Ponderings of a wannabe WotLK raider
Yesterday, I had a pretty bad day WoW-wise. Rarely ever have I felt so defeated about this game that so many of us play. Through it all, I have come to a couple observations about me and WoW 3.0. Prepare for a lot of QQ, and rest assured that I will go back to informative or entertaining posts soon. But this is boiling inside of me, it’s my blog, it’s got to come out.
1. I love tanking. Above all. Kadomi will always be my first love. Everything else might be fun, but Kadomi is my main. Not getting to play her in raids is breaking my heart and sapping my will to push my guild to raid.
2. I think the easy approach to raiding is totally backfiring, especially for casual guilds like mine. In TBC when we first started doing 10-man raids, none of us had been in Karazhan, other than maybe one or two people. It was this big thing that we did together. Same with Zul’Aman. I still remember the overwhelming feeling of triumph when we first got down Hex-Lord Malacrass together. I loved it. But that’s not how raiding is panning out in WotLK. Right now, we have people who are struggling to get geared but are finally getting there, and then we have people who PUG raids. Stuff like Naxx and OS, but even Eye of Eternity. When we will now finally start Naxx this weekend, it will be with people in the raid who approach raids as something that you PUG for loot, as if they were just bigger versions of heroics, not something that you want to conquer with 9 friends. I am casual for a reason, with a hardcore mentality to raiding, but above all, I just want to encounter new challenges and see content, together with friends. I have spoken to friends from other casual guilds that raid (as opposed to casual raiding guilds), and they have similar feelings. It’s very disheartening.
3. Along with the PUG issue comes another issue I never ever thought I’d see happen to us: people signing up for our raids and then getting locked to another raid’s ID. Isn’t that just great? Screw tanking, Kadomi, your best-geared healer just had to got asked to do the 8-man Naxx achievement with another guild, forgetting about our very own raid, so prepare yourself to be healbot again. Now I am stuck with having to make a raid work somehow, by bowing out of the tanking spot I so badly crave. I am no longer a main tank, I am now a raid healer, not of my own choosing completely.
Edit: Some of that paragraph was written in massive anger and did not reflect entirely how things went down. Valuable lesson learnt, don’t blog when you’re really angry.
4. Three years on a US server, 9 hours ahead of my own timezone are finally getting to me. I am tired of late late hours when I want to run anything. Would most of you guys stay up til 4 am to run a heroic? I think not. I am tired of twiddling my thumbs when I get home from work because the server is deserted. The siren song of my German friends trying to lure me back to picking up my characters on Forscherliga is getting more attractive. But I would miss Kadomi. So many hours, days, weeks, months of my life invested into her. I would miss my Bronzebeard friends. I tried the EU approach before and loved playing in my timezone, but I missed playing Kadomi so much, and my German guild tried to turn me into a four nights a week T5 raider, which was too much for me, so I quit.
Unfortunately these are the typical woahs of being in a “Casual Raiding Guild”. Causally getting saved to another guild, or PUG, raid ID. Casually not showing up when you said you would. Causally not caring much about the people you call Guild Mates.
I agree that staying up till 4 AM to suite the needs of your guild is a bit erroneous. Would they do the same for you?
The unfortunate fact is that today’s content is overwhelmingly “Casual” and tends to cater to that mentality. If that is what suites you, so be it. If not, find a guild that better fits your level of commitment.
Best of luck,
Stomp
Stompalina´s last blog post..Why I Hate Black Cats
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The frustrating thing about the guild as far as raiding goes is that we have very different approaches and levels of interest/dedication among our group of raiders. On one hand you have those who leveled quickly, geared up for heroics within a month of launch, and on the other hand you have those who are just now getting ready to raid. For the first group, you have people twiddling their thumbs and trying out raids outside the guild just for something new, and because they CAN. I admit if I’m sitting at my computer on a slow week night, if someone asks me, ‘Hey, wanna come to OS?’, and it doesn’t break any previous commitment with the guild, I will do so. It beats doing dailies! It’s not really fair to ask the geared members to wait weeks and weeks to see content and spend all their time mindlessly running heroics in the meantime.
On the other hand, it does cheapen our own raids when half the people have already been, and it no longer feels like a huge accomplishment. But I really don’t see any solution to this. If we started enforcing some rule about only raiding with the guild, I think quite a few people would leave, and then we wouldn’t have the numbers to raid at all.
I am hoping that is a temporary situation, though. Ulduar will be harder, and hopefully by the time it comes out, we’ll have run the current content enough to have the gear and numbers to head straight into the new content together, and really learn the fights as a group… which I really do miss a lot from our Kara/ZA days.
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admin Reply:
February 19th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I understand that it must be super-boring for many of you who are on at night, have lots of gear from heroics, and are more than ready to get things going. I wouldn’t dream of enforcing a rule that you can only raid with the guild.
And yet, for me it feels like we’re no longer a cohesive unit trying to progress, because why try that with the guild, when you can get it done with any PUG?
The best parts about Kara and ZA for me were the days before we farmed it, by a long shot.
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So many people thought that 10 man = Casual Raiding, when in reality it just meant you needed less people ( really, the only hard part about 25 man stuff is getting 25 people lol ).
Casual + Raiding just doesn’t really work, you need to have 10 or 25 people all on the same page of wanting to do it as a group, not wanting to go in just for the loot or seeing the content, but seeing & conquering the content with a close knit group of friends.
I can’t imagine playing with that kind of time difference though, that would be the roughest thing for me.
Maybe you just need a break for a few days to really evaluate where things are at and what you want out of the game?
Best of luck!
Kanaloah´s last blog post..Growing Pains
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Tarsus Reply:
February 20th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Not that defeating the raid comp boss is easy. Even in quite established guilds finding the right combo of healers/tanks/dps is a difficult weekly exercise, especially if you’re looking for specific comp to do certain achievements. It sure beats the pants off of clearing Naxx.
Still, I agree that 10 mans are harder, on average, than the 25s (accepting certain specific fights). There’s just less room for error when loosing 1 healer is the difference between loosing a 3rd and a 6th of your healing team.
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To counter what Cariad said, back in the TBC days, we had a small core group who pushed to 70, to gearing themselves up to raid, and then they sat around waiting for the rest of the guild to catch up. It was even pondered by Kadomi at the time if she should leave DotH and go to another guild that was ready to raid right then, or wait until everyone else caught up. I know some of our healers did other raids then – healers are always in demand.
The content now is more puggable than Kara was, I will agree. I think part of that is Naxx was in the game before, so most of the fights have just been tuned down. Even if no one saw them at the 40-man stage (or at 70 with 20 or more), the strats are still viable and no one is learning from scratch.
I will try to work on getting my healer leveled a bit. I swear.
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admin Reply:
February 19th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
I did actually level on the German servers at the time because I was so bored. But you know what? I sat it out. I tanked one instance after the other trying to help people get geared. I went to one PUG raid with Raven’s Light and decided I wanted to wait and do it with DotH. When we finally got there, it was this huge exciting event that Q and I busted ass for.
WTB that feeling of accomplishment.
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The obvious aside, there is an issue currently with sensitivity to raid IDs – as in it’s way too easy to get locked to a raid right now. A guildie got locked out of Naxx the other night; we think because he was grouped in another raid with someone who had a cleared Naxx ID. It sucked.
Aside from that though, I’m with Stop on this one – finding the right match in a guild is pretty key, both in terms of playstyle and and schedule. I know when I moved from my much more casual Alliance raid group to my current hardcore horde guild it was a bit of a shock at first – I had played with the same group of people for almost 3 years at the time. It was the right decision though because I really didn’t understand how much more “hardcore” I was until I was no longer grouping with “casual” raiders.
On a that note you’ve given me an inspiration for Monday’s blogpost.
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I usually cant tank for the guild raids so I pug them all. The most annoying part is finding an entire group.
BTW, I tagged you on my blog for a picture meme. 6th screenshot from your 6th folder…GOGO.
Darraxus´s last blog post..Sixth Picture of the Sixth Folder
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Ah your # 2 and 3 hit the nail on the head. For my part, I am avoiding the pug raiding thing because it’s just not the same as doing it for the first time with DotH. I do get occasionally discouraged though because it seems like I can’t be around too much for when we do new things and then I’m left just playing alts and waiting for the next holiday to gnash my teeth against (and the horrid RNG that accompanied the last holiday really made me burn out a bit on this game a little bit).
And I agree with Cariad. We’ve always had that little split between the people with endless free time that are always going to want to be on the bleeding edge of content and the ones that are struggling to even get their characters to end game and get discouraged when they see a large roster full of 80s.
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I hear you about the pugging thing. In Cake or Death we recently had a bunch of people leave. Largely the people that did pug a lot. What we have left is a group of people that WANT to raid together. So while the pugging exists, when you find the right group that doesn’t want to pug, and wants to get guild firsts together it can work out really nicely!
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admin Reply:
February 19th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
I hope in the long run with Ulduar it will work out as you say, I am just down about it all right now.
Nevertheless, big grats on you guys clearing Naxx, I heard you trashed the place.
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Kelsin Reply:
February 19th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
We did, had a great 2 night full clear for the first time. Second time getting to Kel and Saph at all (just due to scheduling) and one shotted Saph for first time and had guild first for Kel. If only all raiding was like last night
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I miss Kara……ya even on the nights of farming after it was nerfed….just getting together for a night of fun, laughter, etc. Oh sure taking down new bosses in Lich has been fun too…seeing guildies get nice gear has been great…but just something about those Kara days..
RJK´s last blog post..Go Figure.
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*hug* You know how I feel about all of this. It totally sucks. I wish raids were harder (or even that heroics were harder) so there was more of a progression.
In vanilla WoW I worked for ages to get all of my Beaststalker set and then venture into MOLTEN COREEEEE.
In TBC I leveled up slower than the fastest people but still relatively fast. I actually felt like I had to get all of my normal mode gear first though – then I went into heroics, and then into raids. Progression was much slower and I liked it a lot better. It felt dirty just skipping over most level 80 instances to jump into heroics, and heroics were not hard in WotLK at all :/
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admin Reply:
February 20th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Amen to that, Shae. Yesterday I semi-pugged a heroic with guildies and me and another person were the only people who had ever been in there, either on normal and heroic. I hate that people hit heroics on their first day at 80, carried by others, because it works. Hate.
I loved the sense of progression you got in TBC, just by getting your Karazhan key. By the rep you needed for heroics. And I feel people who didn’t play then can’t understand now why I feel stuff is effed up.
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For my first 8 months of Wow I played a priest named Kaitee. I got her to 70, joined the weekly struggle against Karazan and was happy. Two months before WOTLK, I was leveling my girlfriend (at the time) with refer-a-friend, and when she hit 20, I switched to my warrior toon. I leveled us both to 70, 4 nights before WOTLK hit.
That priest is still sitting at 70. My warrior hit 80, became a tank for my guild — they made me a Raid Leader because of that — and I found my true calling, my true love.
Occasionally guild members ask where Kaitee is. They hint that she should get back in action. Of course, this is only on nights we’re short a healer.
I want to help my guild, but I don’t enjoy healing. At one point, I was very close to saying “Okay, I’ll get Kaitee to 80 and start helping out,” but then I got some great advice.
“WoW is a game. You play games to be happy. Do what makes you happy. If you don’t want to heal, don’t heal. You can still level Kaitee — if that makes you happy — and when they ask her to the raids, you say no. You say that Kaitee is an Alt for fun and PUGS, but not for the guild.
“Stay strong in saying no. Because as soon as you say yes, it’s over. Don’t feel bad in saying no – you’re not letting anyone down. They are just taking the easy route to getting a healer and don’t care if you’re happy or not.” – Lagom
If your guild can’t take your tank, then they can’t take you.
End of story, QQ, gnashing of teeth… then they find a healer and you tank. It’s seems really simple, but that’s because it is.
You and I both know the joys of tanking are worth standing strong.
Good luck!
TGAPGeorge´s last blog post..Rest In Peace Citadel
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The biggest thing I’m sad about in your post is that you dont get to tank. For me, if I couldn’t tank, I wouldn’t play. The tanking role is more important to me than the friends I play with, and if that means switching guilds and leaving friends behind so I could tank, I would do it in a second. And actually I just did ! – I even moved servers – though it wasnt because I didnt get to tank. I’ll make new friends. It was a hard choice for sure, but life (and wow!) are full of hard choices.
The casual pug vibe? OMG yeah! I’m sure you’re right about that happening to casual players, I can imagine. That just sucks. Well, the game has changed and on the whole, I’m sure you’ll agree its massively better. But in the mix, people are going to have to find new ways to play together (any maybe new friends, of course)
If its any consolation, I’m still experiencing the thrill of shared teamwork to get a hard job done. I’m in a hardcore guild for sure… but believe me the thrill and the satisfaction is there in bucketloads. The game is just a whole lot better.
re timezones; if I ever had to move continents, I would reroll my main in the new zone, level him up and start gearing him up all over again. Sure it would be a drag, but I love my main too much to leave him behind.
Good luck to you as always and best wishes
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1) Then tank. If that doesn’t work in your guild, find a new one where you can, or make room in your own guild for it. Kicking the healer that went for 8 man Naxx rather than wait for the run with guildmates would be a good start. I get the impression that your guild is supposed to be a friendly one, and going for a personal achievement in defiance of your raid schedule is anything but.
2) It sounds like some of the folks that were casual with you in BC no longer are and might want to think about rolling with a larger guild. Divergent playstyles within one small guild is not a a recipe for fun.
3) Seriously, kick that healer. Or better yet, find a PuG healer for Naxx and bring your tank. If that healer works out, bring him/her every week, and let your selfish healer stew.
4) I didn’t realize you were playing so far outside of your timezone. That’s a bit nutty. I don’t see why you couldn’t reincarnate Kadomi on a new server though.
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Your healer Puging has nothing to do with easy Wotlk raid it’s a problem of loyalty of your guild members.
Be thankful that easy Wotlk raids helping you to identify who is loyal and who is not.
I am in casual guild as well and by the sounds of thing we are even more casual than your guild.
However no one will PUG a raid which our guild is doing. We don’t do Nax25 in guild since we don’t have the people so some people will PUG it but they will not PUG NAX 10 since we can do that in guild. In other words our member are loyal to the guild.
I think you need to speak to you guild members and ask them not to PUG raid which your guild can do. If they still PUG get rid of them. You will be happy in the long run.
However I do agree that you need hard raids as well but I think Karazhan was mistake. The entry level raid should be easy so people have chance to mess about and learn their roles in raids.
I think what’s Blizzard doing with Wotlk is an excelled idea. Easy entry level raid, NAX 10 and harder raid followed by it, Ulduar 10
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Basically 2) is killing my guild-run fun for me. Anyone who is half-serious about raiding is already in multi-guild raidforce and clearing 25 mans. Sure, most of these people are willing to lend a hand in regular guild 10-man, but that kind of destroys feeling of accomplishing anything. Not to mention that while we just have numbers for guild 25 mans, 10 or so raiders (GM included) are locked from any 25-man raid activity by raidforce.
I leveled my main faster than I wanted to, to be able to heal on first guild runs. Before they started, most of people who leveled at my pace were done with Naxx already. Out of frustration I leveled my horde toon to 80 and I am having a blast raiding with him. Still I miss playing with people I spend last 3 years with.
Ah, and don’t get pigeonholed to niche you don’t enjoy. Tanks need gear and experience to be useful. You won’t get that by playing your shammy, moment will come, you wouldn’t be able to tank Ulduar simply because Yout haven’t geared up in Naxx and your guild has couple of Naxx-geared tanks anyway.
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admin Reply:
February 20th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I am glad there are others that can relate to how this PUG thing kills their joy in guild runs. Thank you.
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You are feeling the effects of the casual guild. It happens all the time and in the past lead to the death of many many guilds. The difference now is people do not have to leave their guild and join a new one to see Naxx, to me the only raid in the game right now.
If this was TBC your main healer would have left for another guild that was ready to run Kara and beyond and you would be a heal bot still. I am not sure which way is better but the end result is about the same.
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I hope everything works out for you. It is no fun when those situations arise.
And play your Warrior if that is what you love. Just say no to playing your Shaman in a raid situation. If you keep saying yes, then you will never get to play the Warrior, which you definitely don’t want to happen.
For people getting saved to PUGs, you should probably just let people know in advance when raids are, and if they get saved repeatedly, just recruit someone in their place.
Cery´s last blog post..PTR Raiding
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I know your pain, I myself have been frozen out in our rotation due to the overwelming injection of death knights, we have so many tanks at the moment i only see raiding once every few weeks.
I set my sights in AH trading though, I have managed to get the first bike of my guild.
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Okay. I know how much you love tanking, and although I don’t have a tank it’s not exactly rocket science to understand why someone would rather do that than heal. And I know how much time and effort you put into getting these raids together. So I really hope you get to start tanking again (I know this really isn’t helpful but I’m saying it anyway XD). If you don’t love love love healing (and even if you do), it’s so easy to get frustrated and burnt out. :/
And I understand why 2/3 would be disheartening. I’ll admit that I’ve been part of the “see things get shinies” mindset before, as that’s honestly why I leveled up a healer, but it’s been a while. My friends and I have to pug a couple people in our 10-mans still, but we go do Naxx every Friday mostly just to hang out together. We’re kind of disorganized and only on sporadically during the week, so it’s a fun thing to do together, and I’m guessing that’s how you liked DotH raids to be similar too. Some people just have different priorities I guess, and it can muddle up your raid team. I know how that feels too, as there’s a reason why I’m pretty casual now, but one of my good friends in BC is in a Sarth + 3D guild and rarely has time for 10s with us.
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admin Reply:
February 21st, 2009 at 4:10 pm
I really enjoy healing, at least on my shaman. It’s fun. I will say I prefer heroics, because so far they seem far more action-packed than raids. Yesterday, I healed our second successful timed H CoS run, and it’s great.
But seriously, it pales in comparison to tanking. Also, it’s what I do when I want to run stuff with Q who is a tank now as well. In raids, I want to be tanking big stuff.
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You’re far from alone here. I have many of the same issues with the new, casual raiding, and there’s a blog post percolating away in my brain about it—though whether it ever gets written is another question.
Hang in there!
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