Making decisions is hard!

Now that we've unlocked heroic ICC 10, we're in a situation where we have to make decisions. Its very interesting how they've enabled hard modes in ICC in that you don't have to kill a boss on a hard mode to toggle the hard mode on the next boss.

So how do you make the decision to keep working on a certain hard mode as opposed to moving on to a supposed easier hard mode? Especially when you are soooo freakin close (2% on heroic Saurfang... damn you!) And then there's the question of how should we balance hard modes with just getting more Lich King kills. When a guild has just unlocked their first week of hard modes, I wonder if we should have spent the time working on them or sped through to LK again.

Mmmmm decisions. What did your guild do when first starting on hard modes?

Here's another hard decision to make. Which bear has the cutest ass?

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Apparently we're a farm and an enigma

I've read posts and comments from number of 25 man raiders out there who are welcoming these raiding changes, but there are a lot who are also declaring the death of 25 mans.

Now I completely respect those who are sharing their views on how to keep 25 man raiding viable or worthwhile. I mean, a lot of my bloggy friends are 25 man raiders and I respect you for your choice to raid 25 mans. I just think that I should get the same level of respect for my choice and preference to raid 10 mans.

But there are also a lot of posts and comments from 25 man raiders that I just have to say are total pricks. It just seems that their entire argument rests on wanting to declare themselves "better than" 10 man raiders.

Hence my pic here to the left.

So on one of these posts, two comments cracked me up.

Honorshammer states "that 10 man Guilds are little more than farm teams for the 25 mans. New players come in, gear up, and snatched up by 25 mans almost immediately".

Treeboi comments that "10 man guilds always fall apart. The reason is that there are not enough geared backups to replace core players who cannot raid that night, for whatever the reason". He concludes with "10 man guilds tend to survive about 6 months, a year at most, before they completely stop raiding".

Really? Really?!?! Wow. Let me say this. I've been in The Left Claw now for over three years. Three years and 2 months to be exact. When I look at the folks who have left our guild in the last year, not a single raider has left for a 25 man guild. Not all 10 man guilds are farms for 25 man guilds.

Secondly, our guild has been raiding 10 mans for over two years. We started with Kara in March of 2008, and followed that up with every single raid that has been put out. We did ZA, we did Naxx, we did Ulduar, we did TOC, and we're doing ICC now. So not only have we "survived" for over a year, we've fucking thrived. Geez, now I'm irritated.

It seems that for most folks out there, their experience or understanding of 10 man raids are only that they are run within a 25 man guild, are pugs, or are much more casual guilds running with no interest in keeping up with progression. They just can't seem to fathom that there are strict 10 guilds who run 10 mans but do so with a more hardcore mindset. But you know what? We're out there. And we're proof that this model CAN and DOES work. So don't fucking tell me 10 man raiding guilds don't or can't exist. (F-bomb count so far: 2)

You guys may keep reading more posts around these raiding changes from me. Seriously, I feel that I have to put out there the perspective from the current strict 10 raider. I feel like right now its just me and Kae. If any of you know of other strict 10 raiders who have talked about this, please let me know. I'd love to get their thoughts.

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And I hardly ever do these kind of posts!

I know I mentioned that I hardly do posts commenting on game/patch notes or updates. Though I had to a couple weeks ago with the resto druid changes. And then now this! Raiding changes! For the most part I wouldn't feel the need to weigh in since others do it better than I. But because I don't think that there are that many voices from strict 10 raiders in our blogosphere, I'm going to put in my two cents.

Let me step back for a sec though. I actually had a post outline sitting in my gmail drafts from April 2. The subject? "How much difference does gear really make"? The crux of the post was wondering how much gear brings to the raiding table. Why was I curious? Well, when 25 man raiders ask "Why haven't you gotten Sindragosa down yet, we got her a month/weeks ago?", I was curious how their downing of 10 man Sindragosa a month ago compares to us, a strict 10 guild still working on Sindragosa.

Now I would argue that 25 man guilds not only have higher level gear, but given they are running both 25 and 10 mans, they are able to accumulate frost badges at a faster rate, also thus affording them access to better gear sooner. I guess I knew that the answer to my question couldn't really can't be quantified, but I was just curious how different a 10 man encounter is in 25 man gear.

Again, call me biased (remember I am a strict 10 raider) but there has to be some difference. So when someone tells me that they or someone else we knew downed the Lich King on 10 man (in a 25 man guild) in a "Haha, we are the awesome sauce and you are not" sort of way, my response once or twice has been (I kid you not) "Oh that's great, but do you know that I have a bloggy friend Kae who downed Lich King like 6 weeks ago and they are a strict 10 guild"?

I don't know if 25 man raiders can really appreciate what an incredible achievement that is, to down Lich King in strict 10 gear (again, remember accumulating frost badges from only one raid a week) even before 25 man raiders are doing it in their 10 man runs. Yeah, I'm a little bit of a fan-girl of Kae's guild, Vortex, as they are definitely at the pinnacle of strict 10 raiding when they are getting kills before 25 man guilds are doing it on 10 man. Go see some of Kae's thoughts around the raid changes.

Anyways, I thought it was funny I had a post of this subject drafted, then the raiding changes to Cataclysm info comes out. So a ton of other bloggers have already commented on this. A lot of folks are declaring this to be the death of 25 man raiding guilds. Really?

I thought Tam made an interesting point in asking

"but ultimately if something 'dies' because a viable alternative is offered, then that thing was meant to die. I mean, seriously, if people are ONLY raiding in 25mans because the loot is better then 25 man raiding is already dead".

I totally see his point. Honestly, I guess I am unsure then what truly motivates 25 man raiders. Why do they raid? Folks have mentioned the epic feel of raiding with 24 others and the accomplishment in bring 25 folks together. Then make the choice to continue doing so.

If you really believe that giving 10 man raids access to the same gear spells the death of 25 man raids, then was your motivation for running 25 mans truly just "epic feel"? Or was it better gear and the license to feel that you were "somehow better" than 10 man raiders? If you have to do 10 man raids in order to be able to run your 25 mans or exist as a 25 man guild, to me, there's something wrong there.

Dechion remarks:

"Once again, run what you want. I think they will be even more fun since it will truly be a choice to be there. If you truly run twenty-fives because you love them and prefer that challenge then this may well be your golden age. Unless you’re an asshat, but that kinda goes without saying."

Let's examine some other points. One lock out, where the 10 man raid bosses will drop 2 pieces of loot, whereas the 25 man raid bosses will drop 6 or so pieces. Perfectly reasonable. Same ilevel? Hooray! Will 10 man bosses finally also drop boe gear? We'll see.

Now being on the same lock out for 10 and 25 man in one week doesn't mean that a 25 man guild can't choose to do a 25 man run one week, then do 10 man runs the next week right? Could a guild run 25 mans for several weeks to get their 6 drops per boss, gear up their guild faster (more drops per raider), then go back to 10 mans with an intent for faster progression or a first kill on a boss in 10 man? It's going to be interesting to see how the whole tuning of the difficulty pans out. How will these raid changes affect the strict 10 progression designation/definition?

More around relative difficulty. I will definitely recognize that certain fights are more difficult with 24 other people when the size of the room isn't any larger. So yes, I can see how blood queen could be more difficult. But is there another side to this? How about encounters where raid dmg is shared by people (ex. green oozes in Putricide)? Isn't it easier in 25 mans for people to group together whereas in 10 mans, less people means more people could be spread out? Some encounters or pieces of encounters are easier on 25 mans than 10 mans.

Jess and I have talked multiple times about the level of individual responsibility in 10 mans vs 25 mans. We had a hell of a time with Sindragosa last week, partly because we have two folks disconnecting on and off. Argh! It was death for us. Or you have one person make one tiny misstep and it wipes the raid. I'm going to say that there is just less margin to carry dead weight in a 10 man vs a 25 man.

So what does it all mean for a guild like the Left Claw? Well, it doesn't change what we run since we are a strict 10 guild to begin with. I do think the raids may be a bit harder for us than we are used to now, which is fine if we are running for the best level gear. But yes, I am definitely intrigued by the prospect of us being able to continue to run our strict 10s while having access to the highest level of gear, while no longer being the red-headed step-child as Keeva describes so well.

Ok, um that was more than two cents worth of talky talky. Maybe more like ten.

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Why is there no BOE loot in ICC 10?

I'll try to be less ranty than I was yesterday, but I discovered something this weekend that I am confused and a bit irritated (yes, again... irritated) by.

Why is none of the loot from Icecrown 10 man bind on equip?

Let's take a look back at Ulduar. From Flame Leviathan to the General, every single boss with the exception of Freya dropped one piece of loot on 10 man that was BOE. In 25 man Ulduar, all bosses from FL to the General had a piece of BOE gear.

I'm sure 10 man raiding guilds remember these drops from back in Ulduar... stuff like Cable of the Metrognome from Mimiron or Nimble Climber's Belt from Auriaya or Armbands of the Construct. While it was annoying at times to see these drops when folks were looking for other drops, it was a nice way for our guild to sell these BOEs for the guild bank to finance repairs for our runs.

Now in ICC 10, there is not a single drop that is BOE. I wondered whether they had gotten rid of this feature for some reason and taken away BOE drops in 25 man ICC as well. Nope. There is one piece of BOE loot for every single boss in 25 man from Marrowgar to Dreamwalker. I then did some more research and learned that this was something they changed with TOC. Not a single BOE drop in TOC 10, but there is a BOE drop for every boss in TOC 25.

Ok so now 10 man guilds don't get the extra bit of cash from selling BOEs. Well luckily our guild bank isn't suffering for cash, but it'd be a nice bonus. Secondly, in 10 mans its more likely that you'd have a drop that someone couldn't use compared to a 25 man. Hello, 25>10 (maths FTW). It was also nice back in Ulduar when we would give some of these BOE drops to guildies who could use the upgrade but weren't there for the raid.

Why did they make this change after Ulduar? Bring back BOE drops in 10 mans!

Grrrr... I am irritated again! I shall try to temper the irritation by giggling at this pic of scrabble cats (click on pic to get closer look of the board):

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Raiding update

We haven't been able to do much lately in terms of raiding progression, in part due to what I call the dominoes effect. You see, earlier this month we temporarily lost our dress, er kilt wearing pally healer Nicolause. He's doing US Navy training things somewhere until mid next month. In a 10 man raiding guild, losing one person, especially a healer is a huge deal.

Because Nico has been away, Jess has switched over to shammy healing and we have to hear "Chealz! Chealz!" all the time now, in addition to Makawee standing in the middle of the totems and calling it "the power center". /sigh. So this means that Jess isn't tanking, and as much as I hate to admit it, Jess sorta knows how to do the tanking bzness. So now Qyburn is tanking more, which is fine and all since Qyburn is well geared and knows what he is doing. But when Qyburn tanks, that means that we don't have him on Nkm. And that is sad because as a gnome mage, Nkm routinely tops not only the cute meters, but the dps meters. You see, dominoes!

For the last couple of weeks we just have not had enough raid nights with the right group composition to progress in ICC. We tried two healing Festergut one night, which was very very bad. We then went with three healers another night, and we just didn't have enough dps. /sigh. We've tried Rotface maybe 5 or 6 times and while we haven't gotten him down, its been nice to see definite progress each and every time. Can I just say the word ooze sounds really funny and kinda odd, almost like you're saying it wrong, especially after you hear it on vent so many times? Ooze. Ooooze. Oooooooze. Weird. Is it just me?

Oh, so I picked up Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff from Saurfang a couple weeks ago, and oooh is it shiny. The staff enchant on it is also quite mesmerizing if you stare at it adoringly for a long time. Not that I've ever done that, er... uh...

All in all, while its a bit frustrating to feel that we could be doing better if we had the right raid team, I guess in a way I'm not in a huge hurry since this is the last raid instance before Cataclysm. We will most definitely be finishing ICC later than most raiding guilds. I wonder what folks are supposed to do before Cataclysm comes out when, this fall/winter?

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Points of view in a raid

Check out this pic below depicting how people with different points of view may look at a water glass.

How would these different points of view translate to a raid? Perhaps a raid that is struggling or wiping on a specific encounter?

Optimist: We are clearly making progress! We're getting better!
Pessimist: OMG how can we be so terribad? We suck.
Realist: This raid group cannot complete this encounter at this point in time.
Idealist: One day soon we will work together in perfect harmony and take down this boss.
Capitalist: I'm just here for the loot.
Communist: We are all equally to blame for this fail.
Conspiracist: Blizz made this boss harder because they are trying to extend the period of time we have to wait for Icecrown.
Sexist: We can't do hard mode X with these terrible girls in raid.
Nihilist: We shouldn't get so upset over computer pixels.
Opportunist: This sucks, but at least this is good blog post material.

I think part of what complicates raiding is that you are bringing together 10 or 25 different people with distinctly different ways of looking at things. I think even in any normal guild, these different points of view can cause a bit of drama or angst. Perhaps if guild/raid leaders can recognize this, and think about what point of view their specific raiders may hold, it may help them better understand any sort of drama that may come up.

Anyways, bloggers... opportunists? Us? Nowai! ;)

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Too many raids? Good or bad?

Ok, ok so I'll talk about something other than arenas today (though I'm sure I will talk about it again soon). Let's take a quick look at what the Left Claw did last week in terms of raiding.

1. VOA. I don't really remember when we did this, but we did. Doing the three bosses in there is a pretty quick clear.

2. TOC. Another full clear in one night. Now I heard that they nerfed the third pvp style encounter with the patch last Tuesday, but did they also nerf the other encounters? It just seemed so much easier this week! I kept mentioning this in raid chat, and some folks asked, "Maybe it wasn't all nerfed K, maybe we are just super leet?" I don't know, I'm sure that could be the case, but I'm convinced the first two encounters were nerfed as well.

Anyways, here's a funny picture of us levitating down for the final encounter. Trees look very funny levitated.

3. Ulduar. We had been saved up to Yogg so we went to take a look at him again. Once again we got into phase 2 but lost it there. The problem is that we aren't working on Yogg every week. Heck, since we started TOC, its been more like every couple of weeks. So it takes a bit each time to get used to the fight again. I think we're tired of Yoggy yogg yogg though so we'll let Ulduar reset and start working on hard modes.

4. Onyxia. We also did Onyxia last week, which we ran with 8 dps and 2 healers. As we were approaching Onyxia though, I mentioned in raid chat whether it was a little weird for me to feel bad about killing her because I thought she was so pretty. Look! Purty dragon!

Its definitely a pretty simple encounter once everyone figures out what to do. The only issues we had were that Nico and I were dying to either flame breath or the whelps. On one of my deaths to flame breath, I have no idea how it happened because two folks survived when they were literally right next to me. Grrrr. Onyxia definitely drops some nice weapons. Anyways:

So yeah, in the course of one raid week, our guild stepped into 4 raids, though Ulduar was just for one boss. Ok so having all these raids does provide a lot of guilds with content to clear so they don't get bored. As for our guild, I'm not sure what we'll do next raid week given that we will let Ulduar reset and do hard modes. Will we able to do all the other raids? Will we just have to pass on VOA for the week?

While its nice to have the variety options, is it bad to have too many options? Especially for guilds with limited raiding schedules? Does having the other options result in folks not slogging away at stuff like before? Would our guild be forced to keep trying Yogg (and hopefully getting better at it) if we didn't have so many other options?

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Healing assignments in 10 mans?

I am curious as to whether other 10 man raiders make healing assignments in their runs. So when we have a new person healing with us, often they will ask me who they should be healing. My reaction typically starts with a pause, then an "uh", then depending on the healer I'll specify a tank or say the raid. Or more likely I'll say something like "uh, everyone" or "anyone who needs it?" in a half joking, half serious manner.

Now if things go wrong and we are wiping on something repeatedly or healers are running out of mana, yes I may take a second to consider whether we should be making assignments. And for certain fights like General Vezax for example, we do assignments as well. But the default for our raids, even when we are seeing new bosses, is to not have assignments.

Why? Well, perhaps when you're with other folks you've healed with before, you know who is going to do what in terms of healing, and that they are going to take into account the strengths of our respective healing classes. So maybe we already have silent unspoken assignments. Or perhaps I like the excitement of not being really prescribed to something and figuring out what works best, responding to the situation at hand.

Now yes, there could be drawbacks on not having assignments. Sure we could heal the same person and overheal. But if we don't run out of mana and folks are kept up, is that a problem? Or does giving healing assignments also help new healers learn? By not providing healing assignments, are you freaking out new healers?

I know assignments are much more important in 25 mans. So do you do healing assignments in your 10 man runs? And those of you who do, are you doing these 10 mans within a 25 man guild, as such being more used to healing assignments? Those of you who run in a strictly 10 man guild, do you do healing assignments? Are we just weird not to? (Don't answer that, that was a hypothetical).

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Random raiding thoughts

I have a number of thoughts/comments around raiding I wanted to share, so I shall just smush them all into one post.

1. Is it a full moon or something?

Isn't it odd how sometimes everything just seems to go all so wrong? I mean how on one night a raid seems to just be so off.... dps, healers, and tanks. We had one of these nights this past raid week where it was just such an off night. But nearly the same group came back the next night and kicked ass. I don't get what makes an off night an off night. Was it a full moon or something?

2. 1/10 = 10%

Now continuing from this first point, I won't start the whole debate again around 10 man vs 25 man raids. But Jess and I have talked about how a single raider carries more weight, or responsibility in a 10 man. One person is off, or not carrying their weight, that is 10% of the raid. Compare that to 1/25... I don't know what that is, but I know its less than 10% (complicated maths FTW).

I think its much harder to carry dead weight in a 10 man vs 25 man. Or maybe it is just more noticeable in a 10 man. Am I thus saying 10 mans are in a way harder? Well I don't know, because on a per raider basis I know that 25 man bosses require more dps. But I will say that yes, you do carry more responsibility to a raid in a 10 man.

3. "Feminine healing"?!?!

Larissa at Pink Pigtail Inn did a post bringing back up the old subject of gender stereotypes in WOW and how as much as she hates it, she feels that healing is "girly". The post and some comments talked about healing as standing in the back... being nurturing, passive.

It made me laugh because yes, I am a healer. Yes, I am female. But I bristle at the notion that healing is girly or that females tend to play healers because it is passive and nurturing. Maybe I play a healer not because I am nurturing and passive but because I know how to multi task and can time things well and quickly react to changing situations not only by the bosses but by what your raid members do? How about that huh huh huh? (Sorry maybe a little miffed here).

Now on the "passive" front, maybe its just different for me because as I told Jess, I am probably a healer with a tank attitude. Though Jess did point out that none of our tanks have attitude. Its true, except for when Jess tries to get lippy with me, our tanks don't have attitude. But what I meant with a tank attitude, was perhaps being more aggressive, taking charge, and wanting to run the show.

Trust me, you can take charge even if you aren't a tank. My guild has now taken to calling me the Empress Raid Leader, a nickname oh so lovingly conferred upon yours truly by one of our hunters Kalthan.

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When you raid with a blogger

We had an interesting week of raiding last week. First, we decided that we'd do Flame Leviathan with one tower up. So we start the encounter, and we were ready for the light beams, but WTF Flowers? Fires? Yeah... in our quest to do FL+1 we accidentally started FL+4. Oops. It was kinda funny though. We came back and took down 3 more towers and successfully did FL+1. It was nice that just leaving one tower up on 10 man resulted in two badges of conquest!

So we took down Thorim this past week. Woot! Didn't end up getting Freya down, but I think we're very very close. I actually forgot to take a screenshot after Thorim. Oops again. Now we had left a bunch of easy early bosses that a group of us went back to clear. So we're going to do Ignis, and had a healer who had to leave. We brought in a dps and could have switched Jess or Chachi out and brought in their healers, but I knew that Jess and Chachi both had drops they wanted off of Ignis.

Since Ignis is relatively easy sauce now, I decided "Hey, lets challenge ourselves" and suggested that we do Ignis with just two healers, Breld, a pally healer, and myself. From the slight pause in Breld's voice, I'm guessing that he thought that I was crazy (he probably wasn't the only one). But my hope was that with 6 kick ass dps, we'd burn him down before too long. Plus since I knew that we could still heal if we got in the crotch pocket, I thought we might be ok. And hey, if it doesn't work out, then we'll just switch someone in.

So yeah, I had to work and try a little harder, but Ignis was one shot with just Breld and myself healing. My reaction as soon as he went down? BOOYAH! And it was a good plan since the gun dropped for our hunter Chachi off Ignis.

Now I'm not sure what the deal was this past Sunday night, but Sunday's raid ended up being incredibly incredibly naughty. Terms and phrases were mentioned and discussed that required the very innocent Jess and Kalthan to look up via google or wikipedia, after which I'm sure they had to clear the cache/history on their computers. Our little gnome Nkm was so traumatized that he emoted using little mittens to cover up his little ears. I don't know... there must have been something in the fish feast I put out because it was just out of control. Even I was blushing, which tells you how bad it was.

Sometimes I wonder how it is for my guildies and friends to raid with me, a blogger. Do they wonder what will get posted and what won't? Are they sometimes surprised by the way I see things and post them? Are there things I post that they wish I wouldn't? Let's take a look at a quick raid conversation from one night:

Suzzy: Now don't you go putting that up on your blog K!
K: Sorry Suz, I think you all well know that by raiding with me there is an unwritten and unsaid understanding that anything you say or do is rightful fodder for the blog.
Chachi: Yeah, I ended up figuring that out.

But seriously, I do think I'm pretty good with not putting anything up that they wouldn't want me to put up. However it is nice to have an avenue to put up stuff like this:

So Jess had some connection issues and ended up lagging for a while before Iron Council. Here is Jess simply running in place, so vigorously so that the snow got worn down!

Well what did we do while waiting? I think it was Vel that put bunny ears on Jess, while I ran over to get screenshots. Wut mentioned that this would be the WOW equivalent of someone passing out drunk and their friends drawing on their face. Hee hee.

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Healers... the neck of a raid?

Ok a couple of updates. First of all, I haz a new dress, Phaelia's Vestments of the Sprouting Seed.

I cannot believe that I am wearing the most famousest resto druid evah's dress! Phaelia was one of the earliest supporters of my blog nearly two years ago, so its quite exciting for me to be wearing her dress. It makes me want to be a better and smarter tree, or at least a nicer one. Will I be able to do complicated spirit and mana regen calculations on the fly wearing this dress? One can only hope...one can only hope.

Secondly, a funny shot after we got Hodir down. Breld's hip thrusts right behind Vel and I disturbs me a bit...

Finally we had one night of raiding where I was once again the raid leader (previous experience with raid leader-ing here). Let's see how the rest of the raid reacted to this:

Ah, I've taught them well, I've taught them well. No, but seriously I do think it just comes a bit more naturally for tanks to be leading raids. However here's my interpretation on tanks and healers in a raid, based on this Chinese proverb:

A tank may be the head of a raid, but the healer is the neck that turns the head.

Hee hee. :)

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Listening to raid instructions

There is a running joke in the guild that Jess' raid instructions are like lectures and the rest of us are students. In keeping with the analogy, folks ask for Cliff Notes sometimes and the joke is that Vel and I are sometimes caught "passing notes in class" and not completely paying attention:

Jess: Ok, Vel?
Vel: Huh? Sorry, I was whispering K.

On a little more serious note though, I think its important for us healers to listen to all of the raid instructions and adapt our healing strategy based on that. Now I'm not talking about knowing what the boss or encounter is going to do, but knowing what your specific raid leader is instructing your raid to do.

I guess listening to what the tanks are instructed to do is a bit more obvious, such as preparing for a switch in tanking by throwing out hots to the second tank. But listening to what the dps is instructed to do is important as well. Knowing where folks were going to be and which dps was assigned specific duties ensures that healers keep them within line of sight and can perhaps pay special attention to someone who has a critical role.

Does this mean Vel and I will promise to hang onto Jess' every word? Hmmm... we'll see.

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Better with drinks?

Anyone else think that their raids are a little more successful with drinks? I think some of our guildies perform best after just one or two drinks, where some folks seem to perform better with even more than just one or two drinks (you know who you are!). Personally, I am not a big drinker, but I would say on average our guild raids seem to do best when folks are just a bit more relaxed after that first drink or two.

On a more serious note, I'm curious what people think about the relation between gear and skill in success. I've seen first hand skill outperforming gear, but how far can skill get you? Would skill play into 60% of success and gear 40%? 55% and 45%? 70% and 30%?

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Why isn't it ever a "tank fight"?

During one of our last Ulduar runs, this tree had a revelation. I can't remember exactly which boss we were working on, but a comment was made to the effect of "this is a healer fight". I paused for a second, held up a branchy arm, and posed my question over vent, the gist of which is:

Why is it that you hear from time to time the phrase "its a dps check" or "its a healer fight" but you rarely or hardly ever hear "its a tank fight"? Was it a tank that came up with these two phrases so that tanks aren't ever "blamed" for a wipe? If dps and healers can be blamed, I think its only fair, don't you? Amirite or Amirite?

Everyone laughed and agreed. There was more laughter on a subsequent night when we wiped on some boss and I declared, "Sigh, this is so obviously a tank fight". I definitely recognize when certain fights are dps checks and others are very much reliant on the healers. I wouldn't have a problem with that if certain fights placed the crux of the responsibility on the tanks. Or is it that there really is no such thing as a "tank fight"?

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Resto druid services?

Atania was taking a break from her prime number maths last night and pointed out a funny advertisement(?) on trade chat. Let's take a look, shall we?

Now I have to wonder... exactly what is this female resto druid doing during raids to liven things up in vent? How exactly is she making raids not so "depressing"? Is she simply speaking as a female? Is she boosting the male ego by cooing "Ooh Mr.(insert male toon name here), you are so strong! So awesome!" Is she reading scandalous stories to the group? Does she simply state "OMG guys I haz the bewbs!!!!" Seriously, does a flirty female really liven a raid up or just cause more drama?

What I also find amusing is that she lists herself as a female resto druid. Why does it matter if she is a resto druid with 500+ IMBA rating? Isn't the crux of what she is selling simply the "friendly female" bit? What does it matter what class she is and whether she can play at all?

Finally, how she is getting paid? Drops? In-game gold? A raiding spot in a hardcore progression guild? Real life cash? Geez, I liven up our raids for free not with friendly flirting (please...) but with smart, sarcastic, witty banter. I had no idea I was giving away something so valuable for free!

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Leading a Raid - K style

Before patch 3.1 dropped, we were putzing around in 10 man Naxx. Yeah, yeah we've done it tons of times before. What was different this time? Well, I was "leading" the raid. From this experience, here are 5 things that you should not be doing as a raid leader, well unless you want a horrible raid or you are goofing around:

1. Demand undeserved respect: I insisted that everyone call me Madam Raid Leader and would not respond to anything else.

2. Provide irrelevant instructions: The raid strategy and instructions I went with were "Kill shit, don't die"

3. Blame others when things go wrong...: When there were minor missteps I insisted Jess try harder.

4. ...but take all the credit when things go well: When we downed a boss, I praised everyone for a decent job, but then declared that the overall success was clearly due to my awesome "raid-leadering"

5. Go on a power trip: I did a number of raid checks, just to do them. But I got mad when any of the raid assistants did them before an actual boss.

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