Sunday, May 31, 2009

Useless Blog is Useless

I'm a little frustrated. After reading all the things about the Ferraro web of lies, I realized that I wanted to do my part to make my blog useful to the druid community. Sadly, I have no idea how to go about doing that... Averna already has a ton of great 'How to heal (insert Ulduar boss here)' guides, but there's not really any point in me making my own guides when hers are already so well thought-out and informative...

Any ideas?

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Cats, blog changes, and clothes

I got tired of trying to make the background of the blog look perfect, so hopefully you all like it the way it is...

Alt ADD Continues
I spent a TON of time leveling up my Draenei Priestess, Soniah, today! It was a lot of fun. It's almost like a new game now that I'm in Northrend. This time, however, I'm on the Alliance, so a lot of things are different!

There's one thing I'm doing now that I NEVER do..
.
Read quest text.

It's funny... I always thought that reading quest text would just make it take longer to get quests done, but not only is it a) interesting to read about what exactly is going on and WHY I'm doing the quest, but it is also b) almost faster than relying on QuestHelper or Carbonite. Ironic, I know. But I'm really having a lot of fun reading about the different things going on in Northrend, seeing the way I'm helping out the different characters... it almost makes it more... I know this sounds weird... personal? It's like you're really there helping out everyone.

*cricket chirps*

Anyway! Onto my next, short topic...

Blues on Cat Form Updates
I was browsing MMO-Champion during some downtime in my alt Naxx25 run and I saw this on the front page:

(click for a larger image)


*squeals* This makes me so excited! They seem rather confident that we'll (read: MOST druids) be happy about the new design, and I'm ecstatic. I'm so tired of the monkey-face-anorexic-wyvern that I've been forced to run around on while doing dailies. Needless to say, next week cannot come soon enough! Hopefully the Tauren cat form will be on par with the Night Elf form, as I always felt that the Night Elf cat form was much cooler!'

WoW Swag!


For those of you who have never heard of or visited Jinx, now would be a great time! They have a plethora of WoW T-shirts and other Warcraft-related things, such as vynil stickers of the Horde or Alliance logos (pictured below on my car!) They just released their Summer '09 line of shirts, and they look pretty sweet! I might invest in the Dalaran University and Thunder Bluff Warstompers T-shirts =) So far I've got quite a few shirts from them. I have the older version of their Alliance shirt, their Druid class shirt, the newer version of their Horde shirt, the 'Rogues, the Original Ganksta' shirt (from when I was a rogue long, LONG ago), and lastly their /dance T-shirt. If you haven't been to Jinx and have really wanted some neat WoW swag, check them out!


My car gained +100 to Awesome

Friday, May 29, 2009

Dilemma!

Another more personal blog post tonight!

As I stand here in front of the Coilfang Reservoir summoning stone, dancing with a male draenei whilst I wait for another party member to arrive to summon, my mind wanders off, remembering a certain tattoo design a kind artist sketched for me...

Personally, I *adore* it. I know some don't approve of tattoos, but this one is very special to me. Druidism, and just all things nature in general have been a passion of mine for a long time now; druids, specifically, a major part of my life for the past 3 years. My birthday is coming up in July, and my boyfriend has agreed to take me to get it and buy it for me as a gift. My only issue is I can't figure out where I want it =(

Ideas so far:
  • on my back, near my left hip
  • on my stomach, near my left hip
Other than those places, I can't think of a thing :( Shoulders are rather out of the question; I can't get it somewhere my parents could see if I was wearing a tank top or something like that. But I'd like to get everyone's opinion if they'd like to offer it ^^

Also... color suggestions would be nice! I think I want to get it all in one color, not black.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Yoggy Down!


YOGGY DOWN!!! We beat my old guild (the one full of @$$holes), but only by 10 minutes or so :X

Boss Progression and Degrees

*yawn* O hay there. I just woke up... it's about 1pm. I had a later-than-normal night last night due to raiding. Our raid last night was set to quickly take down General and then use the rest of the night to get Yoggy down, but sadly due to some interrupt fail and retarded RNG, we spent about an hour and a half wiping on him. We got to Yogg, though, and we did have two REALLY good attempts; I'm talking less than 13%. But phase 3 is insane. I was shaking the second we hit phase three, spamming hots on the tanks and keeping nourish up. Sadly, due to Cox Cable kicking myself, one of the main tanks, and my boyfriend off, ruined one of those perfect attempts. The rest of the night was plagued with random DCs, bad luck with mind controls, and all kinds of other things.

Some of our key people won't be able to play again until later in the week, and it means that we could be passed by my older guild, which would make me pretty sad. I know that if/when they down him before us they'll rub it in our faces; they're all incredibly immature and rely on accomplishments in WoW to make themselves feel better...

But anyway! The second half of today's blog is more personal... it's about the degree I was hoping to see at my university finally going into action!

The degree is 'Computer Game Design' and a Bachelor in Fine Arts (B.F.A). The degree I was originally persuing (only because this art degree was not yet in place) was a Computer Science major with a focus in Video Game Design. Boy am I glad they put in the BFA degree... this degree has essentially NO math or science, which makes me a very, VERY happy tree. I'm terrible at all things math, it's laughable. There's so many cool classes on the program list, I can't wait. All kinds of art and digital design courses, along with musical classes!

Needless to say I'm one happy cow!

I think, for once, I'm ecstatic for school to start up in August. Now, if housing would just assign me a dorm...

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

New Druid Forms! Night Elf Edition

I may not be a Night Elf, but I used to be! Every now and then I venture back to my elven roots, hence why I started a Night Elf druid on Bonchewer, Averna's server. That said, here's a link to the new Night Elf bear form models (YES, models. They aren't simply reskins as all the QQers seem to believe. It's clear certain aspects of the model have changed, including a higher polygon count, according to Blues).

(click for a larger image)

Personally, I think they look pretty cool! I'll be excited to get them whenever my Night Elf hits level 10 =)

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

New Druid Forms!

After waking up around noon and doing a few things around the house, I went to the main page of the World of Warcraft website and was pleasantly surprised with this:

In our next major content patch, druids will find a host of new textures for two major forms, cat and bear. There will be five different designs for each of these forms for the Horde and Alliance. Night elves can choose to change their cat and bear look at any time by visiting the barber shop and changing their character's hair color, while tauren will be able to change which look they use by switching skin tones in the barber shop -- a new feature for tauren in the next major content patch. Given that there are more hair colors and skin tones than unique form looks, some colors and tones will overlap with these new textures. The hair and skin colors chosen will, in most cases, correspond with the color seen in the look of each form. Some similar colors that may share a particular cat texture will not necessarily share the same bear texture.

We'd like to share with you this new art for each form and faction in four installments. So without further ado, our first preview is for the five new textures of the tauren druid bear form. We'll also show the current form design so you can easily see the extra detail and textures of the new art. Work continues on new looks for the remaining druid forms and we hope to add them in future content patches.


(click for a larger image)

Huzzah! New forms! I'm rather pleased with them, but many druids are not. I'm excited to see cat form, personally (and hopefully a travel form update). I am, however, a bit miffed that the skin changes are directly connected to our fur (Tauren)/hair (Night Elf) color. Luckily for me I was hoping to use the brown bear (upper right), and I believe that will correlate to my splotchy light brown fur that I have on Corgii now.

Ideally they'll think of some way to change it, but until then I'll be satisfied with this polished up bear =D

Monday, May 25, 2009

Of Dead Motherboards and New Guilds

R.I.P, my motherboard
After spending a lovely week down in Southern Virginia with my boyfriend, I came back home to put my old Dell XPS 410 back together. Sadly, my LANPARTY DK motherboard was pronounced dead last Sunday when I arrived at Sauder's house. When I got it back in December, it already appeared to have issues when I put more than 4GB of ram into it, and after we tried new ram just a week ago the motherboard said 'Hey, screw you', flipped me the bird, and refused to boot up my computer.

Luckily my older rig isn't so terrible. It still runs WoW at close-to-max settings and runs rather well. Ideally, DFI will get back to me soon and fix my motherboard in a timely manner so I can get back into the beautiful world that is max-graphics!

New Guild First Impressions
If you've been reading my blog at all, you'll see I've had guild issues in the past and I was very lucky to be accpted into Blur, one of the top Horde raiding guilds on Tichondrius. I'm always nervous when entering a new guild; I'm careful to make the best first impressions I can to prove that I'm dedicated and focused.

I've been in pretty much each of the top raiding guilds Horde side and ultimately left because of the guild dying, personal conflicts (school, work, etc.), or because of differences with the leadership, and I had essentially lost all hope in finding a guild that I really enjoyed. Luckily I was plesantly surprised at how much I loved the guild right after I joined. Everyone is very supportive; no one goes 'you suck l2p noob' or gives you harsh criticism with no help. Guildies/raid members point out possible weaknesses in a nice, helpful manner and give you possible tips for improving.

One specific instance is the guild's holy paladin, Eviver (whom I found out reads my blog >_<, but this isn't a suck up!). I had been reading extensively on druid gemming, enchanting, healing rotations, ANYTHING I could find to improve my performance. He was very helpful in suggesting a better way to gem, and also pointed out that I had the wrong enchant on my helmet (I had gone boomkin a while back and forgotten to re-enchant it)! Other members have been very helpful, offering me a spot in their Naxx25 run to help me get the last few upgrades I need (IE: off-hand and rings). Thanks to everyone's suggestions, I've seen a HUGE improvement in my performance, which I'm ecstatic about. A few of the higher-ranked members have told me I've been doing a good job, which just makes me feel great. I'm so happy to be an asset to the raid, rather than a detriment (which is how I'd been feeling for a while).

The environment has also been very friendly as well. Everyone was very warm and welcoming and I felt accepted instantly; different from that feeling of alienation that I felt in other guilds (read: Martyrdom). Needless to say I'm finally very happy in my guild and could certainly see myself staying here for the long haul (if I make it past my trial, that is!).

Well, I'm off to go laze about and do who knows what... until next time!

Friday, May 15, 2009

Healing Rotations

As I apply to a new guild, I'm asked to provide WWS/World of Log records to show my performance on past fights. Pulling up this information and seeing how the other druid in my raid seemed to do laps around me in healing, I began to wonder if there was something off about the way I was healing.



Healing Rotations
While, when I normally think of 'rotations', DPS rotations for my paladin alt come to mind (CS>DS>Judge>Exo>etc.), but the more I think about it, the more healers can kind of have their own rotation, just like DPS.

Reviewing the healing meters from older Ulduar fights revealed that I'm most likely not healing to the best of my abilities.

Currently, I usually keep a full set of HoTs (LBx3, Rejuv, Regrowth) on the tank(s) and toss out LB/WG on the raid. In PuGs and the like, this was always more than enough and would usually keep me high up on the meters. However, in my actual guild runs, I would be third; second below the other resto druid (1st) and priest (2nd). After a bit of lurking around the EJ forums, I came across this post:

For heavy, consistent raid damage combined with huge spikes of tank damage, I keep a 3stack of LB's on the tank, 15ish people rejuv'd, and use the extra 2 GCD's on either WG or tank healing as needed. If tank healing isn't required, then the highest hps is a 5rejuv, 1WG rotation keeping 15 targets rejuv'd, and 6 targets WG'd constantly.
I began to think about this tactic and realize that it was probably rather effective. As it stands now, my Rejuv ticks for around 1.8-2.2k (depending upon my buffs/flasks), and since it doesn't overheal (?) it would help lower my amount of overheal. Not to mention, when coupled with the Glyph of Swiftmend, it's great for a quick insta-heal for the raid while still allowing that HoT to continue ticking.

I tried this rotation in a 10-man Malygos this evening, but I found myself going out of mana rather quickly. Part of this could be due to the lack of Replenishment buff, and until I get into a full 25-man raid I won't really be sure how well this works. Until then, I'll probably keep browsing the forums and looking at other possible rotations.

If you have a rotation that works for you, please feel free to drop a comment; I'd love to hear some input for other rotations!




Thursday, May 14, 2009

/sigh

Well... my 10 man guild fell apart. I applied to the last guild I have left on the server, and they already have 8+ druids so I'll most likely be a backup.

This sucks.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Arty Stuff

I'm in the process of creating a banner for my guild's website, and I'm putting it together character-by-character. So far I've got myself and one of our main tanks done :)


I'm most likely going to redo the bear; I don't think I want a profile view..

Wednesday, May 6, 2009