Mend Pet

Monday and Friday were both Zul’Aman raids.  There was a little drama regarding Monday, since not enough people had signed up, and no one wanted to volunteer to fill them empty spots (including me, Monday is my night off to gather supplies).  And there was a LOT of drama on Friday night, when the raid group (again, I was online but not raiding) was having problems downing Bear, and decided to go to Karazhan instead, pretty much ruining our scheduled Monday night raid for next week.  But I don’t want to get into that here and now.

We hit up SSC on Tuesday night.  Lurker went down with few problems, as usualy.  We decided to make our way to Leo the Blind, of course passing Hydross on the way as he taunted me with his chest piece, shoulders and ring that I so desperately need.  Last time we took a visit to Leo, it was kind of messy.  I was hoping we wouldn’t encounter the same problem this time – and we didn’t!  The problem with stopping DPS was complete history.  But we had a different problem.  The Leo fight was pretty smooth for the first 85% of the fight.  But every time we reached the 15% split, something happened.  We panicked.  People were running this way and that, getting hit with whirlwinds, everything was a big ugly mess.  We made a number of attempts, but it wasn’t going to happen.  At least last week, we managed to down him eventually.

Back to Tempest Keep on Wednesday.  I must admit, I almost dreaded going in there… I’m so tired of wiping on A’lar.  It’s getting very tiring.  But when we got to the big bird’s room, we just went right past.  And Brajana let out a sigh of relief.  Void Reaver and Solarian!  That sounds at least different, if not better.  I think I’ve only done Solarian a couple of times, and it’s been many many months since then.  But I figured it’d be nice to see her again so I can thank her for the boots!

We had a strange composition for Void Reaver, only two and a half (off tank druid in cat form) melee DPS in our entire raid.  Heck, that’s a strange composition for ANY encounter.  But we made it through after one unfortunate wipe caused by aggro pull by a ranged DPS.  He dropped lots of pants, and many people were excited, and we moved on to Solarian.  And I’ve decided that I love the Solarian fight.  It has some quiddity that makes me very excited to be in that room – I’ll have to narrow it down further.  In fact, I think I will dedicate an entire post just to that fight next week!

THURSDAY NIGHT! What an amazing raid night!  We went back to SSC to do what we had not done on Tuesday, take Leo down.  And we did!  Even though one of our mages was having serious connection problems, we took him down in one attempt.  And I got a shiny trinket!

We still had lots of time to spare though, so on to Karathress we ventured!  Karathress was the only one keeping us from being 5/6 and 3/4.  /glare.

We’d had a few sad attempts there in the past, but we were really gunning for it this time.  First attempt:  just over 1 minute and one of our tanks goes down.  Second attempt:  The same thing.  Uh oh, this is looking like a wipe-fest   So we juggled the healers around a bit before the third attempt.  And then… BOOM!  Karathress and his henchmen are no more!  Screenshot!

But wait!  There’s more!  Unbeknownst to most of the guild, it was decided that since we were already done so early, we were going to take a little field trip to Mount Hyjal!

It was SOOO much fun!!  It’s really exciting to just have wave after wave coming, and even though we only made it to the 8th wave, we had a blast – I can’t wait to go back in!

Anna from Too Many Annas has come up with a fun idea for helping people develop and flex their roleplaying muscles.  I have always enjoyed roleplaying, but never been great at coming up with ideas.  So I’m going to follow along with Anna and help everyone (including myself) get to know Brajana and Ferguson!

Brajana, Troll Hunter

1. What is your character’s name? Brajana, named after her great-grandmother (a Troll tradition).

2. Why did he/she pick his/her class? Brajana’s father was a warrior.  She appreciated the things he did, and his lessons about the history of the Trolls and the Horde inspired her to follow in the fighter’s path – but her father could see that she had a quiddity about her, a way with animals, and so he sent her to be trained by her uncle, a proud Hunter.

3. What’s the worst trouble he/she ever got into as a child? On her first trip to Orgrimmar, a young Brajana had a chance encounter with the Warchief, Thrall.  She’d gotten separated from her father in the Valley of Honour, and ended up sneaking into the Warchief’s chambers, only to come face-to-face with Thrall himself.  She still to this day will not tell anyone about what Thrall told her that day, but ever since then, she’s held his opinion above everyone but her father’s.

4. What is his/her favorite thing to eat? Crunchy Spider Surprise – She can’t stand the creepy things when they’re alive, but fry ‘em up and they’ll be gone in no time!

5. What does he/she have in his/her pockets? Pet food – always pet food.  She feels like these beasts of hers could eat every living thing in all of the Barrens and still come crawling to her for an extra Sporeling Snack or two!

Ferguson, Forsaken Priest

1. What is your character’s name? Ferguson.  He had a first name in his former life, but will only go by his last name, as it helps bring back the memory of his family.

2. Why did he/she pick his/her class? Ferguson was inspired by the light all of his life.  He spent his time as a young adult at the Abby, where his caring nature made him a very popular friend to many.  After he was… lost, he fell into shadow for a time – the loss of his family was too great for him.  But he has since redeemed himself, and has gone back to a life focused on helping those around him not suffer what he did.

3. What’s the worst trouble he/she ever got into as a child? Ferguson was a very good child.  Except when it came to playing with his sister, Anabelle.  Something about her brought out the worst in him!

4. What is his/her favorite thing to eat? Ferguson is a vegetarian, he refuses to act like a cannibal like so many of his fellow Forsaken.  Give him a tasty deep friend plantain, and you’ll have one happy priest!

5. What does he/she have in his/her pockets? Whiskers the Rat – the first friend he made in the Undercity.

After having spent Tuesday night getting more and more frustrated by our inability to down Leotheras the Blind, Thursday night we got him in one swift attempt.  Almost the same group composition, but much less fail.  How do we do it?  That’s just the quiddity of Unemployed!  And the best part is…

Goodbye Bladefist’s Breadth!

Goodbye to my very last second to last Blue quality item! (Stupid Blackened Spear)

Hello trinket-I-don’t-have-to-activate!!

Unemployed had a VERY exciting raid week. Here’s a hint:

More details to follow on Saturday’s “This Week in Raiding” post!

I think it’s time you met my pets.  No, I don’t mean Fiddlesticks, Willy or Sparkle.

I mean Zelda, Casper and (soon to be) Sunny!

Okay, so I don’t really have anything to write about.  But everyone loves cat pictures, right?

I love my kitties.  Zelda, my oldest, is 2 years old.  She’s slowed down a lot since she was a kitten, when she was pretty darn crazy.  Her geekiness, laziness, her quiddity is what makes her so unique.  Every morning when I wake up, she is sleeping next to me on my bed.  It’s very sweet.

Casper, is only a year old now.  He’s a bit quicker and more of a trouble maker.  He was a little scruffy when I he first came to stay, but he’s filled out and is quite pretty now!  Every night before I go to bed, he hops in and won’t let me go to sleep until he’s had at least 5 minutes of attention.  He’s quite cuddly, and he uses explosive fur as a defense mechanism.

I’m very happy they get along, I lucked out there.

Sunny is coming to live with me next week, and she’s bringing her owner along with her.  I don’t know her very well, but I’m hoping she gets along well with the others!

Alright, it’s time to go into detail about how my UI is set up.  It’s not perfect, and I’m not completely happy with my unit frames mod… but it works for me for right now.  It’s taken me years from when I first downloaded Cosmos to get my UI to the state it is in now, which is pretty much how I like it, despite it’s quiddities.

I haven’t yet perfected the look of Ferguson’s UI, in fact, I spent a good amount of time between pulls in my last Karazhan run trying to get it set up how I like it.  I have decided I like to have my raid/party frames right in the middle of my screen, because otherwise I tend to not pay attention to what’s going on, just watching health bars, or the other way around.

First of all, I must recommend WoWMatrix.  This program will manage your addons for you, giving you a very easy way to install and uninstall addons, and most importantly, it will auto-update them all for you!  Just run it before you run WoW to make sure all your addons are always up to date!

WoWMatrix says I have 123 mods.  But that’s including all the modules and stuff… so here is the list, trimmed down to the major components.

Ace2 – AddOn development framework. I find that the Ace2 mods work smoothly together, I have switch a number of my addons to Ace2 versions of them.

AceProfit – Makes it easy to sell junk items to vendors. Necessary.  Goodbye grey items!

Atlas – Instance Map Browser. I don’t use it all that much anymore, but it’s handy for instances you don’t know.

AtlasLoot – Shows the possible loot from the bosses. I love Atlas Loot, you can find almost any item in there from crafted ones, to drops to rep items!

Auc-Advanced – AuctioneerAdvanced, An addon to help keep track of items values. I’m not that great at playing the auction house, but still, no one should be without this.  I only keep the whole thing enabled on my bank character, but it’s handy for figuring out which items to toss or sell.

Bagnon – Single window displays for the inventory and bank. I like how Bagnon works, my favourite feature is probably the search functionality, and being able to see what my other characters are carrying without switching over.

Bartender3 - Simple and Advanced combined. My action bar addon.  i’ve used a number of different ones, this one seems to do what I need right now.

BigWigs – Modular, lightweight, non-intrusive approach to boss encounter warnings. Required for raiding!

ChatMOD - General Purpose full featured Chat Enhancement Collection. Adds nice little features like moving my chatbox to the top of the chat window and highlighting names in class-colours and keeping a history of what you’ve typed.

CooldownTimers2 – Shows Status Bars that you can drag around and group up for your cooldowns. In the screenshot, this is the one on the left right above my action bars.  It’s handy for keeping track of how long til I can retrap or use my trinkets!  It pops up a message to inform me when cooldowns are finished as well!

Critline – Saves your high normal and critical damage records and flashes a message if you break the record. Can anyone say e-peen?

Decursive – Affliction display and cleaning for solo, group and raids with advanced filtering and priority system. I like having this on my priest, it really does help out for dispelling stuff.

DoubleWide – Make QuestLog a DoubleWide! Ahhh, so much easier to read.  It puts the list of quests and the quest text window side-by-side, so neither is squished.

EquipCompare – Compare items easily with ones you have equipped.

FuBar - A panel that modules can plug into. Used to use Titan, but I switched to FuBar.  These are the modules I have:

• FuBar_ClockFu
• FuBar_CritlineDmg
• Fubar_CritlineHeal
• Fubar_CritlinePet
• FuBar_DurabilityFu – Keeps track of durability and pops up a dialog to repair when you go to a vendor who can.
• FuBar_ExperienceFu
• FuBar_FactionsFu
• FuBar_LocationFu
• FuBar_MoneyFu – Keeps track of current money and all your characters on one realm.
• FuBar_PerformanceFu
• FuBar_XPerlFu

Gatherer – Displays stuff you gather in your minimap and world map. Also lets you get nodes from other players.

IHML – Switch macro depending on zones or BigWigs boss modules. “I Have Macro LOL” is what it stands for, if you were wondering.  As long as you have BigWigs installed, this will change to the appropriate macro depending on which boss you are fighting, like “/target Demon Chains”.  Also works for doing dailies and stuff!

KHunterTimers – Times hunter buffs/debuffs. This is the one above my action bars on the right.  Keeps track of things like how long my trap is going to last, how long Ferocious Inspiriation is lasting for, whether my pet has Frenzy up or whatnot.  It’s not a necessity but I find it helpful.

LittleWigs – Boss warnings for 5-man instances.

Ogri’Lazy – So easy a Dwarf could use it! Put away that pencil and paper and get this mod!  It does the same thing.  It doesn’t auto-track which colours are pinged, but you click on them to make a list.  It does help a lot.

Omen – A lightweight, flexible, multi-target threat meter. Handy for avoiding “OMGWTFFD!!” situations.

oRA2 - A CT_RaidAssist alternative. Assign maintanks and do raid checks and stuff.

Quartz – Modular casting bar. Shiny casting bar that has a swing cast bar and a global cool down indicator.

QuestLevel - Shows the quest’s level. Pretty simple.

RatingBuster - Item stat breakdown, analysis and comparation. Very handy, although sometimes I find myself relying on it too much.  It’s good for a quick comparison, but make sure you really look at the stats if you are deciding on whether you should need or greed!

Recount – Records Damage and Healing for Graph Based Display. <3

XPerl – Replaces the normal unit, party, target, pet frames and adds target-of-target. My current unit frames.  I’m not 100% happy with them, but they do what I need for now, so that’s what I’m using.  Maybe I’ll try out something else when I get a chance, if anyone has any recommendations, they are more than welcome!