Some fun stuff from the past day-

A) We got to H Anub and got attempts in on him in one night, meaning we have the next two days to work on him.
B) I found out I’m teaching a creative writing class for 7th-9th grades starting in January. (And yes, I’m totally covering blogging with them.)
C) I told my Romanticism professor about this, and we had a chat about how I graduate after this semester.
D) She then got very upset that I was leaving, and talked to me about getting my masters. Then she told me to screw getting my masters, and that I should go straight to a Ph. D program, because I “am already doing masters-quality work,” in her words.. It kind of made my day.

Some not-so-fun stuff from the past day-
A) Chili’s changed their menu some time in the past month. No more crispy chicken tacos for Elam. >:(
B) I found out that the first “grown-up” book my boyfriend read was Flowers for Algernon while he was on a plane to Ireland by himself. At the age of 8. My first “grown-up” book? Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. When I was 11 or 12. And being babysat by my grandparents. Mlia.
C) Patch 3.3 will probably drop it like it’s hot next Tuesday…just as I’m going into super serious crunch time for school. ARAWRAWRAWR.

In homage to the name, everyone needs to watch this video, because everytime I’ve watched it in the past 6 months I’ve laughed my ass off.

B) People like to complain. A lot. Here is a list of the ten hottest qq items of the past month. (Note, I don’t necessarily agree with any of these. for the most part, I agree with none. Ok, maybe number 9.)
10. Moonkin’s wrath GCD caps in like Naxxramas-level gear, which makes gearing hard. Also, gladiator is not a talent in the Balance tree. Reroll restoration.
9. Cleansing Totems make DKs the damage-dealing version of a eunuch.
8. BEASTCLEAVE IS OP. (Wait, you mean the same Beastcleave that LOST MLG? Yea, that Beastcleave.)
7. Shadowpriests. (High dps on ptr, low dps on live, no dps in pvp, shadowform’s description is longer than the line’s at New Moon’s premiere, the only thing they hard counter is levels 1-79, etc. That whole thing.)
6. Nerf PMR. They’ve only been the best 3s team for 7 seasons or something. Only.
5. Rogue tier 9 gear makes Baby Jesus cry.
4. Rogue tier 10 gear makes Baby Raptor Jesus cry.
3. Protvp is like the sports car of the high school’s star quarterback. It looks impressive, and functions much better than other cars, but everyone thinks the guy driving it is a tool.
2. Arp makes non-warriors/combat rogues/feral druids/marksman hunter nerds rage. Good thing it’s being removed in Cataclysm.*
1. FROST MAGES R LYK DA BEST SPEC IN THE GAME AND THEIR POWER LEVEL IS OVER 9000 AND THEY RNT AFRAID OF ANYTHING.

*Except, it’s not. ARP is being removed from gear, but will remain in the “mastery system,” so that there might be a tad bit more control over it. It’s not gone for good, though.

Between 2 @Elam threads, 3 people logging on level 1s on Black Dragonflight before my avatar updated to ask what I changed to (after posting once “why won’t my avatar update. ”), and 40 people I had never talked to before asking me why I changed race, I realized two things: A) I’m kind of a big deal. and B) Race Matters (and not just Cornell West style.) People all across Azeroth were weighing decisions and arguing with themselves about the value of looking good vs. performing well.

And so now, two weeks after my therapist-reviewed sex/race change, I figured I’d post the positives and negatives of my character transformation, and what I think everyone else should do.

A)Size matters too. In his “If I was Grecian I’d be a minotaur” form, Elam was a beast. His shoulders blocked out the sun, and the rest of the raid pew-pewd in the shade. More importantly for me, he blocked out humanoid–sized mobs, from trash mobs to Grand-Widow Faerlina. On quite a few of these fights, my only way of telling whether I was in front of or behind the miniscule mobs was by figuring out if I was surrounded by other meleers. And, since most of them fit inside my hitbox anyway, this led to more than a few instances of me standing on our cratchety undead tank(Ironically, he is now a cow-man) thinking I was standing our cynical corpse rogue.

This issue was exacerbated by my computer- a Dell Studio laptop, with an…18′ screen, I think? (I do have a 22′ monitor screen that I could hook up, but it was stolen by my family two months ago when they blew out their screen. They finally bought a new monitor yesterday, so hopefully I’ll be back to playing on a monitor where my raid members are bigger than a thumbnail soon.) Right now, this small monitor is my only problem with Elam’s new waistsize- when running fights where my camera needs to be set at max view distance, trying to discern which blob with axes in the center of the screen is me on an 18inch screen can be more challenging than the fight itself.

2. It is hard to get used to. Really. At least twice in the past two weeks I have confused myself for our male tauren enhancement shaman initiate, resulting in me standing out of melee range on two trash fights because I didn’t realize my weapons weren’t swinging. Moreover, messing with viewdistance has gotten stupid. I actually died to Pewx2 on Mimiron easy the other day because I had my camera zoomed in closer than I used to have it on Elam, and I didn’t realize this was a problem until he started to spin up on p4 and I couldn’t see the middle. I lost “Champion of Ulduar” for two people that night (as well as sabotaging my own chance at the achievement, since he was one of 3 bosses I still need too. ) I felt pretty damn silly.

3. The racials are excellent. There is no making this any prettier: Orc racials are simply the best that exist for Enhancement shaman, bar none. 5% expertise when wielding axes frees up at least 2-3 gems for Attack Power. Blood Fury gives 322 Attack power, 163 spelldamage, and through mental quickness you get another 107 spell damage (322x.30), so 270 spell damage. That’s the equivalent of at least a blue/bad epic iLevel 200 trinket, such as Loatheb’s Shadow. And, Command gives 5% extra damage to Spirit Wolves while they’re up, which is a minimal increase, but still not terrible. And, I’d need to check this to make sure and google is not making it easy, but I think 5% to fire elemental totem- something that will be excellent assuming permanent fire elemental totem is not changed for 3.3. Any one of these racials is an upgrade from the void of terrible tauren racials (for pve), and all 3 of them together blow tauren out of the water.

4. But Elam, races will be changed for Cataclysm!: This game is perpetually changing, and the idea of choosing to do anything  without remembering that is just silly. It’s just like people rolling fotm classes for pvp: they will eventually get nerfed. Recognize this fact, and use it roll with the blows. (E.g.: Enhance DPS is the third worst in the game right now, right before Elemental and Shadow Priest. However, we’ve been consistently good the past two patches, so pretending that our low performance in ToC is proof that the end is near for our dps is not really intelligent. This is even more true now that we’ve seen the patch notes for 3.3, and enhance is getting some considerable dps increases.)

So yes, Orc racials WILL be nerfed/changed. Honestly, they might even be made better- as far as I can tell, they’re not up to par with Goblin/Worgen Racials, and those two will be the new standard for racials sometime soon. I’m fully prepared for this, and was prepared the moment I typed in my card information on Blizzard Account Management. I’ve grown accustomed to my new green body, and I even like it, but I won’t mind eschewing it if tauren get beastly racials. (And, tbqh, I’m planning on going goblin in Cataclysm anyway. Free gap closer for a class that has no gap closer? Yesplz.)

5. I can wear boots. Seriously. You people who have worn boots your entire wow career might take them for granted, but for someone whose first 3 80s were a Cow Deathknight, Cow Shaman, and Blueberry Hunter, NOT HAVING HOOFS IS AWESOME.

6. I’m kind of a big deal. Hehe, to be honest, this did factor into it. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of people questioned my race change, and even more people log onto BDF to whisper/mail me questions, etc. People ask me stuff on the forums. It’s generally believed that I have a clue what I’m talking about, and I felt guilty about the prospect of telling people “Orc is the best class for pve,” when I was unwilling to make that sacrifice myself. Practice what you preach, that whole thing.

All of the above said, I don’t advocate race changing. There is absolutely no challenging the fact that orc racials blow Tauren (and trolls, for the most part) out of the water, but there is also no challenging the fact that it is your $15 a month to play. Will going orc increase your dps? Yes. But is 200dps(arbitrarily assigned- I can’t put an exact number to the increase atm) worth you spending $25 to play a race that you don’t want to play? That’s not something for me (or for anyone else) to decide for you. We can criticize your putting a 20 crit gem in your helmet, or using the higher dps weapon in your offhand, but when it comes to a question of spending real money AND possibly sacrificng enjoyment- that’s a personal choice, and there isn’t a wrong one. I’m a min-maxer who had cash to spare and felt that I was holding my guild back by not doing the best to maximize my dps, but that’s my personal opinion on the situation. I can’t/won’t criticize anyone for playing the race they want to play, because ultimately this game IS about enjoyment, and no one wants to loathe their character.

(PS: I didn’t get into the gender change, so here’s an addendum about that. I find male orcs to look vapid and clueless, and really they embody the traditional masculine charcteristics I hate. (Honor, unhealthy obsession with violence, competition, etc.) Female orcs don’t look stupid, have cool ponytails, and certainly do not typify stereotypical female gender roles. {“Estrogen? What’s that? Can I eat it?” }While my boyfriend glares at me whenever I bring Elam’s sex/race change up {apparently, he entered into this relationship with a male tauren! xD}, I think I made the right choice. )

Back when it was relevant content, our 10man progression group downed a little boss named Mimiron. Except, this wasn’t your normal mimiron. This was a mimiron who blanketed the room with fire and called down small firefighter bots, among other things. After a week of attempts on him, the general consensus of those in the group was “oh my god, I will stab myself with a rusty spork in the eye before considering running this fight again.” Those of us not lucky enough to be in that first Firefighter cried out in horror, but the launch of ToC shortly after distracted us from our self-pity party.

A month later, on a boring Sunday night during a stretch of time where our 25man progression was halted due to lack of attendance, we decided we’d do 10ulduar hardmodes for enjoyment. We figured we’d go for the easy ones, such as Heartbreaker/Hodir/Ignis Speed Kill(not a hardmode, but a meta req.), and leave the hard ones for never. However, through some strange form of luck, we one shot every hardmode/meta requirement from Ignis to Freya+3. We reached Mimrron, and dubiously decided to defeat the dastardly dgnome. Through some stroke of luck, we managed to 4 or 5 shot Firefighter- a fight that at least 1/2 of the raid had never seen before. We went on to wipe once on General hard before calling the raid at Yogg-Saron’s door, with the full intent of returning to visit.

This was September 27th. That id rotted in a Flea’d bear raid lead’s raid tabs for an entire month, while Liluye sat in /g and tried to garner interest in taking on 1light. One raid did try to make attempts, but it was 1:30ish in the morning, and apparently it’s hard to raid fights you’ve not done before while half the raid is snoring. After 3 or 4 attempts, they failed. October 25th, nearly a full month after I downed firefighter for the first time, and 2 and a half since surreality did, I got a text from a certain resto cow telling me that I was needed in the brain phase for bloodlust. Ecstatic, I broke a few laws rushing to my house to boot up my computer, and with high spirits we smashed 1light in the darkness. (In something like 2-3 attempts.) We then proceeded to use a dragon to lightly toast a few dwarves, and called it the night…with me needing two of the easiest hardmodes in the instance left for my meta- 4towers Flame Leviathan and Disarmed Kologarn. I’m not quite sure why I had two of the easiest achievements left up, especially since I have disarmed on my holy paladin who has only seen Uld once, but I needed them both.

Some tomfoolery happened last week, and I ended up missing those two bosses that I needed most. I did happen to get into the latter half of the raid, and managed to score a super qt 2.7 speed weapon off Cthulu’s lieutenant when we downed 1 light and I watched another 3 persons score their glory of the ulduar raider achievements. (I also managed to die on Mimiron to PEWx2, a mistake I haven’t made since people were still pretending “noob” was cool, ruining three raiders “Champion of Ulduar” title, but that’s a story for another time. >.<)

I finally got into Uld 10 again tonight, an Uldur group that was specially created by a few awesome people to ensure I finally got my drake. After some rocky attempts at Flame Leviathan (apparently, having six of us not knowing the fight is a bad thing!) we pressed on to Kolo and ripped his arms off like an angry wookie. I was spammed with achievements, and truly considered nerdscreaming over vent. After something like 12 weeks since our guild first got Firefighter (considered the benchmark hardmode achievement), I finally got my Glory of the Ulduar Raider and Rusted Proto-drake, which replaced my amber drake that every kids with a second grade reading level and access to a computer can get without making an effort. and, it’s 310% speed!

They see me soaring, I'm flyyyying!

Yea, he's a beast.

Yes, I know I was month’s behind with it. Yes, I know that 245-258 gear made it significantly more manageable than it was a tier of content ago. And, I know I’m probably going to get flak from random level 1 alts telling me that I got my mount when it didn’t matter anymore.

But really, I don’t care. To me, this was an achievement. Going from where I was 6months ago, where my computer was so bad that I died enough that I was at times considered a liability rather than a help, it’s exciting. Knowing that a huge part of our lack of success was simple apathy, and the fact that we’d go months at a time without stepping foot in Ulduar again, it was an achievement. Knowing that my guild leaders like me enough that they spent the past three days post-25 raids trying to get me my own drake makes me ecstatic. And, honestly, the fact that I have a mount that looks like a badass is an achievement in itself.

So yes, I was months behind. I might be months behind on my tribute to insanity too. However, I’m still having fun.and I’m still proud of what I’ve been able to do in this game.

This is Failam. You’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the weeks to come.

Failam is a premade Alliance Shaman, coming equipped with some really cool Alliance t9 (which I’m jealous of), a 1% hit aura (which I’m also jealous of), and some axes that look pretty pansy (Not so jealous of.) Failam, along with my new Bear/Resto drood Treelam, my fancy Disc Priest Healam, and possibly the rogue Stealam (I have a hard time thinking outside the box, ok? D:) will be my fun companions through the next few months or so of testing on the PTR.

That journey started today, with some pretty awesome testing on Fire Nova totem. (7500 dps on Sarth 10, with no 13% spell damage debuff OR might is nothing to sneeze at), but unfortunately I’ve been feeling pretty sick…and I got distracted by the shiny bubbles of discipline healing, and I read my way through the Elitist Jerks compendium for disc priest. (Fun fact- I have in fact read every single EJ thread for every class, at least as of midway through 3.1. However, having not played a lot of the classes, I find myself realizing that while I might have read the threads, I definitely did not understand them until faced with playing said class. )

I’ve got Shakespeare, Urban Anthropology, and Romanticism in the AM, from 10:00-2:15. After that, there might be some napping, chilling with my boyfriend at his lame apartment where he gets no interwebs, and watching Heroes (and hopefullypossiblyraidingonlivetomorrownighthinthintNaithin.) Oh, and spamming my guild leader with happy birthday text messages. If I have time during this packed day of lounging about, I’m going to write some pretty sweet blog posts, pertaining to:

• The awesomeness that is Fire Nova.
• Why you all should join <Best Shaman on Server>, as the PTR is a scary place to pug. (Srsly, ending up solohealing OS10 as my first ever instance on a Disc Priest was fun-espescially when the group was all like “OMG U WERE AWESOME,” but I didn’t like the going through 8 different members getting there because the tank couldn’t hold aggro/the group leader sucked/ the mage in full t9 was doing 2.1k dps.)
• Pit of Saron- However, I want a few more attempts at this, as I don’t fully understand the boss fight mechanics yet. That might be a post for a later date.
• The new incarnation of Black Magic to weapon-it’s shiny. Possibly.
• The new map feature on the PTR. Also shiny.
• Why I hate people.

I do need to apologize for the lackluster nature of posts over the past week, but I was having a bit of a struggle with apathy and writer’s block. This is weird, as we downed every Uld10 hardmode from XT-General (XT, IC, Freya, Hodir, Mimiron, Thorim, General) last Saturday night in a 3 or 4 hour raid, and we got our first guild kill of Heroic Northrend Beasts Wednesday after throwing recruitment open. These were both awesome fodder for blogging, but I was a little “meh” over the past week. I’m not going to pretend it won’t happen again because we all feel shitty sometimes, but do know that I will return- and with a passion! (In this case, a passion inspired by testing!)

To that end, I figured it’d be a pretty rad idea to put together an informal guild of Shaman on the PTR, so that we have a place to discuss new changes, flex our epeen aoe damage, and generally make fools of ourselves. It’s going to be named <Best Shaman on Server>, because I have a huge ego and I thought it’d be funny.

It is going to be informal, which means:

• -Posting Meters is cool, provided you have a reason for doing it. “Hey, look at this 7500 dps on Sarth is cool; I think it has something to do with Fire Nova” would be sort of what I’m looking for.
• -As far as I can tell, we have some pretty inane and pointless conversations on the shaman forums. I start a quarter of them. That’s fine too- we can’t talk Shaman 24/7…it’ll get boring.
• -Alts are cool. Because being able to play a destro lock at 80 with reign of the dead when you’ve not been able to convince yourself to level out of the Barrens is a fun time.
• -Bashing on Blizzard is not cool when taken in an extreme. “I don’t understand/hate that they removed Fire Nova Stun” is fine. “OMG FIRE NOVA STUN NERF IS PROOF THAT BLIZZARD HATES THIS CLASS” is stupid, and I will demote you to a rank of “not being able to talk in guild” for a length in time.
  -Open Door Policy. If your guild wants to make a concerted effort at Icecrown Citadel, definitely drop guild to do it with them. If your guild decides to stop due to lack of interest and you want to come back in, that’s perfectly fine too…provided you weren’t an annoying twat to begin with.
  -Any spec is fine. I focus on PVE Enhance myself, but PVP Enhance, PVE/PVP Elemental, PVE/PVP Restos are all cool.

If anyone is interested, I’ll be on my Premade Draenei (Yes, we’re doing it ally side) Shaman Failam, on Broxrigar- the PVE server. I’m working on getting charter signatures now, and hope to have it up and running within the next few days.

Hope to see/talk to you all in game form soon.

Back in March, after I begged and whined and followed Ell around Orgrimmar like a sick dog, Surreality welcomed me back into their humble abode. (The story of my leaving the first time is one for another time- in a nut shell, peer pressure is bad. Unless I’m the one pressuring. In that case, listen to me.) They had pretty recently downed 25Sarth+3 for the first time, while my experiences had me at 10+1, a few sloppy Malygos 10 kills, and attempts at Undying that ended on Heigan. Thus, I was elated when they let me back in (and as enhance! ^_^. I was resto when I hit 80. Gross.) I was even more elated the week I planned to skip class to down Sarth+3 with them- I’d get my Twilight Vanquisher title pre 3.1, have some fun with my new guild, and feel like I actually got to experience some progression content. …that was the week 3.1 decided to land. I skipped class anyway in hopes of getting in on our first Ulduar pull, but my campus internet was at 2k, I was an initiate (and not trusted, at that), and the lag monster that is post-patch raiding reared it’s ugly head. I was pretty majorly bummed.

It was pretty awesome, then, when one of the officers let us in on the game plan Thursday night- Besting the Black Dragonflight, Twilight Zone style. With a full raid of twenty-two whole members, we ran in and engaged the fatty dragon like pros. the other 21 members of the raid (who had at least experienced whiping on 3drakes) were pretty used to the layout. I was stuck in the pug mentality of BIG DRAGON GO IN CENTER, (I’d done 2drakes once before, but not enough to be familiar) and promptly died to a void zone while trying to run away from a lava wave at the last second. I ahnked to be a badass…and then got hit by a random fireball. Buff reincarnation hps imo. Two lives down, and starting to feel like I was in a SNES game, our Marksman-Hunter-Turned-Resto-Druid battle rezzed me, and I proceeded to hold tightly to my bottom of the meter status. (Hey, even with my time spent dead, and no buffs, I outdamaged the tanks and hit 4ishk. I’m not -that- bad! )

Yes, it's seven months too late. Yes, I love it anyway. And yes, I am wearing the title. It's cute on me.

Our Thursday night raiding didn’t stop there. While the brunt of our raiders left- some mages left to pee vee pee on their tree drood alts, some warlocks left to benchpress skyscrapers, and some tree druids I might name were busy getting an education rather than raiding, we managed to scramble together 12 raiders for a 25 man instance. A 25 man instance we had never seen before. A 25 man instance known as the Sunwell. (Sunwell Plateau if you want it to sound less epic.)

We didn’t technically wipe on the first boss. We happened to dps him rlyrlyrly hard, and he hit 0 before we realized the point of the encounter is killing the demon in the portal first. We then spent the next 10 minutes leveling weapon skills on a banished boss, hoping he would enrage and kill us all. He didn’t, our weapons dinged 400, and we proceeded to hearth out and reassemble. We pulled ourselves together, smacked a bitch dragon up, and proceeded to Brutallus…where our bear tank forgot he was in kitty gear and got murdered when it was his turn to taunt. We had no further issues, I topped dps on Brut and was happy, and I nabbed some sweet t6 token. We then wiped on Felmyst. It took us four tries to properly avoid the mind control fog. It was especially fun on the attempt we actually downed the dragon because dots made her hit 0 HP in midair- only one of us had to survive to win. All 12 made it through that time, though, and we moved on to Eredar Twins.

This is the point of the night where we stopped listening to our elemental shaman explain boss strategies, and we developed strategies of our own- pop bloodlust, hit buttons, and kill it before it kills you. Somehow, this strategy brought us through Eredar twins, Mu’ru, and Kil’Jaeden. I was rewarded for my efforts hitting my bloodlust key rly hard with some sweet lolArmor Pen gauntlets, and our main tank was rewarded…with a legendary.

The Sunwell- 1,000Xmore powerful than a lightwell?

Yes, that is our main tank being a meanie and taking the bow over a hunter. However, he was nice and gave it back later. And I know, lolLevel70 content and lol70 weapon…but honestly. It’s orange lettered. It’s golden gilded. And it fucking SHOOTS LIGHTNING arrows. It’s awesome. <3

That was not the end of my Thursday night, oddly enough. Somehow, I managed to scrounge up our New Zealandish Tree, fresh back from school, and 6 other friends from our ex-guild and put together a “The Dedicated Few” Naxx10 run. (Actually, that’s a small lie- the tree’s mage brother kept DCing and left, and I kicked a bad pug ret paladin. What started as a naxx10 turned into naxx8 by Gluth.) I think I might go more into detail about this in another post, but for now I’ll mention this: Paladin healing is fun. 1.75 second holy lights on KT frost blocks are fucking intense. However, I’m not about to rehash stuff that has already been said, and I want to sleep, so I’ll say this: I’m writing this rather than sleeping right now because tomorrow is maintenance day. So, in my mind, either A) You’re bored at home with no wow and only blogs to read, or B) You’re bored at work with no wow and only blogs to read. Either way, if you want the full story of Ent and Evangelist, head on over to Tank N’ Tree and check out this entry, which includes a treatise on why I’m the biggest douchebag in the world.

This was it for my Thursday night of raiding. It was a very fun, laid back, low stress night- the exact opposite of the raid we did on Saturday night(also an amazing one), which I’ll blog about tomorrow. It was also a great call by our leadership to have us raid old-but-fun content, at least imho. We’re considering farming Sarth+3 for drakes and trinkets weekly, now. So, I’m interested to know- feel free to comment, to e-mail Elamtheshaman@live.com, or to link to a blog about it- what awesome raid nights have you haad in the past? Any in particular that stand out for a reason other than “Omw we killed progression boss X” or “I got BiS item Y?”

——————-

On an entirely different note, I’ve become addicted to alts and alt specs over the weekend. First off, after a disasterous attempt at tanking ToC10, and due to my utter hatred for tanking, Grazeless went back to being blood dps. However, I hate blood dps (even though 13k death strike crits are pretty), and due to a generous rogue friend, a boe holiday drop, and my realizing I was a champion of Thunder Bluff on my zombiefemcow, I was able to spec DW Threat of Tharassian, the dps talent spec my DK had been wishing for in her cold little heart the entire expansion. I happen to have an insane love of DW which predates WoW, and might even predate Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (best console game in history). And no, it doesn’t stem from a love for Drizzt Do’Urden- for all I care, while this may offend some, R.A. Salvatore can be crushed by a gigantic flaming pile of Star Wars novels for what he did to Chewbacca. And Drizzt/Co. lack any form of character development or personality. I’m happy now, with my pretty little zombie cow, and glad she finally can drink her problems away while beating them senseless with the mug.

I like her 2pc t7, 2pc t8, 1pct9. Gogo mismatched tier gear!

Notelam hit 80 with the intention of one thing- going Retribution. Like Grazeless, she started as a He. unlike Grazeless, she started as a filthy human on Uldum. I could not stand for this, and 45 minutes after faction changes were announced, Idrawaggro the male human paladin from Uldum was Notelam, the female belf from Black Dragonflight. Much like her gender/spec/race, I was a bit confused with my plans for Notelam- I leveled her while I was on a melee kick (which I’m still on), where I wanted one of every melee class at level 80. However, paladins are super freaking boring with their SHINYLIGHTATTACKONE and SHINYLIGHTATTACK2 and YOUGETTHEIDEA attacks. Couple my boredom with religious light effects (my parents are both Presbyterian pastors- I don’t need more shiny lightside stuff in my life), and the fact that I leveled a lot in Alterac Valley where low level heals are infinitely more useful than low level dps, and we have a recipe for healing success. That said, she only has like five heroics under her belt, and it was a big stretch for Naithin and Co. to allow her 1600spellpower self into Naxx10. (He insisted I did well, I call bollocks.) Nevertheless, I found healing to be pretty fun, and I’m pretty comfortable keeping her that way, especially now that she sits just shy of 2k spellpower.

SHINYLIGHTATTACK42

Elam is not an Alt. Elam is a main. He is enhance mainspec/resto offspec a good deal of the time, but has spent some time as enhance offspec. What Elam had never done, however, was spec Elemental- at least not this expansion. The last time I dpsed anything as elemental was early last October, where I rocked 1k dps on Caverns of Time: Durnholde trash through Chain Lightning/Lightning Overload awesomeness. I had not tried Elemental since Lava Burst/Wrath of the Lich King hit…and I’ve been missing out. Lava Burst crits for 10k on target dummies is awesome. Lava burst/Chain Lightning burst in battlegrounds is intense (though I admit to dying a lot- part of that is the staff, anyway.) Thunderstorming people off the Arathi Basin Lumber Mill cliff is hilarious. In all, Elemental is just a really, really -fun- spec, and I’d like to keep it my offspec. (This isn’t possible, as I’ve had my already-precarious spot in guild ten mans taken away if I keep it as my offspec- it seems being able to go ranged on ranged-friendly fights is not as useful as being a bad healer on healing intense fights. xD.) I’m not really upset about this decision, though- it makes sense from a guild point of view, even though I don’t like it. However, until I’m called upon to change it, I’m rocking my Elemental offspec and tearing up battlegrounds/alt and heroic runs.

How about everyone else? Do you have a new alt you’ve fallen in love with? Or tried a new spec you hadn’t used before and found yourself enjoying it way more than you might want to? I’d love to hear!

This is a huge step for me- somewhat warranted by the fact that I’ve been able to maintain a steady 3-400 views per day for nearly a week now, but also just because it seemed like all the cool kids were doing it. And it just seemed fun.

I am planning, for the next week or so, to continue posting blogs on both my original wordpress account and this blog to try and ease people into this new place. (I’ll probably include a little note at the end of the blog, reminding people to come hither!) After a little while, though, I will just abandon that blog in favor of the one I’m paying to have. xD (also, if anyone is linking to me- could you please update your links to reflect the blog change? )

This is a really awesome transition for me, and thanks everyone for the views and support. <3

What I was not expecting was this:

Screenshot by Shadowxtz o nthe Moonrunner server!

Note some of the pretty things in this image:

A) It’s a 2.6 speed mace! Luvluvluvluvluv.

B) It’s BoE! So even if you don’t manage to see this QT in the next week (it drops off Mr. Direbrew in Blackrock Depths, but he’s shy and only comes out once a year), you should be able to buy one, albeit for a pretty penny.

C) It’s iLevel 226. For those of you for whom the word “iLevel” sounds like a foreign language (my dad included!), iLevel 200 items drop out of Naxx10/Coren Direbrew. ILevel 226 items drop off 25 KT/Reg Uld 25 bosses, meaning that this item is as well itemized as Calamity’s Grasp(and with Agi, Haste, Ap, Crit, to boot!) Because of this, not only are the stats nice, but it also has a whopping 171.5 dps, meaning no more farming H ToC for your dual Aledar’s Battlestar, which is only iLevel 219.

D) It looks preeeeeeetty.

Photo by same person as above photo. I'm unoriginal!

Yes, I want it. Minus the fact that it’s a downgrade.

However, I’m so going after it on my Death Knight Tank’s offspec-but-sometimes-main-spec-depending-on-my-mood. (Remember, Threat of Tharassian DW death knights follow the same weapon speed rules as us!) I’m totally looking forward to being a Femcow with mugs for hands.

This is Elam, signing off from Panera, as I finished my soup before typing (it was so good!) and I think I’m getting weird looks from the other patrons from salivating over this weapon.

Cheers to all who get it!