Monthly Archives: August 2011

As you might remember I put out a call to arms for the European bloggers to join up on Real ID and do some Heroics together. Monday night it finally happened (I’m just late writing about it) and it was a lot of fun!

Ironically almost everyone who signed up were people who play a healer. Now, I do play a Warlock for my main, but 90% of the people signed up were Horde, so I had to go on my Horde Paladin, who is of course also a healer.

So, what happens when you put that many healers into a group together? Well, we had to make some arrangements. I ended up tanking with my protection spec, and some of the others had to come on their dps alts. While a group may have worked with us all on our mains (heck, with that many healers no one would ever die.. but then again, probably no mobs would die either..) it just seemed like a better idea to have some actual dps toons in there.

The Group
Me: Rhaura – Paladin
Syrco: Syrcorax – Warrior
MiniMorvel: Toron – Warrior
Shintar: Pujaka – Hunter
Reala: Reala – Priest

With me tanking, Reala healing and the others dpsing we took on Zul’Aman and we fairly well. There may have been a couple of hiccups (totally had nothing to do with me managing to have taunt on cooldown when the panther on the final boss charged off to kill the healer.. really!), but on the whole it was a lot of fun. It was a great experience to meet and play with the people whose blogs I read on a regular basis.

If there are more European players out there who’d be interested in this, just let me know and I’ll send you my Real ID. Maybe others are interested in sharing theirs with each other as well.

There is also an overwhelming amount of Taurens!

Another evening I also did a Heroic with a reader of mine, Zemaree and some of his guild mates. They needed a dps and so I brought along my badly geared Horde Death Knight, but we managed to finish Zul’Aman even with me in the group!

Thanks to everyone for some really fun Heroics, and I hope we can do it again some time! If anyone needs a spare set of hands for a Heroic, just grab me – as long as I’m not busy with something I’m almost always up for another Heroic.

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike

After reading about the post from Ophelie where she talked about running Heroics with bloggers using the new Real ID grouping feature, I realised that I’m missing out.

Why should we have to deal with pug groups that are often rude and sometimes bad when we can group with each other instead?

And so, I suggest a get together for us poor bloggers that are stuck on the other side of the pond (European Servers) to get together and start our own Real ID groups. To start off I have picked two days that we can try to arrange this on, after that once we’re on each other’s lists we can probably just do it whenever if that’s what we prefer.

Days & Time

Monday 29 August
Friday 2 September

I’m personally available from 19.00 server time onwards and am flexible from then onwards for the entire evening.

Interested?

If you’re interestd in this, please respond to this post – or send me an e-mail – with the following information:

- Day(s) that you can make it.
- Times that you are available.
- Faction: Horde/Alliance
- Role (Dps/Healer/Tank)
- A means of contacting you to get your Real ID (since I don’t think anyone wants theirs broadcasted on a public website – if you fill out the e-mail field for example with a contact mail I should be the only one who sees it)

I will try to put groups together, and collect the Real ID information so that we have everything we need for the actual days.

For me, I have my Warlock on Alliance side, and a semi-geared Paladin tank/healer (she should be fine in Zulroics). On Horde side I have another Paladin who is geared for healing, and semi-geared for tanking.

I also have access to a Mumble server in case we want to do voice chat while we play. It can host up to 10 people, so two full groups if needed.

I hope that someone else is interested in this as well. I think it could be a blast to talk to and play with some of the people whose blogs I read.

Join us!

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike

Paying attention to me is more than just not standing in fire during raids or dungeons, it’s knowing who you’re playing with and knowing what they can and cannot do.

With the change to Valor Points in the last patch I’ve seen myself creeping back into Heroics, and I’m surprised by the lack of attention shown by a lot of the people I meet.

Or maybe it’s lack of knowledge, I don’t know.

For me, I like to have a general idea of what my group can do. I know which tanks have a proper AoE taunt (Druid, Warrior) and who has a limited one (Paladin) and who has none (Death Knight). I know which classes can silence/interrupt abilities, and which classes can CC which type of mobs.

When I zone into a dungeon I always check who is tagged as the healer and who is tagged as tank. I like to know who to stay within range of for heals and who to run to if I get aggro. I also make a mental note of who can silence and CC. (Though admittedly 98% of dps never seem to bother with silencing/interrupting spells.)

I don’t care if your dps is a bit on the low side. I care if you’re doing your job.

But I’m digressing – what I’ve noticed lately is that others don’t seem to be very aware of who they’re in a party with.

I’ve been asked to sheep things. Or CC ghosts. (I’m a Warlock, and I can do neither.) I’ve seen others being asked to do things they cannot do.

It doesn’t stop there. People don’t seem to even check who is the healer and who is the tank. (Healer I can possibly understand if there’s lots of ranged.. no wait I can’t understand that! Tank though… that’s the person running in and facepulling everyone – hopefully.. I’ve seen melee dps who seem to think they should be able to do so as well…)

The time that I probably found the most amusing was when I was on my Holy Paladin playing with my brother. We had a feral druid friend with us and got into a ZG with a dps DK and another feral.

They were quite horrible to be fair, their dps wasn’t much to talk about – but I don’t really care about that. What bothered me was that they didn’t silence the nasty Whispers on the first boss, and didn’t pay attention to not standing in the bad.

When we got to the raptor boss they both managed to die to the (very) avoidable damage he does on the ground. We eventually wiped since we had a bit of bad luck with my brother getting decapitated and the spirits all being dead due to the two dps being out of the game.

As we run back we had an “interesting” conversation.

Dps DK: Do you guys even know the fight?
Me: That’s an good question coming from the person who died to the avoidable damage.
Dps DK: Well at least I wasn’t nuking the boss instead of the raptor!
Me: Dude, I’m the healer – I’m not nuking anything.
Dps DK: At least I’m doing more dps than the other DK!
Me: Dude, he’s the tank. You really should be.

(Ironically he wasn’t doing more dps than the tank in most fights.)

I think what surpised me the most was the fact that he hadn’t realised who was tanking and who was healing. (Makes me wonder who he thought was tanking and healing since the only other people were the two feral kittys.)

Am I the only one who likes to know who is tanking and who is healing? Do you check out your group when you get into a dungeon or do you just get on with it?

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike

It’s Oh So Quiet

I apologise for the lack of posting during the summer in general and the last week and a half in particular. For once we had a fairly nice summer and quite honestly I was playing less than normal.

The last week I’ve been extra occupied because on the 7th August my little nephew was born. He’s the first baby born to any of my siblings and so he’s of course “extra precious” right now.

Since the new parents and I share a house (they live upstairs and me downstairs) I’ve been working on my baby overdose since they got home.

Who wouldn't want to overdose on this?

On Raiding

After a rocky summer where we hardly got any raids done since patch 4.2 we seem to finally be on our way. My main guild and alt Horde guild have killed the exact same bosses, though due to me being gone this last weekend I sadly missed out on the two newest kills in the Horde guild.

I hope that we can keep raiding at a steady pace, because summer was depressing with us not even managing one raid some weeks due to people being on vacation, moving houses and so on.

On Archaeology

I still haven’t found the Vial of the Sands pattern and I’m beginning to give up hope. It’s getting too frustrating getting all the good stuff on my Alchemist alt instead of on my Warlock.

The one that hurts the most is probably when the Alchemist got her hands on the Ultramarine Qiraji Battle Tank. So I think it may be time to give up and start doing Archaeology on the Warlock again. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and buy the Vial from the Auction House.

Project Ten Update

I know there’s been a lot of discussions this summer about alts and whether having them is good or bad – but I’m going to keep playing them. I don’t play many other games, so to me playing alts is a bit like playing another game.

My main, and second raiding character, are the ones getting the most attention – and then when I feel that I want a chance, I play an alt (instead of switching to another game).

That being said, not much has happened during the summer with the leveling since I’ve not played much at all outside of capping my VP and raiding on two characters (during the raids that did actually happen).

Hunter – I only levelled her from 81 to 82. I’m finding Mount Hyjal a bit slow when going through it for the umpteenth time and I’m considering trying to find another means of levelling.

Shaman – She went from 74 to 80 and since I’m bored with Hyjal I will probably go to Vashj’ir, combining it with dungeons to get her to 85.

Druid – I finished up Swamp of Sorrows and Blasted Lands, and she’s now 58 (from 47) and ready to battle demons in Outland.

What has everyone else been up to?

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike

I’ve come to the realisation that I have too many friends in WoW. Or the days have too few hours. Or I need to learn to accept certain things.

I have three people in WoW that I really want to play with, sadly they are all on different realms which makes it very difficult.

The first person is actually not a person per se, but my guild. I’ve played with these people for close to four years and I want to continue to do so.

The second person is my very good friend, the GM of my Horde alt’s guild. So I do actually play with her as well.

The third, and whom I’m not currently playing with – is my brother. He’s the person who got me into WoW to begin with many years ago and we ran a guild together in early TBC. He has now started a new guild with a couple of the people from our old one again, and has asked me if I’d like to join.

Part of me really wants to. We had a lot of fun in our old TBC guild and while we only ever did Karazhan because we didn’t make the jump to a 25 man guild back then – I have to say that we were really good.

I remember going in there to try Nightbane for the first time, having heard that it was a difficult fight. We did a “lolpull” first without potions, elixirs or flasks. And nearly got him down. We were so surprised by it that I think that was part of why we wiped. Obviously next try we got him.

I have a lot of fond memories from that guild.

The thing is though; I have my main and my current guild plus my Horde alt that I raid with. Having a third raiding character just isn’t viable.

It’s not just that the raid days would most likely collide with my main’s guild (I can raid with my Horde simply because it’s a weekend raiding guild and my main guild is weekdays), but that I already have problems finding the time to do everything I need to on my main and the Horde character.

Adding a third character to VP cap or do Firelands dailies – I just don’t see me having the time. And of course the raid times, as mentioned above, would most likely collide.

Because every single one of these three guilds are struggling for people to fill their raids at times – I do wish that at least two of them would merge. From a purely selfish point of view – because it would allow me to play with everyone.

Sadly that will never happen. And so I will have to resign myself to the idea that I cannot play with my brother again. However, I wish him – and his new guild – the best of luck.

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike

You know those days when you think that maybe you just weren’t quite awake, or something just went wrong somewhere along the way and suddenly you’re doing all kinds of odd and/or silly things you wouldn’t normally do?

Well, I have those… A lot.

Recently I have:

1) Realised that I finished the Molten Front but didn’t get my mount, so I read up – found that I was missing an achievement from the Druids of the Talon (most likely because I never did their side).

Not wanting to do all the Molten Front quests again I decided that I was just going to chance it and run up that fire hill anyway. I managed to make it through. Having some vague memory of people jumping across the chasm to the island, and if falling off being picked up by birds… I jumped off the edge.

Here’s the kicker – you don’t get picked up by a bird if you don’t have the quests!

And so I fell to my death.

2) After the aforementioned accident I did my quests so I could go up the fire hill the normal way – do the quests and go rescue Anren Shadowseeker (the achievement I was missing).

After finishing it and realising it was another 5 marks I could have had earlier while I was still collecting them I was facepalming. Then of course I realised that having rescued him I unlocked another daily – again something that could have given me more marks while I was collecting them!

Note to self: if you ever do this on another character – make sure you get all the quests for all the marks possible every day!

3) Being tired I spent a raid with my Horde guild clicking almost anything that came up on my screen without reading it. Just out of habit.

Like… the release corpse button when I died during Shannox. Though of course they killed him – and I was outside as a ghost meaning the guild didn’t get the achievement and I didn’t get the VP. (The fix for this came later.)

Like… accepting the summon that was put out for a replacement raider while I was stood at the boss – putting me back at the beginning of the entrance.

At this point my guildies were all laughing at me and saying they should try to COD me things in the mail for a few thousand gold to see if I’d click that without realising too.

4) Doing Archaeology while watching NCIS. Did you know that putting auto-run (or auto-fly in this case) on and then getting too wrapped up in what you’re watching can be disastrous?

You don’t want to know how many times I’ve finally looked back down on my screen to find that I’m out in the middle of the ocean with only a tick or two left on my fatigue bar.

5) I apparently managed to sell my Theralion’s Mirror while clearing out my bags. It is now too late to get it back from the vendor. (I only realised it a couple of days later when switching sets.)

What silly things have you done lately?

Be the first to like.

Like

Unlike