I have had a lot of RL issues to deal with in the last few months, my dad passed away very suddenly, my contract at work ran out so there has been a lot of job hunting, Xmas holidays, new year festivities, starcraft 2 :P ..... there was this other thing ... what was it .... Oh that's right
CATACLYSM!!!!!!
Most probably don't care and I know I don't really have all that many people reading my blog but for those of you who care here's the updates:
1. LK HC went down a few times prior to Catas release. Our two 25man raid teams were having issues getting 25 each every night so we finally decided to combine the teams to put an end to LK once and for all. (Was fun raiding with the "other guys").
2. Officers decided that a new expansion meant it was time for Contingency to be reborn. (Contingency was a short term back up plan for our GM and a few officers once their old guild Horizon disbanded). As a result all those wanting to raid left the guild ....
3. We all joined the newly created guild Ad Elysium.
4. We no longer have 2x 25man raid teams ... that was just crazy ...
5. We now have 1x 10man - 7day raid team, 2x 10man - 5day teams, and 1x 25man - 3day team. There is something for everyone. The 7day team were smashing content and were in the world top 50 until one of their main healers went all EMO over loot and gquit - this put a bump into their progression but after a few team transfers and some hard work they are back to progressing.
SO THIS IS CATACLYSM HUH?
Well Cata was released. I don't know how everyone else found the release but other than the 45mins of frustration I endured trying to log in once it went live as I sat of guild comms hearing people swearing at the log in servers then cheering as they were given access, it was very smooth.
Ofc there was the crowding of the starter zones the respawn rates were nice and high which meant that there wasn't too many issues. I have to say straight away i was awe struck. The quests and story lines were very interesting and gripping. The only "downside" if you will was the rather linear quest lines which Cata introduced. Now I have heard a few people complain about this - you only get 2qs you do them then get another 2 etc caused some confusion to people who moved on missing the phase shift and skipping qs. While this isn't really Blizzards normal method of questing - IE there were no big HUBs where you could pick up 6+ qs go do them come back and hand them in. The gd thing about the new method - which I have told many many people - is it means Blizzard can tell the story. There are a lot of people who have no idea about the lore surrounding Deathwing and TBH this felt like / was the sequel to War3. WoTLK basically wrapped up all the Jazz that went on in War3 and with Cata they had to put in a story.
MY TOONS!!! AND HEALING
Well ATM I have Panzee (still Disc/Holy) and Tanglewood (Resto) at 85 and the gearing is going well. In a future post I will go over my opinion of the dungeons and the player base. Before Cata was released I had several chats with different healers in my guild regarding their concerns surrounding the healing game for Cata. Hell for a little while there I was worried ... just a little though.
The worrying was useless the changes they have made to the game has made healing much more fun and complex than it was in Wrath. There are decisions which have to be made and it also makes raid composition much more of a balancing act - you need the healers to survive the encounter, but at the same time you need the DPS to kill the bosses. Similarly, all the classes have differences to their respective classes but at the same time they all have the same tool box: 1 big heal(medium mana long cast), 1 small heal (low mana long cast), 1 fast heal (high mana quick cast) with AoE sprinkled throughout. This is a very general statement I know but its true. Sure there have been post about various classes and there are slight advantages to some classes over others for roles, but in general they are all balanced and a lot of it comes down to player skill, and the ability of healers to adapt to the new style of healing.
TEAM PANZEE ASSEMBLE!!! WARNING CONTAINS RANT!!!
Well as you can see from above out guild has went through several changes recently and we currently have 4 raid teams progressing through content. Pre cata there was a little drama and uncertainty amongst the guild. We have the Officers from the old 5 day team decide they wanted to go for server 1st's and world Top 50 as a result there were several members from that team who were left in limbo :( similarly there were 9 players from the 3 day team who also wanted 10man content and before long Slanesh's team was composed. At this time our GM Nos came to me and basically said "there are people who want to raid 5 days I only want to raid 3 days can you try and put a team together." What could I say? I was used to raid leading and the concept of 10man raiding appealed to me more than 25man so before long I had a team up and running.
We had a gd set 10 people with 3-4 other people interested who I could easily fit in and rotate people since there will inevitably be occasions where some people cant make it and the others will still want to raid. At this point Slanesh came to me and tried to get me to join his team sicne he was going to be short 1 healer. I told him that I was going to have to stick with the 5 day team since they needed someone to lead them but so long as people leveled at different speeds there was no issue that if my team leveled slower that I would probably be able to raid with his team for the 1st week or two until such a time as the rest of the team caught up. Sounds like a good idea huh?
So the players leveled and it ended up my 5 day team was much faster in leveling and come the Wednesday we were only 2 people short for raid. As a result we got Slan and his teams healer in and we went in 1st night was a bit of a disaster but so many people didnt have a clue or the gear, gems, enchants etc which was needed to do things properly. The following raid was much smoother we went in down went Def System and Magmaw - wow everyone was happy. Unfortunately, due to Xmas holidays and what not we didn't raid 5 days but 2/12 bosses down was good and had everyone in high spirits. The following reset rolled round and once again Slan didn't have the people he needed to again we brought him in and bish bash bosh down went 2/12 again.
Now here comes the drama. The following Wednesday I log in we have 11 people signed up for the raid 11 of my own team so the team was finally together. I log on comms at about 2pm and after a little while in the channel I hear Slan and one of his teams healers chatting and then I hear.
Slanesh - "Yes we might have a new Tank
Allathiel - "Oh who?"
Slanesh - "Oh I don't want to say there are people in this channel I don't want knowing about it"
Now the night before this I should preface this by saying that as we ended the raid on the Tuesday I said ok GJ people show tomorrow looking at sign ups we will have enough people. To which Slan said I doubt you will have enough (at this stage i thought he was just a little pissed because his team who were meant to level fast still weren't ready).
19:30 rolls around and I through out invs 10 people accept and then I get /w from my main tank and my teams top DPS saying "Eh thnx for the raids but I have decided to go raid with Slan" I was pissed off and so annoyed that Slan a fellow officer who I had raided with for over a year didn't have the decency to warn me at any point that this was happening. At the point I wasn't alone in this feeling and approx 5 other people from the team who were RL friends decided that a guild where that sort of stuff happened and people treated one another like that wasn't where they wanted to be and they decided there and then to transfer server. So my team to 10 had went to a team of 3 :(
This wasn't the only issue as a result o this deception and lack of respect for other teams, officers, and people (in general) rubbed several people / officers the wrong way. Mick (god love him) was furious and too this day Slan still doesn't see what he did wrong and doesn't understand why people were / are upset. Anyway, for a few days this really annoyed me then I decided to get back to work and reform the team. The upside of this whole drama was that I was in a different team from Slan and I now didn't have to have anything to do with him. Sure we have the same guild tag and we we are both officers but other than that we don't need to interact with one another. And other than a very very weak apology which wasn't even really an apology which I got from him 4 days after the incident we ha vent spoke, but again there is no reason for us to speak.
Anyway, after a little recruitment drive we are finally back to 10 people over the Holiday season we managed to raid together as a team 2 - 3 times (for 2hish at a time) killing 3 bosses in BWD, which was nice and let the team know that while we we rent raiding 5 days a week we were capable of downing bosses which meant that things looked promising come official raids. Come last week we started official raiding and after 4 days of raiding we had 9/12 dead leaving only Nefarion, Alikir, and Chogall alive. The following night we spent time progressing on Chogall and after a few tweaks and a few 15% ish tries we had to call the raid but the progress was definitely there.
This week Wed rolls around and we have 2 tentatives and 3 people sign as accepted and not show. Needless to say we didn't have enough people to raid :( so we did BH that night and went on to Thursday. After a little struggle on Maloriak (didn't know why we were struggling) we cleared 5/6 in BWD. The new team is strong and I hope everyone in it is having as much fun raiding with one another as I am having raiding with them :)
Sorry for the ranting and the long post. But as I said its been a while and I had a few thigns to get off my chest. In the next few days / weeks I am hoping to discuss priest specs, healing spells, gear, the new HCs, PuGs, Raiding, and hopefully more alt discussion.
I hope everyone had a great Xmas and New Year and All the Best for 2011.
Panzee
(I promise I will be back - no more big breaks - forgot how much i enjoyed putting my thoughts, ideas, and feelings on the interent.)
