This site is the win-ing-est! You gotta check it out. Please please please -- just do it. You'll love yourself more for having done so -- and not in a dirty way ... mostly.
Well, I'm not that mad. Although it IS interesting to note that what this guy is saying holds true today, even the Russians are a problem again, albeit not quite what they were in the early eighties.
Anyhoooo. Yes, I'm a little bit pissed. I'm angry at the people I play with in the game. This is a social game and sometimes people step on other people's toes, I get that, but I'm tired of my current situation in-game.
I am a tank, I am currently my guild's only heroic/raid geared tank. I am one of two geared tanks in our guild alliance. This means that for raids the both of us must have 100% attendance for things to happen. It also means that if I want to run 5 man heroics all I need to do is find a healer and we can pretty much get it on. However, that also means that if I'm not the in mood to wait around for someone and I decide to just get something started -- I am the focus of bad feelings because someone gets left out. It also means that if you whisper me about running something and I'm getting whispers from 10 other people, you might get missed and so you miss that run as well.
This I find bothersome.
I join guilds so it's easier to find groups and to have people to be social with. I don't join them so I can feel like I have another job. I join guilds that are casual in the hopes that someday I will find one that has a chilled out relaxed atmosphere, but that also likes to get instance runs and raids going.
My guild has recently created an alliance with another guild -- one that I really like the members of. If I had my druthers we would merge our two guilds but as both guild leaders really like their independence that is not likely to happen. But things are starting to come together a little bit -- we have run Vault of Archavon 10 successfully and PUGed 25 with no problem as well. This coming week we are going to give Obsidian Sanctum a visit and kill Sartharion with his attendant drakes already dead AKA Sarth+0. So things are moving.
But that's not really the problem. The problem is that I feel pressure every time I log on to the game. I feel pressure to make sure that everyone who wants to run something is included. I feel pressure to not show anyone any kind of favoritism. I feel pressure to show up all the time so that I can be someone's meat shield.
Now our guild leader wants to start adding all sorts of leadership roles to the guild roster. This means we would have a tank leader, a paladin leader and a herbalism leader -- along with all the other professions, roles and classes. With our guild being so small, maybe 15-20 actual regular players and a crap load of alts. We only have 5 MAYBE 6 people at 80 who can walk into heroic 5 mans. So this all boils down to people taking on multiple roles.
What will my roles be? Well, currently I am the raid leader. I am also the most experienced tank, but not officially the tank leader -- although the funny thing is that my advice is not taken when I tell people that so-and-so is not ready to tank something. Guess I'm REALLY not the tank leader. And I suppose I could be the alchemy boss, but so could our guild leader.
Really, I don't want any more titles or roles to play. I want to tank in heroics and raids and if I have to organize such things, then so be it. After that I just want to play, and not be bothered with much else. I'm responsible for enough shit at home (7 month old baby) and at work.
All this has lead me to spend more time on the PTR messing about as well as logging into low level alts that no one knows. Which is OK, but doesn't get me into more interesting content. I could honestly care less about the epic items, I just want to play content I haven't seen before and I want to skill up on that stuff.
So what to do, what to do. The extra roles in the guild should not be such a big deal (I would hope) -- just tell them that I'm not interested. The crap dealing with groups and emo kids who don't get their runs ... harder.
What really makes this an issue at all is the fact that there is a casual raiding guild, in which I have RL friends, and who I know are chilled out and cool people -- and they want me. They are running Naxx on a regular basis and they need more tanks. Also I have had a toon running with them for a couple weeks, just to check them out -- DK, of course.
One of their members even offered to pay half of the transfer fee. Ugh.
Of course, if I didn't have at least one person who I really think is a cool person-- a person who I could see really becoming RL friends with, this would all be a non-issue.
Now, I've been in perhaps 15 guilds on 5 or 6 servers so /gquit is not a new thing for me. Nor is transferring. But I've never left one guild for another. Usually a guild will just self-destruct or I'll quit playing that toon for a while and get kicked. So this is all something new for me.
Alrighty, that's all for now. More when I know more.
I am going to focus on 2 changes to the protection tree -- for this current build they are, in my mind the most significant changes (and maybe the only ones for protection? not sure).
Filling out the talent with 32 points in protection we now have Spiritual Attunement -- working much like it used to when bought from trainers.
"A passive ability that gives the Paladin mana when healed by other friendly targets' spells. The amount of mana gained is equal to 5/10% of the amount healed."
There is a lot of talk about this move and what it does for all 3 specs. At the moment it is a definite nerf to both Holy and Ret, although Holy can probably get away without it because they aren't receiving many heals from friendly players. Ret however is currently counting on this mechanic to get mana back because of the Seal of the Martyr/Blood self-damage mechanic (this takes a bit to explain -- if you want to know more check out any of a number of the retribution paladin blogs).
Eat dirt Archavon!
I think this is a great move on the developers part -- although it most likely means that they will need to do some extra work in the Retribution tree. It makes sure that when tankadins need mana they will have it.
Speaking of having mana when you need it there is another interesting change in the protection tree. Fully talented at 42 points is Guarded by the Light.
"Reduces spell damage taken by 3/6% and gives 50/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Divine Plea when you hit an enemy. In addition, your Divine Pleas spell is 100% less likely to be dispelled."
Jigajiga-what? Alright. Now this talent used to be insanely useful: Did the same work on spell damage, but lowered the mana cost of the 3 most used tanking spells. Now it gives more uptime to our biggest mana generating spell, Divine Plea.
I am not sure this is so great anymore. Sure it gives us the ability to be generating mana like crazy, for ourselves, but I think it may be too much. With Blessing of Sanctuary and Spiritual Attunement I generally have more mana than I know what to do with -- ending many boss fights with full mana. This WILL help tankadins when it comes to trash fights I suppose, when they're not getting healed quite as much, but my experience has shown me that normal unbuffed Divine Plea works just fine.
Of course there is still the reduction to spell damage, which is always nice, but I am of the opinion that this might not be one of those HAVE TO HAVE talents anymore. Testing will prove one way or another. I hope to get on the PTR tonight to get a look at just that.
Well I copied my character, waited the 2 days and finally logged into the PTR.
When I copied my toon he had logged out in Borean Tundra and so I immediately flew over to Coldarra to test out the silencing mechanic newly built into talents deep in the Protection tree.
LOVIN IT! This was great, finally I can pull a caster to me instead of having to use line of sight mechanics or rushing in on them. As I was fighting, I realized that the 3 second silence may not be long enough. I would rather go with a 5 or 6 second silence, but hey, I got something which is better than the nothing we all had before.
While there I ran into my first bug. It's only an animation glitch, but it was more than just annoying.
As you can see, I'm no longer fighting anything, but my arms a oddly akimbo as if I'm dodging or getting ready to slash with my sword or shield. And this effect lasted until I summoned my Red Drake and flew away, but came back again once I set down and fought some elementals also in Borean Tundra.
This was when I noticed the new cooldown on the Hearthstone. It's now only 30 minutes!! Even though I hadn't used it since logging in, as soon as I got to Dalaran and had puttered around there for a few minutes I was shocked to find that I only had 10 minutes until I could hearth again.
Since I was on the PTR and nothing I did would have any permanence I decided to zone into Wintergrasp and spend some of my Stone Keeper's Shards on a Black War Mammoth. While this isn't REALLY PTR type stuff, I took some video of it's glory. Not sure if I'm going to allow myself to buy one on my live server, but hey, it was fun for a little bit.
Because I have recently been writing mostly about PUG aggro or personal issues with the game I decided it was time to jump into the PTR for 3.1.
I really want to be able to write about interesting things happening in the game, and although there are still arguments raging about whether or not Reckoning is worth spending points on, or if Pursuit of Justice in the Retribution tree is pointless (hehe) or not -- I feel like those arguments may continue to rage until the end of time. Or at least the end of WoW (shudder).
Also I am not a mathematician (I can hardly balance my checkbook) so I have little interest in trying to write about current theorycrafting -- check out Elitist Jerks for all that.
I want to be able to report on the reality of upcoming changes to the class and most especially to the Protection spec. So I've downloaded the PTR client and have put my toon in the queue for copying to the PTR. That is supposed to take a couple of days, so I won't have anything new to say on this front for a few days.
IF there are any readers out there who would like me to check something specific out on the PTRs and talk about it, please leave a comment and I will do my best to do so.
I am most psyched to play around with the Shield of the Templar talent change. While we are losing +30% damage in that talent to Shield of Righteousness, Avenger's Shield and Holy Shield that damage is being folded into the base damage of all those spells and being replaced with the ability to SILENCE with Avenger's Shield. HOW FRIGGIN COOL IS THAT? Finally. Seriously.
I also heard somewhere that Shield of Righteousness was no longer going to generate a high amount of threat, but as I cann't find the source for that, I would like to hop into the PTR and get the scoop.
Looking at the latest talent calculator on MMO-Champion, it looks like I will be going Holy 3, Prot 55, Ret 13. And that's quite weird at the moment to look at.
I also want to check out the dual spec deal and also I am wondering about mana issues with the changes to Blessing of Sanctuary and Spiritual Attunement. I believe that I will have no problem keeping my mana up, but I would really like to see what's going on.
So, dear reader, look forward to some interesting articles about what's coming up for paladins and tankadins in the 3.1 patch.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm pretty busy right now and have had trouble writing.
Work is keeping me quite busy. Home is always busy with 6 month old baby, girlfriend, dog and various other things. And then there's Warcraft.
As it stands I am on a streak of trying to run as many heroics as I can as often as I can. So on the nights that I know I have more than a few hours, I try to run at least 2 heroics. Alot of the time, unless it's scheduled ahead of time that means trying to put together a PUG, which can be great or insanely awful at any given moment.
Plus I have just been elected as the raid leader for our guild, so I have to work very closely with the raid leader of our allied guild, Remains of the Fallen in order to get some stuff done. And that takes up time.
Along with the scheduling of the raids and deciding composition numbers from each guild -- here's hoping we can keep it to 5/5 -- there are the gear/experience/skill factors with the membership of my guild.
I am totally sure and confident of 3 of our players. 100%. No worries. At all.
One of those is me, and yeah, I guess there is some hesitation for me on new content, but I know I'm geared and I have the right skills to figure most fights out (given that I've done some research).
And there are really some bright stars that are rising quickly in our guild, both in skill and gear (there experience is usually not something I worry too much about in the beginning).
Anyhoooo. So I might not be writing as much as I'd like, or you my dear reader(s).
Yeah sure it's easy for you, you just have to stand there and hit your buttons and what? Not pay attention to threat meters, not pay attention to incoming adds, not pay attention to the healers mana, not pay attention to the tank moving the mob.
Argh, this subject makes me so angry. When someone comes into a group and just assumes that whatever they are doing will be easy and they can proceed with no cares in the world.
When grouping it is important to remember that there are 4 other people in the group with you. They all have differing levels of gear, experience and skill -- all three of which are insanely important in how "easy" anything is.
I can't tell you how many times I have run with a PUG in an heroic and someone keeps saying that this should be a breeze and that, "any 80 will have 1300 dps." Then, when I remind them that people are always leveling alts or new toons they take a step back and I can hear them gulp a little.
Yeah, we might have some under-prepared members of our group -- people who aren't geared enough or don't have any idea how to deal with the first boss in heroic gundrak or just aren't very good at their class.
You just don't know until you hit that first boss.
Just, please please please remember: Unless you're in a guild run or with good friends, you never REALLY know the capabilities of the other people in your PUG. The Armory can't tell you that they're watching Dollhouse on hulu while running heroic Azjol-Nerub.
Well things have been pretty slow in my WoW life recently. Not much sweet gear, although unless it's truly friggin awesome I wouldn't post it anyways. Heroics runs have had the same chance to be great or to fail epicly depending on group makeup.
I've also been very busy at work, and that bleeds over into the blog writing.
I keep playing, and when I can't get a group I mostly farm for herbs or do the Hodir daily quests.
Sometimes I kill something randomly just because I want to. This is one such instance (not dungeon).
I really love the models on these guys -- with their toothy grins!
One thing that is happening that I will be excited to see come to fruition, (if it does) is the alliance between my current guild, Elven Fellowship, and our friends over at Remain of the Fallen. We have just created a chat channel in-game that we all share, so that should build relations between the two groups.
My understanding is that they are in much the same place as our guild. We don't have the numbers to really field a 10 man group, we don't want to change our focus to hardcore progression and we don't want to be swallowed up by a large guild just so we can raid. So we're just going to get together with another like-minded group and hope it all works out.
I know that that Remains has some great players, and so have we, we'll just have to see how the two can come together.
On a totally different note, I screamed through a 44 minute Heroic Nexus run last night with a nicely heavy dps group.
I died at the end dragon when she was at 2% because I thought to myself, oh we got this, and then stopped jumping and promptly died. The rest of the group spanked her down so it didn't matter much -- just a slightly higher repair bill.
