Archive for the “Shinyz” Category

So last night I got dragged into a ToC run with a friend of mine. We were going to do 1 heroic run and at least 2 regulars (we were going to do more and farm, but I was tired and people were dragging their feet getting started).

Heroic went fine, as did the first regular run. I managed to get uncontested (finally) The Black Heart, which now gives me a full tanking set (and 30,000 HP when fully buffed)! Not that I intend to do any tanking, any time soon.

Or so I thought…

The 2nd regular ToC run went less than stellar, as our healer DC’d, and shortly after that our Shadow Priest had to bounce (it was him and his girlfriend’s anniversary). So it left myself (on my Druid, obviously), a Prot/Holy Pally, and a Holy Pally who swapped over to his Hunter. We decided to let the Prot/Holy Pally heal, and I’d attempt to tank it and we’d 3-man it. So, we did.

3-manning it, we did okay (it was Paletress, btw, who we were stuck on. Eadric is easy as hell compared to her). Got the image down to 30k before we wiped. The Hunter called in another guildie, who hopped on his Warrior. The extra DPS made a big difference- we 4-manned her np. Even better- she dropped the Banner of Victory, which I was hoping to snag for my kitty set (my Feral set is kitty-focused, with some tanking talents for the sake of soloing/emergencies). The Warrior and I both needed… and I won! (If you check my armory I’m in my Feral kitty set atm.)

So we continued with that set-up and I tanked the Black Knight and it was… easy. Even the 2nd phase, with all the stupid adds- no problem. Maybe our Pally healer was just that good, I don’t know. But tanking was kind of fun, and I think I’d like to try again sometime…

Normally I won’t post twice for something kind of meh like this, but I was seriously in shock last night. XD

My Guild Leader and some of the other officers are currently aware about my current real life situation and the fact that for now, I’m stuck playing on my Macbook again, until I can get my PC hooked up in my current situation.

Last night, since one of our regular healers has returned from his summer adventures, we took a 10-man group back into Ulduar once again.

Here’s where the shock comes in. I hop on Binya and get invited. As I make my way to Ulduar, I mention in raid chat that I’m still on my laptop, which tends to be a little laggy, so if people die I didn’t want to be held accountable. Then something incredible happened.

“You’re going to DPS tonight.”

I almost damn near fell off the bed I was sitting on at the time.

I’ve *NEVER* DPS’d in a guild Ulduar-10 run. EVER. It was a sore point for awhile, but since I started to enjoy playing Discipline again, I didn’t mind too much and sort of accepted my fate. So I was kinda floored.

But it gets better.

I replied that they should let me bring my Druid, since she does more DPS than my Shadow Priest now.

“So go hop on Esa then, lol.”

@_____@

So yep. I got to bring Esa into ulduar last night. I can pull 3.4k DPS on dummies in Ironforge, and that was before I snagged a double 2-piece bonus on my gear (Tier 7/7.5 2 piece and 8.5 2 piece now). I was consistently in the top 3-4 on DPS and damage, so I’m really happy that I could hold my own. I may see if I can bring her into Ulduar-25 tonight, unless they need me to heal (and really, Esa can use the upgrades more than Binya this very second). :3

Of course, we managed to freaking own Razorscale’s face and get A Quick Shave (10 player) last night… which *Binya* doesn’t even have. >_o I also missed out on my sexy Cloth shoulders that dropped, that would have been nice for my Discipline set, but ah well (they still went to good use- to the Holy/Discpline Priest my Guild Leader was playing). Still, it was funny. XD

Speaking of Binya, I was absolutely thrilled after spending like 3 days farming normal Trial of the Champion, I finally got to see Tears of the Vanquished drop! I’d been itching for it for my Disc build, especially since it’s more or less a healing-focused Pandora’s Plea -1. :3 The next thing I did, after equipping it, was swapping my cloak enchant from Lightweave Embroidery to Darkglow Embroidery. Hopefuly now with the throughput from the trinket, Darkglow, and Rapture returns, I’ll be able to heal longer than I was previously able to (especially in Ulduar-10 and some other really healing-intensive fights).

There isn’t anything else from normal or Heroic ToC that I need or want on Binya now, so hopefully I can keep bringing Esa in to flush out her Feral set some more. I really, *really* want to snag Marrowstrike for her Feral set, and I’d ideally like to get her Uruka’s Band of Zeal to replace her last green, as well as get her Banner of Victory to replace one of her trinkets. I really need to get more hit in her set though- plenty of expertise, armor penetration, and agility in her set at the moment, but I’m sorely lacking in hit. We’ll see what happens though. :3

First and foremost, I’m intrigued by the info that’s out about FFXIV. If you haven’t been to the NA/English website, go now! I didn’t know it was possible to make Tarutaru (Lalafell in XIV) any cuter than they already are! I’m not sure if I’ll wind up being a full-time, hard-core player of XIV when it’s released, but it’s definitely piqued my interest and I’m looking forward to giving it a whirl (I might try to get into the beta… if that’s in any way possible. We’ll see).

Updates here will probably be a tad sparse for awhile- I’m going through some pretty major drama and changes in my real life right now, and I’m not sure how many witty and upbeat blog entries about my videogame habit I can crank out, honestly. I’ll try to keep updating on a fairly regular basis (though, there will be no update next week, as I’ll be out of town on vacation for a week).

I’m gonna kind of toss the goals thing aside, as my brain feels a bit like mashed potatoes right now.

My Druid, Esa, has been progressing nicely since patch 3.2 went live! I’ve gotten lucky with a drop in VoA25, and got myself my 8.5 hands. Thanks to the emblem change, I’m about a day of heroics away from getting the headpiece and sporting that sexy two-piece bonus.

She’s also gotten some really nice upgrades from the new 5-man heroic. Abyssal Rune, Barkhide Treads, and (most excitedly) Spectral Kris! DPS-wise, I think my playing has improved (or it might be a result of the gear upgrades) a lot, and once I make one or two more upgrades, I’m considering taking her into Ulduar and see how she fares. :3

Haven’t really played Binya much, aside from healing some heroics here and there. Haven’t really raided in like two weeks.

Guild drama has sort of cooled off. Sort of. But that’s a long and annoying story that I don’t really feel like getting into here, especially right now.

It’s been pretty quiet. Just working on saving money for my Druid’s epic flying now (when I’m not spending said money on enchanting/gemming her gear upgrades), and collecting emblems on both characters. I did get the mail BoA chest for my baby hunter, and my partner in crime got the leather for his rogue, since we’ve been levelling them together (they’re both at 42 at the moment). We haven’t actually played them since we got the pieces though, but that bonus exp should make things fly for us now (maybe we’ll even play them more than once in a blue moon, lol).

Oh yeah, and since the change to opposite faction rolling on PvP servers, I now have two little hordies to level. :X A Blood Elf Priest and a Tauren Shaman. Don’t know when I’ll actually have time to play them, but I was considering moving my Rogue from Tanaris over to Ner’zhul now. We’ll see what happens in time, I suppose. Have a lot more important things to concern myself with at the moment…

Since Berrie and Maiev have officially posted it, I’ll make my mini-announcement here as well- I was invited to join and have joined up with the team at www.ffxivblog.com! I’m kind of honored to be asked, but part of the “criteria” was to be a long-time blogger, and seeing as this blog hit its 3 year anniversary yesterday (I’m shocked as well!), I guess I’d fit that criteria. :3

It’s kind of crazy to me to be blogging alongside people who were my inspiration to start this blog, too. Not to mention, before I got to know him, I was always in awe of Maiev on Fenrir. :3 I guess I’ve come a long way, even if half the content of this blog is mindless drivel (I’ve been trying to keep the emo to a minimum ).

Anyway, since there isn’t a whole lot out there just yet for FFXIV, I haven’t been real inspired to blog yet… and a lot of the technical stuff just makes me go glassy-eyed, but once there’s a little more meat out there to spark some inspiration, I’ll be contributing to the blog. I’m actually kind of excited about it, hehe. XD

So yesterday marks the 3rd anniversary of A Bardlet’s Tale, which also means that overall, I’ve been blogging on the ‘net for 11 years now. Crazy stuff. All my old stuff got taken down (it was all real-life related, and once I started working in a public school, I didn’t want it to come back and bite me in the ass), but I do have backups on floppy disk (lol) somewhere. XD Kind of crazy. And while ABT has strayed from being a strictly-FFXI blog as of late, I do still have a few friends and readers who keep coming back. :3 Though sometimes I’m not sure why, exactly. XD

Anyway, enough waxing poetic. Weekly achievements and goals after the jump!

Read the rest of this entry »

So first things first, lets see how I fared on this past week’s goals!

- Druid to at least 77.

Achieved! I pushed it to 78 yesterday, because I had enough rested experience to get there. Got my Cold-Weather Flying and now my slow bird-form arse can chug along through Northrend.

- 300 Herbalism on my Druid.

Failed. D: It’s still at 150. I totally meant to do it last night after my buddy logged, but then I got sucked into a regular Oculus run on Esa… and then they wanted Binya to heal a timed Culling of Stratholme run soo… yeah.

- Save as close to 5000 gold as I can for Esa’s Epic flying.

Failed~ish. :S I’m at 2500 across all toons, so halfway. I need to suck it up and start running Hodir dailies on Binya again, and maybe today I’ll start the quest chain to open them out on Esa. I’m hoping, if I suck it up and really make a push, to maybe have it done before I go out of town at the end of the month. I need to buy a whole bunch of mats though to get Esa’s boomkin stuffs made so I can pretty much start running Naxx not long after finally dinging 80 (if I can get everything I want to get crafted, crafted, then I should only need to run 3 fairly easy heroics for some stuff :3).

- Do either Ulduar-10 or 25 this week, and Naxx-25.

Achieved? :s Didn’t do Naxx-25 this lockout, BUT my guild teamed up for an Ulduar-25 (we’re continuing tonight, actually), and we did do Ulduar-10 up to Kologarn. So that’s 2/3 on that one, so I think it counts as achieved. :3 I did get a smexy new wand though- 3rd best in slot, and probably the best I’ll be able to do in that slot for Shadow for a loooong time.

So now… this week’s goals!

- Druid to 80. Yes, I am being *very* ambitious, but the last two weeks I managed two levels/week, so I think I can do it this time around! If I can get to 79 by Thursday/Friday, I *know* I can pull it off over the weekend (especially since I have no real-life obligations this weekend!).

- Herbalism to 300. Third time’s the charm?

- 30000 Honor on Binya to snag a PvP ring. The only purchases for my PvP set that remain are a backpiece and 2 rings, then it’s all about finding an arena team. Yes, I’m going to try some arena. Discipline ftw! I’m only at 1500 honor right now though, so this will be a bit of a push.

- Get 2-3 pieces of Esa’s 80-Boomkin set made. I’m aiming for finishing her Ebonweave Robe, and 2 Titanium Spellshock pieces. I still need to buy 4 Ebonweave cloth and 6 more Dragon’s Eyes though. So much for saving for Epic flying.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way (this week’s goals are going to be a real beast to tackle, too), onto my ridiculous luck.

I’m sort of a fishing nut in WoW, in case you haven’t noticed. :3 After snagging my Sea Turtle on Saturday, I thought my luck ran out.

I was wrong.

The one thing I’ve wanted *SO BAD* from the Dalaran fishing dailies is a Jeweled Fishing Pole. It’s pink. It’s sparkly. It looks like something out of Cardcaptor Sakura, one of my all-time favorite anime/manga.

So imagine my shock to be running through Dalaran after turning in (once again) the luckiest fishing daily EVAR, Monsterbelly Appetite…

Oh the squee’s and girlish glee that erupted from me at seeing that. So of course, I threw on my PvP stuff (Ner’zhul horde like to gank fishing people, I like to be prepared), my fishing hat, and my shiny new pole and took it for a spin.

Yeah, even though my Kalu’ak pole has 30+5 fishing, and my Bone Fishing Pole has 30+3 fishing… they’ve been officially retired.

I need to start giving the fishing tournament a try again. “Salty Binya” would perfect the ensemble. ;3