With Rossini, I had been saving the Wicked Witch Hat from Karazhan since Kittykat (Rossini before his gender transmog) won it back in the real days of playing BC.  I kept it all this time because you never know when you’ll need a black pointy hat.  With transmogrification, I really wanted to use that hat!  But I couldn’t find robes to go with it, or shoulders or anything else.  I decided to give up and just go with the Corruptor set.  Which while cool, it’s my style.  But then running Zul’Aman the other day, I won shoulders which pulled the whole outfit together!  So here it is:

The colors of the shoulders matched that of the hat and with a few crafted tailoring items that I could make myself, I was able to round out boots and a belt to match too.  The robes I had previously determined matched the hat, those are none other thank the black mageweave robes.  I found a simple leatherworking cloak to match as well.

Overall, I was really pleased with how this outfit turned out!  I have to find a weapon that matches too and thanks to the staff transmog list over at Orcish Army Knife I have some ideas!

Anyways, let’s see…I could complain about the fail tanks I’ve been getting lately.  Like the ones that don’t know mechanics for normal heroics, or the ones who don’t use CC with their whopping 140k health pools and then wonder why I can’t keep them up.  Or the ones that break CC or the warrior who kept charging the banished target.  I could complain about the 1.5 hour Zul’Aman run I was in followed by the long Grim Batol where I lagged out on the two trash pulls up to the final boss so I couldn’t even finish to get my bag of wonders. 

But instead of that, I’m going to talk about Elgar, and how he got some major playtime yesterday…in fact, the most play time ever.  And as a result ended up getting about 10+ achievements two of which resulted in new titles.  Around the Christmas holiday, I realized that Elgar, upon completing Merrymaker was just two holidays away from his Long Strange Trip achievement.  Those two holidays were Lunar Festival and Love is in the Air (V-Day).  He had about half the V-day achievements done, but upon looking at the Lunar Festival ones…one.  Not a single achievement towards the holiday achievement besides the rocket one.  Ick.  So settled in for a day of  travel around Azeroth.  I stopped to do archaeology along the way, but tried really hard not to stop too much for herbs.  It took hours.  The dungeons slowed me down the most.  They weren’t impossible, but annoying.  Some of them required you to go quite far into the instance…which wasted time and Maraudon doesn’t have a good exit, so after getting that one, I hearthed out which is not where I wanted to be.

But with all that said and done, I got the achievement earning the Elder title.  Elder Elgar is a little weird though.  While looking around at all my achievements I noticed too that I was super close to finishing the Cataclysm Explorer, which would earn me the Explorer title.  I just needed to finish Vashir and one spot in Twilight Highlands, so I got those and also earned the Explorer title!  Not a bad day!  I even did Wintersgrasp PvP while going to get that Elder.  Just an FYI you have to have Wintersgrasp to get that Elder, so don’t forget to see when your faction has it so you can snag him if you are going for it. 

I had forgotten how terrible I was at PvP.  And Wintersgrasp is weird now because people can destroy the vehicles very quickly.  It’s funny how there’s a small subset of people really into it though, it’s almost like a personal BG to these guys.    I’m glad they didn’t yell at me for helping out where I could. 

Anyways, it was a good weekend.  We finished it off with some Firelands to help a guild member finish up her staff…she’s at like 139 of the final things before the Rag thing, so it’s close!  That’s free pets for all!  Oh!  Speaking of which, I bought the Lunar Festival pet for Elgar and earned the Menagerie achievement for 125 minipets!  I would have had it a while ago if I could just catch that damned Seahorse or Mr. Pinchy.  Over 550+ casts for that damned Seahorse and nothing to show for it…I don’t even want to think about how many I’ve cast for Mr. Pinchy.  It’s enough to make me into a furious crawdad though!!

The only toon that is eligible at this time is Elgar, much to my surprise; he’s the most improved toon over one year ago. I really struggled with healing and adjusting to the changes with him, so this is a good thing to be able to play my favorite toon again. So I queued up with a handful of DPS from the guild and one tank the first week.

The thing with being Disc spec is that when you toss in 5 other healers, I’m not sure what my role is. Paladins heal the tanks; shamans, druids, and holy priests AOE heal, and I am left scratching my head what I should be doing. If there aren’t any paladins I focus on healing the tanks. But how often are there no paladins? Once last night there were none, but otherwise there was always one or two.

The first week, I spent most my time using PW:Shield on people, but not being sure when damage would happen, I would just cast it around, mostly on my own guildmates. AOE healing is harder since Prayer of Healing only hits members of the same party. Usually the party that gets that the most is the tanks party or my party.

So that takes me to the images. Here’s my recount for that first half the first week.

This is the image of recount for total healing done for the entire first half of the DS raid.  I actually didn’t think it was that bad.  Holylightman was also a disc priest, but I literally saw him standing around not making any casting animations during boss fights.  He soon became the last raid member I wanted to heal.

Here’s total absorbs, not too shabby.  So when I saw these two numbers I was thinking, I was doing pretty good.  Then I looked at the next number.

Overhealing…ouch.  53%.  Well I guess we didn’t wipe because I went OOM so I don’t feel so bad about the overhealing done.  But it was a reminder of how often my heals were going to waste, I am assuming that this is pretty much anytime that I was trying to spot heal or tank heal and someone else with faster cast times beat me to it.  Or any renews I might have tossed out.  I really need to stop with the renews if there are druids around.  But though the overhealing is an embarrassment to me one final category left me feeling like I did perform okay.

At least I won something!!    This did make me feel good though.  I am pretty sure most of the dispels came from that one boss fight.  I tend to avoid any dispels that last under 4 seconds because I’ve learned that in Cataclysm they typically aren’t that bad.  I seldom have time to read the dispel and decide if I want to dispel or not.  But this made me feel like I was at least useful for something.

Here’s a couple other fun facts, when I looked at my top shielded players by PW:Shield, it was the two tanks, me, and then all of my guild mates.  I have a tendency to look out for my own first.  Don’t ever believe a healer that says they don’t have a personal healing priority.  In the second half of DS the second week I did it, there was a cute gnome priest, the only other one, she was holy spec.  This is good since we tend not to overlap.  Except…she kept casting PW:Shield on the tanks and then I couldn’t!!  This was super annoying since I was PRETTY sure that mine absorbs way more than hers.  So I only have this request:  Holy priests, if you are in a raid group with a disc priest, please don’t cast PW:Shield, the debuff of weakened soul is shared across all priests and you’ll make them angry.

All in all, LFR has been a lot of fun.  I think it is partly because when you bring in 7-8 plays from your own guild, it means that’s 7-8 slots that aren’t filled with douchebags.

Rossini
Rossini hit level 85 a week or two into 2011.  As a member of a successful raiding group in late LK, Rossini was a priority so that I could hit raiding in Cataclysm.  However, it was evident that it wasn’t going to happen.  I was severely lagging behind everyone else and hadn’t done any heroics.  It was clear Rossini was not going to be an early Cataclysm raider.  Also, pushing hard to level is not my style, and soon after 85, Rossini was burned out.  He maxed out professions pretty quickly, but heroics and dungeons burned him out and unfortunately I would soon avoid logging in on him.  Warlock isn’t my ideal class anyways.  He did however sub in for raiding and got Nefarian, Cho’gall, and Al’akir killed.  This was about where his play time ended.  Other than holidays and disenchanting things, Rossini’s highlights ended around the time Firelands was released.

Elgar
With the addition of archaeology and a desire to avoid leveling zones shortly after expansions, Elgar leveled to 85 using archaeology XP.  This was bad as he didn’t have any gear, but through questing he got to the point where he was “up to speed”.  Keeping disc as a primary spec, he eventually tried his hand at healing.  The first dungeon was a disaster and depressed and scared Elgar then relied on shadow for nearly all activities after that.  I dislike shadow, but wasn’t left with much choice.  Elgar leveled his professions, but then too, was shelved due to general dislike of the condition of priests.  With Firelands, gear was a little easier to obtain, and Elgar went to a non-smite spec.  This changed everything, healing was feasible for him again and soon heroics were no challenge.  As a result, Elgar ended 2011 as a confident healer and with the highest gear score of any of my toons!  Elgar also is rocking his transmogrified priest T5.  He’s again a favorite toon.  I will always have a place for the priest class.

Troutwort and Schubert
These two had about the same story, leveling up, geared enough to do heroics, struggled with crafting professions (Trout is still not max level) and didn’t see much play time.  They still have a long way to go, but nothing bad about either one.  Trout is better for DPS than Schubert because I keep Schubert as frost…and though I love that little gnome, I know my refusal to make him “spec of the patch” will keep me limited.  Nothing special for either one in 2011.

Sousa
Sousa had the biggest changes, though Elgar was spooked away from healing, Sousa thought to give it a shot.  Leveling as enhancement, his “primary” spec, I collected healing gear as it became available from quests and from extras in dungeons.  After collecting enough gear, I started to heal normals to get a feel for it.  I still remember having a heal crit for 52k in my crappy gear and just about falling over dead.  Elgar couldn’t pull off numbers like that!  Then 76k heals from Sousa and I had found my healer.  Sousa quickly became the toon I felt most confident on.  Sousa had a good run, heroics, keeping up with both resto and enhance gear, I grew to really love the shaman.  I did 6/7 in Firelands with Sousa thanks to the great guild group, and had some good luck on mounts with him.  Only once Elgar got more confidence did Sousa lose his place as the favorite/most geared toon.

Sibelius
The druid is a similar story to Troutwort and Schubert, though his professions struggled even more, as I had a max level enchanter, making it to max for enchanting hasn’t been a priority.  Boomkin spec was okay, but for DPS casting, I like the mage better, and though he regained a healing spec, I still don’t care for the HoT-style healing of the druid.  It’s not my style.  Though he hit level 85, Sibelius cannot do heroics and is least accomplished of the level 85s.

Floy
The little gnome DK was a project to push to 85 once I realized all we were missing for the Classy Gnome achievement is a gnome DK.  However, after hitting level 80, Grom hit level 85 on his gnome DK and so she stopped being a project.  She did get her blacksmithing up to 450 which puts her ready to tackle Cataclysm.

Haydn
The dwarf rogue made a push with Cataclysm.  As a way to see lower level zones, Haydn spent much time pushing through zones.  Hitting 2011 around level 35 or so, he ended 2011 at level 70.  He’s a fun diversion from the normal and I found that I did enjoy the rogue more than I thought I would.  New quests probably really helped.  Now that they have nerfed XP required for levels 70 to 80 he might get a little play time, I don’t care for Northrend much anymore, so it’s harder for me to level there than in Outlands…I know, I’m the only one that feels this way.

Mouret
2011 was a HUGE year for the worgen warrior Mouret, mostly because he didn’t exist in 2010.  Ha!  Another class that I always struggled to get into, the new leveling experience and having a hunter friend to level with made the warrior far more tolerable and he wins for most levels earned in 2011, going from level 1 to level 53.  Only slowed by waiting to play with my friend, he’s been a huge success and a good experience to see other things.  In 2012, he’ll try some tanking.

Kalinnikov
Last and least: the dwarf paladin.  The last play time in 2011, less than low level alts on another account I have.  Kalinnikov gained 0 levels in 2011.  Still stuck at level 80, he hasn’t seen any of the new zones.  I should run some of the quests and then get him into some dungeons and learn to tank again, but it hasn’t happened.  I have my toons organized by what level they are…I fear that poor Kalinnikov will one day, be last on the list.  I’m sorry Repgrind, I do not have the enthusiasm to level paladins like you do.

So that’s the summary!  It was a busy year and yet, I feel like 2011 in WoW didn’t accomplish much.  Since patch 4.3 my play time has increased and again I feel interested in WoW.  I’m looking forward to MoP and feel that for me, now, it’s just a matter of getting everyone ready for that point.  The guild changed a bit in 2011 too and though we hit Level 25 pretty close to as soon as we could, we lost some good people, that I will miss, to groups that raided more.  However, the spirit of Crits and Giggles has not changed, we picked up some awesome new players and I look forward to experiencing more and more of the game with them.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have dropped the ball a bit.  Naked races are a little harder because people don’t have unlimited character slots on a server so they can’t create new level 1 toons just for the sake of running around like crazy.  The scavenger hunt was fun, but items purchased off the AH made it really easy for some while others didn’t think that was fair.

Anyways, I learned a bit from those things.  Classic raid nights still are pretty successful as people are looking for transmogrification gear.  And with that, I have thought of a new idea, a fashion contest.  As people collect gear for transmogrification I thought it would be awesome to come up with the best and worst outfits for your race/class/armor type combo.  Of course this is all subject to the eye of the beholder, but I think I can figure out a voting system so people can cast votes for their favorite best and worst outfits.

I’m hoping we get a decent turn out as the more the merrier!  Unlike actual transmogrification, this will not be limited to only green or better items, and all novelty items and holiday items will be allowed as well.  So maybe people will think of awesome or horrifying outfits to make with those weird Lunar Festival Pajamas…seriously…weird.

We’ll sweeten the pot with some nice prizes, some TCG loot and such.  More details to follow for this guild event.

So, what should you do it someone is wearing your outfit?

Kill them.

At least that’s what my party told me last night when I went to Hour of Twilight instance for the first time.  I was on Elgar and when we got to the final boss I said “Hey!  That guy has on my outfit!”  And my party responded with all sorts of quips about how that’s reason enough to kill them.  So we did, in the name of fashion.

It was Christmas early for Elgar then as the boss dropped his epic staff and it was a MUCH needed replacement for Elgar’s 333 mace which I have been toting around since forever.  I just don’t seem to get weapon drops on Elgar.  Elgar then had enough JP and VP to get a new chest piece and new bracers, these new pieces pushed Elgar above the i372 requirement for LFR and now he’s raid ready!  I was surprised he passed Sousa.  Sousa has some nice things but since patch 4.3 hasn’t been running as much as Elgar so is behind in replacing some of his pieces.  

So Elgar was able to transmogrify his new staff to match his T5 (Staff of Immaculate Recovery) and now looks SO amazing.  Speaking of transmogrification and having a tough time being prettiest, one of our guild’s most beloved shadow priests, Bocat, told us that the other night that someone whispered her and told her that her character looked hideous, laughed at her, then put her on ignore.  Now, Bocat spends more time creating and farming awesome outfits than anyone I know, (and our guild does have transmogrification fever in general) but Bocat’s outfits are awesome and original.  So I asked her specifically what the person said, she typed it in guild chat.  I then searched that person, whispered them the same message, and put them on ignore.  I announced in guild chat that I had just sent them the same message and put them on ignore.  Someone else in the guild chimed in “me too!” 

This is why I love our guild.  And we sure do love our outfits.

With the holiday season in WoW in full swing, I have been trying to log onto many of my level 85s and at least do Greench.  After Schubert got the epic dagger in his first bag, I’ve been hungry for more!  Besides some of those toys sell for a decent chunk of change!  As the Greench isn’t really soloable, I’ve just been heading out there and wait for a group to form or at least a bunch of people show up.  A few times I have tried communicating through gestures to the Horde, mostly it’s things like /ready.  I find it amusing when the /point at the Greench…yeah, duh, that’s what we’re all here for.  There’s one thing that really amuses me about the Greench encounter though.  And that’s how people die or take damage from either the tree or snowman.  I get schadenfreude when I see people in Firelands gear die to snowman or tree attacks.  I know I shouldn’t be like that, but I’ve seen too much attitude lately where people think only those “worthy” should have that gear.  It reminds me that it’s just ego sometimes and they aren’t always as awesome as they think they are.

Speaking of awesomeness, I did two LFG last night.  The first was on Elgar because the Call to Arms was up.  I keep my fingers crossed that it’s something quick and simple.  Lost City.  Sweet, we’ll be done in no time.  Oh, they are on their way to the croc.  Right away I pop in and they say “thank god, a healer with gear!”  I actually don’t think Elgar has that awesome of gear, but whatever, they then complimented me on my outfit (priest T5).  The tank was less than geared, I think he was pretty new to tanking.  I suggested we use some CC and away we went.  The first pull was messy.  But we managed to survive, except for the shadow priest, he got that nasty poison on him and I couldn’t stop healing the tank or we would have lost him.  They were all friendly though, the tank always checked if we were ready and the dungeon, though sloppy at times, went okay.  They wanted to skip a few of the trash pulls and attempt to just run past them.  I suggested we kill them anyways, because “I’ve been on too many runs where we ‘go around’ and it ends up with us all dead.”  A few people laughed indicating that I wasn’t the only one that has had this experience.  The tank rejoiced at his satchel of mysterious goods, seemed like a good kid.  I got a Dun Morogh Bear Cub in my satchel, but I have them on like 4 of my toons already, so I sent it off to someone who doesn’t have it yet.  

Rossini did a group then too.  Just an FYI in case you didn’t know…fear does start combat, unlike the other CCs.  Whoops!  I haven’t played Rossini in so long that I was a big rusty.  I apologized profusely, but no one seemed to care.  This tank was also new and not very geared, the priest healer was geared though.  It was pretty obviously shortly into the instance that the tank had never been inside Throne of Tides before.  He said it was only his second heroic.  That was fine, we used CC and it seemed to go pretty well.  ON the first boss, the DK DPS stood in something bad and died like 20 seconds into the fight.  The first adds come.  The tank picks up the big one and I fear the one on the right.  The hunter starts to shoot the one on the left attempting to solo it.  I focus on the big guy, but see what the hunter is up to and decide he’s going to need help.  We manage to finish that phase but the next time the adds come, I fear the right one again, the tank picks up the big one again and the hunter again starts to solo the other one.  This time I help the tank and though he should have gone over to pick up the non CC’d caster add, he doesn’t as he’s new and the one the hunter is attacking kills the priest.  I soulstone rez, the hunter dies; we finish the phase and continue on.  We don’t really have interrupts at the time and now she’s down under 20%, so I don’t think there was threat of going to another add phase.  The tank dies as the healer is low on mana from soulstone rez.  I pop demon form and all demons possible and unleash with everything, it’s brutal, I get some heals from the healer, but weave in drain life when I can.  We kill her it was awesome.  The group cheers, except the hunter who carries on about how much the tank sucks.  

This is one of those hunters that pulls 20k DPS on trash and is all “go go go”.  He doesn’t run back in like the DK and tank did even though the priest resurrected them on their run back in.  Then I notice the priest doesn’t res the hunter.  For the sake of keeping things moving, I mass res him.  All goes well up until the gauntlet.  Again the tank doesn’t know what is going on because he’s never been here, we proceed slowly down the hall, but the hunter runs all the way to the end aggroing all the big surgers…thanks stupid.  We get overwhelmed but all but one surger dies, so at least we’ll make it the next time.  Everyone releases and runs back…except the hunter.  The healer makes a comment to him about being lazy and maybe he could run back like the rest of us.  He starts linking Recount showing how much damage he’s done and that maybe we’re the lazy ones.  I decide I’ve had enough of this guy and his “mightier than thou” attitude.  I click ‘vote to kick’ and for reason I simply type “jerk”. 

It passes.  In two seconds we have another hunter.  We finish up, the final boss goes flawlessly as the DPS focus on the right targets and tank picked up the correct adds.  Everyone thanked each other and the priest comments about how that hunter was probably pissed for wasting 20 minutes and not getting his valor points.  I winked and thought about how being nice and patient really does go a long way.  I think that as WoW has aged some the player base has changed, it’s no longer a game of grinding and elite content; it’s a game for the common casual gamer.  And with that change, respect and patience will play a bigger role than epeen and epics.  So be forewarned elitist jerks, we are not afraid to boot you from our groups if you’re a tool, even if you do 50% of the damage.

What I don’t love is paladins, as if Blizzard already didn’t make them crazy machines of healing and whatever, and making gear exclusively for one of their specs–it’s just madness.  But no, as if we all weren’t feeling bad enough about paladins, then when we go to SSC to get some T5 stuff with a couple of priests, a warlock, warrior, and druid, we down Vashj and she drops 3, yes 3 paladin head tokens (well paladin, shaman, rogue–but still!!).  The other bosses dropped 2 for paladins, it was like we couldn’t get a damned piece to drop for the classes we had with us!  Then we went to Gruuls and it was more of the same, paladin crap.  It’s like Blizz loves them more than anyone else!! 

I do take into account that it could have been because Elgar was there for some of it.  Is this just more of the same “sorry, no Mr. Pinchy or Sea Pony for you” bullshit?  A slap in the face to Elgar, subtly letting him know he should have been a paladin instead of a priest?  No, I won’t believe it.  Because no paladin set looks as hot as priest T5.  NO SET. 

So Blizzard, if it’s just Elgar you hate, fine.  Just please, enough with the paladins already.  I don’t know how much more I can take. 

/cry

But Saturday my friend came over and he played on his hunter of level 36 and me on my warrior of level 39.  After he did his Faire things, I ran him through all the Scarlet Monastery instances to get him to level 38 and hopefully some new gear.  I was hoping we’d get some of the Darkmoon artifacts as well, but no dice.  We did a few more dungeons, but for him, I think he enjoys questing better as it’s more dependant on his pace rather than the pace of an heirloom geared tank who is all “go go go!” 

We did some quests in Western Plaguelands and then headed over to Eastern as we both dinged 40 and got our fast mounts.  The mobs there were more appropriate level and leveling went much quicker.  We stopped for herbs and ore along the way.  There are so many since Cataclysm that I had a full 28 slot bag of herbs before I knew it! 

I also did a few archaeology dig sites on the warrior and after his first completed artifact (fossil) my next one is the fossilized raptor pet, awesome.  So it looks like at least one other toon will do some archaeology.  It is amazing how much faster it goes now.  One dig site now can provide as many parts as 3 did before! 

While end game is fun, I’ve always enjoyed leveling up alts, doing the dungeons again, getting new gear and talent points.  Trying out new classes and new quests. 

The nice thing about having that second account up and running is that I have the ability to play more alts over there on the same server and get the perks of the guild.  Since I have 10 toons already on Winterhoof and apparently 10 is not enough.  I mean the GM should make up 10% of the total population of his whole guild, right?

Anyways, on that account there’s a druid and mage (71), hunters (63 and 41), priests (36 and 21), warlock (14) and a couple of level 1 alts that were used mostly for holiday achievements.  Many of these toons haven’t been logged in on in a very long time so last night I decided to see if they still needed any respecs or whatever.  I decided to log in as Linus, the level 35 priest last night, assuming he’d need to respec talent points or something.  But as it turned out he was ready to go, already in shadowform.  I never leveled a priest shadowform so he was my experiment.  I queued up for a dungeon and in about 1 minute it popped up, awesome.  I did two dungeons and leveled up to almost level 37.  Good times. 

The character names on this second account are more hap-hazard that the ones on my account which are almost exclusively named after composers (save Troutwort and Floy–though I’ve been tempted to change Floy).  While playing Linus a guild member pointed out… “so now you have a toon named after someone who obsesses over a dead composer?”  It never dawned on me.  But yes, yes I do.  It couldn’t have been more fitting.

Probably more alts in the future, like I said, you can never have enough!

Reasons I love it:
1)  Fun games!
2)  Mounts and mini-pets!
3)  Skill ups for professions!
4)  Cool redesign!
5)  Achievements!
6)  Ponies!
7)  Shipwrecked debris for fishing! 

Reasons I hate it:
1)  My friend that plays on my second account on his level 36 hunter with fishing skill of 29 when he started caught the Sea Pony.  Elgar did not. 

Seriously, if Blizzard has a thing out for Elgar, I wish they would just publicly announce it.  Is there a reason he can’t find all the Dalaran books?  And after nearly 3 expansions of trying to fish for Mr. Pinchy and STILL no luck—but my dumb mage gets him in like 20 casts?  And now this Sea Pony incident?  Outrageous!! 

Anyways, aside from that I really like Darkmoon Faire.  The 5 skill points from profession quests is really nice for those alts that are up above 510 or so but are struggling to get the last few skill points, that will be VERY handy.  Also, there are great opportunities to catch chests from the shipwrecked debris and I have been lucky with those—though the competition is high as there are many others usually looking for them.   

It was also a good time with my friend last night, after spending lots of time fishing and then doing a dungeon, we also worked on professions, namely his mining and my herbing, both had been neglected while we were first leveling as to focus more on the game rather than the professions.  He still struggles a bit with things like shot rotation and would rather just mash buttons.  I probably wasn’t much better at that point. 

Oh!  One other thing, since I was out herbing anyways, I came across a dig site on my worgen.  He has archaeology skill 12.  I dig up a troll artifact and collect 8 pieces.  8.  WTF?  I saw they were updating the amount you could get, but really?  8?  Wow!  At skill 12 before you could only get 3!  I am going to have to see what Elgar can dig up and spend some time on archaeology again, also with my dwarves since they find things too!  That was a HUGE bonus to the profession and much needed.  I could almost finish one item in one dig site getting 8, 7, and 7.  Very nice Blizz!

Anyways, I really love 4.3 so far!!