Monday Random Thoughts

- I'll start this monday random thoughts with a public service announcement.

- Maybe you knew it already but I didn't.

- The new missions that require a 675 item level do not require your followers to have a 675 item level only.

- You have to have a 675 item level as well.

- I'm talking about the mount, the medallion of the legion, things like that.

- Was wondering why some of my characters got those missions and others did not.

- Chalked it up to random being random.

- Then someone said maybe your character needs to be 675 too.

- And I tested that this weekend.

- Last night I went into a mythic dungeon on my rogue at a 673 item level.

- Won two pieces and left the dungeon at a 675 item level.

- Checked my mission table and, surprise, those missions were now there but were not before I went into the dungeon.

- Seems like proof enough to me.

- Have another character at 671, will get them to 675 as well to check.

- But thinking back, the characters I got those missions on were all over 675 and all the characters under 675 have never had one.

- So it really does make sense even if it is with anecdotal evidence.

- Speaking of my rogue, I played it a bit this weekend.

- Managed to get it a couple of pieces of gear, those two mythic dungeon pieces as mentioned, the 680 ring and one empowered piece I upgraded because it had okay stats.

- Went from 670 to 675.

- And even playing it a bit this weekend I still have no freaking clue what I am doing.

- Did all the dungeons you need to do to start the legendary quest line when I was at 670 with a 655 and 670 weapon.

- Yeah I know I am really slow with starting it but I suck on my rogue and I did not feel like subjecting random people to my poor play.

- Now that I was a higher item level I felt I could contribute enough to do them.

- So I figured, what the hell.

- On trash mobs I was doing between 12K and 18K.

- See, I suck.

- On bosses however I was between 26K and 30K.

- Give me a single target mob that will last for more than a few seconds and I can do okay, but I suck at AoE situations.

- I read how to AoE as an assassination rogue, I just do not get it.

- Or I do get it, I just can not do it.

- Reminds me of the wrath lock.

- I could never do good dungeon numbers as affliction because by the time I was putting my dots on the second target all the others were dead.

- Same goes for the rogue, by the time I build up enough combo points to put rupture on one target all of them are dead.

- How exactly am I supposed to keep rupture up on all targets when I can't even put it up on one?

- I could just spam fan of knives I guess.

- I think from now I will just do what I do as marksman and do single target.

- Let the epeen points for high numbers go to the other, more capable of AoE, classes.

- Maybe they need to feel good about themselves anyway.

- So I will let them.

- But I still would like to learn to get better at it.

- I hate being melee, I hate being a rogue even more.

- But I keep playing it expansion after expansion.

- I keep trying to get better at it.

- And that is because I am bad at it.

- I like the challenge.

- When going to do the mythic dungeon I asked, do you think I can get away with bringing my crappy rogue.

- And someone on voice chat said, you always say you suck on your rogue but you do just fine, better than the people you will find in pugs.

- I said, that is not the point.  I judge me based on me.  I know I can do better and I know I am doing poorly, so I suck.  Who cares if I am better than some random pugs.  I am not competing against them, I am competing against myself.

- See, that is the key for me, I want to do better for me.

- I do not care if I beat random joe blow in a dungeon, he does not matter.

- I care if I am doing what I believe to be competitive numbers while still obeying the mechanics of the fight.

- Do I need to be a better rogue being I do not intend to raid on him?  No.

- Do I want to be a better rogue because I find it a fun challenge to get better at something I know I am bad at?  Yes.

- Doing good is not about what content you do, it is about having fun.

- Even if I will never be a mythic raider on my rogue that does not mean I can not try to get my skill level to mythic skill with it.

- I enjoy knowing I am doing as well as I am able and find it fun, even if all I ever do is simple stuff on it.

- I do not have fun doing so poorly.

- That is why I always end up giving up on my rogue.

- Unlike my hunter who even if I am having a bad day I have fun with it, I do not have fun playing the rogue, so I give up when I hit a bump in the road.

- If my rogue ran into the gearing issues me hunter did, I would drop it in a heart beat.

- I do think I could do better with better weapons.

- I'll ask the people here if they know, is at my best 18K trash and 30K boss at 670 item level with a 655 and 670 weapon good?

- Doesn't seem so to be to me.

- 30K single target for the gear seems acceptable even if kind of low, but the 18K AoE numbers really seem low.

- Speaking of my hunter I did a heroic BRF run figuring I might be able to snag some 685 tier pieces to replace my 670 ones until I get the four piece from T18.

- Used a coin on the tier bosses and gruul for a chance at the tier pieces and the BoE neck.

- Figured what the hell, spend 270 gold on a coin for a chance to get and sell a 15K piece.

- Guess what happened after months and months of not winning anything on a coin?

- I won on all the coins I used except 1.

- Bad part is I won crap I did not want, but on well, at least I finally won.

- I would have preferred to, you know, win something I wanted, but I guess beggars can't be choosers.

- I did manage to get one tier piece however, so that is something I guess.

- My first heroic tier piece from last tier comes a month after the new tier is out.

- How depressing.

- And I have still not seen a single weapon drop for a hunter on personal or on master looter the entire expansion long.

- I am convinced that hunter weapons do not exist this expansion.

- I swear if it were not for the crafted weapon I would have quit the game already.

- You can't raid without gear and a weapon is the most important piece of it.

- It should never be this hard to get one.

- It was nice to get a chance to do marksman on these fights.

- Had only tried it a handful of times when it was current.

- I did well, 97 - 99th percentile, on most fights like usual.

- But I did dreadful on three fights.

- Two were my own fault, numbers wise.

- We had a good AoE group so I did not switch to barrage for beastlord and operator.

- This left me in the 76th percentile on both fights.

- Still think I could have done better even if I did not try to hog AoE.

- I went full single target and used both like a moving target dummy.

- Hey, I was there to practice so practice I did.

- The third fight I could chalk up to doing boats on maidens because MM is killer on that fight with always having two targets but that is not why I did poorly.

- I did poorly because I was one of only two DPS up at the end.

- Do you know how freaking long it takes to down those three maidens when there are only 2 damage dealers up in the end phase?

- My numbers dropped like a rock as the fight drew on.

- Funny part is even with a little more gear than I had last time I did it and supposedly a better spec for single target, I did not break any of my personal records on any fight.

- Not even the perfect single target fight in there.

- Closest I came was gruul where I did 54K and my record is 56K.

- Guess that just means I need a lot of work as MM.

- Practice, practice, practice.

- That is how you get better.

- Wrath time walker dungeons were awesome on so many levels.

- I am going to write a post just about it.

- Let me just sum it up as saying I have never had so much fun wiping in my entire life.

- It was nice to see these bone heads that keep saying that wrath dungeons were a joke and you can just pull full rooms and AoE them down die a horrible death trying to do just that.

- People seem to remember the end of wrath when we massively over geared it and think that wrath was always like that.

- Um... no.

- I will have to make a post on it, it will be fun for all involved, except for all the idiot tanks.

- Speaking of time walkers, found a new time walker bug that should be of particular interest to hunters.

- And I guess warlocks, but I did not test it for locks.

- If you are in a time walker dungeon dismiss your pet and recall it back out as soon as you leave.

- Why you ask?

- When you zone out your stats go back to normal but fully remains level 80.

- Yeap, he is still level 80 with level 80 stats until you dismiss him and call him back out.

- On my horde hunter I went from a time walkers right into LFR.

- I am BM on that hunter and after the first trash mob I see I am doing 8K.

- WTF, I was not even doing 8K the second I hit 100, how can I be that low.

- Dismissed my pet, called it back out, there we go, back up to 28K instead.

- Interesting, so I tried it again just to test it out.

- From a timer walker into an LFR, same thing.

- From a time walker into a training dummy, same thing.

- From a time walker into tanaan, same thing.

- Maybe it is just this hunter, so I went to my other hunter, who is MM but I did a time walker as BM and tested it, same thing.

- Yeap, this is an absolute bug, not a one time thing.

- Maybe fluffy catches up to you, in time, but as soon as you come out, fluffy is still a level 80 fluffy.

- Ah, wasn't fluffy cute when he was just an itty bitty pup?

- I did have fun doing some of the dungeons with guild members that were not around during wrath.

- Me and a healer from guild were reminiscing about the good old days of wrath.

- Going back and doing them again I realize that I liked these dungeons still.

- Not because it was the first time I did dungeons on a regular basis, not because late in the expansion they added the group finder which made it easier than spaming trade.

- I liked them because they were better than any dungeons that have come since.

- It really is that simple.

- Would love to see today's generation do hall of reflection at a scaled down item level.

- I can see the forum posts crying for it to be nerfed already and it doesn't even exist.

- You can tell the scaling has changed a hell of a lot since then.

- I can do 13K-15K on bosses and those were the types of numbers I was doing in dungeons at the end of the expansion, not at the beginning when I was around a 160 item level, which is what we are scaled to.

- So their scaling technology failed, miserably, to say the very least.

- At least it failed if what they wanted to do was to give the feeling of them being an at item level feeling because at item level those bosses did not die as fast as the do now.

- So we are doing end of wrath number with beginning of wrath item level with around middle of wrath difficultly.

- And pugs are still wiping like crazy.

- It is a big middle finger to all those people that kept saying wrath was super easy dungeons.

- As I love to say, of course they were super easy at the end.

- We over geared them insanely, which is what is supposed to happen to dungeons, they get easy when you over gear them.

- Surprise surprise.

- I'll leave more rambling for the post on it.

- But I have to end it here with one tank I got in a random.

- Zones in, starts talking about how wrath dungeons are just faceroll and he is going to pull fast so we should try to keep up.

- He preceded to die on the first pull, instantly, the second pull, instantly, and the third pull, instantly, and then he said, maybe the people on the forums lied, I had never tanked these but they don't seem faceroll to me, these guys hurt.

- No shit Sherlock.

- Someone that had tanked them before knows that all the face roll crap people post on the forums is a lie, or under special circumstances like having a full group of raid geared people that are good players at the end of the expansion.

- I just loved him contently getting one shot by trash, it was priceless.

- The healer said after the second time he did that, maybe try using some of your cooldowns once in a while.

- I laughed.

- So many fun times, so many fun wipes, and I got a laugh out of everyone raging.

- Good time, good times.

- It just makes me love wrath heroics even more now.

- I was afraid my memories of them would be tainted, but I feel they have been decently served.

- They added the bag with the normal mode HFC cache to get more people to do them.

- Guess they did not have enough participation last time for the BC one.

- Funny part is, I did less this time around than I did last time around.

- The bribe bag did not make me want to do it more.

- I actually did not even do it on all my characters that would have wanted the bag and would have wanted the coin.

- Even if I liked the dungeons, even if I wanted to do them, I hate the limited time nature of it.

- But I will say I agree with the limited time nature of it even if I do not like it.

- Should be a full week, not just weekends, but still, limited time events do make more sense.

- I was not about to do them and only them all weekend long just for the sake of a coin and a bag with gear even if I wanted those things.

- I wonder what the participation level of these is.

- And why no achievements for completing a time walking version of the dungeons.

- We have an achievement for doing dungeons on normal, doing them on heroic, doing them in challenge mode, and doing them on mythic, why no achievement for doing them in time walker?

- From the looks of people in guild there was always someone looking for a group for them.

- So I would guess participation levels had to be good.

- I finally got to face that one super rare in tanaan.

- His name begins with an X, forgot it otherwise and do not feel like looking it up at the moment.

- You need to be exalted with your faction (prophet or headhunters) and the order of the awakened as well as have the achievement for killing all the rares to get to him.

- I had read that as soon as you had all three if you used your master treasure hunter item you would get teleported to him but it did not work that way.

- I used it dozens of times since I had all the requirements and never got teleported to him.

- Then yesterday I go to T2 and use it a soon as I get there and poof I am teleported to him.

- Woot, now it is time to get my predator title.

- I ask in guild if anyone needs him as he is finally up.

- One person met all the criteria but when he used it he was not teleported to him.

- Wonder why?

- I thought as long as he was up people would get teleported to him.

- Oh well, instead of having me wait 15 minutes he tells me to go for it, he will get it another time.

- I start the pew pew and see someone else zone in.

- The second they zone in he knocks them off the platform.

- I laugh.

- Another person teleports in, same thing happens, he does not even get to get a hit in, he just zones in and goes flying off.

- I laugh again.

- I don't mean to be a meanie but it is kind of funny.

- I see a third person zone in, boomkin and he moonfires and then gets blown off.

- Wonder if he will get the achievement, he did get a shot in.

- I finish him off, of course not getting blown off, I am a hunter I know how to handle things like that.

- Also, I was in the fight, not surprised by it.

- Maybe if I were like them and surprised by it I would have been knocked off to.

- He drops no loot but he does give you the achievement for killing him and the predator title for killing him.

- Glad to finally get that out of the way.

- So the only T2 thing left for me to do is collect 5000 claws so I can get the meta achievement.

- I just have not been in a grinding mood to do it yet.

- Some day.

- I have over 270K apexis crystals, feels weird saying that I am not in a grinding mood.

- But you do not really need to grind them, just kill stuff and they come.

- I have well over 10,000 primal spirits now and have no clue what to use them on.

- Any suggestions?

- Was thinking about buying savage bloods and making some 675 gear for alts that might be up and coming later.

- But unless I can start getting fel blight cheap it would not be worth it.

- Would be better with the 695 T2 gear over the 675 gear.

- What do you think the chances of them ever adding fel blight for sale with primal spirits?

- Yeah, me too, I don't think they will ever do that.

- Wish they did, I would have 715 on all my alts, even the ones I do not use, if that were the case.

- I got the quest for the black market auction house on a couple of my characters.

- What a complete waste of time.

- Let me explain.

- I get the quest and go do it, running around collecting something, talk to someone, you know the standard routine, then return to my garrison..

- When I get to my garrison it auto completes.

- Now what?

- I run around looking for the black market auction house and can't find it anywhere.

- There is no follow up quest either, so it has to be here right?

- Off to wowhead I go after a couple of minutes running around looking for a new building or something and not finding it.

- Ah, there is now a panda standing near my mailbox.

- I had not noticed her.

- She is the black market auction house, just another NPC standing around.

- Can you say boring?

- So I talk to her and see what they have.

- As an impulse buy I figured might as well buy one of the containers and take a chance.

- It is on short time and only 20K, so I will go for it.

- How do you bid from there?

- I could not figure it out.

- Clicked on every item, could not find a bid option for anything.

- Are you telling me this just shows me what is at the black market auction house and doesn't actually let me bid?

- What freaking use is this?

- If I really was the type that cared what was at the black market auction house I would be going there to look to begin with.

- I would have wasted some gold as an impulse buy out of boredom while in my garrison but I am not going to travel all the way to nagrand to bid.

- I am not really interested in buying it, I was only going to buy it because it was right there.

- Either there is a way to buy from your garrison and I over looked it, like I over looked the new panda chick even standing there, or it is just for show.

- If it is just for show I say it was a lame addition to the game.

- Blizzard would have sucked 20K out of game from me if I could have bid on it from my garrison.

- I am sure I might have even impulse bid other times as well, as I am sure other people would too.

- But if you can not bid from your garrison, there is no reason to have a black market auction house in your garrison at all.

- Like I said, if I cared so much what was in it I would go there to look.

- What a waste of an addition to the game.

- Sure hope they did not waste more then 15 seconds coding this because that is all it is worth as it is.

- If they are going to add worthless NPCs to the garrison I have a great idea for one they could add.

- A quest line that adds someone that will be the trade in vendor for all tier tokens thought history.

- Being it is your garrison they would only trade for your tier token of course, but at least now if you wanted to collect those sets you would not need to run all over the world to different vendors everywhere to exchange them.

- You could do it from one simple vendor in your garrison.

- Now if they were going to add another worthless NPC to my garrison that would be a more welcome one than a representative from the black market auction house that will not even take my bids.

- I'd have no use for the tier turn in vendor, just as I have no use for the look at the black market NPC, but at least the tier turn in vendor would have an actual purpose where I do not really see the purpose of the black market NPC.

- Maybe they are guessing people will look there and travel to bid if something interests them.

- It might work for some, won't work for me however.

- I should be able to bid from my garrison, that is all I am saying.

- Well, that's all for now folks.

- Have a great day.

Do You Like Seeing What Other People Win?

Blizzard recently added a new feature where when you are doing any content and someone wins something good it pops up on the middle of the screen showing you who won what.   This is used in dungeons, in LFR, in raids with personal loot and with bonus rolls.  So now whenever someone wins something you too can share in their excitement of their win.

Many people really seem to like this update, at least that I have seen, but it should come as no surprised that me, the grumpy one, with his life long streak of having no luck really hates this feature and wants to see the person who came up with this idea kicked in the nuggets.  Really really hard.

I'd like to hear if you like this new addition and why of course, I try to keep an open mind, maybe there is something good that comes out of it that I am just missing because I have had such horrible luck for such a long time.  It is easy for me to look at the dark side of the loot issue when all I ever see is failure in getting it.  But in an effort to ease my pain I will share why this feature makes grumpy even grumpier.

When doing the LFR on an alt that can really use gear it sucks to bend over to loot boss after boss and see nothing but an augment rune each and every time.  All while I watch, what seems to be, every single person in the entire raid win something but me.  Yes, I know it is probably only 5 or 6 people winning and maybe a few others winning something on a coin, but when you go for the 6th and 7th and 8th boss of the week with nothing those 5 or 6 wins after each boss starts to feel like everyone is winning except you.

I don't want to see what other people won.  I don't want to see that someone that performed so poorly seems to win off every boss while I bust my ass trying to do the best I can, yes even in LFR, and consistently win nothing week after week.  Even if I did not need anything winning something once in a while would be a nice feeling.

Seeing other people win something does not ease my pain.  It does not put my mind at ease.  It does not give me the warm fuzzy feeling that at least someone won something.  It does not make me feel like the loot system is not broken because I see other people winning something.  Nope, if anything all it does is reinforce my feeling that I am one of the unluckiest people that plays this game.

It makes me begin to hate the people that win something.  Even when I do not need anything, each time I see someone win something I start hoping that when they get up from their desk they stub their pinky toe and it really hurts.  Ha, they deserve it.

I'd go so far as to extend it to seeing the notification listed in chat saying so and so won something on their bonus roll.  Even without a pop up that too can be annoying when you have been running on a three month dry spell for upgrades.

Even in a real raid I hate seeing it.  Sure you might think it is cool seeing the tank get that shield he needed because him gearing up makes him a better tank and makes our guild group stronger as a whole.  Yes, this is true. Yes, I am happy he got it.  Yes, him getting it helps me.  But no, I do not need to see that he keeps getting lucky while I keep getting spit on by the random number generator with some stupid pop up in the middle of my screen.  Him saying, "woohoo I won my shield", is more than ample to let me know.  I do not need some pop up flashing in the middle of my screen reading, in my mind, "Look what he won, you get nothing you unlucky bastard, ha ha, sucks to be you."

And then there is nothing more annoying than finishing a fight and seeing the hunter with the a full 685 tier set while I am still sitting in all 670s because I never won one single piece of heroic tier win the new tier helm on a bonus roll.  A tier helm he does not need because he won the tier helm last week already.  Son of a bitch.  Yet he, who doesn't need it, gets it and I get shafted again.  Did I really need to see that blizzard?  Is this supposed to make me feel better?  Am I supposed to just say, well at least he won something he doesn't need and I have another 23 gold?

Sorry if I sound bitter but I am, I really am.  I do not want to see what other people won.  I more so do not care to see what other people won when they do not even need it yet I could have used it.  I just want to win something I need once in a while.  Getting an upgrade once or twice a month feel nice.  I do not want to go through another tier like I did last tier and win nothing of conciquence.

I am sure people with decent luck, people that sometimes win a roll, people that sometimes win something on their coin, don't mind seeing others win things.  It could make them happy everyone is getting something.  But when you go so long getting nothing, losing rolls, getting gold on coins, somehow it just doesn't make me feel any better to know that someone else won something they don't need because they already won it last week when I would love to have something, anything, that I could use.  If there were ever another reason I want to avoid the LFR, that is it.  Even if I need nothing from there, I really hate seeing other people win something while I continue to collect a giant pile of pocket lint.

Do I like seeing what other people win?  Absolutely not.  I would rather not.  It is bad enough dealing with winning nothing, I don't need to see that everyone else always seems to win things while I am not.  How about you, do you like it?

Don't Judge A Character by Their Item Level

I was going to name this post "Don't judge a book by its cover" but I did not believe enough people would understand it was a post about gear and item level.  Well, at least until they started to read it.

I did the new LFR last night because I wanted to see what they changed with the bosses.  I also might need to tank this week so figured I would get it out of the way on the first night.  I like doing them all at least once so I can see the fights from the perspective of LFR.  It helps me explain the fights to people that might have only done it in the LFR.  But that is an all together different post, lets get to the topic at hand.

As fewer and fewer actual raiders do the LFR when I go in I am usually the LFR hero, a phrase most people use for its derogatory meaning, but lets face it, for a smooth group to happen there needs to be an LFR hero.  Our group found that said hero was not me.  Nope, not even close.

There was a mage in the group that was destroying me.  We one shot the first boss, two shot the second and one shot the third.  He owned me every step of the way.  The closest I came to him was 12K.  He was rocking it.  I'd get to 150K on the pull, he would do 175K, I could not beat him and I actually was trying.

As normal I take a look at the gear of people that beat me, or people of the same class so I can use it as a means to compare how I am doing to them.  If they are doing better I will view over their logs to see what they did that I did not so I could learn.  I am a geek that way, excuse me.  But when I looked at the mage it was not to learn, it was to see how he was geared and maybe glean into things a little as to why and how he was doing so well.

He had one piece of 695 gear, one piece of 701 gear and then everything else was 710 or higher.  It would be very easy for me to just chalk it up to that was why he was beating me.  His item level was 715 while mine is a pitiful 687.  With a nearly 30 item level advantage he is supposed to be beating me right?

But I don't just take item levels word for it.  I looked at what he did, how he did it, and I saw that he was not beating me "just" because of his item level.  He was a damn decent player to say the least.  As I said, it would be easy to just write it off and think he was doing good because his gear was carrying him but that was most definitely not the case.  He knew how to use the gear he had.

There could have been others in there with the same item level as him and they could have done poorly because they did not know how to get the most out of the gear.  I see that all the time.

But the big reason for this post was not to point out that it is the person that makes the gear work for them and not the gear itself doing all the work, but that with the T2 gear and 695 upgrades, people need to start to realize that is it not all about item level.

I mentioned my 687 item level, which for a raider is pretty poor, but once again that does not mean I would do poorly.  For my gear I do okay and oft times do better than those with much better gear.  I could easily get to a higher item level using some baleful upgrades, might even push 700 if I did that, but that would not be the best gear for me.  What gear you use matters.

Does the fact I was beating everyone else outside of him mean that I am that much better of a player than them?  Absolutely not.

I just made better choices.  Sure I had bad luck never winning a heroic tier piece in BRF but I do have the normal 4 piece which means I am stuck with four 670 pieces.  It also means I have four very effective, when used together, pieces of gear even if they are of a lower item level.

Put me along side someone that just did the T2 grind, upgraded anything they could get, and purchased a few BoEs off the auction house and you will see someone with an item level over 700 but someone that is not even remotely capable of matching my hunters numbers.  Why is that?

Because the stats on gear matters, the bonuses on gear matters, almost just as much as hitting the right keys in the right order.  There are those of us that pay such close attention to our rotation that we try to delay a shot if chimaera has less than 0.3 seconds to come off cooldown to try to get maximum damage and while perhaps that is a little more skill based, choosing to wear the best gear you have and not be sucked into thinking item level is no less of a skill.

Choosing a mastery haste baleful belt to upgrade as marksman is like delaying your shot by a full 2 seconds so you do not miss it.  It is a DPS loss.  All because you made the wrong choice of upgrading the mastery haste belt instead of a critical multistrike one for example.

Two people wearing the exact same gear and at the exact same item level could see greatly different results.  One guy upgraded whatever baleful gear he came along and the other picked and chose to get the best stats he could for his spec.  One will surely do better than the other, in a large amount, even if equally skilled, because one is wearing the "right' gear for him and the other is not.

What gear you choose matters, it matters a lot.  Sometimes choosing a lower item level piece of gear is the correct choice.  You can not just judge someone by their item level.  It would be like me saying that mage only beat me because he had a lot more gear than I did when that is just not true.  Sure it helped him create the large margin he did, but he beat me because he was skilled enough to use that gear to the best of his ability. 

You can not say he did well just because of his gear just the same as you can not tell me I will do poorly just because of mine.  I applied to a pug that was asking people to be capable of pulling 40K.  The guys asked me why I signed up, he wanted 40K and there was no way I could pull that at my item level.  He, of course, was wrong.  He judged just on item level, which means he judged wrong.  Sadly all people have to go on is item level when looking at a glance, but if you want a successful group, taking a look at the gear that comprises that item level matters a lot more than the item level itself sometimes. 

You can't judge a book by its cover and you sure as hell can not judge a character by their item level.

What Do the Long LFR Queue Times Mean?

After spending three hours in queue, on a Saturday during prime time nonetheless, to get into and LFR it had me thinking that there are some real problems with the grouping system that needs to be addressed.  Or maybe it is more telling that just that and it says something about the health of the game as a whole.

Tanks:

It is easy to chalk up the wait time to be because of the lack of people playing the role of tank.  I know I am as much a part of that problem as anyone else.  I have tanks but refuse to tank the LFR.  I have a saying I often use, and it is true, that even if blizzard were to offer to send me a paycheck each week to tank the LFR I still would not do it.

Admittedly that is only my opinion on tanking but it seems like I am not alone.  There are a shortage of tanks and that does seem to make a difference.  The idea is how do we deal with this problem in the LFR to shorten queue times.

I have the answer and I have been saying it for a very long time.  Make all LFR bosses one tank fights.  If you only need one tank it makes filling the group with tanks a lot easier.  Also, if you only need one tank that means many people, myself included, that do not like tanking because we do not like the other tanks we run into, will tank it.  If LFR was a one tank event I would tank it, no problem and no need for blizzard to pay me to do it either.

But, are the lack of tanks really the main reason for the long waits lately?

Coding:

I've wondered a few times, more often while waiting for those three hours, if perhaps there was a problem with the coding that was screwing up making groups.  How it it even possible for a game with seven million subscribers, even if they are in all different zones and play at different times, to not be able to assemble 25 people at prime time on a weekend night when usually more people are supposed to be playing.

It made me wonder if someone over at the blizzard home offices has been playing around with some of the match making code and broke something so it is not matching people correctly.  It can not just be a tank issue.  Even more so when just the other day one of the people over at blizzard watch, a writer there, said he waited in queue, as a tank, for an hour before he gave up.

So it can not be a tank issue if sometimes even tanks are waiting in queue.  Sure when you look at your group it always shows there are no tanks, but that does not mean there actually are no tanks.  It just means they have not matched you with a tank.

So if sometimes tanks are waiting and sometimes others are waiting all while there are even others that say they have 10 minute queue times as a damage dealer and get right in, makes you wonder, is something broken?

How can one damage dealer get into a group in 10 minutes and another wait 3 hours?  How can one tank wait in queue for an hour while other groups are sitting there waiting for one fill in tank after someone dropped for the past 30 minutes?

Maybe there is something wrong with the coding.  Maybe it is not just the lack of tanks.  Or maybe it is something else?

The Health of the Game:

Maybe it is a symbol of the over all health of the game.  Longer wait times because less people are playing it, or less people are doing this aspect of the game.  Blizzard did say they wanted to give raiders less of a reason to go into the LFR and lets face it, they did exactly that.

My main did the HM and BRF LFRs once each.  Because that is what I like to do, just to get it done.  My main alt, my druid, did one here or there, but I could count how many LFRs she did on one hand it was so few.  All she really needed to do was blackhand because she never killed it.  Otherwise she, even as an alt, collected all her legendary parts in the real raids.

Even my alts do not step foot into the LFR.  The couple of characters that do have any progress toward completing the legendary only go there once to loot items needed.  Otherwise I let the garrisons, and now shipyards, collect the pieces for them slowly but surely.

You are talking a person that did the legendary quest line last expansion to completion on 11 or 12 characters and had partial completion on another 13.  I had no aversion to working for something, I had no issue with group content even if it was LFR.  For the most part I liked doing LFR on alts.  But between the removal of tier gear, decent trinkets and weapons and the fact I can slowly get items with my garrison, there is no need to do it.  Not even on alts.  Unless I wanted to speed along the legendary quest line that is.  And with as crappy as the end result ring is, I am not really all that excited about getting it on multiple characters. Maybe if the bonus was not capable of being used by someone else I might, but that is another story all together.

So with all that added together, blizzard basically said they do not want me there.  If I get the feeling they do not want me there I am sure other do as well.  So add the feeling we are not wanted there, no tier gear, bad groups, increasing long wait times, lower subscriber numbers, and the LFR is the very symbol of what warcraft really is, a dying game.

Maybe the LFR and its long wait times are just a side effect of a game that no longer is capable of grabging the attention of the people it is trying to grab.  A three hour wait time at prime time on the weekend which is usually busier just has to mean something.  And it has to mean something more than just a lack of tanks because it is impossible to believe there are none at that time.  Maybe it means a lot more.  Maybe it is telling of the health of the game as a whole.

Monday Random Thoughts

- My priest is out of oil.

- My hunter is sitting on over 9000.

- There is a joke in there, I'll let you make it.

- I wondered how the hell can people have no oil.

- Now I know.

- My priest opened T2 and did quests the first day to keep themselves from being phased and has not been back.

- That is a recipe to run out of oil.

- You need to at least do the one main daily once in a while to get some oil.

- Or get the oil rig upgrade, which requires reputation.

- So if you want to be T2 free and not run around there you best run around at least until you get enough reputation to get the oil rig.

- The oil rig missions always seem easy to finish, so if you get it then it can be a great way to get oil and never need to return to do dailies again to get it.

- Follower missions will not supply enough oil alone.

- My priest does one mission every 2 days now waiting on follower missions only to get oil.

- Wish my hunter could send her some.

- Speaking of my hunter, when I logged on friday night I saw I only needed 2 more treasure missions for the level 3 shipyard.

- As of now, I still have no level 3 shipyard.

- Only one treasure mission over three days?

- You have got to be kidding me with this blizzard, really.

- I think this is blizzard trying to slow us down.

- My druid and my hunter are stuck at 24/25 treasure missions now.

- So it is the waiting game for them to spawn.

- Oh joy.

- Waiting is such exciting game play, isn't it?

- My druid has the quest for the last part of the legendary in the shipyard.

- I can get it to 92%, still not sending it yet.

- Think I can get better with a carrier from the level 3 shipyard.

- I do not trust my luck.

- Not after losing 3 epic ships on one of my characters this weekend.

- Two of them on a 92% mission.

- How fun is that, I failed a 92% mission and lost both ships, blizzard really knows how to make fun and enjoyable content.

- Then immediately next on the mission from my completed missions was a failed 88% mission that lost one more epic.

- I F'N hate shipyards.

- No really.

- I can see losing a ship when you go on a high risk trip, but not on a good chance trip.

- They should add something like you only lose ships that fail on sub 80% mission failures.

- If you fail an 80%+ mission you should never lose the ship.

- Maybe damage it and you need oil and garrison resources to repair it, at worst, but not lose it.

- It is just a failure, not a loss.

- If you fail a 36% mission, sure you deserve to lose a ship.

- You sent them on a high risk mission, if you fail it makes sense you could lose a ship.

- I just hate losing epic ships on 90%+ missions, it is getting old, fast.

- Yet on one of my characters I keep sending out ships I do not mind losing, because I want better crews, so I send them on risky missions, and they keep coming back alive.

- How is that possible?  I have not failed even 1 sub 50% mission but have failed at least a fair chuck of 90%+ missions.

- Blizzard and math do not get along well.

- But we all know that.

- When will they notice it?

- LFR story time, I know you all love LFR story time.

- Or at least enjoy my frustrations with the LFR but it is okay, I am here to entertain.

- I have very few LFR stories this expansion as I do not do it much any longer.

- Hey, blizzard said they wanted to make it so raiders do not feel the need to do it.

- Well, it worked, and now I don't even do it on my alts either, because if it does not drop raid tier, it is not worth doing it on my alts either, as I see it at least.

- But from doing it this weekend, on both my hunter and my druid, I noticed that blizzard needs the raiders there.

- At least they do if they want smoother and more enjoyable runs for everyone involved.

- I had to do it as my hunter did not do the 3rd boss this week, as I tanked it on my druid, and my druid did not do the first two, as I was on my hunter.

- So as to not miss chances to get tomes, I did it on both of them.

- First up was my hunter.

- Which will be the center of a post to come later this week.

- The post will be questioning the over all health of the game.

- It took me 2 hours and 47 minutes (actually longer but that was the last number I saw when checking) to get into the LFR.

- Then when I zoned in on the first boss there is only one tank.

- Then that tank drops.

- I rarely type in chat but I had to this time and said, I waited almost 3 hours for this?

- I zoned out and went herb picking while I waited for new tanks.

- That only took about 15 minutes give or take.

- So lets say it took 3 hours to get an LFR group, even if it was slightly over that in the end.

- Seriously?

- How can this game have 7 million players and even if they are in different "zones" you can not find 25 people that want to do the LFR at any given time.

- Sorry, but I wonder about the health of the game as a whole if that is the case.

- But back to the LFR.

- As expected I was an LFR hero.

- Of course I was because there is no reason for an actual raider to be there unless, like me, they missed bosses and/or did not feel like pugging that week.

- To see the numbers these people were pulling however did amaze me.

- I'd say the average "good" DPS I saw was around 15K.

- Is that normal for LFR?

- I need to ask you because I do not do it enough to know.

- Had 2 people in the twenties, a couple more in the upper teens and then everyone else under 15K with the majority hovering in the 12K range.

- The second boss was like OMG this fight is taking forever.

- I did not even know it was possible for him to go in the air twice, or three times.

- I honestly think that boss is harder in LFR than it is on normal.

- Like I said, I was the LFR hero thanks to my numbers.

- Nope it was not skill, is was all about the gear.

- I think with my gear even if all I did was hit steady, aimed, steady, aimed, over and over I would have been tops by a long shot with the low numbers there.

- It was scary bad.

- I don't see how they could even down this boss without at least one or two people in there with some raid gear doing higher numbers.

- I used to like that there would be some raiders I could compete against in there for LFR hero status.

- Not this time however.

- It was a nice smooth run however, one shot all three bosses, and if I can toot my own horn it was mostly thanks to me pulling close to 20% of the damage done.

- I really wonder what it would be like with no high numbers in there.

- I got my chance to find out when my druid went in.

- I go in as a healer, it is really the only reason I have healing gear on my druid.

- I refuse to tank the LFR, but I also refuse to wait the DPS times so I heal.

- Healing might be a thankless job and those large rooms make me thankful I am not a real raid healer, but I do not mind healing the LFR so much.

- As you can guess, from lack of practice and piece mealed gear I am not a great healer but for the content I can pull my own weight.

- I'd say my healing skills on my druid are roughly that of LFR skill level, so it works for me.

- I get some practice in a difficulty that is best suited for my skill level which is good.

- As a healer it still took me over 30 minutes to get in.

- 32 minutes the last time I checked.

- We zone in to one tank, just like my hunter did.

- Except that tank does not drop, he says he will clear trash while waiting on another tank.

- We get the other tank just as trash is being done and all seems well.

- The trash before the boss trash went down fast enough.

- First boss was... fun.

- Everyone was tanking it seemed.

- Even me, running around in tree form.

- Did I ever mention why I love healing as a druid?

- Tree baby, tree.

- I pulled 36K HPS on the first boss and something seemed a little "wrong" with that.

- Most pug healers, that I picked up for normal and heroic, don't even heal that much.

- Is it possible that you need better heals for LFR than you do for normal or heroic?

- How the hell do people take that much damage in LFR?

- There should not even be that much that needs to be healed, at least I would think so.

- More importantly, how the hell did I heal for that much when I was more worried about looking cool as a tree while jumping up and down hitting rejuvenation, because it is an instant of course and allows me to jump while doing it.

- The only way that is possible was that no one must have ever been fully healed thus my normally over healing HoTs were actually effective and not over healing.

- Either way, first boss went smooth, only one death and he died nearly on the pull, so I will chalk that one up to one of "those" people who purposely get themselves killed in LFR.

- There always has to be one of those people right?

- Second boss did not go quite as smooth.

- Nearly half the raid was dead 30 seconds into the fight.

- I was healing my leaves off.

- No jumping, no playing around, no spamming instants because it is fun, but really thinking about my healing because no matter what I tried I could not keep anyone alive.

- Tank died, I revived him, we tried with half a raid, but two healers went down and it was me and two other druids alive.

- Seemed like none of us was used to tank healing so it became an issue.

- We all apparently went to the school of raid healing.

- Basically blanket the raid and let the tank healers deal with the tanks.

- So I changed to what I believed was needed and I went to strictly tank healing.

- I might not be used to it, but I have read about tank healing as a druid, so I figured I would wing it.

- We lasted a fairly long time, but with people dropping it was going to be a wipe.

- When it was me, the two tanks and one DPS left we all just killed ourselves to start over.

- I looked at the healing meters and was like, wow, I did not even know I could do 40K.

- I was also OOM the entire end of the fight.

- Hey, this is what I wanted, it will help me get better right?

- The one good thing about bad groups on a healer is that they are a great learning experience.

- Anyone can heal good groups where the boss goes down fast and everyone avoids the avoidable.

- That is easy.

- Healing in this pandemonium is what makes a healer a healer if you ask me.

- It is exactly what I signed up for so I was fine with it, but it did kind of seem way out of my league.

- So it was time for me to get better.

- Challenge accepted.

- It is at the skill level I play at as a druid healer so lets roll with it.

- If I am ever going to get better, it starts here.

- We lose a tank and have to wait.

- The other tank says, nope, no need to wait, this can be solo tanked.

- I agree, it can, but not in LFR.

- Tank blows up, melee goes with him as well as half the ranged and two healers who were trying to stay close, we wipe again, do not even get a stack of determination.

- Tank agrees to wait for another tank.

- That was mighty nice of him.

- Hey wipes happen, but lets at least get a stack of determination the next time please.

- We get another tank, new tank rushes in and pulls him to the wall, (what is with that in LFR) and promptly wipes the raid in the process as they are all running after him into a barrage, we do not get a stack again.

- Three wipes, only one stack of determination.

- It most definitely is not my day.

- Highest DPS on any of the pulls, yes even knowing that two of the pulls all we saw was their "burst" DPS, was only 19K.

- Yeah, this is not going to go well.

- Forth pull goes much better however.

- By much better I mean we get a stack of determination.

- That is better right?

- How are these people this bad at both doing damage and avoiding damage?

- Looking at the healing numbers I keep thinking to myself, if we are going to do this with these people we need 10 stacks or much much much better healers then us to carry them.

- One tank drops, we get another, then the other tank drops, so we wait again.

- So here we are, 2 stacks, 2 new tanks, and we are waiting.

- Someone says, what are we waiting for and the one tank says they are talking it over.

- The group seemed okay with that.

- After 5 minutes without a pull, one tank drops, someone asks what happened and the other tank drops.

- Now comes the time where I am sure there are 24 people out there in wow land that are going to hate me.

- Hate me with a passion.

- As we wait in queue for 2 more tanks people start to drop.

- Down to 18 people, down to 12 people, down to 8 people, down to 5 people.

- 30 minutes pass by and we go down to 4, 3, 2 and finally 1, just little old me doing a dance around the iron reaver.

- Everyone got tired of waiting and left as we are approaching what feels like an hour but was probably closer to 40 minutes than it was to an hour.

- I do my wonderful and mesmerizing dance of the treefolk all alone in the raid for only the iron reaver to see.

- At least I am keeping myself entertained.

- I was not going to drop.

- What happens the next day when I come in?

- Would I have to do the first boss again?

- Would I just zone in on the last boss when the only boss I really need is this second boss?

- Nope, no way in hell I was dropping even if I was the last tree standing.

- So those 24 people got stuck with an already in progress raid because I refused to drop.

- They all have to re queue for the first boss should they want it and that is all my fault.

- Sorry guys, I was being selfish and you all had to pay because of it.

- I wholeheartedly apologize but I was not doing this wait again for one freaking boss.

- Thank you for helping me down it.

- Thanks to two stacks of determination and 6 people actually over 30K DPS we one shot the boss when they came in and it was all just wasted time because I did not get a tome.

- But hey, the group was better and I stayed for the last boss.

- Figured might as well get the gold out of the deal and this looked like a group that could one shot the last boss.

- And they did, thankfully.

- Funny part is, every healer was over 30K.

- Yes, all 5 of us were over 30K on both the second and third fight.

- Makes me wonder, was I wrong blaming the bad DPS for the wipes, maybe it was the bad healing.

- Can someone in the know please let me know, is 30K HPS needed for the LFR?

- Because looking back on it, that is what made those 2 fights so easy.

- The wipes before on the second boss saw me pushing 40K and none of the others even approaching near 20K but the kills everyone was over 30K.

- Maybe it was a healing thing and I was being hard on the DPS.

- Hell no.

- It always comes down to DPS.

- More DPS means faster fight means less healing needed.

- So screw that, it was the damage dealers fault.

- Either way, after those 2 LFRs I guess that is why I am kind of glad I do not do them any more.

- I just hope to get the tomes done as fast as possible so I do not need to go back there.

- But with my luck, that is not going to happen.

- Hunter at 7, druid at 2.

- 2, you believe that?

- Sure my druid has not tanked nearly as many bosses as my hunter has DPSed, but still it should have more than 2.

- Only did 5 bosses on it this weekend and got none.

- Have I mentioned lately how much I hate the random number generator?

- Well, I do hate it.

- However I am not sure what I hate more, 3 hour queues or the random number generator.

- They both suck a lot.

- My hunter will be exalted with the Hand of the Prophet and Order of the Awakened today after I do the dailies.

- Will be exalted with the saber stalkers tomorrow after I do the weekly.

- Sure I could grind some, but what is the rush, I need 5K claws before I can buy the mount and I only have 700 or so, so it is not like I won't be killing them sooner or later anyway.

- Might as well save them for something to do later.

- I like saving some stuff to do later.

- Have to be careful however being blizzard has a habit of removing content lately.

- I saved my DK from doing the legendary last expansion because I was planning on going back and soloing it for fun to get it done.

- But noooooo, blizzard does not like us having content we can go back to do for fun any longer.

- They would rather remove content.

- Like the heirlooms off garrosh of which there were 2 I never got, would have kept going back to get them.

- But nooooo, blizzard doesn't like people actually playing the game it seems.

- Going back to do thinga is a huge part of the game, when will blizzard realize that.

- They could have made the title for doing the legendary on time something that went away but I still do not understand or agree with why the legendary itself had to go away.

- Blizzard makes no sense.

- Their wealth of older content is what gives new players something to do when they get bored.

- Why remove it?

- Someone at blizzard has been taking their stupid pills by the fist full.

- So maybe I should make an effort to get the saber stalkers mount sooner than later.

- They might decide to remove it tomorrow for some stupid reason.

- Either way, I will take my chance and wait, for now.

- I am sure we will be in this patch cycle for a year or more, so I have time.

- I think.

- I got my first ever Empowered Apexis Fragment this weekend.

- So I guess they are not a myth.

- I can't believe there are people that have gotten 10 or 12 or more already and me killing massive amounts of rares on various characters only just saw one now.

- Then again I still only have one mount and only got one medallion of the legion thus far.

- I used the reputation token, figured I could use some of the PvP faction reputation anyway, so might as well.

- Not like I really needed it for the new factions.

- Their reputation really builds up kind of fast.

- I had great luck on my hunter in terms of not needing to look for groups for the big four on Sunday.

- Was doing the iron front zone and about to leave as terror fist popped up.

- Exit stage right.

- I was just heading out when he appeared, made a quick right and killed him instead.

- He actually dropped loot for me.

- The last two times I killed him he dropped nothing for me, not even oil.

- And yes, it was my first kill of him each day and he still dropped nothing for me.

- Have not had that problem with any of the others, but terror fist does not like me.

- I was heading down the road to fish by that pool that always spawns at the raid entrance as doom roller popped up.

- Oh cool, two I do not need to look for today.

- They came to me.

- I figured I would test my luck and headed up to dread talon and he was not there.

- As I turned to head out the emote came that he just spawned.

- I turned around and low and behold he was now there were only a split second earlier he was not.

- You have got to be kidding me, this is so unlike my normal luck.

- So I figured maybe I could go 4 for 4.

- I went over to see if vengeance was up and no such luck.

- I checked group finder and there was a new group formed 4 seconds ago.

- Timing is on my side today.

- I joined, killed, dropped group, and vengeance was there on my server.

- If only I had waited one minute it would have spawned.

- How is that for some insane timing luck?

- It all started with looting that Empowered Apexis Fragment from the podlord rare when I was on my way to the iron front to begin with.

- So this is what it feels like to be like to be lucky in game.

- I must say I like it.

- I am sure if I was lucky like this I would not be as grumpy as I am.

- Was nice to have a lucky weekend like that.

- I also guess it made the 3 hour wait for LFR a lot more bearable on my hunter.

- Because he got his first ever x5 fel blight while waiting in queue and had a nice collection of fel blight over those hours.

- Allowed me to upgrade one of my pieces getting so many while waiting.

- For the first time this patch I was getting fel blight at an almost reasonable rate.

- I do like this luck thing.

- I wonder if blizzard will ever start selling "luck" boosts.

- Kind of like experience boosts, but for luck.

- Better chance to win with personal loot.

- Better chance to win on a coin roll.

- Better chance to get special items (like fel blight) when doing things.

- Better chance to get world drops.

- Things like that.

- If blizzard sold a luck boost I would buy the ever living crap out of that.

- I would spend spend and spend more to buy that.

- Because I tell you one thing for sure.

- Even if it is only a rare taste of being lucky, I know I really enjoy the game a hell of a lot more when I am being lucky than when I am being myself, unlucky.

- Now there is an idea blizzard.

- Sell luck boosts, I'll buy 10, thank you kindly.

- Want the kicker of luck?

- This one was not mine but someone in my guild.

- They got a 710 BoE from their salvage crates.

- Holy crap I did not even know that was possible.

- Has anyone else seen that?

- That is all for today, I have wasted enough of your time, thanks for reading.

- Have a great day.

It is Nice Not Having A Weekend Bonus Event

This weekends bonus event is the arena skirmish event where you need to win 10 arena skirmish matches for 500 conquest points and you get double honor from each skirmish you do.  Being I do not PvP often this is basically a non event.  It is a non event I am extremely happy to see.  I am actually happier to see this weekends arena event than I would be to see an event I would actually participate in.

At first I, like many others, did not like the idea that there would be weekends where there would be nothing for us.  PvPers did not like the PvE stuff, nor did they have a use for it.  PvEers did not like the PvP stuff, nor did they have a use for it.  And anyone that does not pet battle, or in the case of a guild mate already has every pet in the game at max level, the pet battle weekend event is useless.  So the people that liked whatever it is they like did not like the idea they were being left out some weekends.

It wasn't until I actually participated in a weekend event, like I did last week and the week before, that I realized I do not actually like these events.  If anything they got in the way of other things I had wanted to do.

Sure it was fun doing some throwback time walking BC dungeons the first few times, but as you approached 10, 15 or even 20 dungeons, it started to get more annoying more than fun.  Even more so if you were a DPS and did not have a guild group, having to wait in queue for these things was no short event, it was a long and drawn out thing.

The apexis crystal one did not bother me as much because I was there anyway as it was new content and I was bringing new characters in there anyway, so bonus apexis crystals, yes please.  But even while getting my bonus crystals I thought, this is going to suck in a few weeks when I am done with this place and feel as if I have to come back just to grind crystals on a specific weekend.

It is nice to have options, sure, we all love that and the game needs more of them but these bonus weekends are not options always options.  Not if they fit in your wheelhouse of the thing you wish to do.

At this moment if you are a raider you "need" to get that 4th coin for the week.  If you are gearing up through apexis gear and want to do it as best and as fast as you can you "need" to grind on T2 during the apexis event.  How exactly is that an option?

For me this weekends event is an option.  It is something I could do, if I wanted to, but being it does not benefit me in any way it is completely optional.  With that said, I shall be opting out of this weekends bonus event and I am so very glad that this weekend it is an option for me to do so.

In time the "need' will go away and even the ones we might feel like we "need" to do them will also become optional, they just aren't right at the moment for some.

I'll end up sitting on 10 coins at some point in the future and will not feel the "need" to do the time walking dungeons to get my 4th extra roll for the week.  The people gearing up with apexis gear will eventually get every slot done and no longer feel the "need" to grind like a mofo during the bonus event.  The pet battler that wants to level pets will eventually get all the pets they want leveled so they won't feel the "need" to take advantage of the pet bonus event.

At the moment however, for me, any time walker event or dungeon event that pops up that will allow me to get an extra roll feels mandatory on any character I intend to raid with.  I might even go so far as to say I would be more inclined to grind for crystals while the apexis bonus event is going on now that the fragments to upgrade the gear is BoA.

So I am welcoming a weekend where there is nothing I feel I "need" to do.  I am really liking that it is an arena event.  The idea that I would get conquest from completing the quest and bonus honor from participating in each skirmish means nothing to me.  Sure it is bait, bait to try to get people to PvP, but it is not working on me.  My free time is more important to me and I am really glad to not have an event I feel I "need" to participate in.

For those PvPers out there, have fun with the event.  I hope for you and what you are aiming for it is less "needed" than getting a 4th coin is for me so that you can only do it if you really want to where I felt I had no option.  But for me, I am very happy to see this bonus event because this bonus event means I have no bonus event telling me what to do this weekend and I am free to do whatever it is that I want.

Was it their intention that I feel happier when the bonus weekend event is something I do not want to do than I do when it is something I want to do?  I am sure that is not working as intend.

How the Times Have Changed

Before I had my army of alts, a long long time ago it seems, I used to have a collection of people on my friends list to help me out with what I needed.  Someone that could make bullets and arrows for me.  Someone that could make enchants for me.  Someone that could pick locks for me.  Someone who could make gems for me.  You know the deal.

It was usually cheaper to get the raw materials for someone to make it for me and tip them a few gold than to buy them already made at the auction house.  In some cases I had the materials anyway, so it was most definitely more cost effect just to throw someone a tip to craft what I needed made.

Back in wrath the person who I had making my gems for me was a member of the number one alliance guild on the server, number two over all.  We became friends over the course of that time even if I only contacted him to cut some gems for me at the start.

Years past and we ran into each other from time to time.  His guild would do 25 runs on the weekend and I would bring an alt into them to get some play time in and maybe some gear.  He was a really good player, as you might expect from someone who was a main raider in the best guild on the server alliance side.

His guild broke up sometime in mists I believe and he never really found a place to fit in right away.  He stopped raiding to tend to some real life situations and joined our guild because he knew a few people in it.  He might not be able to raid but as a quality player that was occasionally available so he would definitely be a good addition.

He never raided with us in mists and only started to show some interest in raiding again in the past couple of months.  He was well behind in gear when he decided to join us so we dragged him along with us on our normal alt run of BRF that we would do once a week.  We figured it would get him back into the habit of raiding and get him a start on gear.

He has been working his butt off since then trying to gear up.  Running with us when we could bring him, running in pugs, running LFR, upgrading his crafted gear, buying BoEs.  Basically doing all the things you would expect someone that was a seasoned raider to do to catch up and join the team once again.

We even had him come along on a mythic dungeon run the other night and he did somewhat well.  Not great mind you, his item level is now higher than mine, but he did acceptable.  He was pulling in the 30s, which is not exactly horrible even if his gear said he could do more.  He was still rusty, still returning to the idea of raiding in general and we are a casual guild, we do not ask for perfection, just that you try your best and it sure seemed like he was trying.

He was once a great player and there was no reason for me to believe that he could not return to that status.  So when we were assembling for a new heroic run of HFC I decided to give him a chance.  I sent him an invite.  He earned it.  He has worked hard to gear up, he did okay in the mythic dungeon I ran with him by doing decent numbers and not standing in crap.  So I figured it won't hurt to give him a try out in the big show now.

We wiped a few times on the first boss, mostly because half the people there that night had not done it before.  As usually when wiping on something I looked for where we can improve and saw that his numbers were dreadful.  I am not just talking bad, I am talking really bad.  His best attempt out of the three we put in was 16K.  The first pull or two I was willing to let it slide as I knew he has never seen the fight before, even in normal, not to mention we was quite a bit out of practice.  Sometimes it takes a few pulls to get a hang of what is going on and for a casual guild that is fine.  It is not like we are blowing through heroic already because we are not.  Everyone is still in that learning phase.

I decided that we were not going to be able to do heroic tonight.  Not just because of his numbers, but over all we did not seem to have the right team for it.  We were down a healer so it was stretching what we had thin to begin with even more so with one of the three healers for 18 people being under geared to begin with.  That, combined with some new people along with his under performing and another two people that you could call the "top DPS" types that seemed to really miss the concept of single target the terrors down fast I thought we would just move to normal and kill some stuff nice and easy and maybe get some people experience tonight.  I'd yell at them later for trying to pad their numbers instead of focusing the primary target.  It looked like most people there needed some practice on the fight anyway.

This saved him.  If I had decided to continue along on heroic that night he would have been asked to sit. It was clear that if we were going to do this some changes would be needed and someone doing 16K and screwing up running back boxes was surely on the chopping block to be the first gone with whatever changes were to come.

I really hate asking people to sit even more so after I asked them to come for a test out.  We are not an aggressive progressions only type guild guild, so I give a little more leeway usually.  On normal his 16K would not hurt us.  As long as he could handle the mechanics it would be fine to carry him and maybe the experience will help him out next time.  It is also a better place for him to learn the mechanics.

Remember, as I said, this guy now out geared me.  So I expected something from him.  At least what he was doing in that mythic dungeon which was in the 30s.

We moved to normal and made it up to gorefiend before I was once again put in that position.  His numbers on gorefiend were better, but can't really say how much of that was due to the 100% increased damage in phase 2 or the fact that he was just better off as a melee with a boss that never moves anywhere.  As a piss poor melee myself I know I can do awesome when the boss does not move, I just suck every other time.

We wiped a few times, all to stupid stuff that is completely avoidable.  I was the middle of the chain, the mage I was attached to came to me, the other person did not.  Even after yelling his name on voice chat to come to me.  Guess who that other person was?  You got it, him.

He dropped doom right on melee 2 times.  He did not run to the person he was chained to three times.  He did not switch off the boss when I said multiple times adds were top priority.  If there was a mechanic in this fight, he was messing it up.  About the only thing good I can say was that at least he was consistent, but when that consistent is consistently bad, that is a problem.

The first time of the night he was actually doing respectable damage and he somehow forget that mechanics matter more.  I would rather have his 16K doing all the right things than his 40K doing all the wrong things any day.  It was a sad turn of events but I was forced to whisper him the inevitable.  I said, your numbers are most definitely looking better on this fight but you are just not getting the mechanics.  I will give you one more attempt but if you mess up mechanics again I am going to have to ask you to sit.  I even explained again, in whisper directly to him, what he was messing up with and what he needs to do so he handles those mechanics correctly.

We pulled once more and he dropped doom in melee again and did not run to someone he was chained to again.  I asked him politely to leave.  We are not world beaters, we can not carry people, even more so on bosses we just started fighting to begin with.  It is not like we are over powered for it or know it like the back of our hands at this point, it is only the second week we are doing this boss.  And even if any of that was the case, these are mechanics where one person can screw the entire team and I could not have that happen.

After the wipe he walked out of the entrance and saved me the trouble of having to boot him by dropping himself.  He traveled back to loin's landing and logged out, dropped off voice chat and I have not seen him since.  I swear for a moment I felt my heart sink, the same feeling I think I would have if someone else asked me to leave.  I felt bad for him.

This is a person that seven or so years ago I looked up to.  He was a great player and someone I wanted to be like and here I was making him feel like crap by asking him to leave because somehow he just was not the player he used to be.

I guess it happens to all of us.  We lose a step, we take a break and come back and can not find our grove.  But for me, having to tell someone that they can not raid for us when they used to be someone I looked up to as the ideal of what a raider should be really hurt me inside.

Is this my future?  Is this the future all raiders face when we start losing a step?  Some day someone will ask us to sit because we just aren't good enough any more, not even for a casual guild.  It sucks just thinking about it and it really sucks I had to ask him to sit.  I feel really bad about it.  I am just not cut out to be a raid leader any longer.   Not when asking someone to sit starts to affect me.  Once he was at the top of his game and now I am asking him to sit, how the times have changed.