Hitting the Heroics

I have made a decision in guild to switch my main from Crash to Acidlake my paladin who has been so much fun to play as ret both in solo play and in groups.

However given the guild is preparing to hit IceCrown Citadel and I'm still rocking heirloom items and quest rewards some severe gear upgrades will be required. Fortunately the recent change in badge drops and that tier 9 is wholly available from badges means that there is a clear and straightforward route to getting raid ready, heroic instances.

Normally this would have required trying to grab any groups that were forming in guild and possible get one or two done. But given we're now in the land of patch 3.3 and the new looking for group tool.

I'd only had one experience with the old LFG tool when we picked up a healer for heroic Ramparts back in TBC days. It didn't end completely well due to the complexity of heroic instances back then and since then the only random dungeons had done had been pugs organised either through whispers or adverts in /2.

Hoping that I wasn't too undergeared I signed up for a random dungeon looking forward to the possibility of new emblems and a chance to try out running as part of a group with people who don't know me from Adam.

Getting Azjol-Nerub was a bit of a blessing and having completed all the heroics before means I know the tactics well enough to know what to hit and when. We completed all the boss kills without a hitch, including the speed kill achievement on Anub'arak. Achievements appeared, extra boxes appeared to say the dungeon was completed and my collection of badges had increased.

From then on I've been hooked. The simple way of getting to the instance, not quite knowing which one it will be and the extra badges every time it completes mean I can just queue up at a time I'm able to play should I not be able to fit things in around what the rest of the guild is doing.

I'm probably 2 runs away from getting the 'the Patient' title which I shall proudly display in future pugs and have picked up a couple of very nice pieces of T9 ret gear.

The new instances also provide a great way of getting gear as well as containing a fantastic part of the storyline but those journeys can wait for another post.

What's important when raiding

Now this isn't a post about how tanks should tank, dps stay alive or healers conserve mana. It's about what you personally get from attending raids and down a boss with 9 or 24 other people. I'm not going to come up with a definitive list but would like to outline a few that I've spotted.

For some people it's all about the loot, what epics will the drop and what's the likelihood of winning said drop with the group you are in.

For others it's about the technical aspects of the encounters, learning how a fight works and what each person needs to do in order to get the boss down, but also to ensure the raid members stay alive and are able to get the job done.

There are those who are interested in seeing content, it doesn't matter when, just that it's nice to see the inside of certain instances and to kill the bosses, maybe for lore reasons, maybe just for the ability to say I was there and got the achievement.

Finally there are those that are there to play with friends, have a good laugh and enjoy an evenings gaming.

I would expect that the majority of players are a combination of all 4, with leanings towards a particular one.

However there are those that will have a very strong leaning towards a particular trait. While this isn't a problem in the general sense, these people will have to accept that not everyone feels the same way. If they don't then friction can arise during a raid, which means a less fun experience for all involved.

I've written this up on the basis of something that happened in the last raid I went on. I won't go into details as I don't think it's necessary but do want to leave with one thought.

Enjoy the game as you want to enjoy it, just don't do it at the expense of others.

A quick loss would've been better?!

So I was playing a couple of games of Alterac Valley last night trying to gather together the last bits of honour needed for the S2 OH dagger ready for the new talent trees.

It does appear in my battle group that once you get past midday you end up with every stereotype of battleground player. There's the AFKers keeping the cave safe, the wannabe generals shouting orders regardless of who's paying attention and the whingers who complain that everyone is useless and the Horde always lose.

Having won one game, I queued up again and off we went. The Alliance played a good game and soon we were all pushed back to Frostwolf Keep and required to defend heavily. So defend we did, when rogues and druids sneaked past and tried to capture the towers we ran back, flushed them out and prevented the capture and then ran back to keep them at bay.

Do you know what, it was a lot of fun, we were organized in that chaotic way, we got healed, we took out the healers and generally made life difficult for the invaders. As the battle raged it was clear the the Alliance reinforcements were running out quicker than ours were and sure enough we won the match.

As we entered the closing stage the immortal line from the title was uttered by one of our side, the full quote as I remember it was "I would say gg, but a quick loss would of been better". I was so surprised that I completely forgot to screenshot it and managed not to say something unfortunate in battleground chat. It did make me wonder though, if you're going to play a game in such a way that a quick loss is better than an epic, well fought for win why are you playing it.

Sure when playing with complete strangers things might not always be exactly as you would like it, but if you can't try and find something to like then get out, and stop causing me to fill up my ignore list with people who feel the need to spout off about how wrong everyone else is for trying to enjoy the game.

Anyways I've now bought the dagger so I can hopefully avoid these people and just hang out with all the lovely people in my guild.

Careless Whispers

Well this has probably been blogged about before, but as it's still happening (and more importantly to me) here's my view.

So just recently I'll be questing away in a zone when out of nowhere I'll get a whisper along the lines of "r u feral". That's it, no hello, no explanation, just a question of how I've spent my talent points. Generally I assume it's because someone is trying to put an instance run together and are looking for a tank (or healer).

Now it's not that I mind being asked to help out, heck I might even be tempted if I was going to be online for a bit and bored, but interrupting my play time without so much as a hi/hello isn't likely to get a favorable response from me. This also happened when I was levelling up Crash, but that just tended to be the abbreviation of the instance being PUG'd.

Right, so now we know what won't work as a way of getting my attention, what might. Well here's a 3 point plan

1. Be polite - you don't know what I'm doing and will most likely be in the middle of something when you send that whisper.
2. Use proper words - if you take the time to write a proper question, I may well take the time to right a proper response.
3. Be original - You won't be the first person to send a request so make yours stand out from the crowd.

Finally an apology, if you've done all that and still not got a response please don't take it personally, I may well have missed the whisper in amongst guild chat, officer chat and other spaff. Good luck with your adventures and remember not to break the cc