Monday, September 28, 2009

New raid!

I was in the most epic 25 man raid on Saturday. I was a little worried because it was a PUG and the raid leader and his two guildies didn't seem very organized. I had trouble getting a summon so I met the group at the stone. Once I got there I realized this other guild of 15 was there. They were really pro. The guild master and two of his buddies were just tearing up the dps charts. The first wing was really hard, but there were no wipes. When we got to the second wing two of the other PUGs aggroed a group of wasps and left group, and a few of the ones from the larger guild went AFK, so we weren't able to quite clear out the second wing. Everyone did a great job! That big guild is recruiting, I may just go app with them.

Yep, creek cleanup day went really well. Those 10 foot tall weeds didn't stand a chance against the mighty power of the city volunteer day team!

Friday, September 25, 2009

Style!

A thread over on PlusHeal got me thinking about my PvE healing style. One of the reasons I have trouble as DPS is the notion of ability rotation. There IS no rotation as a holy priest. Well, after the inital tank cast. It's like as series of IF... THEN statements.

I lean heavily on shield/renew to prevent damage and keep people topped up. In the current patch, I've been stopcasting GHeals on the tank, and only using flashes when they're free or I have to hit multiple people in a short time span. I've gotten pretty good at always using the free flash. Having sparks shoot out from under my feet helps.

1. Open with PoM, Shield. Keep tank in range and hit with renew about 1 tick after the tank gains aggro.

2. IF the tank is a DK, I try and keep my shield up the entire fight. I leave gaps with rage users and pallies when the fight's not too intense to help them do their tank thing.

3. IF I see an aggro indicator on another player, I throw them a renew. If there seem to be a lot of people with aggro, I'll toss a PoM on the person who seems to be taking the most damage.

4. IF the damage is being caused by disease or magic I will abolish/dispel as needed. This is a pretty high priority for me. I spend a lot of time keeping debuffs to a minimum.

5. IF a player other than the tank has lost about a quarter health, I'll flash or gheal them when I can, depending on how much health is lost. 9k is about where I switch from flash to gheal. If it's more serious than that, I'll throw a new shield->renew->PoM on the tank, then renew->flash->greater the DPS.

6. IF things are really getting hairy with the DPS and myself taking damage, I'll usually damage control with PoH if it will heal more than the incoming damage.

7. If multiple people are going critical or the tank is taking massive damage, I'll activate a trinket if I'm wearing one that requires it, throw a guardian spirit/renew/PoM/shield on the tank, do a circle and a PoH if I have time, then start shield/renewing the DPS. At that point I usually have to start deciding which DPS is the priority to keep up.

8. MSBT tells me when my health/mana is running low. I have it set to a pretty high threshhold. IF it's health, I'll generally shield->renew->flash. IF it's mana, I'll let out my puppy if it's available, or use the Hymn of Hope. If I'm out of options, I'll use a health or mana pot.

9. IF I get bored because I'm overgeared, which happens more and more lately, I switch to my second bar, which replaces some of my emergency heals with dots, pw:d, smite/blast, etc. I still have the DPS part of my holy nova "turned on" so I like to run in and start spamming it when I'm really bored. I've outDPSed people in lower level dungeons before.

10. On top of all this, I'm constantly moving. Running, jumping on top of stuff, repositioning, watching for fires and pats, etc. I love having so many run and heal possibilites.

Things I could improve
-I could probably wait to throw on the renew until after the first shield wears off. I would need more Grid indicators for that.

-I could probably pay more attention to where the PoM bounce is so I don't overwrite one already present on the tank. I don't think that happens very often though.

-I could do more dispels on the tank's target. I'm sure there are occasionally things that I can dispel to help out the DPS

-I always forget about binding heal

-I should use Divine Hymn more. I know it's awesome, but I have this thing against using it unless I'm really desperate, which isn't really the best way to use a group heal

-I'm better about Hymn of Hope, but I should still use it more

-I'm bad at using lock cookies and mana potions early in the fight, which is really the ideal time to do it.

-It's been a while since I revewed my talent tree. A few patches have gone by, so there may be some tweaks to do

That's all of Zully's secrets! Have fun!

Friday, September 18, 2009

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

What Step is this Again?

So I think I've finally kicked a lot of my unhealthy WoW habits. Yay for me! Now I just have to not backslide when I have a few more nights a week open.

1. I have started going to the gym again just like I did when I was on my last WoW break. Like not saying 'I'm going to go' going, actually moving my arms and legs going.

2. I tend to get excited when I have extra WoW time, like this week. However, last night I opted to have a sushi/beer/movie on the couch night instead.

2. I have been a lot more timely and consistent with my chores/errands, which means even if I don't leave the house all day I am out of my chair doing something else for at least an hour or two.

3. I pretty much go to bed by midnight on Saturday nights. Fridays tend to be closer to 0100, but a lot of the time I'm logged off at midnight and end up goofing off on the internet because I'm too tired to get out of my chair

4. I've been going back to sleep on weekends if I'm still tired rather than just getting up and playing WoW instead.

Things I still need to kick:

- Getting up 20 minutes early to do auctions/check mail/squeeze in the cooking daily, and then end up speeding like crazy and running to the train

- More Bio breaks. I still do the pee pee dance in my chair quite a bit.

- More showers. I know, it's gross, but I generally shower every other day, but sometimes on the weekend... I should just do it first thing in the morning on Saturdays.

- I have to stop putting off phone calls because I want to play WoW instead. I also need to stop talking on the phone and playing WoW at the same time, especially when I'm talking to my mom.

- I need to watch the fish/snuggle with the cat more. My poor cat has to practically sit on my face to get my attention sometimes.

- Umm I probably shouldn't be WoW blogging or surfing at work...

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

I think I played WoW this weekend...

I actually had to check Zully's achievements to see if I did anything with her this weekend. I did H ToC for the first time (what?), got champion/exalted with Thunder Bluff, and finished punching furlbogs in the face for my knuckle sandwich/master of arms achievements.

I spent some time on Yoka as well, H Nexus and a whole bunch of Isle of Conquest games. I also did the first "boss" of Ulduar. I was a gunner, so my gear level didn't matter.

Yam is lvl 44 now, I finished up Dustwallow and will be moving on to Tanaris. I haven't been 'sent' to Feralas yet, I wonder when that will happen. Tonight I think I will run around the world with her and turn in a bunch of random quests. Hopefully I can use the portal near Swamp of Sorrows now and save myself some running/flying. Also, I completely forgot how to get to the Badlands.

One of my big chunks of time was doing JC and other dailies on Mal's rogue. It was partially to help him out, but a lot of it was just me wanting to quest for a good reason. Zully's pretty much done with the Northrend rep grind, I just have 2 more factions to finish in the tournament. Mal's rogue, however, needs pretty much everything. I was able to get to 9 dailies remaining easy by doing the tournament, the brunhildar bear gamble, cooking, JC and Hodir. I would have done the last 9 but I couldn't think of what to do. I should have done Wyrmrest thinking back on it.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Breakfast Topic: I Hate

You know what I hate the most in WoW? Stranglethorn Vale. I refuse, utterly REFUSE to quest there any more. Even now I can't run through there without getting attacked, even on my F'ING LVL 80 PRIEST! Stranglethorn Vale single handedly caused me to abandon my first priest because it was impossible in Vanilla.

Probably a strong #2 in things I hate about wow is that damn troll ziggurat in the Hinterlands, that you had to do to get the mallet of Zul'Farrak. It's not so bad now, but back in the day all the trolls were ELITES, so it was basically a 5-man instance, out in the world, with mobs on a fast respawn and quest items on a slow respawn, where Allies could come kill you and spit on your corpse. In fact the only redeeming quality of the Hinterlands is the abundance of leveling herbs.

I think I've talked about this recently. I forget where. Hmm.

Wow.com Breakfast Topic: I Hate

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Call me the Zullypedia

I was mostly AFK this weekend, but I have quite a bit of WoW to talk about as well.

I've polished off all of my "easy achievements" list, you know annoying ones like explorer, squirrels, and northrend gourmet. I dropped some gold on the Gigantique Sack to get that out of the way too. Now it's back to grinding rep. I don't have Krom to back me up on the heroic Outland instances anymore :-( so I think I'll work on the old world ones. Zully is currently parked in winterspring with no staff equipped. Yes, I've been punching teddy bears in the face. It's quite theraputic actually. Got that unarmed skill up to 391 :-) I need to buy/find a grey dagger and grey mace to get those skills maxed out too. I'm pretty close to having all weapons usable by priests at max. I broke down and started making frostweave bandaids as well.

On Saturday I went and visited a friend. She and her other half had to go fairly early but let me stay the night since I was headed off to the mountains. I set myself up at the dining room table w/ my laptop. I was intending to just level my drood but I decided to poke my nose in on SDS first and they invited me to bring Yoka to Naxx. My dps went up from around 1k to about 1.3k with the spec change. I scored a new ring. I felt a little bad rolling on loot seeing as I'm not exactly a regular raider, but the other dps warrior that rolled wasn't exactly a regular either.

I ended up hanging with the Goblin clan on their boat Sunday. His kids are super cute and well behaved, which is very unusual for me to say. I'm generally not into kids. It was really funny when Goblin introduced me by my drood's name. LOL. I'm thinking I need to go visit them down at their house some weekend and have a little dungeon LAN party. If they could just get themselves a tank it would be great. Fortunately for the one non-WoW player on the boat the "Zullypedia" talk was only intermittent. I was having a blast getting to swim in the lake and hang out with some real people for the day.

Friday, September 4, 2009

September Gear Upgrade Post

I wasn't going to do one of these this time, since it looks like most of my upgrades are pretty straightforward: Farm, farm, farm the Heroics. Wowhead's profiler makes this process a WHOLE LOT easier. On a girly note, everything matched quite nicely. Except the gloves :-(

This is going to be painful:
75 Emblems of Valor, must be downgraded from Conquest
162 Emblems of Conquest
25 Emblems of Triumph, obtainable through doing the Daily heroic
Dagger has a 13% drop rate from the Black Knight on Heroic ToC
Chest has a 14% drop rate from the Black Knight on Heroic ToC

Head
Current: Lifespark Visage (Ulduar-Flame Leviathan)
Upgrade: Conqueror's Cowl of Sanctification(58 Emblems of Conquest)

Neck
Current: Torque of the Red Dragonflight (Malygos-Key Quest)
Upgrade: Evoker's Charm(19 Emblems of Conquest)
EDIT 8/4 - COMPLETE

Shoulder
Current: Mantle of the Preserver (Ulduar-Auriaya)
Upgrade: Ulduar +

Back
Current:Wispcloak (Crafted)
Upgrade:Disguise of the Kumiho (25 Emblems of Valor)
Priority Upgrade - Valor badges? Really? Wow am I behind.
EDIT 8/4 - COMPLETE

Chest:
Current:Moonshroud Robe (Crafted)
Upgrade Embrace of Madness(H Trial of the Champion - Black Knight)
EDIT !0/1 - COMPLETE

Wrist
Current:Resurgent Phantom Bindings(Naxx-Gothik the Harvester)
Upgrade:Cuffs of the Shadow Ascendant (60 Emblems of Valor)
Priority Upgrade - Valor badges again. Yeesh.

Hands
Current:Handwraps of Surrendered Hope (Trial of the Champion 5N - Black Knight)
Upgrade: Touch of the Occult(28 Emblems of Conquest)

Waist
Current:Elegant Temple Gardens' Girdle (Emblems of Heroism)
Upgrade:Sash of Potent Incantations (28 Emblems of Conquest)
EDIT 10/1 COMPLETE

Legs
Current:Leggings of the Haggard Apprentice (Trial of the Champion 5N - Confessor or Eadric)
Upgrade:Legwraps of the Master Conjurer (29 Emblems of Conquest)

Feet
Current:Boots of Forlorn Wishes (Naxx - Instructor Razuvious)
Upgrade: Ulduar +

Rings
Current:Band of Channeled Magic (Emblems of Valor)
Current:Inscribed Signet of the Kirin Tor (6800g + 1000g + Exalted with Kirin Tor)
Upgrade: Ulduar +
Upgrade: Apparently there is now an Etched Signet of the Kirin Tor as an upgrade. Since I dropped so much on it already, I don't see why I shouldn't keep upgrading it :-P
EDIT 8/4 COMPLETE

Trinkets
Current: The Egg of Mortal Essence (Emblems of Heroism)
Current: Tears of the Vanquished (Trial of the Champion 5N - Black Knight)
Upgrade: Whatever drops that I like. Trinkets are hard to find "upgrades" for

Weapon
Current:Staff of Restraint (Obsidian Sanctum 25 - Sartharion)
Current Offhand (in bank):Watchful Eye
Upgrade Staff: Ulduar +
Upgrade One-Hand: Spectral Kris (H Trial of the Champion - Black Knight)
Upgrade Offhand: Handbook of Obscure Remedies (25 Emblems of Valor)

Wand
Current:Wand of Ahn'kahet (H Old Kingdom - Herald Volazj
Upgrade:Brimstone Igniter (25 Emblems of Triumph)
Why does the only non-Ulduar upgrade for me have to have +hit on it?

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