Ok, so I jumped into a 25 man VOA last night, knowing that it's been revamped and while I have read the Emalon fight, I don't know it. I was ok with my gear, especially with there being 3 tanks for some reason. But I was concerned when I noticed it was a hard core raider group.
Nothing against hard core raiders, but I'm not. Nor will I be unless I get laid off with a lot of savings. I have too much going on to commit to constant and regular 5-8 hour blocks of raiding time. I'm not the most amazing tank out there, but I do the best I can and try to learn what I can. That being said, this particular raid was not the best experience, and I've been trying to piece together why I had such an awful time in less than 5 minutes of actual time in raid.
First, I was tired, not even sure I wanted to go on the raid, and worried I wouldn't do well. Not a good combo. It was pretty clear most of these folks raided together all the time, so that didn't help. RL specifically said no vent, so there goes a great form of communication. But since I was one of two OTs, I knew my job was adds for the most part. Not sure why we needed 2 OTs, I could have just DPS'd, or I was more than happy being told "we have tanks". I hear it all the time lately.
Trash pulls went fine, we obviously had good DPS numbers. But Emalon didn't go well on the first attempt, and 1/3 of the raid wiped on the first chain lightening. Yay for spreading out, eh? I was in the wrong place, and I knew it, but I wasn't sure where to be. The other OT had the adds, the MT had the boss, I was waiting for an add to peel off? I dunno. All the strategies I know of use 2 tanks. I'm not going to taunt off the OT as long as he has it and is fine on health. Problem is that about the time the DPs get wiped by chain lightening, the RL starts yelling. And Yelling. I mean, just stupid yelling. Mostly at me. Sigh....
Frankly, at that point, I don't give a shit. Clearly the raid has the stats to do this, there's just some slacking all around, including me. It happens on raids when folks aren't focused. And they sooo weren't if I judged the text chat right. Likely it took a wipe to wake everyone up and stop facerolling. But I'm not fond of yelling, don't think it's necessary, and really am not interested in interacting with people who punctuate yelling with swear words. So I bailed. After calling him a dumbass. That part felt good, even though I'm sure it's a drop in the bucket for him.
I dunno, they finished and a guildie got some loot off of it, which is great. But at the end of the day, I was glad I jumped. I learned from it. My only concern was really perception for my guild for jumping out of a raid. New guild, new perception to build. I do want to raid, I work at getting better, I'm upgrading gear. But it's not my living breathing goal in life. Hopefully they get that.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Good things and more good things...
My buddy Everdawn and I plunked down 2, count them, 2 60 day WoW cards for the Child's Play Charity Auction starting this week. Everdawn is a graphic artist when not playing WoW, and makes some damn fine t-shirts and promo goodies out in Vegas.
Now it's your turn - the auction starts May 1st, and there's a bunch of good goodies to bid on. Go support a great cause and get some great stuff in the process! Details here:
http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/04/its-almost-here-childrens-week-childs-play-charity-auction/
Inside the game, I've been pondering my gear as I fish for Fish Feast ingredients in WG. I love that I can step off the flight path and cozy up to a nice quiet fishing hole in the middle of a BG. But I digress... I need to finish the gear process in getting up to Naxx-able, and I've been struggling with block and avoidance stats now that my def is nicely capped with a bit to spare. And even with regular upgrades, it's been a slow process. Upgrades were huge for +def, but less immediate satisfaction for the avoidance stats. So I did what anyone would do, and went to find my favorite uber pally to pick his brain for a bit...
Sadly, he's Alliance :-P But Turall is a RL friend, and very helpful and clear about explaining stuff to me about stats and gear and other things Pally. And he plays more than I do, so I get the benefit of his knowledge and experience. And he has excellent taste in cars. We batted back and forth about stats, talents, glyphs, and rotations to build the most effective tanking machine.
Some excellent points:
Improved Judgements:
If you look at the main protadin rotation, all your abilities have 6 or 9 second cooldowns (Ok, Holy Shield is 8 seconds, close enough it fits into a 9 second slot), except for Judgement, which is 10 seconds.
By putting only one point into Imp. Judgement you get a perfect 9, 6, 9, 6 rotation. SoR and HotR are 6 secondConsecrate, Holy Shield and Judgement are 9 second. You can tailor the actual rotation to your preference. But with this method you get always have an ability ready after a Global Cooldown (the 1.5 second cooldown after using a skill)
I must admit, my rotations aren't as machine-like as they could be. I'm tempted to set up a macro to see if it improves. Then again, that kind of takes the human monkey fun out of the picture, now doesn't it? Maybe I should just get better, improve my HUD, and practice.
His glyphs:
Majors-Glyph of Seal of Vengeance: bumps up expertise, nice for keeping Vengeance stacks up (it's the only seal I use for tanking)
Glyph of Salvation: %20 damage reduction when Hand of Salvation is active. You can use this as your own emergency button if your threat is really high, or it is good for saving someone's ass.
Glyph of Divine Plea: duh.
I personally am not a fan of the Salvation Hand. I get the mechanic, but my mindset while tanking involves using my taunts, not dropping their threat. Probably a good consideration, but I don't think I've ever, ever pressed this button. Ever. I suppose I could while healing, but I have yet to do so while tanking. Interesting thought.
Time to go mess with some basic setup and gear stuff. I did add the Aldor shoulder enchant last night, getting my dodge up a smidge more. And I'll go change my weapon enchant to STR, which should help my block a smidge. And I'll probably respec, he gave me some good points that I want to see in action.
Now it's your turn - the auction starts May 1st, and there's a bunch of good goodies to bid on. Go support a great cause and get some great stuff in the process! Details here:
http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/04/its-almost-here-childrens-week-childs-play-charity-auction/
Inside the game, I've been pondering my gear as I fish for Fish Feast ingredients in WG. I love that I can step off the flight path and cozy up to a nice quiet fishing hole in the middle of a BG. But I digress... I need to finish the gear process in getting up to Naxx-able, and I've been struggling with block and avoidance stats now that my def is nicely capped with a bit to spare. And even with regular upgrades, it's been a slow process. Upgrades were huge for +def, but less immediate satisfaction for the avoidance stats. So I did what anyone would do, and went to find my favorite uber pally to pick his brain for a bit...
Sadly, he's Alliance :-P But Turall is a RL friend, and very helpful and clear about explaining stuff to me about stats and gear and other things Pally. And he plays more than I do, so I get the benefit of his knowledge and experience. And he has excellent taste in cars. We batted back and forth about stats, talents, glyphs, and rotations to build the most effective tanking machine.
Some excellent points:
Improved Judgements:
If you look at the main protadin rotation, all your abilities have 6 or 9 second cooldowns (Ok, Holy Shield is 8 seconds, close enough it fits into a 9 second slot), except for Judgement, which is 10 seconds.
By putting only one point into Imp. Judgement you get a perfect 9, 6, 9, 6 rotation. SoR and HotR are 6 secondConsecrate, Holy Shield and Judgement are 9 second. You can tailor the actual rotation to your preference. But with this method you get always have an ability ready after a Global Cooldown (the 1.5 second cooldown after using a skill)
I must admit, my rotations aren't as machine-like as they could be. I'm tempted to set up a macro to see if it improves. Then again, that kind of takes the human monkey fun out of the picture, now doesn't it? Maybe I should just get better, improve my HUD, and practice.
His glyphs:
Majors-Glyph of Seal of Vengeance: bumps up expertise, nice for keeping Vengeance stacks up (it's the only seal I use for tanking)
Glyph of Salvation: %20 damage reduction when Hand of Salvation is active. You can use this as your own emergency button if your threat is really high, or it is good for saving someone's ass.
Glyph of Divine Plea: duh.
I personally am not a fan of the Salvation Hand. I get the mechanic, but my mindset while tanking involves using my taunts, not dropping their threat. Probably a good consideration, but I don't think I've ever, ever pressed this button. Ever. I suppose I could while healing, but I have yet to do so while tanking. Interesting thought.
Time to go mess with some basic setup and gear stuff. I did add the Aldor shoulder enchant last night, getting my dodge up a smidge more. And I'll go change my weapon enchant to STR, which should help my block a smidge. And I'll probably respec, he gave me some good points that I want to see in action.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Charity - go do good things!
http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/04/childrens-week-childs-play-charity-auction-update/
I highly recommend giving what you can, participating if you can, promoting if you can, etc. Gamers have hearts, too!
I highly recommend giving what you can, participating if you can, promoting if you can, etc. Gamers have hearts, too!
Monday, April 13, 2009
And its been a while...
Sooo it's been a while since I posted. That pesky real life has been annoyingly inconsistent lately, so I took a break from my usual writings to go deal with it. And again. And again...
But I've made it almost to patch 3.1, and I find this: http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/04/12/the-light-and-how-to-swing-it-patch-3-1-and-you-part-ii/
Yes, that high pitched squeal is every prot paladin in the Wow-niverse having a game-asm. Yay for viable pvp on a prot spec, not to mention the hardened goodness of the pve changes. I can't express it better, but I do have a new shopping list of glyhs to attmept. Now I'm just wondering if I'll be getting talent points back to respend amongst the new goodies.
Had some drama with the former guild. Best I could figure out is that the GL got annoyed at being the land of alts, not having good attendance at raids, and generaly not being #1 in our hard core raider's books. Which isn't hard to believe when most of them were on during prime time, and the GL works nights. Makes for difficult raid scheduling. The things I got annoyed by was signing on to mass insecurity as alt after alt was being kicked by the GL/other officer and no one was explaining to the rank and file why there were toons flying out the doors. Especially folks who'd been there from the beginning and were well known and liked. Sadness and chaos all around. I ruminated on it for a week or so, talked to everyone involved, and eventually decided that I needed to be elsewhere if I couldn't stomach the leadership style. Sad to not be in guild with some of the folks I left behind, especially since I switched servers to play with them. But I can still harrass them from my handy dandy friends list instead.
Still struggling with gears, although now that the bf has hit 80 (yay for him!), I'll be towing him through a few heroics perweek. I'm ahead of him on the gear scale by far, but the more we hit, the faster he'll catch up. He got 2 upgrades in the first instance we hit.
But I've made it almost to patch 3.1, and I find this: http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/04/12/the-light-and-how-to-swing-it-patch-3-1-and-you-part-ii/
Yes, that high pitched squeal is every prot paladin in the Wow-niverse having a game-asm. Yay for viable pvp on a prot spec, not to mention the hardened goodness of the pve changes. I can't express it better, but I do have a new shopping list of glyhs to attmept. Now I'm just wondering if I'll be getting talent points back to respend amongst the new goodies.
Had some drama with the former guild. Best I could figure out is that the GL got annoyed at being the land of alts, not having good attendance at raids, and generaly not being #1 in our hard core raider's books. Which isn't hard to believe when most of them were on during prime time, and the GL works nights. Makes for difficult raid scheduling. The things I got annoyed by was signing on to mass insecurity as alt after alt was being kicked by the GL/other officer and no one was explaining to the rank and file why there were toons flying out the doors. Especially folks who'd been there from the beginning and were well known and liked. Sadness and chaos all around. I ruminated on it for a week or so, talked to everyone involved, and eventually decided that I needed to be elsewhere if I couldn't stomach the leadership style. Sad to not be in guild with some of the folks I left behind, especially since I switched servers to play with them. But I can still harrass them from my handy dandy friends list instead.
Still struggling with gears, although now that the bf has hit 80 (yay for him!), I'll be towing him through a few heroics perweek. I'm ahead of him on the gear scale by far, but the more we hit, the faster he'll catch up. He got 2 upgrades in the first instance we hit.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)