I think normal-mode guilds cannot afford to be casual anymore given the difficulty level of current tiers. Flex raiding coming in 5.4 has the potential to improve this frustration, particularly for casual guilds but it also has the potential to dramatically shrink the recruitment pool for normal-mode guilds.
This is not to say that casual players shouldn't be raiding, or any of that elitist nonsense. Of course everyone has a right to raid, as much as they have a right to access any level of content in the game. And I'm alway glad when more people get to play the way they want.
However - I feel that more and more, the content is being driven to a smaller and smaller subset of people. This sort of targeting is great, as the content is now more focused to the right audience but it comes at a pretty steep cost.
Back in the day
Let's look back at Vanilla/TBC content, when raids were linear, fights were balanced around class composition and finding attuned characters made recruiting a living hell for guilds. Wrath eased this by removing attunements, allowing for guilds to raid with 10 people, normalizing abilities and fights to "bring the player not the character" and providing a very quick catch-up mechanism though badge (now valor) gear. This worked well, but tiers were forgettable and grew old rather quickly as the new tier of badge gear invalidated the old raids immediately.
Cataclysm took this to an extreme where nobody even ran older raids once the next tier launched, and as Tier 12 and 13 both has fewer bosses than Tier 11, the whole thing was terribly lopsided. Cataclysm might been the worst raiding in WoW history. The difficulty curve for Tier 11 was very high, and while Tier 12 and 13 was normalized (re: nerfed by 20% a month in) a bit, it still felt too much for casual guilds to progress through. LFR provided the answer there, by allowing completely casual people to raid and see content.
Mists combines a lot of these ideas - there is still no attunement, valor gear is a bit more difficult to get but is less effective than current tier raiding, and there is no immediate "catch up" mechanism. Guilds that progressed first have an advantage but it's not overwhelming - players and guilds have to work pretty hard to catch up and LFR feels like it's a thing on the side, another gearing avenue, and normal/heroic raids remain the benchmarking of raiding. I'm quite happy here. It feels like a good medium level of compromise between the various aspects of raiding.
Movin' on up!
One of the things I liked about LFR as compared to normal mode is that LFR introduced and inspired people to do normal raids. When I moved back to Moon Guard, I've met a few people through PUGs who have started raiding for the first time after they grew bored of LFR and they're good players. I think LFR was intended to inspire people to move up the difficulty ladder and I'm certain that these people will slowly train and become very good raiders in their own time.
This also allowed the design team to make sure fights weren't forgiving. Encounters like Horridon, Council, Durumu, Iron Qon, and Lei Shen were brutally hard in the first few weeks. I was playing with some amazing people, and we took 3 weeks to clear the tier and that was after putting in 12 hours a week, every week rather than our usual 9.
Things Cost More on the Ladder
When people move into normal modes from LFR, particularly in a group that's progressing, the difficulty and gear check can be a huge roadblock. And Blizzard has explicitly stated that they expect you to work on your gear outside of normal mode raids - i.e., through LFR, though Valor purchases, through upgrades, crafted materials, heroic scenarios... there are a lot of avenues so each week, regardless of progression, each team grows stronger. iLevel is a very real consideration with these bosses as raw throughput is the line between enrage and kill sometimes.
So - in light of all this, when an LFR player who is used to more-or-less queue and raid and kill has to move into normal modes, there is this daily maintenance involved.
You have to do a bit of research, you need to stay current with your gear, you better be hitting your weekly caps with charms and valor, and you better be practicing your class. If you aren't, it's going to be difficult for the team to progress.
That's all there is to it. I don't begrudge it, I enjoy this increased level of responsibility and I like that there is a "you must be this tall to raid" barrier and it generally only takes me a small amount of time in game to accomplish this. But it does mean that if your team isn't willing to do the work, you will have a hard time playing the game.
But Wait! There's More!
So what am I going on about? Flex raids. I know why they are coming, I support the developers in their goals of making content accessible, and I appreciate just how hard it is to raid with twelve people on your roster.
But the nature of it such that I fear it will stem that upward transition. People will go from LFR to flex rather than normal, simply because of the lower level of commitment required. Flex is designed to handle a wide variety of play-styles, particularly the casual style, and it won't require as much from raiders as normal modes by definition.
My main concern with this, is that flex-raids will cause the already
shrinking pool of raiders to contract even more. As you can gain
achievements in flex, it further strips away a reason to step up to
normal mode.
Fear is the Mind Killer
Naturally, it's a silly thing to worry about, and if people are happy doing flex-raids, so be it. And I know that greater diversity and choice is a better thing for the game in the long run, and if the commitment required to raid normal modes is so high that it infringes on people's ability to raid and enjoy the game - then so be it, let them move on.
And there is always the possibility that flex raiders will grow out of the difficulty level. If people progress from LFR to normal mode, then there's hope that people will do the same from flex. There is another rung on the ladder and the glass ceiling is really just a time commitment.
The whole thing really has put me in two minds. One part of me is very glad and happy to see more flexibility in raiding for people, as human resources are the most complicated part of raiding. But another part of me is worried that this will make recruitment even more difficult than it already is.
Here's hoping I'm wrong.
Can you tell I'm tearing my hair out trying to find people to raid?
Showing posts with label not raiding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label not raiding. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
And then, a break in the storm....
I haven't raided in about 3 weeks.
After killing Lei-Shen (one of the all-time great fights in Warcraft history - seriously amazing), I lost my flex-time at work and couldn't raid anymore with my guild. Finding myself in a position of having to go through the applications, interviews, introductions, and assimilation, process again just proved too much.
Maybe my heart just wasn't in it as much, which makes the decision easier. Honestly, my heart broke when Tidal broke up and never really mended. From Ulduar-onward I only ever raided with people I felt like were my actual real-life friends. People whose phone-numbers were in my cell, and people I met in real-life and knew on a first-name basis. It took years to build some of those relationships, but the Occasional Excellence/Tidal people were just so genial, warm, and welcoming that the months of courtship took weeks.
That's an impossible standard to hold any guild up to. Methodical is an amazing group of people, some of the best raiders I've ever known, and yet I never felt like a part of the team. No fault of theirs, they're very warm people as any, but I think my heartbreak kept me from committing.
And finding myself having to find another group... I just couldn't do it again.
Playing this game and not raiding would be like living real life without listening to my favorite music again - an impossible task. I've decided to uninstall WoW from my computer for the time being, and replace it with real-life raiding.
Or as close as real-life gets to it anyway - I've re-joined a table-top RPG group that I had stopped playing with after my son was born. It's so nice to be back among old friends and in familiar surroundings, rolling dice and scribbling on character sheets with pencils. Well, not that I've started yet, but next week will be my first session back.
I've also begun to work on my writing career again, breaking out my old novel to re-work it for the marketplace and really giving it the old college try to sell it this time. I'm playing the Piano again and thinking about doing a bit of recording with my guitar and synths. I've begun to study a new mode of programming to get some mobile application building skills under my belt to shift careers in a year or two, and maybe move into video game programming.
In short, I've re-structured my life in the last few weeks to compensate for the loss of raiding. Yes, raiding took up enough time in my life that I sacrificed things as important to me as my writing, music and furthering my career. No, I don't regret it - raiding is the finest e-sport I've ever played, and if I had a team of friends and the time to play, I would dive back in it. But it's more than just the game itself. My character - my avatar in this world - has come to meat much to me.
My avatar's successes were my own. I took some meaning from their existence, and their glory in game was mine in some thin, yet material way. I took pride in their achievements, their accomplishments, their victories, their impeccable standing in gear and especially in my own ability as a player (if I might be so bold).
Innana - my main character, the paladin, has meant much to me. Her success in Azeroth has helped me see that success is possible in reality. The confidence in her role was both inspired in her faith (that I lack more-or-less completely as an agnostic), suicidal in its vulnerability and bold in the courage it required. I see her - and will see her - always as a human paladin, no matter her temporary race or allegiance,walking the canals of Stormwind, in simple white robes, unarmed. Her hands strangely empty for the want for a weapon and shield, her shoulders free from the grip of pauldrons. In the lack of the materials of her office, she found the peace she was fighting for.
That I never got to roleplay as much as I wanted to is my great regret. Her previous incarnation as Joachim cut very close to me in all his roleplay, and his death was written in the moment he was conceived in my mind, I think, but I didn't know it at the time. His arc was always morbid, fearful and corrupt. It consumed him in the end. But Innana was stronger than that, there was a vein of steel in her that kept back the corruption if not the melancholy of being no more than an instrument of something greater than herself, and I wish I had gotten to know her as well as I knew Joachim.
Anyway.
I've realized that if I want to spend hours and hours online, I want to do it with friends. And I want to do it in less time than I've devoted to raiding in the past. Now that nearly so many of my friends have left the game, I will also let it lay quietly. For a while. This is not an adieu, but it is, probably, a fairly lengthy break.
As for this blog? I don't know. There are so many half-written guides, incomplete posts that will likely never see the light of day...
But firstly, I want to thank those of you who have continued to read for months, or years, and those who have asked me about the lack of posts lately. Your readership has given sail to my writing over the last three years of writing block and it means a lot to me that I was able to write at last something during that period of drought.
Secondly, I love blogging. I don't intend to stop, and I don't really see the point of starting a new blog when this one already exists - maybe I can acquire it for my other "raiding" goals as it were, the new activities I mentioned above, but maybe I will start writing in a new blog just to keep this apart as a chronicle of my Warcraft experience, and return to it, if and when I return to the game. I don't know yet. I will make another post if I do start writing elsewhere, so those interested might follow.
I always thought my last days in Warcraft would be somewhat dramatic - I'd do this or that, park my characters in thematically appropriate places, dressed for their civilian life, but I think I'm just going to leave them where they are. Mid-step in their military careers. Frozen in amber, as it were. Waiting for me to come back to them, one day, and to pick up where I left off.
Well. This has gone on long enough, and I know when I'm stalling.
Rest easy for now, my friends. Until we meet again... in this life or another.
After killing Lei-Shen (one of the all-time great fights in Warcraft history - seriously amazing), I lost my flex-time at work and couldn't raid anymore with my guild. Finding myself in a position of having to go through the applications, interviews, introductions, and assimilation, process again just proved too much.
Maybe my heart just wasn't in it as much, which makes the decision easier. Honestly, my heart broke when Tidal broke up and never really mended. From Ulduar-onward I only ever raided with people I felt like were my actual real-life friends. People whose phone-numbers were in my cell, and people I met in real-life and knew on a first-name basis. It took years to build some of those relationships, but the Occasional Excellence/Tidal people were just so genial, warm, and welcoming that the months of courtship took weeks.
That's an impossible standard to hold any guild up to. Methodical is an amazing group of people, some of the best raiders I've ever known, and yet I never felt like a part of the team. No fault of theirs, they're very warm people as any, but I think my heartbreak kept me from committing.
And finding myself having to find another group... I just couldn't do it again.
Playing this game and not raiding would be like living real life without listening to my favorite music again - an impossible task. I've decided to uninstall WoW from my computer for the time being, and replace it with real-life raiding.
Or as close as real-life gets to it anyway - I've re-joined a table-top RPG group that I had stopped playing with after my son was born. It's so nice to be back among old friends and in familiar surroundings, rolling dice and scribbling on character sheets with pencils. Well, not that I've started yet, but next week will be my first session back.
I've also begun to work on my writing career again, breaking out my old novel to re-work it for the marketplace and really giving it the old college try to sell it this time. I'm playing the Piano again and thinking about doing a bit of recording with my guitar and synths. I've begun to study a new mode of programming to get some mobile application building skills under my belt to shift careers in a year or two, and maybe move into video game programming.
In short, I've re-structured my life in the last few weeks to compensate for the loss of raiding. Yes, raiding took up enough time in my life that I sacrificed things as important to me as my writing, music and furthering my career. No, I don't regret it - raiding is the finest e-sport I've ever played, and if I had a team of friends and the time to play, I would dive back in it. But it's more than just the game itself. My character - my avatar in this world - has come to meat much to me.
My avatar's successes were my own. I took some meaning from their existence, and their glory in game was mine in some thin, yet material way. I took pride in their achievements, their accomplishments, their victories, their impeccable standing in gear and especially in my own ability as a player (if I might be so bold).
Innana - my main character, the paladin, has meant much to me. Her success in Azeroth has helped me see that success is possible in reality. The confidence in her role was both inspired in her faith (that I lack more-or-less completely as an agnostic), suicidal in its vulnerability and bold in the courage it required. I see her - and will see her - always as a human paladin, no matter her temporary race or allegiance,walking the canals of Stormwind, in simple white robes, unarmed. Her hands strangely empty for the want for a weapon and shield, her shoulders free from the grip of pauldrons. In the lack of the materials of her office, she found the peace she was fighting for.
That I never got to roleplay as much as I wanted to is my great regret. Her previous incarnation as Joachim cut very close to me in all his roleplay, and his death was written in the moment he was conceived in my mind, I think, but I didn't know it at the time. His arc was always morbid, fearful and corrupt. It consumed him in the end. But Innana was stronger than that, there was a vein of steel in her that kept back the corruption if not the melancholy of being no more than an instrument of something greater than herself, and I wish I had gotten to know her as well as I knew Joachim.
Anyway.
I've realized that if I want to spend hours and hours online, I want to do it with friends. And I want to do it in less time than I've devoted to raiding in the past. Now that nearly so many of my friends have left the game, I will also let it lay quietly. For a while. This is not an adieu, but it is, probably, a fairly lengthy break.
As for this blog? I don't know. There are so many half-written guides, incomplete posts that will likely never see the light of day...
But firstly, I want to thank those of you who have continued to read for months, or years, and those who have asked me about the lack of posts lately. Your readership has given sail to my writing over the last three years of writing block and it means a lot to me that I was able to write at last something during that period of drought.
Secondly, I love blogging. I don't intend to stop, and I don't really see the point of starting a new blog when this one already exists - maybe I can acquire it for my other "raiding" goals as it were, the new activities I mentioned above, but maybe I will start writing in a new blog just to keep this apart as a chronicle of my Warcraft experience, and return to it, if and when I return to the game. I don't know yet. I will make another post if I do start writing elsewhere, so those interested might follow.
I always thought my last days in Warcraft would be somewhat dramatic - I'd do this or that, park my characters in thematically appropriate places, dressed for their civilian life, but I think I'm just going to leave them where they are. Mid-step in their military careers. Frozen in amber, as it were. Waiting for me to come back to them, one day, and to pick up where I left off.
Well. This has gone on long enough, and I know when I'm stalling.
Rest easy for now, my friends. Until we meet again... in this life or another.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
September, September
For the first time in many years, I've moved to and played consistently on a new server with my Paladin, Innana. A server where I don't know anyone, in a new guild. It's a bit of an isolating and lonely experience, but I fully appreciate that this is the lull before the storm. Things will pick up very quickly in a couple of weeks, and then I won't even have the time to breathe, but right now, it feel lethargic. I almost wish I could just log out and not log back in till the 28th of August, but I'm a completionist and there is much work to be done to prepare for Mists.
I only moved Innana over as I didn't want to spend a lot of money, and thus, I've had to level a Druid to farm ore and herbs, and I've also parked a Death Knight in Stormwind to make Flasks and Belt Buckles for me. They still need quite a bit of love and care, and my druid is still wandering in Hellfire Peninsula. Here's hoping I can get both of them to 85 before the 25th of September.
Not to mention churning out 4.8k guild rep every week with fistfuls of Dailies. At least it's worth some gold. Every time I think I'm done for good with Baradin Hold and Molten Front, there's something else to suck me back in.
But it's all busy work. Nothing truly engaging. I miss my friends, and Battle.Net is a great resource, but it can't compensate for what playing on Moon Guard is like. That's the other thing, the new server is so quiet compared to Moon Guard. I flew through Elwyn to get to Darkmoon Faire, and I paused, because General chat wasn't a continuously flowing river of hideous, horrific and hillariously bizarre comments. In fact, Goldshire was practically deserted save for the occasional human in the single-digits hurrying about with quests.
Even during peak hours, I can find standing room in the Auction House and the Trade District and Dwarf District aren't crowded with giant epic mounts. Last night, the old guild went in to finish another Legendary staff and I went along on my Warlock to help. At the end of the night, nearing midnight server, when the staff was finished in Stormwind, the sky was black with wings. Easily at least a hundred people crowding around the dragon, even this late in the expansion.
I'm not complaining, necessarily, it's nice to have such quiet, even though the Auction House is - let's call it strange to be polite. Finishing quests is easy without having to compete for kills or resources, and farming and such seem to be significantly easier, at least in the lower levels so far. I think in all my time so far I've only come across one other competing farmer. And maybe I'll even admit that it's gratifying not to see a dozen Twilight Vanquishers floating above Auction Houses, and any number of Saviors and Firelords and Dragonslayers every time I swung around (back, vanity, back, return to the black pit from whence you rose!)
So for now, I level my alts, switch over to help the other guild when they need an extra body, and wait for September. Well, August 28th, now, which is 12 days away.
I would love to accomplish a few things before that happens.
- Heroic Nefarian, Al'Akir and Ascendant Council
- Heroic Sinestra
- Heroic Ragnaros
Anyone want to join me to work on anything on the list while we wait? Or does anyone need a Prot/Retadin to do any of the above? :-)
I only moved Innana over as I didn't want to spend a lot of money, and thus, I've had to level a Druid to farm ore and herbs, and I've also parked a Death Knight in Stormwind to make Flasks and Belt Buckles for me. They still need quite a bit of love and care, and my druid is still wandering in Hellfire Peninsula. Here's hoping I can get both of them to 85 before the 25th of September.
Not to mention churning out 4.8k guild rep every week with fistfuls of Dailies. At least it's worth some gold. Every time I think I'm done for good with Baradin Hold and Molten Front, there's something else to suck me back in.
But it's all busy work. Nothing truly engaging. I miss my friends, and Battle.Net is a great resource, but it can't compensate for what playing on Moon Guard is like. That's the other thing, the new server is so quiet compared to Moon Guard. I flew through Elwyn to get to Darkmoon Faire, and I paused, because General chat wasn't a continuously flowing river of hideous, horrific and hillariously bizarre comments. In fact, Goldshire was practically deserted save for the occasional human in the single-digits hurrying about with quests.
Even during peak hours, I can find standing room in the Auction House and the Trade District and Dwarf District aren't crowded with giant epic mounts. Last night, the old guild went in to finish another Legendary staff and I went along on my Warlock to help. At the end of the night, nearing midnight server, when the staff was finished in Stormwind, the sky was black with wings. Easily at least a hundred people crowding around the dragon, even this late in the expansion.
I'm not complaining, necessarily, it's nice to have such quiet, even though the Auction House is - let's call it strange to be polite. Finishing quests is easy without having to compete for kills or resources, and farming and such seem to be significantly easier, at least in the lower levels so far. I think in all my time so far I've only come across one other competing farmer. And maybe I'll even admit that it's gratifying not to see a dozen Twilight Vanquishers floating above Auction Houses, and any number of Saviors and Firelords and Dragonslayers every time I swung around (back, vanity, back, return to the black pit from whence you rose!)
So for now, I level my alts, switch over to help the other guild when they need an extra body, and wait for September. Well, August 28th, now, which is 12 days away.
I would love to accomplish a few things before that happens.
- Heroic Nefarian, Al'Akir and Ascendant Council
- Heroic Sinestra
- Heroic Ragnaros
Anyone want to join me to work on anything on the list while we wait? Or does anyone need a Prot/Retadin to do any of the above? :-)
Friday, July 6, 2012
Can I be a Warlock, please?
Wow, this has been a gap of nearly 3 weeks since I posted - long time since I've taken such a break.
There really isn't much to write about with my in-game activities, unfortunately, and while I'd like to wax philosophical on some other topics of the game, the muse fails to stir. Still, here I am today, after a few... extremely frustrating weeks of game. Not much raiding to talk about, a lot of mumbling on my part, and playing of alts and doing really repetitive boring stuff just to have a reason to log in. I've been seriously tempted just to uninstall WoW and wait till patch 5.0 to install it again, so I don't even get tempted into logging in just to sit in Dalaran staring at Trade with a mixture of horror and fascination.
But, log in I did, and do, and last night I dusted off my sweet, lovely Warlock lady for a bit of LFG action. First, as a good little diligent player, I sat on the Dummy for a bit just to remember my rotation, I spread some DoTs around and so forth, and when the dungeon started, I saw I was in the company of some full DS geared people (my poor Warlock is mostly in normal-FL gear). Afraid of a poor showing, I sat up straight and prepared to do my best.
Throughout the dungeon, I found myself competing pretty aggressively. I was Soul-Swapping full piles of DoTs like my life depended on it, I was keeping every bursty button on cool-down, every time I could boost my numbers, I did, and when a pile of mobs gathered, I gleefully breathed Shadowflame, spammed seeds of Corruption. I won't deny the cackled that left me as the screen exploded with huge, bright yellow numbers everywhere.
At the end of the dungeon, we were all within 1% of each other in overall DPS and damage done, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself. It made me wonder about how much fun I have playing my DPS specs lately, as I don't tank very much anymore even on Innana and Retribution has become my most progressed set, so I've developed a very DPSey mindset. And of course, in a given raid, ranged DPS almost always seems to outperform Melee, or should be, and playing Affliction would give me a great deal of utility in terms of what I can offer the table.
While raiding in Cataclysm offers me absolutely no inspiration anymore, I do kind-of want to raid on my Warlock, if I could find a late Friday night group for some cross-server action or something. It would let me make up my mind about how much I really enjoy flinging spells all over the place. I have to say, having tried Affliction on Beta, it feels a bit more frantic. Malefic Grip seriously messes with DoT refresh timers and Haunt replacing Shadow Bolt from Nightfall procs constantly breaking the normal flow of the rotation while constantly being aware of Drain-twisting for when a bursty part is about to come up or during Execute phase, all makes for some pretty tense casting. There are a lot of things to track and Affliction was never the most straightforward of specs. But I think it's a very rewarding spec to play, there is almost no other spec in the game that feels as in touch with its in-character description as Affliction.
You are laying curses and afflictions and banes on your enemies and devouring them from the inside out. There is no question of what an Affliction Warlock does. Merricat is a twisted, dark woman with a warped mind and I sometimes feels that she thinks she doesn't control her actions anymore, that she has stepped too far into the Nether and when she came back, she wasn't completely herself anymore.
Through all this, Affliction remains the least flashy of the 3 specs. Demonology has some incredibly cool moves, and Destruction has always been about the fire and brimstone, but Affliction is the quiet art of killing by looking at you and suddenly that belly-ache turns into blood pouring out of your ears. So I guess I'm okay with it.
By contrast, Retribution has become almost elegantly simple. We build Holy Power from absolutely everything. Judgment? HP. Crusader Strike? HP. Exorcism?! HP. Have too much HP? Have some extra storage. Inquisition is all buffed? Just spam those endless streaks of Templar's Verdicts. But at the same time, because we're hitting Verdict so much more, it had to scale down in terms of the damage it does, and that is a serious bummer. It doesn't feel like we're building up this massive blow, it feel more like a lot of medium-sized blows whittling down the enemy rather than bringing an overwhelming righteous force down.
So, how do you choose? I'm hoping we have a "Well, what the hell class and spec ARE we playing next expansion?" conversation soon, and we'll go from there. But, knowing what our armor-class breakout is like (3 each of plate, cloth and leather) I suspect I'll be back to tanking and my brief affair with my Warlock will be a memory, we'll glance at each other occasionally in Stormwind, steal brief smoldering looks, wonder what-ifs, exchange unfortunate smiles, shrug at each other, hoping that the time between patches brings us together again, and then we'll both return to our jobs.
There really isn't much to write about with my in-game activities, unfortunately, and while I'd like to wax philosophical on some other topics of the game, the muse fails to stir. Still, here I am today, after a few... extremely frustrating weeks of game. Not much raiding to talk about, a lot of mumbling on my part, and playing of alts and doing really repetitive boring stuff just to have a reason to log in. I've been seriously tempted just to uninstall WoW and wait till patch 5.0 to install it again, so I don't even get tempted into logging in just to sit in Dalaran staring at Trade with a mixture of horror and fascination.
But, log in I did, and do, and last night I dusted off my sweet, lovely Warlock lady for a bit of LFG action. First, as a good little diligent player, I sat on the Dummy for a bit just to remember my rotation, I spread some DoTs around and so forth, and when the dungeon started, I saw I was in the company of some full DS geared people (my poor Warlock is mostly in normal-FL gear). Afraid of a poor showing, I sat up straight and prepared to do my best.
Throughout the dungeon, I found myself competing pretty aggressively. I was Soul-Swapping full piles of DoTs like my life depended on it, I was keeping every bursty button on cool-down, every time I could boost my numbers, I did, and when a pile of mobs gathered, I gleefully breathed Shadowflame, spammed seeds of Corruption. I won't deny the cackled that left me as the screen exploded with huge, bright yellow numbers everywhere.
At the end of the dungeon, we were all within 1% of each other in overall DPS and damage done, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself. It made me wonder about how much fun I have playing my DPS specs lately, as I don't tank very much anymore even on Innana and Retribution has become my most progressed set, so I've developed a very DPSey mindset. And of course, in a given raid, ranged DPS almost always seems to outperform Melee, or should be, and playing Affliction would give me a great deal of utility in terms of what I can offer the table.
While raiding in Cataclysm offers me absolutely no inspiration anymore, I do kind-of want to raid on my Warlock, if I could find a late Friday night group for some cross-server action or something. It would let me make up my mind about how much I really enjoy flinging spells all over the place. I have to say, having tried Affliction on Beta, it feels a bit more frantic. Malefic Grip seriously messes with DoT refresh timers and Haunt replacing Shadow Bolt from Nightfall procs constantly breaking the normal flow of the rotation while constantly being aware of Drain-twisting for when a bursty part is about to come up or during Execute phase, all makes for some pretty tense casting. There are a lot of things to track and Affliction was never the most straightforward of specs. But I think it's a very rewarding spec to play, there is almost no other spec in the game that feels as in touch with its in-character description as Affliction.
You are laying curses and afflictions and banes on your enemies and devouring them from the inside out. There is no question of what an Affliction Warlock does. Merricat is a twisted, dark woman with a warped mind and I sometimes feels that she thinks she doesn't control her actions anymore, that she has stepped too far into the Nether and when she came back, she wasn't completely herself anymore.
Through all this, Affliction remains the least flashy of the 3 specs. Demonology has some incredibly cool moves, and Destruction has always been about the fire and brimstone, but Affliction is the quiet art of killing by looking at you and suddenly that belly-ache turns into blood pouring out of your ears. So I guess I'm okay with it.
By contrast, Retribution has become almost elegantly simple. We build Holy Power from absolutely everything. Judgment? HP. Crusader Strike? HP. Exorcism?! HP. Have too much HP? Have some extra storage. Inquisition is all buffed? Just spam those endless streaks of Templar's Verdicts. But at the same time, because we're hitting Verdict so much more, it had to scale down in terms of the damage it does, and that is a serious bummer. It doesn't feel like we're building up this massive blow, it feel more like a lot of medium-sized blows whittling down the enemy rather than bringing an overwhelming righteous force down.
So, how do you choose? I'm hoping we have a "Well, what the hell class and spec ARE we playing next expansion?" conversation soon, and we'll go from there. But, knowing what our armor-class breakout is like (3 each of plate, cloth and leather) I suspect I'll be back to tanking and my brief affair with my Warlock will be a memory, we'll glance at each other occasionally in Stormwind, steal brief smoldering looks, wonder what-ifs, exchange unfortunate smiles, shrug at each other, hoping that the time between patches brings us together again, and then we'll both return to our jobs.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Long Time No See!
It's been a while since I wrote!
There are a couple of themes that are going around the blogs that I read lately that I'd love to respond to but I don't really know how to. Either I'm not affected by them as strongly as the writers, or I feel like what I have to say is so private that I'd either e-mail the person directly or maybe just silent because I don't know the person well enough.
It's an odd time. Raids are quietly falling silent, people don't log in anymore, guilds are falling out of the game, or scaling back their commitments and I kind of see myself doing the same to some degree, but I still enjoy the game. I'm excited about arenas and pushing my team ranking up. I'm excited for whenever we start doing Heroic raids. I'm excited to farm Madness for more loots as we have a fairly repeatable and reliable strategy for killing him now.
I am absolutely loving being a paladin tank lately. We are the most imbalanced and over powered tank class in the game right now and I love it!
And yet, the game seems distant lately. I don't exactly know why. Some of it is the content being old, some of it is the anticipation I have for MoP, I'd rather play MoP than drag my heels in Cataclysm any longer, honestly, and part of it is wondering if I'm missing something when I read about other people dropping the raiding game or the game completely in some cases.
Why do I keep playing, then? People are leaving, apparently in droves based on forum posts and such, for Star Wars, and while I have some dim interest in the game, it's not enough for me to keep up two subscriptions at the same time. I might wind up playing it to fill in time anyway, but I'm not excited about it.
I tried RIFT and was burned by barely playing the game until I canceled it three months in. LOTRO was the only other game I played consistently but it has changed a lot, and for the worse I think, since it went F2P and the audience it has picked up since then. I miss the quiet, mature audience it had before then even if the game was far more populated after the transition. I don't know how it is now, I haven't played it in a long time. Besides, there was no end-game there to speak of.
Anyway. I keep playing WoW because my friends are playing, because I'm enjoying the game, the raiding is great, the PvP is fun, but I guess I just wish I had something to do with my alts other than the same things I'm doing with my main. I don't know. Maybe I'm just... not burned out, exactly, but bored? I'm done with the leveling game. I love raiding, I love Arena, but the rest of the time I have to convince myself to log in.
MoP can't get here fast enough, or I'm going to have to play SW just to stay amused. Any SW guilds recruiting? :-P
There are a couple of themes that are going around the blogs that I read lately that I'd love to respond to but I don't really know how to. Either I'm not affected by them as strongly as the writers, or I feel like what I have to say is so private that I'd either e-mail the person directly or maybe just silent because I don't know the person well enough.
It's an odd time. Raids are quietly falling silent, people don't log in anymore, guilds are falling out of the game, or scaling back their commitments and I kind of see myself doing the same to some degree, but I still enjoy the game. I'm excited about arenas and pushing my team ranking up. I'm excited for whenever we start doing Heroic raids. I'm excited to farm Madness for more loots as we have a fairly repeatable and reliable strategy for killing him now.
I am absolutely loving being a paladin tank lately. We are the most imbalanced and over powered tank class in the game right now and I love it!
And yet, the game seems distant lately. I don't exactly know why. Some of it is the content being old, some of it is the anticipation I have for MoP, I'd rather play MoP than drag my heels in Cataclysm any longer, honestly, and part of it is wondering if I'm missing something when I read about other people dropping the raiding game or the game completely in some cases.
Why do I keep playing, then? People are leaving, apparently in droves based on forum posts and such, for Star Wars, and while I have some dim interest in the game, it's not enough for me to keep up two subscriptions at the same time. I might wind up playing it to fill in time anyway, but I'm not excited about it.
I tried RIFT and was burned by barely playing the game until I canceled it three months in. LOTRO was the only other game I played consistently but it has changed a lot, and for the worse I think, since it went F2P and the audience it has picked up since then. I miss the quiet, mature audience it had before then even if the game was far more populated after the transition. I don't know how it is now, I haven't played it in a long time. Besides, there was no end-game there to speak of.
Anyway. I keep playing WoW because my friends are playing, because I'm enjoying the game, the raiding is great, the PvP is fun, but I guess I just wish I had something to do with my alts other than the same things I'm doing with my main. I don't know. Maybe I'm just... not burned out, exactly, but bored? I'm done with the leveling game. I love raiding, I love Arena, but the rest of the time I have to convince myself to log in.
MoP can't get here fast enough, or I'm going to have to play SW just to stay amused. Any SW guilds recruiting? :-P
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Avatar Improvement
I swear I have like, 10 posts in draft that I can post, but whenever I go to retrieve one of them, I wind up with something new to write. Something is wrong here.
This is the first week in a long time that we didn't raid. Enough folks are missing that we just couldn't fill the holes. And I was kind of glad. On the one hand, I really want to kill Deathwing and be done with it. I think we just need one solid night on him to finish it all, but even just farming the rest of the raid would be a fun experience. I really enjoy smashing the first half and working hard on the second half. The raid is well paced, and well designed. I need at least my tier gloves and chest still, not to mention the shield and sword, and maybe a trinket and a ring.
But still, when we called it last night, before even entering the raid, I was glad. A few of us queued up for LFR and cleared the first half, and I called it a night an hour and a half early. It was odd, and nice, to just walk away rather than struggling to find people, messaging every I know and flailing like mad to make a raid happen. I just shrugged and said, "Okay." I wouldn't have done that even a month ago. I would have fought to raid.
I don't know if it's the Holiday that I'm willing to be more laid back about it, I don't know if it's the fact that our server has so many relatively hardcore raiding guilds that we're really just a tiny fish in a big lake, or the fact that maybe when I'm not raiding or doing Arenas, I really don't have much to do in the game. I keep trying to level my rogue, or get the rest of my alts up to 85 who're parked somewhere between 80 and 82, or gear up my DK Horde-side, but I just manage an hour or two of any of those activities and loose interest.
The one character I don't loose interest in, is my Paladin.
Whenever I look at her, I want to improve her gear, improve my understanding of her as a character, improve the way I play, push her achievement points into the five digits, get her all the pets and mounts I can, and make her perfect. Which, of course, is impossible.
The MMO by definition is a game that never ends, and goes on forever, where we just grind for gear, and achievements, and drops, and there is always just one more thing that we could use. I remember when TBC ended, I had been doing a bit of T5 and had some of that gear, but what I really wanted was the T4 helm from Prince. After killing him for months and months, he dropped it the last time we ever raided Karazhan at level, the week before Wrath came out.
I remember changing mains on the first day of Wrath to my Paladin (and never will I change again), and we were in ICC for a year and yet I was still hunting for one more drop or one more kill. Today, I look at my character and I know even after we kill Deathwing, we'll be raiding, wrapping up the T11/T12 heroics, grinding out Sinestra and Heroic Ragnaros, eventually even trying our luck with Heroic Deathwing.
But when Pandas come, it'll reset everything, won't it?
Maybe some part of me remembers what it was like to grind ICC. Two years ago, now, we started on that raid, and man, it was a brutal time. I remember how close I came to burnout, almost burned all my bridges, left the wreckage of two guilds in my wake before we formed the current guild and stabilized ourselves. And maybe that part of me doesn't want to slip into the desperate end-of-the-expansion must-finish-everything panic.
Sure, we've got months and months to go, but when I look at Innana without her title, without her mount, without her shield and sword, that part of me cringes, wants to post on the realm forums right now and get a PUG together so I can at least have a shot at some of that gear.
And another part of me says, "Relax. It's okay. If not this week, next week. The gear and the raid are here to stay. The only person you're playing against is yourself."
If that seems obvious, and normal, I assure you, it's a bit of an epiphany for me. Maybe it's a sign that I'm finally starting to let go of some of that hardcore edge I've always wanted.
To be in a group that was devoted to pushing through content, to grinding night after night, early in the tier, to be one of the first with the titles, the kills, the glory. To make Innana a Hero in her own right. The best gear. The highest gear rank. Because that way, I can get her as close to finished as I can - and rest, till the game paints more track further up the field.
This is the first week in a long time that we didn't raid. Enough folks are missing that we just couldn't fill the holes. And I was kind of glad. On the one hand, I really want to kill Deathwing and be done with it. I think we just need one solid night on him to finish it all, but even just farming the rest of the raid would be a fun experience. I really enjoy smashing the first half and working hard on the second half. The raid is well paced, and well designed. I need at least my tier gloves and chest still, not to mention the shield and sword, and maybe a trinket and a ring.
But still, when we called it last night, before even entering the raid, I was glad. A few of us queued up for LFR and cleared the first half, and I called it a night an hour and a half early. It was odd, and nice, to just walk away rather than struggling to find people, messaging every I know and flailing like mad to make a raid happen. I just shrugged and said, "Okay." I wouldn't have done that even a month ago. I would have fought to raid.
I don't know if it's the Holiday that I'm willing to be more laid back about it, I don't know if it's the fact that our server has so many relatively hardcore raiding guilds that we're really just a tiny fish in a big lake, or the fact that maybe when I'm not raiding or doing Arenas, I really don't have much to do in the game. I keep trying to level my rogue, or get the rest of my alts up to 85 who're parked somewhere between 80 and 82, or gear up my DK Horde-side, but I just manage an hour or two of any of those activities and loose interest.
The one character I don't loose interest in, is my Paladin.
Whenever I look at her, I want to improve her gear, improve my understanding of her as a character, improve the way I play, push her achievement points into the five digits, get her all the pets and mounts I can, and make her perfect. Which, of course, is impossible.
The MMO by definition is a game that never ends, and goes on forever, where we just grind for gear, and achievements, and drops, and there is always just one more thing that we could use. I remember when TBC ended, I had been doing a bit of T5 and had some of that gear, but what I really wanted was the T4 helm from Prince. After killing him for months and months, he dropped it the last time we ever raided Karazhan at level, the week before Wrath came out.
I remember changing mains on the first day of Wrath to my Paladin (and never will I change again), and we were in ICC for a year and yet I was still hunting for one more drop or one more kill. Today, I look at my character and I know even after we kill Deathwing, we'll be raiding, wrapping up the T11/T12 heroics, grinding out Sinestra and Heroic Ragnaros, eventually even trying our luck with Heroic Deathwing.
But when Pandas come, it'll reset everything, won't it?
Maybe some part of me remembers what it was like to grind ICC. Two years ago, now, we started on that raid, and man, it was a brutal time. I remember how close I came to burnout, almost burned all my bridges, left the wreckage of two guilds in my wake before we formed the current guild and stabilized ourselves. And maybe that part of me doesn't want to slip into the desperate end-of-the-expansion must-finish-everything panic.
Sure, we've got months and months to go, but when I look at Innana without her title, without her mount, without her shield and sword, that part of me cringes, wants to post on the realm forums right now and get a PUG together so I can at least have a shot at some of that gear.
And another part of me says, "Relax. It's okay. If not this week, next week. The gear and the raid are here to stay. The only person you're playing against is yourself."
If that seems obvious, and normal, I assure you, it's a bit of an epiphany for me. Maybe it's a sign that I'm finally starting to let go of some of that hardcore edge I've always wanted.
To be in a group that was devoted to pushing through content, to grinding night after night, early in the tier, to be one of the first with the titles, the kills, the glory. To make Innana a Hero in her own right. The best gear. The highest gear rank. Because that way, I can get her as close to finished as I can - and rest, till the game paints more track further up the field.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Now what?
The nerf lists finally made an appearance today and man, they're taking the entire tier out at the knees. It's tremendously disappointing to me that we didn't clear Ragnaros, though things weren't helped by all the other crap that hit us in the meantime.
We lost our third healer two weeks ago and haven't had a third healer in that time other than our top DPS respecing to fill the slot really, really, really set us back. The last two weeks let us barely squeak past Domo on the second night let alone get 6-kill nights like I was expecting to after we cleared through Domo the first time and realized how simple things should be getting. Our third healer situation got so bad we wound up 2-healing Alysrazor just to make it go faster and it actually worked out just fine.
Though starting tonight I imagine it really won't be necessary to three-heal anything but maybe Baleroc, Beth'tilac and Domo. Or maybe we'll just do everything with three so that the night has that much allowance for mistakes...
I'll be frank, this has really taken the wind out of my sails. Even two weeks ago, I was dedicated to achievements, kills and getting a few hard-modes down before 4.3 but now it all feels worthless and pointless and I'm spending less and less time logging in or playing other games instead.
It's not even a hardcore/casuals thing honestly, it's a disappointment in myself and not achieving the goal I set out for myself a few weeks ago. A lot of my guildies seem to see this as me being upset with them, or with their performance, or me being critical of them, or of our server ranking, or whatever else, but it has nothing to do with any of that.
I'm disappointed that I wasn't able to achieve what I wanted to in the game, and now I'm looking at months of farming nerfed content with Heroic Ragnaros being the exception, and he's the other end of the pendulum in terms of difficulty - the Heroic Lich King of this tier that guilds will throw themselves at for months just to squeeze out that one kill.
A lot will depend on the raid tonight - if it feels like T11 and is just a faceroll as I'm expecting, then we'd better at least get Rag down, so I can, with my tail between my legs, go into Heroics next week and never look back.
But right now, I don't know. I don't know. Raiding is why I play this game. If I don't enjoy the one raid left to me, why am I logging in?
We lost our third healer two weeks ago and haven't had a third healer in that time other than our top DPS respecing to fill the slot really, really, really set us back. The last two weeks let us barely squeak past Domo on the second night let alone get 6-kill nights like I was expecting to after we cleared through Domo the first time and realized how simple things should be getting. Our third healer situation got so bad we wound up 2-healing Alysrazor just to make it go faster and it actually worked out just fine.
Though starting tonight I imagine it really won't be necessary to three-heal anything but maybe Baleroc, Beth'tilac and Domo. Or maybe we'll just do everything with three so that the night has that much allowance for mistakes...
I'll be frank, this has really taken the wind out of my sails. Even two weeks ago, I was dedicated to achievements, kills and getting a few hard-modes down before 4.3 but now it all feels worthless and pointless and I'm spending less and less time logging in or playing other games instead.
It's not even a hardcore/casuals thing honestly, it's a disappointment in myself and not achieving the goal I set out for myself a few weeks ago. A lot of my guildies seem to see this as me being upset with them, or with their performance, or me being critical of them, or of our server ranking, or whatever else, but it has nothing to do with any of that.
I'm disappointed that I wasn't able to achieve what I wanted to in the game, and now I'm looking at months of farming nerfed content with Heroic Ragnaros being the exception, and he's the other end of the pendulum in terms of difficulty - the Heroic Lich King of this tier that guilds will throw themselves at for months just to squeeze out that one kill.
A lot will depend on the raid tonight - if it feels like T11 and is just a faceroll as I'm expecting, then we'd better at least get Rag down, so I can, with my tail between my legs, go into Heroics next week and never look back.
But right now, I don't know. I don't know. Raiding is why I play this game. If I don't enjoy the one raid left to me, why am I logging in?
Friday, August 12, 2011
PuG Blues
Man, this is the longest gap I've taken from writing in some time. Mostly because I've been kind of glum in game as raids haven't been very engaging - not that I don't want to raid, but our raid group has been having some trouble gathering up and actually raiding and it's starting to wear on me.
I feel like we're just in this hanging phase, where all we need are a couple of good, solid, three-day weeks to push through to Ragnaros. This is exactly what it was like when we were on Nefarian - except that was one bsoss and here we have an entire raid to learn. Our core is kicking ass as usual, it's the last couple of slots that worry me. We've been picking up people, and if I look at the roster, there are 21 people who could conceivably raid... and yet I'm PuGing at least one slot every week.
There are a lot of things that happen when you have to bring in someone new.
1. You have to let your entire raid comp adjust to this new person, personality wise. We're a nerdy, smart, funny, laid-back group and we've had people join who immediately began poking, poking, poking at someone's performance, I think jokingly, and it got to be an issue. While I'm trying to figure out DPS distribution, I don't want us to be distracted by people management.
2. Things are just going to take longer. Even if they've done everything, they might not just gather up scorpions to AoE and then move out as stacks grow. Maybe they kill Shannox a completely different way, or they're used to being on the top with Beth'tilac and don't know how to manage adds on the bottom. Or worse, they don't know the fight at all and now the raid is sitting there for five minutes while you explain their role to them and suffer wipes while this person gets up to par. We're not to a point in Firelands where we can just cruise through a boss with a person down. And there is nothing worse - nothing worse - than explaining complicated things to one person while eight other people sit on their hands doing nothing.
3. The rest of your raid suffers from having to adjust around this person. Maybe you're moving people's roles around, maybe someone is playing an off-spec, and you go through all of the above with your own people. Admittedly this is less onerous, but it is still an issue where the alt-spec gear might not be up to par, or the person might be rusty or less adept with that spec, and you're wasting more time getting them used to the fight in a different role.
4. You have no reliability. The person might just have joined to get the sword from Shannox and then drops group right after the boss dies. Or they were in your raid because their own guild benched them, but suddenly asked them to swap in as one of their members left. Or maybe they forgot that they had another obligation and when you said "10 server" they thought you meant "10'o clock their time" which is an hour after you started. Sorry. And now you're stuck a boss or two in with no hope of finding someone to come into a locked instance.
5. The night is shorter because of it. You might have wasted time at the start of raid finding someone and by the time you zoned in it was 15 - 20 minutes past your start time. Now you're pulling, and explaining at the same time, and maybe someone gets confused typing or talking and half your raid just got punted off the ledge. Or you wiped. Or even if you get to the boss quickly, instead of just pulling, you're sitting there explaining again. Now it's 50 minutes after raid time was supposed to start and you do your first pull on Shannox. At this rate, you're looking at no progression work at all, and by the time Beth'tilac dies your raid is so shot and grumbly from relearning downed fights, that you might as well go see if your faction has BH just so you can come back in tomorrow with fresh brains. And you better hope like hell someone will show up tomorrow to fill that PuG slot because your odds are slim that they'll show up again.
6. You have absolutely no way to separate the good from bad. This is probably the worst problem. You can look at their armory, you can look at their gear, you can look at prior raid experience, you can even check the dates of their achievements on kills to make sure they killed Nefarian when he was far more difficult - but all of that won't guarantee a good player. Maybe they were carried through, maybe it's their girlfriend's account, maybe they're having a bad night or swapped spec because you needed a DPS and they went Shadow just to step in and haven't actually played Shadow in months. That vetting you did, checking their amazing gear, raid experience and availability for length of time just went to crap and you might not even realize it until you get to a boss.
All of that said, I'm just grateful to those who PuG with us for two things.
1. I've met some of my favorite raiders through PuGing. Three members of my core right now are people who responded to my "LF1M" calls on LFG. That's what keeps me PuGing - knowing that there are amazing people out there, looking for a chance to raid, and every time I PuG with someone, I don't know if they're going to be the next core member of my raid group.
2. I do get to go into Firelands and kill things. This is started to feel a lot like late summer from last year when we were literally begging for people to get a raid, any raid, off the ground. And other guilds are struggling far more than we are just to get started. So the fact that these PuGs let us raid and kill things is enough to make me very grateful for them.
What makes this worse is that I actually quite like Firelands and would love to get to work on it with a good, consistent team. I am enjoying these raids so much, both T11 and T12 have been fantastic raids to work on.
But. The patch is relatively young still and if our record is anything to go by, I think we'll clear the normal modes and at least a couple of hard modes before 4.3 drops, though our progression rate might move at the pace of our guild's namesake.
I hope you're having some luck out there! And if you're looking to raid, poke that link.
I feel like we're just in this hanging phase, where all we need are a couple of good, solid, three-day weeks to push through to Ragnaros. This is exactly what it was like when we were on Nefarian - except that was one bsoss and here we have an entire raid to learn. Our core is kicking ass as usual, it's the last couple of slots that worry me. We've been picking up people, and if I look at the roster, there are 21 people who could conceivably raid... and yet I'm PuGing at least one slot every week.
There are a lot of things that happen when you have to bring in someone new.
1. You have to let your entire raid comp adjust to this new person, personality wise. We're a nerdy, smart, funny, laid-back group and we've had people join who immediately began poking, poking, poking at someone's performance, I think jokingly, and it got to be an issue. While I'm trying to figure out DPS distribution, I don't want us to be distracted by people management.
2. Things are just going to take longer. Even if they've done everything, they might not just gather up scorpions to AoE and then move out as stacks grow. Maybe they kill Shannox a completely different way, or they're used to being on the top with Beth'tilac and don't know how to manage adds on the bottom. Or worse, they don't know the fight at all and now the raid is sitting there for five minutes while you explain their role to them and suffer wipes while this person gets up to par. We're not to a point in Firelands where we can just cruise through a boss with a person down. And there is nothing worse - nothing worse - than explaining complicated things to one person while eight other people sit on their hands doing nothing.
3. The rest of your raid suffers from having to adjust around this person. Maybe you're moving people's roles around, maybe someone is playing an off-spec, and you go through all of the above with your own people. Admittedly this is less onerous, but it is still an issue where the alt-spec gear might not be up to par, or the person might be rusty or less adept with that spec, and you're wasting more time getting them used to the fight in a different role.
4. You have no reliability. The person might just have joined to get the sword from Shannox and then drops group right after the boss dies. Or they were in your raid because their own guild benched them, but suddenly asked them to swap in as one of their members left. Or maybe they forgot that they had another obligation and when you said "10 server" they thought you meant "10'o clock their time" which is an hour after you started. Sorry. And now you're stuck a boss or two in with no hope of finding someone to come into a locked instance.
5. The night is shorter because of it. You might have wasted time at the start of raid finding someone and by the time you zoned in it was 15 - 20 minutes past your start time. Now you're pulling, and explaining at the same time, and maybe someone gets confused typing or talking and half your raid just got punted off the ledge. Or you wiped. Or even if you get to the boss quickly, instead of just pulling, you're sitting there explaining again. Now it's 50 minutes after raid time was supposed to start and you do your first pull on Shannox. At this rate, you're looking at no progression work at all, and by the time Beth'tilac dies your raid is so shot and grumbly from relearning downed fights, that you might as well go see if your faction has BH just so you can come back in tomorrow with fresh brains. And you better hope like hell someone will show up tomorrow to fill that PuG slot because your odds are slim that they'll show up again.
6. You have absolutely no way to separate the good from bad. This is probably the worst problem. You can look at their armory, you can look at their gear, you can look at prior raid experience, you can even check the dates of their achievements on kills to make sure they killed Nefarian when he was far more difficult - but all of that won't guarantee a good player. Maybe they were carried through, maybe it's their girlfriend's account, maybe they're having a bad night or swapped spec because you needed a DPS and they went Shadow just to step in and haven't actually played Shadow in months. That vetting you did, checking their amazing gear, raid experience and availability for length of time just went to crap and you might not even realize it until you get to a boss.
All of that said, I'm just grateful to those who PuG with us for two things.
1. I've met some of my favorite raiders through PuGing. Three members of my core right now are people who responded to my "LF1M" calls on LFG. That's what keeps me PuGing - knowing that there are amazing people out there, looking for a chance to raid, and every time I PuG with someone, I don't know if they're going to be the next core member of my raid group.
2. I do get to go into Firelands and kill things. This is started to feel a lot like late summer from last year when we were literally begging for people to get a raid, any raid, off the ground. And other guilds are struggling far more than we are just to get started. So the fact that these PuGs let us raid and kill things is enough to make me very grateful for them.
What makes this worse is that I actually quite like Firelands and would love to get to work on it with a good, consistent team. I am enjoying these raids so much, both T11 and T12 have been fantastic raids to work on.
But. The patch is relatively young still and if our record is anything to go by, I think we'll clear the normal modes and at least a couple of hard modes before 4.3 drops, though our progression rate might move at the pace of our guild's namesake.
I hope you're having some luck out there! And if you're looking to raid, poke that link.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
H. R. is my least favorite R.
I haven't been talking about raiding much lately because I haven't been able to do much raiding (well, real raiding, which is Firelands) lately. When 4.2 dropped, we went in to Firelands the first two weeks and had a lot of trouble. One of our healers was severely under geared and we had a lot of trouble keeping the raid alive.
This week, we decided we'd go do some hard-mode/T11 clearing for some gear and upgrades and then go back into Firelands for the second night, and then the roster issues rose up again. Next week I'm on vacation and that means the earliest chance I'll have to see Firelands again is 7/26. Which is not a pleasant thought. It's not that I'm trying to compete with the guilds on my server - most of them have pushed forward fairly quickly and many congratulations to them, however, it's frustrating to be side-lined.
Last night we wound up PuGging to go clear some raid achievements because hey, 2 missing raiders means I don't want to wipe for hours on Shannox, so we cleared all of T11 (which, BTW, seems easier than Zandalari these days) and Halfus on Heroic.
Our roster is growing more stable, slowly, one person by one person. We picked up one semi-regular friend from another guild which is super-awesome, and last night, yet another PuG who was raiding with us last night wanted to join after the night ended, and I hope his attendance will be stable.
Right now a third - solid, geared, aware, and reliable - healer or tank would make life a lot easier. That's the big gap in our roster right now. My co-tank has swapped to healing and one of our top DPS has taken to tanking, but I miss her epic DPS (though she's a fine tank as well) and their off-spec gear sets are not as well-tuned to these roles as their main-spec sets are, naturally.
There are maybe three or four other raiders who are on the roster, and they are all awesome and I would love to see them attend consistently, but their real-life obligations make them hit-and-miss and I can understand that, and they know that if I do find stable positions they would become bench-warmers, but these HR problems continue to crop up, and I hear about it even from the very top-end guilds on my server who never used to have a problem with their rosters.
I'm wondering if I'm noticing it so much because of the smaller size of our guild (before we formed Turtles, we were in fairly large guilds with many people and often had folks to step in to fill raid (even if they were sometimes less than ideal, which is a completely separate issue)). Or is this a Cataclysm issue? Is there just a lot of burnout with Cataclysm in general? I don't know.
There is also the time factor. I do think that the new encounters are just, plain, harder, and the biggest resource they require to clear is not gear (though it helps) but time to practice and learn. So many guilds are doing at least three nights, and often four hours per night. We're doing six hours a week, total. I can't help but stare at that fact and wonder if it's a factor in our stalling progress.
Solving HR problems is the hardest thing for me - thankfully my GM is amazing at recruitment and when we find good people PuGing with us, she is relentless at getting them to accept a Guild Invitation. I don't know how anyone can resist her pursuit. It's like the adds on Maloriak casting Fixate - she just doesn't let go until you say yes! The problem is finding good people who are reliable.
Anyway. This post is just a ball of QQ and I didn't intend for it to be that - I'm trying to remain optimistic and it was actually a pretty fun night to kick back, crack a beer and just steamroll T11 while picking up achievements and yak with friends. Isn't that what raiding is supposed to be about, anyway?
Next week, I'm off to Cape Cod at a beach house with my wife and baby, so the only thing I'll be raiding is the Oyster bar. Lots of yummy, briny Oysters to shuck and slurp, while reading lots of books and dreaming of Dagon sleeping off the coast of New England.
You guys have fun, and I'll see you when I get back, unless I get inspired and write from vacation-land.
This week, we decided we'd go do some hard-mode/T11 clearing for some gear and upgrades and then go back into Firelands for the second night, and then the roster issues rose up again. Next week I'm on vacation and that means the earliest chance I'll have to see Firelands again is 7/26. Which is not a pleasant thought. It's not that I'm trying to compete with the guilds on my server - most of them have pushed forward fairly quickly and many congratulations to them, however, it's frustrating to be side-lined.
Last night we wound up PuGging to go clear some raid achievements because hey, 2 missing raiders means I don't want to wipe for hours on Shannox, so we cleared all of T11 (which, BTW, seems easier than Zandalari these days) and Halfus on Heroic.
Our roster is growing more stable, slowly, one person by one person. We picked up one semi-regular friend from another guild which is super-awesome, and last night, yet another PuG who was raiding with us last night wanted to join after the night ended, and I hope his attendance will be stable.
Right now a third - solid, geared, aware, and reliable - healer or tank would make life a lot easier. That's the big gap in our roster right now. My co-tank has swapped to healing and one of our top DPS has taken to tanking, but I miss her epic DPS (though she's a fine tank as well) and their off-spec gear sets are not as well-tuned to these roles as their main-spec sets are, naturally.
There are maybe three or four other raiders who are on the roster, and they are all awesome and I would love to see them attend consistently, but their real-life obligations make them hit-and-miss and I can understand that, and they know that if I do find stable positions they would become bench-warmers, but these HR problems continue to crop up, and I hear about it even from the very top-end guilds on my server who never used to have a problem with their rosters.
I'm wondering if I'm noticing it so much because of the smaller size of our guild (before we formed Turtles, we were in fairly large guilds with many people and often had folks to step in to fill raid (even if they were sometimes less than ideal, which is a completely separate issue)). Or is this a Cataclysm issue? Is there just a lot of burnout with Cataclysm in general? I don't know.
There is also the time factor. I do think that the new encounters are just, plain, harder, and the biggest resource they require to clear is not gear (though it helps) but time to practice and learn. So many guilds are doing at least three nights, and often four hours per night. We're doing six hours a week, total. I can't help but stare at that fact and wonder if it's a factor in our stalling progress.
Solving HR problems is the hardest thing for me - thankfully my GM is amazing at recruitment and when we find good people PuGing with us, she is relentless at getting them to accept a Guild Invitation. I don't know how anyone can resist her pursuit. It's like the adds on Maloriak casting Fixate - she just doesn't let go until you say yes! The problem is finding good people who are reliable.
Anyway. This post is just a ball of QQ and I didn't intend for it to be that - I'm trying to remain optimistic and it was actually a pretty fun night to kick back, crack a beer and just steamroll T11 while picking up achievements and yak with friends. Isn't that what raiding is supposed to be about, anyway?
Next week, I'm off to Cape Cod at a beach house with my wife and baby, so the only thing I'll be raiding is the Oyster bar. Lots of yummy, briny Oysters to shuck and slurp, while reading lots of books and dreaming of Dagon sleeping off the coast of New England.
You guys have fun, and I'll see you when I get back, unless I get inspired and write from vacation-land.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Exhausted
I went through this last year after we killed the Lich King and it's happened again now, where a lot of folks are just done with raiding and nobody logs in. It is so frustrating to deal with this kind of thing after working so hard, and it's not like I haven't set expectations - everyone knows I wanted to progress into heroics but this week has seen a steep, steep drop-off in attendance. 40 - 50% of the raid just didn't show up. And I'm left scratching my head.
Am I doing something wrong?
Am I doing something wrong?
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
HOW TO: Nefarian
This is part 9 of a series where I'll cover the way my guild does all the normal-mode encounters on the 10 person difficulty in the current raiding tier. I'll cover the fights in general but also talk specifically about tanking from a paladin perspective and give any hints I can about how we assign DPS and healing.
This is a very Paladin-tank specific view, and you'll excuse me for that, I hope.
This is a very Paladin-tank specific view, and you'll excuse me for that, I hope.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Time In Game
I had originally planned to write about all kinds of productive stuff, like the guides I've been putting together for raids or my recently discovered love for my Warlock or something else that is good, but the last week has been just difficult in game. And I should probably not post this but I keep going over it in my head so I don't want to sit on it and hope that writing about it in public will help me sort it out.
This kind of emotion only comes up when we talk about our Guilds of course, and that's what I'm going on about. Our raids are doing well and I'm very happy with them. I love my raid team, I love the people who show up week after week, we have a great time talking and killing bosses, Tuesday and Wednesday nights are fantastic. But then, the guild just dies.
This kind of emotion only comes up when we talk about our Guilds of course, and that's what I'm going on about. Our raids are doing well and I'm very happy with them. I love my raid team, I love the people who show up week after week, we have a great time talking and killing bosses, Tuesday and Wednesday nights are fantastic. But then, the guild just dies.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Burnout
It's funny how fast things can go from being okay to just total crap.
This week's raids have been the worst in months. Struggling to get even simple bosses down, and just a total lack of communication until I have to ask the same question eight times to get answers from people. The kind of nights you just want to end. And then after an hour of trying to pull things together, someone's connection craps out and you just want to log out and never log in again.
So I called raid, and told everyone I was canceling raids for next week as well. We'll regroup on the 15th - with whoever doesn't leave the guild by then - and see how things go from there. I'm also going to just not log in during this time and try to focus on other stuff. I have a lot of writing on my plate anyway.
This week's raids have been the worst in months. Struggling to get even simple bosses down, and just a total lack of communication until I have to ask the same question eight times to get answers from people. The kind of nights you just want to end. And then after an hour of trying to pull things together, someone's connection craps out and you just want to log out and never log in again.
So I called raid, and told everyone I was canceling raids for next week as well. We'll regroup on the 15th - with whoever doesn't leave the guild by then - and see how things go from there. I'm also going to just not log in during this time and try to focus on other stuff. I have a lot of writing on my plate anyway.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Stalled
I really wanted to talk about useful things like loot lists to start tanking Heroics with or easily accessible Ret gear from questing, but instead, I'm going to whine about my situation.
Things aren't going so hot with my guild. It hasn't helped that with how long Wrath ran, we lost a few of the really long-term members just to attrition. A rogue who needed a few weeks break just vanished completely. One of the core healers took a break for the summer and found real life instead. Another healer moved on to another guild while a fourth took a break and has no intentions of coming back. More DPS has walked through that revolving door than I can remember at this point, and the small, tiny core of about seven people that we've held together for the last few months is getting ready to raid and I find myself in the exact same spot I was in back in March when this guild started - with a small core and only PuG options to move forward and I feel like I'm solving the same organizational problems when I would have thought this would be when my work at keeping the guild together, motivated, and progressing would start paying dividends.
It's utterly frustrating.
One of the problems is that about half our members are in other guilds that are their first priority. Maybe I should've filtered those folks out, maybe I shouldn't have, I don't know, I enjoy raiding with them, but at this point, we've become a guild where people put their raiding alts and then go play in their real guilds.
The thing is, I know once we start raiding, filling in spots will not be hard. Historically, it takes people one or two runs with us to want to join up, and it's pretty gratifying when that happens, but I feel like I keep hiring mercenaries and of course, it keeps from any guild culture from evolving because really people only log on to raid and it gets difficult to do things like PvP nights or whatever.
I'd like to build guild culture, I'd like to have some stability so I can focus more on enjoying the game and not on solving the same problem over and over and over again. Either that, or I'm doing something horrifically wrong and I should just give up trying to run a guild and find some existing guild to join that fits my schedule where I can sit in the back and be Paladin #63b.
Ugh.
Things aren't going so hot with my guild. It hasn't helped that with how long Wrath ran, we lost a few of the really long-term members just to attrition. A rogue who needed a few weeks break just vanished completely. One of the core healers took a break for the summer and found real life instead. Another healer moved on to another guild while a fourth took a break and has no intentions of coming back. More DPS has walked through that revolving door than I can remember at this point, and the small, tiny core of about seven people that we've held together for the last few months is getting ready to raid and I find myself in the exact same spot I was in back in March when this guild started - with a small core and only PuG options to move forward and I feel like I'm solving the same organizational problems when I would have thought this would be when my work at keeping the guild together, motivated, and progressing would start paying dividends.
It's utterly frustrating.
One of the problems is that about half our members are in other guilds that are their first priority. Maybe I should've filtered those folks out, maybe I shouldn't have, I don't know, I enjoy raiding with them, but at this point, we've become a guild where people put their raiding alts and then go play in their real guilds.
The thing is, I know once we start raiding, filling in spots will not be hard. Historically, it takes people one or two runs with us to want to join up, and it's pretty gratifying when that happens, but I feel like I keep hiring mercenaries and of course, it keeps from any guild culture from evolving because really people only log on to raid and it gets difficult to do things like PvP nights or whatever.
I'd like to build guild culture, I'd like to have some stability so I can focus more on enjoying the game and not on solving the same problem over and over and over again. Either that, or I'm doing something horrifically wrong and I should just give up trying to run a guild and find some existing guild to join that fits my schedule where I can sit in the back and be Paladin #63b.
Ugh.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Reason For Lack Of Posts
My drop-off in posting is directly tied to a drop-off to my time in game! Often I log in and then my toon just sits around doing nothing. I've even begun missing raids here and there, and often, I have to take an AFK while the raid continues clearing trash without me.
It's quite shameful and I'm expecting to be fired from my lofty position as a Raid Lead any minute, now.
And there is someone directly responsible. And it's this guy:
My little son! He was born on October 7th and has become a giant distraction from gaming and blogging. This was the little project I referred to a little while ago in a post as to why I might not be posting or playing as much in the near future.
He hasn't figured out what class to roll yet, though based on the insane level of energy, excitement, movement, physical ambition and strength he displays on a regular basis, I'd say he's going for a Fury Warrior. He spends all day in Berserker Stance anyway.
What a betrayal! Doesn't he know his dad plays a Paladin? For shame!
It's quite shameful and I'm expecting to be fired from my lofty position as a Raid Lead any minute, now.
And there is someone directly responsible. And it's this guy:
My little son! He was born on October 7th and has become a giant distraction from gaming and blogging. This was the little project I referred to a little while ago in a post as to why I might not be posting or playing as much in the near future.
He hasn't figured out what class to roll yet, though based on the insane level of energy, excitement, movement, physical ambition and strength he displays on a regular basis, I'd say he's going for a Fury Warrior. He spends all day in Berserker Stance anyway.
What a betrayal! Doesn't he know his dad plays a Paladin? For shame!
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