Some random mumblings

Well, yesterday I spent all day trying to log on to beta. I finally got on about midnight. I rode to where I thought Dalaran was and couldn't get in :( I asked about and someone said it's quest at lvl 74, or ask a mage higher than level 74 for a portal. I went to the traditional place to ask for portals (Ironforge) and found a lovely level 80 mage who opened me a door to Dalaran.

I went, found a quest to go down to the ground and back up and am sorted - yay. Next up, find Breanni and get a pet fetch ball...


I played with Mojo and a ball for a while and went exploring a bit more. I found the inn and went up on to the rooftops. What a view...


And then it was time for bed.

Today, son has taken over my computer and is playing DeathKnight. I guess I'll wait until tonight, or when he goes back to school to get my go. To be honest I'm not sure what else to do. I've now done the things that excited me most about the new expansion - had a haircut, found Dalaran, played fetch. Am I too easily pleased? I'd like to try some of the new instances, but I'm not one for PUGs - there's 3 of us from my guild with keys, and Softi one of my blog readers (who I've yet to greet online), so that's almost a group, so maybe we can do something in the future.

On a different topic - my guild's Council elections are complete and I am still a member of the Council - hurrah! We have several new members and I'm looking forward to stepping out of the limelight a bit and letting them do some of the work.

WotLK Beta-Key: Blessing or Curse?

Well, I finally decided that I would keep the beta-key and not pass it on to my fellow guildie who I know was also very very keen to have one. It was such a hard decision.

So - Thursday morning I started to download it - all 1.24 GB or something. We have fast broadband. It still took something like 6 hours. Finally got the loady screen thing - it said I needed another patch - another 1.24 GB. I left it going and went to bed.

Hurrah - Friday morning - can get in. I managed to get on on Sephrenia - but I have to change my name - I pick Sephrenya - it's close enough. I'm in - Argh! No buttons in the right places, no grid, no clue what the hell to do or where to go. I saw someone say you can get to Northrend from SW so I portal to SW. While there I get sidetracked by the barbers shop...


I go to the harbour in SW - it's very impressive. I get on the HUGE boat and set off. New loading screen - very exciting. OMG! Icebergs. We're here - I can't even remember the name of the place. Son wants a go, so I log out (it's taking too much time in the middle of the day anyway) and let him go in to make a DeathKnight.

I chat to my guild friend on MSN - that very morning he received his own Beta Key - I'm soooo happy.

Son makes a DK and plays happily until the servers go down. I get back from my afternoon shopping and try to log in - an hour and a half later - right at the time I need to put my little girl to bed, I finally get online. My druid has also been transferred, along with 11500 gold he borrowed from another guild friend - BIG TIP if you get a beta key - transfer all your gold to the characters in turn before you copy them to the test realms. I have now passed over that gold to Lorienne and set her on the way too.

I cook some dinner for Barkie and me and then find that the beta has gone down for a patch. It's kind of good because I'm trying hard to stick to my "no play on a Friday" rule, but it's very frustrating.

So - Saturday morning - get up and try to log in - another 538 MB patch to download. I have never been so annoyed at having something new and exciting in my life. I bet when I've downloaded the patch I still won't be able to get on because there are simply too many people trying. How anyone can actually TEST any of this is beyond me. I really think if Blizzard want stuff testing they should actually make it test-able. Not being able to log on and try is immensely irritating.

If I ever get back online I'll tell you a bit more about all the "girly" things I've found - I need to get to Dalaran to visit Breanni the pet collector :)

Word Doodle of my blog

This is a word doodle of my blog. I stole it from Anna. It's kind of pretty. I'm impressed that the main words are positive and have meaning to my life - Guild, Like, Barkie, Druid (hmm - maybe I should talk about my priest more).

Interesting.

So many exciting things...

Some days I can't think of anything to blog about, other days I have LOADS. I forget stuff. I remember trivial things. I need my brain to be a bit less cluttered.

Today is one of those days that feels like I've met up with an old friend I've not seen in ages and want to share ALL my news all at once and I can't speak fast enough. I'm feeling like making a big list and then going through each point in turn.

First up - I've noticed that my blog appears on some other people's sites as one of their favourite blogs. This is wonderful. I feel like I should return the favour, but currently my feeder stands at over 100 blogs I subscribe to. I'd like to have another page to list them all, but I don't think it's possible using Blogger. I might have to switch to WordPress, but that is a scary thought for a technophobe like me. But - all of you who like my blog - THANK YOU - it makes me feel very special.

Second thing that is exciting is that I have a beta key. I can honestly say that I never for a second believed that I would get one, and I didn't. Someone in our guild did. He didn't want to open his presents before Christmas, so offered it to the guild. Being perpetually on the guild forums, I saw it first and he emailed it to me. I sat on it for a while, wondering if I really wanted it and decided that I did (and that my son would kill me if I gave it up). It's currently downloading (and has been all day) and is at 93%. I'm not sure how much I will actually play, but son is desperate to try out a death knight.


Third up, and probably my most ecxiting thing is that we (the guild) went to Mount Hyjal last night as a guild. Our first time ever. It was amazing. I had such fun. We didn't have the best geared people. Our poor Paladin tank was Holy up until about 5 minutes before the start. We had about 4 or 5 tries. Each try we made progress. It felt good. We were working together as a team, learning, growing. We got an epic drop on the trash and 4 hearts of darkness for the guild bank.


We got to wave 8 on the best try and I saw the boss mod say "Rage Winterchill in 90 seconds" before we wiped again, but it was a great attempt. I think most people had a good time and we really felt like next time we will get to a boss. We're going back for more fun on Monday, so I really hope I will have some amazing news then.

Sephrenia stops picking flowers and takes up tailoring

Well, now I've got my druid all sorted with his swift flight form, I decided that having 2 herbalists was a bit much. Also I rather like the look of the [flying carpet thing] coming in WotLK.

And.... I had all that cloth lying around. (See this post).

So, yesterday evening I decided to give up the flowers and learn tailoring. It's the first time ever I've changed profession on a character - I thought about doing it before on Sephrenia, but didn't have my druid flower picker then and decided to keep it to go with my alchemy, even though the Primal Mooncloth set DID look very inviting. Anyway, I got my guides all printed off and ready, gathered up my materials and began about 6pm.

Lots and lots of my lovely guild friends helped me with donations of cloth, arcane dust and spider silk and I set off crafting. Allowing for food breaks and lots of character hopping to buy and post materials, I ended the evening (about midnight) with a skill level 371. I ran out of energy, time and netherweave cloth and so I went to bed.

The guide said I needed all this for 360-375 - eeek (and that was MINIMUM).


This morning I logged in to find MORE cloth and spider silk in my mailbox. I needed to craft 4 garments to make the skill last point (cleared out the AH to get enough cloth) - but I'm there - I have 375 tailoring skill. YAY. Now I just need to go round all the vendors and collect the patterns I'm missing so my training is more complete. I know I don't need any of them (or the primal mooncloth set stuff), but I like to be complete.


If Blizzard take out the magic carpets now I'm gonna sue! I mean - how cool does that look? A great big THANK YOU to all who gave me things to help me level - you all know who you are and I love you all to bits. HUGS all round.

Sephirot becomes fully fledged

Hurrah! I have [swift flight form].


A fantastic group consisting of a druid tank (Barkie, my husband), a Shaman (for back-up heals and some dps), a Warlock and a Rogue went with me (The Tree) to Sethekk Halls to complete the final part of my quest chain for swift flight form. We were a little worried at first about the lack of CC, and I almost switched out my druid for my priest and shackle abilities, but we decided to give it a go anyway. Two deaths later we were at the boss. I had no clue what I was supposed to do, but the big birdie god died anyway and I got my quest done.


We decided to have a go at the stupid last "hide behind the pillar" boss. Our poor shaman died 3 times in the fight and I died as well, but dps won out and so did the boss. One battle res and a reincarnation later we were all complete again.

A quick trip to Cenarion refuge and I gained my wings. Barkie and I had a fantastic soar round Shattrah to celebrate!


Thanks very much guys for helping me - now I can fly fast while I'm picking flowers and mining ores. And, more importantly, I feel like a proper druid. After helping so many others gain their wings on my priest, it felt good to do it for myself. (On an interesting side note, I read in my diary that Barkie achieved his form almost a year ago to the day - ahhhh).

Shattrah City Blues

Some days, just chatting away while standing around in Shattrah gets too much. I just have to take a break, fly off into the open country and be at peace.


I hope you find some peace for yourself this weekend...

What's the definition of a "Social Guild"

I joined my current guild after having burnout and RL time challenges with a "hardcore" raiding guild. At the time I wasn't really sure what "hardcore" meant, and to be honest, I'm still not sure that I do.

The guild I am now "Mum" to is a "social" guild. Recently I've been wondering quite what that means too. My current frustrations come from our lack of raiding, which is looking likely to improve soon, but is starting to weigh on my mind a little.

A lot of our members are "older", have children, jobs etc. that make it so they can't play at the "traditional" raiding times - i.e. starting at 19:00 or so. We formed as a "Late-night raiding guild", but I feel that we have lost some of the emphasis on raiding in our bid to attract a more mature player.

My rant is this... people are coming to raids late, under geared, under prepared, no enchants or gems, no knowledge of the instance, no add-ons, no food, no flasks and any combination of these. How do you tell someone in a social guild to get their act together without sounding mean, callous, or making them feel inadequate?

I was venting to Barkie last night and it struck me that these people are NOT being Social, adult, mature themselves. Is it fair on 24 other people for one to turn up to a raid with the wrong stuff? Is it adult?

The guild is starting to put together a list of required add-ons, with things such as Omen, LibHealComm-3.0 for healers, etc. and I think this is a good thing. I think we might have to start using tools for working out if people are geared enough before letting them in raids and having a check-list of consumables and stuff which will help with raid performance, but we're struggling with the feeling that this is moving away from being a social guild.

Personally, I don't want to go back to my "hardcore" raiding days where the raid leader checked that all rogues had at least 40 bandages etc., but I want people to learn and grow. I want them to appreciate that a little bit of reading, research and a few gold spent can really make a difference.

I'm thinking that we should start to use our Guild Bank a bit more and provide people with potions, food, maybe even pay repairs, but the challenge will be in managing this and making sure people do a bit of work too. It would be all too easy to scrimp on your preparations and just scavenge from the bank.

I think the way round it is to have "gearing" raids, to Karazhan, 5 man heroics, etc. to help people getter more prepared for 25 man raids and have some "rules" about who will be invited to participate in the larger raids. We are going to have to check people out and start leaving some behind in order to progress. I think we have sat about too long letting the lesser geared people drive the guild, while those who want progress, who want to feel the thrill of downing a new boss have missed out. It's time to renew the sense of achievement and feed our better geared players for a change.

I think this will encourage people to think a bit more about their characters, their colleagues and where the guild is going. We have 3 months or more before WotLK hits and there is so much we can still do and achieve and rather than lose people from boredom I think we need to get more strict.

This is a good article I found.

I'm not really sure if I ended up where I was thinking. This is one of my "something's bothering me, let's write about it" rambles that has probably ended up more confusing than it should have been, but at least it's got a few of my thoughts out and eased the load in my brain.

I would really welcome any comments from anyone who reads this - how strict is too much for a social guild, how do we tell some of our members that frankly they suck (should we tell them?), how do we please the well-geared eager raiders who are losing out and facing wipe-fests as a result of others?

Argh - just chatting to a friend and he said (about people not being prepared) "that's the trouble with being a "Casual" guild". OMG - another phrase - what's the difference between casual and social?

Times they are a changing

Well, I think my guild has some "interesting" times ahead. I have recently posted on our guild forums asking for nominations for a new guild Council. We are likely to take 5 or 7 people on for the job which has, for the last year, been done by roughly 7 people over the time. We have taken on some new members who seem to fit in well and hold true to the beliefs and ideals for the guild, so I'm hopeful for the future.

Another development follows (possibly) from a conversation I had the other day with the GM of a small guild that seems to be on the edge of collapse. He suggested that 10 or so of his members might like to join us. All are over 30 and have some friends already in the guild. It sounds good - we might actually get enough people to do something in the 25 man instances for a change, but I have some worries.

How do we integrate 10 people who already know each other and have ways of doing something without either them feeling put out, or being clique-y, or wanting to change us? I am waiting for them to apply on our forums to see what our current members feel.

I don't normally do change very well, so dear reader, prepare for some venting, panic, tears and hopefully some joy to follow...

A Mother is sad when her children leave

I get sad every time someone leaves the guild, or stops playing for a bit, or transfers realm, or is on holiday or whatever.

This week has been a very sad week. My guild has 6 Council members to lead it (I am one). Currently one is on extended holiday while he moves him and his family from Paris to Malta. I doubt he will be playing until the middle of September. Another one has taken a month off to do his studies. One announced this week that as we aren't doing much progression wise and stuff that he's bored and will stop playing until WotLK comes out. The other more active member is on holiday for a week, then away on business for a week. The last one is our least active Council member - he's about a bit still.

At the moment I'm feeling like the whole world rests on my shoulders and I'm not enjoying it. We made the Council so no one person would have all the responsibility, but currently it seems that I do.


We have such a range of people in our guild it's hard to please everyone, but as a Mum that's what I end up trying to do and it's very, very stressful. One guy left recently to PVP. Another left for more progress. Someone left because she came online and only 2 of the 18 online said Hello to her. A bit harsh, yes, but not the only one who has complained to me that people don't say hello. One has a beta key... the list goes on for why people aren't doing stuff.

How the hell do I inject some more life in there when I'm feeling lacking in that life myself? Hmmm. Think I might need some more sleep - will someone wake me up when September is here - I think I'm going to estivate (yeah - a Mum and a teacher - go look that one up).

Blogs, holidays, guild quiet times and health

Well, I've been busy, but not doing much WOW stuff that I can post about - a lot of guildies are on holiday and stuff is quiet, so today's post is a bit more personal than normal.

I noticed the other day that I should really update my blogroll, so I went to my reader and I have 86 blogs I subscribe to. Eeeek - how the hell do I list all of those? I might have to move my blog now so I can start to arrange it how I want, but after reading how other people have gone about this I'm not sure....

The kids are still on holiday and I'm slowly turning to a grump 24/7. Nine weeks is TOO LONG. They are going to my parents for a week next week and I'm looking forward to the peace and quiet. I will completely and utterly miss them like crazy too. Damn kids - can't live with them, can't live without them.


At least daughter is having fun now - she's playing with her grandfather on her level 37 rogue (he's boosting her in Scarlet Monastery). I'm very proud of my little girl - she's only 7 and has a level 37 rogue which has 34g and she has 94g on her bank alt (I taught her to play the auction house). She's started her own blog (which we have limited the audience on) and is loving it!

On a personal note, I'm in the middle of changing my whole diet. I suffer from Multiple Sclerosis (was diagnosed last year - kind of late in life for MS), which most of the time doesn't bother me at all, but periodically I get numbness in my hands (seriously messes up my playing and typing abilities). I did some reading on the web and found that diet can have a massive effect on symptoms so I did an allergy test and found that I am intolerant to cow's milk, yeast and blackcurrant (where the hell did that one come from!).

So I switched milk to soya, cut out bread, all dairy and all sorts of other stuff. I'm going to write a blog on all that too, so maybe if it all works I can help other people who suffer the same.

So - all in I've not been playing as much because I get frustrated that I can't type and I end up with stiff hands and pain. Last time it was my right hand and I switched to doing everything off key-bindings, but this time it's more my left hand so I keep messing up my movements and misclicking keys.

Yeah, I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself. Time to go see if it's the fishing quest to give me a much needed croc pet, and do some web research for dairy free chocolate.

Poor Lorienne....

I went and bought an Epic Flappy, but NOT for Lorienne. I gave it to Sephirot - well, he's a miner and a herbalist and it's so SLOW doing them with normal flappies, even with normal birdie form. He got a blue one to match his blue hair.


Lorienne is a bit cross, but like I told her - she just instances, gets a summon there and a portal home - she doesn't really need an Epic flappy just yet. She can wait a bit for Sephirot to bring in the cash and then have one!


Then Sephirot went and started the quest chain for swift flight form. OMG! He had to kill some stuff. Very strange. I'm kind of pleased I have another level 35 druid that I've had to use all the forms a bit, but you can see why people who Ebay characters have trouble knowing how to play. I think the quest chain will be good for me - help me to learn all the forms a bit more - I think I'm going to have to fight things in each form as I go along, before going back to that hateful Sethekk Halls place! The number of times I've helped other druids get their swift flight form, it will be good to do it for myself!

I think I might hoard stuff a bit much....

I was sorting through my banks the other day and decided to send all my cloth to one bank, all my herbs to another, all the miscellaneous stuff to my banker with it's own guild bank, etc.

Do you think I might be keeping a bit much cloth?


I think I might have to do some selling - I kind of quite fancy starting a mage and need the character space, so if I can clear this bank out I can use that space. I think maybe having 3 bank characters is a bit over the top, but hopefully with WotLK I will have some more room once I get rid of all my pets, mounts, tabards, etc. Please Blizz - can we have a wardrobe too? I need somewhere to keep my clothes.

I hate PVP, but ... anything for a pet!

So - new today - new pet for the Olympics - all you have to do it win a BG!

OMG - PVP - I hate pvp. I dig my stuff out of the bank - actually I'm not too bad - 346 resilience, but I lose all my mana regen stuff.

Where to start - try a WSG - lose - get a tabard though. Find some guildies and try a WSG - LOSE. Try an EOTS - WIN! No mail - no pet. Sad bunny. Try an AB - lose. Why are Alliance so BAD at PVP? They run around like headless chickens after anything red and leave everything free for Horde to pick off. One more WSG - going OK - I'm with the warrior with the flag - keeping him alive and killing all who come in. He gets bored though and drops the flag for a druid, who runs into a million horde and dies. Argh - we lose.

Give up for a bit and have some lunch.

Back in - sign up for everything - get in WSG - horrible looking group - AB pops up - dreadful, completely dreadful - we can't even keep bloody stables. GUYS - I'm HEALING - keep me alive and I keep you alive. Jees - how hard is that as a concept?

AV comes up. I join. I have NO CLUE where to go in AV, so I tag along behind a crowd and a guy called Mayhem something who seems to know what he's doing! I find myself by a graveyard somewhere and we seem to take it. See something about Drek - kind of remember he is their bad guy we need to kill. Also see something about Vanndar needing help.

Wander into a bunker - Ooooh! There is their bad guy. People seem to be getting ready to attack. I heal my little butt off (which is being bitten by wolves) and all of a sudden WE WIN!

OMG - I won an AV and I have no idea how - LOL - what a total noob. (Top of healing though).

Get out of BG and I HAVE MAIL - YAY - I have my medallion! New pet, new pet, la la la la la la!


Don't I look mean in my PVP gear btw?

I can haz Durid

Well, what a turn up for the books! Yesterday our guild was holding a druid only Karazhan run. I was a little sad that I could not take part.

Barkie (my husband) was busy working, so I came up with the great idea of re-speccing him to be a healing priest-like druid so I could take him to the run. I spent half the morning sorting through his bags and banks and making him into a tree.

Son (the darling) muttered to me (he's at that grunting age) "You can have my druid Mum". OMG! I can haz level 70 durid! I quickly binned one of my low level characters and transferred his druid (stupidly called Dunnomyname) to my account. OMG! OMG! I have a level 70 druid - I never thought I'd have a level 70 druid - my little baby druid is only level 35. The only down side is that it's a BOY druid. I've never played a male character. Good job I can spend most of my time as a tree to disguise this. This tree is very nicely geared - son did a bit of BT and MH with it before he got bored of healing and went back to playing his Orc Warrior. I think I've got about 1850 plus healing. /flex.

Barkie came home early and was a bit less than pleased that his lovely feral druid had been transformed into a tree. But we were short of healers anyway, so he joined the raid too. With my Dad in there as well, we had almost half a raid of my family!


So here we all are at the start of the raid. We had 3 trees, 2 moonkins, 2 mostly bears and 3 mostly cats. I say mostly because some are better geared to be bears than cats and some the other way round.

Having the possibility of 10 innervates, 10 battle resses, 10 hurricanes, etc. was amazing! We quickly swept throught he stables and saw off Attumen. Moving on to Moroes gave a wealth of choices - we could Prowl past a lot of the mobs. Sadly, some slightly less than cautious cats pulled a few, but we sorted out our hurricanes and healing and stuff and kicked butt. Who needs mages? Well, we could have done with some water for our Chickens actually, but...


After celebrations on the way we moved to Moroes, who was "interesting" - we ran out of Mana a bit fast because of the draining, and then died, but rebirth gives some mana back, so problem sorted. Moroes died.

We stealthed the whole corridor to Maiden. We thought we could heal through the Holy Fire. We could, all was going well - then BAM! All our melee died. I think we got the bad side of a Holy Ground. We decided that Maiden was a bad idea and thought we'd go and see the Opera instead.

We sneaked past all the stupid backstage mobs and straight to Barnes, who kindly started the show for us. We got Romulo and Julianne (kind of relieved it wasn't Oz). The hardest thing we found was her healing. Feral charge seemed to be about the only thing that would stop it. We had rushing bears all over the place. Lots of people died and lots of rebirths were used, but in the end (it was VERY long fight) they died!

I rallied the troops round and with a resounding FOSHIZZLE, we called it a night. (No comments on the messy UI - not had time to tidy it up yet).


We had no teleport Shattrah, so we used the only teleport we had, and went for a party in Moonglade!


I was a bit pleased with my healing - son had given me a few tips before we raided and it seemed to have worked.



So - the name... I could not spend my days playing a druid called Dunnomyname, so I searched for a new name. I looked up "Tree of Life" and one of the things I found was "Sephiroth" - this looked good to me - I can still be called Seph, which is great. Sephiroth was taken, so I read about a bit more and found simply "Sephirot". It was done! Seph, the healy druid is born!


Now - to sort those bars... and to work out how to kill stuff if I need to... and to FLY! Yeah - instant flight form - I can pick flowers with ease.

I'm never going to be able to play properly again ....

.... with this little addition to WotLK.

Wrath's Fetch Ball lets you play with your pets

I've got so many pets to play with - it's going to take me ages to watch each one. Arrrgh!

Sephrenia's Solo Healing Karazhan run

Get yourself a cuppa and some chocolate - it's going to be a LONG story.

Well, Sunday came. I had all my potions, elixirs, food, oil, bandages ready. I had a chat with the Paladin who was going to tank for me and he said that his game card had expired and he didn't want to renew just for my run and then hang around doing nothing for the rest of the month. Fair enough. Cries. OK, so - Barkie (my husband) could take over tanking and the other Paladin, although dps spec could off-tank. Sorted. Found a replacement. Another shadow priest.

I log in to start up the raid - get some apologies from my rogue who has to take his Dad somewhere. I'm being whispered left, right and centre with people offering various characters for spaces if there are any. I have 2 SP, 2 Mages, a Lock, a Druid tank, a Shaman and a Pala. One space. There is a mage who really, really wants in for rep and a lock who has expressed interest. I'm in agony trying to work out which to take. Finally decide on the lock as he can heal himself a bit and the extra SS might come in handy.

The mage is cross, but I'm sorry - it's my run - I choose. He is left waiting outside (even though I whispered him to tell him I'm full) because my SP has brought a character that was not in the guild and, seeing only 9 guildies in Kara he thinks he might get in. Argh! All the way through the stables I'm trying to explain and heal at the same time.

Anyway - on with the show - here I am, all prepared, buffed, potted, etc.


The run turns into one of those "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" sort of evenings. We pull 2 packs on the way to Attumen. Normally this is OK, but when a horsie charges the only healer it's a bit tougher. People aren't quite alert enough yet. Maybe they are too full and drowsy from their Sunday meal.

Attumen. Let Pala do horsie, Druid do the man. Sadly, it's been a while since my hubby has played and he misses Attumen when he arrives. Being as gorgeous as I am he charges straight to me and kills me in a rush of affection. OK - this is silly - let's try again. Maybe the Druid can tank them both - someone has read about it. He can't. Third time lucky? Actually, no. Third time, we get respawns. LOTS of horsies don't like us.

So - half an hour gone and back at the start. I'm kind of feeling a bit low at dragging all these people to indulge me and we have a wipe fest at Attumen! People tell me it's not my fault - my healing is doing OK. One of the SP comes out of the shadows and we call it a "normal" raid and set off again. Actually he does hardly any healing and goes purple again as soon as I've calmed down. We clear, we get to Attumen, people back off the pew pew a bit and let tanks get aggro, Boss dies. Now THAT was better. I did solo heal the boss.

Feeling a bit brighter we move on to Moroes. Things clear well, we have a little wobble when we go into the room because at that point I'm distracted as a new guild applicant decides to whisper me. Note to self - put DND on when solo-healing a raid. Note to others - DON'T whisper people when they are raiding.

Moroes. Oh dear. Try number one - shackle breaks and runs to me. Of course it's the big hitting guy, who chops me down with a single hug. I use my SS, but it's all looking pear shaped, so I run out. It resets and the rest of the raid are a bit miffed because apparently Moroes was almost dead. SORRY guys.

I'm now feeling completely and utterly dreadful. But these guys are great. They are happy to indulge me some more, even though I'm a guilt-ridden wreck.

We have another go and Moroes dies with ease. Some days I think we like to do things the hard way, just so we can revel in how easy it is when we do it again! I solo-healed Moroes (and even got garotted in the process).

Clear to Maiden. Moderately uneventful, except we get the group of elite dancers just before the hallway - I think we were a little too keen to pull the last group opposite the archway!

At Maiden. Someone was a bit over-awed at her obvious beauty and with memories of my last picture of her, peaked to soon and pulled. We almost recovered, but it was very frantic, she AOEd me and we wiped. Regaining composure we re-grouped and killed her properly. She went down very fast (I think 1 minute 20 seconds someone said), fortunately, so we only had to survive through 2 repentances. One I managed to get myself out of, the second I think someone may have sneaked a heal in for, but it might have been the Druid's frenzied regen or something. Anyway, she died and I had healed my group all by myself.

On to Opera - we lost a mage cos it was getting a bit late, but managed to get another. I think we did OK on the trash to Opera - by this time all the dying had blurred together!

We got Big Bad Wolf. Sadly Barkie had never tanked him before so died, the Paladin picked him up and ran about a bit. Then suddenly the curtain came down. I have absolutely no idea why. I think that he must have known it was one of those nights, or something! We rallied round and tried again. Success! Still NO trinket - of course - I mean that would have been too much to ask of a night like that! Fortunately I didn't get turned into red riding hood and managed to heal all those who did really well, so had achieved my goal here as well.


It was late - we'd died enough, so we stopped. I'm guessing that my Spirit Healer counts as another death and with the SS then die again I did a lot of lying flat. My repair bill was 27g or something, but had fun!


So - I did "most" of the healing. The other priest helped a bit while I regained my composure at the start, the Druid was his own inbuilt heals, the Shaman chain healed a bit after they wipes, but I think you could basically say I managed to solo heal the first four bosses, which gives me enormous satisfaction. I'd like to try it again some time and maybe even do further. I think if people chilled a bit and weren't competing for the highest dps, rushing to get it done and if we had 2 "proper" tanks we would be great. I'd like to thank all those who came along for giving me a night of indulgence - I hope you had a bit of fun too in amongst all the dying!

Looking at the information a bit more, most of my healing was flash heal - I know it's inefficient, but when you're on your own you've got to be quick. I'd really tried to get the most mana regen I could and I don't think my mana dropped below 50% more than once. I only used my fiend after I had died and SS - and the same for mana potions - I only used one! I ate a fair few elixirs though, and munched on lots of blackened sporefish. Time to go flower picking and fishing again.

The great thing is that some people seem willing to try it again and I think having done it once, I'd be a bit more relaxed and manage a bit better.

A rogue and 4 cats

We had another interesting Karazhan run the other night. The aim is to do some lower Kara to gear a few folks up to move on to other things. This week we had 5 Druids (2 resto, 3 feral), 1 Rogue, 2 Shaman (1 resto, 1 pew pew), a Hunter and a Warlock sign up!

We killed Attumen no problem - my annoying Dad won the [Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation] over my amazing roll of 1. Yes, my Dad plays WOW - he's actually OK at it (his main is a Holy Pala, but he was being Druid tank in this run). He does have his moments (like deleting all his feral gear on his Druid because he was going Resto), but it's fun playing a game with 3 generations of my family involved.

We had a few interesting moments on the AOE trash, but we did OK. Moroes - no shackle and only one trap (which got resisted). We nuked all the adds and then Moroes and he died. YAY!

The Warlock and Pew Shaman were competing for the best number of deaths and the leather loot was interesting to almost everyone!

We decided that with no dispellers Maiden might be a tad tricky, so moved to Opera. We got Romulo and Julianne. We had one of those annoying she's dead - KILL HIM - moments, where sadly he didn't die quickly enough and they both ressed. Our turn to die!

The pew pew Shaman decided that 10 deaths was enough for his poor character and brought in his feral Druid instead. The Hunter brought his imba Warrior to tank so one of the Druid tanks could go kitty instead. It was an amazing sight - playing Sephrenia so much I've got used to standing back and watching the action, but with Lori it's all up front and personal. Me and 4 kitties REALLY showed Julianne some loving :) We won this time.


All the cats needed some beauty sleep, so we called it a night. Death count for the Warlock and Shaman stood at 10 each, but it was all the Hunters fault anyway - he won the blame roll. Did I mention our "blame roll"? At the start of our raids / instances we have a roll which decides who is to blame for all the bad (or good) things that happen in the raid. It's a wonderful idea because it takes away the pointing fingers, the guilty feelings and all that sort of stuff that could get in the way of some serious fun.