Quick Update- Paragons Down!

Whoo! Oblivion, my Tues/Thurs raid, made it to Garrosh. It was our raid leader’s birthday, and we were told all he wanted was to squash some bugs. And we did. It wasn’t a pretty kill- with the last 3 up, we started losing people for some reason- a tank went down, but thankfully the klaxxi died quickly, leaving one tank and two bugs- doable. Then I noticed the other 2 healers were dead, and it was just me. I do not like it when they leave me alone- so I called out for people to run through my healing spheres, focused on the tank and kept an eye on the DPS who had picked up the scorpion buff. She helpfully called it out so I could place some heals on her and keep our tank alive.  I can’t remember how many were alive at the end, but we got it. No pet, but I keep getting nice weapons for my offspec- a very pretty axe, have to decide if it is better than my current weapon. 

A note- that fight is soooo much nicer when we managed to kill the first guy before he called the little amber worms to nom us. Made things way easier to heal.

We tried a few pulls on Garrosh, just not sure which is the best strategy for us. We’re extending next week, I’m sure, and we’ll work on it then. I think I might have to make an effort to be near ranged for interrupts- usually as my monk I stay with the melee group. But first we have to get to that phase, so I’ll worry when it comes.

My napping plan might have to be scrapped- lovely nap yesterday afternoon, stayed up til 3 AM. Not the best idea. 

Well done, guys!

A very nice raid night for my Wed/Fri group. We one shot everything up to Shamans, and managed to down them after 3 attempts. It was a little messy, but I know a few people were very worried about that fight so it was nice to get down.  We’ll start Friday on General, and I am very optimistic that we’ll knock out 3 bosses (at least) on Friday. I’m hopeful we’ll get Blackfuse too and have all of next week for Thok, Paragons, and Garrosh. A girl can dream, right?

What might be helpful for raiding next week, and will probably entice a few more people to come to flex, is trying part 4 on our Monday flex night. We’ll see how it goes on Saturday I suppose. If we’re lucky and quick, we can start on time and knock out 1 in an hour, breeze through 2 and maybe take out Malkorok. I am hopeful, but not expecting that. General Nazgrim always slows us down.

My plan to embrace the nap has met my desire to do things other than sleep. Like level my DK, who hit 90, promptly equipped the timeless isle plate I’ve been saving, DE’d the rest and logged out for what will probably be a few weeks. The plan is to make her my engineer, so eventually I’ll go around and gather all that stuff. Probably soon-ish, since a friend just offered to send me extras they have left from leveling their JC. I feel guilty if I take a long time doing things after someone has helped me get started.

Next up on the leveling list- either my horde monk to 80, or my little lock. I think she’s adorable, but the last time I played her she needed a bag for soul shards. It’s like when  I logged into my first hunter and found a quiver of arrows. I don’t think I have any old druids who still have a few minutes on their thorns buff, but I was amused the time that happened.

So on the general to-do list, in no specific order:

-finish gearing up the shaman and monk for CM

-learn how to play the shaman in CM

-level horde monk to 80

-level warlock to 90

-level engineering on someone

-finish all my Ulduar achievements

-finish my Ulduar legendary on the druid

-convince my shaman friend to PvP with me in the new season, get her geared up and go for that 100 3v3 wins achieve

-note on that one: totally dependent on 2 other people for most of it, so I will be lax in pursuing it

-help plan for the guild’s second anniversary party, if needed

-Start those ICC runs to see what I need to do.

-work on achievements in general

-learn to tank on the monk

-convince our tank that he really wants to heal again on his druid so I can tank

-alternatively, convince our lock he wants to heal again on his druid so I have more healers I can trust and our tank can DPS to his heart’s content

-realize half of these won’t come to pass, accept it, and nap more

-finally get the last 3k giant dino bones for that mount

And finally, another quote from vet school

Another great use for KY lube in your clinic… God that sounds awful. In the back room…

She meant it’s good to add some to water to suspend drugs if you need to. Also for adding to water if you are giving oral fluids to reptiles to help prevent aspiration by making the water a little more viscous.

A Nice Night

Alright! Last night was fun- there was an officer’s meeting last night. I was concerned. It was called pretty abruptly. The way our GM mentioned it made it sound, to me, like she was pissed off about something. And I think she was, to a degree. The flex runs- requiring a certain ilevel to attend one.  Of course, now that we’ve listed it as a requirement twice, everyone has reached it, so it’s kinda a moot point. But we were gently rebuked about the goal of our guild again- to be a fun, inclusive place. That happens to raid, but that is not the point of our flex runs.  

We have a temporary website up and running again, thank goodness. It seems like as soon as the website went down I began to find things to share. Though when I tried to post something to the forum, it appears to work but I can’t look at the post without getting an error. Hopefully our tech officer will sort it out soon.

In other news, yesterday was the one year anniversary of the guild I raid with- big grats to them, they are wonderful people and have a guild I would be proud to be a part of, if I hadn’t already found a home in another lovely guild. Speaking of, our guild is going to be celebrating its 2 year anniversary in March. I have a list of ideas for activities, which I have sent on the the guildmaster, but I am always looking for more fun things.

While that meeting was going on, I continued to raid. We started fresh since we were missing another person and I was out of vent. Only 1 death due to not paying attention- whoops, my bad. Otherwise, a decent night- cleared up to shamans, with a later start and a semi-paying attention healer was excellent. Shamans were our only wipe too, so well done guys! And well timed, telling me you DE'd the off spec weapon I could really use right as things were getting sharded. 

My Wed/Fri raid has settled on a 2 week schedule, and should be starting fresh this week. Our raid leader is a little worried about shamans. We wiped a lot, and i didn’t realize how much he was taking to heart. Lots of people were asking tanks to do things, and it kinda came across as the raid blaming tanks for wipes. We eventually got by, and that one shot of general afterwards felt really good. But I think we will do great tonight. We also cleared up the issue of who was a reserve and who wasn’t, which is nice. I don’t mind the swapping people in and out, but I do not like to exclude good people from progression. 

I have changed my plan a bit- I am going to embrace the nap instead of worrying about an earlier bed time. I like naps, and now I will have plenty of afternoons to experiment with how long a nap I really need. In general, naps start at a minimum of 90 min and go up, but now I will have lots of time to adjust that. Maybe 30 minutes is really plenty. What I really want is an alarm that counts down from when I fall asleep. Perhaps some day that will be a thing.

Lots of Grr.

Not sure what to say about this weekend. Right now I am so tired, I feel like I need to write something to keep awake.

Challenge modes- did not go so well. I am a bad DPS, this is why I heal. I forget totems, I forget cooldowns. I spend so much time setting up, I end up with very low DPS. I offered to be the one who sits out to rotate new people in. I’ll keep working on it, of course- I should be capable of way better. 

Flex went pretty well, we made it up to Nazgrim on Saturday, but we had low DPS and couldn’t get him down before berserk. It was still a ton of fun. Our Monday night flex now has an ilevel requirement, since the plan is to do parts 3 and 4. I think everyone who was close worked to get the level required, so no one who usually comes should be left out. I felt a bit bad about it, because I knew people want to come who didn’t have the ilevel, but we didn’t enforce it the first time. I also feel worse if I know we aren’t going to pass a boss because we have 2 or 3 people who can’t pull their weight. Hopefully I remember to bring the druid tonight, at least for Thok. She can pump out some nice heals. I remember one flex the pally who was assigned to BoP me for tranq kept sending me <3s, cause they thought me heals were awesome. That was fun.

Update with Monday’s progress: took 2 tries on Malkorok, and on shot Spoils with our flex group. Which was pretty neat, since it was that tanks first attempt tanking either of those. Thok went not so well. I remembered to switch to the druid for our last few pulls, but it didn’t help much. I think our best attempt was 20-ish percent. For some reason I can’t seem to pop out the numbers I remember from that previous flex. Still doing pretty well- though I need to get the stacking together a bit better. Maybe I’ll just mark someone else next time and say stack on them- we always seem to get mixed up. 

Something that has been on my mind lately is raid breaks. Yeah we need them, and I appreciate a timed break. I can do some stuff, get a snack, not feel like i’m holding anyone up. But how long is too long? When I started raiding this expansion, we took 10 min breaks and ended at 11. Somewhere along the way it morphed into 15 min and 11:30 end times. When we reformed for SoO, one of my requirements was I had to be done at 11 on weeknights. I’m an hour ahead, and I have morning classes. So even though I may stay up another hour on my own catching up on How I Met Your Mother, I don’t want to be required to because of raid. An extra 10 min to get a kill now and then, sure. But I don’t want to be late all the time. And this has strayed away from our 15 min break topic. But we start at 8:30 (supposedly- starting on time is a myth) and go til 11. We often don’t start til 8:45, sometimes as late as 9, though that is much rarer now that we have a roster of more than 10. So in reality we have less than 2 hours of raid time, because there’s always someone missing after our break for another minute or two. I wonder if break times are something I should bring up? I think 10 min would be plenty, and most likely turn into 15 anyway as late people show up. Really one 5-minute break with a timer is probably enough for me, but that would be a bit of a radical change for some others.

And another topic- I was reading the Officer’s Quarters on WoW Insider this week, and one of the complaints (that was extensively discussed in the comments) was someone never released and ran back. I know 2 people like that- one I don’t like to raid with for other reasons as well, and one a healer for our 10 man, and we need healers. So I’ve just learned to live with it. I’ve never said anything to him about it, so if I should get mad at anyone for that it would be myself for not talking to him and still rezing him. I do not like it, it comes across as lazy to me, to do that every time. I actually have a few problems with this healer, mostly stemming from the fact that to me it seems he doesn’t care about raiding as much as I do. And there are a few people in our raid group I get that feeling from, and that makes me alternatively sad and frustrated. And worried, for next expansion, when normals are flex. We invite everyone to flex now, we won’t be able to do that in WoD. 

I guess my problem is this: I want to raid with people who care about raiding well. People who will look up all the fights before hand, run LFR to get upgrades and see the fights, show up on time, and answer raid invites. And I approach every raid- flex, normal, LFR- with that same attitude: I want to do well. I don’t want to be the person holding us back. People know we’re doing flex 3, can’t they look up the fight themselves and not rely on an explanation? Sure we’ll explain, but watching a video can be very helpful. But flex is casual, so I only grumble to myself a bit.  But I hope for normal that can be expected, without asking. And that doesn’t seem to happen. Admittedly, we decided to extend on the fly last week, rather than start fresh. But I would have hoped people would look up the fights when it looks like we’re getting close, not when we’re already there. 

I think my real issue is stress. School has started up again, I am getting less sleep, and I am trying to do both too much in some areas and not near enough in others. All combined to make me edgy. I am going to try to go to bed earlier- as close to midnight as I can with raids. And wake up a tad earlier so I can get outside for a few minutes, in the sunlight and cool air. Take a walk, relax. I think those two things will help a lot, at least at reducing my bitchiness. Making me less aggravated with fellow raiders? Maybe that too. 

Bad LFRs Got to Me

I’m ashamed to admit it, but LFR has gotten to me. I’ve been running a lot this week to finish up gear for challenge modes. And the second time through on Spoils, the second time with tanks who can’t seem to count to 50, I got upset. I said in chat- hey, we only however many boxes, some small number, on whatever side we were on. Kept opening boxes. Sent a whisper. Kept opening boxes. Called him an idiot in instance chat. Immediately felt ashamed I’d sunk to that level. Wanted to leave right away, but I really needed a ring off Thok, so I stayed and shut up. 

I mean, I’ve grumped to friends and guildies who come with me, but I’ve never been mean in chat to someone. I’ll call you out if you AFK the whole fight without an announcement, and usually send people tells if they are really obvious about standing in the bad. I like to think of myself as a nice helpful person generally. I make macros to explain fights quickly when new wings come out, I’ll always offer to answer questions, mark targets to help things go more smoothly. I’ve never said anything in general chat, aside from pointing out AFK/standing in fire. I did not like it. Well, lesson learned. Go grump to guildies, leave strangers alone.

On more fun notes: things my vet school professors have acted out in class. One- turtle mating. Very amusing, part of an explanation for why males have a divot on the bottom of their shell, useful for sexing. Very amusing demonstration too. Two- wild stallion trotting. Cute. Of course our classmates have the horses down pat. Asked, “what do you do when you give this drug, and the horse wobbles then falls over?” someone answers “Dig a hole.” Don’t get me wrong, I love horses. I started riding when I was 10, I’ve worked at stables and owned a horse. But boy can they be good a dying.

Other quotes:

“These little pugs, can’t hold them because an eye falls out.”

“Who likes the basenjis? Anybody? “

“They’re so cute.”

“No, they’re not.”

“I figured I’d teach you so you stop asking me what it means.”

“Cause people are afraid of looking at prepuces and penises don’t be afraid.”

“Everything here is the cartoon watered down truth.”

“We lie to you everyday in lecture.”

Lots of Raiding! with some PvP

So Tuesday raiding did not result in any boss deaths, but I think it went pretty well. Working on Seigecrafter,  we managed a 7% on our best attempt. It took us a while to get used to the belts, and not put sawblades down where people jump off. Lots of experimentation though, started with 2 healers and sending 2 DPS up, then switched to 3 healers and I went up as a fistweaver just to ensure my DPS could get it down, still 2 DPS in the other group. I think everyone going up the belt missed a jump at least once. I have learned to roll of the belt (yay for monks!) but everyone else usually just runs on the belt til they get pulled off. 

I think getting to the point where we can send only 1 DPS up safely will make a big difference. If I could kill it alone as a WW, I’d volunteer. But my DPS spec is about 545, not sure I could do it. Still, I think suggesting that we only send 1 DPS up is worth a try. Or if we can at least only have 2 DPS plus me doing the belts the whole time, that might help. Problem is we are so light on ranged, the crawler mines can really hurt us.

In other news, my druid did not get the staff from Ulduar. Did get a few shards, so now I think I will go work on that legendary. Luckily I have a buddy who likes that place and is willing to run it with me, in return for help with his legendary from ICC. So I am going to shamelessly use these opportunities to get achievements.

I am torn on who to gear up for challenge modes. I don’t care much about the transmog sets, both toons I am considering have transmogs I like at the moment. I can gear up my monk for healing, but I think the warlock is going to gear up his resto druid. I can DPS with the monk, but a lot of things aren’t melee friendly and we already have a rogue guaranteed. On the other hand, my shaman is missing fewer pieces, and has something usable in all slots. But I don’t know how competent I will be a elemental. I mean, I leveled elemental, and I know in theory what to do. How hard is spam chain lightning on trash packs anyway? What I really ought to do is talk to the guy running it, and get his opinion.

More PvP! I now has a ton of PvP gear, only missing the jewelry. Got my 1550 rating achievement in 2v2, only to promptly lose the next 5 or 6 in a row. I was sad to end the night on a loosing streak, but my partner was getting frustrated and I shouldn’t have even started. But I was one win away from a trinket, then one win away from that achievement, then I wanted to end on a win… Oh well.

And earlier in the day, he managed to talk our shaman into starting PvP as well, and we started 3v3. Took me a bit of getting used to, harder for me to CC as much as I would like and keep everyone alive. I did have fun, and hope we can run some more arenas later. There were some buggy moments, where one of us couldn’t zone in. Actually managed to win one of those, which was fun. And I only popped tree form in the hallway once because I forgot my keybinds. Yes, I am that good sometimes.

Wednesday raiding we decided to extend, and took out Malkorok very easily.  A few pulls, some people getting used to how we place the markers to avoid breaths. However our other tank was not aware we would be extending, and had not seen the spoils fight at all. It took her a while to get the hang of it, and in the mean time one of our healers has an odd UI and couldn’t see the bombs on him and died 2 or 3 times. Since I switched to DPS I was paying less attention to health bars and more to trying to keep my kitty DPS at a respectable level, I wasn’t helping him as much as I should’ve been.

I get really frustrated by mistakes like that, because he’s been in flex with us and how in the world has that issue not come up before? Oh well, deep breath and remind myself we’ll get it on Friday. I feel like I am complaining an awful lot, but apparently I have been keeping it quiet enough to not bug the crap out of everyone else. It was just very frustrating after running spoils on LFR with a tank who a) apparently couldn’t add to 50 and b) couldn’t read my tell to stop opening crates please, we have enough. It’s enough to make me actually switch to tank.

And finally Thursday raiding, we got Seigecrafter to 4% on our second try. Then promptly wiped several times before taking him out. Ended up sending a DPS and me for one group, and 2 DPS or the second group, and I rolled off the belt half-way, just doing enough so the DPS could finish it easily. She did go a few rounds on her own, but it was really close, close enough she though she missed it. I got my tier shoulders, yay! No one got a pet. We did a few attempts on Paragons, but we need people to react quicker to aims. Oh well, we’re going to extend next week and I am really really hopeful we’ll get it. 

Vet school things now: It’s been  along time since I’ve read Hitchhiker’s Guide, but today someone asked if we were panicking yet, and my first thought was “no, I’ve got my towel.” That made me smile for a little while. Then our teacher asked “what do horses do?” and half the class promptly responded “die” I started giggling for a while. So she had to correct, ok, yes they do, but of what? It was a fun day. I have a few teachers I really like. Avian and Exotics is a ton of fun, I like to learn about the things I will rarely need to know. Pathology is as boring as it was last time. Learning dermatology things there, which I know will be important, and a very common issue. They’re just not interesting to me, and the professor, while a super nice guy, is just not that interesting. Very monotone.

Nice Start to the Week

Can’t remember if I mentioned it, but challenge modes are officially completed on my druid. Plus some, we had to go back and do a few more for the hunter we swapped in after the start. I’ve also managed to run Ulduar 3 times this week, and promised my self to 2 more next week. That’ll be fun.

There has been talk of putting together a Herald of the Titans group. I’m up for that, I have a 60 horde monk I can push to 80 and get geared up. I am a little nervous about healing at that level on a monk, but I probably shouldn’t be. So I might have to do more than fistweave, I am perfectly capable of it. If I am planning to do challenge modes healing on my monk, I better be able to heal a raid group at 80 with help. I just tend to get nervous and doubt my abilities. No matter how much praise my tank gives me for healing him in challenge modes in his PvP gear. Which he did switch out of, before the last boss. 

In other news, Thok went down. I probably mentioned that already, but I am still proud of my group for getting it together. Next week- Seigecrafter, and Paragons. I am confident we can take each of them down in a night. That is, if we extend the lockout.

I have finally taken the plunge and picked out a transmog for a brewmaster set. Cause that’s the most important part, right? And I also turned in my flex tier leg token for brewmaster legs. Ok, I haven’t learned the spec yet. So it’s more like dipping my toes into the pool. I want to finish out Brawler’s guild before I drop the DPS spec. Got to rank 8 yesterday, and I think I have half of the collect your deck achievement. So a little more work there and I’ll actually switch. I promise. I think. It’s that nervousness thing coming back again.

Classes have started up again. I am writing this on my breaks, since it’s the first day subject material has been very light. I’ve been told 4th term is fun and interesting. We’ll see how that turns out. In terms of scheduling, we have morning classes and afternoon labs, with no more than 3 afternoons a week. It looks nice, and I prefer the morning schedule. I whine a lot about waking up early, but once I adjust I am usually happier and more alert. Plus, it looks like we get good, interesting professors. Not that we’ve had any truly awful ones, but we get some of the ones who really make me pay attention.

Though I’m a bit annoyed, part of the projection if hanging off the edge of the screen, and it is really bugging me for no known reason.

And I need to let my raid lead know I feel confident healing on my little shammy for normals, if he wants to save the lockout on my druid so we can skip Shamans. I took her into a PUG normal. And while that group barely lived long enough to see Immerseus split more than once, I was easily able to heal a very green tank and all the DPS near me. If we are 3-healing it with my regular group I will be more than fine, the issue will be if they need to swap out a healer for a DPS to get gear. Of course, in that case I’ll just be the leaving healer.

And my lesson for the weekend is: don’t join PUGs without a) expecting to lead them, wether it is my group or not, and b) inspecting the group leader to see if  kills look likely. I hate leaving people hanging, but after an hour with the Immerseus wipes- and not even close ones, but all before or on the first split- I left group, tanking the DPS I’d bribed into coming with me, which made that group fall apart. On the plus side, everyone was very nice., and I would have been more than happy to offer the suggestion of dropping it to flex, but I had already done flex, as had a tank and a DPS that I knew of. 

Since I am writing this during breaks and I keep thinking of things to add it keeps getting longer and longer. Not a bad thing, this is keeping me a bit more awake. My later bedtime is catching up to me. I hope I can perk up for Dr. Corrigan next class, she can be brutal. She is a ton of fun, but here’s an example of her sense of humor. We had a lab where we switched from station to station. At hers, she gave us a piece of paper and told us to be quiet, this was a test. Then when we gave her our papers, she looked at them and laughed for a few minutes before telling us it wasn’t a test, just trying to get us to make a decision and give her an answer.

Update: Monday night flex went alright. Wiped on Thok, but 2 shot Malk and 1 for Spoils. Apparently I was sounding a little bit more pissed off than I thought. I apologized for it later and someone went “yeah, I was asking around to see if I was the only one who thought that.” Yikes! Clearly I need to sleep more and mute my mike a bit. Hopefully I can manage a short nap today, but I have a feeling I will need caffeine to stay awake through class.

Success!

So there had been a raid scheduled for Sunday afternoon for Oblivion, to work on Thok. I was all set to have some fun with the OLRG tonight and relax, get to bed at a normal hour. And right after flex, I get a tell- can't raid tomorrow, am I available in about an hour? Sure, whatever. I was a little out of it, that hour flew by and suddenly I was wondering why my buffs had run out and what I was doing. But after a quick dip into my stash of chocolate covered expresso beans, I was aware enough for raiding. And success! Thok went down (on the last attempt, as per usual). We should start our last attempts much sooner. Lost a tank during the transition opening up the third gate and did the last ~25% with 1 tank. Always seem to have more success when we sacrifice our tanks too... And my helm didn't drop, but the priest's did, so yay!

After that our challenge mode group got together and finished our last 2 golds, Mogushan Palace and Temple of the Jade Serpent. Yay, immediately went out to buy the pet and took a look at the transmog. We did a quick Scarlet Halls run to get one of the missing golds for the hunter who swapped out in the middle. And of course, after all this time of running with a crit pet, he switched to spell haste so I needed to reforge to make it worthwhile.

On a different track, I doubt I will ever get revenge on my tanks. I can't tell them I'll leave them with the other healers only, cause they have gear and can handle it alone now (tanks and healers- really, I die and the tanks keep on trucking). I can't intentionally kill them cause then I die and I am not into pyrrhic victories like that. I suppose I can mail them off the enchants they ask for before they can give me the mats, but that's not really a revenge, even if it is apparently mildly guilt inducing per one of them. And they make me laugh too much to truly stay angry. Combined with a short memory, lack of creativity for revenge, and waning desire it means nothing will come of this. I suppose all I can hope for is more good times :)

Well, I suppose the only revenge left is to get a tank spec on the monk and have at it. I probably have the gear in the bank for a ~540 tank set. Might be fun one night. Plus I get tired of slow pullers- if I'm healing and can keep you up, let's GO already. Just need to make sure I have a healer if I chose to do that.  I'm already mentally making plans for other people without telling them, perhaps I should discuss them first... Enh, probably will come to night.

Actually Took the Plunge

And did some PvP. Shocking, I know, but thank goodness for my friend who has been running arenas with me. I m actually dead right now as I start this, waiting for my DK to kill their rogue. I feel like all I do is keep him alive to kill things, and occasionally hold their attention while they kill me. But it has been fun. I went with my druid, Elaylda. And boy is the PvP gear not pretty to look at, at least this set.  And he killed the rogue, back to the next one.

So we promptly ran Ulduar to get the staffs my monk got on Tuesday again for my druid to mog over the PvP gear. Only got 2 of the 3 I was hoping for, but Lifebinder and Intensity are nice, even if she didn't get Dreambinder, which I really wanted. Dreambinder is my monk's current transmog, even though it doesn't match cause it's so pretty. But the others are still nice, and I picked up some missing achieves along the way.

Arenas have been up and down. I have a decent amount of gear now, but still more to get. It's fun though, even with our strings of losses. We were one win away from the 1550 rating achievement, and lost 7 in a row after that. Oh well, I am hopeful we'll get it soon.

I feel like I should be doing more. I have a decent amount of CC, and I occasionally forget to use all my abilities. This did give me the push to finally make mouseover macros and combine a few abilities with macros and key bind some additional things, which I think has helped my PvE self a little bit.

On to raiding- Oblivion is still stuck on Thok. However, I just read the nerfs coming with the next raid reset, so I imagine we'll get him then, at the latest, but the plan is to go in tomorrow afternoon, and raid from 2 til he's dead or the tank and I leave to run challenge modes.

Icon had a great night last night, we finally managed to kill shamans and then went on to do a fabulous, perfect one-shot of Nazgrim. I don't think we had a single death til 10%, and then only lost 1.  I am really glad, shamans were frustrating and the one shot felt nice. As a plus, I liked where we tanked him, and might mention that to my other raid's tank as a good spot. My tier gloves and trinket dropped, but I have war forged from Ordos and the other healer won the roll *grumble*. Actually, both healers rolled higher than I did. But since it replaced a level 500 trinket for him, I can't be sad.

As far as school goes, I made it to Grenada and classes start on Monday. I flew in on Wednesday, plane was supposed to land an hour and a half before we raid which I thought would give me plenty of time to get back. After all, campus is less than 10 minutes from the airport. I forgot the lines. Some bad luck had me in the last row of the plane, one of the last people off, one of the last in the immigration line, and then I had to claim an iPad at customs which meant the red line for me. It was 10 minutes before the line even moved. I got home at 9, half an hour after the raid started. And the internet was out in my room. So I rushed to VSL to check the internet there (which was working) but forgot my authenticator so I jogged back to the dorm to get it then headed to VSL again. I was the only one in there, and after raid we did challenge modes. Being alone in VSL made my little paranoid mind think up all kind of scenarios. SGU is a mostly safe place, but even then there are thefts. Occasionally from security guards. It didn't help that all I had to eat were chocolate covered espresso beans. Yeah, that was fun. We did get Siege gold, and Mogushan Palace silver, so that was fun.

Oh! Then last night for raiding the tanks played a not entirely nice (though I would have thought it funny from their end) trick on me. Earlier in the afternoon I mentioned in guild chat I was torn between taking a nap before raid or finding something to do to stay awake. Well one of our guildies heard the word "raid" and started asking questions. He's nice, but not that great a tank. I believe there was a conversation where he mentioned reforging out of hit and expertise because they were useless stats. Something like that anyway. So when I loved on before raid they told me he had pestered them until they agreed to let him raid and they would step aside. With perhaps really good timing, because I had just woken up and gotten a shower, was in the process of getting dressed, inviting a friend to the guild, answering my boyfriends questions. I did not have time right then to sort out what they were doing. And they were apparently laughing too hard. I will have to plan an appropriate revenge. Possibly bring my priest some nights and drag them into awkward places. Ah well, I found it funny once they told me it wasn't true.

Break's Over

So that was a long break. First thing when I got home we had internet issues. They've been going on since July, but they were supposed to be "fixed" the day I came home. That turned into 4 days with no internet. I ended up spending a lot of time with my boyfriend, using his internet.

So my break, both here and from school, is almost over. I fly back to Grenada next Wednesday and Virginia weather has decided to remind me why I love Grenada by being miserable and cold. A lot has happened recently. I ended up being in charge of raids for Icon for a few weeks while our lead was out. Went well enough I think, got everything moving at our usual slightly slow pace, no new bosses down but to the point we had been reaching in normal. In flex, we shook things up and started with part 3 on Saturday up to Thok, then on Monday night did 1 and dipped our toes into part 4. We had 3 pulls on Blackfuse, which went about as well as expected.

I'd really like to start in 4 on Saturdays, which is when we get better turnout usually. We've had some new 90's coming along with rather poor gear, and our better geared players don't bother to run flex regularly. After one disastrous night wiping on Nazgrim I conceded to my friends point that we didn't have the DPS to kill Garrosh, and probably were lacking a lot of situational awareness. I am hopeful that we can start killing Blackfuse and Paragons (yay potential pets!). On the pet note, someone got a Shaling on Sha of Pride normal and gave it away, how sweet. We all rolled for it.

So much to say! I also gave out Christmas gifts to all my friends and guildies. I had 30 imperial silkworms in my tailor's bank, and wanted bank space. I also did not have a lot of people to shop for this year, and I enjoy shopping. So I went through my extra pets and the armory and found everyone a pet they didn't have in addition to the silkworms. I received a Coilfang Stalker, Fiendish Imp, and a Pierre! I love them :) and my tailor once again has bank space.

On the normal raid front, Sacred is working on Thok. I will not be able to attend tonight, and since we 1-shot 7 of the first 8 bosses yesterday and cleared Nazgrim, I have great hope they will kill Thok tonight. Though it was pointed out to me that no one else has a working macro to mark for Malkorok yet, I believe they will work that out. I am really expecting the monk tier helm to drop, and I will cry when i hear about it later :).

Icon's raiding has been going well. We have had some work on Shamans, and I thin owe will down them Friday. I feel awkward, as a healer, saying "hey tank, try this so we don't have to deal with a mechanic" but if there are issues I will try. I have set a new record for crates looted while trash is still up- 7. 3 or 4 deaths though, and they did kill 1 pack for me. By myself, the record is 6. I am really, really glad our raid leader is back. I can sit back and let him drive, he is a good tank so we don't have to sub in a not-good one. Now if only I could get people to respond to their calendar invites... I will worry about that next week I think.

In other news, I am thinking of setting up a tank spec on my monk. Used to be we were drawing in healers and not enough tanks. Now we are lacking healers, drowning in people with tank specs but not really great gear/capability. I don't tank, so I don't have any advice to offer. Plus I have 7 burdens of eternity going to waste, and an extra normal tier chest piece... May as well bite the bullet, can always have our hunter/back-up tank heal instead...

But that's for another week. I have some great monk tank resources at my disposal, just have to get things set up and try it out. I just wish I didn't have to give up my DPS spec to do it :(