If at first you dont succeed, find someone better!

This post is a little late in coming, but in an effort to keep this joke running for a few more weeks its well worth mentioning!!

As i was writing this post, i actually remembered that this situation had actually happend twice in the last two weeks!! coincidence much??!

So to set the scene a little bit, we were in ICC10 and had cleared upto Rotface without any real issues. We had a Pally (Brenstorm) healing the Tanks and me, in my 70's disc(o) spec healing the groups.

A couple of wipes into the Rotface encounter, or RotGate as i now referrer to it, the raid leader (Brenstorm) calls for a change in the raid setup. At this point i should probably also clarify that as we are a relatively small raiding guild, we are quite versatile in our spec's and between the raid we can cover various roles.

Now to this day, i still do not think our previous wipes were as a result of poor healing, but i can be overly defensive when i believe i am being criticised, and never the less i was swithced out to my dps role and DJhuxter (druid) was brought in to group heal.

Needless to say we downed Rotface first time with the new setup, admitedly moreso because of my imba dps then the change of healers (in my expert opinion) :P , although it soon transpired that DJ had forgotten to switch to his healing gear, which was slightly embarrasing for me, much to the raids ammusement.

Anyway, I dedicate this post to Brenstorm. Without his insight and bravery in switching me to dps to melt faces like never melted before, we would probably still be wiping now!! Thanks Bren!!!

Holy Tree, how i missed thee...

If you are reading this chances are you probably know more about priests than i do, but nether the less, its worth pointing these things out.

So, a tip for all you priests out there... play to your strengths.

Im all for priests being spec'd a specific way to help their guilds, but no matter how much you work at it, some priests cant play holy and some cant play disc, its just not in their dna. I have learnt over the years that i am a holy spec priest, i eat, sleep and breathe holy and wouldnt have it any other way.

Before my last wow break i had decided that i would ms/os holy/disc, just so i and the guild had options for raiding, and to be perfectly honest it came in really useful on certain fights. However upon my return and due to the loss of raiders i changed my o/s to dps and the expense of my holy spec.

^^This was without a doubt the biggest mistake ive made in wow, period! Over the last few weeks of disc healing 5mans and raids i have come to realise that i cannot heal disc spec for shit, my play style just doesnt suit it, at all! and so with that i had no choice but to respec.

Last night was my first raid using my precious Holy spec again, and to be frank it was fecking amazing!! I wish i had remembered to screenshot the meters before resetting them, as it would have been nice to have a record of my return to form, however im content knowing the improvement even if noone else saw it.

So fellow priesties... dont let the bastards get you down!! We are a very unique class but we have the ability to heal in pretty much any situation! play to your stregths and heal like you've never healed before!!!

Where are we now?

Its been almost 3 months since I last posted, but given my track record with this blog you shouldn’t be too surprised at that. I don’t do farewell posts, simply because they would contribute to over 50% of my post count.

Anyway, I just thought it was about time I did a bit of an update of where we are since May.

So as you may remember the situation was that Ulduar had just landed and it was causing major problems for our guild. We’ve never been a "large" guild and our lack of numbers was halting our raid progression. A number, I estimate around 3 of our regular raiders left the guild for pastures new, and this rocked the guild. There was a snowball effect, which resulted in around 8-10 members moving on.

It took until the end of June for everything to really sink in and get back to "normal" In the meantime, I, along with another long standing member of the guild were promoted to officers and went about the task of rebuilding the guild.

We are now at a point where we are progressing through Ulduar nicely on 10man, and have started doing joint 25man runs with a guild in a similar position to ours. Whilst these are going sloooowwwwllly, we are progressing and learning each others personalities and abilities along the way.

But the most important, and in fact noticeable thing over the last 3 months is the spirit! Since June everyone has been amazing. I think we are now at a place where we have again, a like-minded set of people who have similar goals in wow. There is no doubting that we all want to progress and see new content, but we’re doing it at our pace. Those that don’t raid are not being talked about (which has happened in the past) and everyone is left to get on with there own thing. In fact the guild is pretty self sufficient now, so much so that I don’t really do anything in my role as officer!

Where do we go from here?

Who knows! The current bug where XT is stuck in hard-mode has really affected our plans for this week. The aim was to extended the raid lock-out and clear ulduar over the next two weeks, with a view to starting the new content the following week.

I would still really like to clear ulduar, but we need to consider what the rest of the guild would like, although tbh there are still a number of people in the guild that would like to raid, but cant get their gear levels up to the required levels, mainly because we don’t run naxx anymore.

So there we are. Valerius is fighting fit, and long may they continue. If I was a betting man, I wouldn’t bet against Valerius getting back on the 25man radar before Christmas!!!

~Cav~

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.

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

The Nerf Stick: Friend or Foe?

Whilst I was writing my thoughts down on the 10 vs 25man argument I noted a post pop up in my reader from wow insider! Before I even read on I knew what they’re about to say!

That’s right, yet another nerf (hotfix) for Ulduar. Through reading some of the changes it appears on the face of things that Ulduar is getting easier and easier by the day. Of course until these changes actually go Live im just speculating on their impact, however I will be expecting a much easier ride in Ulduar once they have hit the servers.

Maybe im overreacting in my opposition to these “fixes” and maybe the encounters are currently “not as blizzard had intended” but I just wish they’d stop making everything easier. Instead of kills feeling like an achievement, they’re going to be meaningless urple farming once again!

On the bright side we will still have the “hard” mode to compete with, until of course they’re “fixed” aswell!

Ive made my feeling on Ulduar perfectly plain for all to see, but what do you think? Is Ulduar to hard, Is it a Guild breaker, or is it merely to much effort for people to put in?

10 vs 25: The Conundrum

Its fair to say that I have quite an open view on raiding, raid difficultly and whinny little bitches! And usually I would say that if you are struggling with content then its probably been pitched at just the right level (despite public opinion, raiding isn’t supposed to be a cake walk). However the more and more I look at the 25man content for Ulduar, the more and more I think there is a need to do some 10man content first.

From a healing perspective I am fairly confident in what I am doing and fairly confident that collectively we are not struggling to heal through the 25man content. However it is obvious to me that we are struggling to dps the things down! On every encounter thus far we have hit the enrage timer on multiple occasions. It is arguable that we are refining strategies and this will impact upon the time taken to kill something, but we are more often then not 20% away from killing stuff when It enrages!

As a guild we have decided that we are going to focus on the 25man content (for now), although 10man groups are going on each week, and to my knowledge are proving more successful. Given this, I would have thought it more sensible to focus on doing 2x10man raids on the allotted (official) raid nights! More to the point, how many raiding guilds did 10man Naxx first? I know we did! So why is Ulduar different, why do we think we can step straight into 25mans.

To argue this I have looked at the 10man content, and more importantly the rewards (gear) acquired, and I have to say, im not all that impressed! There were maybe one or two items I would currently consider to be upgrades, and I mean maybe! It’s debatable. If we applied that rule across the entire guild you would expect that we have a good level of healing/tanking/dps! So why is it that we struggle so much?

My guess is that we just not quite there yet…. And that a few weeks of further strategy refining is required (hopefully). With Thursday comes another fresh Instance for us to tackle, and hopefully some further progression will be achieved.

So, Ulduar was a (fairly) big jump from Naxx etc… How has you guild faired so far? Did you jump right in to the 25man content or have you been refining your strategies in the 10man (easy) mode?

Well it was St.Georges Day

So yea it was St Georges day yesterday and what better way to celebrate the patron saint of England then to slay a dragon in his name, and you know what, that’s exactly what we did.

It was another long and hard night in Ulduar last nigh, although to be fair the time did seem to fly by. Flame Leviathan was fairly straight forward. For last nights attempt we still had some new-commers and so played it safe and took down all the towers, however next week I think we are going to leave one up!

Onwards to Razorscale we went. Having spent the best part of a raid night on him last week we were fairly confident with our strategy for this fight. Although we wiped 3 or 4 times it was far more promising than previous attempts, and we were consistently getting him down to 20%.

Finally we wiped ourselves down, got back up and had another go. This time we were successful, and in the process I actually managed to pocket [Shackles of the Odalisque]

There was more action to report from Ulduar last night, but I think I’ll leave it at that for now!

~Cav~

A week ago

So it’s a week after returning to wow, and how do I feel? Well suffice to say at the moment I think everything is going pretty well. I have managed to slot back into the raid calendar quite nicely and whilst im not logging in on a daily basis, im still managing to integrate into the social side of the guild.

I have quite a few goals still left to achieve in wow, but im not in any urgent rush to accomplish them. If I have half a day to play one weekend then I will, but im not devoting anywhere near as much time as I once was, and for the most part im not sat wishing I was playing wow, which in itself is quite refreshing.

I didn’t mention at the time, but Sunday’s raid itself wasn’t all that successful. In fact we just couldn’t take down Raz? No matter how hard we tried. It wasn’t through lack of trying though, and im pretty confident that we have nailed down a sound strategy. However 3 hours of rinse and repeat wiping is very tiring, and may well have had an affect on Monday nights raid sign-ups. Come kick-off we only had 22 raid members, which just wasn’t going to cut it for Ulduar, so instead another wipefest occurred in VoA when up against Emalon.

So with it being a Thursday today the obligatory raid is scheduled and numbers permitting we will have another crack at Ulduar, and maybe even kill some stuff!

I would be interested to hear from people on there raid make up though. How many healers are you taking to Ulduar in these early days and are you finding DPS more of an issue than healing?

When the Going Gets Tough

I for one have been supremely satisfied with the new raid content that has landed with 3.1. Since wrath launched all those months ago everyone within the warcraft community has been waiting for some new, exciting, and most importantly, challenging raid content, and that is most certainly what we have received.

For those people that are bemoaning the content as over-buffed, pull your thumbs out of your arse and do some fricking work!

Before this patch was launched, we were blessed (if you want to call it that) with some real cake walk content, which has had a significant effect on how we now approach raiding, and not for the better.

We (collectively) have become arrogant, lazy and impatient, and rather than becoming excited by every kill, we criticise every wipe.

I recall a time not so long ago, where every kill was an achievement, a badge of honor you could wear proudly amongst you piers, and its about time those times returned.

For the record, by guild have only managed to clear the first encounter in Ulduar thus far, but we are not down heartened and we are not calling for the content to be nerfed! We are calling for a time where you gave 110% on every encounter, wasted every pot and every cooldown you had to ensure the raid success.

Warcraft is not all about easy kills and new gear! For some it is the excitement of seeing new content and knowing that they worked hard to achieve new goals! This is why I still play, it might also be why I came back, but the exhilaration of succeeding in an new encounter for the first time outweighs any ingame cost to you or your guild!

So next time your raid wipes, don’t be disheartend! Release, Rez, and try Again! And when you succeed! Celebrate!!! That first kill only comes around once!!

~Cav~

who said raiding was boring?

oh right, that was me wasnt it.

Well maybe i was a tad hastey in my comments on stale content.

Blue posts today confirm that after 3.1 goes live we wont be able to get the rewards from the “Glory of the Raider” and “Heroic: Glory of the Raider” achievements. This means that all and sundry will be trying to complete the meta achievements as soon as possible.... Its a shame to see them go, but like the amani war bear the rewards were indended to be obtained for completing something particularly difficult at that level.... After that they becoming less meaningful...

rest in peace plagued and black proto drakes!!!

when raiding becomes stale.....

The fundamental problem with current end game content is the lack of end game content! and moreover, original raiding content.

From a guild point of view, i think its fair to say we are a middle of the road sort of guild. We arent particularly bad in any areas, but nor are we the best guild on the server. Although we only officially raid 3 nights a week for 25man content, we also do the 10 man equivalent on days off, and to be fair, we clear the current content in around 2 days give or take an hour or so to finish up. I guess my point is, we arent "hardcore", but we take it seriously none the less.

Given this, and although it should be something to be proud of, im quite disapointed to be able to say that i have, excluding Sath 3D cleared all current end game content. This from a guild that never made it to BT!!

Whilst the current content holds its own challenges, its not even close to the difficulty of vanilla or TBC content for difficulty, in fact its childs play in comparison.

Achievements have added replay value, even after the whole guild is kitted out, but really blizz... rescaling a vanilla instance and 3 single boss encounters..... really not good enough for launch end game content.

The next patch is scheduled to include all new content in the form of Ulduar, and to be frank, it cant come a moment to soon!

Raid Etiquette – Loot

Raiding has changed considerably over time, from the 40 man raids in vanilla to the 25 man in burning crusade. With the introduction of wrath we went to normal and heroic raids, reportedly to enable even the casual gamer the chance of raid glory.

My concerns however arise over the distribution of loot. I have been running with the same people for years now, ever since two guilds merged in vanilla wow. Its not always been smooth sailing, but we have a mature bunch of players, with an equal respect of each other, and therefore give or take, raids have always been a pleasant experience.

With the recent changes in wow, loot and raid etiquette has changed. No longer is it our fellow class-mates that we are to be considerate of, but in fact most of the raid. There are many examples, but I’ll pick a recent case that I was not directly involved in.

[Hood of Rationality], which drops from malygos.

In my opinion, based on the current version of wow (excluding forthcoming regen changes), this is the best in slot head piece for priests. However in our short sighted excitement at getting said loot, we forget that arguably, this piece is also best in slot for warlocks. See their spellpower mechanics relate directly to their spirit, and given the crit rating and sockets, they too drool over this piece.

Who should get the [Hood of Rationality]?

Being a priest I know where my allegiance lies, but that’s not to say im right, in fact I am most probably wrong. In these cases it comes down to the individuals. We do not have a loot council and I don’t think its something we would even consider, we have a simple dkp system, and for the most part it works, people are considerate, and if something is a bigger upgrade for person x they can usually have it! But there are still cases where someone will be left seething that a warlock has taken the best priest item in game, but trust that the warlock feels exactly the same when you take the same item!!!

There was a much simpler time, when dps took spellpower and priests took healing gear. However, here and now, we are all equal and the chances are in some cases we want exactly the same things! Whether it be today, next week or next month, you will get the gear you want, and I guarantee the less you worry, the more satisfying new loot is.

Raids are about clearing content…. And I guarantee you cant do it alone!

long time no see....

Due to popular demand the blog is back! At least until I forget to maintain it again.

Its been over two months since my last post, and valerius’ first adventure into Northrend raiding, and a lot has happened since then.

Although I do not attend the 10man raids at this time… mainly due to my own personal raid restrictions… I have it on good authority that naxx is well and truly on farm status! This goes pretty much the same for the 25man, although we do have moments of madness, mainly when seeking achievements :P

Sartharion is also on farm in both 10 and 25 man, although that is without drakes!

With drakes it is completely different, and in fact the only real challenge we have yet to conquer.

Malygos, Malygos, Malygos!

Last week the guild successfully downed him in 10man, again I was not present, but it was great news for the guild!

Last night was the 25man version. Essentially it is exactly the same fight, however in my view it is much harder on 25man. You are relying on so many more people to understand the fight than in the 10man, and that’s what makes it tough. The encounter itself is fairly straight forward once you understand it, but you cant afford to have anyone not pull their weight.

A final note on malygos, and actually, this is a healing related comment!

You do not need CoH to heal malygos… we managed fine last night without it, and we will again in the future!

Valerius do Naxx

Right then, I’ll get right to it.

Last night was out first foray into the wrath-raiding content. It was an eventful night and probably surpassed all of our original expectations on how far we would get.To summarise, we cleared the whole of the spider wing, and then took down the first boss in the plague wing (although I don’t know if that’s its actual name). From a boss encounter point of view they were all quite interesting with their own individual quirks.

From a healing perspective (which is the reason you’re here), we took two priests and a shammy. This felt about the right level of healing, although im sure we can reduce this to two healers once we are better geared. The only boss that seemed to give us real trouble was Maexxna, mainly due to her raid wide cocoon effect, which relied on our HoT’s to keep the tank up. For one reason [tactic] or another we couldn’t keep the tank up whilst she was enraged. A quick change of tactics seemed to resolve this, and on we went.

All in all it was a very successful initial foray into Naxx and one that we are going to venture into again tonight to refine our tactics. All being well we may even get to see a few new encounters [fingers crossed].

Interestingly, on a personal note, my new healing spec seemed to work a treat. When accompanied by raid buffs, my mana regeneration was very good, and although I could probably use a little more intellect and spellpower it all felt pretty good.

The unseen Flaw (in my plan)

Following yesterdays blog, I had no intentions of going home and sitting in front of the pc screen to play WoW. However what I had stupidly forgotten was the allure of Warcraft, the addiction that needs to be fed.

See, some warcraft players will tell you that they’re not addicted, that they can quit at any time, and that they only play because they enjoy it, not because they need it. Other players will openly admit they cant go one single day without thinking, living and playing the game!!!

I, at the moment, fall into the second category, and have done for large proportions of time since its initial launch. See, for all the will in the world I wanted to go home last night, do house work, watch tv and NOT play WoW, but instead, I did no house work, watched no tv, and focused on my pc screen all night.

Subsequent to my post yesterday I aired some of my views to my guild, told them, in a round about way, that I was unhappy in being left out of Kara (rightly or wrongly), whilst not questioning the authority to do so.

(as a point of reference, I used to be an officer, I know what a hard job it is, and I know from experience how little respect people can have for the difficult decisions that are made by those officers. Therefore despite any difference I may have with people, I will always respect the role they play in the guild, even though I may not respect them)

Anyway, after all my bitching and whining last night and due to other people dropping out, I got to go to Kara. Again I think I did ok, nothing spectacular, but many thanks to Yit who provided me with valuable advice throughout. I know I have lots to learn.

I still want to try and take a step back, but I really don’t think I can! With WOTLK around the corner, should I really be bothering with Kara, should I be concentrating more on damage gear for the new expansion? Lots of choices and decisions to make!

For now, I’ll stay holy and enjoy what im doing, but also make an effort to get some “off-spec” gear rather than see it being sharded!!

Cavalla does Kara!

Friday was a good night, I got invited to take Cav into her first Kara run, and in fact my first ever Kara Run.

The guild had taken down the bosses up to the curator the night before, but that still left lots to kill.

Admittedly I was really nervous to start with, the guild had been clearing kara for months now and coming in with no experience and having to heal it was quite daunting for me. Fortunately I had some good support healing which took a lot of the pressure off.

We had a couple of wipes as there were a couple of us who hadn’t done Kara before, so understanding some of the boss fights took a while. Other than that it was a very successful run.
We one shotted, Aran, Illhoof and the Prince, which I thought was really impressive.

Cav got a new necklace, which I have now realised will be replaced this week when I get exalted with SSO, but I got all excited in the moment!!

Following this massive balls up on my part I have now done a Kara “wish-list” and wont bid on anything outside that list…. Hopefully

Looking forward to hopefully getting in on this weeks run too, and spending the rest of the week working on my hunter (now lvl 47)

Gearing

Quite busy at work today, but time for a quick post.

I was reading Dwarf Priest earlier today, and hes updated his loot table following patch 2.4. There have been some interesting movers and shakers since the patch, but this is still one of the most reliable sources for priest loot (imo).

Whether you’re preparing for raiding, or in the middle BT, this list summarises what should be in and around your “I’ve Gotta Have it!” list!

If you have the time, also read his calculations behind this it all, very interesting reading, but also quite heavy, so you’ve been warned.