Purple Haze

A week of craziness, and it’s only Wednesday!

“I just wish my wand would auto-shoot, instead of me having to push it
each time”.  That was from our mage before the first General pull on
Monday night.  That was the culmination of a bit of ribbing he’s been
taking from us, and it was very funny when we all said “it does
auto-shoot” at the same time.

I had to miss the start and a good chunk of the 10 man run on Monday
night due to some storms that were rolling into the area.  When those
petered out, they asked me to come in so the tree replacement they had
was starting to fall asleep.  It was a good time, we downed Mimiron
for a second time, and this time with considerably less failure.  We
made progress on General trash, and actually pulled the General a few
times.  We got some nice trash epic drops on the leadup to the boss.
We got cloth shoulders that both the mage and our holy priest rolled
on, and our priest won.  Then, 2 minutes later, we got the shoulders
again and the mage passed on them - thinking they were a helm… Dork! 
He was able to pick them up though, after everyone passed on them.
We also got a tanking neck epic a couple minutes after that.  Good
times!

While I was waiting for the storms to start up Monday night, I leveled
my priesty some.  I’m making some progress there, she’s level 39 now.
My immediate goal is to hit 45 so that I can get dragged through BRD,
LBRS, and UBRS.  I’ll probably do 58-60 in Outlands and hopefully have
enough green, blue, and purple gear to get me through our Retro
Raiding of old content.  A guild name was decided on, Years Behind,
with a very appropriate Hogger mascot.  Allegedly, we’re going to even
have forums - for now we are monopolizing the Argent Dawn WoW forums.
Tonight is the first night of our next 10 man lock out period.  I
can’t wait, seriously, for the Raid ID lockout extension feature of
the upcoming patch.  We would have totally extended it to give us time
to work on the General tonight.  Soon, very soon.  There was also some
talk about when the patch hits and we do extend our lockout that we
will do 3 nights (Wed, Mon, Wed) of Ulduar and the last night (Mon)
would be breaking into the new raid dungeons.  It seems hard for me to
believe that we are ready for more raid dungeons but I guess it’s been
3 months or so since Ulduar was introduced.

I’m really trying to focus on my healing rotation, and seeing where I
can tweak things.  I currently do not have a tier set bonus so I’m
trying to keep an eye on my lifebloom usage.  So many times it ends up
being completely an overheal.  I’m also considering trying out a
Healing Touch spec, because I can’t believe that I have this totally
worthless spell that Blizzard has given us.  Naïve, eh?  I’m also
toying around with the idea of trying out Vuhdo, the UI that is
sweeping the nation.

The funny bit from our mage that I mentioned at the top made me think
of some other major changes that WoW has gone through.  From having to click a new destination at each flight master, to the time when the boats freaked out and kept dropping people through the world – and they were replaced temporarily by “boat masters”.  When the boats came back, everyone missed the instant portals of the boat masters hehe.  Running through Stranglethorn Vale and getting dismounted at each bridge, and when you had to be in a capital city if you wanted to troll the LFG channel.  It wasn’t global, and it was before the LFG system.  Ahhh the good old days haha :)

* Lil Edit: that’s what I get for posting from a different computer.  Also, I was in a pain-med haze when I finished typing up the post so apologies for rambling :D

I Have the Coolest Friends

Really, I do…

I’m scared to say it, because I don’t want to jinx it but dizam, our 10 man group is the bomb.  It feels like we have the best class balance and the best personality balance a group can have.  We steamrolled through last night, taking out Flame Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale, XT, Kologarn, Iron Council, Auriyia, and Hodir.  We had a couple hiccups on Iron Council, but it was stuff we could easily correct and avoid on the next attempt.  Everything else went very smoothly; there was friendly and fun banter on Vent.  Nothing is really getting DE’d because a class isn’t represented, it’s getting DE’d if it’s a duplicate.  We have a pally, a shaman, warrior, druid,  shadow priest, a holy priest, a hunter, deathknight, and 2 mages.  The pulls are getting to be muscle memory and everyone knows what their responsibilities are.  Love it!!

I did have the funniest thing happen on Razorscale.  We had just finished up Flame Leviathan and headed to Razor when my little one started fussing, so I needed to AFK for a quick 2 mins to get him back to sleep.  When I came back, they said “Ok as soon as Sinny gets back, we’ll start it up”.  And I said I was back on Vent and then looked at my shapeshifting bar… Hm, where’s my tree… OH NO! “WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT” I hit N and click Activate for my resto spec… “too late, we just started it up”.  I thought I had gotten it in time but then I see “Entering Combat” and my spec switch stops mid stream.  “uh guys? I’ll be dps’ing for this…” It was really fun, too : )  We got the achievement for A Quick Shave even.

We had one wipe on Hodir, I can’t even really remember what went wrong, but when we did our 2nd attempt, we got the I Have the Coolest Friends achievement.  I think the only fight that I had mana issues on was Iron Council and I think that was mainly because I was healing our Pally tank and I’m not used to healing him so I can’t anticipate his damage yet.  I had a lot of overhealing on that fight from spamming Nourish and constant Blooms.  I’ll be conscious of that on our next encounter with The Council and see what I can do to be more efficient with my mana.

The Badlands

Before the raid started, I finished up a couple quests that I had in my quest log.  Trying to make room for Loremaster craziness.  I did one quest that was inside Uldaman, but not actually *in* the instance and it didn’t count towards my total.  So I abandoned the rest of the chain for the time being.  Sure it would count towards my Seeker achievement but I’ll have that without problem when I have Loremaster (the big Loremaster, not just Classic) done. 

Blog Front

As it pertains to this blog, I’m tweaking some of my layout.  I’m learning more about blogging from practice-makes-better-but-not-perfect and reading other blogs and seeing what elements I like as a reader.  So, stay tuned and hope you (the one or two people who are reading) enjoy it! :)

Loremaster Ysinnia?

 

Not quite yet.  But I think I’ve decided to start working on this as my next large project.  I’m going to finish up the Argent Crusader assignment that I got on the Achievement forums and then not ask for another assignment.  This is a huge undertaking because when I leveled this toon in Classic WoW, I didn’t quest very much.  I think I’m something like 160 short on Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor is something like 300 short, I haven’t looked recently.  I just know it’s a number that when my brain sees it, it goes “oh god, so many to go!”.

I’ve been kicking the idea around in my head lately, but it’s not something you just jump into, ya know?  I mean, I HAVE TO MAKE LISTS.  AND PLAN.  Yeah, I’m like that.  So my first order of business, after completing my current assignment, is to make a list of each zone starting with the lowbie/starting zones.  I know I did some of the Human starting area when I was grinding out my Ambassador title, but I think I stopped around the Goldshire area.  Not just because I hit exalted, but because when you hang out near Goldshire too long on Argent Dawn, you have to bathe frequently and you get a rep for “hanging in Goldshire wink wink”. 

So, lists of starting areas and then to Wowhead.com to start pulling lists of quests in the zone.  I also have to remember to hit the Easy to Miss thread on the Quest forums.  There are a ton of quests there that I’m sure I missed.  I need to give myself a deadline for completing it and I won’t know a realistic timeline until I see everything laid out on paper.  I do know that I’m going to make a timeline for the entire Achievement, not just Eastern Kingdom or Kalimdor.  There are too many quests that shuffle you between continents, so I want to take it as a natural progression of zones and quests and not try to get hung up on watching one specific continent. 

Such planning!  Who would have thought you could translate your OCD into an Achievement!? : )  Anyway, that’s my summer goal. 

News from the Front

We had a fantastic run last night in Ulduar25.  Life found me with some playtime unexpectedly and I checked with the healing lead to see if I was needed as a backup or anything and they did have a spot.  Their first night in the raid was Tuesday so we were up to Auriaya last night.  It was a bit tricky getting the pull coordinated but once the pull clicked, it just took some old fashioned pinching and pulling to get everyone to fit right.  I even got to dps!  Of course, that was after 4 of the 6 healers were dead, we’d lost our main tank, both off tanks, and about half of the dps.  She was at 1% so I started pew pew wrath wrath cuz I didn’t really have anyone to heal ; )

I did notice one amazing thing during this fight.  I spammed Nourish and all my hots on our MT for the entire fight and only one time did I notice that I was below 50% mana.  One time.  I usually try to hit my Spirit Glass Trinket once kind of early in the fight, once again when we are about halfway and then it’s up for the end when things are getting tight.  I instinctively hit my trinket and then glanced at my mana and I was at 80%.  Hardly any desperate need for a quick regen but I used the opportunity to throw a few hots on myself to alleviate some of the other healers mana. 

We headed on over to Iron Council after that and after a couple false starts and some reassignments, we were able to down them.  I have to say, I much prefer experiencing the fight vertical, as opposed to the 10 man version I did Wednesday night when I was busy healing the floor.  I picked up the heroic Achievement for I Choose You, Stormcaller, also.  So I’m helping rez people and didn’t really look at the loot.  I never do, really.  Now that we get our badges auto-looted, who needs to?  So when the Master Looter linked all the items in Raid, I had to scroll back up to make sure I read it right.  Phaelia’s Vestments of the Sprouting Seed!  I whispered the Master Looter with the !command to find out how much dkp I had, confident that I had more than the other resto druid I breathed a sigh of relief.  I felt slightly guilty because I had picked up a really nice chest the night before in 10 man, but this was THE chest I had been hoping for since stepping foot in Ulduar. 

Flame on!

Before the raid started, I finished up the Flame Warden Meta Achievement after stealing and turning in the Undercity flame.  Apparently I had gotten credit for Silvermoon City but not Undercity during the reset of the quests earlier in the week.  4 more holidays to go before I can check off that section!

So, Ulduar really does drop Leather Resto gear…

 

/italian accent …Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday

So Wednesdays and Mondays have become my almost-standard raid nights now.  I did Ulduar25 for a month or two on Tuesdays and Thursdays until real life stepped in and strongly suggested I rethink my WoW schedule.  So instead of 25 with the raiding group, I’m doing 10 man with a portion of the raiding group.  We go in on Wednesday nights, have a lot of fun, clear some bosses, try some new things, and finish up what we can on Monday nights.  It’s very casual and a lot of fun.  We are getting in somewhat of a rhythm with each other and even though 2 or 3 faces may change from week to week, there’s a pretty solid core of 7 that run it. 

Last night was no exception.  We assembled and started a little late but nonetheless got underway and knocked off Flame Leviathan, XT (which gave me a Nerf Gravity Bombs achievement) aaaaand my first piece of Leather healy loot from Ulduar!  Vest of the Glowing Crescent and I was the only one who would use it so Yay!  I had won the roll on Spark of Hope several runs back but this was the first Leather Healer gear I had seen drop.  I was beginning to think that only Pally and Shammy gear dropped in Ulduar.  We downed Kologarn and then Iron Council, which I had not been there for but the group had done it a couple weeks back.  I was totally helpful in the kill (which was our 3rd attempt I believe) in that I was rolling Lifeblooms on my dead body for probably 90% of the fight.  Note to self: Overload kills trees.  Well, that’s not right, trees not watching for Overload kills trees.  We finished the night on Razorscale.  Anywho, IC gave me a couple of achievements for the night.  It’s funny because I didn’t even realize I had gotten achievements for it, I was just so happy we killed them!  I didn’t find out until this morning when I logged in and (the first thing I do when I log in) hit Y to bring up my achievements. 

I had a lot of fun throughout the night, raiding, even on wipes.  On XT, I dps’d during two of the heart phases which was fun, and then raid healed the rest of the fight.  I also got to go boomkin for the pulls right before Auriaya.  I reverted my UI back so my bars aren’t fading so switching specs on a moment’s notice didn’t cause quite the anxiety that it did last week.  I was also not MT healing this time around, so my focus was OT, general raid healing and hotting the MT.  I played around with some of the timing, trying to get 3 LB stacks on the MT and then weaving in a couple on the OT, and letting them bloom and return mana to me, and then distributing some rejuvs to the dps taking splash damage.  I always love thowing a regrowth on another healer because a) my regrowths hit for a lot and b) I know the hot will keep them mostly topped off and I can swiftmend it if they run into trouble.  Last night, we had a new to the group healer with us, a shammy.  He did an awesome job and I think the combination of priest-druid-shammy was fantastic.  We all have our strengths and areas where we need someone watching our back and we just sort of meshed last night. 

Flynch!

The Midsummer festival is almost over for me, I have 1 more fire to extinguish in Kalimdor and then I need to redo the horde cities since I did Org and Undercity before the reset.  Redoing these should give me the Thief’s Reward quest, and with that my crown and final Achievement for the Meta.  Flame Warden is not a title I particularly care about, and I doubt seriously that I’ll ever display it.  I just like checking things off : )  Finishing the meta will also give me the opportunity to log back in on my baby druid, Flynch.  I’ve been itching to play her again, much to my surprise.  I don’t really see it as playing an alt, it’s more like a little nostalgia with my main druid hehe.  But I’d like to tack on some levels on her during the festival so I can use the 10% buff to experience gain.  This weekend should be quiet on the home-front, no birthdays to attend, no crazy festivals… I should be able to get to 18 at least, and she’s at 12 now.  I’m walking the fine line between wanting to go crazy on Achievements for her, but so far I’ve been able to just enjoy playing her and focus on Achievements on Sinny. 

Back in the healing groove

 

What’s this other stance…hmmm Moonkin

When I was leveling from 70 to 80, everyone kept telling me to just go Balance, and that it would be easier. Nahh, I’ll stick with Resto. I always believed, and pretty much still do, that you can’t just level a dps spec and then bam! hit 80 and know how to heal. I need to know what all my stuff does, and I learn that by using it over and over in instances and leveling while questing. So I hit 80, I’m healing Naxx and various instances and questing. Well, trying to quest. Dailies took forever! With the introduction of the dual spec option, my questing life improved 1000%. My healing life, I’m afraid, is suffering. The first time I did my dailies as boomkin, I finished about 20-30 minutes sooner than normal. I almost cried I was so happy! With my limited playtime, I’m almost always in my boomkin spec. Because of this, my reflexes are a bit slower than they normally are when I’m healing more frequently. Cuz really, does it matter if stuff dies in 2 seconds or 3, it’s all pew pew and I’m not trying to top the dps charts when I’m grinding Hodir rep. But the 1 second difference is everything when healing.

Healing is fun, I … Ooo is that something shiny?!

The other night, I appealed with puppy dog eyes to Belghast to tank Old Kingdom for me - it’s one of two kills I still needed for my Champion of the Frozen Wastes title. He rounded up some folks and we were off, to a place I’d never been. Instead of being on my toes like I normally would, I lost focus and trailed off to loot something instead of sticking with my tank. Wipe #1. Bel has ADD when it comes to tanking and as a healer, I know that - I just forgot briefly what I was doing. After all, no one cares if the dps stops to loot something. After a couple close calls and a few deaths o’ dps, sorry guys L , we made it to the Insanity fight. Bleh. The first try, everyone had trouble with the tree, and the tree was being a nub and trying to kill the people attacking me. So, second try - I stood and healed myself. Helpless as I watched my parties’ health bars drop ever so slowly, and on vent listening to their frustrations with killing “the tree”. Third try, and possibly fourth before they were finally able to kill the tree and call it a night, having checked off that part of my achievement requirement. Now, if *I* were that indestructible, that would be awesome! Sometimes in a raid, I feel like I’m made of paper - but honestly in a raid I’m not standing there healing myself the whole time. The next step is the Malygos fight and while it doesn’t matter if I do it on 10 or 25, I have the quest for 25 man so I’d like to get it all done in one shot. Guess I need to make sure I’m not rusty on the dragon flyers.

It’s a mana pool, can I go swimming?

I had the chance to redeem myself (at least, to myself) last night when I healed Ulduar 25 for the XT fight and also a couple Kolgarn attempts. I came in as a backup healer as the raid was shorthanded and was losing another healer due to RL stuff. I found I was managing my mana pool a bit better than I had in the last couple raids, and I still love my Spirit-World Glass trinkie and used it a bit more effectively also. Overall, I was pretty happy with my mana management and look forward to being able to test out a few tweaks to my healing rotation. I think I used Nourish more effectively, and while I always make sure my target has a hot on them to get the real benefit of Nourish, sometimes I get a little Regrowth happy. Maybe it’s the pretty green icon, maybe it’s the placement of my button. I’m a clicker, sue me. I’m actually working on revamping my entire UI and will get some screenies once I’m happy with a more final draft of it. Maybe it’s silly but I tend to get in a rut and if I need to change things, then I need to CHANGE things - like, the placement of all my abilities, like the appearance of my head’s up display, etc. It’s all gotta change for me to make the extra tweaks to my healing rotation. God I’m high maintenance =)