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.

You should be afraid.

I know I am.

(Cryptic post is cryptic.)

ETA: My creativity is being sucked into NaNo.  Flowchart ideas, anyone?

25s: wooooo!

So last night, BoO made its return to 25s.

Yaaaaaay!

We still need some solid DPS-we pugged a couple, some of our own still need work, and some alts made appearances.  Of course part of the alt fun was because two nublettes decided that it was okay to take their healer mains to a pug Ulduar25 since OMG we have so many heals right?  …and then we’re short a healer come the night of our run.  

Don’t do that.  You know who you are and you of all people should know better.  :P  Yes, we have more healers than you can shake a stick at.  Yes, you have alts that are capable of going into Ulduar25.  But you have no idea if one of our other healers might have connection issues, wife aggro, kid aggro, or whatever at the last minute.   Save your god damn mains for god damned guild runs. 

Let me tell you, the last thing I want on what is still progression content is Josh healing.  Not because Josh isn’t a fine holy paladin-he is-but because I want him tanking.  

Besides, on his pally Josh gets all up in my healing business.  “I think that not having healing assignments on this was a bad idea.”  Really?  It was a one tank fight  (pummelbot bitch doesn’t really count).  Do I have to explicitly tell you that you’re a tank healer and should therefore be on the tank?  And that the raid healers should be on the raid?  Hello?  /thwack 

If we have an excess of tank healers (and we did, last night) then I’m going to be the one on raid bitch duty.  This is fine with me as I’m the most used to it.  I really want to push the tanks to be comfortable with Celaeno, anyway.  Know the Celaeno, love the Celaeno.  I am not the only disc priest.  I do not want to be the only disc priest.   Feel the warm embrace of the other disc priest’s bubbles…  They seem a bit insecure sometimes because she’s not on vent (with reason), but they’ll have to get over it.  I’ll make them.  >:|  

I’m not sure if my tendency to hand out similar healing assignments is good, or bad.  Familiarity vs boredom?  I’m most likely to assign Kotakh the floating “assist on the tanks but watch the raid”  because I know he’ll be on top of it.  And well…raid is raid.  I could switch up the tank assignments, but…Josh wants me healing him.  So.  You try to work with that and make it interesting, damn it!

Dear Readers…

Don’t worry, your Friday Flowchart is coming.  But today, I have a request.

BoO is so close to running 25s.  We can assemble a 25 if everyone is onand we exploit a couple of alts/dual specs.  We did this with Ony some time last week.  But, naturally we need a few more folks.  My readers, of course, are awesome-I’m actually amazed at how many of you have wandered over to join us.  I’ve gotten far more response here than I have through the recruitment forums, or any of half a dozen recruiting websites. 

So I come to you, again.

If some of you have something other than a healer please by the love of all that is holy and would be interested in wandering over…please do so!  For all the complaining that I do here about some of our adorably special people, the awesome people far outweigh them.  I just can’t think of a funny rant about a guildie handing me six fucking epic gems when all I really needed for my scrub ass was the blue ones goddamnitKyr.  I couldn’t even pay him for them right then because that toon was nearly broke.  And he didn’t seme to care (OhgodtheguiltIthinkIhavetogohomeandsendhimsomegoldfromLyr). 
Nor can I rant about Kyr bringing his scrub DK into H ToC and us looking at his gear and going…oh god.  Oh GOD.  That is TERRIBLE what the FUCK here let me go make you shit.  Insults alongside love, gotta dig it.

…where was I going with this?  Oh yeah.

I needs me some deeps.  Deeps that doesn’t stand in fires…much.  I don’t even care what kind of deeps.  We don’t have any DPS shammy mains, of either flavor.   Actually we have no shamans raiding at all, which makes me QQ.  I think our shadow priest went hunter, though god, more priests.  Um.  I actually wouldn’t mind another hunter,  so you can take loot from Huntres.  How about a rogue?  I think all of our rogues left, or got eaten by RL, or switched mains.   We don’t have any reliable ret pallys, either.  BRING ME DEEPS. 

We could also use a tank.  Right now we mave m’dear Cranky Tank, Atropus, and…our rogue that went tank?  So that’s two warriors and a DK who actually would rather go back DPS.  There’s also a REALLY AWESOME BEAR but his availability doesn’t always match our schedule.  Regardless, it’d be nice to let Atropus go back to smacking things in the f…er…ass.   So.  Tank!  Good!  Preferably not warrior flavored, though. 

We currently raid M/W, 7-10 PM CST.  Ulduar and ToC are our regular gigs, though we have several semi-regular off-night runs (Naxx25 on Thursdays and another Ulduar10 on Saturdays).

http://www.booguild.net

<3

Beatstick.

SIGN UP

/thwack

FOR FUCKING RAIDS

/thwack

YOU FUCKING SCRUBS

/thwack

“Oh but the epics in ToC are better!”

/thwack

Fuck you!  We’re up to Yoggy for fuck’s sake!  WHY CAN’T WE COMPLETE THE GODS BE DAMNED INSTANCE?  “O noes Yoggy is hard”? 

/thwack

What the hell are you, a lazy child?  Is the concept for working for epics, or raiding for something other that stupid purple pixels JUST FOR YOU a foreign concept? 

/thwack

IS THAT QQ COMING OUT OF YOUR MOUTH?  THAT BETTER NOT BE!

/THWACK

This post brought to you by sick, angry priests who wanted to chew on Ulduar more last night, not do Ony/VoA because, like, only healers and tanks signed up.  No one wants to do the “hard” part of Ulduar, apparently.

The Healers Will Take Over the World

…or at least, the guild.

Historically, the officers in Brotherhood of Oblivion have been tanks.    Sidearm, Zlord, Atropus, Macharious, Zoja-all tanks at one point or other.  Even I was a tank when I first transferred over to the guild, though I’d gone healer again by the time I was promoted.

Last night, we had a little officer chit-chat and decided to replace our two departed officers with people who will actually do stuff.  While little miss tree-bear doesn’t ENTIRELY break the pattern, Ky is Mr. Heals With Everything That Can Heal.

It would be easy to draw parallels between healer/tank types and leadership positions-so easy, I won’t bother.  But I will congratulate Kyr and Mikata on their new shiny titles, and publicly LOL at the bloggers taking over!

I will also thank them for two healing Freya last night so that I could go shadow and make up for the fact that several of our DPS seem oblivious to trees.   :P 

Recruitment is kicking into high drive, so it’s my time for…

SHAMELESS GUILD PLUG O’ RECRUITMENT

BoO is looking for DPS and healers primarily.  Shadow priests, hunters, and elemental shamans would be especially welcome, but any solid DPS who knows what “Kill the mother fucking trees!” means will be considered.  We do have room for sets of friends/couples/etc, though due to raid composition we can’t promise you’ll get to do every run together, especially as we transition back up from 10s to 25s.  Good tanks will also be considered, as we currently have only 3 on the active roster.  Healer-wise I’d like to add both raid healers and another tank healer.

We’re up to Mimiron in Ulduar10, and Crazy Cat Lady in 25s (with only two weeks in, at that).  ToC 10 is something we’re just starting on off-nights, and we still run the periodic Naxx25 for gear/badges.   Main raid nights are M-W, 7-10 PM  CST.  Thursday is our primary off night (lol?) and keeps the same hours, roughly.   We’re on Azgalor, and yes it’s a PvP server, but if this RP-server scrub can hack it, I promise you it’s not so bad.

Oh, and we’re crazy.  I’ve mentioned that, right? 

 

…Seph, did we scare you off?  We’re fine, I swear!  XD  I mean look, we promoted useful officers and everything.  Mikata didn’t even get promoted because she’s Steve’s GF, but because I wanted a secretary!  She keeps being nosy and doing my HR bitch job anyway, so she might as well stop making me look bad and do it officially, right?

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.

Be afraid! Muhahahaha.

Our dear Macharious is taking a temporary break from GMing, leaving the guild in the hands of his…intrepid officers.

Excuse me while I sit here and giggle like a madwoman.

The first thing I did upon learning this was take a collective look at “the boys” as I call them.  Then I rolled my eyes and decided that if I didn’t take over, we wouldn’t get anything done.  Obviously.  Not that I’m declaring myself acting GM or anything I’m just…looking around for my pointy stick, to make best use of my passive nagging bonus.

Between myself, Andy, and Josh (sorry Hunt, you don’t count), we’ll chug along nicely.  We’ll probably see a return to 10 man content, just because having two of our tanks on hiatus is…well, having half of our tanks on hiatus.  Of course I do have other outside tanks to tap so…we shall see, we shall see.  I’d like to continue with 25s but then we’d need more DPS and healers to actually…sign up. 

The shift in guild ranks and the bank will still occur as planned, and BoO will buckle down.  We’re still a “casual progression raid” but we’ll be a casual progression raid that won’t tolerate people being being lazy dumb fucks.  This shall please me greatly.

One of our recruits, bless her transferring heart, was speaking to me the other night.   She keeps tabs on the blogs (hi!) and the forums and was a wee bit concerned.

The tide of stress has been running high amongst the officers of late.  It’s an unfortunate fact that, with so many of us being RL pals, and two of the officers being co-workers, that the RL burden on one is often shared at least in part by the others.  But I’ve seen this guild chug through drama that would have seriously rocked others.  In fact, I bet that large portions of the guild remain mostly unaware of some of the waves that the officers have been wading through over the past few months, aside from a slight roister shift.  This is nothing!  The man needs a damn break but the guild isn’t go anywhere.

I might threaten to rename it the Sisterhood of Oblivion though.  Just sayin’.

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!

And the wheel of life-and guild rosters-rolls on

I have, if unofficially, become the healing lead.  This means I get the special pleasure of herding our healer cats, handing out healing assignments, and naming ourhealer channel LetHuntDie. 

We had until just recently a holy paladin named Yarp.  I’m not ashamed to say that Yarp’s skill kicked the shit out of mine, and he was on near-perpetual MT duty because of his sheer awesome.  Hell, he did an amazing healing job for awhile with two broken wrists.  I could make some jokes about pally two button healing there, but never mind that.

I had no issues taking the OT/flex duty myself.  In fact I rather relish that position and all of it’s variations. 

Well, Yarp was burning out and left the game.  I’ll miss him!   I missed him ton and tons when we walked into Ulduar and proceeded to wipe on Ignis over and over and over.  Naturally many people were thinking: was Yarp THAT good?  Can we really not do this without him?

The thing about a healer core is that it’s a complex assembly of pieces.  Yes, losing an excellent healer sucks, especially when you don’t have a near-identical piece to slide in.  Our other holy paladins are Zy, an alt, and Kyr, who is more often raiding on his holy priest.  Our only other holy priest is only available in two week blocks due to work, so I’d kind of rather keep him there.  That means I step up into the MT role, which is fine, but…

…now we’re losing people to the pot.  People that I, as OT/flex healer, often personally took care of along with the raid healers.  We can do this without Yarp, I just have to beat the other healers into multitasking, that’s all.  But see what I mean about it being complex?  Merely shuffling one person into another role can change more than expected.

Healing assignments are rather like stat juggling-a complicated, confusing, sometimes frustrating game within a game. 

If I put this here, then I need someone here, but this person can’t do this job well so he has to go over here, but now I…oh, fuck.  God damn it people just heal whoever is dying, okay?