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?

Read More...

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.

Read More...

Apparently I'm crazy enough

... to be farming Warsong Gulch. Yes my friends, I have officially lost my sanity. Though honestly I was very surprised during my farming last weekend, as I won a lot more than I lost, some of which became insane farm fests. What I learned is that there is a sub-culture of those of us crazy enough to be farming WSG, because I ran into the same people over and over again. And look!

ZOMG! The third cap for Ironman was pretty close. I had several Horde on me when two priests on my team came to save my ass. I was somewhere around the middle of the field when the first priest pulled me forward, then literally a second later I got pulled by the other priest to our tunnel entrance. Priests who know how to use their leap of faith ability well? Hawt. Damn hawt.

I also had the opportunity to run some BGs again Gnomer and his guildies, as well as PP. Topics of discussion during these BG runs? The differences in how we pronounce the word 'banana' and the impending summer for us US folks vs the impending winter for the Aussie folks. They were talking about how cold it was, though celsius temperatures mean nothing to me. I've gotten the time conversion between us down, but I think converting temperatures between C and F is going to be a lot harder.

In other news I been doing a little bit of old world questing to work on Loremaster. The quest rewards have been quite amusing. Two of my favorites from this past weekend?

Unidentified Cooking Utensil

Speaking of which, how come we don't see offhands when you're running around? I mean you can control click on it to "try it on" but when your toon is running around, you don't see the offhand that you see when you're logging in. Weird. If I could always see my offhand, I just my replace my ledger with this pan.

Green Whelp Shoulderguard

These shoulders crack me up because its singular. Just one. Only one shoulder can be protected. What happens to the other shoulder? I guess its the WoW version of those one shoulder tops and dresses girls wear. It amuses me.

Read More...

This is how you bring the world together

As Gnomer already posted about, we had the opportunity to get together to BG this past weekend, along with the lovely Pugnacious Priest and BBB. I was looking forward to BGing with two folks who have the Justicar title and one who has Battlemaster! This is crazy serious business PvP!

No, but seriously, there were folks in our group with very little resilience gear and minimal PvP experience. But I would say that going in together as a group of 10 people willing to work together and having voice communication trumps gear. I also learned a number of things this weekend.

As we were planning to coordinate when we'd all be on, I became an expert in converting PST to Gnomer and PP's time zone, which I affectionately started calling Koala Standard Time. You can now ask me at any moment what time it is for them, and I have it seared in my brain. It's +18 hours from PST. :)

Accents are hawt. Well, that's not something I just learned this weekend, but actually something I already knew. Honestly I have long been a sucker for accents. And let me just say that our first couple of BGs were quite disorienting for myself and my guildies as we were distracted by the incredibly hawt Aussie accents... both male and female. Did we even win our first couple matches? I can't even remember. Why can't us US folks sound so cool? Sigh.

BBB is a nightelf?!?! Ok, so clearly my rational mind should have known that BBB had to have a nightelf form, but in my mind he has always been a bear. Always. Like running around SW, interacting with the auction house, getting things in and out of the bank... as a bear. My mind just never processed him having a nightelf form. So seeing a female nightelf with the tag Bigbearbutt was almost as disorienting as the Aussie accents.

I think it was our second day of BGing together that we started talking about differences in Australia and the US, for example what things cost etc etc. It kind of blew my mind there that here we were, a group of about 4 or 5 Aussies and 4 or 5 Americans BGing together. As Gnomer mentioned, it really did feel like we were one guild. I think this is how you bring the world together... group up to kill Horde! Rawr!

I'm looking forward to doing it again in a couple of weeks! I have a feeling the more I BG with them, the more I may start to use the word 'bugger'. Bugger this... bugger that... it's a nifty little word, bugger!

I do wish we could BG with those crazy Europeans as well. Though honestly a BG with Aussie, Scandinavian, British, and possibly other European accents? Whoa... I might be rendered completely useless. I'm not sure I would be able to adequately heal because I'd be too busy fawning. ;)

Read More...

Weekend roundup

Happy Monday! Hope y'all (you can take the girl out of North Carolina but you cannot take the North Carolina out of the girl) had a good weekend. As for me I went skiing yesterday, which means I am a big bundle of soreness today. While skiing, a guy ran into me and we collided pretty hard. Fortunately I always ski with a helmet on, and I clearly heard a loud clang as my head hit something hard.

I warned the raid last night that if I was particularly nice to Jess or our holy pally Lorosia last night, that I may be experiencing some side effects from a minor concussion. It probably wouldn't have been being actually nice so much as just being really quiet and agreeable and without opinion that would have signaled some level of illness for me. (Emphasis on without opinion). But fortunately last night's raid proved that while my neck is sore as heck, I am just fine. Just ask the raid. ;)

Last night was also the first raid with our newest guildie Heili. I'm quite excited to have her join us because we have doubled the number of females in our raid to a whopping two, increasing the intelligence and general coolness of our raids exponentially. I also love that she plays melee dps (very well by the way... giving our boys a good run for their money last night).

So I've mentioned recently that we have been without guild drama for a really really long time. It feels kind of odd to not have to worry the guild, whether that is due to new guildies who don't work out, performance issues, or even just recruiting. With people leaving the game and all the turn over in guilds lately, I know we've been really lucky to not have to worry about recruiting. We've been able to add new guildies when needed who are friends of friends.

Now saying there is no guild drama isn't saying that we don't drive each other crazy, because we do. But its very much like being driven crazy by your brother or sister. You get irritated, but then you get over it because you're family. There are 9 of us who have been raiding together for 15 months now... while 6 of the 9 have been raiding together for almost 3 years? Then Jess and I have been playing together for over 5 years now.

Also this past weekend was Isle of Conquest weekend. I did a significant number of Isles on Saturday both on K and my level 81 shadow priest. You know, I'm not sure that there is a BG that generates as many opinions on strategy than Isle. I mean you go into an AB... WSG... EOTS... any of the other BGs, the strat is going to be pretty similar match to match.

But Isle? Well for Horde I guess its easy, they go Workshop, at least on my battlegroup. But for Alliance? Everyone spends the two minutes before the gates go up saying there is only one way to win. Docks! All go Workshop! Split docks and hanger evenly! But you know what? I saw wins and losses with various strats and combos of taken nodes.

But sure enough, there's bound to be that one person each Isle, adamant that strategy X is the only way to win. Myself, I think people underestimate the importance and impact of the Quarry and Refinery. Anyways did you guys do Isle this weekend? Thoughts on Isle strategy?

Read More...

PvP talk

So I was looking at my statcounter logs the other week and I kid you not, someone actually found this blog with this exact search: "I'm not bossy I just have better ideas". This is why statcounter rocks! Hmmm.... so I wonder if I should self reflect on this for a moment.

Ok, self reflection done. Speaking of being bossy and having better ideas let's talk about bgs for a bit, shall we? So I was in a Warsong Gulch over the weekend and there was a pretty undergeared hunter carrying the flag. He was getting targeted by a bunch of Horde who came after him and eventually he died. He then decided to question my healing of him. He said something to the effect of: "I'm getting targeted and all you do is cast the green aoe healing circle"?

To which I responded, "Hello, swiftmend"? So this huntard decides to criticize my healing when he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about? Let's just say I had some words with this guy. I probably should have taken screenshots but I was too hot to think straight.

Folks have asked me why or how I can pvp so much. And yes, I readily admit that it can be painful. PvP definitely has really high highs and really low lows. You have to remember those highs when you're in those lows. And likewise remember that you'll be back in those lows when you're in those highs. Despite our joking of alliance being bad at pvp, I do think that overall it balances out.

I think for myself I am addicted to the pvp rush. Whether its the rush of having a bunch of Horde trying taking you down, the rush of completely annihilating a team, or the rush of your blood boiling because of your own ridiculous team. In pve I may get frustrated, but I wouldn't say that I really get mad. But in pvp, its that rush of adrenaline whether from anger or exhilaration that has got me hooked.

Anyways, Sam, Violent, and I were doing some bgs together last night. Between all our pvp toons, the three of us probably have well over 200,000 honor kills. We were talking about what drives us crazy in different bgs. Here is my personal list.

How to drive K crazy in battlegrounds:

10. Twin Peaks or Warsong: A flag carrier that runs away from the healers when they are targeted, then proceeds to blame you for their death when you were being expertly cced.

9. Strand of the Ancients: Running instead of using the portals to quickly jump back to defend.

8. Arathi Basin: Teams that are overly defensive or overly offensive. Yay, lets have 7 people defending stables! (Though I think these 7 people would be related to #1 below). Or let's just constantly rush bases and have no one defend!

7. Strand of the Ancients: Folks who can't tell the difference between the green and blue gates.

6. Isle of Conquest: The fact that Alliance always takes Docks but can't defend the glaives worth shit.

5. Alterac Valley: Standing on noob hill instead of defending West and East Towers, allowing a rogue or druid to recap.

4. Battle of Gilneas: Teams that rush 8 folks to WW, see that no Horde are coming across, yet get all the way to WW, waste precious time there, then wonder why LH was lost. You can see them running across! If you see no red running across to WW, run back to LH or go to Mines. Quickly.

3. Strand of the Ancients: Taking the Southern graveyard when you're attacking.

2. Eye of the Storm: Having over half of your team go for the middle/flag instead of towers. Those who go for the middle when your team is down 3 towers to 1 deserve a special place in hell.

1. Any BG: Being afraid of dying. The penalty for dying is nothing in this game. Don't go do something stupid that won't help your team or will mean a certain death, but sometimes you have to take chances. So if you're afraid of dying, don't pvp.

Read More...

PvP achievements - Have I gone mental?

Yes, the title of this post says it all. I've actually been on vacation in Chapel Hill for a week so one of the things I've been working on this past week was pvp achievements. I've gotten 11 pvp achieves in the last 5 days, though a number of those were ones that I've been working on for a while. I actually have finished all of the Isle of Conquest achievements so that I now only need 22 more wins for Isle of Conquest Veteran to get Master of Isle of Conquest. Perhaps I'll do a separate post on how to get Master of Isle of Conquest, which I feel is the easiest BG master to earn.

Anyways, some thoughts on grinding pvp achievements. First, grind the achieves during the battleground weekend. The reason I've been doing Isle for a couple of days is because it was the bg this past weekend. Thus, queues are going to be short. Also it seems that when you run the bgs on its bg weekend, you're more likely to get in a bg that is going to run either side of the spectrum. Meaning you're going to trounce the other side (and thus get some of the harder to get achievements) or you're going to get trounced.

I found that in some ways running the bgs for achievements made the losses less frustrating, because you're at least working towards some goal. Though yes, having a bg end when you're just one step away from finishing one of the All Star achievements does make it frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I came one thing away from Alterac Valley All Star.

It's also quite frustrating that a lot of the achievements are very difficult for healers to earn for one reason or another. I tried to work on To the Rescue, but when Horde is always focus firing healers first, its really hard. Grrr. And add to that the fact that some are more difficult for alliance (for example the fact that Horde always take Workshop in Isle, at least on my battlegroup).

However, what I found the most difficult about going for many of these achievements is that it goes completely against your purpose and role in the bg, particularly if you're a healer. I wrestled with that in some of the bgs, especially in the smaller bgs where you're making a bigger difference. There were some achievements that I only went for after it was clear that my side was going to lose, though even then I felt a bit guilty because there is always the possibility of a come back. Even in the large bgs, like Isle, it just made no sense for me to hang back to finish Cut the Blue Wire... No the Red Wire! when I should have been rushing and defending docks.

Anyways, we'll see how long I keep up with this push towards the pvp achievements. Hopefully I can keep my sanity in the process.

Read More...

50,000 Honor Kills... how did I get here?

Two words. Holy crap. 50,000 honor kills, that is a lot of killin'. Or healing to help support the killing in my case. So what have I learned in this journey to 50k? First, you're going to die a lot. You just have to accept it and be ok with it. Rez, dust yourself off and carry on. Second, there are no short cuts.

It's one kill at a time. And being Alliance, this has been painful. There are still so many who don't know how the battlegrounds work. Yes, I'm talking about you "thee who stays at stables with 12 others in AB"... and how can I forget about you, "thee who goes for flags when we are down 3-1 bases in Eye of the Storm". What else... what else... oh yeah all the f'in afkers and those who bitch about the heals when Horde are so good at immediately targeting and taking down heals.

Sometimes I've tried in a nice way to guide or direct people. Maybe though some folks just can't be taught.

Now when we're talking pvp, how can we forget the bitching and whining? Honestly I don't understand how people can type and bitch so much during pvp. Um, doesn't that prevent you from hmmm, doing what you're supposed to be doing? I did a lot of bgs and Tol Barads this past weekend in the final push to this achievement. Given I was doing so many, yes my fuse was short when faced with these folks.

I was in an AB with this particularly whiny priest who started bitching very early on and continued throughout, even when it was close and not clear which way the battle was going to go. I told them that they were welcome to leave the group, to which I was told that I was welcome to fuck myself. I said, typical response and noted that maybe if this person would bitch less and dps more, we'd be doing better. This shadow priest did 600,000 dmg where I was just under 3 million in healing.

I think overall its been 50/50 in terms of whether I ignore these guys or engage them and tell them to stfu. Sometimes its just easy to let it all go and say its not worth it, but then sometimes I get so irritated and mad at these guys and have to have my say. Is raging at nerd rage nerd rage as well? But oh God... the nerd rage! Nerf nerd rage in 4.1 please.

I do have to say though that there have been plenty of folks who are incredibly grateful for good heals from someone in full resilience gear who is also running around rooting and cycloning folks. There have been many many times where people have whispered me, cheered at me, hugged me, or typed in chat, thanking and praising my heals. That has always been nice and rewarding and I try to remember those moments the next time I'm in a painful bg.

So any particular class I hate the most in pvp?

Mmm not particularly. I wonder how many patches of pvp related nerfs/buffs these 50k honor kills relate to. Because I've been through all the phases of various OP-ness... rogues... ret pallys... dks... warriors... though right now the that class makes me cry in bgs are those darned pesky mages. Nerf mages!

My favorite bg of all time? Arathi Basin, hands down. Back in BC I probably would have said that AB was a tie with Alterac Valley. But my love for AV has diminished a bit (defend Balinda plz since Horde will defend Galv kkthxbai), while not changing for AB. If I just want to do some real pvp, I'll queue directly for AB.

I think the nature of pvp and what makes many people enjoy it, makes it less likely that you're going to have a lot of healers. So why do I do it? How did I start? Well I started back in the BC days when you needed to pvp to get certain gear to raid in. But now? Well, yes I've gotten addicted to the adrenaline rush, even with the associated swearing that comes with it. I also love the satisfaction of being able to last much longer than I should against 3 or 4 Horde.

But more than that, when I pvp on K, I feel like I can have a real measurable effect on the outcome of the bg. Especially if I'm in one of the smaller 10-15 man bgs... a good healer or two makes all the difference. It's perhaps that feeling of knowing that you could be the game changer that keeps me at it.

When I got the achievement, Chanticleer noted that I was now half way to 100k and thus getting the "of the Alliance" title. But my gosh... 100k is pretty freakin' crazy! While I doubt that I will make it to 100k, I'm not done pvping. I may step back just a bit since I've been recently grinding bgs and Tol Barad like crazy to get this achievement. I need to give my blood pressure a break. =) But I'll be back at it. As long as I am playing this game, pvp is an integral part of the game for me!

*P.S. I'd like to thank my guild for putting up with all the caps lock and profanity laced tree rage in guild chat during many of these 50k honor kills.

Read More...

I want hakas before pvp!

The national rugby union team of New Zealand, the All Blacks, traditionally perform a haka before their international rugby matches. War hakas were traditionally performed by Maori warriors before battle, in order to intimidate their opposition and show their strength and prowess. Amazingly enough the All Blacks started performing hakas all the way back to 1884, when they first toured overseas.

Here are the All Blacks before a match against England:

Here are two more amusing videos of the All Blacks performing a haka, though both are against the national team of Tonga, another country with tribal roots. And the Tonga team responds with a war dance of their very own!

The white All Blacks player at the head of this haka below totally cracks me up:

PvP has been on my mind a lot lately because I am grinding towards the 50,000 HK achievement. I have about 2,500 kills to go. I think if you get 50k HKs as an alliance toon, you should get some sort of extra credit for the achievement compared to getting it as Horde. Seriously.

But can't you just imagine performing a haka before your next AB or WSG or Strands match? =) Heck, the alliance could use anything to help us in our bgs... /sigh.

Read More...

Arena Update

Arena Season 8 has been out for 3 weeks now. I have been involved in a 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 team this season, which is interesting because I have to definitely alter not only my strategy, but my choice of trinkets based on the team. With 3 teams it sometimes gets crazy and I don't end up getting matches in for each team every week, but its been pretty fun so far. The fact that I entered this season having a decent chunk of last season's gear, plus a previous season of experience has been very valuable.

We've gotten in somewhat of a regular schedule by doing 2s and 3s on weekend mornings when we can, then getting in our 5s on Monday nights. Though I wonder if we should tweak this at all due to our biological clocks:

Apparently we should be getting in our arena matches between 2:30 and 3:30 pm! Hmmmm... Anyways, we probably had the most experience from last season on our 2s and 3s teams. We haven't done a ton of matches on either teams, but I am hopeful we can get more in (especially on our 3s team!). Though Wut, Muriel (Jess' disc priest), and I had an epic 3v3 match two weeks ago:

Yep, 23 freakin minutes... only to lose. Grrrr. I know their matchmaking value was higher than ours, but we should have won! Especially since their pally ended up rezing their priest after Wut already took the priest down. Double grrrrr!!!

Now I think our 5s team is just starting to get the hang of things this season. I remember the few matches we did last season... and they were just a painful bloody blur. But this season we are much more experienced and better geared. Last night we put our 5v5 team over the 1000 rating, so its been a great start.

I find that I get a good number of folks who land on this blog after searching for something like "resto druid arena" in Google. For those just starting out with arena, frustrated at your performance, it sucks, but the best advice I can give is to be patient. It really does take about a season of painful losses (and gearing up with arena level gear) to understand your abilities and how they mesh with your partners, how to communicate within your team, using line of sight, and how to quickly react to your opponents. I think a lot of teams give up too quickly in their first season, thinking they suck.

I've thought about trying to talk a bit about what I do in arena matches, and how my strategy may change in 2s vs 3s vs 5s. But there is so much of arena that is variable. A lot does depend on your partners. Are they melee? Casters? What kind of CC do they have? Then of course your tactics also are going to change based on the class composition of your opponents, then reacting to what they do.

But I can try to summarize a bit of what we do. In terms of our first choice targets, it seems to go priests, locks, rogues, then perhaps elemental shammys or hunters. I am so conscious of not leaving priests unattended. The ping sound of mana burns landing on me gives me nightmares.

Now in terms of what I do. In 2s (I play with Wut a ret pally), I am almost always the first target. So I typically throw up hots on myself, then get ready to trinket out of their first CC. If things get bad I cry out for Wut's bubble, but then work on cycloning the opposing healer so Wut can take their dps down. If we are against two dps, I try to root whatever melee dps there may be so they aren't beating on me. In 2s I tend to use trinkets with armor, stam, and resilience because its pretty likely they will be beating on me.

In our 3v3 team, we typically always run with a priest. And the priest is the first target almost all of the time. So I tend to switch out to pvp trinkets that max spell power here, but my first moves are a combination of keeping our priest healed up along with rooting and cycloning their healers.

And 5s? Well 5s are really a whirling dervish of craziness. But I tend to keep my spellpower pvp trinkets for our 5s team as well, and my first moves are typically focused on cycloning the opposing healer. Since we run our 5s team with at least two healers, its nice that I can spend a couple seconds getting the CC off knowing that the other healer will be healing as well.

How about you guys? How's Season 8 going for you so far?

Read More...

A note for my PVP gear

If you guys haven't noticed by now, I'm a bit of an internet and blog junkie. My Google reader is a bit insane. Anyways, today I share with you a pic I came across from passiveaggressivenotes.com which is a hilarious site where you can laugh at how crazy people are.

I love the XOXO touch at the end.

In terms of an arena update, we haven't been able to arena regularly for the last two weeks. Plus, last night I was hoping to get some matches in, but Drenden was down all night! So we won't end up getting any arena points this week. Damn you Seattle server data center place (techy technical words ftw)! Damn you!

I think what we've found is that we do best in 3v3s when we run with two healers, myself and a disc priest. Its fun for whatever dps we take as the third person because they don't have to coordinate with another deeps and can do whatever the heck they want to do.

We're also trying to run more 5v5s, which we run with 3 healers, myself and TWO disc priests. The set up allows us to stay standing a decent amount, even against 1800 rated 5v5 teams. The last time we ran this 5v5 set up, we did pretty darned well going 9-5 or something like that!

Read More...

ABsolutely ABsurd AB

I've recently mentioned how AB is my favorite BG now, especially since on the Emberstorm battlegroup, alliance seem to have learned how to play it. Now someone was reminding me the other night how a long long time ago I was painfully grinding AB marks for some pvp upgrade I needed. The grind was so incredibly torturous, that I forbid anyone to put the letters A and B together in guild chat, because it was that painful for me.

So its really nice to be able to play AB and actually have fun from it now. I think its also a lot better practice ground for arena than AV, which I used to play a lot. A couple of funny stories from my recent AB adventures:

1. Are we all healers here?

In one of my matches, I was going from base to base as needed. Someone called out that they needed help at the blacksmith, so off I went. Now once I got there, there ended up being 5 of us alliance at the blacksmith. So there we are going at it against 5 or 6 hordies. Now a minute or so passes, and I don't see much changing. The 5 of us are still all up, as are the horde. What was going on?

Well what was going on, was that all 5 of us alliance there at the blacksmith were healers. Four druids and a shammy. LAWL. I /s-ed, 'Are we all healers here'? We all laughed, and one person asked in battleground chat 'Um, can we get one dps to the blacksmith please'? A warlock came over soon after and we took them down. It was so funny though, that all 5 of us ended up being healers!

2. I'm just going to follow you around, ok?

I find that its not very common to find healers in BGs that have a lot of resilience. Thus, once folks realize that I can heal them to death while staying alive, they start to enjoy their "pocket healer". I've had multiple melee folks say that they will just start following me around to whatever base I decide we need to attack or defend so that they can get my sweet sweet healz. (Ok, maybe I exaggerated one or two sweet there).

The only drawback to this is when folks start to boast in battleground chat about their high number of honor kills with only zero or one death. When they do this, I do have to set them in their place, reminding them in battleground chat as well that it was only because I was healing their ass.

3. Cyclone: you are evil. But I love you.

There were many times it was just me and one hordie at a base in AB. Well clearly, I'm not going to be able to take them down. But hell if I'm going to let them take the base. So I'd just cyclone them over and over and ask in battleground chat for someone to come help me.

If I was being continuously cycloned, I would be seriously pissed. Its an eeevil eeevil spell. But oh, do I love it so!

Read More...

So this is how it feels to be Horde, aye?

Last weekend was Arathi Basin weekend for us. I tend to be more an AV gal, but since it was AB weekend, I decided to check it out a bit. OMFG... I played maybe 6 games in a row and won all 6. Only one was close, the other 5 were pretty much blowouts. I probably ended up playing 10 and lost only 1.

What? Alliance actually communicating and working together in AB? What? Alliance understanding the subtle balance between attacking and defending in AB? Knowing when to attack, when to defend, and how many folks are needed for each?

It actually was a thing of beauty, to see so many Alliance BG teams working so well together and understanding how AB is scored. It did show me that yes, Alliance can win more than just AV. But you know what I thought? This is how it must feel to be Horde.

Read More...

Getting back into PVP

I tend to go through a lot of phases in WOW. As Jess mentioned at times I am an herbing/farming machine while other times I am all about the PVP. My BG of choice has always been AV. Why? Well I love it because I can choose to do either run with the lead pack or stay back, stealth around in kitty form, and try to take back bunkers and work on defense. We have so many great options as a druid in AV.

Now I stopped doing AV for a good while earlier this year when every single AV I entered was horribly lopsided with 40 horde to 20 or so alliance. But this past weekend I saw that it was an AV weekend, and thought I'd check it out again. A couple of things.

We are back in the days of AV being alliance again (at least on Drenden)! Yay, I really like these days. :) Secondly, I definitely do not think that I am great by any means, but I do really enjoy giving the horde some trouble. Whether that is healing other players or taking on horde one on one or two on one or three on one! What I often find is that when I'm doing BGs I make up these conversations in my head.

Let's look at some of these conversations. Now when I am healing others in BGs I never do it in tree form. I know we have the armor bonus and we don't have a movement reduction now, but please I think shifting into tree form is just asking to get yourself killed.

K: Ooh look, there's 3 or 4 alliance folks taking on 6 or 7 horde! Let's heal them! Bring it horde! Let's see if you can out dps my healz!

(Then I imagine what the horde players might be saying)

Hordie: WTF? Why is this ally not going down? They keep getting healed!
K: Muahahaha

Now one or two on one, I am not going to kill you by any means (Hello I am healer?), but I will most likely get away. Three or four on one, yes I'll probably die, but I still enjoy seeing how long I can last. It's often quite longer than you'd think and I take some pride in being pesky.

Hordie: Ooh look! A fresh little piece of ally druid meat! Let's kill them!
K: Aaah, young hordie, its not going to be as easy as it may look!
Barkskin
Instant heal
Root or cyclone
Shift into travel form
Throw horde a wave or a kiss
Run away

I love it. I really do. So now I'm sitting at a resilience of 530 and still need to get a PVP cloak, rings, and trinkets. Let's take a look at what my PVP gear looks like shall we?

Hee hee! I quite love how pretty the dress is and how it all matches. And yes, while at first I was disturbed by the helm, I kind of like it now. I think it sends a strong message of "Don't f'in mess with me".

Read More...

K's update

Hope everyone has been having a good holidays! I've been doing a bunch of things lately in game with some of this extra time I've had lately. Some updates.

1. Rep
I hit revered with the Oracles, which I wanted to do to get Mysterious Egg. I am hoping it hatches into a pet later this week. I also hit exalted with the Kaluak, so I have my own Pengu! Currently, I am at 44 pets, and am quickly approaching the 50 needed to get the little skunk. Issues I tell ya, issues.

While it doesn't give you a pet, I also hit honored with the dirty minded Sons of Hodir folks (come on, quests like Thrusting the Spear? Blowing the Horn? Polishing the Helm?). So now I have their honored shoulder enchant, which is good enough for now.

Anyways, here's me and Pengu in quiet contemplation. Actually I am bemoaning how difficult it is to find those books in Dalaran for the Higher Learning achievement. Pengu is lending a sympathetic ear.

2. PVP
Now that I'm doing less dailies, I have more time to PVP! Jess says PVP K scares her, to which I can only say, "Rawr!". I've been doing a number of Wintergrasps and have recently become a huge fan of Strand of the Ancients. I guess Strand is the alliance's new AV. While I am sad to see that every AV I've been in lately has been a lopsided mess (about 15 ally to 35+ horde), I am enjoying our new AV, Strand of the Ancients.

My first pvp gear reward of this expansion is Hateful Gladiator's Pendant of Salvation. I am next going for Hateful Gladiator's Cloak of Salvation or Hateful Gladiator's Cloak of Deliverance. I am so overloaded with spirit lately (my spirit to intellect ratio is out of whack), that I am starting to look at mp5. Plus these pieces have such high mp5 stats, with more mp5 than its equivalent spirit amount. Anyways, I believe I will be using both pieces for pve for a while.

3. Gear/instances
We've been running tons of heroics. I picked up a very nice but sad sounding mace, War Mace of Unrequited Love. To go with this, I turned in some emblems of heroism for Handbook of Obscure Remedies and Idol of Lush Moss.

Here's how K is looking now (updated pic to the right). I also had the chance to heal a 10 man Archavon and Obsidian Sanctum. We are planning on doing our first guild Naxx very soon.

4. Random other stuff
I'm still working on getting the fishing achievement and salty title. Getting that rare fish for The One That Didn't Get Away is driving me up the wall. I'm also on track to getting the cooking achievement and chef title, though I still have a bit to go to learn the 45 Northrend recipes. But here is K after having done the Critter Bites achievement with her posse of turkeys.

In running around Dal for the Higher Learning achievement (read 8 books you find in Dalaran which will give you a pet), I came across the City Historian. Seriously... this is how the City Historian dresses?

Read More...

PVP should come with a cautionary warning

I forgot to mention that I did finally get that pvp belt. Three straight days of pvp to grind the AB marks and the 17,850 honor was a bit much. Jess said that it seemed unhealthy for me as I would often express my anger and frustration in guild chat. There were outbursts like "F'in rogues! Except Ata... I love Ata" and "F'in idiots... all of them!"

Seriously though, PVP should come with a warning sign. When you enter a battleground, this is what you should see on the gates before it opens up.

Ok now I'm really off to pack.

Read More...

Overheard around the mana cooler this week

A lot of times there are little things said here and there within the guild that aren't enough to mention one by one. So I thought I'd compile a couple from the last week or so that I thought was funny.

1. Keredria: I should be able to hibernate Adamas when he gets too rowdy in bear or cat form.

2. Kaho: So where did we get the name The Left Claw from?
Daihiro: Its because on a crab, the left claw has the most meat.
Keredria: Because if there's one thing we are, its meaty!

3. Keredria: My cable and internet were out for a while today!
Niobar: Oh, is it back now?
Keredria: Um, I'm on here now aren't I?
Niobar: Withdraws question...

4. (during a heroic Bot run in reference to some mobs that you shouldn't engage when they're red)
Jessika: But isn't red a color of good luck in China?
Keredria: Yes, but this is Bot Jess, not China.

There is a pvp belt, Guardian's Kodohide Belt that I am grinding marks and rep for because it is better than my current pvp and pve belt. So there I am doing AB runs to get the 40 marks needed. Fortunately I did have 22 already in the bank. I finished with 41 marks over 15 AB runs, with a final record of 2-13. Yes, 2 wins, 13 losses. It was painful. I told my guildies that no one is to even put the first two letters of the English alphabet together in a word to me any time soon, so that means don't say ABsolutely... ABdominal... ABacus...

I'm sure that anyone who runs a lot of battlegrounds has posted these kinds of pet peeves before. But why is it that Alliance often goes into a match thinking/expecting to lose? Yes, I understand that we are often outmatched by the Horde, but why don't we even try? Also why is it that the person whining the most that we suck and don't know what we're doing is the one who never does anything? In a number of my matches, when someone would start berating everyone else, I'd pop open the bg table and see where they were in damage or healing. There was one guy once who was at the very very bottom of the dmg list, with no healing. So of course I had to chime in, saying that maybe if he would shut up, start playing, and do more damage, we would do better?

I was in another match where two folks sat back in Trollbane Hall for the first half of the match. After I sent repeated afk notices for them, I guess they got some notice (I don't know what happens when you are marked afk in a bg), because they came down to the stables area, hit one thing, then yelled that whoever tried to boot us afk, it didn't work. They stood in the little shack behind the stables for the rest of the match.

So to you, Ganighmava and Apruder of the guild Constant Fear on the Antonidas server, a big F you to you from me. (You guys know I never name names on here... but these punks just got me too pissed off).

Read More...

Oh noes, the corn! Save the corn!

Last night we did a couple of guild battleground runs for the first time. Jess needed 20 AB marks to get the arena season 2 tanking shoulders as who knows when the ones of Netherspite will drop for her. I am in my final push for just 1,000 more honor to get Merciless Gladiator's Salvation. And yes, I am also going to use it for pve, the topic of which has been creating quite an uproar on BBB's blog. I actually started Kara with quite a bit of pvp gear on as it was the best gear I could get at the time. And likewise, I will be equipping this pvp mace for pve as Maiden and Prince haven't been dropping their maces, plus this pvp mace has some ridiculous +healing on it. Does this make me somewhat less of a pve healer? Meh... you can think that if you want, but for me I am currently trying to get my +healing to as high a number as possible. If you got a problem with that, I say "No healz for you!"

Anyways, back to last night. Jess hasn't been all that big into battlegrounds, Vel and Nio had never been before (omg noobs!), while Adamas (on his new 70 hunter Ricochet) and I had the most experience. We started out with the five of us going to an AB together. As the battleground leader, I was able to move the groups around so that the five of us were all in one group and I marked each one of us so that we would easily stand out. Our strategy? Go for the corn! Yes, that would be the farm. I ran a number of ABs last weekend with some hilarious people who were all about the alliance going all out from the very beginning to push for the farm. When the farm would be attacked, it was "Oh noes, the corn! Save the corn!" We'd then make sure the rest of the team had the other bases then cut Horde off from their starting house.

This strategy worked out pretty well for us in this first run and the five of us became a little roving gang of offensive trouble. When we'd get the farm, we'd leave a couple of other people from the team to defend it and go for LM or the mine. We made a nice little team, a warrior, two hunters, a fire mage, and resto druid. Jess, with all her health was a nice little piece of meat bait for us, I barely had to heal her except when warlocks got on her. (p.s. I hates those warlocks in bgs!) Anyways, so Jess would just storm the flag and try to get all the attention on her, I would run around in circles healing, while Nio, Ric, and Vel just stood from a distance and burned people down. We pretty much had 3-2 or 4-1 bases most of this game, and I like to think that this alliance team won because of the 5 of us. It was pretty fun to be on vent as a group and I was glad that Nio and Vel sort of seemed to enjoy their first bg.

We then brought in more guildies and friends of guildies to do a WSG and a couple more ABs. However the problem is that once you start queing in larger premade groups, it seems that you get matched up against Horde premade teams that are in all pvp gear or with at least 300+ resilience. So yeah, once we went in with premade teams of 8-9, we got our asses whooped as most of our team weren't in pvp gear. I wish we could continue to do larger premade guild runs of bgs for fun and get matched up with Horde teams that are of similar pvp gear.

What was funny about doing our first guild bgs was how the new people reacted to it. I tried to prepare Nio and Vel by saying that in doing bgs, you have to accept the fact that you may die a lot and you may encounter ridiculous and annoying people on your team. So in one of the ABs where we were getting our asses handed to us, there was this one pesky (but yes, very very good rogue) that was giving us a lot of trouble. He seemed to keep going after Vel. After a couple of deaths, Vel yells out something to the effect of "Get that f'in rogue!" Whoa. We all paused for a moment, then started laughing. It was pretty hilarious, hearing something like that come out of the mouth of our sweet and innocent mage. But then again, maybe all that fire she breaths out as a fire mage also translates into the types of words that come out of her mouth?

Read More...

You down with PVP? Yeah you know me

I mentioned earlier this week that I would do a post on my experience in battlegrounds. I've certainly done my share, as I am in nearly full pvp gear and have over 10,000 kills. But I still consider myself a noob in many ways. Yes, I know the BG strategies, but I feel my reaction time one on one is still slow. It is sorta fun to see if someone can out-damage your heals. Its also fun to have a couple of horde on you, who they thought was an easy kill as a healer. With my resilience at over 300 now, it ain't so easy. Even if I die, I enjoy trying to making it as difficult as possible. :) But here are some of my thoughts and tips as a novice resto druid BGer. Those who really know what they are doing probably have some more ideas.

Quick note: make a second action bar. For a long time I just used my main action bar, then would have to go up above the action bar and click on certain pvp spells that I never use soloing or raiding. For example, hibernate and cyclone. Also barkskin for me regularly isn't on my first action bar, its on that bar above. But its definitely on my pvp action bar.

So here are my preferences in BGs and what I do in them:
1. Alterac Valley: AV is my favorite. In a group of 40, I feel the healers can hide a bit more in the crowd. Half the time I like to go with offense, sometimes going to get Iceblood GY and Drek, sometimes rushing to get Relief Hut. The other half of the time I like to be on defense, and many times there aren't enough on defense. One little habit I've picked up lately is if Alliance is behind on getting the towers and we have absolutely no defense, I use my little AV trinket (Stormpike Insignia Rank 6) to port back to Dun Baldar. I port back in kitty form and as soon as Im in Dun Baldar, hit prowl. Then I stealth around to our bunkers and try to get them back. Half the time, the Horde assume no one is there and sit just waiting to go in to Vann. Its sorta fun spoiling their fun, even if we lose. Hey, that's what they get for leaving the bunkers unguarded.

2. WSG: As a druid, you will be a good option for the flag carrier. So I am often on offense in WSG. I run over to their side, go up the ramp and while I am above their flag, I cast a couple of HOTs on myself. Then I jump down in kitty form and snatch their flag. Hopefully run out ok, then switch into travel cheetah form. Your advantage as a druid here is your many forms. If you get stuck, switch forms to try to undo whatever was done. I've also been really close to capping the flag, but with a couple of hordies on me. Then I try to cast some heals on myself, switch into bear form and try to last to the cap.

3. Arathi Basin: I haven't done any AB in a while, but I just usually see what the team needs, whether its defense somewhere or pushing offense somewhere else.

4. Eye of the Storm: I think my least favorite BG has to be EOTS. I don't know if its because most of my EOTS end up as losses. As a druid, you could be a good option to run the flag, but my peeve with EOTS is that a lot of the Alliance teams I've been on lately don't seem to understand the basic strategy of EOTS. Please stop fighting in the middle and trying to get the flag when we are down 3-1 in posts. Ok? Thanks.

Read More...

New screenshots

Well this weekend had quite a few things happen and I have a couple of new screenshots to share. First, our Kara runs this weekend had us going up to and downing Shade. This was our second time getting him, but strangely it wasn't all that satisfying. I was just kinda meh about it. Oh, but Maiden did finally drop one of the drops I've been waiting on her for: Mitts of the Treemender. And that night we had Romulo and Julianne for Opera and Romulo's Poison Vial finally dropped for Atania as well! Wow two long awaited drops in one night!

We also made three good attempts at Prince. I would say this was our first real night at him. We tried once before, but it was really really late. Anyways, we wiped each time in phase 2. It was myself and Lonebear, another resto druid healing and it was very very tough to keep our tank up during phase 2. I think we are trying again tonight and bring a third healer, a priest. The run did give me enough badges to get Gown of Spiritual Wonder. See new pic of K to the right. Ooh so pretty! I am also wondering if for the second half of Kara I need to focus less on spirit and MP5 stats and more on +healing. I did a little bit of regemming this weekend for that.

Oh and when we did chess, King's Defender dropped yet again, which no one needed or could use. We didn't have a disenchanter with us, so guess what we did? Our mage friend Alorya asked for it for fun, so if you see a mage running around with the King's Defender... its probably her. Oh and she's probably going to enchant it with +intellect or +fishing or something crazy like that. LOL!

Now I continue to do the fishing dailies because, well... duh, its me. A week or so after they started these dailies, I was awarded my croc friend Muckbreath. I love clicking on him to hear his little groaning sound he makes. Here's the two of us in Nagrand. Oh and what's that hat I'm wearing? Well that was another award I got a while back from a fishing daily, Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat. I think it matches my new dress quite nicely. I love it, because I never need to carry around lures anymore.

So I already have one croc pet, but low and behold, this weekend, I got a friend for Muckbreath, Toothy! Here's the two of us in Zanga. Now I just need their siblings, Chuck and Snarly.

Finally, this weekend I got enough WSG marks to get Gladiator's Kodohide Legguards. Now I know I said that was development need #4, but doing battlegrounds is the one thing on that list I can do by myself. So I went a bit crazy and ran WSG and AV (it was AV weekend) until I felt I could do them in my sleep. I now have the full Kodohide set! Just call me Ms. Spidey. I also slapped on Glyph of the Gladiator on my pvp helm, available at revered rep with SSO. Next I will probably go for Gladiator's Salvation as suggested by Mosshoof. After such a heavy bg weekend, I have a couple thoughts on running bgs as a resto druid. I am by no means really good at pvp... my reaction time is still way too slow, but I'm getting better. I'll probably post a separate post about this later this week.

Read More...