Dear Alchemist’s Cache, <3 you. Always, Sinny

 

The door opens and closes in the small room next to me, the dividing window slides to the left.  I start..

Forgive me father, it has been one week and one day since my last Achievement.  The holidays, they tore me away from the game and prevented me from working on any reputation grind, searching for random books, and stealing money from corpses.  I shall do better, I promise!

Hmm my penance… I guess it should be to finish that freaking Argent Crusade rep grind before I start really crazy into the Loremaster stage of my life. 

We had another amazing night of raiding on Wednesday, with our 10 man group.  We smooshed Freya pretty easily and got another huge Alchemist’s Cache.  I really love those!  We got a stupid amount of Flask of Pure Mojo, which I find to be kind of useless.  In fact, none of the healers in either the 10 or 25 man have mana issues so no one wanted the flasks.  I have them all on the Auction House so that I can buy real flasks that our tank and dps need.  After downing Freya, we backtracked and took out the bosses that we had skipped on the way in resulting in us clearing every single boss we had ever killed in one single night, going over our regular ending time by 15 minutes.  Amazing.  Flame Leviathan, XT-002, Kologarn, Freya, Iron Council, Ignis, Razorscale.

Best place for Runecloth drops…

I ran a friend, another 80, through Strat (undead) the other night, too.  He’d never been there (a fact which blows me away) and he needed runecloth to level tailoring.  So, we get out there and he says “should I just go resto (shammy) and heal you then?” when I switched to my boomkin spec.  LoL.  “We won’t need healing, enjoy dpsing” I say.  We cleared that place in something like 12 minutes.  Seems slow, but mainly because we were looting stuff for Runecloth and he was DE’ing the boss drops (he was also leveling his enchanting).  I remember when Strat would kick our butts.  It was always such a chore to get through that place – crypt crawlers and their nets, those damn banshees that silence… ughh those boxes that you get too close on and they are full of rats or something.  But it was such fun, having a challenging huge instance with lots of bosses and the creepy streets of Stratholme were always hiding some horrible being.  I was hoping we’d have some beginner luck and maybe see the mount, but no such luck.

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! :)

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 =)