NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Hunter Dun. However...

It was an Epic fight. Even a Druid with THAT Legendary weapon could not save the first wipe. Second time in we were fighting whelps at 15%. It was one of those victories you felt you deserved. Lock and Rogue hats dropped, the Lock was celebrating... as the RL looted everything else, and promptly logged out.

STUNNED Silence, and then a lone voice.

'Did... did he just ninja everything?'

Yes, he did. He's been reported by nine people and as I logged out he was the main topic of discussion in Trade. I can but hope with nine tickets open the GM's will do something.

Ah well.

Hang On, What if...?

 Lesson #15: A little knowledge can be dangerous.

I'm beginning to wonder whether it's me now, you know...

Day 3 in the Onyxia PuG Drama, and I've been through one abortive attempt already. In my heightening annoyance, I have composed the following message to insert into LFG:

Shaman Healer LFG Ony 10: it would help if you weren't going to ninja the loot, that you knew what to do and you weren't going to spend half the raid bickering about who wiped us first. I may be over-optimistic, who knows?

This gets me what looks like my most hopeful try of the week thus far, and we make it to P2 before fiery Whelp Death eats us. I avoid all the Deep Breaths, and I'm the last healer standing. We do it again, and again. By the time we get to Wipe #4 we've been through six personnel changes. It's at that point that the Hunter (who has the Ghost Wolf pet back from Vanilla) pipes up:

'Hey M, how come you've not done one single Naxx run?'

Now, I know she's looking at PuG Checker. What immediately piques my interest is WHY suddenly, after all these wipes, it's being mentioned in Raid. Ah yes, I know, it's because I can't keep the raid alive that we're dying, isn't it? Got NOTHING to do with the stupid tanks or the rogues being swept into the Whelp pits or the mage who patently refuses to wait for the tanks to get aggro before arcane exploding and grabbing ALL the aggro... it's me. Me who, because I've never done a Naxx, must know diddly squat about the encounter.

My gear is clearly awful too coz it's not L219 at minimum and therefore I can't be expected to contribute in a ToC Encounter... ok so that's a fair point, but I've been here for an hour, two FAR better healers than me have buggered off, and I doubt their gear had anything to do with it.

To make the point she starts linking the healing stats into Raid... and suddenly I have an incredible feeling of Deja Vu. I find myself thinking 'no, this is stupid, if I tell anyone this they're gonna think I'm making this up for attention-seeking purposes, this is NOT happening again'. The Hunter stops typing to me for a good minute and when she refuses to respond to a RW from the OT I think I know what she's doing, she's whispering the RL. She has a replacement with better gear, and because of that they will succeed. *sigh*

So, it's a choice: do I stay or shall I just go this time and so I go, because frankly my life is too short and my son's now home from School, and I'd far rather spend time with him than a bunch of average no-hopers. As I leave I do /who Guild of Losers and there's three of them online. There's a Druid, already in the Wyrmbog. By the time I've ported to Dalaran he's inside Onyxia's Lair.

GAH!

So, I now have to ask myself, am I REALLY going to have to have gone and run Naxx 10, then 25, then Ulduar before ANYONE is prepared to take me seriously as a healer? What is so bad about being bottom of the meters, somebody has to be there. More importantly however... is this the way people play their game, where the PuG Checker is the Bible and nobody gives a flying *** about your word or your ability?

It is, isn't it?

I am SO Doomed .... :(

Money Shots

For the first time since it's introduction, we extended a Raid ID yesterday. Mostly it's because of this guy. Vezax is now all that stands between us and Yogg Saron on 10 man.

I completely understand why the Hardcore Guilds don't consider 10 man as 'proper' raiding. In ALL respects getting 25 people in one place and getting them to work as a team is more complex, more time consuming and ultimately should give better rewards. The fact remains however if you don't have 25 people around, 10 man gives you what you'd expect, and probably demand from this kind of experience. There is a lot to consider: there's the question of making sure you are operating at maximum capacity, of functioning well in a unit, whilst ensuring you're doing what you're bought to the raid to do. Currently the loot is pretty much an aside (as we have TotC virtually on farm, PvP bosses depending) and it's all about completing the instance. Without 10 man modes our Guild would probably still be in Naxx, or at least as part of an Alliance... which is nearly not as good as doing it for yourself.

I don't doubt for one second, with the people we have currently running the instance, that we won't finish Ulduar very soon. Actually, I'd say we'll be ready for Icecrown as soon as it appears (which I'll predict will be around the Christmas holidays) with decent gears and people hungry to face off against Arthas. In that respect the game is keeping pace with us for the first time, I suspect with a lot of the more casual guilds overall. I think it's a testament to the changes Blizzard has made that we have a game that now remains current for longer and offers greater overall challenges to it's participants. Props to Blizzard as a result.

Of course, as soon as the servers stabilise all thoughts of Ulduar and the Crusade are out of the window. All roads will inevitably lead to the Wyrmbog... :D

QQ No Moar!

The biggest complaint while I was levelling in AV ALWAYS came from the L80's. It seems that Blizzard were already listening...

With the launch of patch 3.2.2 today there have been some changes to the Alterac Valley battleground and we wanted to clarify what exactly has been done.

Level 80 characters now have their own bracket and there is a separate bracket for characters that are levels 70 to 79. This change was originally planned for patch 3.3 but it was accidently applied to the current patch 3.2.2. As we had already intended to make this change so that players who are leveling play together and players who are at the level cap play together, we will be keeping the bracket setup this way, but the level of the bosses in the brackets below level 80 will be reduced to compensate.

I have to say this change could not have come soon enough. It will put to an end the deliberately-engineered premades with 10-15 L80's who surge forward to cap and then leave sub-80's in their wake to defend. Yes, I'm only annoyed at this coz no-one on my server has the time or the foresight to do this, but still... It's a welcome change, as is the confirmation in the patch notes that heirloom items will grant you XP in BG's as well.

All the machines here are patched. The Guild did one last Ony run last night. All I can do now is wait...