A Smattering of Summer Stuff

Ah summer. Warm weather has finally returned to the high desert. What does this mean? Why, a much greater urge to actually go outside and do something. I'm really looking forward to summer this year as my child is finally of an age to truly get out there and have summer fun either with us right there or mostly by himself. We got him one of those cheap little plastic pools that he's been filling up under the end of the slide and having hours of fun bombing down into. The garden is exploding with fresh produce for the table. I'm even starting to get out on my bike on a mostly regular basis. I don't expect I'll be getting back to riding multiple centuries by the end of this year, but it would be nice to feel comfortable rolling out in the 50-75 mile range on occasion. But enough about all those 'real life' activities.

Midsummer festival sure has reinvigorated my desire to get on some toons each evening instead of just for raiding. Most of my alts on the main server have been languishing, unloved, even forgotten, for quite a while now. The lock is the only one that's seen any love lately, and that was just to finally finish the push to 80 on him. However, with the chance for 2 easy frost from Ahune every day (and kudos to Blizz for making that such an easy proposition through LFG) I've been making an effort to get on each 80 most nights for that, if not dropping in for a random heroic to boot. I was not particularly looking forward to throwing myself to the random hounds on a regular basis again, but I must admit that almost all of the runs I've done this last week have been quite painless, sometimes even fun. I have to admit that I couldn't agree more with one of 3B's posts about Ahune. It's simply astounding the level of stupidity I had to put up with on Ahune the first handful of days. It's truly like players these days haven't got a clue how to adapt to a new fight without having it all handed to them. A few get it, and admittedly most seem to have figured it out by the fourth day or so. Those first couple of days were simply insane though. I had to laugh for the most part, especially when watching people in their T10/ICC25 gear floundering about. I mean, sweet Elune, on the second day of the festival I had an Ahune run take more time (5 wipes that I couldn't walk away from because I was laughing so hard at 3 peeps that started by bragging about their gearscores and then proceeded to let me, the healer, get abused over and over) than the follow up Occulus run I participated in. That was a long and convoluted sentence.

Things are conceivably looking up on the raid front. The one real problem child on our team (the one I've mentioned before without going into too much detail) is apparently taking a break from the game for a while. Most of us had to breathe a bit of a sigh of relief as that allows us to put off the ugly process of having to remove them and possibly losing one of the tanks as a result. Anyway, last thursday went mostly well, except we struggled on Sindragosa again. Granted, we've only gotten her down the one time, but it would have been nice to breeze through the whole place up to Arthas in an evening. Ah well. We'll get it down to a science soon enough, and hopefully the Lich King will be close behind so we can start working on heroic hell. I did top the damage done/DPSe charts by a bit during the run too. Our feral druid was right behind me, and we both had a comfortable margin over the boomkin, lock and DK. I think our pally dpser would be leading us all if we didn't have him go heals during blood wing and Dreamwalker. I'm not mentioning this to point out how uber I am, but rather because I'm surprised by my standing on these charts. I believe most, if not all, of the team outgears me since they all do ICC25 and have gotten some stuff from there that supplements the 10man gear. Also, most of the stuff I've read out in the blogsphere indicates that I should be on the low end of the list as an elemental shaman. It's hard to say for sure as our team is made up of all hybrid DPS except for the lock. I don't really know how things would stack up against solid players from pure DPS classes. Either way, I wonder how far we would be as a team if all the dpsers could be within a percent or so of each other. Well, I've meandered through another post for long enough today.

later daze~Bero

Enter Arthas

So no post last week because I was far too busy being the right-hand of my good friend SuperDave as we put on the U.S. national trail half marathon championship. It's the ninth running of the Dirty Half and this year was by far the smoothest. Great weather, no major course or facilities problems, and people just crushed it this year. But this is really supposed to be a WoW blog.....

So on the thursday before the trail run our ICC 10man finally got Sindragosa down. Rather a bit of an anticlimax too as we wiped on the first attempt, then downed her on the second. And there was much rejoicing. I even got a neat little dagger, Bleak Coldarra Carver, which is convenient since I've been carrying around generally healer weapons for a long time now. It's also somewhat ironic that as soon as I get a true caster dps weapon I end up going heals for the Lich King encounter.

So now begins the hatefest of the Lich King. I'm very interested in how long it's going to take for us to get this fight down. The Raid lead extended the raidID through this last week too so we could spend all of last thursday and this coming monday working only on Arthas. I have to admit it's another wonderfully fun fight. I'm not even sure how many times we wiped on thursday. I think we've got phase 1 and 1.5 down fairly well now. Phase 2...wellllll...isn't going so well yet. I think by the time we were working on figuring that part out, people were starting to wear down and make silly mistakes. And, dare I say, we were having to compensate for one person who really has no business being on this team at this point, but we're still stuck with them because of the fear of losing one of the tanks if said person is removed. But I believe I may have mentioned that conundrum before. Anyway, things are getting busy here at work, so I'd best hang this up now.

later daze~Bero

We Can Do It....Theoretically

Real quick post today as work is fairly busy. The ICC10 run on thursday this week ended up being simply phenomenal for us. We had a bit of a rough start with some afk issues and the MT not showing up for the first hour or so (big real life issue that has no bearing in this tale). Anyway, after a bit of off-spec shuffling we were having a pretty solid run to start, and once the MT was on and in everything was like butter. We didn't do first pull in ICC until about 17:40 and yet we cleared everything in time to have a handful of stabs at Sindragosa. Which leads to the title of this post. If we have the full group up and running from the start and actually bang out the weekly raid (instead of the comedy of errors that started this week) I believe we will be able to clear the whole place in our 3 hour cruise in the not too distant future. This probably doesn't seem like a big deal to many folks out there, but believe that it's a big deal to us.

Of course we are talking about regular here. I won't even try to speculate on what we'll do with heroic versions...

later daze~bero

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

The Slime's Not Flowing Anymore

Good news everyone! We finally got Putricide down a couple of weeks ago and now the fight just seems like it's not that big of a deal. Which got me thinking about progression fights and the headache/heartache/hell yeah that they entail. I don't know why it never occured to me before now, but as I look back on what 'progression' content I've been a part of I realize that for all the hours of wipes on a boss fight, when you 'get it' it just suddenly seems easy...at least relatively. When we got to Putricide this week he just plain went down. I'm not saying it was instant faceroll, but I just wasn't worried about it anymore. And it seems to me that's usually how progression content goes for us. Weeks of hating a fight to almost instantly what was so hard about that? Frankly I'm surprised I never noticed that transition until now. It also appears to me that the majority of the team reached this same conclusion at about the same time. Now we're banging our heads against the Blood Princes but there isn't any real angst about it. More of a relaxed dialog and general attitude of try x and if not that then we'll try y and if we can just get z I think we'll have this down. Very refreshing change and I don't feel that frenetic pressure I usually get on new content. I actually really like the Princes so far. It's such a totally chaotic fight (at least for us) with the spacing issues and main target switches and 'oh crap that kinetic bomb just blew half the raid out of range'. The big issue with us right now is keeping our lock up when he's tanking. I'll just have to wait and see if I have such a relaxed attitude about this if we're still experiencing a wipefest a couple of weeks down the road.

On a different note, the guild 25man team is completely bogged down on Festergut and Rotface. I am not a member of this team due to work conflict, but I often swing by my co-GL's house on my way home from work on Saturdays and watch over his or his wife's (she's guild raid lead) shoulder for a while as we chat about WoW or RL issues or whatever. Yesterday I got to see the Rotface...er...debacle might be the best word... Anyway, it's interesting to be able to just watch a fight instead of participate. Amazing how much you can see happening, or not happening as the case may be. As I sat there, two things were very apparent. People were not getting behind Rotface during his puke and some people with oozes on them would hang out around his feet pounding away in oblivion. Needless to say these resulted in poor outcomes. What boggles the mind is that I listened to the raid lead explain everything before at least 2 attempts, and I watched her tell specific toons to basically get the ooze the hell out to the OT or to get the hell behind Rotface...and did those people react in a timely fashion or even at all? I'm guessing you know the answer would be a resounding no.

The question I found myself pondering as I drove home was at what point should someone who clearly is either incapable or choosing not to learn/complete a task in a raid be removed/replaced? That question is muddied a bit further by knowing that one teammate admittedly is currently suffering lag issues that cause that toon to be truly unaware that an ooze is on them (or puke is heading their way, or whatever). A couple of others are players that I know are perfectly capable of dealing with the same mechanics in 10 man, but for some reason just can't or won't do it in a 25 setting. And of course there are a couple that just aren't very good (although not for a lack of trying), particularly in that oft bandied about situational awareness thing. And by not very good I mean quite bad, but at this point I think they are accepted to the raid mostly through a combination of persistence, longevity in the guild, and (lets face it) pity.

Sidebar: my best friend and I started this guild over four years ago largely as a reaction to the Vanilla perception that you had to be super skilled or experienced or geared to even be in a raid guild. This particularly had to do with the old question of how do you get raid experience when no one would take you without raid experience. So one of the founding tenets of our guild was that we felt anyone should be allowed to at least try raiding. I think we both knew that such a posture would inevitably lead to slow progression and some turnover issues (hello guildies that we got some gear and experience for who then used that to jump to a 'real' raiding guild, yes I'm looking at you). That said, it's 4+ years later and we're still here, operating 3 relatively successful 10 man teams and a struggling 25 man, while most of the guilds we've known have long since imploded. And frankly, I'm surprised at how many of those 'grass is greener' guildies have come back to the fold over that time span. Heck, we've even had a number of new recruits in just the last couple of weeks because apparently we are becoming fairly well known on our server as a good place to be even if we aren't remotely bleeding edge. But this is really turning into a topic for a separate post, so back to the original point...sort of...

Actually I guess the end of that last section does have some bearing on the idea of when to remove/replace perceived-to-be underperforming teammates. With fresh blood in the guild looking to get in on a raid, how do you balance some level of longtime association and camaraderie against a desire to see and do more when the resources most likely exist? The very nature of our credo on raiding in some ways has come back to bite us as for the first time in our existence we find ourselves with a glut of raiders which is setting us up with the impasse of who should go. The easy and probably most correct answer is to go with the calendar invite and first come/first serve, obviously while considering raid makeup needs. The two main outcomes from that are either simply putting up with the 'dead weight' if they get in or seeing more content sooner (or at all) by essentially jettisoning people that may have been with us for a long time (which seems to me to go against the aforementioned raiding tenet). That being said, and even though I am not actually one who will be trying for a 25 roster spot, I can't help but feel a bit guilty either way.