Category: ramblings

A Revelation

Kurn / / cataclysm, guild, raiding, ramblings

I saw my RL friend the resto druid today. And over the five hours we talked (yes, I am, in fact, long-winded in person as well as in text) we spent precisely one hour talking about WoW.

And in that one hour, dear readers, she pointed out something to me that has completely changed my perspective on a few things.

It’s times like these that I’m really glad I’ve blogged all this stuff, because you can see in my blogs how I have become increasingly unhappy and more distressed at guild crap.

I really started getting CRANKY right about mid-April. It’s then that I was in the middle of my temporary position of healing lead, plus dealing with Priest Who Thinks So Far Outside The Box He Can’t Even See It Anymore, plus raiding too much and too late for my tastes.

My RL friend the resto druid has been concerned about me and my attitude about raiding, both as a friend and as a healing lead. So when we met up today, we had a discussion that completely opened my eyes about a few things.

1) Prior to, say, December/January, I didn’t have a real problem with how people were treated in our raids. I was personally called out a number of times for standing in fire or poison (I do raid at like, 9fps and adjust to those things fairly quickly, but it takes some dying first) and insulted directly. Like “are you retarded?” and such like. I think I was actually asked, by the MT, if I was blind, at one point.

The way it goes in the guild is: you take it. You shut the hell up, bite your tongue and you take it. It’s just business. Don’t take it personally.

This does not excuse or forgive the MT’s behaviour. But you just take it. Period.

And yet, I didn’t have the same recoil and reaction as I did the other week when the MT basically insulted all the healers by lumping us all together with the Failadin. (I’ve since learned that two other people have complained to my RL friend the resto druid about that comment, so it really wasn’t just me.)

The question is, why did I not react as severely to personal insults in September/October as I did to something that could have meant this particular Failadin instead of all healers?

2) I spent two months as healing lead, raiding in a guild I had only joined in order to raid with my RL friend the resto druid… without my RL friend the resto druid. Without her there, raiding became a real obligation and duty to me. Every night I went to a raid, I told myself that I had to go for her, so that she could focus on her RL issues and not let the guild stuff distract her.

It was that important to me that she not need to worry about the guild and the healers. I continued raiding and doing healing despite not wanting to, because I felt bound by loyalty to my friend.

So the answer to the question in the first point up there is this:

The guild has changed. We have had some WICKED turnover. We have lost a ret paladin, a holy paladin, a disc priest, a resto druid, a kitty druid, two hunters, a resto shaman, two mages, a DK tank, an enhancement shaman, two different moonkin, a DPS warrior and a rogue, I think. That’s just the people I can think of off the top of my head. They were all core raiders and all of them have quit the guild or the game.

We pulled in a core bunch of raiders from a failing guild to shore up our numbers and suddenly, raids weren’t cancelled anymore. Sweet deal.

At about this point in time, we had a change. The MT gave up raid leading duties to the current raid leader (a shadow priest), promoting him and the hunter (now DPS lead) to officer.

The new RL is, in my mind, a jackass. But he’s an excellent player. Still, he spends too much time theorycrafting versus seeing what’s actually executable with our raiders. This makes him inflexible and makes me want to beat him in the face with a hockey stick.

But I digress.

The new RL also brought Vent into raids.

Given the new social dynamic brought by the core raiders from that other guild, added to the fact we have now spent time on Vent together listening to each other’s voices… the guild has gotten more social.

Add to that the fact that I was in a position of authority, which was EXACTLY like the position of authority I’ve ALWAYS had in all my other guilds, which were ALL much more social and friendly and such…

And you have the makings of Kurn going batshit insane without realizing what the hell is going on.

Without my realizing it, the guild changed, became more social, became much more like my old guilds. And with me slipping into my old role of healing lead, I began to treat my healers… well, not better, but as if they were MY healers in MY guild, not just my FELLOW healers and guildmates. That’s to say, I took care of them. Not that my RL friend the resto druid doesn’t take care of us, but I slipped into the job and did what I’d always done — reviews of the healers, detailed examinations of the logs, personal attention to the healers…

I was forging relationships (even if they’re just working relationships) with the healers. And trying to forge them with the raid leader, the DPS lead (hunter) and… even the big, bad MT.

And I didn’t even realize what I was doing. It’s just who I am. It’s just what I do.

So talking to my RL friend the resto druid today brought all of this up.

She pointed out that I am taking everything as a personal affront to me these days. Everything. In a raid, out of a raid, in trade chat, in an instance. And she’s right. I am SUPER CRANKY KURN these days.

Why?

Because the guild is getting to me. Nine months ago, I treated it like a job. Log in. Raid. Log out.

Ever since my stint as healing lead, I have been forging relationships with some people and taking shit personally. It’s not that job anymore. Now, it’s this horrible situation I’m in where I am literally betwixt and between. All my instincts are telling me to be personable, to continue building these bonds with people but every time I do, I get crankier.

The reason is that the guild is in a state of transition from a very business-oriented guild to a guild like most others, that is somewhat social, but the guild master (the MT) is a complete dick to people in raids.

He’s ALWAYS been a dick to people in raids.

But I take it personally now because I’ve adjusted to the new, more social reality of the guild. Hell, I probably helped contribute to the new, more social reality of the guild by bonding with the healers.

The GM/MT has not. He will not. He never will. He will ALWAYS be The Bad Cop, which was his role four years ago, two years ago, nine months ago and two weeks ago. And will be his role tomorrow and Monday when we pull heroic LK on 25 for the first time.

This realization has completely shifted my perspective.

I realize that one of two things has to happen.

1) I have to go back to thinking of it as a job. Log in. Raid. Log out. Done.

2) I have to leave for a guild that’s more social and friendly and respectful.

I’m going to spend the next three or four days deciding whether or not I can do option 1. I have a feeling that I can’t.

But if I can’t, if I do have to leave… at least I really understand WHY that is. This is a different guild than it was nine months ago. It will never get to the social level I need if it’s going to be a social guild, and it may never return to the very business-like atmosphere it once had. But it may be possible for me to readjust my thinking and go back to how I used to treat my membership in the guild.

My mind is still kind of blown by all of this.

My RL friend the resto druid pretty much rocks, everyone. Because when I realized I had to make one of those two choices, she reminded me that if I have to leave the guild to be happy, that that’s what I have to do. She reminded me that it’s not like I’m leaving her in the lurch, that I shouldn’t feel bound to the guild because of her and that I’ve done so much for her already that she really doesn’t want me to stay if I’m not enjoying myself. She also said it would suck to have to look for another paladin, based on Failadin’s very short trial, but that I really do have her blessing if I’m gonna go.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’ve been friends with her since we were six.

More stuff tomorrow here on the blog, including responses to my judgement post comments (must do math and research!), an update on potential guilds to go to and a nugget or two of information about Cataclysm, without spoiling too much. But I got to play Alpha for a little while at my friend’s place today. Woot!

Guilds & Loyalty & Obligation, Oh My!

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings

(or, Yes, Kurn is Still Bitching About Her Guild And Stuff… You Got A Problem With That?)

So, as previously mentioned, I didn’t raid last Thursday. Or last Sunday. And I didn’t raid on Monday, either. Insert 24h downtime and then I figured I’d go raid tonight. Apart from anything else, I was definitely getting twitchy. I hadn’t healed on the paladin for, oh, a week. I actually tried to toss a renew up on a tank at one point by clicking my mouse wheel and got the error message that there’s nothing to dispel. (It’s bound to Cleanse on my pally.)

Anyways, it didn’t start off terribly. I don’t raid for loot, but it was definitely very nice to get the heroic version of the Bulwark of Smouldering Steel. We’ve had five shields drop since our first week in ICC and this is only the second heroic one. I’m too tired to do the math, but that is a LOT of weeks without a shield dropping.

Apart from that, the raid pretty much sucked. Here are some “highlights”.

Heroic Lady Deathwhisper:

Number of Resto Shaman in the raid: 2

Number of Resto Druids in the raid: 1

Number of decurses by Resto Shammies on one attempt: 3 and 1 = 4

Number of decurses by Resto Druids on same attempt: 12

Heroic Deathbringer Saurfang:

Wipes: 2

Number of times people beaned in the face by Blood Beasts over all three attempts: 13

Number of times the raid leader got beaned in the face by Blood Beasts and subsequently died: 4

Heroic Blood Prince Council:

Number of wipes: 1 (which is 1 more than usual)

Number of times the stupid DPS forced ME to move, while healing the MT, despite Shadow Prison: 3

Number of times the stupid DPS killed me because they refused to move and I could not move lest the MT die: 1

Number of times veteran ret paladin died to Shadow Prison: 2

Number of dispels of Glittering Sparks by anyone over 2 attempts: 6 (me), 2 (RL/shadow priest), 2 (holy priest)

Number of dispels of Glittering Sparks by virtue of Mass Dispel by ANY priest over 2 attempts: 0 (I think that the healing lead asked the holy priest to go disc and he doesn’t seem to have done so)

Blood Queen Lana’thel:

Number of healers asked to heal tanks: 3 (1 holy paladin, 2 resto shaman)

Number of non-Chain Heals cast by shammies: 33 + 43 = 76

Number of Earth Shield heals on MT: 8 (never refreshed)

Number of Earth Shields heals on OT: 1 (placed on the OT at the end of the fight)

On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being “Not at All” and 10 being “Extremely”, the level of fear Kurn has of looking through the rest of the log to see Earth Shield failure: 14

If I was looking to last night’s raid to convince me that I should stick around despite the fact I’m currently not speaking to the raid leader, well, that definitely wasn’t convincing at all.

Everything was pissing me off. The stupid holy/disc priest who is the one who thinks outside the box before thinking inside it was all “yaaaaaaay, we have healers tonight!!!! I’ve missed you guys!!!” and it made me want to punch him in the face. Which, you know, is silly. He was genuinely happy to have so many members of the healing team online. But I still wanted to punch him in the face. I didn’t feel like it was a big ol’ happy reunion or anything. I was actually dreading the raid, exactly as I have been for the past couple of months and everything about it had the effect of stressing me out or frustrating me.

And so, perhaps it’s finally gotten to that point where a decision will have to be made. Do I put the good of my guild ahead of me and my desires? Or do I run screaming from this atmosphere and find a new home?

Let me be clear: I am not a guild hopper. I spent a year in Fated Heroes — my first real guild. I was there from the day I dinged 50 until the day it disbanded. I spent a couple of months in Skull, until such time that they ceased raiding pretty much entirely and my old FH crew and I started up Apotheosis. I was in Apotheosis for over a year and a half, until we stopped raiding officially in March of 2009.

From March of 2009 until September, I was in a raiding guild on Bronzebeard and only left due to two reasons:

1) The raid leader had ragequit and, though I was an officer, I didn’t have the energy to help them pick up the pieces of the guild. I tried, but I really couldn’t help keep it together.

2) My RL friend’s guild was in need of holy paladins; after nearly two years of talking about raiding together “someday”, “someday” was finally here.

And so I’ve been in my RL friend’s guild since October, with my trial having started in September. That’s nine long months of TOC, TOGC, ICC and the odd Ulduar run. I’ve been there for their Algalon kill and the crafting of my friend’s Val’anyr. I was acting healing lead for more than two months while my RL friend dealt with RL stuff. I was responsible for the healing for Sindragosa and LK regular kills and all the hard mode kills except Putricide and some of Sindragosa (I did some basic strat stuff, but it got further refined by my RL friend and the raid leader, which then led to a kill).

My point in this is not to toot my own horn, but merely to show that I am someone who values loyalty, who IS loyal, who always puts the needs of her guild/raid group/healing team ahead of her. The exception, of course, being when I took the crappy boots off Dreamwalker from Failadin. ;D

Leaving a guild is never an easy decision for someone like me, who believes that there has to be more to the guild than showing up with 24 others and downing content, or attempting to. I’m not saying I want to be best friends with everyone in my raid group, but I’d kind of like to respect the majority of the raiders. I’d like to push myself to keep up the tank because I don’t want to let the tank down, not just because I’m scared they’ll swap me out for a poor performance.

I want to be patted on the head every so often and told that I did a good job. I want to do my job quietly, but I want people to recognize that even if I didn’t top the healing meters, I DID do my job. (Don’t get me wrong, I CAN top healing meters if I really want to, and I will do so on certain fights, without even aiming for that goal, but that shouldn’t be the measure of success on a fight. :P)

I want to be surrounded with people who can play their classes adequately, if not extremely well. I want people who KNOW how to play, who can rely on others in the group to do what they’re supposed to do on each attempt.

Like, for instance, resto shammies who know they’re supposed to get rid of the damn Curse of Torpor and NOT let it run full duration on a freaking tank healer. Have you ever seen every healing ability you have on cooldown for fifteen seconds? It’s not a pretty sight, but it was necessary because if I didn’t throw my tank SOMETHING, he was gonna die.

So my raid on Wednesday was lacking in so many ways and was not at all what I had hoped it might be. I hoped that with a few nights off, I’d be ready to go back to ICC and kick some ass. And I, personally, totally kicked some ass. I have no idea how, but I hit 7k HPS on Saurfang, and I didn’t even have Marks 1/3 to heal, I was given 2/4. I never died to something that was my fault (see: DPS killing me on Blood Prince Council) and when the tanks died, it was either a wipe or they weren’t my target for that fight. (Like Saurfang, and for some reason, we lost a tank on our Council kill, but it wasn’t my target, nor was it my beacon. I didn’t even notice.)

As a former guild master, I automatically hated people who left my guild. Period. You leave my guild, you are dead to me. As a raider, I’m similarly pissed when a core person leaves a guild. And so this is where responsibility and loyalty and obligations come into play. As a member of any guild, I have a responsibility to show up for raids, ready to raid and prepared for the fights. I have a feeling of loyalty and belonging when I’m in a good guild, where we can learn from mistakes or laugh about near misses and all be collectively inspired to kick some ass after a 2% wipe. I have an obligation to do my best, to not let down the people around me, to do what I can for the team.

This is why, more often than not, I open my stupid mouth and try to help if I see things being done “wrong” or not being done at all. I’m the one who tells the paladins what to judge. I’m the one who sets up pally power for the optimal buffing setup. I’m the one who does all of this stupid stuff because other people either don’t do it or, in my experience, they do it WRONG. Er, “wrong”. As in, sub-optimally.

I’m not someone who, by nature, min/maxes completely out the wazoo. If I were, I’d run 10s, I’d have crafted the shammy spellpower legs for Madrana already and replaced the 258 Legplates of Failing Light.

But when something is done sloppily in a raid, I tend to be a little cranky. So I step up. Same with healing and healing assignments. That’s how I got to be healing lead in my Bronzebeard guild; I wouldn’t shut up about how X, Y and Z would be better than A, B and C. I feel like if things are done sloppily, we’re all just wasting each other’s time.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I devote myself to the guilds/raid groups I become part of — I want the team to succeed.

So when the time comes to leave a guild, I am, of course, drowned in waves of guilt. My natural inclination is to help the team, not myself. Leaving a guild is the ultimate in selfishness; you’ve gotten loot, experience, strategies from raiding with these people and then you leave and take your loot and experience and another idea of how to do things to another raid group.

But, as anyone who’s been reading can tell, I’m clearly getting to this point with my current guild.

So I’m exploring my options and plan to talk to my RL friend about this stuff tomorrow. There’s already a guild that’s caught my eye, but I figure hey, if your guild is looking for a holy paladin, let me know, either here or via email at kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com. Why not, right?

Some notes:

– I will not go Horde.

– I would prefer raid times between 8:30pm ET and 1am ET (not for 4.5 hours, but a 3-3.5 hour chunk in there). (Obviously, I am on North American servers and cannot transfer to any other versions, blah, blah, blah.)

– I prefer PVE servers and have no interest in going to a PVP server. RP is potentially negotiable, but not my preference.

– Server economy must be strong; I don’t care if things are pricey so long as they’re available.

– Prefer Alliance to dominate Wintergrasp so VOA pugs are easy to form.

– I have 0 interest in 10-mans. I am only interested in 25-man ICC (and eventually Ruby Sanctum) and my preference is at least 9/12 HM already down. (Perhaps 8/12, but I have no desire to relearn/teach people how to do fights I already spent hours wiping on.)

– Must have a competant healing lead who is very aware of all five healing specs and how they work together. Healing leads who bitch people out for not topping meters are not competant. :P

– Similarly, must have a competant healing team. Preferably, a competant raid group in general.

– Must have a respectful atmosphere. I don’t want to see racist, sexist, homophobic crap, no religious or national intolerance either. If your raid group consists of people who call each other “gay” or “fag” or use “rape” casually to indicate domination of something in the game, I would probably rather stay with my current guild and all the abuse the GM lays on us.

– I’d really only stay until 4.0/Cataclysm. This is just a short-term stay to help finish ICC heroic and Ruby Sanctum.

So, yeah. Let’s see if there are any options out there, eh?

ETA: Here’s a CharDev profile of my gear and talents:

http://www.chardev.org/?profile=420109

Healing Classes and History

Kurn / / classes, druids, general, healers, healing, paladins, priests, ramblings, shamans

(or, Why the Hell do I Have All Four Healing Classes??!?!)

Yep. It’s true. I finally have all four healing classes at max level. I’m still not sure why, exactly, but I do. As such, I feel the need to discuss some of the differences and such between them. This isn’t going to be a direct comparison between all the four classes and five specs, but more my own history and views on each. I feel that I’ve spent a lot of time recently giving out information, which I love to do, but haven’t spent a ton of time on me/my classes/my history, despite the whole “I hate my guild” post last week. So this is a fair amount of rambling about my history with my healers in the game. You’ve been warned. ;)

Continue reading “Healing Classes and History”

24 Hour Downtime

Kurn / / blogging, ramblings

In all seriousness, a 24-hour break from this game is something I need to do more frequently. That doesn’t mean that the fact it’s not on MY timetable doesn’t bother the crap out of me.

Anyways, Tuesday, June 8th, will be a busy day here on ye olde blogge. I’d start my posting frenzy now, but I am le tired. As such, I am not attending my raid AND I am going to bed early. So THERE!

That said, I thought I’d let you all know what is coming up tomorrow.

1) Healing: Paladins vs. Shammies vs. Druids vs. Priests. Just a look at the four classes and their healing roles from my perspective and (in some cases) limited experience.

2) Kurn’s Q&A 20, where we look at such search terms as:

“holy paladin wearing mail”

“can u reset the keepers in ulduar”

and, my favourite:

“how the fuck do you get into halls of reflection when you die”

Then, depending on Real Life stuff, I may also write up:

3) Holy How-to #7: How NOT to be a Holy Paladin. This will be a detailed examination of many of the mistakes Failadin ™ made while applying to my present guild. Specifically, mistakes made in the Lower Spire. I plan to include a link to a WoL parse where I’ll have changed all the names, to preserve anonymity.

And finally, if time permits:

4) Kurn’s Guide to Stratholme (Live side), assuming I can get the narration done properly and upload the darn thing.

No World of Warcraft for 24 hours means there’s no game to distract me from the blog, mwahahaha. ;)

Of Money and Alts

Kurn / / priests, professions, ramblings

So I set out on Friday to make 5000g and to level my priest alt from 78-and-a-half to 80.

I was halfway successful.

My priest is languishing at about 79 and a half, mostly because my brother and a friend of ours both dinged 80 over the weekend. This meant that my brother, resplendent in his awful tanking gear (though still immune to crits, thank you very much) insisted I “heal [him] plz” through some heroics. Seriously, he hit 80 and says to me on Vent “heal meh plz!!!”. So I hopped on my druid and went to town. Over the weekend, we went to Azjol-Nerub, The Nexus, Culling of Stratholme and Halls of Stone, all on heroic, and tried TOC regular for the tanking trinket, too.

He’s not easy to heal, but he’s not inflicting himself on another healer, so I’m okay with that.

What’s more than a little surprising is that he’s not having a horrible time holding aggro. When I went out there on my druid in bear form, probably better geared than my brother, I kept running into people with ICC gear who would whirlwind or Consecrate or Death and Decay and BAM, they would own the mobs.

My brother? No problem. And he’s using Grid to show him who has aggro so he can cast Righteous Defense or BOP or something easily. (Yes, that was my influence.)

Conclusion: Paladin tanks are OP. ;)

As to the money side of things, I ended up with 5,400g more than I had on Friday afternoon. There are still things up on the AH and still things that expired in my bags, but really, that wasn’t bad at all.

How did I do it?

1) Flasks. Flasks sell like hotcakes between 7pm-8pm server time. I sold Flasks of the Frost Wyrm exclusively, in stacks of 5, for just over 100g per stack. I have no idea how many flasks I made, but it was a LOT. It seemed like I always had at least a stack up on the AH or a stack that had just sold.

How did I get the mats? Well, Icethorn is plentiful out there. So is Lichbloom, really, but it’s expensive on the AH. So I took Rilgon’s advice and grabbed GatherMate/GatherMate data (Gatherer has never worked properly for me, for some reason) and went farming in both Wintergrasp and Icecrown on my shaman. My shammy is both a miner and an herbalist, so I used GatherMate’s displays to show me when I should be tracking what, which worked out very well.

The Wintergrasp farming was particularly productive since you can not only harvest Frost Lotuses from any herb you pick, but you can also pick Frost Lotuses from their rare spawns. (I think the only other place in the game you can pick an actual Frost Lotus spawn is in Freya’s room in Ulduar, but I could be wrong.)

While farming herbs for flasks, I also gathered a ton of ore (I actually hit something like 10 titanium nodes in two loops of Icecrown and Wintergrasp!) and did the following:

– prospected the raw Titanium Ore: sold some Titanium Powder, cut and sold any epic gems from the ore, stored the rare and uncommon gems for the future.

– smelted the raw Saronite into Bars: sent them to my transmute specced alchemist and transmuted them to Titanium Bars. The proc rate was abysmal, but I did see a couple. I sold stacks of five bars for 75-80g per stack.

– kept all the crystallized elements for the future, including future Cardinal Ruby transmutes

2) Gems. I had a bit of a stockpile of Cardinal Rubies in my bank (5-6 I think) and so cut those into Fractured, Delicate, Bold and Runed. I transmuted four more Cardinal Rubies on Saturday and Sunday (no procs) and cut and sold those as well. I got a couple epic gems from my Titanium Ore prospecting, so I cut a Solid Majestic Zircon and a couple of Ametrines (Reckless — they sell, but cheaply! — and Glinting, which doesn’t sell well at all on my server). The trouble here is that most of the cash I got from gems is not repeatable because I emptied my stock of Cardinal Rubies and the cut gems are going for like, one or two gold over the raw gems on my server. If I made about 1100g from gems, probably only 500g of it was not due to my prior stock.

3) Food. I spent some time on Kurn fishing and got a ton of Imperial Manta Ray, which I cooked into Imperial Manta Steak. This is my preferred buff food in raids on Madrana, so at worst, I was stocking up for myself. But when I realized I had something like over 200 fish, I decided to sell half of what I had. 80-100g a stack for haste food at raid time on the weekend. Very nice.

I also had enough fish to make a couple of Fish Feasts, which I sold for about 120g per stack of 20.

I also bought some cheap Rhino Meat and made some Hearty Rhino. I made 40, so 2 stacks sold for about 90g apiece, I think it was.

4) Enchants. I sold some raw materials. I had Dream Shards coming out my ears, so I sold a bunch of those (about 40) and a lot of leftover enchanting mats from the 50-60 range, like Large Brilliant Shards, Greater Eternal Essences and the like. Sold all that, probably to the tune of about 500g. I also had leftover mats for the Fiery enchant, so I made some scrolls and while I’ve only sold one of them for 35g, I still have 3 to sell. This was really just me selling crap I already had.

5) Dailies. The only dailies I did were the fishing and cooking dailies on Kurn and the daily random dungeon. I also did the weekly quest on Kurn. I got lucky a couple of times and got the Waterlogged Recipe (5 extra cooking tokens) and the Poison Vial thingy (extra gold). I could have done a lot more in terms of dailies and money, but the thing is, I absolutely loathe the Argent Tournament dailies in particular, and I hate relying on people for Threat from Above and the Commanders.

6) Glyphs. My druid is my scribe and I have a very poor selection of recipes. I essentially did Inscription for the Darkmoon Cards and the shoulder enchant, because as I was levelling my druid, I decided there was no way in hell I was going to do Hodir again. And then when I hit, oh, 70-something, they patched in that the Hodir enchants were BOA. /headdesk. Still, I had a bunch of glyphs leftover that had never sold, so I managed to sell about 200g worth of glyphs. Glyph of Polymorph, Glyph of Chain Heal, Glyph of Rejuvenation all sold out.

Other Things I Could Have Tried: With some patience, I could have done various Leatherworking leg armors, Tailoring spellthreads, done more Earthsiege/Skyflare Diamond transmutes/cuts. The main issue here was a lack of cheap eternals and Frozen Orbs to do this effectively. I already have most of the mats for these, but not so much with the eternals and definitely not with the Frozen Orbs. (Most of the orbs I was getting — and yes, I bought some — were for the sole purpose of making them into Frost Lotuses.)

So. With a 24h downtime coming to ALL MY SERVERS as of 3am, I need to get going on my priest. Stupid priest. Why did I roll a priest? A fourth healer? Really? Someone punch me in the face if I ever decide to level another healer to 80 again. I’ve GOT one of each, that should now be sufficient FOREVER.

All "Good" Things… ?

Kurn / / raiding, ramblings

Well, I snapped. At least a little bit.

I sent a fairly, how shall I put it, biting PM to my raid leader (CCing my RL friend the resto druid/healing lead) on Thursday afternoon. In it, I addressed three things:

1) Screw this noise, I am not your healing lead, even when the healing lead isn’t there. The expectation to automatically do healing if my RL friend is late or absent, without so much as a “hey, do you think you could…?” was perhaps understandable, but not doable for me. I made it very clear that my time as healing lead was temporary and that I was happy to help my friend during a time of RL trouble, but that I was done with it.

2) The MT/GM has got to stop being so freaking abusive. I’ve talked to my RL friend about this point a lot and she’s insistent that he’s not saying it to deliberately insult us but that he’s just a bad leader and that’s how he’s seen the previous leaders in this guild get results. My stance is that I just don’t give a crap what his intentions are, because any normal person is going to take offense to “HEALERS YOU FUCKING SUCK” and such. The chances of changing any part of the MT/GM’s behaviour are slim to none.

However, I did realize something. He has always been this crude, abrasive and obnoxious. It’s not a new thing. But prior to my RL friend’s break from the game, he at least was telling her in /o or whatever that we sucked and trusted her to bring the message to us. Which, we both realized in discussing this, he doesn’t do anymore. He just lets us have it in raid chat. She had been acting as a filter for him for pretty much the entire time I’ve been in the guild, but without her, he had no one he trusted to tell us we suck and fix things. Because he didn’t know or trust me. (Compared to my RL friend, who’s been in the guild for four years.) So my RL friend is going to work on getting him to use her as a filter again. Which is only changing what chat channel he says his stuff in, rather than changing what he says.

So. I guess we’ll see.

3) The late nights are killing me. The raid leader has pushed us past 2am a few times in the last couple of weeks and obviously, I stay, like a moron, because I know they can’t get X or Y down without a holy paladin or without a sixth healer or whatever. So I told the RL in my PM that I was done, that 2am is my hard limit and that any attempts that begin after 2am, unless it’s an exceptional circumstance, will have to be done without me.

Those were the basic points. Of course, I was a lot less brief about it all and I was angry, to boot.

The response I received involved the RL being pissy at me and included the phrases:

“If you’re really that unhappy raiding here though, you should probably
just stop raiding. […] If you have more suggestions about what we can do, then I’m all ears, but I’m kind of doubtful we’ll be able to fix all the issues.”

So I didn’t raid on Thursday. I’m about to post and say that I won’t raid tonight. Did I mention that they didn’t raid on Thursday, either? Not enough people in general, but only five healers as well. 0, that is zero, paladins of any spec.

I’m not one to cause issues, really. But I’m not above withdrawing my services from the guild for a little while to illustrate various points: a) We need 3 holy paladins, period, b) I have worked my ass off for you people and if you think that you can just tell me to not raid because we’re not going to solve the issues, well, good luck raiding without me, c) An unhappy raid environment leads to unhappy raiders who then don’t want to raid or do whatever’s necessary to push through, such as staying ’till 2:30am when end time is 2am.

That cancelled raids give my RL friend a better night’s sleep doesn’t hurt, either. ;)

Anyways, I don’t know what this means for me or for my guild at the moment. It may mean I’m in the market for a new guild. As angry as I am with the RL, he has a point: if I’m not happy, I shouldn’t raid, which is what so many people have said to me over the last week. His pissiness towards me (not really included in this post) has helped ease the guilt of not showing up. I have lost respect for him and, as such, I don’t feel motivated to do my best. Or, you know, anything at all.

Having spoken candidly with my RL friend really helped and I’m feeling less stressed and less worried about the impact my absence has on the guild and raids. I suspect taking a few nights off is also helping substantially.

I’m undecided on tomorrow’s raid, but it’ll probably depend on what they do, if anything, tonight.

In the meantime, priest is 79 and I’ve made almost 4000g since Friday afternoon. So there’s that. ;)

Weekend Plans

Kurn / / professions, ramblings

I didn’t raid on Thursday and I probably won’t raid on Sunday. I’m feeling pretty burnt out, as if most of you haven’t been able to tell. ;) So there are a few goals I have for this weekend, since it’s raining and I’m not going to go up north to my parents’ cottage.

1) Try to ding the priest 80. She’s three bars into 78 at the moment and just a wee bit rested. I have completed precisely 262 quests with her. Can you tell I have basically spent all my time on her from 15+ in instances? Also, some battlegrounds. And it’s AB weekend, so maybe I’ll go camp LM and enjoy hurling some Horde off the side.

2) Make money. I have always loved to make virtual money. And yet, in WoW, I am not so good at keeping it. I think I’ve broken 20k gold once, but spent a lot of money on my druid alt, my brother’s hunter and our friend’s DK, so that dwindled. On Friday, I was at 10k gold in my bank alt’s guild bank, with no more than 200g on each of my other toons. I plan to end the weekend with about 15k gold in the bank. How?

– Flasks: Madrana’s an elixir specced alchemist and flasks are one of the things that EVERYONE buys. Problem: Frost Lotuses. Solutions: farm with the shammy; run instances on the druid tank for badges to turn in for frozen orbs; buy the damn things.

– Smelting Ore: Mithril Ore was really cheap this week whereas Mithril Bars were super expensive. I made about 800g from smelting ore into bars, but I risked flooding the market. Still, weekends are when people tend to power-level professions and stuff if the mats are available, n’est-ce pas?

– Fish Feasts/Buff Food: One of my pre-Cataclysm goals is for Kurn to get a freaking turtle mount. Ever since I got my buddy Euphie to go fishing for me pre-raid, several months ago, and he got the turtle mount, I have been consumed with jealousy. ;) So Kurn’s been doing a lot of fishing lately (and will probably take in the fishing contest today, too) and, as such, has a ton of many different fish. Must go get more Nettlefish for Fish Feasts and check out what other fish are selling well.

– Gems: Madrana’s also a JC, so if I can find a bunch of raw gems for cheap, I should be able to turn those over pretty quickly.

– Runescrolls of Fortitude: The druid’s got Inscription and these consistently sell well. I just haven’t bothered to make any for a while.

– Drums of Forgotten Kings/of the Wild: Speaking of, Kurn’s a LW and can make drums. I wonder if they’re selling well these days.

So those are my plans for the weekend. Anyone have additional money-making tips? Professions at my disposal:

Skinning, Herbalism, Mining, Fishing, Enchanting, Tailoring, Jewelcrafting, Alchemy (Elixir spec and Transmute spec), Inscription, Leatherworking.

Big Crits

Kurn / / raiding, ramblings

So I read Derevka’s post about Big Crits last night and was instantly hooked. I mean, instantly.

I highly recommend you go read Derevka’s post, but basically, Big Crits is a web series about a real end-game raiding guild in World of Warcraft. There are four episodes so far and I adore it.

It’s awesome for so many reasons, but the primary reason is that it isn’t just about focusing on the game and progression and the encounters. With the inclusion of talking heads (you know, when someone faces the camera and speaks their mind, like they do on The Office or Survivor or The Apprentice), they’re not just showing a guild downing a boss. They’re having their actual guild members talk about their actual raid experiences and it’s all woven really well together.

Who wouldn’t love that? I LOVE talking about my raid experiences (as this blog proves) and I love hearing about cool happenings for others. Plus, the talking head segments are comprised of actual video of the people, not the toons.

I majored in Sociology, so I’ve always been absolutely fascinated by the social interaction in WoW. Don’t get me wrong — I still can’t stand stupid people and I would very much like to wipe them off the face of the planet. But how guilds who raid together gel (or not) and deal with various in-game issues is just awesome to me.

The biggest challenges of being a guild master aren’t really the in-game encounters, although I will admit that getting 15 people to know their Bloodboil rotation sucked, just as getting 25 people not to die from air bursts or fire on Archimonde sucked.

But that wasn’t the big challenge. For me, the toughest thing was knowing when to be a hardass and knowing when to be more understanding. (And also, when to stop talking or typing, because I am the most long-winded person in the world.)

A classic problem any guild faces is the following:

A long-time member who is basically universally adored by all guildies for being so awesome in so many ways is, in fact, one of the worst players we’ve ever seen. He has consistently died on whatever progression fight we’re currently on and his death has had repercussions that lead to a wipe. Say that, I don’t know, four of seven wipes on this one fight can be traced back to a chain of events that began with his death.

What do you do? Do you swap him out for someone on standby? Do you bitch him out and tell him to shape up? Do you warn him at all that if he doesn’t do better, he’s on standby? Honestly, how do you deal with that?

Then, assuming you chose the more diplomatic method of getting his class/role lead to talk to him and apologize while swapping him out, then what? Is he going to leave the guild? Stop raiding? Is he going to be disappointed and sulky? What about the morale of the guild and raid team? If the guy they adore is wiping them (but perhaps they’re not aware of that?) and gets swapped out, are THEY going to be sulky because he got sat out?

Here’s a second scenario that has happened to every single guild:

You are in dire, I mean, DIRE need of a specific class/role, to the point that if the one person who does fill that role isn’t there, you can’t do a whole lot.

So you go recruiting for that particular class to fill that particular role. Granted, it’s much easier in Wrath to swap any kind of DPS for any other kind of DPS, so let’s imagine that what we want is either a moonkin or a retribution paladin because we don’t have Improved Moonkin Form or Swift Retribution in the raid on a regular basis. We have a prot paladin, so we have various blessings and we have Heart of the Crusader. We have an elemental shaman who is occasionally not around, but we generally have Elemental Oath and Totem of Wrath.

But we don’t have that pesky 3% haste buff and everyone is getting pissy about it, plus we don’t have backup for that ever-important 5% spell crit, so if the elemental shaman is out, we’re screwed. So ideally, we want a moonkin, but would take a ret pally.

So we go out recruiting for both.

After three weeks of searching and four nights in that period where casters were without their crit buff and still no one had that 3% haste buff, we finally get an app from a moonkin.

He looks awesome.

He is appropriately geared, gemmed, enchanted, specced and glyphed. He’s moonkin and resto, but also has a tank set. He wasn’t significantly behind you in content, just a boss or two.

He’s perfect.

So you accept his app, he transfers, gets a ginvite and then you realize, right smack-dab in the middle of the first raid… this guy is a jerk. I mean, really, no question about it, he’s pretty much That Guy that you want to punch in the face. Maybe he’s told a dead baby joke in raid, maybe he yelled profanity at someone who wiped the raid or maybe he’s just overly superior about his skill and is boasting constantly.

Of course, he’s topping damage, CCing appropriately, helping out on decursing, innervating and tossing battle rezzes as needed. In short, he is a freaking excellent player. He’s pretty much the opposite of our first example.

Within a week, you’ve heard about 12 people complaining about this guy, but you’ve killed two new bosses, largely because of him. His role lead has tried, without success, to rein him in a little bit, but he’s still mouthing off in raid, if not in Vent, and it seems like he just doesn’t understand that his comments aren’t appropriate.

So what do you do, as the guild master or member of the officer team? Do you decline his application and remove him from the guild? Do you warn him that the previous action is a possibility if he doesn’t stop being such a jerk? Do you try to appease your guild members individually and asking them to be patient? Do you hold on to the jerk until you get another moonkin or ret pally app? Perhaps more importantly, is being a jerk who helps the raid to excel such a horrible thing after all?

These are the real challenges in running a guild. It’s all about taking actions for the betterment of the guild as a whole while simultaneously trying to achieve goals as a raiding group.

I really think Big Crits is going to bring up these kinds of issues. They’re common problems, but everyone has a different opinion on how to deal with them. This is what is going to make this web series fascinating to me; how others deal with problems I’ve dealt with within this incredibly rich game world.

So go watch Big Crits from Week 1 (they’re up to 4 now)! Let me (and, more importantly, the guildies themselves) know how you liked it. :)

Wow. Just… wow.

Kurn / / facepalm, icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings

I’m exhausted. I spent over two hours writing up all the fail I witnessed from the holy pally app during last night’s ICC 25 raid, which I then sent to the healing lead and the raid leader.

He was in for five fights, all heroic: Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Gunship (I was swapped out for that), Saurfang and Blood Prince Council.

Some choice bits of information I’ll share with you:

1) He never used Sacred Shield. At all. Oh, wait. He spammed it… on Lady Deathwhisper. Like, not on that encounter. On the mob. Which means that he was mind-controlled when “he” used it. NO other use of it at all.

2) He cast Holy Light 158 times total on four logged bosses. In comparison, on those same bosses, I cast it 619 times. He cast Flash of Light 625 times to my 125. He is gemmed straight-up int, specced the way a HL pally would be, glyphed the way a HL pally would be.

3) He consistently ignored healing chat/assignments, would screw up his beacon and judgements.

4) Speaking of judgements, he judged 12 times on those four bosses. Bearing in mind we wiped twice on Saurfang before getting him, that’s 12 judgements in 6 boss encounters…

5) Did I mention that he missed beaconing me on Saurfang? He beaconed my direct-heal target instead and healed the tanks instead of Mark 4 like he was supposed to. Props to my RL friend the resto druid and some quick-thinking priests for keeping my ass up, given that I was Mark 2.

6) Speaking of beacon, he ignored 4 requests to beacon the DK tank on Blood Prince Council, instead deciding to beacon the warrior tank.

7) Speaking of Council, guess who was almost always in range of me during Empowered Shock Vortex AND who got 6-8 Shadow Prison stacks on five occasions during the fight? That’s right, the pally app.

8) Speaking of crowding people, he also crowded two healers and a moonkin on Saurfang and ate extra boiling blood because of it. Thank you, dipshit, for increasing Saurfang’s blood power.

9) Speaking of Saurfang again, he let a tank die through not healing him when he was supposed to be, then let HIMSELF die with the fourth Mark by … not healing himself like he was supposed to be!

10) He wanted to be in for Gunship so he could get Althor’s Abacus, which is a trinket that has 0 int, 0 haste, 0 mp5 and 0 crit. Way to be.

11) He wouldn’t STFU about loot. He actually asked, in raid chat, after a regular Conqueror’s token had been awarded to a priest, if he could have it instead. And when I got the Rot-Resistant Breastplate and Holiday’s Grace, asked me what my gearscore was now. OMG, stfu, you stupid dumbshit app who is giving ALL PALADINS a bad name.

I’ve recommended his app be closed ASAP. I would rather be the only holy paladin than have to deal with this fucktard. If it were just one thing or the other, I could attribute it to nerves or anxiety. But some core issues with how he plays the class, some basic awareness issues and an unhealthy fixation on loot makes him NOT what we’re looking for.