Why so Silent, Bell?

When Summer comes along, so does the sunshine and the need to do things other than WoW. When I don't have homework to procrastinate on, playing on WoW holds a bit less appeal (if you know what I mean). However, I haven't stopped playing!

My mother's house, where I spend a lot of my weekdays, has no internet at the moment. Her current provider was giving her the run-around, so she cancelled service, and is working on getting the new service worked up. So, needless to say, weekdays if I'm on the 'net, I've just gotten home to quick jump on and prepare for a raid.

Our raids haven't gone through, much, either; Many people are finishing up college or have summer vacations and the like. I'm not disheartened or discouraged, and in fact it's giving me more time to work on my surprise and save up a little money...

...which I promptly spent on gemming my Moonkin set. With the creation of a second "ZA Bear Run" group, our first foray into Zul'Aman ended with us just short of attaining a Bear Mount, but yielded a staff and pants for my Moonkin set, as well as a tanking cloak for my Bear set, a dps chest for my Cat set, and a healing neck for my haste set. I cleaned house, I tell you. But, when no one else needs it...

Don't worry, I have a few articles in the works. I need a bit of raiding to get enthusiastic about some again, but never fear.

Bell is still here!

"Fun" with Ahune

I have not yet had a good run at Ahune, and I've downed him only twice. Never on Heroic. Let's see what we have...

Too much melee dps, and most under-geared.

A moonkin who socketed blue gear with spell haste (for a total of +16 haste, woo!) and melee'd the rock elemental mob (the one with the stacking AoE debuff?) to get mana back.

A rogue who wanted the paladin to run back and rez him on a complete wipe so he could talk to a guildmate for a strategy, when we had already stated the strategy. And everyone else was running back.

A group just running in and summoning without clearing any of the packs of trash that roam through the area.

A group asking multiple times what the strategy was, while in combat, while I was trying to heal everyone and everything and get them to move away from the giant earth elemental mob and keep the trash off of me and stay out of the shiny ice (because it's totally cool to get shot in the air, guys!) and dps the boss when he's just a core.

At this point I don't think my luck will let me have a good Ahune run. I think he could be an amazingly fun boss. If my group is never at least 2/5ths full of stupid.

/cry

Sunder is Recruiting!

That's right, my guild needs people! A certain type of people, actually.

Sunder is Recruiting:

Healers: 2 Resto Shamans, 1 Resto Druid
Ranged DPS: 1 Mage, 1 Shadow Priest, 1 Warlock
Melee DPS: 1 Enhancement Shaman

So, if you're a HoT-Healer, Brain-Bouncer, Fire-Flinger, Malefic-Melter, Demon-Dancer or Totem-Twister, Sunder would like to hear from you. We play Alliance-side, Dark Iron (US), which is a PvP server.

For more information, the website is found here, the forums here, and the application forums here. Please, please, please read all of the information and follow the guidelines when submitting your application. For tips on what to do when applying to a guild, check Chick GM's blog. She has great articles on the Anatomy of an Application and Examples of Good/Bad/WTF Applications. Since she's not affiliated with Sunder, not everything is the same, but she gives many great tips.

Sunder is currently only interested in regularly working T6 content (5/5 Hyjal, 7/9 BT), so please keep that in mind when considering to apply. SSC and TK are largely ignored. Kara is still run, but only when people throw a group together.

Thank you for your time, have fun, and don't die. Too much.

Illidari Council: Notes from a First Try

To know more about the mobs and their abilities, check the guide found here.

The AoE's are ridiculously easy to avoid. I have my spell effects on medium and I play with 6 fps; the only time I died to an AoE was when another unfortunate combination occurred, such as Deadly Poison.

I would really like a mod that pings the map to let me know where someone who is affected by Deadly Poison is located.

The room is just big enough and the steps just awkward enough that LoS is deadly.

I was put on helping heal people who have the Deadly Poison debuff; I'm still debating if this is a good choice. My HoTs can't seem to stack fast enough and my other heals are too slow on the cast. I'm thinking I should request a tank assignment in lieu of raid healing.

If the WWS Report ever stops erroring, I'll be able to explore my effective healing a bit better.

I need more runs to decide if I should be out of tree form constantly or simply shift out when I need to run from an AoE. In some of the guide videos, I saw tree druids running out of the AoE without shifting forms; with the two second delay in damage taken it may be possible, if not the safest.

Tonight it is back to Black Temple to clear it all over again! Hopefully we'll just steamroll right on through so our next raid night will have more than an hour and a half for Council trash and attempts.

In other news, Part One of the Pre-Kara Resto Druid Guide is up! Thanks, Bear!

Bang Head Here

Every once in a while, I hit a wall of frustration with WoW. This is a normal occurrence for me in anything I engage in, whether it’s school, employment or recreation. Lately, though, due to high gas prices, I’ve spent much more time on WoW (less expensive than trying to go out, especially as, where I live, everything is very spread out and you need a car to get anywhere), and have thus found a lot more to be frustrated about.

Right at this moment, I have two unenchanted pairs of gloves sitting in my inventory. One is Botanist’s Gloves of Growth as a step towards a haste set, and the other is Thunderheart Gloves. Yes, I can has T6! The only problem here are that the enchants are very expensive. Each Enchant Gloves – Major Healing costs six Greater Planar Essences, six Large Prismatic Shards, and six Primal Lives. Since I need two enchants, double that. Add to that I need to gather the mats for Boar’s Speed and I’m now up to needing 20 Large Prismatic Shards, 12 Primal Lives, 12 Greater Planar Essences and 8 Primal Earths.

But the fun doesn’t stop there!

Remember that list from before about things I needed to do-slash-get? Let’s see what I’ve accomplished:

Made two Primal Mights (out of five) and gotten Exalted with SSO. I had made one Earthstorm Diamond, but then my new helm dropped and I needed it for a meta socket. So, now my shopping list is 20 Large Prismatic Shards, 18 Primal Lives, 12 Greater Planar Essences, 8 Primal Earths, 1 Earthstorm Diamond, 1 Skyfire Diamond, 2 Fel Lotus, 3 Primal Mights, and 2 Nether Vortex.

Now if that isn’t daunting enough, mix in my small, small gold pile of about…1.2k gold. Across all my characters. I do not have epic flight, and I do not foresee myself getting it anytime soon. I cannot commit too much time to doing dailies; and when I do them I am horribly slow at any of them that require something to die. Though I’m an herbalist, farming is the same way; things die much too slowly and I have to have help, which means I have to drag someone out of the way to kill things for me, split the profits with them (I don’t mind doing this), and then feel guilty about bringing them to do something which is, inherently, really, really, boring. It doesn’t matter if they want to do it; I don’t like asking.

Besides all of that up there, I need to work on my honor situation. I am, irresponsibly, not in possession of a 2 minute PvP trinket, and therefore gimp myself on a few fights such as Rage and Archimonde. Season 4 is coming out; my three pieces of Gladiator are going to be woefully obsolete. I don’t even have all of the Vindicator’s set; I still need my boots and my rings.

I could do this if I respec’d, possibly, but my money is so low and my play time (though relatively plentiful) is so sporadic it becomes difficult to simply recover what I lost by respec’ing, let alone make extra gold. And since I need to spend time farming, I can’t really do many dailies. The flip side of the coin is trying to do dailies to buy what I intended to farm, but it seems like since everyone can do 25 dailies a day, inflation has gone out of control.

Then I have this…other problem? People keep trying to offer to give me gold. Which is a lovely gesture in itself, but I cannot accept. One, because I will never, ever be able to pay it back, and two, I have the “if they can do it, so can I” mentality. When I was fresh at level 40, I made the money for my riding mount in three days, and this was Pre-BC where that was (at level 40, anyway) a feat. Or it felt like one. When epic riding came around, I scrounged for gold again and got a PvP mount so I could get a Ram and not have to spend that chunk on a Saber Mount I didn’t want. Regular Flying was easy; Druids do have it made with that. But after all that, I can’t stand the thought of asking for someone else’s gold to pay for my epic skill. I want to be able to do it myself, to know that I can do it. Only problem is, it’s almost looking like I can’t.

Did I mention I’m power-levelling cooking? 245 skill at the time of writing this.

I know I can’t get everything done, but it does feel like I’m gaining no headway. Illidari Council is, hopefully, tonight, and I’m all prepared for that, but otherwise, I’m starting to fall behind. It’s starting to look like the only solution is to get my paladin to 70 so she can smack mobs around for me.

/grindteeth

/partyhat

Sorry about the small bit of radio silence lately; this is always a busy weekend for me. I just turned twenty (ding!) and also Father's Day is tomorrow. But don't worry; I'll return with a brand new and shiny post on Monday, promise!

Have a great weekend, and a terrific Father's Day.

Thunderstorms are Made of Fail

A thunderstorm swept through my area last night and knocked out the power for three hours, which was just long enough to allow me to miss the invites and first hour of a raid. My guild understood; a couple other people had power outages and connection issues over it. I was at first unconcerned; I thought we were going to Hyjal. I really don't need too much out of Hyjal, as I don't have enough DKP to compete for tier, should it happen to drop.

Then I found out they were going to BT instead, and died a little inside. I need two things from BT! Shade of Akama is holding my [Kilt of Immortal Nature] hostage, while Bloodboil has the amazingly beautiful (and slightly disturbing) [Staff of Immaculate Recovery], also known as "Priest-on-a-Stick." The latter would have been the first piece of gear I would have actually been able to participate in a bidding war over; I was cursing the thunderstorm with every breath in my body.

Well, luckily for my sanity, neither dropped, though I felt bad that one of our other priests, who had graciously offered not to bid me up too much should the staff ever drop while we were togetehr, did not get his shot at the staff.

This morning, I got my fishing to 375! Score. Still no croc pet, but I can be patient. I should hope so, at least, since I was patient enough to level fishing without too much complaining!

I am also progressing slowly with a secret project. I will, unfortunately, have to wait until it's done to tell you about it, because two of my guildmembers actually read this blog, and I don't want to give the surprise away.

Which brings up the subject: Sharlet, a holy paladin in Sunder, has officially begun posting on his Paladin blog, Hammer Hurling. He is insanely knowledgeable about the Paladin class (and just about every other one), so I highly recommend checking him out.