Back to the beginning…and stuff

I spend so long working on this the other week only to have my computer crash and I thought I’d lost this post. I was quite the sad panda. But lo, it was backed up! Huzzah! Rejoice! *does the happy happy joy joy dance*

I’ve been struggling with a heart/head dilemma for awhile regarding my ThoBro guild; my heart was telling me to stick it out, and try and fix what’s broke/changed, be loyal; my head was telling me to GTFO before I stress myself out and/or rage quit because I’ve severely burned myself out. I knew things were bad when a bit of drama popped up and I was secretly hoping that things would end up such that I had a reason to go “Guys, that was the last straw, such and such was rediculous/I don’t deserve being called a (whatever)/some other reason”. Then I thought, if I’m looking for an excuse to leave, mayhap I’d best just do that. I caught my GM one evening when he had some time and laid things out…the good, the bad, everything. He understood and supported my decision. I decided that I would dedicate myself to one server, especially with regards to raiding. ThoBro would switch places with my original server, Scarlet Crusade as my ‘secondary server’ meaning it was second on my list, no longer getting priority over the other server.  I’ll log on there when I feel like it as opposed to being obliged to for some reason.

I’m not looking to name and shame here, in some cases I just don’t see the point or it would hurt feelings/stir up more crap. But I’ll see if I can elaborate on my issues, at least a bit. As I told a guildie who found out about my decision after I talked to GM, there is honestly not ONE person or ONE incident that pushed me to make my decision. This has more or less been brewing since last January, when Cata had some out and my raid group was all but DOA. Guildie X was at the center of some drama that put the final nail in the coffin of my raid group (but it’s her I have to thank, ironically, for where I am now…I wouldn’t have gone back to Endy 2.0 at that point without the drama she ended up causing). This was the first time I thought about leaving the guild, but I held on for dear life in attempt to stay there and stay raiding with them. After the GM and her husband decided to transfer off the server, the guild took some hits during the confusion following their announcement and promotion of an unpopular choice to GM. I was unsure what, if anything, I would be doing in the time that followed.

I stuck around to help out but in the end, it just wasn’t feeling like home any more. Many of the folks I’d felt close to in guild had left or stopped playing. I felt that at any time, my raid was a hairs breath from imploding spectacularly around itself because I suspect not everyone likes their fellow group mates. The healer channel was, at times, a place to gripe about or insult others. Full disclosure: I myself was guilty at times and eventually resolved to speak as little as possible, and only about healing matters. This caused me much stress until a meeting before raid one night, but even afterwards, I still waited to see if we’d have a shoe drop.  I wanted to try and make things work, but I couldn’t work up much energy to actually….try very much. Our struggles in Firelands only made me more anxious, as well as frustrated, honestly. Not because we weren’t progressing so much as I feared that morale would tank and lead to sniping and bad feelings. I wasn’t having fun anymore. Raids used to be fun, and even anticipated. There was cameraderie and a sense of determination to get that boss down, even if it took us for freaking ever (Sindy, I’m looking at you!). Was it perfection every night? No. Did I want to strangle some fellow raiders sometimes? Sure. But I enjoyed it.

There is more WoW time behind me than ahead of me and I don’t want to spend the rest of my time unhappy, so I made this move to do what I want and have fun….advice I have given others before and am now taking again. So back to Scarlet Crusade, where I began my days in WoW. Making this change greatly simplifies things for me, as I no longer have to raid on 2 different servers, sometimes back to back. More free time was something else I wanted to get out of this. There was a time when I was in one raid or another 4-5 days out of the week. It got kinda out of hand. I decided against transferring my priest, which was an option I was considering, owing to the fact that I have an up and coming disc priest on SC I made awhile back (ironically, just for funsies earlier this year I think) who is closing in on level 82. I have a ‘copy’ of all my main toons on ThoBro over on SC, so I’m content to leave everyone where they are. I’ve largely stayed away from ThoBro since I made my decision, but that’s *mostly* because I went on vacation the next week, then it was the madness of Christmas, then…well, some cowardice on my part, I admit. But you know, as soon as I’d voiced my decision to the GM, I felt it was the right thing to do. A weight was lifted off me and I felt good.

Endy 2.0 has now killed Deathwing (in a regular 10 man raid, not just LFR…which I don’t really count), I’m pushing to get to 85 on my wee priest and generally having fun. And I’m doing new things that are relaxing and fun…I’m focusing on fishing and JC’ing dailies, Darkmoon Faire stuff, and working on my DK’s enchanting. I no longer worry about who might piss of whom or spend a whole night anxious and hoping for a boss kill so everyone can be happy. Am I expecting rainbows, puppies and green grass year round? No. I’m too cynical for that. You wait long enough, drama always comes around. But hopefully when it does, it will be dealt with smartly.

Random Randomness

• LFR. It’s something I haven’t delved into that much yet, but I have thoughts about it, just like everyone else. Vidyala over at Manalicious wrote a post called Looking For: Community (I’d link it, but my work computer has decided links are the devil) that I found myself nodding mostly in agreement with. For me, it’s for me a tool to get better gear until I am blessed with winning the regular version of the item, or a way to get my alts better gear since they’re not my main and therefore not raiding. I go in expecting VP and a shot at gear (haven’t one one daggum thing yet) and hope for the best. But I like that it gives people an *option* they might not have otherwise had. I no longer have the horrid work hours I used to, but when I would work until 11pm, or even 1am, finding a raid group was uh, impossible. There was a time when I would have LOVED that LFR is finally giving me the chance to see bosses I never would have. Is it an ideal raid situation? Heck no. 25 random strangers of differing experiences and skill level thrown together to kill simplified versions of raid bosses…..yeah. But it’s something, and for some, it’s more than they has before.
• I really, really want to play SW:TOR. I know quite a few folks that are playing it now and the only reason I haven’t joined them is I lack a PC to do it on. But in a lightbulb moment, I realized my current laptop is almost 9 years old and it could tooooootally die any time now. Yeeeah. That’s my reason and I’m sticking to it! So I aim to get a PC laptop when one of my tech-minded friends thinks the timing is right (we’re hoping prices drop on the laptops I’m looking at). THEN I can not only play SW:TOR, but LOTRO. I enjoyed playing it, but my Mac Mini didn’t like playing at being a PC and it was just too much trouble to work out the problems.
• It occurs to me, looking at my header, it’s woefully out of date. Endyme, the Original Flavor, has sadly been gathering dust since I took her out of her raid group. Lirwyn is no longer a main focus of mine, though I love her dearly. *puts a new header on her to do list*
• I look forward to blogging about well, stuff other than my head/heart issues and actually talking about healing, paladins, priests, whatever randomness that comes to mind. I’ve been VERY bad at keeping this blog up…I could probably count on a hand and half of another one how many posts I had last year. But there’s only so many times you can go “Bleeeh, drama…bleeeeh, not having fun..” before even I’d get tired of it, and I just wasn’t inspired to talk about much else.
• Bananas!

Feeling selfish and how I’m trying to fix it

Hello dear readers (all 7 of you left). I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog front because as I have said before, I lost alot of desire to do it when there was some drama earlier this year, the first big bout of it since transferring Endy to ThoBro. It was a snowball of one thing causing another, which, when combined with more recent goings on have hit me (as usual) hard. And my desire to not name and shame to cause further dramaz made it real hard to blog about what’s going on.

My RL friends, the ones I transferred to ThoBro to be guilded with, decided after long deliberation to transfer off to another server about 2 months ago (honestly can’t recall the exact dates). Their reasons are their own to explain (or not), but sufficed to say, I can’t blame them in the least, as I’ve been there myself. It gets to a point where you have to do what’s good for YOU, even though that will leave many people sad and possibly shake things up. And get shaken up they did. WaR took many hits in the days and weeks following, many folks were going on hiatuses from the game (not, I think, connected to the news of transferring), which broke up one of our raid groups overnight. Some decided to seek out raiding elsewhere (I kept wondering how many in the guild thought I was going to follow my friends to their new server, or if I was going to go back to my old one). The rest of us were left to scramble around and try to fix the officer core and crown a new GM (not me, not ever me, heck no), which was even more drama. As always, I don’t give up easily, and I felt the need to do what I could to help, somehow becoming a higher ranking officer than before.

Things haven’t felt quite the same since, and I still have plans A, B, C and maybe even a D rattling around in my head, just in case. I spent more time on my old server because I didn’t feel quite so stressed when I logged in there. You know, the irony is that I transferred off of Scarlet Crusade because of drama and now it’s the server that I am turning to to escape it. Many of the guildies I felt closest too on ThoBro are now gone. I am trying SO HARD not to just give up, but at the same time, I’m…not. I could be doing more, but I am being selfish. Rather than spending more time on ThoBro to be a bigger presence, I just…couldn’t bring myself to face possible strife. Endy 2.0′s guild, while full of youngins that like to cuss and use phrases that make me /facepalm, doesn’t seem to have the antics I see on ThoBro. Maybe because it’s a slightly more hardcore raid environment, or something that just can’t be quantified, but it just…works. I think it also helps that the GM is a long time guildie who was scarred by out last guild break up and loathes drama as much as I.

Naturally, this lead me to question whether or not I should just acknowledge that I’m not giving my all to ThoBro (and I mean as a whole; I should note that when I come to a raid, I give 100%, I try my best and don’t just phone it in, or don’t show up because I just don’t feel like it) any more and remove myself from the guild or if folks are ok with what I AM giving. I’m afraid that at any moment, the rug will get swept from under me and I hate that feeling. But this is what drama does to me. I run from conflict, I hate it, it stresses me right the fuck out.

I recently had a chat with the GM of my ThoBro guild in an effort to get out all that was bothering me. People can’t fix problems, or even try to fix them, if they don’t know about them. I didn’t want to just go “X, Y and Z are bothering me, I’m out of here!” without doing everything I could to address that I had some issues and try to turn things around. Later that week, my raid group had a pre-raid meeting, wherein we talked a few things out. The GM acknowledged his poor attitude of late and why he’s been that way, I spoke up about a few issues (got completely misunderstood on one of my points…) and mentioned how I’d been stressed, folks talked and hopefully we’ll be a bit better for it. I can’t come clean about ALL the things that are irking me or stressing me, namely because it would just not help (or cause MORE problems) or are things that I don’t see changing, but at least for this week, for the first time in awhile, I really enjoyed raiding with the ThoBro’ers. I’m still fairly cautious though, I am not sure what the future holds. I can only try my best, and like I told the GM, give 100% to making things superawesome again by running more heroics for gear, being on more, etc.

I am trying to simplify my raiding life a bit, so I’m not scheduling so much of my game time for raids. Until very recently, I was raiding on 3 toons on 2 different servers, which was….challenging and time consuming. I finally pulled Endy out of her Monday raid. I’d been trying to get out of it for a few months with no luck (I was trying to hang around until another healer could be found, but it just wasn’t a pressing issue since I was always there) and I finally just said “No, no more, not coming” and pushed the issue. There’s more I could do, but for now, that’s at least a little more free time I have do say, go do something with a guy I may be dating (just as a toooooootally random example) or do whatever I please in game.

So there we are, my life of late. Still polyserverous and polyguilderous, still playing, still raiding…just trying to find the fun again. In a bit of topical news, I hear they’re introducing pandas in the next expansion (my thoughts: meh, but willing to wait til the expac actually comes out before I go bonkers about how stupid pandas are). Also, coming down on the side of “Not cool, Blizz” over the whole Blizzcon concert debacle. In my opinion, that deserves a real apology, not some “We’re really sorry if you were offended, it was a joke, you guyz!” excuse. The things that have been said under the “just a joke” excuse…some things just aren’t funny, ‘joke’ or not.

I’m a bad healer (but not really)

So I have a confession to make: I’m a bad healer.

There, I said it….whew, feels good to get out. Been holding that in for awhile.

I have a second confession: I am a darn good healer. Not perfect, mind you, but good.

Now to explain these conflicting statements. I read blogs, armory other healers of my same spec, occasionally peer at Elitest Jerks, talk to others about how they do things. I don’t go IN DEPTH and theorycraft in my spare time, but I try to educate myself on how things are done. But when the chips are down and I’m in an instance/raid, I heal oftentimes by instinct. I mash buttons in a panic when tons of damage is being taken, I choose the ‘wrong’ spells (I use Flash of Light regularly, which would probably alarm most holy pallies out there..it’s a mana hog, but it’s fast and I can’t stop using it), I don’t always wait til I have 3 stacks of Holy Power to use WoG or LoD (which I don’t really ever use cause it doesn’t seem to do anything useful)….in other words, I don’t ‘do it right.’

I’m sure much of it is muscle memory. After all, I’ve been playing a holy pally for 6 years now, but my priest for only err, maybe a year (as disc anywho). I’m sure I’ve absorbed alot of how things are done by osmosis, but I hear folks discus their class’s abilities by tossing out stats and facts and I’m like, ‘Ummm, I just heal people when their green bars get low.” I feel stupid sometimes, for not being able to bandy about these terms with ease and confidence, that I *should* know this stuff, since I’m a semi-serious raider and all. But somehow I make it work in the end, I (and say this with no ego intended or to make myself sound like I’m full of it) do a darn good job, generally, of keeping folks alive and get compliments for my heals.

Could I be a better healer? Always, always, always. Would some of the big name blogger types who’s blogs I read look at me in dispair if they saw how I healed? What mistakes I make? Oh, it’s quite possible. By some folks’ standards, I might be labeled a bad healer, but really, I don’t feel that I am. I just do it differently at times. By instinct. I might use FoL more than a proper holy pally aught to, but it’s a quick spell for when Holy Shock isn’t available and folks need a quick heal before I can spare a longer casting time heal like Holy Light or Divine Light. And a living target is better than the dead one I might have because I took 2.5 extra seconds to cast a big spell. Least that’s my thinking.

But what do I know, I’m a bad healer.

 

Oh huh, WordPress tells me this is my 100th post. Yay me!

I’ve been here and there and everywhere!

First off, to those who are still here…..hi!!! I’m NOT dead or not playing WoW or any such thing, I just lost my blogging mojo for awhile after a bunch of things that happened earlier this year. It’s all fine and dandy to blog about what’s on your mind, but when it can hurt feelings or cause more trouble or you’d be saying the same doomy gloomy thing over and over, it’s hard to keep up posting. I didn’t even keep up with other’s blogs or my twitter after awhile, I just kinda took a break.

Anywho, since my unplanned hiatus, things have stabilized. Lirwyn’s raiding group is chugging along, trying to work on Atramedes and/or Chimeron. Endyme is in the group Lirwyn was originally in and after a few weeks of going back to basics (heroics and troll heroics), we finally went back to BWD and just downed Magmaw for the first time. I had stopped going to the heroics because once we started to do ZA, it became a 2 hour wipe fest and that’s just not fun to me. Heroics should not (at this point) feel like raids and that’s what they were starting to feel like. I love my guildies, but…ouch. I’m still dubious about that group but I’ll try my best while I’m there, because to do otherwise is just not how I do things. Celrina just hit 85 recently and I’ve had great fun doing some regulars and Ahune on her. I love how much DPS I can do (real srs DPS’ers would probably point and lol at it, but to ME, it’s alot) in my frost spec. LOVE.

So somehow, I’ve found myself raiding on both my current server and my old Scarlet Crusade. How did this happen? Very slowly. You see, when I transferred Endyme to Thorium Brotherhood just about 2 years ago now, I quickly remade an Endy on SC (a goat pally!) with the vague intention of leveling her to help if needed but otherwise to keep in touch with old friends/guildies. Eventually, after a few stops and starts, she reached 85 in April and 2 days later found herself in BoT because they needed a 10th person and oh look, there I was, scrubby and new! When I was nearing 85, I thought, well..if they need a healer to sub in when folks don’t show up, I can probably be that. My SC crew raids much later than my ThoBro guild, so the times don’t overlap. Thanks to people not showing up and a few key folks seemingly taking breaks from the game, Endy 2.0 has found herself a fairly regular fixture on the SC raiding scene. We recently downed Nefarian and with that have killed all the bosses in BWD and BoT….and we’re working on heroics. Only Halfus has fallen to our efforts, but we’ve tried a few others and with the better gear 4.2 should get us, might see success on other  bosses. I still can’t believe how this all fell together.

There are a few things to keep in mind, I think, when raiding (or even playing) on 2 servers regularly. It’s important to know which server gets your vote in a conflict of scheduling, which one you will put above the other(s) if there is a need to. I try to keep in mind that Thorium Brotherhood is my main server, and should any raids on SC be scheduled at times that would conflict would get put on standby in favor of ThoBro. My primary concern is my priest and her raid team. I want to get the best for her and any thing I can do (like the new Hyjal quests that end in a really nice cloak) to better my toons will be done on her first. But as Endy 2.0 is raiding as well, I need to try and put aside some time when I can to run heroics or do quests on her that will get her in raiding shape. It’s nice because WaR is more active in the earlier part of the day/evening…we have alot of family types who tend to go to bed or do other things before it gets to late. Whereas on SC, my guild is full of youngin’s. It’s full of people in their late teens/20′s so they’re up (and raiding) til fairly late.

Most days it works out fine, with raiding on 2 servers, but Tuesdays can be a bitch. That’s when Lirwyn’s raid team raids until 9, and then my SC guild usually starts a raid about 9:15-9:30-ish. And they raid laaaate. Fortunately for me, I’m a night owl, so I’m up that late as a matter of course anywho, but oy. It’s incredibly fulfilling to get to see raid content much earlier than I’m typically used to, but at the same time, I love the feeling of community and fun I get raiding with my ThoBro peeps. WaR is a more casual environment, so we’ve never been at the forefront of progress, but we get there and that’s fine by me. I have no idea how long this raiding on 2 servers thing will last, I expect if my Scarlet Crusade guild gets in some new folks (there aren’t alot of raiding regulars at present), I could get bumped and that’s really fine with me. I never planned to raid regularly on Endy 2.0, though I’m having a fun while I am.

Another (mostly amusing) issue I’ve come to deal with is the confusion factor. When one has 2 toons named Endyme that have the same spec, one can easily get the 2 confused. And one has. I’ve spent an annoying amount of thought over “Wait, did I get that trinket on Endy or Endy 2.0?” “Which Endy got her Therazane rep to Honored the other day? I was working on both!” Also, raiding with 2 different guilds can mess me up because each group works out their own way of killing the bosses with the group make up they have. Like Theralion and Valiona: one of my guilds has the melee group up and the ranged group up for the Meteor Crash/Smash/whatever it is and the other one has the person who is getting the Meteor thingie run to the melee and they soak the damage and then you run back out. And I am sure I’ve annoyed people coming off like a Little Miss Know-it-all about boss fights when I’m eager to share nuggets of wisdom I have gleaned with my ThoBro peeps…I honestly don’t want anything more than to help out and make the whole process easier on us but I can imagine folks not taking it that way. I just need to learn to talk less or something. Easier said than done.

Anywho, just wanted to post something before folks decided I’d given up on blogging entirely and let y’all know what I’ve been up to. I’ll try not to be a stranger! Now, to slog though the backlog of a few months worth of blog entries…Weeeee!

Dead bosses make me happy

Ignore the skeletons. They were here when we came in. Reeeeeally.

Endy 2.0, triumphant in front of the dead body of Chimaeron.

Character Roundup!!

• Lirwyn has shuffled around a bit to find a raid group she can call home. Though I enjoy the company of the folks I’ve been raiding with, I don’t much enjoy the results at the end of the night. So the guild has put together a raid team comprised of people from 2 of our raid groups with the idea in mind that we need to consolidate more of the mains in one group, as well as wanting some srs progression. Not that her previous raid group didn’t want to progress, but at the end of the night, I didn’t feel like any progress had been made, any lessons learned. And I myself have felt rather useless, trying to keep up with all the AoE damage Magmaw puts out – plus I’ve lost my long time healing partner-in-crime for the forseeable future, which sucks. So, she’s just this week started raiding with the new group. For our first night together, I’d say we did rather excellently! After trying various strats in various combos of toons/specs, we ended the night with Magmaw at 23%!! In the meantime, I’ve tried to gear up Endy…
• Endyme has had to try and gear up much faster than I’d thought. After hitting 85, I didn’t do very much with her. My focus is still on Lirwyn, so Endy got mostly ignored. But when I learned Lirwyn would most likely be going off to the other raid, I looked to Endy to plug in the hole being made by losing Lirwyn. Now, should a main healer wish to join that raid group, I will be MORE than happy to step aside (I always feel guilty for ‘double dipping’ raiding wise), but for now Endy is needed. I got the epic shield crafted, and am working on gathering mats for the epic chestpiece. The one or two heroics I’ve done on Endy since I deemed myself eligible (yeah, 329 ilevel is technically when I could have gone in, but…ouch) haven’t yielded much in the way of gear for me, but I’ll keep working on it, and farming mats for more truegold, and getting JP’s and VP’s to buy gear with, and Ramkahen rep for the belt, and and and!
• Endy 2.0.… Where to begin? I suppose I’ll start with the fact that not only has she killed the Ascendant Council a mere 2 days after hitting 85, but as of last night, has also killed Atramedes (the first time I tried him!) and Chimaeron (I do NOT like that fight, it goes against my instincts as a healer)! I’m just….what? The toon I least expected to get my first boss fights on in Cataclysm is the one that has 3 boss kills under her belt (which is now a crafted epic belt). But at least it’s fun, and a learning experience I can hopefully use in my other guild. The only bad thing about it is, my SC guild raids really late. Like, REALLY LATE. So I log in after a night of raiding or whatever on ThoBro and then at 11:30 or so, “Oh hey Endy, come help us kill Cho’gall!” I’m hard up for raiding experience, so I really want to do it. It’s not like I would be asleep if I weren’t raiding – I stay up rather late all the time – but still, it can be challenging.
• Celrina has started the leveling process, slowly but surely. The only reason she’s been stuck at 82 for a week or so is I just have too many toons I’m doing things on, so I can’t *focus* on her like I want to. But my gosh, I do love just killing things sometimes. It’s a nice stress reliever, to not be responsible for peoples lives all the time. Dual wield frost is still the bomb. Of all the DPS toons I’ve played, she’s the one I’ve connected with the most, I think. Well, DK’s in general. I liked my rogue back in the day, but I haven’t played her in sooooooo long.
  

Finding happiness in WoW

It’s been a rough 2 months, dear readers. I’ve been considerably less active on my blog of late because (as I’ve said before) I didn’t know what to say without hurting feelings or sounding like a bitch, or both. I didn’t want to post issues that could and should be solved in game. I felt silence was for the best, all the way around. I still don’t know the ‘right thing’ to say….therefore, this post may go all over the place.

I just want to raid, as I’ve said to many a person recently, and it’s been hard to do that between this issue and that. For awhile, it seemed like either raid lead or not at all and…I’m so not a leader. Not in the least. But because of my strong desire to raid, I tried to do just that (with help). Let’s just say that my career as a co-RL was very, very short (hint: I sucked BIG TIME). The group I’m running with now is still a work in progress, our DPS needs improving across the board and the roster seems to change in a major way based on who can make it…but we’re a good, fun bunch of people, recently united by the crummy actions of one of our former raid group members.

It’s been hard for me to find joy in WoW at times lately. It was stressing me out IRL, and I thought of many a wild thought during the worst of it. The thing that made it hard(er) was I love my guild, it’s full of great people, and it’s been a haven for me since I transferred to get away from the drama of my old server. Having the first major bout of ‘bad times’ on ThoBro hit me extremely hard. So, still taking the advice I gave myself long ago, I’ve been not forcing myself to play when I wanted to do other things and logging on my old server more to play Endy 2.0 (part hiding from the stress, part having fun reconnecting with old guildies I hadn’t seen in awhile, cause  it’d been awhile since I’d logged into Scarlet Crusade and some were coming back from years away). Simply playing the game again, selfishly doing what I want when I want. I’ve needed the ‘vacation.’

Playing on 2 servers is like having my cake and eating it too. It has, in my case, provided me with a place to go when one of my servers is causing me stress or just has nothing going on. When most folks are logged off for the night on ThoBro, I can hop on SC and they’ll be in BoT or BD, raiding til the wee hours. In fact, funny story, that. No really, it’s hilarious. See, Endy 2.0 dinged 85 about 2 days ago. She hasn’t run any instances since doing so, but I have managed to get the epic healy shield crafted for her, as well as buying a few bits and pieces off the AH. Her average gear score is 328, so she’s juuuust shy of being eligible for Heroics. I logged on last night after a rather fun night on ThoBro so I could do my daily JC’ing quest – Timeless Nightstones 3 days running…wtf – and maybe troll the AH for a good deal. I’m the only person on NOT in BoT raiding. I’m doing my thing, looking at rings on the AH and the GM suddenly says in guild “Hey Endy, wanna raid?”

…….

What is this, I don’t even…..

Less than a minute later, I’m in BoT, facing…well, I didn’t even know where we were. I later figured out it was the Elementium Monstrosity council. Keep in mind, just dinged, not even eligible for heroics, no proper flasks or food stuffs and no familiarity with the boss fight. I’ve never been past the trash in that first room that everyone farms for epix. I was, to quote Illidan, “not prepared.” And yet, an hour and a half or so later, for the first time, the guild downed the Monstrosities and I was in quite a bit of shock that (at times), I was actually second on the healing meters. I know, healing meters can lie and not tell the whole story, but I was expecting to be a distant third to the other 2 healers. I’m still kinda…whaaaaa? We actually tried Cho’gall once and got him to 79%. So….hilarious story, right? My first Cata boss downed, on my freshly dinged 85. Wasn’t expecting that.

Anywho, things are holding steady nowadays. I’m wary, but not stressed out. My raid group is a fun bunch, though I am going to try to get some of them through heroics for better gear. I’m focusing on leveling my DK currently (omg, smashing in faces is so much FUN!) and even working on my wee mage a bit now that I’ve influenced some of my SC guildies to make/transfer toons over to ThoBro. I’m having fun. I’ll take it.

It’s all fun and games….

A month or two ago, I got promoted to an officer in my guild. It’s basically the ‘has no official responsibilities’ kind of officer, but one nonetheless. I figured I had something to offer and I had a certain level headed nature that could be useful. Even though I didn’t have to, I felt I should DO something because, I didn’t just want to be an officer in name but not action. So I came up with the idea of a Fun Event(s) for the whole guild to get in on. The first officer I mentioned this too kind of dismissed the idea, or at least the notion I had to do anything to ‘earn’ my officer status, but I really felt I had a strong idea, it just needed fleshing out. So I mentioned something in /o chat later on and it was fairly well recieved. I was given the go-ahead to head up the planning on it. Unfortunately, I was just about to go on my Disney trip, and then at the same time, drama happened, and then from that drama came more drama, which left me with not much of an inclination to plan any fun events (with not even a strong inclination to play WoW). But, faced with disappointment from some that I didn’t get on top of the planning like I’d said I would, and my own desire to do some fun, guild bonding, I’m hoping to get back on track with that.

When I first conceived the whole thing, it was going to be a Weekend Extravaganza of Fun. Lots of fun events, packed into one weekend. But, it’s evolved a bit since then. It’ll be easier to focus on planning one event at a time, plus, it guarantees that more people should be able to get in on the action if it’s one event here, another event there. I have in mind things like a Fishing Tourney, to get the That’s A Lot of Bait achievement, maybe even a Mining Tourney to get the mining one, since we’re pretty close on that, an Alt-o-rama, wherein people get a chance to run their alts through instances with guildies (either with all at level toons, or having an uber 85 run them through), or a Hide & Seek game, where a guildie hides in a zone, and guildies try and seek him (clues being given of course, to pinpoint his location more and more as time goes on). But the one that I’m getting together first, since it’s fairly easy, is Ground Beef. What is Ground Beef, you ask? Of course you’re asking….I know it! It’s an idea I’m borrowing from here, and mostly keeping it intact, save the name. It’s easily done, should be fun, and will result in prizes being given!

Basically, we’ll make level 1 Taurens on a random server (since I know a few guildies at least, have little or no spaces free) and give their cows names that hopefully reflect their own, but with a cow-like twist to it. I could be “Endymoo” for instance, or “Moowyn.” We’ll then make our way to Thunder Bluff. If we can find a kind mage to make a port to Dalaran, it’d be even better, since we could jump from the Purple Parlor….waaaaaaaaay at the top of Dalaran. Either way should work. Once at TB, I’ll jump and become the ‘target.’ Everyone else will get 3 chances to jump, and land as close to my poor, mangled body as possible – and not rez when they’re happy with their position, so their corpse remains. We’ll have 2 or 3 judges to decide who is the closest to my body, and we’ll have a first, second and third place, with prizes. I just need to decide what prizes…augh!

Hopefully, this will be the first of a series of fun events we can do as a guild to bond, hang out with each other, have some fun, etc. Since 25 mans are not in our immediate future at least, it’s harder to hang out with tons of guildies at once. That’s why I always liked 25 mans. Yes, they were harder to organize and I myself prefer 10 man raids, but with the 25 mans, I got to hang and raid with tons more guildies. I kind of miss that.

So if anyone has a hordie mage that wouldn’t mind helping out, um…I could give you uhhh, err, lots of thanks on my blog and twitter? >.>

Twitter….I has it

So on a lark I decided to try out this thing I’ve been railing against (if only in my head) for so long. I have joined Twitter. I have no idea how it works, but I’m fumbling around and messing with settings and fun stuff like that. Please feel free to find me….my err, handle thing is Endyme (or do I have to put a @ in front of it for it to be properly Twitter-ized…..@Endyme?) and help me learn how2Twitterz.

Raiding changeup

I’ve been pretty quiet of late, and it’s mostly because what I wanted to say I couldn’t without hurting somebody or stirring up more stuff by my words here. I’ve seen the power of words in blogs firsthand and have no desire to be that person. This is sounding all doom and gloom already, and it’s not! Too much. >.>

I’ve weathered 2 expansions previous to Cataclysm, but none have been so full of upheaval and change with regards to raiding for me. In BC, I was extremely new to raiding and didn’t know the ins and outs of the whole thing. In Lich King, the guild I was in really didn’t have raid ‘teams’ formally….I’m pretty sure we only had one group raiding, kinda fuzzy on it. This expansion, I knew would be rough, but I was not expecting what happened. I didn’t handle it well.

I’ve been with the same raiding crew most of my time on ThoBro and was hopeful we could continue that in Cataclysm. Drama claimed some of our members recently, but then a few of them migrated to another raid group and I erroneously assumed it to be a case of them just filling in to get experience and help with the holes that group had, which was pretty much ready to start raiding. That assumption held for awhile and gradually it got chipped away and I realized I was ‘raid homeless’. And that thought left me not feeling good. Communication was not happening, or rather, it was…but much in the manner of the telephone game, where “I sneezed on grannny” turns into “I have red panties.” Things seemed to be changing day to day, it felt – everyone was getting different information and I was hella confused (as were others, no doubt). And in one weekend chat with the GM, I was crying in Vent, left with a headache and an upset stomach much of the day and pretty miserable. I ended up creating a Vent meeting so the remnants of my raid team could chat about our prospects, but I fail at putting up events, so the old RL of our group did it for me…inviting officers as well, at the suggestion of a friend, so we could all be on the same page.

This whole thing was probably made worse because I bottled as much of my misery up as possible in an effort to not spread it around and start drama. Nothing on the blog, nothing to Askevar (I knew she was dealing with a busy time IRL), and I really didn’t know what TO say without sounding whiny or annoying (“My raid group died and I don’t have a raid group, waaaah! I want to raaaaaaaid!” /hissy fit). I turned to my old server more, but after my weekend sobfest, I took my own advice from months back and took a step back. No matter what the cause, no matter if it was all my fault and nobody elses, I got so worked up about the game that I was physically out of sorts a good portion of a day. That was no good. I gave myself permission for the next week not to log on or play on certain toons if it would stress me out.

Things have started to work themselves out, I hope. Our meeting ended with a tentative group of folks, a tentative day/time and a thirst for raiding. It will be me and 2 others sharing raid leading duties. It’s hella stressful to Raid Lead, I’ve seen how it wears on a person. I’m believe that having 3 co-RL’s will be a way to alleviate the stress and weight of it all, and won’t end up being confusing. If we do it right, it shouldn’t. We all have our various strengths: one is good at logistics and planning, one is really good at leading in a fun way, and if he needs to correct someone, he does it in a way that isn’t mean or condescending, and me….I cheerlead. I maintain morale (or try to!), I joke and make silly cheers, I um, I hope to find more I can do well, because I am DETERMINED to see this work. There are still a few kinks to be ironed out, such as a name for our group. HFC is gone (RIP, Happy Fun Crew), this is a clean slate for us to craft to our liking and start anew. I hope things go well, I want them to very badly.

My guild does organized guild heroics twice a week and last night we didn’t have quite enough people to fill out 3 groups like we usually do, so we changed things up and went into Bastion of Twilight with 10 folks to do a ‘trash run.’ I loved every second of it. I missed raiding in new, fresh content with a group of nine other folks and seeing what Lady RNG might hand us. An epic leather helm dropped and erm….may have gotten sharded instead of sold or used by someone. Honest mistake, since we were in the middle of fighting when it got looted and I know I didn’t have a chance to do much other than go “Oh, leather…meh.” and pass. That aside, I had SO much fun. I can’t wait to do it with my new crew, whatever our name may be.

Character Roundup:

• Lirwyn’s gear continues to sloooooooowly improve. I got some crafted epic pants thanks to the help of some generous guildies. Because I’m restricting myself to mostly guild heroics, I haven’t done enough to buy anything with VP’s yet, but I’m inching my way up there. Raiding should help with that. She topped 100k mana recently (buffed up) and I squee’d a little.
  
• Endy 2.0 has made improvements in leaps and bounds. She’s now on the verge of level 79 and has pretty descent gear, I must say. She’s at the point where she can nab some GREAT upgrades from the AH that come from lowbie Cata zones (because they’re able to be worn starting at level 78) and it’s been great fun catching up with old guidies again. I hope at some point to be able to get to 85 and geared well enough I can help sub in on raids if they need it. My guild over on SC raids late enough it most certainly wouldn’t clash with ThoBro stuff. I may fall asleep at some point though….
• Original Endy is a good halfway through level 83. It’s just hard because I usually just quest on her and have only done 2 instances. I need to do more. I either need to pester guildies or….*gulp* PuG. I just want her to be 85 already. Arrrrrg.