Still Looking

>Thunk thunk<
Is this thing on?

Oh hi there. Yeah. So I guess it’s been a while?

Took a break from raiding. And sort of a break from Wow. Not a real one. I leveled my shaman to 85. Poked around at a few things. But I’ve been concentrating hard on my writing and, well, WoW was feeling boring for a while. I knew I’d be back.

I took a long weekend this past weekend and when I finished Mass Effect 3 (wow, the ending was dumb on so many levels) didn’t have much else to do. Fortunately I’d already scheduled a fun raid for Saturday night. We had a great time. Zari talked about it and we had a special guest star, Arioch, come help fill out our roster. And of course the lovely Bocat and Repgrind were there. But they haven’t written about their experiences yet so I can’t link directly to them. So there!

We had some wipes on things we maybe shouldn’t have wiped on. The 8 second cooldown on cleanse really threw me. As did the fact that they renamed it. Which I realized after our wipe on Zon’ozz. Oops. Mana felt tight but Rep and I two healed it and none of the wipes were down to healing. I blame Log. Not really but when the off tank disconnects randomly it makes thing tricky.

Better yet was when we went to do spine, Log doesn’t stand in a hole and goes flying off the dragon 18 seconds in. Thanks to the high dps and people being on the ball, we one-tank two-heals the whole fight. I guess that 35% nerf makes a big difference. I remember when that fight was a healing nightmare.

Then Deathwing died. He dropped the Blazing Drake which I won and totally didn’t get a screen shot. Oops. But it’s cool, trust me.

Sunday I got bored. So I decided I needed a chopper. They were selling for 40k on the AH. Fortunately Rev’s hunter/engineer has the pattern so we went on a quest, grabbed the mats, and made me a chopper. Of course I had to learn it first on the gnome mage. Gnomes look so silly on the chopper. I gave Approximate a ride.

Then I decided to clear up alts a little. That worgen warlock was never going to level past 20. I just don’t like worgen enough. So I stripped her bare and got Rev to fly her somewhere vaguely appropriate for a suicide.

Eh, maybe not the best screenshot but killed by an angry fire demon seems ok for a warlock. Then I started a new one – but hey, I’ll save some of those stories for later, huh?

Anyway. Had a great time. Looking forward to pandas. Probably going to do a whole post about it but I need two dps for a Saturday night raid in MOP. I’d kill for a hunter but we could work in a lock, mage, rogue, monk, dk… or double up on something we’ve got already.

Analogue out…

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Falahla in the Sky with Dragons

A giant, spectral Falahla floats over Stormwind, riding a giant, spectral dragon. Trade Chat is very very puzzled.

We went into Firelands last night to kill Ragnaros as the last step of getting Falahla the legendary staff. It went pretty quick once we got people – had to convince a guildie to bring his undergeared alt tank, but it only took three tries to kill Rags. Falahla looted the heart and it was back to Stormwind for some roleplay!

Is that…. is that a dragon? In Stormwind? It’s kind of big….

The sky gets kind of crowded between Falahla, the dragons, and all the spectators. I think half of Trade Chat joined us to watch!

Boom! Guild achievement spam! Grats Falahla and thanks to everyone in Crits and Giggles who helped. It started as a raid group project but in recent months we’ve done runs on off nights with guildies to fill in and all the help was awesome. Now we as a guild have a current-tier legendary. Wow.

Posing with our new dragonling pets and our guild mascot dragon pet! That was fun. Let’s not do it again sometime because I hate Firelands now ;-p

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You’re so bad, you don’t know this post is about you

Sunday afternoon, I logged onto my not quite baby shaman. She was only a couple frames from 79 and Rev had been raving about how fast Northrend levels are now. “Run two dungeons, ding” is about how he put it.

We did a couple together – Oculus, where we got in halfway and had the rest of the party die because their dragons disappeared on them. Which takes an hour. They were a bit slow…. but said their real problem had been a healer not healing them. Oh boy. I hadn’t played Anastrophe in ages. Still, I had Vuhdo all set up so random mouse clicks would do something.

I only had to heal one trash fight and a boss, then it was dragons time. Cool! I was always good at that! I was on a green and we started and I learned that…. you can’t target the other dragons through Vuhdo any more. You used to be able to. Oops. Well, everyone else (except Rev) was bad on that pull and we wiped. Came back, I activated “friendly name plates”, and targeted them manually.

Then we ran an Utgarde Pinnacle. That was fun! Only as soon as we entered the dungeon, one of the dps turned in quests, got a “20 Dungeon Quests Completed!” achievement, and dropped group, all without saying anything. Huh…

Later I queued up solo – Rev’s hunter was 80 and I had some catching up to do! I got Halls of Lightning and this happened:

And then we were off. The tank started by heading the wrong direction around the big square: I asked what his plan was and he said “lol” and headed the other way. Hmm…. good sign. And then he pulled the boss. Fully charged up. With a full trash pack. I said some special words and healed my butt off. I yelled at him. “Don’t DO that!”

“Do what?” he asked. I explained what. He then linked every vaguely cooldown like paladin ability he had and said “lol I got it.” I asked which he’d used. He said: “All of them at once, they stack.”

Every healer who reads this is now in the corner pounding their heads on a wall. I started explaining why this is a terrible, terrible strategy and he ran…. around the square more and killed packs we don’t ever have to kill. After we’d already said “run in there and past all the little guys” because it was clear he didn’t know what he was doing. I managed to get caught up to them in time to save the dps and he got a repair bill.

We kept going. I don’t think any of them knew the place, so I tossed out little pieces of advice. The dps said things like “thanks!” and “great heals!” The tank said “lol I have three paladin tanks”. I said “I have four healers” and the dps agreed that trumped him.

We keep going, he pulls all sorts of trash he doesn’t have to, nearly dies to the lightning boss because nobody listened when I said “run away all the way to here”. And then he gets to the room of trash. You remember that room. Planetarium sort of place with way too much trash way too close with way too many stuns. He says “Pull the room?” and runs in.

We wipe. I do it in a safe spot, pop, rez, and tell them how nasty this trash is, how we need to pull one group at a time. I mark a patrolling pack. He waits til they’re walking through another group and throws his shield…

The whole room is like this, two and three packs instead of one and he can’t take it. Finally he dies and we kill the trash that killed him and the whole dead/rez/heal cycle is long enough that we can get a vote to kick out. It passes.

Whew. We get a dk who does two pulls and drops. Then another paladin who does two pulls, the second being Loken, we get our points, I complete quests, ding, and am 80. Bye Northrend! The baby shaman is ready to get wet!

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The End

Deathwing is dead!

 

I’m really proud of our raid. We had everyone around this weekend, for the first time in ages. Friday night we were short one so our old buddy Fyuria, who’s back in the game, filled in. Squishi could only stay for two hours so we went and knocked out the first 7 encounters back to back. Considering two of the healers could barely focus for being sick, we did well. No wipes Friday, right? I forget. It was kind of a haze. I remember being mad about all the stupid hunter tokens dropping.

 

Saturday we had everyone so we came in, stood around for an inordinate amount of time, and finally pulled. First pull we got into phase 2. Second pull Toxic had a screen lock and we wiped on the third platform – two healing gives no margin for error. Third pull – we were all nice and healthy when phase 2 hit, we knew what we were doing, and Ado called us to ignore the second set of adds and just burn the boss. Boom! He died, an hour into raid.

We posed for screenshots and risked the wrath of Kerick by not lining up nicely. Oh well. Yes, I’m in tree form even though I dps’d this fight. I swapped back for the screenshot. Awesome job everyone!

I have to admit the kill almost feels like a letdown compared to the sheer rush that was killing the Lich King. Still I’m very proud of our raid. We’re going to have challenges in the future – Ado and Falahla can’t commit any more, but I’ve got a number of people interested in filling in, if their schedules can mesh. We might go down to one night for a while, or do DS on Fridays and weird fun crap like T11 heroics on Saturdays. It’s kind of up to what the raid wants and we’re looking for input. I’m interested in survival.

Oh so after we killed Deathwing we went and cleared Firelands for Falahla’s legendary. Next time we go in there we can get all the embers she needs to finish the bloody thing! Yay!

 

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Screenshot Fun: 6 of 6

Repgrind tagged me with a meme and I thought hey, why not.

To quote Rep:

I admit, I stole this part right off her page.

•The rules are as follows:
•Go in to your image folder.
•Open the sixth sub-folder and select the sixth image.
•Profit! Publish.
•Challenge six more saps and link to them.

 

Ok, first, the screenshot. I don’t have subfolders and the 6th picture in the main folder happens to be the image I posted yesterday so I switched to List View, went to the 6th column, and picked the 6th image down.

 

 

Aww! I think this is from Rev and my first kill of Lich King. Damn I miss my tree form. I love being a tree and I never get to appreciate it any more.

 

Crud I’m supposed to tag people and, er, Rep took everyone.

Ok I’ll cheat and tag Bocat, Slice, Grom, because if they haven’t done it yet they can claim we both tagged ‘em. And they should post two screenshots because then it counts as six. Or something.

 

 

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Love in the Air

 

What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than by acquiring a pair of hideously pink birds and posing atop Stormwind?  Too bad we didn’t get a Love Rocket but hey at least I got the Toxic Wasteling drop!

Many thanks to Troutwort for making us so stylish. Yes, Crits and Giggles has holiday-coordinating tabards. The Love Is In The Air ones are always fantastic.

Oh and what makes this an actually romantic picture is that I was going to be short on tokens to get the mount yesterday but Rev farmed me up a couple bracelets so I could turn in. Yay!

 

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In the Name of the Moonkin

Pretty warrior of love and justice! In the name of the moon, I’ll punish you!

My transmog set looks awesome with the guild tabard this week. This is actually my boomkin set. It looks just like my resto set because 2/3rds of it is the same gear and when I put it on and don’t transmog it, it looks awful. Yes, I’m in bird form most of the time but still. I think with the heart it makes me look like a magical girl wanna-be. Or maybe it’s the pretty moon headband.

Raid nights have been really great the last two weeks. Last week we finally got Gunship down after a lot of hard work and then we proceeded to take down Spine in only three attempts. Team is really coming together! Right now we’re running with three priests and two paladins so of course only the hunter token will drop, which makes gearing up a little fun but everyone’s very good natured about it and doing things like LFR to get tier. We’ve got both tanks in their four sets, Kerick got hers, and Toxic and I are just a couple drops away.

Anyway we did some Deathwing attempts last week, then this week we got all the  way to him Friday night. One shot everything except Spine and even that went really well.  Saturday we came in and got to work. We mastered the mechanics pretty quickly, so after two hours it got obvious that we were having problems getting enough dps. The last set of tentacles just didn’t die very fast, and then we would hit Catacylsm with about 20% still to go on the limb. Everyone was playing hard and getting lots of dps out of their gear, but we just didn’t have enough. So the healers decided we’d try two healing it. I know sometimes it’s frustrating to the rest of the raid that they can’t see our deliberations in our channel but we don’t do that much strategizing, mostly just who to beacon. But sometimes when it’s something like “do we offer to make our lives harder for the next hour” it’s good to be able to just have us girls in there. (Interesting demographic note: our raid is now 60% female. We have 3 real life couples in the raid. We’ve been feeling very laid back lately)

Anyway, so I went boomkin. I was the obvious choice for a couple reasons. I’ve been going dps on Ultraxion for weeks now. Kerick and Toxic have both two-healed Madness in other raids before. And with me in boomkin the raid could get the bonus spell damage debuff and the attack power buff from Ado’s pet.

We had a really good first attempt – we wiped with Deathwing below 7% health. After that we started getting sloppy and tired but the concept was good.  So we’re likely to try agian.

On Ultraxion I’d been pushing 16k dps. Not very good considering my gear. The Deathwing fight was hard to tell because of all the buffs but I was dead last and that was after I went and reforged spirit into other things until I was just at hit cap. Time to do some reading. Oh wait – back when I was doing the legendary staff quest, I took some pvp talents. Do I still have them?

Yes, I do. Oops.  And one glyph wrong. Those are easy to fix. I read up on what my stat priorities were supposed to be and dumped a whole lot of crit for haste. And then Sunday Rev and I  hit LFR. In the first half I won a shoulder token. Ok, I lied. Rev won a shoulder token and gave it to me. Since I have tier shoulders in my main spec, that went to the first piece of my boomkin tier. Second half, I won a chest token and now I’m torn. If I make it a Resto piece, it’s an upgrade plus then I have 3 pieces of resto tier. But I could get the boomkin 2 piece which would be a dps upgrade…. I decided I’ll hang onto it until later in the week. Tuesday we’re going to run LFR again with the guild. Maybe I can get another drop.

The respec and reforge were obvious immediately, I wasn’t anywhere near last on the charts. I was pulling 20k on fights where I could just stand still and nuke one target, or more on trash. Fights that require movement, not so much. Then on Madness I managed to take the number 3 spot! I was really proud.

Sunday night the guild does Firelands to work on Falahla’s epic. I made Sousa heal and went dps. Not very impressive showings on most fights but I got to go up on Alysrazor and got that yummy haste buff. Mmm! Makes my stuff hit hard and fast! I was having .5 second Starfire casts.I pulled something like 35k on that fight and we finished a full minute faster than my previous best time. Guess we just needed a dot class going up! Falahla does a great job when she goes but I know Arcane doesn’t scale with haste quite as – um – insanely.

Anyway between all the stuff we’ve been doing and just feeling more relaxed in WoW Rev and I are tossing around some more blog post ideas. So if you are still reading our blather, stick around…

Oh yeah – an action shot! Blizz, why did you take Tree and leave me with ugly owl?

tsuki ni kawatte oshioki yo!

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The Pen is Mightier

Reversion suggested this title. I thought “We ain’tn’t dead” might be better but hey someone out there might not read Discworld. If so shame on you.

Anyhow. Yeah. Long time no post! Don’t blame Star Wars. Sure, we’re playing a little, our characters are a whole level… I don’t know. 26 I think. I like the game but it’s not keeping me from WoW. The kitchen remodel is a worse distraction, we’ve lost hours putting new cabinets up. They look awesome, and once I have the counters in… two weeks from now… the place will look awesome.

Nope, the problem is our other shared hobby/passion. (Not THAT one, perverts out there). Writing. Remember we did NaNoWriMo? Well, despite Christmas and cabinets and Star Wars and everything I kept at it and last week finished the first draft of my somewhat epic fantasy novel. And then went “ugh, this thing needs so much work”. Rev is my content editor/talent manager/first reader/co-writer on scenes that I am sucking at, as well as working on his own writing project. Our free time keeps getting taken up by one of two things:

1. Talk about something we need to change, add, edit, delete, whatever in my story, or his story, or some other story we’ll write later

2. Listen to Writing Excuses and lose all track of time.

Seriously if you want to write fiction – or draw webcomics, or similar creative pastime – go lose a few weeks of your life with these podcasts. 15 minutes long but when you mainline them you tend to realize it’s 11 o’clock at night and you have been steeping in creativity for hours.

We’re serious about this thing. We’re going to a writing workshop at a convention later this year. My goal is to have my book in a state where I can look for an agent this fall, and be working on the followup novel (I’ve got three followup novels planned….). And it takes time and energy I’m not spending in WoW or blogging.

But… where was I? We’re not officially closing up blog. Had a great time raiding this weekend. Some fun times with the guild. Heck, Reversion even drew on the whiteboard last night – a map for me, not a comic, sorry – so who knows maybe we’ll do more Corporate Raiders soon. It’s our two year blogiversary next month and I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel yet.

You guys may or may not find it amusing, but it just occurred to me that my main male character is a bear warrior. Metaphorically, anyway, he doesn’t turn into a bear or anything but it’s what the people in my world refer to his sort of battle magic… I swear being married to a bear tank didn’t have anything to do with it…

Seeya in WoW or out of it.

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A Week in, 4.3 is Awesome

So I should be qq’ing massively. As a resto druid with jewelcrafting as my profession, I got nerfed, nerfed, and then minorly nerfed again this patch. Not that the JC nerf is obvious until we start running around with lots of epic gems, but it’s the thought that enables the QQ, right? Ah well.

I’m not in a qq mood though. Haven’t been playing WoW super hardcore this week. We had to finish off NaNo last week and my novel isn’t complete yet. (Since it’s a fantasy epic, the 110,000 words I wrote in November are basically half the story. Yes, my blogging has been low this month because all my words are going elsewhere. Trust me, I made the right choice)

Still, what I’ve done so far has been awesome. The new five mans are super cool. My druid went through once to get my boots and a few VPs. I got my boots Thursday and when I did, made a comment about how Alysrazor had never ever dropped the leather int boots so of course she would now. Loved the five mans except the bit in Well of Eternity at the end when I was trying to turn in a quest to Illidan and he would not stop running around. Seriously, dude, get a Ritalin prescription or something. Ran the first two on Invariant and got her like 4 upgrades. She’ll be LFR ready in a couple days at this rate. The Murozond fight is amazingly cool.

Transmogged Analogue to a nice understated set. I didn’t screenshot it, but I know Repgrind did so the two of you who might care will see it later. I don’t actually like any druid tier except the Conqueror’s Nightsong Hood, which is the most awesome headpiece ever, so I’m sporting that. And probably always will. What doesn’t got with a glowing crescent moon headband?

Darkmoon Fair is cool! I’ll stick to doing that on my mage only. She collects pets, she’s my fisherman (and not maxed level so that fishing daily there is great!). The little minigames were awesome, except the shooting one. It’s hard enough to do as a gnome because you’re the same height as the counter and that’s before a Tauren on a Kodo parks on your head. Grr. The other games were great. Healers will own the Whack-a-gnoll!

And raid: Well. For about an hour Friday night things were looking really really bad, because an hour before raid time Rev and I had no internet. We troubleshot and determined the problem was on our internet provider’s end, and called them up, only to discover that they use their own phone service and so  were completely down.  Hmm. Well, we can always use guild chat to let the raid know we’re having trouble and to find another tank and heals, but since our disc priest lives in the same town as us and has the same isp, they’d probably be down two healers… which is not good.

Around raid time the internet started staggering to its feet, and after several dcs and much muttering, we were ready to go. This was going to be our one solid night this weekend; Saturday we were missing Kerick, Log, Grom, and Slice; I didn’t have a clue who I was going to get to tank for us. But that was tomorrow and this was now. I’d asked everyone to watch the first four fights and know what to do, so we went in and got started.

We one shot Morchok the Not Really A Raid Boss. I got to soak crystals, whee! Nice note to start the night. Went to the ping pong boss. Took a few tries – like, what, four? It really wasn’t bad. Then off to the oozes. We had the mechanics there right away, just had to learn how to handle various combos, and he went down too after a few tries.

Off to Hagara for some ice and lightning. I rather outdid myself with sucking on that fight. Our penultimate pull, I died twice. The final kill, I was dead… that time was just bad luck with getting bounced funny though. We did really awesome with the chain lightning bit. I thought that might take time to learn but we mastered it right away.

Right. So. Now it’s 9 pm, we have two hours left, and we’re standing around going “I dunno what do you wanna do?”

We ended up deciding on Firelands. We want to make Falahla’s staff still, and I don’t think we can ask people to commit to another night for Firelands clear, so we’ll just have to devote a couple hours every week to doing 6/7 in Firelands. It may slow our progression a bit but I am determined to make that staff! She’s on the final collect stage now.

We got half the firelands down, called raid, and went to bed. Came back Saturday, collected some guildies to fill our slots and went back to FL to finish the clear. We had one wipe on Alysrazor. And then she died and dropped my #$%&^#%$% boots. That are not as nice as the End Times quest boots. I hate you, loot gods.

We even made a few Rags attempts before calling Saturday early. Rev and I got to go watch a movie on a raid night! It felt like cheating or something.

Anyhow. TL:DR is that I love 4.3 so far, am slightly worried that the first four Dragon Soul bosses are undertuned, and my HPS have gone through the floor, but Kerick and Toxic can make up for me so I just need to get used to the new normal of me not owning meters.

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Nerf Weeknights!

Ok, seriously, dropping a patch on Tuesdays is mean. We can’t raid til Friday! And heck, I can’t even spend much time in Wow. Last night I spent working hard on my writing (Yeah, Nanowrimo is about over but the book ain’t. I’ve got another 90k or so words to write so… Christmas time, maybe? Just before jedis arrive?). Tonight, it’s choir practice until late. I barely had time to transmogrify Analogue, and her weapon is a stupid dagger so I don’t even have a cool weapon.

Anyway. Apparently Dragon Soul has some easy bosses. Repgrind says so and they’re 4/8 now – sheesh! I’m studying up now. Even sent messages to my raiders who haven’t done them telling them to watch the first 4 fights. We are looking really bad for Saturday night so we need to hit it hard Friday.

Guys, who told you you were allowed to be absent one night the first week of a new patch? Those bosses don’t kill themselves! Noses to the grindstones, people!

Just kidding. It’s nice to be looking forward to WoW playtime again!

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