The Daily Frostwolf - Druid Edition

Guildie meet up 10 March 2012

2012-03-10T22:07:00.001+11:00

The official guild meet up was scheduled for 530pm for 6pm start at Bankstown Sports Club, which was a convenient and roomy place to have a group thing. Lucky we went early, as we needed a table for 20!

There were mini gatherings around - at Epidemais' place (Lushnek lives with him) there was Fueghan, Faithless and Sevros. I was picking Aza up at lunch time so it was like we were having a mini gathering at Epi's place anyway. Epi cooked naan and rice and vindaloo curry that he'd made earlier and we all had a nice lunch. I had my daughter with me and she was quite well behaved, considering.

On the other side of town there was another mini gathering - Beauti and Barkhoof (who are married) had Nabe and Voe staying with them, and 3 of them were coming together from the city where they were attending a meeting, and Barkhoof was coming on his own and meeting them at the dinner place.

So at a bit past 5 the gang from Epidemais' place rock up to the Sports club, and while I was signing in, Nok turned up! He had lost weight since I last saw him, but he was his same smiley self. Ayelena and Corael also turned up in the foyer, and we all headed towards the pizza place. Shaba turned up not long after that and Mabaho. Nabe, Enna and Voe turned up a bit later, and Voe is softer in real life than he is on Vent - everyone made the joke that it's because his outbound is too loud on Vent...

But we all tucked into our food, chatted and were loud, I spent most of my time with the the people who weren't at Epi's house as I had already talked to them for a bit, and wanted to chat a bit to the others. Voe was telling us how he got Nabe drunk and showed us some pics, none of which were too incriminating. Me and Az marvelled that I had a green healing dinner plate and he had a red dps one. Fue and Bladewind pondered why they had yellow plates and were glad they weren't pink. Ayelena was showing us how long his tongue was. Beauti is definitely taller than me. Lushnek poked me when Shab first arrived because I didn't introduce him to Shaba, but Shab had already met Lushnek when he'd gone to Epi's house for dinner one time - ha! Even I remembered that!

Ksret made a grand late entrance and then by 8pm Erika was getting tired so I had to go and then we started the drama of taking photos. Me and my dumb idea to try and squish behind the table. Turned out too dark. Then we went to a better lit area and it was still to dark. Multiple shots with Beauti's fancy SLR and we got one eventually that was good, so I will have a modified picture to put on the guild website. But it was good fun, was really good to see all our guildies, the only person whose face I didn't really know was Ksret. Ayelena and Corael were new to me too, but I had seen Ayel's pic on forums. Mab was saying we really should have name tags with "My name is ...." but I introduced everyone by their game names anyway, because that's what I call them IRL even.

I think even Erika didn't mind the party, but she was tired after it all and when we got home went to sleep very quickly. I had a great day, as always, and I know the day was filled with WoW talk, but hey, what do you expect when it's a WoW party, right?

Mab wrote about it here.

To be Horde...

2012-03-10T21:43:00.004+11:00

I quested in Stonetalon Mountains today, trying to get some shoulders for my entry for Mataoka's Leather and Lace competition.

And I was shocked when I was doing my quest chains there.

The whole chain had a good start. I was amazed that there was another pop culture reference in the starting zone quest:

And it is the whole scene! It's from Inglorious Bastards, Blood Guard Aldo Rockrain (Lt Aldo Raine) even says to the troops:

"We're gonna march in there and do one thing and one thing only: KILL ALLIANCE!"

(In the movie, Lt Raine says "And once we're in enemy territory, as a bushwhackin' guerrilla army, we're gonna be doin' one thing and one thing only... killin' Nazis.")

And you can see two named soldiers, Utvoch and Dontrag (mostly likely Utvich and maybe Donny Donowitz from the movie) .

Anyway I digress. So we're off in the area killing Alliance. One of the quest givers looked really cool. A bare chested Orc, who looked like a Mag'har, covered with tattoos.

I was distracted for a bit as Saunder logged in. We had been playing realID ping pong trying to catch each other (he sent me his realID details so we could talk across game which was really useful because he has a zillion alts on Saurfang and trying to friend them all was just nuts), and so I was thrilled to be able to finally chat to him. He even wrote a post about it today too. I knew he had a new job and he seemed to be quite happy with that. But that mean no more posts about his lunch time LFD antics I guess. I watched him going through his parade of alts doing his dailies and I swear it astounds me how much patience some people have. Though he threw that back at me - sitting around looking for rares and chasing pop culture references also requires lots of patience! Different strokes for different folks, I told him, and it amazes me how much one can always find in game to amuse each different person.

Back to questing... a lot of the quests here are about killing alliance. But there are lot of scared Night Elf druid young ones running around in the valley as well, feared. I wondered what were they?

Then I got this quest: Proof of Lies. High Chieftain Cliffwalker is wondering why we are attacking an ancient tree in the grove, where he and his kin had long learned druidism. How could there be a weapon of mass destruction there? He had sent his son to investigate, and asked we go look for him. When I got there, I saw his son's dead body, surrounded by dead Night Elf younglings as well, clutching a Krom'gar General's insignia in his hand. I was horrified. Horde... slaughtering Horde? Slaughtering MY race? How can this be?

I was infuriated. Is this what Garrosh and his kind bring to the horde? I remembered a story from Red Cow Rise, about Tauren railing against the new Warchief, written by Akabeko's friend, Dahakha. And I thought about how bad Garrosh was for the Horde. How I missed Thrall...

I continued the quest, Is this Justice? taking back the news to High Chieftain Cliffwalker and his wife Masha who were devastated their son was dead. They demanded the truth from General Grebo, who came to face us and then attacked us! I had to kill him. In the next part, The General is Dead, Masha Cliffwalker urged me to go and explain to Overlord Krom'gar, as I was a ranking officer in the army. I went back to the Overlord who was incensed those Tauren had done this and in Might Makes Right said he would make them pay. I was to meet him at the Tauren village. I flew back.

And when I arrived, the village was burning. Masha lay dead on the ground. I almost had tears in my eyes. How was this fair? Overlord Krom'gar said to me:

Stand by me, Navimie , and watch as our mighty weapon destroys our enemies!
Learn what it means to be Horde!

High Chieftain Cliffwalker kneelt, broken, beside him, and this conversation ensues:

Overlord Krom'gar: Watch now, Cliffwalker, as this battle comes to its glorious conclusion.
High Chieftain Cliffwalker: You are about to cross a terrible threshold, Krom'gar. may the Earth Mother have mercy on your soul.
Overlord Krom'gar: Look upon the world, Cliffwalker, and see the might of the Horde!

And a balloon carrying a bomb drops the bomb on the grove and all is obliterated, leaving an empty crater. THIS... is what it means to be Horde? I was stunned, and enraged. Can I stop this quest now??? Can I choose a different path?

A portal from Orgrimmar opened and Garrosh stepped out. MURDERER. I faced him, my eyes stinging, from this whole quest chain, and stopped in my tracks when he said this:

So Garrosh, our Warchief, is a man of honour. I was relieved. He then turned accusingly to me but High Chieftain Cliffwalker came to my aid and defended my part in this whole fiasco.

The honour is mine, Warchief. I was wrong about you. You are a fair and just leader, and I am proud to be a servant of the Horde. And that was Stonetalon mountains done.

New Rare pics this week

2012-03-10T06:00:00.003+11:00

Spotted Gibblesnik in Thousand Needles while on a flight path. Had to get off in Tanaris to come back and get a pic of him and hope nobody had killed him.

I found Aquementas while I was busy doing my quests in Tanaris. Makes me glad I was down there, since I was off farming for my mog gear.

And boy was I excited to see two rares from Zul'Farrak in two separate runs! I love dungeon rares because they are just that much rarer to me! Sandarr Dunereaver was there on my first visit this week.

And Zerillis was there the second time! I was with Roshii trying to farm my shoulders. He had an annoying companion who was blocking my view despite Roshii distracting them, so Roshii killed her then vanished and left him there. That made my screenies a whole lot better.

JD Kennada of Amateur Azerothian was being really helpful this week and sent me some of his rare pics! Unfortunately one of them he was totally blocking the rare so I didn't use that pic, but there were quite a few others which were good, and I'll keep them in my collection until I get better ones

Thursday raiding - Fooling around in Firelands

2012-03-09T11:01:00.001+11:00

Since we were unlikely to get a Firelands raid happening on Saturday (PARTY!!!) I tried to rustle up some interest amongst the online guild members. I had to beg, borrow and steal people and I managed to get a group together.

Hwired was tired, but I said he could just cruise around healing instead of tanking and he said he would come. Then Moo came back and I let Hwired go rest and brought Moo in on Juju. I know Moo doesn't like nonsense in the raid and having Gutsy and Voe there, I was a little worried because, like Voe, Moo doesn't like to do things that he deems "not progressive". He is happy to help HK though.

I told Faith to jump into my bike so she wouldn't die, and as we were going across the bridge, Gutsy Leap of Faithed us to the edge of the bridge and I fell into the lava. I should have seen that coming. Roshii wondered if Gutsy did that all the time, but he doesn't really, during proper raids. Anyway, poor Faith and I got rezzed and it was back to work.

Had a few attempts at Ambiturner, but that went rather badly. I even thought we did all right turns but the achievement didn't pop. Weird.

Alysrazor was a bit slow, but it was done. OMG I ran into the non moving cyclone. And died. Totally stupid. I was hoping nobody saw that but Falln immediately called me out on Vent. Damn. Oh, but how cool was this, Gutsy and Falln said "We should do Pet Racing." Pet racing? What the hell is that?

So this is what it was. Get out your vanity pet. Everyone in one spot with back against the wall. Pull the boss - probably best done with a hunter pet or a hunter. And then we all get pulled in to Domo, and then the vanity pets come racing towards us. It was the coolest thing I'd seen in a raid in a long time. I even FRAPSed it.

Oh, and then Shannox! DPS forgot to switch to Riplimb before Shannox hit 30% and the dog enraged and killed people. So the next time we did it the right way and I shook my head, thinking that we had wiped on Shannox normal. Ugh!

So on to Baleroc and that was OK, poor Faith died, she might have dispersed to early I think. And then we tried to do the Only the Penitent achievement and Lushnek was lagging and got hit. Awww. Well, everyone has to have a turn at stuffing it up.

So we were arguing how many scorpion adrenaline phases we stay in for. I said 11. Then 13. Gutsy said 15. And then we thought hell, we'll just wing it.

Amazingly, we made it to 31 stacks of adrenaline, and we killed Domo. It was pretty cool. We did lose 3 people though at the end, and that was with me and Gutsy both using our CDs. We actually equalled healing too which was pretty cool at 33k. I was quite chuffed. I'll FRAPSed that too, but I think the screenshots show it better. I'll put some in when I get home.

Ragnaros was messy so we didn't want to really try, so we did 2 or 3 attempts and failed it and called it quits for the night.

On to PVP after that (I bribed Shabadu to come along with a promise of some arena) and we had a quite good match against a paladin/lock/mage combo. We beat the twice, the first time they did a lot better and gave us quite a challenging but good game. The second time they seemed to lose a bit of steam because the poor pally went splat really quickly that time. And then there was one poor team who were very poorly geared with very low health, and we finished them off as painlessly as possible. I even apologised to the first one we killed. I don't want to be one of those nasty PVPers that I write about. But I hope they didn't think I was being condescending either.

Wednesday raiding - 1 night clear x2 and heroics x3 x2

2012-03-08T09:35:00.000+11:00

Both groups were missing one person last night. Azadelta was missing from the other raid, and Augment from ours. So Faithless was on, so the other group took Faith and our group had to pug someone, because Ayelena wasn't online, or any other backups for that matter.

So Falln and Gutsy suggested we take the guild leader of their old guild, Zodiac Guard, on his alt. So we took him, his name was Pixies, with funny accents over the i's. OK I hate those accents they give me the goddamn shits when I'm trying to type. The poor guy was in LFR and 378 gear, but it was his alt, but hey, it was better than nothing right?

So we did Morchok, and missing Augment, Lushnek had to take the hits with Barkhoof. Gutsy let poor Lushnek die... even after he offered to bet with me that my side would die first (we took Pixies on my side so that we could look after him easier). So he got his first heroic, and the guy picked up heroic mail gloves too. Damn! Why can't my bracers drop? :P The caster mace dropped and Bladewind got that. NICE.

So on to Yor'sahj next. Fortunately this Pixies guy was pretty clued up and being a hunter he didn't have to do much except get the bubble down so that was nice and easy too. Another achievement for him and a clean easy kill. Thank god there were no fuck ups :)

Then on to clean up Zon'ozz where my healing was absolutely ABYSSMAL though I'm not sure why, but it was ugly. Way way way behind the other two, and I have no idea why. Anyway, didn't matter, it was killed and that was that.

So on to Hagara. I wanted to try a new strategy that I saw on Youtube, which went like this:

So we kill add, run clockwise, and on the last stretch we position ourselves along the outer rim. 8 people have to evenly space themselves between the two crystal conductors. One person stands next to the last conductor, but away from the group (blue), and one person stands next to the 2nd last conductor (green), away from the group. The blue one moves in first, to be the last link in the chain, then the green person moves in. The bummy thing was I forgot to FRAPS it. So finally after weeks of trying, we got it! And the achievement comes up instantly, so we don't have to kill Hagara for it. It was satisfying watching the lightning going between us.

We then did Ultraxion heroic, which I was surprised we did, and we had one or two wipes before we got it down. So that was cool, and heroic mail caster crap dropped and the Tier token was Pally Priest Warlock.

Then we did the rest and it was no dramas. But after we killed Madness I was excited because the Maw of the Dragnlord dropped and I got it. YAY! So now I have chompy chompy mace.

Erika was up and was commenting during raid again. It was funny.

But I'm looking forward to the meetup this weekend. We have cut our raiding short this week in anticipation of that.

More WoW NPCs - Mad max references

2012-03-07T14:44:00.000+11:00

I was trying to farm my shoulders for my mog set, and noticed there were a lot of mobs that drop it in Tanaris, so while I was down there I thought I'd go and do my quests there too!

So starting off in Gadgetzan, this Mad Max reference was staring me in the face!

This is the Thunderdrome... (play on Thunderdome) hahaha! Even looks like it! And look who is standing next to it giving out quests inside the arena...

Dr Dealwell is a throw to Dr Dealgood, who acts as the ringleader for Thunderdome in the movie. He's even dressed like this goblin.

Katrina Turner is Tina Turner! The luscious Ms Turner, plays Aunty Entity in the movie, and she sings the Mad Max song "We don't need another Hero".

Monday raiding - OMG could I be any more stupid

2012-03-06T13:07:00.001+11:00

Fue's RSI in his wrist was playing up, so I wasn't even sure we could raid. Unfortunately for me I fell asleep putting my daughter to bed again, and didn't wake up until 30 minutes into raid. Fortunately Hwired stepped in on his priest to help out for Zon'ozz.

Now we TRIED to do the achievement for Hagara again, but it doesn't seem to be working, or we did it wrong again. So I guess we'll try it again next week.

Heroic Ultraxion was bad. I stuffed it up about 3 times at least. I couldn't remember which turn it was and whose turn it was and that stuffed up a few attempts. We had to do it normal in the end, which was disappointing, but we were pushed for time. I felt really really stupid.

The rest of the evening went by smoothly, and nobody died on Warmaster to his shockwave so that was good. And Bladewind didn't get tossed off Deathwing's back this time.

So come Madness, Gutsy said he would like to come on his druid for the achievement. He said he wouldn't take any loot, he just wanted the achievement. And when we downed it, he was only marginally behind me, so he was doing quite well on his druid, considering the huge gear difference between him and me. Lushnek went to open the chest and said OMG...

I thought, OMG did we get SOMETHING other than Gurthalak?? OMG OMG did we get two healing maces??? That would be awesome!!

No... we got a BLAZING DRAKE!

So we rolled. I took a screenshot of it too. I didn't think I would be lucky since I had used up my luck for the week with Attumen, and so following a spate of rolls int he 20-40s, I rolled a 97. I was excited! And then Gutsi (his alt druid) rolled a 100....

Now I probably sounded really bitchy when I said Guts shouldn't get that on his alt. Even Nabe, who tanked for us on his DK alt since Fue was unable to, didn't roll because it was on an alt. And Guts did say he was going to pass on all loot anyway if people wanted it. I just wish I hadn't said he shouldn't get that on his alt because it sounded like I was having sour grapes coz I would lose to him. Now if he had rolled 100 on his main, I would have said grats and be excited for our first Blazing drake drop. But not on his alt. I really don't think alts should have those, especially for his first Deathwing kill, when we could have said no, bring your main. But in the end I won it, and I was excited but I was a bit ashamed of my behaviour about it, even though I think I was right.

Anyway, here I am, with my new beautiful mount. Roshii did say it was wasted on me because I always use my flying form, but that doesn't mean I can't admire a beautiful new mount.

Transmogrification Tuesday - Guildie mogs

2012-03-06T09:29:00.001+11:00

I was very proud to know that Souglyy told me that all my slut plate posts had inspired her to mog her gear! So she had been furiously farming for a set, even getting Roshii to help her in Maraudon, but I had no idea what she was getting. She said it was a surprise. Last night she got the last piece she needed (bracers) and she proudly modelled for me (and showed me her belly button!). She had the set mostly finished on Sunday night and Voe and Aza were shouting out to me how hot she looked with her new mog set. So here I proudly present Souglyy and her mail mog set!

Souglyy is wearing the Steadfast set, with Mantle of the Sea Wolf as her shoulders. Bow is Melmorta's Twilight Longbow and weapon is mogged to Crystalfire staff.

And of course, whenever I start saying "Can you get by Moopie's wall for a picture?" everyone wants to come along and show off their mog, so here we all are with our mog sets.

Then and Now

2012-03-05T11:32:00.000+11:00

Vidyala of Manalicious, still high after the 6th Screenshot Meme that went around, started thinking about Then and Now:

I wondered, how would an old image of my main character look alongside a new one?

Navimie Feb 2006, Winterspring

Navimie March 2012, Winterspring

I don't have pics of my character screen, but this picture is my 3rd oldest screenshot and at least showed off my gear that I was using at the time.

What stayed the same: Navimie's features haven't changed at all, or her skin colour. Since moving servers, the name stayed the same (there aren't that many people using that name other than ME!). She still loves pets, and the one she had that was new at the time was a Dark Whelpling given to her by her friend Mockjaw who farmed it for her.

What DID change: Gear obviously. And Navimie is a bit more fashion conscious now. Transmogrification has taken away the pitch potch thrown together look that she had in the past - though the classic Wildheart shoulders and helm are unmistakable. Now she is transmogged into Tier 6 - which looks really great on Tauren Druids. One thing Navi won't miss is the number of people commenting on the dead bird on her head. Now she has another dead bird on her head, but it looks way more cool. And her staff is now more Fel than Lunar. And to show the modern day pet, I used Lil Tarecgosa who is clearly a Cataclysm 4.2 item. I don't have any of the Darkmoon Faire ones or I would have used those.

I couldnt' find the exact spot I was standing in, but I am pretty sure it was near where I am now. You can see another change - Mount Hyjal now has Nordrassil coming out of it, where it didn't have it before. Amazing how that tree magically grew after 6 years :P

So does my character look older? I don't know. But she sure feels a lot older.

Guildie Guest Spot Voe - Resto Shamans for Dummies - Chapter 2: Abbreviations and Talents

2012-03-05T08:24:00.046+11:00

fc Voe joined our guild during 4.2 (Firelands) and hasn't looked back since. Love him or hate him, you can't miss the fact he's an excellent healer, and I asked him to put together for me a little how-to for the budding resto shaman. He's written a second part in his Resto Shaman series and there's still more to come.

RESTO SHAMANS FOR DUMMIES

Chapter 2: Abbreviations and Talents in depth

Doing it the Voe way

Welcome back people! I got a better than average response to my first introduction to the Resto Shaman, surprisingly I was shocked that so many people were interested in what I had to say and I was in awe of the positive feedback.

SO... here we are again. This time I want to start off with a few basic things, for example explaining some Resto Shaman Abbreviations as well as the “cookie cutter” raiding specs that would suit almost any restoration shaman.

Abbreviations

Let’s be honest, nothing is worse than reading a paragraph of writing from a class that you don’t have much experience with and not understanding the abbreviations written... In saying that I would love to throw a few out in the open to clear up the “jargon” for the budding new resto shammy or the ones who are just interested in what the hell it is we are talking about =D, so here we go!

HS: Healing Surge
HW: Healing Wave
WS: Water Shield
ELW: Earth Living Weapon
UE: Unleash Elements
HST: Healing Stream Totem
HPS: Heals Per Second
HPM: Heals Per Mana
HOT: Heal Over Time
HR: Healing Rain
ES: Earth Shield
CH: Chain Heal
GHW: Greater Healing Wave
SLT: Spirit Link Totem
OOM: Out Of Mana
SWG: Spirit Walker’s Grace
TC: Telluric Currents
MTT: Mana Tide Totem
WSH: Wind Shear
CS: Cleanse Spirit
RT: Riptide
LB: Lightning Bolt

I really hope that clears up a few of the most commonly used abbreviations in almost any resto shaman conversations, blogs, and or forums you come across. If I have missed any just give me a holler, I’m sure I have, I bet some of you will scroll back up here to understand some of the things im about to crap on about :D

Talents

Ok now the fun stuff, in my eyes to be a good healer, dps or tank you need to be specced into the “best” possible tree(s) that will benefit you most. Thankfully for shamans we have one main build that you can adjust slightly to coincide with your play style. Nothing is worse than seeing a well geared player not healing to the best of their potential because of their spec, or gems (which we will discuss later) or even been reforged wrong... I just know there is a confused player behind that screen wondering why the shaman next to then is healing higher. Below i hope to clear the mist the little if not completely.

Below is currently the spec you would more likely see almost any resto shaman using, sometimes it variates slightly but generally this is how your trees should look.

Click here to go the Wowhead talent tree with mouseovers

This is the cookie cutter spec mentioned above 3/7/31 I'd suggest anyone new to the class use this spec then adjust it accordingly to your play style. Just a note, this is the spec I use for heroics and seem to heal quite well =D

Most of the spells are self explanatory from hovering over the tool tip from the above link, I'd just like to split the talents up into Must Need and Optional talents from each of the Trees.

Elemental

Acuity: Must Have, simply put it gives you 3% more crit to any of your spells.

Enhancement

Elemental Weapons: Must Have, this increases UE by 50% and gives ELW a passive bonus of 40%

Improved Shields: Must Have, increases mana gained from your WS orbs and more importantly increases the healing from ES

Ancestral Swiftness: Optional, increases movement speed by 15% all the time, which means you don’t have to get Lava Walker (doesn’t stack with this talent /CRY) on your boots also makes your ghost wolf an instant cast, this is only beneficial to a shaman with the reflexes to use ghost wolf at call in “oh shit flame wall” moments to get out of the way, if this isn’t you maybe you should spec into Totemic Reach ;)

Restoration

Tidal Focus: This talent is a must Have, reduces healing spells cost by 6% so you don't OOM

Spark of Life: Must Have, increases total healing done by 6% also increases healing received by 15% (which rocks for heroics)

Resurgence: Must Have, without going into too much mathematical depth here, this talent pretty much means you get mana back whenever you have Water Shield active and crit heal with a direct spell, which is almost EVERY shaman healing spell (except Healing Rain... which would be OP lol)

Totemic Focus: Must Have, reduces healing spells cost by 6%, so unless you have super mana and never OOM.. you should still take it

Spark of Life: Must Have, increases total healing done by 6% also increases healing received by 15% (which rocks for heroics)

Resurgence: Must Have, reduces mana cost of totems by 30% and increases duration by 40%, this is ALL totems MTT and SLT included

Natures Blessing: Must Have, increases direct heals on ES targets 18%. The only time you would not take this is if you never use ES which means you're a baddie HAHA

Natures Swiftness: Optional, makes next nature spell with a base cast time of less than 10 sec instant, this is good if once again you have the reflexes to use it in oh shit moments, i suggest macroing this to your keybinds and either HS or GHW for that moment. If not don’t waste a talent point

Ancestral Healing: Must Have, all crit heals reduces the targets damage taken by 10% for 15 secs, also increases the targets HP by 10% up to a max of 10% of their health. This is awesome as not only does it decrease damage taken it also increase players HP. MUST HAVE!!! /nod

Soothing Rains: Must Have, Increases healing from HST by 50% and HR by 30% get it and watch your HST heal for stupid amounts in your healing meters, just make sure to pop it back up after you use MTT... Big rookie mistake there

Imp Cleanse Spirit: Optional, this spell now removes a curse and magical effect, i suggest speccing into this if you are doing heroics if not, let another healer dispel and spec 2 points into (Ancestral Resolve)

Cleansing Waters: Optional, reduces mana cost of CS as well as heals target for 1317 to 1485 (this can crit) sad thing is this only works every 6 seconds.

Ancestral Awakening: Must Have, when you crit heal with a direct heal you summon a spirit to aid you, which heals the lowest % friendly party or raid member within 40 yards for 30% of that crit heal

Mana Tide Totem: Must Have, just get it don’t ask why!! If you do ask why... I can guarantee you won't be taken to raids anymore

Spirit Link Totem: Must Have, Just get it don’t ask why!! Another one if you don't have guarantees you a spot in group 8

Tidal Waves: Must Have, when you cast CH or RT, you gain this effect which reduces the cast time of your next 2 HW or GHW and increases the crit chance of HS by 30%, this is hot i love this talent.

Blessing of the Eternals: Must Have, increases the chance to proc ELW HOT by 80% if the target healed is below 35%

Riptide: Must Have, i don’t need to elaborate why...

To go along with this spec, some shamans that are doing normal DS still tend to spec into TC because some of the fights have a bit of downtime where they can rape the crap out of their mana pool healing and then on the down parts of the fight spam LB to get mana back. Honestly ive never used this spec before, to do it you take points away from Imp CS and Cleanse Water and put two points into TC. In heroics you have little to NO time to stop and spam LB to get mana back, the one benefit to this spec is you can keep HR up on cooldown and as long as your 3 RT’s are up on 3 targets you can spend the rest of your time mana regen through TC talent. Good idea I suppose?

Anyway I hope you enjoyed part 2 as much as part 1 and I once again look forward to your feedback, thanks for your time.

Yours faithfully,
Voe

Another Transmog set from "The Fallen" Guild

2012-03-04T15:28:00.000+11:00

One of the people whom I featured from the guild "The Fallen" in my slut plate around Dath'Remar asked me if I could take a picture of her mother's transmog, because she was the one who started it all. I managed to track the hot mama down, and asked her if she would mind posing for me. She obliged, but when I told her why, she said that it was her daughter who didn't want her to feel left out, and she was ok being happily anonymous. However, you can't go around looking good and being anonymous in my book, so I snapped a pic of her colourful plate gear. I didn't get around to asking her what gear she was wearing, so I'll have to ask next time around.

Highlights of the Week from my Blogroll March 4, 2012

2012-03-04T13:47:00.002+11:00

Well, the Highlights from my Blogroll this week all seem to revolve around a common theme. And nothing gets the heart and mind going like a good going argument with some passion behind it.

Indignation was the one behind my post earlier this week (When is your say less important than what others say?) which I kept anonymous to an extent but really, anyone who read it knew whom I was talking about. The only thing I didn't mention was who the person who made the comment was...

Oh stuff it, I'm using names now, everyone knows who the hell I'm talking about.

The only thing I didn't mention was the person who made the comment on Bear's post about his 2 million pageviews. That comment resulted in him removing the post with a small apology/explanation. Only after posting my little piece of mind, did I go to my blogroll and go through all the new posts in the last 24 hours. And I came across a post by Oestrus.

Now, when you READ people's writing, you think you get to know the person. As in, you read their words, and you get a feel for what kind of person they are by how and what they write. Obviously, because I tend to have a few favourite posts from bloggers, I tend to think of their personalities and traits from those posts. Oestrus is someone whom I've admired for bravery to come out with difficult things about herself and share them with the world. Not for atttention, but because she feels it had to be said and maybe she didn't want people to be misled about her. Azeroth Apple did a similar thing, and I greatly admired that post too. Oestrus is not someone who keeps her mouth shut and will write whatever she feels, and admires a good discussion.

Oestrus wrote a really good post (Shameless) which was about how people should blog for the right reasons and that people shouldn't self plug as it can put off other bloggers who may give up blogging because those posts make them feel "What's the point?" Her post was prompted by Bear's post. And the initial part of her post was good, until I got to the next bit when I realised that whom she was talking about. In O's defence, she did not say that particular blogger was self plugging, but I think she was saying that sometimes it is really annoying when people shout their achievements in your face, but it does depend on how you say it. I personally have no issue with people who yell out their achievements, in fact I like it because I do it too. I'm not doing it to say "Ha, take that, I'm better than you!" because I did all the achievements for ICC and got my mount, I'm just excited because it's something I wanted and I was proud of it. The only thing that DOES bug me is people who go around yelling on Twitter "I ranked #x on this fight, I did 50k HPS hell yeah on XYZ fight" and that irritates me. I find those comments annoying because they really ARE comparing themselves to everyone else and saying how great they are.

Mataoka of Sugar and Blood, wrote a response on her blog and also on O's post. Like me, I think it was Matty's first time writing on O's blog (I could be wrong!). And Effraeti, whose blog I also frequent, also was prompted to comment on O's post because of Matty's post. Her response was really well written - almost a blog post on it's own. I can't link it so I'm going to show it:

I am fairly new to the WoW Blogosphere compared to many of the Blogs I read regularly, and so despite my elation at “Wow! My most views EV-er!” on certain days, I know that there are far more people elsewhere – people who may have never seen my Blog or just did not click with it or me to view it regularly.

I do not believe this reflects on the quality of a Blog.

I write mostly for me, as others say, a journal of sorts. Sometimes I wish for feedback – that others agree or disagree, but mostly I write to get the thoughts out of my head and into a form allowing better analysis. Honestly, if I really want feedback, I suppose I should more obviously ask for it. :)

Now that I have those who visit regularly, I do not see it as extra pressure, but as further motivation. I recently lost my job a week ago, and lost ambition to write, partly because I was afraid it would merely be negative.

But I realized that the connections I have developed in the community were not affected by my RL – they were still there, they were still listening, they were still writing. So in this time where I am feeling cutoff in RL, I can maintain my online relationships until I can feel strong enough to step back into forging new RL connections.

I guess what I am saying is I think we all write to be heard, to be understood, to know we are not alone – especially through a medium where we feel safe, like the anonymity of a Blog. But I agree that is not the reason to start a Blog. Start a Blog because you feel you have something to say, something you do not know how to express elsewhere, something that will only stop torturing you once it is down and visible, even if no one but you ever read it.

Being read is an added bonus.

It was so good in fact that it caught the attention of the Bear himself. But Matty's post was about writing for yourself, and not for others, and that writing was a cure for the insanity of her soul. Though I did recall one time where Matty was worried she offended someone with a post and was apologising for it, and I have no idea to this day what she was talking about. And that itself was like what happened with the Big Bear Butt too, he wrote what he was feeling, and didn't think that what he'd written would actually offend someone. But Matty apologised for the insult, but didn't remove the post, like Bear did. I think.

Godmother, also had to put her say in, she merely cautioned that if you hit PUBLISH, you should be happy with what you wrote. She said that what you write you should be happy with and you should not be changing it to suit one or two disgruntled people, but make sure before you go hitting publish when you're brimming with heightened emotions, you read CAREFULLY what you write, because once it's out, it's out, and you can't really take it back because this is the internet, and nothing goes missing.

Gnomeaggedon, in my opinion, was a bit late to the party. Ever since Bear wrote his post, I expected his bestest buddy, his blog brother to rush to his defence with all the passion and vehemence that he writes with. For if you ever read Gnomey's blog you know he holds no quarter, and pulls out all the stops. He's controversial, he's in your face, he's brutally honest and he doesn't care if you love him or hate him, he would never back down from a good fight. It's no wonder his blog is all about PVP. So 4 days later, after the drama, he posts his 96% Spam, 4% Ham, which if you didn't read the post you wouldn't realise it was actually to do with what happened earlier in the week. And he openly disagreed with what Oestrus said, but as I said, it was to generate a good battle, not to start a spitting match.

Unfortunately, something which neither side really wanted, was hate mail and nasty abuse. Well except Gnomey who welcomes it as a challenge. The whole saga was supposed to be opposing points of view, to generate discussion, and I think everyone should remember that hate slinging is not really called for. Neither of the original parties was hating, just merely stating their points of view, and disagreeing with other points of view. Supporters of both sides are on my blogroll, people whom I like, I follow, I admire.

But there are positive posts from O's post. Tank Like a Girl, who now writes Live Like a Nerd, said that:

Oestrus recently made a post that resonated with me. Pageviews really do not matter, as long as you put your heart into your blogging. I intend to do just that. I still get excited about every single comment though. I don’t understand this new trend of 2012 of commentless blogs, because it’s not about writing into the void for me, it’s knowing that people read, enjoyed or disagreed. That’s the power of blogging for me.

Which is what I think people should take away from O's post. Write for yourself. Pageviews shouldn't stop you from writing if you have none. But that doesn't mean you can't get excited about them because I certainly get excited if people like what I write. After all, what writer doesn't like their stuff to get read and to touch people, right?

If I disagree with something, I don't go around hating. But I am entitled to my point of view. And I respect everyone with something to say. But nobody should go around hating or abusing or spitting just because someone doesn't think the same as you. And I just hope everyone remembers that. The debate this week really was entertaining and thought provoking, but poop slinging and flag burning is just that little bit too far. So, more opinions! But less mindless hate! And we will all live happily ever after and still be friends.

And World Peace Will Prevail. Umm.. yeah :P

PS: Oh, and I forgot to say that I was super excited this week that Hugh of MMOMelting pot linked me TWICE this week. That just goes to show, that sex sells. /wink
All in all, this was a really good blog week. It's been hard to tear myself away from the blogroll and the New post page.

So this is my one that started it all...

2012-03-03T15:10:00.000+11:00

Cymre at Bubbles of Mischief asked to see our very first screenshot - one that has survived the test of time and hard drive fails and new computers.

Show us your very first screenshot from the game. Tell us about it, including the date, what you remember about the photo and who was in it with you. Do they still play?

Digging around in my old files, this was the oldest picture I found. It's like looking at the clothes you wore in the 80s... (like, OMG what was I wearing!!!)

This was taken in February 2006. I don't remember what level I was, but it looks like I was 40s or 50s. It was taken in Zul'Farrak, near Gahz'rilla's pool. Hyades, my husband was a tauren warrior and he used to tank up till Lich King. He doesn't play WoW anymore. Mockjaw was my epal (think penpals but via email) that I had since my medical school days... so I think we were friends since about 1995 or so. And we used to send lots of long emails until we played WoW and then we got lazy and we talk to each other in game now via RealID. He even made his toon on my server so we could talk more (back in the days of no RealID). Flimsy was a friend of his, and they were quite good friends, but they ended up having a falling out. Mockjaw still plays though, but I don't know about Flimsy.

OMG what am I wearing??? I cringe looking at my eyesore clothes, I can imagine Kamalia looking at it and saying Tsk Tsk Tsk Navi what are you wearing??? In this era of Transmog, you can't go around looking like that anymore, or the Transmog police will descend on you.

New Rares this week AND another named NPC

2012-03-03T09:20:00.002+11:00

Only one rare was found by me this week, and it was DEAD :( It's amazing how far the NPCscan goes off with Mobus. I rushed when NPCscan went off but it was too late... I saw the 2 guys swimming away as I went to look at the dead body.

Souglyy and Roshii were in Maraudon farming transmog pieces for Soug and I said to them while you're there, can you go see if Meshlok is up? And he was up! So I told them to take a pic. Action pic here!

Falln surprised me with a picture of Sambas! I was suprised and thrilled to see this in my mailbox earlier in the week. I have never seen him, and I often look at Cymre's pic to gaze with longing at this rare I'm missing.

Falln came across Tarvus at the end of the raid I think! And he summoned me, and I took a few pics and then Falln promptly slaughtered him. Poor Tarvus. But I was really happy to see Tarvus, I have never seen him dead or alive either! So now I have a pic for every rare in Twilight Highlands woot!

And Dalaran presents another named NPC! Shen Kang Cheng is a play on Chen Kang Shen, which is the mandarin pronounciation of Jackie Chan's chinese name (in cantonese it is Chan Kong Sang). I coudn't believe I had missed this one!!! Jackie Chan is the famous Hong Kong Kung Fu movie star who has featured in dozens of American films as well.

Karazhan luck and gifts from friends

2012-03-03T01:53:00.000+11:00

I went to Kara to go look for my last rare from the basement - the spider. I cleared the basement only to get the bat spawn again. Crud. Well, I guess I'll just try again next week.

So since I'm here I should do Attumen. And my bad luck turned into good luck...

I couldn't believe it! I would never have thought I would get that, and I immediately felt bad because I know Roshii wanted that mount so bad, farming it every week for 2 years with no luck. I didn't know it gave an achievement but hey I love achievements and FoS so I'm not scoffing at this one.

But it was exciting to have a rare mount drop so here I am showing it off with something else I got this week...

I was gifted with a Cenarion Hatchling this week by a dear friend who is a faithful reader, and someone who opened my eyes to the fact that people read my stuff, and makes me laugh when I'm cranky. And gives me lots of blog traffic! /hug

Thursday raiding - Beating our heads on Zon'ozz still

2012-03-02T10:47:00.000+11:00

2 teams. Same boss. Same result. No kill.

I was fresh and ready to tackle Zon'ozz after my half assed playing yesterday. I had read up - though there isn't much out there except to say that healing is HARD and all I can find are 25 man healer tips, not so much for 10 man. Well, if I get this boss down, guess what my next healer strat is going to be.

But we did much better today than we did yesterday. Yesterday it felt like we were feeling around in the dark. Today we were making a bit of headway. Fue had sore wrists again so we had Nok come in and take his place. Lucky Nok is quick on the uptake because we explained what we needed to do and he understood it really quickly. I was befuddled yesterday but now it seemed simple. Bounce the ball 7 times, stack at purple, AOE heal, I stay healing Barkhoof and help out the others, Bladewind go with melee, Gutsy go with ranged and kill all those tentacle and eye things and come back before the next ball starts to bounce. Then rinse wash and repeat.

We had markers this time set up for the healers. So that made it easier for me to understand. But damn, don't those melee take a pounding!

We had 3 good attempts, according to Lushnek, but I really only remember 2. There was one where we made it to the 4th black phase. That was exciting! We got it to 30% or something, and we were all really happy about that. There was another one we were going so well and poor Bladewind got hit as melee were all running out ending up with more ball bouncing and a wipe. So many attempts and they all seem to blend for me, I can't remember which attempt had what happen.

Augment got killed once by the Pyschic drain, which you only get if you're standing in front of Zon'ozz. I teased him. "Why would a rogue of all things be standing at the front?" Everyone laughed, and we just started again. Then when there was a wipe and we didn't know what it was from (I think it was from Bladewind dispelling Falln who was in melee but I didn't even see that he had the debuff on him) and killed a fair few melee. We asked what happened, and Blade said "I think I dispelled Falln..." and I said "Did he have a debuff? I didn't even see it!" and even Falln didn't know he had it or I guess he would have run out. Jokingly I said "Well, Augment died too and he's not saying anything so I think he knows it must have been his fault." Augment didn't say much after that. And he logged quickly after raid. I guess I'd better apologise in case I offended him. I forget he is so much younger than me. I think I'm old enough to be his mother. No. I AM old enough to be his mother.

In our second last attempt it was quick wipe to an early mistake, and Gutsy said "Geez, Navi and Blade, you need to pick up your game..." I glanced at the heal chart and Guts had done 45% of the healing and me and Blade were sub 30%. Blade said "I'm trying to conserve mana for the later stages :P" and I was, for one second, thinking holy crap, I'm not pulling my weight. "It's only the first 15% of the fight!" I said. "You can't base it on that." Then Lushnek said "Yeah, but he cheated, he Hymned." Ahhh. I can't believe I didn't pick that up. "You cheater!" I said to Gutsy, accusingly. "For one second I thought I was really healing like crap." "Then it was totally worth it," laughed Gutsy. I'd been so focussed all evening I forgot to play around with meter padding.

But we were all in high spirits by the end of the raid, except trash respawned at 10:45pm and we weren't going to clear everything again just for one attempt so we called it for the night. But we are looking forward to Sunday so we can try again.

In the other raid, they had a few starting hiccups. Hwired was out to a dinner so he was coming back home a bit late. So raid was late to start. And Ayelena was probably stuck at TAFE so he couldn't come, so Blade called Ksret to come to raid, and so that filled them up. Aza was a little disappointed because Aye gives him some 10% spell buff of some sort. And there was lots of agro last night, as they didn't seem to be doing as well as they did last night. One of the things was about Voe standing with the ranged. He wasn't doing it so the ranged were dying because they took too much damage. Voe's reasoning is that if he stand out apart from them he won't have to run out to dispel the debuff so he doesn't waste precious time running when he could be healing, and I can understand that, but I'm not sure that is the best thing to do if everyone else is taking so much damage. Gutsy was having a tough time with his group so I was trying to help him as much as I could. But in black phase the melee were the ones who were dying, so trying to get them to be topped up was hard. I think I have the easiest job really. Lucky me :) But my mana is still crap at the end. Not sure what else I can do abou that. I'll figure it out on Sunday.

What's so special about Goldshire Inn on Moonguard?

2012-03-02T10:22:00.000+11:00

After raid today, Roshii said to me that I had to go to Moonguard. And specifically, Goldshire Inn. He wanted me to write about it. And I said OK, and I wondered what it was all about.

*********

THIS POST CONTAINS ADULT CONTENT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! DO NOT CONTINUE READING AS YOU MAY BE OFFENDED

*********

In Vent I said OK, and off I went. Barkhoof was on Vent too and said amusedly "You're going to Moonguard?" and giggled. I was bemused. What is going on?

So I logged over to the server. It was a US RP server. And it was full.

"Don't forget, it has to be a human, Navi," said Roshii.

"You're going to Moonguard?" said Azadelta,. "Wait, I'm coming too. Oh, and you have to roleplay along, Navi."

I threw up a few random names but they were terrible. "I'm just going to use my own name." I said.

"Don't use your name!" said Aza

"I'm not using my name, no way," said Roshii.

Bizarre, I thought. But I went ahead and made a warrior female. I logged in and Roshii and Az invited me to party.

So we head off to the inn. As we approach, Az said, "Now you have to walk into the inn. We are on an RP server and we have to play along." OK, I can play along.

I walk into the inn. Wow. It's a party in here.

And um, there are lots of naked people. And this night elf here is talking to me...

Oh my. While I'm downstairs taking in the scenery, Az and Roshii said to fit in here I have to take my clothes off. I took everything off except my boots. OK, so I'm in some sort of pick up joint. I get it.
"Navi, you have to come upstairs, that's where it all is," said Roshii.
So I head upstairs. Aza is already up there. "This room is typical, look at these guys!" he says.

This druid kept sitting, standing, sitting, standing. Over and over. OHHHHHH. I see. Oh my gosh, I think they're having... sex. My goodness, even standing looking from here it looks blushworthy. I go into the next room. There is another couple on the bed, but it looks like they're just talking. And there are dead bodies all over the floor!

"What happened here?" I asked.
"Horde often come here and try to ruin the fun," said Roshii. "So they get slaughtered."
Uh-huh. OK. I wonder if Horde have their own brothel on their own side... I doubt it, if this is an RP pick-up server. Humans and night elves are probably more sexy. Maybe in Silvermoon it's different, in the low level inn on that side. Full of sexy blood elves... hmmm. Roshii was asked to dance, and so he obliged the person with a dance.

And I went into the other room. Oh my goodness. Now that really made me giggle and blush. I had to leave. I felt like a voyeur. Oh dear, I was BEING a voyeur, that was my whole purpose here.

Someone whispers me. It's the person who was dancing with Roshii.
"First time here?"
"Yes." I reply.
"I sometimes prefer the fishing cottage. There's a nice fire and beds there. And it's quieter."

I relayed this information to Aza and Roshii. "Let's go!" said Roshii. So off we went to check it out.

And it was quieter there. There was only one couple in the bedroom, and they appeared to be deep in conversation. I rapidly backed out. Leave them to their private conversation, I might spoil their mood.

Another person chatted to me.
"Hi, how are you?" he asked.
"I'm fine thanks," I replied. "You?"
"A lil bored," he says. "But I'm OK."
":) everyone is so friendly here," I said. "So many people chatting."
"So what brings you to town? :)" he asked.
"Curiosity." I replied
"About? Most ppl here are looking for sex lol :P"
"Really?" I said. "I thought it was just RP. Oh My."
"Why you think everyone's naked?" I could almost sense his amusement. "That's what you get with ERP."

I had to ask. "Oh, What's ERP?"
"Erotic Role Play."
Ding! The light switched on. Everyone must think I'm so stupid. /facepalm "Ohh, right."
He replied with a :P
"I had no idea!" and I really didn't. They really HAVE those kinds of WoW servers??
"Hehe, I'm shocked noone's tried anything as you're naked," he said. "I guess you're an ERP virgin :P"

I think I had seen enough. I felt like a fraud being here. I was, actually. I was a tourist. There are people here trying to get their "business" and I was here pretending I was in the business but I was really here to gawk. I felt like I was leading people astray. I put my clothes back on.

"I've seen enough." I said to Aza and Roshii. "I'm deleting this character now."
"So what did you think?" said Roshii.
"It's... different." I said. "I didn't know people did this."
"They've clamped down on it," said Aza. "I think it was really bad before in BC here, but now it's just like this."
"I can't believe you've never heard of this," said Roshii. "Everyone knows about Goldshire Inn on Moonguard."

I wondered, how do people find out about these things? I can't imagine that it's written up on any popular websites anywhere. It must be one of those secret dirty things that everyone seems to know about, but nobody talks openly about. Is this what happens on every RP server? I thought about Vidyala, who played on an RP server before. I remember her talking during her Twisted Nether Blogcast interview about how friendly everyone was on RP servers, happy to help out when you needed help. Is it because all RP servers.. are like THIS? I thought RP servers were just about playing in character, like in D&D or something, and so people were nicer because they were more about playing in character, and dressing up in cool clothes and making friends.

So, I have to say this was a real eye-opener for me. I never knew this sort of thing existed, openly, like this. And I won't say that I didn't WANT to know that these things existed, because I think it's good to know, because, after all, we are adults, and we are free to do as we wish, consensually. If this is what people want to do, then by all means they can do it. I am not going to belittle them or say they're weird, because I don't think it's harmful to anyone what they're doing. The only thing that would concern anyone is if they let their young children or young teenagers play and they get accosted by people looking for online sex. But if you're here and looking for it, then you know to avoid it. Besides, young children, like my daughter, can't read so even if someone talked to her, she wouldn't know what it was about anyway.

So people say it's creepy and sleazy. Well, if I hadn't gone there, nobody would have tried to pick me up or dance with me anyway, so really, I think that it's a place where everyone goes to do this sort of thing. And if you go there, then people will THINK you are there looking for it. And you can always just avoid the place, or go to another server.

But I have to say, I don't think I will be going there again. But I didn't regret going to see it. Just another one of those secret things in World of Warcraft.

Late Submission: Azeroth's next Top Plate Model

2012-03-01T23:32:00.000+11:00

Introducing my friend Azalpha! Azalpha is entering into 3 categories today, and is hoping she can sneak in as a late entry!

You've already seen her submission for Best in Horde:

Pauldrons of Radiant Glory (normal), Breastplate of Radiant Glory, Gauntlets of the Golden Thorn, Dragonfracture belt, Legplates of Radiant Glory, Pillarfoot Greaves, Twin Blade of the Phoenix

And here she is in all her elegant glory in this submission for "Evening Gown":

Black Embersilk Gown, Pillarfoot Greaves

And last but not least, her submission for "My Profession" - Azalpha is part of the honour guard for Mischiefus.

Glimmering Steel Mantle, Brutal Gladiator's Ornamented Chestguard, Brutal Gladiator's Ornamented Gloves, Brutal Gladiator's Ornamented Belt, Guardian's Scaled Greaves, Torch of the Damned

Navimie's favourite World of WarCrafts

2012-03-01T15:41:00.001+11:00

Who says that you can't mix WoW with your other hobbies! Other than the graphic art, which is one of the most common creative mixes that goes with WoW, there are so many other things (which I amusingly term World of NannaCraft) out there that a lot of people don't see. WoWInsider has a whole section dedicated to the World of Warcrafts, but I wanted to put all my favourites in one spot. Here is a collection of some of the creative crafts I like best.

The World of Warcraft Cookbook

Gamers Fridge (whom I know as Edenvale) is well known for her real life recipes based on the food of World of Warcraft. I listed here some of my favourites! You can find a more extensive list on her site.

WoW recipe	Gamer Fridge recipe
Crocolisk Au Gratin	Crocolisk Au Gratin
Conjured Mana Cake	Conjured Mana Cake
Spicy Hot Talbuk	Spicy Hot Talbuk
Kaldorei Spider Kabob	Kaldorei Spider Kabob
Smoked Desert Dumplings	Smoked Desert Dumplings
Conjured Cinnamon Rolls	Conjured Cinnamon Rolls
Kibler's Bits	Kibler's Bits
Bread of the Dead	Bread of the Dead
Broiled Dragon Feast	Broiled Dragon Feast
Deep Fried Plantains	Deep Fried Plantains

Puppets and Toys

Glow of Glow's Branches made this Magmaw sock puppet, complete with instructions.

She also made a Ragnaros Finger puppet! Probably a bit more advanced as it requires some crochet knowledge. Love the Sulfuron Hammer!

And here is Glow's normal mode Ragnaros (felt) with instructions.

This Yogg-Saron Stuffie toy was brought to my attention by Aidrana of Miss Pew Pew. The original was made by Destini of Raison d'être and shows the instructions on how to make this adorable (!!) old god. Photo from Parade of Apples, and there are more pics on her site.

Two Cheese Please made this Illidan plush toy as a commission, and it is a real cutie!

She also made a whole heap of other WoW commission plushes

A troll hunter

A troll rogue

Paper crafts

Kamalia of Kamalia et alia made these Lunar Festival Lanterns, and they seem like a nice little Lunar Festival project. She has instructions on how to make them too.

I LOVE Origami and paper craft! These sites are damn awesome: WoWPapercraft. and WingedCrafts. Not for the novice, some of these designs will just blow your mind away. All you need are scissors and glue and paper! There are downloadable instructions for a number of their creations, but I just HAVE to show you some of the most impressive ones.

I hope you enjoyed looking at all these crafts as much as I did! If you can think of any other ones I'd really like, don't hesitate to drop me a comment in this post.

It's a small world after all...

2012-03-01T05:39:00.000+11:00

The advent of RealID raiding has made the World of warcraft even smaller. I love the idea that you can play with your friends from other servers in one raid - I remember when RealID first came, I thought it was so awesome because I could talk to my friends on other servers instead of having to log over to my level 1 alt to chat to them.

The WoW blogging community is so large, and the Twitteroth universe equally so, that there has been a lot of interest in Saz's Twitterland Raiding site - where twitter friends who play wow all get together and raid. It looks like they've been having lots of fun - doing Ulduar, Molten Core etc . A lot of the Tweeps have been bloggers as well (Twitter, for those non-bloggers out there who read my blog, is a fantastic way to promote your site and new posts). There are some really cool things about that site - everyone's birthday is on the calendar (I swear, it feels like it's someone's birthday EVERY day over there - but I guess I shouldn't really be surprised, because in real life, it really IS someone's birthday every day :P). And it's got the times on the sides for different zones - I think that's really handy.

But I was thinking about a few blog posts that made me giggle about how small the world is. The first one was a while ago now, but Effraeti made a comment about a Euphyley look-a-like (with pets in tow) that she saw at the AH on her server in her post The Finest Form of Flattery. The comments that ensued were funny.

That gave me giggles for a few minutes. Small world huh!

Then yesterday I happened upon Rades' tweet and was curious.

My guildies and friends know I get all agog when it comes to WoW blogging celebrities. Cynwise visited my blog once and I nearly fell off my chair I was so excited. Then Bear wrote a comment as well and I was all squeee about that! So I was wondering why Rades, a hugely popular, piggy winning, blog celebrity himself would write a post about Celebrity Cynwise. So I went to read it, and at first was confused... Cynwise is in Rades' guild? I didn't know that... but as I read further I realised it's a low level alt in Rades' guild. Anyway off topic, the whole post was about how Mr Rades himself was in LFR and one of the people in LFR (a DK) recognised Rades' guild name... but not Rades.

So how funny is that! Being in a raid and being recognised from blogs by a fellow player. I think that's really cool.

The only story I have is that Shaba, my long time guildie and PVP buddy, one day we were talking and it turned out his close aunt not only worked in my hospital but she worked in my Department, and actually her office was next door to mine and I knew her VERY well! When I told her I knew Shaba, she found the whole concept of talking in a game very bizarre. Kind of like how Roshii's mum was.

I have made my World of Warcraft smaller by looking for Tome of the Ancient and Glow and Voros on the servers they had tons on. And I'm in the process of looking for Saunder but he has so many bloody toons it's hard to find him when he is online - and he'd probably be playing during his lunch breaks anyway, so I might be able to catch him on one of my lunchbreaks.

Theres so much that we share, that its time we're aware, it's a small world after all! I wonder if anyone out there has had any encounters like that? Like playing WoW and meeting someone online that you've known for years IRL but never knew played the game? Or doing a LFR or LFD and come across someone well known in the WoW community?

Wednesday raiding - bashing at Heroic Zon'ozz

2012-03-01T05:32:00.000+11:00

So the nerf hit again. Another 5% on top. However, yesterday I think my raid team was playing half asleep at the wheel, because REALLY, most of us were half asleep. I was tired from staying up all night furiously writing all the crazy thoughts buzzing around in my head, Lushnek was tired because he was jet-lagged from flying back from Perth (before you laugh, he had been pulling 17 hour days and finishing work close to 10-11pm Perth time which is 2am Sydney time, so me trying to help him readjust his body clock by ringing him at 7am to make sure he got up at the right time made him tired for the whole day). Barkhoof was tired too, he kept saying he was sleepy and even Fue was getting sleepy at 1030pm. Augment, being the teenager he is, is always rushing off to bed, and Gutsy was yawning because he had to get up early to work. So I didn't feel like we were playing with a full pack of cards yesterday.

The other team took Ayelena along and I think Ayelena had a fun time because he got two heroic modes down. They were working on Zon'ozz and got really close again, and the frustration for them was palpable. Us on the other hand, were still trying to sort out our healing and rotations and where to go and honestly, I don't think I was that focussed yesterday, despite itching to raid since I had raid withdrawal having not raided for a whole week.

Mor'chok and Yor'sahj were both messy. Well it felt messy to me. Tonight, I've had a nice full night's sleep so I will be bringing my A-game to Zon'ozz. Oh my, the silly mistakes we made last night:

In Yor'sahj Fue did 13k DPS. Oh shit, he's in his prog gear...
Gutsy also went DPS for Yor'sahj and when he went to go back holy he realised he had been wearing his holy gear for DPS
I ran the wrong way in Morchok and couldn't hide from the black stuff but it is healable!

So I was being stupid and standing at ranged while trying to heal melee. What a dumb idea. Firstly I forgot that the melee only had 4 people in it anyway coz the tank is on the other side so having 5 there would be fine. And then trying to run in and keep LB up on the tank was just idiotic coz I think I hit the ball early. And poor Bladewind, was telling us how the other team does it but because of the way he talks which is not very animated, it made me sleepy. I know he was concentrating and he was trying to make it clear but I think I was working on half IQ yesterday.

Faith felt sad she couldn't do any heroic modes with us last week, but I said it wasn't her fault, we were down a mainspec healer so it would have been to be hard to do anything heroic that week.

OK so today, I need to go fishing to get some more stuff for feasts. I hope I have internet reception...

PVP ranting and unfair Mods

2012-02-29T04:25:00.000+11:00

As a resto druid in PVP, I get killed a fair bit. People just have healer hate when they play for the other team. But it was a few months ago when I noticed that I really was getting killed - A LOT.

Sometimes it was as if I had a huge bullseye planted on my head every time I started to cast a heal. How can they see me behind all these other guys? And you know what I had it all down to? Good PVP tactics. Take out the healer, and mow down the troops. Steamroll your way to win. That's assuming you have more punch power than the other team of course.

So why have I brought this up? Because I used to think that battlegrounds with no healers were a loss for the other team but then I read this written by Gnomeageddon. He talks about and advocates the use of the addon Healers have to Die. I shouldn't even be writing about it here, because talking about it encourages its use and I don't like that addon. However, on it's plus side it does put friendly ones on your teammates so technically you can assist your healers who are getting pounded on. So now I know WHY I am getting pounded on as soon as I cast a heal. Bloody hell.

Cynwise wrote about it too, advocating its use. Bloody dpsers. I admit I have no PVP addons, but I'm not sure if I would use them because I get confused easily. It's much easier for me just to focus what I'm worried about (mostly an arena thing) and just heal and run and hide and call out incs or whatever for the battlegrounds.

So do I think this mod should be removed? Umm... no. As much as I hate it, killing me is the smart thing to do in PVP. And if my teammates use it as well, then we are all on a level playing field.

One interesting healer PVP read I did go to was this one at P Vee P - healer placements. This person wrote a whole series on it. Which I thought was pretty cool. Do I agree or disagree with what they said? It's not that I disagree exactly, but being the spacebar twitch that I am, I'm usually constantly moving around so I am rarely in one of the positions PVeeP said I should be in. But the diagrams are pretty and it is a pretty good tool for someone who is new to healing a BG group. And I mean group. Not a pug.

Which will now bring me on to what I class I hate more than anything in an PVP but especially in Arena. A death knight. Now I find this interesting - there are very few DK blogs out there. I suppose Rades is a DK, but really he has a hunter, a priest, a druid, a DK and a paladin so I am not sure if he qualifies. He does have an outdated DK gear thing on his blog though - maybe that counts.

DKs just smash through everything in my arsenal. They wipe off my Lifeblooms, they put bloody diseases on me that I can't dispel, they put me in iceblocks... chains are not so bad as I can shift out of those... they yank me back when I'm trying to run away... they use that annoying as hell death strike that gives them back a shit ton of health I mean WTF is with that SERIOUSLY! And don't get me started on Anti-magic shield which lasts too long and can't be stolen and just totally stuffs up my Nature's grasp... GAH! Hate them hate them hate them. My worst nightmare? 2 DKs. Add a shaman to that and I think I would rather be

Mages however, I do find annoying, but a good mage can be so painful. However, I spend a lot of time practicing duels against my mage team mate Shaba, so I am reasonably well versed in escaping the sheep/tree/sheep/ROF/counterspell combo (oops did I just give away something?). And I will always relive my glory moment of me being left in arena against a mage, who was being very cocky about killing me and after 4 minutes or longer of running around and stuff, I killed him. HIGHLY SATISFYING. Take that you little blinking evocating frostbolting pipsqueak! I bet you were pissed off when I cycloned you while evocating! Ha! My mage dislike came from one AV I did back in Vanilla, and I had stopped to hit a mage who was hitting me and I was yelled at on the battlefield "Are you STUPID? What the hell are you doing? Druids can't beat mages, DERRR, get your ass up to Vann's room." Ok, so like, yelling at me is going to make me do anything you say faster? I don't think so.

Which leads me to another sore point in PVP. Poor sportsmanship. It drives me nuts when people are rude to me in a BG. BG talk can be like LFR talk, it's full of finger pointing, hate and ego flexing and blame making. Telling everyone how crap they are. Just go away, I don't want to talk to you. I try to write down every positive experience I get in PVP so that I can remember the nice times to cancel out the times I just want to reach into my screen and slap those egotistical twits until thier poor little buttcheek faces are sore.

And those people in arenas who laugh at you and spit on you. Why must you do that? You know I would really like it if someone came after me after a really challenging match and said "That was a great match, well done." I admit I've done that before, I logged over to the server made a level one alt and told someone that the game we had was a really good game, and it was really satisfying. OK, so I'm a big fan of the 45 minute arena match (where we WIN of course, but even when we lose it's a good game coz of the challenge) because outlasting and survival is what me and Sev are good at. But the multitudes of times I have had opposing team make rude signs at me and spit on my corpse and laugh at it... ugh, it just drives me nuts. I hate rude people.

Ok I think I'm done yanking that chain now. Ahem. Geez, I shouldn't post when I've got insomina.

So for those who don't realise, I'm actually doing this post as part of Gnome's challenge, because Ancient wanted me to join her.

Challenge: Find one of my old posts from the 830 odd posts I have written and choose to agree or disagree with it. Compare life during TBC with life pre-MoP. Hate me, go on, hate me – ill love you for it!

There is one condition, with the exception of the initial link back to my inspirational post, all other links have to go outward and include at least two other people to involve.

Not that I ever have a problem with link love. I have my weekly blogroll to do that. But I decided the extra challenge today was to link to some people to whom I have never linked before. But at least even if I only linked to people who don't really need the link love (Rades and Cynwise) I can say I got that PVP thing off my chest. Never really found an outlet for it before.

When is your say less important than what others say?

2012-02-29T01:11:00.005+11:00

On my usual Tuesday night wind-down when there is no WoW to be had, I usually catch up on my reading, look at some drafts on my blog that need polishing off before publishing, and work on my latest video(s) project - and then lament that I can't get online because I want to film a particular scene... but I digress! I was taking a break from staring and editing videos and I noticed some new things to read so I went off to read them.

I pause here for a moment because I'm not sure I should mention where I read it or whose blog I read because that person may not want to draw more attention to what happened. I think I'll just continue writing about it in the "I know this person who...." sense, but if you continue reading and you also read that person you may know exactly who and what I am talking about.

This person took down a post because it offended some readers. In fact, at the time of writing the post, the author had felt so happy and chuffed about the milestone they had hit that they couldn't help but share. Well, that's the impression that I got. I have actually read that post 4 times and the reason I had gone back to that post so many times since it had been published was:

I had written a comment and wanted to see if I got any replies
I had some great feelings when I read that post, and wanted to relive them. Those feelings were 3 versions of awe:
Awe - (OMG really that is AMAZING how could you hit 2 million people reading your stuff!)
Awww...? (as in OMG wow what if that was me, I wish I was that popular!)
Awww cuuuuute - that dancing pic is so sweet, I felt like the love for his spouse was personified by that picture
I wanted to see how many congratulations he got

I was even so proud to be following and reading this person that I was telling a few of my guildies how amazing it was to hit that many pageviews - since that is like AMAZING, I want to be like that. Cynwise recently hit 1 million and I was like agog about that, but 2 million?? WOW!!! One guildie reassured me that what I write about is totally fine and I don't need to be like that person, what I write is funny and amusing in it's own right. But I can still be awed right? Come on, it's me, who gets impressed by crazy cool things, loves discovering new people reading my blog, and being visited by famous bloggers (yes yes I know I need to stop the crazy fanboy shit!!)

So I wonder, what was in that post that could have been taken the wrong way? For inspiration, I decided to listen to Fleetwood Mac's "Go your own Way" while I write. Thanks Matty for the Fleetwood Mac revive a few weeks ago.

One of the commenters on that person's blog said that it was still in reader, so I went to my reader and it was still there. I reread the post and tried to imagine, if I took that post the wrong way, how I would interpret that post. I suppose that someone who was envious of their success would feel a little bit miffed, and think, what's so good about you? Perhaps it was the comment about how the author's goal was to amuse someone during a lunch break. Maybe the offended person didn't get lunch breaks and felt bitter about that. But I suspect the offending culprit was this:

I like to think I achieve that goal at least a few times a week, and if that’s so, then world peace and a united earth government can’t be far behind. Right?

Clearly, a terrorist bent on destruction took offense to this. The author, is American after all, and they want to take over the world right? And have everyone live under a star spangled banner? A united earth government? Oh wait, I know who was offended. It was someone in North Korea. Because clearly there is no other people in the world for those poor brainwashed and isolated souls about whom I think about every second day since I read that book about life in North Korea and thank my lucky stars I live in a country where there's freedom of speech, freedom to choose, and freedom to write about whatever the hell I want.

Have I offended you? Oh, I'm sorry. You can stop reading now if you're offended. Because this is my blog and I can write whatever I like if I feel like it. Navi likes to rant when she has the creative urge to.

I'm actually too busy giggling now at the thought of Kim Jong-un posting comments on the author's blog that I've lost track of what I was going to write next.

Focus. Ahem.

Him deleting that post reminded me of another time when another blog buddy took down a post, that I thought was written hastily when they were upset, over a misunderstanding. There were some things in the post that they wanted to say still, but I remember giving advice to them ways on rewording it so that they didn't come across wrong. The rewrite of the post was much better and less ranty, and I think conveyed the feeling that the person wanted to get across much better, but more focus on the writing and feeling and less focus on the rant. It was a good result and I went back to read it just now to see if it still evoked the same feelings I had when I first read it. And... yep. It did.

I wish the author would put that post back up. Maybe with some rewording, because I don't think that it was anything to be ashamed about. Maybe take out the bit that was offensive to some people and remove the comments of those who were offended. But it may be hard to do that now with the follow up post that was written after it was taken down. I suppose one thing they could do was wait a while and put it back up, but really, that would only satisfy me, and not really the author, so I shouldn't wish for things just because I want them. I think I am just sad because the feelings of aww I got from reading that post will no longer be had because that post is no longer there. And everyone who knows me, knows how I get a kick out of emotions from stuff people post.

Offense is in the eye of the beholder, they say. But, so is Beauty.

So in the memory of the lost post, I will quote these lyrics from Metallica's Eye of the Beholder.

Rant over. Thanks for reading to the end.

PS: OK I thought I'd try posting what I wrote just now into I write like and see if it still comes up the same. Yep. I still write like Cory Doctorow. But you know what else is really REALLY cool? I put the whole deleted post into the analyzer too see what that came up like and guess what? Also comes up like Cory Doctorow (normally that person writes like William Gibson, or even.. GOSH.. Stephanie Meyer - oh I bet he won't be happy to hear that!!). So that explains why I liked that post so much. Oh my, I'm all chuffed again! Stop it, Navi, the fanboy is getting too much... :D /minisqueeee!

PPS: Oh my, I think I just discovered why the post was removed! Amazing what one finds on one's blogroll ><

Aza's hawt plate

2012-02-28T06:00:00.001+11:00

Aza's paladin is so pretty. He said this isn't slut plate, but I think it does look rather nice. Blood elf girls always look good in sexy mog sets :) And I do love that headband :) So for a plate mog, this is pretty sweet.

Guildie Guest Voe - Resto Shamans for Dummies - Chapter 1: Intro

2012-02-27T08:00:00.008+11:00

Voe joined our guild during 4.2 (Firelands) and hasn't looked back since. Love him or hate him, you can't miss the fact he's an excellent healer, and I asked him to put together for me a little how-to for the budding resto shaman.

RESTO SHAMANS FOR DUMMIES

Chapter 1: Intro

A Voe perspective

Let’s get this straight, a shaman isn’t the first class I’ve healed with. I have been around since the vanilla days. Back at level 60 when I PvPed on my priest as shadow and healed 40 mans in shadow spec. Back at lvl 70 on a holy paladin when flash of light spam was cool. Back at lvl 80 once again on my paladin healing away at whatever end content I could step foot in.

Now in Cataclysm after quite a bit of away time from the game I decided to level my shaman, not so much to dps but to heal. I hadn’t healed on a shaman before, I liked the idea of having totems, bloodlust, raid healing ability as well as solo tank healing if needed. When thinking about making a comeback I sat down long and hard and thought should I step out of my comfort zone, and roll a tank class... But Voe prevailed.

Furthermore, I knew joining the end game raiding again as a badly geared dps class I would find it hard to fit in anywhere, and as usual everyone needs healers. It’s been the case since vanilla. So with a chance from Fue and a few raids in bad gear, I think my ability to heal with a class that was “nerfed” really opened a few eyes. Now being one of the pillar healers within Frostwolves I’m going to jump into some depth about the shaman. A few pointers on how I heal, how I look at fights, what I look for during encounters. Really everything I do whilst we pound our heads against new bosses.

So let's begin.

Healing isn’t something a person does without the love, the passion and the challenge knowing that without you in the raid people WOULD be dead. To me healing is the best aspect of the game. You get to sit and see the entire fight, the screen is open for you to see every mechanic, every individual person doing their role.

More importantly you can see exactly what other healers are doing right or wrong. I think out loud which tends to shit a few raiders within the guild, but i do believe with my thoughts out loud do help others who aren’t as forth coming and really rely on things being yelled out so they don’t get hit by the fire wall, don’t over heal a target with too many stacks, know when to stack, when to spread and when to pop cds. I have always had the ability to talk, not just in WoW but in all aspects of my everyday life, so by doing this in game I had hoped it brings out the best in players.

All things being said I try my best to not come across as a know it all dick that steps on peoples roles, I believe I have improved in my time with frostwolves with my “foot in mouth syndrome”.

Healing As A Shaman

Forget whatever you have been told about shamans. To me, out of all the classes i have healed with they’re the most fun. You have quite a bit of utility and heal for EVERY situation. I don’t just press 3 buttons for a fight. I use the following buttons on my keyboard

1. Riptide

2. Healing Wave

3. Greater Healing Wave/NS

4. Chain Heal

Q. Unleash Elements

E. Earth Shield

X.Drop totems

`. Cleanse Spirit

V. Healing Surge

C. Ghost Wolf

F. Healing Rain

G. Wind Shear

R. Totemic Recall

T. Spirit Walkers Grace

Z. Blood Fury (Orc Racial)

H. Water Shield/Earthliving Wep

My H key is macroed so that I can hit it twice and cast them one after another. I am not a clicker,I use my keyboard to cast all my spells, the only use my mouse is to scroll over targets to heal, dispell etc. Natures Swiftness is macroed to Y Key for that quick heal on someone.

The best advice I can give you is, keep riptide up on 3 targets at once, general rule of thumb is main tank off tank and another melee, as they tend to take the most damage. In doing this not only will you keep hots on those targets you also have a chance to proc Earth Living Hot on the target as well as Ancestral Awakening/Healing which reduces damage taken by 10% and increases the targets HP. This to me was one of the best buffs given to a resto shaman, furthermore everytime you crit heal with Water Shield up you regen a certain amount of mana depending on what spell you crit with. Which is why you should always keep it on. NO questions asked.

I don’t care what people say about mana tide, I try to use it as many times as I can throughout a fight, I can usually get about 3-5 mana tides off depending on what fight. In saying this I rarely have mana issues because of this, just use it when you feel necessary, always try to have it up in “oh Shit” moments especially with the T13 two piece which decreases the cost of healing spells for 25 seconds after you use it (this is amazing).

Totems

I Really only use the following totems depending on who is the raid and what buffs are needed

Earth: Strength of Earth or Stoneskin Armour

Flame: Flametongue

Water: Healing Stream totem/Mana tide when its up

Air: Wrath of Air, Windfury or Spirit Link Totem

Our situational spells are (SLT)Spirit Link Totem and (SWG)Spirit Walkers Grace, both these spells are good in their own right although i think SLT should be buffed to last about 10-12 seconds, just IMO. And with the T13 4 set bonus SWG is awesome it increases haste and also lets you move while you cast healing spells this is great once again for situational times during all boss fights. For example
running to get your crystal in Ultraxion, you can heal while running to get the crystal and heal while running back.

I think I have covered most spells you would use as a resto shaman I'll share with you my main rotation to give you an idea of when i use spells etc.

I use Riptide on CD, this is always on 3 targets unless I'm being lazy, always use Unleash Elements on people not only is this a cheap heal it also makes your next heal 30% bigger! The other benefit of using Riptide is it makes the next two healing waves/greater healing waves 30% less cast time and increases their crit chance, this buff is also given whenever you chain heal. This should be kept up as
much as you can which you will achieve by keeping Riptide up on 3 targets. Healing Wave and Chain heal are the shamans AOE beast heals, chain heal is mana efficient, Healing rain isn’t... In saying this if used well you can conserve a lot of mana, I see a big rookie mistake with some shamans using healing rain when it isn’t needed, when a chain heal would have sufficed.

Only pop Healing Rain when raid damaged is crazy spastic, holy shit everyone is taking so much damage, heal them now... Which funnily enough seems to be most heroic fights LoL?

I don’t want to bore you with every situation as a resto shaman and what healing you need to do and when because everyone heals differently, but as mentioned above use the spells when they’re needed keep HoTs up on the main damage takers then just use whatever heals the situation needs. I use all the buttons I have mentioned above, although healing surge rapes your mana is a great quick heal to get people up, as well as greater healing wave works well with Natures Swiftness (next heal is instant) incase someone almost dies.

In an overall summary of what I have talked about, Shamans are amazing to heal with. They bring utility, raid balance, raid buffs with totems and bloodlust as well as the versatility of having off specs to dps if needed. (Although i never get to do that much these days. Not to sure why :P)

Shamans are easy to heal with once you have grasped the finer detail of their spells and when to and not to use differing spells. If this gets an ok review I'll be more than happy to jump into serious depth as to what specs to use, what stats to have etc. For now this is a quick intro into my world as healing as a resto shaman.

Enjoy!

Reunited - A world of warcraft video

2012-02-27T07:10:00.000+11:00

Shaba and Enna gifted me with a piece of music, and I thought it was so lovely I had to do something with it, so I made a WoW video out of it. So here it is! It's called Reunited - a story of 2 lovers, separated and then reunited in death/undeath.

Thanks to Enna/Beauti, Gley/Beasti, and Serayl(Sevros) for allowing me to direct them. And a special thanks to Cymre who came on her alliance toon to slaughter Serayl for me, and Shab for the moral support!

Ironavie - Chapter 2 - 13 is an unlucky number

2012-02-27T03:00:00.001+11:00

Ironavie sobbed as she hearthed in shame.

"It just wasn't meant to be, Ironavie," said Guvan, the Priest trainer, with a regretful look on his face. "Your journey is over."

"No, NO," cried Ironavie vehemently, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. "I was liking this challenge. I can't believe it's finished just like that."

A soft voice whispered in her head. "You should just continue on this character with the old Ironman challenge - the one where it was OK to die. Less stress that way." Ferricat's gentle voice was a gentle purr, reassuring, comforting. "I hope it wasn't because I distracted you whilst talking..."

"No, it wasn't," Ironavie reassured Ferricat. "I was happy to hear from you. I was excited to be able to chat to you!"

"What happened anyway?"

"Oh, I was trying to kill High Chief Bristlelimb, and I ended up pulling a second mob, and I was trying to get range on it and backed into another mob - too many mobs. I was thought I was ok and then suddenly my health was 20 and I forgot to use my Gift of the Naaru..." Ironavie sniffled. "Oh well."

So poor Ironavie got 5 hours of playtime and only got to level 13. I have to admire that person who made it to 81 already!

Playing a pure DPS class... my god. I forgot that I couldn't heal myself, well not much! It really is so different, when before I could heal myself and run away, and I got carried away because I could actually kill things relatively quickly as a DPS, that I forgot that the tradeoff for that would be poor survivability.

So what should Ironavie do now? Delete? Start over? Continue on in the old Ironman fashion with just levelling in whites and greys? Before anyone says anything - no I am not going to level her like a normal alt because I don't do normal. So I guess it boils down to Delete, Start over or Continue. I look forward to hearing what people think!

Ironnavie Chapter 1 - Level 1 to 10

2012-02-26T23:58:00.000+11:00

Oh dear. The Draenei crash landed here and altered the native flora and fauna! Never fear! My trusty Moth and I will do these quests and do our best to right what wrong we've done with our unplanned visit to this world. I just hope that none of these enemies I'm fighting our wielding a [Bug Spray] or else my Moth is a goner. I can't help but pat my beautiful blonde hair before I set off on tiptoes on my hooves (hooftoes? tiphoofs?) running off to go kill some poor creatures.

Wow, it's been a while since I played a hunter. Since when do I start with a pet? And, what is this focus bar? Damn, I did like mana because there are pots for that but there are no pots for focus! And oh, we don't have to buy ammo anymore? Wheeee!

Looking at these red crystals leaching bad energy into the water brings back a famous Woody line from Toy Story:

"Somebody's poisoned the waterhole!"

Ah, but there is tragedy not only in what's around us but within our circle too. Here we mourn the dead. I kneel in respect and sadness for those of my race who have fallen.

Some silly things I noticed around here. There are some normal Owlkin, and some mutated Owlkin. Isn't it funny that the NORMAL ones look like Tauren Moonkin, and the Mutated ones look like Troll Moonkin?

I got my first achievement from following a Furlborg Totem. I jumped off a cliff and got "Going Down?", though it did feel like I was cheating because I had special wings at the time! This quest chain has a hell of a lot of running and swimming.

Oh, and I found another NPC named after a famous person. Odesyus (Odysseus) named after the Greek hero who wandered the sea for 10 years before he came home to Ithaca.

After finding a traitor, and heading up north to kill some ravagers, I made it to Level 10. Yay! Only 75 more to go. I bet they won't be as easy as those first 10.

Introducing Ironavie

2012-02-26T16:19:00.000+11:00

It's so hard to open my eyes. Oh my, it's bright. The sky is so... pink?

My fluttering eyes snapped wide open. Pink sky. Wreckage. What on earth has happened here? I look around and my jaw drops as I catch sight of my hands. I turn them over in front of myself incredulously. Blue-black skin. Smooth. No fur. My hand goes to my head - the horns are still there but my hair is different. I put my hand to my muzzle - and find a flatter, more human face. I look behind and I still have a tail, and hooves. But boy is my ass big compared to my shoulders. I sigh in resignation. I've been reborn - as an alliance Draenei.

It came back to me. I was being entered into the WoW Ironman competition. And the rules were:

Only White or Grey gear. No Heirlooms of any kind.
No transfer of gear, items, or money from any other character (yours or others).
No gear enhancements, including gems, enchanting, and reforging. Class abilities are allowed (eg. Rogue poisons, Shaman imbues).
No specialization, talent points, or glyphs. No pet talent points.
No professions or secondary skills, except for First Aid.
No potions, flasks, or elixirs except for required quest items.
No food buffs or other external buffs (including buffs from items and other players).
No groups or assistance from other characters, even if not grouped.
No dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, or arenas.
No guilds, except for level 1 guilds created specifically for the Ironman Challenge.
No Refer-A-Friend.
No addons which assist in combat and/or leveling (eg. leveling guides, Ovale).
THE BIG ONE: No deaths. Character death for any reason disqualifies the character

The following are allowed:
All class abilities, racials, and personal buffs.
All mounts, bags, and non-combat pets.
All quests, including holiday events and dailies (unless prohibited by some other rule, eg. Fishing and Cooking dailies).

Now why would I, of all people be in this challenge? Everyone knows Navi has no alts, hates levelling alts. So why would she be in this one, which is even worse than levelling an alt, it's grinding your way the slow way to 85. And the only way I would level an alt, I said once, was to do it with someone, in a group, and do it faster.

So what happened? Why the change of pace?

It might have been the whole challenge of it. It's different to level an alt this way. And by the light, Navi is always contrary. Trying to be different, to stand out. Also, there is no pressure to level. The problem with levelling with someone is that they're chomping at the bit to get going whilst you're still dawdling away on your main doing dailies. And when I get left behind, I feel miserable and don't want to play anymore.

But, and this probably makes me the most concerned, is that I am jumping on the bandwagon. Is it just wanting to get into the whole community event of it? Giving me something else to write about - geez, it's not like I don't already have enough things to write about. Sometimes I think this blog should be called The Twice-Daily Frostwolf. Of course, a lot of that is ramble, but I love rambling. It's my blog, after all.

But perhaps it's a good escape. I think it's good for that 10 minute WoW time that we busy people have sometimes. I can log on, do a few quests, log off. And yes, I could do that with a proper alt, but there is always that pressure to level. With this Ironman challenge, I don't want to be taking risks, I want to do it the slow scenic way... or I'll go splat.

So why did I choose:

Being Alliance - the quests are new, and I can see some of the Alliance perspective of Cataclysm
A Draenei - Because I wanted something sexy (so I chose a female) and I like having a tail. And the racial would be helpful for this challenge (Gift of the Naaru)
A Hunter - I thought I would have the least chance of dying. Pet classes would be good for this, and feign death would be a good way to avoid dying.
Zangarmarsh server - honestly, it was because Tome of the Ancient was there. I was so excited after meeting Glow, that I thought that I could meet up in game with another of my blog buddies. And, nobody else I know is there, so I will happily not have to worry about catching up or playing with anyone on that server.

So, here I am. My name is Ironavie, and I have one life to live, here as a Draenei on Zangarmarsh server, and I'll be sharing that life with all of you, each painful step of the way!

Wait, wait! I think I feel like telling a story! No, no, I'll wait till next week.

Thank God, RealId is only a /r away! Though friends can't help you with levelling, they can help you live through the boredom of running from place to place.

Highlights of the Week from my Blogroll February 26, 2012

2012-02-26T06:00:00.004+11:00

The best read of this week was from Big Bear Butt again - boy can that man write. This time he wrote WoW is like a... which is a rather unassuming title for such an awesome read. BBB voiced what I felt about WoW but had never even thought to say - I can't even write it, you have to go read it, what I would summarise about it would not do the article justice. I love WoW, and I never get sick or bored in it, yet people always ask me why I'm still playing it, why am I not sick of it. BBB wrote that WoW is like a relationship, a commitment, like a marriage. And how he is still in love with it, and discovering new things about it even after all these years. Much like he does with his wife. And though new shiny things come (ie new games) he may go and look, but it's WoW he comes home to. And I started thinking how that translates into real life. People who are attracted by the latest new thing, the latest shiny - do you think that reflects their real life commitments and relationships too? Does that mean that the sign of a good partner can be told from their WoW habits? I mean, that is an extrapolation from what he originally wrote about, but when I look at it that way, who are the people in the game that I feel closest to? It is the ones who love the game, who are fascinated by every aspect of it, who are still in love with it after years. Probably because I can identify with that feeling, but it just makes you think, and I love those articles which make you think.

Tzufit as usual stuns me with her great and insightful posts - and this week she did a whole series of Cataclysm grading papers. The Resto Druid one is the one I was most interested in reading, and she has it here. It is such a good read, all resto druids should have a look at it and take a walk down memory lane (because I found that my Cata memory seems to be short!) and see if they agree or disagree with what Tzu has to say about the whole thing.

Juvenate has done a nice little summary of MoP talents with choices for resto druids, in his post Thoughts on the Updated MoP talent calculator. It's got pictures, I like pictures.

Last but not least, there are three of my blog buddies that inspired me to do the unthinkable - Effraeti, Tome of the Ancient and Euphyley. Reading their adventures (Ironeffy, Ironsteve and Ferricat) made me start the Ironman competition, and I will have small stories about my little Ironavie later in the week. Everyone who knows me knows I hate alts, and I hate levelling, so why am I doing this? You can read why when I make my post later :)

How 25 man raids are going the way of the 40 man raids

2012-02-25T18:40:00.000+11:00

It seems to be a common theme for a lot of guilds - unable to attract good recruits, or even any recruits. The lucky ones who pick up the stray person who left from a raiding guild to forge out on their own - be it for personal reasons or returning to the game or change of raid time - are fortunate, I guess. But I was reading what Beru wrote about Exploring the Continued Vitality of 25 man raiding, and thought about why things changed.

She postulated a few things:

Did the introduction of 10 man guilds kill the 25 man guild?
Did making the gear from 10 and 25 the same kill 25 man raiding?

I have to admit, that both of those things did kill the 25 man raid. But the interesting thing for me and my guild is, that going from 25 man raiding to 10 man raiding has actually increased our progress. And the reason is because now everybody has to pull their weight, and it's easier to see where mistakes are made.

Lissanna also wrote about Why two raid sizes are worse than one. She proposes the idea of 15 man raids - which is larger than a 10 man but to me, is not really that much different! Because she says, with the dying 25 man raiding scene, Blizzard will not want to continue to make content for that level anymore - especially since raid finder seems to work well now as the larger raid group.

Image from Worldofwar.de's interview with Tom Chilton

Let's look at the 40 man raid for example. Back in Vanilla, you could get away with being a bad healer or a bad DPS because most of the time there are other people there to pull you through the content. But there weren't that many 40 man guilds out there, because there just weren't that many people. So Blizzard decided that 40 mans were no longer viable and decided to cut it to 25 mans.

No more 40-man-raids, because 10 and 25 players raids still feel epic. “What we realized is: it’s not really the number of players that makes it epic, it’s the quality of the content and what you do with this content and what you do, to make players be part of this content.”
- Tom Chilton

So many 40 man guilds collapsed as people scattered around trying to find somewhere to fit in, and there were divisions because if you did have a 40 man guild and you started 25 man raiding, what did those other 15 people do? Obviously they went somewhere else. So then was the age of 25 mans, and it was rare to find a casual 25 man raiding guild.

Then came the change to 10 mans. This was to allow the smaller guilds to participate in raiding whereas before they had to form some kind of guild alliance or pug their way into a 25 man raid. But they made the loot of 10 man less than that of 25s to compensate, to still reward the 25 mans the extra effort and coordination that it took to get that boss down. In my opinion those were the golden day sof 25 mans. The days of Ulduar and ToC.

Then they changed 10 man loot to be the same as 25 man loot. I agree with Beru, that was the 25 man killer. Why would you want to do 25s and wait for people to get on when you could quickly grab 10 people and do the same thing? And of course, those people who were better players and wanted to only play with the better playres - those people could splinter off in their 10 mans and even form a new guild with those elite 10 and progress - maybe even faster than a 25 man. And of course, then all these 10 man guilds began to pop up and pull away even more raiders, so that you have lots of little groups of guilds with 5-9 people in them who raid, and each of those as well as the 25 man guilds is trying to grab that new player. There are so many more guilds now, and all those players are "raiding" which means they aren't out there in a bigger guild boosting the big guild raiding numbers.

There will always be natural decay. People find other things to do, get jobs, have children/families, get bored of the game. When these players leave, those holes can be hard to fill. People are looking for people with the raid experience and DPS/HPS/TPS (Tank Pretty Sweet) that is similar to that which was lost. And when you're at the high end, you're not going to find many of those.

So what happens to those 25 man guilds who can't recruit to keep their numbers up? They turn into a guild of 2 10 mans. And then the few who get left out are reserves and stop turning up? And then those who want to go to do 25 man... go to another guild. You can see how a guild dies from these sorts of things.

So how can you stop these things happening to your guild?

To be honest, I'm not sure if you can. It really depends on the core, the foundation of your guild. A group of people who are together to raid, to achieve that kill, at any cost, will do really well if they all work on the same mentality. But with a few no shows, and raiding collapsing, people get frustrated and want to find somewhere that looks more appealing.

Baby boomer vs Gen Y

This kind of behaviour can actually mimic real life. Think of being in a raiding guild like working in a job. You're new, you work your way up the ladder in the workplace, and when you get to where you like you can stay and perhaps put in years of service to the company that offered you all the training. That's a typical baby boomer mentality, or so they say. Or, you can be more like a Gen Y - who comes in, brilliant and smart, stays for a while, and then sees a newer, better opportunity somewhere else, and leaves after a year or two. It seems to me, that being in a guild is a bit like company loyalty. This place trained me, gave me opportunities, and I want the opportunity to give back and share what I've learned and help the company. I'm no baby boomer, but I'm no Gen Y-er either. But what I am trying to get across is that if you have a guild full of Gen Ys, you're going to end up in trouble sooner or later, as they come and go, and the leadership changes that can go with it as people move in and out of the guild. If you are in a guild that has a foundation of baby boomers, who have been there a long time, who have commitment and loyalty, then you will find that your guild will survive, and may even succeed, if there is the core who remain true to the foundation on which the guild was laid.

Of course, that means you have to be HAPPY in the guild you are in. If you're not happy, then it's never going to work. As an officer in a guild, how do you make sure your players are happy?

Involve guildies in decision making - people who feel like they are a valued member don't like having decisions made about them. This may mean putting polls up in guild forums, offering a couple of options if a change is coming, but it allows everyone to have their say.
Keep them informed - nobody likes to be a mushroom
If you are an officer, act responsibly - don't have rules for officers/yourself and different rules for everyone else
Outline rules of raiding and guild conduct clearly before people first join - it will save them disappointment and anguish later and also avoid misunderstandings, especially with things like raid loot
Trim the weeds - every now and then someone will make the guild a miserable place for everyone. These people need to be removed, but it should be a joint officer decision, and not the decision of one person as it could just be a personality clash
Make sure everyone knows they are valued and are treated that way - everybody should be respected. Sure some people may not be as good a player or as reliable as others, but they bring other positive things to the guild - maybe they farm mats, or they are there as backups, or they are good at morale boosting. Rather than focussing on the negative, try to look at the positive aspects of a person. If everyone feels like a valued member of the guild then they are less likely to leave.

I wish everyone the best with their guild through these difficult times. It is sad for me to see some of these long standing guilds collapsing, and I hope that my guild continues to survive for at least a while to come.

New Rares this week

2012-02-25T06:00:00.007+11:00

I have no luck seeing Terborus, but with guildies like Falln and Belinia, at least I have some extra eyes to catch those rare screen shots for me. Thank you Falln for this pic!

Trigore hangs out in Wailing Caverns, and Sev summoned me there whilst he was fishing for deviate fish.

And thanks to Nabe for snapping this, though I thought I had this one, but clearly I don't...

Thursday raiding - working on heroic Zon'ozz

2012-02-24T12:32:00.000+11:00

It's always hard to write about something when you're not there. I have to rely on what I see and hear from the other raid. But, it sounded like they were making some great progress, and then as the night wore on, people got tired and made mistakes.

From what I could tell, they hit enrage timer. They were getting the phases down, but they had a bit of health to get down still. But it sounds like it was a really really good night. I'm not sure what their final % was down to but I heard rumours of somewhere between 10-25%. People were getting frustrated at the end because of the silly mistakes and I whispered Hwired to do a /soothe in case he was having a tanty. But he said he wasn't the one getting mad, it was the OTHER two getting cranky.

Me, on the other hand, since we weren't raiding, was instead shopping the auction house for nice Transmog gear, and then off to do some battlegrounds with Barkhoof, Sev and Shaba, and had some pretty sweet wins. We started with a slow win in AV, then an AB. Then there was a Twin peaks and the bear there said he'd flag carry. That was a decent game but I was a bit worried (and so was Sev) because the bear was spending a lot of time on the battlefield instead of running towards the flag room. So the bear capped first. Then Sev got the flag next and was running back with Shaba and another druid healer, and I thought oh well, I'll go help on the field and heal the dps. Sev yelled at me because his healer was getting killed and I ran back to help him but he capped and so I headed out to pick up the flag. I grabbed it and a rogue was chasing me but I managed to get up to the bridge. Sev called out to me to be cautious, but the bear was waiting for me and I passed the flag over and he picked it up about half a second before the rogue appeared and started trying to hit us. That was a lucky pass! So 3 cap and easy win.

There was one BG we had to go without Sev, because the queue was bugged, and Shaba told us to all leave queue and Sev (as usual) didn't read chat and when we left the queue popped for him and he entered. He did win that BG though, so it was good. However, the rest of us queued and got Battle for Gilneas, which I usually like anyway.

That battle started out well. It was amusing that we had 3 mages, 3 paladins, 3 druids and one DK. I said to my friends "I hope that DK gives us Path of Frost" which he did. Awesome. Because I always like to rush to waterworks and try to intercept alliance as they try to get to the flag. So we had a battle there, I capped the flag and stayed to guard it. Everyone ran away and headed over to Lighthouse. I was stealthed, and then I was sapped and the rogue started capping flag. I called out the inc and trinketed out and hit the rogue and he absolutely THRASHED me. I felt like I was wearing paper! The DK, Upinyagrillz from Barthilas said in BG chat "Coming to help" and as I died, I saw the rogue go over to the flag and start capping and thought crap, I lost my base. But the DK arrived and steamrolled the rogue and when I got back I whispered a thanks to him and he politely said back "No worries" and then Barkhoof (who was now on Arc) said that LH was in trouble, and the DK ran off to go help LH, which had been uncapped by Alliance. I watched as the other 3 players at LH died and the within 30 seconds, the DK had somehow defended Lighthouse. Wow. I whispered the DK and said "Wow, you're amazing, nice defence!" and he whispered back ":) you don't get to Warlord without learning a few things." So that was pretty impressive. (You get the title Warlord if you complete the Warlord achievement). So a nice 3 cap win in Gilneas.

After a few more games Barkhoof had to go so we did some Arena. Oh my we had some awful arenas. The priest, mage, lock team where much better with their LOS and hiding than we were, and ended up having all of us lured out intot he open and they hardly took any damage. There was a couple of satisfying wins - we did come across a triple plate (pally/warrior/DK) which we killed but the next time we came across them we died. Bleh.

So, Sunday! More PVP! If I can drag Sev away from Star Wars, that is.

Wednesday raiding - Not given the opportunity to strut our stuff...

2012-02-23T11:37:00.002+11:00

Bladewind was not raiding last night so it was just me and Gutsy main spec with Lushnek offspec. Faithless came and joined us and was so quiet and shy - I told her not to worry, I would make sure she was OK! Fue insisted we do all normals but we begged to do Morchok heroic, because we wanted to try 1 healing Porkchop's side. I tried it twice, and I did better the first time, and horrible the second time. I lost Falln and then I lost Barkhoof. It was bleh. So I said to get Gutsy to try it, since he had lightwell to help boost him up, and he did well too, his goes were better than mine, but with the time pressure thing, we couldn't do it, because Fue said we had to clear Dragon Soul tonight. So we switched to normal and ended up doing everything else on normal. Faith even whispered me asking me if it was her fault we were not getting Morchok and I reassured her that it was a healing thing, not anything to do with her.

We did the green and red step of Taste the Rainbow and that leaves most of us with just Purple and yellow left, so if we do another normal Yor'sahj we can do that. But I was so hoping Purple and Yellow would come up last night as well as green and red, but we weren't that lucky. We 3 healed that because green and red is a bit ouch.

Sidetrack: OH MY GOD, I googled "Taste the Rainbow" and I got this nice friendly Skittles ad, but Urban Dictionary came up with THIS:

When a straight person has a homosexual experience
The act of putting skittles into some unlikely body part for the purpose of feeding another
To have sex or sexual activity of people with various races

I had to stop after that. Each one after is just a variation on the ones above... and here I was thinking there was nice simple happy G-rated definition! That's the problem with urban dictionary, every word seems to involve sex or fetish behaviour.

Back to topic. Ahem.

We should have 2 healed Hagara too but I forgot and told Lush to stay resto. We tried the achievement again but failed again, but we've decided we will try to crack at it every week. Faith was worried she would stuff it up, but the arc is really long for the hand holding, so we will try to have everyone bunched up at the crystal next week.

So the second half we 2 healed except for Madness. For once, neither me nor Gutsy died at Warmaster Blackhorn (but poor Faith did - but that's understandable, she hasn't done it as much as we have). We tried the achievement for that again, but I just spoke to my friend who has done it and you have to stop EVERY single barrage, not just the big ones. So I'll have to tell everyone that for next week. Doing Spine with 2 healers was very doable, and nobody died which was great. It was nice and clean, and I had no mana at the end but that just means I healed a lot. Gosh, it was really noticeable though with the tendril debuff on (mindblank atm what it's called), health just DOES NOT go up, and I don't think Gutsy heals to get it off like I try to. Oh, and for Madness we did something different - we had Nozdormu being assaulted first for part of the step for Chromatic Champion.

I got an offspec ring for my feral spec and off offspec Tier shoulders for my non existent boomkin spec. The Tier chest dropped and I was trying to decide if I wanted that for main or offspec (since my offspec is 378 and my main is 391) and decided that I would rather take it offspec since it dropped of Ultraxion and it was likely that the heroic version would drop next time when we do heroic anyway, and I would rather upgrade to that. But Barkhoof took it instead, so that was all good. Faith was chuffed because not only did she get Destroyer's End, she also walked away with Bracers of the Banished and Rath'rak, the Poisonous Mind as well. I hope next time we can take Ayelena for his achievement and Deathwing kill, if a spare spot comes up.

The other group will get Bladewind on Thursday so maybe they will have a good shot at Zon'ozz and then they can do Ultraxion and see how nice and clean it is with a paladin healer. Though as long as they don't start whinging about needing him all the time then I think we can live for one week without our star holy pally. Fue said that they should have Bladewind this week as their raiding is going to be rather iffy the next few weeks as Belinia will be leaving for Sydney shortly for his holiday. And so they will be down a tank and have to take a substitute dps for a while until it's settled. I wonder if Moo will tank for them. Falln tanked for us when we needed him to. Most fights don't need 2 tanks anyway except Heroic Ultraxion and Heroic Morchok anyway, so they could still do heroic Yor'shaj.

Gutsy says he's going away for a week too sometime (not sure when) so that will halt our heroic progression as well but we'll worry about that when it happens. Worst comes to worst, we can have one heroic group and one normal group filled with reserves and casuals with mix up between the two, or even just one heroic group while the rest of us have a break and do... PVP, rest, relax, make videos etc.

More Hawt Plate

2012-02-23T09:46:00.001+11:00

Hawt plate... slut plate... I can't decide which term I think is more amusing.

I've turned into a voyeur. I feel like someone from Cleo or Cosmo magazine going around taking pictures of fashion on the street! Everywhere I look I seem to see items of clothing which look really interesting. And now that I started staring at what other people are wearing, I've seen so many interesting sets! This guild on my server, The Fallen, seems to be full of fashionistas.

I like this super hero look

I admit I really do like this holy pally look. I wonder what it would be like on a Tauren.

I was trying to get Leahe with her plate gear but her guildies wanted to be in the pic too.

Their guild must think I'm some kind of psycho. I've kept their names in the pics so I can actually look at their gear on armory, because I'm not one of those people who looks at gear and goes "Oh, you're using So-and-so Leggings!" (Though I do admit, I did recognise the Witch bead cloth chest on one of those skimpy BE females). And the guy in the Haliscan asked me if I liked his gear... but I said that's not transmog gear because Haliscan stuff is white! Wait... I'm starting to know what gear is what... OMG stop wasting BRAIN SPACE Navi!

There is one thing I would like to see, well, sortof want to see. It's actually one of those things where you can't help but look even though it's so painful to watch - like watching American Pie the movie, where he does such stupid painful things to himself and it's so stupid, but I can't help but keep watching. OK, oops sidetracked a little, but the thing I want to see is a MALE in slut plate. I will keep my eye out for that.

So watch out Dath'remar! Voyeur Navimie is on the prowl looking at YOUR Transmog sets!

Face to Face with the 2 bloggers from Labyrinth of Lost Souls

2012-02-23T01:21:00.002+11:00

Gnomeageddon's thing made me do something I hadn't done before - and that was log onto another server where I had a low level alt already to talk to another blogger.

Voros tweeted me a few days ago, after I'd made a comment to Gnomeageddon about being Aussie, to say he and Glow were both Aussie. It took me a little while to realise that not only were he and Glow BOTH Aussie, and BOTH blogging, they were BOTH in the same guild! So when Glow made a stray comment to me that she had no horde toons on Dath, I thought I'd go see if they were there on Saurfang.

I logged in a few times at night, and /who Labyrinth and nobody would be online. Then tonight, when I logged on, there was one person online and I asked them if Glow had been on. She had logged, he said. So I was getting on Twitter to tell Cymre something, and I saw Glow had tweeted about her sexy new Blazing Drake. So I tweeted her back:

So I got to meet Glow and Voros! I was fan struck! Glow of course looks just like her pictures, and I think that the whole T13 looks heaps nicer on a night elf than on a tauren. Voros seemed amused that Glow was famous, and I wonder why it is that males seem to take such nice pics (well, Fannon is the only other one I'm thinking of really). So being the dork that I am I had to take a pic with them.

Even Roshii came along to see what I was up to. He was astounded. "You actually talk to other bloggers in game?" That comment reminded me of this conversation he had with his mother that made me laugh so hard:

Roshii: "I'm meeting up with some of my friends from the game."

Roshii's Mum: "Oh, but they're not real people are they? They're just computer people?"

Roshii: "No, mum, they're real people. Real people play the game."

Roshii's Mum: "How do you meet computer people when they're in the computer? You mean you talk to them in the computer?"

Roshii: "No, people play these other people in game, and I'm going to go catch up with them."

Roshii's Mum: "I don't understand how you can meet people who aren't real."

Roshii: /sigh "Never mind, mum!"

So he came along to see who I was talking about. And I said Glow is the one with that awesome Baleroc strat that we used, that was recommended to me by my friend Cavendar (who was also in game at the time and I said to him "OMG guess who I'm talking to, I'm talking to GLOW whose Baleroc strat you made me read"). So I chatted to them for a little while and then it was rather late so we all said farewell, and they both said they would say hi on Dath.

Why does everyone have to be alliance? I'll never get to try and play with bloggers in some sort of fun raid/twitterland thing since I'm the opposing faction...

12293 Fish caught, 16263 other things caught

2012-02-22T16:22:00.000+11:00

And just when I least expected it...

I was flying back through Twilight Highlands and fishing along the coast, and ooh there were 3 pools near a boat. So I landed on the boat and started to fish. And when I clicked it there was a blue item with my fish, and I didn't quite get what it was until the achievement went off.

OMG OMG OMG OMG!

So after 16263 fish caught and other things, I got my Turtle mount. Though really, only 12293 of those fish count because they were fished from pools and you can only catch the turtle from pools.

I am a master Fishercow at last. Now I can fish for Lavascales and not feel like I'm wasting time since I should be fishing pools to get that turtle.

Love is in the Air - video

2012-02-22T05:32:00.000+11:00

Well I decided to make a video of the "Love is in the Air" World Event, 2012. Mostly just the dailies and not the achievements (since I had done it in previous years). I put it to the appropriate John Paul Young song to match the whole theme. I have to say that doing dailies looks rather lonely! The main reason I decided to make this video was because I thought it was really cool how the faction leaders bowed and curtseyed to you when you gave them Charm bracelets. And the problem is that you can't capture someone else doing it, only you can see it.

So, relive the daily grind of Love is in the Air, 2012!

Blogger you bugger, and other dumb things I did today

2012-02-21T16:15:00.000+11:00

I noticed recently that Blogger changed their word verification thing and of course I don't notice it on my own blog but I certainly notice it on other's. In fact it's gotten so bad lately that I have been tempted not to leave comments because I can't get the words right.

So I decided that I might be losing comments that way, and so I've decided to brave the spam and take out the word verification thing. So hopefully my friends can comment more easily now.

Another thing bugging me is the pingbacks. I noticed in Wordpress that there are all these cool pingbacks to posts, where people linking to your post shows up at the bottom of your post. I really would like to see that on my blog. But when I ticked the little box that says show pingbacks, I don't get anything. I worked out that it's because I am using a custom template, and if I had the standard templte, you would be able to see the pingbacks. There are even instructions on how to insert the html stuff to put in there, but it's too hard for me, and I can't find the places it says you have to put it... The solution would be to revert to a standard template. Ugh. I guess I could see if that works. But I'm reluctant to do anything drastic because I am happy with the way the blog looks now. If it's not broken, don't fix it, right?

And my dumb thing for the day. Hwired and Roshii were telling me I should make money. I don't make money with the AH, I do dailies and quests and raid and all my money seems to keep me quite comfortable. It's not a lot, but it's not little either. So they told me to try selling enchants and stuff, which I don't like doing because I'm a bit of a hoarder, and I keep everything "just in case". So I thought I'd venture out and sell a Power Torrent enchant. Which sold. So that was nice. Roshii said he made money selling his epic gems, the ones he doesn't need. Ok, I thought, I can do that. So I got my Elven Peridot which I got the other day and put it on the AH.

I looked in my mailbox and it had sold. Yay! So I went to collect it... hm, the price that it sold for was... missing a 0. Navi, you noob. I think I just sold an epic gem for 100g instead of 1000g. Doh. Well, the good thing is that the gem cost my nothing anyway, so it's not like I LOST money. And more gems will come. But boy do I feel silly. The person who bought my gem must think what a bargain! What an idiot selling it for so little - maybe they're a gold farmer.

Monday raiding - Slayers of Stupid, Incompetent and Disappointing Minions

2012-02-20T23:58:00.001+11:00

I think this was the funniest thing of the night. Going back and polishing off a whole heap of achievements was enough to give me, as Moo calls it, Nerd Chubby. Well, the fact that I'm a girl makes that a rather odd achievement on it's own, but I was very happy. How can you not love achievements? You get such a feeling of.. achievement :) Anyway, I'll get to that cool title later. I'll start from the beginning.

We started the night off by killing Cho'gall. I forgot I wanted to take a picture of him but we kept engaging him so I forgot, while I was busy eating. So Heroic: Cho'gall was done, and we got Heroic: Cho'gall Guild Run as well. We had a really messy kill with people on 100 corruption and stuff and basically burning the boss down. Nabe fell through the floor with Cho'gall and silly old me didn't know that down that hole was Sinestra. Bish was up in spirit again. He seems to be really good at doing that for kills.

Nabe tried to rez us from down the hole but it was too far away. So we all have to jump in this hole to go see Sinestra.

And boy does she look awesome. I was super excited to see her. She is amazing looking. And all those eggs around here look really cool too! You can see the dragonkin babies inside the eggs wriggling around.

Look at those scratch marks on Sinestra! Looks like she and ol' Deathwing were having some mighty rough sexy times. Rawwwwrrr!

Yeah we just had one go at trying to do it. Just winging it. Ouch. Whelps. I think you'd have to read to figure out what's going on there first.

So back to Blackwing Descent. Had a few goes at Heroic Omnotron but thought, it's getting late, might as well try to get the other achievements first since they're easy. So we did Heroic: Atramedes and Heroic: Maloriak. Maloriak we had to hold back DPS because it was going to cause a wipe and after a few goes we did get it, it wasn't too bad in the end. Same old story of me pulling agro on adds again, even Hwired mentioned it. Chimaeron was good, and a lot of the others got the achievement Full of Sound and Fury. I had it from before... can't remember when. But you have to love the Shakespeare reference (from Macbeth: "It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing")

So when you kill Heroic Maloriak you get this cool buff for 30 minutes, which gives you that funny title. I love it, I logged out with it so I can still look at it for a while. And you can see the buff in this picture too.

Ooh I saw a Slut Plate!

2012-02-20T21:41:00.000+11:00

I saw my first Slut plate today, and boy did it look hot. No wonder these boys like to dress their girls in it. I guess it gives them an excuse to play Barbie dolls.

Sunday raiding - Life on the other side

2012-02-20T20:12:00.000+11:00

I got on a bit late on Sunday, as we had a small(ish) get together for my daughter's 4th birthday. Which usually means adults have a dinner party and kids get a cake at the end. But it was a late bedtime for the kids which meant I got on late.

So I logged in close to 9 and found none of my raid team was around except Lushnek, which didn't surprise me since Fue wanted to do LFR for just me and the thought of that was cringeworthy to me. I can do LFR myself! I didn't want people to do it with me! But he wanted to do the everyone roll on it thing, which I felt was not very fair to the other people, but apparently everyone does it. Anyway, I was a bit skeptical, but I asked Lushnek if he would go with me.

And it was true. Everyone rolled on everything they could and offered to trade it for other items they wanted. Which makes sense in terms of the way the LFR economy goes, but man that was annoying. So, did I roll on everything? Yes, I did. If everyone was doing it, then why not?

But I did restrain myself from rolling on things I had much better of, like boots, and shoulders. Lushnek rolled on them, and another feral druid asked him for it, as it would be a huge upgrade for him. He asked if I needed it first, which I didn't, and then he passed it over. Then that guy won the gloves which is what I really wanted! And I selfishly thought, oh I wish we'd kept that item till the end so we had something to trade (though we would have given it over anyway). I ended up getting Tier legs anyway, so that was still a non wasted trip. No cool trinkets dropped, but I was happy to now have a feral 2 piece T13. I did want to get the leatherworking legs made and I even had the mats ready (Bladeshadow Leggings) except I was missing 2 Essence of Destruction (guild bank only had 6). I guess lucky I didn't make it then... but now what do I do with all those pristine hides? I did bum them off Lushnek after all...

So I bought the Valor gloves and hoped that it was enough for some movement upwards on the DPS meter for Ultraxion this week.

The other group was doing BOT/BWD and I was more than a little envious when I saw all the guild spam achievements go by... Heroic: Magmaw... The Only Escape... Heroic: Halfus Wyrmbreaker...

Voe seemed to not want to be there. I don't think he likes achievements. It might be because there is no loot involved as a reward, it's like a hollow victory to him. So he asked me if I would like to replace him... and oh yes I did! Can't let Aza get too far ahead of me in achievements!

So I got to sneak in and was there for Heroic: Valiona and Theralion, and then we did Elementium Monstrosity and got Elementary.

Yes I was the only nub who died on that attempt. I can see everyone saying I'm the weak link of the team.

This was a crappy messy attempt that if you had done normally would be a wipe. DPS on adds was uncontrolled, dispelling things which weren't supposed to be dispelled... even Hwired was like "What the hell are you guys doing?" I did no dispelling, but I tried to churn out some heals at the end, and I admit I forgot to dispel after we didn't need the buffs/debuffs anymore...

I was talking to Beauti today, who said though it's nice to have me there, it's not the same as having Voe there. Healing is harder, spirit link makes a big difference. But maybe it's just getting having to get used to my type of healing. It's been a while, after all.

Tonight it's Cho'gall. I'd better go read up.

Guildie Guest spot - Souglyy, as scouted by Shift!

2012-02-20T06:00:00.001+11:00

Souglyy is our raiding hunter, and has been in Frostwolves since ICC on her druid, before she switched back to her hunter. I caught up with her and put the hard questions on her so we can all get to know our superstar hunter a little better!

Do you remember when you joined Frostwolves and when?

I do, that was back when we were doing 25 ICC. I wanted to join on my hunter but the guild was full on DPS so I joined on Baha (resto druid).

And when did you switch to your hunter? Coz that was your main before.

Yeah, My hunter has always been my main until I joined you guys and I joined with Baha, and I switched to Soug in the current expansion.

Obviously you like your hunter more than your druid, yeah?

Yes, my hunter is my very first toon that I ever made.

What do you like best about playing your hunter?

Um, I love the fact that I can have pets and I can have all these exotic pets. My stable now is completely full *laughs*! I have no more room left *giggles*

So who is your favourite pet? You must have a couple of favourites...

I do, my number one favourite would have to be BP coz she is really unique, and you hardly see many hunters with BP, only because you need an Alliance on a certain quest in order to get them, otherwise when you tame them they just go to a normal wolf and don't retain the black tar.

Just to let others know who don't know what BP is, she's your oil covered dog.

Yes, that's my wolf, my oil wolf, which is named BP because of the oil.

And then who else? Think you can name your top 5?

OK, I'd go definitely BP first, and then I'd go Skarr, coz I like her skin and her eyes, and I can use her on my survival spec, even though she's a rare and a hard tame, which normally those ones they put down to beast mastery, you can't use them on your other spec, but I can with Skarr, so I like Skarr. Then my next one that I camped for AGES and AGES and ages, but she's a spirit wolf so I can only use her with my BM spec which I don't have at the moment, so she's in the stables, is Skoll, the blue wolf from Storm Peaks.

You have this thing about dogs! So many wolves!

I do, I do, well see back when we were doing ICC, the wolf was the best pet it gave the best buffs and stuff it was just unreal.

Roshii: Where's your seagull at Baha, you need a Seagull.

Baha: I don't have a seagull!

Navi: Roshii, if you want to stay here you have to not talk, you can type. Here I'll invite Baha to party.

Roshii: OK...

That's 3. 2 more?

I can think of one more, and that's Terropene my turtle.

Oh I love Terropene!

She's my tanking pet.

I haven't even seen it, coz people keep killing it.

Oh really? I camped her for a while too.

People say to me "Oh I've seen Terropene, I killed it, it doesn't drop anything except this shardy thing" and I'm like "What? Aww, don't KILL it."

Yeah, that's really frustrating because a lot of the pets that they brought out now that we can tame as hunters don't drop any loot other than 25g trash item, but people still kill it.

They should drop nothing, so nobody would kill it.

Yes!

OK so those are your pets, do you have a favourite mount? Wait I know what it is, it's your new one!

Yes, that's my favourite at the moment, that's my Blazing mount (Drops from Deathwing)

And your favourite non combat pet?

Ummm, don't know that I have one really... I have so many...

Not your thing?

No, I just collect them for the achievement *laughs* but I don't really have a favourite.

Are you looking forward to playing Mists of Pandaria, are you going to continue playing then?

Yes, absolutely. I already have my panda name reserved *laughs*

I'm going to ask you a couple of guild questions now. Why did you join OUR guild back in the day?

Um, yes coz at the time I was in Legion of Champions which were a close net guild, the GM I think was an American, and raid times were really, really hard and the guild for whatever reason, I can't remember why, just started falling apart and people were leaving left, right and centre.

That was on this server?

Yes.

And what do you like about being here?

Um, I've become really close friends with a lot of people. Voe is cheeky *laughs*. Voe is cheeky but we did get off on the wrong foot I guess to start with and we had a really big talk and now it's completely the opposite, he's funny as. Even though he still shits me on vent coz he's so loud and he doesn't be QUIET.. but it's not that bad anymore.

I think everyone thinks Voe is loud.

Yeah!

On the other foot, about this guild there must be things that annoy you, what do you wish you could change about this guild?

Umm... I wish we could some more old content for achievements.

I think that could be arranged, people like that stuff.

Roshii: *whispers* Sunday

Well I guess I sort of .. what was that Sunday?

Roshii: That's what our raid group's doing, we're doing old content heroics.

Yeah we are this Sunday and Monday I think, that would be cool

Yeah that would be cool! I wish we could 20 man it, that would be cool. But anyway... Baha, this is a funny question, say if your partner didn't play WoW, would you make them play WoW? Or would you stop playing WoW because they didn't play WoW?

No. I don't have a partner...

But IF you did.

I GUESS if I did have one, I'd probably con them into playing, I think they'd get to the point they'd get sick of watching me playing so they'd have to join in *laughs* well, I'd hope so! *laughs*

*laughs* OK well this is the tough one! Say your partner does playWoW, but they play like a sack of shit, you know, they play like... Earthwisper...

Roshii: *giggles*

What would you do about that?

Haha! Well I'm quite cheeky so I'd pick on them.

Would you try to disassociate yourself from them or try and make them better?

Aww, yeah I'd try to help them, but I'd make fun of them.

What if they got upset and stopped playing because you kept making fun of them, saying "I hate this game."

No, I don't think it would get to that sort of stage, I don't think. I wouldn't get that bad.

Would you be embarrassed to play with them? Like they were in the raid and you were like OMG that's my husband/partner playing like crap... could you go join another guild please...

*laughs* well, probably if it was in the same raid team as Voe!

*laughter all around*

You're not into pets, so you're not into the whole pet battle system in Mists of Pandaria are you?

No, that's a bit like Pokemon and I never got into Pokemon, it doesn't interest me. I think that's designed around your 15-16 year old boys isn't it?

Are you joking? Do I look like a 15-16 year old boy to you? I'm looking forward to it!

Do you like Pokemon!?

I love Pokemon!

Oh really??

I'm so looking forward to pet battles.

Roshii: Baha, I love Pokemon too.

Navi: Yes but you are a 15-16 year old boy Roshii.

Baha: *laughs*

Roshii: What are you talking about!

Navi: Stop talking I told you your voice is too loud, you can type.

Roshii: I'm in my 20s.. Jesus.

Navi: You're only 4 years older than a 16 year old boy.

Roshii: WHAT??

Navi: Stop talking! I'm talking to Baha, you said you would be quiet, I can't hear Baha.

Roshii: You always belittle my age!

Do you have a favourite achievment?

Um, yes, my favourite at the time was killing the Lich King.

Oh yeah, that was a good fight.

That fight was super, super, super intense.

You were healing it then! I remember seeing Baha, the tree in my ICC videos.

Yeah, when I killed it with you guys I was on Baha, that was the first time I killed it on a 25 man. I had the 10 man on Souglyy when we were in Legion of Champions, from memory.

Hang on a sec, Roshii's complaining at me. *types furiously*

Baha: *laughs* really?

Anyway, of all the bosses you've done, do you have a favourite boss or mechanic that you like? I'm talking about your hunter not on your druid.

I really, really like Ultraxion. I love that fight, especially on heroic.

But that's new, that's our latest kill! Are you sure you're not just saying that because we've just killed it?

Aza: Boo!

No I really like that one, um, I dunno, it's because also too I don't have to move it's all just basically standing still.

*Laughs* That's so boring! I have to say I'm a big fan of movement fights as a druid, a healing druid. And I'm trying to tell these guys to be quiet, I'm going to mute them.

So what do you like best about WoW?

I love the raiding. I never used to be, when I first started I just loved the questing and exploring, but now it's raiding and achievements.

Oh, I love achievements! What do you like least about WoW?

Farming.

Oh and I have to ask about this. We're going to talk about your scouting, tell us all about it.

That was really, really cool! To actually have someone look me out, which I didn't even know people did and for me to have someone find me and look me up made me feel really, really cool! Like, I'm NOT shit! I must be good! *laughs*

Nobody thinks you're shit! For those who don't know what we're talking about, just got to give a bit of background, so who the person was who asked you and where were they from.

Um, it was a toon called Grimreaper, they were from Shift, and they just whispered me last night before our raid, asking me if I was looking at changing guilds as they were looking for a hunter, and he was told by another hunter that I was really good.

(Background: Shift is the number 3 guild on the server, the 2nd ranked horde guild on server. They are composed of the elite from Conclave, another high ranking guild on the server)

And what did you say to him?

He was trying to twist my arm, and twist my arm and twist my arm, and I said, no...

Oh, oh, how did he twist your arm? Tell me, tell me, did he offer you a new mount?

No, he was just sort of saying that they were 5/8 heroic um, and I'd be straight into their main raid team, and they would never have to sit out *laughs* that I would be in every raid.

And? Oh that sounds just so cool, must have been so exciting. *long pause*

I can't hear you now, because Roshii's... STOP! *laughs* Talking!!

God, tell them to shut up, I can't hear them coz I've muted them all, so they don't interfere in my Vent.

Oh, how do you do that?

Go to Vent, right click them, go to user, and mute.

Ah, OK, I'll do that so I can hear you too. Roshii kept saying "Baha, tell Navi how awesome Roshii is."

*laughs* Roshii's already had an interview, and so has Aza and so has Hwired. Ok, can you hear me?

I can yes.

I was thinking of that Star Trek thing, where Data was tempted by the Borg Queen, like how tempted were you to go?

Aza (typing): Navi that is such a bad reference

Um, I was slightly tempted in the sense that they were 5/8 heroic but in sort of thinking of it, I would sort of miss everyone here too much, and I LOVE the THRILL and feeling of the whole group getting that first kill for the first time, like for example when we did Ultraxion last night, that was just amazing. And to think, to have to go into a guild that had already done 5/8, so really it wouldn't be until the 6th boss, that I would get that feeling again, because I'd go and get the kill for the first time and they would just think "Oh yeah, cool, good on ya," and I'd be like super excited and it would be just wasted on just me.

Yeah it is kind of exciting, that Ultraxion kill for all of us, for our group, we were so excited, we were screaming our heads off. I'm sure you guys were screaming your heads off too.

Oh, we were, there was so much screaming and my hands were shaking, just the full thrill and the rush and yeah, just everything it's so cool. It's WHY we play this game! For that feeling! *laughs*

Yes, that feeling! And also coz we have our teammates and we can all scream and laugh about it together.

Yes absolutely!

Say that someone is playing a new hunter, what is the best tip that you could give them for when they're starting out with their hunter? Some gem of a tip that you wished you knew when you were levelling or something, or raiding.

Oh good grief, I don't know! Best advice I could give I guess, is to make sure you're hit capped, I didn't know about hit cap until I started raiding, and I didn't start raiding until ICC, that was the very first time I'd ever raided, and I didn't know anything about hit cap or anything, and my DPS I was lucky to get like 1500 or something STUPID *laughs*

I have no idea what is good DPS anyway back then, I didn't DPS.

Yeah, so hit cap and forums.

What forums?

I have my bible, and it's um.... oh shit what's it called, hang on...

That's a lousy bible :P

I haven't checked it now for so long... but.... (long pause) Warcraft Hunter's Union. It was brilliant.

Oh! Warcraft Hunter's Union has good pictures!

Their guides are just spot on, they're just brilliant. It really helped me when they took our mana away and gave us focus, I was so mad, I hated it, absolutely hated it. And that site helped me out heaps.

How hard is it to raid with is it 3 kids or 4?

I have 4 but I have 3 at home.

How hard is it to raid with them around?

Um, it's pretty cool, my eldest is 18 so when we start raiding, which is 730pm our time the kids are still up, well the youngest one, is still up for an hour and they're finishing off dinner, the eldest puts the two young ones to bed for me, so that's pretty cool. I'm quite lucky.

So she doesn't go "Mum, I can't believe you're playing World of Warcraft, you're making me do all this mum stuff and you're off playing games, that's what I should be doing, mum!"

No she doesn't, she doesn't, she did play World of Warcraft for a while as well, but it just got too much for her with school and studies and everything, and now she's going to Uni this year and that doesn't start till the end of the month, so I don't think she'll be playing WoW for a while.

You never know, lots of Uni students play WoW. But if she's already left, then she's already left.

True.

So you're family and your kids are really supportive of your WoW playing?

Yes, my son who will be 3 in March, he'll watch me, he'll come sit on my lap and he knows now what buttons to press to go forwards, backwards, turn her left and right and to jump, and if I just logout and don't exit the game, he knows how to login, so you've probably seen my toon running around like a fool in Orgrimmar and it's coz he's got on while I've just jumped off for a second *laughs* and he's running my toon around Orgrimmar.

Oh my daughter does that too, she loves playing.

He loves it.

She loves to sit around, she loves to fly as a druid, she knows how to fall, she knows how to take me out to sea and kill me with fatigue... you know that sort of stuff.

I've come back and I'm just about dying form fatigue coz he's flown me out to sea.

And how many times I've fallen off Thunderbluff... it's really bad on your bank toon, level 1, walks so slow and running around no idea where my body is coz it's fallen off somewhere.

*laughs* but it's funny well when we're raiding, when he's still up, he'll grab the dining chair and come and sit right beside me and when we die, he looks at me and he goes "You Die?" and I say "Yes mate, we died!"

*Laughs* Oh that's so cute! I love hearing these baby stories. He should play with my daughter.

Yeah he will absolutely play when he is older, I know it for sure.

My daughter will too. It's a treat for her, if you finish your dinner you can play World of Warcraft and she shovels her food in so fast.

(Lushnek laughing in the background)

She sits at the computer and she waits and says "Can I play World of Warcraft now?" She even starts it up and puts in the first two letters of my login...

Oh really?

It's funny, I've come in and the login screen is up and she's put the first 2 letters and she sits there waiting for me to type the rest in.

I know I've come around, my computer is in the lounge room but it's sort of quartered off by a wall, and I've come around and Joshie's sitting in my chair on his knees, kneeling, he's got my headphones on, coz he's seen me do it, and he's got his fingers on the right keys to make her move and he's got his hand just positioned on the mouse, he doesn't really click on anything but he just loves to move her around the screen. It just blows me out, he's been doing that for a year so the coordination that he has, to watch and know, that if he wants her to go left, he turns her left, and right, it just blows me away.

It's funny how kids can do that. She likes to sit in the water and say mummy I'm having a bath, and she likes to follow people around.

Yeah, Josh likes to put my toon in the water because he loves water, and as soon as she's in the water he goes "Water! Water, water!"

Anything else you'd like to tell us Baha, that you'd like to share with our readers?

Oh YES, I beat Roshii in DPS that was pretty cool!

That was the highlight of your day? Lucky Roshii is muted he's probably saying something right now.

*Laughs* It was a challenge thing with Roshii.

You got a buff Baha, he would be crying about that. You wait till he gets his Legendaries, you can kiss your number 1 DPS position goodbye. LOL Thanks Baha.

Yep no worries!

Saturday Firelands - Kneel to the Flame!

2012-02-19T10:18:00.000+11:00

At last. After weeks of trying and hoping not to stuff it up, we did it at last...

All 6 of us managed to sit in our little spots and click the orbs. I was panicking, thinking OMG are we going to do it in time? But yes! We did it. Yay. Nobody stuffed up. Not even Ayelena, or Hwired, or Faith. Yay!

Hwired came on his scrub priest. He did alright for his level. I cringed when I saw his 325 level weapon, but he did have valour boots! Not chanted though. But meh, he's being carried to get some gear, and there's lots of gear in Firelands.

But, we decided to do heroic Staghelm. And we managed to do it! That was exciting. So I laughed that Hwired's priest could do heroic Staghelm but wasn't high enough level to queue for random 85 heroics. I guess having Dragon Soul gear makes a big difference. Hwired had earlier picked up a trinket that I wanted but then I was super excited because heroic Jaws of Defeat dropped which I wanted to replace my normal version. And we one shot Rag as well. Phew.

Afterwards, I was hanging around late and joined a PuG ToC25. Would have liked to do it heroic, but the person running it was just after achievements. I had a few, but I did manage to pick up 2 more from that run:

Not One, But Two Jormungars (25 man)

The Traitor King (25 man)

All up a good night for me. Now to sub all the other people in for their achievements in Firelands...

Highlights of the week from my blogroll February 19, 2012

2012-02-19T06:00:00.000+11:00

JD Kennada from Amateur Azerothian had a great idea for Leatherworkers (JD has been campaigning to make professions a bit better and more fun!) - and that was to make a tent! That you can cast and get rested in! That is such a cool idea! Check out the post here: Pitching a tent.

Gnomeageddon started this crazy 6th Meme thing which brought a whole heap of new blogs to my attention as well as doing my head in trying to make a chart out of it. But Martha did an even better job and has the WHOLE lot here in a great table which is so cool because I am in there so I even get traffic from her blog! Here is her awesome chart And the Number of the Counting shall be Six. And then Gnomeageddon did a link back post including mine and Martha's masterpieces (The Devil made me do it), so that was kinda cool.

Sixth meme - 60 hours

2012-02-18T18:02:00.001+11:00

It's my own fault. I wanted to see. I needed to see. I tried. And since 60 hours there have been even MORE but I have to stop. It's just turned.... crazy. It even looks crazy. I can hardly read it.

So for those who don't know what I'm talking about it's Gnomeageddon's Sixth Meme. That screenshot thing which started out as a simple post a pic chain mail but made everyone involved that there a HELL of a lot of WoW blogs out there. Since then Gnomey has followed it up with a follow up post: The Devil made me Do It: A week of 666. In which he showed my "work of insanity" and also Martha's anally obsessive tree of linkage. Her list was just amazing. I thought that my chart would be redundant. But some of my friends did like the visual image, and I thought, and wondered what it would look like now. I imagined it would be something like a tangled ball of wool, and I wasn't far off.

So, since you've been so patient, here was the Meme at 30 hours:

And here it is at 60 hours (are you ready....)

I can't even read it. The middle bit is all blotted out. I can just make out Godmother's name. And underneath her, Guild mum (Sephrenia) is totally overwritten. Rades is barely visible under all the crosses over, and same with Kae and Effraeti. But there are a hell of a lot of bloggers out there... and there are still more who I've only noticed now. Thanks to Martha, whose amazing tree I couldn't have followed it all without, especially in the areas that I dont' know so well.

One of my guildies said to me, why did you do that? Do you even KNOW these people? And looking at the list, I would say I would KNOW OF about half of them, or had heard of half of them. The other half are new to me.

And there are still some bloggers who haven't been tagged. That I know of anyway. I am totally bamboozled.

But... I found out that Gnomeageddon is another Aussie blogger. So the list of Aussie WoW bloggers is now up to 5:

Angelya
Saunder
Cymre
Gnomeageddon
and me!

OK enough typing. My brain needs a rest.

Edit: Twitter updates! Glow is Aussie! I never knew that! And Voros too!
Now we have 7 Aussie WoW bloggers!

New Rares this week

2012-02-18T06:00:00.006+11:00

Last week I was so excited about Roshii and his mounts and rares that I totally forgot a few of the ones I found last week!

Xariona is the boss level rare that flies around in Deepholm. I was glad I managed to see her because it wasn't long before a couple of my guildies set out to kill her. Poor Azadelta, he was so excited to see her when his NPCscan went off, he went and attacked her not realizing that this WASN'T Aeonaxx... splat ouch!

Blood seeker, also from Deepholm, is the one that shares the spawn timer with Aeonaxx. Roshii found this and sent me this pic, he said when his NPCscan went off he nearly had a heartattack but it was just this little fella.

I have been looking for Cyrus for AGES. Cymre sent me an SMS saying he was up and I quickly got on to grab a picture before all those camel farmers came across him and slaughtered him.

I was up in Mount Hyjal with Cymre taking a ton of pictures of these two rare spirit beasts. So many mobs around Magria, it was annoying. I already have pictures of these two but I was trying to get a better one. At least this time there was no pressure from hunters and other nasty rare killers out there.

Shadikith the Glider is one of the rare spawn bosses in the basement of Karazhan. Only one more for me to find now, the spider!

This rare spawns out of the portals crated by Scarshield Warlocks in LBRS. It was annoying because you sit there and they open a portal, rubbish demons come out, and the warlocks cast shadowbolts at you and eventually oom themselves and they don't cast that many portals. It took me quite a few goes to get this because I often accidentally killed the warlocks trying to get away from them.

Dreadwhisper was too big! I couldn't get his name in the picture.

How Six degrees of Sixth Meme made everyone think I'm insane

2012-02-17T12:49:00.001+11:00

Gnomeageddon's Sixth Meme thing took over the blogosphere in 24 hours. I went to almost every website to look at everyone's pics, and was amazed by the sheer number of wow bloggers out there in the community, and some of their fantastic pics. There were plenty of emotions out there:

Excitement - ooh part of the community!
Trepidation - do I even HAVE a 6th folder
Resignation - I hate these chain mail letters, but I'll do it so I don't let someone down
Disgust - I hate them, I won't pass it on
Anxiety - OMG who hasn't been tagged and am I too late everyone's been picked?
Relief - I have an awesome screenshot as my 6th 6th thank GOD

So I started doodling...
I was at work, browsing and doodling. People came to look at what I was doing and said "What the hell is that!" I said "Oh, it's like one of those chain mail things, I was just looking at the six degrees of separation." And it looked so messy that I had to get online and make it look nicer...

So this is what one does during a long procedure when I have internet access and plenty of time on my hands. And besides, I needed this to take my mind off the Ultraxion kill we had because I'm still all SQUEEEE about that.

This is everyone that I could find who participated in the Sixth Meme in the first 30 hours. I think. So if I missed you I'm sorry. But welcome to my insanity. I think Matty and Ancient would be proud of me.

Thursday raiding - Ultraxion is DOWN!

2012-02-17T09:50:00.000+11:00

Ultraxion was going to die today, one way or another. Both groups set out, determination written on all our faces. Our group was a little behind because Shab had a dinner date and was hurrying home. Lucky he rang me to say he was going to be 15 minutes late because I had fallen asleep next to my son again while putting him to bed. So he woke me up in time for raid.

While we were waiting for Shab, I thought I'd fish for some lavascales. After all, I'm perpetually out of feasts, and though Fue did say bring your own fortune cookies because feasts are not really a viable and cost effective method of buffing your raid, I still like to fish. Maybe not the lavascales because there is no chance of me getting a turtle, but I do like fishing the others. And maybe one day if I'm lucky fishing Lavascales I might see Aeonaxx or Terberus since the big pink worm still eludes me.

So Shab arrives, we set off. Our first attempt was not so exciting. Falln and Barkhoof died within 30 seconds. Oops, SOMEONE forgot to turn on righteous fury.... Wipe 1.

Screams from the other group. 0.2% wipe. OMG they were so close!

So we keep bashing at it, with our group. A few more wipes here and there, I died a few times in Twilight, because I didn't get my health up high enough, Falln didn't get his guardian spirit, Shaba died from something, someone forgot to taunt and Ultraxion hit Gutsy and splatted him...

Then we had massive guild spam. Heroic Ultraxion was down in the other group! They were screaming in their vent channel from the excitement!! EVERYONE in the raid had died. Ultraxion had dots ticking on him and Biship was still up in spirit form, which allowed at least SOMEONE to be present for the kill and the dots had ticked Ultra over. What a relief! Such excitement! I was thrilled to bits, but there was a bit of mixed excitement because some of our group wish we had gotten it first. But I didn't care, our guild is 3/8 and we all get to bask in the glory. Bish was thrilled to bits, he felt so happy and important, I was really pleased for him.

At this point, we were fiddling with when to Bloodlust/Timewarp. We had been waiting till the end but we thought maybe we'd do it off the bat at the start. And we started doing that and it was actually really good. We could knock 20% off before the first twilight. Even my DPS looked good! But it was only transient really. Fue then said "OK, who isn't double potting?"

OK, now double potting is a DPS thing. Healers don't double pot. And I being the crap DPS that I am, why would I waste my time double potting? My DPS is only just above the tanks. So I had to double pot. I was a bit stressed about that. Ok, ok there's the countdown, I take it at 3 seconds to pull and then take it again when all my cooldowns are up. Got it. Gulp. And I didn't have pots, so I had to bum some off Fue and Barkhoof. I feel like a sponge :( With doing that, and the bloodlust, we were at the same point we were before but with an extra minute, so Lushnek was saying that the whole thing was going really good.

It was our 11th attempt and we were doing pretty good, but I had been feeling like we weren't going to be able to do it - the other group just scraping their kill made me feel like we wouldn't get ours since the DPS in their group seems to be so high compared to ours. And on the sixth hour of twilight, despite me having barkskin, guardian spirit, lightwell renew and going bear form I died. Bleh, I wiped the raid again, I thought. But Fue said get me up, Lushnek rezzed me, and I had to get back into it again. And then we were at 8k... 6k... 3k OMG are we going to kill it? I was just mangling and ferocious biting hoping I could keep my health up and clicking that F***ing lightwell and BANG! More guild spam! Oh were we excited! We did it! I was even more excited, because I didn't think we could do it and even though I died my DPS somehow managed to be 25k which meant I was the carry of the group since both tanks were doing 20k+ each and everyone was alive! The healing and DPS was great and hugs all round to my team as we were thrilled that both teams got Ultraxion down! Of course, then we looked at loot... bloody Conquerer chest... grats Sev! And Fue got heroic tanking boots Stillheart Warboots. Fue was torn between the two items, but he can't have both and he was the only one who could take the boots. But yay!

The rest of the night went by smoothly, the other group cleared Dragon Soul on normal and we did too, after having one look at Warmaster heroic just for kicks. Augment was ITCHING to clear because then he would finish his gems for his legendary and move onto his new daggers. And he did, he got enough to get to the next stage so he was excited. Heart of the Unliving dropped and Bladewind said to Gutsy "Hey, do you need that?" And Gutsy said "Nah man, you go for it," to which I said "Umm, hello what about ME?" And they both laughed because everyone forgot after the two of them took the glory of healing in Ultraxion, that I was a healer too. I took it but I don't think I like it, so I gave it to Bladewind in the end. I think I'm still better off with my Jaws of Defeat.

Bladewind also picked up a new shield (Timepiece of the Bronze Flight), so he's slowly gearing up. Hopefully he will be able to solo heal one day... after all he did an amazing 54k heals for Ultraxion and that was without 2 upgrades. Gutsy and me will have to realise now we are now the shit compared to those glorious paladins. No matter how much he and I pad the meters. Even on Deathwing, he was miles in front of us, with both of us padding the meters with our AOE heals and we tied in the end. Ah well, I guess I am no longer top dog, but I don't mind. I am so proud and happy right now, knowing that I am in the guild Frostwolves.

No pics until I get home, since I'm writing this at work, but it will just be a boring achievement pic!

Wednesday raiding - What do you do for a kill?

2012-02-16T09:48:00.000+11:00

I love Wednesdays. After 2 days of not raiding, I get excited thinking about raiding again. It's like Sundays, after a few days off raiding I get excited thinking I'm getting back into it again.

So I was looking forward to healing Yor'sahj again. After writing my post about healing it because I was oh so proud of doing it successfully (gee, could you tell?) I wanted to do it again.

But...Bloodzta was a no show again. One more week of no shows and he's going to get replaced. Where is he I wonder. But of course, while my group was settling into the excitement of trying to do Ultraxion, the other group had their stresses again. No Bish on Thursday, need a replacement - not too big a problem, Nok is off all week, so he can sub in.

So my group heads out, we do Mor'chok and me and Bladewind are on Fue's side, who thought we were being cheeky when I said his side was harder to heal - he really didn't know that Mor'chok side did more damage (hey, that was me last week being the one in the dark about that!) and it was nice and clean. Augment didn't die. It was good.

On to Yor'sahj. I was itching to do it. Gutsy asked if I wanted to dps or did I want to heal it, and I asked if I could heal it - after all his shadow damage will give some heals around anyway. And the first attempt we forgot to get Bladewind to run out with the ranged who were going after the ooze, so they died from low health when they got back. And OMG I totally noobed it up the 2nd attempt because I read the oozes as Red Black Yellow when in fact there was a Purple there and I tranq'd and wiped the raid. Shit!

But the kill attempt was a clean one with no deaths. Thank god for that.

Zon'ozz was kind to me, and gave me my Tier gloves. Yay for 4 set!!!

We tried to do the Hagara achievement but one person was out of the line. Oh well, next week. The standing back was a good idea though, I thought we'd have to inch across one by one from one node to the next.

So. Ultraxion. Raid killer, divider of friends, conquerer of button click failers.

Our group was just bashing away at it, but boy is the healing insane. We can't even do the double blood lust thing because we only have one blood lust. And the best we got was 10%. I died when standing out once because my health wasn't high enough before I took the blast, but that was my own fault, I should have looked to see what it was and used my healthstone or clicked the lightwell. Anyway, my DPS was a bit better and I was happy. Nowhere near the 30k mark though. I thought about whether I should go farm some leather and mats to make some legs for myself. Anyway, that's off topic. Stopping to rez a dead person hurts HK's and my DPS and one time I nearly died from fading light because I was in a rez when it went off. But I managed to click just in time. Falln forgot to stay out once too, so everyone had their little stuff ups.

The drama was in the other group. They were wiping at 3%. Ouch. And then Beauti stepped out and Nok came in, and there was a lot of discussion in officer about it. I am not sure why she stepped out but knowing her, she probably felt bad about something, because she logged off straight after. And I know when she gets stressed she can't sleep :( Nok's DPS didn't help get the kill either, and it was unfortunate because it LOOKED like they put her out of the group because her DPS wasn't high enough and they wanted the kill. But when they were asked about it, that was not what happened, but I think the constant respecs of holy, shadow, disc were getting a bit much for Beauti, and it gets confusing when you can't get used to one or the other. It worried me because I know when Beauti gets stressed she needs a little break. And you can't blame her. It happened on Rhyolith. And when she takes a break, Barkhoof takes one too. And then what happens to raids?

Fue said that you have to make do with the team that you have, not sub people in and out. And I can understand that. This is a TEAM effort. You have to pull through it together. Like me for example, I feel like I'm the weak member of the Ultraxion team, with my poor dps. But so far nobody has said to dump me or sub me out (except Ksret!!!) just to get a kill. It would be great if we got one! But if we still need a few weeks to gear up, then so be it. At least we get the timings right, and our rotations right, so hopefully nobody will forget whose turn it is to stay out. Lushnek wasn't lagging this time and did better with deaths this week. Hope it continues to be that good for Sunday.

To break up this wall of text I'll put a pic of me with my Vile Fumigator Mask, since I think it looks really cool on a Tauren. Picked that baby up after raid.

Meme the Sixth - Gnomeageddon's challenge

2012-02-15T19:39:00.002+11:00

I saw this post on Jaded Alt and wondered what the hell is that? I went along to read it and saw that that Windsoar had been tagged by Gnomeageddon for this challenge.

What is this challenge? I hear you ask. Well...

The Rules.

- Go into your image folder
- Open the sixth sub-folder and choose the sixth image.
- Publish the image! (and a few words wouldn’t hurt, though I dare say I couldn’t stop a blogger from adding a few words of their own).
- Challenge six new bloggers.
- Link to them.

Windsoar had a great screenshot of her doing the legendary quest in Firelands, and I thought wow, how lucky (with tweaking! :P) was it that she got that cool picture!

Imagine my surprise as I read further down the post that she had tagged ME to participate! OMG! I don't have subfolders in my screenshot folder... BUT, I thought I would take a couple of liberties

though I may not have a subfolders in my WoW screenshot folder, I do have all the pics I keep for blogs and nice pics etc in a separate wow blog pics folder, and THAT folder has lots of subfolders
the bad thing is that all the shots in there are already edited, though that doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to get a good shot!

And then I realised that I had messages on my Twitter... and she'd told me in a tweet that I had been tagged! Gosh, I found out from going through my blogroll, but hey, now I have to get in and quickly tag people before they're all tagged up!

So here is my 6th of the 6th...

This picture was taken for my Furtive father winter gift, it was supposed to be 7 worgens swimming (my gift was 12 days of Winter Veil). What a shame the 6 priests a praying wasn't the 6th picture, that would have been really cool and a great coincidence too!

And for the next 6th, I challenge these bloggers to participate in the challenge (ok, this bit is really hard. Windsoar chose 3 people that I would have chosen, and Ancient is going to choose another 2 that I would have chosen, so I need to get in there real quick!)

Cymre
Effraeti
Fannon (if he takes as long as he did to do my commission we might have to wait till next year to see his picture...)
Euphyley
The Godmother
Aralosseien

So why these 6? I guess because I know they're all avid screenshotters, and Matty in case you're wondering why I didn't tag you it's because I knew Ancient would tag you first.

Happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T23:33:00.001+11:00

How cool was this spot in the Barrens that Roshii pointed out to me? So appropriate for Valentine's day! I wonder if there are any other heart formations hidden out there in WoW?

And of course this day was made for all you pink flamingos out there in the world. And may everyone who is doing their dailies get their swift lovebirds!

Healing Heroic Yor'sahj 10 man with a Resto Druid

2012-02-14T22:41:00.005+11:00

Take heart druids! Healing Heroic Yor'sahj with a druid can be done, and with not too much pain! I had to listen to a fair bit of:

Druids are the worst at healing Yor'sahj
All their spells put a dot on during purple phase
Big heals are a bit weak compared to priests, pallies and shamans

So, a quick recap on what heroic Yor'sahj is all about:

In Heroic, instead of 3 globules coming out, you have 4, and so Yor'sahj will have 3 active on him. A really good add-on that we use is Yor'sahj Announce, which tells you which globule to kill. Also, the globules, mana void, adds and Yor'sahj have more HP, and all damage is higher.

Shadowed Globule up (Purple)

So what do my spells do in purple phase?

Regrowth - 1 stack on application, no stacks for hots
Rejuvenation - 1 stack on application, no stacks for hots
Lifebloom - 1 stack per application, no stacks for hots, no stack for bloom
Healing Touch - 1 stack
Tranquility - 1 stack per tick - NEVER USE!
Swiftmend - 1 stack on use
Efflorescence - no stacks!
Wild Growth - 1 stack on each player

What else is free?

Trinket procs - eg. Windward Heart
Weapon procs - eg. Maw of the Dragonlord

Healing with a paladin is fantastic. Never get them to heal the tank. That can be your job in Purple phase. Beacon is free, so they can beacon the tank and heal everyone and the tank gets lots of nice free heals. Remember the stacks reset after 30 seconds so nice big heals like Healing Touch or Regrowth if they're low and you want to get a swiftmend off as well (though that would be 2 stacks). Another useful thing is to park a pet next to the tank and rejuv and swiftmend them for efflorescence healing. I never use tree of life when a purple is up.

So right before a purple comes out, top everyone up to max, I like to throw hots on everyone just before the debuff hits so hopefully sneak some healing in.

Cobalt Globule up (Blue)

I used to hate this bit. I hated having no mana. Now I love it. In Heroic Yor'sahj, there is only one time you have to use your cooldown, the first time there is a blue up, you use innervate after all your mana is sucked away, and the dps work and get it low but don't pop it. So the next time mana void comes, wait for it to suck mana away again, and then pop the old mana void so all your mana come back, yay!

Also, if a mana void is about to come, heal your nuts off! Your mana is about to get destroyed anyway, so you might as well use it.

Acidic Globule up (Green)

Interestingly you don't have to heal the melee much, if at all if the ranged are spread out properly. So in 10 man with 2 healers, you can try to split healing of the ranged between yourselves. It felt like every time there was a green globule we had purple globule up as well as a blue globule. Don't forget to heal yourself!

Dark Globule up (Black)

The adds aren't terrible if they go down fast enough! It's good to bunch up nice and tight when you have this globule up. You can cast thorns on yourself if you want, hoping the adds will die a little while they're beating up on you and the raid is AOEing them down.

Crimson Globule up (Red)

Really important to be bunched up nice and tight at Yorsahj's feet here. The searing blood will hit the person furthest out anyway (ie to get the most damage), so don't get caught doing your tranquility NOT stacked in the bunch at his feet or you will get yelled at.

Glowing Globule up (Yellow)

Most of the time Yellow is the priority to kill. The only exception is during a Black/Red/Yellow phase which is a high damage phase where our raid uses Bloodlust and I use Tranquility and heal my guts out with the other healer. Everyone should be stacked nice and tight for this combination.

You only ever get these combinations, and the crossed out one is the one we kill, and what heals I use and my role:

black — blue — ~~green~~ — purple: (stack), mostly HT and regrowths here, rejuv+swiftmends on pets, swiftmend n tank if desperate, focus healing tank
black — blue — ~~green~~ — red: (stack), rejuv, wildgrowths, swiftmends, regrowths on OOC procs, I have used TOL on this phase if mana was tight.
black — blue — purple — ~~yellow~~: see above
black — ~~green~~ — red — yellow: (stack) wildgrowth, blanket rejuvs, tranquility, swiftmends, TOL if a second one comes and tranquility is on CD
black — purple — red — ~~yellow~~: (stack) HT and regrowth, rejuv+swiftmend on pets, swiftmend on tank if desperate, focus healing tank
blue — green — purple — ~~yellow~~: (spread) HT and regrowth, rejuv+swiftmend on pets, focus healing tank

This is me healing with a paladin. Not sure how I'd go with a priest or shaman, but if I ever get the opportunity to heal with them, I will update this post with any changes to my healing strategy.

Guildie Guest Spot - Edgar Allen Voe

2012-02-14T12:57:00.001+11:00

Voe wrote me a spontanous poem the other day. Since Sev wouldn't write down his awesome song I am putting Voe's poem here for everyone to look at, unedited.

Feeling creative i started to type
Not a clue what say, about what boss or what fight
But navi insisted i give it a go
To bring out the inner me, thats right Damn Voe
I may be loud, obnoxious and a little bit rude
You can always point the finger and blame Mr Fue
One day in Orgs i see a guild ad
I whisper and ask “would you like a shaman that isn’t bad?”
With a word or two i receive and invite
With Navi whispering me, i get cast into the light
After a raid or two I seem to be fitting in
And poor old Targetme got thrown into the bin
Many months later ive found a place i can call home
Waiting for 8.30 my lips start to Foam
For heroics is fun and painful at best
We wont give up and lay back and rest!
Group 1 and group 2 who really gives a shit?
Just ask navi who replies to everyones fits
For now this will do as im running out of things to say
Now let us kill ultra as soon as can be
hopefuly bish will turn up this time
fingers and toes crossed we hope it's not a far cry

Monday raiding - The price of aiming high

2012-02-14T07:02:00.001+11:00

Voe had basketball last night so they had to find a healer to replace him. Gley went over on his shadow priest to their group to DPS for heroic Ultraxion. Oh dear. 2 priests did not work well healing. They were disappointed and had to knock it out on normal - with achievement of course :) But I could tell everyone was disappointed.

Poor Beauti, she respecced disc for that fight, and it didn't work as well for her. She went non-atonement, which was a different spec to her normal disc spec but she didn't feel it was as good as her holy spec. Everyone felt sorry for her and her multiple respecs. I voiced that I had to do it a lot too but Aza said t/hat was self inflicted because I wanted to spec for PVP. This was true I suppose!

But the rest of the evening also did not go well. They died on Spine, and also had multiple wipes on Madness. Fortunately, Voe got back after basketball and came back into the raid and everything went well. But not without a lot of stress for his team members, who probably now feel like Voe is one of the major supporting pins of their group.

A lot of issues came up after that. Because Bish can't raid on Thursdays, should he continue in that group? Is it fair for the others who want to raid for 4 days and they can't? Is it fair to Bish that he has to work and must be excluded? And though they had been going well with 2 priests that while, should a better combination of healers be assigned for that group even if they already have the better dps?

The obvious solution is that they take Bloodzta, who as a paladin would make their team look a lot better. However, Bloodzta's healing doesn't seem to be that great but as he said before it may be due to his drug habits rather than poor playing ability. We won't know till he comes and actually heals. But the preconception of his poor playing ability is already in place and those first impressions never change. And if it is said to give him a chance? Then they say my group should take him and they take Bladewind. Then what happens to my group? Is it fair that we have the lesser dps and lesser heals too?

This is where competitive raiding starts to cause cracks within a guild. Fingers are pointed at others. People are not good enough to go with others. Argument about who should be where causes dissatisfaction and unrest. What happened to playing as a team?

The group I am in at the moment is the less competitive team. People don't seem as angry there. There is no yelling at low dps - though there is a lot of people poking fun at my DPS but they all understand that I'm doing the best that I can, and it's not my role. Even when we did so badly that week where we couldn't get Madness down, we didn't yell and cry and point fingers, though I remember feeling really down about it. When we did it easily the following week, was it the nerfs to Dragon Soul that made us get it? Or was it the fact we had a different paladin healer? I was feeling happy again after Bladewind came back to raiding, but if we get Bloodzta again will we still be the same? I'm not so sure. But should our team take him or the other team?

But the lack of Voe in the other team today highlighted one thing - healing leadership in a team is really important. Obviously his healing is really important, but he also manages to bring out the best in the other 2 healers as well. And perhaps this is why we cannot ever raid together him and I if we have 2 teams running - because I direct the heals in the other team. If both teams had nobody to direct the healing, do we rely on the tanks and DPS to tell the healers what to do? What a horrible idea. Can you imagine the uproar if we had healers telling DPS what to do? They get grumpy!

So what is the solution that is fair for everyone? Or is best for everyone?

You can look at it two ways. We can have a progression team, and the other team does normals. But if you have 5 good players in the other team why should they be excluded from raiding heroics? So then should we have a rotation roster so all our top DPS and heals and tanks get a go at doing heroics? Then the top DPSers will say why should we have to sit out and get grouchy. So far, a satisfactory solution has not presented itself.

And who decides what happens? Clasically, officers have, but raiders are an important part of the team too. Do they get a say in what happens? The role of the officer has always been to mediate and look at things fairly. Putting the ME into the equation, where does that leave everyone? Who will look at the bigger picture instead of what do I get out of it and what is best for me?

A progression guild would say just put the best together if you want to progress. But is that what we are? We are more than just a bunch of people who play to kill bosses - I like to think we are friends. Who work together and play together and try to give each other a fair go. Yes, nobody likes to carry a dead weight, but when we are all trying where does that leave you? It was hard going to sleep last night with all these thoughts rattling in my head.

But could the real reason be that if we give the a good healer replacement and they do get Ultraxion down ahead of us, will that group again start pointing fingers at my group and call us the crappy group? Who, in reality wants to hear nasty things like that?

Sunday raiding - So close yet so far

2012-02-13T17:53:00.001+11:00

Argh, no Augment meant that we couldn't bash at Ultraxion tonight. Sigh. But Nok was on but lagging so at least we could make a raid!

We wouldn't be able to do heroic Ultraxion now, so we just killed it on normal. I asked Fue if we could do the achievement - it's not that different from doing heroic since someone has to stay out all the time. And so we did! So the people staying out for Twilight in order were Fue, Barkhoof, Bladewind, Navi, Falln, Shaba and Nok if needed (he was on Omggoaway). But we got it after Shaba's one. So that was cool achievement spam. The other group at first thought we had killed heroic Ultraxion... I wish!

The other group did get it very close! At least twice they were on 5%, but it wasn't lack of DPS that held them back, it was button clicking. I think almost everyone was guilty of stuffing up. People got quite frustrated. Even Voe stuffed up a few button clicks. Ksret stuffed a few as well. Just a little more DPS, and they would have gotten it.

My group polished off the rest of Dragon Soul on normal in a comfortable 1.5 hours, and I even managed to snag some offspec loot for myself, Starcatcher compass. So that inspired me to try to upgrade my gear a bit more for next week's attempt.

Oh one small embarrassing moment... I told Gutsy not to die on Warmaster Blackhorn and guess who died to the shockwave. Yep. Me. OMG embarrassing.

Did our usual post raid arena games, only one stood out in my memory - a priest/mage/lock group. They got us the first time as we killed their mage and they killed Sev. There is no way we could outlast that combination and we oomed quickly and were finished off. We got them again and beat them back, so that made me feel a bit better. Sev got his 50k conquest point achievement.

At the end of the day, the fashion police pulled me up on my horrible mismatching DPS set.

Yes, yes I know, it's hideous. But I'm kitty most of the time, so nobody sees what I'm wearing! At least now I can put some of the clothes from the set Effraeti made for me to use... but I had to buy some temporary replacmeents in the meantime. But it's not horribly bad.

I like that chest, my friend Tome of the Ancient wears a black version of it. And Roshii said my pants were too tight. I've decided to wear my red shirt underneath anyway since I wasn't sure if I wanted to show that much skin, but I guess it will do for now.

Saturday's Firelands and this week's achievements

2012-02-12T17:34:00.001+11:00

Well, it was Saturday Firelands again, and I was a bit late logging on so I didn't get into the raid. But I did want to get the achievement from Staghelm still. It's more like Only the Patient... rather than Only the Penitent...

Only the Penitent Man Will Pass

It was looking good! We had everyone in their spots. Sev zoned out (not sure why, but he said HK asked him to, but HK said he didn't say that, so all a big misunderstanding) so I could zone it, and everyone was sitting in their little spots ready to go. I was heading up. I freaked out because I stood at one point instead of sat, but fortunately managed to sit just in time! Phew. I thought it was going to be my turn to stuff it up.

Poof! The orbs disappeared. "Oh no!" said Hwired. "I thought I was standing up so I sat down but it made me stand up and I got hit..."

LOL, oh dear! Another week not done. Ayelena piped up "It wasn't me this time Navi!" LOL, indeed it wasn't. I was more worried I would stuff it up for everyone.

Hwired said later he would come along next week, just to ruin my achievement again. /giggle well, it's actually rather funny the whole thing now!

With Darkmoon Faire this week, I managed to get a few more achievements, I was super pleased to be finally able to get this on my first daily - Blastenheimer Bullseye:

Then later in the week I noticed all my dungeon artifacts got reset! I won A Treatise on Strategy in my first and only heroic dungeon this week, which was really exciting for me, and I thought oh good, I can hand it in and get closer to finishing my achievement - but the mini-patch reset them! Grrr. Cymre had that happen to her and she told me that I should buy the rest in case it happened again. So I did. And that was Darkmoon Dungeoneer and Darkmoon Despoiler done.

And nice wins in arenas this week tipped me over for my 50,000 Conquest points achievement. Interestingly, I don't have my 50,000 Valor points achievement yet. Hmmm.

Well, fingers crossed for that achievement next week!

Highlights of the Week from my Blogroll February 12, 2012

2012-02-12T08:52:00.001+11:00

Euphyley from WoW Rare Spawn Guide usually just writes on rare spawns in WoW, and shows locations, abilities and how to tame them as a hunter. She also puts videos on every rare as well. Her blog has been such a fabulous read for someone like me who loves rares. This week she deviated a little to write Pretty in Pink - Loving my Swift Lovebird, a post about the Swift Lovebird, Mazzranache and Mulgore Hatchling complete with picture, and as a Mazzranache fan I can't help but put up this pic of her!

And I thought I was into obscure WoW references! Perculia at Flavour Text wrote about how Your Justice Point Gear is Named after Famous Poetry. Poetry and obscure WoW references? I LIKE! I think it's amazing she picked up so many - some are a bit vague, but hey, what if it was true? Some developer or writer would be so chuffed that we picked up on the little in-joke! I got to this link through MMO Melting point's post about Many Things you Didn't Know About WoW, where I was also featured for my post about comic characters in WoW.

And Big Bear Butt once again blows me away with blog posts which such wisdom that is oh so quotable. In Under the Spell of Dark Lunar Love, he says:

The only true limitations to getting into a Dragon Soul raid are time, skill and a group of friends.

That was higlighted by my friend Matty at WoW Sugar. But I like this bit the best, when he described how WoW as an MMO.

More accessible. Easy to learn, difficult to master.

Which is probably why I like WoW so much. Anyone can play, and anyone can enjoy it at whatever level they play at. Good one Blizz :)
Edit: Oh shit, Matty beat me to that one too. She actually requoted that last line in a reply to his post.

Love is in the Air - How to Host a Wedding in WoW

2012-02-11T23:49:00.002+11:00

Love is in the air! Yes everyone, it's that time of year again. There are so many guides out there, I thought I'd so something a little bit different but still with a romantic slant.

I thought I'd slot this into Effraeti's Blog Azeroth Shared Topic - Love is in the Air.

Many bloggers lately have been discussing playing with IRL couples who raid together. How would this transfer to the characters they play? Why would their characters slay dragons together?

With a couple of guildies getting married, both of whom play WoW, I was thinking how cool it would be to have a wedding in WoW. It sounds like a totally dorky RP thing, but I think that if you would like to invite your guildies to your wedding, and of course, they're all over the place, what better place to hold it than to hold it in game when everyone can be on at the same time?

So I thought about what I would do if I wanted to hold a wedding in WoW, and here is what I came up with.

1. Set the date

What you would want is a time when everyone can get online to attend your wedding. You can do it through the raid calendar. Because if everyone can turn up on time for a raid (well, almost everyone) then they can turn up for your wedding for an hour. That's if you plan to invite guildies. For other people/friends not in your guild you would probably have to send them an ingame mail (see Send out the Invitations below)

2. Pick a venue

Chapels like Light Hope Chapel are good choices, or even in Stormwind Cathedral (bad of course if you are Horde like me). Alternatively, a nice garden setting can work. What you would want is a low traffic area, because you don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry questing in your wedding venue and stickybeaking at what you're doing. Here are some nice locations I would choose:

Moonglade has some beautiful scenery, and it's full of ancient nature magic.

You could copy Thrall and Agra and have it at their location by the Well of Eternity in Hyjal

The beaches of Vashj'ir are secluded in some spots, and are nice for a seaside wedding

You could adjourn to the Legerdemain Lounge in Dalaran, which has barmaids with booze as well as lots of tables to sit at for your guests.

3. Send out the invitations

A copy of a letter with the venue, dress code, time is sufficient, I think. That way they can keep it on themselves to remind when it is. You can just send the mail out and hope that everyone makes a copy of the letter, but that's not always reliable.

4. Assistants/Bridesmaids/Groomsmen

Bridesmaids and Groomsmen are great as assistants on your big day. They can lay feasts, make announcements, go around handing out the drinks, and also act as the photographers and videographers on the day (though of course, everyone can act as a photographer with PrtSc). Other things they can help with include decorating the place you want to get married with:

Beams of light (eg Elder's Moonstone)

Rose Petals (eg Handful of Rose Petals, Bouquet of Ebon roses, Bouquet of Red Roses)

Fireworks (eg Love Rocket, Dalaran Firework, Darkmoon Firework)

They are also good at clearing out any annoying NPCs who might want to gate crash.

5. Menu

Feasts are ideal wedding food. You can lay these out on the table and everyone can help themselves. You can put these out yourself or you can get one of your assistants to help with this. Also providing plenty of in game alcohol or champagne - Dalaran has a nice selection of alcoholic beverages. Also those cakes which serve multiple people are good ideas as well for the dessert/cake cutting part of the ceremony.

Aimee in Dalaran near the south Bank has 2 varieties of cake to choose from as well as a pie that can serve 5-10 people.

From left to right: Lovely Cake, Chocolate Celebration Cake, Big Berry Pie

6. Wedding finery

White Wedding Dress would be the obvious choice but there a whole host of beautiful dresses out there. Tuxedos for the boys are also the obvious choice but here's a nice list of other things you could wear.

White Wedding Dress

Aurora Robe
(accessorised with Mantle of the Avatar and White Bandit Mask)

Elegant Robes


Mooncloth Robe

Green Wedding Hanbok - see below

Korean wedding dresses can be obtained from Geenia Sunshadow in Moonglade. There are 2 rare spawn wedding dresses as well the Formal Dangui which can be purchased from her which I included above.

Tuxedo Jacket, Tuxedo pants, Tuxedo Shirt and Dress Shoes are all good choices, easily made by any mid level tailor. Unfortunately it looks a little shabby on an undead...

Wedding rings can also be purchased or gotten from the AH (such as Gold Wedding Band, which can be found in Bag of Fishing Treasures), but there are a number of rings you could get.

A shame that Harold Winston in Dalaran doesn't sell the actual role play rings, but the shop is pretty cool for taking pictures in if you want to pretend you're shopping for rings :P

Haris Pilton has the Gold Eternium band which is a good traditional wedding ring and it is forever (it's Bind on Equip), and the Black Diamond ring is a good engagement ring, and can be passed around and also can be displayed when worn.

For those on a budget, you can get your bling from various other vendors around Azeroth. Gappy here is in Azshara. The Flawless Diamond Solitaire is the perfect proposal ring. The Miniscule Diamond Ring text is amusing and more for the less serious proposal. The Rock is also a good proposal ring, and of course is the butt of many jokes :P

7. Celebrant

Your guild leader, raid leader, or some other suitably responsible person would be great for this role. Just make sure you give them a list of what you want them to say and when, and it will run smoothly. To be funny, you could get a priest to do it, wearing some kind of priestly gear. Like this from WoWRoleplaygear.com:

8. Photographer/Videographer

A few people acting in this role would be good. Make sure your Videographer/s have FRAPS or some other similar video program so that you can keep a recording of your special day. You can keep all the screenshots in a folder or get everyone to send it to you so you can make an album if you so desire. One photographer with speech bubbles on might be great for when you're exchanging vows, or making speeches, and one photographer without it on might be great for just general screenies. You will need a coordinator to have everyone ready with a /cheer and have them all hit enter at the same time to get a good picture. Ventrilo is good for that.

9. Music

Not easy to do, but if everyone is on Ventrilo, then you could designate one person to have an open mic with some nice music in the background. Make sure they aren't talking or doing noisy keyboard typing when the mic is on. There are also some COOL ways to make music during the game. Sylvanas' Music Box is pretty cool, if you had a friend who completed Shadowmourne, the legendary weapon in WotLK.

Click here to listen to it and watch the WoW video.

10. Gifts

Gifts for the bride and groom are easy. But bonbonierre type gifts maybe a little bit harder. Gift wrap can be bought from any general vendor to wrap presents and sent in game. Cookies and other consumables would be good gifts - reflecting the traditional candied almonds. Wedding presents can be anything really - mounts, pets, gear, transmog gear, even gold!

"You forgot to invite the GUESTS??"

These were just a couple of ideas! I'm sure that people could think of other things that would be great for a WoW wedding. Have you role played a wedding in WoW? Let me know what you did!

New Rare pics this week

2012-02-11T06:00:00.010+11:00

With Roshii getting all his rare mounts this week, he had been a major contributer to my Rares library with not only Poseidus and Aeonaxx, but also managing to see Ankha as well. He also saw Blazewing!

Ankha is one of the spirit tiger beasts in Mount Hyjal. Another lovely tiger skin, I am glad Roshii managed to nab a shot of the beautiful yet elusive rare.

I thought this was a cool picture of Engineer Whirleygig because you can not only see the rare you can also see Kerrigan in the shredder! Starcraft fan alert! I already have these 3 rares but these are some better pictures of them.

And I came across one of my favourite rares again - Lady La-La. I decided to engage her and watch her for a while and see her cool abilities again, and it occurred to me, I should do what Euphyley does and video it! So here is my little video of Lady La-La with her abilities being performed on me.