Tanks with attitude

Best friends?

Filed under: screenshot, tank

Now that 4.0.1 has settled

I title this a bit hesitantly because, really, this patch feels far from settled, despite countless server restarts and the fixes put out thus far. From the bug where druid battle-rez + warlock soulstone + shaman self-rez ankh can only be used once (out of all 3) per combat, when that is only supposed to apply to druid battle-rez (once per combat, regardless of individual druid 30minute cooldown availability). Let me squash down my unimaginable rage at the major druid change of destroying permanent-tree-form in exchange for a tree-uber-heal cooldown, despite the awesome threat that druid tanks are currently putting out.

Have I mentioned I was born a feral druid during The Burning Crusade that loves to tank whatever baddies are out there with her bear face? That I loved my awesome insta-threat, hellish mitigation, REAL hybrid “do everything” during raiding back in TBC? Oh, I have. I knew that. Well I’m loving the bear stuff, but it doesn’t outweigh the other druid changes that make me cry if I dwell on my lovely druid. I’m still tanking stuff as I wind down this expansion, still enjoying the game. My druid tank was carried through 4/12 Heroic ICC10 this week, to finish 6 more bosses on regular! And the leather loot gods loved her.

Well, after the saga that was re-installing the game, and the two days it took me to finally download the expansion and the updates and patches, I was glad to get in game and see some of the changes. Many good things, and many bugged-out-the-wazoo issues.

Good: Interface changes with party and raid frames being much less hell, Justice points (stop skipping bosses, puggers, you are making us miss out on justice points!), better stats information panel. Reforging useless junk into useful loot (as a bear tank, arpen MADE ME WANT TO HURT KITTENS) is kickass. Skull bash is the new feral druid spell interrupt/charge and it’s freaking beyond awesome.

Bad: I really don’t like re-learning the classes I’ve played for two years. But there’s more I don’t like.

Glyphs, need more glyphs. We can play with so many, yet there are so few REAL choices. I want glyphs that let me play how I want to play, not that pigeon hole me into a style the developers forced. Speaking of style, wtf healing options are all over the place. The best is reading paladins on twitter cry about wanting their old heal-bomb style back. As a healer, I loved knowing my tank and knowing what to expect from a fight because I could anticipate how to heal. Last minute stressful triage is NOT FUN so someone please tell me why the devs thought moving in that direction would make people WANT to heal. Then they also had to slip a buff to Vengeance in to beef up tank threat.

My video drivers now hates my guts. My favorite addon, Cellular, that manages to give me a tabbed window for every whisper I get makes my game crash when I’m trying to switch toons. (As someone on the same little RP server for going on 3 years with 6 80s and an assortment of little toons I like to hop around on, crashing EVERY TIME is a great way to MAKE ME QUIT THE GAME. ahem)

Things I don’t really like: the new spell queue thing going on. When you hit a button it gets queued, whether the GCD lets you use that ability now or not. That is taking some adjusting from this 50% clicker. :/

All in all, still not sure I’ll be around for Cataclysm. I don’t mind walking way from this. I’m kind of anxious for real life to improve. It just hasn’t yet and this is a pretty inexpensive way to enjoy my time until real life gets “better”. I’ve met amazing people here though from all over the country & world and that I will miss, if I really feel continuing to play won’t be much fun.

Checking myself, for the billionth time, with gear set XYZ

This post inspired by @GeekShui and @phineasdelgado I’m a bit worried, Phineas seemed a bit revved up to come to blows over what I may say!

Filed under: addicted, awesome, bears, general, rant, screenshot, warcraft

My new project

I have a purpose! Sort of. To enjoy the game.

Previously, I failed at ever getting a Death Knight out of their little starting zone. I just lost interest or got bored or distracted. But, inspired to join some determined non-elitists that don’t raid on a server in the same time zone as myself, I rolled a DK and bugged @xparanormalityx into joining me there. I knew he could make sure I got out of that zone!

Here we are in our glory.

The dynamic duo start again as the not_quite_dead

I have very little time not devoted to raiding on two servers, two nights a week each, so I don’t plan for this toon to move quickly. Hopefully it will keep me entertained.

Some DK resources I’ve found so far are:

@TraxyDK
MoodyDK
Rhin’s Blogspot

Filed under: warcraft, screenshot, deathknight, dk

Guess where I am

I like to toss this challenge out there every now and then. Not sure why the screenshots for these are always on my priest. I could find old world ones on my druid, the World Explorer.

Points to whoever guesses correctly where this was taken

Filed under: pretty, screenshot, guess, screenshot

A bit too much cheek. (via Pugnacious Priest’s Warcraft Blog)

Not sure how I missed this until now. But I think it’s something a lot of gamers, players of female toons, regardless of our out-of-game-sex/gender, face. How we respond probably has a lot to say about us. I’m not quite sure what, but I know it says something!

With rose-colored-glasses, I’d like to claim that our toons can appear this way because in game our “allies” are incapable of jumping on us because they don’t like, or perhaps like too much, the gear our toons are wearing and the skin we’re showing. We don’t have that same trust in real life. That “safety” isn’t there.

Things to ponder.

This  probably has to be the most cheek I’ve seen on any gear model.  They are Elemental Rockridge leggings from Mara She is not displaying her cloak now ( obviously) but that is an option.  I can choose to ‘hide’ her indecency untill I get different legs but I haven’t. I think she looks tarty ( a judgement)  - and I find that somewhat amusing.  It’s rather unfeministic  of me.  I know guys play female avatars so they have a “better ass” to look … Read More

via Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog

Filed under: Blogroll, pretty, rant, roleplaying, screenshot, Uncategorized, characters, feminism, gear

Screenshot Friday Game!

I’ve been on my priest a lot lately, while our 10m holy priest has been moving. It’s given me much love for flexing shadow muscles, even with Zarixaanu’s tweaked spec. But having fun on the hunter, too! Including nabbing a PRETTY NEW PET that I’m not sure how long I’ll keep. Kiotikah (coyote, GET IT?) is strictly a boar-loving hunter. But..

Do you know where I am?

She's not purple, but this spot is beautiful

And finally, what my raiding UI usually ends up looking like:

Just another boring UI

Filed under: alts, priest, screenshot, guess, hunter, priest, screenshot, shadow, shadowpriest

In a mood

I really hate failing. I’m my worst critic, in almost everything I do. Sure I can distract myself with fiction, with warcrack, with deviant art, and avoid pondering the magnitude of my failure in all sorts of contexts. I still hate doing it.

As a tank, their deaths are on me

Last night I made some pretty simple mistakes that I feel horrible about. Me, a pro shadow priest that had to MC tank the Razuvious fight in 25man Naxx many many times, totally forgot to release and reMC my tanking mob. I’m left feeling horrible, that I should have known better, that my awesome Raid Leader DID MENTION IT but I didn’t process what he said. In my defense, ick do I have to go through every boss encounter in DXE and turn on all the bars for tracking stuff? Last time I faced this fight I had DBM.

And now for some fun!

That shield is still damn sexy!

Tanking info for Embri

I intended Embri to be a healer the whole time..

I often joke about the multiple personalities of my toons in my guilds. I love my main 3, and the 4th hybrid (paladin) is really growing on me. After listening to the RaidWarning Totem Recall podcast, and their promotion for magelo, I went and redid my free account there. And this is why I did it.

Zarixaanu

Lheaf

Thank you magelo!

I really really like these.

Filed under: alts, paladins, priest, screenshot, specs and loot, tank, tanking, trinket, warcraft

Rock beats healer

This weekend I relaxed and didn’t run myself ragged through raids. This led to discovering that, lo and behold, Maraudon can indeed be fun!

Sunday I logged onto warcraft (having partied plenty on Saturday in honor of Green Beer everywhere) and tossed a coin to see if I did my first random as a lowbie 50 mage or chained through my heroic random grind. Me and my level buddy’s 50 warrior decided it would be lowbies. And little did I know, Greg had been preparing himself to tank. (He finally managed to find a decent shield).

The 30minute wait I expected became insta-group. At 9am server that’s pretty awesome.

The first run was painful. I barely remember BlackRock Depths. Greg, the tank, didn’t know squat about it. All he knew was the first molten fire boss might drop some loot suitable for him. Well, we wiped a bunch getting there, but the trash also dropped a world drop boe epic shield for him. I squealed on vent.

After that disaster of a run (which wasn’t too bad, but was a bit painful at the beginning) the disc priest, my mage and Greg’s tank tried again. We landed with an awesome shaman and paladin. And the fun never ended. We hit Maraudon-Fall of Princess, of all places, twice, and found ourselves back in Sunken Temple three times. The 2nd time through Maraudon, I took them all on a tour up to kill Celebros and the Demon boss, along with a few rares (did I mention my first Nightelf levelled completely in Kalimdor? I cleared Desolace of quests twice) .

All of us were pretty impressed with ourselves. It seemed nothing could kill us. Enhancement shaman, Ret pally, Warrior tank and Disc priest really don’t scream “aoe things to death”. Me? Oh, I just blizzard a lot… Until the priest decided 2 giant behemoths on the way to the Princess weren’t enough, and demanded we pull all of them.

Filed under: awesome, pug, screenshot