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.