Musings of a Holy Hybrid

New Home - Married IRL

2008-04-07T01:43:00.004-04:00

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

Slight Changes

2008-03-28T15:11:00.001-04:00

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!

Fired

2008-02-28T13:24:00.003-05:00

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!

So, what the heck?

2008-02-23T13:13:00.003-05:00

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

I'm alive

2008-02-19T16:37:00.002-05:00

I live, I swear.

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

Haha! Take That!

2008-01-15T09:09:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-08T17:19:00.000-05:00

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

OMG I swar it's the last for today

2007-12-29T15:41:00.000-05:00

Critical QQ. He makes me giggle. ^.^

...and a Happy New Year

2007-12-29T13:05:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-12-29T12:46:00.000-05:00

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.

I love snow

2007-12-20T18:23:00.000-05:00

So, as the title implies, fat falling flakes of precipitation is the only reason why I love living in the Northeast.

The crappy response by RI state officials non withstanding, I still love the snow. There's just something about it that makes me feel like I'm 10 years old again, outside sledding or rolling aorund in it, tosses snowballs at my brother/father and or making a snowy mess.

Like so:

Enjoy my masterpiece. He is Carlos, Man of ... horns?

Ok, so maybe not, but I had to toss something on him.

What does this have to do with WoW? Not a terrible amount really. But, suffice to say, WoW still goes, my guild of awesome is taking a raiding break for the holidays, we're pugging Karazhan on alts and anxiously awaiting the new year when we can really start working on progress in SSC. That place looks like tons of fun. Like seriously, oodles of it.

I'm going to be gone for the rest of the week visiting the parents in Ohio (yea, we're driving there, pray that the Snow waits until I'm off the road XD) and then driving back home to see Fio's parents on Christmas day. Granted, his parents live in the same state as us... but yea. I'm teh uber excited to see my family after not seeing my brother for ages and my parents since summer.

Priestings! Rakzha is now in Outland. Thank you Blizz for that 2.3 patch! I leveled Rak from 45 to 53 over the weekend and have been hashing out more and more levels since. Being on Raiding break also helps with the leveling of alts, but I always seem to find time. Since I barely remember when I leveled Cay, I'm hoping that my 242 shadow damage at lvl 58 with pwn many Azeroth quests. I took Rak at level 40 something to do all the new quests in Dustwallow Marsh, and seriously, Blizz is pushing hardcore for people to level, cause I breezed through on this toon. Also, I did decide to just go with the Shadoweave gear into the Felcloth gear and let me tell you, so much fun. I'm having minimal drink time (Yay spirit Tap!) and much shadow pwnage. (Sorry gang, if you're looking for math, I'm not a great person at it. To me, its all about feel).

I'm very excited to start getting Rak into some parties and totally noobing up my role as a mana battery. Soon, I'll be trolling places like Kirk's and Apathy's to see how best to make the most of my shadow'ing dmg and mana efficiency outputs. Though since Fio is better at math than me, he's helping me along too. Doesn't know too much about priests, but knows enough about offensive casters to help me along.

So, as of right now, with another Outland quest for her wand and maybe one or two more for XP, Rak will go back to places like Burning Steppes (which, she hasn't touched yet btw), EPL, Winterspring and Silithus. All these places are virgin questing territory to her, and I like to finish up as much as I can in Azeroth so that it 1) puts me at about 60 going into Hellfire and B) gives me more Outland quests I can finish for money at 70.

Btw, when she gets her tailoring up there, I've already got all the mats for her Frozen Shadoweave Set and the Battlecast Set.

I know, I'm a noob.

I have too many alts... T.T

(Warlocks are fun!)

Ok, time to pack for the trip, but first, finding all the links I'll need for this post, so people don't have to guess wtf I'm talking about...

Now I'm rambling... ZOMG LATER! <3

SSC Awesomeness

2007-12-06T19:55:00.000-05:00

Yup, as you've prolly heard, over and over again, Aetherial Circle 1 : Serpentshrine Cavern 0!

Well, at least for now ;)

Here's the kill vid, on Younoob for now, but I'm looking into throwing it up on Filefront or Warcraftmovies.com er something.

Color me excited ^.^

Srsly, it was such a fun fight. We would have had him last week if it wasn't for the damn fish.

Tonight, I take a break from raiding. I've been at it non stop since Saturday, and I needs me a break! Tomorrow too, but I'll be back at it with Cay on Saturday to (hopefully) get my tier4 hat, since OH! Yea, one of the drops in SSC last night?
Belt of the Long Road pattern = mine
/dance

Now I can like, bid on those Nether Vortex's. Wewtness ^.^

Ok, this good cheer of mine is much needed, 'specially since our previous two days had been total train wrecks. Murphy ran crazy stupid on our Gruul's run Monday. It was so bad, we didn't get him that night (though Maulgar bit it hard, he's always bent over since we first laid eyes on him, the slut ;P)
Tuesday night in Zul'Aman wasn't much better. We killed the Bear boss in under 20 minutes for the second time, attempted to go for the Eagle in the time frame but wiped mid way through the gauntlet. So we skipped Eagle and went straight for our Nemisis, that damn Dragonhawk.

We know the fight. We've gotten it down... we can do it. The game just won't let us.

But it's cool, we know and realize that it's a pretty decent gear check. Time to get more into SSC ^.^

I know this is kinda a hackney update, but it's here! And I'm really hungry, so I'm going to go gets some foodages. Makin' vid's is hungry work!

Oh! 'nother thing. I have the vid's from our Bear, Eagle and Lynx kills, but I'm going to do a bit of a colaberation vid on ZA, and I need the Dragonhawk kill before I post it. Plus, I'm experimenting/learning how to use Sony Vegas 8. Is Vegas 7 easier to figure out if you're not all rad with the media lingo? I dunno, but yea, I will be experimenting with that soon. ^.^

For now, FOOOOOD!

Color me excited!

2007-11-29T13:16:00.001-05:00

So, no Maggy last night BUT! We (as in AC) had our first foray into Serpent Shrine Cavern, and let me tell you, I'm teh UBAH excited!

Our goal was to start the learning pains of the Luker Below fight.

This is a fun fight. ZOMG.

From what I heard from some of our old fart 40 man raiders, it's reminiscent of the Ragnaros fight, but I wouldn't have a clue about that. During the first part of the fight, you get to just beat up the Big Fish while the Melee fighters get all whirled around and all the range laugh maniacally with Kings on because they can't technically aggro the Lurker.

That is until they get a geyser up in their face. But then! You have to jump below the water line and take a few seconds of Scalding hot water damage as the Fish spews forth a jet of water that does retarded amounts of damage if you get caught.

That's just the first part. The second part is when he submerges, and then adds come out and try to stop us from killing the Fish. They are easily squishable, but watch out for the Guardians, for they will one shot anything not Plate. After a minute, the Fish comes back, Spouts the raid, and then we resume the killing.

No, we didn't get to kill him our first time in, simply because we had to take most of the time getting the timing right on killing adds and jumping under water... our best shot was our last attempt, but unfortunately, once trash respawns, the water goes from Scalding hot to FISH OF DEATH. We wiped due to mass Parana overload. Still though, we spanked the trash in there, and I'm VERY excited to start doing SSC in our raid roster.

Now, you might be wondering, "Wait, didn't she just say they were starting Void Reaver/Maggy?" Yes, we did take a few jaunts into those place, but so far, SSC has been the most fun, and it's very, very doable for us at this point. So, Sundays, ZA shumshing, bring on the SSC!

And I'd have more to say, but I'm at work XD

Ah well, there's always next year.

2007-11-27T18:29:00.001-05:00

As the title says, me thinks NaNo and NaBlo have slipped my grasp this year. Blarg.

BUT THAT'S OK.

I'm finding that my posting was going to crap, so time to do a little revamp. I'm way behind in updating some of my links, so many new bloggers I want to link to (<3Ratshag) as well as some people who've moved (*grumble* twice now... *grumble*)

I've got a hankerin' to do post about Gruuls. We've gotten the Lair down pat now, to the point where we're killing him sooner and soon. Much fun. And don't make me use the dreaded... word. I dislike it, because it makes me feel like it's become a chore, er something.

Zul'Aman has been a really fun experience. I went in there with a big head thinking, hell, we could probably get to Zul'jin the first night... and then had a pleasent azzkicking from one side of the bear boss to another. He whooped us good. But that's fine. So far, we've gotten Bear, Eagle and Lynx down and still having issues with the Dragonhawk, but we got really close this past Sunday.

With the holiday this past week (and I hope everyone had a great Turkey day, I know I did ^.^) we didn't get any 25 mans done, but we filled it with Kara pugs and ZA learning pains. All is good.

Well, except for one thing. Maybe a few, but here's the thing I'm going to talk about.

My survivability right now blows.

Totally, completely blows.

Hard.

I'm dying a lot in ZA. My HP are low. Unbuffed, I was at 6.7K. Other clothies were kicking my butt, even the Shadow PeW PeW priesty. WTF. So, after some gear comparisons, I've decided that while my PMC set has served me well, it's time to start bidding on Tier gear. I've been avoiding it for so long because others could use it more than I could. But I'm starting to see that while the PMC/Whitemend set is fan-fucking-tastic for Kara, it's lack of base stats (and TOTAL lack of stamina on the PMC) is killing me, literally.

Going to hop over to Kirk's to see what he has to say about it (unless he responds here, in which case <3) but other wise, last night I got my tier 4 shoulders. I got a belt with some stamina (Cord of Sanctification)...

Wait.

Time to get in your laugh at teh Squeaker. So I log in to DE some things for a guildie. Not a problem for me really, I'm always willing to help and I had done it before for them. Well, you see, they sent me a bunch of Runecloth belts and some Netherweave boots to DE. Not a problem, right? It's funny (not) but did you know that the icon for the Runecloth belt and the Cord of Sanctification ARE THE SAME DAMN THING?!

Yea. I looked up, saw I had a VOID CRYSTAL... and panic ensued.
I just DE'd my purple belt from HEROIC DURNHOLD. SHOOT ME NOW. >.<

But I was lucky to get an awesome GameMaster to help me out. He restored it. Destroyed the Void on the spot to show him that I really, truly, just wanted my belt back. Disaster averted. Lesson learned. I will pay closer attention to what I'm DEing...

Anywho, tangent aside, I was able to raise my HP a few 100. Still not pleased, but I guess I'll live. The biggest upgrade in stamina would be my Chest, but that means killing Maggy. He's scheduled for tomorrow night. I'm excited and a bit worried. One of our most awesome of guildies had her subscription run out, and she's spot out of luck on getting it back for a least a month or two, and she was one of our warlocks. So we're low ballin' Maggy again. We will have Teh Awesome that is TJ, so hilarity will ensure, I'm sure.

By the way, I don't think I mentioned it, but DPSing in Gruul's was SO MUCH FUN.

PLEASE DON'T NERF MEH! I'm having fun pwning face with holy justice! :P

Oh, and another thing. Thanks Ego for answering my question on Roleplaying. I feels all special that I got a post from the Ego. /cheer

Ok, time to refresh blog face...

That thing...

2007-11-18T16:03:00.000-05:00

TJ's favorite song is stuck in my head.

And I have no access to music to unstick it.

/brainsplody

In other news, Sasha MT'd up to Aran in Kara last night. We could have gotten him, but the group make up was rough for that fight: 2 mages, 1 lock, 0 rogues/warriors, so we had no interrupts save for Counter Spell.

This is not very priesty, more druidy... but I have a curse, I really do. If there's something out there that I can get crafted/enchanted, but I could possibly get an upgrade from a Kara run, if I get the crafted/enchanted item that day, I get the upgrade in Kara.

Case in point. When Cay first started Kara, I was holding out on getting my Hallowed Handwraps enchanted with 35+ healing because they weren't purple, and well, that enchant's expensive! But it was our first run, and I wanted to max out and and all +healing I could, so I did.

What do you know? The freakin' Gloves of Saintly Blessing dropped. Oy.

Last night I had Fio's hunter make me the Necklace of the deep for my ferlol tanky, and after gemming it up with 2 shifting Nightseyes... the freaking Barbed Choker of Discipline dropped. /headdesk

Don't get me wrong... I'm ecstatic to finally get a Kara tanky piece for my druid... but I'm cursed XD

Oh and yea, been to Kara with Sasha 3 times, each time she's gotten a healy drop... except for last night. /huzzah

I passed on the DPS leather since we had some main toons rolling with us and helping them get DPS gear for the 25 mans = happy healerzors.

Ok, taken up enough time... and I'll be editing this later to like... put in links 'n stuff.

Yes... I like the dots...

More dots...
More dots...

Alright, sotp dots XD

Do it, please

2007-11-16T19:27:00.000-05:00

What the hell was I thinking?

This new job sucks.

Not because I have this adverse thing to work or anything, I don't really.

But there's no organization. There's no cooperation. The manager is a total territorial bitch. The job itself, while easy, is boring, but I can deal with that. The people suck. And the company training programs? HOW DO THESE PLACES STAY IN BUSINESS?! SERIOUSLY! /huff

It's so bad I can't even think WoW thoughts at work, because I'm in fear for my life anytime I step into the back rooms. Surprise ninjas or a mouse might knock over the 300 lbs of clothing onto my head, crushing me without so much a peep.

I'm not sure I'm going to survive. I'm looking again. I'm going to chalk up my decision to seriously fill out an application at a department store during holiday season as a temporary act of insanity.

And I got distracted mid post... I'm a freakin' genius.

Playing Moon for now...

That's it for today... I think... yup... distracted again.

OK, you're right it's later..

2007-11-15T17:37:00.000-05:00

What have I been doing?

Other than rockin' out with my Giddglet and her new Rolfcopter?

700 spell damage.

In my healing gear.

They're going to freakin' nerf it. I know it.

But I'm enjoying every bloomin' minute while I can!

I can actually damage things in less than a minute! I dueled our Raid leader of awesome before we tried out ZA, AND WON! (Ok, yea, he's prot, but he's in plate, usually just giggled while I tickle him for three to six hundred dmg a spell).

They're going to nerf it, wait and see.

I haven't been able to play too much with the new fear ward mechanics, so that will have to wait. As for the Chastise spell... well, the stun on it is laughable. It never lasts. It's a 2 second stun, and you have to stand still to cast it. Pally's get Hammer of Justice, instant cast can be done on the run. Chastise so far hasn't stunned my opponent long enough for me to move out of melee. And the dmg it does it meh. I dunno, I might go into a battleground or arena to really test it out. I've got a bunch of badges, I can gets me some PvP gear that way.

Zul'Aman: Brutal. Freakin' Brutal. But I'm so glad to be doing something new with the gang. The trash leading up to Nalorakk was easy, the adds he throws at you can get a bit hairy, especially that last group with the guys mounted on bears. They do this scream that increases the dmg people take by 25%. The tanks had to separate a bit or else they'd get both screams (yea, it stacks) and then get munched.

Nalorakk hits like Nightbane. We'll need at least 3 healers for him, we went in with two. I'm looking forward to pwning his face on Sunday.

Maggy!

On Monday, AC did something so incredibly awesome, I was speechless (ok, for all of five seconds). We one shot Gruul's Lair. High King Maulgar (3 mins 59 seconds). Gruul (6 mins someodd seconds.) Dead, dead. So we mosie'd on over to Maggys. We were going to be going there any way on Wednesday, but we figured, hell, it's 930. Let's try it! So we did. The trash pulls took some getting used too. And we only had 3 warlocks with us. On our first try, we going 3 of the adds down, then had to call it a night. But not bad for our very first try ^.^

Wednesday rolls around, we got our tanks, got our heals... but again, short on locks. We've got 4 raiding locks and 1 couldn't make it, so we were going in at a pretty harsh handicap (at least according to all the strats out there.) But we were going to try it anyway (we be stubborn SoBs.)

83% was our best short. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out cube clickers. People would die early too, things like that. One thing it did make me think was whether or not I should try Circle of Healing. I'm the only raiding priest at the moment with Divine Spirit buff, and that's more of a benefit to the raid. We had two shammy's with us healing them. Need moar locks. T.T

But, we're planning on going back this Monday, after Gruuls (barring we have the time). Sunday is another shot at Zul'Aman, and I'm looking forward to that ^.^

That's it for now, more later, since I'm hoping (though it's probably not likely) to get some baby priesty love tonight. I want to check out the new quest hub in Dustwallow and she needs her elephant!

I may have fallen... wait, shiny....

2007-11-13T18:06:00.001-05:00

Shiny patch 2.3 today. More later.

Time to face it

2007-11-11T13:23:00.000-05:00

I didn't make it T.T

Cop out? I think not!

2007-11-10T19:11:00.000-05:00

Yea, I have tons of word count to catch up on. But instead of being able to type up the thoughts I had today, we're going to try something semi different.

Caption!

I want whoever's bored to come up with a caption to this picture.

Weiner gets to choose the next thing I write about. I'll give everyone until Nov 15th. I'll post my reply to their topic on the 18th.

Sound fun? Good. ^.^ Your captions can just be replies here. Post your "WRITE ABOUT THIS NOWS!" with it iffn' you want.

(SHHH! This is NOT because I can't think of anything to write.... really.... ok, I'm lying... /wrists)

Here's your pic!

Hi, my name is LATE

2007-11-09T23:27:00.000-05:00

And I live in.... insanity.

This post started at 11:30pm. I'm probably not going to make much sense or substance. Why? I PuG'd Kara on my tank. Then had to go in an emergency heal on Cay.

Oh, and the past 24 hours have been spent getting said tank her Flamewrought Key. So now she can do Heroic Auch, Coilfang and Hellfire Pen.

As bad as it sounds... it wasn't half bad. Did three runs of Shattered Hals last night and three today to get my 9.2K rep needed. Got Sasha her wastewalker gloves.

So there's a mini update. Can't type much more... brain turning to mush.

/falls unconscious

What is the Squeakie Listening too?

2007-11-08T17:51:00.000-05:00

After looking at TJ's post about music... I must confess. My Pandora looks nothing like hers.

In fact, doesn't look much like Doom's either (he hasn't posted yet /huff)

Nor does it look much like Fio's. Though, we do have some similar tastes.

During Raid, I usually don't have any music playing, especially if it's brand new content. That's usually because I'm too busy concentrating on raid, and everything that's going on.

But after raid, what does teh Squeakie need to calm her jets or just relax with?

A few things:

Tool
Dead Can Dance
Bjork

Those figure high up on my list of stuff to listen to when I feel like just... chillin'. Though I do admit, I'm not too happy with some of the new Tool, and Perfect Circle, while nifty, does fit nicely, since it's a much calmer Tool.

Oh, wondering about that Gladiator pic? Lisa Gerard, one of the lead singers in Dead Can Dance, did a lot of the vocals for that movie's soundtrack. I didn't know about DCD until I met Fio, but OMG. Just.... awesome music.

Now, the Pandora thing. I used to use Launchcast for all my music wants, but the commercials were annoying (when I worked for Hell, I paid, so I had something to listen to as I lost brain cells) and it has been a bit of a chore to keep updated. My music tastes change a lot, or at least what I feel like listening to. That and I would run out of skips... which is just... foul. It's still a nice place to go and listen to all the funny stuff (my comedian channel is still rockin') and it was nice to see them get tons more music (obscure things like Type O Negative and Voltaire) but Pandora is rocking my socks.

I guess it has some sort of thing with this Music Genome Project of theirs, but you basically add a band, and they'll play it, and then they'll start playing things similar to it. Not just in like "category" but by sound, instruments, vocals, length of song, pace, etc. It's really nifty. I'm still experimenting with it.

What do I listen too during instances, heroic or otherwise? Iffn' in a hyper mood...

Mindless Self Indulgence (thanks to Eska ;P)
J-Pop (varity of stuff)
They Might Be Giants
Jethro Tull
No Doubt
311
Voltaire (You HAVE to hear his Star Trek Spoofs... to die for)

... crude... just really, way to much stuff to list, but that's the jist.

My music choice is definitely out there... but there are few if any "new" bands I like. It takes a bit of time for me to hop onto the wagon (though admittedly, I like Panic at the Disco/The Killers and just LOVE Evanescence when I feel like being all emo).

(Tangent warning: This is just... really nifty. Bravo XD)

Right, where was I? Oh, music. But yea. Most of the time I'm WoWing... not much for music. Unless I'm doing to the level grind. Then I kinda need it to keep myself sane.

Oh and I do leave the ingame music on, cause, well, I like it. Though it's turned down so I can hear MY music when I want to XD

So there joo have it.

Oh hello world

2007-11-07T21:17:00.000-05:00

OMG. Sleepy.

I got home from work, intending to type up today's post, fiddled on WoW for a bit, had some more mashed potatoe/pot pie (OMG HEAVEN) and then I remember... nothing.

I don't even remember Fio coming home. This is me when I'm really sleepy. A nuke could detonate in Boston and I'd not wake up until Fio tossed me out of bed er something.

Anwho, since I passed out, I don't remember what exactly I was going to post. T.T But it's ok, I can fudge it.

Besides, TJ has made some fun suggestions for the Jackels (NaBloPoMo ftw)...

Distracted... shiny... gah. Train of thought. Lost.

I will say it's good to see Teh Diet Coke of Evil again. She's back and putting Kitty in his place! /dance

Hehe. Ummm... shoooooooot, I wanted to type something relevent to game, but this is ending up being a bunch of garble!

No Kara for the Cay-ster tonight. The lowbie raiders are in with Fio, hopefully getting some phat loots so they can join us in Gruuls and beyond.

ZA is confirmed for the 13th? Oh joygasm. I's looking forward to something new. Not a whole lot it looks like for loot in there for us clothie healy types, and I'll write about that soon too. (I know, I'm a little late into looking at the gear offered there, but gear is second, more like third to why I raid).

Mew. Going to stop now. Wake me up when its over, K?

What's this?

2007-11-06T18:07:00.000-05:00

No patch today? T.T

Ah well, I will survive. In the mean time, since I have no inspiring prompt for today, you'll get a bit of random.

Leveling cooking sucks. Leveling fishing sucks even more. Rakzha's cooking was stuck at 106 for the loooooongest time, because I had moved on from things that had dropped stuff like Murloc fins, Crispy Spider Legs and other such randomness. And it was impossible to find these things on the AH. Just absurd. I had been doing just fine getting her first aid leveled, but that's mostly because I was in such a rush to 300 tailoring, so anything left over went to the first aide fund. But still. Four stacks of turtle meat (which, btw, they've SO upped the spawn rate on that!) and I couldn't cook any of it, cause my cooking was too low.

/sigh

But I got it today. Took my Giddglet out to Wetlands, had me a Murloc Genocide, then the server restarted, and whadya know, I log back in and all the murlocs are back! 4 stacks of fins later, I got to 125, could cook the 80 pieces of tangy clam meat sitting in my bank, and I'm now going to get some Giant Eggs so she can finish up that 225 quest and level her cooking all normal again ^.^

Rarr.

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering if there's like, the smart way to level cooking, Doom posted this for people to use on our guild forums.

And now, time to salivate over the chicken pot pie on mashed potatoes that is currently cooking in my oven.

Mmmmm, potatoes.

___

Ack, I almost forgot, I kinda said something about fishing sucking even more.

It does.

It really, really does.

I don't ever want to try and level it again. But I have this sneaky suspicion someone is going to get me ~~drunk enough~~ trick me into doing it on Rakzha. Who knows.

Baby Priest

2007-11-05T13:49:00.000-05:00

So Operation Face Smelter is well under way. Rakzha is now 38, on the verge of hitting 40something and getting a special elephant of her own.

I'm going to experiment in something (and also mini rant about it too). In the next few levels, I can start wearing the Shadoweave gear (trainer for Alliance people/ trainer for Horde people). Now look. I know, this gear is more for 'Locks than it is for shadow priests. I'll be taking a hit on Intel, but I can make that up with enchants. I know that the Dreamweave stuff (you can wear the chest and gloves at 40) are more than likely better than their shadoweave counterparts. You don't need to point it out to me again and again. I get it. The Shadoweave is green, Dreamweave is blue. I GET THAT IT'S BETTER. /huff

But I don't care. Why? Because I want to test out the set. Numbers may not back these things up, but sometimes you just have to go with what feels right. Plus, I'm not PvPing, I'm leveling in a PvE environment. If I can dish out more shadowy hurt that's less time I'm spending on a mob, more time to kill more, more xp, you can see where I'm heading with this yes?

As of right now, my shadow spacegoat has been a breeze to level. Since level 10, she's had spirit tap. Let me tell you, the lessened downtime is awesome. I only carry a stack of water with me because of it. Also, from level 5 to level 26, the wands of choice I used we're the enchanting ones. They have really the best DPS out there until you hit 30, then the quest wands start looking ok.

I'm still fighting with myself on something though. I'm pushing to get to 40 so that I can get shadow form (cheer). But I've been wondering if I should stave it off until 45 to get the 5/5 in Wand Specialization in the Disc. tree, because wands are such an integral part of my DPS while leveling. Me thinks a tiny respec at 40 to see the dmg output. If I'm doing ok with the shadow form DPS, it stays and wand specialization can commence, but if the wand specialization is doing more, or just feels faster/better for whatever reason, might put the shadow form of DOOM on hold until 45.

Can I also say, being able to Silence again = bliss? Ahhh, I missed that on Cay. "Stupid caster is about to heal itself, Scream is down... Nooooooooo!" *mob at full health* /death.

/sigh

So yea, another thing. As awesome as it is soloing, GET A FRIEND FOR STRANGLETHORN VALE.

I hate that place, but since Doom and I started tackling the quests there together, my rabid loathing has toned down to just hating it. I'm not sure if the FP at the Rebel camp will make me like it any more. But suffice to say, if the Blizzard servers some how "forgot" that map, no love lost here.

So today and tomorrow's word count is severely lacking, I'm probably a day or two behind in word count. It's ok, I can make it up! ^.^ As more baby shadowing goes on, I'll keep people updated. As it stands, need to go back to SM for the quests and to get Whitmane's hat. Because it's good to have a back up ^.^

Boredom

2007-11-04T20:31:00.000-05:00

Ok, so again, I tried getting back onto WoW topic and post my Opera healing thing, but again, the cosmos are preventing me from posting it. After I got home from work, I was working on it again...

Alas... haven't finished it.

This will get done eventually!

I think.

Now, for something WoWish, and not terribly post thick:

I'm bored. Bored with Kara. We've been running it for months now. All our core raiders have maybe one or two things they could get from the place, but would rather get the upgrade from Gruul's/new stuff we're doing. (and hey Zul Aman maybe this Tuesday? Who knows.)

I have a question for those of you WoW types who read and haven't gotten terribly bored with my OT posts: What did you do when your guild got bored with something? Or you got bored? I mean, I haven't run an instance in like a month because... I got sick of them. Karazhan is just... a chore now. Is this what being a raider is like?

Meh, emo posting.

BLARG!

(Yes, today, first day at my new job, stunk. Because we had to Hurry, even though we had no idea what we were rushing to do. Very inefficient use of time. /grumble)

Thoughts?

Word count: coming soon.

OK, so sue me

2007-11-03T13:02:00.001-04:00

So today's post is probably going to be very un-WoW related. Meh. I feels like talking about something else. It's Doom's fault really. So blame it all on that roguish bastard.

This is going to be my obligatory anime/cartoon geek out post. For those of you looking for something priestly, just go here for today and get a kick out of all the pally's QQing in priest forums kthxbai.

The picture I've linked to refers to something any and all anime fans should go watch. I snarfed my soda at the DBZ skit. Please, GO WATCH IT NOWZ.

Now, I'm not going to regal you with tales of superior anime and other elitist crap like that because, quite frankly, I'm not all that hardcore about it. I watch anime, but subbed and dubbed. Before you turn your flame on, take note that I will not hesitate to call you names for being a closed minded purist for thinking that Subbed is the only way to go, I'm a lazy American, blah blah blah.

I watch both because I actually care about what I hear. Yea, there are many, many animes I'll watch the subbed version and never even dream of going dubbed (Love Hina for prime example - subbed is awesome, the dubbed makes me want to something awful that would probably gag a maggot.) However, Hellsing has one of the most awesome dubs I've ever heard. British accents, the sexy pleasebitemenow aural orgasm just wafting out of my speakers from the voice actor of Alucard... /flutter. Sir Integra's manly woman voice. I love it. I've heard the sub, I like the dub more.

Then there's anime like Trigun. I love both. Vash's voice is awesome, Milly and Meryl I could do without. The subbed sounds right too (though I haven't heard it in a while.) I do have a sneaky suspicion the American voice actor for Vash is the same for Ichigo in Bleach. I could be wrong, I don't really research these things. Bleach, also another that I could listen to either, though it'd be nice if the continuity between subs and dubs was better. It's a Soul Reaver or a Death God, pick one damn it!

Regardless, if this isn't enough for you to cry ZOMG YOU FAIL, here's the next thing all you hardcores are going to scoff at: I don't care for manga. Hate is too strong a word for it, but I have a tough time reading any and all forms of comic books unless I force myself too. And don't get into the mincing of words ("ZOMG she called a manga a comic book!" /foam at mouth) they're graphic novels at the library, just stop being so damn PC, call it what it is. Comic book/manga, same freakin' thing in two different languages. Also, I read tons of books.

I find that my whole tone so far has been pretty defensive. Hrm. Well, usually it's because after trying to talk about this subject many times, if you don't treat it like the "hardcore" fans do, you're a noob, or whatever hip Japanese word they call it. Anywho, back to manga and why I don't read it.

Two reasons really. One, if I'm reading a book, I want to read it. Not digest pictures with the words, my imagination is very handy at developing what I'm supposed to be "seeing" thank you very much. I wasn't much of a picture books kid.

Secondly, the habit that anime/manga makers have of creating a manga that's "awesome" then coming out with an anime that's pretty much the summary of said manga, then saying, "Oh, btw, you want to finish this really cool story and get some details we left out? Go buy the manga." So they want you to sink money in both the literature and the vid. Screw that. One or the other damn it. Yea, yea, I know, the cost to making an anime far surpasses the cost of printing paper, but still, I don't read manga, for once finish the fucking story in the damn anime please?!

What's the one exception that's been able to make it past my apathy for comic books? The Sandman Chronicles. The story is just... incredible. I'm a big Changeling: The Dreaming fan and having read some of the Sandman... makes me wish I could get a group together to play some fae. Just... it drips awesomeness. I can't describe it any better than that because its just... so nifty!
_____
(This is an aside, just because... well, because.)
Guys... it's there. It was there when you woke up this morning, it'll be with you all day, and even at night when you go to sleep. What is it with guys and their willies!? Let me explain: I'm at work, I work at a library, the boss is a guy, in his 50s, a hyper OCD man who is an excellent librarian, a work-a-holic, a bit crazy, and has this tendency to just... scratch himself when talking to you! I Don't Get It. He's an awesome boss, but... gah! It's not just him! Other guys I work with do this! You could be talking about something, putting a book away or scanning something and down goes the hand for a quick flick and then back to whatever is being done, totally forgotten.

Maybe, no wait, it's probably because I'm a woman that 1) I notice and b) it bugs me. But... gah! I don't get it. If my tits itch you don't see me just mid convo start scratching. If it's really that bad I'll go to the bathroom or make sure I'm in the stacks alone and itch to my hearts content. But mid conversation? And it's not like the boss guy does the quick flick. SOME TIMES HE'LL KEEP HIS HAND THERE FOR LIKE 10 SECONDS! Not in a cupping type... thing... it's just... there!

I don't get it. Ok, prude senses off, back to anime...
______

Also, and maybe this does or doesn't count, who knows, but while I can't get into Manga or other conventional comic books in general... I can read web comics till the day I'm pushing up daisies.
CAD, VGcats, LFGroup, Dark Legacy Comics, and to a lesser extent Penny Arcade - you name it, I've probably read it once, and liked it. The ones I listed I read regularly (aka when I remember to check on them) but maybe I like them because 1) they're funny, b) they deal with topics I know readily and III) they've got good art (though Dark Legacy is meh, it's still wicked funny). I'll admit I'm a bit of an art snob, though I wouldn't be able to tell you what kinda art is what. And I fully admit most of my art sucks donkey turds (yes, I have a thing for Gargoyles, more coming on that in a second).

Where was I going with this? I know I had a point... ah well, it'll come to me later.

Suffice to say that's my view on the whole anime thing. Now. For a bit of fun.

ZOMG GARGOYLES!

Disney came out with this cartoon in 1994 and it was THE THING I watched after school. If I missed an episode, I was generally in a bad mood until I got my Goliath fix. This show has had such a weird impact on my life. The story arch is just so fun to follow, this woman created a bunch of fan fiction after the show that I pretty much think of as the "lost" episodes of the series. It's just... so cool. I found the fan fiction and the fandom my first year in college and have been hooked on it ever since.

What's funny is I still can't read Shakespeare. I mean the show is one gigantic Shakespeare orgy! But I just... can't get into his stuff. Maybe it's the way it's written, and I'm just some sort of lazy person, but anything written before the 20th century, (and even some of that shit) I just can't enjoy reading it.

After finding all of the nifty sources and sites related to other crazy gargoyle fans such as myself, in 2006 I finally got to go to the Convention. Yea, I was able to convention geek out. It was both cool and a let down, but more because I expected too much maybe? The Gathering of the Gargoyles has gone on for ... 12 years now? I missed the heyday. But ah well, I still got a chance to make a total noob out of myself and got second place for it XD
For the convention, I even wrote a story for the anthology contest. It got in. /cheer
I'll post it sometime, I think it's past the date where I can post my work. Think they said I needed to wait at least a year or something... but it's at home. So linkage coming soon. And you can laugh at my attempt at fiction MUWHAHAHAHAA!

Right.

Ok, so this Off WoW Topic has gone on long enough. I'm probably going to get a swift kick in the shin for using so much time to come up with it.

Oh! FYI, I will be counting my responses to posts that I make towards my word count. Because I did write them! So nyaaaaaaah :P

And I'm still searching for a word counter to put up. Hey, at least I'm consistent in putting something off. I'll probably get a word counter on Nov 30th XD

Official Word count: 4284

Gear Change!

2007-11-02T16:02:00.000-04:00

Ok, not really a fail. But! The Awesomeness that is TJ has given me something else to do. I'm still going to try to make this NaNo-ish in length, but this NaBloPoMo... makes me sad because I thought I was being all original and schtuff!

Ah well. I should have know better.

Btw, if some things come out... weird, it's because my fingers are committing mini acts of seppuku as I type. Raking the leaves has made them... rebellious.

Want to see something uber cool?

I know you do.

That was AC in Tempest Keep: The Eye last night. SQUEEEEE! Yea, we went there. We got totally owned by trash, but we got at least two stabs at Void Reaver before we had to call it a night.

Oh, a pretty VR shot:

Yea. It was oodles of fun. IT WAS SO HARD TO HEAL! I mean, I had to concentrate again, it wasn't a snoozefest. My heart was racing for most of it. And it's made me realize I need to get my ass in gear and buy Cay an epic flier. Because many times, people would die, release, fly back into the instance in time to help kill some more. Those Astromancers suck btw. Suck hard. Instant cast AoE fire balls for like 3-4K. Owie. We had 7 healers in there, and our pallies and myself found us running out of mana at the end of each pull. It was really hard to try and conserve mana.

But for it being our first time in there. I think we did awesome. I just wish the server would have stopped being retarded and not had so many DC's. We had some hickups with that. Had to switch out some DPS because we were running late, other things we're probably going to address soon.

Still. It was AWESOME. I couldn't get over how cool the place looked, how fun it was. When we get to go there for real, after we've done Maggy and some SSC, I'm going to have a lot of fun taking out A'lar. He's. So. Fucking. PRETTY!

One of these times I'll wrangle my brain into posting how it feels healing High King and Gruul, but that's another time. Still just in a slight afterglow with TK. Oh, and something else that's funny. We got 4 purple drops while in there XD 2 tanking rings and our fire mage Fulgor (who is now Carlos, teh man of Love) got a nifty purple belt. Oh the last purple was a Nether Vortex, but only the arms warrior Black smith could really use it. But still! Not only did we get some valuable experience, some people got some lewts.

Tonight is Karazhan, and it's the last "scheduled" one we're doing. The next time we do Kara its for the undergeared guildies. It will have some of us old timers in it either on alts or just listening in to give advice, but many of our core group has moved on from Kara. It'll be a rough transition, and we're still trying to figure exactly what we're going to do now that holiday season is here. People have family stuff to do, will be on holiday vacations, doing family things, etc. So it's going to be an interesting 2 months.

Oh and I start my new part time job on Sunday. Wewt! And Suck. Wewt monies! Suck starts at 7am T.T There may be work related foibles incoming.

And damn it, Doom's got me thinking about all those cartoons.... /shakes fist. Tomorrow, tomorrow!

Some thoughts on raiding: I've mentioned it before, I'll probably mention it again, but I've never really raided until BC. I'm finding it to be... really, really fun. And it's definitely hard work. ... I had more thoughts, but a ninja in my brain just stole them all. Little fucker.

Ah well. I think the leaves are catching up with me. I did a little bit of yard work to get some good In-law Karma. Here's hoping my fingers didn't commit their acts in vain. How am I still typing you think? THE POWER OF MY MIND. Er something like it.

Getting back to the beginning mention of the NaBlo vs. NaNo, I'm still going to go for word count! But I will be blogging daily anyway to get that word count.... so I accomplish BOTH! PHEAR MY SQUEAKIE INSANITY!

/ahem

Which means I still have a really big post to go, so here goes nothing. (No, seriously, you're probably better off not reading past this point, because it will be just that. Nothing.)

_________

"Guys, my head is stuck."

This picture has a story. You see, Blizzard, in it's infinite ~~wisdom~~ pain in the assness decided a long time ago to put in a reset cap to instances. Not sure when they did it, but for the Headless Horseman fight this past Hallow's Eve, it was annoying to say the least.

You see, when we reached our hourly quota on SM resets, we'd get bored, restless, and there was nothing really relevant to take out our frustrations on. That is, until we remembered where we were.

The citizenship of the small town called Brill is comprised of a few notable NPCs. They have a blacksmith, apprentices, a town hall, an inn, an orphan matron, a stable, some alchemists/herbalists, and a few guards.

Well, at least they did. In come the bored Alliance players who have 25 mins until they can go into an instance. Much smooshing of lowbies was done. Sometimes, we even got a few lvl 70s to come defend their poor small town. It made the time go by. Afterwards, we even helped put out the fires the evil HHM lit on their inn, but the guards didn't find it very redeeming and shoo'd us away from the little township with their sheer numbers.

Ok, so that story didn't have much of a point. The picture was from when we cleared out the town hall, had a mid range hunter come inside, look at us enjoying a quick bite to eat, and then said hunter turning around and exiting the building post haste.

It was funny.

It was.

Oh go smoke some pole.

Anywho!

As you're probably figuring out, I love LoLCats. Luff, luff, luff. And I will find any and every excuse to use them as much as plausible in my blogging. They make good pictures ^.^

I knew it. I got distracted by shinies. Blarg! Ok, no more randomness for today. I'll just have to make it up in the future. This has me wondering if on the 30th I'm going to have the epic post of BLARG RANT ZOMG NOOB WHY DID I THINK I COULD DO THIS! /wrists

It's a good thing I can't predict teh future.

Oh and I need to find a word count updater thingie.

But for now its 2682!

What Time is It? Oh, crap it's November

2007-11-01T17:36:00.000-04:00

Hiya! Yes, I am a live. And yes, I'm a bad blogger. HOWEVER. This is a special month.

You're going to hate me.

You're going to get sick of me.

For it is November.

What does this mean? What is this "November" other than the month for tasty and coma inducing Thanksgiving Dinner (yes, I'm a Yank)?

It's NaNoWriMo month people!

Is this WoW related? ... Not... technically. BUT! I am going to make it so!

My mission should you choose to endure it:

Write at least 1.7K words about WoW related stuff PER DAY of November. My ultimate goal: 50K words of blather on WoW.

Now, if you know NaNoWriMo (or you followed the linky) than you KNOW the horror and torture this month can be for wanna be writers, such as myself. For those of you who don't know, let me 'splain:

NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. You have 1, count it, 1 month to write 50K words (the size of a short novel). So 30 days, 50K words. By midnight of November 30th, that last tid bit of plot or what have you in your novel better be done! Because you can then call yourself a Weiner. Or a Novelist. Take your pick. But it means you did the hardest part there is to writing and that's writing. I know, concepts.

Anywho, for the past ... I would say 3 years I've done this and failed each time. The highest word count I've gotten so far I think was about 5K words before my plot said FOaD. Last year, I thought I had a winner, but bogged myself down with so many details, my Main Character decided to be a hussy and not speak to me. Bitchy little snob hated the world I created for her... /sniffle...

Right, well, this year, I'm going to fail again. Not because I haven't written anything or I didn't make the Jynormous word count - nooooooo. I'm not going to write a "novel". I'm going to blog.

Daily.

I hope.

I am going to reach a 50K word count by the end of the month.

Some (who am I kidding, all) of this may just be gobbledygook that you may not know why you read here anymore, but I do promise that at least ~~most~~ ~~some~~ a fraction will be priestly related.

I think.

Am I going to be cheap and count all this explanation towards my finally word count? You bet your ass I am!

And now, before you totally tune out, something WoWish.
_______

I know I've been promising an Opera healing summary for some time now, and haven't delivered the goods, but it's mostly because while I have oodles of fun in the opera event... I just can't really find the right way to say "this is what you can do to make it more fun/less of a heart attack." Don't ask me why, it's just not talking to me. Also, AC's tried Netherspite again, on a whim, and I still.. cannot figure out what the hell I was doing there. Mostly healing the blue beam guy (unless it was a 'lock). And then raid healing. Tanks don't need heals during beam phases...

Right, moving on.

Can I just say that the Headless Horse Man fight for this Hallow's Eve ROCKED MY SOCKS!
It was a fun fight, and I even Frapps'd it (I think with Vent intact too? I can't remember) and I'm planning on making a video. In fact, lemme go checks it now. OMG, 38 gigs of videos, my computer hates me.

Anywho, the fight itself was just so easy to heal in the gear our group was sporting. I took the opportunity to practice DPSing ^.^ Because in the next patch, all that +heal is going to amount to some spell hurt! /cheer
The rings he dropped were pretty spiffy for some one just reaching 70, but alas, none of them we're really all that cool for me. I saw the Squashling drop twice (Damn you Fulgor/D!) and I saw the cloth hat drop a lot, and I even won it on Giddg.
But the bane of my HHM existence:

The Horseman's Helm

That is AC's Raid Leader of Awesome, Celliana. And after running HHM... so... many... times. WE GOT IT!
/orgasmic Celli-bration

I was very happy. He has Big Plans for that helm and certain raid videos to come. But still... every half minute... The Laugh of Eeeeeeevil! Cool hat, cool laugh, damn plate wearer's get all the fun.... /mutterstoopidclothpumpkinheadmutter

Our OT Eska and even D's alt Tsuya allso are sporting Mr. HHM's ... er, head, but either way, still a cool thing. Damn, D made out like a bandit this Hallow's Eve.

So, other than spending my time in HHM, what else has this priesty been up too, you ponder? I mean, I haven't updated this thing... um, in like half a month (ouch), what could I possibly be doing that's so uber as to miss this!

Not much, really. T.T

Though I have been leveling my baby shadow priesty. Rakzha's 37 now, sporting her Illusionary Rod, rocking out with Mind Flay, Silence, and a few other shadow things that I'll probably get into later. By the way, a slight tangent into tailoring:

Black Mageweave Pants and Vest make a hot combo.

But they're level 36 gear.

Let's move up the tailoring tree to circa tailoring lvl 275, to something you can't wear until you're in you are 50:

The Wizardweave Leggings.

... Yea. No wonder wizards wear robes. And don't get laid. /shudder

But hey, at least you know, you have the train wreck in your future.

You know what I'm talking about.

I hate those pants. My spacegoat shadow priest will find something to wear that will hide those fugly things. Rest assured! Oh and I had to nab the screen shot from Wowhead.com because I erased all known existence of said pants from my screenshot archive.

I tried. :P

Now, what's in store for teh Squeakie? Other than more rambling posts like this (and if you survived this long, Hallelujah to you! I'm beat!) I must make a confession.

Well, it's more like an experiment. You know, those things you'd do when you were like ten... er wait, no, not that.

A guildie of mine has kinda burnt out of WoW, and has been playing over at EQ2. Now, the only other MMO experience I've ever had has been WoW with a 2 week precursor of Guild Wars. So I DL'd the trial version of the game that's supposed to be one of those... I dunno, old sckool icons of MMO's, just to try it out.

My first impressions? (deep breath)

STOP CRASHING MY COMPUTER YOU STUPID M#(%TH!()%T(J( S)A*(#_P@....

Ahem. Ok, back to something more coherent. It's kinda fun. If a bit... well, weird. I love faeries, I like the idea of an more RP based game, and it seems at least on the surface, that it is. Though only being able to level ten blows. I was having oodles of fun Binding things with my warlock (which btw, caused Fio to scream UNINSTALL NOW! He's bitter about the indoor "root" ;P)

The tradeskill system is weeeeeeird. But fun. I mean, it's like you're in combat with the stove to cook... your frog leg. See, weird. But it shows promise. Is it enough to shell out the cash for it? Nah. Not right now. Too much time, fun and friends invested into WoW. WE're just starting to get to some of the fun stuff.

As I sit here and type, we're getting set to go take a serious look at Void Reaver. Yea, he's TK. But from what we've all read, he's really, really, really simple. We're gathering our Frost/Nature resist gear for the tanks to get ready for Hydros, and yea, we've only taken Gruul down twice, but many of our core is bored to tears with Kara. We need something fresh. We don't quite have the DPS for Maggy, and that's going to be an interesting fight anyway. The World Bosses require a bit more spur of the moment, "Hey, Khazzak is up, we've got 26 raiders on, let's get him!" type dealy. And after we get our taste of Void Reaver (aka Loot Reaver, since he's that simple) our Raid Leader of Justice wants to head over and try the Lurker Below. That's going to be fuuuuun. We (Celli, myself as Sashara and Kel) all took a jaunt through the death infested waters to fish up the Lurker, three man style. I suggest farting around like that for everyone. Makes good video filler. ^.^

Speaking of filler... this is going to be tough, typing a bunch of WoW stuff, day by day. Here's hoping it sticks to something vaguely priest like!

Oh and did I mention... raiding with TJ is teh shit? Oo

Toodles for now gang!

PS: I need to get some sort of word counter going. I'll work on it tomorrow. Oh, did I also mention I'm working on an hour's worth of sleep? Loot Reaver here I come! /sleep

WORD COUNT - 1529

(PS, PS - Yea, I'm like ... a couple hundred words short of my daily goal. In the words of Doom,

"Eat a d!ck."

Urm... yes.

2007-10-18T13:55:00.000-04:00

I haz a post. It's in Drafts. Still needs editing. But it's there! Moar to come.

((Sorry for the LoLcats grammar... but my head hurts.))

Aggro - I'z Squishy! Nooo! /splat

2007-10-10T10:32:00.001-04:00

So yea, Fio went ahead and made a nifty post about Aggro.

It's great fodder to think about, and he gives good math for DPS Pew Pew'rs, but where does this help you my squishy bantam?

Ok, basics. Aggro is the term used to describe a mob's attention. You want your meatshield to have it, because they are the best equipped to handle it. That's why they are your meatshield. DPS can follow Fio's advice and hold off while your tank is getting all that lovely aggro... but you're the healer! To get aggro, your tanky is taking damage, and as soon as you pop that Renew/Flash Heal/Greater Heal... BOOM! You haz aggro!

But the mob doesn't come running right away (if your tank is worth their salt in plate, they better not) because you ticked it off by association (though honestly, I'm surprised healers don't generate more aggro... I know they piss me off in BGs... /grumble). No, if you're doing the smart thing and staying back as far as possible, that's one aggro mitigation. I'm not a number cruncher, but from what I do understand, there is some mechanic that deals with range aggro: the closer to the mob you are, it generates a little bit of aggro. All your healing spells are going to generate aggro in some way, shape or form on all mobs in the brawl. Some spells generate more than others. But if you're using a Threat Meter (like Omen or KLH Threat Meter) you can see just how much aggro every one in your party is generating.

Oh and another term for aggro is threat. Just what kind of threat should you be generating? Let's face it, no matter what the situation, your going to be generating threat from the beginning of the fight. Tanks can tell DPS to wait for however many sunders/lacerates before they can start whaling away creating their own threat, but you don't have that option.

So what do you do?

There a few things in combat we can do to mitigate what threat we generate and then there's some out of combat things we can do.

In combat, The Frisbee is your Friend. "But Squeekie! What about before Level 68?!" I don't know how I got along with out the Frisbee, but here's a bone to the pre-68 healers. Renew is usually the first thing you want up, because for a little mana it goes a long way. And it's a slow aggro gain. Which is fine, cause while you may generate 100 pts of aggro, your tank should have doubled or tripled his/her aggro with the mob, which makes your "little" heal not look so enraging. Squishy butt saved. But if you have a Frisbee, ho ho! Things change. That first hit and your tank will probably heal it all back with the Frisbee spell. And all that healing aggro? It's the tanks. It counts as healing s/he did, and so they get the threat. It's a beautiful thing. This is why you want to start a few seconds before the fight with a Frisbee, and then when your CD is up, toss another one. It pretty much solidifies your tanks aggro way ahead of yours. Now you can get down to business.

Frisbee's done, refresh your Renew every 15 secs, but if you see your tank getting hit harder and faster, don't hesitate to GHeal when s/he's at 50%. As long as the mob isn't doing 25%+ damage every second, your 2.5 sec cast should be enough to get out of OH SH!T territory. But now, you've just done a major heal, and that gets lots of threat. If you see yourself passing the tank in threat, Fade. Its only a temporary threat fix, but I usually save Fade after big heals like 2 consecutive GHeals or a Prayer of Healing. That usually gives the tank enough to get aggro back. If you happen to be in the OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD and your tank needs that heal 2 seconds ago, Flash Heal. Yes, it's horribly mana inefficient to use FHeal, but a FHeal followed by a GHeal usually saves the day. Oh and then Fade ^.^

Don't just use Fade because the CD is up. Doing that isn't efficent aggro reduction. Really, you should just be using it when either you've passed (or are about to pass) the tank in threat, or when you've just finished a Big Heal. Because remember, Fade is a spell, and casting it means you're just another second away from the 5SR we all love and adore. /snuggle

Out of combat, priests have a second tier Discipline talent called Silent Resolve. Max'd out at 5 pts, that's 20% threat reduction on holy and discipline spells, as well as a 20% chance that your spells won't be dispelled. That last part is awesome for PvP, but the reduction in threat to your healing spells is a must have for the holy healer. Trust me, you can afford the 10 pts into it. Also, as of this patch, a Subtlety to Cloak enchant is available from the Honor Hold/Thrallmar Quartermaster if you're Exalted with said faction. (Btw, I hates Shattered Halls... so I don't have it yet T.T)

Now that you have a little bit of an idea of why mobs are coming to hit you even though you aren't DPSing, here's a way to have fun/strategically help out the group in case the damage coming in is greater than the healing you can produce.

I'm standing at max range, and the tank has 3 guys on him. My group is pretty good in watching out for me, teh squishi, because they love healz. Tank is getting hit extra hard and all Crowd Control that can be deployed has been, so what do I do? GHeal, GHeal, and no Fade. I've peeled off two mobs and they're making a bee line for me. One of two things can happen. I let them come running to within 5 - 10 yrds of me and either 1) Fade, which will send them running back at the tank. Congrats, thats enough time to get off another GHeal and lessen the load of damage tank has taken, or, if there's room you can 2) Psychic Scream and then Fade. The Scream generates some aggro too, but the Fade after gives you and your group time to get things under control. Also, if you happen to have a mage in your group, then the peeled mobs can be Frost Nova'd into place, and since no one's beating on them to break it immediately, well, it's yet another breather for you and your meatshield.

Now, don't do the above if you think it'll tick off your tank. Some tanks don't like people intentionally pulling off them unless it's the hunter for their trap. So make sure your group is cool with your unconventional Crowd Control ^.^

Any one else had some fun tricks with their Priestly Aggro? Lemme know ^.^ I always like hearing new tricks.

The DragonSlayer has been Slain!

2007-10-10T09:36:00.000-04:00

Commence celebration! /dance

So yea, as Kitty has probably made clear, AC took out Gruul on Monday. Skin of our freakin' TEETH! At 3% We had our 5 rogues Evasion tanking since all three tanks were down. It was a big rush. ^.^

I have a vid up on Youtube, but sorry working people. I've realized a bit late that by linking the uploadable version to my website (also our guilds site) I'm close to going over my bandwidth usage T.T

So will have to deal with crappy Youtube until I can find a place to put the 64MB file. Any suggestions?

My initial thoughts on Gruul... well, our group make up was as follows: 3 tanks (MT, OT/Hurtful strike soaker and 3rd Oh SHIT tank), 6 healers (pretty much who ever we could get to log in) consisting of myself and another holy priest /cheer, 2 pallies, a shammy and a tree, and the rest DPS (tons of rogues, a smattering of casters and hunters).

Now, all you Gruul's vets are probably having heart attacks over the numerous melee guys. Well, couldn't be helped, unfortunately. But our rogues did a super job. We had very little in Shatter casualties once some of the new people to the fight got used to it, and Cave ins on the melee were rough... but having 6 healers there (with a pally dps/Off healing) helps.

But yea, back to my initial thoughts: I think the next time I go, I'm going to equip my DPS staff for the first part of the fight. If you see the video, there are many things I had to cut out for length, but I was Wanding/Smiting/Mind Blasting initially in the fight. The two pallie healers and the Tree were assigned to the tanks, with the Shammy, myself and Val spot healing the raid. So initially, Snow, Val and I didn't have much to do other than DPS. Which is where I noticed... damn it, I'm getting resisted a lot! T.T So yea, going to try that next time. It probably will be such a small contribution as to not matter, but I'm going to try anyway (stubborn, moi?)

I could really afford to cast DPS there too. Since the 5SR and I were getting lots of action together, well, mana wasn't an issue. I'm kinda relieved there, too. I thought Mana was going to be my biggest prob. Thankfully, it isn't. I am, however, sorely missing not having any +hit... /grumble...

Oh and our illustrious Raid Leader is jealous of my Ground Slam hiding nook. I luff's it. I don't get tossed half way across the screen ^.^

So yea, this is a little mini summary of my advice on Gruul. I'll post soon on a healing guide to King Maulgar soon, but first, something I've been inspired to write due to my husband of the Boom. Oh and a revised Addon post is upcoming. I've got some new ones since the 2.2 patch.

Ya Gotta SHOUAHUAHUAHT Your Lungs Out!

2007-10-06T10:56:00.001-04:00

If you haven't watched AMV Hell 3 ... you're missing out. Go watch it. XD

This post today is going to be broken, revised and is going to be very fluid. I'm writing it in between different PCs and they don't let me save a draft... or Blogger does, I'm just a tard and can't find it.

Le sigh.

Anywho! Where the hell have I been?! Umm, not doing very priestly things, thats for certain.

AC is still kicking ass, taking names, all that guff. Last weekend, we had Gruul's on Sunday. Maulgar pwnd us. Repeatedly. It was a sucky, sucktastic day. Then Monday rolls around and Celliana, our Rail Leader of Awesomesauce, smelled blood in the air, and we proceeded to One Shot Maulgar that night and go on to get Gruul down to 5% (new low!) So Monday > Sunday. Hooray!

To be continued... on another PC

Right, so I was thinking of the Gruul vid, planning ahead, when I forgot what it was that I wanted to do. Don't you HATE that!?! I know what the beginning vid is going to be like, but there was a part in there with me and Celli talking... that I just totally forgot. Ah well, hopefully, it'll come back to me. Meanwhile, I must stealthily figure out a way to record our prestigious Raid Leader's voice and said phrase without him being the wiser... man, I still wish I had voice being recorded during our first Maulgar kill. He was so excited, and sounded so adorably cheesy. When you get moments like that guys, treasure them. XD

Ni Hao - I have this song stuck in my head. Thanks Dem. ;P

Over at Doom's, he started a lovely thread about random thoughts of violence. Honestly, I just think this is something our brains do to A) keep us sane, 2) keep us honest and III) keep us entertained. A boring day at work, the brain wants to play. So let it. No one knows where your strategic body hiding spots are except you - and maybe your psychic SO. But that's a story for another time.

Did I mention that this post wasn't going to have much of a point? Why haven't I been doing my duties in writing about my priestly ways? Well, to be honest, I'm in a bit of a writers funk. I had a spew of ideas, and then I found these awesome priestly blogs that also have a spew of ideas... and then things I think of have pretty much already been said, in a much more entertaining and better way than I could think of. That and I just haven't had an urge to really play Cay for a bit, unless it's raiding. Heroics are a yawns fest now, we actually cleared Kara from Moroes to Prince in 3.5 hours last night (wewt!). DO not get me wrong: I lurv my healing job. Lurv it to bits and pieces. But I'm bored. So I play on my alts. Who right now need some lurvin's.

My Giddglet just got her Retainer's Blade (Huzzah) and I'm working on getting the Riftmaker. She's about 14K Keepers of Time rep from it. Which is fine. While Doom will curse me till the day I die, I have the Hourglass for her, but I could use the gloves in the Assassination set for the set bonus for our Arena team (Spanish Inquisition: two druids, 2 rogues, you do the ZOMG MONTY PYTHON reference ^.^). That blade is Giddg's second purple ever. It makes me warm and fuzzy. She was my first toon, so she's near and dear to mah heart.

I'll tell ya too, after taking a break on her, it feels like going home when I get to play her again. Though I still feel slightly noobish. I mean, everyone and their mother has a rogue. But trying to figure out how to play one well again, after healing, is fun.

Then there's Sashara, my big butt'd bear (XD) who's gotten some recent upgrades to her tankiness. Specifically the Idol of Ursa from Heroic Under Bog. Celliana and I basically have a role reversal in there. I'm tanking, he's healing on his pally. It's funny and weird and... well silly all at the same time. Oh and last night I totally noobed it up. I'm wondering why the hell I'm getting hit so damn hard in this first pull... I got to pop my trinket... the penis looking one... shoot, lemme find a link... this one, anywho, I got to pop it... and realize it's not equipped.

Yea, I was in kitty gear.

D'oh.

(PS: You cannot tell me that this doesn't look like a phallic! Ok, maybe this looks more like one... a Cthulu one, but ZOMG it does! You have to be looking at the tiny icon in the game to get it maybe... the WoWhead pics are larger.

More thoughts on another PC...

Healing Curator: Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto

2007-09-26T13:57:00.000-04:00

See that? Its a good picture. It means your group has made the first hurdle into the raiding world. You've downed Curator. The Curator is the 3rd non-optional boss in Karazhan, he drops your first Tier 4 gear token (gloves) and his fight is an interesting one.

When AC hit him the first time, we were just doing our typical "Oooh lookie a new boss -ZOMG GACK" looksie. Which means we tried it once, tried it again semi seriously, and then ran out of raiding time. But the first serious time we went after him, it took a few tries to get the whole thing down right.

It's not really hard. Healing wise, we have one person on the tanks (we have both tanks on him, one tanking, the OT taking the Hateful Bolts) and the other healer spot healing the raid. What makes Curator so weird is the DPS isn't hitting him at first. Instead they're killing his little Arcane Flare adds. Each add costs 10% of Curator's total mana. WoWWiki has the Strat of nifty-ness, here's how it feels healing it.

The Strat:

Honestly, if you're healing the tanks, then your job is easy peasy. Your MT will need a Frisbee in the first minute or so, and your OT only really needs a Renew/GHeal after s/he gets nailed with that Hateful Bolt (it's an Arcane blast for about 5K Arcane Dmg, so that OT will be sporting some Arcane Resist gear to mitigate it), but after the first intial aggro gain, send your Frisbee to the DPS. They'll need it more than the tank. Your tank is going to need your GHeal/Renew lurvin's too, so don't forget that.

If you're assigned to heal the DPS, do as above with the Frisbee for the initial aggro gain boost, but after words, you'll be doing a lot of Renews (Renew... Renew!!!) DPS is going to be killing those Arcane Flares, and they do annoying little AoE arcane mini ... well, flares. They aggro randomly, which means you might get targeted. Power Word Shield helps cut the bite. You'll definitely have time to toss a GHeal on someone getting too much Flare love.

On the second to last Flare, we announce the next flare is X's, so make sure you keep an eye X DPS'r, since they'll be the only one hitting the Flare, and usually said Flare runs over to try and kill your Flare Killer.

Right.

While X DPS'r is doing that, everyone else LAYS IN to Curator. See, when Curator runs out of mana, he goes into an Evocation stage, where he stops attacking, turns big and blue, and takes 3x's as much damage. Yea, so this is why no one's on him during the Flares. If I'm on tank duty, I usually start wanding and cheer at my 700 wand dmg. If I'm on DPS, I'll make sure X is up while they cry that the damage meter is going to be stacked against them this fight.

Then Curator has full mana and it's lather rinse repeat until Curator reachs 15% health. Then he enrages, hits a little hard, still Hateful bolts, but no more Arcane Flares. A group just starting out will probably reach 3 to 4 Evocations on Curator. Then after you get a little more experience and gear, 2 Evo's is the usual thing to see.

THINGS TO NOTE:

This is a semi mana intensive fight, so make sure you have your pots. The tank healer may have some time to cuddle with the 5SR, but the DPS healer probably won't, especially if you have a lot of melee DPS in the group.

However, during an Evocation, your Shadow Fiend will sparkle. Use him as a little Priestly Innervate. Because remember, he's doing 3x's as much damage, and that means 3 times as much mana back. It's very win/win.

Otherwise, have fun with the fight! It'll be fun to watch all your melee running around, rogues trying to get behind something that doesn't have a face... OO

Oh and Loot to look forward too: The Tier 4 Gloves Handwraps of the Incarnate

Not a super huge upgrade over the ones from Attumen: Gloves of Saintly Blessings, but I mean, they are Tier 4... and they are really pretty (about the only thing I find pretty from Tier 4, other than the shoulders *gacks at the helm*)

PS:

Tier 6 looks EVIL! I <3 it. ^.^

Arg! /headdesk

2007-09-21T15:01:00.000-04:00

So yea, I've fallen behind. Getting the brain pan in order to cooperate and write. Silly brain.

I've been trying to sit down to write the Opera overview, but it keeps giving me the finger (not in a good way).

So, that's put on hold for now. I'm going to be playing Rakzha for a bit tonight, just to get a feel for the 20s on a shadow priest ^.^ Should be exciting.

As for my irregularity in postage, maybe its my inner moron rebelling against a schedule. I don't seem to be making my Wednesday posts, so I'm going to change that to when ever my brain pan stops being retarded. Which is at least once a week. So expect at least a post a week, if not more. This way I don't disappoint myself (or anyone else) when I see Wednesday come and go with no post.

And as you've probably already guessed (since BRK, Doom, Tred, and Brig have squee'd about it) AC took out High King Maulgar on our first night. Which rocked this baby raider's socks off.

(Viddage - Younoob / Website DL)

As you can see from the vid.... it was chaotic, but we recovered pretty well from it.

I've never done a raid higher than a 10 man, so it was definitely a new, exciting experience. I was in charge of all our awesome healz that night (we had 3 pallies, 2 druids, 1 shammy and myself) so we totally had that covered. Hard core. It was excellent. And I was totally nervous the entire time... I've never organized that many people in a life or death situation like this before. Ok, it's not real life and death, but you have to make a snap decisions. Even when my LARP werewolf was Alpha, I still had the luxury of well thought out plans. So yea, big fucking rush. It was great XD More thoughts on that later...

There are plans to revisit HKM and his crew this Monday, with the goal of seriously trying to take out Gruul. Eeee! So yea.... here's hoping for more good raiding!

This House, Is Clear!

2007-09-17T13:44:00.000-04:00

Last night, Aetherial Circle, my guild of awesome, cleared Karazhan. After 5 wipes, we took out Netherspite.

Wewt!

Viddage is here:

Younoob

AC Forums

In other news, Friday was our Raid Leader's night for loot.
Prince dropped his T4 helm, and Nightbane dropped his Shield of Impenetrable Darkness. Prince also dropped Light's Justice, which I blew all my points on. Now I need nothing more from Kara! Yay! But the last bit for our Raid Leader, after 20 some odd freakin Heroic Mechanars, The Sun Eater FINALLY dropped. /cheer

So yea, tonight, we plan on wiping in a spectacular fashion on High King Maulgar and crew. It will be my first 25 man ever.... I mena, like raid wise... it'll be my first big raid.

/squee!

Oh and PS: I have no idea if I'm going to be coming out with a How to Heal Netherspite... because even I'M not sure what the fuck I was doing that night....

ZOMG CRAZY! That's the fight. XD

Healing Prince: I'm Super! Thanks for Asking!

2007-09-14T07:32:00.000-04:00

Good Morning folks and welcome to another installment of Healing Karazhan!

Today is time for the total whore, Prince Malchezaar! I'm really not going to bother with a strat to this guy... well, ok, I lie, but this fight has a huge, mega, retarded LUCK factor to it.

I don't care if you have the DPS of GOD, unless you're a GM who just /kill mobs, you're probably going to wipe your first time on this SoB.

I hate luck fights.

This is a one tank job. So if your OT is prot s/he may want to bring his DPS gear to help out. You don't want anyone taking aggro from the tank in this fight. This too will cause a wipe. This fight also is prejudice against melee DPS. Not sure why, I mean Prince must love to take it from behind (srsly, watch him patrol, he prances... it's funny XD)

Anyway! Ok, here's the skinny on his abilites:

Enfeeblement/Shadow Nova - This is something that's going to give you a panic attack the first few times it happens. This randomly hits 4 to 5 people in your raid (never your tank UNLESS someone grabs aggro, in which case, insta wipe) This reduces peoples Health to 1 HP. Healing has NO EFFECT on them. Really stinky. A few seconds after he enfeebles he casts a Shadow Nova ability, which if any melee were in the way, get nailed and die since they were at 1 HP. Also why if your tank get Enfeebled, once he grabs aggro back, you can't heal him, and he gets nailed since he only had 1 HP. The bonus to this is after the Shadow Nova
, anyone with the Enfeeblement is healed to full, regardless of what their HP was before hand. So that's a tiny, itsy bitsy bonus. Also, he only does Enfeeblement during phases 1 and 2.

Shadow Word Pain - It's dispel-able, and for the first two phases, he only casts it on the tank. In third phase, he'll start casting it randomly, which is a pain, but with a Prayer of Shadow Prot up, its tics on your raid aren't ZOMG life threatening.

Infernals - Here's the luck factor folks. Others would call it the "DPS Race" meter, but you could have 2 shitty infernal drops wipe the raid right off the bat. Basically, periodically (not sure the timing, but I know it's consistent because Fio's DeadlyBossMods broadcasts a timer) Prince calls down an Infernal to randomly drop anywhere on the map. It has no aggro table, so where it drops and lands, it will start an AoE Hellfire that tics for about 1.5K on my clothie butt. Many a times we've had an infernal land on top of the ranged DPS's head or on top of the tanks and wiped us in a reposition. If someone is in range of an infernal while they're Enfeebled, consider them done.

AC's had 4 successful Prince deaths - 1 Tank, 2 Healers, 7 DPS. This was our group make up. One of the DPS has always been at least 1 boomkin, probably 2. We could only get him to like 1% when we had 2 prot warriors (1 in DPS gear) in that make up, then we get killed by the crazy infernals dropping like rain. Give it time, and we'll probably get him dead with both tanks in there.

Anyway, that was the the annoying bits, here's what your holy keister shall be occupying your frontal lobes with.

The Strat:

OK, your job here really is to just keep the tank up. Both you and your other healer will be concentrating on your Meat Sheild with gusto. Prince hits for a decent amount in his 1st Phase, but honestly, Frisbee, Renew and the periodic Dispel of Shadow Word Pain, and nothing to panic about. When ever your melee DPS gets enfeebled, just toss a Renew on them AFTER the Nova. It'll take care of the 3Kish Shadow Nova. Also, that Shadow Nova has a 30yd range. Sound familiar? Yea. Your dispel only works within 30 yds. I usually stick to the maxium edge of my healing range on the tank, and then when the SWP gets tossed on him, schooch up, Dispel, schooch back. Otherwise you get hit for 3K in the Shadow Nova and get knocked back a fair amount. Not fun.
Position is key really for this fight to work. Our tank is always tanking Prince in the opposite corner from the door (as shown, sorta, in the picture). As such, he can only see Prince's lovely loin cloth and not much else on his screen. We have 1 person watching out and calling out Infernal drops, while all the ranged DPS/Healers cluster near the door. This gives us as much Leeway as plausible for Infernal drops and repositioning if we need to.

Now, at 66%, Prince ramps it up a notch and heads into Phase 2. During this phase, he summons two axes, still casts Enfeeble/Shadow Nova and SWP, but now, he's Sundering the Tank, and Cleaving any forward DPS. ZOMG HARD HITS! This is going to be a very intensive healing phase. Prince could well 3 shot your tank if you and your other healer isn't on the ball. Toss your Frisbee for that 1.5K oomph, but make sure you're casting your GHeals here. And not like it should be a huge issue, but watch your aggro. Mine's never really shot beyond the tank or anything here, but it will shoot up and gets kinda nervy (damn Omen and it's flashy red %'s XD)

This will probably be your most mana intensive phase since you will not get a chance to cuddle with 5SR. Its ok, you have a Fiend, and pot as soon as you can fit it in. Did I mention? He's still tossing Infernals, so hopefully you won't have one drop on you or the Tank during this phase. This is the biggest wipe risk factor here because you can't really afford to run around since your tank is going to need that 2.5 GHeal STAT and you need to be standing in one spot to do that. You get a bit of a reprive when he's casting that Shadow Nova, but it's not much. Def the suckiest part of the fight (other than the Infernals).

At 33% Prince stops hitting like a nuke and goes back to Phase 1 damage, but those axes of his have a life of their own and start hitting others in the party. Here's where the awesome that is being a priest REALLY shines. If someone's getting hit with the axes, make sure your tank is ok FIRST. The axes don't hit that hard (unless that craptastic Amplify Damage has been cast, then well, they might hit a little harder) so you can make sure your tank is not in PANIC NEED HEALZ and toss a renew on the axes target. If they're taking a bit more damage than that, toss your tank a heal, then toss them either a FHeal or a GHeal (use your judgment on how much time you can leave your tank a lone, and also say something to your other healer so they know you're focus is shifting to heal X party memeber). No matter what, you always want to have 1 healer on the tank at all times. Are there a few people down on health because the axes/SWP/whatever has decided to crap on them? If they're in your party /cheer Prayer of Healing! (Make sure before you start you're in a group with mostly Ranged, your melee DPS are too far away for your PoH, but if you're a Circle of Healing Priest, well, then they'll get a smidgen of AoE healin' lurv too I guess XD)

Also, during phase 3, Prince starts casting SWP on anyone who strikes his fancy. So that can get a little hectic. BTW! If the Axes start attacking you, Fade actually helps deter them for a moment or so (at least it has for me). But if they're getting really annoying, bubble to stop the casting interuption they're causing you. Trust me, they won't stay on you or a single target for too long. Its great when they aggro on something in ranged, then you Fade, and they decide the rogue waaaaaaaaaay back at Prince was much more tasty. (The rogue has Quick Recovery right? ;D, they'll be fine.)

By the way, those Infernals? Still dropping. In fact, in this phase, they're on double time, so you gotta be STUPID quick in killing him or else you're going to get a 1% surprise infernal on your head, and that Blue Diamond WitchWand, while pretty swank, does not kill 5K HPs (Prince at 1% T.T)

As long as you pot early and often in this battle, you should be good to go on mana.

Now that he's dead, /cheer and Celebrate your T4 Helm token (or don't in my case, since it has yet to drop /shacks fist.) Honestly, at this point, I'm waiting till all my tanks/druids have their head tokens before I nab mine. My Whitemend set is still doing me some good. What you should be pining for is Light's Justice. It's a very, very, very (did I mention Very!) nice healing mace. And I wants one. O.O My Gavel is great. But Light's Justice is a huge freakin' upgrade. Though I will say, if you've got the Nightstaff of the Everliving off Nightbane, I, personally, will let my pallys/shammy's get it first. We can equip staves without getting a gimp (Pally's can't equip staves, Shammy's don't get their swank shields XD.)

And that's it folks! Opera coming soon! ^.^

Update (and a Mini Rant)

2007-09-13T18:18:00.001-04:00

Ok, so I've been a bad blogger. I've fallen down on my duties in bringing fun to read How Tos to the bored WoW masses.

I AM ASHAMED!

But, I hope to remedy this.

I still have (counts on fingers) 3 more How To Heal Karazhan's coming, with a fourth not ready to be made yet since AC has yet to go for Netherspite. Do you guys find them interesting? (Insecure about her writing? NEVA! -.-)

I also have updates that are forth coming about my baby priesty and how her leveling is going (btw, her current outfit... that's a toe... isn't it?!)

Among other things, I've guild stuff has been going loco. We're excited and thrilled that we've been able to field 2 groups. But one is far out pacing the other. And we're rethinking the way we do things. And I think morale is getting sunk. So, I have a question for all you guild people out there: Have you ever done something fun, silly, crazy, or just plain weird as a guild to get every one feeling good?

Some one mentioned to me once (Or I could have read this somewhere, it's very possible) that they were their guild's Morale
Officer. Very nifty. I think I'm kinda like that. But! What did you do to raise the morale! Send everyone a Mechanical Squirrel and demanded Nutz of Doom at Dawn?! Raiding Horde places doesn't sound as fun (or creative) as something bizzaro would. The 40 man gnome zurg on Hogger is old... bah. I'll think of something, but what have you done, or seen done, or heard done, for general mischief and mayhem?

Also, I must admit, I got sick, and tired, and just plain worn out with the priest forums on the O boards when I was perusing them for some +healing stat advice... WTH PEOPLE! ... Er, wait...

/soapbox

I am sick and tired of all the LOLERSkates who troll the Priest forums saying, "You guys suck for X, Y, Z and Theta reason, QQ and reroll Pally if you want to be a healer." Is it because the Pally boards are nothing but "Prot This" and "Ret That"? They couldn't bemoan something about healing on their forums so they decided to bring over their "We're the bestest healers in the game, you squishi noobs suck, blah blah blarg."

I don't normally let trolls get to me. But sometimes, its not the trolls. Reasonably intelligent people are even saying, "You want to be main healer? Reroll Pally."

You know what, I didn't roll a paladin. When I made a healer, I wanted to be as obvious as I possibly could. I rolled a priest. And guess what? I'm MAIN F-ING healing. I recognize that Paladins are superior single target healers. They have the talents, the gear and whatnot to get as much healing bang for their mana buck. Thats awesome. Druid Treehuggers have just as many nifty talents for their HoTs of Eluney Awesomeness. I think the only class that got a widdle bit of a healing shaft is Shamans (Practically no threat mitgation ftl - I know they have a totem, but still, not as cool as Fade), but they've got Chain Healing (which rocks my socks off cause it makes thunder noises /shiver). Each healing class has some uber strengths and weaknesses.
I do think priests, as you know, the OBVIOUS healing class, could use some better holy healing talents, but whatever. Improvise, Overcome, Adapt as my pappy always says.

And you know what, as cool as those other healing classes may be, I still love my priest. I made a squishy and she can patch you back together TOT sweet and be smart enough NOT to pull aggro doing it!

So, before I tell the entire paladin class to STFU and FoaD, I rolled one. I won't knock something until I try it, but be warned! I'm extremely prejudiced! /grumble

Oh, and the pally is a Hordie, so this ought to be interesting.

/end soapbox

So yea, that's what I've been up too. Its lots of things. Oh and for some random geekiness... I'm running a D&D session for the jr high kids at my place of work (library). /squee

Tune in later for How to Heal Karazhan: Opera - The Most Fun You'll Ever Have

I Live

2007-09-13T14:37:00.001-04:00

And this was supposed to have more text to it, but my work PC ate it.

Neva fear! Moar Priestly things coming! I swearz!

Healing Night Bane: ZOMG Dragon!

2007-09-05T12:45:00.000-04:00

Heyo! Welcome to another installment of Healing Kara! Yea, I know, I'm missing Prince, Opera, Curator, etc, BUT! Nightbane is a dragon. He's a f*cking dragon! I lurv dragons, every since I was | | big! In order to get to this boss, you need to finish this quest line, Medhiv's Journal. That quest requires things like killing the Shade of Aran, then doing Heroic Settheck (ANZU IS MINE!) and Heroic Shattered Halls ( /shiver).

Ok, enough with the foreplay (though, yet again, check out Wowwiki for a good over view of the strat ^.^).

The Strat:

Ok, he's a dragon. So Draenei and Dwarf priests have a leg up in that they can fear ward the tank. Other wise, your tank must do some creative stance dancing that is beyond this priest (care to elaborate Brig? XD) because he does fear. Our group make up for this fight has been 1 tank, 3 healers, 6 DPS (with at least one being a mage). Nightbane has two phases, on the ground and in the air. His air phases come at ever 1/4 of his health (so at 75%, 50% and 25%).

Trust me, you'll want the three healers for this fight. If you have two pallys with you, great, the tank will definately be topped off, but having you there is great for when Nightbane really wackes him. And he will. Nightbane hits HARD. Really gorram hard. Celli and I were goofing around right after I got the urn, and he and I summoned him (fully expecting to die) and ZOMG, he hits hard! Having the third healer for this group is a godsend, because you'll get more time with the 5SR (and everyone will love you for it, trust me).

Now, while on the ground, Nightbane should only be hitting the tank. Melee has instructions to slice and dice his armpits, while the ranged DPS and healers should be at their max distances on either side. This is to avoid cleaves (which will 1 shot you, clothie, it did to me -.-), tail swipes and breath weapon of doom. More than likely you're going to be out of range of some of your raiders, so in case they take any damage, it's ok, there's going to be a healer with them. You just concentrate on the tank while the dragons on the ground.

Prayer of Mending? Check. Renew? Double check. GHeals? Of course, but not necessary every second. Your Frisbee is taking care of bad hits by giving your tank some healing back, the renew is nice insurance when you or your other healers need to run out of a Charred Earth (nasty AoE on the ground that does damage to you, but you can just move sideways to get out of it). Those Fears are annoying, but they're on a long timer, so you'll have plenty of time to re-Ward your tank after a fear. You can even spare a few seconds to toss them a heal first, since they were going with no heals for all of 3 seconds, and then re-Ward.

Now, once Nightbane launches himself into the air at 75/50/25%, things get a little interesting. Firstly, Power Word Shield yourself. Trust me, you'll want this. Nightbane is going to target someone random and start a Rain of Bones. Its a bunch of skeletons that start attacking people, watch your mage and heal him/her, since they're going to be taking care of downing most of them ASAP. Nightbane is also going to target the healer with the highest healing aggro and start fireblasting them.

That's right, the highest healing aggro. I suggest that as soon as Rain of Bones starts, you Fade. If you have a holy pally in your group, they can start flash healing themself, and since the fireballs Nightbane tosses count as a physical attack, the Pally, with boatloads of armor, takes less damage, and takes the heat off your back. As a clothie, the bolts were hitting me for around 3K, every couple of seconds. It wasn't fun. The pally can handle it, and I imagine a shammy can too. But we've had a pally in our group for him, and it worked like a charm.

Also, make sure people are grouped up in the center of that platform. If anyone gets more than 40 yds away from Night bane, he gets cranky and starts hucking random fireballs all over the joint. To prevent this, everyone stay close and play nice with the big angry skeletal dragon.

Nightbane only stays in the air for about 45 seconds, then he'll land, whether you've finished off the skeletons or not. If you have a hunter in your group, make sure he has a Misdirection up to bring aggro back to the tank. Nightbane's landing is an aggro wipe, and usually our poor mage has bit it since he just annihilated the skeletons. Luckily, we have many druids with us, so a battle rez is readily available. AC is like the druid mecca, it's funny.

Anywho! After Nightbane lands, it's lather, rinse, repeat. Just toss your Frisbee to the tank, slap a renew on and wait until the next air phaze. Its the transition from Air to land phaze that's the toughest, but once you get that down, you're on your way to Nightbane pwnage.
Also, a note on Mana. You will go through tons. This fight is long, so if you have Mp5 gear, abuse it. I'm lucky in that I have a pocket Boomkin who loves to innervate me if we think I need it. For Nightbane, I do, but only about 4 to 5 mins into the fight. If you use your Fiend early, I guarantee, your first few wackes at Nightbane, you'll get to summon your fiend twice for the fight (both times I've fought and won against him, the fight took about 11 mins). I go through about 4 pots in this fight too. So bring many, especially if it's your first try. You will use them.

What does the priesty have to look forward to after this fight? Well, if you're one for staves, and Prince hasn't coughed up Light's Justice yet, than the Nightstaff of the Everliving is a pretty swank healer staff. Nightbane also drops the Emberspur Talisman, an Ok healing necklace. (Personally, I think the Necklace of Eternal Hope is better. It has some needed stats and it only costs 25 heroic badges.)

Well, that's about it folks, tune in later for Prince Malkazaar: I'm Super! Thanks for Asking!

Quick Thing

2007-08-30T18:17:00.000-04:00

As cool as it was I got rid of the the Armory Musing's pop up for gear on blogs. I just wasn't using it often enough. So I guess y'all just need to click on links XD

Now to go back and fix some of my past posts. Oo

Peek a Boo

2007-08-29T11:27:00.000-04:00

So this is a bit of a silly post, but I figured I'd take a look at some of the quirky priestly spells today. We get a few, starting with Mind Soothe, followed by Levitation and my favorite, Mind Vision.

Starting off with Mind Soothe:

In a nut shell, this is a nice spell if you need to scoot by some humanoids that you don't plan on clearing. (Or if you're trying to get at that herb/ore and really don't feel like fighting the mob patrolling near it.) If makes it so that ring of aggro the mob has centered on it is reduced by 10 yds, letting you get just a tad closer. It's got a level cap of 85, since there are still some ?? mobs even to 70s, though how many of them are not instances bosses, I don't know. They tend to be immune to stuff like this though, so it's kinda pointless to risk the aggro.
Oh yea, that's the draw back, the spell can fail, or be resisted. And then you get the fight you didn't want. Or an elite who's less than pleased with you if you're in an instance.
Quiet honestly, this is my least favorite of the three utility spells. I have yet to really find a good use for this spell. It's not on my bar any more, since I never use it. So yea, not a bad spell, there's no big bang to it.

On to Levitate!

Now here's a spell I use a lot and I have fun with it. ^.^
It's your Jesus spell! Walk on water! Accidentally dismounted way over Shattrath? Not a problem, just hit this spell, and you'll float back down to safety. It lasts a whole minute and a half longer than a mage's Soft Fall (which doesn't let you walk on water, I might add XD) but not as long as the shaman's water walk (10 mins). The only pain in the butt thing is you need to have a reagent for this spell. We get a grand total of three spells that need reagents. Our prayers of Fort and Spirit, and this one. It takes a Light feather for each cast, but that's not hard to get (specially if you're religiously running Setthek Halls Heroic daily, like I am.... ANZU's reins will be MINE!)

Ahem, right, anywho, this is a good OH SHIT I'M FALLING spell, as well as a cool way to get to Kara quicker ;) (I'll even post a video on that technique later.)
Other than that... it's just a cool novelty spell. Never had to use it for a fight since you fall to earth as soon as you get hit in combat, but none the less, very fun. Oh and as of last patch, instead of just looking like you're standing on an invisible ground, they added a nice little floaty look when you're just standing:

Nifty huh? ^.^

And last but most definately not least, Mind Vision!

This is SUCH a fun spell. Maybe I'm crazy, but I amused myself for hours outside of the Scryer bank, just randomly casting this spell. On alliance, on horde, doesn't matter. NO ONE'S SAFE! And hell, it's one hellava way to test drive that Netherdrake/Netherray mount you've been eying (or silently but forlornly pining for, since well, being holy, you won't get it quickly or easily /sigh)
But in a practical sense, I get a good bit of use out of this spell in Karazhan. Our Raid Leader hates marking the Shade Trash between the Curator's to Aran's room, because they stealth in and out of view, so he might prematurely pull them because he can't see them. So what I do is Mind Vision him, then once he's got something targeted, hit my assist key (in this case, the default 'F' key) and target the shade, then recast Mind Vision. Voila! I can now mark them at my leisure. The shade I'm using as my eyes can't stealth while I'm on it, so I can recast the spell in case it takes more than a minute to mark (which is shouldn't).
Also, this spell can be resisted, so just be prepared. Since we holy PvE'rs don't really need to concentrate on spell hit, it will probably come up... but I'm not going to say "ZOMG get new gear"... for this... one... spell.
Yea.
But anywho! I love this spell. So fun. You can use it in many different situations just to get your target early. I have yet to test it on a rogue in PvP though, but then again, I really don't want to be a sitting duck for said rogue.... more to come on this though!

Edit: As Kirk oh so graciously reminded me, this spell does not cause NPC aggro. However, player aggro is very situational ^.^

So, if you're bored, Mind Vision yourself a Hordie today. Drives their addon's mad! :)

All in all, not a bad spread of utility spells, though I could always wish for something more. Like a holy one that lets you put the fear of the Light into your foes! It would look pretty, make stealth not possible... in a 5 yd area. Like an Elune stone of Justice!

Come on, it could happen ^.^

~Cay

Fun Stuff

2007-08-29T11:03:00.000-04:00

Hello again boys and goyles! It's been a fun week for teh Squeekie ^.^

AC's group 2 took out Nightbane on Monday (yay!) while, as Brig and Tred have ranted about, group 1 got cock blocked at Prince.

But we both got past Aran, and there's another 2 groups scheduled this week! Wewt! We're 12 out of 13! (Oh group 2 got the Oz event for the first time too!)

"Great, now where's mah damn video?!" you ask. Hold yer damn horsies ;P

Nightbane - Younoob link or Download the actual Vid (for those of you at work)

Oz - Younoob linkage or Download the vid!

I will say this, the quality is much better if you DL the vid instead of youtube. I can't get youtube to keep most of the quality so it gets really grainy. But I'm still using Window Movie Maker. Premier.... is very confusing.

And now.... On with todays actual post!

Hrm... I have some other things to catch up on, eh?

2007-08-24T16:10:00.000-04:00

As Ego so awesomely suggested, I've put my "Healing Karazhan" posts in a easy to find place link type box. However, it pointed out to me... that I'm missing bosses!

I haven't done Curator, Big Bad Wolf or Romulo and Julianne. I am ashamed. -.-

However! This means more yummy postage. Also! I've been busy with Rakzha lately, and I have some thoughts on leveling shadow to post soon. Because honestly... leveling Holy is ASKING FOR IT. Don't get me wrong, I <3 being your face mender, it's my calling, but there are two sides to the coin, and getting to the mending takes smelting some faces.

In other news, and semi petty rantish, so you can ignore it... but this just ticks me off. I orginally rolled Dwarf because it was the only race that had fear ward available.

Lo and behold, the xpac comes out, and BAM! Draenei get it. Ug. Well, Cay was already uber, I'm not going to start a brand new toon to level to 70 just because I like the look (even though that Symbol of Hope is pretty tempting...) but anyway... I could have had a pretty, schmexy looking priest, instead of stately. WTH. Now EVERYONE is going to get Fear ward? /head desk

And before any Hordies get their knickers in a twist, Shammy's have had Tremor totem since level... what, 8? It effects the whole party. Fear Ward has a 30 second cool down, so usually, only the tank got it. I know that's how we roll on Dragons.

So yea... ug. I know, the rumor is it won't be out for sometime, I have plenty of time to rebuild a schmexy priesty from the ground up... but still...

Ug.

~rant off

TGIF people!

And Aran, Aran So Far Away...

2007-08-23T13:08:00.000-04:00

So, twice I've seen this guy kiss dirt. Both times was a nightmare! But if you want heart pumping, edge of your seat excitement.... yea, this fight will give you this.

The Shade of Aran is a fun fight. He's a whore, he has NO aggro list, so heal to your hearts content, but be careful. He loves to target people with low HP so he can finish them off with his Arcane Missiles of DEATH or Fireball of FOOSH. He also has three special abilities:

Blizzard - covers half the room, slows people down and damages them (ranged only really)
Arcane Explosion - he pulls the entire raid into the middle of the room, casts SLOW, then has 10secs of casting of an Explosion that does about 10K on plate... so yea, RUN.
Flame Wreath - DON'T MOVE! I'M SERIOUS! This is cast around three people in the raid, if they or anyone in the raid even TURNS SIDEWAYS... then the entire raid gets hit for about 4K worth of fire damage.

So yea, three different schools of magic. During the entire fight, he's casting something from each: Fireball, Frost Bolt, or Arcane Missiles. You have your raid interrupting 2 out of the three schools so he doesn't run out of mana too quickly... because... if he does... (this is funny) he Mass Polymorphs your raid, creates some water and sits to have a drink, getting his mana back up to full. Then, after he's had a nice cool refreshing mana drink, he does a PYROBLAST VOLLEY to the entire raid. It hits me for about 7K, and I usually die. Also, as if this guy didn't have enough annoying abilities, at 40% health, he summons 4 water elementals. They last for 90seconds or until your raid can kill them and not die while Aran is merrily casting away on anyone who strikes his fancy.

The Strat:

THIS IS A HEALING NIGHTMARE! But it's fun too.

This fight tests how on your toes you can be. Your normal routine of Frisbee, Renew, GHeal, lather rinse repeat on your MT is thrown right out the window, into the pool, to stew for a little bit.

Instead, you're healing anyone who needs it. This could be the other healer, the DPS, yourself, ANYONE. Renew helps, but if you need that Oh Sh!t heal, go with a shield on your target and be ready. If you have a pally backing you up in this fight, awesome. Also!

(I need to switch PCs.... so yea, I will finish this soon!)

Ahhh! Posting while at work! Anyway! Also! Aran's has about a 10 yard Counterspell Aura around him, so you don't want to be standing near him (if you noticed in the video... I was standing in the CS aura... bad Stephi. But I lucked out because I was casting in the middle of his cool down for it... Yes for living dangerously!)

Also, you'll notice in the video too, if your interrupters for the fight happen to miss a beat and block all three of his schools... he starts running around punching people. This is bad! When he's in the center of the room, you can pretty much gage where his CS aura is. When he's running around batshit crazy, not so easy to tell where the aura is.

Depending on your DPS, and how well your raid has done the interrupts, either Aran runs down to 20% mana (Polymorph time) or 40% health (Elementals). Hopefully not both at the same time. If so, you may want to tell your DPS to hold up, so that the polymorph comes, you get a little time to recover and then you can deal with the elementals.

During the elemental stage, your MT and OT will be tanking elementals while the raid burns them down. Here you can sorta get back into your normal swing of things, just be aware of what major spell is coming (hopefully not Flame Wreath since those stupid elementals do ranged T.T) and also I hope you have a warlock in your raid. There are 4 elementals, so the lock can Fear one and Banish another, while your raid takes out the other two.

There is very little time in this fight to chat with the 5sec rule... which makes me a sad panda, but my best advice here is pot often, and pot EARLY. And most of all... have fun! Cross your fingers for the Boots of the Incorrupt, Aran's Soothing Sapphire to replace your Signet of Unshakable Faith from Moroes, or Formula: Enchant Weapon - Sunfire if you're an enchanter ^.^ (which Doom, the sweetie, let me take on our last run!)

Toodles for now!

~Cay

Catching Up

2007-08-22T14:29:00.001-04:00

More like there was this virus right... and I couldn't eat anything without getting violently ill.

So suffice to say, playing WoW or writing on it was cut short. It was teh suck.

However! I have some fun news: on Monday, AC took out Prince! For Youtube video goodness, I direct you to this link here. For those of you with the IT Nazi regime at work, you can DL the video here (though the DL is much clearer ^.^).

It was much fun, but my guts didn't like my excited celebration as Prince kissed dirt, so Monday was cut pretty short for me.

We got Aran the night before again, so that was a good boost, and though we lost some guildies because of schedules, we've got out DCoE back and 2 groups ready to go this week! ^.^

We also tried Nightbane for the first time on Sunday... we're thinking we'll need 3 healers for it. ZOMG he hits so hard! And our poor mage just couldn't survive the aerial attack at 75%.

So! With all that out of the way, time for this week's post! I've been wanting to spew about the Aran fight, the Prince fight and Heroic Shattered Halls ^.^

Please, don't kills me

2007-08-21T15:11:00.000-04:00

I've been sick, and couldn't really post much. However, tonight and tomorrow, I will have things to splurge about!

Very sorry for the huge post gap guys.

And now back to your regular bloggin...

Post Delayed

2007-08-16T10:45:00.002-04:00

Yea guys, sorry about yesterdays absent post. I'm running a bit behind.

T.T

Don't kills me. XD

Another One Bites the Dust

2007-08-14T14:27:00.000-04:00

That's right, AC downed Aran last night, for the first time! And we one shotted him too! Thank you Doom for your awesome prediction!

Oh, and now, for your viewing pleasure, the vid I stayed up till 4AM making XD

YouTube link

and for those at work and YouTube is blocked:

The Vid from Silentstephi.com

Its about 50MB, so it might take a smidge long ^.^

Enjoy!

/dance

And because I like pretty things...

2007-08-11T15:00:00.001-04:00

This is such a nice quest.

I did this quest with my Squishi, BE hunter. I love it when Blizz tosses us an atmosphere cookie. Wish there were more.

And I'm also a sucker for gorgeous sopranos.

PS: If anyone can clue by 4 me in to posting a video to the blog, that would be great, but when I tried the embed code form Youtube, I got a big angry screen that said REQUEST DENIED... -.-

The Few, the Proud, the Bloggers

2007-08-11T13:26:00.000-04:00

So I added some more fun blogs to my "Interesting Places to Go".

It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to view a blog I had never seen before and see that I was linked on it ^.^

Priestly Endeavors is an awesome place to read about lots of things priesty. Lots of Shadow Priest stuff there too. I'll be definitely going over some of that stuff while I level Cai/Rakzha.

A View From Behind is Doom's blog and WOOT! Someone I can geek out with on the Awesomeness that is the Mutilate/Combat spec. /dance

Then there's The Positive Warrior , Brig's blog and always a fun read. I like to know what my meatshield is thinking... never tick off your meatshield, for you are squishi and feint at the thought of pokies coming your way.

And finally, there's TJ, who is just fun to read, as she likes to poke the Kitty. ^.^

That's it for today. This silly New England weather has deemed I need a summer cold, so now the screen's getting all fuzzy. T.T

Terestian Illhoof : Feral Druids Wetdream

2007-08-08T10:37:00.000-04:00

It's been a week or two, but this fight was an interesting one. Illhoof is an optional boss in Karazhan. He's behind the "Conspicuous Bookcase" right outside the Shade of Aran's room, and, really, unless you have a warlock in your party, just skip him.
(Your ferals will probably whimper though, since they really want Terestrian's Stranglestaff.)

Here's the group layout we had to take him down, and I'll tell ya, healing during this mofo .... ZOMG. We had our tanks (Prot Warrior and Feral), a DCoE Shammy and myself healing, and our DPS was 2 Boomkin, 1 Rogue, 1 Kitty, and 2 Locks.

Illhoof isn't alone by the way. He's got a little imp pet that he keeps around, and needs to be tanked. The bonus to the little guy is, if you kill him, Illhoof suffers from a "Broken Pact" debuff, and is taking 20% more dmg for 30secs. The suck thing is, his little buddy comes running back from the Void once the 30 secs is up. Little shithead won't stay DEAD! -.- Illhoof also likes to portal in cubic butt tons of mini imps, and while they're easier to kill, there's so many! They can put a Debuff on you that's non dispel-able that makes you take tons more dmg from fire spells too. And as always WoW Wiki has an awesome break down of his fight.

The Strat:

You need to split your healing job practically 4 ways in this fight. First, the lock(s) will be "tanking" all the little bitches. If you only have one lock, well, all the power to him/her. This is a tough job. The lock is going to be tossing a Seed of Corruption up on Illhoof, and then doing their cute little lock AoE to kill the buggers.

You have 4 different heals going on. You have your lock(s), your MT, your OT, and then the Sacrifice (more on that in a sec).

Assign one healer to your MT/OT and the other to the lock. Who ever has lock duty should also take care of the Sacrifice. The MT/OT are really not taking the brunt of the damage in this fight. Illhoof doesn't hit that hard and his little guy is laughable. You can leave a renew on the OT and forget about him. Healing your usual suspects in this fight is a cake walk compared to the rest.

If you get Lock/Sacrifice duty, you're in for a much more intense experience. Once the little imp invasion starts, your lock is going to need your tender lovin' heals. Btw, that Fel Armor? /molest
It increasing the amount of healing you do to them, so that makes things slightly nicer. Tossing a PWS on them is not a frownable act in my opinion too, if they're cutting it close.

Now, to the Sacrifice. I don't care if you're .1 second from finishing that heal on your other target, STOP whatever you're doing and start with a FHeal on the Sacrificed victim. It took us 4 tries to kill Illhoof because the first two times, I didn't stop my healing ASAP to start healing the Sacrifice. Here's what happens: Illhoof nabs one of your raid, and puts them in the oggy circle in the middle, killing 1.5K HP per second. This drain also heals him of stupid amounts of HP, so not only do you need to keep that person alive to get rid of what he just healed, your raid needs to be prepared to take down the chains holding the sacrifice. Because those chains can be killed, and your friend free'd to pwn some more Illhoof face.

Did I mention Tab Targeting the Demon Chains holding your raidmate is retardedly impossible because of all the farking imps? Yea, so make sure your DPS has a macro that targets those chains AS SOON as they're up.

This fight is VERY mana intensive, on all sides. You will have little to no time for your loveable 5SR. I know, it'll be mad that you didn't call, and probably pissed that you prank call it a few times in the fight, but those times are few and far between. Even with two locks, bring lots of mana pots to this fight. Your fiend will do best on Illhoof, but if you don't have time to click him, don't worry, just tab target something and let your cutie eat an imp or two (spam the Pet Attack button if it's eating imps, you don't want him sitting with a thumb up his butt when you need MANA damn it!)

Otherwise, enjoy the fight guys! It's crazy fun and you have the Cincture of Will/Mender's Heart Ring to secretly lust for while your Ferals cry that the staff is a no show ;)

Some Thoughts on Guild and Karazhan

2007-08-03T14:32:00.001-04:00

Warning: The following is my obligatory worry post. Feel free to ignore it as it really doesn't have much in detail on what to do when healing Kara or healing in general. However, it is an excellent post on how to worry yourself into early ulcers.

You have been warned. :P

So, it happened. On Wednesday, AC fielded 2 whole Kara groups. We started raiding on June 5th. August 1st, 2 groups.

Group 2's Raid Leader was late, then it turned into no show. Damn Real Estate agents. But with some shuffling, two people who previously didn't think they could make it did and Group 2 was able to roll on through a half an hour late. Group 1 cleared through Opera (BBW), Group 2 had to stop after Moroes since the healer had an OH SH!T IRL emergency. But they were back yesterday to finish off Maiden and Opera (BBW) while we had to nab two extras for Group 1 to get through Curator/Chess and get eaten by Aran (he's such a bitch, more on him later).

On the one hand, I'm excited, thrilled, ecstatic that we can field two groups into Kara. But the other hand is terrified of all the headache that comes with it. We're just barely sqeaking out those two groups. We have the tanks, between our Prot warriors/feral druids/Prot pally, but we're just barely getting by with healers. There's 4 exactly, with a possible 5th (he's 70, and he's 2 PMC's from his set, just need his last two frags and BM) but he's got a really tight schedule, so I'm not sure when he'll ever be able to start raiding.
Plus the DCoE is one of those 4 Healz of Awesome on her Shammy of Doom and as ecstatic as I am that I'm raiding with her, we need more healers so she can play her Face Melter. The Shammy is awesome, but she is the DCoE for a reason ;)

Kara is my first raid experience. Fio and I are brandy spankin' new to this whole raid world. I don't want to get people upset or pissed that they didn't get a chance to go raiding this week for this or that reason, but that's why we're trying the two groups. The big disadvantage to that is trying to sync schedules.

We're not hard core, we're casual. So we're not raiding 5 or 6 nights a week. More like 2 to 4. And we've got multiple time frames to deal with. I know, probably every raiding guild has to go through the same schtuff.

So how do they deal with it? How do other casual guilds deal with raiding so that they don't have officers who's heads about to implode because they're worried they're going to leave someone out and then that person is going to make a stink and be unpleasant and AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!

So yea. Those are the thoughts for today. Tune in later for my tips on healing Illhoof: Rat Bastard, but a Lock's Bitch.

Sex = Good Start to Day

2007-08-01T11:49:00.000-04:00

Got your attention? Good.

Today friends, we take a look at my favorite spell since 68.

Prayer of Mending, also know as the "Frisbee" (Thank you Ego).

Let me start off by saying I actually didn't start using the Frisbee right away.
It was new, it was weird, and I was still a nooblet using Flash Heal, so I couldn't appreciate the awesome power that is the Frisbee.

Let's take a look at the tool tip:

Places a spell on the target that heals them for 800 the next time they take damage. When the heal occurs, Prayer of Mending jumps to a raid member within 20 yards. Jumps up to 5 times and lasts 30 sec after each jump.

See that? Raid member. Yummy.

A few cool, nifty things about the Frisbee:

- It's low mana cost with high healing return value
- Nice way to manage AOE dmg on melee
- Whoever is healed by the Frisbee, gets the aggro. That's right, you gain no healing aggro.
- It can last up to 2.5 mins, bonus!

Cons:
-You have no control where it goes

I think 4 : 1 is a good ratio, don't you?

But after running many a 70 instance and the occasional Heroic, I can say that the Frisbee is an essential spell to have.

You're first spell every time should be to toss that Frisbee to the tank, right before he pulls. The first hit he takes, oh look, it's gone AND he's got healing aggro. Not you, the tank. A nice little aggro boost. It's great that you can help get the mobs pissed off at your meat shield and not your squishi self.

Most likely, after your tank has gotten his 1st hit, the Frisbee will either jump to a random person, OR, it jumps to the next person with the lesser % health. This can be a bonus or an annoyance. If your 'Lock is killing them selves for mana again, and you have no other melee up in the mobs face, the Frisbee likes to give said Lock some love. But Lock's sucking the life out of themselves for mana doesn't proc it's healing ability, so blarg.

This is why having something like MendWatch or Natur EnemyCastBar is essential. You need to know where the Frisbee went. If it's just sitting there chillin' out on the ranged caster who's doing good and NOT getting any aggro, then you'll want to recast it on the tank to give him/her some more aggro/healin' love.

Oh and nifty trick I saw a Shadow Priest do once: If you have Frisbee and Fade's up, toss a quick Shadow Word: DEATH onto the mob. The Frisbee will heal you of that, and if you have a good tank, then you're little DPS heal shouldn't cause too much of a tiff.

EDIT: Thank you Malva, it's good to know that the Fribee does not in fact stack when you have two holys playing with the group.

A note on how much it heals: The tip says base of 800. At a +healing of around 1700, my Frisbee smacks some one for a little over 1600. That's at most 8000 Healing for 390 mana... YES PLEASE! Math people, you do the math on this one.

And that my friends, is the Frisbee. Learn it. Love it. Have fun with it.

But most of all... PLAY IT!

Oh and just because I thought it was funny, the frisbee in the picture above come from here...

This guy has ALIEN NIPPLES! ZOMG!

Bear Tank Smash!

2007-07-28T13:26:00.000-04:00

I know, silly, random, but I just felt like squeeing:

Thursday night Sashara got to tank UnderBog.

Very successfully I might add.

No one died until the very very end, at all three Druids and the Shammy died after boss death. Shammy self rez, life is good. XD

It was cool, fun, and nice to be in charge for once ^.^

And I even held aggro against Fiordhraoi. ZOMG. The DCoE brought her Shammy to heal, and then there was two other guildies who were Sasha's level. It rocked.

I don't know if it's a rare thing, but after being run through so many instances repeatedly with Cay, I'm thinking making the transition from healing to tanking isn't going to be as hard as others make it out to be.

For example:

A couple of months ago we had a good prot warrior tank burn out for a bit in guild. He went off to another server to play with some IRL friends, and he leveled a pally there. He became healbot in later levels, and actually enjoyed it. Which was cool, I heart my little healing butt as well. When he decided to come back to AC and play his warrior again... he lost his touch. He was so used to being in the back, waiting for things to happen instead of making them happen.
Another tank of ours mentioned to me, this is why most tanks have DPS alts, so that they don't lose that edge. But I don't know. I don't think being a healer makes you reactive by nature.
There is some forethought and planning you do as a healer, and while some of the stuff you do is "OH SH!T SPIKE DMG!" healing, most of it is preventative of major mana spending in the future.

Plus, I think having healed has helped me in my tanking strategies. Knowing where I'm going to get more/less damage from mobs is a bonus. Though I have to get used to not just staring at my threat meter. Freaking Boomkin...

And here ends today's random brain diarrhea.

Addons

2007-07-26T17:37:00.000-04:00

I think I'm going to do as Ego and make a certain day(s) blogging days. Before was just general spew that came to my mind, now I'm looking towards planning out my posts.

So I'll make it a point to update at least every Wednesday, with a quip on Fridays/Saturdays if work allows.

I've had lots of work lately + parents = blog in the dust. Not a good thing. I like this blog. /pat

So what I'm going to talk about today is simple. The Blizzard UI for WoW is great, but I like having just a bit more versatility and customization with a game I spend butt tons of time on. Initially I was a CosmosUI type gal, but I was getting bored with the general look. I wanted something with a bit more shiny to it. Plus, since I was starting to heal, the basic crap I was supposed to have (What's DeCursive?) was hard to find updated for BC.

Ow.... sunburn. I haz one.

Anywho! A few experiments later, and we have this as my current healing set up. If you want some more action shots, then look no further than here and here.

But let me break them down for you.

Bartender3
This addon lets me put my actions bars where ever I want. This was cool because I was feeling all caged in with Blizz's default layout. It also gives me the chance to hide bars I don't feel the need to see, or make bars only visible on mouse over, etc. It's pretty nifty. It's what lets me have all my buttons in the middle.
I know, not really all that conducive to healing, but I like not having to click on my heals. My mouse is already clicking on my target, that's a precious second or two for a heal if I'm clicking all over the place.

FluidFrames
This is the addon I currently use to move things like my toon's picture/info around as well as other frames in the game. It's a bit buggy, so if you've got something better, then have at it.

SmartBuff/SmartDebuff

Welcome to the meat and potatoes of my healing!
I love this addon.
The little frame you see there is what I use to heal. It shows me who I need to heal when and it even clues me in to how much mana the mana users are down.
I don't need to click on anyone's toon, click once to target someone or just right click on someone's box and it casts Renew (if you're a druid, it's Rejuv). It Right Click casts whatever HoT your toon is capable of. Which is pretty sweet. If I don't want to stop targeting the tank, but the rogue/druid/whoever needs a quick HoT, right click and forget.
It's awesome.

The picture above is the SmartDebuff frame. When something Debuff's someone in the raid and it's either a Magic or a Disease, then SD lights up the persons box with either a red R (for Alt+Rightclick to Dispel) or a blue L(for Alt+Leftclick to Abolish Disease). Again, I don't need to stop targeting the tank to dispel another party member, which makes this very sweet. And you can also turn on/off the class colors. I think I took these pics at two different times Oo.

Smart Buff is kinda fun too. I like it because it gives me a sound and visual reminder that my Fort or DS or Inner Fire is almost up, time to rebuff. And it'll use my middle mouse button wheel to cast the buffs, on me and depending on the setting, anyone in my party too. So yea, pretty useful.

The only draw back I have with SB/SD is this: I don't know what the debuff is or how many different debuffs are on a target. So if your Lock friend Casts Unstable Affliction on the mob, who then reflects it back at them, they better HOLLAR! Because I'll dispel it right quick, and now they're silenced for however long it lasts. -.-

Yea, it's not game breaking, but it is annoying.

Also, keep in mind the examples I put up are custom to me. You can customize it for your own game play. Don't like clicking on someone's box to target them? Then you can turn it off. But that means a Left Click on a box is now your HoT.

Natur EnemyCastBar

Also a very useful addon. This lets me know exactly when I need to reapply my HoTs (and gives the added bonus of letting me know when Inspiration goes away ^.^). Not only does it show your spells, but also anyone near by. Yes, I said nearby. Sometimes, it can be annoying, but generally it isn't. (Middle of Shat and I see the creation bar for 50 million bandages... time to fly!)

In Kara, it's really nice to know when the trash mobs are going to respawn on your heads, so I'd say this is practically a must have. ^.^

MendWatch

This one is new and ZOMG I hearts! Finally something that lets me know where the Frisbee is! It's awesome. You must have as a lvl 70 priest.
No.
Don't argue.
:P
Get it. Seriously though, while I love the sound and the fact that it's visibly bouncing back and forth between people, sometimes you lose track of it, don't know if it's expired in the heat of battle. And it def helps in keeping you mana efficient! Why recast PoM on your tank if they just got it back?

Why haven't you DL'd it yet?!

KLH ThreatMeter

Kitty's Wowinsider article mentions why KLH is great for hunters. Here's why you should have it:
If you see red anywhere near the top of that list, please remember, FADE IS YOUR FRIEND! ^.^ Hell, Fade should be knockin' boots with your fingers every 30 seconds in a massive fight.
But it's always good to know where you are in threat and also it gives you an idea of who might need the next major heal if someone is shooting beyond the tanks.

So, that's what I use.

Sorry if this isn't way indepth, but I figured if you wanted that, you can read the Curse gaming schpeel. ^.^

Toodles for now!

OT: Bear Gram

2007-07-24T19:05:00.001-04:00

So yes, I have a 3 day hiatus and I come back... to ask advice about my bear!

Well, more specifically, my druid.

I have the insanity of many alts. I have one of each class. Most are in the teens to 30 something, but the three highest are:

Giddg Puts the Pointy Ends into the Squishie's so that they bleed
Cayleigh the Love Priest
and

Sashara, a very confused Druid.

I started her out feral, then switched to Boomkin, and recently respec'd her back to feral.

Why?

I have my healz, I have my DPS, now, I have the potential for a tank.

Sasha is 64, so she's only 6 levels away from 70-dom. By having a 70 of each type, I'm looking forward to being able to help anyone in the guild in case they need anything. (And yes, I realize that by playing a druid, I could be all three anyway, but SHHHHH! The monkeys don't need to know.)

Here's my problem. I can DPS like a mofo in kitty. It's fun, it's an awesome way to level, this feral spec.

But I've never tanked. Ever.
And this is what she's supposed to be.

So what do I do? I know, I should go out and peruse some of the blogs out there (BRK's got a friend with a druid blog, I know it!) and read up?

Ever get retardedly nervous about trying something new?

I don't want my first tank adventure to be with anyone but guildies. I tried, way back at lvl 61, to tank Ramparts with a PuG... but some bug in the mapping wouldn't let me click target, and was screwing up my gaming, and I just sucked it. Hard.

Not fun. I felt like the ultimate tool. Since then, I just haven't had the time to go back to her. But I want to try and tank.

I don't have the "Sit back and let things happen" mentality that is prevalent in many, many healers. Giddg got me over that. But there's been a lot of times in instances where I knew more than the tank about the place, and I was marking... and what not. So, yea... I want to try it.

Nyar, now I need a time machine to make me more time for my tank!

____

Ok, that was sufficiently Off Topic (hence OT). Stay tuned for more blathering tomorrow on how to heal your Tank's left testicle back on after Epoch Hunter ate it.

~<3 Cay

ZOMG where have I been?!

2007-07-23T16:30:00.000-04:00

Parents are visiting, I'll be updating again once they go.

Squee! Parents!

Armory Musings - You Rock!

2007-07-20T14:03:00.000-04:00

It burps a bit, but looks really cool! Thanks Armory Musings!

It's nifty:

Primal Mooncloth Set -

[Primal Mooncloth Belt]

[Primal Mooncloth Shoulders]

[Primal Mooncloth Robe]

Whitemend Set -

[Whitemend Hood]

[Whitemend Pants]

Woot! Hover!

W00+! 70! ... now what?

2007-07-19T09:26:00.000-04:00

mars506 said...

Hi there. I just reached 70 recently on my priest, and was wondering what I should do next?

I'm completely in a daze as to which instances I should run to get rep for heroic keys, or even which keys I should be getting for which instances and which heroic instances drop good gear.

All help would be greatly appreciated. :)

Woot! 70! The new level of endgame! If you're thinking like Mars506 and not sure what to do next, you should ask yourself one simple question:

To melt face or not to melt face?

If you always planned on being a healer for endgame, this won't be that hard of a decision for you. But if you're liking the DPS that comes with being Shadow Spec, that is also a viable raid spec to stay at.

However, this is a blog about being a healer, so I'll just go with you having decided to make some love, not some pain. For how to specialize in the pain, I direct you to the DCoE's lovely blog of Shadow Priesty-ness.

On to the love!

For a good idea on where you should get good endgame healer gear Pre-Karazhan, I recommend WoW Loot. I've used this site to map out my gear needs since before I hit 70. They give a good run down on other priestly spec's as well, and have links to where you can get all the gear they show.

From experience, you should definitely run as much as you can to get your heroic keys, since there is a sweet healing off hand you can purchase with Heroic badges. But here are some highlights:

- Get Honor Hold/Thrallmar, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City, Sha'tar, and Keepers of Time rep to Revered for your keys. At Revered, you will get access to a nice healing helm, the [Watcher's Cowl], from CE. Though while it's good stat wise... it's uglier than sin and doesn't match anything you would be wearing at the time. :P At Honor Hold, you can get a nice ring, [Ring of Convalescence], a very good healing ring. Then there's the [Lower City Prayerbook], a nice trinket from Lower City that you can get two of in case your dungeon runs aren't being kind. The Sha'tar and KoT don't really have anything at Revered other than keys, however, you are definitely going to want to get at least the Sha'tar to Exalted, for the [Gavel of Pure Light], and if you can get KoT to Exalted, the [Bindings of the Timewalker] are pretty sweet for bracers.

To get all this rep, you're going to need to run Shattered Halls (Honor Hold/Thrallmar), SteamVaults (CE), Shadow Labyrinth (LC), Black Morass/Old Hillsbrad (KoT) and Mechanar/Arcatraz/Botanica (Sha'tar). Botanica nets you the most out of rep for the Sha'tar, but also takes longer (about 1.5 hours to 2 hours). All of these are great dungeons to run in, because they have pretty good drops. Check WoW Loot for the best ones.

Now, something else to consider. If you're a tailor, and going healer, I strongly (read: gun to your head) suggest you go Primal Mooncloth. Not only can you make nifty 20 slot bags, but you get 2 Primal Mooncloths for the price of one, and the Primal Mooncloth set is a MUST HAVE as your core healing set. I will still be using this set well into Karazhan. That's how core they are.

Also, if you go Primal Mooncloth, when you get Warp Splinter in Botanica and Delilah the Doomsayer in Arcatraz to drop the Whitemend patterns, you'll crow with joy. The Whitemend set compliments the Primal Mooncloth set quite nicely. PMC takes up a chest/shoulder/belt slot, while the Whitemend is helm/pants. Very good combo. In fact, it is the combo of LOVE AND PEACE!

The only catch to the Whitemend patterns, you need a primal nether to craft them (as well as 5 primal mights and 10 Primal Mooncloth), so you'll need to get lucky with one of the last bosses in the lvl 70 instances. I've seen Murmur, the Mechanar guy and Warp Splinter in Bot all drop nethers in normal, so it is possible. But realize, if you get the Whitemend patterns... don't tell me. I will kneecap you. :P

So, I hope this answers your questions Mars506 ^.^

Time for me to go to work. XD

~Cay

Healing Maiden: Cake Walk

2007-07-17T11:26:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the delay, now to the post!

Maiden of Virtue, the 1st optional boss in Karazhan. Being the priestly type you are, if you have a pally or another priest in this fight, then things will be A OK.

Also, you probably won't have to, but begging/coercing/blackmailing your Raid Leader into downing this boss = a must. She drops Shard of the Virtuous which, combined with Moroes's Signet of Unshakable Faith = healing weapon combo of JUSTICE! ^.^

Having two people able to cleanse is good. Maiden does a Holy Fire that ticks for massive amounts of hurt. But Priests/Pallys can cleanse this (not sure about Shammies) so having at least two to get this debuff off your raid is awesome. As always, WoWWiki has a good run down of the fight, but here's the low down on healing Maiden of Virtue.

The Strat:
Ok, you saw the video I posted earlier, so here's a run down of it.

Why are we trying to position ourselves between pillars, you wonder? Well, Maiden does a Holy Wrath (think Holy Chain Lightning) on ranged raiders. What sucks is that it does more damage the more it "jumps". So spread out. Less hassle.

Make sure when you're between pillars, you get as close to the inner circle as possible without hitting her Consecrated area (or Holy Ground, but lets face it, it's a Consecrate XD). Only one tank to concentrate on, but any melee in there is going to need a renew once in a while. That Holy Ground hits for about 200 to 300 a tick.

Every 45 secs or so, Maiden spices things up by casting Repentance. This basically stuns everyone not in the Holy Ground (yes, that means you) for 12 secs as she beats on the tank. 12 seconds of no healing the tank, so be sure to top of the tank constantly. PoM, Renew always, but if you're not cleansing a Holy Fire, make sure you time your GHeals are a little heavy handed. Also, because you might need to, I usually come out of the stun either starting a GHeal if the tank isn't that bad off, or with a PoM/Shield if I need a second to FHeal, GHeal. Also don't go too crazy, your other healer is probably in the same OH SHIT! mode.

Otherwise... Maiden really is easy. Pat yourself on the back with a job well done and pray for that Shard of Yum yumness.

___

Sorry about the delay in today's post. I started it this morning, had to go to work, then work was really busy! So I'm finishing up here at home. XD

Mew.

Crossing the Lines

2007-07-16T13:10:00.000-04:00

What's with the animosity of gamer's of one type of game towards gamers of another?

I went to a party on Saturday, to see some super keen fireworks. That Saturday is also the Vampire LARP day, and was being held at the house where the game usually is.

Well, there wasn't going to be much LARPing going on, but people brought their Magic the Gathering cards and many games ensued.

Fio and I enjoy a game of MtG every once in a while. Fio has the decks I won't play against, and I have my pretty merfolk deck in purple foil card holders. But anywho, during one of the games, some one over hears my convo with Fio about raid on Sunday, and another person at the table smiles and says something about Molten Core. Ahh, another WoW person. But before I can get a few questions/jabs/air out of my mouth, another person at the table says something towards the line of, "Ug, let's just keep this WoW Free, ok?"

The look of disgust on his face is plain as day.

This isn't just gamers vs WoW though. I know many table top players who have similar feelings vs LARPers too. So... what gives?

I don't understand it. But Fio and I are pretty well rounded in our geekiness.

Any thoughts?

PS: I tried posting this yesterday, but didn't finish before passing out. And my pc restarted... so no saved draft T.T

Healing Moroes: Kara's Raid Check

2007-07-14T12:28:00.001-04:00

It took AC three weeks of banging our heads against this guy. On our third week, we got him to cough up the purple.

Moroes is tough. For someone who is used to just sitting back and healing, he's more so.

Moroes isn't alone in the fight. He has four undead friends who share his space, chitchat with, and make our lives living hell. He has a total of six friends, but they rotate each week. Those four adds and Moroes's annoying Garrote make this a CC Fight of Doom.

Again, WoW Wiki gives an awesome strat to deal with him and his four adds of the week. Here's what it's like being a squishi healy type in the fight.

The Strat:
Ok, this fight is all about your raids methods of CCing the four adds before taking on Moroes. Out of the 5 times I've done this, the best combo to date is 2 Shackles/1 Trap. Yup, that's right. You aren't sitting back and just making sure the tank doesn't die this time. You're shackling, preferably every 15 - 20 seconds, one of the 4 adds. In fact, during this fight, I usually assign the other healer to deal with the MT and OT while I've worked on keeping the rest of the raid up.

Both the MT and OT are on Moroes and both are fighting for Aggro too. They need to. Moroes has a nasty habit of Gouging one tank and then Blinding the other, and then he prances his psychotic way over to the DPS/Squishi/Non-Plate wearers and merrily one shots them into Oblivion. Druids can cure Poison on the Blind, so that's not a total loss. But it's nerve wracking. Also, Moroes will periodically Vanish during the fight, then SURPRIZ BUTTSECKS some on with a Garrote which does 1000 HP every 3 seconds for 5 mins. It can be gotten rid of three ways: Pally Bubble, Dwarf Stoneskin, and Mage Iceblock. That's it.

So, we've established that you have your shackle, that gets one add out of the fight. What about the other three? Well, if you have a Shadow Priest of Awesome with you, Great! Another shackle, and one that lasts longer than yours. (Ok, maybe there is no math to back that up, but I find every SP I come across, their shackles always outlast mine. Rarg.)

Two adds taken care of, what about the other two? Well, try to have a BRK (aka Hunter of PewPew!) who can chain trap with you. Big bonus. Huge bonus. Mega bonus to keeping that 3rd add out of the fight.
Down to one add left to smush. This is usually the one that needs to die first. Lady Catriona Von'Indi - Holy Priest, or Baroness Dorothea Millstipe - Shadow Priest are the usual contenders for this prestigious rank of "MUST DIE NOW." They're squishi, have low HPs, and have the top most annoying abilities (Holy heals - duh, SP has the Mana Burn of "For the Love of God and all that is Holy, MY ANUS is BLEEDING!".)

In our last run, we didn't have a tank to spare for the two adds who needed to die (which is the squishi first, following by the trapped one) before all DPS was one Moroes. But we were able to get by with the Rogue Stunlocking the priest (we had Holy). This means all my attention was on that rogue. Let me tell you. Healing a rogue tank is a serious rush. They don't take a steady stream of damage like tanks usually do. For Luc, our rogue, I opened with my Prayer of Mending before the fight, shackled MY add as soon as MT pulled the posse, threw a quick renew on MT, then started a GHeal for Luc. Yes, he had opened with a Cheap Shot, which means he had 4 secs to start pwning Holy Add, but he started that when I was Casting my 3 sec shackle and 1.5 Global cool down Renew on MT. In the case of a rogue tank, Over healing a mite = A OK in my book.
After that first GHeal, it's PoM again. In order to gauge when you should start that next heal, I recommend having something like Natur EnemyCastBar. It gives you a timer on all cooldowns on abilities from allies as well as enemies. I have a 70 rogue, so I know how a stun lock works, and from that I can pretty much guess when Luc is going to need me to heal him most, if he's stuck in between cool downs.

If you have ADD, this fight is for you. While Luc's back may have felt a little sunburn as my focus was extreme on him, you still need to keep an eye out for the rest of the raid, MT and OT especially. Depending on your DPS output, the 1st add should go down, no problem.

If you do have a feral who can go tank for this fight, bonus. Our first time taking Moroes down, it was the Feral/MT on Moroes, and out OT on the adds. With this combo, I was OT healer but with liberal crossover in case MT/Feral needed it.

Ok, first add, out of the way, now its on to Trapped add. In our Rogue Tank situation, well, there was no way Luc would survive the trapped guy, so BRK sent in Hobbes in all his kitty fury to tank. Hunter pets can vary in the healing feel, but as long as you think of them as a slightly undergeared tank, then your set. PoM, Renew, GHeals, all are good. 2nd add should go down reasonably quick. If you have the OT on the add, then it's business as usual.
And remember, your MT loves you still. Keep an eye on his/her health!

By now, you're probably wondering "What the Hell! No time for rapage of the five sec rule! T.T" But this isn't true. With pet tank/OT, you'll get a few breaks as your Renews/PoM give you a bit of a buffer to get some 5sr luvins. Pacing yourself in this fight is a good thing.

2nd Add down, doggy pile on Moroes! (You did remember to shackle that Focus target of yours, yes?) and here's where the fun begins. By now, at least one or two people will have Garrote on them, and are slowly bleeding their lives away.

All that's going through this Squeaker's mind (and on Vent) is this: ZOMG WHY ISN'T HE GARROTING ME! T.T

It's random, but if you're a dwarf healer (pally or priest) , getting the Garrote means one less person you need to keep an eye on. Stoneskin has a 3 min cooldown, but I have been able to use SS twice in a fight.

As soon as Moroes is everyone's target, whip out the Shadow Fiend, PoM the MT, and take a break! If you have the Bangle of Endless Blessing up, use it now. It's the best tricket for ShadowFiend mana lurvins. This also gives your other healer a bit of a break as well since both are now concentrated on the MT/OT (MT/Feral) combo.

Now, it's a DPS race. Your raid has to DPS him down quickly, before those who have Garrote sap all the healers mana. Ideally, you want the tank and OT to have the Garrote, because your healing them anyway. Keep your renew up at all times, as this will mitigate the Garrote if your tank has it. If you need to pot, do it at 50-60% of your mana as opposed to later. You never, ever want to shout OOM unless Moroes is down to 1% and you can help wand him to death (that is, if you can before your shackle breaks and then your add comes to eat your face.)

Is he dead yet? Good! Now RUN! If this is your cherry breaking day on a Moroes death, you're going to be pooped, OOM, and generally bleeding to death. Run out of the room and your shackle will disappear. Hooray! Time for purples! For the holy priest in my, only one thing on Moroes drops that is nifty keen: Signet of Unshakable Faith.

It hasn't dropped yet, but it's ok. I'm patient.

Double Woot! Fio joins the Bloggin'

2007-07-14T01:35:00.000-04:00

Say hello to Balance of Power, my husband's awesome blog!

I am excited. He has lots to say about WoW Math, Boomkins, and other geeky things that I know people are looking to smursh about.

Yay!

Woot! OT

2007-07-13T21:17:00.001-04:00

What makes me a happy panda?

I have made it to the Cool Blogs!

/cheer

Healing Attumen : Kara's First Hook

2007-07-13T11:50:00.000-04:00

So, AC just started raiding Karazhan in the beginning of June. I'm main healer being the only raiding Holy Priest in the guild, and my back up healer is Hathorn, an awesome guy who respec'd from Boomkin to Resto to help me out in the healz dept. I heart teh Hathorn ^.^

Anywho, this is about healing. Right! Well, Attumen, believe it or not, wasn't as hard as we thought. He was actually quite spankable. WoW Wiki gives an awesome guide to most of the bosses, but here's the skinny on what it's like to heal during Attumen. (Oh, and our MT has a raiding hunter on another server, so he knows all about Kara. Bonus!)

The Strat: Midnight is sitting all by her lonesome in her stall. The OT ruins her exciting day by thwacking her. Fun! Before the OT gets that battle gleam in his/her eye, Prayer of Mending is on their ass.
Once they engage, I give them a few seconds, then Renew. At this point, your MT and other healer are waiting until Midnight is down to 95%. Then she lets out her whinny of "ASSHAT SAVE ME!" and Attumen comes to the show. MT picks him up right quick and other healers job is to watch him.
All DPS is focused on Midnight for this. All my attention is on the OT. I am keeping a constant Renew up(15 secs, so that's 2 opportunities for mana/5 to kick in), tossing a Prayer of Mending when I need a second to get my GHeal off, but unlike some healers out there, I don't down rank my healz. I only have so much button space, and so far, I haven't gone Out Of Mana. GHeal gives you an excellent chunk of healage, (with +1670 healing raid buffed, mine hits for about 4500/7200 crit) so abuse that 5 sec rule like a 20 cent hookah.
If the OT is doing his job right (and you've faded a few times after that bitchin' GHeal, right? *glare*) no aggro for you, and you should call out the Shadow Fiend before Midnight hits the 55% health mark. Don't worry, you won't need to watch for that: the RL, OT, DPS will let everyone know.
At 25%, Attumen mounts Midnight (*refrains from dirty .... nm*) and, this is important: AGGRO IS WIPED.

Don't breathe.

I mean it.

Now the real fun begins. I switch to healing MT now, since OT has done his/her job (Well done!) and Attumen really starts dishing some pain. Also, he'll randomly charge the squishies now, so it's like Russian Roulette on who gets hit next. We try keeping the highest armored range in front (BRK got it in the teeth last time XD) but I still toss up a Shield on myself... just to be safe.
Both healers are concentrating on MT now, so barring mana probs (molest 5 sec rule! I command it!) the rest of the fight is a non issue. Celebrate! If you're a squishi like me, you'll be looking for the Phat lootz of Gloves of Saintly Blessing. Our first time on Attumen, those dropped. I was both pleased and frustrated. I had just enchanted my Hallowed Handwraps with the healing enchant -.- *grumble* Wasted mats *grumble* But in the end not wasted. ^.^

Next post, Moroes! The Steward Who Throws a Bitchin' Party!

Edit: Fio pointed out an error. It wasn't 55% of Midnight's health that Moroes... umm Midnight... the two become one? *snerk* Ok, 12 yr old mode off. They become one mob at 25%. Corrected!

AC downs Maiden

2007-07-12T19:11:00.000-04:00

Aetherial Circle Downs Maiden

It's my second video. Be kind!

Blackheart the Inciter: I hate you.

2007-07-12T14:56:00.000-04:00

So I was pondering what to put in here next, and due to the Shadow Labs run last night, I figured I'd throw up my .02 on this big buttheaded brute (not the words I initially used to describe him... they were a bit more... colorful o.O)

When I first encountered Blackbutt, it was when Fio and I were baby 70s. No Primal Mooncloth set yet, so my +healing/ mana/5 was a bit lacking. But I was excited to get my first Karazhan key frag and excitement (and caffeine) can do wonders ^.^

The first few pulls and first boss in Shadow Labrynth, very easy, IMO. Being a Fear Ward priest, the big Doomwarden's were not as hard as they are when you don't have Fear ward. Ambassador Hellmaw is also much easier with a Fear Ward on the tank, but not impossible.

So Hellmaw is a broken piece of demon goo on the ground, now its time for the next room. "This place sucks. I hate this next part." This from my Fio. He had been in SL before me, had made it to the last boss, Murmur, before the healing in his party really messed things up. (It was a shadow priest who decided to DPS instead... which got the tank killed. Messy, messy messy.)

This room, had 4 and 5 pulls. Oh my. Our group consisted of 1 CC. Sheep. That was it. After a few laughable tries at the pulls with just the sap, we decided a different tactic. This is where the NEKKID PRIEST was born. We discovered that if I stripped down to my skivves, got away from the party and Mind Controlled a mob, let them kill it, then they all come angrily at me and smush me, we could mill the insanity pulls down to threes. (DISCLAIMER: I don't recommend the above tactic unless you're 1) bored, 2) desperate like we were 3) or have about an hour or two to waste on top of the time the instance takes). The good news is I have perfected the death run back into SL.... -.-

So, an hour or so later... we're clear for Buttface. If you're not familiar with what he does, it's a few things: He does an AoE knockback that hits for about 1.5K on a clothie, and hits hard. The other retardedly annoying thing he does is Incite Chaos. This is a 12 second Mind Control where everyone in the party takes the lessons they learned in the Murkblood School of Fighting and starts beating on each other. Blackhead just sits there and laughs, not attacking, so that's a bonus... sort of. Suffice to say, we wiped three times on him, and only achieved victory via pure luck. During our attempts, Ventrillo was not a safe place to be. My father was in the Navy. I know how sailor's cuss.

That was the first time I encountered AssHat the Retard. I still don't like the fight, but I have some tips that will hopefully conserve some mana for you. Running out of mana was my biggest issue there, especially during the MC, but there is some mitigation.

First, realize that they've nerfed most of the ways to stay out of the fight. If you have a hunter in your party, don't depend on their frost trap to keep you out of the fight. There's either a bug or something equally annoying that makes the hunter or his pet just start attacking you.

Also, trying to spam a dreamless sleep pot the millisecond before the MC goes off is pretty much luck, and you'll more than likely be knocked out of it immediately ( I think the feral druids are bugged, I kept getting hit by ours from across the room.)

What you must do is make sure you're far enough away from the tank to not get hit by the knockback. After each MC, DON'T HEAL ANYONE.

Let me repeat: DO NOT HEAL ANYONE.

The MC is an aggro wipe. Make sure everyone knows to not even bandage unless they are the tank. Any healing done and you're Buttface's first target. He likes to blow all the cooldowns in the MC, so your fade is going to be at 20 seconds or so, and then you're smushed, have 15 seconds of free heals, and then you're on the floor conversing with the dust bunnies.

Once the tank has aggro back, give him a little bit more time. Blackhead doesn't hit tanks that hard, and at this point, you'll probably be scrambling to keep everyone else up.

Also, if you haven't already, get rid of Holy Nova. Its a mana sink in MC fights. It really is. I just recently respec'd to get rid of Light Well and Holy Nova, and while it was annoying that I was MC'd into casting Mass Dispel instead, it's not instant cast, so there's a chance someone in your party will interrupt you.

Other than that, just pray he doesn't kill someone. Also, as a last bit of advice: yes, sometimes some one can run back in time to help with the fight if it's still going on, but I don't recommend it. We did that once, and Blackbutt aggro'd on the person who walked back into the instance after his MC... and he reset. We still killed him, but we had to do it twice practically.

So, that is the grr-ness of Blackbutt the Bitchwalla.

Why do I love to heal? Oh let me count the ways...

2007-07-11T13:52:00.000-04:00

I didn't start out a healer you know. Last year, a friend of mine was trying to convince the husband to play WoW. Jas was a bit skeptical, he'd had some bad problems with MMO's in the past, and wasn't eager to try his hand at it again. But our friend bought him a copy and just said "Try it."

So he did. Our friend had many alliance toons, so he made a NE druid, named him Fiordhraoi (Gaelic translation = "Crotchy weirdo druid"), and well, he liked it. I have a habit of watching him play tons of video games (and play a few myself) because at the time, his PC was shinier than mine. And I liked it too. I wanted to play.

So out we go to EBgames (our home away from home), nab me a copy, get home, install, and I'm there at the races screen. What did I choose to play? My first MMO (Guild Wars didn't count since I only played it for like ... 1 week) ever.... Well, I don't want to play something smchexy, everyone plays something schmexy. So NE's and Humans are out. Dwarves.... not terribly inspiring.... OMG gnomes are so CUTE! OMG Pigtails of DOOM!

And Giddg was born. My gnome rogue. Because rogues are easy to level, and again, I was just starting out.

Fast forward a couple of months, and after some guild drama (we had joined Hyppie's guild, but we left because of some mental retardation coming from the officers) Fio, Hyppie and I, along with some friends created Aetherial Circle. The 18+ guaranteed that we wouldn't have to deal with most of the grief we had gotten from the last guild. Around this time, I had an alt (my first!) Phelyx. She was a mage I made to play with Fio's mage, Miloc. But even though I leveled her to 20 something... I just couldn't get a good vibe going. Being squishier then my rogue yet dealing damage seemed to be a lose/lose situation.

Then, as some of the people in the guild started hitting 60(yay Fio hit 60!)they were starting to get a bit bummed. Fio was an awesome balance boomkin of doom, and he can heal quite well too. But the instances were getting tougher even for him. So I figured, well, why not? Hyppie explained to me that healers were always a sought after commodity on pretty much any server, and if I made a dwarf priest, I could have my pick of anything. "Fear Ward."

So, back to the character creation screen I go, this time to whip me up some Dwarven Priest. After toying with the generator for 15 mins or so, I got the look I wanted. They spoke with a Scottish brough, so I wanted something appropriate to name her. Rhiannon. That's what I'll name her.

THAT NAME IS NOT AVAILABLE.

Damn. Ok, what about Rhia? NO. Shannon? Nice Try.

Ug. Ok, I need a new inspiration for a name. Hrm.... or do I want to watch Firefly again. WAIT! I put a little Irish spin on it and whoop! Cayleigh. Sweet.

Next advice I get, "As soon as you hit level ten, start putting points into your Shadow Tree. You want to do as much damage as you can." Ok, shadow tree.... well, yea, that's a lot of damaging type things. Can't I level holy?

*crickets**Sound of a thump, followed by cats making noise and laughter*

Ummm, guess not. Apparently, if I tried going for healing right away, it would take me forever to level. So ok, I guess I'll conform. Just this once. Besides, Fio could heal all the lowbie instances I'd need to go through anyway.

So, months later, about 4 weeks from BC release, and whoop! Cayleigh is 60! I had been good, leveling her mostly shadow (and actually enjoying it for a while) but at level 57, I decided it was time to go holy and start healing.

Holy shit, what a rush!!! I was healing BRD (keep in mind, I was still a nooblet at this game, even though Cay was my second 60, this was my first time actually balls-to-the-wall healing) and went OOM but we killed the boss and only the squishi died!
From the squishi - "Steph, don't DPS the boss. Just sit back and heal. We'll cover the rest."

Sorry -.-

And after many adventures of learning that Fade is my friend, amongst other things, we come to the Cayleigh of today.

Few things I've learned and (love) about being a healer:

1) Everyone wants to group with you. I mean everyone. This can be a good thing (Oh, I need 4 more badges for my Tears of HEaven offhand, who's up for some heroic Mech?) to a bad thing: (*while in the middle of some other dungeon run five tells of* - "do u want 2 run X plz!?!one!"). So you'll never really have to worry about not being able to do any instance (unless all the tanks are afk/not on T.T).

2) As a healer, you have one of the three most important jobs in the game, so it makes things much, much more interactive then just smushing buttons and getting big numbers that gain you aggro (with mobs and other players).

3) Guaranteed loot in most cases. Hunters/Shamans, Feral Druids/Rogues/Warriors can all quibble over who should get what (because it does happen in PuGs... a lot... unfortunately) but as the healer, if it has +healing, or in a priest's case, spirit, intel, mana/5, you won't have any one else to compete with.

4) How do I describe the feeling of awesome success? I don't know. But it's a fuzzy feeling, and I'm prone to them. I guess I'll have to get into this step more later on. But suffice to say, I felt retardedly awesome during that Black Morass run BRK went with us on.

So those are my reasons for playing my priest. It's not a great list, but more things will come in time. Yes, I will say one thing: it does kinda suck that you can't solo any more, but a solid DPS set will see you through those tough times.

And for now, musings off. Gotta close up the library. And like, do work. oO

Toodles for now!

Introductions must be made

2007-07-11T01:46:00.001-04:00

Well, I blame BRK for putting this in my head, but what the hell: his enthusiasm to show how much hunters pwn has inspired me.

My name's Stephi, and I play a Dwarf Priest on World of Warcraft's Drenden server. It's a PvE server where I spend most of my fun time playing with my guild, Aetherial Circle. My husband, Jason, aka Fiordhraoi (story on the name later) is the GM, and we have a merry time playing this game as well as other types: RPGs, Larp, video games, etc.

We're huge geeks. Huge. We met at a LARP, he proposed to me at the same game 3 years later.... HUGE. FREAKIN'. GEEKS. Our minions will be as well.

Anywho, as for this blog, I wanted some place to put my thoughts about being a healer. There's plenty of rebels out there who enjoy in the new DPS face of priesthood, and while I don't judge them harshly, I make love, not pain. It's the kind of priest I am. I'd rather heal your face back on than melt it off. ^.^

There's more I would like to say about this whole hubbawho, but I just realized... it's 2 am... I should probably get some sleep.

Bah, sleep. To a WoW'r? Doesn't exist!

Oh yes, it does. Gotta pay the bills somehow. ;)