July 2007

Misako’s first raid

stargrace July 20, 2007 1Comment

Little hard to see since it’s shrunk, but besides the blocky persona window in the way, that’s my typical UI

Last night was Deathtoll and boy was I nervous. Yes, I’ve done the zone numerous times over the course of the past two years, but I had never raided with Misako before. Not even so much as Labs. It was also my first raid as a mystic, and there was lots for me to pay attention to. Thankfully with some suggestions from Thunderwalker, I didn’t mess up too badly. It will certainly take some time to get used to healing with her vs. the other healers I have. Mystics have a lot of temporary spells to keep track of, aside from their pet, their stunning ward (which I rarely used), bolster, and torpor… the raid was a blur for the most part. It was fun though. No deaths. Well, one death because we accidentally stepped on a second group of worms and I had wards up, other then that though, no deaths. Probably one of the smoothest DT runs I’ve ever done with this guild. We’ve moved some people around in groups, and I love it. We’ll be diving back into EoF shortly and I’m looking forward to that.

As you can tell by my UI pictured above, I have a lot on the screens. Every character is pretty much the same. The persona window is blocking a lot of the battle or else you’d be able to tell that I have a lot of room to see things. I have 4 chat windows, the ones to the left are tells, group, raid, guild, and then combat, the ones to the right, are npc says and then channels. I also have 7-8 hotkey bars up at any given time depending on the character. I use profit reborn UI, best that I’ve found and it lets me see everything I need to see, like in combat power regen, and specifics about my attacks.

I’m trying to get Goudia to level 30 weaponsmith. I hate having to grind through the 20’s. Number one the +durability buttons are going to turn grey and make it impossible for me to reach pristine. Number two, it’s just drab and boring. I’m also out of vitality, so I’m trying to grind through the levels doing writs which of course just take longer. She’s sitting at 26 right now, so just 4 more levels to work through. On the plus side, the little baby items I’m making seem to sell well. It will be nice to be able to make weapons.

Other then that, things are going well. Guild drama has slowed, Kilanna is away for a few more days (thoughts are with you again girlie). Guild leader and his wife as well as a few others are going to be taking vacations shortly, so raids may be a little slowed. I’m looking to get into more rp, I miss it since the festival of unity a few months back. I’m eager to get Faydai leveled, and then maybe my troubador or ranger. I’d like to see all 3 hit level 70 before RoK comes out. Not sure how feasible that is though. I suppose I could just grind every day, but that’s going to get drab really fast. Misako needs to start / work on the Sword of Destiny, as well as her Claymore. She still needs to speak as a dragon, which I’ll probably get done sunday or monday, not sure yet. Shadowgeist has been having a lot of fun on his necromancer, think he’s close to 45 now. Lader has been playing his defiler, for some reason I just can’t see him as a healer. Lots of interesting changes coming as far as the loot system and drop system in game, looking forward to that. They patched yesterday for 2 hours but nothing was said in update notes, so I don’t even know what it was for, and then today servers are down again. I know it’s quite frequent with all the changes they’ve been adding to have these down times, but people are starting to get slightly cranky. I’d MUCH rather have the servers down for 1-2 hours every day (except weekends) then go through what WoW does though, which is 8-9 hour patches every Tuesday. It’s been that way since release.

More chattering later as always!

One of those days..

stargrace July 19, 2007 1Comment

I was attempting to write some rp note about how Misako went back to Mystic and ended up back in Qeynos with her twin sister Stargrace, but for some reason today the words just don’t seem to want to flow. So a post for a later day perhaps. The servers are down for two hours, which means I have plenty of time to get the daily house chores completed, though it would be easier if the cat wasn’t always under foot. . . and of course I completely forgot what I was going to write about.

Not much happened yesterday. I helped move things into the new guild bank, which of course was always fun. I love having a new little baby guild again and I don’t mind being removed from the raid guild since they’ve been getting on my nerves from time to time. Not their fault, it’s just that moody time for me or what ever. Spent a lot of time talking to Gothun lately, hopefully he takes what I say with a grain of salt. Talking to Kilanna a lot as well. Tonight there are raids, not sure what the target is yet so I can’t really write about it. I’m hoping today I’ll be working on HQ most of the day with various alts to help the guild get closer to 10 and then 20, we could really use some extra slots. Sorry for the short post, but it’s just not one of those blogging days!

Feeling Cool..

stargrace July 18, 2007 3Comments

Anyone remember Snow Form? It’s the item from Frostfell that lets you turn into a delightful snowperson

Dasie was looking for ways to cool off this summer in Freeport, so I have her running around in true snow woman form. As long as the snow is not yellow, it’s all good. Last night was Labs, went just fine. Misako managed to get a (very small) upgrade, some relic chain gloves. She was wearing leather ones, so even though it only gave her one more power, the mitigation boost was nice. They would have just rotted anyhow. Misako is now sitting at 6.9k self buffed power, which I love. She’s got 600 more then Dasie, who is pretty well geared and adorned.

Last night I decided to remove all of my alts from The Inquisition, and put them in a smaller / crafter orientated guild with a friend. Number one it gives me something to level up since Inquisition is level 60 and has been for quite some time, and number two, it gives me bank spaces to oohh and ahh over. Anyone who’s ever had their own guild before knows how exciting it can be to be able to have it all to yourself and not crammed full of useless crap. It’s nice to have a place to store common rares between characters, as well as L&L pieces, and adornment pieces. Now the guild just needs a few levels to get past the very minimal bank space it has currently.

SoE also was praised from one end of the server (Antonia Bayle, for those who have no idea what server I’m on) as they implemented a spam filter. I LOVE this feature, I must admit. I have gotten NO spam tells at all since they’ve added it. I have them filtered off to my combat chat window, just incase it happens to read something as spam that is not spam. It basically sets the channel as a link, any you have to click “view” if you actually want to read the spam link. Everyone of course was being stupid about it though and testing out exactly what you have to say / do in order to get added to this “spam” channel. So I no longer have to have my characters flagged as /role or /anon in order to prevent the mass tells from flying through. Yes, I love it. I have to admit that SoE has been doing some pretty amazing things in game lately. I have heard no one speaking ill of it compared to what used to be said out there. I have no idea if their player base is growing at all, but I would assume that it is. I know my server at least is very well populated, though that could be because it’s a role play preferred server, and the other one (Lucan D’Lere, which I of course moved from) is quite under populated. There is rumor that when RoK comes out a few servers will merge — and that new servers will open up, much like WoW does every few months. This entices new players to try out the game on a server that is not already inflated as far as the economy goes. They’d probably prevent anyone from transferring to the new server until things were stable and some time had passed, so as to not give players an advantage over the newer population. Personally, I think this method works great, though I will not be starting over on a new server any time soon that’s for sure. I have invested countless hours in the characters I already have.

Speaking of which, I made a new warden last night. I don’t imagine I’ll be playing her any time soon, but I did not want to betray my fury back to a warden, so this solution is far easier. She’s an iksar, though that may change, we’ll have to see.

Tonight in guild is apparently “training” for raids, which I think is sort of silly and sort of needed. I wish it were on a day we had raids, because Wednesday is like my “day off” from that sort of thing, but we’ll just see how it goes. The parses (healer at least) looked amazing last night. I want them to look that way every single night. It was main tank defiler on top (as it should be) off tank defiler (expected, since they use wards), main tank warden, main tank templar, off tank inquisitor, mage group templar, and fury in the 4th group. I don’t care what order things are in but certain groups and certain classes are ahead of others (typically). Of course gear plays some roll and how well the healer plays is a huge portion, but again, the heal parse last night… I want to see that every time we raid.

Misako goes Mystic.. why did I wait so long?!

stargrace July 17, 2007 2Comments

Misako is so far behind on everything.. including the Mystic Lake chains

So finally yesterday I bought enough pearls and moonstone to attempt to betray Misako back to a mystic. Now that I’ve done it, I wonder why I did not do it a long time ago. I love mystics. Defilers are great if you’re into some dps and a lot of debuffing, and soul ward is wonderful — but I really do love my mystic. Bolster is just plain fun, and their wards and heals (though they are pretty much the same) are just.. so.. fun. Then there’s also their temporary pet (a ghost bear that follows you when you move! Not stationary which is great..) They also buff different stats com paired to the defiler, so I’ve switched my girl over to carrying boxes (32 slot of course) instead of the bags she had. Much more room. I did some lowbie mentoring and managed to get my necromancer to level 54, playing with Geabrial (Gerbil) who is pretty close to 57. It was a good learning experience for me.

Hopefully I’ll be wiggling Misako into some raids in the future, she’s got no fabled at all but she’s sitting at 6.6k power self buffed (or there abouts) which is really nice. Her resists are not too bad either for being self buffed. She’s got 7 master spells (more then she had when she was a defiler) and the rest are all adept3. A very huge thank you to Thunderwalker for helping me out with it. The support I get from my guild mates is amazing at times. Yes, I know, what a change from my post yesterday, eh? Well, I’m a woman what can I say, I’m moody and temperamental. I know I know, bad excuse, oh well.

So. Dasie and Misako and Stargrace are all at different points of Claymore, Misako needs to get SoD under her belt some day. There’s some key quests she’s missing that I’d like to get eventually, and help Gerbil level up to 70. Lots to work on before RoK comes out in November. I’m still wondering which two characters I will take to 80 first. Ideally, I’d like it to be Misako and one of my dps / utility classes depending on who I happen to be in love with at the time. I can box two of my characters up at the same time at least.

Lader has been working on the SoD, and he’s at the CMM portion now. I wished him luck with it. Kandrial joined JoTo, and Shadowgeist applied, but is doubtful he’ll get in as recruitment is closed and he plays a shadowknight which is never well received even if he is the best I’ve ever seen before. I wish Kandrial the best and I really hope he’s happy there. Everyone pays to play this game, and it is just that, a game. So if someone is not happy, I would hope that they’d do whatever it took to make themselves happy, or else why bother playing at all.

My thoughts and prayers are with Kilanna this week as well, it’s really nice to have her back and chattering in the mornings and evenings. Some of my closest (actually… all of my closest) friensd are online, and I don’t think they’re any less of friends based on the location that they reside in.

The betrayal game, and when will the drama stop

stargrace July 16, 2007 1Comment

Dasie is quite dead. The first pull punted our tank the wrong way. The 2nd pull was flawless

I have been feeling restless in game again as of late, and anyone who knows me that it’s typically not a good thing but that it does blow over before too long. I’m not sure what it is. I tried to focus and work on a few goals that I had set for myself to no avail. Maybe it’s the time of the year or maybe I need to go find some trees. In any case. I spent 5 hours working on L&L with Dasie last night. Brownies were not nice to me. I had killed 0 when I started and had 500+ by the time I managed to find the last dropped piece, a pancreas. I found multiples of every other part — except — that one and I refused to pay the 42g the broker was asking for it. Another pretty house item to add to her walls, and more books to add to the shelves.

Yesterday I also decided to betray my conjuror back to a necromancer. I’m happy with the choice. I originally went conjuror for CoTH (call of the hero) but I had not used it except to port people to MMIS when they wanted the gear that dropped and didn’t want to let it rot. I’d much rather have a feign death, and a rez, plus Faydai had some pretty spooky rp going on when I played her (she talks to her pets and considers them her children, crazy gnome). The betrayal itself took a few hours as always, but again well worth it to me. She’s 53, so she did not have any important spells.

Next I’ll be betraying the defiler over to a mystic. I have 3 rough pearls and 16 moonstones thus far saved up to accomplish this. I need a handful of pearls still and then I think I’ll be set. I am not certain yet if I want to wait until I have them all before doing it, or just do it today and have it out of the way. It’s not a raid day (thank goodness) so I’ve got plenty of time to do whatever it is I want to do. Lader is back from Costa Rica, and I’m glad to have him around, a voice of reason and a great friend. I’m still contemplating guild issues. They don’t seem to go away and everyone promise change that never happens. One person (and the biggest voice) has already admitted defeat and is no longer going to fight on any issues because they just can’t do it any more, which sort of sucks but is understandable at the same time. I’m not sure if maybe this is just my cue to go find another guild who is accomplishing the goals I was aiming towards in November, or give this guild more time. RoK is going to come out and we’ll still be doing KoS is my honest opinion on the matter, because they refuse (they as in leadership) to listen to the advice of others. The way the positions on raids go, you do not EARN your spot to be in the main tank group, they just put their favorites there (wives, and close friends). Which is a shame. If they did what was best for the guild we may actually progress some what, and those people can still be in the raid but there are others who have proved they are worthy of the positions much more. People who know what they’re doing and can handle emergencies.

Which is my biggest gripe. I parse the heals and keep them to myself typically unless some one asks for them. Parses looked like they were improving — zone wide. However. If you looked at any battle that there was a named involved, or any battle where we had an add, or some other sort of emergency. Those people (minus one warden) in the main tank group seemed to freeze, and did not know what to do any more. The people in the other three groups had to compensate for them being unable to handle the change in tanks. It sucks. We need MT healers who can keep their tank up during the roughest of moments, who can anticipate him dropping to half health, who know when to use their emergency spells and anti-deaths and all the rest. Who can pull out all the stops. Alas, I’m rambling again. I know the issue will probably not get better. Perhaps it is time for me to look at something else guild wise, if I am so intent on being able to see some progress. Which is a shame, because I love the atmosphere of this guild, well, when the MT isn’t completely ignoring me because his wife is around and we don’t exactly get along….. *sighs*