The 3 P's

Practice! Practice! Practice!

Most of my wow time consists of completing dailies and raiding, that’s essentially all I have the time or patience for at the moment. However this weekend I took the opportunity to do a few heroics for some rep and shards.

What I came to realise is that ive become a really lazy healer, whether its because you have that extra support in raids, or just because mana isn’t generally an issue when raiding, but I found heroics, whilst not earth shatteringly impossible, sufficiently challenging.

With Misty getting closer to 80 Im going to make it a target of mine that we do more heroics together, which will also give me the opportunity to stay sharp, either with healing hands or the dps stick “pew pew”.

What doesnt kill you, can only make you stronger

This was put best by our new/current GM. Essentially we have shaken the tree and some stuff has fallen out.

At the moment valerius is struggling as a guild, the spirit and core of the guild remains, but we are leaking raiders each day. This was a result of the increasing frequency of cancelled raids, which as frustrated and upset people.

Firstly, I do not blame those people that have left, nor those in the guild that simply don’t raid. We are not a “hardcore” guild and I believe that individuals are free to play the game in whichever way suits them.

It is important for the guild that people who are not happy and not achieving personal goals, should reflect upon their role in the guild. If they do not see the guild progressing at the same speed they want, it is better they leave than resent those they have come to call friends.

I am a true believer that sometimes it is necessary to take a step back in order to take two forward, and that is certainly true here. For whatever reason valerius has hit a wall, but it is only (imo) temporary and we will break through that wall.

A solid raid group does not come easily and we have been fortunate that many of those that raid with valarius have been doing so for a number of years. It is reasonable that with recruitment drive comes inconsistency.

For valerius, now is a time to regroup, and rebuild, make new friends and understand our strengths and weaknesses as a collective. With time we will becoming a force again and I strongly believe we will come out of this a bigger, stronger, and happier guild than before.

commenting problems

It has just been brought to my attention by Tobold that embedded comments do not seem to be working... Ive tested a number of work arounds, but for some reason it just doesnt want to work.

For now i have revereted back to the pop-up comments page, so please feel free to comment as you see fit.

p.s. i am going to continue to delude myself that the problem with blogger is why i have not received a comment in over a month!

~Cav~

What do you call a raid without a healing coordinator?

……Funny!

Since wrath we have always had two healers with an outstanding commitment to knowing a fight inside out and the pressures each encounter puts on the healers. However one of those people has now quit wow, and who knows if or when he may return. That leaves one! Despite the fact he has fantastic raid attendance, sometimes people just cant make a raid, and last night, he couldn’t.

So, where did this leave us? Right up shit creek tbh.. we had 7 healers all asking the same question…. What do we do? Ive only really been in Ulduar once, and so im not an expert on the encounters, and so in the end we all chipped in, trying to work out the best assignments for each of the healers. Leading a raid, group, or healers is never an easy task, and one I don’t really welcome, but I think im going to take it upon myself to be more aware of the encounters, what happens, where damage spikes occur etc… with a view to fill in the void if ever required again. Its also important that you know what each of your team excels at, be it group healing or MT/OT. For further information on leadership, i refer you to Lodur.

Has anyone else had experience in leading a raid? How did you find it? If you don’t, what would you do to change the way healing is assigned in your guild?

Burn Out!

Those two little words. They are familiar to almost every wow player and due to the nature of the game will always exist. Today I wanted to talk a little about burn out, but for once, not my own personal feeling, but the overwhelming trend in the wow community at the moment.

Whether it be a guildy, or just another toon on the server, burn out affects us all, its that feeling of boredom or exhaustion grips us like a deathknight, and normally follows a long and meaningful grind of something, be it rep, pets, mounts or similar. For most wow players it means a break of some form from the game, sometimes a day or week, in others a month or two, and for some they simply never return.

I’ve suffered this burnout many times, and as you can see from some of my longer blog breaks I always come back with a new found energy and enthusiasm for the game.

At the moment though, burn out seems to be more prominent than ever in wow. Within our guild it seems to be affecting raiding more than anything, but I notice all over the blogsphere that people are taking a step back from wow! But why?

In many cases personal lives are more important and I completely accept that, changes in circumstances or family loss can affect your outlook on life and your priorities, but what about every one else that’s absent at the moment. Personally I think it’s a lot to do with the expansion, whether it be burnout from the grind, or the lack, absence, or disappointment of end game raiding.

The cynic in me says that people aren’t playing at the moment because end game has gotten to difficult for them, and that they’re waiting until Ulduar is nerfed or their guild has it on farm.

What ever the reasons may be, burnout is affecting players everywhere and is becoming an ever more worrying trend within wow.

I guess the reason for this post is more to do with my personal views than I had intended, whilst we don’t appear to have specific burnout issues in the guild we are struggling to put together a 25man raid each week, and the last 3 raid nights have been cancelled because of this. Its fair to say the last week was full of bank holidays across Europe which did not help our cause, but there is a more worrying picture emerging, and unless things change, we may be forced to postpone 25 man raiding indefinitely.

~Cav~

================================================================

wow that was a poorly constructed post, I completely lost track of what I wanted to say, but hopefully I got across a few points:

a) there’s an increasing number of players suffering from burnout
b) this is having an effect on my and in fact everyone’s ability to raid