Archive for July, 2009

I was fishing in Dalaran’s sewers tonight, when I saw spell approach from the side. It hit, and I was sheeped. So there I am, a poor sheep, looking for my attacker, and there’s this dude, Manabonk, looking at me. He then teleports away, leaving me confused as hell. Finally, I get a letter in the mail that one ‘Minigob Manabonk’ had Manabonked me, and for my ‘cooperation’, he gave me my own manabonker, The Mischief Maker.  Now, I couldn’t afford to let that opportunity slide, could I? I ran up to my nearest guildie and manabonked them. Fair play, I feel.

I had actually just arrived back in Dalaran from trying to help some guildies finish Azjol-Nerub. Anub’arak wiped us no less then three times before we gave up. Last time, we kicked his butt soundly. This time… I don’t know what the problem was. Our tank kept dying, so it could have been a bad night for the tank, or our weak link could have been our new healer, or maybe we just weren’t doing enough damage fast enough. My DPS was down some 3k points because I had to keep stopping to heal myself or let the tank re-focus the boss. Oh well. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

Tonight we – my guild – ran another heroic, this time Azjol-Nerub. I was tentative at first, since I wasn’t sure how my DPS would hold up against my guildies. Well, the answer was swift: at least among the group we brought, I was tops. lol Capping 2k DPS allowed me to lead the offense and earned me a “Damn, Gav,” from a guild mate. I also had to tank a few times as the baddies would turn on me. On top of all that (as if that wasn’t enough) I tossed a few heals around to keep us alive. We absolutely blitzed that dungeon, no question. I also got my first nice drop, Flamebeard’s Bracers. The comments on Wowhead say,

These are the highest crit rating bracers available to holy paladins and unless you really like your mp5, they are arguably second only to a drop from Grobulus in Heroic Naxx.

Every holy paladin should make a point of farming for these.

Score! I got ‘em in one run. My guild is great, and I’m still really happy to be in it. They had no qualms with passing out the loot as needed, plus we rolled greed on everything that no one in particular needed. This process netted me another Frozen Orb. lol Now, what to do with it…

I did my first pick-up-group today. The Heroic Daily Dungeon was Violet Hold, but I missed my guild’s run, so I had to PUG it. I ended up with a prot pally tank, a resto druid healer, an arcane mage, and a hunter with a cat pet. It took us two tries to drop our first boss (Ichoron), with everyone dying but myself and the hunter. I held on so long that our healer came back from the graveyard before I fell, but fall I did. We tried it again from the start and went on to sweep through it. Cyanigosa was more difficult then necessary, because I ran out of mana about 4/5ths through the fight. One runic mana potion wasn’t enough, as I ran OOM again, but we did it.  I topped the DPS meters this time, with over 1.7k. Yes! I’m getting better! No loot again, though.

I also now have 25 Emblems of Heroism, so I can pick from some neat loot at the heroic vendor. What will I pick? We’ll see.

I logged in tonight to find a group of my guildies half way through Heroic Nexus, and they were short a healer. Guess who got another trial by fire? lol

I slapped on my holy gear and flew on down. I entered the dungeon to find everyone way, way in the back, past some mobs. Great. One of them killed me before I could even meet up with the group. After I rezzed and met up with everyone, I faced my biggest challenge: massive lag. I had such latency issues that I’d click a spell and have to wait a few seconds before it’d cast. That could mean life or death for the whole party as a healer. We killed our first boss (their third overall; remember, I joined late), Ormorok the Tree-Shaper, with little fanfare. I got silenced a few times, but we lived. On to the final boss, Keristrasza!

This was a pain, because the boss kept using a damage over time frost spell that made it hard to keep everyone alive. Our first attempt failed when our tank died (damn lag), letting the boss loose. Try number two failed when I died from that DOT spell. Third time, as they say, was the charm. We learned to move to shake the frost spell, so that was less of an issue. Our tank got killed again, but the rest of us dropped the dragon. We rezzed the tank, doled out the loot and some ‘gratz,’ and headed back to civilization to regroup and repair. As usual, no loot for me, but I got some more intensive healing training. Some day I may be able to be a regular healer for the guild.

I still prefer being DPS, though.

Attention  WoW players on the Cairne-US server: If you’re seeing a recent influx of reindeer in Dalaran, I’m sorry. It was my fault. I take full responsibility for the reindeer boom.

Now you may be asking what this is all about and how it’s my fault. Let me explain; A guildie of mine and some of his friends have recently been doing mammoth parades around Dalaran for kicks during down time. I wanted to mess with them but I don’t have a mammoth, nor any other rare-ish mount. What I did have, though, was preserved holly. Allot of it. So, I got on my bear mount and used the holly, producing a reindeer. I ran around them saying that “Rudolph said for all mammoths to go home.” People laughed, so I added, “However, Rudolph also says he wants a Coke, so maybe he’s just cranky.” More laughs ensued. I followed them around, and at one point raced ahead of them, standing in their path. As they walked through me I yelled aloud about them trampling Rudolph. My guildie’s buddy said, “Gav, you and Rudolph go somewhere.” So I said that we were going to go deliver toys to all the good boys and girls. I went to the landing pad and turned my gryphon into a reindeer. I circled the dock for a while before swooping down on the parade, mid-town.

Now this was all just a fun lark one night. We thought nothing of it. I logged back in tonight, and Dalaran was loaded with reindeer. I saw no less then seven of them, when I’d never seen any there before my joyride. I doubt it was just a coincidence. I hadn’t seen a reindeer since last winter, and now they’re everywhere. Again, I apologize to players on my server. I guess all great minds just think alike.

And the dumb ones do, too.

I’d call tonight a successful evening. Let’s rattle off the achievements I got tonight, in order.

1. Northern Exposure
2. The Winds of the North
3. 5 Exalted Reputations
4. Ambassador of the Alliance
5. Champion of the Exodar
6. Exalted Champion of the Exodar

In all, this netted me two titles (Ambassador and “- of the Exodar”), some Mammoth-Riding Boots for killing Tukemuth for Northern Exposure, access to the Mekgineer’s Chopper engineering plans, and one “Damn, you’re on a roll” from a guildie.  All in all it was a good night’s work.

I was given a second chance this morning, and I kinda, sorta took advantage of it. The guildie who took me to Violet Hold to heal last time invited me back to do it again. Some people are gluttons for punishment, I guess. Anyway, I’d upped my spell power by almost 300 points and installed Healbot since then, so I was ready. We did ok, and again cleared it in one try, but again there was allot of dying. I died this time, too. Twice. No one died in the fight with Cyanigosa this time, though. She was toast in no time. All in all it was an experience, and experience is what I need right now, as much as gear. We also got A Void Dance, but that required my guildie who invited me all but soloing Zuramat after we all died.

Cyanigosa is dead again, but this time not without some drama. One of my guild’s leaders and I went with three others into Heroic Violet Hold tonight. It was me (a ret pally), my guildie (a death knight tank), another death knight, another ret paladin, and a n00b. I mean, a restoration shaman. She wasn’t the best healer though, to be honest. She had a gear score of almost 2k points less then the rest of us, and she wasn’t too experienced. So, it was not a huge surprise when we all died (it was sort of a surprise that we got to Cyanigosa before wiping, but that’s neither here nor there). When I went to ghost out, my game crashed. It took me awhile to get back in, and when I did another guildie had taken my place. I didn’t begrudge them one bit for replacing me. In fact, I was hoping that they weren’t sitting around waiting on me. However, once back (and after the group wiped again), I was re-instated to the group, much the the chagrin of the shaman. Why, I don’t know. I guess she just liked the my other guildie better (they were both girls). We promptly died again when the healer went ahead of us and got killed.

It was clear what our weak link was, but how to fix it? My guildie had a plan: we told the shaman we were breaking the run off, at which point she left. We promptly inserted a druid healer with a gear score 700 points higher then mine. Yes! The rest of the run was rather uneventful, aside from some joking about the shaman. We quickly cleared the dungeon and I got a total of 5 emblems of heroism out of it (two the first time, and three when we tried again). I now have enough to buy a libram at the EoH vendor, but I’m not enamored with the one available. It’s buff to my Seal of Command would be great, if I actually used that spell. As it is, I don’t, and probably won’t before patch 3.2 removes Seal of the Martyr.

What I find interesting is that we died over and over with this shaman, but I healed my group yesterday through in one try. People died, yes, but we didn’t ever wipe. I guess I’m not too sucky of a healer.

BTW, I did remember grab the dragon’s head this time. I also didn’t get any loot. Again. WoW has it out for me for mocking dungeons.

Another day, another accomplishment I never thought I’d see. I was brought along by some of my guild to help with the Amphitheater of Anguish in Zul’Drak. However, one of our party members misunderstood and thought we were doing the Ring of Blood in Nagrand, so they hearthed to Dalaran and took the portal to Shattrath. Once we corrected her, she was in a pinch since her hearthstone was now down. She had to go from Shatt to Ironforge, and then to Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands to take the boat there back to Northrend. She got there and we completed the quests all the way up through Champion of Anguish, netting me Of Blood and Anguish since I’d already done the Ring of Blood almost 20 levels ago. We were interrupted by some Horde during our attempts, so when they tried to do it, we screwed with them. As my guild leader said, payback’s a *****. On a related note, I was near the top of the DPS charts for most of the battles.

Earlier in the day, I was in Storm Peaks when I got a whisper asking for help to kill one Sirana Iceshriek. I joined in with a level 77 paladin, a level 78 mage and a level 80 warrior. The warrior and I did most of the work, but the mage helped some. While waiting for the group to assemble, the paladin challenged me to a duel. You know how you hear about ret pallys killing folks in the span of one Hammer of Justice? It was just like that. I stunned him, judged Seal of the Martyr, and fired off a Crusader Strike – the end. He said he wanted a rematch someday, so I told him I’d see him around.

Lastly, I bought some Hateful Gladiator’s Scaled Gauntlets with my Wintergrasp-earned honor and a Pendant of Azure Dreams with my Champion’s Seals. Nice, huh?

It turns out that Gav is an equal opportunity team killer. lol One of my guildies asked me to come along to Heroic Violet Hold as healer. I’ve termed myself a holy-****-adin, and that’s about what the dungeon amounted to. I got everyone killed at least once. Except myself, of course. I’m the only one who didn’t die. I almost caused a wipe because I thought that Hand of Protection was a backup shield and cast it on the tank during the fight with Cyanigosa. Oops. It wasn’t until afterwards that the guildie who took me said that HoP shook all threat off of a target, which caused two of our three DPS to die (including the guildie) when the tank lost aggro. Anyway, it was interesting, but I’m now certain that I need to start healing in normal dungeons before I try the heroic healing gig again. My big problem was lack of mana. I just couldn’t keep enough of the stuff, and went through 10 Runic Mana Potions in that instance alone.

The biggest sin of that whole ordeal was that Violet Hold was today’s Heroic daily, and I neglected to grab the dragon’s head for the quest before I left. Dammit!