You know....

I had forgotten the responsibility factor when it comes to instance dynamics. All parts of the group are important....without dps the healer and tank would die, without the healer everyone else would die, and with out the tank...well....we have all seen that scenario before! What I am talking about is the chance of surviving if any part of this puzzle is eliminated....

Just by shear chance if one of your dps is eliminated, then you still have an above average chance of downing a certain mob(s). You still have your tank, a healer, and a fair (although lessened) amount of dps. If you take the healer away unless you have a utility toon with you that can off heal, you have a severely limited ability to complete the task at hand. If the tank goes....well....RUN!

I guess what I am saying is that there seems to be a certain lack of respect or maybe acknowledgement to the people that still find tanking and healing enjoyable and, even more so, rewarding! Does a dps ever consider that when a tank or a healer has to worry that they are pulling aggro that they decrease the chance of any encounter of success? I know as having played all of these that aggro management needs to be looked at again and taken to heart by those dps WHORES who just vie for the top spot on the aggro meter. As a healer, I am revisiting the idea of my Kill List and implementing it again....if you pull aggro you will pay the consequence...

Mages Rock Again!

I was waiting for the day that mages would crawl back to the top of the damage meters and they have! With AoE and crit I am pushing 3.5k dps on most fights and almost 4K on bosses! Now....dont you wish you were a cool kid playing a mage?? :)

Bubble Priests

For those of you that are curious, I have found a new passion in the game. PvP'ing with my low level priest! OMG! I never thought that I would feel so invunerable on a clothy! If I have the mana, I can drag two or three pvper' with me for a good while! And talk about kills! I DoT everything up with shadow word pain and plauge and let everyone else do the work! I also LOVE the exp that you get when doing it! RockOn Blizzard!

Hello Again!

I know it's been awhile... Life, BlizzCon, gear grind... but I decided that I need to come back to this so I could share a few of my feelings about the game. As all of you people (well, actually person) who follows this blog), this is not the informative ElitistJerkest type blog that will math crunch as the specs and discussion the minutiae of one spec over the other. I am more the emotional type WoW player... the one that will quit his farming routine to help out a fellow friend who needs it with a quest, instance, whatever. So...with that being said...

I am now standing on the razor's edge of continuing the WoW that I love...that is leveling new toons and hanging out with people that I enjoy PvP'ing with or do I take that step into raiding that I am fascinated with but find a bit stressful and laborious? The guild that I belong to is a great guild and one for which I have great affection. We are a casual guild but have decided to raid progressively in Ulduar and so forth. So I decided to go. My first performance was a bit... well... crappy. 1700dps in Ulduar is not an aspiration that anyone who is even considering raiding should try to attain! So I spent the next couple of weeks gear grinding and building my toon (now my main is an ele shammy...sue me! :) ). I went back in and...low and behold! I was consistant with 2400dps and I did not die once! I was even told that I had brought my game that night! Man O Man did I feel good! I had made great advancements and I was ready and willing to give it another go!

I signed up for another raid ready to, once again, prove that I was raid ready. I was passed over. I signed up for another. Passed over. Now I know that in the past I have had the rep of being a "loose" kinda player... start an instance and fall asleep, get too drunk! :), whatever... and I knew that I would have to overcome my stigma of that which I was happy to do. Lost the drinking, geared my toon...and no raids.

I guess the point that I am making is that when the momentum goes out of your sail to do something for a group of people that you really wanted to help it's hard to get the aforementioned momentum back. Again I want to remind raid leaders and the like that the reason that we all started to play was to have fun. A majority of that fun comes from being around friends and people that you enjoy.

I am not saying that you should take a total basket case to something that you know will continually wipe the group. Who wants that? But, given the time and oppritunity, I do think that sometimes you CAN find that diamond in the ruff...

I will try and post more often...I find that I miss this way to communicate my feelings...even if it is to myself:)

P.S. I realize that this is a regurgative representation of my innards...please be respectful! :)

Been awhile......

As you all well know, life is busy WITHOUT WoW....and trying to level 5 70's (and a few lower ones a that!) can be quite time consuming. With hit rating, haste, spellpower, etc that all need to be capped or neared to and with certain crafting professions that have gone into the crapper in my opinion (namely tailoring), I decided to comiserate with all of you who are doing the same thing GLADLY and without remorse because we have decided that this would be our hobby:)

What makes this so enjoyable? Is it the phat loot? Well loot is great but fighting over a cloth chest piece between 2 other clothies can get quite bothersome. Is it the pride you feel when the group comes together and makes it out of the safety dance alive more than one time around??? Let me tell you....I watched a prot pally and a resto druid kill that boss after the rest of us died....amazing to watch but 45 min of my time I would have liked to have back.

I would say it is the friendships and the people that I have gotten to know through this community. For the most part they are kind, generous, and supportive. Yea, yea....there are exceptions but I have found those to be few and far between.I like to watch the noob who has no idea what WoW means to me when I try to tell them this. They just can't believe it isnt all about the Naxx loot......it's about my friends that I get to enjoy when I log in.....

Hit Rating......CURSE YOU!

A 341 hit rating for casters? BOOOOO! And I thought that leveling 3 tailors was bad enough! Now I have to regem, get new spell thread, new gear, etc. I guess I am just whining but with 4 70's to level there just does not seem to be enough time

EXPANSION TIME!!!

WOW! And I mean WOW!

I realize that I have not been posting a lot with the oncoming on the expansion and then the launch but I just felt compelled to say a couple of things about the material.

There are still sucky quests out there. There are always sucky quests out there. Whereas the suckiness is about the same in all content, the new quests that are cool sre 100 times more cool then anything in the past! Have you been to Dragon Blight yet?? Where you ride the dragons and kill other ones?? SO COOL!

And the gold and the xp have certainly been bumped up!

Thats all for now.....I have a few 70's to level.

The Winds.....they are ablowin.....

The patch has come....and I still see that the world still has not come to an end. Imagine that. Yeah, I have heard a few grippings about repecs, nerfing ret pally (this mage has also learned to love the dps of the highly skilled ret pally:) ), a few UI's broke.......but.....we got through it. And now we are on the last few week stretch to NEW MATERIAL.

Since I am not a theory crafter, I tend to wait till the smart people find all the cool specs while slap something together and play with until I find one I like. Gets me back in the action quicker. And into Northrend.

I look forward to seeing all you brave adventurers heading out into the new world. Lets have some brew and reminisce about how in the day Qerk ran into the center of Molten Core having fallen asleep with his finger on the keyboard and woped the party. That is what this game is ALL about to this mage.....

Also....

If you checkout Outlandishpodcast.com (or something like that) episode 33 part 3, you will here Babygorn and Brem mentioned....I am FAMOUS! :)

BlizzCOn

OMG! Let me just say that BlizzCon was GREAT and that Brem and I will be going back next year!

Not only did we get the polar bear mount, they gave us all a Starcraft 2 beta key plus all the little chotskies that they give:) I would like to see a group of us go next year......any takers??

A Side Note.....

Everyone check out Epic Dolls' episode 51 podcast.....the link is on the side here.....I think you may recognize the name:)

A Mage Quest.....

Waiting in Blade's Edge for the rest of her party was always a nervous proposistion for Babygorn. Several times she has been into the lair of Gruul and it never gets any less nerve wracking for her. She knew what was inside and that, in itself, was nerve wracking enough. Even with seasoned explorers that had agreed to journey together on this expedition, you hardly knew what or even when something would go wrong.

Checking her packs she made sure that she all the necessary potions and food that she would need to heighten her already strong abilities. Being a child of magic, particularly of the arcane school, she wanted any advantage that she could gain against the guards that she would encounter. She even carried a few extra oils for her friends. There was no room for doubt in this case. And she wanted her friends to be prepared too.

"Been waiting long?" Baby turned around and saw that Bremagorn had just landed on his mount and was walking towards her. A warm feeling welled up inside. Though dwarfs were known to be rough and irritable (Bremagorn was no exception), he had a deep sense of right and would defend his frineds to the end.

"Brem!" Baby rushed forward to hug the dwarf who returned her embrace warmly. "You know I get here early to settle my nerves!" Baby admonished him.

"That's my Baby! Always with the itchy casting finger." Brem laughed as he sent his mount back to the stables. He started the same pre-exploration item check that Baby had just completed. Looking satisfied with the situation he looked up and said, "Do you think we aree ready for this?" Bremagorn a a rare serious look to his demeanor.

" Are we ever truly ready?" Baby said as she peered deeply into the tunnel entrance......

To be continued...

A Fresh New Day.....

I dont think I realized how much spell hit cap rating concerned me until I capped it. I think its 172.....I know its around that. AM really pleased that my mage seems to be pulling her weight now that she isnt missing 40% of the time......

September 11, 2001

Please never let us forget the true heroism that people represented that day; the people that have the good fortune of being with us and those that passed knowing that they were doing the RIGHT thing. My head is bowed in humble admiration of the ultimate courage those people represent.

Assumption.........Or A Point of View?

Mages have to, in certain circumstances, look around and assess many situations. Which mob to sheep, which would be the best spell to cast, should they use invisibility because their threat is too high, etc. Given this, it takes an aware person to be a mage with phenomenal powers of observation.....well maybe not phenomenal but maybe just a basic ability to look at facts and make their own decisions.

Facts: things that can be proven. There are people I know that assume that others just aren't as aware as they are. So that the decisions they make are faulty because they are either made out of peer pressure or out of emotion. Hmm......is a decision made on facts in an emotional state of mind automatically wrong? I don't think that is valid logic. I think it is prejudicial and possibly dangerous.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: To all of you who read my blog: I do not go out of my way to flame people or to talk negatively about people to whom I am associated with. I hate no one in the game (severely have issues with some but none that would read this blog:) All two of you:)). To me, a flame is blatant blast of vitriol towards a named person(s). I do not support flaming nor do I respond to it. I do support, however, the right to state opinions and to make your thoughts known in a polite, if mabe an aggressive, way. This, I promise will end this series of blogs. I will go back to the more humourous, if not pompas, mage you have come to know and maybe, in a certain way, to appreciate.

Rock On!
Babygorn

Humbling Words.....A Mage Must Have Written This

ROAD LESS TRAVELED
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth
Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads onto way
I doubted if I should ever come back
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference

Robert Frost

Things that make you go "Hmmmm.........."

Statements that are taken out of context.
Passive aggressive people that down other people's views just because they don't like them.
People who glorify their beliefs through grandiose logic when they are just hard headed and cant admit when they are wrong.

True mages would stop and view these statements and say "Hmmmmm.................."

I want to clarify something that I stated in an earlier post. When I said you should leave a guild if you don't like what the guild leader says........READ ON!!!! I go on to say that you should TALK to the leaders, see if there is a resolution, and if not......LEAVE. To stall or tell a fellow guildie information contrary to what the guild leader has previously stated is perilously close to treason. I have had that happen to me as a guild leader and it is not a good feeling especially when you think of the person(s) as friends. Please....if there is anyone that wants to judge me, get your facts straight.
Rock ON!
Babygorn

P.S. A Pinch of Wisdom for A Recipe for A Good Life..........

Flaming....Leave it in the Fireplace

It is to my dismay that I have been (indirectly accussed) of "flaming" someone on this blogspot. Just for the record: THESE ARE MY OPINIONS THAT I HAVE STATED. That's all. No more, no less.

I believe in the things that I do. I believe in my friends. And I believe people sometimes mean well when the results are less than optimal.

So....if anyone thinks I have flammed them I do truly apologize. Although I stand by what I wrote, it is still only the opinion of one person. Me. Since that is who I answer to then I am ok with what I have stated to be my views. Rock on!
Babygorn

Guild Leadership-Not For The Faint of Heart

In all of my years as a mage on WoW the lesson that I have learned is that Gleaders deserve respect.....you join the guild because of their tenants.....if they have rules or regulations they must be obeyed unless the officers have a discussion. Its like a mutiny.....or a hostile take over.....believe me, there are ppl that I have regretted inviting because they sound too good to be true. Often........they are...........

I know that things happen......but the guild leader is just that....THE LEADER.....even mages have to obey even when they dont agree. If you dont like what the guild leader is saying......LEAVE. If you have an opinion state it.....see if there is some resolution....if not.....so be it. Find a guild that you agree with and one that fits your style of play. Remember ppl....we are human behind these toons......

Mana Gems: Not Only A Girl's Best Friend......

......but a mage's also:) A short to the point post here:) In raids where I think that I am going to have mana issues (I rarely do with +450 mana regen while casting) I will create mana gems of each size to use up while I am fighting. May take a little more time to prepare but I can assure you that it has save my ignoble behind more than once:)