Sweet Bye and...Hi

Quick updates:

No, I didn't quit WoW, although it was kinda touch and go there for a while before patch 3.1.  

I ended up spending a week in Texas at the end of March/beginning of April for my Granny's funeral.  Yeah, the one with the lace curtains.  I didn't play at all while I was there, which was actually kind of nice.  I got to do things like help my sister-in-law plan for Vacation Bible School and watch my niece and nephew do cool kid things.  Although I miss my grandmother, the service was actually really nice--my brothers and I sang at the funeral and got two thumbs up from our critic (so the critic is also our father, and he always gives us thumbs up, but this time he really meant it) and even got my grandfather to nod his head to our version of "Sweet By and By."

Before I left, we managed to get "Undying" with our 10 man group, which finished up the meta achievement for two of our members.  Grats to Whammie and Kromise for their Plagued Proto-Drakes.  But Whammie needs to stop posting it in chat or he may have a mysterious accident when he goes to visit the Floridians next week.

Since 3.1, our guild has downed Flame Leviathon, Razorscale, Ignis, Deconstructor, and Kologarn with our 25 man raids, and our 10 man group has killed all those plus Iron Council, Auraiya, Thorim and Freya.  So raiding is going pretty well.  

In real life news, I'm starting the job hunt (with knowledge of my boss) with the intent of moving back to Texas.  First choice is to return to the Lubbock area.  And since it's early in the hunt, that is my focus.  Later on I might settle for anything that gets me back into the Lone Star State, but for now, I'm focusing on being able to move back there.  

I guess that's all for now.  Happy raiding.

Undying Conspiracy

Our dedicated 10 man Naxx group decided a while back that rather than become "alt friendly" (although we do have two guys with healer/tank alts that switch it up), we would focus on getting some achievements done.

I think I've stated before that I don't actually hate achievements, I'm just not as obsessed by them as a lot of people have become. The two that I would really like to have are Undying and The Immortal. As a healer, I like the challenge of trying to make it all the way through a late night Naxx without letting anyone die.

The trouble is, we seem to be cursed with really bad luck. I know that these achievements require perfection (or the ability to save the day) on boss fights, but, for the most part, our recent failures haven't been user error. They've been flukes.

I wasn't there, but three weeks ago, we had a poorly timed taunt between our main tank and off tank on Gluth. The report I received said: "Basically, our druid was off tanking Gluth and the warrior told him to taunt. Just as a decimate hit. And well, you can guess how that went. The warrior was watching his debuffs and not the decimate timer."

Two weeks ago, we made it all the way to Kel'Thuzad. A retadin 'sploded, but the healers managed to save him. Unfortunately, his life dipping was only an instant before our elemental shammy was iceblocked. In my defense, he was the one person who had stepped out of my range. But that's no excuse. Three healers should have been able to save him--if our attention hadn't been on saving the pally one second before.

Last week, our Canadian friends had some internet issues. These issues decided to present themselves after we started the Heigan dance. We kept one of them (a healer) alive until he could make it up on the platform, but his counterpart happened to be our main tank.... We weren't as successful with him. The raid broke up after that, but he reported that he had no more lag the entire evening.

This week started out promising despite the fact that the same Canadian duo were at a BSG-themed lan party (meaning slightly buzzed and sharing the internets). We wouldn't let them talk about BSG, but the run itself was going well. We breezed through Heigan. Recovered from a miscommunication on Four Horsemen. And even managed to survive a kinda rocky Grobbulus (there were WAY too many slimes at one point for comfort). Everyone seemed to be on the ball, and even if we had some minor mishaps, we were surviving them. Until Gluth. There we all are, preparing for the Decimate. The Holy Priest had a binding heal cued up to land on the adds tank and himself as soon as the cast finished. I had a chain heal going on the tanks/melee in the front. And the pally was doing his pally thing. We were set. We weren't going to let everyone down. This was the week we'd make it.

Only it wasn't. Apparently there is a known (but not known to us) bug where if you use commanding shout or a warlock imp during the Gluth fight, the encounter can miscalculate how much health you actually have when dispensing the Decimate damage. And instead of taking you to mostly dead...it takes you to overly dead. All three healers died. Instantly. Our preparatory casts were useless to save us or anyone else. I used my reincarnate and we ended up killing the boss, but over half the raid died.

So I guess this week we should research and try to find any other obscure bugs that will ruin our chances at this achievement. Damnit, I want to get Undying so I can stop staying up all night, or at least start taking the Shadow Priest. It's a conspiracy. I know it is.

Image courtesy of Toothpaste for Dinner.

You Know It's a Bad Raid Night When...

1.  You get the message from your raid leader that his cable car crashed on his evening commute.  And you tell him his night isn't going to get better once he's home....

2.  Your main tank has a note next to his sign up saying he will be an hour late.  And everyone is surprised that the raid doesn't start on time.

3.  The wait list has two names on it.  And both of those are people you'd think twice about having dps in a nostalgia run to BRD.

4.  Your healing corps includes that player who has to link all of her gear to the raid to determine whether a drop is an upgrade.  And she seems surprised when you point out that healers don't need hit.

5.  Your hunter has to go buy ammo.  Not just once.... Twice....

Shaking Things Up...Again

Quick Updates:

It looks like I totally failed as a blogger in the month of February. In my defense, not a ton was going on in game (at least for me) and I was studying, or at least feeling guilty about not studying, for the Bar Exam. The test is now over, and things are starting to get back to normal.

I was reminded today at work that every case, no matter how small it seems to me, is vitally important to someone. This may sound like a lofty statement or a moment of true enlightenment about my role in the justice system, but that's only because I just finished a successful Heroic Naxx run and picked up a few more achievements necessary for the fast mount that I say I don't want, but really wouldn't mind having. What I really mean by that pompous sentence is that a petty misdemeanor case (0ne I never should have agreed to prosecute in the first place) totally killed my buzz from prosecuting a guy charged with 11 felonies today. I spent approximately four hours of my day negotiating a plea agreement with a thug facing enough charges to send him away for over 20 years. Then I spent three hours and fifteen minutes working with a witness from a case that carries a maximum penalty of a $500 fine and three months in the county jail (with good time, that would be about 45 days, tops). I came out of the interview room wanting to hurt someone--I mentioned the THREE hours, right? Good thing I made it home just in time to raid.

More related to WoW, I've spent the last few days totally overhauling my UI, for like the 15th time. I still have a few issues to work out like fine tuning Grid and Clique a bit more and perfecting my buff/debuff displays. Although I'm not the one to cost us the Immortal achievement tonight, watching for the polarity shifts on Thaddeus was a little nervewracking with the new set up. So I'll try to perfect that over the weekend. Here are the latest screenshots, both in and out of a raid.

We now return...

to our regularly scheduled programming.

Or nearly anyway. I finished up the test today at approximately 3:30 pm Texas time. After a nice dinner with friends, I headed back to my parent's house which is about 2 hours away from Dallas. I'm so glad to be here. Mase's futon was a great place to crash, but I'm looking forward to a nice night in a real bed where I'm not disrupting anyone else's routine. I'm also really looking forward to sleeping right on through that whole 5:30 am thing. Ugh, I really prefer thinking that there is only one 5:00 on the clock.

I've returned just in time to get to help calm down the drama llama in our guild. We seem to have developed another small case of the doldrums. We have a few newer 80s joining a few established 80s who fill dps roles who are unhappy with the state of our raiding recently. With me basically being on hiatus for at least the past two weeks, the unfortunate timing of some other real life issues for people--including tanks and healers, and the state of end game raiding in general (meaning boring), our raids have become more infrequent and frustrating. Although I sympathize with the people angry over confirmations--again--we're working on the problems and doing our best. Airing the grievances is a two-sided sword. It's probably good that they feel like we have to take their complaints into consideration, but they are mostly spewing problems and not trying to help with solutions.

Oh well, that is a problem for another day. And we will weather this like we have weathered drama storms before. But for now, I'm just going to curl up on my bed and sleep until I wake up. Happy gaming, all.