So most of you will have noticed that I’ve gone from comment-queen to “Wow, she replied like a month after I made the original comment. What a lamer.”

I’ve been busy. Well, busier than normal. I have had time to bless my forethought for making this a twice-a-week blog eleventy frillion times in the last couple of weeks.

I’ve got the Ego posts, the Ego comment replies (which are usually way more fun than the posts, by the way), the random Ego emails, I’m editing a book for publishing, I’m starting another book for publishing, I’m starting ANOTHER book for publishing as a joint effort, I’m helping another friend publish a book, I’m months behind on my arting, I have that work thing that I do less often than I should, I watch movies, and sometimes I like to play this really obscure MMORPG, perhaps you’ve heard of it?

Oh, and the dishes and laundry and other chores. And the cats. And the bento-making (which mostly happens in the morning, to be fair). And dinner and cooking, and oh…life.

So yeah, that’s not a QQ post, just letting you know that I know I’ve not been as active and responsive as I normally would. Right now I’m trying to stay active enough to keep my head above water with my gmail inbox. So if you send me an email and I haven’t replied and it’s been over a week - holler at me again, shame me into responding. (Be nice about it though, I have a delicate personality. *winks*)

That’s it. Once things settle down, Ego will once again float to the top of my priority list, but I’ve got to get these time-sensitive things done first, or else the universe shall careen madly out of control.

It’s science.

Okay, no post from me today.

Instead, I offer you a post on our guild boards by my favorite tank. I’ve been trying to get this guy to make a blog forever, or at least do like a bi-weekly tank post here.

He refuses, saying he doesn’t know what he’d write about, and nobody would want to read it. Thinks his writing style is boring or something, I dunno. Seems to me he’s just shy.

SO! I’m going to post HIS post below the cut. (Warning, it has Naughty Words). If you like what you read and think he should post more often or have his own blog, comment and tell him so! He reads my blog, maybe I can shame him into writing more often, like I think he should.

So, without further ado, I give you EgoTank’s World Famous Lern2Tank Rant!

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No time to delurk yesterday, so I have 241 things to read on my reader. Hopefully most of them are from BRK’s comments. *clings desperately to that beautiful, false hope*

Bento
(if you don’t know what bento is, check out my previous post)
Adventures in Bentomaking
She plays FFXI instead of WoW, but shall be forgiven for the awesomeness of her bentos. I get a lot of good ideas looking at the pictures she posts!

Bento Anarchy
Adorable rabbit bento as a method of getting rid of old hotdog buns. All it needs are antlers…

Bento Yum
More from Bento Yum. Those pears are making me hungry for the one I’ve got on the windowsill, waiting for it to turn soft and delectable.

Freakin’ Tasty Bento
I love this bento site. Just shy of belligerent about how awesome bento is, plus great recipes, writing, and pictures. <3 If I could, I’d dub it the Egotistical Bento.

Cute Overload
I’m getting some spam trackbacks by linking here and to the cheezburger site. If it happens on this thread I won’t link them again, but I do watch them in my feeder.

I can has cheezburger
See above disclaimer about spam trackbacks.

Random Stuff
Opiate of the Masses
More than I ever wanted to know about my friend’s porn preferences.

Partially Wow-Related
Temerity Jane
Again, she never fails to amuse. I love the recent post on the “perils” of being a girl gamer.
/hand to forehead
/swoon

Mostly Wow-Related
A View From Behind
A great post on when to (and most definitely when NOT to stunlock) in instance runs. I wish more people read this stuff. Sometimes, the tank not getting hit is very. very. bad.

Apathy, Inc
Ah, I love a good wishlist of spells. Even if this one is pvp-related.

Gun Lovin Dwarf Chick
Love this site, I get a chuckle out of it every time I visit. The recent story of death by wolpertinger cannot be beaten. In the spirit of Brewfest, I bid thee go!

Mana Battery Bitch
A great post, proving that shadow priests can tank too!!

Musings of a Nut Job
Ah, the joys of farming.

World of Matticus
A great piece on organizing your raid into teams. =] I like it!

Big Bear Butt Blogger
An absolutely HILARIOUS recounting of a “doh” moment - both his and from someone working on the Kara key quest.

Big Red Kitty
Gruul down, and a bunch of technical Apple stuff I don’t really understand.

….

Okay, I give up. I’ve spent three hours on this already, and my list is only halfway done. It’s going to do this every day.

I’m not going to continue delurking. It’s a good idea, I just watch too many people, and don’t have enough to say most of the time.

I’ll give a list of links to the other places I visit, but at this point it’s starting to feel like a job, and not fun, and making me not want to comment on ANYTHING, rather than encouraging me to comment.

Kestrel’s Aerie
Musings of a Holy Hybrid
Resto4Life
Holy Light
Wow Insider

And two that are new, so I’ll give a small introduction

The Patient Marksman
A mixture of prose, hunter information, and random gaming thoughts. I love the recent post on “mindless” gaming, and how gaming isn’t like television, where you’re supposed to be entertained while you just sit there and soak it in - gaming is entertainment that you actively participate and pursue, that engages you mentally and requires some work.

Shatter
The blog of someone who really and truly doesn’t care if you find him offensive. He tells it like it is, and thinks sugar-coating is for pansies. Take his latest post, on why people SHOULD struggle, and why struggling is a good thing and a sign of growth.

No, this isn’t about a teenie-bopper 80s band - this is about new people encroaching on your territory, wanting to join your raids, constantly begging for instance runs.

Disgusting, isn’t it?

It’s also about how hard it is to be the new kid, to look in at all the tightly-knit groups and to want desperately to be a part of it all, to join in the fun and make new friends.

…not quite as disgusting now, eh?

It’s hard. It’s hard to be on both sides of that equation. What do you do when you’re the new kid, and you analyze every word you type, constantly question yourself, and wonder if you’re ever going to fit in. What do you do when you’re the old hand, bored with all the regular instances, jaded and tired of helping people only to have it thrown in your face?

The veteran has seen it all, and they’ve become weathered and embittered by it. They’ve done their time, they’ve helped newbies, they’ve run instances a frillion times, they’ve got the gear and then some. They’ve finally found themselves a nice cozy little nest, a comfort zone of people they get along with, can relax and joke with.

The last thing they want is some young whippersnapper coming along, stirring everything back up.

The new person, puppy-like, is desperately seeking approval and friendship. They want to be part of the cool group too! Sometimes they try to hard, sometimes they get irritating and the old hounds snap at them to settle them back down.

There has to be a middle ground.

And there is, but both sides have to give more than just a few inches.

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WAY overdue, I’ve changed the image in the sidebar. No, this isn’t because people finally started commenting on it, I’ve been wanting to rotate the image every two weeks or so, and Lovely Dress Vonya has been there for far longer than that.

It being Brewfest, here’s my nod to the Seasonal Event. <3

Here’s my Monday list!

Bento!
For those who’ve never heard of it, Bento is a type of Japanese lunch. Using smaller and more varied portions, you create something that is healthy, fun to look at, and made with smaller portions than a traditional lunch. I used to just grab a big container of whatever leftovers I had handy - now I have fruits, veggies, a smaller portion of said leftovers, maybe a cookie…all arranged as neatly as I can in my narrow, two-tier Hello Kitty Bento box (hey, I’m on a budget, and you can’t beat $1 boxes at the dollar store). If you follow the links, you’ll see some much nicer examples of Bento lunches. Mine are…still in the “how do I make five meatballs and a row of carrots look pretty?” stage.

Bento Yum
A cute toddler Bento today, with cutout cheese stars as a theme.

Cute Stuff
Cute Overload
I commented on the goat-packing donkey, since it was my favorite of the six posts that were waiting for me. I usually love this site, but I personally don’t consider naked baby birds to be all that cute. Ego is Displeased. Temporarily. There’s enough cute on that site to make up for frillions of ugly naked birds.

I Can Has Cheezburger
Already I’m cheating, but that site has so many ads and garbage that I don’t want to leave my information on the site. I get enough porn spam as it is, and I just don’t trust the website to play nicey-nice with my contact information. Love love love the lolcats though.

Random Stuff
Opiate of the Masses
A “here is how my weekend went” article, with airshow stuff and birthday wishes. Funky Woodjam is a friend of mine from college days, and he’s way too smart to still be hanging around people like me. I lawled at the “Nobody puts Vader in a corner!” lolcats spoof, because I’m from the Dirty Dancing Reruns Generation.

Semi-Warcraft Related
Temerity Jane
I refuse to introduce her as “BRK’s Friend” because if anything, the association ought to go the other way around. I watch her because her humor absolutely tickles me - like the recent post about extra-strength toilet paper and the perils of impulse shopping.

More than 50% Warcraft Related
A View From Behind
Rogue blog that I’m currently spying on to possibly add to my blogroll. I need some new classes there, druids and priests are getting all the love. So far he seems to be both interesting and knowledgeable, and if I had a rogue or knew about the different kinds of poisons they had available, I’d have been RIVETED by the recent post. Not that lack of knowledge has ever prevented me from commenting wildly in the past….

Apathy, Inc
Another blog I’m spying on and very much enjoying. The recent post was one on new versus old content, and allowing yourself to move on in-game. =]

Mana Battery Bitch
More spying. Mana Battery’s been waiting for some gear that finally came in. Always good to see people getting upgrades. =]

Musings of Nut Job
Again with the spying. One might begin to think I had a problem. A fellow priest just getting his blogging started. I remember when I got my first visitors, I was just as excited!

World of Matticus
Great blog, and they’ve recently introduced a co-writer to help them out. LOVE the article on PVP healing, it’s not one that I’ll cover myself but has all kinds of common-sense goodies in it.

Big Bear Butt Blogger
Another favorite - his recent post on the struggle to get engineering maxxed out was hilarious and useful. Go take a look!

….

Okay, it seems that my consumables post has made it on WoWInsider. Which is great, because it’s a good list. But bad, because I haven’t incorporated my reader-suggestions yet!!

So I need to go fix that post as quick as I can, and this one’s just gonna have to wait to get finished. I’ll post the other half of the list later, if I have time.

Today, I am going to continue the trend that Temerity Jane started last week. I think Delurkificationing is something that should not be limited to a single week, so I’m postponing the end of it and stretching it out even further.

I am going to delurk. Ever since I started using the Google Reader to watch all my feeds, I’ve been terribly bad about actually commenting. No more!

All this week I will comment on every blog that is on my reader list. And then, my dear Egotistical Readers, I shall compile a list of blogs that I visited that day, and post them here.

To be completely fair, I don’t ONLY watch WoW-related blogs. So you’ll see a smattering of some bizzare blogs in my “Visited Today” lists, but maybe you’ll find something you like too.

I haven’t read my feeds all weekend, so I’ve got quite a few to work through! Wish me luck!

Big Bear Butt had a post recently about how nice it would be if every guild had a list of raid consumables by class. He also mentioned how nice it’d be if they’d list the names of crafters in the guild capable of providing said agumentation, but I can’t help you with that part.

Here is my Big List of Healy Consumables. This doesn’t include gear - these are things that various professions can provide you and that you’ll probably need multiples of.

Please note that there are “lesser” versions of most of these which are incrementally less useful but require old-world mats. I’m also not listing the eleventy frillion different types of drinks and consumables that return mana while you’re using them. ALWAYS have three stacks of your favorite mana-return water/coffee/mead when you start a raid. If the raid has a mage along to give you conjured water, then that’s excellent, but you should never assume that someone is going to be there to give you water. Bring your own, be prepared.

Please also note that I didn’t add mana potions. There are a number of different types of mana potions you can get. The generic Super Mana Potions, there are potions you can turn in spirit shards from Auchenai instances, there are potions get from turning in Coilfang Armaments. There are also some nice Flasks you can only use in Gruul’s lair, there are Demonic and Dark Runes that can be farmed to give mana back on a non-potion timer. There are also some nice spirit enchants and spirit Elixirs that aren’t on the list. I’ll add them back once the supposed spirit buff for priests has gone through.

Time being a commodity, I tried to narrow the list down to things you could ask for in trade chat, collect mats and ask guildmates for — or collect on your own without having to farm (like the seasonal events).

I may change my mind, add more detailed information on some more stuff, but for now, this is The List. It is not intended to be the Be All End All of lists, containing every item, no matter how difficult to farm or find…it is a list of the ones you should be able to get with minimal effort. As such, it is the list of things I EXPECT you to have, come raid-time.

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This probably won’t be one of my exceptionally long entries, but I think it’s important enough to merit its own post.

You’ve just had a wipe.

You’ve been soulstoned, or DI’d, or whatever.

You are alive, but the corpses of your comrades litter the ground at your feet.

Hold on, pause just one second before you start rezzing everyone willy-nilly. The order that you rez people may not make or break a group, but it can be done efficiently to help reduce downtime.

The Rules
Whether you’re in a raid or a five-man, you’ve got a lot of work in front of you. Is there anyone else that can help you rez? No, not the druid, show some pity. Their rez requires both a reagent AND has a long cooldown. You’d rather have that rez available in case of an in-battle emergency. A paladin? Another priest? A shaman?

Rule 1) Always rez other rezzers first.

They’ll get up, have themselves a drink, and help you rez.

Who’s next? Well, who takes the longest to recover from a death? Mana-users that buff group members should be next. Priests, mages, druids, paladins…anyone who is going to have to drink -> buff -> drink should get the next rez priority.

Rule 2) Always rez mana-using buffbots next.

After that, mana-users who don’t have buffs should get priority. They’re still going to have to drink to get their mana back, even if they don’t have to drink TWICE after they rebuff the group. Hunters, warlocks, for example. (please note that if your hunter’s pet died in the previous fight, they’re basically in the second rule. They have to drink, rez their pet, feed their pet, drink…)

Rule 3) Non buffing mana-users next.

After that, melee fighters like warriors and rogues should get the rez. They just need to sit down and eat. (Heck, most of the time they don’t bandage OR eat, they wait for me to heal them).

Rule 4) Next comes anyone who only has to regen health.

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