Blah...Meh...Yup

Well, not feeling like I've got anything much to say this week. No deep insights or inspirational thoughts or pissed off rants. It's just been a blah kind of week I guess. The most exciting thing warcraft-wise is probably that I was actually called on to use my secondary healy spec in ICC for Dreamwalker and Princes. I hadn't gone healing in a couple of months at least so there were definitely a few moments of panic as I tried to remember A: what spells are available and B: where the heck are they on my bars and healbot. Then there was the whole green portal fly around in tandem with our priest instead of just stand here and nuke everything part. Totally fun and actually a refreshing change. Of course it also led to the realization that I really need to work on my healing set, so I guess it's back to the frost emblem grind.

The other thing that was interesting for me this week is that I got into the end of our guild ICC 25 run when I got home from work yesterday. I was only there for 4 wipes on Putricide, but it's always entertaining to see the complete clusterfuck that I usually miss. And I quietly tooted my horn to myself and the GL and RL as I got to point out that the averages for those 4 attempts had me leading in both dps and damage done. It's refreshing to know that I have enough ability to be right up there with the other guildies that outgear me from at least their 25man stuff vs my 10man stuff perspective. Ok, I'll admit it. I'm inordinately proud of that fact. I suppose I should temper it a bit with the realization that they may have all been falling off a bit as I was fresh and they'd been running for a couple of hours. Ah well.

GS vs Vanilla

So I've been keeping a bit of an eye on the various posts around the blogosphere in recent weeks regarding gear score and achieve checks and such, and I just can't help but to throw my own 2 copper out there. Maybe I've missed some critical opinions out there somewhere, but it seems to me that nobody has specifically mentioned the pain in the ass that is associated with getting into most PUG raids on anybody other than a main. Maybe my server is being more harsh on requirements than others who have posted. Maybe I'm just being ignorant. The point is that I raid on my main with my guild. I don't PUG with him. I do have plenty of other 80s that I have worked through heroic fives and such, and that I would like to take into PUG raids. However, pretty much all raids that I've tried to get into while hanging around Dal have some darn steep requirements. Generally 5500+ for ToC 10 or 25 and 6000+ for any ICC. And of course they all want you to link your achieves showing you've been there. So...how am I going to have scores that require gear from those raids and achieves that require I've been through such and such wing if I can't get into a raid in the first place? Which leads me to the title of this post. I am reminded very much of my time back in Vanilla dealing with the daily /facepalm cycle of you can't raid without experience and you can't get the experience because nobody will let you raid. Which is why my buddy and I started our guild as explained in previous posts here. I had honestly buried the painful memories of those times fairly successfully, but dealing with gear score nazis has brought it all crashing back to the forefront. And I know some of you are thinking I should just start up my own PUG raid, but I'm just not that person. I'm good at knowing my role and following orders. I'm good at troubleshooting and recognizing problems. I'm horrible at leading. It's that simple. I know myself well enough to realize that having to be the leader in a PUG setting would immediately take all the joy of doing the raid right out of me. I'm also honestly amazed at the complete recalcitrance of others who are looking for more when you are just a wee bit short of their GS requirement even if you talk to them about how this is your umpteeth 80 and you're more than familiar with all of ToC and most of ICC and you'll do whatever you need to and they still just throw up a GS/achieve wall anyway. Their loss is about the only reasonable response I can have at this point I guess.

One interesting thing that all this frustration has resulted in is my creation of a couple of new toons on a different server just to get away and cool off sometimes. I started up a pally just cuz I've always loved (and hated) them and a rogue because it's the one class I've never really tried to get down. This little side project has also given me a throwback to Vanilla moment. I had completely forgotten how...difficult...it can be to be completely without resources to draw on. I mean, sweet Elune it's hard to power quest when you've only got your one starting backpack and barely enough funds to train each level. And don't get me started on not being able to pretty much immediately have all the mats I need on hand to jack a couple of professions right up. The crazy thing is that I've had quite a bit of fun just having to juggle space and struggle to get my blacksmithing to a level that makes it useful to my toon's level. Right now I'm getting pretty excited to take the rogue into Deadmines. I almost have everything lined up questwise and I honestly don't know how long it's been since the last time I went in there on a level appropriate toon. Refreshing! Anyway, can't think of much else to talk about for the moment...

Later daze~ Bero

Back In The Saddle

So, been a bit since my last post. The quick and dirty of it is that I joined the ranks of the hacked. It's happened to a number of my guildies in the last few weeks. So of course I ordered an authenticator. The sweet irony of it all is that I was hacked just about 12 hours before the authenticator arrived in the mail. I can't remember a time where I've felt quite as helpless and lost as when I was sitting here at work checking my email to kill a little downtime and I see the back to back messages thanking me for successfully changing my password followed by a 72 hour suspension notice for conduct detrimental to the economy. I knew right away that they got me. Just to be sure though I called up the raid lead and she quickly confirmed that my oldest toon had left the guild that morning and guildies had seen my other toons popping on and off for a bit. I guess the only good news was that they didn't get anything out of the guild bank since the GL was hacked the day before me and was used to clean us out. Anyway, didn't do anything WoW related including the blog for a couple of weeks out of pure frustration with it all. I will say that Blizz was very helpful (once I got through on the phone anyway) and all my stuff is back no problem. Let me say, I didn't realize just how much crap I had stored away until it was all there in the mail.

On a better note, my 10 man now has Dreamwalker down (up?) and I finally got the damn Scourge Lord's Baton to drop on Deathwhisper so that I could make all my planned moves for a major round of upgrades. I can't wait to see what I'm able to do this week with the gear changes, it should be a decent boost. In one fell swoop I replaced my 232 chest and helm with T10, the Baton let me finally drop the 200 shield, got a back upgrade on the run too that bumped me from 219 to 251, and I crafted the 264 legs and boots. I lost a bit of hit, so I switched out the 245 int trinket for the hit (haste) one. That, combined with the new gear having a bunch of gem slots that I didn't have before, allowed me to switch a few things away from hit to sp and haste. In the greater scheme of uber raiders on our server, I'm sure I still seem rather paltry, but I'm more than happy to have over 3k unbuffed sp and now over 900 haste. I may have to redo the gems a bit as my relic stacks haste and the new trinket buffs it too. As it stands my LvB and CL are at a 1.17 cast time. I need to go hit up the dummies and see if I run over the 1 second GCD barrier with everthing up. Anyway, getting a bit crazy here at work again today so I'd best just post this and get going.

later daze~bero