6.2 is coming

Normally I would do a lot of what we did here, not this time.

      Because last week we didn't really raid.  Not enough peeps showed the first night, and we LFR'd the second night.

      This week was a little better.  We were a person short Tuesday night and managed to pull someone from the nether to come heal for us.  Because it was a mixed team of newness etc.. we just did Highmaul.  We didn't get started until late, and because of it, we only downed Khargath and The Butcher.  Better then nothing.

      Wednesday we managed to get into blackrock a little, but just managed to down Gruul.  We brought in the healer, this time on a hunter, again and had a relaxing fun night.  Yes, things can be fun and relaxing when not downing bosses.

      Right now honestly, I just want to build the team back up.  I think we may lose another toon or two before things are through but I'm hoping that with one person who came back from the nether, and this healer if he wants to keep putting up with us might give us the flexability we need to start working on progressing again.  I would love to feel the team was whole by the time Hellfire Citadel opens.

     Now, time to look at what's coming up in a month or two.

     First up is the end of the Legendary Ring quest.  We are supposed to get a proc that we can blow every X amount of minutes for added damage.  Here is the catch, if you blow it everyone else in the raid with a ring blows their proc at the same time.  I will be honest, I don't like this.  I see nothing but chances for abuse on this if your pugging or running LFR.  I would much rather just have another cool down that all players could use at their own discretion.  Either way, it's a thing and it will be interesting to see the end of the Gul'dan/Legendary story line.

      We are getting a naval yard in our garrison.  You will need about 6k resourced to build your ship yard up.  Your garrison will need to be level three as well.  The quests here will be used to open up Tanaan Jungle to you as you quest in to fight the new Fel Iron Horde?  Really not sure what we are calling them now.  But this will essentially be what you have to do to progress in the story of the expansion.  Once again I'm not fond of a gate that involves a lot of resources that may keep my alts from venturing into this.  Obviously, as stated before Tanaan Jungle will be open to players.

     Felblood will be replacing Savage blood as a building mat for professions.  So, don't sit on your Savage blood at this point.  Sell it or use it before the patch drops, because after that it may start being fairly useless.  My understanding is that the item upgrades from the Felblood skip the savage blood upgrades completely.  If that's the case Savage Blood will just be a bag space holder.

     We will be getting Mythic level dungeons.  Because nothing makes you hate the dungeons you were so glad to be done running (and for some reason they have been painful for me this Xpack) like having to run them again.  Only with them being harder.  Oh, and epic gear, epic level gear drops so you may have to run them if you want to gear up quickly.

     I am excited about Timewalking dungeons in retrospect.  We will be able to run select dungeons on level with current content, and the drops will be ilevel equivalent.    This means older gear with current stats.  Kind of pointless with transmog, but it will be fun to run some older content and have it feel like something other then a cakewalk.

    And of course there will be some minor class changes etc.. that I'm not going to list here.  If you want to know what is happening with your class just go hunt down the patchnotes on blizzard forums.  Or Blizzardwatch.com normally lists them in articles as they are updated every few days.

See you next week.

Lag/Lazyeye.

   

   

   

Tectus has multiple personality disorder.

One more week down....

     Tuesday went well.  We one shot all the ones we had already downed, and the mood was pretty good.   We hunkered down and prepared to take on Brackenspore.  After a few tries and a little frustration we managed to kill him dead.  On the last pull of the night.  Happiness and joy abounded.

    Wednesday started out with us almost not raiding.  After the group had gathered we went to knock on the door and Highmaul seemed to be not at home.  Trying to get into the entrance just resulted in a long loading screen that kicked you back out after a couple of minutes.  After a half hour of this I was starting to call the raid when one member dropped from the group and got in.  We disbanded, handed him temporary leadership and moved in together.  From there we went to work on Tectus, and after a few pulls we swapped Saberlynn to disc and with the extra healing he went down pretty well.  Then it was on to Kor'gath.  That is where our night ended, we did a couple of pulls and then went our merry ways to re-convene next week.

       Now, for the news part of this week, 6.1 is now live on the PTR and Blackrock Foundry opens on February 3rd.  Both of these are big deals.

      First of all, it is nice to know when the next raid is opening other then "Sometime in February."  I honestly suspected with the vagueness of Blizzard's answer that we wouldn't be seeing the next raid until close to the end of the month.  It was a pleasant surprise to know we can traipse our way in three weeks from now.  There is hope that we can be 7/7 in Highmaul by then.  At the rate of progress we have had, I believe we may get there on opening week.  That is, if we can get the first five bosses down on Tuesday from here on out.  I think there is a chance we could pull that off.

        As far as 6.1 is concerned.  We are already seeing spoilers and data-mined content.  As always anything you hear about the next patch from anyone but Blizzard must be taken with a grain of salt.  A lot of the information gained is stuff that never makes it into the game and people get butt hurt when their expectations don't become realized.

        We are getting an legendary follower.  I'm not going to spoil who it is, but I am very excited.  And no, it's not Varian Wrynn.

        New blood elf models are on their way.  Looks like there is a good chance we will have them with this patch, who is happy about there finally being male blood elves to play?

      Heirlooms tab!  That's right!  If this feature makes it in, you can just create and equip the heirlooms you already own from a tab.   When your done, just throw those suckers away.  No more mailing between realms.  No more re-buying the heirlooms that have dissipated along the way...

      And much more!  This is a content patch so far.  No raids, just fun little quality of life additions.  6.2 should be the next raid, and then 6.3 may be the last patch of the expansion?  If they stick to the two raid tier plan it will probably be.  Then again, maybe Blizzard will have a change of heart.  I believe they said that the final raid boss will be a surprise this time around.  (This after someone slipped and said it was going to be Grommosh Hellscream right after Blizzcon)  I am personally hoping for Gul'dan and the Shadow Council as that would fit into that last big bad nicely.  This would really fit into the current legendary quest for our ring.

     That is it for this week.  Next week I'm hoping to have something more opiniony.  Like, NO FLYING IN WARLORDS EVAH!  Or at least not looking like it in 6.1.

Lag/Lazyeye.

Butchered in Highmaul (Raid update week of 12/14/2014)

We have officially started raiding in Warlords.

     Tuesday we went in and tried Kargoth Bladefist.  Strangely, despite his name he seems to be a very violent fella.  It took us two or three tries, but he went down.  Honestly, I wasn't prepared for this, so we went forward into fights I had not looked up yet.  Next on our list we decided to try the Twin Ogron.  We got mushed, and then there was a DC from a healer.  Our night ended there.

      Wednesday we went in and started on the Twin Ogrons again.  This time after a couple of attempts they went down and we were able to chalk off two of the bosses on our first night of raiding.  We decided to try Brackenspore next, which we were making progress until we had another issue with DCing.  Deciding that we couldn't do this boss with two healers, we moved over to the Butcher.  We only managed a couple of attempts, but we got him down to 15%.  Very happy with our first week.  I'm also Dissapointed that the butcher wasn't a big pig demon.  (Diablo I-III have ruined me for villains named "The Butcher.")

      Still having issues with 2 things in raids.  One is DCing/ending early.  I know when I raid I plan on staying until the end of the 2 hours.  When someone has to leave it's not as big a deal with the flex system, but it can impact the raid if you are a tank or healer a lot more then if your are a DPS.  I know people have busy lives and it's a busy time a year, but I'm going to be a lot less happy come January if we have to swap out a major roll early.

      Second is timelyness.  Both nights we have started a half hour later or better.  That means there is a whole hour we have wasted, and I'm pretty sure, had we used that time, we could have killed the Butcher this week.  If not something else. I normally try to get invites and that rolling at 10 server, and when I have to hunt people down, or wait on people it bogs everything down.  Once again real life happens and I'm O.K. with that.  However, I want to make sure this is a week 1 trend and doesn't continue on.

       So far Highmaul seems good to me.  I ponder that if we have downed two out of seven bosses already, that it might be tuned a little easy, but at the same time I am hopeful we might down them all before Blackrock Foundry opens sometime in February.  (Blizzard hasn't said when yet)  It would be nice to be even with the raid content this time around and as more people get geared and hop in, I look forward to some pretty good progress.

      Warlords still seems to be fine.  Now that people have gotten gear Heroics seem alright to run, and I'm enjoying a few of them.  Hijacking a train in Grimrail Depot is just fun.  I have my Legendary ring to 680, and I'm working on the next part of the quest.  I am also determined to find all the treasures in Warlords now that I have bought the maps from the archaeology vendor in Ashran.

     I have also dipped into LFR.  It's not a bad pre-emptive gearing spot, as everything in it is insanely easy.  It does get kind of boring but as far as what it is intended for I'm with the group that thinks it's perfect.  If you are just in it to see the content and story and your not worried about raiding it's perfect.  I don't see myself running it once all my gear has hit that 640 spot, but until then it's a way to get some OK gear before I start getting raid drops.  I am happy that most of what I'm seeing in there is already lower geared then what I need.  Of course the legendary quest might have me running through there a bit for now.

     Next couple of weeks are holiday driven.  I only plan on raiding on Tuesdays for both weeks so it's important people are on time and ready to rock.  I would love to get a new boss down each night.

Lag/Lazyeye.

Heroic and Blizzcon.

Alright, here we go...

     It's been a busy couple of weeks....  And I admit to not having written this last week, partially in frustraition.

     Last week between Tuesday and Wednesday we managed to get to both Thok on regular and Heroic on Thok.  Sunday we snuck back in only to find that our Heroic save had been corrupted so that we had to start at the beginning, so we worked Garry on Regular.  And we died.  Sadly.

    Tuesday this week we went in knowing we would be working on regular as the same issue was still presenting with heroic.  We downed Garrosh for the second time on regular and then thanks to a guildy who had a heroic save on an alt we were able to fight Garry on Heroic.  We got him close but didn't quite kill him off.

    Wednesday we went in to try him again.  This time (after a rant from yours truly) we managed to down him in about an hour and called raid early.  Gratzy to all who were there.  We can say we downed Heroic Garrosh and now have shiny titles and better BOA's to level with.

   Of course the other big news is Blizzcon launching tomorrow.  I think the next expansion to Starcraft, and Hearthstone will be shown.  I would also not be surprised to see them show off something up and coming for Diablo III.  I am guessing we may get introduced to a new Blizzard project or two, and maybe Beta release plans for Heroes of the Storm.  What of World of Warcraft you ask?

     I have heard people wonder if they are going to announce the next expansion.  This would fit into their goal to release more content faster and keep pushing us along.  I honestly feel the opposite.  I hope they don't tell us the next expansion because it would feel strange to walk into Warlords knowing what was going to happen after from the get go.  I believe that would be a mistake that might make Warlords feel like something in between and not it's own expansion.  I am one of the few though that thinks that having an expansion about every other year is better then every year.  Truly part of it is budgeting with me.

     So, next week the question is what next? Do I just push an alt run through regular Siege to get more toons some heirlooms? Or do we try and work Heroic again?  Maybe we should go back and try to finish Throne of Thunder?  I haven't fully decided.  Honestly, part of me wants to start my short break from raiding early so I'm fresh and ready to start leveling on the 13th.

     Still not sure if I'm leveling Lag or Lazyeye though.... I'm not convinced we have a steady 2nd tank at this point.  We have had people step in, but no one who has been consistant on being there every time yet.  I don't want to level my hunter just to find that I have to power level Lag to raid....

That's it for this week.  See you on the 13th.

Lag/Lazyeye.

Ding, dong, Garrosh is dead. (Raid update week of 10/19/2014)

It was a good week.

     Tuesday we went in and finished what is now 10 man regular SoO.  We pretty much just blew everything up from Thok to Garrosh with ease.  All the 6.0 adjustments have just made us incredibly overpowered and amazingly destructive when it comes to boss life.  The rest of the wing just went down without much fight.  We even one shot Garrosh.  We then decided to see how heroic felt with the changes.  We got through wing one easily, and stopped there.

      Wednesday started off with a couple of hitches.  Galakras caused some trouble as a couple of simple mistakes wiped us a couple of times.  After that it was all sunshine and rainbows.  We mowed through more bosses until we got to the last pull of the night.  Thok ended up being a little bugged and he turned and blew us all up without going into his second phase so we ended the night there.  Tuesday we will be finishing this save and killing Garrosh on Heroic.  I have no doubt it will go easily as the last time.  It will be nice to see if I can get a second leveling bow for my hunter, or something for Lag.  We will see.

      They really have made the difficulty of running  raids very easy.  I imagine it's to get people in and amped up before the next expansion drops.  Honestly, I may even pug a couple of SoO's this weekend to get a chance to get a leveling heirloom for a couple more characters in WoD.  There is no reason at this point not to hop in and get a little something to get running in the next expansion.

     It's been an interesting week or two.  Not only has the patch been out giving us the ability to outright destroy old content.  No, really, go run some old raids.  Most of them just blow up easily with little effort.  A few mechanics may still cause trouble to some classes, but mostly you can destroy anything from Cataclysm back.

     I know I am starting to work on the legendaries from Ulduar, and soon Firelands.  I also plan on getting Shadowmourne eventually.  I see 25 man raids of ICC happening with 20 characters all trying to get their own legendary through the system where you can browse and find raids.  I can't think what it's called off the top of my head.  It should be fun.

     Anyway, that's about it.  I want to talk about Gamergate, but at this point it would be a little premature to say more then this.

     It is never OK to threaten anyone, in game or out, regardless of sex, race, or creed, with violence sexual or otherwise ever.  I know that Gamergate is focusing on the attacks on female players, but in all honesty with that above statement being true it shouldn't be limited in discussion to any one group.  Talent when it comes to playing has no boundaries in any group.  The wonder of online gaming is that anyone can excel and when we roll that virtual reflection of ourselves we should be able to play as anyone, anything, we want without having to bend to the criticism or threats from anyone else.

     Pretty much anything else I can say is a reflection of the above statement.

      See you all in game.

Lag/Lazyeye.

Another path. (Raid update, week of 10/05/2014)

We are branching into different directions.

      Tuesday we had some issues to start with.  I was tanking, and while I do OK I haven't tanked enough consistently to be amazing at this point.  Scorpy was on his tank as well since both folks who had been tanking weren't able to make raid.  Once again, we found ourselves getting stomped out by Blackfuse.  It wasn't any one thing either.  Scorpy was learning the fight from the tanking side, we had a new belt person because he wasn't there to do belts, and a couple of folks we hadn't played with for a bit.  The new dichotomy  of the make up was what did us in as well as the learning points.  We finally called the raid about twenty minutes early and gave up for the evening.

       Wednesday was a little better.  While it took us a few minutes to get the raid off the ground, we managed to kill Blackfuse in a handful of pulls and one shot Paragons.  We managed a couple of attempts to punch Garrosh in the face, but at the end of the day ended with him still standing.  Hope is not lost however.

       Sunday night we have an extra raid posted this week.  Now, I'm not sure this raid will even happen since a lot of folks have a hard time coming when the raids aren't scheduled, but we are going to try to get one last shot in before 6.0 drops and changes everything.

      Speaking of change, there is one more change we have thrown into the works.

      There is a new guild kicking around the Hellscream server! "Fear Itself!" That's right.  Since Hellscream is connected to Zangarmarsh I decided to start a new chapter over there for folks who want to play around on Horde.  Fear Itself was not taken as a guild name, so essentially we have an Alliance Fear Itself, and a Horde Fear Itself all on the same server.  (leading to my ability to take such screen shots as the one above)

     Now, for the record right now this new guild is just for hanging out, maybe leveling with some friends you already know, and experience the other half of content.  I am not at this point planning on leading any raids over there as I just simply don't have the time.  If someone when the guild is more established wants to do so I will give them my blessing and support, but I don't push for a second raid team anymore.  It has never worked in the past and it's not worth the effort on my part at this time.

      Also, as far as raiding In WoD, I plan on starting about a month after the expansion drops give or take a little.  This will put us right in the middle of December, so it might not happen until Januaryish depending on schedules.  That being said, I want to hop in the saddle and be moving before patch 6.1 comes out and brings us more big raidy stuff.  With the way Blizzard released content in Mists, I'm afraid if we wait too long we will be way behind the curve.

That is the update for this week,

Lag/Lazyeye

Quicker, Faster, Stronger. (Raid Update 9/22/2014)

So, we are getting there

     Tuesday was fantastic.  We managed to one shot Blackfuse for the first time, and then went on to one shot Paragons.  It was a great feeling and I can't complain at all.  We managed to get to Garrosh, but someone's computer blew so we ended up 9 man pulling him a few times just to get a feel for the beginning of the fight.

     Wednesday we spent the whole day on Garrosh.  We were missing one main raider due to a family emergency, and our prayers are with him and his family.  We did manage to get some good progress and things were starting to come together, then near the end focus was gone and we could feel it.  I went ahead and called things a few minutes early and told people to run LFR and to study the video for the fight again before next week.  I want to get him down.

    Now, we are at the door of 6.0.  I am betting on it dropping this Tuesday, though every one else whom I've talked to thinks it will be a week later then that.  Either way time to get things wrapped up is quickly evaporating, and this brings me to a complaint I am starting to have about the next expansion.

     Here is the thing that really is bothering me.  Warlords of Draenor is rumored to be an expansion with only two raid tiers.  That means not only is the expansion ten bucks more this time rounds, but we are getting one less tier of raids then we traditionally have.  I understand the desire to get more content out quicker and that the goal is to have an expansion yearly, but this seems a little small fry to me.

    Now, I understand this might not mean less content overall.  Class systems are being overhauled, we get a whole new world/continent to explore.  There will be ten levels of quests, and apparently each zone will have new content once you hit 100 to explore.   The raid system is revised and updated really for the first time since Burning Crusade.  (Yes flex was added the last patch of Panderia, but now we are seeing the fruits of that labor.)  There is the new space savers, (Toy box etc..,) and I'm sure lots of other things that I can't remember to post here.  So, saying two raid tiers is less is very subjective.

     Of course you have to balance that out against the Cataclysm backlash.  A lot of effort was put into revamping the 1-60 experience and because of it the end leveling experience felt short and was mostly put together out of existing resources.  I enjoyed  leveling through this, but a lot of people where very unhappy with it.  Let's be realistic though, no matter what Blizzard does there will be backlash.  They can't make any decision without someone complaining.  I'm convinced that if they gave one million dollars to feed the homeless of California, they would have people complaining the money should have been donated elsewhere.  But hey that's people.

    How do you all feel about it?  Does ten levels of leveling trump that 3rd raid tier, or do you think they should stick with the three tier model for the expansion.  Personally I am happy with an expansion about every other year, or year in a half as long as we are getting some sort of content and attention.  But what I think doesn't matter at the end of the day.  What is your opinion?

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

I've been sleeping.

A lot.  And working.  Ok, mostly working.

First for the week of 8/18/2014

     Tuesday was good.  We went into Flex wing 3 and managed to work our way through the whole place.  We wiped once on Spoils of Pandaria and two or three times on Thok, but managed to get them both down.  It felt good to get through all of wing 3 without having to cry a little because we seemed to be backtracking.  Not that I cry.  Ever.  O.k., there may be some manly tears from time to time.

     Wednesday we went in and tried one or two swings at Blackfuse.  When things didn't seem to be melding well we realized we had 10 unsaved players and decided to try regular 10 man SoO.  I am glad we did.  Immersius wasn't too hard to handle, but we had to fight kicking and screaming to get the protecters down.  At the end of the night that was where we stopped when we realized we wouldn't get any real tries at Nurushan with the time we had left.

     Now when I say I am glad we struggled on protectors, it was because I wanted to see how the team did against the regular content.  It was nice to know that if we were to go to a ten man it wouldn't be a face roll up to where we have already been.  I have done the first two wings, (up to Malkorak) on my hunter, but I was in a group that had been tacking regular difficulty, and it was a 25 man to boot.  I knew the content was a little harder, but didn't realize how much.

     I am hoping it was kind of a wake up call to realize that the stuff you can ignore in flex, can just destroy you in normal.  That was what was killing us, there were mechanics that some of our players just absorbed, or didn't try to get out of quickly on flex, that they were prepared for in normal.  It's not a good sign when your healers are out of mana before the first round of abilities are done.

Then we have the week of 8/25/2014.

     I will put it simply, we didn't raid.  Tuesday we didn't have the folks, and ran LFR.  Then Wednesday we went and cleared H. ICC and Some other Wrath content.  'Lil bit of fun, but not what I had planned on.  On the bright side we still went out and did stuff together.  I believe this is important.

     More then ever the end of expansion doldrums are hitting us.  I am seeing a lot of people not logging on, or playing.   I myself have slowed down a bit and find myself meandering on alts, or only playing in bits and pieces.  I think I am done with this expansion for the moment, and hopefully will be re-energized for the WOD.  Then we come to the elephant in the room.

      Without people we can't raid.  Even with flex we need at least ten folks.

       I am going to continue to schedule raids for us to run.  But if we keep not having folks I may call a break until into WOD.  I don't want to.  As much as I'm feeling expansion fatigue I still think it's best to keep the group together and doing things so we maintain the habit of running things on the same nights.  However, if we can't field a team at all at this point, I would just as soon wait until the next expansion to rebuild things.  The core of the team will still be here and those who have stopped showing up really have no stake left in the team at this point.  Now, this isn't a strike against those who have real life going on.  We have folks who due to work etc.. are now missing a raid night a week or so.  They talk to me and I understand this.

     This is meant for the folks that have just disappeared without a word.  Sorry, if you come back I'll welcome you, but I can get along without you.  Feel free to stay disappeared.

      Yes, I am feeling a bit bitter right now.  This expansion above all the others had really had a plethora of folks who built themselves up raiding with us, then moved on to raid elsewhere.  I am tired of this.  I know it's a fact of life that it happens, but what out team would have been now if they had invested in where they started rather then finding the greener grass on the other side.

      There are days where I debate banning people from coming back if stuff falls apart.  But that is not the attitude I need, and it's not the attitude my team needs.  I will welcome people back every time.  Sometimes even when I would rather shake my head and say no.

 Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

One more to 100.... (Raid update week of 8/4/2014)

That's right.  My next blog will be number one hundred.  That amazes me a little.

          Tuesday we started wing one again.  Blew the place up and managed to down Galakras too.  We have people still getting a little gear here and there, but the content is getting somewhat old.  I enjoy running with the folks we have, the banter etc.. when we are doing easier content, but we need to move ahead.

          Wednesday we didn't have enough folks show to raid.  Instead we did a group LFR together and downed Garrosh.  It was LFR, but we still had fun and chatted the time away.  It is important in my opinion when the raid doesn't happen to still do something with the folks who show and want to be involved.  Hopefully next week we will do better.

        We are now four days away from the announcement of when the next expansion is going to drop.  This is going to give us a timeline on how soon we need to finish SoO if we are going to finish it.  I won't lie, if it is coming quickly enough part of me debates calling off raids until the next expansion.  I want to keep people involved, but I am getting tired of pushing people, only to have them leave for another raid team when they get built up, or to have people just not study or learn the fights.

      My biggest frustration is that people do leave for the team that is more advanced, pushing content quicker, and making bigger kills.  Part of it is the nature of the beast, but it seems these folks leave at the moments when we are pushing forward and killing things as well, just not as quick.  I don't know if I am insane to expect some sort of loyalty out of people (and don't get me wrong, we have a lot of loyal people)  But if you look back to us as a ten man team, there were 3 spots or so that have changed through the expansion several times.  That is 30% of the teams, dynamics, etc...  When someone leaves it hurts us.

      I think flex has maybe hurt our expectations a bit.  Right now we still have two consistent people who top the charts at over 200k. (There are others, but they aren't there every raid.) I would have hoped by now that those top 2 dps would have had to work harder to keep that spot at the top, but no one else is excelling as high.  There has been time and opportunity, but it isn't happening.  Honestly, if we weren't a casual raid team I would be trimming folks.

     Part of the problem is we have people who have recently swapped specs, people who are lower geared etc.. because they are just getting started.  I yearn for the day though that I have to fight not to be number 5 on the dps chart because everyone is blowing crap up.  I don't consider myself a great raider by any means, but I studied my class, did my homework, and now I blow stuff up.  There is no reason anyone working consistently on the same class shouldn't be able to as well.

      That is my griping for the moment.  Let us see what the future holds.  The announcement is Thursday this week, so we get to find out after our second day of raid.  I am looking forward to seeing what it brings.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

P.S.  Any ideas for Blog #100 next week would be appreciated.  I want to think of something special for it.

Inclusiveness in Wow and Other Video Games. (and raid update week of 7/21/2014)

I feel this topic has been beat to death.  however, I want to weigh in my two cents.  First, raid update.

      Tuesday we tried starting wing 3.  After some complications etc.. I hopped on my Pally Tank Lag and we managed to down Malkorak.  We managed a couple shots at Treasures but ended up falling short for the night.

      Wednesday we opted to start from where we finished.  Not going to lie, things just wouldn't balance out and we couldn't manage to get the boss down.  It didn't help raid stopped a bit early as the raid leader was sick.  When his sickness finally defeated him, we went home without any new bosses.

      Not going to lie, it was a sadly regressive week, but next week will be better.

      Now on to my topic, and it's considered hot button but here we go.  I am going to try and write this from a somewhat neutral position politically because if I wanted to talk politics, I would make a political blog.

      As a prospective writer I am faced with a choice every time I start a new project.  Who are going to be my characters?  What are they going to be like? How do they talk? How do they act?  How do they look? Who do they love?

      This part of character creation is important because it flavors what you write, what decisions (Good and bad) your characters make.  If you put in something that doesn't belong there with the character it feels forced, and out of place.  This leads to stereotyping and poor characters.  You want to make racist decisions for a black character into your story, work to make him black.  Same goes for LBGT characters, if you want a bad stereotyped character force one in to echo an agenda and most people will end up with a horrible character that is out of place and offensive.

      The truth is inclusiveness is very important.  But not at the price of story or character.  If it makes sense to make a character any race or lifestyle by all means do it.  If you want to add that flavor in anyway, I say write your piece then add the race/lifestyle after you have finished your work if it isn't important to the story.  If the focus of your story obviously is going to be around race/lifestyle don't write your characters to fit the "normal modes."

      This goes for video games as well.  I want good strong characters of different races, sexes, and lifestyles.  I don't want stereotypical lazy writing or characters that seem out of place because they don't fit.  So when it works, do it.

       My worry is that the pressure for games, books, and shows to be inclusive is going to do some damage in the short term as more and more demand for inclusiveness is pushed.  If you are crusading for this, please be careful what you wish for because bad stereotypes can push unrealistic expectations in the real world.  (Because some people do believe all they read and see is real)  I would rather there was a steady and slow approach to this than we were introduced to a bunch of bad characters that damages society's notions of any group.

      I am also going to get myself in trouble by asking this next question.  When will there be enough inclusiveness?

      Looking at the census about 14.1% of the United States is black.  Does that mean that when 14.1 percent of actors in movies and T.V. shows are black we are being representative? Or do we push the bar beyond that?  Same with other races and lifestyles, do we go for a realistic number? Or in order to support minorities do we push further until we get an unrealistic mix of characters in our media all in the name of inclusiveness?

Most of all, what do you think?  I would love to hear feedback on this topic.  If you have a well thought out answer I will listen.  If you leave an answer full of hate and vitriol towards any group, I will delete your comment.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

We Thokked Thok (Raid update week of 5/25/2014)

Very Happy on this one,

      We started out on Tuesday fighting Wing 3.  With a couple fresh faces in tow we took down Malkorak, Treasures of Pandaria and Thok.  Yes, I can proudly say we took down Thok again and this time I don't believe we had some of the power hitters who were helping us out last time.  If we get him down a third time I will label him "farm status."

      Wednesday night we went up against our nemesis, Blackfuse.  This fight is still beating us around a bit and we are filling lots o' pain here.  The hardest part was that on our first pull we got the mother______ down to 12%.  This made my heart swell with joy and I was ready for us to two shot this guy and bring some pain down.  Instead we went back to people standing in the fire, dying early, and so on.  The biggest frustration here is that I know we can down this boss, we just can't defeat ourselves and right now paying attention is our biggest enemy.

       I am going to continue starting on Wing one, then Wing 3 every other week.  This will give us a chance to still get some gear for people missing a piece here and there, and to also push some harder  bosses the next week.  Wednesdays will continue to be wing 4.  I know there will be a lot of frustration on Wednesdays, but we need to keep pushing somewhere or people will get bored.  This is also my attempt to please people who want to push further, and those who want to farm the beginning/build some alts.

       I am really feeling like the time is marching during Warlords of Draenor.  To be honest, my hunter needs little or no upgrades from what we are working on, Siege has been out for six month now, and news is coming slowly but surely.  I am still betting on Beta coming out sometime in June.  Without the million or so players that were promised Beta access for MOP I have a feeling this Beta may be a lot shorter.  I think that we are looking at Blizzard trying to push this out before Blizzcon.  If they take as long as December I feel their numbers will suffer another half to a million subscribers, and not all will come back for WOD.

     I am curious to see how this expansion cycle works.  MOP has seen the biggest drop off in subscribers WoW has experienced so far.  There is always a drop off between expansions, and I'm curious to see how many players come back.  Honestly, if I was so invested in World of Warcraft I might start looking at Wildstar or another option at this point.  As it is, my family and friends are here in game and I'm not likely to go elsewhere and try to rebuild that.

     Starting next week when I queue us up for wing one I am not taking Lazyeye.  I may bring Lag in as Ret to play around and get some more gear for both dps and tanking.  Or if my lock or mage get enough love this weekend one of them might make and appearance.  Haven't decided yet.  Lazyeye will be back when we are pushing wing 3+ when we need the push his deeps brings.

See ya'll next week.
Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

I may be a little bit lost.

Houston, we have a problem.

      Tuesday we started wing one and started working through.  We got past Iron Juggs and called it a night.  It was a pretty smooth raid and we might have gotten further if we had started on time.  No complaints with our performance however, and I'm happy with how we are handling this first bit.

       Wednesday didn't happen.  We didn't have enough folks show up and I didn't want to pug in 3 dps spots to keep moving.  Instead we all jumped on some lower geared toons and ran some LFR together.  Doing LFR in a group makes it tolerable I have found and I think we still had some good time.  But this brings us to where we are.

      I think I want to start pushing progression again.  Since I went back to just going the first few bosses the last two or three weeks, less and less folks are showing up.  My fear of losing people to frustration has led us to a place where we are losing people anyway.  To be fair these folks that aren't showing might have dropped off anyway, but I don't think the lack of challenge has helped.

     This next week we are going to push wing 3 the first night, then wing 4 the second.  I want to see if that pulls some more interest in.  Yes we still have some obstacles to fight there, but I think we may do the first flex on Tuesday forward every other week, and then start wing 3 every other as well.  I'm going to find a way to get things to work.  I want to kill Gary Hellscream dang it!

     But I can't do it alone.  And I can't do it with less then 10 people showing up. If it keeps going this way and we have less and less people showing, I may have to call raiding until Warlords.  Don't make me do that, we have managed to keep a raid team going until the next expansion hit from Wrath on.  I would be very unhappy if this was the first one that defeated us.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Busyness and Mother's day. (raid update for the last two weeks, 05/04/2014 and 05/11/2014)

That's right.  Mother's day killed me and now I'm playing catch up.  Well, work and Mother's Day.

     Last week I will keep simple, we started with wing one and started blasting through things.  Between the two nights we managed to get all they way to Treasures of Pandaria which isn't bad.  That pretty much means we cleared all the bossed up to the point we have been stuck at.  Past that point we have downed Thokk once, and Blackfuse once.  Both times with a little help.  I was very happy with the progress this week.

     Tuesday this week we got off to a good start and moved through the first four bosses of flex one.  We then moved to Galakras where several disconnects and other issues stopped us for the night.  I want to stress the reason we didn't get this boss down was because of the disconnects and other such issues.  We even tried another different trick that ended in flames, but I thought was pretty fun.  Next week It will go better.

     Wednesday didn't happen.  I had texts from a couple of people that said they weren't going to make it.  Then my daughter crashed her bike and had to be taken for stitches right before raid time.  This meant, I logged on, canceled raid, and did what I had to do.  It sucks, but sometimes life happens like that.  My daughter is fine though.  Seven stitches above the right knee and she was good to go.

     It is important to remember that sometimes life trumps game and raiding.  In a perfect world we could itemize every moment of our days into simple little compartments that never overlap.  However things do happen and there are times when you have to step out or miss raid.  Families have emergencies.  Power goes out.  Work calls you in.  So many different reasons that can come up because lets face it.  Life is busy and it's messy.  As time goes by there is just more busy and mess to fit into the same time frame you normally have.

     I am looking forward from where we are.  There are still people missing plenty of loot from the first bit of the raid.  There are still people who are gearing up and have swapped toons.  There is opportunity to work together better and to work on bettering ourselves as players.  In a few weeks we will be back to smacking Blackfuse and Thokk and the later bosses.  We will get back there in time.  We have a good bit of time before the next expansion comes out.  The fact that patch 5.8 is on the PTR and getting ready to load shows they are working on giving some bonuses before 6.0 and the walk up to Warlords happens.  At this point I want to guess we will see the new expansion in September or October if they get stuff rolling.  If they keep having set backs, (and I am assuming that with Zharym's recent tweet about things taking longer then intended.) Then it may take as long as December.  I think that is the last thing that Blizzard or the players want.

Next week will be better.  Soon, we will be moving forward again.

Lag/Lazyeye/Dizzty.

Cha, Cha ,Cha, Changes.... (raid update Week of 4/27/2014)

That's right.  I have a big stick and I ain't afraid to swing it.

       Tuesday we hit wing 3 and managed to one shot Malkorak.  We all cheered and were prepared for smooth sailing.  Then we hit Spoils of Pandaria.  All our work seemed to have evaporated on this one.  We did have a new tank for one half, but even after swapping back to a group build we have somewhat used before the fight just wouldn't go down.  We ended the night at one boss dead.

       Wednesday I was pumped, excited, and ready to down Blackfuse again and hit some Paragons in the face.  What happened instead was a massacre.  We had people who couldn't survive the first half of the fight.  We had random deaths from stupid things.  We had lost any and all co-ordination that we had achieved the week before when he went down.  It was like we had forgotten every thing we had achieved.  I was extremely pained by our performance.

        And that brings me to a hard decision.  We have long maintained that we are a casual raiding group, but I have been pushing us in the other direction.  I believe there is a balance between the two we can find that is a happy place.  A place where more casual raiders can be comfortable to show up.  But more advanced raiders can find some benefit over frustration at wiping on content they are used to clearing one harder modes.

        I have to made a decision here between being the person who starts telling individuals to not show up, or to find a way to keep them working on a path to advancement.  That is where I am.  My frustration level personally with the performance of some people has gotten to the point where I have considered walking away from raiding until next Xpack.  I am tired of talking to walls.  I just can't justify slamming our faces against the bosses anymore when a part of the raid isn't putting in the work.

        So here is the new plan.  We are going to start from wing one from now on.  I figure in a good night we will clear wing one and part of two.  Next night we start where we left off.  We will keep working forward in this manner for the time being.  We are not ready for wing four.  The fact we are burning through Brezzes etc.. shows we are not quite there.

        Think of this as a reset.  It's a good opportunity if you want to start gearing an alt, or swap toons you have been playing with.  If you having issues playing melee and surviving you can swap to a ranged or vice versa.  If you want to try healing/tanking we may be able to work you in a bit.  Let's make this an opportunity.

       Either way, we will see wing four when one of two things happen.  1.  If we are clearing content all the way to Blackfuse within the two nights.  2.   Our DPS is all averaging about 150k and we are simply destroying stuff.  I will tell you when we started flex, my hunter was just barely over the 100k mark on DPS.  I am now normally one of the top two on the DPS chart and it's not uncommon for me to be doing 230k DPS average.  This didn't happen because hunters got buffed, or because I got the best gear, but it helped.  The bigger part is that I worked on that character.  I tightened my rotations.  I constantly rechecked my reforges and enchants.  I have put the time and effort into Lazyeye that he needed to get to this point.  This reset should be the chance to get everyone to take a breath and make sure we are working in that direction.

         This is my last stop before I let things go until Warlords of Draenor.  If you are looking at the way raiding is going to change when 6.0 drops, you know that a bit is going to change with the way we raid.  Flex will become normal, and that means that the folks who have been stepping in and raiding with us on the side will either have to be come part of the raid team, or they will have to form their own.  That means one of two things.  Either we build to the point where we can keep up and give the more advanced raiders what they want, or the guild hosts two raid teams.  That is if they don't decide to drop out of the guild and start their own to make sure they can put all the resources to the team they need.  This is something to plan for now, not later when we are jumping right into the fray.

       I know not everyone will be happy with this decision.  We may even lose one or two people.  But I am trying to look out for the whole raid team.  I also want to find what we have lost recently pushing ourselves so hard.

       Our spirit and happiness we started out with.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Critical Thinking. Yes, I Crit. (Raid update week of 4/20/2014)

I've got a lot on my mind this week.

      Tuesday was  a hard day for me.  We went in to Flex wing 3 and got kicked around my Malkorak.  A  lot.  I was already irritated that the raid seemed to have started a bit later then intended (about 20+ minutes by my count.) and was fighting a bad case of the grumps.  It didn't help that it felt like along with skill the raid had regressed to several people calling out ideas at once and folks were calling each other out on mistakes even though it wasn't our policy.  I was a horrible raid leader that night and just let things happen as I honestly was feeling to irritable to jump in and start what would have been a tirade of frustration and yelling.  By the end of the night we did manage to down Malkorak, and Spoils of Pandaria.  Thok ultimately killed us, but we will be back.

       Wednesday was much better.  We went straight to Blackfuse, and once again pull by pull things felt like they were getting better mechanic wise.  The whole mood of the raid seemed more positive then the night before and it showed.  We ended tweaking stategies and our roles a couple of times and on the last pull of the night we got Blackfuse down for the first time.  That means next week we should be fighting Paragons.  Yay progress.

        I have been doing a lot of thinking after Tuesdays raid this week.  The mood had gotten toxic enough that my wife turned off vent part way into the raid.  She eventually came back on but later told me she feels the team has lost the laid back feeling and happiness that we used to embrace.  After taking a 9 month break, and then stepping back in she hasn't been here for all the changes in the raid team and probably has one of the best views to see this.

       Honestly Wednesday morning I sat at work thinking through different ways to address the team and the problems that may have developed over this period of time.  I had speeches in my head that involved Hellfire.  Others that were kind and guiding.  I had gone over rants, rage quitting in the middle of pulls, and logging off in a foul and swearing manner for effect.  There were debates of starting progression over, rage quitting the team, or even rage quitting WoW for a while.  I was in a tumble of dark places and irritation.

       I was going over the issues we are facing.  People calling people out in front of the raid.  (There is a difference between chastising someone after a pull and saying "Hey Lag, Step out of the fire" in the middle of a fight.)  We have two many Chiefs not enough Indians complex where several voices are stepping in and trying to lead things.  We have people who get piss poor attitudes and get ornery with everyone else when things go wrong.  We have DPS who have hit that goal of 125k and instead of progressing further have regressed down to lower numbers.  There are these things and more going on right now.

       Then, as I was realizing all the issues, going over all these speeches and rants one thing occurred to me.  There is one consistent, one issue that needed fixing above all these things.

        And that was me.

        All these issues exist because I have allowed them.  I have been very non-aggressive lately in my approach of raid leading.  I have been very bare minimum on the strategies and watching videos before a pull/fight but I haven't been thinking them through.  I have let other step in, make calls etc.. without me O.K.ing that as their roll or assigning them to that job.  I have allowed all these problems to exist because I have allowed my heart and passion to wander away from the team.

        So now it's time for some critical thinking.

        I am going to start working hard to gain that passion back.  I want to be the one who is leading the team. I want to be aggressive when needed, and gently guide when it is not.  I want to walk into each fighting already thinking about who I want for what role, and where the best use of our assets are.  I want to be the one to make the calls, good and bad when we are fighting a boss.  I am going to make mistakes, but they will be honest mistakes.  I am going to try and be the person I was a year ago who could have told you the mechanics of the vast majority of classes and specs.    I want to get things to a point where they feel right and good.

        Here is my challenge to the team.  Do some critical thinking.  Where are you as far as the raid team goes?  Are you working on improving or are you just scraping the bare minimum.  Are you watching the boss fights before the raid, or are you just hoping that the strategy will make sense when someone explains it without any context to work from.  What are you doing to build the team.  Honestly, a team is better when most of it's people are taking ownership of that little part that is theirs.  Whether that is blowing up DPS charts, healing your butt off, or successfully tanking it doesn't matter.  1/10th to 1/25 of that raid is yours depending on how many folks show.  If you own and work on that part that is yours, we are all stronger for it.

       So get some critical thinking done, and lets blow up some Paragons next week.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Identity Crisis. (Raid update week of 4/13/2014)

It was the best of raids, it was the worst of raids.

       Let's start with Tuesday... after the troubles with Blackfuse I decided to take us back and we ran Flex wing one, and killed the first couple bosses of wing two in SoO.  It gave us a chance to go back and kill some bosses and remember what we've done so far.  A couple people hopped in and were able to get some gear for an alt or two as well.

     Then came Wednesday.  It was back to Blackfuse.  This time however, we started seeing the strategy come together and things started moving into place.  Every pull we were feeling a little more control of the fight and different mechanics were clicking together.  We did not down Blackfuse by the end of the night, but we sure made some good progress to bank on.

      As we raid I am looking more and more towards the next Expansion.  I am pondering how, if anything, I am going to change things or run things differently in Warlords of Draenor.  I love the fact that all the raids are going to essentially be flexable, and that I will be able to build a team around the fact that some people may not be able to make every night.  I also am looking at the role I will be playing next expansion.

       My pally Lag is not likely to be the first toon I level for the first time in three expansions.  In Cataclysm and Mists Lag was my solid main for leveling and starting out.  He was my main through the last half of Wrath of the Lich King.  Up until the last half of this expansion, if I was raiding it was on Lag.  Lazyeye however has edged him out as I've gone to a DPS role in the raiding scheme of things.  Now, Lazyeye was my main back in the day, end of Burning Crusaide/beginning of Wrath, and if feels good for him to have some recognition.

       The question going into the new expansion is am I going to stick with Lazyeye?  I mean, I love my hunter.  I am having fun with him.  But since I've been running DPS I have other options I can look at.  I could level Shimmer as Elemental/heals so that if we need a healer I will be available.  I could go Pyreknight my mage who was my first main even before Lazyeye.  I could go DK, Warrior, Lock, Priest, or even go straight Ret on Lag himself.  I have many options before me, however, I do prefer ranged DPS over Melee the majority of the time when it comes to damage dealing.

      My gut feeling is that I'm going to stick with Lazyeye for a while, and then Level Lag second.  I still use him a lot as a stand in tank and would like to make sure I'm available for that as needed.  Dizzty or Shimmer will probably be next as I like to have a healing option if needed as well.  Yes this means I will be leveling 3 characters back to back.  But, hey that's me.

      How about you all.  Are you sticking to your mains for the next expansion? Are you going to swap to a different toon/role etc...? What do you plan on doing in Draenor?

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

Wiping is not always bad.

No really, it isn't.

      Tuesday night we went back to wing three.  Our groove wasn't quiet grooving and it took three tries to down Malkorak.  A few on Spoils of Pandaria, and we ended the night watching a giant T-Rex walk confidently all over our bodies.  Not the worst raid night we have had, but we definitely had some kinks that were kicking us.  Despite it, I decided to start wing four on Wednesday....

      And that Brings us to Wednesday.  Once again Blackfuse laughed merrily as he blew us to bits.  After a bit, I handed the raid to Irritated/Fastlane who has run through this fight before.  We managed to get the boss down and learn some mechanics better at his lead, but alas the boss still won out the night being victorious.  We are however, closer to talking him down.

       That brings us to my topic for the week.  We have wiped a lot to Blackfuse the last couple of weeks.  This has been made more frustrating by internet issues and other problems that have walked into the raid with us as well.  However, between both nights we have made progress.  Every time we learn something from a pull, we are that much closer to killing the boss.

       We don't even have it bad.  We are high progression raiders, and we especially aren't world first raiders.  Those guys log in hundreds of wipes on a single boss very often as they figure out mechanics etc...  They walk in with no guides, no map to follow written by folks that have been to the raid before.  They spend 16 hours a day at times just trying to grind bosses down for a few weeks until the titles are claimed.  We spend four hours a week.

       More over, we want bosses to wipe us.  If everything was a march through one shot we would all get bored and would stop raiding quickly.  There has to be something to keep fighting, but it also needs to feel attainable.  Things should not be an endless wipefest of destruction, but it also can't be so far our of our reach that we get frustrated and walk away.  Blackfuse seems to be about right for this.  We are making noticeable progress without gaining a quick victory.  I appreciate that about this fight.  I felt the same way about Galakras to be fair, and I still hate that fight.

      That's about it for this week.  But tell me, how do you feel about wiping?

Lag

Comcast killed our Raid... (raid update week of 3/30/2014)

Well, they murdered an hour of our time anyway.

      Tuesday night was fantastic.  We went through and cleared the third wing of flex in the one night.  Malkorak went down in one shot, Treasures took a couple.  Then, Thok, the big mighty dinosaur went down.  There was much rejoicing.  That means we have now downed 9 of the bosses in the raid.  So now the test really begins... Wing 4.

      Wednesday we fought Comca... err.. Blackfuse.  He pretty much ate us alive.  And not gently, he ripped our limbs off and slowly slurped them down a piece at a time.  It was not a surprise, as we knew it would be a tough fight going in.  It is definitely a mechanics fight and as soon as we get those down we will be golden.  It didn't help that for the first hour of raid people got dropped by their internet provider (cough* Comcast * cough) in a pattern that moved across Utah.  And hit a bit of Texas.  It was one of those things that couldn't be avoided, and despite being cut an hour short we made some good progress on Blackfuse.  He may still take us a bit to get down, but people were making progress every pull.

     Belevina gets my cheerleader award this week.  Despite the floor tanking fun of Blackfuse he managed to keep up a positive attitude and shared it liberally with the rest of the group.  It is always a good thing to keep the happy vibes flowing.  That fight is going to be work and I imagine it might even be a couple of weeks before we down him.  I may switch that up with doing wings 1,2,3, alternatingly so we are still downing bosses and getting chances at loot.  As it is, I'm happy with this week and I am looking forward to stepping back in next week.

     That positive attitude is something that can not be spoken of well enough.  We had thirteen people in raid last night, and despite the setbacks and internet frustration there was no swearing, anger, or negativity about the issues.  We also didn't get the boss down below 65% but the vast majority of the feedback was constructive and everyone was trying to solve problems rather then tear other players down.  There was a few points where we had almost too much information coming out from several sources, but I would rather have a lot of ideas to sift through then dead silence.

     My next goal is to get the raid team on homework track.  I want to get people to look up boss fights, information on raids etc... so that more then a couple folks are seeing the fights before we get whacked by them.  Now we are looking at the last three bosses in this raid it is becoming very apparent that studying is needed.  We have/had met our dps goal... let's get this goal down too.  Most our dps are still maintaining the 125k dps average, a couple have dropped back down and I am working with them.  At this point bosses health is dropping quickly enough that I'm not too worried about a couple stragglers as long as they are improving.  And they are.  Right now we are running 12-16 raiders, and I have been running with about 4 healers.  (I figure with 10 you do 2-3 heals on a fight.  If we have 3-5 more peeps another healer works.)

     I feel we are finally making some good progress.  I feel things are coming together.  There is still some headbutting between people in the raid, but it's minor enough that I'm not to worried about it at this point.  That being said, I have a minor eye on it.  I have never been an aggressive raid leader, and people are working together in a manner where I don't have to step in often.  Normally, I listen to the ideas... we make choices and roll.  That being said starting next expansion I may look for a strategy master.  We will see.

Epicness

      Next week, we will see how Blackfuse fares.  I am looking forward to pounding that little goblin into the ground.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

We got Thoked. (Raid update week of 3/23/2014)

That's right folks, that happened.

        Tuesday went well.  Belevina has returned to the guild and he brought a ten man raid team with him.  I will not be running with them but I look forward to the addition of people to the guild and hope they find a good home here.  A couple of people from this group hopped into flex with us and we blew through 2nd wing of flex in the night.  Once again the only place we stumbled was Nazgrim who took  a couple of pulls to get down.  All and all it was a good night and I'm happy with it.

       Wednesday was pretty good as well.  We went in and one shot Malkorok.  After that we moved on and blew through Spoils of Pandaria.  And by blew threw, we downed the fight on the second attempt and it's the first time we have downed it.  We then moved on to Thok, whom we made a few attempts on with him stomping all over our faces.  At the end, we had gotten him to fire phase once, and I believe he will go down well next week.  Which means one thing.

       Next week, we will be doing 3rd wing, then 4th wing.  That's right.... Moving on a bit.

       Just a couple of quick things this week.  First of all, I am working on getting my Shaman geared and ready should I need her.   Yes, I'm a masochist and constantly want to be working on getting another toon ready.  By the time Warlords comes out I expect I will have a lot of toons happy and ready to go.

       I also want to thank those who pushed their DPS up.  It shows, it really does.  Our Dps charts look a lot better then they did a month ago.  While we still have a one or two that have been a little up and down they have hit the 125k mark  and I hope they will continue to improve.  I am debating doing some lighter runs on a Sunday or Saturday when I have time to see about getting gear for one or two people on the easier wing (Flex 1)

       The other option is to rotate that first days run between flex wings one, two, and three so that people who are hopping in still might have a chance here and there for a piece of gear they may have missed or want.  We will figure it out.

Anyway, that is short and sweet for this week.  (Been busy) Will catch you all next week.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Making Folks Work For It! Another Rant from Me! Yay! (Raid Update week of 3/23/2014)

Hi, this is your ornery raid leader....

      This week Tuesday was very good.  We managed to get through the second wing of SoO in one night for the first time.  The bonus to this is that we one shot every boss with the exception of Shamans.  Shamans took two shots.  But we huffed, and puffed and blew that house down in a way we haven't achieved before tonight.  I was very happy with our performance.

      Wednesday night was a little more rough.  I almost didn't make raid and was close to having to stay and close at work.  I managed to still get off, but was about ten minutes late.  Magilla and Gwyn had managed to get things started though, and we were in and raiding shortly.  Malkorak took us a few attempts, but we got him down and moved on to Spoils of Pandaria.  Spoils beat us but it also showcased the problem I have been hitting the raid team with.  We Need More Deeps!

      I threw down and Ultimatum.  I want everybody to be at a minimum of 125k dps by the end of two weeks.  If a dps shows up and can't pull that 125k floor, or close to it, they will be asked not to raid with us until they can hit it.

      We are more then a year into this expansion.  People have been hitting these numbers since Mogu'shan vaults in many cases and we are a lot of gear levels above that point.  There are too many resources in this game to not be able to make such numbers.  I put the effort into my hunter to get to 200k average dps on my hunter as my goal.  I have made that.  On fights where I just pew, pew, and I don't have a lot of swapping, moving, and dps stops I hit that 200k consistently.  As a matter of fact I am setting a new goal of 225k.  To do this I am actually going to start working on some key binds/macros I can use to up my deeps.  I wan to make sure I'm not getting complacent in what I'm doing.

      Now you may say "Lag? Why do we need to be able to hit 125k dps?"  And I will say, "Because you owe it to everyone else who shows up for raid to come in and not expect to be carried."   Let's be honest here.  If you are not working to improve, if you are showing up every week pulling substandard dps and dying constantly they your are not part of the team.  You are a detriment.

     That't right.  If you are not pulling the dps to justify being along in raid you are just one more boss that we have to beat.  Not only that, you are a boss we have to beat on top of the regular bosses every time we walk into a fight.  You can look at yourself and know that you are one of the reasons we have to fight so hard to clear every single boss.  You are one of the enemy.  I happily invite you along to help destroy the raid.

     No more.  I want to see improvement, and I want to see it consistently.  I know that our tanks and heals all work hard to keep things going.  Hell, my wife just started playing again 2 weeks ago after a 6+ month hiatus and she has fought tooth and nail to get her heals up to a point where she is feeling competitive again.  She was the one when she quit that dominated the heals charts the majority of the time.  I can tell you right now, she won't stop until she hits that point again.  Why? Because she wants to do her best.  She doesn't want to be dead weight.  She wants to compete on a level that shows that she gives a damn about how our raid team is doing.

      I may not even live religiously to that 125k minimum and I admit that now.  If you have been pulling 60-70k dps for 2 months now, not naming names, and you show up in two weeks pulling 100k.  I may say, "I see you have been working to improve.  Come next week."  Because this isn't about the numbers at the end of the day.

     It's about doing your part to support and build the team.   You are either building the team, or you are tearing it down.  Piece by piece.  I am already loosing one good raider because of this.  I am determined not to lose anymore.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.