Category: general

Updates and Ramblings, as per usual…

Kurn / / general, ramblings, world events

So, first of all the Armory is sucking. It hasn’t updated my pally since July 1st.

As such, I have pictures to share.

mad-flamewarden

This is probably the only title/world event achievement Madrana will get, just because she was so close to getting it after last year. I’d gone through and honored/desecrated all the flames on … probably all three of my characters (hunter, paladin, mage) last year, and killed Ahune at least once on each. Hell, I tanked Ahune on Madrana, which was hilarious.

I honored/desecrated just about all the flames on three characters this year, too, only I didn’t do anything with the mage and did all the flames with my shammy. Got a full bar of experience, too!

mad-bfd

Some people from my old guild, Apotheosis, have come by Bronzebeard and are transferring toons or rolling alts. Alts need run-throughs, of course. And so Madrana got her BFD achievement.

mad-master

While killing things for a friend who was questing in Ashenvale, I took the opportunity to finish out my Unarmed skill, which also got me Master of Arms. Shweet.

Not so shweet: getting tricked into going to an Ulduar 10. Someone in my guild, who has been pestering me to go for WEEKS if not MONTHS at this point, asked me to go “for fun”. So, considering it was pouring rain outside, I went. Turns out it wasn’t “for fun”. It was “for hard modes”. If I weren’t a decent human being, I would have left the group RIGHT THEN AND THERE. But then they couldn’t have done the instance. So I stuck around, at least until my RL plans were going to settle themselves, and got a few achievements.

Flame Leviathan with 4 towers up:

mad-fl-hard

XT-002 after breaking his heart:

mad-xt-hard

Just a note — getting something like four bombs IN A ROW is FTMFL. I got Light Bomb, then Gravity Bomb, then Light Bomb AGAIN, then Gravity Bomb AGAIN. Of course, if I hadn’t spent 30 seconds running around like a moron, I would have been completely out of mana, so I guess it wasn’t too tragic. And we got the kill anyways.

Another friend transferred his druid over and got it in his head that he wanted to get the Guardian of Cenarius title, by getting exalted with the Cenarian Circle and Cenarian Expedition. He ground rep for three days to get exalted with CC and has been steadily working at CE. Of course, after a certain point, one of the best ways to get CE rep is…

mad-heroic-sv

Which Madrana’s done at least a dozen times, but definitely not since 3.0 dropped.

The druid in question is levelling resto (no joke!) and knows that the Idol of the Emerald Queen is basically the best resto idol until Wrath. So we did a quick Shadow Labyrinth boss kill (it dropped) and then cleared a bit of trash so that I could get rep and…

mad-exalted-lc

So that was kind of sweet.

In other news, Yogg down for the third time and still no trinket from Mimiron. I’m beginning to think that Pandora’s Plea doesn’t even exist…

Whew.

Kurn / / general, shamans, world events

Finished all the fires in the old world, Outlands and Northrend on my shammy. Got easily a full level of experience and a whackload of gold. And none too soon, either, since Midsummer ends in 4 hours.

Go me.

The shammy.

Kurn / / general, ramblings, shamans, world events

According to WarCraftRealms.com, my shaman was level 14 on June 16, 2007. Since then, she’s moved from Eldre’Thalas, to Proudmoore, to Bronzebeard and back to Eldre’Thalas (to supposedly level with my brother on his rogue… We ran one Nexus together, did some quests and, after that 3 hours together, over the course of two days, he got bored.). She’s had an interesting existence.

Right now, she’s honoring and desecrating all the fires she can get to because, DUDE, with the 10% experience shoulders, that’s 22k experience for a desecration and 11k experience for honoring a flame.

That’s a ton of XP!

Of course, there’s less than 24 hours to take advantage of it, so I did Outlands and am almost done with Eastern Kingdoms. I’ve gained about half a level of XP from it today. Which, at level 72, is pretty substantial. And since it’s all *quests*, your rested doesn’t vanish. Pretty sweet.

Plus, you get some gold too, which is also nice.

Anyways, of note, I healed Azjol-Nerub on the shammy tonight for the first time. Level 77 prot warrior tanking made things much easier. ;) And you know what ELSE makes that place a CRAPTON easier as a healer? CLEANSING TOTEM. Best frigging totem in the entire UNIVERSE. EVER. Geez. Absolutely disgusting how awesome that is. Imagine — one GCD to drop the totem… instead of spamming Cleanse, at a certain mana cost AND countless GCDs… It was fun.

Best part — got a resto belt upgrade from the last dude, then the quest rewards were great as I got resto gloves from one quest and DPS boots from another. Dual specs are fun. :)

About to ding 73 when I honor/desecrate my next fire, too. Only four more levels ’till I can fly in Northrend. Cannot come soon enough.

Random thoughts…

Kurn / / facepalm, general, raiding, ramblings

There are far too many kinds of raiders.

1) Those who don’t want to do any work and get dragged through content for phat lewtz.

2) Those who don’t even care about loot and only want to get through content for the sake of having gone through it.

3) Those who like farm nights because it means they can be gracious and give their spot up to someone while they sit on standby.

4) Those who hate farm nights because they get bored easily and it’s hard to maintain concentration and yet they have to go because the guild is low on their spec/class/etc.

5) Those who like progression nights because it means working on something NEW!

6) Those who like progression nights because it means the possibility of NEW LOOT!

7) Those who hate progression nights because they’re cheap morons who can’t figure out how to make gold in this game.

8) Those who hate progression nights because they think they’ll put in all this effort and then won’t be on for the kill which will, of course, not be tonight.

All of this is rattling around inside my head.

Is it a GOOD thing that I’m rarely on standby? Sure, because I like content, I’m getting emblems of conquest, chances on loot, DKP…

But it’s also a bad thing, because raid time is split between the other pallies, it’s a bad thing because I’d LIKE to get a night off, now and again…

Tonight, well, last night was Tuesday and we had like, 34 people online. Wednesday, we won’t have that many. Thursday, we’ll have less. It confuses me. Then again, I never did understand loot whores or people who didn’t *want* to progress.

Anyways.

A-posting we will go…

Kurn / / facepalm, general, hunters, paladins, raiding, ramblings, ulduar, world events

Haven’t written much here about raiding of late. Or much of anything barring the 3.2 holy paladin changes that will KILL ME. But this isn’t a post about 3.2. It’s a post about recent achievements, recent happenings and the fact that I miss being remotely knowledgeable about hunters.

The big thing… Yogg died on June 18th.

heroic-secrets

Continue reading “A-posting we will go…”

A question.

Kurn / / apotheosis, general, raiding, ramblings

Which is cooler?

ToonName, Hand of A’dal

or

Twilight Vanquisher ToonName

I think that, given the fact that Hand of A’dal was removed when 3.0 came out and that Twilight Vanquisher is now for the previous tier of content versus the previous expansion… Hand of A’dal is cooler.

I’m both, on my pally. But I earned Hand of A’dal by leading the raids that led to that title. I did it with friends of mine. Twilight Vanquisher was the most challenging fight I’d ever done as a healer, though, and I felt like I earned it, and it was snazzy, but it didn’t mean the same as Hand of A’dal.

So I’m still reppin’ Apotheosis with the Hand of A’dal title.

BTW, our Illidan kill is up at warcraftmovies:

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=115477

Think I’m gonna try to level the shammy a bit. I can’t believe I moved her back to Eldre’Thalas for like, 3 hours of playtime with my brother. Sigh.

Gutted.

Kurn / / facepalm, gear, general, paladins, ramblings

I am absolutely gutted by some of the paladin changes coming up for 3.2. Like, just ruined.

  • Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.
  • Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.

30%?! THIRTY PERCENT?! Are you KIDDING me?! I was playing a paladin when Illumination was at 100%. I was there when they nerfed it to 50% and then reconsidered and buffed it back to 60%. I am STILL bitter about THAT nerf and that was two years ago! And now they’re halving THAT number?!

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.

Honestly, I know a lot of people complain about stuff like this, but this is proof that no one at Blizzard plays a holy paladin in Ulduar. If they did, this wouldn’t happen.

I feel like we, the players, are being punished because Blizzard itemized us TOO WELL in tier 7, which is why we’re looking at T8 and going “hah, as IF,” and all kinds of plate Mp5 gear is getting DEed. The answer, Blizzard, is NOT to nerf the living shit out of the class. The answer is to ITEMIZE BETTER for T9. Give up T8 as not remotely worth our time and have Tier 9 be *awesome* for us so we WILL give up Tier 7.

5% less intellect, half the mana regen I normally get… do you REALLY think that’s the way to get me to let go of my T7 4-piece bonus? NO. 5% off the cost of Holy Light? I’m going to cling to that even MORE tightly now.

Oh my God, the sheer rage and disappointment is just… wow.

… in good news, Yogg to 5% last night.

But OH MY GOD, Illumination to 30%?!?!?!

Must breathe and later compose a forum post to post on the cesspool that is any official Blizzard forum, in the hopes that this madness can be stopped.

Bet you $10 that they revert it to 45% or so and everyone takes it as a victory, too. Everyone except me, that is. Fuckers.

Woot. (Ulduar Reset 6, Night 2)

Kurn / / gear, general, paladins, raiding, ramblings, shamans, ulduar

Went in, did Hodir (1-shot), Thorim (3-shot — with a new tanking tunnel situation) and Freya (1-shot) and then worked on General Vezax.

Got him DOWN.

Most hilarious part of the raid: someone asked if I’d gotten a GM to hack my account and add more mana to my mana pool. Why? I had 30989 mana while raid buffed with:

Flask of Distilled Wisdom, Blessing of Kings, Improved Mark of the Wild and Arcane Intellect.

Then I switched my gear around: T8 chest, 4-pc T7.5, Greaves of the Rockmender, plus my Figurine – Sapphire Owl (with 2×16 int) and… the pièce de resistance… the Pendant of the Violet Eye. That’s right. From my very first Aran kill. Of course, I’m also a JC, so I have 3×27 int gems in various spots in my gear and I’m an alchemist so instead of 65 int from the flask, I get about 98 intellect, with help from Mixology AND Divine Intellect.

Hawt.

So that’s two new bosses in two nights. Things are going well, progression-wise. Yogg-Saron next. It’ll be nice to get Sara to shut the hell up. She’s more annoying than Jaina was.

In other news, some old friends from Apotheosis have made alts on my new server and so I’m transferring my shammy over before she’s hit 77. She’s, uh, still 70. /sigh

But she brings with her a ton of Northern Spices, some gems, a frozen orb, some odds and ends, and 1400g. Not that my pally really needs more money, but it’ll go towards getting the shammy epic flying and cold-weather flying at 77.

Ulduar, Reset 5, Night 1

Kurn / / general, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

So, Mimiron didn’t die on Monday. Still not entirely sure what the reason for the suckage was, but there was definite suckage going on.

That said, they made me an officer. My friend Majik tells me that I fail at being mediocre. I blame my all-girls, private school education, which had a focus on leadership. I had no idea I had leadership skills until a few years ago, but hey, apparently I do and apparently they’re not all that rusty.

“While we wait, I have a quick announcement. I’m happy to welcome a new person to our Officer corp. She has exhibited exemplary skills and will be a strong asset to the Guild leadership.”

Anyways, that was Monday.

Tuesday, the RL decided to go after FL with towers up — hard mode. So we spent about an hour and a half or so working on +2 towers (Mimiron’s and Thorim’s) before just ruining Mimiron’s tower and doing +1. And I did it in a siege engine, completing my 3-car garage achievement. Woot!

heroic-3car

Then we tried 4-minute Ignis, also known as Heroic: Stokin’ the Furnace, without a ton of success. So we just killed him after about 8 or 9 attempts and then went across to kill Razorscale. After that 1-shot, we had a couple tries on XT before getting him down and called it there.

And then, one of my old healers from my old guild got an invite to my new guild. He’d applied a couple days ago and we’d had the interview on Monday evening, and he transferred over last night. I cannot describe the awesomeness of  having another healer there that I know I can trust. Healing is definitely a weak spot in my current guild and I hope to help fix that… but having this particular healer with us will make a huge difference to my own personal attitude, primarily because he is AWESOME and also because I know how he heals and he knows how I heal. That familiarity is going to be nice — I won’t have to watch his targets out of the corner of my eye, nor will I worry about him missing Pain Suppression.

In fairness to the healers in my current guild, I trust two of the priests a lot, but it’s just not been the same as my old group 4 from Apotheosis. I mean, there was me, this priest, a resto shammy, another paladin (usually) and sometimes a resto druid or another priest. Group 4 was the healer group, usually. And it was fun! We bonded. Group 4 represent! Never mind that this priest is the ONLY member of Group 4 I still speak to… It’s nice to have an actual friend over there.

I feel moderately bad that he’s come over to my new server, though. I left behind a lot of friends on ET, people I’d played with for years. I really needed a fresh start and to establish myself as a healer, not as a raid leader or officer or GM. And I still feel bad about leaving the server and all those people. So that my guild is an opportunity for this priest makes me feel like I poached him, although I didn’t. He told me he wasn’t happy in his current raiding guild and wanted a place that approached it a little more like a job, and was my guild recruiting?

Given that our weak spot is DEFINITELY the healers, I asked him if he was sure, then told the recruitment officer about the possibility. Then he apped and the members were like “interview immediately” and “not sure why he’s got spirit when he’s disc, but other than that, looks good” and stuff. We had his interview and he was offered a spot and that was that.

Hopefully he’ll get into the raid tonight. I’d love to heal with him as soon as tonight. I imagine he’d be on the Steelbreaker tank with me, on the active Kologarn tank with me and I might see if we can get him to run the tunnel on Thorim, although he’s never done it before. Well, that might be a little mean. ;) Really, a holy priest would be ideal for the tunnel with all the prayer of mending, renew, shield, CoH goodness. But I don’t have that many issues, personally, and even a disc priest would have more mobility than me.

Anyways, I ramble, therefore I am.

OH, and at least ONE of my guildies has discovered this blog. I’m kind of glad I’ve left all kinds of names out of my various bitchings. ;) /wave to M. ;)

Ulduar Reset 3, Nights 2-3; Noble Garden & Orphan's Week

Kurn / / general, raiding, ramblings, ulduar, world events

Dear Lord, so much to catch up on.

Basically, nothing happened in Ulduar on Wednesday. Except that we died. A lot. On Thorim. What a bitch that guy is.

Thursday, we got Thorim down after about 2 hours, after some practice with a slight change in our strategy that involved me, a holy paladin, being the sole healer in the tunnel. As opposed to Wednesday night. When a holy priest and a resto druid were in there. Or as opposed to earlier Thursday night, when just the one holy priest was in there.

<drums fingers on desk>

Right, so you substitute the LEAST MOBILE healer in the entire game for the two MOST mobile healers in the game for a portion of the fight that includes a lot of running around.

<drums fingers on desk>

I had a couple of hairy moments in general, sure. And one pull, I lost my tunnel tank entirely — looks like it’s because he had two adds on him at once. Maybe a mage screwed up?

Anyways, in the span of 3.5 seconds, he took 45000+ damage and was only healed for 5519 from a non-crit Holy Shock, about halfway through. Nothing I could do, I was still casting.

But apart from that, it worked really well.

So here’s my question: Am I really that awesome or do the TWO healers who did the job on Wednesday truly suck? Because, really, there is no WAY I should have done better in the tunnel than either of them. But I kept the group up pretty much the whole evening. Lost the tank once, lost one mage once. Aaaaaand that was it.

I mean… priests just have way too many tools to not get through that. Prayer of Mending. Renew. Power Word: Shield. Seriously. Just… so many tools. Meanwhile, a druid may have fewer tools, but they have the mobility that I lack. While strafing left and right, they can use Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Rejuvenation… I have Holy Shock followed by an instant Flash of Light IF Holy Shock crits.

So, really. I don’t get it.

Anyways, due to the fact that I was in the tunnel group (and will likely be stuck in the tunnel healing forever, now), I got an achievement.

heroic-takeyouallon

Of course, our Thorim kill was extremely messy. How messy? Four people standing, that’s how messy.

heroic-thorimdead

1 elemental shammy, 1 enhancement shammy, 1 warlock and 1 disc priest.

This is how I died:

Thorim Chain Lightning hits Madrana for 52531 Nature. (23927 Resisted)

Yeah, he kind of enraged, too.

Due to various circumstances, I had to log at that point for over an hour, came back and they just had killed Ignis and then called the raid. No raid Saturday this week or next, so my next raid is Monday.

Which is good, because hi, Noble Garden and Orphan’s Week, you pieces of crap.

Like I said in a previous entry, Kurn gets the world events and their titles, Madrana gets raid stuff.

Thank God, because no WAY was I going to do Noble Garden on Madrana after doing it on Kurn. NO WAY.

Camping/running around for eggs? Dumbest thing in the entire universe.

Laying an egg in Un’Goro when you can only turn into a bunny when a friend casts it on you? Also dumb.

I managed to get it all done, but WOW, did it suck.

kurn-ng

Last achievement was Desert Rose, dropping a flower just across the border from Tanaris in Thousand Needles.

Which meant that I was now free to focus on Orphan’s Week. Oh, the joy.

It’s actually not a hard bunch of achievements… just do some dailies with your orphan, eat some food… and do some battlegrounds. Oh, God, the pain.

First of all, Arathi Basin’s assault a flag is stupidly easy.

1) Get into a fresh AB.

2) Run like hell for Stables, make sure you’re mounted and have your Orphan out.

3) Cap Stables.

Seriously, it was that easy. Not so bad, right? Well, not yet.

WSG’s return the flag sucked. I played like, four games (I know, I know, but remember that I hate to PVP and that four WSG games is equivalent to 100 matches for anyone normal!) and finally got that portion of the achievement while clicking so furiously on the horde PROT WARRIOR with 45k health that I didn’t even realize I’d gotten it when I saw the flag vanish.

kurn-flag-wsg

Woot!

Incidentally, since I don’t BG much (read: at all), I was amused to get:

kurn-damagecontrol

300,000 damage or healing in a single BG on players. Sweet. I always thought I’d get this on Madrana, since I have been known to go in and healbot through things on very rare occasions, but nope, she doesn’t have it yet and Kurn got it tonight.

AV took me three turtles to get the achievement. I did that by miraculously getting Crusader Aura and jumping ahead to Iceblood Tower, hauling out my orphan on the way up and being the first to assult the flag by literally a second. Thank you, goodbye, /afk.

That means all I have left is the flag in EotS (uggggggh, I hate that place, but at least there are many, many flags in the course of one match) and Utgarde Pinnacle. Then I can actually finish the quests with my Draenei Orphan (already did the Human one) and then be done with this accursed holiday.

Probably doing a Naxx 25 tonight (Sunday) for fun — maybe I can actually get an upgraded ring or trinket, maybe my 7.5 chest?