A Good Night's Work

My guild went to ICC-10 tonight and they had a spare spot for me!  I was so excited! In the end we only ended up wiping on Festergut and Rotface a few times but it was really nice to see a new place with my new guildies and also get started on that Ashen rep.

After the raid was called the group decided to go and do Sarth 3D, so Leesah became of the Nightfall.  How's this for achievement spam?

I then discovered I only needed Heroic Halls of Lightning for the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title, so off we went to get two titles in one night.

And to finish off, I now have the four-piece Tier 9 set, so all in all, a satisfying night's work.

Tree Gets Mad: A Pug's Tale

This is a story about a pug of randoms.  Yes, it's one of those stories. 

I'm not normally one to get mad at people - I'm usually pretty forgiving. But last night, my patience was tested to the limit.

Scene: Heroic Forge of Souls. In the corridor leading to the final boss, there are a number of ghosty mobs that hit the whole party like a truck. We went in, attacking one. There's another one outside the door behind us - it gets pulled by accident. We wipe - no biggie, we just need to take the mob outside first.

When we get back in there and get going again, the tank just runs into the tunnel again, leaving the mob outside.  The DPS warrior gets all funny about it and says something like "wtf are you stupid?".  The rest of us just run well inside the tunnel and keep attacking the mob in front of us.  

Then, the DPS warrior runs back out of the tunnel and picks up the mob outside.  Meanwhile, the rest of the group are attacking the next mob towards the boss - all I knew was that the warrior was taking damage somewhere outside my range.  I didn't realise what the idiot had done until he says in party chat, "HEAL!".

Now I consider myself a reasonable person, but people telling me to do my job when I am clearly already doing it really makes my blood boil.  It's probably a good thing that this guy couldn't hear the names I was calling him.  This time I just managed to heal through the two mobs and we didn't wipe (adrenaline?), but I was so pissed off afterwards that I told him exactly where to go.  A vote to kick was initiated, but since we were right near the final boss anyway, it wasn't worth it so I just said no, and we just killed the boss and left. I didn't record anyone's names, because I was so mad I logged over to my mage to throw spells at stuff for a while.

I vented my spleen on gchat and on Twitter about it, and most people's reactions to it were along the lines of, "Should have just stopped healing him then - let him die." At the time it had occurred to me that I could have just let him die, but I didn't. I thought about why I had kept healing - I guess it must be that as a healer, I'd feel like I hadn't done my job properly if I let someone die, even if that person was a total asshat.  I honestly didn't really think about it at the time, only later once I read everyone else's reactions.

Why are healers so vindictive?  Is it because we have the power to keep someone alive, so if they make us mad we use that to our advantage? Did I, by choosing to keep the asshat alive, decide to use that power for good rather than evil? Do we feel like we need to teach the idiot dps a lesson?

Would YOU have let the asshat die?

Magic with Macros

Macro Magic has Moved :)

http://reviveandrejuvenate.blogspot.com/p/macros.html

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Progress Post: Guildie

So... I joined a guild. They are a casual raiding guild who are into ICC-10, and they are very friendly so far.  All I've done with them so far is a weekly raid quest in Naxx, a visit to Malygos and a few heroics, but I think 10-man guilds are probably more difficult to get a progression spot with.  Plus my gear is still not brilliant so we'll see how it goes once I upgrade a few things.

That's not the point of this post though! The blogosphere has been chatting about Guild vs Blog issues this week, with Tamarind posting about having to leave his guild over comments he made on his blog (along with other reasons), and Anea, Larísa, Matticus and Ophelie sharing their views on the subject among others.

I decided not to mention my blog (or "showcase" it, as Matticus puts it) in my guild application, as I wanted to be accepted on my own merit. I didn't want to label myself as a Blogger.  At the end of the day, I'm just a noob healer in some welfare epics, and I'd rather prove myself to them by healing well than just saying, "Look at all the stuff I know about!"

I may mention it to them if the subject somehow comes up in conversation, but really I'd like to avoid what we call "Tall Poppy Syndrome", or the act of making oneself stand out from the crowd, and thus the subject of ridicule. We're not much up for self-promotion in Australia I'm afraid.

I haven't been blogging long enough yet to really know whether I will post about frustrating and guild-related stuff here, but I'm planning on keeping it lighthearted so if my new guildies do find this place, there shouldn't be anything here for them to get upset about.

So, after a few nights in my new guild, I decided to label myself as a Blogger, went and rolled a Paladin on Argent Dawn-US and joined <Single Abstract Noun>. If you want to know more about that, go and read this post by Miss Medicina and this other one by Tamarind.

Okay, I admit it, I'm an altoholic!

Crystalsong

Click the image for a 1600 by 900px wallpaper image. 

The Unbound Thicket, Crystalsong Forest.

Want to see more pretty pictures? Visit R&R's Gallery Page.

Information released about stat changes for Cataclysm

You may have seen links to the recent blue post from Eyonix on the stat changes coming in Cataclysm.  If you haven't, go read the full text of it on Big Bear Butt's awesome blog or the original forum post, then make sure to come back here.  BBB also discusses what the changes might mean for Bears.  Done?  Let's continue.

Update: World of Raids has posted a summary of the responses from the Blues to player questions about these planned changes. Interesting reading!

I don't want to talk about the changes in detail, as they haven't given us a lot of specifics yet.  In addition, these changes will come in before Cataclysm (probably a patch 4.0 or similar), but that is still a loooong way off so we don't need to worry about it just yet.

I will, however, attempt to summarise for Trees and Moonkin.

• Spellpower will be removed from armour, and instead we'll get it from Intellect. Weapons will still have spellpower.  They're not removing spellpower completely, just not itemising specifically for it on armour.
  
• Healers will be the only ones to use Spirit on gear, apart from Moonkin and Elemental Shaman. This means we will still be able to use healing gear for offspec, which is very useful. I also like that there will be more of a delineation between caster and healer gear.
  
• Druids will get a bonus from wearing leather armour over cloth.  I like this idea a lot, especially since they took away the ability to roll need on cloth.
  
• Mp5 is going away.  No great loss for trees!
  
• They are improving lower level quest rewards, making more of them caster leather.  To be honest this has been a long time coming. As someone who has recently leveled up, I can say that I wore cloth pretty much the whole way. It would be really nice to turn in a quest and have something other than caster cloth and agility leather to choose from.
  
• Moonkin will get their some of their hit rating from spirit.  The changes for Balance Druids seem a bit complicated, but from the way it sounds at the moment it's going to involve calculating a sliding hit cap depending on your spirit, and the level of content you are at. I foresee spreadsheets.

What does this mean for now? Not a lot.  Well, if you're in a raid and an item drops that's a sidegrade or slight downgrade, and no-one wants it, you might as well take it and bank it. You never know what might end up being an upgrade once the stats are switched around. A similar thing happened to me before patch 3.0.  My guild at the time was in Mount Hyjal, and no-one understood why a shadow priest would want to roll on a necklace with +Fire damage on it, but after patch 3.0 it became +spellpower and a huge upgrade for me.

Of course it's still development days and all of this could be gone by the time the Alpha starts. As a first batch of released information about the expansion, it's interesting to mull over!

PS. Image at the top is from the awesome wallpaper collection at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/media/

Looking for Multitudes

Leesah made a new best friend last night, after achieving Looking For Multitudes.

He's completely adorable, except that I think he might have worms - he keeps scratching his bum along the ground in a quite off-putting way.

So, what has Elder Leesah learned from grouping with 100 random people?

1. There are good tanks, there are great tanks... and then there are tanks who are still learning.
   
   
2. DON'T PANIC!  Panic leads to death.  Use Swiftmend, use Wild Growth, use Tranquility.  Let the mage die.  He'll get over it.
   
   
3. If a party member makes jokes about women, abuse, racism or whatever, and you are offended, chances are someone else in the group is too.  Just vote-kick the joker.
   
   
4. People will roll need on offspec items then leave the group.  Items that are healer items.  Grrr.
   
   
5. If a cloth item drops that you really want, and you are not a clothie, everyone will roll disenchant and it will be de'd before your QQ'ing eyes.
   
   
6. The DK/Shaman/Hunter/Retpally keeps pulling aggro.  Let them die, or spam heal them?  That, my friends, is the question.
   
   
7. Warlocks Lifetap constantly.  Every time they do it, it scares the hell out of me.  I think they do it on purpose to freak me out.
   
   
8. People who refer to other party members by their class name really make my blood boil.  Go on, call me "druid" ONE MORE TIME.
   
   
9. People are impatient.  I think in 4 out of 5 groups, the tank will go charging off into the first mobs before waiting for buffs or to make sure the healer is ready.  Most of the time I am able to catch up.  Other times, death.
   
   
10. I queue for heroics as healer/dps.  I have been surprised by how often I get into a group as dps.  In fact, I usually get in as dps while I'm in resto spec, and in as a healer when I'm in dps spec.  This means I'm often frantically swapping specs and gear and trying to mana up at the start.  Refer to point 9 for the logical conclusion.

In summary, I've found the LFD system to be incredibly useful and makes the emblem-farming process a lot faster.  Most of the time, people are polite, and while I've had a few bad experiences, the majority of the runs have been great.

The only gripe I have about it is that you can't choose just to group with people from your server.  I'd like to be able to suss out guilds while doing heroics, but I very rarely get random people from my server.  I guess I'd better get stuck into pug raids instead.

What, dear readers, have you learned from the LFD system?  Do share your stories!