Too Tired to Post Much, and So You’re Lucky I Even Bothered to Crop This Screenshot

Mimiron down.  I’ll post a full debrief on weekend goings-on tomorrow.  I’m watching the video on TankSpot on General Vezax to prep for tomorrow’s raid, then I’m going to bed…

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More Dead Bosses, or When An Achievement Doesn’t Really Feel Like One

We managed to down Thorim last night, a boss that gave us quite a bit of grief last week.  As we were learning the fight, we seemed to always face problems in the arena (“tank down!”) or problems in the gauntlet (“tank down!”), and if we successfully made it past that phase, died to massive chain lightnings when fighting Thorim himself.  We also struggled with an undocumented ability:  Thorim’s tendency to DC one or two people on the pull. 

The thrill of downing a new boss was dimished by several things — that Kaleyen wasn’t invited to raid being the most important to me personally.  But the nerfs, omg, the nerfs.  The changes to the first few bosses in Ulduar have been discussed by several bloggers, and no surprise to any readers here I’m sure, the elitist jerk in me thinks it’s ludicrous that these have come so soon.   Honestly, I’d like to see the Disconnect, Lag, Latency, and Loading Screen bosses tweaked first.  But as we circled back around to Razorscale and Ignis last night — one shotting both while standing in the fire — I felt pretty sad that Blizzard wasn’t willing to give us time or incentive to improve.

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More Dead Bosses

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Deconstructor Deconstructed: Server First for Delirium

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We interrupt this priest blog to bring you an update on the druid

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Because Messing Around with Add-ons Makes Me Feel Like I’m Figuring Stuff Out

As Tuesday’s respec left me rather flustered, I logged into Khaeli last night a bit earlier than usual so that I’d give myself plenty of time to review my new spec before our raid.  As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve used Power Auras for quite some time in order to track buffs (I initially downloaded it to indicate when the ol’ 10-minute Inner Fire had expired, but have since set it up to track the haste from Borrowed Time and the Egg of Mortal Essence).  I added the Surge of Light, Clearcasting and Improved Holy Concentration procs to Power Auras, and tried to give it some sort of color code that made sense and made learning these new abilities a bit easier:  a green circle around Khaeli meant a haste buff, a blue one meant a mana reduction.  (Here’s a great guide to the add-on, for those interested). I tested it by spamming heals on myself, but it just seemed to be a blur of color and rings, all indicating “zomg!  proc!” to which my response was still, after 24-hours of being Holy, “Wait, wut?”

So I tried a different add-on:  TellMeWhen.  While it has ostensibly the same function as Power Auras — it provides a visual display to monitor buffs/debuffs/cooldowns/procs — it uses the game’s icons rather than some other (albeit pretty) pattern.  I set up one bar right above my Quartz casting bar to watch for my new Holy procs, as well as the haste from the Egg trinket and Heroism.  I also created a bar to the left of Grid (where my eyes are most of a fight) to monitor the cooldowns for Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending, as I’m still trying to get the feel for what buttons to push and when.

Did it help during our Naxx run?  Blah, I dunno.  I have gone from feeling incredibly knowledgeable and well-geared as a Disc Priest to feeling like a button-mashing, mana-starved padawan noob.  

In other add-on news, I tried out Multishot as well last night.  It automatically takes a screenshot for boss kills and achievements.  I found it mildly irritating as the screenshot caused my PC to freeze for a split second (not good when the boss is dead but her adds aren’t, as in the Widow fight) and it seemed to fail at getting quality screenshots (each boss kill screenshot looks like a mess of scrolling combat text and raid frames but thankfully as we’re working on the Immortal achievement, no dead bodies).  So I have disabled it already.  Nonetheless it did manage to capture these moments:
 Thanks to AT&T for (for the time being) fixing your damn servers so that I can raid Heigan without lagging into the green wall of doom.

And thanks to Jurk for sending me the Gloves of Token Respect, granting me this achievement.  I can’t even give him Power Infusion any more, dammit, as some sort of quid pro quo.  But if I’m on raid heals, I guess I can heal him now?  Yay!

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Weekend Update: Alts, Achievement Screenshots, & Eighties Pop Culture Mixed Metaphors, with Lyrics by John Cougar Mellencamp

Although Khaeli became Twilight Vanquisher last night, she spent much of the weekend feeling pretty vanquished.

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Back in Black

Upon turning in yesterday’s JC daily, Khaeli was awarded the Breadwinner achievement.  With the expense soon-to-come of buying dual specs for three toons (elementa/resto shaman, elemental/balance druid, discipline/shadow priest), I certainly need to work on winning more bread.  However, as our guild and raid leader will be out-of-town for ten days (and I’m just not confident that much will happen in the way of 25mans without him around), K- and I plan to spend the weekend working on alts.

Funnily enough, he’s leveling a priest; I’m playing the DK.

Initially, I made the DK a scribe for profit.  But the class is too damn fun, and if I’m not careful I’ll lose track of my plans to level an AOE healer and instead find myself with a level 80 plate-wearing DPS (no, I will never tank.  It’s verbotten.  Trust me.)  Right now, the goal is merely to hit 65 so I can level inscription up the rest of the way, but honestly I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop.  It helps immensely that K- can give me advice on my spec and rotations, as it feels rather odd to be in the Outlands with a class that I am such a noob at playing.  But noob or not, whether it’s from wearing plate, wielding a big ol’ sword, or not needing mana — hot damn — I am a killing and leveling machine.  Rawr!

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Does This Mount Make My Butt Look Big?

in lieu of the 25man Naxx "alt" run (well, as we have no alts at 80),
Kaleyen and Khaeli raided the Horde cities last night

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Dragon Down

Back to Discipline for the guild's Tuesday night raid, one where, thankfully, we finally killed Malygos on heroic mode.  And I not only won the Mantle of Dissemination, but afterwards had enough badges for the Cuffs of the Shadow Ascendant (as I'm at 28% crit unbuffed, I thought it time to amass some haste gear).

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