The second raid was infinitely better than the first. And the first wasn’t bad or anything.
We got Saurfang down after a few attempts. We stomped on heroic Rotface and heroic Festergut, killed regular Putricide (getting most people their Nausea, Heartburn… achievement), then stomped on the Blood Princes and BQL.
Then we looked at heroic Dreamwalker.
My new guild had never killed heroic Dreamwalker before.
We did it on our second try.
And that is a part of why I joined the guild. People were saying to me all night long in whispers how awesome it was that I was there, how much they enjoyed having me there, how I was just what they needed… And I think that’s got to be true. We downed Saurfang for the second time for them, Dreamwalker healed to full for the first… and I played significant roles in those fights.
I totally noobed it up on Festergut, though. Fellow healers, please take this as a warning and DO NOT DO WHAT I DID.
I use Clique and Grid. I have Clique binds for most of my spells. Flash of Light is left-click (shift-left click is to target), Holy Light is right-click, Sacred Shield is shift-right-click, Cleanse is middle-click, Beacon of Light is shift-middle-click, Holy Shock is thumb-click and Lay on Hands (a relatively new bind from about three weeks ago) is shift-thumb-click.
Tonight, before Saurfang, I was looking at my bindings and trying to figure out where I could put Hand of Protection for easier access during Saurfang instead of shift-left-click and then clicking on my Hand of Protection button.
So I figured Ctrl-Thumb-Click.
Who here sees where this is going?
I try out the binding a couple of times. I don’t like it. I DO like the thumb-click part of it, but the Ctrl is just a little far out of the way for me.
So I open up Clique. I decide to edit that bind.
And I promptly bind it to Shift-Thumb-Click.
Uh, Kurn? Didn’t you say that Shift-Thumb-Click was Lay on Hands?
Why yes. Yes I did.
Uh…?
Yeah.
So NORMALLY, when you try to bind something in Clique to an existing combination, it yells at you. But that’s apparently on the main screen only when you’re clicking the combination in your spellbook.
If you edit the bind directly, you can overwrite any prior combination. Without the yelling.
Oh, God, Kurn. What did you do?
Well, Saurfang went great with me BOPping someone on each attempt with ease.
Festergut, well, there we are, one tank with 9 stacks of the debuff, the other with 7 stacks, probably with Fester at under 20% health and I see the active tank (7 stacks) is about to die and so I do what any good paladin would have done; I went for my Lay on Hands bind, which has been, for the last few weeks, Shift-Thumb-Click. Which I UNKNOWINGLY bound to Hand of Protection.
Tank is BOPped, other tank gets aggro and blows up the raid because he hit 10 stacks.
I was completely oblivious as to why the tank got a 10th stack of his debuff. The GM said something in healer chat along the lines of “ha, ha, who bopped the tank?” and the ret pally was like “Not me!” and then I paused, remembering that I HAD messed with my Clique bindings and I HAD tried to cast LOH on the tank and hey, why wasn’t that on cooldown? Why WAS Hand of Protection on cooldown?
I checked my Clique binds and found the problem and switched Shift-Thumb-Click back to Lay on Hands and then let them know what had happened.
Apparently, I made the MT laugh, so, uh, way to go me?
I told him that it could have been worse, I could have DIed him the way I did one of our tanks on Bloodboil back in the day and he replied to say that a DI would have been the only thing that would have been funnier than a BOP.
>< Still annoyed! In my last guild, I was teased for standing in fire for months by my RL friend the resto druid and another RL friend of hers. And now, I’m going to be known as “the pally who bopped the tank”. /facepalm
By the way, I’m still in search of a good Clique-bind for BOP! :P
Anyways, getting Saurfang and Dreamwalker down was awesome. I also managed to snag heroic Unclean Surgical Gloves and heroic Crypt Keeper’s Bracers, which is kind of hilarious, given that it’s my second raid with them. EPGP is an odd beast and I’m going to have to read up on it again, but it’s got this nifty mod that makes things super easy.
In other guild-related things, my new GM and I are hitting it off beautifully. There’s a mutual admiration society going on and we just totally get along. I did not transfer with the intention to make good friends; I just wanted to escape the douchebags, but she’s definitely someone who has the potential to be one of those awesome people I still keep in touch with even if I’m not playing. The weird thing is that she already knows a stupid amount about me — she knows my real first name, she knows about this blog… It’s like, in the span of a couple of days, the woman already knows a ton about me. I feel a little bit naked, if that makes sense. I mean, I go through a fair amount of effort to construct and maintain my various WoW personas, all of which have the “true” me at the center of them, mind you. But, for example, if I’m on my hunter, chances are, I’m going to be quieter. Just let me be there, in the back, shooting things. It’s what I like to do.
If I’m on my paladin, I’m not so quiet. I’ve spent a LOT of time as some kind of stupid leader in this game, including YEARS of that stuff on the paladin. Kurn-while-on-the-paladin is a lot more outspoken, a lot more critical (HOW CAN YOU NOT HAVE HASTE OMG FAIL) and can get frustrated really easily.
My GM has somehow managed to dissemble these personas, more or less, because I’m basically my actual self in talking to her. That doesn’t happen too often, at least without my expecting it. This just kind of happened.
There’s an opportunity, which will remain more or less cryptic, for a mutual exchange of information, a mutual way to get to know each other better. Part of me wants to participate. Part of me does not. The part of me that wants to is all like “HELL YEAH!!!!” and the part of me that doesn’t isn’t remotely as enthusiastic in trying to talk me out of the idea. It’s more like “Dude, whatever, give it a couple of weeks. You’ve been in the guild for like, 36 hours.”
It would involve stripping off yet another layer of my carefully constructed personas. “Kurn” and “Madrana”, if you will, are very public personas of mine. It’s still me in there, but there are things about me that none of my readers, no matter how dear to me, will ever know. Things that my long-time raiding companions never knew and probably will never know. You know, real life stuff.
All of this feeds into my interest in identity theory, online personas, the use of the Internet for anonymity… And really, you know, that’s it. That’s what’s bugging me about this. If this exchange of information happens, I’ve lost any real sense of anonymity I still have. Okay. Now that I know why it’s something I’m hesitating about, it’s time to figure out if that even matters.
Actually, it’s well past time for sleep. I’ll figure that bit out in the morning or, perhaps more accurately, the afternoon. ;)
Apologies for the sidetrip into the land of sociological musings. I hope the Festergut story made the entry worth reading. ;)
Lol, gg on bopping the tank there ;P. If it makes you feel any better though, I hadn’t heard about it until I read it just now. And about the whole ‘feeling naked’ thing, our GM’s gotten pretty good at it over the years lol, but trust me when I say that it’s probably the best thing about us is that she just has a way of generating an environment that everyone just IS themself naturally. Besides, complete internet anonymity died when facebook got popular, lol, your last bastion of hope for that type of anonymity is 4chan.org (if you’ve never been there, remember that it’s miles beyond NSFW, you been warned ;P)
It really does sound like an awesome guild, and that you are fitting in really well.
As for Clique:
You don’t use Alt, any reason why not?
Being an FPSer I am used to using WASD+all of the meta keys, so my binds range about ctrl/alt/shift (I also only have 3 buttons). Assuming you use WASD for movement, you probably rest your thumb on Space for jump (or typing), and thus it’s a small shift left to alt. After that I would probably say alt+rmb for BoP as I would assign it similarly to cleanse, but that’s just how I think.
The anonymity vs reality and online persona(s) thing is interesting as well. however I’m a fairly simple person, I have who I am with my friends, who I am with a acquaintances, and who I am with strangers. The personalities stick through the internet, and are really not that different, I just tone back my sense of humor (it’s fairly black and abrasive) at each step.
Ahahaha. That BOP (and, incidentally, the fact that you SAID BOP) situation is hilarious to me.
I’m definitely happy to hear things are going so much better in your new guild. Grats, Kurn’s new guild, on H-Dreamwalker! Keep it up!
Sorry, I use keybinds for my non-heals, so BoP is X and Salv is Z — Don’t thin, that’s going to help you :P
Glad to hear everything is going well in your new guild.
You pallies are so hax on Vaithria. I’m jealous.
Sociological musings are the best part. =]
Cyber – The whole damn guild is going to be reading this blog, aren’t they? ;) As to feeling naked, it’s weird for me. I’m definitely not used to being my whole, actual self in a guild setting with all these people I don’t know. The GM is goooooooood. haha. I like to think I’ve managed to stay relatively anonymous to a degree. Apart from my buddy Majik and some old guildies, most people here don’t know my real name, don’t know my exact age, don’t know what I look like. Facebook friends are generally people I know IRL only with a few exceptional exceptions. And that’s generally how I like to keep it. So it’s really interesting to me that I want to cling to what anonymity I have left. I suspect it could just be me being stubborn. ;) But that’s why it deserves more thought. There is something about shedding my layers of anonymity that makes me nervous and if it’s not just me being stubborn, I should figure out what that is.
I am fully aware of 4chan and wish I weren’t, but thanks for the heads up. ;)
So glad you didn’t hear about the BOP ’till you read it here. ;)
thansal – I’m glad I’m fitting in, too. :) As to Clique, I don’t tend to use Alt even though that’s exactly right, it’s just a small shift to the left for my thumb. I think it’s that it doesn’t feel “right”. I might do Alt-Thumb-Click, though. (I do like the thumb button.)
With regards to personality, I’m pretty sure I don’t have a good way of explaining it, exactly.
It’s like… like I have different groups of people with whom I speak about different things. My WoW friends/companions/guildies will, 99% of the time, not hear about my latest crush or my latest heartbreak. They will, 99% of the time, not hear about someone in my family being ill, unless it interferes with a raid. My RL friends will hear about all of these things. But they won’t (usually) hear about me BOPping the tank on Festergut. One of my friends IRL plays WoW and another generally tolerates me talking about the social aspect of my guilds (like my last GM being a dick, etc, etc), but for the most part, my RL friends hear about stuff that affects me deeply on an emotional level.
With my WoW friends, I can chatter all day long about this game and the situations within it, but I don’t open up about myself too much. I’m the same overall personality — good sense of humour, talk too much, easy to make laugh, analytical, etc — but I volunteer very, very little about what affects me emotionally.
And it’s rare that there’s any crossover. Literally, a handful of people I’ve met while playing WoW with have any idea about my love life, my passions in life, my adoration of writing… And it’s worked just dandy so far. ;) The idea of crossing that sort of boundary with someone who is awesome and yet still more or less unknown is daunting. :)
X – I keep thinking “could have been a DI, could have been a DI”. Why is my saying BOP funny? I think the funnier one is to say “HOP”, which you will NEVER catch me saying seriously. “HOP on Kurn!”? I think not, haha.
Windsoar – Yep, not a whole lot of help. ;) How do you sit and unsheathe your weapons? haha. I try really hard not to rebind most of the default keybinds, since I’ve played for 4.5 years with most of the defaults.
Jasyla – and I didn’t even keep all my stacks! I managed to lose them after 15 because I didn’t snag an orb right on my way out. I did, however, blow Lay on Hands with 15 stacks since I realized I was going to lose them and I’m pretty sure that bumped her from 71%-75%. It crit for 170,000. :D
Devynity – haha, glad I didn’t put you to sleep. :)
But you look great naked! ;)
Ladies and gentlemen, my GM. ;)
Y’know, I’m not really sure. I have a mental image of you hitting someone with one of those oversized anime fans, though. And that’s just silly, because, well, I see YOU doing that, not Kurn or Madrana. ;)
0_o you’re into anime, Kurn? /excitement
X – What ARE we going to do with you, boy?
Cyber – no, no I’m not. Xmolder is. :P
Hadn’t had the chance to say anything yet, but gratz!
I’m glad you seem to have found the right place for you. Let’s keep it this way, shall we? ;)
Oh, btw, just because of the excitement, I’m going to say that we took down BQL last night and are now officially 10/12 :D
Yeah, normal mode. So? ;)
Went for a lol try on Sindy too (as we were all getting tired) and even survived two air phases. I think we’ll have her down in no time :D
“We stomped on heroic Rotface and heroic Festergut…”
Funny, my Guild last night spent a good hour or two BEING stomped on by Festergut and Rotface. On Normal. But it was late for most of us, and it was the first time there for a good chunk. So people got a bit confused due to fatigue. I’m not too angry about it, but I was disappointed. :/
I can’t say for sure yet, but it sounds like you and I approach friendships in-game in a similar fashion. I’m a pretty easygoing guy. I get along with most people, and I like to think that it’s exceedingly easy to get along with me. However, I do tend to be more reserved when it comes to revealing the more personal things about me in an Online setting.
One thing that must be clear is that I never lie or put on airs when I’m getting to know someone in WoW. Even if I don’t reveal my first name, the intimate details of my life, or anything else, my personality as I express it is genuine. When I say “Good evening, how are you?” when I log in, I actually want to know how you are. I’m not going to deceive anyone about those things for the sake of anonymity. It just isn’t my style.
But there are times (several times, so far, in fact) when over the course of time; be it a few weeks or a few months, I’ll spend enough time talking to someone that the conversations inevitably drift away from WoW-related things. And I’ll find myself getting more and more comfortable with the person, eventually revealing my first name (ironic, given that I have no compunctions about leaving blog comments under my real name), sharing my e-mail address, etc. Several of the friendships that I’ve met in WoW have extended beyond the game. E-mail correspondences, Facebooking, etc.
I don’t make the stark distinctions between “real life friends” and “Internet friends” that I used to. Friendship is friendship, and in many cases my interactions and relationships with my WoW friends have impacted my real life. I can honestly say, for example, that one of the women that I met in WoW has become, in a sense, the big sister that I never had. (Being a firstborn.) So in my opinion, being an online relationship does not in and of itself delegitimize the friendship.
I treasure friendship very much, regardless of the medium in which it resides. And so when I find that bond forming between someone else and me, I hold it dear. Even outside of WoW, but remaining online, there are a few bloggers whom I would be honored to call “friend”. I do have to be careful to avoid overstepping any boundaries. Just because I may approach something one way doesn’t mean that the other person does. I can hope to one day earn someone’s trust and friendship, but I’m not going to overstep the bounds of decency. (Especially since in the realm of blogging and commenting, I’m just some shmoe.)
I’m sorry about the massive comment. >.> Congratulations on the kills/rescue, and continued luck as you press on.
And Heaven help me, I think I might just be becoming a regular commenter here now. ;)
I’m actually not that into anime. I think the last show I enjoyed was Samurai Champloo, and that was a passing fascination. Before that it was Outlaw Star, which was, let’s face it, amazing.