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

We are back! (raid update week of 9/1/2014)

We downed Blackfuse finally.

      Tuesday, we marched in and took down Blackfuse in a little over an hour.  I am very happy because while this isn't the first time we have beat him, it's the first time we have done so without a couple of extra heavy hitters.  Now I know Flex compensates for extra players, but there is a difference between bringing in someone who does about 150k dps and a lock (al la Amelmi) who has topped the chart at 350k plus.  The fact is everyone there where members that have normally been raiding with us.  So when we downed Blackfuse we can say we did it under our own steam.  That is a great feeling.

     Wednesday once again was defeated by the attendance boss.  We ended up destroying Tempest keep and Black Temple for fun instead.  I'm not going to go over attendance, my feelings on this etc.. again.  I have beat that particular horse into the group and I'm tired of rehashing it.  I'm sure I'll discuss it again, but for now I'm resting that demon.

     I am holding this save for now.  We have another month, month and a half before 6.0 drops if Blizzard holds to it's normal schedule.  I honestly think we will see it the last week of September, while Magilla was betting on the first week of October.  I think if they are doing an in game event that any later then mid-October is going to be to late to give us any real time with the introduction to the new content.  I am hoping for another pre-Wrath or pre-Cata type event.  I still maintain it was a mistake to not do any more then a scenerio to open up Pandaria with.  I think that the opening events to different expansions actually gives the players an attachment to the new happenings.  How cool was the Zombie invasion before Wrath? Love or hate it people still remember that event for the city invasions, and the ability to jump around and defend different areas from the scourge invasion.

      The lead into Cataclysm was good as well.  While it didn't have the resonance of the zombie invasion, it was cool to go infiltrate the cult of the damned and work your way into the story before the world got shattered and Deathwing rose.  While that expansion had it's issues, the story at least made you feel involved with everything that was happening.

      If we keep playing we have several more expansions ahead of us.  Blizzard had already stated they are working on the expansion that comes after Warlords of Draenor, and have up to five more after that in the works.  So, for all those who think Wow is dying, be assured, there is a plan.  Do I know if I'll be playing several expansions from now?  No, I don't.  In another ten years my youngest will be nineteen.  I am fairly certain my life will be looking very different at that point in many wonderful ways.  I won't be sad if I'm still a resident of Azeroth in my spare time, but if I'm not longer there that is just the way time works.

     Wow, I walked off into a tangent.

      Anyway, next week we will start on Paragons.  I feel we have a good chance of downing them before the night is through.  Then onto Garrosh.  We will try and plant an axe into the face of good old Gary Hellscream.  (Well, an arrow in my place)  If things work out correctly we may have a chance of beating him before 6.0 drops.  At this point I wasn't expecting to get him down this expansion.  I am happy to have some of that hope back.

NSFW on this video.

      So folks, sharpen your swords, shine your armor.  Make sure your mana is full and your arrows fly true.  For next week we move on, and our foe to go down, is Paragon.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

You beta believe it!

So, I'm feeling pretty lucky right now.

      Lets review the raiding for the week first shall we? On Tuesday we started Flex wing 1 and managed the first three bosses.   I hadn't tanked this content for a good while and it showed.  When we fought Sha of Pride I know I made several mistakes, and between that and some other unlucky issues like people DCing etc... we didn't get the last boss of the wing down.

      Wednesday I went ahead and lead us into wing 4 again.  We did better then last week but still there are too many issues there.  I think this next week I may start wing 1 the first night and move to wing 3 the second as I know we can down malkorak and treasures of Pandaria continues to elude us.

       I think we have had more content resets with the raid team this expansion then we ever have.  I hope leading out of this one we will get time to down Garrosh before 6.0.  I know people are still predicting the next expansion to be out November/December.  I am more optimistic then that.  I am sticking to my guess of the expansion in September.  I think we can bet on 6.0 in mid to late August and to have the game out before Blizzcon.

      I know this isn't the popular guess.  I am still thinking that the Beta is going to be surprisingly short this time around.  We don't have to have access for over a million free passers this time, and if Pandaria has had one major success it is to show that Blizzard can put out content quickly, I even have said and still think too quickly at points.   As they continue to refine the process I think we may be pleasantly surprised this time around.  If I am wrong, I will accept it but I have high hopes that Blizzard will surprise us all.

       I went into the Mysts Beta a couple times when I had it.  This time I plan on delving a little deeper.  I am hoping to get my live stream going so I can comment and give my opinion on the things I am seeing.  As soon as everything is live I plan on going through the Alliance side on Lazyeye my hunter, and Rhapsidy my Rogue will sneak around some of the Horde content.  I am not sure how deeply I want to delve as I've always hated having to redo content or spoil myself too badly.  At  the same time I want to embrace this Beta as a new opportunity to play with some other stuff I've wanted to do.

    If I can I will even let people know when I'm streaming beta so they can hop in and watch if they like.

     We are one step closer, and before you know it, Warlords will be upon us.

Lag/Lazyeye/Dizzty

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

How Much Is Your Integrity Worth? Yes, I'm ranting again. (Raid update week of 02/13/2014)

It's a basic question, but first lets review the raiding this week.

      Tuesday went very well.  Kedec was taking a break for the first bit of the night so I was tanking on Lag.  (And being bitter about not being able to show off my deeps with my hunter's new cloak.  I admit it.)  Despite the fact I hadn't tanked any of the second wing before both Galakras and Iron Juggernaut went down in a one shot.  Then, thanks to Orheim guild tripping, Kedec came in and we three tanked, one shot Dark Shaman.  Nazgrim took two shot but he went down as well.  At that point there was only 13 minutes or so left, so we went ahead and called raid.  Wednesday night we would start on Malkorak.

      Wednesday turned out better then I thought it would.  We were down a couple of folks who were sick or otherwise incapacitated.  That being said, Old Malkorak went down on the third pull.  We then moved on to treasures of Pandaria.  This fight was rough due to some low deeps but we managed to get to 2% before we wiped.  I foresee a downing of this boss in the near future.  It, to me, was a very good raid week.

      I have been thinking since Monday on integrity.  We had a situation where at work one of the employees decided not to park where the designated parking was set, but instead decided to park in an area we try to keep open for customers during lunch.  When he had come in my boss had asked him where he was parked and the employee initially lied.  Then after a little bit of badgering he admitted he was in the wrong place but claimed not to know that he couldn't park there.  He went out to move his car, begrudgingly, and the day went on.

     My boss however, looked at me after the exchange and asked quietly, how much is your integrity worth? 75 feet?  He then went on to bagging the food for the customers and I've been stewing the thought in my head ever since.

     That employee was willing to lie for the sake of not walking that extra 75 feet.  That is about 30 extra second to walk into work.  It also is a small bit of walking for how much we move around the restaurant during and through out the day.  It should have been a minor thing, but to this employee it was worth evading and lying not to walk that 75 feet.

     There are people that say that everyone has their price.  I don't like parking down in the employee parking either but I do it anyway.  It cost me four hundred dollars to park down there when some kids from the neighboring elementary school threw rocks over the fence and smashed out my side window.  Even so, I still park down in the area designated for employee parking.  I even park further away then most of the employees as I don't feel the need to be extra close to the restaurant.  My price is much higher then this employees, as a matter of fact it is much higher then $400 apparently.

      That is not to say I'm not perfect.  I have told my own white lies to make people feel better or to try and spare feelings.  Should I do it? No.  But I'm not better then anyone else.  Do I do it often? Not really.  I try to avoid being dishonest, but at times I fall into the same trap as other people.  I feel the ends justify the means if it means keeping the peace or not offending people etc...

      Being back at my job at Chick-fil-A means that a lot of time when I'm raiding now, I have woken up at 5 am or earlier, and I'm tired.  Or that I've worked a ten to twelve hour day, and I come home and get ready to raid with folks on our team.  This means, that while tired I still and putting my time and effort into making sure things get together for everyone else.  I know people have different levels of tolerance, but sometimes I question it when people say "I'm too tired tonight." or "Well, I know it's fifteen minutes to raid, and I've been on petbattling for the last 2 hours, but hey I didn't have time to watch the raid encounter video."  Sometimes I want to call B.S.  It is O.K. to not feel like raiding and to take a night off here and there.  Stuff happens I get it.  I don't need smoke blown up my arse to spare my feelings.  Now if someone is consistently missing raid nights then we may need to talk.  If you are in a critical position such as heals or tanking this is twice as true.  Every time you don't show it effects everyone else on the team.

      This goes for people who just drop off the earth as well.  If you don't want to raid with us you can tell me.  I'm a big boy and I can take it.  I know we  are laid back and not pushing insanely hard content and that is fine for us.  It might not be fine for you and I understand if you want more of a challenge etc...  I get that.  However, if you don't have the courtesy to tell me and I have to hear things second hand that shows a lack of respect to me and everyone on the team.  For the record this isn't going to anyone in particular, but we have had lots of people of the years just suddenly stop with no explanation.   That bothers me more then if someone wants to PM me and tell me that they refuse to raid because I'm and a________.  Really, I do my best to show everyone some level of respect, and I feel that respect should be returned.

     What is your integrity worth?  Is it worth the time to make sure you are as prepared as possible when you show up for raid?  Is it worth letting the team know when and if you are going separate ways?  Is it worth the extra ten minutes it would take to look up your class on Noxxic.com or Icy-veins.com and do some work to improve your performance?  Is it worth asking for help if you can't figure out how to make your class better?

     Most of all, is it worth showing your fellow player the respect they deserve, and doing your best to be part of a team.  To me the biggest sign of integrity is just taking responsibility for what little bit of ownership you have invested in this team.  If you play like you want to be better, and help others out, that speaks more for you then any words ever can.

     Show us your integrity.

     Be part of the team.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

I miss the Lich King

Last night was pretty fun.  We went Retro.

      As is more then possible we did a quick run of heroic 25 ICC.  In about an hour and a half we had blown all the way through the entire raid getting several achievements.  It was fun, it was smooth, and most of all there was little or no tension.  There were a couple of achieves we didn't manage to get, but we can grab them later.  We also had a couple issues working on Frosttide's legendary quest, but he did get further. I'm calling the night a win.  I was kind of sad by the fact that you can heal through the remorseless winter portion of the Lich King fight now.  We just sat back and dpsed him down without running to the edges.  Adds died quick and we pretty much skipped the 2nd phase and 3rd phase as we kept pushing him down before remorseless winter was over.

     We will be back to ICC soon though.  I look forward to getting the next drake after the achieves are done, and I would love to get a couple peeps through their shadowmourne legendary quests.  I use to run retro raids for the guild here and there, but people stopped showing.  I think it might be time to revive the practice.  Not every week, but once or twice a month would be nice to go blow stuff up.  Wrath was the period where I really started raiding, and I look back on it fondly.  I did some raiding at the end of B.C., and never touched it while I was in vanilla, but I smile at a lot of the memories from back then.

     While the game has been streamlined, I almost feel at times that Wrath was a simpler time.  Gearing seemed smooth.  I wasn't afraid to pug my way into a 25 man and do some damage.  Tempers seemed not to flare up so much, and it wasn't hard to do a good job if you focused on what you needed to do.  I know that if I really looked back, it would also have the pain of sitting in trade pugging a group for Raids or dungeons.  Balance was a lot more skewed, and before duel specs it meant a lot of work if you needed to trade specs.  (I recognize that duel spec came out during wrath.)

     A lot of people learned to raid in Wrath as well.  I feel this is when raids became more accessible, and the story line really carried you through Northrend.  Arthas was everywhere, unlike Illidan who you never really saw unless you did the netherwing quest line.  It felt meaningful when you killed him.  It wasn't like Deathwing who would randomly nuke you, Arthas was looking at you specifically.  It made you feel connected to the story in a fascinating way.

     What was your favorite expansion/raiding experience?  Why?

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

The Servers Killed Our Raid! (Raid update week of 1/16/2014)

Last night was a big bottle of suck!  I am of course not talking about the raid team.

     But lets rewind to Tuesday.  It was an exercise in frustration as well.  We did better then last week and got three bosses down in the first wing of Flex SoO down.  This may seem like a little accomplishment at this point, but on the first two bosses the synergy was working well.  I dpsed on my Pally Lag as we had a new tank in the raid and I wanted to be able to step in if needed.  I was pleasantly surprised that my pally pulled decent dps in ret, even though his gear was alright, but not fantastic.  My hunter still puts away better numbers, but Lag is a solid choice if I need him as well.

    The problem was the third boss.  Things didn't sync up well on the third fight, and the tension in the raid was insane by the end of the fight.  The other tank swapped to dps, as he was getting tired and I threw on my tank set.  Boss went down.  I don't believe any of the issues we had previously to that pull was one person's fault.  Rather there was a slew of factors that added up.  It's possible I didn't explain the fight well to a couple of people.  Several folks made fatal mistakes at times when maybe they normally wouldn't have.  I think it undermines everything for folks to say... "This one person made X fail".  There were 11 people in the raid.  No single person could have made everyone else die to RNG.

     Wednesday night was... horrible.  Zangarmarsh was down! Server outages across the board pretty much killed our chanced of going in and killing more bosses.  (And Lag really wanted that two hander off of pride.)  We will get our chance next week, but it's kind of irritating when you can't run your raid because of bad luck with Blizzard.  (I'm not saying Blizzard purposely did anything.  Then again... they may hate me at this point.)

      At this point in the expansion I've given up my hopes and doing and crushing 10 man.  Right now, I want to get a team stable enough that when Warlords of Draenor launches we can hit raiding in a timely manner, knowing who is doing what.  We have several people working their way in and more then one plays a couple of different roles.  This is good.  I want to see people swap between healing/dps/ and tanking occasionally.  It helps keep the game from getting too boring, or you class from becoming a mind numbing blankness when you run it.

Fight some Foo

     Next week it will be better.  We will be better.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

     

Your allowed to Rant. Yes you are. (Raid Update 08/22/2013)

      I was debating sugar coating this post, going through, talking about how everything is all right and being the calm in the midst of the storm.  F*** that.

      We went from a point where we one shot every boss up to Tortos last week, to this week where events made it so we didn't even get past Horridon.  If you are on the raid team you are allowed to be rant, be frustrated and be grumpy as I am this morning.  What happened you may ask?

      We had too much damn change in the last week.

      First of all, we lost Ithuriol to Bridgeburners.  We wish him well over there and hope he enjoys his time.  We may see him in guest starring roles occasionally as he has some characters still in the guild, but that leaves a hole in our raiding roster that needs to be filled.  Preferably by a healer as I don't want to swap who I am gearing again, but I probably will. /sigh.

       Secondly one of our tanks had real life commitments this week, and those always trump Wow.  So the first night I was tanking on Lag again, in a raid I had previously not really tanked in.  The second night I was on my hunter, then my priest when we tried to swap things up a little.

       We also had to pull in a couple people to fill holes, (1 the first night (I still count moldie as a standby for the raid team)) and 3 the next night.  (Two being Ithuriol and Khallon's alts respectively, and we thank them for helping.)  

      I want to point out that the issues we are having are nobodies fault.  There should be no pointing finger's or irritation.  Sometimes you lose people from a raid team, that happens.  Sometimes you have a few extra spots for a night or two, that happens as well.  This week they all just happened to hit us at once, and hopefully next week will be better.  Or I will have a stroke.  I am voting for better.

      I do appreciate everyone working hard in a bad situation, but the situation as it stands may kill any chance of great progress in Throne of Thunder at this point.  Patch 5.4 drops in a few weeks on Sept. 10th, and I am not sure we can get our crap together before then.  Of course I could also be over blowing the situation and I may swap back to Dizzty and find out the raid is fine.  Right now though, I am just so frustrated, and not just for myself, for everyone else on this damn raid team that have worked so hard to get to the point of progressing again.  I owe you guys a better experience then this.

     So, this weekend, I will find a fill in.  I will look mainly at Pally or Priest heals, but will also look at DPSers.  Agility leather, Agility Mail, Strength Plate are all areas that don't have a lot of MAIN spec distribution right now, depending on how things shake up.  At this point, I will push whatever toon I am working on through the legendary quest to get them caught up, and once they are legendary, I plan on getting my other two pushed to that point.

    That's right, I plan on doing the damn legendary quest three times.  Though to be fair both Lazyeye, and Lag are well along it.

     As far as inspirational happy thoughts go, on Sept 10, we get siege of Ogrimmar.  That is a new raid.  New content, and a fresh start for us to start progressing again.  At that point, we will go one night ToT, one night Ogrimmar until ToT is done, and I plan on saving the progression since the new raid finder gear will have a higher gear score then the content we are working on.  We will push forth, and prevail.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Why you should be a Huntering

     I was probably twelve or thirteen when I was excited because my older sister has some friends over and they were going to play Dungeons and Dragons.  I had never had the opportunity to play before and I wasn't even sure what the game was completely.  They gave me a quick run down of the different classes, and races to choose from, and of course, once I found out that the ranger not only fought from a distance but could train and have an animal fight alongside him, I had found my calling.

       Soon I found myself fighting alongside my new found companions and  I grew very excited as we came upon a group of flying creatures called stirges.  I of course tamed one since they where the first animals we had come across and I wanted a pet dang it!  Finally, I had my own animal companion.  For those who haven't played Dungeons and Dragons, let me point out a stirge is a giant mosquito.  That's right, my ranger had a pet mosquito.  I was mocked, laughed at, and had eyes rolled at me, but I loved my blood sucking buddy.  I think when I tell this story, my present Hunter's pet firefly Serenity laughs at me.  A lot.

     I tell this story, because the hunters we play in World of Warcraft are very much evolved from the ranger class in Dungeons and Dragons.  Of course that is not the only place you find your hunters.  If you look through different stories you have Robin Hood, Aragorn/Strider, and Davey Crockett whom could all be considered different versions of Hunters.  Your classic Hunter would have been one of the folks who were more comfortable outside the cities and villages, communing with the animals and avoiding most society.  They were your trackers, your guides.  They could at times provide food for the community or furs to make clothing and keep folks warm.  Most are not obsessed with worldly riches wanting nothing more then to challenge the wild world around them.  These are the Hunters that have always been my obsession.

     Now, I will admit my first main character in World of Warcraft was not a Hunter, I originally played a mage named Pyreknight until the end of Vanilla Wow, and my hunter Lazyeye was born about half way through the Burning Crusade.  It was at the end of the Burning Crusade, when I first started raiding, I took my hunter into Karazhan and never looked back.  From that moment on, I was interested in raiding and moving through end game content and would work on making that one of my biggest in game focuses.

     My hunter took a hit half way through Wrath of the Lich King however.  We ended up needing a tank after our main tank on the raid team called it quits.  I quickly power leveled a Death Knight, and started tanking to take up the slack.  Then I power leveled a Paladin (Lag) who would be my main character from the end of Wrath up until recently in Pandaria.  Recent events however have made me pick my neglected hunter back up.  I only call him neglected because he wasn't my main raider.  Lazyeye still managed to see raids all the way through Wrath until now, he just wasn't the character I was spending most of my time on.  I am now excited to have him re-introduced as my main as far as raiding goes.  I feel I have taken too much time off of DPS (Damage per second) classes and it is nice to get reacquainted. 

      I love the feeling of playing a character who has ties with beasts who obey him.  I love sitting back and watching battles from a ranged perspective, being able to increase my field of vision and call out fights better then I could while tanking in a bosses crotch.  I love shooting bosses in the face, putting up competitive DPS numbers and contributing in a new way to my raid team.  So here is my list of things you should look at if you are thinking of rolling a hunter.

     Do you want to contribute to your raid? Hunters have it all.  If we select the right pets we can fill in for any buffs our raid might be missing.  No attack speed boost? No problem, magic serpent here we come.  No battle rezzer? Get a Quillen pet.  No Blood lust/Heroism?  That's cool, bring a Core Hound to raid.  While some of these are Spec specific, you can fill in for whatever your raid is missing if you plan ahead.

     Do you like soloing content? With a hunter/pet duo you will find that you can fight your way through some fights that other classes may have a hard time with.  When it comes to leveling you have great survival skills and you are less likely to find yourself getting killed or over run by mobs.

     Do you like challenges and switching things up?  There is always another pet to find, or new pets being introduced into game.  Some of these pets have unique challenges that make them not only rare, but hard to tame.  Plus, you can switch out your pet to whichever one you would like to run with you at the moment.  You can keep five pets on you, and up to fifty pets in your bank.  That is a lot of options to switch through if you want to take the time 

     Do you like being competitive DPS?  While hunters are not always the top class for blowing up charts in raids and other game play, they are very rarely near the bottom. We have enjoyed at the worst being steady, consistent DPS,  and at best dominating charts while other classes fight to keep up with us.  Oh, and lets not forget that unlike yonder days of mana bars, we can now DPS on the run as most of our shots can be fired while moving.

     Now, there are reasons you might not want to roll a hunter.

     Hunters are not tanks.  We have mad kiting skills.  We have pets that can take a pounding and hold aggro for a bit.  We do not have the skill set to mitigate damage for an insanely long amount of time and keep the raid alive through a boss fight.  While there are a couple people who may be able to pull something like this off on a hunter, most of us will just get our raids killed if we try.

     Hunters are not healers.  We have bandages, we can mend our pets, and sometimes our Spirit Beasts can cast a heal that helps out our raid.  We can not keep you alive, we would much rather be shooting something big and ugly in the face.

     Hunters are not Melee.  O.k., we no longer have a minimum range and can fight up in a bosses crotch without much penalty.  Trust me on this, you are much happier fighting further away from the boss where you can see what is going on and can feign death and watch your raid die stay far enough away from bosses to avoid some damage or avoid repair bills during a wipe.  

      So, if being a hunter appeals to you, go roll a character and see how you like it.  Others of the hunter class will welcome you with open arms.  If not, that's alright too.

     Someone needs to play the inferior classes.

Lazyeye.