My current project is a level 60 troll mage named Aching, named after Tiffany Aching from a few Terry Pratchett’s novels. (However, this name is boring, and female trolls are fugly, so once she hits 80 she might become a female undead named Elamwatson. and by might, I mean she will.) She’s super fun to play.

My conundrum, and the reason I didn’t level her for the longest time, is that I have absolutely no intention of speccing out of the frost tree, as I find arcane boring and fire tedious. Since Frost dps currently is worse than your grandmother’s pitching arm, we won’t really work out at level 80.

However, patch 3.3 is looking awesome for frost pve dps. First off, Deep Freeze will have a new effect on raid bosses that makes it hit like a compendium of Shakespeare’s plays dropped from the Empire State Building. (Something like 20-25k damage every 30 seconds, iirc. It’s hot.) Second, and more relevant to this blog, is the Glyph of Enduring Winter (or something), that makes Water Elemental a permanent pet while taking away it’s pvp usefulness.

Now, this is awesome for me. Right now, I’m pretty tight with my Water Elemental, even though I only get to see him 1/3 of the time. He’s like the friend I go out to dinner with every few months or so…except every 3rd minute. Same difference. Come 3.3 (and hopefully, a level 80 frost mage), mr. Water Elemental will be the Daniel Radcliffe to my Elam Watson, except less doable.

This, however, is where my problem lies. My Fire Elemental (and yours. And every other fire elemental totem on the planet) is somewhat affectionately named Sparky by my lovely guild leader. My Earth Elemental doesn’t need a name, because he hasn’t enjoyed a spot on my bar since Mulan was in theaters. Charles <Darwinism’s Pet> is a well established member of the League of Extraordinary Elam pets. Mr. Water Elemental, however, can not go on being named “Mr. Water Elemental,” as he’s no longer a dinner guest and is now a traveling companion.

Normally, I’d name him myself. However, like every other thing I name, one of three things will happen: A) I’ll name him Theodore. No idea why, but I love the name Theodore, even though every Theodore I’ve ever met was a prat. (No offense to readers named Theodore.) However, I always name things Theodore from inanimate objects to babies. It won’t work out. B)I’ll name him something Russian, which is my default fallback plan. For example, my laptop’s name is Rasputin, and my iPod is Anastasia. C)I’ll name it Mulan, because I fucking love Mulan.

However, all of my names are predictable, and I’m pretty bored with them. To that end, I’m sponsoring a contest! Everyone has till exactly 1:47 AM next Tuesday morning to submit as many water elemental fitting names* as possible as comments.Why? Because I say so.

And, as a reward, just because I’m trying to be absurd as possible, I think I’ll take a picture of myself with a cardboard cutout of Edward Cullen and a personalized note to the winner. Because I can’t think of anything hotter than me in a steamy embrace with an inch-thin piece of cardboard that has more depth than the character it’s exhibiting.

Aww yea.

*Srsly, though-No Nemor. No Squirtle. No Ariel. Think harder!

(Quick note: /afk tomorrow. I’ve been tagged by our raid leader/feral tank extraordinairre in his tank survey, which means I have to complete it talking about my experiences as a blood dk. Additionally, over at my guild leader’s blog, our Canadian berserker tagged me in his guest post dps survey, which means I also get to do the DPS survey…which is probably the one that anyone reading this blog most want to read. xD That said, tomorrow is a schoolwork day, with two short essays and a reading of Hamlet due Wednesday, as well as my normal work day. My schedule is so packed that I’m admittedly worried about having time to raid, so I doubt I’ll be blogging…unless I’m a sneaky hobbit and cheat at work. )

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.

I thought I’d throw this out there for anyone interested: Due to people being bad (as I’ve mentioned in previous posts), people being good (but having real lives), and people being stupid (and lying about being sick in order to join pug raids WHILE WE’RE STILL RAIDING), we’ve been forced to call a few hardmode nights. We’re fine 23-manning normal ToC and so on, but we can’t bullshit our way through hardmodes. To that end, we’re recruiting!

Surreality (H: Black Dragonflight):

A) Is pretty awesome. We’re just cool people. Especially me. (Our bear has fleas, but he’s cool too.)

B) We’re a semi-casual raiding guild. We are -not- going to be getting server first kills. It’s not us. We’re not going to gkick you for not showing up for a hardmode raid because it’s your daughter’s ballet recital/your girlfriend scheduled a “meet the family” dinner/you rlyrly needed to finish that paper on string theory before midnight. It’s not us. Real life comes first.

C) We’re are going to work our hardest-being “semi-casual” is not an excuse for being bad- it’s a description that we have other stuff going on in our lives that we need to work around. We work our butts off on progression (when we have the people), and we expect everyone to come prepared with their flasks/potions of speeds/knowledge of what the fuck they’re doing.

D) We raid Tue-Wed-Thurs, 9:30-12:00 EST, which is also server time.(Though we ask you to be on at 9 for invites!) That’s 7.5 hours of commitment we ask from you- less than any job, significant other, or school ever will! ^_^

E) We are recruiting the following:

• A DPS DK. Blood/Unholy/Frost doesn’t matter, as I’ve got buffs covered myself. Just know what you’re doing.
• A Sapling! We like trees and promise not to light you on fire.
• An arrow-shooting-person thingymabober. Using guns is cool too…I guess.
• A non-frost specced mage. I’d love frost to be viable in pve too…but it isn’t. D:
• Someone who can spam holy lights. (And do the other stuff holy paladins do.)
• No rogues. Srsly, we had like five the other day.
• A Critchicken. We really, really want a starfire spam owlbeast. Plz line up and apply.
• Soul-sucking warlocks.
• A Shadow priest. We somehow lost two to real life in the span of like a week.
• Deeps warriors. I think Arms is preferred for trauma or w/e, but fury is better for dps- I believe either works at this point.
• AN ENHANCEMENT SHAMAN. HINT FUCKING HINT. Not that we don’t love me or anything, but I guess for days I’m not here having another one present to steal my loot would be cool. Plus, you get to chillax and talk enhancement with me…which might bore you to death. I notice our guild leader and other resto shaman have stopped asking me about enhancement. It might be my intensity to blame. xD
• In reality, we’re recruiting most dps. If I didn’t mention you, try anyway. We’re a little high on melee atm, so any applications for a melee spot will likely be met with a more critical eye, and might require more riding the bench during full raids until we’re comfortable with you.

You can click on the shiny banner at the top of the page to apply, or just go to www.surreality-guild.com. Hope to see you guys app soon. ^_^

Edit: Something worth mentioning: We get very few cross-server applications. We really don’t want people spending real money to transfer over to find out they’re not really a good fit. To that end, I really, really encourage anyone considering this post to take some time to think it over, because it really is a big decision.

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!)

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!

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!

In order to commemorate this fine moment, my loving guild leader over at altadin.com made me a fresh new banner for the middle of the page. Let’s see if it takes you all as long as it took me to get it.

Also, go read my last post. It’s much longer than this one.