Kyrilean of Arathor

Moving

2008-09-03T23:11:00.003-04:00

I've given up on Blogger. I can't figure this out and I don't have the patience to try and get someone over there to help me so I'm just moving. I've set up a new blog using Wordpress. I've found a template that I actually like better than what I had over here and although the blog controls aren't quite as straight forward for someone like me, I'm muddling through and so far happier.

On Hold and Update

2008-09-02T14:39:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted in quite some time. Work has gotten a lot busier for me lately and the number of contracts that come across my desk is growing. Guess I wanted more work to keep me busy rather than being bored at work and it finally happened.

I still haven't been able to figure out what's happened to the blog layout. I cannot for the life of me get my side bar to appear and I've searched Blogger's FAQ for help, but to be honest since I haven't had time to post I haven't taken the time to really figure it out.

On the other hand, Maedchen is slowly being geared in Kara. She almost has 100 badges which I've been saving for pants. She has 3 greens left, one of which is the pants. Since one of our GMs kicked our only other Shadow Priest, I'm now the leading Shadow Priest! LOL! Because she's a Transmute Master and Herbologist, I've been able to do dailies and sell a lot of primal mights so she already has her epic flyer which has only increased the rate at which I can farm.

I've also spent a lot of time leveling alts lately. I got a druid up to level 26 and ended up getting a little bored one day so I went over to my level 5 shaman that I haven't played since creating him. Spent two hours doing that! LOL! Anyway, as of last night he's level 30 and leveling up Jewelcrafting and Engineering. We have a serious shortage of those two professions in our guild. I don't care what anyone says, but Exploding Sheep makes Engineering totally worth it! ROFLMAO!!!

Anyway, I think I've gotten somewhat bored of raiding. We have over 125 different toons in our guild with nearly 100 of them being level 70. We have over 70 different accounts and so you'd think we'd never have problems getting a 25 man raid together, but we have yet to have 25 guild members in Gruul's. We always pug a couple.

We also have a serious lack of devoted players that are devoted to really learning their toons. We have a warrior that can't figure out that using up your high-crit abilities at the start of the fight is a sure fire way to wipe the raid by pulling aggro from the tanks. Many, including this one, spend hours in battlegrounds to gear up and rarely run heroics to learn how to raid. They just don't understand the ins and outs of their toons and no amount of advice ever seems to get through. I apologize if he's reading this, because I like the guy, but we have a player who has a dual-wielding arms spec warrior who claims to be able to off-tank. No offense, but I won't be inviting you to tank or dps any progression raids or even heroics with that toon.

Anyway, my focus has been primarily on my Shaman and Druid. I hope to level both to 70 before the expansion and if I get that done and still have some time, I'll probably focus on another toon just to kill some time. Once the expansion hits, the holy pally, shadow priest, druid, and shaman will all be leveled to 80 just as quickly as possible. I'll throw the death knight in there for good measure. I've heard from friends in the beta that the DK is just too cool not to level up to 80.

Level 70!!!

2008-07-31T11:10:00.002-04:00

Maedchen dinged level 70 Tuesday night. I sat out of our Kara and ZA raids to make it happen. Although I had first priority for ZA, I felt bad asking one of the three healers to sit out. On a plus note, they were able to beat the first timer which is a guild first! Crap, I wasn't there!

Now debating whether I should leave her shadow spec or switch to holy. Two Co-GMs want me to stay shadow and I must say I'm a little intrigued with doing so. Probably more to learn than going with Holy considering my pally.

I've been tracking my DPS on Recount and sadly I'm averaging 350-400 dps in only greens and a couple of blues. Why sad? Because we have some guildies that are roughly half Kara geared that perform as well. So I suppose I have the potential to have a strong DPS toon here, although I'm afraid I'll get bored of it. Love healing!

I need to learn how to watch Omen though. As a healer I just ignore it because I've learned how to keep my aggro low at all times even when spamming Holy Light. I rarely aggro anymore even with 2300+k buffed heals and 26+% holy crit. So watching Omen will be a new excercise for me.

I'll see how it pans out. If I don't like it, I'll just respec holy.

On another note: need to figure out what happened to my side bar...

Being a Team Player; What You Do Affects Others

2008-07-30T11:11:00.003-04:00

We recently had an Officer leave our guild. Several of us saw the frustrations building over the past few weeks and wondered where it would lead. The other day we saw exactly where that went.

On his way out he left a message for the guild expressing his frustration that many are not prepared for heroics, let alone raids. In his opinion, many are attempting difficult content without regards to abilities, gear, group make-up, buffs, etc. He expressed his frustration at those who unwittingly bring down others by not being prepared and waste the time of those who are geared. One of his complaints was evidently the 10g repairs required before even getting to the first boss in a heroic. As a clothie, this may be a valid concern, but don’t ever make the mistake of complaining about a 10g repair to anyone in plate! Remember, 10g is one daily quest which isn’t a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.

Regardless of how the officer left, which wasn’t shall we say professional, he does have a point. There are many people in casual raiding guilds that aren’t ready. Part of the responsibility rests on the officers’ shoulders and the majority rests on the player.

How do we fix that? The old adage that “knowledge is power” applies. There are so many resources available to us that it’s a crime to not take advantage of what’s available. There are links to so many websites that will assist you in enchanting, gemming, and evaluating your gear, evaluating your talents, or even blog sites such as World of Matticus and Resto 4 Life for healers, Big Bear Butt Blogger for Feral Tanks, and Big Red Kitty for hunters just to name a few. There’s dozens of sites out there and each one of these has links to more. After a while you’ll find what’s useful and what isn’t.

But what do I look at, you might ask? Well here are a few tips:

Talents

In my guild, the officers have noticed that some of the talent builds we’ve seen on our members are what we might consider...odd. Although many of us have little understanding of other classes, there have been a few raised eyebrows from those that do. If you haven’t looked at your talents in a while, visit some sites dedicated to your class to see what’s out there. Just by redoing your talents, you may find that your heals, dps, or tanking abilities will increase dramatically. What worked while you were leveling up is not necessarily going to work as well in raiding. What works in PvP, almost never works as well in PvE, and vice-versa.

Give it a chance. Find something new. Try it out. If it works for you and you’re happy, great run with it! If it doesn’t work out, try something else till you find what does work. Everyone’s play style will be different and the so-called “optimum” builds may not really be that “optimum” for you.

Gear

In every guild I’ve been in, I’ve seen a lot of linking loot that members find on other players they happen to be running past. This can be a great tool for motivating guild members as to what awaits them, but it can also be detrimental when that player focuses on trying to attain that gear without having a plan. I’ve seen players pass on obvious upgrades because they believe that they may as well wait for that piece they’re after, not realizing that the small upgrades get you to the larger ones eventually.

Research your gear upgrades. The WoWArmory has the ability to search for upgrades and this is a useful tool. The only part I don’t like about it is the inability to exclude certain categories, such as Sunwell. There are other websites out there that do allow for this though.

Another great resource is AtlasLoot. If you don’t have this add-on, I recommend you get it now. Hell, I DEMAND that you get it NOW!!!! Best thing in the world is to know what gear could potentially drop so you know what to look for. This speeds up raid times while distributing loot allowing your group to down just “one more” boss before the end of the night. Remember, one more boss is more badges and a couple more pieces of loot that will assist the guild in running it even better next time. (I swear if I have to sit through another 5 min loot distribution routine in Kara again...)

AtlasLoot will also assist you in knowing what badge gear to go after. This add-on has the ability to create a wishlist by holding Alt and clicking on the item. There’s a wishlist button at the bottom. No more will you have to spend several minutes at the badge vendor to search for the item you found the other day and can’t remember how many badges you need.

Heroics/Raids

Know which heroics/raids you are capable of and which you aren’t. Did you know that Slave Pens, Underbog, and Ramparts are considered the easiest heroics? How about Mechanaar being the easiest after that? Did you know that Heroic Magister’s Terrace is the hardest? Did you know that even regular MgT is the equivalent of some of the regular heroics? It’s amazing how few people I run into even realize that the difficulty differences that exist between the regular instances translate even more so in heroics.

Know which heroics/raids require what types of CC and how many you should bring. Karazahn has 3 types of CC that are effective: priests can shackle, hunters can ice-trap, and warlocks can banish the few demons that are present. Knowing something like this can prevent you from making the mistake of bringing Rogues for the sole purpose of CC. I’ve actually participated in the Moroes fight with only one CC because someone wanted to bring their alt in. It wasn’t pleasant.

Pay attention in heroics and raids. You may never know when your knowledge of another class’ responsibilities will come in handy. There are certain mobs in Slave Pens that can’t be sheeped. Know which ones? Ever been in a group that relied on sheeping only to find out too late that it was resisted and you wiped? Personally, my biggest regret was not paying attention to what others needed to do as I now run these instances.

Know the advantages of group make-up. When does it make sense to have more melee than ranged dps? What classes should be grouped together on raids? Want an example courtesy of BRK? Look here for some of the responses.

Point is there’s a lot of different ideas and information out there. Use it.

Know Your Toon

You’ll often see requests from friends and members about whether or not they should switch out certain pieces of gear or what badge gear they should go for. I’ve often been asked by someone looking at badge gear as to whether they should buy A or B first. The issue isn’t so much about which piece as both are generally needed and obvious upgrades. The issue and question is what does your toon need?

Every class/spec has certain stats they need above all else. It’s your responsibility to find out what that is. This information is freely available on websites and from opinions within game. Know which stats are most important and in which order the importance should be placed.

Here’s a major problem I’ve observed in my own guild regarding DPS players. It makes me cringe when hearing about a DPS player wanting to stack crit to get the most damage possible. Why? Because first off, anyone relying solely on crit to deal damage is going to be ineffective and low on the DPS report. First, you have to be able to hit the guy. All your stats should be working towards that and making sure you can’t miss before concentrating on crit. Also, crits are great but only after the tank has gained enough aggro. Someone who tries to get as much crit early on in a fight as they can is asking to die. Dead DPS is NO DPS!! (I'm speaking to you Mr. Mage, who always wants to start casting before the pull so the spell hits instantly after the tank pulls!!! Wiping the party/raid is not the way to increase DPS!) We’ve all heard it, we all know it, but some people get too excited and forget. The DPS player that concentrates on steady damage will out damage the one who focuses on critting, guaranteed! Know where you should be stat wise.

Be Courteous, Be Responsible

The Officers of any good guild, as well as its members should be taking an active interest in helping others and advancing their progress. But it’s often hard for anyone to approach someone and try to give them advice. So for those of you on the receiving end, remember it’s more awkward for someone to approach you than it is for you to hear it.

Please be courteous and learn all you can about your toon. What you know or don’t know affects more than just you. What you do to prepare affects more than just you. Every action you take in a guild has the potential to affect a great many others both positively and negatively. One of the most devastating effects a casual guild faces is attrition. Casual guilds will often attract geared and experienced players looking to potentially lead others or just for a more relaxed raiding atmosphere, but they will often leave if others don’t attempt to improve and make progress. Each one that leaves then makes it that much harder for the guild to stay together.

Be courteous of others and responsible for your place in the guild. When you do that, even casual guilds will thrive.

Gruul's Lair; What Not To Do In A Raid!; and Forgive & Forget

2008-07-21T15:39:00.010-04:00

We attempted Gruul's Lair for the first time last Tuesday and it wasn't great. We were using Teamspeak and unfortunately the person's computer wasn't capable of handling 25 users with success. The result was a garbled mess that very few people could understand.

But the real reason for attempting the raid was to get a feel for where we needed to be. We currently have 59 players in our guild with 97 toons at last count and I think close to 75% of those being level 70. So there's really no reason not to be able to do 25 man raids except that we have had a hard time loggnig the right people in at the same time.

Well, aside from the communication problems, we had ppl not paying attention in raid chat and were filling it up with clutter. We did make it to High King with relative ease, but coordinating 25 people, only about 5 who knew at least one way to approach the fight, became a chaotic mess. But here's WHAT NOT TO DO IN A RAID!

WHAT NOT TO DO IN A RAID!

If you're in a voice chat program with 25 people listening in, make sure when you're in another chat program that the appropriate one is muted before making negative comments.

Perhaps people didn't approach the raid with an attitude that this would be a learning experience. Perhaps they thought it would be free loot. Perhaps they still don't realize how undergeared they are even for Kara. More than likely it's all of these things.

We had one hunter get so frustrated that he evidently was talking to someone in voice chat and started saying "These assholes..." when talking about the two raid leaders not listening to his advice on how to approach the fight. Ironically, he's also one of the most undergeared we had there and although he acted like he had been in there a hundred times, his gear didn't show it. In fact, one officer recalled him mentioning something about running it a lot, but when we finally called the raid the hunter asked "Are we moving on to Gruul?"

Now I don't know how many of you might understand how Gruul's works, but the door to continue is locked until you down High King. So my response was no we can't. His sarcastic comment was "Can't or won't?", to which the other officer responded "Haven't you run this a hundred times?" Anyway, the hunter was then kicked from the guild after the raid by another officer who tried to settle down, but couldn't. Due to the poor voice chat only about half the raid heard what the hunter had said.

Moral of the story: Keep your cool or keep your mouth shut!

Forgive & Forget

The following day the hunter contacts our GM with a story that he was over at a friend's house and while he was in the bathroom his friend began to mess with his game by purposely stating those comments for us to hear. Evidently he's done this before on XBox360 and supposedly his friend and he sound a lot alike.

So we gave him the chance to explain his story to all officers and I spent several minutes listening intently to see if I could tell a difference in voice from what I remembered. There may be a difference, I don't know. Bottom line, we decided to give the guy a chance.

I told him that regardless if his story was true or not, the majority of the guild were not going to believe it, the officers included. I'm one who's generally willing to give someone another chance, in some cases several chances. Everyone says something stupid from time to time that they don't mean. This hunter was going to have to spend some time gaining the trust of the members and officers, but if he was willing to work on it I would vote him back in. We'll see if it was a wise decision

I also mentioned that he may not agree with what the raid leaders were doing, but when it comes to organizing 25 people, everyone has to listen to the appointed leaders regardless of who stupid they think it is or chaos ensues. I explained our purpose that night was to see where we stood and what we needed to do to make things work in the future. It was never about downing High King, though we did think we had a good shot at it. We were short two healers, but given the right make up and gear we could have done it still. There were issues with people listening, which was in part to the voice program, but instructions were issued in raid chat that still weren't followed

This was a learning experience and in general enjoyable for most. (To be honest, I was bored to tears because most of it was sitting around waiting for the raid leaders to decide what to do

Gruul Revisited

On Saturday our GM organized a joint run with another guild that is in much the same boat we are, supposedly in that they don't have enough of the right geared people to run 25 man raids. (I actually want to look into this myself, because quite frankly I think we might be better situated than they. I was told today we were offered an invite to join their guild yesterday. No offense, this pally ain't going anywhere!) They brought half the people and we brought half. Ironically, we brought all the tanks which may be why they have a hard time running stuff

For the first time in a long time, I was not the most geared healer in a raid. That was weird, but man was it a weight off my shoulders! There were two holy pallies from their guild that were more geared than I, as well as a priest. I think in all we brought 4 healers and they brought 4. Anyway, I got assigned to raid heal which was an odd decision in my opinion as a couple of tanks didn't have a pally healer, but who am I to question why

OK, I usually avoid bragging, but screw it! At the end of the night, I had the highest overall healing by a good 200k and even on a couple of the individual boss attempts had the highest. I also was #6 on the overheals and around 30% so I felt real good about that! Not sure how that happens when assigned to raid healing and the tanks are taking the most damage, but it happened

Anyway, we got the loot and one of each class token dropped. Yours truly rolled against one of our rogues to win the Tier 4 shoulders. Everyone from the other guild passed. The other two tokens were also won by members of our guild in addition to the other piece of loot. So we cleaned house. We continued on to Gruul and had asked that some of our members pass on Gruul loot to allow the other guild to get something

Unfortunately after several wipes we gave up when members of the other guild started to leave. We got him down to 25%, 12%, 2%, and 14%. I can't remember the last attempt, but it went up as people got tired. The 2% fight was very disappointing since we had just lost too much dps near the end.

Zul'Aman: 2 more bosses!

2008-07-17T16:21:00.002-04:00

Guild firsts! We're excited!!

Akil'zon

Halazzi

Now That's a Raid (Drama Notwithstanding)!!!

2008-07-11T13:44:00.005-04:00

Last night was an off-night for raiding, technically speaking of course. Our raid nights are supposed to be Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at 6:00pm server. Invites go out at 5:45pm and first pull is supposed to be no later than 6:15pm. The problem with casual raiders is we rarely get that done.

In all fairness, last night was unchartered territory for us. I've mentioned that we've been recruiting fairly heavily and have in effect absorbed another guild with some fairly decent players. We actually had enough healers and tanks to run two full groups...and we did!

Needless to say the excitement level was pretty high! We've discussed running 25mans for some time now and the fact that we had enough for two full Kara groups without pugs is amazing!

So everyone who wanted to go was invited into the raid group. We had at least one person question whether they were ready to go, which they aren't, but we needed to fill a slot. Besides it's lower Kara and anything would be an upgrade to replace all the greens and blues she had. She got at least two pieces.

Our GM started moving people around to figure out if two groups would work and then consulted a few of the officers. We felt that it was good and started to proceed when the drama hit.

A few people kept mentioning that they wanted to run a full clear tonight and wanted to make sure they were in the group that did. I replied saying "Everyone wants a full clear.", to which several people laughed.

Several things have to be taken into consideration on a night like this.

First, this wasn't technically a raid night, but we always try to accomodate people if there are a sufficient number ready to do something. Tonight was no different and when the excitement started to build that there was a small possibility of running two groups, we did try to accomodate that.

Second, not everyone was going to have the most ideal group. We had two ways to go about this. We could load one group up for a full clear and the other group with the remainder and pray to the gods of Azeroth that they could down Attumen or we could divide up and hope that both groups could get fairly far. We opted for the second choice.

Third, even if we tried to get everyone that could stay for a full clear into the same group we probably would have ended up with four tanks, one healer, and five dps all of which probably can't CC in Kara. They wouldn't have made it any farther anyway. I pointed this out too.

That's when the drama hit. One of our members wanted to run with another particular member, but was moved into the other group. She instantly said "This is crap.", proceeds to log out, and then logs on to another toon that's in our guild.

There was some behind the scenes complaining, whispering, and general "WTH's going on?" I whispered her to find out what was going on and she didn't respond. I finally whispered for her to please respond. She did eventually with a comment about how we're breaking up her old guild members that know how to run together and do very well together. Her argument was that we should utilize that advantage and keep them together.

If you ever find yourself in this situation, remember be very careful about how you respond. Try to stop and put yourself in their shoes.

My first initial reaction was to tell her to grow up. I wanted to yell at her as she initially ignored my requests to know what was going on. Besides I was already upset that she quit the raid to log onto an alt when things didn't go her way.

This may sound pretty narcisistic, but I'm going to say it anyway. I've been told that I need to learn how to be selfish. I have a tendency to think of others before myself in the game. Take this with a grain of salt because it's true and it's not. I tend to think long term. I want to start raiding ZA. I want to start raiding Gruul's and Mag's and get my loot there. I want to experience something besides Kara before the expansion hits. Notice all the "I want" statements? The only way for me to do this is to help others gear up, get rep, enchant, gem, etc. I've spent thousands of gold giving guildies free enchants, mats, etc. Yes, I'm not inherently a selfish person, but don't get me wrong I'm still doing it with the hopes that I will benefit later too.

So whenever someone throws a fit, a tantrum, /gquits, or quits a raid because something isn't going quite the way they would like, I get angry. I have spent the last two months generally never getting farther than Shade or Chess just to gear up others. Hell yeah I want my tier 4 helm! Like I said I've spent thousands on enchants, mats, etc. What about the hundreds spent on repairs from continuously wiping? There was a time when I was part of a group that almost had Kara on farm. I've spent time farming fire and water motes for people. I gave someone 12 primal waters just yesterday from my own stash. I might be the only maxed fisherman in our guild. And you're going to throw a hissy fit and purposely disconnect, leave the raid, or /gquit?!! WELL, #$%@ YOU!!!

Sorry got a little carried away.

But I didn't say those things. I tried to remain calm. I waited knowing that she was frustrated because she had hoped for other things. What I did say was, "OK. But this isn't your old guild. We have a lot of new people that need to learn how to play together or we'll never get into 25 mans. Hell, I want to be in [so-and-so's] group, but because of the healer make-up I can't be." This is true, I really did want to be in the other group, but I was put where I was needed.

Shortly after that statement, she logged back over and we went.

Now how do you react after that? There's a good way and a bad way. Shortly after both groups got started I tried to see if I could lighten the mood a little. In guild chat I said "First one to wipe, farms next week." Several people laughed. No one in our group mentioned anything after it, but then again she was in the other group. I can only hope that tensions weren't high over there.

The bad way to handle things is to hold it against her. I'm not saying that we don't have to keep an eye on people who react poorly, but when tensions are high not everyone makes the right decision. But if you're one that makes one of the bad decisions, remember you just showed that your wants and needs are more important than the guilds. You have to trust your officers to know what they are doing is in the best interest of the guild. If you don't agree, feel free to address that with an officer at the appropriate time. During raids is not the right time.

Also remember that just because you made a poor decision, and now may not be viewed as highly as you may have been, doesn't mean that you have to stay that way in their eyes. Do what you can to assist the officers by cooperating and learning to trust them. If you have ideas, share them. You'll be amazed at how little officers know even if they look like they know everything and if he/she is a good officer they will give you credit.

I have yet to get home and check with the other group, but Group 1 only got through to Curator. We one-shotted everything, including Romulo and Julianne (shoulda heard the groans) with 3 undergeared people. Curator was a mess though.

When we got to Curator we ran into a little bit of drama as two different strategies presented themselves. We've got a lot of new people in the guild and not everyone was on the same page. We wiped a couple of times and then tried it another way. That way still didn't work, but it was agreed that our dps was light. Looking at one report for one of the fights, we had a lock at 800+ dps and the rest below 400. We just weren't able to down the adds fast enough.

All in all it was still a great night. We successfully had our first two full Kara groups and I hope everyone had fun!

Blog Look

2008-07-09T14:49:00.003-04:00

A few days ago I updated my blog image a little. I posted a new banner and called it Flash of Light. This is something I wanted to do for a long time, but afterwards it didn't look right. So I've changed it back.

Matticus posted about blog identity the other day and after reading it I thought about my own blog. I guess I just picked my own Warcraft identity initially because I didn't know what I was going to end up writing about.

I always wanted to write a lot about pally healing and then eventually healing in general, but I still have to get my priest to 70, let alone respec to Holy first. I'm leveling a druid as feral, which during lunch today hit 15. It's my intent to switch to Restoration, but our guild now has a large surplus of warrior tanks and only one feral tank. No we don't have pally tanks yet. And no, I'm not being lazy by not posting him over on the side bar. He's my escape from everyone when I just want to be left alone, so he won't be making an appearance any time soon. But overall my intent is to get one healer each so that I understand healing to it's fullest.

Anyway, I always wanted to posts informative blogs about healing and paladins and warcraft in general, but there's so many more people that do that already and are more qualified. I still consider myself a newbie when it comes to Warcraft. But I guess I'm just not ready to be able to write this informative stuff yet. Flash of Light hints that the blog is about healing and more specifically pally healing. That's a little misleading so I've changed it back. Who knows, maybe in the future I'll be more experienced that I can do something like that? And if I ever get to that point, I can just start a new blog and look back on this one in embarassment! LOL!

Anyway, I still can't believe there are a few people that read my blog. I suppose it would be cool to have a blog like Big Red Kitty or others, but then again that's not why I do this. I do this for me and for the occasional chance that I might actually say something worthwhile. So if you're one of the few, thanks for reading.

Time Off from Raiding

2008-07-09T14:32:00.003-04:00

A couple of months ago I was spamming trade chat like most guild recruiters looking for healers. Amazingly, one day I happened to find one! This might have been the most extraordinary luck our guild has had since starting up.

This healer brought a friend over eventually and everything was great. The healer has turned out to be a top-quality player and a great asset to our guild. The friend he brought over has also been a great addition. In the past week, we've had an flood of newcomers to the guild, many of which were members of their old guild which evidently had been dying a slow death, but die hards managed to hold on for quite a while.

It appears that we've unintentionally absorbed another guild and it appears that it was a great thing! The other night we had 22 lvl 70 members online at one point. We've been trying to get people geared and excited for 25 man content for a couple of months now, but we've been unsuccessful. Whether this is due to the fact we are on a Pacific Coast server and at least half of us live in the Midwest or on the East Coast, I'm not sure. We have players from all four major US time zones. Getting a raid together is sometimes a chore.

So where's the time off? Well, we have so many people now that I was able to actually opt out of our Kara raid last night. At first I didn't think I was going to be able to. One of our healers opted to play an alt he's leveling and didn't want to go and the other was non-responsive, busy trying to get an arena team together I guess. So we just had 10 people to go, so I started in. Then at the last minute someone logs in late who wanted to go. I gave up my spot, although thinking back on it I probably shouldn't have.

Earlier in the day we had an officer meeting to discuss issues in the guild. One issue that came up is the frustration we have with being too lenient and I admit that I'm the biggest culprit. We have a tendency to allow people to come late and we still go. It was decided we need to make it known that you show up on time or you don't go. I did kind of want to go, but I wasn't feeling well and my wife was bugging me to go watch a movie with her, so I opted out and gave in.

It is nice to have a night off. Kara has been somewhat frustrating for me. I have yet to be part of a full guild clear, not that I haven't done it before, but I'm always part of the group that is still gearing up. I don't mind helping, because I really don't need anything from Kara, though I can use badges and a couple of items. But when others work it so that they get a geared group to go that also doesn't need anything, yet go for a full clear and not assist those that really need it, it upsets me. They complain about wasting their time and I see their point, but what makes their time more valuable than mine?

Anyway, enough with the QQ'ing. Things are good in the guild. We've got a few issues we're trying to hammer out, but we're almost there. And I never thought I'd admit it, but having a little time off from Kara was a great thing!

/WoW quit?

2008-07-03T07:58:00.006-04:00

Is it time to quit WoW?

[Warning: QQ in progress!]

I guess let me give you a little background first. I started playing WoW just over a year ago and have had a lot of fun and some not so fun times. I started out with minimal socializing and pretty much leveled entirely on my own. I belonged to a couple of guilds, but honestly said very little and did very little with anyone in them until I got into Outland. Even then initially I did very little with others unless I was asked to come along.

I'm not a social person. Most of my guild mates would disagree. I'm known for my bad jokes (which ironically people laugh at) and am never one to hestitate at speaking up. I've enjoyed the social aspect of the game, but honestly it was easier when I didn't.

I'm currently a Co-GM for whatever that is worth in our current guild. We have three of us, but to be honest it feels more like the GM and I are running things and last night that was expressed to me directly.

Somehow, and I'm not sure exactly how or why, when we merged to form a new guild I somehow became the go to guy for our side. I can only surmise that this is because I'm more vocal in my opinions than the others and so naturally the GM and Co-GM on the other side gravitated towards me. I never asked for this and although I am more than happy to take a leading role as it is very important to me on what this guild is about, I'm tired of being the middle man. Let me explain.

We use Teamspeak. Until recently the aforementioned Co-GM and the GM have often spent all their game time using TS and early on invited me into the chat to discuss initial issues, guild directions, goals, etc. Perhaps this is where it all started. I often log in before the other officers. Regardless of how it happened somehow I became the default guy everyone complains to. Weird thing is, anyone can log into Teamspeak, but they dont.

Several weeks ago we were in Kara when an issue came up. I had to sit and think about what it was just now because I couldn't remember. That's how big it was! The issue was switching people for the Chess Event who needed a loot drop with those who didn't. This was all done privately in whispers and officer chat. I wasn't paying that much attention because I was in a private chat with someone, again can't remember what that was either. It's amazing how these "important" things take up our time! The GM pulled the aforementioned Co-GM, myself, and another Co-GM into another channel within Teamspeak. As I was in-game, I didn't know who got pulled in and didn't notice that one of our Co-GMs was left out. To say the least, this Co-GM was furious! So I said he or she should say something to the GM about that. Did he or she want me to say something? The response I got was very close to "no f#$* it! whatever!" I did say something the next day about making sure to include all Co-GMs and officers in those private chats, to which the response was that it wasn't a big issue and was primarily between the individuals who were involved in talking and he didn't mean to exclude anyone. There was one Co-GM pulled into that chat that wasn't initially involved, but to quote another, "whatever".

We have an Officer who complains that the GM and myself made the decisions regarding DKP without consulting anyone else. This may or may not be true based on how you look at it. I informed people we were going to implement it. We took a week to test it out. I badgered the GM and others to help decide what the points were and if we would utilize it in Kara and on and on and on... Did we initialize and start it? Yes. Did I try to include others? Yes. Do people know how to communicate? HELL NO!!

So our Officer believes our geared mage quit last night after I finally enforced the use of DKP bidding on a Tier 4 drop from Curator. Our GM has asked everyone to link what they have and asked people to pass to those who need it most, but he wasn't around last night. So if we do it his way what's the point of DKP? It also doesn't help address the next issue.

We have one Co-GM very concerned about loot beyond Kara and the potential of losing that loot to someone who is currently gearing up in Kara. There is also the concern that we have several geared level 70s who are not assisting in Kara and it is making setting up two Kara groups extremely difficult, which in turn has made progress in Kara slower. It is the belief of the officers that these people will mysteriously have time for raiding again once we get into Gruul's, Mag's, ZA, etc. As such, how do we keep them from reaping the rewards of the hard work the others have done in gearing up and those who have helped along the way? DKP seemed to be the answer.

If we don't utilize DKP in Kara, as we haven't been except to charge the person 1 DKP when they get the loot, then everyone accumulates DKP at the same rate and we're all on equal footing when we get to 25mans. This doesn't address the fear that one Co-GM has at losing that precious loot to someone else that's been getting loot for quite some time as he's patiently waited before he can acquire loot again. There needs to be a minimum charge.

The ironic part here is that I brought this up the other day in an Officer chat, where the GM wasn't present. I said we needed to talk this all out with the GM
and make a decision sooner than later before going much further with DKP. This goes to my argument that people were included, albeit they have a point that it may be somewhat later than they would have liked. Guess what? No one's talked to him.

So here's everything in a nut shell:

GM complains that a Co-GM runs pug Kara groups with only a few guildies. This makes it difficult to then later fill all spots for our Kara group. He says that f$#%ing s$#% must stop! I say I was informed not to say anything by one of our Officers as it is a touchy subject so he (the GM) needs to talk to that Co-GM. Guess what? He doesn't.
Co-GM complains about losing a particular piece of loot in Gruul's when we get there to someone who is not a main tank/healer/dps and feels that main tanks and main healers should always gear up first. He has a solid argument as if our regular tanks and healers can't gear up first and lose gear to those who show up from time to time, it'll make progression extremely hard and slow. Also, this is after evidently complaining repeatedly to an Officer before it ever gets to me. I suggest we all talk to GM when he gets on to discuss. Guess what? No one has, though I have mentioned it to the GM and asked him to talk to the others. Guess what? He hasn't.
Co-GM complains about not being included in guild talks and private chats. Is pissed off, starts cussing behind the scenes, and generally becomes defensive. Suggest talking to GM, even ask if I should talk to GM, to which I get a negative response "no f#$* it! whatever!" I did talk to GM and though inclusion got better, it's still not there 100%.
Initial push to start using website for raid signups, etc. No one does and even one Co-GM and GM say they didn't because they're always on. No excuse. If Officers can't set the example, no one else will follow. Website becomes fairly pointless. Only reason anything is on it is primarily because I've posted all the news and most items in forums. Happy to do it by the way, but no one's using it.

Bottom line? Our problem lies in lack of communication. Somehow I ended up being the translator between the GM and everyone else. It stops now! I've sent in game mail to the GM to get with the others and figure it out. I've whispered one Co-GM to get everyone together. I sent e-mail to one Co-GM and two Officers to figure this all out. Until it does...I've effectively /wow quit.

(Hope they do it soon too! Wanted to level Maedchen this long weekend, but I ain't logging in on toons the guild knows until they get it figured out. In fact, I'm so frustrated and so not having fun, that I may just quit WoW altogether.)

Transmitting Personal Info: Account Security

2008-06-27T12:31:00.003-04:00

So I was logging in Tuesday after the weekly maintenance and like normal I pay little attention to what's on screen, but start getting comfortable in my chair in anticipation of playing.

But wait! Out of the corner of my eye I see two words pop up on screen "personal info"!! I've never seen this is the pop-up window before and my heart starts racing! What's going on?! I could swear I saw something to the effect of "transmitting personal info", but I can't be 100% sure.

As soon as I log in, I mention it in guild chat, but no one else seems to have seen the same thing. I immediately go back and change my password completely afraid that I've been hacked.

Now everything I've ever read seems to indicate that people who get hacked are those that answer questionable e-mails, buy gold online, or unfortunately were susceptible to that Flash player exploit, etc. I've never gotten a questionable e-mail claiming to be from Blizzard. I've never purchased gold or power-leveling services. And I recently bought a new computer that was already up-to-date on the flash player. I do however scan for other blogs all the time and visit sites like Wowjutsu, Be Imba!, and Wowhead.

So what happened? No idea. At first I thought, OK if I've been hacked, I've at least changed my password and that's all I can do. If it's more likely that I'm overreacting, then it probably had something to do with the recent Season 2 update. Still no one else saw it. Then on Wednesday a friend and fellow guildmate also saw the same thing as she logged in. I told her to immediately change her password, just in case.

Have you read my last post where I said I was lazy? I really should send a notice to Blizzard asking about it...

Just goes to show how lazy I am...

2008-06-27T10:00:00.003-04:00

Finally decided on a name for my blog. Kyrilean of Arathor was very generic and I only did it last January because I couldn't come up with anything else at the time.

Well, OK I didn't finally decide on a name, that's where the lazy part comes in. "Flash of Light" was an obvious choice for several reasons and it appears no one else has taken that name. The Holy Light already exists, but I spam Flash of Light about 90% of the time so it fits more. Besides I'm a Monty Python fan and well "Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!"

The lazy part is creating a banner. Thank you, Pugnacious Priest! I guess the final lazy part is finishing up about 4 or 5 posts I'm currently working on, but getting nowhere with.

OK, maybe I'm not so lazy. Yes, I need to update my toon's pic (wow that's old!) But I have been spending a lot of time on Maedchen and finally got her to level 50 yesterday! Now I need to spend some time getting her herbology and alchemy maxed. I'm tired of buying elixirs for Kyrilean. I've also spent a lot of time posting items and info on our guild website and recruiting tanks and healers. I checked yesterday and we had 48 lvl 70 toons, some of which are alts. Our GM alone has five I think! But in reality I think we've got around 30+ actual different players for those 48. Why can't we get a 2nd Kara group running?! Well, we only have four tanks and if even one doesn't show... So I recruit.

On the plus side, we downed Nalorakk again last night and he dropped Formula: Enchant Weapon - Executioner so I can add another enchant to my list. It was decided that an officer would automatically get any recipe so long as they did not have it before the rest of the members would. This way we can minimize our risk of enchants leaving the guild.

World of Wifecraft

2008-06-24T12:28:00.003-04:00

It's fairly tame, but there is a little bit of language so if you're sensitive to that...

World of Wifecraft

....

$#@%: Patch 2.4.3

2008-06-19T11:48:00.004-04:00

I've never been one to read the patch notes in the past. For the most part I'll admit I was dumb and stupid. I'm still learning a ton about the game's mechanics and was more worried about just gearing up before worrying about the little nuances. Fortunately, I have spent some time this past month trying to get more familiar with some of those nuances, specifically macros.

This past month I've finally gotten comfortable enough to understand how the mouseover macros work and have implemented it in my healing spells and Cleanse. In researching it I stumbled upon some notes about equipping Librams for each of the heals to increase the healing output. For the most part I'd been doing this manually and hadn't thought of trying it in a macro. There was some explanation about difficulties that I still don't understand, but I'm going to find out after what I found out about 2.4.3!!!

Whatever the difficulty is--has something to do with cooldowns I think--that the cast needed to be before equipping the appropriate libram. To be honest, I read through it twice and still didn't understand, but I was primarily only interested in knowing that it worked. I also unfortunately cannot give credit to the appropriate person as I cannot remember where I found this info, so thanks to whomever and sorry. But I was excited and set up my macros:

#showtooltip Flash of Light
/stopcasting
/cast Flash of Light
/equip Blessed Book of Nagrand

#showtooltip Holy Light
/stopcasting
/cast Holy Light
/equip Libram of the Lightbringer

I didn't even know Patch 2.4.3 was in development. I find out this morning and start reading through some of the cool things they've changed when I stumble upon this little number:

Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress.

$#@%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've tested it, it works great! Now it won't!!! Crap. /sigh

Well I need to figure out what the issue with equipping the libram before the cast actually is. I think it had to do with some sort of libram cooldown, but I didn't think those had any. Hopefully this is nothing and I can proceed, but my initial reaction is:

$#@%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Preparing for Wrath of the Lich King

2008-06-18T15:21:00.003-04:00

So Phaelia asked over at Blog Azeroth what people were doing to prepare for Wrath of the Lich King. There have already been a multitude of responses and since I’ve been somewhat at a loss for what to write about these days; here’s mine.

For the most part, I’ve been working on getting through as much end-game content as possible. I’ve seen all of Kara and have personally been a part of downing every boss except Netherspite, which unfortunately I wasn’t around for, and the animal bosses which I probably will never do. I’ve seen Gruul, but not the High King. Night ended in wipes. I’ve downed Nalorakk and seen Halazzi, but that’s it. Never been to The Eye, Mag’s, BT, Hyjal, or Sunwell. Chances are I won’t see the last 3 before the expansion hits.

Actually I take that back. I suppose I have seen Hyjal. A friend of mine and her guild got really bored one day and decided to run in there to see it. There was only about 20 of us ranging in gear from Tier 6 to blues/greens. We actually survived the initial swarm, but the defenders didn’t. LOL!

In order to do this, I’m actively spending time recruiting and finding ways to motivate others to gear up in Kara. There’s only so much I can do. (Hmmm, there’s a post topic here.)

I’d love to get an Amani Bear Mount, if for no other reason to say I did it. I think we’re all aware that once Wrath hits, this drop will no longer be available and will be replaced with an appropriate epic drop.
I’m determined to get the Champion of the Naaru title, again for no other reason than to say I did it. I guess you will still be able to get it once Wrath hits as long as you don’t hit level 71. This would mean not installing Wrath I guess. I’ve already completed every heroic except Slabs to get it. Trying to gear people up in my guild to get ready for Mag’s and Gruul’s, but I need them to actually log on during raid times. /sigh

I’ve already maxed out all of my professions, including the secondary ones. One of these days I’ll remember to level up my 2H Axe and 2H Sword. They’re already around 365 anyway. I just always use a mace. I’m one point from Unarmed, but never seem to get around to maxing that one either.

I want to hit exalted with Lower City and Shat’ar. I’m revered with both. I also would like to hit exalted with Keepers of Time. Can’t remember what standing I have with them and too lazy to look it up.

I’m working frantically on leveling Maedchen to 70 before the expansion. I’d like to raid with her in Kara if possible too. After last night’s Kara run with a shaman healer, I think Erdkrieg is going to get some play time soon! Maybe I’ll spend two hours a week with him.

I’m not really trying to save money for the future, but its happening. I hit the dailies maybe twice a week. Otherwise I do 3-4 every day, so I’m not gaining money from that. I’m just so burned out from the dailies that I cannot motivate myself to do them. Besides I really don’t need the money. I’m not rich by any means, but I have sufficient to purchase what I need for raiding at the beginning of the week and not worry about repair costs at all.

I’m gaining a majority of my money from farming gems and having a friend cut them for me. I usually spend about 1-2 hours doing this every day. On any given good day I’ll average 5 gems/hour. On really poor days I’ll end up with 2 every hour. The Royal Nightseye is selling well for me. I post it for 75g and get 73g after the AH take. I always get undercut, but mine always sell; always seems to do better during the week especially on Tues/Wed after the Kara reset. The main thing to remember is to not flood the AH or it’ll kill the price and don’t undercut. I was undercut 6 or 7 times when I posted three of these gems the other day. This morning I logged in to find I had sold two and one was returned.

Once Wrath hits, I intend to level Ky to 80, along with Maedchen, and possibly Erdkrieg if I get that far. I want to continue raiding once Wrath hits and I’m really looking forward to the 10man raids. Although I know a lot of people that would call me hardcore, I’m still too casual to put up with egotistical pricks to join a “hardcore” raiding guild. I just want to have fun, and I actually mean it.

I will roll a Death Knight. Oh groan! Yes, I know. Either you’re on one side of the fence or the other about this. I think I’m somewhere in the middle. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be intrigued enough to actually do something with it, but I doubt it. I like healing too much. Besides I have no idea what the Death Knight really entails. I’m not really reading anything about any of it. I don’t understand how people can do the beta testing and then not get really bored doing it all over again. Where’s the fun in that?

So why roll a Death Knight? Well, right before Wrath comes out I’m going to be farming up a lot of mats and/or gold to level 2 professions with him. Sure I might not be able to max them out, assuming that the limit will raise above 375, but I’ll have someone that can do quite a bit and will no longer be required to turn to others. Actually that might motivate me to at least level him to whatever is required to max out the professions.

I don’t know that I’m actually preparing for Wrath so much as just trying to finish up as much as I can before everyone loses interest in Outland like they did with Azeroth.

Maedchen's Journal: DING dong the Witch is Dead

2008-06-13T14:06:00.003-04:00

OK, so there's no witch. It's just something I had started saying to friends when leveling instead of the boring old "ding".

Finally got Maedchen up to level 40. As slow as the regular mount is, it's such a delight to be able to ride now. I had forgotten how painful it was to walk everywhere. Areas like Redridge Mountains and Stranglethorn Vale are horrible places to have to walk.

Still wondering if I will actually be able to get her to 70 and raid at least Kara before the next expansion comes out....hmmm.

Return to ZA

2008-06-13T14:00:00.004-04:00

I've been so busy with work lately that I haven't had time to post anything, not that I have had a lot to say lately. It's harder to get people to raid anymore with their real life commitments or burnout. However, last Saturday we attempted ZA once again with a better mix of DPS than we had when we were just looking around. It took a couple of attempts, but we got Nalorakk down! This was an exciting moment as we now know we can at least farm this boss twice a week if nothing else for gear. We still have a ways to go as a guild even in Kara, but we're making progress.

We made our way to the fourth boss afterwards and although we were able to survive, our DPS again wasn't enough to be able to take this boss down. We did manage to get him to under 30% at one point before he started healing himself.

New World of Warcraft Expansion Released!!

2008-06-10T11:07:00.003-04:00

Check it out!

_

Raiders of Lost ZA

2008-06-03T15:20:00.003-04:00

Zul’Aman has always been somewhere I was never sure I’d get to see. It was a lost treasure always dreamed of, but never attained. That all changed Sunday night…

Our GM set up a guild run of ZA to do something new and as incentive for people to start really gearing up in Kara and Heroics. What transpired surprised me to no end! We actually did well for being totally unprepared! Only a couple of members had ever set foot in ZA and half of us aren’t geared for it. In fact, our druid healer isn’t quite geared for Kara yet, but is doing wonderful as he learns his raid heals.

It took some time to get to the first boss, and we wiped a couple of times I think. All in all the pulls weren’t that bad although they hit hard. By the time we got to the boss learning to heal that fight was a little difficult, but after the 2nd wipe we had it down. Once we figured out the tanks were switching as the boss changed forms and were able to hold the aggro accordingly, it became easy to focus on that one tank. Excitement coursed through my veins as I saw we were starting to get the hang of it and really beat down the boss!! Unfortunately, my mana was starting to get low and I had already used a pot 3 times, then I heard the other pally announce he was out of mana and the druid chimed in right behind him. I looked at the boss’ health at roughly 28% and thought, dang we almost made it!

We did get the boss down to 23% before all 3 healers were drained and the tanks started to fall. I couldn’t believe it though. We actually managed to take the first boss to 23% on our third attempt!!! And to top it off we didn’t even have our top DPSers in the raid that night!! Wow!!! The entire guild should be excited about this!

Seeing new content was a blast! Knowing that we’re actually making progress is a huge boost for me! The prospect of knowing we’re progressing is the motivation I needed to help with my burnout problems. I can’t wait for our next attempt!

My User Interface

2008-06-03T06:21:00.006-04:00

Well here's what my UI looks like. It's more than a little cluttered, but it works for me right now.

But what does all of this mean? Well, if I activate a couple of the add-ons I can show you what all of it is.

So what are my add-ons? I've got:

Bongos3 - my action bar add-on located at the bottom. I've got it full expanded to 120 buttons. Do I need all of them? No, but having the ability to put the items used for daily quests at the bottom has made doing dailys much easier. I use the same layout for each of my toons, but have character specific key bindings to make things easier. You'll notice I have my pet bar above my bag bar which is to the right above the main action bar. My menu bar is located in the center and my class bar which for my pally is my auras, is above and to the left. I've also got my stats bar to the bottom right. All of these bars are customizable in size and location. My action bar is one bar of 120 buttons. This can be broken up into multiple bars in whatever number of buttons you prefer and located all over your screen. It is highly customizable. You can also turn them off, but I keep the pet bar on for events like Chess in Kara or the Sunwell quest where you take over the ravagers.

Metahud - my range indicator. This is the add-on with the rounded bars to the left and right of me. The two green bars are my own health bar and the health bar of my target on the outside. The blue bar to the right is my mana bar. The mana bar of my target will appear on the right to the outside of my own. The options allow you to change the locations a little. The health/mana totals are also shown at the bottom of these bars including percentages. You'll note that I am casting Flash of Light with 0.7 seconds remaining shown above my mana bar. It's also shown just above my buttons, but that one is part of Bongos3.

VisualHeal - is located just below my menu bar and on top of my action bar. On my previous computer it was above the menu bar, just below my feet. I've forgotten how to move it. What does it do? The screenshot doesn't do it justice, but imagine my health being at 50%. When I begin casting a heal spell, it will show in a lighter green color the estimated health gain I will achieve from the spell. This works for any target.If you begin to overheal, the health bar will extend to the right past the bar length and show up red. Just a handy tool I like to use, but probably not necessary. It does not seem to take into account crits, because I've been at 20% and cast Holy Light on myself only to show it going up to around 50%, but then maxing my health out on a crit.

X-perl - is my Unit Frames add-on. If you're a healer and aren't using some kind of a unit frames add-on you are doing yourself and your raid a large injustice. I'm told that Pitbull is also an excellent add-on, but it is so highly customizable that I can't figure it out. You'll notice that my character frame has my mana/health with percentages, my buffs underneath me, and a casting bar. The target is next to me also with a lot of information. I also have target's target enabled, which I've moved to the right of the target. All of these can be moved to any location of the screen you prefer. One of the best advantages I've got enabled is the ability to see debuffs I can dispell. The party/raid member's bar will light up a light blue to show me they've been hit with something I can Cleanse. Sure helps being able to get that debuff off the tank who's about to take massive amounts of poison damage I can avert by dispelling it.

The party bars are underneath mine and I've located the raid bars around myself in the center of the screen. Does it get difficult to see sometimes? Yes, but I have to have them there in order to quickly see the health bars and also be able to see what is going on around me. A healer standing still and not noticing that rocks are falling, the blizzard is coming, etc. will die fast! The shaded roll area is where the items to be rolled for will appear. You'll also notice a cross right above my head. That's the Aggro alert. I always move it to the top of the screen, but it always seems to reset there. If you pull aggro a bright red Aggro alert will flash in it's location. Once you lose aggro it will turn green.

Recount - the damage meter. Mine is currently located to the right and turned to the Healing Done page. If you haven't used Recount it's much more than a damage meter. Besides showing heals, it'll show rezzes, dispells, etc. DO NOT KEEP THIS TURNED ON DURING A RAID!!! I only turn this on at periodic times of the raid like after boss fights or at the end. It gives great information and can show the last 5 fights or the entire total since joining the raid. I like to see who I'm healing the most and what spells I'm using on them. It'll give a breakdown and I can see how I'm progressing. BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN COMPARING YOURSELF AGAINST OTHERS!!! A little competition to motivate you to get better is one thing, competition to make sure you stay ahead of the others for the sake of being "the best" can get the raid killed! The ultimate goal is to keep the raid alive. Nothing else matters! If you do that, you could be "the worst" healer in the entire raid, but you did your job and can be proud of that!

Omen2 - the threat meter located under Recount. IF YOU DON'T HAVE A THREAT METER, QUIT NOW!!! No, seriously make sure you have a threat meter. If you're not sure how to use it, because it can be just a little confusing trying to figure it out in the heat of battle, make sure you talk to someone or do some research. They're really easy to understand once you actually know what you're looking at. I've recently acquired the Gavel of Naaru Blessings and noticed that my threat from heals has jumped up quite a bit, or at least I'm pulling a lot more aggro than I used to. More on that on a later post I'm working on.

I've got more add-ons that you can see, but primarily they are things like Gatherer, Atlasloot, Deadly Boss Mods (which is another that's required by my guild for raiding), Auctioneer, etc.

For healers I recommend HealPoints and RatingBuster. RatingBuster isn't healer specific, but it helps you know what you're getting from that +15 Intellect and +20 Stamina.

Burnout!!!

2008-05-30T13:48:00.005-04:00

We’re all seeing more and more evidence of burnout. Burning Crusade has had its heyday and people anxiously await Wrath of the Lich King and I’m one of the many.

I hit burnout a few months ago, so much so that I seriously considered quitting until the next expansion, but held on and found new things to keep me going. I rep’d up to exalted with Aldor, Netherwing, and Sunwell, maxed out my Fishing skill, devoted myself to starting a new guild, devoted myself to getting its members into raiding, and finally got 150 badges to buy my Gavel of Naaru Blessings which in turn boosted me over +2000 bonus healing unbuffed. Trust me that last one was draining. I was only able to average 4-5 badges/night maybe 4-5 times/week. So it took me a month to get all those badges. I’m sure some of you out there got this in a couple of weeks. To get all the remaining badges items I can use, I need just over 500 badges. Oh the pain!

So why the burnout? I think it’s mostly because of the daily quests. I go in spurts, primarily because I don’t absolutely need the money. If I drop below 1000g, then I hit them hard for a couple of days until I’m back around 1200g. If I’m above that, then I see little need to do daily quests because I’ve already gotten my epic flyer, what else do I need?

I’ve told myself to get the money to help a few friends get their epic flying mounts, but I don’t have enough motivation to keep at it and my own alts aren’t anywhere close to 70. I also want to collect all the enchants I possibly can and that’s expensive, but most I don’t absolutely need. Someone posted Vitality the other day at 1200/1400. After it didn’t sell he posted it at 1250/1500 the freaking #@$^@%&!!! That’s one I desperately want in my collection!!! But again, I refuse to pay 1500g for an enchant that I can probably get for free with tip and my own mats and did on my current boots.

So what do I do? Well, I do the fishing daily every day. There’s the cooking daily, but I only do the soup and the mana berry quests. I don’t have the motivation to do the others, because I usually don’t do the quests in Skettis or Blade’s Edge anymore. I finish the Netherwing quests only because I spend a lot of time mining nethercite for the chance at gems. I fish a lot for food buffs to put in the guild bank and for Motes of Water. But even now that’s getting old.

Running Kara is keeping me from getting too bored, but we can’t do that every night and we do plan on getting into ZA this week for a little peek. So to combat the burnout I’ve started spending time with Maedchen again. The part I hate about leveling is in the beginning. Every quest seems to have you run all over and kill x number of mobs, the only problem being that you have to kill about 30 of them; or a drop quest where the number of drops is high and the drop rate low. I don’t remember it being this bad in later levels, but I’m old so maybe there’s a few holes in my memory. However, I’ve gotten her from level 25 to 29 in the last two days so I’m pretty happy and excited. I’m sure I’ll spend an enormous amount of time trying to get her to 40 this weekend because I hate walking. With the guys from the other part of the guild merger having so many level 70 toons, it’s motivated me to get Maedchen to level 70 as soon as possible and to start poor little Erdkrieg up again. I spent one night with him and got him to level 5.

I love healing and if you notice a trend here, I’m leveling a Shadow Priest that’s intended to switch to healing once I get to 70, but we’ll see what the guild needs. My little level 5 Shaman will be next, again with the intent to make a healer at level 70. I’ll then start a druid after that and somewhere in between I may do something with a Death Knight.

The Death Knight. Lots of emotions out there about this one and I laugh at most of them. Sure there’ll be a lot of DKs running around, but do you think I’m going to abandon my pally healer for a death knight after all the time and energy I’ve sunk into him?! HELL NO!!! My current intent in rolling a DK will be just to check it out and to level up two more professions. Another reason to start saving money, I guess.

So I guess through all that rambling, my way to combat the burnout is to play the alts. Wonder what others do?

Guild Mergers: Done

2008-05-27T15:36:00.002-04:00

So we did it! We merged our two guilds into one and things so far are going great!

We’ve got a few people back in the old guild that didn’t move over because of the holiday weekend, but I expect that to change here in the next couple of days. Actually I expect whispers tonight when I log in about how lonely they are over there.

Our new guild is ICESTORM and comprises members mostly of Dominion and Crazy Club. There are a couple of others including our friend who pushed for this merger. Given the right conditions we may find ourselves with enough people to run two Kara groups which we’re excited about. We believe we have enough geared to run ZA this week and at least attempt the first boss. That’s a little iffy as many of our level 70s are alts of some of our new friends. But I believe tomorrow we will at least take a peak in there.

So far things seem to be going well, but as with any changes there will always be concerns. We were asked to select two people to be co-GMs and two to be officers. This is to give our previous guild equal representation and speaks volumes to me as none of us requested this. Soon after we selected and the promotions went out, a member of our old guild logged in and immediately asked in guild chat how one particular person got to be an officer. She was mortified and didn’t know how to respond so I explained the reasoning.

There's also concern about access to the guild bank. One of the many things we're working on, but some are hesitant to deposit items when they have no ability to withdraw and rightly so. Members, including Officers, are locked out of the bank right now until we figure out how to set up the tabs and control who has access to what, but access will be given. Can you imagine only a handful of people trying to handle withdraws for the entire guild?

There will always be jealousies and envy as we make and implement the changes in the new guild, but those are the growing pains that we all have to bear. Fortunately I believe that we will have very few problems and anyone who takes issue with the changes is one that’s probably more worried about themselves than the guild anyway.

That’s a big thing about these guys. They are definitely about advancing the guild and not in the way that most people think of raiding guilds. They want everyone to have the opportunity to gear up and see all the content. They understand that in order to advance to Gruul’s, Mag’s, and ZA that we have to have people gear up in Kara. From time to time we can take some of the undergeared through and still succeed, but even small upgrades in Kara will advance the cause of the guild. They all have alts that aren’t Kara geared and mains that are beyond that, but they aren’t worried about running Kara repeatedly or even sitting out until everyone has what they need, including just farming it for badge upgrades.

We’ve got a lot of work to do including discussing; bank tabs and access, ranks, Kara groups, progression raids, new website, heroic runs, rep runs, loot rules and DKP, etc. I’m excited that there’s actually a raiding guild out there with my goals; to raid with friends and just have fun.

Guild Mergers: Update

2008-05-22T10:19:00.003-04:00

So I spent a few minutes talking to the members of this other guild. Here are some of the highlights:

Doesn’t bother them if alts, low levels, non-raiders, etc. are in the guild.
They currently have 6 members. Although they seemed to forget one because of a crazy work schedule right now that keeps him away.
They seem to be excited about the prospect of having us and our mutual friend come aboard. They also expect he will be bringing more of his low-geared buddies he’s found along the way.
They admit they don’t know how to manage a guild and are making it up as they go along.
They have experience in some areas, but admitted that they don’t have experience everywhere.
Our officers will have officer status in their guild. (Ironically, although this was a concern of mine, their initial response to my question about what they saw in store for this guild made me forget to even ask. And damn if that doesn’t make me feel better!)
Their former guild is falling apart. They aren’t sure of all the details as to why, but their theory is that the leaders and high-geared people do not want to spend the time going back through Kara, Gruul’s, and Mag’s to help those that need or could use gear from those areas. They are focused on progression only forgetting that even slight upgrades make a big difference in SSC and Hyjal.
Comments about alts in their former guild lead me to believe that they think the same way we do. Alts take second chair to any main in the guild.
Their goal is to raid and help anyone else along the way.
They want “to start over.” This means they want to spend as much time as it takes to get everyone geared in Kara and heroics before making a large push in progression. That said they expect that progression runs will be during the week and farming Kara on weekends.
They expect anyone that has to sit out of raids to hit heroics for badge gear. With regards to Kara, several of them will opt to sit out in favor of others because they need absolutely nothing from there except badges.
I didn’t touch on DKP or loot much, but they pointed out that one of them lost out on an upgrade because he opted not to use all his DKP for an item which would have resulted in a +60 damage increase. Another lock won it with a +16 damage increase. It was felt that the Raid Leader, GM, or someone should have asked the other guy to pass because it would have benefited the group a lot more. It didn’t sound like they had absolutely locked in on any kind of a loot distribution method, but it appears to be need then greed. Also, they pointed out they don’t want to pigeon hole some items as a definite class/spec item and if it’s an upgrade for any class/spec, they can roll for it. Didn’t quite understand this comment and didn’t ask too much. Might be the idea of a healing staff going to a caster because the +dam is still a better upgrade given that no healer needs it for example.

Well I’m the skeptical one and boy was I ever skeptical since this was being setup by our friend outside of our guild. No offense intended, but he has jumped around a lot and it was about loot. I want loot as badly as the next guy, but not at the expense of enjoying myself. That said, after talking to these guys, I think they’re the real deal. I spent maybe 20 minutes talking to them and made up my mind. It took me 2 hours with the other guy as I was trying to convince myself it would be good for the guild, only to finally decide it wasn’t.

The great thing is we’ll get our friend back in our guild and we’re excited to have him around again. He’s also met a lot of people in running heroics over the past several months, so we expect he’ll bring some with him. With any luck we’ll have at least two Kara groups running this week.

Guild Mergers: Good for Whom?

2008-05-21T15:18:00.004-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, some of our guild members began talking to another guild about a potential guild merger. We aren’t equipped for 25man raids and have enough difficulties organizing Kara raids. Whatever conversations happened between the other guild and members of my guild is beyond me, but I was eventually contacted by the GM of the other guild. We spent two hours in voice chat discussing the idea.

Are Guild Mergers Good Things?

The reasons for guild mergers are probably as plentiful as sand on the beach, but our reason is simple; we want to raid. We have tried recruiting and when we still weren’t able to get people to commit to the times, we saw those people leave. So our members are understandably frustrated and looking for alternatives.

Is a guild merger a good thing? I suppose that depends on who you ask. I want to raid. I’m already geared beyond Kara. There are not enough members to advance to 25man raids. There are not enough geared well enough to enter ZA. If merging with another guild gets me into either of those, it’s a good thing, right? Based on those criteria alone, yes.

But are guild mergers good things? Would this guild merger be a good thing? What makes a guild merger a good thing? How do you make it a good thing? So many questions plague my mind.

Our First Potential Guild Merger

I spent two hours in voice chat the other night discussing the issues that would arise with a potential guild merger. I asked all the questions about philosophy, goals, attitudes, etc. to get as much information as possible to avoid potential problems.

It became readily apparent that this wasn’t a guild merger, although the GM kept referring to it as that. I finally pointed out although we have more members, it was us joining his guild and therefore not a merger. He admittedly agreed because ultimately we were going to do things his way. I had little issue with this other than making sure that our leadership had some voice in his guild, which was agreed to.

Through all the questions I asked, the gist of it came to this:

Raiding was top priority. If you don’t want to raid or can’t, you don’t belong.
If you aren’t about the team and are out for your own personal advancement, you don’t belong.

This guy is going to go far. He seems to know his stuff and he apparently knows how to treat his players. As we were talking, he was running low-geared members through heroic Ramparts for badges and gear. He had spent most of the day doing this, paying for all repairs, pots, food buffs, etc. to get his members through this. His dedication to helping his players advance is going to instill a lot of loyalty and dedication from his members. At first glance, this seemed an ideal opportunity for us. I was all for this deal initially until the answer to this question came out:

Where do our non-70s stand, whether they are mains or alts?

If they are level 65 or above and working hard to get to 70 and show desire to raid, then they are welcome.
Non-level 70 alts will be invited to an Alt guild.
And the comment that killed the deal, “for this guild merger only” those less than 65 would be allowed to join.

That final comment reinforced where this GM’s priorities and philosophy pertaining to this guild lie. This was a raiding guild and it was going to be about that only. He even stated that he likes to shoot the bull as much as the next guy, but if that’s what someone wanted to be there for; they needed to find another guild.

I’m all for a raiding guild. That’s what we started Crazy Club for, but I’m also not going to abandon my friends just because they can’t or don’t want to raid.

Know Your Philosophy

My philosophy is “If you want to raid, great! If you don’t, fine. I won’t kick you out of the guild. You’re welcome to stay. Who knows? Maybe someday you will change your mind and want in. I’m not burning that bridge with you, because I may find that I’ll need you then.”

Everyone plays this game for fun. It annoys me when people recruit with comments about being a fun-loving guild or that they are about having fun. Of course they are!

“Hey, honey! [sigh] I’ve got to go play WoW for a couple of hours.”

Yeah, how many times does that happen? Of course we play for fun. Who pays someone to do something boring or to be miserable for hours on end?

To me fun is having a group of people you like to hang out, raid, and experience new content with, etc. It’s not fun when some of those people are asshats that complain, whine, gripe, moan, carry on, and yet won’t lift a finger to do something about it. Let me restate that, “WON’T LIFT A FINGER TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!” If you don’t like something, do something about it! Make yourself useful, quit pouting!

Unfortunately, my philosophy wasn’t marrying up with the other GM’s philosophy and the merger didn’t go through.

Wait a minute! Ky, you said “First Potential Guild Merger.” There’s another?!

Second Potential Guild Merger

Funny you should ask. Yes, there is a potential guild merger in the works right now. Based on several factors, I am very wary as to how this one might roll out; in large part, because it wasn’t initiated by anyone within our guild.

Wait?! Someone outside our guild and not part of the other guild started talks about merging our two guilds?! Yup. LMAO!

Last week we were unable to get a guild run for Kara together and found ourselves unsaved on Monday evening. We were invited by a friend of ours to run Kara with some of his friends and were asked to fill in certain slots. Guild drama ensued as people logged on and saw we were in Kara without them.

After the run, which was painful in places and we still haven’t figured out why, I was later informed that evidently a couple of the players we were with had asked for this to evaluate us for a potential guild merger. The conclusion; even with the dumb mistakes and constant wiping on Maiden, it was very positive.

The information I’ve received is incomplete and skewed at best. This guild is a top ranking guild on our server raiding SSC, TK, BT, and Hyjal. They’ve recently dropped in rank, but are still one of the top guilds. Is this an indication of guild drama within? They have been courting my friend to join them for some time now and he is keen on joining with them. Two minutes later, the story is that they are even willing to leave their guild to start a new guild with us.

Wait a minute! Call me skeptical, but what top ranking guild is willing to disband their guild to join up with a few unknown players, only a few of which are geared enough to do content they are?

I did some research. I looked up their guild on the armory and they are large. Sorting through the level 70 toons, they have 4.5 pages listed there, whatever total that is. The toons we ran with were rank 6 and 7 in their guild indicating that they probably aren’t officers.

The promises are these guys are geared and experienced and that there are 5-10 of them wanting to start this guild, so obviously it’s not the guild itself that wants us. But later on it was also stated that a few aren’t geared. So I’m thinking its people of a similar mix as our own guild. Also on the plus side, if we start this guild our friend, who we’ve admittedly tried to get to join us in the past, will be joining this one.

There are a lot of advantages to starting a new guild with these guys, but all the same questions from before apply.

Merging: Questions to Ask

How many of them are there?
How many of us?
Would they be interested in just joining our guild to avoid having to pay for a bunch of bank tabs, etc. with the understanding that we will reorganize ranks, guild leadership, etc. as we all agree to?
Guild leadership?

Who will comprise the leadership?
What is the expected guild leadership?

What are their overall philosophy, goals, and expectations?

I want to ask the question “What’s the most important thing you want from a raiding guild? And the answer cannot be to ‘have fun’ as no one would play the game if it wasn’t to have fun. And only one item per answer, not multiple ‘To see new content and to gear up’ type answers.” A single answer really shows what they’re after. Then have everyone whisper me. It’d give me the general idea of what kind of people we’re dealing with.
Are they casual?
Are they hardcore? What is their definition of hardcore?
How do they handle wipes and mistakes?

Raid expectations?
Raiding times?
Set groups? Signups? Alternates?

Raider priority?
Less active raiders, where do they fall?

Specific gear requirements before attending?

Gearing up? How will the non-geared be assisted?

Loot distribution? Spec, off-spec, disenchant? DKP? Or some other system?

All of this aside, my absolute two primary concerns are:

Will everyone from our guild have a place and a home to go to, including the lowly level 15 main and how will they be treated?
That when people talk about “having fun” that they mean to hang out with people they like and play the game to play the game; not for loot, not for badges, not for gold or any other goal they have that may be affected positively or negatively by the gear, skill, class/spec, or even personality of the people in the guild.

Where Do You Go From Here?

Given that everything goes over smoothly and everyone agrees that the merger will be beneficial to all in all aspects, there’s a good chance for a merger here. But what’s next?

We are currently working on setting up some form of chat to discuss a potential merger. The question is whether to start initial chats to get a feel or just jump right in and have everyone there that wants to be a part of the chat?

Although I suppose I’m as excited as the next guy to things getting decidedly better with raiding, I’m probably more wary than any other right now that’s aware of the merger. Why do they want us? Are we a means to an end? Will they genuinely been interested in our members' welfare and advancement?

We stand to lose people without the merger and we stand to lose people with a merger. Finding the right balance that benefits the majority in the guild is the tricky part. Guild mergers have the great potential of good, but good for whom?

What Makes a Good Healer?

2008-05-21T11:31:00.005-04:00

Funny thing happened to me the other day that just had me in hysterics. A friend of mine sent me an IM and prefaced it with “i really shouldn't say it because your ego is already too dam big”. Enter fits of laughter.

What she was referring to was running a 5-man instance with another healer the other night. In the guy’s defense his main is a DPS machine and he’s spent time trying different things with his healer that included trying out the other specs. Overall their run was somewhat of a challenge for her and without me there I guess things didn’t go as smoothly as she’s used to.

Enter my ego. Yes, this makes me feel pretty good about myself and everyone likes compliments on how they are doing. Fortunately, my ego isn’t quite as large as her joking might lead someone to believe. I’ve always thought that I was a decent healer, but reading several blogs and seeing what others are capable of I often see my shortcomings as a healer. I suppose that’s a good thing to keep me from getting too overconfident.

It got me thinking though, “What really makes a good healer?” I remembered reading a post from Matticus about what makes a good Priest and headed on over there to refresh my memory about what it said. The four main points are awareness, perserverance, precognition, and preparation.

Awareness

This is the one thing I struggle with more than any other. It’s the one thing that more healers have a problem with than any other single responsibility they have. It’s difficult to focus on every single health bar in the group and be aware of what’s going on around you. As you concentrate on one section of the screen your eyes focus intently to the exclusion of all else.

I’m reminded of wiping on Nightbane 6 or 7 times before either taking him down or calling it quits because one priest couldn’t watch to see if he or she was standing in Charred Earth. I’d spend a few of my heals trying to keep the priest alive while the tank dwindled.

Perserverance

I think this goes without saying. Once someone gives up mentally, it becomes nigh impossible to win at that point.

Precognition

This is something I’ve gotten pretty good at. Knowing how much you’re going to heal for on average is important. I know approximately what my Flash of Light heals for and also how often it crits. I know what my tanks are capable of sustaining and how long I have to heal others, also being aware of whether or not I’ll have to then hit the tank with Holy Light for the big heal. In general I know that with one tank I can start to hit Flash of Light when he reaches 94%. Anything more is a waste. With another tank I know that I can start at 96% because the average damage rate is going to get her down to 92% by the time my heal hits. This has changed over the past few months as I used to have to start heals almost immediately upon her taking damage. Adjust accordingly.

As a pally healer and spamming Flash of Light, I know that I can usually afford to waste a heal on a potential overheal in given situations like clearing trash. Better to waste the mana and keep the party alive than be stingy.

I also know which DPS in the group are good at watching their aggro. From time to time they’ll take damage from obtaining aggro or getting with AoE. It’s important to know which ones back off and can wait on that heal and the ones who just aren’t aware and continue to get pummeled. This goes two ways, sometimes you have time to heal that guy. Other times…you just let him die and hope he learns his lesson.

Preparation

We all joke about it, but no one ever seems to learn. How often have you heard the following?

[after 2nd wipe]: “I gotta go repair.”
“Anyone got a mana pot?”
“No mage? Anyone got extra food?”
“Sorry can’t summon. I’m out of stones.”

Show up prepared! I bring 60 Golden Fishsticks, 300 Symbol of Kings, 10 Super Healing Potions, 30 Super Mana Potions, 30 Elixirs of Healing Power, 30 Elixirs of Draenic Wisdom, and 20 Superior Wizard Oils. I sometimes bring Superior Mana Oil as well. Overkill? Yes. When am I ever going to be in a raid for 20 hours straight? And if we wipe enough times for me to go through 300 Greater Blessings, we're either really stupid or drunk. But I'm prepared and that's what counts. I often can go the entire week without going back to the AH, but sometimes I gotta give my surplus to others and better that than the headache of having someone hearth back for supplies.

In Addition

Aside from the items that Matticus mentions, I would have to include heal and attitude as the final key points to being a good healer.

"Well Ky, we're talking about healing of course heal is important. You're being redundant."

Let me explain.

I have been in so many raids where people don't do what they are supposed to do. I believe they get bored. Want examples?

The rogue stealths around while everyone buffs up because he justs wants to see what's out there. Whoops! He was spotted and we're all dead. Stay with the group, please!
The mage begins casting his most powerful spell because it has a 6 sec cast time before the tank pulls so that his initial spell will hit shortly after the tank aggros. Whoops! The aggro from the spell created more threat than the tank had gained yet. Mage dies, tank scrambles, healers try to keep everyone alive in the chaos. Be patient, quit trying to be tops on the damage meter.
Holy Priest gets bored during trash pulls and whips out his wand to DPS for something more exciting to do. Wait don't pull next group! Damn these pulls are harder than normal, I used a lot of mana! I gotta mana up again?! What's going on? Pull your weight, do your job, don't put the burden on someone else. You're not as mana efficient as the Holy Pally? Well don't save all your mana at the expense of his. Be a team player.

OK so all three of these examples are personal examples and yes I'm a little bitter about a couple of them, especially the last one. Just do your job and stick to that. Let tanks do their job and DPS do theirs.

Finally, perhaps the most important trait for a good healer is attitude. It is my opinion that we will always be the first scapegoat for blame with regards to wipes. We have the immense responsibility of keeping the group alive and responding to others' mistakes that lead to potential wipes. We are the last line of defense in determining success or failure and that's a responsibility that weighs heavy on us.

Keep a positive attitude! Don't let the blame and criticism get to you; your focus will change to the negative and you'll be less effective. Don't let self-criticism get to you either, that's just as detrimental, if not worse. Learn from mistakes, whether your own or not and you'll find that you'll be a great healer.

Guns don't kill people, damage meters do!

2008-05-03T06:26:00.002-04:00

Some time ago I found myself in a heroic instance and like most instances someone inevitably asked "Does anyone have a damage meter?"

There was a time when I would happily send the report and not think anything was amiss. Recently however, I have begun to cringe any time someone asks for that report. I even found myself last week refusing to acknowledge someone who had asked because I didn't feel like directly lying about having it.

What's wrong with damage meters? Nothing. It's the person evaluating what the damage meter says that's the problem. Be wary of anyone asking to see the damage meter. Chances are, he or she already has one and wants to brag about it. They already know they're at the top of the list and just want the recognition that they are on top of their game. In fact this last week our friend Jim posted it himself without even asking anyone. Imagine my surprise as he was at the top of the list.

Also, damage meters don't tell the whole story. Just because someone has the highest damage doesn't mean they have the highest dps. How long have you been tracking the information? How many bosses or trash mobs are included? The longer the tracking the more accurate the average, but only if the fights are similar in nature. Boss fights and trash mobs are two completely different animals. Although Recount now has the ability to report by each fight too, at least giving you the ability to separate some of the info.

So is all of this really bad? It's bad enought to get you killed. I was in an instance some time ago and we had someone in the group who was determined to be tops on the damage meter, so much so that he kept asking if anyone had one. When he saw he wasn't at the top, he started pulling stupid stunts. On each pull he'd start casting spells a little early just to gain a couple of seconds. His spell would hit after the tank had already attacked, but the aggro wasn't high enough and I spent my first few casts using Holy Light to save his butt. That spell is slow, mana heavy, and with the tank struggling to gain aggro, nearly cost us our lives in several occasions. After each battle I'd have to pause to consume food to regain mana and health. Very ineffecient use of our time.

Let's look at heal meters for a minute too. Almost two months ago, I found myself at about 1200 bonus healing. I have a priest friend who was around 1800 bonus healing. When grouping for Kara, I found myself constantly monitoring the heal meter to make sure that I was on top of my game and making sure that I was going to do as well as her given the difference in healing. It wasn't long before I realized, that I was constantly beating her in total healing. And not only was I beating in total heals, by the time we were done with the raid I was beating by almost twice the amount, if we went long enough. Wait! That doesn't make sense! I have 600 bonus healing less than her, how could I possibly be beating her?!

I spent hours trying to figure this out and only a few things came to mind. First, as a healadin I have the ability to spam Flash of Light until the cows come home. At the time it was healing for roughly 1000 and critting around 1500, if I remember correctly. So these aren't big heals and they only cost me 180 mana. When buffed I was around 9700 mana, so given the right situations I could heal forever. But even that shouldn't account for being a priest who has larger heals, only cast fewer times, right?

Second, because Flash of Light costs me so little, I would top people off after trash mobs just to keep the progress moving faster. My mana regen was fast enough that by the time we pulled I'd be back up to 100%. But even then that would only account for maybe 10k heals after each trash pull. I haven't done the math, but that should in no way account for twice the heals. I would think it might just catch me up.

I even discussed this with a few friends and couldn't figure out what was going on. The only other solution would be that my friend was spending time in combat not doing anything. So I watched and that wasn't the case. I did discover that she would switch to dps with her wand if the group took little damage and I was more than capable of handling it. Still, that shouldn't account for the difference either.

I've spent weeks trying to figure this out. I even went so far as to ask my friend's boyfriend if I was doing something wrong. I hope he didn't get the wrong idea, but I started to really worry that maybe I was doing something wrong as a healer. Maybe I was overhealing or being mana inefficient.

Bottom line, I have no freaking clue as to why the differences. And you know what? It doesn't matter. We both do our job and the raid succeeds and that's what matters! I've finally chalked it up to the differences between priest and pally healing.

I never used Recount before 2.4, but SW_Stats hadn't been updated when it came out, so I switched and I'm glad I did. Recount has more modes of tracking information than SW_Stats did. It's cleaner and sleeker too. As a healer, I've found that the ability to track overheals is a nice feature. Although it gives me a sense of when I'm being inefficient with my heals, I'm sure the party would rather see me overheal than wipe.

So take all those meters with a grain of salt. Watch yourself! Don't become obsessed with being the top dog. Use it for what it was intended; to better yourself. If you're the Affliction Warlock that is the #4 geared person in the group, you probably have a major problem if you're #8 on the damage meter of a 10-man raid in Karazhan with 2 healers. Come on! You should at least be beating the tank!! (Yeah, I know. I should probably let that go, but it still kills me! LOL!)

Things to Remember

2008-05-02T12:18:00.004-04:00

I read World of Matticus on a daily basis. Almost every day he writes about something that I can relate to and today is no different. In yesterday's post Matticus wrote about giving some advice to those just starting out in WoW from a level 70's perspective. Its advice we'd all do well to remember regardless of level.

Last night's raid ironically showed a lot of these things that need to be remembered.

#3 – Players have long memories. Don't be an ass or you might regret it when you finish leveling.

This goes two ways. With regards to Jim, he's an ass. Everyone knows it. He won't be grouping with me in anything anytime soon. Whether he regrets it or not, I don't care. He might not need anything from Kara again, but who knows. If he ever needs a healer, I won't be volunteering.

Gotta remember my own friends were frustrated and leaving the party like that may be viewed as being an ass. Need to spend more time cooling down or approaching them before leaving. Even though I announced it with what I feel was an appropriate amount of time, need to be more respectful of giving them a better opportunity.

#5 - Assume the person you're interacting with is the real deal. The game's anonymity aspect.

This is definitely my view of Jim. He has a big mouth and rarely closes it. I'm all for the joking around and teasing people as I'm known to do it a lot, but there is a limit to how much and with regards to what's appropriate. I hope I know the line.

#8 - The achievements you accomplish in game are what you make of them not what anyone else says.

This one relates a lot. I sarcastically pointed out that I wasn't being selfish and was offended at being accused of such. Everyone has things they want to do. I want the next piece of gear, badges, titles, etc. as much as the next guy, but they're hollow and meaningless without getting those with the friends you're with. As a healer I could easily find a place with any guild and get all the things I've been dreaming about for months in a relatively short period of time, but I don't. I made the mistake of going off to help one friend's guild try and take down Gruul without the rest of my friends. I didn't know anyone. I didn't know the boss. Even though it was kinda cool to see new content, it didn't mean crap without my friends there. I found myself bored.

#11 - Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies on your ignore list.

I was told I could ignore people. Maybe I should start.

#12 - The game's loot is not worth getting emotional over. The people are. Don't get the two confused.

I thought about this because lately a lot of my posts have been highly emotional. I felt I had to support a fellow guildie who defended a raid healer from Jim. I did that by leaving the group after Jim refused to stop. I got emotional, but I don't feel bad about it because I believe I did it for the right reason.

#14 - Just like in the real world, you don't have to be best friends with a someone to work with them. There are a fair number of people in my Guild who I wouldn't have drinks with.

I might not have to be best friends to work with Jim, but I'm not being paid to work with him either.

#20 - The only thing constant about the game is change. There's nothing you can do about it other than to learn and to adapt without complaint.

Well I'm complaining here I suppose, but he's right. Adapting for me means not grouping with Jim again, even if it were to mean the rest of my guild did. I once compromised my values which lead to my WoW burnout a few weeks ago. I became obsessed about the loot, the next raid, etc. I put those values above what I really liked playing for. I'll not do that again.

I'll adapt by accepting that I might not be able to go on raids, get that piece of Tier 6 gear, or getting that Champion of the Naaru title. Absolute worst case scenario and one I pray never happens, I find other friends to do those things with. I may have to accept someday that those friends value those things enough that they will be forced to continue on without me whether they want to or not. It won't be anything personal, it's just part of the game. Why continue playing if you cannot advance?

Vent on Kara (and not the chat software)

2008-05-02T12:15:00.001-04:00

Last night our Kara run was frustrating to say the least. It became so bad at one point that even now after I have calmed down I am considering not playing anymore. Part of me feels it just isn't worth the aggravation.

As we began to group for Kara I was whispered by someone I'll call Bill. Bill wanted to know who was coming so we could begin finding the remaining fill-ins. He did suggest that we not bring a particular person we had brought earlier this week because we were attempting Nightbane which really was going to require better gear than this person currently has. I agreed that it would be difficult and that I would approach this person, but that I also had been spending a lot of time announcing on my blog and in guild chat that "we succeed together, we fail together". I feel very strongly that the person should have the choice to step aside. If he didn't want to and the others refused to bring him, then I would have to in good conscience not attend the raid. I did not however tell Bill this last part.

When the person asked me about Kara, I had the unpleasant task of asking him to sit tonight's raid out. I told him he could refuse, but he said he was OK with it. I honestly believe he wasn't. I felt like an ass. Should I have though? I have stated in previous posts that there is the potential for being asked to sit out on a raid due to gear or someone else's need and I realize this is a necessary part of raiding, but I also believe that he helped us get to the point we were at and deserves every opportunity to continue that whether we succeed or not. In the greatest way possible, he accepted to sit out and said it was OK. He didn't complain or throw a fit. He made it was easy as possible for me and I appreciate it. I still feel like an ass.

We finally got our group together including two others from our original raiding party from way back when. We haven't grouped with either of these two since the unfortunate incident and the GM of the other group, who I'll call Jim, stopped their participation. Unfortunately, this guy was here.

I've never had a major problem with Jim, but I can't honestly say he's one that I'd normally want to hang out with either. He's got a mouth on him that just doesn't stop. He has a special relationship with one of the other players in giving that guy a real hard time. It sometimes gets verbal and the raid chat fills with insults and laughter. In the guy's defense, I do believe he honestly is just joking around like he says. He just doesn't know when to stop.

To speed the story along, things got heated after a few frustrating attempts to take down Nightbane. A healer's mortality was the butt of many jokes and one person stepped in to defend this guy. It finally got vocal with yelling and profanities. Both parties egged each other on. One raider had to leave for a prior commitment and another left because of the drama. I finally stepped in and demanded that it all stop or I would leave the raid. The one doing the defending left the raid. As others attempted to find replacements, Jim kept it up. I told him that he too needed to calm down and stop. After he chose to ignore me and keep it up, I left. It all fell apart at that point.

No person in any group, raid, guild, or other circumstance should have the power to completely control a situation by their leaving, refusal to cooperate, etc. Unfortunately, as a healer, I have that power. It is not something I want to have. I do not want to be thought of as trying to throw my weight around. I don't want to be the guy everyone puts up with because if they don't they're screwed. And tonight was not about that. I felt I gave this guy every chance to stop and he wouldn't. I even stated that I would leave if it didn't stop. I didn't choose a side when I said it, stating that everyone was to stop.

The part that cut me to the bone was when after I logged onto an alt I was accused by friends of abandoning friends and that this was the second time. I admitted that the first time I did it, I was going through some issues and that was all me. I was also accused indirectly of being selfish and only going to Kara for myself and not the good of the group.

This second accusation cut to the bone even more than the other because I had not wanted to go to Kara with Jim. I had tried to talk to him earlier in the week about whether he was interested in going and his response was to say the least curt and more than a brush off. I figured after that I was done trying.

Jim only attended last night after another asked him and because his own guild wasn't going, but he wanted those Tier 4 gloves which he won. But I went anyway because otherwise my friends who had gear they wanted or a particular boss to take down for a questline wouldn't be able to. I'm not saying I didn't want the badges, but I'd have rather run heroics than go with Jim. So I'm still trying to figure out where I was being selfish (being an ass with this comment is another matter). Let me know if you see it.

I was told I didn't allow enough time for others to defuse the situation. In my eyes, there was no defusing the situation because Jim just wouldn't stop. I tried to stop it so we could continue. He only continued to make more and more comments. I was told I could have put him on ignore. Why should I have to do that or even be expected to do that? He was disruptive to the good of the raid and I don't need the aggravation.

I've been told in the past by some to put up with assholes to get what I want, whether it's a raid, heroic instance, or quest help. Just use them and ignore what they say. That's all good and said, but why should I? I play to have fun. Running with a bunch of assholes that think they can act however they want, just because they're protected by the anonymity of a virtual avatar, is not something I pay Blizzard to put up with. If others want to do that, more power to them, but I should neither expect nor be expected to do so. I'll spend my time helping friends I know aren't assholes level their toons so they can come with us instead.

Crazy Club Information Moved

2008-04-29T07:08:00.002-04:00

Seeing as how our guild has started growing and the need to at least post some information somewhere, I've decided to start another blog site to post Crazy Club guild information.

This site is intended for my own personal experiences with World of Warcraft and although I highly doubt that I have that many readers, I'm sure they'd rather not read about Crazy Club rules, recruiting, etc. So I'm moving the information to htttp://crazyclubarathor.blogspot.com.

Return to Karazhan

2008-04-28T06:55:00.006-04:00

After three weeks of repeatedly trying to get back to Karazhan we were finally successful in getting something together last night. I spent hours recruiting this week having several people join the guild and finally getting 15 level 70 toons in our guild. Yeah we're still small. We hope to keep it that way too.

If we can keep the guild to a minimum required to make it through Karazhan and slowly increase that number to accomodate 3 groups, then all of us can make it into the 25 man content without having to compete against each other for slots. It'll also help us be a tighter knit community with loyal players. This is something we are definitely shooting for. I don't know how some of the large raiding guilds handle it.

Two of our friends, Zeza and Latifah, were able to join us last night. Although they had to leave to prepare for their own guild's raid, we were able to down Attumen, Moroes, The Crone, Maiden, and Shade in the space of about 4 hours. Total of 11 Badges and I finally got my Libram of Souls Redeemed.

All in all a great night everyone!

[Edit: Forgot to mention that we almost wiped on Shade the final time. Everyone went down as he approached 1%. Finally, only one hunter and myself were available. I myself was low on HP and mana. I easily gained aggro at this point and in an act of utter desperation, while completely freaking out, I charged Shade hit Consecration and threw a Hammer of Wrath for the win!!! I couldn't stop laughing!]

Crazy Club: Recruiting Policy

2008-04-25T13:57:00.006-04:00

Recruiting Policy

We are always on the lookout for potential new members for our guild. I firmly believe that the majority of those future members will come from contacts you make. Remember this is YOUR guild. Someone with rank doesn’t make them any more important in the guild than the newest Initiate. Although invitation rights are limited to the Officers, this is only to help control our numbers.

It’s going to be time consuming enough helping those not yet 70 to reach 70, gear up, run Kara, and still do all the other daily quests, heroic instances, etc. for our own needs. Inviting en masse will not be the solution now. However, if you strongly feel someone would be a great addition to our guild and don’t want to lose them to another, please let an Officer know.

Here is where those of us who set up the guild currently see the direction we’re headed. We want this guild to be a group of people and friends who enjoy hanging out, questing, raiding, and playing together. Large guilds have a tendency to have large turnover rates, due to drama, lack of opportunities raiding, etc. We’d rather have a small guild with loyal players and where everyone has an opportunity to do what they’d like to do while helping others do the same.

In general, we want to see as much end-game content as possible before the new expansion comes out, which supposedly is by the end of the year. Although seeing Black Temple and Mt. Hyjal are probably beyond our reach in that time frame, we are still shooting for it.

We eventually would like to get two Kara groups going and potentially a third. After Kara will come Zul’Aman and the 25 man raid content. In order to do that we’ll definitely need t least 30 people to raid the higher end content. We need to do this in controlled steps.

First, we’d like to gear up all current members to the point where they can run Kara with relative ease. At that time we’ll shift group make up around and recruit others to gear up while running two Kara groups or possibly three. During that time, we’ll also begin Zul’Aman for those that are ready. With each step we’ll increase our numbers until we’re finally ready for the 25 man content.

Here is the list of classes/specs we are actively recruiting:

[04/25/2008: Currently not recruiting new members]

Crazy Club: Raid Rules

2008-04-25T13:47:00.004-04:00

Raid Rules

Before even going into the Raid Rules, I want to express my excitement that it appears we finally have enough people in the guild to really start raiding Kara. Please remember that several of us have Kara experience and are used to progressing with relative ease through the trash mobs. Only three weeks ago, at least four of us were privy to a group that downed the first 5 bosses in less than 3 hours. It would have been less except for 2 wipes on Moroes that were extremely stupid mistakes.

So for those of us with experience, please know and understand that we have several new people that have no Kara experience and are slightly undergeared or just barely there. Initial goings will more than likely be difficult, frustrating, and potentially costly in repairs, pots, buffs, etc. I not only ask for those with more experience to be patient, but I ask those of you that will find it more difficult to have patience with yourselves. We’re all in this together. We succeed together and we fail together.

As part of this mindset, all of us who go on the raid together will end it together. For those who are less geared, you may be asked to leave to allow another to come in. Once you start, unless there’s no hope of proceeding, we will continue together. You will not arbitrarily be asked to leave. Again, we succeed together and we fail together. Officers, this will be done in whispers to the person being asked.

Raid Schedule

Current designs for the raiding schedule are to raid Karazhan as often as possible until we have it on farm. This means that if we have enough people we will attempt to raid Kara every evening for at least a couple of hours. Most nights this will mean 1-2 bosses. On Friday evenings we will discuss raiding times for the weekend and adjust accordingly to accommodate the majority.

If a majority of the guild is prepared to raid Kara on any given day, but the group is not complete it will be up to those involved whether they wish to PUG the remaining slots. If your spot is filled because you are late, we will not dismiss a PUG member. Be on time!

On time means:

• When the raid is called for 6:00pm server time; be ready.
• Have on hand a sufficient amount of elixirs, flasks, pots, food buffs, food/water (you never know when we might not have that mage handy), reagents (for whatever reason it appears that warlocks have the hardest time with this), etc. I carry 300 Symbol of Kings on me at the start of a raid. Overkill? Yes, but I’ve been in raids where 2-3 people die each pull and re-buffing after has gotten me down to 100 before. This is an extreme, but I’m ready for it. Know what you need and be prepared!
• If you aren’t sure you’ll be selected for tonight’s raid, be prepared as if you were.
• There will always be one reason or another someone’s slightly late. Help out by heading to the meeting stone a little early and begin summons.
• Being late could result in being replaced. Replacement will be based on whether or not another can fill the need of the group. Obviously we can’t replace a healer with a mage, or vice versa. See Group Selection below.

Group Selection

Groups will be selected based on the following criteria for Karazhan:

• Tanks: 2
• Healers: 2
• CC: 2 for Karazhan. Because of the undead a combination of priests and hunters will be used.
• DPS: 4 – whenever possible this will consist of at least a warlock, warrior, and mage, but DPS is the most flexible here and therefore most important that you guys are on time.

Currently we have only 2 tanks and 2 healers in the guild. This means that for each Kara run, we will be required and pretty much guaranteed to go. Because of the larger number of DPS in the guild, at times some of you may have to sit out. As we progress through Kara’s content and gear is acquired, we will ask you to volunteer to sit out on certain bosses you’ve already acquired gear for to allow another the chance to get a drop.

To illustrate this point, I will opt out of the Shade encounter for another given that Sollenni feels up to healing that encounter in my stead. There is no tanking on Shade and her tanking skills there will not be required. I still need a drop from him, but I’d rather someone with more of a need get a drop now and I can wait until later. Large upgrades benefit the group more than a minor upgrade for me.

Please keep this in mind when you are rolling for an upgrade that someone else may profit from a whole lot more. An additional 10 points of damage for you is a lot less effective for the group than having another get a 40 point increase. Remember if they get better, next week’s run is made a whole lot easier for you to get that upgrade or another. That said if you need it you will not be stopped from rolling on any item regardless if someone needs it more. See Loot Rules below.

Loot Rules

We do not currently use the DKP loot system. Once we get into 25 man raid content we may look at DKP. Fewer drops per person on the 25 man raid content may make it harder for you to get the gear you are looking for. As such, DKP may be fairer.

Currently we follow a system based on need. Need will be determined by Spec, Off-Spec, and Disenchant. Those whose item is clearly for their spec will be allowed to roll. Should none roll the need passes to those with off-spec capacity. Should everyone pass then the Loot Master will pass it to someone who can disenchant the item and everyone will roll for the shard or crystal.

Constructive Criticism: The Raiding Guild and The Candidate

2008-04-23T14:38:00.009-04:00

On March 5th, 2008 I posted a question on Blog Azeroth. The question was:

Question: How does one go about giving constructive advice to others about their gear, talents, skills, spells, class, or any other aspect of the game? How do you handle giving someone advice who “knows-it-all”?

At the time this was a real issue for me and a large concern. I eagerly awaited responses from fellow bloggers, but to this day not one person has responded to that question. Well, I guess I can’t blame anyone. I suppose they don’t know the answer any better than I.

However, Matticus brought up the same topic today and I felt the need to respond. As I started to think about my response, all this crap started falling out of my head. Well, mom always said I had $#%! for brains. So head on over to Open Discussion: How Do You Improve Players Without Coming out as an Arrogant Jerk? and read Matt’s hypothetical situation, then come on back.

I’d like to address Matt’s questions from two viewpoints: the viewpoint of the raiding guild and the viewpoint of the recruit. Since I’m inspired by Matt’s hypothetical situation, I’ll approach it with the healer in mind, but this can be just as easily applied to any class or spec.

There are several things during the recruiting process that need to be addressed up front from the guild’s perspective:

Know where you stand
Know when to offer advice/criticism
Know how to offer advice/criticism
Know when to cut your losses

There are several things during the recruiting process that need to be addressed up front from the candidate’s perspective:

Know where you stand
Know when to accept advice/criticism
Know how to accept advice/criticism
Know when to cut your losses

The Raiding Guild

Know Where You Stand

Make sure that your candidate knows where your guild stands with regards to expectations and that the guild members know the same in return. This is where I see a problem occurs with the average raider.

Raiders wants results and they want results now. They feel that everyone in the group should be at their level or greater. They deserve to be able to down the boss with minimal wiping and frustration. Yet they often forget that they were once in the same boat and more importantly in this case they need that healer to achieve their goals. If they offend the healer, especially without a potential backup, when will they get to go back?

Is it not better to suffer through some frustration hoping to help this new guy out, keep him loyal, and move on? Or is the here and now just so important as to not look to the future? I’m not saying you should have to wait months or even weeks for the person to figure it out. Just set those goals and expectations so all are aware of the time frame. Amazing how much a person can put up with if they see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is why it is so important to ensure that the guild members understand potential issues with new recruits and that they are on board with assisting in helping and retaining those recruits. It’s for the good of the guild as a whole and that’s often forgotten.

If you have specific gear requirements, make it known up front. If they don’t meet it, but you still believe they’re a prime candidate, give them the support on being able to get whatever they need. Give them a timeframe in which you expect this to be done. Let others know so they can assist in speeding up the process.

Discuss healer smarts with them. Ask them what they would do given certain situations. This one’s difficult, but try to come up with more specific situations than what’s the healing priority? Everyone knows it’s the tank first. Please forgive my example as I only went to Gruul’s for the first time last night in the middle of a raid that lost a healer. Didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing. And no, this isn’t a personal example. I was on the main tank.

Take for example, having one main tank and two off-tanks at Gruul. You’re assigned to one of the off-tanks and told to assist the main tank should he get low. One healer is assigned to raid heals only and to assist tanks as necessary. You have the mana to spare. Ten raiders are at 50% or less after an AOE attack. Your tank is at 90%, the main tank is at 75%. What do you do?

The answers may vary here depending on your own expectations. Is it important that he trust the raid healer to get to those 10 or should he assist? Assist the main tank? Conserve the mana? Spend it? There might not be a right answer, but the way in which the person answers usually gives you an indication of how well they will do. Someone who beats around the bush is indecisive and better to have someone who makes the wrong decision than have someone who can’t make one at all.

As a pally healer, situational awareness is difficult for me. I have to stand still to cast any of my healing spells and my eyes are glued to the health bars of all those around me and in crisis situations it can sometimes be hard to see that AOE that I’m standing in. It’s easy to lose sight of when the tank moves and where I need to be to stay in range. I’m only getting better at this as I learn what damage my fellow raiders are capable of sustaining so I can look away for a time and through repeatedly doing the boss fight over and over. I’m not sure there’s any good way to train someone for this other than through repetition, but make the importance of this known. Suggest watching online videos of the boss fights to help them at least know what goes on and what they need to look for.

Know When to Offer Advice/Criticism

The number one reason I’ve experienced in losing potentially great guild members is criticizing during an actual raid or instance. Its human nature to bring up questions about what happened or who was to blame for that last wipe. DON’T DO IT!! Make sure your raiders are aware that they should keep their collective mouths shut!

Let the leaders handle the situation. Don’t let anyone say “we wiped a second time because THE hunter didn’t re-ice trap the add AGAIN!”, hypothetically speaking of course. (/thinking “Granted we could have killed her the second time.”) Instead let the leader say “We let ice trap break leading to a wipe.” In a statement like this we avoid the accusatory nature of the first statement which singles someone out and instead places the blame collectively on the entire group. Everyone knows who let the ice trap break. Everyone knows who’s at fault. No one needs to point it out. Unless the one responsible is a total tool, they know it too. In a 25 man raid there’s even more anonymity and potentially less embarrassment for that person, if it’s kept general. Just remember this is teamwork. We succeed together, we fail together!

So when do we offer advice/criticism? After the raid, away from others. Nothing boils my blood faster than to be asked during an encounter “What’s your bonus healing at?” At times, it’s been because they were amazed, but more often than not I believe it to be a question regarding my healing abilities and the inability of others to accept any blame for what lead up to that wipe. At these times I have to struggle to remain calm or my decision making becomes impaired.

Know How to Offer Advice/Criticism

Leaders take notes during the raid, talk to the person one on one after the raid. Start off by asking them how they felt about the raid? Don’t ask them what they felt they did wrong. Let them do that on their own. You’ll be amazed at how much more open they’ll be if they have the opportunity to point out what they felt they did wrong before you did. Most people are more critical of themselves than you ever will be. Don’t necessarily disagree with them on their self-criticism, especially if it’s regarding important items. Often people will criticize themselves about trivial matters. This is the tool you’ll use to help them stay on the path to improvement. More importantly, this is when you offer advice. I say advice because at this point it will feel more like advice than criticism.

If you end up with someone that doesn’t point out some of the things they did wrong or shifts all blame to others, then you know you probably have someone you don’t necessarily want to group with anyway as they’ll never be accountable for anything. At this point, it’s entirely up to you on how you want to handle criticizing them and whether you even want to continue the trial period.

Matticus, you also answered your own question as to how to offer advice. Explain the why. During a raid, especially a fast moving one, there’s no time to explain the why. In Common Courtesy: Sleeping with the Dodo I explained a situation in which a Raid Leader didn’t explain the why of a particular situation until those who didn’t listen experienced the why. He pointed it out condescendingly and mockingly earning absolutely no respect from those of us within the group. He expected us to do what he said, when he said, with no explanation.

The problem with the example I gave was no one knew this guy. We had no reason to trust that he was the authoritative figure for Kara that he claimed to be. There was no trust built there yet. Did it matter that he did in fact know what he was talking about? No. He handled it incorrectly. He did have the time to explain before the first pull, just refused to do so. His answer was “Just do it!” He then handled the explanation afterwards unprofessionally.

People are not lemmings. We do not like to blindly follow anyone. Only those we trust will we agree to follow blindly as required, but even then we eventually expect some sort of explanation afterwards. Whether that explanation comes in finding out the hard way or having it explained verbally doesn’t matter. Knowing the why behind something gives us the reassurance that whatever we are doing is not in vain. There is a purpose behind our actions. It is important. We are needed. We fear that which we do not understand. [Edit: I believe this is a quote from someone, but can’t find it on the web.]

With regards to offering advice on specs? I don’t know the answer. Just make sure you know what you are talking about. Being criticized by the mage who doesn’t know how to control his aggro for not being able to keep the raid properly healed because he doesn’t understand the first thing about pally healing only frustrates the paladin and makes the mage look stupid to anybody that does understand. This is why I’m very careful to criticize another for their spec or class and keep my mouth shut. Make sure you know what you are talking about. Granted if that warlock is #8 on the damage meter in Kara, only beating the two healers, in full epic gear and according to Be Imba!report out gears everyone except the main tank and one DPS warrior, AND spec’d Affliction? You might have an obvious problem you can complain about. (*cough, cough. Totally hypothetical, of course.)

With your example Matticus, you stated:

"Bob, you know, you’re an excellent healer. You do what you’re told and heal who you’re asked to heal. You’ve been a tremendous service to the Guild. But I’m in a tough bind here. I can only let in 7 healers at a time and you don’t exactly supply a lot of options for yourself. You’re specced Spirit without the Improved Spirit. You also don’t have Circle of Healing. Why should I take you? You’re useless to me. Give me a reason to take you. I want to take you in, I really do. But when I weigh you against the other potential classes, it looks quite grim."

You started out great giving him a sense of worth. You even said that you’re in a tough bind, which conveys the sense that hey I’m getting pressure from above. This helps ease the person from taking it personally. Won’t stop it, but makes it easier. Don’t say “Why should I take you? You’re useless to me.” I read this somewhat as a joke, but I’ve read some of your other Bob posts.

It’s amazing how you can change the tone of a statement and still have the sense of urgency just by altering the way you say something. Say things like “Help me out here. I’ve noticed you’re spec’d x. What if you spec’d y?” By including them on the “improvements” you haven’t dictated to them what to do. They are included and feel their opinion is important. Again, goes back to this trust issue. You can always say “Hey, let’s try it and see if it works better for you. If it doesn’t, I’ll pay the respec costs.” A minor gesture for anyone raiding, but also gives the person a feeling they have an out.

Know When to Cut Your Losses

There are times when you will come across candidates that are the greatest people in the world, people you just love being around, but just aren’t going to cut it based on your guild’s needs and expectations. Knowing when to cut your losses with these people can be very difficult. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but you also can’t spend any more time trying to help the guy out. Know when to say when.

You may find that you want to keep them in the guild as a reserve, but make it clear that is what they are there for. However your guild might handle it, deal with it appropriately. Avoid making promises that may never come to fruition.

Regardless of the type of candidate you have, try to end it on as positive a note as possible. You never know when you’ll run into this guy again. Perhaps in the future he’ll end up with a guild that can help him out and eventually he’ll learn what he needs to learn. It’d be a shame to have burned a bridge there. Try to keep the door open for future possibilities, but treat it like a Band-Aid and remove it as quickly and painlessly as possible. Don’t drag it out!

The Recruit

Know Where You Stand

What is it that you’re looking for? Are you looking for a guild that raids on particular nights? Are you looking for a guild to grow with or a guild that’s almost maxed out? Do you want to be helped along? Do you want to be one of those that does the helping? Basically, what’s important for you?
I’ve seen people come and go because they thought they could get a free ride through raids. I’ve seen people come and go because they thought they were so good that they’d outshine all the rest. There are any number of reasons as to why someone joins a new raiding guild. Make it easier on yourself and the recruiting guild by knowing exactly where you stand and where you want to be.

Find out what the goals of the recruiting guild are and see how closely they match up to your own. Be honest with yourself. I’ve had friends join horrible guilds because of the content they could do, only to complain to me and be miserable the entire time. They made their choice. It was more important to go after that upgrade than it was being miserable in a guild they couldn’t have cared less about. There are guilds out there that will match your goals. Be patient.

Know When to Accept Advice/Criticism

This may sound like an odd comment, but this is very important. Hopefully you will not be criticized during a raid or encounter. Hopefully this will be done on the side as time permits elsewhere, so both parties can fully address the issue without having to shorten anything due to time constraints. That said, it is going to happen.

If you are offered advice or criticized during a raid, don’t fight back. You don’t have to accept it, just put it to the side. Take things said during raids with a grain of salt. Emotions could be running high. Things might be said that aren’t thought out and with other information may not have been said or thought at all. Adjust as necessary, but don’t feel you have to blatantly accept all criticism during those heated encounters.

Not accepting the criticism is not the same as fighting back. Push it to the side. Don’t retaliate!

Know How to Accept Advice/Criticism

This is difficult for most people. I can attest that I am one of them. Try to remember one general rule. If you’re being offered advice away from the mob mentality and the raid, you’re probably thought of as being of value. Take it so. If you weren’t worth the time, you’d be brushed off and no one would say anything.

Remember the raiders want you to succeed as much as you do. It doesn’t always sound like it, but it’s true. If you succeed, they succeed. If you fail, they fail.

At times you’ll be accused unfairly, it’s going to happen. Listen to it calmly. If you have a counter argument, present it to the person after they have had the chance to explain their side. If you don’t you’re going to end up in a heated exchange as each side tries to fully explain their side of the argument.

Make sure you present any counter argument by knowing your stuff. Don’t shift blame! Even if it wasn’t entirely your fault, but there was something you could have done better, accept the responsibility for your part. I cannot stress this enough! Nothing aggravates the leader trying to help you faster than you attempting to divert all blame to others, even if it’s later found out you were entirely not at fault. You shift blame and you’ll be labeled as one who never accepts accountability and not a team player. Let the leaders deal with the others. Accept your part and their advice on what to do and move on. The next time when you do your part, it will be painfully obvious that you did all you could and leaders can more fully address the problem elsewhere.

Know When to Cut Your Losses

Knowing when to cut your losses is also tricky from the candidate’s side. There are websites out there dedicated to tracking your movements. Good guilds will know if you’re a guild jumper or not and that’s a label you don’t want following you around. However, there are times when things just do not work out. Guilds may want to keep you, but their goals don’t match yours.

Decide what’s important to you and move on, whether by staying or leaving. Don’t let things drag out thinking they will get better. Do something about it. Talk to your leaders. If they are unresponsive, get out. They obviously aren’t worried about your needs. Only you can determine when you should leave, but always leave on as positive a note as possible. You’ll run across these people again whether in this guild or another. Don’t burn a bridge! There may be millions of accounts out there, but it’s amazing how you keep running into the same people over and over.

Conclusion

Matticus pointed out that without the healers his guild is effectively paralyzed. He is aware of their limitations with respect to gear, specs, and experience. That said it needs to be made perfectly clear to all those involved that there is a huge possibility that they will not succeed over the next couple of weeks and the whining and complaining need to be kept quiet. This is for the good of the guild. Negativity directed towards anyone will only drive people away and healers perhaps more than most. There always seems to be a shortage of healers and even more so of effective healers and we know it. We’re a commodity and we know you need us more than we need you. Terrible attitude to have by the way, healers! I’ve been guilty of it in the past too, but that’s a selfish attitude that causes groups to fall apart.

By taking these healers on you’ve essentially agreed that you know their weaknesses and are willing to work with them to improve. You seem to have two options before you. Do you come on strong risking the possibility of offending them and driving them away only to start all over with someone else in a never-ending cycle? Or do you coddle and reassure them giving them warm and fuzzies so as not to tread on any toes and potentially lose them only to continue down a frustrating and fruitless never-ending cycle of failure? Neither one seems appealing and neither one is the answer. Finding the happy medium is the struggle.

In summary, whether recruiting or being recruited remember to:

Know where you stand
Know when to accept/offer advice/criticism
Know how to accept/offer advice/criticism
Know when to cut your losses

Have fun and good luck!

Journal Entry: Kyrilean's and Maedchen's Weekend

2008-04-21T11:25:00.003-04:00

Finally hit exalted with Shattered Sun yesterday! I did this by completing 4-5 of the daily quests. I then bought my new healing necklace which I’m excited about. Not a huge upgrade on the heals side, but the mp5 upgrade is great!

So now I’m exalted, I feel little desire to continue these daily quests. As I’m fairly broke for a 70 in epic gear, I will do the easier ones just to keep my gold supply increasing. I probably won’t bother with the quests requiring drops as I cannot stand it when the drop rate is low. I have better things to do with my time.

I spent most of my weekend playing my priest Maedchen. It’s been a long time since I’ve played any of my alts and it was very refreshing. I’ve devoted a lot of time with Kyrilean and it’s great, but repetitive daily quests and heroic instances are starting to take their toll. So Maedchen got a little time this weekend.

Maedchen started out level 18 when I started on Friday and hit level 21 by Sunday evening. I must say that leveling a shadow priest is much easier than leveling a protection pally. Granted I had little to no idea what I was doing with specs and gear back then. I have a simple understanding now. Not much of an upgrade in knowledge, but a little is better than none.

I must say that Darkshore is perhaps one of the worst designed areas in my opinion. I completed most of the quests before deciding I was finished. I hate the design, the quests, and the running from one end to the other constantly and I was using QuestHelper! For future alts I will have to settle for being barely on speaking terms with the Night Elves.

Kyrilean did see some play time though. On Sunday, three of us 70 pallies grouped with two lower level warlocks who hadn’t run Ramparts yet. In fact, one hadn’t even been to Outland yet. They had quests so we took them to get some better gear and finish their quests. After Ramps we ran Blood Furnace too for more quests.

In recent posts I’ve complained about my attitude changing towards the game. It was extremely refreshing to play to have fun and help a few people out. Making everything about me and my next piece of gear was definitely taking its toll. Not going to say I’m not going to Kara this week as we arrange a group and hitting up the heroics for badge loot, but the focus has been redirected.

Getting to know some of the new guildies was great fun! Watching how they play and getting to know how to group is absolutely necessary for preparing to set this guild up for raiding Karazhan and other instances. I’m positive that we’re going to get there and soon.

My only concern with those I ran with is inexperience. I have absolutely no idea how to play a warlock. I haven’t even rolled an alt for one. That said I can give no advice on how to spec, play, or treat a warlock. These initial 5 man instances are crucial to learning how to interact with a group and to learn your role. The further we move into raiding, the more specialized the job becomes, and the more critical understanding your role within the group is.

The other part of the concern is running lower levels through these instances with the gear and abilities that I and others have. Some of us are so overgeared for the regular instances that we can 2-man them. It makes it difficult to learn exactly how to react in given situations when you have someone so overgeared that you will never wipe. In fact, only one warlock died once the whole night. The only others to die were their voidwalkers.

Well I suppose I shouldn’t be too concerned. There are many instances that I ran only once or not at all but have run in heroics many times. Granted not the best place to learn, but it is doable given patient people which I know our guild has.
So overall a great weekend! I had a lot of fun and look forward to helping a few of the guildies level and/or gear up in preparation for Karazhan!

Crazy Club Information

2008-04-18T16:04:00.005-04:00

Welcome to Crazy Club!

Since we don't have an actual website, I'll use my blog site to post some guild information here. Please take the time to read through this. It's not that long.

General Rules

1) Have fun! Remember everyone's definition of fun is different and that's OK. Just remember that others might see it differently.

2) Be considerate! Everyone will be at a different level in skill, gear, and ability. Sollenni may be the "Great and Powerful Oz!" of our group, but she's no more important than the player that just started learning to play WoW last week.

3) Contribute! Don't expect to receive a free handout and ride through every quest you have. We all will help, but help is expected in return. Everyone has things they need to do and the Level 70s can't be expected to help someone every step of the way.

4) Loyalty! We want to create a tight knit group of people who enjoy playing together. We hope to grow the guild enough to run 25 man instances. We're not looking to have hundreds of people. There will be no limit to those who would like to join, but smaller numbers creates a more together atmosphere.

5) Honesty! To help create loyalty, please be open and honest with your fellow guild officers. Bring concerns and questions up to them. We hope this will aid in avoiding guild drama which is bound to happen from time to time. If you are affected or involved with guild drama, please remember that everyone has a bad day and approach it with an open mind.

Add-Ons

Please download and utilize the following add-ons. These can be found on various sites, but I generally use Curse.com:

1) Omen Threat Meter or Omen2 - KLH was compatible before 2.4. I haven't looked to see if it is anymore. If it is, please feel free to use it. I personally have never used KLH. This is only required if you will be running instances or raids. Anyone not familiar with this add-on should still install it and become familiar with how to use it.

2) Group Calendar - We will use this for help in setting up raids, instances, quest help, and other things we see fit.

For those that will be raiding, I highly recommend downloading Deadly Boss Mods. This add-on will give you warnings in the boss fights and it is definitely handy in preparing for potential wipes. If not that one, find another.

Preparing for Karazhan

Currently we are just getting started in building our guild. At last count I believe we potentially have 6 people that can commit to a regular raiding schedule. We have a few more people that can get to 70 probably within the next few weeks with our assistance. By the end of the week, we should have 9 total 70s, not including level 70 alts.

Some of you need more gear to get to Karazhan. Please use Be Imba! to assist you in tweaking your toon. This site is useful in helping you prepare for Karazhan.

Also use the Armory to look for potential upgrades to your gear. Look for quest items and attainable instance items first. Use the calendar to help set up a run for you. Please look for interim gear. We all know we want gear that's outside our reach. Getting the interim gear even if it's a small upgrade will help you get there.

I've finally maxed my enchanting. I do not have every enchant, but will be willing to enchant most level 70s gear. If you've not obtained level 70, I'll give you some of the cheaper enchants. You'll probably be getting an upgrade soon, so best not to use the mats on the expensive enchants. But remember, even a crappy enchant is better than nothing. Enchant your gear!

And finally we need a holy priest and could definitely use a rogue. Although we would love to find one that is already geared, since we need to upgrade some of you and potentially level some of you to get into Kara, feel free to suggest anyone that is close to 70 and we will help them get ready with you.

Remember although there may be ranks in this guild like any other, it is YOUR GUILD! No one stands above anyone else. We all contribute whether we're the worst Healer, best DPS, or mediocre Tank. We succeed together and we fail together, but we're together!

To Do List

2008-04-18T13:55:00.000-04:00

[Edit: Oh the irony! started this post on March 20th, 2008, but I'll leave it as is and strikethrough the items I've done. Then in the next few days I'll just redo it with the things I've added. In otherwords, except to see another one in a month or two. LOL!]

You ever get working on so many things that you just can’t get any of it done? This has often happened to me at work, but now it’s happening in World of Warcraft! Dear Lord, what have I done?!

Here’s a list of all the crap I’m trying to get done. Maybe if I list it here I’ll finally be able to prioritize it.

• ~~Earn 5200g for epic flying mount and training.~~ Done.
• Heroic items – Bought my first item about a month ago. Need 775 badges more to buy all the items I'm looking at, including the new 2.4 badge vendor items. (Man I'm praying to get into ZA soon and avoid all that!) [Edit: at this point I'm just hoping to get back into Kara soon.]
• Lower City Rep – Want Lower City Prayerbook. I have been working on this a little bit. I need 800 more rep to get there.
• ~~Sha’tar rep – want Gavel of Pure Light~~. [Edit: Received Light's Justice during a Kara run a couple of weeks ago.]
• ~~Aldor rep – want those Greater Inscription of Faith shoulder enchants.~~ [Edit: Did this last Sunday spending 3 hours farming Marks of Sargeras and Fel Armaments.]
• Consortium Rep – and the Arc key
• ~~Help Cenarion Expedition Rep – want that enchant~~ [Edit: Did this. Pointless enchant for myself personally, but wanted to add it for completion's sake. So pointless that I can't even remember what the enchant is and too lazy to look it up.]
• Helping friend level an alt to advance her jewelcrafting - we still haven't found time to do this
• ~~Get enchanting to 375~~ [Edit: Finally did this a few days ago!]
• ~~Start Kara~~ [Edit: Amazingly this finally happened, but now we're on hold again.]
• ~~PvP items~~ [Edit: A friend of mine was hounding me to get Gladiator's Salvation and I started, but I don't like the battlegrounds, except AV and can only do that a little at a time. Now I have Light's Justice I have crossed this off my list.]
• New 3v3 Arena Team

Updated Picture

2008-04-17T23:14:00.002-04:00

Finally updated my picture! Been meaning to do that for a while. The old tabard was the Field of Honor guild that we were in. Since then I had joined another guild with the GM from Field of Honor and another friend. We since left that guild after some guild drama there to start our own all over again. Guess we don't learn too quickly. As an inside joke we called it Crazy Club meaning to change it before hand, but my friend forgot and although initially I didn't like it, it's kind of grown on me.

The picture doesn't look much different than the last one, because the upgrades look almost the same. I have since acquired the Justicar Gloves, some new leggings, etc. I've also got Light's Justice showing there now too.

Common Courtesy: Sleeping with the Dodo

2008-04-17T16:26:00.004-04:00

Has common courtesy gone the way of the dodo? Maybe I’m just too old. Let me tell you what I mean.

If you’ve read my last couple of posts, you know that I was recently part of a Kara group that fell apart. I’m desperately trying to get into a new group to experience some of the BC endgame content before the new expansion hits and nobody wants to go anymore. AQ? Bless you!

I’ve spent the past week hitting the trade channel from time to time trying to recruit Kara ready players. It hasn’t worked at all. I have discovered that if you’re a Holy Paladin that you will get requests like crazy to join their guild. Interesting that it can be so nice to be wanted and yet annoying beyond belief all at the same time.

Since the recruiting wasn’t going so well, I decided to at least entertain the idea of joining another guild or hope to find one willing to group with us. So I watched the trade channel for recruiting macros. I asked for information such as a website, raid times, etc. Then I started hitting up Warcrafter and Be Imba! to review their gear levels and whether or not it appeared they really could do the raids they advertised.

Eventually I talked to someone that invited us to join their guild which I’m always wary to do initially. Want to try someone out before committing to joining. Don’t want to be known as a guild jumper. However, she seemed really nice and what we are looking for so I talked to her for a bit and said I’d talk to my friends about setting something up.

Skipping through some of the issues getting set up, which became apparent later, we joined up and started running through Karazhan. My first warning should have come when we showed up and I wasn’t sure who the other healer was. I later found out it was the GM I had been talking to. I could have sworn I ran a report on her and she was a tank. Maybe I was wrong, but I wasn’t sure and didn’t think about it. But maybe she was asked to respec.

It turned out that the raid leader had just joined the guild. Apparently he was there to help smaller guilds run through Karazhan and then move on to others in an attempt to train first time raiders for the end game content. That said I ran a Be Imba! report on him and he came out with Karazhan gear and a gear score of 174. Nothing indicating he had done the higher end content. Granted, I have no idea if he has an alt.

On the first pull he informed everyone to stand within melee range. Didn’t say why, just instructed everyone to stay in melee range. For ranged dps and healers this was a different concept. He offered no explanation, no one asked. At first I thought, OK we might have a “know-it-all” here, but I’ll give him a chance. Turns out he had a point.

I’ve been to Kara several times, but never really thought about the first trash pull. The groups I’ve been in have always done the classic stay out of range, etc. Some particular steeds charge when the aggro switches making it difficult for the tanks to stay on them. The closer you are the easier it is for the tank to get back. Only after it happened a few times did the Raid Leader sarcastically say “That’s why we stay in melee range.” This guy started to rub me the wrong way.
But again he was here to train these guys run Kara. This isn’t my guild. We’re here to test it out. Give it a chance and see what happens. The guy definitely did know and understand Kara and quite frankly pointed out some things that I knew but never thought about, or just didn’t know. Nothing big, nothing profound, just small things that made it go a little bit smoother.

By the time we got to Attumen and he explained the fight, we took the boss down with relative ease. The one difference for us is that it took almost twice as long as we are used to. This guild’s dps is very low compared to what we had in the past. It’s doable, but I don’t believe we’ll get too far the first few times with them. They need more gear to up that dps. We’re fine with helping out. We were there a month ago.

The Fiery Warhorse’s Reins dropped. Before rolling the RL announced that the GM, since she was the GM, would get a +10 roll to her roll for the reins. OK, I don’t know if this is typical in other guilds, but I’ve never seen this before. Just because someone is in a management position doesn’t entitle them to special benefits. Everyone is an equal. Everyone did their job to take down the boss. What entitles any particular person to be elevated above any other? Because it’s just the reins, I didn’t say anything. It also didn’t bother me that much, but I still think WTH?! Didn’t matter because my tanking friend won the roll anyway, which made me bust out laughing.

As we moved to the stairs to tackle the next boss, the Raid Leader informed us we were skipping Moroes and moving to Maiden. OK fine, I like Maiden more anyway. Still want her mace drop. Somewhere along the line he decides that he’s going to replace my fire mage friend with a shadow priest. Not sure why and never found out. He announces in voice chat “Thanks for coming, appreciate it.” and then kicks him out of the party and invites another. My friends and I are stunned! We don’t know what just happened! There was no warning, there was no request, just a blatant dismissal and let’s move on.

At once, my warrior friend announces that he can leave too if they want to bring a mage and leaves the party. I whisper the GM that I’m leaving as well that “We don’t play that way. We all succeed together or fail together. I’d be just as upset if he kicked out one of yours without asking.” The four of us promptly left Karazhan.
The GM spent the rest of the evening apologizing saying the RL was new and didn’t know how things were done. She said this isn’t typical of her guild and not allowed. She didn’t know he was going to do that. Basically she spent the evening trying to salvage whatever potential relationship we might have. We all agreed that she was sincere, but regardless if this guy knows his stuff or not, that’s no excuse for lack of common courtesy.

My friends and I play to hang out with friends, experience new content together, celebrate in each other’s victories, help each other out, etc. This guild appears to have the same attitudes towards the game as we do.

We do not allow or accept the following:

Being told what, where, when, how, and with whom we can raid, quest, or group with.
Telling others what, where, when, how, and with whom they can raid, quest or group with.

Being told or telling others how to spec or play their classes.

Removing or replacing someone from a raid or group because we need to, want to, or just have the power to do so.

Everyone’s an equal, whether you’re in Tier 6 gear or the lowly level 5 in the guild.

Being rude or inconsiderate in any way, shape, or fashion. Just follow the Golden Rule.

Now I know exactly what raiders might say to the first two. Please re-read carefully what I wrote.

If a sign up system is set up and followed, that is different. If I can’t go because I signed up late, that’s my fault. No one dictated. If a rank system is set up that supersedes sign up times, again that is different. If I’m told that I can’t go because my gear is inadequate, that is different. Basically, if I’m being told to do something arbitrarily, I won’t do it. There must be a reason and that reason must be valid and fair.

I don’t tell you how to play your class, don’t tell me how to play mine. I’m barely an expert, if at all, at my own class. I’d look like an idiot telling you what to do. Besides, it’s rude. Offering advice has its place. It must be handled lightly and with care. Generally speaking, don’t do it. Let the person’s friend do it; whatever it takes to avoid hurting feelings. Raiders might find that statement stupid. But my response is what gave you the right to be an ass because you’re hiding behind an online avatar? Ask yourself, would you do this in person? If so, how would you handle it? Given that the average person is at least somewhat of a decent person, handle it that way.

If you set up a group for whatever reason and someone in that group isn’t cutting it, you fail together. Accept it. Kicking someone out will only lead to hurt feelings, anger, bitterness, guild drama, etc. Abandon and regroup another time. Easier said than done. Hopefully if you are one of those people, please offer to leave. It makes it easier on everyone else who doesn’t want to be rude. If you are asked to leave in a polite manner, please do so and remember that as the others gear up and move through, they'll be that much better to help you to come back.

There is no problem with asking a particular person to leave. You’ll ask them to not take it personal, but please realize that they will. If they refuse, disband and end it. You accepted their help. They got you to whatever point you ended up at. They deserve to see it to the end or none do. If they accept, replace them and move on. Common courtesy.

My question is am I unrealistic to expect these things in a raiding guild? Are there no raiding guilds out there like this? If there are any in Arathor, please let me know because I’m looking for one.

Have I just gotten old? Or is common courtesy sleeping with the dodo?

What do I do now?

2008-04-15T23:27:00.003-04:00

So after my tirade on the last post, "What do I do now?"

I guess I need to spend some time thinking about why I play WoW. I need to determine if that reason has changed. If it has am I OK with that? If it hasn't how do I get back to feeling about it the way I did?

If it has changed and I really have converted over to the raiding aspect fully and that's the most important thing to me, then I need to find a guild to fill that need whether my friends go with me or not.

If it hasn't changed, but raiding is still important to me, then I need to discuss with them what we're going to do. We started our guild with the understand that we had 10 of us ready to join and start raiding Kara. A couple of these guys were already past Kara, but were willing to join up and get us caught up to them. That didn't happen. In the meantime a couple of others joined large raiding guilds and didn't want to give up the opportunities that presented themselves beyond Kara. Can't blame them really.

So first thing I could do is just find my own guild and go. Still stay in contact with my friends, but go and do the raiding thing with or without them.

Second, I could look for a raiding guild that would take all of us and more importantly allow us to group together.

Third, I could look for a small guild that doesn't have enough people to raid and join forces whether or not we join the guild.

Fourth, we could recruit for our guild and try to build a solid base for raiding. The concern here is that we'll recruit people who aren't quite ready, because those who are probably have already found their place elsewhere.

I've already talked this over with one of my friends and he has the same concerns as I. We both want to see and experience as much content as possible before Wrath of the Lich King comes out. We won't be able to do that spending a lot of time helping others gear up, especially if they only leave us after doing so.

Guess I got a lot of thinking to do. What do I do now?

World of Warcraft Fatigue?

2008-04-15T22:51:00.003-04:00

Well it finally happened! I never thought this day would come, but I actually reached a point where I left playing WoW for fun.

As stated before, the last week hadn't been the greatest. The Kara raid group I was in fell apart due to one person getting a burr under his saddle because the raid group took down Netherspite without him. Well shame on you for leaving and not coming back within the 30 minute break. They waited 90 minutes for you! I had to leave early that night and didn't get to go. Was I disappointed? Yes! But not their problem and I would never have expected them to hold the raid just for me.

Now there's an uncomfortable rift between all of us who didn't have it out, but are tied to one of the two who did. As such, it's made it difficult to try and fill in the gaps. We tried and were successful in taking down Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Curator, and Big Bad Wolf. We tried several times to take down Shade, but to no avail. I believe I can point the finger, but I won't here. I'll keep it to myself. The sad thing is this took all week to do. We did this in 3 hours the previous week.

Tonight along with the reset, we had planned on going to Kara again. We knew that our main tank wasn't going to be on very long, because Tuesday is one of his raiding nights with his guild. As Arathor is a Pacific Time Zone server and most of my friends are in the Eastern and Central time zones, this doesn't present too much of a problem. He helps out where he can. As such, we should have been able to get together to take down Attumen and probably Moroes. Well no one logged on. The tank called a buddy of his to whisper me that he had to work late. Didn't matter at that point because it was already too late to start and again no one was on.

So that probably set the tone for my night. I began to get frustrated looking forward to another week without a real Kara run. Without realizing it, I had changed my mindset.

I've always been an advocate of trying new things. I haven't cared about the enormous repair costs that I've had to dish out when we've wiped repeatedly. I couldn't have cared less because I was with friends and experiencing new things for the most part. That's all changed.

I'd like to compare Kara to a drug, but I've never seen anything more powerful than marijuana. So I can only imagine what a drug addict must feel like and Kara is what I compare it to. Karazhan is a great instance. The feel, the music, the atmosphere of the whole place entices you to explore. The bosses are challenging, but not impossible and the loot is fantastic for someone at my stage of the game. I've been lucky the past month in that I've gotten at least two pieces of gear every week. Most of it has been healing drops, but I've gotten a couple of off-spec tanking gear. I got sucked into the loot problem.

I call it a problem, because as the focus of the game becomes less on the socialization, the questing, the just having all around fun enjoying the many aspects of the game, loot begins to take center stage. I've seen this with a lot of others. I've refused to join a raiding guild because even running heroic instances with some people has been a test in patience, not because they weren't good, but because they were jerks.

The majority of raiders I've run into are elitist know-it-alls. They think they know every aspect of every spec of every class and know exactly what to tell you to do. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked "What's your healing at?" soon after a wipe, sending me the silent question as to why I suck? Well right now it's at 1860 unbuffed @$$hole!! I can buff it to 2000 and with other raid buffs it's higher than that. Is this great? I have no idea. I haven't been beyond Kara, but I know it's pretty good there.

Pally healing is completely different than Priest, Druid, or Shaman healing. I kick ass on the heal meters every time I go in a raid. I've often doubled the total heals of the priest and halved the over-heals. Is this because I'm better? No! It's because of the way Pallys heal. We spam Flash of Light. It costs me 180 mana to cast. At my current state it heals an average of 1500hp, but crits probably half the time for 2500hp. I regenerate mana during casting at a rate of 100mp5. If all I have to do is spam Flash of Light it never runs out!!! Holy Light will kill me. It heals for 4000hp on average and crits at 6500hp, but it costs me 840 mana!!

But I digress. We decided to run heroic Mechanar, which to be honest I've only ever tried once without getting far. Wipe after wipe, I grew more and more irritated only to have it compounded by the fact that the rogue we brought with us kept playing an off tank's role and having to heal him was a pain. Also when we wiped, which was often, he decided not to rez and fly back. I'll never understand that about Tempest Keep. You rez at full health. It's not that far. Healers don't have to use food to replenish their mana after rezzing and healing your lazy ass. You don't have to use food to replace your health or mana after rezzing. This isn't Coilfang people!

Anyway, after getting to the 4th boss and wiping for the third time I was done. I was so irritated and getting so angry about everything that I said I'm done, left the party, hearthed back to Shat, and logged right after saying in guild chat "I've made the game not fun for myself. Maybe after I've cooled down I'll be back tomorrow. Maybe not." Or something to that effect.

I've made the game about Kara. I've made the game about loot. I've forgotten what it means to play with the friends I've made. I've forgotten why I played in the first place. The adventure.

A Tale of Two Viewpoints: World of Warcraft Grouping

2008-04-15T10:46:00.004-04:00

Recently, Tobold wrote about What can be done to save grouping in WoW? The comments all revolved around Blizzard making it more feasible for everyone to be able to more easily do a little bit of everything. Using my words, they want a Jack-of-all-Trades.

I definitely didn't agree with the comments, maybe perhaps because I'm a healer myself and experienced tanking while leveling as a Paladin. So I posted a comment that I will admit became somewhat long-winded. I wanted to address several points that were being made, that I consider to be part of the "I'll never be happy with the system" crowd. I honestly believe these people will always find one more thing to complain about and never be happy with the system.

Evidently I'm not the only person who thinks so and over at Blessing of Kings there's a post that sums up what I was trying to say.

The best thing about MMOs is that you can play with other people.

The worst thing about MMOs is that you have to play with other people.

Here's the comment I posted:

I’m going to approach the other side of the argument here and say that the current system is generally fine. I do believe that Blizzard’s LFG system is completely broken. Nobody uses it and spams the Trade channels. Blizzard needs to create the LFG channels in every city too. I can’t get into the channel in most cities without first activating the LFG. Stupid way of doing it.

“i would really like to see the day that a guild is looking for well geared pvpers for something more meaningful than rolling pugs.”

Set up a pvp guild. Don’t know if there are any out there, but you could be the first.

“I've always liked the duel spec idea”

Unless I’m misunderstanding this comment, dual spec refers to being able to change specs on the fly. If we’re able to do that, then what’s the point of having specs anyway? You could change it mid instance, switch your gear, and go. This effectively removes a large majority of the challenge in the game. If it became too easy, would you really want to play?

“They need to make choosing to be a Healer or Tank more attractive to people”

“A main tank or a healer absolutely has to be on the ball in most of these dungeons in order to succeed. It's a role that brings a lot of attention if you are struggling.”

“Every healer/tank I know has a dps alt, but not every dps player I know has a tank/healer alt (most have other dps alts).”

I don’t know that they need to make this more attractive to people. I think the real problem here is that the average person is going to find tanking and healing extremely boring compared to dishing out the hurt. Also when the blame game starts, who gets blamed? Tanks and healers. Generally DPS only gets blamed when they break crowd control or don’t watch their aggro. This is a general statement so take it with a grain of salt, but it takes a particular mindset/personality to have fun playing a tank or healer.

“…think the tank/dps warrior roles need to be combined into one class… you could dispense with Healers altogether, and if not, seriously nerf the amount of healing that is required in the average instance…”

The problem with these comments is you are asking for a class that can do it all. What then would be the point of some of these classes? Each class/spec should have a particular strength above all others or what’s the point of even offering that class/spec? And shame on you for suggesting the removal of healers! [I’m a holy pally. :)] You’re attempting to make the group content the same as the solo aspect and I believe they should be distinctly different and offer completely different challenges. Part of that challenge should be more specialization in my opinion. Remember ultimately WoW is a multi-player game. Making classes that can do it all removes a lot of the need for that multi-player aspect. May as well go play a single player role-playing game at that point. Final Fantasy anyone?

Anyway, bottom line I think the system is fine. I enjoy the customization inherent with specializing. It allows for more freedom of play. Is it frustrating to level a tank or healer? Yeah! Get out there and make some friends for the harder stuff. It’s an MMO people.

In the meantime...

2008-04-14T14:33:00.004-04:00

This post is a little old, but I laughed so hard that I just had to share!
Karazhan Bingo!

In the meantime, it's been quite a while since my last post. I've started a couple, but never get around to finishing them. Ironically, one is a list of things I need and want to do to help me prioritize my goals.

Work has been busy. Just got handed another project to buy out and I didn't have the first clue as to what I was looking at. Still need to spend some time looking at the plans and specs.

As for WoW, I've been busy there too. Just a month ago, my gear score over at Be Imba! was 145. Today it's 184!!! Pretty happy about that. Spent the last month getting into Karazhan and getting close to getting it on farm. Two weeks ago we happened to clear Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Oz, and Curator in 3 hours. We one shotted all the bosses except Moroes because we had a hunter break CC resulting in two wipes. First time, shame on you! Second time, shame on us!

Anyway, all in all it went great. By Saturday we got through Shade, Chess, and Prince. Which by the way due to my semi-bad luck both Light's Justice and Helm of the Fallen Champion dropped. As there was another Paladin and a Rogue in the group, they rolled for the Tier 4 token and I automatically got Light's Justice. This arrangement was more than fair, but man a Tier 4 token!! Still, I probably have more of a chance getting the pally token again than the mace, so I'm pretty happy.

Actually over the past month in Karazhan I've gotten a crapload of gear, both for healing and off-spec tanking, I've had more than my fair share of luck. Healing gear has dropped on half of the bosses each time we've gone. I've also spent a lot of time on my enchanting and getting everything I can out of healing bonuses. Last night I finally reached Exalted with the Aldor. Spent about 3 hours grinding for Fel Armaments and Marks of Sargeras to get the last 3800 reputation points I needed. I was able to then upgrade my shoulder enchant to Greater Inscription of Faith. Granted it's only 4 more healing points and 4mp5, but it was one of those things on my to do list that I can scratch off now.

Unfortunately, our Karazhan raids fell apart last week. I'm still a little fuzzy on the details as I wasn't actually there and I'm getting enough information second hand to make anyone wonder, but it all happened two Saturdays ago.

We had made fairly quick progress through the week and got stuck on Prince the Friday night before I got my Light's Justice. Every time the totem like adds [sorry can't remember what they're called right now] fell, they fell right on top of us or blocked our way around when we had to relocate. Every one was a frustrating battle as we beat on Prince only to lose to an unlucky placement of adds. So we decided on Saturday that we would try again. We agreed on 3pm server time and only a handful of us showed.

I've gotten some real life aggro from my wife about the amount of time I've started dedicating to WoW, so I made a deal with her to cut back some and plan accordingly. We finally got everyone back on board late that evening and after downing Prince we moved on to Netherspite. I had never been here before and it was pretty impressive. I'll admit I made a classic "noob" mistake by not reading up on it. Didn't know that we were going to try considering everyone talked about how hard it was and indications were we weren't doing it. Should have been prepared though.

After a few tries, my wife was getting angry as I had agreed to watch a movie with her that evening, so I finally said I had to go. The group agreed to take a 30min break and find a replacement for me. That's when it fell apart.

Our Kara group was made up of primarily two groups. There are 6 of us that were members of an old guild and we now comprise parts of 2 guilds. The other 4 are all part of another guild we partnered up with. The GM of that guild was always the Loot Master. Let me first say that in general I like this guy. He seems to know what he is doing and coordinates the fights well calling out incomings, etc. He is somewhat young and his age shows it in his cockiness, but I can forgive that as he is a nice guy. Sadly, he seems to be at the root of what happened.

This GM never came back that evening. The rest of the raid group waited for 90 minutes and finally decided to replace him. On the second try, they downed Netherspite. Everyone was pretty excited.

The following day we gathered together to try Karazhan again, but the GM said that he'd been every day this last week and didn't want to go today. When he was told that's fine, he accused others of having an attitude with him. My buddy, the main tank and raid leader, ended up having a talk with this guy and supposedly words were exchanged to a point that it got kinda ugly. Well, needless to say we aren't grouping with them anymore.

The bad thing is we finally had the majority of Kara on farm after four weeks. We'd all learned how to group together and knew each other's strengths and weaknesses. It was going great!

We're bummed, but we're hopeful we can recruit a few more in our guild to start again. My buddy and his girlfriend are way past Kara when it comes to gear and joined a new guild that's in Mt. Hyjal, so they're able to spend less and less time with us. Although we've done the first half of Kara this week, it took days to do.

Actually we'll be talking about it this evening on whether we should recruit or join a raiding guild.

A Bard's Tale...

2008-04-01T07:22:00.002-04:00

Once upon a time...

So if you've checked Blizzard's website recently you've noticed their front page news of the new Hero Class: the Bard!!! If you haven't, check it out!!!

If you don't want me to spoil it, please check out the site first before reading further.

As soon as I saw it I started laughing hysterically! Obviously it's an April Fool's joke. But it was amusing nonetheless.

Know When To Say When

2008-03-21T08:07:00.001-04:00

Think back to the first time you started up World of Warcraft, the cinematic telling the story of the race you are about to play as the camera pans in around until settling on you. You begin your adventure excitedly as you begin learning how to use the interface and interacting with the world around you. After a couple of minor quests, suddenly a burst of light surrounds you flashing upwards as a trumpeting sound announces that you’ve just attained a new level! The excitement courses through your veins as you become hooked.

As play progresses, you upgrade your gear, talents, and professions as you level. Each new item adding a little thrill of victory that pushes you ever onward, then you reach level 70. With sudden excitement at reaching this seemingly ever elusive goal, you look forward thinking “OK. Now what? Does it end here?" No. Blizzard has cunningly crafted and designed a world that quite frankly seems to only begin upon reaching level 70. So you push on.

Attaining level 70, you begin to pursue the reputation rewards and push through the many instances and quests to increase your reputation with various factions. Heroic instances beckon with the potential gear that can be dropped as well as purchased with the use of Badges of Justice. Karazhan tempts you like a succubus’ spell. And now the Sunwell looms on the horizon as the pinnacle of all we work for.

So when does this stop? When do we say enough is enough? For each person, the answer is different.

Currently I’ve been working on trying to get to Karazhan. I’ve spent months attempting to gear up in preparation for it and it hasn’t been easy. I’ve been told through others that one of my former guildmates said that I have done extremely well considering that I haven’t gotten into a raiding guild yet. I have to say that it was a nice compliment coming from this guy. He left our guild, Field of Honor, some time ago and joined a raiding guild. I’ve heard horror stories about what that has been like. He’s been in a couple of them now and they’ve professed to being about having fun; fun being defined as succeeding with no wipes and no problems at whatever they are doing.

If you watch the trade channel for guild recruiters, every single guild states they are fun-loving and looking to have a good time. Have you ever once seen a guild recruiter state “We are a cold, impersonal bunch looking for hardcore raiders capable of committing to raiding for 4+ hours/night, 7 days/week. Must be able to accept extreme criticism and not #*@! up”? Of course you haven’t!

[ed: By the way Blizzard, you really need to fix it so that the guild and looking for group channels are usable in Shattrath. That might help alleviate some of the traffic in the trade channel. Probably not, but it's a thought. :)]

I suppose that “fun-loving” and “good time” are subjective terms. Not many would say that wiping in an instance repeatedly for three hours is a good time. Repair bills become high and sometimes astronomical in nature for plate wearers. I have had a couple of times where wiping repeatedly was just fun because of the existing attitude of the group; we knew we probably wouldn’t get through, but the trying was what it was about anyway.

[ed: Ironically, last night another friend of mine, who happens to be in the same raiding guild as the friend mentioned above, told me she'd rather spend 3 hours dying in Karazhan with friends and laughing about it, than continue to put up with the crap she has to deal with in her current guild. Granted, she was very upset at the time she said it because of something that was going on.]

I have reached a point where very few upgrades exist for me through normal instances and quests. I have been looking at Karazhan for quite some time, but we do not have the appropriate number of people in my current guild that are ready for Karazhan. Actually, we don’t have enough of them ready for heroics either; the other avenue that exists for me to acquire upgrades.

So where do I go from here? My friend I mentioned above suggested that I join his guild. He warned me that they would dictate what spec I would play and when and where I could go. I don’t mind so much about the when and where, but what spec I play should be up to me. I’ve always believed that everyone should play as they see fit. Yes, there’s advice out there for the best overall spec for any particular healer, tank, and dps, but for heaven’s sake do what you want! How can you have fun otherwise?!

So why this post? Because I actually began to consider doing it. The thought occurred to me that I could join his guild for just long enough to get everything I wanted out of Karazhan. Right now, I want every piece of healing gear that I can get my hands on, plus tanking gear besides. I miss tanking and having the ability to switch when needed would be fantastic! Once gaining all that gear I can come back to the guild and assist the others in getting through Karazhan and moving forward from there. Makes sense right? No.

When does it stop? Once getting through Karazhan, I’m back in the same boat I am now. I could come back sure, but they would either be in the same place they are now or they would be into Karazhan and I would be ready for the next step looking for that next elusive upgrade. So when do I say when?

I know I won’t be happy in my friend’s raiding guild. It, like many others, sounds like you are there to do a job. It isn’t about the social aspect or about relaxing and killing some time. It’s about getting with others to finish something and move on. Thank you, I already have a job. Does that outweigh the desire to get the next set of gear? I don’t know. I do know that I’d rather go through Karazhan with friends I know, but are there enough of us to do so? I’m currently weighing my options and trying to “know when to say when.”

Another Character Audit Website

2008-03-19T09:40:00.003-04:00

Just an FYI for those of you out there. Siha over at Banana Shoulders posted this blog about a new character audit website. Oh and might I interject, kudos to Siha because she's got absolutely the best blog site out there in my opinion. I wish I could write as well as her and look forward every day to seeing what she's posted. Thanks, Siha!

Anyway, back to the website. So far it's pretty rough and currently doesn't provide any more information than you can find searching the Armory. At least the Armory provides the pretty pictures unlike this site does, but again it's pretty rough.

This site does have some potential and I'm playing around with it. Evidently you can track characters and see the changes they go through. This will lead to running reports if you're so inclined. I could see this being a great tool for those serious raiding guilds.

The advantage this site has over Be Imba! is it isn't limited to level 70 characters only. So again, huge potential for this website. Here's hoping it turns out great!

Character Tracking Websites

2008-03-19T08:28:00.007-04:00

Although I'm still fairly new at blogging, I've done a poor job of trying to keep up on posts every few days. Lots of things have kept me busy both personally, death in my wife's extended family, work stress, and every day family life, and in Azeroth, including guild drama, shooting for 5000g for epic flying mount training, hitting the heroics, and gearing up for raiding.

However, in all this time I've stumbled across a great new website: Be Imba! Chances are you've either seen or heard about this. If you haven't, go check it out now!

Be Imba! is a character auditor for World of Warcraft. The only requirement is the character in question must be level 70. It will then evaluate your gear, enchants, gems, and even to some extent your talents and abilities.

This website is continuously being updated as even in just the last two weeks they have added functionality to include forcing armory updates, using cached reports, etc. One of the new features I really like is the ability to expand your gear score at the bottom to show the percentages each piece of gear contributes to the whole.

The two most useful items on this tool are the Unenchant/Misenchant report and the Gear-o-Meter at the bottom showing you where you stand with regards to heroics and the current popular raids.

If you're anything like me, then when you've upgraded your gear, you've forgotten to enchant certain items. The first time I ran this report I found three items that I had recently upgraded and hadn't enchanted; the thought hadn't even occurred to me. Rather embarrassing really, because even cheap enchants are better than nothing.

Ironically, looking at this as I post this, I just recently upgraded to the Lightsworn Hammer and haven't enchanted...AGAIN!!! See how useful this is? LOL! At least I have an excuse for the rings because my enchanting isn't high enough yet to enchant those.

Now for the other neat feature. If you're like most people tracking your gear score below is a great motivator to pursuing upgrades. Check mine out.

I've been eyeing Tier 4 gear for some time now, but haven't been able to get any. I believe the reason is I have been aiming too high. Every upgrade, however small, is one step closer, but I haven't been satisfied with going after the small upgrades. Be Imba! gives me the motivation to go after even the smallest upgrades.

Watching my gear score go up even one point is kind of a thrill so I look everywhere to find these small upgrades. Doing this has gotten me closer to Tier 4 than anything I have tried in the past. Now a few friends and I are working on helping others upgrade so we can all go to Kara to start our quests for Tier 4 armor.

Maybe some of you out there can't relate to this, but for those of you who play Xbox360...you guys get it! I relate it to the same thrill that those of us playing Xbox360 have when getting Achievements. Achievements are items done within a game that once accomplished gives you a little ding, pop-up, and a few points towards your Gamer Score. A Gamer Score is set up to show off to others and give you bragging rights, but really only serves to show others how little of a personal life you have. It serves it's purpose though and is quite addictive! LOL!

The Gear-o-Meter at the bottom lists the relative difficulty of the different raids and heroics and will give you two colored bars showing you where your character falls. Remeber the red bar shows the approximation of where your gear comes from. For the most part I ignore this bar. For example, looking at my report shows that most of my gear comes from the high end of Karazhan. I have one piece of gear that came from Prince Malchazar in Karazhan. The rest is mostly PvP gear. So take it with a grain of salt.

The blue bar is the bar you'll be interested in. Based on your gear score, this bar tells you approximately how well you can expect to do in any given raid, given that the others with you are of the same level. Remember, being geared for Mt. Hyjal doesn't mean you'll do well in Karazhan if everyone else in your party isn't geared for it.

I hope you find this site useful and thanks to those guys running this site. It has it's problems, mostly resulting from the Armory blocking information requests, but when it works it's fantastic! The other problem is high traffic. I live on the East Coast and the best times I've found are before 8am, when most of the rest of the country is still getting up or asleep.

The Passing of Gary Gygax

2008-03-11T13:25:00.004-04:00

As we all know by now, Gary Gygax passed away last week. When I initially heard the news, I was shocked and found blog after blog paying tribute to him. I've spent the past several days trying to find something that I can say that would express how I feel about his contribution to the fantasy gaming world, something that could be said that hundreds before me haven't already expressed and there is nothing else that I can say. I know virtually nothing about Mr. Gygax, except that he helped create one of the greatest games in the world, Dungeons & Dragons. I haven't played Dungeons & Dragons since 1994, but it's impact has left a major mark on my life.

In 1985, my family moved to Pocatello, ID. I was in sixth grade. I had grown up on a small dairy farm less than an hour north of Bear Lake. For any who know the Pocatello area, it's a small town, but to a kid that grew up in a farming community of 500, it was a huge city. I was in sixth grade at the time and made a friend who's family was into a game called Dungeons & Dragons. A small group of us banded together and he introduced us to a world of swords and sorcery.

Initially, I didn't have a clue as to what we were doing. Although I've always had a vivid imagination, at the time I didn't understand a lot of the terminology commonly associated with the fantasy genre. It was something to do and I did enjoy it some, but understood little of what we were actually doing.

In 1986, my family moved to Eugene, OR. Again, I met some friends that played D&D and knowing more about what was going on, began purchasing the books to read up to better understand how to play. This led to other games such as Palladium, TMNT: Road Hogs, GURPS, Car Wars, Robotech, Mech Warrior, etc. This also lead to an intense amount of reading, but only in the fantasy genre. I read Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Weis & Hickman (other story lines such as Death Gate), David Eddings, Piers Anthony, and even later in life Robert Jordan and Harry Potter.

My family made several more moves over the next few years, once each year. Dungeons & Dragons was there to help me through it all. It may sound nerdy, but I was indeed one of the geeks. Every year being the new kid in a new school was tough. My sisters made the transition rather simply, but I was the shy one. D&D was a means of escape for me and an enjoyable past time that got me through some lonely times. Don't misunderstand, I participated in school sports such as football and basketball, had a small handful of friends, but in the summers before school and after a move D&D often became my life.

As technology progressed and D&D made the transition to computers, I played all the original greats like Pool of Radiance, Hillsfar, Curse of the Azure Bonds, etc. It makes me wonder would World of Warcraft even exist without his contributions to fantasy gaming? This was easier than having to create my own adventures or use the store bought ones which required I knew what was out there and try to pretend that I didn't.

Either way, Dungeons & Dragons and ultimately Gary Gygax had a large impact on my life. Without him, the shape of the fantasy gaming world would be largely different. Although I know virtually nothing about him, I give my thanks, along with millions of others, to Mr. Gygax and may he rest in peace, dicing in the heavens.

Constructive criticism and helping others

2008-03-05T16:45:00.004-05:00

I posted this on Blog Azeroth.

First, let me apologize if this topic is already somewhere here. I scanned through the list and nothing jumped out at me. As I wrote this, I began to ramble about how this question came up. I decided it was too long to post here and have posted my rambling on my blog. In it I talk about the more specific issues leading up to my question. I would appreciate it if you took the time to read it to further understand what I'm trying to get from the question, but it does ramble some and isn't necessary.

Question: How does one go about giving constructive advice to others about their gear, talents, skills, spells, class, or any other aspect of the game? How do you handle giving someone advice who “knows-it-all”?

I am currently in a new small guild that appears to be...I'll use the word disjointed. There are only 30 some odd accounts if I remember correctly. There are a select few in the guild that are almost geared for Black Temple based on http://be.imba.hu and only four of us that are geared for Karazhan or Heroics, also based on http://be.imba.hu. There are roughly another 7 or 8 lvl 70s currently in the guild; none of whom are anywhere close to being geared for Heroics let alone Kara.

I may be getting myself into trouble here if any of my fellow guildmates frequent Blog Azeroth, but I feel this is important enough that it needs to be said. Without going into great detail, but based on observations a few of us newer to the guild have a theory that the elites in the guild carried several of the newer players. As such, we're afraid that they haven't learned certain aspects of their toons and don't understand how certain aspects of the game change in the endgame.

Please let me interject by saying that I am by no means an expert in any class. I have a level 70 holy paladin and 4 alts; none of whom are higher than level 27. I do not know how to play any other class other than a paladin with any degree of expertise. I do not tell others how to play their class, besides being rude, it would only show my ignorance. I am a firm believer in playing your class anyway you like. That said I do believe certain advice can be and should be given. Let me elaborate.

Last night, five of us went into Heroic Slave Pens. This is one of the easier heroics as I understand; only having attempted three in all. I’m still fairly new to heroics. I am currently geared, albeit with PvP armor, for heroics. One other in our group is geared for it as well, one is extremely close, and the other two are nowhere near ready gear wise. Although we went into this instance knowing this, we felt that perhaps we could at least take out the first boss with a little luck, hopefully get a drop or two that would help upgrade them, and get a badge out of it. It didn’t happen.

It came to my attention that certain things about my healing abilities were brought into question by the two that are not geared for heroics. I shouldn’t have known about this, but it was passed along to me by someone I trust (the person on the receiving end of the whispers). The only thing that gets me upset in WoW is being blamed for things that are arguably not my fault. It was brought up that I was allowing the tank to drop below 50% health. Yes, this was happening as I was trying to heal others; myself included. The two low-geared toons were DPS and CC, which neither was doing effectively. This was fine because we knew this would be a problem going into a heroic. Nobody expected different, except maybe them. It resulted in my aggroing several mobs frequently which lead to my demise and ultimately a wipe.

In all fairness, I wasn’t the only target of criticism. My friend receiving the whispers was also receiving advice from the same person on how to play her toon. This is something that we’ve observed in this guild; there are a lot of people who “know-it-all”. This is very important to my question as how do you handle giving someone advice who “knows-it-all”?

Even right now as I write this, I am upset about the apparent finger pointing and lack of self-criticism. Ironically, this was set up because I talked to the GM a couple of days earlier and expressed my frustration that the guild wasn’t attempting to try new things. Well, we tried and we didn’t fare so well. I would have had an enormous amount of fun regardless of the hefty repair bill, but once I found out about the comments behind my back, all fun went out the window. I know I would have had fun because three of us had tried it the night before with two others and got the first badge after wiping so many times I lost count. We finally quit because it was getting late and our warlock started to pull hubby aggro.

Anyway, I knew it wouldn’t be easy and I knew there was a chance we’d fail, but I want so much to help those not geared get a little better geared. Not only does it help them, but it helps the guild and ultimately me as well.

Near the end when we were calling it quits, some comments were made about grouping together and spending time in easier instances to “learn how to work as a group together” and “learn how each other plays”. My other friend whispered me and laughed. He was also frustrated and upset at some of the comments and the apparent lack of knowledge on how to play their toons and, please take this with a grain of salt, sometimes appeared to not being doing much of anything at all. I'm sure that last part is not true or they were trying to not aggro, I don't know. It was the heat of battle and hard to watch everything when concentrating on your own tasks. We also understand that we’re not experts in the other classes, but we do understand the Tank-DPS-Healer trinity.

We had a Balance Druid healing because I wasn’t able to keep up. Bless her heart I love her for it, but she’s Balance and needs to play that way. In the few groups that I’ve been with her, she spends most of her time healing. Checking out her gear she is set up for healing, but is 47/0/14 in Balance. She claims she’s Balance/Resto whenever asked and never just Balance. I’ve only ever seen her change to Moonkin form once. Again, maybe she’s just under the impression that I can’t do my job and is complimenting mine, but ultimately hurts the party by not using her DPS capabilities. I especially don’t know how to give her advice on her gear/talents because I really don’t want to offend her. She’s an absolute sweetheart! (Lil, if you’re reading this, please take it in the spirit it’s meant.)

It wasn’t long ago that I had no clue as how to play a paladin effectively. When I was around level 30, I found someone that gave me advice because I asked for it and it changed the way I played so much that I enjoyed it. Solo-leveling a Protection Paladin was no fun because of my lack of knowledge. Later on, when I switched to Holy I was asked if I was a Retribution Paladin. Apparently I had primarily Retribution gear was spec’d Protection and had only recently switched to Holy without time to re-gear. I didn’t understand the differences between the three types of gear for paladins and the amazing affect that having the correct gear can have on your performance.

So ultimately, here are the questions. How do you give advice to someone you don’t want to offend? How do you give advice to someone that believes they know-it-all?

Kyrilean's Journal: First Night in Karazhan

2008-02-26T11:57:00.011-05:00

Last night was a blast! I entered Karazhan for real for the first time and boy was I excited! Well, let me rephrase that, I was initially hesitant, but later excited!

I logged on and immediately got a whisper from a friend whose guild is apparently short on healers as he asked me to join. I was told two hours max, which I should have dismissed, but I really wanted to go. It took almost an hour before we were finally ready to go and had everyone invited.

While we were waiting I started reading up on the first boss and mentally preparing. Lo and behold! This was a saved instance and they were on Nightbane and Prince Mel. I tried reading up on Nightbane quickly, but didn’t get any really good information to prepare. He took a few tries, but we managed to get him down. He dropped Stonebough Jerkin and as there were two priest healers and myself, I had the option of taking it. It’s definitely an upgrade from what I’m currently wearing based on the healing bonus, but because it was leather I opted not to take it. I also didn’t want to appear greedy, so the tankadin ended up with it. I did get 2 Badges of Justice out of it though, so I'm happy.

Prince Malchezaar was a bear! I believe we wiped three times when I told the raid leader that I appreciated the invite, but that I really needed to go. It was already 1:00am and I had work in the morning. He convinced me to go one more time as another member of the raid had to leave too. Thank God he did too! We were able to get him down relatively easy on that last try. He dropped Jade Ring of the Everliving and I was the only one that rolled on the item and won it! It’s been a long time since I’ve upgraded any equipment and it’s a good feeling to have that again. Prince Mal also dropped 3 Badges of Justice which I was very pleased about.

I’m hoping to get invited back with these guys as my own guild is not yet prepared to go. I think we’re still waiting on a few others to gear up, although we have at least 10 players keyed.

Recommended Blog Site: The Pugnacious Priest

2008-02-25T14:18:00.002-05:00

Although I have a few recommended blog websites listed, I've never actually recommended one in a blog. Granted, my blog site is fairly new and so I haven't necessarily taken the opportunity.

Today I stumbled upon a blogsite that I believe to be fairly new, at least I couldn't find a huge archive cache of posts. http://pugnaciouspriest.wordpress.com/

So far this is a great read and I look forward to reading more.

Definition of a Casual Gamer

2008-02-21T14:17:00.004-05:00

Znodis over at Blog Azeroth listed four suggested topics for blogs. I don’t think anyone has actually answered any of these over there, but maybe I’m not looking close enough. I’ve been mulling over my answer to the first three questions for some time now. The fourth answer is easy:

Q: If you could tell a newbie one thing what would it be?
A: Run for the hills!!! There’s a reason why people compare WoW to crack!

Here’s my attempt at answering the first question, “What does casual WoW gamer mean to you?”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines casual as; 1) feeling or showing little concern, 2) lacking a high degree of interest or devotion, or 3) done without serious intent or commitment.

Everyone out there is going to have a different definition of “casual” gamers. Anyone willing to shell out the bucks that it takes to play WoW, I wouldn't necessarily classify as lacking concern, interest, devotion, serious intent, or commitment. Quite to the contrary! But there are still casual WoW gamers out there and I consider myself one of them.

I know a few people who love experiencing the thrill of leveling. Once they reach level 70, they’re on to the next toon. They don’t completely abandon their 70s because of all the end game stuff available to them, but they also aren’t dedicated enough to seriously tackle raiding and the like. Does this make them casual? In the eyes of a raider? Definitely. Personally, I think it’s still pretty hardcore to make the attempt to level another character to 70. Sure it’s a little easier, especially if you rely on your 70 to help out in gear, gold, etc. but there is still a time investment that cannot be avoided.

I consider myself a casual gamer. I spent quite a bit of time getting to level 70, but then again I soloed as a protection paladin almost up to 70. I consider myself a little anti-social and don’t spend a lot of time trying to make a bunch of friends online, but primarily I hate asking for help. I’m a guy! What can I say? I don’t ask for directions either. LOL!

Once I finally got to level 70, I started trying to upgrade armor by working on the instances in Outland and upgrading my professions that I hadn’t bothered with for a while. I spent time working on the dailies and am still saving up for an epic flying mount. Because I don’t focus on it and grind for the gold, and spend what I do have frankly, I’ll probably get that mount sometime when the 3rd as-yet untitled expansion comes out. I’ve also spent time working on rep with the Aldor, Ogri-La, and the Shattari Skyguard. I’ve gotten the Skyguard rep to exalted and Ogri-La should happen today, as I’m only 800 points or so away. I’ll concentrate on Aldor next and then move to the next probably, but I keep jumping around on what I’m doing and never stay focused on any one thing. I get bored otherwise. Let me give you an example.

During the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, I spent a lot of time in the battlegrounds working to attain my Ornamented Gladiator armor set. Initially it was fun, but because I had time off from work, I was spending 10-16 hours on any given day to get enough honor points and tokens to buy the stuff. It was exciting as I purchased each new piece and added it to my toon. But I overdid it and quickly became burned out. Now I have a couple of rings and trinkets I’d like to get, but it’ll take forever because I can’t stomaching the battlegrounds more than two or possibly three times a night.

I haven’t tried the Arena yet and I hear the gear is worth it, but I also hear it is extremely time consuming and I am not that fond of PvP. So why did I spend so much time in the battlegrounds? Frankly, I needed upgraded armor. The battlegrounds provided an avenue to get some fairly simply, cheaply, and quickly (although quickly is somewhat relative). It only provided a stepping stone to getting into instances in Outland. The gear I had at the time was inferior and I kept dying in the instances. I also wasn’t healing as well as I needed to and the PvP gear gives a nice boost.

I’ve read the arguments between PvE and PvP gear and how they don’t work well in the other setting. Now I agree that in general it’s better to have the appropriate gear designed for the appropriate forum, but I disagree with just about everyone arguing the importance of gear because as important as gear is, and I think it’s very important, I think party dynamics, including class make-up and the individual players play a more important role overall, but that’s an argument for another blog.

So I’ve spent a lot of time jumping between daily quests, battlegrounds, reputation advancement, profession advancement, helping out lower level guildmates, helping guildmates get keyed for Karazhan, etc. I’ve been trying for three or four weeks to get into heroics, but I haven’t dedicated the time to doing it every night. Dyna’s been wanting me and Yec to join up with him as he’d prefer the three of us to do these with a couple of others, but Yec and I haven’t made the time. Dyna’s really gotten into it and has 47+ badges where I only have 6 and I think Yec has 2.
So does that mean focus determines whether someone is a casual gamer or not? It can, I suppose, but I don’t think so. I focused on battlegrounds, but still consider myself a casual gamer. Dyna’s really focused on heroics, but I still think of him as a casual gamer. I think there’s more to it.

The biggest reason why I consider myself a casual gamer is attitude. A couple of weeks ago I had a blast in a heroic ramparts although we continued to wipe multiple times and only came out with one badge. It cost me 47+ gold in repairs, but I had a blast! It was a learning experience, I was with friends, and I couldn’t have cared less. There are so many people out there that would have given up after the second wipe because to them it’s just not worth it.

Don't get me wrong! I'm all about upgrading my toons and being the best that I can, but I also want to just spend time with the people that I like and having fun.

Q: What does casual WoW gamer mean to you?
A: Bottom line, the definition of a casual gamer is someone who just plays the game to enjoy the game.

Character Name Creation

2008-02-12T15:00:00.000-05:00

Author's Note: Bunnyfer over at Blog Azeroth suggested two questions for blogs. I'm going to address the first one, "How do you come up with your character names?"

Kyrilean. Funny thing is I invented this name, but evidently so have many others. If you do a Google search for Kyrilean, the first item in the list is my blog page. Currently the third item down is a link to Allakhazam for Dark Age of Camelot. There’s a few more so you’ll have to take my word for it that I came up with it on my own. Ironically, I also read Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Absolutely love them. In one of the books, there’s a character named Kyril. I use this a lot as a nickname, but I’ll explain that as well.

Back in high school I used to play D&D, back when it was still owned by TSR, Inc. I was still playing a little by the time Wizards of the Coast bought them, but not as much. Because of this I used to spend time inventing names for characters. It was during this time that I invented Kyrileanthos Silverblade.

At the time I was reading a lot of the Dragonlance novels. In fact, I read them over and over constantly. I was intrigued by the characters Tanis and Laurana. Tanis and Laurana are shortened names for Tanthalas (if memory serves) and Lauralanthalasa. The long names and shortened versions intrigued me and I wanted to create a name that had similar characteristics.

This is where my memory gets a little hazy. I don’t remember exactly if the correlation came before or after I created the name. For Star Wars geeks, we all know that the Millenium Falcon was a Corellian freighter. Corellian and Kyrilean have very distinct similarities. I cannot remember to this day if I thought of the name first and noticed the similarity or if Corellian was an influence. Anyway, I attached the “thos” at the end of the name. Looking at it later, I unintentionally had created a name that could also be shortened to Kyril, adding another nickname. I thought that was pretty cool. It wasn’t until creating Kyrilean, Kyrileanthos didn’t fit, and adventuring in Azeroth that it was even shortened further to Ky by guildmates. I accomplished what I wanted with this name and have been proud of it ever since.

That was probably the only name I created using that method. Most of the names I’ve created involved picking a letter that I wanted the name to start with and then picking random letters to start filling in spaces within the name. As soon as you get a few letters together with a sound, begin substituting letters until you get a name that works well with the character you’re inventing.

Another technique I use is to take a name I like and change it. I’ve always liked the name Jason and I once modified it to Jasyn and created a character named Jasyn Blackhawk. That’s a simple example, but you can take it much farther. Take my character Luthe from Ultima IV—if you’ve never had the chance to play this game, it’s been widely said that this became the template for all future role-playing games, so give thanks to Lord British. I believe I started with something close to Legolas from Lord of the Rings, substituted and removed letters until I got to Luthos, which became Luther and finally just removed the ‘r’.

Other techniques just involve envisioning your character in your head and then having that determine the letters and sounds that will ultimately become your character’s name. Remember I mentioned I was reading Dragonlance? Quite possibly my favorite character in the entire Dragonlance series is Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I wanted to create a similar character and envisioned a Halfling. From there I decided I would use the letter ‘K’. For whatever reason the letter ‘u’ seemed like it would fit perfectly so it became “Ku”. After that I cannot remember where it went, but eventually it settled on Kupix. The name itself does not evoke a sense of dread, so it wouldn’t necessarily work well with a warrior. However, for a semi-innocent Hafling thief? It worked and the name stuck.

One final technique to use is foreign words. This becomes harder for those that cannot speak another language, but for those of us that do it can be a great help. I recently created a Human Female Priest character named Maedchen. For anyone that knows German, “das Maedchen” is “girl”. Kinda corny I know, but the average person won’t know and it’s a good looking name. I also created a Shaman named Erdkrieg, which is using the German words for “earth” and “war”.

Whatever technique you use to create your own character names, have fun with it. As long as you like the name, that’s all that really matters. Try to create something that you won’t regret later. I’ve seen some fairly silly names online that I can’t imagine anyone would want to live with all the way through level 70. At least Blizzard gives us the chance to change those names now.

Kyrilean's Journal: Slave Pens (An Heroic Adventure) and Finding Friends

2008-02-10T08:52:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was a long day in Azeroth, but a great one!

The first thing I did was spend a lot of time getting my cooking skill up. It had been around 125 for more than 30 levels and I've been level 70 for smoe time now. It's just a skill that I neglected, primarily because I didn't have recipes that would allow me to upgrade the skill. Most of the recipes I knew were green. I keep hearing about this daily cooking quest and heard that you can also make good money with the higher level recipes.

Eventually a couple of guild members came online and I was asked to help with the quest chain leading to the Ogri'La daily quests. It surprised me that we were able to accomplish these quests with five people in just over an hour. When I did them it took a group of 10-12 over three hours! I don't know what we were doing wrong back then, but OMG! LOL!!! And it isn't the gear, although Yec, Dyna, and I were part of the large group and have upgraded a little since then, we haven't upgraded that much.

I was initially supposed to go to Karazhan for the first time tonight. A friend of Yec's needed a healer and actually wanted one the night before, but I was questing with Yec and others and wasn't all that excited to go with a bunch of people I didn't know. I hadn't seen the guy on and the time was getting close. I was invited to go with a Dyna and Zeza to finish a heroic Ramparts instance. They had tried earlier in the day and had only taken the first boss down. I felt bad about leaving Yec to herself, although she said I shouldn't. Later on, Dyna and I were talking about getting Yec to go and I told Yec I decided she had to come on the next one, since she was giving me maybes.

We spent just over an hour getting to the second boss only to find he wasn't there! LOL! The other guys not in our group had come back and finished the instance! We ran over to see if the main boss was there and he was gone too! LOL! Well chalk this one up to practice.

Zeza, Dyna, and I looked for others to go to Slave Pens and get some badges there. This time we ended up with a mage to help and it went really quick. I think we were through the entire instance in about an hour or less. I wasn't even fully mana'd up before they were off running attacking the next group. I don't know if it was the other two we ended up with, but Slave Pens was much easier than Ramparts. I got 3 Badges of Justice out of the thing which doubles the number I have. It's also the first heroic instance that I completed from beginning to end, having only ever been in three others. One time I got two badges and another time only one. The third time I didn't get anything.

Although the heroic instance was great when it comes to advancing in the game, the part that really made the day a great one was the time I spent helping out a friend finish a lot of quests and leveling. It was a lot of fun and with it being just the two of us somehow the talk drifted towards a personal level. We have similar problems in our real lives and have similar views on life. I've made a "new" friend.

Kyrilean's Journal: Leaving FIELD OF HONOR

2008-02-08T09:22:00.000-05:00

So funny thing happened last night! I quit my guild. Yeah, I know it makes FIELD OF HONOR – A World of Warcraft Guild; Friends in the Making a little ironic now. But that said FIELD OF HONOR was only as good as the people that were in it. Now there are still some good people there and I added them to my friends list before leaving, but some things happened that lead up to this decision.

When I logged on last night, Dyna told me that Yecarteiram had left the guild today. So I whispered her alt and called her a liar since she said she wasn’t leaving. She felt really bad, but couldn’t take it anymore. I’m not sure of the details and I won’t go into what I either suspect or what little I do know. Suffice it to say that we’ve had several people come and go because of drama issues and it has affected pretty much everyone the same way.

The three of us started talking and I told Dyna that if he stayed that I would stay. I also said that if he was unhappy with the way things were that I recommended leaving if it would help him enjoy the game more. So it was decided that we were going to leave and make the move to Ambrosia.

While we waited for Lillika, the GM for Ambrosia, to come online I pushed for starting a Heroic Ramparts run. It was fun, but we were so unprepared. A lot of people will argue that we were undergeared and we probably are, but I don’t believe gear plays as large a part as most people believe. Don’t get me wrong, it is very important! Our biggest issue was maintaining crowd control. We must have wiped at least 6 times on the group around the corner from the bridge because of the spellcasters there. I lost track of how many wipes we had after about ten.
We finally did it and made it to the first boss and took him down. So we got our one Badge of Justice and called it quits for the night. Total repair cost was 43g between two repairs! Everyone else was at 16-20g, the penalty for having epic armor! We’re going to try again tonight.

At this point, I left the guild and joined Ambrosia. It started a bunch of people talking evidently. I had one whisper me about why I left. About thirty minutes later, Dyna handed off the guild to another member and joined Ambrosia as well. Not that many people were on, but I’d love to be a fly on the wall when people find out! LOL! Actually, I checked the Armory online this morning and the new guild message is “wth, Dyna left too?”

Well, here’s to a fresh start with a new guild!

Kyrilean's Journal: Spending Time with the Alts

2008-02-07T08:54:00.000-05:00

I've got a few alts floating around that I have spent a little time playing trying to find a class that I wanted to spend time leveling to 70. I have a priest, mage, rogue, and shaman. I guess technically I have a warrior as well that I named Esel (German for mule), but he is permanently parked in Ironforge at the auction house. I mail him pretty much everything I find that's worth selling and then post it in the AH on Friday evenings. I also scan the AH for deals with Esel. But I never spend a lot of time with any of them. Something always draws me back to Ky.

Granted Ky is my main and I've spent the most time with him. He'll always be my favorite. I've spent a lot of time in BGs trying to get PvP armor. I've spent a lot of time farming trying to upgrade professions and get to the ever-elusive epic flying mount. I think all of that is about to change.

I didn’t spend much time online as Kyrilean last night. I logged on and started the Ogri’La dailies. I ran into a friend and we grouped for the banish and bombing quests. He then came to help me with the escort quest in Skettis. He logged off after that and I contacted a few guild mates about starting the daily heroic. But while I was waiting, I decided to have a friend’s alt get Maedchen, a level 12 female human priest, invited to our so-called “sister” guild.

My friend Yec has a couple of alts in the guild Ambrosia. Our GM Dyna also moved his alt a few weeks ago into that guild. The idea of having a “sister” guild is to be able to group together for raids. We’ve been trying for some time to get raid ready, but it’s been slow going. Things kept looking up when new 70s joined the guild, but more often than not they’ve left to find a guild that’s a little further along.

Ambrosia has limited invite privileges. I don’t know what they are, but the GM, Lillika wanted to group up and hit the Stocks. Well, I don’t think Maedchen is allowed in Stocks yet, so we decided on Deadmines instead. I guess they wanted to evaluate me before blind inviting me. I wish our guild did a little more of that.
I got the party invite and we met up at DM. I felt extremely out of place as they were all in their upper 20s except Lillika who is 70 and Yec’s alt, who I believe was around 23. They all laughed when I joked about it. Obviously the evaluation wasn’t going to be on my ability to contribute on this run.

We flew through DM quickly and it was interesting to find myself passing on all blues and greeding on greens. I lost most of the greed rolls. I don’t have great gear at lvl 12 and could have probably used a lot of it, but didn’t spend the time actually looking. I guess I figure I can always buy stuff as Ky gave her 30 gold or so. I didn’t realize I was doing it until near the end when the druid in our party asked if I hadn’t needed a particular item. I probably did, but overlooked it.

A Deadmines run is never boring. I don’t know why. You would think that being as simplistic as it is that it wouldn’t be fun after a while, but even at level 70 it is. I’ve run other instances that are fairly easy and I can’t stand them, like Blackfathom Deeps.

After our run, Lillika invited Maedchen into the guild where I was quickly welcomed. At this point, she helped me get a few items for quests on our way back. And they were on their way to the Stocks. I asked if they minded having a mage tag along. So I logged in as Shalandra, a level 22 female human mage. At least this time I was closer to their levels!

After a quick run through the Stocks, Lillika asked if Shalandra wanted to join the guild, so I said why not. I told Dyna that I was moving Shal over to Ambrosia and left FIELD OF HONOR. Even though I know I’m not really leaving that guild, there was still a twinge of guilt, or maybe a sense of loss, associated with that move. LOL. Dyna did ask me about the daily heroic and if we wanted to group with Zeza, but it was late by this point and I had to get up early for work. So hopefully tonight.

So now I’ve met a few new nice people and have a couple of my alts in another guild. I didn’t think it would be quite as exciting as it is. I say that because I’m getting the chance to meet a few more people with lower level alts that can help my lower level alt advance more quickly than I’ve been doing while soloing. I haven’t spent a lot of time with my alts because it got boring and now I think it might be more fun. So here’s to starting a few new journals in my blog!

Kyrilean's Journal: Keyed for Karazhan!

2008-02-05T08:41:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, several of us in the guild decided to get BM done and finally get our keys to Karazhan. Some of the others already have them and are waiting on us. There was another holy paladin in the guild that needed it and he did offer to step aside for me, but I could tell he didn’t want to, so I stepped aside to go second. Now I outrank the guy and probably shouldn’t have, especially since I’ve been trying longer than he, but I figure we’ll all get there and there’s no need to rush or be a jerk about it. I didn’t think about the rumor that I had heard earlier that day; evidently he’s going to go off and start his own guild. That said I shouldn’t have stepped aside because I’m in this for the guild as well as me.

Anyway, they succeeded and we started to group up for a second run. We ran into a little trouble. We had a slightly different group and the makeup wasn’t ideal. The hunter mysteriously DC’d and never got back on and one of the additional warriors decided to try and find another group. It was Super Bowl Sunday people! There was no one on that wanted to do this. We really needed a mage and although there were a lot on, none who wanted to run BM.

We kept trying to take down the bosses, but to no avail. Our last attempt consisted of 3 warriors, none of which were tanks, a druid tank, and I. I have to say the one warrior I didn’t know did extremely well with the adds.

My GM and fellow guildmate were getting very frustrated as they really wanted me to get keyed for this. They felt bad, which I appreciate, but it wasn’t their fault and I know they had tried hard. Yec was cracking me up because she started putting her foot down when I kept talking about giving up! She kept saying it was going to happen and it was going to happen today! But I finally got them to give up searching for someone and we went to BEM to kill the four dragons. Amazingly, the three of us took them all down by ourselves. It wasn’t exactly easy, but it was easier than I thought it was going to be.

The cloak created from the four dragonscales was a little disappointing. I ended up with the Deathwing Brood Cloak of the Sorcerer (+27 Stamina, +18 Intellect, +21 Spell Damage and Healing). I already have something better for me and although the cloak is really good, it just wasn't quite there. I'm definitely keeping it as a memento.

Yesterday, I logged on and my GM logged on about two minutes later. He started hunting for a party and got our former guildmate (see While I Was Gone) to tank for us, one of the tank’s mage friends, and our hunter. We set off for BM and did it! I’m finally keyed for Karazhan!! I’ve been trying to do this for months now. I can’t wait to get there. I really want that Tier 4 armor!!! I’m as a giddy as a school boy!

Guild Websites - Should I Create One?

2008-02-04T15:01:00.000-05:00

I’d like to create a guild website. We’re a small guild that’s currently trying to get to Karazhan. We’re pretty casual and I’ve seen what some of the other sites say about being a casual raiding guild. I understand that there is a lot of time and effort needed to be a successful raiding guild. Most of us are willing to put in the time. I probably average close to 30 hours a week on WoW and a few of the other officers and GM put in more time than that.

I really like the casual feel of the guild. We help each other, let everybody do their own thing, and overall there’s no pressure to do any more than you really want to. It’s a game after all and we’re here to enjoy. Just like the hardcore raiding guilds enjoy being that, we enjoy doing our thing.

However, that said I think several things need to change. I believe a website can assist us in doing this. We need a forum in which to post rules and expectations of the guild. We’ve seen a lot of drama lately, I believe primarily due to the willy nilly recruiting. Everyone has the privilege to invite anyone they see fit into the guild. Although I don’t think we should necessarily take that right away from the members, I do think we need to communicate the guild leaders’ expectations.

Here’s what I see potentially for a guild website:

Guild Rules, expectations, etc.
Calendar of Events (raids, etc.)
Communication Forum (congratulations, promotions, issues, problems, class questions, grievances, etc.)
Raid set-up (calendar, rules, looting, participation tracking, DKP, or other form)

I have no experience with any guild websites out there. Does it work for you? What are the problems you run into? I would appreciate any comments on what to add, modify, or avoid. Any advice on maintenance of website, enforcing members to view website, etc. would be greatly appreciated. If you have personal experience with creating a website, what kind of effort and time are you putting into maintaining it? Any advice on layouts, structure, etc. is appreciated. Basically, if you think of it, please let me know.

Also, I have no experience with creating a website whatsoever, unless you count this blog. I think someone in the guild has some and I have a friend that is very good at it. Also, I’ll probably be accessing Blog Azeroth for help from time to time. I learn quickly and am confident I can create a website.

Kyrilean's Journal: While I Was Gone

2008-02-04T11:51:00.000-05:00

I was going to avoid writing too much about my actual day-to-day online experiences, but a lot of you are doing it and I figure I may as well too. Perhaps in doing so I will discover new topics to write about. So the first one is just a recap of some of the things I missed while away the past two weeks.

Last Wednesday my computer came back from the store. They had to replace the motherboard. Thankfully it was still under warranty. I really thought as soon as I got home that I would boot up and play WoW. I had even written a blog about being addicted. Although I booted up and logged in, I only stayed on for a minute to see who was there. I've been using CoD4 on Xbox Live as a crutch and still felt the urge to continue playing. I let my GM know what happened and took a look at the guild roster. It had changed quite a bit. Several people weren’t there, including one key person.

I was pretty shocked at what I saw. The key person that left was surprising, but I guess it shouldn’t have been. He had been going off with others to run instances constantly and was really starting to get into raiding. He was rarely with the rest of us unless we really needed his help on something. Our guild has slowly puttered along trying to get to Kara, so I should have seen it coming.

The roster was down about 15 people since last time I was on. That might not seem like much, but we’ve averaged around 70 members for quite some time so it’s a blow. I found out later that a couple of characters were alts sent to another guild that we’re partnering up with. So I guess at least one of my alts will be headed that way too.

Another member was evidently kicked because of ongoing drama. Before I left he got drunk one night and became extremely vulgar and antagonistic towards other members. Mainly he was goofing off and trying to be funny. Although we’re pretty laid back, we do have an age range of players in the guild. I know we have a couple of 12 year olds and I’m sure their parents wouldn’t appreciate us not doing something about it. Evidently he had continued his antics while I was gone and was finally booted permanently. The note of the day says anyone that invites him back will get booted too. LOL!

Apparently others left during this time, either to pursue advancement with other guilds due to our slow progress, the drama, or a combination of both. We also cleared out those who hadn’t been online in over a month. I have a level 5 alt that was a casualty of the cleaning. I laughed when I saw him gone and gave the GM crap for that one, although I hadn’t told him who the character belonged to. :)

Evidently the guild almost crumbled during this time. The GM felt like things were falling apart and almost gave up. Luckily he didn’t. I love this guild! Although we all would have ended up somewhere else together anyway, it just wouldn’t be the same.

Now we’re trying to fix things. I’m looking into starting up a guild website. I have no experience in doing that though. I'll post what I'm thinking about it in a separate blog. I’d appreciate any input.

Struggling with Online Friendships

2008-02-04T11:41:00.001-05:00

Author's Note: Although, I've had this idea floating about in my head for a little while now, the motivation to finally write this came from Belgarath at Blog Azeroth. It took a really long time because it became overly winded with ideas I found interesting, but were too tangential to the topic. I haven't had time to read through any new posts that may have appeared since I started. I hope that I am not just repeating what everyone else has already stated.

: By the way, I just want to point out that I looked up “friend” on Wikipedia. What I found was a definition for friendship; “Friendship is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more humans.”

Given that this is true, then there are very few friends within the world of Azeroth. Sorry guys, all you elves, dwarves, gnomes, draenai, and horde players are screwed! :)

Several people have posted comments already that friends are friends no matter what forum you find them in. Can you truly consider those you meet online as friends? This is a concept that I’ve been struggling with for some time now and I think I’ve found out why. The real question is “Why do we struggle with the concept of online friendship?”

What is friendship? I believe we can all agree that the definition above is one way to describe friendship and that it is a very basic, bare-bone description at that. All of us have our own interpretations and additional criteria we associate with friendship. I myself disagree with the definition only because I can think of several people that I am forced to co-operate with and support in my workplace, neighborhood, and even a couple in my extended family—not talking about my in-laws :)—that I would never consider a friend. I would add that a friend is someone you care about on a personal level. I specify “care” instead of “love” because I have had people that I considered friends, but wouldn’t say I “loved” them. I cared about their personal welfare and always wished them well, but the caring didn’t extend enough to go out of my way to make sure they were taken care of; such feelings and actions I equate with “love”.

Think back as far as you can to when you were very young. If you can think back to kindergarten, try to go back to then. How did you first make friends? It’s possible that you knew a few of the kids in your grade either through parents, church, or just in your neighborhood. Either way, chances are you made friends with them because primarily you were in the same class and associated with them. You had a similar forum in which you could relate to others.

How is this different than meeting people online? It’s not. WoW gives us all a forum in which we can meet people that have similar interests as we do; the basic foundation of which is WoW. From there we get to know people by grouping up for quests and instances and an even better forum through joining guilds. Over time we may begin to feel a certain bond between those we often adventure with. And why shouldn’t we? We are spending time with these people albeit through online avatars. Does that make it any less real? No.

I think the real question is “Why do we struggle with the concept of online friendship?” Well, there are lots of reasons. Online predators come to mind. I’m a parent with two young children. As they get older, my fear of online predators will increase. Another reason is that it is very easy for people to lie online. You aren’t face to face with these people and cannot see body language or hear inflections in their voice (unless using voice chat). They can even claim to be the other sex and you’d never know. There are a million reasons, but we all get the idea.

Bottom line, if you meet someone that you like associating with online and they with you, then you’re probably friends. There are different levels of friendship online, just like in the “real world”. There are people I consider “work friends” that I wouldn’t associate with in my private life. Just like that example, just because you wouldn’t associate with the people you meet online in your normal daily life, doesn’t mean they aren’t a friend.

Blog Azeroth - Shared Topics #1

2008-01-28T14:40:00.000-05:00

Explanation: Over at Blog Azeroth, Siha suggested a semi-regular shared blog topic and kicked it off the first round with this question. Check out her response here. The link to other's responses is here.

Q: What do you enjoy about the class you play the most?

I haven’t been playing WoW long enough to really get a solid feel for any of the other classes, but I really enjoy the Paladin. I’ve tried Priest, Shaman, Rogue, and Mage as well, but only the Mage has reached a level above 20.

So why did I choose the Paladin? The perception.

I’ve been an avid fantasy reader since I was young. I spent a lot of time reading Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, David Eddings, and Robert Jordan to name a few. I also grew up with the Christopher Reeve Superman movies and idolized the ideology of the Jedi Knight. In all of these stories, the characters that I’ve always been drawn towards are those that strive for honor above all else; a desire to rise above the natural man. Sturm Brightblade immediately comes to mind for example. Whether this is because I strive for that ideal as my own life permits or because of a lack somewhere in my life, I do not know. I’d like to think I’m honorable though. :)

The Paladin represents all that is good and decent in life. For me, they are the epitome of righteousness and good society. They uphold values that all should strive for in being decent with each other and with helping their fellow man (elf, dwarf, gnome, orc, troll, tauren, etc.)

So what about gameplay? Much like Siha, who started this shared blog, I like the survivability! Let me clarify this statement. I like survivability when it comes to PvE. I can’t survive a sneeze when it comes to PvP!!! Maybe that’s because I always get hit by at least four players in BGs, usually casters and rogues and NO ONE defends the healers.

When I first started playing the Paladin, I kept dying quickly, couldn’t do damage and had no clue as to what I was doing wrong. Then I discovered some of the Protection talents and found that although I couldn’t DPS to save my life, I could take a beating that could! I’ve since learned that a Paladin supposedly can do a fair amount of DPS, but I’ve never tried the Retribution talents so don’t know personally.

My current favorite thing to do is the Banish daily quest. I head north and take on as many of the various demons that I can. So far I can only aggro four and that’s tough because someone always thinks they’re helping and steals at least one. But I have aggro’ed four and then taken on the two humanoid spell-casters that wander around somewhere in the middle of my fight and survived! This all as a Holy Pally too!! I’m not sure why I get such a thrill out of doing this, but I do!

If you read my other blog, WoW Healers: Is there a more frustrating job?!, I make comment on how healing is a frustrating job. There’s nothing so fun like spamming Flash of Light during a fight and only watching the green bars of your party members! But as boring as that can be, I get a thrill out of being such an important support member when we succeed. What can I say? I enjoy healing.

Finally, the ability to wear plate! Plate armor just looks cool. Oh wait, we have Redemption Armor. /sigh. OK, so most of the epic armor for paladins leaves something to be desired, but generally speaking it makes your guy look that much bigger and badder.

FIELD OF HONOR – A World of Warcraft Guild; Friends in the Making

2008-01-24T11:40:00.000-05:00

I started playing WoW in June of 2007. It was primarily because of buying a new laptop for my wife. (See World of Warcraft Addiction.)Burning Crusade had recently come out and there was a lot of hype about it. Everyone was excited. I had never played and actually had never talked to anyone that had. I just didn’t see the point of paying for a game and then re-paying every month to keep playing. The whole concept still baffles me a little and I wonder if I would do this with any other MMORPG.

When people are asked why they play WoW perhaps the most common answer is the social aspect. I have nothing to base this on, but after reading several articles, talking to people within the WoW community, reading blogs, etc. this answer seems to be a very common one. Initially I didn’t really see the attraction. For the most part, I am a very private person. I have only a handful of people in my life that I would call friends and only one in my life that I truly consider a friend. But I have to admit that I have gained a few social bonds within the WoW community that I enjoy. Those social bonds are found with the guild community.

As stated, my first couple of months was spent soloing because I hadn’t really gotten into the social aspect of the game. I ended up joining a guild somewhere near level 20. The guild was brand new and didn’t have many people, but there were a couple of cool guys in it. Unfortunately the guild started to stagnate quickly and eventually I left to find another guild that could help out and that I could join for instances. I eventually found a larger guild that had quite a mix of players. I was actually impressed with the guild because the guild leader was maybe 14 and acted a lot more mature than I would have expected from someone that age. But the majority of the guild was refusing to get Burning Crusade and I was quickly approaching level 58. Although I debated leaving the guild, even though I still wasn’t extremely social within that one, I eventually left when a friend of mine invited me to FIELD OF HONOR.

Granted I’ve only now been in three guilds, but I have to say this is the BEST GUILD EVER! When I first joined there were maybe 6 members that were level 70. I wasn’t level 70, but ended up being the 7th or 8th to reach that. Generally speaking we average 70 members at any given time. Granted nearly everyone has at least one alt and there’s a couple that have several. I’ve never done a count of how many actual players there are in the guild. But that doesn’t matter considering it’s the quality and not the quantity of the guild. Sure we have aspirations towards raiding someday, but we can always join up with other guilds to do that.

The best thing about this guild is that the “Founders” and “Officers” generally have online personalities that coincide with mine. What do I mean? They are all very willing and ready to help anyone in the guild and even others that aren’t. But they resent those that are looking for handouts. We often have people join the guild thinking that they can ask every level 70 to help them with every quest, every instance, gold, equipment, enchantments, etc. I once had someone who had been in the guild two days ask if anyone could enchant his weapon with fiery enchant. I told him I could, but he’d have to provide the mats. He expressed his disappointment and without a word ended up leaving the guild about five minutes later. We all got a pretty good laugh out of that one!

As odd as it sounds and even though this may come out as sentimental drivel, I feel I’ve made four really good friends on WoW through FIELD OF HONOR and good friends with the rest of them. Because of that I look forward to playing WoW even more than I normally would. The game really is designed for the social environment and the guild is perhaps the best way to do that. I give thanks to all those in FIELD OF HONOR that make WoW that much better!

World of Warcraft Addiction

2008-01-24T11:32:00.000-05:00

If you scan the internet, especially blogs, for WoW addiction you will find some interesting opinions out there. [Edit: 1/25/08 - Read this interesting blog.] Here’s my take on it with my recent bout of WoW addiction.

Last Friday, my laptop went out. I took it back to Best Buy to have them look at it. I purchased it last April and so at least it’s covered by the protection plan. I haven’t heard back from them yet, but the guy thought it was due to the video card being burnt out. He then told me that if that’s gone the motherboard will have to be replaced. I’m an idiot when it comes to computers. The last time I felt caught up on the whole computer thing was when the Tandy 1000 was the computer of choice.

Well, Best Buy had to send the laptop back for repairs. I should get it back by the end of next week. I’ve actually managed to go a week without playing WoW. I deserve a medal! Actually it hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be. But I’ve had a crutch to lean on. Call of Duty 4!!! I also spent the time to finally complete Assassin’s Creed as well. Both are great games and diversions from WoW.

I never played a MMORPG before. Refused to purchase any game that required a monthly fee out of principle. Felt that I already paid the game, why keep paying? Anyway, I fell for it and wish I’d done it sooner. I have to admit that I’m one of the people spending about 4 hours a night and 8 hours/day on the weekends playing WoW.

How did I get addicted to WoW? My wife can’t figure it out and doesn’t understand the obsession. She also regrets that it was her idea to buy the game in the first place. We were at the store buying the laptop for her. I was looking around and saw the game and expressed mild curiosity about the game, mostly because the new expansion came out and I had read about the success Blizzard was having with it. I still couldn’t understand why anyone would pay a monthly fee though. Since my wife always has a guilty conscience whenever she spends money, she suggested I pick it up and play it for 30 days. I guess she didn’t think I’d get hooked! LOL! Her bad!

What is it that addicts me? Well originally it was the new experience of learning a class, getting talents, learning skills, upgrading weapons/armor, questing, exploring, etc. Now that I’m finally level 70, it’s about getting that blasted epic flying mount, getting to Karazhan, daily quests, and getting tier 4 armor. Eventually I want to get tier 6, but I need to remember to take baby steps. I kept trying to get tier 4, but wasn’t geared for it. Finally I got into the battlegrounds to get the Ornamented Gladiator’s Armor. I finally have all that. There are a couple of more items I’d like to get, but I think I burned myself out on the BGs for now.

So I’m addicted to WoW! But I don’t care! It’s my escape from the real world, helps me calm down after a rough day, and is something I thoroughly enjoy. I just need to remember; I have a family and need to spend time with them. As long as I’m able to find that balance, I should be OK. I’ve been able to cope without playing a little better than I thought I would, but I do miss it. Hopefully, I only have to endure this one more week. Maybe this was a good thing for me. Hopefully it will refresh me for when I get back. I have to admit that the last month was starting to get real repetitive and I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere.

Anyway, Blizzard knows how to cater to my addiction and to everyone else’s apparently. Give us the satisfaction of working hard at something and we’ll keep coming back for more. I can’t wait until Wrath of the Lich King comes out!

WoW: Healers. Is there a more frustrating job?!

2008-01-16T10:54:00.000-05:00

Healers. Is there a more frustrating job out there?! I know everybody thinks that their job is the hardest in the group and I’m not saying they don’t have valid points. But take a moment to think about it.

Every group must have a healer. It’s a given. Unless you are a level 70 running a group through Deadmines, YOU NEED A HEALER!!! Every group will of course need a tank, dps, cc, etc., but you can vary this effectively based on the instance, quest, pvp, raid, gear, etc.

But really is there any more frustrating job?! The reason is because of the nature of the job. In order to be an effective healer, you MUST be spec’d and geared for it! This is to help minimize the problems that I will discuss below. Now I can’t speak for druids and priests having never played a druid and only having a priest alt that’s currently at level 9, but for paladins this means sacrificing a lot of other attractive options in order to make this happen. [I’m currently looking around the internet for advice on how to re-spec my holy paladin to be more effective at healing as well as increase my dps.] But all-in-all every class has to make sacrifices to do whatever their job is effectively, so this is a weak argument at best.

One issue is you really need to be someone that likes healing. There’s a certain thrill in healing a group that’s being pounded on and coming through it alive, but more often than not we’d all rather not have to deal with close calls. In those cases it becomes rather boring. The effective healer stays out of range and watches his/her aggro to keep from getting killed. In most cases, you don’t even watch the battle. Unlike many spells in which you have to face your target, healing requires only that you be within range. I generally miss most battles because I’m so focused on watching the parties’ health bars on the left side of my screen. For those of you not familiar with this concept, it’s really exciting watching the green bars go left and right for the duration of the battle. I can only equate it to watching paint dry. So again, you really do need to enjoy being the healer, whether it’s the praise afterwards, the excitement of pulling through on a difficult run, or just a personality thing, it’s important to enjoy.

The real frustration lies in the way healers are treated. You are everybody’s hero, when you perform. I’ve been praised for great heals for some of the dumbest situations. One day a few of us in our guild got an itch to take out a Fel Reaver in Hellfire. It might have been a quest for some, but I can’t remember anymore. All I remember is that I had wanted to take one out ever since I first got to Outland. They were so impressive back then! The fight ended up being a joke because of our druid tank. I believe I had to heal her with Flash of Light less than ten times and once was critically hit so I had to use Holy Light a couple of times. For whatever reason she was taking almost no damage and the others were doing a good amount of dps on the thing. Mostly I stood there and watched the thing fall, which was fun in itself! I got thanked for the heals, and rightly so, but I didn’t do anything special. I did my job. Bottom line, I got thanked because we survived.

When you don’t perform, you are everybody’s “whipping-boy” or “-girl”. You not performing doesn’t necessarily mean “you” specifically. More often than not this means the group. I’ve been in groups where the tank was so poorly geared that I couldn’t use Flash of Light to heal him because of the amount of damage he was taking. Each heal had to be Holy Light depleting my mana quickly and leaving the rest of the group to their own devices. Guess who got blamed? The healer was unable to keep up. I was poorly geared, not having enough bonus heal, mana regen, or mana in general. I wasn’t healing the rest of the group. So on and so forth. Bottom line, I got blamed because we wiped. There’s nothing more discouraging.

If you’re in a good group, it will be obvious to all that although the healer may need better gear or talents, that often the rest of the group needs better gear and talents as well, or even a new party dynamic. I was once in a group with one warrior tank and three hunters. We kept wiping on the second boss and they were getting very frustrated. I was finally asked to leave because I was under-geared. I’ll admit at the time I definitely was, but having three hunters in the party did nothing to help the situation. Our group dynamic was such that we didn’t have a range of effective damage and control for this boss. Following up later with the warrior, who is a friend of mine, the party never did get past the second boss even after replacing me.

Now it’s time to talk about the role of a PvP healer. As I have no experience with Arenas, my focus will be on battlegrounds. I am not an avid PvP fan. I don’t particularly like it for a number of reasons. First, it always seems like the Horde win 90% of the time. This probably isn’t true, but it sure seems like it. This makes battlegrounds a test of grinding patience. When I first started last Thanksgiving, I found that I could do well in Alterac Valley. The Alliance was winning about 75% of the time. I raked in the honor points averaging 500 each battle. It was new, it was fun, and definitely worth it! However, the other battlegrounds were miserable tests of patience just trying to get through the thing as quickly as possible to get my single mark, 150 honor points, and move to the next loss. It’s frustrating because I do not believe in AFKing a battleground. In my opinion, it is just cheating and unfair to the others. Thankfully, Blizzard is now taking steps to really rectifying the situation. We’ll just have to see if the new announcement works. Also, I can’t just sit there. I get bored quick. The only reason I even started battleground PvP was to get geared for tougher instances. I wasn’t able to effectively get gear in the instances I wanted to get into and the ones I could do, I already had the best or better gear . I needed something for the in-between to help me get the better PvE gear.

But being a healer in battlegrounds is even more frustrating than being a healer in other areas. Why? Because I believe that the hardcore PvP fan is also a complete @$$hole. This is a generalization and perhaps an unfair statement, but these guys like PvP because they are overly-competitive in nature, like to trash talk those they beat, love bragging rights, etc. Unless you succeed, you’ll get no thanks and often not even then. On the Alliance side [in Reckoning], we often fail in the battlegrounds and these guys are very vocal about it because of how quickly they get frustrated. The two largest complaints I see are that nobody knows what they are doing hence no coordination and the healers don’t heal anybody.

For the latter complaint, I can only say that it appears they are right. I always compare my healing points at the end of a battle against everyone else. Usually I’m in the top 10 overall and in the top 3 with Alliance. Unfortunately this means that up to 7 Horde will beat me out on healing. That’s extremely bad!

I believe there are three reasons for this. The first reason is their first complaint. There’s absolutely no coordination in most cases. This means healers are all over and not always in the right place. It also means that when the healers are in the right place, they don’t have the protection they deserve. The Horde seems to do a better job of targeting healers than the Alliance does. And Alliance, you guys don’t protect healers! I’ve been yelled at for not healing, but I’ll have a Rogue stunning me, a Warlock cursing me, a Mage hitting me with every DPS spell he’s got, and a Warrior kicking the crap out of me and not one single Alliance member trying to get them off of me!!!

This is the second reason. You have to protect your healers!!! If the Horde are taking them down faster than you can spit, then of course you won’t have the heals you need! I can’t believe I have to explain that logic, but I’ve had to on several occasions in battlegrounds. A few arguments lead to the ever favorite “You’re not geared properly”. This is where a healer has to be the bigger person. It’s very easy to decide not to heal that one guy who complained about your healing capabilities, but remember this is a group effort and even though it possibly won’t matter, it could cost you.

The third reason is often the Alliance doesn’t have enough healers. I’ve been in battlegrounds where we will have 7 paladins, 7 priests, and 7 druids in Alterac Valley, but more often than not we have 2 paladins, 2 priests, and a number of druids, but usually not healing spec’d. This varies from the time of day to the time of week though and is unpredictable.

No one likes to be the reason something failed. From time to time, it will be the healer’s fault, but more often than not there are contributing factors that lead to that failure. Whether it is poorly geared party members, poor group dynamic, inexperience in the quest, instance, or group, or pure dumb luck, just remember that there’s enough blame to go around. Learn from it and do what you can to prevent it the next time. Just don’t take it out on your healer, because one day he/she will get better and you’re going to need him/her.

WoW: Asking someone to leave the party

2008-01-14T15:24:00.001-05:00

Last night four members of my guild, including myself, along with another friend, attempted to complete the quest in Black Morass to gain the key to access Karazhan. Obviously I was the healer; we had a druid tank, two warriors, and a warlock. Unfortunately, it was taking an extremely long amount of time to take down the elites. As such, we were unable to effectively control the swarm of adds that kept appearing through the portals. I believe we only made it to the 6th round before Medivh succumbed to his “mortal coil”.

Eventually, one of the warriors stepped out and allowed another DPS warrior to step in to assist. We tried again with no success, although we started to take down the elites a little faster. Running a damage meter showed that the warlock was at 2% of the total damage, only remaining from the bottom because I was at zero (something I jokingly complain about; they make me feel better by running the heal meter).

What came next I’m sure is a classic problem with guild groups throughout WoW; how do we ask someone to leave?

The first obstacle was that all of us needed to complete the quest. The warrior from our guild volunteered to leave, provided when we were done that we would help him later. That’s when the DPS warrior from our guild joined. When it still wasn’t working, the next obstacle was that the warlock was not performing effectively as a DPS like the group needed.

I had previously tried this with others from our guild that included a mage who was very good at DPS, but hadn’t completed the quest due to a time constraint. We wanted to invite him to help as he had done extremely well with the adds last time. But how to ask the warlock to leave? Finally after beating around the bush and not getting anything accomplished, I finally decided to be the bad guy; this was after several hints about replacing either the warlock or another in the party. I told the warlock to not take it personally, but that we really needed to ask the mage to come and we’d get her back in once completed.

Why are we compelled to say “don’t take this personally” when we already know that they are going to take it personally? I felt stupid saying that, but couldn’t stop myself.
Well, we got the warlock to leave and invited the mage. We ended up making it to round 12 or 13, but didn’t get past that. Our party make-up was now better, but we still didn’t get the deed done. We all decided to try again next Sunday.

After leaving the instance, we headed back to repair and figure out what to do next. We ran into the warlock in the bank and she and I began a conversation. She felt really bad. Some of the comments were that she didn’t have the DPS that she should have. She should think about re-spec’ing and do something different. None of these comments were negative; however under the given circumstances they weren’t well received.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know the first thing about warlocks, except that they kick my butt in BGs all the time. I can’t stand all the afflictions they cast on me to beat me down. I can usually survive it, but it’s the warrior and rogue standing next to them that finish me off. So I’m definitely not the guy to be asking for advice when it comes to how to play a warlock and I told her so. I also couldn’t give any advice on how to spec. I was a protection pally for the longest time and struggled with making that work. When I finally did start to get somewhat good at it, I switched to holy to fill a need. Although I like being a healer, I definitely miss being a tank. My advice; spec to how you like to play. Don’t spec to what people tell you. It will eventually destroy your own enjoyment of the game. That’s not to say don’t be afraid to try new things. If you don’t like it…switch back.

Needless to say, she was embarrassed, upset, hurt, etc. I tried really hard to make her feel better. I told her that it wasn’t her fault. Although we were able to get further, we still didn’t finish. There were other factors including inadequate gear, additional DPS problems, party make-up, and inexperience with the instance. She was still pretty hard on herself and we all felt bad. I think I may have done some damage control to at least keep her from leaving the guild. I also shared the experience I had when still fairly new with the guild. I’d only been in the guild for about a month. I grouped up with the tanking druid from our party and another tanking warrior from our guild. There were two hunters in the group and we were in one of the Coilfang instances. I don’t remember which anymore. Anyway, we were trying to get past the second boss and it was impossible. I was eventually blamed for not having the proper gear and I’ll admit that I was trying to be the healer with half protection and half retribution gear. However, I didn’t feel it was my entire fault because I had completed the same instance the night before with an entirely different group and we didn’t have one wipe. Actually, if I remember correctly we finished the instance in about an hour.

Anyway, in this particular instance, the druid spent a lot of time trying to make me feel better. We became pretty good friends about this because she felt bad for me and was a little upset with how the other two non-guildmates handled it. We still joke about our "sucky" armor to this day. Our other guildie also felt extremely bad as they were his friends. I’ll admit that I was offended and upset about being asked to leave, however I knew I’d get over it as well. It’s just a game after all and I wasn’t going to let a couple of jerks ruin it for me. This was the driving force behind me entering the BGs and going for the epic gear, but I’ll save that for another time.
So how do you handle a situation where you have to ask someone to leave? I don’t know that I know the answer to this as each situation is different, but I hope with respect and concern about how the recipient will take being asked to leave.

How do you handle being asked to leave? I hope with respect and concern about how the others feel about asking you to leave. Sure there will always be the jerks who could care less about how you feel and to them I say "Grow up!", but I believe the average person will be very uncomfortable asking you and will genuinely feel bad about the whole thing. Try to use the experience to learn where you can improve for yourself. Don't worry about what they think you need to improve and I think you'll come out with a better look on the situation.
I'm curious to hear how you feel about both sides of the story from you.

Starting up...

2008-01-14T15:13:00.000-05:00

I've not been one for blogs. Heck, I still don't know what that means! But since playing World of Warcraft, I have spent a little time searching for tips on how to play my Holy Paladin. I've seen some really interesting blogs regarding WoW and some really bad ones. I hope mine is not one of the latter.

This is my attempt to create a blog about something I enjoy.