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.