4.07.2008

New Home - Married IRL


So yea, in case you hadn't seen over at BRK's or on Blog Azeroth, the slight changes I mentioned?

I'm moving to a different type of blog. Teej had this crazy idea where, you know, I could still write about WoW and stuff, but I would also not feel too guilty writing about my other toons if I made it a blog that was... a bunch of stuff.

Cause I have a lot of stuff I could write about.

And so could my husband. We've both got this awesome job of Co GMing, and then there's this other stuff we do... no not that, but gaming in general, like all the other gaming stuff we do.

I know, technical terms all around, but I feel like I'm breaking up with someone here! "It's not you, its me..."

So, if you're still wanting PRIEST ONLY content, it's cool, I can understand. There's good people out there who write all about priesting. But I'm moving over to MarriedIRL... join me?

<3 Cay

3.28.2008

Slight Changes

So, I'm thinking of a change in scenery...

I'm working on a Wordpress home...

And I'm also considering a tiny name change.

Lemme 'splain:

It's been 2 months now since I respec'd Cay from her 23/38/0 Hybrid spec to a full 20/41/0 Holy spec.

So she's not really a holy hybrid anymore...

: /

So yea. Be prepared for a bit of a change. ^.^

But then again, as a wise monkey once said, "Change is good."

^.^

PS: The pic I nabbed is one of Ayashi's icons... it was really funny, and I had to share!

2.28.2008

Fired


So yea, despite the awesomeness that AC has achieved in the past month, February is totally Fired.

Why you may wonder?

On top of all the crapola that I divulged from my last post... Fio got laid off this Monday.

F- YOU FEBRUARY!

/grumble

Anywho, on to something cooler, which is the awesomeness that is my guild.

We got Leo down for the first time on Monday (huzzah!) and although we didn't get him last night, that's ok, we got him to 3%! So yea, just need to perfect the technique. Also, I died on my inner demon... I wish there was a simulator or something so I could practice going from healbot mode to killer mode... it's not as easy as you may think. And I HAVE a DPS priest. So it's not like it's some foreign idea to me. But I guess it's getting out of the "I'm the Healer" into the "I'm the Healed" type mindset. People dread when I call out names during the Inner Demon phaze. Because I only call out healer names, which means they're busy killing their demon and can't heal the others fighting their demons or the Lock tank at the moment.

Anywho, I can't blab much, I'm at work and this might turn into a big ol' chunky weird type post, so I will do what I wanted to do and that POST VIDEOS!

The Hydross Vid - Youtube
The Maggy Vid - Filefront (it's big, 137MB)
The Leo Vid - Youtube

Enjoy!

2.23.2008

So, what the heck?

I've fallen off the blogger bandwagon in a big way. However, lemme explain -

Since I last updated, AC has downed Magtheridon, Hydross and Void Reaver. I missed the Void Reaver kill though, and I'm still working on the Maggy Video (though Hydross is out there.)

/serious hat
I missed the VR kill because in my life outside of WoW, Jas's grandmother died, and his father has been diagnosed with lung cancer. On top of that I had a really disappointing time at my first midwife appointment and we both came down with the flu. So, it's been a depressing February in the life and times of Teh Squeak.
/tosses serious hat out the window

So yea, I've a serious case of LoGaS* to go and write, but now I do. Fio's gran was a wonderful lady, she lived till 90, and died very fast. Something about a flesh eating bacteria, which, is weird to hear of outside an episode of House, but there you have it. We're still not sure how she got it, but Tuesday she went in for emergency surgery, Friday morning she was gone. It was my first time experiencing death of a family member close at hand. I mean, growing up, I didn't really know my own grandparents, they were thousands of miles away. My family is Mom, Dad, and my brother. Fio's family is all extended and on top of each other here in RI... so yea, the wake and funeral were an experience for me. But Jas's sister should have had her baby by now, and seeing a very pregnant sister in the face of the death of a family member, had a really awesome synergy to it. Death to life and all that.

Jas's dad's cancer though totally came out of left field. The man hasn't smoked since Jason was 3. It's been almost a quarter of a century since he last put butt to lips... so they're thinking it's one of those freak things. After the first bombshell of that news though, things seem to get better and better. It's large cell, which means it's not prone to spreading (at least easily), it's treatable and he's already started Chemo/Radiation therapy. So that's all good stuff.

Oh, and this past week was an epic fail. Jas and I were both awfully sick with whatever flu bug is going around. He got hit harder than I did, probably because of stress. But now I'm feeling tons better and ready to tackle all the crap we had to kinda put to the side in AC.

We've stalled a little bit, but we're pushing through. We lost our only pally tank, but one of our holy ones took up the job, so now we're in full blown recruitment mode for another Pally healer and a resto shammy too. We're getting back on track, and gonna hopefully be seeing a dead Leo, Fathom Lord, Tidewalker and Solarian this coming March. ^.^ I want to get my first gander of Lady Vashj before Apirl Fool's day ;p

____

Otherwise, since things have been so epicly crappy, I've taken the time to veg out and whoa... I got my horde pally to 63. She's probably going to be holy by the time I hit 70, but I'd love to try out prot.

Leveling is so ridiculously easy now that 2.3 has come out. I mean... they nerfed Princess for Chris'sake! Princess! Nerfed! Wtf?!

But I'll have to make that a separate post. I've got some things I wanted to link to that I don't have access to right now... so yea, something to look forward to ;)

Till I see you agains. Oh and I'll post the Hydross video very soon... it was slightly chaotic and goofy, but fun ^.^
*Lack of Give a Shit

2.19.2008

I'm alive

I live, I swear.

I haven't forgotten, just a lot of life has come up. More to come later tonight.

1.15.2008

Haha! Take That!

Rarg! AC finally got Doomwalker... and I MISSED IT! T.T

Basically, after pwning Gruul's, we all booked it over to Doomwalker in the Black Temple area. Bastard knew his time was up!

Our first attempt... I forgot to FRAPS, but we all wiped at 5% anywho...

Our second attempt we go him... but in MID HEAL... my game locked. Fio was already kissing gravel because our pally tank (Destroy of teh Uber AoE Taunt!) didn't really tick Doomwalker off to bad with his "HEY OVER HERE NEWB!" Splat goes Boomkin.

But yea. I relog into WoW, hearing all the action as it unfolds on vent... And as SOON as I log in... the ground disappears. My PC has won the Biggest Douche of the Year Award. And it's only January! /huff

So I restart the PC but not before I watch over Fio's shoulder AC take him down. Lots of people died, it wasn't a clean kill, but we did it.

Also, we happened to have a tiny bit of luck in that the second Alliance guild on Drenden finally killed Kael'thas, thus completing their Black Temple requirements, and they also happened to be doing their BT attunement when Doomwalker was at like... 20%? >.> Much love to the Insurrection people who went, Haha! and Pew Pew'd for justice (I think it was like 2 people XD and they died cause no one could see them to heal them.)

FYI, Drenden is really, really behind in raid progression. The first guild to clear Black Temple did so a day after Christmas? I think? I have to check forum boards again. But now another Alliance guild will start making with the tier 6 goodies, and the Hordies over in Heresiarch killed Kael yesterday, now they just need to nail Vashj and then we'll have some Hordies in Tier 6 epix. So fun times are a comin' ^.^

OH! And another thing! Brig got his resist gear back! So we're back on track in SSC again. We tried Tidewalker a few times... but he has this nasty tendency to make Celli get all squished. But from what I'm to understand... Tidewalker and up is SRS BIZNIZ in the raiding to come... so time to shoulder the yoke and press on.

So yea, there's a WoW update for you... something priestly coming soon.... I think. XD

1.08.2008

1 F&^$K*#&$G PERCENT!

So, while waiting for patch 2.3.2 to install, I'm going to blog for a moment.

Last Wednesday, AC went in and Pwn'd Lurker, again. First raid of '08. Huzzah! Sunday was our schedule TK raid, our second foray into The Eye.... well, ok, no, it didn't go, the Raid Leader of Awesomesauce's ISP was epicly douchy and crapped out on him for a whole day. I had a small heart attack, since I KNEW he wouldn't miss raid and we couldn't get in touch with him... but that's just me. I'm prone to worry. Character flaw.

Anywho! So, we had a group go into Zul'Aman instead, and ate the Bear (though didn't make the 20 mins) and got Eagle Wings to go on our second shot.

Then there was yesterday. Monday is Gruul day. We started 15 mins late, but one shot the place and finished in record time. It was 9pm. Time for a World Boss? Sure! Doomwalker is up, let's go look at him!

15 mins to get there, explain the fight and in we go! Not quite sure who to heal when... but mid way through the fight, we got the rhythm down... 20% he enrages (crap I'm laggin', gotta shut off the vid, or else I'm going to lag out)... 15% and most of the DPS is dead... fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck HOLY CRAP ONLY HEALERS ALIVE! QUICK! DPS DPS DPS!

Everyone dead... he's at 1%.

/epic fail

It was our first shot of the night, our second shot was fraught with Line of Sight issues. And our third, we had started tossing in too many new people... We had to call it then, since it was 11 and people had to go.

But that first try is haunting us now.

1%. He was down to like 18K HP er something.


He's already dead. He just doesn't know it yet. /seethe

12.29.2007

OMG I swar it's the last for today

Critical QQ. He makes me giggle. ^.^

...and a Happy New Year

Damn it Destroy. He's got that damn Portal song stuck in my head.

So, hope everyone who had one had a very Awesometastic Christmas. I know Fio and I had a totally tubular one ^.^

Not only did we drive like crazies to Ohio and back, and we broke down and bought a 360 for some Mass Effect/Assassin's Creed, but, we got to see the Demonic Ponytail pre-taming. ^.^

All in all a very fun weekend. And what's even better? I got to post up the raid schedule for the next week. Hurray back to SSC! And our Raid Leader of Awesome also figured we'd head back over to TK and take another stab at VR. Which I am teh excited about ^.^

I'm just glad to be raiding again. Don't get me wrong, the break was nice, it let's me fart around in the game (and there fore keep my interest) but the constant raiding we were doing was wearing on me. That and it was refreshing to be away for a few days. Though, as you probably heard, total asshatery did commence and some jerk face hacked into one of my friends accounts. Freakin' turd. I swear... well, I did swear, a lot that night. Felt bad about calling Immy at 11:30 at night to say "ZOMG YOU'RE BEING HACKED DUDE CALL BLIZZ!" but at least we got it handled. Though I would have no problems putting that dickface's balls (or tits) into a meat grinder for pulling shit like this 2 days before Christmas. I hope Santa brought him a chainsaw anemia. /growl

Anywho, back to something a tad more pleasant, my guild of Awesome has put the feelers out there for some like minded friends to come raid with us. We did the O board forums post and TJ, Kitty, and Doom were all nice enough to post threads in their blog. I like the page Kitty did the most with Fio's little addendum on the bottom, so I'm going to link to it here. So far we've had some awesome people come and apply and we even got a healy priesty to come play. He's pretty kick butt, nice guy and has a funny sense of humor. Bonus ^.^ Now we just need a shadow priest to come and app *puppy dog eyes* so Kitty won't steal my DCoE away. He's a greedy wench sometimes.
;P

The meeting with new raiders and getting back together with the gang is something I'm really lookin' forward to. Excitement + Fun = the raiding I wanna do ^.^

OK, this whole post seems to meander all over the place. The next thing I wanted to mention was my Shadow Priest pet, Rakzha. I decided to stay in Azeroth long enough to get mining to 295 and then I booked it back to Outlands. I have... SO much fun with Outlands quests. They are just too awesome. And I did a bit of a marathon of Ramps/Blood Furnace for her and now she has pretty much everything a caster would want out of there sans the belt from BF. Oh, and the pants? You know, the EVIL PANTS. Totally didn't get them. I don't care that they're uber awesome in stats, blah blah blah. Nope. Not going to happen. I got the plate and sold them. /dusts off hands

I need to look at her spec again though. I think I went a little crazy with the shadow tree. But I'm putting it off for now. I'll definitely revisit it once she hits 70 though that's for sure. And now, I'm off. After finishing the Opera post and this, I think this is me trying to catch up XD
There should be a Gruul's post coming shortly, that's for sure. (Yea, shortly, like the Opera one, that took 2 months T.T)

Healing Opera: Figaro!

I had a really funny pic to go along with this post. But Bloggers picture thingies was down and then I lost the link.

Sad panda.

Anywho!

I know it's a long time coming(in fact, this has been in drafts for a loooong time now. Since October 17th to be exact...) Here be my experiences with the awesome Opera event in Karazhan.

Now, what's nifty about this event is that it has three different types of bosses. All three are big fairy tale rip offs, but that makes them even more amusing.
The three events you can get are The Big Bad Wolf (BBW), Romulo and Julianne (R&J) or Oz. All three have their quirks and this is by far, one of my most favorite fights in the instance.

So, I'll start with the "easiest" fight.

Big Bad Wolf

Firstly, about a minute before the fight starts, Fear Ward the tank. This way you have anout a minute into your cooldown into the fight and you might get another ward off during the fight.

Usually our MT tanks Wolfie in a corner, and all your ranged DPS is going to be grouped in another corner. You're going to want to start, as always, with your handy dandy Frisbee, and sometimes, BBW will start the fight with a Little Red and a Fear, so be on your toes. The Little Red Riding Hood Debuff he does is SO. MUCH. FUN. Srsly. I luff's it. You turn into this cute little gnome in red clothing, your armor is reduced to zero, but your running speed gets a boost. When the debuff happens and its not you, prepare to shield/frisbee/heal the bejesus outta the Little Red.

Depending on how many hit points the victim is and how well their "OMG I'M THE GNOME!" running technique is, they may need it. Also, while there's not much of an aggro table while he's running after Red, keep in mind that he resumes normal aggro after the debuff wears off. The debuff lasts about and a half runs around the stage or until Red gets clobbered. So still, watch your aggro. And re Frisbee the tank as soon as you can.

Otherwise, it's just your standard fair of Frisbee/Renew/GHeal on the tank. Due to the new fear rules, if you miss out on a Fear during the fight, don't worry too much, just make sure your Renew is still going since, well, you can't heal when you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off for 3 seconds.

Oh and btw, when YOU get to be little Red, don't panic. Just Shield while running, slap a Renew on yourself juuuuuust in case, and make sure you hug the wall. Don't take any short cuts while you're running along the wall, because Wolfie will catch up to you (he cheats.)
And once the bugger is dead, he'll have a nice cloak waiting for you (RIGHT?!)
Red Riding Hood's Cloak


Romulo and Julianne

This fight is pretty gimmicky, but it's also fairly simple to heal. We've always done this fight with two tanks, though I've heard one tank can do it too. There are two bosses and the idea is this:

The fight starts with Julianne and she has some fairly standard abilities: she heals, she has a holy DoT she'll randomly toss on people and she's got a buff on her that makes her cast faster.

Usually you put whatever spell interrupters you can on her, because that heal is annoying and possibly fight breaking (you'll see why in a sec.) During this part, if you're assigned to heal this tank, it's pretty smooth sailing with your Renew/Frisbee combo, though be prepared to toss a Renew out to your raid members since that DoT does a good chunk of initial damage and DoT.

Once she's kissing floor board, Romulo spawns. (Keep in mind, these guys are UNTAUNTABLE, so try to time your Renew if possible. Romulo one shots clothies T.T)
So ok, once you've stopped giggling at how flaming Rom sounds, just keep in mind he's all melee. He has a buff that makes him attack faster, he'll fling any DPS that's directly behind him waaay across the room and he has a Poison that stacks on the tank that decreases their stats by a %.
That poison is nasty, and hopefully you have a Druid/Shammy/Pally to get rid of it. Not much we priesty types can do about poison. This tank will be getting hit a bit harder because Rom's all... muscle... (we guess XD) but he also dies fairly quickly and simply.

Now the fun part. Once Rom's down, Julianne rises from the dead (again) and rez's Rom.
Now you have both up and here's the kicker: they both have to die within ten seconds from each other, or else the living one rez's the other. Here's where Juli's heal becomes extremely annoying. But otherwise, it's a repeat of healing techniques, just watch out for the raid since Juli's going to be DoTing away at her hearts content at them. If you have the interrupts, you could see if they could use one or two on those DoTs, but priority goes to killing her heal. Also, the Buffs (Devotion on Juli, Daring on Rom) can be spell stolen and Dispel'd. So if it's needed, you can dispel those buffs so that they aren't going all super speedy.

It's a bonus, swarz.
And once they're both in eternal slumber, you can hope to nab the Masquerade Gown from Julianne (Rom's got nothing for healy types.)

Oz

By far, the most awesome and fun of the three events in Opera. Few things of note:
Dorothee's aggro table is random - she just shoots frost bolts at whoever and she's usually the first to die.
Tito spawns mid fight and is a tank and spank. Just make sure Dorothee's dead before you kill him or else she enrages and things get ugly.
Strawman does an AoE fear/stun but he can be pretty much solo'd by a lock/firemage/flaming shammy. Fire spells keep him confused and do uber damage to him. And no, Holy Fire doesn't count T.T (I tried).
Roar hits pretty hard, but he can be kept feared by either a lock, your Psychic scream, or a hunter's Fear Beast and it lasts a bit longer than normal, because he's weak to fear. He's usually the third to go down after Dorothee and Tito.
Tinhead hits like a truck and is usually given to the MT to kite around the room. You see, after like 15 seconds, he starts getting this debuff called Rust and it slows him down. So as long as the tank has his attention, he's pretty much the last one to die in the melee (before Crone.)
The Crone doesn't spawn until all the others are dead. She does a chain lightening, doesn't hit all that hard, and separate from here there's a Cyclone whizzing around on stage. Just avoid it, otherwise it knocks you into the air (you can still cast instant spells, like Levitate ^.^) and then you fall to the ground and take a bunch of falling damage if you happen to be out of Light Feathers >.>

Try and have an OT tank Tito, Roar and Strawman, and watch the raid's health with Dorothee's crazy frost bolts. Renew is probably going to be the biggest thing you do in the fight. Though, when Tinhead comes into the fray and your MT picks him up, toss a few Frisbee's the MT's way to solidify his aggro on him. Otherwise, watch your butt around Strawman (that aoe fear thing sucks) and keep everyone healed.

Don't worry too much about going low on mana if you do: if you keep Tinhead till last and you have a pally in the group /cheer. Have them toss up a Judgement of Wisdom? (the one to get mana back) and just level your weapon skill. Tinhead has a lot of HP, and make sure ranged and melee don't attack him during this. It's a great way to refresh the raids mana pool for the Crone.
Once she spawns, MT picks up, watch out for the Cyclone, and stay behind and away from her. That Chain Lightening isn't a pleasant feeling. Frisbee/Renew/GHeal and then... LEWT!
The biggest thing for the healy priesty here is the Blue Diamond Witchwand. Rejoice in your lewtness! ^.^

Ok, there was one item that can potentially drop from all three fights that I skipped and thats the Ribbon of Sacrifice. I have it. I've used it before in Kara... but I find it lacking. The use trinkets really aren't all that optimal for priest types because a lot of our heal strategy is based on burst/planned healing. Renew and the Frisbee are really good maintainers, but we don't spam GHeal or FHeal unless we want to go OOM very quickly. It's a good OH SH!T button, but from what I've heard it's a better for 25 mans... I'll try and get back to you guys on that, but for now, I've just stuck with my Scarab of the Infinite Cycle and (Pre Gruul) Bangle of Endless Blessings.