Feng gets Fanged, Gara'jal proves to be a wall

This past week my team did manage to kill Feng the Accursed, yay! Got myself a nice ring out of my token roll, it didn't use my need roll for the week so I was pretty impressed by that. Loving the token system that was added in Mists, for 90 coins a week you get 3 tokens (each turn in) that will allow you to have an additional chance at loot, that no one else is able to roll on. It's pretty sweet!

 I'm incredibly pumped about how geared my shaman is at the moment, I've never been one that has been able to achieve the top 20 under on the server due to my previous guilds, but this time around it looks like I'm in the running! I'm currently sitting at 15th on the server, 3rd shaman (only 1 Alliance ahead of me), 3rd Alliance side, 1st in my guild. This past week I had a moment where I was in the top 700 shamans in the world (651st to be exact)! Very exciting stuff for me!

Gara'jal the Spiritbinder has proved to be a brick wall for us, we just can't reach the dps required without switching one of the healers dps. We tried having me go dps on Sunday (I was the only one with a decent off set), and the other two healers just couldn't keep up /sadface. Hoping to have better luck this week, possibly having one of the monks healers go dps may help things; hopefully they've upgraded their offsets to the point where they'll be able to help out.

 I started leveling my monk as well this past week, and I have to say that Brewmaster is crazy fun! I've tanked one dungeon so far, but I've really enjoyed it. The idea of throwing specialty brews at mobs (including an AoE one with no CD!) is very appealing, I can't wait to get to higher levels :).

Week one of raiding, one boss down!

This week we managed to get into raiding; had to take some people that were 90 because some of our team members weren't, but oh well whatever works!. Last night (Sunday) we killed the first boss of Mogu'shan Vaults, the Stone Guard. All I know is, man these fights are designed to drain a shammy's mana dry! I had barely any mana for the majority of it and I have a feeling this will become the norm since the second boss Feng seems to be just as mana draining, possibly even more so! I'm currently attempting to up my spirit and some crit (without losing 50% mastery benefit) so I can benefit from more mana via Resurgence , we'll see how that goes.

Got myself the Sixteen-Fanged Crown off of the Stone Guard, which I find looks kind of odd with it's large plume, thank god for transmog and the ability to hide my helm! Rest of my gear still looks pretty hot, liking the detail on the crafted item models. Because of this upgrade, I've moved up to the #1 shaman on the server (take that Farm Status! I'll gloat while I can ;P).

Tomorrow's the start of another raid week and hopefully at least another boss down. I can only hope :).

Mists of Pandaria release - End of first week

So, tomorrow is the mark of Mists of Pandaria being released for one week, woot! My poor elbows and wrists are telling me all about it....been playing for the majority of my spare time. My shaman hit level 90 the other day and the goal since has been of course grinding dungeons and doing dailies each day, which by the way takes quite a while if you're trying to do as many as possible! I hate that I need at least honored with the Golden Lotus faction in order to get leatherworking patterns, the grind is so slow with dailies being the only way to get reputation.

 Got myself a few mounts this week, the riding turtles from the Pandaren faction, my blue dragonhawk and the wonderous Grand Expedition Yak (for only 108k gold :P). I love having myself a mount that people keep asking where I got the gold for that from, the answer is being smart and selling things before MoP release :).



Hoping to get my nose into raiding next week. We have a raid group meeting Thursday to see where everyone sits. I just hope our druid healer is able to log on and level before then! I'm fairly well geared and hope to be even more so by then. Speaking of gear, I like the models for the dungeon/questing gear available to shamans in MoP, my shaman looks darn sexy in my opinion :P.

Mists of Pandaria release, first two days

 So, MoP came out this past Tuesday and I have to say, it's been quite the blast! I've really enjoyed the new content even after leveling to 90 via the Beta. The journey is taking longer because of the increase in exp needed, my dungeon guide is helping folks, the new gear (even the greens) looks really nice and the new features are extremely fun from Pet Battles to the WoW version of "Farmville" (I don't see the two as one in the same really, some likeness but not entirely). I love getting to see the scenery again from a different view as I am leveling Elemental questing instead of Enhancement while trying to do quests I didn't do on Beta, makes it feel like a bit of a different experience for me! Has some funny things happen the day before the release and now, a cubed box on a Fel Orcs head in the Netherwing questing area (got my mount!) and what looks like a barrel on my Ghost Wolf's butt, made me giggle a bit!

Dungeon Guide Completed, Alliance pattern sampled

Not a whole lot going on these past few days, I've completed my Mists of Pandaria dungeon guide (you can find it here:  http://www.epicism.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=3704, it is a public forum on my guild's website) and I'm crossing my fingers that it will help some people out as I'm quite proud of the work I put into it :).

I made a sample Alliance lion knitting pattern the other day and am going to make myself an Alliance themed scarf with it, putting one lion on each end. I think it'll look really nice in Alliance colors! I already have someone debating on buying one off of me depending on the pricing, going to need to go shopping for some cheapish wool to make it cost effective.

Mists is in 2 days 5 hours and counting!

Theramore's Fall, now on Twitchtv, Sinestra killed

So, yesterday the new scenario Theramore's Fall came out of the live servers. Yet again, another Alliance town demolished by the Horde....when will they get a break? Not to mention the loss of Rhonin, a great mage of the Kirin Tor and someone I loved to read about in the World of Warcraft books.

 Overall, my impression of the scenario was so-so. I enjoyed having new content to do, but felt that it lacked in storyline as I had little to no idea what was going on. I didnt find out about Rhonin afterwards by reading the WoW forums :(. Scenarios themselves are an interesting concept, not really difficult, not so easy you could do them in your sleep (some opinions differ) but I would really enjoy knowing what was going on in the Theramore battle without having to go and pick up one of the WoW books (even though I'll probably get it anyways).

 In other news, I am now on Twitchtv! You can find me under the handle fulgora_epicism. I will be streaming any of the Epicism raids that I attend and some Diablo 3 when I feel like it :).

 This past week our guild's main goal (besides farming current content) was to kill Sinestra. Since I was sitting from the farming this week I decided to join in. Managed to get her killed after going through 3 of the 4 bosses in Bastion of Twilight on Heroic first (Council was done on regular for the achievement) and going back another night. Two healing it was not incredibly easy, even two tiers later! You can find a video of that kill on my Twitchtv channel.

End of Cata Blues, Mists incoming soon!

It's called a few things; burnout, end of expansion blues, etc. but I like to call it boredom. Bored with grinding the same content over and over, every week doing it the exact same as when you first killed the boss. Week before last Blizzard added patch 5.0.4 to the mix, changing our whole talent system and adding a bunch of new stuff into the game. Do I like it? Meh at best, shaman talents and glyphs are fairly underwhelming; there just isn't the same variety that it available to the other classes. I think my beta testing may have made them a little more underwhelming then it would be if I saw them for the first time then, but I'm not complaining.

 MoP is less then two weeks away today, yahoo! Less then two weeks until I wake up before 4am to (hopefully) get into the new content and gain some new levels on live. In the meantime I'm doing the usual, raiding when I'm scheduled to raid on one of the teams (I'm hoping this won't become the norm come MoP) and working on a strategy guide to all the MoP dungeons for my guild. Hoping to have that done soon :).

 Non-game I've been doing a hell of alot of knitting, currently I'm working on an Alliance banner pattern that I would like to turn into a scarf with the Horde banner on the other end. Will post pics when I have my samples patterns done :).

Level 90, Heroic Dungeon and Raid testing here I come!

I managed to crawl my way to finishing off level 89 the other night (okay, so it really wasn't that bad ^.^)! Found out where to obtain free PvP gear so I would be wearing something a bit closer to what I would look for, but the dilemma I had was gold. It's always about money isn't it!? Created a bunch of premade 85s and mailed their gold to my shaman just so I could pick up gems to outfit my new gear; these were not cheap! The gear's pretty snazzy though :).

Besides the money hiccup I'm pretty much prepped as well as I'm going to be (not bothering with enchants at this time as I don't have a maxxed enchanter for Mists content). Did one Heroic Dungeon so far, Siege of Niuzao Temple. Fairly interesting fight mechanics involved in the dungeon, most I haven't seen applied in the fashion Blizzard decided to put them in. Overall I was impressed with what I encountered, healing it wasn't easy even with my gear being put at an iLvl estimated to handle the dungeon (lower then the PvP gear I had equipped) and the dungeon was challenging and interesting all at once!

 Attempted some LFR Mosu'ghan Vaults and didn't make it past the second boss, but again some interesting mechanics put in place by Blizzard. The second boss is actually difficult and requires quite a bit of coordination from the whole group, something I wouldn't expect to see in a PuG situation. I found myself facing alot of mana problems, couldn't keep any amount of it for the life of me; that's something I desperately need to work on. Hopefully with the hotfixes they recently put into place buffing Healing Rain while decreasing mana cost that I'll feel a little more comfortable; how do you AoE heal without Healing Rain and only being able to use Chain Heal every 6 seconds or so? You don't! Going to take some time hopefully later tonight to attempt some LFR again and see if these hotfixes are worth me not pretending to be a druid in Wrath spamming Rejuvination (equivalent to my Riptide glyphed) on the entire raid. Crossing my fingers for something a little more interesting! Otherwise I'll be switching out some glyphs each fight, which is supposedly what Blizzard intended so I guess I'll learn to do it one way or another ;).

In non-related news I did complete Heroic Dragon Soul with my group this week, yay! Took the week off this week so I could spend time with the boyfriend and son, but hoping to get back in there this week.

A break from WoW; what?!

Been so busy lately that I haven't had much of a chance on here, but I'll take the time to make a few bulletpoints anyways.

• Took a break from WoW about a month ago to get my life straightened out, WoW became such an addiction that it took priority over the more important things in my life, like my family and doing what I'm supposed to be doing while I'm staying at home; cleaning the house.
• Got everything straightened out and am now attending my first week back to raiding on my resto shaman; without the heavy burden of being guild CDO on my plate and feeling like I need to do everything for the guild things seem a bit better between my home life and WoW life.
• Testing MoP beta for the past while so I can get a head start when the live version comes out in September.
• Guild has in the meantime completed Heroic Dragon Soul (you rock guys and gals!). Sucks that I wasn't there but oh well, life comes first.
• Pretty much gave up on Diablo 3 after getting my "main" to Inferno Act 3, way too much time repeating for my like to get any further in the game.

And that's about it, going to make a point to boot my ass into gear so I can blog more often in my free time!

The Road to level 90: A Mists of Pandaria beta adventure!

Since I am an annual pass holder, I received a beta invite a few months ago to go with my other gifts included in the deal I signed up for (whether the whole year contract was worth it or not that is still being debated on); but I never did much of anything with my beta access. Logged on a few times to play around with some glyphs and imagine my shaman as a Pandaren, but that's about it! A few weeks ago I decided it was time for me to get around playing it, free access to boss strats from dungeons and raids prior to the live content comes out will help my guild out I hope. At the beginning of the Cataclysm expansion I wrote a guide to Heroic dungeon bosses for my previous guild since I was the first to be able to do them and they really appreciated it.

 Mists of Pandaria has such gorgeous scenery, I love it. If a game I'm playing has nice scenery and a captivating storyline I'll usually be too busy just looking at the environment my virtual avatar is exploring, or reading the questlines to understand the full story behind what I'm doing instead of going for the all out "balls to the wall" type questing that most people do in the effort to reach max level first.

 My shaman is currently level 89, the first level was given to me since the Jade Forest was closed for repairs so that was one less level I needed to grind out :). For the following levels it wasn't near as terrible to get the experience needed as I was expecting, I ended up with enough rested experience to almost get me to 90; just finishing it off today with about 2/3 of my last level to go. The changes to resto shamans are pretty neat, glyph so my Riptide doesn't have a cooldown but doesn't do the initial and another glyph to change the looks of my chain heals make everything seem like something new, feeling more like a druid/kind of paladin hybrid again. Considering that's why I fell in love with shaman healing in the first place that just fine with me :).

 Don't get me started on Ascendence, http://mop.wowhead.com/spell=114049/ascendance! This ability is beyond awesome as a resto shaman, if you're familiar with Ultraxion from Dragon Soul it's like the green buff you can obtain on crack! Really handy spell, just wish it would last me a little bit longer. With the additions it seems like I have more cooldowns then I know what to do with at times, probably why they removed buff totems out of the equation...

Hoping to get myself to 90 soon (probably within the next week) and get to work on scenarios and raids so I can really be on top of things when this hits Live!

A nerf, a Hag killed and a fail Horde guild

These past few weeks have been pretty stale in game on my Shaman, been having difficulties replacing our magical disappearing bear tank (douche...) with someone that can raid for more then one day a week /sigh. Last week though, we finally managed to kill Heroic Hagara! It took a lot of work and quite a bit of coordination, but we pulled it off; just minutes after our guilds other group killed her. Onto Heroic Blackhorn hopefully this week, we may actually be able to catch up with the other Alliance guilds on the server!

Kind of in relation to us killing Hagara I guess, Blizz put in place their next nerf to Dragon Soul this past week with the encounters doing 20% less damage and having 20% less health helps things along. I'm not entirely in favor for continuing to nerf it after the first three times, but it will help us complete the instance before Mists comes out (hopefully), so that part will be awesome.

Haven't been doing much CDO stuff in the past while, I probably should be completing my Best in Slot gear spreadsheet.....but yeah....haven't gotten around to it like usual! I'll probably start working on it again shortly while I have some time with the servers down. Not much to do when people are actually willing to do the research themselves, which is awesome but makes my job pretty boring!

I started trying to raid on my Hordie recently, and apparently on Illidan that is next to impossible! Every PUG (Pick Up Group) seems to require an achievement and a certain iLvl that is way over what you would expect to do Dragon Soul. So, since I couldn't find a PUG that wouldn't require an achievement I joined a guild that completed regular DS and looking for a paladin healer. I first thought, "Cool, I'll get my achievement, stay if I like the guild and leave if I don't", but was I so terribly wrong...

 I went to their raid and we breezed through most of the first seven bosses, you know fine, looks good. Get to Madness of Deathwing and it's a totally different story..... essentially there wasn't enough dps. Two of them doing just enough damage to be over the tank. So they're talking about what the problem could be, the raid lead not having any addons to tell him the amount of damage/healing being done, and they start to assume that I'm the problem as I'm the least geared. Little did they know that whenever the raid lead did go heals so we could three heal it that I was outhealing him....but that's my fault right? I insisted they replace me multiple times and be ignored, you know what? Whatever. We make it through the night and the next still not killing Madness because things are being killed too slow, but no one listens that the dps aren't doing enough, it's still my fault because of my gear.

 So, I get pissed off because they're obviously a bunch of idiots who don't like listening to reason, and so I gquit the next day. Get whispered by the GM (Guild Master in this case) wanting to know why I left, I don't want to talk with him so I place him on ignore. He gets pissed, logs to another toon, reports me as being hacked and tells me. I unblock him and tell him that I'm not hacked and I left because I didn't enjoy myself in the guild. He gets all pissy because I blocked him in the first place and tells me that me doing that doesn't help the guild. All the while I'm thinking "Why would I care about your guild if I left it?!". I mail him later with what happened and some tips and he starts harassing me, calling me a child and sending me mail for two days straight calling me down because I placed him on ignore. He's finally left me alone thank god, but if he mails or whispers me again I'm reporting him for harassment, there's no need for name calling when I was trying to give him the advice he wanted.

Hoping that my next guild goes better, would love to get the achieve for killing Madness on normal so I can PUG when I want :).

Beta invites, a cow and a biotch!

Wow, it's been awhile! I've really been slacking off here >.<. Been pretty busy since I've posted last, sick for the past week, working on Heroic Hagara progression, got my invites for both the Mists of Pandaria beta and the Diablo 3 beta (yes I realize the release is only a month away...), so anyways back to my blog :D.

Heroic Hagara....is......a........bitch, no other word to describe her. It bad enough we've been trying to deal with one of our tanks having internet issues and not being able to raid, but she's definitely not the pushover the others seemed to be. This is one of those fights that make or break a raid team I think, the coordination and planning needed is quite extensive, both of which I am unsure we have the flexibility to be able to pull off. This isn't one of those fights that someone can do something wrong and we can power through it, the wrong person dies at the wrong time and you're screwed!

In other news, I did get both my beta invites for Diablo 3 and MoP, tried them both and I'm very excited for the release of both of these games! The Demon Hunter gameplay in D3 is amazing and very lovable for me, I was in archery with a traditional bow when I was younger, loving it! The areas they have released for WoW: Mists of Pandaria are beautiful, and I've completed the first dungeon of the expansion with little to no difficulty, hoping it won't be too difficult when live comes with the amount of people going through it via the Beta testing. The amount of monks in groups amaze me, but I guess I really shouldn't be that surprised lol.

I did finally get my Tauren pally Udderlyholy up to level 85, it's just a matter of time before I end up gearing her to be able to do Dragon Soul raids! I never did get into holy paladins before, I have another named Amydia, a draenei on Rexxar but I didn't do much with her since she hit 85; just didn't have the interest or the time to put into gearing her. I do enjoy Udderly though, guess it's because she's the "enemy" and on a very popular server, it's hosts the #1 guild progression wise in the US, Blood Legion.

Hopefully some new stuff this week, going to need to work on posting here more!

Two progression kills, a lightsaber and a few levels

This past week was pretty awesome, we managed to kill both Heroic Yor'sahj and Heroic Ultraxion within 2 raid nights (approx 6 hours) and I got to heal on my shaman Fulgora, woot! Made our way back to the top of the two raid teams after dealing with consistency issues, meaning there's a certain other team that's a bit jealous (not going to name any names lol).


Tonight's another raid night, going for Heroic Zon'ozz and hopefully getting another progression kill (crossing my fingers!). On the upper hand our raid lead does seem to be starting to take the initiative to post strategies beforehand so we can chat about them, something I've complained about a few times these past few months. Got my spec already set up, hoping it'll work for what's needed.

 I've played a bit of SWTOR (/gasp, traitor!) this week as they were offering a free week of playing (up to level 15). I really enjoy the story the quests take you on, the cinematics are like watching a movie instead of playing a game and you're forced to watch the lore of the game instead of skipping through and hitting accept. I'm a big lore fan so this was part of what made the trial so enjoyable. I played a Counsellor which when reading the descriptions was the only healing class that made sense to me >.<.

 Read the info from the press conference regarding Mists of Pandaria last week and I have to admit I'm getting a bit excited! Now that I've seen the model for the female Pandaren and read more about what's coming the hype is starting, can't wait for the Beta to come out! I've got a guaranteed ticket into the beta this year with the year commitment I signed up for in October. Diablo 3 for free, beta access, free mount, how could I resist!

Been still playing my tauren paladin a little bit here and there, slowed down a bit with my boyfriend not playing his mage as much this past week. I did catch her up to his mage and sold a few Phantom Blades, so that's enough for me :). Managed to get my a Spellfire Longsword (Lightsaber!) out of Slave Pens, and even though it has hit on it I love it to pieces :).

That's it for this week, hopefully I'll have some more good news for my next blog!

My first blog :)

Hey there :)

For those that don't know me, my name is Jenn and I LOVE gaming especially WoW (aka World of Warcraft). My main's name is Fulgora on the US server of Rexxar (resto shaman, alliance side). I have many alternate characters that most of them I do play (some of them get neglected when things get busy with raiding and such), including one of each of the classes available to play in WoW at this time at max level (85).

 I'm currently CDO (character development officer) in my guild called Epicism, which is an adult guild that doesn't allow drama. It can be a very exciting position, I know quite a bit about the game and each of the classes so the opportunity was made for me :). There's times where being a CDO can be a /facepalm moment, seeing applicants/players with gear/stats that have nothing to do with their class for example, but it is a bunch of fun. I've been able to learn even more then I already knew about particular classes when someone needs a bit of advice to help them play better (usually in raid situations) because of the research needed to help me help them. I've been able to create a best in slot list for this current tier of content for every class in a spreadsheet format, advise people on how they can improve their raid awareness and help raid leads change their strategies just a bit to get that progression kill (helped us kill Heroic Rhyolith and Heroic Alysrazor last tier of content).

 Down to raiding, my group named Green Circle is currently 1/8H for Dragon Soul 10 man, we've been working out some issues that have been happening with consistency and group makeup to try and get us our second heroic kill (Yor'sahj). My main Fulgora has been benched the last month or so and I've been raiding on my prot warrior Toothandnail in my attempt to get spread the loot out a bit since we have half the raid on the same tier token (Mage, Rogue, DK, Druid). But, this week she's making a comeback! In an effort to make the group more consistent I am going back to healing and my boyfriend Geoff (aka Numen/Breton) is going back to tanking to fill in that spot. I can't wait, I'm so excited to finally be able to play that toon again, I've missed healing so much since I went tanking.

But, that's Wednesday. Right now I'm playing my prot/holy paladin Udderlyholy on Illidan horde side. She's only level 54 at the moment, but the levels come quickly it seems :). You wouldn't believe the amount of people that I've encountered in dungeons that either don't have a clue what they're doing, or are just plain idiots. It's pretty amazing! I don't think I've seen that many people like that on Alliance side while leveling, considering I've leveled 10 toons Alliance that's pretty shocking. Guess it's true that the kiddies play hordies......

 My newb pally lucked out yesterday and got the pattern for the Phantom Blade, woot! I don't remember ever seeing that drop on any of my other toons, so it's pretty awesome that I lucked out and got it! Currently working on getting the mats for some more of them, made one for myself for transmog but today I found out people are selling them for 5000 gold each, can anyone say cha ching?! Epic flying (when I can fly) here I come!