... In Which Blizzard has a Sense of Humor

I was wandering [slowly] around Dalaran, and I came across this:

I found it hilarious. And cute.

Oh, and the tree to the left?

Yup. That's me. I wish I was that big!

[That's really all I have to say. I'm not crazy about LK/Northrend. Wasn't before it came out, still am not. Ah well. I've been playing my shaman a lot [she's 66 now] and started a Death Knight to play with The Aussie. So... Yes. That's all that I've been doing.

And not writing. Ugh.]

Hacking the Roots

Phae, among many other bloggers, has pointed out Ghostcrawler's [and Blizzard, in general] intent of nerfing Wild Growth [and CoH, but I'm not priest, and will refrain from commenting on that one!].

Now, I will admit: I am rather old fashioned. I can't seem to wrap my mind around the fact that I am to be using HT, and, right now, I just don't have the glyph space for it. One Major Glyph spot is taken for Maul, and the other, for Rejuvenation. This may change when the dual specs and having glyphs for each spec comes out, but, until then, I'll stick with my ever trusty HoTs.

Now, any druid worth their salt should know better than to just spam "Wild Growth" -- in fact, I've even gotten in an argument with a fellow tree about it, for he says that all he does is spam Wild Growth... To emphasize my point, this is just one example of the healing done in a ZA raid:

I came in on top, and my meters looked like this. Two healers. I have always been a liberal user of Regrowth, and with the changes made to it, it's making me use it even more. Still, however, Lifebloom was top -- I'm a little terrified by just how many times I let it bloom, but, at the same time, for how fast we were zerging the place, sometimes it was just unavoidable.

Night before last, we went to Black Temple. Five healers, and I beat both of our priests [the resto shaman beat me in Recount [although he had a lot of overhealing], and the holy paladin shamed us all -- I hear the new changes to Light have put them on top of the meters, of both healing and overhealing].

This time, however, Wild Growth did what Blizzard feared: came out on top. But not by the extravagant 70% that they mention. Over four hours of healing, and only one fight in which I can recall hitting Wild Growth a lot: Supremus, when he's running around and looking at everyone but the main tank. During that phase, I was running around, waving my leafy branches, Lifeblooming and Wild Growthing everything within reach while trying to find our MT. Sure, I used it on many trash pulls, but when everything has been nerfed into the ground and even groups that are generally around Badge/ZA geared are AoEing BT down, it is to be expected that we, as healers, will be using our AoE heals often to make up for it. [And, for me, raiding with all of 4FPS, gives me more of a reason to do so.]

Sure, we may not be at Sunwell level, but we are hardly eschewing our other spells.

That druid I mentioned earlier? The one who said that all he does in raids is spam Wild Growth? I laughed at him. Not only was he a bear at the time, but the druid who was following his instructions, although having gear close to mine, was doing 25% less overall healing than I, and I was using most of my arsenal, whereas he stuck to two or three spells.

Wild Growth is a powerful tool, I'll give them that. What makes it more powerful, however, is when druids learn how to weave it into their normal spell rotation, rather than letting it take over everything.

Will I be upset over the nerf? Yes. Blizzard seems to love nerfing trees.

Will I be too devastated? Probably not. I don't tend to spam the spell, but use it in between all of my other spells and when I remember that I finally have an awesome AoE heal.

I do personally have a few problems with Wild Growth, though, which may factor into my thoughts.

• It isn't the most optimal for 5-mans. At least, for me, I found that it doesn't actually heal all five people. More often than not, it ignores me.
  
• Smart choosing? Sometimes. Other times, it ignores people who are lowest on health but are in range and instead tops off other people. It still forces one to be aware of one's surroundings and who is low on health [which, in my opinion, is a good thing. I think being a good healer has to involve being able to look at both the raid frames and at the fight, to know where you, as the healer, are in proximity to your tanks, your DPS, and just what big bad guy / AoE might come and kill you and how to escape from it].
  

I asked a few other trees about their opinions. Their feedback?
Pet Tree: "Would give those Wild Growth Spammers learn. :P Wild Growth isn't our only heal."
F: "It's a HoT. giving it a CD doesn't do much, since it'll just overwrite a good fraction of the time anyway."
S: "-shrug- Lifebloom was spammed for long enough, just a new spell its been switched to."
F: "It gets spammed, when you don't know what you really should be doing."
Pet Tree: "To be honest: WG is just an okay heal. It's a good AoE damage heal."
F: "It's good for stuff like Felmyst."
Pet Tree: "Rejuv, with the glyph or not, is a far more superior HoT than rolled Lifeblooms or WG Spam." [I may not agree with this one, but...]
S: "I don't use it that much unless like said its AoE damage. I love my rejuv right now."
Me: "Rejuv is wonderful. I've got a love affair with Regrowth though."
Pet Tree: "We have too many Lifebloom rollers and WG spammers. Lifebloom rolls are only good for people taking heavy damage, sch as a tank. Rejuv is a massively underestimated heal."
S: "With replenish, I think a lot more people will be using Rejuv. I sure use it more when I'm tree."

Then we wander off and talk about every other class and their healing, and GC's nerfing. Oh, and tanking. And bear armor nerfs. [I'm still sore about that one, which is why I'm tree.]

In sum, the Pet Tree puts it best: "Tree Druids are still Uber healers. We just have more stuff to use and it kills our mana efficiency."

Which was Blizzard's point, so, really, all's working out just as they planned. Not to our liking, perhaps, but it is to their ideals...

November? Oh, Geeze! I'm Dead.

WoW? Nope. I've played, yes, but this month being what it is, means that somewhere in between me being ill and sleeping more than a newborn baby does, I've been writing. And [as the Aussie pointed out], to continue the string of references I've been making to them, been listening to Aussie voices. -grin-

Yup. As everyone knows, this month is November. As most people *should* know [for many of us bloggers have been mentioning/spazzing/"OH GOD NO" about it for a month, a least], this month is also National Novel Writing Month -- NaNoWiMo, or just NaNo for short. Meaning that we ought to be well on our way to writing fifty-thousand words. In one month.

Now, I must confess. I'm an odd sort of writer. When I want to write, I write. However, I don't write in chronological order; scenes appear in my head, and, if I get lucky, I scribble them down, expand on it, make it a full blown chapter [my chapters are an average of two-thousand, three hundred words long]. Then the muse withdraws, ponders, and comes back.

Thus far, I've gotten a grand total of eight thousand, three-hundred and... ninety-nine words, with two hundred forty-six of them a summary rather than a chapter. And have come to a stop. I've realized that I don't know where I'm going with this, which is why my brain has stopped coming up with the mini-scenes. There's a few different ways I could save all those thousands I've already written, or I could start over...

But starting over would mean that I'm terribly behind, which would give me even less inspiration to continue. At the same time, however, it would give me a brand new topic [of only Elune knows what] to write upon, and maybe the muse can seize up upon it more. As a third option, I could hack two centuries away from the story, and relocate it to somewhere more around the 1800's, an era that I am familiar with more so than our own. But that would mean editing, something Skyla said we should lock away... but if it gave me plot, if it gave me muse... why not?

It would mean nearly starting over, but I can keep much of my material... and would have a rake, and, if I truly wanted to make it cross the fantasy world, I could. Vampires are much easier to integrate into that era, for some reason...

Oh, and there's always the option of keep plowing on and seeing if the muse can do it...

I'm flailing, that's for sure. Oh, and it's four in the morning and I just got up from my four hour nap...

Dwarves are Smelly and Gross

Lin's going to write a bit differently today, as she is going to combine real life experiences with WoW experiences, and see if she can make a strong enough connection to make a fair post.

It's human nature to make assumptions about people. Perhaps it is due to their looks, or an action of some sort. Whatever the cause, people tend to do it. When concerning myself, two strong incidents stand out from the rest.

Now, take me. I'm a young Asian girl who (clearly) speaks English. All right. With that in mind...

As I mentioned a while back, I went on vacation. One of the places we went was Antelope Canyon. As it is special land, they have tour guides. He comes up to us, and starts to explain the tour. Me, I was staring off into space as is my want, and didn't actually catch it. And he had an accent, so it was a bit harder to understand while not paying attention. So I asked him to repeat what he had just said... he repeated everything, yes, but... so slowly that either he thought that we couldn't speak English, and, therefore, had to say it s l o w l y so we would understand, or our IQ was below 30. Hrm...

And then one of the brass at the Dragon Ball Festival. "Is there a owner here?". We point at the organizer for the booth, and she says: "one who can speak English?" We all could, and informed her of such. Just because we were chatting away in Mandarin in the back doesn't mean that we couldn't speak English.

Both of those were rather insulting.

*Assumptions*

Relating to WoW:

Have you made assumptions about someone due to their class/spec/even how they type that led you to put your foot in your mouth, or just made you regret holding the thoughts you did at one time?

Some assumption examples:

• [Roleplay sense] What Dwarves are Not -- smelly, short, fat, and/or drunkards.
  
• Literate people play better. >_>
  
• ______ spec sucks for DPS -- do _____
  
• Rogue/warriors/mages/healers-of-any-sort should just give up. Druids do it better. [I've actually heard this one. Not quite an "assumption", but... still. I felt that I should toss it in here.]
  
• The classic example: Hunters are easymode. You can't fail playing one. [Yes you can. That's why there's the label "huntard".]
  
• Ret pallys are OP. Just like hunters... which is why they're nerfing them.
  
• Alliance: All Horde are evil/want to kill you/variant.
• Lots of muscles either mean one has to stupid. [I find people who work out a lot to be highly insecure, which is why they do it in the first place. And they're sweethearts/brainy.]
  
• Any other real life or WoW example you can think of, as both can apply to WoW [through roleplaying].

People are not always what they seem; take a few moments and chat with them. Just because one happens to be a cute little gnome doesn't mean that they can pull out a sword or two and cut you up into little pieces!

Behind the Screen: Fimlys

Two weeks ago (I think, anyway!), I had the great pleasure of being able to meet our very own Fimlys, of Asleep at the WoW. Now, despite whatever he may tell you, he is not boring. Or ancient. Or anything of the sort!

He's young at heart [couldn't resist -- Frank Sinatra!]. He is the reason for me driving six extra hours this week, but it was completely worth every moment of it!

It was... Sunday night, really, that I discovered that he was coming to town. Imagine my delight! How utterly awesome and rare is it that someone from the interwebs (especially our blogging universe!) to visit one's town! Not only that, but, where he was staying just so happened to be Three minutes away from one's house! I had to see him. Just had to. So we chatted, and decided upon Tuesday morning, bright and early at 8:30AM.

Now, I must mention that I normally hold Aussie hours (right now it is 4:19AM and I'm awake -- it's 8:19PM in eastern Australia!), so 8:30AM is ridiculously early for me, and completely screwed up my sleep schedule for that week... but it was a whole lot of fun.

On Tuesday, I took him (well, he drove, but still) down to downtown Denver. The Pavilion, LoDo, 16th Street Mall... We walked a lot. A LOT. Definitely had to stop and sit down a few times, just to rest our legs. Then drove all about town, stopping in quite a few places along the way to pick up a few things, and just to show off my very limited knowledge about the town.

We decided, that evening, to meet up again on Thursday -- again, in the morning, with me actually going back up to school (about an hour and fifteen minute drive) on that day for a midterm. I went back up to school that night, then came back down Wednesday night [used a whole tank of gas for that whole week, but it was a lot of fun and well worth it].

Thursday, I took him to Red Rocks Amphitheater, where we wandered about and took lots of pictures. And tried to figure out how to read a sign. And discovered that GPS navigators are fun, even if they don't lead you on paths that you *thought* you should take.

Gorgeous days, I must mention. I think Fim's a bit bummed about not seeing snow, but he got lots of leg stretching (as did I) and got a taste of our nice, crisp mountain air.

Now all he needs to do is to move here!

Oh, and just to prove our nerdiness:
Tuesday, at a jewelry/craftsman store:
Fim [upon noting necklaces]: "Trinkets! I wonder what the effect on use is."
Me: "I dunno. Could be a bind-on-equip thing..."

Today:
We're talking about me needing to get to class:
Fim: "Just use your epic mount :P You'll get there faster. No summoning stone at class?"
Me: "I'm afraid not. I "don't meet the requirements for this summoning stone"."
[Later]
Me: "I'm not high enough for an epic mount. Still trying to level. xD"
Fim: "What level do you have to be? 20? 21?"
Me: "Dunno. Have yet to visit the trainer."
Fim: "I want a flying mount but I fear I will get sick on it :P"

Nerdy? Us? You betcha.

Note: All the pictures of this post were taken by Fim. Yes. Free Smells. That came from a window of a sandwich shop... Kudos to the person who knows which one it is!

Oh! And I'm on TNB again, this time, as a guest host. You can find me here.

Not so Nubface, a Squashling, and Being Squashed

Fim, of Asleep at the WoW, spoke of our adventures last night. Feathermoon was down, so I went to go bother Fim on Draenor, as he attempted to do that with me a few days ago, but I, apparently, missed the memo and wasn't on. He, however, didn't, so I was able to find him fairly easily.

I decided that I loathed Westfall, just as a quick note.

So we decided to skip on over to another roleplay server (it's me. I like roleplay servers; Fim just tagged along) where we found out that the Annas was there too, but was about to hop off and go pester Matticus). So we kinda ran around for awhile -- Kinda, being that *I* ran around and killed stuff, Fim occassionally poked his head in from the collecting Gruul's and looted stuff, and got xp.

Oh. Another note. Apparently, this server is a popular one for people to bum about on when their own server is down: people from the Argent Dawn and others from Feathermoon were there, and /1 General was just as terrible as trade chat on your average day. Something about French Fries, and the French, then reflection about the American government, was the theme of those... forty or so minutes we spent on there.

Once Fim ran off to Gruul's, I returned to Feathermoon, which had just come up. Got in a guild group for the Headless Horseman (Mel wants the mount, Losse wants the pet, and Cir wanted the sword), and had flown Mel all the way up to Chillwind when my Pet Tree whispered me and asked me to go to Gruul's. A ranged DPS, so I brought my hunter, who had never done it before.

It's always really interesting to see a fight one knows as a different role. I've brought Losse in as a healer before, and Mel, to (obviously) DPS. But an average DPS is different than being a tank for whatever-that-guy-is-that-sheeps. Got the High King down in two minutes, went to Gruul himself, and had no issues on him. Ended up being in the top three of the damage meters on him, getting 1302 DPS. Now I want to know...

SINCE WHEN DID MY BABY HUNTER DO 1302 DAMAGE, SINGLE TARGET?!

She's beast master, and wearing mostly epics from Kara, with a Brewfest trinket, her Violet Signet, and her one remaining trinket and ring being green. And she was doing more sustained DPS than my mage, who is slightly better geared.

And didn't have mana issues. My mage, when I tested her out later that night on the test dummies, does 1266 DPS over the span of 2.65 minutes, then she ran out of mana. I can push it up to 1300.9 in haste gear, but it means, instead of 133 hit, I have 80. Hunters are OP, non?

About the same result occurred in Mag's, and I walked away with nothing but amazement at my hunter's DPS.

-sniffle- My nubface hunter is no longer a huntard! [Until I manage to break my own trap again, that is!]

Afterwords, my Pet Tree, my favorite Aussie, and a guildie I haven't grouped with in ages went to Headless Horseman, and we switched out toons so that all three of my characters went, the Aussie brought two of his, the guildie also brought two of his, and the pet tree got to bask in all of the summons.

The pet dropped while I was on Mel, and I won it. Darn it, wrong toon though! Other than that, we saw the same three rings drop, most of which I got last year. Disappointing!

The Aussie had one or two more AVs left until he got his healing boots (having recently switched to resto from being elemental), and, so, I accompanied him after making the Pet Tree go to bed. (I'm... somewhat convincing. My method isn't as... curious as two of my friends, though. One will count sheep, and the other will sing the "go the sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep now, Liiiiin" song. I just pester them to go to bed until they do -- Pet Tree hasn't slept for twenty-four hours or so, which is why I forced him).

Alliance on Feathermoon normally don't suck at AV... but last night, it was just painful. Utterly steamrolled, and it took forever as well. There was a lot of fighting, and the Frostwolf Graveyard just wouldn't stay ours... but we got him that honor, and his boots.

Then I went and splurged, and brought two new shinies to play with for the mage: some pantaloons and a brand new neck piece, bringing her, in her haste gear, up to 173 haste. 2.25 Frostbolts, and 1.88 Frostbolts with Icy Veins.

Delicious.

Then a bit more screwing around doing absolutely nothing, then bed. It will probably be one of the most chaotic and fulfilling nights that I will have this week.

Except for Friday, but that's coming up later.

[ RPJournal: Kanta ] :: A Great Change

Parting, parting! Oh, she was quite tired of her hair. For years, she had worn it the same way; a plain part in the middle, and the rest of it free-flowing. However, ever since she had started her travels, she'd noticed the others: others who had more life in their hair. No matter what she did, though, no matter how much she fluffed it, her hair just. Wouldn't. Stay. However, never had she had the urge to visit the small barber shops, and, therefore, had kept it the same.

Until recently, of course. Then, circumstances rose that made her change her mind... although, she wouldn't have chosen it to occur that way.

Western Plague Lands: A month ago.

She had been combating the plagued creatures of Western Plaguelands. The whole of the land made her skin crawl; the disease, the corruption... even the air was changed up there. The voices that called to her, while they still answered her call, felt changed. As a shaman, she knew the balance of nature and of the Elements, and, to her, there was more chaos than normal, an offset of that balance. She hated it, and the more time she was spending in those lands, the more conflicted, the more moody she got. But it was a duty bestowed upon her by the Argent Dawn, and by the Cenarion Circle, to end the lives of the plagued beasts and to free them. Return the balance of the land...

It was one of those plagued creatures that did it. She understood their pain; as a shaman, she was granted power over most diseases, but this was not a disease she knew how to cure. The plague made muscles stiffen, and for the flesh to rot -- a very painful process, the Elements tell her. Despite their pain, they had not been too far gone to defend themselves; their claws still hurt, and their bites still required bandaging. She had been slow -- too distracted, too haunted, and too darned slow -- and it got her. A claw managed to reach her face, and she had been overwhelmed by pain, wheeling back and somehow landing a lucky, crushing blow on the bear's skull as she flailed about.

Pain. It was all she had been able to feel; the voices of the Elements still spoke to her, but she couldn't hear them over the overwhelming, agonizing pain. Through one eye, she could see the waves of blood that was gushing down from her hands... the hands that were holding the left side of her face. It was unlike any pain she had previously experienced: her wounds always hurt, yes, but most times she was able to think through the pain long enough to ask Nature to heal her wounds. But this!

Slowly, Water's clarity got through to her, and she was able to see past the pain long enough to seek its restorative qualities, and the pain started to recede. She knew, innately, that something was wrong; there had been far too much pain for it to be a normal scratch, and, through her constant honing of her skills, and, through it, the familiarity with her body, there was an offset of balance. There was little pain now, but her vision...

Tentatively, she raised her fingers to her left eye... and paused as they reached scarred skin and... nothing.

Nothing.

Fear clawed at her. She was a fighter, one that took full advantage of all that her body and the power the Elements offered her and merged them together to form a deadly force. Without an eye, however, her depth perception would be off, her peripheral vision would fail her, at least, on that side...

She had to get out of there; the fresh blood was attracting unwanted attention from the nearby wildlife...

Away she had gone, to Shattrath, then back to the land of her roots, in Azuremyst Isle. There, she consulted with her mentor, a priestess that had taken her in many years ago, sometime after the Crash and her loss of memory. It was there that she had taken time to listen to the Elements, relearn all that she knew, adjust to her new disadvantage, and had to become comfortable with herself and her image once more. She finally allowed herself to go to a stylist, and it took all of the resolve she gained from Earth to endure the stares she got, both from the stylist, and the other customers in the shop. But the deed was done: it was cut stylishly to cover her left eye, and the rest of it coming to a neat V resting on her back. The right side, she tucked behind her ear, emphasizing the contrast of the dark and the blue points. She spent much of the time when she wasn't out with the Elements, or with the priestess, in front of the mirror, practicing and learning just how to manipulate both the light and her hair to her fullest advantage, working on how to hide her eye from view.

A month later, the priestess felt that Kanta was ready to go back into the world and resume her given duties. While she felt confident enough in her abilities to hide her disfigurement and knew that she could fight almost as well as anyone who had command of both of their eyes, now, she was reluctant to leave. It was the stares, the questions, that she feared. But, with the urging of the priestess, she left her home once more. The Elements continued to whisper guidance and comfort to her, and there was a light breeze floating around her, giving her the courage to return to the Plaguelands. Her head was held high as she made her return, her one good eye daring anyone who gave her a second look to ask just why she had gone missing, to ask why that side of her face was covered.

She had a duty to do, and, no matter how uncomfortable she may feel, she knew that she had to persist, and that, over time, her discomfort would fade away into pride.

Yes, it was time for a change, a new start...

[ Writing ] :: Against a Brick Wall

Once again, another post with NaNo on my mind. The date is pressing ever closer, and I find myself thinking quite a bit about the novel, and how much I'm going to enjoy bashing my head in writing. Along with that thought, I've been messing around a lot with StumbleUpon, finding lots of fun little distracting websites, and browsing the NaNo forums.

Sounds busy, doesn't it?

Not really, considering I've been holding Aussie hours (so a friend teases) and staying up anywhere between four to nine-thirty Mountain time to chat with Aussies. [Hey, what can I say? There's a certain Aussie I love chatting with!]

I realized that every writer (blogger as well!) will sometimes come upon a brick wall and need something -- anything! -- relieve them of that awful block they may have. How does one counteract it?

I know, for myself, I take a break. I read something else, I play WoW to find more inspiration (which, as you can tell, doesn't seem to work too well, does it?), or I go find humorous articles... so, amidst my stumbling, I've come across lists, articles, and pictures that I find amusing/clever/creative, and sites meant to stimulate the writer, and I thought I'd share them.

Humorous/Clever/Creative/Overall-WOW!-ing... Meaning, distractions!:

• Store Names and Phrases: Just think about these for a few seconds...
  
• Analogies: Lookin' for an analogy? I don't suggest using these, made by high-school students, but they're good for a laugh!
  
• Teaching and Murphy's Law: Sure, we aren't all teachers... but this is Murphy's Law, and, therefore, will probably be true. If not, they're at least amusing!
  
• "Interactive Drawings": Where one's work may not just be that...
• 30 books before you're 30!: As if you didn't have enough to do between WoWing, looking at WotLK stuff, blogging, your own life... [And NaNo!] Here's a list of decent books that someone suggested for reading!
  
• Adorable Kitties: Just 'cause they're adorable.
  
• Make Your Own Snowflakes!: I spent the better part of a class period playing with this one. Create your own snowflake, then have them animate it, pause it, and add more to it. See what pretty designs you can come up with!

Music!


• Pandora: Looking for a certain style of songs based off of some of your favorites? Pandora is a good place for exploring new music.
  
• Project Playlist: Build a playlist of your favorite songs, or just browse for a single song!
  
• Musicovery: Don't really have a song you really want to listen to, or even a certain style? Choose by moods instead!

Now, for the stuff that pertain more to writing!

• Japanese Blood Types: Once again, I'm showing my strangeness for character development. This site intrigues me, and helps me put a personality to character-less names that I have sitting around!
  
• Gems! One and Two and Three: I have to admit: I like gems. And jewelry. And giving them a particular meaning -- many of my characters wear jewelry, and they are important to the character, or to the story... so I like to make sure the gems themselves mean something, thus these two sites.
  
• Colors!: Colors, too, hold importance, and, sometimes, it may be good to put a certain color in and not just be picking a random color and going with it. Have it mean something... and find the meanings here.
  
• Mythology: Now, if you don't happen to have a copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology on hand [or are looking up mythology not pertaining to Greek, Roman, and Norse myths], this website may come in handy!
  
• Writerisms: Overused/misused phrases/words?: Some things to keep in mind while writing! [I would also suggest Woe is I by Patricia T. O'Connor for a quick reference to grammar in a fun way. She also encompasses overused phrases and misused words.]
• Writer's Block? Dial a number!: One of my newest discoveries. Push a number, and they'll give you a situation, a character, a verb... something that might just help you get past that tricky wall!
  
• Rhetoric Terms: All right, I'll admit, this doesn't quite have much to do with anything, except, perhaps, your writing style, and if you wanted to put a name on a particular way you've writing something as an example. If someone told you that the part you wrote was strange, you can tell them that, no, it wasn't really. It was meant to be that way, and the style of that block of writing is called an anaphora, and it's used to emphasize an idea. And, it's fun!

There we go. Hopefully, these links will not only provide a guidance and serve as a muse-prodder [purposefully not a word!], but also be at least entertaining and distracting to give that hardworking muse a break!

Good luck in the writing!

[ WotLK ] :: Devastating Powers of Typhoon

I wasn't going to post about beta, but... I couldn't help it. The roommate of one of my friends currently plays on Beta, and, [since this bug was fixed], I feel like I can write about it.

Stress relief? Nothing else beats seeing lots of pretty numbers go rising up your screen and hearing the death throes of... well. Everything that you just killed. For the past two days, Typhoon, the new forty-one point talent for Boomkins, has been broken. Instead of having a cooldown of 20 seconds and costing 32% of base mana, it had no cooldown of any sort (including GCD), and cost absolutely nothing.

So for two days after the patch, Typhoon was... deathly scary. A friend made a macro that had sixteen of them, and would just hit that, and things would drop dead. With this little bug, he went though normal Sethekk Halls, Mechanar, Shadow Labs... The Nexus and another one of the beginning "70" instances in LK... then did Heroic Blood Furnace and Ramparts, as well as Kara, SSC, Gruul's, and Mags. Solo. Without stopping to drink, and only had to heal a few times, and only died a few times too (Karathress killed him)...

It was really funny to watch (and do some of it too!), and it was really, really comforting to see 2111 go rising up the screen in huge bundles (as he pulled large groups), or it critting for 4.2K, and people dropping dead within seconds, and getting knocked back, and sometimes dying in a knocked-back-floating-in-midair position.

Stress relief? You betcha.

Makes me almost want to become a boomkin, even though they fixed it so it's not OP beyond anything? Yes.

Almost. With the tree nerf and me having no idea how to make my feral spec look right to me... Egh. Almost. I can't do it... really!

In sum, Typhoon looks like it will be a well appreciated spell in a boomkin's new repertoire.

I am Perfectly Innocent... and Perfectly Distracted.

"You know, back in the old days, we used to take notes on paper..."

A friend noted this to me the other day when he asked what I was doing on WoW in the middle of the day. It was right before a class, and I told him as such... but he still made fun of me. Of course, he had good reason to, because he knows exactly what I do (or, perhaps, don't really do) during the lectures...

I must confess: I am (at least, in my mind), nearly as bad as Matt's warlock friend. While I don't play WoW in the middle of class, I can easily be accused of blogging, reading/catching up on blogs, sometimes checking BA, read BBC news, and posting to blogs. Oh, and sometimes actually look up stuff pertaining to class.

Yes, I'm a bad kid... but there are consequences to doing all of that during a lecture. Today, I discovered one of them... in a rather embarrassing manner.

Starting from the beginning: I am currently on three-and-a-half hours of sleep (and I have Aussie voices to blame), in the middle of a lecture (as I was earlier as well), and have been really rocky in my emotions and state of being lately.

I hardly ever check BA -- heck, due to my schedule and my priorities, it's very rare for me to be able to read my blog roll -- but, when I feel like looking, I do until I must stop (usually, the end of class).

This morning, I was browsing through the Author Introductions, and came upon The Stoppable Force (which also finds a home in Feathermoon, by the way!). Right in the middle of a lecture about Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin (yes -- Age of Reason was the topic of lecture today!), I posted... and broke the two main rules of posting: [one] Proof-reading, and [two] actually try to sound intelligent and did .325 seconds of research. Because I was flipping back and forth from the notes I was taking (and, surprisingly, I take acceptable notes for not really paying attention), I missed out on one really rather major factor... and it made me look like an idiot.

Thankfully, I can laugh at myself -- (if I can ever show face in that blog again, now, that's a different question!) -- and... well. Laugh at myself. The .325 seconds that I should have spent would have been on the banner, which I noticed *after* I had sent in the comment (and right after I noticed my forgot-a-letter error too)... the boo-boo?

One word: Horde.

Oops! Clearly, Lin is a genius. I'm sure it's very easy to guess exactly what she messed up on (oh, even better! It's still there! Traffic for TSF, and you get to make fun of me! A win-win situation!)... Yup. At least I was trying to be friendly in all of my sleepy-ness and confusion!

With all of this noted, I really do wonder how she manages to play the game itself in class! If I tried that, not only would I be putting my foot in my mouth all of the time, but would be kicked out of class...

Nope. Don't have the guts to do that. Doing what I do, and screwing it up is bad enough without have someone-like-Matt finding me on WoW.

Although, come to think of it, it'd be a rather nifty way to meet someone... maybe I should work on that. (First stop? Don't sit in the very front and center of the classroom...)