Day 2254, Ran out of Food. Hunter has been eying my Bear Form :(

Merry Christmas! Yay for pagan holidays!

Update time. The new guild goes great. Feels like a better fit overall. They aren't as progressed as the previous, which in turn wasn't as progressed as the ... erm, preprevious? w/e

We went in and 2 shot Marrowgar though, so that was a nice change of pace. Plus there are a larger amount of people that lead raids in this guild, so no more of that, if soandso isn't on then we all just go kick rocks for the night.

Been diggin the new LFG, got my perky lil pug and my title and today, combined with our ICC and Weekly and Dailies I picked up my first new cloak! Which is a big deal since my luck on cloaks is matched only by my luck with bracers, which I DID eventually upgrade in FoS or PoS, I can't be bothered to remember. Good thing to, because those bands of the great tree were getting a little chaffy.

Anyone else a little miffed that Blizz is just dumping a million pets on us? I mean, I get making raiding easier, but jesus, now there's no real reason to be a pet collector. My BANK ALT has a half dozen already. Kinda irks me a bit.

But here's my big story of the day: Newbies.

Its great i can deck my tank spec in full t9. Its great my alts can be as geared as my main in a week. What isn't great is the people who don't know their class yet. Jumping in a HoR group is hit or miss. There are tons of players popping up now that have the gear, but have no skill to match it. It is like an influx of bad players. As the weeks continue, you will see this trend get worse, I'm sure. And Heaven help us if they implement the LFR feature.

Can you just imagine?

"Hey t9 mage, sheep X"

"Whats a sheep?"

"Hey, T9 Paladin, DI the healer"

"DUI? What are you asking me to do? I AIN'T BREAKIN THE LAW!"

"Brez the Healer!"

"Huh?"

"You know how to hold aggro right?"

"Sure, my main spec is unholy!"

*Wipe*

I know, I know, I'm a pessimist. But at least I set my expectations low. The WoW community in general has yet to let me down, only surprise me on occasion.I just don't have a high bar for people who can't spell "A Lot" properly.

I wanna hear your LFG stories! Good AND bad!

Blizzard goes elitist and Tanks get slapped

Here's a nifty note a lot of people miss:

ICC has bosses that do Gear Checks. WTF is a gear check? In Blizzard terms, a GC is something that a boss does from time to time to make sure you have the appropriate level gear for the instance and if you do not, it kills you. This check is random and completely sucks.

In normal terms: GEAR = SKILL LOLOLOLOL

I hate you blizzard. That's the biggest slap in the face, most elitest and hypocritical thing you have done to date.

Because of this ridiculous addition to the game, I had to deal with our Backup tank unknowingly wipe the raid 15 times. Yeah that was fun. More fun was when our OT, who was MT because our MT decided her head hurt.. again... decided that the wipes were a healing issue. Enter Angry Tree.

I wasn't mad because I got called out. I'm a big tree, I can handle it. I has liquor.

No, what pissed me off was that we had three healers, all who were running heals on her constantly, who she straight told sucked. Her exact words were, I went down because I had no heals.

No heals huh? You mean to tell me that all these heals and absorbs in my healing log are all made up? That this whole time we were bouncing around the room healing each other and forgot that there were tanks to heal? STFU, you selfcentered bitch. My healers are sending me tells complaining that no matter how hard they heal you, you still die. We even made the dps sit back and had the healers only heal the tanks. No dps, no crazy switching. Just tanking and healing. With THREE healers ONLY healing TWO tanks, somehow our tanks went SPLAT!

I can accept a mistake, but telling a healer who is healing you undeserved ass, that they aren't actually healing? Oooooooooooo. You just made my permanent shit list, bitch. Even if I wasn't the assigned healer, I KNOW your ass got healed. This from the same girl who quits raiding early because, I can't focus.

ITS BEEN 2 HOURS! WTF DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T FOCUS?!?!?!

/scream

I'm picking up tank gear now because I can't stand her attitude. I'LL tank in her place. I have two priests who want to heal and a pally who is awesome. I don't need your holier than thou attitude muckin up my raids.

Point of the story? DON'T PISS OFF YOUR HEALERS, YOUR ASS WILL GET BENCHED.

How To Win Frozen Halls

So some info on the new 5 mans.

Forge of Souls:

First boss, Bronjahm, targets a person who should then run to the edge of the room so that the little ball can either be killed before it heals him or so that the tank has more time to try and kite him away if you want to get the achievement.

Run in when he does his vortex and try not to get eaten by the fear into a vortex.

Strategy is simple:
Since you cannot stop the funk, you'll just have to get on up, get on the scene and kill him like a sex machine.

Turning on game sounds is a moral imperative.

2nd boss, Devourer of Souls. Casts TONS of Phantom Blasts on the tank, interrupt all of them for the achievement. Also they hurt tanks. When he jumps from person to person he drops a Well of Souls on the ground. Don't Stand In It. Lasts for 15 seconds, easier than anything to avoid.

MIRRORED SOUL. STOP DPS. COMPLETELY. All dmg done to him will be done to the target as well. As soon as it ends (There's a beam from him to his target) continue nuking.

Unleash Souls is just dumb. He makes a bunch of nontargetable mobs that you can ignore or kite if they hit you too hard. We just ignore them.

Wailing Souls. Think Mimi. Stay out of the blast and move around him.

Remember the Blast and the Mirrored Soul and he's a joke.


Pit of Saron:

First boss, Forge Master Garfrost, is easy. He melees and throws giant rocks. Don't stand under them, but hide behind them to keep permafrost below 8 stacks for the achievement. For the tank to drop it you'll need to burn him to 66% and then to 33% and hide behind a rock BEFORE you get 8 stacks.

He also checks his giant underpants to make sure they are clean.

Second Boss,  Ick. Pull the guys separately as they can be confusing when brought together. Basic Melee and Dodge Giant Blobs of Poison fight. He wil sometimes choose a player to attack and then chase after them, just run away.

He will cast a poison nova that must be avoided. Only an 18yrd range so just move back. 5 second cast.

Explosive Barrage is easy to fight through. He tosses exploding missiles on the ground where you stand, simply move away, wait for the next one to target you, run back and dps the boss, move away from the new ones, move back rinse and repeat.

Now before I mention the 3rd boss, I'd like to discuss the next 2 packs of mobs.

The first pack consists of 4 casters and a crazy witch lady. They suck for melee since the hellfire and when they all hellfire together they will kill you. It isn't too bad if your healer is good to have everyone grab their own target so they aren't together. When one hellfires, you just move to another until he is done or the other begins. Mostly it is a chaotic mess that ranged makes simpler.

The second set of mobs consist of 4 melee and 2 casters. The melee are whatever, but the casters do that annoying naga spell where they cast the ice on the ground and if you get caught in it you die.

Manage them and its cake.

Next is the tunnel TO the final boss. To get the achievement do as follows:

Gather up at the door, prehot/bubble/etc. RUN to the circle on the ground halfway through the tunnel while dodging the Hodir Styled Snowfalls, DON'T GET HIT, stand on the gaint circle under the menacing elemental that isn't there on regular so it scares the bejeezus out of your tank, and aoe them all down. The snow doesn't fall in this circle. Once you are done, heal back up, mobs will continue to spawn in front but not behind. When you are ready, rush the tunnel again and go all the way through it and stand just inside the bosses room, aoe them down. Accept Achievement.(You MUST kill all of them to get the achievement).

3rd boss, Tyrannus, is attackable by ranged during his blahblahblah scene, so have at him. The frost wyrm will spit frost on the ground which will hurt you if it hits you on the way down, so avoid those. Rimefang will target a player for an Icy Attack. Move away from other players as it will ice spike them as well.

Tyrannus will Empower, usually after Forceful Smash, Kite him. Think Anub. Run across the ice patch to slow him down and allow him to be kited.

Overlord's Brand. Any DPS who gets this must STOP DPS or you will kill your tank. Any Healer who gets this STOP HEALING or you will heal the boss. Kill, loot, get saved by your mistress of choice.

Halls of Reflection:

First Boss: Disconnect boss. To defeat this boss you must repeatedly throw yourself at the portal and pray you make it through.

Second Boss: Freeze Frame. This boss will randomly freeze the dungeon for 15 minutes. Immune to all spells and abilities.

Third Boss: RP Boss. To defeat this boss you must fight off Boredom which is cast on the raid. Once you defeat this boss you may face Falric.

Falric: This boss is wave 5 of 10. The first 4 waves are made up of different mobs. Kill the ranged with ranged, the mage will make a copy of itself, just move to the mage to kill both. Kill the priest, derr. Ranged can take out the riflemen. Standing in the hallway allows the tank to get all the aggro.Scourge Imprisonment is handy here.

When Falric become active he will attack. Counteract the fear as much s possible, Hopelessness will eventually reduce healing by 75% and dps by 60% as he loses health.

Repeat the gauntlet.

Marwyn: Don't dispel Shared Suffering unless you can handle the splash dmg, stay out of wells of corruption and extra heals on tank for obliterate.

Lich King:

Stay out of 10 yards from him. In order to get past the walls, you must defeat the waves of undead. Grab them and aoe or single target as you see fit. Keep them off the lady helping you and burn fast. You have 6 minutes to get the achievement. Make it to the end and you get the last boss.

Disconnet Boss Redux: Attempt to run up and collect your reward before the boss DC's you and freezes all the instance servers on your realm.

TIP: Levitate allows you to access the ship.

Hunters can haels lawlz

So I hate hunters now.

Last night we were bored after toc so we did sarth and naxx for some other guildies' achievements. Somehow one of our hunters decided he was going to give me a run for my money.

I was topping the healing meters in both healing and overhealing cause that's what I do. Both our priests were disc. One only HAS disc and the other refused to go holy for reasons only she knows and because she's RL friends with most of the guild so she does w/e the hell she wants. Of course this means I was doing 60% of the healing myself. Nothing more annoying than 2 disc in a 10 man imo. So anywho. I'm making the meters call me daddy when the hunter decideds to chain mend pet.

We ended sarth like this:

Hoshiko (That's me): 1.05 Million Healing 5.03 Million Overhealing
hunter in question: 1.05 Million Healing 5.01 Million Overhealing
Pure Disc Priest: 750 Thousand Healing 640 Thousand Absorbed
Stubborn Disc Priest: 700 Thousand Healing 660 Thousand Abosrbed

As you can see while both priests were doing roughly similar healing Myself and the HUNTER did 33.1% of the healing between us. THE HUNTER! Of course it reflected in his DPS because he forgot to turn Viper off so he could keep mana, sneaky bugger, and he fell to 2 dps and 3rd in overall damage.

Mend Pet is OP.






stupid hunters >.<

Surveys ahoy!

Restokin has put a survey for druids on the forums: here.

In case you've ever wondered how Keeva and Kae heal, they're both on page 4.

(^_^)



1. The type of content you expect to heal after patch 3.3 hits: __B__
A) Mostly 5-mans (little to no raiding)
B) Mostly 10-man raids, little to no 25-mans.
C) 25-man raids only.
D) Both 25 & 10-man raids.

2. If you plan to raid 10 and/or 25-man raids after patch 3.3, which raid dungeon do you expect to raid most often: __D,C,B__
A) Naxxramas
B) Ulduar
C) Trial of the Crusader
D) Icecrown Citadel

This question is tricky. ToC doesn't take much time to run as it is, and only the first wing of ICC will be available, so in all honesty, I think it will be a fair amount of equal raiding.

3. When healing in a raid, do you usually: __C___
A) Heal tanks
B) Heal raid members, but not tanks
C) Put HOTs on the tank and then focus on healing the raid members.
D) Only run 5-mans & don't run 10 or 25-man raids.
E) Other (describe what you do).

4. What heal do you use the most? (if you use healing meters, this would be the heal that makes up the greatest % of your healing done - can choose more than 1). _A,C,D__
A) Rejuvenation
B) Lifebloom
C) Wild growth
D) Nourish
E) Healing Touch
F) Regrowth

5. What heal do you use the least? (this would be the heal that makes up the lowest % of your healing done - can choose more than 1). ___E____
A) Rejuvenation
B) Lifebloom
C) Wild growth
D) Nourish
E) Healing Touch
F) Regrowth

6. Do you plan on using the glyph of rapid rejuvenation in 3.3? ___D____
A) Yes
B) No
C) Not sure
D) Sometimes, will swap in & out with another glyph depending on encounter.
E) Don't know what that glyph is or what it does

7. Do you plan on putting talent points in Celestial focus (from the balance tree) to increase your haste in patch 3.3? NOTE: the new haste soft-cap without CF is ~850. ___A____
A) Yes
B) No
C) Not sure

As my gear gains more haste, I'll start pulling points out of CF.

8. What gear set(s) do you hope you will acquire after patch 3.3 comes out? (you can select more than one answer) ___D____
A) At least 2 pieces of tier 7
B) At least 2 pieces of Tier 8
C) At least 2 pieces of tier 9
D) At least 2 pieces of tier 10
E) Not sure

9. Do you expect your healing style to change in patch 3.3? ___B___
A) Yes
B) No
C) not sure.

BONUS QUESTIONS:
What is your current healing style? (Describe) Full HoTs on the MT, All HoTs except LB on the OT, Rejuv likely targets for dmg, ALWAYS rejuv the melee, WG Melee on CD so they always have a HoT and to make the most benefit from Revitalize, except to accommodate raid dmg where needed, WG+Nourish the raid burst dmg, LB+Nourish on WG CD to get that extra HoT on them while WG is not usable and get an extra bloom in case Nourish doesn't get them topped, HT Bomb surprise nukes, SM on CD, where applicable, Innervate myself because the disc priest and Holy Pally never go oom. When the tanks are pulling taunt swap rotations, I'll Fully HoT whoever has the boss, and pre HoT the OT, when the taunt is about to occur I will roll LB on the next tank and let the bloom take care of that pesky "final dmg" swing the boss seems to always slip in. Regrowth + Rejuv through Incinerate Flesh. Rejuv on Snobold Targets. WG through Fires in VoA. On Ony, I'll put full HoTs on the tank and Rejuv the melee so I always have my proc and the melee can benefit from Revitalize. HT Bomb/SM to snipe heals and make my other healers cuss on vent :D

If you chose Yes for #9, how do you think your healing style will change (describe)? Unless I'm glyphed for RR it won't change, however, when I AM glyphed RR, I will drop Regrowth from my rotation in favor of RR + Nourish. In times where I glyph Regrowth, I will drop Rejuv in favor of Regrowth refreshes and Nourish. In cases where I glyph HT, I will drop WG in favor of HT+HoTs+Nourish spam on tanks.

Don't Turkey Me Bro

So let me tell you about MY day.

First off, I'm in a guild now that does 10 mans, and generally speaking its a fun guild and the people are fun and make me laugh while at the same time we get the job done. It isn't a hxc guild by any means, and it tends on the casual side, with people wanting to leave after 5 or 6 wipes on the same thing. So be it.

There's been a lot of clique-ishness going on as most of the raiders have friends in the guild they know in real life. In our progression raids alone we have 3 couples, one of which is ME!

There's one couple who actually are great players and have hxc mentality but are held back by a shoddy isp. One is a rogue and the other is a warlock. I have liked these two since I met them. Until tonight.

So we're in toc. We're at faction champs, marking and explaining for the new girl, who just happens to be a real life friend of one of the tanks. Its a long explanation, so we get bored. Turkeys and fires come out, pandas, lil kt's, furbolgs, flame dancers, disco balls, the Arch Mage, basically anything fun that we have, we play with when we wait.

This time, I opt for my trusty turkey shooter. I shoot the rogue. He removes the buff. I get an idea. I sneak over to him, pull out my own turkey, shoot him again and command that he make an army of turkeys for me by mating with my own little gobblenator. Someone else points out that the turkey pet is male because he "Senses HIS Destiny." and that this "mating" may not be fruitful. You know, just goofin off while we wait.

He logs out.

He then instructs his wife to tell us that "He came to raid, not to be turned into a turkey" and that "He mentioned in Gchat repeatedly that he did not want to be turned into a turkey".

I was not on for this, so I was unaware.

Here's my two cents:

So fucking what. Oh no, the big baby doesn't like being turkified! He hates this holiday because people turn him into a turkey. Tough shit, buddy. We standing here waiting for a ready check and decide to have a little fun and instead of saying something, you turn into a 5 year old and throw a tantrum. Had we had 2 more dps online, I would have straight said, fuck you, and brought someone who wasn't going to behave like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. The fact that you would hold up the raid because you felt that having you pixels redesigned, while not affecting you dps in any way I might add, was a slight to you, shows exactly how much you really wanted to raid. Save your little PMS drama session for a pug. This is a guild run and we're all friends here. But YOU have to be a big ole drama queen and fuck the fun right out the window like a bad porno.

I lost almost ALL the respect I had for these two tonight. One for being a wet blanket and the other for making things worse. When my gf behaves like a spoiled princess, I call her on it. When I act like an unreasonable douche, she calls ME on it. But instead of saying, "Hey honey, stfu and stop being a big baby." she goes and placates his childish behavior.

And even AFTER I told him all he had to do was /t me he didn't like that, he still decided airing laundry in raid chat was the proper way to handle things.

I will not apologize for my actions. Although, I had to fight the urge to use the remaining 6 in my bags to fuck with him all night.

It made me realize that, this may not be the guild for us. If such a little thing like that can turn a friend into a foe, then there's more drma here than meets the eye. These waters are dark and the kraken that lie beneath these waves may be bigger than I had originally thought.

Twilight Cultists

Don't you just wanna AOE them all down?

AMG Wats yer gear skore?!?!

Having played through Ulduar enough to know that gear doesn't mean jack shit unless you are doing hard modes, I often become enraged when I see the following in trade:

LFM 10/25 Uld pst with spec, must have xxxx gear score.

I mean, come on. This is lol raiding at its best. Harder than Naxx, yet so easy an idiot can get epic'd in a week. Don't believe me? Fair enough, most people don't.

However, I am not the only person that thought this. Enter Greedy Goblin. His guild got so upset about this nonsense that they went all out and got themselves some ilvl 200 and below BLUE gear. Not one epic. None. Zilch. They made sure they were "undergeared". The result?



This needs more exposure. Especially since everyone who can't down Yogg complains about "gear".

Ugly Ass Hats, Retarded Ideas, and Sexy Bonuses.

So, yeah. There's that.
Fucking ugly ass thorns. Seriously, what the hell is that? Did I get some sort of disease on my face? That's not even badass. Who the fuck would be afraid of a walking growth? I may have to get tested...

• Druid T10 Restoration 2P Bonus – The healing granted by your Wild Growth spell reduces 0% less over time.
• Druid T10 Restoration 4P Bonus – Each time your Rejuvenation spell heals a target, it has a 2% chance to jump to a new target at full duration.
  


• Druid T10 Balance 2P Bonus – When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 10% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 sec.
• Druid T10 Balance 4P Bonus – Reduces the cooldown on your Eclipse talent by 6000.
  


• Druid T10 Feral 2P Bonus – Your Swipe (Bear) and Lacerate abilities deal 20% additional damage and the cost of your Rip ability is reduced by 10 energy.
• Druid T10 Feral 4P Bonus – Your Enrage ability no longer decreases your armor and instead decreases all damage taken by 12%, and the periodic damage done by your Rake ability can now be a critical strike.


So yeah, there's THAT. Now THOSE are sexy. SEXY.

Preliminary, obviously.

Hot on the heels of this is the talk of HoTs being allowed to be affected by Haste.

So let's discuss that.


Currently, Rejuv ticks for 12 seconds.
That's tick tick heal, tick tick heal, tick tick heal, tick tick heal. Refresh

By adding Haste, You could get:
tick heal, tick heal, tick heal, refresh

By adding more you could get:
tickheal, tickheal, refresh

Sooo, what we have here is something interesting. You can have a smooth and steady 12 second rejuv that heals every 3 seconds, OR you can have a quick bursty rejuv that heals every 2 seconds for 6 seconds, OR you can have a retarded rejuv that heals every .365 seconds for 1.5 seconds.

Obviously you can easily get carried away by your haste. If you have too much haste you'll be spamming rejuv nonstop just to keep it up, in an encounter that has retarded amounts of dmg I can see this being useful...Yeah no. Let's get real here.

Even if having a 3 second rejuv WERE beneficial, the benefits would be lost because your spamming 18% of your mana every 3 seconds as opposed to spamming 18% mana every 12 seconds. We'd literally be making sure our haste is at a specific amount in order to maximize our healing vs mana output.

You can take your hasted rejuv and stick it where you stuck my old school (And PERFECT, by the way)Lifebloom.

Dumbest thing I think I ever heard. Seriously Blizzard, stop listening to the player base on new spell mechanics. Most of us are just not what you would call... well smart.


...grumblegrumble... hasted rejuvs... pfft.



Nerfs ahoy!

Rejuv gets nerf-er fixed?

Rejuvenation now heals 1352 over 12 sec. (Down from 1690 over 15 sec)

Genesis gets nerfed for teh kittens:

Genesis now increases the damage and healing done by your periodic spell damage and healing effects. (Old - All periodic damage)

Nature's Grace + Criting Rejuvs gets the nerf bat:

Nature's Grace now procs from non-periodic spell criticals. (Old - All spell criticals)

Little blue bastards >.<

The Story of Truth

Gather around, My Children, fore I must speak.

There are some things that I have come to KNOW. These things have always been permanent and were basically set in stone.

This no longer applies.

I'm not sure if I am the only person out there who noticed the change when it happened but it made me remember being on the other side of the same situation many moons ago.

To understand this story, we must go back to the beginning. Back before Arthas sent a horde of flesh eating zombies to ravage our beloved homes. Back further than the days when Illidan was still conquering our brothers' and sisters' ancient homeworld and turning its people into demonic slaves and sacrifices. Back to the days of an old wound that will soon rip itself open visiting a deadly and life changing cataclysm to everything we hold dear.

Many years ago, there were a group of Dwarves who for one reason or another turned their backs on their brethren. These lost souls sought to form an alliance with the evil Black Dragon Flight. Their goals were to bring back their evil overlords and send the entirety of Azeroth to a burning and smoldering ruin. Back in those days, we were all fighting in the depths of the Molten Core to stop these nefarious plans from coming to fruition.

As we brought down the evil Black Dragon Flight, we were accosted be an evil force living beneath our very homelands. Bugs. Enchanted by the whisperings of the Old Gods, the Silithid grew strong and believed that by delivering the Old Gods back into our world, they, in turn, would become Gods. We fought long and hard in those days. But, certain truths were just that. Truths.

Warriors were our tanks. Priests were our healers. Warlocks used Soul Shards and summoned her allies to her feet. The idea that a priest would veer away from the light and turn to the darkness was utter rubbish. No druid would ever dream of standing before the hordes of darkness to protect his fellow heroes, they also healed us in our times of need as they were. There were no trees in those days. The idea of flying was dismissed as heresy and druids were dismissed as the bastard children of Elune for their inability to resurrect someone from the edge of death.

I had an acquaintance who longed to reach beyond the holy realms of the priests and tap into the darkness within. We went to our Commander and requested his acceptance. It was denied. The truths spoke for themselves. No Shadow Priest could ever, EVER, contribute enough damage to assist our forces in full on war. No Druid could ever, EVER hold an enemies attention long enough to slaughter his troops nor to allow us to fell him. Paladins were Alliance and Shaman were Horde. This was a simple fact and I was thanked to keep my rebellious ideas to myself.

In the face of the Legion, however, all this changed. Opposing factions embraced the ideologies of each other and came together to destroy a common foe. Flying became accepted as truth, aliens and outcasts were accepted as equals, Priests turned to the darkside, Druids grew brave enough to put themselves in harms way and believed in themselves enough to bring a soul back from an otherwise permanent sleep. These became truths, regardless of how fanciful they were deemed before. Some new truths came about.

Death Knights were evil and brought only horror and misery. Arthas was NOT a threat any longer. The two warring factions were further split by inner turmoil that ran amok in our sanctuary, Shattrath. Kael'thas was dead. The legion was defeated.

This set of truths would turn out later to be a falsity and the ground upon which these lies revealed themselves, also unearthed the hatred between the two opposing factions once again.

Then it happened. Everything we knew was shaken again. Arthas WAS in deed a real threat and he intended to mark this point by trying to destroy our entire world with flesh eating zombies in a full on invasion. The Alliance saw their long lost king returned to them, only to find he was more bloodthirsty than any horde. The Horde saw their leaders fighting amongst each other. Old Gods returned to destroy our souls, spiders clawed their way from the ground up and yet, new truths became as they are now. These truths stand on the verge of collapse. Why then, have I fought so hard to deny these new truths?

I know that within time, the darkest force our world has ever known will reenter our lives. He will succeed in the destruction of our beloved home. Peace will be a distant memory. The prophecies speak these truths.

Azeroth will weep in pain and suffering. Our darkest foes shall rise again. The earth will erupt in pain and fire. The oceans shall rise and swallow the surrounding lands. New alliances shall be made, and the heroes of our world will rise to the challenge. When they rise, it shall be as new heroes.

I have to accept these truths, as do you. Death Knights, having served their purpose, will remain amongst us. We will fight our way through the destruction and learn new Paths that we must walk. The dark and mysterious Worgen and the crafty and financially savvy Goblins will both be a part of our wars. Gnomes will embrace the light, dwarves shall embrace the earth which bred them. Tauren will embrace the light as well and there will be many trolls.

There may come a time when we no longer shapeshift into a tree. There may be a time when we may no longer shapeshift into anything. A day may come when we are no longer needed. I must accept these truths, as do you, but not as truths. Oh no, my children. We must accept these things as life. An ever changing life.

As a druid, it is my duty to embrace the entirety of life, all its glorious moments and all of its darkest tragedy. The world in which we exist, is a living, breathing world that changes on a whim. The future that was once so certain, has no longer remained that way. As druids, we MUST adapt to these changing times in kind. As our forms shift, so must our minds. Do not dismiss things because the truths have always been as such.

Truth is not a constant. Truth is just as changing as the winds in our leaves.

Remember this, My Children, as this is the most important lesson of life:

The only constant, is change.

Busy Blah Blah Blah

Been busy lately. Here's a rundown:

Started up my guild, so far it is just two of us, but the idea is to build up a Casual Hardcore guild. What IS a Casual Hardcore guild, you ask? It is as it sounds. You take all the requirements of a HxC guild, Min/Maxing your gear, Class Knowledge, Strat Knowledge, Punctuality, Proper Gems/Enchants/Gear, Desire and Ambition. Then you take a Casual approach to raiding, 3 nights @ 4 hours. You basically have a guild full of people who play for fun, like to have a good time, joke around, but when it comes to raids /serious face. To make sure we hit the casual part on the head, we've basically decided on a Tue-Thur raid schedule, leaving people their weekends to go out, have fun, RP, PvP, w/e they want to do, Kirin Tor IS an RP server after all, and people do like their time off.

Working on dailies, mostly Argent Tourny stuff, its a helluva way to get city rep. Guess I never noticed on Notabear since he was an Ambassador before they added the title. Rep is still a pain in the butt.

Working on my gear. Trying to tackle two specs at once is tougher than I thought it would be. I usually make sure that I'm the only leather melee in a group and that Tenjo is the only caster, that way we get the loot we want if it drops. I pass on all healing gear unless she doesn't want it or has it. I use drops to build my kitty set and badges for my healing set. As you can imagine my healing set is superior to my melee set.

Here's what I have noticed. Bring a resto druid and a kitty and filling the group with a tank, ret pally, and another melee makes the runs fast and easy on everyone. We ended up farming heroics and I'm almost 2 piece bonus. (^_^)

Babies are BoP

Saw this on WoW Ladies and thought I'd share.

Drama Llama Visits Hoshiko

Woohoo! Recently 80 on my newest server and already I gots teh drama!!!!!!!

Oh drama, how I have missed you.

So, my g/f got invited to a pug Sarth+1 after an exceptionally executed ToC. I got jealous.

So I joined a pug Naxx. Mmmm Puggity Goodness.

Anywho, The Forethought Talisman dropped and My G/F who I got invited (Brownie Points to me) Rolls off against a priest. No big deal. Right? Wrong. The priest immediatly throws a fit because she won. "Do you even HAVE direct healing spells?"

Later it drops again, but the ML afk'd to a D/C. Everyone stays to wait, he doesn't come back so the RL has people roll. I win with the only roll. 30 minutes later the ML D/C's completely. 5 minutes later the priest says, "OK, I'm back. Did I win the Trinket?"

Me: No, I did. 32 minutes ago.
Him: WHAT?!?!? /bitchfest
The Raid: You weren't around for loot.

The next two hours were involved with GM tickets, the Priest who randomly got the RL AND ML spot from the D/C, inorite?, randomly kicking people who disagree with him and are on my side, which is everyone.

Here's A proper Breakdown:

Mytheral: I should get to roll since I wasn't around when YOU decided to do loot rolls.
Me: Um, no. See everyone else stuck around to do loot. You decided to afk during loot.
Mytheral: The ML Afk'd so that's not my problem, Its only fair I get to roll.
Death Knight: Who the fuck goes AFK during loot? What if he had come back before you did? Then what?
Mytheral: /kick DK
Me: great. You're a sore loser in hit gear >.<
Mytheral: I didn't lose. You guys didn't wait for me!
Me: You went afk for 28 minutes. 2 more minutes and you would have D/C'd. No RL in their right mind would hold up an entire raid for one single person who can't be bothered to be around for the loot they want. If it was THAT important to you, you should have waited like everyone else.
Mytheral: *Insert 20 minute complain session interspersed with a 10 minute fight in General with the people he kicked*
Me: You Have Mail. You have received Forethought Talisman.

I love idiots. They create drama. And me? Yeah, I'm like TNT.

ToC and Instance Servers Fixed.

So they finally fixed the instance servers. Thank God. Seriously.

So we decided to do some heroics like in the good ol' days. Turns out after doing the chick in ToC, heroics are fuckin' easy sauce. I'm talking rolling mobs left and right, and while I have some epics from ToC, I'm in mostly quest rewards still and not a damn thing is gemmed. Or threaded. Or meta'd. I mean I got enchants cause I do that sort of thing, but mostly, not a thing.

I have been filling out my resto set while going all cat claws to the face, mostly because my girlfriend does the healing. When I raid, it'll be as a tree, but for 5's I can be a kitten.

NOTES FOR NEW TREES ON TRIAL OF THE CHAMPION.

Learn to do the joust BEFORE going into ToC.
If you get knocked off your mount, quickly heal yourself on the way to a new one.
Champions can do the same, stand on them after they fall.
Verify with your group first if you are going to run out after the dismount or not.
Remember where the door is >.<
Remember to reequip your weapons.Kill order should usually be:
Rogue, Shaman, Warrior, Hunter, Mage. There will only be three.

Easy as Crumb Cake.

Second fight.

You get 3 trash groups. Healer, Pally, Monk. Usually in that order.
Go Left to Right so noone gets lolrolled by the boss.
Paletress or Eadric. Paletress is the chick and she sucks.

Eadric:
When the warning says shield your eyes, do that. In game obviously.
Hammer of LOL. Dispell it. PvP trinkets. Cleanse.
If you don't its easily a 15k hit.
If you do Button 1 on the quickbar throws the hammer back.
That's it.

Paletress:
Nuke her to 50%.
Ignore her.
An add will spawn somewhere.
Fear wards, tremor totems, etc can stop the fear.
Cannot be interrupted.
Renew can be dispelled.
Back on her.
This fight is the hardest of the bunch. Her renew is insane and the fear can cause problems. Her bubble reflects damage ala Disc Priest.
The add reduces cast time >.<

the Black Knight:

Group up for Wild Growth.
Barkskin, Nature's Grasp the ghoul.
Stay out of Desecrate.
/yawn

P2. Stay away from Army of the Dead.
/yawn

p3. Watch who has Marked for Death, they'll take lots of damage.
/yawn.

Collect Loot.

Regular ToC is the hardest Regular on par with Heroic Nexus.
heroic ToC is the hardest.

Instance Servers and You

Now that I'm gearing up my new druid, there have been some things I've taken notice of. Namely, this Too Many Instances nonsense has GOT to get taken care of. I could be in Ulduar gear already, but no, I have to spend 20 minutes humping an instance portal just to get in. Gearing up for Raids has never been harder. At least you can "Usually" get into Trial of the Champion without too much hassle and the gear there is fantastic for the budding tree, however, there's only 5 loot items available and of course, we share them with everyone.

How the TMI issue works:

Every battlegroup shares an instance server. With Wrath, a lot of people returned to WoW. With 3.2, they gave us reasons to farm certain instances for pets that are worth quite a bit of money. Everytime someone farms an instance locks 1 single instance slot. Assuming you have 5 people farming at least 1 instance per server, be it for ZG mounts, Dino pets, Raven mount, whatever, that means 5 locked instances PER realm. There are 18 realms in my battlegroup. 18*5=90 instances being locked out. Assume you have at least 3 major raids going on per day and you add 3*18=54 instances to the lockout. So now we're at 154 locked instances. Double that for the other faction for 308 locked instances. Now you also have to account for the heroic daily and the reg daily, which although they can be the same instance, we'll assume they are separate. We'll go ahead and assume 5 groups running one of those two dailies, times the realms and the factions, brings us to 398 instances being run at the same time. Heroic ToC and Reg ToC also add in because they are more likely to get you in, we'll assume 5 groups doing the heroic for another 180 instances being locked and then assume 5 groups for regular, even though everyone is farming the instance for drops/rep double that to 360. Bringing our grand total to about 758 instances. Throw in a few lowbie groups, runthroughs, solo runs, rep grinds, 10mans, and VoA runs, and you can hit well over 1000 instances being run per day.

1000 locked instances. Blizzard is in the process of upgrading their instance servers to handle the increased usage, but their timeframe is pathetic to say the least. 3 months? I'm supposed to gear up for raids when I'm fighting for instances for 3 months?

So what is a tree to do? How can YOU get the gear you want without the headache of 20 minute waits? The answer is as easy as TBC. Three little letter: P V P. I know, I know. Not everyone likes BGs, BUT, you can always get in them, even if you lose, you still get honor, and you can use that honor to buy PVP gear, which isn't as good as the PVE gear, but it is MosDef better than quest rewards. So, unless you want to farm up the money to get you some nice crafted gear, which is still an option, unless you are saving for epic flying, start hopping in those battlegrounds and make sure you hit up Wintergrasp every 2 hours.

5 more points and a treekin?

Keeva has a really good write up on Resto talents that most people ignore or otherwise say mean and dirty things about here. On her heels:

The contemplation as to what I will do at 85 has me perplexed. I don't get any new spells, only new talent points. Okay, I suppose, but I already have more points than I REALLY need. Or do I? 5 more levels means 5 more points. That means I could max out CF AND still get ET and NP, or maybe put more points into TS. I could even get IT if I wanted or IBS.

Then another thought dawned on me, with the proper spec setup you could be a boomkin AND a tree. You could swap to boomkin and help on trash without using Dual Spec. Sure, your boomkin may not be epic leet and all, but it just makes things go faster. You lose a DPS and now you aren't going to beat the enrage? /boomkin /pewpew.

You may lose some of your other talents, but with the upcoming changes to the talents overall, you may not notice. Though it does make one wonder as to what they are going to do to our trees. Too much speculation. Makes my leaves get all frizzled.

As a side note, they are nerfing 4pcT8 by 50%. It makes sense. Kinda stupid to have a 4pc so good that you don't stop wearing it. Ever.

Finally 80

W00t! Hoshiko is finally 80. That makes, what? 2 80 druids and another one coming as soon as I can be a Worgen. I really AM turning into Keeva. I think she's contagious.

When I went to respec I realized that I hadn't gotten any gear yet, so I just kept my MS Feral and my OS Resto. I'll just run dungeons as a kitteh and use the drops and badges for resto gear. She'll be as equally geared as Nota whitin the month. Kinda sad when ya think about it.

Some things that make me say, hmmm:

I know I'm strong and all, but serisouly, where do I keep these car partts I keep picking up? 30 Car parts seems like they would be heavy, and I just flew over and grabbed up a plane engine for Hemit that I'm not sure where I put.

How are there still mobs in the game? Hemit has hunted every single animal on Azeroth AND the Outlands. I was revisiting Nagrand just yesterday and thought it was very peaceful, until I realized there wasn't a living thing in the entire zone. I suppose that's why he's in Sholazar now, nothing else left to kill. I bet if we tell him the Lich King is a giant Rhino, he'll kill Arthas for us.

Why do I still have lowbie bags? >.<

2 Things

2 things for now.

1. My g/f farmed me a deviate hatchling yesterday. It took her all day long to get it. I love her so much (^_^)

2. I was not excited about the xpac until I got to SEE it in relative action. I may add Female Goblin Priest and Worgen Druid to my arsenal. I don't like trolls.

KHAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!

So. There I was: farming the Deviate Hatchling. I'd been farming him for 3 days now. That's over 40 runs. I was doing it on my Death Knight because my druid needed to level and had places she needed to be.

As I was coming around the back wall for the final stretch... it dropped.

I was so excited that I immediately opened my bags to verify that he was in there and without thinking about it... clicked on him.

My cheer of "whooo" immediately caught in my throat and changed to a loud AHHH!

My heart sank as I opened my pet tab and saw that, Yes, I am that stupid.

Now I have a stupid Death Knight with my little dinosaur while his TRUE owner sulks in Northrend.

I immediately opened a ticket to the GMs and tried to farm up another one, hoping my luck would come back. It did not. Quite the opposite in fact.

Too Many Instances. Additional Instances Cannot Be Launched. Please Try Again Later.

My last hope was the GM.

When the chime sounded and I realized there was a GM wanting to talk to me, I grew excited and let hope build up. Unfortunately, it came crashing down mere moments later when I was informed that, due to the fact that pets are tracked by achievements, they cannot replace a pet that has been learned. I even offered to delete the stupid evil Death knight Thief, but Alas, Andorhol, there was nothing he could do.

So, sulking I returned to my evil Knight of Darkness to resume her duties and farm up another Dino.

TOO MANY INSTANCES. ADDITIONAL INSTANCES CANNOT BE LAUNCHED. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.


Fuck you, too.

So close yet so far.

I should have been 80, again, already, but my g/fs comp decided to have a nervous breakdown and warrants a new power supply. So we've been down to one computer again for the last few days. This means that I haven't leveled since Saturday. It gets fixed today and hopefully this won't set us too far back.

So with that, I'll begin leveling again today and will be 80 in plenty of time for my Moose Hat. Oh, Moose Hat, how I have missed you. I guess that means anyone who kept their Moose Hat in the bank can now DE or Sell it.

Problems in Loretown

Half of the supposed leaks have me fuming, the other half have me excited. Let's start with my pent-up anger, cause you know, it's what I do.

Goblins. Really? Like the Horde really want their own Gnome race? After years of jokes about them being so small, now the Horde get a pint sized snack all their own? Here's the problem: Goblins are business... erm... things. They can't do business by aligning with one side or the other and if only PART of the Goblins merge then where does that leave the others? It is a stupid idea that lore does not support. Not to mention the fact that the lore that is supposed to work with this is flawed. According to various "leaks", Deathwing hunts the Goblins down and they run for their lives only to come across an Alliance ship which "apparently" has a captured Thrall on board. Yeah, we'll not focus on the fact that the Alliance managed to capture the leader of the Horde for a moment, but instead will focus on the ludicrous idea that the Goblins would even stop to help him by fighting off the Alliance while running for their lives to save a single orc and then siding with the Horde. There's also the fact that Thrall leaves the Horde, which makes one wonder why the Goblins would stay aligned with a faction when the leader they chose to follow leaves said faction. Apparently, Goblins get stupid in the expansion.

Worgen. We all know the Worgen are coming. Choosing a side is logical. Why they chose Alliance is a little... dumb, I guess is the word I am looking for. The Alliance hate foul creatures created by the dark magics of the world. The Horde seem to love them. Unless the Horde creates war on the Worgen and they turn to the Alliance for help, and then King Douchie-Douche, decides NOT to be a Douchie-Douche long enough to align with the forces of darkness that wiped out an entire city of humans just so he can fight with New Horde leader Douchie-McDouche. Good game plan.

Hellscream. Seriously? Thrall loves his people so much he abandons them and leaves Garrosh in charge? An orc so angry he has no understanding of politics and will just treat the Horde as an army, not to mention he slaughters the Tauren Chieftain for being anti-horde and allows his son to lead them, which makes sense, because no son would ever want to kill the man who betrayed his father.

Tauren Paladins. Fuck you. If you can't see the issue here, you are as dumb as the person who thought this was a good idea. Next we should make Night Elf Mages.

Night Elf Mages. Really? I can't hate this idea enough. First we take the Earth Lovers and give them a follower of the Light, which goes against everything the Tauren stand for and now we give the Earth Loving Magic Hating hippies a Magic Class and don't throw that whole, "Nelfs have priests" crap in my face. Priests follow Elune, that don't use "magic". Besides, Nelfs shunned magic and made people who liked or used it go to the Horde.

Things I like.

The whole planet getting fucked up. Hell yeah, let's destroy some shit. Blow up Black Rock Spire! Flood the Barrens! Make Azshara a lvl 10 zone... wait what? Oh well, flood the Blasted Lands. That will make the portal to the Dark portal a little interesting, no?

To be honest the only things I'm excited about is the world changing cataclysmic event. That sounds fun. The other ideas need to be burned alive.

And if Hellscream is in charge, I will never play my Tauren again.

Oh yeah! Picture of the New World!

Fuck you, Garrosh.

I have to get this off my chest.

How can one be a Resto Druid for the Horde in the future?

Thrall leaves and gives his seat of power to that Douche-bag garrosh? And then the fat faced pile of walking poo kills the Tauren Leader? Fuck that. I'd rather my leader be a stuckup and cockey sob. At least he didn't kill the leader of my people.

WTB New Faction of renegades.

Age Rage

Alright, I tried to play nicely with people and what did it get me? More irritation.

Why is it that whenever someone says something idiotic or immature, people automatically brand them as 12.

soandso says: I like touching your moms penis.
sumoneelse says: What are you, 12?

That's an example.

Here's my problem. Soandso is most likely late 20s early 30s or somewhere there abouts. He's obviously bored and wanted to start a troll war or thought he was being funny blahblahblah. Irrelevant.

Here's what IS relevant. You know those amazing players that are always mature, thoughtful, helpful, and generally amazing players? Yeah those are kids. They aren't online during the day because they were at work all day. They were in school.

When they say things like, school must be out, what they should say is, oh, there must not have been enough traffic cause Douchy McDouchums made it home from work in record time.

The most immature, hotheaded, and rude players that I have played with have all been late 20s through late 30s. They ALWAYS thought they were right regardless of how wrong they were. They cussed excessively, made references to porn, PLAYED porn on vent during raids, got hard-ons when girls talked in vent and then TALKED about their hard-ons over vent, never tipped, showed up late to raids, expected a spot, demanded loot, NEVER read boss strats, and more often than not weren't very good at the game in general. BUT, they were adults.

The most intelligent, kindhearted, fun, and thoughtful people that I have played with were usually under 18. Always early to raids with ALL the reagents and then some for those of us who were running late, always willing to pass on loot in favor of seeing content, always polite and respectful of others, never called people out for being terribad, learned their class better than they learned science, knew the strats and knew their role BEFORE we walked in the door, never spoke on vent because they didn't want to get made fun of by the older raiders, always willing to step down for another player, always ready to tip for everything, oh, and did I mention they were fun to play with?

The point is this:

Everyone gives kids a bad name, but remember that kids are better at games than adults. You know that druid that outhealed you, Mr. I'mTheBestHealerEver? He was 13. That hunter who managed to pull 8k dps on patch? That's his brother. 11. That twisted looking undead mage who keeps destroying you in arena? She's 8. That one person in trade who tries to calm everyone down and get trade normal again? Under 18. All the others that keep fanning the flames? 26, 32, 19, 23, 41.

People automatically start assuming that immature people are kids and the truth of the matter is they aren't. Those are full grown men claiming that girls can't raid. Those are CEOs of multinational corporations that are making those Chuck Norris jokes. That's an Air Traffic Controller who keeps putting Murloc in movie titles.

That guy who blew up in vent the other night because he was late to the raid and his spot wasn't ready for him still, 28 minutes later? He was 37. The guy that stepped out of the raid so he could have a spot? He was probably 15.

I have more respect for some of these kids than I do for these adults. So you know what? Call me a kid. Ask me if I'm 13. You know what I'm gonna say? Nothing. Because I'm not some lame ass adult who starts fights on the internet. I have more important things to do.


Now if you'll excuse me, I have to write about this in my diary...er, I mean my blog.


Totally different.

Its a Lizard Baby.

And she's all mine.


And all I had to do was hit 70 and goto Dalaran and buy her... seeing as how I can't get one to drop cause KEEVA >.< keeps taking them all. Big ol' Meanie Tree.

The UI. Again.

My new UI. All 5mb of it. Shown here in a fail BG with Target on top, ToT in the middle and Player Frame on the bottom. Target Cast bar is above the target frame. Player cast bar is below player and above raid frames.


Unit Frames - StufUF
Raid Frames - StufRaid
Mini Map - iMinimap
Action Bars - Bartender4
Buff Frame - rBuff
Combat Text - Mik'sScrollingBattleText
Chat Frame - Chatter
Data Text - LynStats
Viewport - Sunn & Sunnart

New Forms. New hatred.

My Nelf is white.

White bear. White cat.

I love the cat, I hate the bear.

There is no medium.

Alliance got screwed.

My cow is black.

Black cow. Black cat.

My cow looks like a badass.

I can have different color bear and cat forms.

I give it 5 months before they allow Nelfs to factor in skin tone as well. I really wanted to be a white kitty and a black bear.

Has anyone else noticed that the alliance forms look girlie and the horde forms look manly? I mean, I see a tauren cat and I think "That guy looks cool" or "Hey, he looks just like the old cat."

When I see the Nelf cat I think, "She's pretty."

Imagine my disappointment when that cute little purple kitten shifts into a dorky looking Nelf male. I HATE nelf men. The way they run, the way their hair looks. I always imagine the people playing them look just like them and that's not a good thing.

On a side note, Draenei men walk like they are walking on their tiptoes. It makes them look like they pooed their epic little pants.



SIDE TOPIC:

Just finished the quest in Zang where you turn into one of the bird guys from The Dark Crystal. They have a dance animation, a wave animation, and a kiss animation. The dance = amazing. I love Skettlebutts.

Screencap Quality and You

So you want to save some screenshots, but they look like a bunny ended up in the business end of a wood chipper. In the immortal words of Parker Lewis, Not a problem.

Simply use the following /cmnds and you'll have an aesthetically pleasing configuration of images that humans will go NUTS for.

/console screenshotFormat tga
/console screenshotQuality 10

If perchance you aren't into the whole, looking hot thing, you can use these:

/console screenshotFormat jpg
/console screenshotQuality 3

Format denotes the type of file your image will be saved as. tga is bigger and prettier but jpg is smaller and more compressed. The quality ranges from 1-10 with 10 bieng Jessica Alba and 1 being Seth Rogen.

Once you have selected your image quality and type, then you are on your way from misery to happiness today. If you selected jpg, you are ready to view rudimentary images in all their unsplended glory, but ready for instant upload to be shared with the whole world via blurry and inconclusive picturesqueness. (Yes, that's a word. No, you can't look it up.)

However, if you selected the oversized, bloated and lumbering sexiness that is tga, then you'll need some sort of convertor/viewer to actually SEE what ever it is you thought you saw. I suggest irfanview and recommend saving them as PNG. Sure, you have to do a few extra steps, but isn't it preferable to those jaded edges that make it look like you have some form of stage 7 diabetus exploding from your tree bark, scarring away the small woodland creatures that came to visit you during your glorified screen capture session? Yes, I think it is.

For the love of Elune, don't use Photoshop to convert your images. What are you, masochists?

Overheal HoT Proc Fix

We managed to get in a hotfix today that allows periodic healing ticks that were going to overheal entirely to go ahead and fire. Previously they did not fire. This means that effects that were able to proc from HoT ticks that did some healing can now also proc from HoT ticks that overheal completely. The most notable such effect is that Val'anyr's absorb shield should now work as advertised. All these ticks should now appear in the combat log as well, allowing you to get a fuller sense of your raw healing output from all sources.

Just thought I'd toss that out there.

Life After 3.2

Ok, so the big question is always what works, what doesn't work, where's all the new shit, how do I do this?

...

Well I suppose that's really 4 questions and yes, I had to go back and count those questions. It has been a long day.

So, what works:

Blizzard has copied ItemPriceTooltip which, I'll say it, is pretty poorly coded. However, if you aren't using a mod for that already, there you go. It works but it is incompatible with something or another.

Blizz also copied RatingBuster and EquipCompare. EquipCompare is now moot and you'll want to turn that or the equivalent off, less you get more errors and wasted memory usage. RatingBuster on the other hand is still very nice and I prefer it to the default Blizz one, sadly, now it fluctuates with memory and cpu usage with no particular rhyme or reason. You're pretty much stuck with the default one now.

What doesn't work:

Anything that was based on unit aggro colors and/or healing was pretty much bunked. Luckily Grid was updated for those of us that still use it. oUF on the other hand has issues. Not oUF itself, but a majority of the profiles that were created are now filled with one error or another. Of course this means that my oUF grid replacement is also kaput.

So, I went with StufUF. Turns out that while it is bigger than the other UFs, once you have it configured and set up it takes up less cpu/memory usage than almost ANY UF. It has its own Grid replacement as well and I have yet to encounter any issues.

Where's the New Hotness?

The orphans are in Dalaran and are easy enough to obtain. Flight form is in your trainers teachings and costs less than 3g. Breanni in Dal has your new dino, which you can also collect the rest by killing boss dinos and rare spawn dinos around the world. Mount trainer in Hippy Town has your ugly ass new tiger, while Brill has your new dead horse. Enjoy farming rep a la Wintersaber style to get your very own Ravasaur mount. For you Twinks out there, you'll want to gather up 10g and pay off the guy by the BG Masters so you don't unwittingly become the best geared lowbie in your next battleground. Gear Manager is better than ever as well.

How do I do this?

IoC? You'll want to read up on that, but basically, take the docks and the factory to win. Its a little lopsided atm. Fly? Get a 310% mount and do it like the big boys do it, only with druid "I-can-loot-shit-without-getting-aggro-aaaaand-go-sexy-fast" style. Heal? Stop using LB so much. Throw your hands up in defeat as Blizz does everything in their power to PROVE that Nourish is a great spell. Never mind that they slowly take away or destroy every other spell until we use that and only that. Then they'll nerf it because we don't use our other spells anymore. /sigh. The life of a druid.

Oh and don't forget to pick up your Cold Weather Flying Book so all your alt druids, I'm looking at YOU Keeva... and admittedly, myself, can fly the chilly skies with everyone else, only sooner.


Blahblahblah. More about me!

I LOVE my new kitty. I'll admit, I wasn't very happy with the forms at first, but seeing them in game is something all together different. Anyone else just want to grab their kitteh and huggle it? They look so soft and they make me think of my late kitty. Alliance only of course. Horde kitty is a scary and frightening badass that looks like he'd suddenly BAM! CAT CLAWS TO THE FACE!

I don't really like the bear form very much, not much of an improvement in that aspect, but I'm Notabear so, meh. WTB Apple Tree Form.

I'll snap some screenies of my new UI, which I now love. It only cost me 2 levels with distractions. OCD kicks in at times. Leveling in the Outlands with Bird Form is so Game Genie It isn't even funny. I'll be in Northrend before next weekend. I hope. Maybe then I can focus on what this blog will really be about. Healing. Cause we don't have enough resto druid blogs imo. Hopefully I can fill the niche of angry tree. Here's a pic!

Gogo Purple Kitteh

Also, gogoo Broken Blizz Ui.

Yup, Blizzard erroneously wrote the code for their ItemPriceTooltip Ripoff and now there's this redunckulous error floating around in my buggrabber. Thanks for that. My own IPTT was working just fine.

Also, thanks for ripping off DruidManaBar. You even managed to make it look identical to the original author's. Very pro ninja.

Also with the change to mob difficulty levels, there have been some errors with ouf. Not anything important, just a slight graphical issue that only slightly annoys me. There is also an error with Postal. And TomTom. And Grid.

Not at the front of this content push, but then, I don't really care. The pro side to this patch is I hit 60 on Monday. Now I has cheap mount and lvl 60 birdo form.

New Druid, New UI. WIP.

I know I know. I said that I'd get to talking about my replacement for Grid, but leveling is a pure pain. WTB 500 Badge Scroll of Instant 60.

Well, truth be told, I have found that leveling has given me the chance to redo my UI almost entirely. I've been looking into a lot of different mods and addons in an effort to reduce the memory/cpu usage and increase my latency and fps. What I have noticed is that a lot of my favorite addons are HUGE. So I thought I'd offer some tips on how to spot a good, great, or bad addon.

Tip Numero Uno: Lua Configs. Using an addon that utilizes the LUA without adding /commands or a waterfall config option generally reduces the amount of memory being used. For example: Pitbull is a very heavy UF mod. The memory usage is through the roof and can hog your cpu resources and reduce your effectiveness with healing or more dramatically with your dps. oUF on the other hand is a very small addon. Pulling a number out of my ass, results in around a 70-80% smaller addon. The trade offs?

1)All customization is done through the lua. There are no /cmds, no waterfall configs, nothing. You have to open the lua and adjust the code yourself. Daunting? Absolutely. Worth it? More than you know.

2)User Friendliness. Dear God. You have no idea what it feels like to be completely stupid. If you know nothing about lua configuring, prepare to feel like you failed Kindergarten Math. It takes a lot of research, trial and error, and scrutiny to learn how to edit and configure other people's codes if you have no experience in it. But the results are truly amazing. Plus you get to get smarterer.

Tip Numero Uno, Pt. II: Usefulness. Yeah yeah. I get it, Sexymap is highly configurable, looks pretty, does what you want it to do, blahblahblah, and uses at or more than 1mb of memory. dMinimap2 is functional, simplistic, movable, has different designs and uses around 8kb of memory. Do the DO the same thing? Yes. Do I really need a spinning circle to grace the edges of my minimap? No, not really. Will using a more minimalistic minimap help me heal better? Unless I'm running the best machine on the market? Yes.

Wait, what? How can using a smaller addon make me a better healer?

Ah, and there begins the lesson, young padawan.

Let's say you have a very nice 32ms or lower-WAIT! How did you get your ms so low?

Oh, I chose my realm based on geography, ping, and timezone. I picked a realm that was within my interests, progression, and timezone, not to mention one with low latency, rather than the one that sounded the nicest.

Anywho, as I was saying, low ms, but you have low fps as well. Low fps means you have a slightly lower reaction time than someone who has high fps. The reasoning is simple, you react to what you see. If what you see is delayed, so is your reaction. This means you have to heal around your own poor fps by planning ahead. You'll still miss a lot of CDs, sometimes you may rehot someone you already hotted, etc. The resolution to this is to start going through your addons and replacing them with smaller, more lightweight addons that don't eat up your cpu.

I, myself, have a single core processor. I know, those were outdated back before Ozzy got his own TV show. My g/f has a dual core. she also has the good gfx card that shits on her and makes her have to restart her pc. Interesting tradeoff to say the least.

Anyway, as a single core user, I NEED every bit of cpu I can get. I was running around 26mb of memory usage healing in Naxx and Ulduar. In Naxx I was the best healer. In Ulduar I got roflstomped by another druid who did everything the same as I did. I now use 3mb and have all the functionality I had when I was using 26mb.

While leveling, I have a few addons turned on that I would otherwise not have. Things like Carbonite (10mb), Lightheaded (26mb), Tourguide (6mb), Tomtom (1mb). I use these, because I'm the one who does the guide. My g/f levels with me using 3mb at the most. Being a gentleman, or at least the one who lost the bet, I carry the weight of the world on my cpu.

I've been messing around with my UI as of late and have a strange attraction to viewports. here is what I level with:

WIP pt1

You'll notice I don't like anything covering my gameplay area. Using Sunn viewport, I've reduced the area on my screen that is rendered. I put my addons on the area that is not rendered and I use SunnViewportArt to make it more than just black bars. I'll probably change the art a million time before next week, but that isn't the point.

Currently, I'm still using bartender. I'm looking into other bar mods and I'm thinking Barkeep will be my replacement for it, but I haven't decided on anything for certain yet. Professions are faded out on the top left where carbonite is sitting, hogging my memory. The Top right is where my buffs are faded out and also where rBuff is located. The top center is housing Tomtom and tourguide. The Unit Frames are oUF Maneut, though I need to move the cast bar a little, it cuts off some of the numbers, but nothing to worrisome, just aesthetics. The bottom left is Chatter, which will likely be replaced by pChat and and redo of my Master Fonts. The bottom center is where Bartender sits. There are a few other bars around those visible that I keep faded for aesthetics. The bottom right is where the map sits and also where my minibar and bags are faded out. I'm currently using tiptac for my tooltips but I may switch to the smaller tiptop addon. That mysterious big black space beside the minimap is where oUF Maneut Raid goes, which is the grid replacement. Still use Clique with that.

Grid is sex, but it is too heavy. I wanted something that could give me the functionality of Grid without the lumbering colossus that is the addon's size.

I'll keep updates on the changes I make and the performance that is derived from said changes. On a sidenote, my g/f hates veiwports and is trying to make me get rid of them. I just hate seeing shit underneath my frames, they distract me. I may use kgpanels in the future, but we'll see what I come up with. More to come and a bonus screenie:

A Tail of Two Druids.

Everything Old is New Again

Well, I've been leveling like a crazy person and now my shiny new elf cat is 38. Or 39. I can't remember, it's kind of a blur. My g/f and I have been leveling our druids together and she recently went balance while I stayed feral and it's been a amazingly fast experience. Since Notabear, I've made some changes so as not to make the same mistakes.

1) Enchanting. I am so sick of never having an enchanter around when I really need one.
2) Jewelcrafting. See above. Although right now I am a scribe because the glyphs were all OP and I am now poor.
3) Use a proxy. I have a DK solely for the purpose of herbing and mining. It makes gathering easy for now with On a Pale Horse and leaves my druid free to take two crafting profs and thereby increases my HPS by 56 instead of 28.
4) UI. I was always happy with Nota's UI but then I rerolled and distracted myself with new UIs for a bit. There are things. Let me tell you. Grid? Replaced. That's right. RE - PLACED. I'll give some more info on my new UI a bit later, after lunch and leveling. It uses a LOT less memory than before so it is nice. I mean I AM using 26 MB atm because of Carbonite, Lightheaded, Tour Guide, and TomTom, but those are for leveling (^_^ )y

But, a bit of bad news. My mouse died >.< Stupid cheap ass Micro Innovations from Walmart. I believe they're called Design Innovations or some nonsense now. DO NOT BUY THEM.

I'm using an emergency back up mouse but this cause problems. You see, my mouse and keyboard use the same USB Input. The emergency mouse uses a separate one. Replacing my mouse will still leave me with another mouse on the comp that I have to keep battery-less lest I get feedback from the old one. Getting a new keyboard is the next step, but I've been using this one sans the Down and Right key. I know, it IS problamtic but I've healed all of Ulduar without them so meh.

Anywho, once I get my new mouse, hopefully with 5+ buttons because I miss them very much, I'll post my new UI info and a review of the cheap mouse I get (^_^)b