"Welcome to Three Moths Ago"

When I told a former student I got 6 Minute Maly last night, he wrote THAT on my white board in big red letters.

So much for respect and spelling! I am forced to forgive him since I am the worlds worst speller/user of grammar. I tell my students to learn chemistry, some physics and maybe basic algebra from me - NOT spelling, grammar and foreign languages. 

Also, I must forgive him because he mostly just PvPs on his mage and thinks he is cool for getting the 2nd drake to 60% and only having 'a couple of deaths' on an immortal attempt. 

Well... despite the fact that it was done 3 months ago I am still really excited and proud of LOKI. We killed him with at least 10 seconds to spare. It was intense, especially since we missed it by 1 second last week! I think that should give out DPS a big epeen boost that will hopefully carry into Ulduar. 

A Little History of Me, Aert, and Yakra

Guildies have been reminiscing on our forums about their WoW history, so I posted this there. It will mean more to people who know me IRL, or who know me or LOKI in WoW. There are some cute WoW meets IRL events if you wish to read, but other than that my story could be any WoW player's story.  

Yakra and I first played WoW on a friends account in his dorm room. I rolled a lock and killed a few wolves. Yakra played the most while I studied Organic Chem. On the way back to my house he proposed. I think all the happy proposal feelings mixed in with the WoW feelings and I was totally hooked. 

That summer Yak and I got our own accounts. I rolled a lock named Auroraglory, after my LARP character. He played a paladin. We leveled and planned a wedding that summer. The school year came and I stopped playing because it was the responsible thing to do.

Spring break came and Yak slept in a lot, so I rolled Aertimus on his account and leveled her a bit - she was going to be LOLKITTYDPS. Return to school, Yak needed his account to raid MC with Fatalis Fodei. I got to play maybe 30 - 45 min a night before bed, when he would call me to get off his account. I listened to his end of raids over the phone and thought this was all very silly. Sometimes I would listen in on vent and think it was more silly.

We got married. We went on our honeymoon. We came back and FF had disband. I didn't work that summer so I got Aert up into the 40s. Yak raided with LOKI for a few weeks, but his overtime was getting in the way. I just thought LOKI was getting in the way of quality time with my husband. I was pretty mad at raiding. Fall/school came again. I stopped playing because it was the responsible thing to do.

Christmas break rolls around and suddenly I got the desire to really play (Left and Ava were playing by then.) I reactivated my account and I leveled Aert on Yak's account while he leveled Auroraglory on mine. Thats when I started to be the healbot for our questing and instancing. This continued into the school year, when Yak wasn't leveling Yak in BC. I reached the 50s and joined Dissension because all my friends were there.

Off to outlands I went, where I could play with YAKRA... except that... Aert and Yak were on the same account. So I legally changed my last name, 1 year after getting married, so I could move Aert to my account and Aurora to Yak's account.

Dissension blew up and Ava found MoH, who was trying to get Kara going. We all went there. The first Kara raid was planned. I was keyed but not level 80, so Yak and I spent all day leveling me to 80 and my very first anything bigger than I 5 man was that night. It was our first anniversary.

MoH was full of high emotions for me because it was my first real guild and I didn't know I would meet so many awesome people online. We got through Kara, but felt a little held back from the inability to effectively work two groups. Left left and app'ed LOKI, using his friends as bartering chips to get into the rouge full guild. So I never actually app'ed to LOKI. It helped to get in as Yak's wife too, since he left Ruff on good terms.

Stuck it out in LOKI missing MoH SO much, but loving raiding. LOKI got flooded with bad players who brought us down and PvE disbanded. I went back to MoH for a little bit, but then stopped playing because THE SCHOOL YEAR STARTED AND THATS THE RESPONSIBLE THING TO DO. Christmas came, I saw Yak playing and was SO jealous of ZA and watching him raid again. I finished college and started raiding again and, well, the rest is history (and archived)!

Why We Do the Thing We Do

There have been a few posts recently (Casual WoW; Matticus) explaining the motivation behind healing and also asking  what makes a good healer. I thought I would add my 2 copper. 

Why I Heal: 

1. Playing God

In a perfect world we would be able to keep everyone alive. Alas and alack WoW is not a perfect world. Sometimes the melee insist on standing right next to each other on Kel'Thuzad so that when one gets frost blasted, they all do. Then we healers must chose who is most worthy of our life saving heals. We must quickly figure out who is tanking phase 3, or who puts out the most DPS and let the less worthy melee die. This is a powerful powerful feeling. There are players on the other side of the interwebz, one going "Yes, I made it!" and the other going "*uck, I'm useless now." We can assign those emotions.

2. Playing Wack-a-Mole

Every healer knows exactly what I'm talking about. And the guest post at Matticus described it really well. Mini game within the bigger game. I also like it because it gives me one more thing to think about. I like thinking about LOTS of stuff as once when I am playing anything. (Major reason I LARP). The more you are thinking about gamewise, the less you are thinking about RL. High wack-a-mole fights don't give your brain a second to wander elsewhere. 

3. I'm Married to a Tank Purist

Yakra like NEVER specs DPS. He is SO tank focused. Always. I'm talking like dinner conversations too. So it only makes sense that I'm SO healing focused. Finding groups is SO easy for us that its hilarious. While I love the DPS, sometimes I giggle a little inside when they are looking for a group for 30 minutes, Yak and I come on, ask once, and our group is full. We are also IMPOSSIBLE to gank. We just don't die. And normally we can put out enough DPS between the two of us to kill them. It takes FOREVER, but we just outlive. 

4. Being Needed

I need to be needed. It does things for my self-esteem. Its probably saying something about me IRL. Some people say DPS is more fun than healing. I need to be needed

more than I need to have fun. Healers being in low demand isn't about getting groups for me. Its simply about all the tells of "We NEED another healer."

5. Mothering

Healing is about caring for other people. Remember my perfect world when we can keep everyone alive? Then everyone can have a good time. I want my guildmates to have a good time. I care for my guildmates, my husband, my students. Wife, teacher, and healer makes far more sense than wife, teacher, and DPS KILLING MACHINE.

What Makes a Good Healer:

1. Obsession

Causual WoW said a good healer must enjoy healing, I would like to take that one step farther and say they should be obsessed with it. Wishy-washy healers arn't going to get the job done. Obsessed healers will research their class, dissect fight reports (recount, WWS, etc.), will install healing mods, will QQ when someone dies, and think think think about how they can keep them alive the next time. 

2. Knows They are Part of a Team

They know if they don't top the meter, its okay. They will focus on their targets first and foremost, and only heal other targets when they KNOW theirs is fine or there is a desperate need. They will communicate with other healers, especially about battle rezzes, innervates, or assignment switches. They will congratulate the team. They will defend other healers against the non-understanding DPS and tanks: "Why's that healer so low on meters?"

3. They are Aware

Of their surrounds mostly. Not everyone can play Grid Wack-a-Mole and GTFO of fire. Enough said. 

4. Let the DPS do their Job

If they keep the DPS up, the boss will go down. On many many fights I have NO idea what the boss's health % is. I'm too busy keeping people alive. If I tab to the boss, someone will die. Healers also shouldn't get involved with the DPS, I think. Even if you spec DPS alot, don't put in your two copper. Just like you don't want DPS commenting on your healing output, your shouldn't comment on their damage output. 

5. Know When to Fold-um

If its progression and its a wipe - YOU STOP HEALING. Healing to pad the meters is wasting precious time and motivation. Good healers stop healing, kill themselves as fast as they can, and get rezzing. 

Druid IRL?

No - not quite...

But I did want to take a few minutes to wish you all a Happy Winter Solstice!!! (If you live in the norther hemisphere that is. If you live in the southern hemisphere a Happy Summer Solstice to you!)

Why am I such a happy druid about today? Because tomorrow there will be more minutes of daylight than there were yesterday. From here it is all downhill sunshine-wise. Nighttime is very pretty and important, but I have been missing the sun terribly. The worst part? I miss going for walks with Yakra when I get home from work, because it is too dark out. How else am I going to learn about upcoming boss strategies or vent about 6 second cooldowns???

Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun - We need back your shine!

Oh Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun - Hiding behind the skyline!

These little druids are a waiting for you, 

So common and do that thing that you do!

Oh Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun - Please shine down on me!

My New Favorite Item

This is my new favorite item:

Unraveling Strands of Sanity

I'm thinking it should be paired with The Impossible Dream

I already have a "Sexy Set" which is mostly good at one time resto gear. I'm thinking I should make a "QQ" set for times when I am down. 

In other news, I think a large part of my feeling sad/frustrated is that it is winter too. I've been working late, which means I don't get to go for walks because it is dark when I get home. Our walks are where Yakra and I do most of our WoW discussing and thinking. Without that it is like WoW is not something we do together, but something we just do parallel to each other. 

Blogging to Hear Myself Blog, WoWing to Feel Myself...

...nothing. That's about all I feel. It was fun while we were leveling. But Yakra pushed the guild into raiding before I wanted to. I mean its fine if other people want to raid, but I havn't even finished 4 zones yet. I finally figured out what pre-Naxx loot I liked and wanted - then I'm in Naxx. I've started reading strats - I've started a "Best Resto Druid Gear from Naxx 25" list (since I'm the type to have to choose for myself) - but I definitely haven't finished. I haven't felt like I was really raiding since Illidan, just faking it. 

Is it Wrath? Is it the fact that Yakra is guildmaster now? Is it that I'm so busy with teaching? Is it that I am jealous of the the people who have the time to read strats and loot tables and write blogs from work? Is it just winter blues?

I don't really expect anyone to answer. I do expect more people to unsubscribe from my blog like the 9 people who did after I was so excited that I had 200 subscribers. Maybe that's one of the reasons I feel down. Right before my number of subscribers jumped by like 40 I had come to the conclusion that reader base didn't matter - I was just blogging for myself. Then they jumped and I guess I got hooked. It was kind of nice.

/endQQsession

200!

That's how many people my read my blog through a feeder! I have no idea why that feels like I am breaking some kind of landmark, but it does. Thank you again to all my readers and all the people who have commented recently. For many of you, I tried to figure out if you too had blogs so I could comment on them, but I was not always successful. 

I know I totally owe you a good post or two, and I have some ideas kicking around in my head. I need to get them out into print form, but this week has been really busy with starting raids again, midterms being due, progress reports being due, as well as dealing with some medical stuff. (Don't worry about the medical stuff, if you are that type. Its something that I have to have done, but its not dangerous or life threatening. I just totally didn't have time scheduled this month for surgery.)

A Regretful Return to the Real World

*It took me three days to write this post because Yakra keeps wanting to quest. What is this "questing" he speaks of, and why don't I have time to blog anymore?

With great regret I returned to the real world. (I wanted to say to my students "I played 42 hours of WoW this weekend, what did you do?" I haven't actually told any the number. A few know I play and have asked about my level, but only one knows my toon's name and server.) It was really hard to pry myself out of bed, away from my PC, but mostly away from my loving husband and tank who I had spend an absurd number of hours with. 

Here is a recap of our 8 hours of playing on Sunday: 

Very early on we dinged 74. This was shortly followed by completing Explore Borean Tundra and achieving Nothing Boring About Borean. If you want my honest opinion, I thought Borean was more boring that Howling Fjord. I just adored the intricacies of the Varkul quest lines. My opinions reflect those of my husband's:

I'm very glad I didn't start in Borean Tundra. It generally feels like various bits of Westfall, Sithilus, and  Shimmering Flats stuck together, and the overarching plot felt far less cohesive then in Howling Fjord.

Some Borean Tundra highlights you don't want to miss: 

Dressing as an orc to kill Magmothregar for the gnomes at Fizzcrank Airstrip. I love the cheesy mask! Because if an elf dressed as a orc, they wouldn't REALLY look like an orc

Riding on a Woolly Mammoth, which you must do any way to complete the hilarious D.E.H.T.A's little P.I.T.A. I loved how those quests in general felt like we were killing other questers. You know the pearl hunters were sent out to "Gather 20 Pearls" and the trappers were to "Empty 8 Traps" with promises of shinies at the end. Alas and alack, there were NPC...er... PCs trying to stop them. Anyway, Yakra and I grouped up with our IRL friend (Kiarina - Hunter), who happened to spend the weekend at our house to complete these quests. It took us a long time to pose for this picture as wondering mammoths kept getting in our way!

Riding Dusk the beautiful Death Knight mount to complete Finding the Phylactery. (I'm I weird for thinking the Death Knight mounts are gorgeous?) I am liking the free rides across the highly rendered landscape, backed by the glowing northern lights. Please do these quests and treasure those "I love this game!!!" moments. 

On Sunday night Yakra and I headed over to Dragonblight. We didn't really get to quest there on Monday. Somewhere early in the night we dinged 75. Monday found us bagging Snowfall Glade Pups. When I first laid eyes on these little creatures, I thought they were absolutely adorable. Now that I have cropped and enlarged their photo they are pretty darn scary looking!

Another Monday Dragonblight highlight was completing Spiritual Insight. Another free "I love this game!!!" ride by light of the aurora, this time as a wisp!

We ended Monday night in Wyrmrest Temple. I couldn't refrain from checking out Alexstrasza and Krasus. I could hardly tear myself away from the computer. I would do either of them in a heartbeat. I think I feel A LOT of Blizzcon costumes coming on for next year!

T minus 44 Hours* and Counting...

Everyone has had their own Pre-Wrath To-Do List, whether it was on paper or just in their head. I've spent this weekend ticking off quite a few things I had on mind. Here's what I managed to accomplish:

1. Put in and was approved for my first personal day ever for Nov. 14th. I put in for it the day they announced release date. I know this will put me about 16 hours behind most people, but I can't leave my kids with a sub two days in a row. 
   
2. Planned a menu for the weekend with Yakra. He has Tuesday off for Veteran's Day, so he will cook then and we can freeze and re-heat.
   
3. Emptied out my bank. I blew up crap tons of gear. I got over 30 void crystals from gear that had little sentimental value, no sexy value, and less raid value since 3.0.2 spell power. I can't remember the last time I had this much bag space! And no... I did not get rid of my Fruitcake collection or my Light of Elune. 
   
4. Lesson planned up to Dec. 11th. That means I don't need to worry about more lesson planning and worksheet/quiz/powerpoint making until like... Thanksgiving weekend. 
   
5. Turned down plans for this weekend and next weekend that various friends and family tried to rope me into. I've have lied to people in general saying Yakra and I are taking a vacation. I have also told my mother I'm going to be busy and to not take it personally if I don't pick up the phone. 
   
6. Invited some of my WoW friends to an open house type thing. Meaning Yakra and I will be playing and playing until we drop and will have lots of snacks, easy to reheat food, and caffeine. 
7. Got my nails done and had them painted WotLK blue. 
8. Earned the Outland Dungeon Hero achievement. (Even though I had done them all before.)
   
9. Earned the Explore Outland achievement by uncovering one little strip of land in Hellfire. 
10. Saw Kil'jaden, pulled him, and got him well into Phase 3 multiple times (with only 2 hours or so of attempts.) Yes, the plan was to kill him, but I feel this overwhelming sense of completion just seeing him. 
11. Earned Loremaster of Outland. Those last three quests in Nagrand for Nagrand Slam were a challenge to find! I'm really enjoying achievements more than I thought I would!
12. Wrote obligatory "Pre-Wrath To-Do List". Enough said!

*I will not be going to a midnight release, nor did I take Thursday off, so it will be about 4pm on Thursday before I am actually able to play. 

Of 11th Graders and Electron Configurations

I am glad I have a job that sends me home evening after evening feeling as though I made some minor difference in the world. A week ago I began quantum numbers and electron configurations with my Chemistry students. Many were very distraught at how hard it was and how they had to "unlearn" things they had learned in middle school. I got comments like "I don't even know what an orbital is!" and "I'm so far lost one more day of being lost won't make a difference..." 

2 and a half block periods later, I'm sitting on my desk in the front of the room while one student writes electron configs on the over head and a second students points out where the representing elements are found on the periodic table. Then I set the class loose, each student with a slip of paper with an element on it in hand. They were to quiz each other and initial the papers of their classmates who got their electron config correct, all to practice for the real thing next class. 

I figured worse case they would have no idea what I was asking them to do and wouldn't be able to do the configs orally. I figured best case it would entertain them for 20 minutes, but I would have to keep the slackers on task and answer a lot of questions. 

They surpassed my expectations. For over 30 minutes they moved around the room, quizzing each other, helping each other, being proud of themselves when they got it right, laughing when they screwed up, and trying to stump the teacher with their element. All you could here was the drone of 10 people saying various parts of 1S^2, 2S^2, 2P^6, 3S^2, 3P^6... etc. It was beautiful!

Steps to Thinking You Don't Suck as a Resto Druid in 3.0.2

1. Drink  (I recommend a long island iced tea, followed by a coffee with Kahlua)
2. Keybind Wild Growth to every button on your key board.
3. Enter AV. Eat GNERDS.
4. Roll face across key board continually. 
5. Earn Damage Control, GNERD Rage, Grim Reaper, Everything Counts, and Make Love - Not Warcraft in one AV.

Is this what most high school chemistry teachers do on a Saturday night?

In other news I was asked to Prom yesterday (lol Think about passing my class first?)

The End is Here!

Today was my official last day of summer vacation. Which is funny since I have been in to school every day this week trying to get ahead so I can still have a life when school starts. I think I'm ready! I don't have lunch duty this year and have a last period study hall again which is exciting. Lunch duty was just too boring for me. I have one section of Chemistry with only 9 students so that will be a blast for sure. I have a 9th grade homeroom again (meh). I shall lay down the law and we will get along just fine.

I sort of kind of lead my first raid last Sunday. I normally just do healing and help some with DKP, and Yakra and Ruff really run the raids. But neither Yakra or Ruff were able to be on. Both of our DPS officers were on, and they did their job, but they are brand new. The new healing officer was a HUGE help handing out SR gear mats. And our pally tank did all the marking and trash, which he is very good at and has done plenty of times before. But I was the senior officer and sort of had last call and stuff.

Related to leading my first raid was downing Mother Shaz for the first time, on the first raid I lead, the very first time we attempted her. We used a 3 camp set up: 1 Melee camp and 2 ranged camps (with healers split between the two camps.) We also used Easy Mother. (The key is to not follow it blindly through the raid/tanks, and run even if it says stop if you are too close to the raid/tanks.)
We did healing for Mother Shaz as follows:
9 healers
2 Paladins on the Main Tank
1 Paladin on both Off-Tanks
1 Druid rolling HoTs on all three Tanks
1 Shaman on Melee
4 CoH Priests, Druids, and/or Shamans assigned one to each ranged/tanking group.
(I prioritized druids, then priests to the group(s) with tanks in them, to give the tanks some more HoTs. After that I assigned people to heal their own groups for simplicities sake.)

Last summer I called myself the lucky druid because whenever people wanted gear, if I thought about it really really hard, it would drop. This summer I seem to be an even luckier druid! First I received my e-mail informing me that I had been chosen to buy a FigurePrint! Yakra has been on a business trip this week and has eaten as little as he can so he can pocket the cash so we can buy one. I figure we will get on of Yakra since its not just his WoW character, but his alter ego. (And he likes presents.) And yesterday I got my e-mail inviting me to the Wrath of the Lich King beta. So far it has done nothing but patch and say "connected" on the very pretty blue login screen. I only wish I had more time to play it. I wonder what my students would think if they found out I was in the beta!

In other real life/sort of WoW life news, the great RuffianX spent last weekend at our house. I had freed up my schedule and stress load totally so I was able to relax and have a very nice time. We played board games and went for dinner with some other guildies. Yakra and Ruff went Kayaking and Ruff beat Yakra a bunch of times at brawl. We tried ZA for the bear mount, but missed it yet again, and went for ice cream way late at night.

I've also been hanging out with another RL/WoW friend. We went to college together and were close then. She transfered servers some time back, so I have never gotten to raid with her. Her guild is well into Sunwell now. We are like a year behind them. Then they moved to the other side of the river which put them far away, but since I got the new job I am out her way all the time. So both of us have been busy with raiding and houses, but she has some stuff going on that I want to be able to be there, so I'm making time. And actually its really nice to not have to explain WHY you NEED to be back home by 7:45. So its really cool because I've missed her.

Pushing Archie

Time flies when you have a real job! I can't believe it has been 3 weeks since my last post!

Real Life Update:
I am still liking the job. There was a week or two in there that was really bogged down with paperwork, but somehow I managed to crawl out from under the 14 feet of labs and worksheets I had to grade. I'm ready for summer because I want to get ahead with planning and have great plans, instead of only okay plans. I'm not a fan of being only one week ahead and sometimes having to drive to get my printing in time. NINE MORE DAYS UNTIL SUMMER YAY!

WoW Update:
Shade of Akama was a cake walk, like we expected. Taron Gorefiend was a little frustrating. We spend about 3.5 nights over 2.5 weeks working on him until we killed him. Of course it was the inability to kill the shadowy constructs. There is a simulator game we all played, but I don't know if it helped me. I am used to watching and clicking on dots (boxes) on my screen. What I'm not good is actually clicking on mobs that may be standing in front of or right next to each other. I noticed the healers seemed to be the worst at killing them. I don't think it is a coincidence - I think it is our tunnel vision. And I don't know if there is any way to help besides doing the fight more or having a ranged dps alt and just grinding crowded areas. I have had a serious lack of practice since I have only gotten Shadow of Death TWICE in all our attempts. I don't want to be "that girl". Who always wipes the raid... We killed Gorfiend once and are now putting BT on hold until Archie is down.

Some nights we rock Hyjal and one shot everything in two hours. Some nights it take 3 hours to get the first 3 bosses down. I have no idea what is going on there. Maybe it is burn out? I know I need to start stacking the healer classes for those fights. I want to consider it farmed content and let my healers have some say on what bosses they come in for and what they sit out for, but we just aren't there yet. And I don't believe the healing problems are player problems, just class differences I have been trying to ignore. No T6 for me yet. Its not like I don't have the DKP, I just don't need the gloves as much as some other people do.

We have spent about 2.5 nights total on Archie now. I think we are starting to work out the kinks on where we are going to run from fires and where groups are going to stand. . A few people seem to consistently die to dumb things, and I think people are being too brave too close to fires too near to fears. (Myself included). We are running healer heavy now. I figure if we can't live until 10%, who cares about the DPS race at the end. We will cross that bridge when we get to it. Our best attempt was about 54%.

We have had a HUGE healer turn over. I am expecting healers to make at least 40% of our raids by hour. Any less than that and they don't come enough to be worth teaching the fights to and giving the gear too. When most of our healers make 60% or so of raids, I don't think 40% is too much to ask.

We have never tolerated people being consistently too low on the healing meters, and are getting a little stricter on this. Yes, some fights will be better for some classes. Yes, our CoH priests are always going to out heal or Imp Spirit priest. But no one should be consistently far below the other healers. We had one healer like that. We asked them to consider themselves a non-raiding member of the guild. (They are really in it for the social stuff, not the raiding.)

Since Someone Won't Let It Die...

...I will post.

Real Life Updates:
I started a new job at the very end of March. I am teaching chemistry and science. I love it. It's been rough coming in at the end of a year and trying to pick up the pieces were the former teacher checked out 3 months ago. My students couldn't balance equations in March. Thats a problem. So there was some frustration. But I love it. My gosh, I love it. Long hours. Long, long hours... but the students are worth it. If anything is worth 125% its them.

I took up drinking... it saves my sanity. (Its not as bad as it sounds.)

I have NOT been even CLOSE to keeping up with post reading. Let me know what I've missed in the last month that I HAVE to read.

WoW Updates:
We downed Kael' after about 3 weeks of working on him. And have downed him 3 times since. So we consider our kill secured. He was a REALLY fun boss to learn and coordinate.

Then we moved on to Hyjal and downed the first 4 bosses in two nights. And then we did it again. Then tried Archie and got him to 65% on the first night. Then we did the first 4 bosses in one night...

Then moved to BT. And did the first two bosses the first night we were in there. I was disappointed by Warlord. I thought it would be more challenging. We are going back to BT Sunday to see how much more we can down.

No fat loots. I don't even know what drops from half the bosses. I again have the most unspent DKP in the guild.

I've been kicking and inviting and promoting and demoting healers more. I want membership and rank to mean more. I think my spreadsheet has been working wonderfully. My healers all seem pretty happy. I know I am happy with them. I continue to be madly in love with LOKI.

So thats it! Thank you to those who have payed attention to my lack of posts, and I look forward to catching up more in a month *sigh*.

My Bad!

To be fair and give credit where credit might be due: Lifebloom and You has a very similar tag line as my blog. "Don't you wish you could cast HoTs like me?" It seems they had it first and I want the world to know that. I did not realize this before, since I read most sites through a feeder, and just happened to click directly to their site for the first time today. I took my tag line from a rogue in our guild, who is also a real life friend. His DPS happens to bring all the orcs to the yard.

Great Interview

I went on an interview today for a full time position at a local school district. I think it went GREAT. Far better than my last interview. I really liked the principal and the school was beautiful and new! They still have more candidates to interview, but I should hear by next week. The position would start very soon too, which would be exciting. The down part is, I can hardly keep up with raiding and blogging just subbing, if I am working full time I may have to cut both out completely. That makes me a sad tree. But that is neither here nor there until I am offered a job! I am just in a good mood today, since I love every opportunity to meet new people!

So Deeply in Love

I fall so deeply in love with everything: songs, LOKI, healing, my students. Once I decide something is worth my time and energy I give it 100%. If its not worth doing to 100%, its probably not worth doing at all. A few things have brought up these thoughts recently:

Yesterday I subbed at the high school where I student taught and ran into some of my former students. I got to see their faces light up, see them smile and wave, and hear how their new semester was going. It reminded me how much I thought about them and invested in them and their education while I was teaching them. And how much I missed them. They were , and still are, worth 100%. More than anything else I have ever found. I cried the whole way home because they made me so happy.

A few days ago, I was on standby for Vashj, and my old guild asked if I would come do High King and Gruul's with them, they needed another healer. So I went and I remembered how much time and effort I invested in them. They are great people and learning Kara with them was some of my best WoW experience. When my group of RL friends decided it was time to because of some serious conflicts with a few people in the guild, it broke my heart. It was one of the hardest things I had done WoW related, because these people were my friends too. So of course I cried myself to sleep the night I left.

Two nights ago Ruffian removed some guild members. The one's I was speaking about before, that gave me grief about invites even though I wad trying to be fair. They had been giving him even more grief apparently. This makes me feel a little sad, because I want my healers to be happy so badly. I wish we had found a way to work it out. Thank you to those who did give me some advice. I think I am going to continue comparing raid attendance to boss kills to track major differences. But when it has come to close ties over the last few nights I have tried to use things like who needs loot of a boss, who hasn't seen the boss downed before at all, who is a better healer, who has been in the guild longer, and who has to leave early or wasn't able to come the following night because of work/kids as my deciding factors, instead of the one or two actual percentage points.

It seems hard and it is a little time consuming, but I feel like my healers are worth 100% and LOKI is worth 100%. Once they aren't, I will probably stop playing wow all together.

3 Days Equals 3/4 TK

I have been a busy busy tree the last week. To spare my RL friends who want to read my blog, I start starting with my RL update.

I have been filing out an application for a general/physical science position that would be like my DREAM job right now, in the district I really want to be in. The biggest addition to my app was a GLOWING letter of recommendation from my curriculum design teacher who said I was among the top 3 student teachers he has had in his 27 years and the most outgoing student teacher he has had.

Then I had an interview on Monday for a subbing position in the same district. It was mostly a "do you have all your paperwork and no eye brow ring" type interview. So I got the sub job and I can start on the 25th. Its day to day, so we will see how it goes. Hopefully I will be very busy!

And a transition from teaching to wow - one of my guildmates is a high school student and they knew I was a chem teacher and told me they bombed a chem test recently. So out the window went paying attention for Kara trash and in came all the graphic organizers and short cuts I could e-mail him for naming different types of compounds In a way I was surprised that I could stop playing that fast, but in another way I wasn't, since I love teaching so so much. Now I just hope they can pull their grade up!

And on to the meat of the post: How LOKI roflpwned TK this past week.

On Tuesday we went into Alar. The huge majority of us had never done Alar before. It was a long three hours, we had to clear trash twice. Each attempt we progressed a little more and a little more. Phase One was learned fairly quickly by all our tanks 3 cycling tanks. Healing was fine so long long as they stayed in LOS. Phase Two was, of course, where things became complicated. Bird adds being tanked all over with trees frantically following their tanks. DPS that didn't understand the concept "Don't stand by the door". (Can you tell I assigned myself to healing the off tanks by the door?!) It was fun times all around, but awesome that we got him in only three hours of practice and attempts.

Wednesday was High Astromancer Solarian. Longer trash equaled blah, and we had to clear it twice. However, I think she would have been cake if people understood how to turn on their DBM announcement (I mean it yells "Run away little girl!" at you for Pete's sake!) or downloading SolarianAlarm. Once that was all set and people were canceling their casts to run the heck away, she went down supper easy. Kind of a boring fight I think for me. All I did was raid heal and HoTs the AOEers before all the mobs rushed the raid.

Thursday was Void Reaver. LOKI downed VR more times than I can remember this past summer. I actually have always liked the fight. It is fairly tree friendly as we can cast on the move, while running away from arcane orbs. I get in this happy little back and forth pattern with my (hopefully) competent group, calling out "Group 1&5, left", "Group 1&5, right." All the while I am HoTs, HoTs, HoTs the melee and tanks. The second attempt, we got probably 6 minutes into the fight before resetting it and I checked the healing meters. I had done a little under 40% of the healing, and we had 7 healers in the raid! Yes, shamans and druids have a big advantage on VR, and I am among the best geared healers in the guild - but 40% is uncalled for. People were just dieing too early from orbs. You know that expression, "I'm starting to sound like my parents!" I found myself starting to sound like the resto druid who has been in LOKI the longest: "How hard is it to run away from the orb? The come SO slow. I can run away and I'm a freaking TREE!!!" But VR went down, about two hours total. And to be fair, we have A LOT of people in there who had never seen VR before.

PS: This post is dedicated to Tolsmir, enhancement shaman and LOKI's Physical DPS officer, who has been bugging me to update my blog for the last few days!

More on Vashj and On to TK

Vashj went as well as one can hope the first night on Vashj can go, I think. There were some disagreements about the best uses for various DPS, and looking back, I don't think we made all the best choices. But we definitively came away with a much better understanding of the fight. We had no problems with the first phase, and by the end of the three hours we had 2 generators down. It was slow progress, but it was progress. Our biggest sticking point seemed to be DPSing down the strider. So there will be big DPS changes for next time.

We had 8 healers, 4 on the inside and 4 on the outside. I believe next time I would like to try 3 on the outside and 5 on the inside, since our inside healers were feeling overwhelmed, and our outside healers were finding time to DPS. Two cores came up my side (different attempts), where I was healing a hunter (different hunter different attempts). We alone had no problem taking down the tainted elemental, the hunter tossed the core to me, and I tossed it to another healer standing by the generator. I actually thought it was really fun!

Here was a macro, that I pulled from a strat. video on the Bosskillers that makes tossing the core easier and helps your raid follow where the core is:

/use Tainted Core
/y <--- TAINTED CORE TO %t !!! /s <--- TAINTED CORE TO %t !!! /Script SendChatMessage ("!!!YOU HAVE THE TAINTED CORE!!!", "WHISPER", "Common", UnitName("target")) This macro will 1. Use the core (ie, throw it to the person who you have selected, 2. Yell and Say who you are throwing it too, so everyone in the raid knows, and 3. Send a tell to the person you threw it to if they somehow missed the previous announcements! Although Vashj went fairly well, and we are hopeful about some of our ideas for changes, we are going to move on to TK. LOKI has previously downed VR, and put him on hold so we could do SSC. We figure Al'ar and Solarian will be easier than Vashj, and we don't want to loose momentum while momentum has been awesome. In other newses, like... last Tuesday I guess, I got the Gnarled Chestpiece of the Ancients from Morogrim for some reasonable emount of DKP. It has more Stam than the Robes if Heavenly Purpose. The robes will stay my main piece of course, but it is nice to have some alternatives that don't totally gimp healing ability. Sadly, they still aren't sexy enough to justify pairing them with my Nordrassil Life-Kilt. We did Kara again this past Friday. This time it was a lot of my real life friends alts. I don't have a high level alt so I went on Aertimus. I was very surprised at the DPS synergy and general output for the lower levels of gear. Of course it helps that we all know what we are doing and work well together! But the neatest part was that, even though I was still on Aertimus, and I have done Kara a ton of times with this group, it felt different since people were playing different classes. I got the Stainless Cloak of the Pure Hearted off of prince, which was, I believe, the absolute last piece of gear I had interest in from Kara. Again, it has more +heal and Stam than the Shadowvine Cloak of Infusion and options are always nice. Some of my friends passed it to me. That is something I always feel awkward about - who has more of I right or need to a piece of gear? An alt if it is for their main set, or a main if it is for an alt set? We "roll need" on pieces - but is it really "need" for either of us, in that case or is it greed? The final piece of WoW news is that I got added to Resto4Life's bloggroll. No pressure here to keep this thing up, going, and exciting! Anyone reading this better already be reading that site. In the real world, last week I submitted all my paperwork to sub in the district I would really like to sub in. So, hopefully some sub work will be right around the corner!

OMG Officer!

It has been a busy 24 hours-ish in my World (of Warcraft). This afternoon I logged on and got grabbed by some guild-ies who wanted to talk about playing alternate healing characters that might be more needed than their mains. I went to run some of it by Ruffian and after it was all worked out I was hanging out in the channel. And Ruff was like "Oh, yeah, congratulations." And promoted me to officer!!! So excited! We had spoken about it before, but he wanted to promote the current priest/druid healing officer to a commander (like a general raid and assistant guild leader.) So now I am officially a healing officer and no longer unofficial. I have some pretty big roots to fill though.

I also have finished editing the Fathom strat to reflect what I learned last night.

In other news, my FBI clearances came today and I touched up my letter of interest and resume so I can send in my packet for substitute teaching very soon! It will be very nice to be in schools again!