Naxx Cleared

Our little guild finished its first full clear of Naxx-10 last weekend.  My priest was on replenishment duty, blasting the minds and melting the faces of the baddies in all her purple, glowy splendor.  On Friday night, I was part of the team that cleared three of the lower quarters (the tougher three).  The following Sunday, we blazed through the Spider Quarter, got Sapphiron down on the second try, and Kel’thuzad on the third.  I hate to say it, but the Kel’thuzad fight itself was actually a bit anticlimactic.  It’s downright boring compared to Sapphiron, in fact.  The thing that seemed to get us killed the first two shots was people being hypnotized by their shot rotations, not realizing they were standing in whirling circles of death.  Heh… I guess that’s part of the fight, eh?  Paying attention?

Anyway, we’ve another attempt at a full clear happening this coming weekend. We’ll take our first few stabs at Malygos tonight, which should be entertaining, but I feel my interested in raiding (and WoW) waning just a little bit.  I want to stay active, keep raiding, hang out with folks, etc, but … I think this is sort of a defense mechanism.  I don’t want to burn out.  I put a lot of work into my priest in the months since Wrath was released, working with a calculated urgency to not let her fall behind the guild’s gearing curve.  I wanted to be among the guild’s first raiding teams to clear Naxx, and I did that.  I’ll definitely still go on the raids, lending my heals or face-meltings as needed, but I’m also okay with not going.  Now is the time to relax a bit, level some alts, and …

Play another game on the side.  I’m planning to subscribe to EVE Online after my trial is up (or before, if I hit some limitation that won’t let me progress), and start spending some of my free time in space.  Rather than clutter this blog, I’ve started a separate blog to my experiences in EVE.  Wara has also started playing, so we’ll be Noobs in Space together.

H’okay, so…

My priest’s gear pretty much rocks.  She’s gotten to the point where there are few easily attainable upgrades for her (for either her shadow or healing set), given the content the guild is running, though I do need to finish up that Sons of Hodir rep grind soon.  Her enchanting is maxed, her tailoring is just a few points away… wow, it’s sort of amazing.  I’ve never been in this situation with a WoW character before.  It’s sort of fun!  I feel more free to follow my nose.  I even step aside for others in heroics if they could use the gear, because I really don’t need badges.  I’ve brewed up some very low level alts, in part because I’d like to bask in this for a little while longer.

Our guild continues to make good progress in Naxx, too.  We had some troubles with Sapphiron last week, largely due to the healing, I suspect.  I was on DPS and in studying the WWS stats after, it seemed we didn’t quite have the party healing to overcome the frost aura damage, at least compared to the week when we did down him.  At any rate, another run begins tonight.  We’ll clear three wings and then return Sunday to finish everything off.

Also:

Yes… I went through with it.  I’m enjoying a 21 day free trial of EVE Online, finally caving in after all the great articles and podcasts I’ve encountered recently from the Ancient Gaming Noob, Van Hemlock, and assorted SUWT folks.  The game is complicated as hell but the tutorials are helping me get my footing.  I confess it is sort of fun to be clueless and have a lot to learn, once again.

Beyond that, my writing work is keeping my busy as a little bee.