A few weeks
Its been a few weeks since I’ve posted. I really haven’t felt a huge motivation to post anything. Self indulgent or not I am mostly just over it.
It will probably only be a few weeks till I quit raiding – and consequently wow, as I see no point whatsoever in playing casually. I am not really too worried at this point.
I probably do a farewell post before I quit but I wouldn’t expect a lot of insight until then. For now, be happy 🙂
…And I turned them down
I was recently contacted by an one of my ex-GM’s about applying to one of the top Oceanic guilds on a different server. It would be overstating it to suggest I was headhunted. It was more in the nature of a friendly inquiry.
It came at a very tempting time for me – there is little doubt in my mind that my guild is steadily sliding downhill – not to mention the ENORMOUS problems I have saying no to pretty girls (see: reasons why I am here) but I came to a realisation. I don’t see myself staying in Azeroth that much longer.
I have an enormous amount of gratitude for my ex-GM – to be honest, I didn’t think she really liked me that much lol, but we all love validation from players we respect. As a healer getting that validation from a tank is better still. I still said no…
Call it burn out, call it frustration – there has been a growing feeling of disatisfaction in my mind for the last month or so. That is not to say I am outta here tonight – I want to kill the Lich King first (and its a toss up whether I stay for heroic mode) but Cataclysm leaves me completely cold.
I could (and probably will) explain the myriad of reasons why I am disastisfied. Ultimately however there are a lot positives as well. I am just looking for a different direction in life. I’ve quit my old shitty job, moved states and am generally a lot happier – only a couple of changes left lol. One thing I do know is that I am going to keep posting here until the end. I just don’t know when that will be.
A few kills finally
Got dreamwalker – finally convinced them to stop this rubbish about keeping pallies out (27k hps bishes).
Got BQL – its amazing how easy it is when no-one fails constantly (note there was still plenty of fail generally).
All I can say is about f’ing time
Not a lot of action
Hai y’all
Yes I am aware there hasn’t been much action here lately. There hasn’t been much action to speak of (there is one development that I’ll discuss after it plays out).
Still working on BQL – yes still. Haven’t had another shot a Dreamwalker. A few more people have left. Mostly really good players, which worries me (as these things always do).
The progress of the top guilds through the heroic content baffles me somewhat. Normal is still quite hard. Maybe heroic isn’t the huge difference it was in ToGC (which would be the best development of all since that terrible room instance).
Anyway, not dead, more posts to come – drama, rants, the whole works.
Peace out
The Ensidia controversy
Big news – if you follow progression raiding, Ensidia got hit with a banhammer for exploiting on their world first LK kill.
I’ve read I think 5 blogs from Ensidia members about this, Kungen, Jinxarn, Muqq, Ekyu and Poptisse (all in favour of Ensidia), the MMO-Champion excerpt (also mildly in favour of Ensidia) and the WoW.com version (in favour of Blizzard). Blizzard are unlikely to comment beyond their hotfix.
I was not there – and so this is all really conjecture at this point, but my pieced together interpretation is as follows:
- Ensidia did the encounter with one group on 10 man and the platform didn’t respawn
- Ensidia then skipped immediately to 25 man and cleared to the boss.
- On most occassions the platform did respawn during the boss encounter, but not always over the course of about 5 attempts
- At this point they are aware of the respawning platform bug – they have to be
- At that point – this is key – I do NOT believe they had any idea what caused it. In all honesty it would be exceptionally difficult to know what was doing this after a mere 5 or 6 attempts – some bugs are clearly obvious but I believe that they were not intentionally trying to respawn the platform. It seems like, from the logs, that the rogue in question routinely uses the bombs in his rotation and the bug is actually counter intuitive (seige damage respawning platforms?)
- Aware of the bug they adjusted their strat and more or less immediately killed the boss
- Blizzard is watching this fight – GMs observing – and see these actions in real time (including the bug)
- Subsequently Blizzard bans every member of the raid for 3 days – the 2nd most serious punishment that can be delivered
Do I think they were exploiting? Probably not but to be honest Nihilium in particular has long been known as a guild that would do what it takes to get the boss down first. The oozeling, the candlestick, flower power – the truth is these guys have indulged in somewhat shady dealing in the past.
However in this case, I tend to be on their side. Provided that they weren’t causing the bug its a bit inconsistent to ban them for not stoping the fight and throwing an attempt to get it hotfixed. Especially since they know that there are GMs watching the fight. They must have seen the bug also.
It inconsistent because SO many people do this as a matter of course. How many people have been in a Azjol run where someone has tried to bug out the adds on the second boss (I always jump down and judge the first mob I see so this can’t happen)? The first strat to get the timed achievement on the last boss in OK was to have a paladin DI someone and SS up just after the first adds. Poptisse lists a heap more of them – not all of which I consider exploits (letting a bitten person die on BQL for example is not exploiting in my view). The truth is that taking advantages of bugs is not uncomming. Deliberate exploitation – by which I mean creating a bug – is different to taking advantage of a bug that occurs during a fight. Exodus deliberately set out with a strategy (on Yogg 0) that was designed to glitch out the mobs and make the fight easy – what Ensidia did is not even close to being in that league.
Why is this? Its because bugs so often work both ways and you get nothing back if you get jammed by a bug. I have long since lost count of the attempts where our post death analysis is “X bugged out so we wiped”. Fuck it happened at least three times a raid, every raid when Ulduar was new, ToC was one of the most glitched, buggy instances I have seen in a LONG time. On that basis, especially on limited attempt bosses, it is simply unrealistic to assume people will deliberately wipe a fight just because a bug occurs. You don’t get attempts back when you get wiped by a bug, why would you give them up voluntarily if you gain from a bug instead of losing (which is what usually happens when something bugs).
I say this KNOWING that I have done the same thing. Back in the days when we were first pushing ToGC on 10s I think our 3rd Anub kill was the result of a bug. We’d been having a long, shit night. A full 25 man raid for 4 hours before hand with an absolute slew of rubbish wipes. We hit 10 man after that hoping to push mad skill at least and ran into a wall of bad luck, poor timing and basically shit play. We had some poor raiders in the 10 (relatively) and it seemed like they were always the ones that got targeted.
We got to Anub and wiped out to about 30 attempts left. By this stage I was tired and generally sick of it for the day. We got the boss to about 400k in phase 3 and wiped, another shit wipe and we got the boss to about 250 / 300k when the main tank died – and Anub bugged. He aggroed onto a warlock but got stuck out of melee range (we hadn’t moved and didn’t even realise at first) – he just got stuck on the floor in the middle of the room. The remaining dps burned him down in about 15 sec.
Is that an exploit offence for which I could be banned? Maybe. I certainly don’t believe that we exploited anything. Nor would I have expected ANYONE to wipe out in that situation. Its simply not something that I think warrants a ban. The guys who got banned for 2 manning Flame Leviathan, also not ban worthy. Martin Fury – absolutely bannable (but only in the context of one shotting a bunch of hard mode raid bosses). I appreciate that Blizzard can (and do) ban whenever they want. It just seems inconsistent at times.
However, the point of this banning I think extends beyond the actual events. I think its a message to the ultra hard core raiders. The message is that basically that style of play is no longer supported by Blizzard.
You see when I first saw the gating of ICC I thought that it was to protect a weak instance. Patently, that is not true. Several of those fights are HARD. Pugs are not killing BQL any time soon. My guild is a top 500 guild – we are a clear 3rd on our realm (as far in front of 4th as we are behind 2nd) – and we haven’t cleared BQL or any of the new bosses yet. This content will hold up till mid year easily for most guilds. Heroics longer still.
The reason for the gating then is a mystery. One interpretation that occurs to me is that they did NOT want the ultra hardcore guilds to blow through the content the way they did in 3.0. Ensidia (and by this I really mean Nihilium to an extent) have long profiligated the view that they hold an esteemed, elite place in this game. That they are somehow above the average guild and player – not merely skillwise (and I say this without any rancour) – but as quasi-authoritative “special” people. Pretty conclusively, those days are over.
I’m not sure what precedent this creates – I do believe though if it wasn’t the end boss, if it wasn’t the first kill then it wouldn’t have been a bannable offense. In fact they may not even have had the kill stripped from them. And that is the thing about this whole saga that I think is wrong.
Number 1 Alliance Guild on Server
So there was a massive implosion at the best alliance guild on server, which may or may not mean we become number 1.
Not that I think we really deserve it at the moment. In fact scratch that. I am not sure that “deserve” is the right terminology. Server rank is largely unimportant, though its always nice to be near the top.
Fact is I am largely bored of raiding old content and the limited attempts on the new content is seriously limiting the interesting raid time we have. I sat the Yogg 1 kill last week quite happily, and was glad not to have to go in and kill H Anub (main tank was hacked several times in one day). We killed Algalol again, with some horrendous mistakes, but was unenthused.
I don’t know – I got the Ulduar 10 drake, which I really wanted but not the way I got it. I am almost indifferent to Ulduar 25 and ToGC. I want to hit H ICC hard but I am so sick of limited attempts. For fuck sake let me at it!
What to do when your on the bench
So thanks to a last minute invite to a VIP function at this conference deelee I am at (cause you know you’re a VIP if you’re invited 1 hr before start time). I am riding the bench for the second evening in a row.
I hate it – though we are in Ulduar finishing drakes (that I wouldn’t get anyway and don’t give a tinker’s curse about) so its not all bad. I have had enough old content for a while.
That said we have 9 consistent, regular healers. This means I am sitting out much much more often than I would like. I am not really sure how to take it. To be honest I am not concerned that its a performance issue. My performance is more than high enough. I am also, thanks to obscene luck, the most geared pally in my guild.
Anyway, I don’t want to say too much on this but I am unlikely to continue sitting on the sidelines so much. Its not good for a guild to always be sitting 3 or 4 heals. I don’t want to point fingers but I am getting a little tired of Blizzard designing content where 1 fight needs 7 heals and the next fight cannot be done with more than 4.
Happy Birthday Australia
I had a big rant to post today about the secret evils of the LFG tool (here is a hint there is a gear equivalisation process in there somewhere and it seems clearly biased towards some instances over others).
However, I can’t be negative on my country’s birthday. Get drunk, get laid – do all the things that make Australia great my brothers and sisters.
I love my country.
I gotta stop ad-hoc raiding
So right now I am in a 10 Ulduar run desperately trying to finally get my drake.
Its not going well.
I really don’t want to be here. I am _tired_ of wiping on this stuff. I am sure that I will get my enthusiasm back, right now though I am a bit pissed at the fail.
Its weird I finally gemmed and enchanted a ret set and I can’t dps cause I want to fucking strangle the healers for every mistake. Of which there are a lot. I’ve had to heal these fights (3 heal in 264 gear) cause they can’t get it done.
Both are disc priests – I am going to put up a post why disc is done as a raiding spec. Soon…
Edit – drake in possession
Putricide is easy when you drunkenly abuse your guildmates
So I am in this alt 10 man ICC run – well it was mostly mains but it was billed as the alt run. I am not sure that I really SHOULD be in this run. I am behind on badges and I really don’t like wiping on easy content. Anyway we wtf pwn the first 6 bosses in very quick order.
And I am drinking…
And had been all afternoon…
So we wipe twice on Putricide – understandably cause most of us hadn’t killed it yet and some hadnt really done it. One of the alts talks about how they had 3 sub 10% wipes in the Wednesday group (which was our first guild clear). I am like fuck that shit; we get to phase 3 and the son bitch dies.
Anyway we have two 60% or so wipes and there is a long strategy discussion (or so I assume – they were talking strats when I got up to get more booze and still chatting about it when I came back).
So I decide that I will do what I used to do – and I call out all the things people need to watch (and make the disc priest go holy – disc offers little).
We kill it EASY – I let out a stream of obsensities at the end (something like “that’s how you fucking do it, none of this fucking around bullshit – pull your fingers out and fuck that shit up”). Yeah I am awesome fun when I am a little cut.
Reckon I might have to have half a skinful Monday to ensure a kill. I know PP agrees with me here.
PS I think Zah may get a bit miffed at me if I keep calling her PeePee – I may or may not be doing it for that reason…
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