Catchup

What's new. Let's see. I've started training up my fishing and cooking, so I don't have to beg for stuff any more. It'll be a long haul, but I'll be glad to have it done. The only debate is whether I would be better off spending the $25 and moving Chel over to the new server.

Went to Kara a couple times, including downing Netherspite, which was a first for me. I just have Prince and Nightbane and I will have been present for all the bosses being killed. Hopefully one of these days the timing will work out and I'll be there for a successful Prince outing. I got some new Bracers last night, which is nice. A decent upgrade from what I was using before. Nothing spectacular, though.

First wine related post

Just wanted to write a tiny bit about the wine I had last night. I opened up another bottle of the Monkey Prize from woot and watched the WLTV video about it while tasting it. It's very sweet, pretty smooth and quite yummy. I wouldn't call it "fine wine", but I certainly enjoyed it with the basil and salami pizza we had for dinner. I'm glad I bought a case and a half of it when it was offered, since it's consistent and I always enjoy it with dinner.

Kara and WLTV

Went to Kara last night with G2. Got through Curator again, no drops for me, as usual. We had a bit of trouble with Romulo and Julienne in the Opera, but we got it sorted eventually. A good run, solid and fun.

Also, notice the new link to Wine Library TV over on the right. Thought I'd enter the contest, as I've been watching Gary quite a bit and find him extremely entertaining. Maybe I'll even start blogging a bit about the wines I've been drinking, as well as WoW.

Zul'aman

I got to go to Zul'aman last night and it was quite something. It was really cool to see a new instance again. On the other hand, it was really hard. :) We did manage to get to the first boss, after a few wipes. Even the trash mobs are quite tricky and require quite a bit of skill. The last pull before the first boss is probably trickier than Attumen in Kara and certainly requires better gear and a stronger team.

We made 2 attempts on the first boss and failed. At that point, the boss reset and was going to require us to re-clear all the trash, so we called it a night. We did get the 20-slot bag quest reward for downing the first boss, though since once the boss reset we could just walk over and pick up the quest item from a table next to where he used to be standing (I'm sure it was not intended to work that way by Blizzard).

quick Kara

While I was doing other things (werewolf, gaming, poker), group 2 cleared Kara through Prince. Tonight, we picked up Illhoof (my first time doing that). I'm bummed I missed Prince, but hopefully we'll get him next week, although Thanksgiving is certainly going to throw a monkey wrench into things.

I also did my daily quests and ran a Sethhek halls with guildies.

I've been using the new auctioneer addon and although it has a ton of good information, it seems to do less to help you make money easily. I still need to play around with it some more and read some documentation, I think.

patch day

Spent most of my time updating addons, but also did my Ogri'la dailies and some other Blade's Edge quests. It's funny, but the Blade's Edge Ogres now all consider me to be the queen. Not sure why, maybe being Revered with Ogri'la?

One of my quests glitched tonight when I tried to turn it in. Basically, the quest-giver had the yellow ? over his head, but he didn't have the quest in the dialog box for me to turn-in. Opened a ticket, but didn't hear from a GM before bed time.

Lots of good changes with the patch. My dps is way way up, making questing a lot more fun and also devaluing almost all of my alternate set of gear. I sold most of it off, because my dps with my healing gear is now a lot better. I also really like some of the interface changes, especially being able to select mini-map highlights of all sorts. I can't believe it took them that long to implement.

blah

Well, went to Gruul's for two pulls tonight, both wipes. Now, in Kara, but got d/c'd and the auth servers are down so I can't get back in. :( Who knows if I'll be playing any more tonight.

Slabs for rep

Went with a little guild PUG last night into the Shadow Labyrinth in Auchindoun. I've been with some PUGs which can't even get to the first boss in SLabs. Our group breezed our way through the whole instance, only wiping once on the 2nd boss because one of the hunters ran out of ammo. Doh! The group consisted of me, a warrior tank, 2 hunters and a mage.

I still need 2-3 runs through Slabs to get revered with the Lower City and have my heroic key. I'd like to have that done with in a week or so.

Kara regression

The past two nights, group 2 has been reformed and we've gone into Kara. We actually managed to get Attumen down last night. Moroes has proven to be a lot harder. The group has probably 3-4 people who are new to Kara and probably new to raiding as well. So, it's been a learning experience for them, and a high repair bill for everyone. We failed to get Moroes down again tonight, made one attempt at the Maiden and failed that, as well. The only good thing that's come of it is that I hit exalted with the Violet Eye and got my ring.

There is no Kara scheduled for the rest of the week, which is pretty frustrating for me. I feel like I've really taken a large step back in the past couple of weeks. I don't think that joining Moonfirespam's new guild would help any, as they can't even get enough people together to raid, as far as I can tell.

Twotoedjoe was back tonight, but he specced ranged dps. This is bumming me out a bit, as we could really use a strong off-tank in Kara. But, he needs to do what he enjoys doing. No one can tell him he should do one thing or another.

My only hope at this point is that some of the newbies get really motivated to gear up and kick ass as raiders. Then group 2 will have a chance at progressing, rather than regressing as we seem to be doing now.

Personal Drama

The only thing notable to chat about from last night's WoWing was a little spat I got in with some dude I was in a Headless Horseman group with. He started out being very cool (much cooler than the rest of the tools in the group), but when we wiped, he started bitching about how the healer (me) had messed up and not healed people when he should have.

Now, I'm always willing to admit when I've made a mistake. In this case, however, I got aggroed by some random wandering ghosts in the middle of the fight. One thing you have to know about priests...when they start getting wacked by multiple mobs, it gets pretty much impossible to heal, since each hit has a high chance of interrupting any casting. In order to remedy this, I generally Fade to take the aggro off me. It didn't work (since no one else had any aggro on these particular mobs). So, the next line of defense is to cast a shield on myself (please note that while this is happening, I'm not healing anyone and I'm using up mana). This will work for a while, and it did. However, my mana was drained enough that when the whole group started taking damage, I no longer had the mana for spot heals. A quick shadowfiend starts to remedy this, but it takes some time to kick in. While I was gaining enough mana to start spot-healing, the whiner died and the rest of the group unfortunately followed quickly thereafter.

At any rate, it was one of those things that happen that can't necessarily be prepared for and wipes do happen (the HH is not a trivial fight unless your group has uber DPS). But, pointing the finger at me as the cause of the wipe is not productive and frankly it pissed me off, so I chewed him out for it. One thing led to another, I dropped group and eventually ended on his ignore list after I told him to f*** off and die. :)

Now, I know I shouldn't have let him get to me (other guildies have said he's a known Ninja, so he's just really an ass in general), but when someone's knee-jerk reaction on a wipe is to blame the healer, it just really gets under my skin and I have a hard time not defending myself.

The only other things I did last night were to do my daily quests and to chat with Decayed about the guild meeting and the people who left. Sounds like group 2 might get started up again next week.