Patch 6.0.2 - First Impressions

Patch is finally here and as usual everyone has mixed emotions. Trade is bustling with people trying to figure out where things are, others complaining about their missing spells, and most secretly enjoying the excitement that comes with a new patch and expansion.

First thing I noticed logging on was Rhyannon. I could see the difference in the character model right off the bat and she looks great!

After logging on you get a prompt about the new changes and a way to start the quest line for the invasion in Blasted Lands.

After I accepted my quest I was sad to see all the gaps in my bars :(

As a shaman healer though, I have to say it is kinda nice to have space for things other than totems everywhere!

Then I went off to check my bank and check out the Toy Box.

SPACE!!! Space to fill with more junk! It's really nice to have that trade goods tab too.

The new map with quest is nice and simple to use. I wish it wasn't as large, but I'll get used to it.

And you can't hate on the transparency when you are on the move!

Quick tip in case you are going crazy looking for this as I was. To remove the outlines go to your interface> display> and at the bottom you will see options for the outline. I made mine go bye bye.

Then I grabbed Rah and put him on follow and I did the invasion story line.

And got us a title:

And a cute little pet, which can be caged, by the way, for some extra gold when the expansion comes out.

When not bugging out I got a chance to do UBRS, which gives you a little taste of what's to come.

I noticed the healing changes but it was nothing too overwhelming that I couldn't handle. Most of my gear lost it's spirit and yet I have no mana regen problems what-so-ever. I'm currently at 587 spirit, with 2689 mana regen with a 565 ilvl. I went from having 50% mastery to 103% O.o once reforge was removed. MUST GET CRIT/HASTE GEAR ASAP! Other than the slower cast timese due to my loss of haste shaman healing remains much the same as before. I'm scared to go on my other characters though lol because I know they have not been as fortunate as Rhy.

You also get a chance to grab some 550 ilvl blues in UBRS, which can be disenchanted into the new enchanting mats and are selling for a butt load on the AH.

And last, but certainly not least, the new Horde mount! It's AWESOME! And I love the way my shaman looks riding it!

Over all not a bad patch day, but the day isn't over yet. Raid tonight should be fun and interesting and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for no resets during that time.

How has patch day been treating you guys? What do you love/hate? Let me know!

Busy, busy, busy...

Real life has been so hectic lately I've had no time to post about my life in WoW. I recently boosted my baby shaman in Aggramar which has been awesome because she went from 483 ilvl to 515 in less than a week. I'm working on her as I type, trying to get her to 531 so I can do Flex 4 with Uprising tonight. She's been very fortunate with gear, so hopefully I can get a few more pieces today.

I've almost given up on my DK entirely, I just can't seem to have any luck acquiring gear for her :(  I'll keep trying, but my focus has shifted entirely to the baby shaman, who I'm having a blast playing!

In real life, Izzy and I have been working hard to get our business up and running. And thus far it's going well, with a little more work on a weekly basis I can stay home with the kids without financial worries! Most of the work we've gotten so far has been by word of mouth, so now I'm working on our Etsy shop and Facebook page and soon our website. They are a work in progress, but you get the picture.

I was recently asked to make a guild banner for Uprising for Warlords of Draenor, but I'll wait for them to put it up on the site before showing that to you all :) I'm very please with how it turned out though and I hope the guild likes it as well.

Anyway, back to grinding LFRs and drawing up designs while I wait for queues to pop!

Not letting that stop us!

As you may already know, my comp is done for. No matter what we tried it just wouldn't turn back on. So Izzy pulled out his old comp, which also had issues, but workable once it turns on. I spent a day downloading the necessary things to be able to raid and have been playing like this for almost 2 weeks now. I'll have to deal until I'm able to get a new comp.

So last week we attempted Heroic Norushen. The first few attemps were a crazy mess of people forgetting their order and if they were to kill their big ad first or last. Once we got it squared away we had a good real attempt where we got him to 3% and the next one was a solid kill with 15 seconds to spare on the enrage timer. I believe we had a total of 7 attempts. Not bad I would say.

This week we went for Heroic Immerseus. At first it was a giant mess off adds, puddles and debuffs, but after just a few attempts we got the hang of it and on our 7th attempt we got him down with no problems. Healing that fight is insane with how much crap you have to watch out for: don't stand in puddles, heal and decurse people, stay out of whirls and swirl... it was fun though. I do enjoy hectic fights, it keeps healing interesting!

So for next week I plan to have us working in Heroic Galakras. Seems to be the next easy heroic to attempt. And from there we'll prob hit Protectors, Sha and Nazgrim, with Jugg and Shamans following.

We've gotten plenty of gear from heroics as well between rolls and loot drops. Izzy got 2 pieces for his priest last night, Bolt-Burster Grips from loot drop and Ichor-Dripping Shoulderpads from his roll, so he's happy as can be with his new BiS shoudlers for his Disc spec. And our lock picked up the Purified Bindings of Immerseus on a roll which made the rest of the casters happy cause that's one less person to roll against when it actually drops. On H Norushen I got heroic warforged Boots of Broken Reliance which is awesome because it's been so long since I've gotten gear that I'm Valor capped, so now I actually have something to spend them on!

In other news, my shaman was picked up by a pug on Tues for SoO reg and she was able to full clear with them in one night :D Not only that but I was loot whoring it up! I ended up with 3 tier pieces, neck, boots and 2 pieces for enhancement! She went up 8 item levels in one night O.o Now that I know I can handle normal Siege I'll be bringing her in on our reg boss kills in hopes of getting some loot and will eventually replace Kaliapy with her once their ilvls are much closer :)

Haters will hate...

As some of you know my raid team has been together for 5 weeks now and this is our second week on Garrosh, with no kill yet :( I can tell people are starting to get frustrated, probably because we've killed everything else with much ease and now it feels like we're hitting a brick wall now. We've spoiled ourselves into believing that we would breeze through Garrosh as well. I believe that with this weeks gear upgrades we'll get him.

I myself was dying to stupid things last night and it has a bit to do with the bit of gossip I got from Izzy during raid. Let me give you a little back-story so you understand:

When I left group 2 (solely due to their change in raid days) and made this group, I made the decision of not having any alts in the group. Although I have no issues with alts I don't feel that the dedication is there as it is with a main character. I was able to find core raiders except for 1 tank before our first raid. The GM and her boyfriend, Xinu, offered their alts to help as we needed them until we were set up. Both of their mains are in the guild's main raid group and Xinu is actually their raid-leader. Our entire group had about a 540 ilvl when we started and we've all worked hard for our gear and for those boss kills. After many days of looking for a tank for our group Xinu told us that he would dedicate the time on his monk alt to our group and so it has been for the past 5 weeks. Which leads me to last night's gossip. Group two is run by the GM's son (who's also in the guild's main raid group) and his girlfriend, and while we've progressed to Garrosh, they have been stuck between Galakras and Shamans for the past 6 weeks. They don't have a consistent group, many alts and end up melee heavy a lot of the times, none of which is any of our fault. And so now the GM's son's gf feels the need to complain and pretty much talk shit, saying that Xinu, who is on his alt and just as under-geared as the rest of us when we started, is carrying us. She feels that he should do the same for her group, which I don't get because they hate him anyway, but I guess not enough if it means a stupid boss kill. Oh but wait, her bf is in the main progression group as well, and his alt is in group 2, so why isn't he carrying them all the way to Garrosh? Could it have something to do with the fact that one person can't carry an entire group? 

It's very upsetting for me to hear this because even though I left group 2, I have continued to recruit for them in hopes of getting them consistent raiders. I certainly don't wish them bad, never have. When our group started there was talk of friendly competition within our own groups chatter, never in guild chat and never in a malicious way. When we passed shamans our competition shifted to the guild's main raid group (who are now 3/14H) and that kept us motivated to push forward.

So now after 6 weeks of having a dedicated group we are at risk of losing our tank because this woman is jealous that we are at Garrosh and her group isn't. It has a lot more to do with the family dynamics than anything else, and I hate the fact that it's starting to affect my raid team. How bad will it get when we do get our Garrosh kill and start working on heroics?

Have you ever had to deal with family issues within your guild ranks? How do you deal with people like this, who don't seem to be happy unless everyone is miserable like they are? I'm more determined than ever now to have my team, group 3, succeed!

So much to do, so little time...

When you take a break from WoW and come back closer to the end of an expansion you find yourself in a rush to catch up and there is never enough time to do EVERYTHING you wish to get accomplished. I have 4 kids, a man and a home to take care of as well. None of which can be neglected for a game, and although I do have my weak moments, I can usually tear myself away from the game to get things done, like cleaning :P but in WoW I have a list of things I want to accomplish:

• I need to get my reputations up and I despise doing dailies, so that in itself hasn't been easy for me. I miss slapping on a tabard and running instances for rep.
• I need to work on my legendary quest line and due to some bad luck I can't seem to get the drops I need. Mind you, Moya hit 90 about a month ago, it's not that I've been slacking, my priority has been set on gearing her for raid first and foremost.
• I need to continue on my quest for transmog gear for Moya. I can't seem to get a full set for any of the outfits that I like.
• I need to level up the rest of my characters, starting with my hunter. I have a project I want to do with her and her rare pet farming for the blog.

• I need to level up Moya's professions, most of which are at 1. Unlike my shaman, whom I have been playing since 2006, I simply didn't have time to level her secondary professions at the same time as her. It irks me to have fishing and cooking barely off the ground and I believe your main character should have everything maxed out. Unfortunately I just don't have the time for everything on this list and to do that as well. 
• I've also been getting her ready for 5.4. As one of the main raid healers, her gear needs to be in tip top shape and as high as I can get it.
• And last but definitely not least, I still need to make money in this game. Mind you I am by no means rich. In fact I'm usually broke. The most gold I've ever had was 40k and for a lot of people that's just pocket change. None the less it's enough for me to maintain my characters and spoil them and Izzy whenever I can. That's not to say that I don't want to make even more gold, so that's something that I'm working on with the help of Nev over at Auction House Addict.

So I ask, how do you deal with the pressure of changing mains? Do you level their profession or do you continue using your old main for that? How do you manage your time and what are your priorities after a hiatus from WoW?

With 5.4 just around the corner I'm feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with my inability to catch up fast enough.

Weekend fun...

I'll start off with Thursday night's raid. We cleared ToT leaving Sunday a raid free day. Möya ended up with a decent amount of gear, leaving me with one forsaken blue quality ring to get rid of.

I'm getting more comfortable with my healing abilities and my mana regen is probably well over what monks need, but since I'm still learning I find it gives me a little room to mess up without going oom. I'm ranking 8th in the guild now, as far as gear is concerned, just above my shaman. Not bad for a week, last Wednesday I was 18th! I'm almost completely ready for 5.4.

Last week I was farming cobalt to level my engineering and I remembered reading about the unborn val'k pet. I decided to look at the spawn points while mining. While I was in Dragonblight I spotted her! Unfortunately my pets were only at level 15, so I couldn't capture her, but I let a guildy know and he quickly came along to scoop her up. Ever since I've been determined to have her and I spent all week leveling my pets. So this week I'm on a mission to find her again and capture her for myself.

Friday night Izzy and I went out for dinner and a movie. On our way to the theater his car's transmission took a shit and we had to go back home to switch to mine. We weren't about to let that ruin our night. We ended up watching Wolverine. The visual effects were good, it was an over all good movie. After the movie we went to Friday's for dinner, but decided to take it to go instead and stayed up watching TV till 4 am.

Saturday Izzy had to work so I spent most of the day hanging out with the kids  and picking up around the house.

Sunday was family day, we went to my mom's house for lunch with the grandparents, my brother and his family and of course my mom and her husband. After lunch my brother and his family came over for some Xbox fun and dinner.

We played Street Fighter, Tekken and Injustice. We spend the day passing the controllers around challenging each other!

Over all a great weekend on and off game. Looking forward to some relaxation today and closing up my wow week by making my Blingtron and hopefully finding my Unborn Valk!

Getting Lucky!

I leveled Möya so fast that she still has 16 slot bags >.<  So last night I decided that today I would get her some free bags, like the ones that drop from OS and Onyxia, etc. I seem to be on a roll with Möya lately though, I've been running old raids for transmog gear and I've ended up with tons of pets. So needless to say I went to do Ony on her for the first time a little while ago and not only did I get the bag but I got the mount as well!

Izzy is the mount whore, I prefer the pets, although I don't get fanatic over it either. The last two days he's given me a nice F U over mounts. Not only did I end up with Ony's today but a few night's ago we ended up with a Primal Egg in my bags from a ToT quest which gave me a pretty Black Primal Raptor last night during raid! Needless to say he's a little bit jealous lol. 

And speaking of raid, Möya is doing so much better, I'm actually on the heal meters now lol.

This was a wipe of course, but the point is that I'm on there!

He had a hard time with Lei Shen yesterday, mainly to RNG, but this ia pretty muh how I did over all last night. Mind you I'm still only at a 496 item level while everyone else is over 522, so I'm proud of myself. I've managed to not only switch my main on a very short notice, but I'm also getting the hang of Monk healing very fast. It's not second nature yet, I do get myself into a zone and then when shit hits the fan I panic and fumble over what spells to use. Practice will resolve that issue. I'm looking forward to tomorrow when I can do some ToT LFRs and hopefully get rid of the rest of the blues and lower level LFR items that I have. Möya needs to be ready for 5.4 as she will be one of the main raid healers :D

Success!

Last night was a success, for me anyway! I managed to do Heroic Jin'rokh without needing to be scraped off the floor. I died just like everyone else when it was a wipe and I was thankfully not the cause of any of them. My under-geared self probably didn't even beat the dk tank in healing, but I contributed with my OP Revival and healed my little Monk ass off. I didn't get anything off the boss not even with my coin, he dropped crap loot and a lot of repeats. After that we worked on Heroic Horridon. I died once or twice due to standing or running into poop on the ground, but other than that it wasn't too bad. When we had 30 minutes left of raid time we switched to norm and killed him. I used my coin and received the Roots of Rampaging Earth legs, not the greatest for me but it's still a big upgrade from raid finder gear. I was also given the Petrified Eye of the Basilisk ring because at this point anything is an upgrade, but I gave it to Izzy for his priest after raid because the ring has mastery and I know I would replace it first chance I got. On Council of Elders I lagged and died to standing on quicksand so just watch the other Monk healer fistweave the entire fight and do about 80k hps just from eminence, it's crazy! I got my tier gloves and the other two items that would be available to me there have mastery so I decided not to waste a coin. Then we did Tortos, thankfully I managed not to die to swirling turtles and when the fight was over I used my last coin and got Robes of Concussive Shocks Thunderforged!

Over all it was a great night, I went from a 476 ilvl to a 486 in just a few short hours. Today I'm running the rest of ToT LFRs in hopes of more upgrades, who knows maybe Thursday I can actually outheal the tank :P
As it stands according to WoW Heroes I'm ranking 18th of the healers in my guild as far as gear is concerned.

There I am all the way down there lol. Izzy on Rahdiggah has been getting gear consistently for the last 2 weeks, so he's 7th right now and that's because he hasn't had time to work on his priest with his new production manager job, otherwise I know he would be higher. Even with his gear as it stands he's out-healing everyone. Maybe I'll pick his brain one of these days and post about Holy Priest healing, I'm know there's A LOT he can teach. My shaman was getting up there but I stopped taking loot since I knew I was going to be switching to Möya. I'll check back with WoW Heroes next week to see my progression in guild and after that I might be able to start comparing myself to other Monks on our server.

I'm glad the stress and anticipation of last night is over and I'm looking forward to gearing up Möya and improving my Mistweaving skills.

Dating again...

The kids got home yesterday from their father's house and I was happy to see them, I missed them terribly, even if 5 minutes later they are driving me insane. A few weeks ago Jr (he's 12) was given a Doctor Who sonic screwdriver? by his grandmother, I don't watch the show so I'm totally clueless. When we put the batteries in the damn thing it wouldn't SHUT UP! So last weekend Izzy and I went to Hot Topic to get it exchanged and while we were there we got him a Doctor Who Keep Calm Seat Belt belt and he loved it! He had been sweating Izzy's Star Wars one, so we figured we'd get him one of his own so he could nerd out the first day of school! Needless to say he was very excited to see that not only did we finally exchange his broken toy, but we added to it to make up for him having to wait for our procrastinating asses.

After dinner everyone was pretty much nerding out, Jr was in bed on his 3DS XL and Ashley (she'll be 15 in Septemeber) was watching one of her little girly movies while Rene (he's 2) was playing on his Mobigo2. Izzy and I were going to hit WoW when he got the urge to go get some ice cream. While driving we couldn't decide where to go for ice cream, then we thought about buying a movie, but we've sen everything and none of the movie we wanted to buy are out on DVD yet >.<, so he gets the idea in his head that we should go to the movies! Mind you it's 9:30 pm and the next showing was at 10:40 pm. So I think about it for a minute and figure what the heck! We haven't gone out ALONE since Livy was born 5 months ago... how sad :(

So we head back home without our ice cream, ask Ash if she wants to baby sit for $20 and of course she jumps on that right away. Besides, Jr is in bed doing his thing, Livy is out for the night and Rene is falling asleep by now on the sofa next to her, so it's easy money for her and Izzy and I get some alone time.

We went to see Red 2 and it was hilarious! The first one was great and the second one was even better! It was nice to be able to cuddle in the theater, chit chat and just be in each other's company without kids interrupting every 5 minutes lol. We got home around 1 am and Ash was still up watching tv, as we expected, everyone else was out for the night.

We settled into our PJs, got on WoW and about 5 minutes later decided that other sources of entertainment were available to us, and did that instead ;)

Now it's Saturday morning and we've already done what feels like a million things... Izzy took Ash to the bookstore to get a hard copy of her summer reading book and then to the grocery store. While they were gone I got the laundry started, and picked up around the house cause since I cleaned yesterday I'd like it to look like it for at least another day :P When Izzy got back he bathed the dog while I got lunch started and now here I am sitting in front of my comp blogging and thinking about what I need to accomplish on Möya so don't fail hard core on Tuesday.

I need to finish my weekly so that I can upgrade my legs, hopefully into something that I can use, and then possibly do Nalak or, even better, Oondasta. I just need 4 little item level points to go into the ToT LFR so that I can be closer to where I need to be for Tuesday.

Izzy is going to help me on his priest, it should be interesting, there's nothing more fun to watch than two healers trying to dps in healing gear >.< At least his gear is epic, all I have for pew pew is reg dungeon blues...

Gearing up in a hurry... continued.

Yesterday around 5 pm a guildy asked me if I was going to be raiding on Möya, and when I told him yes he made me a leather 476 item level chest piece and gloves! I immediately upgraded a few pieces with the valor and justice points that I had and was well on my way to doing LFR! Every boss in the first 2 raids gave me loot. Talk about getting lucky! Unfortunately that's all I had time for, dinner needed to be made, kids needed to be fed, hubby needed attention before raid, so poor Möya was left with a 470 item level. it's not bad considering that in a day she jumped 30 points in item level. So today the grind continues and hopefully by Thursday I'll be at around 500 and be able to raid with the guild. Fingers crossed!

Gearing up in a hurry!

Yesterday I hit 90 with Möya, my monk mistweaver, and I'm in a huge hurry to gear her up because I've already been ranked as a 25 man raider for the guild!

She's at a 440 item level right now and I need to get her to at least 500. That's a huge task which is going to require a lot of luck from LFR. I've already gotten her the 502 boots, and now I'm working on the Barrens weekly to get her a chest piece I picked up on another toon, just need the mojo. Then hopefully through a few heroics I'll be able to get into the first raids in LFR and go from there. It's a very daunting task, but definitely a challenge that I am up for. I'll continue to update this post as the day progresses and let's see how far I've gotten by 7pm EST, which is our raid time.

It's 10:15 am and they were just doing rolling restarts, so I'm gonna go check if WoW is back up now so I can get started on my crazy mission to raid heal tonight.

It's now 12:47 pm and Möya's item level is now 451. Just a little bit more to go to be able to get into LFR.  The grind continues...