First Naxx Run for IA!

Infinite Ascension had its first guild Naxxramas run tonight, and overall it was very successful!

We cleared out all of the Arachnid Quarter, all but Gluth in the Construct Quarter, and got to Noth in the Plague Quarter before it was midnight and quitting time for most of the guildies. Not even that many wipes either. We 1-shotted Faerlina, Noth, and Patchwerk. Posted below are pictures of all the ones we downed. Missing are Grand Widow Faerlina and Plaguebringer Noth, because I forgot about them. I'll take their death pics next time. Congrats to the raiders of Infinite Ascension!







On a side note:

I would like to say that I suppose I have no life, because just Tuesday I hit 80. Tuesday night. Therefore I didn't do anything on Tuesday and starting Wednesday was when I really started getting myself geared, and I didn't really do all that much, besides spent some money on gems, ran some heroics, and bought a badge item. Maybe it's a testament to my guild's willingness to let someone slightly undergeared run with them. Maybe it's a testament to my abilities (LOL)? Maybe it's just a testament to the fact that I work 5 hours a day, I see my love interest 2 hours 2 days of the week (not by choice) and I sleep about eight hours a day. The rest of that time I'm playing, because, like I said, I have no life. Yay me. Here, however, are the fruits of my labors. Myss in pretty new gear. Yay Myss!

TONIGHT!

Sorry for the caps, but I'm just really excited. Myss is level 79 with but 27% left until level 80. She also has 1000 gold sitting in her pocket ready to be spent on heaven knows what. Probably mostly crafting mats so that I can get her tailoring and inscription up like it should be. Tailoring isn't too far behind, but inscription needs quite a bit of work... I might have to steal a friend's toon for a little while for herbs if I can't find them on the AH. I honestly can't wait to start doing the important things that all of my other guildies are doing. When someone asks "Anyone wanna heal H VH?" I can finally say "Yes!" while actually *wishing* that they check to make sure I'm of the appropriate level. =] I just wanted to do a little update post before the Great Ding of 2009.

This just in!

I was browsing around the official forums (something I would rather not do, but none of my favorite bloggers have any new content) and I found a really well-written post on the Healing forums, so I thought I'd share it. The OP calls healing the most difficult role in the game. I'd be inclined to agree. DPS often gets the glory of the kill ("Wow! I topped over 3.5k DPS!"). Sometimes it's the tank, but people hardly ever actually thank the healers, in my experience. I've gotten a "Good heals" every now and then, but no one has ever told me "Thanks, Myss, there's no way we could have done that without you." Healing is a pretty thankless job.

I pride myself in being able to look at health bars and know in a split second what would be the perfect heal to use, and in Wrath this got even harder. Before 3.0, the goal of priest healing was to use some rank of greater heal so that you would get the healee as close to full without actually going over, because those were wasted heals. Now, the goal is to heal them to full and over as little as possible. These goals may seem very similar; however, the difference is that when people are taking damage, their health is constantly going down (duh). This makes the pre-3.0 goal much easier (i.e. it was okay for you to heal when you knew it had a chance of overhealing, because odds were their health would fall below that level by the time the heal was actually cast). Post-3.0 you have to practically heal your target expecting around 1k health overheal or more in order to be as efficient as possible with your mana. It's mind-numbing. Not to mention that healing as a discipline spec is completely different.

So, I would like to take a moment to /applaud that poster and thank him/her for catching the eye of the devs. I don't think it actually did much good, but we'll see in the coming months...

Romance -- It's the devil

Sorry I haven't been posting for a while, but that's why I'm here now. I've finally hit 75 on Myssidia (the priest) and 65 on Myssidia (the Deathknight). I'm certainly not the slowest at leveling; however, I am moving at an awfully slow pace. Why? I'll tell you why.

A few months ago
My boyfriend broke up with me. It hurt a lot especially after I had given him four and a half years of my devotion. You didn't come here to listen to me whine about my love life, though. Well. You kinda did. The title should have given away some of what I intended to talk about. The point of all this is that I assumed that after the break-up I'd zoom zoom zoom to level 80 really quickly. Oddly enough. The exact opposite happened. I almost completely stopped playing.

I find myself logging on to my toons now more to socialize with my friends than to actually play. When my friends aren't on, I get bored within a few minutes and log out. The game just doesn't hold my interest anymore. I'm blaming it on romance.

But now...
A recent development in my life, though, I may be on my way to starting a new relationship. Sure maybe 4 months is a little fast, especially after just getting out of one as long as mine was, but, once again, not the point of this ramble. I've found myself wanting to play more. I know this isn't good because the guy I'm talking to isn't a gamer in the least bit. He thinks it's kinda cute that I'm a little nerdy (which I certainly am, I've threatened to start theory crafting with a friend of ours if he isn't careful), but I'm assuming that he won't like me playing late into the night like I used to. I'm also assuming that he won't like me on a strict raiding schedule. Uh oh.

The game isn't all that important to me, honestly. It's simply one of my more favorite diversions. So I could give it up, but that really isn't the point. I've just liked seeing the way I've handled the game while I was in my relationships. It's funny to me that at the exact time that I needed to stop playing as much, I've had more of an urge to do it (for about 5 hours straight today, something I haven't done since before Wrath). Not exactly as informative as my other posts. This one is certainly more selfish. Oh well. My blog, so I can be selfish every now and then. Also, I would like to say that I've discovered that dance music is making my WoW-time very fun.

Things that still excite me about Wrath!

First, I want to say that the things I said before, still do excite me about Wrath.  The problem is... I haven't been able to experience all of them yet!  So I wanted to start by saying, all of that other stuff that I already said, is still on this list.  So I'm going to start at number 10 and go to number 6, so that I'll now have a complete list of 10 things.  That seems to be the general consensus for list postings.  10 is the minimum.

10.  Death Knights

The quests are cool.  The abilities are cool.  There are way too many of them.  Understandably so, too, because the starting area is truly epic.  The one thing I dislike about rerolling characters is the idea that I have to go through the same starting quests.  Albeit the Deathknight quests will probably get old, too.  But the difference is you aren't just killing wolves.  You are serving the Lich King.  You are his hand of destruction on Azeroth.  He asks you to kill innocent people.  To murder them while they're running away.  You people on the alliance should be ashamed for willfully doing this.  I'm horde, so its okay.  And then he gives you awesome blue items for mercilessly killing these people (It's good to be with the King).  But really, Blizzard did an awesome job with their first hero class.  I can't wait for the next one! Healing class, please!

9.  The Forsaken

They were always cool.  Always my favorite race.  If I could, I would change Myssidia from a blood elf to a forsaken (no I wouldn't, she's too pretty).  But they have an even more prominent role in this expansion.  Possibly more prominent than Hellscream Jr.  The Forsaken were created because of Arthas and Lich King.  It was the initial plague of the Lich King that created them, and through their own willpower (with some help from their resident bad ass) that they were able to break free of the Scourge and become a free-thinking society of undead people.  The best part about Forsaken quests? They're deliciously evil.  I mean, in the Howling Fjord I killed dwarves.  But that wasn't it! Oh no.  I also had to harvest their brains for study.  So I killed them then I used a hacksaw to cut open their heads.  I'm in love.

8.  The Landscapes

Two words: simply beautiful.  Now more than two words.  The most amazing thing about Northrend is that it is so real (besides the forest made out of crystals and the forest that never stops burning and all the dragon skeletons).  But the forests look like a forest I've walked through.  The massive, high scaling cliffs look like cliffs I've touched before.  It's so amazing that everything I see awes me.  Azeroth is nice, but it feels like an alien world.  Then to go from that to Outland was an amazing jump into even more alien.  But, it's so incredible to be brought back down to "earth."  It feels like I'm walking through the real world.  The colors are right.  The images are right (for the most part).  Northrend is beautiful.

7.  The Vrykul

Why? Because of the names of their cities.  They are fun to say!  Okay that's a little silly, but seriously... Say "Gjalerbron"(gyalerbron) out loud right now.  Say it again.  See how rolls right off the tongue?  Even more importantly is the fact that everything about Northrend and the vrykul is steeped in a faux Norse Mythology that's just incredibly fun to play in.  Everytime I see a Valkyr I think about bugs bunny.  Is that an odd thing to say?

6.  The Epicness

This is something that they are certainly pushing in this expansion.  From the time I set foot on the continent I can feel the presence of the Lich King.  There are dead things chasing after me.  And I see him popping up all over the place.  All of the quests are basically pushing toward some major encounter with the Lich King.  In Outland, Illidan was a problem, but he wasn't that thing that always clung to the back of your mind.  All of the quest givers didn't remind you how Illidan destroyed your families, your hometown, or possibly your life (if you're a forsaken).  Arthas is the bad guy I've been waiting for.  He's that goal that's always there.  I can't wait to take him out.

There we have it.  Right now Myss is only level 72, because I've been dealing with a lot of personal issues.  But hell, that's why I'm a casual gamer right? Personal issues are more important than "gogogo 80." I kinda feel like I'm letting my guild down by not rushing to 80 as fast as possible so that I can participate in the raiding like everyone else, but I'm hoping that I can catch up within the next week (maybe 2).

I lied again.

Well not really. My other post is already written, but not on this computer. It'll be here soon. Very soon. Tonight after class probably. But until then I have a musing (a musing does not necessarily mean it is amusing). I was thinking earlier today that I read a lot about healing. I know a lot about healing. Maybe not as much as some of the other people in my guild, but I'm also very good at healing. Should I ask if there is anyway I could be named the healing "role" leader for my guild? I mean we don't raid all that much, and this would require me to get on a schedule to raid more than I used to. I find this idea very attractive though. I mean... in Kara when one of our tanks who wasn't quite at the defense cap was taking heavy heavy spikey damage and the direct healers (me and the shaman) were having trouble keeping her up, I took control and told the druid (who was on raid heals for some odd reason) to switch with the shaman. We didn't have troubles after that. So maybe what I mean to say is that... I care more about doing the job in the most efficient way possible than my raid leaders. I'll talk to one of the officers tonight.

I lied

So... I lied.  About not making a Deathknight so fast.  As soon as I installed Wrath, I had a discussion with myself.  I decided that (and please forgive me, this is going to get sappy) I would prefer to spend my first few hours of wrath with my family on Lightbringer (the nonraiding guild) than with my family on Kirin Tor (the raiding guild).  =] It was time well spent.  So in order to actually experience Wrath content over there (since none of my characters were 70) I *had* to make a DK.  The quests are epic.  I love justifications.

On a side note:  Sorry for not updating in a long time (all of you devoted readers lawl), but I'm going through a pretty harsh break up right now.  Four and half years all for nothing.  =] Luckily It's been over for long enough and I'm just optimistic enough to be okay now.  I'm going to try and do a longer post on Wrath stuff soon.  Like when the next few days.  Maybe.  (possible title: Things that Still Excite me About Wrath?)