Heroics, Heroics, And More Heroics!

Halinka got to run a few heroics yesterday and today. Today, after dinner, Delgada got to run some heroics, too. Seems both my horde guild and my alliance guild have gone heroic crazy. Why? Those damned tokens. Now, don't get me wrong, Halinka was happy to add that i-level 226 neckpiece to her hodgepodge of i-level 200 blues and purples (many of which were upgraded tonight. Thanks everyone!). She just feels a little out of her league yet. Who can blame her? She is so new to 80 that she hasn't sold off some of her green hit gear.

Delgada, on the other hand, was asked to heal tonight. Delgada hates healing. She'd rather try to dig through the glacier surrounding Arthas heart with her bare hands than be anything but a shadow priest. But, if you want the gear, sometimes you have to make allowances. Delgada found some gear that had a bit more mana regeneration on it and healed heroic Oculus, Nexus, Culling of Stratholme, Gundrak, and Drak'Tharon. She got herself a nice pair of bracers, several achievements, and a bronze drake. That's right, a bronze drake, that she can't ride yet. Delgada is a slacker. So, after the runs were through, she dug out every item in her bank that she could bear to part with, turned many bolts of netherweave into bags, churned out a few frostweave bags , cooked up all the raw meat she had iwth spices to make raiding food, and sent it all to Rowena to sell. Rowena is sitting on about 2500 gold, and had a mailbox full of teenage greens. She listed everything, and we're hoping for some nice profits.

Earlier today, Halinka got in on a Wintergrasp raid, and was invited to a 10 man Vault of Archavon run. She ran 25 man of the same instance yesterday, and with all the raid buffs,, her critical strike food, and her flask of the frost wyrm, she was pushing out about 2200 dps. In this run, she ran out of flasks, so she was using that pink elixir that boosts all stats, and an elixir of mighty spirit. Three wipes later, out of food, gear wrecked, and out of elixirs, Halinka's dps had been an abysmal 1350. I thought I had been doing everything right. I guess I wasn't. After complaining about mt shoddy performance in guild chat, one person suggested checking my rotation. I thought, you know, what has worked for me before this patch, may not work now. So I googled "Shadow priest spell rotation 3.2". It landed me on a forum post on shadowpriest.com's forums. No surprise there. If it is relevant to Shadow Priests, it has been discussed on their boards. They had macros! Here is the link, so I don't hog it all to myself. I tested it out on a dummy, doing one rotation of the start and then switching to main. I got my dps to 1750 at one point. Sounds like my problem is solved! Now, if only I could get Halinka a drake...

Dumb Warrior Learns New Trick...err...Macro.

Delgada is ready for raiding. Mostly. Tonight she hit 438 enchanting, and her tailoring is at 440ish. She is missing a few enchants (mostly because I have been using my materials to level, and not to improve her gear), and could probably upgrade some of her gems. All in all, she is ready. If she needed to heal Naxxramas, she could do it. Not alone, mind you, but she would be an asset to a raid. KNR isn't raiding, seriously, yet. I think someone posted a raid for this week. As we just lost our main tank (C, you are missed! Damn this economy for making you do this!), scheduled raids for the last 2 weeks have been cancelled due to lack of...interest? Or maybe it's because we don't have enough of the right people in the right places. Whatever, it turns out we are lacking in tanks. Delgada, it has been fun. Dust off your tank set, Shawndra.

So, I borrowed 50 gold from the guild bank to respec back to protection. All these new talents, what to pick? Sure, once leveling is over, I'll look for the perfect "cookie cutter" spec for her that will fit the guilds needs, but right now, let's play with all these new talents! I am really enjoying sword and boarding through my quests. I'm a dual wielding troll at heart. Somehow, going the sword and board route this time doesn't make me feel like I am missing out. It helps to see my shield (sporting a new titanium spike) slam for 1800-2100 when it crits. Makes me all giddy inside.

I hate having twenty different buttons for every stance that I can use. It drives me crazy! So, I had this insane idea. Let's map 2 abilities to several keys. What a concept! You know, I am not the smartest cookie sometimes, and my husband, the rogue, smiled at me, patted my head, and sent an instant message with the kind of macro I wanted, soI could copy, paste in game, and edit. For those of you who think this sounds like a good idea and may not have done this before, I will put below an example of what I did.


#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:ctrl] Cleave;Heroic Strike;

I used the "?" icon for the macro, so that it would show which attack I was using. Heroic Strike is to Cleave what Frostbolt is to Cone of Cold, sort of. Frostbolt is for one target, Cone of Cold is an area of effect cone. Heroic Strike is a single target special attack, where Cleave does about the same thing, to 2 mobs. So, if I have only one target, the button is fine, just use it. But if there is more than one mob attacking me, I'll hit the ctrl key, and now I'm hitting two mobs. I felt so clever when I was done, as I paired up hamstring with rend, devastate with victory rush, shockwave with thunder clap, shield bash with pummel...

So, I feel as if I have accomplished something huge today (yesterday...it's 1 in the morning here). I got out there, quested quite a bit, and hit 72. Replaced a ring and a ranged weapon, and didn't cry too much when that paladin killed me the tenth time. And I killed a death knight! OK, I had help. A very nice shaman from Sad Panda kept me up until she cast that infernal anti magic shield. Sent enchanting materials and raw materials for cooking to Delgada, sent leather to Maura, and sent all the leftovers to my bank character. Busy, Busy, productive day in World of Warcraft.

And the house only sort of looks messy....my day is a success! Off to bed I go. Any suggestions for a rusty tank, please leave them below!