Dynamic Duo!

I got that achievement last night.

That means I have two level 90s of two different classes.

Now before you get all up in my junk about what the hell was I doing leveling another character before I got all my reps complete etc; let me tell you that it was for a good reason!

I wanted to fly and herb at the same time >.>

I told you it was a good reason!

Just kidding. 😀

PPP was leveled to 90 so we would have an extra healer should we need one.  So far it hasn’t been the case since Zari and Bocat so graciously stepped up to the plate to be the flex healers.  Now I honestly don’t know how much play time she will actually have in end game because outside of Lyssi, we don’t have a brez.  Also, the raiders apparently really love my cookies.

Who knew?

This post is mostly because Navi has nagged at me for not posting more.  She scolded me and told me that I was a very lazy blogger.

Now when Navi scolds you you best get off your duff! 😉

Love you Navi!

In all honesty I really needed to post more.  As I have mentioned in the past I just don’t have the time during the day that I used to have.  The only reason I am writing this now is because my boss is out of the office on vacation and no one has come over to bug me for something this morning.  Have I mentioned how I run the office here?  Yeah I don’t think I did.  On top of being my boss’ assistant I also have his other assistant as MY assistant AND I have to act as the assistant for the Jr. partner.  So I have two people coming to me with tasks that I either do myself or assign to my assistant.  This is on top of all the “emergency” fires that are created because my boss has to do everything as soon as he hears about it regardless of what is going on or what needs done.  But hey, it is a job that pays well and I am appreciated so it works out.

In the game front I’ve been busy busy busy.  After many painful wipes (seriously, painful) we FINALLY got the first boss down.  I am proud to say that I was not the cause for any of the wipes, save one and that one wasn’t REALLY my fault, I just added to it because I am a tard.  We had like 3 people dead but for some reason I thought there were 5 people dead so I just assumed it was a wipe and ran into some bad and just stayed there until I died.  Slice then looks at me and was all “Did you seriously just go stand in bad and die?!?!?”  That was when I realized that I had looked at the screen wrong and we in fact were NOT wiping.  Turns out that was our best attempt prior to killing the boss.

Yeah fayle lock!

Speaking of Fayle, his newest thing, which Adoe has picked up on, is that I cannot read because I am a warlock.  Forget everything else, I cannot read because I am a warlock.

He isn’t even a mage!

Stupid stinky rogues & hunters.

I dunno maybe it is justified.  I did pull a complete fayle too.

I have always been an affliction warlock.

I have always aimed for haste, crit then mastery.

I play destro now.

Destro is Mastery, crit then haste.

I was um, gearing wrong.

I was also enchanting, gemming and reforging wrong.

It gets better.

I was not only using the wrong pet BUT I was also using the wrong grimoire!  20% vs 25%, yeah, no brainer >.<

Prior to my realizing I was fayling I was doing about 30k, which was pretty bad.  I was the lowest dps in the pack.  Upon realizing my fayle I fixed things and jumped up to about 47k and moved into 3rd – 4th place which is where I usually reside since Fayle, Zug and Adoe rule supreme in damage dealing.  Now I just need to work out my rotation a bit more.  I keep wanting to save my embers, which from everything I read I am not supposed to.  From what I understand I should be popping a CB every time I have an ember.  I will admit I haven’t gotten into the hang of that.  I am getting better though! 😀

The other part that is funny is not actually raiding with a pet.  I am so used to having a pet out that using Grimoire of Sacrifice is odd.  I will say that I love the control demon ability part.  It puts the special ability of your demon as a spell for you.  During the Dog fight I would sac my voidwalker because then I get his ability to increase my health.  For non warlocks: Frenzied Enrage.  It is on a pretty short cooldown so that was nice to have!

Speaking of cooldowns, I took Mortal Coil as my talent and let me tell you it has been a LIFE SAVER during raids.  I hit that sucker and I get about 62k health back.  The best part is it is on a 45 second cooldown.  My healthstone is a 90 second cooldown.  I would pop a blue trap then hit my MC button and BOOM! full health!

Oh and remember to place your portal.  It has helped get me out of the bad on the floor more times than I can count.  It will also break the root that the blue traps leave on the ground.

So yeah, things are starting to move along in game.  I think once we get the rust off we will beat out the scrubs on our server that think they are hot shit.  I understand they beat Heroic DS and we didn’t.  But they also beat it at the 30% buff and we quit raiding.  When the top guilds on the server leave or stop raiding the scrub guilds try to fill the void.  To be honest I think some of them are even pugging a few spots.  I know one of the guilds tried to get Slice to come heal a raid for them.  We’ll see how things go and if our guildies pull their heads out of pet battles. 😉

So there is my update for a while.  Hopefully this tides Navi over for a little bit. 😀

I’m doing it right!

So last night we went into Dragon Soul to test out our abilities.  Some of us were having issues but they got sorted out by the time we got the 2nd boss down.  The only real issue I had was the fact that I hadn’t downloaded the DBM addon for Cata raids.  This didn’t become an issue until Ultraxion.  I will say that I didn’t mess up my button pushing (I watch my cast bars and debuffs TYVM) but I also noticed I wasn’t getting any warnings or updates.

Other than some grumpiness that killed the Non-Red Slice buff I had cast earlier, things went pretty well.  By the end of the night Red Slice was gone and even Red Lyssi went away.

Want to know why?

 

The big crits.

 

I am a closet meter whore.  Well I might not be that in the closet about it, but I am no where near as bad as you think when the phase “meter whore” pops in your mind.  I LOVE seeing BIG numbers pop up on the screen.  Playing affliction didn’t start giving me those numbers until late in the expansion when I had lots of gear to inflate my numbers.  Even then I would only see like 30-40k crits on my shadow bolts.  Sometimes I would get a really nice 15-20k crit on my corruption ticks, but nothing like what I would hear other classes getting.  Affliction’s damage is slow and steady with a spike at the end.  Destro, not so much.

I think the smallest crit I got with a chaos bolt last night was 86k.  The highest I got was with shadowburn for 190k.

Yes, 190k crit.

 

EXCITEMENT!

 

When I talk about being a meter whore I don’t mean HAVING to be at the top.  I like being in the top 3 (if possible).  If I hit #1 or #2 I get really excited.  Mostly because I play with such good players.  Adoe, Sorak and Zug all usually wipe the floor with the rest of us dps.  It is like the only contest is between those 3.  So when I manage to sneak in there and top one of those 3 guys I am just over the moon.  I don’t usually get too bad about it publicly (sometimes yes I do, but not ALL THE TIME).  To Slice, yeah I am usually all pumped up and crow about beating someone.  He usually just rolls his eyes at me and ignores me.  Which is fine, I made myself happy, it works.

I think the best part of last night for me was beating Adoe on Deathwing.  I would say beating Sorak but he died halfway through the fight (he managed to kill himself by shadowstepping, it was quite hilarious I might add) and even though he was kicking everyone’s ass throughout the rest of the raid, it wouldn’t be fair to compare myself to him that fight.  While Sorak and Adoe were neck and neck all night (one fight they were like 20 dps points off from each other and the equivalent damage was less than 1000 difference) I was battling with Shadey.  I was so busy focusing on the top dogs that I completely overlooked the mage in the raid that manged to kick my ass on several fights.  I had gotten used to her healing on her shaman and not keeping tabs on her dps (cause there wasn’t any!) which was a critical mistake.  One that I will not continue to overlook.  This means I can’t come in and half-ass fights anymore.  I need to stay on my game so I’m not on the bottom like I was for most of Wrath.

Anyway!  Back to the story!

The excitement wasn’t from beating Adoe, I usually am #1 or #2 on the Deathwing fight, it was from beating Adoe in a spec I had never played before prior to that night.

THAT is what got me excited.

I had done NO research on my “new” spec.  I wasn’t even 100% sure on my rotation.  I used the tab Blizz supplied in my spellbook and went to town.  Yes I fat fingered a lot of stuff, and I wasn’t awful on a lot of my dot uptime ( I was bad, but not awful.)  So when I finally did do some research to find out I was doing things right was pretty awesome.

http://spellbound.nu/?p=2002

Saga is an awesome warlock blogger.  If you aren’t already reading her you totally need to.  She does a great job with explaining things.  Far better than my rambly non-existent how-to posts.

So yeah, go read her. 😀

I’m now getting excited about leveling and raiding again.  I don’t know how I will level in MoP, I might switch back to Aff, but I am not sure.  It almost feels like Destro is doing a great job with the self healing.  I could even glyph or spec in for more.  With a 625% mana regen (Destro locks CANNOT life tap, we don’t have the spell anymore) I really feel like I am unstoppable.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

*CACKLE*

Revealing

I have a confession to make,

 

I

 

*deep breath*

 

WENT DESTRO!

 

*GASP*

 

I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW!

 

As an “Aff for life!” warlock this feels almost like a betrayal to all I have ever known and loved.

For a while the dirty secret was kept on my baby warlock that I was leveling for the classy trolls guild cheeve.  I decided that I was going to learn to destro because I was so unhappy with the new aff rotation.  It ended up being so much fun that I thought about changing my PvP off spec on Lyssi to destro to play around but I never went through with it.

I mean, I wrote posts rhapsodizing over affliction and my love for it.  I said I would NEVER play destro.  It was just a mage with a pet.  Etc, etc, etc.

Now I’ve switched and love it.

When I was testing things out on the Beta I spent quite a long time at the dummies just trying to get my fingers into the swing of a new rotation while trying to keep the basic buttons that I had grown accustomed to.  I moved all of the spells around until I had a flow going.  It was starting to look up for me and affliction for MoP.  I won’t lie.  For a while I was honestly looking at my stable of alts and wondering which one I could happily switch to and raid on for MoP.  Before the Beta changes to affliction went through it was looking as though I would be playing my Priest or Druid, as a healer.

That’s right.

I was thinking of switching my role COMPLETELY!

Which is kind of odd considering I hadn’t healed full time since Wrath.  This was also the time in which resto druid healing was spamming wild growth and rejuv on any person taking any tiny amount of damage.  Hell, I was still angry tree at that time.  The most I had healed since then was in 5 mans or alt runs with the guild.  I even did LFR on my priest a time or two.  Other than that, no real raiding.

What was I thinking in becoming a healer again?

Yes I am insane, if you didn’t believe me (or Slice for that matter) prior to this then you should have no doubts left.

So when the changes came down that helped the aff rotation I was happy again.  I could keep my main, I could keep playing the spec I loved so much.

Fast forward to last night and the 5.0.04 patch.

I hopped online on Lyssi and first hit the trainer to change my off spec from aff (aff pvp prior to the changes) to destro then I flew up to the dummies.

I was dumb at first because I hadn’t put the glyphs in.  So after some toon swapping I got my glyphs I needed for both specs and went back to testing my rotation.

Yeah I had problems.

I already knew from the Beta that I would have to re-organize my keys and bars, even if I hadn’t read the reminder from Cynwise.  Even after switching my buttons around and practicing for quite a while as aff, I just couldn’t get back into the flow I had found on the Beta.

Then I switched my spec . . .

 

The rotation flowed.

 

I can’t explain it any other way.

 

I was just hitting the buttons with the same ease that I had from years of playing affliction, only I wasn’t playing affliction.  It was a scary thought that I could so easily transition to something I had never played before.

 

After I messed around with the rotation for a little while longer I decided that I needed to reforge my gear to better optimize destro.  Affliction loves haste, Demo loves mastery and Destro loves crit.  Since I lost my stat stick in my wand and the hit cap was lowered I thought I would go reforge and see how much more crit I could squeeze out of my haste heavy gear.  Off to Mr. Robot!

First of all, when did AskMrRobot become such shit?  I loved that site when it first came out.  I haven’t used it since it updated to the new format, which was around Firelands.  I stopped using it then because it kept putting the wrong stat levels on my gear.  Which meant that it wasn’t optimized.  I went there last night to see if they had fixed it, and no.  It told me to take my haste enchant off and put on an expertise enchant.

Excuse me?

Why the hell would a caster need expertise?

Ok fine I checked the stat weights.  Expertise was at ZERO and yet 4 different pieces of gear were being told to be enchanted or reforged to expertise.

I just gave up at that point.

I can hear Sorak chiming in with “Why are you relying on some silly website?”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I logged back in and just did the reforging myself.  I am slightly over hit cap but I don’t know what else I could do with what I had.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to raise my crit any higher since I didn’t have anything to reforge away other than haste.  I don’t know about you but I still love haste way too much to want to get rid of it.  Especially now that DI has been changed.  Lots of haste is awesome!

 

Anyway I logged off pretty happy with what I had set up.  New keybinds, new spec, new pet.  It is golden!

 

Tonight we are going to raid to see how everyone handles their new rotations, etc.  I am eagerly anticipating it!  Hopefully I will get a chance tomorrow to make an update on how things went.  If not, I am sure Arv or Rep or Slice will post something.

 

Sorry for being so quiet for so long!  I miss you guys!

Oh look what I have here . . .

Finally! 😀

1, 2, 3, 4 . . . I declare thumb war!

We strolled into Dragon Soul last night and went 4/8 easy as pie. What don’t believe me?

 

 

Left to right: Zarm, Adoe, Gurgie, Zari, Zug, Me, Van, Slice, felpuppy, Fayle (hidden by the boss), Falhala and last but not least! Arv.

 

One shot bitches!  Turns out it was the server first kill too!

Left to Right: Slice, Arv, Zarm, Falhala, Zug & his mirror images, me, Van, Zari & Adoe

 

This one took eight tries.  Took a bit to teach people how to scatter apparently.

 

From left to right: Fayle, Shady, Zarm, Zuggie, Badoe, me, Van, Slice, Zari and Arv

 

I think this fight is shaping up to be one of my favorite fights.  On the third attempt this bugger went down.

 

From left to right: Sorak, Arv, Shady, Slice, Van, Zari, Pix, me, Zarm & Adoe

 

I actually liked this fight.  The lightning chain is kind of fun, you know as long as you don’t stand there all by yourself and take all the damage alone.

No I did nothing of the sort.

*whistles innocently*

This lady took us five tries to kill her.  I blame Slice for the first wipe.  He claimed the ice spikes were “cutters” instead of the rolling spikes that they are.  Fail Slice, fail.

 

 

Looks like we won! 😀

Screenshot Friday

Naked challenge runs

Oh lookie here :D

How badass is this? \o/

Screenshot Friday

badass warlock is badass

Legendary woes

Last night I finished the first part of the quest chain to get my awesome staff of awesomeness (see yesterday’s post if you have questions) and during the end of the raid I went to go complete the next step.  I was unaware of what I was going to be facing (I did want to be surprised) so I was surprised at how long it was taking me.  I actually had to tell the raid to go forward without me because it was going to take a LOT longer than I originally thought.

 

WARNING!  AHEAD ARE SPOILERS FOR THE LEGENDARY QUEST CHAIN.  IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW THEN DON’T KEEP LOOKING!!!  ALSO!  DO NOT CLICK THE VIDEO LINKS!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is this far enough down?  Ok!

So I zone into the “Nexus” (it has the Oculus loading screen so it threw me off) and start off.  After the 5th death I had to find a video to figure out what the hell I was doing wrong.

I found this one – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQxVOSBR0HY of a mage completing the chain.  I found where I was doing things wrong and changed up my strats.  I was able to make it through the first hurdles then after some more dying (seriously I died like 10 or 12 times by this point) I figured out how to finish clearing to the final boss.

Now this is where I was having serious problems.  I saw how the cheating mage was handling the boss (spell stealing is cheating ok :-p) and I had to figure out how to compensate for it.  Everything that I was reading for warlocks was telling me to make sure I keep my dots up (well duh) and to drain life as much as possible to stay alive.  I also saw the tip to kite the flame down the ramp so that I could get a head start on the adds.  The adds seem to spawn a hell of a lot faster than the “every 60 seconds” BS that I keep hearing but whatever.  The nice thing with the adds is they won’t attack you until they reach the top of the platform.  If you are at the bottom of the ramp then you can dot up the add while it runs past you then drain life it dead as it is coming back to you.  This was working for me for about every other add.  I don’t know if my instance was just bugged or what but the adds kept coming pretty quickly.

Another issue I kept having was my puppy kept bugging out.  Since I need my pet to interrupt and dispell it was kind of important for him to NOT bug out.  On one attempt I didn’t have a pet bar!  I’ve been getting that error quite a lot lately.  Since I don’t use any UI modifying addons I don’t know why I’m having that issue.  The easiest way to fix it is to re-summon my pet.  Unfortunately sometimes doing that will bug out the pet to where he doesn’t move and doesn’t do any of his abilities.  From what others are reading (and telling me) this is a known issue and just something I have to deal with.

/sigh

Zarm was awesome and found a forum topic for me that is giving me some ideas – http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2973018600.  I had already thought about changing my spec a bit so now I have even more of a reason to adjust it.  I think I will also get my T12 gloves.  They aren’t part of my full 4 piece that I want but they are the only piece I can get without losing my 2 piece T11 bonus (which is rather nice).  From everything I am reading it is a long fight of attrition and every little thing I can do to ensure my survival needs to be done.

Slice sent me this video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMEVAMZMCxw&feature=related.  It is from an affliction warlock point of view (it is only the 2nd half of the place).  Found out what I was doing wrong on the ramp.  I was running down the middle because it didn’t occur to me to just kite along one edge then run up the other side until I could use my portal (yes I had my portal down).  So I will try that tonight.  I am hoping that will cut down on the time spent NOT draining life from the boss.

Once this part is complete then I get to move on to the NEXT part of the chain.  This part will require me doing stuff during the first four (Shannox, Beth, Rhyolith & Alysrazor) fights to charge some items.  Once I have four charged items I get to open a way to ANOTHER boss that luckily the entire raid gets to help me kill.  Once that guy is dead I will get the first staff.  I can’t wait for this staff as it is a nice upgrade from my current staff.  The one I have drops off Beth and has crit and mastery on it.  The branch has hit and haste.  Om nom nom nom!

Anyway, if anyone else has any tips or suggestions please feel free to leave them in the comments section!  Thanks in advance!

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 >.<