I'm in the example situation for the loot policies thread :D

OMG The new pug pet they're adding is ADORABLE! I want it o_o

I'm seriously concidering making it my desktop wallpaper because I'm currently alt-tabbing every 10 minutes or so to look at it. But I have a nice AQ40 screenshot on my desktop now that'll stay for a while. It's a pretty zone.

I started gearing my druid on alliance because well... I miss her. I spent a good year or so on that toon... that was good times. And while I do have a certain life-long love for the Horde I do get nostalgic for Alliance from time to time.

Drowzee helped me out with a heroic ToC5 that I was basically carried through while I set up my Grid/Macros/Bartender... but I think I'll just gear my Horde one. After all, my moocow already has dual spec and I'd feel less bad about dropping mining than alchemy... because I'm going to need a skinner in cataclysm... I'm not relying on buying leather on the AH.

So I got on tonight to do a heroic on my druid... which is when the PuG began.

It started with a blind invite from an unguilded druid. That's cool, I can dig that... I'm not one to be picky, this is my alt after all.
I was at the stone before the invite so I'm just chillin and he's like "Hor, only 1.3k mp?"

I kinda did a double take, cause I don't think I have that few even as feral in feral gear so before I type that out I check and I'm like "uh no, 13k"
Which is still really low, my gear is admittedly awful but it's still heroic-Naxx10 loot which is more than adiquate for healing a heroic.

He asks if I can DPS. I think about it a sec... technically I have a DPS spec, cat... but  I haven't played it in like 4 months and I'm not even sure if the addon I need still works... I tell him I'm more comfortable healing but I can dps if needed. He's like ok I'll heal then. At this point I'm seriously doubting my ability to heal this... even though now I'm in a dps roll I start second-guessing myself. Maybe my gear really is that bad... I mean I'm still using a feral cape.

Meanwhile I get tells two of the other pug people asking what this guy is talking about and who's healing, etc. They must have asked him something too, or he could feel through the interwebs my distaste for his decision to make me use my shitty feral gear and spec I haven't touched in ages... cause he left. OK then...

So I go back to Resto... a little shaken but determined to show the rest of the group I can do this.
Three pulls in I decide to check to make sure we all have the daily... no, one of the 3 DKs doesn't. After way too much dialog explaining why we had to leave the instance to share it with him we went outside where he had to drop his old one and accept this one, which he declined the first time so we had to run out and share again... this guy's a winner.

After those first few pulls though I was feeling really good... I had this down, my mp wasn't going anywhere. We did Maiden first, where I was targeted and one-shot because I was the only one that canceled my stun... so I explained that while we ran back and we did the fight in 2+ minutes. At least the dps seemed interested in learning the mechanics of that fight though.

The rock guy was another hurdle. I should have thought to explain this fight as well given our success on Maiden but I took it for granted and lo and behold, both DK dps died in their attempts to get the tank killed. The tank took an extra step to help them however, when he fell off the ledge onto the walkway below, at which point the boss started jogging down the ramp after him at 2% health... 5 moonfires later we win.

The gauntlet went suprirsingly smooth, besides the daily DK standing in a fire beyond the point of my heals being able to save him. I did try, but I just can't heal stupid. He also stood in the lightning channel on the last boss, which I also tried to heal him through... he would have died from one more tic at the rate he was dropping but he lucked out and the boss died first.

Overall I think I did really well, and Druid is still pretty fun. I don't know what I'd do with one though, we already have so many resto druids. I thought about leveling my priest that final level but with Miyoko now there's no need.

In any case, Pugs really are cheap entertainment... I should run the daily with the other welfare badgers more often.

I think I'll level a lock with Cata... learn the new shard system from scratch.
But I do want an alt, and while I really enjoy Mimic, no one ever needs dps... maybe I'll finish Wither... but beyond all the bubbles (!!!) and OPvP factor it doesn't really interest me and I'd just end up going shadow... which again is DPS. Caster dps no less, which is something we tend to have ni abundance, especially among alts.

But whatever... I guess I can just focus on an elemental set and get my kicks from the same toon.

I really wish it had occured to me to look at the stats on the Elemental T9... since 2 pieces of that are better than 2 of my resto pieces, and I'm already breaking my lol4p for these amazing pants (which are 2nd only to the leather ones that drop off of 25Anub heroic).

But yea... /facepalm
I guess at this point when we run 10ToGC there will probably be rot trophies next week that I could pick up. Better sit on these tokens, building a Restomental set ftw.

Odd combination to pair together but I miss Matt and Evis. Or their voices anyway.

I spent the better part of today going through my laptop and backing up anything worth keeping. I'd like to get it in working order, I want it to be clean but I'm not sure how to do that. Anyway, while digging through the piles of images I found 3 files I managed to record, which solved a mystery as well. I was certain I had recorded them from my PC, but apparently it was on my laptop, and my PC is incapable of recording sound unless it's via my headset, which is very unfortunate because I'd love to save vent. Which is exactly what I found, 3 vent clips. I would have recorded vent more but for some reason it would mess up my mic whenever I did it so it was a pain to do.

Anyway, these clips are amazing! I forgot how awesome Evis' voice is... and how mean he could be. Two of these wavs were relatively short but the hour+ long one I'm still listening to was the first Netherspite kill we had in <VF> followed by the trash on the way to Prince which is taking them entirely too long, and they're about to pull Prince... ohman.

I love this.
I really want Eolithic vent time capsules =(

Jyue got it, finally~
The bubbles are awesome!
Blood Elves are not!

We rocked Yogg too, we almost had him on the first attempt. We left Mimi out so the dispels were more what I was used to... or more like how it felt when we first started Yogg and the corrupters were just never down.

But what I came to post, since I usually want to write when there's something that's bothering me...

Loose bugs me.
Like I didn't care about Salty first, it would have been a nice little perk but seriously, if I cared I would have leveled faster but I wanted to take that time and enjoy the zones and quests... the quests that I wasn't expecting to do 6 more times because I only have one main this time damnit.

Anyway, Loose likes to mention at least twice a night that he's world first Salty. How he knows this I can't be sure since there were at least a dozen people that got Salty on release day. But I believe he may be right since he happened to roll a mage. So grats on world first Teleport:Dalaran, those fountain coins musta been reel tricksy.

If he was a fisher I wouldn't mind, but he's just a mage that wanted a first apparently, and it's kind of annoying that he's so proud of being handed a title. But whatever, I don't care right?

/nerdrage

Anyway, we were lucky enough to get at least... 2? fragments for Cher last night so he should be at 20. To be honest I was rather underwhelmed at his healing. I'm sure it's just his style and like he said he focuses on the tanks, which is what he should be doing. I know Leg would always be right up there with me, Jyue and Tim on healing done. Cher was floating with Cel at the bottom. In fact Cel "beat" him on most fights.

But I don't know how Paladins work, and I've heard amazing things about this paladin from several people. He might be doing something else that isn't raw output that I'm unaware of. Or he's just not healing because there's no healing to be done... there really wasn't except on a few fights... not enough for so many healers anyway. I'm tempted to reglyph... if we can get a reliable healer to tank heal I guess I could go full raid... which isn't really fun but meh. I've been doing almost 50/50 tank/raid which is a little risky because I think most of the other healers are as well, without assignments. And every once in a while, usually after spike AoE, we end up with dangerously low tanks because everyone hops on the raid. 

With a tank healer though I can ditch my LHW glyph that I loves to pieces, and pick up healing stream... oh boy. Healing stream or Riptide... I'm actually concidering Riptide, even though the raw output Healing Stream does is nice, it's still only for one party, I can't drop it if we don't have wisdom, and it's mostly overhealing anyway. Until like last week I've had to use mana spring all the time since Shamans get might (TY FURBY) But now we have a reasonable number of paladins again so we get a Wisdom too.

Or, I could take Riptide glyph, which would let me have extra time on the Riptide HoT, which would not only get more healing done through tics, but it would let me set up Riptides and save them if I need to, instead of having to use them what feels like immediately.

People on the forums bash the hell out of the Riptide glyph (and Riptide itself)... it does a good amount of healing with the 2p though. I still wouldn't call it "beefy" but it's a viable emergency top-off now. And I can see the glyph helping for predictable burst a lot, especially with more haste. I suppose you could get the same results without the glyph but that would involve precise timing 15 seconds before AoE. What if he doesn't feel like using tantrum when the timer is up? You just wasted your Riptide by 4 seconds, hur hur.

That's part of the reason they hate the glyph... that Riptide is "bad" so they all take healing stream glyph.But the bigger part that I don't think many of them like to admit, is that on certain log sites... I can't remember which one there are so many... one or possibly more of them though, count the ticks from healing stream totem in such a way that it inflates shaman healing output to look massive, but when you look at it its all like "40% of healing done by healing stream totem" which is highly inacurate and probably counting overhealing.

The only fights I would think could benefit the most from Healing Stream totem significantly would be XT, Hodir, Freya if we have a paladin for Fire resist otherwise I drop a resist totem, and Vezax. But Vezax I can't afford to glyph out since LHW is needed for the tank and other people shouldn't be taking damage anyway, just putting it down since mana spring is borked that fight.

I did glyph for Healing Stream the other night on Val'kyrs though. Didn't seem to keep anyone alive but I don't doubt it was helping more than LHW would with all the CH I was casting on the raid, same with IC Hardmode actually.

I donno, I guess I should just keep swapping them out but swap Riptide instead of LHW. Not like I don't have 200 ink of the sea in my alt bank or anything.

btw Happy Birthday yesterday CR :D

It feels like Christmas.

I'm literally bouncing up and down in anticipation of tonight.
Or I'm just shaking because I left the window open last night, but either way...
Extremely excited for tonight!

Tonight Jyue finally gets his HAMMER OF ANCIENT KINGS!

I had a long post preceding this thought but LJ pulled a Blizzard and ate it.
Anyway, I wanted to say that I hope frags drop tonight on the way there cause Cherubael needs to finish his mace so I can get mine in Very's pugs...

OR... best case scenario: We continue farming Uld on like Mondays because 25ToC shouldn't take more than 30 minutes, and for 25ToGC... Beasts and Jaraxxus are at the point where we can one-shot them relatively easily. Champs I can see giving us trouble with mix-ups but once we get Val'kyrs down I see ToGC being a pretty quick thing up to Anub... SO, I'm optemistic about the time we can potentially spend in Uld25 working on Ironbound. Because I know we can do it and I know we can do it before they remove them (and they will eventually, and I don't think the one month notice or whatever will be enough for us to re-learn Uld at that point... what is shadow crash?) 

There's no 25 mount for tribute is there? Cause that would make me extremely sad... I already lost my chance at owning all the Proto-drakes I sure as hell don't want to lose my chance at owning all the wolves.


And CR, where the hell are you?

So... apparently ToC likes me.

A lot.

I'm really happy that I'm getting all this BiS stuff. I've never been this well geared this soon into a patch before, or best geared in guild.
But the overwhelming feeling of guilt tries to get in the way of that... well maybe guilt isn't the right word.

I was really hoping the shield would drop for Celimas tonight to be honest, I've already decided I'm not submitting tells on that or the Val'kyr neck for a very long time since I have the normal mode equivalants.

Now I have these AMAZING non-tier pants that I'm not sure what to do with. They're really incredible... 3 sockets too. So I might try a full haste set on some nights... rather curious how the Shaman on the forums with like 1100 haste are doing. It seems to be the general idea to ditch 4p.

THESE BOOTS ARE SO GOOD.
omg

Yesterday was a very productive day! I got my time-lost trinket (finally! XD) Thing is so awesome! It's got most of the main /emotes as animations. It can dance, sit, sleep. It's adorable when it runs and to top it all off it's random which one you get, which means you get to be all of them :D

I love it.

The only drawback is that it -is- a trinket and like the Orb of Deception I'll have to keep it equip for the duration, which kind of limits its uses.
Also, my bag of toys is at critical mass right now... I had to open two spots since I decided to carry both the above trinkets with me. The orb was in my bank for a while because it's vastly inferior to the bootflask/brew/sindorei costumes... they should probably change how those work o.O

Anyway, guess what was removed from my bag o' manditory shtuff? My hearthstone and ankhs.

Yes.

I realized that I only use my hearthstone like once a week... and I could easily replace that occation with the 17 recall scrolls I have in my inscription bag, which is also with me all the time. That and I finally broke down and got the minor glyph that removes the need for the ankh reagent... I was previously using Water Shield (I still don't understand how this is a minor and not a major but I'll take it), Water Walking (which is nothing short of manditory when you enjoy fishing), and Astrall Recall... because waiting 15 minutes to hearth is too long. So now my hearth is up from 7.5 minutes but hey... it's better than carrying 4 stacks of fish oil instead.

7.5... I can't believe it was actually down sometimes too, that's just abusive >_>
But GG two free spaces.
While I was cleaning out my bank I also went through and did a gear check for Herald of the Titans. I still have a full set of 226 and 10hard gear I can use. And by full I mean it's missing 3 pieces. I need a neck, a totem and bracers. The good news is I bought a neck with the excessive badges I have piling up, I have a 213 PvP totem that I regularly swap in, and I guess I could use PvP bracers too. Or run something and buy the badge ones. In any case, I'm good to go!

Then somewhere in the middle of a series of relatively successful IoC BGs I was able to find Loque'nahak alive and untagged, leaving me with just 2 more rares til Frostbitten :D

And, to top off the evening, Very set up his weekly BT/Hyjal runs and I got exalted with Ashtongue and I'm only 2 Hyjals from exalted with SoS. Then all I'd need is Sunwell and I will be doooone with BC raiding XD
Also got to meet the guy who'll be getting Val'anyr frags when Very starts running Uld, though he was tanking. He has the trinket I want ~_~ And I don't mean a healing one, he's got C'Thun's tentacle.

But hopefully with this large order of Heavy Lockboxes I'll be able to bribe a few AQ40 runs out of Very and remedy my tentacle-less situation.

Saw Zombieland with Miranda yesterday. It's amazing how fast she can talk when she wants to get as much venting out as possible before you reach point A from point B. She has a lot to say.

In any case her enthusiasm for TekkenBR releasing next week has rubbed off on me. I donno who I wanna pick up though. When we were playing Tekken2 when we first got our Playstation (ah the good old days) I played Kunimitsu and Michelle (mostly for the OP double punch that did a crazy knockback) and she played Jun. Well... spoiler alert, Jun dies, Michelle was replaced with her daughter Julia who is pretty annoying, and Kunimitsu is removed altogether which makes me /rage. So I tried playing Yoshimitsu for a while but it's just different... he's got a lot of tricks that I think would be hard for me to fully utilize... teleporting for one.

Now she plays Ling, and she's getting pretty good at it. She makes no secret of hanging out with the best arcade fighters in the country. It sounds like something out of a cartoon to be honest, each of them a master at a different arcade game or two, all hanging out and casually fighting at a private arcade. They complain about not being able to improve because there is no competition in the US and Japan has tons, which I can understand. It's harder to get better when you play against people that are just bad... you don't get to try new things out because they aren't playing intelligently and you start to fall back on simple mechanics because it's the easiest way to beat someone that's repeatedly walking into the same mistake.

I'm not sure who I'd pick up though.. she says either Bruce or Lili would be easiest. Bob looks pretty cool... half these characters look the same now though... like there's 3-4 bald dark dudes, then there're like 5-6 guys that look like Kazuya with varying hair colors. /yawn

Anyway, when I got back last night I was able to get into the raid still. We downed Beasts and Jaraxxus with no problems... sloppy but I don't think we wiped (but they were still on Beasts when I got there, apparently our tank/healer/dps comp needs to be a bit more static for heroics)... hopefully we won't have too many issues with Champs either.

I was able to pick up a lolcrit/mp5 belt and got like the best ring in the game at the moment. It's so sexy... and I'm a complete loser for getting shivers thinking about it just now. I also blew the call on loot council. I'm trying to think what would make me vote against what I think is best, and I think it's 'cause Alex was there. It's not his fault or whatever, I mean he was  pushing for it sure but that wasn't my first choice. But I suppose that'll just hang over my head for a few weeks while I work on growing a spine.

WTB Alliance Rogue T9

We got a Tribute to Insanity!
We had a beautiful setup for Faction Champs which was a real relief compared to last week. We almost didn't get Anub down... it was close >_<;

One of the things I didn't say during the raid that I was terrified to mention, and I forgot to ask Jyue and Tim this afterwords, is if they felt the damage going around was a lot lighter than before. It felt to me that there was a noticeable difference in how much damage the raid as a whole was taking... a lot easier to heal for sure. I might just be imagining it, or the upgrades may have made that big of a difference, but either way I felt pretty good about that run all-around.

Not only that but we got some awesome loot. Dane got some great upgrades, Tim got the dagger of awesome, I got the mace which is slightly better for the extra INT it has, and we got 4 more trophies to pass around, and Darth was kind enough to pass the mount to Jyue :)
It's an awesome mount, it looks like the Argent wolf with the war paint and horde emblem all over, only it's a deep brown instead of grey. I just wish Jyue hadn't mentioned OS, I kinda flipped my lid over it and I'm still pretty pissed, not at Jyue but the fact that we didn't finish it.
I guess that wasn't burried, just forgotten.

But I made a post on the guild forums, hopefully there are enough people without Rusted already that will want to group up and get it. I tried a few months ago but we simply didn't have enough people capable of doing it... we definately do now, just need to find people that are willing as well.

Hopefully spending time with my sis will help me cool off. I was spending way too much time thinking about it... messed up on Algalon too. Forgot to move the camera down like I usually do so I can see if there's a void zone under me when I have the entire milky way riding my back, and then forgot to /focus Sam so I could tell when the stars were going down and ended up getting blown up after an ankh.

But we got him down anyway and got Reepa his title and alpha so it's all good =)
Barely though >_> it was impressive with only I think 2 people standing at the end? lol
Poor Furbs...

Halloween party is tomorrow.
So much to do still, though the house is pretty well decorated at this point. Every year we do a chalk outline on the walkway of cartoons. Unfortunately the only one I can recall is Rocky and Bullwinkle... anyway this year it's Roger and Jessica Rabbit. I'm not very good at blowing things up on that scale, but they came out alright I guess.

Went down to Gizdich Ranch yesterday and picked up our yearly cider... and a pie! I'd never heard of olallie berries but they're pretty good in this pie.
Checked out their antique shop while we were there... farms have the weirdest things. Anyway I was kinda shocked to see that a lot of the kitchen supplies were things in my mom's kitchen >_>;
The Christmas cookie cutters were all ones we had (and we have more, too) the measuring spoons, the glass bowls. We'd have picked up the bowls if they weren't charging so much for them. Those are good bowls.

I had a dream last night, or I guess this morning since I was in sleep limbo for an hour, about Val'anyr. Dreamt that on the way to getting Jyue's Yogg fight we found shards off of every other boss. Which I wouldn't be surprised if it happened, to be honest. But he's at 30 now so next week... next week we forge a hammer of ancient kings for our priesty.

I like having Very around. Very is a pretty cool guy, he builds raids for achievements and doesn't afraid of anything. I like the idea of running as many lockouts as possible each week though. I'd still rather have done these dungeons back when they were new but... ToC doesn't excite me. Uld does... I like the idea of triggering hard modes by interacting with the boss in some way, vs walking into the instance while there's a skull on the door and the mobs are mystereously on steroids all of a sudden. It's lame as hell. The mechanics are exactly the same with the exception of there might be more of something you don't need and less of something you do. 

I finally got a 245 ring last night though =)
I was planning on not submitting a tell on it but when it dropped I checked everyone and lo and behold, what the flying fuck!? Everyone but Cel had 2x245s already, and even he already had one. I honestly don't know which to replace though... I like crit more than mp5 but that would mean replacing the one from Alg, which has a socket. It's a ring with a socket!

Ugh. I think... I'll get two more orbs and have the cloth bracers crafted. I think I blew the call on that one. Then again, the original thinking behind getting the haste/mp5 mail ones was that there's a sporting chance I'll be doing something without Replenishment... I have an mp5 set for that, and that was more important to me at the time. But we don't run 10s anymore, so I could really afford to lose more mp5 now. 

Apples are so good.
And I might be going to see Zombieland with my sister tonight... I was going to last night but asked her to wait cause I was so sure we'd be finishing Jyue's mace. Oh well.

I can't believe 4chan just made me feel better about myself.

So I've been failing at finding a job. I really need one though. . .
/sigh

I wish I knew what I wanted from life.

Anyway, I was on craigslist and saw this:

"Looking for an energetic, extroverted, joyful, prayerful, outgoing morning person who exudes health and vitality with a desire to make a difference in other people’s lives."

I had no idea "prayerful" was a word, I had to look it up 'cause I thought they made it up. The rest of the ad was littered with similar phrases and concluded with a "God Bless".
It kinda freaked me out, I gotta admit. I might have actually applied to it if any of those adjectives applied to me though... but I'm far from "energetic, joyful and outgoing". More like "shy, quiet, calm, passive, boring" along with of course my positive traits like "attention to detail" and "obsessively organized".

I kinda wish I could be a housewife... like honestly. I enjoy maintaining things, a house would be a fun project. But that requires like... finding someone to love and stay with that can support themself + one lazy person (moi) who doesn't bring home money. Housework is a lot of work if you do it right but still... meeting someone. Yea that'll happen. Cause I'm such a social butterfly.

On a more upbeat note, we rocked ToC last night. We two-shot Northrend Beasts much to everyone's surprise, and after a stirring speech from Darth we got down Jaraxxus. Some serious healing issues on that fight though, I don't even know what's up with that. It's really easy to see Incinerate Flesh, you add it to Grid and it's there... Legion Flames too. I don't understand what someone could be doing that isn't healing those people, since there is no single thing in that fight more important than healing someone through Incinerate Flesh. I started running towards the middle on the last few attempts to help people on the opposite side since 3 healers never seemed to be enough.

Something was up with the kisses too... I need to figure out exactly how that works because I find myself locked out before a debuff even appears, it's instant. And in the event I do get the debuff and am able to react to it, 2/4 times it completely ignored Lava Burst and locked out my next heal instead. So I donno what the problem was there but I don't see what I could do different about that. I wonder if grounding totem takes the kiss for you.

Anyway, really optemistic about how things are going in guild right now, out 25 is amazing and I honestly think we can achieve a whoe lot more. Yea, achieve.

But seriously, achievements asside, I think it would be incredible to be able to do what we do in 10s on a 25man scale. I'd love to see us get down hardmodes and it would feel amazing to get ironbound drakes. And I think we can do it  =)



Tabards are for when you're too lazy to draw, color and shade a tier set in MSPaint.
And holy shit RP-GGs are fun.
...I should probably draw toes back there the totem looks more like a peg leg -_-;

Oh and it's been about a year, time to dig up the best screenshot I ever took again.
Yes, my first baby steps into MMO raiding. Ah the good old days.

I need to get some time to PvP... I have ToC done on Mimic already though, and I'm done experimenting with Aion.

Yes, my dirty little secret, or one of them anyway. I mostly just wanted to see the character customization... which was pretty neat. I had fun with it. I only got to level 16 and I haven't partied yet... so I can't say I fully experienced the gameplay. I spent most of my time questing and gathering. Omg I love skilling up gathering... that was fun.

Money is stupid easy to make there too. I'd just look for an item, Forest Helm for example. They vendor for 1.4k, people AH them for much less. Just buy them all out and vender. Easy money. And it's like that for almost every item on the AH, always a couple to buy low.
I guess I can go dump that money on a random person before I cancel.

Oh maybe I can like, give them a quiz. First to answer a riddle? Hmm...
Guess I could just leave it with the guild I joined.

I had a lot of fun making characters, I only played two though. Cleric and Assassin.




Flying wasn't as fun as it could be, you only really get 60 seconds. I'm not sure if that increases with levels or quests, missions... it does for like 12 seconds with potions but, meh.

Overall the game felt like it was made specifically to wean people off of Warcraft; the UI was copied down to the small details as far as functionality went. Just different names for things... market broker instead of auctioneer, manastones instead of gems, weird statue things instead of hearths. The combat was overly simplified from what I saw... it was basically they give you a skill to spam, Smite. And then later they give you another skill, Thunderstorm which can be used after a Smite every like 20 seconds or whatever. But instead of you thinking oh hey, I should probably use this cause it's up, they automatically change the smite button to Thunderstorm for you. So you can basically hit one button the entire time until you need a heal. There's a pair of melee attacks for Cleric that work the exact same way. And I had a snare. Otherwise...

I donno, it was extremely easy compared to Assassin though, which suffered major downtime for not being able to heal itself... and the mana efficiency for Cleric was stupidly amazing.

Anyway, Aion was a good vacation from WoW. It made me appreciate Warcraft a lot more, I was starting to take for granted how much Blizzard does to make this game the way it is. It may not be perfect by any means, but it's certainly the closest there is. And I do like the art here more, oddly enough. /boggle

I also realized tonight... it's not that I don't like Uld. I still like Ulduar... it's that I hate Flame Leviathan. I'd rather go to Uld than ToC any night of the week... I'd just rather skip stupid FL >_>; I hate that fight and its trash and glitches. It was fun the first few weeks though, but now it's just a giant speed bump and really establishes the mood and pace of the rest of the night.

Tonight we did Ulduar though, and man did we do it good. We walked in and after a good 30 minutes of preparation and talking and alt-tabbing and listening to music and doodling and not really paying attention we went in and 1-shot Thorim hard :D
Then after another explaination that I regretably can't bring myself to listen to (sorry Dion) we went in and 3-shot Council hard :D

Jyue got the disc and epic lore was had by all.

The DPS tonight was impressive though... it  was a really good raid. I'm so glad we got council down, that one was hanging over my head.


Halloween's been creeping up and I've been avoiding thinking about it. Ugghh.... fake nose and glasses imo.

I've had GLaDOS's Still Alive stuck in my head for days now.
Days.

Anyway~ it's raining outside, which is amazing. I love this kind of weather if I don't need to go out. It was supposed to be yardwork day too... turned into groceries day.
Winter weather is awesome though... it's overcast so you can see things outside, you get to hear the rain and it gets colder. I like cold a lot more than heat cause you can always bundle up with fuzzy socks a blanket and a warm drink. In the summer you can really only take off so many clothes and the AC only feels nice until you go outside and then your life feels like one big lie when the heat hits you as you open the door.

But I guess that's California... we're lucky to get rain. Might be why I like it so much.

Played TF2 for the first time the other night. Really fun game, I'm just really bad at it. I am good at running into large groups of people, dealing minor damage to 1-2 of them, and dying within 3 seconds though. It's what happens... I either play wrecklessly offensive or I play extremely defensive. CoD4 is a game where I play defensive... I never get anything done. The entire match is me trying to find a place where I wont get shot which, while fun and challenging for me, isn't helpful at all for my team.

What I am good at... or was good at anyway though probably not anymore, and good is a relative term here, was the shotgun in Halo3. Not that it requires skill, it just requires crouching around a corner and blasting someone in the face as they come barreling around it. Very fun. I really do like setting traps and waiting. If I was any good at aiming I'd enjoy sniping, but I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn using a bazooka.

This batch of cookies was not a huge success. I started making the dough before I realized we didn't have enough soft margarine so I had to use 2 different kinds and they came out a little weird. Still taste fine just... they look funny.

The refridgerator looks spotless now; like new. Sometimes you don't notice how dirty things are until you see them clean. Who knew the fridge was white?

Back to work~

Well I can't say I'm too pleased with the Wiki right now, but I suppose that's what happens when something is subject to open editing.
SO, I made a new page... since people are lazy, they can continue to pretend maintaining their own page, and I'll continue to actually maintain a more organized one.

Except I'm in Uld at the moment so I should really put this down right now... I just hope the backup of all the work I did is still up-to-date from where I left it, cause I'm not going to go back again and double/triple check it... again.

Fun, right?

Mammoth rides are fun... this isn't exactly a mammoth ride though.

Halloween is coming up. The house is all decorated, we had pumpkin pancakes this morning... I'm not sure what to be for the party though. I never know, and I usually end up just hiding out but I'd like to get out and take some pictures again this year like I did the first few times. We aren't getting a lot of people this time though... maybe only 15. We had 40-50 before but I guess you lose some when you skip a year, eh?

Anyway, FL time. Though I'm probably gonna be thinking about the wiki the whole time... /sigh

The Warrior t10 has piggies for shoulders!

PIGGIES! <3

And I actually stopped what I was doing to point and laugh at the hunter shoes. Seriously, I pointed and laughed.
I don't think I've ever done that irl... it's pretty lame. But so are those shoes! zing

So it's been a while since I've played a game that isn't WoW. The last one I can think of is Plants vs Zombies, which I still play, but I can't remember the last time I actually went out and bought a game. Until now I mean, I'm installing orange box at the moment.

We have it, just for X-box, so I went and got it for PC since the X-box is being held prisoner in my sister's diseased garbage heap of a room. It's really nasty. I wouldn't wanna sleep there...

Goodie. Time to figure out how to navigate Steam... last time I did this I think I was playing... CSS? That didn't last more than 30 minutes.
Anyway gonna try Portal. It's either this or queuing for IoC all night for another 28 wins.

I'm bad. Seriously.

Let me explain why.

So the past couple of weeks I've been concerned about my healing. I don't care so much where I rank on the meters, as long as I'm up there competitively but I know some fights cater to CH spam while others are dominated by a JoL approach and others are just better for rolling HoTs. It's why there's diversity in the first place.

What I have been concerned about is my numbers compared to less geared Shaman. My gear is really good right now... my gear is more on-par with the current level of content I'm raiding than it has ever been. Now honestly I do try my best to not CH spam, even though when I'm lazy it's comforting to know I can fall back on that. But for fights like IC (before P3 anyway) if I see Steelbreaker charging up his Falconpunch I'll start casting a heal on that tank so it lands as soon as they get hit for 50% HP and then I'll follow up with a riptide to top them off and get back to CHing the main group. Knowing who's standing where helps too, I only misfired once tonight and that was cause I was just so tired of the waiting that by the time we got to the fighting I was still in a vegetative state.

Shaman really has been reduced to CH spam in 25s though, so my fun comes more from finding out who to heal rather than with what. For example some hunters are notorious for standing way in the middle of nowhere... I don't heal them so much. I usually target myself for ranged and Darth or Furby for melee. Fights like XT are probably the most fun to heal because knowing other people's situations is the main game.

I just missed Tako too, I didn't see him log... damn post writing.

But back to the problem... I found myself not doing as much healing as I should be for my gear compared to less geared shaman... mainly Oji, and the shaman with horrible gear in Naxx the other night but that's mostly because she stole my ES's so often I'm pretty sure it was deliberate. Using recount for it's practical use I found that the area where I'm particularly lacking in most fights is either ES, because I wasn't going to fight them for it even though my SP is much higher, and oddly Earthliving. Most of the time Earthliving is second or third on most used heal, it trades places with Earth Shield depending on circumstances. Mine is up there as well, it's just ~50% less than everyone elses.

I tested something the other night on IC and tried running with Earthliving Weapon Glyph (+5% more chance for it to land) because honestly on that fight I don't heal tanks often enough to justify using LHW glyph, and after P1 all I use is CH anyway... might as well increase the proc's.
It did less healing.

Today after Hodir it hit me though.
I was very surprised which makes me feel... well really dumb.

So the reason I've been doing 50% less healing from my ELW than other shaman isn't gear or glyph or timing problem... it's that I've been using rank 5.

Yup.. when I got rank 5 ELW (At level 70 mind you... I had to look it up so I could /facedesk) I got the brilliant idea of making a macro that would cast each of the different weapon enchants when held with a modifier. The only problem was when you shift click a spell into a macro it hardcodes that rank into it, instead of leaving it open to whichever is highest. So I've been using this since outland.

G
G


...I'm so bad.
Hopefully I'll be doing a little more healing now though.

So I drew a cool picture for once and I was like hey, I should probably scan this. It's never that easy, cause there have been things I've been saying that about for over a year now that have piled up into a folder on my desk. A lot of them aren't worth mentioning but will be uploaded after some cropping and level balancing to my DA later, but I thought I'd post the ones I actually liked here.

I drew Midna... with reference of course but there's a startling difference between the quality of my work when I use a direct reference.


Then there's Shock... always. Chibi style because I have a hard time drawing normal sized people lately.


And then there's this picture I drew of Kel'Thuzad and Mr.Bigglesworth.



I thought it was cute anyway.



And a troll DK chick. She looks kinda greasy... like a gnome or goblin.