Category Archives: Raids

Old Content in Mists of Pandaria

As most people will know, old content is a biggie for me. I love it. I love it for several reasons:

- I like achievements.

- I like seeing old stuff

- I like blasting through and destroying bosses

- I like rare drops, pets, mounts, patterns, collecting and gear.

I also like old content for these reasons:

- I love Open Raid and the way I can bring 25 people together

- I like the fact I am known for providing a good atmosphere and fun raids

- I like the fact I can see people coming out of their shells. As we have a core group who are on a first name, friendly basis, and more people attend regularly and come to regular raids, they too begin to use first names, to be more vocal on mumble, to chat more and joke more.

- I like seeing the excitement of people who haven’t got to see content at it’s equivalent level. It doesn’t MATTER if you faceroll through something. You get to see it, and enjoy it, and embark on it and explore it. You still get to get killed by percentage based mechanics! Some things will always one shot a person, that’s what they’re meant to do. The fire in Mimiron might not hurt when you push that big red button but it’s still one hell of a lot of fire!!!

- I like getting other people achievements and like seeing them happy.

Nothing is more fun than one of our good time raids on a Friday night when people are having a drink and a giggle, streaming us or frapsing, laughing at our mistakes, cheering over kills, ooh-ing and aah-ing over rare drops and giggling over accidentally getting people killed or when someone accidentally gets themselves stuck on the edge of a platform. (LOOKING AT YOU, GROMBLE).

So, it’s nearly Mists of Pandaria. And a lot of my regular attenders are asking me, what are the plans?

So! Here they are.

Launch date: 25th September.

There will be no old content for the month of October. This gives us one month to level, enjoy levelling, gear up, play around, see what’s there.

Then, things will kick off again on October 26th. My plan is to take a 10 man group in to Throne of the Four Winds Heroic and see how it goes. If we can smash our way through things without much difficulty then things will proceed as follows:

- Raid nights with a clear of Heroic BWD & Heroic BoT

- Raid nights with achievements for BWD & BoT

- Raid nights with achievements for Firelands

- Raid nights with heroics for Firelands

- Raid nights with achievements for Dragon Soul

- Raid nights with heroics for Dragon Soul

- Raid night clears of Ulduar, ICC, ToGC, Naxx etc – but less regularly.

By the time we reach the end of the Christmas break, I aim to have full meta achievements and drakes for all of my “core” team. Ie, those that attend regularly and whatnot.

Then there is the question of legendaries.

We’ve been working on a Val’anyr for a while, but there are other legendaries to work on. I expect when we DO finish this val’anyr we will leave Ulduar for a good 6 months as we’ve all had enough of it! But, in the works I have:

- 1 Val’anyr – in progress

- 2 Shadowmournes – in progress. Both on shards.

- 1 Dragonwrath – not started. This is mainly something we want to work towards to get a guild member one for Jane Doe.

- 1 Legendary Dagger set – not started. I don’t have a rogue in my core group of people. I need to either find one, or one of us needs to re roll to one!

Other than that,

- 1 Val’anyr – not started. For me, one day. I would like one.

If there are any rogues out there, or even any casters, who are interested in joining us regularly – give me a shout! We are EU based and the caster would be willing to, you know. Be in Jane Doe.

August 16, 2012Permalink Leave a comment

Open Raid and the saga of holyxpala

Since the introduction of cross-realm raiding, I have made a large amount of use of Open Raid. It’s a great site and I love the system. In fact yesterday I had a prolonged conversation with a Blizzard GM about how great it was. I would like to point out I am a MASSIVE fan of the service and look forward to carrying on as a regular user in Mists and beyond. This post is about a USER of the system, not the system itself. My only comments about the system is that I would like to see some consistency in discipline and how members who behave badly are dealt with, which I reference at the end of the blog post.

Since kick off I have run:

4 x Ulduar 25 man

2 x Firelands 25 man

2 x ICC 25 man

1 x ALL TBC & Vanilla Raids

In the works I also have a Throne of the Four Winds normal achievements run and 2 more Ulduar 25s in the making. I run raids either every week or every other week (dependent on circumstances) on a Friday night and plan on continuing to do so until Mists. Once Mists releases, I’ll be having a month off, but by the end of October I want to be starting off again, kicking off with Tier 11 heroics.

Running these raids is challenging. I do very little DPS or healing because I’m herding cats. Beforehand, I’m checking open raid almost hourly to check sign ups and view achievements and player information and progress. I work on spreadsheets which allow me to amalgamate the majority vote for achievements (I work by the method of – what the majority needs will get done). I make Mumble compulsory, so once invites are done I ensure everyone is on Mumble. I take note of those who are no shows and manage my reserve list. I manage who has received a rare mount in the past 4 weeks (to ensure fairness, I make sure people who get a rare mount are excluded from rolling on any others that should drop for a period of 4 weeks) and ensure that people aren’t needing on BoEs, taking patterns they don’t have a profession for or just generally being a dick.

I have a little spiel I ramble out when everyone is on Mumble. I ask for respect to all other people, ask that if people have an issue they inform me in WHISPER, rather than blasting other members in raid chat or on voice chat. I keep people informed that we are an 18+ raid and to expect bad language!, and bad jokes. However I will not accept any racism or racist jokes, or the usage of the word “rape” in my raid as a gaming term. I welcome chat and conversation and ask people to get involved. Because my old content raids are there for enjoyment, they are there for people to have fun and enjoy themselves. And you know, on the whole, people do.

This is me, on Open Raid:

Sitting at 80% friendly so far, with 455 plus votes. I think this means I’m doing pretty well. I realise this is nothing compared to the people who are half way to exalted, but seeing a I’m actually, it seems, comparably quite a LIGHT user of the system, I’m doing pretty well. Yes I am blowing my own trumpet, but it has relevance.

So. Here are the comments that I’ve received so far on Open Raid (in reverse chronological order). Now you can probably ignore if you want to be objective anything coming from Grokknar, Demeternoth & Gromble because they are all close friends of mine. Some of the others have, through attendance at raids, become friends:

Now I am genuinely proud of these. I work my BUTT off to ensure that people enjoy their raids with me – I want them to. They aren’t about getting the most bosses down or kicking the most ass, they are about HAVING FUN. And fun is had. By almost all.

Open Raid’s policy on comments

Now you can see in that list that there are three hidden comments which have been downvoted by other people that have seen my profile.

The first, from Vexy:

This amusingly came shortly after my raid evaluation, which included the following;

One presumes it took him a month to reply because he didn’t check his profile. Regardless.

The next:

And my response:

As of yet….no response.

I think that one can safely be ignored.

So, Open Raid’s comment policy. Requests friendly and constructive. Now…let’s completely disregard Shirvan and look at Vexy.

My comment on his profile page was not friendly, but neither was it mean, or cruel, or offensive. I simply stated facts. He did need on several BoEs despite it being in the rules not to. He did /spit on players repeatedly. And I wouldn’t invite him again. The whole point of a comments and reputation such as this is surely to inform others. Inform others of quality players, and inform them of poor players. When I fill in the full evaluation after a raid, which I always do, I always leave a comment, not just a vote. Because I believe these things only have relevance if we are open and clear. There is no need to be discourteous but there is a need to be honest.

If we just pretend no bad eggs exist in the bunch, then the rating system is pointless because there’s never any reasoning behind anything. We have to provide reasoning and evidence. There must always be evidence to back up claims. This is why I have thousands of screenshots. Because you should always keep evidence.

His comment on my page however – well for a start it was quickly downvoted into oblivion by other visiters, but what this does is give me a negative *undeserved* reputation. Him stating that I am a “bad leadr” is not constructive. It is not stating facts. He is tarnishing my reputation. However, I let it slide cos…well, I’m lazy.

Then, holyxpala entered the ring.

Last week, I ran an ICC 25. I stated beforehand, as I always do, which parts of the legendary would be reserved and which wouldn’t. I confirmed the roster. I did everyone’s achievements, and I uploaded the spreadsheet for ALL to see which stated EXACTLY which achievements we would be going for – this did NOT include Lich King heroic (as the majority of people needed Neck Deep in Vile & I’ve Been Waiting a Long Time For This, so they took priority). This was also stated at the start of the raid.

Before the Marrowgar pull, this chap was already starting to grate on me slightly. He was spamming me with whispers, spamming me with WHY NOT LK HEROIC, WHY NOT. I explained on mumble, and in chat, that we would be doing LK normal, for the achievements. I then said to him that he had every right to leave before we pulled Marrowgar to be left unsaved to the instance and able to carry on. There was no response.

Throughout the rest of the raid (which took 2 and a half hours) he whinged about the jokes people were making on Mumble (which mostly consisted of “the worst possible jokes you can think of relating to plays on words of warcraft terms EVER”), he whinged about the speed of our clear, he whinged about the time of our break, he made offensive remarks about people being “old”, and he had some dodgy and offensive macros for ressing or particular spells – “come alive again you wanker” being one of them. He also paid very little attention and was…well, as much of a nuisance as someone can be. I got whispers off at least 7 or 8 individuals who aren’t in my guild about his behaviour, and then guild chat (usually 8-10 members of the raids come from Jane Doe, my guild, itself) was abuzz with about what a pain he was being.

So. The raid ended, despite the whinging from holyxpala, and evaluation time came round. Now, I have a friend. He is…not known for mincing his words, and he also had no idea (having never used Open Raid before) that comments you made on a page appeared publically. So, he may have given holyxpala a rating and MAY (ie did) call holyxpala a (changed font colour – highlight over only if you don’t mind STRONG expletives) “whinging shitcunt. Do not take anywhere”. Now…yes. This does break the Open Raid policy of being friendly or constructive. However it is certainly information.

My own comment to holyxpala was as follows:

All true. His attitude was poor, he was particularly rude, and I wouldn’t invite him again.

What he did then was get defensive, swapping between his own characters (which are all linked, so I think although his intent was to make it seem like different people were commenting, he just made himself look a little silly:

(as a reminder again, these are in reverse order – newest at the top, so start at the bottom)

I’m a particular fan of the way he keeps on adding extra comments to…add weight to his cause. And the last one just strikes me as “petulent child strikes back” – “and don’t worry I don’t even wanna join your lame humourless raids”.

Anyway. Other members of the raid (COMPLETELY uninitiated by me, may I add, commented on his page;

By this point, he’s just digging himself such a big hole.

So at this point, he reports Gnoble – or someone does. Who receives an email from Open Raid, which I can’t remember word for word, except it included a few clauses

- You wouldn’t speak to a stranger in the street using that language

- You must never comment on a raid page that person has joined

- You must never comment on a raid page that person has organised

- You must never comment on that person’s profile

all of which carried the penalty of profile deletion.

Now…I understand what Gnoble did was crass and unnecessary but I feel the above is completely over the top. Really, totally over the top.

Firstly – the statement about speaking to a stranger in the street that way. This chap wasn’t a stranger. This dude was a total pain in the behind who upset several people and caused problems for several others. To be honest if someone was that much of a dick to me in real life for two and a half hours, I probably would be ready to throw a string of expletives at him.

So, I decided to put my own report in, which said:

Hi There,
I’d like to report this member for a variety of issues.
1) Tarnishing my reputation on Open Raid. As you can see, I run quite a few raids. I also have a pretty much 100% happy raiding base. In my entire Open Raid history, I have had 2 justified negative comments on my page. The first was a response to my negative comment on Vexy the death knight, as I’d mentioned him needing on BoEs, /spitting on raid members and whatnot. His negative comment appeared after this. The second was unjustified and stated “did not turn up for raid” – when the person was not selected or at any point added to my real ID. The third came from this person. This person came to my raid on his paladin last Friday. He was abusive to me in whispers. He spammed me all night with questions which were answered several times on Mumble. He was abusive to other raid members. He had incredibly offensive macros and emotes set up. He complained about the raid throughout. When I stated at the start of the raid we would be doing Lich King normal, not heroic, I gave him the choice to leave. He CHOSE to stay. There would have been no repercussions to him leaving and I never said there would be any. 
2) Another raider who attended the raid then made an off the cuff remark on his profile page, which he was then chastised for with a ridiculous over reaction about how he must never comment on this user’s presence on OR ever again. AND most amusingly how he would surely “never communicate with a stranger this way” – now this paladin was not a stranger. This paladin was, quite frankly, a pain in the behind for a three hour raid. He wasn’t a stranger. I seriously recommend you think about rewording your emails. Whereas a warning was justified, he probably shouldn’t have used the coarse language, the email is an over reaction.
3) This paladin then used his other character (presumably to avoid detection) to comment on the other raider’s page, as well as on my own page.
He is tarnishing MY reputation as a raid leader and tarnishing the reputations of my raids with such comments as “well I don’t want to come to your lame humourless raids anyway” (please see Gnoble’s page for these comments).
I would like to see him suffer the same repercussions as Gnoble and have his comments about my raids completely removed from my page and from Gnoble’s page as they bear exactly the same weight as Gnoble’s original comment.
I will be sending this in PM to moderators if I do not receive a response or do not see adequate action being taken as I believe action is warranted.
Many thanks
Elsen

Using the inbuilt “report a user” function I sent this off yesterday.

This user is tarnishing MY reputation as an open raid user and raid leader. This is inappropriate. If there is a warning given to someone for swearing, I believe that a warning, if not a ban, should be put in place for this member due to his behaviour.

Now at the end of the day, I understand he’s probably just a kid, and that he may not know what he’s saying, or care. And I know that my report is a gross over reaction as well, because really at the end of the day, it’s a load of bloody pixels and…it doesn’t really matter.

But what I would like to see is some repercussions. If this is a website that is supposed to be community monitored, then it needs to be done so adequately. I haven’t, as of yet, received a response from Open Raid to my report. I will be waiting for one and will re send it if I don’t get one. I am happy with NOBODY being disciplined for negative words or negative reactions, or EVERYONE. It cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another.

Anyway. That’s as things lie at the moment. Once Mists drops I look forward to making use of the system again to run T11, T12 and T13 raids, as well as the LK and earlier content. I really do think it’s a great system and the people who thought of it are doing a fantastic job in joining up the World of Warcraft community and deserve a large round of applause for this.

I’d be interested to see what other people think about Open Raid, how they’ve found it or interacted with it, and how they’ve dealt with problem players or other issues.

Many thanks

Elsen

August 7, 2012Permalink 3 Comments

Raiding 101: Listening to Your Raid Leader

Everyone loves a good opinion. We all have them. We all think we know the best, have the right method and the best understanding. But there are certain times in both life and in game where FUCK thinking you know the best. There is someone in charge, someone higher up, someone employed to be or voted to be or plain and simply PUT in charge. One of these times is raiding.

Please note all statements inside this blog post are opinions, mine.

When it’s OK to talk

Everyone raids in a different environment, and I think having raided in seven guilds over the past four years I have a decent breadth of experience to pull from. I have raided in a huge variety of situations, from 10 man casual to 25 man hardcore and everything in between. However regardless of this I think that there are certain times you shouldn’t be speaking. These are:

- during a fight

- when the raid leader is giving out important information – pull timers, strategy instructions, information.

When I was in Praetorian Guards on Terenas and Adept on Draenor, I raided 4-5 nights a week. I got “trained” into not moving off my chair unless it was during an allocated break, of not listening to music or the TV (I’m easily distracted so would lose my concentration with the TV on) of not typing in /g during raids, of watching videos and reading strats beforehand, of…well of all these things. There was also a very strict hierarchy when it came to speech.

I currently raid in a casual group, we’re 5/8 at the moment and hitting a bit of a brick wall on Blackhorn. This is very different for me. Sometimes I struggle with it. I’ve worked out why:

- I don’t understand why drinks/snacks/the toilet is not done before the raid start and during the break. With unannounced AFKs or non-designated AFKs, it seems like up to 30 minutes of time just disappears. I’m reminding myself of Tib, our crazy RL from PG, who used to time non-designated AFKs and then absolutely rollock us for it.

- I don’t understand why some people don’t use raid frames. I mean really. NO raid frames? Like, at all? How do you see who’s in range? Or who’s dead? Or if someone is mass ressing? Or if someone has a debuff that’s going to cause them to explode in your face? I don’t…I don’t get it. I thought raid frames were an utter necessity!

- lag as an excuse. You know how many times I’ve heard “lag!” as an excuse. You know what? It’s not a fucking excuse. If people have SO MANY issues with lag then they need to either stop raiding until they have fixed their issues (be they internet based or computer based) or to learn (like the resto druid I used to raid with who played with 1000ms at all times and was AMAZING whilst doing so) to work round it. I do understand occasionally that there are issues with a DC, a computer crash or whathaveyou. However when it’s the same people all the time it stops being a reasonable excuse. And also – it’s used as a scapegoat far too often. If I balls up, I’ll admit it. I’ll say – I’m sorry, I’ve just been shit. I won’t try and blame it on something else.

But you know what the biggie is? I don’t understand why people talk over the raid leader. The raid leader is there for a reason. They are there to lead the raids.

Normal raid members are NOT there to:

- make comments about strategies during the explanation – such as “well why don’t we do it this way?” “shouldn’t char X be doing that not char Y?” and others

- make comments DURING boss fights about what other people should be doing – “use this spell!” “use that spell!” “you should be doing THAT now!”

- make comments DURING boss fights about the strategy! – “shouldn’t we do this instead?” “well that didn’t work let’s do this”, “char X is in the wrong place, they should be here!”

- consistently calls out the SAME markers/timers that the raid leader calls out. When I raided in Adept, on fights like Halfus heroic I would call out things such as my Tranquility cooldowns etc, and in all guilds as well as having a target macro I also call out Rebirth. However the markers such as….moving out from molten seeds in Ragnaros, clicking the timer in Ultraxion, calling out twilight onslaught in Blackhorn. These should be called by the raid leader and ONLY the raid leader.

Admonishments also – if I do something wrong (I managed to pull trash in Firelands last night by accident and dragged it to the group, causing us all to wipe. I felt mightily bad about it) then the only person who should be telling me I’ve done wrong is the raid leader. It’s not a mouthy DPS who thinks they know what’s best and think they have every right to call me whatever “jovial” term they choose in order to make a comment about my arse pull.

I can understand hearing from the tanks – tank swaps and callouts, cooldowns and shouts. I can understand hearing from healers – healing cooldowns and callouts, rebirths or ankhs, etc. And I suppose, in a 25 man guild, I could probably understand a second raid member of a different position (ie, one ranged/one melee) calling out particular issues. 

But the rest of us? The rest of us are there to BE quiet, to DO our job and to SHUT UP.

I really like raiding where I do now because we have a lot of laughs, chat and giggles. And most of this happens when we aren’t in the middle of a fight, although on easy fights that are defined as “farm”, often we will carry on having a laugh and chatting.

But that’s different to someone directly overtalking to raid leader on matters of the raid. There’s a difference between going, “lol, that’s what she said” when someone accidentally makes a sex joke (happens a lot…) and calling out a timer over the top of the raid leader. Or is that just me??

I’ve rambled for a while now but it also comes down to something else, in my eyes. Respect.

I have immense respect for almost every raid leader I’ve worked with, and immense respect for my current raid leader. He handles a bunch of casuals who DO lose focus, stop concentrating and get distracted, very well. We get praise when we improve and there can be stern words when we need to be serious. He does all this whilst keeping morale high and making the whole experience enjoyable for us.

I do therefore find it super frustrating when people don’t offer up the respect that is deserved. Arguing over a strategy in the middle of a pull – or tbh arguing over a strategy during a raid AT ALL – is, in my eyes, inappropriate behaviour. You want to debate a strategy? Do it in the forums afterwards.

It isn’t always the case but some times the reason we wipe is because people are doing their own thing and NOT listening to the raid leader. Because they think they know best. I can tell you right now, they don’t.

Your raid leader is there for a reason.

He does his job, we do ours.

February 21, 2012Permalink 5 Comments

How I See Raiding Bosses: Without Videos or Ability Names

I expect the preparations made for raiding are the same for most people, although I know some guilds like to go in blind.

1. Make sure I have all the necessaries – flasks, food, mana potions.

2. Have watched the Tankspot video (I never used to be a big fan of videos, but they’re growing on my in Cataclysm)

3. Have a read of strategies, comments on wowhead, all these bits and pieces. I often have the wowhead page up in the fight with the comments up in case something comes up we haven’t seen or weren’t expecting – peer information is often as good as “information from above”, as it were.

4. Try it out for myself. I’m not a massively quick learner, but I tend to pick most things up within two of three tries of a boss. Often my major problem in the early tries of an encounter is mana management – I don’t really “know” the flow of damage so I find it hard to weave my heals in well. Not sure if this is a common problem or just me?

However, despite all this “proper” stuff, when an encounter is new, I still often experience encounters in a panicked blur of not breathing, eyes flicking all over the screen and spinning my character around like I’m on a waltzer. All the preparation in the world doesn’t stop my mind spending all 5-10 minutes going, “OMFG WHAT AM I DOING WHAT DO I HEAL CLICK THIS CLICK THAT OMG THANK GOD THEY’RE STILL ALIVE”.

So, when I was trying to explain the mechanics of Atramedes to Zal (absent and GREATLY missed from my gaming time at the moment) via text message, I got as far as, “well there’s this blind dragon and there’s sound waves and….stuff” and I thought for a bit of light hearted enjoyment I might just post about how these bosses really feel when I’m mid encounter. No sensible listing of tactics or boss abilities. I’m also going to try using some screen grab equipment to play around with mini sections of our kills – not full kills or anything like that, just odd little bits and pieces to try and familiarise myself with the software and also it might make things a little bit more interesting.

There will be no voiceovers – not from me anyway – recorded I come across as both very high pitched whilst sounding like I’ve just stepped off a tractor after I’ve been ploughing some fields. Really northern.

It’s just an idea anyway, and it might fail miserably, but hey, it’s worth giving it a go!

February 4, 2011Permalink 1 Comment

Bye Bye Comfort Zone: What ICC Mechanics Mean For You

Inspired by some issues in ICC and Lady Deathwhisper, I have written this post to be quick and informative and to be about doing things you don’t want to do in fights throughout ICC.

Any black text is written by myself, and then I will add on extra bits and pieces as they get given to me by friends/guildies/bloggers.

I am going under the presumption that people know the basic tactics and just go through the particular points for particular classes/specs and basically the things that make the boss NOT a tank and spank.

Lord Marrowgar
Lady Deathwhisper
Gunship
Deathbringer Saurfang

Festergut
Rotface
Professor Putricide

Blood Prince Council
Blood-Queen Lana’thel

Valithria Dreamwalker
Sindragosa

The Lich King

Lord Marrowgar:

Tanks: communication about direction whilst dodge Cold Flame, and on Bonestorm needs to be continual, not just at the start.

Hunters: you won’t be able to one-spot with the rest of your raid. However this means you need to be more vocal about being spiked. Shout out if you get spiked so DPS know to come and release you.

Healers: pay attention if your other healers get spiked – you will have to pick up the slack. If it’s a tank healer, remember lots of little heals = 1 big heal, 1 Nourish will not cover 1 Holy Light. Spam time!

All DPS: when people get spiked, STOP doing your normal job of hitting the boss – the spikes MUST be burned down.

Lady Deathwhisper:

Everyone: ghosts. Ghosts are bad. Especially on heroic. You MUST run away from these ghosts. This INCLUDES melee. Just because you have lich in your face, does not give you any excuse to cause an explosion.

Decursing: Now. Here comes Sophie’s rant. Are you a mage? Do you know the location of your decurse button? If so you must HIT it. Curse of Torpor is DEATHLY. Curse of Torpor will cause whatever spell the cursed person casts to have a 15 second cooldown. If you don’t decurse – NO HEALZ!

The following classes can decurse:

Druids (but only moonkins/restos – it knocks ferals out of form).

Resto Shammies (that are talented)

Mages

This is a big deal. In this fight EVERYBODY who can decurse, should decurse. This includes mages. In this fight, you MUST decurse.

Mind Control:

In this fight your teammates will be mind controlled by Deathwhisper, in heroic 25, up to three at a time.

Regardless of your job otherwise, you MUST make use of your crowd control spells.

This includes:

Druids (cyclone – ideal, only slightly shorter than the time of the MC, and means total immunity. Roots – only good on melee and can be broken by damage, so not so great)

Mages (kings of CC, surely? Get sheeping. SHEEP EVERYTHING. Seriously, no joke.)

Hunters (frost traps)

Paladins (stuns ahoy - although it’s worth noting that this is only 6 seconds in duration, in comparison to the 15 second duration of LDW’s MC)

Shamans (hex)

Priests/Warlocks (get fearing. psychic scream your asses off)

As far as I know, warriors also have a stun ability, but this does cause damage.

In this fight however, the main CCers should be mages, druids and priests – non-damaging, good CCs.

Gunship:

I’m not even going to dignify this with a response.

Deathbringer Saurfang:

Tanks: No AoE. If you pull blood beast aggro you will have a severely pissed off raid leader. No AoE. This includes Consecration for paladins, Thunderclap and Shockwave for warriors, Death and Decay/Pestilence for DKs. Melee DPS, you can AoE, but time it. There is chance the adds will spawn without the 95% AoE reduction buff not instantly applied, and a mistimed AoE will grab aggro.

Ranged DPS: your healers have priority in where they stand. They NEED to be able to reach everyone. Be prepared and on the ball to swap with someone on the outer ring, should they get marked and you not.

Knockbacks are the biggie in this fight.

Make use of your Shamans and their Thunderstorm, make use of your Moonkins and their Typhoon. Also remember fire mages have Blastwave.

To help out, your hunters can place frost traps down, and your warlocks can kindly talent into Curse of Exhaustion.

You should also have a kill order. Learn your skill order. There is no reason whatsoever that this kill order should not be obeyed. Obey the kill order. When you don’t, and you pull aggro, it will become VERY CLEAR.

Healers: when people get marked it will hurt. Pay attention to assignments and shout out if you are struggling. Don’t leave things unsaid.

Festergut:

All DPS & Healers: You may get a spore. If you get a spore, find our where there “isn’t” one – we have 3 groups in 25 man, one for each spore, and head there. Call it out. Know where you’re expected – what you don’t want is 3 spores in one group, and none in either of the others.

If you don’t have a spore, don’t stand around looking gormless. Find someone in your group with one, and mimic their movements. Stand on them. Hug them like there’s no tomorrow.

If a tank get a spore – you must go and hug your tank. The tank cannot move. YOU will be moving. This means all of you, melee.

If you are the ranged person moving in to the melee group with the spore, make sure you stand close to the tank so they will also get the benefit of the spore.

Also – in heroic, watch for malleable goo. You NEED to learn to avoid it. You avoid it in Putricide, so you should avoid it in Festergut.

Rotface:

Ranged DPS/Healers: remember your 8 yard range on heroic. Remember to GET OUT OF THE WAY of the big slime pools.

Dispellers – don’t do it too fast or too slow. Time it right. This is a disease, and therefore can be dispelled by Shamans, Paladins and Priests. This should be dispelled ASAP, but it IS the person with the infections’ responsibility to move!

If you have mutated infection then make sure you get the fuck out of the middle so you can be dispelled, as in heroic it adds a debuff on to you equalling NO healing. So, GTFO.

Everyone must run out of the way when there is an incoming explosion, but NOT like headless chickens. Wait, find a new spot, wait again.

Professor Putricide:

This is a world of misery and pain on heroic. Point 1: Set up some sort of system for unbound plague and become familiar with it.

If you are melee and you get it – do not a) stand still, b) run around like a headless chicken or c) run out and in again.

You must run OUT, pass the plague to a ranged DPS or healer, and once you are sure it has passed, run back in again. You have 7-10 seconds to pass the plague on, which is ample time.

If you are a ranged/healer and you get it, keep it for 7-10 seconds (whichever you feel most comfortable with), then pass it on to someone nearby. Voice communication is ideal. Once you have passed it on you will get a mucky green debuff. Get OUT of the way of the plague carrier (ideally moving to your ranged/healer green ooze one spot, which makes you useful). This will stop it being passed back on to you and you getting the debuff twice.

Resto Druids – talent into revitalize and return energy to your Abomination through rejuvenation as much as you can.

About the abomination: If you’re doing this often, you should know what to do. Everybody else? DO NOT DISPEL! Again, it’s a disease, so shammies, priests and pallies – no dispelling!

Malleable Goo – yet more pain. Do not stand in it. Do not stand near it. You will either get a 20 second long horrendous cast time debuff, or splash damage that will wipe out half your health.

You can see where it’s coming from at the top of your screen, so don’t just wait for it to hit – watch for it and get out of the way.

The Oozes: If you become the target of the green ooze, you should be stood in a designated onespot. If you aren’t, do your best to survive. Cooldowns, the works. If you are not the target – stack on the target.

If you are the target of the orange ooze your guild may have a particular strategy – ours involves running to one corner of putricides table, and then anticlockwise along the table. By then, the ooze should be dead. If not, it may well recast.

In Phase 3, do not stand IN FRONT of the tanks. There is no abomination to suck slime, and slime will pool whereever you are. Stand in the middle of the room, or stay tucked in behind the boss. Avoid malleable goo and TRY your best to avoid multiple plague debuffs.

In heroic, if a tank dies, it is a wipe, as this returns massive amounts of health to the prof. THIS IS BAD.

Blood Prince Council

Melee – we do not care about you getting every last bit of DPS in. When Empowered Shock Vortex is called out, watch your range checker and get OUT OF THE WAY.

This applies to everyone – the room is massive and there is enough space for people to be at range almost all the time. Bouncing around is bad for your health, your healers’ health and your raid leaders’ sanity.

Everyone – do not move into someone elses space. FIND YOUR OWN! There is nothing more annoying than having a nice comfy spot to heal from then some FUCKER running into it and standing in it.

Everyone – especially DPS – should watch their aggro. Remember that the purple orbs stick to the last person that touched them/had aggro, and your tank will NEED them to stay alive. Make sure that if you do accidentally grab one, you get to your orb chasing tank and let him/her take them back.

Ranged DPS - if you get allocated the job of keeping a kinetic bomb in the air, DO it. And do nothing else. This is your job – stick to it.

Blood-Queen Lana’thel

Ah, my personal favourite. I do love this fight.

DPS: Having awesome high numbers is great and all, but what is most important is MOVEMENT.

In this fight one of three things will happen to you:

1) You get bitten. You may well have (we do, in 25 man) have a bite order. Make sure you know where the person you have to bite next IS. You need to make sure that with just a second or two left on your 10 second debuff, you bite them. If you know you are to be bitten, try and make yourself obvious and easy to find. Don’t run around a lot.

If you fail at this, you will cause your biter/you will become mind controlled, wreak havoc and possible cause a wipe. This. Is. Bad.

2) You get Swarming Shadows – don’t stand still. Don’t finish your cast. Run to the OUTSIDE of the room, and towards the BACK of the room. Do not stand still to cast or do any DPS until the purple fire coming out your arse has gone away.

3) You get Pact of the Darkfallen (or something similar named). Run to the middle. Stand into the middle til the massive RED FIRE has stopped coming out your ass. Make sure all 2/3 of you are stacked. Do NOT run out until you are sure it has gone away.

One final note – during Bloodbolt Whirl (her big shooty thing when she’s in the air) – you do NOT need to run around post-fear like an idiot. It’s only got an 8 yard range. Have your range checker on, and find somewhere safe. It’s not hard. The room is plenty big enough.

Valithria Dreamwalker

Valithria is, in a lot of ways, unique to WoW and in particular to WotLK. Here, your healers get to shine.

The things to note are:

There is a KILL ORDER for the adds that must be obeyed.

This is: Blazing Skeleton -> Festering Zombies -> Risen Arch-Mage -> Abomination. Suppressors must also be burnt down straight away as they slow healing on the dragon.

You MUST always kill the blazing skeleton first. He MUST go down, ideally before he casts even a SINGLE “Lay Waste”.

Don’t AoE the abomination down unless you are bloody well prepared to stay there and AoE down the rotworms that spawn from its corpse – these MUST be destroyed as soon as they spawn as they are A BIG PROBLEM.

Outside healers: every spare cast should be going on the dragon. HoTs on the dragon at all times. Watch your tanks and careful because it’s easy for melee to pull aggro.

Inside healers: especially on 25 man heroic, stick as a group. Grab your first bubble as soon as you’re in but then STICK to being a group. Don’t wander off. You MUST NOT lose your stacks.

Also watch your own health – it is a problem in heroic as you do get hit pretty hard.

Sindragosa

This fight is essentially about coordination, one spot work and watching your debuffs.

Things you MUST do: be spatially aware. Do not cast if you have unchained magic on heroic, and if you do, get the fuck out of the pack so your backlash does not wipe everyone out. Take a max of 5 stacks.

Ranged DPS must never cast – only healers.

During Phase 3 NObody with unchained magic can cast anything.

Put a rotation on your healers during phase 3 – some of you are going to have to stay out in order to keep LoS on the tank. If you are a tank healer, create a macro for your healer channel/raid channel, stating you have unchained magic, so people can cover your targets.

Do not multi-ice tomb – spatial awareness again – leave good distances and go where your raid leader tells you.

If you need to, have your air phase ice tomb marks written on a post it on your screen – I do.

On blistering cold, hunters can help by hitting Aspect of the Pack just after Blistering Cold is cast, in order to help people get out that little bit faster.

The Lich King

I have no experience of this on heroic so I can’t offer assistance, although in my regular (now!) ICC 25 PuG on a Saturday with my hunter, I did have to translate the entirity of the tactics into Italian.

It wasn’t easy.

I can’t write a whole coherent strat for this so it is purely a case of – things you must do for your particular class.

WATCH your debuffs in the first phase – everyone. You must must must move AS SOON as you get necrotic plague, to your offtank. You must.

Hunters: when a Shambling Horror becomes enraged, you must use Tranquilizing Shot on it to remove the enrage. Keep an eye out – they do classically become red when enraged, which makes them easy to spot and target if there’s more than one up.

Ranged DPS: you may get allocated in the transition phase to deal with the orbs. Deal with them! Even if there’s more than one of you! These frozen orbs must go down.

In the first transition, raging spirits will spawn – your tank will pick these up and face them away from the raid. When the transition ends, if a raging spirit is left you MUST dps it down before returning to the Lich King.

The biggie is then, of course, Defile.

Watch your DBM.

The strat in easy steps:

1. Run into the middle. When valkyrs come and pick someone up, SPREAD out if the time for defile is LESS than the timer from the next valks.

2. If the timer for the next valks is LESS than the one for defile, stay onespotted in the middle.

3. Defile – as soon as it hits, if it’s on you, RUN THE FUCK AWAY. You MUST stop this pool from spreading and that means get out of the way. Know who’s around you so you know if it’s someone near you getting targeted.

4. Reonespot for the next set of valks.

5. Rinse and repeat.

This applies to everyone.

Next stage: vile spirits. Nuke em and run. Seriously. Think Lady Deathwhisper but MUCH MUCH WORSE.

Oh and and 10%, don’t release, k?

This colour text belongs to Jakerel, ret pally and paladin class leader in PG.

October 8, 2010Permalink 1 Comment

Heroic Modes and Forgetting to Breathe and my public squishyness

Where were we last time I did a new-guild update?

*goes to look at own website because cannot remember what bloody day it is*

Firstly I want to say a massive thank you to all of you for your support. I know those that have followed me for a while have followed my own very public…squishyness.

You all saw me gush at how wonderful Mike is – to only realise that maybe some people have always been single for a long, very conclusive list of reasons which aren’t my problems to fix, to be brutal.

I’m 23. I want to enjoy myself and my life, not look after someone else.

You’ve all seen me come to terms with my own anxiety, and start counselling. Last Thursday, my counsellor said she truly believed I’d turned a corner. I’d started to realise that…a lot of the reasons I was unhappy were, whilst not necessarily completely my own doing, I hadn’t done anything to stop them, or to fix them.

I’d let myself be unhappy. I’d let myself be upset, let myself be backed into a corner and let myself be put upon because it gave me an excuse to be unhappy.

However, things are a-changing.

I have now been on a calorie counting diet for two weeks, and have lost 4 lbs. I don’t know what that is in kilos. It’s not a lot, but it’s a good start.

I have a list of objectives in my diary for every day of the week, and I try and do four to six of those objectives every day. I’ve started small. “Make my own lunch” is on the list, for example. As is, “Netherwing dailies”. I’m giving myself lots of little things to tick off – my mind likes that system. Same as my mind likes being able to type exact calorie numbers into a database and have things worked out for me. I’m a bit OCD like that.

I’ve turned a corner.

If I’m upset – I’m fixing it.

I’m unhealthy – I’m fixing it.

My game experience was bad – I’m fixing it.

From somewhere, as well, I seem to have acquired a boyfriend. That bit sort of snuck up on my unexpected, but I’m going with it so far! It does mean getting my passport stamped, visa acquired and every jab possible everytime I cross the England/Wales border to visit him, but…ya know, I’m dealing with it.

So, on to that game experience

Since 1st July, I’ve done some lovely raiding. Thursday was quite a relaxed night for me – an off night. I did some dailies, wandered about Azeroth and chatted a lot. Listened in on Teamspeak and absorbed some more tips and whatnot.

Friday we steamrolled through ToC and VoA as per usual. I also went into Molten Core and dinged revered. Now. Here’s a query for you all. I am now 1005/21000 with the Hydraxian Waterlords.

One boss run of Molten Core nets me 1050 rep. I need 20994 rep to hit 999/1000. That is 20 runs of Molten Core. That means one run every week for 20 weeks will take us to 24th November 2010. We all know Cataclysm is going to be out before that.I know the last 1000 is impossible so for now let’s just concentrate on me hitting Exalted.

What do we think is going to happen to Molten Core? I know Raggy’s off for a wander to the Fire plain thingies. But will the instance die? What will happen to the reputation faction? I’m going to try and do an MC every month, because even if I can’t get myself all the way to exalted, I’d like to get myself as far through revered as possible.

Any speculation? Does anybody actually KNOW the answer definitively?

Anyhow. I had awful internet problems for a lot of Saturday, however on Sunday we raided again.

We did Deathwhisper on normal, Lootship Heroic, Saurfang on normal, and then Valithria Dreamwalker on heroic.

Now THAT was a fight. That was a hard fight. Luckily, oh oh oh so luckily, I got to stay outside. We had a few wipes but we managed it. I’ve never, ever gone oom in that fight, ever, and towards the end I was literally waiting for my trinket to repop, for my mana to creep up for one more rejuv, just clinging on depserately.

And we did it.

Valithria Dreamwalker on heroic.

I’d be interested in any tips from anybody who’s done this a few more times than me, here’s the basic info:

untitledAlthough the night wasn’t great for the guild – they’ve progressed much further than this and done a lot more on heroic – I had a fabulous time. I feel like I proved myself to be decent. I feel like I did my job, and although I ran oom, I know both the shammy and the holy priest who were outside did too.

I certainly felt, after Sunday, one hell of a lot more confident about my abilities to pass my trial than I had done the week before.

That’s when things started going wrong. Last night, after a fabulously lovely long walk with Jess (the bezzie), her mum, and three mad dogs, I got home to find a totally deceased internet. Latency varied from 5.5k, to 1.7k, to 2.5k, ms. That’s in between a 2 seconds and nearly SIX second lag on cast times. That would be a wild growth applied and expired before I would see it get through. I spent 90 minutes on the phone to BT, I had to cancel arena (Sorry again chaps :( ), and I couldn’t sub in when needed in the guild’s raid.

HOWEVER! The 90 minutes with BT seemed to fix things enough to play with, so I’m hoping to actually get something done tonight, and get some proper gaming done.

I might get a chance at an ICC10man tonight, which would be quite nice.

So yes! In summary, I am most definitely feeling more confident about my trial than I was.

Which is good.

Before I leave you, I’d like you to watch the below video.

I don’t know how many of you know about Ikea. And about Ektorp sofas. But as you can see by this lovely advert, the sofa covers are washable.

I have TWO cats, and one puppy. One of my cats, the siamese, likes to sit in the soil in the garden, then sit on the white Ektorp sofa covers.

But it’s OK, right? That man! He split tea, and they’re WASHABLE.

But let me tell you this. Try and get the FUCKING covers back on after you’ve washed them is physically impossible. I spent 45 minutes last night struggling to get the (yes by the way, mud does come off, they were as good as new) fucking covers on. FOURTY FIVE MINUTES. All that had been achieved was that I was very red and very sweaty and very exhausted. I had the two back corners on, and one arm. But the other arm would not go on.

So I gave up, put the cushions on and threw a blanket over the uncovered arm.

My dad gets back from a fortnight in Italy tomorrow. I’m going to see how long it takes him to notice.

Adieu,

Soph

July 6, 2010Permalink 2 Comments

Oh what, the Beta’s out?

Firstly I’d like to say thank you to Kae, Seph, Cranky, Ophelie and of course Dal for being so supportive after my whinging post the other night.

I have downloaded GCD, and it’s AWESOME. I love my little Wild Growth and in particular Swiftmend tickers – that’s one I often hit when it’s still on cooldown and I saw a marked decrease in the number of times I did that thanks to GCD last night.

Anyway.

Apparently, the closed Cataclysm Beta is starting soon. I didn’t sign up for the Beta. I’m not…I don’t know how to say this but I’m not really that interested. Everytime I’ve entered new content, level wise, on Elsen – and to a lesser extent on some of my other characters, when I’ve quested through zones I hadn’t experienced before – I have truly been open mouthed with wonder, aghast at the monstrosities I see before me that have to be killed, speechless at the acts of heroism we see by NPCs.

I want my level 80 to 85 experience to be exactly the same – which is why I won’t be looking at *too* many screenshots (I have snooped on troll and worgen druid forms mainly because they won’t affect me), I won’t be dissecting quest lines, or going any further into the druid changes than I have already. I’m all about superficial analysis.

I may restart my series about the new maps – not including screenshots – because I think that was quite a nice way of going about things. A real sort of, “direct” comparison.

So anyway, yea, don’t expect to see any in-depth super good (HA! as if) analysis of the druid changes on this there poxy website.

Time for some more QQ?

SO! How’s the raiding going I see you all clamouring to ask. Look away now if you’re bored of me complaining.

When I last posted I believe it was just before my adventures into ICC normal with the new guild.

Well, in we went. I sucked on Valithria. I always suck on Valithria. I can’t portal bounce, I suck as 3D swimming and that, “bork” noise Elsen makes in her tree form when she pops a bubble always makes me jump.

I was healing with a resto shammy and a holy priest, for info. The priest stayed outside, and I went in with the shammy.

We then went on to Putricide, which I matched the other healers for, and Sindragosa. Sindy took me a while to grasp, and I did accidentally double frost tomb myself at one point. It’s funny though, when I managed to frost tomb myself, my heart sank and I said to myself – oh it’s a wipe. But no! I’m continually amazed by the quick reaction times and general bad-ass ness of these guys. If it was my old lot, we’d be floundering on our arses, no frost tombs getting broken and an invariable wipe. I got broken out and once I grasped the method of the boss I did OK, and she went down. I was only a smidgen below the others there.

We then went backwards and squished the BPC, and then heroic BQL. I love Lana’thel. Lana’thel is where I get to shine. Resto druids are AWESOME on that fight. Like, truly awesome. Pulsing raid damage FOR the win.

BQL healzI love that fight.

Thankfully I then got to have a rest, as the team went on to kill the LK on normal, and then make some attempts on Professor Putricide heroic on 25 man.

During which time I managed to finish grinding my Kurenai rep! Netting me the Kurenai achievement, the Diplomat achievement, and progressing me to 79/100 mounts!

So that was Tuesday, right?

Well, along comes Wednesday. Raid lists go up. I’m in for Heroic Marrowgar, Heroic Deathwhisper, Heroic Gunship, 10man Sanctum and 25man Sanctum.

Busy night much?

On Marrowgar, I’m down to heal the tanks. Not a role I’m particularly best suited to or one I enjoy a lot. I’m not particularly good at tank healing or experienced at it. But anyway. I stand in the wrong place at first, but thanks to the lovely GM telling me where to move to I manage to plant myself in the right place and, whilst forgetting to breathe, manage to make it through.

On Deathwhisper, things get a lot harder. My tanks to heal are on either side of the room, and things go fine until I unluckily get hit by a Death and Decay, or am trying to decurse/cyclone and lose a tank. That happened a couple of times, so after a wipe I get switched round to looking after one tank and the raid.

I feel bad about that, because I feel like I wasn’t capable of doing the assignment given to me. But Deathwhisper heroic is fucking…insane.

Constant adds, constant mind control, and then the one time we did get her down past the shield, those god damn GHOSTS!

I think I only got hit by the explosion once, which isn’t too bad going seeing as I’ve never done it before, and I didn’t die until right at the end. I certainly wasn’t one of the first to fall. Small victories and all that, hmm?

We called it there and moved on to Sanctum.

We spent about 90 minutes in there, on ten man. Three groups went in, and only one managed to get Halion down. Not ours, unfortunately. The mini bosses went quite well (except for the first one, which took us a couple of tries), but the Halion fight itself is hard.

Phase 1 we did successfully every time. Phase 2, however, the first two tries I walked straight through a laser beam. What a fucking numpty. “OO, purple lasers! Let’s RUN THROUGH THEM”. Stupid feckin tree.

We got through to Phase 3 a couple of times but then got stuck against the corporeality buff with a bit of misunderstanding and not quite grasping it overall I think.

It then hit the end of raid time, and we called it.

I feel like I was a massive drag factor in that fight. Massive. It depresses me to think that with someone more competent who doesn’t walk through laser beams they might have got him down. It’s weird, because sometimes my spatial awareness is good – for example, I’m quite good at avoiding fire. I don’t tend to stand in void zones and I avoided DW’s ghosts. However when it’s an entirely new fight…I think somethings just take me longer to learn than others.

Sigh. All I can do is hope that I will have improved enough if I get the chance to go again and do better.

So. As it stands now, my “will I pass my trial meter” went from “quite unlikely” post-Algalon to “you know, there is a chance…” after ICC normal, to “well, if they’re REALLY short on resto druids” after Marrowgar to “you ain’t got a feckin CHANCE my girl!” after Halion.

I will update again soon…

July 1, 2010Permalink 7 Comments

Bit of an update I guess!

Well, I haven’t done an update in a week or so so here goes.

Cataclysm wise, my map-series got cut off quite quickly when the images were removed from MMO-Champion. I know they will be living on the web somewhere dark and nasty, but I don’t want to go there. I will just wait. I will restart it once they reappear, along with any other commentary. I’ll keep up my post on the talent trees as well, as I think that was quite interesting and I was quite proud of it.

My own, in-game preparations for Cataclysm have slowed to an almost halt. I stare at my priest with slight embarrassment whenever I log on, knowing she needs another 23 levels before she’s level 65 and therefore capable of becoming a 450 tailor/leatherworker, finishing my complement of characters, leaving me purely without a skinner. I will try once more to get around to her this weekend – I just invested in dual spec so really she should be able to quest her way through these 23 levels quite quickly, as only the last 5 are 60-65 therefore ‘difficult’ in the comparable scheme of things.

Raiding wise Flames of the Phoenix downed Sindragosa for the first time just under a fortnight ago, and are hoping to start work on the Lich King if we don’t lose raiders to burnout/progression night non-signing. Our 25mans plod on. I find my motivation for them waning, as I don’t particularly enjoy them, I saw my BiS neck go to a mage last night, the Abacus refuses to drop off the Gunship, and my other gear upgrades are minimal. I did finally get my first mark of sanctification last night, however, so I upgraded my helm. Just need to save my frost badges  until I have enough for my tier legs (I’m doing some swapping about) and then I can use them for some arena-suitable PvP gear. Another fortnight and I should have enough, and they will be the second piece I get sanctified, should I win a second mark one of these days.

There is one thing bothering me though. There does occasionally seem to be an attitude of – it doesn’t matter if we don’t do it right, because we killed the boss. I’d be curious as to what other peoples opinions were on this.

Is it OK to stand in Death and Decay, be out of range and bone spiked, melee the blood beasts in Saurfang – if the boss goes down? I am very firmly of the opinion that the boss has to be done the right way, because how can you expect to, for example, move with Swarming Shadows in BQL the right way/direction, if you can’t manage to not-use AoE attacks when Saurfang’s beasts are out? You know, maybe it’s the way I’ve been ‘brought up’ in game – we do things the right way, and that’s shadowed my opinion, but I sort of think… I don’t know. Things should be done the right way I guess. Letting people get away with doing shitty things like that results in under-performance, laziness and therefore slower progression. There’s a lot of reasons Flames is doing so well (which we are – yea, we aren’t hitting heroic Sindragosa, but we’re doing very well in my opinion) and one of those reasons is we do things right.

So yea, opinions anyone?

Flames wise I am in the midst of a guild bank reorganisation. We have a tab full of glyphs that just aren’t used so I’m simply going to flog the lot and then turn the tab into something more useful. I have also very almost finished clearing out our deposit tab! Just some rep items to get rid of and then I’m sorted. Other than that the guild continues to succeed and move on strongly. Although we are full on raiding spaces (18 sign ups for last nights 25 man with only 12 available slots), we are receiving good social applications all the time and I think it bodes well to the future. We do actually still have an opening for a good quality raiding, ICC ready healer, who can raid on Fridays definitely and possibly Sundays. I love the idea of us being able to run our own 25 mans before Cataclysm, if at all possible.

The first outing of the 2nd ICC-10 group is next Thursday, the one I’m ‘leading’. I use that in the broadest sense of the word, as I will be leaning heavily on Zal. As always, we are sparse on healers and that, if anything, will stop us running. I am nervous because I am easily stressed but I want it to succeed so much. If success was down to willpower alone, we’d be in there, sitting on ol’Arthas’ knee.

I’m hoping I can do the numbers I’ve asked of other players – 4k in theory, I managed that in ToC (except in Anub where I had viper on the whole time and I was doing the orb shooting down *ahem*). I need a big flashing add on that says, “YOU’VE GOT ASPECT OF THE VIPER ON, YOU IDIOT!”.

So hunter wise, things are going OK! I’ve managed to pick up my pre-raid BiS belt, I just need some boots, a ring, a trinket and a cloak. The cloak is in theory from Frost Badges but this weekend I may just chain FoS Normal til the other possible one drops, chain ToC normal until the trinket drops and I can probably confidently go into ICC then and know I can perform to the best of my abilities.

I don’t dislike DPS, but I feel more pressured than I do in other situations. I’d like to think I can pull my weight and stuff but we shall see. We ran a disastrous alts run to HoR heroic yesterday where nothing actually dropped that was useful, and Yanader threw himself off the cliff again. I felt sorry for poor Nyo who came along on his mage and saw us all at our very worst!

Blogging wise, I am slacking on taking my own tourism screenshots. I just do not have however long a day to devote to trekking round Azeroth finding photos. The project is a big one and one I do want to finish, but it will most likely be general screenshots and images as I simply do not have any time. Maybe when things have slowed down and whatnot over summer I will have more time.

I hope people are still reading and still enjoying Elsen’s take on the world and the events of Azeroth’s past, despite my slacking timetable and crappy pictures. I thank people truly, from the bottom of my heart, for stopping by, commenting, reading and everything. It really does make me very happy.

My subscriber numbers stay roughly the same, occasionally going up, which is nice. Although I am frankly wary of all the numbers and things that are given, different sources seem to say different things.

Thank you, anyway.

Real life wise, I continue to plod on in a mess of stress, possible depression and body confidence issues. I’m visiting the doctors on Saturday morning in order to talk about my stress and depression (linked? one? both? neither), but I know the doctor I’m seeing and I get the feeling he’s just going to go – “don’t talk bollocks you’re FINE”. But I look at the alternatives and none of them appeal. My sickness record is bad enough already at work. I don’t want to go on long term sick. I don’t want to go on anti-depressants. What I’d really like, would be to be able to work from home every day – or maybe 2 days a week or something. I love my job and I love what I do, but I find the actual work environment, the office environment and the people around me really quite hard to deal with. I’m actually more productive at home, as strange as that may sound.

But I just don’t think that’s a possibility.

I actually tried to mend a couple of bridges I burnt some time ago over the past few weeks. Two of them have…unfortunately, failed. But one seems to have succeeded which is nice. I’d like to redevelop some of the friendships my hot-headedness, and general twattishness have caused to break down in the past.

I also have an intensive canter-jump half hour lesson tomorrow. I’m so excited! I love my riding so much. It’s the very very best thing in my life and I wish I could spend more time around the horses, more time riding, more time at the Stables, because it’s where I feel at home and it’s where I feel happy and it’s the only place I ever go where I forget everything that’s bad with my life and everything that makes me unhappy – when I’m riding or even just at the Stables, all the bad goes away.

And also,

everyone should go and watch Glee.

It’s really, really awesome.

May 13, 2010Permalink 3 Comments