Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Tale Thirty Two: Offering to Buy Gear? Yes or Nay?

I was in a PuG VoA25 the other day, with 3 resto druids and a boomkin. Inside, I’m groaning because that’s three other people I’m going to have to roll against to win tier gear –if it drops. Yeah, go ahead and call me greedy.

I’ve been having a very “is it full moon” kind of month, and rolling anywhere from 1-30. Fail. I do VoA25/10 every week, because if you have the right dps/tanks/heals, its basically free loot and badges. And for the past month no druid gear has dropped and if it has, I have rolled a 1. *weep*

I got a whisper from one of the other druids (lets called her PvPDruid), asking me if I would be rolling on PvP gear. I told her that no, I wouldn’t since I don’t PvP. Go ahead and flame me (please don’t, remember I’m a tree!) Anyways, the druid said that she was here for PvP gear. I said, ‘all yours’.

What I understood from this was: if you don’t roll on PvP gear, I won’t roll on your PvE gear.

Sweet, right?

I inspected her gear and kind of did a double take, wondering why she didn’t want any PvE gear with the gear she had. PvE gear is still an upgrade from a blue in PvP right?

Fast forward to the boss fight. We shot down the first dude whose name I still can’t remember and I run my barky legs over to his corpse. And Oh.My.God. The T9.5 legs. When it came time to roll on them, I said a quick prayers to the healy gods and pressed /roll.

And boom: a 94.

My celebration was cut short however, when I saw this:

PvpDruid rolls a 95
ThatOtherDruid rolls a 94
TheBoomkin rolls a 40

I said a quick ‘grats’ in raid chat and started my vent to Mr. Littlebark, who also happened to be in the raid.

“Offer to buy them off her,” he said quickly.

WHAAAA?!

“No!” I snapped, thinking off how horrible that sounded. Buy gear that she won?

[PvpDruid] whispers: If any PvP gear drops, I’ll consider passing it on.

I was so upset that I just responded with a “no worries”. As I knew it would happen, no more druid gear dropped. At the end of the run, I left the party and sulked in Dalaran.

Mr. Littlebark and I had a conversation whilst I was making dinner about 5 minutes later, in which he said he didn’t see why I didn’t even try to buy them off her. First off, they’re T9.5 pants. They were more of an upgrade for her, obviously. And I was embarrassed that I wanted the pants bad enough that his suggestion sounded great. So he offered to speak on my behalf.

And lo and behold, two minutes later, Mr. Littlebark came back into the kitchen and proceeded to tell me that I now was the proud owner of new T9.5 pants. My first T9.5.

“I can’t believe she agreed to give them to you,” I said, a grin plastered on my face.

“Well, you’re 1000g short now, but I kind of figured she would sell them. She’s a PvPer. And besides, she said she’s cash starved at the moment.”

1000g…

*sigh*


Well, at least I have new pretty pants.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Tale Thirty One: Noob Alert

Noob Alert !!!

One of my co-workers and I were talking about Druids today at work. He’s a fellow druid himself, and he’s been playing WoW for 5 years.

5 Years!!

Anyways, I was complaining about the Wild Growth bug and he smiled and said ‘I remember the days when there was no such thing as Wild growth.’

Whaaaa?!

Excuse me while I go contemplate the life of Druids ‘back in the day’.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Tale Thirty: Important *sorta* news

It's important to me.

About 1-2 weeks ago, I switched my beloved druid to the Alliance side.

Now, when I understood the difference of Alliance and Horde, I swore never ever to play Alliance.

But my will broke and I leveled a Dwarf priest to 80. And I started to play with friends and I was having so much fun. Plus my life is suddendly so insanely busy at the moment that I only had time to really play and raid after 9pm.

So, even though my priest was fun to play and she's an amazing healer, I missed Littlebark. Alot. I mean, she has 450 cooking, 437 fishing and maxed alchemist and herbalist. Most of my achievements are on her. On her, I could tank or dps. And I had an option as to what kind of dps I wanted to do!

I ended up playing my priest more than Littlebark (LB) and I was miserable. I missed my HotS. My battle rez. My running-around-like-a-headless-chicken during a fight.

In the end, I transferred LB to the Alliance and it was hard. I've been playing Horde since I started playing WoW. I had so many friends on my Horde Guild. The guild master (Grimm) and another player are my best friends in WoW. Grimm is my mentor, my friend and the one who I can talk to in WoW about random stuff! Lords of Ancient Sin, for lack of a better word, is my WoW family.

In my Alliance guild, I have no Grimm. Or Fara. While we joke around, it's just not the same you know? I love this guild as well, and I'm pouring myself into it whenever I'm online. I do like being able to play LB now in raids and seeing my name at the top of healing meters (though they mean nothing, I swear!). It's the same as Lords is in Ulduar in the progression scale. But overall, I'm having tons of fun with my friends.

But, I miss the Horde. I find myself /targeting Grimm and Fara in Dalaran in hopes that I see them. I've seen Grimm twice in Dalaran while I was on LB, and it was like someone gave me a present. I've /hugged and /waved and stuff. And then I jump on my Horde toons so I can talk to him and he's already offline.

*sigh*

Such is the life of someone who switches sides. :(

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Tale Thirty: Personal Rant. About RL life.

Personal Rant –cover your ears if you’re sensitive:

Took the frigging bus/train to work today. Already, I was peeved because it’s frigging 30C out. Living up north, I’m not frigging used to this. This is torture. I’m seriously melting.

And to make matters worse, some frigging idiot children made me feel about 100 years old today. Who is the bloody idiot who is teaching those kids to RUN down the UP escalators whilst the train arrived at the platform and there’s a herd of us going UP? And of course, these idiot kids are all laughing and pushing each other, while the rest of us are trying desperately to A) hang onto the railing –which of course is another challenge since said kids are sliding down the rail ways as well- and B) not let a stream of profanities erupt from us.

So, I managed to make it to the top of the platform –gasping and thanking the higher powers that they had spared my life. I stayed inside the platform because it mercifully had A/C going. The herds of kids are gone; I’m enjoying music when I heard this over the intercom: “Parents of the child with the red shirt. Please take your child away from the escalator. It is not meant to be played with.”

So, I don’t know if the parents were deaf or just plain didn’t understand English. But in either case, how can you think that your child playing on those electrical stairs is safe? If you see him BLOCKING THE WAY OF PEOPLE GOING UP, it’s NOT okay!

But oh no. The mother, along with her other billion kids in the same stroller, all applaud and laugh at the child doing this. Eventually peace officers came along and the mother apologized, saying that she didn’t know that the child was doing anything wrong.

W.T.F.

Thankfully, my bus came along so I escaped that little drama. Until I got on the bus and my heart sank.

My sixth grade bully –and all through Jr and High school, mind you- was on the bus.

Friggin fantastic.

It’s been 8+ years since I’ve known her. And because it’s been so flipping long ago, I don’t remember what the hell I did to make her hate me so much.

Only thing I remember was that in grade six, she stole my left shoe before lunch and therefore, I couldn’t go home for lunch, like my mother expected me to. So imagine midget LB, sobbing her heart out because she’s fearing the wrath of her mother, and panicking because now I only have one shoe. My dear bully walks by, smirking and hisses, “good luck trying to find it, loser!” The teacher won’t believe me when I tell her that my bully probably took it, because lets face it, stealing shoes is not the way to dominate the world. Of course, my mother comes to my rescue with another set of shoes, I get grounded for 2 weeks for losing my other shoe because of course she didn’t believe when I told her that someone stole it. I still have night mares about that day.

But I can’t for the life of me figure out why she hates me.

I understand why she’d hate me in grade nine. After all, I had the hots for the same guy she had the hots for. And since I had the same classes as he did, and she didn’t, I can see why she’d hate me for that. Back then, I thought this dude was like God’s gift to man. Athletic, hunky and friendly. Whether as I was into punk music, anime and being weird. And still, this guy talked to me. Chemistry, right!? Nah. Mr. Irresistable was just being a nice guy, and now I realize that that kind of guy is the cliché of High School, but will most likely end up being a door to door salesman with a beer belly a gazillion kids.

So yeah. Back to today.

Bus is near empty. The bus driver is having a smoke. And my bully is sitting at the FRONT FRIGGING SEAT.

Flipping fantastic. –breathe-

So, as it has become costume for whenever I see her: she trips me, I snarl at her, she dares me to do something. I stand up and brush myself off. Walk towards the back of the bus and turn up my earphones. Finally my stop comes up, and what the hell… she’d moved to the back of the bus. I try to jump over her suddenly outstretched legs, managed to avoid her legs… only to trip myself over my feet. And what broke my fall? My frigging laptop.

Flipping Fantastic.

There will be HELL to pay if my laptop doesn’t work and I can’t play WoW. As of right now, I’m writing from my work computer and cursing my bad luck today.

Hope you guys had a better day than I did.

/End Rant.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Tale Twenty Nine: Vuhdoh Pt2/Finale

Vuhdo is my new best friend.

I absolutley love it. And again, I only found one thing that kind of had me sighing, and that is that the HoT timer is colored dots instead of the actual icons.

But other than that, Vuhdo like Healbot, except better!

And for those of you saying, "oh she's making it sound better than it actually is", let me remind you: I was the Healbot virgin. I refused to try Grid because setting it up is just too damn hard and I just wanted something quick and good to go.

Well Vuhdo. You got me. Easy to navigate? Yes please. Quick to set up? Check! Lots of options? Yep!

It even lets you put in what you want your rez message to be. Unlike Healbot, where it says "Casting Revive on So-and-so". My rez message on Vuhdo is, "Resurrecting So-and-So. Side effects may be......"

*giggle*

So, my final verdict: If you have 5 extra minutes, go download Vuhdo and play with it. Set it up to your needs. Put in a wacky rez message. If your add on challenged like me, you'll love this add on.

Cheers!

Friday, September 4, 2009

Tale Twenty Eight: Vuhdo Pt1

Alright, so I've downloaded VuhDo. I'm logging in.

And this is what greets me:

Oh. Hmm. Well, alright. I was suprised to see that you can move each box individually.

Here's the options tab of VuhDoh.

I like it. Easy on the eyes. Easy to navigate so far!

What's this? See that red and blue square? That's my rejuv and regrowth tracker. Not sure if I like that. I like seeing which is which, by means of an icon or something...





There's the buff tracker. I like it, it's really in your face.

Also, as I was playing around with it, it gave me alot of custamization options. For example, do I want my HoTS to be count down for the full duration? Or just for the last 10 seconds?

And, when you get a debuff, it gives you a sound warning. Such as a Elf Bell Toll or Tribal Bass Drum!

I will keep playing with it and test it out in tomorrow's raid. I shall then give you my full verdict there.

Here's to hoping I won't have to use Healbot half way through the raid ;)

Tale Twenty Seven: Vuhdo?

Try two....

something screwy happened and Blogger deleted my entire post before I could hit publish. Tried ctrl+z and nothing.

I hate technology and my noobness.

Anyways.

My last post
Tale Twenty six: Healbot or Grid generated quite a bit of comments. And in a couple of them, I saw you guys suggest Vuhdo.

Now. What is Vuhdo? To me it sounds like some troll thing, but on the curse.com website it says:

"What is VuhDo? – VuhDo is a raid monitor similar to CTRaidAssist or Blizzards built-in raid frames. Basically this is about displaying the health of raid members in form of clearly arranged bars. VuhDo is primarily directed to healing classes, but will make use to almost any other class. Moreover several healing spells or other actions can be asserted to mouse clicks on those bars (Click-Heal)."

Which works for me, because I'm a healing class!

So, I'm putting together an experiment.

I -the Healbot virgin- will be trying out Vuhdo.

I will be testing to see if it's easy to navigate for a technology challenged person like me.

I will explore its options.

I will see if its easy to customize -one of the perks of Healbot.

I will be as unbiased as I can be.

If you have any questions or advice on VuhDo, let me know via the comments or email at
thetreeunleashed@gmail.com.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Tale Twenty Six: Healbot or Grid?

Here's a question:

What is the big difference between Healbot and Grid?

I've read Keeva's
Grid vs Healbot guide and was like, 'm'kay'.

Tried Grid for about 30minutes, trying to set it up and gave up. I'm a huge addon noob.

I heal just fine with Healbot, and I love the simplicity of it. No, not the way it makes the game easier. It doesn't, not at all. I'm still the one making the decisions in a split second: should I Nourish or let the LB tick? It's my decisions that will -literally- save the tank/raid.

Apperantly there was some beef where Healbot used to pick the spell ranks for you. If that was still the case, then I wouldn't use it. But it isn't the case!

So why all the hate versus Healbot?

Just look at some of these comments I've seen around the web while watching Ulduar guides:

"lol healbot = fail healer"

"Learn to play without using easy-mode add-ons. You got your gear from being carried. You got your "skill" from an add-on that does the work for you. Get skill kthanksbai"

"Yes, because when I play a GAME!!!! I want it to be as easy as possible...not! I heal everything with no healbot because I want the added difficulty. Otherwise I might as well play some other easy game like Final Fantasy or something. And it may not translate into skill, it does however translate into quicker reflexes. Grats for taking free handouts."


Obviously, my reactions to some of these comments are =O

When I first signed up for Lords and told them that Littlebark would be a healer, they told me that the add on they use to heal is Healbot. M'kay, easy enough.

But now I pose the question to all you druids out there: What is the real difference? Am I missing out on something? Is all really customization? Or will Grid better me as a healer?

Tale Twenty Five: I'm such a traitor!

I have to tell someone. It's killing me...

I am a traitor to the Horde. I am, it's true.

On Sunday, I killed my faction leaders. All for the For the Alliance! achievement and a pretty Black War Bear.

I don't know why I did it. I was running aimlessly around Dalaran and Mr. Littlebark said, "I'm gonna do that raid to kill the Horde leaders." I had an internal war and 30seconds later said, "fine, I'll go."

Now mind you, we'd attempted it earlier. At 3AM. The group was stupid (38 random people you don't know, doing whatever they please? No thanks!) and I don't know what so many Horde were doing up at that time. Normally, us Hordies just ignore them as they kill Thrall. The Alliance ratio to Horde on the Cenarius server is 5:1. Pathetic. Anyways, the 3AM raid. We had Thrall at 75% when all the sudden this swarm of red invades the room.

Oh look, there's that DK from that guild we do our 25mans with! Hello, Mr. DK! It's me, Littlebark! Oh, hey... hey, stop beating on me. Stop that! Someone get this jerk off me!

Dead.

Mr. Littlebark and I were so disgruntled, not to mention tired, that we quit.

Later that day, we joined the second raid. The group was stupider than the last. I swear, it was. But we managed to get them all down. I think a total of two Hordies came to defend Thrall that time, and on Cairne (which I sobbed at, by the way, as he died) a level 10 druid watched as we mercilessly killed his faction leader. Sylvanas was a cinch (I didn't cry as much on her, she's a jerk to me all the time) and the Blood Elf leader whose name I still don't know and have no clue why he's the leader, I didn't even realise that we had fought anything by the time he died. Run on sentence much?

Anyways. My heart shattered when we killed Thrall. I sobbed as we killed Cairne. I let a tear slip for Sylvanas. And I didn't even know we killed the Blood Elf Dude.


But look! Don't we just look so pretty?

- A very ashamed Littlebark

PS: Thrall is SO MUCH easier to kill than King Varian. He's a pain and a half to kill.