Mana Battery Bitch

068: Status post

2008-10-28T05:36:00.000-07:00

Still alive, but we do not have the internet at home yet, nor a working PC (should be fixed today) so I haven't had any chance to write. That said, I'm not sure if I will continue to write this blog. I enjoy it and it's been a lot of fun, but things have changed and it may be the best choice to stop.

Still playing WoW whenever I can, though the new job takes up most of my time. Still a mana battery. Still on Dentarg. The only thing that's really changed is the guild (goodbye Kamuflasjefylla!). With the introduction of PvE to PvP server transfers though, I'm sorely tempted to transfer to a no-gank realm. Still a carebear ;)

067: Intermission

2008-08-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

Got a job in Ireland, moving there + moving in with the Paladin in a few days. Very busy. Won't have the 'net for 1-2 months (please send help!). The Paladin has resigned as officer and we've both gone casual rank due to this + with my new job I'll have less time for raiding anyway. It's sad, but real life has to come first after all.

Things to blog about once we're all settled and have been hooked back to ~~life support~~ the internet:
* I HAVE A BUG!
* Kinda sorta but not really a World Dragon kill.
* The Staff. Finally.
* Wait, I'm a Rogue now?
* Reputation addicts.

In other news, boy am I glad I've got tailoring on my main! The flying carpet mount (if it is indeed true) sounds infinitely cool and I will be getting one stat once the expansion hits. Now would someone point me in the direction of where that turban headpiece drops cause I have some farming to do...

066: How Cartographer can get you a girlfriend

2008-07-04T11:01:00.000-07:00

Shortly before I joined Kamuflasjefylla I went on a heroic run of SL with a bunch of them. At that time the only people I knew were Dave, Tammy and Chiwi, so I had no idea who anyone were. During the run, at one point, the Paladin healer pronounces my characters name wrong on vent and I yelled at him for it. A couple of days later, now a member of the guild, that same Paladin whispers me asking if I want to group up for the dailies. He says something about how since he's a healer it takes him 2 hours to kill a mob while I'm built to melt faces. He hadn't needed to present any reasons, I was brand new in the guild and wanted get to know everyone. The next day we team up for the dailies again.

That was December 2007. It's July 2008, now, and we're planning on moving in together soon.

It's funny how Warcraft brings people together - through partychat, guildchat and especially voice chat we get to know each other and form deep friendships. In my guild alone there's at least 5 couples, of which more than half met through the game.

Many months after that first heroic Shadowlabs, Tom/Emerald/Adagio the Pink Paladin revealed to me that it had been my yelling at him for not saying my chars name right that had piqued his interest in me. Or as he so eloquently put it: "...and I thougth, hey! She sounds hot!" (Meanwhile I was feeling bad that I'd shouted at one of the guilds officers and all. :P) When I joined the guild he used Cartographer to ~~stalk me~~ see where I was located, and upon finding me in Skettis that day he whispered asking for a dailies group. Who knew that this little map addon could get you a girlfriend/boyfriend? They ought to advertise this, in my opinion. I'm certain the amount of downloads would skyrocket.

So there you are, the main reason for my absence lately. I went to visit him in England for two weeks in early June, and in a couple weeks time we're going on a mini-holiday together to visit some friends in Ireland. The other reason is that my guild, Kamuflasjefylla, died and was reborn that same month. Our Prot Paladin transfered to play with a friend in a M'uru guild, and both our solid-attendance, awesome-gear Resto Shamans packed up and went with him. So did Dave, who was gearing up his mage (not banned as it was on a separate account) for Sunwell. In the wake after those four left, we lost a DPS Warrior to rerolling Horde and the breakdown of our raiding capability was a fact.

After a few days of considering our options and being politely declined after approaching our servers second best guild asking about a merge, we allied with a Sunwell guild on another server. They were in roughly the same situation as us and were persuaded to transfer over to Dentarg to join us. In the process we abandoned Kamuflasjefylla and adopted the name of the transfering guild: NES. Supposedly it stands for lots of things, like Never Ever Sleep and Never Ending Story, but it does not under any circumstances stand for Nintendo Entertainment System. I'll always miss the old name and the story behind it, but in the end the name you raid under doesn't really matter much. What does matter is that after some horrible weeks and over a month of not even being able to get proper BT/Hyjal raids up, we're back in Sunwell were we belong.

What does not break you makes you stronger, right?

065: Field Trip

2008-05-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

We kept reassuring her that it was just ol' Sillydan and there was nothing to worry about. She didn't seem too convinced. Eventually, after some discreet bribery (strawberry ice cream and a candy bar), we were able to talk her into posing for this shot:

Where did you take your orphan?

Also, if you click to view the larger image, please take notice of that Rogue's name. First time he was with us for an Illidan fight was hilarious: "Alright Shadowdemon, he does this... shadow... demon thing.... you, uh, DPS the... shadow demons... Bwahahahahahaha." "Look, just comitt suicide in phase 4 and we should be okay!!" He was not impressed.

064: RIP Meepmeep

2008-05-20T18:02:00.001-07:00

On May 20th, in the late evening (European time), Blizzard took the names and credit cards numbers that they had obtained and compared it to their database of accounts. The names and numbers were those of people who had purchased the well-known Warcraft bot Glider. They were all perma-banned.

We were in Sunwell, progressing on Brutallus. Since we got him down a few weeks back we haven't been able to repeat it. We lost a few of our strong DPSers to burnout and Age of Conan and exams, and while we've filled in the ranks again, they haven't had the gear to provide sufficient DPS until now. Our first attempt went really well, even without flasks we had enough raid DPS to bring him down.

"Did anyone else just get disconnected?", our raid leader says on vent. He was the only one. Then the disbelief when he tried to log back in. The cries of "You're kidding me, you've got to be kidding me." I was whispered shortly after by a friend asking if anyone in Kamuflasjefylla had just been suspended. Three characters in my friends guild had, only minutes before.

We speculated at first if there was something wrong, since none of them had gotten emails stating why. It became obvious soon enough when the forum threads began popping up.

I first met Dave back in my old guild, when Tieryn was around level fifty-something. He and I got dragged along on a fun-run of ZG and all I remember is that he played a Hunter then, and that he'd given his pet cat his own name. After that I'd bump into him from time to time - sometimes he'd merely be mentioned by my guildmates, other times he'd come with us on an instance run or a heroic run. I grew to like him, an alright fellow that laughed a lot and had so much more experience with BC raiding than us. At some point his Hunter was hacked and destroyed and he switched to playing a Priest. I looked up to him, as he was the only one I really knew who played hardcore and had raided all the instances I secretly dreamed of some day seeing myself. As time passed, he would be the one to invite me into Kamuflasjefylla and give me the chance to fulfill that dream.

He's a nice guy. He doesn't seek to hurt anyone and he isn't the kind of person that would break the law or deliberatly try to mess things up for others. He didn't use the bot to farm for gold, he merely wanted to skip the boring leveling on his new baby hunter, wanting it to get to 70 faster so that he could have his lost Locutus back. He'd talk about his plans to get a pet Scorpion called Bob again and go back onto the barricades, promoting the use of Scoprion pets in high-end raids. He didn't mean any harm. Few people who use bots do. He's a nice guy. Most people who use bots are.

I'm not saying what he did was okay or that his banning was unfair, because it isn't and it wasn't. I'm saying that the people who bot are people like you and me. It might not actually be you and me, but it might be your friend or your guildie. I'm saying that in an instant he was disconnected from the servers forever. His Shadow Priest with five or six pieces of tier 6, Skull of Gul'dan and the Spectral Tiger mount was gone. All because he wanted to speed up the boring leveling process a bit. Most people don't see that as a big deal. It is a big deal.

No matter your reason to use a bot, it is against the Terms of Service. It's not a big thing - it's not like stealing from a store or hurting another person - but it is against the rules you agreed to follow, and thus punishable as per the terms.

Realise what you're risking. Realise it can all be taken away from you in a heartbeat. Everything you've worked so hard for. If you're an end-game raider - realise what you're risking for not just yourself but your entire guild.

When he first logged on, after having namechanged from Cascada to Meepmeep.

The Shadow Council won't ever be the same :/

Goodbye Meepmeep, we had some great times ♥

063: QQ

2008-05-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

For many months now, Tom and I have organised a Karathon every Friday. I do the signups, make sure we have enough tanks and healers and raid lead. He assists me and handles the occasional loot buyer + distributes voids at the end. At first it was all fun and it felt nice to raid lead Kara again like I used to do in my old guild. These days though, it feels like more hassle than it's worth. The below is the list of Rules I want to post in the next signup thread. I won't though, I think it's better to just take a break from running these things altogether.

#1: If you sign up and then get saved before Friday, have the courtesy to let us know. Preferably before we log on Thursday night and see your character is in Karazhan with some other group. Or if we don't happen to see you do this, let us know before we start sending out raid invites ten to seven on Friday evening.

#2: If you sign up as a tank, get saved with some other group and decide that this is okay cause you'll just come with your other character (who is not a tank), don't just whisper the severly undergeared feral druid that's coming to be geared up and tell her 'You'll be offtanking, I'll come on my lock instead'. Especially do not do this and not tell us anything about it. She's not strong enough to fill that role yet and we'll have to arrange something else. We'd like to know we need to do so before it's one hour until raid time.

#3: Don't sign if you're not going to show up. If you have an excuse that's fine, but 'I forgot' is not an excuse. Neither is 'It's just Kara, chill'.

#4: Do not show up drunk to the point where you keep dying and/or wipe us because you a) overaggro, b) pull extra packs of mobs, c) spend your time whispering your crush and not paying attention to what the group is doing, d) auto-run into packs we skipped, e) fall down and die, f) set off Flame Wreath on Aran, or any other ridiculously stupid thing. It's not cute. You're just pissing everybody off and wasting our time.

#5: You are not a special snowflake. You will be DPSing the flares on Curator and you will be DPSing the chains on Illhoof. You will also corpse run with everybody else when we wipe.

#6: If you're listed as a DPS and you're told to DPS, do not go into bear form and taunt things off the poor off-tank with lesser gear than you. Yes, you are the better tank, but he does buggerall damage with his prot spec and he doesn't have adequate DPS gear. You do. Next time, state that you'll only come if you can tank and we will work around it.

#7: No, that guy isn't in our guild. He is a good friend of mine that asked very nicely if he could come along for badges (and we needed a well-geared DPSer to carry your blue-and-green geared alt). He's 15, a sweetheart and about a million times more polite than you. Stop making fun of him and act your age. You make me ashamed to wear the same guildtag as you when you get all elitist like that. If only you worked as hard to be a nice person as you did on getting your t6!

#8: No, you can't just take that item. You'll pass on it like we always do, and then the interested people will /roll and we sort it out. This is how we've always done it and you've run Kara with us plenty of times before. There are others here too that wear cloth/leather/mail/plate/need healing gear/need tanking gear/can use that weapon (cross out as applicable). Stop being greedy!

Yeah, I need a vacation :/

062: Speedy!

2008-05-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen any announcments anywhere, but apparantly it's Children's Week again. I ran into some Horde players yesterday with orphans in tow so I headed over to the Stormwind Orphanage this morning to pick up my own. Some 15 minutes later I had my very own Speedy the turtle, a pet I've wanted ever since I first started playing :D

Go grab one for yourself!

061: Life and times

2008-04-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

Still no 4set. Like I mentioned 2 weeks ago, I sat out for 1 Illidan raid and of course 3x Conqueror tokens dropped. Then there was a change of tanks, or rather, the changing of a holy paladin to a tank, and last weeks only Conqueror token went to him on tank-prio. Now bosses are dropping Conqueror left and right (much to the amusement of our new straight-out-of-Karazhan imp-bish - more on that later) except for, of course, Illidan. The new rogues are happy, our new new Sherman is happy (we can't seem to hold on to enhancment Shamans & thus we are in a perpetual state of gearing a new one up) and all the offspec-hungry guildies are happy.

Me, not so much.

:(

It wouldn't have been so bad if Illidan hadn't sent Sathrovarr a memo, but he did and now that pesky demon isn't dropping Conqueror either. It feels like back when we were progress raiding Illy and no weapon would drop for me. I guess this means I'll get my 4set once Felmyst is down or something. Maybe the Twins.

Spreaking of - that damned dragon isn't down yet. We banged our heads against Brutallus again this weekend after a shoddy Kalecgos-kill, but he refused to play nice for us. It's a big shame cause as of today we're on a week and a half's raidbreak to try and cure a guild-wide burnout. Most of the core raiders don't need loot from BT/Hyjal anymore. Even though we've stopped going to Hyjal completely, farming BT every Wednesday and then progress-wiping the rest of the week in Sunwell is draining everyone. Some are dodging raids, some are whining and some show up, shut up and just want to get it overwith. It happens. It happened before I joined too, when Kamuf prog-raided TK. They took a break back then too and once it was over they nailed a boss they'd not been able to get down before. Here's to hoping it'll have the same effect this time!

(And maybe there'll be more frequent blog-posts now that I'm not doing much until May 7th.)

I mentioned some new recruits. Since Illy went on farm we've had the obligatory 1-3 people fall off, either to xfers or quitting the game entirely. I'm pretty sure the officers knew it'd happen, it seems like this happens with all guilds that down the "final" boss. At any rate, after some recruiting we've picked up a new afl Warlock, a new enh Sherman (#5 I believe, here's to hoping this one lasts!) and two new Rogues. Nothing terribly interesting if it wasn't for what I previously mentioned - the Warlock is straight out of Karazhan. (If you were reading my blog back in December you'll remember that so was I when I first joined. Hell, I hadn't even killed Netherspite and Nightbane.) As such, his gear was obviously not the greatest.

Let's face it though, a guild like Kamuf can take a player in blues and greens and epic them out in BT/Hyjal in a matter of weeks. Skill, attitude and loyalty are much more valuable assets than gear when it comes to applicants. This guy? He knew he didn't stand a chance but he was bored, it was late at night and he decided he'd give it a go anyway just for the hell of it. He posted a long, well-written application to our forums that was soaked through with personality. He was funny. He wanted to raid. He was taken in and put on trial the next day.

After pretty much half the guild had crawled all over him, inspecting his gear, his gems, his enchants, his rep and told him exactly how tough a job he had ahead of him, he was brought along for the last BT clear before the raidbreak. Being naturally friendly and helpful to newbies (I've worked as an admin on a large message board for 7 years) I'd taken it upon myself to whisper him the tactics from a DPS point of view for each boss so that he'd be somewhat prepared. I must say he did remarkably well for someone who'd never set foot in the place before!

Then Mother dropped multiple Conqueror tokens (of course) and only one of the core raiders rolled on it for mainspec. The new Warlock rolled too, for the hell of it, even though he barely had any DKP. (He is a 'for the hell of it' kind of guy.) His voice on ventrilo when the raid leader offhandedly told him to pick up one of the tokens was a real treat. The poor thing had not expected to end up with tier 6 shoulders on his very first raid into Black Temple and was quite awed and surprised. The next day when we came back for Council and Illidan, he got himself some tier6 pants as well. I don't think there was a happier guy in all of Azeroth and Outland that day. :)

060: I've drowned in the Funwell

2008-04-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

So tired these days once raid ends, no real time and energy for blogging even though I have lots of things I'd like to write about. Kalecgos is on farm, Brutallus is finally down after some heartbreaking 2% and 1% wipes, and we're now progress raiding Felmyst 5 hours a day.

It occured to us only tonight that the reason Mass Dispell seems to resist abnormally often is that it's not a shadow based spell, and the priest +spell hit talent only counts for shadow spells. Bugger. Will have to look into that and maybe set up a +spell hit gear to get over-capped just for this fight. And farm more Primal Manas for Cauldrons of Arcane Protection. And mats for Destro pots. And for Pure Death flasks. And Mana pots. And... and....

059: Bummed

2008-04-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

First in line for t6 chest but not invited to this week's Illidan raid. Of course three Priest/Paladin/Warlock chest tokens dropped, just to rub it in. Oh well, that's the way life goes sometimes I guess. :(

In happier news, Kalecgos is finally down.

058: That pesky Kalecgos

2008-04-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

We've killed him twice after the 2% wipe, but we haven't killed him right yet. So, no loot :/

The Kalecgos fight is a bit like Karazhan's Romulo & Julianne in that both the Demon inside and the Dragon outside have to die at the same time, with the added complexity that they're in two separate 'worlds' which you keep teleporting between. Additionally, the dragon in his half-elf form is inside the spectral realm with the demon and needs to be kept alive in order for the kill to count. Not the easiest of fights, in other words, but I'm quite pleased with that. Illidan is kind of ridiculously easy once you just get the positioning right, so this is nice. I always enjoyed the timing aspect of the Romulo & Julianne fight anyway.

More progress-wiping inc tonight!

057: /bows to the tanks & the healers

2008-04-02T04:46:00.000-07:00

It's unlikely that this will be interesting to many people, but I was so impressed by the tanks and the healers last night that I need to write this down.

We'd put off the last part of BT until the end of the week so we could focus on Kalecgos. Sunday they had him at 2% so the following day they took the exact same group in the hopes that the magic would happen. It didn't, unfortunatly, as one of the 3 tanks had a family emergency bomb land on them in mid-raid. Unable to progress on Kalecgos, they went on to pluck off some BT bosses and got all the way to Mother. Since I wasn't in the raid and the raid was full, one of my good friends logged off his own char and onto mine, knowing that I was first in line for the t6 shoulder token if it dropped. Unfortunatly it wasn't a good night for anyone and Mother stayed up. Sometimes you just can't win.

Enter Tuesday, the last day of the reset, and we have 3 BT bosses left standing: Mother, Council and Sillydan. Afterwards we were meant to go Kalecgos hunting. Mother gets one-shot in probably our best kill to date (and I got my shouders! Woo!) but Council proves tricky. Our main tank suddenly disconnects which happens from time to time, but on this occasion he can't get back on. He's stuck on authenticating. We set up a trivia bot and play a few 20 questions rounds in the hopes that rebooting/resetting IP/other technimagical things will work, but no cookie. One of the Paladins is shipped off to Ironforge to respec. The Samurai Bear is switched from the Rogue to the Paladin, and the freshly specced Tankadin gets to play with the Rogue. Both are tanking these targets for the very first time, but it's perfectly executed. Council down and we're loving this whole 3 tier tokens business. Too bad the t6 legs stink for Shadow Priests.

Main Tank is still offline, so we set things up to let the Tankadin give Sillydan a try. It's 3 hours until end-of-raid and tomorrow everything resets. We really really really don't want to leave him up. (Plan B is to kiss the feet of one of our Horde buddies in the hopes that he'll be persuaded to log on our MT's character and tank for us.)

There are a few wipes - apparantly Blizzard messed around with the Flames of Azzinoth and made them a little harder than they used to be. We die to a couple charges until the Beartanks figure out what's been done and adjust accordingly. There's an embarassing wipe on behalf of all the healers where Tankadin dies 5 seconds into phase 3 because nobody heals him. Whops!

But then! Then everything starts to come together. Sort of.

I go down in phase 2. By then, two of the DPS'ers in my group are already dead and so is the Tankadin. In order to get at Samurai Bears combat rez (which is the only available), the order is given for the other Bear to taunt flame #2 as soon as flame #1 is down. The healers are so focused on the tank-switch that they forget about Dark Barrage. I'm dead in 3 seconds. No chance. Oh well, at least Tankadin is up and buffed before Illidan decends. One of the mages gets a little crit happy before Tankadin has established enough aggro and there goes the 4th person in my party. Clearly group 3 isn't the place to be.

But they plod along even though several of the key DPS'ers are down, and slowly but surely take him down to 30%. There's at least two occasions where Parasites aren't handled where they ought to be and there's a couple more deaths, but they get there. The mage gets a combat rez when somebodys cooldown is up to help with the parasite nuking. Maiev isn't in a friendly mood and keeps putting traps in walls or all the way over by the warlock tank. 4 DPS'ers and 1 healer are down and we keep watching the enrage timer. Thankfully, the Tankadin who has never done this before does everything perfectly and Illidan switches into Demon form at 3%. The warlock tank burns him down with ease. It's the most stressfull kill we've ever had of him, and I certainly hope we won't put him off until the last day again. It's a recipe for disaster: everything that can go wrong will go wrong in such scenarios. Still, it gave our tanks and our healers a chance to shine. They showed us just how far they can stretch, just how adaptable they are, just how good.

One of my chest token dropped. Tankadin took it. Methinks I'm first in line now. /wipes drool

056: Guild meet

2008-03-31T10:49:00.001-07:00

I attended a mini guild meet this weekend in Denmark and came home feeling like a detox was a good idea. I met two other Shadow Priests (a fellow Norwegian guy and a Swedish girl), a Holy Priest (British guy that just moved in with Swedish girl) and a Resto Shaman (Danish guy). We proceeded to get drunk, take lots of pictures, talk shit and theorycraft (Kalecgos at 2% on Sunday!!). It was lots of fun and a second guild meet is already in the works - I can't wait. It's really nice to meet people you play with in real life and get a chance to find out if they're ticklish or not.

Not to mention taking pictures of them while they're drunk for future blackmail!

055: Murlocs are everywhere

2008-03-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at the train station, waiting for the homebound train, when I hear an all too familiar sound.

"Aaaaaughibbrgubugbugrguburgle!"

What? What the hell? Murlocs at the train station? No. Just the ringtone of the guy sitting beside me.

054: Raiding post-Illidan

2008-03-10T03:37:00.000-07:00

"So what are we doing tomorrow?"
"Same thing we do every night, Pinky. Take over the world!"

What does a guild do once Illidan is down? Game's over, right? There are no more challenges, no more bosses to progress, nothing you haven't seen. You've done it all. So what happens then? What's next?

First of all, and I can guarantee you this - no wait, actually, I will bet you 100g that this will happen - right after Illidan is down, someone in your raid or someone lurking on vent will say the magic words 'so what are we doing tomorrow?'. Provided that you didn't kill him on the last day of the reset, this is. (They might try and say it anyway though, never underestimate the individuals need to say something witty-only-it's-not-really-witty-at-that-time-but-kind-of-a-bummer-to-everyone-actually.) We had two people do this, one of our Wonderbears and a Hordie lurking in our vent channel. All I can say is that it sort of breaks the magic of the moment and forces you to think about the fact that the game really is over, at least until the next patch/expansion.

Bumming as it is though, it pays to be prepared. Kamuflasjefylla had held off attuning new people to BT/Hyjal while we were progressing Mother/Council/Illidan so attunement runs through TK and SSC were naturally planned. To give the raiders a treat though, we were gonna hold off a couple weeks longer and head off to Naxxramas once Illidan was down. A few people had raided Naxx pre-TBC but none had cleared the whole thing and at any rate, they were all just as excited to see it again as the rest of us were to see it for the first time. I don't want to sound like a whiny bitch but I really do feel like more care were put into the little things in the oldschool raid instances. I don't know. Maybe I just fail to see the little things in Black Temple and Hyjal because I'm too focused on the encounters. Anyway, the atmosphere and music in Naxxramas is amazing.

We didn't do much when it came down to it - took out Patchwerk, Grobbusomething and the big doggie, then wiped a couple times on Thaddius cause one of the tanks kept getting knocked into a wall - but we thoroughly enjoyed the change of scenery. Really, just seeing some different colored walls than the brown-and-gold of BT was a relief.

For most guilds though, the immediate focus after Illidown is to cut down on raid time. As you progress raid the bosses you normally play pretty hardcore (we did 5 hours, 5 days a week) and when Illidan is the only one left you might push it even harder (6 days a week!!). The main focus we've had since we killed the Betrayer was to try and get the clearing of both BT and Hyjal down to 2 days. Not only would this give us some time off, it'd also open up for doing other things like attunement runs and farming Gruul's Lair for that elusive Dragonspine Trophy our rogues are drooling over. (I'm still hoping to squeeze a World Dragon or two into that free time somewhere!) Let me tell you this though: Clearing those two raid instances in two days is a pain. The bosses aren't much of an issue, but the trash? Is neverending. Especially the Mother ShaWaWaVoom trash - seeing all those luxurious beds with their inviting pillows is a pain when you've been raiding for 4 hours+ and you're getting really sleepy.

We've somehow managed to do it though, and these days we normally take out BT up to Council on Wednesday, then take out Council, Illidan and all of Hyjal on Thursday. Fridays I organise and raid lead a Karathon for badge-horny mains and alts in need of gearing up. Saturday is off, Sunday we sell loot in Gruul/Maggy/TK/SSC to encourage more 25 man guilds (our server still sorta sucks Alliance-side) and Mondays & Tuesdays we watch our poor raid leader bang his head against the desk as Sunwell on the PTR is down yet again. Since my Karathon project is on a volunteer basis, that means I only really raid 3 nights a week. For some, that suddenly freed up spare time is best spent out there in the real world doing... I don't know. Stuff. Things. For those of us with little to no life though, it means we get to focus on PvP or level up alts. I find myself in Outland for the second time now, as my baby warrior walked through the Dark Portal recently, and this time around I plan on not rushing it so I can actually enjoy the different zones. I also plan on focusing a lot on reputation farming, so I can get those rep rewards while they're still useful, like it was meant to be.

My point is that I think a lot of guilds fall into a trap once they've downed Illidan. Simply plodding on and doing nothing new or different will most likely wear down your raiders pretty fast, and might lead to people quitting or going on breaks. Everybody wants full t6 and even full offspec t6, but don't do it at the cost of good raiders. Give them some treats, make sure their schedule is varied and interesting. Drag them to Onyxia one day for the hell of it. Schedule a 25man Naxxramas run. Go say hi to C'Thun for old times sake. Go world dragon hunting (and take me with you, damnit!). Insert some flavor in the schedule and things won't be so bad when you step out of progression and into the unending lands of farm-raids.

And beware those luxurious beds.

053: Oh dear

2008-02-05T22:19:00.000-08:00

Back in late summer one of my best friends decided she wanted to try this WoW thing. I lent her my old vanilla-WoW guidebook and explained at length about the different classes, races, specs, etc. I instructed her to try leveling at least a couple different class/race combos to level 10 so she'd get a better feel of the differences, and then focus on whichever she liked best. I walked her through the first five levels on a human warrior and a night elf priest, stressed the importance of repairing continously and taught her the gear basics. Then her trial ran out. Life was busy so she didn't come back to WoW again for some time, though I'd ask her every now and then if she was planning on returning.

Christmas arrives. Said friend is very pregnant and can't move around too much so her boyfriend gets her, among other things, a pre-paid card. Unfortunatly this was around the same time my attunement took place and I began hardcore raiding so I wasn't able to play alongside her anymore. We kept in touch through whispers though, and I answered various questions as the weeks went by. She crawled her way through the levels slowly but surely and I was happy to see her ding 20 on her priest last week.

Yesterday we had an off-day from raiding and out of the blue she whispers me and asks if I'm busy. For once I'm not, so I send my baby hunter over to Ashenvale so we can quest together. As I arrive I inspect her of course, and I am horrified at what I see. The poor thing has no clue, of course, and how is she supposed to, really? It's not like this game is easy - we've all been there at some point.

She's weating about 3 greens, all below her level, a pair of blue gloves from Deadmines and the rest are vendor-whites. She's very proud that she's bought all new items from the vendor recently. Oh, and she's disc-specced, with 5/5 in both the first talents.

/mortified

I tell her to not move an inch and send out a distress call to my friends. 2 minutes later she's safely tucked away in my old guild and I've hopped on my baby rogue to summon her to Westfall. Mr Rogue, he of level 70, runs us through Deadmines. It's slow moving, as I explain with each drop whether she can us it or not and wether the stats are any good for her. I should have made her write it down. The mysteries of the need/greed system are unravelled for her, bit by bit. She explains that last time she was there she had no idea what was going on, at all. She'd been whispered by some random person, invited into the PUG and summoned. She had no idea where she was, or what to do. She was the healer in the group and she knew how to heal, but nobody took the time to explain anything to her. At all. By the time they reach the Goblin Foundry they tell her she's useless and kick her from the group.

My very pregnant, very homronal friend had a little cry over that one. Oh the poor thing. I felt so ashamed that I hadn't had the time to babysit her little character more and teach her the ropes.

After the boost was over I took her to Stormwind, made sure she got the flight paths and then had her respec Shadow. I told her where to put her points and showed her how Mind Flay works. She was most impresssed and declared it her new favorite spell, as it 'looks much cooler than Mind Blast'. Then she had to go. I picked up some items off the AH and mailed them to her with strict instructions to swap them out with her last remaining whites.

It's nostalgic, as I said to Mr Rogue during the DM run. We've all been there, but how much do we really remember? I can vaguely recollect not being able to figure out how to swim underneath the water surface for the life of me, until I finally asked a friend around level 30 or so. There was also something about not being able to locate a cooking trainer even though the guard insisted that he was in that building. Nobody told me there was a back room! I'm sure there were a million other little things that I didn't understand or did wrong, too, but they've all faded with time.

A part of me is envious as everything is new and exciting to her. When was the last time I discovered something new in WoW, after all? I bet she wishes she knew her way around already though. At least she's got my old guild now.

052: Plans for the future

2008-02-02T14:58:00.000-08:00

* Complete the Noggenfogger questchain
* Kill a World Dragon
* Kill the Four Horsemen in Naxx until Corrupted Ashbringer drops, then freeride with the lucky winner into SM for the RP event
* Hoard DKP until I can get Handguards of Absolution
* Level the baby warrior to 70
* Gather mats for Bracers of Nimble Thought
* Raise a toast to spell haste in the next patch, and another for Fear Ward being castable in Shadowform
* Have 'never ever go back to ZA' tattooed onto the back of my hands

Illidan Stormrage is a really really long encounter, and it's sorta boring to watch. At least more than once. Especially if you've been wiping on that encounter for hours and hours. In order to prevent ours from being just another run of the mill Illidan kill movie, we spiced it up with an RP intro and a rap song. I take no responsability whatsoever, though I helped with both:

http://www.stage6.com/user/cascada/video/2127048/

From the Rogue's POV I am my normal human female self. However from the Shadow Priests POV I am an undead, as he uses skins. I'm the one with Marge Simpson hair :[

051: What's in a name

2008-01-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

The best thing about killing Illidan is undoubtedly this. I don't know how I lived without it! Being able to HS to Black Temple every 15 minutes makes travelling around the worlds so much easier, not to mention the Netherwing dailies.

Todays blog is gonna be a refreshing break from all the raiding I've talked about lately - it's gonna be about names. I've actually wanted to do this ever since I joined Kamuf and saw the guild list, but I've been too busy. I'm sure that in you too, in your travels around Azeroth, have randomly come across someone with a name that was just plain awesome. Either incredibly well fitting or funny or simply really cool. Well I want to hear about it!

Personally I name most of my characters names I come up with myself, or in the case of elves names put together from various elven dictionaries. Kahdri, for example, was made out of the ElfQuest characters Kahvi and Ahdri. Nemnes is from the elven word Nem which means white (she's pale and has white hair) and -Nes which means sister or daughter or somesuch. My horde bank alt is called Korathem, which meas Dark Dragon according to a different elfin word list. My main, Tieryn, is entirely made up, so I was surprised to discover that other people use the same name. Oh, and by the way, when I came up with it I did so with Norwegian in mind. It's not pronounced Ty-rynn, and it bugs me when people say it like that. It's Tee-eh-rynn. Us Norwegians don't say 'tie' the same way English people do. And then there's my neglected mage, whose name is the Norwegian word for Pancake. Don't ask.

My point is though, that some peoples names are simply awesome. In Kamuf, there's a warrior called Tantrum. How fantastic is that? Tantrum! It couldn't fit any better!

Then there's a feral druid called Lettuce. She told us the story of how she ended up with that name last night: She was on the character creation screen, contemplating using the name of one of her old characters but didn't really want to. Her boyfriend asks her what she'd like on her sandwhich that he's making and she goes 'Uhm, lettuce and... oh, that'll do.' I think it's brilliant.

Of course there's a bunch of people named after objects or food running around as well. I know a rogue called Toad. I've also seen Motorsaw and Refridgerator running around Shattrah. The only other priest (at the time) in my old guild was Tard. When I went to create a bank char for my RP Horde, I was surprised to discover that the name Nemesis wasn't taken. All awesome names. I love it.
So share yours! Which names made you go 'Hey! That's brilliant!'? Which ones do you wish you'd thought of first?

050: Game Over

2008-01-21T15:55:00.000-08:00

Illidan Stormrage is down.

~~World first kill with two feral druids tanking the Flames of Azzinoth. At least as far as we know.~~ That didn't sound right to me (someone in the guild said it), so I asked the lovely women over at wow_ladies to clear it up. Most people prefer prot warriors but it has been done before.

Thank you and goodnight <3

049: On gear and upgrades

2008-01-19T05:25:00.001-08:00

Illidan week #2 starts tomorrow with our second night on him. We've been told by other guilds that the norm is to down him within 2-3 days of reaching him so we're all very excited. This post, however, is going to be about gear. Ever since I joined Kamuf I've been whispered by old guildmates and friends wanting to know if I've gotten any nice drops, and when I kept telling them no, they wanted to know why not. This post is for them.

Back when I joined Kamuf, the raid leader and the main tank/guild leader both inspected my gear critically. I remember Dave (my raid leader & friend) saying how pleased he was that my gear wasn't as bad as he'd feared, and that I had 'all the hard to get stuff', whatever that meant. They pointed out my weak pieces to me, and adviced me on which to upgrade via heroic badges and which to wait for drop upgrades on. Shortly after that I upgraded one of my trinkets (Battlemaster's Audacity) and my gloves (Studious Wraps).

They told me my one hander, my bracers and my rings where what I needed to focus on and get upgraded asap. (At the time my belt was also very unimpressive, but Dave had promised me before I joined the guild that once he got his hands on a second Nether Vortex and I brought him the rest of the mats, he'd make me a Belt of Blasting for free.) They also said 'don't worry about your weapon, caster one-handers drop like candy for us in BT and Hyjal! You'll get that pink dildo-mace before you know it'. Okay, sure.

My rings were a sad state apparantly, no matter how proud I was of them. I was told that Band of Al'ar would surely drop for me, but of course it didn't. Likewise with the bracers they linked for me that dropped off of something-or-other in SSC. Still, they kept telling me not to worry. Eventually I picked up the Runed Spell-cuffs even though they weren't an upgrade, just so that my bracers would be purple and not blue and Gomez would stop making fun of me, and because I had more badges than I knew what to do with anyway.

After being attuned to Hyjal I received the upgradeable rep-ring, which I wore for a while along with the quest reward from Magtheridon. It was then that my first and so far only proper DKP loot dropped - the Ring of Ancient Knowledge. That, together with the Hood of Hexing from Zul'Aman, are the only drops I've gotten.

But why? Surely running with a full tier5 guild would get me some more new gear than this? Nope. You see, I wasn't too surprised when my crafted epics - Frozen Shadoweave and Spellstrike - turned out to be better than tier4 drops in Karazhan. I was a little miffed when they turned out to be better than tier5 as well though. On that first SSC run I saw 3 pieces of tier5 for priests drop and I passed on every single one. It's a little mind boggling that gear you can craft with tailoring upon dinging level 70, without setting foot in a single raid, are equivalent to tier5. Equally mind boggling are the Shadowpriests that do not work their arses off to get said crafted epics! Same with heroic badge loot. It's a little sad as well that my first ever tier piece ended up being for offspec.

There's something about the tier sets that really appeal to me. Probably due to the fact that I never had any, ever. Well, that's a lie, I did run around with 3 pieces of the Warlock tier0 set back when I was level fifty-something. That doesn't really count though! As it is, I'm having to contend with waiting for my DKP to slowly rise so that I can get a shot at tier6. It's gonna take a while.

Then there's the matter of my one hander. Gomez teases me about that as well. They never turned out to drop like candy, at least not after I joined, and at this point it's getting pretty ridiculous. Zul'Aman, SSC, TK, Hyjal, BT, Doomwalker, hell, even Prince in Karazhan has better one handers than mine. They all refuse to drop. Last night after killing off Archimonde and Illidari Council, Dave took pity on me and sent the raid off to kill Doomwalker. Again. He refused to drop his dagger. Again.

I said to them that I'm pretty sure by now that I'm doomed to kill Illidan with my Gavel of Unearthed Secrets still equipped. It's funny, but at the same time it's not funny at all.

Tonight we're clearing Zul'Aman again, so wish me luck.

048: Hello Illidan

2008-01-15T07:39:00.000-08:00

Mother Shahraz: DOWN
Illidari Council: DOWN
Illidan Stormrage: Well hello there....

We only had 1 hour of raid time left so it wasn't super serious tries. We wanted to learn how to handle parasites in phase 1 and see how long we could last in phase 2 (not very long at all) plus give the two Wonderbears some practice with positioning/kiting the Flames of Azzinoth.

It was awesome. First to finally down Illidari Council, which is another really tough encounter, then to walk up two stairs with no trash whatsoever and stand face to face with the Betrayer himself. I can't even describe it. I kept going 'eeee!' in whispers to Tom like a maniac. :(

More coherent posts later, maybe. Oh, and having 7 priests (5 of them shadow) on Council was freakin' awesome:

047: The Raid Break

2008-01-08T13:53:00.000-08:00

Things I did during the raid-break between December 22nd and January 3rd:

* 2-manned Durn the Hungerer with Adagio the Healadin keeping me alive, repeatedly.
* Tanked the rare elite dragon in Blade's Edge.
* Started yet another male Blood Elf (a Paladin this time) and levelled it to 23.
* Dinged exalted with the Kurenai and got my Talbuk mount.
* Grew to hate Zul'Aman with a passion.
* Became convinced that I bring bad luck in raids.
* Walked into a 50 man raid on Ironforge after the fireworks on Newyears (and was brutally massacred).
* Cleared Zul'Farrak more than 15 times without seeing either of the swords drop (by now I've been there more than 30 times and still not a single sword).
* Learned the secret of gold-farming from a warrior in my guild.
* Set about working on Argent Dawn, Sporeggar and Consortium rep, again.
* Cleared Molten Core and cried bitter tears of frustration when the Hunter epic quest item dropped instead of the priest one.
* Became attuned to Blackwing Lair.
* Travelled to Silithus for an oldschool enchanting recipe, and was promptly ordered by Dave to go into the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj and Mind Vision C'Thun (while I was there anyway) so I could 'feel the atmosphere'. Was creeped out by his whispering.
* Farmed more heroic badges than I knew what to do with and ended up upgrading the holy gear I never use.

Then, on January 3rd, the attunement project was picked up again. During the raid-break the Holy Priest we were waiting for had finally dinged 70 and was ready for SSC. I already had my vial but needed Karathress killed, the other three attunées needed both. The next day we made a clean sweep of everything in Tempest Keep save for Kael'Thas, who really is a tough encounter. Sunday the 6th he bit the dust however, and I was ready for Hyjal. We immediatly went there and took out Rage Winterchill, completing my attunement to the Black Temple. Since then, I've cleared Hyjal (died early on Archimonde to doomfire + airburst so I didn't get to experience much of that fight) and taken out everything in Black Temple up to Reliquery of Souls, which is the only boss in there that Kamuf has downed but which isn't on farm yet. Still, we got to put in several very good attempts, and he'll probably go down on Sunday when we raid again. After that, it's Mother Shahraz, Illiradi Council and finally, Illidan Stormrage himself.

I'd wanted to write blogs as I went along, but ever since I joined Kamuf I've hardly had any idle-time in-game. I used to idle in Shattrah a lot, alt-tabbing to do other things or going AFK to watch TV. It was during those idle phases that I'd come here to write blogs. Nowadays there's always something to do, and thus the blog is suffering. That said, the past couple of weeks have been filled with learning strategies, watching movies and learning the encounters. Now that I've caught up with my guild, things should be a lot more relaxed. I certainly hope so, because I have so much to write about!

046: Standing out

2007-12-25T07:23:00.000-08:00

Turns out I wasn't the only one working hard to obtain a goal for christmas!

Way back in my leveling days I went to help out a friend in a Zul'Farrak run. One of the other party members happened to be a Shadow Priest and a female just like me, and her and I got to talking. Almost a year later, we still talk at least once a week and occasionally step in to help each other when needed. Her perhaps moreso than me, being as how she's got ~~a bad case of Alt-itis~~ at least 3 level 70s by now and a couple more soon-to-be. Anyway, she's been going on about taming this rare pet on her Hunter for some time.

Now I'm as far from an expert on Hunter pets as they come, but I was fairly certain that none of the pets in the game were terribly unique. I knew about the extra-invisible cat in Darkshore and the rare spawn lions, but even they didn't strike me as particularly unique since so many people go for them in order to stand out. To be quite honest, I've seen so many of these 'rare' pets around that if it weren't for reading Petopia and BRK's blog, I wouldn't have known that they were rare at all. So when Shado announced her intent on taming some super rare extra special unique pet I didn't really raise an eyebrow. I didn't even pay attention to it much, just tossed out the old 'let me know if you need me for anything!' and went on my merry way.

This morning she whispered me to congratulate me on my dragon, and then she mentioned that she finally got her special pet. Oh, says I, congrats! Stay where you are, she replies. You have got to see this.

She flies to Terokkar where I'm fishing Golden Darters for my Healadins, and dismounts.

Holy God damn hell, is that a spectral wolf? Yes. Yes it is.

I'm assuming it was introduced in 2.3 since petopia says it comes from Dustwallow. It can't be tamed like a normal pet is, as it only exists as a summoned aide to a mob. You'd probably think, like I did, that any hunter could just trek to Dustwallow, locate the right mob and pick on it until it summons the wolf and then tame it, but no. Not quite that easy. See, the tame beast spell is a 20 second cast. The spirit wolf is only present for aproximatly 8 seconds, once summoned.

At some point, a Hunter out there decided to see if it was possible to tame it anyway. They enlisted the help of a Shaman for Heroism/Bloodlust (30% increased spell haste) and a leatherworker for Drums of Battle (+80 spell haste). Or possibly a Shaman leatherworker. On top of that, they socketed Mystical Skyfire Diamond in a meta gem slot (15% chance to reduce the next spell's casting time by 50%) and brought along a Priest.

That Hunter and his team then located this particular mob and had the Priest mind control it in order to be in charge of when the spirit wolf is summoned. He or she then had Heroism, Drums of Battle and the gem-proc all going at the same time and told the Priest to make the MC'ed mob summon the spirit wolf. After undoubtably many agonizing tries, he or she managed to cast Tame Beast the very second the spirit wolf appeared. It worked. The wolf died immediatly after, as it was scripted to die after 8 seconds, but the Hunter could ress it like any other tamed pet. And there it was.

I very much doubt it was planned by Blizzard that the wolf should be tameable, but someone found a way and then people began to copy it. (A statment has since been released, saying that Blizz won't change the fact that it is tameable.) My friend Shado heard about it from somewhere and set out to get it herself. And she did. Now she's trekking around Outland to level him up slowly but surely, as the wolf is only level 30 when summoned. She's the only Alliance to have it so far, and there's only one Horde with it that we know of.

She stands out.

It got me thinking about my own Winterspring Frostsaber, about the Spectral Tigers of two guys in my guild, about Tamashi's Raven Mount and all the other truly unusual pets and mounts out there that people invest time and effort into getting. It's all about standing out, of being able to show just how dedicated you are to this game, how much work you've put into it.

My hat goes off to each and every one of you out there who have gone for and achieved something that's special to you in this game (whether it's something you can show off or not). May there be a new goal on your horizon and best of luck achieving it!

045: My Christmas present

2007-12-24T00:11:00.000-08:00

Late last night, shortly after the dailies reset, I reached exalted. A certain Mr. Stormrage was not amused!

The Netherwing were most impressed though, and saved me from Illidan's wrath. After landing safely in Shattrah, one of their best dragons offered to bond with me in thanks for everything I'd done for his kind.

May your days be merry and bright,
and may all your Christmases be white!

044: 5 worst wipes

2007-12-22T13:21:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, Ratshag tagged me to write about my 5 worst wipes. It just so happens that he did this mere days before my worst wipe yet, but I'll chalk that up to coincidence!

It was actually pretty hard to complete this. I don't really get upset by wiping. I honestly couldn't remember many wipes at all, but I suppose that's a good thing! I've picked those that stood out in some way or another, but none of these are what I'd consider awful:

#1: The setting is Zul'Aman with Kamuflasjefylla and everything has been going peachy. I'm starting to remember which boss has what tactics, though the random order we do things in isn't helping much. At any rate, everything goes down like pie and we're standing at Zul'Jin's feet, ready to kick ass yet again. Well, we would have, if the server hadn't decided to begin randomly tossing off 3-4 raid members in mid-fight. And then do it again, after we wiped and corpse-ran. And then AGAIN. We're getting pissed off, people are rebooting and making sure nothing is wrong on their end, but it's not helping. Finally, things seem to stabilize a little and we get ready for attempt number 4 or so. Adagio does a Ready Check and everyone is prepared, awesome, let's go! Hey wait, why is Tairha on the wrong side of the flaming gate? Turns out he'd clicked ready, and then gone AFK. Brilliant! Oh well, we'll just make the best of it, right? As long as everyone stays connected it shouldn't be an issue, we can 9-man this!

I think Dave disconnected once during that try, and since he'd respecced Holy to be a healer for the time being that was a bit of a problem, but he managed to log back on and we managed to keep him alive while he was DC'ed, so all was well. Zul'Jin falls slowly but surely in HP. Phase 3 hits. I can't even begin to tell you how much I hate phase 3. I call it the RP phase, because I can't do anything but /tickle and run from the tornadoes. Any and all spellcasting - healing included - does some nasty damage to yourself so all the DPS casters are forbidden to do anything unless they're at 100% health. Which we never are, thanks to those bloody tornadoes.

Finally, after what seems like forever, phase 4 hits. Zul'Jin transforms into a Lynx and begins charging people. Once he's charged you, hell insist on slapping the bejeesus out of you for a while and there's no taunt in the world that can change his mind. Very risky business for clothies (unless you're lucky enough to be a mana battery and thus BoP priority♥), but our healers are on the ball and whoever the first victim was survived.

The lynx-shaped boss charges his second victim... and it's Tairha. Standing outside the gate. Zul'Jin slaps her around a bit, evade bugs and resets.

The only bloody time we managed to get as low as 25% with all healers having decent mana, everyone alive and at a decent health and no disconnecting issues on the tanks, and it freakin' resets. We try again since we're all alive... and wipe miserably when 2-3 people DC yet again. We fold. Not worth it.

#2: Wiping on Hydross in SSC with a 25man team of Black Temple geared raiders. I wasn't fussed, but everyone else were!, to the point of Tamashi whispering me to assure me they're not usually that bad. Which I thought was really cute.

#3: I've written about this Karazhan run before, but it was so awful it deserves to be mentioned again. We'd just taken in a Holy Priest on trial back in Reavers, and I was raid leading (I think?) our first run with him into Kara. And then we wipe on Attumen trash, and on Attumen, and then on Attumen's trash AGAIN. Talk about embarassing.

#4: I might have mentioned this one before too, but not in much detail I think so here goes! Back in Reavers, a guildie asked me if I could help him out in Blackrock Depths. He'd had a full team but then the healer had ditched them. Well, says I, I've got about +1k healing in my Healbot set, though I'm shadowspecced. Think your party members would be opposed? They weren't. So I trekked all the way over there, intent on being a healer only. Should be cake, right? I'll have no trouble keeping that tank alive! Not so much. My guildie, who was offtanking, disconnects, and the proper tank isn't particularly good. Combine that with two DPS-hungry pyromages and we have a wipe. Hopping back into shadowform and trying to kill things wearing my holy set (and this was before the patch, so there wasn't much +spell dmg on it either) just doesn't cut it. The tank leaves group without a word because wiping with a lvl 70 in BRD is just that appaling, apparantly, and one of the mages 'has to go'.

Their loss, because when I get pissed off I get pissed off. I'll tank this damn instance if it's the last thing I do! Ten minutes after that senseless wipe, I've recruited an Elemental Shaman via LFG who says she can toss on her holy gear and try and keep me alive. There is some discussion on whether Vampiric Embrace + her healing will be enough to hold me up and then I decide bugger this for a lark. Keep your normal gear on, I'll get my Warlock friend to come on his level 70 Holy Paladin, let's rock this casbah.

The guildie disconnected yet again and stayed offline, but I was far beyond caring at that point. We carried that Mage and the stunned (but very happy) Elemental Shaman through the entire instance, killing every single boss we could find.

#5: Last week. My Black Temple virginity had just been popped. I wasn't on Tieryn as she and a couple others are still waiting for another priest to reach 70 so they can all be attuned together, but I was on a Shadowpriest. A friend had lent me his, since he had to go on his Paladin to help heal and why not give me some experience when there's a free slot? It was a scrambled together raid and it really wasn't optimal for BT, but they were game for giving it a go.

About an hour later, the raid was called after we'd wiped spectacularly on trash several times, and, when we were finally ready to take on High Warlord Naj'entus, the maintank messed up the pull and got both adds + the boss on us instead of just the adds.

I still had a ball because hey, Black Temple!

Not much posting from me these days, I reached 3500g three days ago and decided to stop messing about and borrowed the rest. I've got myself an epic bird now, and in 72 hours I've reached Revered with the Netherwing. It's a lot of hardcore rep-farming, but if our estimates are correct I will have my Dragon for Christmas.

043: Rhêa

2007-12-14T07:04:00.000-08:00

Have you ever thought about who that Horde is, if you play Alliance, or the other way around if you're Horde? Have you ever thought about them as people, beyond them being an enemy player and checking to see whether or not they're flagged for PvP? I hadn't. Not really.

Yeah, sure, I roam around Alliance capitals with the Undead frequently, but I didn't know any of them. I knew Neas was a funny guy that cared more about pushing the boundaries of the game than questing/raiding, and who'd happily share his fun with a random emote-happy Human Priest. I knew Rhêa enjoyed ganking for the sake of ganking and had been doing it since before I started playing WoW. I knew that even though his gear was considered 'shit' his skills granted him victories over people with far superior gear. I guessed from his username that he liked the Dark Tower books, but didn't know for sure. Beyond that, though?

Lurking on the realm forum boards didn't give me much. People don't get personal on there, perhaps especially on Dentarg's forums. Flamewars aren't exactly rare to put it like that, heh.

In a quiet room in the Mystic Ward of Ironforge, furios emote combat took place. Me and a Paladin guildie versus Rhêa the Undead Holy Priest. You want to talk things over with Rhêa. You question Rhêa. Rhêa wants to talk things over with you. On and on. But how?

In a flaming thread on the realm forums where Rhêa had posted, I had typed in my email. After about fifteen more /talk emotes we reached our goal. Rhêa replied in the thread, asking me to come on Dentarg's IRC channel. I quickly removed my email again. IRC? I last used that when I was 19 (I'm 25 now). Luckily the Paladin had once gone on there and could help me sort out my settings. Turns out Rhêa's email address had mysteriously died in a fire, but he had MSN!

Rhêa has mercilessly slaughtered me many times. I don't think I've killed him more than once - and I had help! - but my memory is that of a goldfish so don't hold me to it. He is a really nice guy. Loves the Dark Tower books. Hates questing. Visits Ironforge every single day. Collects non-combat pets just like me. Invited me to come to Orgrimmar some time as his special guest, after I mentioned that I'd never ever been there. Communication is glorious.

Did you know that if you exploit terrain jump and get yourself up to the top of Ironforge - not the airport place but the mountain peak right above IF itself - there's an Alliance banner there with a couple NPCs? Did you know that if you're Horde - or have a Horde friend with you - and you kill them, you loot Alterac Valley items?

I know. Rhêa showed me.

042: New Guildies

2007-12-13T03:31:00.000-08:00

12:23:29 [W From] <70:Adagio>: it was about 9 am GMT, uk time i hear a knock on the door, shoot out of bed, get halfway down the stairs to realise i was half dressed, so i grabbed the nearest thing
12:23:39 [W From] <70:Adagio>: it was a purple with PINK fluffy thingys on it -_-
12:23:49 [W To] <70:Adagio>: You, sir, are a true Paladin!

041: Serpentshrine Cavern

2007-12-09T18:27:00.000-08:00

I had logged out and was procrastinating making dinner when Chiwi nudges me on MSN, telling me to get on cause they were taking me to SSC. Turns out they'd had to cancel their Black Temple progress raid due to some people not showing. :/ As soon as I logged on I had a raid invite and then I got summoned... to Shadowmoon Valley? What? Ten minutes later Doomwalker was down, and we headed to Hellfire to poke Kazzak. He goes down too, and we fly onwards to SSC. Hydross, Lurker, Tidewalker and Fathom Lord all bite the dust yielding aboslutely no loot. Well that's a lie, there was one Nether Vortex so I'll get my Belt of Blasting now (once I grind the rest of the primals), and there were some boots that I received for my healing set.

Again my impressions are pretty jumbled up and blurry, but I must say, SSC bosses seem easier to me then ZA. Lurker, for example, was cake compared to a boss like Zul'Jin.

I'd thought I'd have more time, since they were technically supposed to be working on BT until the reset, but obviously I need to start reading strategies and watching videos right away. Just so I have a better clue what's going on. Who knows when I'll be going next time.

(Sorry if my blogposts are boring these days, life is hectic both in and out of the game!)

040: Zul'Aman redux!

2007-12-09T02:35:00.000-08:00

Kamu are making their first attempts at Reliqblahblah of Souls in the Black Temple tonight, but I'm not getting attuned to Hyjal/BT until later. They don't particularly like Kael, thus me and a couple others are being grouped together for our attunement so they only have to do him once. So far I've mostly been farming primals for enchants and hoarding badges like they were candy, but last night I went on my first raid with them - to Zul'Aman.

Absolutely no loot for me, it was pitiful. We spent hours and hours wiping, too, which isn't normal for them. They have ZA on farm, technically. Last night's raid had a poor setup, Dave said, and we actually swapped out one of the drunk Holy Priests for a Paladin after wiping a couple times on Zul'Jin. (Then we wiped some more!) Up until then we'd run without a single Paladin, and with me being the only Shadow Priest. The healers were two Holy Priests and a Druid. There was no way I could produce enough mana for them, though I did my best. As Dave said at some point - you never fully appreciate Blessing of Wisdom and Mana Spring totems until they're not there.

Dave, by the way, is my self-appointed mentor, friend and Raid Leader. He was the one (supported by Tammi) that told the Guild Leader to invite me, fresh out of Karazhan, rather than recruit someone with better gear whom might not be loyal to them. He plays a Priest as well, though he switches between Holy and Shadow. Oh and on that note, I've written here before that Tammi is the GL of Kamu, but that's actually only on the Armory. The main tank, Potta, is the real boss, but Tammi ninja'ed the rank.

To me, having only been in ZA once before and only ever seeing the first boss without downing it, the whole instance sort of blurred together. Not to mention we didn't do them in the 'proper' order. I remember the first boss. I remember the Eagle(?) boss because I was the only one allowed to DPS him beyond 60%, and this was repeated so many times, loudly, that I won't forget for a week. ("If your name's not Tieryn, STOP ¤@#$ing DPSing the Boss, NOW!") I remember Zul'Jin, because I spent phase 3 wandering around trying to avoid whirlwinds and emoting people. Any spellcast you do during that phase causes aprox 1500 damage to you, so me and the Warlock were out of work. I also remember him because we wiped on 1%! I think that was the wipe that made Dave swap out the Priest for the Paladin.

That Voodoo Gnome trinket dropped, so did Jin'rohk. No one actually needed either. The trinket was handed out with /roll 10 and some of the melee people rolled on the sword for looks only. Made me laugh. Actually, I spent about half the raid laughing so hard I nearly cried. Tammi was whispering me and I don't know if she did it on purpose to help my nerves or not, but she kept cracking me up. Over and over. I'm sure you've been there sometime yourself - you keep wiping and stupid stuff happens and you just start laughing. It got to the point were everything was funny.

I was told afterwards that I'd done well, but there were definitely mess-ups. I had some issues with the fireballs on... one of the bosses. Eagle I think? Took a couple of tries before I figured out exactly what their range was, and how to spot vacant areas more easily. I was given a shackle job on the second to last boss after we realised the Holy Priests couldn't handle shackling and healing as well. It went okay, but it did break at least once. Re-shackling is next to impossible when the Spirit Bolt is up, I'll tell you that!

Other than that I don't really remember many details. I had fun though. And while I know some of the others were dissappointed that I didn't get any upgrades (and that we wiped for hours and hours), I'm honestly happy enough to have the experience. To have survived my first Kamu raid without messing up too much.

Here's to next time!

039: Winds of Change

2007-12-05T17:38:00.000-08:00

Leaving the guild was both and easy and a hard decision. Easy because Reavers is casual and was never meant to be anything else. All the officers (except me) have raided hardcore before and, for various reasons, don't want to anymore. Hard because they're all friends. I've met several of them IRL. I have a lot, a lot, of respect for some of them.

Chances like this do not come often, however.

I've left Reavers and joined Kamuflasjefylla. They've cleared Hyjal. It's gonna be a tremendous challenge.

Illidan here I come. ♥

038: +1000 shadow spell damage

2007-12-01T01:45:00.000-08:00

A guildie needed an SL run for the keybit some time ago and I thought why not? I've been exalted with Lower City for ages, but still need Aldor drops for the last few thousand rep with them. Let's go! We breeze through it all, kill Murmur and... wait what? Spellstrike Pants pattern? Well color me amazed! And color a Mage in my guild green with envy, too!

A week or two of mat-farming later:

Getting it gemmed took a chunk out of my epic flying skill fund, but it was worth it. (Still farming the Primals for the epic spellthread.)

I also ran a heroic with some non-guild friends last week and got mildly scolded for my gear. Namely the fact that I was still running around with Wand of the Netherwing when an epic wand had been made available through Badges. Two heroics later I picked it up and also made my very first honor-point purchase ever (epic gem):

Another thing I was picked on for was that I'm using a healing trinket (Scarab of the Infinite Cycle) alongside my Icon of the Silver Crescent. Honestly though, all the other trinkets I have are +spell crit on equip - the Scarab is the only one that offer +spell dmg. They told me to farm some Heroic or other for an epic trinket but I forgot which one, which is just as well since my 'to do' list is getting kinda long.

Regardless! +1k shadow spell dmg has been broken. With the spellthread it'll be even more, and I still need to switch glove enchants from +15 spell hit to +20 spell dmg, now that I'm ahead of the game hit-wise. The new damage goal is to break +1100 shadow spell dmg before Newyears.

Btw, that's me sporting the Aldor tabard, after finally dinging exalted yesterday :)

037: More Horde affairs II

2007-11-29T18:25:00.000-08:00

I'm going to continue writing about my adventures with my Undead buddies, because it's more interesting than me whining about how there's no raids cause everyone's having exams these days, or how boring farming for mats is, etc. Also, I'm going to start using proper names on some people cause by now there's simply too many Bears, Paladins and Warlocks to keep them apart.

(Randomly, if you can figure out why the font changes after the first image, I'll give you a cookie. I can't figure it out for the life of me and things like that really bug me :/)

It's Wednesday afternoon and I'm hanging out in Stormwind. Got nothing to do so I'm talking to Chiwi, the Warlock that adopted me a while ago, and Tammi, the female guild leader I mentioned recently. Tammi's DJing on vent, Chiwi's tapping his feet for his arena partners to log on and occasionally I alt-tab to surf a little. After about 45 minutes of relaxed idling, I finally hear what I'm waiting for: Stormwind City is under attack!

I hurry over to the flight path and sure enough: it's my favorite Undead Priest! No longer Holy, but as the Draenei say: Eh, details. I /greet and /hug and jump up and down, he /hugs and /loves and wants me to follow. I nod. We don't even make it down the FP ramp before two Rogues stunlock him and kill him.

There's an interlude where I sit by his corpse and wait for him to return, while wondering where exactly Horde pop up as ghosts after being killed in an Alliance capital. It can't be that graveyard by Goldshire cause they take way longer. Raven Hill possibly? No idea. Eventually he spawns, I /pat, we mount up and continue. Through the trade district, past the Stockades and into the Canal. He kills a couple guards offhandedly (and underwater) to get them off his back while I keep posting in /3 to say he means no harm and to leave him alone. Then it's through the Cathedral district and over the Canal to the Dwarven corner. He's got about fourteen guards after him by the time we hit the Tram portal and again he motions for me to follow. Again, I nod.

Neas the Undead Priest and myself, waiting for the Tram.
On the other side of the Tram Tammi is waiting for us, wanting to know what Neas is up to. To my surprise, four other Hordies, a random lowbie Alliance and a guildie of Tammi's are waiting with her. It was like walking straight into an unexpected party.

Coming out into Ironforge, the raggedy band of Hordies attract quite a lot of attention so we all jump into the lava canals and speed through towards the Commons until they've all been murdered. Some Alliance are quicker than MC & druid healing, obviously.

Tammi takes the opportunity to do what
Druids do best on poor Neas' corpse.
(you're all perverts, I tell you!)
After some waiting they all respawn, and we make it to the open area in front of the bank and AH before they're dead again. Tammi squeals and points to the roof of the Armorsmith - it's Rhêa, the other Undead Holy Priest! We love Rhêa! Rhêa is probably even more commonly known among Alliance than Neas is - he's not just a ganker, he's the ganker. This guy spent more time on top of the Inn in Darkshire pre-BC than Alliance spent time in Ironforge. Now I'll admit I've killed both Neas and Rhêa before, and probably been killed by Rhêa a handful of times while leveling up in Duskwood, but that's all in the past.

Tammi is an exploit terrain champion just like the Horde crew and is up on the roof within a minute. I on the other hand, need a little more time. I /beg Rhêa to help me without realising I haven't got my PvP turned on, but eventually I manage to get up on my own.

We immediatly sit down for some casual discussion of the Dark Tower books.
The others soon respawn and it's time for them to celebrate what they came for, which I found out later: Neas had been banned on the official forums due to his obnoxious, spammy posts, but the ban had finally lifted and they'd all come to Ironforge to gank themselves silly in celebration. Not the most noble of purposes, but hey, don't I look cool up there with all the Undead? :)

My pet Horde, Lâncer, is unhappy and needs to be fed :(
Also, can't imagine why they think Neas and I are having an affair!
There was lots of Mind Control'ing going on to give them all Druid buffs and to help Rhêa heal them all up (the other Hordies kept jumping down to give the Alliance a fair game at killing them off - which they did over and over - then Rhêa would ress them back onto the roof), and there was at one point a little Priest coffeebreak too. I think I sat up on that roof with them for two hours, constantly being whispered by people who wanted me to kill all 5 of them on my own. Errr, no. Tammi and I were also called out in yells that we were Horde spies. No, we told them, we're not spying - just sleeping with the enemy!

Horde do it better, I tell you.

036: More Horde affairs I

2007-11-24T17:36:00.001-08:00

The crazy Undead Priest came back for an Ironforge pow-wow! Unfortunatly not all the Alliance were as friendly, so I had to mind control him a couple times to save his life. There's a WoW movie being made on my server these days (parody of Lord of the Rings) that involve both Horde and Alliance and it's made by (among others) the standing Paladin in that screenshot. He's taken several trips to Orgrimmar to shoot scenes and the Undead Priest have MC'ed him in return to save him.

035: Busy busy!

2007-11-23T19:02:00.001-08:00

Been super busy lately and slacking with blogposts. I've started this course and it isn't that it's demanding a lot of my time and energy, it's the exact opposite. It's mind-numbingly boring and leaves me drained every day when I come home, even if it's still fairly early in the day. Also, I have a toothache and a week to go still before I can have it fixed. :/

In WoW-news, I was adopted by a batshit Warlock from the most progressed Alliance guild on the server the other day. We'd talked briefly a couple times, mainly just exchanging hellos, when one night he was bored enough to drag me through all the Ogrila prequests just so I could accompany him for the dailies. Needless to say my epic riding skill fund has benefited nicely! It's made me think about the social networking of WoW and how it really is important to have friends in the game outside your own guild. I can't count how many times I've wanted to do a heroic but haven't had enough people on, or I've wanted to grind something but no one else was interested in coming along. The more people you know the less likely you are to ever log off cause there was nothing to do but idle in Shattrah.

(I don't like to grind or quest on my own. I'm a clothie and a carebear and I stink at PvP - bodyguards are the way to go!)

After making friends with this insane Warlock though, I was invited to join his guilds vent for some daily heroic runs late at night. Now this is a guild with at least 3 females in it already, of which I think two talk frequently on vent. That didn't stop people from going 'WHO WAS THAT?!' as soon as I spoke and whispering the Warlock to find out more. Which is cool, I get that I was a stranger and all, but I doubt they'd have been terribly interested if my voice had been male. Later there were some whispers (that were copied to me by others) regarding my voice and what it sounded like. I'll spare you the details, heh. I thought of TJs posts (here and here) about the girls that complain about the attention they get when they don't lift a finger to try and stop it. I actually did stop talking on their vent unless necessary and told my friends there why. While I didn't really care what people were saying, I don't want to feed that kind of stuff and find myself some day down the line caring about something else they said.

I find the whole hoopla over females on vent/in the game fascinating though. Like TJ said in her posts, it's not exactly a rarity. There are thousands of girls out there playing WoW - There are female guild leaders (I'm the GM of my guild and the GM of the guild I was on vent with is also female), female raid leaders, really awesome female PvPers, etc. It's not a new concept at all, so why is it still treated as a big deal by some? That said, and again TJ pointed this out as well, it doesn't happen often. I can only think of once in the previous 8 months or so (that it happened to me), so that plus the fact that they had other girls in the guild is probably why it threw me for a loop.

Anyway, I've been planning to post this here but it never seemed to fit:

Tieryn tanked Durn the Hungerer in Nagrand several weeks ago, with a Warlock for DPS and two healers. Now he's not exactly the toughest of elites but still people get bug-eyed when I mention that I tanked him as Shadow Priest. Face it people, anyone that can build and maintain decent aggro can tank elites and bosses with enough healers on them :)

034: Alicia's Poem

2007-11-17T19:58:00.001-08:00

I posted this on wow_ladies just now, but I figure I'll post it here too in case someone out there knows. And in case you haven't seen it yourself and would want to.

I randomly swung by that little park in Stormwind Keep today (where you have to kill those noblemen for the Missing Diplomat chain as a lowbie). To my surprise I saw that huge honking yellow exclamation point on my minimap and quickly located this little girl wandering around the park with a quest for me. Her name is Alicia and she wants me to deliver a letter to someone named Caylee on the Aldor tier in Shattrah. Okay, I think to myself, must be the start of some shiny new quest chain or whatever.

Head to Shattrah and sure enough, opposite the Mark of Sargeras dude there's a new NPC: Caylee Dak the NE Hunter and her Nightsaber, Dusky. I'm surprised, however, when I hand her the envelope, get my 3-4 gold and.... don't get a follow up? Wait, that was it? I discover that I can talk to Caylee again and when I do the only option is to ask her to read me Alicias poem - the one that was in the envelope.

And it's sad :/

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am in a thousand winds that blow,
across Northrend's bright and shining snow.

I am the gentle showers of rain,
on Westfall's fields of golden grain.

I am in the morning hush,
of Stranglethon's jungle, green and lush.

I am in the drums loud and grand,
the hunderous hooves across Nagrand.

I am the stars warmly gleaming,
over Darnassus softly dreaming.

I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.

(screenshot)

It reminded me of that toombstone in Hillsbrad Foothills (read about it on wowinsider I think) that was put into the game in memory of a person close to a Blizzard employee or something that had died. Is this something like that? Was this put into the game with patch 2.3 or has it been there longer and I just never noticed? Does anyone know what the story is? And is this only for Alliance Aldor people, or does Alicia ask you to deliver it at the Scryers tier if you're Scryer?

Sad panda :(

Edited: A lovely poster on WoW_ ladies found out. Awwww :/

033: Horde in Stormwind

2007-11-17T09:03:00.000-08:00

Not how I expected to spend my day.

On my server there's this crazy Undead holy Priest that stops by Ironforge and Stormwind almost daily. If you attack him he'll kill you, but if you don't... he'll mind control you and bring you up the mountain alongside Valley of Heroes. You get a fantastic view from up there!

This time he brought a Rogue with him for company. Unfortunatly once they'd managed to MC me all the way up to the top (I stink at exploiting terrain, obviously) the Priest jumped off and slowfalled, effectively missing out on the screenshot. More pics: one two three

(I'd wanted to remove the UI, but names and guilds no longer show up when I alt-z. Boo!)

032: Winterspring Winterspring Winterspring

2007-11-15T23:21:00.001-08:00

Was a rolling restart. Can't sleep. Have to quest more. 20 more turnins to go and I'm done. Exalted. Finished.

Things I will not miss about Winterspring:
* The Winterfall Runners
* Rak'Whatever, the rare purple kitty
* Grizzle the elite furbolg
* Princess Tempestria shouting at me
* Lvl 70 Hordies with nothing better to do than ganking in Winterspring
* Not having enough Shamans and being forced to wait for respawn
* The distance between Winterfall Village and Frostsaber Rock
* People stealing my mobs!

This grind has given me:
* More than 5 random blue world-drops
* 5-6 different Darkmoon Cards
* Enough Runecloth to cover all the walls in Stormwind
* An Orb of Deception
* Migraines
* Revered status with Timbermaw Hold
* Countless green items
* An obscene amoutn of Frostsaber Leatherworking recipes

With patch 2.3 I should be getting a 20% discount on the mount, right? What with being exalted with the faction? How much does the mount cost anyway? It always seemed so far off so I never actually checked. I still can't quite grasp that it's almost over. Whatever will I do now?

His name is gonna be Frost.

Edited to add:

031: Pet Hordelings

2007-11-15T20:03:00.000-08:00

This post is for Doom.

Zul'Aman last night didn't go terribly well. That said, it went a lot better than I'd expected, so I guess we came out of it alright! The trash wasn't an issue except for that 4 (6) mob pull right before the first boss. Took a couple tries before the healers figured out that this was srs bsns and the DPSers woke up from their snorefest. The boss himself was unfortunatly too tough a cookie for us. We've only ever downed Prince once and never Nightbane or Netherspite so our gear isn't the best ever. We were doing a champion job at it though! Yours truly died many many many times (3rd in aggro all the time and no chance in hell to reach the reset point before he'd eaten my face) for the cause.

Our main issue is healing, being as how our main healer, the Healadin of previous posts fame, is on a mini-WoW break. His replacment is the sexy female Healadin (one of my best friends IRL) and while she's an awesome healer she was running around in half Shaman loot and half not that great Paladin loot. Once respawn hit us the first time we decided to close up shop and headed to karazhan instead. There, we proceeded to clear out Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera and Curator in 2 hours, effectively gearing up the sexy Healadin a little bit. It'll probably take some more work, but we'll get there. We had him down to 60% on our best try and I'm pretty confident that we'll pick him off without much trouble next time.

Boring boss and trash talk aside - Zul'Aman is pretty! I love the fact that it's outdoors and I got strong Zul'Gurub vibes when we first entered, even though I've only been in ZG a couple times before. Had a whole bunch of hex stick things drop btw, so half the raid are getting pet frogs soon. I didn't realise it was gonna be that common, but hey, as long as I get one of 'em!

In Winterspring news, I've been slightly sidetracked today. My goal was to clear 9k rep and I managed around 7500 when the Rogue and the Feral Druid came by to keep me company. By 'keeping me company' I mean 'distract me entirely from what I'm supposed to be doing'. Then this Hordeling Warlock showed up and we spent some time attacking him only to mind-control-heal him back to full health again and buffing him, then attacking him again. He repaid us by attacking the Druid. Bad move!

It was fun when he AFK'ed in the middle of the 3 of us though (we even set up a campfire), we were plotting to MC move him to an entirely different location for shtis and giggles when he suddenly logged out on us. Hordelings that don't want to play makes us sad pandas :(

We found another one AFK'ing outside Everlook, but after I'd MC moved him about 50 yards he came back to his computer, got scared and ran away. We were gonna bring him to Frostsaber Rock for a picnic damnit! :(

Sidenote: I run several addons and one of them - a hunter addon I'm guessing - shows the pet's name in red along with a sad face whenever the pet is unhappy and needs food. The creators haven't been able to make it tell mind control victims apart from pets though, so whenever I MC a Horde the addon warns me that they're unhappy and need to be fed. It's the most adorable thing ever.

Then the server shut down abruptly (probably fixing the Shaman loot, eh?) and there was no more Wintersaber Trainer rep (or Hordeling pets) for me.

030: Patch 2.3 so far

2007-11-14T06:44:00.000-08:00

Word on the forums was that if you grabbed the new FP at the STV Rebel Camp and flew to Booty Bay, you'd cross directly over the Gurubashi Arena and get flagged if you weren't already. The fun thing is that apparantly you could be attacked by Alliance too, once you landed in BB. Of course we ran through Duskwood to test it - who doesn't want to kill their own guildies once in a while? - but sadly it didn't work for us. Might be a PvE realm thing, since we're always flagged in STV and thus nothing changes for us when flying over the Arena. For those of you on PvE realms, did you test it out and go Alliance killing? And if you did, how did the guards react to it?

Besides that slight dissappointment in what could be a super fun glitch, I'm very happy with 2.3. I don't like that the Wintersaber rep gain is so much easier, but hey, at least I'll get my purple kitty sooner than expected. I'm also very happy with the auto-leave-shadowform when I hit a holy spell. It's gonna cut down that precious GCD second during PvP which might save my sorry ass every now and then! Noticed also that quests you haven't yet picked up show up on the minimap now. That comes off as a wee bit lazy to me, but hey, whatever.

Beyond that I haven't really tested things out yet. Haven't even bothered to pick up Fear Ward. I went straight to Winterspring this morning and I plan to stay here until we head for Zul'Aman tonight (provided that the server lives). There's already another Priest grinding Wintersaber rep and I expect there'll be several more as the days go by. I want to finish asap to avoid the crowd :[

ETA: ding! Revered.

029: On being human

2007-11-12T17:32:00.000-08:00

As a sidenote in his comment to my previous post, Dammerung snarks a little on the fact that I play a ~~filthy~~ Human. (Then he promptly goes back to his blog and throws flattery at me to make up for it - at least he's a smart Orc.) It reminded me of the times I've browsed my realm forum and seen people with their panties in a knot use this as an insult in arguments. "Well I'm not the person who bought a fantasy game and rolled a human" type thing. I've never bothered to get involved in pointless arguments like that but you know how you sometimes read something you take offense to in whatever way and you know it's futile to reply so you compose a scalding response in your head for your own satisfaction/entertaintment? Orrrrrr maybe that's just me. Anyway! I've done that re: playing a human and will now treat you to my (tl;dr) point of view on the matter:

When I began playing, I was in the (probably very small) group of people who've never played it before and have never seen anyone else play it, but who have read through an entire official guidebook multiple times. See, I decided I wanted to play this Warcraft thing but knew my computer wouldn't be able to handle it. Not having a video card at all was merely one of the clues. However I'm a practical girl when it comes to money, and the next time I had plenty of the stuff I picked up a copy. It'd take me a few months to put aside enough for that shiny new computer and I didn't want to find myself having just bought it... and not having enough left over to buy the actual game. I also picked up the official Bradygames guidebook (with the awesome Penny Arcade comic strips in it) so that I could figure out the very basics of the game before buying the new PC and installing it.

It took some 4-5 months (my savings fund got distracted by this thing called Christmas), but finally the new PC arrived and the game was installed. I'd had plenty of quality time with the guide and had a fair idea of what the different races and classes were like. I'm not ashamed to admit that I immediatly went for the Hunter class. Quite typical, I know, but the reason I'm not ashamed is because I never actually did join the legions of not-all-that-great-players-who-rolled-a-night-elf-hunter. See, for some obscure reason that I don't even understand myself I romanticised the idea of the Night Elf race and I romanticised the idea of the Hunter class, but point blank refused to combine the two. Don't ask me why cause I honestly have no idea. I wanted a human hunter. Not a Night Elf, not a Dwarf, and certainly not a Horde (I was too much of a good girl to play the 'bad' side).

What do you do when the combination of race and class that you want don't exist? You roll a Human Warrior. It made sense at the time. I think I remember having picked up on the fact that Night Elves were the typical choice of female players and I wanted to avoid being like everyone else. How I'd picked up on that I don't know. To this day the only races I haven't touched are Dwarves and Trolls (and Trolls only cause the Horde in general doesn't seem to work for me - I can never get past level 10ish) so for whatever reason Dwarves have never appealed to me at all. I liked the idea of a Gnome Warlock, seeing it as a sort of tiny pack of pure dynamite, but realised that this too was quite a common thing when someone mentioned to me that they were drawn to that class/race combo for the exact same reason. Having exhausted all the (then) options, the only race left for me to roll was Human. I couldn't think of any good reason not to and the race wasn't unappealing, so off I went.

The reason it was a Warrior was simply that I couldn't be a Hunter and it seemed to me as an 'easy' class to start with. You bang stuff over the head with a weapon, right? How hard could it be? Everything else seemed so technical with spells and healing and summoned demons and all these fancy abilities. Warriors, I decided, couldn't possibly be that complex. Give me a sword and a shield and I'll go around killing things until I've figured this Azeroth world out enough to brave something tougher!

Some 42 levels later I only had my Warrior and one other character, a level 6 Undead Rogue that I never quite figured out how to play and thus abandoned. Friends happened and OMG roll on my friends server! She'll help us out! and shortly after I had started fresh with a human Warlock on a PvP realm. Human because I still hadn't gotten over not wanting to do anything common.

(Mind you the actual numbers might show that there were and are more Human Warlocks than there are Gnome Warlocks. I have no idea, to be quite honest. Not to mention that Human in general is probably the most common class of all. This was all about what I believed in my head to be common and not, you know, actual facts. Afte rall, what I roll is 100% about what I feel happy playing and once I'd latched on to the idea that something was typical it'd take some time to let go of that.)

Around level 20ish my friends and I realised that our combo of Warrior, Warlock and Warlock weren't optimal for getting PUGs to instances and group quests. It seemed at the time that there were hardly any healers at all on our realm and since I hadn't fallen in love with the Warlock class I volunteered to re-roll Priest. Human, again, because I had good experience with the race and because my friend fully supported my belief that 'Night Elf = Stupid 12 yearold' was pretty much fact. (This was confirmed over and over with every single PUG group we ever touched.) I have now graciously adapted this belief to 'Night Elf = Stupid person that will wipe your group UNLESS it is someone you know not to be an idiot, or is level 70 and in a respectable guild'. And even then there are exceptions.

It took some time to catch up with my friends, obviously, and when I finally did the 'Lock died off on us (too busy with his raiding Druid on a different server) and the Warrior went SQUEEE DRAENEI and re-rolled Shaman the moment the expansion was out. I ended up leveling my budding Shadow Priest alone through most of her levels but didn't really mind. The first time I ever touched any other Alliance race was when I created my Gnome bank and when I, very guiltily, rolled Night Elf just to try some class. Probably Druid, but I really can't remember. As the months have gone by I've gotten over my dislike for the other races though, and I now operate a small army of Humans, Draenei and Night Elves. There will probably never be any Dwarves in it, but maybe some day I'll try something with a Gnome. It's unlikely though, as the only classes I lack are Shaman and Paladin, and as far as I can remember Gnomes can't be either.

Anyway, to get to the point of most Human insults out there: I really don't see why it's a not-cool thing to roll a Human in a fantasy game. I bought this game to play in a medieval-ish fantasy world and I'm quite content to play a Human living in this world. It's still very much a fantasy to me since this Human wanders around with Elves and Gnomes and Spacegoats, which obviously doesn't exist in real life. She travels through landscapes we'd never see here on Earth and battles magnificent monsters. To me the game is more than fantasy enough and I see no need to play a made-up race to make it a proper 'valid' fantasy. The argument that if you want to play a fantasy game you shouldn't play the race you actually are in real life is moot in my opinion. It's still pretty damn fantastic.

Then again, if I'd known then what I know now, I'd have re-rolled Draenei Priest when the expansion came purely for the racials. I mean, come on, Desperate Prayer? Crit heals me for around 600hp. What the hell is that about? At least I'll get Fear Ward tomorrow. Now that's a 'common' I'll whole-heartedly embrace!

028: The non-WoW'er and you

2007-11-11T04:49:00.000-08:00

I'm emergency backup for Karazhan this Sunday, and thus I felt I should warn my guest prehand just in case a crisis happens and they call me. She wanted to know what this Warcraft thing was. Highlights include:

MBB: A raid means that ten people from different parts of Europe all log on at the same time, and their characters are all in this castle, fighting together to kill bosses. These bosses are so hard you need ten people to manage it.
Alex: Okay. Not like Super Mario then.
MBB: No, not like Super Mario.

MBB: *explains briefly about there being lots of lore behind the game*
Alex: Oooh, you should get all the books and read it all.

Alex (looking at the newly purchased WoW 2008 calendar): So which one is you then?
MBB: Uhm, I don't see any humans here, it's all Orcs and Night Elves. Wtf. Oh, wait, that one's a human. I think. Mage, looks like.
Alex: Nice cleavage.
MBB: I should show you the female Orc on the loading screen, she's like Victoria Beckham. Completely flat chest with two footballs attatched.
Alex: Ooo, show me!

MBB: And this is my Rogue.
Alex: She looks like a human!
MBB: She is a human.
Alex: I didn't think you played any humans.
MBB: Actually the Priest and the Warlock are both humans too, they just wear so much gear you can't really tell.

Alex: OMG that one is so cute!
MBB: That's a gnome.
Alex: Why don't you play her?
MBB: She's just my bank.
Alex: But she's so cute! She's got pink hair!
MBB: She's a gnome.

027: The disease known as alts

2007-11-08T05:12:00.000-08:00

Fair warning: guests are coming to stay this weekend and I might not have the time to blog each day. Will make a valiant try though.

I enjoy these WoW music videos a lot, so I'm spreading the link for those who haven't seen them yet.

Alts! (It's TJ prompt time!) I'm sure you know someone or have someone in your guild or have heard of someone crazy enough to level one of each class. It's great, they say, it really teaches you how to play the classes better. But have you heard of the guy that took it one step further and set off to create not just one of each class, but one of each class in each race? Yeah, that's some quality batshit there. I can't remember where I read about him anymore, but apparantly he'd finished with priests (meaning he had leveled a priest of each race that can have a priest to 70 - both horde and alliance) and was on his second warlock. Or he'd finished with warlocks and had started priests. Either way. If he manages to finish one day, that's a lot of alts. At least Shamans and Druids won't take him too long.

I like this story, it makes people that settle for one of each class look a lot less crazy. Like me.

Currently I'm lacking a Shaman and a Paladin, but I'll get to them eventually. I've got a baby Druid and a baby Rogue, both around 11-12, and a Mage at 19. My Hunter (BM of course) is at level 22, my Warrior dinged 34 the other day and the Warlock is 41. Then there's my lvl 70 Shadow Priest of course. Some of these have banners at the bottom of the blog, but not all.

(Remember the Druid I mentioned starting back when my guild was lacking tanks? Yeah I'm not really feeling the Druid class, so I rolled a Warrior instead and it feels like coming home.)

There's nothing I love more than to be able to log out of my priest after a day of heavy raiding and heroic-ing and go wandering around Elwynn Forrest with my Rogue. No stress, just enjoying the game. Or log on my Warrior and hit up a guildie for yet antoher boost in Cathedral, in the hopes that the Scarlet chestpiece will drop (5/6 Scarlet set! Though she needs the tabard, too). Or log on my Hunter and let her wolf eat some mobs for breakfast. Sometimes it just gets old playing the same character for hours and hours. I even find myself avoiding my Warlock because she's just too similar to a Shadow Priest. When I'm tired of Tieryn I want something radically different. Usually I don't want to play a caster at all.

More than one person have told me that I'm spreading myself too thin. I disagree! The beautiful thing about alts is that there's no stress. You have a level 70 already so you can take your sweet time with the rest of your chars. Play them whenever you feel like it. Muck around at one level for months or speed through them every time you hit max rested.

I'm not saying it works for everyone. I have people in my guild who only have one character that they play (and they tend to be insanely good at it, too), and who never manage to get into this whole alt business. For me though, the variation is key to not getting tired of the game.

With 2.3, I expect we'll see a lot more alt-playing. In my guild there's several people who have rolled a different class and played them up to around 20ish and parked them there, waiting for the patch. Others have mentioned brushing off their old abandoned alts once the patch is here. Personally I have no patience to sit and wait like that, but I'm excited to see just how much of a difference the increased experience will make. If I dare bet on which one of my little ones that'll reach 70 first, I'll have to go with the Warrior. She's so much fun to play and I know she'll be needed. Dentarg is still a realm with only 1% tanks, after all.

I'll probably never get to the point where each of my alts are level 70, but that's not my goal either. I play them to learn the other classes. To do something other than face-melting for a while. To explore the zones I ignored with Tieryn. To try out the other races. Some people say they want to reach Black Temple to get their money's worth from this game. I feel they're underestimating the vast expanse of game that exist before level 60, or level 70. There's tons of fun to be had there, too.

026: Naxxaramas

2007-11-06T15:17:00.000-08:00

Today I got myself attuned to Naxx. Dunno if we'll actually get enough people with us to go there but it's nice to simply be attuned. You never know when the chance will pop up, after all! Only two days ago I got dragged along for a random Ony run with a friends guild and ended up walking away alive and with the backpack I'd wanted.

Speaking of Naxxaramas, some guildies have been spamming these on our forums and I thought I'd share them for those of you who haven't heard them before:

/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_01.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_02.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_03.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_04.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_05.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_06.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_07.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_08.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_09.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_10.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_11.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_12.wav")

Copy these one at a time and paste them into the game. The Corrupted Ashbringer is a sword that drops from Mograine in Naxx I believe, and if you have it equipped it'll randomly whisper to you as you play. Quite creepy. Some of the coolest lore in the game too, in my opinion. If you have the sword equipped and enter Scarlet Monestary's Cathedral, all the Crusaders will be friendly and kneel to you. If you go all the way to Scarlet Commander Mograine (Junior), a scripted event takes place to reveal the story behind the corruption of the Scarlet Crusade and why Highlord Mograine (Senior) ended up as a Death Knight boss in Naxx.

However equipping it also makes you hated by the Argent Dawn faction.

Ashbringer isn't the only creepy whispering thing though:

/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunDeathIsClose.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunYouAreAlready.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunYouWillBetray.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunYouWillDIe.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunYourCourage.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunYourFriends.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\YourHeartWill.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\YouAreWeak.wav")

C'Thun whispers randomly to everyone in the raid inside AQ40, intending to break you before you've even reached him.

The list has hundreds and hundreds of sounds, so go have fun!

025: Gone fishin'

2007-11-05T04:14:00.001-08:00

When I posted yesterday I realised that bloggers clock is entirely different from mine. Normally that doesn't matter, but I've signed up for NaBloPoMo and should be getting up one blog each day. Fair warning: I'm not even going to try and figure out what bloggers day rhytm is, and definitely not adjust myself to it. Too many other and more important things to do. So expect there to be some inconsistencies in the blog dates here in Mana Battery land - two posts in one day and none the next, etc. Regardless, I will make a fair try at having 30 reasonably spaced apart blogposts up at the end of November, which is the most important thing.

DING! 375 fishing!

Yes, I ding in tradeskills too, because gosh darnit it deserves some recognition to finally finish leveling things like tailoring and fishing. The ding itself happened rather quietly in the middle of my first appearance in the Stranglethon Fishing Extravaganza. A couple of weeks ago we got a new mid-level guildie who then promptly brought in his lvl 70 Tree because we were just that awesome. Turns out he's a fisher! Up until that point, I'd been pretty much the only person in the guild that seemed to care about reaching 375 fishing and obsessing over those Pure Water pools in Nagrand. Now we were two! Last weekend was supposed to be my debut in the fishing contest but life happened, as it does, and I went to bed about an hour before the contest started so I could have some precious five hours of sleep before the raid that night. The new Tree won and got a shiny new fishing rod.

(I really need to come up with some better nicknames, we have an awful lot of Bears and Trees now. Unfortunatly this Trees awesome existing nickname is untranslatable.)

Fishing is slow. Skilling up happens every 10-12 catches or so once you get past 300, which means you need close to one thousand catches before you see 375. It sounds like an awful lot but it wasn't really that boring. I fished whenever I felt like it and skilled my cooking on the side. The key really is to not push yourself, as fishing two-three hours in a row will get pretty damn dull. (Unless you've parked yourself by the Stormwind canals with a guildie and he's running back and forth to the AH to model different tailored RPG-costumes for you, inbetween trick or treating and explaining to people where you got your sexy red dress.) I also made it a rule to fish whenever I was waiting for a boat to arrive.

The Fishing Extravaganza contest occurs every Sunday in STV between 2pm and 4pm server time. It's announced in a yell and everyone starts roaming the western coast up and down, hunting for fishing nodes. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect so I'd brought along the mini-mage (currently a Buccaneer, which makes flying to and from Booty Bay really interesting) as a bodyguard to handle self-confident mobs and any possible gankers. The new Tree was there too, hoping to catch one of the rare fish he didn't already have and ready to answer all my questions.

I'll spare you from a play-by-play cause a fishing contest isn't all that thrilling. Suffice to say that I almost won - I had 38 Tastyfish when the winner was annoucned and got the remaining two within a minute - and that we all stayed until the end of the Extravaganza in the hopes of some rare fish consolation prizes. The Tree caught two (bastard!) and I caught one, earning myself some shiny new +5 fishing boots. That might sound like a tombola prize, but in fishing every single skillpoint counts. There are waters out there were you need an insanely high amount of fishing skill in order to avoid the tiresome 'Your fish got away!' messages, and lures just don't provide enough boost. Ideally, a serious fisher should have the Extravaganza fishing rod (+35), the hard-to-get rare fish prizes of eternium line (+5), boots (+5) and hat (+5), a separate pair of gloves with a fishing enchant on them (+5) and a decent lure attatched to the pole.

Sounds extreme, I know, but simply to fish in certain lakes in Terokkar, you need a base fishing skill of 405. That's 375 fishing skill and lure. However 'just' 405 will mean that several of your catches will get away and be a waste of time. To fully stop any fish from getting away, you need to pack 500 fishing skill. 500! With your core 375 skill and a +100 lure, you still need 25 points. If you use the rod you get from the Shattrah quest, you've got an extra +20. You still need either the enchant or one of the Extravaganza prizes to climb the last points, and that's skipping the fact that +100 lures aren't the easiest to come by. At least I don't think they are. Limited supply at some vendors and engineer made only, I believe. Thankfully I have some engineering hookups I can abuse.

Why do we bother? Cause there's money to be made selling you our tasty catches, of course. You want food buffs? We can whip up +20stam/+8mp5, +44heal/+20spi, +20agi/+20spi, +23spelldmg/+23spi and +30stam/+20spi.

Love the fish. Love your fishers.

024: Noobs

2007-11-03T15:40:00.000-07:00

I've met many silly people in WoW, but to be quite honest none of them have really stood out as a Noob with a capital N. Perhaps I've been lucky? The only ones I can really remember are the level less-than-10 in Tirisfal Glades that decided hitting my friends level 60 human mage was a good idea (she hugged him & one-shot him into oblivion) and the silly person that kicked me from a Botanica PUG because I mind-controlled the Mender. You know, the one that can give an insane half-hour +spelldmg buff? He didn't approve of the casters in the group getting that buff.

Neither of those were terribly noob-ish though. The less-than-10 was more than likely a newbie to the game and had no idea that flagging yourself in the kiddie pool area is a bad idea (especially around the Scarlet Monestary) and the Botanica-jerk later half-apologised by saying he didn't realise the buff lasted that long. What makes me remember them isn't so much what they did as making fun of them in guildchat for several days after each incident occured.

To me, being a noob is more when you know something isn't right and people keep telling you something isn't right but you keep right on doing it anyway. Like a melee hunter, to use a cliché. Thankfully, I have yet to run into a noob like that. Knock on wood!

023: He's a Rogue, what did you expect?

2007-11-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

I've never had as much fun on vent as last night, when - in the middle of a Karazhan raid - the Rogue and Warlock disconnected. Shortly after the Druid offtank goes 'Uhm, the Rogue called me and said they can't get back online cause some guys came into their room, stole their router and ran away with it'.

After a while they did return, however, and let us know that everything was fine cause not only did they get their router back, they also stole these guys' Xbox 360.

022: No!

2007-10-31T11:07:00.000-07:00

WHAT.

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

Damnit, the thing that always attracted me to the Winterspring Frostsaber was that it required a ridiculous amount of time and effort to get. I wanted the one thing in the game that isn't easy to achieve (besides 0.000001% BOP drop items, obv).

Now it's going to be common.

Sad panda.

Ah well, at least Pinne the Shaman will be happy. Her grind won't take nearly as long as mine has (and I'm not even halfway).

021: PvP

2007-10-31T04:16:00.000-07:00

I play better PvP when I'm drunk. That's how much of a carebear I am, isn't it sad? I've been hauled off to the Arena a few times a week by the Healadin for 2v2 and now I've got a 5v5 too. I'm not really doing it for a valid reason anymore either. First off I wanted to get the Merciless Gladiator's Spellblade, but you need to pay an arm and a leg for that and now that we have Prince in Kara pretty much on farm... yeah no. So I glanced at the Shadow Priest set and decided it looks quite nice. Probably gonna pick up the headpiece first and then go for the shoulders. Dunno if I'll bother with the rest, I'm pretty much only doing it for the awesome looks! (Because I really need yet another set to carry around in my bags... /sigh. At least I'm not a Paladin.)

Is it just me or could the Arena matching system be a little better? Last week we walked into a 1400 rating 5v5 that waved a freakin' Warglaive of Azzinoth in our faces. It got messy.

Knowing that PvP and I will never be friends, why on earth am I on a PvP server? Long story made very short: friends. Originally I had a warrior on Eonar PvE, but I re-rolled when the bestfriend started playing. I make due the best I can and just switch to alts if things get too bad. Probably the only time I actually enjoy PvP is when there's twenty Alliance outside Kara and a couple of Horde decide to try and run through. Though technically that's more of a massacre than PvP.

I feel completely justified in massacring outnumbered Hordies outside Kara after what they did to us during Hallow's End though.

(Headless Horseman? Yeah he's in the SM Graveyard. Which one that is? Easy, just aim for the one with the two feet thick carpet of skeletons outside. Watch out for the thirty-five Hordies camping the instance portal, the two hunters with traps patrolling the entrance to the Monestary and the group of about seven that's guarding the summoning stone. Have fun.)

Proper entry is coming - I accidentally saved over my notepad draft of Serious Post #2 and have been avoiding it since.

020: Gayadins and other animals

2007-10-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

Healadin: http://www.wowwiki.com/images/1/1d/T4_pala_mhuman.jpg
MBB: is that a unicorn pala?
Healadin: oyea
MBB: its somehow not as cute as a plain unicorn
MBB: or a plain pala for that matter
MBB: even the human inside that armor looks embarassed
Healadin: hehe
MBB: hes like
MBB: 'there's a purple horn on my forhead, isnt there'

(pause)

MBB: is that an arrow on his crotch?
MBB: subtle.
Healadin: haha yeah, showing where da power is :P
MBB: and you keep telling me paladins aren't gay.
Healadin: that's not a hint focused towards other men you know
Healadin: you always tend to think gay ways
Healadin: :P
MBB: it doesnt say that anywhere
MBB: however, you have a purple horn on your forhead
MBB: i think that speaks volumes, personally

Actually, he doesn't, because he passed on it for a very happy rogue. Our healadin is a gentleman and we love him for it. That doesn't mean I won't make fun of him when he eventually does get his t4 helmet token though!

Obv this means Prince went down last night. \o/

019: Comics and Ponies

2007-10-29T05:28:00.000-07:00

I promised my guildie the Wonderbear (now respecced to ~~Boomkin~~ Tree? What? Seriously? He'll always be the Wonderbear in my heart /sniff) that my next blog would be about Ponies. Yes, Ponies. For those of you who have been living under a rock lately, we are of course referring to the Looking For Group comic. FOR PONY!

Randomly, it may serve as proof of how frequently my mind is elsewhere to mention that I was once in a PUG with a warlock named Richaard with two a's. It took me two weeks to realise that, duh!, he was a fan of LFG and that's why he'd named his warlock that. Perpetual head in the clouds, I tell you. End random story and onward to the comic goodness!

Penny Arcade (Horde and Alliance)
With such a vast community around it, it's not really surprising that so many comics have blossomed around Warcraft. I encountered my first one in the official strategy guide before I'd even started playing. Unfortunatly I don't think the strips Penny Arcade made for the guidebook are available anywhere online, only this brilliant one that they made around the time BC came out. However, I will actually go as far as to recommend buying the guidebook just for the comics in it. It's probably not all that expensive now that it's partly outdated anyway.

Looking For Group (Horde)
LFG is the only one I know of that's properly published, and thus, it's not based 100% off of Warcraft. Copyright issues, of course. You'll find that Richard - the undead warlock - is able to do things a warlock wouldn't be able to do in the Warcraft Universe. Like making portals and raining hail on ~~innocent~~ villagers. Apart from little details like that though, it's obvious where their inspiration came from. This one is so heartily recommended that I'll be dissappointed if you don't click the link and check it out. Come on, do it for Pony! (make it to page 42 in order to get the Pony reference)

Manic Graffiti (Horde PvP and Alliance PvE)
From what I understand, this comic has made regular appearances in the livejournal community worldofwarcraft for who knows how long. I don't frequent that community, but from the moment my friend passed me a couple links over MSN I was hooked. The art is stunningly detailed and I may be in the process of comissioning a portrait of Tieryn as we speak. Well worth a read! PS Druids are emo.

Dark Legacy (Alliance)
Superbly funny. It also has the best screenshot from warcraft ever: the infamous boatride to Stonetalon Mountains. Yes, they took the boat from Theramore and ended up in the Stonetalon Mountains. Which, as I'm sure you know, is simply choc-full of ports to dock in. Not to mention sea.

Chronicles of the Flaming Ruby (Alliance)
A Night Elf with a chronic licking problem, gay Rogues, gay Paladins, Warlock-school, horde kidnapping the artist and demanding to be featured in the comic as ransom, Warcraft Soccer with the GMs as referees and so so so much more. You're missing out if you haven't read these! The Chronicles (and the dancing video) are the core reason I got obsessed with Blood Elves.

Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth (Alliance)
Sadly this comic is no longer updated, but it still deserves a link even if GameSpy's intervening ads are fiendishly annoying. Flintlocke is the only comic I know of that uses screenshots for the artwork, btw. I was going to say something about how that must have been nitpicky work that took ages, but it's not like hand-drawing everything is any easier. Anyone else recognise themselves?

The Noob Comic
Lastly, there's the Noob Comic. It's last because it isn't about WoW as much as it is about MMO's in general. While some aspects of it might confuse people who have never played EverQuest, Guild Wars or Final Fantasy XII (like me), the basic issues are the same as you find in Warcraft. Plus it's still funny, even if your mind revolts at their pvp system.

I'm sure I haven't linked all the WoW comics that exist but that wasn't the point of this blog either (feel free to comment with your favorite links though!). If I was able to introduce you to one you weren't aware of yet, that's more than good enough.

FOR PONY!

018: Oldschool Sunday

2007-10-08T02:08:00.000-07:00

We were unable to do Kara this Sunday due to both our Kara-tanks being busy, thus there were a lot of people online without anything much to do. Pinne (the level 50 resto shammy bestfriend) had been dragged to BRD by the crazy oldschool mage, so I tagged along for the ride. Still hadn't got my Shadowforged Key so why not? We took down a variety of bosses in an attempt to make Pinne ding 51, including the one that drops Ironfel. Haven't figured out exactly where I need to go place it yet cause crazy mage yelled 'Ony!' and then things began to rumble, kind of like an avalanche.

There were echoes of 'Ony!' throughout the guild, so we scheduled her at 7pm. Our newest healer hadn't done the last part of the attunement chain, thus an UBRS raid was quickly formed. I'm not sure if anyone has ever plowed through UBRS quite as fast as we did yesterday, it honestly felt like we'd reached the end-boss in about five minutes. It was a lot of fun though, especially for me since I'd only been there twice before. There was QQ when the beast didn't let go of his Pristine Hide. There was a random drop which would have made a lucky raider very rich before BC. There was laughter. I can't have been alone in having fun though, because suddenly hungry players wanted more more more and a spontaneous Molten Core raid was formed. I'd never actually gotten attuned to MC but that part was fixed in 5 minutes (Thank you Kabale♥).

It was my first time venturing into the Core. What impressed me the most I guess, is that the trash was actually tough to take down. We were ten people ranging from 64 to 70ish and we still had plenty deaths and at least one wipe. The best part though was when the tank went afk for ten minutes. Naturally we got restless and the rogue looks up at the two Molten Giants in front of us and goes 'I can tank one'. Kabale goes 'Tieryn can take the other, I've seen a Shadow Priest do it before'.

Oh moment of glory! But unfortunatly a DPSer or two went afk too, so we had to wait.

Obviously I wasn't going to let the chance escape me though, so when the tank was back and charged the skull, I Mind Blasted the hell out of the star and managed to nab aggro. It was a bit difficult to hold onto it but I managed to and look Mommy! I tanked it all by myself! Of course I realised afterwards that I'd done it all with Salvation still on, so that probably explains the difficulty in holding onto the aggro :P

Yes, I am crazy enough to have rolled the epitome of healers with the intent of using her to tank. Because it can be done. To an extent, anyway. My grand goal is to tank Onyxia as Shadow Priest, because it's been done and one day I will do it too.

There was much laughter. There were demands for the Wonderbear to call out the raidwarning **LOOT THE DAMN DOG**, which he did. There was more laughter.

Anyway, we took down Lucifron & Magmadar and I made cheesy screenshots because damnit, they were my first ever MC kills. By then it was almost 7pm and people would soon be logging in for Ony so we hearted out, picked up our medallions from the bank and set out for Dustwallow Marsh.

Sadly I died along with 2/3 of the raid at the beginning of Phase 3. (I moved out of the way of her breath - unfortunatly she moved too.) That didn't stop us though and she was 3-manned by the sexy ~~gay~~ rogue, the Wonderbear and the best damn Healadin on the server. My new goal is to fight Onyxia and live through the whole thing :P

No loot. I had hoped for the tier 2 headpiece to drop from Ony or to at least end up with the backpack as a souvenir of the event, but alas. She actually dropped Shammy loot I believe, and the shaman that had logged on his old priest alt cursed high and wide. Not that tier 2 is any important anymore, of course. It's just so damn pretty! And wouldn't it be something to be able to say that yes, you're in full tier 2 and yes, you got it all after BC? Now that, my friend, is an acomplishment.

Dear Guild,

let's declare oldshool days more often. Please? Also, I want my Benediction/Anathema now, so can we do Majordomo next time? Meanwhile, you'll find me farming for The Eye of Shadow in Winterspring.

Love,
your Mana Battery

017: Lucky week

2007-10-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

First Ritssyn's Lost Pendant dropped in Kara and I won the roll. The next day I gave up on looking for a crafter and dragged guildies into Shattered Halls for a rep run: Pattern: Spellstrike Hood drops. Then, the day after that, we do a guild run of Botanica for rep and what do you know, both Kamaei's Cerulean Skirt and Pattern: Whitemend Hood drops. I'm the only clothie and the only tailor, I get both.

So now I finally have my precious hood and a bunch more to boot. Happy as can be :D

016: I'll keep you my dirty little secret

2007-10-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

On a different server somewhere out there, a belf gayadin and a gay belf rogue found a private corner to unwind at the end of a long day leveling. They, in turn, where created after a long day spent leveling the resto-shammy and doing whatever Tieryn was doing that day. We were bored. We needed something new. And that male belf dance is so much fun.

This post was heavily fueled by Chidori and the Flaming Rubies.

015: ARGH. AAAAAARGH.

2007-10-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

All I want is my Spellstrike Hood crafted. Had a guy lined up to do it via a friend, he said no problem, whenever I was ready with the mats just whisper. Friend even said he'd log onto that guys account and run a heroic to get the nether himself if it came to it. I was a happy Mana Battery. I was purring.

Crafter quit playing wow.

Right, well, gotta troll /trade to find a new guy then. Not so hard, yeah? Spend 3-4 days periodically calling for a crafter with no results. See other people doing the same thing. Finally one day I come back from afk'ing to see that somebody has infact advertised that they can craft Spellstrike Hood in the trade channel and they also have a Nether available. Great! Whisper! 0 players found! Whatever, he logged off, it happens, I'll add him to friends and he'll be back eventually.

He does come back, but I'm the polite kind and do not whisper people while they're in a raid. I wait and wait and wait and two more days pass and finally I catch him idling in Shattrah. Whisper. No reply. Wait, wait, wait, oh look he's gone afk. Fantastic.

Player comes back from afk, I whisper again. He has no Nether. No, he says, he doesn't really run heroics often either.

I JUST WANT MY HOOD PEOPLE. It took me weeks of grinding to gather all the mats now GIMME MY HOOD :[

The Raiding Shadow Priest Part I: +spell hit

2007-10-04T05:48:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I only raid 10man, things might be different in 25man raids. Also, I don't know everything.

In almost every post in this blog I've been going on about my +spell hit rating. So what's the big deal really? Why is it so important? What does it do for a shadow priest?

First of all, let's look at the concept of spell hit. Wowwiki says: "The more spell hit gear a caster has, the lesser the chance an enemy will resist his spells." As the game is set up there will always be 1% chance to miss, no matter what we do. It's the remaining percentage that we're concerned about.

If you throw a spell at a mob that's 3 levels below you, your hit chance is 99%. If you throw a spell at a mob that's the same level as you, it's 96%. When you get into Karazhan and throw a spell at a mob that's 3 levels above you (or any boss), your chance to hit is 83%. That's getting a little low. Since it's obviously necessary to down mobs and especially bosses as fast as possible, it's vital that almost 2 out of every 10 spells you cast are not resisted. Any spell that is resisted is a waste of casting time and mana.

Enter +spell hit.

PvE raiding mobs marked with a skull are considered as level 73 and thus you have 83% chance to hit them. At level 70, you gain 1% hit for every 12.6 spell hit points you've gathered from gear. The theorycrafters have done the math for us and tells us that 202 spell hit rating converts to aprocimately 16% and 83 + 16 = 99. In summary: to not resist more than the unavoidable 1%, a shadow priest needs +202 spell hit. That's a lot.

Enter Shadow Focus.

Shadow Focus is a tier 2 talent in the shadow tree and has a maximum of 5 points. For each point in this talent, you gain 2% spell hit for all shadow spells. Since pretty much everything we do is shadow magic, that's one hell of a useful talent! In fact, it's imperative for a raiding shadow priest to max out this talent until they get their +spell hit going.

(The talent Focused Power also helps the +spell hit for Smite, Mind Blast and Mass Dispel, but being in tier 6 of the Discipline tree it's really not worth it IMO)

So let's say you're level 70 and have no +spell hit but you just specced 5/5 in Shadow Focus. You now have an extra 10% chance to hit with all your shadow spells, landing you at a comfortable 93%. You will need 76 hit rating in order to cover the remaining 6%, which is a much more reasonable number. Once you reach 101 hit rating, you've covered 8% and can downspec to 4/5 Shadow Focus and spend that point on something else. The full list has been posted before but I'll throw it in again:

76 hit is the cap with 5/5 Shadow Focus
101 hit before you can go to 4/5 Shadow Focus
126 hit before you can go to 3/5 Shadow Focus
152 hit before you can go to 2/5 Shadow Focus
177 hit before you can go to 1/5 Shadow Focus
202 hit before you can go to 0/5 Shadow Focus

All numbers rounded up to the next whole number.

When I digned 70 I had a puny amount of +spell hit because I didn't know what on earth it was. Once I figured it out with a little help from my guildies I set about gathering any +spell hit piece that was available to me. For example the day I realised that 2 pieces of the Mana-Etched set gave +35 spell hit was a glorious day and it got a big ol' post on this blog. (I'm still using those.) It's not easy accumulating all that hit but it's not easy to down bosses without it either, and most high-end guilds will require you to have 202 spell hit as one of your most prioritized goals. I won't say the most prioritized because guilds differ, obviously.

That said, it's not only gear that can help you hoard spell hit. Xornot's Gem Finder, which is linked to the right, lists all relevant gems at the click of a button. Any enchanter that's revered with Cenarion Expedition will be able to put +15 spell hit on your gloves. (Consider getting that instead of the +20 spell damage enchant until you've reached your cap.) There might be other ways too, but none that I'm aware of.

014: Tipping the Scales

2007-09-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we headed into Karazhan again, even though we were missing some key players due to them moving IRL. We pretty much knew we couldn't take on Moroes with the setup we had, but we were hoping to farm Attumen and Maiden for loot. No reason not to, after all. We wiped though, and awesomely so. Quoth the offtank bear: "Well as long as it was spectacular, it's alright."

First time was a really bad pull of some sort and the holy priest died, can't really remember. Second time was due to the first wipe and too much time spent explaining things to those who were in kara for the first time. After a few seconds of bopping Attumen on the head, the respawn came crashing around the corner and ate our faces for dinner. Much fun! Apparantly they spawned 2 seconds before we pulled Midnight. Third wipe was cause by yours truly getting feared into some adds just as the patrol was close enough to be aggro'ed as well. Oh the timing. Fourth try - and by then we were laughing in /ra about how mebarassing this was getting - was when our borrowed off-tank went down way too fast, I think. At some point I was Divine Intervention'ed too, at an Attumen wipe, but I'll be buggered if I remember when and why. It gets hard separating the wipes after a while. At any rate, our own off-tank came on after having been stuck in traffic on his way home for half an hour, and we took down Attumen and Midnight finally.

There was no way in hell we were even going to try Moroes, and since it was getting late we decided to go for Maiden another day.

It was glorious and it was humbling. To be honest, we might have needed that. Being forced to give up on Curator last week because our DPS simply wasn't high enough was one thing - Curator is a bastard - but wiping on Attumen is a whole different ballgame. We were the guild that walked into Kara and took down boss after boss on the second or third attempt without really trying terribly hard. We had extraordinary players who all knew their classes like the inside of their gloves and who maximized their DPS as much as they could (and then there was me, tagging along as best as she could, ha). Now, we find ourselves being just like everyone else and having to really work for the kills. All of us have to polish our gear as much as we can and work hard on upping our DPS point after point. It's beginning to feel like raiding should feel like, in a sense. Or maybe I just need some fresh air and an Advil.

That aside, loot! The borrowed offtank got a nice mail helmet and I won the roll for the Handwraps of Flowing Thought. That's twice in a row it's dropped for us now:

I'm probably going to try for the +hit/mp5 gem that drops in Heroic Underbog to replace that green one, but for the time being this will do. I'm now at +116 spell hit (at the cost of losing 4 points in +spell damage), thus breaking the treshold I've been striving for. Respecced late last night and am now happily 4/5 Shadow Focus. Once I get the spellstrike set made (and gemmed) and level my enchanting one more point to get the +10 spell hit on gloves I'll be able to downspec another two points. I could not be happier with where I'm at, gear wise, right now. Yay!

013: Intermission

2007-09-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

Blizzard is teasing me. Formula: Enchant Bracer - Fortitude dropped during a normal Steamvaults rep-run and there was much rejoycing. I danced all the way to the bank, learned the formula and cried a loud WTH when I realised that you need a Runed Adamantite Rod to actually chant it on something. Which I don't have yet and which costs a fortune to make. So dissappointed. That's yet another Primal Might I need to farm, in addition to all the shards.

Primal Mights you say? Yes, and many of them. I'm going for replacing my Mana-Etched pieces with the Spellstrike set (pants, hood). Together they give +38 spell hit, which is more than the set bonus of having two Mana-Ecthed pieces (+35), and needless to say they're infinitely better in all other aspects as well.

I'm getting ahead of myself though. First and foremost it needs to be said that, after much PUG suffering, I've dinged exalted with both Lower City and Cenarion Expedition. Picked up Gavel of Unearthed Secrets (finally!) and Ashyen's Gift respectively. Plus the tabards, of course. My damage has been considerably upped and will go up even further when I get around to enchanting the new mace. At the moment it's +759 I believe, but I can't tell without logging in as the European Armory has died a firey death and refuses to update half the toons - Tieryn being one of them. If I'm right, then the +40 spelldamage enchant will land me at +799. What an annoying number.

(Speaking of annoying numbers, my rep was at 20999 out of 21000 when we'd cleared SL and stood at Murmur's feet. Of course ol' Murmur provided the last point necessary, but geez.)

I find myself inspecting other shadow priests in-game and on the armory, focusing on those whose guilds I know are progressed, to get tips on what items I should go for to up my +hit even more. I still have 5/5 in Shadow Focus because I haven't tipped the scale yet to downgrade it by one point (101 hit before you can go to 4/5), and it bugs me that my DPS could be a lot higher if I just had more hit rating. I only have 1 point in Improved Mind Blast with my build and I'm aching to move points around. Ego posted about wishlists the other day and that's exactly what I'm running around doing. Of course most of the items are out of my reach since my guild isn't big enough to tackle 25man content yet, and won't be for some time if ever, but there's the craftables. The spellstrike which I already linked are just two of many. What I wouldn't give for Belt of Blasting, for example!

It all comes down to gold in the end. Since I'm one of those to whom it would never occur to buy gold (in the sense that I still can't wrap my head around the idea of someone else playing the game for me - what's the point in that?), I'm stuck earning it on my own. I predict a lot of primals grinding in my future, and also many trips to Netherstorm to make spellcloth. It's going to take a long, long time, but it'll be worth it in the end. In the meantime, we got stuck on Curator last week - due to losing all our imba DPSers and the new ones having just dinged 70 - so there's plenty of heroics and rep-runs to occupy myself with. And of course, the boosting/helping/shoving upwards of the 64 healadin, the 65 warlock and the 48 resto shaman. All we need now is a couple more tanks and we're rockin'.

012: Abundance

2007-09-10T01:04:00.000-07:00

Aaaaaaaan we're back! Pulled through Attumen, Moroes and Maiden last night and it felt so good. They didn't give us much trouble either, even with 4 of us being in Kara for the first time. There was one memorable occasion though when the tank pulled Moroes and I stood at the front line to shackle my target when, for whatever reason, Moroes and his compadres decided my proximity aggro was a lot more threatening than the tanks pullspell. Have any of you experienced having all of them on you at once? If not, I can reveal that you go down very fast. Very fast indeed.

Several weeks ago I posted my wishlist from Karazhan, and amusingly, the first three items all dropped:
Handwraps of Flowing Thought
Shadow-Cloak of Dalaran
Bands of Nefarious Deeds

Me and the mini-mage duked it out for the gloves and rolled the same number. In the climatic reroll, he got 6 and I got 3, haha. But I won the cloak (which he already had) and both of us bowed out on the band in favor of the first-timer Warlock. If you exclude all my healing items, this is the first drop I've gotten from Karazhan. It's the first time ever that it's been so benevolent with offensive caster drops, though. Now all we lack is some healing plate, which we have yet to see at all. Poor healadins.

Didn't get a picture before I'd disenchanted the old one, so I'm not sure exactly how much of an upgrade it was. Suffice to say it definitely was.

Immediatly after Kara we did a guild run of Shadow Labs for rep. (15200/21000 currently) The Tree claimed he could keep us alive naked and with rank 2 spells, so it ended up being a mad DPS race were we all took aggro regularly. I topped the charts but the elemental shaman and the rogue were neck and neck the whole time. Made it a bit of a challenge for everyone and made SL not quite so boring even if it was run #285 this week, or so it feels like.

Since the Warlock was online but not in group, everything that dropped were things he desperatly wanted. Oblivion pieces, wands, etc. It all dropped. Universal law, I tell you: Every time your guild goes to a place you'd like drops from but you're not in the party, all those things you crave will drop.

011: The waiting game

2007-09-06T00:11:00.000-07:00

Still not back in Kara. On the bright side though, I'm honored with the Wintersaber Trainers, and this morning I found an Orb of Deception in one of the ever-spawning chests at Winterfall Village. Been running around as an orc all day - shame it doesn't stack with shadowform though.

I've also picked up the Orb of the Soul-Eater, but have yet to ding exalted with LC. Workin' on it though - boosting guildies in SL for the keybits is purposeful to me as well now so it's a nice thing we have all these new people! Last week our honorary Reavers member took the plunge and left his old guild, which we've been bugging him about since we began Kara. He brought three others with him, but unfortunatly they're all DPSers. It's lovely to have backups because lord knows not everyone can be on at the same time every raid, but we're still unable to go due to lack of tank and healers. Sexy Draenei Healadin's PC is still broken and the Shammy still hasn't received her new one. Damn this technology.

Speaking of though, I was asked the day before yesterday if I'd mind respeccing if it came to it. Now I know I stated in my first post that I'm allergic to healing - and I am! I'm never more nervous and paranoid than when I'm healing - but I'll happily do it as a temporary measure for the benifit of the guild. I don't know the first thing about holy talents though, so I've enlisted the assitance of the lovely Ego to help me make sense of things. The Bear stated he'd rather go be a Tree than for me to respec (since my mana battery is much more useful than yet another DPSer) so it might not come to it, but it's better to be prepared. I'd really rather avoid it coming to respeccing and us wiping at something ridiculously easy, like Attumen, just 'cause I have no clue how to heal effectively. Heh.

In further sucky news, the only other level 70 priest in the guild, my shadow mentor, has quit wow. He's promised to still hang out on our forums so I can harass him for advice when I need it, but eh. Sad panda. Add to it that I've been sick and seemingly 90% of Norwegians on my realm are having massive connection problems lately and you've got the past week in quick summary. Sad saaaaad panda.

010: Upgrades

2007-08-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

Thanks for your input on the previous entry guys. I'll keep the name for now and if someone comes along later with a reasonable request to change it, I will. By the way, the name stems from my guild being overly sweet one day, talking about how they would like a Shadow Priests invaluable services for some instance blah blah, and I retorted 'you just want a mana battery bitch, don't you'.

Still not back in Kara and yes, I will whine about that in every post I make until we are. I'm surprised at how much I miss it, really. The regular 5man instances are no longer a challenge, and though heroics are very much so, they're rather hard to organise when 80% of your guild is usually offline doing homework, working or getting drunk. We've managed a few though, so I'm slowly gathering badges. I'm thinking about getting Orb of the Soul-Eater, and combine it with Gavel of Unearthed Secrets from Lowwer City rep. It'd boost my damage quite a lot, and neither depends on drops. Considering how fickle instances and Kara are being, I don't think I should rely too much on them :)

Tonight I'm going to ding honored with Wintersaber Trainers and craft my Frozen Shadoweave Robe finally. Yesterday I got the long awaited 375th skill point in Tailoring, so all I need now are some more primal waters and to scour the AH for a handful of netherweb spider spilk.

Tomorrow will be spent in bed, I think. Feels like I'm coming down with something :/ It's times like these you really wish 'Abolish Disease' worked in real life, too.

009: What's in a name

2007-08-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

By the way, is it a problem that the blog name is Mana Battery Bitch? I'm European and over here nobody reacts to it much, but it struck me that work filters and such might be an issue and that, obviously, not everyone feels the same way. I've noticed the blog name gets censored when linked, and that people adress me as just ManaBattery, hence asking :P

In other news, the guild made a quickie Shattered Halls run (I'm still not Revered and we have a couple new 70s) after BM. You know that hallway with the fires? Guess who died because she stood just a fraction of an inch too close. And guess who then promptly died again when ressed. And then died yet again when ressed a second time! There was much laughter. The flames kept appearing exactly when I'd been ressed, for some reason. Third time was the charm though and I managed to stay alive for the rest of the instance, including when I resisted fear on the last boss -something which I do disturbingly frequently.

Actually, I've been meaning to ask about that... I know there are some very knowledgable priests around and while not all of you are shadow, you'll at least be able to say whether it happens to you a lot or not. See, I am the Queen of resisting fear. I take aggro of course, since nobody else is around, and end up having to tank until the poor paladin is in control of himself again. This happens very often. I keep saying it's something like 90% but I'm sure it's not, it is however, disturbingly often. You know those Fel mobs in Shadow Labs that throw around fear like it was candy? I resist on average 6/8 on them. I've counted. Every time. And that just doesn't rhyme with the 15% resist to fear, stun and silence that I have in Unbreakable Will. Sure, it's on top of the standard Shadow Resist I'm toting around, but everyone in the part has that thanks to Prayer of Shadow Protection. Is there something I'm not aware of, or am I merely speshul?

On the other hand, I hardly ever resist stun or silence.

008: Wintersaber distraction

2007-08-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

No Karazhan this weekend either - too much schoolwork for the poor students and the sexy Draenei healer had to send off her computer to the repair shop, poor thing. It's not a huge deal, raiding is only a part of the vast WoW empire and it means we'll all be a little more hungry for blood when we do go back. It's leaving me with a lot of free evenings that would otherwise have been spent raiding though, and that's making the Battery a little batty. Ho ho, did you catch that clever play on words I did there? Okay no seriously, I'm bored. Bored enough that I've gone back to Winterspring, heavily inspired by BRK and TJ's bet.

I can't remember anymore when or how I first heard of the Winterspring Frostsaber. It's the only epic mount in the game without any armor and that's exactly what I couldn't stand about them. I remember getting my first mount ever, a brown mare, on my PvE warrior. Gathering up 100g was such a daunting task back then, especially for my total newbie warrior, who had skinning & leatherworking as professions. (Yeah, I know! What was I thinking?) I managed though, and then I put them both on a shelf and rerolled on a PvP realm with my bestfriend, effectively starting all over again at those monumental 100g.

I arrived on this new realm equipped with the knowledge of the Wintersaber and as soon as my bestfriend heard about it, she decided she wanted it too. Knowing it'd take forever and a day before we were 60 and could even start, we set ourselves the smaller goal of dinging exalted with Darnassus for a standard, run-of-the-mill kitty at level 40. I was 42 when I got mine (by then I already had a black stallion) and she was 41 when she could get hers. We did not use any runecloth. If anyone ever tells you it's hard or expensive to get to exalted with one of the other factions on your side they don't know what they're talking about.

Then at 60, I chose the lesser of two evils and got my swift white kitty. At least it has less armor than the horses do. I promptly started the Wintersaber Trainer rep grind, but due to some ~~heavy~~ friendly pressure from the guild I had to take a break and push for 70 instead. And then there was gearing up and then there was the flying mount which I had to get for the Kara prequest chain and then there was Kara itself and helping to gear up and attune guildies and boosting guild alts and clawing my way up the profession skill ladder and would you look at that, I hadn't been to Winterspring in several months.

Not that it was such a bad thing, I am meant to be doing the rep grind together with the bestfriends Shammy but her laptop has longsince been diagnosed as insane and so we've both been waiting for her to afford a new PC. If there's one thing I can assure you about the Wintersaber grind, it's that a friend to grind next to you is worth more than anything. It gets lonely up there in the snow. In any case, I've been bored enough to spend this entire weekend grinding and I'm currently about halfway to Honored. I don't even wanna think about how many out of the 520 total quests needed that I've completed.

I'll be writing more about the Wintersaber later, I just got manhandled into a BM run. And I never say no to Medivh♥

007: WTB moar hit rating

2007-08-23T09:03:00.000-07:00

During a Heroic Underbog run yesterday, the Mana-Etched Pantaloons dropped. I already had the Mana-Etched Crown. Now I've been suffering in the past couple weeks from a lack of (spell) hit rating. I'm not sure exactly what happened because up until then I wasn't paying attention to hit rating at all, but I must have had some gearchanges that mucked things up because suddenly the bosses in Kara were resisting left and right and my shackles broke free seemingly at will. For the first time ever I was also radically unhappy with my position on the DPS charts. It wasn't a huge problem, we still downed everything without much trouble, but I felt embarassed and n00bish.

After making a post on the guild boards with the title 'WTB moar hit rating', I was introduced to a lovely Shadow Priest thread on the European forums. Which for whatever reason has gone poof since then, so I can't link it. However, the same info is available at shadowpriest.com's fantastic boards:

76 hit is the cap with 5/5 Shadow Focus
101 hit before you can go to 4/5 Shadow Focus
126 hit before you can go to 3/5 Shadow Focus
152 hit before you can go to 2/5 Shadow Focus
177 hit before you can go to 1/5 Shadow Focus
202 hit before you can go to 0/5 Shadow Focus

All numbers rounded up to the next whole number.

At the time, I had 0/5 in Shadow Focus, which I singularly blame my fellow Mana Battery in the guild for, as he was the one who picked my talents for me. Come to think of it, that happened right around the time my DPS and shackle-reliability plummeted. He apologised profusely in caps lock though, and to be fair, he simply hadn't considered that my less-than-stellar gear would require a different build than his own. Which just goes to prove that spec is highly individual - not only does it have to match your playstyle for optimal use, but also your gear of the moment.

A quick respec later and I found myself boosted almost back up to where I was, DPS wise. I was still walking around with something like +12 spell hit total though, and thus still suffering. I discovered that the Sha'tar sell a lovely head enchant that gives +22 spell damage and +14 spell hit rating, and also switched some random gems. By the time the Pantaloons dropped, I was swimming with my head above water, but I wasn't satisfied.

Now enter exhibit A - my (then) current pants: Devil-Stitched Leggings (with gems)

And exhibit B - the pantaloons: Mana-Etched Pantaloons

(ignore the trinkets, those are my boost-guildies-in-SM-armory trinkets from last night - portable AoE for the win!)

As you can see, I'm taking a loss in both mana and spell damage in favor of a hefty hit boost. That might even be the highest hit boost any one item could give me with my current gear. Now you might ask yourself 'is it worth it?' and that's exactly what I did too. I'm not really into theorycrafting - I tend to read other peoples carefully calculated numbers and trust them blindly without trying to understand the finer details - but I'm sure I could sit down and research 3-4 pieces of upgrades that would not only give me as much +hit as those pants, but also keep my mana and spell damage the same, if not up them even moreso. I concluded that the blood, sweat and tears (not to mention time) that it would take to get all those 3-4 items to drop (and win the roll) didn't weigh as much as equipping those pantaloons here and now and keeping the leggings in the bank. I am, after all, in the same guild as the paladin who is exalted with Lower City and still haven't seen the Mask of Penance drop. I know how those things go.

Plus the word pantaloons is hilarious.

That doesn't mean I'm not on the hunt for alternate ways of getting more +spell hit, though. And more hit in general, since 56 isn't even enough to downspec Shadow Focus to 4/5. At least my shackles don't break anymore, so here's to hoping for a benevolent Karazhan in the weeks to come!

006: What do you mean break? We'd just started!

2007-08-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

I wonder how long this will take. Though it's not like I've been writing this blog for long :)

Things are rather quiet in Mana Battery land this week. We're on a forced break from raiding due to school starting. Also, our bear fessed up that he was sick of tanking and logged on his mage alt instead. Our top DPS, the warrior with the sword that can not be upgraded and habit of massacring Aldor bank guards for fun, is going to step in to fill the role. I know he really don't like tanking either though, so I've taken it upon myself to roll a druid. I obviously won't reach level 70 anytime soon, but I will eventually.

I have to admit, it's mostly a reaction to the massive lack of tanks that my realm is suffering under. I read the boards the other day and a fellow alliance summed it up very nicely. I can't find the thread again to get a direct quote, but this is aproximatly what he said: "Dentarg is 67% horde and 33% alliance. Of those 33, 1% are tanks, 5% are healers, and the rest are huntards." While I don't agree about the hunters, I'm with them about the healers and tanks. Dentargs LFG channel is full of 'tank for _____, last spot!' and 'LF1M tank to _______'.

Rolling a druid and playing her in the lower levels will at least allow me to feel as though I'm helping, as my offers to tank with my shadow priest were swiftly declined. Can't imagine why.

005: Belfs!

2007-08-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

You know that chain quest in Shadowmoon Valley that ends with dressing in a disguise and killing some elite giants? Yeah, that one.

Directly after putting them on, Timo the paladin and I stood and stared at each other in dumstrucked awe, peeling off helmets so we could see better. After deciding belfs look good no matter what, we then danced for 12 minutes straight. Did the quest, then we proceeded to dance for another 15 minutes while discussing which server we're gonna roll belfs on, asap. He's gonna decide what mine looks like and I'll decide on his piece of eyecandy.

Damn. Just, damn! Belf males are fine.
And the women ain't so bad either.

Well. You know what the Draenei say. What happens in Shadowmoon Valley stays in Shadowmoon Valley...

004: WTB phat loot

2007-08-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

Dear Karazhan,

pretty please drop some offensive caster toys instead of just healing items. True, my healing gear has never looked better, but I am in desperate need of upping my +dmg! So far we've had only two caster items - a mana regen trinket that I bowed out on in favor of the other mana battery and a very nice cloak that the mini-mage won. On the other side, I'm now carrying around both Masquerade Gown and Headdress of the High Potentate. I look smashing when I heal 5mans, but this isn't what I'd imagined upon entering you. And while at it, I'd love to up my +hit as well :[

Love,
Princess

Wishlist:
Handwraps of Flowing Thought
Shadow-Cloak of Dalaran
Bands of Nefarious Deeds
Staff of Infinite Mysteries
Wicked Witch's Hat
Ritssyn's Lost Pendant

I'm especially wishing myself good luck on that last one, as it's a random drop from trash mobs ._.

Though currently we're on a break from Kara. As sad as it is to do so when we were on such a roll, school is starting for 90% of the guild and one of our healers bowed out of WoW altogether yesterday because the game had stopped being fun. We were already agreed on wanting to recruit another healer but now it's suddenly become a much more pressing need. We're not desperate yet - we downed Aran with only two healers after all - but we all know we're can't keep going forever without fresh blood coming in.

I've also been made an officer now, so guild concerns are my concerns. It was mostly on accident, I think - I'd been made guild leader temporarily to screencap various new tabard ideas. If you play a female character I'm sure you've noticed the importance of a female being the model: 90% of the icons look horrid over boobs. At any rate, after I'd done my stuff and given leader back, I was automatically degraded to 'officer' by the games mechanics, and... they just let me stay there. I didn't even notice myself until that pesky /officer channel started showing up during the next Kara run. When I spoke up in it people just laughed and said 'ohai'. Welcome to officer-dom, can you tell we're a very serious guild? That's exactly what I love about it though ♥

In all honesty though, my guildies needn't worry. I have my heart set on doing my best for this ragtag group of lunatics, because they make this game fun. So far, I may only be using my newfound power to randomly change the message of the day to my pleading for us to adopt a male belf (to be my naked-dance-slave), but that's another story...

003: Ignored players

2007-08-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

Shammy: Right now I'm set on grinding to 70
Shammy: But I got so damn pissed off... this little gnome came and yoinked a feather I needed while I fought a wolf ON TOP OF the feather
Shammy: And when I went to ignore him... I ALREADY HAD!!!
Shammy: Which means that the fucker has annoyed me more than once
MBB: Ooooh
MBB: BUT look on the bright side!
Shammy: Hehe
MBB: All the time you've been gone since he last annoyed you, ALL THAT TIME
MBB: And he's still not high enough in level that he has done the quests you're on now
Shammy: True
MBB: And you've been gone a very long time!
Shammy: Almost depressing... for him *satisfied giggle*
MBB: It's all about how you view it
Shammy: Yep
Shammy: You're fucking good at being positive...
MBB: For everyone but myself! It's a gift.

002: Karazhan progress

2007-08-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

This weeks homework for Karazhan:
http://shadeofaranchant.ytmnd.com/

We got him down, though. Eventually.

See, my guild (which is fantastic btw) has a rather unique method of doing things in raids. We copy the most basic of strategies/guides/info into the raid chat, then we storm forward, wipe spectacularly when the boss is down to 20-40% (but with Divine Intervention♥), ress, storm forwards again and kill the fucker(s). We call it learning by wiping. So far we've used this method on all bosses and the track record has been as follows:
Attumen & Midnight - 1st try
Moroes - 3rd try
Maiden of Virtue - 2nd try
Opera (Big Bad Wolf) - 2nd try
Opera (Romulo & Julianne) - 2nd try (one damn second too late on the first try! Argh!)
Curator - 2nd try (if you don't count the wipes from accidental pulls, the bloody thing has the aggro range of Azeroth to quote our sexy healer)

And then there's Shade of Aran. I think we brought him down on our 5th try, and that's counting the wipe where he got accidentally pulled because someone stood too close as we were prepping. 5th (or even 4th) try is just not up to our standard. Hence: homework.

Next time ol' Dad is going down on the first god damn try.

001: Intro

2007-08-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

Krissy. Female. 25 years old. Newbie in World of Warcraft. Dentarg EU.

Well, when I say newbie, I mean that I've still only got 1 level 70 and never raided before Karazhan. I'm one of those unlucky suckers who only got to 60 after BC had come out, and thus missed out on Blackwing Lair, Molten Core, Ahn'Qiraj and so on. I'm still upset about that. At any rate, there's still tons I don't know about and thus I consider myself in the category experienced newbie. (I like oxymorons.)

I'm a shadow priest that's allergic to healing and my alt is a warlock. Which school of magic is my favorite ought to be obvious :P This blog will be where I go to write down interesting, funny and boring things from my travels through Azeroth.