Da Voodoo Shuffle

What an interesting week it has been for me dear reader. Its not so much that anything good or bad happened its just an old spark of great fun has blazed up recently and by golly if Edy-bear ain't loving it.

For starters I didn't get to raid what I normally do in a given week simply because I was unable to log on on that Tuesday and as such missed some of my normal runs. Was this a problem? Not really. I have my own share to do now that my mother is a bit down for the moment so i kinda needed a day to get some of that stuff straight anyway. That said I did raid some. So was good, some f'n fantastic and some just down right horrible.

The Good:
Friday I ran 10 TOC with some friends and as usual it went really really well, damn boots still didn't drop but it was still a hoot of a time even if I didn't get any loots. We did have a shining moment on the northrend beasts when some well placed exploding raiders took two healers and all but 3 dps with them just as we killed acidmaw. This lead to the most impressive shaman healing I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing in the game as myself, my pally tank, and a mage were left for him to heal the entirety of the last boss phase after some poor charge escape failures. Stuff like that really is a blast when you down what you are after.

The down right horrible:

So the day before the 10 run a hand full of those same friends decided to get a 25 TOC off the ground and suggested I give it a shot with him. Now first off I havent been running 25 in a very long time for the mere fact i cant deal with all the damn lag i get in them with all the spells going off. This was something I worked out in Naxx but decided against it when I progressed into Ulduar just because "I" didnt want the headache and guilt of not so great performance. Most I ran with had no idea i was even having problems. Anyway I figure what the hell and go and over all did well. Dps was low but I assume that was from the lag getting in the way of the tight rotation I have to maintain in SV. But I wasnt the bottom of the charts either. So we blow though everything up Twins and things just kinda spiraled after we get to this and start wiping (we downed them and only 3 wipes on it but between this and what i am about to talk about people probably just didn't give a damn to finish anymore).

I've talked about my dislike of PuG etiquette when it comes to using vent and this night was the shinning example of how to piss off an entire raid all at once. We had a mage with us that for some reason had the overwhelming need to enforce the size of his e-peen to a raid of 20-something other people who could have given a rats ass one way or the other what this guy did out of game. This mage never shut up from the time he joined the raid to the time he was booted from the vent channel. The whole night was his D**k this and i f****d this girl cause i am mister big shot quarterback to butt sex with various people he knew in raid. I dont think the guy took a single damn breath to rest his voice from pull one to the end.

I'm not new to raiding in PuGs by any means so i have heard it all before but somethign about the fact he just never shut up seemed to grate on me. He capped it off with some racist comments during twins and I lost my shit flat out and just went at him in vent. I dont like doing this at all as i am just long for the ride and maybe some loots but damn being in a raid does not give you the reason to be an asshole when you talk just because you like the sound of your own damn voice.

Anyway guy was booted from vent as his racist spouting got worse and I even found out later the raid leader had long decided to not give the guy loot before he even went that far (which i would have loved to see but nothing even came up he could have used anyway and the one that did he lost.).

At least i got a one hand axe out of the hell night...

The f'n fantastic:

So my guild set foot into Ulduar for the first time as a guild Saturday and you could almost feel the nerves radiating off everyone present. None of us that had been in the raid before really knew how to explain Flame Levi as most of us hadn't done all the vehicle types yet (personally only ever done the bikes) so that lead to a wipe and 'reset' and a ton of funny yelling from one particular guildie that made this the single funnest time I have ever set foot in ulduar. I mean how can you not enjoy the sound of a grown man squealing "get awaaaaaay dont chase meeeeeee" over vent every time Flame Levu targeted him?

We managed to two shot Razorscale and X-T after and I have to admit I was pleased and proud of our newer raiders and it shows hope for our future in guild progression.

Other stuff:

Other than the prior I have been loving my shammy rather hard of late. She is enhancement and ripping things limb from limb with all her shamanistic rage.


Here we see Ms. Raspee (if you're nasty) basking in the glow of victory over a particularly nasty group of alliance rare elites that roam the vast Barrens. The was a lot of mace to face action and fiery totem goodness she just had to share with them.

Anyway thats enough out of me for now. Toodies.

P.U.G: Experiments In Socailizing

I've done my fair share of raiding in pick up groups and its always a crap shoot. Sometimes they are fantastic people (rare but it happens) and others they are a nightmare. The nightmare groups come in a variety of forms ranging from people not having the slightest clue what they are doing in the raid or on the toon they are playing to simple asshole-ish actions by various members of the raid. Any soul that has PUGed knows its a risk and sometimes you just have to know your limits and cut your losses.

Today was not a day to cut my loses as I did pick up a nice ring and some shoulders to play around with (that I doubt i will ever use but again they are to play with and nobody else wanted them). The raid itself was almost completely PUG with a few members knowing each other and the run itself was pretty drama free in terms of the group itself as all players were up to snuff and very pacient as we trucked along to down KT. So why have I made a post about PUGing if everything went so well? Well its the social part of the PUG that was my issue with the run and it wasn't so much fustration with the raid itself but more of one with the guys running it and the vent they used. The leads were nice enough guys and perhaps that was a bit of the problem.

I made the mistake of raiding with a headache but I was all by myself today and planned to take full advantage of that fact so I sucked it up and ran my run. Now my problem with the socail in this group was the constant chatter of a lower leveled guildy of the raid leads butting into our raid chanel and never shutting his trap the entire run. Now let me break this down for you valued reader (i know somebdoy has to read this stuff). First as we all log into vent the gemtleman welcomes himself into the channel and procceds to not do this only once but under several different names as to cause painfully loud feedback to all those in the channel. This contnued for a while and at the time it at least seemed like this was a consern to the raid leads as they quicky began to try and figure out which people where his (hard to do because many people do not use the name of the toon they are playing in vent so its kinda hard to know who the hell is who). They failed to shut him out but he left on his own taking the loud noises with him and all was fine for a while. As we got further in he did feel the need to return and give updates on his progress to 80 though only 2 people in the vent actually would have even cared enough to want to know how he was doing. Again though this was irriating it was not a huge problem. His activity really picked up however when another fairly annoying gent joined our raid to replace someone and began to chat with the guy and brag about how far he was in ulduar as we ran into problems with trash in arachnid wing. Now as the late mention warrior was a pain to listen to at least he was IN the raid and some of the time the things out of his mouth actually pretanded to the situation at had the other "genius" began making his own quips in random areas and sometimes in areas were he seriously could have messed us up.

Now this is by no means the first time I have had to deal with this but the guy was REALLY loud and with my headache getting worse from hours of sitting in this raid it really began to grate on my nerves. By the time we reached Sath and get ready to pull he even starts yelling in vent he wasn't ready almost confusing the entire raid. I am sorry but if about 85% of the raid dont know each other's voices it becomes hard enough to tell wahts going on without some ass adding to the complexity of the situation by throwing a new unknown person into the mix in which you have no idea who he is. We then have a bit of troiuble with people dying on the frozen bastard of a dragon and though I can not say for certain if he was at fault I am sure it didn't help with people's focus during the fight.

Nerd rage began to kick in on KT and the warrior semi flashing the raid with his e-peen also pushes my last nerve as we wipe twice on KT before downing him tearing down raid members ired from the long haul for mistakse that can happen when you are tired and a little too focused to get done and yelling at our melee for being frozen when the majority of our dps was melee (not smart for KT but I was not the one in charge). I have to comend them for not freezing him along with each other with that kind of crowding. This is not the end of the problems with the vent durning the fight. Not only is the warrior basically taking over the vent bossing people around but he and the raid leads began talking about the more random things when vent should be clear so we can cut down on ussless deaths. That at the end of the day was about my breaking point and raises a intersting question for a PUGer.

When exactly is a PUG a BAD PUG? Its very obvious when the group cant even get in the door without about 10 wipes on trash in the first room or numbers look WAY to low for the people there or your raid lead is wearing greens, but is it a BAD run when you have this kind of organization issues in raid communications? Yes we had a good group of people in the PUG but we even had issues with buffing because people couldn't even hear what others needed as the vent was practically unuseable the majority of the run for useless chatter. The run itself ran probably about 2 hours longer than it would have with clear channels and communication as many wipes probably could have been avoided. For all the chatter going on I would have been about as well off not in the vent at all rather than getting irriated at the loud nonsense asaulting my ears. Even without the headache I would have seriously thought about leaving the PUG even though thing were still going fairly well. Had the group be a slight bit worse or not done as well in the early wings I dont think I would have been alone in wanting to get out at that point. Its a bit irresponsible to not control your raid's communication channels like that. Its irritating enough to deal with overly chatty raid members as is when they talk about random things in important areas but to have a guildy disrepect the raid itself because he couldnt "go" is way worse. WoW is a socail game. I might be thinking a bit much of the people that play but at some point you have to realize there are things you should and shouldnt do social situations. Perhaps i just expect too much from people. After all most act like this in there everyday life its just a bit more over the top in the virtual world I suppose.

The Quest for Happy (or) "My Dog's Name is Woofles"

"Hello Edy where the heck have you been?"

I been doin' dis and dat. Lil' Ulduar. Lil' guild drama. Lil' achievementing. Lil' soul searchin' and rescued a stray puppy.

Whats this? What kinda damn answer was that? Well dear reader Edy has been bustin' her ass and having her calm tested for the last few days. Lets start with raiding. This past Wednesday your girl was back in the cold gates of ulduar taking in the sights and busting an arrow in many an iron dwarf. Managed to down 3 bosses that night but I had to come to a very painful crossroads and had to make an admition to myself that BM, as much as I love it and always will, was not going to put out the numbers I need to be truly completely raid useful to the people I run with. I also had to admit it wasn't fair to the people I run with to not try and fix that. Solution. I went back to that damned SV tree and by God this time it works. I dont know what I was doing wrong first time that was killing my dps. Exact same rotation. Spec isn't that much different just a point or two moved around. Either way it works and even if i fuck up my rotation timing a bit I still maintain 3k dps pretty easy. Its about time that Dual spec paid off for Edy, and now as BM/SV I can easily have my utility when I need it in a pet tank and put out the big numbers when I have to. I used our second ulduar day as my testing ground and the change was very clear and I must say makes me feel good to not feel like the dead weight in the run.

Now in the days between some guild drama went down and we lost 2 more members (one of which I could kiss for leaving) to a guild supposedly wanting to help us progress in the end game. Over all the course of this infection in M.A.S. I have become somewhat jaded as to caring what people what to do or dont want to do. That said however I personally have had to deal with tons of drama I sure as hell want nothing to do with as well as revolations that certain members feel there is an elitest mindset in M.A.S. itself. I was not aware pulling favors with a guild I have become good friends with over time to try and get some folks some experience and gear (folks might I add have put forth effort to progress on their own anyway) was being an elitest. I have never been a recruiter as I dont like people in general so I work with what I have aquired over time to help those that have shown the desire to do something for themselves. That however limits my ability to help but in no way makes me an elitest. I am not in charge of these runs but whatever I wont rant about that any longer it gives me a headache and really does nothing to make me want to interact with the guild I truly love.

Now I have been in flux trying to find my happy place in game again. I love instancing and raiding its where I feel I shine and even though the fights dont really change alot split second flubs/choices make for fun times for me when I have to test my skills in my class. The fact BM is so far behind MM/SV the last weeks I have been having a hard time with that happy. I had even reached the point i didnt even want to raid anymore. SV has given me that little bit of piece of mind back. I dont love it but its more fun that it was the first time I tried and as such I think I think can deal with it until blizzard can (if ever) fixes my beloved BM tree. Also in my quest for happy I have sadly found my self distancing myself from the guild I love so much. I think I have just gotten too used to running with people that are where I am in terms of skill I just really haven't felt like dealing with short tempers on learning runs, trying to teach lil' role things that should be known before reaching this level, lack of commitment, and the shooting star syndron a few get telling them to reach further and faster than they really have the ability to. I do admit fault and I could probably more to show but I honestly have no desire to explain every single aspect of everything. I am not a leader by desire. I wont be the person teaching do this this and this to explode the charts cause I dont know that kind of stuff myself well enough to teach anybody. I can only find my happy and move from there. Its a work in process.

Lastly I picked up a stray in my transition to SV raiding. His name is Woofles and anybody that is a fan of the comic Squee you will know where I got the name and he is a good puppy so far. Snuggles probably isn't keen on having to share my attention but honestly I dont have the heart to have him die all the time in raids when I am SV and also that boost from Woofles' howl makes for a nice boost. I might end up being all snuggles all the time again over time but I think my Snuggle-butt has earned his little vacation. Maybe I wil test he waters with Snuggles in our Naxx 10 attempt tonight.