Repeat after me : everything is fair game in the Raid Finder.

I was in the Looking for Retards last night, again, because I'm after one last trinket for my hunter. It's all she needs to get rid of her last 378 piece, so every week, I queue for the RF, and hope for the best.

It went pretty smoothly yesterday, for the most part. But there was this warrior tank who rolled on a tier helm token. I didn't bother looking him up, but apparently, he already had a tier helm. Or something. And there was this shaman who kept asking for the token in chat. And lots of people were making fun of him.

Sounds familiar? Probably.

But it made me think. What if the warrior needed that for his offspec? What exactly is the proper etiquette for offspec? Say he's a decently geared tank, but his dps set still has some blues, or God forgive some greens, and he is missing a trinket. What's he supposed to do? Queue as a dps anyway and do what will most likely be terrible dps and roll on upgrades? Or queue as a tank and roll on offspec pieces?

I'm not sure if there is a good answer to that question. People will find ways to complain anyway. About his terrible dps, or about him rolling on offspec pieces. 

In groups, it's usually "need on stuff you can use, and for the spec you're in now, and for offspec only if no one else needs it." But in LFR, you see boomkins rolling on agility trinkets and all sorts of shits. I used to bitch at people doing that. I still kinda do. Because I never roll on stuff I don't need. (The only time I rolled on something I didn't need but wanted for transmog, I felt bad and gave it to someone who needed it.)

It seems that in the Raid Finder, to a lot of people, everything is fair game. If you get in there with the assumption that everyone will roll only on gear they really need for main spec, you will be pissed and disappointed. But if you go in there knowing that most people will roll on everything they can roll on, you won't be as pissed and disappointed when you lose the roll. Well maybe you will, but probably a bit less. 

It's not even a matter of what is fair and what isn't, or even about courtesy and being nice to other people. In the Raid Finder, it's every man for himself. So I've decided to change my expectations, instead of trying to change people. I am willing to give something I won because I feel bad about taking it. Most people wouldn't do that. I can't expect them to.

So when I lose a roll, I won't even look at who won it. I won't inspect them. It's not worth it.

Edit: After re-reading my post and a comment, I realized this sounds a lot more pessimistic and grumpy then I intended it to be. Long story short, I don't deserve gear more than anyone else, and should learn to be zen about the whole thing. My expectations about how people act in the Raid Finder is wrong. So this post is basically about me, needing to learn to let go and not get mad when I lose a roll. I blame lack of sleep for this crappily written post.

Quick Post : It's mine

I've been farming Sethekk Halls for a little less than two months, and today, I was rewarded with this beauty. I'm so glad I finally got it. It's absolutely gorgeous. 

This has been a productive week for my bucket list. I think this weekend I'll slow down and just level the warlock some more, grind heroics to try and gear the shaman, and run the LFR on a couple toons. Which is a terrible idea, because it seems all the bads come out during the weekend. What can I say, I guess I'm a sucker for punishment.

Achievements, a title, a mount, and more achievements.

The mage has finally finished What A Long Strange Trip It's Been last night!

Those stupid torches were a lot more easy than I thought. It does help that I wasn't lagging like there's no tomorrow. Empty Dalaran + lots and lots of RAM = lag free = easy achievement. Which scored me a new proto-drake!

I really love it. I won't use it on the mage because I love my Twilight Drake way too much, but once the mounts go account-wide, I'll be using it on one of my alts for sure.

I got a lot of achievement points while working on this, as well as lots and lots of cash, which takes me to 8940 points.

Now to find 61 "easy" points to get so I can get It's Over Nine Thousand!

French fun

On WoW Insider, there's a list of all the WoW "What's your game" commercials. There's one among them that I didn't know existed. It's an European commercial.

As you might be aware of (or not), I'm from Quebec. That means that I speak french. Canadian French. As a by product, I can also understand European French. 

Meet Jean-Claude Van Damme. That guy was a bad ass when I was a kid. He was our French Jet-Li. Now he does WoW commercials.

I don't know how funny it can be for someone who doesn't speak French. But it made me laugh so hard, I had to share. Especially at 0:18. Imagine Schwarzenegger, talking about fluffy bunnies.

Anyway, enjoy. I'm curious, is it still funny even if you might not know exactly what he's saying? Let me know in the comments!

Edit: Corrected typos.

Quick Post : Engineering is the best profession.

The lock hit level 60 today, and was able to start using this beauty. You know you want one.

The plan is to have the lock hit 75 before next month's Darkmoon Faire. 15 more levels to go, and 12 days left. This could actually be doable. Although tomorrow I'm taking a break from the Warlock to work on the shaman with the boyfriend. And then more heroic grinding to gear her up for the raid finder. So much to do! But since we still have no news about MoP's release date, I figure that once I'm done with all the things I want to do, I'll still have some time to take some kind of break from WoW before the "must-level-all-the-characters-to-90" begins.

Until then, I still have a shitload of stuff to do. But still. I'd prefer to know when Mists is coming so I can plan accordingly. And I'm impatient as fuck.

Quick Post : I did it.

For the first time ever, I have a level 41 warlock. This has never happened before. All the warlocks I've ever rolled before got deleted at level 40, as I always lose interest after I get the fiery pony from hell.

But not this time. Her professions are way too high for me to just delete her on a whim. I had planned on waiting on MoP to level her further, but screw that. I'm gonna take her as far as I can before the next expansion. Because I can. And because I got nothing else to level. It's either that or I start a priest. So yeah. Ima stick to the warlock. Go me.

Quick Post : Finally

The Black Stalker finally dropped the last piece my hunter needed for her latest transmog outfit.

I didn't like the shoulder from the original set, so I'm using these shoulders instead, as well as the gloves from the same set. The bow is the Charmed Ancient Bone Bow as I think it fits well with the "barbarian" kind of look of this set.

Turtles, sharks and dragons.

I've been waiting forever for the bf to finally have time to sit down and level his dk to 80 (because I'm impatient and leveled my shaman without him for a while), so that we could start the Cataclysm zones together and eventually reach 85. He was level 72 when he started, and painfully made it to 74 the first night. Then he skipped a day, saying that Northrend was boring, and promised to make more levels the next day. Once he reached level 77, yet again painfully, I was way too impatient to wait yet another day. So while he was napping, I logged onto his account and went questing in Sholazar Basin. Less than two hours later, he was level 79. He woke up, logged back onto his account, and gleefully did some random dungeons until he hit 80.

And then we went to Vashj'ir. We had decided to skip Hyjal this time, mostly because I had just done it on the pally and didn't feel like doing it yet again, but more importantly because we had never finished the zone before. Back in december 2010, when Cata had just launched, we did half the zone before quitting, for many reasons. (It's not enough that I often get lost horizontally, in Vashj'ir, you can get lost vertically?!?) So we went there, and were mostly alone the whole time. 

Some sharks try to eat you...

...and some let you surf on their back!

It was a lot of fun to see some new quests, and some of them are pretty fun. I particularly enjoyed riding a shark and eating Nagas. That was fun. We still have about 40 quests to go for the achievement, but there are probably more than 40 quests to do in Vashj'ir at this point.

So now my shaman is level 83, and Mad's dk is 82. We stopped questing when we reached the guild reputation cap. We could have kept going, but Mad really hates questing, and will only do the bare minimum. And since we're after guild rep to buy heirloom leather helms for our future monks, losing potential guild reputation was a big deal. So now we wait for Tuesday. Hopefully, they will both hit 85 before Midsummer Festival begins next Thursday. 

I also worked on my leatherworking and went farming leather in Hyjal, on the dragonkins of Sethrias's Roost. I must be completely batshit crazy but I had fun killing those mini dragons and skinning them. 

Last night was definitely a good night. Can't wait for Tuesday to keep going!

Tuwtle!

Shared Topic : My very own NPC

Cymre's shared topic over on Blog azeroth this week :

"If Blizzard added your main as an NPC in WoW, where would they be located and what would be their function? Give us a shot illustrating the fact."

I have lots of characters, most of which are blood elves, but my mage is the one I identify with the most. My own NPC would definitely be a blood elf mage, and she would be an Archmage of the Kirin Tor. She would   proudly wear the Kirin Tor tabard, standing next to Rhonin and Vereese Windrunner in the Violet Citadel.

Like most other members of the Kirin Tor, Archmage Lyrestra wouldn't say anything. She wouldn't do anything special either, she'd just be another mage of the Kirin Tor. Maybe after all her adventures, she could just do research and lead a more - well-deserved - quiet life.

Dalaran is probably my favourite place to hang out (with Silvermoon being a close second, and the Isle of Quel'Danas not far behind). The first time I visited Dalaran, it was on my mage, and I remember desperately wanting to be part of the Kirin Tor, or at least being able to get "of the Kirin Tor" title. 

Patience wearing thin

Cassie the pally finally managed to get some plate pieces to drop from random HoT heroics this weekend, and reached an item level of 374. She had no luck for days, and then one day almost everything dropped for her, and she was able to queue for the Raid Finder. Her dps isn't as good as I'd like it to be, but I didn't get thrown out of a raid so far, and she always managed to stay in the middle of the pack, dps-wise. We did wipe several times on Ultraxxion, which was totally sad, but it wasn't because of my somewhat low dps, but because of people not being able to press a button at the right moment. 

Nonetheless, Cassie got some nice tier shoulders and new boots out of RF Dragon Soul. Now all she'd need would be a trinket, a belt, and possibly another piece of tier so she can get her two set bonus, which makes her judgement give holy power as well. That would be a nice improvement, considering I still struggle with keeping Inquisition up (refreshing it too soon is something I'd like to work on) and using her cooldowns as efficiently as possible. (which I'm getting better at, but generating holy power faster would definitely be a plus.)

I was very happy when Pit Lord Destroyer dropped for her from Well of Eternity, as she was still rockin' an axe from Zul'Aman. Plus, I think it looks really good. I think I might start looking for a transmog set that will match with it. Her gear looks like hell at the moment, as I haven't transmogged it at all since level 80 or so. I'm waiting to see if I can get her some gear in the Raid Finder tomorrow before I go and transmog her, though.

Cassie has also started running Magister's Terrace daily to gain rep with the Shattered Sun Offensive, and for a chance at the mount. It's a lot of fun to gather whole rooms at a time and Divine Storm all the things.

The hunter is still running daily Underbog as well to try and get her last piece of the Giantstalker recolor set. The pants are the last piece missing, and it's been eluding her for days.Hopefully she will get lucky soon. I'm enjoying the daily routine of Sethekk Halls, Underbog, Magister's Terrace, cooking/fishing dailies that I'm rockin' at the moment with a couple characters, but I'm eager to get it all done and just casually level my lock or something for a while. My shaman still needs to reach level 85, and then the grind for gear and leather will start all over again. 

There really needs to be some kind of MoP announcement sometime soon. I'm trying really hard to keep myself busy with stuff in and outside of WoW, but I have very little patience to begin with. 

If you have nothing nice to say, just shut up.

Last night, I took the pally out for her first night of heroic dungeons. It was a disaster.

I got Grim Batol as my first heroic. As you might have guessed, we didn't kill a single boss. We kept wiping, because the healer went down, and the herp derp druid couldn't figure out how to battle rez him. I dropped group and re-queue'd. After a couple of dungeons that went relatively well, I was lucky enough to get a group of awesome people. We stayed together for hours, doing something like seven randoms together, netting me lots of gear, and some achievements. We even made the bear run in Zul'aman, and made a warlock very happy.

So in one evening, I went from 330 item level to 358. After Zul'Aman the group disbanded, as everyone was getting tired. But I kept going. I tried to do some Hour of Twilight dungeons, only to get a dps piece get ninja'd by the tank, and the rest went to another dps. 

Now. In all fairness, I shouldn't have queue'd for the HoT dungeons. I was tired. It was late. When I got into End Time, the people in there weren't as nice as my previous group. The healer kept saying something that no one seemed to understand. He kept repeating it, so I told him, not very nicely, that it made no sense in WoW to say that. And he said that he'd been playing WoW for years, and that he'd been saying it for years. I should have just dropped it. 

I mean, sure you can use other game terms in WoW, you can use em for years, but it doesn't mean that other people will understand what you're saying. I haven't played with every single people that play WoW. So I guess it's possible that I've just never played with someone using those terms before. But I've been playing for a very long time, too, asshat. If you have to repeat yourself five times so we get what you're saying, maybe you should take a hint?

Anyway, I was wrong, I shouldn't have told them anything. They can say whatever the hell they wanna say. But everything annoyed me to no end at the time. Especially the hunter who kept posting recount to show how awesome his dps was compared to mine (bite me, my gear is shit, I suck at ret, and you're a goddamn hunter. Anyone with half a brain can do good dps with a low-geared hunter.) and then linked all his gear in chat (one item per line mind you) to show us all the upgrades he needed. 

But I should have just let it go. I shouldn't let this get to me. That's why I'm usually silent in random dungeons. If you have nothing nice to say, just shut up. 

Keeping busy

I spend all my time lately working on my bucket list. So much to do! And it seems like the list is still as big as when I started. So here's what I did in the last couple days :

The mage is finally done with the rep farming (at least for now). She reached exalted reputation with the Keepers of time saturday and finally finished The Burning Crusader. She got some new tabards, for which I'd love to  find some nice transmog outfits to match. Right.

Keepers of time, the Sha'tar and Thrallmar.

The paladin is now level 83, her mining is maxed out and her Blacksmithing is at 517. Not bad at all! Out of the blue last night, when I realized the Faire was coming at midnight, I decided I had to farm all the things and level BS as much as I could. The DMF gives a free 5 points for your professions, and I wanted to use that 5 point for the last part of BS, those last omg-so-close-but-oh-so-much-mats! points, and not the easy turn-bars-into-X-amount-of-other-things part. 

I levelled her fishing to 300 as well, as she got a Bone Fishing Pole from a daily and couldn't use it before level 300. I'm still hoping the Jeweled Fishing Pole will drop for her, as it would fit better than the Bone one.

I also created a baby warlock this week, and finally decided to roll it as a goblin on a whim. I'd been asking myself for days which race it should be, and then I just picked one and ran with it. To get her ready for the Faire, I leveled all her professions to 75...and then kept going. Engineering and Alchemy are maxed at 225 and 240 respectively, as she can't get farther before level 35. I plan on farming the necessary mats soon, before we get the cross-realm zones and all the goodies get taken by people from other servers.

I had planned on levelling her to 15, so she'd be ready to do some dungeons and quests whenever MoP came out, but I wanted to keep doing the cooking and fishing dailies until then, so I levelled her to 20 and bought her mount. Running around Orgrimmar killing boars for their bacon or stealing rice from the trolls really sucks when you're on foot.

The shaman surprised me last night, as she decided she wanted the bear mount from the Darkmoon Faire. I had decided I would only go after the pets, but change of plans I guess! There's no way I'll get it this month though, but I'm confident I can get it in July. So I thought only the lock would need to do her dailies this week, but turns out I have two toons that will be running them! To get the shamy more tickets, I've decided to level her archaeology to 75 so she can do the monthly quest as well. It's only worth 3 tickets a month, but it's better than nothing. It'll save me 6 dailies somewhere!

Levelling Archaeology on a shamy really is no fun when you don't have insta-cast Ghost Wolf. At least on my mage I have blink. But I did get a rare, which is kinda cool even if I wish I had gotten it on the mage. (Sigh) It gave her a title (her first one), Assistant Professor. Doesn't quite fit, but it'll do for now.

It feels like I've done a lot, but the list still goes on! The druid is still running Sethek Halls daily for the Raven Lord, but no luck so far. The pally should be 85 this week, if all goes according to plan. I still need to work on professions a bit, but I need to get the pally and shaman to 85 asap, in part because I want to gear them somewhat before the next expansion (more gear means the mobs die faster!), and because I want to be able to queue for the Midsummer holiday boss in less than three weeks! I love how all those things keep me busy until we get new content, but I swear when I'm done, I won't farm anything for as long as I can.