You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2010.
Several patches ago, there was this totem I wanted. I was a tank-healing, lesser-healing-wave-spamming shaman, and this totem increased the spellpower on Lesser Healing Wave by 267. It was amazing. I had to have it.
The catch was, you needed to buy it with Arena points.
So Ted & I grabbed a charter and started doing 2v2 rogue/resto shaman. We weren’t terrible, but we weren’t that good either. My reaction time isn’t fast enough for hardcore PvP. I finally did get my totem – but not until it was available to buy just with honor, sadly. I’d start to twitch after a dozen games.
But I want to be good at Arena. I do.
Today, one of our guildmates was like “PvP?”, and we were like “We’re rusty but sure.” and Buff Muffins, the 3v3 team was born.
We’re still working out the kinks – the plan was rogue / elemental shaman / discipline priest, but I don’t think I switch targets quickly enough to ever be really good at DPS in PvP. So we tried out some rogue / shadow priest / resto shaman, and that seems to work better. At least, that was the comp we were rolling with in the one match we actually won.
I rarely heal outside 5-mans anymore, so I’m thinking it’s time to take another look at my resto spec, make some tweaks, stop spending badges and honor on heirlooms and epic gems and actually buy some PvP gear. I want to get good at this. I want to be able to stop worrying the boys are going to throw me off the team.
Honestly, as much as I love my shaman in PvE, I think there are like … nine better classes for PvP.
So leveling Norrah on a PvP server hasn’t been too awful. I made the mistake of going afk in the inn in Darkshire and got smooshed while I wasn’t looking. Lesson learned. Do not /afk outside of Dalaran, got it.
I got one-shotted by a level 80 warrior right outside Gadgetzan. And this best embodies my attitude towards ganking – just sit there and take it. I mean, really, what is a level 40 something supposed to do? So I sit there and take it. Later, when I had accidentally pulled three mobs in Thistleshrub Valley, a like-level warlock decided he’d add his DoTs into the mix. What he didn’t realize is that there was a level 60 hunter farming ore a short distance away, and she made quick work of him. This clearly didn’t sit well, because he was hanging around Gadgetzan when I turned in with his level 80 friend.
I see the following emote on my chat screen: <Warlock> points at you.
Two seconds later, smooshed. Someone was a little cranky about losing, I think.
However, while I was in Un’Goro Crater today, a kitty druid two levels higher than me picked a fight. Two levels higher than me? I had a chance, so I had to at least try, right? I’m proud to say that Norrah killed him without even using a bubble or Lay on Hands.
I am not a PvP person. The fact that Azgalor is a PvP server was almost enough to deter me from bringing Krikket over, and is the main reason I’m leveling a pally first instead of a priest, warlock, or druid. I have no interest in picking fights with the Horde. If I’m doing dailies, or fishing, or I don’t know, trying to zone into ICC to raid, I’m just … not interested. If I want to PvP, I’ll go to Wintergrasp or queue for battlegrounds or join an Arena team. The rest of the time? I wish they’d leave me the hell alone. I don’t want to gank anyone, I don’t want to raid The Crossroads. I have no desire to be an annoyance to someone who’s just trying to relax and play a video game in peace.
That said? I won’t deny feeling a little warm and fuzzy on the inside as I looked down at the Tauren I had just killed. Maybe I’m not as 100% carebear as I though.
I am very glad to be a member of the various and sundry WoW communities that LiveJournal has to offer. I’ve learned a lot, and made some great friends. But sometimes there are things that make me twitch, and once you read? You cannot unread.
Like this for example: http://community.livejournal.com/worldofwarcraft/8267470.html
I’m mildly irked at the implication that anyone who wants to be good at WoW must have something wrong with them. Or be addicted. Or have something wrong with them and be addicted.
But the example the OP puts forward hits a little close to home.
Last spring, I started feeling bad a lot. Like – constantly a lot. I was sleeping at night, but it was never enough. Somewhere around late spring/early summer, I fell asleep behind the wheel of my car at 5 in the afternoon. I hadn’t done anything, I was just that dead tired. I was getting migraine headaches at least 2 – 3 times a month. Every inch of my body hurt constantly – it could be anywhere from a 2 to an 9 on the pain scale. Everywhere. All the time. I started napping most days when I got home from work, and binge sleeping on the weekends, but it didn’t help. I was tired constantly.
I went to my doctor, got the requisite blood tests, came back clean. I went for a sleep study, but it was inconclusive. My doctor refused to even discuss the possibility of fibromyalgia (which I know now is frequently diagnosed with a pressure test – nothing high tech or expensive) until all other possibilities were ruled out. I was told that I could be tired because I was overweight and didn’t exercise. I couldn’t make anyone understand that I couldn’t exercise – there was no energy for it.
Due to all things medical moving at the speed of sludge, I got let go from my temp position (one I’d been at for over 2 years) before getting a diagnosis. I’d already burned through all of my savings trying to make ends meet – by nature, with a temp position, if you miss work, you don’t get paid and I was the only income for both my boyfriend and I for over 9 months. There was no way I could afford the $500+ a month I would need to pay to Cobra my insurance, and since I was never diagnosed, I don’t actually qualify for state-assisted health insurance because my income potential is too high. I know there has to be a way to get past this, but looking for answers tends to stress me out so much, I have a flare, and spend a week in bed.
So I am that girlfriend now. I live on my boyfriend’s income, I play a lot of WoW, I raid, and I believe in being the best elemental shaman I know how to be. Being in control of Krikket makes me feel a little bit more in control of me – and right now, that helps. Do I expect to be able to do this forever? No, I know I can’t. But right now, I can, and I need to, and I’ve spent a lot of my life taking care of other people to my own detriment. This time is for me, to figure out what comes next, what I am capable of (both inside the game and outside of it), and find a good balance. I don’t always succeed every day, but I’m trying.
When achievements came out in WoW, it was one of the best and worst things to happen to my play experience.
Best because it was an objective method of tracking “how well” I was doing in WoW. Worst because, since then, I’ve done some amazingly boring, and some amazingly frustrating, thing just to get 10 more points.
Krikket is currently sitting at 6365 achievement points. She also has 9 Feats of Strength (achievements that don’t grant points). None of my other characters are even remotely close – thankfully, my obsessiveness does not extend to every character I level.
One of the biggest motivating factors in moving over to Azgalor and joining Brotherhood of Oblivion was the fact that someone wanted to start a group to get Glory of the Ulduar Raider. Silly, right? I was all anti-25-man-raiding, but dangle a raid drake in front of my face? I’m so there.
As it turns out, 25-man raiding is rarely as horrific as I anticipated it being. I still prefer 10 mans, but I think that’s because I feel more competent in 10 mans. I’m not fighting the latency boss. I’m not getting stagger-stepped by 20 AoE effects going off on my screen at once. I also feel that it’s easier to build personal relationships in a smaller group. You know what to expect from yourself and your teammates.
… I’m digressing, aren’t I?
Now I’m getting to the point where Krikket doesn’t have much in way of achievements that she can do alone, and other than Ted – who I can talk into anything – I don’t expect other people to indulge my crazy whims. So I’ve set some new WoW-goals for myself.
- Level one of each class to at least level 60 80.
- Level at least one male character to at least level 60.
- Loremaster Krikket before the release of Cataclysm.
- Katastrophe the Insane.
- Get a red proto-drake on any character.
- Be on an arena team with a 1550+ rating on any character.
Yes, some of those have to do with actual in-game achievement points, but the one I’m finding most interesting at this point is the leveling of all the different classes. I’m up to four different classes at level 80. I have two more that have just barely passed level 60, and a mage that’s sitting at level 58 thanks to RaF. Getting a Deathknight to 60 should be easy since they start at 55. Which leaves me with hunter and paladin. And now that Norrah has passed level 40, I’m thinking I’m getting pretty close to that goal.
(Incidentally – I also want to have every profession in game at max level eventually, even though I’m terribad at leveling professions.)
Now I’m wondering if it would be worthwhile to increase it to getting each class to max level. I’m not great at balance, and I know I would never play them all regularly. But as someone who’s currently missing her max level alts a whole bunch, the desire for MOAR 80S is strong. The only class that I haven’t found to be fun to play has been the mage but I expect that has more to do with not really liking the one-button play-style of frost for leveling than not liking the class itself.
I’m definitely an alt-aholic. There’s only so much you can do at 80 once you’re geared up to raid.
Today was the day I planned to push Norrah through the last part of painful (to me anyway) Azeroth leveling.
While the servers were down for maintenance this morning, I did my normal routine of websites – Yahoo.mail, Livejournal, Gmail, GoogleReader,Facebook, this blog, & our guild website. Then I remembered that I was going to post some strats for the more complicated Ulduar 10-man hardmodes. I found some written strats for FL+4, hard mode IC, and a Tankspot video of 10-man Freya+3.
Shortly after that? My computer basically exploded.
Apparently something I did this morning got me infected with Antivirus Soft. Holy error messages! It took me a couple of reboots to even get control back (ohai program that shuts down Task Manager), and I’m still virus scanning.
No matter how well protected your computer is, and how “safe” you think the sites you visit are – you can never be too prepared.
It took a ridiculous amount of discussion, debate and rationalizing for Ted & I to decide to transfer one character each to a new server to join BoO. Part of it, I’m sure, was my lingering loyalty to my few friends that were still playing on Bronzebeard. But most of it was more practical.
- I am currently unemployed, have been since October, and really? I don’t see that changing anytime soon. So we’re on a very fixed income. We have absolutely and totally budgeted for both our subscriptions (that + Netflix + one date night/month is our entire entertainment budget), but transfers aren’t part of that.
- We recently dumped close to $100 in transfers and a second account so we could RaF Horde. Ted moved two of his old Horde characters to Shadow Council, and we paid for an extra account for two months, and while I’m glad we did it? It was an unplanned-for expense, and it came right around the holidays, so we’ve been living skinny for a bit now.
- If I let myself transfer another character while I’m still not bringing in any income (which is a rule I made for myself – not one he imposed upon me!), not only will I feel bad because … well, I’m still not bringing in any income and yet I’m still getting whatever I want, I also know that’ll open the door for even more transferring and honestly? If we both transferred everything we want to play, we’re looking at hundreds of dollars in server transfer, faction changes, and we’ll fill up all our damn character slots on the server in no time.
That said? I think I ever stop being lazy and get back to making some freelance cash, I will be transferring another toon over from Bronzebeard, but I’m totally torn on which one to bring.
Just a quick post while I see if my friends on Shadow Council are going to log on for a go at the first couple bosses in Ulduar for the weekly raid quest.
I never thought I’d end up with a level 80 Horde character (and certainly never thought I’d see the day where I had an 80, and three more who got through Azeroth!), but when Amazon.com had original WoW for $5, we couldn’t pass it up. We ordered two boxes, planning do a refer-a-friend for each of us.
We stumbled into a guild recruitment ad that sounded just right for what we wanted to do, and we were off. I have always wanted a priest. But once they nerfed Wand Spec at the end of BC, I was never able to level on very far without wanting to cry. Or uninstall. Or cry while uninstalling. Priest healing looked like so much fun – priest leveling was horrid.
But RaF meant never leveling alone. I bubbled my way through 80 levels, and it was amazing.
Now? I sort of hate it that I have a disc priest in 4 piece Tier 9 gear who … does the weekly. Usually. Because healers are always in high demand (although not as high as tanks, if heroic queue times are anything to go by), and I have a character I love to play that I just … don’t. At least not, that often. It feels like a waste. I feel like she could be so much more useful if she were Alliance. I suck at balancing time between servers, never mind factions.
It’s probably strange to miss characters that I can play any time I want just because they’re not available everywhere I want.
Fingers crossed for the weekly!
As part of my quest to level one character of each class to at least level 60, and due in part to the fact I’m totally paranoid to level something squishy on a PvP server by myself, I’ve been spending some serious quality time with Norrah.
Little paladins look sort of silly, don’t they? Especially the rocking red and gold leg-warmers.
Gnomeregan has finally fallen off my random LFD list, so tomorrow? I try tanking again. Stormwind Stockades went ok – not fabulous, but not terrible either. I have been questing like a madwoman. As usual, my professions are way the hell behind where I think I should be. But she is an amazing band-aid-er.
Rawr!
I’m sure I’ll get back to the chatty stuff soon enough because there’s lots of stuff I want to talk about, but tonight?
Tonight is a sad panda sort of night.
So, a couple weeks ago, my boy & I server transferred to join our very first 25-man raiding guild. Exciting right? Well, it would be, if I weren’t already so discouraged that I want to stop signing up for raids.
Tonight, we wiped in the first minute or so of the Festergut fight. Wiping horribly I have no issue with. But the raid leader then said to us all “If you’re running recount, look at that number beside your name. If it’s not 7K or higher, you’re not where you need to be to be here.”
Let’s ignore for a second that only three DPS were close to 7K. Let’s ignore for a second they were all melee and didn’t need to move for spores and they didn’t get targeted for the puking stun.
The problem is this: I play an elemental shaman. It’s the class I love, and the spec I enjoy, and I do my research and know what stats I’m looking for. WoW-Heroes tells me that ICC-25 is a “medium hard” instance for my current gear level, so I’m not painfully undergeared or anything.
In my current gear, and in an ideal world (i.e. one where I never have to move or switch targets), I can theoretically pull about 5.5K DPS in my current gear on a single target. MaxDPS says so. That’s not terrible. You will note that it’s also not 7K.
But here’s the part that really irks me. In gear that’s currently available to me (i.e. nothing that drops of bosses later than the first four in ICC-25, and nothing from heroic mode), I cannot even reach a “theoretical” 7K dps. On a non-movement straight burn. This leads me to conclude that I’m not going to see anything even remotely close to 7K where I have to move a minimum of 10 yards twice every 30 seconds.
I’m not saying none of this is on me. But … I can’t help but feel a little singled out when the shadow priest who gets a good chunk of his damage from DoTs gets put in with the melee (so he has to move less), and I get left out at range.
I know I’m not topping the charts on any of the fights. I haven’t raided 25-mans since Naxx was progression. Most of my gear is iLvL 232 – 245. Yes, I could be more geared.
But no matter how geared I get, I’m not going to pull 7K dps when I can only cast 40-45 seconds out of every minute. Ever.
About two years ago, when I started playing WoW, I knew nothing. I knew less than nothing, actually. I didn’t understand “realms” and actually rolled a character wherever WoW suggested, and played it for a few hours before I realized that if I wanted to play with my friend who gave me the game? We needed to be on the same realm. So I was already rerolling on day one.
This is what I had to go on: In every single player RPG I’d ever played, I was terrible at casters. My friend Sou played a druid, and druids have healy spells, and therefore, were probably squishy, as all casters are. So, if we were going to play together, I should make a melee class that could take a bit of a beating.
Quick scan down the character creation screen, and my choice was obvious. I’d have to be a warrior. A few minutes later, Klyvadia was stealing candles in Northshire Abbey.
