Dire Aquatic Form

No, I'm not going to rattle off a few lines from Big Bear Butt or Need More Rage and make you guess which post it is. So, in my last post, I mentioned that Sharon and I are working to combine forces into a mega-blog juggernaut of death and mayhem. well, we've run into one small snag. We can't think of a name.

That's where you, my faithful readers, get to be used for our benefit! Did I say that out loud? Just post your ideas in the comments on this post, and one lucky winner will be chosen by a rabid squirrel(this guarantees randomness) to have named our blog! But wait, there's more! Okay, no, I lied, there isn't more.

So, our POV on this whole venture is twofold. We're coming from an angle of the jaded vet vs. the bright-eyed new player experiences and views of the game, and also the benefits and drawbacks of being in a relationship while playing the game together.

In all seriousness, we've been trying to come up with a name for the blog for the past two days, and we're just hitting a wall. we've come up with three names so far, but none of them really have quite what we're looking for; however, they should give you an idea of the type of name we're aiming for. Married to the Mobs(Sharon objects because we're not actually married yet), Love and Pwnage, and GuildMating.

Whoever does come up with a name we end up using will, of course, get full credit, as well as prominent linkage on the new site. Plus, you'd really be saving our creatively-challenged asses.

Just a quick(and somewhat drunken) note to let folks know. It is very likely that, in the near future, I will be moving to a self-hosted wordpress site, with a fairly dramatic change in format. Sharon and I are planning on combining forces and doing a blog from the point of view of WoW in terms of a relationship in which both people play it, and our differing viewpoints on it, with me being a jaded vet and her being new to the game. Watch this space for updates.

OTed Kara last night for the first time, and it was a blast. We cleared through Opera(Wizard of Oz, skipped Maiden) with only one wipe on Moroes due to some bad luck with garrotes. I picked up the gloves off of Attumen, which was a pretty nice upgrade(I had been using green gloves of the bandit).

I held Attumen while the group burned down Midnight, tanked Moroes with the pally tank, and burned down Dorothea while holding Tito, then wound up tanking the Crone when the pally lost his hold on her.

Moroes was probably the most fun of all of it. We held Moroes, and burned down Crispin while he was vanished. The pally tank wound up going down partway through our second attempt, and was battle rezzed, so I wound up main tanking him, and had a blast. Picking up the Crone was fun, too. Running her around to avoid the tornado made it a bit more interesting than your standard tank'n'spank.

We also had some awesome luck on trash. Out of four trash pulls before the performers, we picked up the fire mage/destro lock belt, rogue gloves, and a soulcloth tailoring pattern. Three epics on four pulls was pretty damned cool.

All in all, it was a fun night for me. Unfortunately, due to bedtime scheduling conflicts, Sharon wasn't able to attend(Kara starts right at the kid's bedtime). I'm hoping to find a way to be able to work around this and get her in on the runs. We didn't actually start until around 9:15 or 9:20, and if this is the norm, I'm hoping we can get her in on a regular basis.

Sorry I've been so reticent in updating, lately, but I've been extremely busy as of late within the game. Seems I really meant my resolution to run more instances. Sunday afternoon/evening saw us running 5 instances. Arc keyfrag, SV keyfrag, BM, SV full, and Shattered Halls(god bless pally tanks). The last three of those, I healed, and actually did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself. BM was death-free, and my first instance healed as resto. The full SV was pretty smooth, as was Shattered Halls, with only 1 wipe due to some overaggro, and the tank turning around to pick it up with 5 mobs behind him. Never seen a tank go from 80% to 20% that fast.

What I want to tell you all about, however, was the Shadow Lab run from the day before. Specifically, the fight against Blackheart the Inciter. We did SL with the same tank from SH, a paladin. We discovered something, in that instance. Blackheart the Inciter sucks for tanks that rely on mana. After about three wipes where our tank just could not hold the aggro after Time For Fun, we decided to try it with him throwing dps and offheals, and me strapping on my tanking gear. And it was the single most epic 5 man boss fight I have ever participated in.

Our group was me, the prot pally, a holy pally, Sharon, and an enhancement shaman. Within the first two minutes of the fight, the shaman and Sharon had died, I had thrown my innervate on the holy pally and combat rezzed Sharon. Two more minutes, Sharon is eating floor again, and it's just me, the hoyl pally, and the prot pally. They're both keeping me healed, and we're all beating on each other during time for fun. About six minutes into the fight, the holy pally dies, and now I'm really sweating. It's me and the prot pally healing me. Eight minutes in, I throw my innervate on him, the dps is trying to run back in but get MCed near pulls we didn't clear and die. Eight minutes in, my 2nd innervate of the fight goes to the prot pally, and I'm burning cooldowns and trinkets. Nine minutes in, the holy pally makes it back in, just in time to throw two or three heals and watch Blackheart the Inciter die of exhaustion after a brutal, epic, ten minute long fight. As rough as it was, it left me with a really good feeling. We got it done, we got some loot, and we eventually(after much issue with Vorpil, requiring the prot pally to bring his lock for extra dps) got our keyfrag.

The lesson learned? Don't ever assume it's a wipe, like we did about three minutes into that fight.