Sunday 29 June 2008
A date with Archimonde
Anyway, so tonight was another night of wipes in the name of learning the fight. I think I have it pretty much well documented in my head, it is merely putting it into practice that makes it so hard!
The main aim: Survive
Survive through the Air Bursts, Doomfire, Fears and Curses that he throws at you. It's not a DPS race, nor anything overly complicated, just...difficult.
There really is no use being in Tree form for this fight with all the movement needed and decursing going on so it was caster form all night, and kitty for the falls!
Stay with group (in tonight's case I was with the hunters) run away from Doomfire, check!
Hit Tears of the Goddess at exactly the right time as I fall from Airburst to survive, check again.
I actually find this part of the fight quite fun, and as much as I hate to admit it, I actually get the stomach churning feeling that i'm actually falling myself when I'm falling. Another thing worth noting is that Kitty form is also very helpful if you happen to use the Tears too early and are in danger of dieing.
Heal tank and group, decurse group, check.
The fears are what I need that *lovely* PVP trinket for, which after two hours tonight I am only 2k honour away from, apart from a possible Magtheridon GEM run tomorrow night the PVP trinket is what I'm logging on for next!
Basically, we all know what we're doing now, it's just the matter of us practicing till it's perfect as the old saying goes. Tonight our best attempt was 67%, we managed to get it slightly down from our last attempt which is always a good thing.
One important thing I did learn:
If you are about to wipe...die in the Doomfire! It really reduces the cost of repair bills :P The one good thing about this fight!
My repair bill, post Fire Death.
And glancing back through my old screenshots I found some of Brennus (the other bear druid half) when he managed to get into Hyjal in the present day.
Archimonde's skeleton above Brenn's kitty's butt, proof that he can and WILL be killed eventually ^^
PVP Speed!
Wednesday 25 June 2008
To haste or not to haste?
With the amount I'm raiding at the moment I'm gathering up a fair bit of DKP, and not spending it as all who know me would testify, my luck with drops is horrendous! I'm now trying to decide whether to actively seek out spell haste items in various places. I'm fairly comfortable with my mana pool even though my mp5 at the moment isn't as high as other resto druids, it's very rare I actually have to Innervate or take pots, so to lose some mp5 on items wouldn't be that much of a big deal to me.
The two other main questions I ask myself are this: Would the raid team benefit from my lowered global cooldown, my ability to stack more lifeblooms and also to pop a swiftmend if the situation arose? Now I think the answer to this is a resounding yes.
The next question is do I have the time and resources to actively seek out +haste pieces, to acquire enough of them to get my haste rating to at least 180 to be of any use, then enchant etc? Well I am a leatherworker, not a very good one, I've never seemed to be able to grind enough to get past the 350 mark. I chose Leatherworking for Aedos when she was levelling as Feral, and though I knew there wasn't much in the way of healing gear I could make when I did respecc, I kept leatherworking as my profession anyway. So the guild bank currently has three of these recipes: Shoulderpads of Renewed Life sitting gathering dust, and if I was at 375 LW, for a mere 10 dkp these would be a steal! The big problems, no I'm not 375, and no there are no spare Hearts of Darkness in the guild bank to use. So a big sad face here =( However in the raids I'm doing there are a few items that may drop, so I can wait for these or spend some more badges
One nice haste badge item:
Cloak of Swift Reprieve for 60 Heroic Badges
An item I already have that provides haste is my Kharma's Ring of Fate from normal MgT. However this really wouldn't add up to much for now, so it would take some time for me to be fully haste geared up! Now next week will be Aedos' first Zul'Aman run as it had been taken off our raiding roster when I began raiding with her, and now our resident Paladin tank Woody has started some GEM runs up. I know of a few haste items that drop there, cant remember the names but I might edit them in if i do! I just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope my luck with drops improves.
So I think I've decided that I will try to gather as much +haste items as I can, also trying to level Leatherworking at a steady state so that maybe some day I can get that pattern, hopefully this will all be before Wotlk and before we all start replacing our epics with Northrend greens!
Tuesday 24 June 2008
Fun with Clay
But I've decided my first project is going to be a World of Warcraft charm bracelet ^^
After studying illustration at uni I haven't really been doing much in the way of "art" lately, but now this is my chance. I need to think of some charms that would represent things I love in WoW. I think today, since I still don't feel that great, I'll work on some sketches of charms I'd like to try and make, Leaves, a a little dagger, a hearthstone etc! I'm not going to try and make them commercially or anything, just a little fun thing for myself to work on anytime I get bored, and to post about when I'm not doing anything interesting in WoW.
Saturday 21 June 2008
The Party Never Stops!
Second, after spending 150 badges on her Gavel of Naaru blessings, Aedos finally managed to save up 41 more for her first epic healing trinket, the Essence of the Martyr, getting her + healing up to 1753 unbuffed. Now I know most people will be like "Huh? Healing BT and MH with only that crappy +healing?" But since we have effectively stopped doing Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep, our Guild Leader had decided she didn't need me in incredibly amazing gear, just enough to get my Lifebloom ticking decently and to be useful, and to pick up as much new gear as I can to improve that way. So after one raid with my new trink I managed to break my effective heal record to over 2 million! Which I'm very happy about!
Next, after some very long Alterac Valley's and one very annoying and extremely boring Arathi Basin I have managed to get my honour to this:
A Note For Brennus:
Monday 16 June 2008
Ahh...
After seeing the WoW Web Stats from last night I have to say I'm suitably impressed with myself! A few times I have looked at the WWS and been upset with myself as I've been quite low. But I always overlooked the fact that as of yet, I don't have any healing trinkets, I also have a few pieces of low level gear and not as much + heal as everyone else. I also just looked at the first page of WWS and thought "Great, I suck!"
But after listening to my boyfriend, and reading an interesting post at 4 Haelz all about healing meters I decided to take all the advice Bellwether gives into account when I look at the meters.
I looked through all the attempts individually, and as it turns out, I did do really well! take for example the kill of Akama where I was second! Also out of the, ahem, 10 attempts we had on Teron I was in the top three during 6 out of 10 tries.
Now I'm definitely not trying to be big headed, I'm not desperate to top the healing meters or be like "Ha! I are better than you!" I'm just so pleased that I'm managing to perform well in amongst better geared healers, I have honed my healing techniques and now they really seem to make a difference during raids! In the end, all I really want is to be helpful in the guild progressing and make myself an effective and useful healer. It seems I'm on the right track for now ^^
A Picture Tells a Thousand Words
Last night Soldiers of Azeroth descended upon the Black Temple, our objective was to defeat Shade of Akama, Teron Gorefiend and possibly more. But some bad luck was thrown our way and although we got Akama down (with only plate loot I might add *sigh*) We continued to spend the rest of the night wiping on Gorefiend.
I have to admit, last night my mind was elsewhere, during the very long trash clear from Akama up to Gorefiend I did in fact use one hand for healing the raid, the other for tapping my DS as I gathered fruit in Animal Crossing *blush* Even with my giant buttons and timers on UI I let a few of my Lifebloom stacks fall off, but that's what happens when you don't pay attention! The trash clear was no problem, lots of nice gems dropping , and eventually we got to Gorefiend.
As any BT raider will know the biggest problem of this fight is the Shadow of Death Debuff which any member of the raid can get. The fight is a simple DPS race with the awful Shadow of Death, which when you die, turns you into a ghost, responsible for killing "Constructs" who, when they get into the raid can cause scary damage. There's also an Incinerate which if it isn't dispelled quickly enough can easily one-shot someone who isn't at full health. When I first tried Teron Gorefiend on the very first time we killed him we had wiped a few times, but by the time of our last try a lot of people had got the hang of killing their ghosts before they got into the raid and we managed to get him down in a last minute special. I also died at the very last moment!
However I never got the debuff and so had never had a proper go of killing the Constructs. I've tried the flash game and was awful at it, I've watched video's on how to defeat them but there's nothing like practice to get you truly prepared. The flash game scares me since I'm so bad at it I figure there's no way I could kill the constructs in the real raid. Brennus assures me the real version is much easier, but I'm not convinced.
Again last night, I never got an attempt at them. This was both a good and a bad thing. A good thing because I didn't have to face being embarrassed and saying "Honest, i killed my constructs!"
I had already planned that if I DID get the Debuff and got my constructs into the raid my response was going to be this :
"Ok, I'm the only person all night who is admitting - Yes those were my constructs in the raid, I didn't manage to kill them all, I knew I would be rubbish"
Eventually, after many wipes, we called it a night since we had respawns and no one up by gorefiend to res or summon the rest of us.
Sunday 15 June 2008
Things I've never noticed before
The Quest Log minus quests!
I've been playing this game since 2005, rolled countless alts, and yet had never seen the funky spider web and pattern on an empty quest log!
Eep, must run now, Black Temple awaits! Will post later and report on my encounter with the scary ghostie things during Teron Gorefiend!
Saturday 14 June 2008
What Is a Girl to do?
Well real life has thrown a nice surprise recently, my boyfriend and I are both moving soon. I got this info on Friday, and have been joyous ever since! Also I decided to do some more work so I'd have more money to take with me. So this has left me ignoring WoW for the past few days, and also, now that I have time to play again, I really can't decide what to do!
Now tomorrow Aedos is raiding, (Black Temple) but I think I would rather have spent my evening doing something more constructive. I have several goals at the moment which I'm hoping to start ticking off soon! These are a few of them, in no particular order:
1. Get Aedos Swift Flight Form!
Ok Aedos has been 70 for around 4 months now, and in that time I really haven't done anything with her except raid. And with raiding and gearing up comes the expense of gems, primal's etc. She has hardly done any dailies or quests since as resto, it's quite painful! So she really hasn't accumulated masses of wealth. Loukya has her Swift Gryphon, which really comes in handy for her as a herbalist, gathering herbs is a much easier affair when I can zoom round the outlands at 280% speed. She enjoys laughing at Aedos' expense over this, as she's a bit grumpy at her for stealing her raid places.
I didn't really feel the need for Aedos to have swift form when I started raiding with her, but now I feel so slow and inferior compared to everyone else! I'm fed up having to log ten minutes earlier than everyone else to make it to the raid entrance on time. And it is quite infuriating switching from Loukya and her speediness to Aedos and her slowness.
So I guess the thing I should do here is to start doing dailies every day (Which I dont do at the moment, I'm lucky if i get one set of SSO dailies done in a week!) And I shall do them with both Loukya and Aedos! I also will start using Loukya's alchemy more, making pots elixirs etc to sell on the AH could prove quite profitable, this is something else I will try to do every day...eek! I'm going to start this on Monday and I'll record my progress as I go along. As of today...4000 gold to go!
2. Aedos needs her PVP Trinket!
Most of these little goals are Aedos based. This one is to improve her Raiding.
When I started raiding Mount Hyjal I was told that to start off with I'd be fine, but eventually I'd need to get Medallion Of The Alliance for Rage Winterchill and eventually Archimonde. So far I haven't got it *blush* I've been feared around and killed too many times now without it and now as the guild is starting to get better at Archimonde now really is the time to get this darn trinket.
Now I really have an aversion to PVP, maybe it's just because I haven't done any. Brennus and I did a quick AV one night, it wasn't too bad I guess, I don't like being killed, I didn't really know what to do, but I got some honor! But the time has come for me to be brave and venture out into the world of PVP myself, I can't have Brennus holding my hand the whole time. Again, I'm going to try and do a bit of Battlegrounds every few days, and try and slowly get my honour up hopefully before I die too much in raids!
3. Start Loukya on some PVP and generally improve her gear.
Now even though I've said I have an aversion to PVP I'm going to persevere and force myself to enjoy it. Loukya is going to start doing some PVP to hopefully improve her gear, so she doesn't feel as insignificant anymore! I guess I could do a few heroics as well, but it's really finding the time to do all these things which is the hard part! Also a nice little respec to subtlety or something might be a nice change for me This isn't really one of the most important goals I want to finish, but it would be nice to get rid of the last couple of pesky blues I have. Also so I can run past my fellow rogues in the Guild and feel like I'm on par with them again gear and DPS wise ^^
4. Improve Aedos' UI
When raiding with Loukya my UI was as plain as it comes. The bog standard Blizzard affair with a damage meter and slightly more funky moving avatar pics thrown in. I was advised by a few fellow healers in my guild to use a few addons with Aedos, such as Grid and a HoTtimer, both of which I have installed. I started playing about with bartender too, moving my one bar into three and pushing my macro's all over the place. The only problem with my current UI is this. It's far too cluttered, I only have a small space on screen where nothing is happening. One problem I have is that I can't see well without my glasses on. Playing WoW without them is doable but I have to have all my buttons and Grid pretty big to see them well enough. I have contact lenses, but they get dry and irritating after a while and I usually have to take them out during raids. But the other annoyance is my big Stereo Headphones, the only ones which don't hurt my ears, push my glasses into the sides of my head and hurt! Therefore I usually play kinda blind. So I need my stuff kinda big, but I also want to see more of my screen.
So in the middle of the week I'm going to reduce all my buttons and Macro's to just essentials, get Grid and my HoT timers as small as I can, and also get used to using it like this before the next raid!
Ok this is definitely a big enough post. I really need to sleep but had to get all this out quickly before I forgot! There are other things I need to achieve soon, but for now these few will do! I'll maybe post about the others when I have a spare hour. Anyway, sleep calls, I shall report on how I get along with all these things later.
Wednesday 11 June 2008
A Little Bit About Aedos
As I've already mentioned in my last post, while levelling my rogue I met lots of great people, the most important of which was Brennus my cuddly feral druid boyfriend.
I had already created a Druid out of interest but hadn't got her past level 10, after I met Brennus though I was inspired to level her. We first met in Dun Modr where I was struggling with Loukya to kill some Elite Dwarves. Politely asking for assistance on /guild I was answered by Brennus who was in the area and came to help. Now this isn't much about my druid yet but it's relevant honest!
So yeah, I was enthralled by watching him dash around in cat form grabbing lots of dwarves then changing into bear as he killed the whole mob one by one. "Wow!" I thought to myself, "I want to be a kitty and a bear!" So the levelling with Aedos began after that, very slowly! I specced Feral and began fitting in some play time around Loukya. After Loukya got to 60 Aedos became less and less played. I did the occasional quest with her when Lou wasn't raiding and the like but my poor little druid became pretty much ignored again. When Lou dinged 60 Aedos was still level 20!
Again, when TBC came out and I levelled Lou to 70 Aedos was still by the wayside. While Brennus and I went to various dungeons and raids I began to get a bit bored of Loukya. Her gear was getting much better, my DPS was fine but still I started getting weary of only logging on to do dungeons, I began to miss Azeroth and levelling. Aedos began her trek up to 70, and it was quite a power level. I was still feral at this point, and every moment I could play I played with her, with the occasional boost through an instance with Brennus *blush*
But again, I was getting bored. Sneak up on enemies, start attacking, build up combo points, use a finishing move, it was just like levelling a rogue but slower! I had also noticed the lack of healers in our guild for instances and raids, so I formulated a plan. To level to 70 as a boomkin, I needed to do something different feral so I didn't become bored, and then at 70 I would respec Restoration and provide an alt if healers were needed!
This was at about level 50 or so and after the respec to boomkin the levelling came much quicker, not only that but I also began to love playing her, such a nice change from just melee. I loved my treant minions, I loved the damage I did, but I also loved that I could shapeshift into kitty and dash away if I got into trouble. In short, I loved being a druid!
Once I hit 70 I immediately respecced Resto and began healing instances, I had gathered healing gear from quests and such, also I had my Moonkin +damage and healing gear, and although I didn't have any healing experience people trusted me enough to let me heal! After starting Kara runs I noticed something else, I enjoyed healing more than I did DPS. People started complimenting my healing, I read up loads of posts on Phaelia's Resto4Life Blog and learning from there I actually started to become quite good, dare I say it. It's quite something going through WoW on two characters, in various guises then discovering something you truly love and have a talent for. I guess some people would say that tree healing doesn't require much in the way of healing talent but I think it does. Knowing in a multiple tank situation who is most deserving of your lifeblooms, anticipating who is about to get the most incoming damage and topping them up appropriately. These are things that I'm now really beginning to master after only a few months of healing through raids.
Our Guild has a policy of one raiding character per account, so Loukya has been demoted and now Aedos is my main raider, but I have to say I don't regret it one bit! There's no greater satisfaction to me than getting a boss down and still having the whole raid alive with my help! I'm "slightly" undergeared for the content we are raiding now and I know this well. It was decided by our Guild Leader that I should be geared up by running through the same raids as the core of our guild is doing now. We've passed Kara, Gruul, Maggy, even to an extent SSC and TK (We cleared the whole of SSC in one night on Sunday, happy days!) and I'm now getting my gear through going to MH and BT, even though my luck with drops is abysmal and nothing terribly useful has dropped for me yet! I'm still doing the occasional Kara for badges and some fun, raiding around 3 nights a week.
I'm by no means a hardcore player and would only class myself as "casual but dedicated" And now with my little spot on the web I'm going to detail my experiences as a newbie Resto druid, Raiding content she really isn't ready for, the new things I'm going to get up to with my Rogue as she embarks on some PVP, and generally the fun I have in game!
Monday 9 June 2008
A Bit About Loukya
So there is some basic info about her, she's currently resting at the moment as my druid is my new raider but she will be having more adventures again soon!