So it’s been an odd few months for me. I’ve moved homes both in my real life and my virtual life, and my WoW time dropped significantly for a few months. Now though I’m getting back some semblance of stability and I feel able to raid and blog once more.
The New Hotness
Tellisa, the pink-haired gnome Priest, and her ghostly companion
So, meet Tellisa. Cute, isn’t she!
My first proper character was a gnome warlock, and there’s just something about gnomes that draws me to playing them, so when my partner and I decided to move back to the Oceanic realms again as we’re in the process of moving to the region we just had to go Alliance.
She reached level 85 about 3 months ago, and in the last few weeks has begun her raiding exploits. She’s currently at 6/7 Firelands, and blasted her way through the Tier 11 content a couple of weeks ago (damn, they nerfed that hard!).
A Fish Out of Water
I’m a healer and a raider, that’s just what I like to do in game. Doing dailies is a chore at best and an exercise in frustration at worst (I’ve probably already complained about Blizzard’s tendency to give high level mobs boosted HP without boosting their damage, thus not making them “harder” but “longer”, but it annoys me enough that you probably haven’t heard the end of it from me!), and there’s only so many Zandoms you can do without going slightly barmy.
Now don’t let me give you the impression I’m ranting about the hopelessness of pugs in the new 5-mans. Actually I’ve generally had good experiences in there, give or take the odd over-zealous tank or under-prepared DPS. (Just one thing though: on Venoxxis, you do have to let me take the middle spot, or I can’t reach everyone).
The problem with doing these over and over again, at least for me, is that after a few runs there’s a dropoff in the amount of new learning that you can do, and learning is what I find the most fun about the game. Valour points are a very poor motivator for me.
Instead, I threw myself into achievements – those are points I can really get into! Malev got to just over 10.5k points before retirement, and while that number is a long way off for Tellisa that’s not going to stop me from accumulating points anyway. I’ve broken the back of Loremaster, and I’m always on the lookout for reputations to bring up to Exalted. I seem to be drawn to the grindier achievements, probably because you can track your progress which makes it somehow more manageable.
Enter <Abraxas>
Being a raider at heart, I was interested in raiding, but being in a very different timezone than your home server doesn’t open up many opportunities. Raiding on Aussie time would have meant raiding right across the middle of the day UK time, which just isn’t compatible with trying to get things done. What I needed was a New Zealand-based guild, and as luck would have it, a promising-looking one started up.
The GM of Abraxas has definitely been there and got the T-shirt, hanging around on Stormwind his Glory of the Cataclysm Hero drake, Blackwing’s Bane title on display, 1/7 heroic in Firelands. He’s also, far more importantly, a nice guy who knows his way around the fights, and who can wrangle a semi-pug raid into a pretty well-performing team. So I have high hopes that this guild can go places.
We’ve been semi-pugging for a couple of weeks, and we’re just about rounding out the team now; I think we’re looking for a good melee DPS with a tanking off-spec, so it’s beginning to feel a lot more like a guild now. There’s even a “gnome jokes” thread popped up on the forums, that’s how much like a normal guild we’ve become!
The only temporary downside is that I need to start raiding at 7.30am or 8.30am depending on the day, but I have an alarm set and when that fails to rouse me I have my loving partner to make my phone buzz in my ear until I get myself out of bed and logged in. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it sooner or later, and in the meantime they’re being very understanding!
Back for Good?
That’s the plan.
Now I’m back playing and raiding again I intend to bring TH4H out of mothballs and resume posting my thoughts on raiding, healing, Discipline, Priest and whatever else crosses my mind, just as before.
Nice to see you back, Malevica. 🙂 I look forward to reading your blog again.
Thanks, I appreciate the support. I’m very much looking forward to blogging again, I’ve missed it!
Maybe I should start selling t-shirts to raise funds for the gbank….
Whoa.. raiding at 7am? I barely can get myself out of bed to get to work in the morning at 8am 🙂
Welcome back though sweetie! Can’t wait to see more posts, I’ve always enjoyed them you know that <3
Nice to see that you’re still playing WoW, albeit on a different region altogether. I’ve just gotten back into the game after a few disputes with Kwaidan back then, and choosing to quit rather than look elsewhere.
Buuuut, I’m back on the hunter now. Gotten 6/9 spirit beasts in the game :] Loving being a casual, and working slowly towards Loremaster at the same time. What did the better half choose? 🙂 I’m really curious about that one too haha.
You? Having disputes with your guild? I don’t believe it! 😉
Glad to hear you’re still going though, and that your Hunter is back as your main. I’m not sure I’m ready to go casual quite yet though, still got some raiding life in me yet. I am working my way to Loremaster too, albeit slowly.
She’s still a tank, a Paladin this time. After going through all the other tank classes this one just seems to work best.
Haha yeah you know me, I don’t take crap from anyone! Does she still raid and in the same guild as you? Please pass on… I named my spirit beast (Arcturis (Bear) after her druid). I’ve just tamed Skoll this morning, so that’ll probably take your name too since if you remember I named a wolf after you a long time ago. I named my gorilla after Turmoil anyway, because of her famous rants/tantrums and the fact that a gorilla looks cool when thunderstomping.
I still do some raiding, albeit the guild’s alt runs (which is basically a renamed Kwaidan since I cooled off then) which suits me really since it’s all just ticking off the fights I’ve seen. Almost done with all of T6 pieces for transmogrification purposes!
Will be keeping a close eye on this, and your loremaster progress. It’s nice to see that no matter how far away the region is, you can always still talk.