Thursday, August 27, 2009

Gates of Dawn IRL

Top Row: Rawne, Calinette/Darwe, Garaba, Supersamerai.
Bottom Row: Kady (me), Nayana, Alindras/Lafeal, Alendia/Dramada.
Very Bottom: Heap/Drenath


I was lucky enough to have a friend (Nayana) get me into WoW, I didn't have to start out completely on my own and make too many n00b mistakes. I still made them, just not as many. Like, I didn't know about the recruit-a-friend program, so when I started up my account, I didn't give Nayana credit and we didn't get the cool bonuses.

Anyway, we've all known each other for a long time, some more than others. The guys all met in high school, us girls came a little later. Alendia and Alindras met in college, she was the first girl to join the guild. I came next, followed shortly by Nayana. Calinette got Heap into WoW first, and the rest followed eventually. Super and I were last, the others had a significant level lead on us, but we quickly caught up and even made it to 80 before a few others. The name of the guild was voted on before Super and I started WoW, it was Alindras' name that was chosen: Gates of Dawn.

I like that it's just us in our guild. I once made the comparison that it was like going to the playground with your friends and discovering that you have it all to yourselves. There's a certain freedom about having a guild with people you know in real life. We address each other by name constantly, it's only when in a group with pugs that we really use the toon's name. It's ok for us to make mistakes and learn at our own pace, there's no pressure to be perfect the first time around. It was also nice to level and have friends who were higher, definitely made things easier when you have a level 50 running you through Deadmines and Stocks. Or having a blacksmith make weapons for you. Before I knew about QuestHelper, it was nice to have someone who had quested through a zone to help me out.

For the most part, we all live in the same state. Heap is the farthest away, a whole bunch of states over. WoW has been a cool way to stay in touch, whether we're all in the same state or not. We raid regularly, at least once a week and we're trying to make it more than that. My schedule is the worst for it, working at the restaurant. I work mostly evenings, which is when everyone else is free, so multiple raid nights doesn't happen too often. I'm hoping to have a real job soon, but at this point, whatever paycheck I can get is fine by me.

So that's why Gates of Dawn is awesome. We had one person from WoW join the guild, he was looking for a guild to join, but we were too casual for him and he felt like an outsider since we all knew each other anyway. It's back to being the 9 of us now and I do kinda like it that way :)

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Do you wanna date my avatar?

If you're reading this or any other blog relating to WoW or MMO's in general, you simply MUST check out this music video. I've had it stuck in my head all day at work and have now listened to it at least 3 times in a row since being home! :)

It's called (Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar, featuring Felicia Day and it's by a group called The Guild. I hadn't heard of them before but this video and song are amazing! Enjoy XD

Music Video on YouTube

I downloaded the video from iTunes but the description on YouTube also said something about Amazon, definitely support the group!

Monday, August 17, 2009

Hi Garaba!

I'm up late talking to Nayana and she said you read me quite a bit, so this post is for you :)

*HUGGLES*

Friday, August 14, 2009

Know Your Talents - Holy Tiers 1 & 2

The Holy Tree Tier 1 contains the following talents: Healing Focus, Improved Renew, and Holy Specialization.

Healing Focus: Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting any healing spell by 35%/70%.
--I have this maxed out. It's not always the anybody's fault that we take damage, there are AOE's, random charges, etc. If you're casting Greater Heal, it's already a slow cast and if you're using it, that means you need that big heal as soon as possible. If you don't have Healing Focus, that cast could take longer if you're taking damage from an AOE. Your bubble can also help you if you think about casting it before start casting your heal.

Improved Renew: Increases the amount healed by your Renew by 5%/10%/15%
--I also have this maxed out. Renew is my favorite and main heal, ok one of my favorites. But seriously, it does all the work for you. How, as a healer, can you not love a cheap heal-over-time? How can you not want to improve it and make it even better? I thought so.

Holy Specialization: Increases the critical effect chance of your Holy Spells by 1%/2%/3%/4%/5%.
--Also maxed. Crit is super important for Holy Healers, things proc and free heals and everyone benefits from free heals, yay! If you have the opportunity to increase your crit, do it. That's why I have this maxed out :)


Holy Tier 2 has Spell Warding and Divine Fury.

Spell Warding: Reduces all spell damage taken by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%
--I don't have any points in this. I use my bubble when I start taking damage (or anticipate taking damage) of any kind, not just spell damage. I'm sure there's a place where this is useful, I just haven't found it for me.

Divine Fury: Reduces the casting time of your Smite, Holy Fire, Heal and Greater Heal spells by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 sec.
--I've got four points in here only to reduce the cast time of Greater Heal. I hardly ever use Greater Heal while we're in battle, usually I use it after someone's died and been rezzed, but you can bet the few times I do use it while in combat I want the cast to be as quick as possible. I didn't go the full 5 points in it because I don't need the talent it leads into (Searing Light, that's two tiers down, I'll talk about that another time), and because I have better places to put that one point.

That's all for now, I've got to shower and run errands before work, there are nice things about working in a restaurant and having evening shifts: sleeping in and being able to do things during normal business hours. But more will be coming, I'm hoping to do at least the whole Holy tree and maybe get to the others depending how long it takes me to get through this one.

Quick Rant

At first, I thought it was my fault that we were wiping so much in heroic Trial of the Champion, after all, I definitely wasn't getting heals out fast enough to keep the tank alive. Finally, after what was maybe our third wipe trying to pull the three Horde bosses on foot, while everyone was eating/drinking, I took a look at our tank's gear. He was taking damage more quickly than I had seen in just the couple of weeks that ToC's been out, I had to see if the problem was on my end or his. If it was on my end, I had to figure out what was wrong with my heals so I could keep us alive and if it was him, well, that meant there wasn't too much more I could do besides using bigger heals.

Turns out it was his gear. I didn't have a chance to check and see when he hit 80, but it had to have been recently because he only had a couple pieces of purple gear. Most of his gear was blue and he even had some things that had an item level below 200. It was no wonder he was taking so much damage, he was tanking ToC in aluminum foil! H ToC is a high end heroic, even if he didn't have problems tanking other heroics, this was one he should have prepared for a little bit more. There's a reason that the loot you get from H ToC is better than normal heroics, it's slightly more difficult. One of the druids in our group (we had two which I thought was cool, I love druids) realized what was happening and offered to throw up heals until the first of the Horde bosses was down and that was the boost we needed to defeat them. Even with the extra help, I still burned through my entire mana pool keeping him alive. That's a difficult pull for me anyway, it wasn't necessary to add a poorly gear tank to it.

It's easier to pug as a healer than as a dps, but there's no guaranteeing that the group will be any good. Thank goodness for ChatNotes (an addon that lets you make notes about people, it's saved me from a bad pug more than once).

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

A look at what's coming soon...

Much thanks to Merlot of Misery: A Shadow Priest Blog for pointing me over to shadowpriest.com in regards to my talent tree. There is a wealth of information over there and I'll be taking a couple of days to sign up, read over lots of posts, and get back here to write about what applies to Kady and her Shadow spec. I'll be making some slight changes to her talent build, based on suggestions from Merlot, and I'll post about those changes and how they help but I also plan on figuring out what my spell rotation will be in raids for maximum damage output. Once that's done I'll also post that here. I have a couple other ideas in my head for future posts and once those become a little more solid (as in I need to do real research), I'll start writing those and posting them either all together or at regular intervals. I also need to talk about my Holy build and what I do for heals in more detail, especially mana management. I'm getting better when I'm in Holy-mode at managing my mana, I used to be awful, but Garaba (our guild's other Holy Priest who helped me with my talent build) has given me some pointers and I'm doing much, much better.

My days off have been sparratic, having two jobs will do that, so I haven't had as much time for writing as I'd like, not to mention I've been running around enjoying patch 3.2, two lowbie alts of mine got mounts simply because they could! I've got a couple days off coming up so I'm hoping to write a bunch of posts (or at least get some started) soon. :)