Monday raiding - Have I lost my touch?

This week of raiding has been really bleh.  People are unhappy, but I said I was ok.  And I actually was OK with not doing that well this week until people started talking about how bad it was.  Then I wasn't feeling that ok.

Early finishes and PVPing after raiding made the week a lot better I think.  Then we were short on Sunday, so no raiding... no problem, I thought!  We have Monday to finish it off.

The day didn't start well with me sleeping in at raid time.  Lushnek had to call me to wake me up, and I was 10 minutes late.  Then I realised that I still had my feral spec and my PVP spec, no raid spec so i had to quickly respec for raid.  Ugh, these rising costs... I think I need to do more dailies.

Everything was ok until Spine of Deathwing.  Ultraxion was good, I think we even had a new record.  Lootship was fine too.  Then on spine, people not stacking fast enough.  People flying off even if they were stacking.  OMG the plate didn't come off.  What the hell!!!  We actually had Aza on his hunter helping out which was great, and he switched to his pally for Madness.

Madness was another story.

Healing was the weak factor, I felt.  Falln was new to tanking it and he did ok, forgot to use his CDs a few times and died when getting impaled but it was all good.  4th platform, my platform was where everyone was dying.  I thought maybe it was because we were bunching up too much and getting hit by the corruption, so we did say everyone get max distance from it but don't bunch up.  The few times we got to 4th platform Gutsy died and Bloodtza died.  I think they were too close to the elementium bolt that's why they died, but I'm not to sure.  Me and Guts tried switching it around and I do the third platform and he does the 4th but then I died while casting tranquility.  So I have no idea what was going on that was different to every other time I've done Madness.

So we ended the evening with no Madness kill.  That was depressing.  So no heroics, and no Dragon Soul clear.  No wonder I feel like I've lost my touch.  It's hard too when Gutsy says he hates healing Yor'sahj but I'm champing at the bit to get it right.  I don't know if people get excited about trying to get something right, but I do, even if I feel like I'm doing a crap job, I still want to try and do it better.

On a high note I got Seal of the Seven Signs to replace my raid finder version.  At least I got something :)

Roshii the luckiest Camel Hoarder

I got woken this morning by my phone and I thought it was work.

"Navi!!! Guess what!!!"

I was instantly awake, maybe not instantly coherent. It was Roshii.

"Aeonaxx?  Did you get Aeonaxx?"

"No, OMG!"

Is he ringing me to say Cyrus is up?

"I found A CAMEL!  I got the TITLE!  That's the first time I have ever seen a camel!!"

"OMG GRATS!!!!" Oh my, Falln is going to be pissed off, I thought.

"Cymre is going to be pissed!" said Roshii.

"Falln is goign to be pissed, he's found 20 camels and never gotten the right one!"

"Serves him right, this is payback for the Time Lost Proto-Drake."

I couldn't help but laugh.  Falln told me that he and Gutsy just one day happened to go to one of the spawn spots for TLPD and it was just THERE.  No camping.  Just lucky.  I told Roshii and he was like "... I camped for 3 months for mine..."

So I had to get online to take a picture.  I was so excited for him!!

I'll show you where he found it.  This is my map that I have mapped all the locations Falln and Belinia have said they have seen camels (red dots).  Roshii found one where Falln had shown me he had found one previously.

Did he have to stand right on top of the camel?  I guess when you're excited you are more bothered with getting it rather than the aesthetics of the picture.

 I love how Dormus is HOLDING a camel!

Yay!  Grats Roshii!  How am I going to go back to bed now after you've shown me this!  I'm so excited!  And the mount is a different colour from the others so I have a pic of all 3 camels for comparison.

Sunday raiding - 2 short for raid means more PVP

Augment and Entranosh did not raid today so no raid for us.  Which was a bit of a bummer - though not really because that meant more arena for me, Sev and Shab.

Tol Barad was in progress when we grouped so I asked if I could do that first in the hope that I could get a win and get my double achievement, and it was going well, so I did!

We are getting the hang of this healer cc, though we still tend to be a bit all over the place when we are faced with full plate teams.  Those DK/paladin teams suck.  Not a lot of luck tonight with teams, though the one satisfying win we did have was against a warrior shaman boomkin team who creamed us the first time and we fought back the second time and won.  Then I realised I was conquest capped for arena so spent the rest of the night TRYING to win a random BG or call to arms BG.  No luck there tonight.  Oh well.

Highlights of the Week from my Blogroll January 29, 2012

Big Bear Butt entertained us this week with more stories of his son Alex playing World of Warcraft  in his post The Cub Report - Stranglethorn Edition.  I love those stories, because I think of my daughter one day doing that and me being proud of her antics.

Great walk down memory lane with Angelya's post Nostalgia: #playedinBC.  Ang did a hashtag in Twitter and got a ton of responses, which she turned into a post - what a great idea!

The Warchief Command Board has been rivetting lately.  Go check it out - Saurfang is acting Warchief as Garrosh has gone MIA...

Firelands legendary run - elusive achievements!

I went to the Firelands for the sole reason of getting the Only the Penitent... achievement which has every week eluded us.  Every week somebody stuffs it up.  I thought we'd get lucky this week.

However, we may have used up all our luck when we got the Rhyolith achievement Not an Ambi-Turner.  I was so happy to get that!

So we get to Domo.  I said ok, Ayelena, Faith, Ksret, you guys stay here, do not cross the bridge!  Moo was talking about how many silly people stuff up the achievement, how hard is it, he's got it on 2 toons.  Roshii said "Somebody Leroy it!"  and as I was running in, Moo jumped and got hit...

I think I nearly cried.  Then I couldn't help but laugh hysterically.  I told him he was now officially 15 seconds of stupid.

Anyway, we managed to kill it on heroic!  It was quite clean too - Ayelena died twice, but he hadn't done it before.  But Ragnaros was a different story.  So many dot classes, not enough burst... we had to call it.  A shame really.

Enna managed to get her bits done for Beth'tilac and Rhyolith for Beauti so that was pretty cool.  A pretty good night, and oh well, there is always another week to get achievements.

Attendees: Belinia, BloodyNok, Lushnek, Azadelta/Azalpha, Faithless, Ayelena, Ksret, Navimie, Jujubrudda(Moo), Beauti.  Hwired came on Oggfury for one or two attempts at Rag since Lush had a date with the toilet, but that was the end of that.

Lunar Lantern

I couldn't be bothered doing an Alliance toon and getting all the coins, so I had been watching the Auction House for them and they were ridiculous prices, like 20k.  Falln told me that the neutral AH had them for closer to 10k, so I went and bid on one, and I won!  I got it for 9.5k... pricey, but it's just gold.  Falln was bidding on one too and he tried to sell it on the AH for 20k but that didn't sell.  So here I am with my other pet, it's great to have both lanterns.

Well, I still have leftover coins for next year.  I wonder what pets we'll get then!

New Rare Pics this week

I still have a few missing from Wetlands. But here are two more I found:

Ghostlands seems to only have one rare.  Here's a better shot than the one I currently have

Eversong forest only has two, and I need a better picture of Tregla, but I didn't have Eldinarcus so that wasn't a wasted trip

Finished off Teldrassil yay!  Forgot that I had 2 missing from there.

And I took an updated pic of King Mosh, this one is better than my old shot

And look what Ayelena sent me that he found in Blackrock Mountain

 

And Nabe sent me this one from Skettis, I didn't even know this one existed, it's absolutely gorgeous!

Thursday raiding - No Buffy No slayer

Ah well, there is no caster love in my group :)  No crit and no haste buff makes mages and warlocks very sad pandas.  Out DPSd by melee.  Ouch.

On a high note, Nok was able to raid this week so we had a DK - but a shaman with buffage would have been nice!  Paladin tanking for H Yor'sahj is ouch, and DK tanking is much nicer.  We have no Entranosh for a month so that's gonna hurt our raid a bit (make that a LOT), so not sure what's going to happen for my group.

However, still no kill, and I feel like my heals are lacking - probably because without 5% haste I am not haste capped but I feel like I know the fight better and I just need to churn out bigger heals.  When I have mana that is.  We are doing the no-pop mana void thing and it actually is better I think especially when the bubble doesn't pop early.

Anyway, the other group got H Yor'sahj and were working on Hagara.  We finished our raid 10 mins early as Augment had to leave and pack for Melbourne.  So Sev, Shab and I did our usual - we vented our frustration on Arena.

Now this is funny, but Shabadu does put his mic on for PVP because we made him.  And Moo joined our channel after their raid was done and was like "OMG is that Shaba speaking?"  And of course, me and Sev had forgotten that Shab doesn't talk much.  HK did say a similar thing the other week too.  We had some rusty starts, but finished on a high note so that was satisfying.  The last fight with a druid healer, and 2 dps which I can't recall what they were, was well coordinated on Vent with ccs on the druid which I'm sure made them very cranky, coz it makes me cranky.  Me and Sev were bad and kept dotting up the sheep targets on other fights.  I'm surprised Shab didn't yell at us.  I said to them as we were arena'ing that arena always makes me feel better (this was after a few losses) and Shab said "Really? I can't sleep if I have bad arena games."  Just like Beauti, who also has decided to stop arena coz she can't sleep.

Will be an interesting Sunday.  Maybe Nok can bring his shaman as enhance and give casters some love.  That would make Sev more legendary.

What if Australia Day was an Azerothian Holiday?

Today is Australia Day, a public holiday down here in Australia (funny that!), celebrated on the day that Captain Arthur Phillip, commander of the First Fleet of eleven convict ships from Great Britain, and the first Governor of New South Wales, arrived at Sydney Cove on 26 January and raised the Union Jack to signal the beginning of the colony.

The Founding of Australia - Algernon Talmage

On this day, people are naturalized (getting their Citizenship), Australians of the Year are awarded to those who have performed great services to the Community, and many community social events are organised like concerts, family events and fireworks.

Fireworks in Perth 2005 Australia Day - image courtesy Nachoman

Big Day Out is a huge outdoor concert held in multiple locations around the Australia Day week.  It's usually packed to the rafters with good weather, and you'll find lots of young people there - controversy with drug usage and alcohol has prompted a large police presence at these events, but it doesn't seem to dampen the Aussie spirit.  In Sydney, it's held on Australia Day.

Then there's always the cricket on Australia Day at the Adelaide oval (Australia Day One Day International).   Which reminds me of that Telstra broadband advertisement about Australia Day and the cricket:

And what would Australia day be without an Australia Day BBQ?

Australia Day BBQ image courtesy offthespork.com

So how could that translate that as a holiday or a celebration in Azeroth?

I wonder whose landing on the shores of Azeroth we could celebrate.  Since everyone was already here when the continent was broken... maybe Pandarians could cleebrate when they first landed in Azeroth (and then hated it so much they ran back to their island)... or they could have gotten STRANDED!  Or maybe the first footsteps of the humanoid explorers of Azeroth...

Imagine if they had BBQs everywhere!  Maybe you have to eat at all the alliance and horde BBQs for an achievement or quest to promote peace and coexistence.

Maybe we could go on a pilgrimage trail of the first explorers of Azeroth, planting our flag at points of historical interest.

Evening fireworks could be organised in major cities at night time.

And how cool would it be if you could make a cricket battleground LMAO!  I think that would be hilarious.

And what World Event would be complete without a big monster of some sort to defeat?  Maybe a giant rainbow serpent from the Dreamtime that threatens to swallow this new country....

Well to finish off this Australia Day post, I'm going to add some Azeroth to an excerpt from a very famous Australian poem written by Dorothea McKellar "My Country".

I love a sunburnt country

 A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

 Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons,

I love her jewel-sea,

 Her beauty and her terror

The wide brown land for me!

Note: There is a lot of controversy about Australia day and the indigenous Australians, about whether that day was the day they were subjugated etc, making it more a tragic day in their history.  I respect that Australia was originally their home, but I think Australia Day should be a day where all Australians can celebrate being Australian and being unified and our achievements as individuals as part of this great country.

Fangs of the Father quest chain - Part 2

Roshii got his 333 shadowy gems last week and completed Cluster Clutch (Step 8).  Then it was onto Our Man in Karazhan (Step 9) where Roshii was given another Black Dragonflight target to kill:

"Your next target is the Black Dragon Nalice, who is engaged in some sort of arcane debauchery beneath the ruined tower of Karazhan."

She was easy to kill, Roshii said.  It only took him 3 goes, and he said she looked like any other Black Dragonflight..  Awww.  There were other Black Dragonflights wandering around outside - glad they weren't there when I was level 70, they look kinda scary...

 

Killing her completed the quest Blood of the Betrayer (Step 10).  From her you get a Vial of Preserved Dragonblood.

"You did it? She's dead? Unbelievable! You're some kind of miracle-worker!

 

Back to Wrathion for Victory in the Depths (Step 11).  Without warning he pours the blood over the blades of the daggers, and the steel seems to writhe and twist as though alive. When the smoke clears, the daggers have altered their shape.  Fear and Vengeance have now become The Sleeper and The Dreamer. 

Now Roshii is up to Sharpening Your fangs (Step 12) where he has to collect 60 Gem Clusters.  Phew.  That will take another few weeks!

(Edit: Post updated with quest pics from Roshii)

Wednesday raiding - OUCH!

Blizzard decided to do a shutdown on Wednesday instead of Tuesday.  Bleh.  Something to do with a huge bug in the patch so they had to fix that up and put the patch out a day later.

Was a little late logging on, so I logged in to see 8 people in my raid, missing 2.  Missing Sev and Shabadu.  Nok was coming in on his healer to be the 4th healer.  I rang Sev and he wanted to have a break if we weren't raiding, but he graciously offered to come just to keep me company.  Awwww.

So the other group 1 shot H Morchok and then went on to Yor'sahj and nearly got it down.  My group, unfortunately was struggling on Morchok still.

It was a bad start to the night.  I had tells from the other group saying they wanted the Souglyy and Fallnapart back, and I was like but this is what the groups were like before!  The reason things were changed around a bit last week was because my group didn't have anyone who could heal as an offspec.  So we couldn't swap Shab for Lushnek, we had to give them Souglyy, which made us lose our crit buff, and so we swapped Moo for Falln so we could have our crit buff back.  We ended up with no bloodlust in my group, so we struggled at the end, we had one close wipe but after that it just went poorly.

Souglyy said it was a different strat to what she did with Hwired, and it was hard to have to learn it all again.  Falln said the same thing.  I am not sure what was different this time.  Augment still died the same as he did last time.  I died a few times too.  Falln died a few times - boy does that stomp hurt!  What I really wish is that I had a 25 yard radius thing around myself so I could position myself at the right distance.

Anyway, it was server shutdown and that was the end of that.

I was on Vent after and listening and participating in chatter.  Voe asked me what was wrong with my Morchok today, and to tell you the truth, I don't know.  I didn't have logs and my Skada wasn't working so I couldn't even see what my own heals were like.  I am sure people were disappointed in how my group turned out, but I am not sure how to make it better.  Hwired said that the crystals always spawn in the same spot, which is really useful to know, since he seemed to say they were always uphill on the Morchok side and downhill on the other side.  I never noticed that, it just annoys me when the crystals spawn on opposite sides!  But running to the crystal often freaks me out if I'm far away.

The discussion in vent because quite animated, Voe was loudly saying one group is the shit group and one is the good group, which is annoying to me because I am in the "shit" group.  Sev is there too.  We are both good players.  Gutsy is good as well.    The groups SHOULD be the same.  They are both balanced.  People shouldn't be complaining one group is better than another.  I actually prefer that I am in the not so good group so I don't have to listen to people complaining if they are put in the "shit" group, but it really strains me when people complain about where they deserve to be.  Should officers automatically be put into the better group?  Should better players?  How about long standing attendance, guild loyalty, do those things count?  Roshii said to me he hasn't complained, but of course he won't, he's on the next part of his quest (oh which reminds me I need to write about that!).  Hwired even added his voice to support me in saying there is NO difference between the groups and people should not be saying one group is better than the other.  But I think those who have switched between the two groups can agree on this - the strategies between the two groups are very different.  Which is why when you move between groups it feels like you are starting all over again.  What they need is a bit of homogenicity.  Is that a word?  So perhaps what we may have to look at is making the strategies the SAME between the two groups so that it doesn't feel like you're moving into a different world when moving from one group to another.  The solution that I think would work is if Hwired and Fue tanked together so that Hwired can show Fue what he does so that everyone can play on the same page.  Maybe that will happen.  I might bring it up in officer forums.  But for now, I will have to sit there and eat some chocolate to help ease the omg-will-you-not-complain-when-you-have-nothing-to-complain-about!!

Roshii made me laugh.  He said "Voe you do 50% healing, and 50% blabber!"  I don't think Voe was impressed.  He said he would not talk tomorrow.  I'll see how long that lasts.  Oh, and mucking around with our voice settings on our headsets also made me laugh.  4 of us have one of those Logitech headsets that you can change your voice with.

You see, I told you this heroic thing was more trouble.  Life was so simple when we just did normals and babied our not so good players.  Was a bit less challenging though, healing wise.  Lost a few good players that way too.  But now I have the challenge of healing as well as dealing with the drama that sorting and balancing groups takes.

Shared Topic - Expressing my Inner Geek

Akabeko of Red Cow Rise has put forward the shared topic on Blog Azeroth this week:

How do you express your geekery? Do you own obvious paraphernalia like a Horde-symbol bumper sticker, in-joke tshirts like the dps/ups pun, or less obviously related items like a gift from a guildie? Rather than physical indicators, do you mix nerd lingo into your everyday speech or talk/post about geekdom in non-nerd spaces? How do you advertise your nerd tendencies? Does it help you to attract new nerd friends?

The title of this post really is a misnomer.  I don't have an inner geek.  I have an outer geek.  I have geek written all over me, and I have to say I am not ashamed to show it.  But what exactly defines a geek?

I think the pi and number plate says all. No this is NOT my car.  Image from Wikipedia

But this number plate is damn funny.  Image from Wowphiles.com

From Wikipedia:

The word geek is a slang term, with different meanings ranging from "a computer expert or enthusiast" to "a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts", with a general pejorative meaning of "a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, esp[ecially] one who is perceived to be overly intellectual".

So I'm a computer games enthusiast, trekkie and sci fi nut, all of which classify as geek.  I'm going to talk about how I show my World of Warcraft geekiness.

So do I own any World of Warcraft Paraphernalia?  Well, I have a horde T-shirt.  I wear it to work a lot and I wear it out.  In fact, for guild meetups I wear my horde T-shirt.  Hmm.  I don't seem to have any pictures of it.  If I wear it to work, nobody really notices it anyway, since I have to change clothes at work.  I do consciously wear it out when I go pickup my WoW expansions when they release it at midnight - not that anyone has ever come up to me while we're all lining up for our copy of Cataclysm/WotLK/BC but just in case they did... at least they know not to ask me if I'm a Nelf hunter.

And what are children if not extensions of ourselves, right?  When my children were younger, I dressed them proudly in this:

And Lacrox gave me the plushies as a gift.  Nawwwwww.  He kept the pets, he had no use for useless stuffed toys.  Erika calls them lion and birdie.

At work, I openly talk about World of Warcraft.  People at work play it, and I even logon at work sometimes and play (hey, it's more productive than reading the paper or playing the stock market IMO).  Everyone at work knows I play.  Usually it's associated with some eye-rolling, but everyone just takes it in stride I think.  After all, before WoW, I used to talk about Star Trek and all my Star Wars Lego.  But we're not talking about that kind of nerd stuff today.. back to WoW.  In terms of everyday language, I have been known to accidentally let slip certain things which sometimes people go "Huh?"

• I often speak emotes.  I say "slash cry" or "slash sigh" when I'm disappointed in something at work.  Oops.
• I have been known to point at the clock and say "Oh look it's 13:37!"  People ask me what's so important about that time?  I just say "Oh.. nothing...."
• I say "W00t!" a lot.  But I think people seem to know that's a kind of "Yay"... I wonder if they really know that it's short for "Wow, loot!" from D&D

But I do talk about WoW with WoW playing colleagues a lot.  Yuda/Bladewind, who works with me, often gets accosted by me in corridors or at lunch and we sit down and talk WoW stuff.  People listen to us talking and often say it's like we're talking a whole different language - raiding, tanking, spec, DPS, boss fights ... I can understand why people just go "Say what?" when they try to listen to us talking.  In terms of attracting new nerd friends... I think because people know I play, other people who play come up to me and ask me about it, especially if they play.  I've never had someone come up to me in the street while I'm in nerd gear and ask me about anything, but I have often wondered if I heard someone talking while I'm out about something in World of Warcraft, like raiding, would I stop and ask them if they play Alliance or Horde?  Or whether they've done Heroic Zon'ozz?  Maybe... but I'm not sure.

So one last geek thing - not WoW related.  I do have this shirt.  Maybe not the bust that goes with it, but I wear this around the house mostly.  Otaku (おたく) means "geek" in Japanese, and Onna Otaku is "girl geek".

So I'm proud of my geek.  I think it defines me.  But wow, if I had boobs that could fill out that top, I think I'd give geeks a good name everywhere.