Motivation
February 16, 2011So, in a reply to my last post, Repgrind mentioned that she now has four 85s, and some nights runs a heroic on each, and that pretty much kills the entire night. It reminded me of a thought the other day that I had. How does she do it, and not get burnt out???
I played Lajos (now Layjos) for a couple years straight, almost exclusively. Some drama hit, and about August or so of last year, I found my enthusiasm for WoW completely gone. I decided to take a break, and wait for Cataclysm to come out. So Cataclysm hit, I ended up doing a server transfer, and I’m still finding my enthusiasm for the mage to be lagging. I’ve got 50+ mounts, 75+ pets, and a ton of titles. Lots and lots of work into that toon, and I’ve decided I’m pretty much done for now. If our guild starts raiding, I’ll be available, and Caraway and I have discussed arena, but my “minute to minute” motivation isn’t centered around the mage.
Enter my gnomie-lock. I’ve been having a ball, as I’ve expressed in my last couple posts. So obviously, my WoW-mojo isn’t gone. So I have to come to the conclusion that I’m just burnt out on the mage. Which leads me back to Repgrind’s remark. She has choices, options, and apparently, that helps buffer the burn-out. Pretty obvious, actually.
So, I indicated before that I thought affliction was over my head at the moment, and besides, I was enjoying the boom factor of destruction. But, in doing research, I came across some things that really resonated with me, and last night, I decided to flip back over to affliction. I saw one statement in particular, that really resonated to me: You should be pulling targets to you, not running to them. And yes, I’ve remarked on it before, my biggest problem in battlegrounds is I get so gung-ho team-wise that I charge in, find my teammates dead, and find myself facing multiple opponents, and that doesn’t usually go well. That simple statement – and yes, a lot of hours in the battlegrounds – brought it into focus for me.
Probably my biggest “BOO-YA!” moment last night was in EotS. We grabbed Mage Tower, and Draenei Ruins off the bat, and set about going after the flag. I used my handy dandy telescope to zoom in on Fel Reiver, and saw all the Hordies there bail, and head towards the flag. So, I mounted up, and headed out, and did a solo capture. Yeah, I knew there had to be a rogue around somewhere, and sure enough, he opened on me. I trinketed, jumped, Death Coiled him to get some space, tossed Curse of Exhaustion on him, and dotted him up, and finished him off. He came back less than a minute later, and died again. Then he brought a friend. By that time, I’d used my Healthstone, and my cooldowns weren’t cleared yet. I died, but by that time, some teammates were arriving on the scene, and cleaned up my mess.
Moments like these are a joy. It isn’t about an arena rating, or how good I am, or how good the opponent was or wasn’t, it’s about the realization setting in “I can do this!” At this point in time, every time I beat an opponent, I tend to shrug it off as “he must not have been very good”. It’s going to take awhile for me to be comfortable saying “Yeah, I pwned him that time.” But it’s coming.
