A second Dragonwrath!

Last week we were able to craft a second legendary staff for our mage Darc. Even though we had long moved onto DS, I'm glad that folks were willing to still run Firelands week after week to finally get it crafted for him.





Darc mentioned that while having a legendary, and the staff itself is cool, what means more is the fact that a group of friends worked together to create something for him. That's what the staff represents, the commitment that our guild made to craft a second Dragonwrath for him.

With a month before the expansion and the OP summer raid boss upon us, I'm satisfied if this second Dragonwrath is the last significant thing we do before MoP. Now in MoP it sounds like the legendary is going to be something that every class can use.

What are folks thoughts on this? I do like the idea of considering merit instead of being bound to whatever class Blizz has decided gets the next legendary. We were talking about this on vent a bit ago and Chanti mentioned that the obvious choices for our guild are going to be Jess and myself. I think Nkm mentioned that we should put it to a guild vote and that his vote is bribe-able.

Yes, Jess and I will fight over this decision (because seriously when don't we?). But actually the fight will be for the other to take it... so I will be trying to convince him to take the first legendary while he will do the same with me. We'll see who wins...

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Achievements galore!

Lots of achiever-ing (what is the verb form of getting an achievement?) lately, including finally getting Master of Warsong Gulch due to Frenzied Defender. Many thanks to Jess and Nikolai who I dragged into several WSG with me to be able to get this.

So now I just have The Perfect Storm left for Battlemaster. I'm wondering if I should try OpenRaid for it. My other achievement goals before the expansion launches is finishing up Loremaster.

I also finished up Glory of the Cataclysm Hero, for which I ended up tanking a 5 man! So my first foray back into tanking in forever was heroic Stonecore, and yeah it was ugly. I couldn't get enough rage or keep all the mobs together very well. And in the trash right before Ozruk, I think my expansive bear ass ended up pulling half the room.

Anyways, I think I just need a bit more practice and perhaps readjust where abilities are located on my bar to make more sense with how I'd use them. I will say my tanking definitely keeps the healer busy. Poor Bruenok saw plenty of action!

Speaking of bear butts, I could watch this live stream video all day long.

I'm sorry, I couldn't get that work assignment finished because I was watching a live stream of brown bears catching salmon all day.

Reasonable excuse is reasonable?

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Clawcon debrief and loldot

A quick debrief on Clawcon. It was a bit more lowkey this year, and as such I didn't really end up taking that many pics. I don't know, given this was my fourth Clawcon it just become more old friends hanging out.

The boys arrived on Friday and I decided that we should try grilling pizzas up on my rooftop deck. I had Jess take grilling duty, but of course I was right there telling him he was doing it wrong. Actually they turned out pretty well!

Saturday we did a drive up to Bellingham to do some sightseeing and meet up with two other guildies. We tooled around a park there for a bit then spent the afternoon at a brewery.

It was amusing because we ran into a lot of hipsters all weekend (both in Bellingham and Seattle). Hipsters seem to invoke a visceral negative reaction from Nkm. Jess joked that he was going to start a toon named "Hipster" and try to find a fedora and skinny jeans within the game.

I remarked that Nkm would then probably create a toon named "Antihipster". They'd probably stand around dueling all day. I would put my money on Antihipster in such a duel. Skinny jeans really restrict your range of motion.

Sunday was a lazy day of me and Jess making breakfast and just lying around eating, drinking, and watching the Olympics.

We discussed that next year I will do some research so that our "nature-y" outdoor activity would be going out clamming or crabbing. I think it'd be fun and we would be catching our dinner!

It'd be the real life version of when I made the guild get together to fish so we could learn the Seafood Feast. (The guildies think I'm kidding... I'm not).

In our raid last night I actually took my lock into DS. She was in 378 gear and has yet to do Raid Finder (heck I have never done Raid Finder on any toon... crazy I know). Lorosia was also dpsing, during which we affectionately call him lolret. Though he actually does pretty good dps, so he is more ret than lol. We decided we would call Kimchee loldot. She is more lol than dot.

Hooray loldot!

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Preparing for another clawcon

I have a post brewing about why Alliance are so f'in horrible in Eye of the Storm, but that is a post for another day. I need to take medication before I write that post because it gets me so heated up. It's a good thing I don't have blood pressure issues.

Anyways. In happier news, we are preparing for another Clawcon, hosted by yours truly in Seattle this upcoming weekend. It's going to be a smaller Clawcon this year, as a number of folks who live elsewhere weren't able to fly out this year.

I was planning on getting one of the attendees a gift, a real toy bow and arrow with a gift tag:



The story behind this? Our hunter friend Bubble has come with us to kill Deathwing for months now. Months! And not once has the bow dropped for him. Week after week, no bow. It became somewhat of a sad joke. But on Sunday night, finally after 43 Deathwing kills, Bubble got his bow!

I'm super happy for him that he finally got his bow, but I was looking forward to his real life reaction this weekend when I presented him with this gift.

Otherwise I'm planning the meals for this weekend. We're curious to see how much Jess and I can feed Nkm (that gnome can chow down!) and whether we can tie him down to make him eat a salad with fruit and nuts. Salad with pears and walnuts and gorgonzola? Yummers!

So it'll probably be a pretty chill Clawcon, with plans for grilling on my rooftop overlooking the sound. And I'm sure the boys will get some drinking in there as well. We're planning on driving up to Bellingham on Saturday to do some sightseeing as well as visiting Atania.

I'm sure there will be a lot of WoW references into the real life events of the weekend, as well as WoW related puns. Hooray puns! I also have some things around the condo that I need to get Jess to fix. Come on, what else is a WoW hubby good for?

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In non-pvp news

You'd think by my last couple of blog posts that all I did was pvp. Yes, I do a lot of pvp, but some updates from a non-pvp front.

A couple weeks ago I decided to get rid of the second resto spec that I haven't used in a long time and pick up a tanking spec. I haven't used it yet, but I figure if folks want to bring alts in some of our raids I could give tanking a shot. I did read up a bit on bear tanking, but probably need some more lessons:



Though who are we kidding, tanking is just button mashing and counting on healers anyways. What I really need to be doing is finger/hand exercises to make sure they are strong enough for the button mashing and ensuring my keyboard is clean for the facerolling.

On the raiding front, we're less than 3 full runs away from crafting another legendary staff from Firelands for Darc. We were there Sunday night though I cannot even express to you the level of fail from yours truly on heroic Alysrazor. The tornadoes on heroic mode just kill me dead.

My ever loving and supportive guildies (ahem, sarcasm) were giving me plenty of grief over this. And to make it worse I had to be nice to Jess on Sunday night because as a very bad WoW wife, I forgot his birthday on Saturday until really really late in the day. So I couldn't do anything of this sort:

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Checking in on my sanity level

The last 6 weeks were pretty crazy with being on the road pretty much all of June, then doing a short work trip the beginning of this month, as well as hosting my sister for a visit. But I'm finally back in a somewhat regular and more normal schedule for a while.

Hopefully this means I can pick back up on the blogging and blog reading. Did I miss any drama in the blogosphere recently?

In WoW news, let's check on my sanity (or technically lack there of), shall we? Resilient Victory and Master of Arathi Basin, check (finally). Still working on Silverwing Sentinel for Justicar, check.

I have actually picked up grinding for Battlemaster since I will get that achieve before Justicar. To finish Battlemaster I need to first get Eye of the Storm The Perfect Storm. It's EOTS weekend this upcoming weekend, but the prospect of yelling at folks going for middle pains me. I'm just going to have to suck it up and grind for it.

The other two achieves I need are the two flag returning acheives in Warsong. Unfortunately they are really a pain to get #1 a healer and #2 on a laptop with not great framerates. I only need 8 more returns for one, but I'm pretty certain that to be able to return 5 flags in one WSG I'm going to have to do it in a premade group.

So three achieves and I am Battlemaster! In summary in case you were wondering yes, I am still insane.

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For the record

Yep, I'm still around and still playing. However I've been on the road pretty much this entire month. By the end of this month I will have spent 21 nights in a hotel. FML. Thus while I still find time to play, my day time working hours have left little time to blog.

We are still raiding at least once a week, which I think is pretty good for this late in the expansion. Some screenshots after Heroic Z the other week. My guild likes to joke around that I never dispel.





Look, I have proof! So not only did I dispel, but also faerie fired the boss. We like to call it FFFFS or FFSFF ("Faerie Fire for Fuck Sake" or "For Fuck Sake Faerie Fire"). Top dispeller AND faerie fire?!?! Sigh. Carrying 9 others on my shoulders is so exhausting.

Nico/Bruenok and I were talking the other day about his raiding time with us coming to an end this fall due to a move overseas. It makes me sad because we have the strongest healing team we've ever had. Even Lorosia, whose conversations with me tend to go something like this:

Lorosia: This will be interesting, I changed all my keybindings.
Keredria: Why does that matter, don't you just bind that bullshit OP holy radiance to every key anyways?
Lorosia: Yes, but you make me cast might.
Keredria: /sigh

Anyways, in our guild's raiding history, we've usually had one healer who was just a little bit behind the other two. But having three healers who are equally as good means that we can actually take advantage of class strengths in healing strats instead of relying on the stronger healers.

Its so incredibly refreshing not having to worry about a healer's performance. This leaves me to focus on the things that really matter, like blaming the tanks or dps.

Finally, is it bad that I kind of want to see that movie Magic Mike?

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The musical raid that wasn't

Last night was supposed to be our musical Dragon Soul run. However, it didn't really end up being the run I wanted it to be. I think some people appreciated it, but there were enough voices who made it clear that they thought it was lame or didn't give a damn that it just ruined it for me. I stopped doing it after the first two songs.

Here's what gets me. No one except guild and raid leaders understand what its like to continue to keep a raid engaged, in this pre-expansion lull along with Diablo 3 being out. Not everyone is playing Diablo 3. Crazy, but true. So Jess and I are constantly trying to fill our raids, in a time when we have increasing absences along with complete no-shows or last minute cancels. And its only going to get worse this summer. It's not that I begrudge folks missing raids, I understand, things happen. Summer happens. Life happens.

But understand that Jess and I spend a lot of time and energy trying to keep the guild happy. Trying to make our raid time worthwhile and entertaining. Trying to fill holes and find replacements. So that we can at least do something. Perhaps planning so that the eleventh-million-th time we kill boss X in Dragon Soul, it may be a little different. So I not only spent a lot of time to plan out the songs for this musical run, but had also started thinking what else I could do for other runs.

As Beru was listening to me vent last night, we were talking about how guild/raid leaders feel the pressure to keep folks entertained. Almost in a way feeling responsible for their guildies' time in game... that it's still fun. Essentially to continue to entertain somehow. Otherwise we could say, hell lets just cancel all raids until the expansion, right? But we don't. We're still making an effort. I just don't think it's really realized. Finally Beru asked a good question... who is trying to make sure that our time as guild/raid leaders is fun? Mmmm.

I know some folks in the raid did appreciate the musical raid, as they specifically whispered me as such. So I can't put the entire guild in that group. And part of me feels bad that I let the negative voices ruin it for everyone else. But I just couldn't get back in the mood to care and be excited about doing it anymore. Maybe ultimately I wanted it do the musical run because it would have been fun and different for me. For my fun. So maybe I should have told the nay-sayers to shut the hell up and just done it. Oh well. It's over now.

But in case you think a musical run may go over well with your guild, here are my suggestions:

Morchok:
David Essex - Rock On




Zon'ozz:
ACDC - Big Balls



Spongebob makes it even more hilarious.

If I was able to show video for this musical DS run, I would have chosen this version of Jose Gonzales' song Heartbeats:




Yor'sahj:
The Muppets - Rainbow Connection




Hagara:
Run DMC - Walk this Way




Ultraxion:
Queen & David Bowie - Under Pressure



I had a hard time finding options for Ultraxion, and ended up choosing this because of the pressure for everyone except the healers to not screw up the Fading Light and Hour of Twilight. And I love this song.

Edit: Excellent addition with guildie suggestion: Europe - The Final Countdown



Blackhorn:
Billy Joel - We Didn't Start the Fire




Spine:
George Michael - Monkey


Red Hot Chili Peppers - Love Rollercoaster


Had a hard time choosing between these two... I love both songs and think they are both perfect for Spine!


Madness
Puff the Magic Dragon - Peter Paul and Mary



REM - It's the End of the World

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