Machu Picchu, Raiding, and The Girl Who Has Everything

Let me just say this straight-out, up, and front: I am not ready to raid.

And I’m not sure when I’ll be.

For the better part of my playing time, I’ve been beating my horns against the cliffs trying to get on raid teams, trying to stay on raid teams, and trying to fit in and do well. “Hawt” has been my miracle worker. When others were gossipy and perhaps even petty, she above all has been incredibly helpful, supportive, patient and kind. And color me paranoid, but I don’t want to ‘be a burden’ to her and her raiding evening goals. She kindly took me along on Wednesday night for normal Highmaul, and my gear wasn’t even 630, so of course I struggled. Yes, peons, you may now call me “Queen of the Understatement.” /grovel

Everyone seemed nonchalantly confident in their gear level scores, and it’s obvious many of the raiders did the Beta inside and out, so it’s old news to them. I could hear it in their voices already, though – the gentle admonishment of when others made a mistake, when something was buggy or odd, and not quite right.

I am feeling so up-ended right now in Draenor, but here’s the thing: I love it. I love finding new and different ways to do things, love my garrison, and enjoy riding this train that on one side has the past, and on the other side of the windows the parallel past–it’s trippy and wonderful. Now that’s lore, baby! And Señor found the perfect gift for me — I guess in honor of being a good guild mate all these years, and found a stray Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth for me. He’s not in Draenor yet due to life stuff. Man oh man, he got that for me just in the nick of time: Draenor is hard on gear, ya know? Now I can fix it up anytime! And I am loving the dungeon run treasures you get from having an Inn–except may not:

Takes out stains the hard way.

Someone’s got their yeti on!

 

I have to ask though, who are you people? Who are you players who have the best gear two weeks out of the gate, the challenge mode Yeti mount, and seem to act like this content is months old already? Do you have a job, sir? I’m being facetious, and it’s not coming out as funny as I would like it to. It’s not funny because it’s actually pretty cool that players do plan, figure it out, and play well.

And you may be asking yourself, Machu Picchu? The hell? Well–

The other day I got an e-mail from one of those travel group tours, and there is an upcoming tour to Machu Picchu. That place calls to me: high in the Peruvian mountains, it sings: Matty! MaTaOkA!!! Come climb to the top, breath the thin mountain air, and see the world from a completely different point of view! And I realized that if I was to ever go to Machu Picchu it would take so much planning and yes, playing. I need to get in much better physical shape, cut back, plan, and make it happen.

We should all just be more like these love birds, and take in the scenery for awhile…Zeptepi just sat right now in their potato salad

 

So what does this mean? It means I am going to go on hiatus for December: I want to level Kellda, get her geared up, and enjoy Mataoka’s fun and success with all the other parts of the game. I want to go for a walk instead of getting gems and potions once in awhile, and never feel guilty for not being able to raid. My job is going well but it’s very busy now, busy because I created it as such –doing interesting things again, and trying to focus on CD Rogue, too.   My friends are still there for me in Azeroth, and I don’t want to let the raiding ones down while I figure things out. I can’t play like it’s the middle or the end of an expansion–it’s only the beginning, and I need to remember that. Takes awhile to get acclimated to the climate.

Oh, and look what enchanting dust can do:

Finding Momo. (And OLRG Postponed Due to Babies.*)

Momokawa in my mind’s eye…add long ears and green grass hair, and done…

An adorable tumblr page I follow is Find Momo. Check it out. Today is THE DAY! The day I will get everything done. EVERYTHING!!! From groceries to garage, dusting to darning, and everything in between. Just kidding. No one darns anymore. But I can add some daydreaming in there, can’t I? Some “druiding” then.

Once in awhile I take a screenshot of when Mataoka does well…just to remind myself that enhancement shamans are powerful.

Hawtpocket has been incredible — my first impressions of her, that amazingly calm leadership and superb tanking skills were spot on. She started an open raid group, and her vision is to create a solid group of players from around many servers. Her vision is one that I share–no borders or boundaries in Azeroth. We’re in our first week of normal raiding, and she’s asked that my beautiful Druid Momokawa heal. Momo, put down that sake bottle and get out there! And I am going to say something so obvious, so painfully smack-in-the-face there, you’re going to want to pinch me, but for the first time as a healer I want to craft my character to be competitive. Not competitive in the sense of I need to “beat” everyone, but keep up, contribute, and make things easier. One other druid, Henzuru, was kicking my tail feathers in heals, and I kept sneaking peeks at his gear, glyphs, and talents. His gear was not that much better than mine, glyphs and talents about the same, but he did something I hadn’t- he set his gear to tier. I discussed this with another Druid buddy, and he said the tier for Druid healing was essential. I dug through Momo’s bags and cobbled a set of tier: her gloves are heroic, her helm I believe from LFR, and everything in between. Like wearing a designer dress but granny panties, but it gets the job done.

Momokawa of Whisperwind: Going to Punch those Heals Out

Well of course I had to mog the wind-blown chicken helm that is the Helm of the Shattered Vale. More like Helm of the Shattered Windowpane. Her look is always changing, a work in progress, and when her cloak flashes its wings, the results can be disarming:

Cats with wings is pretty awesome, too…

So I’ll be checking in with the most supreme expert Druid healer I know, Navimie, and checking my stats and mix things up. I will be adding gems and enchants, and am just thinking my hoarding paid off.

*In other news, I can’t make it tomorrow to OLRG because I’m going to a baby shower. See? Scared you didn’t I?

Oh, and wandering around, spotted a few cool things. First, give it up for Sharina, for that little gnome has style, baby!

How did she get all those dogs out?

And Drunken Fish is closer to the Classy Gnomes: GNOME OF ANYONE?!

Do you gnome someone who wants to be a Drunken Fish?

And while looking for cool images came across this website:

This is what a human female warlock SHOULD look like…

So for now, that’s about it. Oh you’ll see me in Azeroth today, too. Always something to do there.

Best Three Words:

New shiny shinies!

Nope, not “I love you,” or “Extra pickles, please,” but “Update (from armory).” I want to thank Hawt once again for a wonderful, stress-free, drama-free, super amazing fun time on a 25-man normal. I received a new shiny ring and a great trinket. Sure, I lost the roll of a most-coveted sword to Jed, but because he’s JED for Velen’s sake I can forgive him anything. (I really want a sword/wand and off-hand combo for Kellda: more mog options!) That was so much fun–I felt confident and relaxed. I wish I hadn’t cut open my left-hand’s middle finger on kitchen scissors before the fight, but that is still no excuse for my lackluster dps, however. But here’s the thing: I know how to take a long look at performance and correct it. After work today I’ll pour over Icy Veins and Ask Mr. Robot and make some gear and reforging corrections, review my glyphs, and then hit the target dummies for a bit. There is still work to do. Not to mention finding a band-aid. Thanks again, Hawt!

This is her character BigMac – she found a friend!

In WowInsider!

PS Time to catch up on some reading, too: http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/06/03/know-your-lore-the-lore-of-the-warlock/

And LUCKY! Finally I can get Matty out of that nasty, monkey-poo cave –

Matty Unplugged…

Onxie has nothing to do with this post: just thought it was adorable that she fell on this rafter with her imp and pet rat, Mocosa.

It is a good problem to have, having too many friends. I don’t believe you can have too many friends, actually. Last night I had an embarrassment of riches, however, and to one and all – I apologize. Tuesdays (and Thursdays) I usually need to take Cub somewhere (okay, he’s a Cub who shaves, but he’ll always be my Cub), and between goofing off in Azeroth, and getting used to my new computer, and some glitches, and add-ons, I hadn’t set up Vent yet, and there are just you know, things. I can plug in my monitor to the new computer, but even that gets a little wonky. Last night when I logged on Neo whispered me that there was a Flex, (on a Tuesday, cool!) but right before that Shoryl/Breige asked if I wanted to go to Reloaded’s 25-man. I said sure if I could heal, but never heard back from her, so just assumed Log didn’t need anyone, or specifically me since my last performance on my old computer was so dismal. I have noticed that my framerate has nearly tripled, though, so that’s cool. Anyway, so off I went with Neo on Kellrose, the Most Unluckiest RNG Priest in All of the World; getting gear and coins for her as been a struggle. Her dps was terrible – she’s still wearing boosted gear which is shit, and has an LFR staff. Neo and his guild is totally fine with that, but at the same moment we finished Thok, Shoryl asked if I wanted to go again, and I thought maybe this would be my redemption on Sajja, the monk healer.

It wasn’t.

Oh well.

Still trying to figure out monk healing, and that’s going to take some time and practice. Did get some decent gear though – tier chest piece, so almost to 4-piece set, new boots, and gloves, but I had pretty good gloves. I never did get the chance to get Vent going last night, and that felt more odd than I thought it would. I certainly didn’t like being “all capped” in Raid Announcements, (I clicked on the loot box to take a peek, not knowing the loot master couldn’t see it -was so embarrassed when I got blasted in the RA). But I loved being there with Hawt, Turk, and Breige. Twenty-five man groups still feel a bit unweildy, but it’ll all work out. I died once when I didn’t run far enough away from Skull Cracker, and on the adds in Nourshen. Not sure why they weren’t dead or dying and ate my pretty monk face, but whatev. Turk told me to install VEM and SKULL CRACKER and embarrassed, I said, I have VEM, I love it, I saw the Skull Cracker happened, and tried to get out of the way, but didn’t get far enough. At one point, my screen went completely black. What?! NOOOOO! Now I’ll be really judged! I thought it was an epic dc, but alas. no, just my nervousness about going with Reloaded, and I forgot to plug in the laptop. Um, electricity is still needed to perform magic. (Damn I am a dork.) It doesn’t matter. Folks have formed their opinions of me, and can’t do too much to change minds. I’m just glad I have good friends who know me, and what happens behind the scenes.

For example, the other thing folks don’t see is CD Rogue comes home around raid time, and inevitably I die. What’s the correlation? Does he come home, see that I’m playing and toss my keyboard out the window and put my hard-drive in the microwave? No, hardly. He is not a raider, and I feel guilty if I don’t say hello, how was your day, blah blah blah blah. One of my pet peeves is the term “wife aggro.” It implies fishwife shrews not understanding the ‘menfolk’ playing a GAME. I am not going to start saying “hubby-aggro” to counter its sexist undertones. Life is life. Neo has often said his guild understands family, life, etc., and I believe they do. I hope that’s true.

Anyway – I hope I can come along for Tuesday nights on Sajja, and then do Flex on other nights with Neo. Whatever works. But between 6:30-7:30, I will be looking away from my screen at some moment to say hello to CD Rogue. And ask if he remembered to bring home some wine.