Seri sez: Sweeping generalizations are bad. (Except this one, m’kay?)

It really twists my knickers when I hear people make sweeping statements about raid guilds and the people that comprise them. I recently had a discussion with Mr. Seri about some comments made by a friend of a friend on a forum we used to participate in about how their guild just couldn’t raid seriously because serious raid guilds are full of teenagers that devote 7-8 hours a day outside of raids farming consumables and doing raid prep. You know what I have to say to that?

Pbbbbbth. (Eloquent, I know.)

I’m pretty sure I made that exact sound when Mr. Seri told me about it, because he was like, “I know, right?” and proceeded to tell me about how he mentioned it to someone that knows this person and was told “Well, that’s what her old raid guild was like and that’s the only raid guild she’s ever had any experience with.”

Congratulations, random person that I don’t quite know… you win the WoS Dumbass Award™ for today.[1]

I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here, but since it’s my soapbox I’m damn well going to stand on it.

Without delving into another snowflake analogy (really, you’d be surprised just how many search engine hits we get with “snowflake” as a search term), I’ll just say that no two guilds are alike. Sure, they may share some characteristics here and there, but saying that “serious raid guilds” are full of teenagers is like saying that your refrigerator is just for vegetables. (Assuming you’re not a vegetarian, in which case your refrigerator IS probably just for vegetables… ok, bad analogy.)

Different guilds do things differently, and have different demographics. What’s more, the way that raiders function in the world of WotLK raiding is considerably different from how it used to be in years past. Farming consumables back in the Molten Core era, for example, was indeed a time-consuming activity. Blizzard has made it easier over the years, taking out some of the stuff we used to have to do (Blasted Lands buff food comes to mind, not to mention alchemy labs being required for flask crafting and located in extremely remote locations and requiring retarded amounts of herbs.)

I’m sure that somewhere out there (…beneath the paaaaale moonlight…), there is a raid guild full of teenagers with way too much time on their hands. However, it’s extremely narrow-minded to paint all raid guilds with the same brush based on a single experience. The fact that there is so much variety out there is something we would all do well to remember, and if the environment you find yourself in isn’t one where you’re having fun… look for it somewhere else. Want to raid once a week? Twice? Five nights? Three, but only between the hours of 6-10am during odd numbered months? I really do believe that there is a guild out there for everything. I wouldn’t  be surprised if there was a guild full of snorkeling enthusiasts that raid in flippers.

Okay, maybe a little surprised. But I digress.

Sweeping generalizations are bad, m’kay? Don’t do it. Stupidity angers the murloc.

*MRRRRGGGGGLLLLLLLEEEEE*

[1] The WoS Dumbass Award™ is not an actual award and entitles the bearer to nothing more than mocking applause and exasperated eye-rolling.

Jov sez: Why I’m looking forward to faction-transfers.

While I don’t  have as strong a case of alt-itis as Seri, I have been known to…  dabble… in character creation.  Okay, I’m addicted to it, and stubbornly roll healing class after healing class after healing class.  And don’t get me wrong, I don’t play most of the characters I roll.  Nothing against them, but a lot of them were either to take advantage of free realm transfers to clear up space on my home server and they were essentially retired and unplayed anyway, or they’re characters I’ve rolled to play with friends on other servers, who have flaked or had difficult to match schedules or the like.  Some…  I don’t really remember why I rolled, probably to peek around at the RP (since they’re almost always RP realms unless I’m rolling for a friend) and still there because I’m not at character cap.

My home server…  is full.  Specifically, it’s full of horde goodness.  The only lingering traces of Alliance on Scarlet Crusade are my first priest, who I am still admittedly suffering from major sentimental attachment to, and my druid.  My druid is a lv 70 druid, and damnit, I don’t want to level another from scratch.  I played her off and on from about the time I rolled my priest.  An was a paired character, Vie was the character I rolled to see if I could do this game all by myself.  An had strong ties to RP and other members of her guild.  Vie was played as being in-character as needed, but never really strongly caught as a character for me.  An will always be alliance, and may be played eventually, but primarily is used to keep up with my friends on that side of the fence.  Vie…  I miss playing, but I miss the system of support I have hordeside more.  Not to mention, hordeside she’s pretty much guaranteed epic flight, which is SO not happening if she stays alliance.

In short, I want faction transfers to happen NOW, primarily because I really really want to play my druid again.  I miss her.  I miss the boom, I miss the zoomrawr, I miss the tree-dance.  My name is Jov, and I’ve got an alt-problem.

Seri sez: Hi, I’m Seri and I play a Rogue.

I’m surprised that this conversation doesn’t happen more often:

“So, Seri.”
“Yes?”
“You write for World of Snarkcraft.”
“Yes.”
“It’s a Priest blog…”
“Mmmhmm.”
“…and you play a Rogue.”
“Yup.”
“WTF?”

Ok, actually, I’m more surprised that this conversation has never happened. *snicker*

Jov and I have made little mystery of the fact that we have both changed classes in the time since we started this little blogging adventure. You may wonder why it is that we continue to research and write about Priests when we don’t spend as much time playing them these days. Or maybe you don’t. Nonetheless, I’m going to tell you today!

The reasons why we kept World of Snarkcraft as it is are numerous, and I’m sure that Jov’s are different from mine. My thoughts are as follows:

1. Our readership is comprised mostly (I assume) of Priests, and they expect Priestly info here.

I’ve watched numerous blogs go through content shifts in the time I’ve been following them and, sad to say, I don’t follow most of them anymore. If I add a blog to my reader, it’s because its focus is something of interest to me. When that focus shifts, unless it is to something else that interests me, it loses me as a reader. We are happy members of the WoW Priest community, and certainly don’t want to drive readers off. (Especially the ones we’ve developed a rapport with.) What’s more, we’re lazy and cultivating a reader base is hard–especially when you’re as shrewish as we are.

2. Who the hell would want to read “The Raiding Rogue & Resto Shammy Blog”?

Talk about an odd couple. I mean… I could understand maybe something like a tank & healer pair trying to cater to both sides of the equation. DPS +  healer is about as random as you get, and you’re going to basically have two ‘camps’ of readers, each reading half your content. Doesn’t seem very productive.

3. We <3 Priests.

Hey, don’t get me wrong… I <3 my Rogue. I also <3 my Priest, I just am retired from 25-man Healing. I enjoy healing 10-mans & Heroics quite a bit, and Priesting will always have a special place in my heart. Or, at least what is left of it since I turned into a cold-blooded stabbing/slashing machine. (*stabstab*)

4. I am a diverse individual, dammit!

Man cannot live on beer alone, or something like that. My interests, much like Jov’s shoe collection, are copious and varied (if less prone to wedge heels). This used to mean that I had a billion alts. These days… well… I still have a billion alts, but I really specialize in Priest and Rogue. After all, they’re the only two to make it to 80 (so far).

5. Who knows, there’s always next expansion.

Hey, you never know… one or both of us might go back to full-time Priest(ess)hood at some point. Stranger things have happened. I mean, they put a man on the moon for pete’s sake. Granted, we’re no Armstrong & Aldrin… more like the space chimps from back in the day. After all, I can usually be coerced into a game of  whack-a-mole heal-botting for a banana (split) like any other monkey (and Jov never stopped).

That’s basically it. It’s not terribly complicated, but I feel better now that I’ve actually had the conversation somewhere other than inside my head.

Jov sez: Healing myself out of a job

Okay, so stop me if you’ve heard this one:

So, a guild walks into Ulduar for the first time.  And they totally splat on (XT/Razorscale/Ignis) trash.  “OMG!” they say, “WE NEED MOAR HEALERS!”  So the guild goes back to Ulduar, with 8-9 of their 25 spots filled with healers.  And they wipe, and learn new content, and wipe some more.  And after learning the fights, they go “OMG THIS IS SO EASY NAO, BUT WE NEED TO KILL FASTER TO (activate hardmodes/get top-scored fights on wws/race zerg bosses)!!” so they recruit DPS and start benching half of their healers, cause they’re so not needed now.

The end.

Yeah, me too.  This hasn’t happened to me directly, but it does get my panties in a bunch when I see it.

Like many guilds, Axiom’s suffered a bit from the summer blahs.  Lots of vacations, some recruiting, it’s left us with some pretty interesting, non-standard rosters over the past 6 weeks (“okay, 10 healers are signed, but we totally have no DPS… So, volunteers for respec for the day!” followed the next week by “Wait, what? only five healers?!  shit!”)

After a particularly rough night (Five healers rocking Thorim, Mimi, and Vezax) the joking starts on the guild forums from the DPS.

DPS 1: Meh, they’d already proved they can do it with 6 or 7. Next time I’m thinking 4…

DPS 2: Four, we’re doing three next week…..

Me: And 1 tank and 5 DPS.
If we’re running half healers, as a show of solidarity, we’re running with half everything else, too. No fair only healers get the bench.
/love and kisses.

And then things get serious:

DPS 3: Max. of 6 ever, HS/pot/bandage if necessary, stay out of fire or get teabagged.

DPS 4: That’s forever the healer dilemma, gearing/playing yourself out of a job. :/

DPS 3: Gotta break some eggs sometimes to make an omelet. (emphasis mine)

And lemme tell you, beyond earning a place on my shit list, DPS 3 really pissed me the fuck off.  (Or should that be the other way around?)

Because, excuse me?  Omelet?  Healers are eggs now?  And we’re talking about “breaking them” for the sake of the team?  We’re talking about breaking ANY member of the team?

1.  I’m sorry, I’m not going to EVER advocate benching the people who’ve been working and wiping from the beginning for the sake of your e-peen.

2.  I’m not going to advocate making MY job harder when all you’re doing is standing in place drinking-birding your 1 key.  DPS monkey sez: lawl afk making sammich.  (Sorry, Seri, but it’s true)

I mean, I understand that the number of healers needed at the beginning during wipes is not the same as the number needed once shit’s on farm.  I don’t want to be sleeping through content because there are 10 healers present leaving me with nothing to do. For the most part, I’m okay with it (I mean, I’m NOT okay with Blizzard’s idea that the challenge rating on an encounter is pretty much wholly the healing difficulty, but that’s another rant).  What I’m NOT okay with is the idea that healers should be the one always “taking one for the team” and not reaping the rewards of their month(s) of repair bills.

Of course, I’m also not okay with the folks who only want to attend farm nights and always skip out on progression.  Are you sensing a theme?  At least I’m consistent.

But something strikes me as wrong with this picture:

The number of tanks you need stays pretty consistent.
The number of DPS you need usually goes up.
The number of healers you need drops dramatically as more and more things go on-farm.

And people wonder why no one ever wants to play healers.

Seri sez: Things I love about WoW.

World of Warcraft players as a whole seem like a pretty discontented bunch a lot of the time. If you don’t believe me, visit the official forums sometime… everyone has something to say about the game and/or Blizzard and it’s usually negative. As a blogger I find myself ranting fairly frequently, whether it’s about the game itself or the people (a term sometimes used loosely) that I encounter in my ongoing quest for pixelated wealth and acclaim. Today I’m going to prove that I’m not a complete curmudgeon by turning the tables and talking about things that I love about WoW.

Limited load screens.

I love it that I can ride my pony from Tirisfal Glades to Strangelthorn Vale without encountering a single damn load screen. Sure, they’re still necessary for instances, hearthing, zoning between continents and expansions… but being able to cross over from one zone to another without having to wait for a load screen is something I think a lot of WoW players take for granted. I know I never will.

Quest icons on the mini-map.

Adding little question marks and exclamation points to the mini-map for quest-givers was an awesome move. It’s so easy now to see if you missed picking up the quest from that guy you always forget hangs out on the second floor of the inn. I’ll roll into this the move they made at the same time to put exclamation points over wanted ads and other objects that might trigger quests. So easy to miss! Also, unlearned flight points on the mini-map. Really, I just like having lots of things on my mini-map. Who actually uses it for navigation anyway? (Except, of course, navigating between gathering nodes.)

Leashing mobs.

Did you know that in some games mobs will chase you until you kill them or they kill you? It sucks. I love being able to ride past something and not worry about it (as long as it doesn’t daze me), and occasionally being able to flee when I’m in over my head.

Human/elven/trollish/orcish/tauren/draenei/dwarven/gnomish cannonballs.

I believe I’ve touched on my love of launching myself (and others) out of things at high velocity previously. Please allow me to reiterate: I freaking love launching myself (and others) out of things at high velocity. Whether it’s the Darkmoon canon, the harpoon launcher in Howling Fjord or those delightful little siege engines in Ulduar… I could do that shit all day. Alllllll day. I hear there is another self-projectile machine in the new 3.2 battleground. That might be enough to actually get me into a battleground, but I’m not sure how much my team will appreciate me just launching myself over and over. I’m probably supposed to DO something when I land besides cackle and run back to the catapult.

Guild banks.

Remember when the “guild bank” consisted of some officer’s alt and no one was really sure what was in it or how to request an item? And how that officer would complain that no one was using the bank, and eventually just sold stuff or mailed it randomly to people? Ever had that officer gquit and take the “guild bank” with them? Yeah. The guild bank of today may not save us from unscrupulous officers that want to take stuff with them when they go, but it’s a whole lot easier to use/manage. I love the guild bank.

The barber shop.

The first WoW topic I ever blogged about was my favorite thing coming in Wrath. Although I don’t think that post ever saw the light of day, back when we were slogging through Sunwell trash and looking to the future there was one thing that excited me more than anything else: The barber shop. (*squee*) I love being able to change my hair style/color as the mood strikes me, and I do it pretty regularly. (Though Qi has been sporting the red ponytail for quite a while.) This is one of the most awesome features ever implemented IMO, even though it has no effect whatsoever on game play. Hrm. Now that I think about it, a lot the things I love about WoW don’t affect the game play. >.<

Hawgs & Roflcoptors.

Blizzard took a lot of flak for including motorcycles in the game, but I love them. I think the mats are a little steep, but I have to admit that it has kept them less common. I mean, you still see them everywhere but it’s not like everyone has one. The sidecar is just genius. One of these days I *will* make myself one. I also love the flying machines (aka ‘roflcoptors’), complete with dancing hula doll. Sure, I *could* fly some epic drake… but who can deny the lure of a rickety-looking flying machine belching a trail of grey smoke? Not me. I just wish it had a passenger seat, or perhaps a catapult attachment. Maybe next expansion. >.>

Passenger mounts.

While I’m at it… I love passenger mounts. Mammoths, Mecha-Hogs, it’s all good. I don’t own one, but I love to ride in them. That’s probably because I’m lazy and I like to web surf and/or blog while someone else is driving. No, I don’t actually OWN a passenger mount. What’s the fun in that? However… WTB flying passenger mounts! Give me one of those bombers with bench seats in back. And, hey, if the bomber’s a-rockin’…

Questing with a friend.

Over time I’ve developed an aversion to soloing the quest grind. Whether I’m leveling, doing dailies or just grinding quests for cash, I always prefer to do it with a friend. It’s not about the difficulty of the task, I just enjoy the company. I like hanging out on vent and chatting while we go through the motions of stuff we’ve probably done dozens of times before. Then again, I’ve also been feeling very nostalgic lately. I think Jov is probably tired of hearing me say ‘remember when…’ while we’re out and about on alts.

Bunny ears.

Ok, so there was a lot of feminist QQ about the bunny ears from Noblegarden this year, but I just have to say… they’re adorable. I find them a pleasant alternative to my T8 helm, and still carry around my little bouquet of flowers to put them on guildies. I especially like to put them on the oh-so-macho guys (and one particular not-so-macho guy) during raids. It’s funny to see how quickly they notice and click them off. I’ve actually timed a few, I think the record so far is 3 seconds. Pretty impressive.

Torment of the Worgen.

If there is one thing I could be said to miss from Kara, it is Torment of the Worgen. I’ll never forget hearing Yuki’s excited “I’m a worgen!” periodically during our raids. When I eventually got my rogue into Kara, I couldn’t help but exclaim it myself a few times. Even now, I love going back to Kara just so I can run rampant as a little furry ninja. There need to be more of these types of buffs in the game, things that randomly change you into something else and give you a brief damage boost, kind of like the fist weapons from ZG… Wait. Oh my. Jov… saddle up, we’re going to ZG!!

What do you love about WoW? Tell us about it!

World of Snarkcraft Presents…

You may  have thought we were one-trick ponies here at Snarkcraft HQ. Little did you know that we have secretly been building a recording studio and composing our first little ditty, just for you.

And now, without further ado..

yes, no further ado…

no further ado whatsoever…

okay, maybe a little more ado…

World of Snarkcraft presents…

Real Raiders of Genius

(*fanfare*)

(DivX required to view.)

(Also available on YouTube by popular demand!)

Jov sez: I don’t care about the Coliseum

Okay, so, yeah…  I don’t.

I’ve done all the various Ring of Blood type arena fights on all my characters.  Nagrand?  Check.  Grizzly Hills?  Check check.  Zul’Drak?  Check check CHECK.

Do you hear that, Blizzard?  I’ve done them!  I’ve even done the others…  BRD?  Been there, SO over that.  BRD for the Tier .5 questchain?  UGH, yes, multiple times.  Magister’s Terrace?  I could do that place in my sleep.

I’ve even done ACTUAL arena.  I’ve done PVP against players both smarter than your AI and…  not.  And you know what?  I stopped!  I don’t do it anymore!  I never did it more than I NEEDED to!

I’ve done all this stuff.  Everyone reading has done all this stuff.

“This stuff” is the stuff I hate most about the game.

I’m not talking so much about recycling a concept over and over again.  When Blizz finds something that works, they’ve always pretty much reused it.  When something is popular, it would be pretty stupid to just drop it like a hot rock.

But, I don’t care, and it’s my blog so I’ll get up and rant if I want to.  I don’t want to have our next “progression” content be repeatedly farming the arena boss for a few months.  I don’t like arena fights.  I don’t like arena PVP, I don’t like arena PVE.

I want Old Gods, and pretty rooms, and actually running around from place to place.  Hell, I would prefer to be back in Hyjal and dealing with it’s exciting waves of dynamic trash encounters.

And what about Arthas?  Remember the guy you named the expansion after?  It’s been over 6 months, you’re already talking about wanting to get the NEXT expansion out in 09 (that’s this year) and except for a few cameo appearances, he’s been locked up safe and sound in Icecrown.

And why not?  All the people who oppose him are having a jousting fair party thing in the BFE corner of nowhere (when they’re not poking around, messing with the Titans) and are totally keeping themselves busy AND out of his hair.

Screw faction changes, I’m all for switching allegiance to the smart guy.

WoS: Birthday Edition

Happy Birthday, Jov!

(I couldn’t quite fit all the candles, but I tried!)

Seri sez: So, about that new Tier 9 gear…

Am I the only one that has been underwhelmed by the tier sets in this expansion? It kind of makes me long for the days when druids wore shrubberies on their shoulders and antlers on their heads. Granted, as a Rogue I get to wear shoulders with a quick-flick tentacle animation… it’s so cool it *almost* balances out the terribad terrorblade gargoyle-ate-me helm. But I also feel pretty bad for the Priests, who look kind of like Rogues-in-training with their little black bandit masks. It’s like someone’s manager decided in a meeting one day that they were tired of the top half of Priests’ faces being covered by cowls all the time and decided that this time the other half had to be covered and, let’s face it, there are only so many ways to do that, and unless you’re going for a sheer veil sort of thing (which, btw, would be awesome) it’s going to end up looking like a bandit mask. (At least, for clothies anyway… I seem to remember a certain plate set with its bear trap necklace… now that was creative, if abhorrent.)

Where was I? Oh right, WotLK tier sets. Blizzard is currently previewing the T9 sets, pointing out that for the first time the Alliance and Horde versions will look different! Well, that’s great I suppose. I mean, orange really isn’t all that flattering with my complexion but I doubt I’m going to be showing much skin unless the helm graphic is so terrible I have to turn it off (again).

What they don’t point out, which I noticed because I have a pretty keen eye for these sorts of things, is that they seem to be using the same model for every piece of cloth T9, recolored for different classes. Examples:

See what I mean? It’s all the same, just different colors (and slight changes on the bottom of the robe for Warlocks). I’m not even going to go into the phallic shape of the overall outfit, because I’m sure you’re all perfectly capable of going there yourselves.

I sure would like to know why Blizzard is going in this direction. Is it a time issue? Are they pushing to get content out so quickly that they’re scrimping in the art department? Did they blow their whole budget on the druid forms? Is this just another side-effect of class homogenization? Has it come down to ‘we’re not even going to make one class LOOK cooler than another class, for fear you’ll only take them to raids’?

All I know is that it really gets my knickers in a twist. I sure hope it’s a one-time thing and not the wave of the future.

Jov sez: I’m such a bad role lead.

ooooooooops.  This one was supposed to still be in the drafts pile as it was deemed too random and not polished enough to go live.  It was essentially me going off before I was fully awake trying to get back in the blogging groove.  But!  Since it’s already sparked some discussion/disagreement on my /mouseover healing macro, I’m gonna leave it up.

Y’all might be surprised, but I’m actually in a Position of Authority ™ in my guild.  I oversee half the healing roster (in theory) and only occasionally go mad with power.

I mean, I’m totally full of useful information.  Especially on fora.

I’m gonna useful information y’all now, too.  Because after nearly a month since actually writing a post of my own, I’m kinda rusty.  (Yes, I’m copy/pasting.  Shut up, I wrote it originally.)

I’ve given a breakdown of my mouseover macro (as well as the warnings, when I admitted to accidentally spam-healing one of our mages instead of my intended (tank) target while getting used to healing with mouseover):

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover, help][help][target=targettarget, help][target=player] Spellname

The conditionals pick the following possibilities, in order:
1. Mouseover target. Enables hover-casting, best used when you use raid frames (though also works for just mousing-over units). Bind the macro to a key, move your mouse over the unit you wish to heal’s frame, press your hotkey and your spell will start casting.
2. Your selected target, provided it’s a friendly unit.
3. Your target’s target, if your target is hostile and it’s target is friendly. Particularly recommended for healers acting in a DPS or CC role, follow that stun / fear / earth shock up with a heal on whatever your foe had been pounding on before.
4. If no suitable target is selected or hovered over, heal yourself.

I’ve also given the “use this or else” Guardian Spirit macro for Sarth 3D (Spell name can be switched, making this useful for PS or Fear Ward if you need to ensure it goes off on a specific person (and not your mouseover target, see above)):

#show Guardian Spirit
/cast [target=<tank name>] Guardian Spirit
/# Guardian Spirit Used!
/ra Guardian Spirit up!
/s Guardian Spirit up!
/t <next in line> GS up!  You’re next!

1) This prevents it from casting on anyone other than the tank. If the tank isn’t in range, it doesn’t go off, you’ll know you need to move closer.
2) Announce it in heal chat (and priest as well if you want)
3) Announce it in raid and say
4) Send a tell to the next person in line, letting them know they’re next.

I’ve given my opinion on the current state of blue gems:

If I see any of you with blue gems, I’ll cry. Seriously. And then I’ll take a crowbar to your gears and pry them out.

(Seriously, if you want a socket bonus/meta requirement, go green (seer’s) or purple (purified))

But I can’t be good advice all the time:

So we can ensure <DPS’er> gets the love he deserves:  http://www.wowace.com/projects/gridstatusignored/

*cough cough*

(and then our co-GM totally trumped me.  Lesson learned: don’t piss off the trees.)