Monday, May 31, 2010

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.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

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.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

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:

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

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.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

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.