Horde vs. Alliance

I didn't start out with a favored faction. Everyone I knew played Alliance, and I joined in. I actually liked the Horde a little better when I started, especially the Tauren. There was something about their laid-back, nature-loving, granola-crunching society that appealed to me.

The thing I didn't like about playing a Tauren was how long it took to get from here to there and back again. I spent more time running my first shaman from place to place than I did actually questing! That, combined with having my character take up a good third of my screen (I didn't start out with a widescreen monitor), and with BC making shamans available to the Alliance, I didn't spend much time playing Horde.

I still had this feeling of defensiveness when others I knew would bring up the Horde vs. Alliance debate, though. I'd really enjoyed the other faction, and felt bad abandoning them. I felt awkward in those sorts of debates also, because they invariably devolved into name-calling and sweeping generalizations. Alliance players are a bunch of selfish children with hero complexes. Horde players are a bunch of power-tripping, emogoth jerks. Blah blah blah. On and on.

Those things annoyed me, but there are a few things that amuse me, when people make assumptions about those who play the other faction. As Alliance, I have heard over and over how Horde is so awesome at PvP. How it's not fair that they've got people who actually use strategy. How they protect their healers. How they do everything right, but my fellow Alliance are a bunch of drooling idiots and that's why we never win whatever battleground said person is whining about this time.

What's so hilarious about that? My sis-in-law has been doing Wintergrasp the last few days, and a few things she said sounded eerily familiar. Alliance know what they're doing in PvP. Horde players can't get it together, and are a bunch of drooling idiots who can't...

I was laughing too hard to hear what else she said.

No matter which faction you're playing, the players behind the characters you see are just people. Sure, a few personality types seem to gravitate toward certain races, but it's silly to just assume. I know I'm not your typical annoying gnome, but when I'm playing Weeinsanity I'm sure Horde players don't know that. Not every dwarf is a rude, obnoxious, node-stealing asshole, for example. Not every blood elf is a vapid, self-centered, node-stealing bitch, either.

But we all know that all undead are emogoth teens who equate penis size to dps meters. Some stereotypes are just true like that.

For me, a state of healer burnout exists...

Right now, with the flavor of the month class being capable of tanking, healers are even more rare and precious than ever. I get that. I really do.

I get it right between the eyes.

Until WotLK came out, the four classes I'd leveled the highest were the four healing-capable classes. Shaman, priest, druid, and paladin, in that order. When I leveled my shaman, she was resto for most of it. I loved it. There's nothing like being the hero that saves the group and keeps the tank alive and does the cleansing and everything else a good healer does. It's really rewarding, especially in a group that appreciates their healers.

It's a lot of responsibility, however. A good healer is golden. A bad healer is mocked soundly, and rightfully so. A bad healer is a huge liability in a group.

Also? I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. When things go wrong, I don't go around blaming others. I ask what I did wrong first. What could I have done better? What was wrong with me? Why was I throwing HoTs on that person when I should have been throwing a big heal on that other person? Why did I cast swiftmend when the tank was only down by a little bit? Why didn't I cast it when it could have saved the tank? Why do I always forget Nature's Swiftness???

Top that off with the frustration of not knowing a huge part of most fights, because I'm too busy looking at health bars and whatever crap/fire/disease/void zone might spawn underneath me and kill me in one fel swoop, and eventually it leads to the need for a long vacation. There were some nights I'd log out after a raid in tears from the frustration.

Much as I love the glory of healing, at heart I'm a DPSer. I get off on big crits. I giggle when accidentally pull aggro from the tank. I swoon when I top the dps meters. I ♥ big numbers! I'm a girl with an epeen and the desire to show it's just as big as any guy's!

So, I've been in heaven this week. I've finally been able to take my little DK to places and get gear for a change, instead of just badges. I've watched her claw her way up the dps meters, so that she's in the top ten and not hovering somewhere right above (or even below!) the tanks. Sure, pally tanks are kick-ass in Naxx, but last Sunday I knew I wasn't helping the raid much when I was hovering right there with my favorite pally tank. He's geared as all hell, but he's a tank and I'm supposed to be dps. This week? Not a problem. I was somewhere in 6th or 7th place. (My Recount put me at 7th, but others put me at as high as 5th on some fights. Woot!)

Mini rant: Dear fellow DKs. Do not cast Army of the Dead whenever the heck you feel like it. I don't care if it's a PuG. Gluth is not one of those fights you want to pull those guys out on, thanks. Please know the fights.

It feels good to be able to prove that I'm not one of the new wave of useless idiot DKs. I'm good at what I do. I don't stand in shit, and I learn from my mistakes. I love being able to see the fight, and not just the health bars. I love my big numbers. I love my little evil gnome.

I know me. At some point I'll get frustrated with being just another dps. I'll start asking if I can take my druid to raids again, especially with Ulduar on the horizon and the chance to get a legendary item. Mmmm...legendary heals. I'm drooling already.

But, for now, I'm still enjoying the big numbers, and I'd rather stare at boss ass than health bars.

Quick note

The blogging will continue next Monday. The kiddo is on spring break, so I've been sleeping in and hanging out with him instead of blogging.

I just had to share this, though. I have my first chocobo! Er, hawkstrider. My first Horde character to hit 30, I mean. And it still feels like cheating to have mounts at 30 to me. (Oh! This is the first character I've leveled to 30 since the level requirement changed, too.)

And I still haven't gotten killed by walking into the wrong town or clicking on the wrong flight master.

Yay!

(I feel all sneaky, walking around in Horde towns. Like a spy. I can finally see the inside of those walls! Woot!)

Mootank

This is somewhat later than I would like it to be. My son keeps bringing home colds and fevers and other nastyness from school with him. Why can't he bring something cute home, like a kitten, or puppies. Even a tauren would be better than this crud! hehe

Speaking of taurens...

There's been a lot of talk in the house about playing Horde the last few days. Raven started out Alliance, he got me to start playing and I made Alliance characters so I could play with him, and it went so on and so forth from there until my brother's wife started playing.

Well, she's got a friend who played on the same server as us, only with her husband who started out Horde. He got her to play Horde, and it went so on and so forth from there, until...

My sis-in-law has five of each faction on Moonrunner, but her main is a blood elf paladin. That's her first 80, that's her favorite, that's her baby, and that's the character with all of her gold.

She keeps hearing all of my "funny" raiding rants, and she wants to raid some day, but she's a bit wary of raiding with "that guy". You know the one. The guy who thinks girls can't play, all healers are girls, and if girls play they must be healers. The guy who yells at everyone. The guy who starts drama over repair costs. The guy who MUST WIN AT ALL COSTS, even though this really isn't the sort of game you "win" to most people. It's not a game to "win" for her. It's a social experience, and something fun to do when being a housewife gets boring. She wants to raid to have fun with her friends. Not for loot, not for "points", not for being better than others. And she doesn't want to deal with some misogynistic prick who wouldn't know "fun" if it bit him on the pecker.

She knows two people on the server with actual raid experience. Me, and another girl who doesn't play on Moonrunner very much. (The other girl has more raid experience than me, with a much more progressed and driven guild. I envy her the chances she has, but I wouldn't give up the friends I've made here for some pixels on a screen, sorry. I'm sticking with my friends who JUST got their first Maly kill.) And somehow one thing got carried into another, and I have a baby mootank in the making.

I've named the baby mootank after the god of death in the novel I'm currently writing. I was going to name him after the god of war, being a warrior and all, but I looked up my notes and realized I don't HAVE a god of war yet! /facepalm

How do you have a fictional pantheon without a god of war?

Don't worry. I'll be fixing this. Soon.

So, if he ever gets past Ragefire Chasm, I'll unveil him here. I'll brag about him. I'll post screenies.

Me. Tanking.

You'd think by now I'd learn.

Bad Llama...

I totally skipped yesterday. I sat my butt down and played the game all day, instead of getting anything else done.

I also spent a considerable amount of time complaining about, well, just about everything with one of my friends/guildies.

Actually, yesterday seemed to contain the recurring theme of the RNG. Random Number Generator.

In all my time playing, I have seen a special mount drop ONCE. It was one Brewfest ram. When Raven was doing those runs over and over, though not as often as I was, the ram dropped enough that they had to let one go. Everyone in the party had one. Everyone. And he told me that it dropped ALL THE TIME. I saw one, and it went to someone else.

No kodo. No Baron mount. No ZG mount (though I haven't been in there that often.) No Attumen mount (I went in there all the time, though.) No Headless Horseman mount. No albino chocobo at the end of Magister's Terrace. Heck, I didn't even see the pet drop there.

One Brewfest ram, that I didn't win.

That lack of luck aside, my druid has a hard time winning just about anything. If I'm rolling against someone else on something, I might as well grats them before they roll. My gear upgrades come from the fact that I'm the only druid in our raid group. My gnome-shaped Abnet friend has the same sort of luck, on both his warlock and his rogue, Fred.

I've got a theory. I'm only allowed to bring Ceraan to raids because of her rotten luck. If I brought a character with GOOD luck, nobody would want to bring me along anymore. Don't laugh. I could very well be right.

Sarth

If you're running a PuG OS, here's a few words of advice.

Make sure the people you've put symbols over as who to run to for walls KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING, and don't use a yellow star. Some people are color blind, and a yellow star against a yellow flame wall? Kinda dumb.

Just a thought.

No, I don't trust anyone else personally. I bring Wee to OS PuGs on occasion, but I won't bring my druid. Healers kinda have to trust those around them to a certain degree, because you get in that healing zone where health bars are your priority. As melee DPS, I can keep my own eyes on the walls and run to where I know it's safe, rather than try to trust someone with a symbol over their head as being smart enough to run to the safe spot.

(Rant inspired by a near-wipe Raven had the dubious honor of participating in. He's still not used to the fight, so he got killed by trying to follow the star...and he's colorblind.)

Doom doom doom doom doom doom doom

I have a baby warlock that's been my favorite for the last few weeks. Haunt is made of awesomesauce, IMO. It's starting to make me wonder if throwing HoTs up on the warlocks when they lifetap is really doing them a huge favor, because I feel bad using my haunt, siphon life, or drain soul when I've got full health. But haunt has such an awesome graphic, and it's a good source of dps! I use all these with life tap so I rarely have to stop to eat and drink, or bandage. (Honestly, I bandage more often than I eat or drink these days.) So, I'm robbing my 'locks of the opportunity to feel all warm and fuzzy about using the suffering of their enemies to replenish their own health, and therefore their mana pool.

Poor warlocks can't get a break.

Like I said. My warlock is 62, so I've still got a lot to learn. Still, she's already been spoiled to death, and has had four epics in her leveling adventures. Where the druid I raid on is always the last to get anything in the group, because she can't win a roll to save her life, my warlock has somehow jinxed the RNG in her favor. I have a sneaking suspicion that she's not above cheating (and I'd like to know how she does it, because some of my other characters could use some love.)

I hit 61 right before casting the summoning circle on the dreadsteed quest. I've got my Doomguard now. I'm pretty well set!

Except for the part about still being 62.

Leveling ANOTHER character through Outlands and Northrend.

Top it off with knowing some pretty awesome players with warlock mains, and leveling her is a pretty intimidating idea!

In the mean time, it's fun saying "doom". Doom doom doom doom doom.

Doom.

Seriously! What's not to love about being a warlock and going around saying "doom" all the time?

Doom. Doom d'doom. Doom doom.

Doooooooooooom!

Yeah. I'm done.

(For now.)

Those Nifty Extras

Instead of playing with my UI yesterday, I sat around working on my novel. How boring of me!

So, instead of talking about my UI and rambling about that for a bit, I'm going to ramble about those nifty extras you go back to old dungeons for. I mentioned my Orb of Deception yesterday. A lot of people have mentioned that they run to the Dire Maul arena to kill rare mobs for those to drop. It's perilous though, since some people are in the habit of letting someone else do all the work and then killing the player when the rare spawn reaches around 20%. I'm glad I never ran into that frustration in search of an in-game toy!

In Naxx a couple weeks ago, a paladin friend of mine pulled out an Eye of Arachnida. These seem to be getting more popular now that so many people are hunting for the Baron's Mount in Stratholme. I've soloed the place more than once on my death knight. If that death knight Rivendare can have the cool mount, why can't Wee?

Of course, I've heard stories of people running through Magisters' Terrace, usually with their SO, to pick up a Phoenix Hatchling. I would love to try for that myself, and perhaps see what it would take to get a crack at the Chocobo. I mean, hawkstrider.

I've got a wish list about a mile long. I know my druid wants the raven mount, but that might have to wait a while. There are so many things to do, and so little time to accomplish them all!

Random fun

A couple of weeks ago, I got an Orb of Deception on my druid, and I sent it to my shaman.

Shavra has had the Ambassador title since the achievement system was put into place, and as soon as the mount restrictions were lifted I put it to good use. She became one of the first draenei to own a shiny (noisy) mechanostrider.

And all that makes this screen shot possible. Blood elf on a mechanostrider! Isn't it awesome? Later, I'm going to get few belf on an elekk screen shots, too. ^_^

What time is it?

It's time to play with my UI again!

(SS taken yesterday, while I was out looking for thorium. I'm NEVER going to get enough thorium to level Wee's blacksmithing! I just don't have the patience. Ugh.)

Anyway, it was a pretty layout while it lasted, but I'm pretty tired of it. I like some of the functionality of AutoBar, but for the most part it's just not meshing with me. After all these months I'm still looking in my bags for quest items instead of on my bar, because sometimes they're just not there. And, PitBull with Grid was fine for a while, but it's just not working the way I wanted.

I'm keeping SexyMap. Come hell or high water, that mod stays! It really is sexy. Yum.

My brother has been trying out HealBot on his undead priest, and I think it's time to give that a spin. I've been banging my head against Clique/Grid, and there are a few things that irritate me. For example, Clique doesn't like being active with pet classes. I left it on with it only programmed on my druid for raid heals, and it made my glyphs completely unaccessable on my warlock. For another thing, I can't get it to remember that if I click on Grid buttons I want heals, but if I click on PitBull buttons I want to be able to do defaultish stuff. Like target. Or leave a raid. I had to unbind my right click, and I've been targeting by /tar ____ for the last few weeks. Otherwise, somebody's getting an untimely lifebloom.

The button layout isn't working for me, either. Bartender is great, but I think I messed up the layout myself. I was trying to keep buttons to a minimum, with a minimum of room taken up, but it looks ugly to me now. (I also need to learn how to play my paladin all over again. Things die, sure, and I don't...but I don't know if I'm doing it right. lol)

All that aside...oooh, pretty portal in there! I know it's been there for ages, but it makes me wonder what it's going to be. What's lurking behind all those elite demons in Winterspring? Will we ever know? I'd better get my warlock on the doomguard quest before they remember they've got an instance portal out there that needs to be opened!

The Totem Thrower

Even today, my guildies still call me Shavra. She was my first 70, and for the longest time I identified with shamans the most. Forums, lists, info, the first section I'd read on patch notes...it was all about the shaman.

It was all about THIS shaman.

She's still sitting at 72 right now, and leveling her is somewhat more of a chore than a pleasure. It's an obligation.

Actually, really, it's more of an afterthought.

Before BC came out, I'd been playing for a few weeks and I thought for sure I'd never play an draenei. I'd seen the males, and I couldn't imagine that the females would be any more attractive. I was hung up on the blood elves, and I loved playing Horde even though everyone else I knew was Alliance. With the blood elves, maybe I could get a few people to follow me in switching sides? Well, that was my hope. I had my tauren shaman that I loved to death. Seriously, he was the first character that I enjoyed playing. The peaceful philosophy of the tauren, the "in touch with nature" nature of the shaman. Everything was perfect for me. This was my class! It was like it was made just for me!

Well, since everyone I knew did play Alliance, I had to at least try one of these monstrosities. We got the disks delivered about mid-day the day BC came out, and Raven was still at work. We'd already talked about starting blood elves together, so I installed the game and poked around at the draenei.

I had giggle fits. There was this tall, curvy, mature-looking race, and I could get pigtails! I loved it! I played around with the options a bit more, seeing everything available, but the pigtails were a must-have. In fact, my new shaman was a lot prettier than I thought she would be.

I played around with the starting zone, bolstered by the fact that most people out there didn't know any more about what they were doing than I did. I was in my element, discovering new things rather than following others and hoping I didn't come across as too much of a noob. (And oh, was I a noob back then. I couldn't even figure out how to speak in the general chat channel! It was day two of leveling my shaman when I finally played around enough to figure out how to do that. And yes, that's after a few weeks of playing before BC came out.)

The best part for me, about playing my newborn shaman, is nobody could come up behind me and tell me I was doing it wrong. It was a great boost to my ego! So many Alliance players were so unfamiliar with shamans that everything I did was amazing. Within a week my draenei had far outstripped my tauren in levels, even with fighting the rest of the BC opening day crowds. If you were there, you know what I mean. If you weren't, I can't begin to describe just how bad it was that first day. The fighting over mobs was insane, at least on Moonrunner. The starting zone kill quests took at least half an hour, each, while waiting for mobs to respawn and hoping you could tag it first.

Or, maybe I just wasn't enough of an asshole back then. I'd sit back, philosophically, and wait for others. I was in no hurry.

Yeah. That didn't last long.

I started out enhancement, because that's what all the guides said to do for leveling. I got to my mid-20s and was getting a run through BFD, and a nice staff with loads of spirit dropped. It was only me, so I wasn't rolling against anyone. My first character had been a priest, so when I saw spirit I thought, "Oh, healer weapon!" and I respecced resto that night. /facepalm In retrospect I'm only glad I wasn't rolling against anyone and depriving a poor priest or druid of a good weapon.

I learned. I kept reading. I had a group I leveled with/instanced with in the evenings, and I healed them. It was pretty fun, and I didn't know just how slow I was. I thought resto was awesome because I could put my earth shield on myself, hit mobs all day, and end up with full health and mana by the end of the fight!

At 63 I went elemental.

Lightning Overload stroked my libido every time it procced. I was killing things so much FASTER now! I had no idea being a shaman could be like this! I suddenly felt powerful, and happy, and strong!

It was my spec of choice after that. Oh, I went resto a few months when I was learning to raid, because I wanted to be more helpful to the guild that took me in and showed me the ropes. But, there's something about playing an elemental shaman... *_*

When I started playing on beta, I still loved my ele shaman and flinging lightning bolts and knowing what totems to put down and when and and and...

And then...

...at some point, my level 72 epicced out shaman on beta was doing less damage than my freshly dinged 70 druid.

They'd introduced lava burst, and nerfed lightning bolt severely.

I went from thrilling at how amazing it felt to decimate my enemies with the all-powerful force of sky-fire, channeled through my body, laying waste to all who stood before me...to what elemental shamans are today.

I never reached lava burst.

I don't know if it was actually worth it.

I will some day. I swear.

Maybe after I level my warlock. She's actually fun.

But, right now, Shavra is still 72. And I don't know when I'll bother getting her higher.