Why Do I Raid?

Recently, I catch myself asking that question. Well, why do I raid?

For one, it's because I like the challenge. Fighting bosses that require movement, require skill, require all your attention to not screw up and die.
That is what I like and hope to encounter everytime new bosses are added to the game.

I also like having a responsible position in the raid. I am a healer. The raid's success highly depends on my - and the co-healers - performance. If I screw up not only might die - other might as well.

I strive for perfection. I try to always do the best I can, paying attention to things around me.

I don't really care about what drops. It's nice to upgrade items, getting better at what I'm supposed to do, having to worry less about healing output, mana issues and stuff like that.

There are downsides to raiding, however.

Having to put up with people's inability to walk a straight line, seemingly. There are cases in which I ask myself "what is this person DOING here?"
You should at least try to do your job in an acceptable manner, try to not be the reason why the raid as a whole is failing in the end.

Second, the mentality of depending on the healers to save you from dying to your mistakes, simply ignoring damage sources or debuffs or reacting to slow, puts a vast amount on stress on the healers. For example, if my fellow healers and I are struggling with mana on bosses which we killed several times already, some people are doing stuff wrong.

I'm also quite pissed off by the fact that people blame their own inability on outside sources. Weather... their own lack of gear (and by now, several months into ICC you should have been able to take care of that - if not, raid on your main, not on your bazillionth twink)...
Yes, but your healers always have to be playing perfect, because else we would accomplish nothing at all.

We are just as you. Not perfect. But, in contrast to you, we recognize our mistakes. We even try to save the situation if we messed up. I got caught in a malleable slime on Festergut Heroic because I was just a second too slow?
Fine, I'll resort to instant spells for a few moments. As disc, I have enough of them. I see Sucara got caught by one? I'll just put out some more healing to compensate.

As I mentioned in another post, I have no problem with wiping several times.
It's a part of raiding, that I somehow enjoy. It means we made a mistake and we have to analyze what went wrong.

However, it's no fun, when people start to make the same mistakes over and over again. Ignore given tips and just repeat the same bad performance all over again.
Some people refer to these people as noobs.
I refer to them as being lazy, not caring about improving themselves.

Is it that hard to remember what you have to do for more than ten seconds?
Is it that hard to put out the needed DPS you should be able to pull with your gear, and the buff?
Is it that hard to try to not screw up every single try?

There are superb players. There are good players. Then there are the players who are good on some bosses, but totally overwhelmed on others.

That is okay.

But I don't want to boost "noobs".
I don't want to have this extra stress on my shoulders because I have to smooth away their faults.

That is what causes me to lose the fun in raiding. Asking myself "Why am I doing this?"

I accepted that I'll probably never see some bosses on Heroic. Putricide, Sindragosa, Lich King... hey, that's okay. I don't care that much. Maybe we'll kill them in Cataclym on Level 85 with Tier 11.
That's why I don't need to raid 25mans, or search for a guild that maybe is just a little bit better than you guys. I don't care that much about being in the 5% of the best players on our server.

However, some days of raiding make me think if I should take a step back with raiding till Cataclysm. I don't NEED that much gear from the first bosses there. Maybe a ring from Festergut. Or a neck from Deathbringer Saurfang. Sure, some Tier 10 upgrade tokens would be nice as well.
But... I don't NEED them that badly. They'll get replaced in the next leveling process anyway.

Nevertheless, I'm having fun raiding, most of the time. I want it to stay that way.

I'm not sure it will, if I have to lead stupid discussion about a Paladin Tank thinking Vindication could be skipped. It shouldn't even be a POINT of discussion. It reduces the damage you take. SKILL IT, for all that is holy.

I'm not sure it will, if I as a player that never played some classes could DO MORE DAMAGE than the people we have there. Give me five minutes to read a guide and I can pull 5k and more on any class, easily.

Everyone should try to improve. Not just your healers!


With that, I'll pass the question.

Why do YOU raid?

Life of a Warrior.

As I mentioned in the last post, I rolled a warrior on Agamaggan-EU, because Gevlon's Project, named "The PuG" interested me.

I reached Level 33 by now.

And okay. It's a PVP-Server. I know that this means I can be attacked by Hordies in most of the regions.

Would someone please care to explain why it is that everytime I fight against... three mobs with at least two levels above mine (which I can handle, because I level as prot), a goddamn HUNTER appears out of nowhere and begins to impale me with sharp, pointy sticks?

I went to DESOLACE because I want to avoid being ganked in Stranglethorn and what happens? A frickin' hunter stalks me in this remote place!

I hate you people with your extremely annoying pets, traps and the fact the moment I reach you I'm half dead anyway and I absolutely SUCK at pvp with melee classes.

Dear Hunters,
please go die in a fire.

Sincerely,
me.

This is another achievement post.

Yes, I got a whole lot of things done in the past time.

Here's a few chosen Achievements I earned.



Finally done with Brood of Nozdormu. Yay for never having to enter AQ again!



Proof that we killed Deathbringer Saurfang on Heroic. Buggy armory is buggy.



Hmmmm mushrooms.



This is my warrior alt I began to level on Agamaggan for The PuG



And another faction complete and yet another raid instance I will never visit again.



Oh Exodar, I love thee during Midsummer. All the absolutely clueless non-awaring horde players riding in one after the other :)



I wasn't even aware that obtaining this feat of strength was even possibly. I just was completing a few quest for my 3000 Quests Achievement! (and because I am a lore-nerd and love the AQ story)



Yay, done!
Now only around 100 more quests in Icecrown for Loremaster. Oh group quests, how I loathe thee.

The community wins.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?sid=1&topicId=25968987278

A great day for the whole community.

Regardless if it is a clever strategic plot to present something displeasing and then "look, you're right, we appreciate your feedback, we won't do this" and everything.

The WoW-Community is a strong one. A community able to stick together if the situation demands it.
Thousands of posts, hundreds of people announcing they'll cancel subscription and everything.

I am prouder to be a part of this community more than ever before

Blizzard really lost it.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13816838128&sid=1

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID -- that is, their real-life first and last name -- with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it.


This is a reaally really bad idea to do.
I don't want this.
Several thousands of people don't want this either.

The lack of statement in the forums from official side is horrible.

Furthermore, this:

"Blizzard has recently announced that it is making use of real world names and other data mandatory on the official forums for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, the long awaited strategy game sequel set to arrive on July 27, and for the World of Warcraft MMO, which should get the Cataclysm expansion. After a rather hostile reaction from the community of players, the studio revealed that it would be continuing to talk to players about the system but that it would nonetheless go ahead with its implementation." http://news.softpedia.com/news/Blizzard-Ready-to-Hear-Feedback-on-Real-ID-System-146720.shtml

I have already cancelled my subscription.
I will not pay them anymore for pulling bullshit like this.

And another one killed.

After the horrible performance the day before, the next raid went rather nice.

We finally scored a kill on Deathbringer Saurfang.
Sucara, our holy paladin and I healed the encounter, and I think it helped a lot, that I got the second mark of the fallen champion. I was able to just spam Binding Heal on the other marked player.

Due to the mana-inefficiency of that I ran out of mana just about the moment the boss fell :D

Afterwards we killed Festergut and Rotface another time on heroic, Putricide only on normal - I currently don't even want to think about that one on heroic.
It is kinda amusing how trivial these bosses are ending up. The first phase transition almost happened during the first green slime, nobody ever went dangerously low on HP and even the - at the beginning of this instance - so hard to heal 3rd phase because everyone takes damage everywhere was... kinda nonexistant. He became huge and bulky and angry but... somehow I missed the damage.

After that raidtime was almost up, so we just went over to kill that stupid val'kyr and did two tries on Dreamwalker's hardmode. Well. We were obliterated. But I did not expect anything else, to be honest.

I won't say anything.

No, I won't say anything about the last raid evening.

I'll just sit here.
Sit here and pretend.
Pretend that this was a horrible nightmare and I'll wake up any second.

Aaanny second.
Or maybe I won't and it was bitter reality.

Whatever it is, I am not amused, and not quite fond of repeating whatever the fuck you thought you were doing tonight.

I am not shocked by wiping. Hell, I wiped my way through Sindragosa and Lich King with you guys, but wiping on already downed bosses on Sunday, regardless of outside temperature, multiple times at that is not - I repeat - is NOT a valid option.

Ruby Sanctum and Beta

Ruby Sanctum is online, and although I haven't killed Halion yet, the fight is interesting.

The trash is semi-hard to easy, the minibosses...

Well, Baltharus is kinda hard, at least if DPS kinda sleep and move too slow and Blade Tempest comes right afterwards.
Saviana and General are not really hard.

Halion... well, I suppose he will be a lot of fun until the common bossmods update and the majority of people who depend on them like on air to breathe can finally handle the boss fight.

I have never before seen that a TANK kept better track of what happened than a healer.
In our few tries we had giant Fiery Combustion/Soul Consumption zones, because people didn't move / move too slow / were dispelled too late.
In one try our druid healer had Soul Consumption, ran around and didn't even dispel himself. Then he died. And half the place was filled with the void zone.
How do you even manage to achieve something like that?

Oh and then there is the EVIL LAZER THINGIE OF DOOM™ that originates from two PURPLE ROTATING BALLS™.
Our tries did last - on average - around 20 to 30 seconds in phase 2.
Yes, dear readers, that is exactly when the funny little laser starts.
And half the raid instantly dies.

Seriously?
These things are basic boss fight abilities that like every second boss in WoW uses. You know, things like "move out from the bad stuff", "manage your debuffs", "dispell debuffs", "move away from the raid with a debuff"
How do these people even manage to raid things like ICC?
Oh wait, it comes to me.... pity-buff.

I will not set another foot in a PuG for that instance on my main realm, until DBM updates - I don't need it to learn a fight, but everyone else seems to.
It's nice to keep track of boss ability cooldowns and stuff, but I could live without. Didn't need it my first time in Naxxramas and survived. And believe me, for a freshman in raiding like I was in T7 content, Naxxramas was serious.


Let's move on to more pleasant things.
The Closed Beta started two days ago, and I am furiosly F5-ing by battle-net page to see if I maybe got an invitation in the last 10 seconds.
Nah, only kidding. I wasn't in the first wave of invitations, but more are likely to come and maybe I'll get one then. We'll see.