Sunday, December 23, 2007

Sad story

My gnome warrior Dizzie is happily lvling up nowadays. She is fury specced and its one of the cutest things I have ever seen, watching her charge away to a mob and start hitting the tall ugly thing with her glowing [Phantom Blade] (made for her especially by my adorable <3 husband) and some off-hand axe.

As she hit 44 she went to Tanaris to start questing there. Picked up the wastewander water quests and the ones that lead you into Pirate Cove. You would have thought she'd be 45 within some hours with all these easy questing and the rested bonus.

Well, think again. Tanaris seemed to be filled with sad no-life coward hordes and Dizzie spent more time running from the gy than actually getting any xp.

I never attack horde players when I see them, no matter what level or what they are doing. I just leave them be.

All (and I mean all, every single one I saw) of the horde players I encountered in Tanaris that day attacked Dizzie sooner or later. If they were of about equal level they snuck off when they saw her and waited until she was already in combat before they went for her, if they were some ?? lvl helping out some lower lvls they just attacked her on sight.


An all too frequent sight in the Tanaris desert :-(

(I know I am on a pvp server and should get used to it - I started playing here because the kids were playing here and by the time I found out that there were servers that didn't allow ganking I had too many characters and too many new friends on this server to really like the idea of changing servers. I think many people are like me in this aspect.)

Dizzie has crap gear. She sucks at pvp. She generally just ambles merrily along, picking up quests and doing them cheerfully, not bothering anyone. However, this constant running from the gy was beginning to get on my nerves and I decided to get some revenge.

I logged Tessy, my rogue, flew her off to Tanaris and parked her in the Pirate Cove. She also has crap gear, she also sucks at pvp but she is a lvl 70 subtlety specced rogue, she doesn't have to be good to kill lvl 50 wankers.

And kill them she did.

Some idiot lvl 51 priest, who did see Dizzie but skulked away and didn't start dotting her until she was fighting some freeboter. Shadowstepping rogue = dead priest. He got oneshotted twice and then he got the message and disappeared.

A group of three, some lvl 65 pally helping a 43 or so warrior and mage. Killed them all once and then one-shotted the warrior and mage some times, sapping the pally when he was trying to ress them.

A moonkin druid, same lvl as Dizzie and hadn't been trying to kill her at all so I was beginning to think it might actually be a human playing and not some sad loser al-quaida hangaround. But guess what, ofc he started spamming moonfire on her when she was fighting two mobs at the same time. This particular druid I followed all the way to Steamwheedle Port and made sure he didn't get to turn in any quests. Had to run from the NPC's a few times though, but hey, so what?

And then I asked myself...did this make me any happier? The sad losers were still sad losers, they were not gonna start acting like decent human beings no matter how many times I killed them. Dizzie was still dead and not getting any xp.

No, it was definitely not making me any happier.

It is said that revenge is a dish best served cold and I think I see the meaning of that proverb now. Revenge while being pissed off is not a good thing, it only makes you feel even more saddened and disgusted.

I just don't get it. Yes, its "only" a game and yes, its "allowed" to kill characters in the game, but do you always go around doing everything just because its "allowed"? CS is a game where the only objective is to kill the enemy players, WoW is not. You don't lose anything by letting enemy players live (ofc they may be sad gankers as well and come back and try to kill you, but that is not likely if you are of a higher level).

Ok, you might wanna do it for the honor (if ofc you even get honor, guess its more than probable that some of the morons don't realise that you don't get any honor when you kill players that are grey for you). So you get what, 5 honor?, for killing me. If you want honor go play one of the bg's, more honor there than you could possibly get by killing random world encounters.

Or maybe you want to show off how good you are at killing opponents? Well, if you think that its showing off killing someone several lvls below you or someone who is already engaged in a fight, you need your head examined. Maybe the results would show that you have a brain or at least some cognitive capabilities, but I really doubt that.

I think that those who go around killing other players in have the same mentality as those who don't help people with prams or wheelchairs get on the bus, they are the same kind as those who can't be bothered to hold the door open for you but rather let it slam shut in your face - hey! it would have taken me a few secs to wait and hold the door open, cba with that!

It just saddens and disgusts me that a game I like to play so much seems to be overflowing with such rude a***holes.

It's a good thing I have met so many nice and friendly people too, otherwise I'd have no hopes left for humanity...

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Monday, December 17, 2007

How not to start a career in healing

My shadow priest Jools has been slacking a little lately, not been getting around much. On a whim, I decided to go holy!

Jools has actually been shadow only for a short time, from about half of 67 to 70. Before that she was heavily into the discipline tree - luuuv that reflective shield! When doing the very rare boost for some low lvl friend I used to put on the shield and then just run through the mobs - they killed themselves getting their own damage reflected back at them ;P

Also the mana regen in a heavy disc spec was pretty amazing, hardly ever needed to sit down for a drink (this was very nifty since Jools been a little of my grind-bot, grinding rep for those sweet enchanting and jewelcrafting recipes, timbermaws anyone?)

Had a very brief stunt rearranging my talent points in the mid-60's, getting that angel talent for the spirit buff, which buffed the mana regen even more. It was about this time that I agreed to come heal in Auchenai for some pug.

I told them I was disc and not very used to healing and it was ok with them. Maybe not the most efficient group, a few of them got killed some times in the pulls in the first room, and then I got killed too. Woosh, the angel shape hovers above the rest of the valiant fighters and I watch them die.

When running back, one of them kindly asked me "You do know that you can heal in angel form, don't you?" Eeh right, had totally forgotten about that *blush*.

Anyways, we kept going but after I while it was painfully obvious that I was way too unexperienced for taking on healing in a pretty chaotic group. Changing healing targets, getting the right heals off, it was just too much for me to keep up so I told them I was sorry but they were probably better off with another healer. They agreed.

(On a side note, maybe I wasn't that bad because one of the party members have asked me to come heal some more times, but I have respectfully declined. Or maybe he was just desperate :-)

So now I respecced to full holy with a small dabble in discipline. Holy Nova (this spell I have actually had in shadow spec too - hihihi when aoeing those ballroom packs in Kara), the Lightwell and the Circle of Light - instant (instant!) spell that heal the target and his party members for about 450. Not that mana heavy either, and it scales with bonus healing.

Equipped my healing gear and blushed. Blushed for 2 reasons - why does some gear look like its designed for table dancing or other dubious activities? The dev's at Blizz definitely need to go out and get some fresh air occasionally. 2nd reason - about 1100 healing bonus, half of my gear greens of the prophet or of the physician. (Actually have a pair of sweet epic healing gloves, the [Gloves of Saintly Blessings] that my guildies forced upon me on an earlier Kara run when all of the present healers had better.)


Jools in her K-mart healing gear. Note the fishnet sleeves, the daring deep v-cut top, the pants that somehow lack the parts between the knees and the hips and the huge turqoise musceteer boots.

So the raid time came and we all went off to Karazhan to start decimating the number of its denizens. Three healers, me, a resto shaman and one of our shadow priests healing as well.

The rest of the nights raid were pretty well geared, having been there many times and I suddenly understood why some of our healers are complaining when I am tanking with my pretty bear - I had nothing to do! The damn tanks hardly got damaged!

(On a related side note, some of our healers are known to go pull more mobs when this happens just to avoid falling to sleep due to inactivity. I was thinking about doing this but decided against it, I'll pull when I am in bear gear but not when I am in my fragile glass outfit ;P)

Wohoo, 100 hp's lost, let me give you a renew!

Someone in the melee getting damaged - ooo let me try my instant group heal!

Hmm maybe I should throw the tank a frisbee, just on the off chance he gets damaged.

Prayer of healing, now this is a nice one, maybe I should use it pre-emptively just in case some unforeseen aoe damage happens!

The night ended after 4 hours of raiding, Huntsman, Moroes, Maiden, Opera, Aran and the Chess Event all cleared without a wipe, 4 new shinies for Jools shadow outfit but none for her healing.

So why is this not a good way to start your healing career you ask? Well, how am I to learn how to handle aggro management, chaotic multiple pulls and such like when we raid like a well-oiled machine?

Hmm I guess I am never happy unless I have something to whine about ;P

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Alt-itis

I need a goal to play. I need something tangible to aim for and I need to see that I am getting there. Before TBC came out I hit 60 with my rogue and pretty much stopped playing with her. No more getting xp = no more fun. Went to the occasional pug raid but not much else, and started leveling my alts instead.

Nowadays, I think gearing up is pretty fun too, so I actually play with my 70's even though they are not getting any xp.

But the other day I didn't know what to do anymore, all out of ideas and shiny things to aim for.



My druid has pretty much the best tanking gear she's gonna get without having to start doing 25-man's. She needs the t4 gloves and helm from kara but everything else is really just sidegrades and really not worth the copious amount of effort to try to replace.

I can't decide how to do with my priest, holy, disc, shadow, a mix? She's got a lot of shadow gear and her healing gear is atrocious so I am saving up for the whitemend set for her, but other than that? Get some gladiator gear? Nah, not sure what to get and I don't feel like bg'ing a lot.

My warlock is kinda hibernating atm, mostly use her to fly around on her pretty nether ray and mine ore nodes to sell for gold.

So what to do?

Stop playing WoW and go for a break? Naaah how am I ever gonna pass all that time that I usually spend in Azeroth, I'd go mad with so much time on my hands ;P

I know - the universal solution! An alt!

And just to improve things, I pulled not one but two of my low lvls out of their beauty sleep - my little gnome warrior Dizzie and the obligatory draenei shaman started when everyone and their grandmother made an ally shaman the day after TBC came out.

So Dizzie went around an explored and is currently the distinguished lvl of 44. Larue, my baby shaman is now lvl 27 and going higher at breakneck speed.

Leveling is really so much faster than it used to be, and I think my two new little babies will hit Outland in a month or two, and then I have even more girls to gear up - what to do then? Hmm, a new alt maybe....

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Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Fun fighting

Went to Zul'Aman again last night with my oh so sweet and well-shaped beautifully furry bear Joaquime.

The reason I always express how fit and lovely sleek she is is because some of my guildies have gotten it into their head that she is fat! Sure, she is bigger than a gnome (but then again, who isn't bigger than a gnome? well, another gnome, I guess...) but she is the perfect size for a she-bear, cuddly without being obese, muscular without being arnold, soft and smoothly furred without the ragged bristles of a dwarf beard.

Anyways, it was a fast smooth run to the first boss, Nalorakk. We missed the sacrifice time though, but not with too many minutes so I see us making that deadline pretty easily soon. Boss fight went fine as well, downed him in the first try and he dropped [Robe's of Heavenly Purpose] for one of our healers (gratz! niiiice robe).


As we gathered up for our customary screen shot of posing at the boss's dead body I was muttering on ts about how tank intense this boss fight was - this is the first fight I have experienced that have actually required me to be 110% focused all the time!

Not that I slack a lot on other fights, I usually try to stay (mostly) focused even when I carry on a conversation with my family or watch the telly at the same time or do something else that I can do with just one eye on my screen ;P. But this fight? Not a chance! Talking from the immense statistical sample of two (2) successful fights, I can tell that my eyes are glued to the screen, my fingers are sweaty, my heart rate is going through the roof and I seriously doubt I would have reacted to any kind of noise or disturbance outside the rectangular TFT that is my whole world during these minutes.

Why is this fight such a sucker for concentration then?

Well, I think it's because if you make a single teeny weeny mistake like missing a taunt or taunting too soon or not being able to balance your threat between the dps's and the other tank's, you wipe the raid. There is no way to make up for even a slight mistake, if you slack off too much doing white damage only to reduce the risk of an unlucky crit making the boss switch target to you the dps is up there nosing on your threat and you risk not being able to hold aggro when you try to taunt the troll to you after he shapeshifts.

By the way, Nalorakk is a big fat bear if ever I saw one....

This got me thinking - which kind of fights is fun? And my replies here are from a purely tanking perspective, it would be a very long post idd if I should start elaborating on which fights my other girls find fun - those I can list in another post.

The Nalorakk fight is fun but very demanding. (Well, maybe after I have been there, done that many more times I will be a little more relaxed about it).

Many of the boss fights in Kara is actually pretty boring to tank, like the Maiden or the Curator. You just stand there in front of the boss, lacerating, mauling, mangling, shouting and faerie firing, waiting for the dps to get their act together and wear the ugly mofo down. On some rare occasions a triggerhappy mage or hunter starts showing off too soon, getting aggro, making me wake up and pay attention to what I am doing and rush to get that aggro back to me. Sometimes the aggro thief dies, sometimes this causes a wipe (and a lot of exasperated words from our raid leader, who actually is a big softie at heart I think, despite his attempts to be fearsome (yes, I am talking about you ;P)), most of the times I get the mob's attention back and can go back to watching the Simpsons or South Park or whatever again.

On another tangent: why do hardly anyone who has accidentally gotten aggro run to the tank? I want the aggro, you don't, but still you run around like a headless chicken screaming for help. My taunt is on a 10 sec cd, my charge is on a 15 sec cd so it might take some seconds for me to get that thing beating on you to start beating on me instead, and if you run away, you might be dead by then. So run TO me, not FROM me when you get unwelcome attentions.

So the difference between the Nalorakk fight and the Maiden or the Curator is that Nalorakk actually requires you to pay attention when you tank.

The Moroes fight is pretty fun, especially if you are tanking one of his compadres as well, giving you something to do when Moroes vanishes.

The Opera fights are fun. The Big Bad Wolf that requires you to have fast reflexes and start running when you turn into the sweeet little Red Riding Hood, no sleeping on the job there. The Wizard of Oz that requires you to pick up the nasty little yapper when he spawns, and/or make sure you hit the feared Roar enough to make him go for you when the fear wears off. The least fun of them all, Romulo and Juliet that requires raid coordination enough to make the doomed lovers die at the same time, but hardly any tank skills at all.

Trash pulls can be fun, multiple pulls that require you to tank more than one mob and go pick up any cc'd mobs that have gotten loose. Or one of those party pulls in Moroes room that often is accompanied by a uh-oh, we got a waiter as well! Pick up the waiter fast, roar and swipe the non-elites at the same time and save the day!

Any fight that you can start with Feral Charge is off to a good start - the Charge is by far the funniest ability in WoW. Every time Joa or my gnome warrior charges off ultra fast, zigzagging past obstacles to get to the mob, I laugh out loud - it just looks so silly :-)

Ah well, I could go on and on about fights and tanking, but I see a pattern here. Fights that require you to do something, fights that needs more than just a sliver of your attention, surprising things, accidental pulls, cc'd mobs getting loose, seems to be the fun fights and the pure tank and spank fights seem to be the boooring ZZZzzzzZZZZ ones (well, that wasn't so surprising, now, was it?)

So after we killed Nalorakk yesterday we went exploring a little, killed off lynxes, beast tamers and crocolisks and tried the lynx boss Hazzizi (who hit me for more than 16 k! 16 k! That is like my whole life!) I must say that ZA seems to have a lot of fun fights potential (or maybe its just because its new ;P)

Something to think about: The Amani Hex Sticks that drops are used on the hexed frogs jumping around in the instance, to de-hex them, turning them back to whatever form they were before the frog-form. These de-hexed people wander off to the first room where you enter the instance and hang out there. I wonder if something will happen when you have de-hexed enuff people? Maybe they will throw a party or something?

And with this interesting tidbit of musing I will leave you for know, gotta go visit my friends in Azeroth.

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Friday, November 30, 2007

A raid = a hockey game?

Went to a hockey game yesterday, the first in more than 15 years I think. I live five minutes walk from the hockey rink and our local team is pretty successful, but I have not really been that interested really... But this time one of our subcontractors from work who sponsors the hockey team was hosting the game this evening and invited me to come along. So I did. Good food, imba seating, free beer and wine, and this particular match was between the two league leaders (=supposedly intense exciting fight) so how could I not go?

Anyways, the game was pretty intense, and the visiting team scored their first goal after just a few minutes of play. Our local heroes defended well and evened it out after just a few minutes more.

As I sat there watching the game play, screaming in joy when our team scored and muttering away when the visiting nasties did, I experienced a very tangible echo from our raids...


I could almost hear our GM if he had been raid leading the hockey team, "guys, guys, why did the other team score?" and almost see the rest of us standing there trying to look inconspicous "who me? did I do something wrong?".

The tempo of the game also reminded me of raiding, fast intense action followed by a whistle blow and a lot of waiting around, or in our case, fast intense killing followed by a break and the ressing of any dead people lying around.

Even the constant switching of hockey players, chains going in and out (I am not a hockey fan even in Swedish so I apologize if I use the wrong English sports term) reminded me of the main/alt switching that sometimes happen in our raids. Need two warriors for the trash pulls up to the curator? Niemas problemas, I log my druid or our GM his warrior. Could use another shackle for Moroes? Say no more, let me pull my shadow priest out and replace my warlock.

As the game progressed, the visiting team got the upper hand. 2-2 after the first period and the second ended 4-3.

Our local boys' usual goalie had been injured in a previous game and the goalie standing in today was just borrowed from another team. He was not used to playing with our team and they not with him. This became obvious as the visiting team kept pushing and pushing and scoring and scoring...

Sometimes when we raid we are like the dura-bunny, like a well-oiled machine, we all know each other, we are prepared without having to think about it, we cover up for each others mistakes and we just keep going and going. Sometimes when we raid we have new people with us. We must stop and explain things. We must adjust. We must react to things that we are not used to and we do not understand each other that well all the time. During these raids we occasionally (but not always! not by far always!) wipe. With those groups we need more team practice before we can go on and on and on and on....like our home town team and their borrowed goalie.

Despite the not-so-good prospects of winning our locals kept trying to get back and score and keep the fight going. Much like us on our last ZA attempt, when we wiped and tried again and wiped and tried again. Unlike our hockey heroes, however, we ended my first ZA raid by getting that damn troll boss down (tired, sweaty fingers, high heart rate, dry eyes from staring at the bloody screen, damn scared of missing a taunt or getting an unlucky crit, but we did it!), but the hockey raiders had a time limit to contend with as well and after 3x20 minutes played they had to admit defeat to the visiting mobs.

The game ended 7-3 to the visitors and it was a downtrodden team and audience who walked home from the hockey rink that night....

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First go for Nalorakk

So…Zul’Aman…

My first visit there, second or even third for some of my guildies, no boss down ever.

Hmm, cool Indiana Jonesy-feel about the place, was humming to myself the characteristic theme song from the movies. And who do I bump into? None other than Harrison Jones, who wanted our help banging a gong to open the wooden gates. And of course we happily obliged :-)

As we fought and oops – I died and fought and wtf! – I died and fought again on our way to the first boss several notes of interest turned up.


Interesting note 1: You can’t mount up on the stairs (apparently stairs are not considered to be outdoors, no matter how much open sky you have above your head) but you can mount once you get off the stairs.

Interesting note 2: The trolls can be mind controlled, frost trapped and sheeped, although the MC and traps broke sometimes after just a few seconds for no apparent reason – needs researching as to why.

Interesting note 3: The beasts can be frost trapped, sheeped and sleeped, and it can be all this at the same time! This we discovered on the last pack before the first boss when one of the beasts somehow got loose and stomped towards our bunched up raid of two-or-three-shottable but very fast reacting healers and dps’ers.

Interesting note 4: The beasts sometimes apply a debuff called Crushing Armor (I think) to the tank which reduces your armor by 10 k for the debuff’s duration! I was pretty glad I still had 13 k armor left when that debuff hit me. If you are not a thick-hided dodgy bear like me yell out loud when the debuff hit you so your healers won’t miss it.

Interesting note 5: And if that nasty armor debuff wasn’t enough, the beasts also roars deafeningly on occasion, increasing their damage output by 25 %!

After a few wipes (well now I tell a lie again, it was more than a few…or maybe I don’t tell a lie? How many is a few? More than one, obviously, but is it five? Ten? Hmm, think I must research this matter more thoroughly…

On a similar key, one of our raiders went afk yesterday saying ’brb 1 sec’. Of course he was away more than 1 second, and his attempt at explaining his very long 1 second by claiming he was so fast he was experiencing time dilation so that 1 second for him probably was more than that for us was not recieved favorably by the rest of us. The next time he went afk he hedged his bets by saing ’brb, several seconds’. Naturally one of us timed him, and he was gone for a little more than a minute (hmm gone in 60 seconds?), which some of us found a little too much to fit in the ’several seconds’ time frame. But how many seconds is several actually? Oh well, back to the topic at hand after this lengthy off-on-a-tangeting…)

I start again:

After a few wipes we got some tactics for the boss friends pulls down (since the boss himself was such a chicken he always ran away when we had killed his compadres).
The two mounted trolls in the middle of the stairs (cross and skull).
One tank on each, nuke the skull til he dismounts at about 15%. Sheep his beast, kill the skull and start nuking the cross. Kill the cross first when he dismounts, his beast second and then go for the sheeped beast.

The four-pack in front of the troll boss’s last runaway hideyhole (top of his terrace).
One tank on one of the mounted trolls (cross), sheep one of the unmounted trolls (moon), MC the other pedestrian troll (green) and use it to attack the last mounted troll (skull). Go easy on the dps on the skull first to let the MC’d troll get aggro and use him as tank when you kill the skull. Have a tank of your own ready to pick up the mount when the skull troll dismounts, kill the skull fast, the mount second and the MC’d troll third. Cross troll and mount next, sheeped troll last. Easy as pie ;P

And so the boss, nowhere left for him to run....

Not really a tricky fight, just get the taunts right and its not that bad a fight. Get the taunts wrong and its a wipe for sure. Make sure that you are below the tanking tanks threat but above all else’s – that is the tricky part when the threat levels start to come close to each other, one unlucky crit will too easily make the boss switch attention. So we spent a few tries getting the hang of it and it was with real sweaty fingers (on my part at least) that we downed him!

And the sweet troll boss dropped [Bladeangel’s Money Belt ] for me!

Real nice of him!

And since Zul'Aman resets every 3 days I see us going back there a lot to kill off Nalorakk and the rest of his friends many many times :-)

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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Guildies gone missing

I got a whisper the other day from one of my guildies asking why a certain person had been gkicked. I racked my memory and answered that the particular player hadn’t been online for more than two months.

In our guild we do it like this: if someone isn’t online for more than a month without in some way letting us know he/she will be gone for quite a long time but still wish to remain in the guild, that player is moved to inactive status. After another months inactivity the player is gkicked.

Hmm, not a very nice way to treat people we like, my guildie said, and I replied well that it wasn’t very nice of the player in question to not even bother letting us know he/she would be away for some time. He (I will from now on refer to any player as he unless I know it's a she, not because of any gender issue, just because of lazyness) could have told us before he left, he could have contacted any of his msn contacts, he could have dropped a note on our guild forum.


Well, maybe it wasn’t a planned WoW break, maybe it was just a period of not playing that somehow got prolonged into lasting more than two months. Its no big deal, it's a game and sometimes you get tired of a game and then your top priority is probably something else than letting people that you don’t know and don’t really care about know you won’t be around for a while.

But what if you do care?

Last night our GM and raid leader for the night didn’t turn up. He had scheduled a raid in the GroupCalendar and people had signed up but he himself failed to appear on time. Or after time, for that matter. Long after time.

Three hours after the start time he had still not turned up and his msn was still offline. He is not online every day and but if he schedules or signs up for something he is there. Always.

This is a guy I talk to almost daily. Sometimes we say not much more than hi to each other, sometimes we talk a lot about WoW and our guild, sometimes we talk a lot about more personal things. He yells at me when we raid (well he yells at everyone when we raid so I don’t take it too personally), we have had some severe clashes of opinions but agree on a lot of things and he has helped me through some pretty rough spots when I needed a shoulder to cry on (jokingly referred to him as my online unpaid shrink once). He is from one end of Europe and I am from the other and we had never spoken before we met in STV a year and a half ago.

Had we met and talked like this in person I would without doubt have called him my friend and I would have been very worried if he had failed to appear like this. It was not like him at all.

The next day his msn was still offline and I was at work and unable to check in WoW. In the afternoon my msn chimed with a message from him and I promptly started yelling at him for his making me worried that something bad had happened to him.

Turns out he had had a severe Internet disconnection and hadn’t been able to relog until just now (well, that was bad but not as bad as it could have been).

So this particular story had a happy ending, but what if it hadn’t …

Lesson learned: when someone you meet cease being just a brief aquaintance and become a real friend that you care about, make sure you have some other way of getting in touch with them than just through a nickname on the ’net.

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Saturday, November 17, 2007

Patch goodies

I have to say that the 2.3 patch is the best patch ever! Sooo many new fun things!

After having flown around the lakes in Zangarmarsh for an hour, fishing in every pool I found I got it! The [Weather-Beaten Journal], which taught me the ability to Find Fish!

Happier than a teenager home alone on a Friday night when his parents forgot to lock the bar cabinet (and that can be the very essence of happiness, trust me on this, I have 3 teenies at home and even remember how it felt like myself ;P) I flew around looking for those yellow spots which indicates FISH HERE! And they are all over the place! Never realised there were so many pools around when I had to find them manually!


Always liked to fish but now I luuuv it! Happy Tess!

Tessy is also very happy about the new daily cooking quests! Given by the goblin named The Rokk close to the Netherwing Dragon sellers in Shattrah, she has so far gotten 3 new cooking recipes:

[Kibler's bits ] to make your hunter's pets even happier (I wonder if the pets would prefer Kibler's bits or [Sporeling snacks]?)

[Stormchops], a fun recipe that makes you zap nearby enemies for 30 minutes. The zapping actually does a little Nature damage, and it is no good to have eaten this if you are a rogue trying to stealth up to kill two humanoid mobs at the same time. The sapped one will get zapped too, getting damaged, and you will have two angry mobs hammering away at you :/.

The ingredients for this dish are 1 Lightning Eel and 1 Clefthoof Meat. Heard someone say that the waters outside Karazhan was full of Lightning Eels, but 30 minutes of fishing there yielded only 2 Eels but a lot of Bloodfin Catfish and Crescent-Tail Skullfish. Flew off to Winterspring instead and fished in the Hotsprings there. Much better droprate - got about 10 Lightning Eels in 20 minutes of fishing there!

[Skullfish Soup] , which conveniently enough is cooked with Crescent-Tail Skullfish,which I just happened to have an abundance of after last day's fishing for Eels :-)

Also happy Joaquime! She is an alchemist and since I like to have all recipes/patterns/designs/formulas/whatever for all my professions I have gotten her exalted with Sporeggar for their [Shrouding Potion]. Btw, was does this potion do anyways? I can't seem to notice that I am shrouded in anyway?
[Edit: Aha, now I know what it does! It works like a rogue's Feint, lowering your threat when you are fighting! Could be useful when healing since I don't have that many (=zero) threat lowering capabilitis)

And in the new patch, another exalted reward was introduced: the Tiny Spore Bat!



This is one if the cutest pet I have ever seen! (Well, the piglet Mr Wriggly and the baby elekk Peanut comes close, but this one sparkles!)

That was all for now, folks, more to come as I continue my journeys thru Azeroth and the Outlands!

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Demonic macros

So,I couldn't resist anymore, I specced my little lock back to demonology...

I use her too much for questing still to be comfortable with that destruction build I tried. Also, I heard that for a destro build to be really effective you need an awful lot of spell hit, which I didn't have (always good to find some scientific reasoning to back your decision, eh?)

Anyways, I like the demo spec and I just luuuv my Felguard, he's so protective of my little gnome (well he is more than twice her size so she can hide very well behind him).

Paynne has by far the most spells possible to use at the same time than any other of my girls (or maybe I just haven't discovered all the other girls' spells...ah well) and I use a lot of macros when I play her.


I have scoured forums and other venues of information to get my macros the way I want the, and I have shamelessly stolen snippets from anything that I thought I could use...so I figured maybe I should share some.


Summon Minion [Edited 2008-03-05]
Since I usually quest with my Felguard out this is a very convenient macro:

#show Fel Domination
/run PetAbandon()
/stopcasting
/cast [nocombat, nopet] Summon Felguard
/castsequence [combat] Fel Domination, Summon Felguard

[Edit: the bold text above (nopet) added to make the macro work as intended]

The macro is read from the top down. The first line shows if the cd on the spell Fel Domination(15 minutes) is ticking.

What this macro does is the following:

If your Felguard is out, in our out of combat, one press on this macro will dismiss him.

Why is it useful to dismiss your pet in the heat of the battle, you might ask. It is useful only if you plan to use your Fel Domination (you know, the spell that lets you summon your minion in 0,5 second - whooosh and he's back) and resummon him, because when you do that, he will come back with full health/mana and all those buffs he had on when you dismissed him! If he dies and you Fel Dominate him back, he will come back unbuffed (although still with full health/mana). Takes a bit of concentration to see what how your minion is getting damaged and keep track of his health as well as your own, and get that key-clicking to work, but if you manage to pull it off the difference between unbuffed and buffed might help save the day :-)

The next line checks to see if you are in combat and if you are not you summon your Felguard the usual 10 second way.

The last line also checks to see if you are in combat, and if you are you cast Fel Domination on the first click and Summon Felguard on the second click.

So, to sum up:
Pet out - click once for dismissal
No pet and in combat - click twice to summon
No pet and out of combat - click once to summon

Pretty nifty, eh?


Paynne and her darling Felguard in the big city.



Seduce
Yeye, I am a warlock, we have a way to cc humanoids, and its called SEDUCE. Ever heard of it? I think many people, including warlocks, have not. It is a tricky thing to pull off correctly, and since it relies on a spell channeled by a succubus who might as well be made of glass, it has a big risk of gettin fubared unless you have practiced it before trying it on in a multi-pull in a 70's instance.

/focus [modifier:shift]
/cast [target=focus, modifier:ctrl] Curse of Shadow
/clearfocus [target=focus, dead]
/petpassive
/cast [pet:Succubus, target=focus, harm, nomodifier] Seduction

We have a hunter in our guild who is one of the best trappers I have ever seen (well we have many bit this particular one I have played with a lot), and when I tank with him in my group I never worry about the mob with the blue square on. I know he will take care of it most assuredly, trapping, kiting, whatever's needed, while at the same time dishing out an enormous amount of damage on the other mobs.

I want to be able to use my succy seduce like that hunter uses his frost traps. I am not even close at the moment, but I will get there (I hope).

This is how you use the macro (btw if you choose the red ? as the icon for you macro it will display the correct icon for whichever spell you have in it):

You target the mob you want to seduce and then you hold down shift while clicking the macro. The mobs portrait will get a shiny border so you see that you have set it as focus correctly.

Now you can target any other mob you like, your focus will still be set on your chosen mob. When the pull starts, I usually hold down ctrl and click the macro to cast a Curse of Shadow on the focused mob to lower its resistance to the Seduce and to get it running in my direction, to me and my succubus next to me, and then I hit it with a Searing Pain to get me high on the mobs threat list. After that, click my seduce macro, watch the mob start spouting hearts, and switch target to the skull.

Now I blast happily away on my nuke target pressing my seduce macro about every 15 seconds or so (I have improved Seduce) to keep the focused mob in the seventh heaven. The Curse of shadows and the Searing Pain is usually enough to keep the mob from going for the healers or my made-of-fragile-glass succy the first times the seduce is reapplied.


Paynne and her hot succubus out on a Seduce practice run.



I have some more nice warlock macros that I will post at a later time, now I better post this or I will keep editing it forever ;P

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Friday, November 16, 2007

Just the Bare Necessities?

So how did you spend the patch day?

I got my baby warrior Dizzie out of her hibernation, scuttled over to Theramore and cheered at the sight of so many new yellow exclamation marks! I love doing quests! Happy as a hobbit in a wine cellar she ran around exposing agitators – but wait? Why didn’t I get credit for exposing them? Got just 1/5 and I had killed/scared off more than that! Bugged q or what? *getting mad at Blizz for another patch day f-k-up!*

But wait again - *blush* - I realised I was in a raid group…was waiting for the other raiders to show up and we had already started invites… ah well, it was time for me to let my baby rest up a little more and get one of my big girls up to action again.


Wednesday is one of our usual Kara raid days and (despite it being patch day) we clung to tradition and went there to kill off some of the nasty denizens of that dreary cobwebbed place.

For some reason that I can’t recall at the moment I was there on my (usually) lethal feral druid Joaquime (think we were a little short of healers at the time as they were downloading the patch after work and I had offered to heal at the first bosses so we could get the raid started, but I am not sure…my memory is excellent, only very short…)

Anyways, the healers popped up after all and I shifted into bear for the those trash clears to the Huntsman. I haven’t been tanking in Kara for months and was a bit surprised to find that I could not pull aggro from the other tank, a warrior.

Our gm’s warrior has always been a bit tricky to pull aggro from but far from impssible, the other warrior I used to run with was way too easy to overaggro, all I used to do was hit the mob and it immediately switched its attention to me, didn’t even have to use growl or anything. (And before anyone starts yelling at me for pulling aggro off the other tank so the healers have to ping pong heal, I do it to get some extra nice rage going and then I don’t mind giving it back for the rest of the fight).

This one warrior, however, was impossible to peel. Even when I used growl which, if I recall correctly, is supposed to glue the mob’s attention to you for 6 seconds, all I got was a lousy blink of the mob’s target switching before he went back to hammering away on my plate-clad friend. Gah, I had to use enrage throughout that entire trash clear except when I was tanking a mob or two of my own.

Well, this warrior and also our gm’s warrior have been running thru Kara for many weeks now while I have been ambling along far behind on mostly my warlock Paynne or my priest Jools, so I guess I am pretty undergeared compared to them.

And some nice leather gear actually did drop during that run, [Edgewalker Longboots ] from Moreos and [Bracers of Maliciousness ] from the Maiden, both of which would have been a huge upgrade for my kitty cat, but they went to a hunter instead of me. (Actually, the Huntsman dropped the [Bracers of the White Stag] for me since noone else wanted them, could be useful if I ever respecc to Moonkin).

Well, they were more than huge upgrades for the hunter too so its not that I mind him getting them, and I guess I could have argued my case if I wanted them and I didn’t bother, but still…when is a bear a bear and when is she a cat? Is the bare necessities for the bear only and not for the cat?

I am feral specced, which happens to encompass both bear and cat shapes. I am not either-or, I am both. I tank when tanking is needed, I do pretty good dps when dps-ing is needed. Actually I heal when healing is needed too since was healing at the Maiden in my healing gear, my druid HoTs are pretty neat even in feral specc. And now that I think about it, I was actually blasting my way to the Maiden with starfires and moonfires and wrath’s, courtesy of the new +spell damage on the healing gear, otherwise the only way I would have killed any mob was if it had laughed itself to death at the pitiful spell damage I could do in my healing gear. Hmm, I guess this raid did get to see me shine in all my capabilities…=)

For those pulls and/or boss fights that don’t require two tanks I do immensly more dps in kitty shape that in bear, and if we have two tanks already I might stay in cat form for the whole run.

I don’t want to roll on healing or spell damage gear unless noone else needs it, but what about dps gear? The pure tanking items that drops in Kara that I can use are rare, and some of these my fellow tanks have their eyes set on too, so even if they drop I may not get them. Am I doomed to wait until all rogues/hunters/shamans have gotten their leather dps drops until I can get a shot at them? How am I ever gonna get into Zul’Aman if I can’t upgrade my gear? Am I whining about something that is not an issue really?

Well, I have found two ways to resolve this not-really-a-problem-but-could-be:
* I will check the Kara loot lists and actually do the maths for which items would be an upgrade for me, both in bear and in cat form
* I will keep going to Kara with my druid (well, with all of my attuned girls actually) and get me those nice [Badges of Justice ] for the sweet rewards

I won’t be imba geared in a week or even two with this strategy, but at least I have a plan. And then I will grab that aggro back from those plate-clad target dummies easier than…, than…ehh, well, easier than a very easy thing!

Raid evaluation
- The new ”change out of bearform if you accidentally press a spell that you can’t use in bearform”-ability. NOT a good thing to do while tanking (yeye I know I can disable it but you try to get me to do that in the heat of the battle).
+ We are going pretty well atm. Some new players with us, and only one stupid wipe. Runs still takes a little to long though, we should be able to clear Huntsman, Moroes, Maiden and Opera in less than 2 hours.

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Thursday, November 15, 2007

Nice and not so nice people

We have a sweet warrior in our guild who is the nicest player ever – he is cool, friendly, helpful and generelly so fun to be around that you sometimes wonder what dark schemes of world domination he is plotting just because your own jaded cynical mind can’t really believe that some people are just nice….

Anyways, this sweet guy tells me that one of his RL friends who joined our guild some weeks ago is going to transfer to another server to play with some other RL friends there, and he (the transferring friend) wanted him to come along.

Didn’t think to check it at the time, but later that evening (after our first kill ever of the skinny flaming dragon Nightbane! wohoo! /cheer! /party time!) I checked the guild roster, and - lo and behold! – the transferee-to-be was not in it. Added him to my friends list and – surprise, surprise! – player not found.


Checked the armory and no match was found for the [insert transferees name, class, race and level here].

So what gives? Banned account? (Don’t know if a ban actually makes your chars disappear from the guild roster and server). His parents got tired of him playing and made him erase his chars? (Yet another reason not to accept underage people in the guild). Someone hacked his acc and transferred his char from the PvP server we’re at to a PvE server so he can never come back, payed for the transfer with RL money and changed his name while he was at it, but left all his alts in place and gear intact? (Don’t laugh, there is a guy in our guild who actually claims this happened to him).

The now mysteriously missing player joined our guild some weeks ago at lvl 65 or so, he quickly levelled up his char to 70 and was pretty fun to play with. He got his Kara attunement done and wanted to go raiding with us. He has been telling me he has several other level 70’s on another server and has cleared Kara multiple times with them (oooo I am impressed! Why tell me? Put your money where your mouth is if you wanna have a shot at impressing me…)

This is the guy that was a little upset when he didn’t get invited to one of the raids in his first week as lvl 70 (I signed up in the calendar! Invite me!) and when he did get invited he won a roll for the T4 gloves over his RL friend, the sweet warrior. This is the guy that the day after (or even hours after) just folds his teepee and leaves. Without a word. Without saying goodbye. Just poof – gone.

We had a similar case some weeks ago, a player that had been with us for a long time but all that time secretly applying to other guilds (sometimes applying several times, changing his age from 15 to 19, not recognising the names of his alleged former gm’s, generally making himself look a fool). Well, secretly maybe isn’t the word for it since the guild application web sites generally are public, but secretly in the sense that he didn’t share with us that he considered us just a stepping stone for gearing up until a Better Guild would let him tag along.

The day after he got his T4 helm from our very first Prince kill he did like a rogue and vanished. Joined another guild because – guess what? – he wanted to play with his RL friends (you know, the ones that were a true PITA to play with before he was all epicced out). Well, nvm, good riddance.

/rant

WTF IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? How can you discover at level 70 that oh, I want to play with my RL friends (hated their guts until now and wouldn’t ever want to be seen dead in their company before but now they are pretty ok, and btw the fact that I just got some nice epics is entirely coincidental and have no bearing on my decision at all – what do you mean those guilds wouldn’t accept me unless I had some raiding experience and good gear?)

Maybe ”RL friends” is a code phrase for ”people who won’t let me join their uber imba raids no matter how much I whine unless I am geared up and act like a total asshat first”?

I don’t mind players who want to progress more in raiding than what we can offer – we are not going to Gruul or any other raid instance yet – we do Kara, and only Kara, and maybe not even that somedays when we don’t have enough people online because they have other RL things to take care of. If you want more that is ok, you are not automatically an asshat just because you are not content with the way our raiding progresses or because you want to explore more.

You are an asshat when you won’t tell anyone about your concerns or your wishes and never care about the work other people put in to organize runs, you are an asshat when you see the other people you play with as just means to an end, as some in-game feature whose sole duty it is to help you get attuned, get geared up, get group and raid experienced so you can move up to the next tier of soulless in-game features who should help you get that next set of pretty purple outfits (and let’s not forget its also their duty to use their lvl 70’s to boost your alts thru all lower lvl instances for even more leet loot)

We juggle around to get a fun solid raid party going and you just want us to carry you through it? Well, think again…

Yes you were there to help make a successful raid that day, but just because you were there someone else weren’t. I haven’t raided with my darling druid tank Joaquime for a long time because we have many tanks in the guild atm. I want that staff from Illhoof for Joaquime almost as much as I want that staff from Curator for my warlock, but I go to the Illhoof fights with Paynne for now because we need her warlock powahs for that fight. My shadow priest Jools is just shedding her baby teeth in Kara and I won’t bring her to any of the later bosses until she’s geared up a little more. My precious rogue Tessy hasn’t even been to Kara yet beacuse we have had an abundance of melee so far.

But I don’t care about that (very much). I have fun raiding no matter which girl I play, we are getting a solid core of good fun players who value our way of doing things, even if it means that we wipe sometimes and don’t raid at all other times.

Just wish we wouldn’t have to suffer these other morons so frequently. Ah well, if wishes were gold all my girls would have epic flyers by now.

/rantoff

Nightbane raid evaluation
- Came to the raid with my warlock Paynne and a 28 slot soulshard bag that was - empty! Not a little empty, it was a lot empty, nada, totally devoid of anything resembling the pink crystals..*embarrassed just thinking about it* Major horde ganking outside as usual, had to sneak down into the cellars just to get me some shards.
+ Took us a few tries to master the fight, and I switched over to my priest Jools since her mana regen and vampiric embrace healing would help keep us all up – and we killed the ugly malnourished one!

Funniest thing in the raid: our gm and raid leader was going to summon Nightbane, however he tried to accomplish this by using his hearthstone instead of the urn! Wasting one of my shards as I had to run outside to summon him back! Tactics suggestions ensued, all on the lines of ”maybe the OT should try hs-ing, perhaps he’ll drag the skellys with him?”

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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Infinite Mystery part 2

Well, BFU is dead again, after a textbook example fight with me as one of just 2 Staffless casters (note the very real difference between staffless and Staffless, the first being just without any old stick, the latter being found very lacking in the Staff of Infinite Mystery-department).

But in accordance with the great and infinite mystery of luck (or lack of it) the pretty purple stick did not drop.

Anyways, we proceeded to kill Aran, manage the Chess Event and finally kick the Prince's large behind too, all in one smooth run (well, with a few bumps but nothing major).


Raid evaluation
+ I miss my felguard! I feel incomplete without him :-(. However, it is a little more challenging to use different pets for different fights.
- Can't really think of anything negative (this must mean I am improving!)


On another note, my rogue Tessy has finally reached 375 fishing and got her eye on this:

The "Gone fishin" comfy fishing chair from the WoW Trading Card Game! Isn't it lovely?

You can buy the card for about 50 dollars on E-bay and I am debating with myself wheter this constitutes "Playing too much! Way too much!" - no spending any real money on virtual property! or if I can somehow explain to myself why I really neeeeed that comfy chair....

I'll let you know how it turns out....

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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Infinite Mystery

Ever since I saw it drop on my first Curator kill some months ago my warlock Paynne has been drooling over this beautiful staff - The staff of Infinite Mysteries!

Paynne wasn’t there when we downed that big ugly mofo that first time (was short on tanks at the time so I was there on my fit and well-shaped and not at all fat bear tank Joaquime) but she has been there several times after that. The staff has not dropped.

Paynne has missed some of the Curator kills though these last months and I know the staff has dropped then because it seems half the casters in our guild is running around with that pretty purple stick bouncing on their backs.


Anyways, some nights ago Big Fat Ugly was going to go down again, and I brought all my lucky charms with me (well, I tell a lie, I don’t have any lucky charms but I wish I did). Anyways, my (lack of) charms seemed to work, because at Moroes the Nethershard Girdle dropped and I rolled 100 (yes, top score, max roll, the gods of random chance were on my side!) and won it. Or, were the gods on my side now… seems I would have won it even if I had rolled 1 beacuse noone else wanted it…

Also, Big Fat Ugly flatly refused to die that night, and after some stupid tired wipes we decided to call it a night for the night, get some sleep and come kick his butt clear-eyed and clear-headed the next day instead.

I was a bit worried about my damage output in the fight, being demo specced and dragging my lovely sweet Felguard around with me to protect me and chug away distributing pain to anyone trying to hurt me is a sweet way to fight out of instances, but he seems to be pretty impotent against the Curator’s flares and my shadowbolts kept getting interrupted by the arcane discharges, making that 2,5 sec cast time into something more like 5-6 seconds (although it felt like forever or at least 10-15 secs, standing there shaking and sparkling purply) (phew that was a long sentence…)

So I decided to do some talent reshuffling, going for a destruction build with enough in demonology to get demonic sacrifice for that extra spell damage boost..

Back to Curator the day after, quickly clearing the way and into Big Fat Ugly Not Long Left To Live’s room.

Sadly enough, Backlash doesn’t seem to proc on the arcane discharges from the flares, so my hopes for some insta-Shadowbolts was crushed. However, Immolate, insta-Conflagrate and insta-Shadowburn when caught in the discharges and Shadowbolts when not seemed to work pretty good, so eventually Big Fat Ugly Not Long Left To Live turned into Big Fat Ugly And Very Dead.

And when the loot master asks for a drumroll before he shows what has dropped, you just know that it is going to be something pretty….

Sadly (for me) some of my fellow raiders didn’t actually have that staff either, and also sadly (for me) it turned out the gods of random chance were actually laughing at me since I rolled 5 (5!) and thus lowest of all casters present and the pretty staff of my dreams went to a mage instead.
/cry /cry /cry /cry /cry /cry /cry….

Ah well, he’s a sweet mage and I am happy for him and glad he got a nice upgrade. (Also, there will be one less to compete with next time the bloody thing drops…)

I also take comfort in a saying we have here in Sweden that goes something like this:
If you are unlucky in games, you are lucky in love.
So I expect a whole lotta sweet luuuv will be coming my way (hmm, maybe I’d better start dropping some tangible hints to my husband…)


Raid evaluation
+ Sweet fellow warlock who keeps track of soulstoning and health stoning and other warlock duties (also reminded me of how to keep your imp alive during the fights…Passive! Passive! Passive! NOT Defensive! Gah, I have been felguarding too long…)
- I forgot to put the Curse of Doom on the BFU at 1 minute left til evocation – twice!

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Tuesday, November 6, 2007

New Blogger!

I have been littering our guild's forum with tales of my adventures and misfortunes and general tidbits of useless (or...?) information for a long time now.

Sometimes our evil administrator pops up and threatens to lock the threads when I have managed to derail them far enough (and he actually does it once in a while, showing me da powah of forum admins).

Now I will litter this blog instead, sparing my guildies the "oh, a new post, gotta check it out, blah, it's just another of Tessy's rants!"-feelings of disappointment and general sourness at my inability to stay focused on the topic at hand.



This means that you, dear reader, will have to suffer my tales of constant wonder and amazement as I discover more and more of the world of Warcraft (yes, it is possible to discover a new spell in your spellbook at level 70, and wonder if you just had forgotten that you had that spell or if you actually never have used it).

Also a lot of pissed-off ranting will occur as I detail my encounters with the more nasty type of WoW-player (i.e. gankers, fellow raiders who fail to be on time for raids, people who start escort quests without checking too see if everyone is ready, etc).

Irony might be employed to highlight some of my experiences, and sometimes I might cry over some silly thing (or not so silly maybe).

In general, I will use this as a safety valve to blow off some steam or share some of my happiness with the world at large.

Enjoy!


Type rest of the post here

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Tuesday, January 16, 2007

test

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