Oil exec was not aware of Bush’s speech - yeah RIGHT

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/30/shell.qa/index.html

“John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., the U.S. division of Royal Dutch Shell, addressed rising gasoline prices during an interview Wednesday … HOFMEISTER: If the U.S. set a goal to produce 2 to 3 million barrels more a day in this country, we would send a shock around the world that would immediately say to the speculators, hey, U.S. is serious. President [Bush] said something yesterday about this. I didn’t hear him, but I think that’s good news. But we should set a specific target. “

You know, I know that sometimes I am naive and maybe even oblivious to things going on, but I can smell this kind of bullshit from about 20 miles away.. are they seriously trying to convince us that the timing of this interview and Bush’s speech yesterday are pure coincidence?

I am not much into conspiracies, but think about this scenario for a second: US oil companies increasing prices to force people to rethink their stance on not allowing them to drill for oil in Alaska, while at the same time lobbying Washington to prepare the public to change their mind.. because clearly, right now EVERYONE wants to have that gas price go down, so who cares about Alaska?

Please, PUHLEASE, lets at least be honest here. Don’t say “I didn’t hear him, but I think that’s good news”.. this is just wrong.

Yeah, you guys have an awesome control over the market: you can raise prices whenever you feel like it, there is a need for it so people pay it. But let us just be honest about it, and not try to make this shit up. Sorry for the cussing, but come on!

Insanity? Possible?

A thought I had last night:

• Deutscher’s chestpiece: Robe of the Elder Scribes.. chance to add bonus spell damage (procs quite often)
• T4 2 set bonus: chance to add bonus spell damage (only have 1 piece, so not sure how often that procs.. lets say he would have the gloves and the shoulders (still needs the shoulders from High King Maulgar)
• Spellstrike Infusion set bonus: chance to add bonus spell damage.. will know how often that procs after I get it made tonight..

What if everything would proc? And I use Scryer’s bloodgem? And I would crit? Would I cry? And dance?

I don’t know.

Guess I need to find out.

EDIT: I think I would scream like a little girl. And then my dogs would stare at me and my wife would literally ROFL.

202 is the magical number (that brings on the PAIN) :-)

Alright.. I went and got Spellstrike Pants crafted for Deutscher last night. I gemmed it all up, my spell hit is 203 now baby! Just 1 over the required 202 rating to never have a boss resist my Shadowbolt love.

The GL and RL decided last night that they are bored with Mags and Gruuls (Mags dropped Eredar Wand of Obliteration for me ), and there will be more pain involved in getting a run going in the future. Which sucks for me, as Deutscher and the upcoming priest would certainly appreciate getting all their T4 gear, but I definitely understand where they are coming from — they have been doing those clears for almost a year now, for me its still new, and the world does not revolve around me (ZOMG UNFAIR! ), so I’ll just deal with it.

I’ll spend another fortune tonight to get the Spellstrike Hood crafted for me, replacing the Battlestrike Hood he has been wearing for AGES. There is no stopping now — I tasted the 6k+ Shadowbolt crits, the 2-crits-in-a-row with Backlash.. it is so beautiful it makes me giggle like a little girl. LOL.

So the plan is to get the hood crafted, replace some of the +hit gems with +crit and +damage (since the hood provides PLENTY of hit) and push Deutscher’s DPS up a notch. Sounds like a plan.

No dailies during weekdays 4 U (me)

I actually have to restrict myself to not to dailies during the week. With only limited playtime (evenings) and one full round of dailies taking up 2+ hours, I found myself struggling last night completing them and still enjoying it (and not getting the ‘I just want to be done with this’- feeling). It is a game, I don’t want to stress, I want to enjoy it. Game= fun?

So, no dailies during the week, only playing on Priest or raiding on Lock/Druid. I think tonight we have Mags/Gruuls (I really want to go on Lock, I hope I can).

Memo to self to upgrade Recount and Omen yet again. They get patched every 10 minutes. :-/

Disc/Holy again - awesomeness

So, I respecced Heilerin to 25/29/0 disc/holy last night since I was asked to heal a SP run. And she ruled. Only time mana dropped below 50% was at the 2nd and 3rd boss who do TONS of nature damage to the whole group. Had to let a 61 rogue ‘go’ (ie. stopped healing to preserve mana) during Rokmar’s fight. Meh, enough of them out there anyway. )

I never really dropped below 90% mana until we hit the mobs before the 2nd boss. I actually told the Pally that I am bored and that he needs to make me work more. So he tanked 2 Myrmidons, and after the fight he asked me if that was better. I just told him “look at my mana pool” — I was at 98%.

Love it.

He hates questing too, so I think we could make a good team leveling up. He is already at 66, Heilerin is at 63, but I seriously doubt that there is any lack for healing assignments 63 and up, so I will get to 70 soon enough. In fact, I need to purposely take time, because he also happens to be an officer who is playing a shammy with 2k + healing and he likes my healing style. This means that I may be relegated to healing in the raids, rather than tanking or DPSing on the Lock. I like healing a lot, I like tanking, but I also like nuking on my Lock (especially ever since I respecced to Destro), so I just have to make sure that I pace myself and am in charge of my game.

On another note, I didn’t realize that you had to heal a member to full to get rid of the poison dot that Rokmar debuffs you with, since I never healed that boss before. So, I was rezzing the rogue after boss was down, was out of mana, mana pots on CD, Symbol of Hope on CD, and Pally tank (guildie) says “HEAL ME”, I see his health go down. I heal him as much as I can (not much, since no mana ;-0), then he Lays Hands on himself to heal himself. Calls me a noob for not doing it, I only lol’d at him.

Which led me to have a good idea: since I will be running this instance a bunch of more times, if there will ever be the case that I am in a bad PUG with one or more jerks, I will just let them die from the dot after the boss fight is over. This is fun. I am bad. Heck, even if I can’t be shadow, I can still have an evil mindset, can I not?

Anyway, long story short, disc/holy 1: shadow 0.

BTW, critted a mob for 1200 Smite in SP last night as well, so I think this may be good enough for soloing whatever I will solo during leveling up.

The People in Your Raid Guild « The Holy Light

The People in Your Raid Guild « The Holy Light

This is hilarious. Read it and tell me which type you are.

High Chance of Disc/Holy Tonight

I decided to re-spec the Priest again. She will go back to Disc/Holy. I will try to get her to crank out as much holy damage as possible to make questing doable, we will see. I shall report on it.

I just want her to be able to heal SP/UB/MT and all that stuff without having to worry about maybe being in a sub-optimal spec. Her DPS in Shadow is not that great compared to regular DPS same- and 1/2- levels below. I can only crank out so many Mind Blasts, Mind Flays, SW-P and SW-Ds, and it is still subpar. The only reason why I could justify it is for solo-questing. Will see how bad Disc/Holy does.

Mt. Hyjal! SSC! I am a noob! Fun? Not so much.

<RANT>

Went to Mt. Hyjal for the first time ever last Friday night! I was excited! And I wiped the raid! And people look at me now with an ‘OMG’!

I went tanking with my Druid. Ran the Druid too far up the hill before a wave, the Necromancers aggroed too far back, couldn’t CC them, wipe ensued. Why did I run up? There was a sheep and I thought “hey, I should pop that sheep and get him before the next wave comes down” - big mistake. Don’t think. Don’t pretend you have the faintest clue what you are doing. Listen and follow the Raid Leader.

We went there for the first time. 3 wipes and it was called, last wipe was attributed to me. Although, I saw a different problem (aside from me trying to think) - we don’t have enough DPS.

Yes, I said it. Took way too long to get those waves down, and at wave 6-7 we would have too many mobs to kill. Mobs, mind you, that one-shot everything that is not constantly covered by heals like a tank.

Then, we went to SSC to down the Lurker. I was tanking again (tanking to protect melee on the inner circle, and to take adds that head that way), towards the end of the fight I was stuck in the water after a spout, moved away from my spot under water to get back up and ended up on a different spot on top of the platform.

Heared a collective ‘here he goes again *SIGH*” “dude, where are you”, “dude you are in the wrong spot”, “duuuuude”. Then, as I was heading back to my assigned spot, got grabbed by a fountain w/e you called it and got kicked out about 1/2 mile. Literally, 1/2 a mile. I could barely see the platform I was so far away. After Lurker was downed, RL said “rez the noob”. That did hurt, I can tell you.

Well, so it happened. I made a mistake (or maybe 2 within 2 hours) and I paid for it. But there is no reason to get treated like you are an idiot and you don’t know what you are doing.

This is a game. People interact with each other. Too many people are jerks. If you are in a guild, that guild needs to treat you with respect.  Otherwise, it is too much like real life — sometimes I feel like I don’t get respected at the job I am doing either. So, what do you think my gut reaction is if I get treated like that in the game? I get pissed. Damn straight. I was very close to sending out that /gquit “- screw you guys, I am going home”.

I did not. Why? One of the reasons has been that I don’t want to miss out on raids, badges and loot. Now that I wrote that, I started thinking that maybe that is the wrong reason.

I do miss the casual guild that I used to be in, before it changed, fell apart and people scattered all over the place. People were friendly to each other, friendships developed, good times. But they were casual. A Kara run would still be crazy fantasy, even these days. I wouldn’t be able to deal with that either.

So, 30 minute Mags and Gruul runs and 3 hour - full Kara clears sound good? Yeah, it does. Am I selling out my principles for that? I don’t know. I will have to find out.

One guy (the only real guy I know from before, used to be a nice guy, untl he started raiding in this guild and became an officer recently) sent me a tell after the SSC run. “You need to pay more attention. Lol.”

I replied with “I got stuck under the platform etc etc”, to which he responded with “then you should practice jumping.”

OK, I can take a little bit, but that blew me up. I have been feeling like that the GL and RL don’t really care too much for me being in the guild lately anyway, so I said if they have a problem, because if they do, I should maybe consider moving on. To which he responded “you are alway taking this sooo seriously.”

Ever heard this, or “it is just a game”? Yeah, sure, a game. No big deal. What-the-fck-ever.

There are people you deal with, stress situations, drama, a whole slew of things that you encounter that take this game way past the actual game character. Ever met a person that gets you riled up on purpose, punches your buttons and then just says “hey, just kidding, calm down”? Those are the kind of people that I would like to suckerpunch and tell them, hey man, just kidding, calm down yourSELF.

Anyway. Will see how this raiding thing turns out. It is cool to be in TK, SSC and all that, but after all, the raids always burn down to:

Encounter  = ( special abilities ) + ( this is how we deal with it )

Every. Single. One. It is always just about memorizing (click the cube zomg, jump from the platform before quill zomg, don’t aggro while he changes forms zomg, BAD INFERNAL MOVE) and repeating.

I like being part of a raid. I like learning encounters. I like the bragging (I have been to Mt Hyjal). I like the phat lewtz.

I don’t like having it to do with 9 or 24 other people. LOL. I want to be in a raid where people have FUN.

The guild I am in doesn’t have fun. They execute strategies and move on. Sound boring? It is. They may succeed in getting me to get tired of it.

Gah.

</RANT>

Zerstoerungswut or the Art of the Destruction Warlock

“Zerstörungswut” (look it up yourself :-)) is what happened to my Warlock after I decided to respec him to 0/21/40 Destruction last week. I love it. I need to replace most of his gear (started to), but seeing those 6k+ Shadowbolts pop up on your screen is beeeeeeeawtifull. Especially when soloing and Backlash triggers, and the Bolts crit, oh lordy. Double-BAM in your face.

The Warlock is fun again. I got so bored with Affliction and was towards the bottom of the damage meters anyway, so I thought “why the hell not” and did it.

I like spamming critting Shadowbolts. Its like zoning out after tanking and healing an instance. I recommend that anyone who has a tank or healing character level and gear a DPS class. Keeps you mentally balanced.

Money Money Money

So I started the SSO dailies in earnest this weekend. I did all the SSO related quests on Sunwell Isle and in the Outlands, plus some Blades Edge and SMV/Netherwing quests for maximum coinage. about 17 quests and around 300 Gold. And I did it once on the Druid and once on the Lock each day. I went from 300 to 2000 Gold in 3 days. I like that.

Takes me about 2 hours per character. I only do the quick and easy quests, and I actually decided to not do the Netherwing quests any more — never done them before on either character, and I still don’t care.

Why the Gold? Well, Priest needs her epic flying mount and gear at 70.