Over half of Americans on medicine

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1770954,00.html

“For the first time, it appears that more than half of all insured Americans are taking prescription medicines regularly for chronic health problems, a study shows.”

Wow.

 

Done with BGs yet PLS? / Guild merger

I am currently working on gathering around 25k honor points in order to pick up the S2 caster staff once S4 hits and S2 will be purchasable through honor points. This morning I was at around 18.5k, with about 7-8k still to go.

Painful.

Why?

- forget Warsong Gulch. It is not winnable unless you are in a pre-made. If they know what needs to be done.

- forget Arathi Basin. Same reasons.

- Eye of the Storm: meh. Sometimes I am in good groups that actually win (I have even seen 4-caps OMG), but not enough honor points. Takes too long.

Which leaves Alterac Valley. This one is usually a hit-or-miss. Either you win the BG in the first 10 minutes or you have a 90% chance of wasting your time and losing it. There is the slim chance that the tables can be turned so Alliance wins an AV by reinforcements, but that is a rare case. I was lucky and have been part of some really good PuGs that just kill Galv, take IBT, TP while another group rushes to RH and takes the Frostwolf towers as well, then we gather and kill Drek. I think that happens to me about 1 in 5 games, so it is not the worst ratio. And you get between 350 and 550 honor points, so this seems to be the fastest and most efficient way to rack up the points I need.

I am still looking forward to getting all the points I need though and then to be done with it. This gets old pretty quick.

On other news, my guild merged with another guild. This resulted in almost 30 70s to be online last night with one SSC run and 1 ZA run going at the same time. Wow. This is definitely promising and I am looking forward to us getting the details hashed out (run schedule etc).

I personally did not like the fact that officers decided to run SSC and ZA at the same time. I for example would love to run SSC and other 25 man raids, but I need badges, and ZA drops way more in terms of that.

I would say that it would make more sense to have the ‘cool’ runs going on dedicated nights.. 25 man raid and 10 mans separated. Sure you can have 2 10 mans going at the same time, but don’t mix 25 mans with 10 mans.. A 25 man raid is much more srs bsns, and I think people would rather go do 10 mans then 25 mans, so if given the choice, the 25 man raid loses out. My theory.

Either way. More people means more chances to do things in the first place, so let us just see where this is heading.

lewts!

Short term plans:

- get Priest to 70 + equip her with some basic ‘good’ gear. I am exceptionally lazy in questing with her — this will take a while. I just can’t bring myself to do any of the quests anymore. Really odd.

- get the Badge Chest and S2 Staff for the Warlock and push him to 25% spell crit unbuffed. Maybe also get him another T4 drop from Mags, Gruuls or Prince to get the T4 set bonus. I will get the S2 staff once Season 4 hits and you will be able to purchase it with honor points only (and marks). This will be a nice upgrade over the Curator’s staff drop.

UPDATE: Prince dropped the T4 piece for the Warlock last weekend! The ‘Flameshadow’-buff (the T4-2-set piece bonus) procs quite often

Wrath updates - Death Knight

The guys over at WOWInsider have a ton of new information about the new expansion. It looks like that the Death Knight will start at Level 55, with mount and gear. Lots more information over there too.

Since the DK will play a DPS/Tank role and everyone and the world will role one, I think I will either focus on leveling the Warlock or the Priest to 70 first. I don’t think the Feral Druid will play a very significant role in the new endgame dungeons.

Logically, the healer will have the most demand out of those 3 characters. So, I will quest with the Warlock and heal runs with the Priest until both are at 80. Druid will most likely wait.

And yeah, of course I need to try out a Death Knight. I’d rather experience the content first though. It is like back in the first days of BC: I did not spend time leveling a Draenei or Bloodelf, I focused on getting the Lock to 70 first.

A lot of good stuff seems to be in the expansion though, pretty exciting!

 

Night off

Took a night off last night, watched 3 episodes of Brothers and Sisters with my wife and I enjoyed it. Sue me. Rounded it off with an episode of Family Guy. I <3 Family Guy and the brutal humor it has.

Sue me.

Healing Rotation

I will start researching it a little more, but I am still working out the right healing-spell rotation on the Priest.

I always keep a Renew up on the tank during a fight, I heal him back up with max rank Greater Heals or smaller heals if they suffice. I think I usually find myself spamming Renew - max GH - max or less than max GH - Renew, repeat. I never use Flash Heals, I do think reading somewhere that they are very mana inefficient. Sometimes I throw a Shield on the tank. If multiple members take damage, I throw a Shield on the most damaged and hit him with a Renew while I keep focusing on the tank.

I just respecced her to Circle of Healing. I find it fairly useless unless I spam it if the group takes damage; I also see myself tempted to blow a Prayer of Healing to get them back up faster (extremely expensive though, almost 900 mana).

If tank and I take damage, I may use a Binding Heal, which is also somewhat expensive as well however.

I guess I really have to do some more research.

Long slog to 70

.. if you don’t quest. I just can’t bring myself to quest on the Priest for the life of me. Killing mobs is mindnumbing with Smite/Smite/HF/MB/etc. etc., it takes forever and I really don’t care about doing the same quests over and over again that I already did on the Lock and the Druid. I am doing the ‘good quests’ though — did Ring of Blood last night (she hit 65 yesterday) and got the very nice staff . Ill also hit up any sort of quest chains that lead to dungeon runs. The Priest is already honored with the Consortium, since she has healed MT 3 times already.

She’ll definitely get to 70, it just will take a lot longer than on any of the other toons. I also have the feeling that healing will be a major part of my game play once she does, which will be interesting, I am sure.

We will see.

Slack - how do I hate thee

/rant

There is a lot of things I can forgive. Seriously. I usually am very good at ignoring failures of others as long as they do not impact me directly. But if they do, I have to deal with it.

Everybody makes mistakes. I make tons.

However, there are 2 things that piss me off if people do it:

- being inconsiderate of others

- being a slacker and impacting others with that attitude

Hey, if you are on your own, do whatever you want. I do not care. If you are supposed to be part of a team however, don’t slack. You are wasting the time of others.

One example: Karazhan.

These days, Kara is pretty much understood as a badge-farm-lets-get-it-over-with raid instance. You can clear that instance in about 2.5 - 3 hours flat with a good + geared group, with the only boss left being the animal boss/es. 22 easy badges.

If you are in a group that really cares and focuses.

Plus, unless you hit some bad infernals with Prince, or Shade is grumpy, you don’t wipe.

We wiped over a half-dozen times last night. This was one of the most frustrating raids I have attended in a long time. I had to fully repair twice (went with Lock). One death was my fault, I was a noob and pulled aggro at Attumen. There were wipes based on early pulls, undergeared healers running out of mana, tanks dieing in the middle of fight. 1 or 2 may have been just being unlucky.

I understand that sometimes, people have a bad night. There are nights were you shouldn’t raid. Farm, grind, doing AH or just plainly watch TV. I think yesterday was one such night.

I do have that sneaking suspicion that people don’t take Kara seriously anymore. Some may do other things while they raid, like watch TV.

If I would watch TV, I wouldn’t raid. Hell, I can’t even farm while I watch TV. That’s my problem, but I know about it and I deal with it.

I do still take Kara serious. Kara kicks your ass all over the place if you don’t pay attention.

I understand if we had a bad night. But then, for example, one hunter thought he is so uber, he MDd some mobs to a buddy of his while we were on the way from Maiden to Opera. He thought that because 90% of the raid is still in the Maiden’s room, and him and his buddy are by himself, he could pull it off. Well, it so happened that his buddy didn’t click off the MD, someone else got killed, somehow the mobs were kited back to the group and the group had to deal with it. This is crap.

Now, I know that this is something that the group didn’t think was funny either. At the same time, I have a feeling that they just don’t care about Kara anymore.

This is were slack and half-ass-ness (making this a word, this is my blog, so put up with it. ) comes into play. We spent about 6 hours there. I was drained after about 2.5, did not even care about the remaining 15 badges anymore. I basically felt like I wasted my Sunday afternoon and evening because other people did not pay attention or just did not care. I did not want to leave the raid though, as there were not really anybody else available and I did not want to kill the raid for the others.

I think that if we would have been fully focused on it we could have gotten this done a lot earlier.

Now, I can waste a Saturday no problem. I hate wasting Sundays, because the workweek starts on the next day, and I want to have the feeling that I enjoyed myself. I did not yesterday. In fact, I was so annoyed that I am considering taking a week off ‘the game’.

Rather than getting frustrated about the game .. and yes, that is where all you ‘ITS JUST A GAME’-nubcakes come in and get their 2 sec fame.. I should just take a breather from it.

BTW, DPS-wise I did good. I was in the top 3 that night I think. I usually reset my damage meter multiple times during a Kara raid, as either certain aspects of the instance are not caster-friendly and do not count (e.g. room after Curator), or because I want to single out boss- damage from trashmobs. At any given point my dps was shown as being between 800 and 1200 DPS, so I am going with 900ish raid-buffed. Not too bad.

Good times.

Life is good. I <3 Destruction.

For Sandra

INDIGO GIRLS
Closer to Fine 
Words and Music: Emily Saliers

I’m trying to tell you something bout my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you’ve ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It’s only life after all

Now darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable
And lightness has a call that’s hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it
I’m crawling on your shores

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains,
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin, and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry, or see a b-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
I got my paper and I was free

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains,
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

I stopped by the bar at 3 am
To seek solace in a bottle, or possibly a friend
And I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I’d been the night before
I went in seeking clarity

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountain,
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
We go to the doctor, we go to the mountains,
we look to the children, we drink from the fountains
We go to the bible, we go through the workout,
we read up on revival, we stand up for the lookout

There’s more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

 Click for video on Youtube