So Sanguinary.. isn't really working out. Raids starting at 9pm are definitely good, but ending at 1am.. not so much. I think 8-830 is still my ideal raid start time, with 12 the ideal finish time (or earlier! :D). My daughter has just started school, so I have to get up early Mondays, Tuesdays & Wednesdays, which means late night raiding on Sunday/Monday is no good for me anymore. Sanguinary has only been doing Ulduar on Wednesday & Thursday nights, and 25man Naxx on Monday nights, purpose being to gear up people for Ulduar. They are very pushy about people only bringing mains to the Naxx runs so that they can smash through it fast, which didn't end up happening the one time I went (I declined the invite to the one this week, using the excuse of computer issues, which is partly true). I really don't want to be obliged to go to Naxx anyway, I've done it so many times that I hate the place (apart from Heigan, which is always fun :P) and I'm not gonna get any upgrades from there.

Also.. the Ulduar raids with Sanguinary are painful. Horribly painful. I joined the guild thinking that I would be the only disc priest & was looking forward to a refreshing absence of holy pallies. So I was slightly horrified when I turned up for my second raid with them and saw three holy pallies and another disc priest in the raid group. Do these people not understand that holy pallies & disc priests are tank healers & ideally you should only have two of them? I suggested I go holy for the raid, and was told to stay disc. Cue much eyerolling. We proceeded to wipe on XT several times, and I just respecced anyway. Nobody actually noticed until later when somebody posted the heal metre, and the raid leader (or someone, in this particular raid there was nobody really "leading") said "oh, you're holy". >.> I rock that heal metre as holy. xD

I was impressed when we managed to down Auriaya, using a very bad and drawn out strat (only just beat the timer). Auriaya is as far as the guild has gotten through Ulduar. We made several attempts on Thorim, which failed miserably. I asked the other disc priest to help me shield spam in the arena, they ignored me. I tried to give suggestions on what we could do to improve our strategy (for starters, more healers in the tunnel than out in the arena is a terribad idea), I was ignored. This pissed me off. I don't mind being in progression runs, in fact I really enjoy them, but not when I can see that we're doing stuff obviously wrong & when I point it out I'm flatout ignored, and we continue to wipe over & over with the same bad strat.

I had PC issues last week (overheating & switching off in the middle of boss encounters), and hence couldn't raid, which was refreshing. I played around with my alts & had much more fun than I would have had in Raid of Badness. I think I decided then that I want to go a bit more casual for a while. I'd still really like to raid occasionally (I'd love to see a Yogg kill & try some hardmodes) but not so scheduled, and preferably not with bads.

Meanwhile, I'm having so much fun with my alts. Dollfase the mage is currently level 71 and questing in Borean Tundra. She's cute, she looks like a little bee on her yellow & black striped mechanostrider. xD Mages are a pretty powerful class I've found, but a bit boring to level. All I do really is spam frostbolt. :P

Zkay the DK (named after my DK friend from Cabal, Tkay) surprised me by being extremely fun to play. I adore playing her cos she smashes through everything so fast! :D And for once I don't have to run & hide from horde, lol. :P I'm still bad at PvP but at least I have a fighting chance now. ^^; The playstyle is so different from other classes I've played (casters), which makes her more fun & interesting. I kinda wanna tank on her. :D At the moment she's level 70 & in Howling Fjord.

I'm levelling mining & jewelcrafting (both around 350-375 currently) on Zkay. While levelling mining in Nagrand I noticed I was getting a lot of Kurenai rep killing ogres in the caves, and after I finished levelling mining in the area I decided to continue on for a bit & get to exalted. I got Zkay her tan talbuk today. xD On Dollfase I'm doing herbing & alchemy (I've got her herbing up but haven't invested much time in alchemy yet). I spent a huge amount of money levelling Zkay's jc. >.> But hopefully I will eventually turn it into a profitable profession. I made a lot of money levelling inscription on Panacea recently, farming all the mats myself. I'm still saving for Panacea's epic flyer so she can farm herbs faster.. but after the amount I spent on Zkay's jc it's gonna take a while I think. :(

p.s. in other news, I broke up with Damager. We're still friends. :) He's going to take a break from the game I think.. boo. :(

I've spent the last several weeks raiding with Twisted Faith. It's been pretty good. Managed to raid with them right up to Yogg - I was there for their first kill of Vezax, but we didn't manage to get Yogg down. I got a lot of nice gear upgrades, mostly from the 10 man Ulduar runs I did with them, plus a few from 25 man (only tier gear I got was t8 gloves from 10 man). Last time I checked I was 21st priest on the server, but of course that's just based on ilevel of gear.

I gquit Twisted Faith last Friday night. The reasoning behind it was complicated, and more so because I was very upset when I did it. I don't really want to go into it, suffice to say that I had become very paranoid about what the higher ups in the guild were saying about me behind my back. I felt extremely guilty about it also, because I was their last raiding priest, and I knew I was screwing them up for the next couple of raids. But I just couldn't stay any longer in that kind of environment. I play this game to enjoy myself & relax in the evening after stressful days of looking after my toddler, I just don't have the energy to deal with extra stress from people in game.

Panadoll's been guildless for the last few days, which was very freeing - I felt like a huge weight was lifted when I left TF - but still felt weird. I don't particularly like being guildless. I had a look at other high end guilds that I could apply to, but they either weren't looking for disc priests, or their raid times were bad for me. One thing that has been good since leaving TF, is that I don't have to stress about getting my daughter to bed in time to get online for raids. I've been able to relax & draw out her bedtime routine a bit, which has been really good for both of us.

So I was in Ironforge last night, on my mage alt Dollfase (now in a guild I created a little while ago on my DK alt, called Hiding On My Alt), when I saw a recruitment ad for a guild called Sanguinary. They were looking to recruit for 25 Ulduar, and their raid times were 3 days a week, 9pm - 1am. So perfect for Panadoll, cos then I wouldn't have to stress about getting to raids on time & I'd have an extra day in the week to level alts & muck around. I logged over to Panadoll & whispered the guy to ask how far they were progressed through Ulduar. He said they had 6 bosses down. Which, tbh, is not great. A big step down from TF. I didn't reply to him, and then he whispered me to say he'd armoryed me & asked if I was interested in joining because they could really use a disc priest. I replied that I'd be interested if they had a MT healing spot, and asked him if they had many holy pallies raiding. He said there was a lack of raiding holy pallies in the guild. That... kind of sold me, lol. So I joined Sanguinary.

It feels weird to go from a high end raiding guild to a guild still progressing through Ulduar bosses that I see now as relatively easy (they're up to Auriaya/Hodir etc) but I think this will be a good change of pace for me. Damager won't be raiding for a few weeks, as he's in the process of moving (to Sydney ^_^) and when he finally does start playing again, he says he's going to leave TF as well (he's had a lot of problems with the guild also). So I think when he gets back into the game, I'll probably try to find a more high end guild home with him. But for now, Sanguinary is comfy & relaxed. I'm liking the guild so far. We'll see how it goes when I raid with them for the first time tomorrow.

Wow it's been ages since I updated this journal. I think I stopped updating because I became very busy with raiding with Delusion for a while. Panadoll geared up heaps, became one of Delusion's top healers & priest class leader, and cleared all 10 and 25 man content - with some difficulty, because Delusion was never particularly organised and had a lot of bads. Actually, I don't think Panadoll has actually gotten the 10 man Maly achievement yet. 0_0 (I did eventually work out my problems with third phase Maly btw.) She's pretty much as geared as she can be now & ready for Ulduar, almost full tier 7.5, with the exception of helm, and she looks like this:



Unfortunately, I had a lot of problems with Delusion, and I wasn't the only one. There was heaps of drama, mainly caused by the terrible way the guild was run and the actions of the guild leader and her boyfriend, and after finding out something particularly nasty I finally gquit. Damager - the mage and raid leader of Delusion I mentioned before in this journal and who I'm now in a relationship with <3 - left soon after, throwing the whole guild into turmoil because he was really keeping the whole thing together. Lots of other people also gquit. Damager and I applied to join Twisted Faith, a much more organised & progressed guild on our server. Damager was accepted into the guild almost immediately. It took me a little while longer, because although I was told my guild application was excellent it took a while for the heals leader to find time to talk to me. Finally he asked me to log on to their vent to have a chat. The first question I was asked was, "why disc?" Twisted Faith wasn't actually looking for disc priests, they were looking for holy priests, and they asked me if I'd be willing to respec. I think I managed to convince them to give me a chance to show them what I could do as disc, because I am extremely confident with my heals as disc - raiding with Delusion I was often second or third on heal metres despite my single target healing discness. They seemed to like me anyway and offered me a raiding spot with their guild, which I very happily accepted. Shortly therafter, I was invited to their 25man Naxx as a replacement (usually people in the guild have to sign up in advance for raids). I was very nervous because I wanted to impress them, and I don't think I did too badly. Their healers were much better than Delusion's healers though and although I kept up with them through most of the raid I started losing concentration a bit towards the end and dropped down to 5th overall on the heal metre. I was extremely happy though, to clear 25 Naxx in one night - Delusion only ever managed it over two nights. I also got my tier 7.5 chest out of the run. :)

Today I was logged onto an alt I've been levelling with Damager (and occasionally other friends' alts), a little 20-something mage called Dollfase, when Twisted Faith's raid leader whispered me to ask if I'd be interested in taking my shadowpriest to the guild's 25 Naxx alt run that night. I told him I'd really like to but Panacea is hardly geared for 10man Naxx. He said that he didn't really care about gear, he just wanted someone experienced who could MC on Instructor (which I had successfully done on Panadoll the night before). So I told him I'd give it a go. I think I was even more nervous than I was raiding with them on Panadoll, because Panacea's gear was so bad, not gemmed, not enchanted, no glyphs, and a really bad rotation that I'd been meaning to work on for ages. So I fixed everything I could, worked out a new rotation which I tested extensively on dummies & dueling Damager, and ended up going to the raid semi-confident but still nervous. I actually did far far better than I thought I would - I never actually realised how powerful my aoe (Mind Sear) is. I think I ended up 6th or 7th on dps overall. I really enjoyed myself too - dps is much less stressful than healing (though I will always love healing the best ^_^). Panacea also got three new awesome pieces of gear - Digested Silken Robes from Maexxna, Touch of Horror from Gothik, and Mantle of the Corrupted from Four Horsemen. Panacea now looks like this:



We stopped the run after the DK quarter, because it was 1am and the raid (being an alt run) had gone on for far too long already. We'll be picking it up again tomorrow.. should be fun ^_^ I'm liking gearing up again. :)