GnomeDruid

This weeks section of “Is it a full moon?” and other muck-ups:

• Mistaking a Frost Wyrm flask for your Endless Mana Potion
• Getting into a virtual slap fight over summoning for raids
• Only one Pepsi left in the house.
• The cheating Argent jousters who somehow manage to shield break AND Charge in the same moment.
• Realizing I can’t do my normal round of Icecrown Dailies on Tim because I haven’t unlocked Shadow Vault quests yet.
• Winning a really great item … with a roll of 1.
• Logging into game when trying to post is not great for productivity, either.

Great night for raiding, huh?

Our Sunday night raid was a little less stellar than normal last night. Ignis was giving us fits, as was Kologarn. (Shockingly, we 1 shot Council which has not been par for the course.) Things were fine after we brought a 7th healer in. I think it was just a combination of bad timing (2 or 3 healers getting grabbed at once on Kolo) and slightly lesser geared folks.

I fully admit Tim is one of the latter. Unbuffed (prior to last night) he was sitting at 1821 healing, which is not great for the content we were attempting. Before we got the extra healer, there were some fights where I just ran out of mana for all the heals going out.

I still feel, too, like I’m in the process of learning this whole healing thing. I was in a Naxx25 pug on Saturday night and I think I did pretty well, got a compliment from the raid leader, at least. ^_^ *preens*

Have to give props to the Sunday night group though, we got Auriaya down for the first time, ever I think. Had a couple rough starts and some (really) awful void zone placement, but she died a horrible, painful, agonizing death. That one has been a long time coming, and felt really good.

Then we went and wiped on Freya trash, returning to the general theme of the evening. Got 1 of her badge-toting tree things down, though.

Go High Roller

That fantastic roll of a 1 in the top screenshot? That was, actually, for loot. Phaelia’s Vestments, as a matter of fact. The funny thing? It won.

Yes, there was much ribbing involved. >_>

Funny thing is, it was the 2nd or 3rd winning loot roll of the evening that was a 1. I know it wasn’t actually a full moon this weekend, but damn it sure felt like it.

I have gone from: 1821 heal  & 425(222) mana regen unbuffed to  1897 Heal & 467 (243) regen. And the new gear isn’t completely enchanted yet.

Bitching after the cut. Continue Reading »

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Time for a good, old-fashioned achievement post.

I haven’t been raiding the past week due to not feeling well, and a commission project I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t agreed to now, but oh well.

Cal has finished with the Argent Tournament, in it’s present incarnation, and is a champion for all 5 Alliance races now. Now to just get enough tokens for the pets (i’ll have the 3rd today, 2 more to go) and the Hyppogryph. I’m not overly enamored of the mounts, or any of the other crap, so that may go by the wayside. I hope that we get a tabard pane or something soon. I’d like to pick up some of the other tabards, but I already have an entire bag of them.

Fire Festival

So, with Blizzard having finally reset the quests for the Fire Festival, I’m tooling around between calls at work today redoing all of those. The achievement tracker was very weird in what it did and didn’t pick up from last year.  Timov has nearly all the honor/desecrate achievements, but Cal was missing several from Eastern Kingdoms, and the capital cities.

Come to think of it, I may have skipped the Capitals on Cal last year. Hmm…

At any rate, I’m about 2/3rds of teh way through Kalimdor, with Orgimmar and Thunder Bluff down. It occurs to me, retroactively, that I should have tried taking screen shots. However, I was so preoccupied with getting the flame and getting out (and going to the wrong rise in Thunder Bluff) that I didn’t think about it until I was already plummeting off the cliff in TB.

Orgrimmar

I made it all the way to the flame before dying. Since I had soulstoned myself expecting trouble, I waited until the next sucker, er, Alliance character came along and distracted the guards and Horde players then popped up and grabbed the flame.

Got killed almost immeidatly and took the spirit rez to grab teh flame at Razor Hill.

Thunder Bluff

Well, other than forgetting which rise the flame was on, TB was actually pretty easy. There was one Horde Death Knight waiting, but I just nabbed the flame and hopped off the side of the bluff (yay soulstone!) before he did much damage to me.

Freewind Post

Not technically a capital, but reminder to self and others that the flame is down on the ground, and not up on the bluff.

Undercity

Undercity is sadly very easy. Deathspank the BE DK was guarding the gate on his own, and did get a kill in, but he neglected to hang around and make certain I didn’t get back up again. Thanks to my soulstone (of pain!) I was able to pop back up once he went back to his guard post.

Sorry Spanky, hope you enjoyed your honor kill though.

Silvermoon City

No Horde players were guarding Silvermoon’s flame. I didn’t even have to burn my soulstone to get past the guards. Was able to Howl of Terror them away, then did the warlock version of a bubble-hearth with a Sacrifice from my void walker. Which I also should have gotten a screenshot of. Oops.

Off to the lower half of EK to get the fires I’m missing from last year, and call it good.

Finished!

After doing the Horde cities, I rather ran out of steam. So I just finished up the ones I’d missed from last year, and called it good.

I snapped a pic of myself in my snazzy new gear standing in Stranglethorn after desecrating my last flame.

And completely managed to crop my title of of the screenshot >_<. So, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

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walk into Magister’s Terrace…

So, raid got called last night on account of lag. It was taking several seconds for instant casts to register, and when you add that lag onto something that has a cast time, the healers were having a heck of a time. We only got through Leviathan (barely, 4 people alive), XT and Kologarn before calling it.

I keep trying to talk them into doing Sarth & Maly but they haven’t bitten, yet. *sadface*

Hopefully the server will be happy tonight and we can get some more stuff down. I picked up the Tier 8 chest for Cali with his badges, and I’d really like a 2nd piece for the 2-piece bonus, but I’m down on the DKP at the moment. And we haven’t gotten many Conqueror token drops.

Because raid got called, my friend Illianas and I decided to try Magister’s for the pet, the orb or the mount. None of them dropped, sadly, but there’s always next time.

Neither of us had run it in a while, so we weren’t sure just how hard it would be, but decided to try it on heroic. Shockingly, Vexallus was the only one who gave us any trouble. Well, and that one trash pull before Kael that is just an utter bitch to pull.

Vex took us 5 or 6 tries, and a review of his abilities, but we finally got him down. The Felguard helped eat the Power Surges and we managed to smoke him (though I think one or both of us still ended up dead.)

I was actually worried about the PVP event, but we sliced through that like a knife through hot buttah, and Kael wasn’t much harder. So, we’ll probably tackle that a couple times a week until we get the pet.

Speaking of pets, Old Man Barlow needs to cough up Chuck. He’s the only croc I’m still missing.

Hope you’re having a good Friday!

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General Minutia

First, a general pet peeve to guildies and Pugs alike: for the love of Pete, if you’re not ready, hit NO. >_<

Second, a general precaution: Do not try and type while auto-running, especially when you are in the general vicinity of a boss.

I managed to run Timov into Kologarn on Sunday. I realized what was happening, tried to hit Enter to post the contents of the chat input and then back up, but it seemed like everything just opened the chat box up again. I didn’t have the presence of mind to grab the mouse and steer, and couldn’t warn the raid cause my vent key was just going into chat. *sigh* Thankfully, he killed me and despawned, allowing a rez, and didn’t wipe the raid.

General Kudos

Grats to Has Aggro for their first Mimiron kill Friday. I was not present because I had planned on going to a ball game, which got rained out. Logging in once that was discovered I heard the good news and got pulled into the raid for the remainder of the duration.

General Note to Self:

Do not update your raid UI the night before an unfamiliar boss. Especially do not rearrange things after 4 years of having them in the same general location. All your ‘programmed’ responses/checks will be utterly invalidated.

General Hysteria

We got our first look at General Vezex last night. I say “first look”, because I’m not counting Friday’s “kill the trash, aggro the boss, die, call the raid” as an ‘attempt’.

Last night — we were not at our best. At least 2 accidental pet/butt pulls of trash mobs started the evening.

By the end of the night, we were getting some decent attempts in on him, and getting the General down to about 50%.

I’m not going to go into everything here, because his abilities are covered in much greater detail elsewhere. I’m going to talk about the three things I had issues with.

Spec & Spells

Know which of your spells do the most damage per mana. I did not know this going into the fight and it is something I intend to correct for our next attempts. There used to be a mod called Dr. Damage that put your expected damage for a spell on the hotkey, but I can’t find it on Curse or WowInterface presently.

Because you have to do slow, steady damage, you need to know which spells give you the most bang for your buck.

Saronite Vapors

1) These do NOT return a ton of mana. I was hoping to get 1/3 to 1/2 of my mana pool back. For 5 stacks, this is utterly unrealistic. Per wowwiki, at 5 stacks you can expect 1600 mana for the cost of 3200 damage.

2) We had some bug. Someone got some dots on one of the vapors and killed it. We got the puddle, but no mana regen. Raid members reported this happening at least twice.

Mana management is going to be a HUGE part of this fight.  I’m going to really have to be careful about what I cast. The Imp was regenning mana (on learning fights, I pick the pet that doesn’t cost a reagent…) but I would guess that Dark Pact is also going to be surpressed by the aura thingy.

Faceless

The last ability that personally gave me problems was Faceless. There were two attempts where this killed me because even though I started running the minute I saw the raid warning, I could not get away from the person with the debuff.

I ran right, still getting drained. Ran forward, still getting drained. Jigged left, dead. On that attempt, I didn’t have my camera zoomed out very far, and so I had no frame of reference for where the other person was.

Another attempt, the faceless hit someone while we were all clumped up on a vapor or shadow crash thing. I ran in the same direction as the person with the debuff, and got hosed again.

We tried spreading out in a full semicircle with no one behind anyone else but that makes it a ways to run for Vapors/Shadow Crash. At one point the Raid Leader suggested “Marked, run away from boss, non marked run towards” but I think it got lost in the chatter.  Personally, I think this is the best solution. We can be a little closer together for vapors etc, but with BOTH parties moving in pre-determined directions, the necessary range to break should be achieved sooner.

At least it’s not a fear effect.

Edited to Add: Towards the end of the evening, we were getting him down to around 50%. I suspect another week or two and we’ll have him down. We just have some cleaning and polishing to do.

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I should go back and rename Monday’s & Tuesdays posts to reflect the “week day theme” but that would require effort, and I am a lazy gnome.

Back when Wrath first came out, I had a couple ideas for some short comics, a couple of which I scripted out. I’m not enough of an artist (not enough patience, go fig) to actually try drawing these out in any detail.

So, presented here in Glorious, Amazing, Stupendous, Patent-Pending¹ TEXT-O-RAMA VISION, I now present the first Official GnomeDruid comic. Continue Reading »

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Well, apparently this is a “post every day” week. Don’t get used to it.

We had an absolutely rip-roaring thunderstorm last night. It was really cool, if a little scary. The lightning was going off literally overhead, as evidenced by the immediate (and LOUD) peals of thunder. Some of the lightning strikes lit up the apartment complex like it was noon. And the sky opened up and it poured. My description isn’t doing it justice. I haven’t been in a thunderstorm like that in quite sometime. It was awe-inspiring, and a little frightening.

Nature is cool. I need to get out in it a bit more often.

Resto Druid Stat Formulas

I spent sometime earlier this week scouring the internet trying to figure out where Resto Druid stats come from. I didn’t find anything with them all in one concise place, so I kind of compiled my own list. Some of this is widely known, but some of it was not so much.

You’re welcome. Continue Reading »

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Well. I’ve sure been posting a lot this week. Probably because my brain needs a break from the stupid and fail that work has been this week. But this is not a personal blog, so on we go.

The Gnome

We almost, ALMOST got Mimiron down Monday night. One more attempt and we probably would have had him, but folks had to go. We are now doing consistently well in the first 3 phases, but once phase 4 hits, it all goes to pot and we all die in rapid succession. I think we’re going to try and concentrate on him Friday night, once we get the other guardian’s down. Unfortunately, since we didn’t take out Razorscale or Ignis, that made Monday a complete night of wipes, which can be hideously frustrating.

Cali hasn’t gotten any gear lately that I can think of, but I should be up for the Robes of the Umbral Brute next time they drop.

Loot has actually been kind of frustrating. It seems like we get the same gear/tier token drops every freaking run. I’m not sure I’ve even seen a Conquerer token drop more than once or twice.

Cali is FINALLY Exalted with Sons of Hodir. Hooray good shoulder enchants! Hooray for not having to do those quests any more! (at least until Timov gets to that point!) He’s Champion for 2 of the Alliance races, and working on the 3rd. I almost have enough tokens for one of the  pets. Have to decide if I want the mini-tree or the mini-mecho-ostrich first. The Horde pets are VERY cute, and I need to not look up and see how many thousands of gold they’re currently going for on the AH >_>. Or I need to level a horde toon and sell them to myself…. Hmm … I think my Horde hunter is sitting at 45… no! Bad gnome!

I’m about 10 group quests shy of finishing Icecrown. I need to grab a couple guildies and make them help me this weekend.

While the money is nice, I think I’m going to take a few days off the massive amount of dailies and just do the crafting & tournament. Mainly because Tim will be starting Storm Peaks and his own run with Hodir here shortly.

The Durid

Timov is still 80. I’m still learning how to heal.

I had a funny moment the other night, I’d gotten out of a raid and was going to finish a quest or do a daily or something. Landed next to the mob, hit my formshift hotkey and hit 4, which is Starfire hotkey. Nothing happened.

Hit 1 (Insect Swarm) then 4 again. Still nothing.

Then I noticed I was still in tree form.

I had forgotten to change specs after the raid. So instead of Starfire and Insect Swarm, I’d actually been trying to kill the mob with Wild Growth and Rejuvinate. My exact words to my guildmate were “I guess I’d better change spec, because I don’t think I’m going to have much luck Rejuvinating this mob to death.”

Well, *I* thought it was funny.

Timov and gear already got a pretty big post this week, so we’ll skip that.

Other Stuff

Extended maintenance yesterday, while frustrating, was actually good for me. I was in a shitty mood and usually would have wasted the evening tooling around in WoW. Fortunately, the outage caused me to redirect my energy and I actually got some stuff done around the house.

The triggers are still there today, but I’m being productive at work (novel concept!) and have been reasonably Zen about it.

Time to go update Path of a Hero and nab some lunch.

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If it’s not obvious from the site, I have two toons, Caliban is my main, Timov is my alt. Caliban goes on my guild raids, while Timov runs with a semi-pug group on Sunday afternoons.

Guild progress, loot and a bunch of random thoughts on those subjects after the cut. Continue Reading »

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Well, the bad news is that I lost Phaelia’s Vestments of the Sprouting Seed to a boomkin.

The good news it that this means Tim was healing on a successful Heroic Iron Council kill.

I don’t blame the other druid, the loot rules, or the raid in general.

Disappointment

The loot rules were “Roll if you need it. High roll with least main spec items won this run wins.” I had already won the Pyrelight Circle off of Ignis, which was a very nice little upgrade for me over the Signet of Ranulff that I’d had in that spot before.

When we finally got Brundir down, and the Loot Master linked Phaelia’s and Rapture, My heart leapt a little. I knew that I didn’t have a chance in hell on Rapture, since there were many other casters who hadn’t got anything that run.

However, I kind of figured that Phaelia’s was a sure thing. Of the three caster druids, one had it, I didn’t, and the other was boomkin. What I forgot to take into account is that despite it’s lack of hit, it’s a damn good DPS caster robe.

Item Homogenization

Compared to the Gown of the Spellweaver off of Malygos, which is still one of the Best Caster Robes in the game, Phaelia’s is equal or better in all the core stats (Stam, Int,). It has 14 more spell power. The major difference is the trading of Hit on the Spellweaver for Spirit.

While I don’t think Boomkin get a direct spell power boost from spirit like Tree’s do, most of the Wrath gear is DROWNING in hit, and I know Caliban could stand to lose about 70 hit for another stat.

So, I can’t really begrudge the other druid rolling on it or winning it. It is just as good of a piece for her as it would have been for me. And according to the loot rules of the evening, she was entitled to it.

I want to be cranky at Blizzard for making DPS & Healer gear too similar. But then you risk ending up with somethign so specialized that it will end up getting sharded after everyone gets theirs.

So, I want to be frustrated, but I can’t, really. We generally run with the same group of folks, so my turn will come around again.

So, thanks Ritual Noise for running a great group. I look forward to my Sunday afternoons.

Cool Stuff

Averna over at Nerf This Druid is writing a series of articles on how to heal the various bosses in Ulduar. I, as a new healer, am finding it very useful.

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