Hallow’s End is just beginning!

Achievements must be the biggest and most efficient time sucker-upper/killer/waster – whatever you want to call it – EVER. And I’m proud to say I’m almost done with Hallowed be thy Name (yes, even that evasive little squashling). I just need to get a hordie to help me with the stink bombs in Southshore… And the Wickerman quests. I’m going to guess Sunday will be the best day to do so when the festivities are ending and everyone will be scrambling to get everything done.

How will everyone be spending their Halloween today? Due to an untimely cold, I’m pretty sure I will be stuck at home passing out candy to the kids today while making Headless Horseman runs to try to get his mount. I’ve seen it drop once but the only non-guildie in the run won the roll. >.>

As far as healing HH runs go – here are my impressions of it:

1. depending on your (or your tank’s) gear level, you can either stand around and help your group DPS, tossing minimal heals or
2. just stand around and heal your tank who’s taking massive damage from the HH, as well as the nubs who hang around the HH’s body during the Phase 2 whirlwind.

The fight’s pretty easy from beginning to end. The head will pop off the body at least 3 times, no matter how bad-ass your DPS is. Bubble whoever summon’s the HH (unless it’s the tank), as that person will have initial aggro. If you’ve got a quick tank, he’ll grab aggro before the HH hits the summoner. If not, bubble is a good way to mitigate damage.

Frisbee your tank after he grabs aggro, since the changes in the threat mechanics of Prayer of Mending after 3.0 attribute the healing threat to you, the priest who loves hearing the dong!

I never run out of mana these days so I help out with the DPS. My tanks are geared from badges, heroics, and T5 raids so it’s not hard to keep them up. From beginning to end, topping everyone off and DPS-ing as much as I can will leave me at half mana (~5.5k/10.9k) by the end of the fight. If you have substantially less than that, I would advise laying off the DPS. There is no such thing as regen if you’re going to be constantly healing and DPS-ing so it all comes down to your mana pool.

All right, that’s it for now. Hope everyone has a great Halloween!

You are not prepared!!!

Hm… I think I’ve got the wrong expansion. The zombie invasion event is in full force and I’d like to think that Illidan’s words are oddly appropriate for Arthas’s wrath. Oh, how clever you are, Blizzard.

In the 6 months that I’ve been gone (exactly 6 months almost… yikes!), lots has happened. In chronological order:

1. Our guild stopped raiding ~May, once all the kiddies were let out of school for summer break. We almost transferred off the server. Tried a couple of raiding alliances, which ultimately failed. We had 2-3 members /gquit and they created their own raiding guild. Stole a bunch of our members ultimately, as the server pop is just way to small to sustain too many full-fledged active, raiding guilds. Regardless, we stopped raiding.

2. As a result of us not raiding, I went PvP full time. Let me say, I loved it. And hated it. Arena was the most aggravating thing I have ever experienced, yet also the most rewarding in WoW. For every match I ever lost, I wanted to slaughter the other team in the next 5. Whether or not that happened was a different story. Some weeks, I wanted to throw my hands in the air and just give up on the game altogether. Other weeks, I wanted to do more and more games because the winning was good. In the end, my partner and I (a rogue) finished the season at an embarrassing 1550 while averaged 1650-1700 for the season. No titles for us.

3. Blizzcon 2008. I went with the boyfriend and it was a lot of fun. Tried out all 3 Blizz betas and let me tell you, there is a lot to be looking forward to. I checked out what a level 80 shadow priest looked like, as well as a level 80 death knight (c’mon, I had to – amirite?). Starcraft 2 is going to be a trilogy? EPIC! Yet a little annoyed I have to buy 3 different games now instead of 1. Diablo 2 looks like a hell of a lot of fun. I don’t know how I’m going to divide my time up between all 3 games.

4. Echoes of Doom, patch 3.0. I tried to get the people left in the guild on semi-weekly ZA runs to get all 10 of us Armani War Bears before they were taken away in the patch. No dice. However, we’ve gotten timed runs since the patch! /golfclap We started raiding again. Pugged a Mag run yesterday, which was fun. They nerfed the bosses so much that there’s no way we can’t down the bosses with pugs (as incompetent as they can be on our server).

Let me just talk about the new patch. I have a priest and a warlock and I have to say, my interest and love for both classes have been renewed. After being PvP-disc for about 2 months, I specced shadow to try out the new tree but it wasn’t long before I had to switch back to holy for raids. And wow, I love the holy tree. I liked healing before but now, I am pretty sure I love it. It might be because we’re all so OP now but regardless – can i healz some moar raids? The mana regen, the spell coefficients – I just feel like everything has been buffed for priests. Other than the fact that I miss Divine Spirit, I can’t think of a single thing wrong (instant flash heals? wha?).

I have yet to do research on a good PvE lock spec; I guess I can look into that but I’ve been overcome by alt fever again (this time for my ‘hance shaman). All this while to max out achievements and avoid being infected by the zombies! There’s so much going on, I can barely keep track… >.>

That’s it for now, gotta run. I’ll put up something more insightful later this week. I’m back, I promise!