My life, right now, is pretty nutty.
First and foremost, I have both of my final exams on Wednesday, April 25th. One from 9am-12pm and one from 2pm-5pm. These are the finals for the last classes in my Bachelor’s degree in Sociology. With any luck, of course. As such, tonight is my last raid with Choice of Skywall on the baby pally for about two weeks.
Due to the exams, I’m also missing Sunday, April 22nd’s Apotheosis raid, as well as Tuesday, April 24th’s.
Meanwhile, in Apotheosis, we’re now able to get the second plate up on Heroic Spine. I don’t really have the time to… you know what, screw it. I’ll take a couple hundred words right here to talk about Spine.
Spine sucks.
Wow, that was shorter than I thought. ;)
No, really, it’s an interesting fight, at times. I honest-to-God enjoy some of the mechanics. I feel like I’m getting a good handle on what to do as a healer. The fight has caused some hilarious Mumble conversation (Kaleri was dispelling last night and got gripped at one point and the noise she made to indicate she was gripped and someone needed a dispel was AMAZING) and despite some overall frustration, there was a real sense of progression last night as we lifted the second plate for the first time.
But the fight sucks. There I am, healing people with Searing Plasma… pretty much the whole time until the tanks actually start to take appreciable damage, and even then, I’m still healing people with Searing Plasma at least a little bit.
I’m sorry, I’m ON THE BACK OF A VERY ANGRY PSYCHOTIC DRAGON and I’m worried about Searing Plasma debuffs?! What a waste. I’m also noting how many residue we have and calling for the Amalgamations to be brought through the clumps of them and such. Important to the fight, yes, but I’m doing this for what, 10-13 minutes or so? More than that, I’m doing the same stuff three separate times in the fight. Or six separate times, really. More than once last night, I lost track, I actually lost track of what tendon burn we were on.
Hot Tip: when your raiders can completely forget, in essence, which phase of the fight you’re on, it’s probably not a well-designed fight.
I don’t mind some repetitive aspects of fights, I really don’t, but when the entire phase (say, the lifting of a plate) is repeated almost precisely another two times, the fight is not compelling, is not “fun” and is annoying as crap.
So Spine sucks, but we’re getting there. And I’ll say this, the surge of “OH MY GOD YES!” when we got the second plate off for the first time was fantastic. (But not worth the otherwise poor design of the fight. IMHO.)
Meanwhile, my father was unexpectedly hospitalized last Wednesday. Long story short, he’s got a nasty bacterial infection that has set up residence in his liver. The details are really kind of gross and they don’t even actually know the cause. He’s doing okay (alert, eating well, doesn’t feel “sick”, just weak) but it’s never an easy thing to deal with when you have a family member in the hospital. And, you know, this is my dad, so it’s extra scary.
Speaking of family members, my grandmother, who broke her hip in December, is not coping altogether well after being home for around two months. Her walking is much worse, she’s not eating much and she would down a whole bottle of Tylenol in a single day if we left her that much because she’s been forgetting when she takes Tylenol and is still in discomfort. Since she and I live in the same apartment building, I’m the one who’s been running upstairs and giving her Tylenol as requested, but never more than five or six pills a day. Oh, also, we took her for a hearing test (after YEARS of knowing she’s been losing her hearing, despite her protests to the contrary) and got it confirmed that there’s “significant” hearing loss in both ears. Enough so that she qualifies for a free hearing aid from the government, so while that’s news to no one (except my grandmother), that’s something else we have to take care of.
Of course, all the family stuff has me wanting to play WoW to take my mind off stuff — and I’m in the beta, so I want to spend time over there, too! But then there are those pesky exams, and I want to write blog posts and I want to do log dives for my raids and and and… I also just want to nap, because none of the stuff going on in my life right now is really condusive to a good night’s sleep.
So please do forgive me my lack of posting about, well, anything. I hope to be back at it at the end of April. In the meantime, go listen to episodes of Blessing of Frost or check out Apotheosis, since we’re always seeking more quality raiders. :)