I’ve decided to rename my blog and the new one can be found here: http://boombaloo.wordpress.com.
The content is the same. My WoW blogs are a fun way for me to keep track of things I’ve done, things I’m doing, or things I want to do. 🙂
Please feel free to stop by and say hello. I will work on updating the new blog on sites like Twisted Nether in the next few days.
While I have some time, I’m going to experiment a little with some WordPress themes.
If things are kinda whacky on my site, don’t be alarmed. Hopefully I’ll find a theme I’m happy with soon! 😀
The more I think about this topic, the more I realize how many thing I want to change. I hastily threw a blog together and didn’t really think things through when I created Alliance Girl.
1 – The Name.
This was so hard and I just settled on an obvious choice. I didn’t want to write about my Rogue only, but she is my first character and I felt that she should be the spokeswoman for the site, so to speak. I didn’t want to name it after her in case I wanted to write about complaints or things going on with my server – so I wouldn’t be easily found and flamed. I’m good at coming up with names for things usually (mounts, pets, cars, other people’s characters, but for myself – meh, I suck.) I’m not really happy with the name, but I have a total creative block whenever I try to come up with an alternative. QQ
2 – The Layout.
I am not at all thrilled with this, but out of all the stock theme choices on WordPress, it’s my favorite. I prefer websites with dark backgrounds and I don’t know nearly enough to custom design a blog like the awesomeness at Tree Bark Jacket (http://treebarkjacket.blogspot.com) or Alterac Volley (http://www.alteracvolley.com). I’ve been toying with the idea of going back to school for Graphic/Web Design and until that happens, I guess I’m just stuck with the theme I have. Bleh.
3 – RSS.
No one can even see my text in RSS because my font color is white. Yeeeeeah, didn’t think that through, but I hate the gray default. Grr. I should just get rid of the option to follow me on RSS.
4 – Subject Matter.
I knew that I didn’t want to only write about Boomba the Rogue since I am kind of an altoholic and love all of my characters. I don’t have anything important to say that you can’t find elsewhere – so my blog isn’t informative, really. It’s more just a chronicle of what I’m up to in Azeroth and an archive of things that I’ve done while playing the game that I love. Lately, I’ve been writing about my Priest a lot more because that’s my main character these days. I started leveling my 70 Mage recently, so I’ll be writing about her soon. I don’t really know how to classify my blog other than saying that it’s just a random collection of my own adventures. I’m wondering if I really should try to contribute something to the WoW Blogosphere…but I have no idea what I could do that isn’t already out there and done better. I’m NOT a theorycrafter…I hate, hate, hate math and I especially hate it when it’s mixed with my WoW. I’m not an uber hardcore 25man Disc healer – I actually have fun in raids these days, *gasp*!
5 – Giving Back.
There are so many ridiculously AWESOME WoW sites out there that help people improve in so many different ways…from how to power level a profession, to fishing, to the maximum DPS rotation for any given class, gear min/maxing, boss strats…it’s all out there. I wish I had a niche – some way to pay back the WoW Community for all they’ve given me over the years. I just can’t think of anything original to do, lol. Maybe one day I’ll have something to contribute, but I’m not going to force it. 🙂
I never thought this day would come.
After years of playing this game, countless complaints, hours of grinding…
I now enjoy fishing!
I know, it shocked me too! The enjoyment factor kinda just snuck up on me. Once I was at about 400 fishing skill and done with traveling all over the world trying to catch fish in certain zones, I really started to have a good time logging in just to fish. Because of this, I am now the proud owner of a Titanium Dalaran Seal. 😀 And lately, you can find Old Boomba the Rogue hanging out in her fishing hat in the Dalaran sewers waiting for the Giant Sewer Rat to grab the lure.
I think a lot of it has to do with all the cool stuff you can get from fishing. The Seal, the Turtle Mount, the Daily Fishing Quest rewards, the pets, etc. I got really lucky the first few times I did the Dalaran Daily Fishing Quest and I think that helped turn the tide on my grinchiness towards fishing.
I’m hoping that one of these days I’ll fish up the Turtle Mount. That would be pretty awesome! 😀
I started back to work these week, so my blogging (as well as my WoW playtime) will probably be pretty scarce for a few days while I get back into my routine.
Last week, my guild went back into Ulduar after the recent nerf and successfully downed Flame Leviathan, XT Deconstructor, and Kologarn.
As seen in the photo, I won the Lifespark Visage…I look so awesome wearing it! 😀 (I got that sandbox tiger from a friend of mine in the guild and I love it sooooo much! I had no idea how fun it would be to rock back and forth on a spectral tiger toy while going over raiding details. It’s really cool that you can share it by hopping off and letting someone else jump on. I started joking that I was going to charge people 5 copper for a ride…since I had a line of people doing /tap foot trying to get me to hurry up and get off so they could get on, lol. )
I’ve noticed a lot of things about Ulduar so far – mostly healery things, but some DPS thta we haven’t really had to worry about in the past because of how casual my guild used to be.
Healing Assignments
If we don’t stick to our targets/jobs, we will fail. My job is rather simple – heal the MT and shield the people in range that are going to be taking damage. That’s what Disc does best. Sure, we’re a flexible healing class and if I am able to protect my tank AND throw a few flash heals to help out with raid healing or kick in a .903 second flash heal to save a DPS’ers life, then that’s what I’m gonna do. However, spamming heals on the raid is a sure fire way to eat through my mana pool quick, fast, and in a hurry. For some encounters or if we already have a Holy Pally in the raid, I’ll have to swap over to Holy and don the holy gear to raid heal. Gone are the days when one person’s job was “more important” than anyone else’s. EVERY PIECE of the healing pie is MISSION CRITICAL in Ulduar and we’ve seen that first hand. Raid heals are just as important as Main Tank or Off Tank healing. Without hot DPS doing what they do best (which obviously they can’t do if they’re dead), the boss is not going to go down fast enough, the healers will run out of mana, and then the tanks will die and the raid will wipe. Everything is a domino effect and everyone is just as important as everyone else. With healing assignments ensuring that the right classes are on the right targets, we can minimize losing DPS too early in the fight.
Tanking
Our guild tanks are really good. Our MT is amazing. I’ve run with a TON of tanks throughout my years playing this game since release. So, I feel I can honestly say that our MT is the best one I’ve ever run with. He balances his mitigation/avoidance stats in his gear so well – he makes healing through most fights a lot less stressful than other non-guild tanks I’ve run with. Part of this is due to the fact that he and I have run together a lot in the past, that we play in the same room and can communicate outside of Vent (heehee, sure he’s my boyfriend and I’m probably biased, but I don’t care…he’s AWESOME!), and he understands very well what a Disc Priest can do. If I say, “OH NO” he knows that my cooldowns are cranking and he’s gonna take a big hit and kicks in an extra avoidance technique to keep himself alive. I have a hard time healing other Warrior tanks sometimes because they save things like Shield Wall or Last Stand for the last 5% of the like in TBC instead of when they actually need to kick them in. There’s really nothing more that he can do when he dies…most of the time it’s either something that I had no idea about like damage an aura something about the fight that wasn’t in the research I was doing or my positioning/that I’m silenced/that I didn’t time my cooldown on Weakened Soul just right, etc. Our tanks are in great shape for Ulduar, just have to learn the little tricks of the fights…which will come with time and with additional information when it’s posted.
DPS
This one is touchy. Back in the day, we were inundated with high deeps. We could field 2 10 man Kara groups if we only had the healers and tanks. Over time and with the new expansion, we’ve lost some of our ranks. Now it’s tough to field a geared team of enough DPS to do Ulduar. Incidentally, we have more than enough tanks and healers now, go figure, lol. Even though our guild is in a transitional phase from Casual Guild That Sometimes Has Enough People Online To Do Raids to Casual RAIDING Guild That Tries To Be Fun And Fair While Pushing To Progress In End Game Content. We’ve put a lot of pressure on our DPS to step it up in all aspects of their game….Step it up on your Enchants, Gems, Consumables, Spec, Rotation, etc. They’ve really risen to the challenge and while it’s still hard to field enough DPS to get things cracking, the DPS that do sign up come serious and ready for a challenge.
Summary
We’ve come a long long way in the last year. I’m really quite pleased and proud of everyone involved in our success. I see us a guild who has to fight tooth and nail for every inch and every victory we get. We’re the underdogs. And now we’re doing a great job in end-game content for the first time ever as a guild. Pretty freaking sweet. It’s not easy to change your mentality about the game to see more content, but everyone that’s interested has risen to the challenge like champs. Go Ordo! 😀
Dear Blizzard,
Thank you SO much for the Noblegarden event. I never have any luck with the RNG (except for the new daily fishing quests, yay!) and this event made it possible for me to grind the achievements in my own time. Also, thank you for not including Dressed for the Occassion as a requirement for completing the event. I hated the other holidays…having to log in every hour to maybe get the item that I need is extremely frustrating for a casual player like me.
I’m only bothering with the holiday achievements for the Violet Proto-drake. I’m not really hardcore enough to have access to the Red, Black, Plagued or the new Proto-drakes that are for the Ulduar achievements. I keep buying the Oracle eggs, so maybe I will get a Green Proto-drake one day, but the Random Number Generator is a cruel mistress and I know that if I keep grinding the holiday achievements out I have a good shot at the Violet Proto-drake. I love the way the Proto-drakes look and I can’t wait to have one of my own.
I know that you probably don’t want to make it super easy to get the drake, but let’s face it – this is a game after all. I think we all agree that real life is a pretty serious grind, we play to have fun and succeed.
So thank you again for making Noblegarden as easy as it is. It definitely made me happy.
A casual player and big fan,
Alliance Girl 😉
PS – The Spring Circlet (bunny ears) are my FAVORITE new item. I love them and now have them on all of my characters. Also, big fan of Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit. Rabbiting the Horde is made of WIN.
Late last night after Ulduar, one of my guildies asked if I wanted to go for a Timed CoT. I wasn’t feeling it 100%, but decided to go for it anyway. It was my 11th successful run and three guildies in the group passed on the drake so I could finally have him. Squee!! 😀
This week will be our second round of attempts in Big Bad Ulduar 10. Last week, we were able to take out the Flame Leviathan, but got stuck on the other bosses.
My biggest critic and harshest competitor is myself and I’m wondering whether or not I’m ready for Ulduar at all. My main spec is Discipline which I really love, but information on stat balancing and baselines is very hard to find online…and when you do find it, the very next person will completely contradict it – “Stack crit to the heavens! That’s all you should be concerned with!” “No, no, stack haste! The faster you can toss flashes the better!”
I’ve gone through my bags of gear to try to rotate some pieces in and out to try to find a happy balance.
Currently, I’m trying to maintain this type of baseline: (all of these numbers are self-buffed, by the way.)
-20,000 Mana
-28% Crit
-10% Haste
I’d like to stack more MP5, because I think I’m down around 215 – but with Glyph of Shadowfiend, Hymn of Hope, Runic Mana Potions, the general nature of Disc healing, and whatever Replenishment type buff the raid provides…well, mana regen really doesn’t seem to be an evil that is plaguing me.
I was stacking crit and was up to 32% self-buffed at one point, but then I started reading about how Disc priest should be stacking Haste and decided to look into that school of thought. With 10% Haste and all of my triggered fast-healing abilities on a target active, I can toss out a Flash Heal in .903 seconds. I’ve recently glyphed for Penance, which reduces its cooldown by 2 seconds. So, I can basically hit the MT or OT with a Penance every 6 seconds for close to their entire HP and I can toss Flashes out on the raid that take less than a second to cast.
Also, 10 man raid buffed, I’m sitting pretty at 30% crit. From what I’ve noticed, my tank is almost always going to get the Divine Aegis affect from my third bolt of Penance. I’ve come to Penancing the tank even if he’s not taking damage because of the changes to Grace and Divine Aegis. It isn’t a bad thing to have Grace up on the Tank/OT at all times – increased healing and decreased damage makes me happy. 😀
All of this just makes me wonder if there’s anything else I can do (short of pugging Naxx25 for gear – so not happening) to improve my performance in Ulduar. Even with all of my damage absorption abilities and buffs, the tanks are still getting hit HARD and the DPS – well…they’re not staying alive long enough.
One of my new tactics is to roll Power Word: Shields on all of the tanks. When we did Naxx25 the other night (mostly a guild run and went ridiculously smoothly) I was rolling the shields on all three Patchwerk tanks. The timing had to be on point, but I think I did an awesome job. It wasn’t necessarily difficult and I can’t see in numbers how much damage I was able to absorb that fight, but I have a feeling that it was a helpful tactic. I am doing that in Ulduar as well – making sure the MT and OT are always shielded. They have no problems with rage starvation or losing aggro, and it helps give the healers a little bit of a break right at the beginning of the fight to save an unlucky DPS or to concentrate on our placement while the tank gets into position.
I was hoping that in 3.1, Blizzard was going to give Disc Priests some sort of party-wide shield or barrier. Another time that I use the shielding method mentioned above is when I heal for Timed CoT. I wind up keeping the entire party shielded throughout the run. It sounds very mana inefficient, but it actually saves me from having to spam heal – which is one of the biggest mana killers for Disc priests – and going OOM – which is critical to avoid for successful timed runs. It’s also like a mini-game to me – rolling the shields and making sure that they don’t fall off of party members.
I’m working towards Exalted with Hodir for the better shoulder enchant and once I get it, I will be able to swap in a different piece of gear with either more Haste or more Int. I’d still like the crit bracers from H VH or from Naxx10, but it doesn’t seem that I will get lucky on those as I have been grinding for them for months. And in Naxx25 the other night, SEVEN different pieces of gear – including robes, boots, cloak, and bracers dropped and I lost the roll on every single piece. It would’ve been nice to get at least one of them (the bracers or cloak would’ve been the biggest upgrades) for the tiny boost for the Ulduar attempts. Oh well. The RNG definitely wasn’t with me that night.
I’m really hoping that Blizzard didn’t make it so you would need Naxx25 gear in order to complete Ulduar10 – our guild isn’t big enough to fill a 25 man and having to pug makes me crazy – I can’t even believe the maturity level and vulgarity of the players on my server…all they talk about is drugs, doing drugs, being high while running stuff, f this and f that, it’s just not my cup of tea while I’m trying to enjoy the run. I’m very spoiled with my guild’s maturity level – it’s hard to deal with people who don’t act like us, lol.
Naxx10 with two healers.
It was me (Still a Holy Mage/Disc Priest and loving it) and a Resto Druid. Some of the fights were down to the wire, but we pulled them off and it was great for my morale. Before doing that, I had a bad night in Naxx and let my tank die like four times because of bad positioning/silences. I felt like crap about it. So, coming off of that crushing defeat and being able to redeem myself (to myself since I am my fiercest critic) was great for my healery self-esteem. It felt really good to heal that place with just the two of us. The extra DPS person made a HUGE difference. It was a lot of fun.
Got a battleground mount for Bayloo.
You know, the 30 badges from AV, AB, and WSG kind. I had a blast as Disc in WSG to grind the rest of the badges I needed for the mount and we won a ton today, which I’m definitely not used to at all – my old server was in favor of the Horde in every BG but AV. So, now my Priest has a shiny new black war kitty. >^..^<
Timed CoT.
I’m up to eight successful CoT runs with no drake. I keep losing the rolls. I’ve set up a consistent 5-man guild group and we will be doing this instance together until we each get a drake since we know we can do it successfully. Then, depending on desire…we can just swap people in so they can get one too. I don’t know why it’s such an obsession to me lately, but I’ve been wanting the drake badly. Hopefully my time will come soon.
Update: Up to 10 successful timed runs with no drake. Will he ever be mine? 😦
Ulduar.
We poked our heads in last night and tonight. The server crashed at least twice last night so we didn’t get far. Tonight, we downed Flame Leviathan (SO FREAKING FUN!) and took a few shots at the next few bosses. We decided that we weren’t going to research the bosses or strats and just see if we could figure them out. Wow, does that trash hit HARD! I had a blast driving the Demolisher (that’s what I always drive in Wintergrasp) and nuking the heck out of stuff. From all of the stuff I’ve read on Ulduar, it seems that the main points are that the content is hard…that crowd control will be making a comeback and you need better gear than Naxx10 for Normal Mode Ulduar 10? (This makes no sense to me…if you can only run 10 mans, are they saying that you are forced to PUG for the better gear? That’s crap.)
Dual Specs
I wasn’t going to bother picking this up on my Priest, but then decided that it might be worth it to have for solo questing or to fill in a DPS role in an instance/raid slot. My original plan was for my Primary Spec to be Discipline and the Secondary Spec to be Holy (since I have a really nice fully epic holy set just collecting dust in the bank at the mo’) but it’s a long story why I didn’t go that route for now. My First Spec is Disc, second spec is Shadow. I fully intend on this changing down the line, I’m really just playing around with the DPS spec when doing my dailies or questing for cash. Shadow is fun, but as far as caster DPS goes, I’d rather level my 70 Mage to 80 and just blast things in the face. I must say that I’m pretty impressed so far though – wearing my Disc gea and without any Shadow glyphs, I was able to pull 2200 dps on an 80 target dummy! I’ll need to collect some +hit gear (never thought I’d go DPS with this toon so I never bothered) before I could run a heroic or raid with her effectively in a DPS role, but it’s still good to know that I can DPS in a pinch without switching my gear.
Argent Tournament Stuff
You know I’m a sucker for mounts and pets…so I’ll be grinding this on the side when I have time. I love the titles too…would be cool to be Bayloo of Exodar and Boomba of Stormwind. I liked the beginning quests (not all the travel, but the simplicity of them) especially the quests on horseback. I love mounted combat, it should be a lot of fun going forward in the tourney.
Finally made enough extra cash to afford the Red Drake!
He’s so pretty! I’m reading the Warcraft novel, War of the Ancients, and ever since I started it, I wanted to own the Wyrmrest Accord dragon. I’m very happy with him.
With the new patch came some very, very strange graphical problems for my poor little PC. I’ve never had problems like these before and I was forced to update my video card drivers to fix the issues. Once I did that, the graphics looked a lot sharper and clearer. I took a few screenshots just because they were funny. 😛
Alliance Girl 
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