Category: ramblings

Perseverence

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, blackwing descent, raiding, ramblings

It’s said that insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Raiding can be kind of insane.

You rely on 10 or 25 people to do their jobs perfectly each and every time. In the beginning of raid content, even the slightest error can mean a wipe. As you gain gear and experience and familiarity with the content, slight errors happen with very little issue. Even huge mistakes can be forgiven, later on. But as you’re learning it and just after you’ve gotten that sweet, sweet first kill, execution is everything.

Last night, on our 65th overall attempt on Heroic Maloriak, we got him down.

65 times we went up against this guy. 64 times, we wiped, usually in hideous combinations of Dark Sludge, Scorching Blast, Frost Orbs and Flame Jets. Oh, and Arcane Storms during green phases. Ow.

This incarnation of Apotheosis is very different from the Burning Crusade version. We were learning, all the way throughout BC about how to lead a guild, how to lead/organize raids and how not to be douchecanoes.

We’re a lot more experienced now, after getting through BC together and the start of Wrath together before going our separate ways and seeing what else was out there for us. I know I learned a lot about my personal desires and personal limits when it comes to this game, as well as how NOT to run a raid group. I picked up a lot of tips on how to be more businesslike about running raids and guilds.

The biggest difference between now and then, though, is the attitude the people bring with them to a raid night. In Burning Crusade, it was like “aw, man, we’ve wiped on this guy for an hour. BLAH, I don’t want to do this anymore,” but obviously, progression means wiping and learning. This version of Apotheosis is very, very into killing bosses and new challenges. I rather suspect that if I were to poll them, 90%+ of the raiders would prefer trying a brand new boss fight than farming old content.

I like a good farm night just like anyone else, but once the fight is done successfully, it’s time for me to turn my attention away from it and move forward to the next. Or at least, that’s what I’m supposed to do. In Burning Crusade, I was constantly re-organizing old fights, re-explaining, just for repeat kills, at least in SSC and TK. (It got better in Hyjal and BT.) Shockingly, I CAN turn my attention to future challenges with Cataclysm’s Apotheosis. We have (knock on wood, lest I jinx us) never not done a repeat kill successfully the next time. Some are messier than others, some are super clean, but the second kill is always better than the first.

Getting the first kill is always such a relief, for me. It means that the effort we’ve invested in the fight together has paid off. It means those wipes were all worth it.

Currently being 3/13 on 25-man, in a guild comprised of my long-time WoW friends, is totally worth it all to me.

Yes. Even worth this. ;)

So we’ll keep trucking along. Don’t know that we’ll go 13/13, don’t know that we’ll get heroic Nef or Cho down before 4.2 arrives. But this group really doesn’t have much quit in them, I’ll tell you that. They make me proud to be their guild master.

More Baby Paladin Adventures!

Kurn / / baby paladin adventures, dungeons, facepalm, gear, healers, lfg, ramblings, tanks

At this point, the “baby” paladin isn’t all that little. Well. He’s still a dwarf, so he’s little in that sense, but he’s, er, level 70.

I told you. I must have a screw loose!

Of note, at level 64, I soloed Banthar, Bach’lor and Gutripper as ret.

At 65, right after Gutripper’s quest dinged me, I soloed Tusker.

/flex

Bach’lor was actually rough due to the knockbacks, but I kited a bit, stunned a bit, used WoG, Flash of Light, Lay on Hands… Win. Tusker was a bit rough too, but I got through that in three tries rather than the SEVEN Bach’lor required.

If I ever see Mana Tombs or Auchenai Crypts again, I will cry and/or scream. I had never been so happy in my LIFE to see Sethekk Halls after a certain point. Hell, I was even HAPPY to get Escape from Durnholde. The first two times, anyways.

As soon as I hit 68, I started selecting Utgarde Keep specifically in the dungeon finder. There was no WAY I was going back to Auchindoun!

And before you knew it, I was 69.

That is where the suck began.

I had so many awesome tanks in the 60s, in BC content. (Lots of crappy ones, too, but mostly the DPS were crappy versus the tanks.) And as soon as I set foot in Utgarde Keep, I started getting idiots. I’ve run UK about 14 times now. I have had two good tanks from pugs. I’ve run it three times with the pally tank alt of a guild rogue, Tikari, which is great, but the realization slowly dawned on me: if I want a good tank, I’m going to have to do it myself.

Trouble was, my ret gear consisted largely of the heirloom Shadowcraft (leather) stuff. Farm heroics for Justice Points? Me? Hah! Why would I do that when I had a bonus 20% XP anyways and would never, ever inflict my fail retness on others?

I had the heirloom valor helm and the heirloom agi cloak, so if I was going to tank, I needed the tanking cloak ($$$), the tanking heirloom chest and tanking heirloom shoulders. I could deal with the helm, even if it’s mostly geared for DPS. At least it’s stam and strength and it’s plate.

Thus began the grind.

I can’t tell you how many heroics I’ve run in the last two days. Probably about 13 or so. I capped out Madrana’s VP via dungeons and then two more because healers had Call to Arms (3 Golemblood Potions and an Obsidian Hatchling for my troubles) and then did several on Kurn. At least four, since I got three Chaos Orbs and lost out on one.

That is more level 85 heroic dungeons in 48 hours than I’ve done since December.

And along the way, some notable groups:

– An all-guild group consisting of four people who were incredibly racist and vulgar, all of whom I reported after the run. They tried to recruit me, since I was healing on Madrana. Despite their douchebagginess, they were spectacular players and heroic SFK went quickly and smoothly.

– By contrast, a heroic SFK I got today had a “tank” who had less health than I did. Now, I know, I’m in some heroic raid gear, but I should almost never have more health than the tank. Really. After he got me to blow Lay on Hands AND Hand of Sacrifice on him IN THE SAME PULL, I looked at his gear, saw it was almost all the ret PVP gear, none of it gemmed or enchanted and he was using a spellpower sword. Vote-kicking him felt good.

Having said that, I think he might have been better than a fail DK tank I had in UK on the baby pally, though. Imagine, if you will, a level 71 worgen death knight “tank” who is:

* dual wielding
* not using Death and Decay or, apparently, spreading any diseases, meaning that any time I dropped even a HOLY SHOCK on him, the other 3-4 mobs would charge me and kill me
* using Rune of Lichbane on his two weapons and only using Death Strike and Heart Strike
* apparently unable to use Dark Command or Death Grip

Vote-kicking him felt less good than the fail pally “tank” from H SFK because this guy wasn’t even 80 ot 85 yet. 71. He clearly didn’t know his class that well, but my feeling bad for him evaporated the third time we wiped because mobs killed me and he didn’t know how to taunt.

– Oh, and there was that dipstick of a druid tank in heroic Lost City. He berated everyone (except me) in the group repeatedly for being “fucking retarded” and “total fail, epic fail!”. They weren’t that bad, they just weren’t putting out much more than 7-8k damage each.

This caused the tank to yell at the ret pally so much that when the tank DEMANDED the ret pally leave… he did. I feel bad for the ret, even if he only did 5k DPS on the first boss.

We had a trash wipe on our way to the third boss and the tank just LOST it on the DK (who had replaced the paladin) and I’d had enough at that point. I initiated a vote kick and the reason I gave? “Jackass.”

It passed in about 2 seconds.

We got a very nice (albeit less geared and less skilled) DK tank to replace the abusive druid tank and finished up the instance without any issues.

– On Kurn, there was a fail H Deadmines run that actually was finished successfully, but in the middle of the nightmares, my bow broke. That’s how bad the run was and how often I died. I actually tried to rez people with Mass Rez and it was still on cooldown. Squishy tank who didn’t know the instance very well and undergeared healer. Like, my resto shaman who is just barely qualified for heroics has about 15k more mana than the resto shaman who was healing us.

– Also on Kurn, a group where the shaman healer didn’t know he could (and should!) keep Flame Shock up on Ozruk in Stonecore. So he kept getting stunned (and I did, too, at the start). I don’t know WHY, but Serpent Sting doesn’t count as damage or whatever and it’s been that way for quite some time. Luckily, I always keep some Sulfuron Slammers on me, which breaks the paralysis.

So yeah, lots of “interesting” runs.

But mission accomplished! The heirloom Might chest and shoulders are mine!

And I’ve tanked!

I actually tanked with just the chest, the tanking heirloom cloak and the valor helm (and my ring, of course) twice and then once I got the shoulders, I couldn’t resist going again.

This is the first time I’ve tanked on a paladin since 4.0 dropped.

I’m still not great, I’ve never been a GREAT paladin tank. I’ve been at least adequate most of the time, though.

I gotta say, it’s a little horrifying to realize you don’t REALLY know what the hell buttons you’re supposed to be pushing. Apart from anything else, I FORGET to Word of Glory myself to keep Holy Shield up and I keep hitting Shield of the Righteous when I only have one charge of Holy Power. I know, I know… fail!

So the baby pally is almost 71 and is tanking ’till 80ish. At that point, time to race change to human and then we’ll see how the tanking situation is. The Wrath content tanks are awful from just about every run I’ve done and I KNOW that content as a tank (thanks to tanking on Madrana in heroics back in the day and thanks to tanking on my druid, also back in the day), so it’s just easier to adjust to the new pally tanking methods and going to town on Wrath instances.

I just hope no one looks at my trinkets. They’re level 60ish blue healing trinkets…

Heroic Chimaeron x2 and other fun stuff.

Kurn / / apotheosis, baby paladin adventures, blackwing descent, classic instances, raiding, ramblings

So we’ve been working on knocking out some of these initial heroic modes.

We got Heroic Chimaeron on Thursday, April 28th.

We did that during patch week, with people dropping offline like FLIES, man. So I was thrilled to get him down after just a couple of nights of work. 35 wipes all-told, then a kill on try 36. Woot!

Since, on the night that we killed him, we had 16 wipes before the kill, I was not expecting an easy second kill. Particularly given the comp we had.

This Tuesday’s signups were absolutely abysmal. We had 20 confirmed, 3 who hadn’t accepted or declined, 2 declined and then something like 7 “tentatives”.

I got a hold of the three who didn’t sign up for Tuesday and confirmed they would all be there. I got a confirmation from a tentative and decided NOT to cancel the raid ahead of time. It was a risk — I knew I might have to call the raid or split into two groups of 10 and I seriously hate both of those ideas.

Lo and behold, we had 26 on at start.

We went to BH, knocked that out and headed to BWD. I hadn’t done any raid rosters and I didn’t even make a raid PLAN because of all the different variables in who was going to be there. So we did Magmaw and ODS and swapped out a healer who was lagging and disconnecting (who had been DPSing for us on those bosses) for Fog, to come in as ret. So we did normal Atramedes and did it pretty damn cleanly. Two deaths total and we finally got to use heroism at the END of the fight instead of the start. Atramedes is my guild’s worst fight, I think, but we’re seeing improvement.

So then we’re looking at heroic Chimaeron. I had swapped the healer who was lagging crazily, remember, so we had 7 healers instead of the 8 that we got it with last week. However, last week, one of the healers was one of the people dropping offline frequently, so we basically did it with 7.5 healers as it was.

I figured “what the hell” and decided we’d give it a shot with the 7 healers.

We lost one of the tanks very early, but popped him back up ASAP. Then we lost a rogue and basically just ignored that. I figured that if we had any battle rezzes left towards the end (remember, we have a maximum of three on 25-man) we could pop him back up.

Then, with, oh, five seconds to go before Massacre, I have three people in my group with Low Health. Including me. I’d given the healers specific instructions, since we didn’t have a dedicated “floater” healer, to watch for 2 or more Low Health people in any given group as we approach a Massacre and to start from the right (or bottom) of the frames to help out that group’s healer.

I’m the bottom-most person in my group with Low Health, so I start healing the shadow priest — get her out of danger. Then I heal the disc priest in my group, who’s a tank healer and is more important than I am for the moment. And through it all, I’m praying someone, ANYONE, sees that I have Low Health. I probably should have ASKED for a heal over Mumble, but I didn’t.

Dead me!

(Part of me thinks my healers thought it would be funny to let me die like that, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t pre-planned. Mostly sure.) (I think.)

So I blow a battle rez on me by asking for a Raise Ally and am basically tapped out of mana for the next while, but everything ends up being fine but unfortunately, the shadow priest in my group died because I was running back to my spot and didn’t even see she had low health. ><

Two battle rezzes down, did I want to blow our last one NOW? I held off.

We got to the fourth feud and after that Massacre, I got our feral druid to pop up the shadow priest. We pushed, got another Massacre/Feud, which was very poorly timed and we got to P2 when most people were at about half-health. Eesh.

And then, Chimaeron/Mocking Shadows killed a total of six people before falling over.

I was sort of like “what the eff just happened?”. We one-shotted Heroic Chimaeron with one less healer than we generally have for this fight and had a minimum of issues.

“Well, I’ll take it!” I muttered to myself.

So by 10:23pm, after one hour and 23 mintues, we had done BH, Magmaw, ODS, Atramedes and H. Chimaeron.

We took our break and reconvened afterwards and decided to go play with Heroic Maloriak for the rest of the night.

We’re doing a LOT better with the dark phases! Not so good with the green phases. I’m going to have to go digging through the logs, but I’m pretty pleased to see us living through red phases, blue phases and dark phases compared to our work on him in mid-April. Basically, if we got a red phase first, we were screwed, because the sludges were still up for about 15ish seconds. Last night, they were mostly still up when we transitioned but only for a couple seconds, enough time to finish them off and get into position for the Scorching Blast. Amazing what a couple of weeks’ worth of gear will do, eh?

So it’s Heroic Maloriak on the menu for the next raid night and some more work next week, if need be.

Then… Magmaw? Atramedes? Should be interesting, at any rate.

I’m really pleased with the group and the progress we’re making, though. The repeat kills are HUGE and totally make my night when we manage a relatively easy repeat kill. That was something we were really bad at doing back in Burning Crusade. One week, we did 5/6 SSC in a single night and never did that again, I don’t think.

“Fun” stuff includes the targetting reticule bug. Being a paladin in raids, I don’t really have this issue.

Except last night, I did.

We’re there before Magmaw and I drop a feast.

Except my Raid Buff Status didn’t give out a raid warning.

“That’s weird,” I thought. And then I realized I couldn’t click my feast.

“Anyone see the feast?” I asked.

“What feast?”
“No…”
“There’s a feast?”
“I missed the feast?”

And the like.

“RETICULES!” my holy priest cried.

“Holy shit,” I responded. “Is THIS what you’re dealing with?!”

“YES!” came the replies.

“Wow. That is shitty.”

So here’s a screenshot of what LOOKS like two feasts, but the one on the right is NOT clickable and is ONLY visible to me. (Mostly to prove to my guild that no, I was not hallucinating.)

And in lowbie paladin adventures…

My lowbie paladin has caught up to my lowbie mage. Both are level 52.

I don’t know if I’m horrified or really pleased about this.

I do know that the XP is just insane with all the heirlooms and the guild XP bonus. It’s absolutely out of this world. I was level 50 for 45 minutes, I think it was.

Me, Fog, Maj and Entropia (another guildie) ran a bunch of dungeons today. Zul’Farrak, a ton of BRD (detention block) and a few Sunken Temples.

I have to say that I’m glad they redid ST so it doesn’t suck so bad, but I’m sad they covered up the hole in the center of that room. :(

BRD is glorious and delightful as always. I can’t wait to do the REST of the instance and not just the detention block. (Majik hates it, but he’ll tank for me anyways.)

I’m almost looking forward to Outlands stuff, though. I’m eagerly awaiting LBRS and UBRS runs, too. I think the Outlands anticipation is just because I’ll be THAT much closer to WotLK stuff, which I can practically do blindfolded after two years of running those dungeons.

My lowbie pally is a dwarf, but as soon as I hit 80, I’m going to race change to a human for the rep bonuses to the reps I’m actually going to need.

I feel like I’m on my shaman as a dwarf, anyways, especially with the heirloom shaman shoulders.

SPEAKING of which, wtf. I have Plate Specialization at 50, but there’s no heirloom plate healer helm? Ugh. I’m just going to stick with the mail, I guess, and be a scrub for quite some time, yet. Bonus experience trumps any and all stats.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. How about you fine folks?

Adventures as a Baby Paladin

Kurn / / baby paladin adventures, general, ramblings

I must have a screw loose or something.

Five years after I rolled my first paladin, and decided to make her holy, I rolled another one. Primarily, this is to help out those lovely people I talked about who are in Choice of Skywall. If they can’t have Madrana (and they can’t, because she’s with Apotheosis until death do they part), then why not attempt to clone myself? After all, it’s entry-level raid content that I know how to do, it’s just a matter of getting the toon to 85. Right?

After an initial burst to 22, I got to 24 in a week. Then to 26 in a week. And now, as I write this, I’ve gone from 26 to 43.

Even if Choice doesn’t need another paladin healer (they probably will, though, unless one of you fine people applies today!), it’s good blog fodder. Everything I knew about levelling a paladin is completely out of date.

– You don’t get Cleanse until 34! And even then, you need to hit at LEAST 39 in order to spec all the way down into Sacred Cleansing to allow your cleanses to cleanse magic. Crazy!

– With Holy Shock, Holy Light, Word of Glory and Flash of Light, healing is seriously boring. Two instants, one quick cast, one long cast. None of them hit particularly hard. (Except for Lay on Hands.) I keep reaching for my shift key, since Shift-Right-Click is my Clique bind for Divine Light. What’s that? No Divine Light? Nope. Not ’till 62.

– No Divine Shield! Seriously. Not until 48 do we get our much-adored bubble. I’ve been BOPping myself when I get in trouble or the tank is just that bad.

– I dinged 39 and was able to spec into Beacon of Light (I went for BoL before Sacred Cleansing) and was thoroughly amused that for the rest of that run, I kept catching BoL and refreshing it with about 15 seconds before it fell off. I have it showing up on Grid, of course, but I don’t have a duration there. My duration is usually shown to me by CLCBPT, at least on Madrana, but I hadn’t enabled it for the baby pally yet. Still, it appears that I’m able to time things pretty well even without my timers. I was very amused.

– Speaking of Beacon, wow, totally forgot how kind of lame it is when you can’t heal your Beacon target to get holy power. That’s right, no Tower of Radiance yet.

– No Hand of Sacrifice. Until level 80. Are you freaking kidding me?! LEVEL 80?! I use HoSac all the damn time at 85. And did so while levelling to 85. I can’t believe they couldn’t give me that at like, level 38 or something. Level 38 was lame. No talent point, no abilities to train. Nothing. Just “You have reached Level 38!” Well, thanks. What good is that to me?

– Glyphs. I’m limited to 3 glyphs ’till I hit 50, then I get another one of each. So strange to not have Glyph of Seal of Insight in use, but, in all honesty, I don’t really need it. I feel pretty overpowered.

The other thing I’m noticing is people don’t know the damn instances. Pretty much at all. We’re talking people don’t know where the deeds are in Scholo or even that Jandice and Rattlegore exist. People who have no idea what the pylons are in Dire Maul West. It just… makes me want to cry. I’ve been running these instances for five years. I know them all very, very well. Except Mara and Ulda. I get lost there. But hell, I’m not asking people to run BRD blindfolded or anything. Scholomance is relatively straightforward. How are people getting LOST there?

I would understand getting lost in Blackrock Spire too, but Scholo? Eh.

I’m very tempted to spec prot and queue specifically for the dungeons I know, over and over again, just to give people a good dungeon run. As it stands, the last Dire Maul West and Scholomance runs I did, I acted as the guide. “Stand here. Wait. Kill that. Go. Run. Over here!”

That said, I know very little about prot right now and, while it would be a great time to learn, I don’t have a pocket healer. Meanwhile, my brother’s warrior is 44, so I’m going to get him to tank for me, I think.

I tried questing a lot and knocked out a bunch of levels doing the Cape of Stranglethorn (I love all the Booty Bay/Bloodsail Bucs quests!) but ultimately, even though I like doing things on my own and at my own pace, I feel like it’s just faster to whip through the instances right now. Praise be to any god you believe in, I only got Gnomer twice. Woot! :D

So, yeah. Weird to not have bubble, HoSac or Tower of Radiance. Weirder still to be the only one who knows the instances in so many cases. I need to do those videos I was talking about ages ago, but I’ll hold off ’till my new computer shows up.

But seriously, go apply to Choice of Skywall if you’re a holy paladin who’s looking for a new home, so I don’t have to. ;D

Helping out some friends…

Kurn / / guild, ramblings

When I was getting Apotheosis together, one of the things I kept hearing over and over was “you are passionate about your guild, you can tell from your posts about it!”

I’m definitely invested in and passionate about Apotheosis. What good GM wouldn’t be invested in and passionate about their guild?

Before I restarted Apotheosis and after I spent 10 months being abused by a jackass of a GM/RL/MT… I joined Choice of Skywall.

It was exactly what I needed at the time. I knew I didn’t want to be done raiding before the expansion came out, so I joined them in June of last year. It was strictly a temporary thing — I made it clear in my application that I was only there until 4.0 dropped or slightly after. Definitely gone by the time Cataclysm launched.

These people embraced me. They knew I was a player who was more advanced (I was 11/12 25-man in heroic ICC and I had my drake) than they were but I was careful not to be too bossy (well, mostly!) and I LOVED being just a cog in the machine and doing what they needed me to do.

I don’t normally talk too specifically about people on my blog, but the GM of Choice, Fugara, is far and away the best GM I could have ever had. She’s the reason why I joined Choice over this other guild on Hyjal. I cannot say enough good things about Fug. Go read my Day 13 post about people I admire for more about why Fug is awesome.

Choice is made up of more than just Fug, though. Beez, whom you may have seen posting comments here, now and again, is a great tank and was just promoted to tank officer. He’s solid, knows his stuff and is a nice guy, to boot. I had good times healing him both in-game and in the Cataclysm beta. :)

Geng… is one kick-ass arcane mage. Of all the DPS in Choice, Geng is one I miss a lot! His exceptional play, his hilarious stories and him accidentally keying into Vent while bitching at someone who was sitting on his car (or, alternately, had done something bad regarding something to do with the March of Dimes) has to be heard to be believed. You just sit there and pray Geng never gets that pissed off at you. ;) He’s a great guy and a great player. He ALWAYS had my back when I had the Unbound Plague on heroic Putricide. The downside? He’s a gnome. But he’s awesome. I love Geng and I miss him bunches.

The warlocks were pretty awesome, all of them. Sanevink’s a good player, he’s polite, nice. Daemyn’s a competitive one and she’s fun to be around. Jorik, who is now playing a DK named Forek, was similarly polite and nice and we’ve chatted some since I’ve left. Good people, all of them.

Thornstar is a great moonkin who’ll pitch in to heal if needed. Hell, he pitched in to tank sometimes, too. Great team player, great guy.

Shamownia… with his deep voice and usually inappropriate comments, I would get a case of the giggles pretty frequently. He made raids fun. Excellent player as well.

Mylana was a rogue and he now plays his holy paladin for the guild. Mylana’s a great player with a lot of attention to detail and he has sucked it up and switched to his paladin for the guild, without being asked to or anything. Very nice guy, very good player and hopefully following in the grand tradition of, well, me and Walks.

Speaking of healers, Fugara is, of course, an excellent healer, but the others who are still there from when I was include Yggdrasil (officer/healing lead, whose dulcet tones can relax you oh so well!) who is a kick-ass resto druid and Vvtra who’s a great resto shaman as well.

Yeah, four healers are still there from when I was. Turnover sucks, but it happens. That is a solid core and they need more healers. I’m trying to level another paladin to try to help out on my offnights, but they need help NOW.

They’re 11/12 25-man (just need Al’Akir) and have done 12/12 on 10, so they know the fight, they just need the reliable people, especially healers!

These people embraced me when I was bitter, jaded and pretty close to quitting the game for a time. They made me feel wanted and useful, they forgave my BOPping Bonsey the bear instead of LOHing him on heroic Festergut during my very first raid with them and they’re just a really good bunch of people who could use a couple of solid healers. (But also some DPS.)

So if you’re not happy with your guild situation, please, please, please check out Choice of Skywall. They’re an Alliance guild who raid from 9pm-12am ET on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. They’re 11/12 on 25 and do loot via EPGP. They have amazing leadership and a fantastic GM.

Give them a shot. Tell them Kurn (or Madrana, I suppose!) sent you. :)

Randomly…

Kurn / / ramblings

Ladies and gentlemen, I write to you today with a Very Important Message.

It’s Omnotron.

Not Omnitron.

Not Omnomnomitron. (Although the first time I saw it, it was funny. The subsequent 2981 times, not so much.)

Omnotron Defense System.

Go check your in-game achievements if you doubt me. Or, here, check it out:

Heroic: Omnotron Defense System

Also, as a follow-up, it’s Nefarian, not Nefarion.

Thank you and have a good day.

This public service message has been brought to you by the fact that I don’t want to keep digging through 4.1 patch stuff ahead of recording the new Blessing of Frost tonight.

Catching Up

Kurn / / raiding, ramblings

Oddly, I have posted almost every day so far this month and I have said remarkably little about what’s going on for me.

I’ve been dogsitting. For 10 days now. Gah. My parents should have landed and my brother should be picking them up at the airport by now, so I get to go home tomorrow after Easter dinner. YAY!

The backlight on my laptop died. The screen works, but it looks like you’re reading stuff from behind six pairs of sunglasses. So I went out and bought an external screen, which is what I was planning to do already, since my shiny new computer will be arriving in a week or so. I also bought external speakers and a new desk lamp — and then today, I bought a new desk chair that’s being delivered on Wednesday.

In-game, I finally, finally got Shackles of the End of Days off Cho’gall on our 9th kill of him.

Yes, I also got Superior. The plate healing bracers never dropped for me in regular Grim Batol or heroic GB or heroic Deadmines. Painful.

This week… well. I guess we’ll see what next week brings with it, but this week was pretty underwhelming in terms of attendance. So much so that we cancelled Thursday (along with Sunday, for Easter), leaving us with one, count ’em, one raid night, on Tuesday.

Boy, did we take advantage of that.

Off it was to Bastion to kill heroic Halfus. Done!

Off to Blackwing Descent to clear it, with pulls on heroic Chimaeron for a little bit. Done!

In three hours, we killed 7 bosses, including a one-shot of Nefarian, which was pretty effing sweet.

For some, seven bosses might not be impressive. For us, that’s pretty significant. At least it shows us we can do that sort of thing every week if we really want to.

So we’ll see where we end up in terms of attendance next week. If it’s still super craptastic, we’ll have to open up some more recruitment spots. As it is, I eventually heard from my AWOL moonkin and we’ll have to replace him due to RL stuff, I think. Pretty sad, because he was a great player for us.

I haven’t done much this week in WoW, to be honest. I think it’s a good thing we cancelled Thursday — I think some of us could really use the break. I haven’t missed a raid since we started raiding on January 4th, for example, so it’ll be nice to log in on Tuesday (assuming the servers are up, if it’s patch day!) and really WANT to raid and kick some ass.

Anyhow, that’s it for now. Must pass out. :)

Day 20 – Last Day Playing WoW

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

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

See, I’ve always seen my last day of playing WoW as something I wouldn’t know was happening at the time. I envision myself not being guilded, not logging on much and then, one day, not logging on at all until I realize… hey. I’ve stopped playing WoW.

As such, this is a bit of a difficult challenge. If I were to consciously stop playing WoW, what would I do on my last day?

Let us assume that, in order to stop playing WoW, certain requirements have to be met.

1) For one reason or another, I am no longer in Apotheosis. Whether that would mean that the guild has fallen apart or that I’ve just moved on is irrelevant. There’s very little chance of me choosing to stop playing if I’m still in Apotheosis and we’re still an active guild.

2) Majik and Fog must also have stopped playing. I had a lot of fun on alts with these two bozos during Wrath, so I imagine I’d still play, even occasionally, if they were still playing, too.

3) My friends on Proudmoore must have stopped playing, or have stopped playing during times when I can conceivably play with them.

4) Choice must no longer exist, since I’m fairly sure that if anything goes wrong with my guild and we fall apart, I’ll high-tail it to Choice, if they’ll have me.

So with all of those conditions met, there wouldn’t be a lot TO do in the game for me. No running dungeons with friends, no raiding, nothing of the kind.

I think what I would do is load up Kurn with all my money (which, at the moment, is a fairly modest amount) and go to Darnassus and Teldrassil and give out 1000g to a variety of lowbies, until all my money is gone.

The lowbies would have to be unguilded, not wearing any heirlooms or anything of the kind. They would have to be actual new players to the game.

Once done with that, I’d probably go try to kite Spellmaw to Everlook in my T0.5 gear for the fun of it and then hop on to Madrana to log her out in her T0 gear in Stormwind.

Then back on to Kurn to log out, in the T0.5 gear, just outside the entrance to Strat Undead. Strat UD was my favourite classic instance and probably the second high-level instance I ran. I know every nook and cranny of that instance, every mob, every pull. I did the 45-minute run three times, although the first one didn’t count because either my cat, Whisper, or Tia’s imp, Volloz, got the killing blow on the Baron. The second time was at about the 43-minute mark and essentially had our buddy Football “tanking” by virtue of hamstringing the mobs that were trying to kill Tia and Tandrace. The third time, my cat tanked it and we did it with Crypt, Tia, Tan, Majik and myself. And we did it in 39 minutes.

I loved running that place and it seems fitting that Kurn would log out in the hallway leading to the instance entrance, in T0.5 gear that was acquired thanks to one of the more challenging questlines in the game, part of which took place there.

I still think it’s a lot more likely that my interest in the game will wane over time and that I won’t know it’s my last day when it IS my last day, but if I made the choice to stop playing, that’s pretty much what I’d do.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the end of the 20-Day Challenge! Thanks so much to Saga for writing it up and challenging us all to do it. I had a lot of fun. :)

Yesterday: In Your Bags/Bank
Tomorrow: Possibly nothing at all!

Day 19 – In Your Bags/Bank

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

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

Oh, God. If there’s one thing more cluttered than my UI, it’s my bags and my bank. Click on the images for much larger versions.

First up is Kurn’s bags and bank.

And now Madrana’s.

Feel free to ask me any questions about any item you see, haha. Most of the things in my banks have long, storied histories. The stuff in my bags is stuff I want that’s easily accessible, mostly. In the case of Madrana’s bags, this includes my laughable ret gear and my laughable tank gear.

Yesterday: Your Favourite Outfit
Tomorrow: If this was your last day playing WoW, what would you do?

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)