I have an evil evil plot in the works that I did not get to finish last night…TOMORROW, you shall behold my evil.  Until then, I’m just going to talk about how I am a silly magpie, and how Blizzard nearly ruined shadow priesting for me.

You see, I’m not really….girly.  But I do like things that are bright and shiny, so spells like penance and holy nova are Awesome Fun Toys.  In hindsight, paladins have some of the most disappointing spells EVER.  I mean, okay, Sacred Shield can be kind of shiny, but shouldn’t beacon be a BEACON?  You know?  A BEACON OF LIGHT?  A BRIGHT SHINING PILLAR OF LIGHT?

I’ll never forgive Blizzard for failing me in that regard, just as I’ll never forgive them for what they did to my favorite Shadow Priest toy right next to Mind Sear. 

THEY RUINED DISPERSION.  It used to be that you’d turn into a FUN LITTLE BALL OF DARKNESS!!!!!!  Now you’re just…er…more…dark?  What? 

NO, BLIZZARD.

UTTER FAIL.

I can’t be a bouncing ball of inky evilness now!  This has totally ruined the spell and thus ALMOST RUINED SHADOW PRIESTING for me.

Don’t you DARE mess with my mind sear, or I’m going to have to do something drastic like…GO HOLY for my second spec, and we don’t want THAT to happen ever again.

I AM PUTTING YOU ON NOTICE BLIZZARD.

I don’t know what my gearscore is.

I don’t care what my gearscore is.

I don’t ask anyone what their gearscore is. 

Gearscore doesn’t tell you what someone’s skill level is.  It doesn’t tell you how much DPS they can actually do.  It doesn’t tell you that they’re not a douchebag.  It doesn’t tell you that they know how to gem, or spec, or enchant what gear they do have.  It doesn’t tell you how much thought they’ve put into everything.

In other words, it doesn’t tell you a single.  Damn.  Thing-except how big your penis is and how many emblems you’ve farmed tormenting pugs in random heroics.

And your penis is not helping me out here.

I’d much rather take a look at someone’s gear and take a look at their enchants, gems, and general gear choices.  If I see a DK with a SP gem, then I know I’m in trouble in a whole different way than “oh he only has a GS of 2″.  There’s a difference between recently dinged and ignorant.  I’d like to know what I’m really dealing with, you know? 

So in short: gearscore can go die in a fire.

I had every intention of posting pictures of all of us looking stupid on New Years, but I…forgot to put them on photobucket.  \o/ 

What?  Don’t blame me, I’m sleep deprived, and my sleep deprivation is totally not my fault.  It’s Cranky Tank’s.  Don’t as how, you don’t want to know.   So pictures of Steve looking as much stoned as drunk will come tomorrow!  All is not lost, however!  While Steve will respect Josh’s wishes to keep his drunken stupid from the world I, his girlfriend, will not.  Because I am evil, and because it’s too funny…so here have a video.  Also in this video are the Macharious, the Megaburger, the Phaseroll, and 2 people who do not play WoW anymore because they fail. 

Also, baby!shaman healing reminds me a lot of holy paladin healing.  In other words, I have a big heal, and a little heal, and…that’s it.  Yep.  Oh, and these obnoxious totems to tote around…but of course, I’m also healing as elemental.  And you know, I’m level 37.  But for the moment, it reminds me of holy paladin healing.  I might actually take her full resto, because I’ve got a pet bear, and a pet rogue…and when you have a pet bear so that lowbie instances pop almost instantly?  Who the fuck cares about questing in STV on a pvp server?!?!? 

If you’re in the Ruin battlegroup and running level 37ish alts, keep an eye out for the shaman named Icestone and the rest of the <Has Melted> crew.  :P

…mostly because Pix had done another one for me and I wisely saved it.  Enjoy!

A year ago (give or take-technically, it was the 29th), I was sitting at work.  Almost no one was there and I was bored as hell.  I worked through all the blogs that I read and eventually ran out of interesting, unblocked internet to read.

So…I decided to write a blog.  I never had any ambitions, I just wanted to pass the time at work and perhaps entertain/post the occasional useful tidbit.  When I started, I had a holy paladin chewing through Naxx and a baby disc priest…

…and now I’ve given up the holy paladin gig for tanking bubbles, and the priest has stolen the spot light.

All in all, it’s been an amazing year!  I can’t believe that I now regularly get over a thousand hits a day.  Holy crap, that’s a lot of really bored people wandering this way!

Happy new year, merry bubbling, and may you not have much of the RL equivialant of standing in fires this upcoming year!

Me, I’ll probably be posting pictures of some of my guildies being drunk later…

I decided to carry out my little experiment.  I logged on to Ambrosine, which resulted in a small explosion of dust.  Her gear is mediocre-tanking ToC10 is really the pinnacle of her ability right now.  Despite that, it is still all epics, gemmed and enchanted and showing that I’ve managed to flail my way through several raids somehow.

I did three heroics, including Halls of Stone, which I loathe.  Things did not go flawlessly-I tried to skip a couple of mob packs to save time, which resulted in people pulling them, naturally.  The healer died at least once.  I lost control of an add here and there, even as a lolpaladin.  I was often mana starved, until I won the Winter Hat in Nexus and put it on.

Yes, folks, I ran around in a gods be damned Winter Hat (visible-see above!) and no one said a damned word.  In fact, everyone was quite nice.  This tells me a few things:
1) Even mediocre epics make a difference in people’s attitudes, or
2) I got damned lucky with the handful of heroics that I did despite every single one over the weekend being full of fail, or
3) The Ruin battlegroup is magically less fail than the Vindication battlegroup, or
4) Winter hats are awesome

Obviously this is an experiment I’ll have to continue, but the initial results are…interesting.

On another note, I was no more OOM with a disc priest healer than I was with the others.  I sure can see the geared paladin plight in the older heroics though-damn, even with Divine Plea up, I was perpetually running on fumes!  I was drinking before some pulls!  My suggestion is that you either downgrade some gear, or wear something silly (like my hat) while still remaining over def cap.  Don’t ask the disc priest to not bubble you, you’ll make me cry (and I’ll swear that it didn’t fucking matter).

ETA: If you want advice better then “wear a silly hat” go here, my fellow mana starved tankadins!

The goal of this fight is to sink the enemy’s battleship.  It’s the Wrath version of the Chess Event, so this is going to be a Strat Guide Lite because…there’s not a lot to it.

A tank, healer, and some DPS stay on your boat to defend it from attackers.   Aside from making sure that everything is aggro’d on someone (because otherwise they’re damaging your ship), this is loleasy.

A tank, a healer, and some DPS get to be the Away Team and beam rocket over to the other ship.  If we’re being lazy and three healing it we send two healers over, but one could easily go DPS and help pew pew the mage down.  The mage is your only target-the tank just tanks the enemy commander whosit but isn’t DPS’d at all. The hardest part is jumping back all together-if the tank jumps back before you do, you go splat.  I know this from experience.  \o/  Make sure to call it out on Vent.

Typically two (usually melee) DPS that are on the away team are also manning the cannons.  Your sign to board is the cannons being frozen, anyway.  While the cannons are not ice cubed, pew pew the NPCs, because if they don’t die, they get stronger, and stronger NPCs are teh fail.   Ranged DPS can help out with this as well between attacks.

Kills things, collect loot, done.  Oh, and if someone gets stuck on the enemy ship as it leaves, lol at them, because they’re screwed.

ETA: Circles are bad, don’t stand in them.   The other ship has cannons too, after all.

It is highly recommended that you run with a bear at least once.  This has little to do with the fight itself and everything to do with seeing  a bear with a rocket strapped to its ass.

The Lady Cranky Tank

lol thanks for the help now get the fuck out of my instance

Way to leave right before a boss in VH.  Heaven forbid you have to deal with people who recently dinged 80.  I know VH is SO HARD to heal, especially when we’re still keeping up with portals and no one has even come close to dying yet.    Fuck you.

Congrats, Coldsin, you’re the only decent person I pugged with all weekend.  Rehabilitate, you’re a douchenozzle.  One of these days you’re going to run into mobs with your impatient darting ahead of the tank, and I hope they let you die.  Please spec out of disc so that you don’t shame my kind anymore.

What is this I don’t even

As my priest and even as my hunter, I didn’t see much asshattery.  Stupid, yes, but not asshattery.  Of course things with my warrior, as I predicted, were…different.

Enter my warrior tank and suddenly OH GOD, people are UTTER ASSHOLES.

Ironically, you know who the worst ones are?  The healers.  Oh lord, my fellow healers, you can be fucking jerks!  I mean I’m a right snarky bitch, this is true, but I’ll never leave a group in VH right before a boss spawn.  No one had died, we weren’t going too slow (we were keeping up with portal spawns, and you just can’t do better than that) but the tree abruptly declared that we sucked and left.   As the incoming boss warning spammed my screen.

…

Wut?  Fuck you too, tree. 

My poor warrior gets in these groups where DPS pulls first, or the healer runs clear to the other side of the instance with mobs (FUCK YOU ROOM OF DOOM IN HOS), and suddenly everything is my fault.  Oh, that’s assuming people don’t just take one look at my gear and leave group at the start.  I spent one UK run flailing because the ret pally was pulling everything first and at the end the healer calls me a bad tank and leaves. 

No, no, fuck you.  I’m not the best warrior tank-of course not!  But you can’t expect perfection when the DPS won’t give me even 1 bloody second to try to use Heroic Throw to grab a caster before AoEing and dragging the mobs to hell and back.  Bwuh.  And invariably, the first person to leave…the person to talk the worst shit…was the healer.

Every single god damned time.  The DPS was usually no more than derp derp stupid, though I’d occasionally get the PULL FASTER commentary from them.

I present the face of a snarky bitch here in my blog, but I would never bail on a group like that, or say some of the shit I had said to me this weekend.  Never.  I was baffled that “my fellow healers” could be such a group of cumguzzling cockmongers.

/boggle

Lyestra the warrior is done with full random pugs.