To transfer or not to transfer

Like I mentioned quite a number of times before, I am feeling the pre-Cataclysm blues big time. I’m pretty fed up with leveling alts even though I only have 3 80s, all in ICC25 gear. Not full but BiS as much as possible. I haven’t stepped in this raid for about 2 weeks now and I can’t say I miss it at all. I really don’t know where I had the stamina to take all 3 in one week to the place, in both 10 and 25 man versions but it’s gotten the best of me. So that’s that. I will only join if it’s a raid that will be downing the LK and they feel confident enough to pull my sorry ass through the fight. I know’em all in theory but I’ve had precious little practice on Arthas so that might be a bummer. Of course, there’s always the option of buying my way to a LK kill, the prices on my server vary from about 20K for a 10 man kill (in which I understand you do nothing but go in and pull to die – a fair thing, I say. If I need a boost to the kill there’s no way for the guild doing the boosting to trust me that I’m not going to drop a defile in their midst).

I have leveled a slew of characters to the mid-30s at least to get a feel for the class (currently Rogue – 52, Warrior-35, Paladin – 33, Druid – 35, Hunter – 37, Mage – 31). Add that to the Shaman, DK and Warlock at 80 and you get a lot of playtime. And the worst part of it all is that they are all on the same server, which leaves little room for the Worgen and Goblin I intend to try my hand on when Cata launches. Only one spot and only one class I haven’t ever played past 11: Priest. I really like the class, probably because it is the archetype of the healer and I always wanted one that I could trust.

Yes, I know that shamans can heal. I was resto for all my BC life and the beginning of Wrath but maybe because of the limited gear I had and the lack of tool optimization (or at least that’s what I thought) early on led me down the Elemental path and I’m sticking to it. I want a disco priest. Dipping too low thar? Have a bubble! Oh, alright, lazers incoming, brace for the hit, Spock!

Aaanyway, the thought that popped in my mind was to transfer a char on another server. But which one should it be? My gut feeling is that I should transfer my Shaman, to a PvE realm but that would have me risk cutting him off the gold supply – not that I’m good with gold, on the contrary. My professions on the shaman are Enchanting and Skinning, which is a remnant of LW + Skinning I originally went with. I kept Skinning because of the extra crit and because I have a LW friend that can craft stuff for me if I get him the mats. If I transfer him away then I won’t have my friends to level with. No bonus points for that!

My Lock will be staying on the realm it’s on because that’s where my PvP team members are. Period.

My DK… I barely play her anyways nowadays and I’m afraid that if I were to transfer her away it would mean the end of things. She has Mining + Jewelcrafting as professions and could potentially mean she would be able to support herself but I only have a handful of JC patterns I know because by the time I reached 450 I was fed up with everything JC related and only logged to do the quests when I was really bored. Really bored. Now that having been said, is it worth transferring a lowly alt to a new server? One that I don’t really know if I will play at all? I don’t think so.

What to do?

Of time ingame

Heya again, long time no post, which seems to be the going rule around here. RL blahblah and so on and so forth. I really lacked the inspiration during the past month and I honestly thought that my muse had died. In the meanwhile I have maxed Mining and JC on my DK and all was well. I was pleased. But (there’s always a but) what I hadn’t considdered was that just by havink the skill does not make you a licensed jewelcrafter. You have to learn the recipes and they each cost 4 tokens of which you only get one a day. Believe you me, that knocked my gold making dreams down a peg or ten.

Then I turned to my Warlock and saw it was seriously lacking. No gear to be proud of and he had his Enchanting in the 150 range plus tailoring about the same, slightly higher. In a fit of ingame rage I ditched enchanting and thought I’d pick up Herbalism for my up and coming Paladin Scribe. That las all through reaching skill 2 before it got removed too, go figure. I focused my full and undivided attention on leveling my Tailoring and PuG-ing with my DK, of the rare and soon to be extinct breed of Blood damage dealer. Got some nice upgrades for her, by the way, she is currently guildless and sitting on a 5.7 k groovy score, enough to grant me a spot in any GS PuG. Now if only I could work out how to change my rotation to take full advantage of the ilvl264 sigil it would be great. But I digress. Back to the Lock:

While camping the AH for cloth I figured I’d PvP for a bit. Mind you, I have not entered a BG in almost 11 months since I got incredibly disheartened by the survival chances of a shaman in a PvP environment and the number of leechers that joined and then did not move for the duration. I shelved my hard worked for Elemental and Enhancement PvP gear in the bank (this was before the Honor Jug was broken over BGs, when it took a week of loosing constantly to get an upgrade or a set piece – think ilvl 213 being teh bomb) and swore myself off PvP.

All that aside, I entered my first BG on my lock past lvl 29 in my full set of PvE gear and got mowed down repeatedly within seconds. SotA, 2 minutes left on the clock and the Horde hadn’t made it off the beach.

Damn! Things haven’t changed at all, I thought, until I remembered that I had 2 PvP set pieces in my bank, from VoA, things I chose not to roll on but were awarded to me regardless. Equipped them, gemmed and enchanted them and stepped back through the portal in my Affliction PvE spec. The alternative would have been Destro PvE and I never even tried it out, just got it because all the cool kids were doing it. Things were better. I even managed to survive for a while even though I was pummeled on. Sure, having a keybind for Fear helped a lot with that but I was pleased with the results. So much even that I respecced into Affliction PvP as OS. It was fun but I felt I didn’t pack a punch, really and for me it’s all about the big numbers. Respecced Destro PvP and after reading the tooltip for all the spells and talents I felt confident enough to go in a BG again. And I loved it. I still died a lot because of low resilience but with practice comes perfection and honor. I am currently sporting a 4pc PvP set (2 ilvl232 and 2 ilvl251) and almost everything I wear has resilience on it. I can even haz trinket!

I even has Arena team. It is fail because I am fail at arena PvP and my RL friend and partner is a resto drood that last did Arenas in TBC. We’re working out the kinks in the system and we even won our first match! Gogo sap-trinket machine! Oh, yeah, because I liked PvP I also maxed my Engineering skill for teh sweet toys. Not cheap, mind you!

The reason I did all this was because I was really bummed about my shaman, my first love. I hadn’t gotten any gear upgrades since fucking forever and really, not for lack of trying. I had the same darn MH since early December, the Anub 25 mace of awesomesauce (back then) and it was getting old logging to see that melon on top of a pike every time.

I joined a new guild on the shaman about a month back, that had the core of the guld I felt best in. Things looked pro and all I wanted was to bring down Arthas. Match made in heaven, amirite? No. Like with any good guild, there were raiding hours and they never were during when I could be online for the full duration. I either had to work those hours or have to leave for work after 2/3.5. Bummer. I went on an ICC 10 run with the GL and I guess I made an impression because I was asked again despite the guild having a shaman join per day for a week or so. Fast forward, I explained why I couldn’t raid, the GL said it’s ok and I went back to PvP on my lock. All of this until yesterday night, when out of sheer boredom I opened the Armory app on my phone. Saw a ICC10 HC run scheduled for the next day, and figured that if I tried really hard I could make 3/3.5 hours and then take a cab to work. I signed up and was online at invite time. And 5 minutes after. And 10 after that, during which everything was quiet. Out of the blue, when I got tired of re-listing auctions the invite swooped in out of the blue. There were so many to sign up (only 9, making me the 10th, when I had) that there were actually 2 groups put together.

I wasn’t really surprised to not make thefirst group, the A team, and was just fine with being accepted. I got my flasks and feasts and proceeded to ICC.

Buffs, trash, feast. Marrowgar HC. I had only seen this fight on HC once before, when it ended terribad and we did not try it again. One wipe. Rebuff. Feast. Kill. Rejoice. Lady Deathwhisper, never seen her before so pissy. Had the fight explained for the priest so I listened to everything except the tanking bit because I am not a tank and why the fuck should I care about tanking? I was wrong. It seems that she is untauntable in phase 2 which had me actually watch Omen. The second time around. Apparently the mage wasn’t listening either cause he snatched aggro in no time flat and whaddaya know, was 1 shotted. A death promptly followed by mine because I was next in the pretty aggro chart. A kill in two is not that bad, I wager, I have seen and been in groups flailing about and not able to down her despite the 25% (at the time) buff on 10m normal.

Onwards and upwards to lootship where I finally got my new weapon. Yes, it’s a healer’s weapon, it has mp5 but the trade-off was worth it. Some measly 50 crit for 120 SP plus a yellow socket of hasty goodness? Yes, please! I honestly wouldn’t have minded HC Muradin’s Spyglass either but I was thrilled to get an upgrade, any upgrade. And a weapon upgrade was to die for at this point, really.

Heroic Saurfang was the stuff of legends because of the tauntfail that had us bursting in laughter. Our KS (on another char), the OT, had 4 consecutive taunts miss, 2 of which being during Jr’s ‘oi, look at me, I’m big and bad’ phase. I was the only one on the floor at the end, got 1shotted by a blood beast when the boss only had 300k HP left -.- . Luckily I did not have a mark on me so it was all cool. 1shot, by the way.

This is where the HC bit ended, even though we easily could have downed Festerface based on the level of teamplay involved and the DPS we were pumping out. We got Festergut to hit the ground in 2 minutes and 10 seconds without using Bloodlust. I was honestly shocked to see this. Rotface posed no problem and dropped some boots for mah enhancement offspec (ARP meh) and then we killed the Proffessor although judging by the MT’s shoddy Abomination handling I thought we wouldn’t.

That was all the ICC experience I had, both in 10 and 25 man. I know it’s little, so late after the raid opened its gates and with the buff and all but just how things were. I find it weird myself if you’re asking.

Next up – Blood Wing. I had been in a few attempts to kill the Princes but nothing that even made it past 50%. One-shot. I knew the tactics for this one, which was more than I could say for Blood Queen. I knew the general direction the fight would be going in, with the biting and the lazor and the flames but never having seen it… I was reluctant to believe in myself that I would perform according to expectations. The healing priest admitted to not knowing tacts so they were explained briefly and I had my ears peeled. RC and gogogo, I blow all my cool-downs, which are not many – racial SP and EM and lo and behold, I am the first one to be bitten. The RL actually loled a bit at this (elemental shaman to be top bursty DPS? Unfathomable!) but then ignored me. No Bite assignments? Really?

I proceeded and bit the mage, which was the only other ranged DPS in the raid group and then before I knew it (was chained with the lazor once) it was over. Achievement pops up and I’m like yay, I have gone where no me has ever gone before! All on the inside, I did not need everybody to know that I was excited about such a ‘trivial’ thing as a new wing clear. I had to go shortly after so the frost wing and the LK will be rescheduled. I sure hope I can make it then!

So yeah. I like my Shaman again and that’s both good and bad news. I will now have 3 raiding characters again (the lock is always warlocky and greedy for some upgrades) and this means time. Time that is very precious to me actually. So far the only thing I have been cutting off on was sleeping. I am at an all-time record of maximum 4 hours per night and I don’t know if I should be proud or sad.

Onyxia 25

Oh, my God, that was like soooo 3 patches ago. I know, I ran Onyxia back then on my shaman and rocked the place. The first day it was out, on the very first attempt at killing the almighty dragon I got the achievement for the speed kill. And that was shortly after I had begun my gear transition from PvP only to PvE only. It was easy, a loot pinata, if you will, and all you needed to know were the tactics for downing her. Oh, and the loot… similar to ToC loot but class and spec erm… specific? Yes, please! No more having to roll higher than the hunter that /roll ed just because it’s a mail item and, as we all know, all loot is hunter loot.

Fast forward to today. My DK, ok geared, entry level ICC to be more precise, joined a PuG for Onyxia 25. I whisper my achievement, GS (-.-) and accept the invite. Immediately I search for other DKs, Retribution Paladins and Warriors, because i only need the 2h sword. Crit and Expertise? Yes, please! Just a glance showed me 5 death knights, including myself, a warrior and a paladin. Small chances but hey, it’s the last day before the reset so why not give it a whack?

After waiting for some 20ish minutes for the raid to fill we go in, clear trash and start buffing, what you would normally expect from a raid, PuG or not. One priest healer said brb 2 minutes, we wait 5 and then start the encounter. What we did not think about was to do a headcount. Everybody got summoned, I’m sure of that because I usually do it myself and only need a dedicated clicker and this time it was no exception. So we go in, P1 goes by smoothly and we start the transition to P2, ya kno, the part where as melee you run behind her and try to squeeze a few more blows.

Adds spawn, tanks pick them up, the ranged group is doing its thing, AoE fest going on down on the ground. Swiftly we reach the 50% mark when one tank goes down. That, of course, lead to a wipe, the other two tanks were far off and couldn’t pick the adds up fast enough. Ok, one try went south, replace the healer and let’s do better on the next. Am I assuming to much that this would be the normal attitude?

I was, apparently. Immediately after we zoned in again after running from the spirit healer all three tanks dropped group. Then two healers plus the AFK one which was kicked immediately after we wiped. Immediately after, a bung of DPS dropped too. The raid leader, through this all, was in Dalaran, searching for replacements, and was patient enough to stick around until the empty spots were filled. The reason I mentioned the headcount earlier was that upon analizing recount we noticed that 2 DKs weren’t on there. Mouseover in raid frame and we saw that they were in Undercity, respectively Durotar. They had gone through all the ready checks and clicked Yes. Why they would do this boggles my mind, I cannot for the life of me figure it out.

Anywho, half an hour later, numbers bolstered we line up and buff again, ready to take on Mother O. The new group is littered with druids, 3 tanks, 2 healers, 1 feral and 2 boomkins but we take what we’re offered and can’t afford being too picky. Onward again, wipe again but this time we made it through to P3 where we wiped because as soon as Onyxia landed almost all the DPS rushed to her and adds chewed the tank’s and healers’ faces off. Half the raid dropped group instantly and the other half soon after.

Is it something fundamentally wrong to wipe? As long as I can think back, this is almost normal, you die once, regroup, try again. Everybody in that group had some stakes in this otherwise there were a lot easier ways to pick up 3 Triumph Emblems. Is it a lower tolerance to failiure that’s involved? Are all elitists and if they are, why did we wipe?

The answer, I believe, is a lot simpler than this and has a lot to do with good players caring for the community. Everybody in the raid, as I remember, was in a guild. It is impossible to reach the current level cap without any interaction with another human being. And while it is no longer dominant, there is a community of players that actually give a crap and try to help others, either by tells ingame or on guild chat, or even on the WoW forums. If you meet such a player in a random heroic he will not only pull his weight, but rather pull the whole group’s weight as well. He will be the tank that outdamages 2 DPS, the DPS that does over 50% off total damage or the healer that will heal your ass off through the incredibly slow paced run.

When grouped with such a player, seeing him excell and pick up their slack, they think it’s ok to not give it the best shot they possibly can. They are used to being carried and will think that it is their God given right to do sub-par DPS. Usually tanks and healers do not fall under this category and they only come in two flavors: the ones that outright suck and you can usually spot by the weird gear choices and gems/enchants and those that do their goddamn jobs.

Back to the MS, as Gevlon likes to call them. They have gathered the good gear and boast with their incredible GS, they write stuff like L2P n00b and join the Anal [ability] bandwagon. And they drop group when they notice that in a particular raid it is expected of them to pull their own weight.

Elton John said: “It’s a sad, sad, situation/ And it’s getting more and more absurd”. This fits like a glove. I don’t know how this can be avoided in the future but I’m afraid that no amount of work Blizzard can put into the game will fix it. Because they can’t. And I fear that this will be the downfall of the game, once those good players quit due to burnout or whatever reason.

Back to scrub camp

If you’ve never been there, I salute you! I have and I’m sure that a lot of the players out there that you like have been there as well. It’s the camp where you see a bigger and more bad-ass [insert same class as you here] that’s willing to help you and you keep badgering him with questions.

Buh why am I using Lava Burst off cooldown, gwampa?

Well now, you want to use LvB off CD because in theory it’s your hardest hitting attack.

In theory?

Yes, I’ve seen a Lightning Bolt crit for more a lot of times.

All that aside, I want to try and implement the Class Master role and functionality in our guild. We have some very good players and others have a lot of improvement to go through before they can go into the wild and make their first kill. It’s really hard to DPS Saurfang Jr. while whispering to the hunter that he needs to go use the frost trap on the stairs before the beasts spawn and then again each time. Priorities must be known, nay, dreamed about in their sleep. We do some things a bit different than others but they work out so I would like to give the newer players in the guild the same freedom of choices when they raid.

Do you want to stick to the strategy that is used by everybody else or do you want to give that crazy idea in the back of your head a shot? You will get to, but not with 2.8 K DPS as a hunter on Saurfang, 10% buff included. You need to learn your abilities and the way they work together, put together a rotation, learn when to clip and when not to clip and for the love of God, learn to resurrect your pet after each wipe and not need to be reminded of it.

Yeah, it seems the last batch of recruits were not the best overall but there are a couple of guys that are great and I’m looking forward to raiding with them.