tinydancer the hugewhore

So Whimsy hit 80 a little while ago. I got her in tier 9 and ICC heroic gear pretty quickly. There's not much else I can do for her except to get her into ICC, and since my guild is only doing heroic 10 man now, there's no chance of that.

But tonight, we did a guild VOA 25. It's always better to do things with the guild than to pug, right? WRONG. Josh and I both brought our warriors...the only warriors in the raid. The leader forgot to set it to master looter. Well, two pieces of warrior gear dropped. Everyone passed (including us) because that's what we always do in guild when they make that mistake (which doesn't happen often.) So as Josh and I are discussing which piece we each want, we see, that Tinydancer has decided to hit the disenchant button. EVERYONE in the raid passed, and she effing DE'ed it! I am seething right now. Two pieces of gear that could have been used, and that stupid whore disenchanted them both. She was one of the last people to roll. She saw that everyone passed. It was obviously very much intentional. God I hate her so much. I hated her before I was in the guild with her, but my hatred multiplied exponentially tonight. And she tells us, "Oh just open a ticket." Um no, you retard, YOU have to open the ticket. If we open a ticket, they're going to tell us, "Sorry, you're probably lying, and she actually doesn't want to give it to you." I know this from experience.

On another note. I got a beta invite, but I really only played once. I don't wanna play too much because I don't wanna spoil it. I don't know. Josh has been playing it a lot. Part of me wants to, and part of me doesn't.

I also got a new graphics card today. It doesn't help immensely, but it definitely helps. (I have a four year old Dell that was in the upper-mid range when I got it, so the card I had was....not great, at least not compared to what you would get if you bought a computer for the same price now.) Thunderclap looks so pretty. I can't stop casting it. Haha.

Oh well. I think I'm gonna go to bed since I'm not raiding tonight. Last week was the first time in a long time that I raided with the guild. I signed up for LK25 tonight, but then tinywhore decided to ruin my night, and since our GM didn't even acknowledge that it was a problem, I'm not gonna help him out by going to the raid. He never addresses problems like that because...I don't know...he's afraid of hurting people's feelings? He clearly doesn't believe in the philosophy of losing one person for the good of the guild. He won't reprimand anyone for fear of driving them out, even if it means he loses five other guild members because of that person. Stupid stupid stupid.

Oh! I also forgot to mention....I got hacked last week. It was pretty weird. But it all got resolved so fast that it didn't even cause any kind of problems for me. In fact, it worked out only to my advantage because they gave me double my gold and frost emblems back on three of my toons. Of course they didn't give them to Whimsy, the only one who needs them, but...meh...it's whatev.

whimsy the warrior

Man, it's been a long time. My bad.

I've been playing very, very casually lately. Between work and school, I just don't have the time to commit to anything. I signed up for one raid, and I ended up getting called in to work. I thought I'd be home in time, but then Josh got called in to work, which meant I had to stay there till nearly midnight waiting for him to get done. I couldn't even unsignup for it because I had no access to the computer. So I haven't signed up for any more since then. Next week I'm only working 20 hours, so maybe I'll jump into a raid or two. Maybe.

I have been leveling my warrior. She's almost 79, and she only has four bars of rested xp left. I think I leveled all the way from 72-78 rested because of the way I was playing, so that was pretty awesome. I don't know if I should just quest until I run out, or if I should let her rest to build some more before I continue to 80. I think I'm just gonna head straight for 80.

I did both Operation: Gnomeragon and Zalazane's Fall. I have to say, I definitely like the horde version better. The one thing that bothered me was that it seemed like everything was a lot more spread out than it was at Gnomer. At Gnomer, you were basically standing in the same spot for the whole thing, whereas, in Sen'Jin, you were running all over the place. But Zalazane's Fall was a lot more fun for me. Maybe it's just because I'm a Horde trapped in an Ally body (or four), and I like everything Horde better. hahaha. Speaking of that, I got a horde insignia tattoo a few days ago.



I love it.

I'll probably go back to horde for Cataclysm. And as soon as they allow it, I'll most likely make Whimsy a blood elf. Maybe.

faked link death...whoops?

The calendar invitation I got to the MS raid said the raid started at 8:30. I logged on at 8:00. Very shortly after, I started panicking and remembered that I'm incapable of raiding (with a guild; pugs don't count) when there's no one in the raid that I know. It sounds stupid, I know, but I was getting super nervous and freaking out. By 8:45, I still had not received an invitation to the raid, so I assumed they had deemed me not good enough and found someone else. All the while, Stevie and Kyle were trying to get me to come to their 10 man. I would much much rather do that, but I knew I couldn't bail on the MS RS run or I'd be out. Finally at 9:15, I got a raid invite. I was disappointed, to say the least. I flew over to Dragonblight, and on my way there, I realized MS hasn't downed Halion yet. I completely forgot that KoT is one of only three guilds on The Scryers to have killed Halion 25. (And we've done it a few times now.) I wanted nothing to do with that wipefest (since I HATE HATE HATE RS anyway) so as soon as we pulled, I pulled the plug on my router (so that Vent would disconnect at the same time as the game.) I waited a few minutes and then logged onto my shaman.

Stevie asked me if I could bring my tank instead. That hadn't been what I was hoping for, and I'm not geared well enough to go past lower spire, but I agreed. We had two baddie pugs, but the rest of the group was people we know, and it went well.

We had the most epic Deathwhisper fight ever - I wish we'd frapsed it. Within about a minute of the mana shield being popped, our MT goes down. Both our battle rezes had been used, and both the druids were dead. I was solo tanking a two tank fight from then on out. I thought it was impossible, but apparently not. It was me, one healer, and two dps for at least 50% of the fight. It was absolutely incredible, and I still can't believe we did it. I mean, Deathwhisper is certainly no Heigan...

Anyway. Right before we headed upstairs, I got the warning that my account was expiring in 30 minutes. So we headed up there and did that, and then we killed Saurfang with 1 minute to spare on my account. I had just hit friendly, and I went downstairs to grab my ring before it was over, but it wouldn't let me! I was so mad. I could click on the dude to turn in the quest, but it wouldn't let me choose a reward. Oh well.

I'm definitely glad I chose that over wiping on RS/LK all night, even if that does mean I got kicked out of MS. (I'm too scared to check the armory. lol.)

back to school break

Loihi ended up getting into MS on a trial period. Unfortunately, it's all really bad timing. My account time ends tomorrow, we go back to work on Saturday, and we go back to school on the 23rd. It's not a good time for me to be joining a new guild because not only am I gonna be broke for awhile, but I'm going to have too much going on to be worrying about being online at raid times. Once I get settled into a routine, I should be fine to start playing again. But since I'm only a trial in MS, I seriously doubt they'll keep me through my little break. I'm signed up for a raid with them tomorrow, but I'm not even sure I'll get to go. Blizz decided to be awesome and not tell you when your account expires anymore. I love how they keep changing battle.net every other day...NOT!

I have to say, I'm not at all sad that I'm being forced into this break. I'm getting super bored with it, and I know that once I kill LK (which MS does regularly; KoT still has not on 25 man) I will be like, "k I beat the game cyabai!" I've never gotten to the very very end before. Forget Kil'Jaeden (It was KJ in Sunwell, right? So many Kils and Kels; I can't keep them straight.) No one on my server even killed Illidan till after the nerf. I, to this day, have not laid eyes on Illidan. I have, however, laid eyes on The Lich King, and that's honestly close enough for me.

*shrugs* Hello, Cataclysm?

aggro whore

Last night, I had signed up for KoT's 10 man with Loihi. I go to it every week if I can, and I really enjoy it. I hadn't signed up for anything else this week because the rest of the week is 25 mans, and I can't bring Loihi to them.

So I log on and join the raid group. I'm in Krasus landing, summoning my drake to fly to ICC, when I get a whisper from someone in MS (the guild to which I applied), asking me to come to LK25. I said (aloud), "ohhhhh shit!" I had no idea what to do. I couldn't say yes because I was already in a KoT group, and I love KoT (just not their new policy) so I couldn't bail on them just minutes before the raid was going to start. But I couldn't say no because that was probably my one and only chance to prove to this guild that they should bring me into their guild. I thought about it for a few minutes and then told the guy from MS that I was very sorry, but I had just joined a ten man and wouldn't be able to join them for LK. My heart sank as I sent it, knowing that I had probably just given up the opportunity to be in that guild. But everyone in our 10 man quickly raised my spirits, and I had fun like always. I posted a comment on my MS app, explaining the situation. I still have heard NOTHING from them. Someone who applied after me has already been accepted, but they haven't told me anything. It's really frustrating.

Anyway. We had a tank shortage last night, so one of our trees went bear. He never tanked ICC before and hadn't tanked much before at all. I do pretty awesome in my new demo spec, and, well...lets just say I was sitting at the top of the death meter by the end of the night. I pulled aggro so many times. I realized toward the end that my omen warnings had gotten turned off somehow. Our bear also realized this morning that he had messed up a macro, and he hadn't used mangle once the whole night. We still got 8 bosses down in three hours, despite all our mess-ups and losing a dps to lag.

We had a lot of trouble on Blood Queen, and we shouldn't have. Everyone has seen the fight on 25 man, if not 10, and people were just acting stupid. I was the second person to get bitten on our first attempt. My target and I met somewhere, and I bit her. I was dpsing; everything was going great. Then came the air phase. Just before I got out of the fear, it was time to bite again. I tried to run to my bite target, and he ran as well. But did he run towards me? Oh, no, of course not. He ran away from me. Everyone who was close enough to me had already been bitten, so I got MCed. On the second attempt, the same person who I had been supposed to bite, failed to bite someone else and got MCed at the beginning of the fight. He blamed it on lag, but I don't know if I believe that. That was our last attempt cause it was time to end it.

I did get a wand out of it. I had the 245 wand, so it wasn't a huge upgrade, gearscore-wise or stat-wise. But it did raise my gearscore ever so slightly. I think I'm done with 10man now. I'm not sure. The only things I have below 251 are a trinket and a ring.

new alt vs main policy

Last week, (well, the last raid week), I signed up Loihi for ICC25 farm night. Our GM never had a problem with bringing alts to farm night, assuming they were geared enough and could pull their weight, and assuming the entire raid wasn't alts. Well, things got switched around, and they ended up going to RS on farm night, so I unsigned up, like I mentioned here. They switched farm night to Thursday, so I signed up for that. Well, they ended up doing lower spire after RS on Wednesday. Then Thursday, they continued RS and Upper Spire. That's not what I signed up for, but that's what I ended up bringing Loihi to. She got three pieces of gear (that no one else was remotely interested in, and it's not like I wasn't spending dkp on it), and the main warlock in the guild said something to the effect of, "damn, I'm bringing my alt next time." The GM commented, "Aww, DD, you don't have an alt!"

A few days later, a post pops up on the forums from our GM. We're no longer allowed to bring alts to 25 man (even on farm night) unless the alt is NEEDED. (His caps, not mine.) And they'll take main character offspecs before they'll take alt character main specs. Which doesn't make sense to me because my shaman's (my main) offspec is far less geared than my warlock's main spec. Anyway. I was invited on a whim. I never submitted an application. I never chose my main. Because my shaman was the first one to be invited to the guild, she was automatically my main, even though she was my least geared character at the time. (And she wasn't my main the first time I was in the guild.) There's now in place a formal procedure to switch mains, and I don't qualify for it.

I have little desire to raid on my shaman. My warlock has always been my passion, and I way more fun with her than I do with my shaman. It frustrates me that I can't break a certain dps on my shaman because it's the nature of elemental shamans, and it makes me not even try to dps hard. So what do I do?

I applied to another guild with Loihi. I haven't been accepted yet, but I think I have a decent chance. But I'm really on the fence about whether or not I'm going to go. KoT's policy is that if you remove your main from the guild, all of your alts will be kicked out. Well, Adelaide is listed as my main, but technically Loihi will be my main. It's kind of just asking for trouble, I think. I don't want to burn any bridges in KoT because I did that once, and I don't want to do it again. I love that guild, but I want to play the character that I want to play. If I'm forced to play a character that's no fun to me, I'm just not going to play. Aside from all that, though, school will be starting back up in a couple of weeks. The guild to which I applied ends their raids at midnight my time, whereas KoT ends theirs at 1:30am my time. Midnight is much more reasonable for me. But the other big problem, aside from pissing off people in KoT, is that Josh likely won't be able to come with me. They only have two warlocks in the guild, but every other class is overfull (though they are recruiting...). Even if he were to get accepted, his rogue is the only geared enough toon he has, and it's his main in KoT. And KoT only has two rogues (including him) so it wouldn't make sense for him to leave.

It just doesn't make sense. Loihi is <100 points lower than Adelaide gearscore wise (on wow-heroes, not sure about the addon) and she does more dps than Adelaide. Why can't I bring her to farm night?!

Bleh. It's a much more difficult decision than I'd like it to be, and I just wish I hadn't been put in this position in the first place. >.>

and i'm back

I haven't been raiding lately. I haven't been doing much of anything wow-related lately, except trying to make money. I stumbled upon the money-maker that is fishing, and in about two weeks (though really only maybe 4 days actively) I made 6k gold. The most I've ever had before was 12k, and that's when I sold a hilt I got. I gave half of that to Josh, so 6k is the most I've ever had for myself. As much as I'd like to get my little Whimsy epic flight training, I'm going to wait till I get 10k just so I can see that much money in my bag =P I tried the same tactic on Scilla, but they just don't value fish the way Scryers people do. I've only made about 2k on Scilla in the same amount of time.

Whimsy has finally hit 70. I am definitely not as good at warrior tanking as I am at pally tanking, but interestingly enough, I find it a lot less challenging. Everyone says that pally tanking is the faceroll, but honestly, I think warrior tanking is. I'm just not good at tanking at lower levels when my groups are full of noobs who think it's cool to pull aggro and then continue to beat on the mob so that no matter how many times I taunt it, it can never get back to me. Whatever.

I haven't been raiding because we get finished at 1:30am my time, and I had class at 10am. I wasn't getting up on time, so I had to stop raiding. Now I only have a few more weeks before it's back to school full time and work, so hopefully I'll get some raid time in. I intended to take Loihi to 10 man ICC tonight, but our server was down for the 24 hour maintenance. I signed her up for the 25 man farm night tomorrow, but that got changed to RS, so I unsigned up. I hated OS, and I have absolutely no desire to do RS. When we ran Diabolical, OS was something you pugged. Not just in our guild, but in all guilds. And I have a hard time looking at RS differently. To me, it's a waste of my raiding time. So I guess I'll just have to pug a raid this week since I couldn't get in any 10 OR 25. Sigh.

Since our server was down, though, Josh and I, along with two guildies, went to the B L O G refugee party on Shadow Council. It was pretty cool, but it did get boring after a bit.


Look at all those gnomes!!

wow-related stress hits our gm hard

We found out last night that our fearless guild leader went into the hospital yesterday with chest pains. There is no doubt in my mind that his issue was caused by WoW, whatever it is. We've all been telling him that he needs to rest, but he just...can't. As soon as he gets home from work, he works on the guild forum and then raids. He raids five nights a week (Monday-Friday) just about every week. After the raid (we end at 10:30pm his time) he always stays up for another couple of hours working on recruitment, whether it be conducting interviews, reviewing applications, or posting on some forum somewhere, letting people know what we're looking for. If it's not recruitment, it's strats. If it's not strats, it's reprimanding people for their crappy dps. He hasn't been getting nearly enough sleep, and he lets all of this guild crap weigh on him too heavily. He needs help, but no one wants to give it. I kept telling Josh, "This isn't good. It's going to catch up to him." And I think it finally did.

In other news, we sort of led our 10 man ICC for funsies last night. Cal ended up doing most of the leading cause Josh and I fail... It's just...weird. I don't know. When we had Diabolical, we led the raids. We weren't afraid to say anything, to yell, to do whatever it took to get things done. But in KoT, it just feels weird to tell people what to do. I'm glad Cal stepped up and took the reigns because things went a lot more smoothly that way. I actually had a lot of fun when I really hadn't wanted to go at all. AND I got Muradin's Spyglass!! Muahahaha. Unfortunately, I got it on my alt (Loihi), but....meh. Whatev. I'm happy to have it at all. And that got her the epic achievement.

patch fail

So the patch broke my WoW on my desktop. I would click "Play" on the launcher, and nothing would happen. So finally I went into the folder and clicked the actual WoW exe, and it would say something about the application failing due to configuration problems or some crap like that. It said I needed to reinstall. I ran the repair utility and reinstalled the patch but to no avail. I haven't gotten around to reinstalling the game because our internet sucks for downloading, and I just had to reinstall last week after I reformatted my computer. So I've taken this week off from raiding cause I really can't do it on my laptop. And after my fails on Monday, I just really wasn't up for it. Monday is Lich King, and I'm not sure I should go to that either. We'll see. I just don't want to be the reason for any more failed attempts at anything.

sindy hates shamans

Last night was Sindragosa night. I probably couldn't have done worse if I tried. I don't know what was up, but it was just bad. I died 14 times in two hours. Probably 10 of those deaths were due to Blistering Cold. I never ever have trouble getting away from Blistering Cold, and last night, I just could not get out of it! Once my mouse just didn't turn. Once I got stuck on an ice tomb because I can't see where the hell I'm going because her body takes up my entire screen. Twice I got stuck on nothing at all (invisible wall?) but didn't know it because her body was taking up the entire screen. And there were several times where I promptly turn and ran, and there were still people behind me when I got to the stairs, but yet I was the only one to die. I guess lag is to blame for that, but my latency never showed high. I do think she had something against shamans last night, though, because all three of the people who had double-digit deaths were shamans. Granted, one of them had never done the fight, but the other one had.

We gave it seven tries before we gave up. We got her down to less than 1% on one of the tries. It was heartbreaking. Vent was just full of "Awwwwwwww." Lol. We had a lot of people who were not our regulars, and we just didn't have it together. There was one person in particular who seemed to put her ice tomb in the wrong place every time. She does decent dps, but in general, she's just a bad player. I wish she wouldn't come to progression. Then again, I bet a lot of people wish that about me.

two roads diverged into a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both


...it doesn't get much more cliche than Robert Frost, and despite the fact that I'm an English major, I'm really not into poetry at all (aside from Shel Silverstein =P). But it seemed fitting. You can try to gear your offspec, but when you're coming into it this late in the game, ultimately you have to choose. And I think I've chosen the elemental path. I'm starting to wonder what I even thought going enhancement would accomplish. I'd just have to learn how to play all over again, and I was never really good at enhance before. I never researched it, but still.

I finally broke 10k dps on Blood Queen on Thursday night...without being bitten. I was only two spots behind Popkorn, who was bitten, though I'm not sure when. I think it may have been a fluke because I really have never come close to 10k before. Although, the strange thing is, it took us four attempts (we had a few new people who don't know how to listen...) and it went like this: 1st attempt - 7k dps; 2nd attempt - 8k dps; 3rd attempt - 9k dps; 4th attempt - 10k dps. I have no clue what could have caused that, aside from me having to move less, maybe. Our combat log got messed up, so the only other fight I have to compare it to is Putricide, and I always do terrible on him. Whatever the reason, I was finally proud of myself because I felt like I had pulled my weight, for once. I finally got two t10 tokens, but I still don't even have my 251 t10 helm, and as far as I know, that's BiS. Which sucks. I should have looked into that sooner and bought the helm instead of something else that's not BiS. Oh well. Nothing I can do about that now but save my badges.

In other news, the guild downed LK on 10 man last night! They've been working on it for weeks and weeks. It was about time. I feel like I'll never see him dead. I'm afraid to even sign up for any LK nights because I have very little situational awareness, and I'm not going to be the one to wipe the raid repeatedly... I mean, once I really know a fight, then my awareness is near perfect. But when I'm learning...yeah, not so much.

WTB New Computer

KoT finally downed Sindragosa 25 last night. And I wasn't there. Not because I didn't sign up. Not because I wasn't invited due to my fail dps. Because my computer decided to take a shit at raid time.

I haven't been using my desktop except to raid because it happens to be in the hottest room of the house. It's not bad at raid time (10pm-1:30am) but it's nearly unbearable during the day. So I turned off my computer on Thursday night after our last raid. It said that it was installing some Windows updates when I shut it down. I haven't touched my computer since then.

So I was on my laptop this evening when I got the raid invite. I said that I was heading upstairs to switch computers. I turned on my computer. It booted up. And then it got stuck on the welcome screen. I let it sit for a minute, and then I turned the computer off and turned it back on. The same thing happened again. I restarted. It happened again. So I let it sit for several minutes this time, and still nothing. I turned it off and back on one last time, and I got Blue Screen of Death. That happened repeatedly. So now I'm running system recovery. It's been running for two hours. It had gotten up to 71%. I walked away and came back, and it said 51%. Now it's back up to 68%. I really really hope that this works because I can't afford to reformat.

I just can't believe this happened tonight, of all nights. I guess I should have started up my computer earlier, but I never have problems. *sigh* Two marks for shammy gear dropped, and both went to the other shammy for her OFFSPEC. ARGHHH.

Death to Knockbacks!

There is nothing more annoying than a druid or a shammy who has never done anything but dps and insists on constantly using typhoon or thunderstorm. If you're going to use it in a dungeon, you MUST glyph it. I'm totally serious about this. If you've never tanked, you do not understand how annoying it is to have the mobs you're trying to tank be thrown all over the room. And God forbid one should get away from you, of course it's your fault, not the druid's or the shammy's.

I was just tanking BRD on my warrior, and I had a druid say, "any of u dungeon luvers care if i use typhoon?" I said yes. He said, "that's why the other tank and healer left." (I came into an in-progress dungeon, which I rarely do because 98% of the time that guarantees a fail.) I said, "try tanking and you'll understand how unbelievably annoying it is." He said, "awww, come on! don't be so harsh little gnomey!" I said, "try it and see what happens." He said, "just let me do it one more time, okay? I have to say goodbye to my typhoony. it's my favorite spell." He did it. I left the group, mid-pull.

The best part is, when I joined the group, he said, "FINALLY!! that took forever!" Clearly he hadn't learned his lesson yet, but maybe after having to wait twice, he'll think twice about using typhoon when a tank tells him no?

Yeah, doubt it.

Elitist Jerks Fail

I hate Elitist Jerks. Everyone thinks they are the experts of everything WoW, and it's just not true. They are people too, and they are not Blizzard. They are NOT always right, no matter what certain guildies may think.

I was doing awesome with Loihi in 10man ICC two weeks ago. I was doing as much dps as Adelaide can do, and I was doing it in way crappier gear. The spec I was using was my own, and I figured I could do better if I did it the "right" way. So I went with the spec EJ recommended, along with the rotation they recommended, and my dps dropped by almost 2k in this week's 10 man!! I went back to my old rotation, and I got 1k back, but I'm going to have to respec back if I want to be any good. It just pisses me off because people will look at you and be like, "ZOMG WTF BBQ! WHAT A FAIL SPEC! L2 EJ!!!! NUBZORZ!" And EJ is just plain wrong.

I rolled on several items, but I won nothing. Too many casters in the group. *sigh* Oh well. There's always next week.

Unlucky Dice

I signed up Loihi for 10 man ICC last night. Unfortunately, the two new warlocks signed up as well. Three warlocks wouldn't have been so bad...if we didn't also have three boomkin. I volunteered to sit Loihi out and bring Adelaide, even though I thought there was nothing I needed from ten man. I could always use the badges and rep, and it turned out to be exactly enough rep to finally get me exalted with the Ashen Verdict.

Muradin's Spyglass dropped. I was like, "YESSS!" cause I have crap trinkets. But then of course there were still two locks and two laserchickens (one ended up going tree). I rolled a 1. Seriously. Only one of the other locks ended up rolling on it - the fail lock I was talking about last week. Of course he won because anything beats a 1. I don't care. If you're there contributing, then you deserve loot just as much as everyone else who's there contributing. It just sucks because he doesn't even run 25 mans, so why does he even need it? Oh well. Maybe it will drop again some day. I did end up getting a helm for enhancement. So here's how that set is currently looking:

Head: [Taldron's Short-Sighted Helm] (251)
Neck: Empty
Shoulders: [Dual-Bladed Pauldrons] (264)
Cloak: [Shawl of Nerubian Silk] (251)
Chest: [T9] [Nobundo's Chestguard of Conquest] (232)
Wrists: [Icecrown Rampart Bracers] (251)
Hands: [Anub'ar Stalker's Gloves] (264)
Waist: [Belt of Rotted Fingernails] (232)
Legs: Empty
Feet: [Scale Boots of the Outlander] (200)
Ring 1: [Dexterous Brightstone Ring] (245)
Ring 2: Empty
Trinket 1: [Coren's Chromium Coaster] (200)
Trinket 2: Empty
Main hand: [Abomination Knuckles] (251)
Off hand: [Gutbuster] (251)
Totem: Empty


In other news, we did 25 man progression on Monday night. My dps wasn't as terrible as usual, but it was still pretty bad. We got Sindragosa down to 22%. Unfortunately, we'd had some technical difficulties in the beginning and ended up running Ony to kill time. I think if we'd been able to spend the time on Sindy, we'd have gotten her for sure. Next week, we will. I'm confident of that.

ToC10 Fail

We tried to run ToC10 on Amayaa and Zelu last night. I've never led a ToC, so I wasn't entirely sure what we would need, but in a pug, I generally like to go with three healers for a ten man, no matter what it is. Unfortunately, healers are extremely hard to find on Scilla. Our other tank convinced me that it was ridiculous to bring three healers to ToC10, and that he had one-healed it this week, so I finally gave in and just got a dps instead of a third.

Our healers were in ICC gear, and it took all of about three seconds to realize there was no way we were going to two-heal it. So our super awesome ret pally agreed to switch, and it went a lot better, but people were still standing in fire, not killing snobolds, getting paralyzed, etc. After four wipes, I quit. ToC10 is supposed to be easy for people as geared as our group was. Ridiculous. Guess I'll have to find some gear somewhere else.



I'm trying to convince Todd to bring his holy paladin back to the alliance and join KoT, but so far, no luck.

Amayaa and Lumey

This is going to be a two-in-one deal because, for one, Lumey doesn't have much of a story. And two, I just made a picture of the two of them together.

Our friend Waffle used to play with us on The Scryers. Then he moved away and met new friends who played WoW, so he started playing horde on Firetree with them. Eventually he convinced us to come play with him, so I made a paladin (Amayaa, named after the daughter of a friend from Shinra) and Josh made a hunter (Zelu). We leveled to 45, and Waffle server transferred. So we left those toons alone and went back to The Scryers.

In February of 2009, my friend Andrew said, "they opened up free transfers from a lot of servers to this server called Scilla. You should see if your horde are eligible." They were, in fact, eligible. So Andrew moved from Smolderthorn, and we moved from Firetree. It was pretty amazing. They closed transfers a few days earlier than they had originally stated, and so many people had transferred that there were already queue times, so they ended up opening transfers back out. We stayed, though and leveled to 80 as quickly as we could. We made some good friends along the way, and when we hit 80, we started a guild called Diabolical. We had Naxx10 on farm, and we were having a lot of fun.

Then I got a new roommate who also played WoW but very, very casually. She and her boyfriend made toons on Scilla. Then a bunch of their friends (I think five-ish) made toons over there. Their friends leveled to 80, but my roommate and her boyfriend did not. Of course, we felt obligated to invite them all to our guild. But two of them in particular were elitist bastards who were constantly telling us we were doing things wrong, despite the fact that we could one-shot every boss in Naxx10, with maybe the exception of KT, every time. When they finally got raid-ready, they all signed up for our Naxx run. It was, by far, the worst run we had EVER done. We did better the first week the guild started when half of us were in <200 gear and half of the raid was pugs. They were arguing about boss strats, and they just did not mesh with our other guildies. At all. We wiped three times on Patchwerk before finally getting him down. We moved on and wiped on trash, and that's when I called it. They all got pissed and started all kinds of drama in guild chat. Then I had an officer talking to them in a way that was not acceptable in our guild, so I reprimanded him for it. We lost all of those real life "friends," along with the officer (who happened to be our main tank). Despite the fact that the guild had been going strong for a decent amount of time without all of those people, a mass exodus always freaks people out, and we had a few more of our core leave. (Mainly those who had joined because of said officer.)

As stupid as this is going to sound, I was heartbroken. Our guild was nothing special, but I put a lot of time and effort into it. It meant so much to me, and people who were supposed to be our friends burned us. We lost too many people to continue our ten man, and Josh and I gave up. We quit WoW. There was nothing left for us. We had left our guild and our toons on The Scryers, and I guess karma caught up to us and tore apart our guild on Scilla. We stopped playing for three or four months.

Then our friend Jedi (one of our friends from Shinra, back in the day) came to visit us. He begged us to come back to The Scryers, so we gave in. I had no interest in playing my warlock or my shaman. I had loved tanking, and I wanted another paladin. So Josh and I did refer a friend, and I leveled a draenei paladin named Lumey. I wanted to spell it Lumie, but it was taken, and I hate characters in names. But do you get it? Lumey? Like lumiere? Light? Paladins=light? lol. Anyways. As soon as she hit 40, I bought her dual spec so that I could be prot/ret. I leveled Amayaa as ret to 45, but then I leveled her as prot from 46-80. (This was before dual spec.) I knew nothing about ret, and I wanted to learn it. I may be the one and only person in the world who cannot play a ret paladin. I suck. So bad. Hahaha. But it's okay. I love to tank. I did try healing Naxx a few times on Amayaa on fights that only needed on tank, but I never really got it, and I hate pally healing.

I got Lumey all geared up in her tier9 and ICC5 epics, and she's been kind of sitting around since then. Lately I've been playing Amayaa again, and they are in very similar gear, which is why I made the picture of the two of them together. My two t9 prot pallies :)



Lumey is not currently in KoT because they aren't in need of tanks. I may or may not get her in. I haven't decided yet. They do desperately need holy paladins, but that would require gearing her up, and I'm sure if I take the time and effort to do that, KoT will finally recruit a better one, and I'll be useless. I have three or four pieces of holy gear, but that's nothing, really.

Adelaide

Adelaide is my shaman. She was my second toon to be level capped but my first toon to be 80. You could say I cheated, since I granted her 20 levels, thanks to refer a friend. But it got her through the late 40s and early 50s which is the point where I always, always get stuck.

I leveled her as enhance, and I had a blast with it. As soon as I hit 80, I went resto. I wasn't a terrible healer, but I wasn't great either. Once the patch dropped that allowed dual spec, I bought it and made my off-spec enhance. I got heroic gear and a couple of pieces of Naxx gear, but I sucked. I mean, I really sucked. Plus it was far easier to get a group as a healer, so I left enhance alone. It was a nice waste of 1000g.

I left the server for quite some time, as I already mentioned, to play horde with my friend Andrew. When I came back to The Scryers, I really didn't touch Adelaide. I was playing my paladin primarily, and occasionally I'd play Loihi, but Adelaide just sort of sat there. Once the dungeon finder came out, I started queuing as a healer and getting some healy gear from the ICC heroics.

Now that my heroic epics and blues were completely outdated, I dropped enhance for elemental and started trying to dps in healing gear. I was amazed by how much dps I could pull without a single point of hit rating on my gear. I started gathering my elemental tier9, but most of the rest of my gear was mp5 gear. The funny thing was, I didn't really see a change in dps from when I was wearing straight healing gear.

One day in March, I was sitting in Dalaran unguilded, when I got a whisper from Merc, my old guild leader from KoT. He asked me if I'd be interested in coming back. I knew that the people who had caused me grief before had long since left the guild, so I joined. I started raiding with them again, and I've been happy as a clam, just like before.

Originally, he told me I'd just be running 10 mans since my gear wasn't great. And he gave me the BoE 264 mail healer belt, so I thought he had wanted me to be main spec resto. But then in every raid I signed up for, he slotted me as dps. That was fine with me because raid healing stresses me out. However, my dps sucked. I ran 10 man ICC a couple of times and 25 man a couple of times. Adelaide has three pieces of tier 10. I have three pieces of 232 gear, and the rest is 245+, mostly 251. According to a spreadsheet awhile back, I should have been pulling 6k. I could barely break 5k. I've gotten quite a bit of gear since then, I can barely break 6k in 25 man raid buffs. I have done more research than I ever intended to do on a video game. I have the proper gems, enchants, and glyphs. I have the tightest rotation one can possibly have, and I can barely break 6k. It is beyond frustrating. I'm not pulling my weight in raids. I am constantly at the bottom of the damage meter, and it kills me. Hell, Loihi was pulling 6k in that 10 man the other night. In shitty gear. With the wrong glyphs. With blue gems. With me not trying.

According to a lot of sources, gear just doesn't help elemental shamans that much. I guess it's just the luck of the draw. They were OP at the end of BC, and now they are crap. Everyone gets their turn, and hopefully Blizz will balance them back out.

In the meantime, I've been trying to gather up enhance gear. Not only because I'm hoping I'll be able to pull more dps, but because there are SO MANY caster shammies in the guild. And the thing is, he still has recruitment open. There have been several 25 man runs that had five shamans in them. In my opinion, that is ridiculous. Not because I am one, but because I don't think you should have five of any class in a raid. Merc also informed me that he doesn't want me to wear mp5 gear. Well, almost all of the caster mail has mp5 on it. So he suggested I wear cloth. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to roll on cloth unless none of the clothies need it.

I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, and it sucks. I never wanted Adelaide to be my main, but I wanted my spot back in KoT, so I took it. I do love my little shammy, and I like that it's more of a challenge than my other characters. But I don't like the fact that I look like a slacker when I am busting my ass. Anyways, here she is today:

ICC10 for Funsies and New People

So I took Loihi to ICC10 last night because I am absolutely sick of playing Adelaide. Loihi can pull enough dps to do 10 man just fine. She's in full t9, but I'm using blue-quality gems. I'm glyphed completely incorrectly because I wasn't thinking when I bought the glyphs (way back when I hit 80) and I haven't bothered to change them because I don't play her. We had a new warlock in the raid with us. Despite the fact that he had no ICC experience, he was much better geared than I, and yet, I was out-dpsing him for much of the raid. This makes me sad. Since it has been years since I seriously played Loihi, I haven't researched rotations (or glyphs) or anything like that. I was playing her the way I always have (since BC). And I was able to out-dps someone who should be much better than me...and with very little effort.

We downed lower spire easily. I think Festergut and Rotface each took us two tries. But the Princes gave us a hell of a time. I think we just had too many people in the raid who had never seen the fight before, and it's a complicated fight to understand when you haven't seen it before. I don't even remember how many attempts we gave it, but it doesn't matter.

I got a pretty sweet belt, which means I only have one ilvl 200 left! Yay! Rofl. The only downfall was that I lost a lot of hit, so now I'm back to having to gem for it, which I hate. Josh brought in Angrypriest, and I was going to give him the belt, but by the time I was going to do it, the two hour time limit had passed.

So now I just have to replace that 200 trinket, and I'll finally get my epic achievement. Then I need to work on replacing my four 219s.

I really hate what they've done with item levels. That's all anyone cares about anymore because higher item level = higher gearscore. I liked it better in BC when your gear didn't even tell you its item level, and people had to decide for themselves which stats were better. Although you should still do that, hardly anyone does. They see, "Oh, this is 251 and that's 245, so the 251 is definitely better," when that's not necessarily the case. Oh well. Hopefully Cataclysm will be better.

Loihi

Back in the summer of 2006, I decided to spend some time at home. Josh was stuck at my mom's house, babysitting my sister, and he decided to start playing WoW after a long break. When I came back, he showed it to me, and I thought it was ridiculous. I had played The Sims quite a bit, but that was really the only computer game I had ever been into. The only video game, for that matter. I had an N64, but I just really wasn't a video game kind of girl. He kept trying to get me to play WoW. He even made a character for me on his account, which he named Nyckole - after me. It was a warlock because he figured that's what I would like. But I didn't. I wanted nothing to do with the stupid game. I wouldn't even go near him if he was playing it, and it caused A LOT of fights. In fact, it almost ended our relationship.

Then I went home for Christmas break. I decided it might be a cool way for us to "hang out" since I was going to be away from him for a month, and I had Karli there to show me the ropes. Yes, I learned how to play from a 9 year old. Originally I made an undead because I thought horde were way cooler than alliance, but then Karli told me I wouldn't be able to talk to him if I did that, so I made a human warlock. I named her Loihi. Although I knew nothing about warlocks and their magic at the time, the name fits perfectly because Loihi is the name of a volcano in Hawaii.

After playing with Josh and Waffle on Scarlet Crusade for almost a month, I was level 23. They opened up free server transfers to a new server - The Scryers. Although I hadn't been playing long, I didn't want to leave behind the friends I'd made, and Josh said he was only taking Vare - his warrior - to The Scryers. But he ended up taking all of his toons. And by the time I decided to follow him, free transfers were closed. There was no way I was going to spend $30 to transfer my character, so I started over. I made a new Loihi who looked exactly the same and pretended it never happened. hahaha. Luckily I got to 23 again pretty quickly, but unfortunately, I can't say that for the rest of my leveling.

When she hit the 60s in December 2007 (yes, that's right, a YEAR later...) I decided it was time to find a decent guild. I had one in mind. In fact, I'd had it in mind for months. KoT. Back when I was in my 30s and running SM, I came across a shaman named Snowy. He healed for us, and we ran with him several times. He was in KoT. I honestly couldn't tell you why, as it's been so long, but I really looked up to him for some reason, and I wanted to be in his guild. So I applied. Unfortunately, it was around the holidays, and everyone was super busy, so it took them awhile to get back to me. In that time, I was sitting in Stormwind unguilded when a hunter named Talcon asked me to join his guild, Shinra. I did because I always feel bad declining guild invites when I don't have a good reason. I intended to leave if I got accepted to KoT. But the guys in Shinra...they were just so much fun. We would all get drunk and stay up all night doing random shit, talking in vent, laughing till we cried. It was a blast, and when KoT finally got back to me, I had to decline. I honestly wouldn't go back and change it if I could because my time in Shinra was some of the most fun I've had in the game, and we've even had the privilege of meeting two of our guildies in real life.

Shinra broke up. It was a long time coming. Most of them were real life friends, and they were in high school. Too much drama makes for an unstable guild. When they were done, several of us went to Veritas. We hated it. Josh and I went to Intoxicated, but Josh takes things personally and decided he needed to leave because one person was a dick. Of course, I was right behind him, even though that had been the best guild we'd been in to date. Then we joined Eve of Destruction. It was great in the beginning, until they started handing out loot to officer alts over other people's mains, regardless of the rolls (and they didn't use Dkp.) Josh ended up getting himself kicked out because he stood up for himself when he lost out on a pretty significant piece of gear. In fact, it was so bad, they added a guild rule that anyone who associated with Vare in any way would get an automatic gkick. I think that's quite an accomplishment, personally. Then we went to Phoenix Vindicators - Nia's guild. Nia had been a very close friend, but it was clear that we were stepping on toes when we joined his guild, so we respectfully left and started our own guild. It went pretty well for awhile. We had Kara pretty much on farm, but people started quitting, and we gave up. So I think in August 2008, I spoke to Merc, the leader of KoT, and I got myself an invite. I finally got to raid for realz... I did Hyjal and SSC with them. And we did a little Black Temple after the nerf. I loved it. Josh got Nyckole in the guild shortly after I joined, and things were great. Then WotLK came out, and like I said, I leveled my shaman first.

Once Loihi hit 80, I don't really remember what happened. There were several people in the guild who were pissing me off to the point that I couldn't tolerate it anymore. Because of this, I guess I didn't want to raid with them. It got to the point where I was playing alts because these people made me uncomfortable every time I logged on. Ultimately, Josh and I decided it was time to go. We loved KoT very much, but it no longer felt like home, and we had to find something new. We had been leveling with the leader of Shadow Titans, and he invited us to his guild. We raided Naxx with them maybe once or twice and saw how their loot worked. It was even more unfair than EoD's loot, so we left. And then we gave up on The Scryers all together.

In December 2009, Todd (one of our friends from Shinra) faction changed one of his characters. I decided to faction change Loihi, and Josh faction changed his warrior, whose name at the time was Art. We played them for about a week, and then we went back to the alliance side and left our babies behind on the horde side. After a couple months, we brought them back to the alliance, and we joined Axis. I was in a wave-making mood pretty much the entire time we were in that guild, and this time, I was the one to get us kicked out. I had never wanted to join in the first place. I didn't like Tanlan (the leader) and I wanted nothing to do with his guild. But Josh was good friends with him, and I had nowhere else to be, so I joined. After I got kicked out, I played Loihi sporadically and still do. The dps queue time kills me. All of my other toons can be tanks or healers, so they get all the love because they can get instant queues. But she's still my baby. She's got the most mounts and vanity pets, and she will forever be my favorite.

She somehow managed to get her t9, and here she is today:



And here she is at the end of BC with a bad haircut:

The Boredom Beast

My biggest problem with WoW is that I get bored too easily. Or at least, that's how it's been since Wrath of the Lich King came out. I'm not sure if it didn't happen during Burning Crusade, or if I just sucked at leveling and didn't want to do it again, so I stuck to my warlock. It took me a year to level her to 70, so I'm guessing it was the latter. It didn't bother me to run H Bot every single day. In fact, I loved it. Vare tanked, Nia healed, and Loihi dpsed. And then we'd scrounge up whatever two other dps we could find. Every day. But that was then.

This is now. I have four 80s. I honestly can't remember what was going through my head at the beginning of WotLK, but I can only guess that I was bored even then. Toward the end of BC, Josh and I did refer a friend. We both leveled mages, which we never did anything with. Mine is 68 and his is 70 something. But I granted the levels to a 30-something shaman I had and got her to 58. I hit Outland as hard as I could, and I hit 68 the day WotLK came out. Rather than leveling my precious warlock to 80, I decided to level my shaman, while Josh leveled his warlock. Then, as soon as we hit 80, instead of getting geared to raid with our guild (KoT), I leveled my warlock, and Josh leveled his warrior. Some things went down in KoT, and we stupidly left. Shortly thereafter, we left the server and went to play horde with a real life friend. We put our hearts and souls into those characters and into the guild that we formed, and then we got burned by everyone we thought was our friend. So we took a break from WoW. When we came back, we came back to The Scryers and did refer a friend again. This time I leveled a paladin because that's what I'd been playing horde-side, and I loved it so much.

I started to get Lumey (my new paladin) geared, and I was having a blast. We tried to start another guild, thinking we could do what we had done on Scilla. But apparently we forgot how ridiculous The Scryers was, and that didn't work out at all. Once Lumey got all the 232 badge gear, I started trying to gear Adelaide (my shaman) a little bit. I had leveled enhancement and then had only played resto at 80, but for some reason I decided to change my dps spec to elemental. I knew nothing about it, but it seemed easy. Then I got invited back to KoT on that character, so she suddenly became my main, and started getting gear. But there are so many caster shamans in the guild, and it turns out ele is not easy, so I started trying to get her enhance gear. She's doing pretty damn well with that. I have just a few more pieces to get, but most of the pieces I have are from ICC because we really don't have another enhance shammy, so I get lots of offspec stuff. Then I realized that I have a paladin, and the guild is in serious need of holy paladins. I hate pally healing more than anything in the game, but I was willing to do it for my guild. So I started running the ICC 5 mans and saving badges to try to get my paladin geared up holy. Then I started playing Loihi again, trying to get her geared so she could get into ICC10. I took her last week and will take her again tonight. And then this week I took a deep breath and went back to Scilla. It's been just about a year since our guild disaster, and going back wasn't nearly as bad as it has been the other times I've tried. I've gotten 3 pieces of t9 for her, and she's boosting that gear score pretty quickly.

And I also started leveling a warrior fairly recently. But she's prot, and she's 53...so she's stuck in the BRD bracket, and BRD just sucks, so I kind of gave up on that.

What the hell am I doing?! Trying to gear four characters at once?! Granted, I don't have a job or school right now, so it's not like I have anything better to do. But it's going to burn me out, and fast. But I just can't decide what I want to do. As soon as I get someone almost geared, I get bored and move onto another character.

And truth be told, I'm getting bored with ICC even though I've only been raiding for about three months. I don't know how the people who have been there since the raid opened can do it. I really don't.

I really didn't mean for there to be so much history in this post, but oh well.