Arcane? No thank you.

Another week, another Ony pug. This time it was a 25 man, so I wasn't the only mage. There were 3 of us! One was a former guildmate of mine (he's an awesome player but our guild just didn't fit him anymore) and another I'm sure I've pugged with before.

At any rate, we kill two trash mobs when the third mage sends me a whisper. "You'd double your DPS as arcane. You should try it."

.......

Now, this happens quite a bit. I UNDERSTAND that arcane is theoretically the "best" spec for DPS. I UNDERSTAND that frostfire has gone the way of the dodo. I also do not care.

You see, I'm not a follower of the "best" spec. I have always been some sort of fire spec until dual specs came out - in vanilla, in BC, in PvP. Yes, even despite frost being "the" soloing / leveling / PvP spec, I always solo'd / leveled / PvP'd as fire. Once I hit 80 and got some gear, I switched to frostfire. It's still basically a "fire" spec, but it has enough extras that it's worth selling some of my fiery soul for ice. I love my fire and well, fire laced with ice is just a very enticing idea, in my opinion.

When dual specs came out, I did try arcane (at least on the dummies). While I wasn't thrilled with the DPS at the time, I just hated the rotation. I figured out later that I never trained up ranks of the arcane spells (hence the lower damage), but it was the rotation that really killed it for me. I also knew that mana was an issue on longer fights and considering where our guild was at the time, long fights were inevitable. So, the second spec became a frost PvP spec that I sometimes actually remember to use (but completely suck at XD). I've used it to try out the "real" fire spec as well, but that's a story for another time.

So, I told my fellow mage that I knew arcane was supposed to be "better", but I really didn't like it. Thanks for the advice though!

Then we got to Ony.

I'm still giggling. I think I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.


Damage done > DPS.

Pugging Ony - Who's Fault This Time?

I'm not fond of pugs, but sometimes that's the only way I can get some of the random raids in during any given week. And since it tends to be after Evan's bedtime, sometimes my pug choices are ... sad. But I do it, now and then.

So I'm in an Ony 10 pug tonight. One of the tanks is on our guild's no-pug list and the DK is so pleased with doing 3.5k on the trash, since he "just hit 80 yesterday". Still, I figure I'll give it a chance. We do fine until the whelps. Given that it's a pug, I wait. And wait. And wait. I wait a lot longer than I normally do to AE the whelps, but the boomkin with us already started and it was going okay. I start AE'ing the whelps. Then, the boomkin dies. Then rogue dies. Then I die. All fairly sudden.

Not all was lost though! The tree rezzes the boomkin and the boomkin rezzes me. We down the whelps, get through 1 deep breath and .... it falls apart. I have no idea what happened but we lost a healer and people started dying one by one, so a wipe is called and we stood in the next deep breath.

One our way back, the tree says "DPS needs to wait to AE a little bit and we'll be fine.". O_o When I waited as long as I did, I sort of wonder if it's really the DPS's fault there. Particularly the way three of us went down like dominoes.

I know, I know. DPS never say it's their fault. Healers never say it's their fault. And tanks sure as hell don't ever say it's their fault. At least, most don't.

I tend to own up my mistakes. Let's look at a few! A couple of weeks ago, I tossed a bomb on Kolo before we were ready. I body pulled Freya last weekend while picking an herb (our guild's first kill on that pull, by the way). Heck just tonight I think I got too many stacks at Hodir and died. Okay so that one was partially Evan's fault (naked baby wiener thrust in one's face IS a tad distracting), but I still admitted I was distracted and hence my death.

I would rather have a good laugh about it ("Oh, look at what Vani did THIS time!") than have people get pissed off and wonder what happened or who caused THAT wipe.

So, if I thought it was the "DPS's fault" I would be more than happy to say "Yep!". I hesitate in this instance. Sure, we could have probably waited longer. We could wait until the cows come home! But a decent tank SHOULD have gotten enough threat by the time we started. Both were pally tanks, too, which most seem to agree have a good amount of threat-generation going on these days.

I know that I may have topped the DPS AND damage charts that attempt. But after looking at the gear of the other (DPS) pugs, I definitely out-geared them all. Heck, that DK who just hit 80? He was wearing tank gear and only did 1k on Ony. >_> You'd have thought that if at least I was DPS'ing "too soon", then I would have been the first to eat dirt. But I wasn't!

After that, one healer bailed, a DPS threatened to leave if the DK wasn't kicked, and well the group drifted apart.

Can't say I'm too saddened by that.

Decursive - You're Beautiful to Me!

So, Chirri posted something about Decursive on her blog. I couldn't let such an awesome opportunity pass by without a comment of my own.

You see, I play a mage and I remove curses. I don't enjoy it exactly, but I see it as part of my role as a mage. Decursive was one of the addons I determined to be necessary if I was really going to be raiding 25 man raids in Wrath.

Maybe I'm old school. Maybe I just need to "l2p" my mage "properly" and be a DPS whore. But, I don't think so. You see, I always thought it best to do whatever I could to help the group overall. This certainly includes doing a lot of damage to the intended target, but that's not all mages can (or should) do in a group or raid setting. Removing curses is one of these "other" things that often gets forgotten by many a mage.

Sometimes though, it's not forgotten so much as disregarded as "not my job". "Let the healers get it" is a line I've heard far too often. You know what? The healers are busy keeping your agro-pulling ass alive. Help them out a little! And besides, if it weren't "your job" you wouldn't have a neat little spell called "Remove Curse" available to you at all times. It's not like it's something you can spec into or out of like a resto shaman.

Another "excuse" I've heard for not removing curses makes me die a little inside. "Decursive is too invasive / ugly to have on all the time." Excuse me? It's a group of small green squares that only yells at you if you need to do something. You can move it anywhere you want, turn the squares off when you're not raiding, and it makes removing curses a breeze but it's too much of an inconvenience to have it on when you might need it? Riiiiiight.

I wouldn't mind it so much if they could still remove curses well without a mod, as I do have a dislike for too many mods and prefer not to rely on them when I can avoid it. But inevitably, it's not "really" how the mod looks or the room it takes up or anything like that - they just don't want to remove curses. After all, time spent removing curses could be time spent DPS'ing!

This "ugly" excuse is a favorite from one of the mages in my guild. He supposedly has it downloaded, BUT HE NEVER HAS IT ON WHEN IT'S NEEDED. Granted, it's not as big a deal now as it was in Naxx since fewer mobs in Uld and ToC curse. But even back then he hated it and would log out before and after Noth / Sapph to turn it on and off (I still don't get why he couldn't just turn off the micro frames). And the spider wing trash? Curse removal never happened. Ever. And I don't think he ever removed more than a couple of curses per boss encounter either; he always claimed the rest of us were "too fast" for him. (It's plain to me that he'd rather just be DPS'ing; the spider packs were tasty AE'ing opportunities, after all!)

It's pretty sad when we as a guild have always ran mage heavy (talking 4-5 mages a run, back in Naxx) yet the only mages removing curses was myself and maybe one of the others, depending on who actually showed up. These days, our mage population is just as big but less consistent on attendance so we only tend to have myself and one other (though sometimes we end up with four again).

Yet I bet if we did a Naxx run today, I'd still be the only mage removing curses.

Vani - The Non-Raider Raider.

So I'm the temporary raid leader for our guild. I've been doing it for close to two months now though, so I'm not sure that counts as "temporary" anymore. >_>

At any rate, we are a self-proclaimed "casual raiding guild" (you'll hear more about THAT thorn later). We only raid 2 nights a week for 3 hours a night for our "main" raids (those being the 25 mans). We have 10 man raids that run during the week, but I no longer participate in them mostly due to timing issues. But, I used to attend and sometimes lead our later 10 mans during the week. "Completely optional" is what we call those, but they are there for those that want them. End result is most nights something is on the calendar, even if it doesn't always happens because of numbers (another future topic!).

I am not a raider. Seriously. I did some "smaller" raiding in EQ and avoided it like the plague until close to the end of BC. Then, it was only 10 man raids (Kara, ZA). Rarely I would pug a 25 man SSC with some friends (who just happened to lead the guild I am now a member / co-leader of). I do like having a goal in mind while playing. (Rep grinds? Emblems for gear? Achievements? They all work for me.)

But - Vani, the raider? Not really. I do not spend hours farming mats for consumables (well, maybe frost lotus but only cause I'm cheap). I may play all day sometimes, but I definitely couldn't "raid" all day. I only called in sick once because of a raid, and that was the night I got my skittle stick in EQ. I guess part of me still thinks of a raider in the mold of an EQ Raider, which is why I do not consider myself a raider despite my raiding activities every weekend. XD

People who have known me for a long time know my feelings about being a raider. People in my guild might question my insistence that I'm not, given that I'm not only one of their GM's, but I'm also their raid leader. And I can be a hardass about it. Hell on Monday I demoted one person and sent warning emails to four others, so I'm sure to them I probably seem borderline-hardcore.

But I'm not that hardcore. I'd rather not do those things, but SOMEBODY has to take the initiative or we'd never get anywhere and the guild would collapse. I may not have started this guild, but I don't want to see it die.

And hey - I could be much, MUCH worse about certain things. It's just I have this thing about commitments and keeping them, even in a game. (Another future topic!) So apparently I'm the ideal person in our situation to "handle" people not showing up, not signing up, etc.

Over the last couple of years I have grown to "like" raiding. This is probably more to do with how easy raiding is in WoW; no farming spawns, no fighting for camps, no booking a guild-wide calendar for Planes (Berthall scarred me for life, I think). Everything is instanced for your group (with a few rare exceptions, at least in BC and Vanilla). It doesn't take hours for the boss to show up - he (or she or it) is always there unless you've already killed him that week. You CAN accomplish something in short time periods, if you're focused enough. And if not, you can extend your raid ID for next week! Heck you can manage to raid while having some semblance of a normal life, if you'd like.

At this point, raiding in WoW is just like a long heroic (mind you, I'm excluding hard modes here on purpose). Heck, I've been in some heroics that lasted longer than a normal ToC run even. Does that mean I'm finally crossing that line to being a "raider" in my own mind? I don't know. To be honest, I just like to kill shit and have fun. Preferably with a fun group of people at my side.

In the end, I still can't think of myself as a raider. At least, not the raider of my mind.

Well Hi There!

So Chirri says to me, "You should start a blog." and, well here we are. So hi! I will either post with great frequency or hardly at all. Guess we'll see how it goes.

For all intents and purposes, this blog will probably be a lot of random thoughts, musings, and ponderings. Eventually it might cover a lot of different topics, but for now I'll probably mostly talk about WoW. Undoubtedly my son will enter into these posts, most likely along the lines of "Evan ran across my desk naked again during the raid tonight...." or something similar. Yes, that has happened and yes, it's happened more than once. (He's only 22 months old. He provides a lot of interesting stories! XD)

I suppose we'll start with that and go from here. :)