Screenshot Friday

Happy New Year! 😀

Screenshot Friday

Haunting

Cata & Thoughts

Lyssi dinged 85 on 12/11, she was the 7th 85 in the guild (we now have 15). Since then I have been grinding rep dailies and trying to get my professions up. One thing that drives me nuts is she is an enchanter, but she is a blood elf. This means she has 535 enchanting. This also means that she won’t get the achievement until she hits 535. 😦 The downside to trying to level professions at the start of an expansion is that everything is ASS expensive. Plus I am leveling tailoring/enchanting. You really can’t farm those mats with any kind of efficiency. Strike that, I guess you could run dungeons to farm, but that is about all I can come up with. I really want to get my tailoring up high enough so I can start making the new cloth. You know, the SUPER expensive soulbound cloth that is on a 7 day cool down.

Yeah that stuff. >.>

I think heroics might have come close to breaking me.

It isn’t the CC (which I love btw!) or even the mechanics, I think it is the sheer inability to complete the bosses.

It is one thing to wipe over and over again on a raid boss, that is expected, but on a heroic? Yeah that quickly gets old.

It is stupid things too! When a boss charges — MOVE! It is that simple.

I’ve taken to really using my portal. Especially in Heroic Grim Batol. The new warlock abilities are pretty awesome. We actually have cool downs now! 🙂 I think that once I get used to the new dungeons I will really be pumping out the dps. Right now I am pulling anywhere from 7600-8800 dps, which I know is low but it is still up there in the groups. A large part of my problem is lack of hit. I reforged and I am still sitting at like 11% which is ok for heroics, but damn if I don’t need a ton more of hit.

Other than heroics I have really been enjoying the expansion. Some people might be complaining about being “on the rails” with the direct questing, but I am really enjoying it. I don’t like having to run all over to find that one quest giver to move me forward in the story. The extensive phasing is interesting as well. I really like in Hyjal how the burned forest is changed (due to your efforts) into a flourishing one. The phasing did help out a lot on the first day of the expansion. I was actually quite surprised that I didn’t see more people around. I’m not complaining, but it was an interesting feel.

Since Tattia is one of the few leather workers in the guild I have been trying to get her leveled up as well. Up until this weekend I really haven’t had much time to devote to her. I started her out in Hyjal (druid, hello) then took her to Vashj’ir. I think between the two starter areas I prefer Hyjal, but the quest rewards are more caster friendly in Vashj’ir. After completing both these zones I am about 75% of the way to 84. She is headed into Deepholm tonight until she hits 84, then she will take a detour to the Twilight Highlands to open up the Dragonmaw Orcs, then back to Deepholm to finish it up. I leveled Lyssi through the Twilight Highlands with only a small detour into Uldum. Tattia will level to 85 in Uldum. I liked the Twilight Highlands, but damn do those mobs hit hard!

I have been slacking the last few days on Lyssi with her rep dailies. After a particularly bad heroic I had to log off in tears I was so upset. I know I am not as hardcore as Zug, Sorak and Slice, but damn when it is obvious a boss is not going down we need to cut our losses and let go. Come back when the gear is better so the dps and heals can do their jobs. Banging my head against a wall that doesn’t budge is not a lot of fun for me.

Ideally I’d like to get used to the dungeons on regular before I run them on heroic. So far I have completed Stonecore once on regular, Halls of Origination like 3 or 4 times on regular and Grim Batol on regular. I’ve gotten Deadmines twice on heroic (both times did not finish it) and Grim Batol twice on heroic (again not completed). I still have 4 more dungeons that I haven’t even SEEN on regular and SFK on heroic. I will say now that I have been “bad” in that I haven’t looked up any of the strats. Part of it is that I have been so busy at work then having the stress of making sure I got to 85, then gearing up and getting my professions up, etc. It is a wonder I haven’t gone completely grey.

After my stress quit on Thursday I said I wouldn’t be doing dungeons for a while. I have keep true to that and didn’t do a single one since then. I almost thought about queuing up Tattia and attempting to heal a regular, then I quickly killed that idea and settled in for a quiet weekend. I even made a goblin and on Sunday I worked on her for a while. I had gone through my roster on Drak and I realized that I didn’t have a warrior. So Verica the goblin warrior was born.

Get this, she is being leveled . . . prot.

I know! I know! Shoot me now. Sorak asked me why I always have to do things the hard way. I don’t know if this is really considered the hard way, but we’ll see. I have barely made it out of the Goblin starting area so I haven’t even attempted to do anything else. It is kind of funny because the victory rush that I get when I kill mobs almost makes me feel like I HAVE to find another mob to kill and get the heal, EVEN if I don’t need to have my health refreshed. I start to get annoyed if there isn’t anything around me to kill. I kind of feel that way about nightfall procs on my warlock too.

TL:DR the warrior is fun. 🙂 She is a nice little diversion from everything else I need to work on.

PPP will be next in line after Tattia. I want to prove to Slice that Disc healing CAN work even at lower gear levels. Plus I want a high level alchemist to transmute stuffs. I miss playing her too.

Tonight’s plans involve leveling Tattia & getting back into the swing of my rep dailies on Lyssi. Tomorrow is regular dungeon runs with Doz. Luckily I have a 4 day weekend. Hopefully by next week I will have 2 85s ready to raid.

And keep your fingers crossed that I don’t go nuts and kill everyone in the meantime 🙂

Quickie: We love our GM, we really do!

Sent to me from a guildie:

[16:10:56][G] [Sorak]: noticed a couple of times mobs were beating on
ppl but not sure if you noticed
[16:11:04][G] [Sorak]: use tab
[16:11:25][G] [Lorethos][Zarigar]: dont let that filty goblin tell you what to
do!!!!!
[16:11:29][G] [Sorak]: ya man, like i said just takes practice
[16:11:37][G] [Sorak]: fu lore!
[16:11:50][G] [Lorethos][Zarigar]: come warstomp me…oh, wait…
[16:11:59][G] [Sorak]: sigh
[16:12:03][G] [Telanarra]: can you speak up those of us taller then 2
feet can’t hear you
[16:12:11][G] [Sorak]: bitches all of youy!
[16:12:15][G] [Sorak]: you too
[16:12:21][G] [Telanarra]: Lor did you hear something
[16:12:32][G] [Lorethos][Zarigar]: some tiny voice in the wind

[16:12:56][G] [Sorak]: ima bite your knees!
[16:13:13][G] [Telanarra]: want a stool so you can reach

We LOVE you Sorak!! 😀

Screenshot Friday

Here is a little aww for the weekend

Screenshot Friday

My pet has a pet! 😀

Get that nose to the grindstone!

Leveling is upon us yet again!

So far I am enjoying myself.  I wasn’t at first though.  I’ll tell you why.

Slice and I were going to level together, you know doing the whole cutesy couple thing, etc.  We have two very different styles when it comes to leveling.  I read the quest text, and then usually have to re-read it because I have been distracted by vent or gchat and didn’t comprehend anything I just read.  Slice grabs the quest and runs.  He also HATES questing where I enjoy it.

Now someone please explain why we were going to attempt to level together?

It started out ok.  I had wanted to go to Vashj’ir first but as Slice pointed out Hyjal has the caster head enchant.  So to Hyjal we went!  My brother had been up since midnight and had attempted to level with Zug (who has since been proven to be a robot) but quickly was left in the dust in the wee hours of the morning.  As it was, he was about a level ahead of us having completed Vashj’ir.  Regardless, he wanted to level with us so joined us in Hyjal.  The first few quests went fairly quickly.  We were pretty much on the same page for like the first 20 mins, then somehow I got behind.  When I was just getting to the quest giver they were done with the quest and wanted to know if I had gotten credit.  Um no guys, I don’t even have the fricken quest!

/sigh

I finally got pissed and just said to hell with it and dropped group.  My brother did part with “Don’t get all butthurt.”  It wasn’t so much that I was butthurt, I just wasn’t having fun.  I enjoy questing.  I like reading the quests, especially new quests that I haven’t done 20 million times.  I am not all about flying through the levels.  Yes we have a time limit on getting to 85 and geared, but frankly I have time.  I don’t do anything else with my time but play WoW.  It isn’t like I have other things I have to do instead.  I have no doubt that I will be 85 by the end of this weekend.  Then I will begin to level up Tattia and gear out Lyssi.  Hopefully Tattia will go a bit faster than Lyssi did (now that I know what to expect) and I will be able to get back to PPP.

Once I left them and got to level on my own terms I started having fun again.  I ended up almost finishing Hyjal before crashing out for the night.  I think I had like 10 quests left.  I find it odd that you get the zone completed with 115 quests and yet you have a bunch more to do afterwards.  Considering everything is linear, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t get all of the quests in the zone.  It isn’t like Nagrand where you have to go to Shat to get a quest that takes you to Shadowmoon Valley that then takes you back to Nagrand in order to get Nagrand Slam.

Yes I am still pissed over that.

On Tuesday I got to 98% to level 82 before I crashed out.  When I logged in yesterday I completed the quests in Hyjal, dinging 82 in the process (all on rested xp too!) then got the quests that took me into Deepholm.  Again I had wanted to go back and do Vashj’ir but apparently the game had different ideas.

Slice made a comment about how Deepholm reminds him of Nagrand.  I didn’t understand it until I saw it.  Personally I think it looks more like Netherstorm.  All the rocks & crystals everywhere.  I particularly like the floating pieces of rock around you.  Little touches. 🙂

Oh!  Has anyone noticed that Thrall’s woman sounds like Sindragosa!?!?  I could just hear her telling me that my pathetic magic had betrayed me.  I am convinced that they are the same voice actor.  Now I am aware that I could be wrong and she could share the voice actor with Lady Deathwhisper, but I am pretty positive that her voice was used in ICC.  When I first heard it I was all “Oh no my pathetic magic HAS betrayed me!”

Or as my brother says “BUBBLES NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Yeah I know, inside joke, but I laughed and that is all that matters!

Now how do I feel about leveling as my lock.?  I posted yesterday on Ful’s post at Killing em Slowly about how my warlocking went.  If you aren’t reading them, you totally should.  I seriously ❤ that blog.

I started out as affliction when I was running around with Slice and my brother.  I had the blueberry out and I didn’t see any major problems with him surviving.  It wasn’t until I went solo that I noticed that he was dying pretty damn fast.  Also when the hell did they nerf health funnel?!!?  It now lasts like 2 seconds and hardly heals the damn minion.  I have to hit it like 5 or 6 times to keep my blueberry alive.  Insane I tell you.  Towards the end of the night I changed over to my demo spec just to see if that would help with minion survivability.  It did to an extent.  I think I know what the problem was though.

When I level as affliction I send the blueberry in, completely dot up the mob (previously I just hit corruption and CoA, can’t do that anymore) then send him off to another mob, rinse and repeat.  What I found myself doing was sending in the blueberry, loading up the mob with everything I had (haunt, UA, Cor, BoA & whichever curse is best) then moving on to the next target.  This usually has the mob come back and hit me when it is around 30-40% health.  Since affliction has so much passive healing, I wasn’t really taking all that much damage.  My poor blueberry was though.  In my hurry to level I completely forgot to adjust my spec from my raiding spec to a leveling spec.  Specifically the 2 points in Fel Synergy.  Last night I made it a point to respec and popped those two points in there.  It made a HUGE difference.  I still can’t quite chain pull like I used to, the mobs just have too much health.  But I can consistently pull 3-4 mobs at a time.

I think I just fail at Demo.  I have too many buttons that I don’t understand and just nowhere to put them.  Yes I am aware that I could get an addon to give me more bars, but frankly I try to avoid getting UI changing addons.  I don’t enjoy having a borked UI when patches hit.  I just need to seriously go through and delete from my bars everything and put them back up one at a time.  The problem is I have played so long as affliction that I don’t know if I could ever get used to Demo.  Even in the short time that I was demo for raiding I still floundered around.  There is a big difference in raiding and leveling.  I have never leveled as demo.  Add into that all the new spells that demo has (and warlocks have in general) and that just dovetails into my bars being full and me being confused.

Yeah I know, QQ moar noob.

Over my leveling I had pretty much picked up an entirely new set of gear.  I decided last night to switch out my purples for the greens and blues I had picked up.  Mostly to make a better decision on upgrades, but also because repairs are cheaper. 😀  I need to clean out my banks to find room for my gear.  I know I should probably shard it, but I am not sure if I should still use some of it.  I changed over without really looking at anything.  Was almost kind of liberating.

BTW I have over 50k health.

Lock tank!

Screenshot Friday

Because you have come to expect it

Excitement is building

When I came back to Shadow Rising after Sorak took over I was made an officer.  Since then Sorak, Slice and myself have been brainstorming about all the things we were going to do in Cataclysm.  The end result is I am very excited.

Shadow Rising has a bunch of very talented players.  I honestly think that we could be a force to be reckoned with if we put our minds to it. Our problem has been lack of players. We lose so many people to RL that it makes it difficult sometimes to keep on going.

This is by no means a recruiting post; Shadow Rising is not recruiting. It is just a statement of fact.

We did get lucky and got a really awesome player from the failed merge from several months back. He fits in rather well with our motley group of people and I am very glad to have him. We also got some new players to the game. One is a friend of our long time Boomkin Moogik and the others are friends of my brother. My brother is also a new addition to our raiding roster. Several guildies that left months ago are coming back for the expansion as well.

I am trying to keep hope alive that these people will come back and integrate with the now different tone of the guild.

Several weeks ago the officers got together and had a meeting. We discussed what we wanted from the guild and where we wanted to be. It was unanimous that we wanted to focus on raiding and push progression, but we didn’t want to be an uber hardcore guild. There would be rules and procedures clearly laid out. We would have a focus. I was loving it!

Then I stop and look at our roster.

We are very short tanks and healers who are not the same people. All of our healers are officers. Most of our geared & experienced tanks are also officers. On top of that, several of our very high dpsers are the same people. Since we are so short in our key roles these people (myself included) have to fill them. The result is people who have dps mains aren’t able to play those mains.

I used to enjoy healing on my druid, and I might continue to enjoy healing in Cataclysm, but right now I dislike it immensely. Unfortunately I have to heal because we need a healer. This has helped to get me burned out on raiding.

A few weeks ago I was able to raid on Lyssi and dps. Up until then I had been healing for the last several raid lock outs. I was sick and tired of raiding. I didn’t want to do it anymore. All I wanted to do was level my alts and be left alone. However I am an officer and I need to be there for my guild. I sucked it up and healed. Poor Slice had to bear the brunt of my burnout. It was not pretty. When Sorak told me I was going to be able to dps that night my entire mood changed. I actually wanted to be there and raid. Raiding became fun again. We even got another LK kill. In fact we almost 8 manned it.

In order to combat the above from happening to everyone Sorak said that we would end up rotating people. If they tank or heal one week then they can dps the next. I think this is a great thing. It keeps things a bit fresh so we aren’t always doing the same thing because we have to. Ideally it would be wonderful if we had more of our guildies fill these roles, but it is what it is.

Slice brought up an interesting thought today when we were talking. With the new people in the guild and the returning players (whom haven’t played with a bunch of us ever) we won’t have the synergy that we have built up with our current raiders. Is wiping to new bosses really the best place to learn that? Obviously we are going to have to discuss how we are going to handle that, but I am glad someone thought about it.

Now on to the excitement!

I am poised for the first time in my WoW playing history for being able to tackle content as soon as it comes out. In CoF/EoF I was late to the party. I showed up to the game too late in BC to be of any use and when Wrath hit the guild was pretty much dead. We were raiding Naxx when people were farming Ulduar, and even that was half pugged. When I joined Shadow Rising the first time they were banging their heads in ICC a wing behind progression guilds. Their alt run was still in ToC. Cataclysm is going to be different.

We already have the first raids on the calendar. There is a clear date when we have to be 85 and geared.

I couldn’t be happier.

Last night

Was a ton of fun.  At least that is what I keep hearing from everyone.  Slice was telling me that over and over again while on the phone after the raid.  My brother kept whispering me telling me how much fun he was having.  Sorak pings me on gchat and tells me how last night was a lot of fun.  When I was talking with Repgrind she also told me she had a lot of fun.

Who knew raiding would be fun like this in the 11th hour?

I personally was just stressed to the max healing.  So while everyone was having fun and getting phat lewts, I was freaking out over healing and developing a stiff neck.

Normally I wouldn’t be freaking out but trying to 2 heal ICC with the “new” mana regen was not fun.  Arv and I double druid healed.  He didn’t have much experience with resto druid healing, but he is pro so I wasn’t worried about it.  The problem I was having was the fact that I was going OOM in every fight.  There wasn’t an opportunity to sit back and let my passive regen happen.  I know that if I was having a problem that Arv was probably having even more of one.  I was using a flask of pure mojo AND spirit food.  I was popping innervate every time it was up and mana pots when I was dead in the water.  The druid healing style of Wrath doesn’t fit with the current system.

In ICC there is a TON of damage coming in from all angles.  The tanks are getting whacked with huge hits and the raid is being slammed with constant damage as well.  All during Wrath druids would blanket the raid with rejuv and pop in a few regrowths as needed or even spam nourish.

You can’t do that anymore.

Nourish now takes too damn long to cast.  You don’t really want to use it because it just doesn’t work with the fast paced environment of damage in ICC.  There is the option of using it with nature’s swiftness, but it doesn’t heal for as much as healing touch so you don’t want to gimp that big heal.  Let’s face it, if you are using your NS macro, then you are hitting your “oh shit!” button and you need as big of a heal as you can get.  So Nourish is out of the running.

Regrowth got its timer lessened.  Now you get a nice big heal upfront and a very short duration of a hot.  I really do like this spell, don’t get me wrong, but I am not used to the new version of it.  My mind still thinks of it lasting longer so I still treat it like it is the old version.  This results in me forgetting to keep it up on the tanks.  Otherwise this is your go-to spell.

Rejuvenation isn’t all that changed.  With everyone’s health pools being so large this heal doesn’t feel like it does all that much anymore.  I hit this spell more out of reflex than anything.  I am then left feeling very unsatisfied afterwards.

Kind of like how I felt with some of my exs . . .

Yeah you knew that was coming 😉

This all added up to me freaking out.  Yes I have healed since the patch changes, but it was with Sorak and he is so damn OP it is ridiculous.  Although it was freaking hilarious last night when he logged into Sorak to heal Sindy with me.  He hadn’t logged into him since before the patch so his talents had to be set up and he had to put his buttons back on his action bar.  Then he was all “What! I have to dps to heal!?!”  Yeah it was funny.

I think that was my favorite part of the night.

It certainly wasn’t the part where I had to swim on VDW.  Sad tree is sad.  I always feel ineffective when I have to swim.  For the most part I can hit the bubbles and get stacks (I ended up with 30 when she hit full health), but I always end up at her ass end and have to run to the front where all the fucking portals are.  So yeah, not exactly fun, but what are you going to do?

I do agree with Slice though.  It was really nice to see people get upgrades for once.  My brother has been attempting to level his hunter for months.  He took like a 6 month break when his computer died.  He now has a new one (I am so jealous of it and how gorgeous everything is on it) and finally dinged 80 on Friday.  We ran him through a bunch of dungeons and got him some crafted gear.  When he set foot into ICC last night he had a 3200 gearscore.  He was in a few purples, several blues and even some greens.  I think he is in half leather too.  Poor guy.  He did snag some pretty nice upgrades, including the bow that drops off LDW.  I think he creamed his pants when he saw it.  Now he just needs to get all gemmed and enchanted up before tomorrow’s LK continuation.

It was cute.  I got a whisper from him last night when we were closing down shop “Can I go with you guys again on Thursday?”  Yes you can silly.  We aren’t going to bring you through ICC just to tell you that you can’t come to the LK fight.  I really hope that we don’t have anymore DC issues so that we can get him a title.  I am excited for him.  He might not have ever raided in WoW before, but he definitely learned fast and everyone was very pleased with him.  I hope he will be able to raid with us at 85.

I really enjoyed getting to play with Rep.  She is already a ton of fun, but to see her in action is pretty awesome.  Her toon wasn’t even Ulduar ready and she was holding her own in ICC.  As she said it helped to get a buff when everyone else got a nerf, but even then you have to be a good player to pull off what she did in the gear she had.  I was very happy to see that she got several upgrades too.

I don’t know if there really was something that made last night more fun than our raids usually are, or if it was just knowing that this was the last time we will ever have to raid ICC.  I like to think that our guildies & raiders are just awesome people.  We had people come in and raid who really didn’t want to.  Thank you guys again!  It warms me to know that you guys are willing to help out when needed.  If they hadn’t then the raid might not have happened.  Sorak and Slice both thought that we wouldn’t be able to pull it off.  I was going to pug people if I had to.  I wasn’t going to get people’s hopes up with being able to raid then tell them “oh we didn’t have enough people, sorry no raid for you.”

Yeah I didn’t want that.

In other news PPP is now 65 and cruising through Outland.  I have a feeling she will be replacing my druid in Cata as my primary healer.  I don’t know if it is just that I haven’t come up against what Northrend can throw at healers or if Disc is just so easy that I have a false sense of healing security.  I do know that healing as Disc is easy and yet a lot of fun.  While I bitch and moan when the tanks pull the whole room and I end up OOM keeping everyone alive, I still feel all pumped that I was able to pull it off and keep everyone alive.  I usually emote flexing on PPP.  Then flex in guild chat.  If I didn’t have to keep my hands on the keyboard and mouse I would totally flex IRL too.

*flex*

Like that.

😀