Posts Tagged 'raid'

Durumu: The test of patience & the Maze of doom

DurumuOur poor bones.

I like this fight because I hate it.  It has an intricate ‘dance’ and a purple maze of doom. It requires the whole raid to pay attention, and beam roles are randomised,  and with lingering gaze, life drain,  the delicate balances of movement, and action and reaction. No one every gets to stand still and just face roll.

I know it’s not even considered challenging content to most 10 man guilds now, and it’s even supposed to be farm for us because we have killed him a few times, and been working on extended lock outs for some of the bosses further on. But it is an intricate fight, and so I hate to love it,  whether I heal it or dps it and always hate to love it the most when we fail at it.

The maze though is what I find the most fascinating part of it in that it is a test of patience.   Once you understand the Purple lightening on the floor to indicate the side where it is safe from the disintegration beam  you are then balancing the urge to run too far past the cleared space against getting near to that beam that is edging closer and closer. The path is very random, and we get ‘good’ and
‘bad’ paths,  the good ones, are easy enough to follow,  don’t hug the boss too close, and create enough space to allow better for our lag. The bad paths are the ones that create very little space to shuffle round the Eyes bulbous body and great beam of destruction.  Its also one thing to watch where you going, but then another to then be dpsing or healing at the same time.  Beam, Floor, Health bars, need to watch them all.

We had a bad run of it tonight.  We were pugging two, and running one under-geared because some of our normal raid people couldn’t make it, and one of our healers had thought we wouldn’t get enough for raid, so cleared it with someone else.   😦 and we lost too many people to silly things,  add bad internet connections,  unexplained lag, and just general bad.

Of course LFR has  much better survivability and I will admit that in the very early days in LFR I would ball up in my dispersion and bounce around until I found the beginnings of the safe path. 10 man is much more organised and I know what I am doing now  ( most of the time )

Every time I am in the maze, even in LFR there is a voice in my head ( and sometimes in vent.. ) saying Wait..  Wait…  now move….. wait… wait…  now move.

 

Dislike.

Zelmaru from Murloc Parliament talked about not being ‘liked’ for an unknown reason, and what you should do, if you do dislike someone in “No body likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go and eat worms” , and that has given me a reason to finish this post off.  Like Zelmaru I don’t expected to be liked by everyone, I P people off in real life.  ( hey that should be a tshirt) but it would be nice to know Why.

This post has been sitting half finished since I server transfer quit AGAIN,  and slunk back to Proudmore  with the realisation that sometimes burning bridges is a good thing.

I got asked a interesting question in my re- interview for the raiding spot   that confused me  a little because I had to think on a concept,

“Do you know you will be playing with people  you don’t like?”

I wondered at the time, and considering the grilling I got in my reinterview, and the hoops I was told I would need to jump through to prove myself,  as well as the general difficulty I had in getting them to acknowledge I want to raid –   should the question have been “Do you know you will be playing with people who don’t like you?”

When expressing my confusion at my supposed apparent and obvious dislike,  I said,  well  there was only ever really one person I had issue with – and I don’t believe he is in the guild anymore  anyway – but even me and him sorted that out with a long discussion on vent,  so we were cool. So I’m not sure what gave you the impression I don’t like someone? ( especially since I am usually uncharacteristically quite in raid )

Was  there reasons I didn’t know about that should cause me to dislike someone? –  well that kind of thinking only makes you paranoid.

I did however had to think. Who I actually liked – and I realised how little I knew them. I didn’t know most of them well enough to dislike them.

If we use the analogy that Wow raiding is very much like a 2nd job, you  may not ‘like’ everyone in the office – but you probably don’t know them all too well,  or  have an interest in doing so,  but it also doesn’t necessarily affect your working or business relationship with them. They are colleagues but not a friend. A friend is a bonus – its a deeper connection then a colleague, and you make that because of time invested.

So sometimes  it means working with people you have nothing personally in common with bar that you are at the same place and time to get a job done.

I am amazed  sometimes at such obvious dislike and I guess snark I do see in guilds that if you can get past your personal differences and still raid with someone – and not cause public disruption or another officer tell you to quit it,  well that truly is a working relationship.

Do we need like/dislike buttons against guildy names?  Am I taking this concept of like or dislike too seriously – and that  concept of like and dislike are now as serious pressing a button on a status update.

There are people I have disliked  – however they are usually terrible examples of humanity eg  the Chick that changed Peoples guild notes,  and had to have daddy clean up her forum post messes.  Or the guy who muted me in raid, and his lovely companion in that same raid that told the only other female to “Shut up you f’ken W*hore”

How do you treat other people?  has to be one of the biggest nudge worthy items on the scale of dislike or like. Do you  go out of your way to make other people’s games or lives miserable? Do you manipulate people? Spread rumours for kicks? Those kind of things shall not endear you to me.

Doesn’t matter now  – I burned my bridges – wasn’t sure who would care if I did go to the effort of saying goodbye, because even with working relationships.  When it’s not working. It’s not.

But I am not sure how I would go about displaying my dislike of someone. Perhaps I need to be clearer  about those I do like or respect, so there is a greater variable.

Sweater on backwards and inside out

We wear uniforms at school in Australia, and in school my group of friends were concert age when Alanis did her Jagged little pill tour – we were lucky to get into the mosh pit and it was pretty amazing to be so close to the artist we adored, and who’s every lyric we had memorized. After the concert It started a trend among my friends – we would wear out school jumpers inside out and back to front. I thought it was silly so initially refused – until I was told I wasn’t a big enough Alanis fan then – hint can’t hang with us .  I folded, felt stupid, but we got over it pretty quickly – and our jumpers resumed normal position.  I did it  so I felt like I belonged, and people do all sorts of things to feel excepted or part of a group.  There are other types of peer pressure , and a jumper is a very mild version of the choices  put towards us on a daily basis. In the scheme of things of a group of friends doing something that was harmlessly stupid that contributes to group cohesion ( and doesn’t involve something incredibly stupid or dangerous or harmful – yes I had to add that disclaimer)  is ok. 

When you join a new guild participating in guild activities  and your interactions in guild  is one way of finding your place in its social hierarchy, and to feel like you belong.  Sometimes it might mean wearing your sweater on backwards  for a little while.   

You also participate in ‘bonding activities.’ You might  find a new interest in Arena,  try to catch the guild after  Raid for the holiday quest, or do the LFG random,  premade  BG groups,  Go on retro raids, answer a request for someones alt wanting a carry, or even join a 10’s team.  All those things I have done to some degree, not because I want to – or that it suits my interest or goals, or even that I am going to have fun,  some of it has been obligation. No I did not want to heal through Sunwell,  but it means we get to go as a group. I don’t care about a stupid mount ( but others do), ect.

These things I think are as important in ‘bonding’ or fitting in  as actually turning up for the scheduled raid times. As much as think I am my own player, and will jump servers because I can, as well as  chose my own ‘fun’ – I want to be a loyal guildy – I like ‘team building’ when individual agendas do not rule or run the show, because I think it creates a bond beyond ‘ just a green health bar you keep topped up occasionally, I want to play with people not npc’s.

Professional sports teams do team building activities, they don’t just play and train with each other, they also let their hair down. ( sometimes too much) They see it as helping players form bonds with each other,  like each other, and therefore work better together, we don’t have to be friends, or invite each other over for barbeques,  but the better the team works together the better your results says an old management adage. It’s why teams go to lunch together, or after work drinks together.  Some guilds organise special in-game events.  Guilds have Fancy dress competitions  or even like one guild I was in did a Cow race with Taurens in Pink Tabards it’s all about fun, and bonding.

However  – I don’t want to get confused  because a building a working relationship and ‘lets be best buds forever’  is different.  It doesn’t matter how many times you run Sunwell or TK for someone because they really wanted that mount  – they will, and you will walk away as easily as it to server transfer or G quit – and it’s easy to feel betrayed because someone left you.  So keep that in mind whenever you go out of your way for someone elses goal, appreciate the bonding, but don’t get walked all over and used.  Wear your sweater backwards on occasion,  but also never be afraid to stand up for the big things.

Last Shot with a Tunnel.

I’ve never used a Tunnel for playing WOW.   It was one of the things I have held out on  – I thought it was  kind of silly to have to need to have to use a tunnel just to play a game right.

However recent developments,  and an ongoing thought process was that at this  I think this is as good as I am ever going to get, made me remember there was one thing I hadn’t tried, and that was playing using a tunnel.

So I tried Lowerping.   I paid for a month  – only $7.95 AU I picked a paid service because I hear more complaints from people using free tunnels that it makes their lag worse.

 I was curious as to how it much of a difference it made.  I know going from 3g internet to adsl made a massive difference.  Yes I used to raid in BC on Satellite broadband.

So I had been looking forward to loot night to test it because it’s the one night we get to clear untill LK – it’s the best test under a raid situation with lots of fights ect.

I had made sure I has tested it before raid, and had been running round in BG’s with it . However in ICC I started getting massive lag in the middle of trash – I had made it to Marrows room before my screen froze for several min  Had to muck around with relogging in so much they had to go without me, and Marrow died with me stuck outside. I changed servers – relogged, restarted ect

I made it up the ramp. Through some of Lady’s trash and about 1 min into the fight I got Dc’d again,  changed lowerping server again, untill finally Loot boat  and I seem to have found a nice comfy one, and got through Rot, and fester without spikes , and there is no logs from last weeks fight so I can’t compare in detail,  butI had recount running, and I don’t think there was significant difference in my performance.  I was more curious as to dot uptime/mf ticks because I think I should see even a slight change.

It’s nice to have a pretty green lag icon – I’ve gone from 400-500 depending on a zone, to 212-250  – It feels smoother, if that makes sence.It’s made tanking a little easier on my Warrior too. So I think it has made a difference to my playing, and game experience, and at this point going back to higher lag is just not acceptable so at this point I will continue the service.  It just took a little bit of fiddling round to find a better server to connect through. 

However the main motivation around getting  it was performance, I believe I picked up a little,  I still did the usually things,  dps’d add’s ect.  I got called out when I didn’t use mass dispel on Bloodqueen because an officer knew what I was not doing because I blogged about it,  and that started a whole drama of its own – where basically I had to defend the existence of my blog. Which given I had been open about it from the start was upsetting.

I kn0w a week or so may not be an empirical test, but it’s enough.  I think I have reached my peak for now.  Peak in skill / ability / patience / care factor – and I am not seeing the numbers other people are expecting to see.   but I need a break. I’m not happy – I think I have tried everything reasonably possible, and I should be seeing at least 1k -1.5 k more I guess, and I don’t want to run the risk of another post upsetting people – and I want to attempt some semblance of life outside 4 day raiding committment again.

So where to now?

I need to find a  oceanic server to park my main on to level to 85   ( Non Pvp)  realistically I probably could level to 85 in Pvp gear since the initial cata content will not require  a tier 10 4 set bonus to fight, but I think I would get frustrated rather easily trying to level and quest on a highly populated Pvp realm,  and if there are no  reasons left to stay here then  –  Aventure Ahoy.

N*pple V Circle v C0ndom

Does N*pple make this post NSFW? If So I’m Sorry – I’ve stuck a * instead of an I just in case.  I might be overtly paranoid but better to be safe then earn the wrath of workplace filters.

On LK H Mode attempts the other night.  Someones mod was overwriting the raid icons for the Valks –  someone mentioned this – and I said on vent ”  N*pple keeps disappearing”

What you call things can be a matter of who you have raided with, and what they have called the marks – and what becomes ‘socially acceptable’

Was I trying to be sexual by using that word in a raid situation,  no.  I did not have any motive behind the use of that word bar saying effectively. Circle kept dropping off.  That I did not think what word I used when I said it made me think. ” Oh..  where did that come from?”

I’ve been in raids where the circle is called n*pple , and in raids where it is called a condom, and others where it is ‘that orange mark’ or even simply circle.

There’s ongoing debate about another word of note, and I will say that changing the developing  gamer speak  / culture on the use of words while gaming is not only  with not using them yourselves, but also telling other people its inappropriateness, or even being aware its inappropriate.

There is no need to call it anything other than circle.  All three variations  have two syllables. It doesn’t make it shorter communication

So is me worrying about this  being too political correct? I mean it’s not often I ever have to refer to the circle in an WOW situation, and I think it was the first time I have ever said it outloud. Circle is not too often used as a primary marker,  it’s rather unpopular

I can’t even tell you what was going through my brain when searching for the right term to use. But it was the first word that came to my brain when identifying the raid Mark – have I heard it used so often that it’s become ‘normal’?

Whats the 1st thing that comes to your head?

Have I been brainwashed that its ok to think about raid icons having sexual meaning

Is n*pple actually sexual considering it could be gender neutral – but more often refered to as being part of other female ‘assets’

I think when I first heard that reference I was amused.   I guess I had never looked at it in that way, and of the some of the things over the years I have heard it’s quite tame.

But I am going to double think what word I use next time if only because I think I should.

Pay attention to the signs

We all hate people who give up easily.

The person who leaves after one wipe, or at the first sign of trouble  that sort of thing.

Well  you need to add up some things before you judge them so harshly. Because at least 3 people managed to escape the drama that enfolded by making a judgment call and leaving when their tolerance for bullcrap was reached.

6/12 ICC was going,  which was perfect for my healing priest who isn’t doing much at the moment,  so even though  the Raid Leader was guild-less,   it was still kind of low risk,  it was only 6/12  so expectations weren’t high,  killing 1st 4 is easy and my tolerance was going to be determined by how bad  a wipe on Marrow/Marrow trash .  If we did that  I would evaluate the situation, and see if it was worth continuing.  That was my tolerance. I wasn’t going to be saved – and I would have only had my time wasted.

So,  someone pulls while we are still forming, people die,  – and we lose a tank because I guess their tolerance was a little lower than mine.

We get in,  the lazy people summoned,  and find that someone has turned off the buff – we all leave instance  – walk into the arms of horde outside the instance  – wipe at the entrance,  and we lose another person from the raid because their tolerance was reached.

Its getting kind of clear by now what sort of group this is  – I’m still not saved so no skin off my teeth yet.

Rogues don’t disarm trap 1 – we get a skelly with adds,  its ok we are fine

Rogues still don’t disarm traps, and we get 3 skellys at once.   Its ok we get 2 down before we wipe.  We lose another person – guess they had a 3 strikes your out kinda thing going.

Marrow dies ok,  Tank had add issues on Lady,  H Gunship is all good,   and then! GUESS WHAT HAPPENS ON SUARFANG

Besides stupid people, and silly tanks Aoeing adds, and us getting 3 marks and awesome healers such as myself were keeping everyone up.

Raid leader Ninj’as DeathBringers Will after looting a mark of sanc to his friend Champo ( who Dc’s straight after)

Of course I should have expected this  – so Gargran of no guild from Blackrock,  who will probably faction change or name change or whatever anyway.  You suck.

I mean I don’t care about DBW  – not like I can use it,  but you’re an affront to fairness and all that stuff.   As for his friend Champo – can’t prove he was or wasn’t in on it. But he certainly benefited from it.

I report him and Champo,  add them both to my ignore list, tell the raid to do the same – Whisper the Ninja that he has been reported, and then  some brave soul says! Hey lets continue!  – and after some mumbling we go sure.  We are saved anyway.  Assists are given out. Some people leave then anyway.

When suddenly the Ninjas is invited back and the new leader tells us to summon

Huh?

Well considering his friend was a lock, and is no longer in raid its a bit hard.

At this point I decided my tolerance has been reached, and I tell the raid,  well if your willing to invite the ninja back attack of conscious or not ( how many ninja’s change their mind..  really..  my guess was he only accepted the invite to play further games.  I mean come on,   This guy planed a whole raid around getting his DBW  ) I told them I was no longer interested in being in the raid, and left.

Oh Look! Both him and Champo seem to be ex members of Cherry Sauce  – there’s some collaboration for you.

Sat in trade for a little while longer watching various people advising trade of the ninja,  so our ninja that was invited back doesn’t seem to have stayed in raid, and I feel a little sorry for the poor person who tried to keep the raid going by recruiting in trade with  a RL Ninja logged..   looking for more! message.

So looking back you could see several signs where this wasn’t going to end well, and also why people don’t do pugs, only so much crap you can tolerate before saying this game is no longer fun.

Mindblast More.

Boring post on replenishment.  Doing some working out. Skip to end for conclusion.

6 trys 1 kill on H PP 25 man

Overall.

There were complaints around the 4th attempt  about lack of Mana regen as  I was the only one procing it, and I was instructed to ” make sure I was procing it”   One Pally had left the raid, and the other one was not doing what ever he was before to proc it all the time so I wasn’t aware that I was the only source.

From Wow Head Replenishment

“gives 10 party or raid members (with the lowest mana left) 1% of their maximum mana every 5 second for 15 seconds, or 3% over the full duration”

So I need to Mindblast while VT is up to proc replenishment – and it has a 100 yard range.

It also refreshes if  you proc it again in that 15 secs – so there will be some overlap, as some people will still be on that list  so instead of  application  1 running for 15 secs  on say Bob.  If it gets refreshed at say 10 secs, he gets 10 seconds of Application 1 , and 15 sec of Application 2  especially if BOB runs at low mana all the time, but then bob might get it at 10 sec of application 2 and so on..  – which means 5 ticks is lost just on one person if I am MBing more then once every 15 sec. If I was refreshing it too often then the numbers of ticks would also be lower in comparison to how many MB’s there are, and if its safe to stand still I probably am casting MB more than  when I am on the run,  need to move,   refresh dots, get off the boss,  chase gas/oooze Run run  MB . move again.

A Top 10  of who got the most ticks ( the strength of the mana gain depends on your own base mana -)

What a waste of Replenishment. 2 pets are in the top 10

DPS 1714 36.1 mana 61868 mana
PET 1395 22.3 mana 31169 mana
Healer 1380 60.9 mana 84034 mana
Tank 1185 15 mana 17834 mana
DPS 1084 67.5 mana 73181 mana
Zahraah 1042 59.5 mana 61950 mana
Healer 1025 81.3 mana 83361 mana
PET 1020 22.7 mana 23180 mana
DPS 999 69.8 mana 69699 mana
Healer 907 64.9 mana 58820 mana

So Starting off at attempt 4

18 Mindblasts in that attempt , and to be perfectly honest If I’m hitting the gases,  and they are  almost  dead I am not going to refresh dots when I can MB,  so that may explain why some of my MB’s aren’t procing.

So to work out if I am Mindblasting while VT is up,

1486 replenish ticks

Theoretically if every Mindblast was Procing replenishment then

it should be 18mb x ( 10×15)  = 2700

18 mindblasts could have proc’d replenish

So that would mean  that  it was only procing or being useful   55% of the time

Try 5

1270 Ticks of Replenishment

7 hits 9 crits   = 16

16  x (15×10) = 2400  52% of the time.

Try 6

1171 replenishment ticks  5 hits  10 crits  ( 8 resisted?)

15 x (15×10) = 2250 = 52%

Kill

2932 – Replenishment from me 10 hits 18 crits

28 x (15×10) 4200 69%

2569 ( from a pally who joined fight/did his thing)

so my 69% was higher. I was MBing  more though – which I was under the impression should not be necessary.  I have kept my 5/5 Mindblast CD reduction,  but a lot of 4 piece t10 builds haven’t, and put the points into things like inner focus, and threat reduction, and improved VE.

Not every mindblast is cast with the intent to Proc Replenish. I should have VT up as often as possible,  but if it falls off mid cast,  I’m not going to stop MB reapply the dot then recast MB that would be a dps loss.

I don’t know if I’m the only one procing replenishment.   We have 3 pallys that proc it a random bosses, and random times. So I can’t tell when I should be mindblasting more then what should be necessary because I’m not psychic and they don’t tell me ” I don’t feel like procing it this fight can you mindblast more”

If I worry about mindblasting more than I let dots fall off because MB is more important when VT is up then reapplying  DP, or sticking all my dots on target, and then Mindblasting.

It also depends on how many times I need to move. H PP means lots of movement – running away from things.  If you stand still you get hit with Goo while you have 2 stacks of disease.  ( happened twice) so I fail more often.

Vt’s shorter uptime, means it falls off quicker,  it also has a cast time,  and very difficult to cast on the run,  which I why DP and SWP are easier to stick up  while getting into position.  If your stationery VT will go up first most of the time.

So I went to look at  another PP fights we still had logs up for. We one shot him last week – and I found another thing to consider.

Pally 1 3299 ticks, Pally 2 3007 ticks me 343 ticks

Mindblast = 21 times.  So why is my ticks so low.  If the pallys were procing it  all the time,  then every time I proc’d it it would get over ridden by one of them

Looked at another guilds logs  – they had 3 sources of replenishment for 2 H PP attempts

2 attempts by another shadow priest

sp1 3382 47 MB’s  47 x (15×10) 7050 47%

sp 2 1831  42 Mb’s  42 x ( 15×10) 6300 29%

This shows me that I am not MBing enough.

So In summary

I should be casting MB more if I am the only source of replenishment

It would be helpful to know if I’m on the one who will be procing it.

If someones  replenishment gets refreshed by me, or someone else, ticks are ‘lost’*

Pets also have mana, and will use a replenish tick, or a couple,  or a thousand or so. .

The Ultimate conclusion, and this stings a little. I AM ONLY GOOD AS A  MANA BATTERY

Ok I don’t really feel that way all the time.

While theoretically MBing shouldnt be a dps loss. I don’t have the haste  the two priests I used as comparison do. Cast time is a little lower,  easier to squeeze in, T

I don’t know maybe I’m clutching at straws and excuses. But just when  I feel when I start feeling like I am doing better dps wise, and I have been.  I fail at  Procing replenishment enough.

Kicking

A while ago  I was in a GDKP once where we made a decision to kick two players for low dps.  They were not performing as to their gear, and logs seemed to show an activity level of about 50 % each. They were a Pally healer, and a Rogue and from the same guild – of which they were the only two on.

We weren’t sure who the Pally was healing, or when because their affective healing was just above a ret Pally -and they weren’t using beacon.  The Rogue’s attacks were discussed by people who knew Rogues, and it was determined that when they were doing damage most of their damage was auto attacking.  Neither of them were on vent after repeated requests the whole run to get on.  (The loot rules were clear –  no vent, no loot – but I’ve never seen this enforced.)  So they weren’t involved in the discussion about their failures.

The theory was they were being duel boxed. 

It’s an interesting way to make easy gold.  Duel box them through a GDKP.  Not likely to be noticed,  one is a dps melee, and the other a healer –    If they hadn’t had been from the same guild, separately they would have been dismissed as poor players, and probably continued to be carried. Their extremely poor performance was noticed by several ” What is that Rogue doing… ”  Healers complained” Why isn’t the pally using beacon..”  So they were looked at closer. It was also noted that they had bidded a few times, but were not buying up loot either, and someone picked up their activity on the basis that comments were made about ” the pally just standing there most of the time” 

There was enough evidence – and this was put forward to the raid,  that they were trying to put in less effort and get rewarded twice  for it.  A Vote was called

“Click  No to kick on a ready check”

They weren’t on vent listening, and most people auto click yes on ready checks.

The vote passed, it was explained briefly in raid chat why they were kicked, and they were removed from the group.

It’s an implied rule in a GDKP that you perform reasonably to your class and gear expectations. Your not paying for a carry where it doesn’t matter what you do,  your still expected to reasonably participate, you don’t want a GDKP where everyone is so well geared they don’t need loot,  nor do you want a raid of poorly geared people because then you don’t get far enough to kill anything.

I’m not so sure if it were their performance which made the vote pass, or that fact that we thought we had been cheated. Bringing two underperforming toons to a GDKP raid, and expecting to profit x 2 was not considered fair.  Did we have proof? – a case was put forward,  supported by unrelated people, a key factor being their active time which was determined irrefutable by a live log.  If they had just sucked then we would have kept them,  but  the majority felt strongly enough about this deception to kick them.

I voted to kick. 

The RL tried to be as fair about this as possible – gave them an opportunity to explain and we had enough material for the ‘case’ but still we have no proof that they were a duel boxer,  only a probability.   They were peer judged  based on the measuring tools we had our disposal.

I did another raid recently as a holy priest, and we had a disc priest healing as well – the raid tried to peer judge the Disc priest – but she had enough people who knew enough about disc priests who were willing to speak up, this was reinforced when the disc priest linked her recount with the disc priest estimated absorbtion add-on bit  – and she was kicking all the healers butts.  But this really makes me think,  how careful you need to be when questioning performance, based on what we know about a class / role / assignment and the strength of our measuring tools, and that perhaps we should have given them the benefit of the doubt.

Wednesday: The Raiding Monday

Wednesdays are our first raid night in the new raiding week after a raid ID reset in our our Time Zone.  A guildy was saying last night how Wednesday is the raiding Monday, and I say ”  But I look forward to Wednesdays”  and I do.  It is the raiding monday,  but unlike an office monday – Wednesdays are fun!   The fresh start to a raiding week,  free raid ID’s and a world of possibilities for plums.

Last night saw us down Sindragossa Hardmode on 25  – I can’t show you my achievement because for what ever strange reason,  my activity feed stopped at Dreamwalker but it’s on my Iphone Wow armory(  I shall update and boast further when it pops up)

I have been healing our Heroic Sin attempts,  and feeling a little down about the metres.   I recently replaced my Gylph of Guardian spirit with Circle of healing on both my priests,  and its making  a massive difference, so while I may not have the all the gear – now with 4 piece healing offset sanc on my Main, and urh..  a better glyph –  I did ok. 

The GS Gylph  with its 1 min cool down was awesome for bonus healing when I was an unconfident 5 man healer, but that’s long past now. The additional pressure in  2 healing 10 mans, and omg having to be somewhat important  as a healer on Sin 25 heroic attempts  (when three of your healers get unchained magic at a time – some of my heals count)  means that my hodged podged usual faceroll healing style isn’t going to cut it. 

I heal most of my Random Dungeons unless I get a run with a tank because the DPS queues at around 13 min is just not acceptable, and I find myself now having to mute myself in my eagerness to heal sometimes.  I officially no longer hate healing.

To add to my healing experience,  I healed 25 games of Arena  3v3 last night  ( really.. ) as holy.  *Shock *horror* awe*  I’ve told them if they are serious about doing this then I am happy to heal, and also to go Pvp Disc. So I shall be practising my  Disc healing this week.  * bites nails nervously

“I got bubbles.. pretty bubbles..  who could ask for anything more”

It was only yesterday I said I should say no more often,  but all the cool kids are doing arena now  – and it will be  chance to play disc and try for a pvp weapon.

I felt like a Piñata  most of the time, if they ignored me we did ok, disc will give me better survivability so I am looking forward to less lock downs – and it was fun.  When I died, as holy  I have enough time to do a Divine Hymn  POM, COH and sometimes a renew on both  before I make that dreadful  urghhhhh sound  as I lose spirit form, and become a huddled mess on the arena floor.

Arena, has never been part of the game I ever explored seriously – who knows I might get dumped 😛  but I wouldn’t mind giving it a decent shot.

“I can’t… mum’s cooking a lamb roast.”

Michael Grays Ready check: How to make that vital member show up made me think about when the idea  of  when a committment to people on the interwebs became as important as a committment to people in my real life,  and  how easily I can be manipulated when it comes to wow commitments. There are some things I don’t say no to that I should.

The main point I got from the  article was  about getting that vital person to turn up to your raids, and basically applying social pressure, via guilt trips and ego stroking to make them. ” We need you..  stroke The raid can’t go ahead without you ” stroke

In a progression guild environment,  if you needed to apply this type of pressure on any of your essential people,  then your already in trouble – guilds work because  there is an automatic assumption of commitment as per your agreed raiding times,  you turn up – you get purples – progression  – prestige – what ever the aim.  Most non casual guilds  have attendance requirements. If you don’t meet them, then you will miss out on things and get replaced.

How to make a raid member show up, is worth a read,  but I am going to assume that it’s written partially tongue in cheek.  You should not have to manipulate someone into a commitment.  In game.  In real life.

One point of the article that disturbs me a little in it’s use for exerting social pressure  is the part of Michael’s article  “Trade some contact information” It’s no longer just posting  on a forum saying your late – not available.  It’s having your personal email address,  Mobile number, Home number made available to people who will try to peer pressure you into being available for what they want you to be.  Of course it’s still your choice to share this information.

I can tell you the exact moment when my Wow/Real Life commitment priority switch got confused for the 1st time.  I was sitting in a dodgy Irish Pub In Sydney on a weekend drinking beer with friends,  and getting anxious that I might be missing out on  late night bit of raiding they were trying to squeeze in outside of normal raiding times. Having to be anti social and email from my phone the raid leader telling them,  that I would not likely make it home in time, and that I was sorry.  Looking at my friend laughing at me when I explained what I was doing.

That was by email,  not so bad.

But imagine getting a call from someone.  ”  The Raid will be called if you don’t turn up”   How does that make you feel?  Even the coldest of hearts has to be thinking.  “If  I’m not there – 9 other people have had their time wasted. ”

This is my list of what I consider to be the methods of communicating social/peer  pressure with the most  affective at the top, based on methods to make it difficult to  ignore social pressure  ( so yeah if you really want me to do something you better be asking me face to face.)

1) face to face
2) Phone call / vent
3) text message
4) Whisper In game
5) email
6) forum post

There are people I have shared personal contact information with,  while it can have it’s uses I probably have been somewhat pressured to  be available by my ability to be contacted .  (  I am not talking about you.  Yes I know that’s what your thinking.)

With the implementation of real ID – hiding on an alt will be difficult and I’m undecided as to if I want to use it because of its additional way it makes me contactable.

I know your playing, and you are in…    Why are you ignoring me?

I don’t have a secret alt  I hide on,  but I know some people who do – or only share it with some people.

Like most social media trends it will depend on if my friends use it – and whats it’s used for.  So I will wait  – am happy to be a sheep rather than a trend setter.   I am interested in its potential,  and eagerly await the scandals that I am sure will appear in trade channel and forums, and will be interesting to see if it will be used to exert peer pressure/social pressure


Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,017 other subscribers

 

Add to Google

Wanna Email me?

Provided by Nexodyne

Archives

Blog Azeroth

Blog Stats

  • 835,871 hits