Not Raiding

I'm officially on a break from heroic raiding. I'm getting too easily annoyed with people over things that don't matter, and I needed to cut something out of my schedule. So heroic raiding is gone! My Saturday normal raids I'm keeping. Those are fun to do, usually. Well, when we're not trying to kill Oregorger anyway. So for a change of pace, we're going to try some different bosses and see if we can start getting tier pieces.

It's raid time right now, and to keep from logging and pestering people about how it's going, I'm looking for distractions. Studying would be the logical one, or looking for apartments in Raleigh for next summer. I've done enough of both of those and now I'm stuck trying to decide if I want to live by a lake, or close to a classmate. The lake is mostly winning, except the other place has a washer/dryer in the unit. And I was sick this past weekend so I kept thinking "I don't want to have to go anywhere to do laundry." If only I wasn't in Grenada and could visit these places! Since those two options are not appealing to me, writing it is.

The Darkmoon Rabbit popped up the other day, and it looks like it hasn't been buffed yet. I think if I see it again there is a chance I could solo it. Which would be awesome, I now have 3 people on my list who need the pet. But it is awesome that I was able to get 10 guildies together and there in 5 minutes to kill it. I do love my guild sometimes.

Challenge modes didn't happen this week. One of the DPS wasn't feeling up to it, and I had a test to study for and didn't really want to find a replacement and still have to go back to the same place anyway for the guy who missed it, assuming we could get gold. My second challenge mode group hasn't even gotten off the ground. One of the people I'm trying to coordinate it with has a lot going on. And he's hardly ever on anymore when I am. He's a friend. I'm happy that things seem to be going well for him. At least, I think so. I feel like I can't ask questions of him anymore to find out. I'm a very quiet, usually private person and I tend to be that way with people until I know how much I can talk and ask and how much they want to hear. It feels like I can't really say much more than generic stuff anymore, since I hardly ever get a chance to talk to him anymore.

PvP is going along. We have a surplus of healers interested in battlegrounds, so I'm considering gearing up my mage. Since I have done nothing with her PvP wise, she has a 10k conquest cap. And the thought of getting there is daunting enough I've been barely puttering around Ashran on her while I make up my mind. I don't know if I have the time to learn to PvP properly on my mage. I really like to be prepared and know my class well, and my mage usually just makes the bags for everyone. I did do some CMs on her last expansion, and did pretty well I thought. But I remember how different it was to go from raid healing to arena healing- all of a sudden I was CCing and using talents I hadn't paid any attention to at all! I don't know if mage will be as big a change.

So that's this week's WoW in a nutshell: not raiding, on bunny watch, and trying to figure out what I want to do about PvP.

Day 10

Day 10 is about my friends willingness to keep banging our heads into walls trying things. Since I can't exactly find a picture that accurately represents things like our numerous raid wipes, or the hours we've spent in challenge modes changing little things, I went with this. First week trying to kill Oondasta! I think we were one of 2 or 3 raids trying. There was a lot of death.

Days 7, 8, and 9

7- The day the dinosaurs came. Every time I say that phrase in my head, I think of this poem. Sorry I didn't crop out the vent in the background first.

8. Fun with stags. Someone in my raid group drops stags throughout the fight. I remembered to add to it this time. Think 4 was our highest. One day we'll get a stack taller than the boss.

9. My water gun! I love it. Someone else helpfully jumped me around on a mammoth while they were helping a guildie out, and I hitched a ride. I love it! Some of my raid- less pleased.

So I did great with starting this in a timely manner. A quick catch-up on the first 6 days of February: 

1- Blizzard Watch

A reminder that there is an awesome part of the community as well as the people I see in LFR. I was very sad at the demise of WoW Insider, and very happy to see Blizzard Watch rise. btw- not my artwork, think it was Apple Cider Mage. Pretty neat, huh?

2-Continuing with the community theme, the annual Gnome Run! Usually in October, this run supports breast cancer. The sight of so many tiny pink gnomes making the run to Booty Bay is always a blast. The lag is a tad crazy for me, but I enjoy it and giggle at the gnomes the whole way.

3-Friends, new and old. My guild friends (who have been awesome about sharing mount camps- thank you those few people who waited a ridiculous amount of time for Poundfist to spawn, then summoned me!)

And people I meet from blogging- on OLRG shot, from one of the few times I made it. I love doing things with people. More the people than the things.

4- Easter Eggs! These made me giggle so much, I did the nests every time I was fighting Ji-kun that week (a lot- I didn’t have the pet yet.)

5- The odd bugs you get. Sometimes just random, sometimes someone lets the mages loose and they get bored.

I have no clue what was going on, but that's one bada$$ beetle.

6-How you can connect with total strangers over random things. My oldest- and quite possibly first- WoW screenshot, the dragon line-up while a couple of raids waited for their Ulduar run to start. Plus it reminds me of the run to get my bronze drake. Fun times.

I'm Back!

It’s been a long while since I’ve written anything, but I have a tad more free time now and I feel like I need an outlet to vent. Someone told me to “stop depressing” the other day, which made me angry enough to stop being sad. I feel like it’s unfair to dump everything on the people I talk most with in game, so I’ll dump it out here! Whoo!

I’ve been pretty sleep deprived lately, which always leads me to being more easily overwhelmed by emotion. It’s made me really easily upset by our failures in challenge modes, which leads to me obsessing over them. But I decided to take a break from worrying about CMs. I’ll watch the next video, look up some things for me, and trust the others to do the same. And start looking for pugs on the weekends, maybe, if I have the time. 

I also decided to try not raiding heroics for a week. I do a lot of griping there, and I get easily annoyed when our raid leader starts suggesting they go up in the number of tanks to try to circumvent dealing with mechanics. Uh, if we’re trying to raid mythics (not that we’ve gotten there yet, mind you but still), you ought to be able to keep track of things well enough with 2 tanks. Plus our DPS isn’t stellar, we’re already over-healing it, let’s not lose any more. So rather than arguing with him and making myself mad and potentially others, I’ll just take a break this week, and consider extending that to no more heroic weekday raiding. I will continue to run the weekend normal group. I run that, I get to do what I want as far as the number of tanks. Heals I sometimes fiddle with- seems we either have 3 for 25 people or 8. If I have free time maybe I’ll pug some heroics. I don’t feel bad if random groups make me upset and I want to leave. No need to stick it out  like a guild group.

As far as the other things I schedule go, the Thursday CMs have been planned and cancelled twice, so I am not scheduling those again unless everyone tells me they’re good. Sunday CMs are still on. I’d really like to be able to do old raids for achievements on Fridays. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll see if I can.

On the school front: this is my last semester on the island! On May 9th I take my last flight out of Grenada. I will miss the weather and the beaches, but I am looking forward to my clinical year at North Carolina State University! (Not to be confused with University of North Carolina.) I’ve talked to one of my classmates who is also going and begun the apartment search. Super excited about being 3 hours from my fiance and my family, and being able to bring my dog with me!

This semester we begin a few clinical rotations. We’ve already had emergency, and I hope I was just too tired to properly compartmentalize because one of the cases hit me kinda hard. And I still want to consider emergency as a possibility, but if I cry at every lab with an issue that is doing poorly I’ll be in trouble. Aside from that, it’s been fun actually doing things with real living animals! 

One year left! I’ve heard some unpleasant things about 4th year- that clinicians may scream at you for mistakes you make, a few comments from that come across as very snobbish from current students that they made they’re groups of friends already so don’ try to fit yourself in. Uhm, really? Don’t try to be friendly, really? WTH people? We’re all students in this together! Makes me really glad I know who I am rooming with.

And on the WoW Inside ending and Blizzard Watch rising, I am really happy. The news of WoW Insider made me sad. I’m hopeful that Blizzard Watch will develop into something I really enjoy checking and reading articles from. 

I’ll be back later with a ton of screenshots for Matty’s #28daysofeoelove