Ok.. Now that I got that last post off my chest.. How about a new post?!
First off, I am glad to say that we have figured out how to solve our problem with raiding. We are forming a new guild. What? That seems intuitive.. Part of the reason we were unable to move further than we really could was due to the lack of structure of the current guild. Problem is.. That's what makes it so much fun. Well with the new guild we will do what we can to keep some of that looseness but kinda give ourselves the ability to shore up the edges on the raiding situation. A great quote for it would be "You can raid in a casual guild, but you cannot raid casually" Perhaps one day I'll elaborate more on that, but probably not, but we have found it to be the only way to move on to 25 mans and to foster an environment that is more conducive to success in raiding.
Second off, to state my adventures a little bit.. I decided due to the current flux we will be undergoing that raiding will be likely a little tabled for a bit, so I couldn't think of a better time to go enhancement. Since I have been the only shammy in most of our runs, and we rarely have hunters (weird, huh?), I have been able to amass quite a decent set (third offset). I finally was able to take the decapitator off prince since it was going to be a DE, and went and bought the new badge offhand. I enchanted them both up on mongoose, and spend a good amount of gold (~500) to round up gems, and to buy a head glyph, and such. All said and done, I was pretty rusty, but had nice gear, and was ready to try out my new spec.
First thing I did was land in a normal Slave Pens run, but was a little disheartened that I couldn't do much over 400 dps. This seemed kinda sucky considering I was using the correct rotation of Stormstrike, Earth shock, Earthshock. I also had around 1300 AP and 25% crit, so I was like wth!
Well I was pretty bummed after that run, but wrote it off to being rusty, so the second thing I did was run a normal shadow labs.. more on my level than SP, and hopefully mobs live long enough for me to get into some sort of groove. Well we were running with a tank that was working on building up her tanking set, and I had serious issues managing aggro, even with whiteswinging only.. I eventually had to cancel my windfury as well, and ended the run around the same spot ~400-500 dps.
Again, I write this off to being somewhat rusty, and not being able to land that rotation correctly. So I get a chance to hit up heroic mech, just for the last part to help out a tank buddy of mine...and on a PvP server, you NEVER say no to a tank that wants you to come on an instance, since 90% of the warriors on the server are pvp builds. This time things went much better. With a geared tank, who is rockin devastates over and over I was able to hit about 750 dps for around 25 mins while we finished it up. That made me feel a LOT better.
Well the last leg in this journey, I saw a "LFM Gruul's Lair" and I got a little twinkle in my eye, and got a little misty... What BETTER situation to test my skills other than as a PuG in a 25 man raid. How fortuitous that I would be able to land that sort of thing within the first day of my pimping out my new set and rocking my new spec! So I hit up Gruuls, and struggled at first...was about 12th spot overall leading up to High King, and was able to get to about 10 by the end of the trash. We got High King, and I dropped a couple places, but the T4 shoulders dropped, and being a PuG in a raid, and they allowed us to roll I didn't feel bad about giving it a shot...well lucky me! I now have T4 shoulders, and a significant upgrade over my other ones that I had from karazhan. Well, by the time we finished out the run and got Gruul down, I was sitting pretty at #4 on the damage out charts, and 6th in dps, so I felt pretty good about it all. Across the board I was the top Melee dpser, and finally felt good about the new spec.
Side note: enhancement is awesome for grinding. You never have to stop! Never have to drink, you just pop shamanistic rage and keep rockin! Good stuff. I might even try a Kara or two, just to see how viable a spec this really is for me. Elemental is my first love however, and Resto is always needed, so I don't see myself staying enhancement long, but it was a fun ride!
Karma Call: When my Friend and I were trying to get the guild charter signed, we ran across a level 70 rogue that was unguilded and asked him kindly to sign our charter, and being and overall douchebag, and demanding 10g, we had to look elsewhere... Well, on my bank toon I put on the Auction House, two shadow pearls, of which usually run around 50 silver. Well I was going to put them up for around 46s and was going to be cool with that but I made a huge mistake.. I put them up for 46 GOLD. Lol..no biggie, they won't sell and I'll slap my head and go DOH, and relist them at an appropriate price... well not even an hour later (before I had realized my mistake) they sold. I was confused at first when I saw the amount I was getting, but then realized what I had done, and was just astonished that someone actually had bought them.. Well I checked out who bought them and chuckled a little inside, because it was none other than our little rogue friend that demanded 10g. Man... what luck for me, and what suxor for him.. Oh well, I guess it teaches one or two lessons... one being to always be nice to noobs (even if they are feigning it), and always ALWAYS pay attention when buying stuff on AH, and be a little patient sometimes... There will always be more shadow pearls listed at far less of a price..
And with that I end my blog. More adventures to come I am sure!
Monday, May 26, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
A Requiem for Boom and Other Tales
Hello, and welcome to my Blog.
I feel cliche starting out like this, but hey..how else do you start a blog?
This is going to be my outlet for my World of Warcraft endeavors.
Allow me a quick introduction.
My name is Andrew, and I am a WoW player. I have played for almost a year now. I have a level 70 elemental shaman named Snostrebla. I rock restoration on occasion as well. Both specs I am geared completely through T5, and have little upgrades available up through T5..at least nothign significant. I have a level 32 Prot pally named Tigraine, and a couple others I haven't played enough to be worth mentioning. I am in the guild BOOM, and second-in-command to the Guild Leader only.
A quick description of the title of this particular blog and hopefully the general theme of this blog: BOOM is a guild that we have been rocking on Crushridge. The guild was started back on August 23, 2007. It was started as a guild to escape the clutches of a guild going hardcore, and having the ability to raid in a super casual setting with your closest buddies. I leveled from roughly level 50 and up, here in BOOM. We started rocking Karazhan back in Oct/Nov and we simply tore through it, thanks to a couple of super-experienced raid leaders, and we had a ton of fun and geared ourselves up really quickly since we were fully clearing it in three weeks.
Time passed, and we grew, inviting friends and family into the guild, and rocking Kara with all these folks as well, and then we reached a point where we didn't really have anything we could really do. We found ourselves in a position of not being able to really really hit anything hard after that. Zul'aman was a little too hard to bring just anyone in, and we have such a casual approach that we couldn't tell someone in all greens that they weren't good enough to run with us, and we didn't have enough for 25 mans and didn't want to recruit just anyone. We still had a good thing going, though. We had a group of around 20 really active players that were very considerate of others, and wanted to help everyone out, and then everything changed.
I blame myself a little, I blame the nature of the guild a little, and I blame the guild itself a little. The itch for 25-mans came upon us in force. All-of-the-sudden everyone wanted to do 25-mans. Well we were faced with a problem, because of our unique free-for-all guild structure, but at the same time all the players runing with integrity and mass amounts of skill, we wanted to avoid bringing in the loot whores. You have all probably played with one at one time or another. The person that talks in guild, or party constantly about X piece of gear, and usually works it into a conversation about as often as one would a newly ex-girlfiend or ex-boyfriend. We've all grouped with these people, and sometimes we tolerate them because they are our friends, but lets get real..we didn't want to deal with that anymore than we already did. Also we don't even want to delve into the realm of possible ninjas.
So we were faced largely with a recruiting issue, and it was particularly hard too because we have such a good reputation for tearing through stuff, and having really rock-solid players (gear aside). So we wanted more people, and had many clamoring to join up, but when you slip a little on your standards, and have to bring people in to fill spots on a 25-man raid, you are bound to start seeing some drama. "So and so died too early" "So and So drives me crazy, why don't we kick him?" "if so and so had done x, we would've killed y" All of these things may or may not be true, but what it ended up boiling down to was an overall lack of consideration for fellow raiders. To speed the 25-man jump we started rockin with another guild, and it worked well for a while, and then the scrubs started showing up. These are the guys that won't outdamage a tank, but get upset when healers aren't able to heal because they ran out of mana in a fight that was supposed to be half as long as it should be.
Long story short, things began to get ugly and many started to remember the success of the 10 mans and the old days. Many wanted to still raid, but we were in a cyclical loop. As a GM of a super casual guild, I cannot tell anyone to do anything really, and counting on others to be considerate at that point begins to just epic fail.
Things are at a standstill now for us. We can barely put a 10-man together. We've had people leave for bigger better things, and it looks like the GM's are just sitting on our hands and not doing anything. Partially its true, because we built and environment that was not conducive to fixing the problems we were having, and partially was due to lack of playing time, and many other things. Long and short of it is this: the glory days are going to be short, and a new era must dawn. Whatever the result is, I intend to keep playing.. no dramatic quit, no dramatic explosion. If things get worked out (as I am fully expecting they will as we plan and plan) great. If things fail, I can simply step down and continue my WoWing in some other capacity. As for now, I am done with listening to the whining and not being able to fix it.
The dawn of a new day, and a requiem for BOOM. I will be including my other adventures as well. Hope this is well enjoyed!
P.S. I realize that this sounds ultimately negative, but I really really really do love BOOM. It has seroiusly been the pinnacle of gaming enjoyment in a kid raised on nintendo and beyond. I have made super duper friends in there, and hope that I will be able to keep them, and keep playing with everyone! I am just sad to see its values and greatness passing.
If any from BOOM actually read this, hang tight. The horizon holds great great things, and its very very close.
Godspeed
-Andrew
I feel cliche starting out like this, but hey..how else do you start a blog?
This is going to be my outlet for my World of Warcraft endeavors.
Allow me a quick introduction.
My name is Andrew, and I am a WoW player. I have played for almost a year now. I have a level 70 elemental shaman named Snostrebla. I rock restoration on occasion as well. Both specs I am geared completely through T5, and have little upgrades available up through T5..at least nothign significant. I have a level 32 Prot pally named Tigraine, and a couple others I haven't played enough to be worth mentioning. I am in the guild BOOM, and second-in-command to the Guild Leader only.
A quick description of the title of this particular blog and hopefully the general theme of this blog: BOOM is a guild that we have been rocking on Crushridge. The guild was started back on August 23, 2007. It was started as a guild to escape the clutches of a guild going hardcore, and having the ability to raid in a super casual setting with your closest buddies. I leveled from roughly level 50 and up, here in BOOM. We started rocking Karazhan back in Oct/Nov and we simply tore through it, thanks to a couple of super-experienced raid leaders, and we had a ton of fun and geared ourselves up really quickly since we were fully clearing it in three weeks.
Time passed, and we grew, inviting friends and family into the guild, and rocking Kara with all these folks as well, and then we reached a point where we didn't really have anything we could really do. We found ourselves in a position of not being able to really really hit anything hard after that. Zul'aman was a little too hard to bring just anyone in, and we have such a casual approach that we couldn't tell someone in all greens that they weren't good enough to run with us, and we didn't have enough for 25 mans and didn't want to recruit just anyone. We still had a good thing going, though. We had a group of around 20 really active players that were very considerate of others, and wanted to help everyone out, and then everything changed.
I blame myself a little, I blame the nature of the guild a little, and I blame the guild itself a little. The itch for 25-mans came upon us in force. All-of-the-sudden everyone wanted to do 25-mans. Well we were faced with a problem, because of our unique free-for-all guild structure, but at the same time all the players runing with integrity and mass amounts of skill, we wanted to avoid bringing in the loot whores. You have all probably played with one at one time or another. The person that talks in guild, or party constantly about X piece of gear, and usually works it into a conversation about as often as one would a newly ex-girlfiend or ex-boyfriend. We've all grouped with these people, and sometimes we tolerate them because they are our friends, but lets get real..we didn't want to deal with that anymore than we already did. Also we don't even want to delve into the realm of possible ninjas.
So we were faced largely with a recruiting issue, and it was particularly hard too because we have such a good reputation for tearing through stuff, and having really rock-solid players (gear aside). So we wanted more people, and had many clamoring to join up, but when you slip a little on your standards, and have to bring people in to fill spots on a 25-man raid, you are bound to start seeing some drama. "So and so died too early" "So and So drives me crazy, why don't we kick him?" "if so and so had done x, we would've killed y" All of these things may or may not be true, but what it ended up boiling down to was an overall lack of consideration for fellow raiders. To speed the 25-man jump we started rockin with another guild, and it worked well for a while, and then the scrubs started showing up. These are the guys that won't outdamage a tank, but get upset when healers aren't able to heal because they ran out of mana in a fight that was supposed to be half as long as it should be.
Long story short, things began to get ugly and many started to remember the success of the 10 mans and the old days. Many wanted to still raid, but we were in a cyclical loop. As a GM of a super casual guild, I cannot tell anyone to do anything really, and counting on others to be considerate at that point begins to just epic fail.
Things are at a standstill now for us. We can barely put a 10-man together. We've had people leave for bigger better things, and it looks like the GM's are just sitting on our hands and not doing anything. Partially its true, because we built and environment that was not conducive to fixing the problems we were having, and partially was due to lack of playing time, and many other things. Long and short of it is this: the glory days are going to be short, and a new era must dawn. Whatever the result is, I intend to keep playing.. no dramatic quit, no dramatic explosion. If things get worked out (as I am fully expecting they will as we plan and plan) great. If things fail, I can simply step down and continue my WoWing in some other capacity. As for now, I am done with listening to the whining and not being able to fix it.
The dawn of a new day, and a requiem for BOOM. I will be including my other adventures as well. Hope this is well enjoyed!
P.S. I realize that this sounds ultimately negative, but I really really really do love BOOM. It has seroiusly been the pinnacle of gaming enjoyment in a kid raised on nintendo and beyond. I have made super duper friends in there, and hope that I will be able to keep them, and keep playing with everyone! I am just sad to see its values and greatness passing.
If any from BOOM actually read this, hang tight. The horizon holds great great things, and its very very close.
Godspeed
-Andrew
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