Momma’s going to buy you a mockingbird

Or I can just win the fucker off Ji’Kun!

(Roll above a 25 on gear? Oh hell no. Roll 90 for a mount? Oh hell YES!)

 

In related news, we have killed Megeara and Ji’Kun and are steadily working on Durumu.

The Little Raid

That couldn’t.

Last night marked our triumphant return to raiding.

And by triumphant, I mean the raid bosses racked up some kills.

And by raid bosses, I mean Jin’rokh. And Horridon.

We did manage to field 6 guildies, but two of them were brand new. As in, joined 5 minutes before the raid.

In the meantime

Since raiding has been off the table in any serious capacity for the past couple weeks, what have I been up to in WoW?

With the exception of this past weekend, not much.

I started playing LoL and almost as quickly lost interest.

Watched the first 4 seasons of Venture Bros. Seriously, if you aren’t watching this, you need to start. What are you waiting for? Go watch!

And then two things happened.

Patch 5.4 and the promise of 489 catch-up gear for my alts and 100 free valor (if I can cap on Arioch) each week until this shindig ends (anyone know when it will end?) had me itching to put some serious hours back in to the game.

The second thing was my overwhelming guilt for not keeping up on my cousin’s gaming podcast (check him out over at www.extradamage.com ) finally caught up with me.

I had the perfect opportunity to roam the Barrens, mindlessly slaughtering Kor’kron and escorting caravans, while listening to the MANY hours of podcast I had fallen behind on.

I am sad to say that I’m still not caught up on the podcast (episode 19!) , but I made progress all over the place in WoW on multiple characters.

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.

How does this even happen?

Remember the other day when I said that my guild was on hiatus?

No, that didn’t change.

But the week before I *gasp* offered to gear my priest up since replacing DPS would theoretically be easier than replacing a healer (and with the exception of Tir, we’ve had pretty crappy luck with recruiting healers in the first place).

I was told, no, I should stay on the mage because my damage would be difficult to replace.

Awwww, how sweet.

Making Progress!

Alright, it’s been another week-plus since I had time to write, but there’s been valor to cap and bosses to kill.

Not to loot, just to kill. Because I just get gold.

Anyway…

I am now officially 16/16 in T14 content and ready to step up in to T15 Throne of Thunder.

So I had a bright idea.

I should use the +300 food for the new content, really squeak out that extra bit of DPS.

Hmmm…. I’ve got a DK that’s got cooking up pretty close. I bet I could level his cooking really quick and make my little fish stews to get points!

Moving in to the Barn

I think I need a “not dead yet” tag for posts.

There are three reasons I don’t post:

1. Nothing is happening and/or nothing new is happening and I can only rehash the same rants so many times.
2. There’s lots of new stuff happening but it’s not appropriate to print at all or the timing isn’t quite right.
3. And sometimes there’s just so much happening I don’t have time to post.

Thankfully, my latest week-long hiatus was for the reason behind door number 3.

Last week I posted about moving to greener pastures so it’s only fair I give an update on how that transition is going.

Greener Pastures

Hopefully.

The grass is always greener on the other side, but in my case I think the grass was greener EVERYWHERE.

The Sahara has greener grass. Mars has greener grass.

Raiding on Saturday was terrible.

I use the word “terrible” loosely.

Abysmal. Horrendous. Catastrophic. You get the idea.

It was decided to let the druid healer (punk kid) bring in his hunter and let a new (to the raid but longtime standing guild member and nice guy) take his place as healer.

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.

It was a squeeful event

I came to the table late for the new Darkmoon Faire, ignoring it for MONTHS before finally dragging characters through it.

Pretty quickly, I realized it was useful for leveling some professions across the awkward humps and MOUNTS AND PETS WERE THERE, DUHHHHHHH!

Pets and mounts went account-wide and suddenly it was worth going after the tickets.

So a cycle of 4 characters developed, dragging my mage, priest, paladin, and DK through the faire each month.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t doing all that I could be doing (picked up ear quests late, didn’t pursue the dungeon drop quests, and often missed several days) so ticket collection was painfully slow. Add to that the ticket cost of the mounts being 180 and the pets being 90 and it felt like I would never get there.

This past month, Arioch got really close to the 180 mark for the first mount. So I braved the AH and dumped some gold on the dungeon items.