YAY! I’m Back!

First, I want to apologize for being gone for so long, that explanation will come in a bit.

Second, I want to give the world’s largest thank you to the person that made my return possible.  You are my HERO!

Here is the story.  Last week Monday I called in sick.  At 9:30am I got a call from the HR manager to inform me that I was fired.  My boss did not even have the decency to speak to me.  I was not given a good reason for my dismissal. 

Let me give you an analogy:

You are a boss.  You have two employees.  Their job is to put some parts together and put them in a machine and hit a button.  The employees can make parts as fast as they can shove parts into the machine.  They are only limited by the speed of their own hands. 

Employee #1 produces 100 parts a day.  100 parts a day is the goal.

Employee #2 produces 110 parts a day.

You discover that employee #2 is taking three 10 minute breaks a day to stretch his back, arms, and hands out so he is relaxed and can work better. 

You are a bad manager, so instead of recognizing that Employee #2 is beating your goal by 10%, you think that he is being lazy because he is “Wasting” those 30 minutes a day stretching. 

So, you tell him that you expect more. 

You give him the next month to improve.  During that month he comes in a little earlier, pushes himself a little harder, works thru some of his lunch, and puts out 130 parts a day…but is still taking the three 10 minutes stretch breaks throughout the day. (p.s. this person is on salary, so coming in early is on their own free time.)

So, as a manager, do you fire someone that produces 130 parts a day and keep the person that produces 100 parts a day?

NO!  No one in their right mind would fire someone that was producing more than everyone else just because they took some stretch breaks during the day.  That is INSANE. 

Anyway, long story short, my boss saw that I was taking these little stretch breaks, and despite her own numbers showing that I was accomplishing more than anyone else, decided that I was “wasting company time”. 

As horrible of a time as this is to not have a job, I know that I have a ton of skills that make me a very desirable employee, so in the long run I will be better off, and they will be worse off. 

As for the HUGE THANKS.  All of my WordPress stuff was stored in folders in Outlook on my work computer, because I would write posts during lunch and breaks.  In there was my password and screen name.  I forgot what they were.  HR told me that they would not give me “personal e-mail”. 

Someone, my personal savior, was able to recover that information for me. 

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

First impressions

During lunch I ran out and got my copy of Wrath, got home and quickly shredded the package like a kid on Christmas morning.  45 minutes of install and update later I was logging in.  I had left myself in Stormwind, so I ran down to the dock to catch the boat.

I was standing on the boat next to another guy.  A minute passes, 3 minutes pass…and we are not moving…what gives?  Then someone yells “Hey dumbasses, that is the wrong boat.”

Doh.

So, I hop on the RIGHT boat and head off to the tundra.

First impression, it is STUNNING.  I love the colors.  I quested about half way thru level 70.  The only thing that was a little crazy was the cost to level up on professions.

Skinners: there is that quest just outside the town to bring down those bat things.  That is a skinners PARADISE.  I gathered 2 stacks of the Borean leather in about 15 minutes by skinning everything that died. I was helping people DPS so I could skin faster. 

I had my new red Corehound pet that I got to 66 before I got to the tundra.  He didn’t cut it.  He could not hold aggro.  As a team I am capable of doing more damage with my gorilla pet that does less DPS than the Rorehound, because it lets ME do WAY more damage.  That, and in areas competing for spawns, being able to grab anything and the gorilla can tank it…that is AMAZING.  I had 3-4 mobs on it at once, and it was cake. 

My first impression is that they have done a good job with Wrath.

Last night was a Great time

So, last night I scheduled an AQ40 run for the achievement. 

We ended up with 13 people.  We cleared to the first boss like cake.  5 of us got the bug mounts.  Only 3 of us had been into AQ40 before.  We went over strategies for the first boss.  We charged in. 

All of a sudden I said “Crap, I’m mind controlled…..crap…I’m killing..nope, I killed one healer, SOMEONE SHEEP ME…Crap….there goes the second healer…crap there goes the mage….”

With 2/3 healers dead we wiped quickly. 

The second pull a ret pally got MC’d and smashed the tank and off tank before his MC wore off.

The third pull the mage and two locks knew that they were to sheep / fear anyone that got mind controlled.  That was working ok, but we could not kill the clone adds as fast as they popped up.  Wipe.

Two more attempts and we realized that we just need more people. 

So, what does a 13 man raid do when AQ40 is being a cockblock?  MC of course!

We got to MC and despite previous patch notes, you DO need to be attuned to MC to use the port.  So, we split into three groups and zerged BRD.  That was fun.  We re-formed in MC and started pulling.

The place is exactly how I remember it, except the mobs hit like a 5 man (non-heroic).  My gorilla tanked a giant.  We burned down the firelords before the second spawn. 

Then we got to a place that almost felt holy.  The pat of the first corehound. 

Him and I have a history.

Back in the OLD MC days I pulled him back up to the bridge to be fought.  That is a LONG pull and I died a LOT doing that pull.  He probably could have dinged 63 based only on the EXP he got for killing me. 

I wanted to tame him.  I hearthed and stabled my pet and was summoned back. 

The tank ran in and got some initial threat and then just stood there.  I open fire as hard as I could.  The other hunter misdirected to me.  As soon as I pulled aggro I started taming.  The healers rotated one heal each on me. 

I am the proud owner of a RED corehound. 

Considering how many times he raped me while I was pulling him, I only thought it fair to call him my bitch. 

My new Bitch

Thursday the 13th…almost Evil.

Everyone knows that Friday the 13th is supposed to be evil.  A long time ago I noted that Thursday the 13th is the almost Evil.  It is Diet Evil.  Evil lite. 

A co-worker remembered some of the pranks I played last time on Thursday the 13th. He spurned me to action again. 

In preparation for this Thursday I have done or planned on the following:

-Everyone has a little cup of paper clips on their desk.  I have prepared a “replacement” for them.  At first it started out being a chain of paperclips. Then I started sticking the chain together in random places making it a completely useless ball of paperclips.

-I’ve hidden all of the regular coffee, and only left Decaf in the basket where we keep the packets of coffee.  I left just enough regular for today.

- I have a roll of masking tape ready for taping over the bottom of mice, and taping down phone buttons. 

-I have 6 metric rulers ready to replace the ones on everyone’s desk.

-I’m going to move the clock in the break room 10 minutes fast, so everyone comes back from lunch early.

-Our phones have a speakerphone.  In an open office it is bad practice to use speakerphone unless you Really need to.  There is one guy that does it all the time.  Our phones have volume buttons.  The volume buttons affect the speaker and the mic volume at the same time.  However, of you go into the phone’s settings (which no one knows how to do) you can set them independently.  Last night I figured out that if I turn the mic volume down and the speaker volume up, that the main volume buttons maintain that ratio.  So, I’m going to do that to his.  So, when he is on speakerphone, they will not be able to hear him unless he cranks the volume WAY up, so the entire office can hear his phone calls. 

-We have one girl in our office that always uses her speaker phone to listen to her voicemails.  She wants to show off that she is SO busy that she gets a lot of messages.  So, I have it arranged with a friend that I’m going to call Thursday to leave her a message when she is away from her desk.  “Hello ____  This is Amber from Planned Parenthood.  If you could give us a call ASAP about your test results.  We need to get you some medication immediately.” Then she is going to leave the phone number of the time lady.  (you know “at the tone the time will be…”)

Before anyone freaks out about this one, she plays pranks all the time, and loved the ones I hit her with last Thursday the 13th.  After this plays out I will tell her it was a prank.

-One of the girls in Order Entry is the queen of Highlighters.  She has 10 different colors, and they all have a meaning.  Every order she gets she goes thru with the highlighters marking different things different colors.  Are you aware that with a simple pair of pliers you can remove the felt from a highlighter, and can then push that into the body of another highlighter?  I have a set of 10 highlighters with the felt exchanged and the caps exchanged.  So, the green highlighter body has blue felt and a red cap.  The red body has a green felt and a yellow cap and so on. 

Finally, the best is saved for last. 

-My boss is VERY anal about locking her computer when she leaves her office, despite the fact that she does not have access to anything that we don’t have access to.  The other day I was in her office and she got a call on her cell phone.  She left the office for a minute to talk to her husband.  I jumped over and composed a message to the guy that encouraged more pranking.  I simply said “Have you seen my pants?  I seem to have misplaced them.”  And I set it to send Thursday at 10am.  He is in on it, so when he gets it he is going to reply. 
This is going to be a good Thursday the 13th.

/bow to my gorilla

Last night I logged in to do some dailies.  I had no intention of Actually playing, just some maintenance stuff.  I had not even made it thru the loading screen when I got a ninja invite.  Apparently they were doing a regular Arcatraz run for someone that had a quest.  We had our pally tank, me, a mage, a rouge…all very well geared.  The healer was a ret pally with a few pieces of healing gear that re-speced for the run, and had never been a healer.

So, we burned thru the instance rather quick, being WAY over geared for it. 

We got to the last area, and were two trash pulls away from the end when I got a phone call.  I was AFK for 5 minutes.  Everyone understood and took a bio while I was gone. 

I came back and something was not right.  I sat down to eat some buff food, and something just looked wrong.  Then it dawned on me, we were missing someone.  The tank.

Me: “Where’s Arg” (the tank)
Guildie: “His wife got home and he had to go to dinner.”
Me: “Well….what are we going to do?”
Guildie: “I called someone that is going to come tank for us, but he won’t be home for 10 minutes.  How about we try this trash with your gorilla tanking.”
Me: “……We can try it.”

So, I misdirected, Intimidated, Thunderstomped and then unleashed DPS.  We downed the last two felguards without any issues. 

So, we sat there looking at the guy that starts the boss fight.  The tank was still a good 10 minutes away. 

Guildie: “Want to give it a shot?”
Me: “I’m all for it, but this is not Ramparts here.  We have an inexperienced under geared healer, and a pet for a tank…If you guys are down for it, then I’ll try.”

So, the first mob goes down without any stress. 

The second boss killed my pet in about 3 seconds because the healer was still drinking.  So, we kited the boss and DPS’d the living hell out of it.  All cooldown and trinkets were blown.  We got it.  A quick drink, pet rez, heal, drink happened while the boss came out and did his speech and killed the warden.  So, we went into the last boss fight at full strength. 

Misdirect, intimidation, thunderstomp, DPS.  A misdirect put the first clone onto the gorilla.  A Thunderstomp got the second one off the healer.  We burned down the boss, then the adds, and the gorilla never died. 

Just as we finished the tank logged in. 

So, 4 man, and with a pet tank, and with a gimped healer, we took out the last boss in Arcatraz.

I think it is safe to say that pet tanking has made a Grand arrival into viability.

Impending Awesomeness

Back in the day, and by day I mean just prior to the release of BC, I was in a huge guild.  When I say huge, we had two MC runs.  I have been forbidden from speaking about MC, so I’ll just sit here and remember.  /reflect

 

(talk amongst yourselves)

 

Ahh. That was good times.  Ok, on to my point.  We were a HUGE guild; it seemed like half the frekin server was in our guild.  When BC came out the people in the guild all went their own ways and leveled up in small groups.  That is to be expected.  The problem is that the guild lost its cohesion.  After most people hit 70 it fell apart. 

 

I left prior to that.  I was sick of being in a guild that was so big and faceless that I did not feel like they were my friends, they felt like strangers at the grocery store.  We were in the same place, but did not know each other. 

 

I left and transferred servers to join some old friends that had left as the guild was getting too big. 

 

Now, I find myself staring down the barrel of another expansion.  I’m in a smaller guild that is very close knit.  The small guild I joined when I transferred over here just merged with another small guild.  We are having a great time with each other, and are very close, but I’m still afraid of the past.

 

So, I have a solution.  I’m not going to wait and react.  I’m going to be the glue that sticks everyone together. 

 

My plan is to keep planning fun runs, and “help the lowbie” runs.  I will organize runs for the lower level (i.e. the level of the lowest main) people so that everyone levels closer to the same speed.  I’m going to keep doing 5-man instance races.

 

As a kickoff event, next Wednesday I have scheduled an AQ40 run, so we can get the achievement.  I have never seen the inside of AQ40.  We will get in there and poke him in the eye with a stick.

 

Every week I will schedule 5-mans and probably some random silliness, like an UBRS zerg race. 

Volley FTW

I’m not a big fan of the FTW saying, but I think it applies here. 

The big patch made a change I knew about.  They took the cooldown off Volley.  What they failed to mention was that it got a BIG buff.  I don’t know if they added AP to it or what. 

Prior to the patch casing volley I would see damage of 144 per mob.  Period.  A lot of mobs meant a lot of 144’s. 

Now, I’m seeing 300-500 and crits up to 800.  Being able to chain cast this finally gives hunters an AOE.  It is mana intensive, but with the new aspect of the Viper, I can refill quickly.  The one drawback is that the damage from volley does not regen mana like any other damaging hits do.  That would be so OP even I as a hunter would call for us to be nerfed. 

Last night I was sequestered to housework in preparation for my birthday party Saturday (Holy Crap, I’m turning 30!). About 9 my wife crashed, so I logged in.  I got ninja invited into a Heroic Shattered Halls. 

We as a group have run that place a few too many times.  Farm status is not even applicable.  We have the timing in that place down to the minute.  We have finished the prisoner thing with 30 minutes to spare. 

Last night we only had one little snag.  There is a bug.  The guys in the rooms in the hallway after the gauntlet.  There is a hallway with rooms on the left and right.  Those rooms have guys in them.  They spar against each other and get their health down.  If you time the pull to right before they heal you get to fight them when they are about 1/3 health.  I have mastered the timing on that pull.  Last night when I pulled one group the other group came. 

After our third wipe we realized that they must be linked.  So, we tried pulling them when they were not in combat, and then we got the groups separately.  New strategy, pull the smaller group when they are not in combat, kill them, then pull the other group when they are low on health. 

Anyway, back to Volley.  Our Pally is playing with Ret now, so the warrior switched back to tank spec.  It was Warrior tank, Ret pally, a lock, a shammy healer, and me, a BM hunter with a gorilla.  The warrior was learning how to tank with his new AOE abilities.  That allowed me to spam my gorilla’s thunderstomp and me to chain Volley.  The rule I used was 3 or more mobs got Volley, less got focused fire. 

At the end of the night I was #1 at 33% of the damage.  #2 was the ret pally with 28%, the lock had 20%.  That means I did 165% of the damage that the lock did, and 118% of the damage that the pally did. 

I was very happy with those results, because we are all about equally geared. 

I was even more happy because I know how many times I looked up and said “Crap, I still have aspect of the viper on, and I’m at full mana….crap that is a minute of 50% damage”.