Screenshot Saturday

Well I don’t know where they come from
But they sure do come
I hope they’re comin’ for me
And I don’t know how they do it
But they sure do it good
I hope they do it for free

They give me cat scratch fever

Post Patch Ramblings

I haven’t had much of a chance to dig into the game since the patch hit on Tuesday. When I have been logged in I’ve been doing Noblegarden stuff on alts and haven’t spent much time on Elfi this week. My time has been limited because I have been volunteering for overtime at work and even though it’s a desk job, it’s exhausting. It has also affected my blogging and things have been a little weak around here, sorry about that. Today isn’t going to be much different. I have been able to keep up with my feed reader during breaks at work so I have been reading about the patch and the hotfixes and trying to keep up with everything that way. I have an in-game event planned for tonight so hopefully I’ll be able to spend more time logged in than I have been recently.

I will say that last night I did spend about 30 minutes on Elfi doing some of the new troll quests and the quest Defend The Rebel Camp damn near made me cry. I don’t know if it’s bugged, or I was doing it wrong, or if it was supposed to suck total ass… but it totally sucked ass. You have to defend the camp for 3 minutes and as soon as you accept the quest you draw instant aggro. And before you get that mob down, you already have another one on you. It’s constant, never-ending aggro from multiple mobs until you die and even though I was in my dps spec and shifted into Boomkin, I wasn’t lasting more than 2 minutes. Because combat never ends I didn’t get any chance to eat or drink and because I was in my dps spec I didn’t have my action bar setup good enough to heal myself efficiently. Although I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have worked anyway. I died 4 or 5 times before I finally just skirted the edge of the aggro radius and after I fought off the first few mobs I just shadowmelded for the remaining 2 minutes. Feel free to tell me if I was indeed doing it wrong.

Aside from the patch, I’ve been anxiously waiting for the new WoW Remote App to hit the Android Market so I can haz remote guild chat. I’ve been a subscriber to the remote auction house for a few months now so I was very excited to hear about this awesome new feature. I officially downloaded it at like 02:00am Wednesday morning and every time I’ve logged into guild chat…. no one’s been on in either of my guilds. But one day I’m sure remote guild chat’s going to be really awesome. One day.

I’ve been slowly packing up all my stuff to prepare for my move coming up soon and that is impacting me more than I expected. My desk is barren, my room is barren. I feel sort of naked and uncomfortable there. I’m on a temporary desk and it’s not the best setup for my back and wri….hey, wait a minute. I’m not normally a whiner – when did this happen? Okay, let’s turn this thread around right now. I’ve been slowly packing up all my stuff in anticipation of moving soon. I can’t wait to get everything settled in my new place. It’s going to be awesome and I won’t have to worry about being in anyones way with my computer or bothering anyone as I talk (or actually not talk) in Vent. A whole place to myself is going to be fantastic. 4 weeks to go and all the rules are my own once again. Woot!

Lastly, and probably most rambly, my goals for this weekend are to cram in my 7 heroics, re-do my resto tree to maximize my longevity and mana, work on finishing up some reps that should have been done already and buy heirlooms for my alts (inexcusable that I haven’t done that yet). I also have some real blog posts in mind that I need to line up. Be on the lookout for an upcoming interview with someone I consider a WoW blog celebrity.

P.S. Can you tell from the picture above how much I am loving my new pc and it’s delicious new video card. Ultra view distance, ultra environment detail, ultra water, ultra ground clutter and I still had 60 fps when I took that pic. So awesome.

The One Where I’m A Little Bit OCD

I’m sure an outside observer would tell you I do some weird things and have some odd habits, but I don’t really notice myself being too far out of the norm. I’m pretty chill and agreeable; I’m flexible and adaptable… until it comes to WoW, that is. For some reason, when I log in I go a little bit OCD.

Mailbox Maniac Here in the real world, I don’t give a rat’s ass about receiving physical snail mail. In fact, I am one of those people who postmen hate because I go so many days without checking the mailbox, they run out of room and have to rubber band it all together and actually lay it on my doorstep. In my defense, it’s almost all junk mail and catalogs and papers I do not subscribe to or want. I’m not ignoring it because it’s junk, I just go days without the mailbox ever crossing my mind. Until I login. I am absolutely obsessed with in-game mail. I have the mail icon set to show “always” on my sexy map and the minute I see the envelope is there, I go immediately to the nearest mailbox to see what is waiting. And I always log out parked near a mailbox so that it can be the first thing I check when I login. I cannot get enough in-game mail; I’m disappointed if I don’t get any at login. I don’t know how I ended up on such opposite ends of the mailbox spectrum, but I doubt I change either habit anytime soon.

Domino Dictator The addon I use for my action bars is Dominos and even though my alts all have different classes and roles, I absolutely have to make all the bars the exact same as every other character in terms of position and columns and general scale. Obviously I fill the bars with different spells and items (or do I?), but I just can’t function if my screen doesn’t look the same every time I login. Sexy map is exactly the same across all toons, my bag add-on looks exactly the same across all of them, the chat windows have to be the same size and opacity… yeah, it’s really OCD.

All-Around Anal Once I have my bars all looking the same it’s still not quite enough. I still have to make sure my hearthstone is in the very last position in the bottom of my bag and then in the same position on my action bar for each character. I have to have the same number of stacks of food and drink in my bags, in the slots right next to the hearthstone, and they have to be in the same spots on my bar. My mounts are located in the same spot, my cast bar is located in the same spot, my primary spells have to be in the same key order (5, 3, 2, 6, 4), etc. And if you think that all sounds bad enough, you should experience the stress that is bank organization. That shit is not pretty.

Screenshot Saturday

The One Where Elfi Raps

I apologize in advance for what you are about to hear.

Dear Mr. Bipolar Dude

Dear Mr. Bipolar Dude,

My guild is fairly small and with all of us living in different time zones and working different hours, it can be difficult to gather up an “all guild” heroic run. But you are a friend of one of my fellow officers so when I logged in and got an immediate invite from you and 3 of my guildies who were partied up and ready to queue for a heroic, I was very excited.

My main spec is Resto but because of the difficulty of heroics combined with the asshattery of most players in a pug, I generally queue as dps. But of course I agreed to heal for you guys, it’s basically an all-guild run. You aren’t in the guild, but we hear about you all the time from the mutual friend we have; we have even ran a few of the classic raids with you lately. So while I haven’t actually spoken to you much, I feel like I can trust you to not be an asshat.

Clearly I didn’t read you right. Or did I? The heroic was not fun, thanks mainly to you. But while you were completely pissing me off with your behavior and the way you were talking in party chat, you were also whispering me and being nice and funny and offering me advice. What. The. Hell. Dude? I’m going to guess it’s because I’m female that you were trying to charm me privately; or maybe because our mutual friend told you to be nice to me. It was bizarre and I still honestly don’t know if I like you or not.

Of course, whether I like you or not has nothing to do with the fact that I will not allow you to be in a group with me again and speak to my guildies the way you did. The tank that night was one of Azzah’s alts and Azzah is one of the most knowledgeable players you will find in-game. He plays both factions, he’s an altoholic, he loves to theorycraft, the guy is a damn genius. As the tank, he was more than capable of guiding us through the instance and making any pertinent decisions. But he’s also a nice guy and when it became instantly obvious that you were going to be in charge of things, he kept his mouth shut and just tanked his ass off. He did not need you to tell him when to pull and where to pull, etc. but he let you do so.

The hunter we had with us is new to level 85, new to heroics and likes our guild because we support him and help him learn without feeling like a failure. Like all toons in WoW, his character has a name. We all call him by his name when we speak to him. It’s the way decent human beings talk to other human beings. When you started out saying things like “hunter, trap blue” and “hunter, stand here”, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you were just typing in shorthand to be more efficient. But you never stopped calling him hunter, you never once used his name, and when I started seeing things like “HUNTER DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW TO USE YOUR TRAPS?” and “HUNTER!!! Why don’t you have a better pet?” I became more than a little pissed off. The usually quiet Elfi who hates to stir the pot or cause any bad feelings in any way found herself typing “Pel has a name and we would all appreciate it if you would call him by his name” into party chat. I was shocked I did it, but it was important to me to call you out on this. You actually ignored my statement, didn’t respond to it in any way. However, a few minutes later you initiated a vote to kick Pel from our group and the reason you entered was “jerk”. The vote didn’t pass…. did you forget that everyone but you was from the same guild? Poor little Pel was doing nothing more than trying to learn the fights and having you yell at him repeatedly. How exactly does that make him the jerk? We were only a little over halfway through the instance when Pel told us he needed to log off. I haven’t had the chance to talk to him since, but I have a sneaking feeling he left because he couldn’t take anymore of your abuse.

As for me, one of the first things I said as we zoned in was “I’ve only dps’d this heroic once and I’ve never healed it. You will have to tell me if there’s any special mechanics on boss fights”. I thought I was talking to the tank, my buddy, because I hadn’t yet realized you were gonna take over. Either way, it’s a pretty simple statement to understand. No, I do not spend time studying boss fights for heroics. You can judge me for that if you want to, but I have too much other stuff going on in my life. I do read up on gear and enchants and class changes, etc. and I read a whole list of WoW blogs and WoW Insider on a daily basis, so I’m not a complete moron who needs my hand held through everything. Maybe if I were pugging every day I would consider studying boss fights but when I’m with guildmates it’s just a quick “this guy casts flaming cocktails, you will need to jump over them and then run back to the bar” and off we go. (Mmmm… flaming cocktails. Now I want a drink. I’m pretty sure if someone was throwing flaming cocktails at me, I would not avoid them.) But you just ran up to each boss and yelled “PULL NOW” at the tank and didn’t bother to find out if the rest of us knew the fight or not.

We got pretty lucky through the first few that there wasn’t anything too difficult about the encounters; but eventually we got to a few bosses where a bit of instruction was necessary. After the first wipe you said “YOU HAVE TO JUMP WHEN HE CASTS FLAMING COCKTAILS” and so we all jumped at the right time… and then wiped again after jumping. You got mad and said “AFTER YOU JUMP YOU HAVE TO RUN BACK TO THE BAR”, so we all jumped and ran to the bar, jumped and ran to the bar, jumped and ran to the bar and killed the boss. Thanks for wasting our time asshole. You could have said both sentences before the fight or at least both of them after the first wipe. Also, you need to see about fixing your caps lock button before I rip mine off of my keyboard, track you down irl and shove it up your nose.

Two hours later and we finally get it done. I’ve never been so eager to disband a group in my life. I can’t even explain to you how absolutely enraged you made me. Being disrespectful of people, going batshit insane on everyone for every tiny little mistake. You even yelled at me to “heal faster and get that poison off of everyone”… have I mentioned yet that you are a Boomkin and can abolish poison with the exact same effing spell I use? And all the while you had been whispering me and being friendly. I’ve never experienced anything like it. You even continued whispering me after the game and we had a nice little chat. Part of my brain was chuckling at the jokes you were whispering while the other part of my brain was picturing me stabbing you in the eye. Worst part is, since we are both really good friends with a mutual person I am quite sure I will be seeing you around more and more. I sure wish I knew whether I liked you or not.

The One Where New Things Have Arrived

You guys, my new pc freaking rocks! Everything shipped right on time and my friend/guildie Azzah graciously came over on Friday night and built the shit out of this thing. It was a beautiful process all the way through. I ordered pizza for us and then set about annoying the crap out of him by touching everything and snapping pictures in his face. After it was fired up and the Windows 7 install was completed, we copied over my WoW folder and prepared to behold the magic. I logged into the game, cranked the video settings up and hovered over SW laughing maniacally at my new and improved frame rate. It’s so unbelievable. And I am now using a 23″ widescreen monitor so there’s a whole lot more of the unbelievable to see.

But that’s not the only thing that had Elfi grinning from ear to ear this weekend. When I logged in and checked my mailbox on Friday, I found an Elementium Hammer waiting for me. A wonderful gentleman, from the growing-in-popularity guild Eff The Ineffible, very kindly volunteered to craft me this weapon and I am so appreciative of him doing so. I am leaving his name out simply because I didn’t ask him if I could publicize it and he may not want the attention. It looks pretty bad ass and though I know it’s not best in slot, I am so slowly gaining Valor Points, it will be the best I have for a very long time. I ran Heroic Vortex Pinnacle with it this weekend and I was very happy with the increase in my healing. I still daydream about how far along I might be if my guild hadn’t broken, but at least I am slowly making progress. Here’s what I currently look like with the new mace.

And speaking of looks, this weekend Morena picked up a new helm while questing. She is now a Worgen who wears a wolf head on her wolf head. Lol.

Screenshot Saturday

I had never been an altoholic before Cataclysm so it had never dawned on me that leveling up multiple characters would mean I’d get sick of seeing this guy all over again. I never got the chance to kill him on Elfi, but I’ve got a Death Knight here now and a feral druid who will be here in a few levels and I hope at some point I am able to kick some Fel Reaver ass.