*giggle*

Internet Dragons!

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BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA

*hyperventilates*

F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5

WHY ISN’T MY INVITE HERE YET

*languishes*

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Yesterday, I rolled another new druid, on another fresh server.

Partly it’s because I love starting with absolutely nothing – no BOAs, no bags, no cash, no professions.. and building from the ground up. I discovered that the first few points of fishing can be a goldmine; fish up some tattered cloth and you can vendor them for 1s each (for a penniless newbie, that’s crazy money). I’m weird, I love being broke and working my way up. I sold a stack of copper bars for 7g, (scratch that, just checked my bank alt – I sold my first Arcanite Rod recipe for 35g – chaCHING! Love that easy Moonglade money..) and I’m on my way – gradually buying bigger bags, getting my training. It’s a mini game in itself, for me.

But of course I also did it because I just get such a kick out of levelling druids. Not just playing them, but levelling them.

I know a lot of people can’t stand the levelling process, and wish they could “skip ahead” to max level. Not me – levelling is one of the most fun processes, I think. I get bored at max level; Keeva is starting to gather dust. She only gets time out of her box when it’s time for raids, otherwise I really have little drive to play her. But, a fresh druid? Om nom nom delicious levelling!

10-20, of course, is still a hideous drag; it takes a whole mana bar to kill mobs around your level, which means drinking every pull. OR you can utilise your new bear form; but Maul has a five-year swing timer.. drives me a bit batty. I guess it’s good if you’re feeling peckish and decide to go make a sandwich in the middle of killing your target. Blizzard have hinted that they were considering swapping Cat and Bear around, so that we receive our cat form earlier. This would be great – although you only start with one ability, at least it doesn’t have the swing timer of bear. Of course, if bear was at 20, that would mean no LFD tanking for 15-19 druids – so I guess we’ll see.

Whenever I mention a new druid, people ask me “how many is that, now?” and I tell them the truth – I’ve lost count. They laugh. I’m not being funny, I just don’t count anymore. Anytime I feel like doing something new, I usually pick up a druid. You’d think I would get sick of it over time.. but something just keeps bringing me back to the class, and to levelling more.

I have other classes, of course. I quite like mage – and I’ve been dual-boxing gnome mages a fair bit. They make me smile! Although the dual-boxing just makes me think how funny it would be to 5-box boomkins and have them all starfalling at the same time.. mmm, annoying! Back on topic though – I like my mage, I don’t mind shadow priest, rogue seems fun.. but at the end of a frustrating day, I get the most joy out of picking up a baby druid and levelling some more.




I’m not sure entirely what it is. Familiarity? Comfort? The fact that all my keybinds and Power Auras are already set up? I can do this practically in my sleep. I love to do lowbie dungeons as a druid – because I know the ins and outs of druid healing, I never have to worry if I’m doing the right thing, or if I’m being a bad healer.

I think mostly I chose druid and stuck with it because it suits my short attention span. I love to heal, obviously, but with the same class I can also go out and rip things apart, or shoot them with lasers, or tank. I love using all of my forms while questing – life never seems dull when you have a druid. Well, past 20 it never seems dull.

At end game, I love healing as a druid because it feels like there is pressure on us to multi-task. Keep HoTs up on the tank/s and keep an eye on them, do your normal job through the raid, and keep an eye out for emergencies too. Perhaps it’s maternal instinct or something – but I love that feeling that it’s my job to look after everyone. Of course, I love fights where I have specific assignments, too – because once I get into the swing of it, I can often stretch myself to include other people.

I just love the class, and no matter how many times I pick something else up for a while, I always come back to my druids. When I say “I’ll always be a druid” I know that I mean it. I might play other classes for fun on the side, but I really couldn’t imagine having anything but a druid as my main.


I know most of you out there aren’t serial druid levellers like me – but what keeps you coming back to your druid, instead of swapping to another class?

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Beru over at Falling Leaves set us a Make a Memory Challenge. I’ve been planning to jump in and do something similar for a while – I want to make sure I can look back and remember the zones of Azeroth “as they were”.

As a baby druid of only Level 30 or so, I remember swimming all the way up the coast of Eastern Kingdoms, and (cough) wall hacking my way up onto the top of the plaguelands. It was pretty boring really, just flat placeholder ground texture, with chunky, cubic mountains. But it was kinda cool, considering that in a few months, the coastline wouldn’t exist, and in fact it would be part of a new piece of the continent.




Do you remember what the map looked like, before the Blood Elves appeared? It was all rounded off and stuff. No more – now we take for granted that the northern peak of the continent is Elf Country, as if it’s always been like that.

Of course, it’s not like we lost anything important – just placeholder dirt. But in Cataclysm – it will be different. We’ll be losing towns and coastlines, new ones will crop up – it’s hard to even know exactly what to expect (other than from what we’ve seen in trailers and pictures). Have you seen the new picture of the Blasted Lands? It’s back to swampland – a la pre-portal; it looks pretty. Now, not every zone is going to be so dramatically changed, but who knows.

So I want to document what they all look like, now. Many people are doing the same thing, of course; this is no new idea. But I suppose we all need to do it in our own way. I want to make sure I record the places in a certain way, the way I want to remember them – rather than relying on someone else’s gallery. Plus, the photographer in me needs to them to be *just so*… so I’ve tasked myself with travelling around the world and documenting each zone and landmark, to file away for later.

No doubt some zones will be changed for the better, and some zones I’ll be sad for. I just want to be able to look back and remember the places I leveled in, once upon a time. And let’s face it, eventually, when I stop playing, or when the World of Warcraft doesn’t exist anymore, I’ll have a great gallery to look over fondly.

I was also inspired by Wow.com/mmo-champion the other day, showing some panoramas of Azeroth. I decided that would be the perfect way to preserve some of the broad landscapes that I love so much. So I’ll be taking some “normal” screenshots, but for landscapes that I want to preserve in one big piece, I’ll do a panorama also. The panoramas aren’t perfect, nowhere near as good as the mmo ones, since they’re my first efforts – but they’re a lot of fun to make!

I only wish we could fly in Azeroth already, so that it would be so much easier to document the zones. Ah well.

So, to kick off – here are a couple of images of Orgimmar (I took many, but will only post a couple each time). Click to enlarge.


Valley of Strength: (1914×988)


Sunset on Orgrimmar (panorama – 2200×300)

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Warning: if you can’t handle creepy crawlies, don’t read this.



I have chickens. A couple of very handsome roosters, a handful of age-defying bantam hens, and a flock of generic layers.

The chickens have lice.

I now have lice.



Being a laz0r chicken: You’re taking authenticity a bit far, actually



Well, I don’t actually have them right now. $50 worth of insecticide, a bottle of head lice shampoo (mostly to make me feel better), a big pair of gumboots and a garden fork, and it’s all sorted.

The shed has been mucked out, perches have been sprayed, nest boxes dusted, birds ruffled. And to satisfy my own paranoia – my bed sheets changed, hair foamed, and shoes sprayed.

The hair foaming (with head lice shampoo – which was awfully nice, to be honest) was also partly because one of my stupid hens decided the best path to the outside world was via my HEAD. So along with ripping out half my hair and gouging my scalp, she probably deposited a nice brood of bird bugs on my head. Sigh.

I’ll be repeating the dusting and spraying (quite an expensive exercise) each day until I’m satisfied that walking into the pen to feed them will not re-infest myself.

I spent ~$100 on insecticides, shampoos, and new straw bedding. Plus I lost $100 in wages, having the day off to shower, go into town to buy powders and sprays, and then clean out the pen.

Ever have to tell your boss you need to go home because you have lice? Yeah, not the highest point of my week. Then, coming home from buying various bottles and boxes of poisons, a truck kicked up a stone and put a huge chip in my windscreen.


I sure could use a hug right now. Anyone..? I swear I’m lice-free now!

…Honest!

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Our guild has been without a Moonkin for a long, long time. And even when we had moonkins in the past, they were unreliable or had bad connections. Basically, I can’t remember when we ever had a solid moonkin in the raid.

The raid leaders really wanted one, badly, and were discussing the option of someone swapping to play one. I hated the idea of someone having to give up their main, especially since soon we’ll work on getting our Icecrown drakes. Kinda crappy to miss out on all the achievements and boss kills, just so we can have a buff.

So I volunteered to give it a go.

They laughed.

Can’t really blame them, I’m dual-spec resto and I’ve been resto since I very first started playing, over 4 years ago.

But I was serious. If I did it, it would mean nobody gives up their main character. Plus, I already have pretty awesome gear, and would only have to make a few adjustments to get hit capped and be ready to go – a bunch of my gear is perfectly acceptable as boomkin gear already – so I’m not going to have to be loot trained to a bunch of gear. And, of course, they know I’m reliable.

So I set out to become a Moonkin.

I figured I would share what I did – for anyone else who has been a healer for a million years and suddenly wants to raid as a Moonkin (and isn’t sure where to begin). It’s certainly not an in-depth guide at all, just the steps I took to get myself up to scratch in a big, fat, feathery hurry.


Steps to becoming a moonkin in a hurry

Step 1: Make your UI a bit more DPS-friendly.

Healer UIs and DPS UIs (generally) have some fundamental differences. At the very least, they tend to have elements that are more detailed for one spec than the other. For example, a healer UI will generally shift focus to raid frames, where a DPS UI will usually have frames, but they won’t be focus.

I wanted a hybrid UI, so that I could use it for both resto and boomkin. My trademark “empty” UI wouldn’t cut it if I wanted to DPS. Here’s what I had to do:



• Make sure my player and target frames are nice and clear, and show all appropriate buffs, debuffs, target-of-target, cast bar, and nice clear fonts. I use Pitbull4 for this.

• I kept Grid as-is, because I use it for decursing, finding people who need to be innervated or revived, etc. But boy is it hard to ignore Grid and resist the temptation to heal! I moved Grid closer to my character, but I still prefer not to have it right under my character, because that makes me antsy about not being able to see “behind” me. This is personal preference only.
• PowerAuras – oh how I love you. I’ve set my PowerAuras up to tell me when my cooldowns (Starfall, treants) are ready to go – but also, most importantly, which Eclipse buff I have. PA also tells me that I have debuffs up on my target, as appropriate. (see the rotation section for an explanation of my Power Auras)
• I updated my spreadsheet of key bindings. In Moonkin spec, I’ve had to swap my 1-2-3 (etc) easy bindings to my damage spells. Normally, Alt-W is Wrath, Alt-M is Moonfire, and so on. But having to keep pressing alt hundreds of times a night would probably break my wrist and give me RSI over time, so I had to fix it. In resto spec, my easy bindings are for healing. In balance spec, they are for damage spells – but I can still pop out of form and use my heals.
  
It took me a while to get into the groove with the new bindings, but some time on the target dummies got them cemented in. It won’t take long to have them ingrained, like my healing binds.



Step 2: Fill in the gear gaps

My gear was pretty good as it was – lots of high level ICC spellpower stuff (obviously). But I didn’t have any hit, so I needed to work out what I could gather together ASAP.



• So I headed to Graylo’s site to check out his gear suggestions.

• I brought out my spreadsheet, and decided what could stay, what I could bring out of the bank, and what I’d have to go chase.
• I was super lucky and picked up a few nice balance items, and gemmed them with hit.
• My crit was low so I grabbed the Sundial of the Exiled (heroism badges) to help boost it a bit.

So now I’m hit capped – I can work on ditching more and more pieces of resto gear and working on my moonkin set.



Step 3: Learn the rotation

Four great sites to visit when you’re absolutely clueless but you have to know how to be a raiding moonkin yesterday:



1. Restokin – Moonkin basics for the new level 80 Raider

2. Restokin – Eclipse Basics & Rotations for Beginner Moonkin (in pictures)
3. Wow.com – Balance 101
4. Elitist Jerks – Moonkin PvE DPS (3.3.3)


Once you understand the rotation (and you will, if you visit the above) and you have your keybinds set up, you can spend time on the target dummies, practising.


The importance of a good Eclipse mod

A moonkin’s DPS rests quite heavily on how well we perform our rotation, specifically within eclipses. It’s absolutely essential that you have a good mod that alerts you to your eclipse procs and cooldown, so that you can time your spells properly.

I use Power Auras to do this – as well as to let me know when my long cooldowns are available. Please excuse the mess, here’s my work-in-progress:



Lunar Eclipse (cast Starfire now!)



Solar Eclipse (cast Wrath now!)



So as you can see in the above pictures, I can very clearly see my debuffs (Faerie Fire, Moonfire, Insect swarm) and their timers. The treant and starfall icons are actually Power Auras indicators that only show when I am able to use those abilities. Basically, they say “I’m ready – use me!”

But the most important part is the eclipse indicator. Now, most people prefer a HUD (heads-up-display) style for their eclipse (see Kae’s examples at Dreambound), so that they can keep an eye on their character’s position (and any fires, etc) while they watch their procs.

Personally, I just can’t seem to get used to it. Plus, I find that with a lot going on around my character, I can sometimes miss indicators. And I’ve never had any problems watching frames AND keeping myself out of bad stuff, so I don’t worry too much about having all of my information in the centre of my screen. So instead I decided to put a big, pretty indicator right next to my target frame.

Again, this is entirely personal preference (and it may even change over time!)


The difference these things can make

I think I’m doing pretty good, so far. I started out doing about 4300DPS on the dummies, being under the hit cap, wearing resto T10 and a healer weapon, no glyphs, fumbling with my new keybinds, and mis-timing my eclipse rotations pretty badly.

With some tweaking, a few gear changes (and gems) and some practice, I was doing 6800-7200. I think that’s pretty good so far, considering how much resto gear I still have (and how much crit I don’t have, ugh).

The numbers aren’t really important, they will vary according to your entry level gear – I was pretty lucky to jump in with 25man ICC resto gear, which acts as a pretty good crutch until you can gear “properly”. I really just wanted to put those numbers in there to show how much of a jump you can make in DPS if you tweak your gear, improve your UI, and practice your rotations until you get the hang of it.

I know I said I’d never be a Moonkin – I never really enjoyed it before. But I’ve never raided as a Moonkin before either – it’s quite fun!

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Here’s a fun mini-post.

Time to fess up: What have you learnt – and then slapped yourself on the forehead because it was so dopey that you didn’t already know?

Here’s mine – today I learned that if you are converting 100 badges of Triumph down to Heroism, you don’t have to shift click and then click all the way through to 100 Conquest.. then click all the way through to 100 Valor, then alllllllllll the way through to 100 Heroism (zzzzzz).. you can just click in the little space for the number, and then type in the number you want to convert.


*scrunches face up*

Now it’s your turn to confess, so I don’t feel so bad!

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I don’t often write RL stuff in this blog. I’m a fairly private person.. but also I don’t want to clutter up the blog with stuff that most people probably don’t care about. But this one has pictures of baby animals!



Anyway – apparently, I have high blood pressure.

When I was told that, I immediately though (fondly) of my guild.

These days, I don’t get much time to do the stuff in WoW that helps me to relax. I’m a bit of a weirdo – I love doing daily quests, grinding for rep, flying in circles for hours and farming herbs or ore. Or just wetting a line, fishing up some food for the bank.

With two jobs, progression raiding, blogging (I’m trying hard to be more consistent this year!), looking after the guild forums and website, selling our BOEs and restocking the gbank, attending to messages and requests, trying to get my heroics done and whatnot.. I often just don’t get the time. I miss it, and I think it’s probably starting to take its toll on me. I don’t have much time to myself anymore.

So I’d like to introduce you to my de-stressing companions: my ratties.

I have 26 rats. Not really by choice; I bought 3 lovely girls from a very friendly but very ignorant pet store, who must have kept the girls housed with boys (before I bought them). A week later, I had 3 lovely girls plus a litter of 11; a week after that, 3 lovely girls plus a litter of 11 plus a litter of 12.

3 + 11 + 12 = quite a few.



My own horde


Note: please, no comments about snakes, I will delete them. It’s not original and it’s not funny.


I’ve had rats since I was about 15. I had a break from them for about a year, but missed them too much (and so went to buy the three girls). They are just fantastic little pets – they each have their own personality, their own little quirks. No two are the same, and I love them. Whenever I feel stressed or sad, they are always there to cuddle. Or to distract me from my work or WoW stresses by destroying something. Bless them. Stress dissolves when I play with them, or when they curl up in my collar and sleep.


Meet Peg

Now, don’t tell the others I said this.. but I have a favourite. Her name is Peg.

When she was a few days old, her mother (being a new mum, and inexperienced), picked her up awkwardly and bit her hand by accident (or so I assume, because she’s not a mean rat). I didn’t notice this bite at first, and sadly it got infected. I did a daily head count to make sure they were all there and had full tummies.. and I found poor little Peg with a grey hand.

To cut a long story short, being too young for medication or surgery, all I could do was treat it with antiseptic, soak it a little, and see if she survived the infection. I wasn’t at all concerned about her having only 3 legs, because I’ve had rats with missing limbs (or tails) before, and they learn to adapt – especially if they are young. I was much more concerned that being only a few days old, such a nasty infection could easily kill her.

But she survived that night, and the next, and the next. She would womble around on her swollen leg just fine. Eventually the hand just kinda shrivelled up like a little peg leg (hence the name).



YARRRRRR.


One day when she was a few weeks old, her peg leg wiggled like a loose tooth, and then dropped off, leaving a little rounded pink stump.



Peg today, at 4 weeks


Now she’s 4 weeks old, and she’s a gorgeous little thing – but trouble. She plays the sympathy card all the time, looking up with those big wet eyes and you can tell she’s saying “…but I only have one hand! (sadface)” to try to sucker you in. Don’t be fooled.


So there you go – these are the guys who keep me sane when raiding is crazy and life is stressful.

If you see me getting around in-game with Whiskers or my giant sewer rat out, and maybe wearing my pirate outfit, it’s because I’m totally RPing RL – probably with a Peg on my shoulder.

<:3, ,)~


PS: Sindy tips coming soon - I just can't post them yet because our rival guilds are still trying to get her down, and I want to keep our head start on Arthas. Don't want to give them insider secrets!

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Sindragosa tips coming soon!

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urg…

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