I've been really busy with real life stuff lately (preparing for a huge gathering at my house on Christmas day - there'll be 20 people there all up, and I'm doing most of the cooking o_o) so I haven't been playing WoW as much as usual. Guild raiding seems to have wound down a bit too with lots of people away doing holiday stuff. Despite this I had a more productive evening than usual, for a non-raid night. I usually don't like doing heroics, but I'll go if a friend wants me to come heal. So I went to heroic Nexus for Verd tonight. I was struck by how much easier it was than the first time I healed heroic Nexus. It was pretty much cake, though the rest of our group was kinda rude and a bit noobish. Anyways, I frapsed us killing Telestra, just.. cos I can xD



A while afterwards, Yuge got me into a 25-man VoA. It was the first 25-man I've done. I'm a bit undergeared but it was still easy with lots of other good healers. It was fun, though I was at the bottom of the healing metres.. to be expected due to my gear and discyness :D

I spent the afternoon today doing all my dailies - been neglecting them a bit lately, as it takes me so fucking long to do the entire round of them. wtb ports between all the daily spots. >< I had all evening open after that, as I'm not raiding again til Wednesday. Seems I'm really considered a "core raider" now in the guild, though that's probably due to Delusion's lack of healers more than anything else. I'm getting heaps better at raid healing now though, cos of my recent upgrades. And I really enjoy it more than anything else in the game right now. ^_^ It's more fun than healing 5-mans by far.

Anyways, I was going to do normal Oculus with Yuge, as it's the only dungeon I haven't done yet, and once I do it I can make my awesome Wispcloak. But Yuge had problems logging on (which he sorted out later) so I mucked around with Winter Veil achievements. :D I went over to Searing Gorge to do the Metzen quest, and afterwards I started thinking.. "since I'm here, I wanna get the Leeroy achievement :D" I looked up how to do that, and found out that I needed a key to get into UBRS, which I would have to get doing LBRS. >< So I decided to solo LBRS :D

LBRS was fun! Never been there before. I got hopelessly lost in there for a while, but eventually found my way through, though it took me a little while. Probably the most annoying thing was the poison debuff I got from the spider boss, which would not go away (immobilised me randomly for 10 seconds at a time).. I found out I had to go to an npc in Burning Steppes who would "milk" me o_O to get rid of it. Then I headed over to Dustwallow Marsh and finished off the quest chain to get the UBRS key. :D While I was over in Kalimdor, I decided to finish off a quest I got from an object that dropped off the world dragon in Duskwood which I killed with Verd a while ago. The quest text said to find a druid in Cenarion Hold or Moonglade.. it was only after I headed over to Cenarion Hold that I found out the npc I had to turn it in to was in Moonglade. >< Why put Cenarion Hold in the quest text at all?? beh. Anyways I got 2000 rep with Cenarion Circle after I turned it in. ^_^

Oculus tomorrow, hopefully - depends on shutdown time. I would really like to get my Wispcloak before Naxx on Wednesday...

Panadoll has started including more dailies in her daily tour of Northrend, namely Knights of the Ebon Blade dailies in Icecrown. I only recently discovered that Ebon Blade has a rather nice healing belt that I want (need Exalted to get it), so I finished up the small quest chain to start the dailies. There are 6 of them, and a lot of the mobs you need to kill drop frostweave cloth and greens, which is great for my finances/tailoring/enchanting. I'm making over 200g a day from dailies now, which is not too shabby. Meanwhile I've only just discovered the awesomeness of armor vellums. Why did nobody tell me about these before?? lol. So much enchanting mats wasted before now. ><

Bored in the evening (Yuge got into a h UK group) I logged over to Panacea and pottered around a bit. Questing is less annoying because I know all the quests and I'm just doing whatever ones I come across that are fun, since I'm not going for quest achievements, but they're a little boring as well. So I decided to go to UK. Xan from SotM came along (she's 76 now) and we pugged the rest - a ret pally, a t6 geared shammy healer, and a little 70 DK tank who admitted at the start that they didn't have much tanking gear. Awesome heals made up for that though, even though the shammy was a bit full of himself. Panacea got an upgrade to replace her Kara helm & a nice quest reward ring. And omg. I've missed dpsing instances. >< Sooo much less stressful. The DK wasn't too bad with the dps either, and I was second after him on the dps metre. I think I'm actually much better at dpsing than healing, at least in 5-mans.. and I enjoy dpsing 5-mans so much more. But I far prefer healing in raids, so.. beh. I <3 both my priests. ^_^

I'm calming down a bit from the "must be awesome right now!" mindset I had when I first hit 80 and didn't know wtf I needed to do next. Today I did Wyrmrest, Frenzyheart and Sons of Hodir dailies, then Soffscia, a friend of my brother's and prot warrior in Twelve, asked if I could come heal the last boss in heroic Utgarde Keep. I went along - thinking heroic UK shouldn't be too bad - and although we wiped on the first attempt, we managed it on the second. It was hard though. Afterwards we went to do heroic Nexus. It was also pretty difficult. Not in my "comfort" healing range.. but we did manage to clear the whole thing, eventually. From the beginning the hunter in the group kept predicting that we would definitely wipe on the boss that flings you up in the air & creates copies of herself, so I was really nervous when we got to her. But I worked hard at it and managed to keep everyone up - we one shot it. We wiped several times on the last two bosses, but it was mainly due to people not keeping to the strategy I think. The final boss was the hardest. We only finally managed it when I really concentrated on dispelling the frost debuff on the tank as much as I could, as well as keeping myself debuffed & alive and everyone else up (cos everyone takes damage) - not easy at all. I'm still undergeared for heroics. Need to do more normal instances first I think, and maybe get some rep gear. I did get several good things from h Nex though.. Amulet of Dazzling Light, Gloves of the Crystal Gardener and Cleric's Linen Shoes. I won the boots with a need roll of 100 and got the Needy achievement. :D

Later on, I went to normal Violet Hold (first time there) with Death, Yuge and Verd (+ random). It was super easy healing. Afterwards Verd left, but we decided to continue on to normal Gundrak (my first time there also) with a couple of pugs. I was within my comfort zone of healing there.. it wasn't too easy or too hard. But Yuge was "facerolling" as he puts it and our pugs weren't the best. So I'm pretty sure I can find the same comfort zone in higher level instances, if that makes sense. :)

I had a pretty crappy day today, but learned some important lessons & have some plans to improve my game.

Still feeling bad about not being prepared in the slightest for Naxx last night, I didn't log on til very late in the day, and then just hung around SW levelling my professions. Until a guildie asked me to come heal heroic Occulus. Stupidly I agreed to go. There was some kind of comment about me from another guildie in the group which I assumed referred to my bad performance in Naxx, so I already had a bit of nervous tension going when the run started. As we were clearing to the first boss, I started thinking that I wouldn't be able to do this. I died once on the trash, which wasn't a good sign, and I was having major issues keeping up with healing the tank (let alone everyone else). I thought at first that it was because I was getting some lag, as well as the fact that I was feeling sluggish and down about my healing, but on the first boss it became painfully clear that I was far, far too undergeared for this. I just could not keep up with healing the tank, as well as the rest of the party - I was working my ass off, but my heals just weren't cutting it. The rest of the party could plainly see that I was doing terribly, and after several wipes I told them to find another healer because I just couldn't do it. The most embarrassing thing was the fact that they (two of them anyways) began talking down to me at this point, suggesting ridiculously easy things for me to go do & implying that I was a bad healer, rather than undergeared. I got the feeling that they did this rather than the jocular poking-fun that they usually do with other guildies, because I'm a girl. That's the impression I got anyway. It made me feel pretty fucking crap.

I logged for a while to do RL stuff, then later put myself on DND and headed over to Icecrown to quest. Someone on wow_ladies mentioned a good quest reward from the "ring of blood type event" in Icecrown, that apparently replaced some of their t6 gear. I did some research and found the quest chain I needed to do to get this, and spent a couple of hours working through it. I got a fair way through the chain before shutdown. I quite like Icecrown, but man I have decided that I *hate* questing as deep holy. Tomorrow I plan to respec deep disc - I really don't care if Twelve wants me to be deep disc or not. As far as I know there are no other deep disc priests in the guild, so maybe I'll be useful. CoH has not lived up to my expectations, so I'm not fussed about losing it. I really did enjoy being disc while levelling and got used to it.. so I'm looking forward to the respec. I just hope that I'll still be able to heal 5-mans effectively. I don't really see why I shouldn't be able to though.

So my plan for tomorrow is.. respec deep disc, finish the quest chain in Icecrown, level professions a little more. And then in the evening maybe find a group for heroic Nexus (there's a mace I want from there) or a group for one of the higher level or level 80 normal instances. Trying to do Naxx & heroic Occulus right after hitting 80 was a stupid mistake. My brother told me afterwards that h Occulus is supposed to be the hardest heroic. -_- I think I got duped by everyone in the guild going on about how the game has been so nerfed, and everything at 80 is supposedly so easy.

It's been a crazy week of levelling. >< I was aiming for a level a day, which I managed to do, and last night Panadoll finally dinged level 80. ^o^ ( ding screenshot )

I'm pretty pleased that I managed to get to 80 in just over a week. I really would like to secure a raid spot for myself. Twelve has already started raiding, but I think it's just 10-man raiding.. I'm still not familiar with how the end-game raids work, but I assume there are 10-man & 25-man versions of all the raid instances, a bit like AQ? I'm also not familiar yet with the level 80 instances, or the higher level ones like Gundrak. I've only done Utgarde Keep, Nexus, Drak'Tharon Keep (probably my favourite so far), Azjol-Nerub and Ahn'kahet (which I wanna do again because I didn't finish a quest in there). I was so focused on questing that I didn't do anymore instances after that. The way I quested was Borean - Howling Fjord - Grizzly Hills - Dragonblight - Sholazar Basin - Zul'Drak - Stormpeaks. I was trying to get all the questing achievements in every zone, but gave up in Zul'Drak, because I was 79 by then and wasn't getting good xp from that zone. Stormpeaks was fun :D But my favourite zone is probably a toss up between Sholazar and Grizzly.

The first thing I did after hitting 80 was head to SW and respec. I respecced disc to level, which was fun & definitely made things a bit easier. But it did make healing a little more difficult (I had a bad experience trying to keep up with healing a death knight tank ><) and I like being a holy priest.. so I respecced back. I did some reading first. I'm not particularly fond of a lot of the standard holy builds that are out there.. and I also don't like all the crazy specs I found (shadow/holy.. hmmm). I still like the idea of being holy with some points in disc, although I've heard that DS isn't as important anymore, and impDS isn't worth speccing into at all. I decided to create my own build, and this is what I came up with. DS and CoH.. lol. xD I've never actually used CoH before, but it seems pretty OPawesome. I replaced my healbot click for Prayer of Healing with CoH.

Panadoll looks a little different from this now (slight change in the pattern of the robe & helm :P) but this is how she looked through most of the levelling ~



a few more ( random screens )

oh yeh.. finally bought my epic flying so I could use my netherray. xD It was actually one of the very first things I did when I got the expansion, and realised that the cost of epic flying wasn't being lowered. :P

So Yuge & I went to a midnight launch of WotLK (with our daughter in tow wearing her 'Nooblet' shirt ^_^), picked up our collector's editions & went home to play. I haven't been doing much besides playing since then, except for breaks to eat/sleep/look after Pandora. I wouldn't be writing here at all if it wasn't for Queue of Doom, lol (currently at 853 ><). Panadoll is now level 72 & has her Nothing Boring About Borean achievement. :D I've done both Nexus and UK twice, and right now I'm a couple of bars off 73 & questing in Howling Fjord. ^_^ I am amazed at how fast some of the other people in my guild are levelling.. the highest person is on 77 atm. o_o I've respecced Panadoll disc, which I'm still getting used to, but my DPS is better so I can get stuff done faster. Overall I'm liking the change (but missing my Spirit of Redemption form a bit :P).

Most annoying quest so far, due to high number of people trying to do it & all the ganking going on, was the saving murloc tadpoles quest. I got it done in the end though :P


I also mucked around with a DK a little bit.. not for longer than 10min. The DK starting area is a bit confronting. *_* I didn't particularly like the killing villagers quest, lol. :P My DK's name is Panademic. (I wanted Pandemic, but it was taken qq.)



( screenshots! many screenshots )

Panadoll healed heroic Mech tonight, with Yuge tanking and Death dpsing (I've missed her lately ><). and a couple other dps of course :P Panadoll's new heal bindings are Awesome. :D I'm still getting the hang of them, cos they're a lot more complicated than I'm used to. But I feel like I have heaps more control this way. I wish I had realised the usefulness of Prayer of Healing before now. :P

Earlier in the day Panacea went to normal Slabs with guildies. It was normal because a few people hadn't been there before, and I found myself explaining the strat for bosses & pulls on Vent all the way through. It was good practise for raid leading I think. That stupid spellcloth pattern still refused to drop off Murmur though. ><

I need a new mic, I think mine (which I've had since the late 90s o_o) has finally died. A headset might be nice... :)

Yesterday was a busy day.. In the morning, Panadoll ran heroic BM with my brother and his friend (Hannika and Soffscia). It was my first ever heroic. Panadoll went as DPS, lol. xD It was ridiculously easy. :P Then afterwards, Panacea ran heroic Slabs with them, which was also ridiculously easy.. we 4-manned most of it. :P I am quite liking these nerfs! Gives me more of a chance to see content & loots. :D

Verd was getting a Kara group together after that, so I joined up. We had the whole group together & summoned, but we couldn't zone in to Kara.. all the instances were down, which meant everyone got stuck trying to get through the portal. This had also happened earlier when we'd been doing the heroics, but the instance servers came back up after a while. The Kara group stuck together for a bit hoping the instances would come back up, but eventually fell apart. I got my Swamp of Sorrows and Blasted Lands exploration achievements done, then headed back through the Dark Portal. :P

There was horrible, horrible lag in the afternoon. This lag really did not like my mind flay and mind blast spells for some reason. Still, I had to go do my Isle dailies, so I persisted through the lag to get them done. If I didn't know better, I'd swear the Horde wasn't lagging at all. -______-; After the dailies, I headed over to Nagrand to farm up the last of the primal waters I needed for my FSW robe, then flew over to Terrokar to gather the last of the netherweb spider silk I needed. Then - finally! - I made my Frozen Shadoweave Robe!! :DDDDD

( screenie of the making under here )

yeh I did actually stop right there, among the spiders, to make the robe as soon as I got the last of the mats :P Anyways, Panacea looks like this now :)



I took her to the Dark Portal to take pics of her in her FSW set, like I did when Panadoll got her PMC set (hence new icon ^_^). Panacea doesn't seem to like having her picture taken as much as Panadoll though.. maybe she feels naked out of shadowform :P

Later on in the evening I logged onto Panadoll to do her Skyguard dailies. I wasn't planning to do much else (cos it was late), but after I'd finished them I got kinda caught up in doing exploration achievements.. in the end, I finished up all of the Outland exploration achievements, and got all the Outland Hallow's End candy along the way, and went to bed way too late. xD

I've been running so many instances lately.. it's pretty much all I've been doing, as well as occasionally taking Panacea to Nagrand to grind Kurenai rep & look out for Halaa raids (of which there aren't many, irritatingly). Panadoll has healed a few instances for guildies, but I've mostly been doing instances on Panacea. DPSing is a bit less stressful than healing, and I think I'm quite good at it (often topping damage metres ahead of locks and mages) but it's been fun to heal on Panadoll once in a while. :)

Today I went to MgT (normal) for the first time, on Panadoll. I was there healing for a guildie, Verdiline, a druid (and the only real tank in our guild) who had been trying to get through the instance all day, but had all sorts of unfortunate troubles with groups falling apart, the instance resetting, constant wipes, etc etc. It was quite easy at first, as we had a well geared tank (Verd was DPSing) from one of our server's high-end guilds, Over Nine Thousand. Unfortunately though, this tank had to leave after the second boss. We managed to get in a pally tank who wasn't very well geared at all (having just hit 70 I think) and the healing got a lot harder, mainly because the group couldn't seem to keep aggro off me. I died several times and had to go repair, but we chugged through up to Priestess Delrissa. This is where we hit real problems. >< The pally tank decided to log over to their better geared resto druid, as they said tanks were useless on this boss. I brought in Panacea to lend more DPS, but we still wiped, and the group fell apart. Man I knew MgT was hard, but this was ridiculous hard. :(

Later on, Yuge said he would tank heroic slabs (the daily) for Panacea, and my brother (Hannika) said he would respec from moonkin to resto and come along too. But we were only grouped for a short time before Yuge ditched us for Twelve's Mount Hyjal, which he had warned me beforehand he might do, but Hannika had already respecced, and after our group disbanded he had to respec back to moonkin so he could farm, wasting 100g. :( He was pretty pissed off. I got into a group for normal slabs (I have run slabs so many damn times, lol) and afterwards my guildie friend Deatharra (arms warrior) and her holy priest husband Pelor wanted me to come dps normal Steamvault. Hannika agreed to come along as well, so we spent a while looking for a tank. I noticed Yuge wasn't at Hyjal anymore and asked if he'd come tank. Apparently there was some drama with a troll who got their raid leader banned for some Vent thing, and the Hyjal run had fallen apart. So he agreed to come tank SV. I noticed during the run that Hannika wasn't in a very good mood, and Yuge asked me if Hannika was pissed off at him. I spent the SV run in three simultaneous whispered conversations with Yuge, Hannika, and Deatharra (who has grown nervous of Yuge, because he has tanked a lot of instances for her and she knows he doesn't like running normal instances much) and found out that yes, Hannika was still pretty pissed off with Yuge, telling me he was just tired of waiting around for Yuge and he thought it was pretty scummy to leave our hslabs group for Hyjal, when Hyjal will be obsolete so soon. Meanwhile party chat was pretty much silent, except for a few terse directions and passive aggressive remarks... ugh, dramariffic. I think Death's husband Pelor is getting sick of healing instances for Death too.. he is a little better geared than Panadoll, and prefers raiding with his guild I think.

I wish Spirits of the Moon had more 70s who wanted to run instances, rather than PvP, cos otherwise we'll never get enough people geared for Kara before the expansion. :( At the moment, the most likely candidates for guild Kara are Panacea (geared just well enough for Kara I think), Iamleo (enthusiastic hunter who loves instancing and could just about do Kara), Verdiline (druid tank, Kara-capable), Helpfulness (other shadowpriest, geared just about as well as Panacea, but in more PvP gear), Avidmaul (recent addition to the guild, a Kara-geared resto druid), and Deatharra who is still only level 68, but is trying to get to 70 as fast as possible, and who plans to respec prot for the guild. She will need to get geared first of course, but we've been running her through level 70 instances in preparation, and I think she already has some good tanking stuff. Obviously we'd also have to PuG a few people, but maybe Pelor, Yuge and Hannika might come along for the badges (and Panadoll could come heal if it comes to that, but I really wanna get Panacea through)... anyways, chances of guild Kara before expansion are improving but still iffy at the moment.

Yesterday I got Panacea's tailoring up to where I could spec shadoweave, and managed to make her Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders (by buying up many primals & a couple of shadoweaves :P). They look pretty good. :D

crappy screenshots, and you can't really see them due to shadowform goodness, but you get the idea ~





I took the second one when I went over to Feralas earlier tonight to level up my cooking & fishing.. just cos I took a screenshot of Panadoll in the same place when she was running to help Panacea back in the day (in this post) :P

I want to get my FSW set together asap, cos I know having it will be the best chance I'll have for Panacea to do Kara before WotLK hits. :P With my two 70 toons and their hard working bank alts I have a lot more monies now, so it shouldn't be too hard to get the set together.. I foresee the buying of many primals. ><

Panacea went to Mana Tombs last night. I'd never been there before, and it was easy & fun. :) There were two guildless peoples in the group, so I invited them to SotM.. ended up being almost a guild run. :P

( screenshot from Mana Tombs )

Tonight I had a plan to go over to CoT, do the following-around-and-hearing-CoT-story bit, then try to find a group for Durnholde while levelling my fishing and cooking in Feralas. Unfortunately nobody was interested in doing Durnholde tonight apparently. I put myself in LFG for Sethekk Halls as well, but nobody seemed interested in that either. :( Eventually (rather quickly actually :P) I got sick of fishing, hearthed and headed over to Nagrand to grind ogres for Kurenai rep and be on the lookout for Halaa raiding (I want the black war talbuk for Panacea). Horde picked on me as I was trying to grind ogres. :( Some level 68 tauren attacked & killed me while I was killing ogres, then when I ressed, killed him and camped him in annoyance he called in a netherdrake mounted 70 undead rogue to prevent me from doing anything productive at all. >< It was about this time though, that someone finally invited me to a group for Sethekk Halls. We had a lot of trouble finding a tank (as per usual, arrgh) but finally Yuge said he would tank for us, even though he was in line to tank Sunwell (*infinite thanks to Yugeeee*).

I enjoyed Sethekk Halls very much. It was my first time there also. I really liked being able to do some CC (shackle, yay!) and I got some quests done. Was fun. :) I still really want to do Durnholde though.. and I'm not quite sure of the next instance I should focus on.. maybe Mech or Slabs or something..

I found it pretty boring levelling through Terrokar, Nagrand, and Blades Edge Mountains, because it seems like such a short time ago that I did all the quests on Panadoll. I got through all the quests a lot quicker because I knew what I was doing but.. after I finished BEM, at level 68, I was kinda not really into the idea of going on to Netherstorm. So I decided to go level in Shadowmoon Valley - Panadoll never did any of the quests there, besides the Netherwing ones. Since I moved over there I've been enjoying myself a lot more. It's a bit slower going, but everything is new and interesting. You get to know a place a lot better when you're limited to a ground mount. :P

So Panacea is halfway through level 69 now. So close to 70! I believe I will ding this weekend. :D Running a bit low on quests though. I hope I can ding in Shadowmoon. I've also been helping out guildies a bit, running UB with Deatharra and her 70 holy priest partner (who is up to the same raiding content as Panadoll, but a bit better geared) with Yuge tanking cos tanks are still so hard to find on our server. :( Also tomorrow night I've got to do a run of VC for lowbies in the guild, which will cut into my racing-to-70 time, but people were begging and I want to be a good guild officer. :P

( Shadowmoon shenanigans )

( tonight's UB run )

There's another shadowpriest in the guild, called Helpfulness (also an officer), who I've been sort of "racing" to 70 since we were level 64 or so (he's level 68 atm). I quite like this guy.. he knows what he's doing even though I think it's his first toon, and he levels at a pace similar to my own, unlike most of the other people in the guild who generally level a lot slower. Would be good I suppose if he was planning to turn holy at 70 (cos we have no holy priests) but he's pretty set on staying shadow I think - already getting together his FSW set, which is ahead of me (I haven't quite got my tailoring up to speccing shadowweave). Two skilled shadowpriests in a guild is a good thing to have though right? :D We do however have a severe lack of tankage in the guild. :( I'm hoping once all these 60-somethings hit 70 we'll be better able to entice more 70s into the guild for endgame content though.

Panacea finally managed to find a group keen to do both Underbog and Slave Pens last night. The only trouble was, we couldn't find a tank - of course. Why is it always so hard to find a tank?? Also I did say I'd prefer to dps but when a fourth dps was invited I said "..guess I'm on heals then?" "Oh you don't mind do you?" >< I don't mind being on heals but I'm nervous about Panacea's ability to heal Outland instances effectively. Her +heals are at 424 now.. not too shabby, but still makes me nervous.

After ages spent trying to find a damn tank, I asked Yuge if he'd help us out. Luckily he was just doing dailies & not busy with raiding. He wanted to finish off his dailies first, and the group was more than happy to wait for a 70 warrior tank. :) When we all finally gathered to do Underbog first, after the first couple of mobs I was like "So I'm gonna try healing with VE for a bit, k?" Yuge was keeping all the aggro and hardly taking any damage, so it seemed redundant to stand around just chucking him a renew now & then. VE healed the group pretty well, even when other people took damage. I also popped out of shadowform now & then to heal in emergencies (usually halfway through bosses) which I realised was probably really good practise in multitasking in an instance - not just sticking to my rotation like a robot. Trying to dps and keep an eye on healing at the same time made being "run through" by Yuge pretty much as challenging and interesting as being on pure dps or heals with a normal group. :)

Absolutely nothing good dropped for Panacea in either instance. :( It was all tanking gear. But I did get my two Sporeggar quests done, and also dinged 64. One of the quest rewards was Cenarion Ring of Casting, which is pretty nice. :)

Here are a few UB & SP ( screenshots )

After levelling Pantsnake to 10, I suddenly decided to delete & reroll him. Mainly cos I didn't like the colour of his hair. I almost instantly regretted it. But then later on Yuge rolled a nelf priest to level with me. :D So it wasn't quite so painful doing all those starting quests again. Also, it's kinda fun levelling with someone else. ^_^

Faybelle & Pantsnake ~


It's quite interesting having the warrior & priest roles reversed! I am not used to running around after mobs and Yuge's not used to standing at a distance. :P We are both pretty skilled at our respective classes so we can give each other good advice. :)

On Friday night Yuge tanked Blood Furnace for Panacea. The run was kinda messy (I was half dps-ing, half healing most of the time) but I got 2 out of 3 of the drops I was looking for and got my quests finished, so it was a success. I'd never been into Blood Furnace before (though Panadoll has been in to see Magtheridon, heh) so it was interesting too. :)

Earlier this evening I half-heartedly looked for a group for Slave Pens/Underbog, but I wasn't really into Panacea today for some reason. A group invited me to help them finish off the last boss of UB, so I did that & got a quest item I needed at least. I'm planning to tackle all the boring boring Terrokar quests tomorrow. The sooner I move on to Nagrand the better imo...

Panacea's been doing billions of Zangar quests today. I've almost finished them all, in fact.. just got some Sporeggar ones to go. Tonight I was waiting around for ages for Twelve's Black Temple raid to finish, in the hope that Yuge would tank Blood Furnace for me. But he went offline at some point & I didn't notice. >< Probably went to sleep. Anyways. I flew over to Hellfire to see if I could do the PVP daily, and someone was asking for one more for Ramps. I thought "what the hell" and joined the group. It's a rare thing to see a group that already has a tank & healer. :P

This PuG was really, really awesome. :O The group leader was a warrior tank who seemed quite experienced with the instance.. in fact everyone seemed to know what they were doing. We breezed through the trash - not quite as easily as with Yuge tanking, but still pretty fast. :) On the first boss though, the boss died just after the whole group wiped, and we didn't get any loot. Which sucked! I wanted Pauldrons of Arcane Rage. Oh well.. the druid in the group left & we got in a hunter. For the rest of the run this hunter and I competed for the top of the dps charts. :P The mage in our group wasn't so great with the dps but he was good with sheeping. :) A neck dropped off the second boss that the warrior needed (I've already got my staff from him) then we continued to Vazruden and Nazan. On the first attempt we killed the ogre but wiped on the dragon - the tank died from his fire damage. The second attempt, the warrior died from the dragon's fire damage again but it was closer to the end of the fight and we managed to dps him to death. :D The ring I was looking out for didn't drop, so I didn't get any good loots out of the whole run.. but I think it was good practise and I'm glad I got to be part of a successful PuG of the place. :)

A screenshot of Panacea melting face in Ramps.. taken when I'd just overtaken the hunter in dps, heh. :P ( under here )

I edited my new awesome macro to fix my problem with the shift modifier.. I just took it out. *facepalm* Now, whenever I click Mind Blast it will cast Inner Focus first if it's up, then pop my first trinket if it's up, then cast Mind Blast. It seems that the macro can only cast two things before casting Mind Blast.. so if Inner Focus is still on cooldown it will pop both my trinkets, and if the first trinket is on cooldown it'll just pop the second one, etc. I think that's how it's working. My second trinket has a 15 minute cooldown so it's a little hard to tell.

Late Monday night I hopped on Panacea to talk to my guild leader about organising a guild run of Ramps and/or Blood Furnace. I am so wary of PuGging them now. >< She was quite happy with the idea, and said she'd come on her lvl 60 resto druid Lilacmoon. She said she'd never really done any instances before though, having been run through things up til now, so we'd have to be kind to her. I can totally relate to this of course, as it's the way I took Panadoll to 70. So I told her we'd get Yuge in to tank for us, and it should be a breeze. We organised to do the run on Tuesday night at 7pm. She said that would be 9pm her time, as she's in Perth.

On Tuesday I hopped on in the middle of the day to make sure she was still up for the run and discuss who else we'd need for the group. She was still keen, so all was good. I logged off, and then later when Yuge got home he told me that 7pm our time is actually 5pm Perth time. Bah!! I logged back on at 7pm and sure enough, Lilac wasn't there.. I asked Yuge if he'd be ok doing the run at 11pm instead (9pm Perth time) and he said that'd be alright.

In the meantime, Yuge tanked a PuG of Ramps for me. It went so well.. I got the feeling the rest of the group was just as nubish as the first PuG I was in, but Yuge made up for that with his awesomeness. I got Crystalfire Staff, yay! It's pretty. ^_^

Later on I finished off all the Hellfire quests and moved on to my beloved Zangarmarsh (not really, anymore.. I loved the zone so much when I was levelling Panadoll but not so much this time around since nothing's new). At 10pm, to my horror, the server said it was going down for maintenance. Wtf, there wasn't anything on the login page! Should have expected it for a Tuesday night though, I guess. Anyways, so no Ramps/BF at 11pm with Lilac. :( Maybe we can get a group together for it tonight, though I'm not sure if Yuge is raiding. He's getting home from work late so... maybe he's not?

What is it with Hellfire Peninsula and nubs?? It's like it's filled with all these people who've been run through everything up til Outland, and now their 70 buddies have abandoned them in Hellfire with no skills whatsoever. Ugh!

Panacea tried to find a group for Ramps today. I was in LFG, and was invited by a 58 warrior, who promptly promoted me to leader. Then they said that they didn't really know how to tank and they would be better at dps. Yeh, I should have left then....

So I tried for ages to cobble a group together, posting in Hellfire general and LFG channels. About 5 different shadowpriests whispered me. >< One of them said they could try healing, so I invited them. Then I found a dps shaman. It took forever to find a tank.. I ended up whispering random likely looking people in Hellfire, until I found a pally who said he'd tank.

We tried to get to the summoning stone, but it was being camped by horde. Eventually I told everyone "fuck it, we'll be here all night if you want summons, meet in the instance." So we got into the instance, and the healer then told us he was really sorry, but he had to go. >< Shammy then said they'd try healing, though they'd never healed before. They had more +heals than me, so I let them. We got in another pally, and started clearing the trash. It was way more difficult than it should have been. The shammy was pretty bad at healing, and the dps was WAY worse than it should have been. These people were putting out under 100 dps every fight (the new pally only doing 30-something dps) while I was putting out 190-something. It was ridiculous. Every pull someone would either die or we'd wipe, and eventually after a wipe the shammy decided to leave. I was ready to call it but then someone said there was a 62 mage in LFG, and everyone seemed quite keen on continuing.. so I invited him, in the hope that the dps would improve somewhat. I should have remembered that since the shammy had left, I would have to be on heals, so they'd lose my dps. ><

Anyways, the train wreck continued. I had no mana pots, and although I could just barely manage to keep everyone up I would consistently run out of mana near the end of every fight, so we were still losing one or two people way too often. The mage told me to use lesser ranks of greater heal. Well I could have done that, but I'd have to reconfigure my Healbot, and I didn't know how to do that quickly. They told me to manually heal. Er, NO thankyou. I don't even have my damn heals on my bars (Panacea is not supposed to be a healer ><) and I really don't want to try going back to crappy manual healing after getting so used to Healbot. I was about ready to get out of there then, but continued on for a bit.

The warrior, who was marking, marked very poorly and inconsistently and the mage would often pull before the tanks.. yes there were two (crappy) tanks - the pally and the "dps" warrior. Then.. as soon as I ressed the tanking pally after another craptacular pull, he left the group & hearthed. I was out after that.

Worst group ever. Worse than Panacea's Deadmines PuG. I don't know if it's just a lower level Outlands instance thing, or if it was just bad luck that I got a PuG this bad.. but it's turned me off trying to find another group for Ramps for a bit.

Panacea got into the most awesome PuG last night, for ST of all places. :O I'm finding as I'm doing these higher level instances, people don't want me for heals as much - which is good! But I'm also finding that the locks and mages are getting their act together now and beating me at dps. :P

So I dpsed my way through ST. It was lots of fun, even though I was lagging a bit. Everyone in the group was familiar with the place and knew what they were doing, so we got through relatively quickly and I got all my quests out of the way. :D They were friendly people too.. always nice when the group not only knows what they're doing but also isn't super serious. :)

I tried going to BRD a couple of days ago. It wasn't very successful. We spent like an hour looking for a tank, til in frustration I asked Yuge if he could come tank - breaking my rule of not letting Panacea be helped in any way by Yuge. >< But we didn't get very far into the instance before the group fell apart after a wipe, and I didn't get any quests completed. So I'm not going to count Yuge's involvement. :P Man BRD is a boring instance. I'd never been there before, and I don't think I'll be going back.

A week or so ago Panacea joined a cute little levelling guild called Spirits of the Moon. It's run by a lovely lady who has two toons, currently levels 49 and 59 I think. She's very friendly and helpful, as are a number of other people in the guild. The guild has, surprisingly, a number of 70s, as well as 60-somethings. But it's just a levelling guild for now, they don't raid, though they have plans to raid in the future apparently. I'm enjoying being in the guild as there are quite a lot of people around my level. I hoping we'll all get to 70 around the same time, then we'd have almost enough for a Kara raid. :)

anyways, what would an entry be from me without screenshots :PPP~ Here's ( ST and some random shots from Silithus )

Panacea dinged level 50 last night. :D Not long til Outland!

Over the last few days I've taken her to ZF. The first group I was in was quite good and they let me dps. But we only ran the first couple of bosses, twice, because our tank wanted something off the first boss (which didn't drop). I was a little disappointed cos it was a pretty good group. The next group I joined looked like it was shaping up well until a 70 joined. I am trying to level up Panacea without any help from higher level characters, or being run through things, so this was annoying. But I stayed with the group because they needed the mallet and I was the only one with it (I got the mallet by myself. It's so much easier now that getting it doesn't involve killing elites :D). So although the run was very fast and I got a couple of quests out of the way, it didn't do much for my instance skills.

The last group I joined was pretty good. At first I thought I was going to have to heal, cos there was another priest in our group with higher shadow damage than me. But they went offline and didn't come back, so we had to get in another person, who happened to be a resto druid. :D The run went quite well, and I was always at the top of the dps charts, which made me happy. Our tank (and group leader) was a bit obsessive about the dps charts though and kept posting them and berating the lock in our group who kept coming last.. I felt sorry for her, cos it was obvious she was kinda new (she didn't know what AOE was, and we had to ask her to take her imp out for blood pact) and she was trying her best. The tank was also annoying because he never stopped to let us drink. The healer was almost constantly at below 30% mana.. if it had been me healing like that I would have yelled at him, as it was nobody said anything and just tried to drink whenever they could. I think the tank thought he was invincible or something - a couple of times when we were all sitting and drinking he'd run off and start aggroing the next group of mobs. Annoying. And then at the end, he asked if anyone needed Gahzrilla and when nobody said anything after like a second, he said "well I'm out" and ran out. We were all left standing there - we wanted to do the last boss. He told us we could do it if we wanted to.. er, without a tank? no thanks. Anyways, I got all my quests finished up, so no more ZF for me. :)

I wasn't quite sure where to go to quest after that (since I'm trying to avoid Tanaris/Ungoro). I went to Felwood to have a look around, but most of the quests were a little too high for me at level 49. Then I remembered Searing Gorge. :D I haven't been there since my very first toon, Jeski the hunter, who I played a few years ago and only ever got up to level 55. So I took Panacea over there and had lots of nostalgic fun.



I'm quite liking mind control now. :P I'm still getting used to it, but I think I should learn how to use it properly as it's my only form of CC. Instances are usually so fast paced and people forget that priests can mind control, so I'm not sure if I'll need to use it, but if I'm asked to use it it will be good to know how.

( some random Panacea screenshots )

I've been taking a short break from WoW.. I was getting a little burnt out, as I usually do when I play too much. :P Break was a good idea as my house is now clean & organised and I'm just starting to get interested in playing again. damn you maintenance night! :P

So, Panacea ran Ulda last night. I had to heal, but such is the life of a levelling shadowpriest. It was pretty boring tbh.. I wasn't paying much attention because our group was a little high for the instance and healing them was too easy. I should have asked if they'd be ok with me healing with just VE. Anyways, because I wasn't concentrating all that much, I did fuck up once, when I got caught in some whirlwind thing which interrupted my heals, and was a bitch to get out of. Our tank was a pally though and healed himself, so no harm done.

Today I went back to Ulda and finished up all the quests I had to do outside the instance. I remember them being a lot harder pre-BC on my hunter.. the mobs might have been elites back then? Anyways I got them done pretty quickly, then headed over to Theramore to visit Nat Pagle and grab the artisan fishing quest. On my way through Feralas I decided to look for the sprite darter pet quest chain. I've never done it before, I've only read about it. The quest giver was a bit hard to find but the first couple of quests weren't that hard, as there was a nice level ?? tauren going around killing things for me. :D

( a couple screenshots from today )

Panacea is level 44 now ^_^