I went to 10man Ulduar with Twelve tonight. We were just clearing up to the keepers for the leet hardmode group to finish off tomorrow. All good with me, I don't mind getting saved.. haven't even done 10man for weeks.

As soon as I accepted the invite I went to adjust my UI for raid & realised I hadn't tested it with a vehicle yet. o_o I've had problems with vehicle bars not showing up in the past. So I ran to Icecrown and jumped on one of the harpoon guns. Badness. No harpoon abilities on my bars. However the abilities worked when I pressed number keys.

So I flew over to Ulduar, thinking "oh god please put me on something easy". I'd driven all the vehicles, and had been a demolisher gunner in the past. So I know what abilities are there, it was just a matter of remembering which went to which key.. mostly I was just hoping I wouldn't have to do anything complicated like loading myself up to be shot to the boss or anything (which I've only done once before). Luckily I was given the very easy job of siege gunner, which is the only one I hadn't done before. It was easy enough to figure out where my abilities were with some experimentation.

We got Leviathan down after a couple of wipes (left some towers up). Then continued to Razorscale. It was here that I decided that I fucken hate Grid. I don't know if it was just the way I had it set up, but not being able to see my bubbles/renews/PoMs etc on peoples' bars was incredibly annoying, also those tiny little boxes? No thankyou. I switched back to HealBot after the fight.

Overall I was pretty disappointed with my heals. I just didn't get into that smooth healing zone, I was a bit all over the place and my cooldowns felt slightly off or something. Could either be the new UI, the brand new computer I'm using that I haven't raided on before, the fact that I haven't raided in a while, the fact that I was raiding with Twelve, or the cold I have that is making me feel like my head's stuffed with cotton wool - I don't know. :P In any case I need to stop watching heal metres when I'm disc. Or get that recount addon that shows disc contributions.

It was interesting, seeing the little differences between Twelve's strats and TF's strats. Some of the strategies we used were in order to go for achievements (of which I got a few :D). Kiting Kologarn's eyebeams was.. an experience (never did that with TF). lol :P Overall it was a pretty fun raid. :) Now I must go tweak my UI some more (i.e. get rid of Grid & replace it with Pitbull raidframes).

The last two nights, I've been on Ulduar sitout. Earning dkp & still able to grind rep for my crazy Insane achievement? Awesome. I can't grind Steamwheedle rep, because I can't reset Dire Maul due to being in the Ulduar raid group. But I've been farming heaps of Ravenholdt rep - got 6000 rep through to Honored last night, and 3000 more rep today. I've got my rep route through Stromgarde Keep, I know where every mob spawns, it's just a matter of putting myself on autorun & chucking SW:P on everything I see. Although I only get 5 rep per mob, the mobs are only around level 35, so they go down in a couple of seconds. I get interrupted sometimes. Lowbies are questing in the area & get pissed off when I run past & take down all their mobs. Today a rogue & a lock, both around level 35, tried taking me down - the lock feared me, and the rogue stunlocked me. I got pissed off at the interruption and raped their fases, then camped them for about 15min. :P

Tonight I actually got called into Ulduar for Mimiron. Earlier today I'd revamped my UI completely, I went from this to this. Very different, and making much use of invisible bars. I also finally decided to switch from HealBot to Grid + Clique. But because I haven't ever used Grid + Clique before, I was way too nervous to use it when I was called in.. so I used HealBot. When I switched UIs, I had to redo all my HealBot binds, and I think I mistyped Prayer of Healing, because when I tried to use it, it didn't work. Also, my bind for Pain Suppression didn't work. The result: I stood there spamming my PS bind when I was supposed to use it, saw nothing was happening, targeted the tank in a panic and manually cast it from one of my (invisible) bars (thank god I actually put it on there). And my heals were atrocious. I am not used to being so bad on that fight. I've always been holy for Mimiron in the past, because awesome raid heals are needed for phase 2, so doing it as disc was.. different. I did survive the entire fight, but that wasn't difficult - I was there for all of TF's progression encounters and a billion times after that, so I know the fight pretty damn well. Just.. heals were bad. When I realised my Prayer of Healing wasn't working I was kinda like "ugh" and just tried shield spamming and casting lots of PoMs and Renews. My Divine Hymn got interrupted dammit. :P

Anyways. I'd been waiting to get a chance to show Twelve that I'm not the nub I was when I was last in the guild. Hopefully the fact that I didn't die on Mimi indicated something of that at least. I was so nervous though, lol. :P And, I didn't really know who my heal target was, I mean there were two holy pallies there I think so I guess I was raid heals. Raid healing as disc: a great way to show the guild my potential lolol. Should have gone holy, but it all happened so fast after I was summoned in. I was slightly disappointed that I didn't get to go on with them to Thorim, because I think I shine as disc on that fight - shield spam ftw in the arena. :D But really I'm just happy that they let me come in for something. ^_^

Note to self for next time I'm called in: Make your damn raid stuffs bar visible without mousing over. Said bar has my Divine Hymn macro, pots, shadowfiend, Desperate Prayer & other useful things.

Current progress on Insane:
Bloodsail Buccaneers: Honored (done)
Steamwheedle Cartel
Booty Bay: 9550/36000 Hated
Gadgetzan: 9425/36000 Hated (this is less than the others cos I stupidly killed some guards in Gadget when I stupidly tried to use the flight path)
Ratchet: 9550/36000 Hated
Winterspring: 9550/36000 Hated
Shen'drelar: 2500/3000 Neutral
Ravenholdt: 3040/12000 Honored
Darkmoon Faire: 75/3000 Neutral

So I left Sanguinary, and went back to Twelve. I'm really, really happy to be back. Even if I'm not raiding, there's something comfortable about being in a well respected guild. There's no room for me in the 25man Ulduar group, but more often than not I can't make Twelve's 7pm raid time these days anyway. However tonight I got put on sitout (earning dkp apparently), which was awesome. :D Hopefully I might get a chance to go to a 10man run soon, I think they do them over the weekends & since I don't have my daughter to look after on weekends, I can actually make raid time.

Meanwhile, after spending much time levelling Dollfase & Zkay, I got a bit burnt out on levelling & decided to go do the Midsummer achievements on Panadoll. I got Flame Warden, the first event title I've gotten (I'm usually too lazy to do the event achievements :P). While I was running around grabbing flames I also finished off the Explorer achievement, and started thinking about other achievements I might like to do. Eventually Panadoll & Tkay went to kill goblins in Booty Bay for the Bloodsail achievement. :D It didn't take very long at all - mostly due to Tkay being able to round up practically the whole town. I mostly just healed him. :P Anyways while we were doing that, I started thinking about the Insane achievement.. I've decided to go for it. xD The day after we did the Bloodsail thing, I went back to Booty Bay and got my rep up to honored. It took me longer by myself, as I mostly just single targeted the goblins, but it wasn't a terrible grind.

So for this achievement, I need: Honored with Bloodsail, Exalted with all Steamwheedle Cartel (Gadgetzan, Ratchet, Booty Bay & Winterspring), Exalted with Shen'drelar, Exalted with Ravenholdt, and Exalted with Darkmoon Faire. I'm working on Steamwheedle, Shen'drelar and Ravenholdt at the same time. I've been running Dire Maul north (had to get the key first, which gave me some Shen'drelar rep) where there are 2 repeatable quests for Steamwheedle rep, and also librams drop which I can hand in for Shen'drelar rep. I've also been to Arathi today to kill all the Syndicate mobs in Stromgarde for Ravenholdt rep. They're just 5 rep each but I just run around chucking SW:P on them all and they drop really fast. Today I farmed 3000 rep to take me to Friendly in just a couple of hours.

So here's my progress with this crazy project so far:
Bloodsail Buccaneers: 50/12000 Honored
Steamwheedle Cartel
Gadgetzan: 1625/36000 Hated
Ratchet: 1625/36000 Hated
Booty Bay: 1625/36000 Hated
Winterspring: 1625/36000 Hated
Shen'drelar: 500/3000 Neutral
Ravenholdt: 115/6000 Friendly
Darkmoon Faire: 75/3000 Neutral

Yeh I have a long way to go, lol. :P I'm enjoying myself so far though.. I actually kinda like farming rep. xD I know it will take me a really long time, and I'll probably get burnt out on it, but then I'll be motivated to play my alts again. :D

I've decided to leave Twelve. :)

My brother wasn't able to log onto his resto druid Hannika tonight, so he asked me if I would sub in for him on his guild's finishing off of Naxx. I went along, slightly nervous at first, cos I think I am still undergeared for Naxx. But, omg. It was awesome. Delusion (my brother's guild) is so easygoing, and so much more friendly than Twelve. I explained that I was disc, they had no problems with this. In fact they actually took this into consideration and assigned me to heal the main tank. And I did really well. :O I had next to no mana problems, and I kept the tank up just fine. See what happens when I actually get to do what I'm supposed to do as disc! I think I did a lot better also because I felt like there was a lot less pressure than there is when I raid with Twelve... I felt good about myself as well because these people were pleased to have "someone from Twelve" in their raid. :P I wasn't being written off as noob like I usually am in Twelve. The raid leader was awesome too, explaining what he'd read about boss fights (it was the first time they'd done them) and assigning healers before each encounter, and when we wiped there was none of the annoyed bitching at people that goes on when Twelve raids wipe.

Basically... it was so different from my stressful experiences of raiding with Twelve, that I've decided to gquit and join Delusion. They are just progressing through 10-man Naxx at the moment, and they want me to be in their progression group - they were that happy with my performance. ^_^ Which means.. I will get to be there for all the guild firsts of downing bosses and such, which is a huge drawcard.. I would never get advanced enough to do that with Twelve. Admittedly Delusion doesn't have the numbers to do 25-mans at the moment, but they do want to work towards 25-mans in the future. I feel less rushed already! This decision is making me feel so much better about playing WoW.. I'll be able to finally enjoy the game properly I think. ^_^

Now the only difficult thing is deciding when to actually gquit Twelve. I'm going to try to stealth gquit, maybe in the early morning when less people are online. I don't want to cause any drama. >< I doubt Twelve will really care all that much that I'm leaving, but I'd still prefer it to be.. less public. :P

I played too much WoW yesterday. >< Yuge was home from work, so I took the opportunity to spend almost all day on WoW. I did a couple of heroics on Panacea with Twelvians (UB and Crypts), then did Mags and Kara with Twelve on Panadoll, then BWL on Panadoll with more Twelve, and finally Onyxia with Yuge, Lutzi and a few other people (including Leth). Panadoll got her classic raider achievement! :D I was pretty exhausted by this time though. Took a little break to eat & watch TV, and I was just going to go to bed & read, but I got lured back in. >< I spent an hour or so before bed on Panacea grinding Kurenai rep in Nagrand, and finding out about the guild drama that had been going down earlier in Panacea's absence.

Recently there have been a lot of new people joining the guild, and a lot of them are youngens. There have been a few jokes in officer chat about the guild turning into a creche. I haven't really been paying all that much attention to guild chat lately, but I have gotten some people whispering me about the nublets. Yesterday a new recruit was gkicked because he was swearing at everyone ("fucking noobs" I think was the term he used) because nobody would come help him in STV. There is one particular new guy, called Tigerbum, who gets picked on a lot because he doesn't know much about the game and has a way of talking that makes him look kinda stupid. Yesterday he was apparently getting bullied mercilessly (one of the top offenders is another new recruit who I don't like much due to their bad attitude and general rudeness) when his brother came online and informed the guild that Tigerbum is only 11. If I'm online and see any more bullying towards Tigerbum, shit is gonna go down. I'm thinking of asking Indi to create a new 'sin bin' type rank to demote people for a set period of time if they behave like idiots. There's an officer meeting tonight, so I might bring it up there.

With WotLK so close, my priorities have shifted a bit. I'm trying to get as many Outland raids and old world raids as I can done on Panadoll, and gear her up as much as possible. Unfortunately my horrible luck with rolls has been hampering me. Today I did AQ20 (fun, fast raid), then finished off Hyjal (the servers never came back online last night - not quickly anyways). No tier stuff dropped for me in Hyjal, legs from Archi didn't drop, and I didn't win the only other thing I wanted (bracers to replace my crappy Shattrath Wraps) which was disappointing. Twelve won't go back there again, so that's it I guess. No legs of awesomeness for me. :( I'm hoping they'll do BWL sometime soon, and perhaps Onyxia, so I can get the old world raiding achievement.

Tonight I logged onto Panacea to do ZA with SotM. Half an hour before we were due to go, Lutzi asked me if I wanted to go to Gruuls. So I went and did that, and got Leggings of the Fallen Defender - finally, something! Not quite sure yet if what I can get for it will be better than my gemmed Kara legs, cos I had to log over straight afterwards for ZA.

There were only a few people invited who still wanted ZA. :( So we had to PuG most people. It wasn't too bad though, our PuG was pretty good, despite only managing to get three bosses down before we ran out of time. Better than other PuGs of ZA I've done on Panacea anyways. But I didn't win any rolls for anything (of course ><) and we didn't manage to get the last boss (Zul'jin) down, mostly because people were unfamiliar with the fight I think (move out of fires, first rule of WoW ><) and our awesome healer Pelor going down early most attempts. I'm not quite sure what he was doing wrong. He most often went down in Phase 3, and I know HoTs are better to use in that phase cos you get damage if you cast in a tornado.. but yeh. Our group was a bit melee heavy which may have had something to do with it.

I've been really, really burnt out on WoW lately.. haven't really wanted to play that much. I've been getting a bit depressed about things.. I have problems with both of my toons' guilds.. and problems with the way I'm playing. Like I wish I wasn't so focused on trying to play awesomely and get awesome loots. I just end up feeling like crap when I don't play awesomely and don't get awesome loots. :P I really enjoy raiding but I often can't get past competitive feelings. I guess that's the main thing making me feel bad, cos I don't want to feel that way at all. I want to just be excited about seeing content I haven't seen before and reach my little personal goals. Not be comparing myself constantly to other players. :(

Anyways, I've been doing a fair bit of old world raiding with Twelve lately, on Panadoll. We've been to AQ40 (though we didn't down the final boss, and I wasn't online when they went back & did it ><), MC and ZG. I did really enjoy seeing all this stuff :) But I'm pretty crap at the 40-man raiding. Heals go where now? lol. ZG was the most fun I think, though I did really like AQ40 also. I've been wanting to see AQ for ages. I'm just annoyed I didn't get the achievement of completing it :(

I'd organised a SotM Kara for Monday night, but when I logged on Panacea I had all these mails from people cancelling. It ended up that only me, Yuge, Verd and Cretton were still keen to go. The two main people I'd made it on Monday for, Cy and Indi (guild leader) weren't able to go. Cy at least sent me a mail about it but there was no word from Indi at all. Slightly pissed off about that. Anyways I cancelled the Kara, since Yuge wanted to go off and do old world raids with Twelve anyway and Verd is adept at pugging such things. I wasn't into the idea of pugging Kara. Death has organised a ZA later this week, which should be interesting. :)

Tonight Panadoll went with Twelve to ZA! :O It was a little hectic as I'd never been there before of course, and also it was a timed run. o_o But it wasn't too difficult, all the bosses went down fairly quickly. And Panadoll got so much nice stuff xD So finally, she has graduated out of her PMC set.. so glad I got to do that before WotLK ^o^

I got Robe of Departed Spirits from Halazzi, Cloak of Ancient Rituals from Hex Lord Malacrass and Mantle of Ill Intent from a chest. :D Panadoll is looking pretty awesome now ^_^



I'm not sure if the Swiftheal Mantle I made is better or worse than the Mantle of Ill Intent.. I get the feeling it's probably a sidegrade. /shrug

About 45 minutes ago someone in Twelve said they had a friend who was going to be on The Einstein Factor tonight answering WoW questions as his "specialty area". So we watched it. The guy was pretty good.. the WoW questions came at him really rapidly and some were difficult to answer immediately (like the question "how many playable classes are there?" to which he answered 7 - there's 9. I would have had to think about that for a second ><). I was actually a little surprised about the kind of questions they asked, as he had said at the beginning his specialty was the lore. There weren't really any lore questions asked. One question was "what is the name of the device, used by hunters, that shoots arrows?" Guild chat erupted with "LOL BOW" as the guy answered "bow?" with an amused/disgusted expression. xD He won in the end. :D

Panadoll had a productive day (for once). :) Yuge managed to get me into a group who had just finished heroic slabs so I could run in there and grab the Kara key fragment. Gah I have run slabs before multiple times but for some reason never picked up the stupid key fragment. >< It was my first time in a heroic instance, not that we actually fought anything in there besides the thing that I had to loot the key frag from. :P

( a couple of screenies )

After that, Yuge and I got a group toegther for n Arcatraz. :D We both have the Arc key now. I needed to go there to get the next bit of my Kara key.. I had a quest to kill the final boss too I think.

( adventures inside arc )

I'm thinking some Caverns of Time instances will be next on the agenda for Panadoll. :) As well as Steam Vaults for the next bit of the Kara key.

I haven't been enjoying playing WoW lately.

It's a number of things, but two things mostly. First - I love healing and being a holy priest, but at the same time I find it incredibly frustrating trying to find groups for things. And I really hate being so squishy. I pretty much soloed to 70 and I keep thinking back to when I was shadow and how I just pwned everything, stuff 3 or 4 levels above me, and how invincible I felt. Now it's a struggle just to do dailies sometimes. So, just respec shadow right, problem solved? It's not that simple... for starters, I truly do enjoy healing, when I get a chance to do it. Healing an instance is one of my very favourite parts of the game. And raid healing is so fast paced and exciting.. I really enjoy it too (what limited experience I've had of it). Besides this, my tailoring is already primal mooncloth specced. If I went shadow I would want the frozen shadoweave set, and as far as I can see you can't change your tailoring spec. Not to mention the amount of time I've spent grinding the mats for the primal mooncloth set. Then there's all the gear I've already managed to get for Panadoll as a holy priest.. it's been such an effort to get her just to the point she is now and I really don't want to give all that up. So yes.. there are a whole heap of reasons why I don't want to respec.

The second reason I'm not enjoying myself.. well I think it's the guild I'm in. I've known for ages that I don't really fit in with them personality-wise. I hardly ever spoke in guild chat when I was levelling, and I still hardly say anything.. it's because they're not a particularly welcoming or friendly guild. I mean people in the guild are friends, but it's a bit like... get yourself geared or gtfo, you know? And unless you've played since launch and have a character geared for Sunwell you're kinda, less of a player than those who do.. this is the vibe I get from them, anyways. So, just leave the guild right, problem solved? Not really. I like being in the same guild as my partner (Yuge) and my friend (Lutzi), I am grateful to the guild for taking me through Kara and I'm also hopeful that I'll get to go again - and I know this is the best/easiest way for me to get geared. If I left the guild I would be lost and I'd have even less opportunity than I do now to get better gear.

I think if I'm going to play WoW, I should be enjoying myself, not stressing about people making snarky comments about my gear, not mind-numbingly grinding primals or doing dailies while waiting desperately for a chance to do an instance, not getting frustrated at my extreme squishiness. So I've rerolled. :P



I have made another priest, a draenei priest, called Panacea. She's on the same server. I plan to play her very differently from Panadoll. For starters, I'm not going to let Yuge run me through instances or help me with anything. I want to learn to heal better, so I'm going to heal all the instances I can while levelling. Secondly - Panacea is going to be shadow while levelling, and shadow at 70. So if I get a chance to dps instances while levelling I'm going to do that too. Thirdly - I'm using keybindings and Healbot from the beginning, not just to play Panacea better but to improve Panadoll's game as well. Panacea is currently level 10 (just put my first talent point into Spirit Tap :P) and she's been an absolute joy to play so far. Because I know how to play a priest very well everything is so super quick and easy, and soloing is so much fun. I can't wait til I get a few more points into shadow. ^_^

Here's a few screenshots from Panacea's day today~ ( under here )

So I'm feeling a bit happier now. And looking forward to having both a 70 holy priest and 70 shadow priest. :) I'm also looking forward to journaling Panacea's progress, and becoming a better priest all round. :)

I was nervous about telling Yuge and my brother that I'm levelling an alt. I don't think Yuge minds as much as I thought he would but my brother, predictably, thinks I'm stupid to reroll. He thinks I should respec Panadoll and get new gear. Kind of hard to get my point of view across to him through whispers.