Monday Recap

I did a lot of raiding this week-far more than normal.  I don’t have a single 80 not saved to one or more raid instances, and I didn’t even touch Ony or VoA.  Jamethera went to Ulduar 10 and Naxx25, Ambrosyne went to Ulduar 10, and Lyrandre made her second foray into ToC 10. 

The ToC 10 was a guild run (sans one replacement for our DCing DPS warrior), albeit it an unofficial experiment before we head into it “for reals” later.  We’d done one off night attempt there before but gotten stuck on Beasts.  It resulted in lovely gems such as this one from one of our tanks:

We seemed likely to get stuck on it again, but after we replaced the aforementioned DCing Guy, we did alright.  In fact, we cleared all the way up to the Twins. And you know what?  Seeing the infamous Faction Champions for the first time, and post nerf at that I…I kind of enjoyed them.

Faction Champions: As Experienced by Lyrandre

/heal heal
/get aggro from the hunter pet
/fear
/heal heal
/get aggro from the hunter pet
/run in circles kiting the kitty and casting bubbles and dispels
/fear
/get aggro from the hunter pet and the DK
/panic and say GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF
/run in circles kiting the kitty and casting bubbles and dispels
/fear
/get aggro from the hunter pet and the warrior
/panic and say GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF
/run in circles kiting the kitty and casting bubbles and dispels
/fear
/wonder where the hunter pet is
/heal heal, dispel
/giggle and run into the middle of mobs and fearbomb

And that is how you Faction Champion as a disc priest.  Since the sight of me running laps around the room with a cat following me was highly amusing, it was therefore an awesome fight.  I admit to having an advantage, however: my tank is in the room with me to hear “GETITOFFGETITOFF” when vent is rather, ah, busy.

Come twins in ToC, however, we ran into issues.  The tank kept dying.  As the tank healer, this makes me QQ hard core.  The only reason I can think of for this tank to die on my watch was the fact that I had to move around a lot.  Let’s face it, I’m not an awesome mobile tank healer when my big spell is channeled and I’m primarily a crit/SP whore.  Haste wut?

We were trying the one-tank, everyone-the-same-color strat.  Which works in some respects, but without anyone of the other color around to sop up those orbs, I was doing a lot of orb dancing.  Steve said that he would occasionally eat one for the sake of healing, which is fantastic, but two orbs will kill me.  I don’t want to risk “eating” one orb only to have a second one sneak up on me before I’m healed.  I think I need to drive home the “STEVE I CAN’T MOVE THAT MUCH AND TANK HEAL” aspect with a bat, because he’s got a wicked case of “If I don’t have a problem there is no problem” disease. 

Guild hobbies: Picking on Huntres, calling Phaseroll a loot whore, healers plotting DPS deaths, picking on Lyrandre

Of course it doesn’t help that I make it easy to pick on me.  Last week in Ulduar I just walked straight into a pack of mobs, for example.

My second trip into Ulduar with Ambrosyne as a tank was…not bad.  I didn’t start to suck until Thorim, where I did Arena for the first time.  Lots of DPS died in there.  Mmhmm.  I guess I wasn’t moving around to pick up mobs enough-a fact that Steve didn’t share with me until after.  Thanks, Steve.  You’re supposed to point out my dumb sooner so I can fix it if it isn’t clicking in my brain, mmkay?  :P  Since I spent so much time in the gauntlet (or staring at green bars) I admit I hadn’t actually watched tank behavior in the Arena before.  Now I know! 

She’s not a half bad alt tank if I do say so myself.  She’s got some gear that needs replacing (just bought a badge belt!) but it’s a toss up between gearing her and the hunter.  A lot of who runs what will of course depend on what’s needed, though I did also finally dual-spec Ambrosyne ret.  She is wearing this lovely mix of epics and…greens, where I didn’t have DPS gear already. 

I didn’t have much in the way of threat issues outside of the Arena, so no complaints there.

Dear Pugs:
I don’t want to see that sort of nonsense, okay?  Okay.

And that’s that for my Monday Recap.  I’ll leave you with this little gem, explaining why my ill-fated, dead-every-ten-seconds level 80 wolf is named HarryOtter.

BoO vs Northrend Beasts

“O hai new content we’re only just now getting around to seeing how are you-”

SQUISH.

“-doin…alright…um, that wasn’t so nice.  Hey, what happened to my mana bar?”

SQUISH.

“Alright, really now.  WTF debuffs?  Did you seriously just hit all of the healers at the same time?  FUCK!”

SQUISH.

“Alright so now they’re going under and…okay…okay…so far so goo-OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU DRAGGING IT THROUGH THE CENTER OF THE ROOM WHERE WE ARE ALL STANDING?  FRONTAL CONE WRECKZ FRONTAL CONE PLEASE TO NOT BE-OH GOD OH GOD WHY IS YOUR VENT NOT WORKING.”

SQUISH.

“Okay once agai-”

SQUISH.

“WHAT THE FUCK HUNTERS OMEN ISN’T THERE TO LOOK PRETTY WHY THE FUCK CAN’T YOU FEIGN! WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT’S ON COOLDOWN?! WELL FOR FUCKS SAKE WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!  AUTOSHOT OR SOMETHING.  THE METER IS THERE SO YOU CAN CONTROL YOUR DAMNED AGGRO NOW JUST KEEP PEW PEWING UNTIL YOU PULL.  ALSO FEIGN BEFORE YOU GET AGGRO SO THE BOSS ISN’T SHIFTING POSITIONS YOU COMPLETE AND UTTER FAILURE OF A HUNTER.  WTF IN MY DAY I KNEW HOW TO HUNTER AND DIDN’T PULL FUCKING AGGRO WHILE STILL TOPPING DPS CHARTS.”

SQUISH.

“FUCK YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL YOU GODS BE DAMNED WORMS.”

SQUISH.

“Oh hey, look, it’s the third guy!  There’s only like half the raid left, and 2 of those are healers, but we can pluck him off eventually…la la la la…la la la la….la la la la…OH FUCK HE WENT BIG AND RED OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK.”

SQUISH.

“…see you all tomorrow, guys.”

(We made good progress, and I’m actually proud of our off-night attempts.  But seriously, WTF hunters.  Also, kudos to Oasic, one of our much loved resident holy priests.  See, Oasic, I can blog about you without you being a douche!  Especially if you continue to stand in the way of boss charges and die.  ;)  Your death was a lesson to us all!)

Tuesday’s Random Thoughts

I shouldn't be allowed to drive this thing.

I find it hard to think of blog topics when I hardly raid.  This is, in fact, a complaint I voiced to another officer.  If I was not important to BoO, I would have hightailed it to another guild with more raiding days a long time ago.  I was alright with 3 days.  I am not alright with 2.  I can only pug the other things so much, you know?  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my guildies.  Love.  But.  I like raiding.  OMG.  MOAR RAIDS.

How can you not love these people?

We might transition back to 3 days as attendance allows, but until then, I am one restless soul.  There’s not much I can use from instances I care to pug anymore, sooo…naturally this means that it is PLAY WITH ALTS TIME.  WOO.  I have a lot of alts.

How come no one warned me that this was all that there was to frost mages?

My mage is an old toon.  So old, she has a pvp title.  She’s only 55.  I thought that leveling a priest would make leveling a mage easier, but no…because uh, mages don’t heal.  Ice Barrier helps, though.  It’s kind of like a priest bubble.  Now that I’ve swapped her to frost, maybe I’ll get the hang of it and learn to level without dying all the time.  Or maybe I’ll get her to Outlands and be all like OH GOD NOT HELLFIRE AGAIN and abandon her for eternity…I can’t say. 

I threw Ambrosyne’s tanking gear on and realized that she has no tanking boots.  Except for her 70 ones.  Er…I’ll fix this and other issues (like…lack of gems and enchants?) and then throw her back out into the world as a tankadin.  I’ll tackle the fact that I have a warrior tank sitting at level 76 another time.  I can handle two tanks, right?  …right?  …fuck, I have to do more dailies for money?  UGH.

Josh got bored and dusted off his holy paladin, of all toons, so I brought out Jamethera to play pew pew for him.  Both characters reek of “I used to be well-loved” in their old raiding gear.  It’s actually good for me to have a holy pally as a companion, because no matter what toon I’m on, I will pull half the zone.  And a devilsaur is not a tanking pet.  And mail doesn’t count for shit.  And oh god, why are all those casters shooting me?!

Omnomnom. No really, that's the devilsaur's name.

So for our last Ulduar raid, Mach was trashed and Zoja was getting there.  We had a couple of people who were new to the instance with us, so when Zoja went AFK it was left to me to make some use of the time and explain the fight.  They wouldn’t shut the hell up in vent, so I decided to explain…another way.

I wasn't even drinking yet.

Also, the guild continues to trust me with being the BoO AH Bitch.  This is not as safe as they think it is.

I'm not on an RP server...I'm not on an RP server...

Did I mention that I love my guildies?  I do.

/facepalm

Ulduar Report and Screenshots Galore

Ulduar

So we walked back into Ulduar last night.  RL issues had us shuffling some of the group around-we actually replaced two of our DPS, one of the healers, and and one of the tanks.  So uh…half the raid, almost.  We walked back in to face our nemesis, who rather upset me last week. 

After one shotting the bastard (GOD THAT FELT GOOD) we moved on to face Kolgorn, who had the nerve to yell part of our guild name.  Oblivion?  Yeah, we’re bringing it, buddy!

Oh yeah…we brought it.  After…er…several wipes.  Damn that guy hits hard!  The tank had a real hard time staying up while his healer was being chased around by eyebeams.  Weird how that works, huh?  Ron was wondering about Kyr’s healing, but I know him better than that.  I also know just how bad a paladin is at healing while running!  I’ll make a note for myself to mark Kyr’s head so I can see when he’s running around like a headless chicken.  That way I’ll know when to take up the slack on the tank. 

With our normal OT out, we brought in our intrepid GM, Steve…aka Macharious.  Naturally the fact that I happen to be standing near everyone who suddenly ended up with bunny ears is completely incidental.

Also, Josh was a dork…

In Which They Made The Mistake of Letting Me DPS

Wooooooooo deeps!  And yes, I really do take a ton of SS’s of my toon levitating.  It’s pretty much a running joke now.

 

Not only did they make the mistake of letting me off spec, but they let Kyrilean alt!  We were all shadowy and DPSy together.

And then they had us MC the adds for Raz.  lolololololol.

No shadow here, but behold the perils of bringing a pug paladin:

Fort, check…spirit, check…inner fire, check….crusader aura and might?  What?

Guild Chat and Whispers Are Fair Game

I hop onto my bank alt and…what?

/report spam

And here, Wreckz completed my “_____ is a nub” tag collection that I have going for our guild tanks.

Also…shush, Kyky!  >.>   <.<  Moving on, it’s Rivyn being a dork.

Random Other Things

“We are both products of a broken world, child…may you be stronger where you are mended, not weaker.  Think of life as a forge, where the hardships are the flames tempering the steel of your soul, and make yourself a blade fit for defending the people.”

My babymoocow met Arrens.  Arrens proceeded to completely freak her out.   D: