Healing != DPS

Chaahnee, introduced in my prior post, is a Discipline specced priest that I am leveling as and play as a healer. Having only DPS'd in the past, this is a refreshing break from the end-game raiding I do on Ayonel, which, while enjoyable, requires a lot of concentration and focus.

But casual healing turns out to be more like raiding than it is like casual dps. A casual dps run requires you to do as much dps as possible without pulling aggro, and to stay out of fire or whatever boss gimmick/mechanic there may be. With healing, you have to keep a group of people, who may or may not be any good at their role, alive. If a crappy dps is crappy, it doesn't matter much. But if the healer isn't up to it, or the party members won't let the tank hold aggro, everybody dies, and it's your fault. Sounds like fun, huh? Now you know why good healers are hard to come by.

I have to say, while it was slow starting, I am really enjoying playing my priest now, and have had some fun(if exasperating) instance runs. Unfortunately, as more experienced healers have told me, no matter how good a healer you are, there are some parties that you just can't heal. Whether you take this as a sign of failure depends on you, but is no less frustrating, and still feels like failure to me.

The motivation for writing this is the juxtaposition of my raiding/instancing experience on my geared high-end guild warlock, versus my pugs on low level characters. On Ayonel, almost everything is easy because the people she plays with are all highly experienced, well-geared, knowledgeable players who focus on the game's most difficult content. Consequently, everything else is easy. On Chaahnee, I often find tanks who can't get, or hold aggro, dps who manage to pull aggro but do poor dps, or generally ignorant players. By ignorant, I mean to say only that they do not know the correct way to play their class(yes, there is a correct way.)

I have seen very little in-between. Either my runs on Chaahnee go very well, or they don't go well at all. While I think that she is doing pretty well, and that I know how to play her(how else to explain all the elites I can solo when focused on keeping myself alive), I still find it to be maddening to heal instances, except when it isn't.



Hopefully in another week or two, she'll be at 80, and then the real fun begins.

Lord Jaraxxus Down!

Server second this time. Not bad for our little backwater realm.

Now ranked 2nd.

Northrend Beasts Down

Last night we finally downed Icehowl on 25 man heroic. That puts us back up into 3rd place rank on server.

How Joining a Hard-Core Raiding Guild Saved my Life

I've heard it time and time again. The story about the guy who got so addicted to WoW, or World of Warcraft, in the incredibly unlikely case someone who doesn't play reads this, that his life fell apart. He lost his job, his family, his kids, his girlfriend. He had to go into therapy, stop playing altogether, and now he haunts 12-step programs and hangs around Dunkin' Donuts all night telling everybody just how fucking happy he is in that shrill, vindictive tone that tells the world he knows he isn't fooling anyone.

So yeah, maybe I play WoW a bit too much. Maybe I play it a lot too much. But what are the alternatives?

1. Watch TV 5 hours a night while drinking enough beer to make a grizzly bear comatose. Well, this has obvious downsides, and besides, there ain't a damned thing on. Plus, it costs a lot of money if you like good beer.

2. Develop internet porn habit. This gets expensive once you start paying for it, it causes marital stress in many cases, and if you have kids you are definitely going to get in trouble when your 6 year old daughter asks Mom if she likes double chocolate DP and if it is good with jimmies. And then there is the issue of just how much one person can masturbate, and whether you want to find out...

3. Have an affair. Okay, let's get this out of the way. It really isn't for me. My life is complicated enough with one woman in it. The last thing I need is another one. In this scenario, everyone is unhappy and it costs you a lot of money.(Besides, I actually love my wife. And she isn't make-believe, or inflatable.)

4. Get into politics. That's right. If I wasn't worried about getting the daily done or watching the timer on Wintergrasp, I might start paying attention to how badly the Democrats are screwing up everything they touch, and then I'd have to get involved. Don't make me write a letter.

So, having discussed at least some of the more obvious alternatives, let's conclude that playing WoW isn't necessarily a bad thing, but that the issue is how much time you spend playing it.

For many people, they feel compelled to play constantly because they don't want to miss anything. Even long after they have done their dailies, worked the Auction House, and run a few battlegrounds, they stay on because they are afraid that a raid might come up and that could drop the best-in-slot Hammer of Ura Pente, which would make them the most uber-est of pallys in all of pally-land.

Basically, they are in a crappy guild, and can't run any decent raids, so they play constantly in hopes that they will find a pug(pick-up group) of people they can raid with. Only it doesn't happen because almost everyone in a pug is hoping that you will carry them so that they can get the Hammer of Fucking Uber. Do you see where this is going?

So enter the Hard-Core Raiding Guild. Ostensibly, this is a group of assholes and jerks who are so good that they treat everyone like crap and are no fun to be around, and none of them actually enjoy playing WoW because they are focused on 'progession'. At least, this is what all the scrubs, M&S, or whatever other term for loser you prefer, say. This is the standard mythology that the majority of WoW players buy into in order to justify why they aren't running end-game content and HC guilds are. The alternative is to admit that they suck. Or at least, that the majority of the people in their guild suck.

Let's be clear about this. WoW is a fun, and incredibly complex, game. You can spend hundreds, even thousands, of hours playing and never do all the things that can be done.

And yet...

In order to become one of the highest ranked players on my realm, I press, on average, 6 buttons repeatedly. Yes, I have read extensively on my class, and have built my character around the most powerful configuration possible. But all of the information is available on-line, none of it is more complicated than you want it to be, and once set up, 6 buttons.

In my old guild, I was a good player, and I did my job, and we wiped all the time. I was a top-dps player. In my new guild, I do my job, and I am average dps. The difference isn't anything I do, but that everyone else I play with is that much better. I am doing the best I can as a warlock, and am roughly in line with the other locks, taking gear and experience into account. But all the other players are also doing their best with their class, and they simply do more dps than warlocks.

But back to my point. Playing WoW constantly is, I think, a function of not getting to do the things that you want to do. For me it was. Now that I am in a top-ranked guild on my server, I raid the nights that raids are scheduled, and the other nights I can play or not play, do what I want, and enjoy the game.

The key thing is that I know that on raid nights, I will be running content that is sufficiently challenging and rewarding that it is worth the time and effort, and I don't need to waste my time looking for something more.

What price victory?

Last night we went into Ulduar. Just the 10 of us. Not much in the way of guild leadership. A couple of what I'll call incidental officers. But mainly, some of the best players in the guild.

The experience was eye-opening, to say the least. By eliminating the guild politics which would dictate loading the raid either with officers or with scrubs that need gear and simply taking a bunch of guys who play well, are geared, and like playing together, we downed 6 bosses, 4 one-shots, 2 hard modes, and a few hard mode attempts. This is unprecedented in our guild, or at least in my experience in my guild.

The only downside was that we had to disenchant almost every piece of gear that dropped because no one wanted it. But even that was better than having to deal with 10 people rolling on every item and having no chance of winning the trinket you need after 4 months of raiding because 9 new people in greens are in the raid contributing their 600 dps vs Gluth and thereby earning the BiS trinket.

The lesson here for me was that you have to make decisions in life, and come to terms with what you have. In this case, it's that we(the guild) can field a really solid 10 man team, and even have a few extra people. Or we can field a 25 man team that can only run easy content because we are carrying 5-10 raid members. On ten man, we can one-shot bosses in hard mode, even though some guys haven't been into Ulduar before. On 25, we run hot and cold, and depending on who shows up one night, we either one-shot everything or we wipe all night.

For me, this is a no-brainer. I would rather take on the hardest content in any format and down bosses, run hard-modes, etc. Sure, it's a drag there's no gear in it for me, but whatever. As much as I'd like to run 25's, i do not want to spend my time on fights i already know, passing on loot I don't need or won't win, and collecting emblems I can't use. I also don't like paying the opportunity cost of missing dailies, VoA pugs(the stuff that is easy but we don't run as a guild), oh, and going out with my wife on weekend nights, for the benefit of others.

It seems like there is a decision to be made.