Furtive Father Winter Gift!

Sitting in the mail this afternoon I found I had an email from Mataoka of Sugar and Blood. My Furtive Father Winter gift! In the email I found this awesome story. I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did :) Thank you so very much Mataoka!

Codex

By Mataoka

Nothing came easy for her, nothing. Never did, never will, Vaunt reckoned. She stared at the giant Orc’s bushy, black-bearded face.

Deep in a protected grove of Silverpine Forest rested a small farm owned by a human family. The patriarch of the family gave her father Borbchek his first job, years ago. “Job” is too kind of a word, for he was an indentured servant, working off a debt, and they took him in not out of kindness or charity, but because they recognized cheap, crafty labor. Some say the family had ties to the Proudmoores, but the lady of the house started these rumors. Borbchek kept his mouth shut, and big, green pointy ears open.

The Second War Goblins were notorious financial mercenaries, and would sell their own grandmother if enough gold were involved. Many did. In the case of Borbchek, his father drowned in a crossing, and his mother’s unscrupulous morals and addiction to nogginfogger elixir trumped her motherly instincts, as feral as they were, and she packed off Borbchek to the highest bidder, never giving him a second thought.

From bits and pieces, odds and ends he found in the tool shed, Borbchek crafted a mechanical device designed to dig up rocks, clear debris and scrubby pines, pulverize each stone and boulder to get to the rich soil. His tinkering and engineering contributions to the family are what created their prosperity, and yet they did not reward him or allow him to share in the riches. So, he stole what he needed, or felt he deserved: they seemed none the wiser. A piece of silver cutlery here, or an ivory button there, made no difference. His mechanical cleverness, however, did not carry over to his rapacity skills, and one of the other house goblins tattled on his thievery. He had stolen more than a kiss from her, and she was disgusted in his lack of honor in claiming paternity rights to the green bun in her oven. So, pregnant with his bastard daughter, she told the mistress of the house about his thievery, and his loss would be replaced by the baby’s future labor. He hanged in Gallows’ Corner the next full moon.

The snitching maid raised her daughter, Vaunt, in the household without incident. Her mother wanted to name her something that sounded close to ‘vault,’ to remind herself that she was a secret treasure. Or perhaps her spelling wasn’t too accurate. In any case, Vaunt joined the human household and as soon as she could walk and carry a bucket, began her life of servitude.

Vaunt inherited little of her father’s mechanical skills, so she served the family in the dairy, milking cows and goats. She had a knack for delicious cheeses and butter, and an odd manner or talent with the livestock. Every chicken, barn cat or field mouse would do her bidding: she discovered this talent one pathetic winter morning: slicing snow and sleet caused the milk bucket to freeze up, so she commanded the poor cow to heat up her milk, and squirt faster. The cow obliged. Though she didn’t speak cow, chicken, or goat, somehow she knew their thoughts, and they hers.

The came the Third War: slaughtered by the Scourge, the family members arose, reborn from death, one by one to serve the Lady. Even in death they reigned supreme, chartered by the sensual Sylvanas. Vaunt looked at her own knobby, bowlegged posture, her overly large hands, calloused from milking and churning, and felt that deep acknowledgment that her destiny would never fit in with this beautiful, lost-souls of a clan. Her mother felt dissatisfied too, with serving the ghoulish lot who were ungrateful at best, and damn near elitist puffery at worst. So in the middle of the night, they packed up their things, helping themselves to the family silverware and guild gold, and headed for the sunnier, warmer side of the world: Orgrimmar.

Farming, dirt, and stink were no strangers to the canyon compound of Orgrimmar. It was quite a contrast from the moon-soaked grass and the hushed, haunted pines of the forest she left behind. Homesickness shook her to her core. Her mother had found employment as a hostess and barmaid in a local tavern, and barely noticed her daughter’s comings and goings. To get some different air than the burnt-oil grease fires on the walls of the city, Vaunt followed her nose to an underground, shadowy place, aptly named the Cleft of Shadow. It smelled refreshing to her big green nose: like burnt ink and toad’s kisses, more like home than any other place in Orgrimmar. She tried to stay as inconspicuous as possible while she slunk down the long, rough-hewn corridor. A master warlock trainer, Zevrost, smelled the cow dung and spoiled milk on her clothing, and grabbed her by the nape of her neck, holding her prone to get a good look at her. She pursed her lips in fear, afraid that her big mouth would get her into further trouble: this Orc meant business, growling, “What are you doing down here, little runt?”

Vaunt had had enough: the homesickness, the loss, the solitude, and the stink. She shouted back at the Orc’s angry face, “How the hell should I know! Your breath stinks, this place smells like pig’s ass on a hot day, and you can all go straight to hell and Draenor for all I give a rat’s nipple!”

No one had ever spoken to Zevrost in this way. Not even that barmaid…no, never mind, a story for another time. His Voidwalker, Zekkor, even seemed flummoxed. Zevrost looked in the girl goblin’s burning red eyes, with the ring of deep purple around the green-black pupils, and saw who she would become.

Years later, a powerful warlock in her own right, she found a book.

Or the book found her.

2nd Place Prize

I won second place in Samaramon's transmog contest and got the cool prize of a black and white drawing of one of my toons. I did a lot of debate about who I wanted drawn but I've been thinking for some time that Awoi needed to be drawn. Seemed like a good idea. And you can't have a hunter without a hunter pet. I debated whether to have the sporebat, lightening wolf, cat, or turtle. After some thought I knew the only pet to pick would be my trusty turtle Soup. I asked to have Awoi shooting her bow because I'm just really happy to have it.

I think it's really awesome. Samaramon did ask if it was alright not to include the shoulders from the set because they covered Awoi's face. I didn't mind having Awoi be without her shoulders. I'm just in love with this. Awoi and Soup look pretty amazing. 

Week of Raiding mishaps

Last week's raiding was a little off for Spoiled Milk. Thursday night we started late and our druid tank was having computer problems. It kept causing her to lag and even disconnect. We also had to bring in another person because on Thursdays one of our healers can't make the raids. So our shaman dps switched to healing and we picked up one of our friends to fill the extra dps spot. We managed to make it though the first two bosses but it was really rough. Our druid tank disconnected partway though the first boss but it was late enough that our death knight tank was able to solo tank the rest. The second fight went well and we made our way to the third boss. On that fight our druid tank again disconnected and we attempted to solo tank the fight and we were really close when the enrage timer was hit. Our druid tank decided that she couldn't keep holding us back and was tired of trying to work though her computer issues so called it a night. Our pug friend switched to tank and we found a rogue to come in. We made it though the third and fourth boss and called it a night.

Friday night didn't look much better. Our death knight tank wasn't able to make the raid but we already knew who we wanted to fill in the spot. Things went well but usually on Friday we're able to start on the shaman and this time we had two bosses to kill before we could get to them. We also didn't raid as late that night as we usually did. Things went well but we called it a night after Nazgrim.

I was looking forward to Saturday. The day started well and I had lunch with my family and my dad had me drive the skid steer out to the fields to load the last bales of corn onto the trailer. I love driving the skid steer. It doesn't have a steering wheel but two sticks that control movement and direction. Anyway, I started out pretty excited but by the time I had driven the skid steer out to the field and to the barn twice I was starting to feel pretty sick. Thankfully there was only two loads of bales because after that last trip I went back to the house and spent the rest of the day being really sick. It just hit me so quickly. One moment I was feeling awesome and then I was pretty miserable. I spent the rest of the night and most of the next morning being sick. By Sunday afternoon I was though the worst of it. Since then I've been fine. Anyway, I heard that the raid group was able to work though all the bosses and even killed Blackfuse. I'm excited for them although I'm a little disappointed that I wasn't feeling up to raiding that night.

I'm hoping this week will go better and we'll get the Paragons. It's pretty exciting to be so close to the end. I'm really looking forward to being able to kill Garrosh. Hopefully before Christmas!

Tabard of the Hand Transmog

I was pretty excited when I learnt about Sam's Transmog Contest I just knew I had to try my hand. I love the tabard of the hand. I have to get it for all my draenei but I've never thought to make a transmog for it.

This first look is for a paladin. The items can be found here.  I really wanted others to be able to tell at a glance that this was a draenei paladin and no other race or class would be able to wear this miss. I liked the legs because the yellow felt like the yellow in the tabard but darker. I then moved to the shoulders and I loved the flaming sigil because it reminded me once again of the design in the tabard. I went with the book belt because I thought it went well and as a paladin she would want to keep her book close by. For there I began filling in the other pieces. I noticed later that like the tabard the look starts with darker colors at the hoof and becomes lighter as it moves up. I decided for the shield to go with the blue and yellow crystal one because it brought just a little more blue into the ensemble since there was also some from the shoulders and legs. The sword just picks up more of the browns and yellows. I'm really happy with how this turned out. If I ever returned to being Alliance I'm going to have to track down all these pieces for my paladin.

The other look is for a shaman. I really wanted to make sure that when you saw this look you knew it was a shaman and not just any shaman but an enhancement shaman. The items I used can be found here. I loved the legs and how the colors looked with the tabard. The shoulders piced up the dark color while also picking up the bright yellow. I tried to pick pieces that were dark with just a little pop of the yellow. I like this look but the more I look at the chest I wish it had sleeves that went all the way to the gloves. I'm also feeling iffy about the boots. I think people will either like this look or wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Slow but Lucky Raid Week

Spoiled Milk didn't raid on Thursday because it was the day US citizens celebrate Thanksgiving.

Friday night got off to a late start. But once we got started we began moving though the bosses quickly. I accidently pulled the first boss but the tanks picked up the boss and things just fell into place. The second boss once again did not give me a ranged weapon and I figured it would be another week of scarce pickings for me. But I was surprised when the third boss dropped a ring and I won it. Then the fourth dropped the trinket that I've been dying to get. Finally on Galakras I finally, finally got a ranged weapon! I might have squealed like a little girl. I was just really excited. I could finally retire the lfr weapon and use a normal one. My weapon ilvl went up about 30 points. Even before upgrading it, the weapon was a huge upgrade for me. I really expected someone to be a troll and roll against me. We finished the night after killing Iron Juggernaut.

Awoi and her awesome weapon

Saturday started slow as well because one of our tanks couldn't make it because he was moving and was still having issues with his internet. We knew who we wanted to bring in but he wasn't on when it was time to raid. We began thinking about replacements and who could switch to tank to try and get the raid going. We had just made a plan when our tank friend logged on. So we quickly brought him into our group and began killing bosses. It wasn't as smooth of a run as Fridays but we still one shot all the bosses from Dark Shaman to Thok. Everyone was really impressed with how much my dps has improved. I used to be the worst of the dps but now I was battling with our top dps. I even won a few fights. It was pretty exciting for me. One of our warlocks mentioned that we were breaking all our kill records and we thought that Thok was a bit easier this week then last week. We even put in a few attempts on Blackfuse. Our best attempt was 12%. I had to learn to do the conveyer belt. I gave up with trying to jump into the pipe at the end or to jump off the platform. I just couldn't make it and I was tired of wasting our raid's rez. I mentioned that I was just going to stay up there until it was done and the other person on the conveyer belt said they were too. I do wonder about the loss of the dps from not getting on the ground but I just can't seem to make it.

We have confidence that we'll get Blackfuse next week. We also think we'll get Paragons since we've heard that it'll be an easy fight. It's pretty exciting because we're soon going to be working on Garrosh! We might even be able to work on some hard modes before the next expansion. But I think I'm getting ahead of myself.

Extremely Wild Unfounded Speculation

Image from Battle.net

During the week of BlizzCon the item I was most excited about hearing about was the new expansion. Now I'm just tired of hearing about it. Sound odd? Well... I guess it's just so nebulous and subject to change it's really hard to justify forming any opinions until I get a chance to actually play through it. Unfortunately that doesn't stop the brain from connecting dots it shouldn't and coming up with wild crazy stories that it really shouldn't. So I welcome you to my wild, impossible, and highly unlikely imaginings. Grab your tin-foil hat and throw some duct-tape on it to hold it together. 

I'll start with what I have learned so far. Basically Garrosh escapes and goes back in time to build a new Iron Horde to terrorize Draenor with and without having even accomplished that task he's also trying to send his Horde though the dark portal to the timeline that he left behind to exact his revenge or something. I'm not sure I understand why he would even consider doing that when he hasn't managed to take complete control of Draenor yet but being powerhungery apparently kills the ability to create tactical strategies. 

The story I'm interested in is the Alliance. Especially Jaina. When she learns of this I'm sure her emotion can be described in one word. Pissed. Why does no one listen to her? She warned Thrall that leaving Garrosh in charge of the Horde was stupid. I think she might have told him more then once. And she also warned Varian that he should put an end to everything right now. He didn't. And what do we find? More orcish rampage. Sure, it's not Vol-Jin and his group running rampant through the streets. But if they were given a chance they would be.

image from wowpedia

I have no doubt that Jaina is going to want to be one of the first people though that portal to spill Orcish blood. And she's got an entire magical city at her disposal. Let's turn it into a floating army and take it to Outlands. There she shall reck the Iron Horde. First with lots of support and backing but eventually others will realize that Jaina might just have reached a point where she's now bat-shit crazy. She will break the Iron Horde but Jaina is not satisfied with that. She will not be happy until all the Horde lie broken at her feet. While once the Kirin-Tor was a proud organization it has now become a cult of fanatics much like the Scarlet Crusade. 

The Alliance leaders and Thrall meet with Jaina and try to get her to call off her genocide but she refuses and locks them in the Violet Hold. She realizes that the prison might be getting full and decides to execute the worst of her war criminals which are the blood elves from the Dalaran purge. Some of the members of the Kirin-Tor realize this insanity is going too far and hope to escape with their lives. But before leaving the city they plot a daring escape plan where they break into the Violet Hold with a group of players, rescue the Alliance leaders, Thrall, and a handful of blood elves before teleporting to a random location. Preferably somewhere far away from Dalaran.

This leaves Jaina as the big bad of the expansion and the final raid will involve sneaking into Dalaran which will have a ship battle because there can never be enough loot ship bosses. The ship will stop at the tunnel and you will have to fight waves of trash into the sewers. You will work your way though the city until you finally make your way to the highest tower where Jaina will be a multi-location fight as she teleports to new places and leaves traps behind that you have to clear away. When you finally get to the new location there will be more traps while she throws blizzards down on you. She will ice block several times throughout the fight, along with blink, and other pain-in-the-ass mage abilities. But she will do so in a more awesome and epic way. In the end you don't defeat her instead end up sending her the alternative version of Stormwind. The resultant new time bubble will be the next expansion.

Maybe it doesn't sound so crazy after all. But what are the horde doing? No idea. I haven't thought that far ahead. XD

The Mighty Thok Slain

Spoiled Milk gave Thok a try last week and we were hoping to get the kill this week on Saturday. We had cleared up to Thok on Thursday and Friday and started Saturday at Thok.

It took a lot of work. We switched up having three versus two healers. But finally went with two healers since the only dps that could switch to heals was also our best dps. Without our shaman's dps we just weren't getting enough damage done on Thok. We also switched up the order we opened the doors. We finally decided that the poison door was just overwhelming our healers so we left it for last and hoped we could do enough damage on Thok during the fire and frost doors to be able to finish him before he went on a rampage after the poison door. Our final door order was fire, frost, then poison. It was a pretty close kill but we got him in the end.

Last week our guild had considered mergering with another. After some debate it was finally decided that we would stay in our own guild. I'll admit that I'm relieved. I was nervous about how this merger would take place and how it would affect our raid group. I know we aren't pushing heroics right now and I'm not certain that it's something we will be doing in the next expansion. But that's still some time away and we've got to finish getting though SoO. We're getting closer.

Gastalon the Mage

Last night I really wanted to level but I didn't want to run dungeons. I was actually feeling like questing. It's a rare feeling and I'm sure it'll go away soon. But it left me with a bit of a problem. The toons I'm currently leveling have been sitting in their capital cities this whole time and haven't gone out into the world at all because I've just been running dungeons using dungeon finder. I knew if I tried to take them to an appropriate place to quest I'd get bored along the way and end up running dungeons again.

So I found myself staring at my character screen and wondering what to do. Then I had a brilliant idea. New toon! As I looked at the full screen I thought about switching to Firetree or another connected realm when I realized the toon at the bottom had never actually been started. Gastalon has been patiently waiting since Febuary for some love and a chance to wear the Gaston mog I came up with for Matty's Oscar party. It seemed like it was fine to go and level...a mage.

I've never managed to level a male toon so I'm feeling pretty excited. Gastalon isn't very certain that being a mage is manly. He thought that a warrior or hunter would be better. I'm still not sure how I won this argument. But he's definitely mad about wearing the dress. He can't wait to wear a shirt and pants.

Which means running around and blasting stuff in the face. He managed to reach level 13 last night. Gastalon didn't particularly care what spec he was. He didn't think any sound particularly macho so he left the choice up to me. I had a hard time choosing. I've leveled my last mage as frost and she raided Dragon Soul dungeon finder as fire and I was trying to decide if I wanted to try arcane or stick with something I was familiar with. Gastalon finally made the decision when he declared that he wasn't following in the holves of some draenei bimbo. He's words. Not mine. I decided that he might be right. About playing arcane that is. My Azilem is hardly a bimbo.

Now I just have to keep Vaunt from finding out that I'm spending time running around as a mage istead of throwing green fire and chaos bolts at stuff. It's never good to get on a warlock's bad side.

Lost of Raids and other things

Holy cow! It's been almost a whole month since I last wrote.

Things have been a bit crazy. I've had a few more tests and the doctors have finally decided that my pain comes from two sources. One is from acid reflux and the other is nerve/muscle/or something else. They weren't too certain about the second source other then it wasn't anything internal. I'm definitely starting to feel better. I'm currently planning to return to college in January. I'm really excited about it.

Currently I'm helping more around the farm. My dad was cleaning the office windows using the lift when he fell and landed in the holding area. He broke some ribs, the bone in the back of the shoulder, and one of the bones in his back. Things could have been a lot worse. My dad spent a night at the hospital but then he's been home. He had to wear some braces but he's now doing a lot better.

Alright, now for what I've been up to in WoW. Let me think. I've been raiding. And some more raiding. I think I did some raiding on this other night as well. XD

Are late night weekend raid team is currently working on Thok. It's definitely a good fight to be a hunter on but I'm feeling like my lack of gear is holding my raid team back. I try to remind myself that I'm not actually undergeared just not as geared as everyone else. Right now everyone is hoping I can get a weapon drop and maybe a trinket as well. But I have confidence that I'll get something this week. I finally got my legendary cloak on my hunter and things can only get more awesome from there.

My guild leader has also been trying to build a second raiding group. It doesn't raid quite as late at night and it mostly consists of alts and friends from other guilds. We've even got Arv to come dps a few times. Norushen is not very cooperative though. Of the times we've been though we've only killed him once. I'm hoping that as the weeks progress we'll get a more consistent group of raiders and start progressing though it better. But it's still been fun and it's awesome to get to raid with Arv again.

I've also moved several of my toons from Shadow Rising to Spoiled Milk. I was really tempted to leave my death knight in SR but I realized that I haven't been playing her because I know that I'll miss out on any pugs, flexs, or other things that SM is doing and that SR isn't. I do my the SR crew but I'm glad that the SM people enjoy having me hang out with them so much.

I feel like I've gotten a lot closer to them now that I'm "offically" SM. Which is kinda funny because they are currently talking about merging our guild with another one called insomnia. It's a late-night raiding guild and the hope is to be able to have the twenty people for the mythic raiding in the new expansion. I wonder why they think we'll be pushing that content when we aren't even doing heroics now? Insomina is which has me wondering why they would consider absorbing us. It's not set in stone right now and I'm definitely worried about it. I don't want to lose the people I'm currently with. We're hoping to get a flex group with some of the members from Insomina to see how well we mesh together. It'll be an interesting night.

The mind rambles

I've been in a funk. I just haven't felt much like writing things. I tend to be an very inward person. If I'm feeling that something isn't right I'll pull inwards and work things out in my mind.

One of the things that I've been trying to deny is the end of Shadow Rising's raiding. It's been coming. There just hasn't been that hunger and push to clear content. They got Lei Shen but there hasn't been much interest in SoO. I'm not saying there was no interest but just not interest from everyone. A few weeks ago it was made official. No more raiding. And I do feel awful about it. But I'm not sure there was really anything I could have done about it either.

I still have some good things going on. I really enjoy my other guild. And they've been making some good progress in SoO. But I feel that I'm not holding up my end there. I've recently made the switch from my warlock to my hunter. My much less geared than everyone else hunter. Awoi, who does so much less dps then the other dps. I'm certain my best contribution is my sporebat. And that there's not three warlocks in the raid. I have to remind myself that each week she's made some really good progress on getting better gear. I guess I'm just feeling some frustration. It would be nice to stop leveling and gearing new toons to replace raid ones. And I really love my death knight. I haven't felt much like playing her. What's the point of having her raid ready when she won't be raiding? I thought about asking to switch her into Spoiled Milk but I'm not sure that would be good for the raid. There's already a lot of melee. A shaman, rogue, and a  paladin. There's plenty there already.

The past weeks my focus has been on getting Awoi gear, progressing though the legendary questline, and getting any gear from the timeless isle. She's finally reached a point where any gear upgrades will have to come from either flex or higher difficulty. And I'm back to dying for a new weapon. Hers is from SoO lfr. It's decent but I'm craving something better for her. It's a good thing.

It seems weird to think that my main is now a hunter. I've never thought I would be a hunter. I need to do a lot of studying to figure out the best things to be doing. It definitely feels more comfortable then being a warlock. I love my little goblin but there's no hiding the fact that she's a caster. That and I'm now really spoiled about the moving and still dpsing thing.

I think I'd like to start working on Tyle again. She's been quietly shelling out red gems for my hunter but she deserves a chance to finish out the expansion. I think I'll see if I can get her though some flexs. I hope Drak is going to be on the list of connecting realms soon but I don't think I'll hold my breath waiting for that to happen. I do find it funny that two of the realms I have toons on are being connected. Aegwynn was my original server and I still have a server full of toons there and Dunemaul is where I have a few horde toons. I doubt that I'll see Korgath on that list. It's still a pretty bustling place. Definitely worth a quick look to see what a realm could be. And to know that if things fall through with Spoiled Milk I do have toons that could make a transition to a realm with more options. Although I don't see that happening anytime soon. There's some really hungry people looking to smash Garrosh in the face.

Halfway there!

This week's raiding with Spoiled Milk I was able to take my hunter for most of the bosses. Horray for sporebat! Go Awoi and Eoda!

We cruised though the first four bosses although I did switch to my warlock for the third boss. Since our kill last week was so close we wanted as much dps as possible to ensure a kill. Got it in one shot with everyone alive at the end. That's a huge improvement.

Last week we had gotten several attempts on Galakras and we were optimistic about our chances of getting a kill. Our first attempt was very close. We had less then 1% left before we wiped. There were a few minor mishaps that we felt cost us the kill such as one person went a bit sideways instead of straight back and the explosion killed a few people and a major raid cooldown got used too early. Just small stuff but we felt next time we would have the kill. Unfortunately we bungled the next few attempts and didn't get past the first phase. Eventually we were getting ready to call our last attempts because one of our tanks really needed to leave. And the attempt was good! It's amazing how well that last attempt works. We managed to pull Galakras down and everything went well.

We decided we had enough time for one attempt on Iron Juggernaut and raced off to try. It was a giant mess and a pretty good end for the night.

The next night we were prepared for Iron Juggernaut and I was surprised to find myself raiding on my hunter again. I expected that I would be asked to warlock again so I was pretty nervous. Iron Juggernaut was really easy. We got the kill on our 2nd attempt.

We then made our way to the Dark Shamans. They told me to stop dying so much. I really need to figure out how to keep my hunter alive. My turtle Soup has definitely spoiled me because I have no idea how to keep my hunter alive. I was asked to pull the bosses because I could feign death. Unfortunately I actually had a real death. Anyway, our first attempts on the boss was the two tank strategy but the closest we got was about 40%. One of our dps was clammering for a three tank strat and volunteering to be the third tank. We figured we'd give it a shot. If it worked, great, and if it didn't we wouldn't be out much and we'd get our dps to stop talking about it.

The three tank strat requires one tank on the female shaman and two tanks for the male one. The shamans are pulled apart far enough so that their abilities don't overlap. The raid is divided by melee and range. The range attack the female shaman and the ooze adds while the melee deal with the male shaman. The male group went to the corridor that leads to the next boss. I'm not completely sure how they dealt with stuff except that they stayed close together, moved out of the flame wall, and made sure to drop the poison stream close to the building. Since I was ranged I was far away from the melee. The tank with the female boss pulled her over to the gates that are the entrance to Orgrimmar and tried to stay as far away from the other tank as possible. As ranged I just had to avoid stuff and make sure to slow and kill the oozes.  When the bosses bloodlusted they were pulled together to make sure that we could get as much damage on them both as possible.

Our first attempt with the three tank strat brought the bosses down to 1%. It was very close. This was definitely what would work for us. After a couple more attempts we had another boss kill.

We had a few attempts on General Naz'grim. And while we got close we weren't able to get a kill. Hopefully next week we'll push though and get further along.

Closest Boss Kill Ever!

The past few weeks Spoiled Milk has been beating the first two bosses then banging our head on the third. This week we finally had a breakthrough and accomplished the closest boss kill I've ever seen. We managed to get him just as he enraged and took out everyone. We were really excited to finally have Norushen killed and to move on to the Sha of Pride

The Sha of Pride was easier. After several attempts we were able to eek out another boss kill. And then we decided it was time for a break. We put several good attempts into Galakras on Friday and Saturday night but we weren't able to defeat that dragon. We're hopefully next week will get us closer.

Still it was a pretty good week! 4 bosses killed which is double what we had last week!

On a side note I had a chat with my guild leader. Right now the raid currently has two warlocks in it which is fine, however, one of the regular dps is leaving and out guild leader was looking for new dps to recruit. One of the potential replacements is another warlock. He asked how'd I'd feel about getting my hunter geared up and ready to go and I'm pretty excited about no longer playing a caster. I just have to get my hunter some more gear. She's currently sitting at 514 so I'm hoping for some good lfr and flex runs.

Just Needed a Break

I've been awfully quite about WoW for a bit. I just haven't been feeling very enthused about it. Which surprised me. Here there's this new patch full of all kinds of new things and playing WoW has become an unexciting chore. Bleh.

So I decided last week after the raid not to play any more WoW for the week. I thought I might miss it. Nope. Nada. I was good.

Instead I decided to indulge in playing some old gamecube games. I had recently dug them out because my little sister was home from college and wanted to raid my stash so she could have some games and controllers for playing with her boyfriend who recently gotten a gamecube. My family gave her a hard time about how she has a wii that she's left at home but it was cool. She swiped a bunch of my really cool games like the classic sonic collection, all my mario parites (I mean seriously? Did she really need to take all 4 XD? Then again, why do I own 4?) and super smash brothers.

Since all these games were dragged out into the light of day once again I wound up staring at my collection of Zelda games and trying to remember how far I've gotten in them. Apparently the only one I've ever finished is the first one I've gotten which is Four Swords Adventure. Suddenly I had a dying need to complete some dungeons, collect rupees, and save Zelda! But... I had some toons that needed to be vp capped, leveling to be done, timeless island stuff to do... yeah...

So last week when I decided to not play WoW I went off to the world of Zelda. I decided to play four swords because I haven't played it since I beat it in 2006. Which is a really long time ago. I had an absolute blast! 4 days later and I've saved Zelda, beaten Ganon, and saved Hyrule! And I still find it funny that I was using Link to throw another link around. And then I had to choose just what game to play next. I dug out my gameboy and I'm playing Minish cap. I'm already further then before. Which really isn't saying much. I started Ocarina of Time on the gamecube but the graphics just don't compare to the 3ds version so I think I'll play either Majora's mask or windwaker instead and complete Ocarina on the 3ds.

But I'm also finally excited to be back in WoW. Sorta. I'm not going to be pushing myself so hard but I think it's feeling more bearable again. I'm even a bit excited about timeless island when I realized it was a lot like a Zelda overland zone. Lots of exploration, hidden content, puzzles, mobs everywhere, areas you can only unlock after you've advanced though the game a bit. I also realize I might be a bit demented.

But every now and then a break is a really nice thing to take. :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.