Monday, January 26, 2015

Monday Random Thoughts

- My random thought for this moment right now is wondering if there will be extended maintenance tomorrow.

- Being we are expecting a huge blizzard (no pun intended) I am going to be taking off work tomorrow.

- Being it is rare I get to play during the day on a week day I wonder if I will be able to.

- Would suck to have the one day off during the week and not being able to take advantage of it.

- Been behaving myself with my garrisons by not doing them all every day.

- Funny part is, while the game seems less stressful now, because I am not trying to squeeze them all in, I am playing less.

- I figured that if I did not need to do the garrisons I would do more on my main.

- Did not work that way really.

- Freeing up that time just translated into I am playing less.

- But at least when I am playing I am free to do what I want to do again instead of feeling tied to garrisons.

- I think that is a huge thing for me.

- You know what the number one worst thing about the garrisons is?

- Not only do you feel stuck in them, but they have trade chat in there.

- So trade chat has sunk to a brand new low.

- If that was even possible.

- With no reason to go outside of your garrison due to lack of content and everyone being in their garrison because that is where the content is, it means a very full trade chat.

- While doing a raid this weekend with some new people I asked if anyone had any questions after explaining a fight.

- My raid assistant said, there are no stupid questions, better to ask than make a mistake that could be avoided.

- Good comment.

- I said, "whoever made the expressions there are no stupid questions never read trade chat".

- Because yes, there are stupid questions.

- Seriously, trade chat is where brain cells go to die.

- That is the worst part of garrisons.

- There is one idiot that posts his "can you put a large building in a small slot" all day long.

- I swear whenever I log in, there he is asking this in trade.

- Day in, day out, since the expansion launched.

- Is this really how this person has fun?

- I fear for the future of humanity when the next generation is filled with people who think that is fun.

- I started gearing up my shaman for 3s.

- Going to go elemental in an LSD team.

- I never PvPed as elemental so it will take some getting used to.

- And I have no PvP gear.

- So me and my team mates queued up for 3s and got our collective butts handed to us.

- We knew we would lose, all barely (or in my case none) geared and the first time playing together as this combo we were not expecting instant success.

- It was more to learn, to time things, to get our macros, binds, etc down.

- We dropped in rating like a rock and once we hit around 900 we started to meet teams at the same level we were.

- As in new to spec and comp and not well geared.

- And then we started winning.

- With what we learned while on our way down losing 6 games in a row when we were matched against someone that was our equal we made it work.

- We did not win them all, but we started to win some here and there, more than we lost actually.

- We were getting the fear, hex and cyclone chain going like clockwork, we were working the burst, setting up the gates, protecting the healer.

- It started to come together nicely and a lot faster than I expected.

- Still not used to playing elemental in 3s, but as time went on I started to get a little more comfortable with it.

- And I started to realize, oh wow, I have that ability.

- That is the problem with playing so many classes and so many specs.

- You forget things, even more so after they changed so much this expansion.

- Like I did not even know elemental had spirit walkers grace.

- And I found out at the perfect moment.

- Perfect if you were not the mage I was after that tried to get away.

- Popped my spirit walkers grace and ran after him and finished him off.

- Cool, need to remember that tool for next time.

- Why was I PvPing on my shaman you might ask?

- Because I could.

- I had free time to do anything I wanted because I did not feel trapped by my garrisons.

- Someone in guild asked if I would be willing to play my shaman in an LSD comp and I said, I will give it a try.

- Better than saying, I still need to finish off my garrisons, maybe later.

- The freedom of not being tied down by garrisons was awesome.

- I did some rare hunting on my hunter.

- Needed 3 rares from everbloom wilds.

- Thought I had them all.

- Then it occurred to me, I did, on beta.

- So I sat and camped them.

- I killed them one at a time doing nothing basically except sitting there.

- 45-60 minute respawn timers on those, if you were wondering.

- Yes, I was waiting there that long to see some respawn.

- I am liking not feeling stressed because of doing all my characters garrisons.

- I am doing good beating the garrison addiction and not doing them all.

- And even if I actually am playing even less than I was before, I am enjoying the time I am playing more.

- And isn't that what a game is supposed to do, give us something we can enjoy?

- From hanging around hunting rares, to trying something new like PvPing as elemental, to healing heroic HM for the first time on my priest, I did some things this week that I would not have had time for before.

- All thanks to ditching the impulse to do the garrisons on all my characters.

- Had a rogue quit the guild this week because I did not invite him to the heroic run.

- He did not make a big deal of it, just left shortly after and removed his alts as well.

- Did not say anything to me but did message one of the other players.

- The message, as it was passed to me was, he joined the guild to raid and if he was not going to be getting invites to the raids he would leave to find a guild where he would.

- That is a fair and reasonable reason to leave.

- But all I could think was, good luck joining a guild doing heroic that will want a rogue on their main team that does 8-12K in 650 gear.

- Side note, my rogue in 622 gear got his first heroic kill in this week, first boss only, and I managed 14,700 in the same spec.

- And I suck at my rogue.

- We brought him with us on the normal run the previous day so he could get experience, gear and hopefully get better.

- But I was not about to bring someone with those number to heroic.

- All another person does is make it harder on everyone else.

- And it got me to thinking about a post I want to make.

- Basically, do people really understand their own capabilities.

- In the end, if that guy wanted to join us on the heroic run, it was in the normal run he had to prove his worth.

- I did not invite him because he was not heroic ready.

- Simple as that.

- But I can tell you one thing for sure, lack of raid awareness and low numbers is not a way to earn your way on to my raid team.
- 12K for normal is low but I would have kept bringing him there so he could learn and get better, but I was not going to bring him to a heroic.

- I guess I am just too much of a softie giving everyone a chance at some point.

- But hey, where do you think the next generation of raiders are going to come from?

- They need to learn somewhere.

- Just wish people like him would realize that he needs to learn to play before he is guaranteed a raid spot.

- And just because heroic is flexible does not mean I will just invite anyone.

- And I can't really see any other raid leader just inviting anyone either because it is flexible.

- I really need to make a post on this, so many thoughts, wonders and questions going through my mind.

- Maybe I should seek him out.

- Would love to hear his reasoning why he believed he deserved an invite to a heroic run and would leave the guild for not getting it.

- Maybe I am just designed different.

- If that were me, I would have taken it as a challenge to get better.

- Not to find another guild with lower standards.

- Always move forward, not backwards.

- At least that is how I see it.

- Have a great day.

8 comments:

  1. I was RL throughout Mists and when they announced flex normal my heart sank. We were a 10 man guild that cleared normal and got a few heroic, so that would be clearing heroic and some mythic in today's terms. I was dreading trying to scale up to 25 for mythic as well but it was the flex that really worried me.

    There were people on the team that I always avoided taking on a progression night and if I could get away with it, avoided them on bosses that we didn't manage with ease, basically I only took them on farm because I knew we could carry them.

    I couldn't bounce them from the team because to be honest we needed them. We never had the healthiest roster in the world and week in, week out no matter what they signed. We had a rough patch towards the end of Throne and we wouldn't have had the numbers to raid for several weeks without them. In those circumstances raiding at all so people didn't leave as they had no hope, was more important than progression otherwise recruitment turns into a revolving door.

    Anyway back to flex I dreaded it because I would no longer have the 10 man limit to hide behind, the excuse that I had to bench someone and it was their turn. I always felt bad always benching them on progression if I could because they were nice enough they just were well in the words of a guild mate "picking flowers". They were there to be there, to see it, they had no raid awareness, always died to fire or other moving mechanics, their numbers were half everyone else's etc.

    As it happened I quit the game and never had to deal with the issue as though I'm resubbed I'm not raiding. I do feel a great deal of empathy though as while flex is a great idea in theory, sometimes set limits have their advantages.

    I haven't actually logged into the game in just over a month. If everything goes according to plan I should be moving house within the next 10 days so I've been a little busy. At least it proves I don't have garrison addiction as before that I hadn't really missed a day.

    What do you think of the 6.1 announcements?

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    1. The 10 man limit was a bane and a blessing. There were times you wish you could take more and it sucked, and there were times you could use it as a reason why you did not take someone which was a great way to avoid the conversation.

      The thing is, now people really need to realize that they were not being held out of the 10 because there was no room, but because they could not perform at the level needed to do the content.

      Don't get me wrong, there were many times we needed one of those lesser players and they play their role as well. They are needed at times. But now adding them only makes the fight harder.

      Could you imagine heroic butcher with its 19K DPS check when you bring someone doing 8K? Sure we could manage it being most of us do 24K+, but why make something harder than it needs to be. If it is a 19K check I would not even entertain the idea of taking anyone less than 17K, and even at that, only if they had a reason for doing that number. But there is no reason for 8K and I have no motivation to help someone gear more gear that is 8K. And it makes things harder when you have to tell someone that.

      I can't imagine how they must feel. I bet it was easier to accept that there were 10 better people than you when it was a set number, then to be told even with a flexible scale you are still not welcome. It had to make the person feel like shit. And more importantly, it is me that made that person feel like shit. And I actually feel bad about that. I said it as nicely as I could. Once they get some practice on the dummy and get to know the fights better in normal I can bring them. I thought that was better than saying, hell no you can not come doing 8K. But still I feel I am the bad guy for telling them no. A situation I was placed in because it was flex.

      Nothing in 6.1 impresses me or even really interests me. It is "more of the same" and the same is not really all that interesting. I just want this expansion to be over and them to try again. Great expansion in theory that did not work as intended, but the entire thing should have been a patch, not a full expansion.

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  2. So, do we get a Blizzard post today?

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    1. No blizzard post on the blizzard day. I was snowed in. ;)

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  3. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

    About that rogue, you really did the right thing in not inviting him. I am guessing (because I have not been reading the guild calender much) that you had it noted as a progression run? Normally I have noticed such differentiation. Perhaps a simple minimal DPS note could be added to it? As in "Apply only with a DPS of XXX or higher." Of course that will probably take a fair amount of verbal explaining in both vent and guild chat.

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    1. It was noted that it was a heroic run. I also noted I wanted 19K DPS. Clearly, a requirement he did not match.

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    2. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

      Yep that is pretty much what I thought. Which throws it back on the officers (myself included, I suspect) to make sure that it is talked about a lot more in guild chat and on vent. The fact is that the upper end of raiding DOES require a minimal DPS level and that does fall on the officers to communicate over and over.

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    3. I talk about it all the time. I think said person just chooses to ignore what he does not want to hear, or as someone else in guild stated, maybe they just do not have any addons installed and do not realize how poorly they are doing in relation to those around them.

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