Fishing FTW

I got the achievement bug in me this weekend. I Holy Nova'd my way through the Deadmines and ran all the heroics in Hellfire Citadel with Krom and Auchenai Crypts with Aeth. Ran though a bunch of areas of the Eastern Kingdoms on my way to Stormwind, where I dropped my fishing line in to get the Fishing Diplomat.

Last night and this morning, since I was already in Terokkar Forest anyway, I decided to spend a little time looking for Mr. Pinchy.

And I got him! AND I got the Magical Crawdad Box on the first wish!

I think I'm just going to carry on with the achievements today. Head over to Ogri'la and do the dailies there, do some more exploring, maybe Holy Nova my way though Wailing Caverns and Blackfathom Deeps.

And tonight I'm throwing myself a birthday party at Claimjumpers because I'm out of food and could use some serious leftovers.

*sigh*

I cancelled the OS run for Sunday. Our tanks are being really annoying right now. I'm not going to rearrange my schedule for people who can't commit. All three of us raid leaders are frustrated with them, so I'm just going to back off. I hope things improve soon.

I mislooted some purple pants in VoA 10 today because I thought there was only one hunter, when there were two. If it doesn't get fixed Trig won't get his set bonus. I think I've lost my master looter privileges for a while.

I think I may just take the rest of the weekend off.

Ambition

I've been trying to decide about the raiding situation in my guild. Things have been going OK progression wise, but part of me knows that we can do so much better. I've been trying to push our best raiders to do harder content than I think we would normally attempt, the Sarth +1 raids. It's going alright, but I'm really starting to get frustrated with the response I'm getting. One of our best tanks was hedging today about accepting the invitations to Krom and my raids. I'm really not sure what to do with him, since he's one of the long LONG time members of the guild. I don't want to cut him out, but at the same time it really irritates me that he refuses to plan ahead. I even talked to him directly, and he still didn't accept or decline the invite. I'm about 1 step away from just cancelling Sunday's Sarth +1 raid and doing something else instead.

But here's the thing. I'm ambitious. It's just ingrained in me. I really want to push us to our limit. I just have this gut feeling that if someone (me) shows our best guys that they can do the difficult parts of the game, we will be awesome. The people I've been bringing have been playing for a very long time and know their stuff. Wow-Heroes says that 10 of us are good enough to attempt Malygos. This makes me happy, and annoyed at the same time. The hard part for me right now is riding through the learning process. It doesn't matter how good your gear is, raid experience is something else entirely. We didn't really start serious raiding until Wrath came out, and it shows. It's just going to take us some time to get going, and logically I know that.

Maybe I'm just getting impatient. I've been thinking about that raiding guild again. Aeth has been pushing pretty hard to get me into his guild. Even though I'm undergeared for what they're doing I think I could rise up pretty fast. The other thing that's getting to me is the stress. I've had a lot of personal stress recently. All this raid leading and personality conflict has been getting to me. So I'm sort of at a crossroads. Do I just keep doing what I'm doing, and maybe take a week break or so? Do I continue to take charge and try to push us into better raids? Do I just quit because I'm taking this whole thing too seriously?

I really don't know. It's not simple.

I woke up in the Western Plaguelands...

... And I only have a vague recollection of how I got there. But here's what I remember from the weekend.

Friday night I was hella late for the Naxx run. I wasn't supposed to have to go back to work, but I did. The 'superstar' healing drood who left us for a 25 man raiding guild was in the group. I might as well have scratched my ass and watched a movie for the first two quarters. I'm not really complaining, it was just as much excellent tanking and dps as it was heals. But I think three healers in that situation was totally unnecessary. He's not looting or anything, and he has been running his DK with us regularly, so it's all good I guess. We killed the first boss of the Military Quarter, even though we really shouldn't have. It was a really sloppy kill. We kicked the crap out of Patchwerk on the first try, but didn't get past the next boss before we called it a night.

Saturday we ran Kara for shits and giggles. We actually had a full 10 man group of mostly 80s. We failed at chess. Twice. It was hilarious. I was feeling kind of lousy so I watched Men in Tights, got groceries, and played Guitar Hero. I came back on around what I thought would be raid time, but our tank was being a drama queen so it never happened. I ran a heroic and somewhere in there Tess, Krom and I decided it would be fun to get trashed and run both Old Strat and Scholo for achievements and rep. It wasn't as much fun as I thought, since I forgot just how HUGE those instances are. Those things must have been hardcore at level. I don't think I got that far in vanilla WoW. Regardless, we got the achievements, and I'm real close to exalted with the Argent Dawn.

Sunday I had my Sarth + 1 raid. Everything was rolling along fine until both tanks had to eat dinner. For like 40 minutes. You know, I'm willing to accomodate people's schedules... but a little advance notice would have been nice. So... I guess next week we won't start till 10 server. I wanted to accomodate both coasts by starting early. Hopefully 10 won't be too late for the East Coasters.

I did a ton of achievements this weekend. My raid buddy Aeth has been encouraging me to do them with him. It's been pretty fun so far. I have a ton of instance / quest ones to do though. Guess I'm in it for the long haul!

Gear Upgrade Post - February

I haven't had a ton of upgrades, but then again there aren't a ton of upgrades to be had outside of Naxx and OS for me at this point. These are what I consider my fastest upgrades.

Head: Wearing Forgotten Shadow Hood. All the head pieces either drop from the final 2 bosses in Naxx or Heroic versions. I'm not feeling that confident quite yet.

Neck: Bone-Linked Amulet Construct Quarter, Grobbulus

Shoulder: Dark Runic Mantle Halls of Stone BoE (I want that haste!)
Heroes' Shoulderpads of Faith Plague Quarter, Loatheb

Chest: Wearing Moonshroud Robe Nothing till Heroic Raids

Waist: Wearing Elegant Temple Gardens' Girdle. Nothing till Heroic Raids

Legs: Heroes' Leggings of Faith Construct Quarter, Thaddius (or VoA if I ever get lucky)

Feet: Saltarello Shoes Plague Quarter, Heigan (My favorite Naxx boss EVAR! No joke!)

Wrist: There's a pair that are more "suitable for priests" but I like the heavy crit my Azure Cloth Bindings have. So none till Heroic Raids

Hands: I'm wearing Heroes' Gloves of Faith. No upgrades till heroics.

Finger: I'm wearing Titanium Spellshock Ring and Timeworn Silken Band. As with the bracers, I like the extra crit from the spellshock ring even though there's one with spirit that drops from Heigan. So I'm good till heroic raids.

Trinket: Majestic Dragon Figurine Sartherion, Obsidian Sanctum
Spirit World Glass Military Quarter, Gothik the Harvester

Cloak: My Wispcloak is awesome. Nothing till heroics.

Wand: Using Wand of Ahn'kahet. Best until heroics

Weapon: Needs more research. I'm using Sulfur Stave, which is supposed to be DPS, but I didn't see another staff with good heal stats. I need to research a main hand/offhand combo.