The Blame Game Rant

My rant:

I thought about putting this on our guild site, where I leave most of my posts; however I felt too many people would take this the wrong way or quite honestly wonder what I was smoking and not think it had any bearing to their game play.

My circumstance involved a PUG run, however the 2 rogues in the run were actually from my guild. The rest of the group was an 80 tank, a 78 healer (myself) and a 78 hunter. We were going into Hall of Lightning because of the fact that many people had a quest or two there, however The Tank and I were the only ones who had ever run the instance before. Overall the group was great; The Tank kept an eye on my mana and didn’t pull if he saw I was drinking, the hunter read what we put in chat and actually understood his role in the boss fights.

But then were the rogues. On Ionar, they died a lot. They wouldn’t stop dps long enough to back away when the tank became the Static Overload. (which even though randomly happened a lot) They were both being dealt, along with the tank @ 8000 hp damage in 6 seconds. Even with Wild Growth going I could usually only keep one of the rogues up if they would not back away during this stage. After about 3 deaths the tank decided to go over the fight again (I had done it the first time). He never said anything about fault, he just said well let’s re-think our strategy because something isn’t working…..and then the whining began. “Well if we could get a heal we would have killed him” “Well we can’t kill stuff if we are dead if you could pull aggro” and it continued from there.

Never once did anyone else in the group say anything disparaging about the rogues (who were friends of each others) all we did is say you know what this isn’t working and if we want to continue we need to discuss changes; however they went ahead and started finger pointing.

The tank and I whispered amongst ourselves, basically agreed to pull Ionar one more time, I didn’t waste a single heal on the rogues and they fell quickly because of it. (I did watch them, if they had followed instructions this time I would have healed them) Without having to try to heal them, the hunter, the tank and I downed Ionar. It was a long fight but we got it done. We tried Loken once, but since movement was again an essential part of this fight we quickly died. As we all ran back to the instance there were respawns and the tank, hunter and I all said we were not willing to re-clear and quickly broke up.

The rest of the weekend I had to stay out of guild chat because one of the two rogues continued his diatribe on looking for a "real healer" every time he wanted to do a run. Even though I had not discussed what had happened to the anyone in the guild except my boyfriend, none of the other healers would run with him this weekend because of his behavior in chat. As one priest whispered me about it asking me what happened (which I declined not because I didn't want to vent but more because I didn't want to cause any guild drama) he was afraid what the rogue would say if he ran with him.

The only person I told any of the story too was our 2 raid leaders and basically I just said that if they wanted me to raid then they couldn't assign a certain rogue to my group. (It shouldn't be a hardship we have 3 10 man groups starting)

I know my boyfriend thinks I am being a bit too sensitive, but it is not fun for me to work/play with people who refuse to ever take responsibility for anything and feel the need to blame someone. I myself have cause a wipe or 2 ..or more…in my 3 years of playing and I have always sucked it up and apologized. I was taught as a child that the first person you point the finger at is yourself, and if after doing that you can 100% say that it was not your fault then you need to work on a solution. The hand that the finger is on needs to be put to work and not continue in some blame fest where nothing will ever get done and nothing occurs but the creation of bad feelings.

I guess what my rant is about is one that is common to WOW. I really wish that people would realize there are actual 3-D Real Life people on the other end of the toons, as more than just an intellectual exercise. Realize that blame doesn’t get things done and if you are feeling like someone isn’t doing their job and it bothers you then leave, move on, find a different group if your only other option you see is to start the blame game.

What I will do this weekend

So Wotlk will be coming out tomorrow and I am making plans. After the debacle of what occurred on the last "standard Maintenance day" a lot of my plans are including not entering WOW at all.

The new James Bond movie is coming out so I planned with some friends to go to that.

I will go out and buy the game tomorrow, however I think to some extent that Blizzard has rushed this expansion in an attempt to get the holiday shopping dollars.

At the very least nothing will happen and we will all play the game this morning with maybe just a little lag from the popularity of the Northrend servers.

At the most we will all be afflicted with the ancient curse of "May you live in interesting times".

Definition of Usefulness

Lately our guild has started raiding again. With the break up of the old guild most of our raiding stopped. We could still handle Kara and ZA but could no longer get 25 people together. With the expansion on the horizon a lot of our players have been coming back and with some recruitment we once again have enough to consistently run 25 mans.

We have been planning one raid of burning Crusade material and one of old school to help with achievements. This weekend we had a Gruul's/Mags run and a Molten core run planned. One of our new players who has been begging to raid was invited to Kara last week and loved it.

This week when we invited him to the Gruul's/Mags run he accepted initially. Saturday morning, however, when the actual invites went out he declined. We didn't have a problem with the fact that he declined, real life issues can come up, and he is a kid so maybe mom said no. The problem came when he told us he didn't want to come because this close to the expansion raiding was useless.

A lot of us in the Raid were a little perturbed to put it mildly that he would tell us something we were enjoying was useless. I tried to ask him to tell why, thinking not to have him dig himself a deeper hole, but that typing does not always convey true meaning and if he elaborated it would create more understanding. He stated that with the expansion 2 weeks away gearing up with raid drops was silly. I told him that we weren't raiding at this point for the gear we were raiding to hang out with each other and to come together as a guild. Also good practice for the future raids for the new and older guildies to shake off the raiding cobwebs and remember how to work together.

Well this guy was having none of it and said it was useless once again and then asked in guild if anyone wanted to do MgT. At this point I whispered him and asked why MgT was not useless when a guild run was? He really didn't have an answer to this and at that point he just ignored everyone and went off to pug MgT. Our Raid leader was highly upset and pretty much said that this character would not be doing any raids in the future unless he apologized.

He has the right to his choice and I am trying to cut him a little slack for being a kid. I just hope that in hindsight he understands that he stepped on a lot of toes on Saturday. It is never a good thing to sign up and at the last minute decline, but his real offense is by saying the raid was useless it made those of us who were in the raid feel as if he was saying we were useless. We continued on and downed Gruul's, then we ended up becoming 2 Kara runs instead of Mags. I had fun and I believe everyone else who was in the raid did as well. The camaraderie that comes in a group made the game fun and I hope some day he understands why that can be a very useful thing.

Expansion and Plans of MIce and Trees

My name is Brierley and I am a slow leveler.

I wasn't 60 when burning crusade came out, but a lot of the raiders of our guild had been in kara almost 6 months before I even dinged 70.

Now, somehow, I have become healing raid leader and one of the few people in our guild whose primary toon is a healer.

I have to level my warlock concurrently however because she is the herbalist to my druid's alchemy.

I also want to have fun, which honestly means in a couple of months I expect to get de-officered(not that I care overly much) as the majority of the raiding group hits 80 way before i do.

There are people in my guild taking days off around the release of Wrath king, but I don't plan to. With all the errors that came up from the last big patch, I expect something similar to happen with the expansion.

I will be going to wal-mart at my lunch break to buy copies of Wrath on the release date, but that is about it. I will hopefully play that weekend but no other plans.

Anyways
more animals

I have been given power time to be afraid

So ,
When the guild I had been in for 2 years broke up the guild I am now in Whoville started. When we started some people even asked me if I wanted to be an officer , but at the time I wasn't even sure if I would stay with the off shoot from my old guild or decide to take my druid and go Ronin for awhile.

One of the people who was an officer, she was healing raid leader and guild XO, had to leave the game for personal reasons. The guild has been holding her position open for her with the hopes that she would be able to come back, however recently it became clear that she would not return.

I am not sure why they decided to open up the position, but this weekend I was asked to fill it. Part of me wanted to say no; every time I end up officially taking a responsibility role in a hobby or game it sucks all the fun out of it for me. After consideration though I said yes because I realized that I have been doing the job anyways, and the position gives me the official sanctioning in case someone in the future questions why they should listen to me during raids.

I am also thinking that there is a good chance I won't have the role for long, because I have to be one of the slower levelers in the game. I have 2 70's after 2 1/2 years and one just dinged not that long ago.

Hmmmm, maybe that will be part of my evil plan to not have responsibility long. I will level at my usual pace and as the guild grows I will recruit good healers and see who hits 80 first and seems to want the mantle and happily give the title and worries of leadership once again

Healing Durn for fun

So last night I was flying around Nagrand opening the little areas on the map that had not been opened yet when I saw a plea for a healer for Durn. Now my guild hadn't planned on doing any group events until the weekend and I wanted tot test drive my heals a bit.

One thing I will say is I overhealed like crazy since I wanted to watch the ticks and figure out how my healing was doing. One problem I found out this morning though is that the tree of life form was giving some insane 300% healing to the group.

I was all set to come on this morning and talk about how my Wild Growth had done a group crit and had healed in one tick for 1500. I realize now though that under normal tree of life bonus it would have just ticked for @ 500 on each person. Not that this is bad, but when I saw the sea of +1500 heals and more I was in healer heaven :)

Looking at my healing

Well I did a little healing yesterday, the server stayed up long enough. I don't see a lot of change. I ended up with this spec


And so far I notice a difference in my Rejuv and Regrowth. I also need to remember to use my Wild Growth. I guess it was good that even with an add on I was never the greatest lifebloom roller, so for me I was more used to throwing a rejuv down on the tank anyways. I also had my trinket macros written for Rejuvenation so I used it more than my fellow resto druid. The other resto druid in the guild, who was a better healer than I was, I think will have more difficulty adjusting since she rocked the whole bloom roll thing.

The main change I have seen when playing by switching over to spellpower is now I kill things much faster. I was considering leveling Boomkin but now I may stay resto.

Getting on the new patch train

So finally got on last night for about a 1/2 hour before I got kicked again.
I quickly sent my druid off to Stormwind to train and to take a peak the the new Stormwind harbor.

I will say the harbor is very impressive. Those dwarf workmen kicked some serious butt to get all of that completed in the time they were given :). I wish we could fly over the harbor, if no where else, It was just that pretty.

I have re-specced 10/0/51 resto. Switched around to get the gift of earth mother since I read a few things that sounded interesting about that talent. I will re-spec again once the leveling process starts up but I wanted to play with resto for a bit first.

The achievement thing really excites me. I know there are people who are already using it as a way to compare "size". I have 1500 achievement points while you only have 800. And others who are disappointed you can't trade the points for gear or gifts. I am just glad to have something I can do solo that is kind of silly and fun. I already collected pets, though I discovered I only had 22 :( LOL well an excuse to go buying now :). I also have opened a couple of maps just because.

My only complaint is I hope over time maybe they allow you to turn off the achievement announcements. I don't want to annoy my guildies too much and it can be a little annoying in the cities when everything kept proccing. (Though I also realize it will slow down once we have all memorized the stuff from our bank.)

Anyways looking forward to the game at the moment. Hoping the patch keeps me enthralled enough to want to play this winter.

Kodo Charm

I just wanted to let people know that if your BRD group needs a healer or lock and you want a kodo to drop invite me :)

I have seen the kodo every time on my druid (haven't won one yet, but not really sure if I want one) and I have seen either the ram or the kodo on my lock and once both in one trip. (she won the ram)

I was really happy one time I went with an all guild run on vent. One of our MT's also has a gnome mage and he absolutely hates the chicken. The sound annoys him when he is playing and the motion he says makes him a bit ill, so he was hoping for a kodo or ram to drop. Well we got the kodo, I passed on it since I knew how much he wanted off the chicken but everyone else rolled.

His son, the Boomkin, won it. Amidst all the cheering and gratz from the rest of the crowd you hear this tiny whisper from the tank of "you are so grounded now" which of course made the rest of us totally bust up.

Two days later, we are in a run together again and the kodo drops once again (since he has tanked BRD quite a few times and seen it only with the tree along I have become his favorite healer lol). This time the WOW gods are shining upon him and he rolls a 99 and goes gallivanting around IF. He pressed his space bar to hear the growl but otherwise he praised the silent stealthiness of the giant lizard.

His only complaint was he felt like he was playing the Kodo because he could not see the toon of his mage at all. He loves his new Kodo but he wants the ram now as well so he can see which he likes better. Even though my druid has not received any useful drops in BRD (lost the Hops to a ret pally allowed to roll ahhh the joy of PUGS ;) ) I have found it very fun and enjoyable.

Doing Wacky Things

Well the meeting was kind of a bust :). I mean everyone came to them and everything and it is a good idea for people to communicate, but I couldn't make the earlier ones so I went to the last one and it was all of 3 people so not much was done.

Our fearless leader discussed the fact that he should be back playing soon and let us know that his real life health issues were almost over. He also has a new significant other who doesn't play, so of course he's reducing his WOW time for that as well.

The only thing I did this weekend that sort of shocked my guild was re-speccing. I have only re-specced once before and that was close to 6 months ago when i hit 70 and became a resto druid. It only cost me 10 gold and I plan on re-speccing back to resto on Thursday or Friday before our kara run. I have just never been feral before. I leveled 0-70 as a balance druid (I was @ level 58 when BC came out) and became resto when I realized that in almost every instance run I had done, even balance, I ended up the healer, so thought I'd go all the way this time :).

I have been doing the dailies as feral, and I am not uncrushable but I am awful close with the gear I have gotten in Kara as off-spec drops (400 right now). When the expansion comes out though I wanted to see how I will prefer to level..balance or feral, and I am thinking balance.

I do believe feral is more efficient but since I have never really played feral I keep dieing when doing the dailies since I don't think I am using the most efficient group of talents. I will play with it this week and see what happens.

Sometimes it seems like our guild is full of healers and a day later everyone is wondering where the healers are. I wish I could play more with feral but the guild keeps whispering me if my re-spec is permanent and not telling me to switch back but definitely panicking a bit that I may not.

Guild meeting

So,
this weekend our guild leader who has been ill for a couple of weeks has called a guild meeting. He posted 3 times for next weekend and has made it mandatory to attend (except in extenuating circumstances; e.g. one of our members is being induced. Having Baby very much greater than WOW lol)

I think the idea of a guild meeting is a great thing, but when I look at the post on our boards with the agenda and it discusses the concerns he wants to bring up and suddenly I am 10 years old headed to the Principal's Office again.

We are a far from perfect guild, and I definitely think there are concerns, but I just wish he wouldn't have brought up the word until the meeting itself lol. For one thing it kind of makes me not want to go, just in case. Not that I feel like I am a concern, but you just never know. Also it makes me at least wonder if the entire meeting is going to be a bitch session, which is so not how I want to spend my saturday.

I will attend the meeting on Saturday, and I will probably stay pretty quiet. The main concern I have with this guild is we have too many chiefs and not enough indians. Kind of reminds me of an office I worked in with 4 managers and only 2 employees (yep the chiefs outnumbered the indians). Each Chief wanted things done just a little different and made it quite impossible to ever actually get stuff done or show initiative when at least one boss would not be happy. As an indian in the beginning I got in a lot of trouble for pointing it out to them, that we had no consistency in operations, so I learned to keep my head down and plan to do the same this weekend.

Anyways will be interesting if anything actually gets said or if it is just a bunch of people waiting to see if a shoe drops. .

Idiot Druid rant

Ok I don't remember where I read this but it made me angry and I wanted to write a letter to the two idiotic resto druids giving us a bad name.

Dear Idot Resto Druids (hereby referred to as IRD's) dancing on the stable roof, I too am on a server where the odds are pretty good we will lose EoTS, WSG and AB. But as a resto druid it is my job to heal, and my job to help my team to the best of my abilities to win the battleground. I know there is a slight trend to go into a BG to lose but that is anathema to my way of thinking and I wish it was reportable.

As a HoT healer, even in a losing BG I am usually first or second on the healing charts. (If the hordies win sometimes one of their healers will beat me out.) If you have a competitive streak I want you to go out, and top the healing charts. Not dance on a roof, though I appreciate you dancing as feral so people who didn't talk or inspect you may not have known you were shaming resto druids with your behavior.

If dying bugs you then before the start of the BG let people know you are a healer and talk to a rogue or anyone about teaming up to capture bases or transport flags. I know the pain of people crying for heals and being unable to help because i am dead once again. Usually by this point the horde have figured out I am a healer and just like the alliance the policy is attack healers first. I also know the pain of my own teammates complaining I don't heal them while they never help defend me from the 10 hordies who decided to pile on the tree (even though I usually stay elf just to give me a few more seconds before they figure out I am a healer).

Honestly though for me the fun comes not in the token at the end but in the fight, in the moment right before a rogue dies when I throw a rejuv/swiftmend on them that crits and in the final seconds of a one sided battle the tables turn. The fun that happens when said rogue decides I am their pocket healer and uses me for bait for the rest of the fight. They even occasionally let me moonfire at the last second so some of the kills were mine lol (something I rarely get).

I agree it is not fun to run EoTS 40 times because alliance can not seem to win this week, but then switch BG's for awhile or do some quests back in the Outlands or Azeroth.

Either way, if you don't want to play a BG but want to dance go hang out at any inn or in front of the SW bank.

Please whatever you do stop being IRD's and giving druids of all flavors a bad name. Have some real fun in the BG's and before you know it your extra heals, your extra moonfire (even one that crits at 1500 lol resto druid does not equal high damage) may turn a losing BG into a winning one. I think that is a lot more fun than dancing, even in bear form.
Brierley

Introduction

Hey :)
Decided to start a WOW blog. I realized on my other blog I was commenting about WOW about half of the time and thought I'd start something a bit more specialized.

I currently have 2 main toons:
A 70 elf Resto druid who raids Kara with her guild and PUGs SSC/TK and ZA
A 70 gnome destruction warlock that has primarily become my farming charachter and oocasionally gets to go on a raid.

I also have a myriad of lower level alts.

The friends who got me started on WOW were both alliance players on the Bronzebeard server which is why most of what I comment on will be from an alliance perspective.