Three things, doods:

1) Dinah dinged lv. 80. Awesome! And… literally the day after? The aging laptop she was named after was replaced by a MacBook. Now, before you Apple haters get all up in my face, I’ve had the Apple taint on me for quite some time— since junior high school, in fact— and this was bound to happen at some point. I’ve used ‘em off and on since then and had wanted one of my own, it’s just that until now they were either ridiculously expensive and couldn’t run everything I needed to. I just happened to pick a really good year to make the jump since the ‘10 refresh is several hundred kinds of win. (I originally wanted a MacBook Pro, but the only difference between the 13-inch MBP and the MacBook of the same size was… oh, $300, a firewire port and a card reader. (2gb RAM, too, but I can fix that on the cheap later.) Once you get past how MacBooks look like toys— and I promise you that thought lasts less than five minutes— you would agree that they are stupidly adorable. Of course, this means I will have to overhaul her “Avatar Dinah” design to give her white ninja gear… :D

Really, to get a Windows machine with everything I wanted would have cost just as much (many of the so-called “cheap” laptops have crap for graphics chipsets… lol Intel “integrated” garbage). So… why not? I’ve been able to get Mac versions or suitable replacements for just about everything I’d pack on Blastoise or Yggdrasil (though Painter proves to be a little… elusive *cough*).

Dinah’s new body can run WoW VERY well… in fact, she can go to Ultra with almost no lag, but I keep her at the next notch down since I tend to have podcasts and such playing in the background.

2) I am… amused by how Blizzard has been rolling out Cataclysm— dripping it out in small glops rather than one huge hammer to the face. INTERESTING. To this end, and because I love space goats…

Enter Hynderia, space goat warrior!

That name had been bugging me for weeks. As you can tell by the post title, it sounds like something out of a “Tales of” game. But it isn’t… I’m not sure if she’s supposed to be a Draenei port of Hikaru or a WoW-exclusive, but she’s a badass freaking space goat who will smash you in the FACE. >:} She’s using Rei’s old BoA shoulders for now until I pile up enough tournament seals to get the plate versions.

Sitting at level 28 as of this writing, playing the new lowbie quests… strangely reminds me of the earlier parts of the very first Breath of Fire, in which HOLY CRAP you actually had to solo a couple of dungeons, and afterwards you’d get this hokey-yet-cute little party in your honor before moving onto the next city. :) Hynderia is very much a “I chop things and we win? I can handle that!” sort. While she’s not like Leslie in that she can’t quite heal herself (well, outside of Victory Rush and Gift of the Naaru), I’m hard-pressed to recall how many times I’ve faceplanted so far.

3) I never did get Kingslayer. Booooooo. It’s possible that after the expansion drops, provided enough people come wandering back we might be able to try a 10-man ICC as a guild… I’m not holding my breath though.

I got very very close through a “friend of the guild” run, though… but it wasn’t meant to be, on several fronts. Turns out they were secretly “auditioning” me and two other guildies who were coming along so they could draft us. I want Kingslayer, but I don’t want it bad enough to ditch my brother’s guild over it, even if I knew that I could go back. It just feels evil that way. :( (Plus, it would totally bork up guild rep when that gets switched on.)

First, “third-zerging” Sindragosa = no, does not work, ohgod my repair bill. (“third-zerging” in this case being “only let one person at a time be an ice block, don’t bother dropping stacks and just nuke the everloving smoo out of Sindy in the meantime) Oddly enough, this runs counter to all my previous Sindragosa posts that painted her as the Ridley of WoW.

…well, she IS, but more like Meta Ridley than X-Ridley in that the fight is not a clusterfwegh of DPS and you actually have to think about positioning at some point.

ANYWAY…

Hello, Frozen Throne. I’ve only seen it once before, on Leslie… and very briefly at that. This raid group wants Kingslayer as much as I do, to the point where we’re considering extending the lock until we walk away with that title and Mr. Lich King’s ice cream. That bastard, walking around with tasty chocolate chip scourge-y dough!

Phase 1 is simple enough… somewhat reminiscent of Rotface with the having to hoof it over to the OT when you get slapped by Necrotic Plague. With this group, the first transition is more like “everyone pile up and DPS the crap out of the adds ASAP,” also pretty easily done. Phase 2, though…

DEFILE. At last we meet. The bane of a Kingslayer’s existence… and literally a pool of gray goo. Seriously, what is it? Scourge poo? Rotten ice cream? Melted tire rubber?

My brother is often on an alt but able to listen in on the shenanigans. I’m convinced he’s eating popcorn. Munch away, you smug fool… even if I have to share my Kingslayer title with two (awesome) guildies, you shall pooh-pooh me no more! :P

Finally: Dinah the Ninja Jeweler. At last, raking in a small profit on a daily basis. Not only will this get me MOAR PROFIT, but will also pay for her next flight training and her second Sky Pop (seriously, Engineer flying machines are freaking Sky Pops from Super Mario Land). >:D

You know how I said I tend to favor guild-dominated runs? I still do, but tonight was a reminder that they, too, are imperfect.

The team I was with was pretty close to ironing out the last burps and kinks in stomping Sindragosa in her not-Ridley face (no, really, she’s pretty much Ridley with a Rita Repulsa-like voice) and someone in the guild’s group ragequits so hard he also gquit ALL of his other alts… or so that’s what I heard over Vent from everyone else. While this spelled an obvious end to this ICC10, at least it didn’t implode because of something I did.

Sindragosa… really isn’t that hard compared to the other not-LK ICC bosses, really. If anything, each phase just adds something extra onto the previous, in a way that’s quite manageable. Unchained Magic is easily dealt with, by just slowing down a bit (in Yoshi’s case, it was simply a matter of bringing her spell rotation down to 3 Arcane Blasts + Arcane Missiles as opposed to the usual 5x Blasts + Missiles + Barrage). At least, that’s what it seems for me. If anyone’s a pain to deal with, it’s probably Rotface because of HOLY SMOO SLIME ALL OVER; it and slime spray make finding the goo-kiting tank a little hard to find at times, but even that becomes second nature after a few encounters.

This, of course, is speaking for 10-man normal… and 25-man isn’t that much of a stretch, either (aside from, you know, the logistical mess of herding 25 doods around)… Being able to do Heroic modes would be nice but not essential.

There is still Leslie, who hasn’t used up either her 10 or 25-man slots, and surely there will be plenty of last-minute ICC teams tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get lucky and she’ll get a shot at mr. Lich King. And, worst case… everything resets on Tuesday anyway.

I WILL have Kingslayer so I can taunt my brother with it before Cataclysm (“You are special snowflake NO MORE!” Bonus win if I send it as an audio message in a Magica DeSpell voice XD). That much is for sure. Bwahahaha. Really, this isn’t meant to be jerky at all, more of a bop on the nose for pooh-poohing me early on but not doing much to help. :P That, and bro gets the added bonus of me finally being able to raid alongside him consistently when the expansion hits. It will have taken 2 years, but gear and raid knowledge disparity shall separate us no more!