Tallyswift: The Swiss Army Cow

Farewell, Dear Second Job....

2010-08-23T06:23:00.000-07:00

Like many loveable furballs before me, like Karthis, another retired feral druid, I too have discovered that World of Warcraft had become more of a second job than a pleasurable form of entertainment. Certainly it is fun and rewarding to group up with friends who are almost like family after hanging out almost every night with the same people for over 4 years now... but it is also frustrating and disappointing to come together to accomplish things, but discover that they can't be done due to a missing healer, or some other missing person or people who are necessary and basically irreplaceable for end game achievements and goals.
I'm just not one of those players who feels the need to have a dozen alts that are all level 80 and decently geared up. I just can't invest that much time into characters I don't feel really attached to. I pick just one... and that is my one accomplishment... I might play around some days on alts that are fun to play with, but they never get the love and attention my single main does.

But alas... I have many fond memories of all of my friends, and the nights that we spent working together.. the glee from watching good players pull off what would usually wipe a group, or giggling at noobs who think they can tank... and all of the friends who asked me for advise, or simply just liked hanging out... I'd sing an Ode of farewell to them... I was just too shy to sing to them for real... Eventually I felt shoved aside by my guild because I was a simple feral kitty, and my guildies did not appreciate the abilities of their ferals. I offered suggestions for some roles a feral can do to help on strategies, but whoever the guild gods may be.. would decide in favor of some other mechanic from some web page somewhere else. I was left out and lonely and that was when I just couldn't put any more of my time into raiding... and without raiding.. there really isn't anything else for me. I was one of the courteous WOW players.. putting other's needs and desires before my own, sitting out for people who wanted to see new things first... enjoying hearing their happiness when they experienced new and challenging things... knowing that I would be included in it later because I was a member... but... it hurt me in the end. I passed too much on some of the things I needed to let others gear up... and I sat too much to let others get into my spot in the raid... I was then forced to sit for raids... and was just no longer needed...
At one point, I was one of the main tanks... but I was doing pretty good damage as cat form when we only needed one or two tanks, well.. how about I just go pure dps? Kitties can really kick out some damage right? So I did, and retired from tanking... but... I basically retired from wow in the end... because kitties were doing so well, we have to get nerfed, and the raid only needs a single feral... The feral tank can offer the same buff as the kitties... the kitties aren't even really needed at all... unless they do more damage than the other dps... But they were fun to play.. and I had a lot of fun playing Tallyswift...

Farewell Tallyswift... your paws are no longer needed to claw the trash for people so some players can sit back and watch TV while waiting to get to a boss fight... Your thick hide is no longer needed to off tank on Thorim when our main tank can basically solo tank everything in Ulduar on hard mode now... Tally was never a moonkin... Tally levelled up as a healer and was left in the dust then too.... But feralie goodness was embraced and Tally was reborn as a bear...
and a bear Tally was... for the whole experience of being in the end game guild of Hat...

The stars are calling... The dog is whining... The sunsets are gleaming... just behind those curtains and blinds... The moon waxes, then wanes again... and Orion dances overhead all winter, while Hercules watches protectively from above all summer.... I didn't get a tan again... My skin is so sensitive now I'm not sure I can get a tan anymore... I let my hair grow out... I colored it back to the color I was born with... I withdraw back into my small world.. my home, my kids, my future....

I'm not sure how my blogsite got linked with Asian forums, but it makes me giggle to see comments in half english and half characters that I do not recognize. I hope I didn't offend anyone, I hope I didn't upset anyone. I'm a very giving little person and try to accept and help all those who cross my path... I'm still the child who wants to bring home the stray cats.. the child who stops to untangle the bird caught in the bushes... the lone dove who sings her quiet little song in the evenings even if no one is listening anymore...

But my origami talents are improving, and I have numerous fans who come to see what critters are occupying my display box in my quiet little lab at work...

We always have to come to a point where we must re-define our self image and who we want to be. Step away from the image that others have painted of us, when their pictures are no longer very pretty... just paint the picture yourself...

The Occult, Chakras, and the Third Eye....

2010-07-17T05:25:00.000-07:00

Come join all of these average people who sell you their books and services and offer you this special gift! You can see angels and talk to them! You can watch over your loved ones! You can learn things about the future! You can perform things that seem like magic! You can travel anywhere in the world and even to celestial bodies in space! Wow.. sounds like a lot of fun right? But this is all the work of the greatest angel of all... The _Fallen Angel_ ....and those angels that these "spiritual healers and psychics" contact are also fallen angels... also known as demons. The only difference between the angels of God and the fallen angels is that God's angels don't roam the Astral plane waiting to "help" people who chose to enter it. God sends his angels to his people and works through the good actions of real people in our physical world. Oh don't forget you can see fairies and speak to your dead relatives too... but all of what happens in the Astral plane is a deception, but the results are .. deadly real! The seductive temptation to gain access to the wonders of this fourth dimension by forcibly detaching your SOUL from the safety of your body is being encouraged by more and more people both openly as well as in simple hints, and seeds of information. For example, if you type in a search engine something like: real angels, talk with dead, learn my future, witchcraft or multiple other topics, all of them will talk about how life changing their special offer is, and how you can order it, download it or talk to an online help person right now! Some of these things are free, some cost money... ALL of them will explain eventually how to activate your third eye to enter into the astral plane, or how to use some other medium that accesses the Astral plane. ALL are deceptions to lure people into this! To do so is to deny Jesus Christ and the Power and Grace of the one True God. To open your "third eye" is to receive the Mark of the Beast! The bible warns MULTIPLE times about dealing with mysticism, and even with people who deal with mysticism! They are working with abominations! Demons that pretend to be Godlike and angelic!

Colossians 2:18: "Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshy mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God."

Explanation: (Source: The MacArthur Study Bible)
"defrauding you. Paul warns the Colossians not to allow the false teachers to cheat or defraud them of their temporal blessings or eternal reward by luring them into irrational mysticism. self-abasement. Since the false teachers took great delight in it, their "self-abasement" was actually pride, which God hates (Pr 6:16,17). worship of the angels. The beginning of a heresy that was to plague the region around Colossae for several centuries and far beyond --a practice the Bible clearly prohibits (Mt 4:10; Rev 19:10; 22:8-9). visions he has seen. Like virtually all cults and false religions, the Colossian false teachers based their teaching on visions and revelations they had supposedly received. Their claims were false, since Jesus Christ is God's final and complete revelation to mankind (Heb 1:1,2) fleshy mind. This describes the unregenerate and is further defined in Eph 4:17-19.

I included the whole quote and the whole explanation here from the MacArthur Study Bible. If you don't have this study bible, it is an Extremely valuable resource to learn for yourself the teachings of the whole bible! Every single line is explained in great detail and you are given references to other verses in the bible that back up every explanation! You could spend endless hours simply reading a few verses and tracing back the supporting verses into other supporting verses into historical facts and stories learning amazing things about who God really is and how to become a good person.

Lets look at some of the popular entertainment out there now... Harry Potter... this series gets picked on by evangelical fanatics all the time. Well, he is making people more comfortable with occult ideas like ghosts and magic. It seems like fun fantasy stuff, and certainly it can be watched by billions of people and they don't all go out and start buying a wand and witchcraft books, but it plants a seed in their minds that these things are fun and cool and Okay... The Last Airbender - Another fun fantasy movie with awesome martial arts, but this boy has a mark ... On his forehead ... like this is cool and okay and also meditates and enters the spirit world to talk to a DRAGON and gain knowledge, wisdom, and guidance ... um .. from a dragon? Again, people can watch this and think it's kinda cool and not thing twice of it, but it plants an even deeper seed that it's Cool to gain psychic abilities and powers by opening your third eye and entering the astral plane... How about the cartoon Bleach? In this cartoon, a common boy can *see dead spirits* and is found to possess very strong *spiritual powers* when a *soul reaper* encounters him, knocks his own soul out of his body and gives him her own spiritual powers that she has been training and empowering within herself. ...Again, these very interesting "fictional" cartoons and family/adult movies are trying to soothe the general public into thinking that it's okay to enter the spirit world (or astral plane) and that this world is very much like our own world, and people we care about are in it, and that our only flaw is that we just might not be powerful enough to protect and care for our loved ones.

These ideas and teachings are all completely the opposite of Jesus Christ's teachings that true Christians are meant to follow. If you follow Jesus and love God and want to be pleasing to our True Creator, you would know deep in your heart that we can only follow God through our own faith, and by following the teachings of Jesus. Jesus teaches us to follow the commandments, to avoid all temptations of the flesh (lusting for wealth, power, fornication, adultery etc). To follow Jesus is to lead a selfless life, not a selfish one! Do not seek making yourself more powerful.. you will be lost to the evil snare of power and pride...

In the next several years, there will likely be an explosion of even more movies, books, videos, seminars, gatherings, and all other types of media that will deal with the occult and mysticism being okay. This includes: talking with spirits, talking with "angels", gaining spiritual powers of healing and sight without vision, locating wealth on the earth through dousing, traveling through the spirit realm to visit friends and loved ones, losing all fear of death, meditating to become more relaxed and stress free, listening to certain sound frequencies that vibrate at the exact frequency that activates your pineal gland (the seat of the soul, and location of the third eye chakra).. etc... All of these things are a huge movement that is controlled by a powerful source attempting to lure us all into his own realm, the Astral plane... where we will become vulnerable to this master deceiver's goals and plans for us. All of his wishes are in direct defiance to God's wishes...

You will also find millions of people who have been lured into opening their third eye, and are afraid, but want to be told it is okay. They will find passages from the bible to justify their actions to feel better about it, but they are fooling themselves. God wants to protect and save you! I myself didn't believe anything about souls or the devil, and I thought that there was only one single God and that all religions lead to Him. I didn't even think our soul was some separate entity that could separate from our bodies until I purchased a book that explained how to vibrate your soul to force it to leave your body. It also listed all of the amazing tempting benefits of doing this, and seemed like the most wonderful and amazing quiet secret a person could have... in the comfort of your own home while everyone else is sleeping! I tried to do this myself and felt quite confident when I managed to see the bright beehive light and heard the sound in my mind, and felt like I could lift my soul out of my body, but I was also skeptical and afraid, and thank God, I never did actually enter the astral plane! God protected me and showed me the true knowledge behind what this place truly is and to avoid it at all costs!

The bible warns that the path to the one True God is a very narrow path, and SO many people are being deceived into taking the wide path! This means that almost everyone around you probably believes that there really isn't a good or evil power, there is No God, or that no one religion is better than the others. I don't know what religion is the best one to join or follow, but I do know that if you personally don't read the bible, you are going to be deceived just like all of them! Please seek out Truth, and place it around yourself like a shield! Get a study bible and learn for yourself who all of the false prophets are, and what they are trying to deceive you into doing... If you get caught up in your worldly routines and habits and daily distractions, you won't know what path to follow to find God... If you give into these Occult people who promise you health, wisdom, happiness, and other "gifts and powers", you will surely be lured down the wrong path forever....

-a humble servant who is grateful for the wisdom The Lord has showed me, -Michelle Roberts

Here are numerous links explaining in detail (much better than myself) the warnings God gives us of dealing with the Occult: (note that most of them offer free reading materials to help spread God's word and guide people to the safe path)

Bible-Knowledge.com

An Online Free Bible Study from Doug Britton Books

http://www.creationists.org/spirits.html - a page citing numerous bible quotes...

http://www.farsinet.com/truth/index2.html

Astrology and the Bible

Bewitched by the Occult

The Moses Code

List of Forbidden Practices

Life, The World, and Why?

2010-05-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

Time has passed.
I have learned some new things... I have wandered in my thoughts...
I entrusted the feral mechanics to our second and more superior Feral Druid, Aydrian.
He is extremely knowlegable regarding Feral Druid class mechanics, and keeps up on all
of the Elitist Jerks posts and updates. I followed him around like a lost kitty sometimes.
I'm still lost though...
It is true, my guild is almost like my family. They call me the "guild mom" because I have
children and have a maternal aura of caring for others and wanting to help people when
the have illness or are sad. I have a sleeve full of remedies that I gladly share with anyone
who wishes to listen.. Speaking to those who wish to listen, or those who are afraid to tell
me the don't want to listen.. has gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion...
I attempt to spread good will and understanding between others, but if the end result isn't
wonderful, I am apt to blame myself in the end.
The guild ends up being a very delicate mechanism of numerous intelligent and yet sensitive
individuals all trying to find their place, and earn respect, yet have fun in their own way at the
same time. The diversity in personalities has led to cliques who feel comfortable with one another, and a few loners who prefer to just do their own thing, as well as the rare person who is laid back and kinda gets along with everyone, but doesn't want to join any single group.
Over time, I have learned to reach out to people in a kind and playful manner to simply attempt to raise spirits of both parties. On other occasions I just talk in druid chat, or melee chat, or raid chat to say something playful and entertaining to just be fun loving like I try to be... As far as progression goes for our guild, we have managed to kill all of the bosses in 25 man Icecrown Citadel on Heroic to unlock the Lich King (Heroic Mode) but have not yet been able to put in a lot of serious progression to down him. We have TOC heroic on farm for trinkets and cloaks, and we
are attempting to get a Mimron's Head mount for our guild members from Yogg Seron with Zero Keepers. Priority is given to members with the highest lifetime guild attendance. It's actually a very nice reward for dedicated raiders. So we manage to get things done in a rather timely manner each week, but if for some reason, things don't go so smoothly (and things never run smoothly all the time), some of our loving guild members may begin to lose their happy-go-lucky sense of Go-Get-Em raid attitude. Alas, if we try and try to complete a task that eventually is accomplished, the officers evaluate the hardships and try to iron them out for the next time. If the task is left unfinished, the officers evaluate the situation and develop a new strategy or plan to hopefully become successful on the re-visitation. But how resilient are the members? Do they log off angry blaming others? Do they switch to another form of entertainment and not worry about it? Do they ponder their own small errors or ways in which they can themselves improve? Do they just chill out with friends and talk things over? Perhaps the mode that each player handles their daily activities.. accomplishments and failures... will also be a factor in how the guild itself will progress and evolve over time.

I prefer when the officers speak openly in our vent channel evaluating the events to help us
understand our individual rolls and the importance of each part of the strategy. Our raid leader
is superb in detailing our rolls and the overall strategy so that, for the most part, everything does
run very nicely. We only have problems if a member is unclear of their roll and doesn't say anything, or if people just stop paying attention... We probably have the most problems arrise from members feeling uncomfortable speaking their thoughts to the individuals involved... rather they will go around them and tell someone else who is then burdened with this dilemma and what to do about it?
Luckily most of our members are good natured and want to get along and work together as
a team so that fixing problems isn't too hard... but Life is like this... Learning to get along...
Learning who you can talk to who will just let you vent, and who you can't talk to who will feel
like they need to fix your problems when in actuallity you just wanted to get some frustration
off your chest...

More Feralie Goodness

2009-06-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

Here is another link to extremely useful information! This page contains a whole spreadsheet for calculating all of your druid gear, buffs, raid buffs, talent points ... everything!

And you don't have to spend gold to use it! ;D

You can plan out your enchants, gems, glyphs, gear, and types of food to carry ahead of time!

http://druid.wikispaces.com/ToskksDPSGearMethod

Thank you again, brilliant gamers of the world!

Oh here is another link containing a list of Best in Slot feral druid dps gear:

http://www.unbearably.net/2009/05/05/hey-what-are-you-wearing-a-revised-ulduar-loot-list-for-cool-cats/

The Armor Penetration Mystery....

2009-06-16T06:53:00.000-07:00

http://projectlore.com/blog/melee-dps-101-armor-penetration/

End of Mystery...

Feral Druid goals: Hit cap: 295, Expertise rating: 26-30, Crit: at least 50 percent. Gem Strength, don't bother with armor penetration.

Okay.. more on that...
If you depend no your rip for dps, it is affected by attack power, and not armor pen. If you switch your dps more in favor of Melee hits and Ferocious bite, armor pen helps a lot. If you go for the 4 piece T8 set bonus, it increases Savage Roar, and you can fit in more Shreds and FBs, and stacking armor pen would benefit this dps.

Link to information:

http://www.unbearably.net/2009/05/26/bonus-wickit-examines-t7-and-t8-armor-sets/

---boggle----

Then again... here is an opposing view!

http://www.unbearably.net/2009/06/02/how-to-get-the-armorpenetration-your-pussy-deserves/

Druid-Kitty Observations....

2009-06-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

Druid feral dps is a ponderous thing...
It is a unique combination of 3 debuffs and 1 buff that must be kept constantly up with the burst of 2 bonus abilities that should be used as frequently as possible. Here is my rotation: (Of course this "rotation" is only used on mobs that live longer than a few seconds ---> bosses).

RAKE,
MANGLE,
SAVAGE ROAR (2-4 combo points),
TIGER'S FURY + SHRED to 5 Combo points,
RIP.

Okay, scratch that... It has been shown that starting out with the Mangle is much more dps efficient than the Rake. Rake is actually the lowest priority kitty ability. It should NEVER be clipped and can remain down for numerous seconds for higher priority abilities such as Rip/Savage Roar/and Clearcasting Shreds! So instead the initial sequence should go:

MANGLE
SAVAGE ROAR
RAKE
SHRED (to 5 combo points, use Tiger's Fury if needed)
RIP

All Clearcastings = SHRED

Note*** In order to alert me of the clearcastings without missing them, I have Power Aura's installed. I LOVE that addon! I also have it alert me when there is a Trauma on the mob or a mangle already up from another druid. It is SO useful... and it can have pages and pages of cool popup alerts for you for anything you want! /love My clearcasting also makes a noise too so I won't miss it if I'm looking at all of the other chaos on my screen in a busy fight like Hodir.

Then refresh Savage roar with 5 combo points and alternate stacks of 5 combo points with Rip. If your crit is high enough to stack up the combo points quickly, you can afford some Ferocious bites in there before both Savage Roar or Rips fall off. Whee :D

After this point, each debuff is then re-applied just before it drops off, and Savage roar and Rip are top priority. Some druids will pop their Berserk right at the beginning because RIP is so important to get up with 5 combo points as rapidly as possible... Of course any good druid dps kitty will have a cooldown timer specifically for each of these important fur ripping abilities..
If it's going to be a long fight, I always pop Beserk early so I can hopefully get it in again after it's cooldown.

The rotation is not the biggest challenge though....
The gear accumulation and gemming is much more challenging to perfect...
Of course this is the point of most games.. get you interested in developing your character to the point of hours and hours of game play to put more months of your money into their Blizzard pockets... But we do get a lot of hours of entertainment out of it...

Regarding gear. Currently I have this combination: 2 pieces of T7.5 for the 2 piece bonus. (Increase in RIP duration). In addition to this, I also have the RIP idol that increases the periodic damage. Because RIP ends up being the largest portion of my total dps, the more I can buff it the better. The rest of my gear is basically Rogue dps gear. First priority - Hit cap 295, (note: 295 cap is only for bears, CAT hit caps out around 263, and is not actually crucial!---> See Toskk's discussion forums). Second priority - Stack as much Agility, attack power, and Armor penetration as possible, Third priority (which has proven to be very crutial) Crit should be at or as close to 50 percent. This key factor is what makes it possible to stack up the combo points as time efficiently as possible.

The idea of stacking armor penetration is still a point of contention among kitty druids. If our bread and butter is the RIP and RAKE periodic damage, and armor penetration will not affect this type of damage, should we forget about it and select attack power and agility instead?
Armor penetration seems to be a staple statistic included in most of the high end leather gear, it is actually more and more effective the higher it gets. It doesn't

Not being a math wiz, or a 17 year old boy with plenty of time on my hands, I honestly don't have the time or motivation to work out each calculation of white/yellow hit vs. periodic damage ticks... I have a tendency to try to maximize each piece of gear I have to it's fullest potential rather than selecting specific stats to try to stack... I like to look at a piece of gear overall when deciding to upgrade. Of course there are things like RAWR for this purpose so that individuals with time restraints like myself can still work things out. Thank you genius computer scientists and hard core gamers!

Unfortunately, I find it very difficult to efficiently maximus my kitty dps while constantly on the move. For example, in Hodir, the best dps will result from 1) maintaining constant dps on the boss - this means the tank must keep the boss within range of safe melee locations 2) being able to have the super Storm Power buff - which is pretty easy for melee considering members are required to bring this buff to the main tank, and melee can then share it, and 3) being able to stand in a light well buff while being behind the boss - This is very dependent on the tank dragging the boss close to these rays of light. Between all of these 3 important dps boosts, and running around to avoid falling ice and staying in one place gathering freezing debuffs... A feral druid will need to have expert fingers to maneuver and maintain a perfect feral dps rotation!

Up until yesterday, my computer was the bane of my dps existance... I was only able to achieve about 3-6 frames per second in 25 man boss fights like Hodir. Today is a new beginning for me. Since upgrading, World of Warcraft has a whole new crisp look to it and flows so smoothly! I now notice tiny sparklies and can see long distances.. Things are no longer a complete mist to me. Of course I had these settings because of my terribly out dated hardware so that I could move without being lost in time with each refreshing frame....

I guess we must keep up with the times as always... and upgrade our out dated equipment to the new and improved technologies. If we don't, we get left behind in the dust... not to mention.. game playing experiences becomes 90 percent frustration and 10 percent enjoyability. My upgrade has shifted the enjoyment factor back in to the 90 percentile again. :D

-Tallyswift

Journey Through Ulduar

2009-04-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

Well my guild HAT managed to actually defeat Yogg-Saron this past Sunday, April 19th. It was very challenging to defeat the last boss. Our melee dps had to squeak out every last little bit of dps on the brain below...

My roll as a feral druid went like this:

Phase 1: Gasseous clouds with adds spawning - Tank in my full feral dps gear and spec.
Tanking these was slightly tricky. The biggest thing I learned was to always go behind an oncoming cloud.. because if you try to beat the cloud, you end up halfway around the circle and could get out of range of heals, and it just slows the whole process down. Slowing processes down on this end boss is a bad idea. Other than that, we had melee dps stop attacking adds that got down to the 50 percent life mark, then proceded to drag the add into the center for range dps to finish off when it was next to the boss in the middle. We had 3 tanks picking up the adds, each of us would mark our specific add and "claim it". If we performed this first phase optimally with zero clouds producing extra adds (other than the very first cloud that we intentionally activate), we would have only 2-3 total adds left by the time the second phase dawned upon us. Oh.. yes, I also talked my lead tank into letting me zoom into the room in kitty dash mode to activate the first cloud.. which is rather fun!

Getting the optimal phase one took numerous attempts.

Phase 2.... DPS down the remaining adds and pull them away from the raid before they blow up on people. Then we focus fired down the small tentacles, (I switch to kitty mode from this point on)... and the other two tanks work on de-activating the large tentacles that the range DPS focus on. There is approximately a minute and 10-20 seconds from when this phase starts to when the portals to the brain appear. The key to this fight is having every single melee dps ready to take those portals as soon as they appear. Usually I was one of the last ones to enter because I have kitty speed, and let the slower ones in first knowing I can easily catch up once I enter. I hardly could get in enough hits to hit my Savage Roar, but I do get it in before: Fairy Fire the Brain, Feral Charge the Brain, DPS rotation the Brain, exit through the portal when the melee leader tells us when to exactly get out!

Don't pick a portal with a translucent brain tentacle over it... you can't click through the tentacles or waste extra seconds trying to click it....

Phase 3: Only took us 2 tries. (because our lead tank Katrina is insanely awesome). I would look for any non picked up adds and pull them toward the raid to dps down. Of course they hit like a freight train the moment you pick it up, so I hit all of my "don't die" buttons. The other two tanks kept the rest of the adds on them for the full duration of phase 3. The tanks never faced the brain to avoid excessive insanity and could tank for a prolonged period. My pick ups in the begining basically gave them both a chance to grab an add and fully charge their sanity and then get into position for full time tanking.

We got Yogg-Saron down with zero people going insane, and only one combat rez I believe...
I sat rather stunned once it was over. Usually we take more learning attempts to get down an end boss that what that took us. It was a lucky night for us, and we also got the Server first kill on that boss as well as several of the other bosses in Ulduar.

After Tuesday, the nerfs started... and we notice some significant nerfings of the medium mode bosses we managed to get down before Tuesday. We actually tried Council on Hard mode first, but it seemed getting the DPS to kill Steelbreaker (the huge dwarf) at the end was unreasonably demanding and probably impossible for us at this point before our tanks are destroyed.

I assume the other larger percentage of players who are able to complete Naxx.. even pug Naxx sucessfully... complained about finding "Easy mode" Ulduar to be "not so easy" and complained... And so.. thank goodness there are multiple levels of difficulty for the smaller percentage of players who are not drunk or drugged during our playing experience who enjoy the strategie and the challenges of HARD content.

Preparing for Ulduar

2009-03-05T09:35:00.000-08:00

What can we do to be prepared for this upcoming exciting new challenge?
First, we can educate ourselves with the actual bosses and possible strategies.
Second... Attempt to experience these things first hand!
Hat guild requires attendance on the PTR to get in on this Ulduar goodliness. We all copied our characters over stacked with our best gear and stashes of consumables to burn through with great anticipation of being able to see new content and new challenges... Unfortunately, the Realm is riddled with connectivity instabilities. Hundreds upon hundreds of players are all attempting to connect and zone into the new instance simultaneously, and you're lucky if you aren't stuck in a zoning screen. Unfortunately, this pre-Ulduar preparation method seems
to be getting even more popular making it even harder for a full guild to assemble at all on the PTR at open test raid times. Our only option around this instability is to keep on trying to get through, or... our guild can rent a meeting room in California next to the test server with T4 servers hooking us all up through a LAN. YEAH! Let's Do it! Okay, so I guess that's just a
wow-head fantasy. Back to option "Try try again till you get into the instance" method.

Super Dailies Routine

2009-03-02T12:06:00.000-08:00

How does my pack rat friend manage to make so much gold?
He doesn't play the auction house much... no... he actually tries to save every little item that he possibly can. He actually had to create a new guild just to get access to a guild bank to fill up with all of his "randomly could be useful at the right place or time" items.
Need some Strong Mojo? Yep, he has some.
Need reputation with Thorium Brothers? He has stacks of turn in items for them too.
Need fish hooks? Yep, at least 3 stacks of 20 of those...
So how does he make his gold? He has a ritual...
And I got him to show me the ritual path he takes...

((SUMMARY FOR THE SHORT ATTENTION SPAN FOLKS))
1) Dalaran --> Cooking Daily
2) K3 --> K3 Blow up stuff Daily
3) Brunhilda --> Challenge Sister/Exhausted worker Daily ==> Polar
4) Sons of Hodir --> Pick your favorites
5) Ice crown --> King of the Mountain daily
6) random other reputation dailies... Oracles, Frenzyheart, Kalu'ak etc.

Route: Start point---> Dalaran = Cooking Daily - almost all of them are quick and easy.
Second: Fly to K3 = K3 daily dropping mines to blow stuff up.. Again very quick and easy.
Third: Brunhilda daily = Most of these are very fast and easy. (challenge a sister) and the beating of the exhausted workers... yeah I hate doing this one emotionally, but I get over it pretty fast... lol.. PLUS the reward could contain the cute Polar bear mount.
Fourth: Dailie(s) for Sons of Hodir --> Yes I'm already exalted but.. it's still worth the gold to bang out a few of these. My pack rat friend selects the Lance daily where you lance one of the proto drakes and beat him to death with your fists while maintaining a grip on the angry flying dragon at the same time. I personally prefer to quickly gather a few of the viscous oils for the helm, and throw snowballs at the giant worms and watch them get eaten by the Hodir Giant ghosts.
Fifth: It's back to Ice crown, and my friend does the "King of the mountain" quest that is SO SO easy to do, it's insanity! (unless there are players of the opposite faction around to mess with you).

Hmm so that accumulates over 50 gold, and a chance for a Polar bear mount, and some Hodir rep if you haven't already gotten exalted with them. I also have been working on the Oracles reputation dailies. I keep picking up eggs, but all that comes out of them are those little tickbird hatchlings! Rumor has it, there are dragons in those eggs, but it's rather rare. One must be a patient little cricket!

Total time doing the quests is about 20-30 minutes. I'm a little slow about it, but if I was as religious about doing them, and as orderly and meticulous as my friend, I'd get a lot faster.
I just have "female hormone" syndrome.. or maybe it's the fact that I gave up coffee for the next several weeks, but I tend to function at a slower more laid back level than a lot of people.

It doesn't stop me from trying to be as competitive as the rest of my guild members!
I tend to waste a lot of time fishing but... I have finally caught the Giant Sewer Rat pet! :D

Druid Stamina - How much can we truely afford??

2009-02-27T13:32:00.000-08:00

As a tank for a very high end guild, I honestly cannot stack Stamina in the extreme manner that numerous other druid tanks tend to do. No, this won't work at all for me simply because the guild members I run with have such extreme dps, I would never get a chance to tank anything! Jingle (top mage dps) can break 7000 dps now on a regular Naxx 25 run. Rather than specialize on maximum hit points, I have put more points into hit and crit and expertise than other tanks and trust my healers to keep me alive with my 40k total health with full raid buffs. I off tank in my dps gear to get the immediate crit agro with my swipes, and hardly have time to enjoy the big numbers before the mobs are wiped out. I keep my emergency buttons at hand and always watch my health bar as any good tank should. As my guild continues to rip through the current game content, we have been maximizing our damage and skimping on hit points. Our healers are top notch and have pulled us through our second successful Immortal run, and about 5 Undying runs now. (Yes they amaze me sometimes). The amazing teamwork my guild exhibits also amazes me. Due to some previous connectivity issues, I was unable to join my guild on their first Immortal run, and also was unavailable for the second one until most of the way through. They still had no problem stepping out for me at the very last boss so that I would get the opportunity to earn the Immortal title... (warm fuzzy). (Thanks Phoenix!) (Okay so he already had the title and didn't need gear but... He did ALL of that hard work getting up to that point! OMG). (sheepishly greatful feeling!).

Success is driven by the sheer desire to play our own character to the best of our ability which includes being fully prepared for every run and sometimes helping others be prepared by bringing extra consumable to share. Constantly evaluating our own gear with the gem selection and enchantments to find what works best for us, and keeping well read with all of the gaming excellence resources.

Encouragement and fun and friendships through teaming ... that is why we play the game in the first place, isn't it? There's also the friendly competition to try to get the most achievement points, but it seems no one can catch up with Rulla's lead... He's one of the top achievment gatherers of the world! (bows reverently) (wonders what else he does in his Real life time... lol)

My next post will include the most current efficient ways of farming some daily gold...
First I have to make exact notes to the efficiency of the whole process and time it. :D

---- Glee and playfulness as always --- Your furry bear tank --- Tallyswift.

Oh btw.. try typing your character name into a google search and see what comes up! Interesting stuff.... sometimes that you were not yet aware of...

Back to Biology... The Herpes virus family... best friends forever?

2009-02-09T06:46:00.000-08:00

Just a note to my World of Warcraft readers: This isn not at a game blog-post by any means, so just ignore it if you were looking for tales of furry bear clawings and glamorous loot rewards... But continue to read on if you are interested in the biological manifestation of viruses and the way our body handles them...

My personal background is in biology. I'm a Medical Laboratory Technologist. I recently read some articles on Wikipedia regarding the Herpes type viruses and found them to be very fascinating.
First, I'd like to state: In our current world the incidence of illness and disease has been on the rise... Ever since this observation, scientists have been continually seeking the reasons for our high incidence of healthcare problems. I suspected that the foods we have slowly accepted into our typical daily diets have played a large part in supressing our immune systems making us more susceptibe to develop illnesses. Foods that are highly processed. Foods that contain high carbohydrates, sugars and preservatives as well as artificial sweeteners. What is the result of this? We gain weight, and we get sick more often. It has been shown that even a few teaspoons of sugar is enough to weaken our immune system for a whole day, and aspartame (neutrasweet) is actually 180 times sweeter than sugar! Our intake of sugar and sweeteners has increased significantly over the past 10 years. What happens when our immune systems are weakened? We get sick. Colds, flu, diabetes, fibromyalgia, heart problems, thyroid disorders, bleeding disorders, infertility and the list goes on and on...
What does this have to do with viruses though? I'll attempt to explain:

Viruses are all over and people are constantly passing them around. For example the common Coronavirus. This one is believed to be responsible for a large percentage of the colds that we catch, and is transmitted through droplets in the air. Colds that are caused by viruses are not curable through medicines. You can only alleviate symptoms of the cold and wait the 3-7 days for your body to develop its own defenses against the specific strain that the body is infected with.
The Herpes virus is also not curable. Once exposed, herpes strains stay with you for life. I'm not just talking about the commonly known sexually transmitted genital herpes disease, but the whole Herpes type virus family.
Here is a list of all 8 (known) Herpes simplex virus (HSV) strains:

HSV 1 = Cold sores, fever blisters (HWJ-1)
HSV 2 = Genital Herpes virus (HWJ-2)
HSV 3 = Varicella Zoster (Chicken Pox) (HHV-3)
HSV 4 = Epstein-Barr Virus (HHV-4)
HSV 5 = Cytomegalovirus (HHV-5)
HSV 6 = Sixth disease (HHV-6)
HSV 7 = Roseola virus (HHV-7)
HSV 8 = Kaposi's Sarcoma (KSHV)

If you take a look at these viruses, you may notice that we have been exposed to many of them in our society routinely. Haven't nearly all of us been exposed to Chicken Pox at some point in our childhood? Also, millions of people have cold sores or fever blisters and think nothing of them, but once infected with HSV-1, it stays with us forever... Our immune system has to fight off outbreaks and put the virus into latency. Later on, if something stresses us and lowers our immunity, we could end up with another cold sore outbreak. Further reading shows that these innocent cold sores could be associated with Alzheimer's disease!

"In the presence of a certain gene variation ... HSV-1 appears to be particularly damaging to the nervous system and increases one's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. The virus interacts with the components and receptors of lipoproteins, which may lead to the development of Alzheimer's disease." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsv_1

So this virus harbors itself in our own DNA and then can be re-activated to do it's harmful things again when our immune system is down. Each of these viruses harbors itself within specific tissue types. Here is a list of the target tissues:

HSV 1, HSV 2= Human nervous system - persists notably in neural ganglia (neurotropic and neuroinvasive) (latent in the cell bodies of nerves in the infected area) Shed through saliva (type 1) and genital secretions (type 2).
HSV 3 = Human nervous system (dormant in trigeminal and dorsal root ganglia)
HSV 4 = Human B-lymphocyte (bone marrow?) (persists within the cell as an episome)
HSV 5 = Human body fluids: (urine, saliva, blood, tears, semen and breast milk)
HSV 6, HSV 7 = Integrated into chromosomes - can pass on to fetus during development
HSV 8= Lymphocytes: exists as a naked circular piece of DNA (episome) Shed in saliva?

So once infected, it stays with us for life, and some viruses (like the Roseola viruses HSV-6, HSV-7) can even be passed onto our offspring through our infected chromosomes! The HSV-8 virus is not as well known because it only presented itself in individuals with extremely compromized immune systems such as AIDS patients. It seems we can fight off that virus easier than some of the others higher up on the list.

What happens to us if our immune system can no longer keep these viruses in check? Here is another list showing the possible effects that each virus can cause:

(Possible effects with compromised immune system)
HSV-1 = cold sores --> Linked to increased risk for Alzheimer's disease.
HSV-2 = Genital Herpes STD --> future genital sore outbreaks, low (~1%) risk of developing aseptic meningitis.
HSV-3 = Chicken Pox (Varicella zoster)--> Rare occasions: encephalitis or pneumonia --> Later in life: Shingles (Herpes zoster) with possible complications: postherpetic neuralgia, zoster mltiplex, myelitis, herpes ophthalmicus, or zoster sine herpete.
HSV-4 = Epstein-Barr --> Infectious mononucleosis, Burkitt's Lymphoma.
HSV-5 = Cytomegalovirus --> pneumonia, gastrointestinal, retinal and neurological disease.
HSV-6, HSV-7 = Roseolavirus --> Exanthem subitum (sudden rash), three day fever, (typically appearing between 6 months and 3 years of age). Rare: Liver dysfunction. Adult: signs of mononucleosis.
HSV-8 = Kaposi's Sarcoma --> (This is the disease from compromised immunity) --> Pigmented sarcoma of the skin.

Some compromises of the immune system can include things as simple as: "cold, influenza, eczema, emotional and physical stress, exposure to bright sunlight, gastric upset, fatigue or injury, menstruation" (as listed under HSV-1), or as extreme as: HIV or AIDS infection, leukemia, organ donation treatment, chemotherapy, radiation treatment or any other method that severely affects immunity.

Another example of a virus that has become more prominent over the years is the Papillomavirus (HPV). This virus is rather wide spread and has been known to cause abnormal papsmears and genital warts in women, and some strains can even cause cervical cancer. The negative affects of this virus also have become more prevalent... Why have our immune systems become so negatively affected?

What is the best way to fight or prevent these viruses? The most effective way is with antibodies that have been developed specifically to target these viruses. Exactly the way your own body will fight them off given time and a functioning immunity. Immunoglobulin developed into the form of vaccines help fight and prevent the diseases caused by many viruses. There have also been some anti-viral agents developed that may be effective for certain viruses.

One might conclude from all of this information so kindly accumulated by my favorite "let's find out" source --> Wikipedia, that our best way to stay healthy and disease free is to 1) avoid contact with any or all viruses and bacteria (which is basically impossible) 2) be sure to get vaccinated with the available current vaccines, and 3) avoid foods or other substances that can compromise the immune system. The food topic is another huge discussion all in it's own, but from reading articles about anti-oxidants from berries, health advantages of fresh vegetables, and whole grains, and visiting http://hacres.com/, there is definitely truth to "You are what you eat". The numerous healing stories from people who changed their diets is likely directly related to a recovering immune system that is less supressed by bad foods.

These are my own observations based on accumulated information over the years.
Here are some more links to informative medical information sites:

American Academy of Family Physicians
MedConsult.com
Wikipedia

The Lag Beast

2009-01-16T10:26:00.000-08:00

Such a mysterious creature, this lag beast is. A creature with no actual corporeal form, yet can produce area effects that transcend epic proportions... The Lag Beast is actually so mysterious, that it is often hard to determine if it is truely present...
Detection methods usually go something like this:

Insta-damage spamming Ret-Pally: "Are you guys getting some lag?"
Leetz resto druid healer: "OMG I can't remove that curse before another one is applied!"
Feralie cute druid tank: "Hmm my swipes just aren't connecting very fast.. watch your agro okay?"
Loud Caps-lock using Enh-Shaman: "WTF! LAG SPIKE! I HATE THIS LAG!"

At this point we can usually confirm that the Lag beast is indeed present and that is has initiated it's surprise attack by now. All of the party members then begin to brace themselves... The tank may pop some emergency buttons, a few Tauren might try to warstomp to slow some of the beastly damage.. Clothies might begin to flee and cower in corners....
Many of us also brace for the unfortunate "You have been disconnected" message and get kicked out to the character loading screen to spam the connect button and grumble as the "server is unavailable" message for the next X number of minutes... Eeek

What can we do to fight back?
Well one thing certainly does help.. The use of a voice communication program to communicate within the party can rule out if the lag is due to Blizzard server issues, or if it is a possible internet hub that is lagging. Also the detection of this mysterious beast is confirmed much more rapidly when verbally communicating rather than typing in party chat. The Lag beast hates us and wants to make our lives miserable. Taking away our ability to work together is his favorite evil deed! I mean, don't you get more frustrated if you experience an issue but then can't even tell anyone about it? If your power fails due to a lightening storm, but you can't call the raid leader to let them know you won't be back for an unknown amount of time.. and you pace in your pitch-black home fretting, knowing they will let that ..other guy.. have your raid spot because you can't tell anyone anything?
lol Okay well maybe that hasn't happened to you but..

Everyone has been a victim of the Lag Beast at some point in time.
Probably the worse lag beast attack I have had was when tanking the adds that come into the Muru chamber in Sunwell. Of course missing even one of the 3 adds means that likely someone is going to die.. and usually it's that resto shaman that was keeping you up by throwing insanely awesome heals on you creating healing agro through the roof...

Lag Beast --> 12849375
Random guild of High Occupancy server ---> 0

There some trends though.. that one can be aware of and be prepared for. For example... Naxx resets on Tuesdays.. so what is almost every guild doing on Tuesday? Running their Naxx runs most likely. So our guild has bumped our Naxx run to Wednesdays. We have been able to complete a full Naxx 25, plus 25-man Malygos, and throw in a 25-man Wintergrasp at the same time. ... leaving us with just Sartharion + 3 drakes for our Sunday raid day.

The Lab Beast has tried to thwart our raid progress!! But it has failed... Perhaps I'd like to blame it for our guild not achieving the Immortal achievement yet, but I think it's player attention span that we have to blame...

Possible precautionary measures:

Evaluate UI and remove all that isn't necessary
Examine game video settings and use minimal detail settings
Upgrade your internet service to higher speed
Buy a new top of the line computer system!!!

I guess I'm limited to the first two options. I have only been able to do some minor upgrades like like .. extra memory added, newer video card, newer monitor, upgrade version of windows...

But nothing will stop the Blizzard generated Lag Beast..

January: New Outlook for the Future

2009-01-06T13:53:00.000-08:00

I never used to feel like I had to try to make a New Year's Resolution in previous years, but this year seems different. Maybe I'm just getting older and time seems to be speeding up for me.. so each year is a bit more precious.. Time is a gift. I'd like to make the most of it.
So I ponder... What can I do that I might actually stick with so that it's not another wasted good intention? I'm not going to blow 250 bucks on a gym membership... Instead I acquired a barbell that I ignore in my bedroom instead of ignore the gym as I drive past.. It's free.
But I already have been through that phase....
This year it's more about my children.
This year I hope to spend more time with them making their childhood really count.
I hope to convert their bad soda drinking habit to drinking healthy beverages like water with lemon squeezed into it (helps speed up metabolism), and fruit juices like cranberry juice and limeade.. oh and lots of tea with honey. *warm fuzzy*

We also happen to own a Wii.
This is a novel game console in the sole fact that it (mostly) forces one to get off of their couch potatoe hind quarters and get some increase in heart rate in for the day! Wooo!!! (and actually have fun challenging yourself and others in the process)...
I got addicted to Elobits for a few days... but that's not one of the really high body movement types of games. Just a point and click thing... obsessively.. so if you have carpal tonal, avoid this game..

So now here it is a week into January, and we've had a case of water and all of our lemons are gone already... (several of them were used to make some great cranberry new year's day punch.. mmm)... and I don't feel like I can do enough to get ready for this up coming year....

I know that things will be easier for me in my virtual world... WOW - the druid tanking.. because a good friend of mine is going to play a feral druid and we will be taking turns raiding rather than both of us being required to have almost 100 percent raid attendance. He was our top DPS shaman, and I was the only feral druid. Now we have new recruits, and many of the classes are rather interchangeable depending on what spec they are at the time. Death knights have some pretty amazing abilities, and with paladins on the horde roster, our raids are much stronger than they ever were before both of these classes were available.. So stress levels are decreased in the area of raid responsibilities for both of us. (Thanks Olati for embracing my idea to share the feralie goodness wealth!).

I wonder what else I can do... to make more of my life... and I don't really know. I have many good intentions that I never quite managed to manifest into reality... They end up being lost into that special future good intentions vault in my mind.. saved for the right time and place, but the motivation to make them happen just isn't arriving...
I again have to ask myself how much do I want something in order to get my little legs into action. I wonder if I could get angry about it to generate some kind of extra energy, but I'm not the angry type. I wonder if I think really hard about how it will affect others, is that going to help spark me into action? Maybe some of these things just aren't rewarding enough for me to pursue. I have numerous artistic ideas that I haven't ever taken the time to create.. but who would benefit from it in the end? The wall will have another portion that is no longer bare? Who else but me will benefit from my artwork? People gaze upon it and smile for a moment.. why can't art be more lingering? *shrug*
I guess it's not the result of the product but the enjoyment of the creation itself? I guess the thought of the mess to clean up inhibits my initiation of products...
But luckily there are outlets of artistic abilities that don't cause all of the materialistic mess...
I guess that's why I still log into Spore and check out my Spore friends creations and make the occasional interesting critter or space ship or building myself... it's the perfect art outlet for someone who already has enough on their daily plate to not want to clean up after play time..

Best wishes to all who are working on their New Year's ideas...
Good health to all out there. .. When in doubt... remember to be.. mostly harmless, and stay happy-go-lucky.

Obsidian Sanctum

2008-12-15T09:17:00.000-08:00

Welcome to a wonderfully compact and highly rewarding instance!
The amazing thing about this instance is that the harder you work, the greater the reward!

The Obsidian Sanctum, also called the Chamber of Aspects, is located beneath Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight. It contains a large raid dragon "Sartharion the Onyx Guardian" and his three lieutenant drakes... plus some small groups of trash mobs.

Each mini-drake boss has specific debuffs and added mechanics such as continually spawning adds etc. The details are well documented in multiple locations like: Wrath's Obsidian Sanctum... and all of your favorite WOW informative webpages.

My guild has easily blown through the individual drake fights dragging along all of our raiders to familiarize them all with the different drake fights and to gear up with some minor loot. We then decided to tackle the "Sartharion plus TWO drakes fight". (Our raid leader has ultimate confidence in our abilities, and so we skipped the more simple Sarth plus One drake fight). Sure enough, we got it down in just 3-4 attempts.. Our raid day was cut short that week. The Following week, of course, we started some intense work on the final and most difficult encounter that the Obsidian Sanctum offers.. Sartharion plus ALL THREE drake lieutenants. (I'm sure we could pull the whole instance to make it even more difficult, but that would just be an instant wipe and insanity if we didn't clear out all of the roaming trash in the chamber).

After much difficult work, and practice dodging waves of fire-lava, and keeping agro on all of the spawning whelps and lava elementals, we learned that our most difficult challenge would be a crunch time where our Death Knight main tank would take extremely large hits that could potentially one shot him... After numerous hours of attempts and several repair bills later for all 25 members... we got over that hump, and it was mostly downhill from there... though I died while tanking Sartharion as the second round tank... I was then raised... I thought I was ressurected normally, but noticed I couldn't move and only had access to that crazy Zombie pet bar.... so I Exploded offering my small bit of dps on Sartharion and was then ressurected normally.. Unfortunately, I got disoriented from the rez, and ran the far way when a fire wave came and died again... :P BUT I got off my all important and life saving Innervate on one of our top priest healers, and the raid pulled off the final kill...

Yeah yeah.. I'm sure you've read a dozen "We did it!" stories on wow blogs... but this particular kill was important for us because it was a server first kill, and the 25 of us were the only ones who could sport our brand new titles.... till Limbo feels like killing it in the near future.

Until this time, Limbo has been always just a small step ahead of us getting all of the server first kills. Their dedication is commendable and has been a small nudge for our raiders to always do their best. Perhaps because our guild has always been riding on their furry little tail, they have been more dedicated and motivated than they might have been if we didn't exist on the server.. Either way, Limbo is an excellent companion guild to have, and we have worked with them on multiple occasions regarding swaping useful classes or gear or crafting items... and the friendly competition just adds some excitement...

If your guild is working on multiple drake + Sartharion pulls, Keep working at it! It's really an exciting accomplishment! Eventhough I wasn't thrilled about my personal job of swiping every single add and trying to keep agro on them all with all of the horrible lag and fps that my sadly out-of-date computer compromises me with.. I kept my focus to do my best as all good raiders do, and trusted my excellent raid leader to guide us through as he always does.. We all love and admire Sirloin!! I'm sure he ranks well up in the top 10 best raid leaders in all of the World!..of warcraft. *smile*

Reflections on WOTLK Raiding

2008-12-11T09:03:00.000-08:00

After immersing myself into the new content, I now have a fairly encompassing perception of how the raiding and heroics seem from the view of a feral druid tank.

First, as a tank, (especially a druid), it is extremely easy to find groups for tanking heroics. Feral druids seem to be very reliable tanks. Thinktank has mentioned in detail the mechanics of druid tanking have now been "built in" and are not very gear dependant anymore, and with the advent of swipe affecting all targets, it's much easier to pick up groups of mobs. So it's always nice to hop online and get asked to tank multiple heroics or hard hitting mobs.

Second, regarding raiding, on a scale of one to ten, the ease of the top dungeon seems to be really nerfed to me. My guild was able to work its way through all of the sunwell content before the huge changes were put into place making everything easier. So if Sunwell pre-nerf was a 10 on the scale, I would only give the Naxx 25 man instance a 5. It is a lot like Karazhan was before getting all geared out. Each week we do Naxx, it just gets easier. We only took 1-3 tries on each boss when we were learning the whole thing, and most of our actual wipes were due to server issues. We have had to challenge the lag monster almost every night in surprise locations of our raid dungeons.
The worse lag monster tends to rear his ugly head when we attempt the 25 man Malygos.
The lag was SO Bad when we were jumping from protective purple dome to purple dome that our time limit before Malygos enrages was shortened to near failure each time. If we lost more than 2-3 people in the final drake challenge, it would end up being a wasted attempt.
Regarding our strategy for Malygos.. Originally we had people stacking either north or south of the dragon, and simply move "away" from the sparks that would appear.
This seemed a very chaotic approach and I suggested that we have some organized method of moving away from sparks so that healing drakes and dps drakes would never split up. We ended up with a huge single stack to the south with all of us together... always getting healed, and able to keep continue to keep our dot stacks on Malygos. If a spark appeared, the whole group would then move counter-clock-wise around Malygos and remain in a single large cluster.

After learning each of the interesting new raid bosses and fights, it seems I am at the point of... "Is that it?"... we have completed every challenge so far except for doing the Obsidion Sanctum with the central dragon PLUS 3 drakes up for an epic fight. We were able to do the Dragon plus two drakes up fairly easily... and likely this final challenge won't take us long to complete either. I rather miss the times when we would be stuck on Kalecgos for 3 weeks each week filled with uncountable attempts tweaking individual rolls and accountability to perfect a method that works for our guild..

Final perspective:
The story content...
Regarding levelling to 80, I felt pressured to reach 80 as rapidly as possible in order to be able to begin raiding and hopefully get some server first achievements. I was about the 28th level 80 player, and it took me about 10 days. I was delayed because my daughter was levelling a deathknight on my account at the same time, and my son also plays his hunter on my account.
Overall though, I have been very impressed with the extremely long chain quests that the new content sports. You see how the stories evolve and become an integral part of them. I especially enjoy the Heroic Culling of Stratholme. I have a small group that runs that each day accumulating the bronze drake mounts. Once we have gotten everyone in the group a drake, hopefully we can sell the drake mounts in a similar fashion to the Armani bear mounts from ZA.

Affects on friends and guild relations:
I feel I actually have a lot more time on my hands to be able to do small instances or quest lines with my friends in this new world, or just work on questing solo and exploring. The raids take little time to prepare for since the "floor ham" appeared in our first full raid. (I was sitting in horde kitty form next to a floor ham in a raid, and a few players tried to click on me to eat me thinking I was the Feast!!). All we need to acquire are some flasks, and it seems even the flasks are becoming less necessary for a tank, as our healers spell power and mana efficiency keeps going up and overall survivability isn't even an issue. My guild has done lots of recruiting and there are many new faces in the guild with fresh excitement for our extremely fast raiding progression that we try to maintain. Occasional old guild members who have left over little things have migrated back, and players whose Real-life situations took away their time to play have come back to enjoy the new perks of the exciting new content...

It's well into the holiday season now, and many of my other gaming RL friends have been dipping into other new games that have come out, but I still enjoy my WOW virtual life and guild relations and gear/achievement endeavors... I'm not the "shoot-em-up" type, and I'm not a loot hog requiring new things constantly. The only other game I have been toying with is Spore. (My name is Swiftpaws) It is not a multi-user interface. It is single play only but you can incorporate other people's content and creations into your own game. I have an artistic nature and creating fuzzy animals and beautiful architectured building and vehicles appeals to me... but nothing is quite like my real virtual home in wow...

Raiding Progression

2008-09-19T09:37:00.000-07:00

My guild Hat has just achieved one of our huge goals. We killed M'uru! Entropius died on Monday, September 15th at 11:10 pm. It was our last attempt of the night... It was indeed a surprise to all of us. We had been practicing the fight for numerous weeks in a row. We are able to take down all of the bosses up to M'uru within one night giving us multiple days to work on the fight. My particular side (near side) had gotten into a pleasant quiet and efficient routine taking down all of the shadowsword mobs with time to spare to DPS M'uru himself... It seemed like most of our best attempts were rather quiet. Each player would just go into some kind of trance hitting the sequence of buttons they require to do their job perfectly. This fight indeed requires perfection.. maintained for numerous rounds. Oddly enough, after performing our jobs perfectly for about 5 minutes, at the 6 minute mark when we begin to time the transition, too many times people would freak out, panic, and get themselves killed.
I guess it is this phenomena that seems to be causing lots of near kill wipes when working on a new boss. I guess this is why .. after we have gotten a boss down once or twice, it's not as much of a big deal, and suddenly we can down the boss in one shot, and consistantly do repeat performances each following week.
It makes me wonder what we can do to keep raiders from panicking.. I am certain when Sirloin says, "6 minute mark, just keep doing your job..." It helps keep people focused and not freak as much. A signal goes through the brain saying *note - we are doing well, don't mess it up* ... but how do you respond? Smile and keep focused? Or ... clap your hands like a child on christmas eve and freak out?
I believe we are able to keep the panic to a minimum. It's rather amazing when I myself can keep my focus while in the background of my home, a kid is asking me what the word "Trait" means, and my daughter has "Drake and Josh" blasting on the TV. My cat always is hopping onto my husband's chair the second he steps away to do something.. The only thing that really throws me off is when I get a migraine headache with the lightening doughnut aura.. I can't see half of my visual field, and I feel drained. I hate those. I would like to blame all of the cellular phone towers for them, but I live out in the boonies. :P
So productivity can be hindered.. We are only human right? Aren't we all just trying to have fun? Should we respond like humans or robots? I guess robots are more efficient...
So now.. On to Kil'Jaeden! He sure looks cool coming up out of the pink cheery floor kinda like how Ragnaros does.. Rather interesting. Hmm where was he anyways? Under the floor? Sleeping in some basement? Some magical void that just happens to be located there? Okay I guess I'm going to sound like a complete noob if I keep going on. I need Grob to explain all of the story line to me. Or winge with his magical voids and mysterious boggling explainations of the technicalities of the wow universe...

Spiralling Down

2008-08-25T13:26:00.000-07:00

"An obsession, compulsion, or excessive physical dependence"

Day number 724 - 7pm tonight - Raid - intention = M'uru attempts, possibly ninja an Archimonde from a "mid-Hyjal-Completion-raiding Guild".

Tropical Storm Fay is quietly tapping at the door of our region. Flash floods are to be expected over the next several days. This is an extreme contrast to the severe drought that we endured around the same time last summer. The ground was so dry, dust started to infiltrate the air blocking out the sunlight in a murky haze. All green things had long ago gone into emergency standby waiting for any form of moisture to wet it's thirsty roots and rhizomes. The land had long since turned a dry golden brown and straw color... When the clouds finally had teased us enough with their taunting presence and released some life-giving waters... I let the rain wash down on me and watched everything around me drink it up and regain some of it's living colors.

Now we are going to watch the green thick grasses and fields beaten down with waters rinsing and washing away anything that isn't securely attached.

---> Being an adult, I treated myself to some M&Ms... because no one will tell me not to... Doesn't chocolate help keep us girls happy? Rumors of euphoria... I wish I could feel this.. "euphoria" a little more, but then it would probably dull the sensation with increased stimuli.
Let's not dull our senses... Sometimes I close my eyes while walking down a long empty hallway and skim my finger tips along the smooth wall to help my find my way.. just so I can 'feel' something slightly different.. sense things that have slowly been blocked out of our daily experience of life. My sense of smell has lessened so I eat things that have more flavor now.. is this normal for aging? I look at myself and I'm still a lovely female to behold.. it surprises me.. didn't I want to grow up so badly when I was a kid?

---> (Random thought eleventy-que-jillian) So how much longer before our innocence is but an irretrievable memory?

....The storms have begun already... Rain is pouring down.. the skies are darkened.. the wind has already started it's whipping of delicate green limbs and reaching fronds.

I must depart.. routine continues.. it always wins in the end.. pulling you in the flow of things..

I'm scheduled for more M'uru! How can I delay?... Oh and some delicious spaghetti? Ponder...
I'm so spontaneous.

Bear obsession

2008-08-18T06:53:00.001-07:00

Yes, I have an obsession with bears...
I am most often seen as a bear... I am most often tanking things... My favorite past time is to scan the trade chat for a few minutes for the most appealing "LF 1M Tank" request, and just volunteer myself... The most surprising ones that I respond to, are things like LF Main Tank Gruul's Lair, or Magtheridon... ZOMG these PUG groups are almost always extremely chaotic and contain random numbers of Loot ninjas, or malicious individuals who intentionally try to wipe our attempts.
Usually I come into the raid thinking I'll just kinda lay low and enjoy myself.. maybe see if my other friends who are as spontaneous as me want to tag along.. and often several of them do..
The hopes of laying low never lasts though. I usually volunteer myself to Main tank, and they readily agree when they notice I have full Tier 6 gear. Then we start on some trash.. people don't really listen or stack or heal and a random DPS will die.. usually it's my best friend Auraka who can't help but put his insane dots on the mobs, and is also fully decked out in T6 top notch gear.
Then we get to the actual Boss fight and realize that whoever threw this thing together... has NO earthly idea how to assign healers or explain the fight.. That's when I can't help by try to put some order into things. I'll organize the healers hoping that they will do their jobs.. and assign the tanks and Misdirects hoping that will work out... and amazingly.. we usually end up doing it in one or two tries.. ...except the night I agreed to tank Mag... for my friend Brahuato. He pulled me in because he said Sirloin was going.. and of course I tend to readily agree to help Sirloin because he's just such an amazing person. That particular Mag run was being led by a very derogatory leader. He took every opportunity to cut on people and tell them to not be a noob, and even had some guild recruits that he warned a few times to watch out because the way they handled themselves now would reflect on their chances of getting into the guild. Some of the PUGs they had in the group decided to respond to this leader's negative comments by intentionally not clicking on their cube when we got Mag down to under 20 percent.. and the whole raid would wipe. The leader also was unable to figure out who to boot from the raid, so we did this 3 times before they were finally replaced, and me and Sirloin managed to finish up the "easy boss" with more than half the raid dead. Windflurry also was with us and he too was stunned at how horribly the raid was handled. There was so much swearing that I wasn't even in vent for more than the first initial gathering and few pulls. My little innocent ears don't enjoy the rough vulgarity of typical low life guildling chitter chatter. I'm extremely greatful for the professional manner that my own guild is always conducted. There is respectful language and only the most important transactions going on in ventrilo which is very conducive to the concentration state of each of our raid members.

All of our members have the highest respect and admiration for our raid leader Sirloin who has been running sucessful raids for years. I try to do my part by maintaining the professional environment as well. I'm not afraid of what people think of me if I politely nudge them if they start to say mean or vulgar things, or if they talk down or act rude. Afterall, I'm a mother, and they probably expect me to be like that.

And back to the bears... Beyond volunteering my bearlike qualities to others, I also have been organizing as many ZA Bear runs as I possibly can fit in. (See advertisement below). It has been a very successful venture and there is never a lack of volunteers to get in on the runs. I have been selecting party members based on expressed interest as well as selecting key classes that will ensure a successful Bear run. I appologize to any members who may feel left out. Perhaps I should post a sign up sheet on the guild webpage to make sure I'm aware of everyone who is interested in coming.

So far, we have sold 2 bears, and on our second run, we actually made record time with 10 minutes left to spare. It's been a lot of fun!

BEAR MOUNT FOR SALE

2008-08-07T13:09:00.000-07:00

Regular Zul'Aman runs available to NON hat guild members for a price:
(requires 9 hat members to pull you through it)

Each Hat member will get an equal portion of the gold.

Full BEAR run price = 5000 gold.

You get the bear, plus any loot that hat members don’t need. You must pay the full cost by the time the Bear mount is to be looted via Masterloot.

Usually we do our Bear runs after our raid on Sunday, and after the raid on Tuesday or Wednesday. Assembling time for the ZA run is around 11pm, and run lasts till about 12-12:30am. Bear ONLY run lasts just under and hour (no Hex lord or Zul’Jin).

If you only want Hex lord or Zul’Jin, cost is 900 gold per boss.

****Any items you need from a boss need to be agreed upon before the run. ****
****Half of the total sum of gold is expected up front. ****

Contact Tallyswift of the Gorfiend server online if interested!!

Hat Guild Webpage: http://hat.boardzero.com/forum.html
http://hat.boardzero.com/general-chat-f2/bear-mounts-for-sale-t212.html

Druid Dilemma

2008-06-03T06:40:00.000-07:00

Other classes may be jealous, but...
What does a druid most fret over? Which kind of gear to put on...
Aye, I could ponder and gaze at my gear for hours every evening looking at the different combinations the way other people look at an icecream sundae pondering all of the different combinations of toppings they can put on it.
I have numerous different types of sets of gear... for different situations... Each set stacks different stats and is composed of different items...
PVP gear: the highest resilience items I have.
Pure Healing gear: Of course, stacked healing
10k Hit Point healing gear: Healing with stamina for those bosses the require us healers to save our own butts (like on Archimond) when dying is more detrimental than making top marks on the healing meters...
Tanking Gear: I try to have over 30k Armor, 142 to Hit, and of course maintain critical strike immunity... AND get my dodge up as much as I can.. (For Brutallus, and basically any generic boss).
Tanking with extra dodge: Crit immune and stack dodge
Tanking with Hit and damage: Crit immune with full Hit, and as much attack power as possible for Gurtogg Bloodboil (so the little bear can compete with the leet warrior tanks in agro).
DPS gear!: Of course for kitty form.. stacked agility and as much attack power as possible... (sometimes I tank trash in this gear with my evasion trinkets.. shhh don't tell anyone... the healers don't care, it gives them something to do.. ).
Fire resist gear: at exactly 295 FR with as much Hit and dodge as I can muster.. I even enchanted all of my pieces for just a little more health and agility etc.
..and of course I play around with stacking different stats now and then, and pulling out specific pieces to still keep my T6 x4 bonus, and recently, I have acquired the ability to have the T6 x4 bonus PLUS the T4 x 2 bonus! It hasn't yet paid off yet though probably because most of my T6 pieces have lots of stamina, hit, dodge and defence type gems and enchants on them. If I can replace some of them with pure agility or some strength, I could get my attack power up to much higher levels... My aspiration is to actually try to get a second T6 helmet (which is unlikely unless all of my competing classes already have at least one). I could then put pure DPS gems and enchants on it.. :D

Anyways, I am luckily an enchanter and an alchemist. I do not have any extra profession bags, and I don't have a soul shard bag, so I can keep all of my gear sets with me and be even more flexible and the drop of a hat.

I guess this is all just miscellaneous babble about druid gear.. lots and lots and lots of druid gear if you play a druid as your main character.. The only question I have is about stacking agility for kitty form. It seems strength would be more valuable if you already have a high crit value..

Usually the way I ponder my equipment is to set it up a specific way and just try it out.. but that can be expensive if it means changing my gems and enchants.. The programs for calculating out equipment stats doesn't seem to work very well for me. Rawr is giving me fatal errors, and I don't have a spreadsheet.. /sigh I guess I'll have to acquire one.

Oh, I got a new add on... it shows my missing buffs whenever the raid leader does a ready check. It's kinda cute because it has an ansi bunny also if you are missing 3 buffs or more :D

My Exact Symptoms of Parvo B19 virus (Fifth's Disease)

2008-05-17T12:03:00.000-07:00

First Day of actual Symptoms: Tuesday, May 13th - I went to work as usual. Appetite was decreased, felt more tired than usual. As the day went on, I felt progressively more cold and achey with a fever that developed by evening and the usual fever delerium. I also felt nauseated and ate nothing that evening. I went to sleep an hour early wrapped in a warm blanket to bake out whatever virus I had.
Day two: I woke up still achey but my fever seemed to have disappeared. (I didn't bother to take any tylenol but I did take 2 Airborne tablets the previous day and continued to take over 2000 mg of vitamin C every day for the rest of the week.) My appetite seemed normal, but my back and shoulders seemed a little achey still.
Day three: Thursday - My achiness was not as bad but my eyes felt like if I rolled my eyeballs back in my head, they hurt a little. I might have had a headache but was otherwise basically okay.
Day Four: Friday - I woke up and took a hot shower. When I got out I realized I was covered with a rash. My arms looked like they were sunburned with white splotches and very tiny hive bumps. My legs also were red down to the tops of my feet but not as much. Mostly the red spots were where my hair follicles were like I had a shaving rash but my thighs were all red and splotched and my torso front and back with the classic "lace-like" rash as described in wikipedia. This is when I identified my virus as Parvo B19 virus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parvovirus_B19 As the day wore on, my rash began to fade, but started to itch a little, particularly my feet that were encased in socks and shoes. It wasn't too hard to avoid scratching. My feet felt like they were swelling badly and my eyes felt very dry. By evening, my appetite had fully returned.
Day Five: Saturday - I woke with my joints hurting so I tried to sleep as much as I could to try to finally be rid of this virus. When I finally got up, I found that my hands and feet were swollen like balloons and my toes and soles really itched. I took a shower and rubbed between my toes with the damp towel and noticed my rash was completely gone. If I stretched my fingers on my hands, my skin felt so taunt that the middle knuckles turned white like the image in wikipedia.
Day Six: Sunday - Swelling is mostly gone, only some slight itchiness remains on hands and feet. By Monday, I felt back to myself.

Summary: Day 1 - Flu-like symptoms - nausea, fatigue, delirium, fever. Day 2-4 - Achiness, tiredness, joint pain, decreased appetite. Day 4 - "Lace-like" red rash all over the whole body except for palms and soles. Children = pronounced "slapped cheek rash". Day 5 - swollen hands and feet, slight achiness and join pain when waking. Symptoms will likely be more pronounced with a compromised immune system. To boost the immunity take lots of vitamin C and some Airborne, and get lots of sleep.

***These are the symptoms as experienced by myself. I have not yet confirmed that this is the Parvo B19 virus yet, but my test results will come back in a few days to confirm it. The parvovirus has been spreading through my community for the past several weeks. We have had numerous pregnant women coming in to be tested for it claiming that their children or their neighbor's children were infected with the virus. I blame one of the kids that came in with their mother... I remember at least one or two having the "Slapped cheek" look. So far none of the pregnant mothers have tested positive for the disease, but about half of them have tested positive for the immunity.

*****Monday May 19th: I got my results back today from my blood test. I tested positive for IgM antibodies to Parvo. That means that the blood test confirmed that I had the disease when tested on Friday. I was negative for my IgG antibodies, but I should start making those this week and then be immune to this disease for as long as my IgG antibodies last. IgG = GOOD (immunity). IgM = BAD (disease).

New HAT material: SUNWELL

2008-05-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

When the patch first came out, my anxious guild eagerly set foot inside of Sunwell. We were greeted with a familiar looking massive robot. Warning flags immediately should go up when you see one of these nearly indestructible constructs. If you recall Heroic Botanica, what is the most devastating point? The hallway with the two constructs that spam their purple blasts of energy all over and can often wipe the group even multiple times if not all of the players are on their toes for these metal heartless mobs. Again, in Heroic Mechanar, which mobs are the most challenging? The large constructs that slam their fists and immediately enrage afterward and beat massively on the tank. Anyways, once again, Blizzard places their beloved destructive robots into their new quaint beautiful instance. My guild devised a strategy for these robots.

Sunwell Robots: Divide the raid up into stacked groups that are spread out. This minimizes the damage from the electric charges. DPS him down.

Sunwell Robot + Scout + multiple class mob of 7-8: This is handled by first waiting for the scout to be at a good spot near the raid, easy for all range to hit. The scout is then mind soothed and distracted to stop him, a timer counts down, and all range dps blast him apart before he can agro the giant robot. The mob automatically agros the moment the scout gets hit, so the 3-4 mages in the group each sheep a target, the pretty winged beast gets slept, and the tanks pick up the vindicators, and the hunter too if there aren't enough sheep to sheep him. The hunter needs to be faced away from the raid to keep him from multishotting over the whole raid. Also, one of the mobs will fear (Dawn or Dusk, I think it's the Dusk) so pull everything back away from any non agro'd robots.

Okay after playing around with trash and mastering it finally... HAT moves onto Kalecgos. We spent SOO much time on him the first few weeks.. 9 days total, four hours each day, more than 32 attempts each day... until we finally downed him. Several times we ALMOST downed him, but the last portal didn't open, or a portal gets skipped messing up the rotation, or some other strange thing happens.. someone disconnects etc... anyways... We finally got him down and now we are working on our Brutallus strategies. Yesterday Sunwell reset and we were expecting another full day at least working to get Kalecgos down for the second time.. and what do you know? We go in filled with energy and kill him in ONE shot! :D The raid leaders were rather stunned, as was most of the raid. It was a pleasant turn of events after wiping on him SOO many time over the past few weeks... So.. Yesterday we went on to wipe the rest of the evening on Brutallus.

Regarding tanking in Sunwell... I have examined my gear and worked and reworked it many times trying to get the perfect combination of items. For Brutallus I had to have Full HIT cap of 141, remain Crit immune, AND I wanted to get over 30k armor. After playing around with some gems and combinations of trinkets and gloves, belt, chest pieces etc.. I finally achieved all three goals. My hitpoints suffered just a little, but once I upgraded all of my gems to epic AND I got the bracer that dropped off of Brutallus, I got my hit points to over 22k fully buffed.

My gear is listed in the armory. I currently have 5 pieces of T6. I keep passing on the chest because my Vindicator PVP chest seems better because of the resilience that can be used to help build up to the crit immunity. I have been pondering throwing on 2 T4 pieces for dps, but the T4 chest is just so inferior to the 2 main chests I have... Out of curiosity, I checked all of my gear for upgrades on WOW armory. I had nearly the best items in the game. My helmet is inferior to the engineering helmet, but I'm not an engineer. I still can upgrade my belt and boots to T6.. I'm not in any rush though. :D

The only question I have left to ponder... Should I replace my idol that gives me the agility bonus to dodge with the one that gives my party an increase to crit? Brutallus is essentially a DPS race... If my healers can keep me up without the agility proc'ing, then the crit bonus would be more beneficial...

Also, my Kalecgos gear is now my full tank gear with the neck traded out for the BT shadow resist neck, and my moroes lucky pocket watch traded out for the Arcane resist trinket from Karazhan. It helps enough with the shadow bolts and arcane blasts to help the healers keep me up.

The end of April....

2008-04-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

I guess I made it....
I crawled through the green goo in the depths of the dungeons...
Well, not really, I actually just went through the implementation of the NEW millenium Laboratory computer program. It was a grueling first 2 weeks... Not because of the program itself being extremely filled with glitches and problems and duplicate, triple and quadruplicate reports printing wasting reames of canary yellow paper, but because it stressed out my co-worker like crazy and she became an extreme bear to work with!!
Hence, the reason for my long delay between posting...
Since the last post, I have acquired most of the goals that I had listed for myself. I decided that I probably enjoy fishing much more than most people who play wow.. simply because it is a really nice relaxing break.. It's kinda of like sitting on a screened in porch during a rain storm.. Just sit there and relax while you watch the rain fall, and listen to it pitter pattering all over the world...
Okay so I mean to say that fishing is mindless.. But the rewards are not meager. I usually get a pretty decent stack of food buff supplies. I get the +30 stamina crawdad food, and I get the agility mudfish steaks, and in the process I also pick up some nice clam bars for the + healing to give to Agnarian who in return gives me more agility foods. It's really a nice trade off... So not only do I get lots of yummy foods to eat, I ALSO get some really great scrolls! I'm always pleasantly surpised when the scroll case gets fished out of the water. It actually happens more than expected. I have on my right now about 9 scrolls of protection V, and about 6 agility V scrolls. So I'm all set to do my leet tanking part for Kalecgos in Sunwell. He has been a very elusive boss.. stubborn to tame.. The healing is very intense, and the curses are just killer insane after a while.. but I think all of our hard work and practice will pay off VERY soon.
Sometimes I'm amazed at how much I can just ramble on and on about some things.. Unfortunately I have also gotten to be very very playful.. I say the exact opposite of what I mean more often than not just for fun knowing that the people who know me best will know exactly what I mean and giggle about it with me.. It still throws off the very straight forward ones who don't quite know me so well yet lol... I guess it's good that I still play the game to have fun and hang out with the great friends I have made over the past 2 years!

Useful Information

2008-03-27T07:13:00.001-07:00

Based on the new patch coming out, I sorted through and made somewhat of a priority list of things to work on now that we have access to the new content of the patch 2.4. Most of this I learned about in the druid forum summary post on the elitistjerks forums.

Oh MY Squigglie symbolness!!! = The Idol of the Raven Goddess that previously gave +0.4% crit to everyone in the feral druid's party will NOW give +0.9% crit to the party! According to the calculations: "Assuming an average person in the party does 1500 DPS with a direct 1%crit->1% damage ration, it's a gain of ~6DPS per member, or 24 DPS + your own gain (more likely to be 4-5 or so)." **NOW**, AS OF 2.4, each party member gains ~13.5DPS per person for a total party DPS of 54 DPS + your own gain. This makes your presence twice as valuable in the group than previously with the Raven Goddess idol equiped. I'm going to request to be placed in the hunter party when I'm not tanking.
Aquire this trinket upgrade: Tsunami Talisman = the upgraded version of Hourglass of the Unraveller. I still use this passive trinket for kitty form because I believe in removing clicking dependencies wherever it's more likely that the computer will be more efficient at thinking for me. I don't get those warm fuzzies from seeing huge numbers that some other players get, so popping damage trinkets isn't a warm fuzzy thing for me...
Spend more time fishing for Figluster's Mudfish agility food and doing the daily fishing quest instead of farming Skettis for Warp Burgers.. I guess that just gets old after a while.
Work on reputation with the new faction to be able to learn the new +Defence to chest enchant! *woot* so I can put it on the new t4 chest I got last night off of the rather even more nerfed Magtheridon that we botched up badly yet still downed with only 10 players left standing for most of the fight and me back up main tanking in my Hit gear. LOL. I hope to get one more piece of t6 in Sunwell so I can then swap out one of the 4 I have now to gain the 4 t6 set bonus AND the 2 t4 set bonus. This will be excellent energy and rage generation PLUS the 15 percent increase in damage all together!
Run the new 5 man heroic until I get the new trinket: Commendation of Kael'thas. My two companion main tanks Teraxe and Bedwyr have already won this nice upgrade. I spent a lot of time pondering over how much of an upgrade it might be, and if it would be a problem by removing the human factor of being able to pop the trinket to initiate the extremely beneficial increase in dodge. I currently use the Moroe's Lucky Pocket Watch, plus the Badge of Tenacity combination, and when I am tanking Mother Shah'raz, I alternate them between the 2 minute cooldowns. So about every minute or so, I can dodge a little extra and give the healers a break for a few seconds. With the new trinket, I'll have about 700 more life as a buffer, plus the increase in life will cause the new trinket to activate when I still have less than 7500 hit points or so (my hit points while tanking Mother are currently about 21k fully buffed). The advantage of this trinket though, is that it can activate potentially every 31 seconds if I dip below the 35 percent life threshold. There will not be as many stressful moments when I see my life dip, and I still have over 45 seconds left on all of my trinkets because I used them both. Now I only have to watch one trinket, and maybe have my trigger finger ready on my feral combat potion+HS macro, and just admire the other trinket when it procs for me. I'll be swapping out some of my +defence gems for straight stamina to try to increase my hitpoints even more.
Figure out what to do with all of the honor I now have from turning in my stacks of 100 PVP tokens my daughter has been accumulating from playing my character in battlegrounds. :D

And that's enough to fret my little furry bear head over for now... There is a LOT more content to explore than I had expected, and I'm excited. Unfortunately, I am not as much of a power gamer as some of my guild companions and I'll be taking my time to thoroughly explore it in my meager yet sufficient freetime.

New Content!!

2008-03-27T05:52:00.000-07:00

Well I have not yet discovered all of the new content, but as of this new patch, there are a lot of very refreshing changes! First of all, everyone now has access to the Hyjal and Black Temple instances that previously were basically off limits unless your guild was filled with extremely serious raiders who were relentless about getting down Vashj and Kael... Those two epic battles were large obstacles for most guilds and almost impossible for the casual laid back raiding guilds. Unfortunately, my "brilliant idea" in the following post is now simply an "obsolete idea" unless a high end guild simply charges people gold to take them through the attunement steps to gain the "Hand of Ad'al" title, but what an expensive title that would be? But the good news is.. Guilds that were beyond the attunement hump and were into the farming stages of Black Temple are now able to find new recruits. Blizzard has brought the players together... the over powered high end players and the ambitious yet stuck players can now get together and progress side by side again.. There are new challenges to face that are not restricted to only half of the lucky population of the server, but all may set foot into them and get their butts handed to them just as efficiently as anyone else.. And much handing of hindquarters occured on Tuesday night when raiding guilds peaked their eager head around the corners of the new 25-man instance Sunwell. Our guild had a night of exploring and experimenting with the efficiency of blasting scouts before they awaken the huge electified green robots that shoot chain lightening through the raid like current through a copper wire... New content luckily has a fresh and exciting feel to it... allowing you to tolerate all of the silliness wipes to a certain degree. But then you expect to see progression, and we did get in multiple decent learning attempts on the first boss after dragging torturously through the finicky trash mobs. Overall I think Sunwell will be a lot of fun. The loot is new and exciting, and getting heroic badges from Hyjal and BT as well as the ability to bring all of the alts through them is a huge bonus since the new patch.

Brilliant Idea?

2008-03-13T06:25:00.000-07:00

Okay this may be perceived as ludicrous to some, but....
In almost every guild, there comes a time where the regular raiders will start to have real life interference that takes them away from their raiding posts, or the player will simply drift into other things besides raiding... This will leave a void and can sometimes be compensated for by other guild members, but the more people who drift away, the more it can cripple a guild's raiding ability. At this point in time, the guild leaders will begin to consider recruiting replacements to fill those voids. Often they would like to get specific classes and will seek out replacements who are qualified for the position. Currently my guild is actively seeking to fill the position of a resto shaman and a shadow priest, as well as other general healing classes. As a response, the current guild members have searched through their friend lists and other resources finding a few players that are accepted.. but after those resources have been exhausted, the guild members must then look for new players that may not be well known entities.. HAT guild has the upper hand in recruiting because we currently have done a complete clear of Black Temple, and have Mount Hyjal on farm. Now.. here is where my idea comes in... Our little obstacle in recruiting is the fact that the majority of available players are not yet Black Temple attuned. The individuals who /are/ attuned are most likely content with their guild and would be very hard to recruit. The only ones who would be recruitable are more likely to be guild hoppers, or may end up being a bit sketchy with raid attendance. So, my idea includes a possible two week long process that would involve attuning some new characters. First of all, we would include several key alts that our current reliable players have for example: Jingle has a priest alt who was often at many of the pre-Black Temple raids and has decent gear. Several other players have well geared druid alts, or paladin alts as well. This would give the guild more flexibility for fights such as Gurtogg Bloodboil where a mage would not be nearly as useful as a priest would, and other fights where a melee or range DPS could be swapped out for an ALT healer or hybrid. Also, the player will be able to get excited about picking up gear that might otherwise be disenchanted because most of our main raiders are fairly well geared at this point. So, our attunement group would include about 4-5 Alts, but we still need more actual dedicated players to fill up the occasional extra spot in our 25 man raids. This is where the brilliance comes in. ..... Because we have basically run out of players whom people could *without a doubt* be vouched for, it would be a risk to _first_ invite a new recruit and _then_ attune them.. What if they don't show up to the raids? What if their performance isn't up to standards and brings the quality of our raids down? Then we would have to consider confronting them about their performance, replacing them, or even removing them from the guild.. Therefore.... I suggest that HAT advertise Black Temple Attunenments! There is a price of course. Probably set at somewhere between 500 to 1000 gold each. (According to other members of the Gorfiend server, attunment is already set at about 1000 gold). For our runs, we could charge: 300-600 for the Eye including Kael, and 200-400 hundred gold for SSC including Vashj. This would allow the dedicated players who are still loyal to their own guilds to become Black Temple attuned and possibly break away from their well loved guild that might not be progressing into the end game instances that they might wish to see, or stay with them and help them progress from the experience they gained from raiding with HAT. This would also allow some players in some guilds to manage to get their second vial and maybe also progress into end game. The price would compensate the high geared players who will be taking these folks through the instances. So for example, if the raid consists of 5 alt players, and 6 possible recruit tag-alongs. That would leave about 14-15 main players to be partially compensated for their efforts. Of course it would also be FUN for most serious raiders.. They raid because they enjoy it! So if SSC takes two days, with 6 recruits paying 200-400 gold each, that would be 1200-2400 gold to compensate the other members who are not alts. Each geared member would get about 80-160 gold to do this run for the alts and the possible recruits. Hopefully no one's repair bill will be over 40 gold each day, so it would be well worth the main raiders to first of all, get guild alts attuned, and secondly, evaluate some new players and possible recruits. In the end, even if this does not produce new members for the guild, the alts will be attuned, and the raiders will have had some fun at little to no cost to their personal gold funds. Some of the profits could also be given to the alts who are getting attuned in response to guild need anyways. (If the alts are included in the compensation equation, the guild members still will be compensated with 60-120 gold each for the SSC run, and 90-180 gold for The Eye run). As a result of including non guild members... these individuals can be seen as possible recruits. The possible recruits will get a chance in return to see how our guild runs, and evaluate whether or not they would fit in and enjoy raiding with us. It will be beneficial for all individuals involved in the long run. If all goes well, HAT will become even better known, and attain the reputation of containing players willing to help others. There are some risks though. A possible recruit could in fact attempt to ninja the instance when the scheduled rais is not running it. This would set our guild back a week with our attempts to attune people. If this does actually happen, our guild would simply delay the efforts and get back to our guild only Hijal farming runs and Black Temple runs. Therefore the possible recruits would need to be screened well as being well known non-malicious people. What are the chances that this will work? Well it will come down to the actual raid make up. If the 3 main tanks are top geared, and there are at least 3 top geared healers, and 4 top geared DPS, they should be able to pull the weight of the alts who should already be known to have excellent player skills and able to maximize their alt's efficiency. Hopefully the recruits will also be serious players that can be vouched for as reliable players and good people, so that the raid should still work out. It's so crazy it just might work...
Okay, so this isn't a NEW idea, but it is simply illustrated here in detail to point out how it might be beneficial to execute such a plan of action to help gather like minded people together who enjoy raiding...

Hoooray! Illidan is dead!

2008-03-12T07:44:00.000-07:00

Okay okay, I guess all of these posts about winning and stuff were initiated due to the fact that my guild HAT finally took Illidan down on Monday March 10th. (Um yeah, 2 days ago). I didn't have time to post anything until today. I have a few afterthoughts about our epic experience that I would like to record right here for my buddies to ponder over.. ... First of all, it took us several weeks to work up to the point of even getting to Illidan. Once we were able to get to him on a weekly basis, the actual fight itself required many hours of practice ---> particularly with kiting of the Flames of Azzinoth. Two tanks get to do this fun job that has been called "The hardest tanking job in the game" by some. I was one of them. I was decked out in full fire resist gear which included: The full set of heroic badge gear (chest, gloves, leggings, and boots), I still had my Lava belt that my friend Whitefire made for me from the days of Molten Core, I also had my Onyxia neck piece, and the Blood of onyxia trinket. I had a few slots left to work with to get in as much armor, dodge, defense and burst damage as I could get to help with survivability and holding agro. I selected my T6 helm, plus the T6 Shoulders for the 2 piece bonus, and I have my new Pillar staff from Mount Hyjal for the most damage I can do. This set of gear seems to work out okay except it is still very fragile regarding Agro, and our DPSers had to be very careful about watching their own threat. I learned how to do the kiting from the very helpful informational YouTube video that you can find links to from Bosskillers or other WOW resource sites. Um yeah I guess this blah blah isn't really important unless you too are a feral druid who is either about to tank Illidan in fire resist gear, or has been kiting him and likes to compare methods with other people... But.. I just wanted to note something about the kiting pattern around the concentric circles on the ground that the raid is standing within. There are lines that basically mark the range limit for each elemental, but they are not exact. The exact markings are the small double lines that are at regular intervals on the inner ring. The north west line that marks my north limit is just outside of the limit range for my Elemental, and whenever I stretch this limit, the other elemental will immediately charge me just before or during the time that I turn it around, and it is flaming at me.
....so there I was... just an innocent little bear... (with sharp 4 inch claws and razor sharp teeth, and a vicious bite to go with it).... Minding my own business.. just toying with the cute fuzzy little flaming elemental (who was flaming me for ticks of 3-4k fire damage of which I could resist 2.5k or so each).... Just pawing at it playfully.. luring it in my direction.. playing with it like a cat toys with it's prey before it pounces and breaks the poor mousie's neck.... and suddenly a giant blue laser beam ray shoots down from the sky where Illidan is ominously hovering over us... It sears the ground behind me in a path heading straight toward the innocent little bear... so I dodge outward.. jumping gleefully into the safe zone... and ( *ZAP* -19000 ).. my poor innocent bear tail gets seared right off.... I LIVE.. ..but my little toy elemental gazes at me with it's evil eye that says "I don't think so" .. and .. I .. die...
I am proud to report though.. that of the seven attempts that it took for us to take down Illidan that night, only on that attempt and one other attempt where I discovered the north line border, did we not make it through the Flame of Azzinoth kiting phase. So 5 out of 7 near perfect kiting phases courtesy of myself and our other brave and valiant fire-resist tank: Morphinicus. Not too shabby.. eh? So after a few tries to get through the final phase of the fight.. one of which the parasites went out of control at the last 3 percent left of Illidan's waning life bar.. on our seventh try for the night we finally saw him drop.... and then there was rejoicing.... So.. now what? I guess we do it all over again! But next time.. even better! (like I said in a previous post.. there is no end of the game truely)... It's all about taking on a challenge and through excellent teamwork and execution of a carefully devised plan... achieving our goals.

Winning the Game

2008-03-12T07:09:00.000-07:00

Well, winning the game is truely a relative term, but if you /could/ win it, I guess most people would say it would involve killing the final boss in the game. Other people might consider it as gearing up with the top gear in every slot AND killing the final boss.. Yet other people might consider it achieving top PVP status or being ranked number one as a guild. Truely the "winning the game" idea is just a goal that you set for yourself. What do you do once you reach that goal? Well... you make another one and work toward that one! So in reality.. we never can really "Win The World of Warcraft" like we can win other games... Now as far as LOSING the game.. I don't think there is any way of actually LOSING, but if you /could/ lose, my son managed to do it. He had made a character (a Night Elf Druid actually) and was leveling him up, but whenever he died, he would use the spirit ressurection. After a while, he had completely run out of all forms of currency.. perhaps had only a few coppers to his name, and every single piece of gear he owned was at Zero durability... Not only that, but he had not been on the server long enough to make any friends, and I had no characters on the server to pass him any gold either. ... So this rendered him completely useless trying to fist fight spiders or bats. He couldn't even kill anything in order to regain his gold.. so all of those 4 hours was wasted and he had to start over.. LOL.. I believe Blizzard has created this game to make it so that there is no way of losing.. if you lose you might stop playing, and if you stop playing, you won't want to pay the monthly fee, and if you don't do that, then they won't make money off of you.. so we /certainly/ can't have that!

Over all.. I believe when you mosey off to bed and ponder over the events of the evening after playing online with your friends... you get a sense of accomplishment if you had a good team, and together you achieved some goal.. It is the feeling of teamwork, and comraderie at its peak. You have a sense of being needed and appreciated. Of course one should seek this type of usefulness and accomplishment in all aspects of their lives as well. When you go to work and work as a team to get the daily tasks done, it should also be followed by a "Good day's work done" feeling. When you do a favor for someone, you also have the satisfaction of having done something good, something right, something useful and your self value will increase in your own eyes and in the eyes of others as well. So why do we play this game? What is the meaning of life? Why does my daughter make such a mess in the kitchen when she is baking cookies?? Well we may never know, but perhaps they are all tied together.. Wow is another way for humans to interact.. and perhaps some of you hermits thought you didn't need human interaction, but in fact, we do.. Isolation is not truely a desireable thing.. Seeing yourself reflected off of others by hearing a simple "thank you" for helping others.. is a desirable thing for most humans... So don't forget to appreciate your friends... so they can wake up the next day ready to be even more "cool" and look forward to teaming up yet again.. And.. well.. Make that 15 dollars a month worth every cent... Blizzard will thank you later .. won't they?

Another Late Night

2008-03-05T21:40:00.001-08:00

All this long raiding has gotten a little bear all tuckered out...
It has rendered me nearly speachless.... so my solution to this is...
How about I just post several interesting eventful screenshots?

When the phases of the moon and the earth's relative location along it's circumfrencial path aligns itself in a more verbally proliferative inducing manner, I will commit to writing long drawn out paragraphs about useful, or perhaps not so useful information for all computer addicts who might just avert their eyes in this general direction simply to absorb my extremely long run on sentences....

Coming to an insane Tally blog near you... Soon!

Random Tally Thoughts - cluster 2,300,221

2008-02-19T13:58:00.000-08:00

As of the last post, we did sucessfully manage to take down the Illidary Council! The two days of practice paid off, and with the help of my faithful warrior companion and husband, we were able to keep the mischievous rogue under control. We got into a pattern of rushing Veras Darkshadow and pummelling him for all that our trusty weapons were worth, as well as taking turns stunning him with bash, backing up for intercepts and feral charges. Once he vanished we would dance around the fire and blizzards on the edge of the raid rather inbetween the raid members and where we are trying to keep the rogue spawning and tanked at. With two sets of eyes watching for him it is far easier to spot where he spawns and charge in with lightening response. The fight overall is very long and each member had their own particular job to focus on while also dancing away from the deadly fire and ice patches. We consumed large amounts of potions, elixirs, flasks, and healthstones.. it was a merry bunch of players when we finally succeded. My warrior companion was awarded the sweet DPS plate helmet that dropped to replace the very ugly one he was using that made him look a lot like a murlock! Imotheap was often heard Murbolling in perfect murlock imitation whenever Grendu appeared.
And then.... the lock barring the massive doors to the final destination within the Black temple was broken with multiple rays of colored energy... and we all trotted up stone steps to come face to face with Illidan himself..
I thought, "Wow, here we are at the final boss.. after all this time.. and well.. he seems shorter than I thought he would be.. hehe"
Isn't that what Anakin Walker says to General Grievous when they first meet also?
We did a few practice "getting the feel" attempts on Illidan and died extremely pathetically each time in the second phase of the fight.. wherein lies yet one more tanking challenge for myself and one of our top two protection tanks, Aggresser. It will be simple task of mimicking the informational U-Tube videos, and practicing until we get the patterns and attack cycles down... and watch out for the blue beam of death while dancing with our firey lime-yellow elemental friend.... I guess we shall see how it goes...

The Challenge of Disappearing Targets

2008-02-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

A very popular "disappearing target" is Moroes from Karazhan. This elusive skeletal figure will beat on the main tank for a period of time, then suddenly vanish to award some random party member with a garotte that is not dispellable. Moroes will then re-appear and return to the tank that has been working up his agro on him from the beginning of the fight. The fact that the agro is not reset makes him rather easy to tank as long as no one surpasses the main tank in agro drawing the boss to themself instead.
Imagine what it would be like if Moroes disappears, but has a complete agro wipe before he re-appears in some random location in the raid.. That is what the mob I was assigned to tank last night did. A druid was selected to tank it because we can easily charge the mob when it re-appears and maul or mangle it rapidly to rip the agro back onto our furry armored bodies..
Sounds rather simple.. but to make things more complicated.. occasionally, the mob will have a shield making it immune to phyiscal attacks. ... So a druid can pop out of bear and Moonfire it to try to rip agro back... So here comes this mob back over to a more squishy druid who has to be quick on the reflexes and pop back into bear, then quickly mangle again to keep agro...
The Mob I speak of is the challenging Veras Darkshadow (rogue) of the Illidari Council in the Black Temple.
I was ready for the task... I had my macros all set: Macro One: /targetexact Veras Darkshadow /cast (Maul rank 8), and Macro Two: /targetexact Veras Darkshadow /cast Feral Charge. I also set the sneaky rogue to my /focus, and had a /cast [target=focus] Moonfire all set for him... I drank my agility potions, threw on my Hit and Tank gear and got ready... Our brave Paladin steps in and gets a Blessing of Protection to avoid instant death from the initial pull of the whole Illidari Council, and I move in and hit Veras with a Fairy Fire.. He heads over to me and I Maul and Mangle him and throw on some Lacerates. (I have my Lacerate and Maul on the same key because they have no cooldown). Things are going well, and my dedicated Paladin healer Hiro keeps me alive easily as I dodge most of the rogue's attacks... La la.. fun fun.. and then **Vanish*** so I wait a few seconds and start to look for the sneaky devil to pop back up.. ~~come out come out wherever you are!!!~~~ And I get impatient.. so I start to hit my Feral Charge macro... and suddenly I charge in and hit one of the other Council members! Why didn't my /targetexact work? ZOMG.. so I back away and finally the rogue pops back up... How convenient.. Right in front of me!!! So here goes.. I hit my /targetexact Veras Darkshadow /Maul button... and Um.. it's not working... ZOMG I'm totally out of Rage!!! He runs off and kills some healers and the Main tank dies, and we wipe..
Okay well.. This is the learning curve right? I will not be rageless ever again.. I discover that Boss Mods has a nice timer for us to see exactly when he will re-appear, so next time I will be ready..
Bopstar heads in for the initial pull again.. He's BOP'd and I pull again with Fairy Fire, and run toward him to Maul and Mangle and OH wait... My enrage must have agro'd everything before Bopstar could engage them! Gathios the Shatterer (paladin) smacks me for about 8k, then my lovely target, Veras, comes over and procedes to destroy me for 4 sucessive hits of 3k each. Somehow I didn't dodge a single one... Curse you Enrage button!!!
..Okay so.. Try again..
This time I throw on more Tanking gear and less HIT gear...
The pull begins.. I'm dancing on my toes all ready to pull without my enrage.. I decide to Moonfire him instead, then pop into bearform and tank him. Moonfire hits, but he runs away to the other side of the room anyways as well as a few other Council members... We wipe again.
HMMMMMM... Why does something so easy end up being so complicated??
Anyways.. That was our first time setting foot into the Illidari Council room.
I learned that my Hit gear is more important than the tank gear because one missed Maul or Mangle could lead to the rogue running off and killing someone else. I will just save my Badge of Tenacity to dodge his attacks. I also learned that I can go and beat on some other Council member during the Vanish period to keep a lot of rage for when he re-appears. And finally I learned that .. if the moonfire is needed... pop into bearform VERY fast or else it's instadeath for my little furry self when Veras turns his evil eye back on me and pokes those sharp objects into something other than my armored bear fur!

One last thing I think helps out a lot... Veras Darkshadow is Stunable... so I call out when he is about to appear so that the paladins can be on the watch for him and Hammer of Justice him into place to buy me some time to charge in and maul and mangle him... Teamwork often is the key to making things work out... especially when your target just won't stay put!

Planning Raids and getting people to come!

2008-02-08T12:32:00.000-08:00

How to plan events....

1) "WHEN" Communication!!! First of all, the guild should select specific days of the week as "Raid Days". This works far better than using a guild calendar and scheduling events on it for several reasons. The Calendar might not be updated early enough for everyone to see the event and plan to be at the raid. Many of the members may not have the Calendar add-on installed. They might not know they even need to get one, or they might have been told, and didn't find it to be "essential"... and still have not bothered to get it. The Calendar is not necessary if days are selected and remain static. The "Raid Day" method always seems to work better because of communication. If someone us unsure of when the raids are, almost anyone else in the guild can tell them exactly what days are the "Raid Days". If the Calendar is being used, usually only one person, or a handful of people will actually be scheduling the events and times. There may even be a miss communication problem between the people scheduling them causing confusion.. Again.. just simplify and have "Raid Days". For example, My guild will always raid on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Raiders are expected to show up for the raids, and should let raid leaders know if they can't come.

2) "WHAT" Communication.... So the first step is knowing WHEN, now what must be communicated is knowing WHAT to expect... This is best done through a simple guild message of the day explaining what the raid will be, and what any other future details.. Also, our raid leader gives a very precise summary of what we will expect to accomplish at the beginning of the raid, and at the end of the raid, his evaluation of how well we did, and what to expect to happen in the next raid day, as well as any type of consumables or equipment that will be needed.

Even with great communication expressing raid times and expectations, there still might be problems with raiders not showing up. Some raiders will quit playing or leave the guild, or their computer breaks down, or they just have a lot going on in life that pulls them away from raiding for a period of time... These things are to be expected, and it seems recruitment is an on going process.

More Stealthing!

2008-01-31T08:58:00.001-08:00

The air was teppid, and scented with a slightly spicy yet pungent odor... perhaps from the fine dust floating low in the air... Oh wait... That's not dust, It's Spores! Ahhhh - CHOO!
I was surrounded by a soft close feeling.. almost like being inside of A large passive creature.
The ground was almost squishy like stepping on a giant tongue.. A few more steps revealed plant-like projections sprouting from the terrain, and some signs of life.. actually, LOTS of signs of life.. Perhaps it was just the lack of daylight in this deep cavity beneath the Coilfang Reservoir, instead, it was illuminated with a soft orange glow that gives the impression of being inside of something living. A pair of Sporebats flutter past me, unaware of the silently stalking kitty. I continue to pad through some reddish mossy underbrush until I find that which I came here seeking.... a patch of Sanguine Hibiscus. Although most people will just collect them for a mid level 60 quest, I have come back seeking them now... at level 70. If I can just collect enough of them, The tiny Sporegar folks will grace me with their exalting reputation and sell me some Shrouding potions, and teach me how to transmute the very valuable Primal earth to Primal Water. Because I'm surrounded by creatures that are only level 65ish, I can stay just far enough away to pop out of kitty stealth mode and collect these precious flowers very rapidly! Yes, that's right.. more flowers for Tally... All for me... making myself a big big bouquet that will make the Sporegar folks love me.. Eek I'm starting to sound as jovial as a smurf!

Um, yeah.. I get a little lost in my Tally world.
To sum it up for you, Very easy Sporegar rep = Stealthing regular Underbog, Pick up 7-8 Sanguine Hibiscus per run, reset instance, Collect them till you are exalted. This method seemed far less time consuming that the other reputation gaining methods. Fun.. I even wore the Sporegar Tabard with the mushroom on the front of it for a long time. I guess I like cute things.

Cash Stealthing Cow

2008-01-30T08:35:00.000-08:00

Well, the information about the Dailies is not new information, it is just probably the best option to make some quick gold that everyone can easily do. (Everyone meaning.... People who CAN'T Stealth)....

If, however, you are a druid or a rogue, there are some special bonus options available for making some quick gold----> Stealth Runs! (with an enchanter... er... DIS-enchanter I mean)...

Here are the options:

Party = 1 Druid (tank), 1 Druid (healer), 2 Rogues/Druids (dps)
Instance = Normal Sethekk Halls

With this group of four, all members can stealth to just before the first boss. There is a patrolling bird that pats into the boss room. The bird, plus the two mobs on either side of the doorway may pull if you run straight in and start the boss fight right away, so we usually clear those mobs, plus the nearby mob in the corner of that hallway leading up to the first boss room.
This first boss is relatively easy. It will spawn at least two waves of elemental adds that will need to be dps'd down, and then the third wave can often be ignored in favor of just killing off the boss. The loot is one blue that is then disenchanted into 1 Large Prismatic Shard. Next... on to the last boss! Yup.. just skip passed all of the other junk in between... just stealth right past it all... Rogues can simply distract birds if needed, or sap mobs that might be tight squeezes if one of the members doesn't have all of their talent points spent in improved stealth... The final boss is quickly destroyed with 4 good players, and drops 2 blues that become 2 Large Prismatic Shards. As a bonus, there might also be spirit shards if your faction controls the towers at the time of your run. Each stealth run results in 3 Large prismatic shards, taking about 10-15 mintues each. You can reset the instance and run it 4 times resulting in a total of 12 Large Prismatic Shards. Each person gets 3. They sell for about 20 gold each on our Auction house, so that is another 60 gold earned in less than an hour (if you don't screw up). ....and not to mention, it is rather fun! Especially compared to doing the dailies OVER and OVER and OVER again...

"What if I can't get that many stealthers?" you ask?
Well, it can actually be done with just a Feral Druid, and a Rogue!!

In this case, the first boss will be skipped. The pair will get up to the first boss, then the rogue will enter initially and agro the boss (who can see stealth). The rogue will simply walk out the exit on the other side and then vanish around the corner of the doorway while the druid will stealth through the room as the boss is kept busy. Just be sure the druid is safely through to the other side and doesn't enter combat before the rogue vanishes.... then ---> On to the final boss. It can be done with just these two! (if both are well geared and know what they are doing)... The druid will need to tank the boss while the rogue may spend most of his time sheeped. The druid can then heal with tranquility during one of his explosions, and although it can be very close for comfort, it can still be done sucessfully most of the time. Of course, this can be done more easily with three stealthers, or it can even be done with two druids, but to pass the first boss (who cannot be killed with only two players), one druid would have to sacrifice themself, and be combat rez'ed on the other side. So the number of runs two druids can do together is limited by the combat ressurection cooldown for both of them. (2 every half hour).
The results are: (1 rogue + 1 druid) (4 runs in about 30 minutes with no mistakes) 8 shards total, 4 large prismatic shards each = about 80 gold in 30 minutes! Of course.. it doesn't always go perfectly, so it often takes more like an hour to get your 8 shards.

"What if NO ONE will come with me??" You ask??

Well, if you are a druid or a rogue with enchanting... There is yet another way to make lots of gold from stealth runs. Go and solo Lower Black Rock Spire! Every single boss in this instance can be solo'd except for the last boss. If there are two of you, then you can even do the last boss.

The fruit of these runs comes out to be about 7 Large Brilliant Shards per run, and each run takes about 12-17 mintues. Large Brilliant shards run at about 5 gold each in our Auction House, for a total of 35 gold per run. If you run it 3 times, that's about 80 gold in less than an hour. With two stealthers, the runs are faster, but shards need to be split between two.. but company always makes everything much more fun!!

**Note** Large Prismatic Shards sell FAR more rapidly and are of much higher value than the Large Brilliant Shards, so the LBRS runs may not result in QUICK gold.. but they do sell eventually...

So ... what is the most profitable secondary skill?? Perhaps... Enchanting?? hehe. I have made all of my gold from this skill, and have not made any gold from my Alchemy at all. Both skills are very beneficial to me though. One just makes a LOT more money for me.

Secret Cash Cow

2008-01-29T09:42:00.000-08:00

One of the most common questions that I get asked is... "Tally, how did you save up for your epic flight form?" Well, to answer this, I will have to spill a few of my druid secrets...

PART ONE) The first method: Solo, or with a party. Dailies!
a) Skettis - Bomb Monstrous Kiliary eggs (about 5 minutes) - 11 gold.
b) Take the express flight path to Blade's Edge Mountains - Wrangle Aether Rays (about 5-7 minutes), Bombing quest - (about 5-7 minutes), Apexis Emmanation "Simon Says" (5-7 minutes), and optional: Banishing Demons, (about 10-12 minutes). - 44 gold total.

**Note: Usually while I'm doing the the Skettis bombing, I also will farm the water elementals and get one primal water that sells for about 20ish gold, and also farm the Warp Burgers for raiding (and often are for the Kiliary soup cooking quest). Also I will farm a few motes of fire when doing the banishing demons and hope for the rare Badge of Tenacity to drop. (I was one of the lucky ones who happened to get mine while banishing demons.. rare, but it happens). If you want to do even more dailies, there are still about 5 more that can be done rather quickly in Netherwing.. but they usually take me at least another full hour and are not as time efficient. I'd rather be doing Stealth runs, myself..

So.. doing all of these dailies plus a little farming produces about 55 gold immediately, plus another 25 or so from farming a few motes of water and fire... and another 8 gold from the cooking quest including some free meat or fish. All this within about 30 to 60 minutes depending on how long it takes to get the motes if I'm farming, and where the cooking quest is located. Of course, the time it takes can be faster or slower depending on how many party members are with you. With more members, it's even faster.

I'll add PART TWO tomorrow..... Druid + Stealth + Enchanting = GOLD

The Battle of Mount Hyjal - Tank Boot Camp

2008-01-24T06:21:00.000-08:00

Attention all tanks!! Want a chance to really shine?? Here's your big chance to really show it off!! ...or get beat into the best shape you've ever been.... This is Tank boot Camp afterall!
The Battle of Mount Hyjal is basically just a series of waves of mobs that contain a slightly different selection and number of mobs. The mobs consist of.. well.. no offense to all the undead out there but.. the ugliest groups of mobs you will encounter! Remember walking through the "Dead Scar" when leveling up your beautiful blood elf paladin or warlock or whatever it was you wanted to make so you could see how attractive the new race was? ..and suddenly you enter combat.. and turn around to face the ugliest lumbering pale sickly green malformation you've ever seen coming right at you?... Um, Yeah... the Abomination. Our raid leader likes to call them A-Bombs. There are also: Ghouls, Gargoyles, Crypt Fiends, and some Infernals and Fel Stalkers.. There are about 8 different waves immediately followed by the appearance of a boss.
Anyways.. This is where usually there are 3-4 tanks make a group effort to pick up all of the mobs that come in a big mass... Fun... So we run in there!!! Head first!!! WHEEEE!! Oh well right after the little whimpy knights run in first to avoid our own insta-death... and then claws and teeth and tentacles and decayed limbs all collide in battle.. It becomes a squirming mass of sparkling Orcish warriors and Taurens in their glowing armor swinging blood dripping huge swords... I can just imagine their battleshouts... in the middle of the fray screaming at the top of their deep lungs like He-Man or something.. Oh and of course.. the little Feral druid bear bouncing around gnawing creepy undead creatures away from the knights and the other party members and dragging them back to the mass. After our fearless leader Sirloin decides we have had sufficient time to get good agro on them, the AOE starts, and now the mass of battling bodies becomes a swirl of storms and explosions of purple and blue and white until we are left standing in a pile of dead and rotting bodies.. and then the next wave is about to begin..

This is great practice for us tanking folks because we have to keep an eye on any stragglers and pick them up, and also continue to apply sufficient agro to the targets we already have.. Some targets are stolen back and forth, and other targets are kited away at the very beginning by the hunters and then brought back to the pile. Of course, this is where the protection paladin will be most masterful. Some have even said that it is CAKE for them. So... this type of battle simply forces the tanks and actually indeed the WHOLE raid to watch numerous targets and keep them under control. Sometimes a hunter will notice one out of the mass and misdirect it back, sometimes a dps shaman will notice one and pull it back. It's a group effort from the whole raid, but the tanks must be the best at it, and this is the best place to practice your multiple target control skills.

There is one other thing to note here.. These are all elite mobs. Comparing elite mobs is like comparing a teddy bear with a polar bear. They both look soft and furry and bearlike, but the moment you claw it, the teddy bear will rip in half, while the polar bear will get a minor scratch then turn around and claw you back if it even bothers to notice you at all... For these waves of mobs, I usually wear my Hit/Expertise gear, and I throw on a shadow resist cape and neck piece for the Banshees and Necromancer waves. The preparation for each different wave, and each different boss at the end is also important. So .. after working through each boss of The Battle of Hyjal, the raid has graduated to a new level of "Cool". Now... when the hunter sneaks up and pulls a hard to pull mob and accidentally gets two of them... or a happy-go-lucky warlock inches forward with the stealthed druids and rogues forgetting that he's visible and they aren't and face pulls... well... then tanks are all ready to JUMP right in and pick up all 10 elites and get them under control really fast with few to zero deaths. Everyone else just jumps right in and does their control large mob skills along with them, and the raid is left with a satisfied feeling knowing they learned it all from Tanking Boot Camp....

World of Warcraft Blogging....

2008-01-23T11:53:00.000-08:00

Is it addictive? Perhaps... Is it fun? I guess so if you like pondering over your character's progress, potential gear upgrades to work towards, and evaluating the how's and why's of the previous night's raids and instances... ..and then like to present your thoughts in a clear and easy way in the form of typed out words.. Does anyone else really care? Well I don't know yet, but part one and part two are enough to compell me to create this Blog, and become a part of the extensive network of World of Warcraft fanatics, particularly the furry type who call themselves Druids.
..It is true, I was never fond of the color orange.. until I became identified as the class whose name always shows up in orange... Now, orange is a furry color, a familiar color, and also the color I look for when hoping to do a stealth run for quick large prismatic shards.. although yellow is okay too. ;D

I guess this is the first blog post that I will create, so I should include a little bit more about my little Tauren Druid that I'm so very fond of spending time with every evening when dusk covers the world with a soft periwinkle and violet light... I play Tallyswift, a feral druid on the server Gorefiend. Currently my guild HAT is working on Black Temple and doing surprisingly well. I only recently joined them about 2 months ago. Since then, I have seen a LOT of game content that I never though I would ever get to see. It happens far too often that a good group of friends create a guild, and the guild goes through an evolutionary phase that can be moderately successful, very successful, or just dwindle away and eventually fall apart... or they might even just separate down their own paths and just toss a whisper now and then, or the guild could even be absorbed or .. well you know.. anything could happen... and I was in such a very family oriented type of guild... but it takes a guild filled with serious raiders to actually get the really hard bosses down in the post Karazhan instances... at least to get them down without wanting to tear out your hair by the end of it.. lol.