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 :)