So What Have I Been Up To?

The short answer?

Work and school.

The long answer?

Woooooooooooork and schoooooooooooooool.

And now that I’m done being a smartass…

Seriously, work and school and life have just wrung me through the wringer.

But I have some free time coming up. The semester is about to end and they are reducing the amount of time off I can hoard at work so it looks like I’ve got some days off coming up.

What do I do now?

I’m lost in WoW. Like, really, really, lost.

What the hell is going on around here?

Seriously?

Guild goes on raiding hiatus.

Weird “this is all your fault” drama with a potential to raid with my old guild.

I filled in here and there, but the start time of 4:30 local just is too tight when I’m in meetings that run until 4:30 on those days. No hard feelings, I think they found another mage anyway. I did get Tortus and Megaera down (still no Council for me).

Now, my GM has stepped down and left his GF in charge because he doesn’t know where he’s living from day to day. (Somehow, his being homeless increases the likelihood of his children having a roof over their heads. I can’t even pretend to understand the intricacies of this guy’s life.)

We’re set to raid again this week, new raid days of Wednesday and Thusday.

But we had a brief interlude where a miracle almost happened.

By the number

Four hundred seventy nine.

Once again, that would be four hundred fucking seventy nine.

479.

FUCK.

/rage

…

Didn’t see that coming

As I posted earlier, I was looking forward to trying the QUEST (which apparently involves a draenei porn star).

Log on Thursday evening bearing bad news – Tir’s semester is winding to a close and he’s slammed with homework/studying.

The GM/raid leader was less than enthused, but understood that school is at least slightly more important than wiping all night.

I was on about 30 minutes prior to raid.

There were 4 of us logged and ready to go.

I ran out to the island and popped into the inn. I had my flasks, my feasts, my pots.

Might as well

Tuesday’s raid sort of ran out of steam… and by steam I mean people. So I might as well post.

Tir’s been having a rough week so missed raid as he was passed out before the raid even started, meaning we were out our strongest healer.

Our normal (new) hunter was MIA for something in RL.

We did have a new warlock to replace the last two we burned through in rapid succession. We need a warlock vending machine. Hell, I would be happy with a Healthstone vending machine.

The warrior was busy, but his girlfriend was playing his character. (Much better than she normally does but she was even more talkative than normal. I don’t think she took a breath the whole night.)

We were short our normal heal and DPS spots on top of the absences.

Almost an hour after raid started we had a temporary hunter, a resto druid, and an ele shaman.

Off to Throne of Thunder!

Embarrassment

Things were going so well.

In a new guild.

Making progress with a nearly full roster.

Then the healers that were supposed to join disappeared.

And so did the next pair.

And the next.

So we slogged through a few weeks of Horridon with various PUG healers; all having their own strats, their own opinions, and apparently all having the worst internet connections in the world (judging by the number of “disconnects” we endured).

The funniest thing about all the PUGS we went through, was that the guild was actually functioning appropriately – we were in the right spots and the right time attacking the right targets, it was the PUGs that were all over the board in skill.

And then it happened.

Tir made a tough decision, but one which I am very proud of him for: there are more important things in life than progression raiding.

He told his 25-man guild that he didn’t have the time available to devote to raiding 4+ nights a week and he left.

There should be an account achievement for an absurd amount of faction transfers. That’s right, he came back home to the Horde. (I don’t care that he started as Alliance, he belongs over here under the red and black.)

Not only did he come back to the Horde, but he moved over to Area 52 and brought all his characters into the guild – including his paladin healer, which we desperately need.

So we had an established roster of 9 and a filler healer lined up. We went in to Jin’rok and were already chatting about our Horridon strat now that we had some competent (and consistent) heals.

Except we didn’t get there.

As Promised

I said yesterday I would provide an update on how the raid went last night so here’s a post!

But first, another really stupid thing I’ve done in WoW!

Yesterday I talked about leveling up cooking on my DK (who got his 522 neck last night, FYI) for the express purpose of making mogu fish stews for the mage and getting cooking points at the same time but then I realized that the fish stew was a 600 recipe so I basically just wasted time.

*deep breath after that run on sentence*

Last night I realized I had been doing something STUPID for the past couple of weeks with my priest.

Two Plus Two Equals Potato

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s patch day! 5.2 is loading. Check out MMO Champ for a tidy list of changes.

OK, I admit it, the title is a little misleading.

(Because we all know 2+2=pistachio, derrrr.)

The title implies that I may have had a problem with math.

But I really didn’t.

The math was just fine – great, even! I conclusively proved that a weapon drop was not, in fact, an upgrade for me.

No, the problem wasn’t with the math at all.

My blunder fell squarely in the realm of “garbage in, garbage out.”

You see, I’ve been using the adorable inscription staff, the one with the cute little paint brush tip. I even went as far as to force two alts to grind for valor so that I could have it upgraded without Arioch having to pay for it.

This post is brought to you by the letter F

In the grand tradition here of bitching and moaning about something only to see a drastic improvement in the next few days, I bring you the Fuck It rant.

Fuck it.

I want to raid.

I log in to raid.

I spend my weekends thinking that LFR looks really good.

This weekend?

Patch 5.2 Already?

In case you missed it: https://twitter.com/Bashiok/status/301013346717663232

I have oodles to say.

Don’t really have the “ooomph” to write any of it right now.

In brief:

Guild went in to raid on Saturday and we cleared up to Elegon.

Wiped a couple times on the sparkle dragon before calling it.

Came back in on Sunday.