Feeling pretty RAWR.

So, I've been raiding quite a bit this week.

On Monday, we ran Ulduar-10. I brought my hunter, and she got... zero upgrades. Everything was plate or cloth, no dps mail at all. Sadface. However, we did have a very successful run, we got through Kologarn, which is farther than I've ever seen. The last time I was in there, we had a wipefest on Ignis and never managed to kill him.

I've dual specced my hunter to Marksman. Sigh. I never thought I would, but I had the extra money, and I won a gun from heroic TOC, so I figured I'd give it a try. Stuck a haste scope on there, and I have been doing better DPS. The problem is, now I have trouble switching back. The haste scope is useless when she's using her Beast Mastery spec, and the non-haste scope is on a crossbow. So every time I want to switch, I have to restock arrows, and it's a general pain in the arse. I want a bow, dammit. Then I wouldn't have to worry about it. Still, Leshya is getting a lot of play time, and I'm still having fun, trying to learn a rotation for the new spec is amusing, especially because I'm not geared quite right for Marksman. I'm managing around 4k dps, which is nothing to sneeze at, at least I don't think so.

Then last night Saraabi got her turn. There were two 10-man runs set up, one for OS and one for Naxx. We got OS down with no trouble, and Saraabi got to tank the big dragon again. We did very well in Naxx as well, we cleared all four quarters, and just have the last two bosses to clear out some time this weekend. We had only two wipes the whole time. One was on Anub'rekhan, breaking in a new healer... he was too close to the boss on locust swarm and got silenced. And once Saraabi went down, everyone else followed shortly after. The other was on Four Horsemen, and possibly the same healer. He was put in the back, and wasn't close enough to Lady Blaumeux. Or however you spell that. We cleaned them both out on the second try though, which is a great learning curve for someone who had never seen the encounters before. Saraabi main tanked the whole thing, and had an awesome time doing so.

I think Thaddius is my favorite, with the whole tank throwing thing. It's just fun to go flying back and forth across the room. Grobbulus is probably second, and Heigan third, just because the dancing while tanking is a bit nerve-wracking. I like bosses where I actually get to do something more than just stand there and hold the boss for everyone else to pound on. Some of the standing still bosses were fun too though, I sat there and watched my TPS on Omen climb up over a million. I felt very RAWR!

On Friday is supposed to be another Ulduar, then on Saturday we're going to have another go at ToC-10. We have been in there once before, but we didn't really know what we were doing, and just barely got to the second part of the Northrend Beasts. However, we're all a bit better-geared, so perhaps we'll have more success this time around. We've also tried Onyxia once, but wiped to the flying phase every time. One of these days we'll take her out too, I'm sure!

After this week though, I'm cutting back down on my raiding to one or two days a week. I was up too late last night and Monday night, and I am really feeling it right now. I had fun, but I need to take care of myself too. Tonight is a night off anyway, so all I'm going to do is watch TV with the family and try to put a dent in our laundry. I've decided to wash just about every item of clothing in the house, and it's a big task! It'll get done though, mark my words! :)

Identity Crisis

Hubby and I were talking last night about character names. I mentioned in my last post that Asara had to change her name when she was transferred to Cenarion Circle. I have adjusted to that surprisingly well, I'm right on top of things when people say "Cael" on vent. Or Saraabi. Many of the people in their new guild consider Saraabi my main because they knew her first. Which is fine. There's actually someone else who is a friend of some people we run with often (yeah, that's confusing) whose main is named Cayle, so they call me Saraabi to avoid misunderstandings. It's still hard to hear "Cayle" over ventrilo and not go, "Yes?"

I suppose this is probably partly due to the fact that I've had many alts, all with different names, so I'm used to adjusting to people calling me different things. Still, it's a bit odd to me that I shrugged off the "Asara" identity so quickly. I still catch myself calling her Asara when talking about her to my hubby, and sometimes I have to remind myself what to type when sending mail from my bank alt, but other than that, she's Caelatria now. It makes me wonder if it's time to redesign the blog. After all, it's my WoW Asara that dominates the header, but that Asara no longer exists.

When I did the transfer, I decided that I wanted a new name. I wanted a fresh start for her, I didn't want to give her some odd spelling of the name she's carried for the past three years. She was stepping away from everything she'd known, I didn't want old baggage carried along, and I knew if she continued to be "Asara", it would be hard to get away from that. I didn't want to give her any name that I had ever given another character before.

Maybe it's time for a new blog. A new life, a new internet "identity".

What do you guys think?

It's been a while!

If anyone is still out there reading this, thanks for sticking around!

It's been crazy for me the past week or so. I'm covering some vacations at work, so my hours have been all over the place. Still, I have some resolution to my guild problem. After trading messages back and forth with my class leader, I decided to transfer Asara. So if you're looking for her, she is now named Caelatria over on Cenarion Circle. I did make another Asara on Malfurion, just to keep the name in case I ever decide to go back. Or who knows, when Cataclysm hits, I might re-level her through the new quests. I even made her look like she used to before the barber shop came out, so it will be like completely starting over.

So far, I'm happy I made the move. The new guild is lots of fun, and very supportive. She's already been to 10-man Ulduar with them, as well as plenty of heroics. Believe it or not, they roll on loot in raids, no DKP to worry about, they just go and do what they can do. I like it. She's been busier in the past two days on Cenarion Circle than she has in the past two months on Malfurion.

The only sad note is that I got absolutely no response from my guild master about any of it. I have told him multiple times in the past that he's the main reason I stayed at all, and he had nothing to say. It's like he and my class leader have switched personalities. Over the years, my CL has been very quiet. He hardly ever spoke, even in chat, except to do MD assignments or something, unless directly addressed. My guild leader and I had a very open friendship, always joking with each other and whatnot. Now my GL is silent, and I've talked more with my CL over the past week or two than I have in the entire time I've been in the guild.

There have actually been quite a few people leaving in the past week. My CL is quitting the game entirely, that was a big shock. I had been teasing him recently about how he never named his pets, so I asked him that before he quit, he name one of them and send me a screenshot for proof. Which he did, lol!

That's about all the news for now, just life as usual at home, though Andy is getting ready for first grade! We just got a list of what he'll need in the way of school supplies last week, which was kind of a bummer. I really like the curriculum and whatnot of the school he attends, but sometimes they seem like they're a bit behind the ball, especially when it comes to communicating with us. I mean, Meijer has had school supplies out for weeks, so of course by the time we get there to pick up his stuff, a lot of the things he needs are out of stock, or there are only a few left to choose from. We didn't even know when his first day was until hubby called last Monday.

Ah well, we'll get him situated soon enough.

I might be done.

Yesterday I was involved in some drama on Asara's guild forum. It really drove home to me that this isn't the guild I joined any more. SI has evolved into a hardcore progression guild. The people who are active in it now have little time for fun, and even less time for some random casual friend of the guild leader who used to be a staunch raider.

This morning I sent a message to my guild leader and my class leader asking for their input. I'm not having fun in the guild any more, I think maybe it's time I moved on. I've agonized over this for long enough, I need to just make a decision and get it over with. I'm losing sleep now over all this, and that needs to stop. I'm guessing that at this point my guild leader is probably just tired of listening to me whine and will be glad to see me go.

I just want to play and have fun, is that so much to ask?

WoW I've got things on my mind...

I'm not sure what to talk about first! I guess I'll just start typing and hope that I get where I'm going in the end. Be prepared for a long post! :)

Yesterday when I got home, hubby was working on some Loremaster quests on his druid. So I hopped on Asara and started working on quests in the Draenei starting area, trying to get to Exalted with Exodar. While I was doing that, people were actually talking in guild chat, and I chimed in a few times. Mostly goofing around, which felt good, as I've been very out of the loop with the guild lately.

After a while, hubby asked if I would come tank a couple of heroics on Saraabi. We recently left the small family guild that we'd joined for a much larger and more active one, in hopes that we'd be able to run more instances and stuff. He'd gotten three DPS from the guild, and just needed a tank. I was a bit loath to leave Asara, because I finally felt like I was clicking with people again, plus I was (mostly) having a good time running around pwning the heck out of low-level quests.

I finally decided to go, but only for a couple of heroics. I was tired, and tanking requires quite a bit of concentration, I didn't want to let the group down too much because my attention was wandering. So we decided to run Utgarde Keep and Utgarde Pinnacle, since they're very close together, and I'm comfortable with both, having run them before. We got an achievement in Utgarde Keep for not letting the first boss cast Ice Block on anyone, and quite a few people said grats and good job. I hadn't even realized that he hadn't cast one! The rest of the instance went quickly, and the end boss dropped plate pants that I already have, and a lovely tanking ring that I didn't have, but won.

So we moved on to Utgarde Pinnacle. Had some trouble getting in (stupid instance servers), but finally made it. Things went well, we lost the rogue on Svala Sorrowgrave for some reason, but that was it. No problems on the other bosses, including the end boss, who was nice enough to drop a Red Sword of Courage for me. So as much as I protested going in the first place, in the end I was really glad that I had gone. Plus the group of DPS-ers we ran with was super friendly and nice. They were all already friends, but they tried really hard to include us. There are a lot of people in the guild like that, actually. They'll grats people for the silliest things, like catching 500 fish. But you don't get an achievement in this guild when people are on and not see a bunch of green text congratulating you for it.

After UP, I went back to Asara for a little while before actually going to bed. I was sooo close to Exalted with Exodar, I felt that a couple more quests would probably do the job. Guild chat was a lot quieter because most everyone was in Ulduar. About a half an hour later, ping! Asara has earned the Achievement "Ambassador of the Alliance"! Woo! And.. one person said grats in guild chat. One. Person. Not even one of the people I'd consider a good friend, either.

See the contrast? It really bothers me that people I've been playing with for almost my entire WoW career can't be bothered to take two seconds to type /g grats! because they're so busy with their "srs bsns" raid and people I've been playing with for less than a week do so as a matter of course, regardless of what they themselves are doing at the time. They could have a macro to do it, but the point is, they do it.

Asara's guild used to be like that. I mean, there weren't achievements or anything back then, but the environment was much more friendly than it is now. There was an effort made by the officers to include people, there were social events, everyone just seemed a lot closer. Things have changed quite a bit since those days. Maybe they don't do those things any more because the majority of the guild doesn't want them. Maybe the majority of the guild is only there for raiding now, I can't really tell. There are a lot of newer people, most of whom were recruited to raid, so I guess that might be true.

It kind of hurts, to feel like such an outsider among people I've known for such a long time. Having Saraabi in this new guild is just illuminating the differences more and more clearly. This feeling isn't new, in fact I've talked about it with Asara's guild leader once before. His solution was to wait things out until I can raid again, because then I'll be included in raid chat and people can get to know me better. So that's.. maybe in a couple of months. Maybe never.

They only raid on nights when I have to work the next day, and I don't think I'm comfortable with that any more. Plus they outgear me so much, I'd likely be waitlisted even if I did sign up for a raid anyway. Saraabi and Lumae's new guild, though, they've already invited us to 10-man Ulduar. Someone asked me about it the other day, and I said I'd have to see, because we're 3 hours ahead of server time. But she said they raid it on Friday and Saturday nights. I'm tempted. I really am. I'd have to go as DPS, so I'd have to work on Saraabi's Ret spec, but I think it would be fun to go.

We'll see.

Many Many Accomplishments!

Phew, it's been a very interesting evening. After I got home from work, the heroic instance bug bit the hubby pretty hard. So we hit up Heroic Violet Hold and kicked its tail, with a couple of interesting moments due to encountering a couple of bosses I'd never tanked before. No wipes, though hubby died once and almost couldn't get back into the instance!

Once that was done, we got a group together for Heroic Utgarde Keep, which was the daily. Again, we rocked the kasbah, finishing up the entire instance before my buffs ran out! Since we were doing so well, we headed up to Utgarde Pinnacle, and wiped that place clean as well. No drake, but also no deaths.

Hubby and I were on a roll, so after dinner I decided it was time to conquer my fear of the timed run of Heroic Culling of Stratholme. We grabbed some DPS and headed out. It was messy, but we got through the first two bosses and headed for the inn. We destroyed the dragons in there, and moved on to the part that made me the most nervous... the gauntlet. With about 8 minutes left. I have to say that I could not have managed it without hubby here. He was my cheerleader and my hero. I kept asking him, am I doing ok? And he'd say yep, you're doing fine, just keep pushing through, as long as I'm at half mana or so I can keep up.

And suddenly, we were through it. With six minutes left on the timer, we rushed the boss, and took him out! Mal'ganis was basically an afterthought, I tanked with one hand and cleansed sleep with the other, and he was a goner. And at the end of it all...

This is madness!

Two posts in one day!

*hands out brown paper bags to those who may find themselves hyperventilating*

No, really, I just have some things to think about with regard to my pet situation in-game, and I'd like to write about them here and see if I can't coax a couple more of you lurky-type people out to help me with this whole thing.

The Problem:

3.2 is here, and brought with it a new Spirit Beast. He is blue and sparkly, and, well.. new. Which makes him very want-able for me. That whole SHINY thing.

The Arguments:

He's rare, just like the other ones, so not a lot of people will have one. I'm guessing Beast Mastery is still going to be the redheaded stepchild of the Hunter Spec family for a while, which cuts down even farther on how many people will actually be out there looking to tame him.

He's a Spirit Beast, and not a cat, which adds to the whole "different" feel.

He's a Spirit Beast, and my stables already hold the other two. He would totally be a "vanity" pet, because he uses the same skills as the other two. Plus he wouldn't see raids or instances unless somewhere down the line the whole pet family gets a buff. Devilsaur is still topping the charts as Best DPS Exotic, so Chompy will always be by my side when I go through an instance portal.

(side note: I totally don't get the people going all OMFG WTF about the set of skills this guy has. Yeah, he's not a cat MODEL, and he has Prowl. So what? If you've quested in Hinterlands, plenty of stealthy wolves out there. Plus, the pet family name is totally Spirit BEAST not Spirit Cat or Spirit Wolf, so none of the Claw/Bite arguments hold water for me either. The pet family has these skills. Blizzard chose to give the first two examples of this family cat models. So what.)

In order to tame him, I have to give up someone who's been there for quite a while. Let's go through the choices, shall we?

Chompy the Devilsaur: Not happening. See above comment re. Best DPS Exotic pet. Also my only level 80 pet at the moment.

Beauregarde the Chimera: Probably candidate #1 for replacement, except for the fact that I spent four days camping the silly thing because it was purple and gorgeous. Has not been out of my stables for more than showing off in ages. Still level 75. Rare, but I could possibly camp him again and re-tame him should I change my mind later.

Leshya the Grimtotem Spirit Guide: Also not happening. This guy is totally not replaceable AT ALL since Blizzard hotfixed the mechanic that allowed him to be tamed in the first place. Still level 75, but also a regular wolf, and the only pet available to me should I ever spec out of Beast Mastery.

Sidhe the Spirit Beast: Loque'nahak. The first Spirit Beast I tamed, and totally a fluke that I even managed to get him in the first place. I blogged about taming him, and personally, I think that story is one of the best things I've ever written. Rare, but again, re-tameable. Level 78, because I was working on leveling him when the patch containing Gondria came out. To release him would feel like a bit of a waste, as he counts for the rare-killing achievement, and if I'm not going to have him as a pet I may as well have killed him instead of taming him.

Zingarnor the Spirit Beast: Gondria. Currently level 79, and of the two cat models, my personal favorite. He was relatively easy to find, but his name has some history, and I couldn't transfer it to the new wolf because the first Zingarnor was a cat, and it just wouldn't feel right.

The Plea:

I can't decide this on my own. I've got a problem with doing things on impulse, and should I happen to fly over this guy before I've totally decided one way or the other, it would be extremely difficult for me to resist releasing the chimera and taming him. Advice pleeeease??!

Zergfest is GO!

Last night I was spodding around on Asara, doing the cooking daily and whatnot, and also buying a Tome of Cold-Weather Flying for Mezzaluna. (Flying on a carpet is awesome, by the way, even if it is one of the slow ones.) Hubby was on his druid over on Cenarion Circle, and someone was putting together a group for Karazhan in Trade. So I hopped over to Saraabi and we joined up. It was the most interesting group I'd ever seen. Six paladins, two warriors, a hunter, and hubby's druid. Four of the paladins were ret, one was holy, and Saraabi, of course, is prot. We lost the holy pally before we even got started, so hubby was left to heal the whole thing himself. The hunter told me I was going to be MT, because nobody else was volunteering. Not to mention half of the group was 70, and the other half was 80, nothing in-between.

So we get there, and start getting the group together, and one of the paladins starts pulling trash, before everyone was even in. It set the tone for the whole thing. I was off-balance from the start, considering I was told I'd be tanking, and this other paladin hardly let me have threat. He was in Ulduar gear, and I'm barely geared for heroics, so whatever. I just kind of wandered around after them all, because they were pulling faster than I'd ever seen. We did the whole instance that way. The only boss I actually tanked was Moroes, and that was just because one of the warriors charged one of the trash packs next to his table and pulled them, so I taunted him off.

I was very proud of hubby, he kept up like a trooper. We destroyed all of the bosses up to Prince. By the time we got up there, we'd lost another paladin, and the hunter was dc'ed. She'd started having connection problems after Curator, and never really got back in. I felt bad, since she had been the one to put the group together. So we get to Prince. Seven melee DPS and hubby healing. The first attempt didn't go well. Some of the group didn't know the mechanics, and so a lot of them died on the first Shadow Nova. I knew what was going on, but having only done the fight as ranged DPS, and that having been almost a year ago, I had some trouble adjusting to running out on enfeeble. It didn't help that DBM didn't load anything for any of the bosses.

After the first wipe, the 80 ret paladin that had been leading the charge never released. He got rezzed four or five times, but never came back. So there were five of us. The second try went as well as the first, but the third try.. that was pretty awesome. I got hit with the first shadow nova, but hubby rezzed me, because I was right next to him. Lived through one more, and got hit with a second. The other paladin had gone down as well, so it was down to hubby and the two 70 warriors. One was tanking, the other was DPS. They dragged Prince all over the place, before the non-tank warrior went down. Hubby was totally on top of his game, healing when needed, and popping out of tree to drop a Moonfire and a couple of Wraths on whenever he could. And, amazingly, the two of them managed to get him down. Hubby finally fell at the end, but the warrior blew all of his cooldowns, and down went Prince. Very impressive to watch. The warrior's helm token dropped as well, Prince's nod to a fight well fought, I suppose. :)

We spent the rest of the night watching TV, an episode of Heroes and one of Leverage.

And now it's Friday, and I can't wait to get the weekend going! This work day can't end fast enough. See you all on the other side!

So many things to talk about!

Firstly, let me say a big Happy Birthday to my friend Gracie!

Secondly, it's hard to believe that Michael Jackson is gone. I grew up with his music, in fact, I have several fond memories of dressing up with my friends and dancing around the living room to the Thriller album. I hope that people will remember him for his music and not for all the mess of controversy that followed him around over the past several years. Time will tell, I guess.
And yes, I'm sorry about Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett as well, but it's Michael Jackson's death that hits hardest of the three, so that's the one I'm dwelling on right now.

Thirdly, it's finally Friday. Thank goodness.

Fourthly, it's frickin' hot as heck outside, and I'm ready for that to be done. We're all crowded into one room in the house right now, to save energy on cooling the whole thing. Even a couple of days of decent temperatures would help.

Fifthly, if that's even a word.. I'm taking a tip from my friend Tisha and bolding the main topics of my little paragraphs, in hopes that it will help y'all read the parts of my posts that you're interested in. I know I have people coming here for wildly different reasons, so let me know if this helps sort things out please :)

Sixthly, last night when I got home from work, I hopped on Asara and instantly got a group invite from my guild leader. They were running a quick hit on Emalon before starting Ulduar for the night, and did I want to go? I checked with hubby first, and he said he didn't mind, so off I went. Fifteen minutes or so later, I had a new achievement, and we were looking at some loot. My guild is a bit different from others with regard to this, at least from what I've gathered. We actually earn DKP for it, and are required to spend it if we want a piece of tier gear that drops. My guild master says that tier is tier, no matter where it comes from. The PvP gear is on free roll though, as long as you can use it. We're welcome to PUG VoA if we want a chance at tier gear for free though. But if we run with the guild, it's by guild rules, which is fine by me. I don't have any DKP anyway, so I figured I'd just go for the emblems, and to experience the full boss fight, as I hadn't done that yet.

So imagine my surprise when he drops two sets of hunter gloves. Imagine my even greater surprise when winners are announced and I'm one of them, along with my class leader, even though there were four hunters there all told. I guess either the other two had them already or didn't want to spend DKP on them. The only downside.. is now I have to regem Asara yet AGAIN because the new gloves (and the new bracers I bought from the guild bank last week) have a lot more hit on them than my old ones. Time to get Saraabi out and go mining! :) Then she'll be off to Cenarion Circle to join hubby's druid and my baby alts over there!

Lovely Long Weekend :)

So, it's Monday, which means weekend recap! This is going to be a long one, as I had Friday off last week, so I've got three days of fun to share with everyone!

Friday started at the mall, as a friend of hubby's just got married, and we wanted to get them a gift card. After we picked that up, we did a bit of wandering around the mall, where I got some new white sandals and a new dress. Let me just say now, I adore that dress. It is so comfortable and breezy, I would wear it all the time if I could. Unfortunately, dresses at work are a no-no, so I will just have to wear it at home for now. We then hit up the mall cinema and caught an afternoon showing of The Hangover. Which was absolutely hilarious. I almost hurt myself trying not to be the annoying Person Who Laughs Louder Than Anyone Else In The Theater. Out of the main characters, I have to say that Alan (played by Zach Galifianakis.. say that one three times fast!) was my favorite. It's hard to put into words why I loved that character so much, but at least part of it was how he delivered crazy lines like they were absolutely normal things to say. "Tigers love pepper. They hate cinnamon."

Later that evening, hubby went out to hang with a friend, so I had the house to myself for a while (the kids were spending the weekend with my parents). I hopped on WoW, and was puttering around on Asara when someone asked in guild chat for DPS for an alt run of Ulduar. The run had been advertised on the forums, but I hadn't signed up because I figured I was woefully undergeared. But opportunity was knocking, so I figured I'd at least give it a shot. I whispered them saying that I would go if they really needed the extra people, I was available, though my gear wasn't the best, and I don't know the fights at all. A few minutes later I got an invite and made my way out.

In the end, we only got Flame Leviathan down. We tried Razorscale a few times, but had several different issues causing failure each time. We got him grounded twice, but on one attempt we'd lost too many DPS to stray adds or The Bad (tm), and on the other we lost tanks too quickly. So we went over to um.. I think XT? It's the one that throws tantrums in a very annoying whiny voice. Anyway, I'm not sure what went wrong with that one, but we did one attempt, and when that failed, they called it. Either way, I'd had a good time. I got to see the inside of the instance, which was good, and I got a couple of achievements for the Flame Leviathan fight as well, even if it didn't drop any hunter loot! :)

Saturday was a pretty low-key day. Hubby and I got some WoW in, and at the end of the afternoon Mezzaluna and Rhonson were level 71 and working on Dragonblight quests. Then my brother-in-law's wife called, and we went out to dinner with them at Sonic, followed by an evening of Mario Party 8 on their Wii. We were having so much fun that we stayed up until about 2 AM.

Yesterday was yet more WoW, as the Midsummer Fire Festival started. I spent the morning on Asara visiting all the fires that she hadn't gotten to last year. I don't think I'll be able to get her the Flame Warden title though, as I'm almost positive I won't have enough blossoms to purchase the whole set of gear for the dancing achievement. I did get the juggling one, though, and I already had the horde cities and Ahune from last year. So I'll do the torch-tossing dailies as much as I can, and buy what pieces of the outfit that I can, and stow them away for this time next year.

The afternoon belonged to Mezzaluna and Rhonson again, and they got to level 72 before we called it quits for the night, and retired to the living room to watch a movie before bed. We sometimes have trouble deciding what movie to watch, so hubby decided to put a little random chance in it. He counted our movies (125!) and had me do a /roll in game before I turned WoW off. It came up at 108, and that's how we chose what movie to watch. Perhaps I'll make up a spreadsheet so we can fill in the names of the movies, and save some counting for next time. Plus we can keep track of which ones we've watched recently, too!

The one thing I didn't do this weekend was transfer Saraabi over to Cenarion Circle. The cost proved to be a little too steep with the extra spending we did at the mall. I will move her eventually, but it will have to wait another week or so. Not a big deal. I have also decided to try and wait out the issues that Asara's guild is having. Mostly because she's still only getting logged on for dailies anyway, so it doesn't matter too much right now what guild tag is over her head. For now, at any rate. If I get back into a situation where I can raid again, I might rethink this.

And now it's Monday, and back to work. Sigh. I'll close with a Whistler tidbit from last week.

Normally he keeps the oldies station on during the day. He says it's because it comes in the best out of all the stations, as we've got a cruddy old radio with no antenna, and we're in the middle of the building, so it takes a strong signal to get through. On Thursday I found out the other reason. He had the local rock station on for a change, which I really enjoyed. Someone asked me later in the afternoon why we were listening to it, because he couldn't whistle along! I thought back through the day, and true enough, he had been unusually quiet all day, because he didn't really know many of the songs that were played. So not only did I get to listen to music I actually like, I got to do so without a lot of extraneous noise. It was pretty awesome.

Guild Dilemma

I have no idea what to do, and I need some advice, if anyone has any.

I'm pretty set that I am going to transfer my paladin to Cenarion Circle this weekend. My concern now is what to do with my hunter. The guild she has been in now.. she has been in it for almost as long as she has existed as a character. However, there are indications that the guild is falling apart. Again. They're still recruiting and still managing to put together 25-man raids, but that's not so much of a concern for me, as I'm not raiding, and I don't know when I'm going to start again. The problem I'm having is that there are very few people still IN the guild that I consider to be friends. My guild leader, definitely, he's the biggest one. But everyone else, not so much. There are people I talk to from time to time, but that's about it. There were a couple of other people I'd consider to be friends, but I found out that one of them left the guild last night.

The whole reason I stayed in the guild after I stopped raiding was because it's where my friends were. But last night I was on for a bit, and everyone I had an actual conversation with were people who either are not in the guild anymore, or were never in to begin with. So I find myself in an awkward situation. I never thought I'd even consider putting Asara in another guild. Yet here I am doing just that. Another friend and ex-guildmate has a raiding guild, and has said in the past that both hubby and I would be welcome to join if we ever wanted to. It seems to be the guild where most of my ex-guildmates have gone, so I'm guaranteed to be around people I know and can talk to.

The problem is that my guild leader would probably never speak to me again if I changed guilds before the guild itself disbanded or whatever. So I am really torn on this right now. I told my guild leader the other day that I was probably going to transfer Saraabi off the server, and got no response, even though I assured him that at the time I had no plans to move Asara anywhere, and in fact intended to resume raiding with them if/when my schedule allowed. I don't know what to think of that, if he's just busy with RL, or overwhelmed with the changes and people leaving, or what. Hubby took his characters out a week or two ago as well.

Maybe I'll just leave things be for a little while longer. See how the transfer goes, and maybe talk to my friend in the other guild about putting an alt in there for a bit to see what it's like. What do you all think?

Reconnecting is so much fun!

Yet another great weekend!

First and foremost, I finally finished my review of Arthas for SQT. You can read it here: Arthas Review. It probably took me much longer than it should have, but it's hard (for me) to do a book justice without rehashing every plot point and saying what I liked or didn't like about it.

Secondly, on Saturday afternoon I finally got Numae (my druid) to level 50. She still has a ways to go before she can get going in Outland, but it's a big milestone for her, as she's been stuck at 49 for what seems like ages. Shortly thereafter my phone rang, and it was hubby saying that the car had died, and thus began the Great Battery Adventure.

Hubby and the kids had gone out to do some grocery shopping. They were in the drive-thru at McDonald's grabbing some lunch when the battery petered out. So they went searching for a pay phone to call me. They finally found one at Meijer, so hubby called me and bought a new battery while he was there. I had to borrow my sister-in-law's car, and headed out there to pick them up. When I finally found them (not setting up a meeting place on the phone was a big oops there), we headed back to McDonald's, where I took the kids inside to get lunch while hubby changed out the batteries.

He got the old one out, but the one he'd bought was different from the one actually in the car (even though it was the one recommended by the book at the store for my make and model of car), and the positive and negative poles were on the wrong sides, so he couldn't hook it up. We all piled back in the other car, took the cold groceries back to the house, then it was back to Meijer to exchange batteries, and off to McDonald's again to get the new one installed.

Thankfully that one worked, and we all made it home afterwards without any trouble.

On Sunday afternoon I got to hang out with some old college friends of mine. My friend Lauren was in town from Chicago for a retreat, and we hung out at one of her friends' house. We were also visited by her old roommate Dania, who I hadn't seen.. probably since they graduated in '01. We spent a couple of hours chatting and catching up and reminiscing, and it was really great. Much laughter was had over old jokes and stories, as well as new ones. The only downside was that hubby had scheduled time for us all to get pictures taken that day, and I completely forgot. Perhaps they'll let us reschedule... oops! :)

Lastly, Mezzaluna and Rhonson made it to 70 last night. They're questing in Borean Tundra right now, looking forward to 77 and flight! I really have to start saving up gold now, I've been doing quite a bit of spending lately on Mezza's trade skills, trying to keep them up with her level. Her tailoring is right on track, but her enchanting is lagging behind a bit. She needs 8 more points to be at Northrend level, and it's going to be difficult to not buy the materials she needs to get it there!

Some things just aren't meant to be.

Asara was spodding around yesterday helping Alainds with some group quests in Icecrown, when someone asked in guild chat for people to go to H. Magister's Terrace. I piped right up saying I would as soon as this quest was done. A couple of other people expressed interest as well, so it seemed there would be plenty of people available for a group. When the quest was done, I said I was ready for invite, but none came. A quick check of the guild roster showed five people already in there. Quite the disappointment, to have been first to say something, but left out in the end. I still don't have either the phoenix pet or the white hawkstrider.. but maybe someday.

Later on, hubby and I decided to get together a group for a drake run of CoS. We got the group around pretty quickly and headed in. We cleared the first boss, and started walking toward the next group of elites, 19 minutes left on the timer, things are looking great, when all of a sudden everyone is running in place. And... hubby and I got disconnected. Crap. We reset the modem, got back on for a second, just in time to see the group going for the next boss, and... disconnected again. Long story short, Comcast decided to have problems at just the wrong time, and we didn't manage to get back again until later in the day. And of course, it turns out that we would have easily made the timer if we'd stayed connected, and I probably would have won the bronze drake. Sigh.

There was some fun to be had this weekend though. Later that night I got in on a run of AQ40. They had already cleared most of it, but I was there for Twin Emperors and C'thun, so I got the achievement. I also got a cool blue bug mount from the trash. After that, I took Numae out to try to finish her Sunday's Finest achievement. She had gotten the shirt the night before, and I didn't want to leave it half done if I could help it. She opened something like 525 eggs, but finally, at 1AM EST, the eggs and the vendors despawned for the year, and she was left pantsless. So I sent her off to Darkshore to gather up some small eggs and Mageroyal, to make a Delicious Chocolate Cake, so Asara could get started on her Children's Week achievements.

Speaking of which, I doubt that I'll get the Matron title. I'm really not a fan of PvP, but I suppose I'll give it a shot. I don't expect to see Blizzard taking that part of the achievement out, especially when the rest of them are so easy. Not to mention there aren't that many required for the title to begin with. I guess we'll see, but I'm not going to spend all of my playtime this week in battlegrounds, Violet Drake or not. I'll probably just keep working on my Wyrmrest Accord reputation, and buy my way to a red drake from them. :) I'd really like the green one, but so far all I've gotten is egg yolk and lots of tickbirds from my eggs. Darnit!

I didn't play a whole lot yesterday. It was a beautiful day, so I spent some time outside with the kids, sitting on the porch swing and reading. It looks to stay nice for the next couple of days at least, so I expect to do a bit more of that, provided I don't get out of work after sundown! :)

What a morning!

So I had a few extra minutes this morning, and I hopped on WoW to do my cooking daily. I was one cooking award away from the last recipe I needed for the Northrend Gourmet (Cuttlesteak), and I had fished up the Moonglow Cuttlefish yesterday morning before work. Thank goodness I did too, with the patch keeping servers down for as long as it did. Because I finished grabbing my mushrooms from the sewers, bought my recipe, and...Ta da! Chef Asara is born! Now to save up 100 awards for that sweet Chef's hat, and I'll really look the part! I didn't have to leave for work quite yet, even after finishing that, so I thought I'd give the new fishing dailies a try. The lovely lady by the fountain sent me back into the Underbelly to fish up some old jewelry from the sewers. I have had a love/hate relationship going with fishing in the sewers for quite some time now. Every time I get a chance, I'm down there trying to get myself a Giant Sewer Rat, but never had any luck. I've been standing next to someone who fished it up several times, though. Imagine my surprise and utter shock then, when I fish up the quest item, and with it is a little whisker with a blue name next to it... and my screen lights up with yet another achievement. At first I thought it was just for getting the quest item, then I read the achievement itself. And what do you know...

I got myself a rat, at long last! He really is giant too, compared to the size of most of the other pets. After I turned in the quest, I opened up my little bag of fishing treasures, and there was a diamond-tipped cane in there. I sent that off to hubby before I logged off for work, because I think it will accent his pimp outfit nicely.

Tonight, provided I'm not at work until bedtime, will be Troll Time. I still haven't picked a pet for Neztraz, I'll have to do some thinking about that today. This set of characters will be interesting to level, as we don't have higher-level characters on Cenarion Circle to feed gear and money to them as they go, like we did on Malfurion. We do have a plan for that though, we're going to make a pair of Death Knights and take them into Outlands to quest. What we make from vendoring rewards should be a help, and they will also serve to run each other through low-level instances, at least for a while. I can't wait to see how far we get!

Post me a post...

Maybe.

I'm coming up strangely blank today. Sick coworker is back today, but my boss is on vacation, so I still had to get up sort of early. Same goes for tomorrow and Monday. At least I have my computer time back, for the most part. I'm a bit sleepy, I woke up at 1:30 in the morning for no reason whatsoever, and couldn't sleep again until after 3. This is bad because I'm not concentrating so well now, and I have a lot of things that need to get done today. *sigh* Let's ramble on a bit about WoW then, eh?

I put in some time on Saraabi last night after I got home from work. She is now 76 and about a half, from questing in Sholazar. I didn't really intend to quest there, because I wanted to keep neutral with Oracles and Frenzyheart, but in the end I couldn't resist. The amount of Saronite there is a beautiful thing. In a couple of hours of questing, I had three stacks of it, as well as some Titanium, two eternal Earth, one eternal Shadow, plus half each of Air and Fire. So not only am I supporting my own Jewelcrafting, I'm able to provide hubby with some mats for his Blacksmithing, which in turn he uses to make gear for me.

Can I just say here that I love my Tempered Saronite set? It amazes me how different things are from when I first started running around Sholazar just mining. Even at 73 I was running away from Dreadsabers because I knew it would take me forever to kill them. Now? I am pulling packs of rhinos and dreadsabers and AOE tanking them like it was nothing. It's a beautiful thing for me.

Speaking of rhinos, I'm very sad that they're making Stampede a single-target thing. I don't bring Rocksteady out so much now that Chompy is 80, but it was fun to be able to pick up a group of mobs and scatter them to the four winds. Still, according to BRK's post today, he'll be getting Thunderstomp, so he'll be better able to AOE tank. Good thing too, I'm not so fond of Gorillas. They're also taking away any reason I'd have to bring a wolf to raids, so it looks like I'm going to have to find another "normal" pet for any jaunts I have into Survival or Marksmanship. I still have Leshya, anyway. The wolf was just the only 80-ish Ferocity pet available at the time. I do like that it color-changes like my rhino, but perhaps it's time for another cat or raptor. Or maybe even a ravager, just to be different, seeing as there are three other hunters in my guild, and between them they raid with two cats and a raptor. Perhaps if I do get a ravager, I will name it Pookie, in honor of Breana. We shall see.

I can quit whenever I want.. really...

Raiding, that is.

I did ask my guild leader to demote me last week, and he did. I am now officially a non-raider. The first thing I did? I re-specced to Beast Mastery and got my poor Chompy out of the stable. He was so happy, he went frolicking all over Ironforge. It took me an hour to track him down again!

We ran some heroics and whatnot over the weekend, and I've still been doing decent DPS, so I'm not going to be speccing back to Survival before dual specs come out, whenever that might be. I ran Occulus for the first time yesterday (on Heroic too), and odds are it will be my last, unless I get really achievement-crazy, and try to do the ones where you have to beat the boss with everyone on the same color drake. I also got some things done in H. Nexus, with a guild rogue who really IS achievement-crazy. We went in for the Telestra achievement, when she splits, you have to kill all three of the split versions within 5 seconds of each other. We were all guild, except for our healer, which was a PUG tree in pretty good gear. Like several pieces of 7.5 good. He also had all but three of the Heroic dungeon achievements done. We thought it would be cake, but no dice.

The tree didn't seem to understand what we were trying to do, even though he'd already done it. We would get the first split in time, but we were having trouble with the second, so we kept resetting the encounter. After the third time, the tree starts saying, WHY NOT JUST KILL HIM? He did that several times, in all caps like that. We started wondering if the player behind the tree really understood the point. And the healing was.. ergh. It was like someone gave the toon to their friend who's never played before, and said, oh, just hit these buttons. We went through five or six tries, and finally started to get frustrated. So when Mr. Tree piped up, "This is stupid, why not just kill him?" AFTER we had explained twice that we were trying to do the achievement... I finally said, "It wasn't so stupid when you were doing the achievement". He goes, "Yeah, well it didn't take me 15 trieds (sic) either" Hubby says, well, you can leave at any time, so he responds, fine, I'll leave then.

We got a good friend (and kick-ass healer) to come help us finish up, and wouldn't you know, we got the achievement on our first try once she joined us. We went on to also get the achievements for the rift boss, as well as Keristrasza. Awesome time. (and many thanks to Fäith, though she'll probably never read this).

Later last night, I was spodding around on my paladin (who is now level 76, woo!), spending money on leveling up her Jewelcrafting. I made her some new trinkets, and cut some gems for the sockets in them, and then I was going to head out and do some more questing on her. In the meantime, hubby's getting ready to raid, and apparently a few people haven't shown up. He asked me a couple of times if I wanted to go, and I said no, though I was thinking, oh, just go, what will it hurt? They were going to finish clearing Naxx and maybe head to Malygos after.

Finally my guild leader whispered me, and asked me, "Are you sure you don't want to go? We just need one more DPS". I asked him if I could just come for Naxx, because I'm really not very enthusiastic about trying Malygos. He said sure, I could even just stay until someone else in guild logged on and was ready to go. So I went.

We had the plague wing, and then Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad left. I stayed for the whole thing, and we finished around 10:30, I think. Got myself a nice little polearm from Heigan, which I'll be putting Massacre on when I get the chance. Sapphiron dropped a lovely little neckpiece, which I won on an offspec roll by virtue of being the only person to do so. I'll be saving that for when I run as Survival again, due to the haste on it. Kel'Thuzad dropped Envoy of Mortality as well. I was sorely tempted to bid on it, as it was a bit of an upgrade from my Final Voyage. But my conscience got the best of me. There was a rogue in the raid, who has been a lot better of a raider than I have been. And considering that I'm technically not a raider any more, I was just there as a warm body, I felt that I really should let him have it, as he'll be getting a greater benefit from the stats on it than I would. So I did.

*sigh* I hope he enjoys it. XD

Keep On Keepin' On...

Bit of a blathery post today.

Emily's got pinkeye. It's finally getting better, thanks to some eye drops from the doctor, but for a while there she was looking pretty pathetic. Hubby said when he went to wake her up yesterday morning, her eyes were stuck shut. Hopefully that won't happen again this morning, poor thing. Our doctor was nice enough to give us a prescription big enough for both kids, should Andy come down with it a little later.

Hubby took us all out to Olive Garden last night for dinner. I had mezzaluna with shrimp, and it was absolutely delicious. I love that restaurant. We had a bit of wine too, which went right to my head. Wine always does that, I have no idea why. I can have four or five glasses of rum and coke before I feel it, but half a glass of wine and I start getting silly.

When we got home, I sat down and started trucking through quests on Saraabi. She had eight bubbles to go until 74, and I finally knocked that out around 10PM. I did a bunch of quests in Dragonblight, starting with the Wyrmrest ones and ending with the Wintergarde Keep ones. I also have to give a shout out to Soullock, for helping me out.

I was doing the Emerald Dragonshrine quests, and got the one for the Plume of Alystros, which is a group quest to kill a huge green bird. Well, I went over to where Alystros is, and Soullock was there soloing it with his felguard. I was content to wait, and maybe haul hubby out of the living room to help me out. But since I was there, I buffed him and his felguard. I also gave him a hand with a couple of heals on the felguard so he could knock out a bit more dps and not have to health funnel, since he had the bird almost dead already. He was nice enough to invite me to a group, right before Alystros died, so I could get the quest item from it. So thank you again, Soullock, for making my road to 80 a little smoother.

The Obsidian Dragonshrine was a completely different animal, there were four or five other people there, and quite a bit of "me first" attitude going on. I spent a lot more time there than I should have had to, thanks to having to wait for kill quest mobs to respawn. So I guess it evens out.

Tonight is raid night, I'm not sure what's on the menu, but probably a wing or two of Naxx. We've done some recruiting lately, and actually had more than enough people for raid on Sunday. It looked like the same thing happened last night, which is great. Hubby and I volunteered to sit out on Sunday, but I think if it comes down to that tonight, I don't want to. I don't want to get too far behind people gear-wise, because who knows when Ulduar is coming out, and I want to be geared enough to go in and not have to be carried through. Plus I took tomorrow off at work because it's my birthday, so I get to sleep in!

That's about it for now. I hope everyone is having a great day, and if I don't post over the weekend, have an awesome weekend as well!

New WoW stories

Last night was an off-night for official guild raiding. But on the schedule was a night for BC raids, just to get some achievements, and have some fun.

And fun we did have. We started in TK, and took out Al'ar, then moved on to Kael'thas. It was ridiculous how fast we got Al'ar down. We got through the first phase after he had only moved over one platform. Then the second phase, he meteored once, and died shortly after. Then Kael'thas, well, he was a little more difficult, but we took him out without too many deaths. The hardest part was phase 3, when all of his buddies are up and around. We didn't really arrange them around the room, so there was quite a bit of chaos. Superior DPS eventually prevailed, and Achievement 1 was ours. I walked out of there with the Thalassian Wildercloak.

Next up was SSC. We took out Hydross without moving him even once, and I got the Ranger-General's Chestguard, by virtue of being the only hunter in the group. We zipped through the trash and headed over to Lurker, who died before he could ever summon his adds. Our priest CL got the achievement for fishing him up. Vashj was next on our list. This one took a while, due to having less than 25 people in the raid. We got through phase 1 in short order, and managed phase 2 on the first four tainted elementals that popped up. Phase 3 was just as short as phase 1, I don't think we ever got any sporebats, or whatever it is that drops the poison spots down onto the raid. She was nice enough to drop the Serpent Spine Longbow for me.

At this point, had I been 70, I would have been just rolling all over the floor in happiness. These were great drops back in the day!

After Vashj was down, we headed out to Tanaris and Mount Hyjal. This took a bit longer, due to having to get through all of the other bosses before we could fight Archimonde. But fight them we did, and they dropped like flies. Including Archimonde. Thankfully I never got punted, so I didn't have to use my tears on that fight. No loot for me out of Hyjal, I lost the roll on the one Leatherworking pattern that dropped that I didn't have, and the only Hunter tier token that dropped was for the gloves, which I already have.

Three achievements down, we headed for our last stop, BT. We would have hit up Doomwalker had he been up, but he wasn't, so we headed in to work our way to Illidan. Naj'entus was a joke, one shield, and he was down. Supremus, same thing. We downed him shortly after he entered his first kite phase. Shade, again, simple. And on to Teron Gorefiend. Where I became That Guy.

My Deadly Boss Mods had not been working properly the whole night. I didn't quite realize it because CTRaid was working, and apparently some of the functions I thought were DBM were actually coming from CTRaid. So we're pounding away on Teron, and he dies. And suddenly, there's a ghost in the raid group. I move, and the ghost moves. Oh dear.

I start frantically pushing buttons, as I'm out of practice, and I'm just trying to get the constructs to stop, because people are yelling on vent "Who's dead? There's constructs, what's going on??" I finally get the hang of it, but too late, as my time is about up. I die, and there are still two constructs running around in the raid group. Whoops. Everyone eventually had to die, because there was not going to be a second ghost, the boss was dead, and they had no way to kill the constructs.

I started apologizing over and over, and hubby's trying to tell me, it's ok, honey, it's ok! Finally my GL goes, it's FINE, Asara, we're having fun, really, it's ok! So I felt a little better after that. I don't even remember if they did loot on him, because of all the confusion. A few minutes later I was laughing about it, because I suddenly got the image in my head of Jeff Dunham and his puppet Akhmed, the dead terrorist. Whose catch phrase is, "I KEEL YOU!"

We finished up the rest of the bosses in short order. We blazed through Gurtogg Bloodboil, Reliquary of Souls, Mother Shahraz, and Illidari Council. Finally we got to Illidan. At this point it was almost 1 in the morning, and we had started at 8:30. I'm tired, hubby's tired, we're ready to call it quits, but we've just got this one boss to go.

Apparently Illidan is a complicated fight. Three separate people start talking about strategy, and what to do during what phase. The GL calls for silence on vent so one person can explain what we're supposed to do, and one of the officers keeps interrupting, adding on things, so I still have no idea what's going on. There's something about parasites and standing on top of certain people with fire elementals.. I'm totally lost. Finally I said in an off channel, where the GL and some of the other people in the guild talk to old friends (people who used to be in the guild but have moved on, on good terms), "This is all fascinating, but it's almost 1AM and I'm really getting tired."

So finally the GL jumps in and says ok, let's just try this and see what happens. So we try it, we get to the elementals, and because (even in the 20 minutes of explanation) nobody had explained to the people tanking the fire elementals where exactly they were supposed to kite them, we wipe during that phase.

Learning experience, let's try this again. We go back, and someone shows the tanks how to walk, and we start over. A few minutes later, Illidan is dead, I've got a new achievement, and a quest done. So I and a few other people walk back downstairs to turn it in, and I get my Blessed Medallion of Karabor.

All in all a good night. Until I went to bed and got woken up five or six times by a hyper cat who thought my face was a punching bag.

Can't win 'em all, I guess!

I'm such a waffler.

I'll talk about that in a bit though. First I have a story to tell you all. I debated about writing this here for a while, but the subject totally fails at computers and the internet, so I doubt he'll ever find it. So I'll share it, but I'm changing his name, just in case.

We had a guy who worked here, I'll call him Woody, who was, let's say, not the sharpest crayon in the box. There was open speculation at times about how he got and kept his job. He didn't just work here, he had a number of companies he would visit throughout the course of his day.

He had been having problems with his phone at home, getting other peoples' calls and whatnot, so one day he decided to call the phone company and get his number changed, in hopes that would fix the problem. He called them from one of the other companies that he worked at. So keep that in mind, he was NOT at home when he called.

He was talking to the customer service rep, and gave them his address, and told them what the problem was. The rep asked, "Are you calling from your home number?" Woody replies, "Yes". So the rep does what is asked of him, and changes the number.

The employees of this company started getting emails. "Hey, we're calling you, trying to put through an order, and nobody is answering the phone." People were confused, nobody understood what was going on. This went on for four days, because they knew the number had been changed, but they couldn't figure out how. Finally someone said, "I'm going to get to the bottom of this." They called the company's number.

Woody answered.

"Yeah, I'd been getting calls on my answering machine for a few days now from people wanting to order stuff, I didn't know what was going on!"

Somehow, when he called the phone company, they directed the number of the place he called from to his house, because he had said he was calling from home, and gave that company a new number.

True story.

And as for the post title... it's WoW stuff :)

I did respec to Beast Mastery when I logged on last night. I got my Chompy out of the stable, and I was happy. I missed that little guy. So we ran around getting things situated, I bought a new glyph of Bestial Wrath and stuck that on, grabbed the arrows hubby made me from the mailbox, and went out fishing for hubby and I.

As it got closer to raid time, it turned out that we were short healers, which is happening more and more often. So the GL picked out 10 people to go work on 10-man Malygos, and said he'd try to put together a 10-man Naxx, depending on who was online at raid time. Hubby and I weren't in the Malygos group, as usual. But I stuck around, because I wouldn't mind heading to Naxx either.

We ended up only having two healers, but we decided to have a go at it anyway. There were two hunters in the group, me and one other. Before we headed out, one of the priests asked if either of us was Survival. Both of us were BM, this other hunter hasn't respecced out of BM at all, even with all the changes going on. So the priest was all :( Boo for non-Replenishment-bringing hunters. I offered to respec, but he said no no, play the way you like playing.

Cue crisis of conscience. I know where to get a quick SV spec, I'm in town so I can switch out glyphs again, and get my wolf out. I had a bit of practice with a shot rotation, I figured I could pull it off respectably. All it would cost me is 40g for a respec.

So I respecced. I am Survival again. I rationalized it as I had wanted to try it out in a raid anyway, and I could bring something to the raid that nobody else was able to bring, since we had no pallies or shadow priests.

We managed to clear Military and Spider wings, with very few problems. We had a bit of trouble working through Four Horsemen with only two healers, but they finally worked something out with lightwells that got us through Rivendare and Korthazz, and once they were down, the other two were just a matter of time. Out of all the bosses, none of them dropped any hunter loot at all, except for... um... I think Gothik dropped a belt, but I've got the Torn Web Wrapping from Maexxna, which as far as I know is currently best in slot. The other hunter has the badge belt, so he didn't want it either. So no upgrades for me from there. Hubby won his T7 robe, but found out when he went to turn it in that the one he had from Heigan was actually better.

I am happy to say I did pretty well on Recount. Especially on the boss fights. Of course with all the confusion over speccing and whatnot right before the raid I forgot to log it, but WWS has been acting up for me anyway, so it probably wouldn't have done much good even if I had. So, in the interest of saving gold for our motorcycle, I'll probably stay Survival until 3.1 comes out.

After the raid, someone was asking in guild if anyone wanted to go kill Omen for the achievement. I was the only one interested, but the two of us headed out there anyway. I picked up the quest, and we looked around to see if there were enough people out there already to get a group together. There weren't. It was pretty empty out there, actually. But I rode out to where Omen is summoned, just to see, and there was a group of Horde there who had just killed him. He was laying there dead with a big spotlight on him, and the other person in the guild came over too, to see. They walked over his corpse, and got a quest completion message. Apparently just walking through the light was enough. So I did the same, turned in the quest, and voila, achievement!

I still need quite a few elders before I've got my title, but I'm really hoping to have the time this weekend to knock some more of them out. Tonight the guild is heading out to do some BC raid stuff, here's hoping we go for SSC and I can fish up Lurker. That'd be one more step toward Salty Asara! XD

Happy Friday everyone, sorry for writing so much today, I guess I just had a lot to share. :) Hope you're all having a great day!

I have had it.

Seriously.
Next time I log onto Asara she's getting a spec back to Beast Mastery, and staying there. I never even got a chance to see what sort of DPS output I could do as Survival in a raid thanks to RL interference, and I find that they've hotfixed Explosive Shot to do less damage. People are saying that it's not that big of a change, but I just don't know what to believe now. Ghostcrawler says in the same post that a fix to BM to bring it back up to par is coming "soon", and that's good enough for me. I'll settle for sub-par DPS for a while if it means I get to play the spec I like, the way I like to play it. I am putting my faith in you, GC, that Blizzard will follow through on this, and not leave me hanging like toilet paper stuck to someone's shoe. Seriously though, this is too much change too fast for me. I don't remember things being like this when BC came out, but then again I really wasn't on top of my spec and all that back then either. *sigh* Either way, I am retreating back into my Beast Mastery bunker, and nothing is getting me out. I'll be the lone BM hunter in the raid, providing Ferocious Inspiration, just like there was a lone SV hunter in the raid in BC, providing Expose Weakness. I'm OK with that.