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.