What seems to be emerging right now is a trend where a lot of long time members of the guild are deciding to move on to bigger and better things, and quitting the game. This isn't anything I hold against them, sometimes you just need to do something else!

What is concerning is we haven't seen any recruits to replace them. In terms of DPS this isn't really a problem, we usually have enough. In terms of heals and tanks it becomes more problematic.

Our three tanks are very consistent, but we came across the issue last night when the usual OT was gone and I filled in, that the fight where 3 tanks made our lives so much easier (Maloriak) came up, we had a bit of pause. It's very hard to get an additional person ready to tank a raid. Part of it is gear needs to go to your usual tanks, part of it is it's hard to convince people to spend DKP on a set that may be used once every three weeks, when they'd rather save it to outbid someone on a piece they need now. I don't really have a solution (I've accepted that I just have to min bid on everything and hope for the best, since I'm a pretty even 50-50 split between roles).

Healing is sort of a nightmare. Last Sunday we had four healers not show up, and simply could not raid. We got through all our farm content last week, but no real time to speak of in progression.

I think part of the issue is that current raiding really isn't that hard. It is difficult, that is for sure, but right now the server supports at least 15 raiding guilds that have, at minimum, killed two bosses. To a progression guild that doesn't sound like a lot, but to a social, two bosses that are perceived as difficult can be enough to stay with a not-so-great guild. I think the less talented guilds need to hit a wall in difficulty and break up, so that the better players in them start applying for the guilds with more progression.

It's not malicious, it's just a symptom of a problem I saw coming back when dozens of new guilds popped up at 4.0 mass recruiting: The server's population is spread too thin, and while it should eventually correct itself, the interim is very annoying.

Has a comic



Has a screenshot

Whee
I don't have a lot of opinions this week, most likely because I'm exhausted but oh well! The guild's raiding is in full swing, downing 5 bosses last week, hopefully adding a 6th this week. I got a nice pair of shoulders, and enough points to buy my tier legs, so everything is going pretty well. I like most of the encounter designs (minus some favor to ranged, and some really shitty threat mechanics that one-shot me a lot but are avoidable now that I know about them :P).

The instances are pretty and I'd show you except I forgot to upload my screenshots again. Doesn't that sound like me? So I'll do that later tonight.

The other thigns
My DK finally got 525 enchanting, and we have a massive amount of shards (if no other mats because someone used them to level enchanting), so I should now be able to create all the enchantments we need for our gear (yay!). Next I probably need to level my paladin to 85 to gather green drops, as well as continue her herbalism to level my druids alchemy. After that it's probably focusing on my DKs blacksmithing for cheap belt buckles, and the shaman's leatherworking for leg enchants (I nearly screamed when I saw epic leg enchants going for 1000g... I guess it has a rare ingredient?).

Nuu kitty nuuu
Lots of druid nerfs in the patch notes for 4.0.6, but most of it I feel pretty neutral about. The bleed changes were actually a slight (probably unnoticeable) buff, most of the big theorycrafters think that the bear nerfs will bring our threat in line with prot warriors so that's reasonable, and I don't really voluntarily pvp enough that I'll probably see a big change with the shapeshifting gutting. That loss of fear immunity on beserk is going to suck a bit in SKF tho >:|

But like I said, not a whole lot of opinions to be had!

Is Friday again and I've talked my way into two weeks of vacation starting in an hour (huzzah).

I hope everything is going swimmingly for you as well.

And then I was a bear
I was hoping that, since we have several people who've declared themselves tanks, that the guild would be more active in terms of heroics at the moment. There's a few problems with the plan, though. Only 2-3 level 85 healers. And only 2-3 of the people identifying as tanks are running heroics as tanks. The others seem more like dps who want a short queue (which isn't bad, only it means they will opt to run with you as a dps rather than start their own groups).

I was really worried about heroics. What it came down to was changing my mindset into something closer to progression raiding. Wipes happen while you learn. There was a lot of concern about tank threat coming into heroics, but I find that it feels comfortably between BC and LK in terms of execution - Bear tanking takes a lot of effort, but it will reward you if you do it right. I think that's good.

So far I've only done 4 heroics as a tank, being stonecore, dm, sfk, and throne of tides. My favorite of the bunch of stonecore, my least sfk. Most of the boss fights in all these places were interesting and in a few cases, made me feel like my skill made a huge difference in success (3rd boss in stonecore, in particular, is nearly 100% tank positioning and made me feel pro once I figured it out). SFK earned 'least liked' because the interior design is 5 years old, and made before I think Blizz really understood what a player needs to perform well - The ceilings are too low and the spaces too cramped. It's very difficult to see what you're doing and how to move. I don't know if they could have changed that without a lot more work, but I really wish they could have.

It is worth doing, I think, under the condition that you go strictly for the game play. If you go for rewards, you might be a little underwhelmed that you spent 45 minutes for a blue something. It's a very good blue something, but it feels out of proportion.

You're encouraged to be good to your healer. Healing is rough. I have the benefit of my pocket healer being my boyfriend, but it still took us some adjusting. There is trial and error while strategies and specs were worked out. I was very pleased with our second night of heroics, as it was so much smoother than the first. Be nice!

GOGOOGOOGOGOOGOGOOGOGOOOMG
So we're a little over a week into this expansion and suddenly my guild had decided it wants to start raiding.

I'm not sure what I think about it. Whether or not I want to go I'm excluded because I didn't see the post fast enough. Really, the whole thing is supposed to be a new experience but it really feels like more of the same. We don't have enough healers to support one group, let alone two, at the moment. This has been the case for a loooong time and lead to a lot of begging and pleading on my part in ICC. Here there's a huge bottleneck from several sources.

-Currently, only two of our previous healers is 85 are still a healer, though only one may be raid ready, and only one of our previous dps went healybeams
-Healing in general is a huge huge burden at the moment. I haven't tried it myself, but I recognize just from watching heroics that the game has changed, and many people may not find it fun anymore
-We don't seem to be actively recruiting. This is sort of a catch-22. We're not recruiting because we don't have enough to do raids, but we don't do raids because we can't recruit.
-We only seem to have two tanks in guild, myself and the organizer of the group trying blackwing decent this weekend, who are currently doing heroics. We have other people with tank specs but they all have either opted to stay in normals or tag along as dps in my groups. What this means is that we're gearing up slower. I can't force anyone to tank any more than I can force them to heal.

What will be interesting is to see how fast the ball gets rolling. It's possible that next week there will be a bigger pool of 85s available, and with word that we're starting raids, more healers could appear. Possibly. I don't know.

I was considering starting my own ten man, and then the realization came that 10 and 25 share a lockout. Anything that I build now will have to be rebuilt as an alt and 'absent for 25s' group - which isn't bad, and that's what my ICC group originally started as, but there it is just the same.

(can you tell I really dislike the idea of handing decision making over to someone else, despite all the bitching I did about how much it sucks?)

Really I should just not worry about it. The expansion, she is young. I have the next two years to be angry.

Weekly Screenshots