Progression Raiding and the Holidays

Apparently, my guild hasn't been following my amazing advice on how to get Mythic kills, because we've been stuck on M Tectus for a week and a half. With the holidays forcing less than ideal comps and a lot of off days, our ranking has fallen precipitously from how well we were faring at first. It's come to a point where we're becoming disheartened, faced with the harsh reality that after all the work we've put into beta testing every boss and splitting main/alt raids for the first time, our place is still firmly situated in the semi-hardcore bracket.

While there is yet an adequate amount of time to turn this around, we're still left with the post-Brackenspore depression from our pace of progression not meeting the high expectations we held at the start of the tier. By the time everyone is back from celebrating New Year's, we need to have learned to cope with this potentially crippling disappointment like many guilds experienced at the end of Firelands or on H Siegecrafter. Surely, a night of transformative revelry full of new hope and resolutions for a better year will be enough to inspire our raiders to come into Highmaul once again with a strong determination to perform like world-class players. Or it could just end up the same kind of situation in which we don't quite meet the level of success we anticipate and fall into despondence again.

Thus is the inherent danger of New Year's and all its hype of fresh beginnings only for people to succumb to the human failings of lack of discipline and perpetually procrastinating change, but I don't give a crap, because I LOVE NEW YEAR'S!!!

<3Avia.

Mists of Pandaria confirmed. I is sad... panda.

BlizzCon is happening right now, and Mists of Pandaria is officially going to be the next expansion. There has been talk of Pandaren for months since the discovery of Blizz's trademark for the "Mists..." name, but I'm actually surprised and disappointed that what I had thought was a red herring is actually the premise of our next expansion and undoubtedly 1-2 years of my life. Pandas? T_T Half the community is seizing with joy, and the other half has the same face as I do.

Already some of the changes they are revealing are irking me, like their renewed obsession with talent trees and how they had made it too streamlined for Cataclysm. Now they want to reintroduce player choice and hybridization even though they're really just wasting their time. All the theorycrafters at Elitist Jerks and mmo-champion are going to break out their slide rules and in a matter of days, post the specs that players are supposed to use if they raid, just like they do every time there is a talent tree change. It doesn't even intrigue me anymore, but of course they haven't released any lock trees yet...

So far, the monk's food buff racial seems a little OP (double all stats from well-fed), but what actually disturbs me is the fact that they wear leather and are tank/healer/DPS. This means that while druids will now have to compete for gear and priests already share loot with mages and locks, shamans and especially paladins have no competition. If you play a priest, you know how God-awful (har dee har har) it is to gear up when you're rolling/bidding against the ranged DPS, and Firelands made it even worse by taking spirit off of almost everything. Now druids are joining them in their pitiful situation. I always felt bad for priests, but now I cry for my(alt)self.

I'll post more news (hopefully in a less whaaambulance tone) when they announce lock changes. So far, they've only mentioned that they're revamping the soul shard system. Again. Good.

-Avia.

Guild motto: Awesome on accident.

Yesterday, my raid group and I got the Not an Ambi-Turner achievement. ON PURPOSE!

Why the distinction? For my guild, one has to specify whether we meant to do something or we just fucked up so badly that we made a fight hard-mode unwittingly. Last week, we got Ragnar-O's, not because we're super badass and spit in the face of the hardest boss in the game, but because so many DPS had died by the last phase that we ended up with EIGHT meteors at the end of the fight. Even I think that's retarded, and I was there.

When BWD was current, we got Aberrant Behavior without planning on it because the melee didn't bother kicking any of the add casts. It was three minutes of "kick the fucking aberrations! The off-tank is going to diiie!" followed by "oh cool we got an achievement." It makes the ulcers worthwhile, I suppose.

If only more achievements were based on negligence rather than strategy or attentiveness. We've already given up on Do a Barrel Roll! without ever seriously considering it, because there is no serious consideration of that achieve for a group of 25 tunnel-visioning space cases like us. We've even managed to fail Only the Penitent every single week since the release of Firelands despite our pleading that the (virtually) uncoordinated stay behind just STAY BEHIND THE LINE FOR THE LOVE OF CENARIUS!

But alas.

Maybe next week.

-Avia.

:*( for realz.

I almost ragequit WoW last week. My guild has been working on Alysrazor, and even though we’ve already downed it 10 man, everything is always more difficult with 15 more asshats in play. Apparently, I’m one of those asshats, because for the life of me, I cannot do the fucking Starfox rings without falling to my death.

Call me a noob if you want. Go ahead! It turns out I am too stupid to go through rings in 3D while casting spells. By the time I epic failed for the fifth time, I was on the verge of tears, having flashbacks of Twin Emps tanking and asking my raid to kick me. I’m not used to failing so badly at PvE (PvP is another story), and I obviously wasn’t handling the news very well that I might actually be bad at this game. It was enough to make me want to /gquit and spend the rest of my WoW life RPing in Dustwallow Marsh as Tabetha’s BFF.

On Thursday, I spent the rest of the night killing adds on the ground, but typical gamer and raider, I feel like I have to prove to the raid and to myself that I’m a competent player who doesn’t have to be relegated to the simple jobs for fear of fucking up the important stuff. As a dedicated constituent of the gaming subculture, my self-worth depends on the confidence that I am a skilled player and a valued member of my raid team. If I can’t do this, I’m going to end up one of those DPS that can do great damage but that no one can rely on to do anything complicated. I’m going to be a mage!

I am so angry with Blizzard for creating this fight. It’s bad enough that I have to play a platform game to do my dailies, but I also have to barrel roll to raid? Call me a noob. If I stop posting, it means I threw myself in lava thinking about the good old days of Burning Adrenaline and class calls. Remember this shiz?!!!

-Avia.

Magma is super effective!

July 12 Patch 4.2 hotfixes

July 12

Dungeons & Raids
Firelands

• Majordomo Fandral Staghelm
  
  • Flame Scythe now properly hits pets.

source

Woe is me. Blizzard hotfixed Firelands in such a way that pets have an opportunity to take even more damage than they already do. There isn’t really much to complain about for this particular example, but I’ve spent the past two weeks summoning and resummoning my damn felhunter every pull because he gets exploded by scorpions, burned by magma when he’s sitting in it, and even when he’s not. I figured the massive amounts of environmental/AOE damage that pets were taking was a mistake with Avoidance that Blizz would almost immediately hotfix because it was so super important. I guess it’s just super important to me?

Hopefully, they fix it soon since right now it takes a lot of micromanaging just to keep Traathun alive, which isn’t normal. Until then, I will shed a tear every time his lifeless body flops over and his little demon soul flies back to the Twisting Nether only to get pulled back again into harsh Azeroth by a selfish warlock.

:*(

-Avia.