So I went off and wrote a massive entry about how to make a good PUG.

And apparently Wordpress does not auto-save entries if they don’t have titles. Or something.

As such, I am heartbroken, and LF motivation to rewrite it, but I leave to you a newfound cool blog, Drama Llamas Unite! I loves me some WoW drama, and the fact that it’s written by EU players and mostly involves EU drama is just a cool bonus. Drama is more fun when it’s closer to home, I say.

/popcorn,
Ely.

Seriously. Quit your bitching. Spirit benefits all clothie casters right now. MP5 benefits mages marginally, priests more so, warlocks not at all. That means most cloth gear with spellpower is gear wanted by all three of said classes. No, that offhand isn’t only a healing offhand just because it has spirit on it. No, calling me a retard because I pointed out the talents/skills which benefit clothies from spirit does not help your cause.

I know how you felt like your life was in mortal danger because you had a mob on you for .002 seconds and absolutely needed to fear, right into the other group. Which resulted in a 7 mob pull, which by some grace of Elune we survived, so next pull you had to do it all over again, which we didn’t survive. \o/ Although the best bit was when we survived the first pull, and you patted yourself in the back with “Wow that was some great healing!” instead of “Whoops, sorry for the fear”.

Don’t Shield before pulls. I know you feel it’s a great idea, but it really isn’t, because I won’t be able to generate rage, and the mob will again lunge for you, at which point you will fear and we will pull the next group again. Seriously. Priest 101. Don’t fail it.

Don’t HoT during LoS pulls. Again, Priest 101. I AM NOT EVEN TAKING DAMAGE.

When we wipe because you were retarded, “lol” is not the right thing to say. That wasn’t amusing. That was just absolutely idiotic. Preferably say sorry and shut up.

<3,

Luminaria.

On unrelated news:

I got kicked from Distortion because among other things, I pointed out that the guild leader is a loot whore (which I got flamed to death for). A couple of days after said gkick the guild leader is made to step down from guild/raid leading, because, hear this, he ninjaed the sword from KT25.

The sad bit?

He’s still in the guild, the guild thus giving the message that they really don’t mind if any of their members is a ninja.

Understandably, my only regret is that I didn’t get 5/5 T7 and the KT mace before being kicked.

Risking bitching, there were so many things wrong with Distortion, I don’t know where to start. Raids were usually scheduled a couple of hours before raid time (”Everyone knows there is a raid every night!”), they usually started 45 minutes to an hour late (”I can’t help if people log on late”), raids ran at least an hour past the end time (”You don’t even have to stay, stop bitching”), you could point out the DKP loss that you’d suffer but again, you’d be bitching and being told that DKP doesn’t matter (slight irony there), at some point someone was impersonating me on Vent and saying all sorts of stuff to people which the guild leader did absolutely nothing about (”Fuck off man, what can I do about it”), and it went on and on in this vein.

Although I still think the funniest was the mage who told the resident feral that he should ditch his Maul glyph and get something more useful, because *gasp* the Maul glyph was breaking his sheeps. “Something useful”, he said. “Like the Rake glyph. It’s awesome.”

No I swear, he seriously said this. I’m still facepalming.

So some alt we geared up, decked out, and badged up for the last few weeks just tells me that my TPS is not good enough to be tanking Nightbane.

Not that half the raid doesn’t even have Omen installed and is going balls to the wall upon landing.

Not that with one healer alive I’m having trouble staying alive, let alone even getting back enough mana to keep Holy Shield up.

Not that I have done it perfectly countless raids before.

My TPS just sucks, that’s all.

/raidquit

/log on Alliance druid

/fun

Good times.

So, I have a guildie.

A guy that I really, really respect, like, and generally think is a great player and a great person. He knows his classes inside out and backwards, BT raider and 2k+ PvPer, and overall a sweet dude. He used to be our guildie with his main, then he decided to join another guild on the server to try his luck at raiding. No probs, he still has his alts with us, still does stuff with us, etc.

I asked him if he would come to Kara with us this week, as he has an alt that needs gearing up. He said he would inquire about his main’s raid’s lineup tonight then tell me. A few hours later he reached me saying he was in. We set the raid up and off we went.

Cleared Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera, then moved on to Nightbane, when this guy suddenly says “My guild’s setting up a TK raid, if that goes ahead, I will leave this raid and go to that.”

Cue silence in the raid as we all internally go “…what?”

“Well, I have two quests there, and my main needs gear from there.” (For reference, he is in a guild that has just downed Reliquary of Souls.)

I said that it was basically telling us “Screw you guys, you don’t mean as much to me as other loot opportunities, you’re not good enough” and that I didn’t think friends should do that to friends.

I would understand if it was a total PuG, after all, you don’t owe PuGs anything, and I understand Karazhan just ceases to be entertaining after run number one hundred and twenty five, it’s just his general attitude I didn’t expect. Not “do you mind if I leave, I could really use some things from TK and got some quests to complete there”, just “I’m going to leave if that happens, letting you know”.

After all, most of us don’t need anything from Karazhan either, we’re simply doing it to have a happy “guild time” with people we like. No one’s obligated to attend, if you need the loot/badges, the more the better, but if you don’t, people still sign up to have a good time. We’re friends, that’s why we are there, not because we hold a gun to people’s heads telling them to sign up (well I do it to Zilli, but he is a special snowflake).

He whispered me after this, saying that he unsigned from his raid tonight just to be able to come with us. I think he meant that it somehow implied he wasn’t selfish, but again, we aren’t forcing anyone to come with us… if there is a prior commitment, by all means, fulfill that commitment instead of committing to another, we won’t hold it against anyone. I told him that we were all very disappointed in him, to which he replied by saying that he feels the same towards me. I don’t really understand what he expected, our blessings for doing something which, by all standards, is very rude to say the least?

The raid just wasn’t the same after that and we proceeded in mostly silence to clear the instance. Another week, more drama over the Light’s Justice drop, but what’s new – I don’t understand why everyone can’t grind S1 maces that are just as good, and get over it. Solo effort, able to do on your own time, etc, as opposed to depending on the dice roll and the mercy of others to get it. “But I’m too busy” “But 25k honor is a lot” Then you settle for the RNG, sorry peeps.

And to think this guy is one of the reasons we are reluctant to move servers as a whole (because of his guild, he doesn’t want to move, and seeing he is the best friend and flatmate of our GM, we don’t want to leave him behind). /sigh.

The honor grind… is soulsucking.

No really.

I think my paladin was about the only class I ever really enjoyed it with – WSG flagdefending with Sareya was fun, but it only went too far. I loved every battleground with Rochalie, especially when I had Zilli running with me. But now I _have_ to do it across five level 70s if I have any hope of remaining competitive, and this kills me.

I grinded out some offspec stuff for Ely and Kali a few weeks back. I took a liking to PvPing as shadow and it went pretty well, likewise for my new love for elemental. But now Starlet is 70 and all those need to take a back burner if I ever hope to get her geared for small bracket healing.

Speaking of Starlet, well, it’s not half bad being a druid. I love the mobility (remember, I swapped over from playing a paladin) but my HPS output is horrible with only about 1k healing, and I don’t know if it’s my gear but I go OOM painfully fast. I’ve never had regen problems on any of my previous characters, so this quite bugs me. Will just wait to see if it improves with gear. Did do a Karazhan though (yes, I got carried) and buffed to the teeth it wasn’t THAT bad.

The next Alliance to whine about how AV map favors Horde will eat a Hammer of This Really Fking Hurts to the face. No archers to deal with – check, FW Keep only missing its red carpet – check, Galv/IB/TP on a neat straight line to FW Keep – check. If you can’t win, it’s not our fault you suck, really.

Horde actually _have to_ defend if they have a hope of winning, because due to archers and NPCs it takes significantly longer for towers to get capped. So in a straight out rushfest Horde will lose the majority of the time. Plus, some classes can’t solo cap towers as Horde whereas every Alliance class is capable of going through a ten second channel, conveniently uninterrupted by NPCs.

After only two days I’ve given up on flag carrying in WSG. Bringing the flag all the way to our base solo, watching half the team HK farm in the middle, then getting owned by the recap team they send because no one can be bothered to help out the FC, good stuff.

AB is even worse, horrible honor/hour plus the chance to lose on this battlegroup is massive considering Horde always starts 8 vs 15 if not less. By the time we’ve filled up the team Alliance has likely 5-capped and is HK farming in Defiler’s Den. Although that would be the merciful end to the match, don’t get me started about the 3-2 node holding, half hour matches.

At least I outfitted Starlet with a pair of rings and a trinket so far (also makes me wince to see someone all decked out in full S1/nonset epics but no PvP trinket). Going for the bracers next, then probably neck –> boots –> belt. It’s a wise idea to grind the S2 PvP ring now if you want to double it with the S3 one, seeing next season rings will have an arena rating requirement.

Having some trouble with a guildie who basically believes all of his alts are entitled to being carried through content – he pretty much just levels them up, signs them for a couple of Karazhans with fresh Netherstorm greens, gets all the loot and badges and moves on to a new character to level.

Horrible thing is that he has all those characters, and he has not learned to play endgame with a single one of them. Is his warlock in the raid? Forget about any Soulstones being cast unless you verbally remind him every so often, and you’re better off not assigning this guy to do anything but straight out uncomplicated DPS. Any CC he takes on is sure to break, he deliberately does not use focus macros (”It’s just not my thing”), clicks all of his abilities, puts +7 to all resists enchants on his shoulders because “OMG I have 20 resistance to all spellschools with my racial, sooooooo cool!” and generally gets carried by the rest of the raid. If anyone criticises his gear/playstyle or makes suggestions, he completely laughs them off and dismisses the person.

I usually don’t object and accept that we will be 9manning this raid tonight. He’s got a great personality so he’s loved by a lot of people. He’s sort of the guild mascot etc, and I try to not make a big deal about his inability to play his given characters properly.

Until this past Karazhan.

He’s got his freshly 70 druid all ready to tank the place – it’s appreciated, he put as much work as he could into his tanking gear and with Zilli covering the other tanking spot I’m hoping everything goes well. After all, it’s just Karazhan and pretty much the only boss we need him to properly play on is Netherspite, what could go wrong?

Oh, plenty.

At the small trash packs before Moroes, Zilli is trying to keep them at himself best as he can, and instead of Swiping to help keep the mobs, this guy pops out and starts…. CHANNELING HURRICANE. With about 5 mobs on him. Luckily healers saved the day healing up the real AoEers as well as this guy.

We warn him to not ever pop out of bear when he is tanking and that he needs to focus on keeping the mobs on himself. He just laughs it off, and next group does it again – this time we aren’t quite that lucky and healers start dying to loose mobs, we wipe.

Yep. Wipe. On a trashpack before Moroes.

/facepalm

We’re running a melee heavy Maiden, so this guy is asked to just not go into melee range – heal, Wrath spam, whatever. Halfway through Maiden we find him channeling Tranquility. Untalented, doing about 20-30k worth of healing in 8 seconds. With everyone else Repentance’d. It really is a wonder he pulled no aggro.

Move on to Opera, we got Romeo and Juliet. This guy is supposed to tank Romeo… except not.

Try 1, he faceplants because healing sucked.
Try 2, Romeo starts chasing the DPS as soon as he spawns because he’s too busy shooting the shit on Vent to notice.
Try 3, likewise, except Joey finally gives up and says look, I’ll tank both, you just make something of an effort to pick Romeo up when he pops with Julianne.

By now he’s really getting on my nerves. I mean, someone’s got to explain to this guy that the most fun thing to do is not necessarily the wisest thing to do, sort of like unprotected sex, because by Elune I’m sick of faceplanting every pull.

We move on to the backdoor to take on Nightbane and continue with Curator from there. He’s supposed to be tanking those really hard-hitting ghosts. Who also happen to do a 3-4k Cone of Cold, so I tell him, turn the ghosts away from the raid (and preferably don’t tank them in the middle of a raid). 10 seconds later we have all collectively eaten a CoC to the face. I guess it’s a bit hard to position mobs when you are keyturning and clicking Mangle etc.

So I go “What’s so challenging about turn it away from the raid?” and he completely blows. Basically, I’m spoiled, I’m an ignorant little girl, I have no right to be talking to him that way, I owe him an apology, etc. Rota, our GM, chimes in with “You need to be more accepting of criticism” and that makes him launch into yet another tirade about how I need my friends to speak for me because I’m guilty.

Then he moves on to roll on Light’s Justice – with two other actual _healers_ competing with him. And wins. (To be fair he did pass the Nightbane staff to Starlet, though.)

Him taking that mace was a kick in the nuts for most of us, since he _might_ go resto someday but we had a shaman and a priest, one of which was already holy and the other awaiting raid end to respec, both of whom would have made much better use of said mace. He still hasn’t decided what spec he wants to be, so he pretty much feels free to roll on anything and everything that drops. Last week he was arguing with one of the other druids over Uni-Mind Headdress, because he might or might not go moonkin in the future, and if he does, he needs “teh gearz”.

Basically, I have no idea how to deal with this guy as the de facto raid leader – being harsh obviously backfires, he dismisses all polite criticism by making jokes about it, he’s a really great person but generally a terribad player. (And “I haven’t done this before” doesn’t really cut it when he’s Violet Eye exalted on half a dozen other chars.) It really bothers me to think that in a clutch we are not able to rely on him to do his job correctly. People really love him and not inviting him to raids isn’t really an option, but sometimes you need to make people understand that by acting a certain way you are wasting 9 other people’s time and resources, no matter how “fun” it might sound at the time you are doing it.

That and I really, really hate loot rules, our entire system is based on trust and one’s ability to discern whether people other than them are in need of the item more. But if it goes this way I might actually need to implement and enforce loot rules, because I really dislike this “I can has for offspec I might or might not spec into one day, even though others with said spec as their primary spec need it more”.

If you want the loot for a specific class role, spec into it and use that spec in raids, so that others will know and act accordingly. I’m sure if his druid was resto no one would have objected to him rolling on the mace, he’d be entitled to the roll same as any other healer present, but this is just wrong. I know for a fact one of our priests felt cheated out of the item, having been the one to heal the entire run.

I’ll wait to see if there is improvement on this week’s raid but I highly doubt it. He’s already in the process of leveling yet another character, and I have no doubt that in a few weeks his shaman will be in Karazhan with us in fresh level 70 greens ready to roll on everything he can use.

I’m officially done with trying to explain to people the error of their ways regarding “but I wanna see Kael and Vashj!” “but I’ve wanted to go on a Gruul raid for ages!” – with a guild who has proved that they can mistreat them and their friends as they see fit. Clearly there is only one guild on the server to apply if you want to see Kael and Vashj.

I should go apply to TI or something, they’re on Illidan, and after all, seeing endgame is everything.

Other than that, disc priest LF 2v2 arena team, 400+ resilience, 11.5k HP unbuffed, 4/5 Merciless 1/5 Vengeful (wand and offhand not included). Slightly rusty but can improve with practice. Anyone?

My ex-guild’s forums are full of drama these days. It saddens me for a couple of reasons – first off, because most times I get dragged into it. Someone mentions a name and boom, accusations start pouring in. Over four months since my friends and I typed /gquit, and still, some people blame us for everything that went wrong in the guild. They still think we have enough influence to direct what goes on in the guild, from afar.

Secondly, because it shows how much the guild has died, despite the so-called “progress”. We used to be, above raiders, a bunch of friends. Everyone looked out for each other. Everyone was protective of each other. Loot wasn’t the reason to stay in the game, friends were. We had class channels in which lots of funny banter went on, we had an active guild chat, AND we had progress, even if that wasn’t enough for some.

Sure, some of us disliked some of us, but certainly not enough to flame each other on the forums every day. Now I check out the forums… and each and every post I see is either yet another “goodbye, I’m transferring off the realm, thanks for everything” thread (inevitable flames on loot whoring or lots of good wishes follow from this point on depending on how well the person is liked), or yet another flame thread. And I already wrote about the story of the guild master who transferred off pretending he was accepted into Nihilum, making posts complete with fake Illidan kill shots.

What happened to the guild that actually had a spirit, not in words but in actions? What happened to the guild that actually had a fair, unbiased, solid leadership? What happened to friends before epics? What happened to the guild who scrutinized each and every application for weeks before saying yes or no, who actually interviewed its applicants making sure they’d fit in and be happy? (Zilli has a memory of being interviewed for an hour and a half by his class leader before he got an invitation – mine certainly wasn’t that long, but I did get talked to.)

I ask all this… because my guild used to be home. I was in it for a year. Its people were my friends and I wore its tag with pride. I believed in everything my guild supported and represented. And I can’t help but wonder where it went wrong, and whether its people could or should have done something, anything, to fix it.

From leadership that fell into wrong hands, to an ex-GM who stepped down but insisted on keeping full admin access to Ventrilo and forums so he could ban people as he saw fit, to a biased officer council (which one could get on simply by flirting with the GM irl, but that’s another pet peeve entirely), to completely incompetent people being recruited because “we need so and so class for such and such encounter”, to everything being progress focused and those who didn’t adapt said mentality shunned… I think it’s too late to fix all these now, the damage has already been done.

I have friends in the guild who hardly log onto their mains now, because they no longer know anyone in the guild. It went from having very tight rules for recruitment with an extremely low turnover rate, to a guild who loses and gains members by the dozen every week, and makes no attempt to change this, all in the name of progress. PvE progress is everything, people, nothing. Some leave, new ones come in, oldies simply forgotten.

I used to think that my guild was different in that aspect – that’s why I chose that guild, and only that guild, to apply to. If I wanted progress, I had my choices, but I wanted one on the same ethical ground as me and my then-best friend.

I guess this post is just a shout out to what my now ex-guild used to be, and sadness for what they have become – at this rate, with their member base, I don’t see them going anywhere really fast once Lich King hits, perhaps even disbanding. Because the people in it aren’t really in it for what the guild represents but merely the progress. And once the progress levels out, it’s simply too easy to see people leaving for greener pastures. Or purpler pastures, as the case may be.

Rest in peace, PN, my beloved guild. You are missed.

Dear ex-guild’s ex-guildmaster,

So you finally left the server saying Nihilum, yes, THE Nihilum of all guilds, had accepted you, and that you were transferring to Magtheridon to nolife even more.

Except there are a couple of little details – the fact that you are not attuned to either BT or Hyjal, the fact that you in fact have never participated in a Vashj or Kael kill, the fact that you aren’t geared enough to set foot in BT let alone kill any bosses, etc, etc. Little details.

My friend who knows Nme hit him up to chat. Nme promptly lol’d at the concept of a new recruit not attuned to BT or Hyjal.

I told a rogue friend that you were joining Nihilum. He went and checked the Nihilum armory – that was two days ago. Your “I’ve put in a transfer, GOODBYE CRUEL HAOMARUSH” post was a little over 3 days ago.

There were 3 very orc hunters in Nihilum at that point. There still are only 3 very orc hunters in Nihilum. We lol’d.

We’re still lol’ing. Keep on failing, for you are lots of entertainment.

Much love,
A bunch of your ex-guildies.

ETA: You just posted on the guild forums bragging about how you killed Illidan with Nihilum last night – complete with fake kill shot. Landolph of Nihilum has told my friend that they last killed Illidan on Wednesday.

Keep delivering the lulz, old boy. Keep delivering.

ETA II: Admitting you changed your character’s name, but refusing to give your character’s name on Magtheridon because “you don’t want to get spamwhispered by people in Haomarush”. (Funnily enough, your mage’s name is still the same… but that’s probably because you don’t have to prove your mage is in Nihilum?)

Insisting that armory still shows you as unguilded anyway. (Hi, armory updates every logout.)

Honest people have nothing to hide, Y/Y?

Seriously, people, if you’re going to lie… at least don’t lie about getting into Nihilum. Start small or something. You can always move up to “lol look I got into Nihilum” later on.

/facepalm
/point
/lol
/lol