That Was Also The Week That Was

Not many posts lately, but ir haz a gud excuse.  As long time readers may have realised by now, I’m actually a serving member of the Royal Navy.  Sadly this means I’m not, however much I’d like to, able to spend all my time glued to a monitor, pissing into a bag and festering in a darkened room.  Er… actually come to think of it, that does sound rather a lot like a warship at Action Stations (or what those pesky Yankees call General Quarters) anyway. 

But I digress.  Much time has been spent rolling around the Mediterranean and North Atlantic lately, and not a lot making with the smiting in Icecrown or anywhere else for that matter.  Although there are a few float targets off Gibraltar that won’t be giving anyone much trouble anymore.   I did get to play a spot of WoW last weekend, just in time for the Valentine seasonal to get started, and boy am I glad I got off that hamster wheel last year.  Good news for me is that Calli completed almost all of the seasonal achievements last year except for the Midsummer ones.  For the last two years running the Navy has seen fit to send me to foreign climes every summer, but not this year!  I’ll be around this year to get the Flame Warden title and finally get my hands on that Violet Proto Drake. 

Speaking of last weekends’ gaming, I finally got to see the Blood wing of Icecrown and got the Plagueworks cleared in 25 man.  I’m really liking the Putricide fight, and the Blood Princes remind me a lot of the Illidari Council fight in Black Temple.  Sadly the Princes were as far as I went, as I was swapped out at that point for a Feral Druid who’d actually seen the Blood Queen before.

Make no mistake, I wasn’t upset about being benched at all.  I totally understand why it happened and it did make solid sense for the raid leader to ask me to step out.  With limited attempts still up and three of those wasted on stupid mistakes on Putricide (top tip for Paladins, don’t Divine Intervention anyone in the Professors’ room if they’re in aggro range of Putricide, your repair bills aren’t that important) you definitely can’t afford to waste attempts coaching some noob Arcane Mage who’s never seen the fight before and never produces her best dps on first nights.  It made a lot more sense to get in another player who’d done it before and to hell with raid roster rotations.  I stepped aside gladly and the person asked to replace me is an excellent Feral who pulls off some mind-boggling dps.  So it’s all good.

Except…   there’s this little bug that was going around with any melee dps who were using the seasonal perfume buff to boost their crit and attack power.  This little bug meant that melee couldn’t attack at all if they were using the Victory perfume with the Love is in the Air buff.  Didn’t affect spellcasts at all.

I know I shouldn’t, but… Lulz.  Speaking of irony, why is it that the guy in your random dungeon who’s always yelling “go go go” at the tank has the title “The Patient”?  I can’t figure that one out.

Anyway, even if I’m unable to play much lately (and it’s not going to get much better before May) I can at least browse the blogs of other people who can, and there’s been some good stuff going around lately.

Tam and Chas at Righteous Orbs are always entertaining.   Clearly channelling Angry Priest, Chas has been Winning Asshole Chicken, and Tam has the most unfortunately-named Troll Shaman ever – Kumquat.  This will invitably be shortened to Kum, and at some point he’s going to be asked to heal a raid.  If you haven’t figured out the consequences by now, just go read the post.  Oh, while you’re there, go tell Tam that you like his new hat.

Keredria over at Tree of Life is on a roll lately.  She spotted this article on gamer clothing that make me choke on my cornflakes, but in a good way.  She also has a damn good old fashioned rant about the bias against healers with those Not So Lovely Charms, and she has a good point.  Such a good point, in fact, that Blizzard just hotfixed it so that anyone in a group can get a charm if someone in the group gets a killing blow.  About time too.  I prefer my healers to be healing, not trying to grab killing blows, call me old-fashioned if you must but I’m superstitious about stuff like that.  Keeva over at Tree Bark Jacket seems to agree as does Kae at Dreambound and I’m not going to argue with the Resto Druid community.  I’ve seen Evil Dead and I prefer my angry trees at arms length, thanks.

Speaking of Resto Druids, Leafshine’s not dead!  She’s just been resting.  She’s back and doing what she does best, posting frivolous nonsense about nothing much in particular, and long may it continue!  Welcome back, Leafy!

In the meantime I’m back for the weekend from pretending to fix imaginary wounds on people who’ve been pretending to fight imaginary fires on a ship that’s pretending it’s fighting an imaginary war (other people call it “training” or so I’m led to believe, I call it “getting in the way of doing my real job”) but I managed to end up being on duty for the weekend, so it’s more blog-reading-goodness and Season Five of The Wire for me.  Until Monday, take care.

P.S.   The guys at the cafe in Gibraltar got their USB Flash Drive back.

P.P.S.  How could I forget?  Calli got Muradin’s Spyglass last weekend!  Bye bye Illustration of the Dragon Soul, you served me well but your time has come.