Archive for December, 2007

We don’t need no stinkin’ plans…

Yeah those “I’m gonna be a pally!” plans went to high hell. I logged in later than I was thinking, got up to Western Plaguelands, talked with The Boyfriend while I attempted to kill undead and get minion stones for my pally 50 quest, and got royally irritated at people. While I was there, there was one group of three people that apparently decided that -every- mob there was theirs and theirs alone. I’d be killing a mob, they’d race past me, gather up every other mob within a 1000 yard radius and start working on killing them. I’d sigh and move to an area on the opposite side of the graveyard from them to make sure I wasn’t in the path of their destruction, and the annoying twits would finish killing their group, then come to ME and kill every other mob in my new area other than the one I was fighting.

It wasn’t paranoia. They did this over and over. At one point they tried to train me with about 5 mobs, but they caught a face full of ticked mobs when I bubbled. I didn’t stick around to laugh, cos I wasn’t amused. I had just wanted to kill my quest mobs and get on with things. I didn’t need their grief. So I walked off, leaving them dealing with the group of undead, and dying messily themselves. Karma sucks, don’t it?

Then there was the mage 8 levels over the mobs that was AoE killing them all. If I couldn’t find a mob to kill from the first group of idiots, then I couldn’t find one from this twit. She ran around collecting every single mobs she could find, until she too picked up one too many and died messily. Once again, no sympathy. She pulled targets off me, waiting until they were running for me to tag them. Once again, very deliberate.

However, even with all the massively annoying people (a few others that ran through and aggro’d everything before dying, others that /slapped me when I picked up one mob while they grabbed 4… and died messily, etc.) there was one bright spot in my short time in the grave yard. One warlock, a level higher than I, was there when I started. I looked to see which side of the road he was on, then when to the opposite side to start my kills. After he’d finished his kill, he started to run to my side, then saw me, stopped, waited a sec to see that I was doing just fine, thanks, then went back to his side of the road and kept going through mobs. We never said a word to each other, just politely stayed out of each other’s way. When he finished his mob kills, he mounted up, ran near me, bowed, then ran off. I waved to his retreating back, and went back to trying to kill undead.

I think I was there for 30 minutes before I got disgusted with the whole thing and logged for the night. I’ve now been working on the scourgestones for the pally quest for 4 nights. I have 12/20 stones. At this rate, I’ll be there for another week. :/ Oh and all those people? Opposing faction, right? Nope. All Alliance like me. Yeah I could have sent them tells, but I’m 99% sure I would have gotten either ignored or sworn at.

At least tonight I get to run Kara on my Mage again, this time with Aerye in the group for her first Kara raid evah. Yey!

So last night I was going to work on my pally. I had all good intentions, had run up to Western Plaguelands, and was headed to smack around some undead, when I got a begging whisper, sent from a level 36 Warrior that was having it’s butt kicked around by a quest mob. I sighed, sat there a minute, then thought “what the hell” and went to help them. Turns out they were supposed to kill a level 40 elite mob, which is why they kept getting ripped to shreds. I healed them, they eventually beat the mob down, and I got a good giggle out of them thanking me over and over, while bowing and kneeling at my feet. I think they were a bit stunned when I turned down the gold they offered as a thank you.

Right as I was about to get back to killing undead, The Boyfriend had logged in and gotten tackled by a friend of ours that was asking if we wanted to go a-instancing with her, her usual questing companion and another of their guildies. So I switched over to Siana, The Boyfriend got his boomkin druid, and off we went to heroic Slave Pens, the heroic daily quest instance of the day… and proceeded to get owned. Often. And painfully.

Sadly, our bear tank wasn’t quite geared for heroics. We left SP and went to Mechanaar, where we had slightly better luck for a bit, then it all went to hell, so we went outside and reset it to normal. Right as we were getting near the first sub-boss in Mech, the group that I was supposed to go to Mech and Botanica with from OUR guildies started trying to get going. Thank heavens our other friends understood I’d previously committed to the guild group and TB and I went to join the guildies. I still feel bad for leaving, especially as we spent almost 90 minutes flinging ourselves against instances and never got anywhere with them.

On the other hand, our guildie group tore through Mech, and that was with a tank that’s still getting geared to TB’s satisfaction and had never been to Mech. Then we went to Bot. Oh my lord. I forgot how long that damned instance is. By the time we left there, we were all starting to get tired, and it was past when I’d normally be logging and going to bed. Then the other warrior in the group said “Hey can you guys help me with a quest up here?” Turns out several of us had stages of that quest, so we plowed through it, got everyone caught up, then killed out the end mob for the questline. Yet one more group quest out of my logs where it had been permanently engraved…

Tonight? Tonight is “I’m going back to pally, pally, pally” night (two points if you get the lyrics reference) and hopefully get caught up on the level 50 pally Sunken Temple quest. Man I want to get all those quests done…

The holidays are halfway done for me. Christmas and Yule are done, and the New Year celebrations will start soon. In celebration of having a 5-ish day weekend, I celebrated by raiding for 3 nights. Sorta.

Friday night was supposed to be raiding in SSC, but with the holidays, that got scrapped. Instead, a bunch of people did heroics. I ended up having The Boyfriend and others get together and run Arcatrazso I could get a red Santa hat to complete my Santa suit. Saturday was the day I was looking forward to, as that was the day a bunch of us were getting a friend keyed for Kara, which we’d be running later that night. We went running with a tank that is still getting geared, my hunter, the Hunter Class Lead’s priest, The Boyfriend’s boomkin, and the friend on her Hunter. Loot was gained that -wasn’t- sharded, keys were gotten, and all had fun. Unfortunately, the poor friend ended up getting horribly ill and missed her first Kara.

I ended up on Kara on my mage except for Moroes… where I pulled in Siana for trap duty as usual. ::sigh:: It’s a good thing that I don’t really need anything off of him on my mage. Instead, I managed to luck out and snag the Ruby Slippers for the mage out of the Opera Event, didn’t die, was able to give decent dps (still working on the “great dps”), and felt pretty good by the time I went to bed.

Sunday was the second half of Kara, where I managed to get more loot for my mage, complete a quest, and get more rep. Yey me! Then it hit me: Kara will be empty on Monday… Mwhahaha, let the plot begin…

So when Monday rolled around, Friend found an email in her inbox asking “Yo! Poke me in IMs!” I kept checking the computer as I worked on cookies downstairs (mmm cookies), and finally saw her poke. That when I laid out my idea: there’s a whole Kara instance that’s cleared. There’s no mobs. Would she like a tour of Kara and to also get a couple of quests done? 15 minutes later, we were zoning in and she was drooling. She got pulled all around the place in the order that we normally run it, including the ducking back outside after the opera event to use the back door, skipping mobs while I played tour guide over Ventrilo. She got quests picked up and turned in, and is now ready to go in and kill things, giggling insanely all the way. Not too bad of a Christmas present in-game and a “sorry you missed it! But get excited, cos here’s what you’ll see next time!” gift.

Other than those events, I was out of game for the most part. I did hop in-game for a bit on Christmas Day to wish everyone well and talk with The Boyfriend for a bit. But overall, it was a quiet time in Azeroth for me. Tonight, I get back to things in-game, with a bunch of us doing a Arcatraz Key run since the Friday night run found five people, all standing outside Arc, all laughing cos none had the key. Cue musical toons soon after…

Back when 2.3 was on the PTR, I went into ZA with other guildies to start to learn the fights. We had a blast, but I figured that when 2.3 was released, I’d be shuffled out of the group in favor of other members, ones with more seniority. I was okay with it, but sighed and wished that I was going to be going with them. The plan was (and is) they’d have a core team go in, learn the fights, then shuffle people in and out. We’ve done it like that previously with good success.

Monday night, one of the two nights they do the ZA learning runs, I was on my pally, trying to collect Sunken Temple prereq quests and trying to not swear while doing it. Personally, I hate the Bloodpetal quest in Un’Goro. The mobs constantly spam poison, which yes I can cleanse but i find it annoying, the drop rate sucks, and then there’s the devilsaurs. Evil evil evil. I had finished that and was headed to the Feathermoon camp in Feralas to get the flight point and more quests there when I got a poke from The Boyfriend, who is on the learning team (since he’s pretty much the MT for the guild). One of the regular DPSers has dropped from the team from burnout. Did I want to go to ZA? HELL YES!

So I finally got to go back into ZA, remind people that I DID know the bear fight, yes I know where the quest bit is but I was pulled there so fast I didn’t have a chance to grab the quest on the outside, and in general woot mayhem! After the bear boss, we moved on to the Lynx, which they hadn’t killed before. Yey for laptops, me checking sites fast, and being able to contribute to “ooo kill that part of trash first” knowledge. (I r Google queen.) I was there for a guild first kill again, which gave me the warm fuzzies. Then running to the eagle boss since we had time, we downed him too. First time they’ve killed 3 bosses in one night in ZA. Then to cap off the night of the happies, the Guild Leader tells me thanks for coming and “great job tonight, Sia!” Commence purring on my side.

No, no loot other than badges. But I don’t mind. I got to go to new content. I did good with little to no prep time. I didn’t bork the raid. I got an “atta girl.” That’s enough for me. Now to spend Thursday night lurking around on Siana to see if I get to go back and play in ZA again. Man I hope so…

Yeah I spent 90% of my time this past weekend on my baby pally. Although, she’s 48, almost 49 now. She’s not that much of a baby. More like a pre-teen. I ended up getting sucked into a Sunken Temple run for a friend, and was amused that I had none of the quests. I now have one of the quests, and will desperately try to hit 50 to do the pally quest. And since I have a list of quests that are prereqs for other ST quests, I think I know what I’m doing tonight.

The biggest thing I’ve been “fretting” over is spec. I’m Ret with a smattering of Prot right now for leveling purposes, but my original idea with her was to take her Holy. But now, Prot is sounding kinda nice, since the times that I’ve tanked, I’ve enjoyed. But Holy = healing, which is something I enjoy and have missed since my days as a cleric in another game. I’ll probably keep building up the Prot/Ret side with a healing set of gear til mid 60s. At that point I’ll probably end up huddled in the corner, rocking back and forth trying to decide what to do. maybe by then I’ll have a better idea.

Raid on Saturday didn’t happen. Ah the holidays!

Last night was SSC again, with us taking on Lurker Below. He’s actually the first boss in there that we tackled, and I’m actually glad we went for him first when we started learning SSC. Hydross was a cakewalk in comparison.

The bad thing about last night, though, was that it seemed as though everyone had a case of the brain deads. I knew why I wasn’t quite at top form: lack of sleep will do that to a girl. But I was still pulling my weight and was probably at around 90% of my usual. I tend to be hyper-careful when I’m sleep deprived, not really wanting to be the cause of wiping a raid. We wiped again from tank aggro issues, but round 3 got the Lurker down. A few judiciously applied Misdirects helped the tank keep aggro, people finally stopped dying in the spouts and whirls (mostly), and loot was gotten. Wisely, the raid leaders called the raid after that, even if it was 30 minutes before we normally would have ended. We were a little disappointed in this run, since hardly any purple items dropped from the trash. We’ve gotten spoiled with how many we’ve gotten in past weeks. Last night? One. Ah well.

Saturday night, it’s Tidewalker learning time. Whee!

In WoW-related holiday donations, consider donating to Child’s Play through The Bronze Kettle. Not only do you get the warm fuzzies of helping kids in hospitals take their minds off whatever they are there for, but you also have a chance at getting a gift or two for being a Good Person.

Last night was raid night on Gruul’s Lair, followed by SSC and Hydross. I was suffering from a lack of sleep from enthusiastic baking and no pre-raid nap due to a promise to escort The Boyfriend’s latest alt through Blackfathom Deeps before his quests for there turned grey. Yeah, he would have let me take the nap, but I felt my conscience poking me to get it done before he outgrew the quests and the gear. So his shammy ended up following a night elf hunter with a bad case of “kill everything!” tunnel vision. I got so locked into “next! ::smack:: Next! ::smack:: Next!” that I have no idea how long it was from when he asked me if we were going to kill an optional boss or not, to when I actually answered. Whoops.

By the time raid time rolled around, I was really feeling the effects of sleep deprivation. Ah raiding with 5 hours of sleep! I will say that after a certain time, the numbness that hits is actually quite peaceful. And if my brain stopped trying to process anything, like the big-ass ugly ogre coming for me, I’d have fallen over snoring. As it was, I’m glad that I have 3 or 4 different addons that all yell at me “Yo! Dumbass! You have AGGRO!” cos I think I needed all of them to smack me around to either slow down on the dps or feign death.

Kids, let this be a lesson to you: friends don’t let friends raid sleep dep’d. Or if you do, at least make sure they have aggro alarm addons turned on.

High King Maulgar was our usual kill, meaning we probably could have one-shotted them if Krosh hadn’t resisted our mage’s spell-steal. Personally, I think the devs slipped in some code that checks to see who’s attacking Krosh. If it’s our mage, a whole different set of code is used. Our poor mage has the worst luck with him sometimes. After getting HKM down on the second try, we moved on to Gruul. And boy do I wish I’d taken a screenshot of that ending kill shot. We had the usual bit of “Hey! Quit running for me for the shatter!” “What? You ran for ME!” we’ve had as of late, then a couple of unfortunate dps deaths. I saw the percentage on Gruul, figured we might have to come back for round #2, but then said “screw it” and just kept going.

Then The Boyfriend, our Main Tank, went down. Gruul was loose. People are yelping in Vent, bodies are hitting the ground all over the place, this large ugly drooling thing is stomping all around the room, and I started unloading every trinket, ability, and cooldown I had. If there had been an item called “Kitchen Sink”, it would have been thrown at him. When he finally died, there were 8 of us left standing. I know we had at least two rogues left standing, and I think two healers. The other 3 people, other than myself, were a blur. Awake? Oh yeahhh, that woke me up! Then I got a case of the giggles cos our Krosh mage, a guy that used to be guaranteed to die at least twice on every raid cos he puts out so much dps and threat (except recently. not sure how he managed to keep up the DPS and not gain as much threat), sends me a tell asking “okay what the hell did you do? You change specs? You’re -above- me in DPS and you’re usually not even close!” Mwhahaha… I’m coming for you, Mage-boy!

Loot was passed out, we all ported back to Shatt, then went to SSC. It was being fairly uneventful when my connection died right as we were starting a pull. I’ve noticed that around midnight, it cuts out. This is not good. Cable company will be yelled at. Not tonight. But soon. Very very soon. I got back and Hydross was pulled. Bad Things happened and we wiped. Well, everyone else wiped and I lived. So I got to a safe spot, chatted with the Hunter Lead… then found my connection had dropped. Again. More swearing on my part, along with a fast reconnection, and racing into the Hydross fight, which thankfully had just started. We got him down on try #2, I believe with him enraging (which is a Bad Thing). By that point, my giddiness over out-dpsing the mage, living through the Gruul fight, and over-all “woot!” had worn off and I was about to fall asleep at the keyboard. As soon as the loot was passed out, I fled SSC with everyone else, and promptly logged.

Tonight, we’re headed back to SSC to smack down Lurker, then continue our learning of Morogrim. And tonight, I am going to -try- to get that nap in before raid.

Okay so Friday night’s SSC run wasn’t -that- bad. I just came out of it in a very “meh” mood. I blame that on the mixup in my head of what I was doing which night, along with a general lack of sleep. Apparently I made up for that by sleeping most of Saturday, which just left me groggy and out of it for my mage’s run through Kara.

I’d -wanted- to get one more piece of the Frozen Shadowweave set made before Kara. I did manage to ding tailoring enough to be able to make it, but I’m lacking materials. Part of me feels bad for not logging in and farming mats, but real life has been occupying my time as of late. I also discovered that I suck in kiting as a mage. Either that, or I was even more out of it than I thought. -.- 

Yesterday was an off day for me. Why? I was needing the time off (still so damned sleepy) and I needed to cook. Tonight is even more cooking and most likely not gaming. Again. Sheesh. Never going to get anything done at this rate. Damn you, Life!

I logged in a little early for Kara in the hopes of getting some tailoring done. I was greeted with a whisper of “Kara’s tomorrow night. SSC tonight.” I resisted the impulse to kill The Boyfriend then yell at the heavens over the Cruel Fate(TM) bestowed to me, then sighed, got my made to 365 tailoring, trained the next piece of Frozen Shadowweave, and switched to my hunter.

I had actually been looking forward to Kara tonight. It was going to be a little change of DPS pace, but still fun. This was a good thing since I had a back that was killing me and was exhausted from the week. Don’t get me wrong, I love raiding. I was looking forward to Morogrim. But just not tonight.

As usual for a raid wipe night, it took us a while to work through all the trash. We’re still learning it, and reminding each other “See those guys? Yeah. Don’t touch them.” Sheep was broken all over the place, causing at least one wipe if not two. Hey, after a while, all the death starts to blend together. When we finally got to the boss, we went over the strat, set up the raiid, and got him to around 82% for our first attempt. Not too bad for us. We actually lived through the first round of murlocs and were doing well til the second round came plowing through. Pretty much after that, though, we were all over the place. Focus was being lost, people were distracted and doing stupid things, and after we got back from the 3rd or 4th wipe, we found all the trash had respawned. Since it had taken us over an hour to clear it to begin with, we decided to call the raid.

I did manage to pick up a new purple leatherworking pattern for Belt of Natural Power. Even more amusingly, it dropped twice in a row. So the druid leatherworker that had rolled against me also got one. I was tempted to ask if there was some way we could rez those two mobs and keep beating them to death to get more patterns, since they were feeling so generous.

End result? Epic pattern, a decent repair bill, knowledge gained, and we are so going to have to work on the healers and their aggro at the transition. /salute to the healers. Good luck, guys. You’re going to need it.