Leveling Naked

Well, not exactly leveling naked and not exactly something I am doing but it sure does seem that way lately.  It can be done and is really not all that hard.  I had a friend who leveled a Priest completely naked with the exception of weapons, rings, trinkets and necks I believe, just no clothing.  I was always amazed by that and in a way I still am but now I understand it better.

After leveling a Disc Priest I learned that a priest doesn't really need to wear anything because they never get hit.  Your stats will be lower which means that you will need to adjust what you are killing but over all it is not hard to do.  I was downing level 80 elites on my Priest when I was level 78 without much issue.  Sure I had gear but it was nothing special.  I can see how a Priest even wearing nothing can level easy enough if they went for mobs an average of 3 levels lower then them.  Doing those quests would make it easier for go without gear.  I was completely amazed at the shields ability and that is what it is all about.

Now with me, I do not have a shield, well I do, but not one like that.  On the Warrior and Paladin I am leveling I am sharing BoA heirloom gear which means mailing them back and forth.  However I seem to keep forgetting to either mail them or get them out of the mail.  So I am going out leveling without any chest and shoulders.  Not exactly naked but also not exactly ideal.  Even more so for a warrior.  Warriors, as I always hear, are amazing gear dependent, more so then any other class.  I am having a hard time believing that.

Just recently I went out with my refer a friend leveling partner with my warrior and his mage.  I had no head (being I had not found a good drop yet), no trinkets, no rings and of course, no chest and no shoulders because I forgot to send them to myself.  We were going merrily along our way and I was grabbing 2 or 3 mobs and he was AoEing them down.  That is the concept for these two leveling.

I was barely ever taking a lick of damage.  I never once needed to bandage or sit to eat, we just kept mowing through things.  I was sitting at level 42 and him 40 at the time I think when I went and grabbed up about 7 level 39 and 40 spiders and he AoEed them down.  I never lost aggro and while doing these huge pulls one after another I only needed to use a bandage after the 4th pull like that.

That begins to make me wonder if any class really needs to worry about armor all that much while leveling.  I was clearly not geared enough to be doing what I was doing, heck I was barely geared at all, yet I had no problems with aggro or taking too much damage.

Same went for my Level 24 Pally when I went out with her and forgot that I did not have my heirloom gear on.  Ran into a pack of angry gnolls, 2 casters and 3 melee.  It took everything I had but I got through them all in time.  They were all level 25s and 26s.  It goes to show you that at low levels gear is not all that important.  Sure, heirlooms make it a bit easier but they are not all the be all and end all if you are under level 40.

Makes me think back to an old article for some tips for leveling a hunter and I notice it really fits all classes.  Maybe I should rewrite it.  You can check it out here.  Tips and Tricks: Gearing a low level Hunter.

One of the reasons I started leveling other characters was to see the game from the other end so to speak.  I am a Hunter and that is where my heart is but to be a better Hunter it helps to know what everyone around me is doing or is capable of doing.  I also think it makes me a better raid leader when I know what everyone can do.  While I started alts for progressions it morphed into that and then what it is now, a complete obsession with getting all classes to 80.  I am always amazed at the ways I keep finding to enjoy characters in a different way.  I wonder what I am going to do when I am all done with all the classes.

Maybe I will actually level one completely naked from 1 to 85 in Cataclysm. The way it looks like gear is going to scale after 80 I think it would be nearly impossible.  So I'll have to do it as a Disc Priest.  One thing for sure that I have learned so far is that a Disc Priest has the best survivability in the game against a single target that can't silence you.  Who would have ever thought that a healer, in a healing spec, would be the best class to take damage.  Heck, I never even need to heal myself when I quest on my healer because it never takes any damage.  Yeap, that is my quest for Cataclysm.  Level my Disc Priest from 80 to 85 naked.

Leveling Naked is Fun.

It's Deja Vu All Over Again.

As Yogi would say, it is Deja Vu all over again.  I am back at my original raiding guild and it feels right but it feels different.  I think the difference is that before we had maybe 12 raiders when I was in it and we ran with the same people every day.  It made for the perfect learning environment for me being I had never raided before joining there.  Everyone knew I was new and everyone was the same person every week.  Now it is different because now I am the co raid leader and we now have a lot of people there.  Many more then we had back when I was there before.  So it feels the same, but it is feels different.

I must admit that I am a bit worried about how things will work out.  We do not have enough tanks or healers at the moment to do a 25 and to many people for just doing a 10.  I told everyone to bear with me while we see what we have to try and set thing up on a more normal schedule in the coming weeks.  They know that this is basically a rebuilding and people are slowly flowing into the guild.  I put our first full run on the calender for Thursday night and hope that it all goes well.  Worst case scenario would be me having to do a power gearing on my Druid Tank or my Disk Priest and having to fill one of those spots just to help things out some.   I have no issue doing that if I needed to but I hope it does not come to that.  My hunter is my main and will remain my main.  While I love healing with my priest and tanking with my bear they are secondary things which I would prefer to only run on alt runs.

All in all I think things will be fine if I am willing to do the one thing I have noticed that others are not willing to do.  PuG.  Yeap, it is simple as that.  When only 8 would show before, we did not run.  In the guild I just left if only 16-18 were on we did not run.  Either one of those situations if we PuGed the guild would have not fell apart.  That is where my issue will come in.  I have no issue pugging.  I just do not want to be the person that fills the group out.  If someone else collects all the people together I have no issue running the group and even explaining it for first timers.  I will help everyone with the fights that needs it.  I can not however fill the group myself. 

There are two reasons for that really.  One being that I generally hold people to a high standard.  Prime example is one pug I was in a bit ago there was this hunter that wanted to join and they asked me (being I am a hunter) to take a look at them and tell them what I thought.  I saw missing gems, missing enchants, mixed ArP and Agility gems, and other minor problems.  I said that the spec was perfect but they were missing things and had a couple of bad gems so I would not take them.  Another person said that they did fantastic DPS.  I said I do not care if they can out DPS me, I would not take someone that does not even enchant or gem their gear. 

If they are not willing to give their gear 100% then they will not give the raid 100%. Even lower cost gems and enchants would have been fine but having nothing means you do not run with me.  I do not care about your gear level, the gem level, the enchant level.  I only care that it is the right type of gear, the right type of gem and the right type of enchant.  Everyone starts off somewhere so low level stuff is fine with me as long as it is the right low level stuff.

The second reason is because I am, as the title here says, a grumpy elf.  More then anything else that makes me grumpy it is stupid people that get to me. Assembling a PuG is like a gauntlet through tons of stupid people.  I hate stupid people.  I hate them with a passion so much that I would rather quit the game then have to deal with them.  I am also not like anyone else.  I do not give a flying fuck if your gear score is 6000, if I do not want you in my group I do not want you in my group.  I do not care if you have the achievement, if I do not want you in my group I do not want you in my group. 

Gear score is a nice way to see the potential of people but if you are a warrior gemming for spirit because it helps your health regen, I do not want you in my group.  If you have a mish mosh of normal and PvP gear because it gives you a higher score I do not want you in my group.  If you are wearing things that are not right for your spec just because they give you a higher gear score then I do not want you in my group.  If you have a 3800 gear score I do not care if you have the achievement for the first quarter of ICC, sure you can do it, you can do it with a 3300 gear score (I've seen it) but I can not tell if you got carried or you are really skilled just from looking at your gear.  So even if it is all the right gear and it is gemmed and enchanted correctly I am not taking the chance. 

Those above people are the ones that will instantly turn from people nicely looking to join a PuG into stupid people in the matter of a heartbeat.  I will be getting hate messages because I turned them down.  I will be called an elitist because I turned them down.  Heck, of all the people I know I am the least elitist of them all.  I've been offered to join the top guild on the server twice before and said no both times because they are like that and I do not want to be around that.  The nerd rage will start to fly and they will now be part of the stupid people which I hate so much.

For those reasons I can not assemble a PuG.  It is not in my to do so.  I can add a third reason as well if I wanted to and that is because over all I am a nice guy.  I would feel bad telling someone that is actually a good person for the job that I do not need them because the spot is full or because I want to get someone that is a bit over geared to make it easier.  I would really feel bad telling them no.

So, if I can delegate the job of assembly for the PuG to someone else and then run it myself we will do just fine.  If I can not find someone to do it I will either have to suck it up and deal with the great masses to stupidity.  I do not want to do that but I know that PuGing is required for a guild to thrive.

Only time will tell, but I am sure as hell glad to be back home now.

Now to start thinking about working on making all those guides again.  But this time I will be smart and also post them here so that way I have a back up of them.

Going Back Home

I am going to head heading back to my first raiding guild soon.  I want to talk to the guild leader before I leave.  That is just my style.  I've never been the type to just leave even if I were pissed at someone.  Maybe back in my drinking days I would have done something like that without thinking first.  Sobriety and age seem to change things like that from happening.

Why do I bring up drinking you might ask?  Well, my old (current as it may be) guild leader did not drink.  However it sure seemed a lot like that sometimes.  He would jump quickly to make a decision and then even if he later regretted it he would defend his action.  Such as people getting kicked from the guild because they did not bring their mains on the weekly that the guild does on Wednesdays.  After kicking people for that very reason and then defending that reason he turns around and says people can do the weekly whenever they want but we will still run one on Wednesdays for those that need it.  See, a quick knee jerk reaction.  Something you would expect from someone that had been tipping his elbow a bit to much that day.

That was increasingly becoming the feeling I was getting from him on many occasions.  He was very confrontational at points.  Even getting verbal about kicking peoples ass in real life.  Come on man, this is a game, go play tough guy some place else.  I was slightly bothered by that but I just chalked it up to him being a bit self conscious or something.  Most people that act like that online are usually the ones that were forever getting their ass kicked in school and this is how they made themselves feel better.  But adding things like that with other things made me think that for a man that does not drink he seems to have all the symptoms of someone with a drinking problem.

The kicker was just recently when people started to leave in droves like I had told them would happen if we continued to not run he threw a temper tantrum.  Among the things he did were blaming us for us not raiding when he was the one that was not there and did not even put it on the calender.  He also deleted the guild website in a fit of anger.  He said it was accidentally, but I've been there before, I used to be that drunk person that acted like that.  It was not an accident.  He deleted it because it was pissed that everyone was leaving him and he could not stop them.  So by doing that he was able to take control.  It was the "I deleted the web site, you didn't leave" thing.  A way for him to take control again and it makes a great deal of sense to someone that is drunk. 

I was pissed because I wrote a ton of tutorials for that site and I did not have them backed up.  How did I know some idiot would go delete it because he had a hissy fit.  Then he starts a new site and tells everyone they need to go there to re apply to the guild.

Re apply to a guild I am already in?
After you deleted all my hard work?

No thank you.  I do not care if you where the best player in the world and could single handed carry 24 other people to ICC 25 hard modes all by yourself and no one else doing anything.  You are still not that important that you can let things go the way they did because you were not around.

I think that was the undoing of the guild.  If the guild leader was not around we where not allowed to run.  He made runs for when he wanted to run.  Being Starcraft came out and he was all obsessed with that he did not want to run, so we were not allowed to run.

As a person he is not a bad guy.  Even funny and helpful at times.  As a guild leader, he leaves something to be desired.  If I were to leave him with one word of advice it would be that next time get some officers so that when you are gone things still get done.  Stop thinking of yourself as being so important that you can run everything yourself and if you are not there we can't do anything without you.  <--  Another sign of a drinker.  I've been there too.

I doubt there will be a great deal of raiding in my old guild to start off with but then again I have not been doing a great deal of raiding in the last weeks anyway.  I would rather be around friend doing less raiding then being in a guild where things are set up and never done.  That is more stressful then doing nothing.  Doing nothing when you have nothing planned is okay.  Doing nothing because the guild leader does not feel like running and doesn't want us to pug it is another.

Didn't run 25 again last night.

As a matter of fact, we did not run anything.  I prodded the co guild leader to do something.  I told him as clear as day that if we did not run anything this week the guild would end up breaking up.  He said he does not care.  If we have to PuG people it is not worth doing.  He is in a guild so he does not need to PuG.

While that logic makes sense, that is why people are in guilds, he has to realize that we no longer have the active membership to run a 25 man with who is in the guild.  We need to recruit more.  To recruit more you PuG the left over spots in the 25 you run and hopefully pick up some new people.  He would not even tank it.  He did not care.  He didn't want to do a 10 man even.  He did not want to do Ruby Sanctum 10 or 25.  He did not want to run something old school for achievements.  He had a ton of members online looking to do something and he didn't want to do anything at all.

That, to be as kind as humanly possible, is not leadership.  I have so many more choice words for what they is but it sure as hell is not leadership.  So one of the members messaged me yesterday telling me that he was leaving.  Most people talk to me because they know I try as best I can to do things on my own to keep things together.  I am just not good at it really.  I never pretended that I was.  I can lead, I just do not want to.  I have no issues being a support player but that is where the problem is.  The leadership, all 2 of them, do not want support.  They want everyone to do what they tell them to do, to be there when they tell them to and to act just as they tell them too.

Sorry, that is not me.  I am the #1 DPS there and in most runs it is by a long shot.  I can not even begin to guess how many times I was #1 by over 2K DPS.  Not to mention, even on the days I am not #1 over on the DPS charts if you where to look at the total damage done I am #1.  I think only once have I ever raided with them since I was there that I was not #1 and that was my own fault because I died of something stupid at the beginning of a fight and they ended up downing it.  Meaning that the #2 person has enough total damage from that one to pass me over as I was totally useless that fight because a dead DPS is no DPS.

I do what needs to be done.  I know the fights before we start them.  I will play any role they need me to do.  I can kite, I can ranged tank, I can crowd control.  Whatever is needed I do.  While I love my big numbers I am in no way a DPS whore.  I do whatever is needed to get the boss down. If it means I am kiting slimes because the OT died, then so be it.  I want a dead boss.  I do not care if I am #1 or not.  However, the first time I am told what I need to do I basically say fuck you.  I do what I am asked to do.  I tell you to go screw yourself the moment you tell me to do it.

After talking with a lot of the people there it seems that after this weekend the guild will be a shell of what it used to be.  We will all be gone, most of us going back to where we came from and reassembling there.  We wanted to run 25s and this team is no longer even making an effort to run 25s so it is useless now.  Heck, they are not even making an effort to run 10s any more either.  Of anything.  It is a complete and total joke lately.  Bad luck is one thing, but totally disregarding what your members say and not listening to ideas or gripes with some appearance of caring makes for a bad place to be.

With the leader being obsessed with the new Starcraft game and the co leader not wanting to run without him we are a guild with no leaders because they refused to ever make anyone else an officer.  You do not need a lot of officers to make something work.  But you do need at least 2 active at all times to make raids and run them otherwise it is no longer a raiding guild.

At least that is how I see it.  Who knows.  I am still a WoW rookie in my mind so there is a lot I do not know.  One thing I do know is that I hate being someplace where we never do anything.  Sure, I love leveling my alts but that is something to do in my down time from raiding.  The last few weeks it has been a full time thing because I no longer raid at all.  It is sad.

Now it is gear up time for my Priest.

I basically geared up my hunter before the LFD system when it was actually much harder to do.  A DPS, even more so a new DPS, has a bitch of a time getting into a group.  Healers however are seemingly loved universal as long as they are trying even if they suck.  So getting a group back then would have been no problem, just like getting one now is no problem with one in the LFD system.

I ran a few heroic randoms last night and the over/under for good to bad is about 3 to 1.  For every three good ones I run there is one bad one.  Sometimes that is my fault and sometimes it is not.  I am a new healer and I make to assumptions that even thought I read what to do that I can do it well yet.  I am getting better, that is really why I am doing the dungeons, to learn.  I can afford to instantly get my a 5K gear score from the auction house but what is the fun in that.  Not to mention, I would not have practical healing experience which is what I really need.  Anyone can have gear.  It takes effort to become good. 

I had mostly good runs with averagely geared tanks.  No super tanks but some skilled ones.  They never lost aggro, they pulled LoS when needed, they did what they needed to do.  I healed through everything.  It is a lot easier when people around you know what they are doing.  A renew once in a while here and there and a shield when I know something is coming.  That is all I needed to worry about the DPS.  Binding heal has become my favorite for when I need a spot heal being I heal myself and the tank at the same time.  Can't beat that with a stick.  Not to mention it hit for nearly triple of my flash heal.

When I get a lame tank it all goes down hill fast.  Really fast.  I have still not gotten used to working in panic mode.  Panic mode is when everyone has aggro on something at all times except for the tank. Who to heal, what to heal them with, who is the tank trying to get back and such.  If the tank is about to pull a mob off someone then I do not need to heal them all the way, I can worry about others.  So knowing that is important.  Sad thing is that most tanks are unpredictable so I never know who they are going to save.  Make healing everyone a little harder and I am not doing well working in that situation.

Perfect example is on one run we get to the final boss and the Rogue grabs aggro instantly.  Ever heard of tricks?  I was so tempted to ask him.  But I had not time to type.  I was healing him as if he was the tank.  6K, 11K, 8K, renews, shields, everything I could throw out at them and I keep them up for a pretty long time but sooner or later, with others taking damage as well he went down.  The tank never had aggro for even 1 second until the rogue died.  I ended up dying as well just as we downed the boss, but we did down him so that is what matters most.  Running with people like that make life difficult.  I am a rookie, I can not handle that.  I doubt even a pro could have handled that.  Actually, a pro would have let him die if he wanted to be an aggro whore.

In the 4 runs I did we had a Warlock in each one.  I've gotten used to throwing a renew on the warlock after each pull.  No biggie.  I can't see why some people complain about that.  Even as a hunter, and I do love my pet, I do not heal pets.  It is another spot on my healbot bar and that is not needed.  Yet I have never seen one pet died since I have been healing.  Smart heals always seem to get them.

In the end I got only a trinket for an upgrade and it was a huge one going from a 105 to a 200 trinket.  Trinkets are the hardest to find I think.  I also got enough to buy me my first piece of T9.  Question is, when the time comes, what am I going to do about T10.  I think I will save up for the offset pieces first.  Things like back and waist.

I am willing to do my daily dungeon as a priest now that I have tried it a few times.  I just hope I do not get any more unskilled tanks.  All greens and unskilled makes it impossible for me to learn.  I wish new tanks would make the effort to at least get normal item before jumping into heroics like I did.  I did not spend cash on the auction house.  I went and ran dungeons.  I do love the healer query time.  Much better then my hunters time.  I am just wondering if I will ever do the heard press and knock out a ton of dungeons to get geared up faster.  Only time will tell.  All depends on how well my runs go.  They go good, I keep running.

Moving time?

It might be time to switch guilds again soon.  There are many things I like about the guild I am in and there are many things I dislike.  I mostly overlook the things I dislike being that they are not game breaking so to speak.  However, overlooking the things you do like when they disappear it a lot harder to do.

We have not raided in over a week.  Leadership does not even want to put the raids on the calendar at all.  I know the deal and the raid days but I still like to see it listed.  Everyone does and for some people if they do not see it then that means it was canceled this week.  I am not in a guild just to hang out and talk to people.  I actively dislike people in general.  I have a few people I like to talk to and that is all I need.  Everyone else I talk to is basically just because I am nice and not the type of person to ignore others.  I can deal with most idle banter as long as it is not stupid crap that usually comes out of the mouths of 12 year olds.  On a side note, I do not recall being that stupid and that needy at 12, why it is that nearly all kids now are like that?

Back on topic here.  ICC progression is at a dead stop because the guild leader is not around and we can't run without him.  I guess the idea of what is best for the guild does not mean anything if he is not there to experience it.  So we do not run.  We no longer even schedule 25 mans because the guild leader does not want to PuG.  The Co Leader who is around does not want to PuG either.

Last night I got the Co Leaders ear and told him that if this keeps up I do not give this guild even another full week before everyone is gone.  Some people are already leaving and many are grumpy about it.  Mostly they come to me.  I don't know why but it always seems people like to come to me.  I guess that is a good thing.  I told him that if he does not do something the guild is gone.  He complained that he is sick of not having enough for 25.  I said PuG.  He said he does not want to PuG, he has a guild so he doesn't have to PuG and 25 people should show up.  I told him too many have left and we do not have 25 active any more and we need to PuG so his thought was, we just will not run 25s any more.  Screw that.  I told him he better PuG or kiss the guild good bye.  I even reasoned with him that it is because of his PuGs that I am there and many others are there.  He is steadfast in his decision that he will not PuG any more.  He has a guild so he does not need to PuG.

I am sorry but that attitude does not cut it with me from a guild leader or co leader.  I, as in me, the hunter, the one that is not an officer, join a guild so I do not have to PuG.  You, as the tank, as the co leader, need to make it so me and all the others have people to run with and have days that we run.

If you do not want to run you can at least assemble it.  I do not give a crap if the leader has his fucking head up his ass because starcraft 2 came out and that is more important to him now.  He is being a total ass and ignoring the guild he set up.  He is wrong, dead wrong.  Does not mean that the co leader doesn't do anything else just because the leader is gone.

That is another issue which really never came up with both where on all the time.  When both where on the glaring absence of any other officers was never an issue.  But with the leader having his head up his ass and playing starcraft and the co leader throwing a temper tantrum like a little kid at the playground taking his ball and going home just because he does not want to run if the leader doesn't it just a joke.  Now the absence of other officers is glaring like the sun on the hottest day of the year.  You just can't help but notice that burning ball of fire in the sky.  For guild purposes, that burning ball is falling and is about the set the entire guild on fire.


I will most likely go back to my old guild and hang out there doing nothing if anything.  Maybe drag a few of my old guildies with me if they want to come and even a few of the others that are upset with what has been going on.  Sad part is I really wanted to get things done and I thought I could with this guild.  Doesn't seem like it any more.

It just seems to me that stupid rule I mentioned way back about tanks and healers getting their marks first worked out exactly as I said it would.  Now that the main healer (guild leader) and the main tank (co leader) got their marks they no longer want to raid.

I am not a grumpy elf.  I am a pissed elf.  The used everyone around the to get themselves geared up and then once they got geared they said screw us all.  I hate that crap.  I hate people like that and over all I am beginning to hate the game because of its multi player aspect.  I can not get the things I want to do because I need other people to do it with and 99% of the other people of selfish jackasses or complete morons that can not do the content.  I should be able to gear myself up by myself.  I should not need other people to do it.  I play WoW to play a game... not to make friends.  You know that place called outdoors where that big ball of fire shines down?  That is where I made my friends.  Any I get on a game is purely a bonus and I like it.  But I should not need them to get gear.  Because in the end I just end up screwed like I am now.

And a Priest goes Ding!

I got my Priest to level 80 last night.  Leveling was the easy part.  Now to get into healing a daily to start working on frost badges and to chain run some heroics so I can get some decent gear to start getting some PuG invites.  The good thing is that healers are always in need on my server.  All day I see people looking for more and usually it is always 1 heals or 2 heals. 

So often I see ICC 25, LF 3 heals then gtg.  Seems that no one heals or at least once healers start to gear up they never run anything any more just for the fun of running.  I'll find out if indeed it is because it is not really fun or if they are just being jerks.  I know there are always lots of healers around it is just that they never seem to want to run.  I guess healers more then any other class are the type that will run only to help a friend whereas DPS will run whenever they can.  Looking at the need for healers everywhere I guess that is what makes them have the ability to be that selective.

I know I will get a lot of invites also from that theory.  So often I've seen people say to invite so and so and another says, but their gear score sucks to only get the reply, but they are a healer and we need one.  Healers get cut a lot of slack because you really have no choice.  I also hear a healer say I've never healed this before and get people saying just do your best.  If a DPS says that they will usually get the boot unless they are friends with someone there or have a huge gear score that people (wrongly) think will make up for the lack of knowledge of the battle.

As long as I do my best I am sure I can gear up 100 times faster then I would be able to with a DPS.  Not only do healers get dragged along more often and have quicker query times in the LFD but a healer is usually one of only a very few in a raid and with that have less people to roll against.  I am actually looking forward to the gearing up process now.  Something I dread with DPS characters.

First things first.  I need to rearrange all my key binds now.  I had mostly offensive stuff bound because I was solo questing and only had some healing stuff bound.  Now I need to switch that around and find a layout that will be comfortable for me while still keeping some DPS stuff around for when I do dailies.  Should not be all that hard, I already have some ideas in mind.

Wish me luck because you know how people in the LFD are.  Some will cut me slack, others will rip me apart.  Mostly I am hoping I get stuck with a group of people that are overgeared so we can run them fast and all I need to do is drop a shield on the tank once in a while.  Have to learn different mechanics however.  I noticed when I first tanked some of them that there were things I never even noticed where happening that were important as a tank.  I am sure there are things that happen that I never noticed as a DPS or a Tank that will have an impact on healers.  Either way, this should be fun and I am looking forward to it.