Leafshine: Lust for Flower

It's a pet AVALANCHE!

So, I was doing my fishing daily, like a good little Leafy, hoping to get a nice bit of fishing line for my pretty rod, which you can see below. The quest was quickly done, and I headed back to Dalaran to hand in the quest. People who have an appetite for the fishing quests will be able to guess which one this was:

 W00t!! I wasn't even aware you could get a pet from the fishing dailies. But, hang on, after I got Grunty, I was on 48 pets. And Mr Chilly would make 49. So this would mean:

Mr Chilly: The Account Merge Pet

As ever, Leafshine: Lust for Flower strives to bring you the most vital, the most compelling, the most raid-critical news. In that spirit, here's the latest, greatest thing in the game: Mr Chilly! He's the wee penguin you get as a free pet when you merge your World of Warcraft account with Battle.net:

So, yeah, he's Pengu without the sinister eyes, basically...

If You Think The Druid Tier 10 Helm is Bad…

…you have a short memory.

Do you think I should have told this guy where the display helm checkbox is? 

Druid Tier 10: WANT

Blizz have just dropped a preview of some of the Tier 10 sets, and I think it's the best Druid set of the expansion, personally. Now, I don't have a hope of getting it (seeing as I'm rocking 1 piece of Tier 8 right now), but it does look awesome. 

Update: It appears that others don't feel the same. I'll take yours if you don't want it, Sylly!

Getting Back on the Bike…err…Dragon

When you fall off a bike, get right back on…

When I saw that the Daily Heroic yesterday was The Oculus, I decided to get a group together, partially to get me back into group healing after Monday's "issues" (and a huge thank you to everyone who commented on that post. You're great, folks), and partially because it's one of two 5-mans in Wrath that I've never completed. 

The five of us stormed in, and after a "Leafy's not paying attention, is he?" wipe on the early trash, we sailed through the first bosses pretty easily, and found ourselves flying our dragons, waiting to take on the big bad. Oh, and two of us had never really done the fight before. *gulp*

It took us five attempts. And I'm cool with that. Each time we got further, each time it was a bit easier, and on the fifth attempt, despite my drake snuffing it in the closing moments of the fight (I was caught by a handy tree as you can see above. It's a union thing), we got him down.

And everything felt better again. We wiped, but we were good-humoured and we learnt from every attempt. And we got the job done. And the Emblems of Triumph. :) Oh, and enough Stone Keepers Shards to do this:

Pimptastic!

My fishing is maxed out. My Kirin Tor rep is maxed out. But yet, I still do the fishing dailies whenever I have the chance. Why?

The fun, pointless little drops from the quest reward bag like the Battered Jungle Hat, which is stylin' without being Stylin'. It popped up in my Bag of Fishing Treasures this morning. 

It's the time spent on these fun, but slightly pointless, artefacts that makes this game feel so darn confident. 

Monday Night is Fine for Wipin'

What a difference a week makes. Last week, we were celebrating our first clear of Naxx. This week? I headed to bed angry, frustrated and demoralised.

First up, we had a go at Onyxia. We breezed through phase 1, but spent two hours wiping, wiping and wiping again on phase 2. The raid as a whole felt we were making good progress, but I'm not sure I share their faith. It simply felt to me like we lacked the situation awareness, the co-ordination and the communication to make it work. After the two hours were up, our raid leader called it, and we headed off to Naxx to farm some badges and bag the last achievements some people needed for the Fall of Naxxramas. 

So, we picked military wing, which four or five of us lacked. And the first two bosses when down quick and easy. But the Four Horsemen proved to be our bane. It was knocking on for 11:15pm by the time we got to them, and I was assigned to heal tank the back two, alongside Andro (a mage). And I was made of fail. The first attempt, I missed the void zone completely, and died. The second time, I was faced with moving out of a void zone, and dying from the shadow bolts, or staying, healing and dying from the zone. So I died again.

For the third attempt, they swapped me out for a paladin, but Andro died on the change-over and then all sorts of things went wrong on the taunting up the front. Wipe and call for the night. 

Intellectually, I know that raiding is a swings and roundabouts game, and that, chances are, it'll be better last week. But right now, I'm feeling pretty low.

This Blog is 2 Years Old (+2 Weeks + 4 Days)

Golly. Gosh. Wow. I took my eye off the ball, and what happens? I sail right past my 2nd blog anniversary, and I miss it. Darn. 

Yes, in the middle of last month, Leafshine: Lust for Flower officially became two years old, and a whole load has happened in the time since my first post. Back then, I was a newly-minted 70, working my way through the final zones of BC, and joining the guild on early expeditions into Karazhan. (If I remember correctly, we were having a bunch of problems with The Curator at the time.) I was spending much of my free time away from home, as my mother was fighting terminal cancer, and I was doing a lot of her primary care. WoW was an important escape mechinsm for me during those difficult months.  

Two years on, I'm a fairly established 80, we've cleared Naxx and are about to start on Ulduaar. My play time is far more patchy than it was, as I spend more time with my neglected wife and love doing so, now I'm back home all the time (my Mum passed on just over a year ago). I've had guild drama, leading me to spend a while on another server, lost a guildie or two, been on a podcast, installed an expansion and battled in Stormwind Harbour.