Of Raiding and Guilds

Guess what, my server likes to run the achievement game. Shocking right? Well not really seen as it would appear pretty much every server runs this way now. We’re lucky in that gearscore is a phrase well know on the server but it would appear not so widely used.

As you can probably guess this whole link your achievement thing bugs me quite a bit. When I changed my account from a trial to a full one I was quickly snapped up into a big guild, a big but very dead guild. I think this was just standard practice but then I quickly found out through resources like WoW.com and the livejournal community WoW_Ladies that this wasn’t always the case and sometimes people had very active guild chats and even Vent servers!

This lead to myself and my boyfriend Zorendiil setting up our own guild which we love and adore, recruiting was hard work but it paid off in bringing in a few core members who still now 5 months on we can count on to be there for us even if we just want to sit on an alt and rant.

As with all guild though the initial period guild chat was incredibly busy but unfortunately at that time we weren’t level 80 so we couldn’t really get any raids going from the beginning.

Now however we do try to at least get a ten man run on a Saturday afternoon, we know people have to PuG things because that’s the way it works in a non committed raiding guild but we rotate the “compulsory” raid in order to try and prevent banging our heads against a brick wall.

And here is where my problem occurs, because of this I don’t have any raid achievements, other than Sarth and that’s just with all drakes killed. So I try and jump into PuGs where people know me and know that I can do fairly decent DPS. This week our guild run was ToC10 man and there was just no way we could manage it, I didn’t mention we had no healers online, and so later in the week when a trade message was posted and they weren’t requesting an ach link I jumped on it.

Now as Co-GM and most times raid leader I’ve researched tactics a lot, I’ve seen all the tank spot videos I run grid (even though my main is a mage) so I can keep an eye on everyone, I am a compulsive decursive user, so I know how to keep an eye on my surroundings. This was my first time in there really, the guild run had wiped on those damn worms over and over so anything past that was going to be new for me even though I knew what to expect.

I didn’t know what to expect when we had to 5 man Icehowl and I’m pleased to report that I didn’t get hit even though I' got targeted more than anyone else, so not fair picking on a clothie, but the adrenaline run afterwards was amazing. The rest of the run went really smoothly for a PuG and I’m pleased to report I now have the achievement to show for it. Should make further PuGs a little bit easier.

Now I just wish I had an ICC 10 man one because I know those tactics oh so well but no one will take me. Sigh.

LFG Holy Priest *ping*

How wonderful is the LFG tool, yes I know I only started playing WoW the day patch 3.1 dropped but really patch 3.3 is the best thing ever! My little priest Rionia is now level 26 thanks to healing old world dungeons in holy spec, and I’ve never had a wipe yet which makes me quite proud. She has mouseover macros going and a fairly good grid scheme which is helping loads, and when there’s a good tank in there I barely have to do anything more than Power Word Shield and renew constantly which is awesome.

So far she’s completed:

• Ragefire Chasm,
• Deadmines,
• Wailing Caverns (although I think I was boosted there)
• Shadowfang Keep
• Blackfathom Deeps
• Stormwind Stockade
• Razorfang Kraul

On the subject of BFD that seems to be the place where all the weirdos appear, no idea how or why but it’s a very odd place. One time we had two DPS needing to go AFK, far enough it happens in these long instances, after about ten minutes of the remaining three of us dancing, jumping etc the other two start to get into a little bit of role play. Now if this had been standard role play that would have been fine, of course it was the NSFW variety. I will state now that none of the realms in my battlegroup are RP so lord only knows how this started.

The second occurrence of the BFD crazies was a group where we unfortunately had to kick a DPS, it always makes me sad when this happens as they’re not going to learn how to play the class that way but sometimes it just needs to be done. As soon as the kick was passed the hunter left in the group proceeded to ask my toon to remove her clothes, yes unfortunately my Priest is a Blood Elf but this is the first time I have actually experienced the immature male players being, well, typically male. There’s no need for it, it’s pixels, go buy a magazine if you really need that kind of thing. Quitting group and knowing they would have problems getting another healer did make me feel better but I did feel sorry for the tank who messaged me saying he was sticking up for me.

I will be eternally happy when BFD is completely out of my range of dungeons.

In other news of my priest I somehow managed to max out her Inscription profession until she reaches level 35. It’s cost me quite a bit in herbs but hopefully if I can make a list of all current in use glyphs for cookie cutter builds I can make quite a bit of money back.

Guess I better get her back in and healing to boost her level a bit. I can’t remember the last time I actually did a level appropriate quest with her!

I Guess I’m Really Not That Much of an Altoholic

Every time I aim to focus on one of my alts something or other happens to make me want to work on achievements on my main Arednel. Last night I was in the mood to raid but unfortunately she doesn’t have the proof that’s she’s done them so my server being what it is that means a no go. It did however mean that I looked for something else to do that felt vaguely similar.

So I decided to look back at old world content that I missed out on due to only joining the game at patch 3.1 (Ulduar) and of course joining before our beloved Dungeon Finder that is making levelling alts so much easier. I was missing three items for my Classic Dungeonmaster:

• Maraudon
• Dire Maul
• Lower Blackrock Spire

These three were ones I’d dreaded soloing, long and winding or in the case DM winged and had to be performed in a certain order, but I figured seen as I was in the mood for a raid I might as well give it a go and with the changes to frost spec after patch 3.3 I wouldn’t technically have to go it alone.

I changed my frost pvp spec to a near enough pve one and glyphed for my Elemental making him permanent so I had someone to cover my back at all times but kept him on defensive.

We made short work of Maraudon, other than getting lost on the way in and going in the Orange entrance instead of the purple one and then the chore of Dire Maul began. I’m pleased to report that in the whole evening I only had one death and that was due to me forgetting to clear all the treelings in DM North before attacking the first boss, I should have expected them to all come running.

The good thing is that the squishy mage named Arednel has now conquered two more old world dungeons and hopefully tonight alongside my boyfriend and his level 80 Troll hunter Zorendiil we will take on Lower Blackrock Spire.

Today’s picture I’m going to leave with is a shot I took of Thunder Bluff, I love that place although I very rarely go it just has something about it.

These things always happen…

Well since I started this place I haven’t really played. I do however have plans in mind for what I’d like to do next and where I’d like to focus.

My main aim will be to level my Death Knight what with that lovely high level starting point it would be really silly not to have one at level 80 and tank gear ready, for those emergency guild situations.

I’d also really like to get a healer up to 80 for pretty much the same reason, but I’m torn, I don’t know if I should got the druid or the priest route. I don’t want a paladin, my two paladins are Alliance side and my Guild I love and adore is Horde, I do not want a Horde paladin (until Cataclysm comes out and then I’ll be rolling that light loving Tauren paladin quicker than you can moo!) so priest or druid it is, I really can’t decide.

I guess in the meanwhile I’ll focus on getting my DK through Outland and up to NR, she had heirloom chest and shoulder pieces on now so she’s fully XP bonused up just need to get round to actually levelling.

A background

First and foremost this is a World Of Warcraft blog, yes another one. Here I will be talking about the things I do with my characters to keep it separate from my normal Journal on LiveJournal. My realm of choice is in the EU, an English speaking realm of the normal PVE variety, and this is due to the fact that my friend referred me.

My main is a level 80 female Troll Mage named Arednel. She is currently dual specced for Arcane (because we all love it’s single target uber dps right now as of 3.3) and Frost which I occasionally play with in Wintergrasp but I don’t (yet) have any pvp gear for her, I am contemplating it as I do play Wintergrasp fairly frequently.

My other characters that I play either infrequently or not are the following:

Caladwen – level 15 Human Paladin – prot spec,

Messina – level 20 Tauren Druid – feral spec,

Rionia – level 22 Blood Elf Priest – holy spec,

Isowen – level 41 Draenai Paladin – ret spec,

Sidhiel – level 60 Undead Death Knight – blood spec.

So that’s a little bit about all my little baby avatars. Yesterday I focused on leveling Sid’s mining, I swore I wasn’t going to take her to Outland until she hit 300 and yesterday she finally got there, making a fair little profit in the mean while selling all the ores she managed to get! I’m sharing the plate heirlooms between three toons now though so that may get a little confusing.

Rionia was my other focus, I didn’t know what professions to take when I first started playing her. In the end I settled on herbalism and inscription because another way to make money is always good. Yesterday I spent the time power levelling her inscription, I think I did pretty good, made sure I varied all of the glyphs I produced and threw them straight up on the auction house. I’ll spend time looking at all the specs on WoW-wiki to see which ones are the current main used for the main specs and I’ll produce more of those ones to sell. No point in making them if no ones going to buy them!

So that’s me for now, I’ll try not to forget this place. And I’ll leave with this picture of Arednel, enjoying the peace near the tournament amongst the penguins. She gets bored of killing things occasionally!