Like I mentioned quite a number of times before, I am feeling the pre-Cataclysm blues big time. I’m pretty fed up with leveling alts even though I only have 3 80s, all in ICC25 gear. Not full but BiS as much as possible. I haven’t stepped in this raid for about 2 weeks now and I can’t say I miss it at all. I really don’t know where I had the stamina to take all 3 in one week to the place, in both 10 and 25 man versions but it’s gotten the best of me. So that’s that. I will only join if it’s a raid that will be downing the LK and they feel confident enough to pull my sorry ass through the fight. I know’em all in theory but I’ve had precious little practice on Arthas so that might be a bummer. Of course, there’s always the option of buying my way to a LK kill, the prices on my server vary from about 20K for a 10 man kill (in which I understand you do nothing but go in and pull to die – a fair thing, I say. If I need a boost to the kill there’s no way for the guild doing the boosting to trust me that I’m not going to drop a defile in their midst).

I have leveled a slew of characters to the mid-30s at least to get a feel for the class (currently Rogue – 52, Warrior-35, Paladin – 33, Druid – 35, Hunter – 37, Mage – 31). Add that to the Shaman, DK and Warlock at 80 and you get a lot of playtime. And the worst part of it all is that they are all on the same server, which leaves little room for the Worgen and Goblin I intend to try my hand on when Cata launches. Only one spot and only one class I haven’t ever played past 11: Priest. I really like the class, probably because it is the archetype of the healer and I always wanted one that I could trust.

Yes, I know that shamans can heal. I was resto for all my BC life and the beginning of Wrath but maybe because of the limited gear I had and the lack of tool optimization (or at least that’s what I thought) early on led me down the Elemental path and I’m sticking to it. I want a disco priest. Dipping too low thar? Have a bubble! Oh, alright, lazers incoming, brace for the hit, Spock!

Aaanyway, the thought that popped in my mind was to transfer a char on another server. But which one should it be? My gut feeling is that I should transfer my Shaman, to a PvE realm but that would have me risk cutting him off the gold supply – not that I’m good with gold, on the contrary. My professions on the shaman are Enchanting and Skinning, which is a remnant of LW + Skinning I originally went with. I kept Skinning because of the extra crit and because I have a LW friend that can craft stuff for me if I get him the mats. If I transfer him away then I won’t have my friends to level with. No bonus points for that!

My Lock will be staying on the realm it’s on because that’s where my PvP team members are. Period.

My DK… I barely play her anyways nowadays and I’m afraid that if I were to transfer her away it would mean the end of things. She has Mining + Jewelcrafting as professions and could potentially mean she would be able to support herself but I only have a handful of JC patterns I know because by the time I reached 450 I was fed up with everything JC related and only logged to do the quests when I was really bored. Really bored. Now that having been said, is it worth transferring a lowly alt to a new server? One that I don’t really know if I will play at all? I don’t think so.

What to do?

Time to brag:

It was just me and a guildie in the whole wide raid. When you’re lucky you’re lucky, what can I say? It was just the third time I had killed Thekal and he dropped teh phat lootz.  Furthermore, I get to win with one of my usual rolls (for those who haven’t read my bitching about rolls before, I, without exception, roll on items I really want something between 16 and 23. I won with 22!) . Yay me!

On a side note, while working towards my Loremaster meta I have also had 3 world drop purples shine before my eyes. While I can appreciate an item, I got Destiny, Gloves of Holy Might and the Glowing Brightwood Staff. Awesum stuff if I don’t say so myself, but on my server they just don’t sell. And I’d rather have them go towards somebody who could actually use them or collect them than equip and the shard on an alt. WTS?

Then I turned to my Warlock and saw it was seriously lacking. No gear to be proud of and he had his Enchanting in the 150 range plus tailoring about the same, slightly higher. In a fit of ingame rage I ditched enchanting and thought I’d pick up Herbalism for my up and coming Paladin Scribe. That las all through reaching skill 2 before it got removed too, go figure. I focused my full and undivided attention on leveling my Tailoring and PuG-ing with my DK, of the rare and soon to be extinct breed of Blood damage dealer. Got some nice upgrades for her, by the way, she is currently guildless and sitting on a 5.7 k groovy score, enough to grant me a spot in any GS PuG. Now if only I could work out how to change my rotation to take full advantage of the ilvl264 sigil it would be great. But I digress. Back to the Lock:

While camping the AH for cloth I figured I’d PvP for a bit. Mind you, I have not entered a BG in almost 11 months since I got incredibly disheartened by the survival chances of a shaman in a PvP environment and the number of leechers that joined and then did not move for the duration. I shelved my hard worked for Elemental and Enhancement PvP gear in the bank (this was before the Honor Jug was broken over BGs, when it took a week of loosing constantly to get an upgrade or a set piece – think ilvl 213 being teh bomb) and swore myself off PvP.

All that aside, I entered my first BG on my lock past lvl 29 in my full set of PvE gear and got mowed down repeatedly within seconds. SotA, 2 minutes left on the clock and the Horde hadn’t made it off the beach.

Damn! Things haven’t changed at all, I thought, until I remembered that I had 2 PvP set pieces in my bank, from VoA, things I chose not to roll on but were awarded to me regardless. Equipped them, gemmed and enchanted them and stepped back through the portal in my Affliction PvE spec. The alternative would have been Destro PvE and I never even tried it out, just got it because all the cool kids were doing it. Things were better. I even managed to survive for a while even though I was pummeled on. Sure, having a keybind for Fear helped a lot with that but I was pleased with the results. So much even that I respecced into Affliction PvP as OS. It was fun but I felt I didn’t pack a punch, really and for me it’s all about the big numbers. Respecced Destro PvP and after reading the tooltip for all the spells and talents I felt confident enough to go in a BG again. And I loved it. I still died a lot because of low resilience but with practice comes perfection and honor. I am currently sporting a 4pc PvP set (2 ilvl232 and 2 ilvl251) and almost everything I wear has resilience on it. I can even haz trinket!

I even has Arena team. It is fail because I am fail at arena PvP and my RL friend and partner is a resto drood that last did Arenas in TBC. We’re working out the kinks in the system and we even won our first match! Gogo sap-trinket machine! Oh, yeah, because I liked PvP I also maxed my Engineering skill for teh sweet toys. Not cheap, mind you!

The reason I did all this was because I was really bummed about my shaman, my first love. I hadn’t gotten any gear upgrades since fucking forever and really, not for lack of trying. I had the same darn MH since early December, the Anub 25 mace of awesomesauce (back then) and it was getting old logging to see that melon on top of a pike every time.

I joined a new guild on the shaman about a month back, that had the core of the guld I felt best in. Things looked pro and all I wanted was to bring down Arthas. Match made in heaven, amirite? No. Like with any good guild, there were raiding hours and they never were during when I could be online for the full duration. I either had to work those hours or have to leave for work after 2/3.5. Bummer. I went on an ICC 10 run with the GL and I guess I made an impression because I was asked again despite the guild having a shaman join per day for a week or so. Fast forward, I explained why I couldn’t raid, the GL said it’s ok and I went back to PvP on my lock. All of this until yesterday night, when out of sheer boredom I opened the Armory app on my phone. Saw a ICC10 HC run scheduled for the next day, and figured that if I tried really hard I could make 3/3.5 hours and then take a cab to work. I signed up and was online at invite time. And 5 minutes after. And 10 after that, during which everything was quiet. Out of the blue, when I got tired of re-listing auctions the invite swooped in out of the blue. There were so many to sign up (only 9, making me the 10th, when I had) that there were actually 2 groups put together.

I wasn’t really surprised to not make thefirst group, the A team, and was just fine with being accepted. I got my flasks and feasts and proceeded to ICC.

Buffs, trash, feast. Marrowgar HC. I had only seen this fight on HC once before, when it ended terribad and we did not try it again. One wipe. Rebuff. Feast. Kill. Rejoice. Lady Deathwhisper, never seen her before so pissy. Had the fight explained for the priest so I listened to everything except the tanking bit because I am not a tank and why the fuck should I care about tanking? I was wrong. It seems that she is untauntable in phase 2 which had me actually watch Omen. The second time around. Apparently the mage wasn’t listening either cause he snatched aggro in no time flat and whaddaya know, was 1 shotted. A death promptly followed by mine because I was next in the pretty aggro chart. A kill in two is not that bad, I wager, I have seen and been in groups flailing about and not able to down her despite the 25% (at the time) buff on 10m normal.

Onwards and upwards to lootship where I finally got my new weapon. Yes, it’s a healer’s weapon, it has mp5 but the trade-off was worth it. Some measly 50 crit for 120 SP plus a yellow socket of hasty goodness? Yes, please! I honestly wouldn’t have minded HC Muradin’s Spyglass either but I was thrilled to get an upgrade, any upgrade. And a weapon upgrade was to die for at this point, really.

Heroic Saurfang was the stuff of legends because of the tauntfail that had us bursting in laughter. Our KS (on another char), the OT, had 4 consecutive taunts miss, 2 of which being during Jr’s ‘oi, look at me, I’m big and bad’ phase. I was the only one on the floor at the end, got 1shotted by a blood beast when the boss only had 300k HP left -.- . Luckily I did not have a mark on me so it was all cool. 1shot, by the way.

This is where the HC bit ended, even though we easily could have downed Festerface based on the level of teamplay involved and the DPS we were pumping out. We got Festergut to hit the ground in 2 minutes and 10 seconds without using Bloodlust. I was honestly shocked to see this. Rotface posed no problem and dropped some boots for mah enhancement offspec (ARP meh) and then we killed the Proffessor although judging by the MT’s shoddy Abomination handling I thought we wouldn’t.

That was all the ICC experience I had, both in 10 and 25 man. I know it’s little, so late after the raid opened its gates and with the buff and all but just how things were. I find it weird myself if you’re asking.

Next up – Blood Wing. I had been in a few attempts to kill the Princes but nothing that even made it past 50%. One-shot. I knew the tactics for this one, which was more than I could say for Blood Queen. I knew the general direction the fight would be going in, with the biting and the lazor and the flames but never having seen it… I was reluctant to believe in myself that I would perform according to expectations. The healing priest admitted to not knowing tacts so they were explained briefly and I had my ears peeled. RC and gogogo, I blow all my cool-downs, which are not many – racial SP and EM and lo and behold, I am the first one to be bitten. The RL actually loled a bit at this (elemental shaman to be top bursty DPS? Unfathomable!) but then ignored me. No Bite assignments? Really?

I proceeded and bit the mage, which was the only other ranged DPS in the raid group and then before I knew it (was chained with the lazor once) it was over. Achievement pops up and I’m like yay, I have gone where no me has ever gone before! All on the inside, I did not need everybody to know that I was excited about such a ‘trivial’ thing as a new wing clear. I had to go shortly after so the frost wing and the LK will be rescheduled. I sure hope I can make it then!

So yeah. I like my Shaman again and that’s both good and bad news. I will now have 3 raiding characters again (the lock is always warlocky and greedy for some upgrades) and this means time. Time that is very precious to me actually. So far the only thing I have been cutting off on was sleeping. I am at an all-time record of maximum 4 hours per night and I don’t know if I should be proud or sad.

Cold. It was an eerie feeling, like icy fingers were running across her temples. This feeling she had encountered before, when….

“No, I need to snap out of it. Memories can be deadly in these far reaches,” the young draenei thought, moving closer to the fire. The flames had melted the snow for almost one foot around the setting but couldn’t do more against the winds of Northrend, constantly shifting direction. “It’s fitting. The scourge, with its for ever bolstered numbers, is always fighting us back to our outposts, like the wind does with my fire.”

She hated guard duty but when her number came up she had to grab her mace and shield and conform. “It’s not like anything ever happens here, it’s the safest place to be except for base camp,” she uttered as the chills went down her spine again. “This place… I feel it strange to touch,” she frowned, grabbing a handful of snow off of the ground. “What did the Sarge say? That I’ll love it here? I don’t.”

Valani looked around her for the hundredth time since she started guard duty. It was a shallow cave she had set up in, overlooking a valley surrounded by steep cliffs “The angle prevents the walls from being climbed and the narrowness makes it ideal for an ambush”. She was on the eastern cliff, the mouth of the cave very well hidden from suspicious eyes by a huge rock that seemed to have been cleft in half by a giant axe. Part of it was lying on the ground almost blocking access to the post and the other half stood tall and prevented anyone coming from the north from seeing the fire. Luckily the base was to the south so it was safe.

The war against the scourge was very difficult to fight. Loosing a comrade, a friend to this war was hard enough but having to see him rise from the dead to come kill you made it almost impossible to bear. It did toughen up everybody on this front and made friendships mean a lot more than drinking together and relying on another to swoop down to your aid. Not once did Valani see and hear oaths being taken that should one fall the other would make sure he did not rise again.

Swinging the hammer to crush the skull of somebody you knew and maybe liked the previous day took its toll on the troops’ though. Screams could be heard every night, the nightmares haunted everybody and spirits were undeniably low. Nobody knew if the bad dreams would ever stop. Some didn’t want them to. Those were the ones who had fought in the war against the Horde, who got a feeling of the glory. After the second war they had helped rebuild and then hired themselves as mercenaries. They had no choice, there aren’t many who would hire a soldier in times of peace. Fighting was all they knew because it had to be so when fighting the savage Old Horde. Children had taken up arms and learned how to thrust with a sword or impale with a polearm before they had a chance to learn how to write or were old enough to be left alone with a plow and handle it. They had entered the war scared and rose from it scarred but with a fearlessness hard to come by otherwise. They had survived. They had won over warriors twice or thrice their size and had a taste of glory.

Most of them died in the first battle against the scourge. The stories about the first and second wars against the Horde were now sung by bards and although one could still see the destruction that had come to the land in some remote parts of Azeroth, it was not as fresh a wound as it used to be.

The rest had to kill them again the second day, when the battle resumed. This was not something they wanted to forget lightly even though chances were they would not make it out of this war alive anyway. Children were drafted again and given a crash course in wielding weapons, children such as Valani. She barely remembered Draenor in all of its splendor before the orcs found the lust for blood and ravaged it. She was among the few who had survived the trip on the Exodar and made it to Azeroth and as soon as she could pick a sword up she did and began training with her father. Looking back to it, she knew that it wasn’t her true call, to be a warrior, but the wounds her father had suffered in the battle for Shattrath left him empty on the inside. The young draenei just wanted to see her father happy once more so she asked him to train her. He was not pleased by this and insisted that she think long and hard before going down this road. Her youth made the decision for her.

The training was rough. Valenthos, once proud Vindicator (?), did not show mercy for his own flesh and blood and hounded her with military exercises for over a year before he allowed her to even be in the same room with all the weapons he had brought along. It was for the better, she had to admit it even though at the time she was furious with him. Now she had the strength to hold a two handed sword and not feel its heaviness bring her down after a couple of moments. Valani remembered how after the initial couple of days of immaginary thrusts and parries that Valenthos allowed her he sat her down and presented the pros and cons of each weapon, what sword, if choice is given, to choose over another and why. This was the second year of her training.

She did not recall much of the third and last year, or better said, she did not know when it passed. Under his careful supervision she learned to wield all of the weapons in her father’s arsenal and moved from training dummies to sparring with some of his old friends that were still in strength. At first they made short work of her and had her kneeling within seconds of the fight starting. She will never forget what Valenthos said after the first time she hit the dirt.

He took her aside after Kalenthis left and sat her down.

“Do you know why he won?” he asked in a soft tone.
“Because I tripped,” she replied, tears still in her voice.
“No, Valani. You lost because you wanted to win. It may sound strange to you now, it did when my father first said this to me, but winning is not about sport. Not with war. It’s not about showing your opponent who is stronger or faster. You have to prove to him that you are smarter. Fights happen. Wars happen. What pitches you against another is almost never something of your choosing. What drives the both of you at each others’ throats is the will to live, knowing that only one of you can see sunlight again. You have to wait and be prepared for him.”
“So what you have taught me until now..”
“Was to make sure that you will be able to take whatever gets thrown your way. You attacked Kalenthis. That was your mistake. He is way too experienced to not know what you were going to do the moment you raised the blade. He was waiting for you to make your first move so he can counter it.”
“And he did.”
“Yes, my daughter, he did. There is no shame in loosing to a veteran like Kalenthis. He will come again. And now that you know what to do you will have a fighting chance.”

In case anybody was wondering, I am still playing although to a significantly lesser extent than what I was used to. RL is a bitch and it has puppies, as my boss likes to say.

Out of the ~ 30 hours of playing per week I am now down to maximum 10, spread out across three max level chars and two lower alts which I cannot bring myself around to push to 80. Nothing interesting happened over the last few weeks. My previous guild has pretty much migrated to a bigger one and I’d like my DK to join it as well. If not for that elusive LK kill, at least for the actual good times I’ve had playing with my old guildmates (and when I say old I mean… erm… well we were in the same guild for about 6 or 7 months. It’s still the longest stretch of time with a guild for me).

The one thing that did remind me that I have a WoW blog (not that I’d forgotten) was what I did last night in an ICC 25 run. I’m partly embarrased of this incident so be gentle.

I’m one for reporting spammers every time I see them. My general rule against spam is as follows: If I see the person posting the same message twice in the same chat window it’s spam. Ofcourse, there are some special exceptions, like when he/she is correcting typos made in the first announcement and so on. This doesn’t only apply to /2 /1 and whichever other channel I might be on. Yes, I’m a bit of a grammar nazi IRL so this bothers me, moreso as on EU servers English is often enough botched. I also do this in raids if somebody is either spamming useless crap or using the good-ole formula of one word per line. Report Spam. Problem solved.

So I was in an ICC 25 PuG raid the other day on my Shaman when Wodin’s Lucky Necklace drops off of trash between Festerface. This hunter was a very chatty type of person, in a mildly annoying-but-let-it-be type way. He had nothing constructive to say, wasn’t particularly funny but at least he was awake during the snoozefest. Which I wasn’t, and as I’m currently in between changing homes (leaving one rent for another, yay me!) I wasn’t in a very friendly mood either.

Anyway, the RL links the drop and the hunter begins rejoicing, as if he was the only one with a bow and nobody else had a claim to this drop. ‘Yay, my neck! OMG it’s mine’ type of lines, over and over again, all in the span of a couple of seconds filled the raid chat. To which I instinctively right clicked his name and reported spam. The RL then proceeded to ask for the MS roll from people who wanted it. I would have liked to roll on it too, my Enhancement set is in dire need of a neck upgrade but I was there as Elemental so not much I could do as long as there were numerous others rolling. This hunter didn’t. Which I found strange but didn’t pay much attention because WTH, I was annoyed and not being able to roll on an item usually makes me a very grumpy panda. Just later I pieced it together, when said hunter left the raid without a word. In my reporting him as a spammer pro’lly he was not allowed to roll by the Powers that Blizz because it is some sort of communication (is it now?). I killed his chances of winning this much sought after item. And I felt bad about it. Sort of. What were the chances that he’d get a roll higher than 92, the winning roll, anyway?

It got me thinking, though. I believe this is worth investigating. Perhaps it can be used as a tool for blocking others from rolling. I would never do it on purpose for my own personal gain, but I believe others would. I know others that would and I hate them for it. Mommy, does this make me an evil person, for even conceiving it?

Deathbringer Saurfang

A rather simple fight in terms of mechanics, the Saurfang the Younger fight starts off with a monologue from papa Saurfang that touches the childhood and his life expectations of Jr. You can use this to get into position or go for a bio break, there’s an almost 2 minute mark for the yapping.

Saurfang Jr, whom we will only refer to affectionately as Saur or Jr, has an interesting gimmick up his sleeve that will kill your defense if you’re not paying attention. He casts Boiling Blood at a random target, an ability doing 5k dmg every 3 seconds and you want to be 11 yards away from your closest teammate if you get tagged otherwise upon him using Blood Nova (another interesting ability) he would get more blood energy back, 1 for each player within 11 yds of the Boiling Blood target. When he reaches 100 energy he will cast a Mark of the Fallen Champion on a random target except the tanks, who will take the same damage taken by the tank each hit Saur lands.

Because of the above abilities, positioning is crucial. If your team is bunched up he will get the chance to cast a helluva lot of Marks and that will bring extra stress to the healers (most comps are running 2 healers for 10 man and 5 for 25). If the target of the Mark dies, Jr will be healed for 5% of his total HP so you will not be only down a player but also will have a harder task ahead of you.

Periodically Saur will also call a couple of Blood Beasts and they will give him 1 energy per hit made as well so it’s important to kill them on sight and not get gibed. Here is what smart positioning does. Ideally you will want more ranged DPS than melee for this fight because you can keep your spacing for Boiling Blood and be able to kill the Beasts until they reach you. As a Shaman this is where you shine, with Thunderstorm and Earthbind Totem.  With a bit of luck you won’t need to use the totem if you have a strong partner that can also CC the beasts (they cannot be feared) so you get some damage done on them plus some mana back? Good times!

You will want to be at maximum range from Saurfang, that’s a given, but you also want to be in a place where you can easily kite the beast around without having to get into somebody’s 11yd bubble. I found that the location I’m most comfortable with is at the bottom of the big platform leading up to him, far into the corner. You would then be able to kite the beast towards the enclosed area of the balcony (where the loot chest will spawn) without anyone else having to run out of your way.

If carefully executed, the beasts thing will at most have you move one or two yards back, if TS isn’t enough or on CD, just then use the totem and /profit.

The beasts will be spawned roughly every 10% of HP the boss looses so you will know when they will be summoned. Plus, if you’re using DBM or BigWigs or any other similar addon you’ll have a visual representation of the CD on this ability.

The best time to use BloodLust (again, wait for the RL to call out for it or ask when he wants it used) would be around 30% HP left on Jr. That’s when he will hit a soft enrage and the healers will need the breathing room. That’s also when adds will be summoned so you get to not go full out DPS on the boss because you have to kill them dead. Not a big win for us ranged but at least we’re helping out so it should be cool. Remember to always switch to the closest beast to you as soon as possible.

Elemental Tips:

1. When beasts are spawned you don’t actually need to immediately (as in split second) switch, as long as you make sure your CL is off CD. Hit the button for the extra damage on the boss plus both adds (in 10 man) and then rock your beast’s world with DS, LvB, LB and then TS if you’re the one with the aggro.
2. When you see that Blood Beasts are about to be summoned and the LvB CD just ended don’t blow it on the boss, instead LB again so that it will be up from the get go when the beasts actually spawn. You really want your hardest hitting attack fly as soon as possible (except if you want to go with 1.)
3. If you are the target of a Mark of the Fallen Champion, depending on how far into the fight it’s cast, you would rather want to keep yourself alive rather than doing damage to Saurfang. For instance if you’re it before the 30% soft enrage you will want to let the healers handle this. If you’re tagged on the enrage or immediately after (that would be down to 20% on the boss, until things cool off in their department) you will want to keep yourself alive. Spamming LHW will be enough for this. Another moment when you will want to self-heal is if you get gibbed on the last 10%. A lot of players relax early and might miss the Mark, if you get it and die that’s another 5% more HP that they’ll be too relaxed for.

Totem Selection:

Earth: Stoneskin Totem, for the extra mitigation on the tanks, thus making it easier for any Mark victim. Switch for Earthbind only if needed.

Fire: Go with Fire Elemental in the start and then, when it expires, ToW is the best choice.

Water: Depending on if you have a Paladin that dishes out GBoW, Mana Spring or Healing Stream Totem

Air: Wrath of Air Totem all the way, baby!

The 25 man version doesn’t bring a lot more, just 5 beasts and more HP on them and the boss. Well, that and, given the extra numbers, more Marks will be cast so watch out.

I don’t have a strategy guide for this yet and will probably never be well-versed enough to be able to put one together. I just want to finish this so bad that I actually talk about it with non-WoW playing friends. They look a bit weird at me at first but by the time I get to explain Yogg-Saron they switch from “afro-american fella, wha?” to “mm, fuck off and die” and then they get a look of “meh, I’ll tolerate it, go on if you really want to share”.

The problem with this is that I’m a terribad storyteller when it comes to things I’m passionate of. I start at the beginning then jump off to explain what happened before the beginning. Case in point, and I’ll give you the abridged version:

“So we have to go kill this old god thing and it’s fucking epic, people say!”
“Why do you want to kill him?”
“Well he’s bad and all that good versus evil jazz…”
“Didn’t you say you were an orc? They’re bad,” said my friend that has played Warcraft 1 and 2 but not 3 because he had a shitty PC then that couldn’t meet the minimum requirements. He also played and watched LoTR and all the orcses there are undeniably bad.
“Yeah, well now we’re good. It’s complicated.”
“And the Alliance? They’re bad?”
“No, they’re good too.”
“Well aintcha fighting? Who’s bad? There’s gotta be somebody who’s bad, you know, all that good versus evil jazz.”
“Uhm, I told you it’s complicated. We’re all good, Yoggi is bad and that’s why we have to kill him.”
“You want to kill Yoggi? What in the world will happen to Boo-Boo? And why aren’t you working together if you’re all good?”
“His name is Yogg-Saron, we call him Yoggi for convenience and anecdotal reference. And we’re not working together because the Alliance can’t forgive us for what the old Horde has done.”
“Us? Wow, don’t you think you’re a bit too involved?”

At this point in the conversation I’m usually like “shut up and eat your french fries!” but because I really love the idea of Ulduar I let it drag on for a while, back and forth like that and then delved into explaining the story. I started with the whispers and then went back to explain why he is bad and why he is old and why is he imprisoned and who imprisoned him and half an hour later I realized that I hadn’t really said anything about the actual encounter which became a bit frustrating, knowing that I might never get to be enthusiastic in front of that particular friend about WoW ever again without being cut off.

Shortened story even more short, I ended up comparing Yogg-Saron to Cthulhu and I particularly remember that at some point I even went crazy monkey metaphorical and said something in the lines of “if Nietzsche is the father of Nihilism, then Lovecraft is his house. Imagine that Nihilism is tea. H.P. Lovecraft will not only be the cup but also the teahouse.” I know Nietzsche was actually anti-nihilistic but he didn’t so it worked just fine.

Now where was I going with this? Oh, yeah, I’m not good with story telling if I’m passionate about the subject. Ask me about last week’s fail PuG on any given day and I will be able to tell you who failed, how and why plus a couple of alternative solutions that might have prevented the failing. Oh, and if you do, invariably one of the two solutions would be that the one who failed wasn’t born.

Ulduar looks to me to be one of those off-beat places so out of ‘our’ WoW times that only Nozdormu might have put it together. I’m loving the vehicle fights and even though at this level of gear they’re mostly stupidly easy, the last bosses can cause you to wipe if not executing the fight properly. Dang it feels nice to not be able to brute-force everything!

I am quite unhappy with the fact that I have not managed to kill Yoggi (Boo-Boo can fuck off and DIAF for all I care) and I’m actively watching for groups that might be forming just for this. I often wonder if there are others out there that miss the flavor of one instance or raid, and if there are, what raids tickle whom.

Well, if you consider that we killed Toravon and that it was my first time tanking anything for more than other 4 people (and I’m jittery about that too) I did great. Just that I didn’t, I plain out sucked. The only thing worse than how the fight happened was if I had wiped the group and I really wasn’t far from it.

When I’m on my shaman in VoA all I care about are the adds, when up, dodging while pew-pewing them and afterwards I just watch my cast bar intensively so I queue the next spell just at the right time. I had no idea about how the debuff looks like, the one you have to taunt off the other tank, I just knew that it had to go to 3 and then I step in.
Let’s move 4 minutes back, for some background information. The group is imba, and I mean that wholeheartedly. It’s almost a class run, we just have two pallies, tank and dps, we lack a druid. Healing team is holy priest + resto shaman, both healers whom I trust after grouping with them before and seeing them pull of some impressive stunts. It was 30 minutes before WG started and we’d been waiting for about 20 minutes to find a warrior/druid tank. Not prime game time, it was early in the afternoon when you only see a handful of people in Dalaran. Knowing that I would have to leave in about 20 minutes, I suggest that I might be able to give tanking a go, I’m defcapped but I’m a bit low on health, with only 32 k HP unbuffed. The RL meets the idea with enthusiasm, he grabs the first warr dps he sees and a-buffing we will go. I am clearly the OT here, the MT is sitting on some 40 k HP self buffed so he proceeds to pull the first Stonewarder or whachamacallit. I give him a good two seconds to establish aggro before I step in and thought that I’d just do my blood dps rotation , replacing HS with something else that is off CD at the time.
The moment I throw in IT I grab aggro and I clearly wasn’t ready for this. I’m a dedicated panicker so when I see AGGRO in red and I hear that annoying booming sound I tend to stop what I’m doing and crawl in a sort of upright fetal position and hope for the best. Ok, i don’t, but I did stop and wonder what had just happened there. The pally taunts off of me and then i just auto-attack with the odd PS refresh (because I’m not a completely incompetent tank I know that there’s a talent there somewhere that makes my frost attacks cause 80% more threat. Or something along these lines).

Before the target is dead I see the second whatchamacallit approach so I valiantly tackle it and get to run my tanking rotation => target dead. We, and by we I mean the other tank and I decide that we can pull as soon as we reach Toravon so as the two adds up to him are killed we get the all so common ‘gogogogogogogogo’ line that everybody loves to hate. He taunts, I auto-attack and when I see 3 stacks of something white I brace myself for the hit(s) and taunt. Yay, I did it, I iz big shot tank nao! The pally taunts when I have 3 stacks and then all hell breaks loose in my mind.

He has two something white stacks up on him! One is at two and the other is at three. What do I do, do I taunt or not? ‘To taunt, or not to taunt, that is the question’ ran through my panicky mind. Better to do than not to I decide in a heartbeat and I hit the button. Crap, it was the wrong thingamajig at 3, he had only two stacks and before I know it I have 5. He taunts back and he’s on 5 in what seems to be a heartbeat. Mine drop off and I taunt, ready to pop my CDs (because holly crap, I might need them if I want his buffs to wear off). He taunts back and when my turn comes round I have a very strong deja-vu feeling: he has two white thingies, one is at 2 and one is at 3. Like a hamster, trying to eat over and over again from the electrified corncob, I bite and taunt. Too early again. And so on and so forth until the bugger is dead, in what seemed to be an eon or two. Skada said it was almost 2 minutes.
Tanking seems to be a lot more difficult than what I’ve seen in 5 mans. It’s more than endlessly spamming the AoE aggro attacks I have and keeping diseases up. Learning to play with another tank will get easier with practice I guess but still… it was not pretty the first time. I had heard that the first time it hurts but damn, it was almost spirit-breaking.

Oh, and the saddest part is that the DK tanking pants dropped -.- Now that I got an upgrade I feel obligated to keep on tanking.

I want a priest.

I want a lvl 80 priest that can carpet bubble the raid and look cool while at it. I want to be the saviour of the day, the one whom others look up to and respect and think “When I grow up I want to be just like him!”

I have a priest. It’s currently level 6 and by God, when i get home from work I shall log it and start leveling it up! I will love it and shower it in BoAs and call it Enrique! I will pew-pew healz on all my targets and may all my 13 SP be that which saves their lives!

Actually I won’t. I have wanted to have a max level priest for the better part of Wrath but I can’t pull myself together to level one and for two reasons:

1. The level grind. I have a very low tolerance to stupidity and players that just have fun (teh horror!) in the game without paying heed to my snyde comments and somewhat helpful advice. The ones running about the place facepulling every mob known to Elfkind and saying that they do it for “teh lulz”. Grinding to 80 can be done in two ways as a priest, at least that’s my view of things. You can:

a) level through questing. Again. For the billionth time. The same quests. Over and over. WTF is wrong with Mankrik and why doesn’t he bloody well go looking for his wife? She’s just off the road to the right…

b) level through dungeons. Meeting all those nice players that Blizz wants you to know the first and last name of. And those that have no talents. Or wear SP gear as tank. Or whatever to that effect.

Option c) would be leveling through PvP but I don’t have the best track record for that. I find myself yelling for no apparent reason at the screen and going off to grab a smoke as soon as the Alliance Wins window pops up. Seriously. I have smoked 7 cigarettes within 3.5 hours. I know I PvP in my PvE gear but that only makes me squishy, not retarded as some have implied. I know I have some silly macros that I like to show off at the begining of some BGs (in the lines of Group 1 Defend Galv, Group 2 Argue that we need more at Galv, Group 3 QQ about GS and PvE players doing PvP… you get the idea) but I really mean well! Honestly!

2. The gear grind. Not a wek ago my Warlock has dinged 80 and it is proudly sporting 4.2 k GS atm. I have gotten to the point where I can either run a dungeon for weeks on end waiting for an upgrade to drop while conveniently upping the 5 Northrend reps at the same time or I can bitch and moan about Queue times for DPS and go the emblem way, slowly but surely reaching some 4.8 k GS in about a week and then giving up.

You see, around 4.8 k GS (most items ilvl 232, some lower, a few higher) is the you-no-raid barrier. Your GS is too low for those that want to steamroll through old content and too high to merit the pain and suffering of putting together a raid of your own for the same content. You just know that only people with a lower GS than yours will whisper and want to join, otherwise they’d be in the aforementioned raid. And now begins the Frost Emblem grind, where every T10 piece you can muster the will to grind to is an upgrade too low (GS wise) for the work put in.

I reference GS a lot, I know I do, it’s because with free server transfer to the realm I play on this addon has single handedly revolutionized raiding. It is all the rage and all that is most often required, despite being utterly idiotic. If somebody is dead he will get the achievement. If he is dead he will get the chance to roll on items that would find a better home with somebody who actually knows what the fuck they’re doing. Or he might just put together a VoA 25 raid and make sure he’s the only one of his class and win the phat lootz that way.

Back to the gear grind. My shaman is in a rather nice spot right now. I could do with some upgrades but I’m well off on my way to having a spot on any GS requiring raid. In fact I’m so well off I’m actually there, the highest requirement I’ve seen so far is 5.6 K which I got and some extra for the coating. My DK, on the other hand, is on the second bump on the road to gearing up. The “only need a few items from ToC 25 that never drop so I can meet the requirements to start PuGging ICC10 and take it from there” bump, to be more specific.

In other non-related news, I have picked up my 3rd piece of T10 for my offspec (Enhancement) and I’m looking forward to my 4th. Well, not really, I get to use my off-spec so little that I actually can’t remember why I have it. It doesn’t cut me corners in the queue for my daily, I only get to bring it out on certain fights in guild raids and it’s a nuisance to have to relog for addons when I do dust it off. My Enh addons are out of date and have probably stopped working altogether. My Flameshock macro wasn’t even updated to reflect the haste component of the DoT ticks. I wonder why I’m not resto at times.

But then I remember. I’m a fail healer. Always have been. I suffer from that “all raid must be at 100% HP or else!” syndrome. I got that in early Wrath, when not running away from Ingvar’s Whirlwind meant death and if the respective person happened to not be at max health I would be blamed. I used to have a mantra as a healer, that I shared at the beginning of every PuG dungeon I ran: “There might be deaths. DPS may die or I may die, but never the tank”.

And on this note, of me sucking at healing and getting tunnel vision and whatnot, I will not level a priest healer. But I so very much want to

When I play my Shaman, my main, I am very tactful. I offer advice and help if I’m very bored. I do not speak a lot in raids (or type) unless I have something really important to say. I end up deleting most of the stuff I begin writing because I either do not find it witty enough or deep enough to share. I take on extra duties beyond what my role in the raid implies (because I’m just that nice and will spot-heal/dispel/help CC/whatever I find I can do to ease somebody else’s pain) and I go to great lengths to make sure that nothing goes wrong. I never get angry, or if I do, I do not let that transpire in /s, /p, /g or /raid. I will try to put together raids or send out invites, sort out roles and explain tactics.

When I’m on my Death Knight I’m almost the opposite of the above. I will make silly jokes, call out players for mistakes, demand justice, insist for anything that might bring me an advantage. I’m ruthless and cutthroat in both manners of language and approach. I will point out bad gemming and bad gearing (roll for a+AGI item from a different DK? Come on!), I will throw a tantrum over loosing a roll for an item I badly wanted and will express it in writing, not to its fullest potential but still. You do not want to meet me when I’m on my DK and am having a bad day. I will pick fights with people just for the fuck of it and not give up even tho I might be proven wrong (but that almost never happens). I’ll be snappy and go the extra mile to make others feel what I believe to be an intellectual superiority.

My Warlock is the bridge between the two. I am calm in general but likely to call out people that get on my bad side. I will cry a little on the inside when I loose a roll on an item I wanted but will congratulate the winner nonetheless. So far I haven’t been in any raid on this toon yet (dinged 80 6 hours of playtime ago) except for a VoA 25 PuG the other day so I don’t know how I’d react under raid circumstances. In the VoA raid I was humble and happy to have been invited seeing as I had the worst gear of the lot but when this aspect of my ‘lock game will improve I wonder and actually can’t wait to see how it will go down.