Single Abstract Noun: Blog Community Guild

Tamarind and Miss Medicina are mind readers. I've had this idea rolling around in my head for some time, but they dove straight into my head and took it! It's a good thing, too, becuase I sure as hell wasn't doing anything about it.

Single Abstract Noun is a guild for the blogging community - that includes bloggers as well as blog readers. SAN is a social guild and a means for the blogging community to get together to...well, do whatever they want. Discussions will be had, Hoggers will be downed, RPing will be played, all-around tomfoolery and shenanigans will be declared. You can find more information regarding SAN in Miss M's post, as well as Tam's.

If you want to join, you can find us on the Feathermoon Argent Dawn RP server (both US and EU realms). US players will want to roll Alliance, and EU realms are 4 teh Horde. US players can join the chat channel "singleabstractnoun" and request a guild invite from there.

**Note** Bloggers do not need to 'recreate' their character. In fact, I would even suggest the contrary. Play something you've never played before! If nothing else, it would make for an interesting blog post. I made a Warrior. I'm sure you will see future posts by me with such titles as "How I Phail'd Warrioring" and "Why I was kicked out of yet another PuG for pretending I knew how to play a warrior".

[edit] Bad Nim! It's Argent Dawn, not Feathermoon!

Filler Post: Pike Eats Her Candy With The Pork And Beans

As of this Monday, my work shift has...well, shifted. Instead of an 0800-1630 shift, it is now 1200-2030. Needless to say, I have some sleeptime adjusting to do, I am very maladjusted.

So instead of an actual, factual post, I am directing you to Pike from Aspect Of The Hare. More specifically, her post in which she draws out her idea of Weezer's Pork And Beans. The post is just over two weeks old, which makes me sad I hadn't seen it sooner. But it's okay! Because I've seen it now. And it quite truly made my day.

Thanks, Pike, for awesomeness in drawn form.

Real post coming this weekend.

[edit] Pike has made this into a video. I assure you, it it still awesome.

BA Shared Topic: Leave of WoW Absense

Well, this is quite embarrassing. I certainly have egg on my face.

I've been trying to think of a good topic for my next post with little fruition. So I thought to myself, "Self, why don't you just hop onto Blog Azeroth and grab the shared topic of the week?" I could think of no reason not to do that - That's what the BA shared topics are for!

And I find this.

Look familiar?

Whoops.

There will be a new post tomorrow. A real one. One I haven't done before. That's not filler. I promise.

Kris Kringle: Quicklinks

Well, it seems as if Gnomeageddons's little idea for a Kris Kringle guest post was quite the hit. If you're like me, you're going to want to read them all. Let me help! In no particular order, we have:

How To Be A Hunter, from Deynor to Brajana

What To Get A Bossy Pally For Christmas, from Phoenix to Ophelie

Merry Christmas, from Shawndra to Saresa

So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, from Jaedia to Shawndra

For Christmas, All I Want To Be Is A Gnome Mage, from Ophelie to Gnomeageddon

A Story About Fae, from Nim to Jaedia

Behold! A Guest Post, from the inimitatable Leafshine to Stop

An Ode To Doomguard Roulette, from Rhidach to Nibuca

Nib's Dungeon Finder Tips 'n Tricks, from Nibuca to Syrana (& Sideshow)

Kris Kringle/Secret Santa Post, from Syrana to Gameldar

Inherent Trollish Superiority, from Stop to Jezriyah

Merry Christmas, from Littlebark to Krizzlybear

A Petal In The Forest, from Anea to Petal

Kringle This!, from Psynister to Nim

FAQ For Newbs, from Ambermist to Psynister

Petal Takes Over!, from Petal to Littlebark

Holiday Extravaganza, from Brajana to Anea

...The Impatient, from Gnomeageddon to TyphoonAndrew

A Visit In Fiction, from TyphoonAndrew to Ambermist

WoW In An Hour: Protection Paladin, from Gameldar to Rhidach

A Secret Santa Gift, from Saresa to Phoenix

Kringle This! An Abducted Blog Post

Howdy folks, Kris Kringle is here at Ankh = Life to drop off a few holiday goodies. I would have been here a lot sooner, but all of the treats people have been leaving me kept me bogged down in other parts of the world. And you see, I'm a dwarf so I can't be a mage and none of my elves can either. So teleport's out of the question and I spent all of my gold on lots of vanity pets to keep my shops full of the workers I need to make all of these gifts.

First Gift: Shaman Macros
What kind of Enhancement Shaman doesn't have macros backing them up, eh? Nim asked for Shaman macros for Winter's Veil, and so Shaman macros he shall receive. In looking at the macros decide for yourself how rich their quality is and see if you can guess whether Nim's been naughty or nice. (Minds out of the gutter, ladies. Actually, Nim might like your minds in the gutters, so do as you please.)

General Macros

#showtooltip
/use [modifier:alt] Rockbiter Weapon; [modifier:ctrl] Flametongue Weapon; [modifier:shift] Frostbrand Weapon; Windfury Weapon

Here we have one of the first macros you'll use for a Shaman, the infamous Weapon Enchanting Macro™! This macro will allow you to cast any of your weapon enchants with a single macro. The default is Windfury Weapon there at the end which requires no modifier button. Feel free to move them around as you see fit, or as you level if you don't have some of these yet.

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=8 Windfury Weapon, Flametongue Weapon;
/castsequence reset=8 16, 17;

If you already know you want a certain setup for your weapon enchants all the time, then you can go ahead and put them in here. Use it once and it will cast Windfury on your main hand, use it again and you'll get Flametongue on your off hand. The reset=8 part is just there to reset if needed, you can take it out if you know you're always going to just caste the two spells back to back.

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:alt] Water Shield; Lightning Shield

Here is your shield management macro. By default it will cast LS, but holding Alt key will bring up WS instead. You can switch them around if your default preference is reversed. I default to WS when soloing and LS otherwise.

#showtooltip Ghost Wolf
/cast FlyingMountFullName
/cast GroundMountFullName
/cast Ghost Wolf

This is your mounting macro. There are a lot of ways to make these things to customize it for various situations, but I find them unnecessary. You need to replace FlyingMountFullName and GroundMountFullName with the full name of those respective mounts that you have in order for it to work. When you use this the first thing it's going to try to do is summon your flying mount. If it's allowed then it will do so and the rest of the macro will not happen thanks to the GCD, if it's not then it will move to the next line and try to summon your ground mount in a similar fashion, and then the same for Ghost Wolf.

If you're in combat then you can't summon your mounts, so that's the only time that GW should come into play, the rest of the time it will cast the appropriate mount for the area.

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Stormstrike

Pretty well every Enhancement Shaman is going to start off their rotation with Stormstrike, this macro simply makes it so that you always at least start auto-attacking the target just in case you activate the macro a bit early and aren't in range for SS. I use macros of this style for just about every offensive spell that my characters cast just for the auto-attack feature. It's also good to point out that the /startattack will auto-target the nearest hostile mob in front of you if you do not already have a hostile target selected.

#showtooltip Shamanistic Rage
/use 13, 14
/cast Shamanistic Rage

And here we have the Cooldown Poppers™ macro. This is where you stick whatever spells and items you want to pop when a boss fight comes around. /use 13, 14 will activate both of your trickets for you and since they don't trigger the GCD you will also cast Shamanistic Rage at the same time. You can add in any other spells or abilities that don't trigger the GCD if you'd like as well, especially your racial abilities, by inserting a /cast line for them above the /cast SR line.

#showtooltip Shamanistic Rage
/use 13, 14
/cast Warstomp
/cast Shamanistic Rage

Here is an example of the same macro we just had with the Tauren racial ability added in. You can replace Warstomp with your own racial ability: Blood Fury (Orc), Berserk (Troll), or Gift of the Naaru (Draenei).

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=21/combat Magma Totem, Fire Nova, Fire Nova, Fire Nova
/cast [modifier:alt] Magma Totem

This is your down and dirty Fire Totem/Nova macro. The first time you cast it you'll drop a Magma Totem, and the next three times will be a Fire Nova. You can also hold Alt when you use the Macro and it will drop a new Magma Totem in case you need to reposition it. If you enter or leave combat, or if you wait 21 seconds after casting the spell then it will reset the castsequence back to MT so that you don't end up trying to cast FN without a fire totem.

The reset counter is set to 21 because that's the cooldown of MT, but it can be changed to suite any fire totem you wish to cast.

#showtooltip
/startattack
/castsequence reset=18 Flame Shock, Earth Shock, Earth Shock

Here's a shocking macro for you (see what I did there?). The first cast hits the enemy with Flame Shock, and then follows it up with Earth Shocks. After 12 seconds, the duration of the DoT from FS, it will reset itself bac to FS. Modify as needed.

Second Gift: Shaman Blogs!
It's a simple fact, Shaman blogs are hard to find and the majority of the ones you do manage to find are dropped pretty soon after they get started. Since I first started blogging I've gone through about a dozen Shaman blogs that were reliable for some period of time, but I'm now down to three. Or rather, four now that I have A=L.

You want some good Shaman blogs? Well here you go then:
Flame Shock
Shaman On Ramen
Troll Bouquet

Those are the best three resources I've found for Shaman related information.

Nimala, Such a Beautiful Name


Nim is a DUDE, dude!.

Nim =
Nim =
Nim =
Not Nim -
Not Nim -
Not Nim -

Got that people? No more getting that mixed up, alright? Just call him Nim so he doesn't "..feel like I should be wearing lipstick when people refer to me." Nim doesn't want to feel like that second batch of guys up there.

If Nim was a Hordie, then this would be him:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETAnH7LawXM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1]

Ok "Kris" Who the Crap Are You, Really?
Alright, fine. I admit it. I'm not the real Kris Kringle, I'm just an average guy with a cheap false beard. My name is @Psynister, writer of Psynister's Notebook and Fiery Weapons, and I'm a fellow member of Blog Azeroth.

This year we all opened up our blogs to one another and pulled a special Secret Santa of sorts where we get to guest post on other people's blogs. Nim here was (un)lucky enough have me pull his name out of the hat. Email issues kept me from knowing who I was going to be blogging for until just yesterday, so I'm over a week late in getting this post out there, and that's why Nim's been a bit quiet lately - because he's been waiting on me.

But here you go, and hopefully it gives Nim a nice boost into next year's blogging.



Note from Nim: If I were as sexy as George Clooney, I assure you I would not be writing blogs. I'd be too busy with the ladies.

Thanks for the guest post, Psynister!

Mid-Holiday Guest Post

Well hello there! It's been some time since I last made a post. Holidays can be like that. Unfortunately, today is not a true post. It is more a shameless plug at my prose prowess (or lack thereof). See, there's this thing on the Blog Azeroth forums that a number of bloggers have decided would be fun: a Kris Kringle guest post. The all-knowing names-in-a-hat told me that I would be making a guest post for Jaedia over at The Lazy Sniper.

It's a Hunter blog.

I know nothing about Hunters.

So I thought to myself, "Self, you know nothing about Hunters. What in the world are you going to do?" After some deliberation, I came to a conclusion. I told myself, "Self, you are going to create a story about Fae, Jaedia's Hunter toon!"

It's not very long; in fact, it's quite short. I wanted to put myself in Fae's shoes (boots? greaves?) for just a moment in time and catch as much detail as I could while I was there. I feel I could have added some more in certain places, but I am not disappointed with the end result.

If you're interested in reading the post, you can find it here: A Story About Fae.

Expect Kris Kringle to make an appearance on my own blog soon. Until then, have a happy Winter Veil and a spectacular New Year!

The Gift That Keeps On Giving - Why?

Syrana over at Sideshow & Syrana made a post recently: The Gift That Keeps On Giving. If you let her know that you'd like to play along in the post comments, she will ask you a question for you to answer in the form of a blog post. Unable to pass up the chance at a shameless plug for AeL, I decided to play along. This is what she asked me:

@Nim – Yay! I’m glad you want to play too. Ok, let’s see… looks like Ankh = Life is pretty new. So, I’d love to read about why you chose a shaman, your name, and restoration!

I'm glad this is the question she asked. It strikes me as the sort of thing I should have covered in my first post.

This story goes back about two years ago when I was in a webcomic guild that went sour. disputes were had, friends were made enemies, and I was caught in the fray of it all trying to stop the arguing and animosity. Eventually two members split off and transferred to another server. I still wanted to play with those two people, as they were still my friends. So I took a small hiatus from my main toon to create Jhayna on the new server.

She was a Shaman. I was always intrigued by Shamans, and thought they'd be fun to play, so this was a good time to see if I was correct. I went Enhancement, and loved it. I didn't make it to max level on her (70 at the time), though, before going back to my main server to continue to play my toons there. I ended up forgetting about Jhayna altogether. A year later I took a hiatus from WoW altogether due to relationship issues, guild drama, and another hit of relationship issues (It's complicated).

While I wasn't playing WoW, I ended up with a new job. New job means new people to talk to. This group of people happened to play WoW. Wrath was out by then, and they talked about it . Far too much for me to not miss playing. So I re-activated my account, got their server name, and made a new character. I didn't want to transfer my Druid or Paladin (my two BC 70's) as I decided to retire them after my old guild broke up (final respects, of sorts, for the favorite guild I'd ever been in). I knew I enjoyed a shaman from playing Jhayna, and I didn't want to spend two hours deliberating what class I wanted to play. That time had to be reserved to an acceptable name.

It always takes me forever to think of a name. For anything. Ever. It usually starts with me hitting a random letter on my keyboard. I then go through about a bajillion names in my head for what I could name my character, none of which look or sound quite right for the toon. So I delete random letter number one, and pop in random letter number two. Repeat. What I was looking for was something that I thought looked and sounded like it could be the name of a draenei, as well as the name for someone who is connected with the elements. Eventually, I stumbled upon Nimala. At the time my reaction to it was "Eh, it's not AS bad as the other names...I guess it'll work". But it grew on me, and now i really can't imagine her being named anything else. The only problem was people calling me (what I consider) a female name when I am, indeed, a dude. So I shortened Nimala to Nim, which isn't as gender-specific. In game and on vent, people know that Nim is Nimala, and I don't feel like I should be wearing lipstick when people refer to me.

I initially started out, once again, as enhancement. I enjoyed it, and it was familiar. When it came time to dual-spec, I dualled into elemental. I was very averted to the concept of healing. I figured the option of melee or ranged DPS would be a good idea for raiding, too. I was not in a raiding guild at the time, though, so I pugged a lot. And I got sick of having to wait 30-45 minutes to get into a group. So I switched from Enhancement to Resto. And life got a little bit better. I was having little trouble finding groups for Heroics and, even better, I found out I enjoyed healing as a Shaman. It was more interactive than a BC Paladin's Flash of Light spam. So I decided to stick with it, and it has worked so far very much in my favor. It's something I'm still learning about, and it gave me a reason to create a blog and start writing again.

And that is the story of how Nimala, Restoration Shaman, was born.