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.

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. Continue reading

Killing a big meanie raid boss

In the name of Christ.

(I wish I could link you all back to the original post that the Christ line is from but Megs seems to have shut off her archives. /pout)

Just an average weekend for us in Shadow Rising.

Run a few heroics.

Do some dailies.

Kill a mother fucking dragon. Continue reading

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. Continue reading

Midsummer Mayhem?

So…

Last night I finish up the Midsummer achievements (honored and desecrated all the Northrend fires just for giggles also) and earned my title – Flame Keeper Arioch in the house.

And then a friend sends me this link: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17631614070&sid=1

For those of you at work, here’s the important bit:

We are in the process of applying an in-game fix that will restart all of the quests associated with the Midsummer Fire Festival event and allow players to complete them once again. If you are in the process of completing an achievement such as Extinguishing Kalimdor, this fix will reset your progress and you will need start over. This fix will require realms to be restarted.

WTF?

This can go one of two ways:

  1. Good Way – I retain my achievements and title and get to run around doing enough fires to get just enough burning blossoms so I can get the vanity item. (I bought the pet already but won’t have enough blossoms to get the brazier.)
  2. Bad Way – I lose my achievements and title and have to run around and get ALL the fires again.

I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the Good Way, but I won’t get to find out until tonight. Continue reading

Failure to launch

For not being in a serious raiding guild, my calendar is full of raids.

The priest that runs the guild we’re allied with has invited us to something almost every day for about 3 weeks now.

Sunday was supposed to be OS 10 with 1 drake up, VoA if we controlled WG, followed by EoE 10. The whole mess was going to start at 6 server (4 local) and we were going to move from one right to the next.

I’m standing in the checkout lane of the store just before 4 local time freaking out. Nothing quite went according to the original timeline for the day.

Didn’t I just do a post about not showing up to raids on time? /facepalm

OK, call a friend that’s also in on the raids.

We’re going to be late, if they can fill our spots, please do so so no one is waiting for us, we’ll pick it up next week.

What?

The priest isn’t even on?

OMG. Continue reading

DPS Whores

The talk of damage and DPS and utility and such has filled my chats the last few days. In particular, this tidbit caught me from a friend that raids as both a mage and a DK:

thats the new trend with mages, no aoe, no raid contributions, just raw damage

We had been discussing the last OS25 +1 drake we had run the other day. I was undergeared looking at 3 of the 4 other mages in the group, I could see T7.5 sets and was overcome with much jealousy. Yea verily I did covet their gear for it is purple and shiny and better than mine. But I got over it.

Obsidian Sanctum can really be broken down into two parts – everything before Sarth and then Sarth.

Before Sarth, you kill the trash and the drakes not staying up for the Sarth fight. One type of trash casts a Curse of Mending that causes the cursed player to heal the mob with attacks instead of harming them. If your top DPS gets hit with this and it doesn’t get removed or they don’t stop attacking, it can make for some serious un-damage to overcome.

I get that as the lower-expected DPS member of the group, it makes perfect sense for me to take on the de-cursing. One of us has to sacrifice a GCD to remove the curse, the group loses less if the 2500 DPS mage does it instead of the 3500 mage. I’ve always felt that it should also not fall into the healer’s camp to remove curses; it’s only a few classes/specs that can do so, and again their GCDs are better spent keeping someone alive. Continue reading

Naxx, OS, Tears, and Buzzkills

So much to say… I should post more often.

Ran a PuG of Naxx 10 last week, I got pulled in after the first 2 bosses in Spider were down. Took 2 nights and 22 deaths, we called it at Saph. Several people hadn’t run it at all before or done any research. But it was an awesome learning experience. I shall now forevermore switch to my boots with the run speed boost for the safety dance. I cannot take two mutagen injections in a row without heals. If a sewage slime follows me through the Construct Quarter, it will tear through my mirror images, has an aura that stops my invisibility, it cannot be frost nova-ed, and the rest of the party will laugh when my ice block wears off. Bastards.

I turned out to be the oldest person in the raid (over 25 is all you get). The average age of the raid was about 15. I was dubbed “Grandma” by the 14-year-old raid leader. He was dubbed “Fatty” by everyone else, so I guess it all works out.

Someone over the age of 15 (I hope) said I sounded hot in Vent. As flattering as that was (and it was, truly), I think I was more flattered by the guy trying to recruit me to his guild. I think that cements my gamer status when recognition for skill outweighs recognition for hawtness. And I’m a Leo – that recognition for hawtness goes a long way in my book.

We had a pretty bad hunter. On the Grobbulus fight it got to the point where they directed him to stay on the ramp the whole time and they let him die up there instead of healing him. It beat dodging the mutagen puddles he left all over the room. Continue reading

This post brought to you by the symbol !

This is a happy post!

Why?

Because my guild finally accomplished something with a minimum of deaths and mages are going to get PANTS!!! More on the PANTS!!! later, let’s talk about OS 10.

Thursday nights are kind of special in our little group. We have one friend that’s playing a resto shaman and he hardly ever gets to be on at the same time as the rest of us. He’s got the work schedule from hell, so we set aside Thursday nights specifically to run something with/for him.

Last night we had just about everyone on… what do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do? Guild chat looks like 2 teenagers on their first date. Except there’s 7 of us and we’ve been playing for months.

How about 10-man Obsidian Sanctum? This offer from the DK, who is currently in his tank spec. Continue reading