Tonight, well actually tomorrow morning for those of us on the East coast or even farther east, I will be a part of a Live Round Table discussion on the Twisted Nether Blogcast. I am told the topics will all have something to do with 3.1, and the guests will be some of my favorite members of the Blog Azeroth crew: Anna, of Too Many Annas, Runy from Unbearably Hot, Lassirra from The Hunter’s Mark, and Hydra from Almost Evil. As has been the recent trend, our hosts will be Fimlys and Nibuca.

They’ll be recording live, so if you’re around go ahead and log in and chat us up. I am sure I’ll be in rare form, as Fim and I will be outnumbered 5-2 by the ladies.

This Blog Post would have Links to all these people’s blogs, but I am at work and my Boss is standing 2 feet away. so you get no links until I edit the post after lunch.

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Feel the Burn, Make it work for you!

Yesterday I mentioned I was feeling burnt out. I hadn’t played for a while. Only wanted to raid… Well, last night we did raid. and let me tell you about it.

Last night a group of Unemployed managed to find work for the evening and Brann Bronzebeard hired us to help him out in Ulduar. He had the staging area set and we all hopped in our vehicles. I hopped onto my Chopper(for the first time WOOO!) and rather than laying rubber, I was laying oil. Don’t ask, The thing moves! but won’t lay rubber at all. I think it needs more Horsepower.

Well, As it stands we decided to go to Flame Leviathan with a single tower up, and left the one up that allowed him to shower us in flames. After an aborted first try we took him out and there was much rejoicing.

After FL, we went straight to XT who decided that he didn’t like playing with his new toys all that much after all… a few attempts in, we knocked him on his tail at 6:55, this tells me they really did up the enrage timer over 6 minutes, because Mel didn’t take much damage at all during that last minute.

Once XT was down, we took a moment to revel at our pwnage of the Loading Screen Boss, and then chain wiped on Kologarn, which was probably the most fun I’ve had wiping on a boss in years. We learned a bit about him, and I have got to say we’ll kill him the next time we see him. It was progression raiding at it’s finest, and That’s what I like. 10′s, 25′s, who cares, as long as we’re learning and making ourselves better, That’s why I play this game.

All In All I had a great time last night even though I now have to make more flasks and food…. I even went to hunt for Eggs after we were done!

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Maerr is feeling the burnout. I have’t really wanted to play since tuesday last week. It’s just not been fun. I didn’t play at all Saturday, sunday or Monday. and that is rare. Friday I just logged in and farted around not knowing what to do. Tonight there’s a raid, and I am glad I farmed all the ats I’ll need for food and buffs last wednesday, because I have no desire to do anything other than fight bosses at the moment.

Raiding is the reason I play, and raid I will do. Whether it’s 10 or 25, If I’m fighting bosses, I’m happy. I get to drive a Chopper tonight! That’ll be new.
but, other than three nights a week, I don’t have the desire to game anymore. I blame the weather. Tomorrow it starts to cool off again, so maybe this weekend I’ll want to play more.

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Last night, While chain-wiping on Razorscale I came to a realization. It’s hard to keep Hots up on a tank target for enough time to raid heal AND nourish said tank target. So, I do believe that I will be respeccing back into Natures Splendor and keeping the Lifebloom Glyph, So It looks like Lifebloom, Swiftmend and Nourish when I find it.

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Bell has a post up today about Swiftmend, and the Glyph for said spell. In it she posits that the Glyph of Swiftmend is still #1 for Resto druids, or is it?

I’ll let you read her post. I trust that you’ll come back. I’ll wait.

So, you’ve read it? No? What are you waiting for, click the link, read the post, then hit the back button on your browser.

Back yet? Good.

So, you’ll remember that at the end of her post she poses a question. What are you talking about, you don’t remember that part? You didn’t actually read it did you? Go!

Ok. Finally.

So, in answer to Bell’s question I am posting my opinion on what Glyphs I am planning to use with my spec. So, the spec is a pretty good one, based mainly on hots and Nourish. So, What glyphs am I planning to use with it?

Firstly, The Glyph of Lifebloom has got to go. I want Lifebloom to drop off as often as possible so I can get moar mana back, so I have to get rid of it and replace it. Hmm. Nourish sounds like a plan! Why Nourish? Have you SEEN this glyph? I already have 4pc T7, so that’s good, but the Glyph makes it even better! By now you know why. I’m not going into it. If you don’t know why, Google is your friend. Lazy sod…

Next, I have Swiftmend, Why? Because I want to have as many hots on the target as possible when I throw nourish onto them, and hitting Swiftmend with the glyph will not remove the hot, so iz better for Nourish healing.

Next, Not entirely sure, but right now I’m still using regrowth.I like regrowth, but is it the right glyph for me? I always forget to reapply it, so am I getting enough out of the glyph? I think not. So, which do I want to use? Innervate sounds fun, but I don’t really use my innervate. Rejuv? It sounds ok, but with all the hots already and the spike healers, how often are tanks under 50%? It’ll be a good thing to look into.

I may go with Rebirth. That will make my Rebirth the most coveted in all the raid. Tank goes down? Maerr, Rez him! Hmmm. Maerr is important? That I like!

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Sunday Afternoon I logged in to finish off some Achievements I have been working on for the past couple of weekends. But that’s not the whole story. Well, actually it’s most of the story I guess.

Friday night I was supposed to go to Ulduar 10 with my guild, but when the officer who set up the run never showed up online, with too few sign-ups on the  forums, it was cancelled, and I decided to go farm AD rep again. Only as I was walking up to Baron Rivendare’s room did I get a whisper asking if I wanted to go to Ulduar from another officer who had rallied the troops together. As I had previously thought the run was cancelled, I had made plans to go out with a friend, so I had to decline…

So, Friday night I finished one Strat run, and then after I got home I did the same, so I was getting closer to finishing off my AD rep. I’m just past 50% through revered, so I’m getting there.

Saturday I was out all day and didn’t log on at all. And Sunday afternoon I logged on while watching Baseball and decided to farm Strat again to get the rest of the Runecloth I needed for Silvermoon Exalted, and did I get it? Oh yes I did!

And as soon as it was done I went and bought each and every Hawkstrider they’d sell me. There’s nothing in this world quite like a Tauren riding a Swift Pink Hawkstrider. Nothing at all.

So, After I got my Hawkstriders, I decided to finish up my World Exploration Achievements. I still had WPL, Blasted Lands, Ashenvale, Winterspring, Azshara, Felwood, Darkshore, Teldrasill,  Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isles, and Tanaris. It took a little bit of time, but I ran around to all of them, explored and I am now known as Maerrakesh the Explorer. Yay!

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Well, Take that last post and ignore it. 3.1 was released yesterday. Dual-Spec is all the rage, and the first thing I did when I logged in last night was port to Moonglade, Head to the Druid Trainer and purchase it. I spent some time looking over specs and decided that a Resto Raiding spec would be best. I then looked into Balance specs and decided to use a solo/5-man spec for now, as I don’t have the hit gear to go Balance in a raid.

Where did I research my specs? Who did I trust to help me out with the placement of those all so important talent points? Bloggers, of course!

I was looking through the Resto blogs to see what ideas people had for different healing specs and finally wound up on restokin.com where there’s a great group of articles on PVE healing in 3.1. I looked over the different specs as laid out, and decided that My main focus is generally tank healing, and since I had planned on finding myself that new Nourish glyph ASAP, I chose the Nourish based Tank healing spec. That sounds like me. Right?

Then I wanted to grab a balance spec, since when I respecced last Friday I just kind of threw it together on my own without any research, I went straight to Gray Matter and Graylo’s most recent Mailbag post on Balance specs in 3.1. Since my raiding gear is all resto, and I only have about 130 Hit in my epics, I decided to go with the Solo / 5-man Spec, since I’ll probably only be using it to do dailies and hopefully getting into a heroic or two for some new gear to get some more hit on it. I may change up the spec if it’s not working for me, but I think I’ll do fine with this one for a while.

So, yeah now I can also be called a restokin… Or maybe a Woody-Owl. Hmm.. nah. I’m still a Treebound Cat, but I like playing with the birds too.

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I may have forgotten to mention that I specced Balance for the fun of it this weekend. I believe I may do so next weekend for some dungeons and heroics just to see how I likes it.

Tomorrow evening, before the raid, I will be respeccing Resto. So no worries.

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This weekend, after another odd week with only one day raided for me, I didn’t really know what to do. I didn’t need to replenish my flask supply. My food supply is OK. I had just finished question in two more zones in Northrend, and was kind of floundering in Sholazar Basin when Last I had played. All that added up to, I’m sick of Northrend questing right now.

So, what did I do? I decided to work on Reputation. Silvermoon reputation. It was a great learning experience. Silvermoon is apparently the most difficult Reputation of the major Cities to gain if you’re not from that city. The Starting area quests are not available to any but Blood Elves. This means there’s a chunk of rep that you’re not going to get. This can be easily seen with the fact that My Silvermoon rep was the lowest of my major factions, and I hadn’t done starting area quests in any but Mulgore.

So I looked it up, and saw that one of the only ways to gain rep was to farm runecloth. 75 rep per turn-in. to get from revered to exalted, 280 stacks of Runecloth.. Ugh. I could have done the AV turn-ins, but that’s only 18.5 rep per turn-in, and it’s AV… it takes an hour for AV to pop, Actually I’m not sure if that’s true on Hydraxis, It was on Maelstrom… Well, either way. Let’s look at who drops Runecloth.

Looky Looky. One of the best places to farm Runecloth is in Silithus, off of the Twilight mobs, which are ALSO the best mobs to grind for CC rep. I am a druid. I like CC. I’d love their rep. So, off to Silithus I go Friday night. So, Friday night and Saturday night I spent my time in Silithus farming Twilight texts, Runecloth, doing quests… After about 5 hours farming, I went from friendly with CC to Full on Exalted. I had also gathered about 50 stacks of Runecloth… 50. out of 280. This is going to take longer than I thought.

I got myself to revered, and about 6% of the way through it before I decided to try a new tactic. I knew the initial Blood Elf quests weren’t available, but some must be, so I got myself to Silvermoon and rode up to the Ruins of Silvermoon and started questing. I finished off all of Eversong Woods and then headed to Ghostlands.. Nobody told me that Ghostlands was going to stop giving me Silvermoon rep and only give Tranquillien rep at one point, so I just kept grinding away. Run here, Moonfire, Moonfire, Moonfire, etc. Kill everything I see while still running. Stop to loot quest items. rinse. repeat.

So I finished up last night 66.6% to revered with Silvermoon City, Exalted with CC, Exalted with Tranquillien, and having no idea where to go. Runecloth being my best bet, I looked at the wowhead stats, and it seems that I can get Runecloth by grinding AD rep. So, why not Grind AD rep? It’s another faction to get exalted with, So here away I go!

Tonight I’ll start grinding AD rep and hopefully getting Runecloth on the free. If I have to buy it, that’s going to be a TON of Runecloth. I guess I’ll need about 90 more stacks. That’s going to take a while. I wish I still needed CC rep. Maybe I’ll just go grind CC with the Pally and give the runecloth the Maerr… Hmm that’s an idea, but it’ll take longer with a 68 Paladin than it took with an 80 Druid. But it’s an idea. Or… OR!!! Twilight texts are.. Dun Dun Dunnnnn… tradable. So that’s a good idea. Trade the texts and the cultist robes and cowls and all that crap to Fohrbin, and rep him up that way, while using the runecloth for Maerr. That is, if the AD stuff doesn’t work out.

Thanks for reading this babbling monstrosity of a post. you get a cookie*.

*the cookie is a lie

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Last night the Unemployed crew headed into the Obsidian Sanctum to kick a dragon in the teeth. There were 22 of us and we decided to let two of his friends play. I don’t really want to go into too much detail, but I’ll say that after 2 hours and 45 gold in repairs the Dragon was still able to chew us up and spit us out. Kicking his teeth in was harder than we had anticipated.

Frustration was high. We had people who were dying to silly things which they have been avoiding for weeks and weeks. Since I joined the Guild we have one-shot 2D every week. So why was this week so difficult? I’m not sure. What I did know was that we needed a talking to, so I decided to pipe up and give a little pep talk.

The first thing I did was let everyone know that I was aware that we were better than this. That we had almost killed 3D, so we should not be having these problems with 2D. I further went on to state that all it would take for us to win would be for us to remove our heads from our asses, and I suggested that everyone in the raid grab someones shoulders and pull.

I sensed a lightening of the mood and got a few responses of /agree in raid chat.

Do you know what happened? That very next try we killed the Tenebron and Shardron in good time. And when it came time to kill Sartharion, we still had a large complement of healers and DPS to do the job, and his teeth were thoroughly kicked.

Sometimes, all it takes is a Pep Talk and an admonishment to take their head out of their ass for people to step it up and play like they mean it.

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