on mage leveling

Before I get to the topic at hand, allow me to squee just a little bit - a couple of weeks ago, I took my priest to Naxx10 again (run by my friends) and, well, let's just say I got geared up the heezy:

• [Agonal Sash]
• [Heroes' Leggings of Faith]
• And finally, the item I had been drooling over for a while: [Heroes' Shoulderpads of Faith]

Oh man, gentle reader (yes, the one of you that is out there!) you have no idea how long I have wanted my glowy angel wings. And now I have them! (Although I did not realize that the particle effect would look kind of funny from behind, but oh well.)

/end squee

And now: after months of procrastinating (actually, I prefer to think of it as a "vacation" of sorts), I have finally decided to level my first character, Adenine. But not as frost.

...Wait, what?

YES, that's right, she is fire now. She has never been a fire mage. I knew nothing about fire mages. Turns out, it's not as scary as I anticipated.

But before I could set foot in Northrend, I had to do something of the utmost importance:


New haircut FTW! Now moving on...

I read Ekye's mage guide on the Ensidia website (link is over there to the right somewhere). Excellent guide. I decided to go with his 0/51/20 build, for the fact that I will eventually be wanting to use the ever-so-sexy [Frostfire Bolt] as my main nuke (also includes the glyphs he recommended for MAXIMUM DEEPS).

Now, a few observations: one, I forgot how much effin fun it was nuking the shit out of things. (I guess leveling as a holy priest does that to you.)

Two: FIRE - HOLY CRAP WHY DID I NEVER TRY THIS BEFORE?! Seriously. Wow. I love frost, always have, always will...but damn have I been missing out.

Three: I did not anticipate how squishy I would be. Or how quickly I would run out of mana. Hurm. Must remember to investigate further.

Four: Jame's Horde Leveling Guide - okay, not really an observation, but I'm pretty sure that if I tried to level without it I would take much too long (most of the time spent leveling Illythia went something like: *runs around for twenty minutes* "Hurrrrr where's the next quest hub guise?"). As of tonight, Adenine is 72 (I started leveling her about two days ago). My goal right now is to get to 80 as quickly as possible, and this efficient little guide is working quite well for that.

Next post: Old school raiding, and Children's Week!

naxxramas = death

I went to Naxx10 for the first time last week.

First time as in, ever. I hadn't even been to Naxx back when it was still a 40-man. So I was pretty nervous, but it was nice that I actually knew people in it. The run was organized by a RL friend and main-tanked by my boyfriend on his warrior; another of our RL friends came along on his tree druid for leet heals.

When I first came in, we were going to kill Heigan the Unclean, which apparently requires you to know the safety dance. I did not know the safety dance, so even though I did my best to follow my friend the tree druid around the room, this happened:


Ouch. Well, on to the next boss, then!

Next was Patchwerk. From him, I scored the [Drape of Surgery].

Grobbulus was kinda fun. He dropped [Handgrips of Turmoil].

Gluth was uneventful.

But then there was Thaddius...

Fight seems simple enough, right? Depending on the charge of the debuff you get, you run to the left or right side of the platform. Except, well...lag strikes again:

Illythia receives loot: [Ouch]x2.

Wait, there was something else:

Illythia receives loot: [Cowl of Sheet Lightning].

Yay! On to Sapphiron!

The way he spawns is just too cool.


The way he pwned my face, however, was not:


Apparently I did not stand behind that iceblock correctly.

Kel'Thuzad took some time, but we eventually got him to die. Let me just say this - the first phase of that fight is probably the most annoying thing ever. I mean, what is he thinking? "Hey, maybe if I make some random skeletons and abominations attack these adventurers ONE AT A TIME they will grow weary and leave me alone!" You have a whole room of those guys, KT. Not that I don't appreciate you making it easier for us, but if you really wanted us dead, why don't you just, you know...send them all in at the same time?

So, a few things I need to work on from My First Time in Naxx10:

1. Mana conservation
2. Not dying
3. Avoiding tunnel-vision

But I still had fun and I hope I get another chance to go. It's definitely much more fun when you're running it with at least a few of your friends.

After the run was over, I wasted no time in getting my shiny new gear gemmed and enchanted with these pretties:

• [Sparkling Sky Sapphire] in the gloves
• [Luminous Monarch Topaz] in the helm
• [Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] for the meta socket
• [Arcanum of Blissful Mending]

I'm being a bit lazy about finding someone to do the +28 spell power to gloves, but I'll get to it.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, mining is no longer a pain to level when you have an epic mount. Hence, I have actually caught up on this profession, and can actually mine nodes that are at my level. GASP!

old school screenshot of the week: february 23

[Onyxia's Lair, Dustwallow Marsh]

speccing shadow, or how i tried to learn face-melting

For a couple of months, I specced shadow on my priest. Now, the last time I was shadow was back in Burning Crusade-era, around level 61. I played around with holy and discipline specs since then, but I never put anything into shadow, nor did I even think about it ("Me, spec shadow? That's crazy talk!") That is, until my boyfriend hit 80 on his druid, Grimcow, and wanted to give resto a try.

He is lucky he is cute.

First, I went with a 14/0/57 build. Since I hadn't been shadow for, oh, about 19 levels (I'm not even going to try and convert that into real-world time), I suppose you could say I was pretty rusty at it. And by "pretty rusty" I mean I "completely forgot how to play shadow". This was reflected in my DPS. which was, in a word, embarrassing...

But after doing "extensive research" (read: perusing Elitist Jerks forums while at work) I was able to find out how to improve my shoddy DPS: keep your debuffs up, use spells once their cooldown is up. Simple enough, right? Well, let's just say I still need to work on it.

This was the rotation that I tried to follow:

• Opening: Vampiric Touch --> Devouring Plague --> Mind Blast --> Shadow Word: Death --> Shadow Word: Pain --> Vampiric Embrace --> Mind Flay.
• From here, refresh your debuffs in this order:

1. Vampiric Touch
2. Devouring Plague
3. Mind Blast
4. Vampiric Embrace
5. Mind Flay

• And cast Shadow Word: Death ONLY when you have to move or when you're waiting for Mind Blast to come off its cooldown and still don't need to refresh debuffs.

LET ME TELL YOU, INTERNETS, juggling DOTs is harder than staring at health bars for an hour straight. And although I haven't yet fully grasped the intricacies of melting faces, I can at least say I had fun and I would try shadow out again. It's definitely something I'd like to get better at, at least.

Before Illythia went back to the priest trainer to spec discipline, she and Grimcow decided to pay a visit to an old friend...Onyxia.

I finally got to see what it was like tanking a big angry dragon.

And twenty minutes later, we kicked her to the curb and made off with some Tier 2 helms. But why doesn't the priest stuff ever drop?

When she was done sulking, Illythia picked up Onyxia's ginormous head, somehow stuffed it into her backpack (don't ask her how), and returned to Orgrimmar.

And then, for the first time ever on any of my characters:

Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer, baby!


Next post: PVP DISCIPLINE. HELL. YES.

in-game flirting vs. guild princess-ing it up

ROUND ONE: FIGHT!

This may get a little rant-y, FYI.

We've all had our own run-ins with in-game flirting, I'm sure. Sometimes you meet someone in-game, and they either assume that you're a girl IRL for various reasons, and they start acting pretty friendly towards you - offer to help you out with things in-game, send you gold or loot, run your alts through instances, etc. For the most part, in-game flirting can be quite innocuous, as long as both people leave it at that and don't expect anything more from it. Although it's not something I do in-game, I can understand why people would find it fun, and I don't think that it's wrong for them to enjoy a bit of attention or to hit on their in-game friends. But there's a thin line to walk here, and it can end badly pretty quickly. (Personally, I'd hate it if someone thought I needed extra help in-game because I have girl-bits, but that's just me.)

First, in-game flirting can progress into skeevy territory fast. My own experience with this kind of thing is tame, I suppose; the worst thing that happened to me was when this guy I had been questing with when I was still leveling my mage in the 20-29 range, out of nowhere, asked me if I was 18 yet. Of course, I stopped talking to him after that. For the record, I was 18, but good God, what a creepy question to ask someone. Also for the record, I hadn't been flirting with him at all, which made that question particularly perplexing - was he being nice to me because he expected that I would give "something" back to him, so he decided to play it safe and make sure I was legal first? Who knows. All I know is that me being a girl IRL does not make it cool for guys in-game to assume that I will want to flirt with them (or anything else, seriously).

(ETA: There was another incident that I totally forgot about until now, and it was after this that I really stopped correcting people who referred to me as "he": this hunter figured out that I was a girl and actually said, within an hour of meeting me, that he wished he could fly out to where I lived to see me. Ummmmmmmmmm. I was not flirting with him, either.)

After this incident I didn't correct people who referred to me as "he" or "bro" (lol) anymore (unless I'm interacting with a guildie, because I will probably interact with them more often anyway), mostly because I've found it's easier when people assume you're a guy. Yeah, I know. It sucks that I have to pretend I'm a guy in order to get people to leave me alone, and I shouldn't have to do this to get respect. But it definitely is easier to deal that way.

As for people from my guild knowing that I'm a girl: my guildies have always been very respectful and kind. They didn't send me loot or gold (which I'm thankful for), and while they were much less crude when they talked to me than when they talked with each other (didn't want to offend my delicate sensibilities, I guess), they treated me very much like I was just a normal member of the guild - which is what I wanted. And the vast majority of girls that I know in-game are like this (off topic: I totally just typed "mast vajority" first. What the hell.) .

And then there are guild princesses - people who take in-game flirting and go way over the line with it. We all know who they are, they don't need much description. I've been in my fair share of guilds and fortunately, I've run into very few guild princesses, but still the brief contact was enough to drive me into a fury. There was one girl who was in an old guild of mine who posted a bunch of pictures of herself in the "Post your picture!" thread on our forums - of course there's nothing wrong with this, but she also included a picture of her ass in very skimpy panties. There was also another girl (same guild) who posted a picture of herself, topless, but with her arm covering her boobs.

Now. As I've said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with posting pictures of yourself. I don't have anything against girls who do this. Yes, it is fun to see what your guildies look like in real life. It's also nice to be able to attach a face to the character. But honestly, what is the point of posting your ass or your boobs? All I can think of is that it gets you loads of male attention (which it did), guaranteed raid spots (which they did), and loot (also did). I have been in a couple raids with one of these girls, and let me say right now that it was not her skill as a player that got her that raid spot in AQ20.

I know that some people justify this behavior by saying, "Who cares, it's just a game, I'll do what I want so I can get my shiny purples," but this (non)reasoning sucks, to say the least. It's important to not forget that there are real people behind the characters, and when you screw them over or mess with their heads (and this can go both ways, I'm not pinning all the blame on girls or all on boys) the consequences can be pretty devastating. I have been in a guild that pretty much fell apart not only because of a very influential princess, but because everyone else could not deal with her properly.

So why do some guilds tolerate this kind of behavior? Needless to say, it's totally unfair for other players who actually are skilled at the game to be skipped over for someone with little to no skill who happened to post a sexy picture. People play this game for fun, and it's obviously the opposite of fun when someone sashays in and gets the loot or raid spot that you worked your ass off for.

So: to the one of you who is reading this right now, what are your experiences with in-game flirting and guild princesses? How do your guilds deal with these kinds of things? How do you deal with them?

on my first time healing karazhan

A couple of weeks ago, I was waxing emo to my boyfriend about how I would never find a guild who actually still ran Karazhan, and how my priest would never be geared unless I PvPed for it, and how I didn't want to PvP on her yet until I saw some raiding...I was going on and on in this vein, until I got a random whisper from a rogue. He asked me if I was interested in running Karazhan, and also would I be interested in joining his guild?

After silently blessing him for his perfect timing, I gave him an emphatic yes and became a member of Unholy Fury. My first impression of the guild was overwhelmingly positive; when I joined it was all of two hours old, and had around thirteen members (all of whom were friendly and enthusiastic). The GM had planned for a guild Karazhan run the following Wednesday, which I almost immediately signed up for.

The day of Karazhan, I stocked up on the following consumables which are a must for any healer (with druid and paladin buffs, they bumped my healing up from+1200-ish to around +1300-ish):

• [Golden Fish Sticks]
• [Elixir of Draenic Wisdom]
• [Elixir of Healing Power]

As for the run itself, I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly it went. We cleared all the way up to the trash right before Shade of Aran before people had to leave with no boss wipes. The encounters were not difficult to heal through (especially not with a decently geared tree druid and holy paladin). I cannot stress how much Prayer of Mending rocks - I just threw it on the tank whenever the cooldown was up and watched it bounce around between melee. I also got to practice the fine art of Greater Heal cast-canceling, which makes for amazing mana regen (I think I only had to use a mana pot once the whole raid).

The only part I had trouble with was dying in the beginning of the Opera Event (after Psychic Scream wore off on Roar, he ran straight for me and promptly pwned my face), and dispelling Holy Fire during the Maiden fight (it seemed like I was the only one dispelling, and so I had to run around to try and get in range of everyone. Lost a couple of DPS that way. /sadface). The rest of the raid was also pretty understanding about my occasional disconnects (speaking of which, I have an insolent router to kick into submission).

By the end of the run, I walked away with two new shiny purples:

• [Bands of Indwelling]
  
• [Blue Diamond Witchwand]

Conclusion: Illythia's first foray into Karazhan was a success, and the new guild seems to be getting off to a great start!

Next update: Macros that help me be a more efficient priest!