Deplorable DPS

I don't know if I mentioned this, but Loihi recently joined a new guild. I haven't raided seriously since ICC, and I really really want to raid in WoD. The problem is that the guild I used to raid with is a.) on a different server and b.) on a west coast server. Back in the ICC days, I was working in a restaurant. The earliest I ever had to be at work was 10am, usually more like 11 or 12. It wasn't a problem for me to raid on west coast time and finish at 1-2am. But now? Now I have a big girl job. I have to be at work at 8am. Staying up until 2am is not an option.

A few years ago, I had transferred Loihi to another server to play with some friends. Some of those friends are no longer playing, and some of them are no longer my friends. I decided to do a quick search and see if there were any guilds on that server that met my needs. If I couldn't find one, I was going to transfer out. But I quickly found Under***d. They finish raiding at 11pm, which is still a little late for me, but they only raid two nights a week, so I can do it.

They asked me to join their SoO group, and I've been hemming and hawing about actually doing it. My gear isn't great. I haven't even done SoO on raid finder. I don't like going into a raid without being 110% prepared, and I just wasn't there. But last night they asked me to join their flex, and I decided to just take a leap and do it. I died a few times because I didn't know what to expect. On the first boss kill, I accidentally need rolled a cloak that dropped. I've never raided with a guild that didn't use master looter/dkp, even when the raid was on alt farm, and when the loot popped up, I clicked it out of habit from dungeons. I felt a pang of regret as soon as I did it and quickly apologized in raid chat. No one was mad, and if there were loot rules, no one made mention of them. Still, I only rolled greed the rest of the night.

But let's talk about my dps. I was at the bottom of the chart. I mean the bottom bottom. Just barely above the healers. Everyone else was on their alt; I was on my main. Granted, my main has gotten very little attention in this expansion. (Or the last one, for that matter.) Still, I was extremely embarrassed. It was almost as embarrassing as the first time I raided with Veritas back in BC. We were doing Gruul's Lair. We had just come back from a wipe, and my run key got stuck. I ran straight into Gruul and wiped us again. Ugh. It makes me cringe just thinking about it!!

Hopefully I will have time to get some raidfinder gear this weekend and learn the fights so I can be more prepared for the rest on Monday. For now, I'll leave you with a picture of Loihi in her (transmogged) PvE gear.

The helm/shoulders don't necessarily match that robe, but it is my favorite robe, and they are my favorite helm and shoulders. I don't think it looks awful, so this is the transmog I tend to keep. I don't really have a sword that I love enough to transmog this one. I think this one looks pretty cool.

It's time for introductions

Uhh, better late than never, right?

Some of my characters are not in the gear in which I'd like to present them, but I'm at work, so there's nothing I can do about it right now.

My very first character was an itty bitty baby warlock named Loihi. Though I knew nothing about the elements that warlocks use, nor that a fire (destro) lock would become my favorite class/spec in the game, I wanted to name her after a volcano. Loihi is actually an underwater volcano that no one has ever heard of. I've never been to Hawaii, and I don't speak Hawaiian. I couldn't find a pronunciation anywhere online, so I took my best guess and pronounced it lo-wee-hee. A month or so later, I met someone in game who claimed to be from Hawaii. He told me I was wrong and that it was lo-why-hee. After a couple of years, I learned that my first guess, lo-wee-hee, was absolutely correct. But it had been too long. The name was stuck, and so I pronounce her name incorrectly to this day.

After a couple months of playing, I had reached level 25. (Hey, it was hard back then!) Shortly after BC came out, they opened up free realm transfers from highly populated realms. Josh decided to take it, and I decided not to. I was being stubborn. Scarlet Crusade had been my WoW home those few months, and I didn't want to leave it. He tried to cancel his transfer, but it was too late. By the time I realized it was stupid to play without him, the free transfers had ended. And so I left behind my level 25 Loihi, and she's still there on Scarlet Crusade.

I created a new warlock with the same name who looked exactly the same on The Scryers and pretended it had never happened. So I think I created her around March of 2007, and if I remember correctly, I finally reached level 70 in February of 2008. In January 2010, I faction changed her, and within two weeks, I changed her right back. I'm really weird about Loihi. She has to be exactly as she's always been, or it really gets to me. I've never been able to change her hair or anything. I'm still dealing with her new face.

She's my baby. Before achievements, mounts, etc, were account-wide, I did everything with her, even when I had lots of alts. She's always the first one I level in a new expansion. It may sound silly, but I feel like she's a part of me. So here she is in silly pvp gear.

Don't worry. No one else will have that long of an intro.

So next is Adelaide, my draenei shaman. She was my first alt. Josh and I had done refer-a-friend, and I was able to boost her to level 60ish right before WotLK came out. Josh had already had two max level characters at this point (warrior and warlock) and I was happy to be able to catch up. I leveled her as enhancement, but once I hit 80, I decided to try my hand at healing. I loved it. And I was good at it. Hell, I played on a laptop with the touchpad mouse, without healbot, and I was still good. So when I started playing on my desktop with a real mouse and with healbot, people didn't die. Ever.

Shortly after leveling both of them to 80, we got burned. We decided to switch to horde. I decided to give a paladin a try, since everyone always talked about how easy they were. I leveled retribution, of course, and I hated it. I sucked at it, and it was just so boring to me. So once I hit 80, despite my affinity for healing, I decided to go protection. And I loved tanking even more than I loved healing. Josh had always been a tank on his warrior, and it made him rage a lot. But tanking was just so much fun for me. (I did eventually give pally healing a try, and I hated it.) So meet Amayaa, my blood elf protection paladin. (Excuse her ugly gear.)

We stuck with horde for awhile, and I started to miss my warlock. Amayaa had everything she could ever want or need out of Naxxramas, so I leveled up another warlock...also named Loihi. Lol.

And then we got burned again - this time by real life "friends." So we went back to the alliance. I had loved paladin tanking so much that I decided to level a draenei paladin. And so we have Lumey. (Excuse her ugly gear too.)

We weren't in a raiding guild and weren't really doing much of anything else, so I just decided to level another alt. This time I went with a warrior. If I remember correctly, I leveled her all the way up as protection, and I enjoyed warrior tanking just as much as pally tanking. Whimsy has had her hair and her face changed since the patch, and she's still not as cute as she was before. :/ Right now, she's fury because that's how I leveled her.

Now here's where we enter the Land of Too Many Alts, and things start to get a little fuzzy. I think I leveled Gatsbie next. Gatsbie is a druid. I leveled her up as a kitty with the intention of having my offspec be boomkin. However, I decided to try out a bear spec, and guess what? I loved it. I just really love tanking. The only kind of tank I don't like playing is a deathknight. I don't like playing any kind of deathknight. So Gatsbie never got any kind of caster spec. She's always been kitty/bear, and I enjoy them both, which is interesting because I don't like playing rogue at all. (For some reason, wowhead would only give me her old model.)

I think Ladella came next. I didn't have a healer horde side, so I decided it was time to give priest healing a try. I like discipline a lot, and I went through a phase where Ladella was my preferred character to play.

Then maybe Avena came after that. She has pretty much always been a dps warrior. I'm really not one for melee dps classes because I suck at staying behind the target, but I had fun with her. She's currently arms (and only level 89.)

Next came Katnìss. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea why I chose to level Katnìss. I think it was that I had just finished reading The Hunger Games, and I thought it would be cool to have a hunter with that name. Her main pet is a cat named Buttercup. I've never done a whole lot with her besides leveling her to max level. But I do think her new model makes her look beautiful.

And last, but not least, is Liora. Somewhere along the way, Josh and I had done refer-a-friend again and I leveled a shaman. We had a shaman/mage 2s team, and it was freaking amazing. But I was too cheap to transfer that character to my main account, so she's still sitting there at level 85. I decided to level a new one, but I stopped about halfway there and just finished leveling her this week. Right now, she's enhance, which I hate. If I decide to do anything with her, I'll probably go ele/resto. She also needs a new face, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I think she looks like a human man haha.

I do have a mage and a priest (both alliance) that are level 81. I was trying to get them leveled up to use them for the last few days of horseman, but I don't think that's going to happen.

So there you have it. My happy little big family!

Come on, man!

So at this point, I've killed the Headless Horseman well over 200 times. I think at the beginning of Hallow's End this year, I had 6 or 7 characters that could run it. I had a bunch of 85s, so I leveled them all up, and I now have 11 characters that are 89-90. Josh has 12. Neither one of us has gotten the damn horse. And if the 0.5% drop rate is correct, I should have gotten it by now. Although I did see it drop once, so I guess that counts as my one time in 200.

I've gotten both the helm and the sword on my SHAMAN. Super helpful!! I wish they would take away the damn loot filled pumpkin, make it so you can only run the instance once a day, and make it all drop off the horseman again. I wouldn't roll on the helm or the sword on a character who can't use them, so someone else in the group who could use them could have them. And I assume the mount is ending up in pumpkins of people who already have it. If it were a drop, they wouldn't get it multiple times, and it would give the rest of us more of an opportunity to get it! My friend Todd told me last night that before they made mounts account-bound, he had the horse on three characters. THREE. And he has never been as dedicated to killing the horseman as I am, nor has he ever had as many max level characters as I tend to do. Damn you, WoW gods.

The Horseman's Reins and What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

This is going to be my year. I can feel it.

Despite having killed the Headless Horseman every day of the event almost every year, many years on multiple characters, neither Josh nor I have gotten the mount. I saw it drop once back when it was a drop and not something you got in a pumpkin, but that was the closest I've ever gotten. I mean, I've killed him at least 140 times, and that's probably a really low estimate. (Is there a place I can see this statistic? I know they track certain boss kills, but I don't think he's one of them.) I mean, I know it's only got a 0.5% drop rate, so it's pretty reasonable that neither of us has gotten it. But it feels like we're the only ones. I don't know anyone else that doesn't have it.

I've also soloed Kara plenty of times in an attempt to get Midnight. It may have a different name,  but it's the same model, and I'll take what I can get! The drop rate is slightly higher (0.9%) and I really need to make it a point to do this every week on all of my characters. I just never remember.

One day, my friends. One day I will have that horse.

Hallow's End is definitely my favorite holiday. The Midsummer Fire Festival is a close second, but sadly I managed to miss it this year. :( Those are the only two that I really get into and do all of the quests and everything. There are a few that I hate, like Lunar Festival. These are the reason I still don't have "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been." Maybe this year I'll go for it. Maybe.

I still need the following achievements:

Winter Veil

• 'Tis the Season
• Let it Snow
• The Winter Veil Gourmet
• A Frosty Shake
• With a Little Help From My Friends
• Fa-la-la-la-Ogri'la
• Bros Before Ho Ho Ho's

Lunar Festival

• Elders of Cataclysm
• Elders of the Dungeons

Love is in the Air

• Charming
• Flirt With Disaster
• Nation of Adoration
• Shafted!
• Lonely?
• The Rocket's Pink Glare
• Fistful of Love
• I pitied the Fool

Children's Week

• School of Hardknocks
• Bad Example

It's kind of a lot. But only four holidays. So if I do it, I'll have my mount in April. If you notice, with the exception of Lunar Festival, each of the holidays I haven't completed has a PvP achievement. The reason I haven't bothered with the non-PvP achievements for those holidays is because I know I won't do the PvP ones!! (Particularly School of Hardknocks. I have never done any of those things with or without an orphan involved.) But this time around, I'm going to suck it up. Really. I mean it this time.

Thank the WoW gods...

...for allowing us to change our faces at the barbershop. I truly didn't think Blizzard would do this for us; after all, we had to pay to do it before. I saw hundreds of players who said they would be satisfied if, the first time we logged into a character post-patch, we got the chance to change our face. If we didn't take it, too bad, we'd lose it. Blizz really outdid themselves this time, and I am so happy they made the right decision this time.

Because Loihi's face was awful. Right? Right. I mean...wasn't it?

I found out yesterday morning that this was a thing, and I ran home from work at lunch to change my face. Seriously. I was that excited that I got to get rid of her ugly face.

I went to the barbershop. I sifted through the other faces. I picked one. I paid my gold, and I left the barbershop. I stopped in the Trade District to admire my new face...and I hated it. I hated it just as much as I'd hated the one they gave me. Okay, let's try again. I went back and sifted through the faces again until I found the best one. Once again, I paid my gold and left.

I went back out to the Trade District to admire my new face. That's really quite a lot of cosmetic surgery in one day, but it was so worth it. This face was much better than the last one. As I was looking at my face, I started to think, "Is it? No... It can't -" Sure enough, it was the face Blizz had originally given me. So I spent 60 something gold, only to end up back where I started. Oh well!

I did make one more trip to the barbershop to change my hair. It's such a subtle change that you really can't tell the difference in a picture, or else I would show you.

I will be changing some of my other faces for sure, though. All of my gnomes got beaten with the ugly stick.