Oh, right... I can sheep things!

I was reading Christian Belt's fantastic post on sheeping over at WoW Insider and thinking about my experiences with one of the most mage-y spells in our arsenal (one that exemplifies, nay, defines our mageness) and realized something: I never learned to sheep.

I guess that makes me a fail mage, but I grew up in WotLK, with self proclaimed "uber-tanks" and "pro-healz", where any group of 3 or more mobs got snowed in by a blizzard more massive than the one that just hit NYC (my girlfriend's flight got delayed A WEEK...  Looks like New Years alone /cry).  Polymorph was relegated to random BGs when the match was a foregone conclusion and I was being ganked by hordes of hunters (pun intended).

There has been a lot of talk about the new heroics and the necessity for CC to be successful.  I have yet to see any of it, since I have put all of my efforts towards my goblin mage, leveling up with an RL friend, but it seems like polymorph has reclaimed its rightful place in our repetoir like Simba returning to the pridelands.

So I dusted off my 9 key, turned off recount for a while and jumped into LFD with a weird craving for mutton.  I have to say, Christian is right that no one knows what to do when suddenly a sheep is wandering aimlessly around the dungeon floor.  Everything that he mentions in his post happened to me at some point last night - hunters with tab-happy autoshot, warlocks spreading around dots like lice in a kindergarden classroom (seriously, warlocks are dirty) and overzealous tanks, eager to milk every last drop of the healer's mana.

The best experience of the night however came in Scarlett Monastery where I sheeped a caster during one of the first pulls, the group downs the rest of the pack and moves swiftly onto the next.  I stand back with the healer and mention that there is still a sheep, then continue to blow up everything in front of the tank.  Either the tank doesn't know what I mean when I say "sheep back here still" or just doesn't care, because he continues to pull with a reckless abandon.  By the time the polymorph wears off we are out of range of the caster and as we all know first hand, anyone coming out of a polymorph is pretty PO'ed and comes right after the offending mage.

By this time, I have mentioned three times that there still is a mob that needs killing, but the tank doesn't care, so I continue to chain polymorph this mob THROUGH THE ENTIRE INSTANCE.  We down the last boss, get our bags of lootz and the tank immediately drops group.  The friendly troll druid next to me shifts to bear form and just says "I guess we can kill the sheep now?"  Easy kill with 4 us and one trash mob, but that's not the point.  I had way more fun than I should have continually sheeping this poor caster (I'm sure I cackled maniacally at least twice) and am pretty sure my sheeping skills are much more potent than they were before.

Continuing on my line of thought from my last post: it sure is fun being a mage.

Next up, my other fail mage dirty habit : Learning to counterspell.

Oh, and Ozrael is now 38 and cooking up tasty Mana Cookies like a pro.  Not quite as good as the batch of cookies my mom made for christmas, but tasty nonetheless.

Shalom!

So Cataclysm dropped... did you notice?

I have been a frequenter of the magical world of Azeroth for over a year now and I've got to say, I've seen some things.  I won't pretend to be an expert, I wouldn't even go so far as to say I am a GREAT player.  But I've traveled my share of the kingdom and killed my share of Merlocs (why always with the yelling and the biting?).  I like to think I know something about the game and have recently thought about how much I have learned from some of the other fantastic bloggers out there like Larissa at the Pink Pigtail Inn or Gnomeaggedon over at Armaggedon's Coming.  So, with way less regard to my psychologic well being than I should probably have, I have decided to begin a project of my own as a way of... well, giving back (how un-goblin of me).  Oh - Also I'm a fire mage.

Can we just take a minute and admit to ourselves how friggin' awesome new mages are?  My first toon was a mage.  Bright-eyed and giddy, my friend and I stumbled out of Northshire Abby, killing wolves and trying desperately to steal Gerald's candle.  Fast forward to the 1500th PuG of Oculus, decked out in our tier-10 purples and the luster had all but faded.  Sure it was fun to blink through Pit of Sauron, blasting Tyrannus with purple balls of..... magic?  But the rotation was boring, the dungeons worn out like a NASCAR Goodyear, and my hero's journey felt, to put it bluntly, over.

Enter stage right:

Cataclysm, a handful of RL friends who havn't played since early WotLK and my fresh, inexperienced, unlikely hero - Ozrael the Goblin Fire Mage.

My jewish friends started a guild of all goblins that has already progressed farther than any of us thought it would.  I myself am not jewish, but we have fun... and who doesn't love logging in to a chorus of "Shalom"s every day?

The world is new again!  Literally.  My first toon was a human frost mage who reluctantly changed his major to south campus and joined the School of Arcane.  He tried to play with fire a few times, but it proved to hot and he retreated to cooler climates.  Ozrael hit 10, picked up a Pyroblast the size of his entire person and said "Daddy, can I keep it!?!  Pleeeeasssse!?!"

He's just hitting his teenage years (got a liscense to drive a motorized bike already... they grow up so fast!) and feeling strangely nostalgic running through stockades and Razorfen Kraul.  Something about being on a new server, no heirlooms, playing a new race, new spec and with new friends has made the whole experience as enjoyable as the first time.

I decided to share some of my memories this time around.  I don't know if this will be a regular thing or just whenever I feel the urge to share, but if Larissa is a friendly barkeep serving beer by the fire in her cozy inn, I'm the steel drummer on Venice Beach - I'm here, I'm making some noise, and hopefully you enjoy it!

Shalom!
-Ozrael