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!

/flex

Last week, I logged into WoW for the first time in a while and found this sitting in my mailbox:


OMG, awesome, right? But wait, there's more:


WHAT OMG YAY!!!!11!!eleventy!!1

So one of my RL friends had just quit WoW and as a parting gift he sent my boyfriend and me 5000 gold each so we could get our epic flying mounts. I don't think I've ever sent so many OMG THANK YOUs over AIM in my life.

So, here's a big shout out to you, buddy! Thanks a bunch!

At that point, I had already been saving up some gold by questing, so I had enough left over after buying the training skill to get this bad boy:


Yes, that's an [Armored Blue Wind Rider]! And man, is it sexy.

Now that I was powered by a 280% speed increase, I felt like getting stuff done.

First! I went off to Explore Northrend (and all I got was this awesome [Tabard of the Explorer]).


Then, I thought, hell. Why not go all the way?!

And so my self-imposed quest to explore the whole world (of Warcraft, lulz, didn't see that one coming, did you?) began. It was, as expected, really slow. But it was also surprisingly quiet and uneventful. Alliance left me alone the entire time (and for that, I thank them).

Hours later, my long, arduous journey came to an end in the Blasted Lands.


Success!


Next: powerleveling professions. D:

old school screenshot of the week: february 23

[Onyxia's Lair, Dustwallow Marsh]

so illythia probably hates me now...

When I saw this thread in wow_ladies, and saw all the hilariously awesome bling that everyone came up with, I knew instantly the second I got home that I had to make one of my own. And, well...here it is:

[Made on blingee.com]

...They are totally BFF now.

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.

old school screenshot of the week: february 2

[World's End Tavern, Shattrath]

*I swear, next post will have actual content!

old school screenshot of the week: january 26

[Stranglethorn Vale, Eastern Kingdoms]