Arcane Mage Guide for Patch 5.0.4

Nymphy is an arcane mage who logged into the post 5.0.4 patch World of Warcraft and noticed two very huge things. 1.) Her UI wasn't as broken as she feared! Yay for quick addon updates, she salutes the addon writers for being super prepared! 2.) Uhhh, her spec however, WAS broken, and broken beyond repair.


(Important Note for the Reading Impaired: Arcane mana regen has totally been fixed. For an actual Arcane mage guide please see the link at the bottom of the post.)

So! Here is my super handy guide for surviving as an arcane mage until Mists of Pandaria is released in a month.

1.) Run to the target dummies or perhaps even a heroic dungeon to test out new rotation.

2.) Immediately commence QQ because OMG MANA?! WHERE DID IT GO?!!!

3.) Realize that you don't get your major mana regeneration talent until level 90.

4.) Respec into Frost as right now there is simply no way you can sustain an arcane rotation on the fixed mana pool without mana regen.

5.) REFORGE ALL THE THINGS! Then QQ when you realize that you have to reforge ALL that lovely, sexy mastery into...<sigh> haste.
       5a.) Then REGEM ALL THE THINGS! (Not really ALL the things, just like 4 gems for me)
       5b) REGLYPH ALL THE THINGS!!!!

6.) Go searching for a Frost guide to help you figure out what the hell to do. Find one and slowly figure out a rotation.

7.) Organize your casting bars so they seem to look like they make sense.

8.) Grab a group of your guildies and convince them to accompany you to a Hour of Twilight heroic and eye your Water Elemental suspiciously. (PET BAR?! Uhh, I guess I put him on assist and leave it right?)

9.) Realize with a sinking heart that you can't go back to arcane until level 90 and you might as well get used to playing another spec that you do, hey, actually halfway decent DPS on surprisingly!

10.) Still countdown the month until you can respec Arcane though!

Frost isn't that bad to be honest <gasp!> But Arcane is where my heart stays and lives and it is where I have found the most enjoyment in playing my mage. I look forward to the Day of Pandas when I can level and respec back into it, but for now I am enjoying playing around with something new.

So hopefully you didn't come here looking for a REAL arcane mage guide for the latest patch, because I am not a huge theorycrafter and you should go here instead. If you did, then I apologize. This "guide" was meant to be a humorous, QQ, mage thing instead of a real thing. Please go to the linked guide, they have super helpful information in an easy to read format. And if you want to L2FrostMage(Nub) then go read Jed's excellent post here.

A Fond, Temporary Farewell

This is not the post I expected to be writing in the middle of the night, and certainly not the post that I wanted to ever write at all. But somehow, the guilt and the feeling that I am somehow letting people down, or upsetting them has to be overcome for the sake of mental health. This is not a humorous post, so if you have come here to find something funny, I am sorry to disappoint. This is #RealTalk and something excruciatingly hard and difficult to discuss.

Hi, my name is Nymphy and I suffer from severe social anxiety, depression, and generalized anxiety disorder. No one, except maybe Orv and a few other people that I am miraculously close to, has experienced what is inside my head on a daily basis. It is an effort to be funny and personable and outgoing on various social media platforms on a day to day basis. It wasn't all caused by today, but today was the breaking point. I am not blaming anyone either, but due to the pressures of being happy all the time combined with real life drama, stresses, and all around wear and tear on my emotional stability and I thisclose to having a nervous breakdown. The stress is a killer and for the sake of my own health, and #Lockling's, I am stepping away from all social interactions for the forseeable future. So I am putting down Twitter, Facebook, and WoW, walking away, and taking a break. I may pop into WoW for only 2 hours for the next couple Sunday's to help BBB finish helping his Cub get his 25 man ICC meta-achievements done for the drake just because I have already made that commitment, otherwise I am going to be silent. This blog will still continue to be written, if only by Orv for awhile, he will also be assuming the mantle of GM for Eff the Ineffable until I return.

To all the lovely nice people on Twitter, thank you for being who you are. I know all the people I talk to may not be friendly with each other, but each and every one of you has been a shining point and a source of smiles to me everyday. To say that I feel immeasureable guilt for doing something that I shouldn't even think twice about is awful and just a mark of how unstable I am at this point. If I thought I could bear it by simply talking to a person, I know that I could pick any one of you and you would be glad to listen and I appreciate that more than you could ever know.

As an ending, this post was not made for attention. I am not bemoaning anything or saying woe is me. Anyone who really knows me, knows this to be true. I am not an attention seeker. This is simply so Orv does not have the burden of answering/explaining my absence to those of you who may ask. This is so I can regain a more stable grasp on my mental health and standing so I can return to being the cheerful, lovable person you know me to be.

*Hugs & <3*
Nymphy

Damage Control

   There inevitably comes a time, as GM or any other leadership positions, when you encounter a situation where you have to take charge and make sure it is resolved. As GM, the actions of your guildies reflect on you, and the culture you’re trying to build. Last night one of my guildies was rude and abrasive to another blogger when whispered.

   When this situation was brought to my attention, I talked to the guildie in question, and she then apologized, on Twitter and I thought it was done and over. It looked like a misunderstanding that had been cleared up. When I woke up this morning, contrary to my impressions, the situation from last night was not resolved and had exploded. The great thing about the Twitter and subsequent blogger community is the solidarity. We are quick to band together when someone upsets one of our friends. Today I had an upset blogger who wrote of her experience with the member of my guild, and another who was outright livid and made no bones about it. The subsequent tweets and comments about both posts made my heart sink as I read them.

   So here I am with big girl panties on (more uncomfortable than pants let me tell you), doing damage control. I had a discussion with the guildie that very clearly conveyed my unhappiness. Eff the Ineffable is a guild that was built largely through the WoW community on twitter. I hope that everyone in the wonderful twitter/blogger community knows that if they ever have a problem with anyone in the guild they can come to Orv or myself and we will take the situation seriously. I believe that Eff the Ineffable is, and will remain a friendly guild where people know how to treat each other.

   As an aside, a thing that happened today is that Blizzard announced a security breach. So yeah, go change your password to something you will never remember the very next time you log on. :)

In Which D/E the Tank! Celebrates its First Blogoversary!

   First we would like to first thank our readers. Without you guys, this wouldn’t have been nearly so much fun. It is hard to believe that we have been around a year. Well, to be technical we realize that we are a week late, however cast your eyes to the top. See that? Yes! It is our new header! Courtesy of the lovely Liala over at Disciplinary Action we have a nice new shiny! We thought it would be apropos to save our big first year post to also commemorate a new header as well!

   But Nymphy, you promised us babies! I do want to apologize for the severe lateness in two of our Epic Baby Posts. I also promise that we will put them together as soon as possible if not this weekend. Real life has eaten my time and Orv’s as well. We have not forgotten and you shall get your dose of squee here soon!

   This past year has been an amazing experience, both in doing the baby posts and others. The whole blogging, WoW, and Twitter community has been so supportive in helping us turn a maybe thing into a very fun and real thing! Looking back over the year that we have been writing this blog we are very humbled by the people who read and enjoy it. So to all of our readers, commenters, twitter followers, friends, romans, countrymen, thank you for joining us time and time again as we try to make you laugh, make you think, make you a better tank (whether of mobs or the floor), or make you squee at adorable babies. (We promise the rest of the baby posts are coming!) We will also try to up the posting rate. Twice a month, if that, is terrible and we are sorry! We do hope you will continue to follow our antics as we go into Mists bubble sheeping through WoW. And pets! And maybe more babies! ;) Definitely more floor tanking! And perhaps another boring tank guide from Orv.

(In case you're reading this in a feed reader, here is Liala's awesome logo!)

One Picture is Awesome, but Six is Better! In Where We Get Tagged for the 6's Internet Meme

Nymphy is an arcane mage who also happens to be the newly procced GM of Eff the Ineffable. She feels like she has finally “arrived” on the Internet because this is the first meme she has been tagged for.

Orv is a protection pally who is helping Nymphy with her turn as Defense Against the Dark Arts Prof- err GM of Eff the Ineffable. He’s glad that Nymphy stepped up to take the reins of EtI because she’s much nicer than he is, and no one will suspect her...

The Deal:
Apparently Gnomeaggedon has decided that he really wants to know what is hidden in our picture files. Not just the top pictures....no no he wants the deep, dark, and hidden ones! So the lovely Fannon and our favorite (well, ONE of them anyway) guildie Grimmtooth has tagged us for this meme. Didn’t anyone tell you guys that curiosity can lead to things that cannot be unseen? Oh well, here goes.

The Rules:
They are fairly simple. You go into your Pictures file.
Count to the Sixth sub folder.
Open it.
And whatever the Sixth picture is you post it. Along with a few words so we aren’t all cocking our heads to the side and going wtf? As if being a blogger you won’t say anything anyway ;)
But wait! There is more!
You are to then tag Six MORE people to do this. We guess the idea is to unearth ALL the pictures.

So there you have it. BUT there is a problem with these rules. WAY TOO SIMPLE. Since when did we do things the simple way? So since we love the number six, and there are two of us that write this particular blog, we are going to dig and come up with Six pictures. Three from each of us.

So let us get started shall we? Upon opening said Picture file, Orv had none except sample pics so he is going to go dig in his #Tankling file instead. And Nymphy has found a baby picture herself :D

Well, this is embarrassing. For all that Nymphy loves WoW babies, she realized she has neglected to share her own. This is a picture of her youngest daughter Makayla. It was taken when she was just 7 mos old. Makayla is now 2 years old.

 This is one of my favorite pictures of Tankling and her new favorite doll. I think it's important that she learns to bring a pocket healer with her, and clearly that doll is wearing white cloth armor. Yup, definitely a tank/healer combo there.

So that is the first two pics. BABIES!!! :D

The next set of pictures actually comes from our WoW Screenshot folder.

Hahaha this pic will make an appearance in a future blog post. It is a screenshot of Nymphy’s UI capturing part of a hilarious guild conversation. Coming Soon to a “Shit My Guild Says” post near you. Or...in this blog.

This was one of the first screen shots Orv took when he came back to playing WoW during Wrath. He had just earned his first few epics and was excited to show them off.

The last set of pictures come from our blog writing folder, where we keep the shots used for this blog.

Aww! It is Fannon’s #Dwarfling. This shot was sent for the very first #EpicBabyPost. You guys should bug him to send use pictures so you guys can see this adorable baby again!

Well can’t say this is surprising huh? The ability to find any pics in the blog screen shot folder that don’t feature Nymphy on the floor would probably have been more of a shock.

So that is OUR take on this meme. Now comes the fun part. Now we get to dig into the following people’s pic folders:

Rades from Orcish Army Knife - Maybe we will end up with a sexy Fabulor screen.

Oestrus from The Stories of O - Can’t wait to see what this classy lady has in her folders.

Aldous from Boozekin - Ooh! Drunken pics!

Ophelie from The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon - Spoon pics! <crosses fingers>

Ceraphus from Variant Avatar - Maybe we will get #Knightling pics?

Cynwise from too many blogs to mention . - This should be an interesting pic from him...PvP mixed with mogging anyone? P.S. Cyn, if you’ve done it once or twice already, just go ahead and do it again in another blog.

Merry Christmas and Happy Winter Veil

Happy Winter Veil and other assorted holidays from Nymphy and Orv!

Protection Paladin Talent Guide: For Leveling via Dungeon Finder

Orvillius is a Protection Paladin with the mighty Eff the Ineffable on Azuremyst. With Nymphy away this week he’s abandoned all pretense of being half as funny or witty as she is and keeps putting up serious tanking posts.

NOTE: If you're here looking for patch 5.04 paladin talents, you want to go to the updated guide.

  The other day I was feeling a little bored before raiding time and decided to dust off my level 40 bear druid and spend some time on him. It had obviously been a long time since I’d touched him, because his talent points had been reset. When I went to spend those points I realized that I have no idea where to put them. A couple of helpful twitterfolk pointed me towards their own specs or helpful guides, but the experience got me wondering whether there are people out there who are as confused by the Prot Tree as I was by the Feral Tree. I hope this is helpful for any brave folk who have decided to level up as a Prot Pally, and find themselves unsure of exactly how useful all of these talents will be. The talents are listed in the order I think it is best to fill them out. Some of this is a matter of opinion and if you’re leveling with a healing buddy/dps buddies you may need to swap the order around a bit to better match up to your needs!

Eff the Healers, Let's Have a Tank Circle!

Being a tank for Eff the Ineffable, Orvillius is particularly sensitive to the tyranny of healers. What with their members only healing channel and their posh sense of entitlement, seeing this Circle of Healers reboot floating around was just too much! Using ancient Paladin secrets (replacing ‘heal’ with ‘tank’), Orv reforged the healer meme into a mighty tanking meme.

1. What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Orvillius, human protection paladin, 0/31/10

2. What is your primary group tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
I mostly tank EtI’s 10 man raids. I used to pug weekly 25 mans in WotLK, but with the raid lockout change that became impossible.

3. What is your favorite cooldown for your class and why?
That’s a tough one, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say the new Holy Shield. It’s on a super short cooldown, so I can pop it any time I feel like my healers might need a little breathing room.