Monday, November 24, 2008

OMG Discipline

I guess I have a lot to say today.

In the back of my head I was turning over the instances I did this weekend after writing that last post, and I've been very pleased to find that I can heal a group equally geared to me just fine in discipline spec. It's so nice not to have re-specced for 2 weeks now. Without doing any extensive theory crafting here's what I've found:

1. The uber-buffed shield works beautifully for controlling damage done by over-zealot DPSers, especially with the mana return component. I'm looking at you Px.

2. My LOLSMITE spec includes every bonus to spell power I could fit in. Now that spell power and healing power are one and the same, this boosts my healing as well as my damage, mitigating some of the loss I get from not having boosts to healing spells.

3. I have a few mana-regen trinkets hanging around now that help A LOT. Between the Bangle of Endless Blessings, that new one I got with the +222 to Spirit auto pop, and the Hymn of Hope, I'm doing OK. I even use the Scarab of the Infinite Cycle to change it up once in a while. I have a pair of straight MP5 trinkets I use out in the world that work good too.

We'll see how it goes when we start leveling out of our purple gear, but as long as I can heal a good group, I think I'm OK as a Discipline healer for now.

Watcha doin? I'm Runnin an Instance

Zully is 75 now and Zan is 22, up from 19. I decided to keep burning off Zan's rest bonus whenever I remember since I really do intend to max level a shammy. My enchanting is up around 400 and tailoring 390. Fishing is at 420ish. Cooking is stalled out for now until I get some more recipes. Haven't won the drop for the Heavy Frostweave Bandage yet. I also got exalted with the Cenarion Expedition doing the DEHTA quests, which gave me the Cenarion War Hippogryph mount and my 10th tabard for the achievement. I'm about halfway through exalted with the walrus men.

I was going to skip over Dragonblight over to the Grizzly Hills or something, but I want to get as many reputations up as possible so I don't have to go through the pain later. There's BC reps I will probably never max out, and definitely not the old world ones, except maybe Argent Dawn once I can solo Scholomance.

Part of what's speeding me out of the beginning zones is the subject of the breakfast topic:

Breakfast Topic: The new 5-mans

I wouldn't exactly say I've been an instance fiend. I've tried to run one a day but with my deep dislike of PUGs it doesn't happen all the time. However, I have managed to run the first four instances at least once: Uthgarde Keep, The Nexus, Azjol Nerub (Which I will probably be calling Abdul Jamal forever), and the Old Kingdom.

UK and Nexus are super easy for people with gear, which are generally the ones I run with. The scenery was cool, but those two seem like souped up RFC or Hellfire Ramparts. Straightforward paths and bosses with the same abilites that have been used before.

Azjol Nerub was basically three boss fights with no trash, which was an interesting concept and went very very fast. The one funny part was the last boss is down a ramp onto a circular platform. So Jr and I are hanging out just at the bottom of the ramp when the fight started. Apparently a wall appears to fence you in, and we got stuck behind it. So Zon and Krom are fighting their little plate butts off while Jr and I are trying everything we can to try and get through that wall. Then suddenly, Jr has aggro. Apparently some adds come down through that tunnel to help the boss. I start healing and dpsing the best I can and Jr is doing his best to keep his pet on the the mob, and another one appears, so we take that one out too. While this is going on the boss is buried and our three melee are standing there waiting for us to finish up so they can start again. This repeats again. And we won, with no deaths. It was hilarious.

After that we decided to try the Old Kingdom. It was AWESOME. I think part of the reason was that none of us had ever run it, which is unusual. Usually Zon has run at least one of his characters through it and knows where to go, what to mark, how the bosses go, etc. This time we were just kind of feeling our way through, figuring out the bosses, clearing all the trash, etc. The last boss was SO COOL. You kind of shift dimensions a ways into the fight and copies of all the party members spawn, but you're all by yourself. Then, once someone finishes all of theirs off they pop in and can help with yours. It's kind of hard to explain, but none of us expected it to happen quite that way. When I first saw the copy of Krom running at me, I thought it was more like a Mind Control where I needed to not hurt him, but I realized pretty quick I was by myself. So fun!

We had a few deaths but no wipes (well, except to the allies at the stone). I didn't get any wearable loot, but I did get a lot of Dream Shards, so I can't complain. With the long weekend coming up I'm hoping to hit 77 and get cold weather flying. That will help out with questing a ton, though the areas are so big I think I'll still be using the flyer to have some AFK breaks.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Easy Right?

You have defeated Your Inner Turmoil.

Oh, if only it were that easy.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Breaking Stuff

Breakfast Topic: Are you leveling your Professions?

You better believe it, WowInsider. Then again, I've pretty much given the thumbs down to the Death Knight for the time being. It would be pretty rough leveling from 1 at level 55.

Zully is a Tailor/Enchanter like most healy type priests. That primal mooncloth/whitemend set was, and for the moment still is, the shizzle for raiding. And seeing as you don't have to 'gather' tailoring supplies so much as kill a bunch of humanoids, enchanting is the natural choice for getting rid of all those useless greens leveling tailoring produces. Tailoring is kind of like engineering in a way though, it costs more money than it makes because all the good stuff is boe, and the rest has pretty much no market. This applies even once max level is reached.

Enchanting for me is a huge money sink while leveling, but ends up paying for itself plus a little in the long run. Being able to disenchant greens has its upsides and downsides. Early on, greens are a great way to make a little extra cash either on the AH or as simple vendor trash. As an enchanter, I just break every green I find. At first, I thought I'd be able to sell the mats for profit like I used to do, but it looks like the market is a little dry right now. I think it's a combination of enchanters having plenty of greens to break to level and the lack of people seeking the new enchants. Until people start getting settled into their blues, pvp gear, and start raiding the enchants for sale market won't really take off again. So for now, free enchants for everyone!

Fishing is easy for me to level, because I'm a dork who likes to do it, and also I own almost every bit of pre-wrath fishing buff you can get, so it goes fast. First aid I just level to say I did it. I can't remember the last time I really used a band-aid with Zully and it actually helped. I may have used one or two in arenas, but usually by the time I remember about them it's too late. Cooking goes along with fishing, and being able to make good buff food is handy. I'm not a big fan of the "cooking award" system of buying recipes, but oh well.

I've been getting a lot of requests to disenchant stuff. I ought to start saying no, at least to strangers, unless they're offering a tip. It cuts into my profits!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Wild Mustard and Rhino Dogs? You're kidding, right?

The expansion is a lot of fun. Duh. How could it not be? I took a few days off work to get some good playtime in. I would have just been thinking about it all day anyway if I hadn't. I got Zully to 73. Not bad considering what a slow leveler I am. I am thoroughly enjoying the Howling Fjord. Those level designers deserve a pat on the back. Everyone's complaining about not being able to fly in Northrend, but I'm jumping off cliffs and leaping over stuff with my new Armored Brown Bear like nobody's business, and I love it. Also, the starting zones aren't very big and there's lots of little towns with flight points to stop over at, so it's not a real burden to get around like it was in Outlands before flyers. I'm also very VERY glad I saved up some gold before the expansion. I dropped from over 4k to around 1.5k training all my professions, buying up some greens for enchanting, and yes, I dropped 500g on that bear. It's SO worth it.

Unfortunately, despite being home to play and all the fun new stuff to play around with, I was a little out of my mind this weekend. I talked Danny's ear off about it already. All of a sudden at least 5 people I can think of off the top of my head just poofed back in out of nowhere after months of being gone. Some I'm happy about, some not so much, but generally I feel annoyed that we were struggling to get it together and do end game stuff and people started leaving. Now all of a sudden when we're back at the beginning again, we're full again.

I'm trying real hard to think of this as an opportunity to pull in people for the eventual end game that we're going to get around to in a few months. I also know there are a lot of reasons people leave, and a lot of reasons people return. I shouldn't generalize, and I shouldn't get so upset about it. Some of it too is that I wasn't an officer when all these people were around and now I am. So if they cause problems, now I have responsibility to do something about it. There's a million "what ifs", and that's my downfall in pretty much anything important in my life. I spend too much time worrying about the bad things that could happen and forget about the good things that do happen.

Oh, and Mal appeared out of the blue on Sunday. I was really happy to see him, we ran around the Fjord ganking Allies and generally being jerks for about an hour before I had to log. I don't think he's going to be playing regularly, but I hope to see him once in a while. I still don't like his new hairdo. LOL.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Midnight Madness

So I'm out front of my local GameStop waiting for my copy of WotLK. The crowd is a little bigger than I thought it would be, and not as friendly. I though people would be, you know, talking about WoW and stuff. Whatever. Apparently their credit card machine is down but they're still going to run them, I just have to wait longer. As long as the midnight line is not a waste of time I'll be happy.

*edit*

I was home in my chair by 12:40. The DVD installed super fast, now I just have to get all the patches loaded. Woot!

Monday, November 10, 2008

Fair and square... well close enough

I was up in the Throne of Kil'jaden doing my dailies and minding my own business when this BG/Arena geared warlock decided to start shit with me. I'm perfectly happy to start stuff with allies out in the world, I much prefer that to instanced PvP, but I usually am a good girl and leave the allies alone when they're doing their dailies, especially in places like Ogri'la and the Throne where there's a very small area to move around in and no real competition for the quest objectives.

I had just re-specced to discipline before heading out. Which must be why we raided the next day. I'm gonna go broke re-speccing. Tran was giving me a hard time about bashing Holy the other day, but I find it far FAR easier to do dailies, especially the Island, with resilience/stam gear and a 2/3 discipline spec. I have better damage, but less mana regeneration. When I'm spending time in the air hopping from area to area the mp5 takes care of itself. And I'm having enough issues with my big heals while raiding without losing 2k off the top, so staying Circle Holy all the time is out of the question. But I digress.

I was pretty much at full mana when his felguard started attacking me. I tossed up my uber buffed reflective shield and feared him, got a few DoTs up and a smite. After that, he chain feared me a few times, but I was able to keep my bubble up and him out of contact long enough to keep myself up above 7k health. At some point he swapped over to that demon form, but all that really did was make me damage him faster. It was kind of funny. I don't know why, maybe they're less resistant to Holy in that form? When he feared me into the mobs (inevitable) it started to get hairy but at that point he was almost dead, so I just refreshed my DoTs and let them finish him off so I could deal with the fire elemental that was pounding me.

To be fair, I didn't win because I'm uber, he lost because he was bad. He should have used the felhunter, not the felguard. He also should have kept me dotted up, which he didn't. And I don't know what that demon form's all about but I was kicking the crap out of him while he was like that.

I thought I'd taught him a lesson and tried to continue with my dailies on the other side of the area. This time he caught me in combat at half mana, so I called for friends. He would have gotten me eventually, but I held him off for the half minute or so it took for Tran to come rescue me.

But when the odds were even, maybe even stacked a little towards that lock's side, I won. Except for terrible hunters and sub 70s I don't think I've ever done that without someone else getting involved before it was over. w00t!

Fail

We attempted ZA again yesterday. In case I didn't know this already, we are grossly undergrared if we can't do ZA after nerf. There's nothing wrong with that. This is more raiding than we've ever done. Really if we wanted to do ZA we needed to run Kara about a billion more times, take down ALL the bosses, and get everyone who wants to do it geared up. And as much as I bitched about it before, we need need need more healers. Especially with a chokemaster like me healing. I don't know what my problem was yesterday but I just could not get those greater heals off in time. Sigh. Zon must want to slap me upside the head by now.

*edit*
I loaded up our entire roster of 70s into WowJutsu and we're not nearly as undergeared as I thought. On the other hand, it looks like the half healer who was there with me made out like a bandit at the post-ZA Kara run. Maybe if he gets some better gear I'll have a little more help, since he seems to be one of the ones who wants to run this stuff.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Officer Duties

It hasn't been all that long, relatively speaking, since I became an officer, but seems like forever. Some of that's because once I made a real commitment to the guild I started acting like one, even though I wasn't yet. And unlike many of the other clubs I've had leaderships positions in, I truly enjoy being a guild officer.

I like being the webmaster. I like interviewing and inviting new members. I even like taking care of the guild bank. And you know what? I'll admit it. I liked gkicking those two people. Not because of any power trip, but because I recognized a problem before it became a major issue and acted on it right away (with a little coaching from Tran and Px). And the reason I found it was because of my regular officer routine.

When I wake up early enough to log on before I leave for work, I spend my 20 minutes picking through the guild bank and scanning the auction house with my bank alt. One thing we always have a glut of is crafting patterns. Well, all of a sudden 10 patterns disappeared. I checked the bank log and a low level paladin had withdrawn them, despite the patterns being above 200 skill level and in all different professions. So I let Px know, and they were demoted to Initiate so they couldn't access the gbank. He sent them a letter to contact an officer about it. The very next day a different person of about the same level did the exact same thing, except this time they took all four of the green gems that were put there for general use. Secretly I was glad the patterns were gone, but the gems pissed me off. The same process was followed for this alt.

Well, the next time the offender logged on, I asked about it. I was really nice about it, only implied that maybe they were using them on other characters not in the guild. The person denied the whole thing, and when I pointed out the bank log entries, he blamed it on his sister. And then, right before I gkicked him, he had the nerve to ask me for high end enchanting mats from one of the back tabs! Justice was served, and we only lost a few patterns in the process. I considered petitioning a GM about the stuff that was taken, but I honestly didn't want the patterns back anyway.

Speaking of the bank and bank alts, there's been so much stuff to auction in gbank the last week or so I think I'm going to make my secret squirrel mage my personal bank toon and use Rosy for the guild auctions. I don't want to split the auction money unfairly either way.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

*yawn*

This pre-expansion slump is getting really boring. I'm not sure if that's good or bad though. It has been kind of nice to come online and just chill, but at the same time I always like running heroics and quests, and that's just not happening with my usual crowd right now. Tran's spending most of his time at desktop while hovering over Shat, Krom's farming BGs with his lock, Px is grinding up another warrior at breakneck speed, Gar's brought his priest up and is mostly on a different alliance server. I haven't even seen Zon online for more than a few minutes at a time lately. Mecc's back, which is kinda cool. He's bringing out my 'competitive spirit' talking about his new priest. We'll see how that works out.

I poached my first ENM the other day. Hesp decided to come over and join me. I jumped her right in with PX and some of the guys while we were grinding scourge for the welfare expansion epics. I felt kind of bad, I kinda ditched her once I was done, but she sent a tell later that said things were going good. It's nice to have another priest main to talk priesty stuff with, even if she is on the dark side.

I felt the need to fill the hole in the universe left by Mal by rolling a troll shammy. I won't remotely be able to fill those shoes, but it makes me feel better anyway. It looks like Danny is going off to be a raider, free market or otherwise, so I don't think she'll be joining me. That's OK, I just hope we still do stuff together.

I'm such a dork. I bought a long sleeve t-shirt that says "save the healer, save the group" and if I get it in time I'm totally going to wear it to the midnight launch at GameStop. Now I just need to decide how early I'm gonna get there. I don't really NEED to wait in line because I have it all pre-ordered, but I kinda want to hang out and talk to the other WoW dorks outside the store for a while. If it's too cold and rainy I'll probably show up at like 10 til Midnight, otherwise maybe 11? I'm thinking about this waaay too much.

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