Category: apotheosis

Legendary Fallout

Kurn / / apotheosis, guild, patch 4.2, ramblings

Well, the nightmares I’ve had about a chain reaction of /gquits upon the announcement of who is getting the legendary staff did not actually materialize, which is a bonus.

Having said that, I’m sure some people are unhappy.

Awarding a legendary is, in my opinion, often a lose-lose situation. There are always people who will be disappointed, always people who will feel slighted. I’m still annoyed that I didn’t get Val’anyr in Ulduar. I was very new to the guild, yes, but when I look at who ended up getting the mace, it still makes me want to cry and/or smash things.

The process they went through to determine Val’anyr in that particular guild was, well, shrouded in secrecy and subject to a lot of drama because quite a few people left the guild before the announcement had been made, for some reason. (I was new, I was keeping my mouth shut so I didn’t ask why, but the guild lost at least 2 healers who would have been awarded the mace before the priest who got it.)

Obviously, I felt I deserved the mace, but I knew I hadn’t been there long enough to show them that I was actually more deserving of the mace than the priest who got it. Essentially, that was the difference. The priest who got it had been there for, well, I believe it’s years.

That didn’t sit right with me. I mean, don’t get me wrong — I value loyalty, myself, but when the person you’re giving the legendary to is clearly someone who does NOT understand their class… well, you’re doing yourself and your guild a disservice. The priest in question may have been an officer (strictly in an advisory position, not a role lead) but he didn’t have Spirit of Redemption back when it was GOOD and gave you 5% extra spirit. What priest wouldn’t want 5% extra spirit back in Wrath of the Lich King when it added to your regen AND to your spellpower? I mean, to me, from my perspective, the recipient of Val’anyr was in no way worthy of the mace.

What I did in setting up the legendary distribution for Apotheosis was open a thread for people to express their interest. We had 8 casters who did so. 3 mages, 3 warlocks, 1 shadow priest and 1 elemental shaman.

After several days, I closed the thread, so everyone had plenty of time to throw their name in the hat, so to speak. I was sure to inform all new casters joining the guild (a shadow priest, a moonkin) that they wouldn’t be considered for the legendary at this time as the candidates had already been decided upon. I felt it was important to let them know that before they joined. (The number of people I saw apply to guilds hoping to get Val’anyr crafted/finished was hilarious.)

We were fairly transparent in the way we did things. As I said yesterday, the officers on the selection team ranked all 8 of the casters.

We ended up with a tie. Two of our mages ended up with 25 points apiece, followed by a shadow priest, followed by an elemental shaman.

So while instance servers were borked last night, we had the mages roll off.

Now, being a sociologist, a simple /roll would not, to me, be sufficient in awarding the staff. You can’t just have it be one roll. So the selection team had okayed a series of 5 rolls each. We’d take the high roll for each and throw it out, take the low roll for each and throw it out and then add the three numbers that remained, then divided that number by 3 to get the average (mean) and that would be “the number”. The highest number would win.

Here’s what happened, because this alone is freaking legendary.

Can you believe that? They both rolled a 60, Mabriam rolled a 74, Majik rolled a 73 and they both rolled an 81 at the same time. My stats background wants more rolls between these two guys, to be honest…

I feel as though we handled the tie well and I don’t think either Majik or Mabriam are upset with the results of the roll-off. That was as fair as it could be and it was honestly down to the wire. The difference in their final numbers was 0.67.

Of course, given our expectations of crafting at least one staff, probably two, the reactions of Majik and Mabriam are not the ones to worry about.

It’s everyone else, ranked #3 to #8, plus the guild as a whole.

One of the issues I am anticipating fielding is why one of our top performers is not in the top two. Night in and night out, our shadow priest is pretty much right up there on the meters.

If it were based strictly on damage output, the shadow priest in question would have been the #1 selection for the entire selection team. In fact, if it was based on pure damage, there wouldn’t have been a need for a selection team at all. As it was, the shadow priest was in everyone’s top four, but even if he had been in everyone’s top three, he still wouldn’t have been in the top two, based on the points per ranking.

I can’t tell you why people ranked the candidates the way they were. I’m not those people. Nor am I going to discuss my own choices or my personal reasons for my choices, because I feel there would be a conflict of interest in sharing that. There’s a reason we were neatly sequestered away and discussed the legendary and the candidates privately. In part, it was to prevent hurt feelings among the candidates who were ranked lower and in part, it was to be able to discuss the pros and cons of each candidate honestly and bluntly. But there was no collusion or anything of the sort. We had our discussions, then I had the selection team send me, via PM, their ranked selections. I’d made my list before looking at any of theirs and then posted everyone’s selections to the private section of the forums for the selection team to see that I wasn’t cooking the books or anything. In doing so, I was transparent to the officers and they could hold me accountable by saying “Kurn, that’s not my selection!” if I’d messed with anything. But obviously, I didn’t.

What I will say is that the legendary selection process was based on performance, attendance, participation and attitude. I’ll say it wasn’t an easy decision (although anything was easier than actually coming up with a legendary selection process!) and I struggled with my own choices. As an officer, I routinely ignore friendships and personal relationships with people in the guild when looking at performance and the like in a raid setting. I feel as though I evaluated each candidate appropriately and I feel that I have an explanation for each of my personal rankings that is based on facts, logic and evidence. I would hope that the other officers on the selection team can back up their decisions as well. I believe they can.

It’s not enough to say “hey, casters, you guys are awesome anyway!” in the wake of an announcement like this, though. No matter what, no matter how defensible the decisions are, there will always be hurt feelings because a legendary is viewed as a status symbol, as recognition for going above and beyond.

So it’s only today, more than two years after the announcement came down from my then-guild that a priest would be the first recipient of Val’anyr and that I would be the second, that I really, truly understand that there’s no winning when it comes to handing out a legendary. I feel that we maximized transparency in the process, that we were as open and honest as possible with people at every step of the way and ultimately, I’m satisfied with the decision that was made from an empirical point of view.

As a guild master, I think that I have to look at the process and be satisfied with what we did. As a person, I’m happy that Majik got it, obviously, but I think that I put in checks to prevent my own bias from having too much of an effect, such as having other people making the decision with me. I was one of four voices. And then, most notably, there was the roll-off, which acted as a final check to protect anyone if they came up against Majik at the end. Clearly, the selection team as a whole was comfortable in both of those mages receiving the legendary and the roll just determined the order. The roll was clean, unbiased, and gave Mabriam a chance to get the first one.

We could have just given it to someone without all this hullaballoo. We could have just had the 8 interested people /roll a single roll. We could have just done “eeny-meeny-miney-moe”. But we didn’t. We invested a significant amount of time, effort and discussion into the process and I think that’s the best we could do.

In a way, I’m not thrilled that Majik won out, because no matter how much effort was put into the process, it still LOOKS like we just favoured him over everyone else, when that’s really not the case. But I can’t control what people think. I can’t control what people do. I can only do what I feel is best for the guild at any given time.

Matticus said this, the other night, on Twitter:

And no, I’m not getting myself worked up over a game. No sir. I’m worked up over people and situations, that is all.

How right he is. This isn’t about the game. The crux of this game, for me, is raiding. Raiding is allllll about people and situations.

With any luck, we’ll get through without any overt drama from the legendary announcement, but I’ll tell you right now that just because my nightmare of a chain of /gquits didn’t happen at the time of the announcement doesn’t mean that I’m not still sitting on the edge of my chair thinking that it might.

So much to say, so little time to write it all down.

Kurn / / apotheosis, guild, healing, raiding, ramblings

As I write this, at 8am on Tuesday, June 21st, 2011, I have 18 drafts in my blog draft section.

Seriously.

I always start to write stuff down and then get interrupted or fall asleep (this has happened three times, no joke!) or something.

I’d like to get to those blog posts at some point, but before that, there’s other stuff to discuss, including a 4.2 loot list. (I hate loot lists, but I know they’re very popular.)

I also want to talk about the recent blue post about holy paladin healing.

But right now, I want to talk about something completely unrelated to any of that.

I want to talk about the legendary caster weapon, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest.

Ultimately, hammering out HOW to select any recipients of the staff was more difficult than actually selecting the person.

And yes, that does mean that we have a very good idea as to the first two recipients, as well as a potential third and fourth. (Guildies, you’ll find out after the raid tonight.)

We did not do the big, long, drawn-out process that I had suggested weeks ago. We used a trimmed-down version of it where four officers were put on the “selection team” and we ranked all 8 candidates from 1-8, where 1 was your first choice and 8 was your last choice.

A first-place candidate got 7 points, a second-place got 6, a third-place got 5, all the way down to 8, which got 0.

So four officers shared their thoughts and ideas in a separate area of the forums, neatly sequestered away, then the other three sent me their ranked list in a private message, which I then ignored until everyone’s PM was in AND I’d made my own selections.

Then I tallied up everyone’s results and posted them to the selection team along with the original selections, so they could see I wasn’t fixing the numbers.

It wasn’t a bad process at all. We looked at candidates based on performance (because a legendary will enhance what’s already there), attendance (gotta BE there in order to build it!), participation (teamwork and such!) and attitude (don’t be a douchecanoe!).

Honestly, it only took a few days of deliberations and such and we’re just about ready to make our announcement as to the top choices.

So that’s a huge responsibility taken care of. I call not it on the next legendary selection team. :P

While that’s been going on, I’ve still been doing a near-weekly podcast! Last week, Majik and I talked to Beruthiel of Falling Leaves and Wings during Episode 23 of Blessing of Frost and this week, we talked to Fog again with regards to the Midsummer Fire Festival.

In terms of raiding, Apotheosis is 6/13 with Heroic Halfus, Chimaeron, Maloriak, Magmaw, Atramedes and Conclave of Wind down and we’re working on H V&T for 7/13 before 4.2 drops, with any luck. So that’s always, well, entertaining? ;) I do love raiding with my guild and I do love doing all this stuff together. I do get tired of the leadershippy stuff on occasion, though. Still, it needs to be done.

Thankfully, Toga is going to be taking over the bank. Fog is stepping down, so I took the bank as an interim holder and now Toga’s going to take that from me, hooray! :)

Speaking of leadership stuff, I was curious as to how people felt we handled things during T11 content, so I decided to use my sociology background and I made up a survey.

The questions asked people to rate the officers in their primary roles on a scale of 1-10, where 1 was really bad and 10 was excellent, and I got a second question about my performance as GM, in particular. I asked people what they felt we’d not handled well and what we HAD handled well, which officer they might want to replace and with whom, how satisfied they are with our progression, if they like how loot/food/flasks/etc is done…

Out of about 33ish active raiders, we had 20 responses, which is great. I need to go through the results, but I’m going to learn a lot. I am kind of thinking about installing SPSS on my desktop and inputting the data so I can run stats equations on it… but that miiiiiight be taking things a bit far. ;)

The survey was anonymous (ostensibly, anyways. I’m fairly sure that if I allowed myself to make the connections, I could link about five respondents to those raiders) and I think that really helped the raiders to know that this was something I was taking seriously, at least. I made it clear on our forums that I would be the only one reading the responses, but that I would summarize the results and make sure the officers saw them. I think they liked the idea of me as a filter — so they could talk to me, without fear of retribution or whatever, through the survey and know that no one else will see what they said, but the overall idea will be conveyed to the other officers.

Overall, the survey seems to have been a success. :) I strongly recommend any guild go through the same thing. Google Docs does a great job for you. Look into it.

Yet other news: EPGP is normalizing values! So if a regular-mode pair of shoulders costs 750 GP in T11, a regular-mode pair of shoulders will cost that much in T12, while the T11 one will drop in price. This almost certainly means we don’t have to change how we do EP or GP! Yaaaaaay!

In still more news: Raiding on the baby pally is fun. I get to just heal. Heal through encounters I know the basics of. It’s lovely not to have to assign or organize people. It’s great to just be told where to stand on Al’Akir and NOT spend 45-60 minutes just planning out that one fight.

On Monday, I got: neck off Halfus, mace and tier shoulders off Cho’gall, legs off Al’Akir (fuck you mastery! Where was “of the Undertow” when I needed it?!) and then picked up a cloak from Valor Points. Still not up to the spirit, intellect and haste my “real” paladin has, but that’s a lot of gear and should help me hit harder. I’m also going to be JP capped so that I can … well, I can’t do a lot, really. My last blues are my helm (Ascendant Council or Nef), my bracers (Cho’gall) and my gloves (Maloriak or, if I’m feeling desperate, tier — but that’s a crapton of mastery!).

So, I’ve been busy.

This Friday is a holiday in Quebec — La Fête de la Saint-Jean Baptiste. While I am a die-hard Canadian and have not a drop of separatist blood in me, it’s always nice to have two long weekends back to back. St-Jean Baptiste has always been a holiday for me, which marked the very last possible day of the school year, back in high school, and while a lot of separatists have sort of adopted it as a “national” holiday, it’s a day where I can usually be proud to be Québécoise without feeling terribly guilty about it. ;) While growing up, my parents would always take me up north to the cottage for the long weekend, both St-Jean and the following week’s Canada Day. So, despite the fact that we will be right ahead of a patch, I’m going up north on Friday with my dad. If it rains, so help me God, Mother Nature is going to get an earful from me. I want to go up north, relax, read a book or two, go swimming in the lake, go canoeing on the lake, get some sun and the like. Maybe play some chess against my dad, play some cards, eat some barbecue… Man. It could be very awesome.

I will, therefore, endeavour to put WoW out of my mind for Friday through to Sunday. With any luck, it will be gloriously sunny and just warm enough to coax me to go swimming to cool off.

If it’s pouring rain, I’m gonna be cranky. :P

But yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to, that’s what I’m going to do this weekend.

This week:

– reaction post to blue post about paladin healing
– T12 loot list
– hopefully downing H V&T for 7/13
– do research on Firelands bosses >.>
– answer comments!

Whew.

On that note, time to grab a few winks. I have got to remember that editing the podcast EARLIER is better than LATER!

The Raiding Adventures of the "Baby" Paladin

Kurn / / apotheosis, baby paladin adventures, bastion of twilight, blackwing descent, guild, healing, raiding, ramblings, throne of the four winds

Wednesday night was my first night raiding with Choice of Skywall again. The last time had been in late October, just before I brought Madrana home to Eldre’Thalas.

Well, Madrana II (or Saerani III, as a certain Football would put it), is back on Skywall and raided on Wednesday night.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my guild, Apotheosis. I really, really do. But at the same time, it’s SO NICE to be led by someone instead of leading people! Letting someone else organize the raid roster for the night rather than be the one to do it.

We blew through regular Bastion of Twilight in about an hour. My fellow holy paladin applicant got tons of loot (no Cho’gall bracers dropped… what a surprise…) and I’ll have to wait to be eligible until the next raid I attend, so I’m glad for him and glad for me.

It’s always interesting to acclimate to a new raiding environment. On the one hand, it’s a bit scary and nerve-wracking because you desperately do not want to screw up. And they do things differently than you’re used to, most of the time. I mean, sure, I know to hug people when I get Twilight Meteorite on Valiona and Theralion, but am I normally hugging people in melee anyways? In Apotheosis, yes, in Choice, no.

So Halfus was pretty simple and V&T went okay and Council was fine. Cho’gall was a little rough for me. I glyphed Cleansing for that fight and got 20 dispels, more than anyone — even the priest who was in the raid. /flex. But I was totally oom at the end of the fight. And I’d even taken a Potion of Concentration, too. Eesh.

Then, it was off to Blackwing Descent! And to Magmaw and Omnotron.

Magmaw was… entertaining. They were attempting to practice heroic positioning by virtue of having everyone clump up in melee and have a tank kite. The tank was… a prot warrior. I had never heard of a prot warrior tanking Magmaw parasites before, but by golly, it happened (albeit on normal, so there was no fire to dodge) and though there were some tank issues (mangle deaths — they happen everywhere, it seems!), Magmaw was still a one-shot.

On Omnotron, we had the person about to be fried to a crisp *not* moving in preparation for heroic mode, where they cannot move. A few people got nicked by the Flamethrower, but very nice positioning for the most part.

I was thinking maybe we’d poke around at heroic Chimaeron or something and I wondered if my gear could handle that or not, when all of a sudden we’re told to go to Uldum.

Okay. This was not something I had anticipated. The prospect of doing Throne of the Four Winds twice in a week with two different guilds is not cool. I don’t know WHY I hadn’t recognized this as a very real possibility, but apparently I am dumb. ;) No, seriously, it’s okay. I just dislike that instance intensely. And guess what Apotheosis is working on during Thursday’s raid? That’s right. Heroic Conclave.

So there I am on Conclave and I get to heal with Fugara, the GM. We had an easy job, staying on Anshal’s platform the whole time, so it was pretty chill and relaxed. Conclave was a one-shot. Beauty.

And then… Al’Akir.

Let it be known that I have killed that jackass just twice on Madrana (er, the original one) so it’s not like I’m a pro or anything. And they put me in a different spot than I’m usually in. On the bright side, I didn’t have to do the positions for Al’Akir!!!! Many commiserations to Zarethorn, Choice’s raid leader. He had planned that all out ahead of time.

So we wiped on him twice and called it a night. Having said that, I did NOT get blasted off the platform, I did NOT eat Squall Line and I totally used my CDs appropriately. All this from a brand-new (to me) spot, just one section to the right of the tank. (Normally, I’m at the tank’s spot but have also been two to the right.) I had one moment of panic as I saw the oncoming Squall Line and Wind Burst was casting. The moment of panic was not “how do I navigate this awful combination of elements” but rather “shitshitshitshit where is my bubble OH THANK GOD.”

(Madrana II has a different UI than Madrana I. It’s much less cluttered and yet I STILL had to search for my bubble.)

It was really fun to be back in that raid group. A lot of people have come and gone, but there were some familiar faces: Fugara, Ygg, Aidan, Zare, Acid, Baatezus, Banorind, Beezle, Cyber, Daemyn, Sane, Sham, Thorn. It was great to be back there with a lot of the same people.

A lot of people are worried I’m going to burn myself out with this crazy scheme of mine. I admit, that’s a possibility. But I feel energized by my night with Choice. I feel like going in to Throne tomorrow and handing Heroic Conclave their asses. I feel fired up and ready to kick ass with Apotheosis and then to go kick some more ass with Choice on Monday.

Also, I totally fixed my borked Raeli’s Spell Announcer on Madrana II. It refused to work at all throughout the raid, but I fixed it up afterwards. And then I realized I had enough Valor Points to buy an honest-to-goodness healing ring, so I did that, too.

All in all, a really productive night. A fun night.

Hitting Our Stride?

Kurn / / apotheosis, blackwing descent, raiding, ramblings

So, on May 12th, we killed Heroic Maloriak for the first time.

On May 17th, we killed Heroic Magmaw for the first time. Took us 12 pulls. It was surprisingly easy fight, probably because we used a DK-kiting method. Honestly, I hate that method, but we’ve already gotten Parasite Evening several times without a “stack on melee, kite adds” method, so I feel marginally less lame for doing heroic the way most people seem to do it.

And then, last night, on May 22nd, we killed Heroic Atramedes for the first time.

Three progression bosses in 10 days?

Not to sound ungrateful or anything of the kind, but what the hell is that all about?

We’re making progress AND we’re doing it relatively easily, despite some issues.

What kind of issues? Well, on Tuesday, we knocked out regular ODS, Heroic Magmaw and tried Heroic Chimaeron for a couple of attempts, but he didn’t die. So we walked in there on Thursday knowing that Chimaeron and Maloriak were both up, along with heroic Atramedes and (for now) regular Nefarian.

However, Dayden, our tank lead, had plans on Thursday, so organizing the tanks was largely going to be on my brother’s shoulders.

So there we are, merrily attempting Heroic Chimaeron with one of our OS tanks as a “real” tank for double attack/feud soaking.

It was reading Rhidach’s post about the very same fight, the next day, that I finally managed to put to words the problem we appeared to be having:

We managed to down the fight after six attempts — though, admittedly, we probably could have done it a little sooner if not for my constant confusion of who was tanking what when and why. It was like “who’s on first”, but without the timeless humor.

Midway through our H Chim attempts, my lights flickered, but I stayed online. And then my brother, who does not live all that far from me, promptly went offline. He tweeted me from his phone:

@kurnmogh just lost power.

Well, THAT wasn’t good news.

So we got our other OS tank to swap to tank gear/spec and we had a couple of pulls like that.

And then Fog got back online! Yaaaaaay!

Two more pulls and Chimaeron was dead, with everything having gone right with taunts and swaps and healing. Whew.

On to Maloriak, to attempt to repeat our kill from the week before!

Before the first pull, my lights flickered again. And again, Fog goes offline.

So rather than get both OS tanks going on Maloriak and pull in yet another melee DPS, we went to look at Heroic Atramedes.

8 pulls and lots and lots of people eating discs, bombs and the like, and yes, I am one of the worst offenders. My computer is crap (although I have a new one arriving this week or next!) and so even though I KNOW I’m supposed to move, even though I’m hitting my strafe key as though my actual life depends on it, my toon decides to just stand there. Like a champ.

So we did 8 pulls and tweaked a few things and called it a night, without Fog regaining power.

Sunday: Maloriak time! I was a little nervous about this one. Repeat kills are never a stress-free experience for me. I want to always prove that the first kill was not a fluke.

Four pulls is all it took to repeat our Maloriak kill. Insert me slumping with relief HERE.

And from there, it only took us four pulls to kill Heroic Atramedes. Granted, it was messy as hell and I was certainly dead on the floor, but we did it! I got a battle rez on the first attempt, at Dayden’s request, and after that attempt, I was like “you know, not that I don’t appreciate it or anything, but for right now, I am likely THE WORST POSSIBLE choice for a battle rez.”

So 12 pulls each for Heroic Magmaw and Heroic Atramedes.

I’ll take it!

I know that ODS is going to be more difficult. I know that Valiona & Theralion will be more difficult. I know that Conclave will be more difficult.

But right now, my guild’s killed 3 progression bosses in 10 days and I will take that, thank you very kindly. :D

It's Going to Be Legen-waitforit-dary!

Kurn / / apotheosis, facepalm, gear, patch 4.2, ramblings

I don’t mean for this to be me bitching (I swear), but I’ve spent time over the last week working on a fair, equitable process for determining who’s going to get the legendary staff. Note that I haven’t selected anyone, but I have recently proposed a fairly lengthy and detailed process to the officers of my guild.

I was pretty pleased with it. It promised to be long and tedious for some people (mostly the officers) but it seemed like the fairest way to do things.

There is a substantial amount of resistance from the officers thus far.

I won’t describe my process (at least not yet, but I’d like to do so at some point in the future), nor what some of my officers are countering with, but I wanted to post because if they aren’t going to accept my method, I need another suggestion. So I am now looking at backup plans. Of course, the last one took me a week to refine, so if I’m going to counter, I need to spread my net a little bit.

Please comment about legendary selections that you’ve seen in the past! Tell me about the best AND the worst selection processes for a legendary you’ve ever seen. Tell me why you liked one and why you didn’t like one. Have you ever gotten a legendary? If so, the process obviously worked out for you, but what flaws did you see in the system? Have you been passed over for a legendary? If so, the process obviously did NOT work out for you, but what did you LIKE about the process?

Finally, how is your guild dealing with the legendary staff?

Can’t wait to read your responses. :)

Perseverence

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, blackwing descent, raiding, ramblings

It’s said that insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Raiding can be kind of insane.

You rely on 10 or 25 people to do their jobs perfectly each and every time. In the beginning of raid content, even the slightest error can mean a wipe. As you gain gear and experience and familiarity with the content, slight errors happen with very little issue. Even huge mistakes can be forgiven, later on. But as you’re learning it and just after you’ve gotten that sweet, sweet first kill, execution is everything.

Last night, on our 65th overall attempt on Heroic Maloriak, we got him down.

65 times we went up against this guy. 64 times, we wiped, usually in hideous combinations of Dark Sludge, Scorching Blast, Frost Orbs and Flame Jets. Oh, and Arcane Storms during green phases. Ow.

This incarnation of Apotheosis is very different from the Burning Crusade version. We were learning, all the way throughout BC about how to lead a guild, how to lead/organize raids and how not to be douchecanoes.

We’re a lot more experienced now, after getting through BC together and the start of Wrath together before going our separate ways and seeing what else was out there for us. I know I learned a lot about my personal desires and personal limits when it comes to this game, as well as how NOT to run a raid group. I picked up a lot of tips on how to be more businesslike about running raids and guilds.

The biggest difference between now and then, though, is the attitude the people bring with them to a raid night. In Burning Crusade, it was like “aw, man, we’ve wiped on this guy for an hour. BLAH, I don’t want to do this anymore,” but obviously, progression means wiping and learning. This version of Apotheosis is very, very into killing bosses and new challenges. I rather suspect that if I were to poll them, 90%+ of the raiders would prefer trying a brand new boss fight than farming old content.

I like a good farm night just like anyone else, but once the fight is done successfully, it’s time for me to turn my attention away from it and move forward to the next. Or at least, that’s what I’m supposed to do. In Burning Crusade, I was constantly re-organizing old fights, re-explaining, just for repeat kills, at least in SSC and TK. (It got better in Hyjal and BT.) Shockingly, I CAN turn my attention to future challenges with Cataclysm’s Apotheosis. We have (knock on wood, lest I jinx us) never not done a repeat kill successfully the next time. Some are messier than others, some are super clean, but the second kill is always better than the first.

Getting the first kill is always such a relief, for me. It means that the effort we’ve invested in the fight together has paid off. It means those wipes were all worth it.

Currently being 3/13 on 25-man, in a guild comprised of my long-time WoW friends, is totally worth it all to me.

Yes. Even worth this. ;)

So we’ll keep trucking along. Don’t know that we’ll go 13/13, don’t know that we’ll get heroic Nef or Cho down before 4.2 arrives. But this group really doesn’t have much quit in them, I’ll tell you that. They make me proud to be their guild master.

Heroic Chimaeron x2 and other fun stuff.

Kurn / / apotheosis, baby paladin adventures, blackwing descent, classic instances, raiding, ramblings

So we’ve been working on knocking out some of these initial heroic modes.

We got Heroic Chimaeron on Thursday, April 28th.

We did that during patch week, with people dropping offline like FLIES, man. So I was thrilled to get him down after just a couple of nights of work. 35 wipes all-told, then a kill on try 36. Woot!

Since, on the night that we killed him, we had 16 wipes before the kill, I was not expecting an easy second kill. Particularly given the comp we had.

This Tuesday’s signups were absolutely abysmal. We had 20 confirmed, 3 who hadn’t accepted or declined, 2 declined and then something like 7 “tentatives”.

I got a hold of the three who didn’t sign up for Tuesday and confirmed they would all be there. I got a confirmation from a tentative and decided NOT to cancel the raid ahead of time. It was a risk — I knew I might have to call the raid or split into two groups of 10 and I seriously hate both of those ideas.

Lo and behold, we had 26 on at start.

We went to BH, knocked that out and headed to BWD. I hadn’t done any raid rosters and I didn’t even make a raid PLAN because of all the different variables in who was going to be there. So we did Magmaw and ODS and swapped out a healer who was lagging and disconnecting (who had been DPSing for us on those bosses) for Fog, to come in as ret. So we did normal Atramedes and did it pretty damn cleanly. Two deaths total and we finally got to use heroism at the END of the fight instead of the start. Atramedes is my guild’s worst fight, I think, but we’re seeing improvement.

So then we’re looking at heroic Chimaeron. I had swapped the healer who was lagging crazily, remember, so we had 7 healers instead of the 8 that we got it with last week. However, last week, one of the healers was one of the people dropping offline frequently, so we basically did it with 7.5 healers as it was.

I figured “what the hell” and decided we’d give it a shot with the 7 healers.

We lost one of the tanks very early, but popped him back up ASAP. Then we lost a rogue and basically just ignored that. I figured that if we had any battle rezzes left towards the end (remember, we have a maximum of three on 25-man) we could pop him back up.

Then, with, oh, five seconds to go before Massacre, I have three people in my group with Low Health. Including me. I’d given the healers specific instructions, since we didn’t have a dedicated “floater” healer, to watch for 2 or more Low Health people in any given group as we approach a Massacre and to start from the right (or bottom) of the frames to help out that group’s healer.

I’m the bottom-most person in my group with Low Health, so I start healing the shadow priest — get her out of danger. Then I heal the disc priest in my group, who’s a tank healer and is more important than I am for the moment. And through it all, I’m praying someone, ANYONE, sees that I have Low Health. I probably should have ASKED for a heal over Mumble, but I didn’t.

Dead me!

(Part of me thinks my healers thought it would be funny to let me die like that, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t pre-planned. Mostly sure.) (I think.)

So I blow a battle rez on me by asking for a Raise Ally and am basically tapped out of mana for the next while, but everything ends up being fine but unfortunately, the shadow priest in my group died because I was running back to my spot and didn’t even see she had low health. ><

Two battle rezzes down, did I want to blow our last one NOW? I held off.

We got to the fourth feud and after that Massacre, I got our feral druid to pop up the shadow priest. We pushed, got another Massacre/Feud, which was very poorly timed and we got to P2 when most people were at about half-health. Eesh.

And then, Chimaeron/Mocking Shadows killed a total of six people before falling over.

I was sort of like “what the eff just happened?”. We one-shotted Heroic Chimaeron with one less healer than we generally have for this fight and had a minimum of issues.

“Well, I’ll take it!” I muttered to myself.

So by 10:23pm, after one hour and 23 mintues, we had done BH, Magmaw, ODS, Atramedes and H. Chimaeron.

We took our break and reconvened afterwards and decided to go play with Heroic Maloriak for the rest of the night.

We’re doing a LOT better with the dark phases! Not so good with the green phases. I’m going to have to go digging through the logs, but I’m pretty pleased to see us living through red phases, blue phases and dark phases compared to our work on him in mid-April. Basically, if we got a red phase first, we were screwed, because the sludges were still up for about 15ish seconds. Last night, they were mostly still up when we transitioned but only for a couple seconds, enough time to finish them off and get into position for the Scorching Blast. Amazing what a couple of weeks’ worth of gear will do, eh?

So it’s Heroic Maloriak on the menu for the next raid night and some more work next week, if need be.

Then… Magmaw? Atramedes? Should be interesting, at any rate.

I’m really pleased with the group and the progress we’re making, though. The repeat kills are HUGE and totally make my night when we manage a relatively easy repeat kill. That was something we were really bad at doing back in Burning Crusade. One week, we did 5/6 SSC in a single night and never did that again, I don’t think.

“Fun” stuff includes the targetting reticule bug. Being a paladin in raids, I don’t really have this issue.

Except last night, I did.

We’re there before Magmaw and I drop a feast.

Except my Raid Buff Status didn’t give out a raid warning.

“That’s weird,” I thought. And then I realized I couldn’t click my feast.

“Anyone see the feast?” I asked.

“What feast?”
“No…”
“There’s a feast?”
“I missed the feast?”

And the like.

“RETICULES!” my holy priest cried.

“Holy shit,” I responded. “Is THIS what you’re dealing with?!”

“YES!” came the replies.

“Wow. That is shitty.”

So here’s a screenshot of what LOOKS like two feasts, but the one on the right is NOT clickable and is ONLY visible to me. (Mostly to prove to my guild that no, I was not hallucinating.)

And in lowbie paladin adventures…

My lowbie paladin has caught up to my lowbie mage. Both are level 52.

I don’t know if I’m horrified or really pleased about this.

I do know that the XP is just insane with all the heirlooms and the guild XP bonus. It’s absolutely out of this world. I was level 50 for 45 minutes, I think it was.

Me, Fog, Maj and Entropia (another guildie) ran a bunch of dungeons today. Zul’Farrak, a ton of BRD (detention block) and a few Sunken Temples.

I have to say that I’m glad they redid ST so it doesn’t suck so bad, but I’m sad they covered up the hole in the center of that room. :(

BRD is glorious and delightful as always. I can’t wait to do the REST of the instance and not just the detention block. (Majik hates it, but he’ll tank for me anyways.)

I’m almost looking forward to Outlands stuff, though. I’m eagerly awaiting LBRS and UBRS runs, too. I think the Outlands anticipation is just because I’ll be THAT much closer to WotLK stuff, which I can practically do blindfolded after two years of running those dungeons.

My lowbie pally is a dwarf, but as soon as I hit 80, I’m going to race change to a human for the rep bonuses to the reps I’m actually going to need.

I feel like I’m on my shaman as a dwarf, anyways, especially with the heirloom shaman shoulders.

SPEAKING of which, wtf. I have Plate Specialization at 50, but there’s no heirloom plate healer helm? Ugh. I’m just going to stick with the mail, I guess, and be a scrub for quite some time, yet. Bonus experience trumps any and all stats.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. How about you fine folks?

Apotheosis vs. Raid "ID" Lockouts

Kurn / / apotheosis, bastion of twilight, blackwing descent, facepalm, raiding, ramblings

Welcome to the second of three posts today, part of what I’m jokingly calling “Contentpalooza 2011”. In this post, I’ll talk about how Apotheosis broke our raid IDs last night and what happened to fix it.

Picture it: Azeroth, 2011. A band of 28 people wanted to raid and wanted to kill things. On the agenda, normal Maloriak (after spending about 3-4 hours on him on heroic on Sunday and Tuesday), normal Atramedes, attempts at heroic Chimaeron and then normal Nefarian.

I had 8 healers signed up, much to my joy, which meant I had more options for H Chim. But I also knew that we didn’t need 8 healers for the first two fights.

Being a healer, I decided to sit myself out of those first two fights. I hadn’t sat myself out of anything except Baradin Hold for at least a couple of weeks. This had the happy coincidence (honest, I didn’t plan it out this way!) of allowing me to watch just about the whole NHL playoff game between my beloved Montreal Canadiens and our hated rivals, the Boston Bruins. (The Habs, or the Canadiens, beat Boston 2-0 just as my guild was finishing off Atramedes.)

So with Maloriak and Atramedes dead, I made some swaps. I swapped out three DPS for two healers and another DPS. The healers were myself, our resto druid and the DPS I brought in was a rogue.

We zoned in together and clicked “accept” when warned that if we downed any bosses, we would be saved to this version of the instance where Magmaw, Omnotron, Maloriak and Atramedes were dead. We ran around the right side of the area in Blackwing Descent and got to Atramedes’ area and helped with the trash clearing to Chimaeron.

So there we stood at Chimaeron. I switched to my Chim healing spec and was talking on Mumble and such and our tank officer, Dayden, who had been raid leader to this point, made me the raid leader. While inside this instance, I switched the difficulty from 25 Player to 25 Player Heroic.

The druid, the rogue and myself found ourselves back at the start of the instance — on heroic.

The other 22 people were still in the normal mode of the instance, with an error message of sorts.

This is about the time when we started trying every variation of Dayden or myself as raid leader with 25/25H difficulty combinations we could think of. Bottom line, Dayden and myself could not exist in the same heroic instance together.

The officers were pissed. The raiders were getting cranky. I, of course, opened a ticket. I have probably opened about six thousand, eight hundred and seventy-three tickets in the five years that I’ve played this game. :P It’s what I do. Don’t judge me.

We headed to BoT and right before pulling trash, a GM wants to talk to me! Yaaaaaay, I got to stand in the back and do nothing to do with Halfus trash because I was trying to explain to the GM what the eff the problem was.

At that point, he wanted me to give him all the raid IDs and names of people. The trouble is, there no longer ARE raid ID numbers visible to us. It just tells you what bosses you’ve killed and which are available. And if someone from that group of 22 linked their raid ID, we were told we were eligible to join that raid.

So they get me to get Dayden to log off his toon so they can log on as him and look at the raid info available.

My guildies are nuts. Below, all instances of “Daydyn” are actually the GM, logged on to his toon. The rest are raiders who were in Bastion of Twilight at the time.

So I’m witnessing all this in chat, and whisper the GM to apologize for my “idiot” guildies who are harrassing him…

Naturally, I felt a compulsion to apologize.

He then asked us what we wanted to do — were we going to continue in BoT or BWD?

You’d think that would be the end of it, right?

Hilarious, no? Quite an interesting exchange. And throughout all this, the poor GM is sitting there on Dayden’s toon, being /cheered at, /hugged, /licked, etc:

Whew.

So after something like an hour, total, of messing with ID stuff and trying to get it resolved, we finally got to pull heroic Halfus. Now, we were doing this without Fog, one of our main spec tanks. The first few pulls were pretty bleak, but we swapped a couple of things around and somehow managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, then we went on to clear regular V&T and… yeah. The night was salvaged and we had an interesting time with a couple of GMs, but GOOD GOD, what kind of buggy shit is that lockout crap? I miss the old lockout system when something like this happens. I’ve never pugged a ton of stuff in terms of raids, so the flexible lockout thing is just irritating to be. I don’t need flexibility, dangit! ;)

Anyways. That was the raid night and we’ll see if we’re all propely saved or whatever for Sunday’s H Chimaeron/etc attempts. (H Chim probably for a bit, then normal Chim, Nef, over to BoT for Council and Cho. I think.)

Day 13 – People That You Admire

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, apotheosis, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Good morning and welcome to Contentpalooza 2011! I’ll have not one, not two, but three blog posts for you today! Two of them are Days 13 and 14 of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge and one of them will describe, in great detail and with screenshots, my raid night last night, which was both an exceedingly frustrating experience and one of the more hilarious raid nights I’ve ever had.

But first…

Day 13 – People That You Admire

This is supposed to be about bloggers and players that I admire. There are several of each, so let’s organize this into two categories.

Players

I admire my officers, all six of them.

– Dayden was basically born to be a tank. He’s outstanding at tanking and does a great job herding the cats in the raid. He does his homework and puts what he’s learned into practice. He’s a fairly reasonable sort and is Canadian and one of the best things I ever did for Apotheosis was somehow get him to be the tank officer. He doesn’t get frustrated terribly easily (last night, as you’ll see in an upcoming post today, was an exception) and I would not have reformed Apotheosis for Cataclysm without Dayden being part of my officer team. He and Daey and I made a great leadership team through T5/T6 in Burning Crusade and I can’t imagine being the GM of Apotheosis without Dayden, star of the guild-favourite game, “CAN DAYDEN TANK IT?!?!”, right there with me and the other officers. I admire his play, I admire his attitude and basically, I think he’s awesome.

– Daey. Daey, also known as “Football”, has been someone I’ve played this game with for about five years. He was in my first real guild, Fated Heroes, and, to this day, still gives me hell for choosing to bring a rogue over him for Zul’Gurub raids. My biggest reason? “Rogues can sap!” Yeah, I was a scrub. Daey turned out to be basically our best DPS ever throughout Vanilla and BC. He would have to go stand in a corner on Void Reaver and do absolutely nothing so that the tank could build up enough threat. Hell, we used to soulstone him on Hakkar so that when he inevitably pulled aggro, he could pop back up and have 0 threat and actually get DPS done. More than that, he’s a fantastic strategist who sees things on the fly that I would only see after an hour of scrounging through the logs. It’s his quick thinking that gets us through sticky situations and things like 8 waves of Hyjal trash at a time. BigWigs would announce the trash that was incoming and in those, oh, five seconds of lead time, he’d assign CC and tank targets. Doing Hyjal trash without Daey the few times we had to do it was seriously painful. This is another piece of the Apotheosis machine that I wouldn’t have done without for Cataclysm. He’s a great foil to me, we think in very different ways and see things very differently, but apart from the occasional butting of heads, we use our differences to work out what’s best for the guild in any particular situation. I admire his quick thinking, his amazing level of play, his fast reactions and his ongoing dedication to the guild. I also admire the fact that he manages to have a “real life” that includes playing a lot of hockey and respect the fact that he’s a die-hard Pittsburgh Penguins fan.

– Fog. 4 years, 7 months and 1 week younger than me, my brother came to the game just after I did and he beat me to 60. He killed Rag wayyyyy before I ever would. I probably would have gotten the old crew back together without him, since Fog only stuck around through Gruul back in BC, but having him around usually makes things more fun — when we’re not yelling at each other, as siblings do. ;) I admire his insane ability to learn a class and a role with ease. He’s had four mains: Vanilla was his druid, Fog, and he was feral and he was resto. In late Vanilla, he rolled a rogue, Slovotsky, and carried that toon into BC, where he stuck with us through Gruul, as I mentioned. In Wrath, he played his hunter, Je, then rolled a paladin, Harvey, and he’s now tanking on Harvey for us in the guild. I admire the ease with which he picks up new classes and new skills. I admire his basic understanding of the mechanics of the game and his level of play that allows him to succeed at basically anything he does, in-game. He’s currently serving as guild bank administrator for the guild and is doing a fantastic job in terms of keeping up with EP donations and the mandatory flask “donations” we have in order to keep dropping Big Cauldrons of Battle. I envy him his organizational skills and leet spreadsheet skills! I am definitely not that organized and not that mathematical.

– Darista. Again, I’ve been playing alongside Dar for about five years, as she was also in Fated Heroes. She only became an officer for us in Cataclysm, but I’ve always enjoyed her presence in-guild and in raids. I feel like I should have promoted her to officer three years ago, given what a great addition she’s been to the team! I admire Dar’s level of play, which has always been very good — and if it hasn’t been “great”, she’s done everything she could to bring it up to a great level. I admire her tenacity; if there’s a problem, she will find the damn answer! I admire her ability to communicate her ideas clearly and her ability to do it in fewer words than I do! :) I admire her dedication and loyalty to this crazy group of people and her ability to persevere through stupid in-game issues, like when she couldn’t ever load Skettis or sometimes couldn’t log in to Dalaran or a variety of technical issues. She’s a great addition to the team and I’m so pleased she’s still with us. :)

– Toga. Another former Fated Hero, Toga was my original hunter protégé. I remember out-damaging him in MC. ;) Toga was also the original GM of Apotheosis, something he accepted willingly and humbly. We lost him for Wrath and I swear to God, that’s one of the reasons Apotheosis didn’t do so well. Toga is an excellent player, a really nice guy (no, really, he’s super awesome!) and he’s probably the most reasonable of any officer. If you need someone to cut the crap and get down to the brass tacks, you want Toga. I admire that about him — he’ll look at the big picture and the details and he’ll figure out what the best course of action is. I also admire his willingness to do the dirty work. He hits our gongs on Atramedes. He used to kite General Drakkisath in UBRS. Toga does the shitty jobs and he does them well and he rarely complains about it — and when he does, it’s usually good-naturedly. I adore and admire Toga for so many little things he’s done over the years that just make me laugh or smile or see reason, I can’t possibly list them all. Just know that I am so fortunate he came back to us for Cataclysm. I wouldn’t have gotten this thing going without him around, either.

– Majik. My partner in crime on Blessing of Frost, Majik and I have been playing together since Vanilla in Fated Heroes as well. Majik is a very smart, very talented player who, like Fog, can easily slip into any role or class required of him. He’s a great DPS, a great tank and a great healer. While that’s a great trait and I do admire it about it, what I really admire is his charisma and attitude. Majik was BORN to lead smaller raids. He’s hilarious, light-hearted and makes even the most soul-crushing wipes somehow fun. Apotheosis would not have been resurrected without Majik on board. He doesn’t always get to express his personality to its fullest in 25-man raiding, which I guess is just more serious compared to crazy 10 or 20-man runs back in Vanilla, but I know it’s there and I SO wish I had that kind of presence and charisma. This is the guy who, on off-lock-out periods of ZG for us, would convince 19 other people to go do “a 20-minute Venoxis run”. Why? Simply so he could get the 1H spell dagger off Venoxis. That was the sole purpose of the entire run. But somehow, he would convince 19 other people that it’d be fun and fast and they’d get rep and coins and bijous and… yeah. God help us all if Majik starts a cult and stops using his powers for… well, not “good”, but harmless things. ;) I also really admire how even-keeled he is. He just doesn’t take things that seriously, never really lets it get him down. I’m the complete opposite and so it’s amazing to look at Majik when I’m all blah about something and he’s like “hah, that was fun!” or whatever. I bitch about Majik a LOT, it’s just how our friendship works, but I think he’s awesome. And will deny ever having written those words. >.>

Apart from those six jokers, some other players I admire:

– Fugara, the GM of Choice of Skywall. I only really got to play alongside her for a little less than six months, I believe, but Fug is the GM I wish I could be. I am nowhere near as organized or as settled into this role as she is. She was the deciding factor when I made my decision to leave my Proudmoore guild and find a new home where I could finish out Wrath. I’d narrowed it down to Choice and a guild on Hyjal and while the Hyjal guild was tempting — more progressed, offered free consumables, sizeable repairs, etc… They didn’t have Fugara. An excellent healer, a formidable leader, a great person. I admire everything about Fug’s play and leadership and she’s basically the GM I want to be when I grow up. ;) Leaving Choice sucked not only because I was leaving a good group of people, but because I was leaving Fug and leaving someone I knew I still could learn more from. So if you wonder why I constantly plug Choice and beg people to go apply there, it’s because of this woman and my overwhelming admiration for her.

– My RL Friend the Resto Druid. My friend, whom I’ve known for nearly 30 years, is the best damn druid healer I’ve ever seen. She’s an amazing player when it comes to the mechanics of the game and the encounters, but she’s just a fantastic druid healer. She’s rolled with the punches and learned a lot along the way, but she’s just hands-down fantastic. She also did an amazing job at being the healing lead for her guild despite not really wanting the position. Her dedication and tenacity in trying guild circumstances made me admire her all the more and so when I had to step in as healing lead for a couple of months while she dealt with personal stuff, I tried to be at the top of my game and get the most out of the healers the way she did.

– Fadorable. Fad is the best damn resto shaman I have ever encountered in my life. Topping dispells and healing on Yogg-Saron without even taking cleansing totem into consideration? FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC. And it wasn’t any of that stupid Chain Heal spam, either. Fad is a fantastic player and I would love to see her apply to Apotheosis (COUGH COUGH) and, by golly, I would make room for her if there was no room to be had.

Of course, I think very highly of just about every player in Apotheosis too. But these people listed above are not just amazing players to be admired for their play — it’s the additional contributions that they give. If I weren’t already at 2000+ words, I would go into detail about all the players I admire from the guild.

Bloggers

A shorter list here mostly because I’m already running super long on this post, but I admire anyone who can write properly (using good grammar and spelling — not resorting to “lol, me 2!” or “y u mad dawg” or such things) and about things in this game about which they’re passionate.

– Rohan, of Blessing of Kings. Rohan always has intelligent commentary on the game or various aspects of the game. He’s also been writing FOREVER. So not only do I greatly admire his posts, but his longevity. I mean, look at this first actual post from December of 2005 talking about, what else, paladins. Awesome post!

– Lissanna, of Restokin. Lissanna is just SO dedicated to druids, you can’t mistake her for anything else. She IS a druid. Her love (and sometimes frustration) for her class is evident everywhere. She is passionate about and dedicated to druids and it’s her long-term commitment to the class and helping others to learn about the class that I admire.

– Matt, of World of Matticus. I admire Matt as a blogger and as a GM and as a player, although the most interaction in-game we’ve ever had was him rezzing me once just outside of Stormwind during Cataclysm’s Beta. ;) Matt is a busy guy and yet still has time to have a team of bloggers blogging, still has time to GM a guild, still has time to do all kinds of stuff. I’m sure he makes mistakes, I”m sure he lets things slip, but his blog is his baby and the amount of time and care he’s put into it is something I really admire. I tend to let the blog slide when I’m busy with the guild, but Matt takes that extra step to make sure his blog doesn’t suffer due to his busy schedule.

All right, I think I’ll leave it at that!

Yesterday (well, two days ago): A Day in the Life
Later today: This Upsets You

Day 09 – Your First Blog Post

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, apotheosis, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

On April 4th, 2008 (I really need to edit the template to include the year on my posts) I posted my very first post to this blog.

Boring. It’s an intro. Hi, this is me, etc.

It’s kind of funny, though, because if you read it now versus what you read on my blog today, you would think that very little has changed in the intervening three years. There’s very little that’s actually terribly different between the facts I give in that intro post versus the facts I would give out today.

So I figured that today, I’d talk a bit about those facts I volunteer and examine the differences (or similarities) between them. :)

– I say that I’ve been playing WoW for over two years. Well, that’s over five, now. Still going, just like the Energizer Bunny. ;)

– I say I have 3 70s. I currently have 3 85s. At the time, my 70s were Kurn (the hunter), Madrana (the paladin) and Holyfog, the priest I had rescued from my brother. Today, my 85s are Kurn, Madrana and my shaman, who I got to 84 doing nothing but mining and herbing and then got impatient so I started healing on him and dinged him 85. (My brother has long-since recovered his priest and Gneiss, as he was previously and is now currently known, is an 85 PVP disc healer.)

– I say I’m the guild master of Apotheosis on the US PVE/ET realm, Eldre’Thalas. Uh, yep! Of course, there’s more to it than that. I can’t imagine having been the GM of Apotheosis for all the intervening time. I would have missed out on so many experiences and so many people!

Basically, I would be the GM for about another 11 months after my first blog post, then we stopped raiding officially, just a few months into Wrath of the Lich King, due to lack of progression/recruitment/attendance. So I moved to Bronzebeard for six months (becoming a freaking officer again way too quickly) and then to Proudmoore for almost a year (and yet again, took on healing lead duties, albeit unofficially, for about 3 months) before going to Skywall, where, at long last, I was “just” a raider. Granted, I was constantly bothering the raid leaders and the guild master with comments and such about our raids and info from the logs, but they didn’t seem to mind too much. ;) Still, it was remarkably nice to just have to focus on my job of healing again.

About six months after going to Skywall, though, it was time to come back to Eldre’Thalas and reform Apotheosis. I’d had the wheels in motion for almost a year by the time 4.0 hit and, had there been no interest in rekindling Apotheosis, I could have happily stayed with my Skywall guild for ages.

Having said that, I’m extremely happy being the GM of Apotheosis. 12/12 and 1/13 as I write this and it’s with my old crew. Daey, Dayden, Fog, Toga and Majik were all officers in the BC-era version of Apotheosis (at various times) and it’s SO good to be working with them again. And then Darista became an officer with us, too, and MAN, I wish she’d been an officer with us sooner! :) The leadership team is working out nicely and the raiders are some fantastic people and great players, many of whom I met during my travels throughout Wrath of the Lich King or through this blog. :)

(Seriously, any opportunity to talk about my guild and I’ll take it. I’m stupidly proud of this group of people.)

– I say that I want to start up a resource that will address things I wish more people knew about. I like to think I’ve been fairly successful at that. Most things I learn in this game that aren’t completely obvious do tend to get shared here, somewhere, including strats and obviously holy paladin stuff. (I do need to get back to doing more of that.)

– I say that I “might” also gripe about the game, share my victories and the like. Well, I’ve done a LOT more griping and sharing of everything game-related than I originally intended, but it’s good to have a place to rant. My blogging (and griping!) helped me through the rough time that was me doubling as the healing lead in my Proudmoore guild when my RL Friend the Resto Druid (who had been my healing lead) had to suddenly take some steps back and stop playing for a couple of months. It was because of my blogging that I was able to realize exactly how unhappy I was where I was and even when my RL Friend came back into the mix, it was too much for me.

– I say “pull up a chair, sit back, relax and get ready for some long reads. ;)” Well, you can’t say I never warned you. ;)

Yesterday – 10 Things We Don’t Know About You
Tomorrow – Blog/Website Favourites