04

September

2008

Epiphanies are Fun!

Posted in : Warcraft

I made a discovery last night – altogether surprising, completely unexpected. This wonderous discovery came to light half way through the Eredar Twins fight in Sunwell Plateau. Actually, I had three random epiphanies, and they’re all below the cut.

First Epiphany: The World is a beautiful, beautiful place
I hate all you guys with beautiful, high end computers.

My computer is a dino from 2004, runs with an AGP video card and, until yesterday, 1 measly gig of DDR Ram – which was an upgrade from it’s original 2 sticks of 256 DDR. Yes. DDR. That’s ONE, not TWO.

Bleh. So yesterday I went to the College to buy myself my Chemistry text book, picked up my 2008 Pocket Ontario OH&S Act and Regulations book because it was there (despite the college insisting they did not -ever- carry Ontario regulation books). Then I remembered there was a computer store, one of those ones who do custom builds et cetera. So I stopped, grabbed some fries at A&W, then went to the store and bought myself TWO pretty nice sticks of DDR ONE memory. I paid more than if I had gone online (of course), but once all was said and done it wasn’t ALL that much more because of rate conversion, sales taxes, and shipping. Maybe about twenty dollars. I could live with that.

I got home and installed the memory. I’m still trying to figure out which of my memory sticks are 256mb and which one is the 512mb, but since my computer motherboard is old and stupid, it’s one of those sort that require two identical sticks of memory (size wise) to be able to recognise them. So I’ve got 2 1g sticks and 2 256mb sticks. I might buy another 512 stick at some point just to run it up to a full 3g but there’s no real point, since my mobo can only recognise 3g and I’m at 2.7 right now.

So this might seem sort of random and not involved with the first epiphany, but it really is. This memory was the catalyst. For the longest time, since I first was told “U CUM TO FELMYST K,” I’ve had to run at the barest minimum video settings in order to achieve and wonderful 9fps. With new memory, this would no longer be the case, so I logged in, set all my video settings to full, and restarted the game.

I was on the Aldor tier and as I looked around, I was simply STUNNED by how beautiful the game was. Truly, completely stunned. It was like a kid who had bad eyes had finally been given glasses. The details were clear and…I was briefly overwhelmed by how beautiful the trees in Terrokar were. I still had a lousy 30fps in Shattrath but I’d never had that at full video settings. Maybe at minimum!

That was the first epiphany. Here’s the second.

Second Epiphany: I do not suck!
I’m still having a priestly hatred towards my fellow CoH healer, Zattarra. I wish I didn’t like you so much, it’d be easier to hate you this way

When I joined Exodus, I was in a piece of T5, badge pants, Kara healing gear and some gear from Zul’Aman. This is a testament to how much of a slump Exodus happened to find itself in. Zattarra is another CoH priest (and has turned into a good friend), and she came in T4. I’ll not even count the gear I passed to her simply because she needed it more than I did. I’m not in this for loot (though it’s nice!). I’m in this because I enjoy raiding.

I was comfortable in a raid with her because my healing was so much better than hers. But once our gear was comparable…I was left in the dirt. I wanted to cry, because I couldn’t figure it out.

Some tweaking of grid ensued and since the tweaks (names no longer being blocked by HP deficits and images showing certain debuffs) and I’m suddenly NOT sucking. It clearly demonstrates that A) I’m dependent on an addon (bad) and B) I like Grid. Please download Grid. It is awesome. /suckup

Now, Exodus usually only takes two priests for healing. One is Cadera, the Priest lead/spirit buff machine, and Zattarra had turned into being the other one. I don’t get what fate has it out for me but whenever I’m about to be graded on skill or something shit hits the fan. In this case, it turned into a complete switching of ISP, because my old one couldn’t get its shit together over two weeks.

Last nite is the first time in a long time I’ve been in for a full night of raiding and I was extremely grateful. And then, when looking at the WWS, I realized that ZOMG, I DON’T SUCK. For the first time in a long time I had held my own.

But what I want to know is: With comparable gear, comparable flasking, comparable healing, how the hell does Zattarra’s CoH normally heal for about 2000 health and mine only 1000? I did train the skill. Is 2000 the crit? Even my crits aren’t that bloody high.

But anyways, tweaking Grid, a bit of haste, and my overheal has cut itself in half while my healing has increased about 50k. I can’t complain. I still want more haste though.

Okay, the other reason I don’t suck…is because I don’t suck. We’d been having trouble with Felmyst, and it’s partially because we’ve inherited a lot of new people once another raiding guild imploded and they hadn’t gotten her down yet. So they do some silly stuff still.

So in I come, and I get beam’d, and I don’t die. I don’t run into beams. I don’t get MCd. And after one wipe, Mr. Negative Officer (Happy) is ranting about us not being able to do that and he’s like “Look at Thienna. She’s over there at the side.” And a bunch of other random “Be like her you nubs” speech making. I was like ^_^; Happah made my night.

The Third Epiphany: Not all Voice Actors don’t SUCK.
Unlike resident evil Voice Acting. ROFLMAO.

So I’ve heard the TWINS say their speech. Heard Fire to the Aid of Shadow! and Shadow to the aid of Fire! repeatedly during our first few days of wiping. Then they swapped me for a shaman. Bloody fucking shamans, I HATE YOU ALL. Unless you don’t heal, then you’re okay. Take your chain heal and eat it.

Ahem.

So I’d never actually been there during a kill, let alone downing one of the two. And since I’m a healer and since I like to have a better frame rate, I don’t face the floor, I face the door…so I never have seen the fight, really.

All of the sudden I hear the most agonized, heart-broken cry of agony from the floor behind me.

“SACROLASH!”

I realized we’d killed Sacrolash and her sister was reacting to her death and I was like ‘Wow, she sounded so upset!’ Whoever did the voices of the Twins really deserve kudos.

AND, the best part? I got my T6 belt. And since I am never ever in on the Brutallus fight, I’m happy ^_^ Maybe once everyone has their shit together on Kalecgos and we stop needing to make multiple attempts to down him, they won’t feel so bad about bringing someone in who has never done the fight. I can only hope, but now it’s not so vital.

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