

2011-12-29T10:07:00.000-08:00

2011 has been a roller coaster of a year for me. I hit bottom (not rock bottom, I think I still have a couple feet to go) and have been helped back up with my friends and my guildies. I discovered Blog Azeroth and the WoW Blogger Twitter Community. So, let's go back shall we?

I started off 2011 as a fresh level 85 resto druid. My guild was preparing for our first raid, which happened on January 19th, 2011. We wiped all night while people were getting used to the new healing model and all that. (Plus, our healer core at that time was myself and a resto shaman.) We ended up having to add another healer, a holy pally, who was also in our guild at that time so we could continue. The idea of having to 3 heal everything really sat wrong on my shoulders because my resto shaman buddy and I used to be able to HEAL ALL THE THINGS and now the two of us were barely doing half of the holy pally's healing (together).

We slowly progressed through Blackwing Descent, struggling up hill, in the ~~snow~~ lava both ways.

This is when I got upset enough that I decided to start a blog. My plan was to use it to be sarcastic and bitter and mean about my guild. But I decided it would be too hard to do this and keep it a secret. I wrote one post back during ICC days, which ended up deleted when I actually started my blog.

Now, I can't talk about my WoW year without talking about a few health problems. In March, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. Not very severe, but bad enough that I needed to get a CPAP machine. This machine has completely changed my life. We raided through April and ended up getting frustrated and people started to take breaks.

I ended up taking a break (which I didn't apparently want to do, as I would stand over my husband's shoulder and weep when my loot would drop). We lost our offtank in May, which was probably the best thing for us. He was very contentious and would work everyone up into a frenzy and then sit back and be like "I'm just saying guys!" He was also the brother of the holy pally we had as our 3rd healer and as a result the brother in law of our primary hunter. As well as the husband of another hunter in our guild (who didn't raid).

After he left, a couple members came back and said "Okay, let's raid bitches!" Our guild leader had spent his time leveling and gearing up his warrior so that she could tank for us if needed. So he switched from his mage, who had been his main since he started playing, to his warrior. And luckily, he has a good time. Or so he says.

Just as we were starting to get into raiding again, the aforementioned holy pally and hunter left the guild to go raid with our old offtank. We sucked it up and asked our shadow priest if she'd heal for us when we needed it. More people had to leave for real life (it was summer after all) and we ended up completing tier 11 after Firelands came out, with the nerf, with a pug. But we finally did it in August and then in September, we moved into Firelands.

And over that time, we had a warlock that raided with us all throughout Ulduar and ToC and ICC come back to our server and guild. We gained a death knight (who now appears to be either hacked or gone), we have our usual crew and it's all great. My guild, while we will never get server 1st or even be in serious progression, is wonderful and I love them.

As for me, I posted my first official blog post on February 10th, 2011. I then had a hiatus while I got better and learned that I actually do like to raid. (Seriously, sleep machine, best thing to ever happen to me.) My second post was just over 4 months later. It was basically a 'Yeah we're raiding, I hope no one counts on me to update this thing'. But since then, I've written 100 posts (This will be post 99 that I've published.) so wow. That's impressive to me.

This blog has been a place to share my opinion or what I'm doing where I know that someone might read it. The fact that people read it boggles my mind repeatedly. I've said it before, but since I can't even get my husband to read my blog, it surprises me that others do. (Husband won't read it because he says he doesn't want to get all 'perfectionist' on me and miss my message because he's critiquing how I use a word. He does that all the time!)

So, I'm expect that 2012 will be awesome. If only because my guild is here, my friends are here, my new blogger friends are here and things will continue. Awesome.

When is Undercity not Undercity? Plus Real Life!

2011-12-27T10:14:00.000-08:00

So, this morning I hopped onto my druid and got on the zepp from Org to Undercity, so I could work on Silverpine Forest quests for a post I've got in the works. It was just about time to go to work, so when I zone into Eastern Kingdoms, I fly to the Undercity courtyard. And notice that I have no ZZ's in my little bubble that says what level I am.

So I fly out of Undercity and back in. And I notice that the courtyard is no longer marked as a 'Horde Capital City', I.E there is no bright green text that says "Welcome to a capital city!" I fly across the moat (passing a player feeding the moat monster) and through the archways and suddenly "Welcome to the Undercity" or something in green text pops up on my screen.

So, now that this is a non-flagged area with no guards, does that mean that Blizz is going to remove the Ironforge guards the are outside in the non-flagged area in IF, the Stormwind guards that patrol and the Exodar guards that stand around the tables? I think the only place that doesn't really have guards is Darnassus but you get flagged if you go there. (I'm thinking of the Pilgrim achievement, Pilgrim's Peril.)

In other news, the husband and I went out caroling and that was very underwhelming. Not nearly as hard as BB King. We started out in Darnassus, landed on the archway that leads from the city proper to the rest of the tree area. This was the only place we had issues. We were barely in the city, we sang, but because I was checking to see if I got credit, some flying guards aggroed us and we had to out run them. (We didn't die at all.) Then we headed to Exodar, walked into the ramp way that leads into the city right next to the boat, sang at the wall, and got on the same boat we arrived on.

Then we went to Stormwind, sang ON THE BOAT! and flew to the Deeprun Tram tunnel. Zoned in, rode the tram with a level 85 draenei shadow priest (didn't get messed with because I was in boomkin spec and the husband was a prot pally) and a baby gnome rogue. I totally hugged that rogue!! Then we walked into the portal for Ironforge, sang, walked back into the Deeprun Tram and hearthed.

Took about 20 minutes. Wee. Very not exciting for me. I wasn't going to do it but the husband said I could use my new mount to fly him around. So I did.

I wasn't able to play WoW a lot this weekend, my family is apparently very jealous of my time! However, I loved spending time with them. Everyone was on their best behaviors and I was the grumpy one. The kids were wonderful and loving. There's something amazing to me that I'm so loved by all these little people. My best friend from high school has 5 beautiful children and when I'm around, I have 2-3 little girls hanging all over me and telling me they love me and petting my hair. Makes me ache when this happens but I just soak it all up.

I'm on day 27 of a migraine. Just called the doctor again and pleaded with them to send me to a neurologist. I over heard my husband telling someone that he's really impressed with how I'm handling this. That I'm being a real trooper. And I'm trying so hard to just do things and get home so I can lay down. We left 2 gatherings because my head was hurting so bad.

This post feels disjointed to me. But I don't really care at the moment. Maybe if my head explodes, I will feel better. Let's see!!

Merry Happy!

2011-12-24T22:30:00.000-08:00

So, every year, my husband and I don't discuss presents. With the economy, spending money between the two of us seems too much considering the line of work that I'm in (mortgage industry). However, each year, one of us will sneak something small into the other one's pocket or shoes or what not. One year, I got my Moonkin Hatchling, which is my favorite pet of all time and almost the only one my main uses.

So, tonight, after baking the last of the 8 pies I was giving to people and/or bringing to gatherings, I was tooling around in the Ruins of Gilneas, doing the quests there for the Horde, when I notice something. I have a mail. And it's from my husband. Weird. I ask him what it is and he just says "Well, you'll have to look won't you?" I don't think anything of it but the fact that he won't tell me drives me insane, so I fly up to the nearest mailbox (The Sepulcher) and check it.

A festively wrapped package is attached and I take it out of my mail with a puzzled look. "It's not Christmas yet" I think to myself. "Did he wrap up some grey items and mail them to me? He probably did, punk!"

And then I click open the package, and a single vial drops into my hand.

I have wanted this mount since Cata launch. This makes my whole entire Christmas. Being a druid, the fact that there is a 'form' out there that I couldn't be drove me crazy! Now. I'm a powerful drake, able to carry people around. Watch out! I will eat your mounts right up! (Except the mechanical ones, those give me indigestion!)

Thank you my love. Even though I know you won't read this. I'm so glad you started playing WoW with me. I love that something as silly as a in game mount and an in game pet are capable of making my whole life wonderful and my Christmas fulfilled. I'm so glad that we are on this ride together!! :)

Happy Generic Winter Holiday!

2011-12-20T12:54:00.000-08:00

As you can see to the right, I'm participating in the Furtive Father Winter event that red cow rise is hosting. I was excited and looking forward to it. And then my victim's name landed in my email box. Suddenly, all ideas for posts for my victim flew out of my head! WHOOSH! So, I do what any rational person does when they're stressed.

Procrastinate.

However, it's now the 20th and I can send off my post at any time. I asked the husband for ideas. But after he started talking, I realized that I don't want a husband post. If I were take his ideas, it wouldn't be MY gift. It would be OUR gift and the husband can get his own blog if he wants to share his ideas.

However, as I was in the shower today, a couple ideas came to me. However, I didn't write them down so WHOOOOOOSH. Gone again. I'm going to take another shower when I get home to try and recreate the post thinking experience. (I do my best thinking in the shower, where I have no computer or paper to write things down.)

I have stalked, I mean read, my victim's blog. So this will be a challenge for me.

And in other news. Holy crap. My previous post. Jeezus guys. I posted it at about 7:30pm on Sunday night. I had a comment an hour and a half later. That has to be a record. And then Windsoar posted something about it on her blog. And then MMO Melting Pot got a hold of it. And now. At 12:40pm on Tuesday, I have had 140 views just on that post. I've never EVER had traffic like this. And those of you with bigger blogs can just laugh at me. But wow. Just wow.

I commented on Windsoar's beautiful post that this I wrote this post in a fit of hopelessness. I expected that my best friend (Hi sweetie!!) would read it, maybe our Legendary gathering warlock (I see you there too elfy poo) and maybe a couple others. I braced myself for the reaction from those closest to me. I thought that I was being brave by putting my feelings on this blog for them to see.

However, apparently I was being brave for a whole different audience. Apparently what I wrote struck a chord with people. People could relate to my pain, even if they didn't share my disorder. I had tweets and comments being supportive and sharing advice with how to cope with LFR. These things meant so much to me. As I said in my own comment, I won't say "Hot damn, let's go LFR right now Bitches!" But, the idea of it doesn't make my stomach clench and my eyes fill with tears.

So. In closing, to everyone who is blogging about this, thank you. God, I don't even know what to say. There's so much I want to say but honestly, I just don't have the words. To everyone who read the previous post, thank you. I might be a whiny little bitch sometimes, but to know that I'm not alone means the world (of warcraft?).

LFD/LFR and Anxiety Disorders

2011-12-18T19:27:00.000-08:00

Blizzard came out with the Looking for Dungeon system back in 3.3.0 which was released on December 8th 2009. For many people, this was wonderful and amazing. Letting them play on their terms and on their time schedule. For me, this gave me heartache and stomach pains.

Anxiety is the 'displeasing feeling of fear and concern' that people feel over many things, from small to large. However, when that feeling comes all the time and keeps you from doing anything, you have crossed the line into a mental disorder.

Back in 2009, I tried to do LFD runs on my own. I think I have done a total of 3 runs by myself since the system came out. The rest of the time, I generally run with somebody from my guild. However, as time has gone on, my ability to run in anything less then a full guild group has slowly disappeared. My anxiety has slowly started to rule my entire life.

When I started to hear rumors of the upcoming LFR system, I thought that this was a great idea for the people who work weird schedules or have kids to take care of or just don't have a guild to run with. However, now that it's out, I'm seeing more and more of my guildies say "Don't forget to run LFR this week and get some upgrades!"

Honestly, this has my heart in a vice grip. The idea of going into a group where I know (at the most) 4 or 5 people makes me want to scream and then cry. I have said "I don't want to go, thank you" but now I'm sitting on the side lines watching my best friends and my husband get their "Fall of Deathwing" and it's killing me. In our raid group, the only person who doesn't have "Fall of Deathwing" is me.

Am I bringing my raid group down because I can't LFR? If I want to progress, do I need to have a panic attack over a video game? I don't know.

Also. Does "Fall of Deathwing" even mean anything? If you can go get it in LFR which is "more like finishing a heroic dungeon" then a raid? My husband says that when we do it as a guild, the GUILD will get the achievement. But ya know. That's not the same.

I'm sick. My medication appears to not be working. I've had a headache since December 1st. But, you can't see it. I look fine, if a little tired and a little sad. I seem quiet in the guild, when I try to be light hearted there is no response.

So, tell me. Am I doing it wrong? Do I need to suck it up and just deal with it? Because by the Earthmother, if I knew how to suck this up I would.

Calgon take me away!!! Is that a thing anymore?

2011-12-15T18:50:00.000-08:00

Ugh. Real life is kicking my ass something fierce. Work is crazy, I've had a headache since the 1st (and it's now the 15th) and family things are getting me down. My great uncle passed away a little bit ago and last Saturday was the family memorial for him. A bigger one that is open to the public will be done later this month but it's the family one I went to and the family one that my heart wept at. So, I've been rather sad the last little bit.

In WoW news, my guild progressed one step further in the Dragon Soul and downed the shaman that everyone says is a mage, Hagara the Binder. Yay for that! It took us a few attempts now that our warrior tank's finger is better. It's not fixed, but it's not as hurt-y I think. (He's going to become a super villain now with the amount of silver nitrate they keep pumping into his finger. First his middle finger will turn silver, then his hand, then his arm, then part of his shoulder and chest and finally his head! When he becomes a super villain, I hope he remembers me as the woman who sent soup to his house!!)

Tonight it's Ultraxion (healing team will be myself, my shaman buddy and my favorite shadow priest who also has a disc set) and hopefully after we down him, Warmaster Blackhorn! I'm pretty excited about Ultraxion. This looks like fun!

Anyway. It's 10 minutes to raid. I'd best get moving!

Dragon Soul - Morchok Strategy (10 man)

2011-12-10T22:29:00.000-08:00

I know that people do this all the time. However, when I was looking, I didn't see anything out there that answered my questions. So, I'm going to do this myself. I do know that there is already one 10 man normal mode 'bullet point' list. However, here is the way we did it!

Raid Make up:

Tanks - Prot Pally and Prot Warrior

Healers - Resto Druid and Resto Shaman

DPS - Shadow Priest, Rogue, 2 Warlocks, Mage, and Death Knight

There are two phases for Morchok, a 'Crystal Phase' and a 'Black Blood Phase'.

During the Crystal Phase, the tanks flip him around so his back is to us and everyone groups up just at the edge of his hit box. This let's his Stomp ability be spread out among everyone in raid. This is pretty much a tank and spank phase. The only 'special' things he does is put a Crush Armor on the tank (causing a tank swap) and drop a Resonating Crystal that will require 3 targeted raid members to run to it. The closer the targeted raid members are to the crystal, the less damage they will take when it explodes. There will be 3 Resonating Crystals dropped during this phase.

Once the 3rd Resonating Crystal has exploded, the Black Blood Phase will begin and Morchok will pull everyone to him and drop them. He will then throw out stone pillars (like the dragon in Stonecore does) and the raid will have to get behind them. We have group 1 go to the left side (as you are facing Wyrmrest Temple) and group 2 go to the right side. You'll have to line of sight a flow of 'Black Blood of the Earth' that Morchok spews forth. Take in mind you need to stand a bit away from the pillars as the blood seeps around the base of the pillars. This goes on for a little bit of time and sometimes ranged can still dps while being out of line of sight. (We have one healer in group 1 and the other in group 2, so they get split in case someone stands in the blood, which we've had people do. Mostly because they didn't realize they shouldn't hug the pillars!)

Then it repeats. At 20%, he gets a 'Furious' buff. Aka he does a mini enrage.

This is not a very hard fight. However, this is my first strategy post, so I wanted to be easy. We managed to 1 shot this boss, with no major research or anything. I think only 1 person had gone into LFR earlier in the week.

More Dragon Soul Musings (plus more pictures!!)

2011-12-09T07:14:00.000-08:00

When life gets busy, all sorts of things end up neglected. Sorry blog. I love you, don't forsake me!

Last night we FINALLY downed Warlord Poopyface (I mean Zon'ozz). As many people probably already know, it took 3 healers. We ended up having our pally tank (aka our raidleader, aka my husband) switch his offspec from PVP ret to PVE holy. It took us a couple hours (IE most of Wednesday's raid and a good portion of Thursday's raid) to get him comfortable with pally healing but we finally got him.

Pardon my slightly off-kilter screenshot there.

So, we moved on to Hagara the Stormbinder. Our best attempt was a 1% wipe. SO CLOSE! However, we were dealing with a bit of a handicap. Our warrior tank had a lump on his middle finger that the doctor removed (for the 2nd time). I can't remember what it's called but it's rather painful and bleeds all over the place when the lump is there. ANYWAY. He kept dying because he uses his middle finger on his mouse to move forward and he was having issues clicking it. Poor guy. He did remarkably well for not having a fully functioning middle finger. (And saying that, he'll probably showing me how well it's functioning when he finds out I totally talked about it on my blog.)

Oh yeah. Our rogue totally pick pocketed the boss. Good job!! On to the next step in our legendary quest!!!

In other non-raiding news, as everyone knows, the Darkmoon Faire has arrived! I posted some screenshots the other day but I just wanted to post this.

It took me somewhere around 850-900 casts to get him. But now he's mine and we can go travel the world together!

So, my warrior is in Outlands at the moment and as I'm traveling through Hellfire Peninsula, I notice that after 4.3 all my group quests don't say they're group anymore!

So I run to do Cruel Intentions (which is the Horde version of the quest to kill Arazzius the Cruel ). And he's not elite anymore! Wow! I run to do the Demonic Scryer quest. Totally soloable! Wow!

The Fel Reaver is still elite though. Sucks! He did try to sneak up on me, but I quickly mounted and flew out of his way.

And what would Outlands be without a couple of poop quests?

See my moonkin? She is thinking "Thank the Earthmother *I* don't have to do that!"

Anyway, back to the Dragon Soul raid. I love that the entrance to the raid is in the Caverns of Time. I really love that area. It's so beautiful.

However, when I was flying to to the top of Wyrmrest Temple, I saw the following things:

Yay! Deathwing is totally RIGHT THERE!! Awesome!

However, here we see him looking at our group of Aspects + heros + Thrall and he didn't even bat an eye. If it were me, I'd totally wash that platform with flame. Don't be an evil overlord and let the heroes plot and plan right under your nose! (Also, don't say something like "AND MY ONE WEAKNESS IS THIS SPOT RIGHT HERE BETWEEN MY SHOULDER BLADES!" That's just cheesy!)

I might post our strategies for the bosses we've downed so far. I'm not sure. I need to think about it more!!

Warlord Zon'ozz and other things ...

2011-12-04T17:11:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, my guild spent the evening bashing our head against Warlord Zon'ozz. Multiple things contributed to our head bashing. First one is that we tried to 'cheese' it and get a really long first bounce. (IE have our shadow priest go back to the wall and bounce it back herself.) That didn't always work and we ended up giving that up.

But overall, there just wasn't enough healing to keep everyone alive. I looked at other successful raid groups and they had another 15000 hps then we were putting out. Mostly because they had that 3rd person. So our raid leader IE my husband is going to go holy for that fight, and we'll see how we do.

In other news, I got my shaman to 85. Yay! She had a fun time in Twilight Highlands with her bear boyfriend. But her player did not. I am seriously starting to hate it there!

However, she did have fun being a ghost wolf while her leveling partner was a kitty.

As for the Transmogging - I finally found an outfit for Karegina.

The helm is transmogged to the Helm of the Blind Seer. My shoulders are the Passive Resistor Spaulders and my robe is the Stormrider's Vestment. My gloves are the Stormrider's Gloves and my staff is the Frostscythe of Lord Ahune.

I also checked out the new instances. I think visually, my favorite is the Well of Eternity. Storyline wise, I like the Hour of Twilight. However, I adore End of Time. It is just awesome over all. I like the fights, I like the way it all works out!

And then, last night the Darkmoon Faire arrived!

Overall, I love the atmosphere. It's very creepy. Which is right up my alley.

However, dancing bear. That is just win right there.

And in alt news: Now that I've gotten Rokaria the shaman to 85, it's time to bring up the next baby. And it's Arcina the hunter. She's currently level 79 at the moment. But that will change! Hopefully I'll get her to 80 before bed.

That troll deathknight is my husband. He had just manabonked me and was trying to get into the picture with the sheep. Dork!

We were leveling in Sholazar Basin. Which is beautiful!

Just a note before bed

2011-11-30T22:01:00.000-08:00

As luck would have it, today I ended up with a horrible headache and my office computer died. So not a lot of anything was done today in preparation for raid tonight. But, we did get into the new Dragon Soul raid and managed to get a couple bosses down, all while battling the Vent server boss.

We managed to one shot Morchok and felt very proud of ourselves! And then we headed off to Yor'sahj the Unsleeping. Which could be what I do now I suppose. I'm Karegina the Unsleeping. (Except I'm totally going to bed soon because I'm not feeling well.)

This was when we started to have problems with our Vent server. And an hour and a half later ....

Stupid Vent server. We now have a new one though. This one was a pain in the ass too often!! This picture is without our death knight. He ran off and couldn't make it back in time for a picture. Silly guy.

We go back in tomorrow night. So yeah. We won't be one of those guilds who gets 7/8 their first night in. Nor will we probably be 7/8 our first week. But damnit, we're going to do this and we'll be successful!

Except maybe on this trash. Because I really hate this trash.

And bonus screenshot!!

This is my priest and my best friend's shaman after their transmog adventures. My shaman buddy is sporting a pretty pink shield (from Mags) and my priest is sporting a couple tiers worth of gear (ICC offhand and weapon, Ulduar shoulders and robe). I think we're very dashing together!!

4.3! YAY! or not?

2011-11-30T10:52:00.000-08:00

So, yesterday 4.3 hit the live realms and everyone was excited and happy and joyous. My little guild started running the new heroics so they could unlock them all and do the quests. Every 10-15 minutes SOMEONE was getting an achievement for one of the 3 heroics.

When I logged on, I got my addons fixed almost right away. The ones I didn't get updated all loaded nicely so I had no problems at all there. The second thing I did was drop my Glyph of Wild Growth. Since I only run dungeons and 10 man raids, what's the point? Over half the time, my 6th person is usually an imp or a hunter pet. I don't love them that much. (Sorry hunters and warlocks!)

So, I start to put together a group. I get my husband to tank, my favorite mage to dps and then my best friend logs in. I ask her if she wants to come with us and she said yes and that her husband would want to come too! That was 5 people so after sorting out addons and role checks, we started. We had the follow classes: Prot Pally, Fury Warrior, Fire Mage, Kitty Druid and Resto Shaman. (FIRE KITTEH!)

I died to the first Echo in our End of Time run which was Sylvanas. So I watched the group down her from the safety of my corpse. I also died to the trash leading up to the second Echo, which was Bayne. And apparently my husband didn't hear me when I said "Those fire things that move HURT" because he was almost killed by one a little later. *facepalm* Over all though, that was a lot of fun. I love seeing new stuff with my friends :)

I also discovered that I'm a really piss poor melee. I just smash my buttons and try to follow the boss around. My husband drags those suckers around like they're dancing with him. He and I are going to have a 'talk' about this I think. Especially if I keep dpsing as kitty.

The 2nd run, Well of the Ancients, was a bit more frustrating for me. First of all, when Illidan would put us into 'stealth' mode, it would change my bar to my 'stealth' bar for kitty, which apparently I haven't set up yet. (It was all healing spells.) And then, every. single. time. I would leave combat, I would pop OUT of kitty form into night elf form. And UGH! I'm a moocow, why would I want to be an elf?

So, that was sucky. And sometimes it would pop me out of form between me killing mobs. I told my group that this must be Blizzard's new way to get us Druids to shift more, simply kick us out of form at the end of combat.

The end fight was another one that I died on, so I watched it from the safety of the ground with my fury warrior buddy. I had to chase down Illidan to turn in my quest, punk. But it was still an epic fight. A++++ would dungeon again!

Then we headed to hang out with Thrall. I'd already see this from tenmanbear's view a while ago, so I was ready and knew what would happen. I managed to live through the whole thing as well did semi okay dps. I managed to pick up a 378 staff and got a 378 ring plus some 378 boots. So, I have all 378's equipped now AND I'm slightly over the 2005 haste break point now. I tried to go reforge but the reforger dude was bugged.

I then logged on my priest alt and transmogged her shoulders to Ulduar shoulders, her offhand to Sindragosa's offhand, her weapon to the mace that dropped off 25 man Lich King, and her robe to Ulduar robes! She looks adorable. I'll actually post pictures later tonight, I just didn't have time to get them uploaded before work.

And tonight we head into the Dragon Soul raid! Woot! So excited!

Ulduar

2011-11-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

So, my usual morning routine is as follows: 1. Get woken up by the husband at 6am, 2. Ride my exercise bike for 20 minutes, 3. Get some breakfast, 4. Play WoW until 7:35, and finally, 5. Get ready for work. However, there is maintenance this morning in WoW, so you all get a post.

Last night, my guild took a few people (8 to be precise) and ventured into Ulduar.

We had good times! My priest had never been and we ended up clearing the place and getting a lot of the achievements out of the way!

I didn't get a lot of pictures of us at all the bosses, but I did get pictures of my favorite things in Ulduar.

I love the stained glass. I think it's beautiful. Also, here's an action shot of my guildies!!

And here are more shots of the windows.

Also, don't you hate it when you're lining up the perfect shot and some goddamn tourist walks into the frame.

And finally, we reached Yogg.

No cool shots of Yogg because I was healing my butt off and trying to not get driven insane. (Too late Yoggy boy!!)

But then, we went and had fun with Algalon.

I love Ulduar!! It's a lot of fun to head there and kill stuff. Plus, I'm now really close to my drake!! Yay! Anyway, I'd better wrap this up! So, I just wanted to tell my guild I love them and it's awesome fun to go kill internet dragons with you!!

Symbiosis as envisioned by the Daily Blink

2011-11-28T20:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.thedailyblink.com/2011/11/the-new-abilities-symbiosis/

I highly recommend a visit if you have a chance!!

Leveling

2011-11-28T10:40:00.000-08:00

As I level another toon through Deepholm and Twilight Highlands, I find myself wishing that there were alternatives. The first couple times through Deepholm, I was happy and excited because I loved the story line, it felt epic and that made me happy.

I also loved Twilight Highlands. The quests were interesting, the battles exciting and the whole 'This is Dragonmaw' thing, AWESOME!

However, this weekend I finished up Deepholm for the 6th time. And tonight I will be doing the intro quests for Twilight Highlands. I swear, by the 6th time, I should be allowed to point to the bad guy and say "This is a bad guy" and slay him in front of Garrosh. I shouldn't have to go 'investigate' anything. I've done this before dude, I KNOW!

I felt this way about Storm Peaks back in Wrath. Now, I won't go there at all. You can't pay me to take my alts through that zone. And I have a feeling that this is what it will be like in MoP. I will avoid Hyjal and Deepholm because I am 'required' to go through those zones now. I will admit that I only did Icecrown 2 or 3 times because I could level to 80 without them. However, I took all my skinners, herbalists and miners through Sholazar Basin. But that was fun because I would come out of there with a TON of materials!

Speaking of materials, one of my guildies was giving away their 6 tab guild bank. I said I could use it and then forgot about it for a week or so. Well, last night I finally installed Altoholic and this morning I got it all set up. Hot damn do I have a lot of mats. 1 guild bank tab full of old dust (plus extras), 1 guild bank tab full of old ore, 1 guild bank tab full of old gems, 2 guild bank tab full of old cloth, 1 guild bank tab full of old shards and essences. Seriously, that's a lot of crap! So, my goal for the next couple days is to get that straightened out! Wish me luck!

Catch up!

2011-11-27T10:38:00.000-08:00

My holiday weekend was relaxed, yet crazy. Friends, family, etc. I have been playing a bit of WoW, but almost all day Thursday was taken up by gatherings, and then Saturday was taken up with my usual Saturday 'stuff'. But that's enough about that! On to the screenshots!

Ah, Thrallmar. I remember when BC came out and I was SO excited to go level IN SPACE! And then I got to Thrallmar and Hellfire Pennisula and ended up sick because of the angles. I got to the point where I would level to 60 and then move on to Zangermarsh!

However, before I would leave, I would usually have one or two run ins with my best friend, the Fel Reaver.

I have yet to figure out how something so big can sneak up on me!! It even trumpets!!

Besides hiding from the fel reaver, I have spent my Thanksgiving holiday making rogue toons for anyone in my guild who needs them. For my favorite shadow priest, I made a dwarf, and for my husband, I swear I made one of everything. I would have him summon my Horde toons to Org so I could stand there and be a turkey.

I also ended up doing some farming for copper so my goblin warrior could switch professions from blacksmithing to engineering. And while I was doing that, I can across these shots.

I also decided to do a little project. And I'm going to put these pictures on my 10 to 85 project page. But here are some of my toons.

This is Sinia, she's my 85 prot pally who dabbles in holy pvp even though she's never actually done a battleground.

This is Asmini, my 85 disc (now) priest, who enjoys melting faces as shadow in PVP.

This is Karegina. My 85 resto druid, who will do anything she wants to. Sometimes it's boomkin, currently it's feral because FIRE KITTEH!

Here is Annanda, my formerly undead, now 85 goblin mage. I think she's fire right now but really, she's just transmute specced!!

And here is Duvessa, my 85 combat rogue. I can't believe I got her up there. She was just a side project I was working on.

Now, we get into my 'unfinished' alts.

This is Paraptraz. She's level 76, a blood death knight. I haven't played her since July. But I'll get back to her!

Here you see Gazley, my arms warrior, as of 10:13am Pacific time on November 26th, is level 62. She'll be fury when she can get Titansgrip!

This is Rokaria, my elemental shaman who likes to heal people in her off time. She's level 83 at the moment!

This is Arcina, my level 76 beast mastery hunter. And that's Sven with her. I like hunters because pets are fluffy and cute! /wowcrendor

And this is my level 70 demonology warlock, Zillarinzul. I have another warlock at level 75 or 76 but I'll probably not level her for a while.

So, yeah. Screenshot dump there. And in parting, I'll leave you with two screenies I took in Deepholm.

Thoughts on the new MoP Talent Calculator and Spells

2011-11-23T10:42:00.000-08:00

In a break from my picture taking, I noticed that Blizzard released the new MoP Talent Calculator and Spell lists.

The first thing I noticed was Malfurion's Gift reduces the cooldown on Tranquility to 13 minutes. Boy did that freak me out. However, I noticed that baseline the cooldown in 8 minutes, so I sure it's just a typo.

However, I did a little more looking and I notice that the resto druids have 'Ironbark' which reduces the target's incoming damage by 20%. But every other druid has 'Barkskin' in it's old incarnation. So apparently they're giving us our mitigation cooldown, but removing Barkskin in exchange.

Also, the only druid spec that has an out of combat ress now is Resto. Also, no one but Resto gets Nourish anymore, or Lifebloom. Maybe this will make my husband stop whining about druids in PvP. (Probably not!!)

I do see our version of Wild Mushrooms, but I can't think of a time in a 10 man raid when I'm going to have 4 globals to drop and detonate them. I'm wondering if things are going to change that much that I'll have extra globals. I should probably go read up on what Lissanna things about them. I've been so wrapped up in my own world that I can't think!

However, on looking at the Talents as they are now, I can't imagine taking anything that's going to switch me into Cat or Bear form. Of course, I can't imagine the upcoming expansion, so I can only think of what I know now. I know now that shifting into cat or bear form gives me a new bar with cat or bear abilities on it, so when I want to get my healing bar back, I have to click the correct form to shift out. Also, if I have to go bear or kitty to 'save the raid', the raid is doing it wrong. (See Heart of the Wild).

I don't know. I know it says these things can change, but I'm really underwhelmed and kind of feeling like my chosen role as a Resto Druid is being told "Sorry, if you're a druid, you are a kitty or a bear. Have a nice day!"

So, yeah. Those are my thoughts. Sure hope all the bear, kitty and moonkin druids are in a level 25 guild so they can use mass ress!! :)

From the days of gnomes and wine ....

2011-11-23T09:14:00.000-08:00

So, as I mentioned before, I found where I hid some of my screenshots from before my husband started to play. I even gave them captions there so I would know what I was looking at.

Sinovia was the woman who gave me WoW for my birthday. While my brother in law gave me a trial, Sin actually bought me the game and shipped it to me. She took me under her wing and taught me a lot about the game. Above is the guild we made to 'get away from the rigors of guild leadership'. It was fun and awesome (even though I wasn't in guild leadership) and we were very silly together.

This is Annanda (who I believe has since been renamed in her travels around the WoW servers). She's a druid, who I believe was in her 20's in this screenshot. She's currently level 76 and sitting there. I was so clueless that while I was feral (I think) I had spirit/int gear. Heh.

Shortly after BC came out, I was often confronted with this. I ended up playing my Horde toons a lot more, as I had my Alliance toons on AN.

Throughout my time as Alliance, I saw many funny things. This was one of my favorites! Dancing Night Elf men!

While you can't see the golden swoosh, this was a picture of my 2nd 60, my undead mage (who is now a goblin). I loved mages so much, I made one Alliance side too. (This was pre-BC.)

This is Laera, my human mage. I was so so so proud that I was able to buy myself flying and all that. Even flying around at 60% was better then having to RUN on the GROUND!

However, before there was Laera the mage, there was Laera the rogue. Here you see her with her friend Kurai in Daughters of the Alliance. I leveled to 60 in DotA and they were a second home to me. However, I had to move on when a lot of my friends left the game or moved servers. I went to play Horde and when I realized where one of my besties went, I went back to Alliance and made Laera the mage.

This is Laera the rogue the day she got her mount. Back then you could give your gold to another player and have them buy the mount if they had a better discount then you did. That was nice. At this point, Laera was an engineer, but soon she'd switch to be a blacksmith. (Biggest mistake I ever did.)

Gnomes take Uldaman!! Fear us!!

Do you guys remember when you could take a raid group into Maraudon? Hehe.

And then you have the holidays on the Alliance side. I remember when the holidays were simply "It's that time of year! No extra work for you!!"

And I'll leave you with an old Worgen that wants to eat your face. Be afraid.

IntPiPoMo - A Date with My Husband

2011-11-22T22:30:00.000-08:00

I have mentioned, repeatedly, that I play WoW with my husband. He started playing so that he could spend more time with me, which I love and appreciate. However, we often spend our time doing things the other doesn't enjoy or care to do. For him, that's leveling thousands of alts and for me that's grinding out insane amount of achievements.

However, eventually, one of us will turn to the other and say: "What do YOU want to do tonight?" And if it's me, I usually say "I'd like to level X alt or run Y dungeon". And if it's him, he usually says "Yes".

Tonight, I made a deal with him. When I got my goblin warrior to 60, I would level an alt with one of his alts. This morning, I dinged 58 on my warrior and headed to Outlands. Tonight, he invited me to group and while we ate dinner (Perfect Corn Chowder), he ran my warrior through Hellfire Ramparts and Blood Furnace. I didn't get any screenshots from Ramps, but here is our 'date' night.

Ah, so romantic isn't it? The shouts of Mag, the stench of fel orc. How can a woman's heart not melt? Of course, this is mostly what I saw as I was running behind.

That's my husband, the nameplate you see way off in the distance. Throughout the instance he would turn to me and ask "What's taking so long, can we have class outside?!?!?!" (From a How I Met Your Mother episode in season 5.)

I tried to change into a fel orc to make things faster, but no luck. My skin just turned a slightly different shade of green. However, after an 'incident' with a stealthed rogue, he stayed closer.

I think he didn't want to have to ress me. Or maybe not listen to my telling him he shouldn't have gone so far ahead and let me die.

Oh, darn. Had to ress me anyway. By the way, those technician bombs hurt really bad at level. I had forgotten that. (There were three buried under the bodies I was looting.)

So, after 2 runs in Ramps and 2 runs in Blood Furnace, I got my level 60 on my warrior and we moved our 'date' to our older alts. Specifically, my shaman and his druid.

The orc female dance is something that makes me laugh every time I see it. One of my best friends (who played WoW when I was beginning, but no longer plays, and who I actually met through WoW) had rolled a orc warlock on a new server with a handful of others. We met up to exchange bags and gear and money and stuff, and she started to dance. Suddenly she burst out laughing and said that she will never do that again. It's too embarrassing.

Anyway, back to our date. My shaman's hot tauren hunk of man took her on a romantic moonlight cruise (with about 15 other orcs) but oh no!

The druid tried to defend the ship, but the beast was simply too much for him!! They went along, looking for faster ways of travel. Turtles didn't cut it.

Apparently they're too tasty! And very very slow. But a seahorse was found to do the trick nicely. Unfortunately, there isn't any room on the seahorse for the shaman's pet cat, Jayne. Poor Jayne. Left to swim behind his adoptive momma.

Just a note: Since I started playing WoW, I have gone through 3 or 4 computer 'incarnations'. As a result, I have lost many many MANY screenshots that I have taken over the years. However, I just discovered some of my favorites from back during Vanilla, when I was mostly playing Alliance. Below is a sample.

I will post a few more from the 'old days' later. But man. Those bring back memories!!

IntPiPoMo? Yes?

2011-11-22T07:24:00.000-08:00

Angelya over at Revive and Rejuvenate is doing a 50 pictures in 30 days challenge. I am going to start on it today and try and finish it up in 9 days. /sweat We're see how I do.

My guild went into Naxx 25 last night and I took my priest, who has never been there. She's an herbalist and had levitated herself to get across the slime puddles. Well, I decided that I would turn into an herb to restore my mana and health (our mage wasn't 85 yet and didn't have the good cakes yet!) and I discovered that herbs can float!

I decided at that point, to take a couple screenshots of herbs in weird places. Or rather, herbs in Naxx.

Here we have an herb on Maexxna's web! I actually really like this picture.

And a water herb in Kel'thuzad's throne. (I always wondered why he has a throne when he doesn't FIT in it!)

And, as I was questing in Bugland, I mean Silithus, I found an Alliance skeleton drinking Horde beer. It amused me.

I love WoW, and every now and then, I see screenshots that show me just how much I love it. Fannon at Dwarven Battle Medic has an amazing eye for them. And I don't want to even try to pretend to do as well. But I still find beauty!

Also, the lighting in Icecrown does some weird things to certain items, like mounts.

I honestly don't even know why my druid is riding this mount, she almost never uses anything other then her flight form.

But Icecrown does other weird things too. There was the case of the dragon that wouldn't fall down one day while we were in ICC.

But today, I will leave you with a dancing bear. (And take more screenshots tonight!)

Blog Azeroth Thanksgiving 2011 Event

2011-11-21T10:42:00.000-08:00

As I'm a new blogger, I'm not sure if this is an annual thing but this Thanksgiving, Blog Azeroth is doing a Thanksgiving event just to express your thankfulness to the bloggers who have made you who you are today.

The format can be anything, poems, stories, videos, etc. I briefly thought of making a quilt with druid-y things on it, take a picture of it and then post that. But I didn't have enough time to do what I wanted to do. (However, a druid quilt will be done. I can see it in my head!!) So instead, I will write a little story, and hope that this is okay.

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Once, a long time ago, a little tauren druid was born. Her older sister, a undead mage, got most of the attention but her mother always had a soft spot for that baby druid. She nurtured it and raised her until she got to the mid 30's (which did take a little while in Vanilla), all the while healing her little heart out. Her older sister decided to start playing in the battlegrounds so she could get a title like Sergeant, as everyone of her friends had some kind of a title since they were members of the Horde. Because she loved her sister so much, she started to play in Warsong Gulch. Her first duty was to follow the flag carrier and make sure he didn't die. (She got really good at that.)

Suddenly, a dark portal opened and the druid's mage sister took off. She went to a magical place called "Outlands" and left the poor druid all alone, forgotten. However, eventually attention came back to the baby druid and lo, the druid found many friends to grow up with. She switched from healing to nom-ing faces as a kitty. And as she grew, she longed for the day that she could go from nom-ing faces to healing her friends with leafy tree heals.

Finally, it was the druid's turn to go to the mystical Outlands. And when she finally reached the point where she was strong enough to enter the raids, she once again became a healer, and finally achieved her goal of being a beautiful tree, with a stately waddle and a swaying cast motion. And to learn to heal, she looked on the magical World Wide Web and found the amazing Phaedra, And she followed Phaedra's advice and adventures, learning to trust her HoTs and doing her best to make everyone stay alive. The druid loved Phaedra and would constantly check up on her. She wanted to be just like her! So smart, so articulate!

Then it became time to journey to Northrend and this time, the druid went before her mage sister. She got big and strong, again, and started exploring the raids there. She still followed Phaedra's advice but Phaedra had an amazing real life adventure to start on, so she stopped writing. The druid was sad and didn't know where to turn. She had an idea that maybe she could give advice like Phaedra, but she was too tired all the time and very grumpy.

It came as a whisper from her best tauren shaman friend (who turned into a troll and then later a goblin) but she discovered Keeva also gave out resto druid advice. So she started following Keeva's advice. Sometimes she disagreed with Keeva, but she always listened to her and did the best she could. And through Keeva, she discovered Jaslya and Vixsin and so many others. And she read them all and discussed their information with her best friend (the now troll shaman) and her husband (a blood elf paladin, who is a girl).

The druid killed the Lich King, and managed to tame a bone dragon. Then the world was torn asunder and everything changed. She had to relearn to heal and she was frustrated often. And she saw she was not alone by reading her blog list. And she longed to be like them.

But the druid was getting more tired and more grumpy. So one day, she joked that she would make a blog like everyone else. But she would write funny stories about the stupid things her guild would do. And one day, in a fit of rage, she made a blog called The Reluctant Raider. And she made a post in it (which has since been deleted) about how much she hated healing meters and how not to endear yourself to the current healers when you are new.

And she got more tired. But she kept reading the other blogs and she learned and was inspired and felt that yes, she CAN do this. Her husband took her to the doctor and they figured out the reason for her exhaustion and fixed it. Now the druid, while still cranky, is not tired and has energy to write. So, she picked up her keyboard and sat down.

And everyday, the druid gives thanks that Phaedra, Keeva, Jaslya, Vixsin and so many others inspired her to write. And that they give her feed back on her writing. Everyday it gets easier to put herself out there.

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Shared Topic Nov 14th-20th - Bring Back Some Changes ....

2011-11-18T10:08:00.000-08:00

Before I was going to bed, I heard someone talk to my husband about some changes in WoW they wish didn't happen. Like removing some quests, content, class changes. One of the things that popped into my head was "companion deaths". During the Ragnaros fight in Classic, I heard someone in vent go "Did someone's cat died?" and sure enough, my Black Tabby companion died. Everyone busted up laughing.
So I thought about some other changes that I would bring back...just for the day? For the week? and Permanently?

This week's Shared Topic is suggested by Mia over at Chronicles of Mia and is one close to my heart. If any of you have read my blog before, I'm apparently really big on whining. So, let me whine about the changes the games has had.

Druid Changes:

I love my druid. However, the original 'character concept' behind her was to be a tree healer. I was drawn more to the idea of running around as a slow little tree that waddles everywhere then to the idea of actually healing. When tree form was removed and turned into a push button throughput cooldown, I was really sad. I looked at my priest and then I looked at my druid and I debated switching my main. If I could get permanent tree form back, I would happily give up all my other alts and even the ability to make new ones. I miss everything about it, the Tree of Life healing increase and even the slow waddle (which was removed in Wrath).

I miss being "able" to give out my innervate to anyone and have it matter. As you have seen, I had a huge meltdown over people telling me that innervate is now a self cast only spell, so I can target anyone and get my mana back. Argh.

Rolling lifeblooms on 3 or 4 different people at once. That was awesome and took skill to do. Now, I feel like it's 'spam rejuvs and wild growth, plus throw in some healing touches/nourishes for good measure'.

I miss not being polymorph-able. :)

Game Changes:

I miss the 'walk your ass off everywhere until level 40' and then the 'ride slowly until you reach level 60'. Back in the day, we had to walk through the Barrens, uphill, in the snow, both ways. (What???) I remember dying south of Camp Taurajo and having to run from freaking Crossroads because there was no graveyard closer.

I miss wandering into the level 60+ elites that surrounded the world dragons and getting one shot. And as a side note, I miss being able to wander into the Badlands from Loch Modan as a level 14 character and get murdered by the (then) elite troggs that surround Uldaman.

I miss portals to every city, I feel they've 'thrown us a bone' with the portals to the main ones. I miss seeing the Alliance all around and being able to bunny ears them without having to camp the Tol Barad Alliance area.

I miss a lot of things, but then I've been playing for over 6 years. And I'll probably be playing for a number of years more.

Meltdown

2011-11-17T07:11:00.000-08:00

So, I had a melt down during raid last night. And when I say melt down, I mean sobbing, yelling, crying, the whole nine yards. Though, I don't think anyone in my guild knew I was crying. They just knew I was mad/upset or as my husband said this morning 'throwing a tantrum'.

The night started off okay. We were taking in two new people to 10 man Firelands on normal mode. We get in there and pretty much one shot everything up to Baleroc, as we usually do. Now, I had been feeling rather 'hrmph-y' since my co-healer and one of the warlocks started making comments about Staghelm roasting the druids before FireBirdLady. I know they were being silly, but I heard what they were saying and took it to mean 'All druids need to die'. Which hurt my tender feelings a bit. YES, I know it's pixels, but I really wish that Blizz had not had him kill all those druids like that. It makes me sad every time we go in there.

And to have two of my guildies making jokes about wanting hamburgers from the dead druids, well, apparently I was overly sensitive last night and I took it to heart and nursed my hurt quietly.

Then we get to Baleroc. We try and wipe, and try and wipe and try and wipe. One of those time, I was supposed to be healing the tank but something happened and after I innervated myself (having to unselect him) I tried to reselect him but was unable to actually throw heals on him. I think what happened was that I was trying to throw a heal on him while I was switching targets and the cast didn't go through. I'm not 100% sure because it was in the middle of the fight and I was stressed. What I do know is that by the time I realized I wasn't casting, my tank had died and we wiped.

So, I believe in accepting blame where blame was due, so I admitted to the raid that this wipe was my fault because of the above mentioned conditions. And here is where the melt down occurs. My guildies started trying to tell me how to fix it. I got told the following things: 1. Make a macro to select yourself to innervate you and 2. Innervates are self cast only. After I told them that I don't like macros, they proceed to talk over me and just tell me how to do it. And I was told repeated that innervate is self cast only so I don't have to unselect my target to cast it. Then, when I finally started 'yelling' I.E. talking in all caps in raid chat, along with raid warnings, they flipped it and said 'well, when you innervate someone else you get the same amount of mana as you would if you cast it on yourself'.

By this point, I was in tears and was feeling attacked. I logged off vent and if my husband hadn't been raid leader, I would have quit the raid, if not the guild. We had two more attempts on Baleroc, didn't get him down and called it for the night. I cried the whole rest of the time. After that, I logged off, found an old server of mine and rolled an alt. Because, I apparently don't have enough of them.

We have raid again tonight and I just don't know what to do. I don't want to go. I'm embarrassed and depressed. I feel like a burden to my guild and I am just done. And honestly, I haven't done anything like this since Cata came out I believe. I don't think I've ever done anything to this extent before. Apparently my RL problems are affecting me then I thought. But I don't know. Ugh. What a bad time.

So, now I get to pick up the pieces and move on. I mostly feel bad because we have a new player to the guild and he was one of the ones trying to 'help'. He has no idea what just happened. And I really don't want to explain it to him. Such is my life.

Direction?

2011-11-15T09:24:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog, I wanted to write about the trials and tribulations of raiding when you didn't want to. (I have so many stories from Wrath that it's insane. I'll post one at the bottom of this entry.) I love WoW. I love the world, I love the lore, I love the furbolgs and the murlocs. I love that when I was at Dragon*Con a few years ago, when someone's murloc cell phone ring went off, my friends and I all looked around like "WTF, they're here?!!?!"

What I didn't love was the huge effort the raidleader and officers had to do to get 10 or 25 people together, in one place, to raid. Especially when 10-15 of them didn't give a shit if they were there or not, nor would they put forth their best effort. When our guild started, we have 8 people who could/would raid each week. We did Naxx up til Thaddius with 8 people and only then did we get more. We did end up getting KT down the week or day or something before Ulduar came out. Though, I can't remember if it was 10 or 25 man now.

However, we never really reached the critical mass so we could stop fretting about 'Will we have enough people to raid this week?' It was draining and annoying. When we started our guild, we have 4 officers, myself, my best friend's husband, a paladin that used to be a holy priest in BC and another one of our close friends who leveled up a DK and tanked with him. However, we got big, the paladin left to go do RL things (he was getting married and changing jobs) and my DK friend left to go to school. We picked up 2 more officers and I strong armed my husband into being an officer too. One of our new officers was a DK and he ended up leaving for RL as well.

However, at that point, we picked up a smaller guild that my personal group of friends had played with back when they started. (I played with them too, but I didn't like them too much so I avoided them.) We made one of them an officer so they would have 'representation' and moved forward.

During all this, we raided 10 and 25 man Ulduar. We scraped together our 25 people and had people quit because "this is just too hard, let's go back to Naxx". We got much further on 10 man then we did in 25 and we killed Yogg on 10 man on November 10th, 2009. Which was about a month before we got 25 man ToC. (I don't remember getting 10 man ToC and I don't see it in my achievements, so yeah.)

When ICC came out, I ended up raiding it 3 times a week. Once on Karegina in 10 man, once in 25 man and once on my shaman in 10 man. It was insane. We had such a hard time with 25 man. People were getting burned out, *I* was getting burned out. I ended up taking a couple week break from the game and let one of the 'new' shaman healers take my place. This put more frustration and crap on my husband, who didn't handle it well and ended up punching a wall and breaking his hand. I came back to raid the next day. (This was completely out of character for my husband and I tell him that if he didn't punch like a girl, he'd have been fine.)

One of our last 25 man raids was this (and here is the story I was telling you about):

We had cleared all the wings except for Frost Wing, the only bosses we had left were Sindragosa and Arthas. Over half of us had been successful in the 10 man raid and MOST of us knew what we were doing. However, we were short a person or two. So, we look in guild and lo, there is a warlock sitting around who always says how much he wants to raid. We ask him if he wants to come and he eagerly agrees. He says he knows the fight and just to be sure, my husband goes over it for him.

The pull happens, the first ground phase goes smoothly, and then the air phase happens. The five people are chosen and 4 of them run to their places at the base of the stairs. The fifth, which happens to be our warlock guildie, turns and runs right into the main group. Everyone panics, vent explodes and then the ice blocks hit. And all along the back, where the ice wall is, a ice representation of the Andes appears. The warlock had managed to ice block about 15 of our raiders. My husband literally face palmed, I sighed, over officer chat our GM goes "WTF is that? I thought he said he knew the fight?!?!", over our private channel my best friend says "Umm, that wasn't supposed to happen" and over vent you hear "Sorry mate, I didn't realize I had the ice block."

This would be more impressive if I had screen shots, and I might ask the husband if he has them when he gets home tonight.

At that moment, I felt frustration and an overwhelming urge to shout "But I don't even want to BE here" at my guildies. I was exhausted mentally and physically. I was only going to raids to help out my friends and other people were making my efforts impossible.

I am pretty sure that was our last 25 man raid. We switched to 2 10 man raids. And as people got less and less inclined to show up, we scaled down to 1. And then, when people stopped showing up for THAT (since we were working on our ICC 10 man drakes), we found a pug run by the best guild on our server, and finished up the last 2 or 3 achievements to get them. It looks like my last in guild achievement was on August 3rd, 2010 and then I got the last two achievements (heroic Sindy and Been Waiting a Long Time for This) on September 29th 2010. I went on that run one more time to try and help other people but then Blizz changed the lock outs so I stopped.

When Cata hit, I was eager to level and run the new heroics. We had a great time and I was excited to get into the new raids. However, after 2 or 3 runs, I was once again exhausted. I drug myself to raid every night and fell asleep right when we stopped. Some nights it was all my husband could do to get me to the bedroom. However, around this time, my husband noticed that while I slept, I stopped breathing. So I made an appointment with a sleep doctor and had a sleep study. Turns out I have mild sleep apnea and need a machine to help me sleep. I got one and ever since I've been eager to raid. I don't get tired at 8:30pm and feel like I'm going to pass out.

Anyway, since then, I've not had as much of the frustration as I had been having before. And as a result, the focus of my blog went from being a place I could tell the more humorous of the stories, to a place I could just talk about my love of WoW instead. I had wanted to be a resource for baby trees but instead, I'm more of an altaholic.

Speaking of, I got my rogue to 85 this morning before work. I then went on the AH and bought her the brewfest tankard of terror, the troll instance BOE agility ring, the BOE epic boots, the BOE epic hands, a blue quality hat that has a meta on it and I got her the valor bracers as well (since Kare doesn't need any valor items anymore). I spent about 2000 gold on all that. Plus I have the blue Guardians of Hyjal gear too, a neck piece and a chest piece. I also grabbed a blue quality cloak out of the gbank which I'll probably just replace with the Thrall quest line one. Hmm. I do have a nice trinket (for now) the Heart of The Vile BOE that drops in Twilight Highlands. It dropped while I was questing there! I also have the blue ring from Therazane too. We have Riplimbs Collar in the gbank and I'm going to see if I can buy that for her too. I'll have to see. The husband told our new quartermaster to sell all that. I'll see how much they want for it!

This turned out longer then I was expecting. The way my mind works or doesn't work amazes me!

Grinds aka Achievements

2011-11-14T09:53:00.000-08:00

My husband and I were talking the other day and (as usual) we started talking about the upcoming 'grinds' we were going to do. And by 'we', I mean 'him'. My most beloved is competely batshit insane when it comes to the following items:

Mounts
Achievements
Pets
Achievements
Tabards
Achievements
Raiding
Achievements
PVP
Achievements

I think you get the picture. Since November 1st, he's gotten the following achievements: Insane in the Membrane, a ton of the ICC 25 man achievements (we're going back in today to wrap it up so we can do it heroic style), Alterac Valley All-star, and I Smell A Rat.

His next 'grind' is going to be for honor kills (sorry Alliance players!) and for gold. As such, he's trying to get me to go into any 10 man raids (Naxx for example) just so we can loot the bodies. (I wish I could impress upon him that his obsession with achievements do not come over to me and I don't WANT to grind everything out for months just so HE can get 10 more points on a imaginary bar.)

He worked on Insane in the Membrane for probably about 2 years I want to say. I'm *still* mad at him about it too. I really dislike the Bloodsail Admiral achievement. Mostly because during my many times questing through Booty Bay, it sucked to have my quest givers killed over and over and over again. If he ever brings up that he did that, I get all pissed off and him and leave the room. It's so fun! He even did the part with the night elf mages, the books? I can't remember what that's called but he carted so many books in there that he got exalted. AND when I refused to go farm him the lockboxes to get his Ravenholt rep, he leveled his own rogue and did it himself.

As for the Sewer Rat achievement, I know that he had over 500 of the crystal vials you can get 9% of the time down there. He had been working on that before Cata came out. So, probably a year or two on THAT achievement as well. He's insane.

Also, before the world broke, he did the Veteran of the Shifting Sands quest. He started playing in BC so it just facinated him. (I was around when it went down, so it was not that cool to me.) He actually finished that on November 30th, 2010.

And his Alterac Valley All-star, he was doing all this stuff and then realized "Oh, I just need to do X to get this" so he ran up to a tower and was going to cap it, but a kitty druid was already doing that, so what did my achievement insane husband do? Bubbled the cat and capped it in front of the cat. *hangs her head* Oh Honey. Luckily, the kitty druid was a good sport, so I didn't have to beat my husband!

Now, you might be asking, what am I crazy about? Characters. I love to level and if I could have 1 of every race/class combo, I would totally do that. Right now, I'm working on my rogue (she's about halfway through level 84 now, almost 85!!) and when I finish with that, I'll pick that elemental shaman of mine and level her up (probably with J's druid). And then, I'll take my hunter and level her up (probably with J's warlock). Then It's either the DK or the warlock. And I'll probably end up with 2 warlocks at level 85 before I get my warrior up there. Oops :) My goal is to get 1 of every class on my horde server. Yay!

Shared Topic: Dear Pandaren, what class should I roll?

2011-11-10T12:52:00.000-08:00

Hi guys, Thought to share this idea about knowing What class are you playing with the new race Pandaren on the new upcoming expansion (Mists of Pandaria)?. I know most players are excited to role as a Monk, but there are lots of options to choose from, Are you going to be a Pandaren healer, melee, caster dps or a tank? Please share your thoughts! Thanks!

I love me some healers. I really do. Right now, at level 85, I have my beloved resto druid who is my apple of my eye, a holy priest who is my primary alt, a prot pally (who has a holy offspec), and a mage (who is only around to make me alchemy things and farm herbs). At level 81, I have a elemental shaman who spent more time in Wrath as resto then anything else (she healed 10 man Lich King on an alt run we did back in July of 2010) and then my little rogue that has been half-assed leveled for the last 3 or 4 or 5 years.

At this point in time, if I'm going to have any new characters I either need to get a 3rd account or I need to delete some of my precious babies.

But, Pandaren, I must have them. I know I will end up leveling a few of them and probably race changing at least one of my current toons to a Panda. I know I want a Pandaren Monk. And I'll probably race change my hunter (level 76) to be a Panda too. I will probably end up leveling a couple other classes as well but will probably burn out on them early on. (I have a 75 undead warlock but I'm more interested in my level 70 troll warlock.)

But my Pandaren Monk will be a healer. Because that is what I do. My healers all have dps offspecs but I am a healer through and through. There is no changing that!!

By the way, here's a list of my current toons I have on my server:

level 85 resto/kitty tauren druid
level 85 holy/shadow blood elf priest
level 85 fire goblin mage
level 85 prot/holy blood elf paladin
level 81 combat undead rogue
level 81 elemental/resto orc shaman
level 76 beast mastery blood elf hunter
level 76 blood troll death knight
level 75 affliction undead warlock
level 70 demonology troll warlock
level 62 elemental goblin shaman
level 50 fire orc mage
level 42 ret tauren paladin
level 41 shadow tauren priest
level 40 arms goblin warrior
level 34 kitty troll druid
level 17 bank blood elf priest

Plus I have a worgen warrior and a dwarf priest that I can't remember their names so I can't look them up on the armory! I have too many characters. When you look at a name in the guild list and you can't remember who that person is and then you realize it's you, yeah, makes me feel stupid! But that's 19 toons on that server. My husband only has 1 account (for now). And the funny thing is, I can't figure out who to delete to make room for my Panda!

Go to hell Real Life, I'll punch you in the face!

2011-11-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

So, since my company left last Wednesday, I've had very little down time. On the job front, the day after I took the tests (Friday), I got a call back (before 2pm) asking if I wanted to come in next week for an interview. Well, since my boss is on vacation this whole week, I had to arrange the interview for after work. I get off work at 4pm, which is really early! But it takes me 30 minutes to get into the big city from the small town that I work in. So, I got an appointment for Wednesday (that's today!) at 4:30pm.

I arranged with my mother to go interview clothes shopping and we spent all day Saturday shopping, getting our nails done, getting my hair cut, fixing my mom's internet to be wireless since she's having surgery tomorrow (Thursday) and various other things. I left my home at 8:30am and got home at 10pm on Saturday. Then Sunday, I played my rogue a bit and did housework. It was not very exciting.

Monday, however, I got back into the swing of things and took my holy priest on a retro 25 man ICC run. It was awesome. She's never been in ICC at all, ever. And I had a good time with that! My shaman buddy went too and she was like "Aww, I'm being out healed by two undergeared toons". :( Blizz, WTB shaman healing fix! PST!

And then I spent Tuesday farming for fish and herbs for our guilds fish feasts and cauldrons. I also posted up a post on my guild forum that said "Hey guys, please to be donating fish/herbs/volatile life for fish feasts and cauldrons" and got told "Why can't the gbank just buy that stuff?" I kinda think they missed the point of what I was trying to say but I think it will work out. I'm having a good conversation with the lady who is volunteering to run the AH/gbank stuff.

And now it's Wednesday. I got up at 6am to ride my exercise bike and ended up having about an hour to play WoW before I had to start getting dressed. And during that hour, my little rogue dinged 80. I suppose she's not so little now. Heh. I still have no idea what I'm doing, but whatever! It's all good!

Wish me luck on my job interview!!

Radio Silence Broken!

2011-11-03T21:29:00.000-07:00

This past week has been a blur. On Friday, the 28th, two very special people descended upon my little real life group of WoW players. One of them is the sister of my best friend, visiting from Germany. (My bestie is a transplant. Lucky for me!!) And the other is another friend of ours, visiting from New York. Both of these people play WoW with us and have been in our guild for years. Both of these people played our first online roleplaying game as well. (Which is actually how we all met in the first place, but that's another story.)

So, we housed our friend from New York and of course, my best friend and her husband housed her sister. My weekend was one thing after another, I barely had time to log into WoW at all! I think I got an hour total from Friday until Wednesday evening, which is when our house guest left to make the return trip to New York.

It was wonderful to see them and even better was on Halloween, another one of our guildies and old friend came out from back East to visit as well. (They told me where he lived like 5 times but I've completely forgotten again.) He only stayed for 1 day but he was fun and awesome to see.

During all this, my best friend, her husband and my husband took off Halloween through Wednesday. Which was great for them but rough on me. I got off work early on Monday however to spend some time with them, because my boss is really awesome sometimes.

However, during all of this, I am looking for a new job because my boss is planning on retiring in the next few years and doesn't want me to end up unemployed at the end of it. So, Friday, when our friends arrived, I ended up picking up our house guest and driving him to drop off a job application. I made it 5 minutes before 5pm, the application deadline. However, apparently they liked what they saw because by Monday at 4pm, they had called me and said they wanted me to take a skills test. So I scheduled that for today at 4pm.

It was 4 tests: a situations test, a Microsoft Excel test, a Microsoft Word test and a typing test. I got 100% on the situation test, a 82% on the Excel test, a 75% on the Word test and I typed 75 words per minute. I'm not feeling very confident right now.

Which leads me to raid tonight. Because of her sister visiting, my healing partner won't be raiding for a while. We 9 man-ed it, two of the spirit axes dropped (that my healing partner has been waiting for this whole time) and the flaming kitteh staff dropped again. This time, the hunter, who knew I'd been looking for it for a long time, cheered at me and was so happy to see it in my hands. I promptly respec-ed my offspec to kitty dps from boomkin and went out looking for things to murder.

After a exhausting, yet wonderful, weekend and a horrible day, this was the best thing to happen.

Guild Services and What Not

2011-10-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-10-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-10-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-10-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2011-10-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

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?!?!?

2011-10-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-10-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-10-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-08T19:35:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-10-07T09:13:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-10-06T09:06:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-10-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Yay Fire Birdie Down!

2011-09-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

My guild went back into Firelands last night (with a new tank and a pug hunter) and managed to down Alysrazor. And it only took us 5 tries! Our big problems were our flying dps weren't comfortable flying and dpsing at the same time, and the cyclones in phase 2 were kicking my fellow healer's ass. However, she managed to live through that phase when her husband told her to just follow him and he'd lead her around.

Firebirdie dropped my new boots (yay) and a dagger that our pug hunter took (what?). And with that upgrade, I only have 2 pieces that are not 365 or higher. (My pants and a ring.)

Anyway. We moved onto Baleroc and beat against him for 3 tries before we had to call it. The healers (all two of us) couldn't figure it out at first. However, I've done some reading now (I was not prepared for that boss last night. Usually we take a short break after a kill but we just moved right along and the husband tried to explain but he didn't explain what the healers have to do, probably because he didn't care.) and I know that we need to rotate. My shaman buddy kept healing the tank because his health kept dropping. And I kept healing the DPS because THEIR health was dropping, and then I would throw a heal onto the tank. It was all messy.

I"m going to talk to my healing buddy tonight and see how we want to approach this. I was really bummed that my hots won't help stack the buff I need. Dude. Way to gimp me! Ugh.

Anyway. I have a busy day ahead of me. I'd best get moving!!

Yay heals!

2011-09-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

We went into Firelands last night with 9 guildies and our usual PUG death knight. Do you know what that means? Aw yeah, I got to heal with my bestie. We easily two healed Beth, with only 1 wipe because the downstairs tank took the first web pulley thing and I took the next. When he realized what he did, instead of staying up and just switching for that phase, he jumped down and (since I had taken my usual 2nd web) Beth turned to ME and ate my face. We wiped pretty fast after that.

We 1 shot Shannox, despite both puppies eating my face within the first 5 seconds of the encounter. (The DK battle rezed me.) I didn't get above 50% mana the entire time. Heh. Stupid puppies.

Then we went to Lord Rhyolith and wiped on him 5 times before finally killing him. That wasn't hard, but I swear that some of my dps went, found the fire, and stood in it. We did get him to 2nd phase at least 3 times, so we're definately improving on that fight.

Loot wise, I made out like a freaking bandit. I got the haste caster hat off Beth, and then both pieces off Rhyolith. He dropped the leather agility hat and the leather caster chest. I have my tier chestpiece so I'm not going to replace that but I'm looking towards my boomkin set. The best part is that my 'old' hat, which was the hat from Atramedes (not my tier hat), can now be repurposed for boomkin. I'm hoping we go back and do Nef or Cho'gall so I can get my tier hat or shoulders so I can have my 4 piece boomkin bonus.

Tonight, we head back in and face down Alysrazor. I think we can do this if people just learn to 1. fly and 2. dodge shit. :) I'm hopeful!

The Great Wild Growth Nerf of PTR 4.3

2011-09-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

A lot of bloggers have already discussed this in much better terms then I can. (Beru, Jasyla, Tzufit and I know that the other Resto bloggers will hit this up as well). I wouldn't even discuss it but I am feeling a bit betrayed by the developers right now.

We, the resto druids, don't have a damage mitigation cooldown. In order to 'make up for this', you gave us Tranquility as a 3 minute cooldown. You buffed our Wild Growth in 4.0.6. And you gave us absolute crap for glyphs.

Now, I've never been a fan of Wild Growth spamming. It's not my preferred method of healing. However, in certain situations it is helpful. I glyphed my Wild Growth because I do raid and hitting that extra person is very helpful. (However, half the time I swear it hits people's pets!)

Did this make my output 'better' then other healers? Yes, a bit. Last night, after this nerf was announced, I did a bit of number crunching (which I'm really not good at). I looked at my Wild Growth numbers from a couple weeks ago (since I ran boom last week), and figured out that with a 20% nerf to WG, my numbers would drop by just abut 5%.

And that doesn't include numbers for the new cooldown if I keep my Wild Growth glyphed. (Which, at this point, I probably won't keep.)

Now, let's talk about Resto glyphs. From what I see, we have 4, maybe 5 major glyphs for us. There's Healing Touch (which I didn't have until they nerfed Innervate), Innervate (which is nerfed), Wild Growth, Thorns and Rebirth. Now, I don't believe in glyphing things I never use. So why would I glyph Thorns or Innervate? That leaves behind Wild Growth, Rebirth and Healing Touch. If you want to make us choose between glyphs, GIVE US GLYPHS TO CHOOSE BETWEEN!

And I swear to the Earthmother, if my husband says to me again that mitigation cooldowns are for tanks, I'm going to punt him into a wall.

Hooray!

2011-09-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

It's looking like we're going to have 10 guild members for our raids this week. That means ... I GET TO HEAL! YAY! /dance

I had a really hard weekend, I went on a trip across the state for my nephew's 1st birthday party. It was very stressful, we left Saturday morning (I spent 12 hours in the car, there and back) and I got home Sunday evening and barely got to log in. I logged in and just idled. I was so burned out from driving back and forth that I just wanted to play without anyone pestering me. So I went to a server that I have a level 5 toon on, where I don't know anyone, and tried to play her.

I ended up having to adjust her interface, so that took me all the time I had before bed. But I logged her on again on Monday night and got my little goblin warlock to level 12, and out of the starting zone.

I'm trying to decide if I want to find a leveling guild over there or just stay unguilded and all that. I've never been on a server where I didn't have a community before. And I actually do know people there, but I haven't contacted them because I'm only level 12 and what if they don't really like me and only tolerate me? Heh. I'm such a mess.

Anyway. If anyone wants to say hi. My goblin warlock is Annanda on the Llane server.

Firelands - Post Nerf

2011-09-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

So, last night we went back into Firelands. My raid leading husband had texted me a few days ago, as I went to pick up my resto shaman buddy from work, "Talk to CoolShaman about 2 healing". I kind of rolled my eyes but I brought it up with her when she got into the car. "What do you think about 2 healing Firelands?" She thought about it for a few moments and then said "Sure, why not. We can probably do it! And if we can AwesomePriest will be there to back us up." So we had a loose plan. She and I would try to 2 heal Firelands, as a resto druid and a resto shaman.

Well, Wednesday comes and we can't get the people together. One of our raiders is sick (food poisoning) and another one just didn't show up. We picked up our usual 2 old guildy pugs but still weren't able to get into Firelands. We did Baradon Hold, and 2 healed that. (We decided to stop 3 healing the new boss when my over heal was 60%.)

Then Thursday comes around. And we realize that since one of our usual pugs is a holy pally without a dps spec, one of us was going to have to DPS. Well, my shaman friend just switched her 2nd spec to enhancement but she's not very familiar with it yet and she's not hit capped. So she decides to switch to elemental for the raid (since my output is higher then hers apparently).

However, as we get to talking, it turns out she doesn't have any kind of real elemental gear, she just does it in her resto gear. Which is what I do, but I have two pieces of boomkin tier gear to give me a 2 piece bonus. She decides that I should DPS and she'll heal but if it turns out this isn't working, I would flip back to tree.

We get into Beth'tilac and the pally goes up on the web and my shaman stays down with us. It takes us two tries but we kill her rather easily. The only death was my husband's pally tank, but I battle ressed him and we moved on.

Next was Shannox. I want to say we 1 shot him. I don't remember and apparently our log for last night isn't up so I can't check. But that went pretty well.

So we went to Lord Rhyolith and beat against his legs for a while. Took us 3-4 tries (I think) but we did finally get him. I did pop tranquility at the phase transition, which I think helped a lot. It was a messy kill and I think there were 4 or 5 of us laying around holding down the floor after he died, but he did die. We'd only ever gotten to phase 2 once before, so yay there.

We spent the remaining hour or so trying to clip Alysrazor's wings. And honestly. That seemed like a fun fight!! I was paired with our pug DK to kill things on the left side of the area (left as you look at the cave). Our flying DPS kept falling, so we kept wiping to that. But eventually we will get better at that. It's just a learning curve.

I will admit I saw red when I saw Staghelm kill those poor captured Druids of the Talon. Oh he just makes me so mad! Grrrrrr!

I am a bit bummed that I'm progressing through Firelands as a chicken. I love healing. It's all I've wanted to do for years now. But I lost my healing spot to a pug because we need warm bodies. *sighs* It sucks so bad. I am very happy that we have people willing to help us, but all I want to do is heal. I don't want to be a sucky dps (which I am). I'm just so sad about it. I want to heal with my shaman buddy, like we've been doing since Kara. Oh well. There's always next expansion I guess.

Tier 13 - Thoughts

2011-09-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

I have made no secret of the fact that I find most tier gear ugly. However, I do have a new favorite. Paladin Tier 13. Honestly Blizzard, THIS is what druids should be wearing.

Those feathers? Totally druid-ish! I know people are saying it looks like Pally Birdman, Attorney at Law, but I so want those shoulders. I can do without the hat, but I do like the coloration of this set.

Instead, I'm stuck with mushrooms. I look like I fell asleep in a freaking cave for 3 weeks. Plus, look at that hat.

I will look like a freaking cyclops! I have two eyes!! Not 1!!

However, I do like the mage tier as well. The quilted look with gears is actually really awesome. It's very 'steam punk' and that is so SO cool.

The rest of the tier sets don't impress me.

Shamans - My resto shaman buddy says "It looks like I crawled into a cave for 100 years and had small animals die on me!"

Rogues - Really? You're going to put lights on someone who is trying to stealth in the dark? That just doesn't make sense.

Warlocks - Well, at least their inner beauty is coming out. They look like human sized Faceless Ones!

Warriors - Not too bad. I like the Deathwing look.

Honestly, I can't wait to see what Blizz pulls out for hunters, death knights and priests.

Birthdays and 4.3 and nerfs

2011-09-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

My birthday was on Thursday so I've been rather busy the last few days. However, I did get some WoW in.

We went back into Firelands on Wednesday and Thursday, downing Shannox and Beth'ilac. We got some good attempts on Lord Rhyolith on Thursday, getting him to 2nd phase with only 1 death, me. They wiped pretty quickly but at least we've now seen it! Now we just need to tighten it up and make it work.

This weekend I got sometime leveling my little troll warlock. She's level 64 now and questing in Terokkar Forest. We're trying to get to level 65 so the husband can take his little goblin rogue out and farm lock boxes for his Insane acheesement.

Other then that, I ran 4 troll heroics on Sunday. It was very lazy, but we wanted to at least try to cap out points. I have 60 points to go and hopefully we'll get to run another heroic tonight. We have another birthday gathering for me after work, so we'll see if I actually get time to do that.

And like everyone else, I've been anxiously awaiting word of 4.3. And the WoW gods blessed me with news this morning. I read about the new 5 mans, and End Time sounds awesome. I always loved the concept of the Caverns of Time instances and this one just excites me. Yay!

As for the epic gems, I'm torn on this. My druid is a jewelcrafter and I've always liked having a ton of gems lying around to use. However, this sounds like it will make it harder to obtain and I'm not sure I like that. It would be awesome if they had a JC ability to have a higher chance to get an epic gem from the geode thing.

Also, the Deathwing raid sounds so awesome. Cthulu Deathwing! Awesome! I'm really excited about the idea of an outside raid that is all over Dragonblight. This is going to be epic.

Lastly, I should probably talk about my take on the Firelands nerf. I'm really unhappy about it. I haven't had a chance to do everything I wanted to do pre-nerf and 4.3 isn't even on the PTR yet. Jeez Blizz. I'm not a hard core raider but I want a chance to defeat the bosses at their original hardness. Ugh.

Anyway, over all, with the new information on 4.3, I'm getting excited about it. Not about the void storage and transmog, but the content. So cool!!

Shannox down!

2011-09-12T08:59:00.001-07:00

We downed Shannox relatively early on Thursday evening. It wasn't too bad, but it was kind of messy. We managed to do it with only the death of 5 people? Including both tanks I think. Heh. I'm not sure what happened there honestly.

He dropped my offhand but I only rolled a 16 so my favorite shadow priest won it with a ... 19. It will drop again. I know it!

We then headed towards Lord Rhyolith but didn't have much success with the steering. My darling husband and I had a disagreement about a few things and I got all huffy at him. (I love having my raid leader be my husband. I can argue with him and no one can hear me!!) I did end up logging off angry and going to bed mad at him over something really stupid. But whatever. That's marriage. I was fine the next morning and able to see that I was not completely rational the night before. The funny thing was that we were discussing things in the officer channel and I got pissy at the husband there and my best friend is like "Woah, I'm not getting in the middle of this argument" and stopped talking to us. So I took my argument to the verbal arena.

I spent my weekend playing my 'baby' hunter off and on. She's level 75 now and she JUST got the heirloom bow last night. Yeah. I know. A waste of JP. But I have a rogue who is level 72 who can use it too. I don't 'get' hunters. I just send my pet in and arcane shot. I don't know if that's how you 'do' it but it works for me.

In non-WoW news, my doctor put me on a new medication to stabilize my moods. I started it on Friday night and now I'm just waiting for it to kick in. Could take a few days or a couple of weeks. I can't wait to be back to 'normal'. Where I get upset or joyous over things that make sense and not because of a random whim. I'm only mentioning this because I may be a bit slow on updating since I only want to blog when I'm feeling decent. When I'm down, I feel like no one reads this and no one cares. Which is probably true but I need to write anyway. And maybe there's a audience out there somewhere!

Beth'tilac Down!

2011-09-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

We did get to go to Firelands last night. We ended up pulling two of our old guildies in, one holy pally and one deathknight (unsure of his spec).

We did change a bit of our last strategy and instead of sending our prot warrior, resto shaman and shadow priest up top, we sent our prot pally (my husband), myself (resto druid), a warlock (affliction I think) and our non-guilded DK. That worked pretty well and we were able to get her to about 80% before phase 2 started. Except that if the warlock and DK would go up the 3rd time, when she came down there would be a ton of spiderlings that she'd eat and heal up to full again. So we only had me and husband go up the 3rd time so the dps could clean up the spiderlings easier.

I think we did that for about an hour, maybe hour and half before we downed her. Then we went off and cleared trash until Shannox spawned and we did 2 attempts on him. That was much easier compared to Bethy in my opinion. Of course, at that point I was only half paying attention. So I don't know what the rest of the raid felt. Hehe.

My only complaint is that I kept dying. Husband would either fall through the hole in the webs or not taunt Beth at the right time. As a result, she'd turn to me and go "whack whack" and I'd be a corpse. I am not a sacrificial cow!!

Beth dropped her BOE plate boots and her BOE caster shield. The DK got the boots and my healing shaman buddy got the shield. Apparently Beth has some nice haste gloves and my hat, which also has haste on it. So I'll definitely be grabbing them when I see them. I'm not sure about my tier, because those haste pieces are so nice.

And I see that Shannox drops my haste offhand. (I think I'm starting to drool here.) Haste everywhere. MMMM! (And looking ahead, apparently the flaming bird has my trinket! And Baleroc has HASTE BRACERS. ZOMG. Okay, yeah. I don't look at loot lists until I know I will actually get there. I hate getting excited about things I can do nothing about.)

Tonight we're going in again, depending on what we can get. A couple of our guildies have gone MIA. So, not too sure what we're going to do about that. However, one that had been MIA seems to be back, so maybe he'll start raiding again. *crosses fingers*

Back in the saddle again ...

2011-09-07T14:59:00.000-07:00

So, last week I was on vacation. Now I'm back and it's been rather hectic around here. Mostly real life engagements and what not.

However, I did get to step into Firelands last week and take a few swings at the spider boss, Beth'tilac. We three healed it and didn't really succeed. We were mostly trying to check it out and exploring it. I think that we'll try 2 healing it however next time. Our healing team that we'd have would be a resto shaman up top and a resto druid down below. We (the players of the healing toons) know that's not the best, but it's what we have and love. So we're going to make it work.

We ended up doing 1 day of Firelands as when we went back the next day, 3 of our team couldn't make it. So we picked up a couple members of our guild that don't raid often and went to Blackwing Descent. Cleared that, which was awesome. And that was raiding for that night.

This week, we're supposed to go back into Firelands. However, I don't know how sign ups look because the husband was feeling sick and went to bed before the other officers were online. I hope we can go. I'll be pretty bummed if it doesn't happen!

In other news, I worked on my troll warlock a bit this weekend. The husband wants to get his rogue to at least 65 before he starts farming lockboxes for the Insane acheesement. He's only got the lockboxes to go and I won't farm them for him on my rogue. Because I'm mean!

But I haven't gotten a lot of WoW time in recently. I'm hoping that will change in the future though!

Vacation!

2011-08-30T22:22:00.001-07:00

I just got back from a mini vacation. Sorry for the radio silence. I'm raiding Firelands tomorrow, hopefully will have a post up sometime later about that!

Playing Dress Up

2011-08-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

So, with all the transmogrification news, my husband has caught the 'old tier gear' fever. He has spent the last few evenings (honestly, probably ever since the announcement was made) looking over old tier gear and other 'special' items.

Last night he spent a ton of time with Wowhead's model viewer, looking at teir 6 and his favorite shield of all time. It's really cracking me up.

I know I just made a post about this, but honestly, I thought the actions of my husband were too funny to share. It's like he's playing dress up with dolls.

Heh.

Shared Topic Aug 22-28, 2011: Transmogrification Reactions

2011-08-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

So, by now, we've all seen the tidbits of Patch 4.3 that Blizz has decided to release to us. The hype, in particular, surrounds two things directly related--Transmogrification and Void Storage. If you do not have any idea at all about what the two of those are, you can view the blue posts here (Transmogrification) and here (Void Storage).

What are your thoughts on these two new things Blizz wants to put into the game? Has it fulfilled your need for bank space (a recent ST)? Will it make you more interested in the game? Could you care less? Is there anything you'd change? Let's have at it, ladies and gents! Nitty and gritty!

I have mixed feelings on the tidbits Blizzard has released so far about 4.3. I can use the Void Storage. I have tons of old stuff that I have kept just because I love them. However, I did get rid of a lot of stuff recently when I was cleaning out my bank. I have been farming old instances with my guild so that they could get certain items, like the Bulwark of Azzinoth for my husband.

Which leads us into the transmogrification part of the announcement. The items I want need to be purchased with valor points. Some people are planning out their new outfits but honestly, I don't really care. I like wearing the newest outfit. However, I'd be happy if they'd let me transmogrify myself into a tree again!!

Acheesements and more dailies

2011-08-21T17:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't been doing a lot since raid last week. My weekend has mostly been taken up with BBQ's, house painting, grocery shopping and cleaning. However, I started leveling my shadow cow through Eastern Plaguelands and I got it into my head to look at the guild achievement 'Critter Kill Squad' and see how far along we were. Well, there was only about 3000 critters left to kill so I drug my 85 priest out to the Terrorweb Tunnel and spent my Saturday (when I was at my keyboard) holy nova-ing my way to glory.

I didn't get it done on Saturday, but when I logged in today, I ground out the last 1000 or so and ...

Stupid, I know. But yay! The husband was really happy. He's wanted that pet since Cata came out.

I've spent the rest of my time doing my dailies on my priest.

Today, we unlocked the Druids of the Talon. And ended up spending a ton of time trying to do the achievements and getting knocked off island by the ancient charhounds. Stupid charhounds. Besides doing Molten Front, I'm forcing the husband to do the Tol Barad dailies with me. I have 80 tokens as of today and I need 125 for my spirit trinket. So yeah. But I can't do both completely, so I do all my Molten Front ones and then whatever I can do in TB.

This coming week is going to be really hard as I have a vacation that I'm leaving for on Friday and I'm spending most of the week preparing for that. (I'm spending Friday through Tuesday with a friend of mine's family.) Plus my boss is on vacation this coming week so it's going to be really hectic.

However, I finally looked at the new troll hairstyles. And hot damn. My lowbie troll warlock actually looks troll like to me now.

Lastly, one of our friends came back to the game today and we ran a regular random heroic with him. When we got to Mindbender Ghur'sha (the guy who's controlling Erunak Stonespeaker), the following conversation took place:

It was amusing!!

Defender of a Shattered World

2011-08-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

Tonight, for our 2nd raid night, we entered Throne of the Four Winds and proceeded to kick ass. 1 try for the Council and then 3 tries for Al'Akir.

It's pretty much the same group as last night, except our new hunter didn't show, so we got a replacement healer who used to be in our guild. Which let our priest go shadow, which was fun for her!

And now I'm the proud owner of a pretty glowy bird and a shiny new title.

On to Firelands! I'm so excited! I've wanted this title for months now. I know it's late, but I don't care!

Still riding high ...

2011-08-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

I was so happy and excited over our successes last night that I didn't get to sleep until 1 am and then woke up at 6 am. I don't care. It felt so good to succeed.

Due to our roster issues, we had pugged a hunter last week. And this week, we invited him back to finish off Blackwing Descent. He'd never seen the fights before but he looked them up online and did a lot of research and was READY! I loved that. He would die to some mechanics that he didn't understand from just watching the videos and reading the strats, but he would rarely die to the same mechanic twice. It was awesome.

Apparently, he had been interested in joining our guild last week but our guildmaster asked him to hold off and take his time. So this week, we down Nef and there's a little conversation in Officer chat about how we would love to have him join us but if he wanted to just raid with us under a different guild tag, that would be great too.

Our raid team regroups and heads to Bastion of Twilight next. We one shot Halfus, two shot the Twins (people didn't group up for the Blackout and the meteors), one shot the Council (which was a first kill for us) and then saw Cho'gall for the first time. We did have 1 guy in our raid who had seen it on a different toon, but the rest of us were fresh. I didn't listen to the strat, nor to the abilities. (I was still in shock from Nef's death.) And still, we got him to less then 200,000 on our first attempt. And then POW! Second attempt, he dropped.

And best part, right after the Twins, our pug hunter joined our guild. So our first Cho'gall kill was a full guild group. Yay!

As for uptime on Harmony. I did okay on some fights but bad on others. Even with a HUGE power aura saying "Hey idiot, Harmony isn't up", I managed to only get 81.7% uptime. And that was my best fight (Nef). On the Twins, I only managed to get 49.2% uptime. Every other time was 73.1% (Halfus), 64.4% (Council) and 71.0% (Cho'gall). I need to figure out a few tricks to keep that up a lot more.

Then there's overheal. My best was only 16.5% overheal. But my worst was 52.6%. However, I think that's skewed a bit. Every other fight was about 30%. Give or take a bit. I could do better. But sometimes my hots get stomped :) (I'm running with a resto shaman and a disc priest.)

Lastly. I'd like to put a shout out to my beloved raid team from last night.

Our tanks: Paliclaus (prot pally) and Alama (prot warrior)

Our healers: Shonokoko (resto shaman), Bachué (disc priest) and myself (Karegina, resto druid)

Our Melee: Indale (assassination rogue)

Our Ranged: Payne (survival hunter), Pyrodoom (fire mage), Slipknoth (beast mastery/survival hunter), and Kahlanah, (affliction warlock)

Good job guys. I've never been more proud of you then today.