Almost Done in There

Fairly productive week. Got the first nine bosses down on Wednesday, and Thursday with Tortos and Durumu being the only bother. Managed to get Iron Quon down tonight along with the Twin Consorts. This means we'll have a good four hours or so on Lei Shen tomorrow. Should be no problem. *snicker* The kills bumped us into 2nd on the server:

Iron Quon was kind enough to drop Shoulders of the Crackling Vanquisher so I now have the 2pc going. Might have to find a transmog that works with the shoulders… that tongue is pretty amusing:

Brought me up four iLevels so now I'm back in the top 10:

Good times!

Unwanted Membership

Players on Balnazzar must feel pretty special to get a client announcement all to themselves…

WoWProgress and Invisibility

We're working on the damn turtle tonight. Tried a few pulls last night. Some people had to leave last night so I filled in on the shaman. Was good to get a look at the fight but damn. The exact words of the healer on the first pull: "Is this for real?" We all got a laugh but damn. Going to take some coordination.

I'm sure our competitors are working on it too. Yet for now we're still at #3 on the server. The raid leader is going to have monk and paladin tanks for now. Says he'll get me in on the hydra.

Poked around for some ePeen only to find disappointment. For some reason my DK has disappeared from the rankings:

My in-game character sheet shows me at iLevel 504, which would mean I'm the 6th most geared DK on the server. The web portal also shows me at 504. Not sure what I can do but I will explore options! I want my name up there, dammit!! While it still can be…

Soule Symphony No. 1

Had no idea one man was behind so much of the music that's driven many of the games I have enjoyed. Thankfully an article I caught on Kotaku informed me. Really hope his KickStarter goes well.

Kalimdor Today, the World Next Week

I gave up on Minfernal around Christmas time. Figured it's been long enough that the camp might be less intense. So with today's restart I decided to get the three farmers in different shared realms into position.

Was tuning my macro so figured there was something wrong when it beeped. But it was not wrong! Swooped down on a spawn before the reset!! Naturally I was worried that the servers would hiccup before I finished but my insane luck held…

Wanted to call him Server Restart but the name was "reserved" or something. Tried a few variants until one worked.

This was truly fortuitous. With the Qiraji Guardling becoming available next week, I should be able to get Kalimdor Safari done which completes World Safari and gets me the Zookeeper title.

Our Processes Continue to Process

Another two hours of maintenance. *sigh* Or maybe more! *lol* Not really suprised—just anxious. Would like to get the new first ToT LFR done with the quality, hard-core people. The rest of the rabble will likely make it painful.

With Great Power Comes Great.... Trolling

It's unwise to admit this but supposedly confession is good for the soul. Last night I was doing some last-minute LFRs with various characters. On the Warlock for Spirit Kings I did a Shadowfury during Maddening Shout without even thinking… damned PvP reflex. Naturally people cried so I kept doing it. The third one I did seconds before a Flanking Orders where the tank hadn't moved so I killed at least eight people, possibly eleven.

So we wiped, six people left the raid, cries of outrage sprinkled raid chat, and I hid in the shadows, plotting. Stunning again would be too blatant so I took a different tack. As the shout cast went out I put up an empowered Seed of Corruption then threw out as many Unstable Afflictions as possible to silence the reliable healers. The results?

Top of the Friendly Fire charts! That hunter was right there with me though. *snicker*

The bad part was laughing so hard my sides hurt. Was also difficult to see through the tears. *sigh* Still, it felt good. I tank so often I'm constantly in fear of some asshole doing this type of thing to me. Occasionally it's good to be the asshole. *smirk*

Week One 5.2 Progress

Thanks to yesterday's last-minute before-reset hotfixes we managed to get Council down despite our lack of gear. This snuck us into third overall:

Our healers had some issues so we started two hours late. Everyone was tired though ecstatic to find the third ToT encounter so approachable. Got a few pulls in on Torta yet a healer had to pass out so we called it. It's very likely we'll get up to the birdie this week.

We don't raid today so I'll bet DR and Brotherhood sneak past us for a few days. Was funny to see them scrambling to get a kill or two in as well last night. Saw DR's Badmanwalkin asking for two DPS in Trade Chat even! *lol*

Audio Books ... in Skyrim?!

Gopher just tweeted about an interesting mod project: Read Books Aloud. It's a framework for trying audio to the books in-game made by Chesko (a great author famed for Frostfall). So great to see innovation still coming almost a year-and-a-half after release.

In other Skyrim news… patch 1.9 was announced. The beta is already available so I probably should look into using it. Will need to have a project or two updated possibly.

Similar to 1.6 it really only adds one major feature: Legendary Skills and difficulty. It is also the vehicle for a number of bug fixes. 

Renewed Battle Pet Interest

After getting the Jade Tentacle the epic trainers in Pandaria were too frustrating to bother with and I eventually lost interest in Battle Pets entirely. Yet without a fixed raiding schedule the boredom has renewed my attention.

Over the weekend I took an hour or two and finished up Pandaren Spirit Tamer with Taming the World shortly after. While handy the Safari Hat is rather insidious as it makes me want to level more pets.

I suppose the spark of interest originated from a friendly competition put on by The Anzacs. They hosted a competition that I managed to win. First prize was a Blizzard Store pet of my choice. From a battle perspective Lil' Ragnaros would have been optimal yet I decided on the damnably adorable Cinder Kitten:

Named him after the organizer of the contest. The real threat was from Raven though I managed to defeat her with Bizzlehops, Sizzletint, and Ookin Dooker. Pretty fun and less evil since it was only pets level 10-13. With WoWkemon we were even able to observe other matches when the addon didn't act up.

While there are many helpful guides out there, Battle Pet Dailies was the best for me. I still need to write up my own guide for the pets I used for each boss since the "Use this Class" doesn't always work.