Am I HoT or not...

Now there is a question that each and every Resto Durid has to decide... and ultimately it comes down to your preferences and play styles. How are you going to heal? Direct or Heal over Time? I personally favor the HoTs because of my play style. This is especially true when I use the HealBot addon. I swear by that addon with my (WoW) life. The combo of healbot and HoT for me has seed to work out really nice in the 5 mans that I have been able to run. But what may work for one may not for another... that is the beauty of the game. You can customize your toon based on the talents that you take, and you may be more successful than me. Comes down to this: How well do you play "your" game? If you copy and have the "most successful" build for a toon, but in turn suck at playing, it is all to no avail. However, if you do your own thing, and rock out with the sock it, then kudos to you!

mmmmm... kudos

Of course you are free to try other successful builds. I personally recommend this at first because 50 gold, ever other day to respec can get old quick. Whatever you choose to do, learn it and put it to good use, even when you are playing with complete a$$hats that don't understand your game.

A perfect example is a pug I ran awhile back. I caught the "LFM need healer and DPS for BF" call and was in my feral gear. Now I do have some feral points (easier to level that way) but I have a butt kicking healing set and plenty of talent (points and play) to heal that instance easily, as I had down a few times before. Anyways, I answer the call and say "hey I can fly to Shat change gear and heal for you." and the d-bag sends back "NO... you can DPS but I only want a priest healer" WHAT... are you effing kidding me. I am trying to fill need you have and you basically say I'm not good enough. That right there should have been a tip off of how the run would go, but I relented and agreed to go kitty on their ace!

We end up finding a priest to heal so I think "no big deal" and off we go to start the run. We wipe before hitting the stairs! The r-tard that formed the group (yep guy I talked to) couldn't tank to save his life. Why you may ask... cause he was a full Fury warrior, and a bad one at that. Great, I offer to switch to bear form to help control better, and immediately got shot down. "No, you stay DPS, we got this." Wonderful! The run continues and we have about the same success. I end up dying more than 10 times. Each time the healer has another excuse... you know, the same ones I use so I know they are bunk! "Oh, you died right before my heal went off on you" "Oh, LOS broke" (the last one said in an open hall...right!) So I want to see what such a marvelous healer looks like and inspect him. WTF!!!! They decided that it would be better that a full shadow priest heal than a resto druid. Are you freaking kidding me? At that point (after our second wipe on the floating eye guy) I decided that this was no longer worth the time I was putting into it and jetted from the group to repair my now red gear. 5 gold to repair my leather armor and weapon... are you effing kidding me again. Jeez.. pugging can really suck some times!!! But what can you do, you live and learn!

All that rant to say “Am I HoT?” You bet your sweet a$$ I am!!! And I can't wait to prove it again!

Build-a-Guild

Not to be confused with those darn over priced, "custom" teddy bears. Don't even get me started with those! But if only building a guild was as easy as stuffing a bear form full of cotton... oh that would be the life.

I am by far no expert on all things WoW, but I have been reading a couple of recent posts from Big Butt Bear... check um out here and here... good stuff. He talks about being the guild looking for someone and being someone looking for a guild. That got me thinking about a lot of things in the game that I am coming across now. A while back I got invited to sign a charter and ended up sticking around in the fledgling guild. The GM was really cool and wanted to just grow the guild the old fashion way... find anyone without a guild and whisper then to see if they wanted to join. We never have done the old fashion /2 trade message "New Guild looking for players, have guild bank and tabard" because of two main reasons: It really never works and it annoys the heck out of me when others do it.

We started with a small group of people and went from there. We didn't have anyone higher than level 61 (and I was the 61...yikes) and most were under level 20. But we pressed forward inviting our little hearts out. During this time was when I was leveling my mining and all my proceeds I put towards the guild bank and eventually we got enough for a second tab (I know nothing to big, but it was a big deal to me!) We got our membership up to 73 toons, but I know a number of those were alts. Most importantly we have several members in the 50's and 60's now, with a couple of lvl 70's (sadly, I am not one of the 70's) Things are starting to look a little better. In the mix of all that I somehow got made an officer in the guild (I think I bought my way there)

All that said, I have seen some problems and was hoping that someone out there could help. The main problem that I see is the guild doesn't really do too much together. We are a guild in name but not much else. I think one of the problems is timing. I, for example, can only play late at night after I get off work (9 pm pacific time) and there are only one or two people from the guild on. I want to try and organize something to bring the guild together, whether fun and loopy or toon leveling or something... but I am drawing a blank. I feel live I have invested a lot (mainly gold and chatting) into the guild so I don't want to just /gquit, but I am really at a loss.... Anyone?

Edit:________________________ Ok seriously if you skipped reading Triple B's posts on guilds, go back and reaad them... if you still decide to skip them... get tack hammer and beat self in face. GO READ UM because THEY ROCK!

March Madness

So I officially hate the month of March. I am sorry that I haven't been able to post more but this month makes the month from hell look like a trip to the zoo... but again I find myself saying... "Well at least it can't get any worse... right?" For some reason I think that it can, but I am holding put hope that it just gets better.

Anyways... I plan on writing more tomorrow to fill in the blanks with what has been happening in game with Vishero, and more what has been going on in all the craziness that is life.

DnD...

So I have been using the entrecard blog promoting system (sounds like a self help series) to try and get some kind of word out about the blog. But what I am really enjoying about it is the chance to get to find some many other cool blogs. Since then, my work production may (or may not) have taken a hit due to the sudden spike in blog scavenging. One of the blogs that I came across was a Dungeons and Dragons blog, Corollax.

Now, a little backstory on Vishero, in real life. Being from a large a (13 kids) and prodominatly male (10 boys) family, most of us became a sort of wierd mix of jock/closet nerd. I grew up reading the Dragonlance Chronicles series at 6 or 7 years old. I was captain of the football, soccer and volleyball team, but loved to play Magic:The Gathering with my best friend. All that being said, I never really dabbled into DnD, until about two or three years ago. My buddy at work introduced me to it and said that he was going to be DM-ing a new campaign starting soon with some mutal friends. (this same buddy is Koreth, my Night Elf Hunter friend!) I decided that I would give it a go, and literally from the moment I started playing I was hooked. I loved the imagination it took to play, the chance to make a character and *gasp* write his backstory.

We played nearly 2 times a month for several months straight, but then life happened and we stopped, Koreth moved to Missouri and the rest of the guys, well I had kind of gotten tired of their play style ("why isn't there more treasure...") So I have all the books from 3.5 edition but no one to play with... and reading this blog made me feel like some had stolen my puppy. Don't get me wrong, me loves to play some WoW, but the most fun (and challenges) I have ever had playing came from DnD. I think part of it is that I have had this deep dark secret my entire life... I have always wanted to write a fantasy novel/series. I played DnD as though this would be a character that I would someday write about and read about. I mean my first character I wrote a 3 page backstory. It is that type of imagination and creativity that I really miss. So if anyone knows someone in the Queen Creek/Gilbert/Mesa, AZ area that is aching for some dice rolling... let me know. Cause I am dying to play...

Weeding Time...

No seriously... tomorrow Mrs. Vish has a baby shower to go to and I have a yard to work on getting the weeds out of. Someone please explain how this is a fair trade? On a gaming note though, I love the druid ability 'Entangling Roots' for so many reasons, but one of my favorite is casting it on huge creatures and watching it engulf them... like Mr. Elite T-Rex devilsaur. A few saturdays ago, whilst I was trying to level my mining skills, I decided to have some fun. In beautiful, tropical Un'Goro Crater I took some time to go big dino hunting. I think I managed to get every elite devilsaur, except for King Mosh. That lizard wasn't really worth wasting pots and elixers over to try and take down solo.

Last night I got back into questing. I managed to convince my buddy Seidhkona to come over the Hellfire to help me out. He still had that "recently dinged 70" glow about him! With the help I was able to plow through about 4 quests that would have taken me hours to do (and some I wouldn't have finished.) Eventually (at 3am his time) Seid decided to act like a grown up and go get some sleep, and for a split second I considered the same thing. However an hour later I was finishing up the Dreghood Elders quest in the Ruins of Sha'naar. The only reason I was able to do this quest string solo at 61 was another druid ability (probably my favorite) stealth in Cat form. It was super easy to walk around the camp cloaked and just talk to the people I needed to, get the items, and kill one guy. It was a nice 10% xp boost for a little under 30 mins of work...

So somewhere between Mrs. Vish leaving for her Femal bonding ritual, and me taking two Aleve for lower back pain... I hope to maybe ding lvl 62... and it's all down hill from there!

What do you value?

What we value says a lot about us. Now this isn't a soapbox rant about material goods or what is good or bad to want but rather a funny lesson I learned about playing a "game"

So there I was, standing in the Auction House in Ironforge, looking through the wares for sale. My purpose was two fold: 1) I am someone who has been called lazy (I prefer to say that I have situational motivation) and so I was trying to find some things that I could 'corner the market on' and buy cheap and resell to make some gold. 2) I am always on the lookout for item upgrades since I switched over to resto. I still have a pretty good kitty DPS set, but am always looking for more +healing items.

So that being said, I come across some items that would be a definite upgrade for me, but by the same token the mace cost 24g, but was head and shoulders above what I was using. I seriously sat there staring at the screen for 5 or more minutes, debating, thinking "Can I really afford it?" Then it hit me... I AM PLAYING AN EFFING GAME. It isn't like if I buy this mace I am going to be short on my mortgage this month. I wasted 5 mins. of life debating whether I could use fake gold to buy an imaginary weapon to better my perceived status in a fantasy world. Really? Can I afford this? Heck ya I can... because worst case scenario, I have to suck it up and go farming to get more leather and ore, to then sell to some other shlub who will debate whether or not he can pay the 10g for "just a 20 stack of rugged leather." I can see him (or her) vividly in my mind debating whether they should continue to stock pile their (fake) gold because "you never know what may come along" or if the 1-2 lvls that they might get in leather working is worth the 10g...

Long story short I am under 100g for the first time in a long time, but overall I am feeling a lot better about my ability to heal. Talent is important, and I am hopefully building that each time I play, but having better gear plays an integral part to making yourself better. Just ask the kid whose mom "bought" her son's way onto the soccer team in the 7th grade... yep he was that bad and it still bothers me... I finally settled on about 5 new items from bracers to rings that added to my +healing. I am now at about 490 +healing with 5300 base mana unbuffed. I could have been higher on my +healing, but I went for a happy medium between the healing and loss of base mana and base hit points. I also stocked up on things to begin questing again, you know little things like scrolls and elixirs and potions and food and what not. And how hard is it to explain to a non-gaming wife how you can spend an hour or two “playing” but not really accomplish anything in the game, but having a blast practicing economic principles. (See it is more like homework for econ then playing)

I won't soon forget the lessoned learned about what we hold dear... cause if WoW gold is anywhere near the top of someone's "What I Hold Dear" list, I think it might be time for them to reevaluate their lives/priorities.

300...

Great movie... (with a couple of scenes that I could have done without and frankly didn't really add to the movie) but better feeling. Yep, I hit 300 mining over the last couple of days and it feels so nice. However the journey there wasn't so great and I swear that I will never set foot again in those freaking bug holes in Silithus! But all in all, it felt good to get above that mark, but it felt better to get all the gold that I made off that ore. I have been trying to play the market again and see if I can't get up over 500g for my epic ground mount. It has been going pretty well so far and I am holding steady between 300 and 350, but I bought up a bunch of items to try and re-sell over the weekend.

I digress... with my mining above 300 I finally can focus most, if not all, of my attention to Outlands. Not to say that aren't great things to be had back in some of the Azeroth instances, but for personal experience so far I have found that everything in better in Outland. Jeez... kind of sounds like a Texas add.

And on the topic of Texas, I will have to see if I have a priceless picture from my time there. My wife and I went on a cruise for our honeymoon (greatest idea I have ever had!!!) and it left out of Galveston, Texas. We got to spend a day in Houston with my little sister (who lives there with her hubby) and I saw the most classic billboard. I had a picture of a can of "Lone Star" beer and the caption read "Lone Star Beer. The National Beer of Texas." Really? The national beer of the state of Texas, I am confused, because I thought that Texas was a sta….

Again with the digressing... Now that I can focus my time in Outland, and I have grown way tired of BG's, I am hoping that the leveling train is coming into the station! My buddy, Seidhkona hit 70 this week and that motivated me a little more to work on leveling. My only problem has been that I have been playing around with my alts so much, working on their professions. It has been fun, but I think I am ready to branch out my questing options. For the most part I stick to the Stormwind area for beginning quests because a) they are familiar and b)they are pretty easy. But I am getting a little tired of killing Yowler for the umpteenth time and I swear if I have to "investigate" Jasperlode mine one more time I'll...

/take aspirin and put down cricket bat

So I think from here on out I want to level my toons somewhere new. There is so much to in the game that I have never done, and I am not talking about the end game stuff. I mean low level stuff that I have skipped because it was in "Emo Elfland" (as a friend calls Darnassus) but that might be on hold for a while. If I was any good at Photoshop (which I am not, and yes is I am jealous of Phae) I would have a picture of Vish holding his "70 or Bust" sign!