Shiki Summarizes Clash of the Titans in WoW terms

Shiki is a guildie, she wrote this and I was so entertained I had to share...

So there was a guy named Perseus that liked to fish. He spent his entire life leveling his fishing skill with a few of his close friends, until one day the opposing faction decided to raid their spot. His friends left their corpses in the water and rerolled on a PvE server, because leveling as PvP was too frustrating.

With his fishing guild disbanded, Perseus traveled to the main city to look for another guild, and he joined . All he wanted to do was fish, but wanted him to be a warrior and defeat a world boss event before it laid waste to the main city.

But first, he needed some gear. So the GL of told Perseus to put a raid together and go farm some gear.

Perseus is a horrible raid coordinator. His raid had like 7 warriors, two hunters and a pug priest. The priest wasn’t very good. She sucked at healing and really only followed them around. The hunters were pro though. After leaving the city, Perseus finds a cool epic world drop sword.

As they traveled across the land, Perseus ended up getting cursed, and there was no way to remove it because they were too stupid to bring mages. As the curse is sapping his HP, they encounter a mini-encounter of giant scorpions and, after a while of fighting, managed to win the fight with seconds to spare on the enrage timer. The two hunters quit the raid after realizing they were the only two dps above the tank. Unfortunately by now the curse has depleted like 90% of Perseus health, so they have to find a mage.

Eventually they do find a mage, and he decurses Perseus, who also gets a cool faction shield to tank with. After losing the hunters, they invite the mage to the raid because it would be useful to have a decurse and biscuits, and continue on to the top of the mountain to turn in a quest to go fight the snake boss.

After turning in the quest to the creepy old ladies at the top of the hill, they head off to the docks in the lower city to go across to the other continent where the next quest is. As they prepare to go into the lake, the priestess AFKs and leaves the others to go into the lair for some odd reason.

When the encounter begins, most of the dps run off the edge, the rest pull aggro and get 1shotted by Medusa, leaving only the mage and two other warriors to beat the boss without any heals. The mage suicides to take a ton of Medusa’s health, as the other warrior dies while trying to use the stalactite mechanic to deal damage as well, but dies before he can do it again.

Perseus solos the rest of Medusa’s health and gets his trinket to drop. After returning to the outside, Perseus sees the afk priest get ganked by a rogue, so he flags pvp and bladestorms the rogue off the edge of a cliff. The priest releases her spirit to corpse run, but gives up because there’s no nearby graveyard.

Perseus gets a quest reward flying mount as a pat of his epic quest chain, and flies back to the main city to put together another group for the world boss event.

As he returns, two of the officers of (the GL and his daughter) are in a trade chat war with the guild over who is the better guild, and the daughter goes to solo the Kraken to prove a point. She gets sapped mid-battle as the Kraken spawns in the middle of the city, and the GL gets killed by one of the officers of .

After a long chase scene that involved the hunters running through the city on a scorpion (Leave it to the huntards to leave a guild raid to farm a mount…) Perceus goes to tank the kraken boss without a raid. The trinket from Medusa actually helped him one-shot the boss, but the platform collapsed duringt he rp event and the sapped officer of fell into the water.

Perseus goes to save her, and she offers to promote him to GL because he dad quit the game, but he’s all “hell no!” and /gquits the guild to run around on his horse.

He hooks up with the priest after she finally spirit rezzed.

The end!

I have a deep, dark and dirty secret.

I have been playing a Mage for some time now and I am loving it. I recently also joined a new raiding guild with her. Their raid schedule is much more forgiving than any guild I have ever worked with. They raid 3 nights per week, 2 hours per night, and they are doing old content. They are doing Ulduar and ToC with the occasional foray into ICC for the first boss. Even with my currently ridiculously restricted schedule I can fit 4 hours a week into my life to raid (one night is Boy Scout night with the kid so no raiding on Tuesdays). Not only is the 4 hours per week very doable it gives me some time to farm mats and contribute to the guild and maintain the tricky home life balance.

My mage is wearing almost exclusively valor gear, with the exceptionally embaresing blue sandals from Nexus, and there is no badge shoes available (ok there are but I refuse to spend 40 badges on i213 shoes). I hope to someday get a HoR/FoS to pick up the i219 pieces I could use.

This week I got in on two raids, we did the first section of Ulduar the first night, and Marrowgar the second night. I think I held my own at a respectable 5k dps on trash, and just under 4k on bosses. I think if I manage to replace the few low ilevel pieces with Ulduar/ToC stuff in the next few weeks I'll be a perfectly capable DPS heading into ICC in June like the guild plans.

I think my Shamaning is on hold until Cata comes out, as I just can't muster the availability to raid full time right now. I will however still be here, wiping PuG's and putting my two cents into all the upcoming changes to my beloved healing Shaman.

It's the end of the world as we know it!

And I feel Fine!

Remember back in November when the Blizzard pet store debuted with the super cute Pandaren Monk pet and the Mini K'T pets? The forum troll, and blog rolls exploded with cries of foul and how this is the first step into the void that can never be taken back. They said WoW would be ruined for ever, and any day now we will all be able to buy epic, nay LEGENDARY items from the Blizzard store for real money. Thus ruining the game for every one forever.

Because we all know if you have the ability to pay for in-game it it will completely destroy the ecosystem. Well it has been 6 months since the introduction of the Blizzard pet store, I did purchase both the Lil K.T. and Pandaren. You know what? My server is still chugging along, the game still works and nothing was ruined due to the massive influx of tiny pets. I still take out my K'T or Pandaren whenever I raid during trash, or when farming heroics. But I take out any of the 57 other pets I farmed as well. I am a mini pet junkie, and I will farm, buy on the AH or the Blizz store any pet I can find.

Today Blizzard dropped a bombshell on the pet store. Not only can you buy the now Lil'XT for $10. You can also buy the super cool awesome OMGWTFBBQ Celestial Steed.

So I took a casual look at the WoW.com comments, and the official Blizzard forums. There is a ton of uproar again about how these "micro transactions" (I use quotes because really come on! $10 or $25 is not a micro transaction, it is a full fledged transaction) is going to destroy WoW. Althought there is a new part to the arguement.

The general complaint now says "Blizzard is selling useful items for real money" WoW is once again ruined. Next up is legendary weapons and armor. I guess it depends on your definition of "useful items" I guess that a mount is more useful than a non-combat pet, but it is not something you cant acquire with minimal effort. To use the Celestial steed all you need is to be level 20, with basic riding skill. Of course all you get is basic riding speed, and no flying. I still fail to see how this is game breaking.

The second most common argument is "Whah! Everyone with $25 in their wallet will have this super cool and unique mount! If everyone has it it is no longer unique to top end raiders who get lucky and win a roll or DKP bid for a 2% drop rate mount, or highly skilled PvP'ers and lets face it I am neither of those, and I will never be. I cant seem to figure out arena play for some reason, regardless of the toon I have tried it on, from hunter, to resto shaman to warrior, to mage. My Arena experience has pretty much involved the match starting, and seconds later I'm a puddle on the ground while my partner says "WTF? Why didn't you do X?"

Well to the people making the second argument I have bad news for you. Regardless of what your mommies tell you, you are not a special little snow flake. You do not deserve special treatment, and I'm sorry you are just like everyone else.

I personally am fairly glad that Blizz made this mount available to anybody with $25 in their wallet. I really thought it would be a reward for something ridiculously difficult like "Defeat Alganon the Observer 25 hard mode with only 15 people, with no warriors, paladins or rogues in the raid and no raid member wearing any gear with an iLevel greater than 187."

I'm about to go home for my lunch break (I know how awesome is it that I can go home for my lunch break?) and if the que to buy the mount is less than 60000 I will be buying mine and trying it out. When you think about it...is $25 really that much for a unique mount that you will have on all current characters as well as all future characters on any server you play in the future? I don't think so.

Happy Birthday!

So today marks the 1st birthday of Sham-Wows!
Coming soon, my first forays into ICC since the second wing opened.

OMFG! Spirit Walkers Embrace.

So the Blues have released the first glimpse of the Cataclysm changes for Shaman. From what I see so far I like what I see. I mean aside from the change in cleansing. But that is just me picking nits. I like to think that you would use water to cleanse poison and disease, but it certainly isn't a game breaker.

Looking to the future: Spiritwalker's Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it's necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.

Go back and read that again, I'll wait.

Every 2 minutes we will be able to cast on the run? Yes please! I have to imagine that all caster classes will receive some kind of buff similar to this or there will be some epic QQ going on. But OMG! The thought of this ability has me giddy!

Read this one too: Healing Rain (level 83): An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. There is no limit to the number of players who can potentially be affected; however, there are diminishing returns when healing a large number of targets, much like the diminishing returns associated with AoE damage spells. This should give Restoration shaman another healing tool that improves their group-healing and heal-over-time capabilities. 2-second cast time. 30-yard range. 10-second duration. 10-second cooldown.

I hope to Sylvanas that this spell has an effect similar to the Druid Tranquility spell. A spell that for years I have thought the most beautiful spell effect in the game. I would love to see Shaman cast a area of sparkly rain on all his companions to heal them!

If this is where we are going in Cataclysm, I say bring it! Deathwing.

I will be back from my WoW haiatus after spring break!

But in the mean time, check out my recent goings on. For the last couple of months my WoW time has been severely limited. I have only had short times to pop on, 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there. This lead me from raiding to doing the only thing you can really do in short intervals. Level another alt!

I had never played a mage past level 10, so I thought I would give it a shot. I found I really enjoyed it. I mean except at the lowest levels that required me to sit and drink in between every kill. Now I am level 80, after 3 months of casual play, have managed to get the complete t9 set, and I am working on collecting the badges for the trinkets, rings and necks. I should be geared to PuG some raids on off nights by the time I am back to WoW full time.