Sherlock Holmes

I just got back from watching Sherlock Holmes.

It was a pretty good movie. I liked the acting, the special effects, and the storyline. About midway through the movie, I had an epiphany:

It should have been called Sherlock House.

Screenshot, or it didn't happen

Today, first pull in Gundrak, the tank gathered up all the snakes in the room and held them.

Here's the damage meter from that fight:
That would be 16K dps. Oh...Yeah!

What was I thinking?

I'll admit it: Sometimes I try to please everyone, and in the end, I please no one, least of all, myself.

This last week or so, I've been flaky. I totally forgot about running my pally with Robin and Jay last night (Sorry!) as well as forgot last Monday. /facepalm.

I am just not motivated to level my poor little mage over on my new server; I got back a reply to my email and my friends have some alts in the works. Once they get them to level 12 or so, we can play together! Yay.

Meanwhile, I've gone back to Andorhal and did what I wanted.

I ran the daily on Daxie for Frost badges, then, I switched to Daxen the Hunter and signed up for group after group. Between groups, I was killing scorpids for their scales. I ended up buying some thick leather to get my leatherworking up to speed. I'm finally making armor that is above my current level.

Next on the agenda is gathering up 20 scorpid scales for my helm, then I'm done with scorpids. I need to look into becoming a Dragonscale leatherworker, so that will be next. I won't make the mistake I did last time with Rysteranch the Troll - I had just switched back to playing Horde when I needed to train Dragonscale LW, so I flew out to Azshara, made my way to the trainer, left clicked on him, and engaged him in combat. Whoops. I ended up killing the ALLIANCE Dragonscale trainer...lol.

Badlands...I need to go to Badlands...

I am really enjoying playing a hunter again. I've got my faithful PuddyTat by my side, my bow in hand, and arrows at the ready...sic 'em, girl!

This and That

I wrote more posts this year than last year or the year before. I don't know whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing (or just a thing thing). It's just something I noticed.

I've had a declining readership as google analytics tracks it. I wonder if that's related to my more frequent posting...

My mage over on Silverhand...Silvermoon?...crud, I can't even remember what server I rolled it on...ANYWAYS, is level 14. I sent an email to my friends and am trying to convince them that if they roll some alts we can actually play together now, instead of them waiting for me to catch up. I'm already not wanting to level an alt to 80 that's not on my main server.

Oh, and I'm not going to transfer a character either.

I've been toying with the idea of playing Daxea the Priest again. I'd like to see the level 50 instances and spend her rest XP. Of course, Daxen the Hunter is 42, and I've enjoyed getting into groups with her as well. She absolutely owns the damage meter, sometimes racking up twice the amount of damage as #2.

One down side to chain LFG's on Daxen is getting Mara: Orange Crystal side almost every single time. I don't really like the orange side; the purple side is much better. I have gotten only one other dungeon from levels 41-42, and that was SM:Cath, which we didn't even do 'cause the other people in the group had already gotten sick of it.

Teurion has started playing again. Of course, he wants me to get back to Kael'thas and play my Alliance toons.

This weekend, we are headed over to Manteno, IL to visit friends.

Lastly, next week, Chuck Sullivan makes his triumphant return to the Biomed shop after being sidelined for knee surgery. Let me tell you, the last three months have been a freakin' vacation without this guy; I am not looking forward to him coming back.

Wrapping up the WoW playing for the year

I got three level 80's on my Alliance server - a priest, a hunter, and a death knight.

I quit for a while.

I gathered all my Horde toons over on Suramar and started playing again. My original Troll hunter made it to 69, and I created my army of alts.

Robin and Jay transferred to Andorhal, and I started some alts over there.

I also started on a new server: Executus for dabbling in the new server experience.

Jay tracked me down and wanted to start some new toons together. We decided on Rogues and Andorhal. Daxynn was born, and backs were stabbed.

After piddling around for a while, I decided that my Draenai Priest, Daxie, should switch factions to become a Blood Elf and transfer servers to Andohal to be my little alts' sugah momma.

Daxie has since supplied a plethora of alts with the Heirloom shoulders, chestpieces, and weapons, has gotten a number of T9 or better pieces for herself, turned Shadow, and did some serious face melting.

And lastly, I started some new toons over on Silvermoon to play with some old friends from Alaska.

Yeah, that last one was a surprise, eh?

Wrapping up the game playing for the year

I played WoW.

I quit playing WoW.

I played Diablo.

I beat Diablo.

I played Diablo II.

I quit playing Diablo II.

I played Oblivion.

I quit playing Oblivion.

I went back to playing WoW.

The End.

Thoughts on Creation

I had this thought on Biblical Creation and trying to reconcile it with what the apparent age of the earth seems to be (millions of years according to the theory of evolution.)

Make no mistake, I believe that the earth is very young (thousands of years) which is in accordance with my understanding of the Genesis account, but this idea may help explain why or how we observe a universe that appears to be much older.

The basis of my thought is found in Jesus' first miracle - the turning of water into wine at the wedding feast. My assumptions include believing that actual water was turned into actual wine in the space of moments (less than an hour) and that the resulting wine was, according to the steward present, of top quality and that the wine contained alcohol (otherwise it would have just been grape juice.)

The point here is that Jesus was able to create a substance that had the appearance of being much older than the time it took to create it. Alcohol cannot be created instantly (without a miracle) as it takes the process of yeast turning sugar into alcohol, which is a product of time. So, Jesus, the creator of the universe (Colossians 1:16), is able to produce an item that is old or should be old by all normal reckoning.

That being said, is it not possible for God to create a universe (and the earth with it) that has the appearance of being millions (or billions) of years old even while it isn't even close to being that old?

Is it such a stretch of the imagination to think that when God created the stars that He also created the light from that star to already have traveled millions of lightyears so be be observable on the earth? In other words, God created in an instant something that had the appearance of being very old (because the light had already traveled such a great distance to reach earth) in order to make the star visible from earth.

I suppose I wanted to write this out so that my thoughts were set down in order and so I could muse on it more. I definitely am not trying to reconcile the theory of evolution and the theory of creation; I don't believe there is any way to reconcile those two as one says man came through death and the other says that death came through man.

Chasing Gear

I'm 6 badges away from the 75 Triumph hat. I already have my meta cut and just have to figure out what epic gem to slot in the other spot.

After that, I'll need 25 badges for the wand, 30 badges for the T9 gloves, and 45 badges for the DPS shoulders (I have the healing ones.)

Then...I guess I'll be spending Triumph badges for healing gear, while continuing to save my Frost badges for the uber DPS gear.

In other news, I decided to get a Raptor mount for Daxie by grinding out the Darkspear Trolls rep. I dinged Exalted with Orgrimmar on the way and now have a sparkling new orange raptor!

And, since I've already got 3/5 city reps done, I figured I'd just go ahead and pound out TB and UC for the Ambassador title.

Speaking of titles, I did get "the Patient" the other day and also got the "Looking for Multitudes" achievement with the Pug non-combat pet. yay on me.

Yesterday, on the second pull in Gundrak, I hit 7500 DPS. Yes, I screen shotted it; no, I don't have it on me. Maybe I'll post it later. I figured it was AoEing all those little snakes along with the 6 big ones that did it for me.

That's all for now.

No real post

You know when I have either nothing to say or am busy at work, then there's no real post for the day.

This was/is such a day. Laters.

Priority List DPS

I decided to make a separate post about using Shadowaffinity's Priority List for doing DPS as a Shadow Priest. The following analysis is focused on single target DPS; I found that multiple targets require some different strategy depending on the group's DPS.

The post on Priority DPSing mentions "clipping" a Mind Flay to cast a higher priority spell. During my play time last night, I practiced this by trying to cast Mind Blast when it was available. Of course, if a higher priority spell was in order, I'd cast it first.

What I found out was that I would go through the first four in the priority order and do one Mind Flay. By the time that MF completed, Mind Blast was off cooldown. I then got in one and a half Mind Flays before something of higher priority popped up.

I could not get in two full, consecutive Mind Flays before something came off cooldown or dropped off the mob. So, I ended up "clipping" or interrupting Mind Flay by casting another spell since Mind Flay is the lowest

A big game changer in this entire discussion is the amount of Haste that I have, so other people who have more or less Haste than Daxie may have a different experience, and I fully expect to modify my play as I add more Haste and spells pop at different intervals. Luckily, I have my priority list!

I was going to go further into the analysis, but I realized after writing some stuff out that I really don't have the resources available here at work to figure out the interaction, cost per second, and mana efficiency of the different spells. And I also don't really care to find out; I have a system that works, and that's good enough for me...lol.

Another Tale of the Damage Meter

Despite Jay doing my Shadow spec spell rotation research for me, I couldn't help but do a little myself. I found a great resource that made it through the work filter at shadowaffinity.com.

Their recommended approach to dealing damage as a shadow priest is not a rotation, but rather a priority list. I rearranged my spells so that the first four are together...well, let me just draw you a picture:
Since I am a clicker, I like to get some sort of order to my buttons. The red arrows show the initial cast order with the blue arrows diverging depending on single target vs. multiple targets.

One thing I found out last night is that I need to find an addon that will either make my dots/debuffs much larger (easier to see) or will be a separate display like MagicRunes is for DK's.

First up was a HToC. This damage meter was reset after the mounted combat.
I was pretty happy that I sustained over 3K DPS for the entire instance. It gave me a lot of confidence in the Priority list playstyle, as well as let me know that I'm competitive.

Next up are some screenies from a PuG H. Culling of Stratholme; I was able to mostly follow this order with some departures that just hit SW:P, VT, and Mind Sear. Here is the result for the entire run (I died twice - once in the gauntlet and at the very beginning of the optional timed boss).Yeah...I carried them! CoS is a nice instance for AoEers as almost all of the trash is in tight packs. I was already happy with my AoE DPS; Mind Sear is just that awesome. But what I really wanted to improve was my single target DPS.

From the last fight, against Mal ganis, I present to you, the damage meter:
Mission accomplished! What helped out was only getting targeted for nap-time once. I followed the Priority list religiously, and obviously, the results speak for themselves.

Lastly, I have the breakdown of the entire HCoS damage by spell.
What really surprised me was that Vampiric Touch is my number two spell despite only being cast 97 times (vs 162 for SW:P). I'll still be following the priority list as Mind Flay refreshes SW:P, so I can keep it up all the time on a single target.

But, for sure, I'm going to keep VT up all the time. Oh, and by the way, it will last 6 seconds longer thanks to the T9 two piece bonus. Yeah, got me two items of the set! Woot!

G2G2 work.

The Tale of the Damage Meter

Yesterday, I did a bunch of Heroics as Shadow spec. Since it was a raid night for Robin and Jay, I only ran two instances with them; the rest, I turned to the LFG and was not disappointed.

Now, the queue time for a DPS is longer than I'm used to when lining up as a Healer - around 7-8 minutes, which was ok as I had errands to do.

First up, here's proof that I can sustain damage above the tank! And not only that, I can crank out some decent DPS. Note: This was only one pull...Now that pull was with Jay, so I didn't have any worries about pulling aggro. This next screenie is of another single pull with a PuG.
Still rockin' over 4500 DPS, not bad, not bad. But, can I sustain that? Well...no. This next damage meter is from Halls of Reflection. I was picked up after the first two bosses were down, and the party was on the Lich King run. We successfully completed the gauntlet, and my dps looked like this:Ok, I really can settle for just under 4K DPS...lol! Of course, there is almost all AoE on that gauntlet, so I pretty much spammed Mind Sear. And, lastly, what does a full clear look like? This is the final result from a PuG UP:

Second. And at 2629 DPS. That's more realistic, I reckon.

I attribute some of my loss of DPS to not being really up on a spell rotation for single targets. Ya, ya, ya, Jay rattled one off, but do you think I retained any of it? Bah, pish posh!

I also need to get better at switching targets. I'm starting to remember what I did as a hunter, and that is to watch the current target's health and switch when it gets low so I can maintain my output. One thing I have learned is to try to pick a target that is going to live the longest, thereby minimizing the DPS loss suffered when trying to click the next mob.

And, of course, I'm still learning what all these spells do. Last night, I figured out that Vampiric Embrace was changed somewhere along the line to be a 30 minute buff on myself to generate healing. [cue old man's voice] In MY day, VE was something you threw on the mob! You didn't put that crap on yourself! Kids these days! GET OFF MY LAWN!!! [/off old man's voice]

So, now I have two self buffs I need to keep track of: Vampiric Embrace and Inner Fire. Ok, got it.

I'll be doing some research on how my spells interact together; I already know that I've picked up a talent that increases the damage from my Mind Flay if Shadow Word: Pain is on the target and also I have the talent that has a chance to refresh SW: P with each Mind Flay.

Oh, I also discovered that, according to the tooltip, Vampiric Touch only regens mana from Mind Blasts. It also does some shadow damage, but the mana regen part has changed since I last played as shadow. Feel free to correct me or clarify this in the comments.

And, Jay, feel free to jot down that rotation in the comments as well so I can be lazy and not research it.

Embrace the Shadow...

A New Healer

Last night, Jay, Robin, and I did some Heroics - the first Random Dungeon had fail DPS and the second was OCC. We finally completed the stupid thing after two wipes on the last guy. I still hate that instance.

Jay and Robin had to bail for their raid, so I was left to my own devices. Now, I've been thinking about making my Druid, Daxenos, into a Healer, and last night, I bought the gear and respec to get that done.

I also reconfigured Healbot to place the types of heals in familiar key combos (Renew = Rejuvenation in my mind, which means CTRL+Right Mouse.) I'm still working on getting familiar with the different spells, so it's a work in progress.

I jumped in LFG and got a group for Scarlet Monastery: Graveyard. The warrior tank didn't really stop for buffs, aggro'd pretty much the entire first room (the torture chamber), and we some how survived. Luckily for us, the tank stopped to let me mana up.

The rest of the instance went pretty much the same. The tank wasn't too concerned about the DPS or Healer tanking mobs, so we all got hit some. I was throwing Rejuv's on all of us, which did a pretty good job of keeping people up.

We killed the last guy; I got the offhand loot. My Random Dungeon reward was a DPS Necklace. I'm sure I'll get something useful for healing sooner or later.

I do plan on picking up the Heirloom mace, chestpiece, and shoulders that are geared for healing. I may even send an Heirloom shoulder enchant because Daxenos should be the only one using them. The only problem is that I have enough Spirit Stone thingys for a weapon and shoulders, but I'd rather get the badge ones as I'm not planning on Battleground healing. Suppose I'll just have to see what my badge accumulation rate is.

Speaking of badges, I picked up a new ring and was going to pick up a wand next, but I got a nice drop in HoR, so I can put that off for a bit. I believe a head piece or legs are in order for my next purchase; of course, I suppose I need to sort out whether I want to gear up my healing set or my shadow set....choices choices...

More LFG

You would have thought that Blizzard would have learned from the last time they encouraged people to get into instances...

Embrace the Shadow....lolwut?

Last night, Robin, Jay, and I were supposed to hit up RFC on our little toons, but instead, we decided to rock some Heroics on our 80's.

Jay was stuck with the role of tank on his pally, and since I really like healing, I basically ninja'd the job which left Robin to Boomkin DPS (she's main spec Tree healer).

So, we decide to get the whole ICC five man content opened up for yours truly. LFG was almost instant in providing the other two DPS, and off we went!

The first thing I noticed is that the trash hit a bit harder. Now, Jay is a very well geared tank, and I've healed him before in other Heroics, so it was pretty evident the difference between ICC and the rest of WotLK content. Still, even with the harder hitting mobs, it was pretty easy keeping him alive.

Meanwhile, Robin is rockin' the bottom of the DPS meter, just above me. Well, that's misleading, she was waaaaaaaaay above me, but still in fourth place.

An aside: one of the reasons I chose the healer role was that, although Robin can easily out heal me, I figured she could also easily out DPS me because I have no idea of how to play my Shadow spec, and she is geared way better than I am. So, in my mind as long as I can keep the group alive, Robin is better at DPS than I am, and the group is maximized for its capabilities.

We got to the first boss in the Forge of Souls (FoS), and people died...I died in a pool of purple (lolepicfireftw!). Luckily, we had the boss down enough that even though the two PuGs died, Robin and Jay were able to finish him off. Now, Jay had explained the fight; I just hadn't been paying attention to where I was standing.

We didn't have any problems with the rest of that instance and moved on to Pit of Saron. We totally owned that dungeon. No deaths, no wipes, no problem. I really like the second boss, Ick; he involves a lot of moving around.

We lost one DPS, but LFG quickly provided another, and we marched on to the Halls of Reflection. This is by far, more healing intensive than the last two. The first boss is preceeded by four waves of trash, then, after a short break, there are four more waves of trash and the second boss.

Well, we made it through all of it pretty much unscathed, although Robin helped out with some healing and Jay did burn Lay on Hands. I started to think that I might not be able to keep up my end of the bargain in the Healing department.

And sure enough, on the next and last part, I couldn't. Sylvannas just couldn't down those barriers fast enough, and we died twice on the last barrier due to one crappy priest. I just couldn't keep everyone up.

So....I turn the healing over to Robin, break out my Shadow spec, and hope that I can not fail at DPS. Oh, and while I have what I think are good talents, I have no idea what some of these spells are, I have NO GLYPHS, and I'm all lolspellrotationwut? And to top it off, all of the +hit gear that I've accumulated....is in the bank.

Well, we buff up, drink up, and get our collective poop together and start the event. For some reason, Jay had already researched a spell rotation and rattled it off in Vent. I caught some of it, but the important piece was provided by Robin: Mind Sear is your AoE.

Mind Sear...AoE, right, got it!

So, the first fight, I pick a mob, stand in Consecrate, and Mind Sear.

When that one dies, I pick another mob and Mind Sear.

And at the end of the fight....I had done (according to Robin; I didn't screenshot it) 9K DPS.

lolwut? I was like nowai! And Robin was all WAI! And I was like rly?? And she was like yuhuh!

Wow.

I am such a noob. We proceeded then to absolutely smash the rest of the instance with Robin's 1337 healz and my more than adequate DPS.

So, I figured maybe it's a fluke or something, and I wondered how I'd do in another Heroic. I bought some glyphs but forgot to grab my hit gear, and we queued up for another almost instant Random Dungeon.

We got Halls of Stone. I was up against a shammy with a gear score of 4900+, a rogue with a gear score of 4600+, while I was rockin a gear score of 4200+.

For two thirds of the instance, I was queen of the DPS meter! I couldn't even get close to matching the others on single target pulls, but on AoE pulls, I was crankin' it out! There were numbers literally filling my screen from the damage I was doing.

In the end, I snagged second place to the aforementioned shammy by a little bit; if I think of it, I'll screenshot the DPS meter when I log on.

So...from now on, I'm going to let Robin heal...I have a new job...

...because there are faces that need to be melted.

Embrace the Shadow...

All LFG All the Time

I'm sure the newness will wear off over time, but the new LFG is just about the coolest thing to hit WoW in a long time.

There, I said it. I've been hinting at the fact that I'm liking the new system, and now I'm not afraid of sounding like some little fanboi. I definitely like it.

Two things sealed the deal for me:

Daxea can get a group in about 5 minutes, and I would rather heal my way to 80 on unrested xp than solo. Any. Day. Of. The. Week. Period. I'll do a solo quest here and there as I'm leveling, but the lion's share of my leveling will come from instancing. YES!! /fistpump.

Rysteranch, the Troll Hunter, drug himself out of the bar and did two Sethekk Halls runs last night. Yeah, I didn't have any glyphs....I forgot to spend PuddyTat's talent points since the last patch...I had some weird Survival spec that I thought would be useful for PvP....And still did a decent amount of damage and didn't get kicked from the group. If I can get a group as a Huntard, I can get a group for anything!

So, what's on the horizon? Well, pretty much anything that I haven't done in a group, I'm going to try. My 39 pally on Suramar is going to be tanking for some poor guinea pigs; I want to try out Druid healing; and I've never done a dungeon on my rogue. It's all in play now.

Tonight, though, Jay, Robin, and I have a date with RFC. Last week didn't go so well with the misses, so I'm hoping that two levels make a huge difference (we should be level 12).

Day 3 of LFG

Yesterday was all LFG all the time for Daxea the former Pox Priest.

For all of my play time, I ran instance after instance after instance. ZF, Mara - Purple, Mara - Orange, Mara - uh..the last part.

One of the cool things that I apparently didn't realize was that Mara is effectively three parts; the LFG recognizes that and lists them separately as well as teleports the group to the appropriate starting place. I haven't seen Sunken Temple pop up in the available dungeons yet, but I'm hoping that that one is chopped up as well.

I like the reward for doing the random dungeon; most of the stuff has been class appropriate (except the ring of DPS warrior or Ret Pally...what's up with that?). However, the armor has been almost exclusively boots or bracers. I've gotten a number of shards, so that's good, and I did replace my boots and bracers with whatever seemed better, but it would be nice to see some other armor slots drop.

As with all PuGs, there was good, bad, and ugly.

I saw a fury warrior try to tank, which meant everybody else got to tank a bit (including yours truly).

I saw a Ret pally tank Mara the last part...very well, actually.

I put my first cross-realm person on my ignore list (the aforementioned fury warrior). I did it after running a whole ZF with everybody tanking and wiping twice to stupidity; then the very next dungeon, the idiot shows up again in the tank slot! We wiped on the very first pull because I had buffed everyone and was out of mana. I then watched in horror as he charged the first mob. /facepalm. After venting my frustration that was still pent up after the crappy ZF run, I told the group they could find another healer.

I saw a Holy pally try to DPS.

And I saw a Holy Priest forget he had the Spirit buff and not use it for the first three or four instances of the night. Oh, that would be me...noob. Oh, and I still need to get some dang glyphs. Whoops...

All in all, I'm really liking the new LFG. Yes, I've seen my share of idiots (who runs into an area ahead of the "tank" and starts fighting the first mob they see??? Yes, the crappy ZF run...), but for the most part, I've seen pretty competent players. I really like grouping with people who are leveling alts; they seem to have their crap together and know what's expected in a group - even if they're kids.

I hate grouping with people who are leveling their first toon as they usually try to play solo roles instead of the group Tank/Healer/DPS roles. To top it off, usually they're kids and mouth off when you try to "help" them understand what's going on.

So, I have developed a defense mechanism: After the first wipe due to stupidity (one can usually tell these kind of wipes), I let the group know that I have a two wipe policy and that one of them was just burned. I then encourage the group to get their poop together and work as a team.

Of course, if and when the next wipe happens, I tell them good luck and leave group. Now, I may make an exception if we're particularly close to a boss kill, but I really don't need the aggravation of wiping through content because some idiot can't seem to find the taunt button.

Anyways....I am having a blast...really!

Day 2 of LFG

Yesterday, I signed up for more abuse and punishment with the Random Dungeon feature of LFG(Looking For Group) on both my level 44 former Pox Priest, Daxea and my level 80 Priest Daxie.

An aside: Teurion thinks that I have something wrong with me for wanting to run instances on my level 44 Priest. He cannot understand why I don't just level to cap and play there. I'm not sure I can explain why I enjoy running the lower level (less than 80) instances with a level appropriate group; all I know is that I DO enjoy the experience. I like it so much that I'm willing to chance awful PuGs in order to do it.

Another aside: I'm thinking that I really like the new LFG for the sole reason that it makes groups available. Before, I would peruse the LFG and maaaaaaybe see one other person in my level instances; now, I've gotten hooked up with groups in a fairly timely manner.

Daxea's experience with the new improved LFG:
I have seen good, bad, and ugly, which one expects from PuGs, but last night was more good than bad/ugly. I still got into some groups that fell apart, but I also hopped into a group that only needed to down the last boss. I got in a full run and a partial run of ZF and partial runs of Mara (no bosses, though).

I really think that the new LFG is going to be a boon for those of use who would like to run more lower level (<80) instances as the pool to pick from just got larger. Also, the automatic assignment of tank, healer, and DPS really helps fill groups quicker.

I am planning on doing at least one or two instances a day on Daxea for the time being, although I may cut back on that after her rested XP runs out.

Daxie's experience with the new improved LFG:
Much like Daxea's experience, I saw good, bad, and ugly from joining the Random Heroic PuG feature of LFG.

The Good: Both tanks that we had seemed to be fairly competent. The DPSers usually didn't require much healing. I completed both of the random dungeons that I signed up for.

The Bad: Loot etiquette is...well, I don't know. It seems that Need/Greed/Pass etiquette is different from server to server, so when grouping with people who are used to a different procedure (ie, everyone Greeds, if you need the item, Need it) than you are used to, conflict can arise. In my case, a Damaged Necklace dropped (I'm not sure what it's for, but I know JCers really covet them and Daxie is a JCer); now that item is a green, so I selected Greed. Obviously, one of the other members was a JC, and they selected Need. Whoops on me, I guess. From now on, I'll select Need for those.

The Ugly: Oculus. Yeah, we got that as our random dungeon. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck! We wiped twice on the last guy before we got our collective poop together. Of course, jumping in the random dungeon queue will expose me to more Heroics that I really don't care for - OCC, HoL, HoS, ToC. Yeah, it'll get really ugly, I'm sure.

Overall, though, I think I'll be signing up for more abuse with the LFG on Daxie for the Frost badges and the five man fun. Oh, and Robin wants me to get some Heirloom gear for my little pally, so....

Patch 3.3 thoughts

I almost never play my normal amount of time on patch day due to disconnects, lag, and general server quirkiness. Last night was no exception.

When I am able to play, I usually am not able to hop on my current server, but rather have to jump on one of the servers that I've stopped actively playing on. Last night was no exception.

For some reason, I really wanted to check out the new LFG system on my former Pox toon, Daxea. And, I wanted to heal in whatever instance popped up from the random dungeon feature. So, I respec'd from Shadow back to Holy, hopped in the queue, and voila! I was hooked up with a group for Maraudon.

The Good: The group turned out to be pretty good. The tank tanked. The healer (me) healed. And the DPS DPS'd. Some of the pulls were a bit tricky, but for the most part, the tank held aggro on all the mobs. We downed the first boss, and we all got the Random Dungeon satchel. Mine had a nice pair of blue boots in it.

The Bad: I died once on a bad pull.

The Ugly: The group disintegrated after the boss kill. This guy had to go, then another left, then the tank left. I joined LFG again with the remaining hunter; we got into another group, but someone immediately left the group which kicked us out of the instance. After that, I dropped group and attempted to join LFG with the Random Dungeon, but was locked out with the deserter debuff.

Now, I won't jump to any conclusions with just one experience. I still need to join up with some more PuGs and see how it goes. I may respec Daxenos the Druid to healing so I can start learning tree healing sooner rather than later. Also, Daxie could use some more badges now that Triumph badges drop from Heroics.

Back...ouch...spasms

Yeah, I'm canning the pushup routine for this week. I was sidelined yesterday from work due to back spasms, which I'm not sure if they're the result of the pushups or putting together a Treadmill type thing on Saturday (for my in-laws, not me).

Anyways, the net result is a doctor's visit tomorrow and a cancellation of pushups for this week. If I'm feeling better next week, I'll probably continue the regimen with repeating week 2.

And now I understand why all those exercise programs say to consult your doctor first before beginning any new exercise program...

I have a life...really, I do...

I put it off for a long time, but I finally downloaded the addon Allplayed, which tracks the aggregate amount of time that your characters have totaled in the wonderful World of Warcrack.

I had to log in on all of my alts to get the total. The addon subtotals your time for each of your servers and provides a gold amount to boot.

So....how much have I played?

Suspense, in a blog post, usually doesn't work because people will just skip to the end. Unless, of course, I don't post the answer in this post and make you all guess in the comments.

Hmmmm.....aw, fagghettaboutit. 224 days.

My most played toon? Daxe the BC raiding priest at 41 days.
The biggest surprise? My bank toon on Kael'thas, a level one pally, has over a day played.

What the addon doesn't do is account for characters that have been deleted. Off the top of my head, I've deleted a 20 druid, 18 warlock, 49 warrior, teens druid, the 8 members of the original team Ryster all in their mid to late teens.

But, really...I do get out once in a while...

Pox Time Again??

Well...sort of.

Robin, Jay, and I decided to roll new toons to level together.

Robin - BE mage
Jay - BE Priest
Rusty - BE Pally

The idea is to play these toons together and see what we can do with them as a trio. It's sort of like a Pox group in that we'll try to limit the xp we get outside of the group and reserve our leveling playtime to when we all can play together.

On the flip side, we'll feel free to tweak them as we see fit (but we won't be adding any xp gains gear), are free to powerlevel any professions that we choose, and can use our other toons on the server to help out with gold, gear, and other useful stuff.

At first, when Jay was presented with the idea of not using +XP Heirloom items, he was agast. To paraphrase: "But, but, that's like living in the stone age!!" Ok, maybe he didn't say that, but I know he was thinking it.

My response was: "We're gonna be rockin' it old school, baby!"

So, what are my goals for this group?

0. I'd like to have fun with Robin and Jay. (Computer Science dudes count from zero)
1. I'd like to, as much as is possible, level in instances. Gear resets for BC and WotLK would be an exception as well as class quests and the like.
2. I'd like to see all the Oldlands instances (and as many Outlands and Coldlands instances as we can manage) as a static threesome.
3. Jay is an awesome pally tank; I would like to learn at the feet of the master.
4. I would like to see Robin and Jay fight over clothie gear...I mean get their dungeon drops...yeah, yeah, that one...oh and get mine too!
5. I would like to have fun. Note: this list is not in order of importance!
6. I want see leveling as something that happens because we play, rather than playing in order to level.

That about sums it up. We're at level 5 right now. I'm planning on picking up Enchanting and am undecided on a second profession for the moment. Jay picked up Tailoring, so he's making some leet threads for him and Robin. My Blacksmith has crafted armor up to the 30's range, and my banktoon coughed up 12 Netherweave bags for us all. Daxxyn has 200 gold burnin' in her pocket, and a fire burnin' in her heart! LET'S GO!!

Recent Random Is What?

1 Strength gives 2 Attack Power for Druids. 1 Agility gives 0 Attack Power for Druids (but does give Crit). Somehow, I thought that Agi would give AP like it does for Hunters and Rogues. Since I made this discovery, I stopped using the Heirloom dagger on Daxenos and instead picked up a nice Str/Sta blue mace (level 23) and slapped the +25 Agi enchant on it. Yeah, I'm wasting money.../shrug.

Last night while watching House, I had an epiphany. See, the show was about this middle aged guy who had a recurrence of cancer and wanted his ex-wife to help him out with tough decisions rather than his 20 something girlfriend. The beginning of the episode showed the girlfriend completely out of her depth in trying to deal with her man's mortality. And this led me to my epiphany:

One of the reasons I love my wife so much is the fact that she and I are peers and equals. When either of us is struggling with a difficult issue, we know that we can turn to each other and expect at least our own level of competincy and maturity. We don't have to deal with gross inexperience or incompetence.

Let me tell you, no amount of anything that a younger person can offer will make up for that one solitary blessing.