The View Through The Branches

I think this is one of those questions that’s probably been asked and answered many, many times, but it’s something I like to come back to. I look at Elsen, with her never-changed hair style or colour, her body shape I am so used to seeing, her in tree form, occasionally, slightly disturbingly, her in battle chicken form.

Playing her feels like second nature.

It feels like second nature to drop into cat and hit Dash after a wipe and a reentrance into ICC, secretly racing all the other druids back to the boss (I spent two hours wiping on heroic PP last night, bare with me if my mind is a tad squiffy today). How many other druids do that? I bet it’s almost all of you.

Elsen was born on January 1st, 2008.

I don’t know if I’ve told this story before, but I actually played World fo Warcraft for ten days before that, on the trial. I had read about some people playing it on a now-defunct music forum I used to post on, and decided to give it a go.

I downloaded it, I started a human mage – I liked magic, and I liked being a human, and I liked being able to make someome look pretty. I called her “Sophierach” – I had no understanding of character names.

I made my way from Northshire Abbey, pootled around Goldshire, and then I had to log off. Goldshire was busy, and I was having serious problems logging off. How do I save my game??? I was panicking…

I ended up talking to someone sat on the ground with <AFK> above their head. They didn’t respond. I thought they were very rude. Some kind soul eventually said to me – they aren’t at their keyboard. And you don’t need to save – you just log out.

Apprehensively, log out I did.

I ended up making it to level 16 (no talent points spent, no gear upgrades), and one day logging out in Westfall and going to PC World to buy myself the full game. Home I came with the battlechest, and I typed in my code.

Cannot be authorised – incorrect region.

Yes, I had in fact spent the past 10 days playing with the Americans. No wonder there was never anybody online when I was.

So, I started from scratch. I reinstalled the whole game, and in the Battle Chest box my games had come in, there was a game guide. A double page spread on each race, information on all the classes…perfect for me to make an informed decision. So, in the many hours it took the game to install I chose my character.

1. I had just done the first 16 levels as a human. I didn’t want to do them all again – that knocked humans off the list.

2. The horde were dead (forsaken), ugly (orcs), animals! (tauren) and had TUSKS (trolls). Blood elves were an option but that meant I’d have to play with the rest of the horrible crowd. Alliance it was.

3. draenei…wtf? No thanks.

4. Gnomes + Dwarves. Let it be known I have only dated a man shorter than me once. He was only shorter than me by an inch but it caused major problems. I realise at 5ft7 I’m pretty tall for a girl, but seriously – I can’t deal with short things. Gnomes and dwarves – both out.

5. That leaves me with night elves – not too bad, if it wasn’t for the massive fuck-off ears and glowing eyes, they look almost human.

So I knew I had to be a night elf.

How did I choose my class?

My options were a priest, a hunter, a druid, a rogue, or a warrior.

1. I don’t like “fighting” per se. Big swords and stuff…not really me. I liked magic n shit like that. Zelda, that sort of thing. Bye bye warrior, bye bye rogue.

2. the pet mechanic…wtf? totally confused me. bye bye hunter.

3. starts to read up on druids….”I GET TO BE A KITTY CAT? OMFG AWESOME ROLL A DROOD”.

So, I choose a druid.

Elsen was born.

I’m looking at the character creation screen, and thinking – fuck me them ears are big. I need hair that’s going to COVER those as much as possible. Long hair, no ponytails, nice and girly going down her back.

Blue? Green? nah…I need something more person-like – silver/grey. That’ll do.

Now…a name. She looks kinda…vikingy. Let’s give her a vikingy name. *Opens Tamora Pierce book reading at the time. Sees the name Elsren for a boy. Let’s make that a girls name…*

And she’s stayed that way. Elsen is now, as Elsen was on 1st January 2008, when I clicked whatever button it is you start with – Start Game or whathaveyou.

And I watched the starting sequence, and got thrown into killing nightsabers, wandering around Teldrassil et al.

Els levelled as balance, and from roughly 20-45 levelled alongside two feral druids I met in Darkshore. I gave the healz, they did the pewpew.

“Old school levelling” – you know, where you meet people and do stuff together. It was awesome.

I think I’ve said before, Elsen has truly developed a personality as time has passed, but mainly in that she’s become very much like me. Although I have a human character, and a space goat, and others, it’s only when I hear Elsen’s combat noises/vocals/spell not ready yet etc that I really pay attention.

I was levelling my pally through Zul’Drak over the weekend and kept wondering what girly human kept squeaking. Then I realised it was my girly human.

It is when I play Elsen that I play ‘myself’. On Sapph, or the others, I have…a part of me in there somewhere, a little bit of me, but they do, over time, take on their own little mini personalities, own little mini backstories.

I’ve spent so much time with Els ove the past 2 and a half years that she has truly become like me, she is me in many ways and when I log back on to her it’s like coming home.

I don’t think I could ever swap mains. Whatever they do to druid healing, I’ll always be a druid, and I’ll always be a healer. I’ll always be Elsen, with Elsen’s back story, Elsen’s achievements, Elsen’s gear, Elsen’s vanity pets, mounts, bank full of shite, Scepter of the Shifting Sands, eclectic collection of old tier gear, slightly cynical looking stare, very occasionally changing facial tattoos, Elsen’s preference for a horse over a nightsaber, and every other little quirk she/I/we have.

World of Warcraft is a strange thing. It has masses of social stigma attached to it still. I don’t know anybody IRL who games like I do. Friends of friends, occasional other people I have a slight bond with over ‘gaming’, when boys are on that, “would you like me more if I played WoW” thing they pick it up for a bit…but I still feel very much an outcast.

I think throughout my entire life I’ve been/felt like an outcast – at school I hated stereotypes. I hated people that tried to fit in. I hated the fact almost my entire year at school smoked pot just because 6 months earlier we’d had a new kid and he did it and he was cool. I was quite happy spending my lunchtimes and break times working in the library. My mum was the school librarian – I ate with her if I could do in order to avoid my peers. I knew most of the teachers on a first name basis.

I got bullied consistently throughout school for being overweight – Shrek, Fat Mountain amonst other names and whatnot. They really, really hurt. I left school and spent an utterly awful year at university doing a course I didn’t want to do in a subject I didn’t enjoy. I was surrounded by superficiality, nasty people, gossipy, bitchy girls. I made one real friend, who I still know now, and who I hope to see again soon (after having not seen her for like, a year).

But then there was Warcraft. Through Warcraft I have met people who have appeared, and disappeared. I met a man called Dan who I will always look up to and worship as both my temporary psychiatrist and someone who always gave me sound advice.

I saw marriages fail because people used Warcraft to find other partners, I saw guilds fail because people fucked people they shouldn’t have fucked. I made a couple of stupid mistakes myself that’s for sure. I’ve given my all, my whole being to a set of people only to feel totally worthless, and then I’ve moved on. I mean…I miss Nyo, and my other friends from Flames, but there’s not a lot I can do about it.

And of course, I met Zal, who is my best friend, my confidante, my agony uncle, my saviour, my lifeline, someone I can depend on, someone I can trust, someone I adore.

It pains me sometimes to see the friendships that I’ve lost, be it, through moving guilds, through people quitting the game, through personal disagreements, but I also love the new friends I’ve made – my new class leader, Dal, a lovely lady boomkin, Thimian, who is fabulous to talk to. My new GM, of course. The people I interact with throughout the days (although apparently my love for Jeremy Kyle has awarded me the nickname “Chav-Chick”, not too sure if I like that one or not…). They are all lovely, and I hope these friendships continue as well.

Warcraft gives me a release school, university and work never has done. People see me for me – my neuroses, my madness, my quirkiness, my total OCD, but also my reliability, my loyalty, my tendency to give something/someone my all, and all the squishy love I’ve got in my heart that I dedicate to my friends and guildies.

My life is a real rollercoaster of emotions. I recently realised that I’d spent 10 months looking after someone, caring for someone, loving them with all my heart and soul, supporting them through all manner of things, only for them to turn round and reject me straight out, yadda yadda yadda (ie, there is more, but it’s boring and your typical story of someone knowing how strong someone else feels for them and using them for their own ends and then getting bored). I sort of came to this crazy realisation that rather than looking after them I was actually allowed to look after myself, and that I was allowed to be important in my life for a change. They didn’t like that, and have been quite nasty in a way I haven’t seen before.

If it hadn’t been for WoW, and mostly for Zal and Dalmont, I don’t know what state I’d be in. They’ve helped support me through it and looked after me through it, and I’m eternally grateful to them for it.

I want to say thank you to them, thank you to all the lovely peoples on Twitter, thank you to all my lovely guildies. And thank you to my readers for putting up with my squishyness, my inconsistent posting, the fact I can talk for hours about absolute shite, and for carrying on reading.

Here’s to three years of Warcraft for me, nearly 6 years for many of you, and to many more years of WoW to come.

Is there anything anybody else can reflect on that WoW has done for them or changed for them since they started playing? Any friendships or relationships that have been forged and since then broken or unbroken? And most importantly – something to reflect on. We may be “geeks”, we may be “nerds”, we may be weirdos that play a computer game. But does it matter, when we get so much pleasure, so much happiness and so much support from not the game that Blizzard has produced, as such, although that is of course a massive source of enjoyment and one I will be very sad to lose, when it finally does go, but support from the people we’ve met, the community we’re growing, and the lives we’re leading?

I’ve discovered, whilst on my mission to get all my alts to 80, especially when I haven’t been levelling them as the spec I want them at at 80, that I don’t know what to do when I get there.

I ideally want a full suite of healers. I want to understand each healing style, and I feel that can only come from having played each healing style.

So, I have Elsen.

The plan with her is to keep her Resto / Balance, but before Cataclysm become a confident moonkin.

To help gear Elsen up as a Moonkin I’m going to be using the lists written by Graylo, available here.

Secondly we have Sapph. She is currently single-specced to being Ret, however I would like, at 80, for her to be holy / prot.

For a where-to-start gear list for Holy Paladins I am going to be looking here, and pestering Zal of course.

For gearing her up as a Tankadin, I am going to be looking at this forum thread, unless anyone can advise me different?

After Sapphrina, Ellenaie will be my next level 80, however once she is a level 80 I won’t be gearing her up. I don’t want to play a DK, she was just 55 levels of free levelling. Maybe she’ll grow on me but at the moment, my healers take priority.

Finally, my priest, Baeletha will be next. She has 15 levels to go before I have to sacrifice my gorgeous shadow spec and become dual spec Discipline / Holy. I love shadow. I love melting faces, and it’s actually making me tempted to level another priest in Cataclysm so I can have a DPSing priest and a healing priest – or one Disc/Shadow and one Holy/Shadow. For now, however, I will be making her disc/holy.

For gear for this character I will be looking at this list from Bob Turkey for disc, and his list for Holy. I realise they are 3.2 only but let’s face it, Bael ain’t gonna be seeing ICC. It’s what I can get from badges and heroics that interests me.

When gearing up my hunter, I used Jaedia’s list.

Does anyone have any other guides and BiS lists – pre-raid too! – I might have passed by accidentally?

Sophx

Since I am now a fully fledged member of PG, I thought it would be a good time to do a little update on both:

a) My goals before Cataclysm and

b) My goals for 2010.

My Goals Before Cataclysm

Written on 20th May 2010, I had the following goals before Cataclysm:

1. Defeat the Lich King – check. Completed last Tuesday with PG, on 25 man. Elsen the Kingslayer.
2. Get as close as possible to completing my BiS list – fail. I’m currently at a cross point where I’m nearing BiS for a non-heroic raider, but now in theory I am a heroic raider. I’ve got my BiS chest, I’m sporting 4 piece t10 but non are heroic sanctified, and I accidentally spent all my DKP on a normal belt thinking it was the heroic version. I think this is something that will take another few months to achieve.
3. Reach a 1550 rating with my 5v5 team - check. This happened. Since then, unfortunately as a team we haven’t done very well – Flames died and with it so did “Raw Force”. I would definitely like to PvP again in Cataclysm, ideally from the start.
4. Build a proper PvP set and get good at battlegrounds again - check/fail in equal proportions. I have 5 pieces of PvP gear and a handy trinket, but all my honor goes on mounts. So I’m halfway there. I’m actually decent at AB, and I can hold my own in AV. I like to have my hand held by Zal in the other BGs but hopefully with time will begin to get more competent at those as well.
5. Reach 8000 achievement points - check – I’m currently sitting at 8035! Maybe a new goal would be 8250 before Cataclysm?
6. Collect all vanity pets available to me that don’t involve real money – fail - I’m still missing everything I was before – I don’t have that much gold, and I don’t have a lot of time to grind either. Well, I do have time, but I choose to use it in other ways!
7. Stockpile 10k gold – fail - I hit 10k, and then something happened – oh yea, I bought a load of mounts. I’m now down at about 6.5k, but I think with levelling my alts through Northrend and then ideally beyond for a while, I should be able to make a decent bit of cash, and hopefully reach 10k before Cata hits.

Elsen Goals Pre-Cata:

Complete: 3/7

Partial: 1/7

Must do better: 3/7

I also had a variety of goals to reach on my alts pre-Cataclysm:

1. Level Ellenaie to 80 – total fail – she’s still level 71, having not moved or changed in the past 6 weeks.

2. Level Sapphrina to 80 – partial fail – she’s gone from level 72 to 76 – I gave her the heirlooms back and have been having a whale of a time. I love playing my ret pally and am looking forward to getting her to 80 and making her prot/holy!

3. Level Baeletha to at least 65 – check - this is where she’s at now.

4. Max leatherworking and tailoring – check – both of these are at 450 now. I need to get Baeletha to 80 before the expansion so I can be sure she can pick up the new levels of tailoring and leatherworking and be able to make myself the starter PvP set.

5. Spend time on my Argent Dawn warlock – total fail – she’s still being ignored at level 15. I have started a mini moocow shammy on Terenas with Zal, called Yessika, she’s levelling alongside Zal when we get bored of AB! She’s only level 11, I’d like her to maybe reach level 40 or so by Cata.

Alts Goals Pre-Cataclysm:

Complete: 2/5

Partial: 1/5

Must try harder: 2/5

So, this means my new list of goals before Cataclysm are as follows:

1. Get as close as possible to my BiS list on Elsen. This includes building a competent moonkin set and…well, becoming a competent moonkin. I have quite a bit of gear I just really need to gem it and whatnot.

2. Reach 8250 achievement points - I’m on my way there. I’d like to hit 8500 but I don’t want to get too overly ambitious!

3. Grind more vanity pets – This is one of those things that I should do to be completist but I just hate grinding. I need to pull my finger out a bit though and at least start checking for the fishing daily for my last croc.

4. Stockpile 10k gold - seriously, must try harder. I got it…and then I spent it. Boo hiss boo.

5. Level Ellenaie to 80 in preparation for Engineering and Inscription in Cataclysm.

6. Level Sapphrina to 80 in preparation for Blacksmithing and Enchanting in Cataclysm

7. Level Baeletha to 80 in preparation for Leatherworking and Tailoring in Cataclysm

8. Level Yessika to 58 – so I can see a good bit of Horde quest hubs and whatnot pre Cataclysm.

I’m going to put my Argent Dawn warlock on the back burner for now.

My Goals for 2010

My second set of goals, written much earlier, in late 2009, was a set of goals for 2010.

These were mostly based around leveling again, and maxing professions. I’m sitting at 4/10 with those goals, just 5 mounts away from 100. I think that set of goals is still going strong and I like being able to tick them off in my side bar.

So – who else has got goals pre-Cata? I’m pretty sure the answer to that is everyone – how are they doing? How are you all progressing in your pre-Cata objectives?

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.

I 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…

Oh, sweet 5v5s.

How I love you and hate you at the same time.

Before 7pm last night, we were on a high. A rating of 1476 – 1550 was IN SIGHT. We had til 11pm to boost our rating and hit that magical number to complete one of my pre-Cataclysm goals and progress.

What were we on by 11pm? 1421. Yes, that’s right. 1421. We went down by fifty five points. By 11pm I was cranky, pissed off and really hating arena.

Our win to loss ratio wasn’t that bad either – something like 15-21. We came up against one team that took us about 10 minutes to defeat – I think it was 2 holy paladins, one prot paladin, one DK and one resto druid. Rather amusingly in that fight I did the most healing and got 3 killing blows.

Yes I was seriously smug after that.

But you know what we got? 2 points.

We fought them a further two times that night. Both times all we got was 2 points.

What we were fighting were newly formed teams who were getting 48 points per win – whilst being fully in Wrathful and Relentless gear. We frequently got set against teams where all members – clothies included – were at over 30k health.

It wasn’t that we were bad, or that our skill wasn’t there. We actually had a fantastic moment where we were down to 1v1 – our mage versus a DK, I think, and from my dead position on the floor I could see him slowed, running across the floor towards her as she frostbolted him, then blinked behind him and burnt him down, to get her Last Man Standing. It was genuinely fantastic.

But we were fighting teams with low ratings, weird ass match making scores, full wrathful gear and massive health pools.

We didn’t stand a chance.

I feel quite disheartened. I love arena but last night it was utterly miserable. I’m really hoping that due to funds (summer clothes + car tax + MoT + dog vaccination + cat vaccination + dog microchip = no monday night riding lessons for sophie this month) having four more long solid Monday night sessions means that in a month, we can get to 1550.

Wish us luck!!!

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.

I seem to live in a whirlwind of ups and downs at the moment. One minute I’m all “woooo!” then the next minute I’m all “life sucks, I should just curl up in a ball and become a hermit and NEVER TALK TO ANYONE AGAIN EVER”.

It’s a wonder any of my friends still speak to me and that I haven’t driven my poor boyfriend loopy.

Anyway.

I’m slowly slowly working on building up a second ICC-10 run for Flames, using Petranne as my character. I need luck to be on my side and for instances to start dropping loot – the lovely pre-raid BiS crossbow seems to drop every day in Pit of Saron even though I got it on my first run, whilst nothing else that I need ever drops.

Although an unholy DK did win Nighttime a few days ago which sent me into a nerd rage.

I want to build us up a second ICC run. I want people to be able to raid with flames and to be able to get everything they need from us as a guild and a team. So I’m looking forward to building this up and hopefully getting on with stuff.

Yesterday we ran the usual 25 man raid. And I tried my most very hardest not to care – not to care when people stood in fire, not to care when people stood in the wrong place. It was actually quite good fun, being one of the mindless masses.

I may have been slightly vindictive and sniggered when people standing in fire died but ya know, they shouldn’t have stood in the fire!

No loot (again) but I’ve reached that sort of loot-level on Elsen where I can’t get many upgrades without progressing much further into ICC-25.

I’m one of the few people that still hasn’t won a mark of sanctification to upgrade my t10, despite Zal walking away with his second last night (grrrrr), and my missing upgrades are Marrowgar’s necklace, some vampire-y shoulders (or some BQL shoulders which are a more likely ten man drop – I’m going to be purchasing the t10 legs to swap out my t10 shoulders, as the non-tier shoulders are better than the sanctified tier shoulders, whereas the tier sanctified legs are Bis), Putricide’s belt, and Dying Light from Lanathel 25.

So, seeing as our 25 man progress is very very slow, and I expect we’ll be attempting Valrithia before BPC as the guild we raiding ally with haven’t managed BPC yet, my current only possible upgrades are 2 marks of sanctification for my head and legs, putricides ten man belt, marrowgars 25man neck and BQL’s ten man shoulders.

I’d like to point out I have been using the utterly amazing 25 man and 10 man guides from Hots and Dots to build up my BiS list.

So yes, that’s my irritable grumbles about loot finished.

So, the hunter.

I’m getting there! Yesterday the lovely Riccah ran ToC heroic with me (nothing dropped, boo hiss boo), and then we got FoS. And, glory upon glories, Nighttime dropped, so I now have 2 of those – my pre-raid BiS, and Needle-Encrusted Scorpion dropped too – one of the two pre-raid BiS trinkets. It’s satisfying seeing things progress slowly slowly, I now just need a better neck, shoulders, cloak, gloves, belt, feet, rings and one more trinket….

But! On the upside, all these things are drops from instances, so if I run the four instances every day, and now just chain run ToC normal until the Banner of Victory drops, I should be able to get us up and running with a second run weekly in another fortnight or so.

This DPS stuff is very different to what I’m used to though. I am seeing my numbers and my awareness slowly increase, and yesterday in VoA25, despite me being on my laptop touchpad, I was in the top 10. I’d like to be hitting 5.5k ish before I confidently move us into ICC but we’ll have to see – I don’t want to be the one letting the team down, basically.

I failed at my goal of getting my priest to 45. I actually spent 1k on her dual spec and then did nothing on her because I just don’t really like doing random instances. However now I am shadow specced I am tempted to go off into the wilderness and just pew-pew my way through the next 23 levels to 65. It isn’t until 60 that the levelling gets hard so really I just need to man up and stop bloody well complaining.

I feel slightly regenerated Warcraft wise, and then I think about work, and my heart sinks, or I think about the fact it’s still 9 days til pay day and the only money I have is the £20 I need to cash in on a scratchcard and my heart sinks even further!

This is life though, unfortunately, and this is my life for the next…18 months, whilst I pay off my debt and work to recover my credit rating.

A warning to all students, or new-to-being a student people out there. It may seem like free money – but let me tell you, it isn’t.

Being in debt is horrible. Really, really horrible. Having a crap credit rating is horrible, because nobody’ll lend you any money. So I have to spend the next 18 months of my life trying to recover from this brink, paying off a couple of hundred quid every month, so hopefully in 2 years time I am financially capable and trustworthy enough to get a mortgage.

Being grown up sucks, and being in debt sucks. It really, really does.

Just a warning to everyone out there, this £3250 hovers over my head continuously and permanently, so…just be careful.

And with that happy note, I move on to my next post!

Oh, and by the way. If you’re living in Britain, get off your arse and VOTE today.

Last night was a really, really good night.

We had no raid on Friday, we were a couple of people down, however on Wednesday we’d taken down Lower Spire and Wingus and Dingus (Festergut and Rotface for those not au fait with the lingo). So, last night, we cleared some trash and faced the Blood Prince Council.

And, we got him down.

Our team was made up of 3 exceptional tanks (1 prot warrior, Grags, and 2 bears, Groulinis and Dhearic, Groul of which did an absolutely exceptional job of taking the shadow ball thingies), 2 healers (myself and Zalduun), and 5 DPS (Nyo (moonkin), Kabooms (the mage of the exploding strudels), Hammerhands (hunter), Rydia (Unholy DK) and Shamubar (a melee shammy – neither me or Nyo can remember whether that’s Elemental or Enhancement).

As Zal says, it was a stressful fight. We were all working our butts off, and a few things really helped us on our way:

• There are 2 kinetic bombs on 10 man. Our first few tries we missed the second one, but once we realised there was two, our ranged handled them brilliantly.
• You do not need a caster tank. Take a ‘real’ tank. It is doable with 5 DPS, and the fight wasn’t massively lengthy. The presence of a bear tank with 60k HP on made the pressure on us a lot easier, meaning we could safely…
• Use two healers.

We had a great composition and a great raid, fantastic add management, fantastic tanking, people paying attention and it all came together, netting us the guild first Blood Prince Council kill, and also the BPC section of the meta-achievement.

Congratulations, Flames!

We then, as one would do in this situation, moved on to Blood Queen Lana’thel. Who is spectacular. You know, I enjoy raiding. I love Flames, and I love my guildies. That’s why I love raiding.

But last night? I loved me. Those that know me will know I don’t have what could be ever called confidence in my own abilities. But last night, I rocked. I’ve actually changed how I raid recently. I’ve started paying a lot more attention, being a bit more serious about it all, possibly contributing a little more. And I do feel good for it. Last night was a prime example of that.

Now I know we have the buff. The buff is great. I am all for the buff, and every other blogger in the world has either complained or cheered the buff, so you don’t need my reasons too. I’m not a “serious” blogger in that sense.

So I know the buff certainly added towards last night’s performance, but I’m not going to let that detract from our awesomeness.

When the Lich King was defeated for the first time, and numbers started to be released on DPS figures, HPS figures and whatnot, I took interest.

Now, I’m competitive. I shouldn’t be – if I wanted to blast numbers, I should have rolled a paladin.

I’m comfortable with my niche. My synergy with Zal is awesome – we yin and yang, my HoTs cover the little spaces and his big blasts of light cover the big gaps. I’m used to my smaller numbers. It’s how things work. But Lana’thel is just…amazing. It is the most druid friendly fight I’ve ever seen, and cos of it, I felt like I could shine.

On the try where we actually got Lana’thel down to 10%, I was putting out 7.7k HPS. Now, when Paragon defeated the Lich King on 25man, their top output healer was putting out 4024 HPS. It made me think – I can do this, we can do this.

And I really hope we do.

I was on such a high.

I cannot wait until next week where we get to have another crack at her and hopefully get her down.

The second part of this post’s title is feeling vindicated. I’m the only druid main spec healer in our guild.

I don’t like Elitist Jerks – I’m not good with theorycrafting and numbers. To be honest, I suck at maths. I find the site confusing, complicated, lengthy and…full of obnoxious idiots. Ahem.

My research comes from blogs. I read so many druid blogs that I feel like it comes out of my ears sometimes. I find an idea. I look at that idea. I spend a long time reading everyones opinions on that idea. And then I follow it through.

And also, I have this obsession with socket bonuses. I don’t like grey text on my character sheet. I like my sockets to all make sense.

So. I read about the GotEM nerf. I didn’t understand it. But what I DID understand was that I needed a respec. Because I’d spent a long time working towards a system where I could get 5 rejuvenations into one Wild Growth cooldown. And I wasn’t quite there. So, with this change, I’d be even further away!

So, off to Moonglade I went. Me and the trainer had a chat, and I suddenly became the proud owner of the Celestial Focus talent. And then, the lovely druid bloggers of the world told me that there was this nice round number – 856 – that would mean that my spec could shift from this, back into points I liked having – like Living Seed. So I had something to aim for! So. I spent some money, I bought some gems, and I was at about 600 haste. So far away! I cried. But I’ve inched my way there, and with the purchase of my Vestments of Spruce and Fir, I passed that 856 number. Now, I was casting so fast, I barely had time to move across pitbull to my next person to cast again before the GCD had reset.

I was elated! However not a lot changed. Because our healing team works they way it does, although I personally noticed a change, I highly doubt anybody else did!

But Lana’thel, giving raid healers a chance to shine, allowed me to shine. It allowed me to say YES I am right for choosing this piece of gear and not having the 4set bonus (until testing proves me wrong, I won’t be investing. I favour the haste more than the crit, and to be honest although the 4pc may be fabulous for 25 man raiders, I already HAVE a rejuvenation on every single target almost all the time anyway, making it…a bit crap. FotP is about to embark on some 25 man raiding, and this may make me change my mind, but for now…no thanks), I am right for gemming as I gemmed to get my haste up, for choosing the spec I chose, for enchanting how I enchanted.

I felt proud of my research, I felt proud of myself and I felt proud of my character. That never happens, and I’m still elated and buzzed up today.

Long live haste, long live druid healers and long live feeling good about myself. I only wished it happened more often!

I know my druid, and I’m pleased about it. I just want to say, my eternal gratitude does go out to all the druid bloggers out there whose careful explanations, well written posts and fabulous drawings, because without them I’d have been left totally stranded.

A few things I’d like to chat about today.
Firstly I’m going to blow my own trumpet about my progress with my alts.

I dinged 68 on my paladin on Friday, spent nearly 3000 gold and got her blacksmithing to 448/450. I’m sure I can, when Sapph herself reaches the upper echelons of the level 70s, make something to actually wear for those last two slots. What I discovered cost more than the materials themselves was the recipes. 15g a pop for a blacksmithing recipe I’m never going to use. I’m insane. I also levelled her enchanting quite a bit, and she is now 432/450 enchanting. Only a few points off the 435 I need to learn most major recipes and 60 odd dream shards burning a hole in my inventory. As soon as she is level 75 ish I will take her to Dalaran and spend a few on recipes for Elsen.

I went back to my hunter, finished off Un’Goro and headed to the Plaguelands (rather than Winterspring, which is my usual port of call). I only got her to level 51 as I spent all of yesterday running a friend through some heroics on his newly dinged bear. I haven’t quested in the Plaguelands for a long time though, so hopefully it will move OK speed wise once I actually start levelling her with intent. When she hits 52 I need to take her back to Ironforge and when I train her up I MUST remember to learn the next level of herbing. I can leave jewelcrafting to 60 like I did enchanting/blacksmithing with Sapph but there is really no point running by herbs I cannot pick as I level – I’m going to need them for my alchemy levelling anyway.

I also logged on to my priest for the first time in ages, did a few quests on her and took her to Stonetalon Peak – I didn’t level Sapph or Petranne here although it is where I levelled Elsen the first time, so it’s sort of new for me. She’s now level 23 and I’ll wait til she’s fully rested again before continuing. I don’t like playing her on normal xp – it’s simply too hard!

I spent my weekend wasting my time. Saturday I barely moved a level forward with my hunter but spent the day talking talking talking to a guildie which was awesome, and then on Sunday I just chain ran heroics all day. By the end of it I was, to be honest, exhausted. But at least I got a fair few done. I picked up the triumph helm for the first piece of my PvP gear, and also had enough honor to buy my Medallion of the Alliance.

Last night I embarked on a journey into ICC 10 for my first proper raid in ages. Flames successfully cleared the first quarter on Friday opening up the Spire. The place is spectacular graphics wise, really spectacular – I like it. The trash hits hard but is fun, the plague scientists are cool and I felt very smug standing at the back in tree form with Nyo next me while everyone zipped around the floor as a polymorphed ooze. Druids FTW.

The two dogs were also cool, Gluth was always one of my favourite bosses in Naxx – second only to Grobbulus who was my most favourite ever – and they are quite cute really. Fun little mini bosses.

Festergut was hard, and we didn’t get him down, but we had a good time doing it, it was a really good learning experience and when the healing came together at the end – we got him down to 13% on our best try, and I’m sure that next time we encounter him we’ll get him down.

We healing team was me and two paladins. In the first phase myself and one paladin stayed raid healing, Zal spammed the main tank. In the second phase I stuck to raid heals with the two paladins working on the main tank, and then in phase 3 it was a massive main tank spammage fest. If we hadn’t all gone oom, I’m pretty sure we would have got him down. The tries after that we started coordinating innervates, but unfortunately just didn’t quite get him squished. He is definitely “on notice”, as they say.
A big heads up to Rejuvo whose Festergut guide I kept checking for hints.

My God, my hands stink of diesel. I’ve got to get better at getting it in the car and not on my hands. It’s horrible. Why can’t I drive a petrol vehicle, it’s so much more nice smelling.

I hope everyone’s been enjoying the WoW Tourism posts. I realise my timing hasn’t been perfect on all of them but hopefully I’ll keep getting them posted.

Until later,
Sophx

When I first started this blog, I had just finished creating my compliment of characters. I had them ready to roll, a lean mean fighting team of female toons ready to take on the world.

Since then…world domination is going slowly, I’m not gonna lie.

Elsen, ever my main, is still a skinner/miner. However I have made the uber decision to level her up as alchemy/engineering, but not for a while yet.

Sapphrina, my paladin, has gone up four levels to 57, while she patiently waits for me to slog my way through the last 13 skill points to take me to 300 blacksmithing. When I started the blog she was at 218 so I’m doing well, it’s just so horrendously expensive. On the upside, she is levelling the two dearest professions so at least they are going to be out of the way. Once her blacksmithing is at 300 (enchanting has been for a while), I can push her on to 60, take her to hellfire and work on the next 75 points in both professions.

Petranne, my hunter, has gone up three levels to 29. She dropped mining and took up herbing, so I’ve been working on that. Her herbing is at 125, her jewelcrafting at 158. Ideally I’d like to get her to 225 in both those professions before pushing her on to level 40 and on to 300 in her skill points.

Finally, my priest, Baeletha, is level 12. She is already up to 150 in tailoring and 115 in leatherworking. Hopefully she’ll be 150 LW before she hits level 20 and can push on further.

My warlock is still level 1 (ahem) and my death knight is 58…I hate death knights. I just don’t get it. The whole thing is beyond me.

I am doing OK, however. Slowly slowly getting there.

Anyway.

There wasn’t a lot of point to this post other than a quick update on my task of world domination.

Other than WoW I have been playing the new mario on wii and discovered that when you fail enough times, they offer you Luigi as easy mode (my pride said no to that) and then even if you get to the boss of the world, if you fail and get a game over it RESETS THE WORLD.

I emo quit and turned the wii off then.

I have also been playing Rabbids go Home quite a bit. It’s freaking awesome. Running around with a shopping trolley, screaming at people til their clothes fall off. Awesome. I’ve got nunchuk-white-finger.

Anyway,

for now

Sophx