Jan-chan’s Tidbits

I kind of avoid writing about gaming here since I know some of you don’t play World of Warcraft so it’d be a boring read. But I decided to write about my experience playing in arena because althought it is fun, it makes me want to pull my hair out 90% of the time (usually when I’m using druid). Thus I need a place to vent and this seems to be the perfect spot.

Over the past months (end of Season 1 and all of season 2, so a total of say 4+ months) I’ve been doing arena (player vs player) on my warlock. At first it sucked because I’m very bad at pvp. My brain tends to freeze up and I get nervous breakdowns. Brain should know because he was the first person to arena with me. Remember I’d tell you that my hands are shaking because I’m so nervous/stressed out? Now, after a lot of help talking to Daita (another warlock in my 5v5) I have improved quite a bit and is actually more confident in all arena brackets.

Now the problem, is my druid. So near the end of Season 2, my druid finally hit 70 and I tried to do arena with her a few times as resto. It didn’t go very well, simply because I got outgeared at the 1800 rating (I joined someone’s team to try and get points). Even thought I can run away most of the time, if they catch up to me and chop me a couple of times I’m pretty much a dead cow. It also doesn’t help that I’m a key clicker but clicking is something I’m used to and can’t get rid of.

With the start of Season 3, I thought I’d give druid another try. So I did some 2v2 and 3v3 this week. It was horrible. I’m not saying we did bad, the ratio is about 50% win:lose at the moment but what I find is that I’m so unfamiliar with druid healing in arena that my mind goes blank. I’ve looked up and read alot of posts and articles on how to heal and what to do but it doesn’t help when you’re in the battle field. Just like old times, my brain freezes and my shaky hands are back, making it even harder to play. There’re just so much more options for druid: I can cc with cyclone/root, or heal, or charge/stun, all that while trying to keep my team healed as well as trying to not get feared, mana drained or chopped/shot at. I seem to ask myself “OMG what should I do?!” alot. Al’s always saying I just need more practice (aka lose about 300 games), and I believe I’m a pretty quick learner at most things. But this whole druid healing in arena thing is posing to be a bigger challenge than trying to find the right strategy for killing Hexxer and Zul’jin in Zul’Amen. Maybe I should just stick to PVE but I know a part of me want to overcome my “pvp-challenged” side.

Brian you need to come back and…like…share part of my pain with me! I’ll mail you more mango gummies as compensation. Oh and you should ask Mike, I still haven’t been able to defeat him in duels >_< but at least I last much longer now.

Last weekend I was trapped inside my house for two days. When I woke up on Saturday it was snowing lightly but by the afternoon it had picked up. I can see large snowflakes and everything was blanketed by the snow. It felt like Christmas!

The snow got worst on Sunday and it kept snowing until around 5-6 pm before it started raining heavily. We quickly shoveled the snow from the drive way and the sidewalk before it gets too heavy (with the rain + snow). I hate shoveling snow because I get frost bites easily.

Going to work on Monday was a pain. First the snow is like all slushy now from the rain. For the places where people didn’t shovel, the snow is all packed and icy. I walked mostly on the grass for those area. I got to the skytrain station 5 mins later than usual and when I got up to the platform it was loaded by people waiting to get on. It was kinda scary. I didn’t get on the train until 15 mins later and it was only because I got fed up and push my way in…with some help from the lady behind me.

Surprisingly, there were no line ups at the bus station so the bus ride was actually pretty nice. I hate going to work when the weather is icky. The train and bus smells so bad. I was pointing my nose in the air most of the time in the train because I don’t want to sniff someone’s soaked jacket.

Maybe Mike’s idea about the SARS mask would work. I really should try it out one day.

Brian: How’d you add “law” in front of suit?! [lol] That’s so funny. And…get MSN!!! We must continue our food game!