Ack..

Alright I haven’t posted this week so far and it’s not a matter of I can’t think of anything to write about it’s more that working late shift when you usually work morning screws with me. See with working late shift I lose most of my evening but still feel sleepy at the same times. On top of that since I don’t go into work till later I sleep in everyday. So overall I lose time in my week because of this. And with work being relatively busy I hadn’t written anything so far.

Along with this comes an issue that I’m sure we all run into or should be at least. How do I best balance my time in WoW versus RL stuff.

Most of us before WoW came along probably played numerous other games that filled our time like Sims, Diablo, Mario, Sonic, etc. At least with most of these games there was a pause or you could leave it without much consequence. With WoW, unless you’re just solo leveling, doesn’t have a pause button per se. There are people who need you to run an instance or raid with them or do group quests that you can’t just pause in the middle of without delaying others. Which especially if you do PUGs people are even less inclined to let you go afk for a bit as normally they just want to get done and out and since it was a pug unless you are the only healer or tank they could find will probably look for someone else immediately.

In guilds though schedules are made up with the idea of this schedule you expect certain people to show up and be ready. Now unless you are in a hardcore raiding guild such doesn’t end up being the case. Normally you’ll have a few things happen which are a few people missing for unknown reasons, people in it just started something because they lost track of time, or they are ready at the time but when summoned realized they didn’t repair or had mats for buff/spells.

So the question is with smaller guilds or at least more casual guilds is how do you impose upon people the importance of showing up or at least letting someone know. Especially when it’s not the same people each week that there is a problem with. I want to be understanding that people have lives outside of WoW but at the same time these occurrences are hurting us doing stuff

My anti class

As I’ve done PvP more on my druid I’ve come to realize there are some classes that give me more trouble than others if I’m not careful.

First I’ve come to hate mace rogues or ones that do know to effectively stunlock a person. Because while I can trinket out of one stun I still can’t keep up with the other stuns. So my main hopes going against rogues is to either have them CCed before they reach me, HoTed myself up before the start their stunlocking, or hope they just aren’t good at stunlocking.

Because pretty much unless a person gets multiple crits on me I’m able to outheal what they dish out even if I have two or more on me. It’s when you mix stuns in there and rogues have more than one I can’t heal myself or others worth squat.

My other hated class is Disc Priest who keep casting mana burn. Which should be less bothersome once I get higher Resilience but currently it’s a huge pain. Though at least with them I don’t run into them too much in BGs but in Arena it’s painful.

On my hunter I always found Resto Druids and Holy Pallies to be the hardest to deal with. Resto druids because of all their ticking HoTs and me with only one real stun to do anything about it since Aimed Shot can’t be easily kept up. Though at least facing them one on one I don’t worry much about dying. Holy Pallies just bother because of the bubble and they just don’t seem to run out of mana. And with their plate armor it’s harder to just outright blow them down. Though having played Resto Druid now I find it funny being able to run away from these battles and have people run low on mana to beat me though I’m still mostly at full health.

While I’m sure other classes have one in particular they hate to deal with I’m looking more for suggestions regarding my druid.

How do I deal with that rogue stunlocking me from healing myself or others? How do I deal with that priest’s constant mana burns?

Things to do before WotLK

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. A combination of work being hectic, vacation for the 4th of July, and having a cold. Finally was getting over a prior cold I had and then caught a different one.

Anyways, I can’t recall where it came from but I do remember that somebody said if you write goals down they’re more likely to happen. Not sure if its because you have a reminder out there or it makes you realize you do want to do them.

I have a few things I’d like to do before the next WoW expansion comes out and we head to Northend to pwn that Lich King and one item that’s related.

• Get my Shaman up to level 70
• Get my Shaman in 70 blues
• Finish up a full set of PvP gear for my druid (including the badge cloak)
• Have over a 2k personal arena rating with my druid
• See Gruul go down
• Help maintain the guild I’m in
• Post no less than once a week on this blog

I also encourage others to look at what you’d like to get done before the expansion. Once it’s out we can all see what we did get down out of it.

Cthulhu huh?

This weekend I went to a RPG/Board game event in Columbus, Ohio called Origins. I hadn’t registered for it or had a board pass as I was just going to hang out with friends but I did buy a weekend pass to get into their dealer room.

Before I’d gotten there my one friend had bought a boardgame called “Call of Cthulhu: Arkham Horror” that they had demoed before he got it. At which point I start asking what in the world is Cthulhu?

Apparently I’ve been a sheltered person as Cthulhu was started by the writer H.P. Lovecraft and pretty much started the sci-fi horror genre as we know it as I was told.

The part that bugged me most was after seeing the and references to Cthulhu here I was amazed at the amount of stuff influenced by it. Even more surprising that the Necronomicon was something I’d heard referenced before but didn’t know it was related to Lovecraft’s work.

Heck I’m sure noobed knows about it since he’s a Batman fan as Arkham Asylum in that series is one of those references.

Even WoW has a reference to it in the way that Murlocs are very similar to the Deep Ones created in the Lovecraft mythos.

I did get to play Arkham Horror and I must say I was impressed. I don’t think I’ve ever played too many cooperative board games. In this one you are working with other players to close portals and defeat monsters before a Great Old One comes out. While it is possible to defeat them if they do come out the odds are highly against you succeeding.

Overall my geekness took a hit as I failed at knowing about Cthulhu. But it does give me something to look into over the summer.

Anger it consumes me

At various times in my life sometimes irritates me and I can remain aggravated for days. Stupid things that I would otherwise brush off just add to my frustration. At which point one of three things occur.

I become so irrationally angry that I lash out verbally at someone who just irritated me or I punch a wall. Both of these don’t end well. If I yell at someone I end up feeling depressed because of what I said and I end up apologizing to the person who really didn’t deserve that verbal lashing. Or if I punched a wall I have sore knuckles for a while.

In other cases I realize how silly my anger is and something funny occurs that seems to get rid of the anger I had. This at least seems to be happening a bit more lately as I continue to realize when I’m seemingly angry for the sake of being angry.

Today that trigger was TJ replying to me with the password to her post and my subsequent IM with her. In which I asked if she feels I’m making good connections with my blog and initially all I got was a “sure.” It wasn’t wildly funny either of them but enough for me to realize I was just frustrated and chuckle at myself.

I also realize this frustration occurred a bit last night too while we were in kara. We had a newer tank for Kara and I wasn’t seeing any Sunders go up on the mob we were attacking. Instead of talking it out I just kept putting raid warnings for him to apply Sunders. And if I didn’t have push to talk enabled they might have heard me cursing when it continued to seem that he wasn’t using sunder. Eventually one of the other officers in the raid who plays a warrior went over with him about what was happening. After that we did a lot better and I cooled off a bit.

And lately with how Alterac Valley has gone I just get left frustrated as I keep running into Turtles that just drag on.

All I know I need is something to keep from reaching these points of frustration. But it seems I keep running into this where I just let my frustration build and the problem is I don’t always notice it nor do I always have a good way to let some of the stuff vent.

So much honor so little time

So I’m trying to gear up my druid with the newer Merciless Glad’s gear comes out 6/24 and I’ve got the BG tokens I need but now I need honor points. At this point I’m not sure which bg will get me the most honor for my time spent. It’s Arathi Basin weekend so there is some bonus honor there but Alterac Valley I’ve always thought brought in the most honor typically for how long I was in there.

So I’m left wondering which BG I should be getting into for the best honor gain for my time spent. And part of it also depends who I’m with as currently my druid is resto so killing other players isn’t something I can do quickly if at all without some dpser with me.

I talk about time because on any weekday I only have maybe one to two hours to spend in BGs as I normally get involved in helping with raids or assisting others in the guild on a quest/instance.

So I ask those out there who read this what you’ve found to be the best BG to gain honor for your time spent?

This person deserves a fail at BGs

Today BRK posted an e-mail from a person who was sick of spending 20 minutes in AB just to lose. So she came up with an idea of getting people to queue together who would intentionally lose to get marks quicker. While I do think it was smart idea at the same time it discourages me with BGs. Granted, everyone may not have the goals for going or know the strategy well unless you’re in a premade but to just go in giving up seems against the system. BGs are meant for PvP and by just giving up before it begins makes me wonder why this person even bothered. With 15 people she could’ve gotten an arena team together, formed a kara group, or possibly had 3 different groups doing heroics/70 instances.

At the end of the comments Rua who sent the e-mail to BRK replied

#

Rua on 18 Jun 2008 at 4:39 pm #

Wow.. I only expected a reply mail. =/

I appreciate the post and the comments therein. But all this leads me to:

“Intentionally losing at PvP by refusing to engage the enemy is not appropriate”
So.. intentionally losing at pvp whilst engaging the enemy is ok? We can don a variety of dresses, tuxes, santa suits or pirate gear as long as we thwack the horde a couple times? That way we’ll be “worse than our opponents” and inside the lines of the ToS.

I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m really not.

My only intent (other than quicker marks) was to bring some fun back to my playing experience. Next time you’re in a BG, or just playing for the matter, look at all the incessant name calling, bickering or just plain sh!@#y attitudes.

For all the arguments made against Team FTL, we had fun. Laughing like schoolkids over vent at the sight of the costumes horde players brought out once they figured what was up. Picnic parties at the Blacksmith. Dancing in Trollbane Hall. It was fun. Because of the negative attention brought about quite recently (apparently, that “empty” threat wasn’t so..) we won’t be queuing together anymore, but we’ll still be out there trying to Fail with Class. ^_^

Bytheby, I am in no way affiliated with outofmana.blogspot.com
I mean I read the blog occasionally but I don’t even comment.

/dance

To me it appears she didn’t read any of what BRK said or the list of comments. My hope at this point is that this doesn’t become a trend. I like the competition in PvP and doing this negates competition. Yes an occasionally 4 or 5 cap is awesome but I like the ones that grind out for a while and each side fights to the end whether it be for a losing cause or not.

I can see where her frustration lies but overall this is not the answer and people who purposely go into a BG with this in mind are no better then the AFKers or the people who comment out to the BG that everyone in it sucks. You may have had fun with this and so did those Horde but I guarantee it won’t last.

So please don’t queue in BGs if you only plan on doing /dance

Resto Druid PvP FTW

I’ve found a new love for my druid alt since hitting 70. While I like and I’m used to the feral build while leveling I’ve found a new love in playing the Arena Resto build. Mind you this toon isn’t geared very well yet for PvP and just barely for PvE.

Before I’d hit 70 I’d considered going Resto but didn’t have much gear. So to help with that I went for Tribal Leatherworking and when a quest reward didn’t have feral gear I checked for healing gear. Once I hit 70 I was only missing shoulders, waist, bracers, and a chest piece. As I did some instances I filled out the rest and got some better gear except for the bracers and belt. Which got filled by the Windhawk set pieces.

Then on Sunday I finally made the plunge and respecced. It worried me a bit doing it because even with doing some reading and looking at tips healing was still really a new ballgame for me.

Suddenly, heading into BGs I actually felt I was contributing more then I had been as feral. I was keeping anyone around me doing damage up and I was maintaining my distance from those trying to take me down.

So far I have only a bit over 6k health and 8k mana but in a WSG where I took a flag to prevent a cap I got all the way to the base before 6 horde players finally kept me stunned long enough to prevent me from healing.

In another WSG I way tagging along with another resto druid who had the flag and with at least 6 horde players chasing him kept him alive while we kited almost a full circle on the map. It was probably the most fun I’ve had and I’m sure those players were probably getting pissed. The first flag cap in that game took so long that the flag carriers got the debuff on them to take 100% extra damage and it was only then he went down but it still took a while.

Then later working with a warrior guildie of mine we made an attack on the Blood Elf Tower in EoTS and even after about 5 minutes there he was still barely dipping below half health while ripping into the Horde. It was rather enjoyable.

I think the class so far that has been hardest to deal with was rogues who can stunlock effectively. Even with the pvp trinket I can’t get enough heals off spamming the button. I think once I have more health though it won’t be quite as bad dealing with them though.

Happy Father’s Day

Below is something I actually wrote a few years ago on a myspace blog but it’s still relevant. It’s been edited a bit as my grammar at some points was bad.

I talk to my Father every week. And a lot of those weeks I always wonder what in the world keeps my dad going. My father isn’t healty for his age by any means. He suffers from arthritis, sleep apnea (a sleeping condition in which you stop breathing while you sleep),constant headaches, flat arches on his feet, and he can’t consistantly eat solid food because his stomach doesn’t line up with his intestines. Most of these ailments are a result of his time with the Marines. The stomach problem probably being the worst.

It’s horrible to have to hear your father puking his guts out when you know he hasn’t even eaten anything. Thus outside of him doing work he spends alot of his time lying in a recliner on top of a comforter because he utterly has no energy.

The man’s daily sustanence of food consists mostly of ensure/boost, which while they do give you the needed caloric values for a day it’s not something someone should be living off of. Yet, this man works a job that has him working 10-12 hours shifts 4 or 5 days a week doing hard labor and he still does more work than his coworkers who are in much better health than him.

The only thing I think that keeps my father going now is my stepmom, my sister, and me. To me it seems that his time in the Marines was both a blessing and a curse to him now. A curse because it has caused most if not all the current health problems he has now. A blessing because without their training I don’t think the man would be in any kind of health to do anything.

I love my father very much and I wish that he is able to celebrate many Father’s Days. He has always been there for me even if we don’t always agree. So I ask you all to remember and remind the person you call father that you always love and appreciate them come this Sunday.

Happy Birthday to Bellwether

I know I’m double posting but it had to be done. Happy Birthday Bell