Been a while

The winds of change have pulled me away from my previous place of employment, and I am now in the middle of a career change which is going to be for the better. This and my raiding schedule have kept me away from here.

In more good news, our group is 11/12 now with our first week of Nef starting this weekend (maybe, we may be missing 3 of our cores). We went 9/12 with relative ease, and then Cho and Al'Akir were slightly more difficult due to the fact that I felt our dps was overall low. I went out and found a nice DK to replace our second hunter in the core, but am keeping the hunter with us as a small bench is something that we would definitely like to continue on with. I have begun subbing people in and out depending on the fights/loot available for farm content, so that I have 12-14 geared and knowledgeable raiders ready to go. Our first week with the specific bench we had all 13 people in attempts on Al'Akir due to a DC, a family emergency, and a work emergency. He died with our 3 bench players in on the raid.

More to come in the future.

Expected changes

I play a hunter, used to play a paladin. I swapped to the hunter the moment the hunter took over the crown of "most changed class" and "class which gets adjusted every patch." This was purely coincidence and not something I enjoyed while playing the paladin, but it gave me this outlook:

I don't really care how they want to nerf us and how PTR changes might potentially effect us... Yeah- I stay up to date so I know what to expect, but I figure with each patch I'll run a few sims, check out the changes, and adjust accordingly. People who scream sky falling way too early just end up stressing about things too much. If they nerfed hunters so bad they are unplayable, well that's unfortunate but I could always hop on my DK or my priest. If they nerf a single spec to it being crappy in comparison with another- then I'll swap over to it. If they give me a new meta, I'll use it- and if they don't I wont. It amuses me at how worried people get when generally speaking Blizzard is aiming for balance in raids among classes, and so far they've done alright. They buff what sucks and nerf what is overpowered.

This all being said- I like the buffs I bring as survival with WF and such. I dislike the general playstyle of BM, but have never really given it a chance. MM was always my favorite due to it's inherent complexity, but it is the most difficult to perform as when I'm trying to track my whole raid and stay alive (Survival is hilariously easy to maintain on the fly), but I'm sure I'd fare fine with it.

So, I hope they don't break hunters, and now that we have two I suppose it would be nice to be able to have us as different specs so we can bring more interesting buff combinations, but it really isn't game breaking. The way it is panning out- it would be expected that blizzard is looking to scale back surv dps by ~5%. This seems reasonable to me.

Paladin, kinda gone?

My friend has played wow on and off from beta until now. Since then he's sold his account twice. After the first time he sold his account, he went and made a new one. After the second time he sold his account, he found out when he wanted to come back to the game that the guy he sold his account to never changed the email (this was before bnet changes), password, or anything else. He ended up using this account the 3rd time he came back.

That was up until a few days ago- when that guy decided to take that account back (as by this time the bnet account matched his name, not my friends').

This was kind of amusing to me as I had originally told him to transfer his toons off that account for his own security, but even that would have been complicated as the names would have had to match. What happened though was he was all of a sudden without an account and without the time required to level from 1-80, let alone 80-85 in a reasonable period of time.

Enter Turiel. My paladin. He leads my guild in achievement points, as the GM, and has more mounts, pets, and titles you can shake a stick at. A full character, my main forever. How do I retire a main when I know that I'll always feel obligated to complete achievements (Long strange trip anyone?), get him gear, and keep him up to date? I realized with the swap to the much better fit for me now hunter, the perfect opportunity has landed in my lap to achieve this. I made another bnet account, he purchased all the games, paid for a transfer of my paladin over, and now he has another account (RAF'd from my original one) and my paladin. I'm able to now go to our raids with both my paladin AND my hunter- at the same time. What better way for me to retire my paladin than to make sure it'll stay active in my own raid guild at the hands of my friend?? Perfect I dare say. (plus, if he ever quits the game the account is actually under my control, so the paladin is never really too far away!)

That being said I know I'll continue to discuss healing in general as well as my hunter's awesome skills.

Cata first look

Cataclysm, huh?

Logged in (took like 12 years to do so), trained flying, went to the breadcrumb for Vash and went on my way! Vash to me wasn't as fun right away, but it really ramped up fast. There is that lul where you start helping out Budd stop being an undead person and you are hunting sharks and such, but it is kind of amusing nonetheless. Also, Budd cracks me up because of remembering him from ZA (I think it's the same Budd).

The whole underwater thing I'm not a super huge fan of- I've been out of town playing on a terrible six year old laptop I have, and let me tell you- when you can't see very far it is a lot harder to navigate the depths... especially finding caves can get very tough. After a little while I can spatially map everything in my head and I get a feel in 3D where things land not just on the X/Y-Axis I'm used to, but incorporating the Z as well. I also realize if I was on my 1 year old computer I have at home I'll be a much happier camper as well.

Also, being a hunter underwater presents it's own difficulties as well due to not getting too close and the depth perception I have in this game without visual reference points all the time helping me see how close I am to something. I really liked Malygos and the vehicle mechanic used there, but I would quickly hate it if it was used frequently. Swimming was fun with Kael'thas in MgT as well, but in each instance these mechanics were used infrequently. In Vash it's fine for questing, but if I had to do this for a raid I'd probably kill myself out of frustration.

All in all I'm loving this zone but have only spent a couple hours total. This weekend I'll totally geek out on it.

Hopefully ya'll are loving it up!

Cata Ships, QQ.

Cata shipped this morning while I was sleeping in a hotel away on work for a week. I brought with a personal laptop that has wow installed on it- but when I'm away on work I generally work... all week. I work, eat, sleep, and work out.

I'm not trying to say poor me, because I'll have time to play it later, but the inner child in me wants to go dig though my parent's closet in November to find my Christmas presents NOW. Hell, I'll probably be happier to be able to sit down this weekend and power through stuff, and I'll probably take it at a more leisurely pace as well.

Also, there is a benefit to not trying to fight teeth and claw with everyone else during those first few hours- I don't have to deal with as much server failure and fighting for quest mobs being tagged like mad. I had it in wrath, and as fun as it was (because it was) I just don't necessarily NEED it.

If you have time for it I hope you are enjoying it!

The post in which I revised our 10man group

Found out our Fulltime Tree healer isn't going to be able to commit 100% of the time for our group setup. This saddens me greatly. He is one of my favorite people ever to raid with. Truly one of those people if I'd meet IRL who I'd buy a beer.

As problems present themselves, as do solutions- A few weeks back we had two friends who wanted to join in our group who I apologetically had to inform we were already all full up. Turns out they are ok with splitting up and raiding separately as one of them will have ample time to raid while the other not so much. This also means I can take one and not have to worry about taking the other. So, he's willingly offered to be the "first backup" for our tree (he is also a tree, but also a totem-totaller, and a faith bearing priest... so he's given us the first choice for them).

His reason for this decision being that he believes our group to be the most professional and highest in skill on the server. This is probably true up to maybe a tpo 5 standpoint- either way, we rock and people know it. There is not much more gratifying for a game that is essentially rewarding you with digital achievements and pixels than for another person to give you mad props.

Anyway, someone convinced me it'd be a good idea to try out H LK before cata ships- so that's going to be my Sunday. Not exactly excited for it tbh, as I have not heard good things. But I'll figure out how much of a chance we stand about 2 pulls in.

Enjoy your Turkey.

People Hate Me

As the title suggests, I have many people on my server who are not my biggest fan. I have repeatedly made tanks leave randoms (I usually only start criticizing when I'm on my ret pally and know the healer, so if the tank leaves mid-pull I am able to finish tanking the fights... and I'm actually 4-0 for successful transitions after tanks try to screw us over). I generally do this by asking why a tank with a GS of over 6k with a healer in over 6k is single pulling each mob, and losing aggro to me even after I give him significant time to build a threat lead. On my hunter I find it hilarious when tanks want me to die because I pulled an extra pack or two for them with Misdirects... but they seem to forget that hunters don't die-we feign.

Now, I used to tank a LOT for randoms and such, and I have no personal issue at all with other people pulling stuff for me. My job is to tank, if people try to pull aggro I'm going to try to take it back. If they are really trying to kill themselves, they will. If they are pulling aggro and they know they can take a punch or two- it'll be fine. I just never understood the whole "IF YOU WANT TO PULL, WHY DON'T YOU TANK THEN???? RAGEEEEEE." (Also- If I pull aggro as a dpser and I die, I understand why I died. I'm ok with it even. Action--> Reaction. That's how it works)

All this being said, I used to care what people thought of me in game personally and of my guild's name. Over time I realized that I'm an awesome guy, and a great player. I like raiding and I don't mind being in the average pug. I look back at the reactions I get from our guild tag and I realized that our performance is what got us there, not how we treated people. This all being said, I do generally treat people well I just don't go out of my way like I used to, and I have found myself in situations where people telling me that me leaving a fail pug is making me look bad, it doesn't stop me anymore.

This also translates into our raids, as I no longer feel bad about not calling people out for their mishaps. I have failed at certain things as well, I usually try to call myself out (If someone doesn't beat me to it) and I want to fix what I have done wrong. If we don't call each other out, we can't get better. We have to realize as a group that we have a single goal to achieve and it is not personal when we try to fix the mistakes we make. If we have a weak link-it must get stronger or the chain will break.

Tying back to the beginning, I guess what I'm trying to say is that when I learned to not care about what people's perception of me is I enjoyed my game experience better and we found so much more success as a group. I don't want to become The Prince entirely but there are some effective things to learn from it.

The hunted have become the hunter

So I posted about 3 months ago I came back. True story.

Since then we decided we'd mess around and maybe get a drake, who knew? I played the end of the xpac out as MS Ret, OS holy. It was actually very fun getting used to running with some people from time to time again even though ICC isn't the most challenging of all raids (with 30% buff ofc). We got our drake, but because it was more or less 5 of us showing up each week and we'd fill in the final 5 spots (meaning we could either be FoF-Full of Fail- of very strong) I felt like our healers had to try to heal through stupid and that was our biggest obstacle.

When we'd get a decent 5 set to show up with us we'd clear Heroic ICC10 in under 3 Hours (11/12) with a reg LK Kill, then head to RS to wipe on trash and lol at not using CC or even kill orders.

Long story short I'm ready for the new xpac, I'm very pumped for it actually-

Oh, and I'm playing my hunter in our raid group. I decided this a long time ago and I can't not. I love my hunter so much... I'll begin posting here quite a bit I'm sure, but yeah- My main raiding toon will be a hunter. That being said I know too much about all 3 specs (and can't seem to NOT pay attention to stat weights/talent builds/patch changes) for all things paladin to not consider myself a solid resource in that area. So, if you ever have a question about paladin-ing I can help ya out.

I returned

So, I kind of (actually did) quit the game for a while. I had only started this blog a month prior to, but I realized that this blog was a part of me trying to find more fun in the game.

Well I started up a while back again. This time I came back ready to play on my own terms again (not attempting to be a business professional IRL AND a hardcore- 4 nights a week raider. It gets tough raiding 20 hours, and working 70 a week. I mean that leaves 78 for "everything else" as in... eating (8+ right there), drinking, hanging with friends, mindlessly doing things I like.). I instead enjoy the game as if I can't log in for a week or so at a time, that's life. If I can log in a bunch and I want to, I do it.

I also re-formed my original guild (which I run) and got back with my original crew (who are all awesome players who also have RL to tend to, and a massive raid schedule isn't what they want). Anyway, the idea is that we will be rocking our old raid schedule: Once a week, 5-6 hours.

Most people look at that and initially say "What can you do in 1 raid day a week??? and a fourth the time that most raiding guilds need??" Well I tell you this, sir: We can do everything we want. So far we are 6/6 in setting goals and achieving them (historically). This means I'll be playing cata (though I'll probably be MS ret, or switch entirely to the spriest) and dominating. This also means we may be looking for a body or two to help out.

Long story short, it's nice to see you again!

Raid times.

Latest bug from our GM- He wants us all to do as much as possible in 10mans... which are to be done OUTSIDE of scheduled raid times...

We are 3 nights a week, tuesday thru thursday, 3 and a half hours a night. AND HE'S BEEN HAVING US DO ToC25 INSTEAD OF SPLITTING RAID INTO MULTIPLE 10s.

This slightly annoys me being as I'm juggling 60+ hours at work a week, a girlfriend who I think is feeling neglected sometimes... and friends/family. I love raiding, but I mean it's been quite crazy lately.

Anywhoo, I realize that I just have to sit sometimes in these situations... That because of my schedule and life I won't be able to make every raid AND every 10man... And I know I'll pass on 10s because they want me in 25s... It's just irritating and all.

Truly, I am probably most annoyed at the inefficiencies they are ran at. Among our guild we have a TON of gear, and a lot of geared alts. Almost every raider has one, or sometimes more geared enough alts to keep up in ICC10. Now, what simply baffles me is that in each group it seems like we have a few mains, a few alts, and a random friend of someones or something... This is great and all in gearing purposes... but then people get all hot and angry over the fact that the 10s aren't making progress... I don't get why we don't make one raid a super-duper stacked out the ass raid who is going to lay down the law to ICC and all of arthas' minions. Then the second set would be almost as stellar... followed by groups that will have more and more alts in them. Instead it is just "we'll be running 3 10 mans this week. Here are the days and times. Please reply"

Yet, I digress. I left my guild that I ran for a reason. I want organization and all, but I refuse to be the one to step up and take the reigns. Being as such I really can't criticize too much...

Or can I?

My guilty pleasure.

Of my many, I must admit... I absolutely love pop-music. There is just so much beauty in a catchy tune that is more or less manufactured in a sound studio with no skill by the "artist" at all.

Really, It's true. When I raid, I bounce around in music styles, depending on what I am looking for. Lately it has been this though- Pull up Grooveshark.com, hit the button for "Most popular" and hit "Play all" so I hear what is most recently the most popular. Anything that can hit a top 40 chart is fair game... Ever. As in, I get all the new Gaga, Jason DeRulo, Britney, and what have you. But it's the Afroman, and Tom Petty that really gets me hot and heavy.

Mid-battle going from Taylor Swift to Kanye always makes me smile.

I can't raid without good tunes playing. It used to be just straight techno/trance, as techno has the same effect as classical does on me, helping me focus with no lyrics in the background at all, but I just can't get enough of some of the music and singing along to "Replay" by Iyaz or "One less lonely girl" by the Biebs, simply stellar and out of this world.

Cringe if you will, hate me for doing it, but I love it. It makes raiding more enjoyable for me. I mean come one, if you are going to listen to music while raiding, it better be enhancing your experience!!

Raid Progression

NOTE: Most of the time frames discussed here are my personal thoughts and feelings about how long the time felt and how much I was in a specific instance. I did not go back and look at exactly how long each one was out, and I wanted the post to come from feeling rather than fact to express those feelings about raiding progression. Catch mah drift?



Lately I had been going over a lot of people talking about where they were in wow a year ago and what their characters looked like. It's funny because I don't think about this often and when I do I am always suprised that when it comes down to it... I'm a battle tested veteran.

I think about the encounters I've mastered. The raids I've lead. The people I managed and the guild I used to run. All of this experience I forget about frequently, but when it comes down to it... I can still rattle off boss abilities, class abilities, min/max specs, and the general gist of all of this. And not for just wrath... Even though I only got up to ZA in TBC, I have since experienced/learned about many of the encounters.

I keep looking at it and thinking about why I still play wow over all the other games that have come and gone in my life. I have binged on wow over long periods of time for ridiculously long playtime periods. Yet if I burn out, I generally come back. In fact, most of the time when I burn out I simply roll a new class, or on a new server to see new things (like the time I rolled alliance).
With Arthas not even out yet I think about the time gaps between each of the raids. Naxx was out for soooooooooo long. It was all we had to raid. It got to the point where PUGing it was expected to get and kill KT, even on my fail server (truly fail). Ulduar was not out for long enough, in my opinion as I wanted to attempt hardmodes but we were still working through it. On our server only a handful of guilds actually killed Yogg on 10 or 25. It wasn't hard, it just required people to actually buckle down and stay focused the entire instance. But the actual time that it was out does makes me laugh becuase the content was available for a long time(relatively... I think), and yet those who cleared it in the first few weeks had to have been so bored.

ToC was out for far too long, considering it was only one room(2?) that you fought 5 bosses in. It had to be the ultimate show of laziness imo on Blizzard's behalf. At the time when everyone was grilling Blizz about it and complaining about how much it sucked, my guild leader decided we would be attempting ToGC25 (we had 10man on farm) even though I KNEW 60% or more of the raid did NOT care to be there. Over 60 wipes later we killed beasts. Once. That kind of wipage made my brain hurt. We had no other content to do... We would run Ony and VoA simply because it was free loot... But even that could have been done on our own quite easily. Usually those who needed loot from there would be looking for one or two items specifically. And thats about it.

Now we have ICC being rationed out to us, plus there is a limiting factor/waygate that will hinder many from getting into the depths of the instance early on. I'm unsure about how I feel about all this, yet I'm not sure it's going to work out for the better.

See, I'm a big fan of linear progression. There once was a time when I thought I wanted choice over everything... Well not anymore. As I got older and matured I realized that much of the world is out of my control, I believe in everyone having control over their own actions (for the most part... Sophie's choice being one of the few exceptions) which means I can only choose for myself. What I also found is that sometimes, especially when I'm trying to have fun and enjoy a game... I like choice. I like being able to choose which weapon looks cooler, what instance to run, what role to be in a raid. Yet... there is strange comfort in having those choices made for you. Less thinking and responsibility involved.

All in all, I enjoy this game... Sometimes a bit too much, and I am completely undecided about what kind of raid structure I like best. After all of ICC is out, I am leaning to thinking that we will burn out less and learn the encounters better over time being as we will have had our hands held by Blizz the whole way... This is probably a good thing if you have ever read any of my posts about my guild raids or have raided with the general populace... In the end, hindsight will be 20/20 and I am refusing to pass judgement until I get that vision.

P.S. If you really want my opinion... I think that we'll all burn out of ICC eventually, but the tiered releases and self-nerfing instance will keep it looking fresh for longer. The bleeding-heart, cutting-edge raiders will be distraught as they are being held back... But Blizz is done catering to them methinks...

LFG Anger

I have to say, This post by ferarro made me think of just the other day in a heroic Gundrak.



I zone in (as tank ofc, becuase I don't like waiting!) where I start putting on my tank set and buff the whole party. I throw up a readycheck (as party lead) and everyone is ready but the healer. I hate to say it, but I was actually in a threat set and knew without the dps, I could still live and be just fine. So naturally I pull, even though the priest said no to a readycheck and had half mana. (I actually assumed he'd do what I do in that situation, sit and keep drinking, as he just clearly stated to me"NO, I AM NOT READY") Where he starts flipping out in chat calling me a baddie asking if I saw the readycheck I threw up!!



Now we kill the first three bosses with me just silently pulling and self-healing as much as I need becuase he thinks somehow it is a smart move to NOT heal your tank. His friend in the run is pulling a whopping 1.2k dps, and decides to thunderfuck mobs I'm tanking. I would have said something being as I was annoyed with the guy about his leet dps... but one of the other dpsers is pulling under him at 1.1k and I wasn't about to be a super-ass.



So instead I calmly type out that either he thunderfucked while not glyphed (which is bad for raiding anyway) or the Boomkin hit typhoon(who was talented in it), I didn't know who did it, but it wasn't real cool, please refrain from this. The healer takes this as "RAWR YOU ARE INSULTING MY GUILDIE AND YOU MADE ME ANGRY B4" So he claims I don't get any more heals. The DK (who is pulling 4k =D) is like Come on... were so close to the end and won't have to talk to eachother.



Here's where I do something out of my element:

Usually I would succumb to nerdrage and just unleash fury upon this poor soul (no really, I can get brutal) becuase lets face it... Most of the people who get angry right from the get-go will end up much much more angry after talking to me. I'm not the greatest, but I'm pretty good at utilizing logic in making my points, which I have found most wow players understand when I walk them through it, yet can't do on their own... I'm also very hurtful if I want to be... ALL THIS ASIDE, because I actually chose to NOT do this! Is that I deleted the mean comments I already had typed out (no really) and filled it with simply this:



TUR:"Hey man, I didn't mean to offend anyone. I was just trying to be helpful as I know not everything is explained and many tanks would get angry at that sort of action, luckily I'm not one of them =D"



BH(Baddie healer):"Well most healers would be pissed if they said no to a readycheck and their tank rushes in."



TUR:"I'm sorry about that, but really I knew what I was pulling and that I could keep myself, and the whole group up against 3 trash mobs. If I pull on a no to a readycheck, I expect my healer to be afk filming a porno, making coffee, or curing cancer, clearly."



DK:(randomly interjects):"This group isn't that bad and were looking at the last boss, lets just kill him and go our merry way."



TUR:"Shhh, didn't you know that all DKs are bad? Jeez, try showing up on recount sometime, baddie."



*Tur pops DP and barrels into the boss, waiting for a 5stack of SoCorr to pop wings and AP trinket and unload on the wittle bossie. All the while taking nothing for damage."



The boss dies



BH:"Hey man, you really are a good tank, take care!"



Moral of the story for me... I was actually nice when things got heated and the guy didn't end up being unreasonable for once(I mean he acknoweledged how awesome I am... He has to be at least awake to the world then!)!! Hallelujiah!

ICC is...

(This was a post I wrote a while back while in a car or airport or something where I didn't have internet. Figured I'd post it before it goes out of date)

Lately with time at work being so high and full weekends of work consuming my life, I found that the crawling pace of ICC releases is actually helping me out. With the release of Ulduar, and previous to that with Naxx there was so much pressure to clear because we were able to. (I was in college barely going to class, I pretty much played whenever I wanted to) This allows you to go as far as your raid is capable of and choosing when to stop. Now that blizzard decided that they would control the flow of raiding by only releasing the easy content one step at a time, the challenge in ICC just isn’t there for me.

I really do enjoy the new scenery and the new fights, yet at the same time I find it difficult to get really enthusiastic about content that everyone *should* be downing.

After re-reading that proclamation I realize that it can come off as very elitist and in the same tones as the “Why is everyone allowed to raid and see the content I deserve to see after all my hard work” but I really don’t mean it in that sense. I love the accessibility that blizzard gave to all players into the endgame. When I first started playing I mentioned casually one time to a person that I really enjoyed Wow. He claimed that after he reached level cap there didn’t seem to be a whole lot to do except raid. At the time he was playing (vanilla) it really did take a long time to gear up to actually contribute, then you are looking at being a dpser in a 40-man? Let’s pretend for a moment they even HAD recount (they didn’t). You have no idea who is doing well, and who is afking for anything they like. The content isn’t challenging except for the fact that the raid coordination and leadership. (Think of the nightmare that was Thaddius for 40 people. Granted it was high enough up in progression that any guild that got there had enough people committed to actually paying attention… but still… It was bad enough when we were pugging it before Uld. with 25…)

Back on topic, the accessibility that blizz has given out for raiding is awesome. The logic that they design uber-awesome content (like AQ or Sunwell) that not very many people were able to experience is not really logical. It’s like James Cameron being like “Avatar is teh sex, and you can’t watch it unless you are a well known movie critic. I realize I dumped a massive amount of money into this, it’s extremely popular, received amazing reviews, but unfortunately you all have not watched all my other movies leading up to it so you do not deserve to even be in it’s very presence. You are not 1337.” That just makes no sense.

I want Icecrown to be the pinnacle of raiding, I want the Arthas fight to be just phenomenal. Anything else would be a letdown. We all played WC3 (assumption here) and no one got irate when everyone was able to beat the game!! It had amazing story and the story comes to a close here. It is 100% logical for most people to get to the Arthas fight and to see it. The self-nerfing raid instance is what will assist this as well.

Here’s to hoping it cracks up to everything we want it to be!