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Thursday, September 19, 2013

Two raids in one post

I've been a bit distracted last week with doctor's visits and vet visits so I haven't posted about my raiding with Spoiled Milk last week and it's a new week and we've already done all our raiding with Shadow Rising. So I'm just going to cover it quickly in one post.

Spoiled Milk
This week Spoiled Milk has changed their raid times. They went from raiding three nights a week to only two and the days were switched to help accommodate the raiders who are in school. So Friday and Saturday at 11:30 pm they start. Which I feel makes for a rather late night. But who am I kidding? It's not like I was actually going to be asleep at that time anyway.

Friday night we were all eager to begin the new raid. The first boss took a few attempts but we got it after a few attempts even though half the raid got blown up in the enrage. I lived! They arranged the raid a bit differently then Shadow Rising did. The tanks were in the back and then the rest of the room was divided into the different quadrants. There was one healer on either side of the tanks and one on the other side of the room. Pretty much just spreading them out as evenly as possible. The dps was then split up between the healers. I think the hardest part of the fight is just adjusting to the blobs that come and knowing who's going to get what. But once you get an idea for what the people around you and what you yourself can do you can make better guesses about what pile of adds you're going after.

After getting the first boss we moved on to the second. It's a lot of chaos. Basically we learnt how to deal with all the normal stuff and then moved on to learning how to deal with the first desperate measures, the second one, and then the last one. Once we began figuring it out we began working our way though. When we made it though the six desperate measures with everyone still alive we knew we had a good chance to win. Our raid leader kept a close eye on the percentages and made sure we were focused on the highest health one and burning them close together. It was pretty exciting to accomplish a kill. That warlock sure likes to be ahead of my death knight.

We then moved on to try the third fight. It wasn't happening. Our best attempt hit the enrage timer and wasn't very close. At that point it was getting pretty late. Or perhaps I should say it was getting pretty early. We came back in the next night eager to get to work but we still weren't having much luck. Hopefully this week we'll get closer.

Shadow Rising
Tuesday night and I was tanking. I was pretty excited because I had the legendary! I had found an openraid group that was killing all four and was able to get invited into it. I figured it was a good chance to progress on the questline. I really enjoyed hearing Wrathion and Lorewalker Cho telling my story. And I now had a cape that would prevent me from dying! But that wasn't enough. Nope. I gathered together my meager supply of gold and spent it all to get Tyle the dps cloak. I'm now dirt-poor but I've got two legendaries! Totally worth it.

Anyway, the first boss took a few attempts but we got him down and out of the way and began to work on the second boss. I was tanking He Softfoot. I had a real hard time with the gouge mechanic at first. I felt like dbms timers weren't working right our something. It would count down his ability and I'd be ready and nothing. I'd be back to tanking him and then WHAM! incapacitated. Crap. I'm guessing the countdown is for a cooldown timer and that He doesn't have to use gouge just because it's off cooldown. It's more of a watch out because he could be casting that soon. I just felt awful about how slow I was to figure out how to advoid those gouges. I had tried turning around at first but sometimes he'd still catch me. I figured out the best way for me to avoid them was to just run though He. But I still let a few gouges get though. On the last attempt I thought I was going to prevent them all but one got though near the end. I really don't know how well the fight was going. I was so focused on He and preventing gouge I couldn't see much of anything else. I knew the different phases were being worked though but all my attention was on one thing. Gouge. We reached the end of the night but wasn't able to get them done.

Wednesday I got to come in my dps spec. I was especially excited because the one change I was most looking forward to in the new patch was that frost was getting buffed. I mean look at this:
  • Rune of Razorice now causes 3% extra weapon damage as Frost damage (up from 2%), and each stack of Frost Vulnerability now causes the target to take an additional 3% damage from the Death Knight's Frost attacks (up from 2%).
  • Frost Strike now deals 115% weapons damage (up from 105% weapon damage).
  • Howling Blast now deals 15% more damage.
  • Might of the Frozen Wastes now increases all melee attack damage by 30% (up from 20%).
  • Obliterate now deals 250% weapon damage (up from 230% weapon damage).
It's a lot of buffs for a lot of attacks! The only one that's not too interesting for me is the obliterate one because I'm dw frost. But that's a lot of buffing. I also had the legendary cloak, new gloves from last week, and a new trinket from the lfr. I was ready to do damage!

But I was really shocked at just how much I was doing. Before I was pushing to break 10k and I was nowhere near reaching Zug and Adoe levels. This week I was in their range. Especially when the bosses were moved together for cleaves. I almost started laughing when I heard Adoe say to use cleave rotations. I pretty much do the same thing whether I'm aoeing or single targeting. And I think Howling Blast was doing a very good chunk of my damage. I think it was just a really good fight to be dw frost instead of 2h. But it was still a shock. I knew the buffs were good. I just didn't realize how freaking awesome they were. Zug was convinced there must have been something more that I did. I'm not sure what it could be. I had some gear improvements but nothing really big... except the trinket and the cloak. The trinket isn't really all that great except for cleaving. But even then... it's not like it was doing as much as the cloak was. 

Anyway, I'm done geeking about how awesome and godly my dps is now. It's going to my head. This patch has left me feeling freaking op with both tanking and dps. Although the tanking op-ness probably comes from all the heroics I've been running. What? They're a good source of vp and much less painful then running lfr. And I can pull everything in sight and laugh because the only person to beat me in damage is the healer who decided they were going to dps instead. The first dungeon I had a healer dps I laughed and thought it was cool. Now I'm just starting to expect it. Although I do regret when the shamans switch to dps because then I don't get their health buff and have 1 million health. 

Wow, I got distracted. Raid... right. Well.... we worked though the phases and we had one attempt get really close but we weren't able to get the fallen protectors. It's a bit sad but hopefully we'll have better luck next week.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Radar update

I was able to bring Radar home from the vets today. It's amazing how fast he became sick and how quickly he was able to recover.

He had a blocked urinary tract and so he had a catheter inserted. He was then left at the vets overnight. They decided to keep him for another day and gave him an IV so they could give him lots of fluids and try to flush any toxins out of his system.

When I picked him up the assistant said Radar seemed fine but he was really quiet and hadn't been moving around much. They removed the drape from his kennel and opened the door. As soon as Radar realized I was there he was up and crying. The assistant laughed and said it sounded like he was crying because he was ready to go home.

He's been home for a few hours now. He helped me raid tonight. He's being a lot more clingy then usual but I expected that. He hasn't seen me for two days and he probably thought the vets were torturing him. And it's really no hardship to have a happy cat cuddling with me. Well... almost. He's a little leaky right now. He should be better soon but I'm really going to have to watch were he's sitting and try to keep a towel under him. And carrying around pet cleaner... just in case. So he's going to have to spend a few nights in the carrier. I need to know where he's going to be so I can clean up after him and that's hard to do at night when I should be sleeping.

I'm feeling a lot less stressed with Radar home. He's looking so much better it's hard to believe that two days ago he was absolutely miserable. Until I see his shaved front legs XD Those just look silly. Now I just have to hope he stays in good shape. It's an absolute misery having him away from home for so long.

Monday, September 16, 2013

That helpless feeling

Normally when I've been yakking about real life it's been about myself. Today I'm going to mention someone who's very near and dear to me. My cat. Radar.

Radar is so very important to me. Radar is mine. It's hard to explain what he means to me but I'll try. Family is important to me. I come from a good size group. My family is important to me but they aren't mine alone. It's my parent's family. I'm part of it but I'm not the one who has the care of it. Radar is my responsibility. I don't have a boyfriend or children but I have my Radar. He's my family and mine alone.

Radar is a clingy little monster. And I love him for it. When I come home he's there to greet me. He becomes mopey when I'm away for awhile. I have no idea what a mopey cat looks like but my family claims that if I'm gone he's the very picture of mopey. He trails me from floor to floor and sometimes even from room to room. And when he gets the chance he loves to snuggle.

When I play WoW he's always there. I used to have a struggle trying to keep him away from my keyboard where he would try to sit as close to my chest as he could get. For some reason he loves to sit in my arms but he won't tolerate sitting on my lap. At first I tried to get him to stay on the bed and he'd curl up on one of his favorite pillows. We finally reached a compromise when I gave him the keyboard try with either a pillow or a blanket on it and moved my keyboard on top of the desk. He gets to pretend he's sitting in my arms and I no longer have a cat being annoying. And the bonus is I get to hold 15 pounds of purring fluff while I'm raiding. That's never a bad thing.

This week I didn't get to hold my cat. Tuesday I had to take Radar to the vets for his shots. He doesn't usually hold grudges. He was snuggly earlier but he managed to get himself locked in the garage. But he was fine on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday I had a raid with Spoiled Milk. The night started good with Radar suggled in my arms. Then he took off. That wasn't unusual. He sometimes wakes up enough to realize being sprawled on his back isn't dignified and takes off in a huff. I saw him in the room later. He was on his tower. The night ended and I picked him up and the first odd thing happened. He mewed.

It's not that Radar doesn't sometimes chat. Usually when he's hungry or if I wake him up. This was odd. And he made another noise as I stroked him. And he didn't want to settle in my arms. He jumped onto the bed and curled up. He just seemed odd. But since it was 3 am and there wasn't much I could do for him. I decided to get some sleep and see if he was still odd in the morning.

I woke up and left my room to see a giant mess from a cat. I knew then something was definitely wrong with my Radar. I quickly found him and he really did not like being picked up. He just mewed. So I asked my family what they thought. My dad is a lot tougher than me. He's had to raise alot of animals, do whatever he could to help them, and make that call of when to put them down and then do so. I've had a few pets over the years and I still get tears in my eyes when I remember the day I told my dad to stop wasting time and to do something with my horse. I knew that day what that something would be. I made that choice but I'm also very glad that I was at school and no where near home when my horse was put down. All I really knew is that my cat hurt and I couldn't do anything to help him.

After a call to the vet to ask if anyone was doing rounds and could squeeze in a visit to look at my cat we learnt that the vet had an emergency and couldn't take a look at him. We were told to give him some antibiotics and he'd either get better, stay the same, or if it was something truly nasty he wouldn't make it until Monday when the vet would be in the office and could actually run some tests. I suppose it might sound a little harsh. But... I can also understand it. I tried to tell myself that there wasn't anything more I could do for him. But he still hurt. And he kept throwing up.

So I began to look things up online. I know, I know! It's not a very good way to diagnose stuff. You read about these weird and exotic conditions and become convinced you have something that's going to kill you when all you have is a cold. But... I wanted to know. And the more I read the more convinced I was that something was really wrong with my cat. I tried to put it out of my mind. Hopefully he could make it until Monday. It was just two more days. But.... he hurt and I could do nothing for him. I felt so helpless. I spent a good part of the day crying and another part berating myself for being so weak as to cry. I felt like a tangled mess.

This morning he was worse. And I shared my fears about what he may have. A urinary blockage. And it would be deadly for him. And he was getting worse. I was terrified for him. My mom went to have a conversation with my dad. I don't know what went on but he called the vet who agreed to go the office so he could take a look at my cat. It didn't take much of a look to realize my worst fears were answered. Radar was blocked.

He's still at the vet's office right now. But I feel much better knowing he's been cared for. He had to stay overnight. This place seems so empty without him. I'm hoping he'll be much better tomorrow. I won't be there when he gets home. I've got an appointment to see the doctor myself. Something about more tests. But I'm so mad at myself. I'm supposed to be an adult but I couldn't even take care of this situation. He's my family and I didn't care for him. I should have insisted yesterday that he needed to be seen. I should have done more. I should stop now. I know if I keep on this train of thought I'm going to start tearing into myself about all these things. I'm in a really negative mood right now. I'm thinking of all those stupid things I've done and how worthless I feel about myself. And I let my cat suffer. He could have died a terribly painful death and I didn't do anything. And I can't bear the thought of my precious Radar going through that. If I had just been smarter, better, or something more than me...

I'm going to have to make sure to give Radar some more attention. He deserves so much more than what I can give him but I don't know how I could get along without him.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Last One Standing!


First day of the patch and Shadow Rising has their first boss kill from Seige of Orgrimmar!

Immerseus isn't a very complicated fight but it did take some work to learn the various steps and what would work for getting though the phases. Arv and I were tanks, Slice, Van, and Zarm were heals, and Zug, Lyss, Adoe, Shadeey, and Bo were dps.  We originally started out with the tanks close together and the dps either spread out or together but we'd make our way around the room. That wasn't working well for the heals or the dps since they felt they were spending too much time moving around. So we began to split the raid up. Arv and I were on one side of the room with at first just Van was between us but then Zarm and Adoe were between us as well. The rest of the raid were on the other side. My part involved taunting when Arv got the debuff on him and cheesing though the swirl with antimagic shell.

The fun begins when Immerseus reaches zero health and splits into a bunch of blob adds all around the room. The blobs need to be either healed or killed and it was important that we slow them down as well as kill them so that the ones that got though didn't all hit at the same time because they did a ton of raid-wide damage. It took a few trys but then things began to click. 

One try was going particularly well. We were making it though the phases. The Immerseus phase was taking less and less time and his corruption level was slowly decreasing as more and more adds were healed and killed. I could hear someone reminding us to stay focused and keep doing what we were doing. Then I heard someone mention the 10 minute enrage timer. And someone began to count it down. Then BAM!!! Everyone else was dead! Eh? There weren't anymore blobs that I could kill so I just waited for Immerseus to rise up and beat the snot out of me. Instead he came up and the bonus roll appeared! WHAATT!!!! I won!!! It seemed that before everyone had died they had managed to kill/heal just enough blobs that he was now defeated! And since I was still alive... We Won!!! It's such a rush to be the last one standing in an attempt like that. Just imagine how'd awful we'd have felt if I hadn't lived though whatever it was he did. XD

We got some attempts in on the second boss but we've still got a lot to work on for that fight. But it's nice to start our raiding off with a kill.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Couple New Achievements on Tyle

There  was an article last week on WoWInsider about a GuildOx feature that sorts the pets and mounts you still have to collect from easiest to hardest. So I just had to go take a look. I was really surprised when the top mount on my list was an Onyx Cloud Serpent. I couldn't remember which mount that was. A quick WoWHead search and I learnt that this mount was a QUEST reward! How had I missed that? Starts with the Shado-Pan.. oh.. that's how. I can't remember when I last did a Shado-Pan daily. I leveled that rep though farming. But it was a pretty quick quest and definitely worth seeing and completing it gets you an achievement ...
and a cool mount. It looks really cool but I just can't bring myself to actually use a cloud serpent as a mount.

The other achievements I'm a bit surprised I was able to get on the same day.  Tuesday I only needed two more runestones and I'd be able to complete another part of Wrathion's quest. And I couldn't believe that it dropped off the first two lfr bosses I'd killed. So I immediately went to find Wrathion and turn in the quest. I then had to get Lei Shen's heart. I wanted a fast que so I actually tanked an lfr. But I finally completed the third part!

I haven't done much reading about what I was expected to accomplish next. I was expecting something that would take another couple of weeks. I was surprised to realize I just needed to go talk to the Celestials and complete one challenge. 
I was a bit uncertain about if I should complete the tiger or the ox's challenge. But I figured I'm in my tanking gear, the cloak I want is tanking so I was going to tank.
I might have squealed like a little girl at a Bierber concert when I saw that I was going to be tanking Deathwing! It was a really cool fight, having to taunt deathwing, interrupt (when I remembered, I was awful at that part), avoid stuff (again, I was awful, I realized it didn't hurt much and just didn't move), and prevent stuff from hitting Wrathion. I messed up the first attempt when it was really close but I got it on the second.
New tanking cloak! I was a little sad that I couldn't have both the tanking and dps one at the same time. But it's still really cool to actually be ready to work on the next part of the questline for the new patch.
The last achievement comes from the raid. We somehow managed to get From Dusk 'til Dawn. I'm not sure what is required to get it but it's pretty cool to  have gotten another one.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Alt Appreciation Week - Hunter

It's time to appreciate the hunters!

Awoi from Drak'Tharon
My level 90 hunter Awoi. And what's a hunter without a hunter pet? So here's Blitz, Awoi's lightening-worg. Awoi started as my pandaren character and I really enjoyed her. And I started out leveling her causally but then I got the idea in my head that she needed to be level 90 before the patch. I have no idea if the worg will still be there or not. It probably will but I'm glad to have the wolf that I really wanted. My hunter goal of the week belongs to Awoi. I'm going to try and accomplish three things with her. The first is to start hunting Loque'nahak for her. I'm fairly certain that I won't be successful in finding it for her. At least not in one week so I have another goal for her as well. I'm going to try and also get her the ability to tame direhorns. That means I'm going to have to find the Isle of Giants. The last goal is to get to work on Awoi's professions. She doesn't have any right now. I'd like to make her an engineer and skinner. I'm starting her with mining and engineering but will switch her to skinning when engineering is maxed

Sitroh from Korgath
My level 69 worgen hunter Sitroh. Her name is my paladin's name spelled backwards. At least it means that the name is pretty unique. Sitroh's main pet is a ghost saber. I was trying to be original with the name and funny which is how I ended up with Catspian instead of Prince Caspian from Narnia. She's also the hunter that I got the giant green worm pet on. I haven't seen it since but I've heard it's no longer giant. 

Sitroh from Cho'gall
This Sitroh is only level 46 but she's my oldest surviving hunter. I've had a few night elf ones before her on Aegwynn but they've been deleted at some time or other. This hunter was created as a toon to hide away from everyone back in the day before battle-net. I just wanted to level without any of my friends or guildies being able to find me and get me to run stuff with them. She's wearing three items that can no longer be gotten in game. The chestpiece points to her being older than the Catacylsm! Her pet is a nightsaber I found in the starting zone. I named it Radar after my own grey tabby cat.

Lailda from Dunemaul
I did not make Lailda with the intention of being an undead hunter. I just wanted to see the new undead zone. I'd heard it was really good and you could experience more of the worgen story if you finished the undead zones. So I made an undead character and figured I'd make a hunter since they can handle things pretty well on there on. I used the random name generator and it gave me the name Lailda. I really enjoyed the leveling though the zones and picking up pets that felt appropriate for au undead and giving them wildly inapproitate names. Like my pet dog Fuzzy. She's also has a diseased bear named Teddy. She's too much of a character to ever delete.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Wowscreenshotaday 1-3

I'm starting to accept that I'm not going to be punctual with the posting of these screenshots. But groups of three works pretty well.

1. Together
Throw some random strangers TOGETHER and you get a balloon party

2. My name begins with
A T for Tyle

3. Lines

The lucky twos

Sunday was the last raid night of the week for Spoiled Milk and the first night I've raided with them this week. Wednesday night there were more people then spots to fill so they asked if there were any volunteers to sit out. There were several and so we rolled to see who would get the night off. I won so I went off to finish downloading hearthstone. Thursday night I also didn't raid but that was alright since it meant I could spend some time with Navi, Arv, and Luxy. So when I got to the raid I had no idea where they were at.

I was surprised to see they were still on Dark Animus. The first attempt was bad but we got him on the second. Iron Qon took a lot more time. I think we've gotten a bit spoiled because the past few weeks when we've attempted him we've had two warlocks in the raid. Two warlocks means two portals which means everyone in the 10-man can just click a portal instead of trying to run though the cyclones in the second phase. It took us a couple of attempts but we got them. The next boss was a joke and we were off to attempt Lei Shen.

We'd killed Lei Shen a few weeks ago but we hadn't managed to get another kill since. The first pull went well. We got though the first transition unscathed and then fell apart trying to catch all the bouncing bolts in the second one.

Or new plan was to do more damage so that he didn't charge up the bouncing bolts. XD Nothing like a solid startegy. But it seemed to have worked because the second attempt went really well. We made it though the second transistion and were only down two dps. We kept pushing and managed to get him right as he killed both healers and some other people. I was pretty happy because Vaunt lived! There were two people who got the achievement and overall we were really happy to be able to kill him again.