looking at a new build

Now that I've got all of this dope balance gear, I'm thinking about respeccing a little. While I love (love) boomkining around, my guild really seems to need heals. In fact, our Kara run on Saturday didn't happen for want of another healer.

I know the obvious answer is to respec to Tree (tree is 4 fite!), but 'dwen is my only serious source of money and materials and I'm afraid it'll be too tough to farm without balance talents. When I tried Tree before I could hardly kill the Skettis birds without having to eat and drink after every. Single. One. And that was no fun at all.

So how about a Restokin 34/0/27 build? While eating breakfast this morning I read about two specs on WoWWiki, one based on healing touch and the other based on HoTs. I'm inclined to try the HoT-based build, since that's what I'd be doing if/when I go fully to tree. Hmmm...

EDITED TO ADD: Hawesome resto druid Llanion has suggested his flavor of Restokin build, which I'm seriously leaning towards, primarily because it lets me pick up Subtlety. Wara w/o Subtlety = aggro magnet. Srsly.

gotta get a better hat

Three cheers for Patch 2.4! Because I can now by Primal Nethers on the AH (only ~70 gold each, less than what I expected!), I have now finished my Windhawk Set!

Now I really need a better hat. Although I kinda like the antlers, the blue isn't working for me...

+3 bosses, +2 purps

A brief note about last night's adventures.

I went in to Kara last night with a great crew from KMM. I missed the first night of the raid, Wednesday, because of Pox Arcanum festivities, but that's no matter. They only got to Attumen and Midnight before having to call it a night, so we had many, many bosses ahead of us.

The first boss was Moroes, which was a hell of a fun fight. We had three sets of shackles, so controlling most of the dinner guests wasn't too terrible. In fact, we were able to one-shot him, probably due to the good cc available. I got garroted once (whee!) but we managed to take him down before we all died. For dessert, Moroes dropped the [Brooch of Unquenchable Fury], which I won on a roll. Woot! I never win rolls!

Next up was Maiden, which was a harder fight. The first time, I got hit immediately by holy fire and died before I knew what was happening. The second time we did better, wiping after getting her to around 30%, I think. The third time, however, we took that bitch down. The first half of the fight was slow, and I kept getting silenced by that repentance thing. As I usually do for boss fights, I was mostly using starfire and trying to keep insect swarm up to conserve mana, but when she hit 40% and I was at nearly full mana, I said to myself, "fuck it," and started spamming her with moonfire and wrath. For her last 5% of health, I was moonfiring her like mad. She died (thud!) and dropped the [Mitts of the Treemender]! The resto druid in the group already had them and I was the only other leather wearer, so hurray! More of a healy item, I realize, but still better than the PVP blues I had just picked up at Thrallmar. Plus, gem slots, so today I picked up a [Sparkling Star of Elue] for +8 spirit and a [Dazzling Talasite] for +4 int, +2 MP5. Those gems should be useful for both DPS and healing. If I end up getting a token for T4 gloves sometime, I'll reconsider, but for now they're nice.

The last event of the night was Opera. Our mage had to leave after Maiden, so there was much joking about us getting Oz. Naturally, we did. As we were prepping, one of the healers kept saying that the kill order was "Dorothy > Tito > War > Straw > Tin." Wait. War? Me? Umm...yeah. He meant Roar, of course, but I was still amused when after we burned down Dorothy and Tito, Roar aggro locked on me and just would not let go. I would stop hitting him and bring him towards the tanks, but then if I even looked at him funny he'd come charging after me. Oh well. I spent the rest of the fight face-down on the stage, watching helplessly as they avenged my death, then took out the remaining bosses. Annoying, but still a fun fight. Our guest priest (who was awesome at removing the holy fire debuffs during the third attempt on Maiden) got the [Blue Diamond Witchwand], and I think we melted the other item. Pally shoulders, maybe? I'm not really sure.

Sadly, by that time it was after 1 eastern (we didn't start until about 9:30 due to a RL problem) and our hunter had to leave. We dithered around for another half hour trying to get a DPS replacement, but it was not meant to be. Tonight, Curator, Shade and Chess, at least. Mmm...more badges...

new belt

As I've mentioned before, I'm a bit of a spendthrift. So, when I have the money to buy something that I want, it's really hard for me to resist. After last night's Kara festivities, I had enough badges to buy a primal nether and make myself the [Windhawk Belt]. Woot!

UPDATE: I logged on early this morning and picked up a couple of gems for this beauty. I grabbed a [Great Dawnstone] for the yellow socket (mmm...+hit) and a [Jagged Talasite] for the blue socket.

Kara <3 Moonkins

First, a brief guild update. After much thought and consideration, I'm now a nooblit in Kiss My Murlock. I wasn't going to rush into another guild, but the thought of being guildless at 70 didn't seem very appealing, and this group looks like a great fit for me. I have a dear friend who is already an officer in the guild, so I'm looking forward to getting to play with her more, and frequent commenter and resto blogger Llanion is also a member. Plus, they're fun, casual, and seem to be pretty mature and cool and stuff. I played in-game-mail tag with the current gl and finally caught up with him on Saturday. I'm pretty excited.

Last night Mrs. Wara was asleep, so I was screwing around online. Big surprise, right? Just as I'm trying to figure out what I wanted to do for the evening -- I was thinking about trying to round up a group for Arcatraz...I have like a half-dozen quests in there -- the Kara run starts getting organized. And they need DPS. Guess who's got four hooves and got to go DPS last night? That's right! This guy! I had a fantastically wonderful time and got some freaking awesome loots, which I was seriously not expecting.

The group had already started the Kara run for the week, so the first boss fight was Curator. Having never been there, I spent a few minutes pouring over the WoWWiki entry, had a very nice description from Llanion about what was expected, then we burned him down. Somehow I ended up budgeting my mana just right and was about to go oom when he went down. I need to get better at using my trinkets, but overall I'm pleased with how I did. And guess what he dropped? The [Staff of Infinite Mysteries]. And they gave it to me! Holy freaking crap! Now I really do need to focus on getting the major spellpower enchant mats together, 'cause I'm keeping this bad boy for quite a while, I think. Woo!

The next boss was Shade, which was a tougher fight. It wasn't hard, there was just a lot going on. I died twice on our first attempt, first when I couldn't tell where the blizzard was, then when we all wiped. Someone was battle-rezzed during the flame wreath and that seems to have set it off. But that's okay. The second attempt went stupid-fast and we burned him down before he got to the polymorph phase, which has apparently never happened before in the guild. Yay! He dropped a set of paladin shoulders (and we had no pallys) and [Aran's Soothing Sapphire]. Which they give to me for my healing set! Holy freaking crap, again! The healers (who were incredible, btw) already had it (or better), and the other boomkin didn't want it, so I got it. I really almost couldn't take it. If anybody else had shown any interest whatsoever, I would have gladly passed, but nobody did and they didn't want to d/e when I could use it, so...I did decide then that I was passing on anything else. How could I take so much from this group, when I've been a member for less than a day?

By this point it was getting late, but I we were awake and excited enough to go do the Chess event and get a few more shineys. On the way to Chess, Kara opened her heart again to the boomkins and dropped the [Ring of Unrelenting Storms] off of a trash mob. Happily there was another boomkin who could use it, because I really don't think I could have taken it. Three epics in one night, on my first run in Kara with a new guild? Nope. Impossible. Two epics was too improbable already.

Chess was...odd. I took an orc wolf and had fun tearing up the other side's casters, but I really don't understand what happened. At any rate, we won and got some more loots for our hard work. By the end of the night I had my two beautiful new pieces of equipment, my [Violet Signet] for hitting friendly with the Violet Eye, and six more [Badge of Justice]. Not a bad first night at all, huh?

a quick question

Do any of you have advice about Vent servers? We've been using the in-game chat for Pox Arcanum and it seems to work okay, but definitely is lacking. There seem to be tons of options out there, many of them quite reasonably priced, but do you have any experiences to share? Good or bad?

purple poxers punch pwailing pcaverns

Wednesday, in the depths of the Wailing Caverns, the Purple Poxers laid the smack down. We came to kick ass and eat Savory deviate delight, and we did not disappoint. Led by the all-Kalimdor paladin tank Harisan, the Purples tore through all of the caverns, killing all of the Lords of the Fang and collecting many deviate hides, wailing essences, and serpentblooms.

I started the evening as level 16, as I mentioned last week, only one kill away from hitting that next level. Before I even hit that level, though, I got some nifty loot. Salindiar camped a vendor somewhere in the Barrens and bought out his supply of [Wise Man Belt]s, which he very awesomely shared with me. Woot! Combined with my [Seer's Robe], I looked stunning, if I do say so myself. I think Sal might have been flirting with me, sending me that belt, but let's not tell Madja that. Besides, Madja's really more my type. Mmm...cowgirl.

Anyway, we all met up at the Crossroads and began our run to the Wailing Caverns. We were clever last week and collected all of the quests that we could, so we could just start right away in the dungeon. Our second kill of a deviate raptor got me the experience I needed to ding (woot!) and equip my lovely Simple Pearl Ring (gotta love that +hit!). Oh, and spend another talent point improving my imp. Our path into the dungeon was fine, except for my falling into a hole near the door. You'd think that this would teach me, but it didn't, as we'll see later. Despite my clumsiness, we were on our way into the dungeon.

The first few pulls were pretty straight-forward. Harisan did a rock-star-caliber job pulling the mobs and holding aggro, and Salad was all over the sheep. Um, not like that. Madj waggled her bear rear in the air and tore into the mobs with her ferocious claws, and Ababis and I hurled firey (and shadowy) death at the mobs until we forced them from this mortal coil. Daxe had our back, keeping us all alive and healthy, and even finding time to throw a few wand-bursts at the beasties from time to time. We were cruising our way to that roundabout part with all the raptors when I hit my first stumbling block. A crash. Stupid computer!

As quickly as I could, I closed the error windows and logged back in, to find that the other four Purples had done a fantastic job burning down the mobs without me. Phew. "At least it wasn't a boss fight," I muttered into voice chat, to the confusion of my friends. Yeah, so they didn't even notice I was gone. "Well, [the mobs] didn't go down quite as quickly," Daxe offered as a minor condolence. Heh.

Undaunted, we pushed forward and dropped group after group of raptors cleanly and efficiently. I don't know how many wipes of how many PuGs those raptors have caused in the past -- I know I've been in a few -- but we avenged their deaths and then some. The first two boss fights were almost anticlimactic, in fact, we were such a well-oiled killing machine. All of a sudden we all had two of the four jewels and Madja was rocking both the [Serpent's Shoulders] and the [Gloves of the Fang]. Actually, it was a good night for her...as the only leather-wearer, she ended up with, what, half a dozen blue pieces? Not bad. I'm hoping for similar drops when we get into SFK. There's lots of tasty blue caster drops in there!

The rest of the instance went just as well, with two exceptions. The first happened about halfway through, when a mob aggroed on us, then fell through the bottom of the world. "That was odd," say we, and we pressed forward, forgetting about the bugged guy. We were almost done with the next mob group when all of a sudden we aggroed the entire instance. At once. Despite our valiant fighting, we wiped, for only the second time ever. Not even my fault this time! Our best guess was that the mob somehow respawned at the entrance (or at that large roundabout area) and came for us, bringing all of his deviate friends. Feh. Corpse run.

The second time that something like this happened came about half an hour later. We were battling a few mobs somewhere (honestly, it's all a bit of a blur by this point) when all of a sudden we were charged by at least a half dozen adds. Good times, eh? Amazingly, impressively, we managed to beat them all back with only one death. The sheeps sheared Salindiar before we knew what was happening. Sigh. Harisan continued to do a fantastic job holding as many of the mobs as she could (which was basically all of them, all of the time) and kept marking, so we knew who to focus fire on. It was really awesome and a hell of a lot of fun.

This post is getting far too long and is way past deadline, so I'll try to wrap it up here. I think I've given you most of the flavor of the evening, except, perhaps, how much fun we had. I love this group of Purple Poxers. I can't believe that we walked into the Wailing Caverns as a bunch of just-dinged or about-to-ding level 17s and basically cleared it on our first run. Only one wipe, too, which probably wasn't even due to poor play or a mistake on someone's part (like my minion). We killed all of the Lords of the Fang, eradicated the Deviate menace, and collected bags full of Serpentbloom, Wailing Essences, and Deviate hides. I think we all got a couple levels of experience, too, and have either just dinged 19 or are about to. Not bad!

I think that the plan next week is to go back and do the escort quest which we didn't have time to run this week, and finish collecting the remaining stuff that everybody needs. It would be really awesome if we could get all these quests done in just two runs, wouldn't it? I'm hoping to be able to get some of that nice caster gear from SFK in a few weeks, but maybe we'll be too advanced by then! Ha!

moving on

As I alluded to yesterday, I left Slack Attack this weekend. It's something that I've been thinking about for a long time now and wrote about...what...a couple of weeks ago? Something like that. It was a very difficult decision, but I think it's for the best.

So what does this mean for our favorite cow? PuGs, probably. Yikes. I actually hadn't considered that aspect of this decision. :-D I think I'll keep running my daily quests and run a few dungeons, to see what it's like as a mercenary boomkin. Maybe I'll figure out how to play feral and learn to tank. I'm also looking at a couple of guilds on Arathor, including one where a RL friend is an officer, but I'm not in a huge hurry. I want a group that's social and fun to spend time with, but has enough high-level characters to run heroic dungeons and possibly Kara. We'll see.

/cry a little

purple wednesday

I'm going to forgo the blow-by-blow narration of last night's Adventures of the Purple Pox and instead just share some pictures. If I were cool like Rabbit, I'd make it look like a comic book. But I'm not, alas.

Here we are, killing stuff in RFC. First, from our perspective...

Now, from the target's perspective...

Rebuffing. Dig Madja's green hooves!

This was going to be a nice close-up of Madja, but then she moved.

We did a lot of running in preparation for the WC quests. Go to the first oasis, back to XR, go to the second oasis, back to XR...

End of the night, dancing in Ratchet.

As usual, it was a really fun night. We have all of the quests for WC now and even finished the 99-Year-Old Port quest. Next week, WC decimation!

Oh, one last snippet of a picture to share with you. As of this morning (when I turned in the Hamuul Runetotem quest and picked up Leaders of the Fang), I am 99 XP away from level 17. Just 99! It was so tempting to go kill one raptor near XR, but I didn't. We'll see how well my willpower holds the rest of this week...

Edited to add last night's Quote of the Night: "My rear is sortof a mascot." - Madja

roflmao

the F is for Farm

Hey, guys! Ababis here, Waradwenne's favorite minion...or so I thought until last night. Sit, my friends, and let me tell you a sad tale of treachery and abandonment.

Last night's adventures started out well. Wara took me to a new place, which was way too pretty for my liking. There were some fires there, which are always nice, but they were more for decoration than actual burning. Stupid blood elves. What do they know about fires, anyway? Fortunately we didn't stay there long. Wara met up with her friends and we all went on a brisk jog to the south.

Wara's friends are okay, I guess, and she really seems to like them, but they don't let me do much. I get to cast like ONE fireball at a gnarly-looking spider before one of them slices off its head! Where's the fun in that? If we're going to kill something, why not make it suffer first? Right? Am I right, or am I right? Sigh.

Anyway, we run for a while (boring!) and even have to swim a little (the horrors!), to find a specific little cave on a specific island where we can kill this one dude. Let me tell you a secret about him: he's not so tough. Although I did get two fireballs off, I think he was dead by the time the second one hit him. That cow sure likes her moonfire. Mmmm...barbeque...sorry. Where was I? Oh yes.

With cave-man dead, we're off for more running, back to that horrible Silvermoon place. I swear I'd rather spend time with the TAUREN than there. Srsly! We run around a bit, Wara does some smelting which I like, 'cause we're near a forge, some magic happens, and we're done with that cursed placed. Our light-swinger can resurrect people (so I can kill them again, I think). It's back to Orgrimmar and into the Ragefire Chasm! But, before you get too excited, this is where our tale takes a sad turn.

I suffered through all of this running and swimming so that I could go kill those troggs underneath Orgrimmar. It's what I'm made for, baby! You know, back in high school they used to call me Ababis Troggburner. Really! I'm not making it up! Well, I might be making it up a little. Who are you to judge?

Anyway, back to The Betrayal. We go into the Chasm and kill a few troggs (joy!), and Wara replaces me! Puts ME on the bench in favor of that...that blueberry! Can you believe that? What a bitch! She didn't even apologize. She was just like, "Okay, impy, you're out." Not even a fake apology.

But, you want to hear a secret? C'mere...closer...I heard that old Konvhug wiped their entire party. Swear! He's going to blame Wara, I'll bet, but I know that he did it on purpose. Oh, wait...here he comes, so I'll let him finish the story, but believe me about the wipe. His fault. Totally.

I don't like this place.

Last night I was comfortably roaming around the Twisting Nether when I was rudely summoned to serve my mistress. I helped her and her friends kill some ugly troggs in that awful place full of fire, when something odd happened. My mistress and her companions were standing around, plotting how they were going to lay waste to the group of troggs ahead when she ordered me to go attack. Not one to question my mistress, I obeyed, and we were all quickly overwhelmed. Ah, death. How quiet.

Rest was not in my future, though, and I was soon re-summoned to serve at her side. This time our adventures were more successful, surprisingly, and we quickly killed everything in that horrid cave. My mistress and her companions were so pleased, in fact, that she didn't let me return to the Nether, and made me go back into the cavern once again. Again, we killed everything in sight efficiently, sending them to death's sweet embrace. My mistress and her companions seemed excited about some of the items that they stole from the dead corpses of our victims, but I care not about such things.

And now I return to the Nether, until I am summoned again.

Quote of the night: "No, this is the 'other' clockwise." - Salindar