Googlefail #1

I finally figured out how to see the Google searches that have lead people to my blog. Follow in the fine tradition of Arioch, Gnomeaggedon, and many others before me… I will start as well.

 

Sadly, the #1 search (with 3 hits) that has brought the 2 of you out there to me is

fail druid

I don’t even know how to respond to that honestly. I have complained about fail but never called myself fail that I can remember.

The #2 search (with 2 hits) was

gearscore spam

This one at least, I know I’ve commented on successfully. The only other interesting search was:

pentabox herbals

I have no idea what this means and don’t really plan to find out. Someone please enlighten me (or don’t).

Perfect Naked Angelina Miley Taylor Beyonce Hodir Run

I’m sure there’s a rule against this somewhere, but I want my blog to be noticed. So far I’ve been found by exactly one google search, but it’s not even cool enough to warrant it’s own post.

 

Anyways, if you are here looking for a naked Angelina, Miley, Taylor, or Beyonce, get out of here. I will make fun of you in a few days. If you are here to hear about the Perfect Hodir Run, read on.

 

This actually happened a few weeks ago but I never got around to writing it all out, well now I am. I realized that if I want my blog to be noticed, I need to actually write stuff in my blog. Whoa, what a concept.

 

Rewind a bit to a Monday a few weeks back. The guild (group 2) was running Ulduar 10, it was my first time in the place except for a fail FL only run that never made it to FL. I had no idea that he looked more like a golf caddy than a dragon but I adapted quickly. Being a gunner for Arioch was a blast, I gotta say. I had started to shoot at pyrite before we even got going, then all of a sudden it got a lot harder when I was shooting at moving targets while moving.
But I’m not writing about our one-shot of FL. I’m not writing about the wipes on Razorscale, the one-shot of XT, the wipes on Right Arm, or the one-shot Cat Lady. Maybe I just did… never mind.

Hodir. He’s so hard, we wiped on the adds leading up to him. Twice. The second time may or may not have been the fault of a certain holy paladin who likes to face-pull. I’m leaning towards “may”

We finally clear trash and get to the boss… wow he’s big. And cold. I can tell because the entire room he’s in is ice. And I hear he throw ice, or maybe he just roars and the vibrations cause ice from the ceiling to fall on people. Same diff.

 

I’m assuming that most of the people out there reading this (yes, all two of you) understand the mechanics of the Hodir fight. For those of you who were looking for hot naked pics and decided to read on anyway, here’s the breakdown:

1. Don’t stand in the big blue circle. No duh. If it wasn’t there when you started the fight, and it is big and glowy and doesn’t look particularly helpful, DON’T STAND IN IT! Standing in big blue circles tends to get you hurt/dead/yelled at. (not in our guild no, but in others I imagine)

2. Freeing NPC’s is top priority. It turns out this boss fight is actually a hidden escort quest in disguise. When Hodir does his massive-freeze-everyone-in-the-room-unless-you’re-standing-on-a-snow-patch-spell the NPC’s will specifically NOT stand on the snow. Retards. These NPC’s give valuable buffs such as extra crit, faster casting speed, they will dispel the mini frost novas, oh yeah, and conjure a fire so you can stand still and cast.

** Quick note on this one: As a resto druid I had assumed that I could just run around like a constipated wiener dog the whole time, since most of my spells are hots anyway. I had actually been auto-running for most of the time, until I realized that I could get off one casted spell before having to move again. Nourish heals for like 12k.. for like 1 second… yeah. When I finally learned to stand in the fire (haha) I healed a lot better.

3. Don’t stand in ice, stand on snow. More than once someone in the raid (it was even me once) would jump into the snow too quickly, meaning it wasn’t snow yet and then they get roflstompedowned by the ice.

So, to cut a long story short, we wipe 12 times on Hodir that Monday. We have a few trys at Ignis and then we call it a night. We come back a few days later to try Hodir again.

The first try was close, I actually was the first death (sadface) because of the overeager-jump-into-the-snow-that-isn’t-there-yet-syndrome. I think big guy was down to 30% or so.

Second try of the night (14th overall) started out pretty smooth. NPC’s were out quick, and I decided to stand next to the campfire. Wowee, I can heal! It really helps during frozen blows, just tossing a Rejuv sometimes isn’t enough, but getting off a 1 second Nourish most definitely is.

We go through several freeze phases, waiting for the ice and jumping on the snow perfectly. We even got the mage NPC out first each time, meaning I got more heals off and I looked better both on the healing charts and on the raid frames. At about 20% health left on Hodir I made the mistake of saying in Vent “whoa guys, I think we’re gonna do this!”

I was promptly told by the raid leader to shut up, don’t jinx it. It didn’t matter. We completed the perfect Hodir run. I know it was perfect because:

No NPC’s died.We kept moving constantly.

We moved to the right places at the right time.

What was hilarious, was that the guildy who was calling out these achievements was in a Flash Freeze when Hodir died… but I’m not complaining. We got 3 of the 4 achievements in the same run, after 13 wipes. It felt amazing.

And that, my coolest friends, was the perfect Hodir run.

Next post I’ll tell explain how you can get 30 fps in dalaran. On maxed graphic settings. For under $1,000.

Gearscore

THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

I’m sure nearly all of you are familiar with the semi-parasitic spam-happy addon known as GearScore. The latest edition is now much less spam-happy and the author of the addon has made many wonderful changes to help us disconnect much less.

I personally have suffered through numerous disconnects due to GearScore, both mine and other’s, so please please do us all a favor and get the new one.

Thank you.

(The link is www.gearscoreaddon.com, really confusing, I know)

Whoop-dee-doo

Had a good raid last night. Killed Hodir second try for the night after 13 wipes on Tuesday. No one died, we got 3 achievements out of 4 in one go. I got tier 8 pants. Whoop-dee-do.

I feel like I’m losing my friend…

It turns out people really don’t appreciate it when they find out you chose to play a computer game instead of talking to them. Twice. In one week.

Real life > WoW. Always. Real life friend that I really really care about >>>> WoW. So I’m cutting back. I’m not quitting WoW, I’m not quitting raiding, but I want everyone (especially my awesome guild) to know that I will be slightly less active because I’m getting my RL priorities straight.

I’m sorry if the tiny paragraph at the top didn’t satisfy your desire for information. Maybe tomorrow when I’m in a better mood I’ll give you the full glorious recount of the epic adventure.

Never before had a panda (tree?) been so feared… and so loved.

Last night was my first raid with my new guild. Before I go into details let me just say this: IT WAS AWESOME!

Ok, so I had been in Ulduar only twice before: Once in a very fail FL-only badge run that never made it to FL, and another time when I got summoned in, I put down a mage table, had to go AFK for 2 mins and they kicked me. Oh yeah, that one was my old guild. My guild kicked me for going AFK for 2 minutes! And yes, I told them beforehand.

Anyways, new server now, new guild. I watched a few videos to learn the fights a little, but hearing the detailed and hilarious rundown from my guildies was so much better.

“OK, so there is a big mean metal dragon flying above us right now…”

We downed FL in one go, I gunned a demo for Arioch. We never even got targeted so I got to just shoot the floating blue thingies out of the sky and pick them up. It was so much easier to aim before we started moving…

Tried a few times on Razorscale, but healers (me) kept dying to adds and dead healers means dead tanks means dead raid. I will say this though: While I was alive my tank assignment did not die. I was proud of that =) It was a pleasure healing you Darth.

Gave up on Razorscale after 3 or 4 tries, then downed XT in one try. Got really close to the scrapbot achievement, but we at least ended up with Nerf Gravity Bombs.

Went on to Kologorn… oh boy. That guy is HUGE! And he gets mad and shoots out a LOT of AoE. I died to an eye beam or something and we wiped the first time. I think we got him on either the 2nd or 3rd try. Went to the Crazy Fat Cat Lady and one-shot her.  2 Shamans mean 2 tremor totems = happy raid.

We started to clear the hall to Hodir, but at that point I had to go. We were either going to call in another healer to finish up one more boss or just call it a night, I’m not sure what they decided. Either way the plan is to extend the ID and we will continue tonight. Can’t wait =D

Oh yeah… Loot. I ended up with Combustion Bracers and Plasma Foil. Neither one perfectly itemized for a resto druid, but the dagger alone was 130 spellpower more than my 2h staff. And as I scribe I was able to craft Faces of Doom and I’m now rocking a 3900+ gearscore and very nearly 2k spellpower self-buffed in tree form. I’m getting there!

The Way of the Leaf

It’s official. I have moved. I even took before and after pics! Here we go:

Before

After

Yes, I’m a tree. I originally dual specced to resto so that I could get into groups easily. Healers are in high demand, dps not so much. DPS that may end up lower than the tank because the tank is in TOC epics and the dps is in greens is in even less demand. Healers, as long as they keep people alive, are greatly desired. And yet not greatly appreciated.

Healing is a can be a stressful and thankless job. I am going to oversimplify things here to make a point:

• The job of a tank is to take direct damage from the boss.
• The job of a dps is to kill the boss.
• The job of a healer is to keep people alive.

In any particular encounter, there are 2 possible outcomes:

• The group dies
• The boss dies

The 2nd outcome is obviously more desirable. However if the first outcome occurs… who’s fault is it? Well it obviously must be the healer because it’s their job to keep people alive.

I think there is a reason why there is a shortage of healers. I have decided, however, to follow the Way of the Leaf. (bonus points if you get the reference to the most awesome series of books ever)

Thursday night with the guild is a raid night, for the progression group that I’m not geared enough for yet. However due to a lack of tanks we couldn’t get the scheduled Ulduar hardmodes started, so we ran some heroics. After we did the daily, we went to farm normal Trial of the Champion for all the grape-flavored juice that drops there. I was the healer.

We wiped a couple times. 3 times on Paletress because of the aoe fear/dot that kills my wimpy health pool too quickly. But did anyone yell at me? No. They gave a few helpful suggestions, that I should keep Lifebloom x3 on the tank at all times instead of spamming nourish constantly. And then I could focus on keep a few HOTS on everyone else during the fear. I finally got it down, and I had little trouble after that.

I look forward to this stress-free guild healing environment. Thank you, Arioch and company, for making this game fun for me.

Oh yeah, and I got a longer and bigger and more shiny stick. This beauty dropped in Old Kingdom last night. Now, our guild normally has a policy against OK for a reason, but we managed to find enough to do it just for the daily. Behold:

That’s Staff of Sinister Claws in case you can’t tell. Yes, a blue was an awesome upgrade for me. It doubled the spellpower of my green staff. /facepalm

(btw, can someone please help me get wowhead item links? that would be awesome)

The Hills of Mulgore call…

The faction transfer service has changed a lot. It launched almost immediately after my druid hit 80, and it gave me the chance to rescue my blood elf mage from the failure of a server I was on.

Since then I haven’t touched my druid much at all. I bought a couple BoE’s and tried to heal a little. But being able to go back to playing the character I first levelled on was too tempting. I geared up my mage a bit more and left my druid behind. I’m now in a semi-raiding semi-lame guild that raids too late for me.

Enter Arioch of Clearcasting.

She calls herself a casual hardcore gamer (or whatever it is that our label is now) and I perfectly understand her raiding philosophy. No we’re not going to raid 7 nights a week, but when you say you’re going to show up at 7pm you’d better be flasked/repaired/gemmed/enchanted and logged on 15 minutes early and ready for the invite.

And now she says her guild is recruiting due to lazy attendance. I just transferred my mage and it has a 2 month cooldown. But my druid… could go Tauren. I could rejoin the epic-ness of the HORDE!

I made an alt and talked with a few of the potential guildies, chatted with Arioch a bit before the raid at 7. “Raid time” was 7 pm. Invites were sent out and 9 of the 10 were zoned in by 7:07. OMG!

It’s severely tempting. I’m going to do some serious thinking and see if I can find $60 lying around.

-Delerius

(which reminds me, Delerius isn’t such a great name for a Tauren. please give suggestions)

Yawn (for lack of a better title)

So I’m 80 now. Whoopie.

…

Feral/Resto Druid LFG Ulduar

“so and so whispers: haha noob ur not geared enough go grind heroics for a few months and then try again”

…

Feral/Resto Druid LFG Heroics

“so and so whispers: you don’t have a gearscore of 4k yet? fail fail druid you can’t do H AN without full t8.5 you noob”

Feral/Resto Druid LF Log-out button

…

I have no idea how many times people have complained about this, but I’m going to do it again. I’m tired of these retarks demanding ridiculous amounts of gear/achievements to go anywhere. (btw, that’s retard + jerk and I hadn’t noticed before now how much the “ret” from retard is like a certain spec of a certain OP class… anyways)

Demanding achievements from ulduar to get into ulduar is self-defeating. Not a single pug out there spamming in trade of LFG chat will let you come if you haven’t been there before. How are you supposed to get the achievement in the first place? If you ask them, they’ll say “go with your guild.” Well, I don’t know of any raiding guilds that will take you in without gear/achievements yada yada. They might make an exception for you if you have absolute best Naxx 25 gemmed/enchanted then maybe you might be able to get into an uld 10. You’ll still be “undergeared” in everyone else’s mind because they of course have hard mode gear or even t9 already.

Here’s the thing, when ulduar first came out no one could possibly have t8 or achievements already. Guilds had to do it the hard way in their nax gear, because that was all there was. But now that they have done it, now they demand that everyone else be as geared as they are or better because they just want to get it done easily/quickly and get their badges/loot/egos. This system really really does not help new players who are just hitting 80 to get into the raiding scene.

Solution? I have no idea. I thought I was done grinding when I got level 80, but no, now I just get the chance to grind emblems to get gear just to be allowed in a raid.  Gnomeaggedon had a great post about this that I enjoyed/agreed with/cried at http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/09/04/emblems-of-everything-fail-me/

Maybe I’ll just take Gnomie’s advice and level a shammy. Or a lock. I have seen some pretty sick animations of what I *think* is conflagrate, anyway some gigantic ball of demonic fire from a warlock that makes the inner mage in me envious.

A picture is worth a thousand words… this one is worth at least 80.

What’s that you say? If you’re not seeing this in 10×7 resolution you probably can’t read it, lets zoom in a bit:

=D

All the things that make me sad and a few that make me glad

Hey you two. I’ve decided to write another blog post (it’s about time you say).

This week has been great for getting lots of free time/wow time and I love it. I’m up to level 78 now! But still not 80… and I’m really getting annoyed/depressed that I’m not there yet. My real life friend got his first 80 2 weeks ago, and now I get to watch him run heroics, get badges, get gear, argent dailies, all that stuff I want to do but can’t.

Oh yeah, and my guild… is not like my old one. I don’t even really know what I want. See, at level 38 or so I tried to get in a Gnomer run. I was healing (in feral spec lol) and we had a draenei warrior named Warriorbabe tanking for us. Well, the shaman kept trying to tank too… said we were going to slow and all that. It was a miserable pug, and it became clear pretty quick that the warrior and I were the only ones that had any idea what was going on. At one point I died from overhealing/pulling aggro, but the rest lived to finish the fight. When we asked the paladin to rez me, he said he never turned in that quest *rolls eyes*

So I became friends with that warrior, found out that he had 3 80’s on the server and another 2 elsewhere, got to know him a bit and he invited me to his guild. Well, his guild only lets level 80s. Except for me. But now, even though I’m “in” the guild I feel really really left out. No one hangs out with me. No one talks to me. No one says “Congratz!” to all the stupid little achievements I get. Not like my old guild… from my old server… But I can’t go back to that server. It’s a horrible server, but with a great guild.

I’ve mentioned several times before that I want to start my own guild. I think I may be getting close to doing that. I definitely want to be an established guild before Cataclysm comes out and adds all the guild levelling, guild experience stuff. That should be fun. For my guild, I can be tank healer and dps, I’m willing to do any of them. My death knight friend (who just hit 80, see above) absolutely loves tanking and he just got defence capped and he is excited. So our guild will already have 2 tanks for raids, and a tank and a healer to run heroics in the mean time.

It’s time for another pic… Oh yeah here we go.

My awesome new tabard =)