Nobody Reads This

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

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Me and this blog are a love hate relationship because on the one hand I adore jotting down interesting and humorous events of my life for all to see but on the other hand when I take a leave of absence from it for whatever reason I feel incredibly guilty, almost as though I’ve left the dog at home and gone on vacation … Except the dog has no food and I’ve locked him in the basement.

Honestly though, two things have lead to a lapse in activity; I finished my work for Exrox and moved back to my home town ready for my final year of University and I’m playing a lot more WoW now. At some point in the not too distant future I’ll upload a few of my killshots which include – at last – a Yogg Saron and also my server first kill of Anub’Arak 10 man (and the looting of the awesome 10-man version of the Chieftain’s Caster mace).

In fact I’ve been away so long that I trialed for a guild, failed the trial, trialed for an even better guild and have now been accepted as  a full-time raider. Focus are a long-standing guild on Turalyon (EU) and I look forward to many successful endevours with them in the future … Even if they had registered over 150 wipes on Yogg and only 1 kill

But in all seriousness, I love this blog to death but at the moment I’m enjoying my time so damn much I just don’t float over here to tell you about it, so in case of huge silences again do drop me a line. I read all comments and emails that I get sent, so please do.

Lok’tar Ogar,
JamesR.

Oh, and I fucking hate Goblins and so does Mark :p

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

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Today is my last Friday working for this company and the work-load has ramped up so I apologize for falling behind yet again, it often feels like you sit down to spend five minutes of your day (on break I suppose) to write some notes about what you did recently, only to have the IT-equivalent of an Atomic-S**t- explosion take place just ten feet from you and the universe as we know it imploads.

There’s also the fact that I have to pack all my shit up over the next 7 days, 2 of which I’m raiding – 4 of which I’m working and at least one of which I’m hungover. Needless to say, my caffeine intake will spike and for once not because of some Rare-drop I convince myself I must have.

I suppose an Ulduar 25 update is in order, according to some sources (but not Rawr) I got what is thought to be the BiS Helm for a Holy Paladin. Needless to say I’m chuffed but also needless to say I’m very very poor now with only about 250g to my name. The item I got was the Ancient Iron Heume (What kind of a word is heume…) with the Intellect+Mana return proc Meta gem and a +16 Intellect yellow gem. It drops from the council, one of the bosses I don’t mind as much but generally causes grief because an interrupter slacks and the raid effectively gets shelled causing trouble for me.

I did see our 45,000+ Hit-point tank take a 58k hit yesterday, needless to say I was not amused and we wiped it up.

Later on I did some number crunching and decided to buy an Emblem of Conquest item and my choices were between the belt (28 Badges) and the neck (18). Both were nice upgrades but I let Rawr make the call for me and I upgraded the neck. I grabbed my Frozen Tear of Elune (omg lorelulz) and logged for the night.

We got both Hodir and Thorim down so Sunday evening is Freya and Mimiron. I think that makes it only 3 bosses before Yogg’saron which I will begrudgingly take part in. In the not to distant future I’m going to start combing my chat logs from WoW for some great anecdotes, so keep tuned in for that but until next time – Die safe.

Regards,
JamesR.

I’m a Healer, not your errand boy.

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

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So yesterday while I was *ahem* working away a friend of mine let me know that our Server hadn’t recovered from Extended maintenance and had so far over run by 2 hours. Not like I care really, I was at work and it has never been down as a returned home. Long gone are the years of 3 day maintenance cycles and daily refunds for lost time all of which were a hot spot on my server (Turalyon EU).

Roll on about 4pm our time and the same friend pops up and tells me that the server is back up but it really isn’t running well. As if Blizzard, rather than performing maintenance, had dragged our server kicking and screaming into the underpass before sodomizing it over and over again as it screams WHY DADDY WHY…

… I … Err … Count backwards from three and I’ll click my fingers and you will forget all of this.

Not terribly believing Mark I got home and logged in to the server to get on with my weekly VoA PUGs, sure the log in process took a while but ultimately I didn’t have any lag at all. Unless, you know, I went within 5 feet of a vendor. I have been playing World of Warcraft for a long time now, I’ve seen classes and races come and go and every single one of them has been overpowered for some period of time. I do genuinely remember a time when Turalyon was so laggy that you couldn’t play reliably for days and weeks at a time but this was shocking.

Just what happened during the maintenance cycle? It more or less resolved itself by the end of the day.

I recently got accepted on trial into one of the better guilds on our server with only Yogg Saron left to get down and I joined them rather laughably for DPS on the second to last boss (I forget his name, General something ) and have been tasked with hitting 25-mans as hard as I can in PUGs to try and fill a few of my gear needs, on Day 1 of this mission I landed my Holy T8 Legs in VoA 25.

Good first day.

Later on in the day having cleared out 2 Quarters and 2 Bosses of Naxx 10 (Mostly for badges, boots) I decided I was sick of wearing blue boots and there were only two places to get them – Raids and Crafting. The crafted plate caster boots are simply disastrous for a Paladin – They have no intellect on them and only mediocre other stats so I consulted the WoWHead comment database and threw together the mats for some craftable mail boots that are vastly superior.

I’m sure I’ll replace them quickly, as is always the way with loot you spend a lot of gold on, but it is the price you pay to be in the best gear. And congratulations to Mark on his first time in Naxx10 (Or any Raid?), he came in as our Off-tank as a Prot Warrior. Raid Buffed about 32k HP so you’re definitely getting there!

I’ll be in touch ;p

Regards,
JamesR.

Gamer, Blogger, Student

James Reynolds

jamesr87[.at.]gmail.com

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Complete the title quote in the comments

I play too much WoW. Fact. Recently I’ve been setting myself little mini-tasks but generally doing very little to get my Healadin deeper into content … Until yesterday that is.

Recently I’ve been playing in the relative safety net that it the world of Heroics and 10 Mans PUGing OS10, Naxx10, VoA10 and any Heroic that Rob won’t go to and I’ve enjoyed it with the exception of EoE10 which Paladins just don’t seem designed to do.

Last night I decided that needed to change and I went to VoA25, Naxx 25 and OS25 and whilst Naxx 25 was a disaster it had nothing to do with me. I can comfortably heal in these settings and will out-strip most other Healadins only really finding contention amongst the Druids and Priests (Motherfucking Circle of Healing…).

Of course I got no loot, but a few Valor Badges won’t go amiss! I’m considering what to do at the moment about Guilds. I was expecting that the five of us with 80s in DoA would really come together to farm the shit out of heroics so that Mark would be ready to MT or OT at the least an OS10 PUG with us as a basis but that just hasn’t happened. At best I get 3 Heroics with 3 of us and at the worst I’m pugging every heroic on my own.

Ultimately though I don’t need anymore badges, my Paladin is PvE Holy and PvP ret so unless I want to collect a Ret DPS Set (I really don’t) or a Prot set (I’m happy to do so with scraps I get from OS rolls) the only thing left to spent tokens on is Heirlooms or the mount.

The point of getting fired up for heroics was to help drive Mark through the tough instances in a setting where he wouldn’t feel pressured and where someone won’t just whine-quit after the first wipe on Skaddi in UP but since that hasn’t happened we’re stuck with pugging people like the Hunter who pulled 750 DPS (less than Mark while tanking) and didn’t know what AoE was.

It’s really quite frustrating and at this rate it’ll be a long time before Mark has all the items he needs to be confident in Tanking (Even just Off-tanking) an OS10.

Who knows, I’ve got my 50 mount achievement now and I don’t really feel like grinding dailies at the moment (I will, but not many) so I’ll probably spend an increasing amount of my time trying to level my mage alt. Until the others are ready to actually put some effort in that is.

Regards,
JamesR.