Sonnet of a Raid

I wanted to try something new the other day, something that would challenge me.  So I googled the rules of a sonnet and set down to write my very own.  Without further ado, here is…

Fussypants’s Sonnet of a Raid

The group forms up and we all portal in
We eat our feast and buffs we do apply
With smiles and strats we boldly do begin
By magic and melee the mobs soon die

And now we have arrived to the end boss
The strat is read and boss is pulled by plan
The tank is low but heals do healers toss
The DPS bring deeps as much they can

Cooldowns are popped and chaos grips the raid
A hunter stands in badness and goes down
Quick now a brez and play the best you’ve played
Cast Bloodlust now you should have it keybound

With a tremendous roar we  end the fight
And revel in the lewts brought by our might

Fin

 

Addendum: Yotaan and I might be redecorating the site in the next couple of days, so tell us what you think!

Shields or no Heals

With sure steps, the heroic paladin dashes over the open field.  Her exotic build and glowing eyes mark her as one of the noble race of Draenei.  And her heavy plate armor embedded with crystals further denotes her as a paladin.  Across the expanse, the paladin charges to a fallen comrade.  She kneels down and quickly casts a healing spell upon her ally.  The figure stirs as it’s wounds begin to heal.
But the enemy is not gone! With a bloodthirsty shout, the orc raises it’s axe to behead the righteous paladin.  The draenei swiftly raises her arm, but instead of a protecting shield like usual, she carries a rather useless tome.  The orc’s axe carves right through the book and into the paladin and she is slain.
“Back again?” The spirit healer questions.
“Yeah,” answers the draenei glumly, “I can’t take any hits anymore without dying.”
“While I might not be an expert, I would really recommend investing in a shield,” offered the spirit healer.
“Yeah, but this book has got such better stats! It’s even Warforged!” counters the draenei.
“Honey, Holy Paladins just aren’t meant to use books.  Ignore the stats and go back to your shield.  You’ll thank me later,” the spirit healing wisely advised, “Or rather, you won’t because you and I will barely ever meet.”
“Thanks for the advice Mrs. Spirit Healer!”
“Any time Fussypants.”
The draenei returns to the living world.  But before she charges once more into battle, she pulls out her trusty shield and returns it to her arm where it belongs.  With a satisfied smile, Fussypants once more ventures forth to heal her allies.

There are very few stipulations I have when I play Warcraft.  I’ll play every race and almost every class.  I’ll play any faction on any realm.  I’ll play any role and any part of the game.  But what I will not do, is wield an offhand other than a shield on my holy paladin.

It’s just not right.  Holy paladins are the protectors of the light and of the injured.  And we can’t go about protecting when we’ve got some pathetic lantern dangling at our side.  A holy paladin needs her trusty shield.  That shield saves her life while she saves the lives of others.

But Fussypants, you might be thinking, paladins use Librams which are books! Surely you can transmog a book offhand! Yes it is true that paladins carry librams.  However, if you remember back, the libram didn’t replace the shield.  It was alongside of it.  Paladins can carry books, that I don’t care about.  But they have to carry that shield.  Book or no book, the shield must be there.

And if you are thinking about the BC cinematic as an example of a paladin libram, let me point out to you that that is Maraad, who is a ret paladin.  I honestly don’t care what those good for nothing but face smashing melee boys are up to, I speak only about holy paladins.  And holy paladins must use a shield.

The stats are of no importance to me.  If it ain’t a shield, I ain’t wearing it.  This is why, to the chagrin of my guild, I continue to wear my ilvl 670 shield instead of the 691 offhand that I have.  I cannot disgrace my holy paladin with that disgusting offhand.

Holy paladins are meant for shields, just like peanut butter is meant for for jelly.  Sure you can have them apart, but they aren’t as good.  And you certainly can’t pair mayonnaise with peanut butter, it’s gotta be the jelly.  Just as holy paladins can go offhand-less (not as good) but they can’t use a book (nasty). With the shield, paladins become an amazing juggernaut of healing power!

This is where I draw my line and not even the Naaru can move me.  Holy Paladins must have shields.  In order to heal those we care about, we must be able to protect ourselves!
#ShieldsornoHeals

(Yes, I wrote this whole thing to validate keeping my shield on my paladin.  Sometimes I don’t get why my guild still keeps me on the raid team :P)

Another Name Article (Demon Hunter Edition)

I was inspired (Artwork by Fussypants)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past week, you probably will have noticed the monumental announcement regarding the next Warcraft expansion.  We won’t bore you to death with the details since you already know those, but rather focus on one particular aspect that interested both Yotaan and Fussypants alike.  Demon hunters.

Fussypants: My first reaction was something along the lines of “OMG this is the class I’ve always wanted and never knew until now gimme gimme gimme!”.  The lore behind the class was extremely compelling and honestly, demon hunters look pretty badass.
However the more they talked about the class, the more a nagging doubt echoed in the back of my mind.  Demon hunters were repeatedly mentioned as ‘agile and mobile hand to hand combat fighters’ with lots of abilities that move them around the map.  Sound familiar to anyone else? To me, that sounded exactly like the description of monks.  And since monks have become my second favorite class (only after paladin) I became a touch worried that demon hunters would fill our niche.
I understand that this is only the announcement and we don’t even have a beta yet, so I’m not actively fretting the demon hunter take over. But hey, it’s just some food for thought. And if-

Yotaan: Fussypants.

Fussypants: What?

Yotaan: What are we going to name our demon hunters?

Fussypants: Well, I don’t know.  I’ll probably name mine something ending with ‘pants’ because that’s become my thing.

Yotaan: I want to name my demon hunter Sally.

Fussypants: Sally? Seriously? This wickedly awesome and deeply scarred elf and you wanna name her Sally?

Yotaan: Well it seems that Sally is taken on our realm.  Hmm… Mindy? Also taken.  Oh I know, Suzie!

Fussypants: Suzie.  Are you serious?

Yotaan: Suzie has been reserved!

Fussypants: *facepalming very hard*

Yotaan:  You know what would be cool?  We should name ours together, like twins.  But inanimate objects! Lamp and Lightbulb! Or Fork and Spoon!

Fussypants: Spork and Fapoon?

Yotaan: That. Is. GENIUS!

Fussypants: Everyone is naming their demon hunters something serious and demon-y and we are naming our Spork and Fapoon.

Yotaan: Yup.  It will be great!

Fussypants: *sigh* Well, what do  you think of demon hunters?

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Yotaan: Kidding aside, I am excited for a new class.  I always level them up, if only to experience how they play.  I played with my death knight up to max level.  Actually, I enjoyed him a lot.   He was blood specced and at the time, was unstoppable with awesome DPS.  Of course I played a monk as well, and leveled him to max and for some time played him even more than Yotaan.

I think the most interesting part of Demon Hunter is the lore potential.  The notion of them being Elf only is very appealing.  Here’s to hoping for a great introductory questing sequence for the demon hunter.  If it is at all like the death night initial experience, then I am sold!

That being said, as I peruse the Legion website, the night elf versions look better than the blood elf versions.  Since Fussypants has convinced me to play Alliance, I am happy that night elf is in my faction!

Oh, and by the way, Suzie is a killer demon hunter name….

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So what are you most excited about for the class? And what are your awesome Demon hunter names?

Next Expansion: Make it Brony

Photoshopped by the marvelous Scott Leyes

Yotaan brought up the topic of the next WoW expansion the other day.  Unfortunately, he brought it up over the dinner table, so the whole family got involved.  Including the members of the household who had no idea what Warcraft was, let alone what a new expansion would entail.

Yotaan started off by saying that he and I should post our speculation before the info drops on Thursday.  But before we could get anywhere with that speculation, my mom butted in.
“Brony.  It should be brony,” she said in the matter of fact way that only my mother can. “No wait wait wait, it should be that terrible dinosaur sitcom from the 90’s.  You know, the one where the actors dressed up in dinosaur suits and it looked horrendous.”

My father laughed out loud, and piled on that the next expansion should be Jane Austen to get more women in the story as they make their way through Elizabethan age life.  Pride and Paladin, my mother added.

But it got better.  My mom, having another flash of inspiration shouted “No! I know what it should be! Sex in the City! All the women will sit around discussing women things like their periods and men.  And all the guys will be gay but the women won’t be, so it will create weird tensions.” And even I have to admit, it’d be pretty funny to see hulking brawny orcs sitting around discussing their feelings.

Not one to be left out of the fun, my little sister joined in with ‘Unicorns! The next expansion should be unicorns! There will be unicorns running around and you have to do quests to free them and get meat.  And the unicorns only turn purple after they’ve been with humans!”

And we all agreed that she had the most fleshed out expansion idea of them all.

However, Yotaan and I still needed to write out our expansion predictions.  I sat down and did some good hard thinking.  Unlike the rest of my family, I was going to come up with a legitimate and plausible expansion idea.

The way I saw it, there were two options.  The first and more obvious one would be some sort of demon expansion.  With the lead up of Hellfire Citadel, a return of the Burning Legion made the most sense.   I foresaw some sort of invasion, either on our part or on the demon’s parts.  But the second expansion option is what I would prefer to see.

We return to Azeroth after the Draenor campaign to find that the Naga have been acting up again.  Racing to the oceans, we embark on a South Seas Expansion filled with Naga, pirates, forgotten islands, and more.  Eventually we discover that the Naga have been in contact with the Burning Legion (again) and are once more trying to bring them to Azeroth.  Neptulon plays a part so we finally get that thread wrapped up.

This is the expansion that I would really want to see.  I’ve always thought that the Naga make a great and chilling enemy and I really want there to be more pirates in WoW.  Also, the idea of islands instead of a single continent could be an interesting new take (provided there is fast travel between islands).  And we also are wrapping up tons of plot threads as well as smoothly transitioning from WoD.  It could be perfect!

My father (unfortunately) was way less… conscientious… about his expansion idea.

Yotaan: The heroes return to Azeroth after being away in Draenor battling orcs and demons only to find Disaster has struck!

All the major cities and towns are overrun with zombies (queue zombie invasion from Wrath)  How could this be?  We defeated the Lich King! Bolvar still sits on the throne…

But an old nemesis has risen again – Deathwing!  Now he’s a zombie and he is seeking (again) to destroy the world.  This time, he will crush all civilization first with the zombies under his control.

As if this is not horrifying enough, there is more…  Who is behind all of this?  How did Deathwing become a zombie to terrorize us again?

Oh no!

Its Gul’dan!!!!!

He’s at it again!

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We shall see who’s right come tomorrow!