D.O.A. Week in Review

Stoopid iPad.  See what a mess? I'm going to leave it this way as a cautionary note.  When I wrote it there were spaces between paragraphs and no odd replacement words.  bah.



That juicy semi-regular feature makes another appearance, yay! Did you know that blogs are supposed to be sort of online diaries? Ya. My longest question of the week was an ebook question, no surprise. It is always hard to help people troubleshoot tech questions by phone, and in the case of ebooks you are really in trouble because not only can't you see what is on their screen, you don't actually know the device well yourself. Blind leading the blind indeed. Still, I patiently helped her work through. She even asked how I could be so patient at one point. I assured her if the device was in my hand I would be saying bad words and thinking of pounding on it, but since it was miles away no problemo. Kids are gearing up big time for summer reading. Rick Riordan's books seem like the favorite again so far. Hot hot weather for the garden and not so much rain, so I'm out watering the veggies and annuals twice a day. They seem happy. My celery looks fine, and my tomatoes are lush so if those picky guys are happy all must be well. The Little Marvel peas seem happy enough though some I purchased as plants rather than growing from seed are all wilty. Very pleased with another successful dungeon run with my tank. Since Mr. D.O.A. Was interested in going in with her I went random and got Wailing Caverns. I feared I would get lost, but I hit all the marks. There was a Worgen paladin being an utter turkey, stealing aggro, rolling need on everything, not letting some poor hunter try to tame a beastie. I was trying to boot him when he left. I have had trouble in each dungeon with some galoot trying to outdo my tank and I am thinking it is an epeen thing...they don't want to be shown up by a pink pigtailed gnome. Poof, I say. Ready for my next book, and I have a grand pile but I really want to read Charlie Higson's the Fear next, just available in the U.S. the library doesn't own it so must order it. Blah blah blah. Pictures to be added later. Writing on my dingly iPad.

The Noble Gnome

I finally got my Warrior to level 15 and gave her all of the armor, potions scrolls and jewelry I could make.  I have never seen a Gnome tank in the dungeons but they must exist, right?  The goggles are an Engineering piece of headgear that adds to her stats.  Looks fierce too, right?

My first group was composed of bozos from bozoville.  Things happen fast but I think there were two hunters and they were the most obnoxious I think I've seen.  Just shot at everything, gave me no chance to run in and get aggro.  They're lucky I can't type fast or their eyeballs would have been singed, I say, singed.  So, I barreled on ahead while they were delicately picking up loot.  As soon as the dungeon was over I left without a word.  Smokin.

Right back in, I get a really good group, everyone does what needs doing and we zoom through.  People really should try all the roles so they see how easily you can hose things by being a dufus. 

I'll calm down tomorrow.  I really stressed over doing well at this particular role, and I think I did everything right but yo.

Dungeon Report

I created new characters on a new server in a grand experiment to send them all into dungeons (something I have never done with my "real" characters).  I wanted to do it because I hadn't tried it and I thought backing up and slowly really learning the classes might benefit me.

All but three of the ten have been dungeon diving.  Only one has been an unsuccessful disaster, and that is my Holy Paladin, who was booed and hissed out of every other dungeon she went into.  Changed her finally to a Retribution Paladin like my main Paladin, sent her back in and suddenly she is the eighth wonder of the world.  As my mom would say, "we are not so easily defeated".  I'm going to Dual Spec her as Holy, level up those skills a bit and dang fool send her back in as a healer.

Dungeon running has been a hoot and quite addictive.  I get alot more money and experience faster than I do questing and occassionally I get armor or weapons that really help my character.

I confess I never really understood the whole Tank thing before I did these.  I thought it was stoopid for one person to be standing around like Hercules getting all the monsters to fight them like they were some uber doggie.  Doh.  I can now see clearly how that person allows everyone else to be successful.  It is very cool, as long as everyone else plays their role well.  Many times, however, the tank is reluctant to approach the bad guys, why they go all weenie on you I can't understand, or they don't hold the aggro of the monsters and everyone goes kablooie.  Or they aggro too much and, you guessed it, everyone dies.

Healers are the most needed characters, and they get yelled at so much for the mistakes of others.  If everyone plays out their roles correctly, the healer only has to heal the tank and can pay less attention to others.  All those rogues and warriors and non-tank Paladins who want to show off just get everyone killed, while they whine why no heals?  Die suckers!

The last two who haven't been in are my Shaman and my Warrior Tank.  Really not a Shaman fan but trying to push her along.  You guessed it she is going healer but already I think she will not be able to heal fast enough or as effectively as my Priest, and just like my Paladin it will be The Hook for her when she gives it a shot.  I might as well have named her JustBootMe.   For my tank, I have a little experience tanking incidentally with my Feral Cat Druid bear and I know the dungeons by now.  Plus, she is an Engineer and has that secret weapon, Explosives.  Not sending in my Death Knight at all.

GameNotes: Fly You High, Overlander

Thanks to my little sister I completed the outstanding quests in no time in the Peninsula.

She kindly bought me an Ebon Griffin and it makes things incredibly easy when you can just fly point to point. She plays all the time and is also 10 levels up on me now, so she's a powerhouse to have at my side.

I told her I'd help her with the quests she is stuck on somewhere far far away from Zangarmarsh. She led the way over some really strange spiky terrain where we had to fly really high, and at one point when she said "fly high, bad guys!" (big flying creatures) I wanted to respond "Fly you high, Overlander!" but I knew she wouldn't know the reference from Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins. It's one thing to read about daring flights, quite another to take one.

Here we are safely landed in some Gnome area. There is something wildly cheerful about the Gnomes and their machines and the music that plays, especially after slogging through deep dark areas. I hope my puny level 62 can be of help to her.