Sarth25 with 9, everyone standing at the end.

Healers! *chest thump*

Respect!!

Sorry about Tuesday. Honest… I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD.*

But that was then, and this is now. And the topic for NOW is Discipline Healing Spell Rotation!

That’s a little misleading, because it’s for healing. There’s no such thing as a true healing spell rotation. There’s not even a true dps spell rotation anymore – most of the dps classes I can think of all have talent procs and ability ‘tricks’ that make the old ways of mindlessly pushing 1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 2, 2, 3… obsolete.

However, even though I can’t give you a magic combo of spells that will work all the time, I can tell you a little bit about the spells I’ve been using as Discipline.

The Core
I’d say a good 80% of my healing is made up of two spells – Power Word : Shield and Penance.

• Let the tank run in and grab aggro on the mobs and take a little damage.
• Cast Power Word : Shield
• Wait until the tank has taken about 50% of his health bar in damage, then cast Penance. If the Weakened Soul debuff falls off before he takes enough damage, I just toss another Power Word : Shield on him instead. Why 50%? Because Penance heals for a LOT. I’m trying to manage my overheal without…yanno, getting the tank killed just to save my delicate sensibilities.

…that’s it. I’m still trying to teach myself not to pre-bubble. The Discipline priest’s method of preventative healing DOES have an effect on a tank’s rage/mana generation. It’s not a dealbreaker by any means, but the beginning of a fight, before a tank has locked down threat on all the mobs, it’d be nice if they didn’t have to struggle to get their rage. That’s why I typically let them run in and get hit a few times before I bubble, rather than bubbling before the fight.

(At least, that’s the theory. Sometimes my fingers don’t listen to my logic, and they bubble the tank before the pull. I’m trying to rewire that particular habit, but it’s taking time)

Regardless, most of my tank healing is nothing more than juggling cooldowns on Penance and PW:S.

Other Situations
Okay, so that’s the basics. What about the other 20% of my healing?

Binding Heal
Binding Heal, how do I love thee, let me count the ways? I still adore Binding Heal. If I have taken damage, I can probably find someone else who has as well (like, hey! The tank!) and who probably wouldn’t mind a smidge of extra healing themselves. It’s still efficient, still intelligent, still fast, and still low aggro (not that the low aggro part is as important as it used to be). Still, I heal two people for the price (casting time) of one, and I’m all about effiiciency.

Prayer of Mending
On fights that I know have a lot of splash damage, I will use frisbee freely. It has a chance to crit on each jump, which means that the dpsers not only get a heal, they get one of my new round critbubbles to help a little with other incoming damage as well.

Renew
I still use Renew a lot. I’ve heard some Disc priests scoff at it and others still use it a lot. I’m in the “use it a lot” group. I will use it as an insta-cast buffer on DPSers, and I always throw it into my rotation when we’re fighting a boss to help smooth the incoming damage on the tank. Note that for DPSers, I use Renew more in situations where I can only cast insta-cast heals – when I’m on the run, or during Malygos, for example.

Greater Heal
That’s right, my old standby. I no longer rely heavily on Greater Heal, but there are times when the tank can’t keep up with incoming damage with Shield and Penance alone. If Penance still has more than two seconds on cooldown and the tank needs a heal, I whip out my greater heal and go to town. Extra points if I’ve still got the haste buff from shielding someone.

Flash Heal
Glyphed, Flash Heal is no longer the inefficient monster that I despised in Burning Crusade. Even so, I rarely use this spell because I am not typically assigned to raid healing. If I need to help top off the raid, this is typically a better choice than Renew, unless I’m on the move. For the tank, I will very rarely use this in place of Greater Heal – it’s like spitting on a fire instead of using the perfectly good bucket of water sitting at my feet.

Prayer of Healing
I wish this spell was smarter. It’s not, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s my only group heal at the moment. Sometimes the planets align and the people in MY group all  need a heal and all happen to be standing somewhat near to me. In those situations, I use Prayer of Healing. In those situations, typically the OTHER group also needs a heal, and a weep bitter, bitter tears at how slowly I can help with bringing them back up (Gluth, ah, so much fun). It is one of many, many times that I thank the nether for the fact that my co-healer is a shaman.

Pain Suppression
I should probably use this spell more. I do use it on Sartharion, and in a few “oh, mother of monkeys!” moments when healing…but I try not to get in those situations in the first place. I rarely want my tank to dip below 50%, and there’s no reason to use Pain Suppression if the tank is above 50%. Our dpsers don’t typically steal aggro from the tank (if they did, this spell would be perfect to zap on them – it lowers damage taken AND their threat on the mob).

I know this is a core Disc priest talent, but mine gets a bit dusty, and is filed away under “Oh Holy Craaaaaap, the tank is prob’ly DYYYYIIIINGG! This is the boss with the really painful hiiiiiiit.”

…what? You don’t randomly sing modified Christmas carols in your head when you heal? Well, if you have a problem with it, I condemn you to live in that skull for the rest of your life.*

Power Infusion
Power Infusion is a Discipline priest talented buff that reduces spell cast time and cost for a short period of time. Since I don’t really run out of mana or spend a lot of time wishing my spells would go off faster, I give my buff to a nearby guildmate – typically our mage. I could give it to myself easily, but the mage will actually make better use of the buff than I will. I try to remember and toss it out on every cooldown, but that’s another habit I’m having trouble integrating. (Sorry Shandrell!)

Summary
So! In short, Penance and Power Word:Shield are your primary spells, and when in a pinch, use…everything else.

Yeah, some of you may have noticed that my “Other Situations” section included every other priest healing spell available. That was intentional. We are priests. We are the utility knives of the healing world. Even a Discipline priest has an array of useful and powerful heals that should make every other healing class in Warcraft cry…at least a little.

Of course, that also means you don’t get to be lazy. You’ve got all those heals…use them! Your request to slack off and hit a single heal is DENIED, my friends.

* Bonus points for quote recognition. Triple bonus points if you recognize the second one, plus I want you to email me so we can talk about the best books ever written.

The leveling game

I don’t know how many other people are running around leveling alts right now – on my server, most of the 1-70 run was a handful of random lowbies but MOSTLY Death Knights.

I’ll admit the Heirloom Items make it VERY enjoyable. I’m saying that even though I leveled my Shaman as Elemental. While the weapon I used provided a very nice chunk of spell power, it wouldn’t be as game-changing as never having to upgrade a weapon for a physical DPS class.

I’ve always been a sucker for leveling. I just enjoy it. Sure, at times I get bored, but that’s only if I’m doing one of my crazy power-leveling sessions. I’m not talking about a minimum of two or three levels a night, either.  I think on my Shaman the most I did after 40 was eight in one setting.

Vanilla WoW!

I’ve been taking screenshots of when I ding, keeping track of how quickly I managed to do it and I do feel rather pleased with myself.

My /played time to 60 was 2 days, 22 hours and 47 minutes. I’m pretty sure someone could do it a lot faster (and likely has), but I’m proud of the accomplishment.

There are some tweaks to power leveling (assuming that’s all the intent was) that could have made it faster. Having a constant run speed bonus for those early levels would be pretty awesome. Even better still would be knowing where all the quests where and how to stack them to the most exp per step taken.

Heck,  I’m still not a 100% of where to go for Alliance quests all the time. I still try to click on the Horde Gadgetztan Flight Path and still try to run off to The Barrens when wondering where to go next.

I still love Stranglethorn Vale the most from old world content. It never gets old.

Outland isn’t much different in terms of Horde vs Alliance quests, so I definitely know my way around a lot better and can chain the quests together.

What’s your favorite zone for questing in Kalmidor?

WoW with sprinkles (TBC)

My /played to 70 was 4 days 1 hour and 57 minutes. I very nearly made my 4 days played goal!

After Hellfire and Zangermarsh, I didn’t need help soloing any of the group quests except two in Nagrand – Ring of Blood and Durn the Hungerer. Trust me, if you have yet to experience the 60-70 experience nerf, you are in for a surprise!

Once I got to level 69 from questing Hellfire, Zangermarsh, Terrokar and Nagrand, I elected to run up to Netherstorm to do my favorite quest hub in the game – Kirin’Var Village!

This place is jam packed with quests and mobs that are easy to kill. Once you unlock the major quest givers from doing the Staff of Archmage Vargoth, you have a lot quests in quick succession along with some items that start quests from the named mobs out there and it’s just a really quick level. My Paladin, Priest, and Shaman have all dinged 70 there, and any other alt I plan on leveling will almost certainly do so as well.

What’s your favorite zone in Outland? Mine has to be Netherstorm.

Looking to the Lich King

I’m looking forward to seeing Northrend again, and how much fun I’ll be able to have on my Shaman out there. Though I kind of dread level 77 and how it will be quite the expensive level. Normal Flying, Epic Flying and Cold Weather Flying? Can’t wait!

I’ve been churning away hard to level the shaman, but hitting just 70 wasn’t that exciting. Our raids were far to awesome this weekend. We had a minor let down but it happens, usually just makes us more driven to get our goal.

Recent Rockin!

Friday, we 9 manned Sarth 25. Yes 9 manned. First attempt, second shot.

Now granted, it wasn’t a clean kill. I’m not 100% positive when it will be because when Sartharion goes crazy at the end, it’s hard to lock down all the elementals and our raid quickly gets eaten. But that doesn’t change the fact we have killed the dragon on heroic mode, wearing gear from 10-man raids, and with only nine players. It’s a definite rush.

And just let me say, when you get to focus on the boss AND you get splash damage that hits the Whelps and Flame Adds, your DPS gets a little skewed.

I sustained 5000 DPS on that fight, something still I think is awesome. The only thing that was more awesome was the fact it was so easy to kill Sarth. We had more deaths on some of the Trash Pulls than we did to Sarth, and the Trash was much more difficult than the dragons. Those Flame Orbs that the Onyx Blaze Mistress summon hurt!

We didn’t get any DPS trinkets we were hoping for, but now that we know we can kill him, we’ll be back almost every week we are raiding.

On the same Friday night, we’ve opting to do Plauge Wing just to see if we’d lose someone to Hegin, since that seems to be the toughest place to survive as a raid unit. Well, no one died on the Saftey Dance so we were really focused on getting The Undying title.

On Saturday we made it to Sapphiron without losing a single raider to a  boss and we were golden on the achievement till the final air phase. Sapp came down funny, then swung around, knocking one of our Deathsquad members into a coma. Bummed as we were, everyone knew that it was just bad luck. He got punted out of all healing range and then we’re pretty sure a Blizzard spawned on him just to taunt us. Hopefully, this raid weekend we’ll be able to pull it off.

We also managed to finally get the achievements for Shocking and Patchwerk down in less than 3 with just 9. Two of our raiders have been MIA, and rather than call raids for it, we just go in and kill stuff anyway.

All in all, it’s been a pretty awesome week.

Hopefully the awesome will continue and I hope everyone else is having as much luck as we are.

Dear Blizzard,

With the coming and going of Patch 3.0.8, I feel that my continued silence on this matter would be a dreadful oversight. I had hoped that the matter could be cleared up peaceably and without the need for letters of complaint, but it would seem that my intervention has become necessary.

There is a problem with Northrend.

A rather hideous one, if I may be so bold.

I do not know if it is the temperature or simple lack of human contact, but the NPC behavior is…well, to be completely blunt, it is abhorrent.

I cannot remain silent on the matter any longer. My complaint may seem miniscule in the face of other players clamoring for your attention, and while I would never presume to contradict the warlocks complaining of a two minute cooldown on their summoning spell, or entire periodic server crashes related to Wintergrasp activity, I do feel that my request is a reasonable one.

It is a matter of manners. A simple one. I do not complain when the dwarves guzzling their beer somehow manage to soak up more of the beverage in their beards than lands in their mouth. I do not complain when a gnome eats a sandwich, absentmindedly removing a socket wrench from its innards mid-bite.  Nor am I complaining of the scandalous flesh-baring designs common with so many plate wearing female adventurers.

Is it really so much to ask that when I am speaking to an NPC – someone who has requested that I complete a task for them, no less! – that they stand and remain focused and speaking to me for the duration of our conversation?

I have, on multiple occassions, I might add, been absorbing the import of a quest giver’s words, or even eyeing the rewards they have laid out for my perusal only to have the person simply…walk away!

I then find myself in the unenviable position of chasing after them and reinitiating the conversation. If I am fortunate, they will stay long enough for me to hurriedly complete my transaction, but if I am unlucky I will give chase a third time before finally closing my conversation with them.

This outright rudeness cannot continue, Blizzard.

I implore you to deploy Miss Manner’s Guide to Polite Conversation to each of the offending NPCs. I believe the matter to be one of simple ignorance rather than intended slight.

Respectfully,
Vonyari
Priestess of the Light and Emissary of the Naaru

P.S. If I may be so bold as to add in one other tiny request – I do think it is quite improper for a ranking military officer to be conducting business wearing only his undershorts. I am aware that the mausoleum was crawling with undead and he was in a stressful situation, but wandering around without pants truly is a bit much.

Patch was yesterday, which is sweet….other then Wintergrasp going “uhh I crash servers!”

We did manage to get our Red Proto-Drakes though, and I can’t express how awesome they are. Awesome enough that I sat around for about an hour just running and flying around in circles. Expect a screenshot of the team at somepoint, I wasn’t in the middle so I couldn’t get a good one.

And I know some people will be, “AMG You didn’t do it pre-nerf they shouldn’t count!!!!!!1oneohone!!!”

And to those people – you’ll always have when you actually earned the achievement to rub in people’s faces. We simply didn’t want to have to switch our team around to play the Random Number game, because as far as I know thats what the Gotta Go! achievement was pre-nerf. I never read anything different.

I think the Gotta Go! timer definetly needed to be adjusted, and very happy that it was. Even with the nerf, it’s not like I’ve seen a billion people on my server running around with the drakes, so I’m not too worried that they nerfed them too far.

Nyisa continues to spend gold like I can somehow make it back. I dropped the gold for the new Ring of Kirin Tor which was a good investment till Ulduar comes out.

In other news, I’ve gone and started another alt and it’s been consuming most of my playtime lately.  If you have extra badges to spend and want an alt I’d highly recommend the Heirloom Items. No Durabilty is win and the 10% extra experiance on the shoulders has been adding up.

Level 41 and counting…

Other than that, nothing really exciting has happened over the week.  In fact, I’m running back to my Shaman as soon as I post this. I’m leveling as Elemental and having a blast.

The amount of bile thrown out over the past week, crucifying the space goat via strawman arguments for an opinion she was asked about, has frankly left me dumbfounded.

It’s going to take me at least a week to find a way to top this stuff.  I promise to use the time wisely and take lots of notes.

/afk

I get asked what addons I use for healing probably more often than any other question.

People are almost universally disappointed with my answer, but the recent post about not relying on addons to heal over at World of Matticus spurred me to go ahead and write a post on my addons.

My Opinionated Addon Philosophy

First off, let’s get one thing straight with regards to my opinion of addons.

Addons make our job easier. They provide us with tools to facilitate our game play and in some cases to correct an oversight or lack in the Blizzard default UI.

It is my very strong opinion that if you are incapable of playing this game without addons, then you are allowing those addons to play the game for you.

How you spend your money is your business, but I think it’s very sad indeed to reduce this glorious, multi-faceted, complex, and brilliant game to a single button press. To each his own.

As you might guess by that opinion, I am very stingy with the addons that I use to heal.

There are, in fact, only two of them, along with a pair of macros.

Addons

1) VisualHeal

VisualHeal adds a little bar (much like a casting bar) that tells me only one thing if I am the only healer who has it installed, but tells me far more if other healers also have it installed.

If I’m rocking the addon solo, it shows me how much overheal I can probably expect from the heal that I’m casting. It’s not precise, it’s just an additional colored section on the cast bar, but when I was Holy spec I found it incredibly useful, especially when healing dpsers whose health bars I don’t know like the back of my hand.

As Disc spec it’s less useful for personal use, but I keep it installed not only for the times I do cast a Greater Heal or a Flash Heal but also for the benefit of the other healers in my raids.

You see, if multiple healers have the addon installed, the addon will actually report whether or not the person I’m healing already has an incoming heal.

Oho, and now the magic of the addon becomes clear. I start a heal on StabbityDeath, but it turns out he’s already got an incoming heal from the shaman. First off, will my heal on top of the shaman’s be mostly overheal? Or will my good buddy Stabbity need my heal in addition to the shaman’s heal?

The addon will, in an easy to use visual format, give me the information I need to determine whether to stop casting on Stabbity and focus on the suicidal enhancement shaman instead (hi Shatter!) or maybe the ret pally who seems to cut himself even more often than the warlock does (hi Nyisa!).

It’s a great tool that allows healers in a raid situation to coordinate their heals and help each other keep the raid up.

2) X-Perl

X-Perl is a unitframes addon – that means it replaces my target window, group window, and raid windows.

I use X-Perl for healing because I have an incredible, magic ability to miss whatever it is I’m trying to click on in the default UI.

Health bars in the default UI are dangerously small for me. In truth, they’re not small at all, it’s just that I somehow manage to MISS the health bars when I use it. X-Perl allows me to resize them to something I am less likely to miss.

In additon, X-Perl is set up to fade out any characters that are out of healing range for me (so I don’t bother trying to heal someone I can’t reach, a common problem any healer who’s ever done Gruul can sympathize with). It also highlights the group member in blue if they have a dispellable magic effect, and yellow if they have a dispellable disease effect.

Oh, and it also has a counter for the number of HoTs on a character. I run with a tree druid – I’d piss him right off if I started flash healing someone he just Hotted up, and rightfully so. It’s not a contest to see who can heal the fastest, it’s a contest to see if our raid can defeat the boss. And me wasting the mana of two healers just to show up higher on the healing meters is NOT helping us defeat the boss.

Macros

I have two macros that help me in my healing role. Are you ready for this? It’s really complicated…

/cast [target=mouseover] Dispel Magic
and
/cast [target=mouseover] Abolish Disease

(Note : for those of you doing Grobbulus, I recommend changing “Abolish” to “Cure” so as not to accidentally cleanse his disease on a target before they’re in position, thus dropping an expanding ring of glowing green death right on top of your melee and tanks. Not…not that I would know anything like that….)

That’s it. Those are my magic healing macros. I have them bound to my mouse wheel scroll up and down.

When I see a character light up with a blue outline courtesy of X-Perl, I move my mouse over their character health bar and spin my scrolly mousewheel. BAM. They’re cleansed, and I never lost my target. It saves me two buttons on my Nostromo and about two seconds if I had to click on the spell.

I can also use it to dispel a buff on a boss – in order to get the heroic Utgarde Keep achievement, I kept an eye on King Ymiron. As soon as he started casting a shadowy spell, I moved my mouse over him and started spinning the wheel, cleansing his Bane before the melee had a chance to trigger it.

Wait…that’s it?

Yup. That’s it. I don’t use Grid, I don’t use Clique, I don’t use…whatever the other popular healing addons are.

I credit my Nostromo with the majority of my “success” as a healer – it allows me to shave my reaction time down to a miniscule amount (and it removes my clicking-on-buttons problem completely).

Summary

I’m not saying that if you use those other addons, you’re cheating, or that you’re a lesser healer.

I’m saying that if you can’t heal WITHOUT them, then you’re crippling yourself, AND you’re crippling your raid. What happens if a new patch comes out that breaks your beloved addon? Do you just stop raiding until it gets fixed?

Play the game however makes you happy. But if you’re a newbie healer and your head is spinning at all of the various UI mods that well-meaning people throw at you…take heart.

It is very very possible to heal successfully with nothing but the default Blizzard UI. If you decide that you’d like to include some Addons to help in your healing, do so with your eyes wide open. You don’t need every memory-intensive, complicated UI system available to healers.

Try them out, by all means. But make your own evaluation of what works for YOU and the way you want to play.

Where is the patch? I have so much that I’m looking forward to in it. For example, the “one hit and you get it all” change to mining. Instead of seven taps on that Rich Saronite, it’ll be just one and you still get the same amount of goodies!

Gotta Go!’s timer will be extended to 4 minutes and the little 5 man squad will have our Red Proto Drakes. After a bit of research on the achievement, we decided it was to much RNG for us to deal with. I applaud everyone that’s done the RNG dance and stacked the group to get it done. It just wasn’t for us even if we all really want it. 

And Nysia’s damage (my ret pally) will see an increase. I will enjoy Vengeance stacking to five vs the three stack it is currently.

Not to mention the other goodies people are looking forward to.

I’ve been redoing Nyisa’s professions for Min/Max purposes. Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing (and I had forgotten how much Blacksmithing sucks). The raw amount of materials you need for one skill up is a little silly, at least in my eyes.

Jewelcrafting, while it was a little expensive (buying a ton of Aquamarines off the AH) was at least faster. I hit 367 in one day of work and then hit the 400 mark the next day, which was my goal. All I wanted was to be able to craft Bold Dragons Eyes and prospect Saronite. If I get more skill ups cool, if not I won’t be worried about it till there’s something BoP that Vonya can’t already create for me.

Blacksmithing, on the other hand, has taken far longer. I finally hit 300 last night on Nyisa, needing 580 Iron Bars and being unable (Unable meaning in this case there was simply no bars or ore on the AH for me to pay for.) to pay outrageous prices on the AH means it takes a while to gather em all up. Especially with competition. And the only reason I even want to level it currently is for the Glove and Bracer Sockets. Which amount to around 80 AP for her if I socket both with Bold Scarlet Rubies. Far better then LW or Enchanting for AP bonuses, which is why I took Blacksmithing in the first place.

It should also be said that the only Tradeskill in the game I have ever liked is Mining – or, I suppose, pretty much any other gathering profession. I’ve had all professions to at least 300 now short of Inscription, and there has yet to be a profession that I enjoy. I usually end up choosing my professions to get some sort of advantage that can’t be gained in some other fashion.

I’m fairly positive if the professions didn’t offer any BoP perks all my characters would have a gathering profession just to try and make money or help my friends out.

I don’t often feel motivated to stop what I’m doing to power-level some profession, so it’s taken some time. It also didn’t help that it took me a bit to embrace Nyisa as my main. And now that I have, that motivation has changed a little bit.

Besides the professions, I’ve actually been doing my Sons of Hodir dailies agian and I dropped the cash to get my Darkmoon Card: Greatness. And let me just tell you the 11k price tag that I paid for mine? Was totally worth it, seeing my Character hit 6.1k AP while soloing with only Imp. Blessing of Might is pretty freaking awesome.

I have a question for you all, do you choose Professions based on whats fun for you or do you take the same approach as me and attempt to min/max for Max DPS or that extra stamina for tanking or even the extra spell power for the healing and spell throwing?

I’m rather curious, my guild sees about a half half mix, and not all of em Min/Max entirely, meaning Leatherworking/Enchanting or the like? Just as good as Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting mostly because they have put a lot of work in their professions already, and that 30 AP they’d get from switching around just isn’t worth it to them. Which I understand, I know not everyone is a freak of nature and can farm for hours on end without getting bored.

I take that back. Iron is my nemesis probably the only thing in game I get fed up with farming for…

I got an excellent question from a fellow blogger, and I thought my answer might be useful on a broader scale.

I wanted to ask a favor.  If you had the time, would you mind perusing my blog and maybe offering a few critiques along the lines of what I could improve or change to make someone (someones? so Hanners doesn’t hurt me) such as yourself would consider linking to me?

If so, it’d be very much appreciated!

And as always, keep up the awesomeness!

_Misa
http://somemuchneededdiscipline.wordpress.com/

Let me begin by saying that I am the worst person I know with regards to keeping up my blogroll. I can barely keep up with my feed reader.

New blogs appear, old blogs slowly collapse and fade away, and I absolutely do not devote enough time to try and keep up with it all.

In other words, I probably am not going to independantly find your blog, even if it’s the most fabulous, hilarious, entertaining, useful blog in the blogosphere.

That means you, oh-blogger-who-wishes-to-be-on-my-sidebar, need to do some work.

Step 1

Comment. Most of us bloggers are pretty terrible about responding to comments, but I absolutely guarantee we read each and every one. And we recognize the names of frequent commenters. ESPECIALLY those who comment intelligently on the subject at hand.

Saying “Wow, nice post!” and then posting a link to your own blog is trolling. It does not count. (I am prepared to count the number of such comments in response to this blog entry and cackle – feel free to use this as an opportunity to pimp yourselves with blatant hilarity in the comments, please).

Believe me, we remember you when you come back and comment. And really, why do you care if you’re in the blogroll of a blog that you don’t read?

In this specific case, I’ve known Misa for a while, as they’ve been a frequent (and ofttimes hilarious) commenter on my site.

Step 2

Link to other blogs (like me).

A link in your sidebar is a great start – it’s a polite nudge. Many bloggers do get notifications when someone links to them, although some blogs get so many that it becomes impossible to keep up with the list (thanks to the magic of RSS, which tells me I’ve been linked to every single time most blogs that have Ego in their sidebar update, I am one of them.)

But when Ego was smaller, I would follow up on every single link to my blog. I still try to – especially when that link is in the body of a post, but it’s become a lot harder to tell the difference between a sidebar link and a post link.

In this case, Misa did have me linked, but the notification got buried in a ton of other links, and I did not see it.

Step 2.5

Write a blog entry in which you link to one of the other blog’s posts. Note, a specific post – don’t link to the base blog site. Link to the post itself.

Misa did a recent post in which my respec to discipline was noted, with a direct link to my blog post about the switch.

Not only did I get another buried link notification, I do have trackbacks turned on for my posts, so I got an EMAIL notification saying that specific post had been linked to.

Trackbacks are rare enough that I follow up on each and every one of them, especially since a lot of times they are rebuttals or further discussion on the subject. And if I was interested enough in the subject to write about it, you can bet I’m interested enough to hear what other people have to say on it!

The trackback got me (and a lot of my viewers) over to Misa’s site that day, and spurred me to add the link to my feed reader.

Not my sidebar. Why? Because, quite frankly, I’m terrified by the links on my sidebar and try to pretend they don’t exist.

Step 3

If all else fails, and the blog you want a link on is still valiantly ignoring your fabulousness and not adding you to their sidebar, send an email.

The one above is a perfect example of a politely worded request for a link. (heck, it wasn’t even that, so much as a request to know how they could earn a link.)

Well, let me tell you, that shamed me right up. In Misa’s case, I’d even added to my feed reader without adding to my blogroll, and if I’m interested enough to have you on the reader, you’re definitely worth putting on my sidebar.

Naturally, I added Misa’s link.

Step 4

There is no step four. If you’ve done all of the above and they still don’t link you, there is no polite way for you to request a link.

Most bloggers will follow your link from Step 1 – when you’re commenting.

It takes a special breed of bull-headedness to require you go all the way to step 3 and submit an email, but what can I say? I’m a special breed of draenei.

You can probably also use tools like Twitter to catch a blogger’s attention, but since my twitter account is so unused that the dustbunnies have declared all out war on the cobwebs, I’m probably not a very good person to ask about that.

So someone mentioned that I haven’t done a ‘helpful’ post in a while. My snark even made international news on some sort of interview. All I can say is that you should see my deadjournal page. I make Vonya famous. I have entire categories and tags dedicated to her.

“Vonya holy”
“Vonya healbot”
“Vonya CoH”
“Vonya Ambassador”
“Vonya achievements”
“Vonya STEAL MY SPEC AND THEN BE ALL GOOD AT IT”

That last one is new. What’s worse than someone who is so easymode that they’re considered a faceroller? Someone who doesn’t even have to touch their keyboard. What is up with that? I can’t do that! And now she’s discipline specced, so I can’t even just claim that holy priests have it easy. Obviously there is some racism involved. Maybe it’s the horns or the tail or something. I don’t have the details. All I can picture is her sort of buffing her nails while Sartharion goes all berserk on a bunch of Alliance kids, and when she glances up, they are magically healed and shielded and EVERYTHING IS FINE.

/mana crystal

So today’s lesson, kids, is more about how to deal with pick up groups. There’s been a lot of talk about what to do while in a group, and all the different personalities you’re going to find there. But there’s another level to dealing with some of these people; one that can save you a lot of time and mana crystals.

There are two names for this phenomenon: Non-starter and deal-breaker.

In a group of friends or allies or people who knew your mother, there is some obligation to be polite and perhaps congenial, and even to do well. You don’t want to be over there using mind-vision on the tank instead of healing him, if he’s going to turn around and go “WHAT WOULD YOUR MOTHER SAY?!”

Because you can’t mind-control your friends off of Utgarde Pinnacle.

However, if they don’t know dear old mum, and they’re not in your guild, and you probably won’t ever see them again – they’re probably thinking the same thing about you. They’re very aware that they may never see you again. And even if they do, they’re counting on you having as short a memory as they do, as opposed to keeping a list of names of stupid people and occasionally having your troll friend help you design voodoo dolls of them to help hold your needle collection. These are the people that are perfectly willing to do poorly, sleep-walk around, or yank loot away from you even if you’d look MUCH better in that dress than that orc rogue ever will.

Sometimes you discover these people halfway through, and you’re stuck with them, and it sucks, and you just grind another level of your teeth away, maybe sending hate bombs with your eyes.

Sometimes, though, they give themselves away before anything happens, and you’re spared some tooth enamel and don’t have to burst a vein trying to stare hate into them. These are the deal-breakers, or non-starters.

Non-starters are actually slightly different, and pretty rare. They are the ones that out themselves before you’ve put any effort at all into the group. Maybe you haven’t even met up, yet. You’re all discussing it over the LFG and getting ready to head to the dungeon when the warrior says his friends are laughing at him for tanking as a fury two-hander guy. Spare yourself and go pick flowers for a while instead. Or maybe the deathknight does something typically doucheknight-ey. I don’t know. There’s too much to even bother with examples. Maybe the rogue can’t stop talking, keeps talking, talks so much you wonder what he’s up to, and then suddenly you hear him laughing in that way that sounds like ‘lololol’ and he announces “I died from falling off a cliff.” Because he was talking too much.

You’ll know a non-starter when you hear it. If your stomach clenches up, and that voice in your head squeaks out “Maybe it won’t be as bad as it sounds” – flee. There are a lot of things to do, not much time to do them, and you have better ways of wasting the next hour and a half. Go buy a little companion pet, maybe some toys or a bath for it, and run around Dalaran trying to find books that are so magically delicious that people somehow EAT THEM after reading. That will waste time and the money you would have used on repair bills, and you’ll actually have a silly grin on your face. As opposed to the psychotic one.

Deal breakers are: finding out the tank has less health than YOU. Helping the warlock do that demon-candy summoning thing, wondering why it looks different, only to have a giant armored demon with a huge axe suddenly appear. You know, the one that will be fighting the tank for agro for the next hour. Or maybe the hunter doesn’t have a pet, and you try to remind him a few times, only to have him finally turn to you and go “Pets are bad luck. Nothing but trouble.” And he has a completely straight face, and then goes back to shooting things. But you notice his gear and talents are designed to benefit from a critter beside him, and his damage is poo poo instead of pew pew. You could decide to tell him this, but I promise his response will be something like “Yeah I just respecced” or “My little brother did that.” He will not alter a thing.

Why do people do these things?

All together now…

Because they’re fine in BRD.

Lunar Festival is at the end of this month. I am happy. Do you know WHY?
Because it means I have an excuse to go hide in the far corners of the world.

I need to update my deadjournal background and theme. I found some other blood elf copying my style. I’ll have to write about that, too.