Screenshot Friday

Sexy lock strikes again!

I have to do all the things!

Much love to Hyperbole and a Half for the awesomesause phrase stealing I did.  Is it really stealing when you give them credit afterwards?

Eh who knows!

ANYWAY!

I have sooooooooooooo much personal stuff going on (that I can’t talk about just yet, and if you know please don’t bring it up in the comments) and add to that my normal game time stuff equals one stressed warlock.  My biggest thing right now is just getting everything organized so that I can get it done in the correct amount of time.

Plus I am very lazy, like seriously lazy.

Trust me, it’s bad.

Take Monday night (yesterday).  Every other Monday (or so it is supposed to be) is the alt T11 run.  We try to get people in who don’t normally raid with us and the main raiders bring their alts who need gear.  As I mentioned before, it is supposed to happen every OTHER Monday but it has happened the last 3 Mondays.  We can blame Arv for that one.  He set one up last week for his buddy who just joined us.  This means that if I join in on the alt run then I have 3 days in a row where I can’t get anything done at home.  With all the new stuff piled on my plate I just cannot raid on Monday anymore.  Normally this isn’t an issue because we will usually have enough people.  Unfortunately Slice likes to bring me instead of asking other guildies who didn’t sign up.  One day he will understand that I am not like him and don’t like to raid 24/7.

Some days I almost feel like I want to sit out on our normal Tuesday/Wednesday runs but then I remember about my awesome staff of awesomeness and how I wants it precious!  So I suck it up and come raid.  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE raiding with my guildies.  We always have such fun and it is worth it to come raid.

Unless I don’t eat before/during the raid, then I am a HORRIBLE MEAN BITCH who HATES EVERYONE and all that jazz.

It apparently got bad enough that Sorak even now reminds me to eat something before the raid. 😀

Yes he really is a sweetheart, when he isn’t being a brat.

Things are really looking good for SR right now.  We are 6/7 in Firelands and should be able to get Rag down soon.  As of this afternoon I am 22/25 embers for the first quest chain.  We have been EXTREMELY lucky with our ember drops.  I think we have only had 1 or 2 bosses who didn’t drop an ember for me.  I haven’t really done a whole lot of research into the quest chain because I kind of want to be surprised about what happens.  I know that Slice has read up on it and he tells me that I have at least 2 more long collection quests.  I know that we will be doing this for a while so I am not super worried.  At the worst I will finish up the staff in an alt run when we are on the next tier, but finish it I will!

Slice was asking me the other day if I have found a fight in Firelands that I don’t like.  Honestly I like all of them.  Rhyolith might be a big pain in the ass (at least until they nerfed him to hell and back) but I still liked the fight.  As of right now (since we haven’t seen all of Rag) Alysrazor is my favorite fight.  I love all aspects of it.  I’ve flown and I’ve been on ground duty.  Yes it seems like a crazy fight, but it really isn’t tough at all if you just look at it piece by piece.  I think my favorite part about it is being able to cast and run at the same time.  I love not losing my shadow bolt casts when I have to move for a brushfire.  Being useful with interrupts with my puppy is pretty awesome too.  On those few times when I get to fly (Zuggie usually is flying because he is a fire mage)  I get SUPER excited when I get the crit buff from the 25 ring hit.  It lets me know that I am being good with hitting rings.  This fight has so many little things that make me happy so I just can’t pick one.

What I can’t seem to understand is why all the stuff I need drops off Domo and Rag.  It almost feels like half my BiS stuff only drops off those two guys.  Since we are such a pally/priest heavy raid I will be the last person to see my 4 piece T12.  Which isn’t that bad when you realize I am getting the awesome staff of awesomeness but by the time I get the staff, T12 will be almost done.  Oh well.  It does drive me nuts when other people are always bitching that they get that particular token to drop every time and no one can use it anymore.  It is like rubbing salt in the wound!

Funny thing happened in gchat last night.  They were running the T11 alt run (which I skipped) and apparently Atramedes dropped the shoulders.  Now in case you aren’t aware, Lyssi’s last blue item was her shoulders.  I was raiding and downing bosses in Firelands with 346 shoulders because no cloth ones dropped and anytime the token dropped off Cho’gall it was given to someone else.  The worst time was when it was given to someone who ALREADY HAD purple shoulders.  I was so mad that night.  Anyway I digress.  It was last week I think that Rhyolith dropped the mage clone shoulders.  Zuggie wasn’t there so I was able to snag them!  Apparently Sorak wasn’t paying attention that night because he had Grom link the shoulders that Atramedes dropped to taunt me.  The joke’s on you Sorak!  I laughed and congratulated Grom then linked my 378 shoulders in gchat for Sorak to see when he couldn’t understand why I wasn’t upset.  Good times!

I take back what I said above about him being a sweetheart.

Last weekend I rocked out on my mage, this weekend I was hooked on my baby lock.  Not much has really changed from where I left her off last, at least playstyle/spec-wise, but I was really hooked on leveling her.  The purpose of her leveling has been to experience the new leveling experience in the old world.  I went through the new plaguelands, the revamped Badlands (I got to punch Deathwing in the FACE!) and then this weekend the Swamp of Sorrows and half of the Blasted Lands.  I had done the other half of the Blasted Lands quests on PPP so I don’t think they are that much different for Alliance.  I will probably finish them out on the baby lock anyway.  The baby murlocs are just too cute not to.

I have already started thinking about the next toon that I want to level.  I have several ones that are just sitting there with rested XP and yet I have this urge to make a Draenei Paladin.  I had one that I loved over on Skywall and she doesn’t look like she will be dusted off ever again.  I also want to make a Worgen.  I’m not sure what kind of Worgen, but I need one.  So yeah, too many alts and not enough time!

I need a vacation so I can just play WoW for a week.

Yeah like that’ll happen >.<

Newbie guide to Affliction in 4.1

Those of you that know me know that I am not exactly big on guides. I wrote one a long time ago about leveling up a warlock. For the most part it still works with the changed leveling from 4.0, but I should probably update it. A little back story on this post today!

Cynwise was on twitter yesterday asking if anyone knew of an Affliction guide for 4.1 for newbies.  He had gotten an email from a brand new warlock and since he isn’t big on PvE (he is the king of PvP though) he wanted to direct this person to someone who could help them.

After some research we found that there wasn’t a guide for newbies.  There are several that are more advanced, but those wouldn’t really work.  I asked Cyn to forward me the email and I sent a write up explaining how to Aff lock as it were.  I was quite proud of my reply and asked Cyn if he thought it would work for a newbie guide.  He told me yes and so I decided to share it with you all!

First of all here is my warlock – Lyssianna

What will help you is some kind of dot tracker. I personally use Need to Know. It is fairly simple to set up and can be used to track all sorts of things.

I am not big on macros, so I don’t have any tips on how to use those. What I will give you is the basics.

Boss fights:

Curse of the Elements
Demon Soul: Felhunter (this means you should be running with the felhunter aka the fel puppy)
Haunt
Unstable Affliction
Corruption
Bane of Agony
Shadow bolt (spam this until you need to refresh your dots)

Ideally you want to have 3 stacks of Shadow Embrace up at all times (something to have on your tracker). Shadow bolt and haunt put this debuff up on your target. Each stack increases your shadow damage by 5% for a max of 15%. Since you will be spamming Shadow Bolt as a filler this is very easy to keep up.

When haunt reaches about 4-5 seconds left you will want to start recasting it. You want to have this spell up at all times. Haunt also refreshes Corruption.

The majority of the time will be spent refreshing your dots (don’t clip them!) and spamming shadow bolt.  Just in case you didn’t know, “clipping” means reapplying the DoT before the duration wears off.

You will want to use your Doomguard ideally when bloodlust (or heroism if you are Alliance) is cast. BUT you need to make sure you will have 45 seconds available for him to dps.  Until you learn the fights this might take a bit to get right, but you will eventually learn when the right time is each fight.  Since this has a 10 min cooldown you will want to make sure you use it each time it is available.

When the boss reaches under 25% health you will need to switch to drain soul. This spell will automatically refresh your Unstable Affliction and Corruption. You will continuously channel this spell until Haunt reaches about 4-5 seconds left or when Bane of Agony falls off. The Haunt application will keep up your Shadow Embrace. The under 25% damage is your largest source of dps/damage. I currently use a power aura (only that one) to pop up a warning whenever my targeted mob is at 25% or less health. You might want to set up something similar to help you. I don’t know about you but I have a hell of time figuring out when the mob has hit 25% so this has helped me immensely.  If you aren’t big on using add ons then changing the health bars to show percentages can make this MUCH easier.

Trash mobs:

I try to find the mob that will be killed last and stick Curse of the Elements on them. Then I load up all my dots on the first marked target (haunt, UA, Cor, BoA) then with a glyphed Soul Swap I pop UA, Cor and BoA to the next marked target. I then find the 3rd target and load that one up with dots. By that point haunt is off cooldown and you can reapply it. I essentially tab target through the mobs and refresh my dots as needed until they all die.

If you are in a place with non-elites and just need to AoE spam then use Soulburn: Seed of Corruption and start spamming Seed. The Soulburn will not only refresh your shard once it explodes, but it will also put Corruption up on every target in the area. It is a ton of fun!

Going OOM:

This should NEVER happen with a warlock. Being that you are affliction you have the best passive healing out of almost every class. This is how I typically life tap.

Once I reach about 60-75% mana I life tap once or twice (I currently get 24k mana each tap unbuffed). I try to time this right before haunt comes back. This way I get healed by haunt and the healer doesn’t have to waste mana on me. Assuming you have corruption rolling on your target at all times, the healing from Siphon life will keep you with a steady stream of health.

If you are still having trouble with remembering to life tap, just put it into your rotation. After you put up a full stack of dots, life tap. That way you are constantly full for mana and your haunt will heal you each time.

Glyphs & Talents:

The spec that Lyssi has is pretty much the standard one.  There isn’t a whole lot of wiggle room if you are focusing primarily on PvE.

With Glyphs there are several options.  What you choose will largely depend on your playstyle and what you are planning on doing.

Must Haves:

• Primary – Glyph of Haunt
• Major – Glyph of Fear, Glyph of Soul Swap
• Minor – Glyph of Drain Soul

Options for other slots:

• Primary – Glyph of Bane of Agony, Glyph of Corruption, Glyph of Unstable Affliction
• Major – Glyph of Shadow Bolt, Glyph of Life Tap, Glyph of Felhunter
• Minor – Any ones you want.  There isn’t anything that will make or break for you on here. Although I am fond of Glyph of Unending Breath

 

Crowd Control aka CC:

Warlocks are Kings and Queens of CC.  Thanks to the lovely Glyph of Fear (EVERY warlock should have this glyph, there is no excuse!) we can now manage several types of mobs.

You have 4 types of CC – Fear, Banish, Enslave Demon and Seduction.

How I handle keeping track of my CC target is to make the mob my focus.  I know that several people have come up with nifty macros for CCing and changing your target and focus.  I keep it simple.  Right click the target’s frame, set focus.  Then I can easily watch the duration of my CC.

**BIG TIP!**

Keep your pet on passive if you are going to CC a target.  Once your target is CC’d then send your pet to the kill target.  This will stop you from accidentally breaking your own CC.

Here is a breakdown on each CC:

• Fear – This will be your staple CC.  It works on most mobs in Cata dungeons.  This better be glyphed or you will have mobs running everywhere and pulling their friends with them.  GLYPH THIS!  This can be broken by damage.  You do not have to wait for the timer to finish before you refresh this.  I usually refresh when the duration is about half gone.
• Banish – This works on elementals and demons.  The best part about this method is the mob becomes immune to all damage.  You cannot refresh this very easily.  This can be taken off by recasting it on the mob.  If you want the mob to stay CC’d then wait for this to fall off then recast it on them.
• Enslave Demon – This one will replace your current pet with whichever demon you enslave.  This cannot be broken by damage because they become your pet.  While that demon is under your control you can use their special abilities.  Once this wears off (or you dismiss it) you will have to fight the demon you enslaved.  I don’t use this method much.
• Seduction – Your Succubus channels this spell.  This means you have to run with her.  Since you should be running with your Felpuppy you won’t have this ability as readily as the others.  This can be broken by damage (very easily I might add) and takes a bit more of micro managing than the others.  I usually do not use this ability unless I need more than fear on humanoid targets.

 

Conclusion:

The only way to get good at affliction is to practice your rotation.  Affliction has one of the more difficult rotations to master.  The best tip I can give you is to spend a lot of time on the test dummies.  Once you can go through your rotation with ease (muscle memory for the win!) your dps/damage will go up big time.  Affliction’s main damage comes when the mob is under 25% and we are using drain soul.  Don’t get caught up in your rotation and forget to switch over.

Affliction has always been my favorite spec.  Please feel free to leave any questions you might have in the comments and I will do my best to help you.

Once you progress beyond the “newbie” stage there are LOTS of sites out there with advanced techniques and ideas.  Just think of this as a jumping off point.

Good luck and happy dotting!

Pity party table of 1

Last night we were supposed to start at Sindragosa.  Unfortunately one of our healers got stuck at work.  Since we would have to pull in another healer and Soth wanted a new weapon off a boss we had already killed, it was decided to just restart the raid.

Things got off to a rocky start.  I am not sure what is wrong with me but I was having the same problems last night that I was having on Tuesday.  I made sure I ate before the run so that wasn’t it.  I am starting to think it is something completely out of the game period.  Zam thought it might be raid jitters or something.  I don’t think it is.  I was making a marked improvement each week without any issue.  I can’t see suddenly acquiring that after not having it since I first started raiding with SR.

It is most likely all the outside stuff that is going on.  I tend to think and then over think stuff.  My brain never stops.  I have a hard time falling asleep at night because I cannot get my mind to turn off.  This ends up with me staying up far too late and getting like 4-5 hours of sleep a night.  Like right now, I just zoned out writing this while my mind went off on other topics.  It isn’t even like I am thinking about just one thing.  I have 5 or 6 different topics floating around in my head.  *sigh*

Re-setting the raid turned out to be for the best really.  Soth got his new weapon so big congrats go out to him! 🙂  I also got a new wand and hit exalted with the Ashen Verdict.  I think I am now at 5792 gs.  As Tir said the other day “pimp my lock” indeed.

I am going to take Soth’s advice and get rid of the hit on the gems.  If I get to soft cap (11% for me) I should be ok.  That means I only need to have 289 hit.  With the gems I am sitting at 332.  When I remove them I will be at 312 which is still higher than the 289 I can drop down to.  When I have hit issues it makes me miss being Alliance and having a Draenei in every fucking group ever.  I think EoF had at least 2 in every raid we were in, usually 3 or 4.  It really was overkill.

I am not raiding again until Sunday.  Hopefully I will be able to work out some of the stuff that is plaguing me, both in my head and in the game.  I can stand at the training dummy and knock off my rotation like no one’s business, but put me in a raid, and it all goes to hell.  Ari is such a nice RL.  She tries to help me with my class failings.  I was told on Marrowgar to not switch to the spikes unless Ari was impaled.  On Lady D I get to stay on the mana shield.  Festergut I get to be the anchor or if we have extra ranged I get to be in the boss crotch.  Even with those lovely concessions made to me, I still fail.  5-6k dps is not good when everyone else is doing 7-10k.  I don’t think I can even go with the whole “you aren’t as geared as they are” thing because I am not really that far behind everyone anymore.  I end up feeling like I am given these buffs and they are being wasted, which means I probably shouldn’t be getting them anymore.

What drives me nuts is when I get told “you did fine” etc.  No, no I didn’t.  Each chain has its weakest link and being that link repeatedly is not something I am enjoying.  Yes I stay out of the bad, yes I follow instructions, but damn it I need to pick up my damage.  Other than cookies and soul stones (and sometimes curse of elements, you know when I FUCKING REMEMBER TO USE IT) I don’t have a lot to bring to the raid except DPS and I am not even bringing that.  On the dummy I can pull 5300 dps.  According to maxdps.com self buffed (which is all I am on the dummy) I should be pulling 5300 dps.  Put me in a raid (fully buffed) and I get 5300 dps.  Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Ok so dps is low, but overall damage is where the importance is placed.  It is one thing when your damage is higher and your dps is a bit low in comparison to everyone else.  Last night, not only was I bad dps, my overall damage was significantly lower than the next person.  They were at 17-18% overall, I was at 13-14%.  1-2% I am ok with. 3-4% not so much.

So how did I end out my craptastic raiding night?  By dying repeatedly in AB.  Normally when I get AB I defend a node.  Lately it has been the farm.  I run up, assault it and guard it.  Usually there are 2-3 other people who stay with me.  I got AB twice last night.  The first time I was going solo.  I was left alone at the farm for almost the whole time.  About halfway through a DK joined me.  As soon as fighting started at the BS he left to fight, leaving me alone at the farm.  The Alliance kept sending 5-6 people to the farm, while I was standing there alone.  My poor VW bubble only absorbs around 10k damage.  Being MC btw, sucks ass.  There was this shadow priest that just had a hard on for me or something.  She made it a point to MC me every time she would attack the farm.  At one point she attacked the farm solo just so she could MC me before the DK killed her.

We of course lost that AB.

Back in Dal I was staring at the last book spawn point I need debating if I was going to crash out (it is 11:30 mind you) or what when someone asked me if I wanted to group up with several guildies and do a BG.  Since I still didn’t have my win I said sure why not.  We get AB again.  I got left alone at the farm, again.  I got gang raped at the farm, again.  Luckily Zug was in vent and in our BG group and came to help me.  Zam was also on his DK and showed up to help.  For a while it was just Zug and I at the farm, dying repeatedly.  I did manage to kill a fucking rogue and a fucking DK.  I fucking hate you guys in PvP btw.  I’m sure I sounded like a pissed off bitch when I was yelling about the fuckers dying over vent.  I don’t care.  They deserved to die for camping me in a BG.  Grrrr.

I probably shouldn’t PvP outside of WG anymore.  It probably isn’t good for my stress levels.

We still didn’t win the BG.

So yeah.  Failing at PvE and PvP in the same night.  If you will excuse me I think my table is ready.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty . . .

Isn’t she so very sexy?

For some reason (known only to Ari and Moog I imagine) I walked away with Nibelung last night.  We use EPGP and my priority rating is shit.  This is mostly because everyone else already has everything they need and I still needed gear.  Nibelung, however, is BiS for Moog and like #2 for Arioch.  They both have a far higher priority rating than I do and by all accounts should have won that staff.  I didn’t expect to win it until just about everyone else already had it.  When I saw it awarded to me I let out a little scream.  Luckily for the people in vent I didn’t hit my PTT button. 

This meant that I had to go through and redo my gear to make up for the hit I was losing by replacing Abracadaver.  Since I was also losing haste I decided to use the 199 frost emblems I had sitting around (don’t hurt me) and purchase the Meteor Chaser’s Raiment that I had been eyeing.  I didn’t purchase it earlier because I would lose all the hit that I had on my T9 chest that I was still wearing.  I was already 8 points under hard cap (which really isn’t that big of a deal) so losing all that hit was not a good thing.  My solution? This.

Now instead of being 8 points under hard cap, I am 30 points under >.<.  I was so sad to have to gem for hit.  I only did 2 gems though.  Right now I am sitting at 10 points under cap.  Luckily we run with a boomkin 99% of the time (luv ya Moog) and I don’t have to worry about not being hit capped.  Those times where Moog is not in the group?  Well, as I told Tir last night, .35% is not that big of a deal when you really think about it.

Last night was our 25 man ICC and I don’t know what was up.  I just couldn’t focus.  Overall I didn’t do that bad really.  I think I was #7 on overall dps, but I kept fumbling up my rotation.  I know when I go to check out the parse I am going to see a drop in my corruption uptime.  I was so proud of myself last week.  On Marrowgar I was at 86% up from 81% the previous week.  I am almost afraid to see where I was this week.  Last week I got to stand in the middle for Festergut, this week I was at range and got the puke almost every single fucking time.  It doesn’t help that I fucked up the positioning of my portal (or that I forgot to use it half the time).  I know I failed on that fight.  We wiped at like 1%.  There were several times during that fight where I was not dpsing.  I can’t even tell you why.  I was very disoriented in that fight too.  I just need to make sure it isn’t the case tonight.  We have Sindragosa tonight and I want to get attempts in on the Lich King too.  For those fights I need to be in top shape.

I should probably make sure I eat something before we raid then >.>

I really am looking forward to tonight though.  I have a feeling that since we will all be fresh and eager we will be able to down Sindragosa.  I fully expect us to see the LK fight tonight.

I just realized it has taken me over 3 hours to write this post.  Considering how short it is and how little information it actually has, I am kind of sad.  For 3 hours I should have this epic post of rambling words galore.   Instead you get a few paragraphs and me complaining.

Aren’t you the lucky ones? 😉

What I really want to do is go GoD mode with my new staff and see how many flappity bitches I can summon at once 😀

Patch day, what?

Ha! You probably thought I would be talking about the upcoming patch today.  Yeah not so much.  If you want to read about patch info then you are really in the wrong spot.

Some self plugging – my interview

I still think I talked too much but I was informed that I was supposed to.  So there! :-p

The interview was a really good time.  I was asked to possibly participate in a round table discussion at some point in the future so I will let you know if that happens.

I went back and listened to the show and I still cannot stop freaking out over how much I sound like my older sister.  We already look a lot alike, and now we sound the same. >.> Yeah so that was weird.

I have been doing dailies like a crazy person on Lyssianna.  I have been able to knock out 21-23 dailies a day on her.  Yes I am insane I know, I know.  I needs to get monies on her and since I don’t have money making professions I need to do what I can to get money.  Zam has offered to work out a deal with me but I need to figure out if it really is doable on my end.  Hex offered me a similar deal.  We shall see though.

The main push behind this is my slow mount is slow.  I have 2 epic mounts and I want to be able to use them.  My other 3 80s have epic flying so I am used to having it.  I took Thursday and Friday off from work, so I am hoping to be able to get some IC quests completed.  They give pretty decent money.  I have been making around 450g-550g  a night.  To which I mail to my bank alt like a good girl.  Now that the patch is dropping I can finally get the cloth needed for the 32 slot soul shard bag and the 32 slot enchanting bag.  Yes I know soul shards are going the way of the dodo but I only have a 20 slotter and getting 12 more shards in my regular bags is a pain.

I have a raid tonight at 5:30 pm, a raid tomorrow at 7:15 pm, another raid Thursday at 5:30 pm.  Ulduar hard modes on Friday.  Saturday is another raid at 7:30 pm and there *might* be a raid for me on Sunday.  I will most likely just keep myself available if I am needed.  You know, for someone who didn’t want to raid daily, I sure as hell am raiding daily.  >.>

I went to the training dummy last night.  Self buffed with my pvp trinket on (because I am a tard and forgot to switch it out) I did 4k.  This was without doing the finishing move with drain soul.  I am not happy.  I need to figure out what I am doing wrong.  With my gear level I should be doing 5k if not more.  I need to get some research done.  Maybe that is what I will do on Thursday.  Tir sent me a link (which I have since lost >.<) where the top warlocks in the game are talking.  These guys have 1k haste.  How the fuck did they get 1k haste?!!?!  I think I have like 600 and I am gemming for it!  *sigh*

If anyone knows of somewhere I could read up on afflocks (that isn’t EJ) please let me know in the comments.  I am tired of being fail lock.

You’re a heart breaker, dream maker, love taker don’t you mess with me . . .

Yesterday was the first time I was able to raid with Shadow Rising on Lyssi.  Tuesdays they do 25 mans.  They do the weekly and depending on who they have signed up and their skill they do ToC 25/ICC 25/ToC 10. 

They start raiding at 5:30 pm PST so I tried to be home and ready to go by 5:15 pm.  5:30 happens and boom 25 man Ulduar (XT was the weekly) is pugged and full. 

I ran ahead to the stone because I am on a slow mount.  What happens next?  I got ganked by a gnome mage.  I was floating above the stone (fairly high I might add) and the fricken mage flies above me, slow falls and kills me.  It never seems to fail.  If someone can kill me they do.

Luckily, for me – not that mage, several guildies were around and came to my aid.  They chased the guys away long enough for Hex to rez me.  I know they killed the pally.  I got to help with that :D.  The pally bubble did not save them at that time.  😀

After two portals and a candy dish I hop in a siege engine that is being run by a pug.  That should have told me that I was not in good hands, but hey I was optimistic.  We get up to flame lev and the pugs pull the trash and start the fight before everyone is even in the area.  Fucking PuGs.  As we are fighting him my driver gets targeted and stands there.  He doesn’t move away, he just keeps dpsing.  I am yelling at my screen, typing in raid chat and he still sits there until FL kills the seige engine and then us.  I was soooooooooooooooo pissed.  I believe I told him to move and not just stand there like a turd.  Yes, I said TURD.  :-p

Despite all that we still got this:

Boom bitches

 

I was the only clothie there that even remotely needed gear.  The crit gloves dropped off FL.  I was hoping for the haste ones, but I nabbed the cloth ones.  They were still a massive upgrade over what I already had.  We make it over to XT and I drop another portal since we had to bring Soth in.  His computer kept crashing on him.  Orange had also D/Cd and we were giving him more time to come back online.  While we are doing this one of the pugs starts telling us to “gogogo ffs” which just sets off my “bitch mode.”  I was good though and didn’t say anything in raid.  I might have bitched in vent and gchat though.

We cleared trash and still no Orange.  Ari decides to get some more pugs and we get them in and start on the boss.  As I am trying to help kill trash (go me) the pug rogue gets a gravity bomb and kills a bunch of us BECAUSE HE DIDN’T FUCKING MOVE.  *sigh*  Have I mentioned I hate pugs?  Since it was XT, even being dead I got this:

Stupid fail rogue

 

XT dropped a delicious wand for me. 😀  I ❤ it very much.  I was 2 for 2 that night.

Orange made it back online and Ari decided to have everyone switch to their alts and we were going to do a 10 man to get those people their badges.  I got thrown back in (lootz!).  This time I was in Zambra’s siege engine.  I was in good hands.  We even lived I think.  We tried to get the no repair acheivement, but someone repaired so we just got this one:

Looks like I did live. Go me!

 

We get up to XT, clear the trash and decide to just quickly get it over with, no hard modes.

Things start out ok, nothing different.  I had dpsed on this fight before so I did know what I needed to do.  The heart comes out and we start whaling away.  Suddenly the health on the heart drops really low.  I hear over vent “STOP DPSING THE HEART!”  Umm oops, I still had a full set of DoTs up on it.  I had just refreshed them and was using drain soul on the heart when I was told to stop.  The stupid DoTs killed the heart and we got thrown into hard mode.  Suddenly you hear Orange say in vent “FUUUUUCK.”  Did I forget to mention how we were 2 healing this fight?

I had never looked up the hard mode strats for Ulduar.  This is why when I saw sparks flying around I just moved away from them thinking that they would hurt me if touched because of the static charge on me.  Next I hear Soth in vent saying “Kill the orbs” and then Tel or Ari said something like “I don’t think anyone knows they have to kill them.”  Yeah I had no clue.  So I started killing orbs and then back on the boss.  At one point I got yelled at by Orange cause I got out of range.  Sorry bout that.  There was some doubt, but we prevailed and snagged this:

Oh, no, no, no

 

We grouped up next to do Vault, but Horde somehow lost WG.  I have seen Alliance have WG like maybe a handfull of times since I transferred over.  We all blamed Rix.  It was his fault.  Since that was a no go we grouped up for ToC 10.  We waltzed in and one shot everything, even Anub. 😀

Oh look I beat Soth! Wait, he was the tank 😦

 

The new hunter had never been there and I had never DPSed there.  Let me tell you, it is vastly different to heal that place than it is to dps it.  I kept feeling like I was failing big time.  I got stuck in a ring of fire on Lord J.  I still don’t know how that happened.  On FC I was told by Soth to banish and fear bomb the tree.  My felpuppy was on the shadow priest.  I had my buttons ready, had the tree as my focus and was ready to go.  Sent the puppy in and banished the tree, just to have the banish wear off almost immediately so I feared it, just to have the fear broken.  WTF.  Back and forth with that damn tree.  Nothing would stick on it.  I was completely unaware that the tree was the one they wanted killed next.  I was dealing with the DK who kept gnawing on my face.  All I could keep thinking was “banish and fear the tree.  banish and fear the tree” over and over again.  No one says anything to me about goofing that up, until this morning when I am chatting with Soth over gchat.  *sigh*

The twins was the worst fight for me.  Our guild does a slightly different strat for the twins than SR uses.  I got put as light essense and I started dpsing the dark twin.  Suddenly DBM tells me I need to switch, but everyone is now switching to light? or is it dark?  No one tells me what I am switching to, all I heard over vent was “SWITCH.”   I will be honest, I paniced, so I stayed light and kept dpsing the dark twin.  I tried to nab orbs, but every light orb I found was eaten up before I could get to it.  The result was I spent a lot of wasted time trying to find orbs and not dpsing.  Now at this point DBM is telling me to switch to dark essense and DPS the light twin.  I click the portal and this time the portal changed (it didn’t before) and I start dpsing the light twin.  I had more luck with the dark orbs and manged to get the dps buff, right as the twin died. *sigh*  Go go fail lock 😦

I made out like a bandit in loot though.  Through the entire night I got hands, a wand, pants, an off hand, a trinket and I think I got a ring too.  My GP is huge now >.>

We get out of ToC and form up for randoms.  While running HoS I managed to snag another trinket and got this:

woot!

 

While in ToC 5 the Horde managed to win back WG and Hex was forming a 25 man.  We all trouped over and joined up his group.  Again, I hate pugs.  No one besides Ari and myself seemed to be killing those damn orbs on the frost guy.  In fact I think I died.  Oh well still managed to get this:

Oh guess I was alive, woot!

We then proceeded to wipe on Koralon, because it was a fail pug group. 😉  The poor tanks kept dying.  Dozzer was tanking and I still don’t know how he managed to stay alive as long as he did.  I think he had a Brez at some point too.  Oh well the 2nd attempt netted me this:

Woot! I was alive for this one too!

All in all it was a great night.  Much loot was had by me.  Lyssi jumped up from a 204 ilvl to like a 214 or so ilvl.

I feel like I should have done better than I did.  I know I was the least geared person in all of the runs, but I still feel like I was a total fail lock.  Oh well!  I had a blast and no one complained so I will mark this night as a win. 😀

Well it is about time

This weekend was my self-imposed deadline to hit 80 on Lyssi.  The plan was to hit 80 on Friday and spend Saturday and Sunday chain running heroics to farm badges.  Orange beat me out by several hours.  In my defense he has the +20% heirloom gear and I don’t.  The man is insane though.  He came from behind and beat out both of us.

I had kept plugging away on Friday night.  As soon as I could (read level 77) I started the tourney dailies, the Hodir quest chain and the Ebon Blade chain.  On Thursday I had already put all three areas on daily farm status.  Guildies couldn’t understand why I was doing dailies instead of questing.  Well first of all they are easy quests; secondly they give really decent gold rewards (especially for someone without a level 80) and thirdly I was getting 22k XP for each turn in.  Friday night I had 23 dailies completed before they reset.

The primary reason I was doing so many dailies was so that when I did this:

DING!

I could be able to afford this:

Affliction and Affliction

Please look closely at the time when I finally hit 80:

That is AM, not PM

I ended up crashing out around 4:30 am.  Tel and Hex had been keeping me company for a while.  They did some tourny dailies with me before the big ding.  They even helped me get this next achievement:

Yay!

Hex was the only other person online when I dinged.  He was awesome.  He said that he was going to stick with me until I dinged.  It was so nice not being alone when it happened.  Thanks again Hex!

Saturday rolled around and I started queuing up with guildies.  I made Tel heal for me until Orange came online.  Throughout the day people popped in to help with dungeons.  By the time I had to leave for EoF’s ICC run I had 2 pieces of T9 (chest & shoulders) and had started back up saving for the 245 helm (75 badges >.>).

Sunday I was in a heroic Violet Hold when the purple cloth bracers dropped (I was still wearing crafted greens >.<) I rolled and got this:

Well apparently I really NEEDED those bracers

 

When I logged out last night after midnight I was almost halfway to getting my new helmet and had upgraded several more items with gear from Heroic PoS.  I am sitting at around 193 or so (I think).  Arioch told me I could go ahead and pop in my raiding availabilty and sign off on fight strats.  Hopefully I will be able to get enough gear together to go with them to ToC 25 tomorrow.  Keep your fingers crossed!

Starting over

I mentioned earlier that we had several guildies come back from hiatus and they have since joined us in ICC.

The last time they raided with us we were in Ulduar.  We were also not that progression minded.  Not only have we upgraded our gear significantly but we have also stepped up our raiding game.  Mis said when he started Echo of Fate from the ashes of Call of Fate that he wanted to see end game progression.  Those of us that have stuck around have taken up that mantle and now we are in ICC with a Festergut clear.

Now we need to take a step back.

We need our guildies.  I LOVE having our guildies with us.  Last night’s run was 9/10 EoF.  BigGreg was the only non guildie, and frankly I am trying to recruit him :D.  Even though it was 9/10 EoF, we only cleared up to Saurfang.  We just did not have the dps.  After several wipes I called the raid.  I wanted to save us the repair bills.

This night however, reminded me why I love my guildies.  The officers have talked and are already working to help out where it needs help.  I am convinced that we will be back up and rolling fairly soon.  I don’t want to have to tell someone that they cannot come with us and then turn around and replace them with a pug.  That is just a horrible thing to do.  I don’t want to be that person who has to do either.

Luckily we are doing other raids during the week.  Tonight we have ToC as the weekly, Ony as our weekly “quickie” raid and there have been noises about doing a quick VoA.  If we feel we can two heal the runs I might bring Millea.  She has been so neglected.  I also want to use her to get more practice using the rotation I will need to raid.  I might not be raiding on Millea, but I plan to raid on Lyssi.

I am hoping that these raids will help shake the cobwebs out on our returning raiders and hopefully get them some nice upgrades.  At the least they will get badges.  Moar badges = Moar gear 😀

I hit 78 on Lyssi last night before I passed out.  Tir was trying to get me to stay up all night and attempt to push on to 80.  No thank you.  I need a minimum of 4 hours of sleep or I cannot function.  As it is, I usually only get about 5 1/2 – 6 hours on work nights.  This results in me sleeping in until noon on weekends.  Which of course shortens my weekends even more.  I just have a hell of a time getting off of the game to go to sleep.  Yes I am addicted, I am quite aware of this. :-p

Anyway sorry this is a short post after a day of non posting.  The boss has been hovering a lot lately and I just haven’t had a chance to write anything of decent length while he is here.  I will do my best to get a post out along with Screenshot Friday.  No promises, but I will try.

Just like F’ing pasta

So I have been grinding away at my baby lock.  I finally hit 77 last night and got cold weather flying.  It has been SUCH a pain to not be able to fly.  Especially since all of my guildies who are also leveling have flying mounts.  Grrr.  It would be one thing if this was my first toon, it is quite another when this is will be my 4th 80.

Yesterday Soth and Tel came out to ZD to help Del, Orange and I to get our Amphitheater of Anguish quests completed.  I got the awesome staff and Orange was nice enough to enchant it for me with delicious spell power.  It now glows purple.  Lyssi likes purple.  She is a warlock after all.

Just in case you have not looked, Arioch has a fantastic post today that I feel everyone should go read.  Go read, I’ll wait.

You done yet?

Good.

Delicious weren’t they?  I ❤ males.  Orange called me a fiend, but is it really any different than a guy who ❤ women?  Silly double standards.

I have discovered that Lyssi is a flirt.  She seems to have a thing for big muscular men and guys in purples.  She is well on her way to becoming a gearscore whore. 😉

My original goal was to get her to Storm Peaks as soon as she could so she could start the Hodir quest chain.  Unlike most people, I actually enjoy those quests and like the dailies.  So much so that I tend to do them on my 80s that are exalted with Hodir already.  No I am not insane.  Why do you ask?

I am thinking that I will start out at the tourney dailies first then head over to Storm Peaks.  As much as I dislike the tourney stuff, you get a ton of gold and frankly I could use the gold.  Plus there are some nice items you can get.

The next thing I want to do is to get my daily dungeon out of the way.  I am currently sitting at 22 EoT.  It is a nice little head start on gear for Lyssi when she hits 80.  I also have a few pieces in the bank.  I plan on scouring the AH for whatever pieces I am missing once I ding.  Hopefully I will be able to nab a few items from the level 80 dungeons.  Maybe I can convince a few guildies to run me through ToC once I hit 78-79.  That haste trinket is pretty damn good for an affliction warlock.  I have it on Millea and would love to have it on Lyssi.

I have already informed Orange that he will be tanking the piles of random heroics I will need to gear up my lock.  Since he will be doing the same on his pally it is really a win-win situation.  Instant queue are win!  Del had logged for the night, but I have plans for him to heal as well.  He really won’t get away that easily. 😀  If I am lucky I might be able to con Soth or Tir to tank for me if Orange isn’t available.  They might be elitists, but they are total softies when you get to know them. I ❤ you guys :D.

I got my plushies yesterday.

Soooooooooooooo cute!

 

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 

I took pictures of myself with my plushies, but I haven’t gotten the nerve yet to post them on here.  I did put them on SR’s guild site in the gallery and on my facebook page.  So if you have access to either of those then you have already seen what I look like and I don’t have any weird feelings on that.  You also can squee with me over how cute the plushies are. 😀

I personally like the gryphon plushie better.  The hair on the windrider is kind of irritating so that is why he dropped down a bit.  I think both of them are just absolutely adorable in game though.  BOTH ARE SUPER SOFT THOUGH!

I was running all over my office yesterday showing off my plushies to my coworkers.  My boss is firmly convinced that I am in fact insane and have no life.  Oh well.  Wait, WoW is a life right?

My mom’s birthday is next week and my brother’s is the week after.  Usually every year I try to get him a funny shirt.  I haven’t had any luck lately.  All the shirts on Jinx and T-Shirt Hell are either really gorey, ugly or just not relavent to him.  Hopefully you guys can give me some tips to other sites that have funny gamer shirts.

Just in case you didn’t get enough:

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE