Suprise patch = surprise buttsechs.

So I’m already wound up enough, what with the first 25 man with me as guild leader, and then we have to have issues all night.  It started with the Beasts pull and our OT DCing…and being unable to log back on for awhile.  That was pretty much the theme of the night.

Pyxy, tank.  Ghostfacee, melee DPS.  Erdkrieg, healer.  Iknowyou, ranged DPS.  Mikata, healer.  Myself, healer, though I thankfully didn’t have patch issues.   It was a rotating cluserfuck of 24 manning nearly every gods be damned thing because we were always missing someone. 

Healing felt light and I don’t know if it was due it group comp, silly inattentive people, the particular tanks we’d chosen (Pyx is still catching up in gear to the other thanks and Mega just doesn’t have Zoja’s avoidances), server fail, or all of those.  I know I was lolfailing at one point, to my bafflement-I lolfail at many things, but to be hit by Icehowl?  ICEHOWL?!  On my screen, it looked like he was facing me, so I ran to one side, to you know…get out of the way.  Instead, I ran into him.  WTF?  GAH.  I think I’ll stick with “all of those” as my answer and cross my fingers for better luck next week.

On my Current Things To Do As GM List is “find my spine”.  I should get right on that.

ETA: Kestrel mentioned my name and the phrase “mad comic genius” together.  I feel better now.

Raid from Hell

It was one of those nights.  Cranky Tank is recovering from the flu and Fearless Leader is coming down with it.  Some raiders seemed to have left their brains at home and stupid wipes were had.  The loot gods were not kind.  RL stress frayed tempers.  I, ever the emotion sponge, soaked it all up and expoloded it right back at everyone (my response to one tank’s “heal me!” was “TPS the boss!”).

Normally, I try to keep spirits up with Amber’s Patended Random Silly, but even that was shot down.  Steve has been refusing to give me assist, which means I can’t /rw spam.  Aside from making me a very sad panda, this also puts a crimp on my role as healing lead.  Vent can get chaotic, and even my healers with perfect hearing can’t always catch what I need them to, nevermind the one without.  Whisper and raid chat can be lost, too.  Let’s face it, /rw makes a noise and splashes red text on your screen for a reason.  There’s some logic behind my request beyond my desire to be a dork, like telling Tank Healer #3 to cover Tank #2 because Tank Healer #1 decided to stand in front of a worm (I’m fucking brilliant some days, let me tell you). 

I have my other gripes, as well.  I disagree with having seven healers for ToC.  How about we make our people learn to not hug opposite color orbs, and other such lazy dumbfuckery?  What about dispells?  Can you learn to do those?  We have some damned fine healers and it doesn’t take much for boredem to set in.  We did fine with 6 healers before when I decided to be a bitch and ignore Steve, and we’ll do fine with 6 again.  The most fun I’ve had in ToC was one ToC 10 with one of our more undergeared healers.  My mana bar was screaming!  It was work!  Holy shit!  I LOVED IT.  …you want us to have HOW MANY HEALERS in a 25 man?

One of our tanks also has aquired the Grate On Amber’s Nerves debuff.   This is…not cool.  It applies stacks, and after so many stacks I just want to scream.  In fact, he gets a post all on his own!…again.

How to PROPERLY Place Blame

I was sitting there innocently wasting time in Twitter instead of blogging or working on my Nano outline when lo, this post came to my attention.  I read it over and immediately noticed a massive problem: he was always blaming the wrong people.  I decided that it was my DUTY to set the record straight.

ETA: Don’t forget to check out other versions here and here.

Here, then, is a CORRECTED version of Mortigan’s list:

Amber’s Totally Fair and Unbiased Guide to Placing the Blame for Wipes

Cause of Wipe: The tank appears to be losing aggro left and right! 
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  First, cuss at them a lot and remind them to LOOK AT OMEN.  If they would just LOOK AT OMEN, then we wouldn’t have this problem.  CLEARLY, any and all aggro issues lay at the feet of the DPS.  I mean, they’re making it, right?  Totally their problem.  If that doesn’t work, take away the shamans weapons and make him DPS with mining picks.*

Cause of Wipe: The tank dies.
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  Clearly, the tank died because the DPS took too long to kill the boss and the healer went OOM.

Cause of Wipe: Boss immediately ignores tank and 1-shots the DPSers.
Person to Blame:  DPS
Possible Solutions:  Uh, DON’T STAND THERE, tardbuckets.

Cause of Wipe: The healer dies.
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  Misdirect onto the tanks correctly, hunters, or drop a frost trap!  AoE the adds down quicker! 

Cause of Wipe: The adds are killing everyone.
Person to Blame:  The DPS
Possible Solutions:  If you KILLED the adds then they couldn’t kill  YOU.  See also: previous wipe.  Alternatively, if you weren’t standing in fires all the time, the healers would still have mana with which to heal your legitimate ailments.

Cause of Wipe: The DPS is too low, and the boss enrages.
Person to Blame:  …the DPS!
Possible Solutions:  MASH BUTTONS FASTER AND WITH LESS FAIL.

Cause of Wipe:  People don’t know the fights.
Person to Blame:  the DPS
Possible Solutions:  Tanking and healing are very similar from fight to fight.  CLEARLY, if the strats are being mucked up it’s the DPS’s fault, because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing!  Go read strats, nubs!

*We honestly did this back in Kara.

How2Ony

• Stay away from the whelp caves!
• NO REALLY, STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE WHELP CAVES
• and the bosses tail…
• …and her head…
• …and deep breaths…
• …and the big adds when they make the burny circles…
• …and where the big adds SPAWN lest they come nom you when you are not a tank…
• …and the lava spouting cracks during phase three…
• Did I mention stay the fuck away from the whelp caves?!
• GET OUT OF THE LAVA POOL BY THE ENTRACE ZEREN!  FFS!

OT: Hunter Rant, Ho

ETA: blah blah, Amber can’t hunter, the point is made

So, I have a hunter.  Her name is Jamethera, and for a large part of BC she was my main.  I luffs her.

She was BM then, but not just because BM was the Flavor of the Month.  No, I’ve had a BM hunter since before the first hunter talent reset-my second character ever, in fact, behind my paladin Ambrosine.   Now that first hunter was actually a russet Tauren lady who sits at level 26 to this day, but my nelfy version is old in her own right.  She was my only other max level character in vanilla, actually, because those were the days when each toon took me over a year to level.  I r scrub.

Anyway.  I raided with her in BC, sponging knowledge from Olgas, a most marvelous hunter if ever I knew one.  This was before I knew of EJ and blogs and other such things, because I was the most non-hardcore hardcore raider ever. 

“What is the hit cap, Olgas?”
“What should I gem for, Olgas?”
“Is this peice of gear good, Olgas?”

…in hindsight, I’m terribly sorry, Olgas!  Anyway, I did manage to become a good hunter, usually at or very near the top of the meters.  I enjoyed raiding with Jamethera, and was happy when I got her to 80 a week ago.

Took her to Naxx…fine, fine.  Aside from the Dance Studio, nothing was god awful for my pet, and I felt that I could perform my job fairly well.   I missed my cat Schneeflocke, who had been my companion since level 12, but the devilsaur Omnomnom amused me. 

Then…Tuesday.  I wasn’t worried about the patch, really, until a few comments from other hunters on Twitter had me rushing home to test pet DPS.

And the wolf won.  We’re talking-in my specific case-a difference of 20 DPS, but still.  A wolf out damaged a devilsaur.

Okay, what?  I’m a BM hunter!  I can tame all these awesome, unique pets!

…and if I care about doing max DPS in raids, I need to use a wolf?  What fucking sense does thatmake?  It’s a mere 20 DPS difference for me, but it’s irritating none the less.  So here’s “slap in the face” number one.  I’m a BM hunter and my end of tree talent is pointless except for 4 mother fucking talent poitns in my pet tree.  What the HELL? 

Fuckity fuck fuck.  Since I convinced my poor guild to let me take my hunter into Ulduar, I went out and tamed one of those ugly tiny-waisted level 80 wolves and trudged on in.

Do you know how many times my pet died on Razorscale?  5 times.

Do you know how many times my pet died on Ignis?  3 times before I said FOR FUCK’S SAKE and kept him near me.  You know, not DPSing. 

Now I’m familiar with the concept of yanking my pet out of shit that hurts, but there comes a point where the shit that hurts is every god damned where all the god damned time and you spend more time moving your pet around than DPSing, and what the fuck is up with that?  Razor was especially annoying because I was on turret duty and not always aware of where my mutt was stupidly standing.

A pet is a major component of the hunter class-all three specs, not just BM.  So let me get this straight, it’s okay to render part of an entire classes mechanic bloody USELESS for large chunks of the instance? 

I’m struggling to remember BC, here.  You had to be quick on the pet controls for Aran, or they’d die, and there were some other fights (o hai, High King) where you had to be pretty aware of where the hell your pet was.   Attack this target, then this one, NOT that one, and here, pull them out of whirlwind.  But it was all doableand my pet was never out of the action for lengthy periods of time.  Even in Naxx, there’s only the one fight where he’s loluseless.

Now Blizzard seems to have grown madly in love with Bad Things On The Floor.  Razor?  Fire.  Ignis?  Fire.  Trash going to IC/Kologarn?  Pokeballs.    That’s already a significant chunk of the instance where I’m fighting to hit 2k DPS when I know damn well I can over 3k because I can’t fucking use this integral part of my class.  IC on easy mode wasn’t bad-he died due to my own inattentiveness once, but management on that fight is fine.  CCL and Hodir were fine, but uh…Mim?  Yeah I can see that going WONDERFULLY.

I left the instance having done subpar DPS and feeling generally terrible about a class and spec I used to love.  I tried to coax out tanks into at least keeping mobs out of fucking pokeballs, but I was basically told “Why?  The DPS can move to the sides and moving stuff more than you have to can cause problems.”   I have to wonder if that sort of attitude isn’t why we wiped so often on IC before-you now, not getting the bosses ass entirely out of the rune?  Yeah, that.  I could just be being bitter, though. 

I don’t really want to play my hunter anymore, and that makes me sadder than anything.  It’s one thing to choose a class that isn’t optimal but at least is FUN and supposedly not that terrible DPS wise, and then find out that due to fires on the fucking floor it’s god awful DPS AND not even fun anymore.

QQ…

A Matter of Perspective

Someone has, apparently, stated that I am…elitest.  What makes someone an elitist?  Let’s go poke wikipedia, because I loves me some wikipedia.

“Elitism is the belief or attitude that those individuals who are considered members of the elite—a select group of people with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes—are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight or those who view their own views as so; whose views and/or actions are most likely to be constructive to society as a whole; or whose extraordinary skills, abilities or wisdom render them especially fit to govern.^“

Well that doesn’t sound terrible.  I’m an officer-I’d assume that I was promoted due to some skill I displayed.  As an officer, my opinion is to be taken seriously.  So…let’s poke another resource, ye olde urban dictionary, to see if I can’t suss out the actual…intended meaning.

Someone who thinks he/she is beyond everyone else … A Person who thinks that everyone else is worthless and disabled. … elitists tend to be rude, cocky, arrogant, and very selfish; that’s the combination of a elitist.

Oh, well then.  Okay.

I don’t know who said this (they said it to Steve, who said it to Josh, who mentioned it in passing to me) and thus, I have no idea what it is that I do to trigger this reaction.  That, more than anything, vexed me.

Do I come off as cocky?  Well yeah, sure, I probably do.  Fuck, man, I’m sorry that I’ve been healing in this game for 4 years and have no problem acting like I have some vague idea of what I’m doing.  Vague of course is the key word-I disc raid heal and BM hunter DPS for fuck’s sake, clearly I’m neither the best nor the brightest.  I’m not going to tell you that my way is the one and only correct way because LOL IT ISN’T I just do whatever I find enjoyable.  I find not sucking to be enjoyable, though, so I have this general idea of how to gear and what to do in a fight in order to produce some mild success.  I am baffled when other people do not appear make the same effort.

I certainly don’t think that others are me are worthless.  I may not want to bring some of them to progression raids ever again, but that’s not the same as thinking they are worthless.  I consider myself to be a middling-skilled player.  I am able to, for example, DPS and move out of The Bad most of the time.  If you cannot both DPS and move out of The Bad, I am going to be a sad, exasperated panda.  Especially since I’m a keyboard turner.  I mean come on, guys.   If I can do it, so can you.

Selfish?  Here, take my raid slot.  Take my loot.  I don’t fucking care.  I just want to kill pixels with friends.

Rude?  …well, okay, fuck.  Sure.  I can be rude.

Is it just the fact that I raid with expectations?  Holy shit, I expect you to be able to raid and not fuck up all the time, that’s just awful!  Can’t pay attention to shit around you?  Get DBM or something else like it!  Your waltzing through Clouds of Yogg Farts is frustrating 9 other people, stop fucking doing it.  Raiding isn’t public school, there isn’t a No Child Left Behind Act-if you can’t perform you can’t go.  If you fuck up, we’ll let you know-not because we think you’re awful and we’re putting you down because we love kicking puppies, but so that you can…I don’t know…fix it? 

And yeah maybe sometimes we-I-get frustrated because OH MY GOD HOW IS IT THAT HARD IF MY SCRUB ASS CAN DO IT-but we’re human.  I’ve totally said things I really should have phrased differently.  And you’re totally welcome to go “Hey Amber, watch it, woman!”  And I’ll be all like “Oh shit, sorry.”  And then we can move on.  Or you can tell Steve I’m an elitist and I’ll sit here and /facepalm, one or the other…but the latter is totally less constructive.

I want my mistakes pointed out, too, so that I can try to not repeat them.  I don’t really want to come off as a bitch-I may have high standards, I may be demanding, but I hold myself to the same standards and demands and I genuinely do not want to be disliked.

Healers Keep a Naughty List

Most healers have a “list”.  Actually, most healers have two lists.  One list consists of people we really like-the tank that is always watching our backs, the warlock who uses his demon as a Healer Guard, the hunter dropping ice traps at our feet, or even just the DPS who don’t stand in fires.  We like these people.  If they do something silly, they have an automatic Healer Aggro Dump.  Think of it as healer rep, if you will.  When you’re honored with a faction and accidentally take out a guard or two, it doesn’t ding you too badly.

The other list?  Well, that consists of the people we don’t like.  They’re the people who never run back after a wipe, the people who never sit down and eat as if your mana bar is their damn mage food, and the rogues who bitch every time they die in a whirlwind.  You merely walk into town and next thing you know, it’s like all the Light’s Hope Chapel guards have descended on your ass. 

In our guild, the worst ones are the people that end up with their names in “Healer Channels”.

LetHuntDie has been the official healing channel of BoO since someone had the mistake of letting me pick the name.  Hunt isn’t a bad kid-he’s a kick ass hunter and isn’t not that obnoxious towards the healers most of the time, but giving him hell as been a guild tradition since before I joined.  He canget really fucking annoying but I think that’s just a part of being 16.  Aspect of the Emo Kid QQ. 

NoHealsForNightghost started off as a joke-I’ll often declare a “new healing channel” when someone is especially annoying, unless of course it’s Hunt.  Then it’s just “CHANNEL NAME IS GO.”  But last night our guildie hit a new point of annoyance.

Hodir was a rough fight for us.  It was a scraping the bottom of the mana barrel fight, pots used, Hymns blown, fiend on cooldown, oh fuck oh fuck OH THANK GOD HE DIED fight.  The days of me being able to tie our resto shaman on meters as disc are gone-thank you, PoH and Penance nerfs.  The boss submitted and everyone stopped where they were-except me, because I perpetually strafe and jump like a space goat on crack.  Stopped, and…the debuff kept ticking.

Ticking.

Ticking and stacking on people whose health was already low.  Mikata said something on Vent about moving if you still had the debuff but it was a wee bit late.

Nightghost died.  Died, and then proceeded to make some angry remark on vent about how the healers couldn’t fucking heal him.  Consider it the equivalent of clicking “At War”. 

Cue the healers smacking their PTT keys, only stopped by the raid leader-Mr. Cranky Tank Josh-telling us to chill.  If by “chill” I mean “STFU OR I’LL REPLACE YOU WTF GUYS.”

This did not, of course, stop me  entirely…

CAN’T HEAL WHEN OOM

…nothing can stop my /rw abuse!  NOTHING!

Ahem.  But seriously-it’s a stacking debuff that you’re in complete control of, and healers can’t magically pull mana out of their asses at the end of a boss fight.  Fail on…whatever was to blame for it continuing to tick despite our victory, but whatever.  Even if it had been some other uncontrollable factor, if your healer is OOM and hasn’t been spamming GHeal on themselves all fight or something else stupid, what the fuck do you want them to do when they have no god damned mana?

Angrily blaming other people in a raid for shit that’s not their fault is bad, mmkay?

Angry outbursts on vent in generally aren’t all that great, actually.

Go figure.

This Lesson in Raiding brought to you by People Who Should Know Better.

Bill is so getting the shit beat out of him next time I see him.  By which I mean I’ll angrily hit him in the shoulder a few times and he’ll laugh at me, but it makes me feel better.

Hold on, the llama got out.

The Amber is displeased.  Why is the Amber displeased?  Because I hate people getting their panties in a twist and ragequitting without, you know, discussing shit.  When we post proposed changes on the officer forum and ask for your input, then we want your input.  We do NOT want you to hike up your skirts, scream that you don’t like us anymore, and leave. 

You want to do that, then fine, get your childish ass out of my mother fucking guild and good riddance.  If you truly don’t like the way things are going, why don’t you sit down and discuss it?  Concerned about new guild ranks diminishing the importance of people who don’t raid?  Well, how about some alternatives?  Where’s your ideas?  I want your ideas.  I don’t want your poorly typed out LJ-style flounce post.

We are not “ruining a social guild”.  We are trying to shape up a raiding guild.  Raiding, see that?  Raaaaiiiiidiiiiiing.  Raiding requires a certain amount of skill and discipline. Oh, and time investment.  Do we have people in the guild who can’t play worth a shit?  Well, yeah.  But they’re friends and we love them and they hang out and occasionally we shove purples at them from a farming run.  Do we have people in the guild who are skilled but can hardly run with us?  Yes, and we miss them terribly, and squee with joy every time they DO get the chance to join us.  Do we have good people who ARE here all the time, and are thus the raiding core?  ….why yes, yes we do.  We have and love all those kinds of people and we always have and we always will.  Do the casuals really need full bank access to our raiding flasks and a Core Raider title?  …no.

One of the most sissy of the flouncers actually told us that we didn’t have a good raiding core to build from.  Wait, what?  What the hell am I, chopped liver?  Kyr?  Zoja?  Mach?  Harryotter?  Huntres?  All those other people who do their job and do it well?  And since when were we a social guild?  What the fuck were we doing in Burning Crusade, having tea parties in SSC?  I don’t remember tea parties, I remember tanking some mother fucking bosses and winning some mother fucking loot in a MOTHER FUCKING RAIDING GUILD.

So excuse me, I’m going to go recruit some more RAIDERS for our RAIDING GUILD.  Then we are going to run some RAIDS.  During said RAIDS, we are going to be SOCIAL and make fun of Mikata because it’s easy, and Harryotter is going to die and we’ll lol at him, and Zoja is going to pick on Huntres, and it’ll be fun.  WHILE RAIDING. 

So congrats, two officers who seldom participated anyway.  Your previous contributions to the guild that once earned you your titles are missed, but shall no longer carry you through this expansion.  You flounced.  Now those of us who actually do the work these days will…uh…continue doing the work.  So uh…nothing has changed, really, except that we’ll proceed with shifting the guild ranks and bank permissions with fewer badly typed rage posts on the forums*.

 

*My rage posts involve capital letters and spell check.

Why’d I sign on for this job, again?

So last night, not only did we fail to reassemble our Ulduar25, but we then proceeded to wipe in Naxx.  Wipe in Naxx. 

Now, let me paint the scene for you: your GM and an officer, or two thirds of your tanks if you will, have worked lots of OT lately.  They didn’t have a weekend.  They are tired and cranky as all get out, and one of them is already such a cranky pants that his guild note is actually Cranky Tank.  Your healing lead and recruitment officer is not only feeling the weight of OMG NEED MORE PEOPLE ITS MY JOB TO FIX IT HALP, but she’s in a simmering PMS induced rage caused by merely existing.  Next thing you know, asking for a fort buff AFTER I’VE ALREADY BUFFED WHY THE FUCK DID YOU AFK OUT OF RANGE ANYWAY JACKASS is a major offense, and wiping on 4H is the end  of the WORLD.

…that was BoO last night.  We had a bunch of people that joined us because they wanted to raid, and then they failed to sign up and blew us off when asked for dailies and regular UK.  The rage build up is pretty high amongst the leadership and we’re facing a mass gkick.  Of course, since they haven’t been raiding with us anyway, it’s not like it’ll hurt us.  It’s just one more annoyance.

It’s not guild destroying, but it’s one of those lay low weeks, you know?  I’ve gone and spruced up and reposted our recruitment posts, so I’m going to cross our fingers and hope we get some nibbles.  Our DPS and healing cores need a good boost.  I hate when it’s attendance issues that get us because my mind instantly dumps all the pressure on me.  Bleh!

Mm, mini-vacations

I didn’t post yesterday because I was running around Six Flags instead of being at work.  Wee!  I’m still not at work, but I’ve a nice collection of random commentary for you now.  Aren’t you excited?

Post-patch fun continues!  In Ulduar on Wednesday night, no less than 3 people who ran back to get the harpoons were killed by 2-3 fireballs in quick succession.  I have no idea what the hell that was about.  XT, naturally, obliterated us and that was that until Monday.

On our first foray into the new 5 man on normal, Zoja forgot that he was in arms spec.  Arms tanking doesn’t go very well, by the way.  The mage (who is misidentified in the intro as a paladin) also loves ignoring the tank and pelting me with fireballs.   I’m starting to sense this theme, with fireballs…

Did you know that you DPS better as shadow in shadowform?!?!?!  I apparently totally forgot this for part of a heroic.  Fuck yeah, I’m awesome.

Apparently some of the competitors don’t appreciate you getting loot for besting them, and after the others have left the ring will remount and trample you all until you manage to flee.

I’ll try to get a Flowchart up today, but try is the key word there.