The Gear Race

My Warlock m8 has been playing more intensively lately now his GF is hooked on the game aswell, she's still leveling somewhere while he is getting ready for the raiding game he used to be in aswell. On monday he had one of his first raids with great succes (but i've told about that earlier).
So what do you do when you get new items? You want to tell people about it... your Girlfriend, your Parents, your collegues, your cat... whoever is willing to listen. I'm lucky enough to have Gf who can appreciate wow-related stories as she plays herself but i'm not taking the chance to be riddiculed by others for being too enthousiastic about this game anymore, loads of people simply don't get it. (snif)
People who game can often relate but besides my Warlock m8, my GF and my brother in law i have little people to share my WoW passion with.
This warlock m8 of mine does however... one of his collegues is a wow-player aswell, Horde however and on a different server (same battlegroup ^^) but he's doing Karazhan with his guild aswell so can share stories with my m8 who is fairly new to Kara aswell.
This collegue is a warrior (protection just as my alt) so my mate showed him my profile to show the gear i got and what items i received last raid. Occording to my m8 he was quite interested in all the good items i already had and he was still after, perhaps even a little bit jealous.
And then he mentioned to him this better geared Warrior was actually an alt.... thats one way to get someone down i suppose.

That's just the way it is in this game; there are (almost) always people who have better stuff then you. It's no race and as there is no finish it's not important how fast you go but how great your journey is. But if someone even outgears you with an alt doesn't it make you feel like you've been lapped?

Boost me SSC kk?

The title may seem a bit far fetched but there is actually a bit of truth in it... we are clearing Serpentshrine Cavern at the moment and our latest achievement was Fantom-lord Karathress (btw; Kara is short fot Karazhan btw, not Karathress... stop confusing me). We didn't take a shot at the next boss yet; Leotheras the Blind which was the last boss standing in between us and the endboss Lady Vashj. The problem is you need a lock with a nice ammount of Fire resistance gear to tank one of the phases, the lock who was saving up on this gear and a new job suddenly and doesn't have much time at the moment.. so we need a different lock to get ready but that can take a while as loads of Heroic badges are required.

Yesterday a new Tank joined us from a guild a bit higher on the progress list as us (things aren't going so well there atm), despite the number of noob wipes we had with him on an earlier run.. guess he either has confidance we don't do that on regular basis ór likes the positive (and somewhat twisted) mood we have going in our guild.
He managed to borrow a full Firegear lock so we could try out Leo, completed with some extra tips on how to do him.
Both the lock as the advice seemed to help alot and we managed yesterday to take Leotheras down on our very first night doing him, on our 3rd attempt on him actually. Now i look at it the fight aint actually that hard and alot more forgiving then most encounters, the only tricky part is the inner demon spawn which only you can kill... and if you don't manage within 30seconds you get Mindcontrolled for 10minutes, ouch!
I took the fun role upon me to nuke those who switched sides :P
Later i found out you didn't get any durability loss this way so it's not a bad way to die either. (yes i lost from my demon aswell >.>, was trying to nuke a 18k health tank down when the demon spawned... the combination was a bit more then i could handle as i was surprised and i was a single shot short)

Not sure if our new tank really liked the way we handled things or if he was just trying to make us feel more comfortable but he expected to down Vashj by next week. (might be a bit over optimistic but i agree she should go down quite soon now)
Anyway him and his m8 (which was actually a RL girl... pretty rare to find in raidguilds, we only have 2 ourselves) helped us out alot and hopefully we can get us a proper equipped lock soon to keep this sucker on farm.
A nice boost i'd say... hope they didn't mind the repairs too much. :)

Lootwhores R Us

It's was time for Karazhan again and while things looked grim at first we suddenly had enough healers, mainly thanks to one alt switching to his main Paladin.
So were off to the Curator, the damage check in the instance. Sadly enough with a second Protection warrior on DPS and quite an ammount of alts it seemed we weren't quite ready for him yet. Two wipes later we swapped out a few people and we were able to kill him the first try.
[Wrynn Dynasty Greaves] dropped which were a nice upgrade for me and the T4 Gloves which went to my Warlock m8 who we're trying to gear up for SSC and beyond.

We moved on to chess as we wanted to do Prince first and besides some deaths due to being overconfident we got there reasonable quick. Chess first which was quite easy as usual and the chest had a Healing shield which went to a Resto Shaman (the Paladin passed on them after winning) and [King's Defender] which again was one of the things i was after. The other protection warrior we swapped out for the Curator had logged off and gone to bed when i wanted to get him back in after killing it. This ment there wasn't any competition so i was the lucky warrior here. :P

Next up was the Prince, we swapped in a few mains who still required loot and i would get a shot at tanking the Last Boss in Karazhan (altho some say Nightbane is the real last one). I didn't see shit which such a big boss in front of me and wall behind me so i just did what i had to do; minimize damage taken, maximaze threat and reposition according to what i heared on Teamspeak. I couldn't believe how fast it seems to go if you are just focused on staying alive and not looking at that health slowly going while dps'ing.... we 1 shotted and i lived :)
Would like to say it was a great achievement but it's nothing more then keeping Shield Block up (so i didn't get crushed), use the debuffs, keep Commanding Shout up and use the rest of the rage for maximum threat generation.
I forgot to ask if people had to hold back which happens often when i need to dps myself but while i was quite a bit ahead most of the time i expect i did good on that aswell.
Two out of three items went to my Warlock m8 which was one of the main purposses for me that run anyway.

The night was young and i had to choose another target; either Illhoof, Shade, Netherspite or Nightbane.
As we did Illhoof and Shade last week and didn't do Nightbane in a long time (some were along especially for him each run again) we went for the Dead Dragon.
Luckily for me we had a Dranei Priest along who had Fearward, he had to switch out of shadowform all of the time but as we one-shotted it even tho 3 of our people died i guess it was worth it.
[Panzar'Thar Breastplate] dropped and both me and a different warrior alt rolled, i won the roll which kinda made me feel bad. But as the other warrior was Arms and this was clearly a protection chest i went to me... i'm still not sure if he was joking on the roll or not as i said: Roll need for [Panzar'Thar Breastplate] (Lootwhores only :P ). The other item was a healing stave which went to Holy Priest alt, the entire run only produced 1 shard and i got to tank two new bosses which just leaves Netherspite on the list. (Omg.. i should make a list!)

Let me add to this one saying that it is very very hard to lead a raid when you are maintanking. I can't often see anything around me when up close to a boss or i need to spam buttons to maximise threat and/or minimize damage taken. Sure i could decide on who to rotate in our out and where we would go next but during action pressing the press-to-talk button with my pinky could be quite tricky.
Luckily most people know exactly what to do by now, even on mispulls and with relative new classes... about half of the group were still alts.

Funny thing just yesterday i posted something about getting some loot and then nothing for weeks, i might have that on my alt aswell for a while now aswell... eventho it was a rollraid. But what worries the most is the 6 new gems i need and 3 pricy enchants... ouch.

A view on DKP

Dragon Kill Points or more commonly refered to as DKP, it's a virtual kind of cash often provided by your guild for attending raids or killing raidbosses. The name has it's origin in a different MMORPG actually, can't tell you which as Wow is my first but i've heared the name Everquest being mentioned before.

You spend real time and get virtual points in return of which you can buy virtual items (if you are lucky enough that the item you need/want drops). The more time you spend on raids and events, the more DKP you get and the more points you will get in return.
There are various variations on the DKP-system (some systems reward only for time, others for kills or item drops or even some wacko combination.. our system seems to evolve all the time) but in about every system goes; the one with the most DKP has the best chance to get an item. I say chance as not all systems are as easy as "the highest gets the item" there are also bidsystems, with aswell open as hidden biddings.
It's not always called DKP either, my previous guild called it ELP for Earned Loot Points but whatever you call it, it's still virtual "money" for virtual items.

The question here is; do you get out of the game what you put into it? You raid weeks and weeks and then get a shiny new Epic, then it starts over (most likely not being the highest in the list anymore... if you weren't just pickup up a leftover already). Weeks and weeks will go by once again untill you get that next Epic and your life is a little more complete. (yeah riiight, who am i fooling? :P )
Or perhaps you are "lucky" and get a couple of items in a row, only to fall to the bottom of the list and will have to wait even longer, maybe even a couple of months? The best way to shorten this period time is to attend as much raids as possible, that way you won't fall behind on your fellow guildmates and get a fair shot at the loot.
So even if you sick (either in RL or about the instance) you're gonna show and pay the hefty price for pots and repairs, not to mention time which could have been spend better somewhere else. I'm not exactly cheering anyone up here am i? But when looked at through this dark shades thats pretty much how i see it... until i'm gonna swap to the pink goggles later on.
I hated to mis a raid myself as this would get me out of pace with the rest and i wanted to have a fair shot at loot and stay on top of my game but then i bought me a new house and me and my GF missed out on 2 months of raiding and missing out on a shitload worth of DKP.
Since then i'm not that worried if i'm missing a raid due to RL happenings, i don't even try to move appointments to non-raidnights all of the time. Chances i catch up any time soon aint too big anyway and any loot i get will often be scraps left by others and picking up those scraps will keep me nicely at the bottom.
I kind of let go of the obsession and stopped DKP running my life and i have been enjoying both RL as Raids much more as i'm really raiding for the fun of it not for the purplezz.

Now when comparing raiding to pvp i wonder if this still in balance. This weekend it was Alterac Valley bonus weekend which resulted in about 500honor per run, which takes about 30-40minutes. I'm after a shield myself which is worth 17k honor. It would take me 34 runs to get the right amount of honor for this, which is about 18-20 hours of raiding. So in 4 nights of doing AV i get a nice shiny epic, could easily get this in a weekend aswell when i have time during the day.
If i would spend my time on pvp instead of pve i would get at least an epic each week ánd without paying that absurd ammount of gold on repairs or pots. Sadly enough, pvp is boring... at least for me it is. And having a victory with a bunch of people you don't know is just not much fun, it just means you get more marks. What keeps me going back is the extra fun of raiding and the people in our raid.
Maybe pvp rewards aint in balance to pve rewards but for me the scale still tips to pve, despite of that damned DKP ;)

Unexpected Events

Last Friday i had a drink with some colleages from work so i was late for the raid, quite late actually. When i finally came online it seemed i wasn't the only one who was late and the 25man raid got canceled :( Our RL wouldnt be his true self if didn't at least tried to get a Karazhan run for a few people to get their last needed items (some items don't seem to drop ever unless you ain't there, it's one of those non-removable, invissible curses). When i came online i noticed a few alts in the raid aswell, normally we don't do that but they were obviously lacking certain classes.
I felt quite of sad as this would mean those alts were saved and the alt run that sunday and the following monday would be canceled.
They were just before Maiden at that point and my GF was their MT but she was just there to help and would gladly give up her spot.. so she asked the RL if i could replace her. As my warrior's gear is improving nicely (and i aint playing too bad either ) i didn't mind.
So where i was afraid i would miss out on the Kara raid i was suddenly playing MT again a few days earlier and i even got a new necklace. [Barbed Choker of Discipline] We had some dps problems later on so we couldn't finish it, hoping to do so tonight.

The next unexpected event in this series came from 5-mans; i was joining a pug with my m8 to get him some gear to one of the few instances i could get some gear aswell (for my tank), luck was on my side and it actually dropped for me.
The day after we finally managed to get a group to finish a pile of group quests in Shadowmoon Valley, giving me another tank-upgrade i was after. I'm at 521 defense at the moment which i'm going to gymp soon as i'm gonna get me a pvp shield as soon as season 1 gear becomes available to buy with regular honor.
My m8 did get two caster rings, not the drops we hoped for but better then nothing.

The final unexpected event this weekend was a more unpleasent one; we were running Serpentshrine Caverns and things were pretty much going okay. We had quite a few noobish wipes from people going too close to where they shouldn't, a Hunter having a mispull (still not sure if it was me or my fellow Hunter who did the 2nd Misdirect), some people simply not paying enough attention or just simply bad luck. All and all we did good enough and after killing Morrogrim we had to swap some people for raidbalance. Our carebear RL was slow on his decission on who this should be and the rest of the officers (me included) didn't offer much usefull advice aswell.
One of the officers was getting frustrated with the delay and went nuts and caused quite a stir in the officerchannel, finally leaving the raid to "solve" the problem (which made it even worse and caused even more delay).
Shortly after he had a go at the Carebear Raidleader in the Guildchat which pissed me off with him even more, it ended in a "the whole world is crazy but me" situation as the rest of the officers didn't agree with him which pissed him off even more. I couldn't take it anymore so i put him on ignore which resulted in a much happier raid for me from that point on.
This guy probably has some problems in personal life or just stress from moving house (still stressed out from moving this summer myself so i can imagen) which made him explode so badly,.. i'm just gonna leave him to himself for now, let him cool off and gonna forget it if he is not gonna bring it up once he's back to his senses.

All and all more WoW ups then downs imo so i won't complain. :)

L2spell FFS

You play a Hunter and someone calls you a Huntard... cute joke but not for the 100th time. Recently a new guildy joined and tried to adress me as a Huntard... i made him very clear he shouldn't go that way, kinda joked about it but with a strict undertone and he got the drift. :)
When you call me a Huntard you are comparing me to those Hunters who love to use multi-shots when there are sheep, Hunters who keep using Aimed shot all of the time, Hunters who never seen an Icetrap unless a Frostmage would get aggro, Hunters who NEED huge two handed weapons with strength as they have to melee aswell. >.>
Those guys deserve the name on Huntard yes... i am NOT one of them and neither is any main Hunter in our guild.

But there are a lot more classnames or specs being raped like this; Nublock and Retardin spring to mind and there are a lot more out there most likely thought of by people alot more creative then me. Some are less insulting like Bubbleboy, Waterfountain or Dpsadin but one i simply do not get: Rouge.
Rogue is a colour, some make-up stuff or combined with Moulin if you are lucky enough... but what is the connection to a Rogue?
Did someone miss-spell and people found it so funny they started using it? Should i call the Mage's in our guild Mega's from now on or aint that funny and am i completely missing the point? (guess calling someone Mega is not insulting enough)
People spamming the trade with "LF Rouge SH" or often corrected, not just by Rogue's so it seems not just our stabby-stab friends are annoyed by this letter mix-up.

I must admit some words which are invented do actually help a lazy person like plz instead of please (altho i never use it when rly needing something), rly for really, idd for indeed, ty for thank you, lol for laughin out loud (i wonder how many people don't actually know where it stands for, just like rofl) not too even mention all those instance and zone shortcuts. (ok i will anyway: HH=Honor Hold, IF=IronForge, SV=Steam Vaults and who doesnt know MC, BWL, AQ from the good old days? )
Not exactly 1337 speak (which i'm not into but might make a cool blog later if i do look into it) but some people get quite lost due to those abbreviations, Wow requires its own dictionary at times.
Those who can speak the language can save themselves quite a few letters at time... rouge is not part of the accepted dictionary anyway.

Update: I found this fun leet-speek (abbreviation from Elite) translator which works both ways.
Should give a new method for spamming your guildchat. :P

One of those sloooooow nights

Yesterday we had an optional Karazhan run for mains and while quite a few were interested, we didnt have a single healer...
So no kara, which was probably for the best as the Tempest Keep run the night before ended at 24h30 and most of us could use an early night and some farming to get ready for the next raid..

I was up for a slow night, i didn't want to commit myself to a pug and i surely didn't feel like questing. Without a clue what to do i was hanging around Shattrah as i used to in IF aswell, i guess many have spend a Wow-night like that aswell.
When a guildy was looking for a group to kill the Headless Horseman (only here for Halloween) i offered my help... or more exactly my GF offered her help and told them i would come aswell. An hour or so went by as four of us waited to get ourselves a healer, my partymembers kept spamming the GuildChat but those online were happy to not replenish life for a change aswell.
We came across a Holy Paladin and we asked him if he was after [The Horseman's Helm] as we already two warriors in the group (not me, i already got it on my Warrior :P ). He said he wasn't but was demanding an inmediate invite if we needed him, my GF didnt like his attitude and didn't trust him so she told him nevermind, followed by a "I dont need your damned helmet!".. lovely chap.
Half an hour later still no healer so someone else in the party desided to give this guy a shot, i requested to put loot on ML just in case... worst thing that could happen is him wiping us then.
First thing he noticed when he joined was Masterlooter and asked us to take it off. "You don't trust us?" i asked him and he replied that none of us could be sure the current ML wasn't a ninja. I told him i trusted him 200% and any of us did so he had nothing to worry....
And the ML told him it was not gonna happen so he left the party (we didnt kick him btw), who knows what would have happened if we gave him his way.

Shortly after another Holy Pala was looking for a group, with loot still on ML and being desperate we gave him a shot.
He seemed a nice guy, unguilded with mostly Blue and Green loot.. whatever healing gear he could get with clashing colours looking like a Harijuku Girls. Luckily he did his job well and he got some rings for various specs so he was probably just as happy we teamed up, after we all used up our summon my GF walked away with the Helmet and the other warrior with the DPS ring, the mage had the nice caster ring and i had some time away from Shatt.
My Girlfriend suspected this guy was an alt so she asked him afterwards, she was right... this pala was the alt of someone playing at Sora which is the number one raiding guild on our server. Guess you never know what you might run into :)

I tried to kill the last 2 hours away from Wow for a change as i started up my Xbox360 and play some Half Life. But instead the xbox decided to kill itsself, big was the shock when i saw the Red Ring of Death (RROD)... quickly followed by a second wave when i realised i broke the seal on it and wouldnt be able to return it. Guess i'll have to do the towel trick and pray it will work. More hanging around in Shattrah for me i suppose, first my TV broke down and just before i get it back (this Friday) the xbox breaks down... think Blizzard has some ninja hackers running around trying to keep me in the World of Warcraft?

For who hasn't seen it yet: a quick demo on the Use-function on the Horseman's Helm: (it's more fun with sound on actually)

Where did the pugs go?

Is it just me or is it suddenly pretty hard finding a Pick Up Group these days? As i tank i got quite a few random invites a day but recently those ninja invites have almost come to a complete halt. When i was looking for a group the last few days the options were very limited... the few groups i managed to get often contained jerks or people who didn't have a clue how to correctly play along with others.
The one succesfull run i did was with 3/5 guildies with the last two spots random dps, which turned out to do alright... (1 was a bit in a hurry but managed to finish the instance without us changing our relexed pace)

On of my theories was that everyone is doing Heroics these days but i do wonder if all those noobs have evolved aswell or am i in for an even bigger heap of trouble once i get my Heroic keys?
Thanks to Blizzard most of us will get their keys soon as in patch 2.3 you can get the Heroic key at Honored instead of the current Revered.
I'm quite happy myself as there is not much gear i require from regular instances so i do the runs purely for reputation, which is often not worth the hassle some pugs give you.
When getting the Heroic keys it seems more likely i get into pugs with better skilled and geared people as even raiders will be after a certain ammount of Heroic Badges, even more hopefully with the new items on the Heroic vendor in 2.3. (Even tho Karazhan and Zul'aman will drop badges too, luckily doing the new Heroic dailies which gives 2 badges in reward will tempt people to still do 5-man Heroics in the future)

Blizzard is proud on the fact that so many guilds are doing Karazhan, it is supposed the most popular instance at this moment even over the 5-mans. In the past when you didn't have an MC raiding capable guild there wasn't much left to do besides the 5-mans, nowadays the servers (at least mine) is crowded with small raiding guilds, 10men are alot easier to gather then 40 ofcourse... so i suppose more people actually get a chance at raiding, thus not pug'ing much.
To answer my own question, people are likely doing a combination or raiding and heroic 5-mans, the latter as pugs aswell.
Which leaves the alts and the casual (and likely the noobs) to the regular 5-mans...
So if i don't get my Heroic keys before 2.3 i will at least have some better chances getting some pug-action after that.

My boss C.V.

I'm in a good mood again... yesterday we had a Alt Karazhan raid and there was actually a spot for me.
At first i was a bit worried as there were a view mains along (mains have priority over alts) and there was a tank amongst them aswell. This tank was dps untill somewhere last week but he managed to get some nice tankgear during the raids.
If we both would need items he would have priority on it but that didnt matter to me, i like tanking and on most pulls and bosses the offtanks job is pretty boring. Luckily for me the Raidleader decided i was the man for the job as the other guy wasn't experienced enough yet, even tho he had slightly better gear then i did.
Perhaps he could have used the practise but as an OT there is probably plenty to learn still when you haven't been a tank for longer then a week.

I've been working on threat rotations again and i've become better in using the most effective threat skills. As i was MT1 people nuked my target first and even without a Hunters Misdirect they would start right after the pull, not waiting for 3 sunders as we did pre-TBC.
I'm pretty proud to say i managed to stay ahead of the DPS... i think my taunt button felt left out that day, the Raidleader whispered me and complimented me on my TPS (Threat per second) which surprised me anyone noticed. Too be honest i dont think i can improve threat much more with my current threat cycle.. i really need some upgrades for that. I was hoping to get the tank sword from the chess chest for that, i was "unlucky" but did get [Battlescar Boots]. Kind of a shame i recently got the [Veteran's Plate Greaves] Veteran's Plate Greaves but the extra defense on it will be usefull as i expect to replace some gear soon with gear with less defense and i still need to have 490 to stay uncrittable.

So far i managed to tank all the bosses in Karazhan with the exception if Netherspite, Nightbane and the Prince. I "had" to give up my spot for some dps yesterday who was a Main and still needed some Prince loot. As we only needed 1 tank the logical choice was keeping the other tank in who was a Main aswell and still needed loot aswell... shame because i wanted to give him a try, would have looked good on my CV :P

Tonight it's time for some more serious stuff. As we killed 4/6 bosses in SSC and still need to equip one of our locks with the needed FR gear to take on nr 5 before we can attempt Lady Vashj, we are likely be stepping foot in TK again. We haven't had much time in there, VoidReaver has been downed quite a few times but we didn't try many other... just Val'ar a couple of times on which we made good progress,
This is actually one of the better looking bosses and quite a fun event imho, certainly for the tanks as it requires a bit of movement which is a welcome change from their often static tankjob.
Most guilds kill VoidReaver first (or LootReaver as some call him) and pass underneath Val'ar which is a burning Phoenix circeling high in the room, this boss seemed a lot more interesting then most others i'd seen in SSC.
Perhaps we manage to take it down tonight if we get the right people together, i just pray his gun won't drop as it is better then i have but it's sooooo damn ugly.

The end is near?

Different people get different things out of World of Warcraft.. some people like to mindlessly grind, others like to alt, many are in it for the social thing and quite a bunch are enjoying the raiding part. For me the goals have often switched arround a bit.
When i was still leveling (pre-TBC) i was always looking forward to that next level where i got new skills and would become even stronger. My long term goal was being the best Hunter possible (as disgussed before). I got my fun out of Wow doing 5mans with my friends and later i would really enjoy going to MC with my guild.
This shifted to BWL and when i was tired of that i loved to do MC again with my Warrior alt. Zul'Gurub was also somewhere on this list, first with my main, later with some alts.
Time went by and Karazhan became the new obsession. While the mains moved on to SSC and TK it was time for my alt to visit Karazhan (as a more frequent reader of my blog will know)

So where do i get my current fix? SSC? TK?... well actually, in Karazhan. For some reason neither SSC as TK do much for me, not sure if it's the ambience, the creatures or the bosses.. it's just missing something.
What keeps me playing Wow atm? Strangely enough it's being able to do Karazhan with my alt Tank.
Not only does the instance appeal to me but also the change of pace, playing a different character for a change. Most of the week i look forward to Kara which we do on the Monday and now and then on the Sunday during the day aswell.
During most of the other days i prepare for this, grinding mats to get myself new gear crafted, pvping for again gear, instances for rep so i can get the factionrewards, that sort of stuff.

Yesterday we actually got a great group together. The last few weeks we had to deal with people who were after a few fast epics for their alt which resulted in an undergeared raid as most didnt take much effort putting good gems and enchants on their gear. Last week was the ultimate down, i had again managed toget myself better gear during the week and was ready to test them out in Kara... but loads of the people which showed had put less effort in it. We even figured we couldnt get past Moroes which was the truth at the end, we only managed to kill the Huntsman :(
I was happy to see people did prepare this time and we even had people too many. How frustrated i was i got outrolled on a spot after spending all that time and money on my gear and whiping on previous runs with underequipped people.... i lost the roll fair and square but i did feel cheated someway. Most of the bosses they killed didnt even drop (or had chance to drop) gear i could have used, it was mostly because i really enjoy doing that instance on my tanktoon and now was looking forward to a day of boredom.

Just the day before that i finally managed to get a pug at the end of the day for a regular run (everyone doing Heroics nowadays or what?) and this moonkin kept nuking the mobs before i even had one sunder on it (often before it even reached me) which was quite frustrating as i had to blow my taunt right at the start so i often don't have that emergency button ready. When the mage missed his sheep and i decided to tank it, as most mobs were dead anyway and i could easily tank the last 2, he decided to say "stop breaking my sheep ffs"... i didnt even bother with saying "stop sheeping my mob ffs" and typed: "I really don't like people saying ffs to me....", left the party and i hearted out.
Think the message was clear as they didnt even bother to whisper.
The rest of the evening i stood in Shattrah, bored to bits and nothing to do... but i didn't have the courage to find yet another pug.

When i didnt get a spot in Karazhan and looked forward to yet another boring day i was starting to think: Why exactly do i play this game anyway? At the moment i enjoy doing Kara but besides that i'm just filling my time untill the next Kara raid. (altho raiding on my main has it's moments aswell ofcourse) If the most fun i have is in Karazhan on my tank, am i not doing something wrong?
Shouldnt i find a Karazhan raidgroup who actually needs a tank? Ofcourse this would be a short term fix as this will go boring aswell and what then? The next option i might have is Zul'Aman which would require a raidgroup with at least full Karazhan gear, rather better then that.
My current guild is up for that so i guess i just bite my lip and wait till 2.3 arrives, hoping to be able to make my tank usefull in Karazhan now and then untill then.
Or maybe there is simply a limit to the number of raids a person can do before quiting Wow... time will tell once again.

The Girly Tank

Like i said in my previous post (had too much inspiration today :P ) we went to Serpentshrine Caverns yesterday.
First boss we encountered was Hydross which requires two main tanks; one in full Nature Gear, the other one in Frost.
I guess like in most guilds there are one or two main tanks who often get the more difficult jobs.. and after a while they are the most experienced so the most likely choice.
Yesterday our Tank with Frost gear wasnt online, the one tank who had the required ammount of Frost resistance was my girlfriend. (she had chosen Frost as it was the prettiest set ^.^ )
She does her very best and pays a lot of attention to her gear but before Wow the most complex game she played was probably Patience.
So she doesnt have quite the reflexes of a born and raised gamer, she's one of those turn-key tanks out there but makes up for this with her enthousiasm and sparkling personality. (she's kind of the guilds mascotte i suppose)

Hydross is a tricky pull, we had many wipes before our regular tank had the pull right and requires some fast action and positioning... and i think our regular tank is quite skilled, more then my GF too be honest.
And yesterday she had to do that... the tricky pull, the pull which even our regular tank fucks up now and then. He even uses swiftness pots to make this go smoother, a lot of click-a-dy-click in a short period of time required.
I was worried when our Girly tank ran in but to my suprise it was the smoothest pull i ever seen! And on the very first attempt ever... the Nature tank even had to explain her before we started on how things exactly worked. But there it was, out of the blue: a perfect pull!
Hydross barely moved at all.
Sure some of us had to take care not to overaggro as her threat generation is slightly lower but besides that transistions and all went perfectly fine. She did great and i was relieved as proud that she did it so well. Even the Raidleader complimented her many times which surely boosted her ego. :)

We got lucky in the end tho as someone did actually overaggro and made Hydross run off. Our Girly tank had to start running after him but it started jumping from one dps to the other as she couldnt build up any more threat and dps kept nuking.
Instead of just standing still and paying the bill for overaggro'ing they walked backwards... starting the next phase early.
Luckily the other tank was quick to grab it so Hydross wouldnt step back again and start again a new phase, which would have resulted in 8 adds instead of 4 to grab for the offtanks, would have been very tricky.
Hydross down first ever try for our Girly tank anyway :D

Argh Crap Legit!

The first time i saw a guild with the name "Argh Crap Legit" i didnt quite get it.. not being English and all. I suppose it's like when seeing a word or sentence (instead of actually reading it) and your brain regonizes the words or at least i thinks it does. Someone says something and you glance over it and then you think "WHAT did he just say there?" and then you read back and it's not something dirty afterall (aaawww...).
I was reading this guildname like something as Argh Cramp Leggings (where crap=tight as Krap is dutch for too tight/small), so i thought someone was just complaining about his pants... didnt make much sense to me either :P
Only later i found out i had to read leg it instead of seeing it as one word.... aaah!

Anywayssss, enough of my previous mistakes, let's focus on a new one... a Leg it moment :)
Yesterday i was back in Serpentshrine Caverns after missing out a couple of times. Either me or my fellow Hunter officer devides Misdirection assignements (altho the Hunters do it on their own when neither of us is there aswell) and we have not a set puller.
If the tank you are assigned to needs to tank the next mob, you pull it.
And there our story begins... i was dozing off a bit, checking out our forums on my second screen until my colleague poked me to pull my tanks mob. I quickly ran forward as i had no idea how long people had been waiting and just when i popped Misdirect on the tank, the mob turned around and walked away. I was still out of range so ran after him and by the time i was in range he was awfully close to this pack of mobs which caused the next dilemma: To pull or not to pull? I pulled alot of mobs, often been the puller in various instances from MC to Karazhan and even SSC and TK... so my guts said to me "They are to close Exa, don't do it!". But the Misdirect buff was already ticking and if i missed i would have to wait for it to be ready again.. causing a delay for the whole raid. Hmmmmmm.... so i pulled.... and wiped us. I felt my head turning red and was very annoyed with myself. One of those moments i'd rather just HS and log out, what a dumbass taking a chance like that. I confessed and appologized to the raid and they didnt give me any grief for it, that's the way things go in our guild. (/hug)

After a couple of minutes everyone was rezzed and buffed and the Raidleader spammed his "Pull please" macro. I ran forward to the mob, Misdirected the tank and just at that point the mob turned around and i ran after it to get in range. Starting to sound familiar?
This time i didnt pull however... a quick "Doh!" on Teamspeak caused some laughter and relief from the other side of my headphones.
So i did it the old fashion way when the mob returned, a simple shot on it and then legit back to the tank... hoping he didn't have a noob-moment like i did. :)

Deathknight spree

Nyhm made this great movie a while ago about a possible deathknight spree where he announced a spree of Deathknights in the next expansion. While he ment it funny there is a true core in his story as he certainly knows aswell.
But i'm not exactly worried about the DK's running around Shattrah or Northrend myself... i'm more worried what happens in my own little world: our guild.

I'm pretty sure some people will be trying out the new class, probably most will somewhere after or halfway leveling their main.. but there are already people not happy with their class and wanting to mainswitch as soon as the expansion hits us, not even checking out the new zone on their current main. This might seriously unbalance the raidforce we have, altho a new class will likely already make this happen.
Going on without a DK is not possible as Blizzard will make sure we need them in the new instances, there is little doubt about that.
So there is another fine task for the officers in the guild; how to prevent too many people switching to DK?
Not only will people switching to DK result in an overdose of tankingclasses (currently we have prot-warriors, feral-druids and prot-pala's fighting over the few tankspots in a raid, soon DK will join that fight) but also mainchanging will leave a gap and possible a shortage of other "old" classes.
I know for at least two people in our guild who want to become a deathknight and a third might be interested in doing so aswell. The funny thing (altho i can't seem to laugh about it) is those three are currently Paladins.. is that really such a bad class to play? o.O
For your information two are Holy and one is Ret so it's not just a matter of being sick of being a healing bitch.

It is still a long time before we see the next expension so perhaps things will be completely different by then, perhaps those people won't even be playing by then ór we have a healer abbundance and we will be happy to see them mainswitch... who can tell.
Still i have this nagging feeling about the whole situation which is often not without a good reason, let's hope my guts are just messed up this time from some bad Chinese i ate 3 months ago

I'm a Racist... sorta

I am a Night Elf Hunter, at least my main is.. which is one of two possible races for that class when playing Alliance untill recently.
And while Horde says: All NE Hunters are 12 year old kids, i have met many NE's who werent.
I admit finding a good Hunter out there is hard as i found out myself once again recently when taking applies from Hunters for our guild. Often i'm done in just a few minutes and direct them to tkasomething.com and tell them to go gather a bit more knowledge before appying to the next guild. The armory is a great tool to quickly indentify the bad hunters, while i have a chat with someone i often am already checking out their gear, talents and rep on my second screen. Just last week i had a Hunter with Strength gems in his gloves, not even achieving the gem-bonus by doing this >.>
When i ask people to tell me what their shotrotation looks like is another tool to cut these interviews short... nuff said; i met my share of Hunter-noobs both NE as Dwarves.

But for some reason when i see a Dorf Hunter running around on their short legs.. followed by a pet which could easily fit his master in his belly, i get an akward feeling. Like seeing a 99 year old Granny racing around in a Red Convertible Sportscar or a heavy muscled female bodybuilder, something just aint right!
For some reason i have a hard time not losing my respect for a person when they play a dorf Hunter. Loads of other classes playing dwarves i have no problem with but Hunters...?!? I don't know why, some Dorf Hunter in the past must have ruined it for the rest of them or something.

I like to read BRK's blog now and then, i don't agree with everything he says (as i am a self thinking Hunter myself :P) but it's obvious he tries his very best to get to the depths of his class and does his best to be the best possible Hunter. I respect him for that as much as i respect the other main Hunters (all NE's) in my guild for paying effort, time and money to constantly improve their play.. but at the same time i need to surpress the negative feelings i get when checking him out in a few of his recent video's where his small legs are carying his out of proportions body around. All dwarves have this problem i know but where most classes are often static, dwarven Hunters tend to move around alot... even worse when they use Aspect of the Cheetah.

I know this feeling is totaly unfitting and just recently i met another Dwarven Hunter who is eager to learn and often asks me the ins and outs of Hunterness. This info is not spend on deaf ears either as i see him improving all the time and with some gear improvement i'm sure he could quite keep up with the rest of the Hunters in our guild (the dwarf i'm talking about is an alt).
Perhaps he doesnt know all the tricks yet or missing some experience which a Hunter who's been playing since the retail does have, but he's better then majority of the Hunters i've met so far.
So this Hunter is slowly turning this racist... it might take a while but i'll get there ;-)

No Pay, No Gai-n

Yesterday it was time for the Karazhan Alt-run which is was looking forward to all week (more then SSC and TK actually surprising enough).
I'm taking my alt quite serious, i'm even sticking him in Epic gear and working my ass off (aka getting my ass ganked) getting some nice pvp gear.
Our raid started at 20h30 and i had a major headache, but since i was looking forward to this, wanted to try out the new gear i had and didnt want to let others down i took an hour nap, hopefully to feel better by the time we got moving. My GF waked me up as invites had started and i dragged my throbbing head towards the screen. And there i was, in a unbalanced raid (4 warriors, 3 priests) with various people who didnt bother to enchant their gear or had crappy green gems. From the start we knew we couldnt get this bunch past Moroes which would be quite disappointing after last weeks result... but at least my head was happy with this.
The Huntsman went down pretty smooth but Moroes was a bigger problem as DPS was too low and the healers ran dry before we got the boss down several times. After 4 tries we decided to call it and it was time for me to revisit that bed of mine, a disappointing raid i must say.
In the officerchat i vented my feelings: "Call me a jerk but if people come this ill-equiped again next raid, they better have a backup tank!"
"i couldnt agree more :-)" a fellow officer who was along replied.
A 3rd officer stepped in and tried to piss us off with "2 jerks then".... upon which i replied "just trying to make you feel at home m8 ;)" (old skool quotes ftw)
Hopefully we have better luck next week.. we did make a statement there i think when we told people they need to invest first before they can reap the rewards.

In meantime i've found a new goal for my warrior. While i first planned to get exalted with the Sha'tar to get the shiled i changed plans this morning... i was browsing the net again for Wow related news and found this this article where they confirmed what i expected longer: Season 1 Arena rewards will be buyable soon with regular honor and tokens. As it is on the PTR at the moment we can expect this in patch 2.3. Altho it may take quite a while before it goes live, at least we can start grinding already.
I made my wishlist already:

[Gladiator's Shield Wall] for 15000 honor and 20xEotS tokens.
[Slicer] for 9000 honor and 20xEotS tokens.
Besides that i was looking for some other gear to replace my current blues;
[the chestpiece], [the helm], [the shoulders] and [the leggings]. I have to take care i'm not gimping other usefull stats as Defense, Dodge, Block and Parry by doing so.. so it is likely i can only choose one of these items to replace my tank-blues.
Perhaps i should get myself a big phat brutal weapon to make pvp'ing less frustrating... or even better; a nice OH as my current tank-spec improves damage from one handers by 10%.
Sooo much to do, so little time.

The Adventures of Prot-man!

For my Alt warrior i had my eye on some pvp boots: [Veteran's Plate Greaves]. I was gonna use them as Tank boots but as my previous boots didnt have any stats like defense on it i would only gain when getting these.
Simply said i gained 375 armor and 16 stamina, aswell as gaining some crit (not a very usefull stat for a tank but it won't hurt me) and resilience.
Resilience is actually not a bad stat to have for a tank as it reduces the chance to get critical hit (both by spells as physical) and reduces the damage taken from crits, it also dampens the damage taken from dots.
While defense already reduces the chance to get crit by physical hits (490 for level 73 mobs), it doesnt do anything for spelldamage.
So why not forget about Defense at all and just get to the sweetspot stacking resilience? Well, defense does some other things aswell: it also increased the chance you will be missed or block, parry or dodge an attack.. in the end it's better to avoid some damage at all then just soaking non-crit damage.

My conclusion (as flawed as it may be as i am still a beginner tank) is to forget about resilience, anything i get by chance is nice to have but it has a very low priority. A tank will mostly use it for limiting spelldamage crits and damage from dots which is not the majority of the damage we take... regular spelldamage hits will still ignore our full armour anyway and won't be reduced by resilience, better get some more stamina to create a bigger buffer for my healingbuddies.

But back to the item, i already gathered some honor a while back and still had 10k. I needed 7k more tho to get those boots and 40 Eye of whatsitsname. I can tell you getting honor as a protection warrior is a real pain, i even felt guilty showing up as protection on not contributing much but on the other hand most people were running around like headless chickens anyway so a noob more or less didnt hurt.
34 matches later i managed to get the 40 tokens and a lot of frustration... but then i could at least move on to Alterac Valley.
In it's current form AV aint that much fun but at least it's pretty fast and gives a reasonable amount of honor. More importantly i can really do some good in there for a change, often i end up tanking the various masters and in the end Drek, which actually puts a smile on my face as people will at least see me standing there making a change.
Saturdaynight 2 o'clock i got payed and i was off to Stormwind to get my reward after a looong day getting my ass kicked and giving the horde easy honor.... and all was well. :)

Real life raid

Yesterday we had a little meet-up with a bunch of Dutch Guildies (we are an international guild actually) at my place.
It actually was my GF's idea which invited them and most of them didnt had other arrangements and told us they would come.
So this Sunday my livingroom was filled with 9 people who didn't had much more in common then an online game... and boy did we have fun!
They met at our place at 13h and till late in the evening (last one left at 24h30) we did nothing else then eat (thanks to my GF testing out the new kitchen once again), drink and talk about thé game.
Stories about ingame assholes, the guild, raidtactics, noob things we did, wishlists, specs, jokes, frustrations.. we could easily make this a weekly session without getting bored with it anytime soon.
How much fun it is to talk about your addiction freely and tell stories and jokes which are understood by someone who's not on the other side of a screen... we had quite a laugh and i'm pretty sure the neighbours know aswell. (and no.. we were all sober!)

We laughed our heads off when thinking about our Raidleader who was a bit frustrated we planned this get together on a raidnight.. obviously there weren't many other options then doing this on a Sunday but he was quite worried what to do with that many people not showing.
Nine people aint that much to miss but when we found out we had 6 of the regular healers amongst us (guess Dutch are more of the caring types?) we figured we probably killed that nights raid.
We were giggling like little girls when we thought of the plan to log in one by one on my PC and ask the Raidleader for an invite followed by a "relog, brb"... ow how happy the little Gnome would have been with us logging in only to be the more frustrated when we would never return.
To not piss of other guildies aswell we never followed through on this plan but the idea alone for good for yet another laugh.

A couple of the Dutch Guildies i had seen once or twice before on a previous get together but still we were relative strangers you would say, but it was a busy chatter with not a single akward silence... like we had a meet up with a bunch of old mates. Probably in some way these people have become just that: friends.... you've playing with them for a couple of months or even years and while you often don't know their real names you do know some of the ingame history of those people, like you were around when they grew up and became part of their legacy.

I'm running dry!

I never had this problem in the past but i'm running out of gold faster then a Korean guy can spam his gold-sell macro's... Repairs are a real bitch while trying to learn new encounters and the needed pots aint exactly cheap either.
My warrior alt is a Herbalist so i try to pick most herbs myself but still have to pay 30g for a crappy Fel Lotus, what the hell is up with that? Can't Blizzard upgrade the droprate of these bastard veggies a bit?

So how much does a raidnight cost me?
Repairs: 30g
2 Hour Flask: 31g
Arrows: 8g
I'm not counting the time i need for picking the remaining pots or grinding for food here, just the plain costs per raidnight. Some nights i have more repairs, some less.. will likely average on simething like this. But thats 69gold a night!
You have any idea how many dailies i'd have to do to just keep raiding? 6 dailies don't seem like much but i have to do this every raidday just to be able to keep raiding... and i rly hate doing the same boring quest over and over again, screw that rep! >.>

Maybe i shouldn't have spend that AH alt's money on that purple helm i made for my warrior, but he has a craving for Epix aswell... so now i have to start the grinding game like all the other big spenders out there i guess. /roll

On a lighter note; i was AFK'ing all of the time during yesterdays raid so i stepped out on backup at the start as i was afraid that was gonna happen. (Still some chours in the house and with the weather getting colder outside it was about time we got some windowscreens and curtains in the livingroom ;-) ) Anyway the raid started on Hydross which they 1-shotted and same did happen to Lurker. By the time i got back to the keyboard they were heading to Morogrimm and it was still damn early so it wouldnt surprise me if he went down aswell.
Good to see the guild making good raidprogress again after the summerbreak hit us that hard.

Attunement... done!

Yesterday i helped a reallife friend get his Karazhan attunement. He was out of the running for a while because the dating scene but now his GF moved in with him ánd has her own account, he's back for the raiding game!
So it's time for him to try to catch up and get geared asap for raiding as so far he only got the T4 shoulders which he actually managed to get at level 69 as we were a lock short for the High King. But now Kara is open to him aswell, hopefully he will get some luck getting some loot.

But this attunement thing can be quite a pain, as it wasn't enough hassle to get my main attunemend.. i also "had" to attune my alt. As i finaly was attuned for Serpentshrine Caverns they scratched the need for that one, ah well.
Luckily getting my m8 attuned wasnt that hard as i could bring my warrior which made getting groups alot easier. Also BM was never so easy, our mage was bored to death dealing with those adds as they went down as fast as kids on a busted pinãta.
My girlfriend was along on her Hunter alt aswell which was freshly Beastmaster specced just 10minutes before that, after i hooked her up with a shotrotation macro she did at least 3x more dps then before... not even taking her pet in account.
(had no damagemeters but threatmeters showed she was cleary trying to get mobs pissed instead of scratching their itch like on a previous run)

There are some rumours about this whole attunement thing by the way, it's been said that if one toon gets attuned for a certain instance... all his/her other toons get attuned aswell! Now that would save us alot of trouble, i'm sure people dreaded the idea of doing the whole Marshall Windsor thing for their alt aswell. (even did it on 3 of my toons and helped various guildies, the horror!)
Not sure if this would count for keys aswell but i assume it would, besides perhaps the Heroic keys.
While some people feel people should do those attunement quests on alts aswell to learn the class properly, does those chains actually try to teach you something you didnt learn while doing any random other quest or instance runs? I think not.
My alt will likely never see Mount Hyjal (which is the next needed attunement) but for the next expansion "Wrath of the Lich King" there will likely be Kara-like instances which require attunements and are good targets for an alt, implenting this "attune-all" method would surely be nice :)

Fill in the gaps

We've recently started using Wow-raidar to organize our raids... that’s one thing the standard WoW UI is lacking in, a simple tool to sign up for raids or something. We used to use an addon called calendar but we had synch problems, resulting in some having a certain raid in the calendar while others planned something else.
This was mostly sorted by setting our raids on set dates but still we didn’t know in advance if we would have enough >fill in class here<'s, making it pretty hard to determine our raidtarget of that night in advance.. not much use doing Magtheridon if you have just 3 "tanks" online for example.

So we started using Wow Raidar, it's still being heavily developed and could still use a few more functions (and will get those hopefully soon-ish) but it's a good step in the right direction. People can sign up (once registered to site and guild) and the Raidleader(s) can then draft the needed people. Order of signing up is displayed as well so you can actually endorse signing up fast.
On nights we have too many people we filter people who didn’t bother to sign up and showed anyway, as long as class balance permits it of course. ;)

Ow how i remember the days in my previous guild where 60 people would show for a 40man raid, being a Raidleader back then was quite a nightmare... the worst part of the whole evening. I would try to select the right people depending on the raidtarget (needed classes but also better geared people for harder targets), but also try to give new people a chance or those who i had to leave out before.
More then once i got heavy shit and being a RL of 39 others already put me in quite a tellhell so that was something you really couldn’t use.
One person decided to make a case out of it and filed a sort of complain to both me and the TC (Set of Officers who took care of problems), a couple of messages later back and forth i actually got an apology and deep respect from that person as he didnt notice until i explained to him just how much work a Raidleader had to do and how hard it was to pick the right people in a fair but balanced way.
And i respected he dared to admit he was wrong, or at least ill informed. ;)

This aint the only example i have on issues like this.. i've been accused of many unfair things as people didnt agree on who i picked while i always tried to do it in the best way possible. I just hope a tool like wow-raidar can limit problems like this a bit as it puts part of the responsability back on the raider.

Dodge THIS!

Yesterday was another Karazhan alt-run but this time it was started on Sunday so the Huntsman and Moroes were already down. As i had just one hour time on Sunday i tanked Huntsman and then had to leave for a social event. Due to lack of replacements they had to call it after 1 try on Maiden so that was where we continued yesterday.
To my suprise we one shotted here, previous weeks the healers had problems keeping me up.. but i guess the gear of both Healers as my own has increased, besides that people are slowly learning the tricks of their new class i guess.
Most of us never raided with their alts, let alone with the new bag of tricks we got offered at 61+. I myself was lucky enough to have tanked a bit in both MC and BWL on alt runs pre-TBC and when an other guild needed some help.
Nothing shocking tho... some MC bosses (those who didnt require resistance gear) . The best i did was probably Vaelstraz in BWL (apart from trash) where i was 4th in line (but as most of thosepeople didnt use KTM i ended up 2nd most of the time, as an arms warrior at that time).

Needless to say i'm still learning, but we managed to get our alts up to Aran (which we did not kill yet as we only had time for 2 tries) so i got to tank Romelo&Julianne and Curator yesterday aswell as 2 Arcane guardians because i was the only tank.
One of the things i found out was that Crushing blows make a healer's job quite difficult. I had to keep shieldblock up so i would get alot higher avoidance rate which is basicly a combination of mob miss chance, dodge, parry and block chance.
When i was browsing the net for more information on that i found the macro below.
Get HolyShield or Shieldblock up and then use this macro, the percentage being mentioned should be above 102,8%.

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combined avoidance. Currently at:",0.8,0.8,1)
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5+
(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)*150/355+20)*0.04,1,0.5,0)

Again i have gained some extra knowledge how to play my alt's class to the best potential... sometimes i have the idea i do more effort playing my alt correctly then most people do for their mains, quite sad when you think of it. (but am i the sad one or the "slacking" main? :p )
Still i have plenty to learn, i've read about threatrotations and even know how they work, it's just pretty hard to keep to those rotations in the midst of a fight where you have to check if other people got their mob under controll aswell... or maybe it's just me wanting to keep an eye on everything.
One thing that helps me while doing this in Intervene (small sidestep) which is basicly the Tanks charge which is only useable in defensive stance and even catches the next blow of the targeted mob (assuming he's targeting a friendly).
I made this brilliant macro which i bound to the F-key, depending on stance it uses Charge, Intervene or Intercept (even dismounts if needed) and it makes movement while tanking so much faster. Will share this with you later if you're interested.

Ok enough of this tanking mumbo jumbo... back to work now, chop chop!

Nonsense

Bah.. i'm taking another day off at blogging, it's not like this is a highly visited blog anyway. I tried to advertise it a bit, swapped some links with other bloggers (altho all but one never put their link up in the end and i don't want to be a winy little bitch so i'm probably just gonna take their link down in return) and added my blog to a couple of search engines.
For some reason visits have it's ups and downs but in the end its just a handfull... at least, if i trust my sitemeter. It could be just random hits from search engines and the people who arrive on this site don't actually bother to read this stuff. (and who can blame them?)

Anyways, i'm quite busy at the moment.. i have barely time to read up on wowinsider and my guild's website, let alone do some serious blogging. Altho, could it ever be called serious? Which reminds me, need to read up on tactics aswell. Managed to miss the guild's first on Morogrim (gratz guys, sorry i couldnt be there) and while i took a glance at most other boss tactics in there, i need to have it fresh in my memory before tomorrownight, preferably view a few films aswell.
Guess i'll do that before tonights Alt-Karazhan run, hope there is a spot for me as it is good fun tanking in there.. nice change from my usual Hunter tasks.

For someone who didn't have time i wrote quite a lot of nonsence again, how i amaze myself at times :)
But let's end this one with a small request; drop me a note if you managed to read up to this and let me know you actually read this junk... perhaps i'll do some more effort keeping my postcount up even when work is crowding me. ;)

Alting a waste of time

Some people can play his character endlessly... i myself love to play a different character now and then, often called my alts.
Even without new content im sure i could play WoW for quite a long trying all different kind of classes before getting bored with the game.
So at the moment i'm playing my warrior which i specced Protection to run our Alt Karazhan run and spending quite some time on gearing him up. Not just gathering materials to get myself some nice stuff crafted but also running instances (mostly pugs) and even doing some PvP. (which sucks major as a prot warrior i can tell you... but with just 33gold left respeccing is out of the question :( )

Maybe spending time and more importantly gold on a character which is not my main may seem like a waste i beg to differ, this game is about fun and if i have more fun on an alt.. why not spend some on it?
But i have an other problem aswell: Leveling!
My warrior alt is level 70 but my shammy alt is 36 (or something around that) which i liked to play alot aswell. A few weeks ago i read that Blizzard was planning to make leveling easier and since then i haven't dared to play my Shaman anymore... i'm in the dreaded STV level-zone at the moment and i would feel cheated if i could have limited my time there and i didnt wait for it.
So i'm not leveling any more alts in the 10-60 zone, which the change will effect.
In meantime i've read (think on wowinsider) that they expect to implent this in patch 2.3 so it won't be long anyway. Not just xp-bars will be shorter, also quests will grant more xp is the current plan i think

I'm not 100% sure if this is a good idea still as there will be soon players out there with alot less experience playing their toon.. PUG's might be in for a bad time, at this moment 7/10 PUG's still work out okay but that might drop fast in the near future.
I already gave out the title "Worst PUG 2007" but perhaps we'll have a new titleholder soon.

Storm in a glass of water?

Not sure if it's a Dutch expression but it means something like making a big thing out of nothing and i wonder if that is what went on in our guild lately. People were unmotivated as a result of not getting back into the right pace after the summerbreak which made the progress even worse.
When we looked at our raidforce we had a pretty good group going, loads of skilled players (few a bit less but we can't be picky all the time im afraid) and most people are geared up nicely... but for some reason the new bosses didnt go down.
This was greatly our players faulth as we start late due to not enough people showing on time and leaving us too little time for some serious attempts on new bosses. Before we reach a boss its often 21h30-22h and often the raid stops at 24h because of too many people leaving, just enough for 2-4 attempts which is not enough to get a good feel of the event.

So in my last post i was thinking if it was just a motivation issue or something bigger was going on.
Just a day later, i was home later after a long day at work (and a very early morning aswell... getting up at 5h30 ugh..) and went to bed early, there was another raid to Serpentshrine Caverns.. my Girlfriend who was along aswell shouted to me from the other room "Hydross is down!".
Well i'll be damned, i go to bed early for a change and they get a guildfirst. And there i was wondering what was going on with motivation just the day before that. I must say i was quite relieved and hoped this wouldnt be a temporarely high.
Yesterday was the first day of a new week and we started out with SSC again, with the set targets Lurker and Hydross.
It started out pretty good, we actually had 30 people to choose from to fill our 25man raid where we usually had to start out with whatever we could. We had enough people for me to go AFK for a while (as i had an headache) but was requested to come back when they started on Hydross.
Shortly after that they managed to kill Lurker (2nd attempt as they had an add-tank die due to a healer paying no attention so they reset the event, aka forcefully wipe) and i was brought back in for Hydross.
The first attempt we lost some dps as an add that spawned killed a couple of people so we again had one of those painfull resets. (got to love Feign Dead :p ) The seconds attempt was our last one as Hydross went down smoothly with just 1 dead (someone who doesnt pay attention to threatmeters so didnt surprise me anyway).
We had even time to spare to do another boss which would be Magtheridon... oh my, we actually are seriously raiding again! :D

Guess we've had enough downs, time to live the good life again.

The ups and downs of a Guild

Every guild has its ups and down, i'm sure of it... the previous guild is was in had alot of downs as it was a casual guild with raiding wishes which just wasn't an option most of the time, but the guild offered a tight community feeling to most either way.
The current guild i'm in is quite stable.. we have highs but the downs are more semi-highs then lows as the mood is always pretty good and we have fun together wheter we kill a boss or have a wipenight.

These "downs" happen each summer it seems where people go on holiday and the remaining people try to struggle on and often won't get too far (due too raid unbalance or simply canceled raids)... which is understandable ofcourse.
For some reason this time the summer state of mind didnt leave some people, loads still come and go as they please and leaving their guildmates hanging which results in frustrated people who take a break and by that make things even worse. It's kind of a Domino effect.
We have good nights where we make some serious progress on bosses and 1-shot bosses on farm, but we have to cancel raids aswell or just wipe endlessly on the boss we killed on the first try the week before. Still we have fun on those wipe nights (its not just about epix) but there should be some achievement aswell as people aint paying for 20g repairs and 40g pots every day for this kind of fun.

I must admit i'm getting frustrated with this at times aswell... as i am just 1 councillor of a bigger group i can't make decissions on my own, majority have to agree with me. Yesterday i got so fed up with things i suggested we just take a weeks break of raiding and to tell people to get rid of that holiday spirit and pick up their pace, kind of a shock and awe effect i was hoping.
While one councillor feared some people might leave due to this i wasnt so scared of this, an other councillor said we would at least know where we would stand. Doing something like this would at least show we (the officers) are taking things seriously.

Another idea was to reevaluate ranks, we have Honored raiders which are our Raiders and Friendly which are our backup-players. (besides this we have Neutral which are casual, Revered for our Classleaders and Exalted our the Councillors.. funny side-step: Ex-ALT-ed are the councillors alts :) )
Anyways.. taking a look at people's ranks might be a good wakeup sign aswell, getting people to pick up their act to keep their rank or get a better one. This is what we are discussing now, shall we look at the next 3 weeks (and warn our members) or simply look at the previous 3 months (including the holiday) and base the ranks on that.. at least rewarding those people who díd show effort.

Being a councillor/officer is a crummy job.. did i mention that before?