Cheater That I Am

So I've been cheating on Mirax. I've been cheating on the Alliance and my guild. I've been leveling a Horde Shaman, Zorkelle. I rolled a Horde because my friend Ryland plays on Horde side and since he leveled his Alliance DK to run with my Alliance toons I figured I'd level a Horde to run with his Paladin. I've been having fun with it. I've also been leveling my Warlock, Scerra, and I have to say it's really odd not playing a hybrid class. Especially when I get stuck in groups with fail healers and as a lock am doing the most healing =/

Zorkelle

 

Scerra

Making It Official

Prior to raiding on my alt tonight I made the comment in vent to our two raid leads that I was going to be rolling as Holy on Mirax for the current raid content. Starathir said he was probably going to need me to go heals for Firelands tomorrow (well now it would be today, but I have yet to go to bed) due to the melee dps that had been coming to our raid in the last two weeks. Given that my dps pales in comparison to other melee dps and I can keep up with healers I think I'm just going to suck it up and go Holy for now until 4.3 when Blizz is slated to screw up Holy. Besides, I've gotten more Holy drop in FL than Ret drops. It makes me sad, but I've officially become a Healadin.

Mirax in Ret Gear

Guild Officer Blues

I got some disturbing news tonight. After talking to the GM of our guild, one of our officers found out that our uninvolved GM has no intention whatsoever of relenquishing control of the guild. The GM doesn't talk to guild chat, doesn't interact with members and NEVER talks to the officers to let us now what's going on or to keep up to date with guild happenings. It makes me want to take all of my alts out of guild. I know that's rash and drastic, but it's my gut reaction. Hell, even before all of this, when the GM logged on my gut instinct was to log off. I'm not going to do anything just yet pending a guild meeting I heard the other officers want to call.

But this whole situation really has me on edge. I've been one of the few people fighting to keep this guild together. All of the new recruits think I'm the GM and keep asking me for things I can't give them or do for them because I'm not the GM. The other officers and I have been frustrated with the lack of involvement by our GM. Granted the GM has been through some rough times in real life recently and I can understand needing tie to deal with things. But if you're having that rough of a time why are you clinging to control of a guild you are not involved in and not even asking your officers for help? We all voted you in because we had confidence in you but this behavior is undoing that confidence. I don't want to see everything fall apart, but right now it feels like the guild is on the verge of that. I know that I'm on the verge of falling apart as a result.

When to Give Up

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with trying to rebuild my guild. I want to go back to being a casual player who raids, but I can't. I guess it's a sense of duty to the guild my friends founded but aren't really active in anymore.

Priests and Paladin Related Problems

Ayella

I have been making huge strides in gearing up my new priest, Ayella. I'm not giving up on Mirax or Rhysati for her, but given how much a badass I feel like when I'm running around on Elscol rolling a level 85 priest and mashing shit up on her made sense. Now that Ayella is 85 and running Zandalari heroics, she's better geared than my druid, Ineri. This kind of makes me sad, but it makes sense given my current love affair with Disc priests and my frustrations with my ability to play my druid in any spec. (I have been working on her Feral/Bear spec and gear and might be able to switch to it as a MS eventually. I just need to pick Sheltem's brain a bit more and get some practice.)

Speaking of frustrations, I've been getting increasingly frustrated with Mirax. I can't get her dps to match her gear level. I had a similar problem with this when I was gearing up for Cataclysm raiding, but once I got her some raid gear her dps shaped up. I'm wondering if the same things is happening now with this next level or raiding tier. All of my stats are correctly prioritized. My gear is all appropriate and the only real upgrades I can get are from Firelands or heroic Tier 11 content. I've been doing research and changing some glyphs around and I just feel stuck. I don't think getting stuck healing half the time has helped. I'm sure that if I had drawn a hard line on dpsing verses healing I'd probably be better at my Ret spec. However, since I get stuck changing my role all the time I feel as though I am not as proficient at either spec as I could be. During Wrath I hardly healed even though I felt competent doing so and I think that helped me be a better Retadin.

A RIFT in WoW

Most of the officers and long term members of my guild are getting increasingly bored, frustrated, tired of WoW gameplay. Yes, Blizzard did an amazing job updating Vanilla content and there's a ton of new stories to experience. But it's all just the same. End game has nothing for us and the immense difference in the cost of abilities verses their effectiveness from Level 84 to 85 is so crazy that most of us don't want to level another toon to 85. So those of us who log into vent nightly but not WoW have been talking about what game(s) we might all play together once we move on from WoW.

To this extent several of us have rolled toons on a few different games. Our PVP officer, Stormrydr, is currently playing Forsaken World. He got me to roll a character on there, but I don't like the character controls. Myself and Mälik rolled characters on RIFT and we got our guild's MT, Sheltem, to try it out. (If we bounce to anything RIFT would be my preference at this point.) Our main raid healer, Starathir, and a newer member, Greatknight, have stated that they're going to Star Wars: The Old Republic when it comes out. Mälik has also expressed interest in Diablo III and I might have to check that one out. Meanwhile Sheltem and Greatknight have been playing Team Fortress 2 to pass the time and I've been mashing it up on Epic Battle Fantasy 3 on Shelt's recommendation.

I would like to see all of us stay together and continue to play together post-WoW as it's the people that I met in WoW who keep me in the game. Thankfully I've been making friends with most of these people and have ways to stay in contact aside from playing WoW. Don't get me wrong, I still like WoW. But it doesn't hold the same fascination for me that it once did.

The Men Behind the Screen

In video games we rarely see what the person on the other side of the screen looks like. Even thought they may be your childhood friend you just reconnected with on Facebook and shared Xbox Live handles, you still don't physically see them when you are playing games together. In MMO games its even worse where you tend to become close with guild members that you otherwise would never know. When talking to these people on Ventrillo, Team Speak, Mumble, etc, it's a lot like listening to the radio and wondering what the DJ actually looks like. Face it, we all get curious as to what our guild members and fellow player look like in real life.

To quell this curiosity my guild established a forum page to link a picture of yourself to. That way any guild member could see who was who without giving away personal information and in a setting where only registered members of the site could log in. after all, it never hurts to be safe on the internet. Last night we finally got one of the longest standing hold outs per say to post his picture up there. Our MT has always been closely guarded with his information which I always found funny as I can find his blog on there where he gives out of rather personal information. (i.e. "Hi my name is _____. I live in _____. I'm a member of this church and I have my Eagle Scout.") The funny thing about this guy is that the gays in our guild were discussing what he actually looked like just 2 nights ago. They determined that he was a skinny, nerdy white guy in glasses. Well, they got the white part but he is anything but nerdy looking and is built like the Scotsman he is. I would say he's downright good looking, escpecially those eyes.

This brings me to my point. Does knowing a person in a video game allow you to truly get a feel of their personality free of an visual judgement? The gay boys in guild have been straight up about this and told me it was a good thing I was a pretty girl or they couldn't continue to be friends with me. As for the MT who finally posted his picture, I think his personality does match his appearance but I liked his personality before I knew what he looked like. The same was said previously when I fell head over heels for the Ele Shaman in guild. I would have dated that man no matter what he looked like. Then I met him in Vegas and what do you know, he's exactly my type and is incredibly cute. So is it really wise of us to want to see what our fellow game players look like? I know I get hit on more by the guys in guild once they see my picture on the forum. Then again, knowing what the men in my guild look like doesn't help any crushes I may form on them in-game. It just tricks the mind into thinking the men on the other side of the screen are not far away an thus unobtainable. Yet, I think I would be curious no matter what. Afterall, we humans are curious, visually stimulated creatures. Why else do we play video games?

New Favorite Alt

When is it time for you to move on from a character to another?

This is a question I have been pondering for awhile now. For the most part is in regard to my druid, Ineri, but these days I almost wonder if I shold start asking the same about my paladin, Mirax. The question about benching Ineri comes fro the fact that I feel as though I suck at playing her. Of the three characters I have leveled to 85 in this expansion she has been by far the hardest to gear and run with. Just transitioning from regular dungeons to heroic dungeons was painstaking and I didn't feel comfortable running those with her until she practically outgeared them. I have talked about her restoration and balance specs with the main resto druid in guild. He helped me with my spec and things have become a bit easier, but I still feel that druid healing and I do not belong together. I do love playing bear, but I am a horrible tank with the exception of one boss fight in Violet Hold. For some reason I can kite the kite boss perfectly in there but cannot tank anything else successfully. thus my inepitude at the druid class makes me wonder if I should stop playing a class I once enjoyed so much.

This brings me to the topic on benching Mirax. She is my first character and the main one that I play. I'm not sure I could ever truely bench her for that reason alone. Lately however, I feel as though I am not able to play her to her full potential. Other retribution paladins kick my ass when it comes to dps. Other melee classes that are less geared than I make me efforts look silly. I have been wrestling with making her a holy paladin as her main spec, and while I do well at healing on her I still feel as though I do not play her to her full potential. This combine with the amount of time I have spent leveling my two discipline priests, Elscol and Ayella, I feel as though I am almost more proficient at playing them than Mirax. I'm constantly getting complimented on my healing skill as a disc priest and the insane things I can heal through. Heck, Elscol pulls the same HPS at level 72 that Ineri pulls at level 85. And with my current drive to get Ayella to 85 I'm not sure what I'm going to do in terms of the character I play most when she gets there and gets geared up. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

In-Game Character Relationships and Quasi-RP

I don't play on an RP server and the notion has always appealed to me. Yet, when I tired rolling a toon on a serious RP server once I failed miserably at it. Like a lot of players I do make up backgrounds and personas for my characters as I find it helps me get to know and understand my characters better and I feel it helps me play them better. If you know the character's M.O., then you understand why you play them the way you do. This quasi-RP as I call it had lead to some interesting things as I've gotten to know Mirax and she helps me understand my own motives.

I've struggled to make a background for her, though thankfully Blizzard did that already as she's a Draenei and crash landing in Azuremyst Isle was one of the most profound experiences I had when I first started playing WoW. The land was breathtakingly gorgeous and the environment was so surreal that I was captivated as soon as I got away form the level 6 striders that kept killing me after I had deleted my hearthstone. That experience of running around Azuremyst and later Bloodmyst Isles shaped who Mirax is and why she does the things she does. There have been few in-game experiences that have affected me like this and most of the subsequent ones all had to do with a single player, Mirax's partner in most crimes: Mälik.

Like Mirax, Mälik crash landed on the Exodar and took in everything that Azeroth had to offer. Since sometime during Wrath, after Ulduar was no longer top raiding tier, Mir and Mal have been stomping it up all over Azeroth and Outland. We got out Hero of the Zandalar Tribe together, helped each other finish quests and get dungeon achievements. And we've done a bit of play RP together. I could argue that Mälik is Mirax's in-game soulmate as the nature of our RP does tend to devolve into more adult themes and thankfully I'm female in real life and Mälik is male. Makes for a bit less on the awkward side, except I'm not sure Mal considers Mir his in-game partner the way I do.

The only issue with a relationship like ours is how our situations outside of game affect the in-game one. When we do get into the RP part, we are projecting part of ourselves onto out characters and that's the sticky part. How does one deal with the fact that their in-game mate/date/lover/etc deal with the fact that they have a girlfriend outside of game and how does that affect their gameplay with you? Yes, WoW and everything that happens in the digital world of Azeroth is just a game, but the people and personalities are real. I actually met up with Mälik in real life this year and he is exactly the same person in the real world as he is over the Ventrillo server. So it makes you wonder what's going on in a person's offline life that makes them do the things they do online and how comfortable they are with the actions you take in-game regarding them.

Mälik and Mirax in a secluded room in Stormwind.

Drawing the Line on Guild Raid Performance

My guild has a BIG problem. Our players are constantly getting outshined by the PUGs we bring in to fill out our 10-man raiding team. Last week in the first official guild-sponsored Firelands run one of our 3 dps was constantly lower than the tanks on the meters and the undergeared PUG was outshining our fully geared out in Tier 11 enhancement shaman. Had our dps been pulling the numbers we needed them to we would have had Shannox down no questions asked. Many times we got him to 3% but then everyone started taking too much damage and the raid wiped or we were too slow on the dps and he hit enrange. At 3%.

Our officers, who coincidentally are our regular raiders, had an impromptu meeting after the raid to discuss the issue. Sadly the meeting didn't result in much except our low dpsers saying their dps was low "because we're melee and have to run around a lot." This kinda pissed me off because the main spec on my paladin is retribution and earlier in the day I had been pulling 14k dps without thinking about while running around like an idiot trying to heal the tank while do ranged dps in a ZG because the healer and dps kept dying. And I'm just as geared as the enhancement shaman. Hell my under geared enhancement shaman pulls the same dps as the other raider. Back to the issue at hand, being melee dps isn't a good excuse for low dps in a raid. I think I was so pissed off about the comment because I had been asked to heal for that raid due to the fact that we have too much melee dps and the only other melee with a heal offspec is the guild lead who pulls the trump card. And this issue has come up before--forcing one of the best dps in guild to go heals.

So last night a few of the officers were talking about the raid dps issue once again since our previous meeting had not produced anything other than excuses. We realized that our guild is in the EXACT same position it was in when Trial of the Crusader came out--our guild dps and overall player performance is lacking and Zeffra and Mohrrgun are not in the picture currently--and the guild needs a gimmick to re-invigorate it. (Zeff and Moh are two of the guild founders who happen to be the glue that holds us together.) And just like when TotC came out we decided that we are going to start running 25-man PUG raids on Saturdays that are not guild sponsored and thus we are not obliged to take under-performing guild members along with us. This also means that any PUG we bring in has to pull at least 15k dps or they will be kicked from group. Granted leading 25-man raids makes out main tank and primary raid leader go batty, but he was the one who suggested it. However, unlike TotC he's not running the 25-mans on his own. He has both myself and his co-raid lead to help with group formation and raid execution.

I will always hold out hope that our guild can regain the glory days of our 10-man Ulduar raid team that made our guild 9th on server for 10-man progression. Maybe this is what's needed. Maybe we need to stop walking on eggshells around guild members feelings and be straight up asses about the raid performance. Maybe we should just start our own new guild or go join another. But I don't want to leave a guild I have worked so hard to make a great place to play WoW that it is.

Time for a Main Spec Change?

I'm seriously considering changing my paladin's main spec from retribution to holy. Don't get wrong, I love ret and am one of the few people in game who can still play it well. (There is a perceived notion that ret pallies are "broken" and unplayable by all the former facerollers.) I've already gotten her her up to honored with the Avengers of Hyjal, have her decked out in her new belt and cloak and managed to get my hands on the Apparatus of Khaz'goroth on the first night of release. I'm starting off on a great foot as a raiding ret paladin in 4.2. Yet, I keep getting asked to heal and well, my healing set isn't too shabby either plus I'm not totally failing at it.

I always considered my paladin to not be the greatest healer due to the fact that I didn't really play a holy pally the way you were intended to. Until now. With the changes to holy pallies that came out with 4.2, holy paladins now play the way I play mine. Thus I'm not failing as badly as I could. that and it makes playing a holy pally that much more fun. I have a tough decision ahead of me.

I think my decision to switch up the main spec on Mirax is going to come down to the fight mechanics of the Firelands itself--how much melee dps do we need? My guild currently has only a handful of active raidiers which include a feral druid tank, a rogue, an enhancment shaman, a restoration druid, occasionally an elemental shaman and me the ret paladin. With this makeup I've gotten stuck healing more often than not when we pug out to fill the spots of our 10 man raids. I don't mind too much because I'd rather be playing my off-spec than sitting the raid out. Both of the shaman have resto as their offspec although the enhancement shaman has been talking about picking up elemental as an offspec to help with our low amount of ranged dps. Firelands should be interesting in terms of our raid group make-up and the changes to it that are coming.

The Law of Alts

First off this post has nothing to do with Paladins. Just getting it out there.

As Patch 4.2 started looming closer and now that it's hit, I've been working on my resto shaman to get her up to snuff and do a bit more raiding on her than I did during the previous tier of raiding content. This is a similar pattern to the days of Wrath for me as I focused only on the paladin until she was BiS geared out for non-heroic raid content. Well, that's starting to happen again, although this time I didn't have to get both the paladin and Shaman up to max level from scratch so the whole process is going faster. That and some days I really feel like playing a badass resto shaman as opposed to a face rolling ret paladin.

So in an effort to not get burnt out on Mirax, I took Rhysati to a Bastion of Twilight run today. Her tier shoulders did drop, but I lost on them to a hunter. However, Rhys did get an upgrade for her enhancement set in the form of a new helm. (Which I felt really bad because our guild's main enhancement shaman was there on his prot pally and needed the helm for his main toon.) I feel like my shaman is stuck in the law of alts, but a twisted version as the only raid drops she's gotten in Cataclysm so far have both been for her off-spec. So the main sees gear for the alt and the alt only sees gear for the wrong spec. I love it. Someday I'll be a tiered out shaman again. Blizz just needs to leave a raiding tier in place for a full year so everyone gets bored of it and starts gearing out their alts.

It's Patch Day! Now What?

As I write, Patch 4.2 is going live on servers and I along with everyone else is patiently waiting for the servers to come back up so we can all go check out the new quest hub. The main issue with patch day is what the hell do you do while you're waiting for servers to come back up? I've already read up about the patch on both WoW Insider and MMO-Champion. I even posted to my guild's website with places for guildies to read up about the patch. Then being that there was still three and a half hours left until the scheduled time for the realms to come back up I went grocery shopping which sadly only took me an hour. So now I still have time to kill while waiting.

I think it's the aniticipation of new content that has me bated and dying to jump on and play. I know I'm going to play the new content and probably get burnt out on it quickly, but I still want to play it.

Bittersweet Victory

Yesterday the main tank in my guild ran an ICC 25 doing achievement for the mount as well as to get us our Kingslayer 25 so we can go do a Light of Dawn run next week. However, a a big part of his motivation for doing these runs is to get me my Shadowmourne and our guild the 'We Are Legendary' achievement. For the most part everything went great during the run. We cleared everything, wipes were only caused by people screwing up achievements and thus wipes had to be called. The only downside really to the whole night was me and my silly quest. I'm still on the infusions portion of the questline and am the person in our guild who is farthest along. (We never downed Putricide 25 during ICC's heyday so I could never progress with them until a post-Cataclysm ICC 25 run.) I had already done my plauge infusion a few months ago and thus was on Blood Queen. Everyone held back dps so I could be the first one bitten and so that I could get all three bites in and then we killed her. To may dismay, my quest wasn't complete.

I had read up on the quests months if not a year or more ago when it was looking like we were gonna push for the orange and before the raid lockout was shared between 10 man and 25 man. Due to how long it had been since I had read up on the quest I didn't realize that the buff I needed I got by standing infront of the BQ with the tanks. I also don't play a tank so I didn't even know what the extra debuff they get was callled. So to my dismay I have to do it all again next week when we do heroic mode and have to do the Sindragosa one on heroic as well. Ugh. I feel like such an idiot.

Priestly Ways

I have been having a ton of fun playing on my Level 72 BC dugeon twink Priest, Elscol. She's done Sunwell more than all of my Level 85s combined. She's almost to revered already with the Ashtounge Deathsworn. She has almost as many hit points as the tanks she heals if not more than they have. All in all, she is a little badass and I love playing on her to death. This being said, it sometimes makes me sad that I level capped her and can't (well won't) finish leveling her to 85. Thus I want to make a new priest and level them all the way to 85.

A couple things make the possibility of a new priest a little silly if not hard to do. First off, I have ten characters on my server so I don't have any open slots for a new one. I don't really want to get rid of a character because I have one of each class and I think that's kinda cool. Except I don't play most of them. I think I really only seriously play the Paladin, Shaman and existing Priest at the moment. The Druid and Warlock also get a bit of love, just not as much. The hunter is up at 65 so I probably won't do anything with her and the Level 61 Death Knight is slated to become my farm-bot as soon as I get around to leveling her so that the Paladin can pick up a profession that's a little more beneficial than mining (I don't tank on Mirax so the extra stamina is useless.) My Rogue is my only Worgen and as the newest to the bunch she's not gonna get deleted. Plus if I ever go to level Mirax's Ravenholdt rep I'm gonna need a toon that can pick-pocket. Periodically I get curious about playing a Warrior and I'll admit Victory Rush and quest grinding go hand in hand. Plus Ayrl is supposed to be leveling with Mälik's Warrior, Grizz. This only leaves the Mage, who coincidentally is my only Horde character on this server. Mälik moved his Horde Druid, Moocat, to a different server where we all had rolled Horde alts. I broke up with my boyfriend and his unplayed Troll Rogue is the only character still left in the guild we have on the Horde side. But I don't just want to delete the Mage. I spent way too much gold on her giving in to my desire to know every single pattern that I can on each of my crafting toons. That and she has a ton of patterns in her bank and bags as well as some nice gear that I have no way of transferring to a different character. So I think I'm gonna follow Mälik and transfer her over to our Horde server.

That was the first issues with a new Priest.

The second issue is that I didn't always love playing Elscol. When I first rolled her she was a Dwarf named Escol, though still a Priest, and I had no issues playing her as long as I didn't have to kill things. Oh god, just leveling to 20 was painful. I first started playing her when my ex, his friend and I all decided to start toons together. They both rolled Gnomes and myself a Dwarf. The ex was a Warrior tank and the friend was a Warlock. We had a perfect little leveling party. But after we initially started them all we never played them again together. The friend eventually leveled his lock and the ex eventually deleted his warrior, and Escol was left sitting there gathering dust. I tried to level her several times, always to the same painful conclusion. Then, Mälik rolled a Paladin tank and suddenly I had a buddy to go run Gnomergan with. Except he made fun of how ugly Escol was and a quick trip to the Battle.net site later she was reborn as Elscol, the Human Priest, whose name was finally spelt right. Then the ex and his friend rolled Dwarf Shaman and Duel Spec was lowered to Level 30 and only 10 gold and Elscol now had a Shadow spec for dealing damage. However, this resurgence was short lived as Cataclysm was released and leveling the Paladin, Shaman and Druid from 80 to 85 became more of the priority. However, the mystique of the Priest remained as an alluring thought and once that was accomplished and Mirax was geared for raiding I picked up healing on Elscol again and the rest is history.

So yeah, I'm not sure I want to lose my only Mage on the server and I'm not sure I want to relive the pain of being a low-level Priest. Heck, I'm not even sure what race I would be. My guild needs a Gnome Priest for our Stay Classy achievement, but I can't stand being that low to the ground. I like the spirit bonus that humans get which as a raiding toon will be quite handy. However, I have a human priest already and I don't like having too many characters of the same race. Currently I have 3 Humans, 3 Draenei, 2 Night Elves, a Worgen and a Blood Elf. Also, being a girl I like my characters to look hot or at least pretty. So I have some things to think about. But in the mean time I think I'm going to transfer that Mage.

The Lure of Shiny New Healing Gear

Just looked at the new Tier 12 for Holy Paladins. Sweet Jesus that's an awesome tier set with equally awesome set bonuses. I have been seriously considering making Mirax's MS Holy instead of Ret as we always need healers and usually less melee dps. Between the fact that I keep getting asked to heal on her (I've only ever faced Cho'gall as a healer on any toon) and the fact that I feel like my Paladin is a superior healer to my MS Resto Shaman (who I've also thought about Maining as I do love playing her), becoming a Holy Pally is something I'm thinking really hard about and have been ever since I first found out the new Pally abilities for Cata over a year ago. So when 4.2 comes out next week we'll see what happens.

Toxic Link is a Toxic Problem

Why do people fail so much at Toxic Link on the High Priest Venoxis encoutner? Every time I try to go run a Z-heroic on my Shaman, I get Zul Gruub and inevitably we wipe over and over on the first boss due to people failing to run far enough from me the healer who is usually up against a wall. I can't run through the wall. Trust me I've tried. It's not that hard. Just run the opposite direction of the green line. Like a reverse Blood Queen. But no people keep failing at the concept. 


It's too late for me to be PUGing out anyway. Good night.

Heroic Mode: We Can Do it, Now What?

My guild is comfortably farming Blackwing Descent 5/6 and Bastion of Twilight 3/4 and a couple of us have actually killed Cho'gall and thus the guild can make attempts at Heroic Halfus. I was discussing the issue of heroic raid bosses with the guild's main tank last night. We both agree that the guild can do it, it's more a question of if we should and would the guild want to?

From what I can tell our guild members all want to down raids but their reasons for doing so are varied. Some people are concerned with the lack of raid drops they have been getting. Others want the achievement for the full raid before even attempting heroic modes. Still others just want guild members to show so we don't have to PUG. Personally, I would love to see our guild make attempts at heroic Halfus. I think we can do it and not to mention there's better loot associated with heroic modes.

They Hate Me, They Love Me and They Hate Me Again....Or, They Love Me, They Hate Me and They Love Me Again

What is it with PUGs and loving/hating their healers? I currently have a toon of each class that can heal and I do heal on those toons. So naturally I que up in the Dungeon Finder as a healer or get asked to go raid as a healer and I swear that every other group literally hates me and every other group in between those loves me. Doesn't matter if I'm on the Priest, Paladin, Shaman or Druid, that's how the story goes. Like 1-2-1-2-1.

So what gives? Is WoW just full of more idiots than ever or something? Because usually the groups that hate my healing are failing in other ways as well. For instance, two nights ago I tried to run Zul Aman on my Shaman. The first group had one dps that was over 10k and 2 that were at 8k if they tried and the tank was the top damage on every fight. They hated me and the mage kept bitching at me because he kept dying. I got sick of being the one blamed for the fail when the tank couldn't hold aggro and the hunter who could barely do more than 4k dps kept flirting with death preventing me from spreading my heals around. So I left group mid-bossfight and requed. Once again I got Zul Aman and the tank was the highest damage and we had two dps that were barely 8k. Almost the same group makeup. However, this gorup was significantly easier to heal. The other players knew how to watch their aggro and their feet and kept telling me how much they loved my healing.

All of this proves a point I've been trying to make and get some of my newer guildies who are about to be raid ready to understand—your healers and tanks are only as good as the group they are running with so not only know your toon well, but know the fights you are going to be doing.

The More Trolls You Know

first off, I think Guild Portal's site is broken. I can't even update the welcome note for my guild. It saves, but doesn't update the page and I have Super Admin access.

On that note, I think this will become my new WoW blog as Blogger has been reliable and is highly customizable.

Now the bulk of the post on which I wanted to cover.

Last night I made the comment to our main tank, Sheltem, that sometimes your ability to down raid bosses is less about your knowledge and gear and more about who you know. This came after I got asked to go to a Cho'gall run with Longjohnboom, one of the noteable Trade Chat trolls on our server. Longjohn is a really good player who knows his toons and being asked directly to run with him was kind of an honor. I ended up recruiting Sheltem to come tank and after about 5 tries I finally got Mirax her Bastion of Twilight achievement. Shelt had to agree with me on my comment about it matters who you know.

I've been on my server for over two years now and have been active the whole time, but I primarily only do things with my guild. During Wrath a rogue kept asking me to go run things with him like Ulduar hardmodes for the drake and Trial of the Grand Crusader runs. But that was only one character. And now with Blizzard's introduction on Real ID friends it's easier to keep track of people you like running with. Unlike Longjohn, all my toons don't start with the same prefix. However, if someone knows Star Wars Rogue Squadron female characters my naming scheme makes sense (except Mirax should be Human not Draenei.)

Anyways, my lesson here is that it doesn't hurt to make friends with the trolls on your server. They might just lead you to new opportunities.

Moving Forward

The following is supposed to go on my Guild Portal Blog whenever it fixes itself.

Things sounded a bit bleak for my guild after the last entry I made an indeed they were. We had a meeting where the former Guild Leader, one of the founders of the guild and the person who had called the meeting, asked those in attendance "Okay, who wants to Ebay the guild?" Not a good start to the meeting.

Thankfully that question brought out strong comments of guild loyalty and a bit of outrage as a few players had been making slow and steady steps to recovery, like running raids at the scheduled times even when there were only 3 people from the guild in the raid group and several people running informal PVP groups in  Arenas and BGs nightly. Some people also got upset at the meeting and /gquit on the spot. So there were some shake ups, but for the most part we were able to restructure the guild a bit and give it a bit more focus and drive.

As a result of all of this, our raids have seen higher guild attendance, more players are joining in PVPing and we are on a new wave of recruiting that so far has been successful. However, all of this progress in resurrecting the guild has brought up some of the old issues that plagued us when we fell from being 9th on the server in 10-man progression to 76th during Wrath.

During the early days of Ulduar as people were getting burnt our from Naxx 25 runs, we focused and became a 10-man raiding group with a focus on doing Ulduar hardmodes. This began before the initial Ulduar nerf and as a result we were actually about to achieve several of them during Ulduar's heyday as the preemo tier of raiding. Unfortunaly due to the length of the Ulduar raid we had to spread out raiding to three nights a week and players began to get burnt out. Combine with the normal spring lull that happens in our guild this was basically the death of our hardcore raiding group. When ToC came out the few who were interesting in raiding were split between wanting to complete the content we had started and the lure of shiny new even more epic gear. As a result, raiding in our guild died and when it did finally start up again we had an influx of "Wrath baby" raiders who didn't have to think in order to raid and collect loot, and thus we began the era of carrying under-performing raiders through content because bodies were all the was really needed to to clear content.

So now after the whole dying guild episode, we're back at the point where we have people but they may not quite be up to par. I know I am one of those as I keep volunteering to heal on my Paladin and her Holy set is not quite as good as her Ret set and thus my healing suffers. There's been many times where our main tank and raid leader will call me on it. And while he can be a bit of an arrogant ass at times, he means well and without him we don't progress as a guild. Aside from my own shortcomings as a Pally healer, I've still been running a lot of older content for fun with him and he has been confiding in me about some of the short comings of other guildies who are geared to the teeth but dps, heals, tanking is not matching the gear level. I know I'm still having trouble learning how to be a Holy Pally again (I miss Scared Shield and the HoT Flash of Light would automatically trigger on it) so maybe these other players are still having isseus adjusting to changes to their class and specs. Several of our DPS only classes have had to roll different specs than what they used to (i.e. Combat Rogues now being Mutilation, Arcane Mages going Fire, etc.) whereas Mirax is still mainly a Retribution Paladin and really only had to worry about learning Holy Power management rather than a whole new set of spells and abilities. But Cataclysm has been out for almost 6 months now, so why are people still not up to par. It's a mystery to me, but hopefully things will improve as we get back intoa  regular weekend raiding schedule.