Big Step
Well, I’ve done it, I’ve quit the Munquis on my main. I put out a couple of feelers and I’ve had a bite , so I shan’t be guildless for long.
Scared
I just want to write this so I have something to remind me, already it’s fading.
Woke up this morning knowing that there might be some snow, and looking out the window, yes, there it was. A thin coating on the ground outside the house. Nothing too serious, the main road is certain to be clear. Descision made: Go in by bike and avoid the train.
By the time I left the house there was a little snow falling but not much and I made it to the end of the drive and onto the main road. By the way, it’s a shared drive, we’re not that rich! So, the main road had a very light dusting, but nothing important. I turned to go up the hill behind out house to see to the horses. Here it started being not so good, the light dusting on the main road was a light layer on this untreated road. I crawled up the steep hill in first gear without any problems though.
Horses done and the snow is now falling “properly” which is not a good thing when you’re riding a motorbike. Now I’ve got to go down the hill; put the bike in first so I can use engine breaking to control my speed while leaving my feet to skid along the road for extra support.
Going down the hill was the scariest thing I’ve done in ages! About half way down the hill the back wheel starts to slip occasionally and I want to put on the front brakes to slow down. But you really can’t do that on snow! So I’m stuck with going down the hill, no brakes and barely able to control my speed even using engine breaking.
I was scared and my heart was starting to race! The only consolation I had was that if I went over it would be quite slow. Though lets not forget that I broke my ankle last year going “quite slow”.
Anyway, long story short, I made it to the main road, now covered in snow, and crawled home in first. Grabbed the van and made a rush for the train station in time to catch the train in.
Now that I’m here the weather’s fine and I feel somehow cheated that everyone else had a fine journey in!
Sigh.
yawn
Didn’t do much this weekend…
Bailed out on a Pit of Saron group – the tank was getting on my nerves and I left when we wiped on “Itchy and Scratchy”. I’m not proud, but the tank kept saying learn the tactics on Garfrost and then didn’t give any hints on the second boss.
Pugged into another ICC raid, this one only downed Marrowgar, but to be fair it was an alt run for “Lords of Light” and they were trying to kite one of the mobs for the raid quest and they didn’t have many melee DPS. This run was more sociable than last weeks PuG, I guess because it was mostly a guild run, there was much more chat. Though it wasn’t entirely to my liking, in style, there was at least an aura of friendship. The raid leader even apologised when he called the run. On the plus side, as well as being a fairly enjoyable way of passing a couple of hours, Flowersz reached friendly with whichever faction it it and now has the [Ashen Band of Wisdom]. This pushes her gear score just over 5k, for what it’s worth, which, in my opinion, is not a lot at all.
The Munquis still seem to be getting quieter and quieter. There has been some actvity on the forums regarding raid “funding” that has reasonably been toned down to just getting the raiders to pool crafting skills for flasks and food. We’re NOT a raiding guild after all. But, the catch is, the only raids scheduled are for the weekly raid and, of late, we’ve been doing just the single boss and then stopping. Not even going on to do “Trial of the big round room”. Such a shame (in my opinion). If that’s how it’s going to be until Cataclysm comes around I may have to start looking elsewhere to get my “raid fix”.
I Got A Silver Machine.
AKA Casper the pony.
First “ride” of the season, and pretty much as expected, he was pulling all the way. Even on the last part when he was on his own he thought that 20Kph was a sensible speed for roadwork.
Just need to work on our fitness now so we can up the distance from a paltry 15Km to a more sensible 40Km.
Tired?
Last night’s raid has reminded me how much I really enjoy raiding with the Munquis.
Unfortunately things are going quiet on that front with low attendance, certainly mine. Because I ride a motorbike to work; if the weather’s looking like it might contain snow I have to use the train and that means I don’t get home until after raid start time. So I sign up as tentative or not at all. So that’s another raid that doesn’t happen for me, and sometimes for the guild.
Then there’s the whole grinding for badges for gear front, which, like all grinds is getting to be a grind. I think I’m going to stop forcing myself to join LFG every day just for the frost emblems, it’s plain stupid! I’m slowly but surely getting wise to you Blizzard! Not that I won’t run randoms, just that I’ll be doing it with guildies from here on in.
So that’s one change I’ll be doing right away.
In guild there seems to be a general, slight, defection to the new kid on the block “alods”, now I’ve not played it, but I’m kindof imagining what’s happening there is that guildies are re-discovering the joys of leveling up alts. Only this time an alt in another world. Or maybe not.
I haven’t given it much thought, but I’m beginning to wonder if a shakeout is needed. Perhaps a guild hop, or game hop, or, heaven forbid, going cold turkey. Though that last idea is not particulary paltable.
Spending more time “in-guild” should help me see how I’m feeling.
Pugging Raids
Last night I did something that, for me, was unthinkable a year ago. I joined a random group to do a “serious” raid. The main intent was to complete the weekly raid quest and down one boss, in effect not so different from pugging Vault of Archevon, except that this was for the Ice Crown Citadel, a raid that in my opinion is non-trivial.
It went surprisingly well, we one shotted the first bosses (completing the quest), two shotted the next two bosses and made two attempts on the last boss, getting him down to 45% on our second try. I’m pretty sure that the first boss has been “nerfed” since the only other time I’ve seen him.
That we managed to get so far with just a collection of random players (no gearscore or achievement criteria) says something about the success of Blizzards “purchasable” epics. Or maybe it was an unusually good group, I’ve only the one experience to go on.
I quite enjoyed myself, but thinking back, I could have been playing solo with a bunch of AI “helpers”. Socially it was an empty experience with a complete lack of human interaction, just like pugging running random dungeons nowadays where it’s moderately unusual for anything to be said in chat at all.
So where does that leave me?
On the one hand I got to get my Raid fix, on the other hand I can see pugging whole-evening raids like this getting tired pretty quick. If I want to solo maybe I should hop on my Wii.
–
Gear wise I got a useless Enhancement shaman drop, typical since I’ve just respecced Elemental. I also ran a Random Heroic immediately afterwards and got myself a pair of [Mudslide Boots] so I don’t really know where to go from here gear wise.
Sshhh
The Munqui’s have been going through a quiet patch. At it’s worst recently, friday evening, I logged on and there was only one other guildie online!
Our guild master has been swamped with work and (I think) a little bored with WoW.
A few guidmates are occasionally playing in an open-beta.
Raids are being cancelled due to low sign-ups. I’m not completely innocent on this, I’ve had to downgrade to tentative on this weeks raid owing to predicted bad weather).
All in all, quiet. Not quiet all the time, it still gets positively raucus at times, but at other times it’s deafeningly quiet. This has been going on since before christmas, but it seems to be getting worse lately. Threads have even been appearing on the guild forums discussing other MMO’s.
Is it time yet?
No, not yet. I should clean my own house first and ask myself what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, what I *can* do, and where I’m going.
Once that’s done, I can come to a decision.
Something to think about on the train tomorrow…
oops
Wordpress deleted some text from the bottom of the last post, so in summary:
I got invited to a guild on another server, sweet.
I got a couple of thanks for the healing. Always nice.
blah
blah blah blah.
Okey dokey, you can stop reading now.
I’ve done it, I’ve respecced elemental, from now on I’ll be joining looking for group as healer or dps, guess which role I’m likely to end up playing?
Gearing elemental is much much easier this time, three pieces of T9 from emblems of triumph get me 212 +hit chuck in a couple of JC-only gems and a single epic and I’m sat at a teensy bit over the raid hit cap, and insanely over the Heroics hit cap. My elemental gear is not sharing about 10 items out of 15 between healer and elemental, freeing up billions of more bag slots. So I can stop deleting items just to loot stuff, yay! Last time I tried gearing elemental it was very much a scrabble with Greens and Blues to try to get a reasonable +hit. Plus ca change.
I had a very quick bash at a target dummy and pulled around 3k DPS, I guess in a dungeon scenario this will probably still be respectable. Not that I’ve actually dps’d anything yet, not even on the daily quest!
–
The dreaded gear score has finally made it to Darkspear, with Trade being spammed with
lfm ICC 10 W/ME acheiv and class 5k gs plus
Sigh, not only do you have to have a bonkers “gear score” but you also have to have done the bloody dungeon already. Just so’s you know Flowersz is still a little shy of 5k sitting at 4.93k. Now any sensible person would thing that being 1.5% short was pretty trivial, but no:
2/7 18:48:14.494 Surenius whispers: hello how much gearscore? 2/7 18:48:24.334 To Surenius: just a mo 2/7 18:48:30.700 To Surenius: 4934 2/7 18:48:54.675 To Surenius: why? 2/7 18:49:02.030 Surenius whispers: nvm
I was in looking for raid for ICC, so I guess the request was related to that, anyway, apparently 1.5% off 5k is just too low! I did say I was a little under 5k in the comments, maybe I needed to be 4950 or I’d DIE! Bugger ‘em all, that’s what I say. Plonkers!
I did get a Vault of Archavon invite, and once again we see..
2/7 18:55:56.822 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: Inv Mooiid 2/7 18:56:05.155 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: Healer =) 2/7 18:56:14.343 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: Wait 2/7 18:56:19.772 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: asking him for achi 2/7 18:56:46.016 Mooiid has joined the raid group. 2/7 18:56:55.608 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: What is your gear like? 2/7 18:57:08.323 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Mooiid: more than enough 2/7 18:57:09.564 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: Let's inspect in WG, and replace if necessary 2/7 18:57:19.488 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: And that goes for everyone
Damageugood links his achievements…
2/7 19:00:36.671 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: Storming the Citadel (25 player) 2/7 19:00:41.479 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: Toravon the Ice Watcher (25 player) 2/7 19:00:47.175 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: No need to inspect me. 2/7 19:01:00.427 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Flowersz: Is the achievement a pre-requisite? 2/7 19:01:01.517 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Musek: you know, achiv can be faked2/7 19:01:15.671 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: No it cant 2/7 19:01:20.918 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: Just click it, and check name and date. 2/7 19:01:23.930 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Musek: rly? 2/7 19:01:30.953 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Mooiid: but people can be carried thru it and be so bad 2/7 19:01:36.111 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Damageugood: Sure. 2/7 19:01:41.255 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Musek: Fall of the Lich King (25 player) 2/7 19:01:47.690 |Hchannel:raid|h[Raid]|h Flowersz: then its pointless even asking then isn't it?
Anyway, no-one asked ME for my achievement (which I DONT have). I guess healers are exempt for all this general ass-hattery.
We one-shotted everything and Flowersz came a very respectable 2nd on the new boss out of 3, and 1st over all the bosses.
–
Not everything was full of *ankers.
When the tank blinks
So, not a whole lot went on this week.
Our ICC raid got postponed and then cancelled through lack of sign-ups, not a total surprise since the only times we’ve been in there we’ve been collectively pwned.
I’ve been logging in daily and doing my random dungeon for the “frosties” and my JC daily for the tokens which can be exchanged for 100g on the AH.
After that I’ve been either logging out or joining with guildies for another random or occasionally queueing for Pit Of Saron.
Randoms is easy, too easy; queue, grab a Griffon to do the JC and before I land I’m in a group and in a dungeon. Easy, but not too sociable. Anyway the ease with which we can all get into dungeons now is not all good news, I find that it steals my guild socialising time! I need to do much more fishing…
Watching people gearing up their alts is making me a little twitchy and I’m thinking about switching my off-spec back to elemental so I’m well enough geared to DPS. At the moment if I join a Guild run (always as healer) I occasionally feel like I’m forcing another guildie to switch from heals to DPS.
With the wonderfully geared tanks we’re seeing now the healing is almost too easy, and would give good “starter” practice for those who want it.
Unless the tank pulls the entire room while their healer is watching TV. Even with a full room pulled, like last night, if I take a dirt nap I sit looking at the Reincarnate/Release buttons for a minute or two trying to decide if it’s a wipe or not. Like as not, by the time I reincarnate the fight is nearly over without any help from me and no more deaths anyway, I feel a bit pointless.
So, as I was saying, I’m thinking about DPS again and though I love Enhancement it’s such a different style of play that I think I should perhaps go back to Elemental which should be reasonably similar, and start lobbing lightning bolts. I’ve got enough Emblems of Triumph to buy 3 pieces of T9 which will give me way to much hit for a heroic and not quite enough for raiding, the remaining slots could be filled with my healer gear.
So, as always, we’ll see.
Then I can start saving emblems for buying some Heirloom leveling gear for when I roll my Worgen Priest.
Oh, and the title? One of my guildmates was complaining that he was a rubbish tank and everytime he blinks the healer dies. I’ve healed him, he’s not rubbish, he’s learning. Each time I do a dungeon with him he’s better than the last time.