Well that’s old

I have some few hundred screen shots tucked away in a folder that I need to go through and either label or toss.

As incentive to myself to perform this mind-numbing task, I’ll try to take the time to share a few of these with you.

I’ll most likely start with the oldest and work my way to recent shots, but I may jump around a bit just to spice things up.

Back when I started raiding, I was terribly curious about my DPS.

Was it good? Was it improving? How much did it vary from fight to fight?

I wasn’t educated on parsers yet so I would just snag screen shots of recount after various fights, usually whispering myself the name of the fight and any special circumstances that might make the numbers memorable.

Cutting my Teeth

Well this was an exciting weekend, especially considering the ratio of time I spent in game to the amount of “AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH” that was had.

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First up, on this episode of Pimp My Priest, we take Selwyn, a scrubby holy priest in blues and greens from a rather lackluster 1200 spell power to a healing hunk of belf.

Back to Normal

Or at least, what passes for normal around here.

I’ve spent the last whole week waxing philosophical about the leaked changes and then reporting the results from BlizzCon 2009, but I certainly didn’t just sit around picking my nose during that whole time.

I have been one busy little bee. Busy as a whole hive of bees!

First off, I would like to say that this guy sucks:

That’s right, I’ve been out grinding for my Netherwing drakes. This is the second to the last guy available for racing. I can get so close… but then he dives at the pier thing and I lose him. There has to be a way to do it without a pally aura or other speed-boost. People keep saying they’ve done it… I’ll come back and try again when I feel like I don’t have enough pain and suffering in my life.

She’s allergic to ice

Rare real world post from me…

Last week was both my birthday and my husband’s birthday so our friends took us out to dinner.

The waitress is taking our drink orders, I order mine, “diet, no ice.”

Ice in a beverage makes it too cold and I get phenomenally painful hiccups.

These hiccups that are the stuff of legend with my friends laughing at me for hours while I’m clutching my sides and wanting to die.

Not to mention, the ice machine in many restaurants is a breeding ground for bacterial infestation. You probably don’t want to think too hard about whether or not they washed the lemon slice adorning your drink either.

Anyway, my drink comes out with ice.

One of my friends is quick to pounce on the waitress and request the ice be removed.

“She’s allergic to ice.”

OMG. Did you really just tell the waitress that I’m allergic to ice?

Breaking in 3.2

Quick shout out to my guild for our Naxx 10 run last night!

We were scheduled to run Naxx 10 with a full compliment of people… but life happened.

We lost one of our three healers and our off-tank.

My hubby was bringing his undergeared DK in as DPS to collect gear for tanking but we shoved him into what tank gear he had and he was the new OT. Instead of the luxury of 3 healers when we needed them, we were going to 2-heal it all.

We cleared Spider and Plague wings with only 1 wipe. Apparently poison totems only work for the party that the shaman is in… so that made Grand Widow a little tricky the first time. We nailed the bitch on the second go.

Half our raid was undergeared or under-experienced (our little hunter has only been drug through Naxx 25 once, she’s never seen Naxx 10) and we pulled it off. Two wings, anyway.

Big woot for us!

…

So patch 3.2 has arrived.

I spent the first part of Tuesday night not knowing what to do – once I was able to log in.

I wanted to be on every character at the same time checking all my neat new things (trying very hard to overlook anything that could be considered a nerf).

Load my out of date add ons so my eyes don’t bleed looking at the standard UI.

Started on the mage, of course. Checked with all class/profession trainers to make sure nothing new had popped up. Admired my new +23 Spellpower on my rings (up from +19). Picked up a bizarre little dead-end quest in Dal to deliver a shield to Thunder Bluff. Was anyone able to take that quest anywhere after that?

In TB, saw the new portal to the Dark Portal. Then promptly saw someone in trade chat requesting a port to Stonard. Fool. L2read patch notes.

Picked up the new BoA chest for my priest and sent that off.

ZOMG

Test Drive

OK. Did a Naxx 10 with the new fire spec.

Had tanks and healers I could trust.

We were bringing through at least 2 people that had not done Naxx before. One I believe had done it on a different character, but the other was completely fresh and hadn’t even read strats or watched videos.

Did pretty darn good at sticking with the rotation/reaction and not pulling *too* much aggro. Invisibility got used a few times.

I didn’t spaz out. I don’t even think I did any major swearing.

Still having a little trouble on trash deciding when casting Living Bomb is worth it. I try to cast it on the second or third target in the pack so it has a greater chance of living long enough to go asplody on everything.

Whenever possible I would time my movement for when I was casting Living Bomb or firing off a Hot Streak pyroblast.

With the aid of mouseover macros I could keep Living Bomb and Scorch up on Grobbulus while taking out slimes. There was an awkward few seconds where the tank drug him behind a slime cloud and I couldn’t reach him.

We did 4 Horsemen by pulling all of them to the back, 2 in each corner. Somehow I couldn’t drop Thane’s mark (even though I was further away from him than Lady B) and went splat. That fight took forever, sorry guys.

It was amusing on Maexxna when the Living Bomb would detonate just as her spiderlings would spawn. Poof! There goes half their little lives!

Loatheb was kind of neat for getting a Hot Streak constantly.

I get let off easy for utility on most fights and was able to just concentrate on damage. Druids and shamans told me to DPS and they would take care of curses. That just about drove me insane seeing little purple raid frames. I was even just on back-up web duty on Maexxna.

I did goof on KT. Had to pop Invisibility to drop some threat and accidentally snagged one of the adds as my target when I came back. I must have been getting tired because it took me a few casts to notice. /facepalm

I got a ring that I *might* be able to use in my hit set, but I’m not seeing it on my list from RAWR. Might just be a crystal for me. Will play with that later.

But no one cares about all that.

Everyone wants to know what I think about the spec now that I’ve given it a fair shake.

Drum roll please…

But I Don’t Wanna Jump Off the Cliff

Peer pressure is an odd thing and works many ways.

I’ve always been an odd sort of bird when it comes to peer pressure in that it usually backfires and drives me away from the new hot things. I take pride in being the black sheep.

Except Peggle. Damn the developers of Peggle to the 9th circle of hell. No, give them their own circle. Dante could not have foreseen the evil that is Peggle.

In high school, my standard response to the parental question of, “Would you jump off a cliff if all your friends did it too?” was usually along the lines of, “Depends. Does it look like I would have fun? If yes, then I would. If not, then no, I’ll enjoy the view from the top of the cliff. But why the hell am I on a cliff in the first place?”

In my pursuit of personal improvement on my mage I’ve been poking around EJ, WoW Heroes, WoW Meters, and whatever other flotsam comes my way via the interwebz.

And I have come to a conclusion. Yes, it’s the same one that everyone came to ages ago. Sometimes I’m a little slow, leave me alone.

Arcane has enjoyed the view from the top of the cliff, but fire came along and shoved it off. Blizz can say that they are comparable all they want but it’s not showing.

Loatheb for the Lazy

Wednesday night we successfully pulled off our warm-up Obsidian Sanctum (no drakes).

Most of the guild was present, even one of the guys that is *never* on but finally transferred an 80 priest so he wouldn’t have to get his warrior caught up with us.

We pulled in 3 people from our first alliance guild and lost one of our hunters in the middle due to internet issues (don’t worry, no hunter loot dropped).

Slightly rocky start, we were starting without one of our tanks (he was getting pwned by traffic and a hungry toddler), but overall, I think it was one of our best runs ever.

We got a very nice tanking ring upgrade for our pally tank (who needs some practice in keeping Sarth’s tail out of the raid). There was also a glove token piece of some sort. I finally got the Dragon Hide Bag, go me!

WWS at http://wowwebstats.com/2akq6rab3pbn3 for the next 15 days or so.

…

After OS 10 I got an invite into a Naxx 25 with a chunk of our second alliance guild.

There turned out to be a pretty good number from another guild that I don’t think I’ll be raiding with again any time soon. No real specific drama, just a lot more immaturity than I want running nonstop in a 25-man raid.

Uld 10 x 2.5

We now return to our normally scheduled frivolous posting!

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Went on my first trip to Ulduar with 24 other people. It was a joint venture between our second alliance guild and another guild that I had not had the pleasure of raiding with before.

One member of their guild had been through Naxx 25 on another toon on another server – months (and patches) ago. We had at least one person that hadn’t even been through Uld 10 yet, but was at least geared through Naxx 25. So it’s a learning run, which I am totally cool with.

Ever fuck up real bad and think the whole situation is going to explode but it works out?

The Loot Fairy Loves Me

My mage buddy in the guild gets into a Naxx 25-KT only last night.

Wednesday night and you’ve got KT only?

Lucky.

They get him down to some ridiculously low percentage, fail, and 9 people bail.

WTF?

It’s only Wednesday, you almost had him, you’re now saved (on WEDNESDAY), and you leave?

Get me in on this!

A quick whisper to the raid leader with my stats and achievement gets me in.

I recognize a few people in the raid.

We have the split-personality pally. I think it was personality number 1… with a few weeks of practice under his belt. He wasn’t nasty enough to be personality number 2. But he did show up to a raid with no reagents to buff people.

Hey, we also have the rogue who ninjas BoE gear. OK, he’s not loot master and he’s not in the same guild as the raid leader.

No vent, since it’s just KT.

Summon in our last druid, fight starts immediately (who wanted to buff the druid? no one? guess not) and would you believe that not everyone made it to the center in time so we got swarmed by a-bombs?

Wipe.