One Amazing Night

Horde-side is turning out well for me. Last night just ended up being an AMAZING night and I have screencaps to share! (the day started off horribly, so last night was extra awesome as a result)

First off, I'd signed up for a Light of Dawn run (LK 25 heroic) that had been advertised in the achievements channel.  We actually had 25 people, and lost more people to the elevator boss than any other boss before LK. One wipe on LK, and a new title (and a bunch of achieves) was mine!

Then the same raid leader (who was awesome and if you can go on a run Creacher's running, do IT!) said he was doing an Ulduar 10 drake run. We all know I've been lusting after that drake forever, so I was in. It was a spectacular group, and we ended up doing Yogg+0...

Razorscale's achieve (which we saved for last since it's really painful at 85)

And then went to say hi to the Observer

I won the quest thing and got to make the Dal skies all pretty!

And got my new buddy to top it all off! Oh, and some ulduar tier. I will defn be going on these runs again, it was a lot of fun and SQUEEE MOUNT OF SHINY!

Old Lyl, New Lyl

Old Lyl...

New Lyl

I'm not overly thrilled with the tightly pulled back braid, but it was the only nelf hairstyle available and it didn't  feel right for Lyl to go through a transporter/orb accident and turn into a belf and completely leave her old self behind. Yup, that's my IC explanation for how she became a belf. Right now, she's oscillating between trying desperately to hang on to her old life and working out how to embrace this new life.

I did go to TB on her, and was only focus-fired once! And my new guild does pvp nights, so I'll be healing in BGs more. I like doing that, provided my face doesn't get melted repeatedly and quickly, which more actual pvp gear should help with.

So we'll see how it goes. But is it just me or is it way easier to navigate Orgrimmar by flying mount than on foot?

Firelands Nerf

So, the nerf to Firelands. I haven't talked about it because we've seen so little info on what exactly they're planning to do. I'm also trying to sort my own feelings out on the matter. But there is one major point I've seen that I agree with.

TOO SOON
Summer's never a good time for raiding guilds, or at least it's not for the ones I've been in. People go on vacation, do more family stuff, and generally aren't as available. This means less raiding. My former raid group actually went on hiatus for a couple weeks because not enough people were around. So, patch 4.2 comes out to now, that's 11 weeks more or less. Now, we raided 2 days a week, so that's 22 days minus 4 days which equals 18. 18 days and 2.5 hours of raiding per day, that ends up being 45 hours. That's a rough estimate of how much time I've spent in Firelands, and it doesn't seem like that much.

In that 45 hours, I've helped kill (in the order I killed them) Rhyolith, Shannox, Beth'tilac, Baleroc, and this week we downed Alysrazor. That averages out to about 9 hours per boss. Does that seem right to you? Now, most of that time was spent working on Rhyolith and Alysrazor, not because they were hard but because my old raid team died and I ended up in the other one which raids for longer periods of time and had started with the "easier" bosses.

9 hours per boss. 9! And it's important to remember that Lyllea is not well-geared. I hit Firelands in almost entirely 359s, but I don't farm valor and she's still mostly wearing that same gear (yes, I'm lazy). I remember struggling for a long time on Magmaw (my date for his achieve is early Feb, and I believe we started on him in early Jan).  I know we struggled on a couple of the other bosses as well (Halfus and Council of Wind, I still hate your RNG), and I very, very much doubt that if you averaged out all my raid time over the previous tier, stopping when Firelands came out (and I was fairly well-progressed at that point, with every boss but the end ones down), that you would come up with 9 hours per boss. In fact, let's do some back of the envelope math on that...
Jan 1 (we didn't start raiding till after Christmas)- June 28 is 27 weeks.  Roughly 135 hours of raiding. The average ends up being 16.8 hours per boss. That still seems short, but until I did the math I wouldn't have said that. Plus, that's still over 4 raiding days per boss.

So, based on my back of the envelope math, I don't think Firelands needs a nerf, at least for me. I've progressed further in less time than I did last tier, and certainly don't feel like I've stalled. It also worries me a  bit. I do NOT want Firelands (or the next raid) to be a repeat of ICC in terms of content spacing. I'd be a bit less worried if heroic modes in Firelands were more like they were in Ulduar, or if heroic mode tier 11 dropped gear as good as Firelands normal. That way we could have options! Get bored with Firelands normal, go try tier 11 heroics!  Plus, helm and shoulder tokens. Of course, they'd still look like urinals (stupid tier 11 shoulders for priests), but I suppose I can put up with them for a bit longer.

Now, I'm not against nerfing content to allow more people to see it, I just don't like the timing of this nerf.

DragonCon Pictures

I took pictures at DragonCon, and here you go. Think of it as a RL screencap post... I worked for most of the con, so not as many pictures as I might like.

A toddler running away from a shark. It was a robotic blimp shark, very cool.

Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast. The clock guy was also there, but I didn't get a picture of him

Me with Lucius Malfoy. If you're wondering why I look hot, well, that outfit's made of upholstery fabric.

Bob and Carl, Sci-fi janitors. If you've never seen their video shorts, go check them out. Hysterical.

A female Captain Jack Harkness in a GREAT coat.

Worgen

Spacegoat

Kick-arse Horde bracers

Human, but still a great costume

Great tabard

Troll

Alice in Wonderland set

Bearded Disney Princesses. Because I need to share the HORROR....

Malcolm Reynolds being awesomely overdramatic with a friend of mine. We may have spent a good chunk of one night searching out Doctors for him to hug. It was surprisingly fun.

female Iron Man.

Rogue and Gambit

Captain Jack and me

The Priest Plan

I do have a plan for my new Forsaken priest. You see, I never really leveled a priest properly. Lyl was leveled via Recruit-a-Friend to 60 in combination with Monera. It was fun, and at the time it was the right thing to do, since I had massive issues leveling a priest normally. Lots of horrible, horrible death, going oom, and generally not enjoying it.

I know they've vastly improved the leveling in Cat, and I've had a blast exploring bits and pieces of it Alliance-side. Hence, my priest plan rules...
1. Must get loremaster achieve/finish the zone story for every zone I do until I hit Outlands.
2. Must try leveling as disc and/or holy. Probably going Atonement smite. I'm thinking once I get dualspec I'll go disc smite/holy. In the long term getting more familiar with holy can only improve my healing skills.
3. No heirlooms. This is not a hardship since I'm on a different server from my heirlooms anyway.
4. No dungeons till 60. Then I can go dungeon-crazy if I want.
5. Occasional PVP is fine, but I must remember the point is to see the new questing content.
6. Only one gathering profession, since again, questing!

This toon isn't completely on her own, since I have a DK and a troll druid over there, but that's more to avoid the pain of not enough gold to train than anything else. I ended up with a Forsaken because a) I keep hearing how awesome the new Forsaken experience is, and b) I haven't really played one before.

Now, if you want to play along at home, here's a more general set of rules. The goal is TRY NEW STUFF!
1. Must level primarily in a way you haven't done before or in zones you haven't done since Cat hit.
2. Must level as a spec and/or class you haven't leveled before, or haven't leveled in a long time.
3. No heirlooms with XP gain.
4. Only one gathering profession.

See, simple enough, right?

Now if you want to make it more complicated, you can
1) run with a different UI layout from your main
2) see how far you can get leveling in only whites/greys
3) have the toon be completely self-sufficient, no influxes of cash from DKs or the like
4) go for ambassador!

Stuff, more stuff, and shiny screensaps

Well, Lyllea's becoming a belf, once I figure out the cash situation, and I'm already starting to stock up on cross-faction pets. White kittens, moths, the argent tournament pets, ect...

Sadly my liquidity's a bit low right now, due to my maxing of leatherworking, tailoring, enchanting, and blacksmithing, but on the other hand my alts have nice gear! Monera's now better geared than Lyl was when she started healing tier 11, so I think she's in a good spot to take over Lyl's place in Ars' raid. Plus, two disc priests is less than optimal. I just need to get the hang of resto druid healing, is all. I did two-heal a Halfus run, but my gear isn't quite good enough for that yet. I am having fun with boomkin, and my dps is decent. Still working on figuring out that gaming eclipse thing, but I do have the "DOT ALL THE THINGS, MUSHROOM!" aoe mostly down.

It'll be weird losing my stable of professions, but on the other hand, all they're doing for Lyl right now is making spellthread (and I've got a stockpile of that). I am leveling the DK (and mage) so I have a miner, and I guess one of them will become a JCr. Speaking of leveling, the DK's 78, and the mage is 68. The mage hasn't seen an Outlands quest in 8ish levels, due mostly to the fast queue times in Outlands and also my desire to keep her mining leveled.

So, where toons stand...
Lyl(priest)->still tier 11ish geared, with a couple nicer pieces. 4/7 firelands. And I've found her belf look...

Monera(druid)->ilevel 359. Has killed Halfus. Has also gotten the Patient title, and made love, not warcraft

Adowa (pally)->the much-neglected has a purple chest and maxed professions. I need to start Molten Front stuff with her to get the patterns. Since she's never set foot in Hyjal, this may take a bit.

Eiunn(shaman)->I honestly don't remember what her gear's like, but her leatherworking and tailoring are max'd and once the gold crunch settles down, I'll be making her some gear.

Garetia->same old, same old. Been neglected of late in favor of one of the other 85s. But she now has 50 mounts!

Levelers:
Llonya(DK)->max'd enchanting, and just learned the magic lamp pattern. She's 78, alternating doing dungeons and questing in Icecrown, and will be heading to Vash once she hits 80. Also, she has random honor points. Apparently before you hit 80, you get honor for killing bosses in dungeons and Justice for completing a dungeon. I did not know that.

Angetia(mage)->WHEE FROST! Having a great deal of fun with her.

I also have a priest project going on another server, but there's not much to talk about yet there. But see...

Not dead, just brain-dead

So, job search. Lots and lots of internet surfing, revamping my resume for the millionth time, filling out applications, and all that other fun stuff. Yup, my job search has totally sapped my will to write and is now life-draining it. Stupid lock.

I'm hoping for good heals soon, but in the meantime, there has been wow. Lots of wow.

A shaman hit 85, and I discovered Elemental is awesome.
A hunter went a'raiding. She also got a rare Wraith bird and a lava spider.
A priest healed some people killing stuff in Firelands. (spider and steer by damaging feet guy)
A paladin continued to be ignored.
A druid started gearing, got really stupid purple shorts, and will be raid-healing on tuesday for trash. In fact, the dtuid may become my new main (there was raid team falling apart, but the other team in the guild needed another healer and ideally would like a druid. They're fine with Lyl if I don't like druid raid healing)

A mage wandered into Outlands and never has to see Blackrock again.
A rogue snuck into Outlands and is busily slaughtering and skinning everything in Hellfire.
A DK actually went up a level (yay dungeon-running at 2 am)

And I now have every profession above 500. Much gold was spent, but yay.

Oh, and I found my trans shadow set. See? Yup, hideous colors, but man, that silhouette will be kick-arse when Lyl's in shadowform.  The shaman may end up in lvl 70 pvp enhance gear, mostly cause I think the shoulders are cool-looking, and the jury's out on the others. Haven't really seen a set that grabs me for them yet.

and here, a pretty picture....

Hope everyone's having fun. Now back to the job search, and DragonCon prep!