I pugged the first half of Kara last night (Monday).
It was GREAT!
It's billed as not a quick badge run, but rather a first-come-first-serve roster to get people some free gear before the reset. And get gear we did - two upgrades for our hunter, one for our rogue, a DPS ring for Kante, an offspec sword for the holy pally, and Tier 4 gloves and the Eternium Greathelm for yours truly. We oneshot Attumen, Maiden, and Curator, took a second try on Moroes due to CC confusion. Other than that, it was a lot more cohesive than some guild raids I've been on. I was impressed.
/dance
I've been doing a lot of reading on Tankspot.com about Effective Health Theory, so I'm following it when it comes to gemming and enchanting most of my new gear. The gloves are going to get 15 agility to be part of my slowly-accumulating threat/avoidance set, the helm is getting straight 12 stam gems to make it more EH-friendly, although matching the socket bonuses would turn it into a good avoidance piece as well. I'm going to continue stacking stamina in the immediate upgrades I get until we hit up 25mans or Wrath of the Lich King is released - I was given the MT position in tonight's raid by sheer virtue of having almost 13k health unbuffed, where the other warrior technically outgeared me (several epics, no green gear, all enchanted) but only had 10k health.
Food for thought while I'm at work tomorrow - What badge piece do I want to pick up first?
Monday, August 25, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
So much has changed...
..in the couple of weeks since I last posted. Jah and I left Emerald Dream completely. We rerolled to join the hosts of one of our favorite podcasts on Sen'jin and ended up transferring one 70 apiece there a little while after, and now we're in the process of getting to know our new guildmates and getting everything ready for Kara and the expansion.
In my case, it was my level 70 Tauren warrior - the one I've not played since the day she hit the level cap six months ago. The one with no tanking gear that I decided to go prot on for a change of pace...yeah. It's been interesting. I did manage to scare up a decent tanking set through a combination of clearing out Netherstorm quests and hitting the AH for 'of the Champion' gear, and massive amounts of instance farming has netted me decent pre-kara benchmark stats. (For those interested, I'm sitting at almost 12k health, 12.2k armor, 12%/15%/21% dodge-block-parry, respectively. And I'm raid boss uncrittable!) I'm really excited to start tanking seriously again.
An odd thing I've noticed about our new server is that it's extremely lacking in tanks and healers. Versus the World, on the other hand, is chock full of tanks...but also low on healers. (I think we have 3 at 70 right now.) Still, we've got almost enough class balance to start doing Kara, so we're hoping for great things.
I'm in the WotLK beta. Death Knights are cool, new feral tree is shiny, new prot tree is actually OK to questgrind with, and I'm really really excited for the expansion to come out. I don't think I'll be actively testing much more of the content as I want as much of it as possible to still be a surprise when I get there on release.
I leave you now with a picture of my latest accomplishment - Don Carlos' Famous Hats for myself and three guildmates.
FOR THE HORDE
In my case, it was my level 70 Tauren warrior - the one I've not played since the day she hit the level cap six months ago. The one with no tanking gear that I decided to go prot on for a change of pace...yeah. It's been interesting. I did manage to scare up a decent tanking set through a combination of clearing out Netherstorm quests and hitting the AH for 'of the Champion' gear, and massive amounts of instance farming has netted me decent pre-kara benchmark stats. (For those interested, I'm sitting at almost 12k health, 12.2k armor, 12%/15%/21% dodge-block-parry, respectively. And I'm raid boss uncrittable!) I'm really excited to start tanking seriously again.
An odd thing I've noticed about our new server is that it's extremely lacking in tanks and healers. Versus the World, on the other hand, is chock full of tanks...but also low on healers. (I think we have 3 at 70 right now.) Still, we've got almost enough class balance to start doing Kara, so we're hoping for great things.
I'm in the WotLK beta. Death Knights are cool, new feral tree is shiny, new prot tree is actually OK to questgrind with, and I'm really really excited for the expansion to come out. I don't think I'll be actively testing much more of the content as I want as much of it as possible to still be a surprise when I get there on release.
I leave you now with a picture of my latest accomplishment - Don Carlos' Famous Hats for myself and three guildmates.
FOR THE HORDEWednesday, July 23, 2008
Argh part 2
Noodles left Legion and I officially stopped raiding with them. I'm thinking of pulling my last three toons from the guild.
Wiping on farm content is not cool. Neither is forbidding members to talk to ex-members and then calling them loot whores in /g. Nor a total and complete lack of progression, hell, we couldn't even keep 3/9 BT on farm reliably.
Neither is promising someone a raid spot and gear as an OT, then never *actually* taking them to Hyjal/BT, but instead 'requesting' that they heal farm content and then rolling over them when a tanking upgrade drops.
Argh.
So that whole long post I had about staying with Legion 'cause I wanted to help rebuild? Did it sound like I was trying to convince myself it was worth it? I think I was...and I shouldn't have.
Wiping on farm content is not cool. Neither is forbidding members to talk to ex-members and then calling them loot whores in /g. Nor a total and complete lack of progression, hell, we couldn't even keep 3/9 BT on farm reliably.
Neither is promising someone a raid spot and gear as an OT, then never *actually* taking them to Hyjal/BT, but instead 'requesting' that they heal farm content and then rolling over them when a tanking upgrade drops.
Argh.
So that whole long post I had about staying with Legion 'cause I wanted to help rebuild? Did it sound like I was trying to convince myself it was worth it? I think I was...and I shouldn't have.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
ARRRGH.
Me: Hey miss DPS officer, my hunter's geared enough to handle SSC now - can I start bringing him to farm nights?
DPS officer: Sure!
Me: Hey healy officer and raid officer, I'm gonna start signing up as my hunter for farm nights. Talked it over with the DPS officer and she okay'd it.
Them: Kay, sounds good.
*signup thread goes up for Tuesday T5 Night*
*puts down HUNTAR in giant orange letters*
*opens up thread the day of the raid and sees herself listed under HEALERS*
Wayne Brady is gonna choke a bitch.
DPS officer: Sure!
Me: Hey healy officer and raid officer, I'm gonna start signing up as my hunter for farm nights. Talked it over with the DPS officer and she okay'd it.
Them: Kay, sounds good.
*signup thread goes up for Tuesday T5 Night*
*puts down HUNTAR in giant orange letters*
*opens up thread the day of the raid and sees herself listed under HEALERS*
Wayne Brady is gonna choke a bitch.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Things To Accomplish:
- Hack Jah's blogger account and see if I can set up a new theme for D&H. Or make him do it from work.
- Farm, farm, farm. Need to make up for all the money I dropped on healing enchants. (I mean, I'm GLAD I got four upgrades in one week, but...repair money.)
- Finish FAFSA. Mail.
- Take online placement test for school.
- Write up a REAL blog post.
- Fiddle with PSP some more, get shiny banners made for D&H.
- Try and find a quick easy way to get 15 more +healing so I can hit the 2k mark.
- Pack.
- Farm, farm, farm. Need to make up for all the money I dropped on healing enchants. (I mean, I'm GLAD I got four upgrades in one week, but...repair money.)
- Finish FAFSA. Mail.
- Take online placement test for school.
- Write up a REAL blog post.
- Fiddle with PSP some more, get shiny banners made for D&H.
- Try and find a quick easy way to get 15 more +healing so I can hit the 2k mark.
- Pack.
Whoo! Sorry 'bout that. So much for my resolution to update regularly, eh?
In the time between my last post and now, Legion has downed 4 new bosses (Azgalor, Naj'entus, Supremus, and Shade of Akama), lost our best-geared warrior tank and fire mage, and our second-best-geared resto shammy. They also almost lost me and Jah, too. I had gotten all of two drops since I joined the guild, the raid officer was trying to force us to progress against bosses for which we were MASSIVELY undergeared, and...
...I was handed a free ticket to Sunwell on a platter.
The above-mentioned tank was accepted into the #3 raiding guild on our server. They weren't recruiting healers, but I had told him I was dissatisfied with Legion and so he'd talked with the officers of his new guild and they first agreed to take me for a trial run, and after I spoke with them over Vent one evening they assured me of a trial position in the guild - no application or trial run necessary. I could even bring Jah along, though he'd start in their non-raider rank. It looked perfect.
Then the day of my new guild's formal invite rolls around, and I think to myself while I'm at work "Self, what's going to happen to Legion if you leave? What will your friends think of you? And how in hell are you going to get yourself and all 7 of your alts out of the guild when the servers are down until mid-afternoon and there are guaranteed to be at least 3 officers present no matter when you log in?" And I thought it over for a few minutes. "Your friends will all be nice to your face, but they're gonna be sad/pissed that you left for greener pastures - and considering this is a 4-nights-a-week-heavy-progression guild, you can say goodbye to the rest of your free time - and Self, aren't you starting work on your undergrad again this fall?!"
"Well..yah...and considering the reaction to when [tank guy] left, I bet I'd get about the same reaction...and frankly, I'd rather keep my friends and my position in this guild than jump ship for a bunch of people I don't know I'll get along with."
So, we're still in Legion. I'm not sure Jah is happy with it, but I talked with some of the officers (after finding out I might get promoted to that rank soon) and one of the things I've always enjoyed was bringing a group of people up through content, seeing them improve, and kicking ass while having fun. I won't get that if I'm essentially being run through BT and Hyjal and then tossed into the most time-consuming instance in the game. And since I think I'm going to have to become moderately fluent in at least three languages for my major...well, you get the idea. The casual atmosphere and raid schedule is probably the best option overall. We've even started to get better at the Tuesday "Fright Night" t5 runs - downed Vashj and FLK Monday, then cleared 3/4 TK with time to spare yesterday so we went to Hyjal and downed Rage. Tonight, they're taking advantage of that to clear the middle 3 bosses in Hyjal and take a few shots at Archimonde. (Rumor has it he's bugged - Doomfires aren't moving. We'll see.) Unfortunately, I work tonight so I won't get in on the action.
In other news, I no longer look like a priest. I replaced my PMC chest with the one off Azgalor, the shoulders with t5, and the belt with VR's leather healy belt. WOO! Ain't he purty? :)
In the time between my last post and now, Legion has downed 4 new bosses (Azgalor, Naj'entus, Supremus, and Shade of Akama), lost our best-geared warrior tank and fire mage, and our second-best-geared resto shammy. They also almost lost me and Jah, too. I had gotten all of two drops since I joined the guild, the raid officer was trying to force us to progress against bosses for which we were MASSIVELY undergeared, and...
...I was handed a free ticket to Sunwell on a platter.
The above-mentioned tank was accepted into the #3 raiding guild on our server. They weren't recruiting healers, but I had told him I was dissatisfied with Legion and so he'd talked with the officers of his new guild and they first agreed to take me for a trial run, and after I spoke with them over Vent one evening they assured me of a trial position in the guild - no application or trial run necessary. I could even bring Jah along, though he'd start in their non-raider rank. It looked perfect.
Then the day of my new guild's formal invite rolls around, and I think to myself while I'm at work "Self, what's going to happen to Legion if you leave? What will your friends think of you? And how in hell are you going to get yourself and all 7 of your alts out of the guild when the servers are down until mid-afternoon and there are guaranteed to be at least 3 officers present no matter when you log in?" And I thought it over for a few minutes. "Your friends will all be nice to your face, but they're gonna be sad/pissed that you left for greener pastures - and considering this is a 4-nights-a-week-heavy-progression guild, you can say goodbye to the rest of your free time - and Self, aren't you starting work on your undergrad again this fall?!"
"Well..yah...and considering the reaction to when [tank guy] left, I bet I'd get about the same reaction...and frankly, I'd rather keep my friends and my position in this guild than jump ship for a bunch of people I don't know I'll get along with."
So, we're still in Legion. I'm not sure Jah is happy with it, but I talked with some of the officers (after finding out I might get promoted to that rank soon) and one of the things I've always enjoyed was bringing a group of people up through content, seeing them improve, and kicking ass while having fun. I won't get that if I'm essentially being run through BT and Hyjal and then tossed into the most time-consuming instance in the game. And since I think I'm going to have to become moderately fluent in at least three languages for my major...well, you get the idea. The casual atmosphere and raid schedule is probably the best option overall. We've even started to get better at the Tuesday "Fright Night" t5 runs - downed Vashj and FLK Monday, then cleared 3/4 TK with time to spare yesterday so we went to Hyjal and downed Rage. Tonight, they're taking advantage of that to clear the middle 3 bosses in Hyjal and take a few shots at Archimonde. (Rumor has it he's bugged - Doomfires aren't moving. We'll see.) Unfortunately, I work tonight so I won't get in on the action.
In other news, I no longer look like a priest. I replaced my PMC chest with the one off Azgalor, the shoulders with t5, and the belt with VR's leather healy belt. WOO! Ain't he purty? :)
Thursday, June 19, 2008
I can't believe it's not...!
...Dreamstate?
Yeah. I gave in. I'm a huggertree. (As opposed to treehugger...get it? Okay, I'll stop now.)
And...I think I like it better than dreamstate for raid healing. I can keep a tank up indefinitely by myself with rolling HoTs. It's like DS/EmpHT, but with a different rhythm. And a barky ass instead of having to look at my man-in-a-dress-lawl.
Anyway, Noodles (my pocket tank-heal-DPS-adin) and I were talking the other day about goals we had in-game. I realized I'd never really had any - except for a half-hearted ambition to someday kick Illidan's face in for being a crackhead, and to level stuff to 70 and raid. But this was mostly about goals for WotLK.
He said to me, What are your goals for before the expansion comes out?
And I said to him, Noodles, I don't really have any that I can think of.
So I thought of some.
Before Wrath of the Lich King (which is probably/maybe/possibly in 3 months):
-Get my rogue and shaman to 70 and geared out in high-end badge / farm content gear.
-1600 rating with our 2v2. Noodles and I run BM hunter-Ret paladin. It's better than you'd think. We've gone from 1383 in our first week to 1481 this week, and I'm 26 points shy of my axe.
-Full t5+ gear on my druid, Mandar.
-Help Legion kill Kael'thas FUNstrider, as the officers have taken to calling him.
With Wrath of the Lich King:
-Level Mandar as beartank feral and get him geared to be a dedicated tank at 80.
-Level Anezka (shamanub) as resto and get her geared to be a dedicated healer at 80.
-Level Cly (rogue) and Bran (hunter) to be, respectively, my raid DPS and PVP toons at 80.
-Pwn Arthas's face. Hard.
I think it's pretty doable. I can still hold my own in progression raids as tree, something I was worried about (and which directly affects my chances of getting t5/t6 quality lewtz), and I discovered last night that I'm capable of keeping 8 people alive all by myself on the Hex Lord Malacrass fight after the other two healers died. We wiped impressively nonetheless, but it was good fun for about five minutes on my part. (Raid leader: "Dar, you just focus on healing the tanks." Priest and pally: "OSHITZ WE DEADED." Mage: "Don't worry, Dar's epic. She never runs out of mana." And I didn't...but the DPS did. ;_; )
Re: the respec, I'd talked to our GM (who happens to be a fairly active 41+ resto druid himself) about making the switch, he told me my gear was probably fine for it, so I did it. Swapped some gems and some items (I've got stockpiled gear for respecs...glad I do, too) and showed up to the Azgalor attempts on Monday as tree. I told the healing officer this about ten minutes after they'd invited me. He didn't say anything. Sometimes I wonder if he hates me or if he just does this to everyone. At any rate, I think I'll keep it for a while longer unless I start running heroics on Dar again (unlikely). It's growing on me. (Har!)
In other news, Jah hit 70 on his warlock! We're in the process of farming MASSIVE amounts of primals to get him kitted out in his pre-raid epix: Spellstrike Hood, Spellstrike Pants, and Belt of Blasting. My little baby's all growed up. *sniffle*
Yeah. I gave in. I'm a huggertree. (As opposed to treehugger...get it? Okay, I'll stop now.)
And...I think I like it better than dreamstate for raid healing. I can keep a tank up indefinitely by myself with rolling HoTs. It's like DS/EmpHT, but with a different rhythm. And a barky ass instead of having to look at my man-in-a-dress-lawl.
Anyway, Noodles (my pocket tank-heal-DPS-adin) and I were talking the other day about goals we had in-game. I realized I'd never really had any - except for a half-hearted ambition to someday kick Illidan's face in for being a crackhead, and to level stuff to 70 and raid. But this was mostly about goals for WotLK.
He said to me, What are your goals for before the expansion comes out?
And I said to him, Noodles, I don't really have any that I can think of.
So I thought of some.
Before Wrath of the Lich King (which is probably/maybe/possibly in 3 months):
-Get my rogue and shaman to 70 and geared out in high-end badge / farm content gear.
-1600 rating with our 2v2. Noodles and I run BM hunter-Ret paladin. It's better than you'd think. We've gone from 1383 in our first week to 1481 this week, and I'm 26 points shy of my axe.
-Full t5+ gear on my druid, Mandar.
-Help Legion kill Kael'thas FUNstrider, as the officers have taken to calling him.
With Wrath of the Lich King:
-Level Mandar as beartank feral and get him geared to be a dedicated tank at 80.
-Level Anezka (shamanub) as resto and get her geared to be a dedicated healer at 80.
-Level Cly (rogue) and Bran (hunter) to be, respectively, my raid DPS and PVP toons at 80.
-Pwn Arthas's face. Hard.
I think it's pretty doable. I can still hold my own in progression raids as tree, something I was worried about (and which directly affects my chances of getting t5/t6 quality lewtz), and I discovered last night that I'm capable of keeping 8 people alive all by myself on the Hex Lord Malacrass fight after the other two healers died. We wiped impressively nonetheless, but it was good fun for about five minutes on my part. (Raid leader: "Dar, you just focus on healing the tanks." Priest and pally: "OSHITZ WE DEADED." Mage: "Don't worry, Dar's epic. She never runs out of mana." And I didn't...but the DPS did. ;_; )
Re: the respec, I'd talked to our GM (who happens to be a fairly active 41+ resto druid himself) about making the switch, he told me my gear was probably fine for it, so I did it. Swapped some gems and some items (I've got stockpiled gear for respecs...glad I do, too) and showed up to the Azgalor attempts on Monday as tree. I told the healing officer this about ten minutes after they'd invited me. He didn't say anything. Sometimes I wonder if he hates me or if he just does this to everyone. At any rate, I think I'll keep it for a while longer unless I start running heroics on Dar again (unlikely). It's growing on me. (Har!)
In other news, Jah hit 70 on his warlock! We're in the process of farming MASSIVE amounts of primals to get him kitted out in his pre-raid epix: Spellstrike Hood, Spellstrike Pants, and Belt of Blasting. My little baby's all growed up. *sniffle*
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