Tearing Up The Charts Again

It's been awhile since I last posted. I'll admit I've been a bit distracted by real life, but I'm still addicted as ever to WoW.

I can gladly report that I am once again running on Mirax as a Retadin for raiding. In fact, I've been consistently the highest DPS in guild for all of my guild's 4.3 raiding. The best part is that I'm actually loving Ret once again. With the introduction of Holy Power in Cataclysm, Retribution changed completely from it's incarnation during Wrath. It took some time to become comfortable with these changes and I was decent at playing my class, but not as good as I could have been. A lot of that had to do with me healing more often than not during both 5-man dungeon runs and raids.

In a previous post I noted my decision to be a main spec Holy Paladin for the remainder of the Patch 4.2 lifetime. True to my statement, as soon as Patch 4.3 came out I went back to being Ret and have kinda put my foot down on the swapping specs for raiding. In fact, I haven't even healed on Mirax since 4.3 came out. Sure, I've gotten some upgrades for her healing gear, just I haven't made that my gearing priority. One thing that has helped me in being able to stay as Ret, are some real-life friends, Rolo and Ruckis, who x-ferred to my server and joined my guild. I have to say they are far better raiders than half the people in guild, and I respect their talent and insight into class and raid mechanics. They've also been supportive of "not making your highest dps heal," as one of them pointed out a few weeks ago when the RL was going to ask me to go Holy and then started looking for a new melee dps even though I had not agreed to heal. Since that time I've proven myself to be a consistantly high dps and being one of the two dpsers in guild who can hold their own against the PuGs we bring in to fill out raid team out, the other being Ruckis.

I'll admit, I'm kinda of missing playing Holy a bit. But ow that I have an equipped ilvl of 390 for my Ret set and average close to 30k dps on boss fights, I think I'm ready to start working on my Holy set and playing Holy again. That's part of why I've been logging out in my Holy gear so I can check it out on Mr. Robot and get it all itemized properly. I don't think I'll be going back to raiding as Holy any time soon, but I won't mind switching into it for a final boss attempt or two if a healer leaves early. This happened two weeks ago and I brought my Shaman, Rhysati, in to heal thinking that we wouldn't down Ultraxion. Well, Rolo and I two-healed it and while I have credit for the kill on Rhys, Mirax doesn't. I don't want my alt to end up farther along in progression than my main again just because the alt is the healer.

Mirax and Ruckis at the Faerie Circle in Tirisfal.

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.