We lead raids a little different to guys, we delegate jobs to people and we call ‘mercy’ when we’re down and out. We’re fair, just and listen when raid members have problems. We’re the mother hens of the raid leading.

But just because we are pretty nice, doesn’t mean we’re pushovers and take crap lightly. Some of the best raid leaders I’ve seen were females and they had the personality of a guy. And then there’s been the girly types who bat their eyelashes at the raid and has them twisted around her little finger.

But whatever kind of raid leader you are, whether you wear skirts or pants, play Horde or Alliance….I raise my glass to you! Here’s to hanging with the boys and beating them at their own game! Cheers!

Power Word: Shield>Prayer of Mending>Renew

…to start with. Then since I’ve usually got the tank in focus, I just keep throwing Penance down on him, followed by more Renew…and maybe even a PW:S and a PoM if they’re off CD. Then since I have VuhDo….I watch the rest of my group carefully, throwing Flash Heals out like candy. And if it’s group wide damage, throw out Prayer of Healing…which I try not do too often as it eats my mana pool like Pacman. And possibly even a hastened Greater Heal if it’s really needed. I try not to use GH unless desperate though….definitely one of my ‘Oh Shit!’ buttons.

I just realise that I gave away my heal rotation to the rest of the guild. LOL…since I’m feeling generous, and you’re wondering how I managed to pull almost 7k DPS on Ony last night…here’s my DPS rotation.

Vampiric Touch>Shadow Word: Pain>Mind Blast>Devouring Plague>Shadow Word: Death>Mind Flayx2….and then hit MB again.

Rinse and repeat…keeping up them DoT’s all the time. Oh and on the whelps, use Mind Sear like candy. That’s how I got those numbers….shhhh, it’s a secret xD

Last night was fun, I got to play Shadow Priest instead of Discipline Priest….it felt like old times again, watching those crits bouncing around the screen and even the Holy Pally in the guild thanked me for Replenishment (Vampiric Touch- thankyou!!). My numbers were absolutely staggering, and I’m laughing at this because on single target I’m lucky if I break 3.5k….but on AoE multiple targets (the whelps) I got as high as 7k at one point. At that point I think I either passed out with shock or went to the kitchen to celebrate with a beer I’m still wearing T7.5 gear on my shadow spec, I’ve been gearing up the heal gear more…so with some sick T9 gear what kind of numbers will I be pulling?

DID I MENTION THAT FIORRA IS NUMBER FRICKIN EIGHTEEN?!

Just in case you want some proof….this is from http://www.wowranked.com

We now return you to your regular scheduled programming. Thankyou

• Glyph of Mind Flay now Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word:Pain
• Glyph of Shadow Word:Pain changed to- The periodic damage of your Shadow Word: Pain spell restores 1% of your base mana.
• Glyph of Shadow now increases your spell power by 30% of your spirit for 10 sec (Up from 10%)
• Improved Devouring Plague: This spell now deals 10/20/30% of it’s total periodic effect instantly, up from 5/10/15%
• Shadowform: This talent now causes Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch to benefit haste. Both the period length and the duration of these spells will be reduced by haste. In addition, the mana cost has been reduced by 32% to 13% of base mana.
• Vampiric Embrace: This ability now provides a 30-minute buff that cannot be dispelled, instead of a target debuff.

I had started to level my cooking, but that was starting to get tedious and I’d done it once before. I hate levelling through the old world, I just want to speed level past it and get into Outlands so it’s a little more interesting. I do both fishing dailies everyday, the one in Dalaran and the one just outside of Shattrath. And fish that I was fishing up in the Outlands I was putting into my bank to save so I can use them for levelling my cooking when I got that high (I have no clue what my cooking is at the moment- so don’t ask :p)

And so I was stuck with the major decision of which profession do I drop? At that point I had both Inscription and Tailoring, and they had both served me well….but I was starting to hate Inscription. I didn’t have a herbalist and so trying to farm mats for the profession was impossible and I constantly had to buy from the AH. And making the cards for Greatness decks was a mission unto itself. The only good thing that came with being a Grand Master Scribe was the shoulder enchants…and boy were those sweet. But….even with them being the best in the game, I knew that I could get shoulder enchants from Sons of Hodir and I would just have to grind the rep to get them. And there was no way in a gazillion years I would ever drop Tailoring. The awesome leg enchants, the cloak enchants that really are ‘Tailoring-Only’ and the mounts….oh how I love to ride round on my flying carpets! So I dropped Inscription.

And took up Engineering. Now some people I have talked to about this have cringed at me taking up this…and some people are very encouraging. The main engineer in the guild Drale gave me some good tips for levelling and so far it’s been pretty smooth sailing. I’ve had the profession about 24hrs now and I’ve already levelled it up to 200….I’m pretty happy with that. Getting to make the Exploding Sheep gave me a good chuckle for about five minutes though. I am deciding to go with Gnomish Engineering though, the whole bombs and explosives thing doesn’t really appeal to me and I prefer the junky toys of the Gnomes (besides! Gnomes are darn cute and loveable! Stinky icky Goblins….ick!) I’m farming the mats for it on Lysix, so that tends to help out my costs a bit. Although I did buy about 100 Bronze Bars from the AH last night cause I was too lazy to go out and farm tin and copper to make them xD

Death Knight tanking bonuses:

• 2 Piece bonus: Increases the damage done by your Death and Decay by 20%
• 4 Piece bonus: When you activate Blood Tap, you gain 12% damage reduction from all attacks for 10 seconds.

Mmm….omfg sexy. The first one is huge for Lysix, because in my rotation D&D is one of the first things I use to grab the aggro. And I used Blood Tap a lot too to increase my parry chances as I am specced into it on my tanking spec in the Blood tree. Very, very nice. Makes up huge for the crappy bonuses we got on the Tier 8 gear and all the nerf batting we’ve been recieving recently. These set bonuses actually make me want to get my whole set of Tier 9 now so I can take her into Icecrown and get her tanking some stuff again. I love tanking so much and these bonuses actually make it viable again.

Okay, next up we’ll look at the priest Tier 10 bonuses. Set bonuses on the Priest gear for the longest time have always been dedicated to people who want to spec Holy as a healer- which sadly does not work for me at all, as Fiorra is a discipline Priest. And to begin with, I was very disappointed with the Tier 10 bonuses as it looked like they were catering towards the Holy priests all over again. But then they got changed…and now the set bonuses are like a Discipline Priest’s wet dream:

• 2 Piece bonus- Your Flash Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over 9 seconds.
• 4 Piece bonus- Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

*shakes fist @ Twitter* I hate you. Maybe.

Talking of Chinese food, I smell egg rolls cooking. Mmm.

In game though I got literally showered with gifts and attention, it really was the coolest thing and I felt so special Everytime another one of my friends or guildies got online, they were sending me stuff in the mail or handing me stuff in a trade. All in all, yesterday I recieved:

2 Delicious Chocolate Cakes

3 Lovely Cakes

2 bottles of Dalaran White wine

5 Dalaran Brownies

Countless hugs

Too many cheers

…and 500 gold

Yes, you read that right…I got Cord of the White Dawn! Okay, okay so I got it made for myself, but my guildies Desdemonisis, Slaintemhath, Yotuu, Matdapus all helped me to get the 20 Moonshroud I needed by using their tailoring cooldowns. Bigchuck also helped me out by buying another 7 Moonshroud for me. And so by the end of yesterday, I had all my moonshroud and all my Runed Orbs. I called on a friend of mine, Mulachi and he had one of his guildies- Tamalyn (which is one of the BEST disc priests on Cairne!) make the belt for me. The same person is also going to make me the Savior’s Slippers- which my Runed Orbs are now being saved for- so on goes the Moonshroud hoarding…ack.

And then there’s some people who will not visit my blog because 1. I’m Alliance and they’re Horde. or 2. It’s called ‘Kill The Horde’ and it tends to scare the non-Ally folk away. When I originally started this blog, I was huge into PvP and I still am in a small way…but not so much anymore, it’s more about my toons and raiding now. I’d really like to get the name of my blog changed to something more neutral…but I don’t want to start from scratch when I’ve been writing here for almost an entire year. I’m also looking into getting the design of it changed, I want something clean and smart…but again, I can’t seem to find anything on the Interwebz.

So I would just like to say for the record that I love all my Horde fans, I don’t have anything against you as people- we’re all the same behind our toons, no matter what Faction we choose to play. Some people play Horde because the Ally are a bunch of immature brats on their server. Some people play Ally for the same reason (the Horde are mainly egotistical, elitist assholes on Cairne. I know some good eggs on that side though, they’re not all bad). So whatever side you play on, you’re always welcome here to read my posts. Just watch out, if I’m in a BG and you’re there on Horde….I don’t like dying and will do everything I can to save my ass from slaughter