Battleground Common Sense

So, I finished the weekend just dinging level 69 on Lirys. Last night, I decided to watch House M.D., so I only got a few battlegrounds in. I ended up doing two more this morning, before work, and hitting level 70. The rest of my “pre-work” time was spent flying out to Tanaris to talk to the Legacy Arena vendors, and getting outfitted in my Brutal Gladiator’s set. This evening, I’ll be doing enchants, gemming, etc., before I set out on the next leg of the my climb to 85.

The weekend was pretty frustrating at times. More and more, I found myself wanting to do what I despise, and go off on teammates because of just plain lack of common sense. If there’s one thing worse than someone who hasn’t a clue what to do in a battleground, and refuses to spend a half hour reading any one of the hundreds of posts on the subject, it’s someone who obviously has read those posts, and then turns off their brain.

Adventures in Healing

So, from midweek, on through the weekend, I was fighting off the latest crud going around. In my case, it manifested mostly with wracking cough that by Thursday had my diaphragm in perpetual cramp, but I got the stuffy head, etc. Luckily, this was a quiet weekend. I spent most of the weekend playing WoW, which was a nice change.

I work on the principle of total immersion, so I’ve pretty much ignored most of my other characters, and concentrated on my dwarf priest, Coosh. Just to recap, I got him to Kharanos, did a bit in Loch Modan, and then headed to Elwynn, more to see how the quests looked than anything else. From there, I went out to Westfall, and got thoroughly hooked on the questline, which ultimately sent me off to Redridge, where, among other things, I got to do the new Bravo Company questline, which is a tongue-in-cheek Rambo parody, and an absolute blast. Cataclysm continues the BC and Wrath pattern of achievements for completing a certain number of quests in an area. I got the one for Redridge, which then sent me along to Duskwood, where I knocked out the quests for the achievement, and then happily headed for the new Northern Strangelthorn area, where again, I got the achievement.

A quick word on the new quests: so far, an enthusiastic Two-Thumbs Up. Gone are the “slay things endlessly waiting for certain items to drop” quests. Most amusing, to me, was the fact that the one quest where I had a low drop rate on a needed item was killing Murlocks, which are supposed to be irritating, so I view that as game-flavor. Along the way were some downright engaging quests, some reworks of old classics, and some very creative new ones.

Spirestone is a PvP server, so ganking comes as no surprise.  I’ve been pretty fortunate so far, only one real ass-hat encountered. My first brush with “the enemy” was out in Redridge, where I’d gotten myself in over my head with a pack of gnolls. Suddenly, I see the pillar flash and crash sound of moonfire, and a gnoll evaporates. I was in “keep alive” mode at that point, and another moonfire came crashing down a cooldown later, and I turned to see a Tauren Druid tapping away at a mining node. I bowed, and saluted, and sent off a /thanks, and was on my way. Example 1: Classy Player, can obviously squish me like a bug, but helps out the lowbie. In my opinion, the way it should be.

Yesterday, however, I was in Northern Stranglethorn, and I saw a rogue vanish. “Here it comes” I thought, and prepared to take my medicine. Sure enough, one shotted. The rogue did an apology emote, so I figured he was gonna leave it at that. I ran back from the spirit healer, and resurrected. Bam, one shotted again.Rinse, lather, repeat, a couple times.

Here we have Example 2: The No-Class Cork-Soaker. I truly have problems understanding this mentality. Ok, so a level 80 squashes a level 30. That’s not something to feel proud of, it’s just a fact of game mechanics. Once is someone feeling bored. Not a problem. But to repeatedly grief someone… that screams to me of a truly pathetic personality. We all play the game for rewards, whether it be satisfaction, challenge, whatever. What kind of person is rewarded by making someone else miserable? Or in this case, thinking they were making me miserable? I pretty much just rolled my eyes, then after the fourth or fifth time, went and got more NyQuil, sampled some of the wife and daughter’s baked goods, then returned. By this time, he’d gotten bored and left. No doubt an e-peen that tiny can only take so much self-stroking before they have to go take a nap.

Later, my guild leader (and co-worker) Caraway invited me to heal his group in an already in-process Maraudon. I was still a bit low for the instance, but he was pretty comfortable tanking, so no problem. After all, how could I resist a trip to see the hottest babe in WoW, Princess Theradas? I’d just gotten a point into Atonement, so I was anxious to see how effective using Smite to heal actually was.

By itself, not terribly effective, especially with melee DPS in the party. All too often, I watched the healing go to the rogue, not the tank. For the most part, I felt I did okay. Could have used more mana, and since I hadn’t been planning on running an instance, I didn’t have much to drink with me, but all in all, it went well.

Nick, in his usual fashion, is dithering around with 3 or 4 characters, but he’s out of school, so he should be able to get his pally up to near my level, so we can start chain running instances. Either that, or I’ll have to ground him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Azeroth’s Axis Just Tilted a Tiny Bit

Last night, the unthinkable happened… an event that will have wide-ranging repercussions that will and resound through the very fabric of Azeroth, with echos in far off Outland. Compared to this, Cataclysm will be but a faint whisper of an aftershock. Dragon’s stopped in their tracks, and raised their heads, testing the swirls and eddies of magic that permeate the fabric of Azeroth. Garrosh Hellscream woke in a cold sweat, the vestiges of an un-recallable nightmare fading into the gloom. The Lich King in the middle of his speech to Svala Sorrowgrave, suddenly began sounding like Alvin the Chipmunk. Hogger suddenly went “Hrrrmmmmuh?” and fell dead after being hit with a staff by a level 6 mage.

Okay, it’s wasn’t that big a deal. But it was something that I really did not expect to happen. Nick and I joined Crits and Giggles.

As the post activity on my blog shows, I’ve been busy. Softball season ties up my Saturdays, but when all-stars rolled around, and my daughter made it, that went from “Saturdays” to “weekends”. I’ve bemoaned at length the normal challenges our guild faced, having such a small core membership, and apparently, the inevitable finally caught up with us. I wish everyone the best, have fun. That’s what it’s all about.

Meh, high-road be damned. It’s my blog, and as best I could tell, none of my ex-guildies ever read it anyway. I’m feeling something that’s a cross between hurt, bitterness, and just  plain sadness. Nick and I have could have been in Crits or Apathy months ago, and been raiding our little hearts out, but we stuck with our friends. I’ve sat around Dalaran for hours, turning down raid invites, because I wanted to stay freed up in case my guildies showed up and we could put together a heroic. I cheered my ass off when our group cleared their first heroic. While my guildies were working the auction house, and buying gear because they were too shy to run heroics, I was spending my money on guild tabs, a tundra-mammoth so I could run lowbies to flight points, repair bots, etcetera.

And then I stopped being on every night of the week, and my weekends were taken up by my daughter’s tournaments, and I logged on to find our core group gone, without a word. When I asked, I was told “they had no one to play with”. Ah well. I hope you find people to play with, and I hope they can keep you amused. I do wish you the best.

And a friend of twenty-five years who never mentioned a word of any problems in the guild to me, who in fact had been telling me over the past few months how well I handled the role of “cat herder”, lectured me on my lack of leaderships skills and “selfishness” - when she could finally be bothered to even return an email. Yah, sweety, I hear ya. Thanks for “smoothing things over” with everyone, while keeping me in the dark. Hope you enjoy those glacial bags that I bought for you because you were bitching at me about people filling up the guild tab that you paid for.

::Deep Breath:: Ok, got that off my chest. Cathartic. And yes, I know that all that is MY perception, and they may see things entirely differently. It’s over, it’s done, move on.

And to return to our regularly schedule programming, move on we did. I managed to get the guild bank someone straightened out, and promoted Zachiel, my utility toon to GM, and then told RG she could pull the trigger. And it was done. And it was good.

After a chorus of welcomes from the Crits crowd, and getting Nick in, we did a random, then went for Magister’s Terrace, first normal, then normal again, because Sol and Nick didn’t realize they needed to complete the quest to get into the heroic, and then heroic. It was a learning experience. For example, I learned that despite the tank running around and chain-aggroing everything in site, there was in fact method to the madness, and that did not in fact mean that I should start long-range pulling mobs standing off to the side. Go figure. My bad.

And as RG mentioned in her post today, the Phoenix Hatchling dropped twice in a row, and she didn’t get it. Nick and I will have to start scheduling play-dates for our new pets.

After that, RG was off to help Hartbane, and I responded to a call from a guildie in WG, only to undergo multiple ass-handings. I see I’m going to have to rebuild my PvP set, and get back in the swing of things. That, and get my ‘lock leveled. I still enjoy the mage, but there’s no doubt who my eventual main will be.

Holy shit. It just hit me. I have a guild full of people. Lots and lots of people. There’s bound to be some toons around my lock’s level to play with. Don’t get me wrong. One thing I could always count on from my ex-guildies was help, if they were on. (Despite my self-indulgent rant above, don’t think for a moment that these are “bad people”. It was just a bad situation that was poorly handled all around. ) But I don’t always WANT to have an 80 running me through instances or quests. I *like* challenge, and learning to play my toon. Simple math says I’m going to see more of that.

Most cliche’s have at least some truth behind them, and my own life experience has taught me that when something happens that seems earth-shaking, and terrible, it’s likely just The Power’s That Be forcing you into the change that you already knew, in the back of your mind, that you needed to make. One door closes, another opens.

To all my new guildies… it’s good to be home!

My Butt Is Numb

Ah, Sunday night. Relaxing at the computer, winding down before falling into bed to get some shuteye before the workweek starts… well, at least, I’m at the computer. In this case, I’m trying to wind down, take the edge off, and let the remnants of repeated adrenalin rushes fade out. It were A Good Day.

Start at the beginning… with Saturday. I got to sleep in. For me, that means getting up after 7AM. After 30-odd years of getting up between 3:30 and 6:30 AM, it’s rare that I get past 6:30. Got up, logged on – and got hit with a splitting allergy headache. Screw earthquakes and falling into the ocean… this weekend, the SoCal winds decided to try and blow things into the ocean. Better yet, my daughter’s softball team had a doubleheader. Oh, joy of joys. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching her play. But…. it’s Rec ball. That means cliques, stacked teams, a season that starts in February with maybe three practices as a team,  and players that don’t want to be there but are because Mom and Dad think that they should be.  Or what’s worse, Mom and Dad  decide that soccer, homework, and who knows what else aren’t enough to keep their child occupied. At least one girl plays two other sports. She’s a good little player, but she gets beat up playing soccer, beat up playing softball, and then beats herself up when she doesn’t make the play. Sad, sad.

Blase’-ness is Relative

So, with schedules in disarray, and the sanity meter at work pegged well into “Complete And Utterly Crazed”, I’ve been making a point to try and get my random heroics out of the way before I go to work in the morning. Started my day yesterday with a little nibble of Pit of Saron, and today with a bit of Drak’ Theron Keep.

Ok, put the phraseology in that last sentence down to “writing style”. Now stop, back up, and pull it out of that category, and look at it. Blase’. That’s how I feel about heroics, at least up to Pit of Saron.  Drak is strictly farm, although the bear tank this morning made it interesting by sprinting through the entire instance. The time was when I would have been frantically grabbing mana on the run, and trying to keep up, to make sure my DPS was up to snuff. This morning? Meh. I was toasting bagles, smearing them with peanut butter and apple butter, and munching away, while dropping flame strikes on the mobs, via mouseclicks, not keybinds. DPS? Meh. They want DPS, slow down and let me actually get in on the fight. I was banging Skada on the boss fights, so no worries, and my gear score is such that if someone calls me out, I don’t feel I have to defend anything.

Just Another Manic Monday… Tuesday… oh hell, Monday again…

The title of (last) Monday’s post was obvious. Came in to work, and the call queue was ten deep, including a very entertaining customer that I started trading emails with on Friday. See, this guy purchased our system three years ago. Since then, he has called tech support four times. One was unrelated to the current issue. The other three calls – including Friday’s – all come on roughly his yearly anniversary of buying the product. He contacts us, claiming the clocks our system uses are suddenly chewing up batteries. He claims that it’s been going on, and he’s just now contacting us. To put this in further perspective, we have given him, free, a total of four replacements over the last two years. Meanwhile, our largest customer has over four-hundred of these units, situated all around the US, and has experienced less than a 1% failure rate.

A Change in Plans

So, I cut my WoW time short last night, and had planned a post today, concerning such weighty subjects as peace in the Middle East, ending world hunger, and the sputtering economy, but fate, in the form of Repgrind, dictated it was not to be. I am subscribed to her blog, of course, and this morning, I get notified of this post. Ah, raid news. Yada, yada… and then, imagine my shock and dismay as I discovered that I’m being accused of cow tipping some “poor little Tauren druidess”, and then portrayed as trying to blame such a nefarious deed on her guildie.

I had been thinking something was odd. She and I generally exchange pleasantries throughout the day, while at work, via IM, however, yesterday, her end of our workday chat consisted of “hi” in response to my greeting. No “Bye!” at the end of the day, nothing. Last night, of course, she was busy raiding, but even while standing around Dalaran, ignored any attempt at communication on my part. I thought this odd, but assumed she was preoccupied. It appears I was correct.

I encourage the reader to pop on over, and check out this travesty of inaccuracies, half-truths, and hyperbole. Indeed, the statement “poor little Tauren druid immediately shows the vindictive state of mind of the poster. When have you ever seen a “little” Tauren?!? And how does a Tauren flagged PvP – which RG so accurately notes doesn’t happen fighting Omen – equate to “poor”?

What really happened:

As I noted yesterday, Kalyon and her guildmate helped Shalae and I with the Omen fight. Some history here. RG forgets that I came from a PvP server. My hunter was ganked approximately half a dozen times fighting Omen last year. When I saw a Tauren, flagged PvP, bearing down on Kalyon… well, I think it’s pretty obvious what my reaction was. I didn’t ask for applause, or even a “thank you”. It’s what friends do. You look out for each other.

At the end of the fight, Kalyon, for some odd reason, accused me of “killing a cow”. I thought she meant… well, a cow, and I said “must have been the warlock”. Those of you that have played locks know that it’s not uncommon for a warlock to Drain Life on a neutral ambient creature in between fights, and this is what I assumed she was referring to. She started yammering about arcane missiles, and remembering a post of hers, I responded to the effect of if she doesn’t have it on a screenshot, it didn’t happen. She apparently missed the reference entirely.

She starts then going on and on about me being flagged PvP, and finally identifies the source of her distress… “a Tauren”.

At this point, it clicked what she was talking about, and sunk in that not only was she not thanking me, but she was poking fun at me. I was both indignant at the apparent ingratitude, and yes, embarrassed that I hadn’t caught the the reference. That was quickly replaced by realization that she hadn’t even realized the implications of a Tauren flagged PvP. So… I just shut up, and let her have her laugh. Little did I realize that it apparently went deeper than that. I know RG used to play Horde, but when did she start bucking for the “Defender of the Cattle” title???

And now, she’s messaged me. “Hi!” I responded “Hello. ” Conversation? No, she’s gone to lunch. Apparently, she’s disappointed that I haven’t given her feedback on her attempt to… well, do whatever it is she was trying to do.

/sigh. Maybe the troll episode over the weekend was WoW’s way of telling me something. It was fun, and I made a bitchin’ troll.

Another Monday Morning

So,  Love is In The Air ended, the Lunar Festival continued. WoW-wise, it wasn’t precisely an exciting weekend, but it had it’s moments. Outside of WoW, it was one of those daddy weekends. My daughter started her softball season. She went ten-for-ten in the league hit-a-thon, raising $200, to take second overall. The girl who took first place was the daughter of one of the coaches, who got his checkbook out of the glovebox of his Hummer, and wrote a $400 dollar check. The “daddy moment” came when a bunch of the girls were booing the winner because of this, and my daughter told them to lay off, it wasn’t the girl who wrote the check, then trotted out and high-fived the winner.

Meanwhile, back on WoW, I got my Elder title,  with Kalyon‘s and  Zarchius‘ help on the Omen fight, as well as a couple of the dungeon elders. Probably the most exciting thing, however, was Saturday night. I’ve talked about our guild before. We’re about as casual as they come, and we’ve been smacked with pug-crap a few times, leaving us very shy about pugging, and unfortunately, until recently, we were short a tank. Our pally tanked with his DK over on Thunderlord for a long time, on a laptop that was giving him a consistent framerate down around 3. Any wonder he burned out on tanking? Eventually, my son got his DK up, and started tanking for us, but he isn’t on as much as we’d like. With 3.3 coming out, Nick led the way into pug-a-geddon, and I timidly followed. The other members have been slowly following. Now that my gear is up to a level that I pretty much feel like I’m not going to embarrass myself in most content, I’ve been going back, and trying to organize something to get the others back in the swing of things, and convince our pally to try tanking. With some rotation advice from Hartbane over in Apathy, he’s been coming along nicely. It’s been awhile since we’ve done instances on a regular basis, so everyone was a bit rusty in their roles. This weekend, another guildie brought her high-70′s mage, Bootters, over from Thunderlord, and she joined us in Hall’s of Lightning, which she’s never finished before.

A Bright Spot

Every since 3.3 went live, the blogsphere has been rampant with posts talking about the various problems with random heroics. One of the problems that we talk about is simply a new spin on an old theme – that phenomenon known as the Swollen Headed Assclown. We’ve all seen it: The arrogant cock monkey that thinks since his guild carried his ass through high level content, and got his sorry incompetent ass geared that he is something 733t.  You can recognize this pseudo-sentient waste of precious natural resources like air, water, and bandwidth by their familiar cry of “what’s your gear score?”.

However, what you don’t often hear about – and should more! – is the opposite extreme: the patient, encouraging, nay nurturing sort of player that besides obviously remembering where they came from, is just a genuinely good human being, and team member. I’ve made it clear here that I will call out the asshats, but I’ve sworn to to use my powers for good, and that includes recognizing  the good with the bad.

I mentioned in my last two posts a healer that impressed me by their attitude, not just their skill. She deserves a post to herself. We were playing around Friday night, my son Nick tanking, Karius and Lore from Apathy, and myself, DPSing. We popped a random, and found ourselves in Pit of Saron. The healer that we picked up bore the memorable moniker of Gracemoose.

Edit: Note that I’ve since confirmed that the player is male. The character was female, that’s why I wrote “she”. Doesn’t matter. Still pure awesome.

As we got to the first uphill, Grace remarked “I’ve never tanked this before, it should be interesting.” I thought at the time, she just mispoke, but I soon realized she recognized the problems Nick was going to have. Face it, three ICC-10+ geared Arcane mages, we were putting out pretty serious DPS. After the first wipe on the hill, she said “Hey, DPS… give Nick a few seconds to lock down aggro, ‘k”? I immediately whispered, thanking her, and mentioned that Nick was my boy. She just smiled and said “Cool!”.

Nick had a bit of trouble getting the hang of drag-tanking at the Gauntlet, as he’d never tanked that section before. She explained it to him – even as we were getting ready to – and once again, I just shook my head. She wasn’t giving orders, or lecturing… just doing her best to help a still-learning player get better. No finger-pointing, no accusations. I was chuckling to myself, because she sounded almost motherly. I was enjoying the instance, and enjoying seeing my son learn, but most of all, I was enjoying having an obviously experienced player, who knew none of us from Adam, just being so damned nice!

Her healing was great. The times we wiped, no healer was going to heal us through. But no level of competent healing would have outshone her attitude. I’ve mentioned it before, and I’ll say it again: I will pay for her server transfer to Winterhoof! That’s the type of player that I want to play with again!

Shattered Illusions II

So, geez… apparently I went too far yesterday… or more likely, not far enough. People actually took that post seriously. Normally, I’d put that down to them not knowing me, but even RG missed the intent.

Normally, I’d just duck my head, apologize to the principals, and move on, but I’m acutely aware of how someone’s reputation can be affected by even something as insignificant as my little blog. So, here’s the less embellished version of Friday nights events.

Kalyon whispered me, and asked if I wanted to do OS. Of course, I accepted. We swung by Naxx, taking advantage of the fact we were in a raid to get in, pitied a fool, and headed back to OS.

We had a couple wipes, and what I said yesterday was true. No one pointed any fingers at anyone, except themselves. Apathy members, being who they are, might wonder why I always stress that. It’s something that all too rare in pugs, and even in guilds raids, and I can’t say enough about how refreshing it is.

So after a couple practice runs, Sartharion went down, and yours truly wound up with the drake. And the loudest comment I got was “Lajos, take it outside, I want to see it.” Yes, Lore, very laughingly, said he figured Apathy would get another writeup. I refer back to the cliche’ I mentioned yesterday. Does a druid take a dump in Moonglade? Gnomer has made noises to the effect that it’s rare you have something pleasant to write about that’s is interesting to read. I’m not going to miss the chance.

The rest of the evening happened pretty much as I described yesterday, but, no, Lore was nothing but patient, laid back, and a joy to run with. The healer I mentioned was every bit as awesome as I said, and will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.