Will Boom for Gear

Spark from Tzia

2009-09-02T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'll have to post a shot when I'm actually in a Raid, but here's a 'light' version of my in-game UI. Obviously I don't run around with my bag open all the time so that's never in the way when I'm fighting. I'll update this post then, and have some details about the addons that I have.

So.... Midsummer Festival

2009-06-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

It's been about a month since my last post...... again. Nothing too big to report. it's still summer time and people are hit and miss on being in game, especially me. Camping, working, hanging out with friends, and in general enjoying the wonderful weather.

Though I did transfer my Alliance Druid from Uther to Bronzebeard and have it almost lvl 48. I log in at least once a day to get my Red Battle-Bot Fuel, but that may be the extent of my activities.

What of the Midsummer Flame Festival you ask? Sunday, June 21st when it began, the Lazer Turkey was crowned "The Flame Keeper", and I was done. I got my title, I got my vendor pet, and called it good.

Summer time

2009-05-29T08:33:00.000-07:00

So, 1 to keep Tzia from hounding me when she returns from her honeymoon (4 years late)/vacation in New Zealand, I shall take a slight initiative roll (Natural 20. YES!) and make a post before her return.

So it's summer, people are going on haiatus, vacations, breaks, or whatnot. Shadow Templar has slowed down it's raids to compensate. I discovered that my 'ol man's alliance guild on Bronzebeard is having some issues in Naxx-10. Now to give them their dues, none of them had ever stepped foot in Naxx before and their first boss fight was Anub'Rekhan. That isn't a very nice boss to step into and suddenly have a Locust Swarm go off on the raid and not know what to do with it or how to handle it.

My very first toon was a Night Elf Druid on Uther. What I'm going to do now it level it up from 43 (45 now) and transfer it to Bronzebeard to better help them learn the raiding ropes, considering I'm a Raid Leader, and Guild Officer in ST on Deathwing. Additionally, my Boomkin has been having Feral thoughts, so I figured I may as well quell those tendancies by using this lower level Druid to tinker with Feral....... and I'm LIKING it!! Still have a lot to learn about the Cat DPS, and the Bear Tanking, but for all intents and purposes of leveling, it suits me well. Especially since low level caster takes so much time for mana regen and everything. I really do think having a 80 OP Boomkin has really spoiled me for the caster part. So the speed of Feral is suiting me well.

Lucien Millevoye

2009-05-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

So, I got suckered into this one by Tzia... I just had to go read her latest post, only to find out she tagged me for on of those goofy album cover thingies. Curse you tricksy woman!

So, without further adieu!

If you're curious to how this works:
Instructions:
1 - Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random… Read More” or click here.
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to “Random quotations” or click here.
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click here.
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

Credit: Kelly Burnham for the photo

And now for the rest of the info about my album:

Lucien Millevoye (1 August 1850 - 25 March 1918) was a French journalist and right-wing politician, now best known for his relationship with the Irish revolutionary, and muse of W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne.

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.: P. G. Wodehouse (1881 - 1975)

It has been brought to my attention.....

2009-05-04T21:32:00.000-07:00

That I haven't posted in *now* over a month. Thank you Tzia for pointing out that painful little fact.

So, They nerfed Ulduar a 'little' bit. Or we just became better raiders by getting Naxx-25 on a more readily farm status, but we dropped Flame Laviathan on our second shot, dropped Razorscale on our second, or third, attempt. We dropped Xt-Deconstructor on our 2nd shot after the enrage timer expired, but he never enraged(?) Then we got the guy with the face and arms after about 17 tries. So he was a learning experience for us and we all had a pleasant time about it.

Guid drama is about as much as Guild drama is. Had some people getting burned out /gquit this morning, and other such stuff. So I tried to pick up the Naxx-10 one of them was leading.

That flopped, so a little bit later I picked it up as a hand picked 8-man attempt. The only wings that were left were Plague and Military. Plague was a breeze. I solo healed from the first pull to Heigan. Then had one of the priests swap to healing to help with Heigan so they could cleanse and help heal... Should have just let them heal while I DPS'd. Ran through the gauntlet to Loatheb without a death, then had the priest solo heal Loatheb while we had me and 2 mages drop 4k dps on that sucker and we missed our 10man record by 10 seconds!! I only dropped in DPS (1st to 3rd) because I had to Tranq my group for one of the last heal windows of the fight.

Then we went and had the tanks learn the Razzy fight. Beginning of the wing and the first boss attempt I solo heald again. Boss fight wasn't so bad, just the tanks didn't know what they were doing so as we were wiping, I was about to run out of mana. 2nd attempt the priest swapped back to heals to heal the Understudies while I raid healed. Tank lost control of the Understudy and Razzy started eating faces. 3rd & 4th attempt the Shaman healed while I DPS'd. had one understudy get loose, then had one die and the shaman couldn't quite keep up on heals so we ended up wiping. One of the mages had to leave so we called it there, getting 3 bosses with 8 people in the raid.

Working on Achievments!!

So, I'm hosting 25 Mans now.

2009-04-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

Yup, that's right. As a Raid Officer of Shadow Templar, we are now hosting 25 man raids. Last week (our very first) we hosted a rough 25 man Naxxramas. It wsa very rough as in one night we cleared 3 wings. The next run we cleared one, the next run we downed Sapph, then the next day we downed KT. So we successfully cleared Naxx-25, but it took nearly a week, and all weekend.

We stepped back, did a lessons learned review, then have given it another shot this week. Tuesday we cleared 2 wings. TOnight we plan on clearing the other 2 wings and going after Sapph, and hopefully KT. We seemed to develop a good reputation last week because this week we had a vast amount of people from last week wanting back in. Probably doesn't help that we had about 50+ people saved to our raid because we were constantly changing people out. I think this week we're only up to 32 or so, thus far.

But for the run this week, we had 4 priests in the group for starters, so we took advantage of this fact and took on Military quarter first. We had out big snag on Horsemen, but dropped them and handed out teh phatty lewtz. Then we went and cleared out Plague. *hums* "if you can't dance, if you can't dance" by Spice Girls. ** Loatheb was a chump. Dropped him super fast, and with the entire raid still standing (well done to the healers). Now we hope to have that feral Druid back so we can go take care of Patchwerk. ^_^

Which leads me up to last night. We hosted a OS-25 +1. it too kus a couple tries, but damned it all, we dropped Sartharion and Tenebron. Woot! Achievment points! lawlz.

Tzia started it......

2009-03-22T10:41:00.001-07:00

So, Tzia started it, I had to post mine.

This is for my one and only true character. The Tauren Lazer Turkey, Daemetos.

He was started back in May of 2007 (holy crap, I remember that far back). So, I honestly should have more time on him, but there are several factors to bring into consideration here. Firstly, I was in the military, so with always travelling, and deployments and such there were periods where I could go for weeks without playing (Jan-Mar '08, for example). Then, I was newly married in June of '07, so there was time and distraction to be had there. Then of course, there was just the generalized boredom and pissed-offness at some of the nerfbat beating Druids got around Lich King, and then after the 4 day power playing session upon launch of Wrath.

WE DID IT!!

2009-02-22T21:13:00.000-08:00

As of tonight Shadow Templar has FULL CLEARED NAXXRAMAS!!! We have our key to start Malygos. But more importantly, in an EPIC finish Kel'Thazud dropped to the overwhelming pwnage that was brought down upon him.

And then the after party as we pose on Kel'Thazud's throne!

Tanks on the arms, Healz on the seat, and Deepz around the bottom.

So, it's update time.

2009-02-15T09:12:00.001-08:00

It's been a couple weeks now, so I figure it's time to do some updateage.

Things in the SHadow Templar are going REALLY good right now. I was promoted up to Raid Officer. We officially have Plague and Spider Quarters on farm status. And in a momentous turn of events, Thursday night we (Vlex and I) decided to let everyone smash their face on Patchwerk a couple times before going to do OS-10 and then calling it a night......... We downed Patches in the guild's VERY FIRST ATTEMPT!! Honestly, neither of us as raid leaders expected to 1-shot Patches, we made it through Frogger and on to Grobbulous, had 3 wipes then got him on the 4th attempt. Then moved on to Gluth. Put in 1 attempt there then called it a night on a really high note.

This weekend, I ran a PuG Maly-10. We downed Malygos after 4 attempts and 'lo! I got [Footsteps of Malygos] So I think it has been a good week for me.

I'm still doing some work on the new forums for the Guild. Eo and Vlex are liking the calendar system there, and I think they like the Rapid Raid plug-in too. (But I'm not sure)

So, I'm working on a side-project

2009-01-31T14:29:00.000-08:00

http://shadowtemplar.guildlaunch.com

If you're a friend of the guild, on Deathwing then feel free to apply. These aren't officially in use yet, so there's no activity but It's always best to be ahead of the game.

SQUEE FINALLY!!!!

2009-01-20T07:31:00.000-08:00

IT FINALLY DROPPED!!! 2-1/2 WEEKS OF FARMING HEROIC NEXUS AND IT DROPPED!!!

Now to get that bad boy enchanted with the +63 Spell Power enchant, that's valued at about 1.3-2k gold. ugh.

Getting into the Raid of things

2009-01-07T01:27:00.000-08:00

So, my guild has finally started getting back into the swing of raiding. We hosted a 1/2 pug Vault and OS tonight.

Yours truly got their T6.5 glove token from OS-10, and then screwed it up by not paying attention and picked up the Balance gloves instead... after a couple minutes of cursing, I put in a GM Ticket for it and get the "High ticket receipt" bs message... or more appropriately, "We're just sitting on our rear ends, not answering tickets, so there are many that we're ignoring" a few hours later I get a response and my ticket was "Escalated" and remained so for over 5-1/2 hours. and when I logged off at 2:30am it was still "Escalated". So I may look into it before work and hope they've done something. Maybe by the time I get home from work, they'll have it taken care of.

But anyways, We then ran a 9/10 guild run of Naxx-10 (Spider wing) and ran into some confusion on the first boss. Things were 'discussed' and we decided that before we save someone to the raid, that we'd call it until a later time to allow for better research to be done.

Sportin' the Wood: Tales of the petrified Chicken

2009-01-02T01:33:00.000-08:00

So yes, it has been officiated. The Super Lazer Chicken is once again getting in touch with his roots, quite literally. I have said it before, and I shall reiterate it once more. From lvl 10-60 I was always known as Dae the Healer. Once I hit Outlands and ran headfirst into a brick wall with the mobs outside Thrallmar, and the lack of being able to solo one without popping a potion and using innervate to have mana for a single fight I turned tail, screaming all the way to Thunderbluff and gave the fabled Balance spec a whirl. Finding it much easier, and only needing to drink once every 4 fights, I was set to being a Boomer. I learned much as the DPS, and became good at what I did. Right before the launch of Wrath, I respecced Resto to give it a whirl in the sub-par gear I had been collecting for a Resto set. I quickly discovered that I was a tad rusty, but I didn't care because the following day we were all given free respecs upon release of the Pre-Wrath patch which unveiled our new talent trees. So I returned once again to Boomage and resumed my title of Uber Boomer of Pwnage.

All through Wrath I continued to uphold my title by doing DPS where ever I could. Upon the moment of dinging 80, armed with Spellpower instead of "Bonus Damage/Bonus Healing" I was asked to try to heal a Heroic Ahn'kahet (AK/OK) The first boss was very problematic, but it was a learning experience for me again, and I held the lesson close. I also learned that healing had returned to me quite naturally, though I was still slightly rusty. Over the couple weeks I have/had surpassed the Holy Paladin of my new guild. I am currently sporting a 1555 SP Woody with a 14/0/57 Resto Spec.

I do consider this a fairly cookie cutter spec for any serious Resto Druid/Raid healer. Additionally, stacking gear with Haste/Crit/SP is important. Also along with acquiring Glyph of Healing Touch I currently can spam Healing Touch faster than a Priest/Paladin can spam Flash Heal / Flash of Light, at .9 sec. The only issue I have come to realize with this is that if you're not careful, and watching your GCD, having a lightning fast Healing Touch isn't useful. I have found myself many times trying to cast as fast as the spell cast and not regarding the GCD of 1 sec, and getting the "I cannot cast that yet" error speech.

Another is brought into the fold

2008-12-26T16:07:00.000-08:00

So I ran a Heroic Vault today. Met another Boom Chicken, and it was kinda sad. I'm not saying I'm spectacular right now, being undergeared as I am, but I was still pumping out 1.6k-1.8k DPS, he was pushing 1.4k MAX... He almost got kicked from the raid, except we killed the boss on that attempt.

Afterward, I left kinda bad for the guy, and there was some brief talk to him before we started the final attempt, but we started before I could say anything so afterward while in Dalaran I talked to him a bit. He was a 71 point Balance Druid.... it was mind blowing... I had him inspect me and then told him to ask me questions and try to learn a bit...

Needless to say, by the end of the conversation, I had him converted to the light and hopefully made a better Boom Chicken.

So, if you'd like to see a solid (cookie cutter) Boomkin spec, check out the 55/0/16. I will say this though The points in Celestial Focus and Typhoon are extra points that can actually be put someplace else. I put them in Focus because the 10% Stun chance does come in handy, plus 2% Haste, and Typhoon because knocking Allies off their flying mounts is teh funny! ^_^

DING!! Finally.

2008-12-20T08:23:00.000-08:00

So I finally hit the illustrious level 80. I then got a port to TB bought 13 Spells for 16g each and a couple others for less, AND Respeced to Resto. So I am currently healing. The first thing that happens is that I get pulled along by Vlex, Eo and Legomoo to heal for the daily Heroic, Old Kingdom. It started out pretty good. We only wiped once on trash when I got nailed with a crit by a caster and it was like "...... TIMBER!" Then we made it to the first boss, where after our 5th wipe we come to discover that the tank was not quite un-critable.

So we resigned the heroic and scrambled to put the tank over 540 Defense rating. A few gems, some different gear, and a couple enchants and he's at 537, so we figure close enough for now. We move along to the daily Regular instance, Utgarde Pinnacle. We have no problems there until the 3rd boss where you have to run through a gauntlet of mobs that respawn to pick up harpoons and use the harpoon guns to shoot the dragon out of the sky and have the rider leap back onto the balcony. We still hadn't figured that trick out because as soon as he jumps back to the ledge it's just like "Mage? *Splatter* Healer? *Splatter*" In that order. He attacks extremely fast and he hit both of us with a crit. And pretty much any attempt after that it was always "Healer? *Splatter*" That is, unless the trash hadn't managed to get me first. Because also at the same you are fighting the tash, he is on his dragon, circling, doing fly-by's with a freezing breath attack that leaves a line on the ground which causes mass damage, so the group kept getting split up and the mobs just love ganging up on the Healer.

I have my first taste of level 80 instances as Heals. I'm pretty sure I'm going to stay heals for a bit and try to get geared up this way, I know groups will be flocking to me since I am a healer, and those are always in short supply.

Of course, with the respec, I ended up having to do it 3 times (40, 45, and 50g) to finally get it situated all proper. Though, now that I look at it, I'm considering taking the three points from Living Seed and putting 2 in Imp. Tranq and picking up Wild Growth. Because I discovered a couple times that Tranquility is quite a powerful spell, and Imp Tranq reduces the CD from 10 to 4 minutes. And Wild Growth isn't too bad either. Which means I'll have to pay another 50g respec.... ugh. But I'm sporting over 3k gold still, so I guess it's not too bad.

Winter Veil and new layout

2008-12-09T19:37:00.000-08:00

12 Days of Winterveil

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDu-1N1hqKM

We're airbourne!

2008-12-07T11:56:00.000-08:00

Soooo... I didn't mention this before, but I managed to get the Chicken out of Dalaran. Spent all day yesterday doing nothing but getting to 76 so I could start the quests in Sholazar Basin. Once that happened I was dead set on making 77 and getting my feathers back into the air. and....... DING! I had to go back to Boring Tundra and do a few quests there, but I got' er done then immediately flew back and learned Cold Weather Flying. I then proceeded to spend the quiet hours of the morning flying circuits of Sholazar hitting any and every mining node I came across. It was quite nice.

No more FP's for me!!

Druid woes and Death Knight Joys

2008-12-04T01:28:00.000-08:00

So, I've come to discover that the internet connection at my apartment is *mostly* adequate for WoW play. So I've spent some time the last couple night piddling around with my Death Knight. Got him out of the starting area and into Hellfire Peninsula. And I'm loving the Unholy talent [On A Pale Horse] which increases mounted movement speed by 20%.... Hello pally ripoff. I don't care, I <3 it. And the fact that I get a lvl 60 equivalent mount from a quest at lvl 56. *squee* Additionally, I hit lvl 60 tonight! Wootzorz!

But none of this would come to be if I could log into my Druid. For some odd reason (and I blame Tzia's computer) whenever I try to log onto the Super Lazer Turkey, the loading screen comes up, it finishes loading and then about 7-10 second later I'm back at the log in screen with an error message "Disconnected from Server" but that is the only toon that I have this problem with.

But anyways, more later. Bed time for this one.

Power Grindage 4 Day Weekend

2008-11-16T07:52:00.000-08:00

So I managed to make it to about 75-1/2. Still 1-1/2 from Cold Flying, but I've made over 2000 gold just doing quests and selling the trash, and flying only costs 1000g. I have replaced about 2/3 of my Badge Gear *tear*, but such is a game.

Wrath of the Litch King baby!!

2008-11-13T02:05:00.000-08:00

Stood in line for about 1.5 hours, we were approx 125th in line, of about 300 people. and now I am going to play! Eat me suckers!

And not to mention, I sit here, patching, with 4 - 1 Litres of Mtn Dew, a Fruit Punch NOS, a can of Pizza Pringles, a big bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, bag of jerky, and a 12 pack of Mtn. Dew.

Ugh! Does it ever stop!?

2008-11-04T09:25:00.000-08:00

So now my laptop is being spazz. I brought it back into my room last night, plugged it back in because apparently my brother unplugged it from the wall while I was at work, and it went into Standby.

I turn it on, and wireless is disabled in Windows, I try to re-enable it, and it says "Failed". So I wtf, and restart the laptop. When I go to re-enable it again, the wireless isn't even there! somehow the system uninstalled the wireless device, or picked up something that did it for me. How? Idk. So now it looks like I'm going to have to do a full system restore on the laptop, which means a lot of time doing backups first. and I work until 9 tonight.... ugh.

So anyways... yeah.

2008-10-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

I would much rather use this space to talk about WoW. But sometimes there are things in life that take precedence over WoW, or are the causes of why one cannot log in.

Firstly, the apartments in which I am dwelling started providing free wifi to all residents. At the current location I am at, my desktop picks up negligible signal strength/quality to connect to the internet, much less WoW. So, no WoW on m desktop. I also have a laptop, which is designed for more wide open Wifi connections, so it usually picks up better signal quality. The Laptop has WoW installed, but even on the lowest quality graphics, it lags like the Lag Monkey is in the process of mating on the processor. I was in a PuG SSC, and one boss fight I did not see 95% of the fight. I know the fight started, the boss dropped about 2-3% then my FPS went to 0-1, next thing I know the boss is at 2% and we finish him off. Much of Karazhan was the same way the night before, and ZA right after (Kara) for that matter. And this has all come about because since the issuance of the notice of the WiFi, my roommate/step-brother shut off the cable internet that he had in the apartment. Mostly because he doesn't game, so doesn't need that great of a connection, additionally, it is sounding like something that my ex-wife suggested to try to force me to move out... "Since I can't play WoW".

Additionally, she came into my work in the middle of lunch on Friday and demanded that I go talk to her. Most people would think, Ok, it's lunch, not that big a deal.... Except I work fast food. Lunch is one of our busiest times of the day. and she's DEMANDING I talk to her 'right then'. When I don't come up front, she threatens to make a big scene right there in the store. Then she doesn't believe my co-worker when she tells her that I am scheduled until 9pm that night. Finally one of the managers talks with her, goes to the office and checks the schedule and tells her that I am scheduled until 9pm. In the mean time she tells my female co-worker about how I abuse her mentally, emotionally, and physically; in a warning for her not to get involved with me. First, I don't mix business/work with pleasure. Second, she's already married with a kid..... sooo yeah. But as she leaves, she states "I 'will' be here at 9, and he WILL talk to me". Well, the night goes on, managers change, the rest of the crew changes, and it's slow. So the closing manager says "We're slow tonight, and you've been here since 11, go ahead and go home." So I go home to relax and prepare for her to come over and I have to deal with her. Unfortunately, she never showed. So I got shit-faced drunk for no reason. :(

The next day I was over at the apartment talking with my friend, and had cut his hair for him. We were standing out front his place (which is directly across the parking lot from hers). There was not a sound, no movement from her place, when suddenly she's walking across the parking lot and I hear her "We need to talk." So I deal with her accusing me of sleeping around, calling me many bad things, telling me I owe her for 1/2 of the filing fee for the divorce papers (which I find out later, that the amount she told me was for ALL the filing fee). Then she tells me that I 'have' to take my name off the bank account so she can use it. I asked her why she currently isn't using it and she cry/scream/retorts "I don't trust you enough not to take what I put into it!" Now that's comedy, coming from the thief. Then, to ice this cake, she tells me that if I do not take my name off the account, I will not get my leather trenchcoat back, which was given to me as a departing gift when I left the ship in Korea back in March. Then she has the balls to threaten to pawn my coat. I went over the next night because it was my buddie's gf's kid's 1st b-day, and at about 7:15ish we went over to talk to her, and get my coat. She calls a friend, tells him to call my buddy to tell me to get away from her door. Then she tells my friend, who I'm talking to now, that she doesn't have my coat anymore, that my dad had told her to get rid of it. I went over again yesterday after work to try to talk to her and get m coat, since I did as she told me to and took my name off the account. Since she's fucked us both over by having 2 checking accoutns closed because of them being overdrafted and inactive with a negative balance.

I find out yesterday that she had a flat tire, and blamed me for slashing it. She also blamed a couple of the neighbors for slashing it too. So this morning I had a Sheriff at my door to ask me about it. Which I did not do, because... Why in the hell would I do something like that?! Especially if I'm trying to get her out of my life?! The Sheriff even asked me if she was capable of doing it to herself, then blaming other people to try to cause problems.

So, all in all, I have some shit that needs to be dealt with. Hopefully I can be back in game soon enough, on my desktop of all devices. Plus, I'm in needs of a roommate or something. Since my step-brother is currently keeping tabs on me and reporing every little thing to her.

Patch Day woes, and cheers.

2008-10-15T01:10:00.000-07:00

So, today was the dreaded Major Patch Day in WoW. Everyone was painfully aware of this. I honestly would like to thank the awesome tech support at Blizzard for making this as painless as they could, in comparison for other patches (if anyone can remember those). Yeah, granted there was about 7 hours or so of serious issues, but they were fixed quickly, and now they are smoothing out the minor issues, bitches, complaints, etc. from all the whiny, bitchy, children who have to have things "NOW!" and "MY WAY!" and can't quite grasp the concept of patience, or those that have never been on bastard servers (Uther, back in '04) or been through a major patch that took 3-4 days to straighten out.

Alas, this also means that Add-Ons are broken, or not compatable with the new patch. Luckily, I've found a few that were already good to go.

Bagnon
Diamond Threat Meter
Recount
WiM
ArkInventory
FuBar (and some of the accessories)
ElkanoBuffBars (partially)

Then there are some that are not quite ready for the patch.
Bartender4 (which was supposed to be)
Atlas/Atlasloot
Cartographer
Auctioneer
DeCursive
SmartBuff
BigWigs/LittleWigs
Deadly Boss Mod
XPerl

Now, since all Add-Ons have been updated, I'm going to give them a whirl, and see what's working. Then I'll list what is still broken.

Atlas/AtlasLoot
Cartographer
Auctioneer
BigWIgs/LittleWigs
Deadly Boss Mods
XPerl (partially)
ElkanoBuffBars
Parts of FuBar

Working:
Bartender4
SmartBuff

Untested:
DeCursive

Patch Day, Patch Day!!!

2008-10-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

So, today is the day of the new patch. I had someone ask me the other day, "How are you going to spec? Are you going to get Typhoon and Starfall?"

My retort to this was: "Good god no, waste all my points in Balance and miss out on the 16 point Leetness in Resto?! Besides, Starfall is teh ghey and Typhoon is, imho, a PvP spell/Talent. I'm not going to waste the point in that unless I decide to start PvPing. I can use it to knock Alliance off the bridge in AV, Blow them off the cliff at the LM in AB, or knock them off the flag ridge in EotS."

And apparently, Tzia is getting a [Polymorph Friend] spell that has a permanent effect. And from what I understand, THIS
is what the Super Lazer Turkey is going to look like..... Not very intimidating like before, I know... But I guess when you get your ass handed to you by a pink Tallstrider, you'll be one very, very shunned Alliance.

But anyways, as of Today, here's the planned Talent Point Spread:

Minimum Required Level: 70
Required Talent Points: 61

Balance Talents - 45 point(s)
Starlight Wrath - rank 5/5
Moonglow - rank 3/3
Nature's Mastery - rank 2/2
Improved Moonfire - rank 2/2
Nature's Splendor - rank 1/1
Nature's Reach - rank 2/2
Vengeance - rank 5/5
Lunar Guidance - rank 3/3
Insect Swarm - rank 1/1
Improved Insect Swarm - rank 3/3
Dreamstate - rank 3/3
Moonfury - rank 5/5
Moonkin Form - rank 1/1
Improved Moonkin Form - rank 3/3
Wrath of Cenarius - rank 5/5
Force of Nature - rank 1/1
Restoration Talents - 16 point(s)
Improved Mark of the Wild - rank 2/2
Furor - rank 5/5
Natural Shapeshifter - rank 3/3
Intensity - rank 3/3
Omen of Clarity - rank 1/1
Master Shapeshifter - rank 2/2

And for future reference, my lvl 80, raid Spec will be as such:

Minimum Required Level: 80
Required Talent Points: 71

Balance Talents - 55 point(s)
Starlight Wrath - rank 5/5
Moonglow - rank 3/3
Nature's Mastery - rank 2/2
Improved Moonfire - rank 2/2
Nature's Splendor - rank 1/1
Nature's Reach - rank 2/2
Vengeance - rank 5/5
Celestial Focus - rank 3/3 ***
Lunar Guidance - rank 3/3
Insect Swarm - rank 1/1
Improved Insect Swarm - rank 3/3
Dreamstate - rank 3/3
Moonfury - rank 5/5
Balance of Power - rank 2/2 ***
Moonkin Form - rank 1/1
Improved Moonkin Form - rank 3/3
Wrath of Cenarius - rank 5/5
Force of Nature - rank 1/1
Earth and Moon - rank 5/5 ***
Restoration Talents - 16 point(s)
Improved Mark of the Wild - rank 2/2
Furor - rank 5/5
Natural Shapeshifter - rank 3/3
Intensity - rank 3/3
Omen of Clarity - rank 1/1
Master Shapeshifter - rank 2/2

*** - added talents for lvl 80

How drunk can one Karazhan get?

2008-10-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

+ So It's a Saturday night and the feeling is right for a Karazhan. We're getting formed up and I promised Tzia and Saskia that I'd make sure they got into a Kara with me. So I hopped onto XFire and luckily Tzia had just logged on, so I say "Kara" and the next thing I see is "<'user' has started plaing World of Warcraft>" So then I grab my phone and send a txt to Saskia and tell her that we're starting Kara and I'm holding her a spot.

I had just bought a 1/5 of Jager the night before and I still had a few energy drinks in the fridge, so I announce that I'm making a drinking game out of the run. Every time I die, I do a Jager bomb. Every time the group wipes, I do a Jager bomb. In retrospect, I should have maybe chosen my words a little better. Because that meant whenever we wipe, I do 2, one for me dying, and one for the wipe. It was a fun run, and I think I may be glad we called it at Shade. I do believe I did 7 Jager bombs on him alone. For a grand total of 19-20 within the 2.5 hour time period.

Needless to say, I had a good buzz going when I went to stand up.

Race cancelled due to smeared Night Elf on the track.

2008-10-06T01:53:00.000-07:00

So everyone should know the racing you can do for Netherwing Rep correct? Ever seen it done on a PvP server? Tee hee

I had went out to turn in my Nethercite ore as part of my daily gold farming, and being bored decided to try the last race which I have yet to complete. As I start it, and alliance hunter is just starting his. I notice said hunter has obviously recently failed a race, seeing as he's at 26% health. I pay him no heed and start my own race. Noticing he still hasn't healed at all, I move to the end of the runway, away from the guards, to await my racer, and victim.

The hunter passes me and I immediately start casting Starfire. He jumps into the air to start his race and my Starfire beam blasts him out of the air, critting for 4817 and he collapses like the slimy bag of Night Elf he was. I quickly hop back on my Netherdrake and start my race. Which I decide is better to just fly back to Shatt, so I do so.

I happily squeed myself all the way back to Shatt, laughing the entire way.

Super Chicken has flown the coop, I repeat, super chicken has flown the coop.

2008-09-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

So, back when I started playing WoW again after my IA deployment to the Philippines, in May of '07, I joined one of my best friends on their realm called Bladefist. It were a PvE realm so being ganked wasn't an issue unless you were stupid enough to run around flagged. I played on Bladefist happily until Aug 15th when my divorce began, my ex-wife logged in and started causing all sorts of drama in guild chat. SO my friend and guild leader gave us both the /gkick. He also told me that once everything was sorted out I could come back. So I re-applied to the guild. Within the 2 weeks it took him to get back to me, I had found a geat guild called Omen. That was the guild i had been looking for. Mind you HordeLand Security was a great guild, as I had been there for about 15 months, but they weren't really progressing. When I had left, we had killed Attumen the Huntsman twice, and we had wiped on Moroes twice. Omen, had Karazhan on full clear farm, Gruuls and Magtheridon on farm, and were in ZA, SSC, and TK.

AND THEN... there's always an "and then".... Problems really arose there too. A couple of guildies were engaged. He left her for whatever reasons. She logs into game, says some stuff in guild chat, leaves guild and logs off. A couple days later he logs on for a few, gets whisper bombed and logs off. About a day later the lead Guild Manager kicks him, saying "Anyone that invites him back will get kicked too." When asked why he did that he replied "Anyone that interferes with my personal life on a game is not welcome here." Apparently, the GM was dating her younger sister. He's 37, her sister is 20. So he is letting a piece of ass about the same age as his kids (if he has any) ruin a friendship between one of his RL friends and him. Along wit this, people thinking that was a pretty bitch move, left the guild. Along with them, anyone who were friends with them, left. After that, people who didn't like certain things about the guild left. Then anyone who group primarily with anyone who left, left. So in the span of about 2 days almost 1/2 of the guild /gquit. I was on of them for reason #3.

Here recntly I have been getting bored with WoW. Re-levelling a character is something I loathe so much, I don't have any other toons over 27. That being my rogue. So I was speaking with Tzia and her guy and I tired starting a toon on Deathwing. Again, my issue with re-questing all the low level quests reared it's head again. So I mulled it over a couple days and as of last night I no longer have the super chicken on Bladefist, but I now find residence on Deathwing as well. I will say, getting used to being flagged pretty much everywhere is going to be an experience. If I don't like it still, I have to wait 30 days to tansfer back, so I may as well make the best of it.

*Cheers*

In case anyone were to wonder...

2008-09-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

WOW: $200 Million To Run

September 18th, 2008, 2:48 am by James Fudge

Blizzard has spent around $200 million to facilitate the operation of World of Warcraft according to data gleaned from the recent Activision Blizzard Analyst Day. That number includes the cost of running customer service, continued development and server costs - a small price to pay for this cash-printing MMO that is popular around the globe. The popular MMO currently has 11 million subscribers worldwide, and has $1 billion in revenue this year. Pretty impressive numbers.

(This news article pulled from www.crispygamer.com)

New perks for Druids in WotLK

2008-09-15T02:22:00.000-07:00

Druids

- Entangling Roots: Can now be used indoors.

- Brambles (Balance): Now increases the damage done by your Treants,
and also damage caused from your Treants and Barkskin has a 5/10/15%
chance to Daze the target for 3 sec.

- Celestial Focus (Balance): The stun proc now works with Starfall.This
talent no longer has Wrath pushback protection, but instead increases
your total spell haste by 1/2/3%.

- Control of Nature (Balance) has been removed.

- Focused Starlight (Balance)is now Nature's Majesty (Balance):
Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire,
Starfall, Nourish, and Healing Touch spells by 2/4/6%.

- Force of Nature (Balance): Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes, down from 3.

- Furor (Restoration): Now increases your total Intellect while in
Moonkin form by 2/4/6/8/10%.

- Hurricane: No longer has a cooldown (was 1 minute).

- Improved Mark of the Wild (Restoration): Now a 2-point talent, down
from a 5-point talent.

- Moonglow (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.Moved to tier 2, up
from tier 5.

- Moonkin Form (Balance) no longer increases your attack power or
causes you to regenerate mana off melee attacks, but now has a chance
to cause you to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana every time
you critically hit with a spell.

- Nature's Focus (Restoration): Now a 3 point talent, down from a
5-point talent. Also moved to Tier 1, up from Tier 2. Now also
includes Nourish, Entangling Roots, Wrath, and Cyclone.

- Nature's Grace (Balance): Now also reduces the global cooldown of
your Wrath spell by 50% while in effect.

- Nature's Grasp (Balance): Can now be used and can proc indoors. This
is now a base ability at level 11 and has a 100% chance to proc.

- Nature's Reach (Balance): Now also reduces threat generated by
Balance spells by 15/30%.

- New Spell: Revive - Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead
target to life with health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat.
(Ranks 1-7 added)

- New Talent - Genesis (Balance): Increases the damage and healing done
by your periodic spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.

- New Talent - Improved Insect Swarm (Balance): Increases your damage
done by your Wrath spell to targets afflicted by your Insect Swarm by
1/2/3%, and increases the critical strike chance of your Starfire
spell by 1/2/3% on targets afflicted by your Moonfire spell.

- New Talent - Nature's Splendor (Balance): Increases the duration of
your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom and
Flourish spells by 10/20/30%.

- Omen of Clarity (Restoration): Now a passive spell. Now also works
for spells (healing and damage). Proc rate is roughly 6% with a 10
second internal cooldown.

- Vengeance (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.

- Challenging Roar now has a 3 minute cooldown, reduced from 10
minutes.

- Faerie Fire (Feral): Now an 11-point talent, down from being a
21-point talent.

- Feral Charge (Feral) is now a 21-point talent, up from being a
11-point talent.

- Feral Charge (Feral): Can now be used in Cat form.

- Feral Instinct (Feral) no longer increases threat generated in Bear
form, but now increases damage done by your Swipe ability by
5/10/15%.

- Feral Swiftness: The movement speed buff can now be used indoors.

- Improved Faerie Fire (Feral): Now also works with spell hit, in
addition to ranged and melee hit %.

- Improved Tranquility (Restoration): Now also reduces the cooldown of
your Tranquility spell by 25/50%.

- Mangle (Feral): Now increases the damage done by Maul in addition to
Shred.

- New Talent - Mother Bear (Feral): Increases the bonus attack power
for Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by an additional 20/40/60%, and for
each friendly player in your party, damage you take is reduced while
in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 1/2/3%.

- New Talent - Natural Reaction (Feral): Increases your dodge chance
while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form by 2/4/6%, and you regenerate
1/2/3 rage everytime you dodge while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form.

- Primal Tenacity (Feral) now reduces damage while stunned by 5/10/15%,
and reduces the duration of fear effects by 5/10/15%.

- Remove Curse can now be used in Tree of Life form.

- Soothe Animal can now be used on Dragonkin as well as Beasts.

- Soothe Animal is now instant cast.

- Subtlety (Restoration): Now a 3-point talent, down from a 5-point
talent. Also moved to Tier 2, up from Tier 3. Also now only reduced
threat for Restoration spells, and reduces the chance that your
healing over time spells (Lifebloom, Regrowth and Rejuvenation) will
be dispelled, rather than all Druid spells. Threat management for
Balance can now be found in the Balance tree, within Nature's Reach.

- Survival of the Fittest (Feral): Increased to 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.

- The mana regeneration penalty when in Bear Form, Dire Bear Form and
Cat Form has been removed.

- Tranquil Spirit (Restoration) now also includes Nourish.

- Tree of Life (Restoration): 30% snare penalty has been removed.

- Tree of Life (Restoration): Can now cast Dispel Curse.

- Tree of Life (Restoration): You can now cast all Restoration spells
(Healing Touch) in the form, but Tree of Life now only reduces the
mana cost of your healing over time spells (Rejuvenation, Lifebloom,
Regrowth and Flourish) by 20%.

You think they'd tell the DPS....

2008-09-11T16:51:00.001-07:00

So there I was on a Karazhan run, and we're at Prince Malchazar. We're on our second attempt, no one is sure where the first one went wrong, but we wiped faster than a group of 12's in RageFire Chasm.

So, we're on our second attempt to kill Prince, and he's down to less than 2% when the tank dies. How? Again, no one was sure. So Standing there is a healer, and the super Chicken. Prince was at 4733 health; yeah, seriously. Of course no one yells that to the Chicken while Prince is whacking away on the healers, so I'm in the middle of a cast of Starfire. 2.5 seconds go by and he's tore through the healers, running at the last surviving member of the raid, me. I get nailed in 2 shots, the startfire cast never being completed. After the group wipes, someone reports Prince's health.

If only they'd told the Chicken, I could have instead cast 2 Wrath and an instant Moonfire, more commonly known as Spamfire. "Why" you ask? Wrath commonly hits for 1600-1800, critting for 2250-2400, while Moonfire hits for 500-650 and crits for 1000-1200.

Innervate the Priest........ times THREE?!?!

2008-09-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true. We did it. We put 3 innervates on a Priest. It was ZOMG! MANA! the total MP5 for that 20 seconds was over 4000.

We did it once just for shits and giggles in a Heroic Botanica run. The second and third times we did it, mass hilarity ensued. And yes, in a Heroic of all times. And yes, the priest did die every time.

You know those AoE pulls near the first 2 bosses, correct? How most the time the Pally goes in to establish some AoE aggro before the rest of the party starts in to burn down the lashers really fast? Well, we had 2 Feral Druids, a Holy Nova specced Priest, a Lock, and the Uber Boomer, your truly. We get to the first AoE and the priest yell over Ventrilo "INNERVATE ME I'M GOING IN!". The thought of this was just too tempting, so three Innervates are tossed on the priest and he runs into the middle of the mobs, Leeroy style, and begins spamming Holy Nova. He gets 6 or 7 casts off and his mana never drops. He dies with 100% Mana. The Boomer then has to run in, pop Barkskin and cast Hurricane while the two Ferals are casting Hurricane and the Lock does Rain of Fire.... Boomer tank FTW! We proceeded to do this once again on the next AoE pull as well, with much of the same result, regardless of the priest having 3 Druids casting all 3 HoT's on him as he went running in.

Mind you, this is Heroic, and here we are fucking around.. lol

I did mention there are 3 AoE pulls, didn't I? The third and final pull went even worse than the previous two. Because you do remember there are two large groups which you must mow through, literally, just before you can take the 5th boss of Botanica. So the boomer and a feral pull the two masses and right on que the priest jumps in. No seriously, he JUMPED between the druids and started spamming Holy Nova once again. Druids do the Barkskin -> Hurricane while the Lock spams Seed of Corruption. And it proceeded as follows: Priest dies, Boomer dies, Ferals die, the remaining 10-12 mobs swarm after the Lock and 3 Seeds pop, killing the rest in the Lock's face. It was all he could see. A mass of pissed off flowers charging at him, then dying just before they got to him.

Additionally in this run, we discovered that the Menders, have this very nice 30 minute buff. 295 Bonus Spell Damage; needless to say this was one VERY happy Boomkin when he was pushing 1500 Bonus Spell Damage. The Starfires were flying, and critting for over 5k.

Silly Druids and the tricks we play.....

2008-09-10T02:34:00.000-07:00

So I figure I may as well start this off with a bang...

This was an actual event, not in any way made up. Sadly enough.

So my group was planning on running through SLabs to try to get the other druid in the group the Moonglade D3 Gloves for his Resto spec. But we all had the daily for Mechanar (Regular) and figured since we had just came out of Botanica we'd 4-man Mech for the daily then head down to Auchindown. We quickly found out that the mobs we needed were not there at the enterance like previously believed so we called it a bust and bailed. Well, on the way out the newest 70 Paladin whom just got his mount was sitting at the point looking towards Cosmowrench. Not on his mount, just standing there. Myself and the other druid hopped up on the ledge and both went into Cat Form. While in Ventrilo, we keyed up and said "Hey, wanna see something cool? Just stand there and watch this!" We dashed in Cat Form down the ledge, and crossed at the point, taking a flying leap, hurling ourselves off Mechanar and into the Twisting Nether. Being Druids, we naturally shifted into Flight Form and proceeded to fly off.

It looked cool, and was fun as hell. But this is where it gets even funnier! The pally, whom we jumped in front of jumps off Mechanar as well. I had spun my camera around and watched him do this. He then comes over Vent swearing, I immediately start laughing my ass off. He also cast his bubble, after realizing you can't mount while moving, in hopes that he would hit the ground. Alas, this was not the case as he sped into the Nether. Being the smartass that I am, keyed up, "Nice one nubsauce. Now take your ass to Plaguelands and retrieve your corpse. I bet you really scared the shit out of some alliance. 'Oh my god! It's raining hairdressers!' "

I then proceeded to switch to the main lobby for vent and passed along the event to the rest of the guildmates, whom proceeded to laugh til they cried, and heckled said Pally for 3 days about the incident.