Mah Orb!

I have the worst luck when it comes to getting orbs on my druid.  She is (as far as I know) the only maxed out leatherworker in the guild.  We have several mail/leather wearers who want stuff made.  I’ve offered to make stuff for them, but I need orbs.  Their answer was to run some heroics with me on my druid and give me the orb.

Well that is the idea.  How it actually happens is far from that.  Last night is a prime example.

At some point yesterday afternoon I decided I was going to powerlevel jewelcrafting on my DK.  He was just going to sit there in Org so why did I need a gathering profession on him?  While doing arch on my rogue on Sunday I came across a ton of ore nodes, so I mined them.  How many times had I seen them while doing arch on my druid?  Lots!  So I wasn’t going to waste them when I had a character that could actually mine them.  The result was I had a ton of mithril and iron sitting in my mining bag.  This got me to thinking that power leveling wouldn’t be that difficult.

Onward to the guide!

I had Slice find me a powerleveling guide (cause he wasn’t working so why not) and when I got online last night I started farming the copper and tin.  Apparently I needed some stones that came with the mithril so I farmed some more up in Felwood.  It helped that I had two dig sites in the area.  Multi-tasking amirite? 😉

The tricky part was knowing exactly how many bars I needed and how much ore I should keep to prospect.  I tried to follow the guide, but I just didn’t have enough gems.  So I took what I had and went with the guidelines.  I got lucky and only needed to buy a few gems.  I think I got him to 222 and found I had no thorium.  Off to Winterspring!

As I am trying to find nodes (seriously someone must’ve just been there and strip mined the place) Yui pipes up in gchat about not being able to get any gear for his druid (he obviously doesn’t raid with us because the only raid gear we get is druid gear).  I told him that my leatherworker could make him something I just need the mats and most importantly I needed the orbs.  So he was all “let’s run a quick heroic.”  Sorak was online and jumped all over that.  At this point Slice, Sorak, Yui and I were all in vent.  It was said in vent AND gchat that the run was so I could get orbs to make something for Yui.

We got Rep to come in as the 5th guildie and we queued up.  We had Yui tanking on his bear, Sorak on his rogue, Rep on her DK, me on my druid as a boomkin (I so fail in this spec) and Slice healing on his priest.  Slice no longer had a dps spec so I had no choice but to dps.  If I am lucky I can pull 6k on her in a non-moving boss fight.  Yeah I am pretty bad.  Yui’s bear isn’t really all that geared either.  But hey we have Slice, he who healed the 4 DKs in heroic Grim Batol, how bad could it be?

Well . . .

We got Lost City for our random and it was apparent that Yui was VERY squishy.  More often than not I had to switch out of boomkin and throw out some heals to help Slice.  Disc can have problems when 3 people just start dropping health rapidly.  Add on top of that only 1 CC option (and we all know how much Sorak LOVES CC) trash packs were painful.  The first boss took forever.  We just didn’t have the DPS numbers that all of us were used to.  I’ve honestly never seen these boss fights take this long, ever and I ran heroics in the first 2 weeks of Cata.

We FINALLY make it to the last boss, down him and I roll need on the orb.

Wait!

What is this?

Slice ALSO rolled need on the orb!

WTF?!

Seriously!?!?

Guess who won it?

You guessed right!

The fucker!

Of course everyone starts laughing and Slice is all “What?”

Me, being me, laid into him.  I reminded him that the entire run was to get me the orb so I could make Yui gear.  NOT so he could have an orb for his cloth cooldown.  He claims he wasn’t paying attention and was watching The Guild. /sigh

Now this is not the first time this has happened to me.  I tend to not run heroics on purpose.  I don’t like the feeling of “having” to run them every day.  Especially on my druid.  So when I am in a heroic on her it is because I need to get an orb for someone.  9/10 times that I have run heroics with my guildies for the purpose of getting an orb, someone else will also roll need on the orb and I get nothing.

It isn’t like I am taking the orbs and making gear to sell on the AH.  I am gearing a guildie who needs the gear to raid.  It took me at least 5 runs to get 2 orbs to make Zerl’s belt.  The 2nd orb I got was actually in a heroic that Arv asked me to come and heal on the last boss because they lost their healer.  It wasn’t even a guild run!

/sigh

At this point it is past midnight EST.  Rep & Slice are both east coast.  It was decided we do a 2nd run.  This time we got the dreaded heroic Grim Batol.  I reminded everyone (aka Slice) to not roll on my orb.  I also asked them to please loot so I could skin the drakes (hell if I am making gear might as well get the leather right?)  The pulls were painful and people weren’t looting!

We get to the first boss and things are going well.  I am the only ranged so I am trying to take out the purple trogg.  The problem is my dps is so bad I can’t kill him fast enough.  I start dying to his hits AND all the hits of the other troggs.  Sorak tries to help me on his rogue, but he quickly dies too.

After 2 attempts Sorak switches to Fayle and said he would take care of the troggs.  This time we didn’t have an issue with the troggs.  Woot!

As an aside, they really need to change up the boss skinning.  If I have to have 530 skinning to skin him then he needs to drop something better than1 measly piece of leather.  I have to carry around skinning gloves for 1 piece of leather!  Soooooo not cool.

The 2nd boss wasn’t as bad as he could be.  At one point I got way out of range due to several falling rock spots and fire pits on the ground.  As I am trying to heal myself before I go back on the boss Slice life grips me to the rest of the party.  The fucker.  I hate it when he life grips me.  He does it on my lock during raids because “it looked like you needed to be moved” when I had things under control.  He also doesn’t have any kind of warning when he does it.  It just happens and you are jerked across the fucking screen.

Not cool.

He thinks it is the funniest thing.

Grrrrr.

We skip the 3rd boss and die to trash.  At this point Sorak has switched to tanking and is the worst DK tank ever.  I still am not sure why he keeps trying to tank.  He even admits he has no rune management.  /sigh.

We make it to the boss where Yui goes back to tanking.  Rep and I have one of the adds and Sorak has the other.  We were so good on the adds we got the achievement.  I even got a shiny new staff.

I also got the orb.

MAH ORB!

Random picture :)

Just chillin

It was not a fluke!

Yeah we were able to go back in and kill bosses again. Woot! go us!

I had to heal

The caster cloth helm dropped

We had one cloth wearing class in our raid

He already had an epic helm

A 2nd helm dropped off Magmaw

The healer caster helm

Oh look I am on my leather wearing druid

*glares*

In all honesty I am not really all that upset. It just sounds better for the “dramaz” and entertainment ^_^

In other news, I cannot raid heal anymore. I don’t want to come out and be all “druids suck and we can’t raid heal” because it might just be me and my suckage. Our other druid didn’t seem to be having an issue. But then Zarm is pretty awesome so what do I know. I just know that my druid has no problem tank healing and helping out here and there, but put me on raid heals and people die.

Maybe I just suck.

Who knows.

This week was kind of off. We had two people who couldn’t make both days, we had two more who signed up but then couldn’t make it (or bother telling us they couldn’t make it). Yeah I was grumpy about that. Not that they had to cancel, but that they didn’t tell anyone. Just is very rude.

Sorak is telling me that I am too hard on myself with my healing. That if “Zarm can do it, you can too!” and to ask him what it is that he does, because he never goes oom and his spirit is crap.

So I went and looked up his spec and compared it to what I have. He had taken the talents to reduce the mana cost and I had taken the talents to increase my output. Strangely he didn’t take Nature’s Swiftness. Sorak commented that “maybe he doesn’t like his ‘oh shit!’ heal.” It is a possibility.

What it did point out to me is that I need to fix my spec.

I also need to upgrade my green chest piece >.>

The cool news is I am the only person in the guild to have the boss kills on my main raiding toon AND my alt.

Last night I made a new friend!

I was trying to farm leather in Tol Barad (BTW if you purposely don’t loot the crocs you are an asshole) so that I can get my leatherworking up to 525 (520, so close!). While I am in there I will buff people who are nice and leave the crocs for me to skin. I usually whisper them and thank them for looting too. One such person was a pally who was farming herbs. She started talking to me and we had a great convo. Apparently she had been having issues with killing stuff. It was just taking her too long to do it on either spec (holy/ret) and wanted my help as a BOOMkin. In return she said she would log over to her DK and help me farm crocs.

I of course said yes!

For the next 90 mins we did the dailies and farmed crocs. I ended up with 2 stacks of heavy leather and a handful of volatiles from the stomachs. We had a nice time chatting and even exchanged real ID names.

Who says you can’t still make friends with people in WoW?

I think I shall make a post!

I have settled into an odd mood with WoW.  I am not quite bored of it, nor am I burned out, but I am not exactly feeling the need to log in constantly.

I have my two 85s and now that Tattia is starting on heroics the challenge is back, but in a different way.  I am not saying that heroics are by any means really easy on Lyssi, but I know them (except for ToT, I still haven’t even seen that place) and I don’t really have any “O Shit! What do I do here?!?!” moments on her anymore.  With Tattia there is the challenge of healing.  This has put a whole new shine on everything and I am kind of looking forward to logging in a bit more.

Healing at the end of Wrath sucked.  I was bored to tears of ICC and I never wanted to heal it again.  The new healing style of Cataclysm suits me so much better and I am loving healing again.  Looking back, I pretty much already healed this way.  Until I switched my druid to SR she wasn’t geared to where she could spam heals and never go oom.  I had already been working with a “stand there and don’t heal unless you have to” mentality.  The difference from then and now is that back then I actually was trying to top off everyone and now I don’t even worry about it.

I had been healing regular dungeons here and there on Tattia.  Mostly in PuGs.  Yes I know, I am a sick sick person.  I actually got pretty lucky in my groups.  I only had to drop out of one and that one was destined to fail no matter what I did.  Since I didn’t want to be blamed for the “dps queuing as tank” fail I quickly & quietly left the group.  Most of the time my regular dungeons were specific ones because I was hunting for the gear upgrades that I needed.  It took forever and a day for me to upgrade my green quest reward relic in regulars.  Get this!  In my first heroic dungeon I got a relic upgrade.

Go fucking figure.

The original plan for last night was for Slice to tank some regulars and for me to heal him.  I tried to get Del to log in when he got back from class but he was a no show. :-p  What ended up happening was Slice took a nap (he had been feeling sick) and I got into a heroic with Sorak and Zarm.  We nabbed Dro (one of our new guys) and Sorak told him he was tanking.  Now Dro has never played an MMO except for WoW and he just started playing a few months ago.  He is one of my brother’s friends that came over to play with him.  From what I understand he leveled mostly dps (fury) but tanked here and there.  Since he was so new to the entire everything there is a learning curve, but all things considered he didn’t do too badly.

We first went in as 4 guildies and a PuG dps.  We got a mage and I immediately started squeeing over getting mage food.  The stingy mage made me ONE STACK of mage food and didn’t even offer it to the rest of the group (shaman & druid).  I was kind of sad I didn’t get a table, but I thanked him in chat and then talked crap about him in vent.

It is just how I roll bitches!

We had a bunch of afk time in the beginning of the dungeon then wiped to the first pull (bad positioning and too many kobolds).  The amount of damage was fast and high.  I think I was one shot.  The mage left.  It was rather funny.  We had just been talking about the rightness of booting him and bringing in a guildie.  For once I wasn’t the mean one (I am looking at you Sorak!) and was actually saying it wouldn’t be cool to boot him because he probably waited like 45 mins to get a queue.  When he dropped we grabbed Slice (who had finally woken up) and headed back in.

For some reason Deadmines can either fly by super fast or it can just take you 50 million years to complete.  There is no in-between.  Between Dro’s tanking, and my “just barely heroic ready” healing we ended up with a LONG ASS Deadmines run.  Guess what dropped?  All rogue gear.  There were 2 pieces of non-rogue gear:  the caster staff and the caster relic.  Both of which I snagged.  Yes I know the staff doesn’t have spirit, so it isn’t that great of an upgrade, but damn it!  It was still an upgrade from what I had equipped.  You can always reforge some spirit onto the item!  The relic was the biggest reason for squeeing.  I was already anticipating having to wait forever to get that item upgraded just to have it drop in my first heroic.  Yay for me!

My impression with healing wasn’t too bad actually.  As I mentioned above, I already was kind of healing this way.  While healing regulars I got the “rotation” down.  It is amazing how much healing you can get done with very little mana.  I never went oom in the entire heroic run.  I never used a potion and I rarely used my innervate.  If I got below 40% mana (I usually ended the fight around 50 something %) it was because I had to cleanse a lot of stuff.  I also never use the ToL form, which I know is probably very bad.  The times when I used it during Wrath I went oom so fast my head spun.  I find that in panic situations (where I should probably pop it) I just pop rejuvs and move my lifebloom stacks around.  When it is really bad I hit tranquility.

This is typically how I heal:

3 stacks of lifebloom on the tank.  I pop a rejuv on him when he starts taking damage.  If he gets below 80% I let the lifebloom stacks bloom.  If not, then I refresh them using lifebloom (it is less mana AND faster than nourish).  I pop swiftmend EVERY time it is up to get Efflorescence  down.  I use my Clearcasting procs to pop a regrowth up on either the tank or on a dps that is low.  If I don’t have a Cc proc I don’t usually use regrowth (unless it is an emergency and I need that heal fast) and the dps will get a regrowth and possibly lifebloom stacks if I don’t need to keep them on the tank.  I have been trying to remember to pop Wild Growth each time it is off cooldown (I forget to use it, long cooldown & yes I have a timer on my screen for it) so that probably needs to be used more.  I’ve been typically trying to use Innervate when I hit around 75-80% mana, but even then sometimes I forget until I am around 50-60%.

Yes this run wasn’t exactly proof that I am pure win and healing is easy peasy for me (although it kind of is) but it definitely was a nice intro into heroics.  We didn’t really CC each pull, and the bad dps *cough*Sorak*cough* kept pulling off the newbie tank.  Several times I had healing aggro and Dro wasn’t able/didn’t seem to know and Zarm switched to bear form and saved my furry ass.  Even then I was usually able to recover.  I did die a lot though.  I do mean a lot.  Even with the guild perks we have I had broken gear halfway through.  >.>

I don’t want to take full credit for the lighter load on my healing run.  Slice was on his shadow priest and he can’t resist helping heal.  He has twitchy fingers.  I would constantly see weakened soul up on people (yes babe I see when you are “helping” me heal) and Sorak has his healing rain macro’d to go off when he gets some proc.  So I know I was getting help.  I don’t think I am quite ready to fully PuG a heroic, but I just might be ready to do a run with Zug.  Not necessarily Zug tanking, but a Zug dpsing run.  Maybe.

Yes he will be allowed to die several times.

Both Sorak & Zug know that I will flat out not heal them when they pull aggro & die.  They take it good naturedly and laugh about it.

Once I thought Zug had bitched me out, but he was complaining about the boss.  It was kind of funny actually.

Anyway, it is kind of quiet on this front.  Depending on my work schedule (meaning if my boss shows up or not) I will post when I can and if I have something to say.  I know I missed Friday’s post, but in my defense Slice was visiting and I wasn’t really thinking about my blog if you catch my drift.

You blushing yet sweetie? 😉

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 🙂

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.

😀

This is what I did tonight

I am renewed!

Where did the weekend go?

Slice was in town this weekend so I was not playing. He left this morning so I am super tired. I had to get him to the airport by 5 am. I am sure you all can figure out how that worked out >.>

We did log into the game once. I got online on Monday to show him how I warlock. He has offered to play my toon for the guild when I cannot make raids. I, of course, laughed and told him that playing an affliction warlock takes some practice. I left him alone with my character and went off to do some other stuff. I asked him to get my daily out of the way with some guildies that were online.

I come back later and find him in a pug with 4 random people (he said that he didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of guildies) and generally just flailing about.

My key bindings apparently only make sense to me. I have come to accept this. There is a logic to them though.

W = whisper
R = reply to whisper
S = sit
A = special action (trinket on my druid, blink on my mage, dash on my rogue, etc)

I don’t remember what I have “D” doing. I also don’t strafe (yeah, yeah, yeah) so I have the strafe buttons used for something else.

Why did I mention those keys? Well Slice is used to using the WASD keys for movement. So as he was trying to move, he kept sitting down or trying to make a soul stone (A key for my lock). I thought it was hilarious. I move with my mouse and have never used the WASD keys to move.

Remember, it has already been well documented that I am a very strange person. We all know this already. What I can’t understand is why people either keep forgetting or thinking things will be different at some point in time.

Silly humans.

So anyway, I come back to the computer to find him in heroic Violet Hold. He seemed a tad bit confused as to what he needed to do. I explained that on trash mobs he just needed to life tap and spam seed of corruption.

A few moments later I hear “Isn’t seed supposed to do more damage?”

I replied “Yes. You have to let it explode before you re-apply it though.”

“Oh.”

/facepalm

I showed him which buttons to push and in which order. It was apparently too complicated because when I asked him if he wanted me to take over he jumped up and gave me back reins to the computer.

Considering he had the rotation completely bassakwards, he didn’t do half bad.

It probably helped that the group wasn’t that great and things were living a lot longer than they normally do.

I was kind of curious if the people noticed that the warlock played differently the 2nd half of the instance.

He did try to “fool” the few guildies online. He made a mistake in his greeting though. He used his normal greeting and gave himself away.

I think he was a blonde in a previous life. ^_^

Next up I got on my druid and healed a random. I showed him VuhDo and how to use it. He currently uses grid and mouseover macros. There were some mutterings about getting VuhDo and checking it out. 😀 I think I might have another convert 😀

Tonight is our 25s. I should be able to come on Lyssi. She didn’t get her 10 man ICC done last week or her weekly so I still need like 40 badges for her to get her final piece of T10. After I get that I can focus on getting my hit problem taken care of. Hopefully the belt I want will drop off Marrowgar tonight so that I don’t have to buy a new one from the badge vendor. I also want the wand from Blood Princes 10 man. This means I need to do 10 man ICC on Lyssi.

I have been putting Tentative on the raiding calendar because I just don’t know if I want to raid 5 days a week again. As it is right now, Tuesday is 25s. Wednesday is 10 man ICC with one toon, Thursday is ICC 10 with the other toon, Friday is the follow up for Wednesday’s run and Sunday is the follow up to Thursday’s run. We have gotten to where we clear 10/12 in one night. The amount of attempts on Sindragosa is dependent on the amount of breaks taken. This means that the follow up raiding night is all Sindragosa attempts.

I HATE the Sindragosa fight.

It is a little bit easier on my druid, but not by much.

So 2 of the 5 raiding days will be spent doing a fight that I dislike. This does not make me want to sign up. I guess I could theoretically only raid on Lyssi, but then I wouldn’t get to raid with everyone.

*sigh*

I need to just figure out what will work best. I might just end up alternating who I raid with week by week. Once I get Lyssi’s 4 piece Tier 10, I really won’t need to keep grinding the emblems for anything other than PS (I need like 5 more for her boots). This will free up playing on Tattia. I do want to play on her, just not ALL the time. She is an alt, there for fun and a change of pace. It is no longer a change of pace when she is played constantly.

I am also on an alt streak. I have my little rogue project (Slice got her to 13 yesterday. He died twice because he is a cocky brat) on top of the mage/warlock Slice and I are leveling together. I don’t know if we are going to get to play much outside of the weekends because he is typically raiding every raid too.

I guess I will just have to wait and see.

Oh yeah!

So I guess I should be posting a blog post here huh?  Yeah I am a total slacker.  Forgive me?

Last night was ICC 25.  I was ready to go on my lock.  One of the first people inside (as per usual) and had a portal down to summon the lazy.  We had just summoned in the last person when I find out that Tir is short healers.

FUCK.

Arioch had already switched to her priest and so I asked Tir if he needed my druid.

“Yes”

FUCK!

Ok, ok it isn’t the end of the world.  I know I am helping out everyone.  This is why I transferred my druid over right? *cries*

Healing commence!

The healers were all SR peeps.  Sorak, Ari, Tel, Slice and myself.  This of course meant that we were talking shit about everyone else.  Healer channel FTMFW.

Also, what the hell is up with DPS not having any fucking situational awareness?  When the shock vortexes occur in BP do me a favor and follow this step by step list:

1.  Look to see if there are people around you

2.  If there are people, move away 10 yards from them

3.  Once you are 10 yards away, STAND THE FUCK STILL

4.  Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT keep running.

5.  If there are no people around you, STAND THE FUCK STILL AND DPS

6.  Do not run into the healer’s bubble and force her to move away from the tank who is dying and needs heals.  This will cause her to be hit and pushed back.  This means that she is even FURTHER away from her healing target, who by the way, IS STILL FUCKING DYING!

Seriously, don’t make me hate you any more than I already do.

WTB SITUATIONAL AWARENESS FOR DPS PLAYERS PST!

Kthxbai!

Back in the saddle again

I was going to keep mum about this but then someone went and spilled the beans so now I am going to talk about it.

Yes I transferred my druid over to Shadow Rising.  Some level 29 Undead Priest had the name Tatia so I had to make a slight change.  My Night Elf Druid Tatia is now a Tauren Druid Tattia.

Yes I am still crying about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Taurens.  I have a Tauren hunter that I enjoyed immensely (when I played her).  It just doesn’t yet feel right being a cow instead of an elf.  It does help that she is usually in form so I do have a modicum of comfort there.

I had not played my druid in over a month.  In that time I was able to get so much rust on my leaves that I was flailing about for the first couple dungeons.  Luckily my guildies are PRO so there weren’t any issues.

For the longest time, I only wanted to raid on my druid.  Healing was cake and it made it easier for me to raid lead when I wasn’t having to worry about DPSing.  When I got going on Lyssi my attitude changed.  DPSing, while not raid leading, was a blast.  Even if I am the lowest DPS there, I was still having fun.  There wasn’t any “true” stress put on me, other than what I put on myself.  Raiding became much more fun for me.

I didn’t miss healing.

Fast forward a few weeks.

Shadow Rising had one resto druid, Del.  He has since retired from raiding.  This means they didn’t have a resto druid.  Guess who has an ICC geared resto druid? >.>

I don’t think they meant to put pressure on me to transfer my druid.  I think a lot of it was me knowing what was needed in the guild and (me being me) doing what I could to help.  For all intents and purposes, Tatia was just sitting on Bloodhoof molding.  By bringing her over to Drak’Tharon I would actually get to play her and use her for the purpose that I struggled to level her for.

I also missed having only one 80.  I had three 80s on Bloodhoof.  It made it nice to change up what I was doing.  I only have Lyssi on Drak’Tharon.  What is the point of having 4 80s when you can only play 1 right?  I had planned to eventually transfer fail mage over to Drak, but I was going to keep Tatia on Bloodhoof.  I guess the best laid plans and all that.

So Tatia is now Tattia the Cow.

I spent most of the weekend running Soth through dungeons on his baby pally.  Well I don’t think I can really call him a baby pally anymore.  The dude does 5.6k dps >.> so yeah, nerf Soth. ^_^

Sunday evening rolls around and Tir needs another healer for group Peanut Butter’s ICC 10 run.  They were on PP and were just “estatic” to have a druid healer for that fight.  Now remember, I have only healed up to Festergut.  We gave Rotface a few tries, but I have no experience healing beyond Festergut.  Good thing I knew the fights as DPS.

BTW we one shot PP.

*flex*

I even kept Soth alive as he DCd in the middle of a giant slime puddle.

*flex*

Did I mention we two healed it?

*flex*

Then came The Blood Princes.

I HATE this fight as dps.  HATE it.  I think I hate it even more as heals.  I finally found a spot in the room where I could hit everyone (for the most part) and keep the tanks in range.  Guess what happens next?

THE DPS GET IN MY BUBBLE!!?!!

If I have found a spot where I can be 10 yards away (as I am supposed to be) someone has to come along and get in my bubble.

I swear I am just going to make a macro that yells “GTFO of my bubble” and just spam it until people get the hint.

The funny part is I warned all of my guildies that I am a mean healer.  I warned them over and over again.

They didn’t believe me.

Soth tells me this today: “Gosh you get angry”

Then he tells me: “You are a great healer.  Definitely your best role.  Dps is pretty good too, but wow, awesome druid heals are yummy.”

So yeah, I have this horrible feeling that I will be healing a hell of a lot more than I had planned.  Even with being a very grumpy and angry healer.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel though!

Arioch told me this today: “As far as I’m concerned, your lock is your main.  You can heal in the casual group if you want.”

You know what this means?

FAIL LOCK GETS TO KEEP DPSING!

Happy Koala is happy.