Category: blogging

Day 18 – Your Favourite Outfit

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

I have two favourite outfits.

The first is the Beastmaster Armor set. I worked so hard for that stupid Tier 0.5 quest chain and it took me forever, FOREVER, to get the Beaststalker’s Chest, which was the last piece I needed for the quest chain. I don’t even particularly like the look (although the shoulders are pretty iconic) but that 8/8 just means so much to me.

And the other is the Lightforge Armor set. Though I never really used most of it to heal, I wore it whenever I wasn’t actively healing. Just putting on the shoulders made me feel like a “real” paladin. And it goes so well with the Stormpike tabard!

Yesterday: Your Favourite Spot
Tomorrow: In your bags/bank

Day 17 – Your Favourite Spot

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

I am actually having a lot of trouble coming up with a favourite spot, either in or out of game.

I think it’s made more difficult because so much has changed in WoW. New zones, revamped old zones…

Well, let’s look at what “favourite” means to me.

A favourite spot has to be quiet, familiar, pleasant to look at and relaxing, I think.

I think maybe Nagrand is that to me. I spent a lot of time in Nagrand in Burning Crusade. I farmed a lot, both at Elemental Plateau and over by the Clefthoofs, I fished a lot (again, Elemental Plateau and elsewhere) and really, just enjoyed the zone a great deal. Except for Corki. But it’s the one Outlands zone I actually make an effort to go through when I level. It’s just such a beautiful place and it’s so quiet if you’re just questing or farming.

I don’t really have a favourite spot IRL, to be honest. There are plenty of places where I like to go, but too many to pick a favourite. And many of those places are dependent on the time of year and the company I’m in! :)

Yesterday: Things You Miss
Tomorrow: Your Favourite Outfit

Day 16 – Things You Miss

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Well, this is a bit of a list, really.

– Hunters using mana. No, really. I miss my mana bar. I’m getting used to the throttling of our damage provided by focus, but I miss my mana bar.

– Divine Plea on a 1m cooldown.

– 100% Beacon healing.

– Sacred Shield. I REALLY miss Sacred Shield. A lot.

– I miss wanting tier gear. I just picked up my T11 shoulders because they dropped and because they’re marginally better than the Chimaeron ones in terms of base stats (crit vs. mastery). That might be the only piece of tier I pick up.

– I miss the old lockout system! If you zoned in to an instance that was already partially cleared, you were saved. If you were in a fresh instance where you killed a boss, you were saved. EASY. I know, many people enjoy the flexibility, but we ran into more lockout issues tonight. Total bullshit.

– Auberdine. I spent a lot of WoW time in Auberdine while levelling Kurn. And a friend of mine from one of my stats classes was farming furbolgs for Timbermaw rep and he made his hearth the inn in Auberdine, way, way back in the day, before BC came out. I was at his place once and he showed me his toon (level 60 warlock) and showed me why Auberdine was his hearth — one flight point from Darnassus (AH/bank/etc) and one or two flight points away from Felwood, where he’d spend most of his time.

– I miss the occasional true tank-and-spank fight. Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of the newer mechanics we see… but sometimes, a tank’n’spank is just what I crave. :)

– I miss Valithria Dreamwalker! Well, not her. And not flying. But I miss the fact that it was a “heal this boss to full” fight as opposed to yet another “kill this before it kills you” fight.

– Most of all, I miss the knowledge that I had accumulated over 2 or so years. I’m stuck relearning everything, all the mechanics, all the player abilities and such, so that I can do my job of leading raids better. I just wish I could know it all NOW, you know?

Yesterday: Your Desktop Background
Tomorrow: Your favourite spot (in game or outside it)

Day 15 – Your Desktop Background

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

My desktop background is moderately boring, but I’m happy with it.

That is the logo for the Montreal Metro system — our subway. It’s actually a photo I took of the logo in one of the shopping malls in downtown Montreal, indicating there’s metro access from that mall.

I spent some time (two years!) in Virginia in the US and it was always the Montreal Metro I missed when I was there. When I’d come home to visit, I wouldn’t feel like I was home yet until I rode on the subway. I’m not the only nut out there who loves the metro system, at least. :)

So it’s a plain background, but it’s one that’s pleasant enough to look at and tends to have a calming effect on me.

Yesterday: This Upsets You
Tomorrow: Things you miss (post Cataclysm)

Day 14 – This Upsets You

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, facepalm, raiding, ramblings, throne of the four winds

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

All righty, here’s my last planned post for today, thanks for reading “Contentpalooza 2011”! ;)

Day 14 – This Upsets You

Oh, Lordy. This is almost too much to consider. A better question would be “this doesn’t upset you”. ;)

Actually, truth be told, in-game, not a lot flat-out upsets me. I know, I know. You’re shocked. What it is that really upsets me is the people. I’ll get into that in a minute, but here’s some in-game stuff that upsets me.

– Loot and randomness. Being able to kill Gandling in Scholomance 27 times and see the Beaststalker’s Cap twice (and losing the roll once), or being able to kill General Drakkisath SIXTY TIMES before seeing a Beaststalker Tunic is ridiculous. Even in Wrath, this held true. 24 kills of heroic Saurfang and 0, count that, 0 drops of the Heroic Belt of the Blood Nova. (Not that I’d wear it now, being that it’s mail, but anyways.) 13 Halion kills, 0 drops of the Foreshadow Steps.

And this continues today. 8 Cho’gall kills (that’s, you know, 2 full months) and 0 drops of Shackles of the End of Days. And I’m doing this on 25, so I’m getting 5 drops off Cho’gall each time (plus 3 tier tokens). That is 40 possible drops and we have had 0 bracers drop.

I’m not asking for things to drop every single time you kill a boss. Not even every 5 times. I’m not even asking for non-useless gear not to drop (ie: healing plate with no paladins in the group). I’m just asking for better odds than 2/27, 1/60, 0/13 and 0/8.

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 5/10 (Moderate)

– Raid Lockout Screwups. As detailed in my last post, this new raid lock system screwed us up last night, made us lose an hour or more of our raid time and has made us change our plans for the week. This isn’t limited to the new system, though, there were several “aw crap” moments with the old lock system as well. Still, at this point, I’d much prefer the old one. (For me. I know the new one makes a lot more sense for a lot of people, particularly those who aren’t guilded or those not doing their raiding in a guild setting.)

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 7/10 (High)

Everything else, game-wise, I can generally take. Getting stunlocked by a rogue or three, fine. Login errors? Fine, computers aren’t perfect.

The rest of the things that piss me off are things people do. True, some of them are made possible by game mechanics, but ultimately, it’s people in this game who piss me off.

– Racist/Homophobic/Prejudicial Language. Fastest way to piss me off is to throw a bunch of disparaging epithets into a sentence. People are people, dammit, and I don’t care what colour their skin is, who they love, who they worship (if they do) or any of that crap. They’re people. Even bad players are people. The fact that Trade Chat is typically filled with these various slurs means I spend a lot of time reporting spam on various people and, in the case of some really bad ones, I’ll open a ticket and explain precisely why the person’s language is upsetting.

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 8/10 (High)

– Not doing your job in a group. This goes for 5-mans, raids, everything. It drives me nuts to join a pug and realize that, out of the five people in the group, myself and maybe one other person are doing their role-related jobs adequately. It also drives me nuts if someone just cannot master a mechanic in raid content. I am not the fastest learner. I have a learning curve and, given my crappy-ass computer, it can be steep. But I learn, I adapt OR, in the case of Teron Gorefiend, I SIT MYSELF. My computer at the time didn’t allow me to be quick enough to get all my constructs — I’d lag on the transition and no matter how fast I hit my buttons, I’d only get a couple of my constructs trapped. This was okay if I wasn’t the first person targetted, but if I WAS, it was a wipe. So I sat myself out of the fight as often as possible. The very first Gorefiend kill we had, I was in on my hunter. I would feign death prior to his casts that would give you the debuff and so I was never targetted by his stupid ability. And I did pretty darn well in terms of DPS, too! But I did what I could to adapt to all the various mechanics and that was the one thing in all of Burning Crusade I just couldn’t adapt to.

It’s not a hard game, when you look at it. Don’t stand in bad stuff. DPS this when you’re supposed to, DPS this other thing when you’re supposed to. Heal who’s taking damage. Keep bad guys away from your raid.

That SO many people fail at these basics — I’m not even talking about things like interrupts or DPS classes dispelling things or any of that — makes me sooooo angry.

Don’t even get me started on people who fail at CCing or tanks who taunt to pull.

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 9/10 (Very High)

– Failing Like Faily McFailerson. What makes me angrier than the above is when I fail at something. I am not perfect, I get caught by Blistering Cold on Sindragosa sometimes, I eat Fireball Barrage on Halfus sometimes. I make mistakes. What upsets me is when I CONSTANTLY fail at something. Take, for example, our Al’Akir work from the other week. Had no idea that you could delay the Wind Burst by taking Electrocute so that when the Wind Burst/Squall Line combo coincides at the MT’s location, it’s NOT freaking impossible. I ate Squall Line a zillion times that night before I wrote that post after the raid. And if it hadn’t been for Selyndia pointing out that Electrocute delays the Wind Burst, it never would have clicked and I would have ended up sitting myself on that fight.

What makes it different from Gorefiend? Gorefiend was a technical problem. My computer wasn’t phasing me quickly enough to allow me to complete the mechanics required for the fight. It sucked, but at least I knew I had done my best. With Al’Akir, it wasn’t a technical thing. I just could not figure out how to be right up in front for Wind Burst and simultaneously halfway out on the platform to eat the gap for Squall Line. It was so frustrating that I felt like a total failure. It upsets me greatly to fail constantly at the same mechanic without issues stemming from my computer. :P

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 9.5/10 (Very High)

– Not being prepared. This relates to the above. Back in BC, there we stood, crafting last minute Shadow Resist gear for Mother Shahraz. And a rogue tells me she doesn’t have her Medallion of Karabor, that comes from the attunement quest. There’s more to the story (scroll down a long ways to get to the BC/Mother bit) but basically, I gave all the mats I was holding to one of the officers, made him raid leader and said to the raid that I was going afk for a few.

Right there in the middle of the raid.

I got up and punched the living crap out of my couch. I yelled into a pillow. I was SO angry that, even after all of that, I removed the rogue from the raid and instructed her to go back to Shattrath.

After months (MONTHS!!!) of posts and checking in with people about their attunement needs, their resist needs, we are finally at the fight we have been preparing for and this one dumbshit rogue is like “uh, I didn’t do the heroics” and had confused the attunement questline with the Champion of the Naaru questline. Despite the fact that I had taken two hours (TWO HOURS) one day to detail the ENTIRE questline on our forums and constantly reminded people to finish that up and let us know if they needed Al’ar or Rage or whatever.

I lost it. Dar calls it “the night Kurn drank the RED haterade”. I don’t think I’d ever lost my shit to that extent because of something someone did in-game before and I know I haven’t lost it to that extent since. I was SO angry.

Kurn’s UpsetMeter: 14.72/10 (RED HATERADE TIME)

There are other things — I hate when people leave my guild, I hate missing progression fights, I hate losing valuable members of the guild due to circumstances that are unavoidable. But I think the above really sums up what really upsets me when I play this game.

Earlier Today: People That You Admire
Tomorrow: Your desktop background (on your computer) and why you chose it

Day 13 – People That You Admire

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, apotheosis, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Good morning and welcome to Contentpalooza 2011! I’ll have not one, not two, but three blog posts for you today! Two of them are Days 13 and 14 of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge and one of them will describe, in great detail and with screenshots, my raid night last night, which was both an exceedingly frustrating experience and one of the more hilarious raid nights I’ve ever had.

But first…

Day 13 – People That You Admire

This is supposed to be about bloggers and players that I admire. There are several of each, so let’s organize this into two categories.

Players

I admire my officers, all six of them.

– Dayden was basically born to be a tank. He’s outstanding at tanking and does a great job herding the cats in the raid. He does his homework and puts what he’s learned into practice. He’s a fairly reasonable sort and is Canadian and one of the best things I ever did for Apotheosis was somehow get him to be the tank officer. He doesn’t get frustrated terribly easily (last night, as you’ll see in an upcoming post today, was an exception) and I would not have reformed Apotheosis for Cataclysm without Dayden being part of my officer team. He and Daey and I made a great leadership team through T5/T6 in Burning Crusade and I can’t imagine being the GM of Apotheosis without Dayden, star of the guild-favourite game, “CAN DAYDEN TANK IT?!?!”, right there with me and the other officers. I admire his play, I admire his attitude and basically, I think he’s awesome.

– Daey. Daey, also known as “Football”, has been someone I’ve played this game with for about five years. He was in my first real guild, Fated Heroes, and, to this day, still gives me hell for choosing to bring a rogue over him for Zul’Gurub raids. My biggest reason? “Rogues can sap!” Yeah, I was a scrub. Daey turned out to be basically our best DPS ever throughout Vanilla and BC. He would have to go stand in a corner on Void Reaver and do absolutely nothing so that the tank could build up enough threat. Hell, we used to soulstone him on Hakkar so that when he inevitably pulled aggro, he could pop back up and have 0 threat and actually get DPS done. More than that, he’s a fantastic strategist who sees things on the fly that I would only see after an hour of scrounging through the logs. It’s his quick thinking that gets us through sticky situations and things like 8 waves of Hyjal trash at a time. BigWigs would announce the trash that was incoming and in those, oh, five seconds of lead time, he’d assign CC and tank targets. Doing Hyjal trash without Daey the few times we had to do it was seriously painful. This is another piece of the Apotheosis machine that I wouldn’t have done without for Cataclysm. He’s a great foil to me, we think in very different ways and see things very differently, but apart from the occasional butting of heads, we use our differences to work out what’s best for the guild in any particular situation. I admire his quick thinking, his amazing level of play, his fast reactions and his ongoing dedication to the guild. I also admire the fact that he manages to have a “real life” that includes playing a lot of hockey and respect the fact that he’s a die-hard Pittsburgh Penguins fan.

– Fog. 4 years, 7 months and 1 week younger than me, my brother came to the game just after I did and he beat me to 60. He killed Rag wayyyyy before I ever would. I probably would have gotten the old crew back together without him, since Fog only stuck around through Gruul back in BC, but having him around usually makes things more fun — when we’re not yelling at each other, as siblings do. ;) I admire his insane ability to learn a class and a role with ease. He’s had four mains: Vanilla was his druid, Fog, and he was feral and he was resto. In late Vanilla, he rolled a rogue, Slovotsky, and carried that toon into BC, where he stuck with us through Gruul, as I mentioned. In Wrath, he played his hunter, Je, then rolled a paladin, Harvey, and he’s now tanking on Harvey for us in the guild. I admire the ease with which he picks up new classes and new skills. I admire his basic understanding of the mechanics of the game and his level of play that allows him to succeed at basically anything he does, in-game. He’s currently serving as guild bank administrator for the guild and is doing a fantastic job in terms of keeping up with EP donations and the mandatory flask “donations” we have in order to keep dropping Big Cauldrons of Battle. I envy him his organizational skills and leet spreadsheet skills! I am definitely not that organized and not that mathematical.

– Darista. Again, I’ve been playing alongside Dar for about five years, as she was also in Fated Heroes. She only became an officer for us in Cataclysm, but I’ve always enjoyed her presence in-guild and in raids. I feel like I should have promoted her to officer three years ago, given what a great addition she’s been to the team! I admire Dar’s level of play, which has always been very good — and if it hasn’t been “great”, she’s done everything she could to bring it up to a great level. I admire her tenacity; if there’s a problem, she will find the damn answer! I admire her ability to communicate her ideas clearly and her ability to do it in fewer words than I do! :) I admire her dedication and loyalty to this crazy group of people and her ability to persevere through stupid in-game issues, like when she couldn’t ever load Skettis or sometimes couldn’t log in to Dalaran or a variety of technical issues. She’s a great addition to the team and I’m so pleased she’s still with us. :)

– Toga. Another former Fated Hero, Toga was my original hunter protégé. I remember out-damaging him in MC. ;) Toga was also the original GM of Apotheosis, something he accepted willingly and humbly. We lost him for Wrath and I swear to God, that’s one of the reasons Apotheosis didn’t do so well. Toga is an excellent player, a really nice guy (no, really, he’s super awesome!) and he’s probably the most reasonable of any officer. If you need someone to cut the crap and get down to the brass tacks, you want Toga. I admire that about him — he’ll look at the big picture and the details and he’ll figure out what the best course of action is. I also admire his willingness to do the dirty work. He hits our gongs on Atramedes. He used to kite General Drakkisath in UBRS. Toga does the shitty jobs and he does them well and he rarely complains about it — and when he does, it’s usually good-naturedly. I adore and admire Toga for so many little things he’s done over the years that just make me laugh or smile or see reason, I can’t possibly list them all. Just know that I am so fortunate he came back to us for Cataclysm. I wouldn’t have gotten this thing going without him around, either.

– Majik. My partner in crime on Blessing of Frost, Majik and I have been playing together since Vanilla in Fated Heroes as well. Majik is a very smart, very talented player who, like Fog, can easily slip into any role or class required of him. He’s a great DPS, a great tank and a great healer. While that’s a great trait and I do admire it about it, what I really admire is his charisma and attitude. Majik was BORN to lead smaller raids. He’s hilarious, light-hearted and makes even the most soul-crushing wipes somehow fun. Apotheosis would not have been resurrected without Majik on board. He doesn’t always get to express his personality to its fullest in 25-man raiding, which I guess is just more serious compared to crazy 10 or 20-man runs back in Vanilla, but I know it’s there and I SO wish I had that kind of presence and charisma. This is the guy who, on off-lock-out periods of ZG for us, would convince 19 other people to go do “a 20-minute Venoxis run”. Why? Simply so he could get the 1H spell dagger off Venoxis. That was the sole purpose of the entire run. But somehow, he would convince 19 other people that it’d be fun and fast and they’d get rep and coins and bijous and… yeah. God help us all if Majik starts a cult and stops using his powers for… well, not “good”, but harmless things. ;) I also really admire how even-keeled he is. He just doesn’t take things that seriously, never really lets it get him down. I’m the complete opposite and so it’s amazing to look at Majik when I’m all blah about something and he’s like “hah, that was fun!” or whatever. I bitch about Majik a LOT, it’s just how our friendship works, but I think he’s awesome. And will deny ever having written those words. >.>

Apart from those six jokers, some other players I admire:

– Fugara, the GM of Choice of Skywall. I only really got to play alongside her for a little less than six months, I believe, but Fug is the GM I wish I could be. I am nowhere near as organized or as settled into this role as she is. She was the deciding factor when I made my decision to leave my Proudmoore guild and find a new home where I could finish out Wrath. I’d narrowed it down to Choice and a guild on Hyjal and while the Hyjal guild was tempting — more progressed, offered free consumables, sizeable repairs, etc… They didn’t have Fugara. An excellent healer, a formidable leader, a great person. I admire everything about Fug’s play and leadership and she’s basically the GM I want to be when I grow up. ;) Leaving Choice sucked not only because I was leaving a good group of people, but because I was leaving Fug and leaving someone I knew I still could learn more from. So if you wonder why I constantly plug Choice and beg people to go apply there, it’s because of this woman and my overwhelming admiration for her.

– My RL Friend the Resto Druid. My friend, whom I’ve known for nearly 30 years, is the best damn druid healer I’ve ever seen. She’s an amazing player when it comes to the mechanics of the game and the encounters, but she’s just a fantastic druid healer. She’s rolled with the punches and learned a lot along the way, but she’s just hands-down fantastic. She also did an amazing job at being the healing lead for her guild despite not really wanting the position. Her dedication and tenacity in trying guild circumstances made me admire her all the more and so when I had to step in as healing lead for a couple of months while she dealt with personal stuff, I tried to be at the top of my game and get the most out of the healers the way she did.

– Fadorable. Fad is the best damn resto shaman I have ever encountered in my life. Topping dispells and healing on Yogg-Saron without even taking cleansing totem into consideration? FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC. And it wasn’t any of that stupid Chain Heal spam, either. Fad is a fantastic player and I would love to see her apply to Apotheosis (COUGH COUGH) and, by golly, I would make room for her if there was no room to be had.

Of course, I think very highly of just about every player in Apotheosis too. But these people listed above are not just amazing players to be admired for their play — it’s the additional contributions that they give. If I weren’t already at 2000+ words, I would go into detail about all the players I admire from the guild.

Bloggers

A shorter list here mostly because I’m already running super long on this post, but I admire anyone who can write properly (using good grammar and spelling — not resorting to “lol, me 2!” or “y u mad dawg” or such things) and about things in this game about which they’re passionate.

– Rohan, of Blessing of Kings. Rohan always has intelligent commentary on the game or various aspects of the game. He’s also been writing FOREVER. So not only do I greatly admire his posts, but his longevity. I mean, look at this first actual post from December of 2005 talking about, what else, paladins. Awesome post!

– Lissanna, of Restokin. Lissanna is just SO dedicated to druids, you can’t mistake her for anything else. She IS a druid. Her love (and sometimes frustration) for her class is evident everywhere. She is passionate about and dedicated to druids and it’s her long-term commitment to the class and helping others to learn about the class that I admire.

– Matt, of World of Matticus. I admire Matt as a blogger and as a GM and as a player, although the most interaction in-game we’ve ever had was him rezzing me once just outside of Stormwind during Cataclysm’s Beta. ;) Matt is a busy guy and yet still has time to have a team of bloggers blogging, still has time to GM a guild, still has time to do all kinds of stuff. I’m sure he makes mistakes, I”m sure he lets things slip, but his blog is his baby and the amount of time and care he’s put into it is something I really admire. I tend to let the blog slide when I’m busy with the guild, but Matt takes that extra step to make sure his blog doesn’t suffer due to his busy schedule.

All right, I think I’ll leave it at that!

Yesterday (well, two days ago): A Day in the Life
Later today: This Upsets You

Day 12 – A Day in the Life

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

I’m not sure if this meant what I do in terms of blogging or what I do in terms of the game. Blogging takes a back seat to all the junk I do with regards to the guild and the game, so I thought I’d share with you guys a day in the life of me-as-a-GM, at least on raid days.

What I do on a day-to-day basis depends on a lot of things, primarily whether or not it’s a raid day. Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday are our raid nights, so a lot more preparation/paperwork goes into those days.

Raid Days

If it’s a Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday, the first thing I really do when I sit down at the computer is to go to the armory and check the calendar invites to see what I have to work with. I tend to lock the raid signups 24 hours ahead of time. If you’ve accepted the invite, you’re expected to be there. If you’ve declined, you’re not expected there. If you’re “tentative”, I put you on “Standby” and if you don’t answer one way or the other, I get cranky and either hit you up via PM on the forums (or hit you up on twitter) and hope for a response or set you as “Out”.

We generally have an idea as to what we’re looking at that night, so I start compiling the available list of people and then start with making sure we have all the appropriate raid buffs available via MMO-Champion’s Raid Composition Tool.

When looking at the various encounters, I take a lot of things into consideration when it comes to putting someone into the raid if we already have all the buffs we need. This is usually in the order I think things, but for progression, I usually skip down to #4.

1) Do they need anything off the boss?

2) What’s their EPGP priority? (Would they get anything off the boss if the boss got downed?)

3) Is the fight on farm or is it progression?

4) If it’s a progression fight, can they do the appropriate amount of healing/damage that will be required of them? This involves going back through our World of Logs parses and seeing past performance if I’m not sure. If, after looking through those, I still don’t know if they can do the appropriate amount of healing/damage, I’ll generally give them a shot, even on a progression fight, and I really like making sure people have an idea of how the fight goes. I think exposure on a fight is very important, so I like to start with a basic roster that should be able to get things done and then will swap people out as needed (usually at our half-time break, but earlier if need be).

5) Has this person been sat recently? I don’t keep a spreadsheet (although I probably should) but I’m generally the person in charge of swaps and my role leads will yell at me if I screw up/etc or will let me know if they have preferences, for the most part.

So I do that for almost every fight we have planned for the night. Usually, I’ll split the raid into 9-10:30 and 10:30-12 sets and endeavour to minimize swaps unless they’re at break.

I also spend extra time making sure we have positioning organized for certain fights (group positions on Al’Akir can take half an hour on its own!) and organizing platforms for Nefarian is something I now have down to a science so I can do this on the fly, but I also spend time ensuring we have the appropriate interrupts for Nef in the raid for the half of the raid in which we’ll kill Nef. It used to take a lot longer, but I’m much more comfortable with it nowadays.

Of course, almost every single night, there’s something different that happens to screw up all of this preparation. Really, the smart thing to do would be to do it all on the fly. However, I loathe doing things on the fly. As such, I usually try to set everything up in case everything goes as it should, but that almost never happens. People are late, laggy, DCing, unable to perform, etc, etc. All of that goes into changing the roster in the middle of everything and I hate hate hate that.

I generally do the rosters/positioning in the late afternoon/early evening and communicate this to the officers on the officer section of our guild forums.

Once rosters are done, my major job for raid nights is done. Note that I haven’t actually logged into the game at all at this point.

By 8:30pm on a raid night, I log on to Mumble (so that my overlay works in-game) and join the Officer channel there. We generally spend a few minutes discussing where we’re going or any other little thing that needs discussion (EP bonuses, promotions, etc) then I log into the game on Kurn, who is the guild master toon, and I turn on bank repairs for the officers, the Raiders and the Initiates. Officers/Raiders get 100g in repairs a night and Initiates get 50g. I usually also say “Invites in about 15! Main up, repair and head to (our first destination).”

Then I get on Madrana, make sure I’m repaired myself (using my own funds) and grab 6 of each flask plus a stack of Spirit flasks and make sure I have 20 Seafood Magnifique feasts on me and make any that I’m lacking. Then I head out to where we’re going first (or where I’m zoning in first — like, I’ll sit out BH as I did last night, so I headed to BWD) while inviting the officers to the raid group and such. At this point, I’ll load up the WoL client and make sure I renamed my previous combat log so that I can start live logs as soon as I zone in.

8:45 is when invites go out and I spend time organizing the groups as per my rosters for the night (plus any changes due to various issues) and then give groups 1-5 the all-clear to zone in just before 9 and hopefully, I don’t forget to tab back out and start the logs.

The three hours we spend raiding are possibly the least hectic in a given day. ;) We take a 7 minute break around 10:30 and this is generally when I do swaps.

The raid ends at midnight, or shortly beforehand, and I’ll go back to the officer channel on Mumble and then get on Kurn to close repairs about 10 minutes after the raid ends. (I do try to close it before midnight so people don’t double-dip on repairs, but only if we finish around 11:50 or earlier.)

Then I post a thread on our forums with our WoL link with a couple of initial comments and chat a bit with the officers about issues we saw or what-have-you and then generally log off of the game and Mumble.

If we killed something for the first time, I edit the screenshot to add our guild name, the date, the boss killed and the people in for the kill and post that to the Apotheosis website. I’ll also update our progress in the sidebar and then double-check my own armory before submitting updates to Wowprogress and GuildOx. I’ll also edit a few forum posts (realm forum, Elitist Jerks, Wowhead forums) to reflect the new progress.

Once all of that is done, I generally kick back and watch some TV that aired while I was raiding or I’ll go through the logs if something’s bugging me and I generally try to get to bed between 3-4am. (I’m not working at the moment, so this is a nice luxury to have!)

God, we’re at 1200+ words already… Sorry? :)

Non-raid Days

Days where I don’t raid are either very intensive days of guild work or days where I don’t do anything and go out and have a semblance of a real life. ;)

Today, for example, I don’t raid, but I’m going out in the afternoon for a couple of hours. So here’s what I’ve done today/plan to do today.

– Made a copy of a spreadsheet and made it public for the guild to view where they are on our mandatory flask “donations” which enable us to make Big Cauldrons of Battle.

– Asked in the officer forum what the officers feel we should do on Thursday and Sunday.

– Responded to a PM from one of my former guildmates from Choice of Skywall about holy paladin stuff.

– Wrote this blog post. (I’ll often blog in the afternoons or after a raid.)

– After this, I plan to go through some of Choice’s logs to see if I can see anything going horribly awry as they work to get Nefarian down and will write Fugara (the GM) some notes if I see anything.

– I need to write to my moonkin. Last I heard, his computer threw up on him but I should check up on him and make sure he’s doing okay/he has an idea of when he can raid.

– Do a healer evaluation of the disc priest whose trial with us is nearly done, send it to him and see if anything I discover in the logs affects my final decision in whether or not he makes it to Raider.

– After eating, showering, drying my hair and dressing for the crappy, rainy weather we’re having today, I’m heading out to an appointment around 3 and should be home again by 6.

– I’ll probably have a few things to respond to — maybe my moonkin will write back, maybe my former guildie will have more questions, maybe the disc priest will write back, the officers will likely have chimed in about our plans for tomorrow. And maybe I’ll have comments here I’ll need to reply to. So I’ll respond to those people and then update the guild on where we plan to go tomorrow/Sunday.

– Then I might actually log in to the game!! haha! At this point, I’ll go through my bank and pull out mats for my weekly donations of flasks and our EP drive (this week, it’s 5 Heavenly Shards or 8 Greater Celestial Essences — I think I have the shards) and mail those to our bank toon, managed by my brother.

– If I do get to login, I’ll either farm on the shaman or level the baby paladin.

– Since Canada is in the midst of an election campaign and since I raided last night and missed the English-language debate, I’ll probably try to tune in to the French-language debate tonight. (Canadians, vote on May 2! Elections.ca for information on how and where and when to vote!)

– At some point tonight, I’ll go through our logs from last night and pluck anything interesting from a couple of longer attempts on H. Maloriak and see if I can see any trends or patterns and see if I need to yell at my healers for not respecting healing assignments, after I asked them politely to do so last night before the raid.

– I’ll end the evening with some TV.

Mondays/Podcast Days

So I do a weekly (well, mostly weekly!) podcast called Blessing of Frost with Majik and we tend to record on Mondays, either in the afternoon or the evening. This isn’t a raid night for me, so I do non-raid day stuff and then make sure I’ve edited our shared Google doc to put in all the stuff I want to talk about and then I harrass Majik to make sure he does/did the same. Then we sit down with our guest (if we have one) and record the podcast. This takes about two hours and then I put it all together and publish it either late Monday night/early Tuesday morning before I go to bed, or I publish it after getting some sleep. Hot tip: if it’s published before 10am, I didn’t sleep. If it’s after 10am, I did sleep. ;)

Every Day

Every day, I spend time responding to people, either via Twitter, email, PMs on the forums or through the blog. I read a lot of stuff to do with whatever fight we’re working on and sometimes look ahead to the next encounter(s). I’ll poke around other people’s logs and see what they’re doing and scrounge through YouTube looking for videos, too.

—

All righty. That’s about it, really. It sounds like a lot, but most of what I do is so very ingrained that I don’t have to think about it consciously. Like replying to people, checking up on people, that stuff is automatic. It’s the planning that’s a killer, especially if the plans don’t work out as intended!

Yesterday: Bad Habits and Flaws
Tomorrow: People (players/bloggers) that you admire

Day 11 – Bad Habits and Flaws

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Bad habits and flaws? Tish, pshaw and nonsense! ;)

Okay, seriously, I have a bunch both IRL and in-game, so I’ll share three of each.

In real life:

– I am stubborn as hell. I come by it naturally, being a Taurus. ;) It’s something I’m working on.

– I procrastinate. A lot. I find that I can waste time to the point where I should have a PhD in doing so.

– I have a habit of starting strong and fading before finishing a project. I somewhat lack the “follow through” instinct. Also something I’m working on. :)

In-game:

– I have a bad habit of not using my cooldowns as much as I should. I am BAD about popping Divine Favor and Guardian of Ancient Kings unless I think about when I should pop them beforehand and then remember to do so in that moment. Aura Mastery too, to an extent, but less often.

– I have a bad tendency of standing in the bad. It’s not entirely my fault, it’s due to the fact that I have, as some of my guildies claim, an imaginary video card. :P It makes moving difficult on occasion, due to my low FPS. On heroic Sindragosa, it took me forever to learn how to adapt to Blistering Cold and I eventually mastered it. The only trouble was that once every… 25-30 pulls or so, I would lag out terribly after getting gripped and would have to bubble or die. I should have this fixed by the first week of May when I get my first new desktop computer since 1999. (No joke. I have spent the entirety of my WoW career on laptops.)

– I tend to forget to do healing assignments occasionally. Whoops. I’m still rusty at the whole “raid leading” juggling and should do my healing assignments before I start in on anything else, to be honest.

Yesterday: Blog/Website Favourites
Tomorrow: A usual day in your life/online time

(Unrelatedly, Episode 16 of Blessing of Frost is now out!)

Day 10 – Blog/Website favourites

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Oh man. Blog and website favourites? This is not going to be easy.

I guess we’ll start with a couple of blogs that I always read ASAP when a new post pops up in my feed reader.

Blessing of Kings – this is one of the blogs I was reading back when I started blogging. Anytime Rohan writes something, I read it.

Righteous Defense – one of my more recent additions to the ol’ feed reader, sometime back in Wrath, Rhidach’s blog is where I like to keep mostly up to date on prot pally stuff. Protection is really my preference for an offspec on Madrana. Despite the fact I’m currently holy/holy (no joke), I occasionally enjoy tanking on Madrana. I haven’t actually tanked on her since 4.0 dropped, so I’m fondly remembering how OP I was in Wrath heroics wearing T10 tank gear… but I really feel like a failure of a hybrid if I don’t at least know the basics of another spec. I’ve never really liked retribution, although I did use it to level up in Cata’s beta and in live, too. It just made questing that much faster.

The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon – Ophelie is pretty awesome. I met up with her IRL back in January and I really enjoy reading all her posts. :)

I really do read a lot of blogs, but those are the three paladin-related blogs I run to read as soon as they’re updated.

For news sites:

MMO-Champion – Boubouille keeps MMO-Champion up to date on everything. This site is priceless.

Wowhead – I love Wowhead as an item database, obviously. Who doesn’t? But its news is getting to be competitive with MMO-Champion’s, especially with their relatively new blue post tracker. The amount of advertising is getting pretty obnoxious, though, which is a bummer.

For research, resources and help apart from the above:

Wowpedia – Everyone and their brother used to go to WoWWiki, but the Wikia hosting caused some major changes and most people involved with WoWWiki went to Wowpedia. Wowpedia is my choice of research sites when it comes to in-game information (lore, history and a lot of boss fight info).

Learn to Raid – A great new strat site with awesome videos. Some background: Learn to Raid was founded by two members of vodka, Killars (a rogue) and Kinaesthesia (a priest). Their videos are great and have been really helpful in forming our own strat variations in Apotheosis.

RaidBS – Raid Boss Strategies is an awesome site with images, written strats and generally high-quality info for the whole raid and each role within the raid (tank/heals/DPS). Not sure if it’s still being updated, though. I had to start going elsewhere (like L2R) for strats when Apotheosis hit Nefarian and the Raid BS info wasn’t up yet. (It still isn’t.) Still, some very helpful information here.

TankSpot – Ah, TankSpot. Sort of known as “the” site for raid strat videos. I used to really like the site. A lot. Ciderhelm was awesome. I still like some of the movies — Papapaint’s Heroic Chimaeron video, for example. But I can’t deal with Aliena’s voice. Drives me up the wall. I know her first language is not English and I’m sure she’s a great player, but I can’t stand to listen to her narration. Still, if you don’t have an issue with her narrating the vast majority of the videos, you may prefer TankSpot to L2R. There’s still good information, and plenty of it, it’s just not a “favourite” of mine. I list it here because of how good some of the information is, though. I wouldn’t ever go into a fight without having watched the TankSpot video at least once.

PlusHeal – A great resource for healers. There’s also a healer exchange forum if you’re seeking a new healer or if you’re a healer looking for a new guild.

Elitist Jerks – I don’t always agree with what EJ is saying, but it’s always good to be up to date with what the theorycrafters are muttering about.

WoWLemmings – Great site for recruitment!

Nothing to do with WoW:

MetaFilter – Great community blog site that is an integral part of my day. I visit it 4-5 times a day for sure.

xkcd – Awesome web comic. This one is my favourite strip because my best friend is a doctor and she was AMAZING at the “blow into the cartridge until it works” trick. I sent her this in an email and added “how on earth are you allowed into a hospital, much less an OR?” and her response was something along the lines of “hehehehehe”.

Ctrl-Alt-Del – Another awesome web comic.

And that’s enough for the time being!

Yesterday – Your First Blog Post
Tomorrow – Bad Habits and Flaws

Day 09 – Your First Blog Post

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, apotheosis, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

On April 4th, 2008 (I really need to edit the template to include the year on my posts) I posted my very first post to this blog.

Boring. It’s an intro. Hi, this is me, etc.

It’s kind of funny, though, because if you read it now versus what you read on my blog today, you would think that very little has changed in the intervening three years. There’s very little that’s actually terribly different between the facts I give in that intro post versus the facts I would give out today.

So I figured that today, I’d talk a bit about those facts I volunteer and examine the differences (or similarities) between them. :)

– I say that I’ve been playing WoW for over two years. Well, that’s over five, now. Still going, just like the Energizer Bunny. ;)

– I say I have 3 70s. I currently have 3 85s. At the time, my 70s were Kurn (the hunter), Madrana (the paladin) and Holyfog, the priest I had rescued from my brother. Today, my 85s are Kurn, Madrana and my shaman, who I got to 84 doing nothing but mining and herbing and then got impatient so I started healing on him and dinged him 85. (My brother has long-since recovered his priest and Gneiss, as he was previously and is now currently known, is an 85 PVP disc healer.)

– I say I’m the guild master of Apotheosis on the US PVE/ET realm, Eldre’Thalas. Uh, yep! Of course, there’s more to it than that. I can’t imagine having been the GM of Apotheosis for all the intervening time. I would have missed out on so many experiences and so many people!

Basically, I would be the GM for about another 11 months after my first blog post, then we stopped raiding officially, just a few months into Wrath of the Lich King, due to lack of progression/recruitment/attendance. So I moved to Bronzebeard for six months (becoming a freaking officer again way too quickly) and then to Proudmoore for almost a year (and yet again, took on healing lead duties, albeit unofficially, for about 3 months) before going to Skywall, where, at long last, I was “just” a raider. Granted, I was constantly bothering the raid leaders and the guild master with comments and such about our raids and info from the logs, but they didn’t seem to mind too much. ;) Still, it was remarkably nice to just have to focus on my job of healing again.

About six months after going to Skywall, though, it was time to come back to Eldre’Thalas and reform Apotheosis. I’d had the wheels in motion for almost a year by the time 4.0 hit and, had there been no interest in rekindling Apotheosis, I could have happily stayed with my Skywall guild for ages.

Having said that, I’m extremely happy being the GM of Apotheosis. 12/12 and 1/13 as I write this and it’s with my old crew. Daey, Dayden, Fog, Toga and Majik were all officers in the BC-era version of Apotheosis (at various times) and it’s SO good to be working with them again. And then Darista became an officer with us, too, and MAN, I wish she’d been an officer with us sooner! :) The leadership team is working out nicely and the raiders are some fantastic people and great players, many of whom I met during my travels throughout Wrath of the Lich King or through this blog. :)

(Seriously, any opportunity to talk about my guild and I’ll take it. I’m stupidly proud of this group of people.)

– I say that I want to start up a resource that will address things I wish more people knew about. I like to think I’ve been fairly successful at that. Most things I learn in this game that aren’t completely obvious do tend to get shared here, somewhere, including strats and obviously holy paladin stuff. (I do need to get back to doing more of that.)

– I say that I “might” also gripe about the game, share my victories and the like. Well, I’ve done a LOT more griping and sharing of everything game-related than I originally intended, but it’s good to have a place to rant. My blogging (and griping!) helped me through the rough time that was me doubling as the healing lead in my Proudmoore guild when my RL Friend the Resto Druid (who had been my healing lead) had to suddenly take some steps back and stop playing for a couple of months. It was because of my blogging that I was able to realize exactly how unhappy I was where I was and even when my RL Friend came back into the mix, it was too much for me.

– I say “pull up a chair, sit back, relax and get ready for some long reads. ;)” Well, you can’t say I never warned you. ;)

Yesterday – 10 Things We Don’t Know About You
Tomorrow – Blog/Website Favourites