The story of Filah and legendary cloak no. 3

Today's post is going to be about this chick:

That lovely draenei in the picture is Filah, she is a restoration shaman and she was my main for 2 expansions. She was created back in tBC when alliance could have shamans (and horde got paladins), and I instantly liked her. She became my most favored alt and I even manged to get her into progressraids here and there because our guild only had 1 resto shaman at that point, Class was shadow-specced and back then there was no such thing as dual-specs. ;-)

When Lich King expansion came, I decided that I wanted my shaman to be my main, and parked Class away for a long time. At one point I got really fed up with raiding back then, and instead being a dramaqueen, I simply said "I'm sorry, I need a break" to the raidteam.

I decided to roll a horde character for the fun and laughs, since I had not really played horde before.
Someone I knew from my alliance guild was in a guild on hordeside, so I made an application there, and after some days I was invited to the guild. The guild was called "in Concordia", and was also on Turalyon server. This all happened when I was living in the Netherlands with my bf, I did that for a little over a year. And yes, I spent a lot of that time in Azeroth, being unemployed (was the plan all along, have a year off) I had lot of time for gaming and getting to know the hordeside more :)

In "iC" I first played shadow-priest as main, but swapped later to resto-shaman (named Ataia, aka Two-Toes for laughs on TS, she was "twoll mon" thus only have two toes! :D). We cleared ICC, unfortunately I was on holiday when they killed LK, after that kill we did quite some heroic modes before the raid-team collapsed (our maintank X-realmed on us among other things).

<-- This is Ataia, she is now on a different server (I needed the space on Turalyon), she is currently inactive in a guild on Magtheridon server. Its ok, the guild is inactive too, so no one misses me/her. :P


This picture also show what I meant about trolls and calling her "Two-toes" for fun^^


Anyway, I decided to go back to alliance side with some people that I got to know while playing horde, that also had alliance characters. So on Filah I finally got my first Lich King kill, short time before Cata was launched. Gosh, I was a happy cat that night! :D

Filah was still my main during Cataclysm, I applied to a 25-man progress-guild named "Wasted" and met some totally awesome folks there, that I still keep in touch with.
With Wasted I cleared raids while they were current and also did quite some heroicmodes, but when Dragon Soul hit the guild started loosing a lot of people, and many were not happy with current state of raids. At that time I had some issues with my shoulder that I had to do something about, and raiding 4 nights a week did not help at all, so when the team scaled down to 10 man, I stopped raiding with them.

Wasted is unfortunatly no longer active, it died at the end of Cata when -on top of everything- our GM completly vanished. I have talked with him since and got the whole story behind it, so there is no hard feelings -not that it was before either- it was just nice to hear what happened and that he was fine now. :)

I also want to share with you a kill video made from our other resto-shamans POV, when we killed Cho'gall (normal). I love this video, and the song is sooo perfect for that guild "Born to be Wasted" <3
I miss them sometimes, even if I am perfectly happy in my current guild. :)

(Ps! I am the shaman in the group further away)

In the end of Cata I had more and more contact with the "old guild" that I started raiding with all those years ago, "The Phoenix Reborn", I saw that a lot of people I knew from earlier days had come back to the guild because their lives did not work well with 4 nights a week raiding, and most guilds at the time were 4 raids a week-guilds. So I joined them for some achievement runs in DS 1 night a week, and I had a lot of fun! So I decided to say yes when I was asked to come back to "the team" for MoP. Only thing was, they had already 2 resto shamans, so the GM & RL asked me if I would consider rolling a monk for the team. So I did.

During MoP I leveled Filah up slowly. While questing I died a lot, even if I had a lot of DS heroic gear, and I was generally annoyed with her as elemental. So when my rage had calmed down, I decided to try out enhancement spec and things automatically went A LOT smoother (have no idea why but well :D) and she finally got to lvl 90. I started with the stone-collections, but hit the wall at the 6k Valor-capping, so I parked her for quite a long time. It was only the last few months or so that I started playing her again, mainly in Flex raids.

But! Last week Filah got her legendary cloak!! Hurray! I finally managed to find the energy to actually do all the LFRs that I had to do to get the items required. I felt like I had to get it for her, since our history goes back so long, and she is still my favorite alt.character. :)

I love this picture, its so great! I wish the cloaks looked like that^^

Quiet times

Hey all! 

It's been quiet from my end lately, I have simply not been gaming that much now with summer here, and I am not that much in front of the computer these days. I log for raids mainly, and not much else. 

I have been playing a little bit tho, I have lately joined my guilds flex runs that we have on tuesdays (contact @reliqEU or @iamchrim on twitter if you are in the EU and want to join us for some relaxed runs! :)), and I have come rather close with all the stone gathering on my shaman for the cloak! Today I got stone 11/12 so I have actually hopes to get my third cloak this expansion. Crazy, I know. :)

I have also been playing some WildStar the last weeks, not very much but when I are awake enough to play it I do (if I do it when I'm tired, I only get lost / die a lot / fall asleep on the keyboard / all of them at the same time), so I am still only low level on my Exiles-medic. She is currently lvl 16 if my memory do not fail me. :) I have also started a Slayer that is Domination ("hordeside" in WildStar), that is around lvl 10. It tend to go slower once I hit lvl 10 (I have various other lowbie characters). 

WildStar is a very nice change, but I don't have the same drive / urge to play it as I had once with WoW (once = for many years), so I guess that is why I have not given it a lot of gametime. It is a bit "same-same, but different" if you understand what I mean. Also I find the professions a bit strange atm. Maybe its just me not having the energy and urge to re-learn a new game? I log it now and then for some quests but I get tired quickly from all the focus needed (for me) for playing it properly. Probably will be playing the game mostly together with my bf, since I'm a medic and he is an Esper -we are good team and can easy do team-quests together. :)

Not that it is hard to get groups for quests, not at all! Lot of chatter going on in the public channels so that is a very nice change from the abuse you get from tradechat/LFR-groups in WoW. People are very friendly and helpful and it helps that there is no "tag" on mobs. If you jump in on someone killing a pack of normal mobs, you get credit and loot from it too. A big plus imo, makes things go smooth. :) 

I am horrible at taking screenshots, but I have taken a few of my girls. First one is of my medic, her name is Vanera and shes an Exile on the realm Lightspire. 

After creating and playing with her for quite some levels, I realized that she looks a lot like Oliva's alter-ego in "Fringe" -if you don't know that series/character you should look it up. :D
Once I realized that it made me giggle a bit, have a bit of a fangirl crush on her -she is so cool and awesome in that series!




The next one is of Sans, shes my Domi-slayer on Archon realm: 

I had a period where I died a LOT on my low level spellslinger due to quick respawns and all that crap, so I rage-quit, cleaned the house to get rid of all that negative energy I had in my body and then I decided that I would try a totally different character then what I normally pick (I tend to avoid melee-characters, simply because I am bad at it). Surprisingly enough, I really enjoy her! Might become a competitor to my medic, and that is scary for a healing-person like me! :D 

Then again, the first character I made in WoW, that I leveled first to max level (60) and play a lot during vanilla WoW was actually a rogue. Maybe its a sign? :)

So if anyone asks me if they should buy WildStar, I'd say "sure, try it atleast!" or see if anyone on twitter have a guestpass. 

I know a lot of WoW-ers have really fallen for it, specially since it is such a LONG TIME till Warlords of Draenor comes out, so maybe it is just me being an old hag and not being crazy excited about changes^^ 

I do have to admit I love the character-creation in WildStar tho :D That is the most fun so far! And they have all these cool/pretty/freaky/funky/great looks, styles and races. Worth to try just for that imo! :)

That is it for me for now, sorry if this comes off as a lot of random chatter, I am a bit tired but felt like giving an update on what's up here with me :)

/Class

Sucked into druiding

Lately -when I haven't played my priest(s)- I have been playing my druids. Yes, druidS. I actually have a few, even if they have been very neglected in MoP.

My first druid was made many years ago, my bf told me about the greatness of druids (he's got the same love for druids that I have for priests), so I decided to make one.

Here are some pictures of her, she is my only druid at lvl 90 (atm!):

She have been my herb/skinner from day one, so shes pretty useful for an altoholic like myself :D I have currently started playing her again, as I seem to have wrapped my head (more) around "how to druid" and she don't die nearly as much on the Timeless Isle (or elsewhere) as before. :)

A while back I heard about "The Druid Guild" (aka "Druids of the Beast) from Rinike on Twitter, so I told my bf "that's the perfect guild for you, mr. druid". He was interested in the idea and Rin invited him to the guild. It seemed like he had fun when he was online there, so when I had a minor "burnout" period (progress-raids on Thok Heroic for weeks.. yuk. Could suck the life out of anyone I bet) I was looking for something to give me spirit back to gaming.

And for once making a priest did not solve the problem! (shocking, I know!)

So then I was like.. "should I try to make another druid?" and thought about the cool folks that I have met on twitter that was in the druid-guild and they were all "druids rock!". So I thought, being in an druid-only guild must help on motivation to level it. And boy did it! :D

I made my "perfect druid" (n.elf, green hair ;-)) and to my surprise my favorite name was actually free! Class -the druid edition- was born! I thought "this is a good sign!"

Around lvl 10 I got a whisper from the GM of said guild, asking if I was interested in joining a druid-only-guild. My reply was YES! Later she found out that I was on twitter, and that I knew folks in there already, so that was pretty funny. :) She just loved the name of my druid and thought it would be perfect in the guild :D

So once I caught up with Varesk (aka bf), we started doing instances and questing together. I must say it has been a blast so far! We started questing together around level 40 and now we are 65! My plan is to be MS restoration and OS sparkledruid (moonkin), so doing instances while we level really helps my healing-practice. Not that it is hard, but druid healing is pretty different from discipline priest healing! All the hots, keeping them rolling etc.

I also have a druid around lvl 69 to play when Varesk is not home/too tired etc. I moved her to the Druid-guild a few days ago, so she will grow up with all the druids around her^^ Not played her so much as the other druids lately, but she will get her share of lovin' too :)

But I enjoy the druids a lot! And the guild is awesome. I think people that play druids are a specially kind: friendly, helpful -and not to forget funny!

My raiding UI

After posting last nights killshot, I got complimented on my raiding UI, and asked about what addons I use. I got quite surprised by that, because I feel my UI is more of a "works perfect for me" but not what I would classify as a "pretty UI".

I made it myself, because no matter how pretty I think other UI's look (ElvUI and others) I can not use them in a stressful environment that is much of my raiding time. I suddenly find that I am lacking some critical (for me :P) information and then I get even more stressed and with stress comes rage. :P Yeah, I get pissed off if I cant see the information I want right away (Buffs, debuffs, my shields etc).

I use a lot more addons then I like to think, but I can give a short summary of the most important ones. :)

But first, screenshot from last night again:

I'll start with my bars. There I use Bartender4. "Bartender4 is a full ActionBar replacement mod. It provides you with all the features needed to fully customization most aspects of your action and related bars" as they say themselfs :-)
That means you can move/add/remove all the buttons and make them exactly how you like it. And what I really like is that you can make one standard one and save it -and then whenever you make a new character you can import that setting from Profiles and smack its perfectly setup, just the way you like it.

My raidframes is pretty simple: Its the default Blizzard UI. I just make the health boxes bigger, in the class colors etc. It works perfect for me, it shows me all the info I need to know, like who do I have shields on, or when our monk-tank goes into red stagger it shows as well, letting me know that he need some lovin' etc. It shows all debuffs that I can dispell and so on. I love it! :)

A true raider can not live without bossmods. In my case that is BigWigs. You also have a bossmod named DeadlyBossMods (DBM) but I have used BW for years so I'm stickin' with it. :-) There you can also adjust after what you need more information about. Like on Nazgrim heroic in SoO you need (as disc atleast) a timer/warning/notification when he is casting execute on the tank, so you can make sure the tank have a shield on him when it hits. Makes it much smoother. Or other things you need information about. 

For information about when important spells are up, I use an addon called WeakAuras. There you can add spells that have a CD and that you want to know asap when is up. In my case that is things like Inner Focus, Spirit Shells and  whatever lvl 90 talent I am using. I see that Halo shows on the screenshot, even if I am using Divine Star on that fight, but I have added all 3 lvl 90 spells on WA because I tend to swap a lot between them. 

For damage/healing meter I use Skada. Its very handy, you can see how does how much dps/damage/hps, dispells etc etc. You can also customize it. Take me for example, I have poor eyesight (comes with age :P) so I need to have bigger types on the text but that is fine. It also shows things like death, and what killed people, which is useful at times. 

I also use an addon named Prat which is a chat enhancement addon. Gives my chat nice colors, timestamp and you can open chat in a own window and copy text from it, and so on. Very nice little addon. :)

All the floating numbers are from MikScrollingBattleText -its an addon that makes it easier to see combat information.

I also use an addon called Castbars. It makes me able to move the casting bar of my character to anywhere I want on the screen -the default version dont work well with the rest of my UI so I use Castbars to move it where it is more useful.

And the last addon I will mention is Ingela's Rapture. Its a disc-priest spesific addon. It gives me a cooldown bar for the internal cooldown of Rapture. It is handy for handling your mana. You can read more about rapture here: Rapture

And.. that is it for me for now! :)

The Liebster Award -take 3^^

I am again nominated for this award, I must say I am amazed and grateful for it! This time it was Batinna  that nominated me, you can read her post here 

What is Liebster award you might ask? This is a copy from Batinnas post:

“Well, it is only an AWESOME award given to up and coming bloggers. Given by other up and coming bloggers. It’s a cool way to find other blogs and feel like you are getting into the blogging stratosphere. It is simple, you get nominated by someone else, mention their page and a link to their blog in your Liebster Award Post, answer the 11 questions they give you, then tag 11 other nominees and give them a new set of 11 questions to answer.”

The questions:

1. What’s your favorite game?

I have to go with WoW, been playing it since april (iirc) 2005, so its been some years now! :)

2. How often do you game?

Most days, unless I am out of town/on holiday/etc. :)

3. Do you prefer to go to a party or game in the weekends?

I think a healthy mix is best, that said, I don't go to much partys in weekends. Usually the social happenings in my life happens during the week / after work :)

4. What is your dream job?

My dreamjob... Hm. I do enjoy my job a lot, but a dream job must be to work with animals I think, to take care of them in some way. Since I am very bad with blood and wounds, animal-nurse isnt for me but maybe have a farm with lot of animals on it. Yeah. I think that would have been awesome :)

5. Have you ever postponed cleaning to game instead?

Yes and no :) I have tried, but I just hate to game when the house looks like a mess. :P It need to be somewhat tidy before I can relax and play the game.

6. What is your favorite NPC?

I think Sylvanas is pretty great. And ofc Thrall. <3

7. Favorite thing to do on Timeless Isle? 

Hmm. On the timeless isle, not been there for ages. I think it was to hunt those last rares I needed for the achievement :) Getting that last one was all "YEAH! Now I'm done with this isle!" :D

8. Do you play both factions, or only one? Why?

I play both. Started out as alliance, and played that for years. The later years I have been playing hordeside too, I enjoy the change of quests and stories. :)

9. If Blizzard announced that it would be no more World of Warcraft in the end of the month, what would you say?

"Whaaaat?!" I think covers it :D 

The Liebster Award nr. 2

I was so lucky that I got nominated by Mr and MrsWoW on twitter aswell, you can find their blog-post nomination here: The liebster awards part 2

There you can also read about what this award is, or you can see my former post for more information about it :)

Their questions

1. How long have you been blogging?
2. What’s been the highlight of your blogging career so far?
3. Which has been your favourite WoW expansion and why?
4. Which is  the most popular blog post you’ve ever published? Link it!
5. If they were to remove flying from WoD, would you quit? If so, for how long?
6. What is your favourite thing to do in a group in WoW?
7. Link your favourite transmog item and some info on where to get it.
8. Does your significant other play WoW? If so, do you group together often? If not, why not?
9. What is the last nice thing you did for a stranger in WoW?
10. What other MMO’s do you play?

And here are my answers:

1.  I have not been blogging very long, my first post is dated 24th of March 2014 so that is just a few weeks :)
2. The highligh have been to be nominated for this award -twice! :) Thanks!
3. My favorite WoW-expansion is .. hmm I think I will have to go with The Burning Crusade. I like them all, but that one was the first. I leveled Class in healing spec, and did a lot of instances with my guildies, which I enjoyed a lot! :D
4. The most read post so far is the post about my main, its called The first one and I'm happy it's the most read one, because I really felt that I wrote about something close to my heart when I wrote it :)
5. Na, I would not quit over such a thing. I have lot of lovely ground mounts I could use^^
6. My favorite thing to do, I must admit that vary with my mood. I love to raid, but I also had a lot of fun when I did rated battlegrounds back in Cataclysm with some friends of mine. 
7. My favorite Transmog item is no longer availible in game, it is Benediction from original WoW. Getting that quest done was the best feeling ever!  Here is a link to it on Wowhead: Benediction 
   
8. My significant other "randomly" play WoW. He currently have an active subscription but he get bored with it very quick. But we do play together when his sub is active :) And this weekend we did a loooot of D3 together! :D I know D3 isn't a sub based game but still -we play together. :)
9. I think that was to help someone kill the rare mob close to Halfhill. 
10. I play Diablo3, but that is it :) I am very WoWoholic, so WoW and D3 is enough for me! :D

Thanks again for nominating me, it was our little chat in guild that was the final push to create this blog, so thank you for that! :)

The Liebster Award

I got this challenge from Rinike on twitter yesterday, and I must admit that I had no idea what it was at first. I headed to Rin's blog and read about it there, but I think it sounds very cool -so thank you, "Ygritte" aka Rinike! :D

If you dont know what Liebster award is either, here is a quote from Rinike who quoted Neri who quoted Geekphoria :

“Well, it is only an AWESOME award given to up and coming bloggers. Given by other up and coming bloggers. It’s a cool way to find other blogs and feel like you are getting into the blogging stratosphere. It is simple, you get nominated by someone else, mention their page and a link to their blog in your Liebster Award Post, answer the 11 questions they give you, then tag 11 other nominees and give them a new set of 11 questions to answer.”

And here are her questions!

1. When and why you started blogging?

I started blogging very recently! I had considered it for some time, after Mr & Mrs WoW suggested it one day in guildchat, and after some thought I gave it a go. Still consider myself the biggest nub regarding blogging :)

2. If you would be stuck in an elevator and could pick any person (alive, dead or fiction) to be with you, who would it be?

Hmm.. hard question. Oh wait.. Jon Snow :D

3. What do you listen while playing?

That vary a bit. Most often I just have the ingame music, but I also tend to put on music from the Hobbit-movies quite often 

4. What is your fandom (if any)?

I love the Diablo stories! If that count? :) 

5. What colour is your toothbrush?

Its epic colored! :D

6. If you would have to choose, what animal you would be?

I struggle a bit on that one.. it stands between a dog and a cat. Cat because they are lazy and spoiled, dogs because they are so adorable and love you exactly the way you are  :)

7. Would you rather go about your normal day naked or have smelly breath and body odor for the whole day?

If home all day and not going out: naked. I dislike smelly people, inc. myself! :D

8. What was your first computer/console game?

Super-Mario Bros. If that count? :) If not, then it is World of Warcraft

9. PC or console?

PC

10. What in-game (from any game) feature you would like to have in RL?

Easy one! Portals! :D

11. Are you casual or hardcore gamer?

I dont know, I see myself as a mix of the two, I raid pretty high level, but most of the week I am just casually leveling alts/playing other games and slacking. 

I don't really have that many blogs that I follow, but I will challenge the ones I read regularly (taking Rinike of the list :)):

@ReliqEU - reliq.eu

@AlternativeChat  - alternative-blog.net 

@MrandMrsWoW - http://mrandmrswow.wordpress.com/

@Laeleiweyn - http://laeleiweyn.blogspot.no/

@MissSalvira - http://salvirashangout.blogspot.se/

@Sivation - http://sivation.wordpress.com/

@HealbotAtHeart - http://loreleispixels.wordpress.com/

And my questions are as follows:

1. When and why did you start to blog?

2. What are you looking for in other peoples blogs? 

3. Twitter or Facebook?

4. What games are you playing?

5. What do you do for fun when you are not playing games on the computer/console?

6. What is your favorite TV-series?

7. Horde or alliance, and why? 

8. If you could go anywhere on holiday, where would you go, and why? 

9. What is your favorite food?

10. What is your favorite old-school event/instance? (Opening of AQ-gates, outdoor bosses etc)

11. If you could meet a person of choice from Blizzard -who would it be? And what would you ask him/her?