Moving On

So, yeah, much as I hated bailing on Crits, I had too much time and effort invested in Lajos to let him sit, and the reality was, I’d never play him. So, last night, I popped on Winterhoof, sent the heirloom items from my other toons to Lajos, and a few other key items. The old guild bank had been ransacked by the last member of the old group, who had stayed with the guild. That surprised me, though on reflection, it shouldn’t have, since I haven’t really been on in about 3 months. It would have been nice to have my share of the titansteel we’d been pooling for choppers, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. For all I know, Booters sent it to me, and it timed out and returned.

So, now I have to learn how to play a mage all over again. Whee, good times. Actually, I think it’s going to be pretty interesting, since there isn’t a whole lot out there for Arcane Mage PvP in Cataclysm. Yup, you read that right. Arcane.

Sure, I know, Frost is a no brainer for PvP. So, I’m guessing that there are going to be a LOT of Frost mages in the battlegrounds. Fire has been improved, and likewise, I expect to see a lot of Fire mages there as well. So, since I’m having to relearn anyway, I figured I’d stick with what’s realtively familiar. Everything I’m reading seems to indicate that Arcane rules when it comes to burst damage, and PvP is very much oriented around burst damage. We shall see. Should be exciting.

Oh, and incidentally, I had to rename him, so now he’s named Layjos. Meh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Azeroth’s Axis Just Tilted a Tiny Bit

Last night, the unthinkable happened… an event that will have wide-ranging repercussions that will and resound through the very fabric of Azeroth, with echos in far off Outland. Compared to this, Cataclysm will be but a faint whisper of an aftershock. Dragon’s stopped in their tracks, and raised their heads, testing the swirls and eddies of magic that permeate the fabric of Azeroth. Garrosh Hellscream woke in a cold sweat, the vestiges of an un-recallable nightmare fading into the gloom. The Lich King in the middle of his speech to Svala Sorrowgrave, suddenly began sounding like Alvin the Chipmunk. Hogger suddenly went “Hrrrmmmmuh?” and fell dead after being hit with a staff by a level 6 mage.

Okay, it’s wasn’t that big a deal. But it was something that I really did not expect to happen. Nick and I joined Crits and Giggles.

As the post activity on my blog shows, I’ve been busy. Softball season ties up my Saturdays, but when all-stars rolled around, and my daughter made it, that went from “Saturdays” to “weekends”. I’ve bemoaned at length the normal challenges our guild faced, having such a small core membership, and apparently, the inevitable finally caught up with us. I wish everyone the best, have fun. That’s what it’s all about.

Meh, high-road be damned. It’s my blog, and as best I could tell, none of my ex-guildies ever read it anyway. I’m feeling something that’s a cross between hurt, bitterness, and just  plain sadness. Nick and I have could have been in Crits or Apathy months ago, and been raiding our little hearts out, but we stuck with our friends. I’ve sat around Dalaran for hours, turning down raid invites, because I wanted to stay freed up in case my guildies showed up and we could put together a heroic. I cheered my ass off when our group cleared their first heroic. While my guildies were working the auction house, and buying gear because they were too shy to run heroics, I was spending my money on guild tabs, a tundra-mammoth so I could run lowbies to flight points, repair bots, etcetera.

And then I stopped being on every night of the week, and my weekends were taken up by my daughter’s tournaments, and I logged on to find our core group gone, without a word. When I asked, I was told “they had no one to play with”. Ah well. I hope you find people to play with, and I hope they can keep you amused. I do wish you the best.

And a friend of twenty-five years who never mentioned a word of any problems in the guild to me, who in fact had been telling me over the past few months how well I handled the role of “cat herder”, lectured me on my lack of leaderships skills and “selfishness” - when she could finally be bothered to even return an email. Yah, sweety, I hear ya. Thanks for “smoothing things over” with everyone, while keeping me in the dark. Hope you enjoy those glacial bags that I bought for you because you were bitching at me about people filling up the guild tab that you paid for.

::Deep Breath:: Ok, got that off my chest. Cathartic. And yes, I know that all that is MY perception, and they may see things entirely differently. It’s over, it’s done, move on.

And to return to our regularly schedule programming, move on we did. I managed to get the guild bank someone straightened out, and promoted Zachiel, my utility toon to GM, and then told RG she could pull the trigger. And it was done. And it was good.

After a chorus of welcomes from the Crits crowd, and getting Nick in, we did a random, then went for Magister’s Terrace, first normal, then normal again, because Sol and Nick didn’t realize they needed to complete the quest to get into the heroic, and then heroic. It was a learning experience. For example, I learned that despite the tank running around and chain-aggroing everything in site, there was in fact method to the madness, and that did not in fact mean that I should start long-range pulling mobs standing off to the side. Go figure. My bad.

And as RG mentioned in her post today, the Phoenix Hatchling dropped twice in a row, and she didn’t get it. Nick and I will have to start scheduling play-dates for our new pets.

After that, RG was off to help Hartbane, and I responded to a call from a guildie in WG, only to undergo multiple ass-handings. I see I’m going to have to rebuild my PvP set, and get back in the swing of things. That, and get my ‘lock leveled. I still enjoy the mage, but there’s no doubt who my eventual main will be.

Holy shit. It just hit me. I have a guild full of people. Lots and lots of people. There’s bound to be some toons around my lock’s level to play with. Don’t get me wrong. One thing I could always count on from my ex-guildies was help, if they were on. (Despite my self-indulgent rant above, don’t think for a moment that these are “bad people”. It was just a bad situation that was poorly handled all around. ) But I don’t always WANT to have an 80 running me through instances or quests. I *like* challenge, and learning to play my toon. Simple math says I’m going to see more of that.

Most cliche’s have at least some truth behind them, and my own life experience has taught me that when something happens that seems earth-shaking, and terrible, it’s likely just The Power’s That Be forcing you into the change that you already knew, in the back of your mind, that you needed to make. One door closes, another opens.

To all my new guildies… it’s good to be home!

Son of Manic Monday

So, I’ve been seriously delinquent in posting the last couple weeks. Manic Monday has mutated to “Manic Days Ending in Y”. And truth be told, there hasn’t been a lot going on in my WoW world that I consider that noteworthy.

Noblegarden came. Last year, I was like “Meh… eggs? Are they deviled? Can I throw them at a boss for a stun? No? Blah.” and moved on. I was leveling. This year, tho’, I’ve got “the Pilgrim” and “the Elder” knocked out, so “the Noble” was just another one to check off the list. So, climbing out of bed, jumping on WoW, with a quick glance at WoW.com’s Noblegarden writeups, I got on it. Found a hotspot for eggs, and commenced to scarfing down chocolate. When the dust cleared, I hadn’t purchased a single item, except the Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit. Everything else dropped, along with a metric buttload of chocolate eggs.

My momentum was too much, as it turned out, because I missed the fact that the rabbit disguise inflicted by the Blossoming Branch allows one to lay the eggs that you need for the Hard Boiled achievement. When I hear the word “Achievement”, I assume that it’s going to involve some time and effort, so I didn’t bother to dig deeper. End result was me and Edelestar waiting to be polymorphed by opening eggs, then hopping out to Un ‘Goro to lay our eggs. We hearthed, to take the Cavern’s of Time portal in Dalaran… except my hearth is set to Wyrmrest. (Reason being is, I can normally teleport to Dalaran, and the Wyrmrest drakes are an express flight, centrally located. Method, madness, all that stuff.)

So, after hopping my way up from Wyrmrest to the portal up to Dalaran, I hopped to the CoT portal, then made my way across the desert to Un ‘Goro, down the hill, and through the ravasaurs, to get to the hotsprings, and hear someone asking if someone could use a branch on them.  Good thing I was a pink bunny, or the embarrassed blush would have shown. Meh, I meant to do it. Anyone can ride out to Un ‘Goro. My 45 warlock did it. Takes a real stud, secure in his masculinity, to hop out there as a pink bunny! The rest of the Noble title was a piece of cake. Perseverance, patience, all that stuff. Only the Main Four online, so when Innarra came on, we grabbed her to tank, and we ran a random. /sigh. Pinnacle again. Innarra was gulping, but I followed my usual script, and assured her that once you had the encounter down, it was a piece of cake. Same formula…  give the tank time to grab aggro, keep the adds in hand, and get plenty of harpoons, then warn everyone Skadi is coming down in one pass. Slam dunk.

The following evening, Crits’ Classic Raid was AQ-40. Got Ron and Joyce in on it this time, then they had to pack for a spring trip, so we continued the Noblegarden merriment with lowbies. Ran a few Outland heroics. From Tuesday on, it was pretty much Sue and I holding down the fort. Lots of lowby action going on.

This weekend, I was just hanging out, chatting with Innarra, and it occurred to me that I need more pets. Hmmm…. I’ve got a few Sanguine Hibiscus in my bank. I hear Sporeggar is nice this time of year. Gee… can I solo Underbog? Quick step back here. When the last patch came out, I took my off-spec to Frost. Tried it out in AQ-40, and Black Temple the week before, receiving a scathing “Traitor!” from RG. Such an arcane snob. I’ve pretty much decided that it’s going to take some work before I’m ready to try it in a heroic or a raid. With my group, we need me at max DPS, and if I’m invited to a raid, I’m typically with mages geared a bit heavier than I am, so I need to stretch. But for soloing an instance, it looked to be advantageous.

Worked like a champ. After one run, I ripped out the Frostbolt and perma-squirtle glyphs tho’. I miss having the Frost control. In fact, I forgot how much I missed it. Yesterday, I went out to Tanaris to farm mageweave, and it was like a second childhood.

Speaking of mageweave, that leads me to my little gnomie-girl warlock. You can see on the banner the results of a hiccup in my Dimensional Ripper: Area 52. I fell in love. I was seriously considering doing a race/gender change with Lajos, but it just didn’t feel right. After a couple weeks debate, it dawned on me that what I loved best about that particular toon-model was the slight hint of a frown on an otherwise adorable face… the hint of evil… the suggestion of “Don’t #!@$ with me!” In other words… a warlock.

As the Fates would have it, I already had a gnome warlock, Leareth. It was Destiny! Last weekend, Leareth became Liris. Wheee!!!!

This weekend was dead. Did OS3D with Apathy, fun as always, but other than that… just me, chatting with Innarra… finally lo and behold, after a week absence, on  Booters appeared, and we scrambled to get her the bunny pet before the event ended. In doing so, I found another use for the wonderful Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth: sitting on eggs. It wasn’t 20 minutes, and Booter’s had her eggs and her pet, at which point, late nights caught up with me, as well as the imprints of keyboard keys on my forehead from face planting, and I called it a night.

Sunday, after a quick trip to the grocery store, it was more of the same… lots of dead time. Nick came on, and announced he had the urge to try a mage again. We talked about the pros and cons between human and gnome, and he finally decided on a gnome. I finally I decided to get back to work on Liris’ professions, namely tailoring and enchanting. Hmmm… got tons of runecloth, but she’s still on mageweave. Hence, Lajos’ trip out to Tanaris to farm mageweave.

About 4 stacks into that, Edelestar logged in. Shortly thereafter, Booters came on, as did Nickolas, and with only four of us, and it being a rather late start, we decided to just lowby it. Hmm…. my warlock is a gnome. Sue’s mage, Mydge, is a gnome. Nick’s mage, Goodo (to low for Armory) is a gnome. That left only one choice, so after porting my warlock to Dalaran to set my hearth, Nana logged off on Booters, and created a gnome rogue, and it was a gnome party. We helped her cruise through starting area, then headed to Northshire Abby to get some Stormwind rep. Nick has been playing Godfather II his console, and donned a full tux, complete with battered jungle hat, and proclaimed himself Don Goodo, (complete with Brando voice).

As an aside, this seems to be destiny. Nana has always had a soft spot for Gnomeregan, and with the Reclaiming of Gnomeregan coming up in Cataclysm, what more appropriate way to do it than with a squad of gnomes?

When You Least Expect It…

So, like many other players in WoW, I collect stuff. Mounts, pets, achievements. My hunter has the Epic hunter set that you could only get during the pre-Wrath event, and it takes up space in his bank. Once in awhile, I’ll dust it off, and run Strat, with that set, just because. It’s cool stuff. It’s nostalgia. It’s a material timeline of my toons’ life on Azeroth.

From time to time, when I’ve not got anything going on, I go out and farm for pet drops. To date, I’ve had zero luck doing that. Without fail, nothing will drop until I’ve stopped looking for it. Strat, the Reins of the Deathcharger. Ran it a couple dozen times. On time 24, I was just killing time, and not even thinking about the Reins. Boom. It dropped.

I ran OS with Apathy, not even thinking about the mount. It dropped, and I rolled, not expecting to get it. Boom. Got it.

My Strand Crawler, out of a fishing reward. Didn’t even know it existed, and boom, it dropped.

So, last night, I’d logged in, finished patching, and dropping my off-spec to try a Frost spec, and with nothing else going on, went out to Grizzly Hills to fish up some salmon, to restock Fish Feasts. Second cast, boom!

I didn’t even realize what had happened, when congratulations started rolling in from guildies. I was like “Holy shit!” and promptly took her on a spin around the PvP island.

So, RG posted her new UI over at her blog, so I guess I’m overdue. Here’s mine:

This is during a fight. We’ve got Chatter at the bottom left, and Eavesdropper at the bottom right, with Skada just inboard from that. The bars are mostly Bartender4, for action bars, to the center left. I also use Autobar for things like food, hearths and portals, mounts, etc, because it will pop up all the available choices. That’s Autobar along the center right bottom, and to the right of my player frame just above Bartender. I use Fortress along the top for LDF compliant modes. The minimap is SexyMap, and I use Buffaloes to replace the default buff/debuff icons, and MiksScrollingBattleText. Healbot is above Eavesdropper in the lower right. I use it for decursing, and some stock spellcasting, like Slow Fall.

Raid frames are XPerl, of course. I’ve got an achievement screenshotter in there, as you can see… I think that’s the name of the addon, AchievementScreenshotter, or something like that. I use CBHViewport to compress the viewport, rather than trying to coordinate panels along the bottom. Quartz, Scorchio2, MageNuggets, DeadlyBossMods, and WittyMage all have bars floating around in there, simply because I haven’t gone through and weeded out the duplicate stuff (on my todo list).

Yeah, its’ a mess. I really need to do some cleanup.

Semantics, Philosophy, And The Point of a Good Debate

So, I was scanning the AH, and finishing waking up this morning, having an early morning chat with RG, and the subject of patch changes came up. Off handedly, I threw out “You heard about the two new instances, right?” This simple statement started a conversation that is of the sort that delights me. See, I have this problem. My mind typically as a lot of CPU time in the background. Bring up a topic that has to do with language, human nature, and the combination of the two, and all the cores kick in, and CPU time spikes. Why? Because, due to the nature of the debate, there is no right answer. The point is not to be right, but to think about the various angles and nuances of the topic.

Another Monday Morning

So,  Love is In The Air ended, the Lunar Festival continued. WoW-wise, it wasn’t precisely an exciting weekend, but it had it’s moments. Outside of WoW, it was one of those daddy weekends. My daughter started her softball season. She went ten-for-ten in the league hit-a-thon, raising $200, to take second overall. The girl who took first place was the daughter of one of the coaches, who got his checkbook out of the glovebox of his Hummer, and wrote a $400 dollar check. The “daddy moment” came when a bunch of the girls were booing the winner because of this, and my daughter told them to lay off, it wasn’t the girl who wrote the check, then trotted out and high-fived the winner.

Meanwhile, back on WoW, I got my Elder title,  with Kalyon‘s and  Zarchius‘ help on the Omen fight, as well as a couple of the dungeon elders. Probably the most exciting thing, however, was Saturday night. I’ve talked about our guild before. We’re about as casual as they come, and we’ve been smacked with pug-crap a few times, leaving us very shy about pugging, and unfortunately, until recently, we were short a tank. Our pally tanked with his DK over on Thunderlord for a long time, on a laptop that was giving him a consistent framerate down around 3. Any wonder he burned out on tanking? Eventually, my son got his DK up, and started tanking for us, but he isn’t on as much as we’d like. With 3.3 coming out, Nick led the way into pug-a-geddon, and I timidly followed. The other members have been slowly following. Now that my gear is up to a level that I pretty much feel like I’m not going to embarrass myself in most content, I’ve been going back, and trying to organize something to get the others back in the swing of things, and convince our pally to try tanking. With some rotation advice from Hartbane over in Apathy, he’s been coming along nicely. It’s been awhile since we’ve done instances on a regular basis, so everyone was a bit rusty in their roles. This weekend, another guildie brought her high-70′s mage, Bootters, over from Thunderlord, and she joined us in Hall’s of Lightning, which she’s never finished before.

Shattered Illusions II

So, geez… apparently I went too far yesterday… or more likely, not far enough. People actually took that post seriously. Normally, I’d put that down to them not knowing me, but even RG missed the intent.

Normally, I’d just duck my head, apologize to the principals, and move on, but I’m acutely aware of how someone’s reputation can be affected by even something as insignificant as my little blog. So, here’s the less embellished version of Friday nights events.

Kalyon whispered me, and asked if I wanted to do OS. Of course, I accepted. We swung by Naxx, taking advantage of the fact we were in a raid to get in, pitied a fool, and headed back to OS.

We had a couple wipes, and what I said yesterday was true. No one pointed any fingers at anyone, except themselves. Apathy members, being who they are, might wonder why I always stress that. It’s something that all too rare in pugs, and even in guilds raids, and I can’t say enough about how refreshing it is.

So after a couple practice runs, Sartharion went down, and yours truly wound up with the drake. And the loudest comment I got was “Lajos, take it outside, I want to see it.” Yes, Lore, very laughingly, said he figured Apathy would get another writeup. I refer back to the cliche’ I mentioned yesterday. Does a druid take a dump in Moonglade? Gnomer has made noises to the effect that it’s rare you have something pleasant to write about that’s is interesting to read. I’m not going to miss the chance.

The rest of the evening happened pretty much as I described yesterday, but, no, Lore was nothing but patient, laid back, and a joy to run with. The healer I mentioned was every bit as awesome as I said, and will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.

Shattered Illusions

Those few immensely bored souls who swing by my little blog now and then have probably figured out that I when I’m not cutting loose with a full scale rant, I spend a lot of time writing with tongue-firmly implanted in cheek. Laughter is one of my favorite past times, after all. Once in awhile, however, I find myself moved to write about something that warrants neither a rant, nor comedy, but just a plain heavy sigh. Last night, I found myself a position to observe just such a tragic situation. Read on, if you have the stomach for it.

Edit: Sadly, I tend to forget that not everyone share’s, or even understands that mutant entity that I refer to as “my sense of humor”. The following is, in fact, entirely tongue in cheek. Please read it with that in mind.

Friendship

Friendships come in many different forms, in varying degrees, and manifest in a multitude of ways. In WoW terms, some friends are companions, fun to be around, run a raid with, or just be silly with. Other friends give you a lift when you need a hand getting those last few Emblems of Triumph for your next T9 piece. Others just cheer you up when your down, and help you take your mind off your troubles.

And then, there are those that, in addition to all the above, challenge you, as in this comment from RG, made after I’d told her I needed her to help me find the Jeeve’s schematic:

Help you how? Have you seen the drop rate on that thing??? Get me Deathcharger’s Reins and we’ll talk … til then, have fun farming :p

I woke up this morning, a bit out of sorts. It’s been a rough week, with a lot of ups and downs, extreme ups, extreme downs. Last night, I ended up getting stuck at work, got home late, and my first attempt at my random was a rough pug. Not rough in the sense of rude people, but the group just wasn’t quite up to H-HoL.  RG was kind enough to let me tag along on Karius’ random, so I got my emblems, then I got my lock to 40, but all in all, the whole evening just felt off-kilter.

So, I scanned the auction house while I showered, then decided to see if I could get my random out of the way early. I did my fishing and cooking dailies, then fired up the old Wormhole Generator, and popped up to Storm Peaks. As I landed on the platform for the Library, the random popped, and we got HCoS. Decent run. We missed getting the drake by mere seconds, but other than that, it was good. Thanked everyone, and left the group, back to Storm Peaks.

And a mere few dozen Library Guardian’s later:

So, it looks like I need to get those last few points of Engineering. Folks on Winterhoof, stay tuned. I’m going to be having a clearance on Gnomish Army Knives real soon.

And, to my very good friend over at Reputation Grind, I return the favor: Get your ass down to Strat, and get to work. Last I saw, the Deathcharger’s Reins don’t drop in Icecrown Citadel, Trial of the Crusader, or any other place in Northrend.

Random Postage

I didn’t want to dilute yesterday’s post with more trivial things… like Kalyon tanking my way to a bronze drake in Heroic CoS. I decided to take some promo shots on Krasus’ Landing, and Karius decided to join me.

As you can see, Karius likes to be on top.

Last night, a couple of my guildies and I were graciously invited to Crits and Giggles Classic Raid Night, a trip through AQ20 AND AQ40.

Needless to say, it was a truly mammoth undertaking.

The last two boss fights in AQ40 were just AMAZING. In the end, we prevailed, and just about everyone got the “use only in AQ40 mounts”. I heard a comment on Vent saying we need to run it 19 more times so everyone can get the red one.

Gives a whole new twist to the phrase “I went out for a drive on my buggy.”

RG and I were reminiscing last night while waiting for a random Heroic, talking about all that’s happened over the less-than-two-weeks since she first graciously invited my guildies and I to accompany her guild on occasion, and since Kalyon stepped in to tank Heroic Violet Hold for us. She and her guild-mates have been helpful, gracious, and patient with me and mine, just awesome examples of the type of people we like to play with. Here’s to the last couple weeks, and many more.