1.) Draenei shaman Tier 9 shoulders are ugly. My guildie said it best when he said my shammy looked like a pagoda. Thank goodness a lot of the doorways are extra wide!

2.) I should have cooked more during the Pilgrim’s Bounty world event. I need to find a recipe for my shadow priest, since the only food that will give him any points now is Slow Roasted Turkey.

3.) Leveling balance for my druid is probably pretty stupid, but dammit, I will play the way that I enjoy!

4.) Gonna try to do all the Winter Veil achievements that I missed last year. Which is basically all of them…

5.) Gearscore is the devil.

6.) Characters with names like Katyperry make me giggle.

7.) If your guild-sponsored raid is full of your dick guildies who are rude to the pugs they bring in and go out of their way to keep loot in the guild (really DK, you need that SP shield?), then don’t be surprised when people leave and say bad things about you. Totally looking at you, Phobia on Thrall server. A little goodwill goes a long way.

8.) Do people even run Eye of Eternity anymore?

9.) Why is UP now the normal daily? I refuse to do that on grounds that King Ymiron still has some kind of vendetta against me.

10.) Patch 3.3 possibly tomorrow? I am both excited and scared.

Maybe I can trick King Y by using my ele shaman instead of my priest.

Oh, no no…he saw right through that trick.

“Try to get to me with failheals!” he bellows.

I don’t like getting into a pug with only other DPS recruited so far. It is painful to try to find both a healer and a tank so you can go. Even more so when I am on my shammy.

It’s like I can feel the whispers, “resto set?”

I’m not going to lie. I sometimes sit in a group with warriors and DKs and wonder how they are not tanks. I just have an old-fashioned mindset perhaps.

But back to UP# 35. We pick up 2 druids. One bear, one tree.

Go into instance. Immediately go into combat.

Really?

2 druids and a mage and no buffs. Um, ok. Since we are doing this buffless how about I refuse to drop totems, too?

The tanking is a bit rough at first, but he finally finds his groove and starts holding aggro.

But for some reason he isn’t getting heals. And, um, neither is anybody else.

To be fair, I don’t have a resto druid so I don’t know how their healing style works. It could be all hots and instants and I just can’t see the result. But it kind of looked like he wasn’t doing anything.

As an ele shammy, I don’t mind throwing out some back-up heals if things get too crazy. My chain heal is slow but will do in a pinch.

The thing is, I shouldn’t need to do that for Svala Sorrowgrave. When I’ve run it on my priest, I’ve had to throw out minimal heals on the fight. Just enough to keep people topped off. I honestly spend a good portion of that fight throwing DOTS and Smite on her.

The fact that I came close to dying and had to heal myself to stay alive for that fight was a bit disconcerting.

Oh well. Onward we go. And then we wipe on the trash mob.

No heals? What happened?

We don’t find out because healer is out of there. I don’t know if he was kicked or if he left on his own, but we almost immediately picked up a pally so I kind of suspect the former.

The rest of the run is smooth.

Sidenote: does Skadi’s mount exist? I want to say yes; since I’ve seen people on it. But I’ve never seen the drop. I’m kind of suspecting that people are taking their bronze drakes from CoS and dyeing them some blue color to perpetuate the myth that the blue drake exists. Screw you, Skadi!

Oh, yay, look what today’s daily is…

But he basically capped out at Naxx 25 level gear and hasn’t really seen anything beyond that. I haven’t even really been running dailys with him so his Emblem of Triump count is pretty low.

To fix this (even though as soon as I accummulate enough emblems the new patch will hit), I’ve been trying to run a few dailys a week with him.

Today’s daily was Utgarde Pinnacle. While harder than UK, it’s one I like and can usually get through fairly quickly.

Get in a group pretty quickly and start flying out to Howling Fjord. While on the bird, there is some talk about the server instances not working. One of the party members who is already out there apparently tries to go into one and claims that he cannot get in. Group disbands before I even land.

I go to the UP stone and there are tons of people around. I try out the instance entrance and it loads right up. Not sure if it was a temporary glitch or what, but I go back into LFG and almost immediately get into another party.

Group stands with 4 for a while–no surprise, can’t find a tank. Finally a druid joins group.

“Thanks guys. This is my first time.”

First time what?

“Tanking.”

Hmmm.

The practical side of me says: “FLEE NOW WHILE YOU STILL CAN!”

The empathetic side of me says: “Give him a chance.”

Somehow empathetic side wins.

The first few pulls are rough. Aggro is everywhere.

DK dps dies and I cringe a little inside. Is it me? Or him?

Even though I am fairly certain it is him, I say nothing and instead increase the amount of heals I’m throwing out.

First boss goes down pretty smoothly and when she is dead I realize I am saved.

So I either have to abandon this daily and the potential 2 emblems or continue on and hope we can clear it.

We continue on and are in the middle of a group when a patrol wanders by and immediately joins the fray.

It is chaos. Aggro is everywhere and it is a mess.

Total wipe.

Druid tank says maybe we should look for a new tank.

DK speaks up and says he can tank. Oh really? So this whole time you could tank and were just making us go through all this?

Unfortunately the DK tank is no better. Another wipe.

Now we are really screwed. No way are we going to find a tank to come into an instance in progress and help us finish it out.

Warlock (who started group and is doing very low DPS–obviously trying to gear up an alt) agrees to come in on his pally to finish it out.

Oh what a difference. The warlock-turned-pally had over 10K more HP than his predecessors. He’s holding aggro. People aren’t dying. I’m not frantically throwing out whatever heal is off cooldown.

A tip of the hat to everyone who plays a tank well. It’s not something I think I could do and a good tank makes everyone’s job so much easier. Love your tanks, people!

Skadi goes down like nothing. The rest of the run is so smooth.

Until we get to those damn mobs that fear.

One fear bomb and off I go running into a wall. Luckily I can still heal with my back to everyone else and without having to see my targets.

Then I realize I am stuck.

Somehow my priest is pinned between a column and a wall. OFFS.

“Bring all the mobs to this room and I will heal you” I joke.

The fastest way to get me out is to summon me. Unfortunately we had to swap out the warlock, so it’s a long trek back to the summoning stone to get me free.

At least King Ymiron was an easy one-shot and I got my emblems.

WTB hassle-free run.

I had very few alts that couldn’t heal.

I have a few pallys and shaman, a couple of priests,  a druid. While not technically a healer, my warlocks and hunters have pets to distribute the damage.

But no rogue. No warrior. One mage.

I’ve tried these classes before. I just could never “get into” them or take them very far.

Somehow it occurred to me that I just don’t like classes that can’t heal themselves.

If I play my shammy or pally stupidly or pull too much, I have that heal there as a resort to save myself.

My mage does not have that option.

Leveling and soloing with him sucks.

 Why am I doing it then?

Boredom? A challenge? Something new?

Yes, I suppose, to all 3.

I made the mage a long time ago, around the time when I first started playing WoW. In fact, I believe he was the first Horde toon I ever made.

But then my friends on that server rolled Alliance and I followed along.

Poor little mage got left behind.

Since I play on that server a lot, I had quite a few toons created. I actually had used up all 10 character slots, so I knew unless the number of slots was increased, I would have to give up some characters if I wanted something new to play when Cataclysm came out.

Time to get ruthless. My 80′s were safe. My DK, while not at max level, had hundreds of gold pumped into his jewelcrafting training, so he got to live.

Goodbye lowbie druid. See you later hunter. Adios ma–

Hmmm. Mage.

Do I want to try this again?

What probably helped his case was– at that point–he was my only horde toon left on that server.

What the hell. I’ll give him a shot. I was thinking about making a Worgen mage on the expansion, might as well get some mage training while I wait.

Um, wow, this is hard. It’s a different playstyle than I’m used to.

I am so friggin’ squishy. Yikes.

And I’m such a pig. I have to eat and drink after every few fights. Hope all that conjured food I’m scarfing down is low in calories.

But, I actually can’t say that I hate it. There is something kind of satisfying in freezing an enemy and blasting it until it’s dead.

It won’t be an easy class to level. I’m still getting used to the playstyle.

I do have to give a special thanks to the women at Empowered Fire. Their mage leveling guide has helped me out so much. If I continue with this toon I have no doubt I will be scrounging through every corner of their site.

Now if only I could get used to rogues…

My poor priest has not gotten much love since the newest patch came out. Before, he was my go-to guy for seeing new content.

As I mentioned before, he was basically my ticket into pugging raids. Everyone needs a healer, so I focused on him and got him into many instances and raids.

As soon as I got comfortable, though, I kind of abandoned him for my DPS shaman. DPS meant I had to deal with recount meters and everyone comparing e-peens, but at least I took some of the pressure off myself in worrying about keeping everyone alive.

Most of my guild was gone for the holiday, so it was pretty quiet in-game. I decided to dust off my priest and take him for a spin.

The heroic daily was Utgarde Keep. Easy peasy, I could heal UK in my sleep.

I put myself in LFG and almost immediately get an invite. Even better, the group is already full, so I don’t have to sit around waiting for them to pick up a tank.

(If I ever muster up more courage, I might one day roll a tank. Those things are harder to find than healers sometimes.)

For some reason, as I’m on the bird from Dalaran to Howling Fjord, I start psyching myself out on whether or not I can still heal.

As a healer, the hardest raid I’ve healed is Naxx 25. He’s never healed Ulduar or Ony or TotC, all content that my shaman has DPS’ed.

But still – it’s UK! C’mon. Unless I’ve somehow grouped with the worst tank and face-pulling-DPS ever then this should be a cake walk. 

I start reviewing my spells on the flight.

Nothing looks right.

Shadow Word: Pain? Mind Flay? WTH is this stuff?

Fail.

Apparently the last time I played I was in my shadow build. That might make healing a bit more difficult.

I land and switch out builds real fast. I get to the instance as the last person is being summoned in.

We buff and the tank gets into position.

Then I get the thought?

“I think I forgot how to heal”.

Where is this thought coming from? This is ridiculous.

Besides, there is no more time. The tank has started pulling.

I start off as I always do and fling a Prayer of Mending at the tank.

And thankfully it all starts coming back to me.

Renew. Flash Heal. Circle of Healing.

The spells that I had blanked on were now being cast as the situation called. On each stupid little trash pull I felt my confidence rise.

Then we got to the room with all of the proto-drakes.

I have to backtrack a bit and mention that the pug I was in wasn’t a bad one. The tank was doing a good job on aggro, both in keeping it on himself and getting it back. The DK wasn’t trying to offtank or anything crazy. The feral druid was pulling the best DPS, the warlock the lowest but no problems either way.

So I was a bit surprised when we pulled virtually the entire room.

Normally when I’ve done this room we’ve only pulled one group at a time. Sometimes we’ll get a second group if someone is not watching their placement.

But, all of a sudden, I was in a sea of proto-drakes and Vrykul.

Aaaaargh! We are going to wipe.

Oh well, might as well take out as many as we can.

I was throwing all my instant heals out. Shields. Guardian Spirit, don’t fail me now.

Heal, heal, heal.

And then, somehow, we were standing on a pile of proto-drake corpses.

We had all made it out alive.

I would totally like to take credit, but I know that everyone helped to get us out. The lock might have had the lowest DPS, but I’m sure the Fel Healthstone he gave out at the beginning of the run helped as well.

Thankfully the rest of the run was much smoother.

But what do you know? I guess I did remember to heal after all.

Thank you

I’ve had some bad ideas before, but this one might take the cake. Alliance characters on a PVP server?

Hmm, this might not end well.

To add to my stupidity, I’m debating leveling the shaman as resto. I have other shaman on other servers but I have never played as resto. I think I’d like to learn, but learn it as I go along.

Yes, I realize this will most likely end up with me taking many a trip from the spirit healer back to my ganked corpse.

Luckily, both alts are still hovering around level 10, so they haven’t yet taken those first tentative steps into contested territory.

I’ve made toons before on servers where I didn’t know anybody and had to start from scratch. I think I have a few friends on the ally side somewhere, but we haven’t reached out to each other yet.

For now I kind of like the anonymity. There is something kind of fun in building your character with no input from someone else.

I’m even making my own money, not being dependant on someone’s starter money. Between the 2 of them I have about 50 gold — nothing too impressive for some, but my toons will be able to “live” off that money for a while.

We’ll see how much fun they are when I have to leave the safety of the green zones.

To be continued…

There were some slight differences in how quickly some of us acquired loot (3 clothies = lots of crossed fingers when rolling) but for the most part we have all been at the same level. Our gearscores on wow-heroes are very close together.

But for some reason one of our guildies is doing about half the DPS as some of the others. She is well geared and her build seems to be in order. She has all her gems and enchants. She says she is doing a rotation based upon research she has done online.

And yet her DPS and total damage done is often lower than our tank’s.

I blame a little toy called Recount. In its most simplistic definition, this add-on gives you a numerical score of how much damage is done and what your damge per second is while in combat. (It also keeps track of things like number of deaths, the amount of dispels done, who rezzed the most, etc.)

When some of our guildmates picked up Recount, we oohed and ahhed over the numbers.

“Haha, you had the most deaths.”

“Omg, the tank is doing the most DPS.”

At the time we we just starting heroics and our DPS was a little sad. We didn’t realize we were so bad. Hey, we rocked UK and Nexus with only a few deaths.

But then we got Recount, and with it came the realization that we were a little behind others. Sub-1k DPS. The research we did showed that that was not exactly something to be proud of.

For a lot of us it was the realization that we were performing below our potential.

Off we went, doing more research. Some of us picked up new enchants. Other swapped out some gems. A few parked ourselves in the Auction House and waited for great deals on weapon and armor upgrades.

It was slow, but we watched out DPS rise. Our healer was able to get through an instance with having to stop and drink every fight. Our tank took a loss in DPS but picked up a stronger sense of his threat abilities.

But one DPS didn’t rise. She did all the things we did, but there was no big improvement for her.

After each run, it became standard for us to post the Recount review and see where we were. DPS for some went into the high 2-ks,sometimes they touched 3k.

Except for one that got up to about 1.5k and just stayed there.

We started to feel bad about showing the Recount scores. It was obvious she was not happy and was frustrated with her performance.

Overall our guild was doing so much better. We were tackling harder instances and doing them without any deaths. As a group we are strong; it never feels like we are carrying anyone.

So we made the decision that we are not going to be announcing the Recount scores any longer. If someone wants it for themself, fine, but we are not going to link it into chat for all to see.

We know we can run harder instances, we don’t necessarily need to know the number of how we got there.

Yes, it’s a valuable tool and it has helped us tremendously.

But it’s not worth hurting the feelings of a friend.

So I’ve decided to give myself the above reminder. WoW is a game. Most of the time it is fun. (If it wasn’t, I would play it, much less pay to play it.)

The times when it is not so fun end up as blog entries. So I’ll try to remember to balance it out when I can.

I have fun when I raid with my 80 priest.

I also have fun leveling my 60 warlock.

I’m still having fun with my brand new level 3 mage.

They are at different points in the game, but they each bring something new and fun to the game. I enjoy playing these characters for different reasons.

Sometimes I don’t know where a character is going to take me. I leveled an enhancement shaman to about 71 then just found myself insanely bored with him. I just could not muster up the enthusiasm to log him on and play him.

I got him to 71. Deleting him wasn’t an option; I had already put in a lot of time leveling him up to where he was. Plus he was a high level alchemist and was supplying flasks and elixirs to my other characters who raided.

It took many months of him sitting lonely in Dalaran before the lightbulb went off.

Duh! Change his spec. See if I like it better.

I already had a holy priest I was raiding with, so I wanted to avoid healing if I could.

So maybe an ele offspec?

All of a sudden, my shammy had a purpose and he was fun again. Collecting elemental pieces, learning the builds and how the spec played.

He was the same character, he just now came with new toys and a new playstyle. He hit 80 and was raiding soon enough. (And, as an alchemist, the double flask time? Rawr. So sexy.)

I made him fun again. On to the next toon!

Someone watching me play would probably shake their heads in sadness. With all my alts, I’ve done several quests many times. So I have a pretty good idea of which quests to do at the same time as others. You know, maximize efficiency and all that.

And yet I will stop the middle of a quest and wander away to another one. The worst if when I have to kill XX number of mobs and I have to wait for respawns. Um, yeah, that’s boring, so it’s not unusual for me to look at the next quest on my list and go tackle that.

The same thing happens with my professions. I have an enchanter whose profession I really don’t keep on. Any green loot I get is immediately sharded and put in the bank. Then, when I’m bored enough, I will powerlevel his enchanting up.

It might be more efficient if I leveled enchanting up as I went along, but eh…

Last night I could not decide what I wanted to work on. I wanted to play, but none of my toons were really “speaking” to me.

What’s the logical thing to do?

Start a new character, of course.

Sigh.