OC1 Clinic

Yesterday I went to an OC1 clinic put on by Hanohano. Here is me trying to record as much of it as I can before I forget it. The clinic was touted as a "Beginner's Clinic", with a lot of information geared towards the very newbie OC1 paddler, and even for those who are looking to buy their first OC1.

I'm trying to get the thoughts recorded before I forget it, so it won't be as organized as I'd like. Maybe afterwards I'll try reorganizing.

The clinic went very well. Chris Hill, the HanoHano men's coach. He was very informative. He knew his shit.

So he went over first how an OC1 is made, and what the differences are between non-vacuum bagged, vacuum-bagged, carbon and kevlar layups are. Non-vacuum bagged, is also a wet layup. All OC1s have a core material, and the layup is applied to either side. Non-vacuum bagged layups are done by hand, and the excess resin is squeegeed out. This results in uneven application and varies the weight greatly. This is mostly used for one-off, or cheaper layups. Exotics are made this way also. Vacuum bagged is still fiberglass, but using a bag and vacuum to suck out the excess resin. The example that was given was gluing 2 pieces of paper, and putting an encyclopedia on top to squeeze out the excess. My huki was done this way. A carbon layup is much much more rigid, and in the water transmits the most paddler energy, into forward motion energy. It is also very easily dented and susceptible to crush marks. The Hurricane is a carbon canoe ( apparently all hurricanes are carbon). To keep the carbon's efficiency, but give it some flex in order to take some beating, kevlar is added sometimes. This gives it a bit of a flexible skin over the much more rigid carbon. S-glass wasn't mentioned. I guess I'll have to look that up myself.

Mechanics of paddling were explained as well He made a distinction between paddling technique and paddling mechanics. He taught the latter, but did not touch the former, in respect of the different styles that coaches from other clubs teach. The mechanics are based on physics and are absolute, how those mechanics are performed is style, which is different for every club and every paddler.

One of the mechanics mentioned was forward angle. When paddling the force of the effort is usually ( the majority anyway) is perpendicular to the blade face. The movement of the canoe is 180 degrees from that force, so the opposite side. If your blade is at a forward angle then you are either propelling the canoe upwards, out of the water, or forwards in the water ( depending on the angle). If you have a negative angle, then you are pushing the canoe down into the water. He also mentioned that while negative angle is bad, that doesn't mean that you should get your blade out as soon as you start getting negative angle. It just means you shouldn't be applying force at the negative angle. Especially in OC1s, being comfortable is very important. After the stroke, its fine to stop putting pressure and allow the blade to come out of the water naturally. Also if you try to pull the blade out right at your hip, where the blade face is again perpendicular to forward motion, then you're acting as a brake as as the blade is in the water.

He also mentioned having reasonable personal goals out of paddling. Its not reasonable to tell yourself that you're gonna go beat the big boys of paddling when you're just starting out. He mentioned his triangle-into pyramid. The three corners are:

1. Athleticism
2. Fitness
3. Technique.

Athleticism is the natural, genetic gift people have towards sports or physical activity. People sometimes don't like to talk about it, but its true. Some people are just genetically predisposed to be good towards certain things. Some people are just really great at sports. You can tell if you're one of those people by looking back at your own history. Have you always been into sports, have you been good at almost any sport you've done? Is your hand-eye coordination always spot on?

Fitness is what people seem to sometimes confuse with Athleticism. This is something you can work on. This is your weight vs your strength vs your flexibility vs your endurance, etc. Hit the gym, cross train, or paddle. The more fit you are, the better at paddling you can be. ( Can not will).

Technique is another area that can be worked on. But in my opinion, people seem to stop working on early. He mentioned that he knows quite a few very good paddlers that have shit technique. Its just that their Fitness level and Athleticism are so high that they can still be good with the shitty technique. This is also where efficiency would come into play.

He said the last part that makes it into a pyramid is the man-hours spent on the sport. The first 3 are the base that determine the foundation of your paddling, but the man-hours are what determine its height. I thought that was very good way of putting it.

Drills:

He taught us 3 drills, which he named Pistons, Throwing the Hips, and the Frankenstein. The way he tested these was 20 strokes.

Pistons:
The idea of it is simple, but I had some trouble getting this drill down. The point of the drill is to combat pain and fatigue in your hip flexors. Normally to get the twist, specially in an OC6, most people will coil their body up. To get that coil, they use their hip flexors, which are very small muscles to start the twist. In an OC1 this is much easier to see. The point of the piston drill is to use your opposite leg to do that work, instead of your hip. I've always had an issue with this, but never thought there was anything I could do about it.

The idea is to push off with your opposite leg. For example if you are paddling on the left side. You push off your RIGHT leg, that pushes your right hip back, and throws your left hip forward. This puts you in the normal Kau position, and you are ready to take a stroke. Once your are taking the stroke, you use your left leg as normal to get the drive. On the right side its the opposite. Left leg opens you up, and puts you into the Kau position, drive off your right leg during the stroke.

The drill itself to get you use to it, is to sit on the OC1. Brace with your heels into the footwells. Put your but to the back of the seat ( do not move the seat). Put your hands on your knees. Push down on your right knee, and feel yourself twist to the left, then push the other knee and see yourself twist the other way. Keep doing this ot get used to the motion. Then try to do it without your hands. Try to do it without having to think about i.

Throwing the hips:
I had quite a bit of trouble with this one also. Visualize yourself sitting on a skateboard. You're trying to launch yourself, in that skateboard, forward. What you do is throw your hips forward in order to create motion. I don't quite get this drill, and will have to compare notes with the other sardines to see if they understood it better.

Frankenstein:
This is very similar to the drill I have new people do. It involves keeping your arms perfectly straight. You keep your arms straight throughout the entire stroke, catch, pull and recovery. It really exaggerated the twist, and coupled with the other drills, really gets you efficient. I got the concept pretty quickly, having done it a bunch of times in the OC6, but it was still a bit different trying to do it on the OC1, especially on the right side.

Stability:

He mentioned that leaning overly to the left actually causes the canoe to be over-stabilized and is actually less stable. The most stable the canoe is when you're paddling on the left is with the paddle in the water. The least stable is at the recovery. Apparently this had something to do with the way your hips are when your leaning over. I don't remember when you're the most stable on the side.

He also talked about transporting the canoe. Long story short, the racks we got were awesome for small cars.

There's probably more, and I'll add it as soon as I remember.

HowTo: Repair an Outrigger Canoe Paddle. Part 2 Whole paddle repair

This part will be similar to Part 1, but this time with a more involved repair. This paddle is owned by the club, and was not in great shape. It had the usual scratches and dings like Enzo, but it also had significant water damage on both the handle and the two sides of the face. With the extent of the damage involved, I decided that spot-treatment would be ineffective, and the whole paddle must be redone.

Side View: The edges are scraped up badly.
Wood has started to rot.

As can be seen, there is enough damage to the handle that visible splitting of the wood can be seen. Also, the edges of the face are starting to fray. In some of the problem areas it you can even see some red paint from the canoes. The rest of the gallery can be seen here.

Step 1: Identify Problem Areas

2/3 of each side of the handle are worn. There moderate water damage on each side. Both sides are deep enough to observe wood splitting and a crack running down the paddle. The face has similar damage on each side, with fraying towards the bottom. The face itself is in relatively good condition, but could use a new coat of varnish. The handle has quite a bit of water damage and what I guess to be mold. Must be sanded down. A worrying area is the right side of the face, where a visible crack seems to be running down the side.

Each of those areas will have to be sanded down. Remove as much of the rotting wood as possible. Try to sand down into the cracks/splits to avoid sharp edges. Remove varnish from the entire paddle and revarnish.

Step 2: Sand

I sanded the problem areas first. Again used 220 grit sandpaper. I could have used a courser grit, especially considering how much material I ended up removing anyway, but the 220 ensured that I didn't take off too much material at once. This was done all hand sanding. On the damage to the handle I sanded off all the red paint, as well as evening out the cracks.

Majority of the fraying has been sanded down.
Varnish will give it some strength.

On the face, I sanded the outsides until the I got through the fraying wood. I tried to smooth over the crack as best I could. I got down to the point where the crack was small. I could have gone all the way down, but that might have changed the shape of the face or made it uneven from one side to the other. I also could have Epoxied the crack together, but at this point I wasn't ready to start working with Epoxy yet.

After the problem areas were sufficiently sanded, I went about sanding the rest of the paddle. I decided to just remove as much of the varnish as I could from the whole paddle, and redo it. This would let me experiment with how best to varnish ( more on that later) and give me experience on sanding.

Note: do this in a well ventilated area. I did it in my garage, with the door down and no airflow. Not a smart idea.

Step 3: Varnish

Because I decided to redo the entire paddle, I got the liquid version of the same spar varnish. I initially tried using a normal bristle brush, and a more expensive natural fiber brush. Both worked well... for the first coat. But I was not able to clean them thoroughly well enough, and the next time I tried to use them, they were much too hard. Finally a friend told me to try the opposite, the super cheap foam brushes. Use them for one session, then simply throw them away. This worked much much better.

Also I experimented with different techniques for brushing on the varnish. I've found that super thin coats work the best. It drastically reduces the likely hood of runs and pooling. I would start at the "shoulders" of the paddle ( as it hangs face down from some dental floss). I would "paint" from beyond the shoulder, then brush all the way down past the end of the paddle. Again this is to avoid runs and pooling for when you change direction.

If you decide to do many coats of thin varnish this is even less of a problem, as you simply keep brushing until the coat evens out. Be careful as the foam brush tends to simply suck in the varnish, I found myself almost squeezing the brush along the dry areas of the paddle to create a small pool then spreading it with the brush. Experiment to see how it works best for you.

I did one side completely, then the other. After doing the other side, check the reverse( original) side again for any runs that you may have caused. Usually I'll find a few big ones and brush those away. If you do it quick enough the other side will still be wet enough to allow you to brush. If the varnish has gone tacky, don't brush or you'll only end up leaving brush strokes in the varnish.

Step 4: Scuff/Finish Sand

As before, you have to create and abrasive surface between coats. You can use the same scrubbing pad. But I chose to use the 220-grit for the first few coats. The first few coats had quite a few imperfections and drips, so the extra abrasiveness helped me get rid of them. If all else fails, simply keep sanding until you sand away the imperfection and get back to the bare wood.

I must have added about 10 coats of varnish and sanded away at least half of them.

Step 5: Finish Coat

Keep repeating as in Part 1. A change I did do is that towards the end, I switched from liquid to spray varnish. This ensured that the last few coats would be easier to apply and get perfect. This was especially useful on the face, where imperfections were easy to see.

In hindsight I probably could have kept using the liquid varnish, but my skill was not up to it, and neither was my patience.

The results seem to work out fine. There's a visible difference between the handle and face ( the handle I kept using liquid varnish). I was originally planning on doing a final coat on both parts, but by then the paddle was needed and I figured it was "good enough". When the season ends I'll probably try again to perfect the technique.


Notes

The hardest part of this kind of repair was the face. You can see a lot of drips on the face, and its especially easy to see imperfections in the face of the shaft.

HowTo: Repair an Outrigger Canoe Paddle. Part 1, Simple Repairs

For the past few months I've gotten into repairing outrigger canoe, bent shaft paddles. I started into it because my own paddle, Enzo, needed some minor work done. Mostly just some scratches and small gouges in the face and handle. Those were easy enough to repair, once someone told me how. Unfortunately, the web was less than its usual helpful self when it came to repairing paddles. Hopefully this series of entries will help with that.

Figure 1: Scratches

First round is the simple repairs. These include wood that's been exposed to water, and has started to intake water. Simple scratches (shown in Figure 1) or small dings are pretty easy to repair.

Step 1: Identify the Problem Areas
The first question you have to ask is, is the damage slight enough that you can just fix that small part of the paddle, or is it large enough to warrant stripping and re-coating the entire paddle. Most of the time if you're contemplating fixing your paddle, then its probably bad enough that you'd want to fix the whole thing.

On my first paddle, Enzo, the damage wasn't too bad. Enzo is the "Nani" model, all-wood outrigger racing paddle made by Kialoa. Unfortunately I didn't think to take pictures of the damage before hand. The damage was localized mostly at the handle ( from being stood up on the ground), the shaft ( from banging on the gunwales), and the edge of the face ( from banging into the canoe, and general wear). In our Canoe Club, it is considered very disrespectful to stand your paddle face down, so Enzo has almost always been handle down. Even with this, the tip of the face was still banged up, think how bad it would be if it stood on the face all the time!

Step 2: Sand

The next thing you have to do is sand away the varnish. I chose to use 220-grit sandpaper and hand-sanded all the rough areas. Any areas where wood has started to rot, should be sanded until the majority of the rotted wood has been removed. Be careful of removing too much wood. If the water damage looks pretty deep, it might be worth just smoothing it down, and letting the varnish penetrate through the damage. It won't look as uniform, but you don't risk compromising the structural integrity of the paddle.

Step 3: Varnish

For such simple, smaller repairs, I would suggest using a spray varnish. I used Helmsman Spar Varnish. This is used on marine craft and will work well on the paddle. Apply a thin coat on the area, just enough to cover the work area. A mistake I made was not putting enough varnish. You should put enough to coat the area, but not enough to drip. If you're not sure, err on the side of too little. This repair will require multiple coats, so don't worry if the area doesn't look the same as the rest of the paddle.

Put a coat or two of the varnish, about an hour or two apart. This will create a nice base to work with. Let these coats dry for at least 24 hours. Also, before spraying the varnish, take a slightly damp towel and a dry towel, and go over the area. The damp towel will remove the excess saw dust, and the dry towel will ensure that any water from the damp towel won't penetrate into the wood. Do this right before varnishing ( so that dust doesn't have a chance to get back on).

Step 4: Finish-sanding

At this point the area should be relatively smooth. Because these areas are high traffic, we need multiple coats to build up a nice buffer of protection. At this point take a pot scrubber, such as this. And go over the area to create an abrasive surface. This will allow the next coat to adhere better to the previous coat. Make sure you don't take off too much. Now is the time to remove any drips that might have occured, or smooth out any lumpy areas. Consider going back to a 220 grit sandpaper for big drips.

My rule of thumb is to use the scrubber until the gloss of the varnish has been removed. Go over it again with the damp and dry towels.

Step 5: Revarnish and repear

At this point you simple put another layer of varnish onto the paddle. Alternate sanding and adding a coat and let the varnish build up. On Enzo I went for about 4-5 coats total. When spraying, make sure to go "past the area". The spray should be even and consistant. Start a few inches away from the wood and spray a nice even coat. Then keep spraying an inch or two PAST the wood, before changing direction. This ensures that the speed changes do not deliver more or less varnish.

Face of the blade has been fixed.

Here are some shots of the finished product. It came out pretty well. Note: This paddle isn't the same paddle as pictured in Figure 1. I didn't think to take pictures of the damage before starting work.

 The handle still shows some of the damage left in the wood. To remove the rest of the damage would have required quite a bit more sanding. I didn't think I could remove it without significantly altering the shape of the handle. Plus I didn't want the handle to get too small.

The rest of the pictures from this repair are available in my gallery.

Google+

Just received a Google+ invite and signed up. Now I have to see how that affects this blog with regards to visibility.

[CYGWIN] "Sync" passwd with Windows Password

Sometimes if you add a user using window's control panel, they won't automatically get added to the /etc/passwd file in cygwin. This is annoying if you're trying to set up OpenSSH access. To "Sync" them, use mkpasswd. Like so:

mkpasswd -l -u >> /etc/passwd

This is also useful if cygwin is complaining that your password is incorrect, when you know its right. Just be careful to remove the old entry in passwd. Got this info from:

Etienne Mbuyi on Cygwin mailbag. Thanks!
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2005-07/msg00933.html

A toe into patch 4.1's new 5-mans: Zul'Gurub

I got some unexpected free time last night so I fired up WoW. I haven't logged in for a few days, and haven't played seriously in over a week. I've been very busy, and in a way, kind of burned out from WoW. I've tried to stay away from the Computer in general when I'm home. Usually I'm on my iPad watching The West Wing ( just discovered this awesome series) or Farscape ( also just discovered, also good).

Fired up WoW and went through the long process of updating to patch 4.1. It didn't take near as long as I was expecting. While the Launcher patched up WoW, I was on curse client updating as many addons as available. Curse Client makes this so much easier, even the free version. Even with about a dozen addons updated, most of my main addons were out of date. I bit the bullet and had WoW load them anyway. I disabled some of the more likely-to-be-broken ones, such as xperl. Fortunately Healbot was working ok, which allowed me to try one of the new 5-mans.

I queued up and it popped almost instantly into Zul'Gurub. I'd never actually done the raid before, so everything was new to me. We got to the first boss High Priestes Venoxis.

The fight is pretty tough, especially with a PUG. 2 players are "linked" and have to run away from each other, as well as everyone else. After a few seconds an AOE explosion happens, if the linked players are still close enough for the AOEs to overlap, they're insta-dead. Then there's a maze of green slime on the ground that has to be avoided at all costs, and thats just phase 1. Phase 2, he turns into a snake and does a spit attack, and then something called Bloodvenom. Basically a whole lot of green is sprayed everywhere and you have to make sure it doesn't hit you, and you don't hit the maze. Rinse and repeat.

The PUG I was in was doing ok, learning as we were going. The problem was that after about 2 wipes one person would drop, which means a new person popped up, and it would take them another 2-3 wipes to get up to speed. By then another person would drop, and eventually we couldn't get anywhere because people weren't staying long enough to learn the damn fight.

I'd never had that kind of experience in DF before. Usually people would drop on the first wipe or just stay and finish. Eventually after about a dozen wipes, 3 tanks, and countless DPS I dropped group as well. It just wasn't worth it anymore. Maybe next time I'll try a guild group first.

[WoW] State of WoW.

So I broke down last week and transferred my Druid Waash to my new realm ( The Forgotten Coast). I leveled him a bit to get him to 80 and into the Cataclysm content. This, plus my Priest dinging 85 gives me 3 high level (80+) characters, 2 mid level ( 50+) characters and my lowly Mage at level 12.

I think I've burned out a bit on leveling, once Waash hit 80, I couldn't bring myself to do one more quest. Instead I've been leveling professions, trying to make gold.

Waash, 80 Tauren Druid

So I decided to make Waash a Tauren. I was considering making him a Troll, but I just did not like the Troll fight form. He's now my second Tauren, after my DK Caaz.

I'm currently trying to make money using Inscription, which was one of the big reasons I wanted to transfer Waash. Its not as easy as it used to be, there's a lot of competition and nowhere near as many people buying glyphs. Currently I'm cherry-picking all glyphs that sell for 500g+. This gives me about 15-20 I need to craft, and they're selling ok. I'll sell 1-2 a day, which while not great amount of money, lets me work back into the flow of things slowly.

In Wrath it was easy to be in the glyph business, all herbs below Outland level were going for about as much as Icethorn, so you just buy all Icethorn and trade the inks in for the correct one you need. This time the prices of Cata-level herbs are much much higher. So now I have to compare both the level-appropriate herb prices as well as the cata-level herb prices, to get the cheapest inks. I might switch over to cata-herbs only if the prices drop a bit more, and my revenue stream gets more reliable. So far its been ok, and I'm making a bit of money.

I need that money because I'm spending it left and right. I'm going to buy Artisan ( Epic) flying on Waash soon, so that'll be about 4800g. I've also been leveling his Alchemy. I have quite a few herbs saved up so its at least not costing much out of pocket. But leveling Alchemy and doing the glyphs has drained my herb stores quickly.

Alchemy is probably one of the easiest to level crafting professions. Waash is currently at around 505 or 515, I can't quite remember. I've already been able to craft a few potions, flasks and elixirs that Solinari and Hooff can both use for healing and DPS. Also I've been able to make a nice Epic trinket for Waash as well. That should help quite a bit for leveling. I've hit a bit of a wall right now, since the only way to skill up is to transmute one of two rare gems, the mat requirements being a Twilight Jasmine and 3 uncommon gems. Unfortunately the uncommon gets are worth more than the resulting rare gem. I am an xmute master, so if I proc an extra gem it would put me over, but thats very very rare. I might just have to suck it up and do the xmute, so that I can level Alchemy. Once I can get the truegold xmute then that should recoup some of my losses.

Inscription also has quite a few off-hands and relics that can be made. I made one for Solinari, but I forgot that priests use wands, not relics. The Relics themselves sell for almost nothing on the AH, so I might just end up saving it for my warlock or if Waash ever wants to heal.

Solinari

After hitting 85, Solinari already had quite a few rep rewards available to get her ilvl up quickly. She just recently got to ilvl 329 technically letting her queue for a heroic. I don't feel near ready enough to take her into a heroic, let alone a PUG heroic. I still have some trouble healing heroics on Hooff, and he's much better geared. My plan for her is to keep doing Normals until she replaces all her < 333 ilvl gear, then try doing the PUG heroics. There's quite a few more rep grinds she can do to get that gear.

On a more cosmetic front, she recently did a PUG Obsidiam Sanctum raid, 3 drakes run. She DPSed, and was a respectable 3rd or 4th in DPS. She also won the Black drake! It looks mighty cool and she's the first toon I have to get that drake. Its actually spurned me to want to get it on my other toons as well as go for more mounts in general.

Hooff

Unfortunately for Hooff, he's been stagnating as of late. He's my only raid-ready toon, but since we're not raiding, I haven't been using him much. He can certainly handle a PUG heroic, given a good tank. But most of the time I just don't feel like putting myself through that. My love for healing has been going away lately, specially when there are tanks queuing for heroics at the bare minimum iLvl, then blame the healer for not being able to keep their squishy butts alive.

Solinari, 85 Disc/Shadow Priest

Solinari hit 85 a little while ago. With the questing she did in Hyjal and Deepholm, she was able to get a few nice piece of rep gear. That plus normal dungeon drops and technically she's ready for heroics ( iLvl 333 ). Of course she's nowhere near ready to actually heal a PUG heroic. I tried last night and on the first pull everyone went down. There was a lag spike in the middle but I was already in trouble by that point.

She had more luck doing old school raids. There was an OS-3D group forming on Trade, so I had her join as DPS. Sarth went down pretty easily and everyone rolled Need on the drake and bag. I lost on the bag but won the drake! It looks mighty cool. Who would have thought that just shading the same drake model differently would make such a difference. She also got the Green proto-drake from the egg in the same week. Not bad at all.

[WoW IC] Elementals Attack

Hooff focused on channeling the light into the bruised body of the blood elf warlock in front of him. Having just cleaved an elemental in two, he was still in the retribution mindset. Just a few seconds ago his hands glowed with the white hot fury of the light, but now they had a softer, healing glow. Because his mind was not in a state attuned to the healing side of the light, a simple healing spell strained him more than it should. It would only take a few minutes to calm his mind and reattune but those minutes, the warlock did not have. Besides, there are bound to be more crazed elementals about, no use being a healer in a fight with no one to deal damage.

The felguard stood near the warlock, eyeing the paladin warely. Most people would assume that a demon would take this oppurtunity to run, or possibly kill the warlock and sever the ties of servitude that bind the demon. Hooff has quite a bit of experience with warlock demons, and was not surprised at the concern the felguard showed for the young warlock. The felguard had done its best to slow the onslaught of the elemental, but it wasn't powerful enough.

Hooff looked at the armor and robes of the young lock, Nuiitari was her name? They were high quality, but well worn. Definetly handed down as an heirloom. In fact the robes looked very familiar. They should look familiar, the armor he gave to a priest a few months back.In fact when Hooff was fighting, the robes is what caught his eye. As the elemental was bairing down on the young warlock, Hooff thought it was the priest he had saved back in Tarren Mill. Looking at the face of the young warlock, Hooff could see the family resemblance.

Unfortunately he wasn't able to get to her in time, and she was struck down by the elemental. The felguard did its best to shield the warlock, but it was just not powerful enough. The bruised and broken bodies of orcs, trolls, tauren and blood elves littered the grand courtyard of Orgrimmar. These are the bodies of those who had no business fighting such powerful elementals. Many were evacuated by mages shortly before the elementals attacked, but they couldn't get everyone. Those of the lowest rank were evacuated first, since they were the most vulnerable. These are bodies of those who were high enough rank not to be on the first few groups evacuated, but not high enough to protect themselves. This blood elf was surely low enough rank to have gone with the second, if not first group to be evacuated. Why did she stay?

Still they didn't sit idly by. Many took to putting out fires caused by the fire elementals, much more of Orgrimmar wouldn't be standing if it weren't for these Experts, or Artisans. Only those of Grand Masters rank could reasonably face even single elementals, and only the highest of Grand Masters could face more than one. Hooff was facing three at once when he saw Nuiitari being overrun. Her felguard faced the oncoming elemental but it was no match and was swept aside easily. The blood elf was struck and severely wounded before Hooff got to her.

Nuiitari wasn't doing well, his holy spells were able to heal her most critical wounds, but she was still very weak. The felguard phased in and out, obviously the warlock was losing her connection to the demon.

"Maybe I can solve both these problems at once" Hooff thought to himself.

"Demon, come here." Hooff motioned towards the felguard.

The demon looked at him, but didn't move. Obviously it doesn't take orders from anyone other than this warlock. Hooff would have to get the demon's attention another way.

"Felguard, I require your assistance to save your mistess" Hooff said, this time in demonic. The felguard snapped to attention. The grunts and clerics tending to the injured stopped and stared at Hooff. Not every day that you hear demonic speech come from the mouth of a Paladin. A few grunts instinctively grasped their weapons, waiting to see what happens next.

"Jhuutom." replied the felguard as he moved closer to the paladin. "Jhuutom is my name".

"I am Hooff, and I will bind you to your mistress, with a Soul Link spell. Are you familiar with it". Hooff said, still in demonic, as he placed one hand on Nuiitari's forehead.

"I am, Mistress has only successfully cast it thrice before." Jhuutom said. Hooff placed his other hand on the Felguards chest.

Hooff cast the spell quickly. It was a low level spell, learned at Journeyman level by warlocks specializing in the Demonology. It has unexpected results when a warlock of another specialization tries to cast the spell. The fact that Hooff can cast the spell was almost impossible.

Hooff finished casting the spell, it was a short spell, but required an extreme amount of effort on Hooff's part. Spent, Hooff leaned against a wall to gather his wits.

Color returned to Nuiitari's skin, and she seemed to be stable. The spell linked her mind and body with the felguard. They could now share each other's strength.

"How are you able to cast this spell Paladin?" questioned the felguard. The felguard no longer needed to speak, since a side effect of the spell was that now all three of their minds were linked, in a manner.

"My people are ... adept ... at manipulating fel energy, and I was taught this spell by an old Warlock." answered Hooff with a thought. No need to cause more of a scene by speaking.

"You are not an elf." Jhuutom stated.

"No, I'm not." Hooff answered.

"You are an Eradar?" Jhuutom questioned.

"Hold your tongue Demon." Hooff scowled.

"A Draenei then." Jhuutom concluded.

"Yes, from ... very far away. Keep that to yourself" commanded Hooff.

"I shall not repeat it to any mortal" Jhuutom promised.

Satisfied that Nuii was stable for now, he waved over an Orgrimmar Cleric to finish the healing. Though the scene was horrific, Orgrimmar had powerful clerics and many of these heroes will live. All but the most lifeless of corspes can be brought back with the power of the light.
Hooff then picked up his mace and took a contingent of Grunts to finish the job of driving the elementals out of the city.

[WoW] State of MyWoW

This weekend saw quite a bit of playing. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had quite a bit of time to play. This let me knock out a few of the things on my todo list:

Hooff

Finally hit exalted with Therazene faction. I will no longer have to do those daillies. I bought the shoulder enchants, and bid them a fond farewell. The sheer number of daillies, plus the fact that you start out past honored after questing in Deepholm made this pretty quick.

I'm still doing the Dragonmaw daillies. They're quite a bit more annoying, mainly because you have to gather/destroy things, competing with both Horde and Alliance players. That plus there is a high possibility of getting jumped by mobs makes one or two corpse runs common. Just bad enough to be annoying, but not enough to make me stop doing the daillies.

We two-healed Baradin Hold again over the weekend also. This time it was Hooff and Raenna, a holy-priest in the guild. We got him on our second attempt. The first attempt, the priest's side started getting overwhelmed with damage. We adjusted a bit and were able to down him no problem.

We then attempted to do a REAL raid. Blackwing Descent. We got as far as the mobs before Magmar. The twin mobs that charge the most distant mob from each other. The healing required was intense. We brought in a third healer, a Disc Priest. But she was PVP specced, and the high amount of healing required made her OOM quickly. I myself had to spam my fastest/hardest hitting heal also.

If we have to constantly spam heals like that, I think we must be doing the encounter wrong. We looked up the strategy, and when we applied it ( tanks at opposite ends of the room, DPS clumped together in the middle to the side) it went much better. Unfortunately, we still couldn't get the trash down. Maybe it was just not enough healing, or our tanks weren't geared enough. Either way we need to gear up and practice some more.

Solinari

My priest hit 80 over the weekend. Then hit 81 on Sunday while questing in Hyjal. I was afraid that Hyjal would be a repeat of the PITA that Tedrassil was. So far its not bad. There's only been 1-2 quests in a cave, and the lore is rich. I've already met Malfurion Stormrage (woot) and Ysera ( hott ). I bet my druid would get a kick out of it.

I'm not sure if the mobs just don't hit as hard in Hyjal or if its because I expect them to hit really hard, but my priest isn't having near as much trouble killing things as my paladin did. Right now I can kill 2-3 cataclysm mobs no problem. It could also be that the spellpower of my heals are high, and my health is low enough that a cast of Flash of Light can heal me to almost full.

I've already replaced my heirloom shoulders and chest. They stop functioning at level 80, so I've replaced them with Cataclysm greens. Its a bit annoying because that effectively cuts my +XP bonus by more than half. I now only have the +10% from guild and +5% from cloak. Guess I should shelve the priest for a few days to get some rested XP back. My trinket has also stopped scaling, but I haven't found a better replacement so I'm still using it for the time being. So far I've replaced 7 pieces of armor, and my mana and Health is already double what it when I hit 80. My iLvl is still too low to queue for a the LFD, but i'm hoping to change that in the next few days.

Nuiitari

My Warlock has languished at 53. Her tailoring is already maxed out for her level (350). She's been a steady money maker. Buying Netherweave Cloth from the AH when its cheap, and creating Netherweave Bags to sell. Its not a huge amount of profit, but its steady. Something to keep her occupied until she can level again. I still haven't chosen her other profession. I'm still thinking of bringing my druid over, so that takes care of Alchemy and Inscription. Blacksmith, Jewelcrafting, and Engineering all really require a miner to fund the leveling, or else it is very expensive. I could do leatherworking, but again, I don't have a stockpile of leather to help her level. My skinner is Hooff, and while he could probably farm stuff pretty quickly, the prospect of going back to lower level zones to get the leather sounds horrible.

[WoW] Baradin Hold ... or Holy Pally Heaven

Baradin Hold

Baradin hold currently only has one boss ( A'la Vault of Archavon when it first came out). Just like Archavon, the first boss Argaloth is pretty straight forward. The mechanics to the fight lend very well to Paladin healing. Another paladin and I were able to 2-heal this in 10-man normal. The tank mechanic is normal 2-tank swap. Its really a DPS race. The enrage timer is 5 minutes, with his health being roughly 21Million, all DPS need to average 10k DPS at least to be able to get him down in time.

The strategy for the boss is available in better detail on other sites so I won't go into here. Summary is, the raid splits into 2 equal groups. One tank, 3 DPS and a healer on each side. The boss does a meteor slash that is shared between everyone that gets hit and puts a fire damage debuff. The tanks taunt of each other after so that only half the raid gets hit and the debuff doesn't stack. At 66% and 33% the boss casts Fel Firestorm, it leaves fire on the ground that everyone has runaway from. This goes on for a bit, everyone running and DPS as best they can. Afterwards you go back to original positions and repeat.

Pally Love

This style encounter is great for paladins. All our healing targets are stacked together, with predictable damage patterns. This makes our Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn especially effective. All this healing gets funneled to our Beaconed Tank, so they're getting constantly healed. As an added bonus, because we get to stand in Melee range, we can Crusader Strike the boss to build Holy Power. That gives us free Light of Dawn healing goodness. Heck if you position yourself correctly you might be able to heal your group and the other group as well.

Even during the Fel Firestorm phase, our Holy Radiance gives us the increased run speed, making sure we can both get out of the bad, and reach injured teammates quickly. I like to spot heal with Holy Shock + Light of Dawn partway through the Fel Firestorm, and then when returning to positions hit Holy Radiance. That ensures I'm there quickly, and that I'm healing everyone plus the tank as they get in range. There's also a debuff that we can cleanse that the boss puts onto random people.

This dungeon almost seems tailored made for the Pally healing style. I've yet to try healing this on another class, or with another class. I'm not sure if its because of the synergy between the fight mechanics and pally heal style, but 2 pallies were able to heal this dungeon in ilvl avg 340 gear. Thats technically high enough for heroics, but I certainly wouldn't try any of the entry level raids with it.

Enjoy.

[WoW non-IC] What happened to Hooff?

This is my first crack at writing a story, but not in first-person point of view. Lately it was difficult for me to have an "exciting" story, told in the past tense, so I thought I'd give this a shot.

"We have news of Hooff" exclaimed Rohan.

"How?" Questioned Hotplate.

Hotplate looked around the room, taking in the strange scene in front of her. The concern in her voice seemed out place on her normally stoic and, understandably cold expression.
While not particularly close, she did deeply respect the old Draenei. When they first met, they were already at odds. Hooff's draenei roots and training with the light gave him an automatic aversion to Hotplate's unholy ways. None of the "family" accepted her easily. She was only allowed to stay in the manor by decree of Bob. While Hooff mistrusted Hotplate a great deal, he trusted in Bob's judgement more. Strange to hear that a Paladin would trust the judgement of a Warlock in regards to a Death Knight, but these are strange times. How Hooff came to judge Bob's judgement so completely, is a story only Bob and Hooff seem to know, and neither are considered "chatty".
Eventually in battle, Hooff came to respect Hotplate. Many times Hotplate would charge in, standing toe to toe against a hulking monster, adeptly dodging and parrying its attacks while simultaneously keeping its attention. Hooff would be behind her, calling upon the healing powers of the Light to mend whatever strikes Hotplate was not able to dodge. They made a good team, eventually developing a deep mutual respect. Hooff came to think of her as younger sister.
In the room was Rohan, the archmage that had cast the spell to send Hooff off, a few other nameless mages, and Waash the night-elf druid. Zoee was understandably absent, her and Waash had had a falling out, and she left the manor shortly after. Even if Hotplate wanted to contact her, it'd be next to impossible. The only thing harder to find than a druid that didn't want to be found, is a Rogue that does't want to be found. A glowing eye wandered around the room on occasion, Hotplate recognized it as Bob's Eye of Kilrogg. The old warlock was rarely ever seen in person. Any time his presence was required someplace, either the Eye or sometimes one of his minions would go in his stead.

"As you all know the teleportation spell I cast worked, too well." explained Rohan.

"Instead of sending Hooff to the future, I sent him to another dimension. The dimensions seem to be linked by the twisting nether. There's still quite a bit about the twisting nether that we know nothing about".

"How did you find him? How's he doing?" Hotplate asked again, with more concern in her voice than she meant to show.

A blink of light and Thantomm ( or Tom as he's called around the manor) appeared next to the Eye. He was Bob's Felguard minion, his Axe still had the blood of whatever he had last killed.
"A felguard mentioned his name to me, in the twisting nether" Tom said.

"How would another felguard know about Hooff" replied Hotplate.

"Apparently, he was summoned by a young Warlock. During an elemental attack, they were saved by a Paladin. The Paladin had a strange accent, and his eyes looked strange", continued Tom.

"None of what you said makes me think that it was Hooff" Hotplate replied, clearly loosing patience.

"The felguard and the warlock were stil very young. The Warlock, Nuiitari is her name, was still just an Apprentice, and thus her connection to the felguard wasn't fully established. Normally an Apprentice Warlock does not have the power to call upon a felguard. Imps and Voidwalkers are considerably less... straining. Nuiitari was losing the connection because of her injuries, the paladin cast the Soul-link spell that kept the connection and allowed Warlock and Felguard to share each other's strength".

"I didn't know paladins had such a spell" remarked Waash.

"They don't." answered Tom.

The Eye of Kilrogg moved and settled nex to Tom.
"An Apprentice Warlock can cast that spell, but only to herself and her minion. To cast the spell to bind another Warlock, to its minion, requires a fairly higher level Warlock. To have a paladin cast the spell is very rare". an eerie voice, seemingly out of nowhere explained. Some of the nameless mages looked around, trying to find the source of the voice. Hotplate and Waash simply listened, they were used to hearing from Bob in this way.

"I've only known a handful of Paladins with enough power to cast the spell, enough knowledge about shadow magic to invoke the spell, and enough familiarity with demons to attempt the spell. Hooff was one of those paladins." Rohan added.

"We've known that Hooff was a powerful paladin, but I never knew he knew so much about shadow and demons". Waash said.

"He learned from me." said the voice.

"Indeed, a side effect of the third-party Soul Link is that the demon has access to the caster's mind, if only bried glimpses" Tom said, continuing his story.

"Within the paladin's mind the felguard so images of a human warlock, a human death knight, a night-elf priest, and twin draenei, a shaman and a hunter. He tracked me down when he saw an image of me in the Paladin's mind"

"Ok, thats more convincing" Hotplate finally said.

"How'd he know it was you? All of you felguards look the same to me" asked Waash.

"We can tell" retorted Tom.

"Well there is a bit of a problem... all this happened in Orgrimmar". Tom added.

"What would Hooff be doing in Orgrimmar, helping a Horde Warlock?" asked Waash.

"The Paladin, was a Blood Elf" Tom said.

[WoW] Back to the minors...(normals) with you.

Remi (Goblin Mage) and I tried to run a Heroic PUG a few nights ago. That did not go well. We got Throne of Tides. The group was doing ok on the trash. We got to the first boss and everything went to blazes. We wiped once or twice before the tank dropped. We got another tank, he tried 2-3 times and then dropped as well. This gave us yet another tank.

Each attempt got progressively better ( except for a few where an interrupt didn't get done), but the enchancement shaman would get progressively more ... vocal... about his displeasure. After the 10th or so wipe, I dropped. If the group was having that much issues, I don't even want to imagine how bad the next few bosses would be.

Last night we decided to go back to the minors. We queued up for normals. This time we got Grim Batol. The tank was very good. He marked and asked for CC. He didn't know some of the fights, but we got through it fine. Halfway through the run, I noticed he only had about 94k health. This seemed strange because as a healer, I had about 109k health. Then I looked at his level ... 84. That was like he just earned +150 rep with me. He was tanking very well, on a non-max level character, and doing it with the poise and maturity of a seasoned vet. Bravo goblin warrior who's name I can't remember from a realm I also can't remember.

Bravo.

[WoW] Holy Cooldowns... use them!

Holy Paladin Healing Cooldowns

Recently I've noticed that I don't make near enough use of my
cooldowns while healing. Making good use of cooldowns is very
important to performing at the top of your game. If you're not using a
cooldown that gives you +20% haste for 15 seconds every 2 minutes, why
bother worrying about that extra +10 Haste you got from upgrading
gear?

Paladins have 6 major healing related cooldowns available to us. There
are also "Hand" spells that could help with healing, or preventing
damage as well. I'll go over both and hopefully give suggestions on
when and how to use them.

Cooldowns

Avenging Wrath

This is probably the most iconic paladin ability ( next to the bubble). "Wings", this provides 20% more damage and healing done for 20 seconds. This is on a 3 minutes ( 2 mins with talents) cooldown.

This can be used pretty often. Some people ( me included) tend to "save" it until healing gets intense. Unfortunately this means it doesn't get near the amount of use it should. I personally tend to try to save it so much that I end up rarely using it. That's 20% less
healing i'm doing every 2 minutes.

People have suggested that it should be macro'd to something like Holy Radiance or even Divine Light, the justification being that if you're casting either of those spells, then you'll probably be casting more in the near future. I partially agree, at least for my usage. I really only hit Holy Radiance when 1.) I need massive tank heals, 2.) Everyone is taking damage and I need to pile on the healing. Both of these situations would do well with Avenging
Wrath.

On the other hand, my usage of Divine Light is a bit different. I mainly use it when it would cost too much mana to do multiple Holy Lights or Flash of Lights. In fact with Cata-level health pools, Holy Light does almost nothing at this point. I may or may not be in a furious healing state.

Divine Favor

According to ElitistJerks, Divine Favor is actually more useful or powerful in many situations than Avenging Wrath. This adds 20% more haste and crit for 20 seconds ( +10 with the glyph) every 3 minutes.

With such a short cooldown, I would macro this with heals as well. Holy Radiance is a good candidate, for the same reasons as above. Plus since its basically a mobile HOT, more haste means more ticks and more crit means each tick has more chance to crit. I definitely need to make more use of this cooldown.

Aura Mastery

This is more of a damage prevention talent. "It will give you 6 seconds of "enhanced" auras every 2 minutes. 4076 extra armor, double damage retribution aura, silence and interrupt immunity, 195 extra fire/frost/shadow resistance or extra mount speed" - ElitistJerks thread. Personally I'd recommend the 195 resistance. This is a major boon on fights where you know that a boss is about to hit everyone for major damage. 6 seconds is just enough time to mitigate that one big hit.

Lay on Hands

This is the BIG heal on a LONG cooldown. It will heal the target equal to the max HP of the casting paladin. It will also return 10% of the heal to the paladin as mana. Note: If cast on yourself, it will trigger forberance. Cooldown is 10 minutes ( 7 with the glyph). Very useful for when the tank is going down, and you can't keep him up. This is instant "oh-shit" button. Gives you a bit of mana to boot. The cooldown is long enough that its one use per fight, probably saved for boss fights only.

Guardian of Ancient Kings

This spawns our newest tool, a angel looking pet. It will duplicate all heals done by the paladin. The heals go to the same target the paladin healed. It will also splash heal all targets within 10 yards for 10% of the amount healed. Lasts 30 seconds or after 5 heals. Cooldown is 5 minutes, 3 with prot talents, but that doesn't apply to us.

Some people like to macro this to Avenging Wrath, to power up the heals done by the Guardian. That seems like a good idea to me. I'd be hesitant trying to macro this to other, heals though. The cooldown is just long enough that I wouldn't want to "waste" it. Plus my usual "oh-shit" button Holy Radiance, isn't duplicated by the Guardian.

I personally macro'd this up with Avenging Wrath, and left it as them as something I can press when I need that extra oomph.

Divine Plea

When mana is as much of an issue as it is in Cataclysm, any kind of mana-regen abilities will be used. This ability returns 10% ( +5% with the glyph) of total mana over 15 seconds. Penalty is that it reduces healing by 50%. Cooldown is 2 minutes. Definitely useful for times when damage isn't so intense. But be careful, if you have to do more heals to make up for the healing penalty, then the 15% mana returned will do no good. With the cooldown at 2 minutes, its possible this could be used more than once in a boss fight.

I personally like to hit this in between fights on trash, instead of drinking. I also hit it at the movement portions of some fights (such as during Firestorm in Baradin Hold).

Divine Shield

I'm including this because, while it doesn't raise healing throughput, it reduces the number of players that need healing by one, the holy pally. This helps immensely when shiet hits the fan, so you're not worrying about running around, or getting interrupted because of damage.

Hands

Hands are very short term buffs than can go a long way towards making the target's life easier.

Hand of Sacrifice

Think of this as a bubble with teeth. When cast on a friendly it transfers 30% of all damage done TO the target to the paladin, up to 100% of the Paladin's HP. This lasts 12 seconds or until total damage transfered equals 100% of the paladin's HP. Cooldown is 2 minutes.

A good hand to use on a tank when a boss enrages. With the 100% limit, plus Tower of Radiance talent, as long as the healer is still healing other targets then the healer shouldn't have to worry about dying. This coupled with Divine Shield would mitigate the entire 30% damage.

Hand of Protection

This is the poor man's bubble. You bubble a team member. All damage is prevented, but they cannot attack or use physical abilities. 5 minute cooldown, causes forberance on the target.

This is useful if a DPS, or even another healer's health is dropping way too fast to get a big heal, or taking so much damage that a Holy Shock+WoG can't keep them alive. It also helps DPS that are standing in fire.

I've also used this to calm over-active DPS. If they pull aggro, you HoP them and the boss will go to the next person in line on their aggro table (hopefully is the tank). Hand of Salvation is really designed for this, but sometimes its not enough. Plus this has the added benefit that it cannot be ignored, and their DPS takes a nose-dive. This is bad in a DPS race type fight, but handy to wake up auto-piloting DPS.

Hand of Salvation

Reduces threat of the target by 2% every second for 10 seconds. So after 10 seconds, they've lost 20% of their threat, if they stopped attacking. This is useful if the DPS out-gears the tank and the tank is having trouble staying ahead of the DPS in aggro. 2 minute cooldown.

Hand of Freedom

More of a PVP talent, removes all snares and slowing spells on the target. Useful for the tank if they're having trouble moving. Also useful for dps who might be slowed or snared during movement heavy fights.


Hopefully this little run-through of our major cooldowns has helped someone out there. I've personally macro'd quite a few of the cooldowns to my "big" heals, Flash of Light and Divine Light. Reasoning being that if I'm casting either of those mana-intensive spells then major healing is probably called for. If not, the cooldowns are short enough that they'll come up again.

Even if I do end up wasting the cooldowns half the time, thats still 50% more usage I'm getting out of it than I normally would. Now off to try it out in some dungeons.

Cheers.

Phat Lootz

So Hooff finally got off his lazy belf butt and started going back to work. I spent 2 days questing in Deepholm ( which I completely skipped on the 80-85 leveling ). It took some time but the therazine daillies are now open to him. This plus the dragonmaw daillies provide a small bit of gold, and a steady stream of reputation gains. Relying on getting upgrades purely through normal dungeon drops doesn't work fast enough. I don't run dungeons often enough to get steady upgrades, plus I've gotten almost the best gear I can from normal-85 dungeons.

Reputation rewards have quite a few nice blue, and even some epic pieces for me. A few nights ago the guild did a heroic dungeon run, and I healed. It went pretty well, we wiped once or twice, sometimes to mistakes. My throughput definitely started to wane as the dungeon progressed. We first queued up for random and got Grim Batol. At the first boss we wiped because we had no offtank for the adds. Nib( the tank) asked if anyone minded if we did a different dungeon, I was fine with it. We went and did Blackrock Caverns instead.

The dungeon went well, and I got 3 upgrades total, one for my ret set and two for my healing. I got Heroic: Raz's Pauldrons. With the rare-quality +40str gem, thats a pretty major upgrade to the green iLvl 318 shoulders I was wearing before.

For healing I got: Heroic: Crepuscular Shield. That was also a nice upgrade from the ilvl333 shield I was using before. I also got: Quicksilver Amulet. Wowhead comments say its "The best pre-raiding neck piece for healing classes" which is quite nice. My previous neck piece was a blue ilvl333 neck, so it wasn't terribly huge upgrade.

A nice addition to running that dungeon was that it finally put me over the edge and got me exalted with the Ramkahen faction. This enabled me to purchase their nice blue and epic pieces.

For Healing I got: Sun King's Girdle. An epic healing belt. I'm glad I didn't buy the Light Elementium Belt that was going cheap on the AH. A +40 Int adds even more mana/spellpower goodness. I should also probably get a belt buckle for it, for yet another gem slot. Have to check how much those are.

Ret I was able to buy a Gift of Nadun. A very welcome addition to my then-deficient ret set. I also bought Sandguard Bracers. They are obviously meant for tanking, but the stats were already much better than the ilvl 318 green piece I was wearing. Plus reforging the +dodge to +hit, makes it nice hold-over piece until I can get a proper dps bracer.

If that wasn't enough, opening up the Therazine daillies also let me talk to their quartermaster. Just by questing in Deepholm you already end up at Honored, or close to it. This enabled me to buy some of their lower level items too.

I got Diamant's Ring of Temperance, a nice healing ring. Also Gorsik's Band of Shattering, a dps ring. Both were ok upgrades, but not as dramatic as the earlier upgrades.

To round out the loot parade I also acquired Shroud of Dark Memories and Shield of the Iron Maiden for my probably never used tanking set.

All in all Tuesday night was a loot filled night. My healing set now has an ilvl average of 339, and ret is 334. With this new gear I might be confident enough to try healing a heroic PUG. Maybe, maybe not.

Update

So with my newfound free time I've been steadily leveling my triumvirate of alts. Unfortunately I haven't been leveling them evenly. I worked on Solinari for a while, got her up to Outland, got bored of that, then leveled up Nuiitari. Lunitari is languishing at level 12 merely because I can't have that many characters in the guild. I'm thinking of replacing Caaz with Lunitari, so that I can finally level her. But the guild is short on tanks right now so it may pay to keep Caaz in instead. I haven't decided.

Solinari Level 73 Priest

Soli has gotten up to Borean Tundra. Outland was uneventful, if boring. I've done the 58-68 grind so many times, I do it on auto pilot. It truely is a big letdown after the revamped quests from 1-60.

Before starting outland I had to go back to train up her herbalism. Actually, I leveled to 60 first in outland, then went back. Having a flying mount made training up the herbalism sooo much faster. I even bought her Epic 280% flying, since I was getting tired of how slow the mount was.

Mana has become less of an issue as shadow. With the combination of Shadowfiend and Dispersion, I can usually handle being chained pulled DPSing a dungeon. My DPS is actually pretty respectable, but only on boss fights. The only AOE I have access to, even at this level is Holy Nova, which I forget if it knocks me out of shadowform. Either way it uses a lot of mana for not much damage. I tend to just single target nuke everything.

For healing, mana isn't too bad. I'm trying out the new "smiting" way of healing. Which keeps you constantly casting. Its ok I guess, but I think I prefer the shield+renew way of healing. That might not be too viable once I get into the upper Wrath/Cata instances, so we'll see how that goes.

I've leveled Soli's Enchanting to about 320 or so. Arcane dust is crazy expensive now so I was hoping to bank on DE'ing greens made by Nuii leveling her Tailoring. To do that Nuii has to be at least level 50, so I started leveling her.

Nuiitari Level 50 Warlock

I leveled Nuii to 50 in order to further train her tailoring. Unfortunately the price of Netherweave Cloth is high, probably because of the inflated prices of Netherweave Bags. This makes leveling tailoring in the 300's expensive. The last time I did this on Bob, I had a huge stockpile of cloth, so that helped soften the blow of gold.

At first I was trying to level Nuii as demonlogy. It was the one spec I didn't have much experience with and it seemed to make sense. Having a felguard at such a low level was a boon. I rarely had to stop to drink, and I was plowing through mobs quickly. But as she got higher in level, having the felguard wasn't as imbalanced. Towards the 30's the send-in-the-pet-and-dot style was getting tiresome. I already have to dot the target on my shadow priest, I wanted more burst. I then switched to destruction, which gave me conflagrate. This made quite a bit of difference. Now I send in the voidwalker to tank, hit immolate, conflag and then either a shadowbolt or drain life if running low. The shadowbolt is a long cast, but some talents and procs do bring the cast time down. Its unfortunate you don't get incinerate(fast cast) or even soulfire(instant with soulburn) until much later.

Switching to destruction has really opened the class back up again. With the shoulder, chest and now cloak heirlooms ( +25% XP total), the mana regen BoA trinket, and the guild's +10% XP bonus, you can fly through the levels very quickly.

Unfortunately Lunitari is still at level 12. The main reason being that because she's not in the guild, she loses out on that 10% of xp, which is enough of a psychological reason for me to avoid leveling her.

[Server Farm] Retiring Downy

Yesterday I finally retired Downy. I copied over all the files from the 2.25TB RAID5 array onto frisket's 6TB RAID5, and then shut the machine down. With the changes needed to the den, it was good timing. I was able to move frisket somewhere less conspicuous and downy will be put into "storage" ( probably into its box and then into a closet). I'm not getting rid of downy, just putting it away until my whole situation stabilizes.

Quite a few of the fans in the computers are starting to give out. First it was the exhaust fan in Squirrel. I'm not too surprised since Squirrel, Downy and Frisket are on constantly. Guess I'll have to buy new ones for them.

[WoW]Nuiitari's first PVP kill

This is a comment I left on Miss Mediocre's blog in response to her post Hell hath no Fury

Haha nice story. I suck pretty bad at PVP but I will get into tussle if the need arises. I don’t usually nerd rage from being camped or dying in PVP. Though getting called out as a “bad healer” from a loud mouth in a dungeon will rile me up good.

My own little story:

I was on my lowbie lock, female belf level 36 or so? I was just questing feralas when I notice I was getting dotted up. I noticed a female human lock, level 38 was sending in her voidwalker on me. There was some distance between us so I ran and hid through the thicker part of the forest. Eventually I got far enough away that I was out of combat. I felt a bit betrayed that another lock would try to kill me, the whole honor among deranged, sadistic, demon wielders and all. I said so in guild chat and healed up. Got some laughs and an 85 guildie that offered to help, I said no I would do it myself. Switched out my own void walker for the fel pup ( for spell lock). Mounted up and searched for the lock. Found her questing in an area. Smart play would have been to get her while whe was fighting a mob, but I’ve never had an overabundance of brains. She was at full health and so was I. I sent in the puppy and started with dots. I am destruction spec, so the dots don’t hit as hard as an affliction lock’s. She sends in her void after me. I’m not being dotted up so I guessed the spell lock worked. I hit immolate and a quick conflag. She’s at half health. That’s when the dots start coming. Good thing her void hits like a wet noodle, but the his are interrupting my longer casts. I run in close and hit Arcane Torrent ( idea having just popped in my head a second earlier). By then the dots were widdling her health down to 25%. Conflag came off cool down and another shadow bolt seals the deal. The [An Honorable Kill] achievement pops up in guild chat and the grats start coming in. I don’t stay to revel in my victory in case she calls in friends.

And that’s the story of baby lock’s first PVP kill. My 80 lock on another server would have been so proud.

I'm not sure, maybe I'll rewrite this in character when I get some time/inspiration.

iPhone4 on Verizon

Verizon announced today that the iPhone4 is coming to its network. I'm mildly interested in it because recently I've been somewhat annoyed with ATT's business practices. The most annoying being the change from "unlimited" data to "3GB" limit, for no other reason than just because they can. While I understand that the majority of iPhone users probably don't even approach 3GB, its the fact that we were able to get unlimited before, but now we can't, simply because ATT changed their minds. Thats crap.

Another annoying thing is tethering. They want to charge extra for tethering. So basically they want me to pay an extra monthly fee so that I can use the bandwidth that I've ALREADY PAID FOR. Thats also crap.

Verizon's iPhone4 is playing up that it has mobile hotspot built in. This has been available for a long time on jailbroken iPhone's via MyWi. Not exactly a game changer but still nicer to have it built in rather than having to hack your phone. Of course there will be an extra charge.

When my contract is up I'll have two decisions to make. Whether to stay with ATT or hop to Verizon, and whether to stay on the iPhone train, or jump ship to Android.

[Personal] Lack of posts

I wanted to explain the lack of new content. Currently I'm going through a life changing event. To be honest a lit if the motivation in keeping the stories has been lost. I'd like to keep it going but I've fallen so far behind, the story didn't even mention the shattering yet. I did have a few ideas in mind about how the characters experience the changes to the world, unfortunately I feel that I don't have the skill to do it justice.

I'll keep posting and there will be new installments in the story eventually, when? I have no idea. At this point I'm just trying to emotionally and mentally survive each day. It's been hard I'll be honest.

During my childhood I wouldn't have considered myself a happy kid. I wasn't emo, or outwardly depressing, I chose to keep it in, suffer in silence as it were. The past few years I'd been happy, for the first time in my life things were coming together.

Now I'm back to where I was. I have to relearn how to be happy. It's a long road.