February 2008 Archives

I tanked Kara for the second or third time last night.  We did well, we got pretty much everything down that we wanted to apart from Nightbane.

 

I found myself getting very frustrated when we couldn't do it.  I'd pick him up, get threat on as fast as I could, and he'd still turn around and one-shot a DPSer or healer or I'd take a few huge hits and die.  Now... I know it's not all my fault.  I know it's not my fault that people get feared, or that they stand in the charred earth for too long, or that they're out of range or LOS.

 

But somehow it feels like it.  As a main tank and de facto leader, it feels like I'm the one that keeps failing.  I don't get that so much on my healer, and I REALLY don't get it on my DPS.  It's strange how changing the group role can affect how I feel and how the fights go so much.

 

It's easy to see why there's often a lack of tanks (and healers), because it's a lot of pressure to get it right.  As a DPS class, you just have to watch your aggro, and that's about it.  Everything else is just you, if you die it's probably because you did something wrong and you typically don't take the whole raid with you (there are exceptions, of course).  As a tank... if you pull wrong, or you stand in the wrong place, or whatever - you can wipe the raid.  As a healer, if you're not quick enough on the heals or you stand in the wrong place - you can also wipe the raid. 

 

Yet another reason why I encourage people to play all the roles.  If you know the pressure that the tanks/healers are under, even if you decide that you can't do it yourself and stick to pewpewing, you're more likely to understand what's going on and not to point the finger when something goes wrong. 

I've been feeling creative today and decided to make myself a new signature for use at my guild website.  My graphic artist skills are minimal at best, but I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out.  Yay for MS Paint!  (And model viewer, of course.)

 

It's about time to introduce my last two alts, my warlock and my rogue.  I'm doing them together because they're both still lower levels, and their stories are intertwined.

 

Name: Emelyn

Age: Around 115.

 

Name: Kalianne

Age: 19

 

Background:

 

Emelyn was an esteemed and powerful mage of the Kirin Tor, having been taken into their midst at an early age and trained as a magic-user.  She struggled with the rules and practices of the order for a long time, but kept to them as best she could.  In her later years, Emelyn began to feel the slow creep of time catching up to her, and it was terrifying.

 

 

For night after night, the aging mage searched for a way to prolong her life, and it became an obsession.  Then one evening, her experiments attracted the attention of a being from the Twisting Nether - one of the leiutenants of the Burning Legion.  He appeared to Eme as a benevolant and beautiful being who offered her youth and eternal life.  Seeing her own mortality on the horizon, Emelyn went against her better judgements and did the bidding of the demon, who gave her increasingly difficult and twisted tasks to perform.

 

Finally, he instructed her to go to a village in a remote part of the land and destroy it, absorbing the souls of the people there, and this would return her youth.  Caught in the heady rush of power and with the promise of being young again, Emelyn did as he wished.  The village was bombarded with a rain of fire, the screams of terror splitting the night.  It was only as she absorbed the last of the life from a woman and felt her own vitality completely restored that Eme realised that the village was her family's home, and the charred remains that lay around her were those of her own children and grandchildren.

 

 

Horrified by what she had wrought, Emelyn gave herself over to the demon completely and became a full warlock.  Now she hungers and cares only for power, travelling and searching for more ways to harness the fel energies of the nether.

 

Unknown to the magic-user, a single person survied the purging of the village.  A young child who was discovered amongst the bodies, crying in terror and sorrow. 

       

The child was taken into the care of the nearby Ravenholdt manor, a hidden house that serves as a training ground and base for a group of assassins.  Kalianne grew up with them, learning the craft as soon as she could hold a knife.  She threw herself into the way of life, wishing only to find the warlock who burned her village and killed her family, not knowing that the woman she now hunts is her own great-grandmother.

   

 

 

The OOC Stuff:

 

My warlock is currently level 63, and I'm intending to get her to 70 when I feel like it, to make her my raiding DPS character.  However, I have my other two raiders (Ele and Yol) to concentrate on, so Eme's levelling is fairly slow.  I do love playing a warlock though, and she was one of the earlier characters I made.

 

Kalianne is currently level 48, and likely to remain around there.  She's the character that I sometimes jump on to have a bit of fun.  I do like the rogue, but I prefer the ranged classes for damage dealing.   

So, we went back into Zul'Aman today with the guild.  We were about 30 seconds too slow on Nalorakk to get the chest, but we got him down.  Then we went to Akil'zon.  I'm sure if you've read my blog before you know my opinion on him (Froth, rant, grumble, swear).

 

We got him to 1% again on our first try, and we had some new people in there so we had to shake things down.  We've been told to try the "sound" method, where you turn your ambient sounds all the way up and everything else down and then run in when you hear the rain.  The Deadly Boss timers are pretty much useless except to give a vague idea of when the storm is going to happen.

 

Well, it went very well.  We were running in and out at the right times, we just didn't quite make it.  So we released and ran back for another try.

 

And it started to rain.

 

Hard.

 

In game rain.

 

So all any of us could hear was constant rain.  "Oh well, let's see if it goes off when we engage him."

 

It didn't.  We couldn't hear the storm coming in.  The timers didn't work.  We wiped.

 

Thankfully, the rain stopped after that and we proceeded to whoop his feathery butt for a guild first.  But it's the first time I've ever seen a boss wipe us because of the weather.

 

This is my new toy.  It's seriously awesome.  It doesn't seem to have some of the armour pieces that I want, but there's a heck of a lot there.  It's great to be able to watch the animations in slow motions and view some of the things I've never seen before.

 

Plus, I can get pictures like this one:

 

 

While the servers were down last night, this is what I was doing, as well as talking to guildies on Vent.  Stupid server downs.

Phae over at Resto4Life has done me the great honour of linking to my blog.  I've mentioned her before, but only briefly.  Phae has put together a way to be able to view the growing community of druid bloggers, called the World Tree.

  

 

Not only that, but she also manages the Blog Azeroth community.  Go check it out!  Find more bloggers! 

 

Spread the lifebloom!

 

Also - I'm incredibly technically challenged.  If anyone knows how I can put up some permanent links to places on here, please let me know!  I'd like to put the World Tree thingy over at the side somewhere.

So, last night we had a guild first.  I love those.  Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy.  One day you look back and go "remember the first time we downed him?"  It's a special kind of feeling, and I think it crosses over to the guild as a whole - not just the people who were there for it.

 

 

Netherspite!

 

This might not seem like a big deal to people who have been farming Kara for a while, but we've had months of "we're skipping Netherspite.  It's too technical.  Takes too long to explain.  We don't know how to do it."  We knuckled down this week, read the strats and watched the videos. 

 

Took us two tries.  And the first one only failed because I was trying to be fancier than I needed to be and danced with the tank beam.  We went in all prepared for multiple wipes, and we got him on the second try.  We had more trouble with Prince (three of our DPSers were melee and we had some bad infernals) than with him.  I actually swapped my warrior for my hunter for some more ranged damage.  Of course, my T4 token for the warrior/priest/druid dropped but I would have been rolling against half the group anyway. 

 

We went on to do Nightbane and Illhoof, to finish off Kara.  (Apart from the animal boss, but psh.)  Considering that our group was a little quirky - Warrior, Paladin, two priests and a resto druid, a warlock, two feral druids, a rogue and a hunter - it went surprisingly smoothly.  Illhoof we got down in one try, and he's the one that usually gives us some trouble.

 

I went to bed far too late and I think other people did too, but it was worth it. 

So, I've been coming to realise something over the past few days.

 

I suck in PVP as a warrior.  Oh, I can get in there and whack some people and generally make myself a nuisence, but once I have a rogue or warrior jumping around me, I'm turning in place blindly like an odd, sword-weilding spinning top. 

 

See, I use a combination of the keyboard and the mouse to move.  I use the mouse to look around and the WASD keys to actually move.  So when I need to use abilities, I then sometimes press the numbers, but usually click.  Yup.  I'm a clicker.  There, I said it.

 

When healing, I use HealBot.  I find that it lets me easily keep the tank targeted, and throw HoTs up on the rest of the raid.  In PVP, it means that I can be running around like a loon, playing "ring around the LOS breakers" or "catch the druid" and still click to heal without stopping.  I can keep somebody busy for ages by throwing some HoTs on, shifting to travel form and going madkittydashcrazy.   Toss in a cyclone or roots in there and I'm golden.

 

Even on my hunter, I'm mostly in ranged.  I can kite, using the jump-shot (run, jump-spin, shoot, finish-spin, run), which I use the mouse to move for, but it's not my prefered tactics.

 

Then you come to my warrior.  I'm sure with practice I could get the technique of running circles and spamming my hits, but I'm intending just to PVP with her for my season 1 shield.  So she gets beaten easily by those people who can do that.

 

Looking at PVE, there just aren't many situations where, as a tank, you have to run around.  Maybe Curator, chasing the flares.  Other than that, it's generally pretty small movements.  Even as a healer or ranged DPS, most battles require standing in one spot.  PVP just has rules all of it's own.

 

So, I'll continue to heal in arenas and do it well enough, but I doubt I'll be going Mortal Strike spec'd and rocking with my warrior anytime soon.  And that's okay.  I enjoy tanking, and it's always good to know your own falldowns. 

 

 

Saw this gnome mage in Shattrath while waiting for AV, and had to get a screenshot.

 

 

Sometimes the smallest ideas are just pure genius.

Dear Trash Talker,

 

The reason why we keep losing is because you're sitting there and typing instead of playing.  No, using swear words every sentence does not make me want to listen to you more.  I don't care if you're top of the kills.  You won't get heals if you run off on your own.  Yes, Alliance usually loses but that's because people don't seem to want to work together as much.  This is a game and I'm here to have fun, I don't really care if your epeen is bigger than everyone elses.  Your gear is very pretty and mine is sucky.  I don't really care.  I'm a prot warrior in a battleground, my job is to let them whack on me so that the priest behind me can kill them.  And I'm having fun doing it.

 

Love,

 

Aly.

 

P.S.  Wipe off the crumbs, take a shower, put some nice clothes on and go out and get laid.  It'll help.

Here's something I've noticed with my own tank, and from talking to friends who have tanks.

 

Healers get better gear, their heals get better, they have more mana, it's peachy.

 

DPSers get better gear, they do more damage, they have more health, more mana, et cetera ... peachy.

 

Both roles can be fulfilled in a high-level instances or a slightly lower one.  You can go to Karazhan and then go to Mana Tombs for a friend.

 

But for tanks?  You get better gear.  You take less damage, you have way more health, you can take on tougher and tougher things.  But you go into a lower level instance in that gear and you can't tank for toffee.  Not because you're getting hit, but because you AREN'T getting hit.  So in my case, I don't generate rage, so I can't build any threat.  I'm even finding it happens in level 70 instances on normal now, especially on trash.

 

It's a problem.  I'm finding that I have to wear some of my crappy DPS backup set to be able to generate any rage.  I know that a paladin friend of mine has to do the same to be able to avoid mana starvation.

 

Solution?  I'm not sure.  Maybe make it a protection-type talent that not only do you generate rage/mana when you get hit, but you also generate it when you dodge, parry or block.  That's about all I can think of.

Yup, I'm saying it.  I think I'm sick of Kara.  While I do think that place is great, the bosses can be fun, the design is amazing... I'm sick of it.  I've been healing that place every week for months now.  Zzzzzz. 

 

We did a full clear for the first time last night, took us about 5 hours with a few breaks.  By "full clear" I mean Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera, Curator, Shade, Illhoof, Chess, Prince.  Nightbane still whupped us but I think we were all just tired by then.  It was a good run and a sort of catharsis for me.  I've been getting very frustrated at some of the aspects of running raids in my guild and it was something I needed.

 

I'm bored now, though.  I'm going to continue running Kara for a little while longer on my warrior to get her ready to tank in the 25-mans, but I think my healer is about done.  However, I've been looking at some boss fights and I think we're ready to move on.  Mags isn't really that hard, and Void Reaver looks like we'll be able to do it. 

 

I was going over the strats with Mega last night and getting all enthusiastic about it.  It's a good sign.

 

I think it's something we need as a guild, too.  We have the problem where people come in, run Kara with us for a little while until they get gear and get trained up and then they move on to a guild that's already in the 25-man places to do the same thing.  It means that there's ten or so loyal people who just end up spinning their wheels in Kara because we don't have enough to move on.  We're at a stage where we have 25 people with good enough gear and skills right now (last week we had three seperate groups down Prince, and we've seen him go down a couple of times this week) so I want to strike while the iron is hot.

This thread was linked to on WoW Insider.  Scary thing is, I can identify with many of the sterotypes.

 

Sadly, I'm the "Chick with an accent".  :/

 

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4665317893&sid=1

I spent some time on Yolana yesterday, tanking Arcatraz.  We were in there for a mage friend but I walked out with the chestpiece of the bold.  It was pretty cool though, because I went in with Airbringer, Megawatt and Daelin and a priest that we found on the LFG channel.  I've been having really good luck with PUGs lately.  When Mega and I came out of Kara on Thursday I was asked to tank an Old Hillsbrad run, and that was an amazing group.  Then not long after Yol hit 70 I went to Botanica with one friend and three PUG'ers, and that was GREAT. 

 

I've found that putting together a PUG on a tank feels better to me.  As a tank you have a lot of control over the group... generally you're the one marking things, you do the pulling (unless you have an over-enthusiastic DPS/CC'er) and so you're setting the pace.  As a healer you just kinda stay behind the rest and drink a lot, hoping the tank doesn't pull when you're on 10% mana. 

 

I then spent some time with Megawatt on his newly-respecced level 65 resto druid.  He'd been levelling with his wife who plays a holy priest, so he has pretty much no healing gear right now.  I forsee many instance runs this week.  I spent a happy half an hour or so going over the theories and practices of healing as a resto druid (lifebloom, lifebloom, lifebloom, rejuv, regrowth, lifebloom, repeat until sick). 

 

Once he gets this character to 70, he'll join me and a few of our other friends in having the "Holy Trio" of characters - a tank, a DPS and a healer.

 

I've mentioned before, but I really love having the three characters.  It also works incredibly well when we want to do an instance, because we can fill in those three roles between us and then take pretty much anyone for the other two spots.  Admosmori also has a healer and is working on a tank, and so are a few of my other friends.  Admittedly, sometimes it leads to alt-itis where the individual characters suffer because you're spreading the time too thin, but I think around 3 is the magic number. 

 

Of course, I'm aiming to get my currently-63 warlock up to 70 at some point soonish, just because I want to rock the raiding damage meters, but we won't talk about that right now.

I've enjoyed the Love is in the Air stuff this year.  I got incredibly lucky, and I got a lovely black dress last night, which rounds out the three items I wanted (Kwee, basket, dress).

 

But do you ever have those moments where all you can do is stand and laugh, and say "WTF?"  Yep, had one of those yesterday.

 

I think I about died when Daelin /yelled about them getting married.

I put a picnic basket out after that, and started a pandemic.

 

One of my favourite macros is one that plays the Lament of the Highbourne when you activate it.  I decided to go looking for other sounds that could be played on demand, and my searchings led me to this:

 

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=112181312&sid=1&pageNo=1

 

These can be used to make macros of your own!  The sounds only play for you, though.  So you could have something like a macro that does blizzard, /yells "Back to the cold dark with you!" and plays the sound from Karazhan on your client.  Pretty cool!

 

Of course, you can also be like me and just play the sounds for kicks and because you've not heard most of them before.

 

For quick reference, here's the Lament of the Highbourne one:

 

/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Music\\GlueScreenMusic\\BCCredits_Lament_of_the_Highborne.mp3")

 

Big bugger, ain't he?  There's a picture of me tanking Prince for the first time.  Well, technically the third time (The first time I accidently pulled him before we were ready, second time I got an infernal dropped a bit too close).  Now that was a scary fight, especially in stage 2.  My health was going up and down like a kangaroo in the mating season.  It was scarier than when I heal it.  Not to mention that I nearly wet myself when we misdirect-pulled him and I saw him thundering towards me.  EEK.

 

I found Shade of Aran a lot harder to tank than to heal.  I couldn't see what was going on nearly as much as when I'm bouncing around the edge like a deranged chipmunk on the Shade Carousel.  Like the magnetic pull thing he does, the last time he did it I didn't even notice, I was too busy watching my cooldowns.  Getting thrown up in the air was kinda fun, though.  Thank goodness for a recently popped shield wall.

 

I did some exploring in Karazhan yesterday too.  I'd never been up the stairs behind Attumen before.  It's an alternate route to Moroes, but I don't think it would be worth it unless you were going in just to go to him and no further, because you'd still have to clear all the stuff between him and Opera/Maiden.

 

I did find some cool stuff back there though, like a locked door marked "Sergeant's Quarters" and a Sergeant-At-Arms Bennett (For anyone who doesn't know, Bennett is my RL surname). 

 

I love running around Kara when it's cleared.  If you've not tried it, you should.  Once you get past the library it can be a pain, because Illhoof and Netherspite's stuff respawns if you don't clear them.  Even just looking at the architecture between the front door and the library is worth it, though.  It's amazingly well designed.

 

 

So, last night I main tanked in Karazhan for the first time.  It was one of the scariest things I've ever done in WoW.  During the pulls to Attumen, my hands were shaking.  It took me until Moroes to calm down and start enjoying it.  I've been to Kara X amount of times, but mostly as a healer and occasionally a DPS, so I just don't know it from the front, so to speak.  It also helped that I had great healers and damage-dealers backing me up, and my co-raid leader was in there to help me with the marking.

 

I do have to say ... Tanking Curator was far easier than damaging or healing in that fight.  All I had to do was stand in one place and generate hate.  It was very nice not to have to worry about the flares.

 

Personally, I think that the more roles you can play in a game, the better you become at it.  I'd reccommend anyone to try tanking or healing if all they've done is DPS, just because it gives you such a different scope on WoW.  I find that because I've tanked, I watch my aggro.  Because I've healed, I watch my line of sight.  Because I've damaged/crowd controlled, I know where to pull things to.  Being a different role in a group situation is almost like you're playing a different game.

So in the last few days, I've been having some interesting discussions about how the Death Knight class is going to work, lore-wise.

 

The Death Knights were created by Gul'dan, who slaughtered his acolytes and put their spirits into the bodies of fallen Stormwind defenders.  So essentially, they were orc spirits in human bodies.  Does this mean that only humans can be Death Knights?  I doubt it.

 

I thought perhaps there would be a way to split the spirits from the bodies again.  Or perhaps somebody has figured out how to train themself as a Death Knight without their spirit leaving their body, and can train others to do it.  With the paladin/Death Knight in the WotLK trailer, this one seems the most likely.

 

And will our old friend Teron Gorefiend be involved in the plot?  Given where he is now (Black Temple) I somehow doubt it, as it was stated that the questline would be one that anyone could do.

 

Teron Gorefiend.  Only a mother could love him.

Last night I took part in a fundraising event organised by one of our guild's bank officers.  She asked people their gathering professions and what they wanted to do, then sent people out mining, herbing, skinning or farming.

 

Of course, Megawatt and I being slightly odd people, we decided to farm Stratholme instead of anything more obvious.  We did Live side, then decided to give the Baron a try.  In the end we came out with 3 righteous orbs, over a dozen shards, an epic tailoring pattern (Truefaith Vestments) and an epic axe, along with a few other bits and pieces.  Of course, that epic stuff never drops when I'm solo'ing in there for cash.  Pshaw.

 

We had a guild auction for some flasks, and for a while Mega and I were bidding against each other.  I attempted to misdirect a banshee onto him to distract him, but the price got a little too high for my liking.

 

After the fund raiser, I swapped from Alyviel to Yolana, and got our members together to whack Omen.  We had 15 people, a few of which were under 60, and we gathered in Moonglade.  Some frantic "Oh no we only have one healer" and "Get out of the AOE!"s later, and Omen was vanquished.

 

Like all good events, this ended with fireworks.

 

Time for my most recent level 70, my Draenei.

 

 

Name: Yolana

Age: Around 50.

 

Background:

 

Yolana lived with her family in Shattrath City, studying along with many of her age as a servent of the Light.  To her continuing distress, she displayed little aptitude for any type of magic, although her skill with a variety of weapons was undisputed.  Because of this "handicap" as her family saw it, she seldom left the city and never took part in any fighting, even sparring.  Yolana looked up to her older brother, Admosmori, who was a gifted weilder of arcane forces. 

 

Things proceeded quietly until the corruption of the orcs and the attack of Shattrath City.  Yolana, Admosmori and two of their brothers escaped the slaughter, but most of their family were killed.  They went into hiding with the rest of the Draenei, until the prophet Valen led his followers to take the Exodar and travel to the continent of Kalimdor.  Yolana joined the parties that turned the crashed ship into a new home, while Admosmori left to learn the art of shamanism and to fight against the demonic forces in their old home.

 

To her surprise, Yolana learned that the elves of their new home did not revere magic in the same way as her people.  She trained with the Sentinels of Darnassus and then travelled to the Eastern Kingdoms and there continued her pursuit of the techniques that the humans, dwarves and gnomes could teach her.

 

The road was long and hard, adapting to a new place and new people.  Yolana explored as much of this new world as she could, venturing into the depths of ruined temples and the heights of snowy mountains, learning how best to fight against the magic-users and demons that threatened this world as well as her own.

 

The Draenei aquired many new scars, but eventually she saddled her steed, a horse that she had been given by a greatful farmer of Elwynn forest, and she travelled to the blasted lands to pass through the opened portal.

 

When she saw the devastation that had been wreaked on the once-beautiful world, Yolana threw herself into the fight.  She travelled to the reconstructed Shattrath city and allied herself with the Sha'tar. 

 

While in Shadowmoon Valley with a druid she had befriended, Yolana was almost overcome by a pack of fire elementals.  Just as the two of them were about to fall, the elementals were struck by a storm of lightning and destroyed.  To her surprise, their savior was her own brother, Admosmori.  Impressed by her swift progress and abilities, Admos allowed his sister to join him in the fight, and the two of them now battle side by side along with their other allies.

 

OOC Background:

 

Yolana is my third 70.  I started her to try out being a warrior, and because I wanted to have a tanking class along with my healer and DPS.  I levelled her as MS/prot (I liked being able to solo, but also being able to strap on a shield and tank) and ended up respeccing to full protection at level 69, when I tanked Shadow Lab for my Kara key piece.  Since then I've not looked back.  Devastate and shield slam are just delicious for building hate.  I have to admit that the temptation to go to a PVP spec and rock the BGs appeals to me, though.

 

Why a Draenei?  Well, I always loved the look and feel of the new races.  Most draenei at level 70 are shamen, and I wanted something different.  I also already have two elves at level 70, two humans at mid-to-high levels and I find dwarves and gnomes hard to play because of the low perspective of their heights.  Playing a draenei female warrior makes me feel incredibly heroic, too.  Even if she does squeak too much when she gets hit.

 

I'm about ready to begin tanking in Karazhan with her, and I'm hoping to gear her up as one of our tanks.  We don't have many warriors in the guild that raid.  I'm still considering her as a DPS warrior, but right now I prefer tanking.  

One big problem about being a GMT'er on American time servers is the downtime.  It goes from about middayish my time to 7-8pm.  That's my prime farming time!  Don't they know that that's when I like to go to the elemental plateau?  Pshaw.

 

I watched Pretty Woman instead.  I might have cried a little bit.

Bosses with cooldown timers - Just because something CAN happen every 45 seconds, doesn't mean it WILL.

 

Stupid bird-brained, hunched over, feather butted SOB.  You'll rue the day that you lorded over our dead bodies with your 5% health, so you will.  When we're level 80 nobody will come to see you and you'll be reduced to joining the strip poker game run by Rags and Ony to earn money, you'll see!

 

What do you mean, you'll win by default?  Maybe they'll get clothes by then!

Time to introduce my second 70, and currently my character that raids the most and has the best gear.

 

   

Name: Eledith Leafstalker

Age: Around 500.

 

Background:

 

Eledith is the younger sister of the huntress, Alyviel.  Born and raised while her sister was away, Ele was always told tales of her brave and daring older sibling, and often dreamed of being like her.  During the Third War, so many druids were losing their lives that Ele was taken into training as soon as she displayed an aptitude for the healing arts.  Under the watchful eye of her father, she swiftly developed her abilities.

 

Ele was an impulsive youngster and often found it difficult to be, as she saw it, held back by the stuffy elder druids.  Although her training was not yet complete, she left the safety of Moonglade and travelled to the Eastern Kingdoms with her sister.  It was there that the both of them joined an organisation known as the Shadow Walkers, and fought together against the Burning Legion.

 

Eledith joined the Cenarion Expedition against the wishes of her parents and sister, travelling to the Outland and battling against the Burning Legion.

 

The half-trained druid met and befriended a human warrior by the name of Maxinos.  When he appeared one day at a guild meeting with a patch over his eye, she was concerned.  On learning that Max had been severely beaten by his own brother, a dark magic user named Megawatt, Eledith transported him to Moonglade where she healed his wounds.

 

 

 

Maxinos has been beaten by his cruel brother for warning him away from Eledith and her sister.  On discovering that Eledith had healed Maxinos' wounds, Megawatt sought out the young druid, believing that her strong abilities in a field that he could never touch would be of some use to him.  Telling the impressionable Ele that by allowing Mega to oversee her training, she could better watch over Maxinos, Megawatt bound her soul to himself in a dark ritual.

 

 

 

Well-meaning but naive, the young druid never realised that this would put her into the warlock's service.  Both Aly and Max have suspicions that something has happened, but neither of them has had confirmation yet.

 

 Personality:

 

Before the ritual that bound her to Megawatt, Eledith was a happy-go-lucky, care-free sort, always running around and laughing.  Since travelling to the Outland and battling the demons beside the other druids of the order she has calmed down, and then the ritual dampened her previously effervescent personality, leaving her quieter and more focused.

 

OOC Background:

 

Eledith was my first character created, but my second 70.  For a long time I was the only active druid healer in the guild and so I went along to a lot of Karazhan raids.  Now that we're getting some more geared up, I'm getting the opportunity to play my other characters in there, but Ele remains my best-geared and most common raiding character.  

 

I adore being a restoration druid.  In fact, one of my favourite sources for restoration druid news and tips, Resto4Life was a big inspiration in starting my own blog.  Ele has one piece of Season 3 gear from the arena matches I've taken part in, both in 3- and 2- man groups.  She's hopefully going to get her second piece tomorrow.  She also has the Season 1 headpiece.  Her gloves and chestpiece are both Tier 4. 

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The Valentine's festival is always fun.  I love running around and seeing all the guards with hearts above their heads and helping people mend their broken hearts.  So far I've done the questline ( See here for guides) on Yolana and Eledith, along with two of my best WoW buddies. 

 

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The new items are pretty nice.  I was lucky enough to get the picnic basket on my first gift for Eledith, and Yolana got the old Kwee permenant pet that I was looking for last year.  The picnic basket puts out a parasol and a basket and if you click it, it sits you down with a "looking for love" debuff, and then other people can come along and join you.  It makes you do random emotes like laughing and blowing a kiss.

 

I also went into Scholomance on Yolana and Eledith with friends and got myself the offhand item that you can keep.  It acts like the handful of petals, but has a five minute cooldown.  It was pretty amusing to see a zombie with a bunch of flowers.

 

 

And of course, where else am I going to get pictures like this one?

 

 

 

So, 2.4 looks pretty exciting.  I've been reading the news on the new dailys, the new dungeons - both the 5 man (can't wait to go) and the 25 man (that I'll not get to see until I'm level 80).  The new faction looks pretty cool.

 

But what is it that has me squee-ing?

 

Vanity pet bags!

 

According to this article on WoW Insider, there are gonna be bags just for vanity pets.  I really hope this is true.  Since we got keyrings, I've been wanting this.

 

No more will I have to leave my poor whelps and miniwing in the bank!  No more will they be abandoned and alone!

 

Of course, it also means that, if true, as soon as the patch hits I will be going on a Pokemon-esque rampage in search of new vanity pets, and those that I never got because of limited space. 

It's funny how a place goes from being "Absolutely not, ugh, no way *puking sounds*" to "Yeah, okay.  I think we can do it."

 

Zul'Aman is such a place for me.  The first few times I went in their with my guild, we got our collective butts handed to us on wooden troll platters.

 

Last night we downed the first boss for a guild first.  It's such a nice feeling.  Guild first.  Of course, the second boss still got us beat, but I think we'll be able to go back in and whomp his feathered behind.

 

This brings up one of my sore points, though.  I think it's a pretty big jump to go from 10-man to 25-man content.  Of course, not as big a jump as 40-man was back in the day (Insert old man voice - Back in my day, we had to find 40! people and keep them organised and happy and doing the right things, eeeeh!)  but still.  You basically have to have three groups clearing Kara, with no overlap, to have enough people to fill a 25-man raid and have some for backup.  It would be nice if there was a 15 or 20 man raid in-between, to get people used to working with more others.

 

And then... I don't know about other groups but we have the problem that some of our best people fill more than one role.  For example - Two tanks, a healer, two DPSers.  That's me and one of my friends.  Problem is, we can only play one character at a time.  Sometimes alt-itis isn't the best thing ever. 

So, I'm on an RP server (Argent Dawn).  And even though I don't get to RP very much, my characters still have backgrounds to them.  That and their OOC backgrounds.  I figured I may as well introduce each of my main characters.

 

This is the first.

 

 

Name:  Alyviel Leafstalker

Age:  She stopped counting a long time ago.  In her thousands.

 

Background:

 

Alyviel is the daughter of a druid and a priestess.  She was originally trained in the traditional way, and served for many years as a Priestess of the Moon, and eventually as a Sentinel.

 

 

She eventually fell in love with a young druid named Daedd.  Suffering the years apart when he was slumbering in the Emerald Dream, their relationship ended in tragedy when he was killed in a terrible accident.  Aly's faith was shattered and she turned her back on Elune and her culture, travelling to the Eastern Kingdoms on her own.  There she wandered for many years, keeping no company but her own and eventually that of a lion who she rescued as a cub from predators and befriended.

 

 

Alyviel and Mauja eventually discovered the gnome city of Gnomeregan.  Fascinated by their technology, something that she had never seen on Kalimdor, Aly spent years studying the diminutive race and their ways.  Eventually she became frustrated with their lack of caution, however, and once again struck out on her own.

 

When the Scourge came, Aly threw herself into the fighting.  With her lion by her side, the former Sentinel was a formidable force and she aided many small villages in fleeing from the undead.  During the Third War, it was inevitable that she come into contact with her own people again.  At first reluctant, she was eventually persuaded to travel home and be reuinited with her family.  In her absence, her parents had produced a daughter, Eledith, who was training to be a druid.  Against her parent's wishes, Eledith travelled to the Eastern Kingdoms to fight against the Burning Legion, and Aly followed to keep an eye on her.

 

Personality:

 

Used to solitude, Aly can come across as distant and aloof.  The only being she really trusts is her lion, Mauja, and she has no great love for anybody else.  Uncomfortable in cities, she spends most of her time roaming the wilds.  Recently she has spend a lot of time in the Outland, battling against the Burning Legion with a fierce passion.

 

The lighter side of her personality only tends to come out around gnomes and as part of her engineering background, leading to some mishaps with the gadgets she tinkers with.

 

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OOC Background:

 

Aly isn't my first character, but she is the first I got to 60 and then to 70.  I liked the idea of a hunter, running around with a pet.  In SWG I had played a creature handler, and this sounded somewhat like that.  I also used to solo a lot and she was a perfect fit for that.

 

Nowadays Aly tends to be my farming character, although I do take her along raiding sometimes.  I still enjoy her playstyle very much but there are a whole lot of hunters out there.  I still maintain that the class is easy to learn, very difficult to master.

My dearest Devastate,

 

Since mine eyes first beheld thy wonderous visage, my life hath remained enraptured by thy countenance.  I could not have hoped to contemplate thy skill in gargantuan building of threat.  Nor didst I believe that, even when lonesome, thy uses would be many.  While thou knowest that mine affections are shared by thy brother, Shield Slam, my greatest love wilst always be thine.

Yours forever,

 

Yolana.

Here we go again

You'd think that the Violet Eye

Would go in by now.

 

Animal bosses

Really not worth the time

It takes to get here.

 

The guy and his horse

What I want to know is if

The hay catches fire?

 

Now to the ballroom

Our tanks are all getting drunk

Oops they made a mess.

 

Now to repentence

And the Maiden of Virtue

Trapped with sex demons.

 

Time to see what show

We keep all our fingers crossed

R&J AGAIN.

 

Time for the giants.

Debuff!  Run up the stairs!  Run-

Oh well.  Back door time.

 

Curator.  Gear check.

This guy certainly has flare.

Sorry.  Evocate!

 

Through the library.

How do the wyrms read the books

When they have no hands?

 

Shade of Aran time.

Run around the carousel.

STOP MOVING.  Run back.

 

Killrek.  Killrek.  Chains.

Don't forget the AOE.

Oh yeah, and the boss.

 

Go to sleep for trash.

Wait a second.  Why are there-

OH MY GOD THE SHADES!

 

Chess event.  Okay.

If we wipe here then we fail.

Why am I the pawn?

 

Now we go to Prince.

Infernal on the tank.  Crap.

Yes, that was the nova.

 

Big flaming dragon.

When he lands don't do a thing

Except run away.

 

Netherspite for last.

Don't cross the streams or it's bad.

That sounds familiar.

 

 

 

 

I was catching up on some podcasts recently, and in World of Warcast they were talking about how a lot of the BC instance bosses have a gimmick that, once you learn it, makes the fight easier. 

 

It got me to thinking on one of the subjects that both exilerated and infuriates me.  Random factors.

 

On taking on Prince in Karazhan, the number one reason why any of my groups fail is because of those dang infernals.  One drops on the tank and he can't move quickly enough, one drops right in front of the ranged folks and they're stuck out of range, et cetera.  While the strategies might include ways of moving him and so on, no matter what, the sheer randomness of where the infernals drop is what I find to be the hardest part of the fight.  Keeping the tank healed?  Yep, can usually do that.  Keep other people healed when there's axes?  Check.

 

Keep order and tell everyone where to move and have them do it right without getting in the shadow nova.  Umm...

 

There are other fights like this, of course.  I've heard that Lady Vashj has a similar random factor.  It just annoys me to no end when we wipe because of a chance event rather than because we just plain screwed up.

 

Prince does lead to funny death poses, though.

 

To Infinity, and Beyond!

It's aluminium, not aluminum.

 

We drive on the road and walk on the pavement.

 

You put your shopping in the boot of the car and hang your washing on the line.

 

It's LeviOsa, not Leviosaaa.

 

I ended up on the American servers and sometimes the time difference kills me, but I love you all.

 

I'm sure I'll be talking about this again.

While drinking my "morning" (mid-afternoon because I was up until 6am tanking BM for a guildie) coffee I browsed the notes from patch 2.4 on the test realm.

 

http://www.wowinsider