New guild – this is getting to be a broken record…

I have been in a new guild now for three whole days. I got to listen to a 4 hour wipe fest on H 25 Twins on monday night on vent after I was accepted – they were not successful, but were making good progress

Last night, the 1st night of new week raiding for us, I ran Normal 25 Toc and Heroic 25 Toc up to the Twins last night with them where they booted me for an extra healer ( I did get to see their twins strat when we did it on normal) Their practise from their attempts on Monday paid off because they got the twins in a couple of tries.

I was told I did fine – I don’t think I am going to make within the top ten on the Dps anytime soon, I did 10th on 25 Normal Beasts, ( don’t forget to reapply SWP after that wall smack!) and no log because they only started logging after champs on Normal, but 11th on that fight on Heroic 25 Beasts I scaled around 11-15th depending on the fight for the rest. I haven’t shamed me, or my class but it’s a little discerning to be so far down the bottom all the time. It does however mean that everyone else is doing so much better, and if anything should push me harder to be better.

I’ve had never successfully done H 25 Beasts, Jaxx and Faction champs. So I was a little thrilled to see that 25 H is really not that much different to 10 H so except dying on H 25 Faction champs because I just kept getting beat upon and fade, fear, meld, dispersion, shield, healthstone ( all my oh crap buttons.. ) could no longer save me

I am a little concern about long term stability – on the monday raid 9 of the 27 raid able were trials – we had 30 people in raid last night – and had lost two raiders the half an hour before raid because one recent app had a life change, and the other person didn’t want to raid with out them. The core officer group seems steady though.

No major issues, a little bit of a later start, and end to what I’m used to, and no sunday raiding, but it seems ok so far.

Under the Microscope.

There is nothing like scrutiny to push you to new limits,  wanting to be better, and being asked questions of your application to another guild opens your eyes to flaws or things you may not have considered.  You start thinking that you got too comfy in your fishbowl.  A few of us have had to switch mentality a little for the  guild we have app’d to – how flexible are we with specs – our gears and talents under the microscope.   Not that we would expect anything less –  it’s part of the application process at least at the higher end guilds.

Why I was in a weird Shadow offspec?, do I have a  healing set?  Having to justify my gear choices, explain why I use a particular trinket,  answer would I be willing to heal ? Why I am so over hit cap?  ( that question annoyed me a little. ) Explaining some of my gear planning.

Gear planning becomes a little different when your not guaranteed an ‘income’ of badges and gear.  I was running all the 25’s in a week,  at least a full 10 man Toc clear and I had been doing a few 10 Heroic Toc bosses,  plus a daily occasionally – I was eligible to roll on Loot, and I was getting Badges, getting my turn to get trophies, and  that stopped.  This week has been left over guild member run 10’s and we run 25 Toc last night and pugged half the Dps so I have been getting some Badges, and even a trophy. 

We are expecting a reply back from the raiding guild some of us app’d to this week.  Even then,  they need to trial us,  so find a run for us to fit into, which may not even be a full raid,  so we lose a raid id for a week.   Then if we do get accepted wait an official trial period of three weeks before we are eligible for loot.  So realistically that means I’m looking at another month of raiding before I get any on the books upgrades, unless of course no one else wants something, and then it depends on their policy on that.

That means I need to do as much as possible out of raids to get upgrades.  Currently am planning  for Merlins Robe,  fluctuating mat prices means that it will possibly be cheaper to buy it already crafted.  They are going for under 12k for now,  I might do some trade spamage to see if anyone needs to offload one badly for cheaper, but I should have it by next weekend.  I upgraded to a T9 chest this weekend but Merlins robe is still a bigger upgrade,   I’m only 2 piece T9.5  so If I lose the chest  only a T9  ( the 3rd piece)  then I won’t mind,  if I had waited I could have used the trophy I got in a run last night for T9.5 but I had the badges,  and it was better then what I was wearing and when your application is under a microscope,  any upgrade looks better then not trying at all

Apping to stay on server was a bit of a knee jerk reaction – and probably best explained in my reason ” Why do you want apply for … . Blah.. ” . 

I want to do 25 raiding, its disappointing to be needing to leave ……, but I like 25’s. Your recruiting a Shadow priest, and seem to be in the position to be able to deliver 25′ raiding. As a guild you have been around the server for a long time, and hopefully will continue to be stable……

I don’t actually  sound like I want to be there do I ?

Maybe I should set my sights higher – I’m geared,  I have been tweaking rotations and trying to push out as much Dps as possible no matter the competition or class expectation – should I aim for a real raiding guild attempting firsts and real hardmodes,  and that would mean server transferring, might take me a little longer to find a home ,  but 3.3 is a little way off – I’m looking at another month anyway for any guild I get into  to consider me as a ‘raider’   so maybe it’s worth throwing caution to the wind and do something daring ( for me at least)

Being  being ripped to shreds by ‘elitests’  to become a better player could be fun…  I only have had my current fishbowl to be measured against –  lets see how I measure up to the real world of raiders

I should really stop thinking  – and “Just do it!”

Not with a bang but a whimper

This is the way the world ends.  Not with a bang but a whimper.

The Hollow Men – T. S Eliot

The quote may be a little over dramatic but my guild is no longer raiding 25 mans. Our Gm and RL  transferred off within a matter of hours and has left an alt as  a placecard.

It took a while for it to sink in for most people.  It has been coming for a while though, and I already had some ideas of what to do/where to go just wished I hadn’t had to entertain the idea seriously.

I app’d to another guild on server that was coming to a similar position as us – they need a shadow priest.  I want to raid 25’s . My definition of ‘happiness’ in game includes the need to raid. 

Looking back at the app It wasn’t the most well written- and maybe it’s reflective of my will/desire to leave where I am.  I even reminded them that they rejected me for gear reasons three weeks before Wrath perhaps almost daring them to reject me again.  A few other guildys have app’d there as well, but they won’t be able to accomodate all of us,  and various other  people have different plans they want to explore,   eg try and keep a 1o man team or two in the guild,  some will go off server,  others will just hang around.  Do I follow someone? or strike out on my own,  cross the unexplored plains of new servers, and maybe even a transfer to Horde to be with some rl friends on Jubie’thos

 Maybe by us ‘dying’ as a 25  raiding guild will save another guild. 

News travels fast on the server,  and the people I ran into while riding around Dalaran in mindless circles on my bike already knew. 

“Less stressful” seems to be the catch phrase when it comes to 10 mans.  The death knell of the 25 man raiding guild seems to be sounding, and people are slipping into the comfy confines of 10 man raiding.  Their gear levels aren’t really suffering and  they are seeing content more regularly.

Another thing I am sad over is we have/had 4 bloggers in my guild – almost had a 5th, but he stopped posting after a couple of entry’s,  sure some of them have been quite lately,  Gnome has a list of  Australia/Australasian Bloggers here and three of us are on there, and considering that we didn’t know each other to end up in the same guild, let alone the same server is quite funny.

I want to be one of the people welcome on the vent server – on the forums, and I want to leave my alts in this guild, maybe even level my healer up just so I can play with them still every now and then.

Otherwise Occupied.

I have been ‘otherwise’ occupied.

Aion

I started playing Aion a couple of weeks ago,  and after an initial frenzy of oh this is cool – look at all the pretty graphics ( full settings on new Pc)  I have now settled into an uneasy compromise between Wow and Aion time. 

I even started an Aion blog with a whole 2 entries and the very bad banner.  I need to get my Gimp out and concoct  a much better banner before it becomes fit for public consumption, and my interest in Aion has waned a little.

At first I was avoiding Wow like the plague, logging only for raids because I wanted to play with my shiny new toy, then gradually  the slight grindishness of Aion and my aversion at trying to find a group for long group quests when I didn’t want to be forced to sit at a pc for another stretch of time after a raid made me log back into Wow again, and be reminded of all the fun.  Mostly time  spent running round in circles.  

10 mans

It seems to be a slight growing trend,  a couple of guilds on server have started focusing a lot more on 10 man groups,  we now have 2 10 man groups with plenty of reserves in each that are raiding  in our 25 man raid times.

 It’s a funny situation in that they aren’t official  guild raids really – if you are already in a group that does a 10 man in your own time, you are free to keep doing it.  So the two groups have a mix of people who are already saved – and those who have never done a 10 man before.   I don’t mind,  it doesn’t mean I am raiding more, in fact it means I am raiding less,   It means I don’t pug or do an out of raid time 10 man Toc.    More free time to do other stuff like log off…   Unless we want to spent 2 nights a week wiping on hardmodes there really was no other option, we are officially bored of Ulduar,  and will be using  last weeks raid Id to work on Thorim Hard modes this week

Good deed for the week

I was in Stormwind gemming some new Pvp gear and someone sends me a tell asking me to run the stockades. I say yes,  but only once.  He is grateful,  I start killing everything, and he says ” but I don’t need these ones.. ”  I tell him I am just going to decimate the place, and we get through it rather quickly. Well I do,  I just went all zombie dot dot dot “>dot “>dot  dot disperse when I ran out of mana dot dot dot dot.  Done!

I thought doing something nice for a random would make me feel nice – but I just felt empty.  I think I had hoped that by doing something meaningful for someone else it would make my experience more meaningful. Nope. Didn’t work.   Probably why I ignored the request from some guildys for run through lobie dungeons   a little later on.  I had hoped I would never see “Can someone please run me through Deadmines” ever again in the green guild chat.  Alas other peoples bordems seem to have encouraged them to re roll.

Secret places.

This inability to easily access my screenshots is annoying me.  ( I even did a search for recent files and found no wow screenshots – I will work it out!) 

I spent some time with a friend trying to get into the Horde Inn in Dalaran, we ended up dying on the roof ( had to get the right spot by falling from high above)  and rezing inside the inn.   Running around,  reading the horde books that for some strange reason were still in Common, flirting with their waitresses, and dancing on their tables.    Eventually we just sat there  at the table, pretty much ignored by the hordies even though we were trespassing in their inn.  It was funny as we were trying to get into the inn a couple of other allies  saw what we were doing, and had a go.  They gave up.  We improvised.   We had to make sure we didn’t get too close to the door or we get teleported out into the main street of Dalaran. 

How come theHorde get their own exclusive zone  in Dalaran?

What the others are doing on Hodir..

I went looking to see what other Shadow Priests are doing on Hodir,  and I found one that did 14k dps  Ow.

Now the thing that worries me on that one,  is that their Shadow Word Death x 5 had an average of 26731 damage for each hit.  That meant that some were higher,  and some were lower.  I almost killed myself on one of our attempts due to my Shadow Word death, sure the output isn’t has  as high as the damage you do to yourself now, but still either way its taking a huge chunk off your health that needs to be healed.  I would think its rather risky,  but they stayed alive, so I guess it’s possible.

On that fight  their overall raid  DPS  had  three people on 20k dps Plus..  and the highest we have ever seen was 15k once by a warlock

Not sure how long their logs will stay up on Wow Metre online but if your interested in seeing it its here

and this one has a Shadow Priest doing 16k and another 14k one here.

I’m not feeling so good about my 11k now…

In regards to the priest that did 16 k , just to compare my gear against his They have a Imba Score of 616.35 and mine is 608.89 – they have slightly better gear,  but that should mean I can do 16kish too right?

Right.  Next week, need to break 15 K.

I Could say that my Dps was rare

A bit of a boast post..
We got the Hodir Hardmode finally a couple of weeks ago,  and still havent located where all my screenshots have gone to, and the person who does the WWS/logs wasn’t in the fight for the kill, and when I do a SS on my new pc I have no idea where its putting them, so  I lost my Dps Metre shot for that fight, 

However…

We got the hardmode again tonight and I managed to get some screenies. Just to show I wasn’t mindsearing on a pack mob to get these sort of numbers- I’ve included the detail window.

First on DPS.  11671 Dps. 4th on overall damage.   My first kill was I think only 9k, and our attempts tonight went from 6-9ish but its the final kill that counts right?

 

So my Dps on the Flashfreezes was dismal, but I can usually only get dots up on them anyway, and the strat we use as to what classes are allowed to stay on boss changes every week. but now I don’t have to dispel,  aren’t getting any screen freezes, and will chase the person with the stormcloud across the room  – and thats the result.   Shadow Priests Scale very well with Stormcloud apparently.

Caster Officer Postion is Open.

We have a DPS caster officer position open,  and they are after people from the guild who would like the position to come forward.

What would it involve? 

Attending officer meetings before raids,
Distributing Flasks/Pots
Managing of Guild bank
Interviewing applicants
Reviewing /providing feedback for Raiders
Knowing the caster classes strengths and weakness’ and strat application.

It wouldn’t be a cakewalk, It would involve having discussions with headstrong people about guild directions, being at the beck and call of people wanting stuff from the bank, telling people bad news about applications, or their spec, or play style. I would have to learn more about each of the caster classes. Besides ” Don’t shammys have a tremor totem?” I would need to be able to organise them, know what was needed for a fight, defend or critique them when wipes are called and blame is being directed at Dps,

It would be an interesting learning experience. Could I do it?
I’ve managed a team of people with a variety of skills and experience, of different age groups, I was great according to some, and terrible according to others.

What’s in it for me?
A say in the guild?
Change to some of the things I didn’t like?

Can I translate anything I learn to real life? Not really. It doesn’t improve my employment chances, I can’t make money from it, and it would be extra time that I would need to spend organising people, so that  I am not playing.

I’m outspoken enough to not be afraid to speak up, I’ve done the management course and learnt about the benefits and disadvantages of change, If I treated it as management of a team then I am capable. However Is it something I want to do?

I don’t know – hence the musing over the idea here, It would be another way of further involving myself with the game extending my experience even more. However the last 2 weeks I have been making more of an effort to actually do a lot more other stuff.   To add more time  doing game related stuff thats not ‘fun’ or self servering ontop of raiding, and blogging, adding officer on top of that, and real life in which I see real people and go to work,  I am heading down the thought path that its too much.

And who knows they might even laugh at me for even considering applying.

Boot enchanting for Raiding.

Back in the day, when I needed the Hit.  I used to have “Enchant Boots Icewalker on my boots. I now have  515 hit without even trying  ( I only need 290)  so I slapped on  Enchant Boots – Tuskarr’s vitality

 
I had a look at who has what on my server,   via  Wow-Heroes.com which lets you compare statistics by enchants on pieces of gear by  realm. A search for the Most popular Enchant on Boots  for Priest- Shadow Proved interesting. 

I cropped out the centre of the image because the bars would have made the pic to hard to fit.  It looks like the stats include all Shadow Priests on server, but only 33 Shadow Priests have Tuskarr’s Vitality, the ability to move just that little bit faster out of the fire is invaluable in a raid situation, and I have been convinced it is the better enchant for situations that you need to move in,  especially considering we are already dealing with Lag.

Mind you if you needed the  15 hit, then of course go for Icewalker, and admittedly the +stam on Tuskarr’s Vitality is useless.  The stats won’t include people missing an enchant.

 

I then thought to compare my server to what is considered a much more progressed and serious raid server,  Blackrock, and their stats  only showed about a 6% increase in Shadow Priests using Tuskarr’s vitality over Icewalker.   ( they have a higher Shadow Priest population in general and my calculations are only based on Icewalk V Tuskarr) ignoring the other chants.

 

So its got me thinking,  have I done the right thing?  would that extra Crit that is on Icewalker be more useful, then a very minor “Slight speed increase” Would I even notice if it it’s gone?

I went through the top geared ( by gearscore as reference) Shadow priests on the server to see what they were doing, and besides some of them having higher gearscores on their offspecs which are shadow there seems to be an even mix of Icewalker and Tuskarr’s Vitality.

At this point I think I might go back to Icewalker for that extra crit,  and I guess if I am slower getting out of fires and dying,  will rechant my boots back to Tuskarr’s Vitality.  

So on my server The Top 5 boot enchants are +60 Items only enchants,  so out of 760 +Shadow Priests that are 60  + only 33 have Tuskarr’s

If the majority knew what they were doing all the time,  then there wouldn’t be so many bad players,  so I can’t use the argument majority rules,  but considering the amount of people with  Tuskarr’s Vitality even compared to the greater spirit enchant, that maybe in this case that the 727 Shadow Priests know something that the 33 don’t?  Or do the 33 know something that  727 don’t?

Playing In fear.

I got a new pc.    ( see below for a pic of its innards.) I’m happy and excited can’t you tell?  I don’t normally open my pc case unnecessarily but It had blue shipping foam in it that needed to be removed, and the case has some cool screws to take off the side panel easily ( no void warranty stickers on there either ) so I was taking pictures of my beast Aka Bigfoot and took a pic of the inside. 

Larissa  from the Pink Pigtailed Inn back in July wrote in her post “How my fps issues were solved and I was born once again”  about her experiences seeing Dalaran clearly for the first time after getting a Pc issue fixed, and how it was another world.   I can totally relate to that because upgrading my Pc has not only allowed me to see the detail in things, but I don’t have to be afraid to go places for fear of crashing.  My first experience in recent Dalaran was noticing the bubbles coming off the Brewfest signage in the city.    Posters with bubbles..  I love it!

Fixing my Norton problem on my old Pc was step one to rediscovering the world, upgrading to a bigger and better beast – step 2.

I don’t have to hang out in the Graveyard near TOC anymore before raid.  Hop on my bike and ride as fast as I can with my camera angle looking at the ground, and hope that I will make it into the instance before crashing.

I can use my dual screen again, without fear that too many active programs would overload my pc and increase the crash chances.

I can see the floor! 

I don’t need to fear having to go through Dalaran to get to a capital city.  I used to fly all the way to the Tundra and catch a boat to stormwind, rather then just use the Dalaran portal.

I can do cooking and fishing dailys

I rode around Dalaran on my bike laughing on vent.   This was amazing!  The sights, the sounds, sure I’ve seen it all before, but only in snatches  daringly stolen and hopeful I wouldn’t crash.

Oh, the  people – Had to stop my bike a couple of times to say hello to a few people, that I never used to see because I was never able to hang out in Dalaran like the cool kids

I copied my wow folders onto a portable hard drive, and then copied it to my Pc.  I am running Vista on the new PC, and I discovered there had been a new patch since my last log in,  ( the fix for 3.2.2)  and I was getting the error message that it couldn’t find the wow.exe  and I was still calm, I googled the error message and apparently I need to “run as administrator” a lot of my programs because of the pains of Vista.  Even my vent.  My push to talk wouldn’t work unless I had the vent application selected, but Running as administrator worked.

So minor hic ups,  but it is fully functional, and it has really been amazing to be able to play without fear of crashing.

Much Ado about Aion.

We have a lot of people in guild playing Aion. A lot.

I now have a new PC  – See! Shiny Blue lights..   and there is an EB Games up the road from work –  that for 99.00 I can have, or if I walk a little further to a Dick Smith I can get it for  $69.00  ( what’s with the price difference)  or I can download it for 50.00 US  which on current dollar works out to be approx 59.00  ( but I would need to use up a decent chunk of my monthly download. Plus  Factor in you get a month free subscription ( otherwise 15 Us a month )  and it’s a viable option.

On Tuesdays server shutdown I could either go to dinner, or I could buy Aion.

$22 buck all you can eat mussels & good company V  another computer game?

I will probably give in.  My fear, and I repeat it often to those guildys who have made their own Aion channel in our vent   –  is that they will get tired of it in 3 months, and the sentiment seems to be “Hell no!” 

At the moment, their spare gaming time is being spent in Aion,  on weekends the guild was dead, they log in for dailys/Ah/raids and  when Aion servers go down.   We still have people turning up for raids, but then as soon as they are over people fade away.

Currently from what I can gather,  Aion is a bit of a grind,  but its being helped by the fact that people in wow who already play together are now playing together again,  creating mirror guilds, and the duplicating their wow charcter names into Aion.   The oceanic server they are playing on apparently is a big Wow server reunion.  

If I do start playing I will not make this an Aion blog,  I may mention it in passing,  but I am still doubting the staying power of the game.  One very important thing hasn’t happened yet in Aion.  None of the wow transfer players have reached level cap – and ‘end game’  and I think once they get there, then the real test of  what would you rather play Wow or Aion will come.  Now it’s easy to switch back to wow for a raid.  They are only leveling in Aion still at lower levels, and leveling doesn’t seem to be hard – even boring apparently,  but as the competitiveness starts happening, and people near that level cap, I can see them logging into wow even less.

I have till lunch time to consider my Aion buying options….

Edit:   Dinner Won!