Yay, Garrosh is Dead

Finally, finally- managed to kill Garrosh. I’m so happy. I was a little discouraged after last week, when I joined a PUG and someone said they didn’t know why I was using spinning crane kick and I should just heal. We were trying stacking in part 1 with that group. Apparently, they didn’t “have time to teach me to play my class” and the group disbanded. It really upset me. In part because I fistweave almost all the time, and don’t often solely mistweave, so sometimes I feel like I don’t really know how to mistweave. Which isn’t true, because there are a few times that’s what I do.  Anyway, bugged me so much I had to go look up other logs and see if other mistweavers were using SCK in that fight. And yes, they were, which made me feel a bit better. I would say most of the issues there were the weapons not going down quickly, leading me to think someones weren’t switching to them at all.

Anyway- yay, Garrosh kill. The other guild I raid with plans to organize Garosh kills on weekends, if he can, to get as many people there the kill. The group was all ranged, and one of the tanks was a monk who’s motto might as well be “kite it all” so he was perfect for kiting adds. I’m happy that I was able to come along, and 3 other guildies as well. 2 planned, one we snagged after the priest got upset no one was handling interrupting MC’s and left. I had more interrupts than he did one fight, and I had to glyph and swap to bear form to use it, so I say he was a bit of a whiner. But his leaving was to our benefit, as it gave our awesome warlock a spot. I’m so happy we got the kill, and the achievements, and the mount. So happy. And now that I’ve done that, I’ll be less prickly about doing heroics. Oh, that’s something I should do- look up heroic modes.

On the other raiding front, I ended up writing a really long letter about my feelings for flex and raiding. Ok, it was a paragraph on flex, and a novel on the raid. I sent it off before talking to my raid leader because every time I went over it I kept adding more and making it longer, and I figured by the time I actually caught him, it really would be a novel. I just wanted to see if we were still having some of the issues from earlier, because it looked like it to me. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet, but I did send it to my guild leader. I am hopeful that we can do something. I know what my preference is, but that is in part based on things I believe but don’t know. Assuming those things to be true, I know what I want. If they aren’t, I did provide alternatives.

Anyways, this week was the first I haven’t run one old thing. Well, unless you count running Stockades and Shadowfang Keep looking for a Buccaneer’s Vest for my priest. But no Ulduar for the first time in weeks, no Firelands, nothing. Very odd.

I almost forgot to mention- after the raid, I did a few arenas with a friend on his warrior, and boy did I get off to a bad start. I clearly need a new staff transmog, I use the same one for feral and PvP- which led to me trying an arena in feral gear. No wonder I couldn’t trinket the fear. Whoops. That was promptly followed by a very silly, stupid /away during the wait for the next arena to start. Who knew that would kick you from the arena? Not me. It just showed I was away, and I didn’t like that and wanted to fix it. Whoops. Learn something new every day. So after that we managed to win 1 and lose one or two before I left to sleep.

Whoo! Finally!

Killed that... orc.

aw man, just noticed the Brewmaster title. Must be left over after the Paragon's fight. Usually she's salty, it's my favorite title and the first one I ever worked for.

Tired of Things

I’ll be switching healers this week. I’m going to give my priest a try. I race and name changed, so now Washiun the male pandaren has become Kiranala the female draenai. Yeah, he had some issues about who she really was. I took her to flex, but had to switch out for part 2, so I am still not sure how well we’ll do. And I am missing the vest I want to transmog for her. A silly green. I might have to give in and go farm the red one, much better drop rate than the Buccaneer’s Vest, I just like the all white look.

After her odd luck on part 1 of LFR- 4 pieces of loot form 4 bosses, though admittedly 2 were shoulders and Ordos as already given me three shoulders, I saw nothing through the rest of SoO LFR or flex. 

While we were talking to our GM about swapping toons (one tank is switching to DK from warrior) our other tanking issue was mentioned and very quickly shut down. I’ll need to talk to the RL again, and ask if he still has problems, before I decide if I need to go talk to the guild leader again. I’ve written a detailed explanation of my issues, including my feelings about flex and our other healer. I’m just tired of all the stuff going on there.

We’re not mean, which is fine. We’re inclusive. But you can be a nice guild, and still tell people “you can’t raid this boss with us yet, you’re not good enough on it and we can’t carry you” and still be nice. Though I have felt like that the whole raid. 

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so nice, and that we didn’t have a few awesome people raiding in that group. If it wasn’t for them, chances are pretty good I’d’ve left that raid and moved at least the 1 toon to the other guild I raid with.

Oddly, if I hadn’t mentioned before, the guild I raid with I seriously thought about joining many months ago when some people I really liked left our guild and moved to theirs. I didn’t move then because my boyfriend didn’t want to leave the guild. And now I have made some new friends that keep me hanging around, as well as all the other nice people there.

Flex- I’m tired of it. We just got the ilevel restriction (whoo) but I am still tired of it. I think once a month is perfectly doable if the weekly thing isn’t working. But that’s me, others think that won’t work.

Unprepared

This is a bit late, so it’s two posts combined. 

So a couple of things. Tuesday’s raid was fresh, to gear up some new people and try a heroic. We managed to down heroic Norushen. We 3-healed it, but it was my monk and 2 disc priests so together we were another DPS. We’ll start tonight at Galakras.

I was a little disgruntled- I like to be prepared. I was not expecting heroics, I was expecting more work on Garrosh. I can see why we’re doing this, we have new people to gear up to replace the 2 we’ve lost, it’s nice to kill new things instead of just wiping. I probably came across as grumpy, but I like to research fights first. Yeah heroic Norushen doesn’t have any real differences that affected me beyond more health and damage, but I felt unprepared and that bugged me. But anyway, we downed him, which was nice. First time I’ve downed a boss in heroic while it was still the current tier.

My Wednesday raid… well, we got to Seigecrafter, and we’ll start there on Friday. It was full of people being a bit off. I blinked right into Thok and died. Our hunter forgot which belt he was doing. I blinked right into something else because I panicked about our other healer dying, and died myself instead. Those were the things I remember most, but there were a few more. Oh well, we’ll get the next two Friday and have a little time to work on Garrosh.

I can’t remember if I’ve posted this or just written about it, but my boyfriend visited this last weekend and proposed while he was down here. I was surprised, I had not expected it at all. 

I read Navi’s Garrosh story yesterday, and this stuck out at me:

"Yes, just like that.  But Uncle Sev knows not to use his sticky spells on people because Mummy will yell at him."

I don’t think I yell at people enough for that. We haven’t lost anyone in a while, but we haven’t had any serious attempts there either. I might have to learn how I want to handle that situation… I’ve been trying positive reinforcement with other things- every time I see someone making an effort to run through my monk healing spheres, I say something and thank them which has led to people using them a bit more. I’ve already got 2 raid groups conditioned to let me loot all the boxes near Shamans (though that was not intentional), and it looks like the monk healing spheres is coming along. Response to calendar invites has also increased, and people are showing up at or before start time!

So now to figure out what else needs improvement that we can work on. I mean, aside from “healer not dying to stupidity.”

Geez, can’t vet students be… less empathetic than you’d expect? Listening to guinea pig sounds (because that was important. yes) we started laughing at the fear squeak. You’d be surprised at some of the jokes we make about animals. They are jokes though- given a sick horse, we’re not going to jump to euthanasia right away.

Raid Thursday was slow going. We attempted Galakras on heroic a few times, then swapped to normal. We did kill it, and managed to one-shot shamans. Which was a surprise to me- we lost 3 melee, I was OOM the last 25%, and everyone was running around like a chicken with their head cut off. I have a lot of fun with that raid, but every now and then the things we do puzzle me. We 3 tank that fight- but leave all the melee down at the bottom to avoid the slimes (which is why they died, I think) while every other group I’ve seen use 3 tanks,  sends the melee away. Oh well, we got it.

We had some issues with Nazgrim. Probably would have gotten it if we’d slowed DPS earlier, or saved Hero for the end. Another example of an odd thing- hero at the start, when the end with all the adds, or even a beserker phase, makes more sense to me. I’ve been a bit grumpy at that raid because I don’t like not knowing what we are doing. Makes me grumble. 

I suppose I’ll start looking up heroic modes, and add that to my SoO notes. I just don’t have a lot of time right now. Exams are soon, with our first 2 next week, so I’m starting to stress out about that. 

I’m also wondering if I should be swapping healers for raids. I took my shaman to a raid earlier in the week, and wow can she heal. Totally stress-free, except healing the last 30% of Norushen alone. I know I am not playing my shaman optimally (example: guess how many bosses it took me to discover I had glyph of chain lightning instead of glyph of chain heal. Hint: more than 4.) She was getting some awesome numbers, and only ran OOM on that Norushen fight. So I’m wondering if I should have my druid take my monk’s place and let that raid leader know we can 2-heal just about everything then, letting our third healer get his warlock on. Then have my shaman take my druid’s place, and leave my poor monk to PUGs. 

Our raid group is not very diverse- 3 druids, 2 shamans, 2 hunters. One is an ele/resto shaman, who is mostly DPS lately in anticipation of Garrosh fights. I’m wondering if I should swap to priest, but I don’t play disc priest very well. I don’t know. I think druid/shaman healer is a better combo that druid/druid. Though it is weird playing a non-monk, non-druid- if I am not actively casting a heal on someone, their health doesn’t move. How odd is that? No HoTs, no eminence healing. Anyways, I might talk to my raid leader and the other officer and get their opinion.

“If you block one, they have another [carotid artery]. They don’t need a lot of blood to their brain.”

Lazy Weekend

So my boyfriend ended up missing his connecting flight in Toronto, delaying his arrival by a day. Which meant my rogue got to cap valor and my horde druid tried her hardest to kill things on the Timeless Isle, but was only marginally successful. So I tried the Celestial Tournament again, and forgot how I used my teams. I’ll have to go back to that later.

The raid for Friday was canceled very early, too many missing people. I thought it would’ve been really funny to leave the other officer in charge. He doesn’t put up with stupid like I do. And we’d just had a conversation with some other people about how the best raid leaders are drunk, angry raid leaders. I have not tried that method for coping with raid problems yet, but I will keep it in mind now.

I’m just not a mean person. I can remember the last 2 times I got screaming mad at anyone. Both were family, and one was last summer, and one was around Thanksgiving 2012. Doesn’t happen often. Though that’s angry, not mean, but that’s when my mean streak really comes out. 

My friend asked me what I thought of his horde guild. I’m glad he said the word “assholes” before I did, cause they kinda are. That’s why I was thinking of getting mad. We briefly discussed potential future raiding, and I was wondering if they would piss me off enough to make me say or do anything about it. It is always interesting to look back on those situations later. It really shocks people who know me well when I start doing things like that. 

Ah, vet school where powerpoints can have pictures of cow vulvas so we can check mucus membrane color. This weekend was very nice. We didn’t get out to see a lot of the island, but we ate everywhere I wanted to try. Delicious ice cream cake last night to top it off. And my boyfriend proposed on Monday, which was unexpected.

On the WoW front, the celestials were nice and gave me gloves Tuesday morning. PvP gear that I hadn’t bought yet, yay! Hopefully I’ll have a chance to knock out some 3’s this week. Hopefully raid will go really well tonight and we’ll kill Garrosh.

I have been a bit better with sleep and napping. Made it to bed by 1 AM at the latest every day since Friday, and have only taken 1 nap all weekend. I’m going to try to resist today, though I had to get up at 5:00 to go to the airport. Probably not the best idea for raid night, but if I can sleep at 10 right when raid ends it would be nice.

I didn’t do a lot this weekend. Ate, started watching Farscape, capped valor on some toons for the cloak. That’s about it. 

And the vet school quote for today: “Diarrhea, some people thing it’s funny but it’s really wet and runny.”

Happy Easter!

Alright! Expect even less posting than normal over the next few days. My boyfriend is coming to visit. It’ll be nice to have him here, and we get a 4 day weekend for Easter so this is the best time for visits. Most of the things I have been thinking of doing are places to eat, so we’ll have to find something so he actually sees Grenada.

Raiding last night went about as expected for Shamans. We wiped a handful of times. Hunter died to lag, I died to being stupid, lost a few other people to something similar. Then we took a break and did it about as well as we ever do. We did not one-shot Nazgrim, so we failed the Gamon achievement. Ah well, will give me time to set that up another week. Nothing really exciting happened otherwise. I was super tired and I warned everyone before hand  I was going to be slow and laughing at nothing but any real jokes would likely go over my head.

Since I don’t have much else to say, I figured I’d do a brief history of my WoW time. Brief warning: heavily weighted toward the stuff in MoP I’ve been up to recently.  I started playing in college, in Wrath, with an ex-boyfriend because he wanted something we could do together. Very surprising move on his part since his last girlfriend left him for someone she met on WoW. But anyway, we rolled horde toons on Anatheron and got started. A hunter for me, because I got pets that way. Shortly after that he leveled an alliance toon on a different server because some friends of his had a guild on Cenarion Circle. We kept leveling the horde toons until 42. I don’t know why I didn’t stop and make a toon on Cenarion Circle right away as well, but I did a short time later. And Elaylda was created.

I rolled a druid, because the guild did not have a druid healer and if they didn’t need one I could do something else. I loved my druid. Sure, hunters get pets but as a druid I can be a cat! So I happily leveled feral then swapped to resto at 80- a pattern I have picked up for all my healers. Not one has been leveled in a healing spec. Anyway, I reached 80 and was run through a few heroics and Naxx 10 a couple of times. Ulduar came out fairly shortly later, and we started working on that. We had just enough people to fill a 10 man raid and happily got to it. And then summer came.

I stayed in Blacksburg and took organic chemistry over the summer. My then boyfriend went home and stopped playing, as did several of his friends. I continued to raid, and we got fill-ins. We made it to Yogg-Saron during this. And it really bugged him that I would raid while I talked to him on skype. Really annoyed him. So I quit WoW, and didn’t come back til Cata.

In Cata, I’d started another druid- Elaylda, again, on Earthen Ring to play with my brother and his girlfriend. Around this time that old boyfriend and I broke up. Those old guildies were his college friends, and most of them had stopped playing. I still pop in on Cenarion Circle very rarely, and never see anyone in that guild. Anyway, a short way into leveling again I decided I really didn’t want to and moved my druid over to Earthen Ring. Unfortunately, Elaylda and Elaylda had the same name. I was just going to delete the low level toon, but before I could my brother’s girlfriend said “oh, you don’t need to do that” and came over and renamed her Elayldá. With that weird a I can’t type. Oh well, it was done and I had already paid for a realm transfer, I’m not paying for a name change. 

So Elaylda made it to 85 and we ran heroics as a feral kitty. My brother healed and his GF tanked. Sometime between my start in Wrath and my return in Cata, I had gotten really shy and would no longer do anything group wise if I didn’t know people in the group. So I did not heal or raid in Cata at all. I did do all the Molten Front stuff on a handful of toons- not raiding left me lots of time for dailies. Sometime after that, I stopped playing again because I met my current boyfriend and started spending a large chunk of my free time with him.

And then MoP came out, during my first semester of vet school. And my boyfriend, knowing I had played WoW, picked it up so we’d have something to do together while we were at school. I leveled my druid- then in a guild of strangers, since my brother and girlfriend had left the guild they created (Hearts of Elune, now my personal storage space) and I’d moved my druid over with them before I stopped playing. I rolled a monk to level with my boyfriend, and Renala was made. At some time during this, I walked into Icon completely on accident responding to a recruitment post in general chat. I moved my mage, because I wanted to get a feel of the place before I moved all my toons.

They were good folk, and after a bit I moved most of my higher level toons to the guild. My monk was leveling well, and I was really enjoying it. For someone who claims to hate melee, most of my toons are melee or leveled in melee specs. So Icon got off to a slow start raiding, but I happily took my druid along to heal.

And Elaylda healed normals, and Renala did the LFRs. Until The 4th boss of MSV, where we were hitting the enrage timer, and I offered to get my monk for that tiny bit more DPS. And suddenly I was a monk healer. And it’s stayed that way since. My druid still kept up on the legendary cloak stuff, because it was hard to admit my main was no longer my druid. 

Our raids ended up taking a break when the SoO patch dropped, and in that time I responded to a group LF Healer for SoO. I came along- they loved the idea of a fistweaving monk, and I met the Sacred folk. I enjoyed playing with them, and offered to heal anytime I could. And boom, I’m raiding Tues/Thurs on my monk. Well, originally that was Mon/Tues, but I was unable to come on Mondays due to guild flex so days were changed. Awesome people over there.

Icon got its raid together a month or so after that, and Elaylda stepped back into normals again. And I was raiding Wed/Fri again. And then flexing on Sat and Mon. And then doing CM, and arenas, and running old stuff for legendaries and made an officer in the guild and ahh so much stuff to do. And that’s how I got to where I am now. Heavily weighted towards the current stuff, cause I remember it better.

But that’s the history of Renala and Elaylda with the weird a, my 2 main toons. Below is a picture of Renala in her healing mog, and Elaylda pretending to be a dinosaur. Between the two, Nala is the more obviously outgoing bouncy one, while Elay is sneakier about it. Nala rushes right into everything, while Elay just quietly moves things along by “accidentally” pulling trash packs and throwing unnecessary heals on tanks til they get the idea and pull things. Ok, almost all of those trash pulls are really accidents. 

Vet School Randomness for today:

“There’s one [hamster] down in a hole. looks like they have a tube over it. So it can’t attack.”

“How they (hamsters) spear head their terrorist activity”.

“What’s a smart dog versus a dumb dog?…pottying outside is really the line in the sand for most people.”

“I don’t know how you live without kicking yorkie puppies.”

Our teacher stood in the corner for a minute after she told us we could do pornovenography instead of portovenography. 

Slow Week

Yay, our raid leader is back! Whoo! Now he can deal with people and I can merely commiserate. Not really, but I am really happy to see him back. Even though I now know 2 of us can take down Firelands, the addition of a third will greatly increase our chance of success. Possibly a fourth- the other guildie who hangs out in vent on occasion mentioned he likes to run older stuff too. Just need to recruit him to the cause. My interest in the mounts has been temporarily renewed, since I learned they drop on normal.

I also finally learned how to avoid the clouds on Alyzrazor- too late to get the achievement for anyone, but hey, still nice. 

Yeah, not a lot happened yesterday. My rogue is on the valor part of the quest, and hopefully my druid will catch her this week. 

I’ve decided to let most of my plans sit until summer. Pretty much all of them, really. If people admit to boredom in my hearing, then I’ll snag them and work on a few of the smaller achievements I want to get. Maybe I’ll still try to get a world boss run together for the guild achievement. And I’d like to finish the achievements for SoO on flex, so I can bring along everyone who helped with part 1. Plus a few other people. I just have to find out if everyone is interested, available on Saturday nights in general, and if flex will be on Sunday like I am thinking. 

I’ve decided to revise my goals a bit. I feel like I need to go back and look at my old ones, so let me see where they were. It’s usually true for me if I tell someone I will do something, I am more likely to get it done than if I only tell myself. Of course that doesn’t work for sleeping. That’s another thing- between 8 AM and 8 PM, I love sleep. I’d sleep in if I didn’t have class, I nap if I can. After that, it feels like sleep is an enemy to avoid, stealing my time. Which is silly- that time I’m awake I’m mentally exhausted and probably a third to half is spent watching pointless youtube videos, and the rest reading for fun.

But goals (and not being stupid about sleep is going up in the new ones):

Old ones: studying more, making it to the grocery store (as opposed to my “how long can I go between trips” thing I’ve been trying lately)

I did accomplish all my WoW plans. 

New ones: revised- the plan is still to study more, the goal is to work towards being the vet I want for my pets.

That one is larger than it may seem. I am not the best student, and I am easily distracted. Once I do something I perceive as failing, it takes me a while to get out of the slump and go back to it. I feel like there are a lot of skills and knowledge I am expected to have that has mostly been introduced to me without being taught. Lots of catching up and self study to do, but I have been provided all the resources to succeed- the rest if just effort and time.

Work towards being healthier. I have a horrible sleep schedule, and no excuse for it. It’s like I treat going to bed as an enemy (though naps are treasured friends) and it makes me cranky and more prone to letting the little things bother me. I think there are a few things I can do here. Exercise is a good one. I have a very sedentary lifestyle, especially since I stopped working at the barn and started college. It’s gorgeous here, I should make more of an effort to get outside and walk. Sunlight will probably benefit me too- it does not look like I go to school on a tropical island.

Then I have a few things merely on my to-do list (in no particular order)

-coordinate a day and time for flex, and announce it

-do my FAFSA for student loans next year

Those are the 2 things  I really want to knock out, so I stop worrying about them. Really everything else is little things that don’t really matter, and can certainly wait 6 weeks until I am done with finals. Yes, I want the mounts from some things, but realistically I don’t have the time or will to farm them. 

A side note- I was scolded for running Ulduar with the OLRG and not my friend. So of course we went back to finish it out. And of course all the shaman/hunter tier pieces dropped since I brought my shaman and my friend had finally (after weeks of this) gotten his hunter legs and was on his DK. I go for fun more than for transmog so I find it a tad funny. 

Raid recap: we had 1 shot on Garrosh, which was not the best. We were 2 people short and it took a while to fill. We ended up using someone’s lockout to Thok and knocking out Thok, Seigecrafter, and Paragons.

Thok was great- I rolled my helm, and silently cried that the hunter took the agility neck that was an off-spec upgrade for me. I did tell him to, if it was any kind of upgrade. I just want to replace my timeless neck, and that haste/crit looked nice. Warforged too. I shouldn’t complain- there is only 1other agility leather wearer, and our hunter (that one was a fill-in, our regular hunter is MIA) so my off-spec is really well geared. We took out the next to really easily, and then it was quitting time. A shame it took so long to get that group together, I think we had a good chance at Garrosh if we’d started with them.

Vet school quote “Please remember this. You might see it again. Where’s that spoon…” on actually something a bit interesting. Don’t grab gerbils by the tail, it will deglove and you’ll have skin and fur and a gerbil with a bleeding tail will be running away from you.

Friday Review, a Bit Late

This weekend turned out pretty well. Since I was feeling pretty crappy about raiding last week, I asked everyone on Friday if they wanted to do something fun, and do a few achievements when we started fresh. We knocked out the first 4 very nicely. We were about 4% short on DPS for Norushen to just have no one take an orb, but we were fine sending 1 person down. Oddly, the one I thought would be pretty easy took 3 attempts- the Protectors. We fudged it up first time by 2-healing, and putting the mark on a healer when lots of people needed heals. Yeah. But we rallied, only to fail again and get it on the third try. Doing Immerseus was fun, gave me something to do as a druid. We raid with 3, plus a mage that night so that one was easy, took 2 serious attempts to get it. And we one-shot the Sha of Pride’s achievement, so yay! The rest we’ll have to go back and get in flex.

And flex. It went OK- got through first 2 wings. There were some grumblings and really upset people thought.  We had no restrictions on flex other than “be level 90” and we don’t kick anyone from flex. Though our guild leader did tell us we can kick people who won’t get in vent. I use my judgement on that one- if I know you, and you know what to do, or you aren’t a guildie but appear competent I’m perfectly happy to let you stay out of vent. Lately we’ve had a lot of people I picked up from LFG, and I don’t require vent cause I don’t want to limit our pool even more.  Anyway, flex requirements- after flex, we talked and came up with ilevel 480. Our guild master wants to keep it open, an experience for people who don’t get to raid and for people to learn to raid and she didn’t want to require people do LFR or anything like that. I agreed, ok that’s doable. Then I woke up and went “that’s still not fair to the rest of us” and talked to her about it again. 

Our flex had someone ilevel 434. We can clearly carry someone through part one who does pretty much nothing. But the rest get harder. We don’t have as stringent as I’d like, but since we don’t have a flex that is starting on part 3 or 4, I’m ok with what we came up with. We agreed to 496, which is doable with some time on the Timeless Isle. I will (as always) offer my services as taxi to ferry people around and help gear up. I feel that part of learning to raid is learning that you have to gear up before you jump right in, and requiring that level shows a little commitment toward our goal.

I have no problem with people using flex as an opportunity to learn to raid. I have no problem with people using flex to gear up alts. But it is not fair to the people who show up to flex because they can’t raid other days and to have to struggle unnecessarily because we have people who are putting in very little effort. And I do feel that it only takes a few hours on the timeless isle to get to 496. We’ll re-evaluate in a few weeks, and see how it went.

Now, the time for flex is still up in the air. Evening times seem to work better than the afternoon time. And we have a few people on west coast time who have told me the earliest they can do is noon EST, which is fair, though it means any ideas of a quick morning run are out. There are only 3 days I could do flex- Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Monday evening a few people work, Saturday evening one person has a normal raid. And I really don’t want to cut either of them out. One has been with us regularly from nearly the beginning, the other will do whatever I want which I really like… well, I mean he’ll tank or heal if I need him to. No flex this weekend for the holiday, which gives me some time to chat with people and find a day.

In other news, I have decided my horde druid and maybe my rogue can have their chance to get a cloak. I might change my mind on that as I do more LFRs. I had one person absolutely convinced- typing in all caps convinced- that I was killing people healing through Malkorok’s Ancient Miasma. Don’t know why he picked me, I wasn’t top healer. Ok, I do- I always try to help people learn, so I was marking and calling “move” and “stack” so I make a vocal target. That guy was convinced healing was converted to damage- a perfect example of someone who tried to read their dungeon journal, and missed a few key words. And a great reminder of what’s in store if I truly do go for it. 

Vet school quote of the day: “Do you want to sword fight with a liver then hope to god they can clot afterwards?”

Short Randomness

Alright, I’ve already gone grocery shopping so that’s one goal down, whoo!

A few things today. First, I feel old. It’s my little brother’s birthday! And he’s 18! He’ll be starting college this fall. I’m not sure where, but hopefully he listened to the advice of someone who is about to be in debt for at least the next 27 years, barring winning the lottery (unlikely- I never buy tickets) and he’ll go in state. But happy birthday to him! 

Raiding this week has been bad all around. A short recap of the whole week: Tuesday we did so poorly on Seigecrafter that raid leader asked us if we wanted to quit an hour early. Wednesday we spent the whole night wiping on Thok. Last night we did maybe 5 pulls on Garrosh. We had to find 2 people, and lost one part way through. An hour before quitting time we stopped to do flex so we could try for some heirlooms, since it was obvious Garrosh was living.

We failed to get him in flex, but our one attempt was very good. One more healer might have been fantastic- we used the stacking method, and it was tough with the 2 of us. Doable, in flex at least, but boy did I heal. Then it was past stopping time, and  we just called it.

Tonight we’ll start fresh. We’ll see how far we get, and maybe the week after next we’ll just work on Garrosh. I’m not entirely sure- we’ll see how it goes. I still think we’ll wipe a ton, but I also think we will eventually get it. Maybe we’ll have an awesome group show up for flex, and we can do part 4 to get some practice in. Not terribly hopeful on that point.

Managed some arenas last night. Took a while to get back in the swing of things. I think all the raiding has been getting me down, and I’m not playing as well as I should be. But we capped conquest, and I can buy a chest later today. I gave up on the celestials- double gold every week on my druid since prideful gear has started dropping.

Exotic animal lesson for today: Lock up your gram scales. They have a tendency to vanish.

Small Steps

So I accidentally called it on Wednesday’s raid. I didn’t mean to! I was joking when I said “2 hours of wiping on Thok” I honestly thought we’d get him down and be facing Garrosh on Friday.

Goshdarnint, I knew we should’ve done fresh. We were missing 5 people at the start of raid and even with our 3 reserves were short. Ended up begging the last 2 out of friends (thanks JSM!) and a random person, who was good sport. It did not occur to me one of our DPS had a decent healer alt until the last 2 pulls, and we got him to 3% and wiped. We might’ve done a bit better too if I hadn’t had our hunter tank so I could get HoP and tranq uninterrupted… Hindsight. Yeah.

Oh well- the plan is fresh on Friday now, since we’re missing at least 3 and I know we can safely 2-heal most of the early bosses. 

I was reminded again how much I’d rather play with nice people than jerks, even if we move slower and have to work around our capabilities. A few of us did some BGs to get someone through that part of the legendary quest, and I got a chance to chatter with one of our tanks, the one we’ve been worried about, and I was reminded she’s really a fun person. I got her perspective on raiding, and got a big reminder of why I shouldn’t expect everyone to know all the fight before we get there. We take different tracks of thought there- she would rather clear stuff for the first time with her guild, rather than flex of LFR with strangers, while I would rather learn the fights and see them before our guild gets there, so I know what to do already. I need a reminder that everyone is not me on occasion.

And the other half of that- my horde druid hit 90 and I went around the Timeless Isle to collect some more leather gear. When I am out in the world, and I see anyone from the guild I am in, I’ll /wave a them. Well someone in that guild took offense. Maybe he meant it as a joke, but it did not come across that way. It really upset me. Yeah, part of it is I am tired and that makes me more prone to upsets. Part of it is I like my alliance guild, and the feel we have there. And these guys in horde are a bit more… crude and less friendly. If there’s the chance I might be raiding with them in the far distant future, I want to be friendly with people. But when you get pissed at me for a /wave emote in the world? Screw you, and not the horse you rode in on because I like horses, but screw you, you jerk. 

That made me appreciate the fact that I enjoy most of my guild. I get exasperated with some people sometimes. I wish things could be different sometimes. But we’re nice people, and we’re friendly. Not always talkative, but sometimes. 

I’ve come to the conclusion I need to set some goals. I’ve been all over the place lately. So goals:

-I am going to catch up on studying. When I’m bored, I am going to study instead of finding random things to do (I’m looking at you, part of me that’s quietly saying “maybe we should start watching Game of Thrones.” No.)

-Grocery shopping! We are going today. Also going to make an effort to go up the hill every Monday for fresh fruits and veggies.

WoW Goals:

-properly set up Rene’s CM set, since I was unaware the extra legendary socket worked in CM. …and accidentally put it on a sub-par weapon. I’ll double check that.

-set up Ren’s CM set. I have the gear (I think)

-Do some arenas

-Run FL with my druid.

That’s it for now. I’ll do some other things, sure, but I don’t want to set any down as goals and feel like I must do them.

Not Much Here

Not much to report on Monday. A lazy day with studying and a few random battlegrounds. Surprisingly, alliance won 1 out of the 3 we did. I know, I was surprised too. 

And our test this morning elicited the normal amount of complaints. Not about the questions, it was fairly easy and logical. But it’s not our class if we don’t complain about something.

We’re done with chicken and fish in exotics, and it’s back to small mammals. I like this professor, he’s very entertaining to listen to. Watching him act out the  “bulemic method of education”- complete with spoonfeeding (he’s a fan, good for us) and vomiting, was interesting.

My GL finally had the discussion with our tank. We’re not down a tank and healer, which is good. It is. They are nice people, and geared, and replacing both this late in the game would be annoying. I was a tad disappointed, which makes me feel like a jerk. I guess it’s just the issues we’ve had in the past, and the stress our RL goes through worrying how we’re going to down Garrosh with the issues we have. Would’ve been less stress for a while with that worry gone. Then we’d discover more issues, I’m sure.

And got a brief glimpse of our MIA RL- he will be back next week, hopefully.  He popped on while we were wiping on Thok, so not a lot of time to chat. That raid managed to get Paragons down, so we have Thursday to wipe on Garrosh. Had a lot of issues on Seigecrafter. Paragons was very messy- had only 2 DPS up at the end, and a minute and a half away from enrage. Don’t think I’ve ever been that close outside of LFR.

Back to our guild’s raid on Wednesday. We’re missing a DPS, so my goal for today is to have my friend get his friend and ask him if he wants to come along (since he’s been along before) and get that taken care of early. If that fails, I’ll be poking guildies and friends for a while until I find someone. I hate taking 20 minutes after start time to fill a raid. 

And I need to remember to announce: please show up on time and respond to your calendar invite. It just seems like common courtesy to me, and I personally hate when people treat me like a 5 year old so I don’t like to do it to others. But it appears to be necessary. I assume every week they will show, and they do, but we usually have between 2-5 people not respond. I get easily annoyed by the little things, and in general I try not to let them bother me. At the same time- it takes 2 seconds to click your invite. maybe 10 if things are loading slow. You can’t do that while we’re running back from some wipe or another during raid? really?

Ahem, on to fewer rants about silly things.

Worries

Our raid on Friday went surprisingly well. Shamans took a few pulls, as usual. Our hunter was mildly pissed that they reset at 0.4% while he was at full health and had them dead, but we got them shortly after that. Nazgrim and Malkorok were one-shots, woot. I did have some concerns with the dispelling on Malk, but we managed. Spoils took 2 attempts, and we got it just barely a minute or two after quitting time. It was close- one tank went down in the second room, and we lost 2 DPS right after that, but we finished our room and hopped sides super quick and managed to get it in just under the wire.

On Spoils, I tried to set up groups appropriately. I didn’t think about it, but our hunter is usually on my side with our main tank, and I put him with the other tank this time. So he called out a few things in the other room, a comment or two to that tank, and she snapped at him. Vehemently enough that a few people commented on it to the GM, who was also in the raid. She has told us she plans a talk with her, and warned us of the possibility of that tank getting really pissed and quitting the raid and taking her healer husband with her. I am awaiting the results of that discussion, but am prepared for that out come. 

Since I am “in charge” of the raid this week too (pending our MT’s real life stuff- I think he’s busy this week) I need to make a few raid announcements. We had 2 different people at least 15 minutes late, one for each raid last week. Worked out the first one cause I was searching for a DPS, but I don’t like it. We stood in front of the boss for 15 minutes- more than enough time to kill it- waiting on someone who gave no notice about being late. That really bugs me. I completely understand life happens and occasional tardiness can’t be avoided. But this is an every week thing. So I have to remind people that 9 other people are waiting on them, If you need to be late, that’s fine- please try to let us know so we can plan accordingly, delay start a few minutes and give people time to do other things. The other thing is marking attendance on the calendar invite. We regularly have 3-4 people not accept. I’m going to start telling people if they don’t reply to that invite in some fashion, I’m assuming it’s a decline and replacing them. And if I replace you and you show up- too bad. That one might be tough to avoid, but I know a handful of guildies who can raid and want to raid to fill in if necessary.

In other news, my GM won Smoldering Egg of Millzagor off Ragnaros, grats! I tied her roll, but she won. But I’ll be going to Firelands several more times, so here’s hoping for more. 

Our flex had really poor attendance again this week. At the start we had 5 guildies, and at the end 7. It is currently undergoing some changes. Right now, it is scheduled for 8PM on Sat instead of 3PM. There is a note to contact me if you are still interested in attending flex, which puts us right at 4 replies. I told our GM I wanted at least 12 people interested to continue it, because I don’t want to pug a bunch of folks every week. 2, sure. 5? Not really. 

I do feel bad for the people who are new to the guild, or recently hit 90, or just returned to the game, and really do want to do flex and gear up. They are few in number but really excited. I would feel a bit bad about stopping for them, but that would give me an evening to schedule other things. And an afternoon to nap… Yeah, the internet and poor self-control keep me up later than necessary.

My horde druid hit 90. I took a tour of the Pandarian treasures to get some gold and finally bought glyphs and trained alchemy recipes. Next up, collecting some mats to sell to buy the gems/enchants I will eventually need. I am not entirely sure how I feel about that guild yet. They are more talkative than my alliance guild. They’re going for server first Garrosh, and that occupies a lot of the discussion. They also have a bit more of a crude sense of humor than I am used to playing WoW. Which is whatever, I just have to get used to it. I’ll get my little druid all set up and decide what to do with her. 

In class news, we have a test Tuesday on Public Health and the last of food safety. 

…I worry that it’s bad that I am already mentally composing a request for another tank and healer for our raid. The tank my GL is going too have a discussion with is one who really frustrates our raid leader. The healer husband is the one who really frustrates me. They’re nice people, and fun to play with. I just don’t enjoy raiding with people who consistently show up late and feel like they don’t care.  Mostly this came up because if that does happen, my plan is to ask in raid: hey, looks like we need a new (whatever). Before I start looking outside this group to fill that spot, does anyone here want to switch rolls?

My RL and I have discussed similar things before. Who could tank, who could heal, etc. There are a few people with tanks, who would be awesome tanks, but are currently really awesome DPS and we’d hate to lose that. Heals we have covered- we have a healer going DPS for Garrosh, he could just go back to heals and we can 2-heal everything. If we did it on Malk, we can do it on everything else. Most of the fights I have hime 3 heal  “for safety” are ones where one healer may be out of commission for a little bit (like kiting fire on Seigecrafter) and I don’t worry about him handling it alone.

BUT- I am getting ahead of myself. I will ask my GL if she has had this discussion, or when she plans to have it, so I can respond appropriately.

Half of this post will probably be deleted in editing, so here I go rambling about things.  I’m not going into great detail with the patch notes, You can do that yourself (and possibly have) so why do you need my take on it? I’ll tell you this: I am nervous about healing because I never healed in Cata. I was super shy then, and only ran dungeons with my brother (heals) and his girlfriend (tank) so I just pawed all the things. I healed in Wrath, and I heal now. Those are the styles I am familiar with. So I’m a bit nervous about change. However, I am confident that I can and will adjust. It might take me some time, and I still feel like a fail healer some days because I don’t have the proven healer title and a lot of people say resto druids are a cakewalk for proving grounds. That’s a personal goal of mine- get that achievement. I have my druid’s CM set, but I might need to regem for some spirit.

I keep wondering about heals for our raid. we have 2 resto druids. In my ideal world, we drop the other one and it’s me and a shaman. We lose a tank, someone swaps to tank. Right now we have a 12-person raid roster. If we lose our tank and healer, the first thing we need to do is have a discussion with our 3 “alts” cause as far as I know, we haven’t designated any of them mains. 

Good news everyone! I looked at my belt and realized the current hole was about to tear and break the belt. However, I could tighten a hole! I feel like i’m losing weight even though I don’t feel like I look like it. Except yesterday- I was wearing lazy clothes and actually felt I looked pretty good.

And now back to boredom and planning for the FUTURE. Today: go home, nap. Check online to see if my GM is on to ask about the tank talk. Study VPH, look at review.  Then, can go online and do something. What, I know not. maybe just be AFK while reading for fun, to be available for other stuffs. Think about moving flex back to Mon nights…. I don’t wanna. Or asking the guild leader for the other group I raid with if he’d want to offer our flex to his guild, since we don’t have enough. However, there are contact issues. Enh, oh well. We’ll see how it goes on Sat at 8 pm this week, and re-evaluate.

Next up= go. It’s nice when we have good teachers. I like this one. On emergency medicine triage. I like emergency, I’ve thought about going into it. 

Musings

A few things to think about this morning. First, patch notes. I did pretty much what Tome did- no positional requirements for shred, and mangle is gone. Cast times on some of my instant heals, aw. No more nourish- I’ve cast it less than 20 times this expansion, I bet, so no big deal. Not sure how I feel about the cast time on Uplift. Happy for the changes to healing spheres- I made a point to thank everyone who I saw run through a healing sphere, which seemed to increase compliance a bit. And (totally biased personal opinion) I want a baseline lifegrip for all my healers with the loss of symbiosis. I know, I know- killing the hunter just got a tad more challenging, but if I can manage to now without a priest to symbiosis, I can certainly manage then.

Note- Revival heals, then dispels, then kills almost everyone on the Sha of Pride trash. Makes killing folk there way to easy. No challenge in it.

And the classes I only kinda play I didn’t read. That was a lot of stuff, and I was supposed to be sleeping. Had a fish test today, which went really well.

Thursday night’s raid didn’t go that great either. We took a while on Spoils, and kept wiping on Thok. Which actually made me feel better about the crappy raid on Wednesday. Odd. I really would have liked to get Thok down so I can stop hoping for a ring or my helm. I still had fun- it’s always a fun time with them.

There was some talk of mythic raiding next expansion. Not a lot, but it is clear that is the goal of my raid leader there. It made me feel a bit guilty. I cannot do 3 raids a week. Not if I also want to pass vet school, which is way more important than raiding. I have a lot of fun with these guys, but I have no intention of leaving my guild to join them, and I’d rather help my guild’s raid because we do not have as many raiders. And I have pretty much decided to raid horde-side next expansion as well. I will give it a shot and see if I have enough time. With all the problems I have had with raiding and raiders recently, the idea of raiding with people who take things seriously, and show up on time and prepared is really tempting. I want to try. My little horde druid is going to hit 60 and get boosted this weekend. That’s the goal, anyway. My inscription BoA staff is sure getting a heck of a lot of use. 

And yet another topic for today- officers. I’ve been thinking about what I do as an officer since I read Navi’s post. I am an officer for my guild, and have been for a few months now. I actually was official promoted the night I started raiding with my other group. They were LFHealer in chat, I wanted to come but warned them I had about half an hour of guild vent meeting before I could join them in vent, but that I knew the fights from flex. Anyway, yeah, officers. Our guild has 5 officers at the moment and our GM. One officer recently stepped down, our raiding officer. Currently our GM is sorta kinda filling that role, though I think we need to have a serious raiding discussion with everyone. 

But officering. One of the officers has pretty much left the game since his baby was born, so we’re down to 4 “active” officers. Another seems to have a lot of RL stuff going on and I pretty much see a few hours a week for raiding if we need a back up maybe. Then there’s 3. We were all promoted at the same time. One leads the raid and flex, and I don’t really do anything but be available to answer questions, help out, and invite toons. I feel like I should be doing more. I want to organize all the things I plan in my downtime, but I just don’t have enough time. Our GM used to organize older content runs, at least one a month. She’s started doing that a bit more, and that’s something I’d like to do. I want so many things for our guild and guildies, but I don’t have the time and I’m not sure if theres is interest.

I don’t have an official officer role. We have a tech/website officer, and he’s really the only active assigned role. I don’t think we have enough interest in PvP to truly need a PvP officer but I’ve thought about starting a PvP night again, just to run random battlegrounds. Who knows, maybe there is more interest than I think. However, I just like arenas with friends, and don’t really want to be the PvP person. I am not terribly social and outgoing, and I stink at recruiting. But I want to make a list somewhere of things I want to do for our guild, because someday I might have free time again. And free time is the thing. I don’t want to tie myself up with something every day of the week. Yeah, I’m usually on, but being required ot be on for an event is different than being on and camping random stuffs. Or just chilling.

Potential Guild Goals

-Our guild is missing several achievements, I’d like to get them. Might be tough to get 8 people interested in older content to run things like Kara and Naxx, but I’d like to try.

-The mount runs we used to do, like OS3D, Onyxia, EoE

-I’ll list a potential PvP night, cause who knows? Maybe I’ll give it a shot one day

-Achievements again! This time meta achievements. I’d like to organize a night or two a month to go after some metas. Raids, heroics, whatever. Some of those are actually impossible to solo.

-A pet battle tournament is in the back of my mind. I wiped out my pet supply giving things out at Christmas (I had almost 40 Silkworms in my bank, I wanted to get rid of them. But a silkworm alone felt cheap, so they got something else too) so potential prize pool is kinda slim right now.

-I liked the scavenger hunts, the triathalon, some of the ideas sound fun. I might look towards something for the summer

-Finishing ToES and HoF heroics.

I guess the big thing is this: I don’t have to do everything, and I don’t have to do it every week. Who’s to say I need to recreate PvP Mondays? I could do a first Monday of the month thing instead. These do not have to be an every week thing. I do not need to make the game my life. It is ok to step away and do other things.

I am going to set a small goal: soon I want to set up a day to run all the world bosses and get guild credit for them. That’ll be one thing down. My GM might be willing to do a few nights on some old dungeons and heroics to get the guild achievements knocked out, so I will talk to her about that.

But for the next month, I need to keep my goals small: -deal with the raids I am in. -pass finals. -have fun when my boyfriend comes to visit in two weeks. Most anything else I want to do will have to wait til the summer.

I am also a bit hesitant to start much. When I was home for break, I was scheduled for something in WoW 6 days a week. And my boyfriend could come to 2 of those things, and the rest I felt a bit bad sitting next to him raiding and not really doing anything together. So I don’t want to have that all summer too. Especially since I will be moving a bit further away. Anyway, food for thought.

Raiding

So raid Wednesday did not go as well as I hoped. Since our tank was missing, and I asked one of our other good tanks to come DPS for a few bosses in another raid we ended up with a kinda undergeared tank. We made it through Galakras, but I was hoping we’d get the Shamans down. We’ll have to have a different tank on Friday, he’s told me his warrior isn’t geared enough to tank the rest.

I ended up not having a talk with our healer, since I’m sure we can 2 heal the next few fights with no issue. I’m doubtful we’ll get to Malkorok on Friday, and he’s the next one I’m worried about. If by some miracle we do, I’ll see what happens. 

That raid just left me feeling a little crappy. It was one of our worst nights in a long time. Wiping on Norushen? C’mon. We’re better than that. On the plus side, uhm… our hunter got a normal tier chest, yay? Our mage did as well. Getting people gear was my goal, so /cheer for that. And we’re not getting Garrosh down any time soon, so what does it matter if we don’t get to him til Friday of next week? If then. I’m expecting Iron Juggernaut, Shamans, and Nazgrim on Friday. Which would leave us at Malkorok on Wednesday next, and while we’ll probably clear through Thok then, we always seem to have issues on Seigecrafter. And we’ll be two-healing that, most likely. Which should be easily doable, but I worry if I have to kite fire away our other healer won’t manage. It really sucks healing with healers you don’t trust. And it’s really sad that at 13/14 I can’t trust a healer. 

But that is something I love and hate about our guild, and it also make me worry for next expansion. Our guild is an open guild. The only requirement to join is that you are over 16. A few people have been kicked in the past for bad behavior, but no on since I’ve been there. We’re a primarily social guild, who happens to raid. But what that means is we don’t treat anyone badly, which I am happy with. And we don’t tell people “no, you can’t come” if they have the appropriate level and enthusiasm for the event. Which has caused some issues in flexes before, but we’ve been given permission to be a little stricter on that with some requirements. Not as much as I’d like to be, but better than nothing. 

I’m worried about raiding next expansion. We already raid with some people who I am concerned about in some fights. When we have flex normals, it will be very hard to say no to anyone. And I will give anyone a chance, and if they want to improve I will genuinely do my best to help them, look up and share resources. (Side note: I can’t wait til we have a working website to share things easier.) But for the people who don’t care, who raid because that’s what they feel they should, or a friend is and they don’t care about it, I don’t know how to help them. Can’t teach people who don’t care about learning. So what will we do when we can bring up to 25 people, and can’t say “no, we can’t bring anyone else?”

But that is months away. If I still raid then, i will have a serious talk with my guild leader about that. I would be more than happy to have a night a week of non-progression raiding open to anyone who wants to learn to raid and has the appropriate gear to start. It’s an idea. But this is months off, and I will try not to borrow trouble. 

In the mean time, I will hope my poor monk can finally get normal rings from raid tonight, and a normal helm, and be ready to go on Garrosh next week. He’s going down! On Tuesday, so we have Thursday off and I can do something else.

Slow Start

So Monday was a lazy day. Lots of camping Krol for that XP elixir. I have 5, and I only have to go from 44-60. So that should be plenty, especially if I keep turning in the beasts of fable quests every day and wait til I have rested XP on the weekend to run dungeons. I think I’ll just hang on to the other pet quests and turn them in once I boost to 90 for some quick gold. Cause finding someone bored enough to fly me around is unlikely. 

Managed to cap conquest last week. I’m wary of making any comments about teams, because as soon as I say something things turn bad. A comment on how we get a run of DPS teams, and suddenly healers everywhere. 

Tuesday turned out to be a lazy day as well. I did my usual celestial kill on my druid so I can get the hope for PvP gear shot down quickly. I’ve gotten double gold from them every week since they began dropping Prideful gear. Raiding was a fresh week, trying to finish up some tier sets for folks in hopes our DPS improves for Garrosh. I think we’ll get it soon- we have picked a strategy that we stuck to all of last week, and even though none of those pulls went great, they felt really smooth compared to earlier runs. DPS was much further along, that’s for sure.

Raid tonight will be a fresh run as well, which is good. Our main tank is out for real life reasons, which leaves me in charge. Whoo. I just wish sometimes I tanked so I could set the pace I want, without our main tank we sometimes go a bit slow. I am hoping to get to (and ideally through) Nazgrim. That might be wishful thinking, but I’d love to start Friday at Malkorok. If we can manage that, we should be able to start next week at Seigecrafter at least, possibly Paragons if things go really well. I know, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ll have to do a little thinking about Friday, we’ll be missing a healer and a tank. We can 2-heal most of the fights, I think. I’m iffy about Thok, but with the nerfs and the extra DPS I think we can manage. If I can make sure people get dispelled on Malk anyway. Our two DPS with heal off-spec (well, 3 if I count the one with a healy druid) I’d rather not have swap. I don’t want to lose the DPS and I don’t think 3 druid healers is the way to go. Heck, I’d rather we didn’t have 2 druid healers most of the time, but my other options are swapping to shaman, priest, or monk. I feel stronger on the druid than monk, our third healer is a shaman, and I need to race change my priest before I feel happy playing him. Plus I need a lot of practice. 

So tonight I will look at who we have and how things go. Then I will try to talk to my other healer and see how he feels about 2 healing stuff. In fact, I’m going to write up a list of things to talk to him about for Friday right now. 

Ok, that’s done. I’m a big fan of Keep It Simple, Stupid so it’s just 3 things. I can always bug people about many things, but I am trying really hard not to. It isn’t helpful for anyone, them or me. Anyway, I’ll see how tonight goes. Hopefully we’ll get plenty far in and get our shaman plenty of elemental gear tonight before he goes out of town. 

Liebster Award

Navi tagged me for a Liebster award. I’m going to copy and paste the description she provided, because it explains it all:

“Well, it is only an AWESOME award given to up and coming bloggers. Given by other up and coming bloggers. It’s a cool way to find other blogs and feel like you are getting into the blogging stratosphere. It is simple, you get nominated by someone else, mention their page and a link to their blog in your Liebster Award Post, answer the 11 questions they give you, then tag 11 other nominees and give them a new set of 11 questions to answer.”

So here are the questions, and my attempts to answer:

1. If you worked for Blizzard in the WoW department, what job would you like?

In a perfect world, I’d have artistic talent and be developing artwork and scenery. In real life, I am not very good. I could see 1 of 2 things- possibly a voice actor, for anything robotic. For some reason, no matter where I am or what headset I use, at some point during raid RoboRenala makes an appearance. I’ve been told it sounds robotic, or like you’re talking through a fan, if you ever did that as a kid. Several people have said it’s not a raid until RoboRenala makes an appearance. Now if only they’d quit revealing my plan to take over the world…

But I said 2 things. The other is customer service rep. I hate dealing with people, but I love fixing problems. Like when I accidentally deleted my newly created epic staff from inscription. I’d like to help fix issues other people have.

2. If any of these races became playable, which would you choose and why- Murloc, Naga, Ogre. 

That’s a tough one. Murloc is out, because the MURGLEMURGLEMUR would drive me nuts. I like the ogre dance, and I did create a male panda solely for the dance. But I have discovered that I can hardly play him, and the dance is not enough. I’ve been considering off and on race changing him, but my cheapskate self raises her head every time. So naga it is- c’mon, a mermaid? I loved the Little Mermaid and Hans Christen Anderson (inchworm, inchworm…)

3. What has been your greatest frustration in WoW?

I have pretty decent luck (knock on wood) when I truly set out to farm things. That stupid Spineclaw Crab was a real pain in the a**, but truthfully I’d have to say most of my frustrations come from dealing with other people. I have come to realize I can’t make everyone care as much as I do, and I can’t just throw a fit to get my way. It’s both not in my nature, and unlikely to work. So the most frustrating thing is learning to deal with people in a raid setting who I feel don’t care and aren’t contributing much.

4.If you could design a Children’s week orphan, what places would you take him/her to visit?

My first thought was murloc, probably because of the previous question. I’ve probably made a fair few murloc orphans in my playing. Giving it a bit more thought, I’m not so sure. Possibly a panda, left orphaned by the resurgence of the Sha and the swarming of the mantid? I like Pandaria. Most of it is pretty, and I think it would be neat to show an orphan around. We’d have to visit the wandering turtle, of course, and I don’t think there’s a way to go back to that. And I’d like to show them the Temple of the Jade Serpent, perhaps after we kill the last boss in there? And what’s a tour of Pandaria without seeing Chen Stormstout and Lorewalker Cho. Possibly the Heartlands in Valley of the Four Winds, and some of the monuments to the brewmasters found in Pandaria. And since I love monks, the Temple of the White Tiger. Heck, let’s tour all 4 celestials and meet them all.

5. Name an item of clothing/weapon that you wish there was an in-game equivalent of for transmog

I’d say lightsaber, but BBB did a post about how to get a lightsaber in WoW, so there kinda is one. This is a tough one- I came to the transmog game very late, since I was usually in cat or tree form on my druid and didn’t really care how she looked. I remember back in Wrath being shocked at my shoulders on the log in screen for a few weeks, cause they were big and glowy and I never saw them in game. Hmm… this is completely silly, but I wish there were more costumes. Like a banana costume. I knew someone at VA Tech who would occasionally dress up as a banana, and go to games or just run around campus. 

6. Do you prefer donuts, bagels, or muffins? And any particular flavor.

Boston cream donuts. Chocolate frosting, pudding inside. Yum.

7. If you could have any car in the world, what car would you drive?

Off the top of my head, a Shelby Cobra. John Doe in the show drove one, and I liked it. In reality- I loved my Mazda Tribute, and was super sad to hear it died while I was at school. I like cars that can seat 4 adults comfortably or have all of my dogs fit in easily. Though I loved driving my Dad’s mustang convertible… Ok, let’s have 2 cars: my “everyday” car and my “good weather/traveling by myself” car the first being something the size of my Tribute, and the second can be my Shelby Cobra. Though the word Maserati is fun to say…

8. What item do you want in game the most?

My focus changes depending on what pet I don’t have. There’s very little I really, truly want and farm every week. There are a few mounts- Invincible, Mimiron’s Head, some of the PvP mounts I am working on. For pets, I want Kovok and Viscous Horror. And in the world I have money, the vanilla collectors edition pets. Ooh, and that purple tiger pet- it’s so cute! Purple is my favorite color.

9. Why I like my favorite three blogs

Well, first, what are my favorite three? Probably The Daily Frostwolf, Big Bear Butt, and Healiocentric. 

I like Navi’s stories, and Bear’s humor meshes with mine. Healiocentric gives me all the healing perspectives that I could ever want, makes me feel better about healing, and occasionally makes me crave desserts.

10. What is the BEST thing Blingtron has given you?

Probably that 200G rose. He gives me gems, which are nice, but never the oranges I really use up. No pet- I gave in and got that off the AH.

11. Tell me about your most cringe-worthy moment

This is a tough one- I have a short memory. And anything that I am embarrassed about, I do realize when I look back I am the only one who remembers. I’ll try to give you 2- one of my “wow, huh, ok stupid” moments in WoW and I’ll think about a real life one.

I did a Naxx-10 PuG in Wrath, and had a great time. A bunch of overgeared guys, and 2 healers. Which I didn’t notice til we were through at least the first wing, possibly further. I just thought the 3rd healer sucked. I’d never 2-healed before, never occurred to me that you could. After the shaman said something about our healing, I realized the third person on the list- in bright, DK red- was a tank. Huh, learn something new everyday, right?

Real life one- This is harder. I am not embarrassed by anything for longer than a day. Maybe the time I got into a huge argument with some friends over how many centimeters were in a meter and how that translated to yards so we knew how much PCV pipe to buy? I was really wrong on that one. Talking very emphatically in Home Depot, the graphing calculator came out, whole big thing. Nothing else I am really embarrassed by. Oh, I wish I’d done some things differently- huge fight with my grandmother days after my grandfather’s funeral followed by angry e-mail where I called her a manipulative b*tch? Could’ve handled better. Justified reason? In my mind, absolutely. I did apologize for the insult. But that’s a whole story by itself.

Ok, 11 random facts about me:

1. I love salt and vinegar chips, but I prefer to dip plain chips into vinegar instead of buying salt and vinegar flavor.

2. I read fanfiction. Started with Sailor Moon at age 11, and moved on. Currently it’s mostly Harry Potter stuff.

3. I never finished the last Harry Potter book. I read enough fanfiction to have a really warped idea of what happened.

4. I’m really shy in real life. I talk a lot here, and in game, but in real life? Nope.

5. I worry that I am starting to become a bit neurotic, maybe? Driving over bridges bugs me more than it used to, and if someone is 10 minutes late to meet me places I create horrible scenarios in my head. It seems to happen to the women on my Mom’s side- have a great aunt who can’t even be driven in a car on the interstate without having a panic attack.

6. I read sappy stories. Sometimes young adult books, sometimes romance. And I will sometimes get embarrassed for the characters and have to stop and come back to it in a few minutes.

7. I’m  horribly nosy person. It doesn’t show so much (I hope) because my mom usually keeps up with everything going on with everyone and tells me, or my friends are very open people and tell me a lot. I try really hard not to bug people, but I am really curious and often willing to chat.

8. I get cold easily. At school, I often have a hoodie or a blanket, and at home I’ll often be under a blanket or two.

9. I dislike wearing socks and shoes. 99% of the time I am in flip flops. Good thing I go to school on a tropical island. Though socks would probably help the cold problem.

10. For someone who claims to be nosy, I am having trouble coming up with questions for others :)

11. I worry that I won’t be the veterinarian I would want for my own dogs.

Questions!

1. Do you have a favorite thing to do in game and if yes, what?

2. What’s your favorite battle pet and why?

3. Do you have a favorite class in WoW?

4. Why did you start blogging?

5. Real life animals. Have a favorite?

6. What’s your ideal vacation?

7. What’s your favorite book/author? 

8. What’s your guilty pleasure?

9. What’s the oldest WoW screenshot you have?

10. Do you have any WoW superstitions/traditions? For example, I always try to have a battlepet out in raids (til my GM politely reminds us to put em away)

11. Do you enjoy leveling in WoW? I have a fair number of alts, but thats because I am a cheapskate and don’t want to pay for enchants, rather than because I really wanted to level another toon.

I can’t come up with 11 other blogs that haven’t already been tagged. I am also too lazy to go through and check if these guys have been tagged by someone else, so here we go:

Dark Lady, Watch Over our Brew

Ysera’s Daughter

Tree Heals Go Woos

Sugar and Blood

You Yank It, You Tank It

I debated about this, but decided to add my battletag here. In the interest of finding more people to do things with, so potentially I don’t have to beg the same 2 people for help all the time. Though I do have a 3rd who offered to help with this current legendary questline. And I figure, I gave my (kinda unique) name out to someone because I wanted to do an Ulduar achievement run, so what’s giving out an anonymous btag going to do? Elay#1208

Fair warning- I love to run stuff. So I have committed myself to 4 days of normal SoO between 2 groups, an afternoon of flex (Note- Sat 3pm EST, lately we’ve been looking kinda slim lately and I’m happy to take more people along) and usually a night of challenge modes in there if we can fit it in. And I try to do arenas to cap conquest every week. I have a geared resto druid and I am happy to PvP as well :)

And I’m serious about the flexes! This weekend I will be going out Saturday for pizza and games, but otherwise every Saturday at 3PM EST, goes til 6. Usually start with part 1, and afterwards depending on how I feel the group is we do 2 or 3. One memorable week, both. Alliance side. We’re friendly folks, just ignore my attempts to kill my friend on the Sha trash. And I do heal him, regardless of what he says- I can’t control eminence healing or where Wild Growth goes, after all :)