Ghoul Drool

Raiding

2009-07-29T15:20:00.004-04:00

Been raiding a LOT lately, and I am quite happy about that!

Our guild [Adaptation] has made an alliance with another guild called The Commonwealth. We've been doing Naxx-25 pretty successfully with them last week. I say 'pretty' as it was filled with many wipes, but that was to be expected. =)

We almost had a full clear but some PUG ninja'd our raid ID and killed Kel'thuzad. We will have to be more selective about who we group with in the future, unfortunately.

In the meantime, we hit up 25-man Flame Leviathan in Ulduar and downed him. Got some people loot.

I've gotten a break from tanking, and have been playing my shaman, which was very nice. I missed DPSing - it is so mindless. Just keybind + faceroll and you're good to go!

Tonight our guild is heading back into Ulduar-10 for the first time in weeks [hopefully!], so I will be back to tanking again. Hope I'm not too rusty.

In other news, I got Manatee her Crusader title - FINALLY - so I am all set for patch 3.2. Bring on the new looooots! She's also got 3/5 of the tourney pets. Just need to save marks for an Elwynn Lamb and an Ammen Vale Lashling now. I guess I should get my Horde priest levelled up some so I can start working on grabbing the Horde pets, too. In due time!

This and that

2009-07-20T02:55:00.002-04:00

-I have gotten my warrior, Clive, to level 70. This means I've now officially levelled each class in the game to at least level 70. /asspats for me! Next stop: 80!

-In spite of my last post QQing about PUGs, my guild has made a successful incursion into Naxx-25 with a mostly-PUG. Lieke lead the raid and though she said she doesn't want to do it again, I think she should keep at it because she's pretty good at it.

-We may have a guild alliance in the works based on said PUG. Our guild's officers will be meeting with their guild's officers tomorrow to chat. If all goes well, it will make gearing up members for both guilds involved a hell of a lot easier, so cross your fingers! DO IT.

-My shaman, Rasputina, cleaned house in Naxx-25. Seriously. She outgears my warlock, now, and is catching up to Snooky... Geeze! I really need to work on her hit rating, though. Her DPS is depressing. I'm trying, where I can.

-Based on that, next step is to farm up some honor for a PVP caster cloak to tide her over 'til she gets a proper PvE replacement. Tomorrow is another day.

Happy WoWing!

The ups and downs of PUGs

2009-07-07T01:16:00.002-04:00

Pick-up groups, or PUGs as they are more commonly referred to as, seem to have more downsides than upsides.

Fortunately, being in a great guild like my own, my PUG experiences are usually minimal. But therein lies the problem! My guild's faction is the Alliance, and the most recent toon I've been investing time into is my little Forsaken warrior - Horde side, obviously.

So, I've been in a whole lot of pick-up groups lately, from Hellfire Ramparts to Mana Tombs. And, honestly, up until today, they've been awesome!

Sure there were wipes and the usual "whos tank lol," but we actually completed the instances, and I added some people I'd definitely group with again in the future to my friends list.

Today was the opposite. We were three pulls into Mana Tombs, and our group apparently could not decide who the tank was. We didn't even make it to the first boss, and tempers flared. I was fine up until the warlock said something about people with DK mains being "failures" and how they were "lazy." Of course it would get to me, being that my main is my Death Knight! And I invested a lot of time into her! Argh!! And -- hey wait, hold on a second. When exactly did I stop having fun here?

So, I came to the conclusion it was time to let my little warrior build up some rested experience again, so I can stop taking everything so seriously! Phew!

And my advice to you reading this is, if you find yourself getting too wound up with WoW, take a deep breath, take a step back, and take a break if you need to. It's a hobby. Those are meant to be fun, right?

[Oh, and, yes - ranting always helps me feel better too. Just an idea!!]

A Midsummer Pet Collector's Dream

2009-07-01T05:01:00.002-04:00

Happy Canada Day, fellow Canuckistanian WoW nerds!

I told you I've been busy!

Well, the Midsummer festival is winding down on Azeroth, and that's okay with me. I have, in the past week-ish, gotten:

-A Scorchling pet for my warlock
-A Captured Flame for ALL my toons
-The "Flame Warden" title on my warlock and mage [the warlock being the toon I am working on the "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been" meta-achievement with]

But wait, there's more!

I also:

-Fished up Mr. Pinchy, FINALLY! On my hunter. Got the Magical Crawdad on my second wish! =)
-Completed the "Lil' Game Hunter" achievement [75 mini-pets on one toon] and earned myself a fawn pet
-FINALLY got the Green Proto-Drake Mount!!! After getting the mount, I promptly switched Snooky from Oracles to Frenzyheart. I love those Wolvar. I really do.

While that doesn't sound like so much in text, it's a lot of work running 10 toons around honoring/extinguishing fires all over Azeroth and Outland! But it was well worth it. The quest experience leveled a whole bunch of my toons, and I had a great Indiana Jones-esque escape from Orgimmar on my mage that I will remember for a long time. haha.

My guild has started alt-night Naxx runs for the time being [til 3.2, I'd surmise] and I opted out this week so my husband could join in. We haven't had the healers for Ulduar lately, but we'll get back in there soon. My friend Lieke - the girl I mentioned in a previous entry, recruit from wow_ladies - has been working very hard to gear her paladin for healing, and she cleaned house for upgrades on the last Naxx run I was in with her, so she'll be Ulduar-ready in no time.
Also, the pally Lieke was supposed to "replace" so-to-speak recently returned to the game, so that's great too. It gives a couple of people who rolled healers for the sake of the guild when they had other "mains" initially a chance to return to a class they actually enjoy playing. =)

Midsummer

2009-06-28T20:52:00.000-04:00

I've been so busy with the Fire Festival! Updates to follow!

Patch 3.2, OMG

2009-06-18T16:06:00.002-04:00

So, after reading WoW.com's post about the 3.2 Patch Notes, I think I am even more excited for this patch than I was for the last one. I'll highlight some things that made me squee.

Isle of Conquest - New battleground omg! It looks like it's going to be a mix of Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley kind of? Grabbing nodes and storming the Keep to kill the General. Sounds pretty cool. I do like to take a break from alt-grinding to PVP so I am excited to try this out.
While on the subject of PVP: They are adding experience gains into battlegrounds. Awesome. And to keep twinks from QQing, they are allowing them to opt out of exp gains - but they will only be able to fight against other twinks if they do. HA. Being that my lowest toon is 50 now it's kind of too late for me to really, really enjoy this, but all the same - it's about time.

Better accessability - As a player of both factions [though I do spend more time Alliance side], I was pleased to see the Horde were getting a long-needed zeppelin to Thunder Bluff. Alliance have their Deeprun Tram to tie things together, but Horde still had to run across Mulgore and through the Barrens if they wanted to get from TB to Orgrimmar/vice-versa. Also, they're adding portals to the Dark Portal in SW/Org, I think it was, so that's awesome too. And mailboxes galore! No more having to deal with idiots parking their mammoths/elekks/kodos on the mailboxes outside the bank. =P I used to envy the amount of mailboxes smattered around Silvermoon City while I was playing the auction house.

Emblem changes - They are adding yet another tier of Emblems for the "hardcore" raiders, and my first thought before reading on was that it was getting a bit out of hand. Then I read that Emblems of Conquest would be rewarded through instances like 10-man Naxxramas and even... HEROICS? What! That's awesome! I forsee an instance zerg in the future for my guild. Gearing people up even moreso will really help us push forward in Ulduar. I just want to *see* Yogg-Saron - I don't want it to be like in Burning Crusade where Wrath was being launched and I hadn't even seen the Illidan encounter, QQ. I am very happy with how Blizzard is doing things this time around. Yes, hardcores will QQ, but the game was meant to be played by everyone, not just them. Whose needs are more important and why? The answer is no one's. Everyone pays the same $15 / month. And Blizzard wants to keep the huge player base rolling in the dough. Sorry, dudes.

VANITY ITEMS - OK, so, I am a complete pet collector. [Mounts to a lesser extent. Much lesser. But I digress.] There are SO MANY new vanity items coming in the next patch! 8 new non-combat pets, NOT INCLUDING Argent Tournament pets, zomg! Children's Week will also be coming to Northrend - at least I hope it makes it to live realms, past the PTR - I REALLY want a baby wolvar pet, and a baby gorloc too.
Aside from pets, they are making the Silver Covenant and Sunreaver flying mounts purchaseable with Champion Seals, AND a new paladin-only Argent Crusade Charger. More incentive to level my Paladin, basically. ;)
Horde will also be getting the long-anticipated Ravasaur mount, which is their version of the Wintersaber from Winterspring.
Along with that, new tabard and banners, and an upgraded Argent Squire who can actually run errands for you... System overload here srsly.

I need a break! Phew! More later!

As I was saying...

2009-06-11T13:06:00.009-04:00

PROGRESSION!

I am so proud of my guild, once again! We downed TWO new bosses in Ulduar last night.

The first was XT-002 Deconstructor, finally. We really pulled it together, and killed him in one shot, after being stuck on him for the past couple of weeks. We even managed to snag the Nerf Gravity Bombs achievement.

The second boss we encountered was Kologarn.

I have to say, it was an absolutely awesome feeling stepping up onto that walkway where he pops up. The sheer size of him - especially to me, a gnome! - was genuinely awe-inspiring. I really felt like an "important" part of the game at that point, lame as it might sound! I really missed gigantic raid bosses.

As you can see, my guildies kind of shared the feeling. ...Kind of.

Our first attempt went, uhh... Not so good. But it was a learning experience! Also, the fact that he yells "YOU FAIL!" when someone dies made me laugh a lot.

Our second attempt went a lot better, once we figured out that we needed to have the raid DPS his right arm to death [sidenote: he yells "Just a flesh wound!" when you kill it, also hilarious], and the subsequent earth elemental adds it spawns when it crumbles [after I pick them up!], before moving on to DPS him. We ignored his left arm completely; healers just healed through the raid damage while everyone dodge pew-pew eye laz0rz.
Our MT Wakizashi stayed on Kologarn; if you do not have someone on him at all times, he casts Petrifying Breath and wipes the raid. There is a stacking armor sundering debuff he does to your tank, and you are supposed to have two tanks taunt between stacks [ala Gluth], but he never had a problem with it, and our healers did not complain about having trouble keeping him up - so I just focused on picking up adds. I stayed in tank gear just in case, as I usually do, but coupled with my Unholy DPS spec to help with the arm a bit instead. Rinse and repeat, because the arm respawns every 60 seconds. It seemed to work pretty well for us.

[Some pictures I took as I was grabbed, just as our DPS finished off the arm]:

So I suppose we'll be sticking to that strategy, because we killed him!

I am going to speak with the other officers and see about returning to Ulduar on Friday, so we can maybe have a go at Auriaya and/or Iron Council.

OH OH! I also picked up Ironsoul from Flame Leviathan. How could I forget to mention?! OMG so sexy!

PROGRESSION!

2009-06-10T22:43:00.002-04:00

XT-002 Deconstructor AND Kologarn down!!!

Deconstructor one-shot this time around, Kologarn down in two attempts!

GREAT job Adaptation raiders! You rock! Iron Council and Auriaya next!!!

I will post pictures tomorrow, Argurios took some awesome kill shots and put them on our guild website though! Check 'em out!

Great success!

2009-06-10T11:43:00.010-04:00

So, yesterday, my good friend Bruzin fished up the Giant Sewer Rat pet, and I was insanely jealous.

Once I saw that the pet was the size of his toon, Underfoot, though, I was instantly over it, and just had to laugh. Too perfect!

Well, since RNG seemed to be in his favour, Bruzin, Lumpey and I went off to clear a couple of instances in hopes of obtaining mounts for one of us. We hit up Heroic: Sethekk Halls [twice!], but Anzu wasn't having that. Then we went to ZG.

Hakkar, the ugliest parrot-snake on Azeroth, made sure his brainwashed High Priests didn't deliver us any phat loot, either.

Tomorrow is another day right? And how! As it turns out, the RNG Old Gods are smiling upon me today! [Today being yesterday's tomorrow, of course.]

I was doing the fishing daily today, as I try to do every day, and chatting about the new Battle-Bots promotion Mountain Dew Game Fuel and Battle.net are doing, with my MT Wakizashi.

[Let us pause here to bask in the glory of the Battle-Bot. I chose blue fuel today, but I'll get some red fuel tomorrow for my Hordies!]

Anyway, I ALMOST hit escape on this freaking loot box as I was typing a long-winded message. I would have kicked myself in the butt all day if I did, so glad I didn't, because it had THIS in it!

Yay, rats all around!

So, I had no luck fishing up any more rats for my other toons, but I DID get not one, but TWO Strand Crawlers today in the Fishing Bags! Woot!! One for my mage, and one for my pally.

I also fished this up on my priest yesterday... Not a pet but still nifty.

Tonight, we hit up Ulduar once again. Hopefully we can down XT-002 Deconstructor! Crossing my fingers and toes!

FOOTNOTE: I've been asked how to procure the adorable Battle-Bot pet, and this is how you do it: First, go to the Mountain Dew Game Fuel site. Let the flash animation load. There will be a button that says "Claim now and fuel up!" with a little Battle-Bot on it. Click that and sign into your Battle.net account. DON'T WORRY, IT'S SAFE! It's the genuine Battle.net site. You MUST have merged your World of Warcraft account with a Battle.net account to be able to obtain the pet. When you get to the confirmation screen, you must log out of WoW ENTIRELY [not just to the character select screen], and then log back in. Voila! It should be in your mailbox in-game. =)
After you have your pet, you may subsequently log into the site once a day, using the same instructions here, to acquire fuel for your pet in the colour of your choosing [between either red or blue.] Fuel up your bot, find someone with one of the opposite colour, and BATTLE!

The Usual? II

2009-06-06T08:34:00.007-04:00

Post the second: Alts!

I've been playing my warrior and paladin pretty steadily, and while I'm letting them re-collect some rested experience, I've been levelling some of their professions - both main and secondary skills.

Clive, my warrior, has just recently dropped mining for enchanting, so I can stop trying to make Wakizashi's priest my DE slave. I then remembered what a pain in the ass it was to level enchanting, so it's collecting dust until I have the money to powerlevel it.

Instead, I decided at least ONE of my Horde characters should have high-level cooking, and he ended up being it.

So when I picked up this breadcrumbs quest sending me off to get Artisan cooking, I laughed pretty hard at the text. Exactly which part of him is fat? That troll lady is the leading cause of anorexia in Durotar youth.

My paladin, Cadmus, has made his way to Northrend finally. But not before I killed this rare mob in Nagrand. I was kind of confused to find that he was not part of the achievement Bloody Rare. I wonder why that is? I guess Blizzard probably just forgot about him. Poor Bro'Gaz.

A second odd achievement-related thing I noticed on my paladin, as well, pictured above - though this is MUCH stranger than a rare mob missing from a list. I spoke in a previous post about a guildie getting the PVP Damage Control achievement in Ulduar. I figured it had something to do with the vehicular combat, but nope! As you can see I earned the same achievement... grinding on vrykul in the Howling Fjord. Um, okay? /boggle

I then proceeded to drop somewhere from 1200-1500g powerlevelling my pally's damned blacksmithing. He can almost mine Saronite, but he was still stuck at Mithril + Thorium in his smithing, even with some materials I had saved. I took care of that, though, and now he's all caught up to recipes that require Cobalt to make, so now I can relax and level it casually. You know, until he's still stuck at Cobalt or Saronite at 80 and I spaz out and do the same thing again.

Friday night, Cadmus earned his wings when I hit 70 with him! That means that I've levelled every class in WoW to 70+ now, except for a warrior. But Clive's next!

This was with big help from my friend Bruzin, on his hunter Bulmastif. [The same one who helped me on my Charger quest in Stratholme.] I got about half of level 70 doing all of the group quests with him in Nagrand.

When we finished Ring of Blood, Cadmus exclaimed: "Ha ha ha! Woo!" and Bruzin responded: "Wow, he is so gay."

Yes, yes he is. In fact, Cadmus has developed a huge crush on Lou the Cabin Boy, and I daresay it's from spending so much time with Bulmastif that he's acquired a taste for Tauren men.

Ahh... Lovebirds.

[Cadmus would add that Lou looks fabulous in his leather panties. And that closets are for clothes. Really fabulous clothes.]

The Usual? I

2009-06-06T07:48:00.009-04:00

Phew, I need to update more often! Instead of making one giant, long-winded post, I'm going to break things up into two posts.

Post the first: Raiding!

My guildmates and I finally ventured back into Ulduar on Wednesday, and I have to tell you, it feels really good to actually be working on progression again. I am getting kind of sick of Naxx, admittedly, and I really don't want Adaptation to get stuck in the same 10-man for an entire expansion like Semper Invictus did.

We downed Flame Leviathan with little trouble. I still love that fight, even if I go splat an awful lot! GET TO DA CHOPPA!

Our second order of business was to tackle the XT-002 Deconstructor. The boss's voice is one of the best in the game, in my opinion. He has a spot in my heart right up there with Talon -King Ikiss. [TRINKETSSSSss, pretty trinkets! CA-CAWWWWW!]

We haven't downed him yet, but we had a few very close attempts. One at 11% and two at 4%, I believe. [Correct me if I'm wrong, guys!] We had issues with the adds, and my most favourite MT in the whole wide world Wakizashi was getting his butt handed to him, basically! We changed a few things around that seemed to work better, such as me tanking the elite adds in tank gear but my Unholy DPS spec, which worked out quite well for the most part, in that I was able to actually kill them on my own. That was good, because it let our DPS focus on the boss the whole time, mostly. I'm sure if we pull ourselves together we'll down him in no time, then it's off to Iron Council + Kologarn, and then we take over the world! Okay, maybe not that last part.

Last night, we headed into Naxx, since we kind of switched scheduling that with Ulduar. It went pretty well, all things considered. I have to say I never realized exactly how much I relied on Deadly Boss Mods. It makes life SO much easier when raiding, especially tanking. [Although I honestly can't even fathom healers running a boss like Loatheb without DBM, either.] Since my MT Waki was not present, we pulled another guildie still fairly new to raiding along with us, and he apparently does not run any mods. It was a learning experience for me too, since I had to figure out how to explain fights to him without referring to DBM. Hahahaha. He did well, though. [Especially when I kept dying on freaking Anub'rekhan, but let's not talk about that any more.]

I think tonight we're going to try to finish up Naxx, provided everyone is online. Our old [literally] GM, Ziri, is back from her hiatus too so she hasn't even seen the end of Naxx. She doesn't know what she's in for! If only we had a frost mage so we could make her go splat on Sapphiron.

Here is a bonus picture of my husband posing with his repair bot + Lil' Smokey. You can see dead Grobbulus in the background. [Also it kind of looks like his pet is named Lil' Snooky. Aww!]

Pally power

2009-06-01T03:35:00.003-04:00

My husband recently got his paladin her Charger, so I met him out in Nagrand with my own pally and took some screenshots. :)

~~I'm the pretty one.~~ Uh... ~~The pretty, feminine one.~~ ~~The girly one~~. I'm the Blood Elf.

This and that

2009-05-30T00:12:00.005-04:00

So, what have I been up to on Azeroth, lately?

Well, the long and short of it is: Not too much. =) And I'm liking it! I love just vegging out and grinding on lowbie alts. It's been awhile since I've had a long stretch where I've not felt pressed in a way like: "Omg must hit 80!!" or "Omg must hit exalted!!"

So, in between raiding Naxx with my beloved guildies, I've been giving my Horde characters some well-deserved attention.

Since getting his power pony [ahem, Thalassian Charger], my paladin, Cadmus, has hit level 65. I ran out of rested experience at that point, so I set him aside for the time being. Having as many alts as I do, you kind of get frustrated levelling without rested experience [unless I'm in a mad rush to get to 80, like I mentioned before kinda.] As a sidenote, I HIGHLY reccomend the addon Altoholic if you are, as it says, an altoholic, much like myself. It lets you track just about everything with your alts, but the reason I mentioned it is because it keeps track of everyones' rested experience, so you know when they're capped out and it's time to play them again and such.

I took a break to get my rogue, Callidora, up to 71 just because I kind of missed questing in Borean Tundra! Weird? Maybe a little. But whatever, progress is progress!

And last but certainly not least... I've gotten into playing my little Forsaken warrior, Clive, again. It's about time! He's my lowest alt at 42 [on his way to 43!], and consequently, warrior is the only class I've never gotten to Outland + beyond yet. But he'll get there!! Oh yes he will!

Despite Clive's low level, I've been pvping with him all night, in Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin. I'm having a lot of fun, even if I get roflstomped a lot! I'm really just trying to get marks so I can get him a pvp mount later on. I'm thinking a raptor.

Where would my update be without postcards from my travels?

Gloomy. Aww, muffin.

Gimme food or me eat you.

Anzu

2009-05-22T15:51:00.004-04:00

Yes, my little druid is seated there in her epic flight form, which means the raven god, Anzu, has been vanquished! ...For now.

Admittedly, I spent the extra 17g and picked up epic flight form from the trainer after I had bought my druid her epic flying skill, but I wanted to do the quest chain anyway. It was actually pretty fun, and I got a nice Idol out of it, as well. [You also get a trinket for your flight form, which has since been nerfed in the doing-away-with of riding crops and etc. It used to increase your speed in flight form/swift flight form by 10%. Now, it does this.]

Anyway, two of my guildies - Maara [prot warrior] and Bruzin [ret pally] - and myself [resto druid] went into Heroic: Sethekk Halls to finish off my quest. It was actually a pretty fun fight, but I can see how it would have been quite hectic at level 70. [My druid is only level 73, but my friends were on their 80s.]

Hopefully we can farm H: Sethekk just about every day now, and try to get someone the land mount. I think it's one of the prettiest in the game - but I feel the same about the swift flight form, so I'm happy either way. ;)

Re: Paladon't

2009-05-18T11:48:00.003-04:00

I crossposted my last post to wow_ladies, and a girl over there named terra_firma made me this:

Awesome.

Charge!

2009-05-18T00:37:00.004-04:00

I did it, I did it! I got my little Blood Elf Paladin, Cadmus, to level 60, AND got him his Thalassian Charger.

But let me tell you, this was no small task.

The Horde version of the Paladin epic mount quest is a lot easier than the Alliance version, or at least less time-consuming. You pay some gold, buy some things from a vendor/AH, kill some Scourge, steal some holy water, and then it's one quick trip to Stratholme, and you're done.

At least, in theory.

I did the goldsink part of the quest no problem, as well as the Scourge slaughtering. Once I got to the next part though, something silly happened.

The object of this step of the chain was to head into Tyr's Hand and procure a sample of the Scarlet Crusade's holy water from their abbey. I had no one to help me [at first], but it was still straightforward enough to me. What I planned to do was run into the abbey, die where my quest item was, corpse run back, ressurect, pop my bubble, loot the item, run out to a safe spot, die AGAIN, run back, res, and then hearth out of there. A bit long-winded, but a very straightforward plan. No real kinks to work out, right? WRONG.

It all went well up to the part where I died and released my spirit. Where I was transported to looked all too familiar, but not exactly because I had been there moments ago...

You see, I was transported to the Death Knights' phased version of Tyr's Hand / the Scarlet Enclave.

Let me re-iterate: I was on my PALADIN.

I res'd at the spirit healer and tried to hearth out. I recieved a warning message saying "You can't leave here until you've escaped the Lich King's grasp!" Uhh... Okay. So, I sent in a ticket, and waited.

In the meantime, I headed up to Acherus to socialize.

| |

I even managed to find my name in the Death Knight roster. Wow, I hadn't realized Arthas had planned so far ahead. Was he keeping names of every paladin around in there, just in case he might run into them and Scourge them up?

Eventually, I got in touch with a GM, and they were kind of unhelpful. He ported me back to UC. I said thanks, but, wasn't this just going to happen again if I went back to Tyr's Hand and died a second time? He said "yes," and his advice to me was: "You know, you can buy the mount off the paladin trainer at 61 now. You don't need to do the quest."

Umm, thanks? I know that. Some of us like to do things the fun way, or the hard way, depending on which way you look at it. I'm also planning on doing the epic flight form quest for my druid...

But I digress.

My husband ended up helping me with his Alliance hunter to clear me a path to my quest item, as well as a level 80 BE Pally who happened to be there when I returned.

Then I just waited until I got a hold of a friend of mine, and he took me to Stratholme where we kicked the crap out of some Silver Hand after I burned down their church.

[OK, so this is what the instance was really mostly like... He killed most of the things and I just sat there and drank mana juice, QQ.]

All the stress ended up being worth it. I got a shiny new tabard:

AND, of course, most IMPORTANTLYYYY, my Charger!!

YAY!

Palading

2009-05-16T21:57:00.001-04:00

Goal the first: Get pally to 60 this weekend. GOOOOOO!!!

Yay raiding!

2009-05-10T00:40:00.006-04:00

I love raiding. More specifically, I love raiding with my guild. Even when it's a wipefest on progression attempts, we still manage to have fun.

Tonight, we finished up in Naxxramas, and had a very good run, at that. We one-shot every boss except Gluth, which was only because our designated zombie-kiter died early in the first attempt. It happens!

The person in question doing the kiting was my husband, who plays a hunter called Biggun. He gets a little frustrated when he's having trouble keeping the zombies together, but it proved to be worth it for him. When we finally got to and downed Kel'Thuzad, his [Nerubian Conqueror] dropped, something he's been coveting basically since we started running Naxx. So, grats to him!

Since our raiding night ended a little earlier than scheduled, what with us trucking along so nicely and all, we decided to head into Ulduar for our second-ever time and try it out. This time, we downed Flame Leviathan without a single wipe, even on trash. Pretty cool, considering we all kind of run around like chickens with our heads cut off during that encounter.

One of the best parts of being a tank, imo... We get designated to the choppers.

OMG, Snooky! Put your helmet on!

Much better.

Also, a friend/guildie of mine got a really weird achievement mid-instance:

Umm, okay. I have heard of that happening in Ulduar though, so I wonder if it's just because it's connected to the siege vehicles? Probably.

We did make a couple of attempts at Ignis, but it was a bit too chaotic for us at that point. Still having issues with trash, and I need to work on kiting the adds better. Once they turned molten, they just ran away from me! Lrn2threatpersecond, offtank.

[Yeah, that little speck helping to lead the charge is my gnomish self.]

All in all though it was a really good night. I'm so proud of my guild, we've come so far together! Here's to more epic loots, you guys. You rock!

Well-rested

2009-05-07T15:33:00.004-04:00

Last night, my guild and I ventured into Naxx-10, as we generally do on Wednesday nights. We were short one initially, so decided to head in with nine of us. I was offtanking on Snooky, my death knight, as usual, and we were doing quite well!

Then, I let a pack of spiders get away and hit the raid. We didn't wipe, and I didn't really mean to but the reason for my mishap was obvious as I proclaimed over Vent:

"Oh my god! Is that Lumpey?!"

A close friend and guildie of mine recently was out of commission when he had an issue with a new graphics card he bought. He couldn't re-install his old one, either, because of DirectX being a butthead. But - he fixed the issue! Yay! Just in time for our raid!

So it turned out to be for the better that we'd hit up Naxx with nine of us rather than 10, since we had a spot saved for him.

In other news, today is the last day of Children's Week, and as it peters out, I'm hit with a minor WoW burnout. Unfortunate! But, it happens. I've been playing way too much trying to get these achievements done for the Violet proto-drake, among other things. I'm going to take it easy, for now, and let my alts build-up some well-rested bonuses.

I did get my paladin, Cadmus, to 56 today.

Here he is, in all his femboy glory, with his little Golden Dragonhawk Hatchling eyeballing him, wondering how it is possible for anyone to look more flamboyant than it does.

Recruitment, etc.

2009-05-05T01:03:00.003-04:00

Over the past few days, I've gotten a couple of hits with my recruitment post. Pretty awesome!

One of them is a girl from wow_ladies, whose main character is Horde, on another server. She is currently levelling a Paladin to raid with us, which sounded cool to me -- as even if her main was Alliance, transferring servers costs real money, and if she ended up not liking our guild then she'd have been stuck on our server for a few months. Her main is a priest, so she has experience healing -- and when she rolled a paladin, I was doubly happy, since one of our core raiders who recently quit the game was a holy paladin. Yaaaay.

Another person we just added to our roster today, a balance druid gentlemen gone feral to try his hand [paw?] at tanking. I joined him on a couple of heroic runs as a trial [Utgarde Keep and Drak'theron Keep, to be specific]. He did quite well, really! The only thing that could improve him is gear, and that will come in due time. [He did pick up two epics from the aforementioned dungeons, so that was cool too.] As far as the basics, though, he seems to be doing just fine with them. We had a laugh about trigger-happy DPS on a wipe, myself included... because I should have known better, being a tank, geeeze!

I finally got my alts their Children's Week pets, but that took up about all the time I had during the day, in between running around doing things here. Didn't even get to my fishing daily, QQ.

Bedtime!

Children's Week continues

2009-05-03T21:57:00.002-04:00

It's still Children's Week! I managed to get my "Matron" title on my warlock on the second day. My guildies are having some trouble with the "School of Hard Knocks" achievement I talked about in my previous post, so I guess maybe I got really lucky in getting mine finished. Alliance in my battlegroup are generally terrible with teamwork on a regular day, so... I can only imagine. I plan on not PVPing at all until this holiday is well over with, now that I've gotten my achievement out of the way... Well, actually, I guess it helps that Strand of the Ancients is my favourite battleground, and there's no part of the meta tied to it... Yet!

I'm still working on getting all of my alts their holiday pets. It's taking considerably longer than the Noblegarden bunnies took to procure, but I guess that's because it requires running around all over Azeroth and beyond, as opposed to running laps around a little starter town.

Tomorrow night I guess!

Children's Week

2009-05-01T16:21:00.005-04:00

Children's Week is upon us, and what that means for me is another group of achievements as part of the What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been meta, in pursuit of the Violet Proto-Drake.

I was very disappointed to learn that the gorloc and wolvar orphans did not make it past the PTR. They are easily one of my favourite parts of the last expansion, and I was looking forward to having one of either race follow me around outside of Sholazar! Oh well, maybe next year.

Back on the meta: Like a lot of players, I was a little worried about the "School of Hard Knocks" achievement that required you to do a bunch of things in each pre-Wrath battleground that were honestly difficult for most classes to do on a regular pvp day, nevermind during a world-event where eleventy billion people would be fighting against their own team just to get a certain thing accomplished.

But, my worry turned out to be for naught. I actually managed to get it done within an hour, although I will admit the Alterac tower cap was basically dumb luck on my part. My team and the Horde's team were busy killing each other at Frostwolf, and I managed to slip by and assault one of the towers... just before getting steamrolled by a bunch of Death Knights.

Woot!

Afterwards, I parked my main and hopped on my shaman to go do the Outland orphan quests.

Mostly because I missed adorable moments like this one:

[Dornaa and her brother Jheel, reunited at Aeris Landing, Nagrand.]

I love world events so much!

zomg!

2009-04-30T19:33:00.003-04:00

We squeezed a Heroic: Culling of Stratholme instance in before Naxx tonight [CoS is my FAVOURITE instance, by the way!] and we made it JUST - and I mean JUST under the wire for the optional boss.

So the [Reins of the Bronze Drake] dropped, my GM and I greed rolled and... I won! YAY!

Apologies to Maara for my squee. But, now she has absolutely no competition for the drake. =) Going to run it again tomorrow for her!!

Adaptation wants YOU!

2009-04-30T08:31:00.004-04:00

I am an officer in my guild, Adaptation, on Arathor-US PvE. In the off chance that one of my readers [all three of you] is from my server - and, you know, not already in the guild - I decided to copy and paste the recruitment post I made on the official WoW forums.

[Alliance] Adaptation wants YOU!

OK, not you. But YOU!

We run Naxx-10 Wednesdays at 5:30 PM server [invites at 5:15], continuing through the week until full clear. Fridays we dip our feet into Ulduar! 5:30 PM start as well.

Some of our core raiders recently retired from WoW, so we are looking for some new, friendly faces to join our family. Not like the Manson family or anything but more like the Partridge family with more sexual innuendos.

Anyway!

If you are a:

-Mage / totallynotavendingmachine [port 2 dal plz]
-Feral dr00d [kitty -or- tanky bear, or both zomg are you both]
-Holy pally/disc priest

we are especially starved for your classes. Mainly we are looking for a DPS or two, a[nother] solid single-target healer, and maaaybe one more tank [which could also be, but is not limited to a feral dr00d. I just miss bear hugs, aww.]

For more information you can visit our site at: http://adaptation.guildomatic.com

or PM myself, or another officer, directly in-game. I would prefer that. I'm so lonely.

Hope to hear from you soon! You stay classy, Arathor.

/gnome cheer!

More Mage Mischief

2009-04-30T06:52:00.000-04:00

So here is something that I just learned today, and man, am I glad I did!

I think the WoW bunny critters are waaaay too cute. From their little headscritching idling animation, to the scream they emit when you club them to death. I've got a few "set" non-combat pets for certain characters. For example, my Forsaken warrior is never without his piggy, Mr. Wiggles [because, come on, a big bad undead warrior with a pet piggy named MR. WIGGLES of all things? Hilarious.] And, more on topic, my Death Knight, Snooky, when doing dailies, is almost always accompanied by her Snowshoe Rabbit.

Now, I was happy enough to learn that the Noblegarden event pet was another rabbit with its own... ahem... "special" animation. But, while surfing WoW Ladies today, something else was brought to my attention!

During Noblegarden, mages could purchase a Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit for 100 Noblegarden Chocolates. WHAT. I had no idea! The reason being that the tome is not visible to non-mage classes on the vendor, and I didn't actually go to purchase anything from him on my mage. I was farming only for the pet, and I [luckily] got it as a drop from a Brightly Coloured Egg on her.

As soon as I found out, I logged onto my mage and zipped over to Azure Watch yet again for some egg farming. It took me probably 20 minutes to get all 100 running around, since most people are already done with their egg camping/farming.

I bought the tome and learned the spell.

Scamper, awwww.

I decided to test it out while I was getting a couple more achievements done, so here we are in Desolace as I was planting a rose with my Spring Robes.

Aww, what an adorable deadly scorpion.

Too soon?

2009-04-30T03:47:00.000-04:00

Swine Flu pandemic hits Azeroth.

I am laughing way too hard at the comments.

Robots!

2009-04-29T05:28:00.001-04:00

This morning, I finally got around to doing something I've wanted to do since 3.1 hit. I ventured into Gnomeregan on my gnome mage, whom also just so happens to be a Gnomish engineer... [I like gnomes... a lot. I blame Bruzin.]

My first order of business was securing the schematics for the Pet Bombling. This was the easiest one of the two, since the schematics to craft it are a 100% drop off of Mekgineer Thermaplugg, the "last" boss in the instance. I jumped down and took the short route to him with slow fall, and got the schematics, yay! Adorable robot pet number one off the list.

/dance break

Afterwards, I worked my way back up killing the trash mobs listed to drop the schematics for Lil' Smokey. No dice on the first go. I head out and reset.

The second time through, I just went around killing trash, and on my very last Arcane Nullifier X-21... The schematics dropped! YAY!

I am so happy! =D

EDIT: To add, I showed off my new pets to my husband as he was leaving for work this morning. He is an Engineer on his main. Immediately, he ran off to Gnomeregan to get himself some schematics. He got both on his first go through the instance, so that's pretty awesome [heading straight to Thermaplugg, of course.] And he wasn't even late for work! ;)

Of bunnies and Noblegarden

2009-04-28T22:22:00.000-04:00

Noblegarden is in full swing on Azeroth, and like a lot of people, I am trying to get myself a Violet Proto-drake.

What that means is spending hours running around like a six-year-old on some horrible Speed/pixie stick bender, giggling: "I found one! I found one! F you this is my egg, BIATCH!"

Or you can be one of those stationary lumps of bunny camping eggs.

I found that I net more eggs per hour doing the running around bit than camping out spawn spots, even the really good ones like in Brill [H] and Azure Watch [A]. Mind you, I try my best not to egg hunt at peak hours.

I've gotten all 10 of my toons the adorable little Spring Rabbit pet this way, plus my warlock [whom I am trying for the mount on] her "the Noble" title.

Non-combat pets are my reason for doing anything in this game. [Here is my warcraftpets.com collection, if you're curious.] So, now that I've gotten the Noblegarden pet on all my toons, BRING ON CHILDREN'S WEEK.

[As a footnote though, if I always look this absolutely perfect degree of frightening and adorable, Noblegarden can stay.]

Demons and zombies

2009-04-28T12:17:00.000-04:00

I initially rolled a warlock when I found out they could have pet demons. That was prettymuch the coolest thing ever, in my head.
On top of that, they were casters. I already loved playing casters from other RPGs [in Final Fantasy games, for example, my party leader was always a black mage. ALWAYS], so this basically seemed like the class for me. And I was right!

At first, I levelled as Demonology. This seemed like a good idea at the time, since I was so ecstatic over the idea of having PET DEMONS OMG. It was fun for awhile, but when I finally got my Felguard, I realized it was ... Well, pretty overrated.

So I respecced Affliction.

...and I fell in love with the class all over again.

My god, being able to kill something while you were running away from it [or if it was running away from you, hooray for chain-Fears!]... It was, for lack of a better word, EPIC.
I discovered battlegrounds soon after this, and the devious glee of killing that FREAKING rogue with wonderful DoTs after they killed you. SO. MUCH. FUN.

Fast-forward to Burning Crusade raiding, and you quickly realize, at least in 10-mans, there really is no room for an affliction warlock. My heart: broken! Really! I was presented with the ultimatum that I think far too many people were back then. I had to choose between being a part of my guild's progression, or having fun with my class. Yes, I know I know, I could have respecced at my whim, I'm being a bit melodramatic. But I digress.

I switched to the cookie-cutter Demonic Sacrifice/deep Destruction raiding build, and earned my spot in the tops of the DPS charts in favor of progression. [In the end, after all, it's the people I'm spending hours a day with that keep me renewing my subscription. It really is!]

I hated it. It was called "shadow mage" spec for a reason. Where were my beloved DoTs? There was almost no place for them anymore. I just bound all my keys to Shadowbolt and facerolled until the boss died. [OK, not really.] I didn't want to play a freaking mage. I was a WARLOCK, DAMMIT!

Fast-forward once again to Wrath. Affliction has gotten amazing upgrades, wow. Haunt? Yes please. AND they made my Felpuppy a significant PvE pet!! OMG! I love my puppy!
We're OWNING Naxx! I'm top DPS on Patchwerk! Look at all those DoTs! I'm having so much fun micromanaging, and yes it's tedious and yes I fail at the Heigan dance but omg it's so much FUN! THIS IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

you bet your ass it was! NERFBAT INC. QQ TO FOLLOW. You could fill up Sholazar Basin with my tears srsly.

Patch 3.1, my DPS dropped dramatically. Where I was averaging 2200-2500 in 10 mans, topping out at 3000ish dps, I'm down to 1900 maximum. Ouch. I respec Destruction, begrudgingly, once again, and look to the skies of Northrend for a sign!

And I am given one!

Oh yes, that's right. With the release of Wrath also came Death Knights. You know, all through my WoW days as a warlock, I've been asking myself, what could be better than having a pet demon?

The answer is: having a pet zombie.

THANK THE LICH KING!

I levelled my Death Knight as Unholy spec, and it made the game fun again. When people call DKs warlocks in plate, they really aren't too far off, at least not with Unholy spec. You're melee, not a caster, but you're still micromanaging your pet and all your DoTs [diseases]... I guess you can see why it was easy for me to like the class.

I hit 80, though, and remembered why I was levelling a DK in the first place... Because my guild was short on tanks! So, I respecced to Frost, as it seemed a bit more viable as far as negating damage went, and went to work gearing up [with much help from guildies, of course! Don't let my QQing throw you off, the reason I do this stuff is because they are so genuinely awesome.] It turned out to be a pretty good idea all-around, though. My guild got a shiny new tank to break in [lol THAT'S A PLUS I SWEAR], and I discovered that tanking was actually pretty damned fun... but... I still missed my perma-pet zombie. =(

AND THEN... Dual specs came out.

AND! They buffed Unholy DKs some.

Snooky was the very first toon of mine I dual-specced. I thought of dual-speccing Manatee [warlock] even, but didn't see the point in dropping 1000g on a "pure" class... Especially when, it seemed, Snooky was quickly becoming my "main."

So, TL;DR: 3.0 Affliction, you'll always be in my memories. /single tear

second only to pet zombies.

Introduction

2009-04-28T11:52:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Ghoul Drool! I intend to update this blog mainly about my exploits on both my Death Knight and Warlock - my "mains" if you will, in World of Warcraft.

But, as with most things, it's best to start at the beginning!

My name is Rachel, but from here on out I'll go by Snooky. That's my Death Knight's name. It just sounded cute, no hidden meanings - and well, female gnomes are pretty adorable as a general rule.
I'm twenty-one, and I started playing WoW some three years ago, I think? Just before Burning Crusade launched. A friend of mine let me use his account, and I rolled a Night Elf hunter - as many noobs do - on Silvermoon. Eventually, I got my own account, and rerolled as a Human warlock named Manatee. I made some friends ingame, joined a guild. Silvermoon was a crowded server, with huge queues when you tried to log in at peak hours. The whole guild hated this, so we all collectively transferred to [then] new US PvE server, Arathor, when the free transfers were available.

Given my late start, I didn't have much time to experience real "old world" endgame raiding the way it was intended, with forty guildmates yelling all at once on vent. Instead, I just went on levelling to 70, until one day [skipping some details and patches here], I wound up with a new bunch of friends, in a 10-man raiding guild. I loved it! We did Karazhan a lot. A LOT. And eventually, Zul'Aman.

When the guild finally disbanded just before Wrath's launch, I followed the "core" group to a new guild, Adaptation, where we made the grind to 80 together with still more new friendly faces. This is where we are, to this day. I'm still running 10-mans [I love the changes Blizzard made to raiding!] I'm having a blast.

And I suppose that brings us to now! Rather than clutter up my "personal" blog with WoW adventures, I decided to try my hand at a completely separate, WoW-only blog. We'll see how it goes!