Things to do while waiting for Cataclysm

No raids?  Tired of dugneons?  Here's what I've been doing to pass the WoW time when I'm not in the mood for Starcraft.

Read more »

Zoooooooom Ding!

Every once in a while the new LFG tool comes up with a really stellar group.  I've had a lot of success with my dungeon achievements, maybe found myself an arena partner (finally), and I just want to kick every dwarf I see square in the teeth.

Read more »

Super Secret Blizzard Arena Rating Scale

I managed to do some more arenas with Crav the other day. We lost. A lot. Miserably. We managed to win 1 game out of about 30. Despite that, we actually increased our rank by 45 points. That confuses me, but I guess that just means that we were up against teams that were winning more than us? I don't really care, as long as we keep at it we should have better luck.

I got myself a new computer. Finally. I've been complaining about my old one long enough. I'm downloading all the patches right now, looks like it's going to take a while. I can't wait to log in and set my graphics to ULTRA! Woo!

Now if only I had an Ulduar run to test out my newfound blazing computer speed on.

Oh yeah, and I'm ditching DSL for Cable tomorrow, so that will be about 10 times better as well. So much for WoW being a cheap hobby.

Awesomesauce

Arenas were a bust, because apparently I put the wrong time on the calendar and everyone showed up at 8 server not 11 server like I thought the calendar invite said. Stupid time zones, Blizz needs to be more clear on their calendar.

However, Crav the PvP monster lock was still on so we decided to do 10 games as 2s, just to get some points. Some is better than none right?

We went 10-9. Over 50% on our first run, and the first 3 matches were terrible simply because we were both rusty. We did much better after a Wintergrasp break, so we definitely need to do some BGs as a warm up before arenas. Yeah, after that run I think we're going to try out a few weeks. We didn't just luck out either, we decisively won at least 3 of those games, to the point where I had time to stop, regen our mana with my prayer, and keep attacking.

Also, Disc/Shadow is awesome. I was doing 34k damage in the better matches. One of our opposing warriors was only 3k higher than me.

I decided to calm down after arenas by doing some fishing in the Dalaran fountain and... I fished up the last gold coin I needed! I am now officially Salty Zully! I'm so happy. If I never fish there again I won't cry any tears.

Not bad for a Monday night.

Flying Cows and Ninjas

I had an unexpected block of time to play WoW yesterday morning, so I leveled Yoka to 77. I can FINALLY take her out herbing and exploring for XP. I'm also going to start doing any rep dailies I have available. It shouldn't take too long for her to hit 80 now.

I brought back Guild Arena Night. The first one is coming up on Monday at 10 server. I'm looking forward to it, and am happy that some people signed up to help with match-ups. I should probably come up with some team suggestions before then.

Looking back at my gap in posts, I realized I never talked about the bank ninja incident. While I was on vacation, Tess decided it would be a great idea to start intentionally taking high value items he wasn't using from the bank. Something about burning his bridges I guess. I told Px about it as soon as I noticed it, and took bank priveleges away the next day so it didn't hurt me any. Secretly, I was kind of happy that I got to kick him out during server prime time when everyone was on. A show of power every once in a while isn't a bad thing.

I'm not mad at Tess at all. I'm mostly annoyed at myself for not realizing he would do it sooner, he's been acting really squirrley lately anyway. I'm not worried about it though, I only remembered because I was sending an e-mail to Mal.

Raiding on my mind

I was wishing for dual specs again the other day when I dropped yet another 50g on a respec to discipline for arenas. The arenas went sorta ok, we were still getting used to it and two droods and a priest isn't exactly a winning combination. We ended at 1340 for the week. I haven't managed to get Bb in the arena with me yet. Maybe this week. I'm still not sure about doing arenas with a guildie. Well, I guess now Tess and Dani are guildies too :) My evil plan is now complete. Well, as close as it will get.

Val sent me a message from his DK yesterday. He moved his mage over to another server, but I think the grass is greener. I was saying the other day when he was getting ready to leave that he'd consider coming back over to SDS. I encouraged him, but that was before War left. I'm not entirely surprised. I think War's looking for an active raiding guild, not a social one like ours.

I've got so many ideas about jump starting guild raids to try and progress, but I'm not volunteering for a few reasons:

1. The way things have worked is if you plan it, you lead it. I don't think I'd make a very good raid leader. I'm happy to do all the administrative bullshit to get it together to increase our chances at progression, but I'd really rather have Zon or Tran or even Jr lead the actual raid. I'm just not aggressive enough to keep 9 rowdy raiders together.

2. I'm not convinced that we even SHOULD try and do raid progress because of the way our guild has always run. Want to run three warriors and two paladins? Great. Show up with no potions or buff food and broken gear? Oops. Constantly aggroing stuff with your pet or can't control your dps in heroics? Well come raid anyway, you signed up for it. No organized 5 mans to gear people up. No advice or guidance about specs or stats. No looking at dps output or any other kind of stat. Nothing. Changing this would be a fundamental change in the way our guild operates, and I don't know if that's really something we SHOULD change. It would leave people out and I know we don't want to do that. It would also be a lot more work, and I don't know if we want to do that either.

3. From the conversations I've heard about raiding over TS, I get the distinct impression there's another officer who wants to organize the raids. He's been around a long time and his opinion carries a lot of weight in the guild. I don't want to step on his toes, both because I respect him as a longtime guild member, and because getting on his bad side would be very bad for me.

That's my raiding rant. Which is funny, because I didn't intend for this post to go that direction, but I seem to have it on my mind a lot. Personally, I think Blizzard is making a mistake trying to push all PvE players into raiding. It really hurts small guilds and free-agents.

Quit buggin me, almost level 78

I was babysitting the fax machine at work today and I caught myself thinking about arenas. Not just a passing thought wondering when the season will start, but hardcore consideration of what I'm going to do.

Stop laughing. I know I said I wasn't going to do arenas again.

With Mal being essentially gone, definitely not doing arenas, I need to find a new 2s partner. I just know that 5s is going to be a headache just like it was last season, so I really want to have my own team with agreed upon rules and times. Also, I think I want to try and find a partner outside of the guild. I'm sure running with Krom, Bob, or Zon would be fun, but one thing that was really nice was being able to log off TS and get away for a little bit. When arenas were done, they were done. No need to carry it over into the rest of my game.

I'd really like to get another rogue, but I think a hunter or ret pally would be fine too. I'll probably see if Danny has a friend I could start with, or wants to do them with me. I dunno if her schedule will work with mine, but we could try it. I've got a rogue and a mage on my buddy list that might be open to it as well, or might know someone. We'll see.

Unproductive

I almost wish I'd just taken this weekend away from WoW. I almost did, but once I sat down in my computer chair I was too wiped out to do anything else, so I just stayed there. My other friends were out of town anyway, and I already did a lot of chores during the week, so whatever. We didn't raid, do our 5s arenas, or run any instances until Sunday afternoon. I don't think I ran a single BG all weekend. And Sunday afternnon, we missed 2 badges in Mechinar. We missed half of the key to the lockbox before the elevator, and that fire boss kicks our asses every time. WTF. About the only thing I realy accomplished was I spent a good 2 hours+ farming herbs with Morning, and discovered two flasks while making potions. It's nice to finally be alchemy specialized.

Mal and I played our first 10 2s games on Saturday, and we were both pounding our desks in anger at that point so we stopped. We did a bunch more on Sunday and got all the way up to 1580 or so and then dropped back down to our 50% win ratio with a 1516 rating. Druids are so OP. I hate them SO MUCH. Sigh.

Apparently my guild tried to do Kara without me last week. I think someone said they skipped Attumen and weren't able to get Moroes. This brings up a weird dilemma on my end. On one hand, it would be nice to have more 70 healers so I don't feel guilty and obligated every time a Heroic or Kara run spins up. I'd probably spend more time offline with my RL friends and that guy that lives with me. You know, the one I'm married to who never gets to see me and tells me what an addict I am all the time. That would be good for me AND that nagging burnout feeling I've been having.

On the other hand, I know I'm going get territorial if any new 70 healers show up if they haven't already been in the guild for a while. It's counterproductive, I know, but I can't help it. I've been one of two or three high level priests ever since the guys helped me get my whitemend / primal mooncloth set done. I don't even remember exactly when that was it seems so long ago. It even took me a little while to get over Tran switching to a healer from DPS. I guess I just get used to seeing certain people playing certain roles and get all thrown off when they switch it up on me. I'm messed up, I know.

On a positive note:

ZOMG CLIQUE+GRID IS AWESOME

I don't have to lose target to throw hots on other party members! I can truly spam FlashGreaterFlashGreaterFlash in Heroics! I don't have to hunt for stuff on my toolbar to heal! I can still click buttons if I panic! Now if I would just use my trinkets more...

Also, Mana Burn + Power Infusion = Win. That is, if I don't get too carried away and forget to heal myself or my partner.

Kar -again

So it looks like our "once a month" Kara run is still on track. I got some seriously phat loot out of it. I got my T4 gloves, a set of healing bracers, and 2 high end enchanting patterns, Mongoose and Surefooted, not to mention I'm up to 30+ badges again between Kara and the two heroic Botanica runs I did. I think I've eliminated all the PvP gear from my heal set, but I'm uber squishy now. I'm not sure exactly what to do about that. Enchants I guess. And badge upgrades.

We've been farming the Brewfest boss too, everyone's gonna have epic trinkets by the time this holiday is done. I felt so guilty about winning everything in Kara I passed on the warrior trinkets with Morning last night so Gar could have them. It wasn't just that though, he's been a regular off-tank and it's stupid for me to roll against him for something he needs with my pitiful little mini-70 who does nothing but the Island and BGs.

I've gotta say, after doing some uninterrupted raiding, what was I thinking wanting to do this weekly, especially in a guild our size? Healing for 5 hours straight really wipes me out, especially since it's just me and Tran right now. I need to talk to him about healy-raid stuff. Maybe it's just the way my thinking is right now, but I feel like I make way more mistakes than he does. I don't know if it's because he's just better about keeping his mouth shut, because I'm doing more overall raid healing (we never really determined who is "main heals"), or if I'm just making a lot of mistakes. Maybe I just need more practice, I dunno.

Raiding is even harder now then it was before I started my 2s team because I want to keep my arenas going as well, so I have to spec back and forth between Full Holy and Holy/Disc in order to be effective when I need to. It's not the gold, that's easy enough to get, but every time I respec I have to make sure my bars are setup, remember which "special skills" I'm using, etc. It doesn't take very long for me to get warmed up, but going from 5k+ heals to 3k heals in one day on the same spell button gets really confusing.

Also, I need to get Grid+Clique set up this week. I had my first total heal disaster doing heroic Botanica this weekend. I'm wearing my soft brace this week to take some of the stress off my mouse hand, so my movement is a little more limited. I accidentally de-targeted the tank just as he pulled and I missed his portrait on the first click. By the time I finally got him targeted and started the heal, he was dead. 14000 to 0 in 2 seconds or less. Total wipeage. The tank has to trust me, and when shit like that happens it's like letting someone trust-fall into hot tar. I need to get it together, especially with us doing more raiding. So it's time to get advanced instead of stupid. I've always resisted any kind of mod, but every time I finally adopt one I'm happy I did.

I can't live without Grid. Take my Grid away, and you might as well put a blindfold on me and tie my right hand behind my back.

I have a feeling once I get used to a "click hover to heal" system it will be the same thing, it's just hard to break 2 years of habit. However, it's ridiculous to upgrade my graphics card to cut out the spell effect lag and then add half a second or more "lag" on my end moving my cursor from one end of the screen to the other.

In other news, My 2s team is still batting 50% in 2v2. I was just getting back into the swing when I had to log off yesterday. Poor Mal, he's been waiting for his chestpiece FOREVER. I finally broke down and bought my Merciless chestpiece and the blue gems and enchanting mats to get it up as far as I can, hoping desperately that I'd be replacing it right away. It set me back a good 200-300 gold. I need to be good about doing the island again, especially now that I have two 70s I can run it with. Unfortunately, he rest of the ladder didn't get the memo that now that my blue is gone we're supposed to win. And with the raid, our 5v5 team didn't run this weekend like we were supposed to, so I'll be up tonight AGAIN. Good thing I'm planning on season-pass subscribing to Heroes through iTunes instead of trying to watch it.

Sometimes Life Gets in the Way

I've been ridiculously stressed out in pretty much every part of my personal life for the last few weeks, so I decided to cut the easiest stress maker first and take a WoW break last weekend. I'm really glad I did. I was so much more easy going during arenas this week despite the drama, and just in general I feel a lot more chill while logged in this week.

I'm just going to have to start taking a break when I start feeling stressed out over WoW. I get so involved I forget that when it comes down to it, it's just a game. I can turn it off for a few days and the world will not come to an end. My guildies will still do their heroics, arenas, and BGs, get their chants, run their lowbies, talk on TeamSpeak, and so on, if I'm not there. As I occasionally say, "I'm not that cool", or in other words, the world does NOT revolve around or depend on me. I just forget that occasionally.

I was comforted to find that Mal did not instantly rocket up to 1700 points by switching to a different 2s partner for the weekend. He was a little over 1550 last week, which we have managed to do a few times. I hope I see him on later this week, and I also hope I can run enough AV to get my s2 chestpiece before rollover.

Arenas... 1535 anyone?

Well it's been a little while since I posted. Mostly the same old QQ so I didn't want to overdo it. However, I do want to talk a little about how my arenas are going.

They're not going badly, but I don't think they're going well either

I think I've been kidding myself over the "gear vs skill" part of things. First of all, I don't have as much skill as I feel like I should after dumping oh 2 years of my life into this. Also, despite how hard I've been working to get my gear upgraded, it's still pretty crappy relatively speaking. Krom laid it on me today about my blue chestpiece. Everything else is epic and at least s2 so I think he was being a little harsh when he said I was essentially trying to get great gear from arenas with no work, but seeing as ALL of my arena teams have almost identical ratings, I think a good chunk of the problem must be on my end. And yes Krom, I think I'd rather go club some baby seals than spend 30 games in AV grinding honor. I'd rather die a thousand deaths to roving bands of allies on the Island than that. But I digress.

I'm starting to think Mal is just being nice about my mediocrity because he doesn't want me to feel bad. As much as I appreciate him being a friend and being nice, it's not a good feeling since, again, I've been dumping a lot of time and effort into this and still getting less than mediocre results. He has a friggin 1780 rating in less than 2 weeks on his Resto Shammy. It's not his skill (and probably not his gear) that's the issue here.

Ah well. I guess I gotta just suck it up and grind the honor.

*shudder*

2v2 Arena Team

I'll say this up front: arena night has been making me very grumpy for the last week or so, to the point where it's been making me not fun for the guildies to hang around on a Monday night, and has become this gigantic thorn in my side I keep ranting about despite the fact that in all honestly...

I don't really care about instanced PvP. I only care about Arenas because it is a Big Deal to my guild mates, and thus it became a Big Deal to me.

I'm a conformist, and I know it. It's not all bad, but it causes some interesting arguments with myself, especially when my schedule gets out of whack. I'm sorry, but I'm tired of logging on for 5v5 at my bedtime then waiting around for 30 minutes or more to do a 45 minute set. It's too late, and I have enough motivation issues at work without being sleep deprived too.

So last night I finally got a break from the Arena issues I've been having. My good buddy Mal and I formed a Rogue/Priest 2v2 team. It was hella late last night, especially after the damn allies killed me while I was trying to turn in the charter. What's up with that, don't you have better things to do than make my life miserable? And what's up with Blizzard putting a time-intensive activity like choosing a team banner in a place where you can get killed? I understand this is PvP, but come on, that's just not cool. Fortunately, I have awesome guildies who rode over and distracted the allies while I turned in the charter. Props to Nativ, Krom, and Farty for the help.

We got our minimum 10 games in and went 5-5. not too shabby considering Mal hasn't had a gear upgrade in ages and I haven't bitten the bullet and gone over to Arena Discipline yet. The idea of speccing out of Holy makes me want to cry, scream, and hide under a rock. But I'll probably try it for him, especially since he's paying for it. That and I'm a pushover and not good at arguing for what I want.