Bear tracks

It was cold today.

Standing at the train station, huddling over for warmth as the train arrived, it occurred to me that the screeching sound the wheels sometimes make doesn't bother me anymore. Y'know, the nails-on-the-blackboard, tearing metal sound you sometimes get. When I first started highschool, it was akin to physical pain - I would wince every time a train screeeeched past. Now, five and a half years later, I just kind of watch impassively and then get on. Funny how you get used to stuff like that.

A little bit later, I'm sitting in my Legal class, rubbing my hands together and not paying as much attention as I seem to be, and I realise that I'm sleepier than usual. This in itself isn't particularly unusual - I generally sleep from midnight until seven, which is a fair bit less than the ten hours I'm apparently supposed to get, and I often miss a couple of hours or a whole night of sleep anyway - but I'd been sleeping better and longer than usual the past few days.

It dawns on me that the cold is making me sleepy. I must be a bear.

I really wanted a hamburger then, too.

Stuff

Man. We are absolutely BREEZING through T6. It's ridiculous.

Supremus? Shade? Kaz'rogal? Azgalor? Gorefiend? A resounding 'meh' to the lot of them.

Tonight I got two pieces of loot - pants from Akama and spellhaste (=.=) gloves from Gorefiend, on our first kill at that - which pushed my +heal up to a hefty 1950 unbuffed. I'm reallly low on DKP now though. Even so, I'm considering building a spellhaste set - mostly I'll be losing out on regen, and a touch of +heal in some places, and it's not like I have competition for leather healing pieces anyway. I won't be using spellhaste pieces in most slots in my main set, though, for now at any rate. On the downside, though, my regen is hurting. Buuut... I have 80 mana pots on me, so it's okay.

Bloodboil tomorrow. Looking forward to healing that.

I'm wanting to play a warrior tank again, but not wanting to level a warrior again. I seem to jump around with what I want my alts to be. Like, I miss playing my mage, and I miss playing my warrior, and I want to try playing a warlock, an eleshammy, a holy priest, a shadow priest, a protadin, a rouge, the works. And I know from past experience that alts make my main suffer.

Man, I'm all over the place today. Oh well.

VCE is SRS BSNSS

Year 12 English class. People are being called up to do their orals - something I, of course, haven't prepared.

I get called up. 'Okay,' I think to myself, standing up and grabbing a couple of whiteboard markers on my way to the front of the room. I draw the axes of a graph on the whiteboard, and label them - the X axis is 'whaling,' and the Y axis is 'good.' I then draw a straight line, diagonally up from one corner of my graph to the other.

"Whaling," I say, pausing ever so slightly as I turn to face my classmates, "is good. Mkay?"

I step back slightly, allowing them to see my graph. "As you can clearly see," I explain, gesturing at the relevant parts, "the amount of Good is directly proportional to the amount of Whaling. Thank you."

I cross the room and sit back down in my chair.

A beat.

The room erupts into laughter.

Lolt6

So... yeah. Went into Hyjal tonight.

Oneshot RWC. Nobody even died on the trash. [Rejuvenating Bracers] woot.
Oneshot Anetheron. Trash was still easy. Netted about 3200 rep in there, too, which is nice - I'll have my Honoured ring next time we're here.

'Woot,' we say, and head down to BT. Naj'entus trash is easy. I get to sleep a turtle. We wipe once on Naj'entus because someone threw a spine at the wrong time, then kill him the second time. Fun fight to heal.

We wipe once on a pack of about ninety little green guys, then invis pot/stealth past them and summon the rest of the raid. Then we spend about three years clearing Supremus trash. We only attempt Supremus twice, then call it 'cos the raid finished a while ago and everyone's tired. I die to a volcano. T_T.

After the raid, a group of us heads over and does the Distraction for Akama quest together, netting me a nifty title.

All in all...

LolT6?

Band of Eternity

So... yeah. Despite my whining about it, and despite the fact that yesterday's raid and the start of today's raid were both pretty shit... we killed Kael.

Fucking woot.

My new ring's good. The badge ring is better than most of the SOS rings, but I think I'll be spending badges on actual gear before the ring. Will have to see. Exalted SOS trumps all rings I currently know of, anyway, so... yeah.

Seeing Kael die was, well... fucking awesome. Even though I think it's a relatively easy fight for healers, phase 5 was a rush, especially since it only was the second time we'd gotten to there.

I feel like I've solidly graduated from T5, and I'm looking forward to T6. Goodbye SSC, goodbye TK. I won't miss you, but I'm sure someday I'll look back and think I do.

Focus

I don't has it.

I've always prided myself on being a good raider. I know how to play. Previous to my current guild, I've always easily outperformed 75% of people in the same role as me. The fact that I'm only a mediocre player now is a good thing, because it means that I don't sit there being frustrated because people aren't doing their job.

Maybe it's because I've moved from being an officer to being a member, but I seem to be... focusing less in raids. I mess around a bit, especially on trash. Sometimes I go bearform and taunt mobs - I've been oneshot a couple of times because of this - but, y'know, it's just trash, nobody cares! It's really come to a peak, however, on Kael'thas. The absolute low point of my raiding experience in this guild has to have been when I was jumping in circles around Telonicus - in phase one, no less - since I had no healing to do, and yet! I managed to get myself oneshot by dynamite. Kael is supposed to be one of the hardest fights in the game, and here I am messing around dying to stupid stuff.

I think I perform at my best on fights like Vaelestrasz, or Kazzak, or how I imagine Brutallus or Patchwerk to be. Fights that aren't about controlling gimmicks like adds or phases or move-out-of-the-fire. Fights where you have to play HARD. Fights where the tank dies, where the boss enrages, where the healers run out of mana. I'm not jumping in circles in those fights. I'm pressing my Frostbolt key really fucking hard, or frantically cycling my tanking rotation, or rolling lifeblooms across two tanks and raid healing when I can. Where avoidable damage is basically 'do not get cleaved, firebreathed, or tailslapped,' and all the rogues are standing under a wing and popping their cooldowns. If the fight requires me to play at 100%, then I'm good; I can focus; I can stare at my raid frames and wish my GCD was shorter for the whole ten minutes, and then I exhale in relief and realise how tense my shoulders are.

But... healing Kael isn't challenging. I pretend to DPS Thaladred. I put three lifeblooms and a rejuv on Sanguinar's tank and watch his green bar stay put. I put hots on Capernian's tank and occasionally swiftmend. I... jump in circles around Telonicus. I give it a second then put lifeblooms on the weapon tanks. I catform-dash to the other end of the room and then heal Capernian's tank. I put hots on the phoenix tank and raid heal.

It's really fucking boring. And so I lose interest, lose focus, and make stupid mistakes.

I suppose being a resto druid contributes to this - since I heal proactively rather than reactively, I just have to lifebloom once every seven seconds and can spend the rest of the time jumping around. Maybe I should go back to DPS.

Real healers...

...cast every heal out of their spellbook.

Last night. I somehow managed to swap my main action bar to a different one right as we pulled Hydross, so my nice, familiar Lifebloom, Swiftmend, Rejuv, Tangle, Regrowth, NSHT, Starfire, Wrath bar got turned into... uselessness. I think I had a trinkets macro for cat, Alchemy, Jewelcrafting, Panda Collar, Sprite Darter Egg, Hearthstone, and Golden Fish Sticks there.

So I go, 'shit. uhh... right!' Then I open my spellbook with P, target the tank, and start clicking lifebloom. I actually managed to do my job relatively well just by clicking people in my raid frames, clicking lifebloom in my spellbook, and repeating.

It was pretty intense.