A time to say goodbye

It is settled.

Because old habits die hard, after a great number of weeks when I wasn’t able to make the raid or it stopped at the same damn bosses we usually stopped I decided to switch guilds. In a sense. The problem we’d been facing was that, like most guilds, we weren’t able to field our best team on any given day. Lag, RL issues and generally Murphy’s Law of “whatever can go wrong will go wrong” kicked in and we grabbed some guildies that weren’t really ICC material (although with the 15% buff that doesn’t mean a lot, really) and we hit our head over and over again on Putricide.

I was AFK for a week or so for delicate personal reasons and when I came back the first thing that I got after logging in was a whisper from another officer that said that we are forming another guild, where only the creme of the crop will go to and where progression will be taken seriously. Which is good news. I’ve had some very nice moments with the guild I’m currently in (still sorting out the logistics of the new one and the website and such, I guess) but, like all good things, it came to an end. If I were to find a reason for this, it would be that while we tried recruiting so we can push forward, the quality of the recruits actually pushed us back.

A lot of drama has come to pass and now when I log in, instead of the usual friendly nametags before I can barely remember if I ever spoke to some of the online people. Like ever. It’s been fun, that much I cannot deny, specially the moments where I would log one of my alts and the same person that I had just given some advice to would try to pick on me. I’m not usually a conflictual person but I have been known for making people leave the guild after picking on me or wronging me or the guild. Actually it only happened once but the feedback I received made me considder a career in this.

What pains me a bit is that one of the people I really admire in the guild, the guild leader of my previous one (we merged) might not make the shortlist. He is a very good SP and truly dedicated to the spec and to the guild. He is one of the more friendly people that I met in WoW and if somebody needed any help with anything, he would step in. He is however not that progress orientated and because he’s on PST playing on an EU server he rarely gets to raid with us.

Oh, and speaking of the 15% buff, it is absolutely, positively, ridiculous how big a difference it makes. The latest PuG for ICC25 I was in had a healer have to quit on the trash leading to Marrowgar so we 24 manned it all the way. We 1 shot everything we fought, Uncle Fester and Rotface and wiped with 4% left to heal on Valithria. We had vent but it was mostly used for theorycrafting and having fun. Got myself a nice upgrade too, the neck piece from Lootship. I stand at an all-time high of 835 haste but I cheated a bit. I’ve got some pure + haste gems in my gear but wth, I wanna see how 1.5 sec LB casts look like. As a matter of fact I already see this after the relic procs but i wanna have that cast time relic-free.

Raid group part 1/10

Right, the “write post from work and then paste it on blog” thing that I’ve had going on is clearly not ‘working as intended’ ™, I just now got to edit the post from yesterday. And while this is yet another post written ducking behind all the other e-mails I have open (I do this to not get spotted and for it to bear some resemblance of productive corporate work) from whoevers, whatevers and banks, I’m trying to make myself believe that it will be the last one.

I know I said yesterday that I’d start with the presenting the members of my raiding group, so here goes nothing of interest. There will be a later post about ICC and I’m hoping that it will encompass both remaining fights of the first four.

I’ll start off with the Raid Leader and Guild Leader, or somebody I like calling intimately He Who Has More Alts Better Geared Up For ICC Than My Main, or HWHMABGUFICCTMM. I like it like that. What I can say I love about him (a very manly but not gayish love, mind you) is that when he’s online, he’s there for you. And he can do whatever the raid needs, tank (Padalin), heal (Druid) or DPS (Druid or DK, ranged/melee). I silently begrudge him for winning the T10 gloves on his DK in VoA when I rolled on them as well but not that much.

If I were to choose a role for him in our raid that would be, hands down, that of tank. He is a bloody good tank that never lost agro on anything ever I think. Not while I’ve been around and on my off-days there were rumors of me TAB targeting mobs instead of assisting. He doesn’t get to run with us in this role tho, his healing wiggly branches are much more needed. Hell’s the kind of RL that doesn’t talk a lot, doesn’t blow steam by slandering the ones that may have made a mistake and has the patience of a mountain. No loot drama occurring under his lead and if there happens to be an issue he will take the time to explain his decisions and actions. Story time:

Not so long ago we had to PuG a ranged DPS for our weekly run at ICC and it happened to be a SP that was under geared compared to the lot of us but adequately geared for the content. The Gunship Battle finishes and the dagger with MP5 drops. A little background now: The SP was doing ok but not great, the weapon would have been a clear upgrade for him. Hell had a healing staff ilvl 232 from ToC but he did have the OH from Lady D already, won on an OS roll a while back. I have the caster mace from Anub 25 like I said a while back and the guildie Mage that was running with us then for the first time had something in the ilvl 232 area.

The dagger had dropped before us a couple of times and each time we passed it to the appropriate healer that needed it, regarding of roll. Because it has fucking MP5 on it, that’s why. It would be an upgrade for me in terms of SP and haste, both of which I love dearly, and if I have to give up .5% of my exaggerated* crit chance so be it. I would not roll on this until absolutely nobody of a healy type needed it. So I didn’t but the SP, mage and Hell rolled and the SP rolled highest. After a short and chilled debate the dagger went the druid’s way (thank you, SP, for not being an ass and not dwelling on your thought of Guild prio when explained that it’s MS prio). Needless to say that we congratulated Hell and then proceeded to prepare for the Saurfang fight that was up next. Meanwhile I whispered whether he wanted to have the item enchanted, I had the mats on me and I was happy to do it, especially knowing how long he had wanted this item. While we don’t usually talk that much, or at least not as much as I talk to the other guild and raid members, we have a respect thingy going on. So he politely declined and linked me his enchanting, to show me that he could also do it. He then told me that he was hoping for the +spirit staff to drop off of Saur so he could trade the dagger to the SP.

And now back to the main broadcast. He is the silent yet deciding factor in the decision-making process, as he should be, given that he is the GL and all but he doesn’t step up that often when petty squabbles surface. That is not by far his cup of tea and there are others there to squash these in their infancy. More on this at a later date.

* Shamans were supposed to be around 25% crit chance in end game content if I understood correctly from a blue post a while back but they kind of exaggerated with Tiers of armor and this was blown out of proportion and subsequent patches and raid zones accommodated the higher number instead of tightening crit down a notch.

April Fools’ not getting me!

What a crazy day yesterday shaped out to be!

Granted, it’s April Fools’ and everything posted yesterday should be not have been taken ad litteram. Miss Medicina was saying that she’s fed up with the way the game turned out as a healer and is going Shadow. Gnomeaggedon was saying that he changed Faction and now is a Troll, Trollaggedon. And on top of this, supposedly Paragon and Premonition are to merge come Cataclysm and form one happy Paranition guild on lag-free US realm Sentinels. Right.

Now I know I have no idea how it is to be a part of a guild that is pushing for world firsts and all that comes with the teritory but I really don’t think that I, as a member, would aggree to this. This would mean that the spot I worked very hard for might be in up for grabs. And while I’m all for the idea of benching a player so that another better suited for the particular encounter can step up and get the job done, I think a merge would create one imba 1st group and a very pissed off 2nd one, made out of players that have been swapped for one in the other guild. Granted, this is pretty much going to motivate the let’s call it B team to beat the others to the punch and strive so that they and nobody else have the World First achievement. Nevertheless, I believe this might cause tension in the ranks and a helluva lot of drama.

This brings me to what I originally wanted to write about, and that is working against the system. have you ever had a corporate job where in the end you ended up hating it and trying your best to hurt the company you work for one DoT tick at a time? I know I have and by the looks of it these are the only types of jobs I can land. I don’t hop jobs nearly as much as I think I’d like to and this is one of the reasons of my rage against the system. I usually start out loving my new job and all the people/policies/deadlines/quirks there but by the end of it I dread the alarm that sends me to work.

I’ve noticed this in WoW too. Everything has a WoW equivalent, or most of it, that’s what makes the game great. For this particular example it would be players that have been benched and instead of trying their best to earn their spot back they take this personal and start creating drama and try grabbing the allegiance of as many guildies as possible to stir the pot. We’re having a little bit of this in the guild I’m in, but from what I can tell, people doing it have no idea what types of problems this may cause. They’re just expressing legitimate concerns about where the guild is going, the road to there and, more important, how this affects them personally. We’re not a big enough guild to be running ICC25 so we put together two 10 mans and go with that. We have a couple of wild cards that we can swap in and out on short notice if someone from the first team can’t make it but they don’t really mingle with the second team. We’re talking about IRL friends that want to play together and if that’s at all possible, then cool, otherwise they have like a gazzilion alts each to level. None of which a Female dwarf of at least 18 level -.-.

This is the raiding state of mind, really. While we do want to end up killing the bastard in the end, we are also very comfortable with raiding with one another and we have a very special synergy going on. The only thing that has stopped us from going further in ICC than 6/12 is the fact that we lack tries. We clear out the first 4 in under 1 hour, then wiggle our way through the trash, it’s usually 1 shot Festergut and 1 or 2 shots on Rotface, depending on the fatigue level and then call it a day, to be resumed the next. Problem is, as we’ve all got jobs and families or girlfriends, the next day we’re usually 1 man short and dust off an alt that’s not saved yet and try it. While doing so has given us some very good tries on the Professor, Valithria and Blood Princes, we lacked that dependable DPS/heals that we’ve come accustomed to. While I don’t really mind not progressing as long as we’re having fun and joking around, I would still get to see the next fights and test my skills against what Blizz has in store for us. And I would like to be the Kingslayer. And grab one of those weapons that would actually be an upgrade for me from him. Or not. Doesn’t matter that much, tbh, I’d just like to be there when we kill him and kill him so good that another scorched paladin has to take his place to rule over the Scourge. Or has this happened already and being presented in video at the fountain in the middle of Dalaran?