Comments have been Assimilated. Resistance is Futile!

I’m about 98% certain I’m completely caught up as of THIS second, with integrating comments and articles. This is a very good thing.

For those who want to know which ones were updated…most of it probably isn’t noteworthy.

The biggest change that comes immediately to mind would be on the Trinkets post, where I added some commentary on the Rejuvenating Gem and the Scarab of the Infinite Cycle.

Other than that, mostly just little additions here and there, adding some information on talents to boost the bubble, mentioning some ways to improve your shackle…very small stuff.

BUT it’s been done. Complete. Finito.

So that means that I hit my goal and next week we’ll return to the regular posting schedule. And I need a new image for my right sidebar there, I get bored if it doesn’t change at least once every week and a half or so.

I take my links very seriously.

If I link to someone over in my sidebar, it’s because I feel they have something that the people who visit this site may find interesting or useful.

I have a lot of criteria that a blog must meet before I will link to it in my sidebar.

1) It must be mostly WoW related.
2) It must have useful information.
3) It must have interesting information.
4) It must be updated on a regular basis with said useful or interesting information.

I’ve got my eye on a few more blogs that aren’t linked. I check in about once a week to see if they’ve updated, and if so, with what.

There are a few blogs that I’ve currently got linked that haven’t updated in a while (or if they have, it’s been meaningless posts, like this one that I’m typing now). I’m watching them, and if they don’t resume their old behavior of useful posting on a regular basis (at least once a week) then I’m going to remove them from my sidebar.

Something which is useful but impossible to read probably won’t get linked. Something that’s full of interesting stories but no real information on how to play the game or what they learned won’t get linked. Something that has precious gems of wisdom but is only updated once in a blue moon when the swamp gasses from Mars reflect off of the moonbeams from Alpha Centauri won’t get linked.

I have a ton of other websites that I visit. But if they do not meet those four criteria, they go in my personal bookmarks rather than on my link list.

If I have not linked to you and you’d like to be considered, send me an email. But don’t be offended if I don’t link to you. Even if I go to your site and love it, I’m going to watch it for a while before I decide whether to add you or not. Blogging goes through a veritable roller coaster of fun and agonizing responsibility. Someone who posts five times a day may burn out quickly, and have a month where they post nothing at all.

And having a giant wall of links over on the side isn’t going to encourage people to visit you. If I were a visitor to my site, I’d be intimidated by too many links, and I’d want to know something about them before I click on them.

I have to look at every site from the eyes of a visitor to my site. What do YOU want to see and read? Thus the four criteria above.

The links will move around. They may disappear and reappear. But if they’re over there, I found something I thought was linkworthy in them, and I’ll bet you will too.

*wraps her hair up in a kerchief and fiercely brandishes a mop*

This week, there will be no serious posts. Not on Tuesday, not on Thursday.

This week, I am cleaning.

And if any of you have ever met a woman on a cleaning rampage, you’ll know the safest thing is just to sit back, let her work, and enjoy the clean house when she’s done.

This has been a long time coming, and I’m just getting further and further behind.

Long story short, I don’t want my entries to get out of date. Nor do I want someone to have to read the comments in order to get all of the information they need. If you guys comment and add some seriously useful information, I want that up in the actual article.

And with work and other responsibilities, I haven’t had time to do that cleanup. You’ve added valuable comments to about 70% of my entries, and I want to incorporate that into the text. The idea isn’t that my word is golden and holy and must never be altered - it’s that someone can come here and find out what they need to know about various skills. If I make a mistake, I want to fix it, and if I leave something out, it needs to be added in.

I don’t want to redo the Frisbee entry in two months because what I’ve got is outdated. I want that Frisbee article to be useful and good for as long as I keep the blog up.

If, by some miracle, I finish early, I’ll have a regularly scheduled blog entry. Otherwise it’ll just be the rambly, unimportant stuff that I post around the core articles.

I may try to post some of the rambly stuff for those of you who need me to help chase away the work boredom blues, but I will get my cleaning done this week! *determined look*

I may be holy spec, but at least a dust bunny quails before my Smite!

My internet was down for most of yesterday.

To avoid going stir-crazy, I played with the WoW model viewer and made some character portraits.

The first is an older one I did a few months back of Vonya and Whiska, back when Vonya was but a wee babe back on the Draenethyst Isles. Both Vonya and Whiska get roleplayed from time to time, but Whiska’s entire purpose is roleplay. I’ve got a number of stories that have been written about both of them.

The next one is the one I did yesterday, of my huntress, Khuuna (and her two lions, Kirasath and Refir, of course). Before you ask, that’s a wine glass in her hand.

And yes, the odd names for her pets have significance. I grouped with a non-draenei and found out what the in-game draenei words for “Ghost” and “Darkness”. It was “Refir” and “Kirasath”, respectively. So Khuuna’s running around with the two bloodthirsty lions from that movie based on the real-life exploits of two very real lions.

The joke is very very subtle, and nobody in-game is going to get it but me, but I really don’t care. It makes me smile every time I summon them.

Also before you ask, I have the two cats for a reason - I adore both skins and I want a pet for soloing and a pet for instancing, without having to respec every time my intended-for-mat-farming hunter gets called to an instance.

…I know, I’m disappointed too. But I couldn’t come up with anything on time. The last ones have come to me the night before, when I could torture my husband with them.

No pun surfaced (it might have been the alka-seltzer that knocked me out) so no puns. I do have one really nice punchline, but it’ll take skill to get there correctly and you never want to rush a pun.

That being said, I have a request for you guys. I’ve found that my lack of shadow knowledge is nothing less than shameful. So I’m going to dust off one of my old priests (before they introduced the draenei and I immediately dropped everything to reroll) and she’s going to be respecc’d shadow.

I’m going to be VERY casually playing her (my hunter alt is getting most of my love right now), but I’ll post her progress and random questions as time goes on.

Kytta was my almost-raiding priestess many moons ago. She’s level 60 and geared out in healing cloth, but has not stepped into Outland yet. My hubby did a really quick respec of her a couple months ago to try out a theory regarding shadow, but I’d like to respec her again before I start soloing her.

I already know I’m going to have to drop some pretty cash on the AH for some Outland greens to get her started…what I’m worried more about is the spec.

What, in YOUR opinion, are the talents I should never skip? What would be useful, what is the laughingstock of the shadow community?

I’m looking at three possible ways to play her : solo, duo, group.

For now, I’m looking at the solo/duo side, but later on she may become a grouping toon. Definitely not looking at raiding or PVP, not even instancing unless I respec for group.

What talents would you guys recommend?

Priest Talent Calculator

——————

THIS SPACE RESERVED FOR THE CHOSEN SPEC

First thing’s first. It’s not Power Word : Shield, it’s not even PW:S.

It’s bubble.

Jello bubble, to be more specific, but I’m satisfied just calling it a bubble. Sure, paladins have a bubble too, but this is the only priest bubble we’ve got.

It’s a bubble. A bubble.

Now that we’ve got the most important detail out of the way, we can move on to the actual spell review.

Today, my gentle snowflakes, we are going to discuss the priest bubble.

The tooltip says, Draws on the soul of the party member to shield them, absorbing XX damage. Lasts 30 sec. While the shield holds, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage. Once shielded, the target cannot be shielded again for 15 sec.
(more…)

What makes a “good” priest?

I took an impromptu survey of the people around me to find out. The reason I did this is because to ME, what I do seems…well, if not “easy” exactly, it’s definitely not rocket science.

And yet people constantly seem amazed when they find a good healer, as though they’d found a four-leaf clover (or perhaps a two-headed cow).

So I asked them, “What makes a good priest?”

A good priest, I was told, will always “sacrifice warlocks before hunters in the healing pecking order.”

After the guffaws died down, I did manage to get a few real answers (I’m sure the above answer was no less real for the hunter who voiced it, mind you.)

“Timing, attentiveness, and care”

“fast reactions, the ability to prioritize between healing dps and keeping the MT up. Ability to remember encounters and boss events that can kill a tank in a few seconds.”

Notice first what they didn’t say. They didn’t say anything about gear. They didn’t say anything about downranking, or stats, or reading random online blogs.

Attentive
What they asked for was a healer who is attentive. Someone who watches the fights and notices when things take a turn. Notices when people need heals, even if it’s unexpected. Knows enough about their class and their spells to know what situations call for what reactions. Knows how to deal with AOE damage, when to cleanse. Understands other classes well enough to know when to depend on them, what they’re capable of, and how it can make your job easier or more difficult.

Flexible
They asked for someone who was flexible. Someone who could evaluate a situation and react with the right heal at the right time. Who knows when a trapping hunter will need heals more than the lifetapping warlock, for example.

Someone who won’t panic when the chips are down and the shit hits the fan. Reacting to a fight gone bad takes experience (everyone panics, don’t feel bad if your brain shuts off temporarily…but do your best to overcome that feeling so that you can pull the group from an early grave). Your reactions will become crucial when everything around you is going to hell. You must strive to become a center of calm in the midst of the storm. Know your panic buttons, know your healing priority, and know your spells.

Knowledgeable
They asked for someone with awareness. Who can learn from encounters and react swiftly to unique encounters. Someone who knows that Illhoof’s sacrifice needs immediate healing, and who knows that the Myrmidons in Scarlet Monastery enrage when they get to low health and the tank will need some extra heals to compensate for the extra damage.

Someone who can learn from experience. Who can look at a wipe and find out what they can do to prevent it from happening again. Who can learn when a timely Cure Disease can keep a fight from blossoming out of control.

“Measuring” Success
One of the most difficult things about being a healer is that you’ve got no way to determine your relative skill. As an Egotistical Reader pointed out, healing meters are nearly useless and everything else seems to be binary. You die or you don’t die.

TRUST
You have to trust your tank. And your tank has to trust you. Your dps has to trust you. And you have to trust yourself. If you’re raiding, you have to have a LOT of trust in your fellow healers. As a healer, your group puts more trust in you than anyone else…they trust you to keep them alive, and they trust that if they die, it’s for good reason.

That kind of trust has to be EARNED. Prove that you are worthy of such trust, and you’ll find that your group is capable of miracles.

Love
This isn’t a job for the faint of heart. You have to love it. You have to love every minute of it, every panic-filled second, every hour of mind-numbing whack-a-mole.

Healing is so much fun. If you don’t understand that, then you’re probably playing the wrong role.

Summary
They asked for the things which I cannot teach you. Which no one can teach you, except practice and care.

I cannot teach you to be a good priest.

But I hope…that somehow…I can help you become a better one.

P.S. THIS post in particular I wish to foster a healthy discussion in the comments. What do YOU think makes a good priest? Let me know, give your opinions. I have portable soapboxes for everyone.

P.P.S. If you’re reading this and don’t plan on reading the comments, you’re missing out. There are some that I was half a hair away from just straight copy-pasting into the article. READ THE COMMENTS, PEOPLE. Thank you, come again.

I swear, I can’t leave the site alone for two days without everything just exploding. It’s like a naughty puppy.

I WILL get back to all of you on your questions and comments. I’ll probably also have a follow-up to the trinket post, since I forgot to add a popular trinket and need to review that as well.

Bear with me while I get things back in shape. Having unanswered comments makes me itchy.

Thank you for visiting and welcome to the new Egotistical Readers, by the way!

More than a bit belated, but Kirk over at Priestly Endeavors recently posted a superb article on Guild Management.

I’ve been a GL, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been a leader. I’ve founded a few very small guilds made up entirely of close friends - but that doesn’t mean I’ve been a leader.

I’m one of those people that doesn’t like being a leader. I don’t. I hate it. It stresses me out and churns my innards until I can’t eat. But I will pick up the role if it seems like nobody else is going to, or if they’re doing a bad job. I don’t like doing it.

I don’t like the “power” or the “fame”. I honestly don’t see why people seek leadership positions. There is so much drama, so much extra time and worry involved. And what’s worse, everyone seems to think you’re having an awesome time.

Maybe some leaders are, I dunno. But all the leaders I’ve met have worked twice as hard as anyone who was just a member. I reckon most of you know what I’m talking about.

It’s hard to be a leader of any kind, but being a GREAT leader is even more difficult. You need help, and you need advice from someone who’s been there.

The ideals and suggestions put forth in the article go beyond simply being a guild leader in an online video game. They are true for everyone, everywhere, no matter what field or role.

This is for the leader, who is desperately trying to keep their little herd of cats happy and working together.

This is for the member, who wants to know how they can help their leaders, and wants to know what really goes on behind those vaunted closed doors.

It’s a superb read, and one I’d highly recommend to everyone, be they WoW player or not.

So last year I took a well-deserved vacation on what I thought was a deserted island. I let everyone know that I’d be gone for about a week, then prepared to lay out in the sands and let my mind drift.

You can imagine my surprise when I found that the island was, in fact, inhabited by a race of indigenous troll peoples, the Zandalar Tribe.

After convincing them that draenei meat is tough and stringy, definitely not worth eating (true story, it’s all the space travel), we managed to strike up a rudimentary communication channel using hand motions and exaggerated facial expressions.

I found that they were simply atrocious chefs. Really quite abysmal, shockingly so. There are only so many ways that you can cook a sand lizard, and somehow they managed to find the only way that turned it into old shoe leather.

Well, I could see that my work was cut out for me, so I rolled up my sleeves and set about teaching them the finer points of cuisine. Time passed, and we had finally made it all the way up from Not Burning Meat to the delicate pastries and baking of breakfast food when a gnomish flying machine burst through the overhead greenery.

“Vonya! Hurry, climb on!” shouted a familiar voice. A rope ladder fell neatly at my side and without a second thought I leaped onto the ladder and was pulled away.

As the flying machine zoomed off, rescuing me from my kidnappers, I could hear the mournful cries of the people below as they lifted their bowls of waffle batter into the air and screamed, “Leggo my Ego!”

Badumche.