Christmas Clothes

I thought I'd have a go at mogging some of my girls to reflect the festive season but not using the ingame Christmas items. What could I come up with using Christmas colours and did my girls actually have anything in their bags. The results were surprising as only 3 seem to have enough gold/red/green type items! This might be a new AH challenge for my banker to resolve!

Tsu ended up with this combination . I was surprised as I'd come to the conclusion ages back that leather came in brown, brown, a hint of green and a touch of gold.

To achieve Em's look, I needed to hide most of her gear. Although she has a lot of other red, gold and silver things, they just didn't fit the look!

Leyfin, my pally banker, is the most assertively Christmas she could be ... I'm not sure how much protection that breastplate gives but since she rarely strays beyond the AH and the bank ... she'll be fine!

Feeling Isolated

I had an odd experience in game this week. One I'd never thought that I'd have. My resto girl spawned a monk. Finally! Yes, I know, they've been available for quite a while, but the point is I made a monk, had a wonderful time dancing my way through the introductory quest line and then picked my faction. I picked Alliance mainly as most of the characters I have on the server are Alliance and it is not actually the significant point.

What was significant was my reaction to arriving in Stormwind. I felt, isolated. A stranger in a new land. It was a combination of the visual difference between where she'd started her journey and the gates of Stormwind combined with the comments of curious children and by-standers. It was an interesting response. I'd not anticipated having.

Blizzard in their own way have managed to create a sense for me of what it is like to be a minority in a new land with no opportunity to go 'home'.

I wonder if anyone else has experienced this.

Canopic Jars

I think Tsu's archaeology profession is glitched. Really ... it's glitched ... it's got to be. I know out of all my characters she's got by far the worst gambling luck seeming to come last on loot rolls on such a consistent basis that it is a bit of a joke, but her loot luck in archaeology is just sad.

To date she's dug up some 170 common artefacts the majority of which are fossil and night elf as a result of trying to force Uldum sites to pop. How many canopic jars ... 1. Her first Tol'vir artifact was a canopic jar. I was so excited. Could it possibly have been that Tsu's unlucky streak had vanished. She opened the jar with trembling hands nerves alive ... what did she find ... some nasty mushy poorly preserved material she was told was a bit of a brain. Ugh ... sigh. Since then she's had no more jars just lots of maps, pictures and other grey stuff. Her profession lists some 139 artifacts many of which she's dug up multiples of to give me that total of somewhere over 170 (I gave up counting when I hit 170).

This guy had to find 7 jars before he found his vial of sands recipe .... at that rate she's going to have to hit about 1000 artefacts. :(

How badly do I want to be able to turn her into a dragon? How badly do I want to make the vial myself rather than hand over my carefully hoarded mats to one of our guild alchemists?

when Tsu and I go off on her archaeology I'm starting to feel a little like an old lady popping coins compulsively into the pokies one coin at a time knowing all along that I'll lose while crossing my fingers behind my back in the hope to ward off bad luck.

Props .... out to ... :)

I've read more than one blog and forum post that are full of people's frustrations and dissatisfaction about players, game mechanics and our game designers and so I thought I'd start a post that I can come back to and add to over time. It is way too easy to fall into a trap of focusing on the negative aspects of WoW. I have met some amazing players in game. Some have been masters of their characters, others steeped in the lore that holds our world together and others simply good fun to spend time with.

My inspiration came from a couple of places. Firstly there was BBB's Happy Days are Here Again post and his Cub Report post then Animositas' post on the forums and finally there was Twoflower.

Thus, my first 'props' go to Twoflower of the Legacy guild. We met in a dungeon, Tsu healing, as usual, and Twoflower tanking. The run wasn't anything special ... 'just' a normal cata heroic. Same old, list, run, hit and heal. It was some of the most enjoyable healing I've done for a while and it was by and large due to Twoflower's considered tanking. He maintained control of the fights, managed his character and worked in well with a more than competent team of dps'ers. Healing 'pugs' rocks when the team is good. Healing 'pugs' is blissful when the tank is confident :).

15/5/12

My second props go out to Pete the Turtle and his owner Adaptiive from Frostmourne. We rolled a dungeon and scored norm Halls of Origination. No biggie ... Tsu's well more than over geared these days for normals and I run them for fun. The tank took one look at the dungeon and bailed and we waited and waited ... no tank ... so I asked Adaptiive if he had a tank pet. He replied that he had but that he was, well, not very good or words to that affect and popped out 'Pete' the tanking turtle. Pete tanked us through the first few trash mobs with a bit of nice cc work from Adaptiive on the frost trap and Dandella from Rexxar on the polymorph and Maddogkarl of Nagrand dropping that nice rain circle of healing. We got to the first boss ... and went what the hell lets have a go and :) a beautiful job of tanking was done. Pete and Adaptiive, are my latest people to demonstrate the cool people you meet in WoW. Really I should extend that also to Dandella and Maddogkarl as they were happy to go along with the hairbrained scheme in the first place. About half way through the boss fight, Skrynik the druid of Nagrand joined the group and was somewhat amused to discover that at the end of the fight he'd be replacing a turtle pet. :)

11/7/12

Well I'll be honest. I've been trying to avoid this props as I've never actually met the guy in game and technically I want to target people I've actually encountered. He does, however, reflect all that I like about people who play our game. I came across him first back in 2010 when looking for some advice on bear tanking (sigh, yes you all know where I'm going with this one now) and saw his post for the day ... Come join the raid from the Heart in which he invited us all to join a global activity. It's clear from his post that there were many people who were involved from crafters to mage porters but it was he who acted as the lynchpin. Now in 2012 he's 'at it again' this time getting together a group to track back over a lot of the achieves that for one reason or other were missed out. Following his blog it is easy to see the sense of community that has developed around his blog and that he is very much a part of. Thus, John 'Big Bear Butt' Patricelli, props to you. Cheers for your sense of humour, enthusiasm for just getting in and enjoying yourself and taking us all along for the experience :).

Frost Mages ... FTW ... sorta

I read a comment on Icy Veins saying that Frost Mages were currently considered the inferior spec.

Not long after that I ran my fairly poorly geared 85 Frost (non-pvp to boot) Mage through a dungeon that left me going ... 'inferior ... really?????' and just 'had' to share the following screen shots with you all.

Yup ... you are reading that right ... my 'squishy', 'inferior' Frost Mage did just shy of 40k dps ... with Panggs and Roghan coming in a close second and third. If you've followed my armory links there you will, no doubt be getting suspicious as Panggs was our very capable healer and Roghan our more than competent tank and you'd be right to be questioning my recount. We had, in fact, just finished the dragon bombing run in Grim Batol when I glanced at my recount and laughed. For a moment in time my Mage looked as if she'd out done herself to claim 27.4% of the damage. I'd not noticed before that the dragon 'bombs' registered on our dps meters and it does go to illustrate how much caution must be applied to any meter in game. Still, for that split second of time, my Mage did herself proud and topped the dps charts.

Valiant as she was, these were not values that were sustainable and by the end of the run her numbers looked like this ...

Out dps'ed by the tank ... sigh ... well ... I did say that he was competent. He said he was better at dps than tanking. I don't think my Mage took a single hit the whole run. Thank goodness he was tanking, I'd cry if I saw his figures when running in dps. Still ... if I'm honest, the residual of that dragon ride is still evident in my Mage's stats ... she normally averages about 5.5K at the end of a dungeon and probably illustrating the observation from Icy Veins nicely.

Advice on tanking from your friendly druid healer ...

1) Know that as a dk, dodge, parry, mastery, stam and strength are your friends ... coming into H GD in 75% dps gear with lots of crit and haste is not going to make you a sturdy tank. I don't even mind pvp tanking gear (since I've been known to do a dungeon in fully speced pvp lol) but it should still be tanking not dps gear.

2) Make sure you are repaired before you come in ... coming in then admitting you can't afford to repair your almost totally broken sword is not a good way to be an effective tank.

3) Don't ever, ever, ever equip a mining pick when your weapon does completely break and expect to keep tanking. I don't care how much health you carry. Mining picks were designed to dig holes in the ground not to dig holes in monsters.

4) Don't try to tank in blood spec/frost presence unless you really know what you are doing. Thank you for swapping to blood presence when asked.

5) Do listen when your healer directs your tanking, sets up cc for you and makes some suggestions on gearing (okay, well I've got to admit that along with the first 4 points, he did also do this one which made me sympathetic)

I wish transmogging was more flexible

Well ... what can I say ... blame BBB for this post or more specifically his letter to Effraeti regarding a certain little Bear's gear. The end result, you'd have to agree ... simply stunning. Combine that with Tome of the Ancient's Mog Madness post and I got thinking about my mage.

If any of my girls are a bit of a 'girlie girl' it would be my mage. She's often found getting rescued by her friend, a dashing Paladin, as she is want to stop and look at pretty things and collect pretty dresses. Her tailoring prof had little higher purpose than the desire to make pretty things. If she were a real person, she'd have a well used credit card and a collection of shoes and dresses that Imelda Marcos would be proud of. But, my mage has a problem ... what she'd love to run in, Bliz in all their wisdom, has said, no, that does not meet requirements.

Let me show you.

This was my mage way back in 2008 when she was a sweet little thing. I can't remember her level at the time, but I suspect you can tell, she's not high - I think from memory that staff you can just see is the one that dropped in STV, the one with the blue feathers around a disc.

At 85 she did some sewing and made the full set. It was the first time she'd been able to equip an entire set and was most pleased with herself (okay well I was pleased).

Since then she's earned herself a new dress and, of course, just 'had' to put it on. I tell you, she's costing me a fortune in gems and enchants. No sooner than I'd tidied up her last lot of good clothes than she goes shopping, gets new gear and expects it gemmed and enchanted. Ah well, it's worth it, I do like her dress. She tells me it's her 'work uniform'. ... pft ... mind you, if I could remember how to change her stance on Armory, I'd be happier.

But the point of this post was not to show you every dress in her wardrobe but to show you the two outfits she most likes to wear. She has a bit of a streak, if you get my drift, and likes to race around on her motorbike and asked for, well, demanded an outfit to match. I found her the following ... a mix of Haliscan and Mageweave gear amongst other things.

Her preferred outfit for being about town at the moment keeps most of this outfit with a few changes thanks to the Clothiers in Dalaran.

Em assures me that she does not mind being able to transmog these outfits as she maintains that if she had to wear them in a dungeon, they'd get dirty. She also refuses the option of shoulders, I've just not found a pair that fit. Either way, she does rather preen in her clothes.

While my mage understands the policy, I'd love to have a bit more flexibility in what she can transmog. I rather like the final image.

Oh ... and ... no ... I can't tank ... I'm a mage!

Even Charles Dickens started off with a readership of one ...

Charles Dickens started off with a readership of one ... it's true ... he did. You can't avoid that fact. There was a day in history when having laboured over his text, striving to construct stories about his society that would be compelling reading when the only people who had read his work would have been himself and one other ... in other words ... a readership of one. The Pickwick Papers published in 1837 marked that point when his readership would have started to grow from one to many to become one of the best known authors of western culture. By the time he died, his writings had reached a massive audience and have, since then, continued to grow, spured on now with the dramatisation on television of many of his much cherished texts. The man would have turned 200 this year. His commentaries on society continue to be read, consumed and applauded.

In 1954 Leon Festinger proposed the social comparison theory. According to Festinger, "the drive for self evaluation and the necessity for such evaluation being based on comparison with other persons" permits one to tie together conceptually both social influence processes and some kinds of competitive behavior.' Humans tend to attribute status and worth in comparison with others. Krayer, Ingledew and Ifophen explain that we tend to devalue ourselves against those we consider better and increase our sense of self worth when comparing ourselves with those where we perceive a more favourable comparison. The theory suggests that fundamental to humanity is a need to know the answer to 'Am I doing well?' The measures we use to establish this however, appear somewhat arbritary selected by the individual for reasons that may or may not be clearly understood by others. Conclusions drawn from these comparisons will also make assumptions about the person used as the bench mark and their actions.

Milestones are markers or progress. Whether they are milestones of 'my child talked today' or 'I posted my 100th post' or 'my site has been clicked on 3 million times', their importance as a milestone providing a sense of progress is important. The immersive nature of mmog's reflects this in their use of milestones to provide feedback to a gamer in answer to the question 'Am I doing well?' In WoW we see glimmers for completing quests, achievement announcements, level dings, and ilevels. Each in its own way informing the gamer where they are up to. They are not there in the game as a boast, they are there in the game because we humans respond to a measuring stick, a notch on the doorframe if you like. They take on a new life when we look at them in relation to Festinger's theory. Where the feedback keeps the gamer in the game and so is a benefit to the mmog's, they also act as a measuring tool for other gamers. Achieves and ilevels become used as measures to determine how effective a player is either downward; 'Wah ... I have better gear/more achieves/more whatevers that that player ... figjam' or 'hmmm .... what do I have to do to be half as good as that toon?'.They serve a purpose that is also part of our psyche where we undertake self evaluation based on comparison with other people.

Our blogs likewise serve similar roles. Like the feedback we gain from our mmog's, the feedback we gain from our weblog statistics serve an important role in our psychology as they provide a measure of our milestones. Karl Weigers   makes the point that it is important that people know that they have made progress and that this progress has been recognised. Now, I appreciate that with any data set there will be errors in the data set; Oestrus makes this point well in the responses to the Shameless post pointing out the spike caused by a phishing operation, however, I don't think that this necessarily devalues the importance of the milestones achieved by the writer as to do so then allows that event to have a disproportionate importance in interpreting the information our weblog statistics tell us. Nor does the potential errors in the data set mean that the writer should not be proud of their achievements. At this level, the feedback provided by the statitstics are personal, reporting to the writer about their eternal question of 'Am I doing well?' In the Sugar and Blood post, Numbers Game, Mataoka rebutted Oestrus pointing out that people should not use the achievements of others as an excuse to avoid attempting something themselves. Whether it is comparing your writing to Charles Dickens or your ability to climb mountains to Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, the act of measuring yourself against other people in a negative way rather than against your own achievements is an act of devaluing self. The person doing the comparison is ultimately responsible for how they construct their sense of self in this instance rather than the person who is being used as the measuring stick as the later is not saying 'I am better than you because I have more posts/hits/comments/whatevers than you'. The comparison against others says more about the person doing the comparison than it does about their chosen attribute and measuring stick.

I don't know that we encourage people to write by not celebrating the milestones of our existing community. I would, however, say that it is a sad moment when we reach a time when one of our bloggers feels the need to appologise for having posted an achievement only to have their intentions interpreted in ways they did not intend. It is, therefore, always worth remembering that even Charles Dickens started off with a readership of one.

Wow and the importance of play

I don't read a lot of blogs, but one that does appear regularly on my reading list is Big Bear Butt's work and his recent post Wow is like a ... and my habit of browsing from one post to another absorbing his thoughts led me to Inspiration and Transformation and thus to a post of Gnomeaggedon's that BBB referenced that contained a subheading that caught my attention ... 'Don't write a comment when you could write a post'. His reasonings reminded me that I tend to comment rather than post and my blog was, as a result, sadly neglected.

BBB's posts got me thinking about why I continue to keep with WoW. For me, WoW is my first and only MMO my previous gaming experience reaching the lofty heights of Solitaire, Bejeweled and Tetris ... high level gaming at its best. For me the answer was simply ... I enjoy the experience. I enjoy being able to pretend and explore; to just play. Despite the growth of gaming I sometimes feel like I'm a bit of a novelty by those outside the WoW community for no other reason than the fact that I choose to play for the enjoyment of play. It seems acceptable to play games as an adult to meet people, to get fit, and to maintain skills. Rarely do we see adults admitting that we play any game just because we really enjoy playing and that play is still important in our lives.

I Googled 'the importance of play'. Unsurprisingly the first posts were all about the role of play in child development. Play is apparently important in socialisation, understanding how people behave, how to amuse yourself, discovery, confidence, creativity, problem solving, ... here ... here is one of the links ... while the Child Development site cautioned parents against considering unstructured play as being not worthwhile or time wasting. Granted they are talking about children and not adults and play in the physical world not the game world (I don't like the distinction of the online gaming world as fictional and outside of that as real life as it suggests to me that I go into some state of non-sentient suspended animation when I log onto a computer) but I feel that their premise that play is important is relevant also to adults.

A further search focusing on adults confirmed this premise. Play is important for everyone. It is fundamental to who we are and I do not understand why people struggle to understand why as an adult I would choose to play anything and why there seems a need to justify time spent playing. I play for no other reason than the act of play makes me smile. I feel good and when playing put aside the rest of the day.

George Bernard Shaw said "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing".

(The rest of the quotes on that link are worth reading)

I want to make a dragon

Not just any dragon ... a Vial of Sands dragon

I've sat down and worked out how many mats and gold I need to make two ... one for me and one for my best mate and

strewth!

gold sink or what

ah well I've been having a bit of fun running up Tsu's alchemy and archaeology to max so she can, hopefully, find that darn recipe. 10 points to go on alch and mm about 350 on arch ... in Tsu's defence, she was maxed alch when cata landed late last year and didn't pick up arch until about a month ago and I've not had as much time as I thought I'd have. Some of the flower mats I have full sets of for what I'll need so :) keep plugging away and one day you'll see me look like .... http://p0int13lank.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/orange_stone_drake_01.jpg

Good luck to me I suppose :)

1/3/12

well ... firstly welcome to Autumn ....

I thought I'd come back and update this post ... Tsu has maxed her alchemy and her archaeology and has the first few bits of Tolvir stuff for her first canopic jar ... could she be so lucky to get the vial of sands recipe on the first one? That would be cool.

She's got most of the mats ... just some more gold grinding (which wouldn't take long if she put some effort in to it!)

As a bit of wishful thinking .... The dragon itself ... I particularly like the song on this link and how he turns troll and flaps his little arms in the troll area :).

Cough .. cough ..

Just letting you know ... I've reached that point all WoW gamers reach ...

I've finally loaded Catta

Held off as long as I could ...

There is still content and content and more content in Vanilla, BC and WoLK expansions that I've not even scraped the surface of but off to level 85 we go.

oops ... ICC

Oops ... I forgot to tell you ... ages back .... ICC 10 man norm done :)

Okay so I'm still not caterized ... and I'd sort of love to have a shot at 10 man hard mode before I go cata but omg do you think I can even find level 85's who are prepared to stick their noses into hard mode?????

Geeze ... I didn't think I was that shabby a healer!

WoW cooking

An old post from Hello Tauren that I have only just come across referred to the number of seagulls in game. I have a lot of fond memories sitting places like the hills over looking South Shore (pre-Cata when it use to be pretty) watching the sea gulls swoop over the ocean. On a side note, I can imagine the 'old folk' of wow taking people into CoT to look at the 'old South Shore' area in a 'when I was a young lad/lass this all use to look like this' type thing.

Anyway, the post got me thinking about sea gulls and what I associate with them leading, logically of course, to thinking back on an oldish post (okay so I've not done many) about food that I'd love to see in game.

I just have to add to it.

I think we need to be able to cook good 'ol fashion fish and chips.

You know the sort; reeking of vinegar and a good sampling of salt we could sit on the cliffs, smelling the sea air and relaxing (yup I sense a nice bit of roll play opportunity here). If Bliz wanted to they could even have the sea gulls come beg for food just like they do in real life. Maybe even a bit of an easter egg of a quest ... feed the birds until one becomes a companion pet :).

Upgrades

This is not a comment on gear, I'll save that wander through my brain for another day. This is about upgrading software.

Am I the only person resisting upgrading to Cataclysm for no other reason than I am still quite happy in my Blizz built WoLK sandpit and not really wanting to expand my horizons?

There are so many things still to visit and I know that I'll not do them if I go and start leveling again until much later on.

... And yet, if I don't ... I'll get left behind by the people I play with.

It is a dilemma.

I am also rather enjoying running up a couple of baby toons through the introductory night elf quests (discovering that I could have a nelf mage ... it just had to be done) and running a gnome rogue through the drenai quests (hey ... so I want my girl to have a huge mount as quick as she can and it is cute seeing her smaller than the grasses in the area). If I go run my 80 resto and mages to 85 when do I get to come back to their little sisters?

As I said ... a dilemma.

Raiding update

I thought I should leave a little update for you all to read ...

Our group is now 7/12 in ICC 10 man with the downing last week of Rotface ... finally! It only took us about a month and a half to remember all his mechanics ... using our feet ... if there is anyone comment I can make about that fight (well any ICC fight) that you don't hear so often is 'use your feet'. You often hear 'you have to have good raid awareness' but not often what this actually translates into ... what it means is ... don't stand still :) and last weekend we managed that. It was not conventionally pretty but we did it. Our final effort is here ... you are not going to get a pretty polished sound track, rather you get us blurting names of people who are infected and that is about that, but just thought I'd share our efforts. We have already completed the Dreamweaver fight and oddly enough, where I've heard people talk of this as being the most annoying and challenging fight, if anything for our group, it was the most straightforward.

Our next challenges are Prof. Putricide and the Prince's. The order tends to be dependent on how we feel :). Got to be flexible ey. This will need to balance with the challenge of do we leave ICC for a while once cata and level 85 hits to let people go level thier toons? I'd sort of like to hold us all at 80 for a bit so that we finish ICC at the level it was intended for but suspect that people would like to go and level their toon. For most of the group, the toon they are in there with is their main.

I think this post may disprove the blog title

I'm seriously thinking about finally 'splurging' and adding a tank spec to Tsu.

I think I'll be a crap tank to be honest. Tsu's little sister who is now 73 (so really not all that young anymore) is actually feral/resto speced already (argh back pre patch at 1000g hahah) so I might tweak her feral spec a bit more into bear; she already carries a fair bit of bear spec on her kitty (why ... I will claim a momentary lapse of reasoning) but for some reason does not have a bear form in her spell book (probably because I need to send her to training post patch 4.whatever) but I might, rather than off specing tsu and ruining my ability to go ... nup ... I can only do heals and thus grab my prefered roll ... anyway I'm waffling ...

I think I'll try a bit of tanking on Mystsilver first before I grind out enough points on Tsu to gear her as a tank to see if I can actually do it. I find that although I quite like melee while out questing, the mob effect in dungeons with so many enemies and allies in one spot I find that I tend to loose track of things (that and reliant on a touch pad mouse - not normally an issue in spell casting roles ... trust me ... I know .. you are probably going 'nooooooooooooooooooo omg put this resto on my block list ... but it works fine ... I'll try to remember to put a log up one day to prove/disprove my point). Anyway, so mellee in dungeons I find gets a bit like a bright, busy blast of glary pixels (what can I say ... thank goodness for healer addons)

ICC update

Well we are slowly working our way through ICC 10 man and have now downed 5/12 bosses. Our progress is slow as we really only raid once a week. A second night is proving hard to establish. People wanted a Friday night to complement our now well established Sunday night and to be run at the same time .... and then just about everyone is unavailable. A little frustrating as the person doing the coordinating. The challenge is finding alternate healers and tanks really as willing and keen dps we have a plenty. I think next week I'll try a later time and that may help a bit.

Sunday nights however I would have to say are well established. This one just gone, we turned over the first four bosses in half the time it had taken us the night we all got the achievement Storming the Citadel. Rotface and his twin brother both of whom I suspect were created by bored developers throwing random bits of features together, are a bit tougher. (I'm sorry but in terms of creature design these guys just look like lazy work with blurry features that they could not be bothered to perfect.) It's taken me two goes and lots of reading to have any attempt at keeping straight what is really a relatively simple strategy for my resto chick which is stand in the middle under the feet and heal like hell and oh the other one is run to the tank with my green goo ball ... depending on which boss we are doing. It's a bit more complex for the ranged dps and the tanks having more movement involved or knowing when to switch ... I get lost looking for buffs and things so would fail there I suspect. I think I need a rethink on my UI perhaps. I find it hard sometimes to take what I've read into a visual realm and recognise the things that have been described. I've referred to that issue early on in this blog so I'll not bore you with the details again.

Enough to say that one night a week using the raid lock functions has allowed us to get to 5/12. I'd love to see us at 6/12 by the end of Sunday night at least; it's not a restart so lets be honest, I'm only suggesting one boss fight. I have noticed that we seem to do okay learning one new fight in a night so there is a possibility of getting to 7/12 on Sunday as we are already half way there with the 6th boss.

I'm really looking forward to getting to Valithria Dreamwalker. As a healer race to heal the dragon, its a dramatically different concept in battles for me. I like the idea of the healers being the critical role rather than the perceived support roll in the standard set up for boss fights (personally I disagree, lets be honest ... no heals = wipe unless you are say a mob of 80's running deadmines. The healers are always critical, I don't believe in the idea of support and main roles as it suggests the raid could survive without them which is nonsense).

I've learnt how to do pictures ... so ...

this is one of the first 'bad guys' the resto chick downed all by herself in Northrend. He was not elite, but gee he didn't want to give up. There was good reason to go shadowmeld; he respawned quite quickly!

This is the resto's sister, a frost mage :) who has also hit 80. This image is going back a while now, all of these ones are really, but she sat waiting outside the Mag. Tce. for what seemed like an age. For a flimsy clothie who seemed to manage to discover graveyards easily, this girl did most of her questing and leveling completely independent of most other people. This was one of the few runs she a

ctually went on as part of a group until she changed rhelms and so I was quite happy to sit and wait and wait ...

Ah, now we are 80 in this shot. I've always thought it a shame that with the introduction of the dungeon finder functions, you form a cross-rhelm group, belt through the instance and then disband. I'd have no idea what most of them look like. I insisted that we have a bit of a look before we headed off this time. I was quite impressed by the globe although it is definitely Azeroth, in some parts it looks a lot like Earth.

I thought I had a couple of other shots from the raid in southern Silthis, more the point, I know I do, but I am not sure where so I'll have to have a poke around and see if I can find them.

my faith in GM's returns

After an abysmal experience some months back when I tried to find out why I could not log onto an area of my account on wow only to be told that I had to supply some nobody in a country I don't have a lot of faith in their security with details that would allow them to have my entire identity in their hands ... at one point I was informed that it was okay to mail my birth certificate and a bunch of other documentation as US mail is federally protected .... fine I replied, that will do me great after someone has flogged my stuff and anyway, it ain't in US mail until it gets to the US .... anyway, it wasn't the mail I didn't trust, it was the guy on the other end of the email that I just didn't trust .... (okay get out off my soap box and tell my story) ... the stupid thing was that the guy kept trying to tell me that I had the controls set to a different email ... rot and nonsense if ever I'd heard.

On Thursday last I was playing on line trying to grind some gold as you do so that I could buy a bike ... hey ... if I own one in real life, why not have one in game (although I do think the engine noise spoils the game sound). Come Friday night while in an instance (ICC one on less sigh) my long time partner in crime of a shadow priest whispers me to ask why my gear score was so low (in the middle of a boss fight lol) I flicked open my resto's character tab and saw with a sinking heart that there was no weapon equipped and, of course, in the middle of a fight, you can't equip anything! I whisper back, open my bags and start juggling healing a boss fight with reading through my bags as fast as possible for my Midnight Sun Dagger ... but alas ... it was not there. My shadow priest friend assured me that even without it, my healing was going well (don't want to boast but ... IGJAM - by the way, I'm not a fan of swearing).

Come Saturday I'd gone through my bags and bank several times and noticed that not only was my dagger gone, but so was my Alliance Lance - not a big deal, I could grab one easy. I still have no recollection of throwing out the dagger or vendoring it and the lance, well the lance could only be dumped - vendors don't buy them and I don't remember throwing it out.

So, somewhat reluctantly given my past experience I opened a new ticket basically saying, can you tell me if I either threw it out or vendored it so that I would know which to be annoyed with myself for. I logged my email (the one that is supposed to be linked to my account that the previous GM said was not linked to my account so go figure) and there was a letter from the GM saying that there is a limit to how often they will return items, but I should now find it either in my inventory or my mail ... I'm going to log after this and see ... baited breath ... but has my faith in the GM system returned?

Mind you, it would be cool if they replaced it with this version of the dagger - it's from the 25 man version of ICC and so I just can't imagine getting a chance at getting it.

Raiding continues

Okay so we went to ICC again last night ...

We downed Lord Marrowgar on our third attempt at him with a bit of go-go juice in the tank and only one of us flat on the floor pixelated at the end of the fight (not counting the two battle rez's during the fight). We were most impressed and decided in a moment of comunal forgetfulness to ingore the somewhat ignoble wipe we had on one of the trash mobs at the start of our second run. At that point, I was asked by a mate if they thought we'd get there and, well, you can imagine my response. I had expected to have to work a couple more tries so was a little surprised to get him down. Both loot items were hunter gear and so the one hunter in the group was, to say the least a little happy and as we are all about the same with our gearing, and we are all pretty cool guildies, none of us had a bad word to say about that outcome.

oh I would so like a new weapon for my tree. She still weilds the titansteel guardian and a book. I don't know if bosses are frightened by a tree waving a book. I rather suspect that they laugh at her instead.

Rather than stopping there we decided to roll on to Lady Deathwisper and have a 'cuppa tea' with her and a bit of a natter. Instead her adds and trash handed out butts to us on a platter. We gave it two goes and then admitted that while it was nice that one of the guildies was able to talk us through the fight, nothing beat being battered one week and going back the next to exact revenge in a similar way to beating the Lord some half hour or so earlier. I did hear a story of someone being able to down the ICC bosses in not much more than an hour ... my thought ... yerrrr right ... show me the logs so to speak.

I'm not sure how my healing is going. I tend to spec tallents for mana regen/threat reduction and haste over crit and then gem for spell power as I use a lot of HoT and while crit is nice, not running out of mana and keeping out of the eye of the boss so that I can get in one more cast I sort of feel is a little more important. Even though we are not maxed on hp or anything like that (can you max your health? good question ... I don't know but our health as a group is mmm growing) it is not often that I find myself wishing for a bit more health on a tank so long as the healers are doing their job. Anyway, last night the MT healer (the pally healer) ran at about 30 - 35% of the healing, the raid healer at about 25% I think and me a little under that so my first reaction was hmmm third in the healing. But ... I then looked at the overhealing stats and saw the same pattern. Does this suggest that although I'm not outputting as many heals as the other two, more of them are actually being effectively used by the system to top up a character's health or are the other two better healers because they output more heals than I do. I can shift a few tallents around in my build to pick up mastershape shifter, I've always avoided as you need 3 points in shapeshifter that just reduce the mana consumed in shapeshifting (which is sparrow fartish small in the first place) to gain a 2% bonus in my healing of master shapeshifting. There is another tallent I can pick up that gives nourish and healing touch bonuses I've avoided in the past as those two tended to be less used spells. I do use nourish in raids more often so it may now be worth my while picking them up. I suppose I could finally dual spec, one for my day to day and instance work and one for raids. hmmm dunno.... but I've also not answered my own question about whether or not I think I'm a better healer as I'm not over healing as much. I use to watch the over heal stats like a hawk and try to keep them as low as possible in instances pushing my timing on HoT on the theory that a good player manages their resourcse and over healing represented wasted mana. Now I don't bother and just spam HoT giving the tank in particular a slightly inflated sense of invincibility by rarely not having full health.