I love me some Soil, specifically the song “Breaking Me Down” (be forewarned, they could be considered a little bit metal). The lyrics really strike a chord with me.

I realize I’ve been AFK in terms of blogging, and again, all I have are the same old standard excuses. I’ve been dealing with a somewhat crazy real life situation and using my WoW time to actually play rather than write about it. I realize everyone is all hyped over Blizzcon and Cataclysm and I’ll admit I’m a bit excited about Blood Elf Warriors, but really I’ve been wrapped up in what’s going on in the here and now. Aside from the real life debacle there’s been a bit of tension in my guild for a few weeks that recently snapped in my face like a rubber band. I won’t say it blew up, because it really didn’t, but I still need to vent.

Breaking me down

I suppose for anyone to understand the situation in my guild they’d have to understand me to an extent, so let me break myself down. I’m an elitist, I’m a perfectionist and I have a very low tolerance for screw ups and mistakes, my own included. I take pride in what I do, I love to theorycraft and tweak my gearsets to be the absolute best they can be per encounter. I spend hours on Maintankadin and Elitist Jerks going over parses and Theck’s MATLAB works. I put a lot of hard work and effort into what I do and (at least I’d like to think) I’m damn good at it.

I have a very black/white, right/wrong view of life and once I have the idea in my head that something is right, you’d better have a damn good argument as to why you’re not using that glyph or specced into that talent. A guildie of mine described me as holding “a very exacting opinion of how others should play.” I think she hit the nail on the head. At the same time, I want to hear that argument. I’m not perfect and I don’t know everything. I love constructive discussions that broaden my understanding of things.

I am not an officer of my guild, so I can’t make anyone listen to my opinions, and yes, though there are some really clear cut ways to spec and play, I will concede that anything I say is technically an opinion. Just because there is a “best” way to do something doesn’t mean that it will work for everyone. People have different playstyles and I have difficulty accepting those that don’t spend their free time theorycrafting and would rather feel out specs and the like, figuring out which works best for them personally. I post things on my guild’s Paladin forum about Judgments, Blessings and similar topics in an attempt to better the raid and it seems to fall on deaf ears. This incenses me. If people don’t agree with my opinions I want to know why. With the amount of research and work I put into my conclusions, I don’t like being overlooked or ignored.

I get very frustrated with people easily, I have a short fuse at times when stupid mistakes are made, especially when it’s a recurring issue. I’ve been described as “quite unpleasant over vent.” I have no issue calling someone out for screwing up or doing something that’s incorrect, and though generally it’s constructive, it’s often done with attitude or a snarky tone. Part of this is that my vent voice is monotonous (I have no idea why I have a different voice for vent) and part of it is that I am absolutely terrible at disguising the frustration in my voice. I don’t say things to be obnoxious and nasty, I say things when people are screwing with my ability to enjoy raiding or screwing with my ability to do my job in the raid.

I think something that contributes to the feeling of me being snarky is the fact that I only speak when there’s something wrong. Rarely ever do I call someone out for doing an excellent job and when I do, it’s in a tell. Because of this I just come across as a bitch when that’s really not my intent at all. My guildmaster has pulled me aside and we’ve talked about how I come across multiple times, as have my friends in an attempt to make me aware of just how much of a bitch I sound like.

My seemingly cold attitude has earned me reciprocation from many of my guildmates.

Bringing me down

Two guild members recently left due to “incidents” I was involved in and I believe they blame me for their unhappiness in the guild, though I can’t be sure as they haven’t actually bothered to attempt to talk to me and sort out any issues they have with me, in fact, one of them even has me on ignore. I honestly didn’t have a problem with either guildie, I rather liked both of them, and it really bothers me that they would actually leave without trying to solve the problem through talking to me, with officer mediation, or whatever.

Many of their friends are still in the guild and many of them are unhappy with me as a result of their friends’ departure. I know not all of them liked me to begin with, though my guild is very cliquey and I really hated the social atmosphere until I found a clique that I fit into. I still don’t like that it’s so divided and it’s a massive change from the guilds I’ve been in before where most everyone interacted and played with most everyone else, but I’m much happier now that I have people I consider friends. There is a lot of gossip that circulates, and though most of the time it’s harmless chit-chat, occasionally it is very mean spirited. There is a lot of “side-choosing” that happens once a tiff erupts, people generally fall in line with the opinions of others in their clique without making any attempt to see the other side of the situation. There is little to no direct communication between cliques.

Some truly mean-spirited, nasty comments have been made indirectly to me about myself and my friends with the intent of forcing me to leave the guild, which to be honest, I seriously considered. I had applied to a raiding guild on a different server and fully intended on removing myself completely from the hostile tension that was occurring. I talked it over with a few of my close friends and their advice was to do whatever made me happy. When I sat down and though about what really made me happy, I realized that it was not just playing WoW, not just raiding, not just progression, but doing it with them.

Previous to the situation becoming as tense as it is now I had been really working on being nicer if or when I was going to say something over vent and have been doing very well overall and even in the mentioned “incidents” I was not truly mean, sarcastic or derogatory. The reason they seem to have turned out the way they have is due to a severe lack of communication on the part of all involved parties and misunderstandings. They obviously still harbor ill feelings, or else they wouldn’t have left. I highly doubt anyone will even read this, let alone either of them, but on some off chance they do I’d like them to know there aren’t any ill feelings on my part and that I wish them well in whatever they do.

Hell, just let it go

Things have seemed to calmed down in guild and I’ve been assured by many that they do in fact like me and/or they couldn’t care less about the situation. For the most part my guild is drama free and a fun place to hang out and it’s seemingly to get back to normal fairly quickly. Again, due to the lack of communication, I really don’t have a truly accurate idea of this, it’s just my observation.

So what am I going to do about all of this? Well, other than this venting, nothing. I’ve been making an effort to be less snarky over the past couple months and I will continue that. Really all I can do at this point is carry on and enjoy my time kicking ass on various bosses with my good friends. My plan is to let it go, advice given in both the first and last line of “Breaking Me Down.”

It’s amazing the wisdom pertaining to guild drama that can be hidden loud rock music.

What is Mana?

Wikipedia defines mana as “the stuff of which magic is formed” and WoWWiki refers to it as “a magical power resource available to casters which they draw upon when casting spells” and compares it to “the warrior’s rage, the rogue’s energy, and the hunter pet’s focus.” Basically, mana is a system of points that relate to abilities. Different abilities cost different amounts of mana. When you try to use an ability that costs mana don’t have the corresponding amount of mana left, you will not be able to use that ability. A mana user generally starts with a full mana bar and depletes it as abilities are used. For Tankadins, mana is very important. It is the only means we have to use abilities that involve our holding threat and keeping ourselves alive through other abilites.

Okay, so Mana goes away?

Yes, but you can get it back! There are different ways to regenerate, or regen, your mana. As a caster, different class have specific ways to get mana back. Some use Spirit to generate mp5, or Mana Per 5 [seconds]. Some simply stack the stat mp5. Some, like Holy Pallies and Warlocks recieve mana back when they cast or crit on a certain spell. Tankadins don’t spend any itemization on any mana regen stats. We also don’t try to increase our mana pool with intellect at all, leaving us with a very tiny mana pool.

So I have very little mana and I don’t stack regen stats?

Correct. As a Tankadin you have special tools that you can use to regenerate your mana that don’t involve any regen or mana related stats on your gear or through your consumables.

Blessing of Sanctuary – Damage taken reduced by up to 3% and blocked, parried, and dodged melee attacks cause a gain 2% of maximum displayed mana.
Blessing of Sanctuary, or BoS, is a 5th tier 1 point talent in the Protection tree. It is amazing for mana regen. Every single time you mitigate or avoid a hit you’re getting back 2% of your mana! For someone with 6k mana, that’s 120 mana each time you avoid or mitigate a hit. Theck of Maintankadin has done some breakdown math of this talent in this thread. I believe he estimates BoS to be an average of 270mp5. It is an amazing amount of mp5, especially against a high amount of trash mobs or fast hitting bosses when Blockcapped.

Divine Plea – You gain 25% of your total mana over 15 sec, but the amount healed by your Flash of Light, Holy Light, and Holy Shock spells is reduced by 50%.
Divine Plea, or DP, is an ability learned at level 71. It is available to all specs but it is most powerful for us Tankadins when paired with the 9th tier 2 point talent Guarded by the Light and Glyph of Divine Plea. For someone with a 7.5k mana pool, Divine Plea turns out to be 625mp5 and a 3% damage reduction with 100% uptime thanks to Guarded by the Light and Glyph of Divine Plea. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Spiritual Attunement (Rank 1) – A passive ability that gives the Paladin mana when healed by other friendly targets’ spells. The amount of mana gained is equal to 5% of the amount healed.
Spiritual Attunement, or SA, is a 7th tier 2 point talent in the Protection tree, though the accepted spec only includes 1 point in this talent. According to Knaughty’s math, “Incoming damage needs to be 1,610 DPS and you won’t go OOM.” According to Theck, “1/2 SA gives you 5% of your healing back as mana. That’s 50 mana per second (or 250 mp5) for every 1k damage taken per second. A tanking paladin will be taking around 2-3k DTPS, so you’re looking at between 500 and 750 mp5 from 1/2 SA.”

Adding all of these values up, even using the low end damage intake calculations by Theck, we receive 1395mp5 total, 80mp5 over the expended 1315mp5.

That’s still not enough Mana Regen!

While boss tanking, usage of our three regen tools will keep you more than topped off in terms of mana. Trash though, you may need to manage your mana a little more closely. In a raid or 5 man environment, you’ll likely be getting other mana replenishment from different classes as well, though these other replenishments can’t hold a candle to the best way for a Prot Pally to regen mana; pull more mobs. The more mobs you pull, the more opportunities you have to avoid or mitigate an attack, increasing your BoS return. It also will increase your damage taken, increasing your return from SA. You can also drop Consecrate from your rotation when not tanking large packs of mobs to save yourself mana. As a Blood Elf, I often use Arcane Torrent for a small boost of mana, and of course there’s always the old standby of a Mana Potion.

Moozhe, one of our wonderful DPS warriors, Fraps-ed the entire fight! I have embedded it below for your viewing pleasure. You can also find it on YouTube here. (I’m the one tanking by the door in Phase 1.) Enjoy!

Grats everyone!

My guild now clears content in a night and a half of raiding, and though we’ve started attempts of three drakes on Sartharion, our past two kills have been with only two drakes up, due to our impatience on our first round of attempts and, due to the Superbowl this weekend, our lack of an available third raid night this week. Being that we’ve started these attempts, I’ve been doing more research on a tankadin’s potential role in this fight.

Turns out, being Blockcapped can be a very powerful asset when tasked with the role of drake tank or add tank, making it much easier on your healers in an already healing intensive fight. If you’re Blockcapped as a Drake tank, the damage you take will be much smoother and easier to heal through. If you’re Blockcapped for adds, and have enough Block Value, you can almost be completely untouchable by the whelp adds, as they don’t hit very hard, making it so you essentially turn your block into avoidance and help you take substantially less damage.

What is this “Blockcap?”

Blockcapping, also called “unhittable” by some, refers to attaining 102.4% combined avoidance and mitigation while Holy Shield is active. Sound familiar? It’s probably because 102.4% was the magic number for becoming Uncrushable pre-WotLK. Becoming Uncrushable pushed Crushing Blows, or extra hard boss hits, off the table, making for a much smoother damage intake. When one is Uncrushable, they cannot take an unmitigated hit, and Crushing Blows could only land when a hit wasn’t mitigated. This made tanks easier to heal and vastly reduced the chance of an “instagib” or a one shot. The reason it is now called “Blockcap” is that 102.4% is the point when Block Rating begins to be pushed off the table by avoidance. In the current content, Protection Paladins are the only tanks that can attain this 102.4% combined avoidance and mitigation, making us the smoothest tanks to heal in terms of incoming melee damage. It also allows us to become niche tanks in situations with many light hitting mobs when we pair Blockcapping with Block Value items.

So, how exactly does one “Blockcap?”

Well, in order to Blockcap, you need to attain 102.4% combined avoidance and mitigation. The way you figure out how close to this number (or how far over) you are is fairly simple. First, open up your in-game character sheet and click the “Defenses” tab. Add up your percentages of Dodge, Block and Parry. Now add 30% to that total to account for Holy Shield and add another 10% to that (this is an estimation to account for base miss, which is 5% and the assumed amount of Miss you have from Defense, another 5%). As a note, the Miss percentage displayed on your character sheet when you mouseover the Defense area is not accurate as it doesn’t take into account diminishing returns. All other percentages are accurate. Don’t fret if this total is below the 102.4% threshold. The question now is how much avoidance do you receive from raid buffs? Most tanks in a 25 man raid will receive an extra 2-3% avoidance when fully raid buffed. If you’re right around 102.4%, perfect! Just be mindful of hovering around that percentage raid buffed when you upgrade your gear, re-gem and change enchants.

I’m a bit over Blockcap raid buffed, what should I do?

If you are above 102.4% combined avoidance and mitigation with Holy Shield active, the best thing you can do is shed some Block Rating in favour of avoidance. Dodge and Parry are harder to stack than Block Rating because of the way they are weighted. It takes 39.3 Dodge Rating to equal 1% Dodge, 49.18 Parry Rating to equal 1% Parry and only 16.39% Block Rating to equal 1% Block. However, Block is an inferior stat to Dodge an Parry, so once you are comfortably Blockcapped you should do your best to shed any block being pushed over that cap and replacing it with avoidance.

Okay, I’m not quite there yet, help?

If you are under the Blockcap, the best way to get yourself close is by stacking Defense. Regardless of whether or not you are Crit Capped (535 Defense for heroics, 540 Defense for raids), Defense has benefits beyond this point. One point of Defense skill increases your Dodge, Block, Parry and Miss by 0.04%. It is a complete and well rounded boost to your goal towards Blockcap. Also, keep raiding and upgrading your gear. The better the pieces you get are, the easier it is to hit and maintain Blockcap without sacrificing other important stats like Stamina and Armour.

All of this seems pretty complicated…

Although attaining Blockcap may seem daunting, it’s really an easy way to maximize your potential as a tank. There are a couple of tools and guides to help you on your way. One is a macro that makes the calculation of the 102.4% a piece of cake.

/run ChatFrame1:AddMessage(format("Unhittable at 102.4%% - you have %.2f%%", GetDodgeChance() + GetBlockChance() + GetParryChance() + 5 + 1/(0.0625 + 0.956/(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)/4.91850*0.04))))

Create this into a macro, pop Holy Shield and hit the macro. It will display in your chat box the goal 102.4% you are striving for and the progress you’ve made towards it in the form of your current percentage of Dodge, Block, Parry and Miss. It’s quick and easy, as well as an accurate way to figure out what percentage you are at while raid buffed.

For those who are newer to tanking and need help choosing gear pieces and enchanting and gemming choices to put themselves closer should check out Eanin’s Failsafe WotLK Gear Guide as well as Petrus’ Guide to WotLK Gear Enchants and Gems. Krazy also has a guide, Krazy’s Block Cap Gear Guide (Pre Naxx), for those pre-Naxxaramas folk, but please realize that this post is geared more toward those who are currently raiding and I don’t advocate sacrificing important stats like Stamina and Armour for the pure Block Rating required to attain Blockcap in a pre-raiding environment.

Okay, you’ve sold me.

I know I’ve just spent this entire post explaining why you should Blockcap, but I do have a few words of caution. Please weigh what sacrifices you are making to attain Blockcap. Losing a few hundred HP for a significant upgrade to your Avoidance is probably more than worth it. Losing a few thousand HP, on the other hand, is probably not a good decision. Use your discretion, resources and general knowledge to guide yourself to an appropriate decision. I also don’t believe it is necessary or practical to Blockcap unbuffed. Take your raid buffs into account when calculating Blockcap so that you’re are not sacrificing important stats for Block that will simply be pushed off the table in a raid environment.

Over the past couple of days, it’s come to light that the girl in the pictures wasn’t the author of the blog and doesn’t even play World of Warcraft. (I won’t link to the offending blog, as I don’t really feel like supporting that person, but if you really wanted to I’m sure you could find it.) Her name is Sarah Townsend and the is the author of a pretty cool blog at techdarling.com. The author of the WoW blog had been stealing her pictures, videos and even blog content for over 5 years, branding it as her own, claiming to be this girl. What’s even more disturbing is that she had pictures from Sarah’s private Facebook albums, and if Sarah is to be believed about only friending people she knows well on Facebook, knows her personally. The situation hasn’t been particularly damaging to Sarah, I don’t believe, and has increased her blog traffic and traffic for socialvibe.com, the company she actually works for. She also posted a very classy video response to the situation. However, this kind of identity theft could potentially ruin someone’s career, and if taken further, other important aspects of their life.

I realize that, in Sarah’s situation, it was someone she knew who was stealing her identity, but I think we can all take a little lesson from the situation in keeping our information and pictures a little bit secure. I’m not saying we should all lockdown our Myspace, Facebook and Twitter accounts, but it may be a good idea to keep things like pictures at a friends only level and think twice about friending a friend of a friend of a friend that you hung out with the other night at the bar, or the random guy who PuGed VoA with you last week. You never know how much of a weirdo they really are.

I don’t fall into the category of an anonymous blogger, as I’m totally cool with my guildies reading what I write and people looking my character up on the armory. I’ll divulge a little bit of personal information so that those reading my blog have an idea of what I’m about. If you want me to friend you on Facebook though, you’d better know me on a personal level. After all, we are not avatars made of pixels, we are real people with opinions and often times who we are in the “real world” affects how we game. Obviously the recent event calls into question whether or not the “facts” that any blogger puts out are true, but I don’t feel the need to defend myself or my facts. You can choose to take them or leave them.

Being that I’ve already made this sound like some sort of public service announcement, I figure I’m fine adding this plug in as well. I’d recommend checking out socialvibe.com and signing up with it. It’s a charity site that allows you to choose a sponsor and put a badge up on your social networking profiles like Myspace and Facebook that you earn points with to donate to various charities. It’s free, easy and it’s doing something good. I signed up and have badges strewn around my social networking profiles, but I haven’t posted a badge here yet because I’m slow like that. It’s definitely on my to-do list. Perhaps something good came out of this situation after all.

Know of an excellent song or parody I might not have heard? Let me know! I’m always looking for more grinding music. I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but here is a list of some of my favourite World of Warcraft tunes. Enjoy!

Big Blue Dress by Cranius
The Betrayer by DetDragonclaw
Dwarf Killa by DJ Busby
NPC by Eccky
No PuGs by Hazzyrd & Moonxtal
MC Raiders by Myndflame
Ni Hao by Nyhm and Summergale
ROFLMAO by Oxhorn
Billy MacLure by Rufus Cubed
MS Warrior Tribute by Mute
World of Whatever by Slegg
I’m Just a Druid by Spunky the Druid
Ballad of the Noob by Stone Falcon Productions
Night Elf Paradise by Jethal
Belore Shala Diel by Phillip Presswood
It’s Fun to be a Hunter by GiGi
Honor Killz by Azerothian6
Crank Dat Druid Boy by Druidboyz
Ulduar by Summergale

I’ve provided links to download or listen to them where I can, most are YouTube videos as it’s difficult to find mp3 versions of many of these. Also, most of the artists listed have multiple songs that are great. I’d suggest checking out their other works as well.

Second, I’d like to mention the fact that I’ve fallen absolutely head-over-heels in love with Areidan’s blog, The Wordy Warrior. She is a Protection Warrior and an officer in her Alliance guild on Doomhammer who has recently started blogging. I’ve been watching her blog from day one and all of her posts are wonderfully informative and well written, as well as refreshingly humorous, and of course it’s always nice to read the opinions of another female tank. If you haven’t checked her out already, I can’t recommend strongly enough that you do.

Now, on to the Steam-Punky, machine ridden instance that we’ve farmed Naxx for so long waiting for; Ulduar.

First Impressions

Upon my entrance to Ulduar, the first thing I noticed (other than massive server instability), was the grandeur of the instance. It has got to be the most visually stunning instance that Blizzard has come to hand us yet. Vast skies, massive hallways, and yes, even giant titans that pop out of nowhere to kill Paladins unwittingly auto-running into their domain, who later fall to create bridges. There are even portals to make the run back from wiping shorter!

Despite my reservations due to a strong hatred of vehicles, I was completely taken up by the excitement of destroying towers with teammates in huge, clunky tank-like war machines on our first Flame Leviathan kill. As a note, I do wish the encounter was slightly harder so that I could say attempt, rather than kill, though the difficulty seems to ramp up later in the instance so I can live with the initial ease.

I’ve also noticed that the trash is significantly harder in Ulduar than Naxx, and I’m actually quite pleased by this. Being that I’m a tank, I can’t get away with AFK-ing on trash pulls, no matter what the instance, something that I used to do quite often in instances like Black Temple on my rogue (”brb, mac’n'cheese!” on Teron trash was my personal favourite). In Ulduar, the trash is much more involved, with much less AoE, so at least for now, the entire raid has to stay focused. I enjoy the fact that everyone else must suffer through the trash with me! Ahahaha! Well, that and the fact that I have something to do other than just laying down a Consecrate and stand idle while everyone rains fire, stars and ice down from the heavens.

The gear also looks fabulous (except for the whole T8 “Tankadin in a dress” thing, but I’ll spare you the whining). I’m pleased to say I’ve picked up a few upgrades and they’re not only quite functional, but I love the graphics. I picked up a Titanguard and enchanted it with the new Blade Ward enchant. I’ve also picked up the Charred Saronite Greaves, or “fat-boots” as I lovingly call them. When wearing my Dragonstorm Breastplate and my Hero’s Surrender along with these new pieces and a pair of pants, I look like some sort of space cadet with a jet-pack and laser sword, which amuses me greatly. All joking aside though, the new models are beautifully detailed and really embody the instance.

Tanking In Ulduar

I’ve touched on the trash already, it is more difficult and more involved than Naxx trash ever could be. Tell your mages to dust off their polymorph tomes, pull your twitching finger away from the Consecrate button and start marking those ‘Skulls’ because Crowd Control (CC for those of us who have all but forgotten) is making a comeback! Trash mobs need to be kited and dragons are being… /gasp… slept! The trash in this instance has been designed to keep you on your toes. Though my guild has currently only seen up until Mimiron, I must say that, barring some brutal trash that I couldn’t possibly fathom, his trash is by far the most annoying trash ever designed by Blizzard, and I think they’re fully aware of that, actually naming some of these tiny robots “Trash.” Just be glad that you only have to clear it one per reset, as engaging Mimiron opens up a portal right outside of his room for future use.

So far, I’ve maintanked every boss through Mimiron phase 4 on 10 man mode, and have been rotating through maintanking, offtanking and throwing sparkle dust (also referred to as healing) every boss through Mimiron phase 3 on 25 man mode. Of course every boss mechanic is different and encounters vary on the type of tank, number of tanks and ideal gearset required, but in general, there is a rule. Things hit you. And boy, do they hit hard. Sadly I feel many of the fights rely on chaining cooldowns. I’m hoping once the raid starts upgrading their gear a bit as a whole, the other tanks and I will be able to stop begging for a Guardian Spirit when our ‘oh sh!t’ buttons are all on cooldown.

I plan on talking specifically about how best to gear yourself to specific fights and the instance as a whole at some point, though I do feel it necessary to mention it here. As a Protection Paladin especially, one wants to strive for MAXIMUM AVOIDANCE, achieving the MAXIMUM STAMINA that they can manage while maintaining the 102.4% BLOCKCAP (combined percentage of dodge, parry, miss, block with Holy Shield active after diminishing returns) while raid-buffed and staying about DEFENSE MINIMUM while tanking in Ulduar. You do not want to be taking a single unmitigated hit and you want to be avoiding as many as you can, with the stamina to back you up if RNG doesn’t like you.

As of yet, my threat has not been an issue on a single boss, save for Hodir, whom I elect to tank in Frost Resist gear to make it easier on my healers, and even then my threat was not beyond repairing with a cleverly placed Hand of Salvation on an eager DPS. It seems since 3.1 my threat has been through the roof and I’ve even been able to tank trash a pull without Righteous Fury. That was accidental, I assure you, but still nice to know it’s possible.

Bronze Coloured Glasses

As I mentioned earlier, the boss difficulty seems to ramp up the deeper into the instance you get. My guild is currently working on Mimiron, which is a completely hectic and crazy encounter. We got him to Phase 3 last week in our 25 man raid, but I doubt we’ll be attempting him again until next reset due to the advent of Mother’s Day this coming Sunday, which is a usually a scheduled raid day. My 10 man group managed to take him down to Phase 4 last week and I am very proud to say that we accomplished this before our 25 man raid managed to get through Phase 1. It is a difficult fight and I’m hoping that we can find the time to devote to it in our 10 man this week. I am absolutely looking forward to taking down General Vezax, Yogg-Sargon and eventually Algalon the Observer as we progress and learn on our journey to free the titans.

Tonight I will be heading off again into the 10 man version of this wild… bronze… yonder? I’m excited, really and truly excited. I’m enjoying new content and raiding has regained it’s spark. At least for now, I have a challenge and a purpose; to be smacked in the face by giants, robots and titans… and survive.

THE QUESTIONS
1. What is your name, and where did it come from?
My name is Aureilie. It was originally Aurelie, but I had to add the extra “i” when I changed servers. Originally my name comes from the latin Aureilius, which means golden one. Fitting for a paladin, I think.

2. How old are you, and what is your birthday?
The toon is level 80 and the player is level 20.

3. Are you in love, and with whom?
Aureilie is in love with Sylvanas, and no not that way.

4. What is your favorite mount, and why?
I love white mounts. So the Night Elf Frostsaber, the Albeeno Drake (Stomp and Haf have me saying that now…). Also, I love ponies, especially the Undead model. Combining this makes Sir Zeliek’s mount my favourite, but since that’s not attainable, I’ll have to settle for the gorgeous Swift Forsaken Warhorse that’s being added with the Argent Tournament.

5. Do you prefer a certian type of Azerothonian meal, and where do you get it from?
Mana Strudel. I get them by /poke-ing the mages in my raid.

6. You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be, and why they are so huge?
I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s linked to the Sporeggar. Those guys sure do love their ’shrooms.

7. If you saw the Lich King walking towards you, what would you do?
He’s done it a few times so far. I generally stand their in awe until he peaces out.

8. (Dav added this one) Be honest, how many times have you used the Grizzly Hills outhouse without any real reason?
I honestly wasn’t aware there was one…

Tagging Byaghro, Halcyon and Ragar.