NaNoWriMo

I'm going to be doing it again this year, but not entering it on NaNoWriMo...

For starters, last year I only got 25k words done in the book I was writing for the event, mainly because I stopped about halfway through the month for some reason. But I want to finish it, so I'm starting it up again... and I think that's against the rules. :)

For seconds... in July, for no reason what so ever, I started to write a new story and in a month I got it up to over 50k words. It isn't finished, by a long shot, but there it is.

I know I can do it. I just haven't been.

Well, even though I'm not in on the contest, it's a good imperative to push me into writing again. It also helps that because we're down to one car, and Boon and I have to share it, I'm at work two and a half hours before work actually starts... so I have nothing to do BUT write. So I will.

I brushed off the old manuscript and I'm going to reread it for a day or so - mainly to get back into the personalities of the various characters that I have written for the story. Should be fun. :)

Been a while...

Wow. It's been a while!

My main has pretty much switched to my restoration shaman. We're clearing TotC, Ony, etc, etc. Fun fun.

What have I been doing, I hear you ask, that would have taken me away from your eager reading of my delectable blog?

Or something.

Aion is one of those things. Borderlands is another. Star Wars text-based RPG's the third.

I have finally tried clique with grid. And it's nice when I don't forget that I have it. And it isn't nice when I have to open up clique to take off right and left click, so I can do group things like changing leader or even leaving the group! I still haven't found a way to quickly enable and disable clique so I can do things like that. Not to mention clicking on someone to open trade if they aren't in my immediate party, (/tar , /trade is what I have to do right now), etc, etc.

Aion is a pretty game. There are a few things about it that I'm not liking, but as well, in reverse, I go back to WoW and I go 'grr, so irritating. *X* is so much better in Aion!'. I seem to be liking the DPS classes there, and my cleric is not so much. Granted, when I was the cleric in a GROUP, it was much more fun. But when it's the two of us, not so much fun.

However, my Asmodian Sorceress and my Elyos Assassin are scads of fun.

Borderlands is a very fun RPS... RPS you say? Role-Play Shooter... RPFPS? Something like that. It's pretty fun, has quests, objectives, loot, all sorts of fun things. I play the Siren - because she's the only girl! But she's fun... with her phasewalk explosion. *giggle*

And then there's the Star Wars RPG. Some of it is nostalgia, I will admit that, but it's still scads of fun for me. I'm a GameMaster on the game that I'm on, so I get to make plots for other people (read: I get to do evil things to them, consequence free for me! ;) and .. *giggle* In the last week, I've been called 'scary evil'. *cackle* The sign of a good admin, people see you post something or @mail them something and they get nervous what you're going to do next! :)

Happy Birthday Boon!

Today is several things...

Talk like a Pirate Day.

Boon's Birthday.

Saturday.

But equally as important... it's 4 years. People who know what I mean by 4 years understand the importance of that. People who don't... it's a long story.

But Boon... HAPPY BIRTHDAY! And maaaany more!

How do YOU heal?

So, tonight in guild chat there was a debate about how people heal.

There's mouse-over, there's clique, there's grid, there's healbot, there's keybindings, there's a combination of any of the above!

The conversation delved into that a healer with grid/clique will out-heal a healer that uses the regular UI.

And I (and Boon who uses no healing addons) who use ONLY Grid more as an organizational tool than anything else, had to disagree.

Yes. I'm a "bad" healer. I click on my button on my standard UI bar, and then bring the mouse over to the grid box and click the box.

But I will maintain that I will heal just as fast as someone who is using grid/clique.

Because honestly - you can only heal as fast as your heals are off cooldown, and GCD is cooled down.

Can I see how a DRUID healer would be slowed down without using something to help, considering the nature of instant-cast hots? Yes. But when you play a class that doesn't have a lot of instant cast spells... by the time I CAN cast another spell, I have it ready to be cast.

So sure - you may use less motion than I do - but I'm still healing just as fast. ABC baby.

Does it honestly matter HOW I heal, provided I do the job, and do it well?

When people start to randomly die because I fail as a healer, I'll go ahead and change.

I use grid because it lets me see if people are in or out of range, who has aggro for pre-emptive healing and what class they are and how hurt they are at a glance.

So... how do you heal, and what pros and cons do you feel it offers you?

September 11th - 8 years later

Last year I blogged on my memories of the day.

I was talking to Boon this morning and I remarked how for us, Pearl Harbor is something that we don't actively think about, or remember the date of, at least not as anything but 'When did it happen again?' - and this morning I even got it wrong. I thought it was December 14th. It's December 7th.

It made me wonder ... when will that time come for us? Will it ever come for those of us who were old enough to be affected by it? Will this always be a day that makes us tear up, even in some small way?

Those who were alive during the days of Pearl Harbor, those who were affected by it... they'll never forget that date. To them, every December 7th is a day to remember. A day to wear a flag pin or a red-white-blue shirt, or if they're blogging, to blog about it.

Is September 11th that day for us? The first few years, in preparation for the day, I'd get together with some of my classmates and we'd make a basket full of red-white-blue ribbon pins and leave the baskets around campus.

Then when that stopped, I would wear a red-white-blue shirt - a white shirt with a red-white-blue heart in sequins on it. Or one of my 9-11 T-shirts.

Now, I'm not. I could technically say I'm wearing red-white-blue because my pants are cream colored, my work top is red, and my shirt is blue. But I feel very unpatriotic. Some of this is due to the fact that I'm bad at planning. So even though I knew this day was coming, I didn't think to plan on what I'd wear, or try to find or make a pin, or anything.

So I'm a very bad 9-11 remembrance person. :(

Where is the cutoff on who the generations that lived through it are and the generations after it?

Do students who were in high school, or middle school... consider the day the way those of us who were adults do? Or to them, is it just another day where something bad happened to some old folks?

How many years must go by before the headline of today isn't something about 9-11?

Will it ever do that?

With the advent of the internet, videos, audiolinks, images - can be found everywhere. It's kept alive - and perhaps it should always be kept alive - because today I can click on a link that will show me exactly what was on TV at the time of the attacks. Because I can click on a link and listen to President Bush talk about the attacks the evening OF the attacks.

It doesn't die down. Perhaps it's good... it isn't something we should forget. But perhaps it's also bad. If we don't let it finally rest, can we ever heal?

Where HAVE you been?!

I can hear you all clamoring for the answer to that question.

The answer is quite simple. I got burned out. Still am burned out. We were pushing Ulduar hard. It seemed like all there was before me was endless grinding and grinding and grinding to try to get badges so I can upgrade to the gear we'd need in Ulduar.

And then the patch hit that took away my pretty pretty Martyr. *mewl* I miss my Martyr. So suddenly I had to deal with DPS that was so much lower than it was - where before I was competing with the top DPS in my guild, suddenly I was struggling to stay ahead of the tank.

Ok ok ok. SLIGHT exaggeration there. Very slight. Like... this >< much exaggeration.

So I took a break and dove headfirst back into the thing that got me started down the road to meeting Boon, and some of the best and worst friends of my life. Text Based RPG. Yes. It's still out there.

The 'Golden Days' may be over... but the games are still out there. Some of them better than others. Some with people who are better RPers than others.

And with this odd little habit of people doing the internal monologue thing in their poses.

See, I 'grew up' in the field of - you pose what you are doing, what your facial expression is, your stance, your everything. You don't TELL someone what you're doing.

For (brief) example:

Kikidas looks over at Boon, her lips turned down at the corners. The skin between her eyes draws in and her fingers slowly clench into fists.

Now.. you read that and you see EXACTLY what I am doing. It is up to you to draw conclusions as to what I am thinking - the way you would if you were seeing that in real life.

Kikidas could be pissed at Boon for what he said. Or what he's going to do. Or upset for some other reason that Boon is bringing up, but not at Boon himself.

But you can only guess based on what you can see of the interaction between the two.

The bad example:

Kikidas looks over at Boon, frowning as he talks about her sordid love affair with Bargrave oh so many years ago. Her fingers curl into fists as she contemplates the horrible ending where Bargrave spurned her for Disrida, that succubus tramp. Her heart is still broken.

There is just way too much information in that pose that, if we were being true to the soul of text-based gaming, you just shouldn't know. Unless Kikidas or Boon say: "Hey, do you remember when Bargrave spurned you for Disrida and broke your heart? Isn't Disrida such a tramp?" how could you possibly infer that information from Kikidas frowning and clenching her fists?

Granted... there is a time and place for internal monologuing in poses. I use it RARELY myself for comedic relief.

For instance:

As Bodaz speaks of using mice to experiment synthesizing a new hormone that would allow Dekir's people to live offworld, Kvasira looks down at her fingers, flexing them against her clothing as she listens. Where's PETA when you need them?

There's no such thing as PETA in the Star Wars universe, so it isn't IC information being given. But it makes people laugh in out of character chat. :)

So that's where I've been -- that and on Champions. Erm, I don't know the full name. It's the new incarnation of City of Heroes.

I have, thus far, gotten a ton of compliments about the way my characters look. Granted, some from Boon, so that doesn't count, but some from other people, too.

And of course, my account is being shared by Vialora, who has a thing for vivid purple and green -- which kind of hurts the eyes. I think his power is to be so blindingly clashing that people can't see him out of self-preservation.

So, because I think my characters look cool...

Gaia, Sibuna, Nightdream and Blue Lace -- okay, that last one isn't cool as much as just... what can I say, I was having fun. :)

You may need to refresh the page if it shows N/A for character picture.

So... that's where I've been. I'm back on WoW part time, leveling my disc priest, and probably going to be playing more of my resto shaman than my retardadin. And maybe my warlock.

A Keiji in Naxxramas

I know that previously I had taken Keiji into Naxx with a PuG. But this time it was different... this time, it was a guild run.

Two days. All bosses. Only trouble was KT (and Heigan, but then again, when isn't there trouble with Heigan? We still one shot the Dance Master.), where we had some issues with positioning and tank death. But we persevered and down he went.

I finally got a shoulder upgrade (woot for tier!) and some nifty boots.

Unholy tanking... still a problem with the Bone Shield, the cooldown being a smidge too long for comfort. Perhaps they should offer a glyph that reduces the cooldown on it?

But otherwise, I believe I did well. It helps that we had some awesome healers and awesome DPS. But I am happy. I finally got Keiji through Naxxramas (10).

Next step... ULDUAR! (I jest, I jest!)

Mimiron is a PITA

I was on vacation to New York for a little while there, which doesn't completely explain the lack of blogging, but it does explain some of the lack of blogging! It's hard to blog about a game you can't actually play, especially given that much of my blog inspiration comes from in-game issues.

Our 10-man Ulduar progression team is stuck on Mimiron. We finally made it past phase 3, which has been the sticking point for us for a while now, and then had half the raid wipe in phase 4 because they didn't see the red runes of death beneath them. After that, we couldn't get past phase 3 again.

I don't get the whole clumping up thing, to me that seems like you're just asking to have your entire raid wiped out in one second. I get the whole 'need to be together to prevent the boss from bugging out during laser barrage', but can't we clump up when that starts?

The 'nice' thing is that our allied guild that we do 25 man runs with is also stuck on Mimiron.

Is it wrong to be glad that our allies are also stumbling? Or just normal? :) I'm not CHEERING that they're not progressing, but at the same time, I'm also glad that they aren't beating us out!

And in other news, MRSA is in da house! Albeit, this is not a cheer thing, as much as a 'you've got to be kidding me' thing. Black clouds, people, black clouds!

PvP: Failures in Teamwork

There are lots of different strategies for the various battlegrounds that we have in World of Warcraft, from the old favorites of Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley, to the newer ones of Eye of the Storm, Strand of the Ancients and Wintergrasp, to the new one on the horizon.

One of the common factors in whether or not your side wins, besides when one runs afoul of a premade, is when a team works together as a cohesive unit, even if you don't win, you do far far better than when everyone is soloing.

This is something that the Horde in the Rampage Battlegroup seem to be able to do, regardless of it is a PuG or not.

Be it because they actually DISCUSS things before hand (blasphemy, I know), or be it that they realize that four rogues working together will own just about anything that comes their way (oh God, that WSG game SUCKED.), or that a disc priest, paladin combination is nearly impossible to beat and therefor they can do whatever the hell they want... be it what it may, the Horde have mad leet communication skills and the Alliance do not. Which always seems backwards to me, given the names involved.

Those few times when you do have a leader attempting to actually lead, it's like trying to herd kittens through a field of butterflies. They either ignore you, or ignore you, or bat at your heels while purring. Or viciously attack in badly written English.

Or if/when the attack plan doesn't go as intended, they start to bitch and moan and complain, rather than help modify the plan to fix what was wrong, or deal with the unexpected. Because this helps everything.

Simple things... "Need healers on FC", "FC coming up West", "EFC going down East", "Don't go Tunnel", "Go Ramp", "Inc. BS", "Inc. TP", "I'm tank, going in on Drek"... can be the difference between success and failure... and often are. Yet people do not do this. They rush in, or solo defend, or solo run the flag, or solo try to get the flag back, and then whey they die, or fail, they blame everyone else for sucking.

PvP: The Beginning

Back in the old days of yore and bygones and in a galaxy far, far away... I swore I'd never PvP.

However, I am a) a woman and 2) a warlock. I can do whatever the hell I want.

So I've started to PvP. As you may (or may not) have read, I started with Kvasira (technically my current "main") the RetLoL way back at level 70.

I can't say I got BORED with PvPing with Kvasira, but I'm a goal-oriented person for the most part. It can be something as simple as: 'beating X boss' for the umpteenth time, but I need an end-goal.

For Kvasira, it was hitting 10k HK's. I did that. And then I said, 'Next one is 25k? Screw that.'. I worked my tush off, got her outfitted with over 800 resilience, she's a walking juggernaut of death! (Okay, not quite, but I do well considering I still don't use keybindings.) But I do NOT have the patience to grind away to 25k HK's.

I realized that my place as a retribution paladin is assist. I run with the fc, I get back the flag from the efc. Sometimes I run the flag. I guard bases or help assault them. I burn towers and laugh. I serve as a bad backup healer but possibly the only thing standing between tank death on Galv and winning. I soak up damage by NPC's so someone else can cap the graveyard.

In short, I make myself as annoying to the Horde as Humanly (or Draenicly) possible.

But I digress! (As I'm allowed to do. My blog, remember?)

So I switched my focus to Karika the Resto Shaman. I sat there all the time with Kvasira and said to myself, 'OMFG, Trees, Resto Shaman, Disc Priest, Holy Paladin... I HATE YOU'. So I decided to go at it from the other side. I'd try to BE the person that those other people hated (even more than my 'screw up their plan' paladin self).

It stunk at first, no resil gear besides the crafted rings and necklace. I'd land in a battleground and announce to my raid: "I'm a resto shaman in PvE gear. Please don't leave me alone and I'll heal you."

It garnered a few laughs, but it worked. For the most part, I was able to live long enough to accomplish something. Heal the flag carrier, whatever.

Of course, once the Horde realized that they had 1) a resto shaman that had b) bad pvp gear, it was open season on Karika.

The Horde are VERY good at focus firing people. I hate it when it happens to me.

However, I'm now at somewhere around 400 resilience with Karika, I can live longer. I do live longer. I can sometimes hear them grinding their teeth as they work at killing me. I'm still working on ways to do stuff besides heal myself over and over again when someone is hitting me. It's still just a waiting game otherwise: I heal myself until help arrives, if help doesn't arrive, it may take three minutes or whatever, but eventually I'll die.

Now... what's the point of this? Just K babbling again, right?

WRONG.

I'm in these battlegrounds, battlegrounds that have been out for YEARS, and watching people do the silliest things.

It seems people have either 9) forgotten the basic strategies for the various BG's or z) are new to the game and thus do not KNOW the strategies that the rest of us take for granted.

There are MANY guides out there, (some of them good! Like The Art of War(craft)). (And if I had any ability with the internet at all, I'd link his articles. As it is, this is the best I can do. The Warlock's Den also has a nice page devoted to beginning PvP.)

And of course, my favorite place is WoWWiki for all my unofficial needs.

However, you guys all know me. I'm never content just linking and letting that be enough. I've got to rant, rave and give my take on the whole PvP/Battleground scenario.

Besides 'The Alliance has the coordination and tactics of a group of kittens in a field of butterflies' that is...

And isn't that a pretty visual. :)

Faction Change

I'm sure by now everyone and their brother (or sister, let's not be sexist here) has seen this post, or some variation of it.

Now, the question becomes: how will they do it?

Options:
1. 'Makeover': Similar to how they currently let us redesign our race, new gender, new face, new etc... are we going to have transracial transformations?

Problems:
a: How does this happen on a RP server? Nibuca has already humerously outlined potential pitfalls with this.

b: What if I'm an Alliance paladin... do I HAVE to become a Blood Elf paladin? And what if I'm a Horde shaman, do I then have to become a Draenei?

c: If I'm not limited like that and I could become an Orc paladin, what does that mean for people who are just starting out their orcs? Will they start to bitch: But I want to be an orc paladin too, without having to level Alliance! Or will Blizzard make all classes available to all races?

2: 'Racial Turncoat': They are out there. I mean, we already have humans in the Scarlet Crusade that are against the Alliance, and the Scourge against the Forsaken, and etc. So... let's go one step further, shall we?

Problems:
a: Do we REALLY think that Thrall is going to let some whiny Human join his people? Or Varian Wrynn will let any despicable Orc join his?

b: It will make the appearance of battlegrounds a little more tough to navigate. You see a Tauren on the horizon... quick, check his name against the raid list, do you see his little dot on the minimap? He's too far away to see if his name is red, or green. Is he one of ours, or one of THIERS?

c: It will piss off the Horde in the Rampage battlegroup, that's for sure. Suddenly, all the little kids who don't want to play an ugly Horde, EW! (I'm with ya, little kids. And yes, BE's aren't ugly, but the girls cast/attack like sissies and the boys are prettier than the girls. That's just wrong. And besides, the bones in the Forsaken are put together all wrong. Inaccuracy FTL.), can now play their pretty/cool/awesome/whatever Alliance character, and go all emo and switch sides to the Horde. Suddenly, a Cho'gall Horde premade isn't as scary anymore.

d: The use of 'v' to bring up enemy nameplates will suddenly become MUCH more commonplace.

What do YOU guys think they'll do, and what problems do you think will arise from that method?

Boon personally thinks it'll be Option 1. I kind of hope for Option 2. If I wanted to play an Orc, I would have rolled an Orc.

Resto Shaman PvP... I suck.

Kvasira hit 10,000 honor kills, has the full set of purchasable level 80 epic PvP gear, including trinket and cloak. The only thing I could work towards now is upgrading one of my rings and necklace to the epic form rather than the rare crafted ones. I'm also working towards getting one of the PvP mounts. 30 badges of each of the original three types. I'd have had it a long time ago, except I did a lot of concerted efforts instead to raise my honor faster to buy stuff.

So... I'm bored with that for the moment.

And I decide, given how much I bitch about resto/healers in PvP (opponents, love 'em when they're on our side), I'd take my shaman in and see how I can do with PvP there.

I have a LOT to learn. It doesn't help that I don't have ANY PvP gear with her (gonna craft myself the necklace/rings today). Once the Horde figure out that 1: I'm a healer and 2: I die like a baby mouse against a lion, I'm their preferred target to kill.

Granted, there were a few times where I sat there and said, 'Yeah, just keep hitting on me. While you're trying to kill me, my companions are killing you/capping the flag/assaulting the base.' If I don't get stunned, stunlocked or silenced, I can keep myself alive pretty easily.

I also have new respect for the healers I used to work with. Never again while I am running the flag will I leave them behind unwittingly. There's nothing nothing more annoying than having the flag runner get away from you because you're trying to stay alive, and then watch them die just out of your healing range.

Yeah.

So, resto pvp for me. Any suggestions?

Totems: Tremor (where appropriate) or Earthbind, Wrath, Cleansing and Magma?
Earthshield on myself (or flag runner with Watershield on myself).
And then just heal my tush off.

I'm having issues where I'll try to hit Nature's Swiftness and then a Healing Wave or Chain Heal and I can't get it off in time.

Part of my PvP problems arise from the fact that I don't use keybindings. I've tried in the past, and I just get confused. Now, some of that will go away if I just practice/practice/practice. And I may need to switch to that, and using the mouse to move instead of the awsd keys.

Yeah, I can hear you... yes, I use the awsd keys. And the qe keys. I'm a terribad player, I know.

The Joys (Hahahaha!) of Pugging

That was a sarcastic pathetic whimper of a laugh there, by the way.

Boon is out of town, so I decided that my Tuesday was best spent trying to get in some raids on those characters of mine that never get to see the nonlight of Naxxramas. As opposed to cleaning the house or something.

First up: Keiji needs badges. The likelihood of her getting into a VoA run without another DK that needs the chestpiece, IF it drops, is so miniscule that I'm just going to farm up the 80 badges to buy the chest token.

So I advertise myself for any heroic, and 10 man Naxxramas.

I get swooped up for a 10m Nax, almost full except for tanks. Okay, cool. It's a pug, I don't expect completely smooth sailing, but it sounds like they're all familiar enough with the fights and the like.

I'm a little nervous, since though I've been in Naxxramas enough times healing and DPSing to do it blindfolded (I can probably still tell you how many pulls it takes to get to Gargolmar in Hellfire Ramparts), I've never tanked in there before.

So I immediately hit up the other tank in tells, letting him know that while I know the fights in general, I've never TANKED them before and could he kindly let me know anything particular about the tanking aspects that I may not be aware of. He's cool with it. He only needs ONE trinket out of the whole instance, so anything tank-like that drops, it's mine, all mine!

We hit up military first. After one wipe on Raz because I was learning the whole 'charming the people thing, when do I use bone shield, when do I ask for a taunt, when, what, huh?', we down Raz. We down Gothik.

We have a few wipes on the four horsemen. Why, you ask? Because unknown to me, there's only 2 healers. And the unholy DK in full epic DPS gear is doing barely more damage than me, the unholy DK in mostly epic and some blues tanking gear (I knew this part). So the paladin MT goes holy, saying he can heal himself while tanking the guy, and I'd take the 'burn first' group with all the DPS. The RL says we're not going to switch up front, but just burn straight through. With most of the raid doing a little less than 2k damage (and one doing barely more than 1k, granted, he's off in the back tanking one of the mobs back there), I find this an unlikely win scenario.

Surprise! I'm right. We wind up with like, 7 marks before the Thane (and most of the DPS and the other tank) goes down.

Okay. Fine. The boomkin (who is top DPS) says he'll bring in his holy paladin just for the fight, doesn't mind saving the paladin to the raid, etc. A few more wipes, the back goes down, the RL wants to try one more 'no swap', and then finally I'm tanking by myself with the resto druid on me, the paladin MT is on Thane, and we do the swap method, and we win.

Yegads. Oh... guess how many tanking items dropped? Yeah. None. We swap out a few people, get in a nice warlock that pushes mid-2k dps, and we continue to go.

We go to Construct next. To my COMPLETE surprise, we down Patchwerk in one try. Yeah. Never pictured THAT happening.

We get to Globbulus, and one shot him too. The DK keeps dropping his poison cloud in the raid, but other than THAT, no problem.

Then we go towards Gluth. Now, let me say, when we started, we had two mages. By the time we got to Gluth, we had no mages. We had: roguex2, DK dps, warlockx2, boomkin, tree, holy pal, prot pal, DK tank.

We ask the DK if he can kite the adds. He says he can, sure, but doesn't like doing it.

Then when asked if he knows how to do it, he says no. The RL starts to ask if anyone else feels comfortable doing it... and a few of us point out that he's the ONLY class capable of doing it in the raid. Bonus that he has desecration.

Surprisingly, we get Gluth almost down when the DK dies and we lose it. Then the MT has to go. We swap a few more people. Then the holy paladin says he has to go. And it gets called.

No tank drops for Keiji.

I did get asked by the other DK: u unholy tank? can u do that? (I'm paraphrasing and making it more understandable.)

I exit Naxxramas, they're going to TRY again today. I, oh so unfortunately, have work. I spot Vialora outside of Nax. He says he's in a Nax25 pug. I ask if they have room for a warlock? They do!

I join. Through cajolery, we get a few more KoUers in the mix. The RL is armory'ing everyone. Everyone there is in almost full epics, tier 8, etc. This is going to be GREAT, right?

Spider goes down with only one hitch on the Grand Widow, but we two shot her. I'm on the low end of the Recount at about 2800 dps. The top end ranged in the high 3k, low 4k. This is going to go GREAT!

We go to Plague next. Noth no problem... and then we hit Heigan. O. M. G. I don't think I've ever seen so many wipes on Heigan since KoU first went in on 10man. The tanks kept pulling him too close to the stage, so the healers couldn't heal, so the tanks died. Or the tank would be too far away, so we'd move forward to heal/dps, and then the tank would suddenly be too close again. Like, is he backing up on an S curve through the room or something?

I think we wiped 4 times before we FINALLY got Heigan down. Loatheb was a clean kill (with an amusing 'pre-attempt half-wipe' that happened when someone ran in and aggro'd Loatheb when half the raid was still on the bridge outside of his room). (Granted, at the time, not so amusing considering how many times we all just died on Heigan.)

And then the end. We go to Military next. And we cannot get Raz down. Can. Not. Do. It. The 'lead' spriest wouldn't say when she was starting, she'd be told 'when you're ready', and instead of saying anything, would just slip down there and start casting. Then the other spriest would have to rush to pick up his target. And then the one would pull Raz too far to one side, so the other couldn't get him with their MC target. And people were hitting the MC'd targets with AoE damage? And the call-offs weren't good so the MC targets were taking tons of damage. And they weren't telling when one was being released, or weren't releasing on a regular schedule, because he'd be on one, and then suddenly both he and that target were running at the raid. And the healers weren't keeping the MC targets alive, and we'd run out of MC targets to tank him.

So we called it. Kikidas did get wrist and helm out of there, so not a complete loss on my part. Yet again, another one where they said to get in there again today. Alas, alas, unless I'm inconcievably not part of our Ulduar 25 run tonight, busy for that too.

For the final part of my evening, I went as Keiji to a SUCCESSFUL 10man OS guild-run. No drakes, but meh.

Unfortunately, didn't get the bag of spoils. Those badges would have gone a long way towards my chest piece.

So once again, the joys of pugging are rediscovered. To me, the BIGGEST mind-blow was the UBER Nax25 run that turned into a wipe fest. I think personally it was a bit of 'familiarity breeds contempt'. Everyone knows it well, but slightly different, and with us all KNOWING, no one was leading the attempts with 'tank him here' or whatever, or healing assignments, or anything. The most we got was 'you're MT' to one of the warriors.

So... top five signs that your PUG isn't all it's shaped up to be (and given the already low expectations of a PUG, these are pretty bad!). These aren't in any particular order. Because how do you order these beauties?

5. One of your six DPS is barely (or not at all) outdamaging one of your tanks.
4. The raid leader doesn't vet anyone, just invites people, and then later on asks: 'Does anyone...'
3. You're heading into Gluth and don't have any class capable of kiting the chow. And the RL doesn't notice.
2. The raid leader insists on doing something, when it's painfully obvious that it won't work.
1. The raid leader first says that there isn't going to be vent. And then after one of the DPS finally offers their vent channel, doesn't want to join it. (Or lead.)

As a top five list, it's pretty pathetic, I realize. And it's largely based on my experiences from yesterday, shockingly enough.

In other news... I got Ironman on Kvasira. *rawr*flex*

LFG Disc Priest. --> can u heal?

Now granted, discipline priests can do some interesting damage, but I'd be hard pressed to say that they're a 'DPS' class. Please do correct me if someone out there thinks otherwise, but when someone says they're a disc priest, I naturally assume that they're a healer.

I've discovered the joy of priestly healing once again, and in addition to leveling my hunter with Boon's shadow priest, and playing hordies, I've been pestering Boon to do some instances with me and my priest, so that I can heal heal heal heal!

It's like a puzzle. Heal X, Shield Y, Renew A... some combination thereof will allow us to get to the end of the instance with everyone alive.

I'm interested, once I hit 80, in trying PvP. A few of the things I HATE HATE HATE when I'm PvPing with Kvasira is running across a discipline priest, a resto shaman or a tree. Holy paladins are also annoying, but not NEARLY as much.

Maybe it's just that paladins are somewhat limited in our interrupts. We have a whopping two. No kick. No silence. No silencing shot. No fear. No deathcoil. Nothing. So put one of us against another and it's really just hoping we can burn them down when our HoJ is off cooldown.

Anyway... Boon is going out of town for a week, so I am going to be unable to instance with Kiljara. I'm not allowed to do any leveling without him. So I guess it's PvP with Kvasira, working on reputations and badges with Keiji and writing.

Noooo! RetLoL is gone!

I mean, the site is still there, but the person who updated it has stopped updating due to RL things!

Come back soon, RetLoL! (And come back safe.)

Rotational Queries...

In our recent Ulduar 25 run, I had the pleasure of being one of three retribution paladins.

Of the three, I was second in terms of damage. Now, the paladin who topped me is normally a tank (how galling), and does a lot of pugging (how brave), and has really nice gear.

So I just assumed it was an issue more of gear than of rotation or ability or anything like that.

Then I looked at the WWS for the run. With the exception of Exorcism and Ret Aura, my abilities do more damage than his abilities (if you look at the white line. On the green line, his abilities do more than my abilities. I wish I knew how to read this stupid chart better. It seems that the white is damage, the green are how many? Or something... in which case, I'm just not doing ENOUGH). My Seal, Judgement, Swing, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm...

Yet he's out damaging me. (Shut up. I know on the charts it looks like only by 9 DPS. But that's apparently the difference between #1 and #2. So 9 DPS is GIGANTIC. And I have no idea why Micro, who is pulling over 4100 DPS is so low on the charts. Probably because Paladins are awesome and mages are just glorified water boys.)

So I've been trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

I'm going to assume it has something to do with my rotation. Which admittedly is my hardest to watch/do thing, given that I'm also often using art of war, and moving, and decursing and all that fun stuff that makes being a paladin so awesome. Which means that my perfect rotation, where nothing is off CD at the same time so I don't 'waste' time waiting for GCD, never happens.

I tend to move in and judge light, to get Heart of the Crusader on the boss. Then I'll try to crusader strike, then divine storm, then judgement will be off cooldown (or close to). I use exorcism whenever I have all three of the others on cooldown (or the boss moves away and I'm not in melee range). I'm not sure if I should use exorcism whenever it's up? It does some nice damage.

I think the problem is that I have one 6s CD and two 10s CDs. And I get confused which one I should be hitting first to try to keep the CD's from overlapping.

I guess it's time with the training dummy for me. Or maybe RetLoL has new information.

I'm in the News! (in 1984...)

OS+1

Normally when I'm in Obsidium Sanctum, I'm the OT, the 'add picker upper' - given that I'm unholy and usually less well geared than the other tanks in the instance.

This time, I was given the daunting task of tanking Sartherion. Not sure if the RL did that because of my magic shield eating a few of his flame breaths, or because he wanted the better geared and more knowledgeable of the tanks on the drake and adds, or what, but there it was.

I wiped the first time on a flame tsunami. See, I didn't know that you had to dance between the two safe spots, and I thought there was just the one spot that was safe from all the flames. I am sometimes... not often, but sometimes... dumb.

So the first time, I went to what I was told was the 'safe spot', not realizing there was a second, and sure enough, the first flame tsunami was right on my back.

The next time, I went ahead and stood in the safe spot that doesn't require me to move from the flame tsunami that arrives from my back, so I just had to dance in and out of one tsunami.

I did die on our successful attempt, as neither I, nor my healer, were prepared for (or knew about!) the mini-enrage Sarth gets when you down one of the drakes. So BAM. Dead tank. Thankfully, the other tank was up to the task of picking up Sarth and the DPS were up to the task.

In the future, gonna try to save a bone shield cooldown for that time and be ready with trinket/other cooldowns. As it was, I went from reasonably alive, to dead, before I realized what happened.

So I can finally say that I've tanked Sarth. Go me!

After that, I went and pitifully DPS'd in Heroic OK. I need badges as Keiji for the Tier Chest. On the herald? Yeah. I slapped on my tank set and actually didn't do too badly in terms of killing my friends.

Ironsoul

The other day I was looking at Kvasira's gear and wondering when I'd ever get out of the Spiked Titansteel Helm and the Titansteel Destroyer.

I don't need the hit rating, for heaven's sake!

And I was commenting to Vialora how I hope that Flame Levi, one of those times I'm in Ulduar-10, drops this neat two-handed weapon that he has.

And usually I'm the only plate DPS in Ulduar-10.

And the other night, Vialora is invited along.

And Flame Levi drops Ironsoul.

And Vialora has more DKP.

But Vialora lives in my house.

And I know how to castrate things.

And make brownies.

Together, those two arguments convinced him that passing so I can get the upgrade was a good idea.

I'm sure my guild thinks I beat him into submission.

But I think 'beat' is too strong a word. Strongly demonic glares and the promise of brownies isn't beating. It's negotiation. It's a compromise.

(In all honesty, Vialora passed out of the goodness of his heart, and the fact that I raid far more often than he does, and would use the weapon more. Also, his equipped weapon was better than my equipped weapon at the time (he is using The Jawbone). So I really do owe him brownies and my very sincere gratitude.)

For the Alliance

Got my bear last night. Yup indeed.

Got into this raid around 4ish or so. Then left the raid because no one was in it and it was being run by what seemed to be a 12 year old with ADD.

Then got into another raid... with the same 12 year old, several HOURS later, during which time we had fun with things like PvPing and Arena'ing.

So we head out to Ratchet. Someone pulls the guards on the 'secret entrance', so we have to rush in before we're really ready. Nevertheless, Thrall dies. We go on our way to TB. We go in a poorly organized group of string cheese, and most of us die on our way to Bloodhoof. (I didn't. Rawr.) And then when we regroup, no one waits for buffs, and no one actually tanks the boss and he's going everywhere and we had tons of adds and it's just a MESS.

A bunch of people leave.

Boon steps up to the plate and says, "LISTEN UP PUKES, IF YOU WANT YOUR BEAR, YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME OR DIE."

And surprisingly, that works. We regroup. We buff. We kick Bloodhoofs (or would that be Bloodhooves?) posterior.

Then we head up to UC. We regroup. We buff. We go through the sewers. We get lost and amusingly dead as a bunch of us run off a cliff in the city and think we're going to land in a nice pool of sludge and instead hit the floor. Sneaky.

We get to Sylvanas. We kick her posterior. Little tip? The best way to figure out where she's going to be next is to watch the pets of the hunters. They'll go over to where she's about to spawn before she actually appears. They're smart little minions that way.

We then ride up to Silvermoon. We ride straight up to the group of three people who are in the big shiny area. (Can you tell I know little of Blood Elves?) I don't even know which one is the leader and which ones are just his underlings!

But we get to him. We kick his posterior.

I get my BEAR!

Of course, a few people didn't get the Org achievement, due to releasing or somesuch, so we head on back. Naturally, since most of the people just did all four and got their bear, why would they do it again? (If only for fun, right?) So we get a bunch of people deserting. Including our one tank. So I log in Keiji, we grab a few more puggers (making sure to let them know we're just doing Org) and we charge in for the second time in a night!

I tank the hexing dude. A druid we picked up tanked Thrall. I kept death gripping those few Horde that showed up to stop us into the mix. That was fun. :)

(We 25 Manned Thrall. Yes. We had only 4-5 groups of people, not all of whom were 80.)

And then we run back on out. I'm in combat so I'm running, not riding. Boon stays with me because he's the best. And all the guards are on me... and they don't stop (probably has something to do with unholy blight + DnD (they were hitting Boon! What else could I do but pull them off of him with a DnD... let him die? ... Well, okay, I could do that I suppose...), so we're running and running and this level 80 horde shaman keeps trying to stop us.

I mean, talk about PERSISTENT. He followed us all the way from Thrall's room out. I kept chains of ice on him (and hello, the only cooldown on that is global and frost runes? Seriously? No wonder it seems you can't cross the field in WSG without having to constantly cleanse chains of ice from the flag runner.) and then we were out, jumped into the river, and finally evaded most of the rest of the guards except for two persistent fellows... and that dang shaman!

So the unholy tank and the holy paladin (and how is that for a duo? Unholy and holy together? Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!) went into this epic battle with an elemental shaman! But strangulate, mind freeze, death grip and Boon hammering him got him down. And then he came back up. So we killed him. Again.

I mean, really! Bravo on a good attempt! :)

The highlight was this level 1 orc had followed us out the whole way with the shaman, unflagged naturally, and watched the whole fight. When it was over, I bowed to the level 1...

And then the level 1 logged into their Alliance alt and told Boon that it was the most epic fight he'd ever seen! (I doubt that, but the sentiment is appreciated)

It was, I will admit, very fun.

They're gunning for me!

With the PvP bug again in my ear, I've been running around with Kvasira in the various battlegrounds, rediscovering the joys and ... okay, rediscovering the headaches that being Alliance in the Rampage Battlegroup means.

However, I think I've noticed something! People don't LIKE me! ... well, the Hordies. The Alliance don't seem to mind me.

But dang, if it isn't every time I'm in a battleground, I seem to have one or two hordies that seem to have it out for me. They see me and veer off from what they're doing or where they're going to try (sometimes succeed!) to kill me.

It probably has something to do with the fact that I like to mess up plans wherever and whenever possible. :D

Oh, are you running the flag? HAMMER OF JUSTICE!

Okay, this seems to mostly be a Warsong Gulch thing. I haven't noticed it much in the other battlegrounds, except Strand of the Ancients... and I think that's because in Strand I like to do the bomb defusing thing, and bombing thing, and killing the tanks thing, and taking the graveyards thing.

Anyway, so in between running the flag (cleanse, cleanse, cleanse, cleanse, cleanse) and returning the flag (hammer of justice, hammer of wrath, take THAT!), I seem to, in every WSG, develop a following of two or three hordies that take time out of their busy day to see how I'm doing.

It makes me feel loved. In a very warm, bodily fluids gushing out, way.

Dual spec? No thanks.

With the advent of dual speccing, a lot of people have accepted the task of getting multiple sets of gear together and paying the fee to be able to respec 'instantly' for the need of their guild, or their own personal desires.

While I think that dual-spec is a nice thing for people, it isn't something I have ever shown an interest in doing for myself. There's a good reason for this, for me.

If I wanted to be a holy paladin, guess what I would have played?

If I want to heal, then I'm not interested in being my paladin, but instead I'm going to be logging in my shaman or my priest, both of whom are my healers.

If I want to dps, then I'll be logging in one of the people that I have decided, in my mind, to call my damage classes.

I just think we're assuming that if someone shows up at 80, dual-specced holy and ret, or boomkin and tree, or tree and bear, or shadow and disc... that they can play both equally well. I don't think this is the case.

Now, I'm not saying that someone who is dual-specced can't play both their specs really well. I'm not saying this because I've encountered many people who do. And if I so chose to do dual-speccing, I don't doubt that I'd be good at both specs.

(Because I'm K, like you had to ask.)

However, as I mentioned above... if I want to heal, then I log in Karika. If I want to DPS, then I log in Kvasira or Kikidas. If I want to tank, I log in Keiji. If I want to level a healer, dpser or tank, then I log in one of my poor neglected characters.

For people who aren't as altalicious as I am, it makes sense for them to turn their hybrid 80 into two (or three!) roles. In terms of raid saves, it also makes sense to not have to save two characters to the same raid if they suddenly need you to switch from your dps to your healer.

But it isn't for me. For me, the reason I have so many alts is that it isn't JUST the game or the quest or the fight... for me, it's the CLASS. For me... my paladin is not a healer. Sure, I can toss flash of light here or holy light there, but I am not a healer, unless you count Judgement of Light, then I'm HoT-Queen, druids look out! But my paladin is retribution.

If you want me to be my healer, then you had best know that from the start and ask me to bring Karika along from the getgo.

If you want ranged DPS of awesome proportions, then ask me from the getgo to bring Kikidas.

Someone who used to be a holy paladin but decided to shelve them to be a DPS-only class (which is entirely AOK by me. It's their 15 bucks a month.) told Boon that every ret paladin should be dual-specced holy.

Excuse me?

I don't think I heard you correctly. You're telling me that you don't want to be a holy paladin but instead want to be a DPS-only class, but that I have to take my ret pally and dual-spec holy? Because the option is there? Because why? Please tell me what compelling reason there is that I have to take my kickass plate wearing big hammer swinging retribution paladin and turn her into a plate wearing shield bearing holy paladin just because the raid leader may want another holy paladin?

I don't even take offset GEAR for anyone, because I KNOW that I am not going to be using it.

Now, I wasn't privy to the entire conversation and I'm sure they have their reasons for thinking the way they do. But I'm sorry, I don't have to dual-spec holy. I don't have to dual-spec anything, for anyone.

If you feel that strongly that DPS-hybrid classes need to be able to heal in their spare time, then log in your paladin and dual-spec ret and holy, but don't try to tell me that I have to.

For those out there that dual-spec, because they like to heal and dps on the same character, more power to you! Be it because you like healing and dpsing and tanking on that class, or because it's your favorite toon, or because it's your only 80, or whatever, go you! Have fun.

But don't tell me that I need to dual-spec.

When I log into my paladin, I log into her with a certain set of expectations. Big two-hander. Divine Storm. Crusader Strike. Paladin. Muscle memory guides my clicks and my movements.

I don't log into her and have to decide what spec I want to be with her. I am retribution paladin. I am Kvasira.

Ditto with Karika, or Keiji, or Kikidas. (Yes, I know, warlocks are dps/dps/dps classes, but I'm an affliction warlock, and that isn't likely to change for a while, even though destrolocks are currently higher in the raid damage meters.)

While it would take but a change of mental preparation for me to say, 'Okay, I am holy paladin now, gotta get on my holy paladin hat', I don't want to. At the risk of being obnoxiously repetative... if I want to heal, I want to be my shaman. If I want to hit things with a big weapon, I want to be Kvaisra. If I want to tank, I want to be Keiji. If I want to hit things from a distance with shadowy bolts of darkness and massive amounts of damage over time abilities, I want to be Kikidas.

Sorry, this turned into more of a rant than I was intending it to be, but I find it kind of offensive for someone who chooses a primary DPS class, to turn around and tell any hybrid that 1: they need to dual-spec and 2: that they need to dual-spec into a healing spot.

It ranks right up there with people (I'm looking at you, mages. It always seemed to be mages who bitched.) who used to tell ret pallies in PvP that we should respec holy and be useful. (Of course, my answer was: then you roll a paladin and play holy, otherwise, shut up.)

Guess who isn't getting a bubble. Yeah. That's right. You aren't.

Ulduar Downings for KoU's Progression Team

Flame Levi
Razorscale
XT-002
Kologarn
Iron Assembly
Auriaya
Hodir
Thorim

This is just a list for us. We've attempted Ignis and Freya, a few shots on each before we ran out of time for the evening.

Fun in Regular Halls of Lightning

One of my friends has leveled a DK tank and he wanted to take it on a test drive. So we rousted together some people and hit the heroic daily, which was Utgarde Keep. I took Kikidas, because Ingvar drops a ring. It's better than the rings I have. So I went.

When I joined the group, I got a swell of heart-ache and longing remembrance, as Agurtzane said, "Nooo! I wanted JUST ONE CHANCE to hold aggro!"

Of course, it would have helped if he had been in frost presence instead of unholy! (Remind me to tell you guys about the hunter in our Ulduar-10 that had on Pack during the Deconstructor.)

So after a few wipes (well, I kept dying, so as far as I'm concerned... wipe) where I kept going, "I don't know WHY I'm pulling aggro! I'm waiting!" I finally notice that the tank is not in frost. I gleefully point it out, gloating that it wasn't my warlocky badness that was causing me to pull aggro. I, dare I say, was innocent.

We go on through the instance, la-de-da, kill the boss, la-de-da, no ring, poop, and we try to get him the tanking trinket out of regular HoL. Kikidas doesn't need anything out of regular HoL (not that any of my 80's do), so I decide to take Kvasira just to make it a nice quick run.

Heehee. I need to run regular instances more often! I was almost hitting 4k DPS on everything. *glee* I know it means nothing... but it still made me squeal in delight and fuzzy warmth.

So fuzzy. So warm. Like curling up with a kitten of epic DPS proportions.

And once Frost presence was on, Agurtzane kept threat really well... except for when I opened with Divine Storm...

C'mon people, I need the BIG NUMBERS! Aggro be damned. (It isn't like every tank doesn't have to get massive amounts of AoE threat right away with ANY ret paladin that they run with. I was just training the new tank appropriately.)

On a side note... I'm still having issues figuring out a good single or duo-target trash rotation. For quick deaths, rain of fire seems to do better than SoC? But other than that, is it SB, SB, DL?

PvP Martyr vs. Command?

Yes, my paladin is PvPing again. Namely because Boon wishes to arena. And what the Boon wishes, the K provides. So I need PvP gear.... so it was off to the battlegrounds for me!

It's a new game out there. There are times when, yes... it's an 'even match' and we win. By even match I mean not a horde premade and equal amounts of people on both sides. Of course, we still lose a fair number of those even matches.

And then there are those matches where we go into EotS (I see this most often there) and it's 15 to 7, Alliance to Horde.

Those are so sweet and clean. Feel a little bad for the poor Hordlings.... until the next match where I sit there and curse them all back to the bowels of Hell.

Anyway... I had been noticing that some paladins in PvP are still using the damage to self Martyr. Presumably because of the higher overall damage, despite the 'always crit on stunned targets' of Command.

I slapped it on to try it... and surprisingly, I didn't do as poorly with it as I expected -- didn't die from it, at any rate.

So for PvP, I've rediscovered the rawr. Yes. The rawr. The feel of running the flag and nyah'ing at the Horde's attempt to stop me. The feel of rushing FRR and whomping people. The feel of running up and planting a seaforium charge at a gate and defending it and seeing the gate blow open with no tanks nearby. The serene joy I get sitting at the top of IBT and watching it burn. And of course... Arathi Basin and the... yeah, still hate the terrain advantage in AB.

Back to Martyr and Command in PvP. From what I had read, people still preferred Command over Martyr in PvP. But it isn't matching up with what I'm seeing in actual battlegrounds. I'll have to evaluate if I notice it on arena opponents, as well.

You'd think that without the constant whackitywhack on something with judgement of light inflicted upon it, that the damage you take from Martyr would swiftly outstrip your Divine Storm/Art of War healing, and if you didn't have a healer nearby, it would be a big negative. But again, it isn't something I noticed as a big downside. I think because most fights are over before the health loss becomes an issue. You're either going to die or not.

Granted, there are a few times where it comes down to the ittybitty little last bit of life for you and the other dude, where Martyr could seriously make you have a baaad day, but that doesn't happen too often.

If any other paladins read this blog, chime in with your impressions of Command vs. Martyr in PvP and Arena.

Martyr vs. Command

With the advent of Retribution Paladins actually being USEFUL in raids, a big debate has popped up over Seal of the Martyr versus Seal of Command. (where Alliance Martyr = Horde Blood)

Seal of the Martyr: All melee attacks deal [0.22 * mw] to [0.22 * MW] additional Holy damage, but the Paladin loses health equal to 10% of the total damage inflicted. Lasts 30 min.

Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing [.36* MW + .25* SP + .16* AP] Holy damage at the cost of health equal to 33% of the damage caused.

Seal of Command: Gives the Paladin a chance to deal [0.45 * mw] to [0.45 * MW] additional Holy damage. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 30 min.

Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing [0.24 * mw + 0.16 * AP + 0.25 * SPH] to [0.24 * MW + 0.16 * AP + 0.25 * SPH] Holy damage. This attack will always be a critical strike if the target is stunned or incapacitated.

Now, a lot of people will argue that Command is better, because of the Glyph of Seal of Command, which increases your chance of dealing Command damage by 20%.

The big difference between Command and Martyr, in my mind, is that Command is a proc ability, meaning it does not hit on every attack, and Martyr is an 'on melee hit' ability.

The numbers (crunched by people smarter than I am) say that Command unglyphed will proc 7 times per minute, glyphed it will proc a little over 8 times per minute.

Martyr will deal damage with every Crusader Strike, every melee swing, every Divine Storm (and have the potential to crit with every strike).

When I was first playing around with switching from Command to Martyr, having grown up in the era of pre-Martyr Alliance Paladin, where Command was IT... I had the Command Glyph and I was rockin' the Command bandwagon.

Then I noticed in a raid that I was in that another ret paladin was using Seal of the Martyr. They were doing more DPS than I was (unpossible, but it happened). And so ... I started to take a look.

On Recount, using Seal of Command, my #1 ability was Melee, followed by Judgement, followed by something else, often CS or Seal damage. (It's been a while since I've used SoC, so forgive me that I can't remember.)

On Recount, using Seal of the Martyr, my #1 ability was Seal Damage, followed by Melee, followed by Judgement.

So, a lightbulb flicked on in my head... if my melee damage is constant (and there's no reason it shouldn't be, since Seal damage counts as it's own section in recount), the only thing changing is my seal damage and judgement damage... and OMG, my Seal damage is blowing past my overall melee damage.

My DPS jumped up by a bunch, I don't know exact numbers, but all of a sudden, Martyr was lookin' pretty hot, even unglyphed compared to Command as it is.

Actually, let me bring pretty pretty pictures!

Or numbers... here is a comparison of my WWS on a recent Nax25 run compared to Vialora, who used mainly SoC (he switched to Martyr briefly at one point, then habitually went back to SoC)... if I could figure out how to list us both side by side, I'd do that. But I'm dumb.

We both did about 4 million damage overall with just Swing damage.

His Seal of Command did 2 million damage.

My Seal of the Martyr did 5.5 million (of which, 10% of that was done to myself, but 10% of 5 million still means somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.9 million damage done to the mobs, unless I'm doing numbers TOTALLY wrong).

His Judgement of Command did about 2 million.

My Judgement of the Martyr did a little higher than that. Again, 33% of that damage was done to myself, but that still leaves my judgement damage to other mobs comfortably over the two million mark.

And he is using the Glyph of the Seal of Command.

The argument 'It puts a strain on the healers', is largely negated by Judging Light, Art of War and Divine Storm.

Now, there are stories untold of people killing themselves with Seal of the Martyr/Blood on Prince in Karazhan, and even some talking about Thaddius in Naxx. Are there going to be situations where if you're expecting to take a ton of splash damage that MAY drop your health low enough where you can kill yourself, you need to WATCH yourself (or use a different seal)? Yes.

However, I haven't had a problem yet. I use it on Gluth and his decimates. I use it on Thaddius with his polarities. I use it on Malygos with his vortex and falling damage. I use it on Loatheb with his unable to heal yourself debuff.

I have yet to kill myself.

And I kick ass.

One-Shot Nax25 and Post-Raid Thoughts

It ran from 6-11pm... well, really more like 6:15ish to 10:30ish. And some of that ish is because of afks, disconnects, and us calling it then uncalling it to finish off KT.

The run went ... bumpy. We had a new tank, so had to spend some time going over fights here and there. And we had a few 'oops' wipes, once on TRASH (so humiliating).

We one shot Spider, one shot Plague (getting Heroic: Safety Dance for those of us who were new), two shot Gothik and the 4 Horsies.

On Gothik, we had some weird thing happen where the mobs didn't respawn on dead side after being killed on live. So we had Gothik come down and over to dead side, along with about 20 elites.

The Four Horsemen we had the back crew go down after the first boss went down. Which then caused everyone to get AOEd to death.

We 2-shot Patchwerk, then finished Abom cleanly.

We 2-shot Sapph because for some odd reason, our MT got two-shot at the beginning and we lost too many DPS before one of the secondary tanks could pick it up.

We had the SLOPPIEST KT wipe ever... the MT got his position wrong, and the melee groups that were supposed to be aligned according to him decided to align themselves according to the room instead... so while I was in the right spot to the left of the tank, I was standing on the group that was supposed to be opposite the tank. And people were standing on the tank. And then the tanks that picked up the Guardians didn't pick all of them up, and they were running around whacking on the healers. It was... not... pretty.

Our second KT attempt went better, of a sorts. We lost all the tanks at the very end, and I wound up tanking KT for the last 300k health. By that I mean he was chasing me and I was backing up and whacking him with everything including the kitchen sink, while the healers kept me alive and the remaining DPS went midieval on his ass.

At the end, I had enough for my 75 badge tier 7.5 pants. Yay me. 10% more damage to divine storm, woot woot!

So... a few thoughts...

I brought in my paladin as she is my 'main' character, my progression raider. Yet with the exception of one or possibly two pieces, there isn't anything she could use out of there, everything that dropped for plate DPS that night was a sidegrade at best. I did pick up a new libram, but that was it.

Yet a few other people who were progression raiders brought in their alts. Well geared, yes, but alts nontheless. Which makes me wonder why I can't bring in one of MY DPS alts? Karika is geared to the gills, but Kikidas can use some upgrades. And while she doesn't do the DPS that Kvasira can do, she still puts up decent numbers.

And don't get me started on Keiji.

Given that I don't log onto WoW anymore, except to arena and raid... my alts are unlikely to get into any runs that give them gear upgrades. And it means that between runs, my progression raider will definately not be getting any upgrades.

I'm okay with this.

I'm still writing, both fanfiction (I snicker at myself) as well as sitting down to write one of the stories that I've hashed around for a while now in my head. Maybe I'll actually finish it, this time.

I found myself slightly frustrated with the raiding. We spent a lot of time doing what I felt was ... sitting around with our thumbs up our ass. The tanks not pulling as loot was being handed out. I don't think there was a single time I didn't have to prompt: "Can we continue clearing?" and have one of the RL's confirm: "Yeah, tanks go fight something.".

We had to wait for Patchwerk to pat away and back again (long wait) because we had to wait for someone who decided to go AFK, one person who disconnected and for healing assignments to be handed out.

I find my tolerance for such disturbances to have dwindled to nothing... not that my patience was ever super high to begin with. But now I don't just have the vague feeling of 'I could be doing something productive' or 'this is inefficient'. Now I KNOW I could be doing something more productive or efficient.

I don't mind raiding. It's fun to get together with my friends and bullshit and have Neshura give me a tell of 'You and your damn DPS!' as I beat her out (it only happened once) on Razvious. But at the same time, I wish I had a hookup to a computer so I can write ideas down as I'm waiting, rather than resisting the urge to alt-tab out.

Overall, I was consistently in the top 10 DPS, depending on fight, usually in the top 5-7. To my own surprise, I broke 3k most often.

I have finally convinced Vialora (maybe) to use Seal of the Martyr instead of Seal of Command. Go me and my awesome powers of persuasion (and recount).

Unfortunately, the tier 7.5 shoulders and leg pieces are bright yellow and blue. My chest piece, gloves and boots are dark red. My cloak is this hideous gray-green and purple.

We need the ability to dye our armor, if only so I don't look so much like a color-blind ginsu knife.

Poe Shots

Finally, as promised... I present... POE!



We've contemplated keeping her in the dog kennel to prevent her from trying to escape, but she just meows piteously.



... the blurring is from my hand, not the cat.



The gray cat is Cloud. You should see them groom each other. So cute.

Funny vs. Not Funny

Funny: Someone in your raid is well known for practical jokes (that often involve death). (He pays repair bills)

Someone else who typically falls prey to those jokes (and deaths) encourages someone who does not know said joker to get on joker's chopper.

In the beginning of OS.

With all the trash mobs around.

... said joker goes riding off and dies, along with his companion. And about three or four other people who didn't notice the joker riding off, laughing gleefully. Everyone else is safely zoned out already.

This is before the raid is started, before food, etc. Some people still aren't there.

Amusing.

Not Funny: Someone in your raid is well known for being a chode. Always complains. Tends to die because he does stupid shit and then blames everyone else for his death.

You're in Ulduar25. He was given command of driving one of the Siege Engines.

Raid Co-Leader says: Don't use the ram command on the siege engines when you're on a ramp. You'll fall through the world. Okay everyone, let's roll out and kill Flame Levi.

Driver: *RAM* *FALLS* *DIES and kills Co-Leader*

Co-Leader says: WTF.

Driver: I was at the bottom of the ramp. I should have been fine.

Now we have to wait for his vehicle to respawn. Which it never does. Finally we have to go escort his sorry ass down to Flame Levi.

Not Amusing.

New Hard Drive = No Pictures :(

I discovered that when we built myself a new computer and discovered that it still ran s.a.s. (slow as sh!t) without a new hard drive, we went and got a new hard drive.

And my old hard drive is the one with all my pictures of my babies! (including some who are no longer with me, so it's pretty important that I get that hard drive hooked back up!)

So, until I can discover where my camera went to and how to upload photos from it without the camera manager software that came with the camera ten years ago (okay, it wasn't really ten years ago, it was more like 6...), or get my old hard drive hooked back up (whimper), no pictures. :( I shall endeavor to get some.

And I need my old hard drive back, or I'll have forever lost the only pictures of Mike (friend), Phil (cat), Anubis (cat) and Kira (cat) that I have. And that is unacceptable.

(So, still working on the Poe picture... sorry!)

I am an idjit

I had fully intended on uploading a picture of Poe, since I just posted about her. And I forgot.

Now ya'll have to wait until I get home this afternoon. Because I KNOW you're just dying to see fluffy-lazy kitties.

I know how KT feels...

Mr. Bigglesworth dies.

KT: No!!! A curse upon you, interlopers! The armies of the Lich King will hunt you down. You will not escape your fate...

********

Kel’Thuz4d]: ok and now my cat is 8fwhwe8ufhffweeexvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

[Kel’Thuz4d]: walking on my keyboard

[Kel’Thuz4d]: hold on afk

********

Yesterday morning, my cat Poe was safely in my house. I know this because I caught her begging at the front door to go outside when I took the dogs out in the morning.

Yesterday afternoon, I idly asked my husband, "Have you seen Poe lately?"

Now, to explain Poe... she's a fluffy, lazy, brown/black tiger kitty, who is very responsive to her name. You call her name from anywhere in the house, and she'll meow back at you and slowly make her way to you to see if you have food.

She's so lazy, she won't even bat at a feather-teaser that's wriggling two inches too far from the minimum distance of mild effort of stretching her foot forward. However, she does like to go outside and eat the grass until she vomits. This makes having a rabbit on a diet of hay in the house very interesting.

The only exception to the lazy-factor is when you call "HUNGRY KITTIES". Then she's like dynamite, racing with loud yowls to the food bowl.

So we look around and do not see a fluffy lazy cat. We see our other two cats. But no Poebaby.

So I pull out the ULTIMATE WEAPON(tm). I call for hungry kitties! I'm nearly run over by Cloud and Ripley as they make it to the basement where their food is stored.

(Yes, Cloud after FFVII and Ripley after Ellen of Aliens fame. Poe herself is named after Po, a Hawaiian earth aspect of night and women. Boon added the E, so people wouldn't call her Pooh.)

Okay. I step outside and check the front and back yards. Have I mentioned this cat is lazy? The other two times she's managed to slip (and how does a big fluffy plump cat slip past people? I have no idea. She's like Houdini) past us outside, she's been right in the front or back yard, pretending to be a cow.

No kitty. I call for her, and listen, hoping to hear her meow. Nope. Nothing. The sound of kids playing two houses over. No cat.

I go back inside and Boon and I start checking under blankets in the bedroom, in closets, under the couch. He worries that she's died in the house. Considering that she has the best vet ever and has no health problems, I don't think that's likely.

So we go out and walk the block, calling out for our cat. Have you ever walked around the block and did nothing but call for your CAT? Yeah. Try explaining that one.

"POE! POE BABY! POEPOEKITTY!" (Boon told me after a minute that I really shouldn't be shouting Poepoe)

One of our neighbors from the corner said that they had been out for an hour and haven't seen her. An elderly neighbor from across the street came out and when he heard we had lost our cat, he said "I have two cats myself. I'll walk the block." and he proceeded to amble around his block.

Boon and I got into the car and started to troll the neighborhood. We stopped to ask people on various blocks in a two block radius if they've seen a fluffy brown tiger kitty. No one.

Boon starts to curse her and swear that someone had to have stolen her. A pretty, friendly cat? Who wouldn't want one? Neither of us could fathom our lazy cat hauling her ass off of our front or back yard of her own free will.

Thankfully, she has a collar on, and it reads:
I AM LOST.
XXX-XXX-XXXX.
POE

(where the X's are the digits to our phone number, pervs.)

However, less than 30% of cats (even with collars) ever make it home once they're lost (the knowledge of statistics has never been so depressing, well, except when we looked up the statistics for Boon's particular flavor of cancer.).

So we're driving around, becoming more and more depressed. We finally pull back into our driveway, and our elderly neighbor greets us with a smile, "Someone returned your cat!"

I nearly flew out of the moving car, let me tell you.

The story was as follows... remember I said there were neighbors with their kids playing? They live two houses down from us. They have two YOUNG girls, who SHRIEK very loudly as they play. They're kids. It's expected.

Well, their parents had heard us calling for our cat, but it took them a minute to remember that earlier that day, they had seen a cat under THEIR neighbor's fence. They had figured that it was their neighbor's cat (Right idea, wrong neighbor!). One of them then got up and checked. Yup. Cat was still crouched under the neighbor's fence. She called and Poe, bless her friendly heart, came right on over and undoubtedly was quite happy to be picked up.

I think she had gotten startled somehow, or just ambled away from the house. We have no idea how long she was out. Then when the girls started to play, probably got freaked and either didn't hear us calling for her, or was too scared to go past the playing children.

The neighbor started towards our house, Poe undoubtedly clinging to her shoulder (she loves shoulders). Poe heard the dogs barking and according to the person carrying her, nearly had an aneurysm trying to get to our house.

When we got in, I scooped Poe up, who had the gall to look as though I should simply feed her and not fuss that much. Boon held Poe up, called her an idiot, and then hugged her.

Now, why is this on a WoW Blog? Other than the fact that it's MY BLOG AND I CAN POST IF I WANT TO... we missed our Nax25 raid to go find our cat. (Our guildies didn't mind and were glad we found our cat, but this is the tie-in for it to count as a WoW related post.)

I think if Mr. Bigglesworth was missing from Naxxramas, Kel'Thuzad would be a no-show too.

Flame Leviathon & Thoughts on Ulduar

Ah, the Flame Leviathon. He is becoming known as much a 'come and get your free loot' boss as VR had been (he was sometimes affectionately called 'Loot Reaver').

Why? Ulduar is supposed to be tough, right? Why did my guild go and jump to 'on farm' status for Levi so fast?

It's elementary, my dear Watson. It doesn't matter what you gear is, or what class you are, or what spec you are.

You can go in there with a group of 10 shadow priests and still down Levi.

The hardest part of the whole endeavor is making sure that everyone understands their roles, jobs and the importance of interrupting Flame Vents, staying at Max Range unless you're a Siege Engine, and that if you can get everyone kiting him in the same direction every time, you can lay down this lovely line of tar-fires that he has to drive through.

Our guild leader has said, and to an extent I agree with him, that there isn't much reason why everyone shouldn't be getting together and getting saved weekly in Ulduar if ONLY for Flame Levi. Now, granted, ideally you should be looking for a run that plans on doing everything, because who wants to get saved for a week for a single badge and the possibility of a single piece of loot?

The other interesting thing is the difficulty of Ulduar. Now, I know, people said they wanted more difficult. I am NOT complaining.

But the question my guild is currently facing is 'What do we make our minimums?'. Do we have to complete Maly10/25? What does our DPS need to do consistently? What hit points and armor value do our tanks need? What about those ever hard to quantify healers?

Is it a question of relearning that we have to be on our A-Game at all times? A philosophy that has been largely ignored with Naxx, especially of late.

What if the A game of our guild's top raiders is not good enough? Do we stop trying and run more Nax25/Maly25, etc? Or do we keep trying, striving and seeing if it's a matter of skill, or a matter of gear?

Granted, to a certain extent, you can be the most skilled player in the world and have such poor gear that the worst player in the world decked out in full Tier8 will out DPS you. So gear does make a difference... but not as much as skill, something we all know.

So do we start paring down our raiders and saying, "Not skilled enough, skilled enough, not skilled enough, skilled enough."? And then if we do that, who makes that call? And if we do that, is it worth raiding anymore?

Now, I don't think our guild will ever get to that point. But it's an interesting thought to share anyway.

NonWoW Update

I am still happily on hiatus. I log in to raid, to play with my husband, but otherwise I have found that I don't really miss WoW that much.

Blasphemy, I know.

On the other hand, I have rediscovered the joy that is Brooklyn. (And unfortunately, have switched some of my addictive tendencies from the crack that was WoW to the heroin that is Brooklyn.)



(That's a scene from the season 1 episode 'Temptation'.)

Gargoyles was a Disney cartoon that ran in the mid-1990's. It had two 'canon' seasons, and a third season considered mostly non-canon by the original writer (and many fans).

There was a planned spin off starring Brooklyn (who is the most awesome of awesome characters. He tops Drizzt Do'Urden as my favorite fictional character of all time). I didn't know about the spin off, until in a fit of going, "I can't believe they canceled this wonderful amazing cartoon when I'm still needing a Brooklyn fix!" I stumbled upon a series of stories about Brooklyn... called Timedancer.

(In VERY brief summary: Brooklyn finds a damaged magical artifact that basically teleports him through time. It turns out he's been chosen by Fate (or just the whim of the ever erratic Fae) to be the 'Timedancer', the creature who has the most influential effect on the history of the world. Unfortunately, Brooklyn can't CONTROL where he goes, and is at the whim of the erratic Phoenix Gate... which causes all sorts of problems, as one can imagine.)

*sappy sigh*

I loved it. (There are some differences between the posted Timedancer stories and the 'intended' (as per the creator) story, such as the difference in Brooklyn's wife. In the posted stories, a green gargoyle named Sata, and they have twin children named Ariana and Graeme. In the intended version (and in the proposed comic book version), she is a white gargoyle named Katana and he has a son named Nashville and a younger child named Tachi... among other slight differences. But I digress...)

And that led me into the realm of fan fiction. Some of it that I found is exactly what you'd expect. NSFW, bad plots, bad stories, etc, etc... Others are good.

I had to try my hand in it. A lot of people have told me that I write fiction well (albeit my grammar is NOT the best...). I have countless original stories that are in the making, but I just never actually keep going with them. I run out of steam, or come to a wall in the plot that I can't think my way around. Or the plot line just peters out.

But fan fiction... that's another challenge entirely. It isn't just me writing whatever I want... if I'm using Disney characters, the challenge is writing them as they should be written.

It's the difference between writing Darth Vader as saying, "Your lack of faith disturbs me." and, "I think you want to rephrase that statement."

He could be doing the same action, but one sentence brings immediately to mind the voice of the character, the tone, the very essence that makes people SEE Darth Vader in their head as they read the story. The other one ... doesn't sound like Vader, does it?

The challenge in writing Brooklyn, or any of the other Gargoyles, is just that. Bringing the character to the story and not recreating the character to something that someone ELSE reading it can't envision them doing or saying.

Now, some of it I'm sure... I don't do right. I see it in my head as 'This is SO Brooklyn', because I can picture it in my head. But I may not get it down on 'paper' the right way.

And to those who are unfamiliar with the Gargoyles universe, stories, or the Timedancer chronicles in and of themselves will be unlikely to recognize a good portion of what is going on.

But I find myself intrigued. And I find myself wanting to write more. Because though Gargoyles has been canceled since 1996... I want more. (Disney, pretty please? With sugar on top? And cherries? Lots of cherries? *sob*)

It's the same urge that drove people to play Star Wars RPG and tabletop. The desire to live in the world that George Lucas created, and play a role, see the characters, the situations. Be involved in something that stirs your heart and your imagination...

So I've been posting to two fan fiction sites, Gargoyles Fan Fiction and Stone by Day under the writer name 'kiatrix'. I have three stories posted, but I've actually written about seven so far. I'm TRYING to not jump the gun and post stories that I haven't actually sat down and reread several times, especially as I'm starting to develop an original character that I want to keep writing about. I need to make sure she's 'real'. I need to make sure I'm not making her into a super-heroine, or a Mary Sue, as I've discovered they're called.

I'm also going to start a blog... for brainstorming, idea and plot fleshing as well as just a place for me to also store my little tales of fiction, just another place for someone who also loves Brooklyn (or Gargoyles in general) to possibly stumble upon and also become inspired to delve creatively into this wonderful story concept.

The blog is 'A Brooklyn Blog' -- real imaginative, I know, I know... but I've never been really good at 'titles'.

Coffee with Sargeras

Coffee with Sargeras is a relatively new blog... written by Sargeras.

No really, I've seen the chat logs. It is Sargeras.

However, it is rather amusing to read. The warlock side of me greatly appreciates the dark megalomaniacal humor. Of course, the part where he keeps repeating that I'm going to eventually be destroyed... not so much fun to read.

However, it is VERY amusing. Go read. Especially about what he thinks about Voldemort. I wonder what he thinks about Sauron?

Now quit reading my increasingly boring and uninteresting blog and go read his. But don't buy anything. I think the funding goes towards Starbucks. I mean, how much more evil can something be than Starbucks? And hello... Coffee with Sargeras? He should just place a giant Starbucks logo on his blog.

(Kidding... sort of.)

Unholy Tank Changes

There have been some changes made to two of the key components of Unholy Tank mechanics.

Namely they increased the cooldown on Bone Shield to 2 minutes, up from 1 minute and they changed Blade Barrier from a 10% increased parry chance to 5% reduced damage.

(They also did schtuff to Anti-Magic Shell, but considering that is a very situational issue and not a 'can you tank, at all' change, I haven't looked too deeply at it.)

Unholy Tanks relied on keeping Blade Barrier up to prolong the use of their Bone Shield. Bone Shield reduces damage taken by 20% (consuming one 'charge' per damaging attack, 4 unglyphed, 6 with glyph). We don't have access to a few of the seemingly 'tank specific' abilities that Frost DK's (probably the most common 'Tank' spec for DK's) have access too, Unbreakable Armor and Frigid Dreadplate. In order to get to Frigid Dreadplate (possible to do), we'd have to give up quite a bit of points in Unholy. And frankly, while 3% miss rate is nice to have, is it worth giving up some of the things that we take as Unholy because we want to be Unholy? I don't think so, personally.

In the past, we'd be popping Bone Shield like candy. In the past, keeping Blade Barrier up to increase our parry chance by 10% meant that Bone Shield stayed active until the cooldown was available.

Now, some DK's have the gear where they didn't need Blade Barrier active and could theoretically keep Bone Shield active and going without that additional 10% parry. For those of us Unholy tanks that don't have access to that gear... making sure Blade Barrier stayed active was an important element of our rotation.

Yesterday I took Keiji to Heroic UP. I was expecting it to be a bit tougher than it actually was. The damage reduction of the new Blade Barrier is a nice thing, (still miss the parry though!), that's 5% all the time, subject only to the cooldown of your blood runes. Bone Shield was being hit everytime it came up, as one would expect, but all in all... it wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting.

So though people out there (I'm looking at YOU, Pos) keep saying that Unholy DK's are DPS, I'm thinking that I am going to keep Keiji Unholy, and Tanky.

BTW: The Red Sword of Courage dropped. If I can find another nice one-hander that will keep me uncrittable, I may switch around a few points and take the dual-wield talent in Frost (Nerves of Cold Steel) and play with that a little bit.

Normally, all these abilities would have links to WoW Head on them, but alas, a while back I was playing with my template and managed to delete the thing that let me put in WoW Head links. And I had to get that information from Pos, so I don't know how to do it myself. I shall have to pester him tonight.

So many alts, so little time...

Yes, I am still on 'hiatus'. But I do still play here and there with my husband and our friends.

Last night, at the urging of one of our friends coworker, we went to a PvP server where we rolled Horde.

So now I have a level 9 Belf Priest. Named Kaelthia. She has red hair. And big gold hoop earrings.

As I was setting up my bars, I discovered that I have a set way of doing my action bars that tends to hold true for all of my characters.

From the center buttons (-098) to the left are my offensive abilities. Any defensive or healing abilities go from the center buttons away to the right. Buffs for some reason are on the far left, as are racial abilities. Who can figure out why I did it that way? I just do. There must be some wonderful rationale, as I've done it and been doing it for the last ... how many levels collectively have I leveled? Anyway, for at least that long.

Up the right side are where my non-combat abilities go, tailoring, first aid, fishing, food, potions and usually in the bottom ride side are where my mount buttons go.

Yesterday I was on Kiljara for a little bit and I kept being ... very confused.

Her offensive abilities were where they should be... but her mount buttons and self buff buttons (not fort, spirit or inner fire, those are in their proper place!) were on the wrong side. I kept clicking Power Infusion while trying to get on my mount. Likewise, her healing buttons are up on the right action bar. And I have no idea where her psychic scream or fade buttons are. Which can be problematic.

I think I'm going to have to figure out a better way to organize my bars. Hard to imagine that there may be a better way than I already have, but ... For someone with as many alts as I have, the fact that I haven't gone insane trying to remember everything for everyone is miraculous (but no more than the norm for me.). I need to make it a bit easier on myself. Because trying to figure out where my healing buttons walked off to when I'm being eaten by a monster isn't fun.

On a side note, according to Boon, my guild misses me. Apparently, without me around, they have to get their answers to various questions from General Chat or alt-tabbing to the internet.

*shudder*

In terms of the new Hordling... I don't think it's going to level very fast or well, considering that we probably won't be playing them very frequently or long. Just another fad.

(Belf's still are pretty as long as they aren't moving. As soon as they walk, jump, cast or try to hit stuff with a weapon, they look like complete dorks. So pretty, yet so useless.)

So today's mental exercise is going to be figuring out a way to organize my bars across the various characters and classes that I play so I have something that gels smoothly from one to the next. (As opposed to previous mental exercises which usually involved trying to remember how many pulls it takes to get to the end boss in Ramparts. Egads. I can't remember his name! I feel ashamed. I must go beat myself in the head with a lamp now.)

(Vazruden?)

(*scurries off to the internet*)

The Nerfing of Mor'Ladim

Yesterday Boon and I were running around Raven Hill. In time honored fashion, we got surprised by Mor'Ladim. In time honored fashion, we squealed like little girls and ran away. (Eeeeeeeee!)

A little later, we got the quest to kill him. We looked at each other and said, "Why not, we can try."

And then we proceeded to wallop the level 30 elite that he now is. I seem to remember him being a higher level elite, and being much harder to kill.

It took some of our pleasure of defeating him away, when we realized that Mor'Ladim got whacked with the nerf bat.

New generations of WoW gamers will never know the fear and the triumph of the old Mor'Ladim.

Or many of the other classic things that we old gamers once knew, feared and loved.

It's sad.

Keiji goes to Wintergrasp

I have been doing well in my hiatus.

The first week, I logged in only to do Wintergrasp with Kikidas, angling for the Titan-Forged Hood of Dominance.

Finally, I did get it. One of my companions in game, an individual known as Brem, would give me tells teasing me about my online appearance. It was like clockwork, said he! Naturally I blamed Boon entirely.

I have rediscovered walking my dogs and what idiots they are. (Ooh Squirrel! ... Ooh Leaf! ... Ooh Car! ... Ooh Poop!)

I have taken naps with my kitties and discovered that the bunny gets jealous when I have naps with the kitties. (He then proceeds to jump up on me, and then jump on them growling until they leave. I had to protect my 10 pound cats from the 2.5 pound minibunny. Pathetic.)

I have started to watch Buffy again and marvel all over again at how silly the vampires look. (Really, I get all bloodlusty so my face does this wierd evil-Klingon impression? Riiight.)

I have done load of laundry after laundry, and actually put them away instead of just stacking it downstairs in a messy pile that winds up needing to be washed again because 1: wrinkles and 2: cat hair (apparently laundry piles make wonderful cat beds).

I have cleaned my kitchen and my living room. (Fantastik > Cinch imnsho. Fantastik has OXYPOWER)

I organized the office (specifically the pet storage area that was looking like a miniature supernova went off, who knew hay could be so messy?).

I took down the bird feeder, cleaned it out and put fresh bird seed inside of it, then hung it back up. (Apparently, leaving seed in a bird feeder over the winter makes it go moldy. Who knew?)

Boon, concerned that I was going tooooooooooooooooo much into 'Not playing WoW!', was worried I'd have a psychotic break and has been urging me to play 'just a little bit'. I've limited that to playing just with him for the most part. We've done our lowbies a little bit. He wanted to do some quests in Icecrown, so I did that with him. I stay on for about an hour and then I log out to do something else. I did get roped into bringing Kikidas to 25-KT the other night. Rawr. With my new epic hat, I was stylin'.

And yesterday I sat down, looked over at Boon who was giving Age of Conan another try with his new computer that won't blow up trying to play a game, looked at the clock which told me I had three hours before we were leaving for TableTop, looked at the room I had cleaned and said, "I'm taking a break."

So I logged in Keiji, got a group for 10-OS. Then got a group for 25-OS. Then helped take Wintergrasp (for once, the Horde had control). Then got a group for 25-VoA. Then got a group for 10-VoA. All one after another. And it still ate up a ton of time. It was almost time to leave for TableTop. Oy.

So I played PuzzleQuest Galatrix, which is odd, but interesting, even if I don't like the fact that there isn't as much 'choice' so far in it as Puzzle Quest, Challenge of the Warlords. Where you had a choice if you'd give the goblet back to the man who had you go look for it, or if you'd keep it, etc.

On a side note, I realize this differs undoubtedly between servers, but I feel really sad for the Horde on Alleria in regards to Wintergrasp. They always have about 10 stacks of Tenacity on, but we simply maul them with numbers. It's like a level-1 raid on Hogger. The individual dies, but that's okay, because while he was killing me, fourteen other people killed him. I'll take the corpse run.

So I feel bad. Because they can never get Stonekeeper Shards unless they're doing the WG dailies. I always see the same few people (Horde... and Alliance, come to think about it) doing WG. Hordies can't get shards by doing instances, so if they want a piece of shard-gear for their alts, or even themselves, they have to do WG dailies over and over again. (Wowolf, if you're out there. Hi! And sorry. Really, I like you Blood Elves, but you just can't take my Fortress.)

It makes me wonder if when the Horde DO have Wintergrasp, if suddenly the entire Horde population goes into instances? ZOMG! We have WG! QUICK QUICK, GET THEE TO AN INSTANCE!

People stay home from work, call in and explain, "Sorry Boss, but I play Horde on Alleria... and we have Wintergrasp. I just can't make it in today, at least not for another 2 hours and 30 minutes."

Their boss, understandingly, "Oh I know how THAT goes. I'll see you online then!" as he runs to his work laptop and logs in, while yelling at his Alliance minions to work, giving his Horde allies two and a half hours off.

Maybe Alleria can host a 'Be Kind to Horde' day, and we start a petition to LET them win Wintergrasp for a whole day? From midnight to midnight.... let it be Tuesday. Tuesday 12am until Wednesday 12am.

(What? Maintenance? And your point is? Hello. I'm not completely altruistic. I am, part time, a warlock.)

(Hrm. Blog name? Part Time Warlock? ... Nah, too much like Part Time Druid.)