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.

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!

Tendencies to State the Obvious

So, yeah, I’ve been hearing “You suck!” more than I’d like to lately. Ok, so tell me something I don’t know – like how to not suck.

Let me touch on human nature. Most people who are expert at something do a lot of little things that they don’t even think of. They assume knowledge on someone else’s part of things that are second nature to them, because, well, those things have become second nature. I know this. I do it myself. I’m terrible at teaching, particularly at work. Usually it’s quicker and easier to just do it myself, than to go through the process of breaking knowledge down to the lowest common denominator. It takes a special personality to enjoy breaking things down and teaching people.

Now add to that the environment. In a pickup practice arena, people have no vested interest in helping their partner get better. Add to that the fact that usually, they’re playing a different class, so they may not have any helpful knowledge concerning how to play my class. I get that.

Okay. So what is “You suck!” based on?

Is it because we lost? So it’s my fault that we lost? Tell me why.

Were you disappointed that I wasn’t good enough to carry you, and therefore, I must suck?

Did you see things that I was doing wrong, or things I just wasn’t doing? Tell me!

Saturday morning, I jumped on to do a couple practice rounds. Had a mirror matchup, with a druid and a warlock. We won, after about 5 minutes, mainly because the other druid left. I simply could not put out enough damage to take either the warlock, or the druid (and I tried both! ) down more than they could heal. I tried fearing the tree, and focusing on the lock. I tried fearing the lock, and focusing on the tree. I tried fearing both. Until my teammate was able to start throwing damage onto the lock, it was futile.

So, since my teammate was from my realm, I whispered them, saying “So, okay, I know I suck. Any pointers?” No response.

So, it’s pretty much up to me. One thing I found was I was unable to keep track of my DoTs, and their remaining time on a target. So I got an addon that shows my DoTs on the nameplate. And I’m watching video. And reading. I’ve been lurking on ArenaJunkies non-stop, it seems. And in game, I’ve been playing mostly with my lock, getting used to the keybinds. We’ll see what happens.

It’s A Lock

So, the Grumpy Mage has gotten really grumpy. Even more than usual. So RG messages me a week or so ago. It went something like this:

RG: hi!

me: Howdy

RG: I have a question for you

me: Okie. I probably have an answer.

RG: would you have any interest in the arena tourney?

me: I haven’t done much PvP in quite awhile, very little arena period. I’d get eaten alive in a tourney. lol

RG: we’re all going to get eaten alive. but you get a pet for playing 50 games … and we need a warlock

me: Hmmmm… but my lock is only level 48

RG: on the tourney realm, you get to create up to 3 toon, level 80 and with the best gear

me: ohhhhh

So, long story short, I’m now registered for the tourney. Liris, my now level-53 gnomie warlock is incarnated as a Lirith,  level 80 affliction warlock. Yes, the mage has turned to the Dark Side, reveling in the pain and misery of his – now her – enemies, cackling with glee as she sucks the life and very soul from them.

Er, well… sometimes. I’ve never played a level 80 lock before. Most of the time, I’m concentrating on keeping moving, and remembering all the things I’m supposed to be doing as a lock. So far, I’ve just been doing practice 2s, and even won a couple. The problem is, I have no way of knowing a) if I screwed up, b) how I screwed up, or c) what I should have done. I simply don’t have any background to use as a reference. I’ve just come to the conclusion that I’m just going to have to keep butting my head against it until I get better.

I’ve taken Liris into to the BGs, and done fairly well; I’ve usually wound up in the top two in killing blows. One thing I have determined I need to work on is situational awareness, and survivability, and hopefully, that will carry over to arena. Getting used to the higher level spells is a challenge, but it’s coming slowly.

I’d love to see a really good PvP guide for warlocks. I’m reading all over the internet, but too many times, the writer starts using PvP slang, and I haven’t a clue what they’re talking about. I’ve tried looking at videos, but typically, I have no idea what’s going on in the video beyond some guy jumping around the screen, and most videos aren’t really created for educating n00bs, they’re for showing off the player’s talent. Guys, it’s great that you’ve got a good soundtrack, but that doesn’t tell me what you did, or why you did it, or why I should do it. Most of the time, I can’t tell what spell your casting from looking at the screen, either because  it’s lo-res, or because it’s happening so fast.

Right now, I would pay money for a small series of well-done videos from a rated affliction warlock, with no music, but good commentary. (and I only specify rated because to give some insurance that the author would know what he was talking about).  Here’s an example of the kind of videos I would love: Paladin Tanking from WowWiki. The author did vids, then did a nice, clear commentary on what he was doing, how it works, why you do it, etc.