Archive for the “hunter” Category

Ah drama. How we loathe it. Well we like watching it as long as no one we know is involved, including ourselves. But once it touches us, it’s kinda hard to get rid of it. Once upon a time ago, I was a guild leader in another game. It was formed to be casual friendly and full of people that were drama free. We had a couple of people that might go for some drama, but as a whole, they were kept in check. Within the guild we rarely had fights over loot (actually I can’t even remember one instance of loot fighting), and almost all of the “drama” was directed towards external influences, like people who trained mobs onto others for fun. Yep, in a pre-WoW world, that’s how some people got their non-PvP kicks (morons). No we weren’t perfect: we had spats with each other, names were occasionally called, but over all, we were a pretty good group of friends.

Cut to today’s WoW: yes, I read WoW Insider and yes, I read the weekly guild drama recaps. Some of the time I giggle cos it’s so silly, and sometimes I just sigh cos it’s so pointless. But for the most part, I read them with a sigh of relief that “it’s not me”. But then I have a brush with the drama llama and I’m reminded to not get cocky. That it happens to everyone and when you least expect it.

The problem with raiding with another guild as a guest is that sometimes drama over loot happens. We’re all human. We all want that “omg shiny!” item. Hey, I admit it: I’ve had my moments of avarice and loot whoring over the smallest thing. Hell, I have the Baron’s Cloak from Strath still in my bank as a “war trophy” (god I hated him). The group The Boyfriend and I are running with is doing okay in SSC and TK. The whole time I’ve run with them, I’ve never seen anything that made me stand up and put my name in for loot when they’ve called for loot council. Wednesday night that changed when I got the Rift Stalker Gauntlets. Last night, Bands of the Celestial Archer dropped off of TK trash. As I was still wearing Stalker’s War Bands, once again, I figured wth and tossed my name in. I was given them, but apparently that caused drama with some people in the guild. At this point, there’s little that I can do. I put my name in, they checked my gear. But, to make peace, I now have an alt in their guild, as well as The Boyfriend. It’s light drama, and something that’s handled, but it’s still drama. ::sigh::

So how do you handle inter-guild raiding loot drama? Avoid it and not take anything? But then you gimp yourself and not help the raid which means there’s no point to you taking a spot in their raid. Ignore any snarking that occurs? Never been fond of the hide the head in the sand approach (even if I occasionally practice it). Confront it headon? Well then that’s where fights can break out. Yeah so not happening.

I will say this: I’ve deliberately not taken loot before if someone else rolling on it needed it more. I’ve waited and checked others’ gear before putting my name in. I try to be a good guest when I’m not in a group with my guild. So I toe a fine line: being a good guest, getting geared up, not gimping myself but trying to not step on toes. ::sigh::

Tonight? I get interviewed by Breana and Fimlys for a podcast after hopefully doing Kara. Tomorrow, I’m off with friends for an evening of Real Life fun. Sunday, Mount Hyjal! Monday, … I pass out. >.>

Tuesday night’s raid, we were all over the place. Attempts were taken at Al’ar and while we did great on Phase 1, Phase 2 was… well… not so great. After 2 hours at it, with everyone getting more and more frustrated, we pulled out and went to go kick Void Reaver’s butt nicely before we called it an evening.

Last night, we waterwalked over to the Leo trash in SSC, skipping Hydross and Lurker. Once we got to Leo, we had the same thing happen there that had happened at Al’ar: messy, all over the place, and once we got Phase 1 over with, complete chaos. But that last attempt at him, something happened to the raid. You could feel it. Everyone was ticked, since the previous week they had one shot him. He was mocking the raid. This was WAR. Everyone snapped into focus, and we had a great kill with just seconds left on the enrage timer.

For loot, this guild runs something I had not come into contact with before running with them: Loot Council. To me, it’s not better or worse than other distribution methods. It’s just a different method. Every method has the chance to be abused, so you just shrug and go with it as long as it’s being handled fairly. Last night, for the first time since I started raiding with them, I saw something I wanted. There were 3 others there who wanted it and I figured they’d get it before me, but I tossed my name in and linked my gear it would replace as requested. I think I just about fell over when I got it.

So now, Siana’s the proud owner of Rift Stalker Gauntlets. I’ve already regemmed to bring my hitcap back down to max instead of way over max, and gained quite a bit doing so. I just have to get them enchanted tonight before raid and I’ll be all set.

Here’s hoping I get everything done tonight before raid that I want to. ::crosses fingers::

I hurt. No, really. I’m covered in footprints, sneakerprints, heelprints, you name it. Why? Cos I got trampled by teachers all yelping in glee that my store was opened. The funny part? I was only out on the floor for part of the chaos. The two ladies working for me were in the thick of it and are still recovering. I was in the back office, frantically trying to order more stuff for them. Oh and for all those that had questions about the store, please see the previous post. I finally replied to them all.

But enough of that. What about WoW?!

Last week, I took off gaming except for a ZA run with friends. Why? Well there’s that whole store thing that was going on. And honestly, I wanted to have my focus be on that instead of trying to be all things all the time. This week, my schedule’s packed: Tuesday-Thursday 25-mans, possible Friday Kara, and a Sunday 25-man. Oh, and on Friday, I’ll be recording some podcast run by a couple of nutcases I know. /dies

And in all of that, I’m still reading and trying to absorb the changes that will/might be coming when Wrath is released. I mean, I’m thrilled about more stable slots. Some of the tree talents look to be droolworthy changes and are making me purr. But not of it’s really sinking in, since I’m not involved with the beta (at least not right now, I’m holding out hope for a beta invite tho /prays to random gods). My first thought when I see new stuff come in is “ooo!” then “oh yeah, raid tonight, and I need more money for repairs.”

See, I still have a lot to do in the current game. As Big Bear Butt has said over on his blog, there’s still a lot of content in the current game. Not everyone’s killed everything in the game. Not all the bosses have been downed by everyone. Me? I’d like to stick my nose into Black Temple at least once before the next expansion. Yeah that’s right, I said it. I haven’t been to BT. So nyah.

The group I’m raiding with now is Tier 5 and flirting with Mount Hyjal. Am I enjoying the raiding? Yeah, but it feels like everyone’s lost focus on the bosses in front of them. Don’t get me wrong, I have my off-nights too, where it doesn’t seem like I can focus to save my life. Last night for some reason I was terrified I was going to have a mob targeted while everyone was buffing and accidentally shoot/send pet after the mob, thus wiping the raid. And last night, that wouldn’t have been good. Things were too fractured and disjointed.

So tonight, we go into SSC and hopefully kick much butt. I’m hoping that everyone’s had their off night for the week and we really go in there and just own the place. Even more, I hope I have fun. Cos if it’s not fun, then I know of some PS3 games I could be playing instead.

Okay, not a REAL truck, but that’s about what it felt like. -.-

This past week, I took off of WoW. I had a good reason: the store that I’m going to be managing as soon as it’s finished, stocked, properly licensed, and has one more employee other than the one I hired last week. Right now, it’s in yet another critical phase, with upteen boxes of merchandise all sitting in a (conveniently empty) store next to mine. All of those have to be opened, checked, priced and put out onto the floor. The floor that still needs some guys in here to move some stuff around, since I can’t move huge fricken metal shelving units. Strong? I have my moments, but they’re more nice spurts of “POWER WOMAN!”, not sustained “excuse me, I need to move this house I’m carrying and you’re standing in the way” kinda moments. And when I say umpteen boxes, I’m not kidding. Friday, a semi showed up. Thankfully, it wasn’t all for us. Just the 5 pallets, 42″x42″ square and 6 to 7 feet tall each, stacked high with art supplies and held together with wonderful heavy duty cling wrap. Guess what didn’t fit through a standard size door? You guessed it! So Mom (down visiting and helping get everything set up), The Boyfriend and I frantically unloaded the pallets to get the sidewalk they were on free and clear again.

Oh yeah, the store isn’t in a mall. It’s in the middle of the downtown area on a street, in one of the renovated buildings. Lovely place. Parking’s not great. But damn, the deli 3 stores down is amazing!

So this past week was getting computer systems set up, stock unloaded from trucks, training from the company that sold us the systems, interviewing another prospective employee, having Employee #1 fill out her forms and get started on setting up the teacher supplies section (holy crap teachers have a lot of stuff to buy these days), and close on my house back in Georgia. Yep, house finally got sold. Thank god.

After ALL of that, I’d have to be insane to play WoW, right? Apparently, I’m insane, cos Saturday I walked into ZA after the longest damned time away with a group of guildies. It didn’t start well. We wiped on the last group before the bear boss twice before we got it down and tackled him. We lost out on the timer chests, but we did clear out all of the animal bosses, which was as good a job as we’d ever done when we were serious about it. Then someone said “Hey it’s kinda early, anyone up for a speed Kara run?”

Not only am I insane, I’m a dumbass, too. I heard myself saying “Sure! Count me in on Siana!” Next thing I know, we’re in Kara and cruising along. 3.5 hours later, I left with my badges, tossed them into the bank, then saw I had 100 badges. Wait, wasn’t there something I wanted? Oh hells yes! So Siana is now the proud wearer of Leggings of the Pursuit, gemmed and patched (even if it’s not the patch I wanted, at least it’s something).

The next day, I was in bed most of the day with a headache. That’ll learn me. ::sigh::

Tonight I went into TK and helped slap down Void Reaver. That was fun. What was even more fun, but totally on a personal level, was seeing this:

Aww yeahhhh…

Once we got done with VR, the guild leaders did some chatting and decided that since they didn’t have the raid makeup they wanted, we’d go on and beat up Gruul instead. Beatings did occur, and while the High King and Gruul did drop lewts for their guild, I had my humbling moment early on in the High King fight.

See, back when my guild was doing the 25 man stuff, I was one of two hunters that Nature resist tanked the shaman. It got to the point that the Class Lead and I were doing it in our sleep, and on good nights we could get him almost dead with just the two of us before the raid came to kill him. This guild we’re running with now asked me if I could help NR tank, I said sure, watched where they were going to tank him, put on my gear, buffed, ran in… and died in 10 seconds.

I sat there with my jaw on the floor, blinking, then started swearing at the computer. The Boyfriend glanced over to see what was going on while he was tanking something else and said “oh, I think your healer got feared.” Oh joy. So for 4 minutes, I chatted in another channel while the rest of the raid went and killed the High King. End result of the evening? #3 on DPS and Damage Done. Still a good evening.

Ah WoW: you know how to humble us right when we start to feel good about ourselves, don’t you?

Real Life has been a mess. We’re still trying to get my house sale done, the store is slowly coming together, my Mom bummed up her knee, thus necessitating scope surgery on it, etc. It’s just been one thing after another. So what so I do to take off some stress?

PLAY WOW!

I couldn’t join the raid last night, because after 11 hours of going over art materials and ordering them from a vendor (even if he was a very nice man) fried my brains. So I came home and collapsed, sighing somewhat over the fact I couldn’t get into raid right before I fell asleep.

But today… mmm RAID! TK Raid too! But instead of running to Loot, erm, Void Reaver, the Powers That Be said “Hai guyz! Go read up on Solarian and Al’ar!” Gah. One hour of frantic reading later, off we went to TK.

Al’ar? Owie. Mucho pain. Fire bad. But we now have food for thought on the fight. Solarian? Well we only got one shot at her before the repops started to hit for us. Ah well. But ah man it was nice. #4 on overall DPS and #3 on Total Damage. :;happy purrs::

Tomorrow night? More TK. The rest of this week? Who the hell knows. I have more Real Life stuff trying to chew on me, so we’ll see what happens.

I got an invite to SSC fun last night with the guild that The Boyfriend and I had run TK with Wednesday night. They were up to Leo, which they haven’t managed to get down as of yet. Sadly, last night they weren’t able to get him down last night either, even with some insanely close calls. The last attempt was with him at 3k health left. That one just made everyone cry. After we were done, the other hunter in the group and I hung out for a while talking hunter macros. I showed her what I had and I think she has some plots now for some of her own.

A couple of days previously, I’d talked to some of my friends in WoW and asked if I could use their shadowcloth cooldowns. They were gracious enough to say sure, and I sent off the mats. My mage is still frost spec (and happily so), and in desperate need of the Frozen Shadowweave set. After I got their shadowweave back, I found I had enough cloth to make the last piece of the set: the robe. So as of last night (or early this morning, I kinda lost track), my mage is now decked out in all her Frozen Shadowweave goodness. /cheer

(Now if I can just get her a better weapon, get rid of the green pants, and get some new shiny trinkets…)

Today? Here’s hoping that I can get into some Heroic Ramparts or Heroic BLood Furnace runs on Sia. I need Exalted on her with Honor Hold and had some volunteers to help get it for her. ::grin:: The rest of the weekend? Who knows.

Friday night, the guild met up and went into TK for the 3rd (or is it 4th?) time. We haven’t officially raided 25 man content in over a month. We were there to kick some serious ass.

I don’t think the poor (ha!) mobs leading the way to Void Reaver ever knew what hit them. The guild was there for blood and phat lewts. There was a lot of good-natured ribbing, a lot of really bad jokes, and a LOT of laughter: just the way we like to have raids go.

Then we got to Void Reaver. He’s still borked up with his globe attacks and the non-announcements by addons. There was a bit of adjustment to that, then the guild started chewing away on him. We had one more shot before things would respawn in bad places (we took more time than we liked. there were too many jokes involving “balls” and “face” and we were all being too damned silly) and then…. Boom. Dead Void Reaver.

So the guild went to TK, we saw VR, and all I got was some shoulders. Such a nice WoW birthday present, even if it was 3 days prior to my actual birthday! (Yes, my birthday’s today, like Fimlys posted earlier on his blog. Sing away. ::grin:: )

Like I said earlier in the week, reputation grinds are the bane of my existence. I just get too easily distracted and want to go do something “fun”. Sometimes though I manage to buckle down and plow through a set amount of grinding and just get it done. Don’t bother talking to me while I’m doing it, cos I’m oblivious to everything else. It’s how I made it through the Netherwing grind this past weekend: purely from gritting my teeth and saying “no, dammit, I’m finishing this TONIGHT!”

Then there are the rep grinds that I don’t even realize are happening. Violet Eye from Karazhan would be that kind of grind. I mean, yeah, my brain realized that there was grinding going on, that I was getting reputation from killing all these mobs. But it’s not til the green flash of light goes off that I realized that “Hey! I’ve been getting rep for the past two hours! Sweet!” I like those grinds.

I’ve found that the Shattered Sun Offensive is a similar rep grind for me. No, I still haven’t set foot into Magister’s Terrace, either the 5 man or 25 man versions. The only rep I’ve gotten has been from doing the dailies which I haven’t been doing daily. More like every 3 or 4 days. Maybe. Yet yesterday I still managed to hit Revered with SSO and pick up a new sword from the rep rewards for Siana. I suppose that once I get Siana Exalted, I might as well start doing them on the mage again. So I’m slow at dailies. Sue me. But I just can’t sit there for 2 hours and do them all, then do it all over again on another character. It would make my brain pop.

But I still have a list of reps that I want to grind out for Siana. I want to get a Talbuk for her. I want Exalted from the Consortium. I still need that last bit of Honor Hold rep to get Exalted. And so on. Will I get them done? Hopefully. And when I get them done, maybe I can go back and finish getting all the Alliance racial faction up. Noooo I’m not slow at all. Why do you ask? >.>

A lot of my friends can tell you I hate rep grinds.

No, wait, I loathe rep grinds. I get bored, start to get really distracted, and pretty soon I wander off in disgust from the whole thing. This is why Siana doesn’t have the original 4 Alliance races, Argent Dawn, Cenarion Circle or a thousand other old world reps at exalted. Hell, I’m lucky I have some of them at revered.

So when Blizz made all those factions in Outlands, complete with keys to buy and really really REALLY nice patterns and other goodies at various levels of reputation, I sighed and started to buckle down on getting rep for them. I was really pleased to see the faction start to climb, since it seemed like everything had faction attached to it: quests, mobs, items the mobs dropped. Perfect for the easily distractable like myself. Granted I still don’t like rep grinding. I lust after the Kurenai mounts, but have yet to grind my way to one. I still need to go grind my way through some Consortium rep. But it’s not heavily pressing on me. But the important ones, the ones for keys, those I got up. Then I got up the rep to use the Marks of the Illidari. So I do rep grind. I just bitch and moan then get distracted.

Once The Boyfriend surprised me by getting the rest of my epic flying mount, I knew I’d have to deal with the Netherwing rep grind. At least it was all in the form of quests, so I didn’t feel like I was just mindlessly killing for no reason. There was a purpose! Yes! Even if the drop rates on some of them suck (Fel Glands, you suck). But last night, I got to see something I hadn’t seen before. I got to see Illidan, at least in projection form. And right after that, I had to go see a man about a dragon.

My kitty mount is Kenshin (long running joke). My regular gryphon was Yuki (it was white, and Yuki means “snow”). The epic flappy was Kyo (another joke, one involving the manga Fruits Basket and the previously named Yuki). So now, I have Mizu. No anime connection this time (at least that I know of). This one is just Japanese for “water”. What? He’s blue! It made sense at the time! Just cos I only had 4 hours of sleep then as soon as I got him I went and passed out… :;sigh:: My dragon, my name, so nyah!

Tonight? I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m sure something will come up. Who knows, I might start working on Kurenai faction again. Mmmm Cobalt Talbuk…