And the fields…

of Halaa will run red with blood.

Lyss finally caved to peer pressure and transferred her Alliance druid over to Drak’Tharon.

But she didn’t do the faction transfer!

So a bunch of us met up on Halaa and proceed to slaughter her.

Over 170 times.

When last we saw our hero

he was wooing a member of the opposite faction.

For the past couple weeks I haven’t had a chance to talk about what Arioch has been up to what with all the thoughts on raiding, RP, pr0n art, patch notes, and everything else that amused me.

So here’s what’s happened in the past month with Arioch:

…

Raiding

Wait. What?

I was speaking with a guildmate over the weekend and had a spark of conversation that caused me to go through 3 phases: confusion, refreshment, frustration.

The player in question has an elemental shaman.

With a 71 point spec.

We (politely) ganged up on him and convinced him that was inappropriate for any circumstance, but especially not for raids.

Again, we explained the requirement of DBM or some other raid-warning add on.

And then I touched on Recount.

Did we just do that?

Seriously?

For reals?

How the fuck did we do that?

We’ll get to that.

I volunteered to DPS in the guild’s non-progression raid since they are short on ranged DPS (and people in general).

We had an OT lined up but it turned out that he had a VERY valid reason for not showing. (And if you read this, you have my condolences.)

My husband has been gearing up a DK to tank in his spare time.

Not a whole lot of experience, he’s tanked a normal UK, OT a Naxx 10, and a chain of normal ToC.

That’s it.

Oh, and his gear is blue (mostly) with hardly any gems or enchants. But he’s def capped! And has about 25k health unbuffed.

He comes in to OT as a rep for the missing OT.

The raid leader and I aren’t expecting a whole lot from the group.

Simulated Manatee Sex

See the kinds of things that come up at pirate parties?

I hope you all had a wonderful National Talk Like A Pirate Day, I know I did.

There will be pictures at some point… I have to wait for them to be sent to me.

…

Brewfest is up and running, but I won’t talk about that until Tuesday or Wednesday as I am not sure which parts of what I did were truly dailies and which were the non-daily holiday quests.

The one really important tip I have so far:

When doing the Coren Direbrew kills make sure that only ONE PERSON talks to him at a time. We lost a summons when 2 of us tried talking.

…

Got into a 25 VoA Friday night.

And Just a Little More…

Where was I?

Oh yeah, busy bee week/weekend!

We put together another 10 man Ulduar after the reset last week with the intention of taking it by storm… and it started out really well.

We were trying for XT hard mode, could get the heart down without a problem, but we were a little light on heals so had to settle for this:

Moved into position to take on the Iron Council and I look around at the group.

So… how are we going to deal with Fusion Punch? We seem to be decidedly light on paladins and priests…

OK, off to Kologarn!

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?

Winds of the North Consumed Me

Saturday I was screwing around on my priest and my husband pops his head into my office.

Need ranged DPS for EoE 10.

Ooooooo!

I need that one for the Focusing Iris quest!

I think it was 2 tries, not bad at all for a PuG. We would have done better the first try, but we weren’t far enough away from the center of the platform when it broke so we pretty much ended up sitting on top of Maly. That doesn’t work so well.

Neck upgrade for me!

…

Headed back into Ulduar 25 with (mostly) the same group of people as last weekend. They swapped a few people out on their side and my rogue hubby got to join us. He absolutely killed the charts.

Moving Forward

Anyone remember this post where I mention that we had fallen into an alliance with 2 other guilds?

And anyone notice how I really only talk about 1 of those guilds?

Between the 3 guilds we are all dysfunctional in different ways.

My guild has 3-4 “raiders” with several more “trying very hard to be raiders.” We’re an older group, all but 2 members (recent recruits) are old enough to drink. Most of us have met and several of us have known each other for 15 or more years.

The guild that we’ve been mostly working with is full of nice people, mediocre skill, and completely unorganized. Nothing starts on time and they spent over 2 hours on Thaddius in Naxx 10 last night. I eventually joined the raid to get them through it. It’s nice being at the top of the meters, but there are situations where it feels like a chore.

The second guild is younger, mostly family, and better raiders. They show up to raids prepared, but are likely to start raids earlier than scheduled – if you aren’t on when they decide to start you can kiss your spot goodbye.