An overload of awesome.

Feeling really, really bored? Head over to deviantART and look at all the stuff that comes up under either Resto Druid or Tree Druid. Some of it is ADORABLE and there's a ton of talent there. I've spent many, many moments ooohing and awwing over all of 'em. My most favorite one yet?

Pakwa by Embley

So freakin' CUTE. And terribly accurate of the same facial expression/mind set I get in RL when I'm faced with a flurry of heavy raid AOE damage that I need to take care of. :>

Others that I can't help but post:

Amarant the Resto Drood by Peridott



Tree of Life Form by UnidColor



WARCRAFT: Resto Druid by Copeia

So much win and only the tip of the iceberg. Now flee over to deviantART, flee!

- Sound/Doom Tree

Finding a focus.

Much like we need them in real life, blogs also need a focus to help get by. Phae once said,

"As enthusiastic as you might be to start writing immediately, it’s helpful if you can first refine what you want your blog to accomplish. There are limitless options to the type of blog you can create."

With focus a blog can grow immeasurably, find it’s niche and allow the author to really fine tune and perfect what they’re going for. I read a LOT of blogs, see a lot of blogs and I enjoy doing it. Though I must admit.. a random jumbling of posts thrown together with no real symmetry not only lacks the ability to captivate me, it also can be messy. (Though I am a sucker for hope, so they get added to my reader anyways, /blush). I generally read blogs because I’m interested in Restoration Druids (I’m obsessed, tbh) but in return I need to easily be able to find what these bloggers have to offer back to me as their audience.

Bringing this back to my own blog, I intend to write about Resto Druids. This you all know. It’s a start of something.. but due to the dozens of different aspects one could take on with them in regards to the game, it’s also quite board. And my easily distracted, likes to wander brain of mine might need it a bit more condensed in order to enjoy it.

This leaves me asking where I’d like to take all of this. What topics would I like to mostly cover? How do I want to express myself in regards to this game and class that I love so much?

The name of this blog, “Doom Tree || Musings and Misadventures” and it’s subtext, “The art of leafy disasters!” says a lot. But do they say enough? Is my romance with doom and death enough to get by on?

I ask myself these questions because as much as I may read other blogs and think about my own, I just don’t know.

And thus the brain storming for further focus commences...

- PvP as a Tree? *ponders* I occasionally PvP yes, though my definition of Tree PvP is desperately HoTing those nearest and fleeing chaotically as if my branches were ablaze. More often than not I’m too busy freaking out and not properly CC’ing. :X Next option!

- The Tree/PvE guru? Well, I know my class and (I’d like to think!) what to do with it, but with the amazing Lissanna, Bellwether and Keeva around they already have this covered. And covered fantastically if I might add!

- Guild Leadership as a Tree? Hmm. Not so much. I’m only (thankfully) a Vaultkeeper with Bloodbound. I let the real officers do the important stuff while I happily get to sort and perfect the guild bank’s contents to my enjoyment’s end. Organizing makes me swoon. :> (There goes that OCD thing again.)

- Roleplay as a Tree? Ahahah. It only makes it funnier that I play on an RP server and originally started off in an RP guild. :) *imagines herself rambling on about her oaken branches swaying in the wind*

- Or do I stick with my guns and let my focus be my stories of barky mayham? Is it okay to devote blog posts to past retellings of epic adventures gone affray by this ol’ crazed tree? Is my uncanny ability to magnify any sort of doom to Sound’s presence enough of a drive to call it good if I enjoy it?

Questions.. questions. In the end I think Lorell at Wordpress may have answered them for me best with a quote from this post,

"I believe that with time, we will automatically start leaning towards our favorite content naturally. You can’t help it. That’s what holds your interest, and keeps you coming back for more. Your blog will unconsciously show you where your passion lies, if you open yourself up to the possibility and are willing to look."

Definitely food for thought. And hey, if all else fails Blog Azeroth will always be around with a shared topic to tackle. ;)

Until next time!

-Sound/Doom Tree

Six months of Doom, six months of Sound.

In the past six months Sound has..

* Obtained her Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings, eee! Bubbles for all!

This is a moment that I don't think I'll ever, ever forget.

* Healed the ever living hell out of anything she touched. (and the six months prior, and prior, and prior..)

* Collected an entire PVP set for when I, uhm, PVP every other week or so due to extreme boredom? >.> But 919 resilience, /flex! Now if only I could successfully hunt down a RestoPVP blog..

* Perfected her Doomkin gear and placed top in DPS in her 10man, hah! :>

* Downed encounters, fully cleared raids, had a smashing time progression wise in her 25man. Same ol' story, different Druid. :p

* Successfully became one shotted, splattered to the ground and generally dead (on my own accidental accord!) in a variety of amusing, story worthy, "HOW THE HELL" positions under varying degrees of expertise and skill. If I am awesome at anything in WoW.. it is this. Understand my connotations to being a Doom Tree now? :)

I didn't mean it, big scary boss! NOOO!

* Planned out and implemented a, "Halp! I need more haste after the patch! Collect this 'ish!" list for her raiding endeavors. If you haven't checked out this excellent post by Sylly at Rolling Hots, go!

* Dragged her fantastic guild, Bloodbound, along to SWP and gave little ol' Kil'jaeden some ass kickin'. Yay for obtaining Outland Raider!

* Meticulously cleaned, organized and sorted both her bank, bags and the guild bank until her eyes bled. (owait, I do this daily, OCD go?)

* Snagged the very last pet needed to finally get my little Fawn's Salt Lick! I adore her times ten.. but when is WoW going to let me have out two pets at a time so she may frolic next to my Teldrassil Sproutling?!

* Unfortunately didn't finish off "What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been.." but did come quite close! I should be able to snag it when the Lunar Festival comes around again next February.

* And last but CERTAINLY not least.. Added Reins of the Raven Lord to her delicious Druid repertoire. It's been awhile now and I still grin like a fool when I mount! :>

Squawk, Sound and their mounts! <3

I know no one reads this.. at least not yet!.. so my asking of this may be a bit early. But what was the most memorable moment for your guy's Trees over the past six months?

-Sound/Doom Tree

Behind the scenes.

I’ve been working on small tweaks and changes to my blog to help make it more reader friendly and informative. I'd really like to make something of this area and with hope, these changes will jump start it a little. :) I even added shinny Blizzard tooltips, yay! This is undoubtedly a learning experience and Blog Azeroth has been immensely helpful. If you’re new to the blogging scene and haven’t checked it out yet, GO. I can’t stress that enough.

Next up:

• Find a better layout. One with a tree. Figure out how the heck to install said layout on my own.
• Try to not completely break this blog in the above process. (I give it twenty seconds.)
• Tinker around with Windows Live Writer. It seems promising.. But doesn’t seem to do anything that Blogger.com can’t do for me just as easily.
• Praise Phaelia’s wondrous So You Think You Can Blog … You’re Right! every night before I go to sleep. :>
• In the words of Phae, write write write! (This should really be the first step.)
  
• And when I feel I’ve reached a happy place with this blog’s appearance and postings, start spreading the word? Though slowly for awhile.. as the whole process of introducing it on Blog Azeroth is completely overwhelming for this shy one at the time being. *hides blushing cheeks, paws at the dirt with the toe of her boot*

All blogs have to start somewhere, right? Welcome to where mine begins. :)

-Sound/Doom Tree

Addicted to blogs.. yet not my own! :)

My Google reader subscription list (which I am proud to say focuses 98% on delicious Tree blogs!) has reached thirty strong.. now if only I could stop reading other's posts and focus on my own! :X

I both adored and enjoyed writing my first two posts I made here however.. so there has to be SOMETHING to this, right? *ponders thoughtfully*

-Sound/Doom Tree.. not to be confused with the new and upcoming Hermia @ Tree of Doom. :)

How Doom Tree was born.

Sound was the first character I ever created in WoW. Back in December of 2005 the game was given to me as an early Christmas present from a friend. At the time I was completely new to the genre of MMOs and frankly oblivious in their regard.. but hey, I was also bored out of my brains and always had a ton of time on my hands. Why not?

Growing up I was inclined to favour the more nature side of things; rolling a Druid made sense to me. Admittedly I was a bit aghast with the fact I would essentially going to be playing a cow.. Though I got over it quickly. Levelling went extremely, extremely slowly for me. I didn't understand what intellect, agility or spirit meant at the time and I kept finding cloth caster gear that I would put on for the sake of just having something.

Sometime around here is when decided that I would like to heal with Sound.. but knew I couldn't very well Rejuvenate things to death, thus I had a conundrum. Pretty soon I found myself in the Barrens wearing all spirit and int gear and trying to level with it in /bear form/. Wrath? Moonfire? Huh? Needless to say I spent more time running away from mobs then I did killing them back in those days. Without realizing it herbalism became more of a priority over levelling because it was about ten thousand times less difficult for me. :> Six months after I installed I finally hit level 40 and got my mount!

My very first mount and screenshot! I had just learned how to take them by this point. :>

Slowly yet surely Sound finally hit level 60. A few hours afterwards she was invited to her first Molten Core run! The next year ahead I was deeply immersed into MC and Zul'Gurub whenever I was invited by my guild at the time.. and every other five man I could get my hands on. I started making a lot of friends in game around then and gratefully gathered my full Feralheart Raiment, Cenarion Raiment and Zandalar Haruspex's set.

The concept of raiding 2-3 nights a week for a few hours at a time was still a bit strange to me at that time.. though I was starting to get the hang of it. (And am now the opposite, funny how things work.) A few months before BC came out I started to venture into AQ20 and was able to gather enough idols and whatnot to collect my Symbols of Unending Life regalia. I adored my sets of gear and relished so much affection upon every single slot I had to fill. This is also where I tell you the bank god's curse me on a continual basis-- as I've kept ALL of the mentioned sets above and below to this very day.

A funny graphical mishap I was able to capture in Sound's MC gear. She looks miserable, eh?

When BC came out I-- 1) Levelled properly to 70! and 2) Started raiding in a serious way. I enjoyed the hell out of Tree form and loved healing more than I could possibly express. My addiction to WoW had kicked in fully here I believe. After spending awhile in both Karazhan, Gruul and Mags I was able to hook up with a raiding coalition that wanted to venture into SSC. Stepping up to the “big times” was pretty scary for me at first. Healing assignments? Battle rez duty? Being constantly flasked? Eeep!

With time I was able to comfortably fit in and truly let my leaves show. Forty mans never gave me a true feeling of raid healing and being depended on; 25mans did. I loved being a Tree, Lifebloom was my best friend and I /loved/ owning the meters. Soon enough Vashj was down for us and we moved onto TK. A few months later we stood before Kael.. You were a PAIN to learn, Kael! Though just as equally rewarding.

Mount Hyjal and it's forever waves of doom was upon us next. I seem to remember this period going by quickly, though working on Archie was an experience I will NEVER forget. The rush from beating Kael was big, but the one I got after finally downing Archie was HUGE. Unfortunately I think my hands were shaking too much to catch our first kill shot. I'm not sure if one fight can teach you how to be a raider, but Archie taught me an immeasurably amount in the game. The most important being patience.

Our coalition then decided to try it's hand's at Black Temple. We were nowhere near server firsts upon entering it's doors but that didn't make it any less epic to us. We bled, we cried and we laughed in that monster of a dungeon. Soon enough we were waving hello to Ilidian and getting our Hand of A'dal titles! I obtained my Crystal Spire of Karabor off our very first kill and was absolutely stoked. Yes, that I still have too. :>

After Illidan came the unspeakably awful Sunwell Plateau. It hurt. Oh god, it hurt. Call me a crybaby, but SW reduced me to a ninny! We got all the way up to working on the Twins before Wrath came out and we were able to flee from the misery. If Sunwell taught me anything, it was this: How to AOE heal your heart out. Holy. Freakin'. Crap. Though Sound looked awesome when it was all said and done!

Wrath has been an enjoyable success for me thus far. Levelling up was quick and I enjoyed the constant heroic rush once we all hit 80. Naxx was Naxx-- a little too easy and too akin to being burnt out on, but we held tight with Sarth and Maly to pull us through. Sometime during BC everyone in our raid coalition kind of all conglomerated into the raid leader's guild, Blood Bound. We've become a pretty tight knit crew and one of our biggest successes thus far was achieving Sarth3D after months of hard work. That fight I /don't/ miss! :>

These days you can find us in Ulduar25. Monday and Wednesday we put in four hours of work a night and we've done well so far for not being a “true” raiding guild. We'll be working on Yogg-Saron later this evening actually, wish us luck! As for Sound? You can still find me as a tree, of course! She's come a very long way since the days of leveling in bear form with her intellect and spirit gear... thank goodness!

Most Current.. Sound and her 'lil Tree. <3

I don't think I'll ever regret choosing a Druid nearly four years ago. This class gives me an immense amount of joy.. be it healing my leafy heart out, causing mayhem and destruction in my Boomkin dualspec or just flying about in Epic Flight form gathering herbs and exploring the scenery, Sound is where my heart is when it comes to World of Warcraft. With a little work and effort, hopefully I will soon be able to convey that truly through there and to all of the other Druids of Azeroth. :)

*takes a deep breath*

Hello there!

Making this blog has been an incredibly long time coming. I will admit that I am a bit nervous about it, eep!

First and foremost, I am Sound. Also known as Doom Tree (for reasons I promise to soon explain). My intentions in a nutshell: I am here with hopes of creating a Restoration Druid blog based off of the class mechanics, antics and shenanigans that the wondrous World of Warcraft has given me.

Over the past year I've seem to of done everything /but/ post in a blog of my own. Be it creating various setups via Blogger and dabbling a bit with Wordpress (was a bit too confusing for this one ), plotting and conspiring user names/titles, poking at search engines meticulously for some of the fantastic Blogger Templates out there or just wistfully reading the dozens of Tree blogs I have added to Google Reader, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. There was an apprehension I didn't quite understand and as a result, nothing ever came to life out of these well thought and articulated attempts.

As a result I was, unfortunately, all but settled on the fact that a blog like this would never happen. Being a person who suffers from social anxiety disorder out in the real world, I soon chalked it all up to something that SAD wasn't going to comfortably allow me to do. Instead I continually poured time and energy lovingly into Sound, my prerogative to always make her the best she could possibly be. And then (not to be too dramatic) everything changed. *queue drumrolls* ^.^

One late, late night I was sitting in front of my computer. Through a chance of misclicks and sleepy browsings, I came across Syd's Guide to Blogging Part 2: Getting Started and something really stuck out at me--

"Most cases of writer’s block are not caused by a lack of material or a lack of interest on the part of the writer. They are the result of fear and anxiety.. Recognize that first drafts are always bad."

Be it my inabilities to think straight at such an hour or my utter desire to just SLEEP that messed with my reasoning, something I had been denying myself for so long suddenly made /perfect/ sense. That first attempts at a blog DO have a high chance at being mediocre best. Not everyone knows perfect HTML from the get go, writing is a process of learning and the ability of truly catching a reader's interests is tough business. I won't always succeed.. but I'm sure as hell never going to know unless I try, right?

And you know what? All of the above is OKAY. A simple, universal word that can blanket so much and mean even more. If this blog teaches me anything, please let it be this. Regardless of what happens and the mistakes I may make along this blog's path, it's


I won't always bat a home run.. but even if I go out in a blazing bout of foul balls, at least I know I will of tried.

And what am I guilty of most of all? How much I adore, cherish and admire the hell out of my Druid. She deserves this just as much as I do.. so here friggin' goes it. :)

*moves her mouse cursor over the orange, shiny "publish post" box and finally, finally clicks it*