OMG Awkward

You would think in a game where things are anonymous and nobody knows who you are, you can avoid awkward moments right?

Wrong.

This last week, I feel like my life is full of situations that make me squirm.  Of things I said which maybe I should have thought a little bit more before I said them.  Things which people say which make ME feel awkward.  Sorting out difficulty social and guild situations which make me feel awkward.

Maybe I can try the "I heard this story about a friend who..." intro but I think I'll just go with the anonymous route.  Maybe that will avoid more awkward, but those who are involved will obviously know who they are.

WHEN A HARDCORE RAIDER TELLS A CASUAL RAIDER HOW TO SORT A TEAM

I was in our server's resto druid channel, which contains a mixture of raiding druids whom, from what I can tell, are from raiding horde guilds on the server.  Obviously quite selective because not every raiding druid was in the channel.  And no druids from the top 4 guilds are in that channel because... well, because they're probably too cool to be in the channel.

One of the druids is in a casual guild, and was lamenting the fact that he couldn't get his guild to get organised to raid.  A druid from a more progressive guild started to tell him that you need to kick out the underperformers and recruit new raiders.  I opened my mouth went to type in the channel that you don't really do that in a casual guild, and they said "Why not?  You can't have people dragging down your raid."  The hardcore druid said essentilly, do you want to progress?  Then you need to get rid of the trash.  It wasn't quite in those words, but it was the sentiment that I felt was being conveyed.  The casual druid sighed, wishing that they could get their team to perform better, and I wondered if the casual guild was the right guild for them.

"But it's a family friendly guild, you can't hurt people's feelings," I said.

"Who cares?  Don't play like a retard."

"But it's a casual guild..."

"Just because you're casual doesn't mean you have to play like a noob."

"But maybe it's because they're a social guild rather than a casual one..."

I had to stop because I'm making an idiot out of myself.  I'll never be able to explain to a hard core what a friendly social guild is like! A social guild, I think of the motto "Leave no man behind".  To me that is the core, the essence of a casual, family oriented guild that wants to raid.  A bunch of friends that want to play together and help each other get that kill.  This ideal is very opposed to the raiding guild motto "Go big or go home".  Which is basically, bring your best, and if your best isn't good enough you can go home and play with your action figurines.  Maybe I shouldn't have said those things to the hardcore druid.  Now he thinks you're a real nitwit Navi.  Nice one.  Awkward.

WHEN YOUR FRIENDS WANT TO RAID BUT CAN'T

I feel bad for a guildie because they wanted to raid but didn't really make a huge effort to try to get back into a raid team.  Getting into a raid group is a bit like trying to get a job!

1. Dress for success - working on your dailies to get the good gear, running dungeons to get heroic gear, having the crafted stuff made.  Now you look like you're serious about raiding.  Much more than that guy in greens who hasn't made the effort to enchant his gloves...
2. Look interested in raiding - Reading up strats and fights always makes you look like a keen bean.
3. Make sure people know you're interested - the person who speaks to the guild leader about being interested in a raid spot and saying which time suits them better is more likely to get one than the guy who just sits back and expects a raid spot but doesn't bother to reply by the raid deadline.
4. Showing up as a reserve - the guy who keeps turning up as a reserve for a raid spot is more likely to get subbed in when we're short.

So with the tank/heals shortage this week, I thought maybe this person could play, but probably, there isn't a spot for them anyhow.  Someone had offered once in a while to sit out for them to play so I pulled that card out and asked him if they could come on Wednesday.  One of the other tanks can't go to the other group because they made other plans, so I am guessing that two other reserve guildies will be healing or tanking.  Either way it seems like it will be ok.  But the sitting out guildie doesn't want to take a spot from other raiding guildies, and would rather sit out and pout about it.  It's so awkward when I'm raiding and my friends aren't.  Sigh.  I can't sit out to keep my friends company because I'll let the team down!  AWKWARD!!!

WHEN SOMEONE SAYS BAD THINGS ABOUT PEOPLE YOU KNOW

I waved a stranger the other day who was pet battling next to me, and they sent me a tell later wondering if I was the alt of someone they knew.  I said they didn't know me I was just being friendly - but they did know people from my guild.  We had a nice chat about pet battles and then the conversation progressed to say they knew others in my guild from being together in another guild, and started to say very uncomplimentary things about the other guild.  I had to refrain from replying and tried to turn the subject, but they continued for a bit until I said that those people were friends of mine.  Uncomfortable silence.  AWKWARD!

WHEN SOMEONE DOESN'T KNOW HOW BAD THEY ARE

Ever tried telling someone they weren't good at something?  But they still don't get it?  And everyone is talking about it?  What if they're trying their best and it's still not good enough? How do you tell them nicely "You suck?" Nobody wants to hurt other people's feelings!  How about if they know they suck but are embarrassed about it... what do you do then?  So when someone asks you "How did I do?" you say.... ummm... yeah.  Awkward! 

THE MISTELL

Umm... I have too many to list here that pop into this category.  Like telling one of my single, male, childless guildies about the toilet habits of my toddler, when I was supposed to be talking to another mother.  Or when I was commenting about how attractive another female was, and sent the tell to her instead of one of the guys.  Or when I was trying to send healing meters in a tell to a guildie and sent that instead to one of my blog buddies.  Bleh!

WHEN YOUR 4YO DAUGHTER SHOWS YOU HOW DIRTY YOU REALLY ARE

And this had to top off my awkward week.  I was googling for pictures to stick on this post, and I saw this one and so did my daughter.  She asked me to click on it and I said no, we're not clicking on that, but she did it anyway.  And she said it's just like the old grandma dinosaur in that movie we watched last night...

And holy crap.  It really was a dinosaur, caption and all.  I couldn't stop laughing and my daughter asked why.  It would have been too difficult to explain.  OMG I AM FILTHY.

Come on.  Share with me your most awkward moment.

Monday raiding - Just beating enrages on Gara'jal and The Spirit Kings

When am I NOT excited to be raiding again?  After the excitement of Wednesday and Thursday, I was hoping we would have success last night, and we did... JUST!  One sad point - Sev had computer problems and couldn't raid.  I was sad.  However, Aza was asked to replace him and he turned up and that was fine.  Gutsy was a little bit late due to work, but we managed to kick off at 945pm.

Our problem last raid lockout with Gara'jal was the enrage timer.  This time with smarter dps swaps into the spirit world we were a lot better with DPS output overall, but it was still a scrape by - we just beat the enrage timer.  We tried 3 healing it but we still were short by a bit, so I told Priestie she had to save the day and go DPS and win us the kill - LOL which she did!  Well, it was a combined effort of everyone's DPS, and our coordination was a lot better, setting up whose turn it was to go in, and with 2 healing it was easy with only me and Gutsy having to decide who was going in.  I enjoy this fight the most because I can burn mana like crazy, knowing I'm going to get it all back in the spirit world when I get out.  I have noticed though that Slurs mitigates a lot more when he has voodoo, compared to Tout, because when Tout has it, boy do the other voodoos take a pounding.  Things I'll need to tell Hyad so he can make it easier for me.

For the spirit kings, everyone says how easy it is... but when that mad guy isn't last, it's not QUITE a walk in the park!  We decided to 2 heal it.  Basically, it's 4 kings with different abilities - I'm not good with names but I think of them as the hunter who does the volley and then the arrows that pin you to the ground; the warrior who does some sort of shockwave that is an instakill; the warlocky type one who makes these skulls chase you and then when you dps them down they make a Lich King type defile on the ground; and the crazy one who makes us all enemies to each other and we have to dps each other to get it off.  The problem with that is I can't heal anyone when they are all red to me, and they're busy killing each other so it's all AAGGGGH!  We're supposed to bunch up and AOE people but sometimes... the other guys hurt so much when they're AOEing us down!!!  We had some silly moments - Lush and I didn't move from the shockwave and both died (dumb druids! Though mine was dumb, his was lag), Aza stood in the volley and got hit by all 3 shots and went splat (portal must be broken...), and Tout charged in on the pull and got cleaved to death.  We finally got it down, at least this time a bit more comfortably than the last boss, and now we just have to improve from here.

I used my gambling roll (is it just me or isn't it just that little bit funny that you add this whole Pandaria expansion has a heavy asian slant, and they put in more GAMBLING which is also a very asian thing???) and scored caster bracers yay!  But I picked up 2 offspec leather items.... which makes my guardian bear almost look better geared than my resto!  That's 3 offspec items I got this week in raid - legs, waist and bracers.  But I was happy for the upgrade, because bracers was one of my weak points.  Helm is my other weak point.

Gutsy got a cool ring and Priestie got a hat, so all the healers are happy with this run.  Balinar got some healing plate for offspec, Sabre picked up some loot too, and Tout got 2 items from his gambling roll.  All in all pretty reasonable loot wise!

Gonna be sketchy next week.  Not sure how Fue is going to organise raids, but hopefully Hyad can come and raid with us, since Nabe is stepping down, and Raked and Hyad are both tanks.  Will be tough for both groups, I think.

Guild news - Nabe has unsubbed from WoW

Sigh.  It was coming but I didn't think it would be so soon.  Nabe is stopping playing WoW, again.

The thing about Nabe is that he often comes and goes, and when he comes back he is an avid farmer and when Tillers came out he was pretty fast at getting that Farmer title, which suited him perfectly.

Though us old Frosties know him as Nabe, most of the others know him via whichever alt he is playing as his main.  In Mists, it was Zarrianissa, his DK.  In Cataclym it was mostly his paladin, Belinia.  We call him Nabe, from his name back in our vanilla days where he was playing his priest, Nabeshin.  He's always played a healer or a tank.  Never really see him DPSing that much.

Nabe is always so lovely to me.  He often gives me pets - in fact, he just mailed me a Red Cricket as a "I'm stopping playing WoW so I'm emptying my bank" gift (along with some flasks and some pocket money).  He has given me countless pets and mats for things, and I've never known how to repay him except talking to him, and even then people might say that's a curse rather than a gift!  If you have ever been on the receiving end of my hyper-excited blabber, you may know what I mean.

Lucky Fue inherited all Nabe's gold.  Though I'm surprised he wasn't maxed out gold on all his toons already.

Tout got some crafted tanking stuff.

I wonder if it's because Gley and Enna don't play WoW, that is part of it.  Nabe loves to level alts, and farming and levelling don't be as fun as he remembered, he says.  Also, he thought it would be better to quit now whilst we still have tanks around waiting for raid spots than when there are none because they've gotten sick of waiting.

Miss you Nabe!  Though it's true, you're not really gone, after all your brother will be around still and it's not like you dropped off the face of the earth or anything... right? :)

Achievement milestone - 15k Nerd points!

Phew!  Cracked the 15k Achievement points today!

Ok, I wish I had logged out with a more impressive helm on.  But the last 24 hours had been good for achievements which I had been a bit lazy to do.

Finally got around to finishing the Candy buckets of Pandaria.  Dailies had been distracting me from finishing that.

Last night did some heroics with Hyad, to try to get him some gear for raiding.  Not much luck really there, but we did try for some achievements.  We started off in Scarlet Monastery Cathedral, and we had a pug DK but we managed to get And Stay Dead!  We wiped the first time because we had her below 50% and she put Hyad to sleep and he died, and those 13 adds just smashed the hell out of everyone else, but the second time, we decided to DPS her lightly but not below 50% so she wouldn't sleep us.  Hyad took a lot of damage and Hyad, DK and Lushnek died (though those 2 DPS died after the tank died) but at least all the 13 Justicars died too!  I had managed to Brez Hyad, so it was just Hyad, me and Sev against the Whitemane and Commander Durand.  In hindsight, what we should have done was attack her until she ressurected Durand, interrupting her mass rez and then kill him, and THEN let her cast mass rez, kill the Justicars and then kill her.  Well, that's the strat video I saw on youtube anyway.  But it worked we got it!

We queued again and brought Moopie's alt shaman, Juju, and got Stormstout Brewery, so we managed to knock that monkey down from the keg by having Hyad tank everything underneath him and then try and smash hammers to get the hoplings to explode and knock that monkey down for How Did he get up there?  We only have one more achievement in there, and that's to kill 100 hoplings with one hammer.  That was pretty painful, Hyad might need better gear.

With 15 more points to go, I decided I might as well do those easy ones, which was to cook Sliced Peaches and Perfectly cooked instant noodles which I got the surprise achievement of The Pandaren Gourmet.  I sat down to eat my newly cooked food, netting me Pandaren Cuisine.

So... next goal... 20k? /groan

Shared topic: True Confession

This week's Shared Topic at Blog Azeroth is brought to you by Mataoka of Sugar and Blood:

What is one thing, just one thing, you did that was pretty awful in Azeroth, that you wish you could get some kind of redemption or forgiveness for, or even just get off your chest?

Now mine is not exactly in line with the shared topic, but it is a confession that is related to World of Warcraft that is, in my opinion, hilarious and also a bit shocking for the... ah... conservative parent or childless player.

This happened to me the other night, when I was doing arenas with Sev.  There was one thing about the arena match that we won that I forgot to mention, and it did shock Sev when it happened, and he wondered why it was conspicuously absent from that post.

A little background first.

My son, who just turned 3, was toilet trained around the age of 1, and to help him with his independence, I bought lots of sand buckets (that kids take to the beach to make sand castles and whatever) and put them around the house and in the car, and showed him how to pee into the bucket which he thought was a fun thing to do, standing up to pee just like daddy, and he liked emptying his pee into the toilet.  I did this was because when he climbed on the toilet to pee, he would sit on the toilet and often be busy holding the sides of the toilet seat instead of pushing his willy to point into the toilet and I would end up with pee on the floor and on his pants.

Ok.  I wonder if you can see where this is going.

So back to the arena match.  It was a close match, and we might be able to win it and we really wanted to win because, at our current gear level, wins are really hard, and hunters need to be hit with a spade on the head and buried in the ground.  It was midnight, and my son woke up, and came downstairs looking for me.  I went to pick him up to sit on my lap, and I was going to put him back to bed after the match (which is what I often do if one of them wakes, I quickly finish the fight and then go put them back to bed).  But he didn't want to be picked up.  He said "Mama, wee wee."

I told him to go get his bucket, but his face started to crumple, and he repeated "Mama, wee wee," to me, and I thought OH NO, don't cry, you'll strain and wet yourself.  I told Sev that I might have to go, my son is up and he needs to pee, and Sev said "Oh, Ok.... um just go Nav," but I'm sure, like me, he was disappointed deep down inside, because we could win this match.

Would I have time to run and get the bucket and bring it back?  I really didn't want to step away from the computer, we almost had this!!!  I looked around my computer desk and the only container I could see was a Hello Kitty Lunch Box.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, it's true.  I made my son pee into a hello kitty lunchbox so I wouldn't leave my arena match.

He was happy, he seemed excited to pee into a new container.  I had to put the full lunchbox back on my desk and finish my match whilst I told Sev what had happened and he was like... "YOU WHAT??"

And, we won that match.  Thank god for that.  I quickly said goodbye to Sev and logged off so I could get rid of the pee and take my son back to bed.  Now you see, if I had AFK'd to take him to the toilet, we wouldn't have won that match...

Every time my son sees the lunchbox now, he points at it and says "wee wee".  I am not sure I want to use that lunchbox ever again, but... well, that's my shameful confession.

See.  I told you it was shocking.

If you want to read a more funny things related to kids and WoW, have a look at this post from one of my new followers on twitter @BkfstinMG, who has a blog Breakfast in Moonguard.  It's about a young child... Sethekk halls.... and a cockroach.  It's hilarious!

Rare pics from Roshii and Souglyy

Roshii and Souglyy have both got the Glorious! Achievement (which is the Pandaria version of Frostbitten) and I berated them for not taking pics of all their rares!  So they started doing it again, and so the sent me pics of what they had.  Thanks guys!

Thursday raiding - Putting down the dogs

Well, I was late home to raid last night, and fortunately the kids fell asleep in the car on the way home.  10pm raids.. holy crap.  No dinner, no shower, so I threw in some leftovers from the fridge into the microwave and logged in to play.  For some reason Priestie and Slurs had decided to reset their router at 10pm and couldn't get back on!!! DISASTER!  I settled down with my nuked chilli eggplant (yes I hear Sev and Lushnek groaning at me about my food preferences) and ate whilst I tried to sort out replacements so we could raid.  Gutsy wasn't on either... WTF?  I rang him and he didn't answer but he logged on shortly after.

Should I ask people from the other team to raid with us?  They're not raiding all week... or are they going to try again on Sunday? I didn't want to poach but it doesn't hurt to ask.  They can always so no, so I understand and won't get upset.

So I rang Fue, who sounded sleepy and I asked him if he'd like to come just until Slurs and Priestie get on, so we can at least get Tout learning the fight a bit better - no opportunities wasted!  But that still left one healer to find...

Bish was on but on his laptop so that was crap :( Voe was not answering his phone.  Oh well.  Could use Lush in a pinch but really he should be DPSing... maybe I could ask Aza just to play with us for a bit...

So I asked Gutsy if he wanted to try 2 healing it, just for larks.  He said ok.  We steeled ourselves for some fun times with no mana and lots of wipes.  Az had agreed to join us so that was cool.

Lush had made me a nice new shiny Wildblood vest so I was happy with more spirit and more spellpower so maybe that would help a little bit.  And I was going to eat spirit food to see if I could push a bit more oomph out of my mana.  I had previously been just eating raid freebies (ie tables).

Fue bounces the dogs back and forth as opposed to our double swap, so that had to be figured out a little bit.  Tout had read up, and respecced and fiddled with his gear a bit for better mitigation and his survivability was a lot better.  However, we noticed that it wasn't just Slurs - paladin tank threat is clearly inferior to warrior threat, Fue had a hard time holding threat, though with people hitting different targets when he had one focussed that might have been part of the problem. Moo's threat was a particular problem because Gutsy and I blew 1/6 of our mana healing him in the first 20 seconds and we still didn't get him to full.  One of those times was funny because Moo forgot to get out of defensive stance - he had been tanking trash whilst we waited for Fue and Az to come to help us with our raid.

It wasn't as horrible as I thought, 2 healing.  Hectic yes.  I got chained to Gutsy which was brilliant, and one time to Aza which was also great - we actually ran in the same direction sometimes to get out of blue ices!  I think the first attempt was as good as our last attempt and I was thrilled to bits with that and I said to Gutsy that it wasn't as bad as I thought - with higher DPS the fight was shorter so mana was better.  Taunting the mobs was still very iffy and we had some bad explosions and I said "Angry healers!" in reference to the Fatboss video (timestamp 3:15 to 3:26) - Gutsy just laughed and said he's not angry, just dead.  Not a good fight for mushrooms.  I did plenty of rejuv blanketing and wild growths and kept the tanks hotted up fully and using barkskin as much as possible but I wasted a lot of mana on myself healing from getting stuck in icy bads.  MUST HAVE BETTER RAID AWARENESS!

But the kill attempt was a damn fluke.  We were doing well but everyone started to drop off at 4% because I was OOM, I had potted, innervated, tree formed... EVERYTHING, and I had nothing left.  I had even used my tranquility already.  I'm trying to squeeze out one more rejuv, I'm begging people to use their cooldowns, healthstones, ANYTHING, but we hung in there but with OOM healers nobody was going to live long.  We had 1 million to go and the locks were the only ones up, and then Aza died and then it was Sev, and his health was borderline... and DOTS WON US THE DAY!  We were all dead of course.  But it was DEAD!  OMG I was screaming my head off in excitement, which was for two reasons.  One, because we killed it by the skin of our teeth, and TWO, we had just 2 healed it which I had not thought possible because of the damage of bad explosions.  I can imagine it would be 2 healable if taunting and explosions was perfect, and nobody stood in bad things, but this combination was CRAP!  I was feeling super chuffed, it was a great end to a bad day, making that kill the 3rd good thing that happened to me (first was kids sleeping, second was Souglyy giving me an Aqua Strider and third was killing this boss and 2 healing it!).  Though if I look at it now, it wasn't REALLY 2 healing, because Fue does so much healing as well that he might as well be a 3rd healer.  Lucky he didn't top our healing or I'd feel really redundant.

Even Gutsy was happy and not his sour self.  I was doing happy dances inside (yes yes I am sure lots of other people 2 heal it but they are leet, and I'm far from leet, I'm still wearing 450 ilvl gear!) and then I ended up getting offspec legs for my bear (much better than my green pants!).  But 2 healing Feng...  yeah that wasn't happening.  Got Lush to try to help out but... no it wasn't happening, and we had only half an hour left of raiding so we called it quits just after midnight.

So, a brilliant end to a crappy day.  My son woke up just after midnight and so I put him back to bed and went to sleep with the kids sporting a big smile on my face (hubby was out of town hence why I was home alone with the kids).  Hopefully this means that Friday is going to be a good day :)

I have the best guildies...

It was gifts galore for me this week!  I don't know what I did to deserve it but boy am I happy!  And two came before my last sooky post so they weren't coz I was a sad Panda...

Fue started off the week by giving me a Landro's Lichling - Woot!  That was totally unexpected and out of the blue!

Then Nabe gave me a Terrible Turnip... OMG I love those things and have not been able to grow one yet.  Those brothers are just awesome :)  Fue and Nabe rock!

Then Roshii and Souglyy gave me an Aqua Strider!  OMG they camped the rare and gave me the pet that was so sweet of them! That was SOOOOO nice OMG look at this gorgeous thing!  I can't believe I have one now too!

I love my guildies!!!!

Edit:  I forgot Tout gave me a Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling last week!  And it looks pretty awesome I must say :) he does all sorts of jumping and spinning around!

As if my day couldn't get any worse...

Well, just a culmination of little things making this a really shitty day....

• Late for 7am morning meeting... but only by 10 minutes, that's not so bad.
• First patient on my operating list is delayed by half an hour, which means I'm going to be late and can't finish operating at one hospital and I have to be somewhere else to operate at 1pm
• I decided to do something stupid for fun a few days ago and found that I have something wrong with my eye which initially I thought I would need an operation for because it could end up making my eye pop out, but it turned out ok in the end because it's just a benign tumour type thing in my eye socket instead...  well shit, doesn't that make me feel better.  Why do I do stupid things like have an MRI of my head for fun.
• First child on my operating list has a complicated recovery related to her snorey sleeping resulting in an emergency call, a blue/purple child, a stressed out parent but it all works out, but boy did that wake me up
• Long operating list this afternoon which means a late finish and I have to pick up the kids and I bet I'll be done at about 9pm here and then I have an hour's drive home WITH the kids... they better be asleep.  If they're not that will make it even MORE dandy and I'll be late to raid..
• Decide to fix up my blogroll and accidentally ended up DELETING my "Other Great WoW blog reads" widgit F*** F*** F*** F*** 

So if anyone out there was on my blogroll and is mortally offended that I deleted you, it was an ACCIDENT and I am trying hard to remember who was on it, but you know, the whole reason I have those blogrolls is SO I DON'T HAVE TO REMEMBER WHO IS A GREAT READ COZ I'VE SAVED IT!

Well F***, that's just totally F***ed up an even more F***ed up day.

Wednesday raiding - This fight has gone to the dogs...

Raiding for Frostwolves did not get off to a good start this week - Bladewind ended up not turning up to raid last night and Fue had to heal and they brought Raked in... I don't know exactly what happened but the group gave up at about 930 when we were starting to do our run!  They said that it just wasn't happening... I couldn't help but tease Fue about his healing - obviously so awful they had to give up after an hour.

That didn't bode well for us, since they were the more advanced group and more experienced and the change of just one healer for a melee dps resulted in them not raiding for the rest of the night.  So we went in to see the horror for ourselves.

So this week, the dog combination was Jasper (torturous chains), Amethyst (pools of pain) and Cobalt (ouchy ices).  I groaned inside.  This is the fight everyone yells at Gutsy coz he doesn't move!  I didn't want to be the Gutsy so I made a conscious effort to try to stick to my melee.

Our attempts varied - our early attempts were encouraging, the next few were abyssmal, and our last attempt was our best with a wipe at 8%.  We decided to go with attack power speed over blood lust because we weren't using bloodlust in our attempts, but perhaps in hindsight we could lust at the beginning to get the most benefit out of it - though that would be crap for Slurs trying to hold agro.  Gutsy wasn't awful on the chains, he did stand still a lot because of cast times, channelling etc, but I felt like I was the weak link because I had difficulty in melee when I was chained trying to see the stuff on the ground as well as keep health bars up.  The number of times I stood in ice when I can't see squat under a dog and all the aoe heals was too numerous to count!

When I remembered, I symbiosed Priestietute or Gutsy so I could have the Leap of Faith to pull my chains to me if there was a problem, but I never used it, I always tried to get into melee.  Another problem I found healing in melee (and Priestie mentioned it too) was that we couldn't reach the other tank to heal.  Out of everyone there, I think I was the only person who enjoyed being chained to Gutsy because he and I could happily stay at ranged and heal and I could see the floor and move accordingly.  Of the melee I was chained to, it was best with Moo because being a tauren he's so big and he moves in strafes, so he was easy to follow. When I was chained to Balinar, who is a svelte male blood elf, he tends to run left and right and around, more like a dancing rogue, I found, and I couldn't figure out where he went.  And I must have the total opposite thinking to a melee because if there was ever something under us and we had to run out of it, I ALWAYS ran the opposite direction to my chain and I ended up getting huge damage from that... sigh.  That didn't seem to happen so much when I was chained to Gutsy, Lushnek, Sev or Sabre.

By the end of the fight the tanks were getting much more independent with the taunts and calling out, which was great.  Sev was doing the callouts first, then handed over to Lushnek but then Slurs started doing warning calls to watch for a swap soon which was really helpful and it was going much better after that.  Even Tout finally started to get the picture!  Of course, I can't talk since I have no idea which one to taunt still because I have so much OTHER stuff to worry about, but I should make a conscious effort to learn it in case I have to teach someone else how to do it.

So tonight... more of the same.  Sigh.  Ok, happy thoughts...

Actually, our happiness would be a dead puppy.  Or 3.

Tough decisions: Pets vs PvP

The other night after raid Shab asked if we could do one game of PvP with me and Sev, and I was off looking for Minfernals.  I had recently friended Ratshag (OMG FANBOY /fans self furiously) and I wanted to help him with his pet persuits.  No luck though, so off I went up to have a look at Storm Peaks and it was snowing!  And there were Arctic Fox Kits all over the place and no farmers in sight...

Ratters had one already... who else was around?  No Ancient, Chris or Eva... but Zwingli was on!  I asked him if he wanted to come up and grab one and I invited him to party with me and my PvP buddies, but then we couldn't queue for a BG /cry.  So he dropped from group and said next time, but I really wanted to help SOMEONE get a rare pet...

And who logged on at just the right time?  McTacky!  I told him and straight away he was on his way up and he got an arctic fox kit!  Yay Tacky!  No Scourged Whelplings though :(

Now I did want to stay and try to grab a rare Arctic Fox kit.  But PvP was calling.... oh what to do!  In the end, PvP won out.  I don't get to play with Shab much so I need to grab any chance I can get.

So we did one BG and we won it THANK GOD, but I admit that with a lack of gear, I really notice my own mortality.  After that, Shab went to bed and Sev and I decided to try some arenas.  We lost a game or two but we did win one - it was against a paladin and a warlock.  And oh boy, was that a long fight.  I did think that we weren't going to win it - we had quite a few close calls.  But I think they must have gotten tired, because Sev managed to kill the paladin whilst the lock was on the far side of the room and then we polished off the warlock.

A stark contrast to last night - where we did a game with Shab and we did win it, I think, but that win was overshadowed in my mind by the abyssmal arenas we had.  I can't wait for 5.1 to come because hunters really need a nerf.  I did not last 3 seconds against a BM hunter with stampede.  I was so cranky by the end of the multiple losses against hunters, despite trying to charge and stun, asking Sev to fear, and trying to teleport, barkskin... I do have poor PvP gear, and that might be part of it but there is no way that is fair!  So from now on, hunters are my number one hate subject in PvP and I will do anything to cc them, kill them or focus them.

I also got to try the new battleground last night - Silvershard Mine.  It actually was quite fun - think mobile flag captures!  Little mine carts are moving around on tracks and if you tag them as yours, and it falls into the collection bin, then you win.  Like other flag capture nodes, the more people standing within the capture radius the faster you get it, but the difference is that the flag is moving.  We won it, and got an achievement, and I look forrward to more of that battleground again.

Anyway, tonight is raid night, and I am looking forward to trying the bosses again now that we are a little better geared, and hopefully we might have more success on that third boss this week :)  I do miss Shab though - I wish he was with us, so we could PvP properly.

Bladewind told me that he's going away this Thursday, so I am sure the other group will be fine 2 healing stuff after Wednesday, especially if they're working on the 5th boss.  I dunno, these young people, holidaying and jetsetting all the time!  I envy them :)

Monday raiding - Mogu'shan vaults - Gara'jal attempts

Pretty excited to be trying this boss - the mechanics seemed quite reasonable!  I like different mechanics and this one was pretty interesting and different.

The tanks get to have a break!  This fight is DPS and heals having to do all the thinking - it's back to the old taunt-tank-spank business here.

Gara'jal is a troll shaman with a ton of health.  Everyone stacks on the boss, and he does some interesting things.

• The first is Voodoo doll where 3 people get affected and they take 70% of the damage taken by the tank.  So as a healer, you gotta heal these people BIG TIME.  Tanks can make it easier for us poor healers by trying to mitigate some of that damage - hey that 150k hit may not be much to you with your 550k health but for us with 330k it can start building up real quick!  
• The second thing is that he makes a totem that DPS have to kill and it sends 3 people standing within it into the spirit world.  Sounds like a scary place to be with spirits and ghosts and severed souls and stuff, but it's actually a cool place to be.  First scary thing - everyone goes to 30% health in there.  If you ask me it seems more like 20% health or even less.  So, a healer always has to go in.  You can't get out until you're healed to full, and then a little button will appear which lets you get of the spirit world.  If you don't get out by 30 seconds... bang you're dead!  So the DPS go down into the spirit world to hit all those nasty spirits down there who are hitting us in the real world and making us take damage.  And, the other important thing that healers have to do is heal as much as possible because it gives nice buffs to everone - more DPS for DPS, and more mana regen for healers.  So going down there with dregs of mana is good because you're gonna be top dog for mana when you get out.
• Tanks also get to go down and kill a severed soul which is supposed to be easy to kill.  So when they go down into the spirit world, the other tank has to pick up the boss.

Sounds simple right?  Well, the one thing that makes it a bit iffy is that you can't go in there if you have Voodoo doll - so trying to organise who goes requires good communication between us.  We had HK calling out who has to go in, me and Gutsy talking between ourselves who has Voodoo doll and has to go in.  Yes, we were 2 healing.  And it was probably just as well because we really need that DPS.

We hit enrage and we still had a fair way to go.  We had hiccups with me not being able to heal enough with crappy double Voodoos so I couldn't get in to get mana.  Fortunately we have an extra tranquility if I symbiose Priestietute so she can use that in a pinch.  We had tanks not killing their add or being unable to target it inside.  We had DPS coming out too early so they didn't get the full benefits of the DPS buff, and people staying in too long and dying (I did that first go!).  But it was a really interesting fight, but we really need to pick our dps up a bit.  With Sabre going BM because we have no bloodlust, it's a bit crappy and I don't know if his DPS takes a hit because of that, but we will have to look at that this week when we try it again.

I had fun playing with my Leap of Faith (which is what I get from Priestie from Symbiosis) for a bit just to be an idiot, and I healed my guts out with lots of rejuvenat

A Wild Silithid Hatchling Appears!

I still maintain that my alliance mage is THE LUCKIEST POKEMON CATCHER alive!  She racks up another rare catch today...

... with a Sandstorm in Tanaris!

I was disappointed a few days ago because there was a sandstorm but no Silithid Hatchlings around - I think I was too slow and lots of people had picked them all up already.  I was lamenting this to Cymre who encouragingly said that there will be more, don't worry!

Lo and behold I logged over after picking vegetables and not only was there a sandstorm, but a little beast icon under me... OMG SILTHID HATCHLING!!!!  And wait, there wasn't just the ONE there were many!

I immediately swooped down to battle it - and OMG it was RARE!  I mean I wanted it badly before but now must have it - MY PRECIOUS!!

After I caught it I quickly went to my guild list - nobody who pet battles was on - no Roshii, Souglyy, Aza, Mctacky!  Then I went to my friends list... OMG, where was Ancient, JD, Arvash, Eva, Chris?  I saw Repgrind but she told me she didn't have anything high enough for Tanaris...

I told Slice, but he was like... what the hell are you on about Navi... so I was sad, I only had myself to tell :(

But I can tell my blog!  Good ol' blog, I can always count on you to listen :)  So here is a pic of me and my newly acquired pet, which means, like Cymre, I only have the 2 seasonal pets to go for my Kalimdor Safari achievement - Qiraji Hatchling and Snowy Owl, I mean YOU!

Scenario Spam!

Scenarios are funny things - they're like little mini stories that you can do with 3 people of any kind of spec that are more for progression through a story than as a dungeon grind for boss kills.  They don't drop any loot, there are quests that you can pick up in Pandaria to complete in there - so why would you do them?  I hear you ask.

I guess they are Blizzard's way of giving us some extra story for those of us who are interested in that.  Not everyone is crash hot on lore and story, and this is a convenient way for those people to skip the talk and head straight for more loot oriented goals.

Here is what I think of scenarios:

• Great source of achievements
• Quick easy way to group up with 2 mates and do stuff for a few valo(u)r points and some gold and the chance at a blue dropping from the box you get as a reward.

Most people would probably do them once or twice to get the achievements and be done with it.  I probably would be in that group too, I think.

There is a funny achievement that wants you to do all the Scenarios on a Saturday (Scenaterday - I don't quite understand the spelling of that) but it's bugged, and not working properly but it was something fun that my husband, Lushnek and I could do - even though, really, we should be doing dailies.


Started off in Crypt of Forgotten Kings, where we have to cleanse a crypt and Destroy the Abomination of Anger.  The achievement in there is to not get hid by red clouds.

Then we ventured into level 90 Theramore's Fall, but we failed all the achievements in there. I'm sure we didn't hit any totems...

After that we did Brewmoon Festival and unfortunately the town got burned...

Onto Unga Ingoo where we had to fill a pot with beer without spilling and the last boss we had to keep his orange away from him.  It was quite fun really :)

Then we did A Brewing Storm, where we had to defend kegs of beer from mobs and from getting burned, and not get hit by lightning.

Then at the end we had to avoid the Swamp Smash ability from the last boss (which is a frontal cone attack) which was quite easy.  We missed one achievement though, which we thought we'd get next time.

Queueing a random got us A Brewing Storm again!  So we just did that last achievement, which was to make sure all six of the Thunderpaw Guardians still alive.  We just marked them and tried to protect them, and now we didn't worry so much about the Swamp Smash it was easy.

The guild was missing one of the Scenarios, and we managed to do that one, earning us the guild achievement

So, a little bit of easy WoW stuff, a lot of achievements, and no Scenaterday for me - maybe another day! 

Shared Topic: The Rules of Me

This week's Blog Azeroth Shared Topic is brought to us by Mataoka of Sugar and Blood:

What are your personal rules you wish others would know about you?

My personal rules are quite simple, and quite similar to a lot of other people's rules.  You know, the general sorts of rules:

• Don't be a dick, and I won't be a passive-aggressive bitch
• No name calling and aggressive slander in public chats (guild, trade, raid, BG)
• Get OFF the F*^%ing quest turn ins.. PLEASE??

However, the PERSONAL rules are the ones I think Mataoka is interested in, and I have a couple of quirky things that I wish people would know so I wouldn't have to tell them:

• Don't kill that rare that I'm trying to take a picture of.  I know you can't tell that I'm trying to compose the perfect shot, and even if I told you not to engage it whilst I was screenshotting it, it probably wouldn't stop you because you want that blue drop, or some other treasure it drops, but I wish people wouldn't just run in and grab a mob - you can see I'm not engaging it!  I always gesture at something to the opposite faction, you could do the same!  Or if you're the same faction, just ask me.
•  If I'm raid healing and you die, you don't need to tell me you are dead.  I can see that.  And don't ask me for a Brez.  We have ONE and if we deem you worthy, you will get it.
• I don't roll on caster gear that has hit on it.  But just because it doesn't have spirit on it, does not mean it's yours, caster-friend.  So don't yell at me about rolling on gear, I am intelligent enough to figure out fairly, what is good for me and what is not.  And I roll need on offspecs, yes, because anyone who is a mainspec I will happily hand it over - I am merely saving it from a DE.
• Don't whinge at me for ignoring you, because I don't ignore anyone on purpose unless I put you on /ignore.  Most of the time, I haven't seen your tell, or worse, I've seen it and replied it but accidentally mistelled it to someone else.  So don't emo at me!
• I was reminded of a silly rule that I had back in Burning Crusade, whereas the Mongoose enchant would NEVER drop from Moroes.  Every week, no drop.  For months.  It was probably almost a year before I got the enchant, but Mongoose became a dirty word in guild chat.  As a silly Navi thing, I would have a tantrum everytime someone said the word Mongoose, and if someone even said that word in guild chat, they would get a /gkick.  It was all in good fun, and I think it started because people started "taunting" me with their enchants and linking it and I had a gkick fest and of course they were all reninvited and their ranks reinstated.  Obviously I don't do that anymore since I have the enchant, and I worry about people losing guild rep for being removed from the guild...

Check out the rest of the responses for this week's shared topic!

Stormstout Brewery achievements and some new pets

Just for something different to do, I thought I would try some "easy" achievements, and there was a pet to be had too for one of them!

Stormstout Brewery has a number of achievements and we managed to do 2 of them - I think smacking that hammer to kill 100 will take slightly better gear!

Keep Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' is pretty easy to do - just keep rolling barrels into him until he dies. It's probably best you don't hit him at all because those barrels stack and give him a debuff which makes him take more damage and he dies quicker.  It was quite fun to do, actually.

To do Ling-Ting's Herbal journey, you have to drink Ling Ting's favourite tea (which you buy from Auntie Stormsout at the beginning of the instance) and then for 5 minutes you get the ability to see Golden Hoplings around the instance.  We got a bit excited and collected them from the word go, sometimes neglecting to tank or heal or DPS and then decided to go back at the end and finish it.  There are only 30 in the brewery and it's shared so everyone can get into the Golden Hopling treasure hunt.

I like floating in bubbles for the last boss :)

You get this cute Hopling as a reward for the Herbal Journey achievement. Nawwwww!

And, I finally got around to getting my Tiny Goldfish (honoured from The Anglers).  Ugh this picture didn't turn out so good!

In Which Navimie talks about Minfernals with Kia's brain

A few days ago, I was frustrated with pet camping, and I asked the brain of my friend Kialesse for some advice, or maybe I was just chatting to her brain for a bit of perspective on what I was REALLY thinking.  However, the day after that I managed to get not just one of the things I had been camping but BOTH of them, so this post fell into the netherheap of drafts.  But I like this post, and yesterday after visiting Achloryn, Kia and Pixel as a break from my daily grind, I thought I would share it, in all it's crazy glory.

Navimie:  Here I am again, camping at Shatter Scar Vale.  Does this thing really exist?  Yes, of course it does, silly me.  I saw that bugged one stuck in the tree a while back, so they're around.  And Aza has one.  And Cymre.  And Sephrenya too, but she's on an EU server, so does that count?  Maybe they don't have buggy mobs there.  Maybe they spawn more often on EU realms.

Kia's Brain: Well, you know, you're not really camping.  If you were really serious about camping you would have your computer on 24 hours and not sleep and fly around every now and then checking the other spawn spots which prevents you from AFKing out as well.  Look at all those serious TPLD and Aeonaxx campers.  Now THAT'S real camping.

Navimie: I can't do that.  I have a family and work and chores to do.  But I do get on at work and camp...

Kia's Brain: Well, if you camped PROPERLY then you can complain.  Your 7 visits a day with about 5 minutes of flying around could hardly be called camping.

Navimie:  It's more than 5 mins, I'm sure!

Kia's Brain: Nah-ah.  Time goes slow when you're NOT having fun.  It seems longer than it is, trust me.  You know who camps properly?  Roshii and Souglyy.  They know how to camp.  And they reap the rewards of it.  Look at Roshii's TLPD.  3 months he camped.  Now that's camping.

Navimie: I wish I had good luck.  I'm not like Ancient who can just HAPPEN along Aeonaxx while just flying along doing la-di-da in Deepholm.

Kia's Brain:  You think she's lucky?  She's got the wool pulled over you, little cow.  Do you think she just HAPPENED to luckily get that insane title?  That takes dedication, silly druid, not luck.

Navimie:  Well, you just burst my bubble, thanks a lot Kia's Brain =/ Oh great, look at this, more campers.  A horde one and an alliance one.  I'm going to wave at the horde guy and talk to him.

Kia's Brain: Are you gonna tell him to get lost this is your camp zone?

Navimie: NO!  I'm being friendly, you know I'm a friendly sort of person.  Besides, camping is more fun with friends than enemies.

Kia's Brain:  Uh-huh.  You know what he's going to think, he's going to think you're talking to him to distract him while you go and zip up the first Minfernal that spawns.  That while he's busy replying your tell, with your superspeed touch typing, you can race to that spawn before he does.

Navimie:  I am NOT.  Look, if he's nice and chatty, I'll wish him the best of luck.  If he's an ass then I don't feel bad about nabbing the mob from him.  Oh look, see he's talking back to me.  He says he's never seen one.  I'll tell him my experiences about it.

Kia's Brain: Don't you mean your LACK of experiences with it?

Navimie: I've seen it ONCE.  In a tree.  Bugged.  That's better than no experience.  And I can tell him how often I've been here so maybe that's something!

Kia's Brain:  If you say so.

Navimie:  Oh he's a warlock who wants all warlock type pets.  Just like Az!  That's cool.  I'm going too add him to battletag so that if I'm here and I see some, I can tell him.  Maybe he'll do the same courtesy to me?

Kia's Brain:  I wouldn't count on it.

Navimie: Why must you be so negative?  People can be nice, and he seems nice.

Kia's Brain:  I'm not being negative.  I'm being realistic.  I don't want you to be disappointed if it doesn't turn out how you want it to.

Navimie: I don't get disappointed.  Well, not a lot.  I mean, I UNDERSTAND human nature, and I accept it.  If I find 2 minfernals and I contact him if nobody else is online then at least I feel like I helped someone!  If he decides he wants to battle both of them.. well then that's no different to me not having friended him so I might get lucky, right?

Kia's Brain: If you say so.

Navimie:  Oh. My. God. OH MY GOD!  He just saw one, and he's off battling it now!  Where?  How did I not see it?  Oh my god.  Of all the luck!

Kia's Brain:  Well, you were busy talking to me, that's why.

Navimie:  In my HEAD I was.  I wasn't typing.  He says he saw it up here.  Where is he?  Let me invite him to party.  Oh there he is!  Wow, up here?  No wonder I never see any if they spawn here!

Kia's Brain:  So.  What did you learn, Navi, from all of this?

Navimie:  Well I think from now on I'm not going to camp in that position down there.  I'm parking up here instead.  Shit!  All these times if I'd parked up here I might have had it earlier?  OH MY GOD WHAT A WASTE OF TIME, all those other days... Oh I'm so cross!  Well, I'm happy for him though, I'll get him to show it to me.  Ohhhh, that's so cute, I want one!!! Oh but I'm so angry at minfernals right now!  Well, I don't need him on my battletag anymore, since I won't need to contact him about seeing one and he won't be camping anymore.

Kia's Brain:  That's a bit petulant of you.

Navimie:  No, I'm telling him I'm removing him.  I mean, he's no longer camping here so that was the only reason we swapped battletags anyway.  Oh, I feel so demoralised :(

Kia's Brain: You can't have everything go your way.  You win some, you lose some.

Navimie:  True.  I should think of all those lucky times.  Widow Spiderling.  Baby Ape.  My rare Sporeling Sprout.  Those are lucky finds.  I should be glad.  I suppose I was very early levelling pet battling so I was getting in before everyone else was at the right level to catch some of the high level ones.  That's it I'm not camping this shit anymore, I'm going to wait for a reset and come here straight after reset.

Kia's Brain:  You and everyone else who wants one.

Navimie:  Well I'll have to be quick then won't I?

Kia's Brain:  You?  Quick?

Navimie:  I'm very quick at nabbing a pet battle, I'll have you know.

Kia's Brain:  I was looking at how fast you level.  You could pay some attention to that since you need to be raiding soon.

Navimie:  Yeah... maybe I should do that.  But I don't want to...

Kia's Brain:  Do you want to be the worst healer of the heroic DS healers?  Pull your socks up, girl.

Navimie:  Why does Kia talk to you?  You're like the devil's advocate sometimes.  I should talk to Kia herself, not you.  She's nice to me at least.  She understands.

Kia's Brain:  How would you know?  When was the last time you talked to her?  And have you been to her blog lately?  She hasn't updated for ages.

Navimie:  Well, she's probably busy doing dailies and levelling and dungeoning like everyone else.  Too busy to talk to YOU.

Kia's Brain:  Well, you talked to me first.

Navimie:  And I'm talking to you last.  Goodbye and thank you for your ear and.. advice.  /click

Thursday raiding - Dogs and Feng kills for my group!

Last night we got ready to head back into Mogu'shan Vaults - a slight hiccup as we had 11 people turn up and Moopie volunteered to sit out, much to the chagrin of some of our raid members, and to the mortification of Balinar who had done the Herculean effort of waking up at 3am his time to attend the raid after sleeping in last night.

A few wipes and Balinar asked the innocent and curious question of why we were doing it that way and then we all pulled together and had Slurs tanking two and Tout taking one and Sev calling out the swaps and Lush calling out the active if needed.  Much better, much smoother, still had 2 or 3 bad explosions which killed mana but it was killed!  Yay!

With that we moved on to the second boss, Feng the Accursed.  The tanks had to pick up two crystals and use those abilities against the boss at the opportune time.  Making me wish I had 4k more spirit because I was on fumes at the end of the fight... again!  We started with some really good attempts and then had some not so good ones, and the last fight of the night was the winning one which got us our kill.  Interesting how when you say "This is our last go" it has that magical winning property.

Sabrehawk went Beast Mastery for this fight so we could get a bloodlust which we used at Phase 3 because by then all 3 of us were struggling with mana.  I was happy because I found a use for mushrooms in Phase 1 where he was doing some big raid wide damage.  In phase 2 we got fire debuffs which we had to deposit in a set spot and the boss would suck up those fires and use them against us later.  The raid was really good with their raid awareness, except me and Lushnek once or twice (silly druids!) and then the last phase was a run in and out with really heavy healing.  I was trying to conserve mana on the last attempt of the night for that phase because I found that phase really intense.  Sabre got a bloodlust off at the start of phase 3 (thank god!) because the poor guy died not long after!  Battle rez had been used by then on a tank I think, and woohoo that was pretty awesome as we watched Feng's health going down and thinking damn, that we can do this, we can do this!  Yay dead!

Lootwise, from the dogs Sabre and Sev came up as winners with Stonemaw Armguards and Ruby-Linked Girdle respectively.  From Feng, Lush and Balinar both got helms - Hood of Cursed Dreams and Nullification Greathelm.  I passed for Lush because he really needs the gear upgrades, and at the moment I am scraping through with my gear (and the priests can carry me anyway /grin)

Nobody seems to be intent on pics, so here's an extraction from my FRAPS of the end of the fight, as Feng is defeated.

Everyone was pretty shattered by the end of the raid.  Raked said he had to be up on 4 hours for work, and Gutsy was falling asleep at 1130

Frostwolves in Mogu'shan Vaults - 4 down!

Group 1 had a swell time tonight!  They got 4 bosses down before the servers and instances restarted which was a fantastic achievement!  Well doneguys!

My group was mostly newcomers, and the tanks were new so we had to take some time for Slurs and Tout to get the hang of the fight, and after a few goes they did.  I had to laugh because I watched the fatboss video and they commented that "It was ok if one of them blows up and it's not the one that's petrifying because it won't KILL you, but it will make your healers very angry."  Oh, and I got to see what he meant, and though it was frustrating, I could laugh about it.

It was really exciting about the other group!  I asked a few of them about it:
Voe: It was a lot easier, without the Jasper one around, so no chains!  So it was cruisy.
Roshii: It went really well.
Voe: The second boss had no issues, and the third boss had minor issues with enraging at about the 10-20%.
Roshii: 4th boss was easier than 3rd.
Souglyy:  I was really surprised we got it.
Bladewind: That was so cool!
Shabadu: It was really good with everyone being calm.

Well, Fue has that effect on people.  I think he's a great guild and raid leader because he's calm and doesn't get all antsy and excited and swear and yell.  And he researches the fights well.  But I couldn't get that much detail out of them (and Voe typed whilst I was raiding so I lost half of it to raid text), so I have no details of their raid.  But I think we're pretty excited to say that Frostwolves was 4/16!  I hear Bish cleaned up in loot! Yay Bish and his lucky rolls!

Anyway back to our raid because that's what I had the best perspective about...

It was difficult to judge whether DPS were doing anything wrong because the tanks hadn't got it quite right yet.  Between the two of them trying to figure out which one to tank, which one to swap, controlling which is about to blow up, is something they will have to figure out between themselves whilst the rest of us focus on avoiding all the crap on the ground.

Raked and Sabrehawk who are both friends of Voe, were new to raid with and Sabre was pretty calm and had specced into beast mastery so we could have a bloodlust, and was pretty cool with that.  Poor Raked is a tank who had to go DPS, and had tank trinkets on because he didn't have DPS ones.  He died a lot at the beginning coz he was standing in stuff, and I symbiosed Priestietute so that I could leap of faith him out of it but I ended up being so busy trying to heal the tanks that I didn't have time to yank him out of anything!  However, by the last few attempts he'd figured it out because he stopped dying.  I symbiosed Sabrehawk to get his deterrence and fun running around with that on popping the big blue traps.

So as a general rule the DPS were supposed to hit the ones who are together because the one by itself is taking 90% less damage.  Healers had to just keep the tanks up - I had a priest on each tank, and Gutsy was grumbling because he was on Tout who was the one who was the hardest to heal (but hey Gutsy has healed it with a priest and with a druid so he knows the fight better than us) and Priestie was on Slurs which is easiest since he's sitting next to her anyway!  Voe told me that the fight is damn hard to heal, but I can't figure that out until the tanks stop having the wrong ones blow up because everytime it did...

"OMG Tranq'ing!" and then...
"OMG Tranq is on cooldown!" LMAO.  Well if Tranq was on a 30 second cooldown with the amount of explosions we had... well we might have had it :)  I think our best was about 50%.

Did an LFR afterwards with 9 guildies and that was good, cleared it and I even got some loot.  Fue was trying to direct people who didn't know what to do, and he was pretty good with that.  He was excited to try symbiosis - then HUGELY disappointed to find he got Rebirth and not Wrath to play with!

Anyway, more fun and games tonight! :D  Maybe the others will get more down and we might get these stone dogs down on our first week :)  It was bummy that Balinar got on 11 minutes late because we can't wait when we have a raid starting so late already and I still had dailies to get done!

What happens when you have 22 people who want to raid...

Well, it's one of those times I'm glad I'm not the guild leader.

It's difficult when you have to split the teams.  I understand that.  It's even more difficult to balance the teams!  However, what will usually happen is you get one good team and one mishmosh team.  And leftovers who feel sad.

As a member of team 2, I am in the mishmosh team.  But that's OK, I'm just happy to raid.

There are a few things I was sad about.  Our arena teammate had a misunderstanding and forgot to mention that he wanted to be in our raid team so we could arena together on the non raid day.  He wrote on his mail to Fue that he wanted to play Sundays so he could PvP Mondays.  What Shab should have said was that he wanted to be put with Navi and Sev.

I was hoping Bladewind would be with me so we could talk shop as well as raid, and then we could talk at work about it, but Fue wanted him to be in his group.

Gutsy doesn't like late raids, and he is in my group because he can't raid Sundays.  I can see the tension now as it approaches 11pm and he's sleepy and grouchy and falling asleep at the keyboard.

So, I'm in the 930pm late raid start team, which raids Wed, Thurs and Monday.  In my team I have a combination of:

• Tout (prot warrior)
• Slurs (prot pally)
• Priestietute (disc/shadow priest)
• Gutsy (disc priest)
• Sabrehawk (hunter)
• Sevros (warlock)
• Raked (feral druid)
• Lushnek (moonkin druid)
• Navimie (resto druid)
• Moopie (fury warrior)
• Balinar (ret paladin)

So... it will be an interesting mix with 3 druids, 2 warriors, 2 priests, 2 paladins, a warlock and a hunter.  Where's the bloodlust?

I think the other group has:

• Fueghan (prot paladin)
• Zarrianissa (blood dk)
• Roshii (rogue)
• Souglyy (hunter)
• Biship (holy priest)
• Voe (resto shaman)
• Bladewind (holy paladin)
• Shabadu (mage)
• Azadelta (warlock)
• Fallnapart (fury warrior)

Anyway, fingers crossed that I can coax Shab away for PvP.  Maybe if I convince him that arena on Sundays is better than raiding on Sundays.... :D then I can have bloodlust in my group!

Unfortunately, it looks like Hyad and Fleckso didn't get raid spots :(

Good luck for tonight everyone!  For my group, as our first time, it's going to be a bit of an eye opener. Let's see how bad Gutsy is this time at staying close to who he's chained to for the first boss... :D

Fishing in Pandaria

One of my favourite grinds didn't turn out to be that grindy after all - and that was fishing.  A large part of it was due to the number of dailies related to fishing.

A more complete guide to Pandarian Fishing can be found at El's Extreme Anglin'.  I'm not trying to rehash it, I'm just going to talk about it from the I-love-fishing perspective.

The Anglers are a faction located in Southern Krasarang Wilds.  Through a series of dailies you earn reputation and special fishing rewards - AND each completed daily awards you one fishing skill!

There are a number of achievements to be had related to fishing in Pandaria:

• Zen Master Fisherman
• Pandarian Angler
• Locking Down the Docks
• Learning from the Best
• The Anglers

There's even a GUILD achievement for fishing in Pandaria named Pandaren Angler, how confusing! Just a slight change in spelling...

A few screenshots of me doing my dailies...

"Navi, I know it's rude to mention a ladies' weight but when you're sinking your raft..."

The quest "Who knew fish liked eggs?" means you break an egg in the water and fish it.

Other dailies require you to do some fishing as well!  The Cloud Serpent daily, Snack time, requires you to fish food for your cloud serpent, and that also helps you to level your fishing in a rewarding way.

It wasn't long before I got my max fishing, doing all those dailies.  I hardly had to do any extra fishing at all!

However, there are 3 rare fish to be caught as part of the Pandarian Angler.  These fish, Flying Tiger Gourami, Mimic Octopus and Spinefish Alpha are special fish with a low drop rate - Wowhead says 2%.  I caught the Mimic Octopus in the ocean in a pool on the island where you do your Cloud Serpent dailies, the Flying Tiger Gourami in the Dojani river (actually around the area in the picture above of me sitting on a branch), and Spinefish Alpha at Inkgill Mere in Kun-Lai Summit (big lake in the south east of the zone that has black sha things around it).  These fish all give you a quest which is the only way you can become best friends with Nat Pagle.  El's Anglin says that you can only catch from open water (ie not in pools) but I could swear I caught my Mimic Octopus in a pool!  Next time I'll pay closer attention.

Souglyy told me that she saw the Ghostly Pandaren Fisherman (rare spawn) and he gave her the Ancient Pandaren Fishing Lure!  That was pretty exciting!  So she was fishing with her lure for a while one night.  He spawns in Valley of the Four Winds on the north side of that lake at the border of Vale of Eternal Blossoms.  She didn't get any pics though =/

I have 2 more dailies I need for my Locking Down the Docks and I have a loooong way to go for reputation with The Anglers and Nat Pagle... so there will be more fun fishing days ahead for me!  I tell you what I look forward to - that Tiny Goldfish (which I totally forgot to buy now that I'm honoured!) and that cool Water Strider mount (exalted) when I get more rep!