31 October 2010

My, it's been a while...

Guess I haven't had a lot to rant about lately.   Well, I haven't had as much time to rant, to be honest, as I had to go out and become a productive member of society and find a full time job...   After I stopped posting here (and the Moonkin Repository forums, and the WoW Druid forums, and everywhere else I frequented in my abundant free time while jobless), my guild managed to down 25 man LK and several heroic 25 man encounters... and then....

Starcraft 2 happened.  And the Cataclysm Beta.  And burnout.  And suddenly people stopped showing up for ICC, or for much of anything.  I got a beta invite courtesy of a guildie who has a friend with connections, and leveled my main on the beta server to 82, and then my friends in beta got more interested in Starcraft 2 and were never on when I was, and I got bored of playing by myself.

Now that 4.0 has dropped, we've managed to scare up enough interest to raid one or two nights a week again, with the help of a few non-raider friends and a PUG or two willing to fill a spot for a chance at offspec or unwanted drops.  And I'm still not back in full forum-lurking mode yet, although I most likely will be by the time I'm 85 and trying to gear up to raid new content.

Meanwhile I've been logging onto WoW a good bit less, and reading more.  After my most recent re-read of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, I started lurking more at the Westeros.org forums, and finally created an account to post there.  The only thread I've dared to post in so far is one in the Entertainment subforum dedicated to WoW - for the ASOIAF related threads, I still feel too much like a noob to contribute anything.

This morning I decided to contribute to a conversation about the best and worst of 5 man dungeons over the history of WoW, and I thought I'd share it here as well:


27 May 2010

Another Kingslayer, and another 80

Been a while since I've had a rant to share, but I thought I'd toss up a couple-few updates, in case anyone bothers reading (and for posterity's sake, when I look back fondly on my WoW career as an old lady... lol).

First off, I've picked up another Kingslayer title, this time on my priest alt.  Her weekly ICC10 group used to struggle mightily with Rotface and Dreamwalker, but over time we've gotten a bit more cohesive as a unit, and picked up a few more skilled players (the ever-increasing zone buff doesn't hurt either).  Two Saturdays ago, we downed LK, and I found myself standing around Dalaran on an alt with a Kingslayer title.  It feels odd.

A couple of nights ago, my hunter hit 80 - that makes 7 level 80 characters, and only the second one who isn't a hybrid.  I took my time for the last several levels, after the dungeon finder went live I'd queue for one random per day (when I felt like it, which was certainly not every day) to get my two triumph badges, and quested while waiting in queue.  From level 78 on, I stopped questing, just to stretch out the pre-80 experience and get more triumphs in hand before hitting max level.  I was able to purchase 2 pieces of T9 the first night, and a third piece last night. 

I also made the decision to respec Survival (from my BM leveling build) as soon as I hit 80, so when that last instance run was over, I ported straight from Dalaran to Ironforge, and hit the trainer to respec.  Set myself up with a spec for me and my new wolf from the WoW.com Survival 101 guide, got Power Auras all configured to notify me when my cooldowns were up, and started learning how to play all over again.

About 10 heroic runs later, I got into a group with someone who was running RankWatch, which was the only reason I became aware that I completely forgot to train my level 80 abilities.   Epic fail.

Otherwise, let's see... my guild recruited half of a guild from another server to solve our raid attendance woes, so progression may pick back up again once the newbies get used to Sindragosa, which they hadn't even downed on 10 man before the transfer.  We've at least been seeing LK and getting a few attempts in every week now.

My main's 10 man crew stopped showing up for a few weeks, and the main organizers have given up on further scheduling, so I'm stalled at 9/12 hard modes in ICC10. One of my good friends from another guild was going to set up a 10 man group to include my main, but some of the people he was counting on including got snagged for a newly organized weekly run within my guild.  This may mean my main won't see her ICC drake after all, even though I'm 4 achievements away. :(

My shaman may be getting into that aforementioned new weekly group with some well geared and experienced mains, including a couple of 10m Kingslayers - they didn't have room for my main, but needed healers, and particularly wanted a shaman.   Three Kingslayer characters?  Is that too much?

24 April 2010

Trade Chat PuGs and "Elitism"

So last night, a group of 4 or 5 of us were hanging around in vent together, bored out of our skulls.  It was well past midnight server time, nothing going on, and a couple of us had switched over to lowbie Horde alts to pass the time while chatting to the others.

Sometime after 2 AM server time, one of our crew spotted an ICC25 PuG forming, with a smallish guild leading the run and advertising in trade chat.  The raid leader had indicated he'd be checking people out with WoW Heroes, which was fine IMO because he wasn't just going to be looking at Gearscore.  All four of us have experience in ICC on our mains.  My guildie and I have done Lich King attempts in 25 man, while our friends' guild is working on Sindragosa - I have killed LK in 10 man and am 9/12 on Hard Modes, while the others are working on LK10.  None of our alts are undergeared scrubs, and we know the fights better than your average trade channel pugger at 2 AM.

We contacted the raid leader separately and asked for an invite - these are the characters we proposed to bring:
My resto shaman
Geo's arcane mage
Chim's marks hunter
Duce's survival hunter

One of us got in the run - the mage.  The rest of us were told we weren't geared enough.  Caydance was willing to accept that explanation - that was actually his least geared 80, and his character was showing on WoW Heroes as having ICC25 in the "yellow zone" for difficulty (the rest of us had it as green).

03 February 2010

A Public Service Announcement...

... to those who tank Heroic Utgarde Keep:

The Dragonflayer Weaponsmiths stun you so you can't dodge, block or parry.

The Dragonflayer Metalworkers sunder armor.

If you pull all the packs in the first hallway, unless you are extremely lucky, you will wind up getting owned, no matter how good your gear is.

To those who were just in my priest's random heroic:  Things would have been fine but your AOE pulled an additional pack.  The tank kept them off of you but got owned because of the mobs' abilities.  It was not his fault.  It was not my fault.  Dropping group immediately after the wipe wasted a bunch of time for all of us.  And to the tank:  if that wasn't a random disconnect, sorry that I bailed.

30 January 2010

Jerk-taliation

Over at WoW.com, Matthew Rossi's Breakfast Topic for today was about dealing with jerks in PuGs - sometimes by being just a little bit of a jerk right back to them for the greater good of the group.  The comments section is full of stories, and other readers judging the behavior in those stories.  Some of them are rather entertaining, while some make me shake my head in wonder at those who perpetrate such things - and then brag about them.

I left a short comment of my own, but really wanted to expand on my "maybe I was a jerk but they deserved it" story, and this is of course the best place for it.  Especially since I don't think anyone else is reading this blog anyway, so nobody's going to be bored by it unnecessarily.  ;)

A li'l background here... Except for a couple of short forays into Hyjal, BT and Sunwell just for grins, my guild was not raiding at the time Patch 3.0 was released.  Hence our first real raiding with the new WotLK talent trees took place in Naxxramas, where there was AOE a-plenty and classes with new knockback spells that positively delighted in using them on trash packs.  Being a new moonkin determined to prove my worth to the raid, I got a bit defensive when accused of using Typhoon in those days - especially because my talent build did not at the time allow me to even have Typhoon in my main spec. 

It became something of a joke within the guild to blame me whenever a mage Blast Waved an AOE pack, and while I quickly became less prickly about the blame thing, I never really did get over the irritation at mages and shamans who continued to use unglyphed Blast Wave and Thunderstorm on trash packs.  Knockbacks on large trash pulls are bad, mmkay, for several reasons.  Tanks hate them - especially when they've barely touched the mobs - because it makes holding aggro more difficult.  Healers hate them because half the time the mobs aggro onto someone else that they have to heal (or the healers themselves), or they reposition themselves behind the tank when they run back, making the tanks harder to heal until they can carefully adjust them back to the frontal cone.  Other ranged DPS hate the knockbacks because suddenly our AOE is hitting... nothing.  Melee DPS really, really hate knockbacks because the mobs have disappeared, and they either have to run after them or wait until they run back to the tank - if they make it back to the tank.

I've played all four roles, and I can say without hesitation that the only person who really enjoys the knockback in 99% of the situations is the person who cast it.  Now, there's that 1%  where a situational knockback can be useful.  That's the only reason why Typhoon is unglyphed and in my spec right now.  I picked it up when we were farming Trial of the Crusader and starting to work on the hard modes, specifically because it came in handy on Faction Champions when one of the melee mobs was in my face and Nature's Grasp was down, and on Anub'arak when I just couldn't keep one or two scarabs off of me.   I keep it now for the blood beasts on Saurfang, and the occasional use in instances when a stray mob comes after a squishy, knocking it back toward the tank. 

Of course, Typhoon is a staple in my PVP spec.  My friend Geo and I had a fantastic time one night running late night BGs - for once, I had my own personal healbot, as she runs as PVP resto and chose to stick by my side as I ran flags in WSG, etc.  The most fun, though, which caused the two of us to giggle like giddy schoolgirls for most of the night, was guarding the Lumber Mill in AB.  The two of us would go cat form and stealth near the flag, calling out in vent when we spotted incoming Horde with Track Humanoids.  When they'd inevitably think the node was deserted and start to tag the flag, I'd position myself, pop into Moonkin Form, and Typhoon them to a plummeting death.  If I had time, I'd target them and /wave.  Then we'd re-stealth and laugh in anticipation of the next hapless Hordeling who tried to make an easy cap.

But I digress.  My point is that, as a main spec raiding moonkin, I am very sensitive to misuse of Typhoon. 

29 January 2010

WTF PuG Moment of the Day

My intent with this blog is not to skewer individuals I run across in cross-server PuGs - although I have no problem calling out the really annoying ones that behave like spoiled children or sociopathic asshats, there are some players who are still new and haven't learned a lot about this game yet.

And there are some who, no matter what the rest of us would like them to do, would not research how to gear, gem and play their chosen class or spec even if they knew where to go for the information, because they consider WoW "just a game" and that sort of research too much like work.  I can kinda see where they're coming from, really... but even when it comes to games, I dislike sucking at things.  If I find myself doing poorly at something, I either choose not to engage in that activity except under very specific circumstances (see golf, bowling and other such activities), or I use whatever resources are at hand to get better at it.

Twice yesterday, I found myself in PuGs on my mage where an essential party member decided they were not doing well enough and dropped the group very suddenly.

The first time was a Heroic Halls of Lightning group.  I was on my mage, who is now decked out in 4pc T9 and a new shiny Merlin's Robe, along with mostly heroic level or better items (except for cloak, boots, and crappy trinkets).  She can put out some very respectable damage, and I'm learning quickly just how fast I need to be ready on the Ice Block/Invis trigger. 

The tank, a DK who was very personable and set a nice pace for progressing through the instance, seemed to be slightly on the low end of the heroic tank gear scale, but I'm not one of those who expect every heroic instance tank to have 35k health or more - as I recall, this one was more along the lines of 28k health, which is perfectly fine for the non-TOC/ICC heroics.  She/he did a fine job on the first boss, and the "suppression room" gauntlet with the WTFexplodyslag that tends to kill anyone in melee range if you AOE them (one dead rogue at the end, due to overzealous and overgeared lock who just couldn't be bothered to single target).  At the first landing above that room, someone accidentally pulled both packs, when you can normally skip either the left or the right one, and the tank admirably rounded them all up, managing to lose only one of the DPS in the process.  Great healing, heads-up tanking, and I gave the team a cheerful compliment at pulling that one out with a win.  

At the top of the stairs, while rounding up trash to the second boss, the tank informed us that she/he was actually brand new to tanking, and still learning.  The warlock took this announcement as a challenge to test his/her ability to hold threat, and proceeded to do his darnedest to pull aggro on the next 2 trash packs.  And, unsurprisingly, the warlock died.  I tried not to pull, but I did watch Omen carefully and pushed my threat to the limit a few times.  After the lock's death, the tank decided we were too geared for him/her, and needed a "better" tank.  I was just on the point of reminding our tank-in-training that it is the DPS's responsibility not to be stupid and pull aggro, and he/she was doing fine, when we abruptly found ourselves tank-less.  We would have been fine for the rest of the instance, really, and the warlock laughed about the fact that he knew he was setting himself up to die when he started pushing the tank's threat purposefully, but it was too late.  We knew she/he was a new tank, but we didn't know they were that insecure about being a new tank.

So the dungeon finder served us up a confident and overgeared DK for our next tank, and the lock and I stayed on the low side of his threat easily.  Life went on.

28 January 2010

Well, my existence has been validated...


Who knew?

Apparently most realms are infested with badkins to the point that having a moonkin "not suck" is a surprise.

26 January 2010

Kili Rants... on why I'm a baddie

I have a confession to make.

I am a keyboard turner.

Go ahead, call me OMGn00b - I beat you to it in my "about me" blurb there on the sidebar anyway.  I know it's not the "best" way of doing things, and sometimes it has caused more problems than I'd like it to... but hear me out here.

I was catching up on the last couple of weeks worth of posts at Tree Bark Jacket, and spotted this response to a reader question about how to learn to not be a clicker.  It got me thinking about the good old days of vanilla WoW, when I was just starting to play, and how I've evolved into the player I am today.  I left a comment about my keybinding philosophy there, and realized there was a lot more to say than I felt comfortable leaving in the comments section.  I mean, when my comment starts threatening to be longer than the post that inspired it, I know it's time to hop back over to my own space to vent my thoughts.

See, unlike many of my friends, I came to this game not as an experienced gamer.  I didn't have tons of FPS experience, or even play another MMO.  I'd played a text MUD, and a bunch of computer arcade/puzzle type games that involved lots of clicking on the pretty pictures on the screen, or with maybe a few preset keystrokes that mimicked an arcade game's joystick/button commands.  The concept of customizable keybindings was a bit new to me, and the sheer number of skills and usable items in WoW blew my mind.

I had the default UI for a while, until I learned more about different addons to change my button bars and other interface features.  I didn't even know enough to turn on the extra action bars in the default interface for a while.  Macros?  Ha.  Not a clue.  I had the basic 12 action bar buttons to shove as many useful things as possible into, and then I clicked on things in my bags, or put them on the extra action bars once I figured out how to show them, and clicked on those.

Then, after a few weeks of low-level messing around, my good friend Dave, who was much more experienced in this sort of thing than I, informed me that I needed to keybind my commonly used spells and items, or I would be considered a baddie.  "Don't be a noob clicker.  Keybind everything."  "EVERYTHING?"  "OK, well, the stuff you'll actually use very often."

Trying to go from mostly clicking to mostly keybinding was a real learning experience.  Of course, Dave didn't play a druid, which was my main by that point, so he didn't have any real advice on how to keybind effectively.  If I could go back in time and teach myself a few things, I'd have done it very differently.  Over the last 2 years, I've learned so much about how to play this game better - but unfortunately, unlearning 2 or 3 years worth of ingrained habits is... awkward at best.  And at worst, disastrous.

Oh, Ignore List, how I love you.

I've been running a lot of random heroics lately, between my 5 level 80s on Skullcrusher.  I try to get one a day on Kili and the healers, for the 2 frost badges as well as keeping a stock of triumphs for offspec upgrades on the healy girls and epic gems for the main.  My mage has been running as many as I can squeeze in, because there are actual upgrades from some of those instances, in addition to needing triumph badges out the wazoo for T9 and other items.

So I've seen a lot of PUGs - good, bad and indifferent.  Most of them I just let roll off my back, but the last few days I've been feeling quite a bit more intolerant of bad pugs - especially bad tanks.

Last night, for instance, on the mage... Heroic Utgarde Keep popped, and as per my usual routine, right after I ported in, I buffed AI, refreshed my Molten Armor, picked out my target for Focus Magic (the resto shaman this time, as the other DPS were a ret pally and feral druid), and start to drop a table.  The ret pally hung back with me to buff and then said he needed to run AFK really fast, and the feral druid tried to help me drop the table, but the tank, Mr. Impatient, ran ahead of us and pulled almost immediately, so the shaman followed, and the table didn't get dropped.

Instead, Mr. Impatient Tanky-pants started griping at the DPS who were all back at the entrance (either AFK or trying to set out the refreshments, thank you very much).  "Can someone other than me come DPS this stuff?"   I abandoned the ritual of refreshment cast, and ran up the steps to help with the first pull.  And then mildly chastised the tank by reminding him that some us had to buff, and I was trying to help the group by dropping a table.  He, not mollified in the least, then began bitching at the resto shaman for not healing him after the pull was over.

Now if I were the shaman, I'd have healed him before he asked.  But since he asked, and in such a nasty tone of voice, the shaman took offense to how badly the whole thing had started, and told him he could eat or bandage, as we were out of combat.  I actually bandaged the tank myself, since he was being such a prima donna about it.  And the tank, trying to prove something to someone, then ran off at 3/4 health and decided to pull ALL THE MOBS in the first hallway of Utgarde Keep.  Now, I've run this instance many times, on many characters.  I've run it as a healer with my guild's best geared bear tank - who was much better geared than Mr. Warrior Pants there - and when he tried to pull the entire room, he got positively owned.  Hardcore.  Armor reduction debuffs FTL.

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Impatient Prima Donna Uber Tank died.  Quickly.  I know the shaman actually attempted to heal him, but couldn't keep up with the damage when Mr. I Wear Plate Hear Me Roar was fully sundered, and proceeded to die as well.  I backed up into a corner and hit Invisibility, so I was the only one alive when the tank began to positively berate the shaman, who gave back as good as he got, and the other DPS joined in.  The tank felt that he had done nothing wrong, and that clearly the shaman's attitude and lack of skill was at fault.  Riiiiight.

And of course, being the second pull of the instance, we were not yet able to vote kick Mr. Tank Wearing Pants on Head.  When he was informed of our desire to do so, he laughed at us, refused to either leave the party or continue to pull, and said "go ahead, you'll have to wait for another 20 minutes to find a new tank while I insta-queue into the next one."

After several minutes of him bragging about himself both in game (playing for 4 years, six level 80's) and out of game (married with a child, and therefore "mature" and not twelve years old as he was accused of being, WITH A GOOD JOB... as they all seem to have....), I finally reminded the rest of the party to put Mr. Asshat Tank on their ignore list so they wouldn't have to group with him ever again, and proceeded to set him straight.

You see, it may make our wait longer, Mr. "Ghettoboy" of Bloodhoof-US, but every single person in that party would rather have sat there for 30 minutes watching paint dry while waiting for a new tank instead of spending one minute more in that group with him.

25 January 2010

Fantastic! Amazing! Spectacular!

As a blogger, I'm inconsistent and often indecisive.  When WoW.com put out a call for applications to write their resto and balance druid articles, I immediately wanted to apply - get paid for blogging?  Yes please! - but started to realize how very difficult it would be for me to come up with topics, and how very hard I would take criticism that all prominent WoW writers face, whether writing for a major site like WoW.com or maintaining a guide on the official forums.

Lissanna from Restokin.com was a natural choice for the job, but she declined to apply, as she's too busy with grad school...  So without Liss in the running, and with my own reluctance to apply, I sat back to wait and see who WoW.com would wind up with.   They've introduced new writers lately for several features, and I figured we'd end up with an obscure individual for the resto/balance druid column like myself, who knows some good resources and has a penchant for writing, but with a little more confidence.

Thus, today, when the announcement came, I was stunned.  I was astounded.  I was inordinately pleased.

One of the best known moonkin theorycrafters out there is the new WoW.com "voice of the boomkin" - Tyler Caraway, better known on the druid class forums, DPS role forum, and TheMoonkinRepository.com as Murmurs.

I did not expect Murmurs to apply.  I'm curious now about whether any of the other well known forum moonkins - from TMR, Elitist Jerks, or the official class forum - bothered to apply, and what kind of sample articles Murmurs provided.

One thing that makes me happy...  I will be able to read the moonkin posts on WoW.com without constantly second-guessing the theorycrafting behind the advice, since I know Murmurs will have done his research with all due diligence.

Excellent choice, WoW.com.

21 January 2010

ZOMG EPIXXX ZOMG!

Less than 24 hours after dinging 80, four of my bored friends carried my little mage butt through heroic Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection.

I replaced my weapon twice (lulz), my neck, and after the run was over I did one random heroic and had enough badges to pick up T9 shoulders. 

In random heroics, I picked up the belt from Ymiron and the ring from Ingvar.  If I hadn't had real life stuff to attend to last night, or plans to be productive today, I may well have been able to grind enough heroics and normal mode TOC/ICC 5 mans to be fully epic'd out by now.

Patch 3.3, great for gearing out new alts.  Combine that with my last post's rant on how doggone easy it is to play an arcane mage, and I very well may have a non-healing alt worthy of bringing to ICC-10 within a week or two.

Score!

20 January 2010

Kili Rants... on Level 80 #6

My cute little bundle of hurt hit 80 tonight - red pigtails and all.

I originally started my mage as fire spec, with advice from a guildie who was the best mage I know.  Leiseletta was going to be "The Burninator", and I ran battlegrounds with her at 19 and 29, with some semi-twinked gear, and had a good bit of fun.

The low level PVP, by the way, was my reasoning for her Engineering profession.  I'd considered picking up something else instead, but if I can force myself to level it I think I'll stick with it.  The toys are fun, and I still may PVP on her again.

After bouncing around between a few other alts, I got the urge to pick her up again after Patch 2.3 improved leveling in the 30's and beyond, and after talking to another friend, I followed his advice and went frost for the survivability... and for the ability to ride around in a big circle, aggro 7 or 8 mobs, and AOE them down, coming out alive on the other end with a quest half done.

Leiseletta was my last alt to 70 before WOTLK hit.  She was intended to be my PVP alt, but I didn't have enough time to get used to mage PVP (and not being able to heal myself, zomg) before the expansion, and time to level my main again.  And then my priest.  And then my shaman.  And then another druid.  And another druid.  (And let's not forget the fits and starts of playing my rogue and hunter!)

Throughout this process, off and on, I soloed my way through Borean Tundra - with a little help from a guildie on a couple of difficult group quests - and struggled to find instance groups for Nexus and Utgarde Keep.  I finished a couple of quests at the first quest hub in Howling Fjord, and put the mage back on the shelf again for a few months... and then, 3.3 hit.  Cross server instance groups meant I could quest for about 20 or 30 minutes while in queue, port directly to the instance no matter where I was questing, and then pop right back to my quests when done.  Following Jame's leveling guide, I started at level 72 in Howling Fjord, and was just nearly level 79 when I finished HF due to all the instance XP.  I hit 79 after doing 3 or 4 quests in Dragonblight.

16 January 2010

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I logged on last night without much in mind - I figured I'd do the random daily on my level 80s, and work on leveling my mage a bit more... It was Friday night, and one of my guildies had been trying to start up his regular TOC25 PUG again, and I thought if he was online, I might bring my main and try ONE MORE TIME to get that stupid trinket from Anub'arak.

Another guildmate, a non-raider whose brother is part of my regular 10 man crew but who himself is often ignored as bad or annoying (to be fair, he is only 14, and only started playing with WOTLK), was trying to organize an ICC10 group, and not getting a lot of positive response.  I personally didn't plan to join the group - again, I was thinking I'd do heroics until TOC25, if it happened - but as 7:00 server time approached and the TOC raid leader was not online, I got a tell from a friend who'd agreed to main tank and lead Mura's ICC10 group, asking if I had a character I'd like to bring.  As my main was saved, I offered him a choice between rarbare, loltree, shammy heals, bad enhancement shammy, priest heals, or bad spriest.  They had a resto shaman and resto druid already, so my priest in healing spec was a good fit for the group, and we managed to pull together a pretty solid team of well geared alts and a few mains who hadn't done 10 man yet this week.

The group flew through the first wing, at least until Saurfang, where we had a couple of aborted attempts and a full wipe before we got serious and made healing assignments.  Yeah, I can't heal everyone at once.  With our team, we decided the best route was to have the resto druid watching the ranged dps and other healers, the resto shaman chain healing the tank and melee DPS, and me primarily on tank heals, while tossing up PW:S on the ranged when the blood beasts were targeting them just in case.  I'm not discipline spec'd, but every little bit helps, and in this case, we got well into enrage before the first mark went out.  And nobody died, at all.

15 January 2010

It's the little things that make me happy...


... Like selling the Battered Hilt for a little over 12,000 gold...  That'll give me a nice little cushion while I wait for enchanting materials to stabilize and try to figure out a new way of making decent gold that doesn't require lots of farming.  My next thought is using all that Infinite Dust that's not selling because people are undercutting and flooding the market like there's no tomorrow to make Imbued Frostweave bolts, which seem to list for a decent price.  I just don't know how well they sell.

... Like getting Professor Putricide down in my 10 man group before our competitors, the "elite" 10 man group, managed to.  Since the de facto leader of this "elite" team has intentionally snubbed me and cut me out of even raids that I was already saved to, it's just a nice little /rude in his face.

... Like getting the Blue Drake mount from my first Oculus run post-nerf.  I only wish I'd gotten it on a character other than my main, who uses 310% speed swift flight form exclusively.   My priest, for instance, who was in a Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle run yesterday where I saw my first blue proto-drake drop, but lost it.

... Like managing to heal Heroic Pit of Saron in a PuG on my shaman from the very beginning with zero deaths.  Does wonders for my self-confidence, since I stopped queueing her as heals for weeks after a particularly bad series of wipes in that instance.

... Like getting my mage leveled to the point where I'm getting something other than Azjol Nerub and Old Kingdom for the random daily.  Man, those places were starting to annoy me.

13 January 2010

Battered Hilt!


First time I've seen it drop, and I won it on my enhance/resto shaman.  *happy dance* 

Of course, after looking at the rewards, and thinking hard about it, and I decided to try to sell it.

If it takes too long to sell, I'll probably assign it to one of my alts who needs it the worst... but right now, I need the gold, badly.  Pre-3.3, I was making a thousand or two gold a week on enchanting mats - using Auctioneer Advanced / Enchantrix to scan for greens and blues to DE that would net me 3.5g or more in profit, sending to my druid for disenchanting, and back to my bank alt to list.

Now, after the group disenchant option, the AH is drowning in stacks and stacks of vastly underpriced Abyss Crystals, Dream Shards, and Infinite Dust.  The only enchanting mats that still seem to be selling well are the Greater Cosmic Essences.  I'm hoping the prices stabilize a bit instead of continuing to drop like a rock, and I can set a new "normal" price range and start unloading enchanting mats again.

In any event, my regular income has vanished, and I have been upgrading gear and having to buy gems, head and shoulder enchants, etc., as well as having to stock up on flasks for raiding.  I detest daily quests, and the disenchanting business was working oh-so-well for me for many months.  *sigh*

I really need to start farming on my herbalism alts again, and making flasks to sell, as they are holy cow expensive with everyone and their uncle trying to progress in ICC.

Adapt, or go broke, I guess.

12 January 2010

Kili Rants... on class roles, and why DPS isn't just "meat in the room"

So one of the WoW blogs that I have read with regularity for quite some time now is John Patricelli's, amusingly titled The Big Bear Butt. Having been a feral druid, I find the image familiar, and I love his knowledge of feral druid-y things, as well as his smart and witty takes on things outside the game.

Yesterday BBB highlighted, via another blogger he reads, a guest post at World of Matticus from last week, full of brashness, ego and controversy:  Tanks and Healers Should Get the Biggest Rewards.

Tanks and healers are the most important classes for any group. Tanks set the pace of the group, the flow of experience and man the vanguard as they lead the team into battle. Healers mend the broken bones of their companions and keep the tanks a live – without the healers there could be no tanks and there could be no group. These are the two most important classes that exist in any MMORPG. But the DPS? They’re just meat in the room.
Now I've nearly always played a healer, and I've done my share of tanking as well - occasionally on my main, on my lowbie warrior pre-BC, my pally was leveled as prot from 40 on (and will be prot again when I'm ready to pick her up again), and on my feral/resto alt Kilikitty, who is strangely enough never kitty, but either bear or tree.

The reason my main is no longer a healer is that the guest blogger is correct - there is an enormous amount of stress and responsibility in raiding as a healer.  Toward the end of BC, it became apparent that with a few notable exceptions (i.e. Brutallus with its short hard enrage timer), Blizzard's usual method for ramping up the difficulty of raid encounters was to require more out of the dedicated healers.

Sunwell especially was brutal on the healing classes - sure, Kalecgos required strict attention from mages as well to deal with the curses, but as one of the few healers who could also decurse, every global cooldown was an exercise in assessment and instant decision making.  Do I cast a heal on myself?  Do I decurse the tank? Do I heal the tank?  Do I heal the mage so the mage can decurse the tank?  If I heal the mage, will the mage continue to DPS the boss and let the tank die?  Is anyone else healing the tank?  Oh yeah, and beyond that, having to be aware of portal timing and location, as well as keeping enough distance between myself and the rest of my group, and having range on everyone I need to heal.  It was severely stressful, and every wipe caused most of the healers to second guess every decision they made, except perhaps the paladins who were assigned to spam heals on the tank and ignore everything else, including their own health bar.

So yes, I switched to DPS because it was lower stress, and I was ready for a change... but let me tell you something.

Anyone who considers the DPS "just meat in the room" has never wiped to an enrage timer, or because sub-par DPS caused a fight to drag on so long that the healer ran out of mana or couldn't keep up with increasing damage.

11 January 2010

So now that I've bored you with my life story...

... just think what I can do with ranting about playing WoW!

I decided I needed this blog after leaving lengthy comments on no fewer than three separate WoW blogs in the last few days, as well as telling several stories to my friends because I just couldn't believe some of the stuff people do and say in game - especially with the new cross-server dungeon finder.

Rest assured, this won't all be rants about bad behavior in PUGs, but it's as good a place for that as any. It'll also be a good place to brag about achievements, whine about failures, and question the reasons why I still play this game.

As for that last thing, well, I'm still having fun. That's pretty much the end of it. :)

What Ho! A Blog!

Well hello there, friends, guildies, bloggers, and complete strangers!

A little about me - personally, and as relates to this game we love, hate, and love to hate:  World of Warcraft.

Personally, I am a 30-something female, widowed about 18 months ago, no kids, 2 cats, and currently looking for a job.   I'm also very cautious about giving out too much personal information on teh interwebz, so I'm not going to link to my other blog (yes, I have one), my Facebook page (that too), talk about where I live, etc.  A few people - mostly guildies of mine - will know all manner of information that I won't be posting here.  Please respect my right to avoid stalkers, kthx.

WoW-wise, I came to the game a little later than some.  I was never a gamer, but I married one.  I watched him play a text MUD for about 3 years before I decided to give it a try, and when several of his good friends quit the MUD for World of Warcraft, I watched him play that for about 3 months before I gave in and bought my own copy.