Friday - September 12, 2008

World of Revelations

No, not the biblical book. Just epiphanies to go around.

First, Amber's been trucking away like a trooper and is almost to the Outlands! Congratulations, Amber! She had a bad day the other night, when nothing seemed to go right, and she was making all sorts of silly errors. Let me assure you again, Amber - we've all had those days. We were all new at one point, and utterly misunderstood our rolls in groups.

Let me give you an example from my own n00b background : 

• When I was leveling my priest, I thought that FADE (which drops a certain amount of aggro in combat) would work like limited stealth. I was popping it while trying to skirt past monsters, and getting upset that Fade wasn't working when they attacked me.

• While leveling my mage (the first time, not my new blood elf) I was in a dungeon with a group. This was in the days before paladins in the horde, so there was no "AOE Tanking." Warriors had to deal with large groups with crappy single-target aggro, and this was a level 40 dungeon, so our warrior tank didn't even have all the tricks up his sleeve that he could have. Anyway, I  had gotten it into my head that mages were "the AOE class" and that's how we did damage - single-target frostbolts were an inefficient use of my ability. I was afraid the group would be mad at me if I didn't AOE every pull... so I did. A lot. And pulled a TON of aggro, and kept dying every other pull, until the warrior FINALLY yelled at me and I stopped.

• My first warrior was spec'd Protection for leveling because I thought I'd die less. I didn't realize that's also why fights took FOREVER, and I got bored with the character and deleted him.

And those are just the things I can think of while typing this.

You aren't the first. You won't be the last. Hell, there are people I've grouped with in my 70s that still make these sorts of mistakes. It's a game, and nobody's going to hunt you down and kill you over it. Buck up, kiddo. We still love you, and we still want to play with you.

Also, THIS little gem popped up over my messenger the other day. I thought I'd share Amber's "coming of age" story as it unfolded:

Now, with regards to me...

I've recently joined a new guild! I'm a proud initiate of <The Syndicate> with Spradlin. "Spradlin?" you say. "But, I thought you HATED priests and never wanted to play one ever again!"

Well, that's sort of true. See, here's how it went: I got Spradlin up to the point he was at when I left him. He had roughly +1100 healing, which is alright for say, introductory raiding. He could get into a beginning level Karahzan guild maybe, and wouldn't have too much difficulty in the level 70 dungeons. Heroics were a little out of his reach, but he could MAYBE pull off the easiest of them with a few sweaty-palm moments.

So, being the player I was, I said, "Hey, how do I up my game here? How can I improve my gear so I can get into heroics and such?" Well, the I got two answers; The first was, "Make the Primal Mooncloth set and the Whitemend Set - that'll get you started." The second answer was, "Run Karazhan a lot."

Well, to answer the last one first, this was about the time <Vendetta>, the guild I was in at the time, fell apart. Karahzan wasn't going well for us, we were losing members to guilds that WERE making progress, and then our guild leader got his account hacked. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, and <Vendetta> was done for. So, unfortunately, that avenue was cut off from me. My spirit was a little broken at that point as well, so finding another guild just wasn't what I was looking for.

In the mean time, I was looking at the requirements for the Primal Mooncloth set and the Whitemend set. Let's see here... Countless pieces of primal mooncloth (on a 4-day cooldown for 2 pieces)... meaning that if I make all my mooncloth myself, I'll have my stuff done by next CHRISTMAS. Tons of Primal Life, Primal Water, and the Whitemend set requires tons of Primal MIGHTS, and each takes a Primal NETHER (that were soulbound at the time, rememer) making each one of those worth a little over 1000g each. The amount of either a) farming, or b) gold and auction-house luck required to gather the materials for even one of those items (of the 5 in the full set) was too much to bare on my priest. I refused to spend my money on not only the items I needed to collect, but also constant respeccing so I could farm as Shadow and continue healing as Holy. Even with decent gear, my damage was sub-standard to other classes, and farming was painfully slow and monotonous.

No, thank you.

So I retired Spradlin. The prospect of trying to move him up in the world, and what it would take to do that, was far too much for me. Combine that with the fact that I was burnt out on being everyone's healer-on-demand, and you've got a 1-2-3 recipe for hating priests.

After taking some time off to go play Alliance and having a lot of fun on my Druid, I finally came back to playing Horde after <Bloodline> fell apart. I used the fresh start as a chance to play with Carl and Mac again, and level up classes I'd never played before - Mage and Warrior, namely. Ironhyde was okay. I'll admit I had some  fun with him, but ultimately, he and I remain in a love-hate relationship, and I refuse to talk to him if he's not farming Primal Waters for me. Bethual I had FAR more fun with, having come back to the Mage class after all this time. My very first WoW character was a mage of the same name - I still have him on Eonar, in fact. But, this was back in the days that mages sucked (Evocate was a talent, and Arcane Explosion required 5 talent points to make instant, among many other things) so I shelved him and leveled Rivanna, my Warlock. So, now that mages do not, in fact, suck, I gave the class another try, and had a blast with it.

So, now I've got 2 level 70s in mediocre gear - one of which I don't even particularly like - and two 66s, neither of which I can bring myself to be enthused about for longer than a week. I wanted to run heroics, and Karahzan, and advance... but the game had reached a point where, unless you have the gear already, you can't get into those places. Nobody's running Kara for the GEAR anymore, they just trample through it for badges to get bigger, better gear. I was dismayed that there would be no progression for me.

Then I realized something - I had 2 level 70s to do my farming (one of which can do anything but water elementals in 2-shots) and I had a priest that I missed terribly.

So, the triumphant return of Spradlin occurred, and I started looking into getting my PMC and Whitemend. It really wasn't that hard, once I had someone who could run around 2-shotting stuff, and who had close to 4000g in his pocket to lend to the effort. Not long after, I had my gear, and I had leveled up my tailoring AND enchanting skills to maximum level of 375. With that kind of bankroll, it went relatively smooth. I was at +1500 healing, which is MORE than acceptable for Karazhan, and capable for all but the hardest heroics. I took a nice long look at my gear, and decided it was time to close the gear gap by applying to a guild that's raiding at my level.

I talked to <The Syndicate>, and though they liked me, they said my gear was still shy of where they were at in the game, and they wouldn't be able to gear me up sufficiently to catch up. I would need far closer to +2000 healing bonus to join them. I said okay, and I understand.

The bar was set - 2K or bust. And bust I did, but only my ass for about a week straight.

The first thing I did was re-gem ALL of my gear. I was hardly hurting for mana regeneration, so a lot of my hybrid +healing/spirit and +healing/intellect gems went away to make room for pure +healing gems. Then, I bit the bullet, and did the one thing I hated most... I PVPed.

Why? Why would I do something I hate so much? Well... because with a little time chewing on the proverbial bullet, I could upgrade my 2-hand staff with +227 healing on it, to a ONE HAND mace with somewhere in the range of +443, and still have room for an offhand with another +62ish on it. Thanks, Blizzard, for making me PVP to get PVE gear. I spec'd Discipline, and it was bearable - try 2-shotting a guy who has a small handful of resilience, a damage shield, pain suppression, and uninterruptible heals. I might not kill you, but my team will, while you're slamming your head against the wall trying in vain to kill me.

So, I got my PVP weapon / offhand, enchanted it, and took the total again - +1941. MUCH BETTER.

I whispered the guild leader of <The Syndicate> and asked, "A week or so ago, you asked me to get closer to 2000 +healing and re-apply. How's +1941?"

He replied, "wow... that's.... that's some dedication!"

15 minutes later, I was invited to the guild.

So, go me! I feel good that a) I'm able to progress, even if it is pretty late in the game, with the new expansion looming around the corner, and b) that I get to play my favorite character again, and c) that I have a community to be in once again. I love <XRaided> but it gets really lonely sometimes.

And WOW I just realized how long this post is. I'll cut this one off here. Thanks for reading, if you actually finished this.