We're real people... who screw up sometimes

Something happened in our raid last Thursday night and I couldn’t quite decide whether I should blog about it. But after thinking about it a bit, I decided I need to. Not only to give others some insight into how I see things or what I think, but also because writing it out always helps me to better understand what I think or feel about something.

So long story short, Jess and I screwed up… again. We had Part Two of Jess and K Fight on Vent (if you remember, Part One was during Cho’gall a couple months back). We then proceeded to wipe horribly on Rhyolith, a boss that we’ve killed before. I know that our fight affected the mood and thus the performance of the rest of the raid. And I know and readily admit that Jess and I did not handle things the best way and we need to find a way to change it.

But I will also say this in reference to Jess and I. And while I don’t pretend to speak on the behalf of every single GM and RL, I believe that what I have to say applies to them as well. We are human. We are real people. We thus react to things and situations, situations that affect us for the better or worse. We have our own issues and personality quirks that sometimes clash with each other. And sometimes (even often) we screw up. We aren’t stone statues who lead the guild and run raids in a vacuum without being affected by anything. Have I mentioned that we are real people?

Jess and I talked this weekend about what it means to run the guild and run our raids. Because we are real people, sometimes we can be in a particularly shitty or sensitive mood. And while you may be able to tell when a raider is in a shitty mood during the raid, it’s different when it comes to the RL or GM. When you’re running the raid, your behavior has a larger impact. As Jess said, our behavior is more on display, thus its different for us by virtue of being the leadership.

I’m not trying to excuse our behavior on Thursday night because clearly Jess and I need to work on communicating better and not taking things public. I need to try to be more clear (which is hard when I call most things by the wrong name or just add a “–y thing” to it, such as “freezy thing” or “marky thing” or “sparky thing”) and perhaps be more patient and not shut down (Jess says I should just be nicer to him). So while Jess and I recognize our issues and we have talked about how we could do things better, I guess I just wanted to highlight some other things I’ve thought about.

Ultimately though things did work out. The kids were worried that mom and dad might get divorced, but I explained to them that we went to counseling on Friday and that all was good. We also went in last night and proceeded to one shot Rhy. AND not only that but Rhy dropped the chest piece I was drooling over so now I am one drop closer to my pally arch nemesis Lorosia. And what could be better news than that?

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Why is it that...

1. ...achievement tracking keeps getting reset?

I always have a number of achievements tracked on my UI. For over a week now it keeps resetting every time I relog back in. WTF? Anyone know what is going on?

2. ...doing BGs seem less an event against the Horde and more against your fellow alliance?

This past weekend was Eye weekend. Ugh. If I have to say one more time that 3 towers>middle/flag... When you are down 3 towers to 1 and 75% of your team is still standing around in the middle (when its clear Horde are holding the flag), all I have to say is FFS. I ended up giving up on Eye yesterday and going back to my old stand by Arathi Basin.

3. ...we have such a limited sell back window?

I finally finished up Loremaster of Cataclysm this past weekend, finishing up all the Vashj quests 8 months after most people (heh). With all the quest rewards you get, plus all the random stuff you get off mobs, they really need to increase the number of sell back slots. Twelve slots is definitely not enough when you are hard core questing.

4. ...my arch nemesis keeps getting upgrades?

I've blogged plenty about my arch nemesis, he of the endless mana, our pally healer Lorosia. Can I just say that Lorosia has gotten like 4 drops from Firelands so far and I have gotten none! Zero! Zilch! Nada! It's just so so so wrong... grrrr. Freakin' pallys...

5. ...our guild has gotten screwed on RNG lately?

The Left Claw seems to have the worst luck with the RNG boss lately. Baradin Hold seems to only drop pvp gear or pve gear for classes not in our raids. And Chogall, the little f'er, will only drop the pally/priest/warlock shoulder tokens! I will now never forget the fact that pallys/priests/warlocks share the tokens because the number of times that we've said "Pally/priest/warlock again?!?!? FFS!"...

6. ...I haven't blogged in a bit?

There have been a number of RL decisions I've had to make lately. I mentioned a while back that I went to Seattle to interview for a job. Well, ultimately I got the job and I have made the decision to accept the offer. Yes, this means that I am moving to Seattle! Holy crap! I anticipate a bit of an erratic raiding and blogging schedule for the next 3 months as I not only deal with the stress of a new job, but with moving to Seattle as well.

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For the gnomes!

K was created in February of 2007 and not long after that, I created a human priest named Calexis. Well poor Cal has been sitting at level 60 something for pretty much forever. The funny thing is that in the over 4 years that I've had her, she's leveled with pretty much all of Jess' alts: his shammy, his druid, his hunter. As Jess' alts each hit max level, Cal just stays where she is.

I wondered that perhaps I didn't feel as strong a connection to her because she was just a simple human toon that was kinda meh to me. So after a couple of bgs on K where I remarked once again that it is so darned cute that there are gnome priests, I did it. I race changed my priest to a gnome and renamed her to a K name.

So I introduce to you Kakigori, my new gnome priest:

OMG the cuteness overwhelms me.

Kimchee is my spicy Korean lock. Kakigori is now my sweet Japanese priest. Kakigori is the name of a Japanese shaved ice dessert. This is my third gnome as I also have a gnome DK who is my inscriptionist. Yes, I love gnomes. Its true. They just make me happy when I play them because they are so darned cute.

Jess even said that he wondered whether I may race change K if gnomes could be druids. Especially if they could be small and cute when they shapeshifted. Can you even imagine a mini tree? A healing bush? Or a mini kitty or bear? Awww. They'd be the same size as companion pets! Though honestly if that were the case I probably wouldn't race change K, but would level a new gnome druid.

Anyways, so what have I been doing with Kakigori? Eventually I think I'll pick up a disc spec on her, but for now I've solely been doing bgs with her as shadow. And you know what? Shadow priests are way OP right now. For me to go into bgs pretty green on the toon and spec, and to be the top dpser, its insane! I was in one WSG where she was just totally kicking ass and had like 15 HKs. As I told the guild, respect bitches!

I was also in a number of ABs where I immediately took her to the lumber mill because mind controlling folks off the LM is just so evil, yet so fun. If MCing folks off the LM is wrong, I don't want to be right. I just kept doing it over and over and over again. :)

I also love the fact that this cute little bundle of evil energy can generally kill a Hordie one on one. I mean you see a big mean green orc DK or warrior or whatever, and Kakigori can just own them, all while giggling and chewing pink bubble gum. They're powerless. I love it.

The Horde seem to have a special dislike for gnomes. And for them, Kakigori says, "See you on the battlefield!"

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Needing dramamine to raid?

When the heck did it become August already? The summer is almost over! Anyways, some random updates.

We raided last night for the first time in two weeks since a week was taken off for Clawcon. On a personal front, I hadn't logged into the game since I was on for about an hour last Monday night. Before that, I hadn't been on for about 5 days. So basically I haven't played much in 10 days.

The amusing or not so amusing part for me was going back to dealing with the motion in the game. Every time I take some time away from the game, even if its just a week to 10 days, I come back to getting nauseous from the movement. The whole perspective of running and flying around just makes me queasy.

So yet again I log on midday yesterday for my first real extended play time in 10 days. I set about to go do my dailies (which I haven't done in 14 days... slacker!) and ugh, queasiness. I felt queasy the entire 2 hours or so that I was on and I really got worried that I would have to take dramamine to raid last night.

I did log on about 75 minutes before raid time to see if I still felt sick. I did a couple of BGs and a successful Tol Barad defense (heck yeah!) to test myself before the raid. And huzzah! No more queasiness! I have issues, I know.

Outside of the whole is K going to hurl on her laptop question last night, there were other ups and downs. Last night was our first raid without our old lock Buns. I really missed her. This also meant that last night was our first raid where I was the only female. Clearly this means our raid was thus lacking in maturity and general awesomeness. Sigh. I miss the days of running with 5 out of 10 raiders being female.

On that front, we could probably use another raider or two if anyone is interested or knows of anyone. A dps/healer or a tank/dps dual spec would be awesome. A female would be double the awesome so we can increase the average IQ of our raid. (I kid, I kid! Or not...)

Our raid last night also consisted of 3 pallys (1 tank and 2 healers) and three, yes THREE mages. Perhaps not the most ideal, but you know what? We make things work best they can. I would rather take people I like playing with and let those people bring their mains than create a more optimal raid composition. It also worked out because on any given wipe I could just blame a mage or pally. It was true! The numbers say so!

So just as I was bemoaning missing Buns last night, lo and behold our old holy pally Nico logged on after being deployed for a while! Huzzah! I'm excited to see him safe and sound back in the states, even if it means that he and Lorosia now tag team gang up on this poor little tree. Hopefully we can get Nico geared quickly and joining us in raids soon!

Finally I had a great time grabbing dinner with the lovely Beru last Friday night. I was back in her neck of the woods for the second time in less than a week for an interview. It boggles my mind that this game and the corresponding blog community has forged these sort of relationships. I knew that I'd be in Seattle for a couple of days so without question I shot Beru a note to say, lets meet up!

We talked about everything from work to real life to books/movies. And yes of course we also talked about the game, raiding, our guilds, the blogosphere, and specific bloggers. We specifically talked about you Rades! :) You never know how long you're going to play this game. But I find it pretty awesome that my time in the game and the blogsophere has forged these kind of friendships!

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Quick Clawcon debrief

I'm supposed to be catching back up on work and all my emails, but I thought I'd do a quick Clawcon debrief from this weekend. This was effectively our third Clawcon since we kind of did two Clawcons last summer, one in Indianola, WA and one in Chicago. This time we were in Port Townsend. The view from the back deck of the house this year:

Most of us had done this before, so we were pretty comfortable with everything. Nkm, who did not attend a Clawcon last year remarked how closely we sounded like we did on vent. Imagine that! :) I have to give a lot of credit to Chanti, who came out despite knowing and playing with us for the least amount of time. I hope that our old friend and guildie Rap did not scare him away. We joked that he better not gquit when he got back Sunday night.

Anyways, we did a lot of eating. We joked that we probably ate better than those top raiding guilds would eat if they got together. You can have your world first Paragon or whoever is getting world firsts lately... I bet we eat and drink better than you when we get together! (I'm sure they're hurt).

Jess made breakfasts of blueberry pancakes one morning and french toast the next. Jess, Wut, and I made yummy dinners as well. (We are maxed in cooking IRL). There was a lot of fish and seafood feasts to be had given we were in the Pacific Northwest. We got some dungeness crab one night and I joked that we needed to put it in a pot and take a picture of it as our seafood feast (since we didn't have lobster). Unfortunately I forgot to take the pic... it would have been so cute!

Not to be out done by the eating, there was also a lot of drinking. Lots of dark microbrews from the region, very nice bottles of wine from Wut and Chanti (heck we even had rose champagne one night), and I think the boys were drinking fancy scotch or something Friday night.

So yes, the two pallys Wut and Chanti bonded over their shared love and knowledge of nice wines. I also made them pose together with a pillow that Rap brought:

OMG Carebear stare! At one point I was hugging the pillow hoping that the never endless pally mana would somehow rub off on me.

And yes, of course there were references to WoW as we were out and about. When we went to Fort Worden and were walking around there, we were walking up a narrow path. We had to step to the side to let this guy on a lawnmower through. Good thing Chanti called out, "Pat!" so we didn't grab aggro.

Also when we were walking around the abandoned artillery batteries there (which were so freakin creepy... I am convinced that place is haunted), Jess walked down into a pitch dark walkway. I did not want to follow him so I was kind of lingering at the top of the steps and waiting. But then Jess called out "Heals!". Gosh we're such dorks.

We also spent some time walking around up at Hurricane Ridge in Port Angeles. It was quite stunning up there.

I came across an interesting sign there:

Huh? Tree skirting? Chanti offered that perhaps its the tree version of t-bagging. Yeah! You better not mess with us trees... we'll tree skirt you!

So on Saturday night we were treated to a fancy dinner from Wut. There were two non WoW players at this dinner and at some point we did talk about the whole phenomenon about us getting together. This one guy said that he was just so surprised, or that it was just something that he couldn't imagine, that we would all gather together to share a house with people we didn't know.

I had to correct him though. You may not have never met or shaken hands with each other, but we KNOW each other. I would argue that many of us know each other probably better than some of the people we physically interact with daily, like at work for example.

If you really think about it though... it does take some level of comfort to be ok with sharing a house together. You're cooking together, you're seeing people sleeping, stepping out of the shower with towels wrapped around their head, etc etc. But I don't think anyone had any reservations about sharing a house together. It just seemed so obvious. There is no one in our guild that I would even second guess feeling comfortable about sharing a house with.

We also talked about how this is the kind of guild that we want to play or raid in. Its not just about the phat lewts. I would not trade a guild further progressed for the guild that I have. That's not what is important to me in the game. I am pretty sure that many of us would not be playing this game anymore if we weren't in this guild. It's the people and the relationships that have kept us in this long.

All in all it was a good time but I also think it helps people understand each other in game better. When someone does something in game, or says something, meeting and having spent time with them gives you a context for all of that. I hope some of the other guildies can make it out next year.

We did have a little bit of sad news on Saturday. Buns our gnome lock let Jess know that she was leaving the game. I was really sad to hear that. Besides Jess and I, Buns was our only other current raider who dates back to Kara with us. That's a long time. I'm also kind of sad that we're losing a female raider. I think back to some of our Kara runs when we were usually 50% or sometimes even 60% female. I miss that. We need more women!

Buns' name came up over the Clawcon weekend, as did all of our other guildies who were not there. When we had all these bottles of really nice red wines, we mused that Buns should be here. Buns has this wicked sense of humor and sarcasm that sneaks out from time to time. She's been a long standing member of the guild and I am really going to miss her.

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This is so my leadership philosophy

I'm kind of old fashioned in that I still like to buy books. I don't have an iPad or a kindle and don't really plan on buying them soon. So not only do I like to buy books, but I buy them in hardback. I know. I'm a dinosaur.

Quick side note though, is anyone else playing Tiny Tower? I want to play it on my iPhone but the tutorial keeps resetting itself. Chanti says that I shouldn't be too upset because it is virtual crack, in 8-bit form. That I should stop now before it takes over my life. But I'm intrigued! The game looks cute! I told him I may have to play around with his game this weekend.

Anyways, so the other day my latest book order finally got delivered to the hotel. One of the books I got was Tina Fey's book Bossypants. In the introduction, she gives some thoughts on how to be a good boss:

"... to get the best work out of people you may have to pretend you are not their boss and let them treat someone else like the boss, and then that person whispers to you behind a fake wall and you tell them what to tell the first person".

I immediately jumped when I read that because it was just so spot on in terms of Jess and I and our guild. You get to guess which role Jess plays and which role I play in this example. :)

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Healers blog meme before it gets too too late

Rades tagged me for the healing blog meme that went around. I figured I should do it before it gets too too late, even though its already kind of late. I'm probably the last one doing it, but hey, I'm ok with bringing up the rear.

1. What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Keredria, resto druid.

2. What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
From what I spend the most hours per week doing to the least, it'd be pvp, 10-man raiding, and the occasional 5-man. We've cut down raiding to 5 hours a week this expansion, so pvp definitely wins out from an hours/week standpoint. We dabbled with a bit of arena at the end of last season, and perhaps we'll do some more in season 10, but I do a ton (and I mean a TON) of bgs.

3. What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
Mmm probably rejuv as my in both pve and pvp. It's instant and heals for a decent amount!

4. What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Toss up between Healing Touch and Regrowth. I only use healing touch with nature's swiftness, and regrowth just makes me go oom too much. I used to use regrowth more, but now I'm scaling back on it until I feel better about my mana.

5. What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
Combination of mobility and output. Can I just take a quick side note here and talk about how AWESOME tree form is in bgs? Not so much for the extra healing, but for the instant roots. The ability to pop tree form and have no cast time on your roots is so awesome in bgs like Strand, Warsong, or Twin peaks.

6. What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
Probably what every single druid has said... lack of mitigation. I think our barkskin should be raid/party wide! We already have the spell just let us cast it on others!

7. In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
I love that the original question makes it seem raiding is only a 25 man thing. So in my "less than" 10 man raiding environment (/sarcasm) I end up rolling hots on the tanks and healing the raid. I have long healed with the same healers week in and week out, so this is what I just end up doing without "being assigned" to do so. Sometimes Jess tries to assign me a healing assignment, but then I set him straight.

8. What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
Pallys. Because I can sit and read a paper and eat a sandwich all in order to regen mana while the pallys will heal everyone with their 80% full mana bar. (And no, I don't really do this.)

9. What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
Pallys. Because their always full mana bar often makes me see red with rage or green with envy and when I can't see well it distracts me because I can't see my grid boxes.

10. What is your worst habit as a healer?
Blaming everything on the tanks. Even if its true. Oh and trying not to do everything myself. ZOMG must heal everyone!

11. What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
This doesn't happen in our raids, but as the adage goes, "I can't heal stupid". In pvp, it'd be people bitching at me for not healing them when I am healing them like crazy. And when I check out their gear, not only is it not pvp gear, but its blues and greens. At this point in season 10 when folks are stacking near 4000 resilience, if you are in a bg with pve blues and greens, I don't care how strong a healer is... you're going to die. And trust me, I bitch right back when I get bitched at this way in bgs.

12. Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
I do. We can heal tanks or raid and generally I feel good with where we are. Now if only we could do that judging nonsense that pallys do...

13. What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
I use World of Logs but I'm not checking them after every single raid like the srs bness raiders. I probably check them every other week or so, or if I want to look at something specifically.

14. What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
That we are rejuv and wildgrowth spam bots.

15. What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
Besides mana management I'd say the fact that we are always casting. With the power of our mobility comes the responsibility to be always casting. So you have to learn to track your hot countdowns. You don't want your lifeblooms to fall off and now we need to throw in those direct heals to keep up our mastery buff.

16. If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
As a druid, I'm always going to have overheal. And as much as I complain about mana, WoL will show you that I regen just as much mana as Lorosia does because I'm maximizing use of cooldowns. It's insane to me that I regen as much mana as he does. I call bollocks on the logs.

17. Haste or Crit and why?
Duh, haste. But I am never going to hit the haste break point for a 9th WG tick because most of the time we raid without a shammy, boomkin, or a spriest. So without the haste buff I need something insane like 2700+ haste. This makes me sad, but it is what it is. So there's another argument to the fact that 10 mans are not always the "easier" option, since we don't always have access to all the class buffs. Anyways, back to haste. I do keep it above 1600 for the 5th Rejuv tick.

18. What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Honestly, I probably understand all of them equally... equally little. I have a general idea of their strengths, but don't know specifics. Sometimes Lorosia will reference a pally spell and I'll say something like "and that means nothing to me". He then will link the spell, but then I won't read it because OMFG why do pally spells have like huge paragraph long descriptions. I lose interest after reading the first two lines. Oh look a shiny!

19. What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
Grid is probably the main addon I use. I generally don't use macros except for when I can't speak on vent. I've been spending a lot of time lately at my parents house and when I raid from there, I can't speak. So the macro is for when I need to desperately cry out for a hymn of hope. Generally the hymns are planned ahead of time. But if they are not, I have a macro that gives a raid warning that says something like "Sam, hymn me my dear!" I think the "my dear" part balances out the pushiness and annoying factor of asking for a hymn via a raid warning. :)

20. Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I've already mentioned that beyond 1600 haste, I no longer worry about stacking haste. So then its intellect.

Phew! Lots of questions! I won't tag anyone else because uh, I think the blogosphere is already beyond this. This was so two or three weeks ago. So yeah... bringing up the rear...

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Bunch of random stuff crammed into one post

ZOMG three posts in one week? What the hell. It's been a slower (thank God) work week than most. :) Makes up for fact that next week, at least the 3 days I'm working prior to Clawcon, is going to be insane. Anyways, a bunch of random thoughts crammed into one post.

1. The current drama in the blogosphere over the capping valor points issue. I have strong thoughts on this, specifically over the judgment being thrown around. But I'll say this. It's easy sometimes to forget the situation that other people are in, situations that affect their opinions.

So related to that, I'll say this. I sure as hell am glad that I am in a guild and raid that looks at me at more than just a number or the ilevel of my gear. If I was simply a dps or hps number and could be easily replaced with a higher number, then yeah, perhaps I would be more obsessed with capping valor points each week. But I'm more than just a number.

I raid with friends, in a long standing guild going on over 4 years now. While we can drive each other crazy at times, like any other family, we are still a family. And for all of this, I'm grateful.

I am going to try to catch up on doing some heroics this weekend though. During the week is really hard when I'm traveling as I tend to be at the client site for 10+ hours a day, then come "home" to the hotel pretty exhausted around 7 pm. This weekend I will also be trying to finish up the Master of Strands of the Ancients achievement by winning like 30 something more matches. Hopefully since its Strands weekend, it won't be too bad.

2. Rades tagged me in the Healer meme going around, which is funny because I don't feel like I'm a true healy blogger where I talk about healing mechanics and such, at least of any value. Anyways, I will do it, but I think the only way I can answer so many questions is if I can intersperse some snark and sarcasm throughout it.

3. Fellow gold enthusiasts, what addons are you currently using? I can't get auctioneer to work quite like it used to prior to 4.2. Specifically when I scan the current gems on the AH, it brings back the results in some crazy order that I can't use easily. Is everyone else still using Auctioneer? Are there some new addons I should be looking at?

4. The other week there was some talk about Google rebranding Blogger. More recent news is unclear whether this will really happen. I feel like I'm one of the very few still using blogger and a blogger domain. Anyways, we'll see what happens.

5. Clawcon 2011 starts next Thursday. In preparation for this, I made Chanti give me his RL name the other night. For most everyone I met for the first time last summer, I had a reference for RL names and faces from being Facebook friends. Though there was one guy I met at Clawcon Chicago last August who I didn't have any reference for. And it kind of freaked me out when I met him completely blind.

So I told Chanti I needed to wean myself into this, and asked for his name. He then asked whether there was anything else I needed, to which I told him that his name was enough for now. That I'd noodle on that, let it settle in while imagining what a guy named "X" would look like in my head, and get back to him.

6. Finally, today is Jess' RL birthday. I told him that as a birthday gift I would do everything he asked during tonight's raid without talking back or questioning anything. Or at least give it a good try. :)

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