Sandwich Rations

(( It should be noted that this takes place shortly before Darion Mograine sends Valinar on a quest in which he's tasked with recovering Light's Vengeance, and several days before Shadow's Edge sends Valinar out on A Feast For Souls. ))

Eight years of journals was a great deal to sift through. Ovistine had, at first, started at the beginning and worked her way forward, looking at entries about her mum's return from the war and all the speculation her older self had done about where Nancie had been, who she'd been with, why she'd come home the way she had--but it was a hell of a lot of reading in order to find out that yes, Mum had eventually gone back to fighting, because Mum was a fighter at heart. Well, fine; Ovistine knew that already.

Of more interest were entries that started five or so years back, entries about an elf--an elf named Valinar, who started off as "Mum's friend from the Stormpike Guard" and eventually progressed to just "the elf".

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Well, don't get me wrong: the loot is fantastic. There are many things in there that are outstanding, and I'm collecting Frost badges as quickly as I can -- I desperately want the Frost Witch helm. There's even a freaking caster shield in there -- AND WE HAVE SEEN IT DROP. (I personally never saw the one in Naxx, never saw the hardmode one off of Thorim, and we have only seen the one in ToC twice. Meanwhile, THANK YOU LOOT TABLES for our 48 gazillion Misery's Ends -- at least they have all gone to people who wanted them, I think.)

But here is my very quick first-wing wishlist for Icecrown Citadel:

* Saurfang throws Mark of the Fallen Champion on the warriors.

I would have settled for "on the melee", actually, until Valinar got marked one fight and immediately exclaimed "WHOO! Free rage!" Turns out if he gets marked, he gets so much rage he can afford to stance-swap. We have two to three DPS warriors and one warrior tank in our 25-man, and they're all damn good at using those rage bars; giving them all hawt free full rage bars is never bad.

And let me tell you: Chain Heal + melee = THING OF BEAUTY. Not that this is news; Chain Heal + melee is actually why I tried out resto in the first place (I had a group that was two feral druids, a rogue, and a warrior, and we wanted to go pwn a heroic), and ever since I have had a great enduring love for it. Give me three marked melee and I'm your shammy; keeping three full-throttle DPS warriors alive through that isn't a huge problem (especially not when you have talented HoTtie druids and paladins running around throwing bacon -- and, uh, Hand of Salv -- on people).

Our raid has totally gotten the hang of this fight, even if some particular versions of it are harder than others. We know not to stand in the Blood Beasts. Our tanks are pro. We spread out enough. So I am not, exactly, complaining about the fight mechanics. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't wishing for easymode heals mixed with holycrap hardcore deeps from the warriors on that fight.

It was December 26th, 2004, and as usual, Valinar had gotten a ton of video games for Christmas. One of the games he'd gotten was World of Warcraft.

I'd heard of WoW. I was familiar with the Warcraft franchise, having been with Valinar and one of our good friends at the midnight release of Warcraft III (I chose the orc cover but ultimately liked playing the undead best; I never had gotten around to Frozen Throne, though), and I'd never known Blizzard to make a bad game, but still... MMORPGs were not my thing. The only one I'd tried was Asheron's Call, and I simply wasn't sold on the idea of a game where you had to put in hours just to maintain your status, or build pots, or whatever.

So on the 25th, Val installed WoW, rolled up a paladin named Vaelen, and played for a few hours. I was distracted by the many books and DVDs I'd gotten, so I wasn't really watching, but he said it seemed like it had a lot of potential, and that I could roll up a character on his account if I wanted to try it out.

On the morning of the 26th, I was up an hour or two before Val, as usual (you'll note that I'm writing this post around 8:00AM, and Val is still quite asleep). I logged into his account and rolled, if memory serves, a dwarven hunter with blonde braids named Agnessa. I was trying to emulate my favorite Diablo II character -- I'd played a bowazon with multi-shot for most of the time I'd spent playing the game, and thought a hunter was clearly the way to go.

I spent about fifteen minutes playing -- with the naked vanilla interface and no pet -- before I went back to the bedroom, woke Val up, and said "Okay, I think I love this. We have to get me my own copy."

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Me (as heard by Valinar): Want to log in and play our little Ovis?
Valinar: *cracks up* I think they're called "dwarves", not "Ovis".
Me: I said lowbies! Want to log in and play our little lowbies?

By the way, if you're on Twitter, and would like to contribute to a running list of "stupidest things you've heard someone in a LFG pug say," tag it with #pugbingo! Eventually, if I can find a list of 25 universal stupid-things-heard, I'll make a bingo card (or rather, will set something up to randomly generate a bingo card) and give prizes to people who manage to make a bingo. ^_^

Finally, finally, something dwarves can (mostly) lay claim to! Yes, it's the dwarves who shared Winter Veil with humans -- and elves and gnomes and draenei. So it's time for another five questions! How do you celebrate Winter Veil?

1. Do you celebrate Winter Veil at all? If so, is it a new tradition for you, or one you've been doing for as long as you can remember?
2. How do you feel about the more commercial aspects of Winter Veil? Do the Smokywood Pastures vendors bother you at all?
3. What sort of food do you like to have around Winter Veil time? Are you a fan of Graccu's Mince Meat Fruitcake?
4. What sort of decorations do you put up for Winter Veil, and when do they go up?
5. If you could get anything at all from Greatfather Winter this year, what would it be?

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I really had fun with the five interview questions I tossed out last week, so I think I'm going to give that another shot this week. If you have interview questions you'd like to toss out, I'd be happy to save 'em for a later post!

Talents and abilities!
1. What's one thing you're particularly good at?
2. What's one thing you're particularly bad at?
3. Do you prefer it when your talents put you in the spotlight, or when you can perform them quietly from the sidelines? Or neither?
4. If you could be instantly great at any one thing, what would it be?
5. What's a talent someone else has that you particularly admire?

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The other day I took Ovistine -- my shadow priest -- to Oculus. Now, Ovistine's trinkets kinda suck, so when a Pendulum of Telluric Currents dropped, I was pretty psyched. I was the only DPS caster in the group, so I figured it was a no-brainer that I'd get it.

I tried to click the "need" button. I tried again. I tried again, and nothing happened. I had to roll "greed", but of course others had rolled "disenchant". Sorry, Ovi -- now that nice new trinket is a dream shard.

Uh, okay, I thought. I went on to Halls of Stone. This time we lost our healer midway through, and (cover your eyes, RP folks) I went disc in order to get us through the rest of the instance (it was not hard to find another DPS). Well, a Forge Ember dropped. Okay, not the most exciting healing trinket, but not not a healing trinket, right? Everyone else in the group was melee anyway.

I tried to click "need" again. Nothing. Another shard; another disappointed dwarf.

Valinar pointed out, today, this post:

The "need" option is only available for both armor and weapons that are designed for your class. Caster classes and hybrid caster classes can roll "need" on items with intellect and/or spell power while melee classes cannot. Melee classes and hybrid melee classes can roll "need" on the items without intellect and/or spell power.

What do you notice about Forge Ember and Pendulum of Telluric Currents? Forge Ember's base stat is crit. Pendulum's is haste.

Not Int. Not spellpower. Crit and haste.

Hot damn, guys, those are melee trinkets. Or at least the Need-Before-Greed system sure thinks they are.

Until this is fixed -- and I hope it gets fixed soon; the GM ticket I submitted got a response that said "we know it's an issue and we're working on it" -- please, for Muradin's beard's sake, pass on caster trinkets that don't have int or spellpower. You may get shafted once or twice on this; you may lose out rolling on a shard. Greediboi-NotYourServer the nelf rogue may walk away with a shard unopposed (except by the desperate druid rolling "greed" instead of "disenchant").

But right now, rolling greed on trinkets is the only thing those of us with shitty caster trinkets can do. And we're doing it. Give us a hand, if you can.

(( "Perhaps we can't, Mr. Data. But at least we can give it a try." Another Ovistine story. ))

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I've been reading the Aely and Arrens story with all kinds of interest -- it's always neat to see how characters' relationships start out. (Also, I can't help but think the fallout from Arrens going all neanderthal and telling Tarquin to keep his paws off Aely must have been awesome.)

Romance seems to be the driving plot behind a lot of characters -- or if not the driving one, certainly one that lasts through other major plot elements. I think it might actually be more unusual for characters in my circle to be single than attached.

Which makes me wonder, and inspired a set of five questions to be posed to any characters interested in answering them:

1. If you're attached, how did it happen? (If not, are you interested in dating?)
2. Have you been "lucky in love" in the past?
3. What's the number-one thing you need from a potential mate?
4. Is there friction in your relationship? Big, small, none at all?  (If you're not in a relationship, how much friction would you like?)
5. Do your friends and family like the person you're dating?  (If you're not dating anyone, how important is your friends' and family's approval?)

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I hadn't pugged an instance in more than four years. I stopped pugging when I finally fell in with a bunch of folks in WoW, and I still play with those people, plus I've got a raid now, and I often group with them. There's been no need to pug, plus I just generally had a fear of terrible pug members.

But the LFG tool actually got me pretty excited about this whole pugging idea. It's not just the title (although I think "Ovistine the Patient" and "Teuthida the Patient" will eventually be pretty rad), and it's certainly not the pet (I'm not overly fond of pugs), but the ability to get a group pretty much any time I want, for any character I want, run a quick heroic, and get scads of rewards? It's shiny.

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