Valefor

On page 260-something of Pillars of the World I was right about figuring out what was going on waaay ahead of time. Kind of sad that the majority of the Fae STILL don’t know about it

Just wrote an email to the Asian Languages department to be sure I am on track for a minor in Japanese. If not, I can add any additional classes, but I think all 4 intensive classes were all that I needed to take (Otherwise known as the “are you an idiot? you could have taken some easier courses than all 4 intensive classes” track!)

I am in the mood to do a Flash animation over winter break. I’m not sure if it will actually happen - more likely is that I’ll make my animation from art a year ago be less crappy My main goal for winter is to complete my new online portfolio (which will display a wide variety of my work - photos, photo manipulation, vector art, regular drawings, photoshopped colored/otherwise altered drawings, traditional animations, 3d animations, 3d models, graphic design, websites, etc).

I’m sure I will regret any decisions to work on my animation because Flash is a total pain in the ass at times… Most of the time. I was going to put my website portfolio on my UMass webspace, but since that will die 6 months after I graduate, I may as well put it on my permanent webspace at Valefor.

It’s funny… some of my work, I’m not exactly proud of… but it has such a nostaglic feeling for me. Like the “10 Day HTML Diary” I made up. I used a Flash intro with some Javascript to make it into a sort of storybook. It was from the point of view of a character in a story that I had been writing with Erin and Steph, Mika’el. I just love the cute, dorky little story I wrote up about him, and all the silly drawings I did in 5 minutes because I was dying to finish the project ASAP.

Anyway time for class!

About 1/3 of the way through Pillars of the World. I THINK I’ve figured it out already, which is funny But still remains to be seen. The characters (so far) are not as loveable as the Black Jewels characters, but I guess that’s to be expected :p The story is good though and I have been enjoying the book very much!

Saw… something… yesterday. Ergh, what’s the name? That newish movie Harold Crick who finds out he is a character in a book and– oh, Stranger than Fiction I really enjoyed it. We saw it with Jared/Melanie/Rob

Anyway now I need to catch the bus so I can eat lunch with Chris!

Respecced my druid to feral on test Here are my thoughts.

Now to go get ready for class (booo).

Her gear is: http://ctprofiles.net/4047886
Spec at 60: here

In cat form… Mangle, well… there is no reason to ever use another ability. Maybe a finisher But the rage cost is the same as claw and does tons of damage. Even ravage is kind of a waste because it costs 60 energy (as opposed to 37 (40-3 (from the relic))). I do about 300 for each Mangle, it crits for around 600 and crits often, since my crit chance is about 25%.

In bear form, Mangle has a cooldown (6 seconds). When I have a surplus of rage, I use both. The passive on Mangle (25% additional damage from bleed effects) is currently useless in Bear Form, but once they get Lacerate it will be better. (The best thing about Mangle is it is INSTANT - not on next attack - so you can get out some decent damage if you have plenty of rage… Mangle/Maul right next to each other.)

The only annoying thing about being in feral form is what I think is a graphical bug when stealthed - I can see my druid’s eyes while looking from behind. As in, I can see them through her body I’m not sure if its like that in Live, but I just noticed it now.

I did something I never could have done before - I solo’d an elite level 56 (caster) dragon, in cat form, without ever shifting to heal Granted I lived with only 200 hp! But I also didn’t play at 100% And just now I did the same to a melee dragon (that stuns!) and I survived that as well And those annoying blue whelps that cast frostbolt and do tons of damage (3 of them at once)! All of this stuff was definitely POSSIBLE for a druid pre-patch, but I don’t think you could stay in cat form and solo an elite without having to heal before And it was practically suicide in cat form anyway - bear plz Now it is still dangerous but surviveable

Bear form feels much faster soloing (fighting elites still) - I feel like I gain more rage (not sure that this is true my druid has been specced for mana conversation (balance/resto) on live so this could be a feeling just from that) and I have been cycling Maul and Mangle (Mangle whenever I have surplus rage, Maul the rest of the time). In bear, Mangle crits for about 900-1000 and hits for about 400. Swipe is critting for about 230 (which I think is different - it increases by attack power now)

I am going to talk about random stuff because I am bored, and I have over an hour until I’m supposed to meet Chris for lunch.

Dinner last night was really good we made stir fry with beef! It’s the first time we’ve made beef together (usually it’s chicken). We made it with rice (of course), red peppers, carrots, broccoli, and garlic

Yes… that was very interesting. I don’t know what else to write about. I was pvping on my mage on the test realm (something like 48 points in fire, 3 in ice (for elemental precision)). Dragon’s Breath is crazy good for pvp I had a lot of fun. We even had a game where - gasp - it felt like we were horde! We completely owned midfield and we rocked every hordie that dared to jump down from the graveyard. 3-0 cap I was having fun just running around and frost nova / dragon’s breath / fireball / fireblast, whatever XD and BLAST WAVE! And then dying in 2 hits to a rogue and doing it all over again

I also found Retcha on the test realms it was fun to talk to him. He was DEMANDING to know why I was on my mage instead of my hunter, haha. (I got in to WSG and saw “Retch” join the battle. So I was like… huh? I clicked on his name and noticed the portrait looked exactly like Retcha so I talked to him for a bit. That WSG was annoying though, I was in it for about 20 minutes, NO caps on either side, and then I afk’d out so I could go help Chris with the stir fry.

I really miss the old Aegis Order crew I barely know half the people in the guild anymore and it annoys me. Not that I ever play there anymore! But I probably would if it wasn’t for what has happened with the environment over there.

I think I’m going to go to the Blue Wall now and starve for an hour while I wait for Chris and read my book I wish my laptop was smaller and easier to transport, because if it was, I’d have it with me and I’d be working on my research paper right now!

This video is incredible… stop motion space invaders!!

I cringe to think at how much WORK this must have been, though! Wow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3B89sFNH8Y

and the slightly less impressive but no less awesome, Pong:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6oNSc8cvWU

In other news, I’ve started reading Pillars of the World. I’m a little confused because I thought I’d started reading it before, but I remember the beginning being different… I think I might have started reading House of Gaian or something like that. I know I didn’t get much more than 20 or so pages into it though. Anyway, so far, Pillars of the World is good - the characters aren’t as good as the Black Jewels Trilogy, but maybe they’ll become more interesting as the story progresses. I’m only about 100 pages in.

I have 12 credits!! Before the next semester starts!!!

My classes as they stand now are:

Fundamentals of Marketing (Marketing 301)
Advertising as Social Communication (Comm 287)
Comic Art in North America (Comp-Lit 393B)

and… last but not least…
Imaginative Political Writing (English 297FF)

Now… what the hell does “Imaginative Political Writing” even mean? I have no idea! I signed up for it out of pure curiosity… we’ll see - if it’s terrible I can always drop out after the first day

Major problem though - all my classes are in the afternoon/evening again! Why do I do this to myself D: (I really, really hate not having morning classes + free afternoons/evenings - it drives me crazy.) At least though it will only FEEL like 3 classes with regards to attendance - the Comm class is on-line! And the teacher is supposed to be awesome

Adding classes in SPIRE is impossible!! Changing the term took forever, SPIRE takes 5 minutes to load a single page, and grr. Fury

I paid my “unbelieveable” $187 that I owed, apparently one of my grants had $187 subtracted from it, who knows why… but so, so dumb

Now I’m trying to find/add classes and it is taking forever and it’s impossible! SPIRE has the worst interface ever

Testing specs on the test realm…

I have MOSTLY played my druid Alaphrei, who is balance specced (51 points, rofl) right now. First impressions… Balance is incredible. Fire spec on my mage is fun, but I don’t think I’ll really get a good feel for it until I’m grouping with other people. Beast Mastery spec on my hunter is great, but overall I’m kind of bored with her now It makes me sad to look at my ranged attack power and see it only reading 1100 or so - it’s at least 300 below where it was before I’ve only PvP’d with my hunter, no PvE, so I’m not sure how my pet is at holding aggro or anything yet.

Arenas seem fun. I wrote a little bit about my arena experiences (mostly under the priest section).

With my druid I ONLY did PvE (balance spec). Same with the mage (fire spec). I did ONLY PvP with my hunter (beast mastery) and priest (both shadow and holy spec)

Anyway time to catch the bus and meet Chris for lunch

Druid
Granted that I have not tried feral or restoration yet - but balance is incredible!

Moonfire TICKS For 145

Starfire crits for ~1600-1700 and hits normally for ~821.

Wrath hits for ~450 and crits for about 800-900.

Her gear isn’t stellar for balance. A lot of it doesn’t have any dmg/healing on it or it is only healing:
http://ctprofiles.net/4165055

But granted I do have all 51 talent points specced into Balance I decided that if I couldn’t have Reflection, then I wouldn’t put any points into Resto XD

(For the record, I would not normally put 51 points in Balance. But I figured, if I can’t get Reflection (15% mana regen while casting) then I’ll just go all-out into Balance. I might do something like this at level 70. I chose omen of clarity because it is kind of nice to melee in moonkin anyway - you get free mana every hit! (I got about 70-something mana every time I hit something with my staff - my attack power is 200-something.

I found the treants to be fun and powerful, but they have a very short duration and a bit too long of a cooldown to be terribly useful (imo).

It seems that moonkins are oom no more I was able to grind successfully on mobs in Winterspring (level 55-58) with no problem. I had to stop and drink every once and a while, but it was pretty rare. I have dreamstate and innervate to thank!

Priest
I played Veela for a bit. There are 2 versions of her on the server - one full shadow and one almost full holy with a little bit of disc. (Alan was playing over there and specced them). I pvp’d a little bit on Shadow Veela, which was really fun although I didn’t play very long. I stopped playing early because I was told we were going out to eat - so I /afk’d out of the battlegrounds (and got deserter buff) and theeen I was told we were eating at home. So I logged on Holy Vee and decided to pvp a little…

Granted, Holy Vee isn’t a PvP spec… I think disc would be a much better pvp healing spec. So I’ll withhold my judgment… I think Holy will be great for PvE (circle of healing is a very interesting spell, I would like to see it at work in a raid, and with more +healing gear than Vee has - I couldn’t transfer over Voice because my 4 transfers on that account were used up :X) but I was getting really frustrated with PvP. I just didn’t have the survivability I wanted (which I THINK disc could give me) and I died a lot. Granted, part of the problem is 80% of the people on the test realms are all in tier 2/2.5/3, and Veela just didn’t have the stamina to put up with it, especially with PUG group members who didn’t do a spec of healing or protecting me (dumb pallies!) Arena fights look like they’ll be really fun though.

One note, while pvping on Veela, I got feared through a door and the warlock/hunter who were fighting had to use their pets to kill me that was interesting. Also, it’s odd that you can talk to the arena people you are fighting… I ended up usualyl fighting alliance. Right now arenas do have some big flaws though… I often was not put in a full group, or someone would leave, and then the battle would be very unfair… in small pvp the difference of one person is HUGE. But… arenas do look darn fun

Hunter

Beast Mastery is fun. I’m sad at Aimed Shot sucking. Still not used to being able to trap in combat. I’d like to write more but I have to catch the bus very soon Anyway, my pet was powerful, it was fun, I kicked one shammy’s butt over and over as BM I don’t really have anything to worry about with regards to frost shock, because with The Beast Within, it couldn’t slow me down, so I could still wing clip and get range. I was having trouble kiting and stuff because my buttons are in different places (I use the CT bars, not the Blizzard ones).

Mage

I only played my mage for a few minutes and said pretty much all there is to say up above. Seems fun, I’d know better if I could group with her. That’s what is fun for my mage anyway soloing isn’t near as fun as grouping!

We have our Nintendo Wii (Got it opening night) and have bought 7 games for it now (not including the included Wii Sports):

Zelda
Trauma Center: Second Opinion
Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam
Rayman: Raving Rabbits
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
Red Steel
Excite Truck

Our Wii was unfortunately struck with the 110213 bug, fortunately it’s simple and easy to fix. Nintendo took my [...]

All of my level 60 characters in WoW. They’re in the order they hit 60 (though for a while I was convinced that Voice would get it before Alazais - Alazais was stuck at 56 for a LONG time). Alazais used to be known as Alanis on Mannoroth, but I moved her to Bronzebeard and I’m really glad I did I really like them all! Every class in WoW is so fun

They’re all in their current gear. Ceres is definitely the best geared (although I will never get my damned Dragonstalker shoulders now… sigh), followed by Voice, then maybe Alaphrei? Alaphrei has more epics I think, than either Alazais or Shaeldre, but she also has the shittiest blues of the group too (hello Ironfeather shoulders, oh god do I want to replace you!). Alazais and Shaeldre are pretty equally geared I think