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 12 – A Day in the Life

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

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

I’m not sure if this meant what I do in terms of blogging or what I do in terms of the game. Blogging takes a back seat to all the junk I do with regards to the guild and the game, so I thought I’d share with you guys a day in the life of me-as-a-GM, at least on raid days.

What I do on a day-to-day basis depends on a lot of things, primarily whether or not it’s a raid day. Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday are our raid nights, so a lot more preparation/paperwork goes into those days.

Raid Days

If it’s a Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday, the first thing I really do when I sit down at the computer is to go to the armory and check the calendar invites to see what I have to work with. I tend to lock the raid signups 24 hours ahead of time. If you’ve accepted the invite, you’re expected to be there. If you’ve declined, you’re not expected there. If you’re “tentative”, I put you on “Standby” and if you don’t answer one way or the other, I get cranky and either hit you up via PM on the forums (or hit you up on twitter) and hope for a response or set you as “Out”.

We generally have an idea as to what we’re looking at that night, so I start compiling the available list of people and then start with making sure we have all the appropriate raid buffs available via MMO-Champion’s Raid Composition Tool.

When looking at the various encounters, I take a lot of things into consideration when it comes to putting someone into the raid if we already have all the buffs we need. This is usually in the order I think things, but for progression, I usually skip down to #4.

1) Do they need anything off the boss?

2) What’s their EPGP priority? (Would they get anything off the boss if the boss got downed?)

3) Is the fight on farm or is it progression?

4) If it’s a progression fight, can they do the appropriate amount of healing/damage that will be required of them? This involves going back through our World of Logs parses and seeing past performance if I’m not sure. If, after looking through those, I still don’t know if they can do the appropriate amount of healing/damage, I’ll generally give them a shot, even on a progression fight, and I really like making sure people have an idea of how the fight goes. I think exposure on a fight is very important, so I like to start with a basic roster that should be able to get things done and then will swap people out as needed (usually at our half-time break, but earlier if need be).

5) Has this person been sat recently? I don’t keep a spreadsheet (although I probably should) but I’m generally the person in charge of swaps and my role leads will yell at me if I screw up/etc or will let me know if they have preferences, for the most part.

So I do that for almost every fight we have planned for the night. Usually, I’ll split the raid into 9-10:30 and 10:30-12 sets and endeavour to minimize swaps unless they’re at break.

I also spend extra time making sure we have positioning organized for certain fights (group positions on Al’Akir can take half an hour on its own!) and organizing platforms for Nefarian is something I now have down to a science so I can do this on the fly, but I also spend time ensuring we have the appropriate interrupts for Nef in the raid for the half of the raid in which we’ll kill Nef. It used to take a lot longer, but I’m much more comfortable with it nowadays.

Of course, almost every single night, there’s something different that happens to screw up all of this preparation. Really, the smart thing to do would be to do it all on the fly. However, I loathe doing things on the fly. As such, I usually try to set everything up in case everything goes as it should, but that almost never happens. People are late, laggy, DCing, unable to perform, etc, etc. All of that goes into changing the roster in the middle of everything and I hate hate hate that.

I generally do the rosters/positioning in the late afternoon/early evening and communicate this to the officers on the officer section of our guild forums.

Once rosters are done, my major job for raid nights is done. Note that I haven’t actually logged into the game at all at this point.

By 8:30pm on a raid night, I log on to Mumble (so that my overlay works in-game) and join the Officer channel there. We generally spend a few minutes discussing where we’re going or any other little thing that needs discussion (EP bonuses, promotions, etc) then I log into the game on Kurn, who is the guild master toon, and I turn on bank repairs for the officers, the Raiders and the Initiates. Officers/Raiders get 100g in repairs a night and Initiates get 50g. I usually also say “Invites in about 15! Main up, repair and head to (our first destination).”

Then I get on Madrana, make sure I’m repaired myself (using my own funds) and grab 6 of each flask plus a stack of Spirit flasks and make sure I have 20 Seafood Magnifique feasts on me and make any that I’m lacking. Then I head out to where we’re going first (or where I’m zoning in first — like, I’ll sit out BH as I did last night, so I headed to BWD) while inviting the officers to the raid group and such. At this point, I’ll load up the WoL client and make sure I renamed my previous combat log so that I can start live logs as soon as I zone in.

8:45 is when invites go out and I spend time organizing the groups as per my rosters for the night (plus any changes due to various issues) and then give groups 1-5 the all-clear to zone in just before 9 and hopefully, I don’t forget to tab back out and start the logs.

The three hours we spend raiding are possibly the least hectic in a given day. ;) We take a 7 minute break around 10:30 and this is generally when I do swaps.

The raid ends at midnight, or shortly beforehand, and I’ll go back to the officer channel on Mumble and then get on Kurn to close repairs about 10 minutes after the raid ends. (I do try to close it before midnight so people don’t double-dip on repairs, but only if we finish around 11:50 or earlier.)

Then I post a thread on our forums with our WoL link with a couple of initial comments and chat a bit with the officers about issues we saw or what-have-you and then generally log off of the game and Mumble.

If we killed something for the first time, I edit the screenshot to add our guild name, the date, the boss killed and the people in for the kill and post that to the Apotheosis website. I’ll also update our progress in the sidebar and then double-check my own armory before submitting updates to Wowprogress and GuildOx. I’ll also edit a few forum posts (realm forum, Elitist Jerks, Wowhead forums) to reflect the new progress.

Once all of that is done, I generally kick back and watch some TV that aired while I was raiding or I’ll go through the logs if something’s bugging me and I generally try to get to bed between 3-4am. (I’m not working at the moment, so this is a nice luxury to have!)

God, we’re at 1200+ words already… Sorry? :)

Non-raid Days

Days where I don’t raid are either very intensive days of guild work or days where I don’t do anything and go out and have a semblance of a real life. ;)

Today, for example, I don’t raid, but I’m going out in the afternoon for a couple of hours. So here’s what I’ve done today/plan to do today.

– Made a copy of a spreadsheet and made it public for the guild to view where they are on our mandatory flask “donations” which enable us to make Big Cauldrons of Battle.

– Asked in the officer forum what the officers feel we should do on Thursday and Sunday.

– Responded to a PM from one of my former guildmates from Choice of Skywall about holy paladin stuff.

– Wrote this blog post. (I’ll often blog in the afternoons or after a raid.)

– After this, I plan to go through some of Choice’s logs to see if I can see anything going horribly awry as they work to get Nefarian down and will write Fugara (the GM) some notes if I see anything.

– I need to write to my moonkin. Last I heard, his computer threw up on him but I should check up on him and make sure he’s doing okay/he has an idea of when he can raid.

– Do a healer evaluation of the disc priest whose trial with us is nearly done, send it to him and see if anything I discover in the logs affects my final decision in whether or not he makes it to Raider.

– After eating, showering, drying my hair and dressing for the crappy, rainy weather we’re having today, I’m heading out to an appointment around 3 and should be home again by 6.

– I’ll probably have a few things to respond to — maybe my moonkin will write back, maybe my former guildie will have more questions, maybe the disc priest will write back, the officers will likely have chimed in about our plans for tomorrow. And maybe I’ll have comments here I’ll need to reply to. So I’ll respond to those people and then update the guild on where we plan to go tomorrow/Sunday.

– Then I might actually log in to the game!! haha! At this point, I’ll go through my bank and pull out mats for my weekly donations of flasks and our EP drive (this week, it’s 5 Heavenly Shards or 8 Greater Celestial Essences — I think I have the shards) and mail those to our bank toon, managed by my brother.

– If I do get to login, I’ll either farm on the shaman or level the baby paladin.

– Since Canada is in the midst of an election campaign and since I raided last night and missed the English-language debate, I’ll probably try to tune in to the French-language debate tonight. (Canadians, vote on May 2! Elections.ca for information on how and where and when to vote!)

– At some point tonight, I’ll go through our logs from last night and pluck anything interesting from a couple of longer attempts on H. Maloriak and see if I can see any trends or patterns and see if I need to yell at my healers for not respecting healing assignments, after I asked them politely to do so last night before the raid.

– I’ll end the evening with some TV.

Mondays/Podcast Days

So I do a weekly (well, mostly weekly!) podcast called Blessing of Frost with Majik and we tend to record on Mondays, either in the afternoon or the evening. This isn’t a raid night for me, so I do non-raid day stuff and then make sure I’ve edited our shared Google doc to put in all the stuff I want to talk about and then I harrass Majik to make sure he does/did the same. Then we sit down with our guest (if we have one) and record the podcast. This takes about two hours and then I put it all together and publish it either late Monday night/early Tuesday morning before I go to bed, or I publish it after getting some sleep. Hot tip: if it’s published before 10am, I didn’t sleep. If it’s after 10am, I did sleep. ;)

Every Day

Every day, I spend time responding to people, either via Twitter, email, PMs on the forums or through the blog. I read a lot of stuff to do with whatever fight we’re working on and sometimes look ahead to the next encounter(s). I’ll poke around other people’s logs and see what they’re doing and scrounge through YouTube looking for videos, too.

—

All righty. That’s about it, really. It sounds like a lot, but most of what I do is so very ingrained that I don’t have to think about it consciously. Like replying to people, checking up on people, that stuff is automatic. It’s the planning that’s a killer, especially if the plans don’t work out as intended!

Yesterday: Bad Habits and Flaws
Tomorrow: People (players/bloggers) that you admire

Day 11 – Bad Habits and Flaws

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

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

Bad habits and flaws? Tish, pshaw and nonsense! ;)

Okay, seriously, I have a bunch both IRL and in-game, so I’ll share three of each.

In real life:

– I am stubborn as hell. I come by it naturally, being a Taurus. ;) It’s something I’m working on.

– I procrastinate. A lot. I find that I can waste time to the point where I should have a PhD in doing so.

– I have a habit of starting strong and fading before finishing a project. I somewhat lack the “follow through” instinct. Also something I’m working on. :)

In-game:

– I have a bad habit of not using my cooldowns as much as I should. I am BAD about popping Divine Favor and Guardian of Ancient Kings unless I think about when I should pop them beforehand and then remember to do so in that moment. Aura Mastery too, to an extent, but less often.

– I have a bad tendency of standing in the bad. It’s not entirely my fault, it’s due to the fact that I have, as some of my guildies claim, an imaginary video card. :P It makes moving difficult on occasion, due to my low FPS. On heroic Sindragosa, it took me forever to learn how to adapt to Blistering Cold and I eventually mastered it. The only trouble was that once every… 25-30 pulls or so, I would lag out terribly after getting gripped and would have to bubble or die. I should have this fixed by the first week of May when I get my first new desktop computer since 1999. (No joke. I have spent the entirety of my WoW career on laptops.)

– I tend to forget to do healing assignments occasionally. Whoops. I’m still rusty at the whole “raid leading” juggling and should do my healing assignments before I start in on anything else, to be honest.

Yesterday: Blog/Website Favourites
Tomorrow: A usual day in your life/online time

(Unrelatedly, Episode 16 of Blessing of Frost is now out!)

Day 10 – Blog/Website favourites

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

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

Oh man. Blog and website favourites? This is not going to be easy.

I guess we’ll start with a couple of blogs that I always read ASAP when a new post pops up in my feed reader.

Blessing of Kings – this is one of the blogs I was reading back when I started blogging. Anytime Rohan writes something, I read it.

Righteous Defense – one of my more recent additions to the ol’ feed reader, sometime back in Wrath, Rhidach’s blog is where I like to keep mostly up to date on prot pally stuff. Protection is really my preference for an offspec on Madrana. Despite the fact I’m currently holy/holy (no joke), I occasionally enjoy tanking on Madrana. I haven’t actually tanked on her since 4.0 dropped, so I’m fondly remembering how OP I was in Wrath heroics wearing T10 tank gear… but I really feel like a failure of a hybrid if I don’t at least know the basics of another spec. I’ve never really liked retribution, although I did use it to level up in Cata’s beta and in live, too. It just made questing that much faster.

The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon – Ophelie is pretty awesome. I met up with her IRL back in January and I really enjoy reading all her posts. :)

I really do read a lot of blogs, but those are the three paladin-related blogs I run to read as soon as they’re updated.

For news sites:

MMO-Champion – Boubouille keeps MMO-Champion up to date on everything. This site is priceless.

Wowhead – I love Wowhead as an item database, obviously. Who doesn’t? But its news is getting to be competitive with MMO-Champion’s, especially with their relatively new blue post tracker. The amount of advertising is getting pretty obnoxious, though, which is a bummer.

For research, resources and help apart from the above:

Wowpedia – Everyone and their brother used to go to WoWWiki, but the Wikia hosting caused some major changes and most people involved with WoWWiki went to Wowpedia. Wowpedia is my choice of research sites when it comes to in-game information (lore, history and a lot of boss fight info).

Learn to Raid – A great new strat site with awesome videos. Some background: Learn to Raid was founded by two members of vodka, Killars (a rogue) and Kinaesthesia (a priest). Their videos are great and have been really helpful in forming our own strat variations in Apotheosis.

RaidBS – Raid Boss Strategies is an awesome site with images, written strats and generally high-quality info for the whole raid and each role within the raid (tank/heals/DPS). Not sure if it’s still being updated, though. I had to start going elsewhere (like L2R) for strats when Apotheosis hit Nefarian and the Raid BS info wasn’t up yet. (It still isn’t.) Still, some very helpful information here.

TankSpot – Ah, TankSpot. Sort of known as “the” site for raid strat videos. I used to really like the site. A lot. Ciderhelm was awesome. I still like some of the movies — Papapaint’s Heroic Chimaeron video, for example. But I can’t deal with Aliena’s voice. Drives me up the wall. I know her first language is not English and I’m sure she’s a great player, but I can’t stand to listen to her narration. Still, if you don’t have an issue with her narrating the vast majority of the videos, you may prefer TankSpot to L2R. There’s still good information, and plenty of it, it’s just not a “favourite” of mine. I list it here because of how good some of the information is, though. I wouldn’t ever go into a fight without having watched the TankSpot video at least once.

PlusHeal – A great resource for healers. There’s also a healer exchange forum if you’re seeking a new healer or if you’re a healer looking for a new guild.

Elitist Jerks – I don’t always agree with what EJ is saying, but it’s always good to be up to date with what the theorycrafters are muttering about.

WoWLemmings – Great site for recruitment!

Nothing to do with WoW:

MetaFilter – Great community blog site that is an integral part of my day. I visit it 4-5 times a day for sure.

xkcd – Awesome web comic. This one is my favourite strip because my best friend is a doctor and she was AMAZING at the “blow into the cartridge until it works” trick. I sent her this in an email and added “how on earth are you allowed into a hospital, much less an OR?” and her response was something along the lines of “hehehehehe”.

Ctrl-Alt-Del – Another awesome web comic.

And that’s enough for the time being!

Yesterday – Your First Blog Post
Tomorrow – Bad Habits and Flaws

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

Day 08 – 10 Things We Don’t Know About You

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

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

Truth be told, I’m a private person. I know, kind of silly, when you think about it, right? A blogger who posts fairly often who then claims to be a private person? Well, it’s true. I’ll talk about WoW until the cows come home — and I often do! — but I don’t talk about myself very much. At least, not about myself in a non-WoW context.

So, here’s my attempt to be a little more forthcoming.

1) My Keirsey Temperament Type is ESFJ – Guardian Provider.

2) I’m very good at remembering lyrics to songs, enough so that it drives me NUTS when others can’t. The problem? I can’t carry a tune.

3) I can, however, muster my way through some piano and clarinet playing, although I don’t get a chance to play much piano and my poor clarinet is in terrible shape and needs repairing.

4) I’ve been an online content provider, a web designer, a web coder, a marketing co-ordinator, a community moderator and a technical support/customer support specialist (at a local ISP) over the last 15 years. Also, a student. I’m just a couple of classes away from my BA in Sociology.

5) I love to write and I take part in National Novel Writing Month every year. In fact, two of my current guildies (and raiders!) are people I’ve known for years through NaNoWriMo. Having said that, I’ve only ever written 50k in November once and that was in 2003 — way before I discovered World of Warcraft. Curse you, WoW! <shakes fist>

6) I have blue eyes, like my brother, my father and my late paternal grandmother. Unfortunately, unlike my brother, my father and my late paternal grandmother, my blue eyes lean more towards various shades of grey/blue, rather than the piercing blue they all share. I am, occasionally, very jealous that my brother got the awesome!blue eyes in the family. (Shut up, Fog. Gloating doesn’t become you! :P)

7) Je suis plus ou moins bilingue. Mon français n’est pas tellement fantastique, mais je me débrouille assez bien dans des situations où je dois le parler. (Anche, parlo un po’ d’italiano. Ho preso tre anni all’università.)

8) Blessing of Frost started out as a recruitment avenue for Apotheosis, but it’s really evolved into its own little bit of fun. The hardest part about producing an episode of Blessing of Frost is not yelling at Majik as much as I’d like and, in fact, having to be nice to him. (We like each other quite a bit, but we prefer to show each other that affection by swearing at each other at length.) Still, I do quite enjoy it and it reminds me of working at my college radio station. Good times!

9) I’m fiercely loyal. Pretty much to a fault. One time, we were in Mount Hyjal, and one of the guildies was telling me, in a panicked whisper, she couldn’t find her vial from Lady Vashj. So I opened a ticket and started chatting with a GM through Kaz’rogal trash, saying “no, look, SHE WAS THERE. Do you want to see the logs?!” and stuff.

Here’s an image.

Can you guess what happened next? If you guessed “Kurn didn’t realize the boss was incoming and facepulled the boss and got ruined because she was debating fiercely with the GM”, you’re right!

One of these days, they’re going to close my account just because they’re tired of all the tickets I submit. :P

Yeah, my loyalty has its unfortunate downsides, but I care about my friends and my guildies. I don’t think I could ever be another way.

10) I have a pretty good sense of humour and can take some teasing, but when it comes to Canada, my sense of humour usually goes riiiiight out the window. I am passionate about my love for my country, which probably comes from living pretty much my whole life in Quebec and living through two separate referendums, and that’s basically where my sense of humour stops. I am proud to be a Canadian. I am proud to be a Quebecoise whose maternal side of the family has been here since the 1630s. I am proud to be a Montrealer. Those of you who have never had to live in fear of your country splitting up — you’re so very fortunate. At the same time, however, I wonder if those who haven’t had to live through that (and live through the constant threat, still!) don’t take for granted the peace and security they have. So take a moment. Appreciate your local, provincial/state and national governments if they’re democratic, if they’re reflective of your ideas and ideals. And if they’re NOT democratic, if they’re NOT reflective of what you believe, then work towards making sure your voice is heard in your government.

Uh. Right. Yes. I’m not really political. It’s just a Quebec thing. :) And dealing with the “Quebec thing” is what’s made me recognize how passionate I am about Canada, which is why the sense of humour that is normally pretty evident, just vanishes into thin air, if people start ragging on Canada. (And don’t get me started about people ragging on Quebec! I love my province too, you know!)

Yesterday – The Reason Behind Your Blog’s Name
Tomorrow – Your first blog post

Defender of a Shattered World

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, guild, raiding, ramblings, throne of the four winds

It’s almost 7am as I start to write this. Apotheosis killed Al’Akir almost 8 hours ago. I went to sleep and woke up at about 6:30 just because I couldn’t stop thinking “Holy crap, we killed Al’Akir!”. Most of my guildies in the raid, myself included, got the Defender of a Shattered World title. Apotheosis is now 12/12 on normal modes to go with our pretty, shiny, 1/13 heroic modes.

That is one hell of a fight. And I don’t mean it in a good way, either. Hands down, my least-favourite fight in Tier 11 content. That said, I do feel pretty smug after having beaten this guy. :)

It was on our 59th attempt that we killed him, although, to be fair, 16 of those attempts were in February. Our work on Al’Akir really feels like it started in the last couple of weeks.

This brings us to 12/12 normal modes, as I’ve mentioned. I know, it’s just like clearing T7 and getting Champion of the Frozen Wastes, right? But it’s doing it at the proper, that’s to say “intended”, gear level. We’ve done it in 346 and 359 gear, not in T12 or T13 or T14. We’ve cleared the normal modes of entry-level raiding in this expansion with a group of people who largely didn’t know one another six months ago.

And then, there’s me. I just posted a long-winded, sappy post on my guild forums about how I basically love everyone, but something I didn’t say there (but will obviously get back to the guildies — and that’s okay) is that I’m relieved. I am SO relieved. I almost can’t even put it into words.

So many people who joined the guild did so because of me. I’m the one who started asking around if people wanted to come back to Apotheosis for Cataclysm. I’m the one who was talking excitedly about her old guild on her blog and, for some unknown reason, got a lot of responses and applications because of it. Really, if Apotheosis didn’t make it out of T11, it was almost certainly going to be my fault. I would have let down my old crew, I would have let down the people I’d drawn in, I would have let down the people who had, collectively, paid hundreds of dollars to transfer. And, of course, its success has very little to do with me — it’s a lot more to do with everyone I’ve assembled here. I would take all the blame if things hadn’t worked out, but the credit for it working out goes to the ladies and gentlemen of Apotheosis.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that Apotheosis is through T11 normals. The pressure is off me. I’ve put together a team and the team is performing. The guild has a personality, it has a life of its own, now. If things go to hell now, chances are, it wasn’t my bad. ;)

It’s still intimidating, though. While I’m not terribly concerned about everything falling apart, this is the most progressed I’ve been in my own guild, ever.

In Burning Crusade, we cleared Black Temple, but only ever pulled Kalecgos in Sunwell Plateau three times before calling it an expansion. We also only formed on June 1st, 2008 and the expansion had come out back in January, so we were constantly working our way through content that had already been nerfed and used the 3.0 patch to steamroll our way past Reliquary of Souls, Mother Shahraz up to the Council and Illidan himself. (Much less steamrolling when we hit the Illidari Council.)

In Wrath, Apotheosis didn’t even kill Thaddius on 25-man. Attendance was awful, people were unhappy, progression was bad due to attendance and recruitment was bad due to progression. We had the potential to kick some ass, but it just didn’t pan out.

So now, my guild is the #2 25-man raiding guild on Eldre’Thalas. Overall, we’re still something like #11, if you take all the 10-man guilds into consideration, but… well, I don’t. It’s not that I don’t take 10s seriously (really!), but I really think 10 and 25-man raiding are very different beasts and so I don’t think of us as the #11 guild on ET. I see our 10-man guilds on the server as doing their thing and the 25s are doing our thing.

And, to my utter shock and delight, Apotheosis is doing WELL at “our thing”! We finished at #9 guild progressed guild in Burning Crusade, #6 Alliance guild, and that was with a 5 month delay on anything guild-related. We farmed Karazhan for three months before we got Maulgar and Gruul down. And even with that, we finished pretty well.

This time, we had our shit together. This time, we had a team ready to go. This time, we are SO much smarter than we were in Burning Crusade. (Seriously, who puts a moonkin in the tank group, back when the 5% crit buff they brought was party-wide only?) And this time, we don’t have the progression or attendance issues we had in Wrath.

Rank doesn’t mean a lot to me, truly, whether it’s server rank or US/world rank, but it’s always nice to see where you fit in. GuildOx says we’re the 706th ranked 25-man guild on US servers. So we’re not vodka or Premonition or Midwinter or Edge. We’re still here, we’re still kicking and we’ve cleared 12/12 normal modes, ready to add to our heroic Halfus kill with more heroic kills.

So freaking relieved. And so freaking proud of my peeps.

Day 07 – The Reason Behind Your Blog's Name

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

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

When I started my blog, I knew I wanted a fun name. Blogs I read at the time were named Blessing of Kings and Banana Shoulders and the like.

I knew, though, that I didn’t want to focus just on paladin stuff. Sure, I was playing my paladin in raids, but my guildies still (mostly) called my Kurn and that was still very much my in-game identity (and still is).

I knew I wanted to talk about hunter stuff, about how I hated that Beast Mastery was all the rage and all you needed was to spam-click a macro to get stupidly good DPS.

I knew I wanted to talk about raiding and the trials a raid group goes through while pushing through bosses and progression.

I knew I wanted to talk about guild stuff and what my guild was doing, both inside of raids and out.

I knew I wanted to talk about dailies and pally stuff and healing and alts.

It was going to be conglomeration of whatever I wanted to talk about. The only thing tying everything together was that these were going to be my thoughts, my ideas, my opinions.

Kurn’s Corner seemed right. There was alliteration (which I do love) and there was a broad sense to it. I’ve never felt trapped by my blog’s name — this is where I write whatever the heck I want to write. No constraints in terms of expectations apart from “this is what Kurn is thinking about today”. While I’ve done a lot of posting about raiding and healing and paladins, I know that I don’t have to limit myself to these topics, and that suits me just fine.

So Kurn’s Corner is a collection of Kurn’s thoughts about the World of Warcraft and that’s why the name has stuck since Day 1. :)

Yesterday – Your Workplace/Desk
Tomorrow – 10 things we don’t know about you

Day 06 – Your Workplace/Desk

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

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

Before I started playing WoW, I sat at my desk and had a 19″ CRT monitor and a comfy office chair and a keyboard tray and speakers and everything.

I got a laptop. I started playing WoW. The laptop was miles beyond my desktop computer. The desktop wouldn’t even let me install WoW.

Thus began the era of Kurn-on-the-Couch.

I generally sit on my couch with my laptop on my coffee table. I also have a lapdesk that I use frequently if I want to sit back to relax or if I want to play from my bed (which I do, sometimes!).

I looked around for a picture of my desk at the height of my “this is my workspace” time, but I cannot, for the life of me, find it.

It’s all moot anyways — whole new setup coming in the first week of May. New computer, dual monitors, new speakers, everything. I will definitely have to do something about the TV situation, though. I’ve gotten used to watching hockey games (among other things) over the top of my laptop screen!

So tune back in then for a pretty picture of my new setup. :)

Yesterday – Favourite Items in the Game
Tomorrow – The reason behind your blog’s name

Why Bribery Won't Help — Much

Kurn / / dungeons, facepalm, lfg, ramblings, tanks

Today, Blizzard announced that they would essentially be bribing tanks and healers to queue up for random, heroic dungeons in the 4.1 patch, by rewarding the least-represented role with special rewards, which may include rare mounts and rare non-combat pets.

(I won’t even talk about how one of those rare mounts is the Baron’s mount out of Stratholme. That’s someone else’s QQ fodder, but I can imagine people are going to be pissed if they’ve done 500 runs over the years and not gotten one, but some random tank gets it for running heroic Vortex Pinnacle.)

Tanks and, to a lesser extent, healers, are the least-represented roles when queuing up for a random heroic dungeon at 85. You can tell because DPS has the longest queue (30+ minutes for me on my hunter, typically), healers have a much shorter queue (about 8 minutes) and tanks have a damn near instant queue.

In a dungeon group, you have 20% of the group that heals, 20% of the group that tanks and 60% of the group that’s DPS, right? 1 and 1 and 3 makes 5.

In a 10-man raid group, you generally have 30% of the group that heals, 20% of the group that tanks and 50% of the group that does damage. (This can also be 20/20/60, so your mileage may vary.)

So far, that all seems pretty logical, right? The dungeon group percentages mostly match up to the raid group percentages.

Then we have 25-man raids. In a 25-man raid group, you drop from 20% of the group being comprised of tanks to, in most situations, 2 people tanking. That’s 8%. On some occasions, you get 3 tanks, that’s 12%. It is a lot less than the 20% in your standard random groups. You also generally go up from 20% healers to around 25% healers (6 or 7, up from 5, one per group.).

My hypothesis: Tanks are in high demand in dungeon situations because there are not enough tanks needed in raid situations.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking for 5 tanks, 5 healers and 15 DPS for every encounter. Or even ANY encounter. But my theory is that there are more healers than tanks and more DPS than healers because there are more spots required of DPS and healers than there are of tanks. Yes, having death knights be able to tank since last expansion has added to the number of possible tanks. Yes, more raid groups (thanks to the legitimacy of 10-man raiding in Cataclysm) will mean more geared and skilled tanks who are available.

However, what will bribing tanks (and, to a lesser extent, healers) into solo-queuing do to the random dungeon finder system?

Fox Van Allen tweeted: “you’ll wind up seeing a lot more bad, unready tanks,” although he rather likes the idea apart from that.

I tend to agree — tanks are going to be awful. This isn’t going to convince the good/experienced/geared tanks to go out and start pugging. Since they don’t need much out of heroics (once they farm ZG and ZA with mostly guild groups, at any rate), the only added incentive is this “Call to Arms” reward. Why do your daily random (or seven weekly randoms) with not one but four puggers if you can easily do it with at least a partial guild group?

I don’t think the experienced, good tanks will do this very often.

What I think this will do more of is convince that idiot ret paladin to choose prot as his dual spec and fail miserably. Or convince the moonkin that he doesn’t need ALL feral gear to use in a bear spec; after all, who’s going to actually take the time to inspect the bear?

I did a lot of daily dungeons runs in Wrath on a lot of different toons. I did them on my pally as a tank and a healer, I did them on my druid as a tank and a healer, I did them on my mage and hunter as a DPS and I did them on my priest and shaman as a healer.

Oh, the failure I saw, the lack of knowledge I witnessed, the common sense that I realized was not remotely common at all. I KNOW I’ve blogged about these experiences on this very blog before.

Oh, look. April 9th, 2010, “Yet another fail ‘tank'”.

April 6th, 2010, “OMG.”

There are more, but I digress yet again.

I have no reason to believe that Cataclysm random heroics are any different from Wrath random heroics except that they’re longer and more difficult to begin with than the Wrath ones were. Thus, based on my WotLK dungeon finder experiences, I do not foresee a lot of experienced tanks solo-queuing to get these rewards; I see a lot of DPS posing as tanks who solo-queue for the rewards, without any kind of real understanding of how the encounters work.

That’s going to translate into more groups being formed, yes — but will they be more successful? I’m sure some will be, but I would imagine that the success rate will drop, overall, at least after the initial ZA/ZG farm fest.

I really believe that the key to alleviating the dreaded DPS queue problem is to make tanks more needed at the higher levels of content. More demand for tanks should lead to more tanks being rolled, no? That said, I don’t have a good idea as to how to make tanks more needed without requiring 5 tanks on all 25-man raid encounters. I just don’t think this is the way to go about fixing the queue problem. I am actually afraid to see those DPSers in “tank” specs who will probably spec 41 points in their tanking tree and still miss out on six crucial points…

Time will tell, I suppose!