A day of crazy healing

I touched upon this the other day when I did Firelands, but I don't feel that I've captured my feelings on the matter properly, succinctly.  I want to write it all down so I remember exactly what was going on the day I tried to heal a raid post 5.0.4.  So that when I come back and look at it when I hit 90 I can laugh at myself for being a noob.

So we'll start at the beginning.

I didn't want to play the Beta.  Yes, I had a beta key, but I don't quite see the point of going out there and doing something and being a test dummy when there are plenty of other people to do that.  And I have better things to do with my time than do quests that I will be doing again and playing with a buggy World of Warcraft.  Yes, forgive me all those beta lovers and testers, but I like my World of Warcraft all polished, pretty and working as intended.

I was not ignorant of the changes to druids, I don't live under that big a rock.  I know about the fixed mana pool and the healing mushrooms.  I know that I need more spirit, and that I'm losing relics.  I was eager to test it out, because I like change, and everyone starts on the same boat again.

The patch was live when I was at work, so everyone else got to play with it before I did, and I was itching to get started because I had addons to fix, "talents" (I think of them more like bonus goodies) to add to my character, glyphs to change and reforging to do.  I work a long day, I leave at 630am and get back home 630pm, and raiding is at 8 or 830pm and I've got kids to put to bed, dinner to eat and get cleaned up after work before I can get on the computer.  So while I'm eating dinner and hubby is entertaining the kids, I jump on the computer and start sorting out my character.  Wow, why am I not haste capped anymore?  Oh right, relic is gone.  And Beru was trying 2600 spirit so I'll go try that too - luckily I was at 2500 so I ws close anyway.  So I reforge all my stuff, and I look sadly at my 102k mana pool and think geez, I hope this is gonna go ok.

Next step - Healbot.  OK, Healbot is not working.  I whinge on twitter about it, and people suggested trying one of the other ones.  I have never tried Vuhdo or Grid so I wasn't that keen to start.  Sev asked me to duel him outside so I went outside with no addons and see how it would be like to heal.  After all, back in Vanilla I used to heal with no addons and I was mouse clicking people and using my keybinds so maybe I can go back to that.

So we start duelling.  And OMG it was SHIT.

I'm so used to running with ASDW and clicking with my mouse that suddenly trying to run with my mouse and use my left hand to hit numbers 4 through to 0 is just wrong.  I can hardly move while I'm trying to heal, and though the healing seems to heal through Sev's damage I can't seem to get my mobility right.  There is no way I can do this for raid tonight.  Off I go and get Vuhdo.

I haven't got time to watch the youtube video, so I start setting up the click to heal part and that seems ok.  Geez these windows are small... oh right, here it is, I can change the size here.  Wow, this big red dot is ANNOYING.  Oh I get it, the hots appear on each corner of everyone's box, I can deal with this.  Oh but the red dot is on top of the lifebloom corner so I can't see how long it has left... Oh I haven't got time to sort this out, they're pulling trash already.  Crap, Aza died!  Sorry!!  I was trying to figure out this healing addon!!  Oh great, Aza's complaining at me for not healing, I didn't know he was going to seriously try to tank!

Damn how do I put the tanks together on Vuhdo?  Oh right, I can heal them from this tank window up the top here, that's handy.  Oh shit, Roshii died, because I didn't see his health because I was only looking at these tank windows.  OH GOD, where is healbot, I don't like this thing...

Back to twitter to search for whether anyone has said anything useful about healbot.  Nope.  Bloody hell, that doesn't help.

Souglyy told me she found a Healbot that works!  I have to go to forums and click on something... I'm trying to pull up the second screen while the tanks go and pull some more stuff and I'm trying to keep up with them whilst looking at my second screen.  Lushnek is telling me where to go and I'm stressing out trying to find that on the page while at the same time look at the game to heal the tanks.  Geez, what's wrong with Fue, why is he taking such a pounding??  He's going down like a sack of stones!

Lushnek sends me a link and I run off to click it and get this working healbot.  So I said in raid stop pulling I am logging out to get my healing addon and I download it, log back in and YAY!  Healbot is up, I see names on it and I just need to quickly fix these mouseclick binds and I'm good to go!

Victory number 1.

But, running around healing like I normally do, I noticed my mana is constantly below 50%.  This is crap.  I never run that low!  I need to be more conservative with my healing - god I don't even have time to get to try these mushroom things, I've already got mana issues, I don't want to be stuffing around planting mushrooms that won't get used, what a waste of mana.

Even the tanks noticed that healing was a bit off.  Well, we did start with Heroic Beth'tilac first, and that's not an easy fight to heal anyway.  Everyone died so quickly...

Oh crap, debuffs to dispel is not showing up on my healbot.  I squint at the Blizzard UI to see if there's anything I need to dispel.  God, this is not going well.

Wow, my healing on Rhyolith is really bad!  Bish easily outhealed me on that one.  Well, I died at the end but still... maybe priests aren't that weak after this patch after all!  And he's not even using lightwell!

Off to Baleroc and the flame buffs aren't showing!  OMG I have no idea why it's not showing!  I can't see my stacks, I can't see Bish's stacks and I have no idea if I have the mote or the primal buff for tank healing or crystal healing.  I have no idea how I managed to get through that boss with no idea of where I was up to on buffs... Bish was very patient and was telling me it looks like a mote of fire, but I know what it looks like, I JUST DON'T SEE IT ON MY BUFFS AND I DON'T KNOW WHY THE HELL NOT!!  Inside I was going crazy, healing like I've got a blindfold on.

So then we went to Majordomo and we were doing it on heroic and OMG after 7 swipes, not only was the raid looking dangerously low (even at just 4 swipes) but mana was at 20% as I ran out for jumping kitty phase.  HOLY CRAP.  I innervated, tree formed to try to conserve mana, and tried to heal the DPS so they could do their thing.  They beat the thing down before we even got the orbs out thank god, because that would have been crazy.  We did have a few wipes, but the kill attempt was clean.  And what is wrong with my Swiftmend, why is it working only half the time I'm clicking the button???  IT'S OFF COOLDOWN YOU STUPID ADDON!

Then we did Rag.  OMG, that was hard to heal.  I was OOM, and adds were getting to the hammer (well just one) and by the time we hit the fire bubbles that blow up phase I was at 10% mana.  And Fue was getting the crap beaten out of him, what was going on there?  Seven was looking pretty awesome with 256k health, talk about BUFFAGE.  But I did stupid things that caused wipes like getting blown up in the air and hitting travel form (or trying to) instead of kitty and dying when I hit the ground.  By the time we got to the meteor phase I was living off shreds of mana and this was NORMAL Ragnaros.  How on earth am I going to do heroic Dragon Soul if I can't even get my act together on normal Firelands?

I lost a lot of confidence in my ability to heal after that night.  So yesterday I thought I'd just test it out in PvP to see how it went.

I was duelling Shaba and normally I don't have much problems with surviving.  But OMG Shab was stealing all my hots and his mana didn't go down and I could not get away from him nor keep myself up - gone are the days where I could dot him up and let him get worn out and waste his cooldowns trying to get me because he burst me down and stole my heals and I was kersplat!  I mean, that's good for Shab so now he knows how to kill a druid, but now what am I going to do?  I can't use direct heals in PvP because counterspell will lock me out of my spell school for 6 seconds which IS BLOODY LONG.  It looks mages have become the new anti druid class.

So we go into a BG together and I was absolutely CANED.  I could hardly stay up.   I was focussed and squashed, spell stolen and silenced until I just wanted to scream in frustration at the computer.  But really, that always happens in PvP anyway, so I shouldn't really be surprised, and now that I look at it with the rectrospectoscope I realised I was getting caned because I was the only healer and I had 2-3 DPS on me and I was getting focussed so I was supposed to die.  Lousy game anyway, that AB.  We lost.

So I'm hoping for a run in Dragon Soul  SOMETIME this week so I can really test my skills.  I'm flasking spirit instead of Intellect and tempted to go fish for spirit food to keep my regen high, but I'm still nervous.  Maybe instead of 2600 spirit I should be running with 3000 spirit.  And why didn't I take those trinkets with spirit on them FFS.  Because regen trinkets I am sorely lacking - I still have my heroic Jaws of Defeat so that's good, at least.  Sigh.  Oh well, guess we'll see when we get to Dragon Soul... if not this week, then next week.

I think I dread everyone telling me how easy healing on the druid is now.  All day of patch day people were saying you'll be right, and were not happy with their DPS.  Unfortunately, none of them are healers for heroic Dragon Soul.  I just got my healing sorted and now I have to figure it out again.  Rotations are different now, mana is tight and I am trying to figure out how to work this new spell into my rotation or if it's even feasible.  You can't tank or dps when your healers can't keep you up.  I just hope people remember that, and realise that maybe, just maybe they have to rely on their defensive abilities or avoid more damage as they realise that I can't heal them through those little mistakes as much as I used to.

I think what I dread most is going out there onto the internet and reading other druids writing about how much easier it is, how great it is and how they're really OP now.  And yet here I am still struggling to feel comfortable in this new skin.  What does that say about me as a player?  I was looking forward to this... and now I can't even do what I was trying to do.  Am I getting old?  Too old to change my spots?

If this stupid laptop would patch I could go and console myself by playing with my stag form or orca form and take some pretty pictures.  Or maybe do a Mylune and surround myself with furry little creatures.  But no, I can't, I can only sit here and wonder about  how I can get my groove back, and hope that I don't let my team down when we raid again.  If we raid again.

Nerisella, Queen of the Desert!

It should be easy visiting Aussie bloggers.  They're on at the same time as me (unless they're in Perth of course and then they're like 4 hours behind!) and when I found out Neri (of Neri Approves!) was living out in the Alice, I wanted to go meet her.  After all, we've chatted, she loves her guild, she has transmog competitions on her blog and she also does charity stuff (see her Dry July challenge) so all round, she's a pretty cool chick!  AND, she plays Horde.

So, went over to look today, probably a BIT optimistic, because it's still afternoon and she could be at work or school.  Her server, a PvP realm that is in my battlegroup, was familiar to me, and when I did a /who of her guild, Concur, there were 4 people online, 2 in Orgrimmar, and 2 in Shadow labyrinth.  I sent a tell to the ones in Orgrimmar, and one of them responded, and told me that Neri was on an alt - one of the toons in Shadow Labyrinth.

So I sent her a hesitant tell, and she replied and told me she was helping her brother, but would be done soon.  All good, I replied.  I had been running around killing things to get coin for an in game mail but phew, don't need to do that now!

So she summoned me to Valley of Spirits and we took a few pics and chatted.  Time was tight, so we were doing a lot of small chat - she'd been sick lately with the flu - and I asked about her guild (and it's name), and we talked about pandas, Dry July, and her August transmog competition, Faction Pride.  Entries close on Friday 24th (by the time this post is published, that date wil be LOOOONG gone).  If I have time I'll try to get dressed up for it and enter.

 She was such a nice hostess.  Always putting that mushroom chair out for me to sit on :)

Then we said our farewells.  It was a short visit (damn you work!) but we swapped RealIDs so now we can just chat whenever - and since we are the same faction we can even DO stuff together!

Thanks for letting me Navispam you Neri, you lovely desert flower!

Mists of Change - a short story about Patch 5.0.4

Something was coming.  There were whispers in the alleys and crazy heralds in the streets shouting about the rise of a new World.  Navimie thought it must be another full moon.  Next month was the coming of the apocalypse, some cried.  Others said that old gods would rise again.  One lunatic troll clutched at her robes saying that the Sha were upon them, and Navimie had cast Soothe, watching with satisfaction as the crazed look left his eyes, and he sat on his haunches, his face impassive, with maybe a hint of a smile.  She cast a rejuvenation on him to calm him further and smiled as the warmth of the healing spell wafted around him like a summer breeze.

But yesterday, when she woke, she FELT different.  She stared at herself in the mirror, wondering what it was that was different.  She felt a little... diminished.  She couldn't explain the feeling.

As she stepped out to head to the Valley of Wisdom she stopped short in her tracks, and looked around her incredulously.  The streets were awash with people - great throngs and crowds concentrated around the Auction Houses, profession trainers and the training dummies.  She hadn't seen this many people since... maybe, since Deathwing shattered the world.

Shifting into flight form she headed to Shalla Whiteleaf, the druid trainer in Orgrimmar.  Perhaps she could explain what was going on.  She swooped in front of Shalla and changed back to Tauren, and greeted her druid sister with a wave.

"Shalla, my sister, what is happening?  I feel different, as if nature's elements within me have..." Navimie paused as she struggled to find the right words.  "Changed somehow.  I feel more ... animal like, if that is possible?  Oh," she threw her hands up in frustration.  "I can't explain it!"

"Changes are coming, my sister," said Shalla, patting her arm reassuringly.  "The Earthmother herself as felt it, and like all things in nature, she is trying to adapt, to grow to it."  Shalla held her hand up as she cast Wild Mushrooms upon the ground beneath Navimie's hooves.  "Observe."

It was difficult for her not to step out of the mushrooms.  Navimie braced herself for the stench of spores and fungal cloud that the mushrooms emitted which caused damage and slowed enemies, and prepared to cast a Rejuvenation upon herself to help soothe the minor injury the cloud caused.  However, as Shalla cast Detonate, rather than acrid spores which would sting her eyes, the mushrooms bloomed like spring flowers, and an earthy smell surrounded her, that was refreshing and calming.  Navimie's eyes opened wide as she realised these were healing mushrooms.

"How...?"

"The power that the Earthmother has allowed us to tap into is changing, Navimie," said Shalla.  "These mushrooms are not the only thing that those of the healing arts can now access.  Our healing spells are different as well, some more powerful, others more draining on our mana.  We can even Barkskin others now."  Shalla cast Barkskin on herself and Navimie.  Navimie looked in awe at the magical skin that covered her hide, exactly the same as the Barkskin she cast on herself.  Now that was a very useful spell indeed.

Mana was the energy source for casting all spells in all schools of magic.  Navimie started to cast lifebloom and rejuvenation on herself, and noted that the healing effects of lifebloom lasted a lot longer than it used to.  However, she found that she depleted her mana reserves very quickly, and had to rest.  Navimie frowned.  This would not do in raid party or in a battleground.  She would need to improve on her mana regeneration if she was going to survive.

Navimie saw a wounded Blood Elf warrior riding into the Valley, his plate mail dented and scratched.  She cast a Healing Touch on him and felt the Harmony within her rise, boosting her natural healing power.  She felt exulted as she noticed that Harmony remained longer with her than it did previously.  The blood elf turned to her and bowed his head in acknowledgement, returning a blessing of might to her in exchange.

It was time to visit the Ethereals in the Drag and ask them to adjust her magical energies to improve her mana regenerative powers.  As she cast travel form, she yelped.  No, she didn't yelp, she bleated.  Navimie stared in shock at her hooves as she noticed that instead of paws she still had hooves.  She trotted over to the pond and stared in surprise at the stag that looked back at her.  She could feel traces of Malorne's magic within her, and she studied her new form with interest.  She reared on her hind legs, and raced down the Drag, as swift as she had been when she was a cheetah.

Navimie had no idea what the Earthmother was adapting to, what forces of nature had caused these changes for all druids.  But as she surged forward in the image of Malorne, the great protector of nature, Navimie knew that with her new found gifts she would find a way to battle this new threat to her home in Azeroth.

 --------------------------------------------

This story is my submission for this weeks Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Headcanon put forward by Akabeko of Red Cow Rise:

Canon refers to the actual events and characters that exist in a fictional world. Headcanon refers to any situations or characters that are imagined by fans of said fictional world. Sometimes they are silly, like the fact that Garrosh's favorite treat is lemon squares. Sometimes they are serious, like positing that tauren store grief in the lungs.  What are your headcanons, and where did you get the idea?

Patch 5.0.4 Cool Stuff #5 - Collector's Edition Quiliens - mount and pet

Akabeko wrote a great post on the Qilin (pronounced Chi-lin) which are the mythical beasts/chimera that the Pandarian Quilien are based upon.

So when patch 5.0.4 hit, our Deluxe Edition goodies came in the mail.

I really need a mod that shows the WHOLE achievement.  Geez.

So here I am on my mount with pet.  I have to admit, not the best looking things I've seen, but they fit in well with the whole asian theme of Pandaria.

Patch 5.0.4 Cool Stuff #4 - Stag stacking

Unfortunately they fixed this bug I heard, but I would have LOOOOOVED to take a screenshot of this!  So I'm not sure if it comes under cool stuff, but it probably is on par with Mataoka's cats which are rats in Dalaran.

Screenshot courtesy of redditbot of Images

Image from derbol on MMO-Champion

Patch 5.0.4 Cool Stuff #3 - Account wide Achievements but I'm still #1

So despite account wide achievements, the guild tab still shows character achievements rather than personal ones.  Which means... I may not have the most achievements on my personal toons out of my guildies, but on a toon level, I'm still number #1.  HELL YEAH!

I have to say when I saw people getting 100,000 Valor points and 100,000 Honor Kills I was pretty impressed.  Yay to everyone who got a few extra achievements (Falln said he got Master of Warsong Gulch through account wide achieves GRATS!).

OK, now I'm gonna have to work hard again to keep ahead of these guys sneaking up...

Zellviren the Unwavering Sentinel is Navispammed!

I had just finished visiting Ironyca and Noelani and I said I was going to go visit Zellviren, and they mentioned that he used to be in the guild, and was likely not on the server anymore.  So I went to his blog and did an armory and found that he had moved.  And he had tweeted recently, so he was around.. somewhere.  So I tracked him down to his server and when I got there looked through his guild.  There were a few on.

The first person I whispered didn't answer, but the second person replied me when I asked about Zell and said he was on an alt.  Perfect!  Except that he was in a dungeon.  I asked if he could tell me which alt he was on, and then when I sent a tell his reply was "WHAT!"

I laughed.  Was he making fun of me talking to him in an instance?

It was actually him doing a "WHAT! You're talking to me???"  Which was kind of funny.  I said to him "Oops where are my manners!  My name is Navimie, and I'm a fan of your blog..."

"No you're not!  I read YOUR blog!"

"Hey!" I said.  "I commented on your blog AGES ago!"  And I went to his blog and pulled out old posts that I'd commented on to say "See, I do visit you!"

It was really nice, Zell was really really excited about me visiting.  He was grinning so wide that his face was sore halfway through my visit.  He brought all his toys out and we chatted about blogging, and he said that my visit really cheered him up, he'd been having a down kind of week.  His last couple of posts had made him sad - people being jerks, really.  One was a thread that said "No girls in our guild" and he'd also been rather busy.  But I was happy that I'd cheered him up somewhat, and I tried my best to be entertaining.

LOL, I had to take a picture of him going SQUEEE.  It was funny because he had written a blog post that started with a definition of squee and mentioned me in it.

I have always admired that post he wrote about helping raiders with Autistic Spectrum Disorders - I like reading things about people understanding others and trying to help them through things.  It inspires me to be more understanding and helpful.

Zell had to go and raid which allowed me to go to sleep.  However, how can I sleep after being so excited from meeting people and them getting so excited - it's contagious because I was excited to meet him to but him being happy about it only fed my excitement MORE!  Positive feedback/reinforcement causing overload LOL!

Oh, there was one bad thing about the meeting... I mentioned this to Ironyca when I was chatting to her just before I went to see Zellviren.  And that was I cannot stand that snorting sniffing sound that Worgen do.  So you can imagine my horror when Zell turned up and he was a worgen and while we were standing around chatting there was the snorting and sniffing dog sounds that drive me nuts.  I just took my headset off and happily typed away.  I don't need game sounds to chat :)

So THANK YOU Zell for making my visit so fun.  It was a genuine pleasure to Navispam you!  And you squeee'd at me.  OMG people SQUEEE seeing me! /blush

First raid post patch 5.0.4 - OMG LOL!

Everyone was logging on and trying out their talents and complaining!  I couldn't wait to get home to look at my toon and see all these new things.  So I went to reforge some extra haste and more spirit (didn't actually have to forge that much spirit - I was already on 2500) and then look sadly at this tiny mana pool.  Gutsy's computer wasn't letting him download the game, so he couldn't login and Shab didn't want to raid because he was playing around with his talents.  So Fue said let's go do Firelands to test out our new talents.

Meanwhile in guild chat...

There was something really weird about achievements... Falln kept getting Koralon the Flame Watcher achievement over and over... and Souglyy kept getting 5000 Daily Quests Complete.  Every time she zoned into something.  It started to get a bit old by about the 20th time...

I felt so gimpy!  Healing my usual style stripped my mana away so I was being a little more conservative.  We tried to do Beth'tilac heroic but that wasn't a go, so we just knocked it off on normal.  I was happy because we did Alsyrazor so fast that she didn't even get the cyclones out so I just have to have a raid where nobody gets hit by brushfires or the worm fires.  Then I can get THAT achievement, wooo!  We did everything on normal except for Majordomo Staghelm which was good because not only did Aza finally get his neck (which will be obsolete in less than a month) but we also did the Only the Penitent... achievement.  Yay!

We did Rag, and we wiped on it, and Fue said did we really need to do it, because he didn't want people to get stroppy at wiping on stuff.  I said it's kinda embarrassing to be wiping on Rag, and I felt like because of that we HAD to kill it.  So we did, and we had a few more wipes and by golly those adds were getting to the hammer WHAT THE HELL!  Anyway, we managed to kill it and when we looted... we found a Smoldering Egg of Millagazor!  We all rolled and guess who won it with a roll of 100!!!  Fueghan!  So here he is on his gorgeous new mount - /whistles my that's a nice one!  Seven says that the drop rate is higher the less meteors you have out.  We only had one so that apparently gives you a drop rate of about 50%!  Wow, why haven't we been farming Firelands eh?

 

I have to admit, healing was hard.  I didn't feel like my usual slick self.  My heals are bigger, but my mana seems to drop really fast.  Though it does regenerate quickly, which is good.  I don't know how tomorrow is going to be but I'll be late home, so unless Gutsy gets on, we won't be doing Dragon Soul any time soon.

Patch 5.0.4 Cool Stuff #2 - Stag and Orca

 This I like.  I'm was a bit over the ugly seal/dugong form.  This orca form is very nice!  I think this was a great addition :)

And this is Stag Form.  I do enjoy being able to carry an extra person!  I like these minor vanity glyphs!

Patch 5.0.4 Cool Stuff #1 - Reins of the Twilight Harbinger

OMG, they took out Heroic Spine and Heroic Madness for the Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider!

Which means, the Frostwolves Heroic raiding team all have Twilight Harbingers - WOOHOOOO!

 

Thanks to Souglyy for letting me know about that!  I hate being at work on an unpatched computer.... look at all the fun I'm missing out on!  Can't wait to get home to get my one :)

Navispamming the couple behind WoWRolePlayGear

I promised Ironyca that I would come and see her on her home server and maybe I could see Noelani too.  So after I finished chatting to Syrco, I wandered over to see her on Elford, her Ironman toon.  Her visit to me was so lovely, I hoped she would be as happy to see me on her own server.  I was sure she would be!

He is a spunky looking gnome isn't he?

I wondered about Noelani and it turned out he was doing what Cymre, Arvash and Kamalia had been doing - farming Scholo and Scarlet Monastery for items.  However, he did come over on his alliance toon and I was curious as to what someone who writes a transmogrification blog would wear.  His female rogue was dressed like a demon hunter!  We partied up, and then I was fretting about Elford being in a party and Ironyca said that it would be fine as nobody killed anything or got her any XP.  Noelani sounded really cheeky when he made a threat about killing some mobs "accidentally"... but fortunately it's all too low level so Elford wouldn't get XP from that anyway!

I thought about how I came across them - Ironyca I knew from her blog ages ago, and Noelani had his blog WoWRolePlayGear - though at that time I thought he was a girl, and since he and Ironyca did it together, I thought it was two girlfriends making a blog.  Never realised that they were a couple until they came to Dath'remar for the transmog contest.

I was pleased to meet him and I told him that I was very interested in what transmog gurus wear.  And he told me that he wasn't much of a transmog person!  What he told me was that he had a photographic memory for gear and it was Ironyca who put the sets together.  I was very dubious of course, because the set he came up with was perfectly lovely, but after seeing some of Ironyca's mogs, I was very impressed at her sense of style.  I chuckled at the thought of Noelani being Ironyca's Ken doll.  Or rather, Barbie doll, since Noelani's toon is female.

Noelani speaks Danish!  I thought that was rather cool.  I said it would be really awesome if they slip in a Danish word in the next livestream of WoW Factor and the two of them said Elvine would go nuts!  I wonder if they do it :)  heh heh!

I decided to be a tourist and sight see a bit.  It was an RP server after all, and I said to the two of them that I just wanted to go to Goldshire Inn.  They both groaned and said it would be full, but I just had to go see.  There was no good voyeuristic things to see but there were "sound effects".  Some human was standing in a fire to make the moaning sounds... /rolls eyes.  OK OK, I had enough perving and I went to go and be sociable again.  Ironyca showed me all the people lining up for ERP.  Heh.

Noelani has two accounts, and he brought his Blood Elf over to hang with us.  She attracted a lot of attention because people thought she was itching for a fight.  She was very attractive however!  I talked about the post they made about how to make characters on the other faction, and they talked about how maybe they'd make a video out of it.

We retired to the inn in Stormwind and chatted a little more, and that's where I got to see Ironyca's other toons and transmogs.  Noelani joined me on another alt at first and I moved away thinking he was someone trying to join in our party without an invitation!  Whoops!  I had to go soon after (and they had to go have some dinner) so we said our farewells.  Interestingly, they knew the next person I was going to Navispam (was in their guild before)!  You can read more about that tomorrow :)

Ironyca and Noelani, thank you for letting me Navispam you!



What Frostwolves are saying about Patch 5.0.4

Patch 5.0.4 is going live this Wednesday, and with it come a multitude of changes.  So what do guildies think of the upcoming patch?

Roshii (Assassination Rogue): 

I can't wait!  Something new, new talents, change of playstyle.  See how the raid will go!  Wooo :)  In my talents... well not so much for the rogue - rogues have the least amount of changes.  Leeching poison sounds pretty awesome tho!  Poisons being spells not reagents???  Oh, and I'll tell you what I am happy about - my spec gets a proc!  That's pretty cool :)  Oh, ALL MY MOUNTS on all my toons!   Yeeehaaaaaw!  Oh, I almost forgot, Crimson Tempest!  It allows us rogues to have an AOE rotation!  So now FoK (fan of knives) builds combo points and Crimson Tempest is the finisher!  It puts bleeds on all targets.

I'm a bit scared about all my alts :(  learning all my alts all over again!  Druid is the most scary - those talents intimidate me!

Gutsy (Holy Priest): 

Not looking forward to having only 102k mana to heal with.  Not really looking forward to learning priests, druids and mage all over again.

Aioros (Ret Paladin and altoholic):

Uhm... I haven't read.  Am I being nerfed?

Jinjersnaps (Restoration Shaman and altoholic):

I've only looked at a few class changes so far.  Druids symbiosis has got me excited, part reason I got my troll druid up.  I have a nelf but I don't really play alli anymore.  Shamans are getting nerfed, so I was looking to run a druid for healing and my mage for DPS.  Resto druids are goign to be amazing pvp healers.  The mobility, not sure of the spell name, where you can fly to an ally.  But I don't like the stag for travel form lol.

Azadelta (Destruction Warlock):

Personally, I am very excited about the patch.  Most notably the changes to warlocks, which I am quite nervous about.  I've tried them on the beta, but its never quite the same as on live.  It will be a big change and I'm interested to see how the new talents and specs do in PvP and PvE.  Aoe looting will be a massive help, especially farming for greens.  Uhh, revamped Scholo and Scarlet Monastery should be fun, wish they didn't take out all the old loot though.  I still need a few pieces on my rogue, warrior and lock...  Account wide achieves and mounts, I might be able to catch up to Navi =p would be pretty cool if I gained 1000 or so points.  And the thing I'm most looking forward to is guildies coming back to play.  Hopefully the guild gets really busy before the expac hits, that would be cool.

Execute (Fury Warrior):
I'm looking forward to the warrior changes and achievement changes.  Don't know much else about it.  New abilities like dragonroar I think - AOE stun.

McTacky (Holy paladin):
Love it! The only thing I don't like is less gold from old instances.  I don't play the AH, so it is the only way I've got gold really.

Souglyy (Survival Hunter):
OMG I can't wait! I'm so excited!  I GET CROWS!!!!!!! lol, What could be better than that! lol.  There is only one thing I'm not happy with, and that's the loss of agility from them taking away my staff, they are buffing my bow, but I lose the enchant of 130 agi and I still lose about 100 agi on my bow.  Oh and OMG dont' forget AOE looting! Yippie :)

Lushnek (Balance Druid):
Um Yay?  Haven't read that much really, only played the beta for a short time. Yea, I'm winging it.

Sevros (Affliction Warlock):
I'm looking forward to it mostly, it's a change, something different, could be fun for a while.  I'm interested in trying the new abilities and seeing how they work with the existing raids.  Will see how it goes.

Aurii (Frost/Unholy DK and altoholic):
LOL, I think I am going to avoid LFR like the plague :-)

Fueghan (Protection Paladin):
Looks pretty good mostly.  Only needing one dispel on spine will be good.

Shabadu (Frost/Arcane Mage):
Haven't really read too much about it, I've only seen mage talents.  I'll be trying out different PvP builds.

Fallnapart (Fury Warrior):
I'm looking forward to it I think.

And my thoughts as a restoration druid?
I love relearning my talents - probably because I only play one toon.  The mana thing is going to be tough and I'm not sure how much spirit I'll need but I'll have to start with tons and then whittle it down I guess.  AOE looting sounds fantastic but I bet I'll be out of bag space REAL QUICK!  And everyone knows what I think of account wide achievements - my last few days clutching to my number one position in guild for achievements!

Come on Patch 5.0.4 - BRING IT ON!  Frostwolves can't wait to meet you :)

Syrco! Det var hyggelig å treffe deg! (I hope I got that right!)

I first discovered Syrco's blog ages ago when I was looking for things about the Whispering Forest.  Interestingly that was also how I first came across Ironyca's blog too.

I had probably been reading Syrco for a few months and one day she said something that made me realise she was a she!  And here I thought all this time Syrco was a he!

So I went to Syrco's server, but she wasn't on, and I asked one of her guildies who said she wasn't on any alts.  I sent an in game mail to her, and thought I'd come back another time.

Then I got some messages from her on Twitter:

Ok good, she seems keen!  And look at Dragonray as my own personal PR!  I planned to do all my EU Navispams during the next server shutdown.  I headed to her server and did a /who and she was online!  Perfect!  I sent a tell and she came to meet me and I explained to her what it was all about and she said we should go to her special place - Whispering Forest!  So off to the zeppelin we went.  However... one small problem...

I hadn't been there before on EU so my game was downloading data.  And so I was stuck on the boat going back and forth because it wasn't loading the screens because I was lagging/downloading.  Poor Syrco probably wondered what happened to me!

Eventually I emerged and we set off to Whispering Forest.  When we got there, 7 Faerie dragons were up so maybe it was going to happen soon!  Syrco and I sat around talking and we talked about Norway (she's Norwegian) and how pretty it is, and she mentioned in a post about improving her English.  I asked her about that, wondering if she had a copy of her blog in Norwegian and she laughed and said how many readers would she have then... 5?  We both laughed.  I told her about my penfriend from Norway that I had when I was young, and how I used to think that Norway was full of snow and bears and everyone lived in a forest.  She talked about her partner (who plays WoW) and also about her guild which is a Scandinavian guild.  It was at least half an hour before the event started, but time goes fast when you're chatting.

Oh!  It's started!

Suddenly, the event started!  We both cheered as we sat down to watch the event and listen to the music and I laughed because after it was done a rat somehow ended up on top of a mushroom!  I've only seen it twice before, and it's still amazing.

It was a lovely, memorable visit and Syrco is so sweet!  At least now she knows what it's like to be Navispammed :)  I think she liked it (you can read her account here).