Incredibly Disappointed

This is a WoW guild leadership post. I don't normally do them, but I was… well… incredibly disappointed and I'm stuck at work where I can't talk to the guy who started it and I need an outlet before I end up verbally punching someone in the gut who might not realize he deserves it.

So… the backstory is that after the breakup of my 25-man guild, about a half dozen or so of us reformed as a 10-man with help from our ex-guildies and new recruits. Everyone who came from the old guild knew the terms. We would raid 10-mans only, no hope of our new guild ever becoming a 25-man. The underlying subtext was, don't come if you're not going to be happy with 10-mans.

At this time, there was a relatively new 80 who only went to maybe one or two 25-man runs before the old guild broke up. He was in blues, totally unsuited for Ulduar and ToC, and was only in the guild because he was a friend of another raider. He hadn't raided before, but he was interested in coming to the new guild. I wasn't sure what to make of him, but we needed people so I gave him a shot.

He worked hard on his gear, running 5-mans day and night (only a mild exaggeration), and was in tip-top shape for 10-man ToC so quickly that we didn't feel we were carrying him. He turned out to be a very enthusiastic raider who watched videos, read up on fights, and wasn't afraid to ask for help to improve his ability to play. He went from a nobody to one of our best dps, a fantastic backup tank, and the makings of backup raid leader. I had figured in a few more weeks I'd probably make that designation official.

Then on Tuesday night he confessed to me that he wanted something more. He had been running with a couple other guilds in their 25-man spots, which I knew about and had told him he could do, but even though he was going with them on a semi-regular basis, he was tired of being "benched" when their own guildies were online and able to go. He decided that he really liked the 25-man raids, so he wanted to go to another guild.

Of all our guildies, he's the one I'd be most forgiving of this. He was new to raiding when he joined us, so he hadn't done the 25-mans unlike the rest of us who actually retired from it. The rest of us have no intention of going back. Some of our newer recruits have even asked to be sure there was no intention of trying to scale up to 25s.

So I told him that I understood, and he said he didn't want to leave us in a lurch so he hadn't applied to anyone yet, but he thought we were in pretty good shape now. I begged to differ, since we're still in active recruitment even two months after we started (need healers) and we even had to pug a couple people on Monday because we couldn't cover the expected absences of two guildies on vacation when a couple other people were unexpectedly absent as well. I told him that and asked him to wait so we could see what things looked like on Saturday once our vacationers came back.

I also thanked him for talking to me rather than just /gquitting and he said he something to the affect of not wanting to do that since he considered this to have been his first real guild. He said if we were ever short-handed after he left he'd be happy to fill in, and that was fine. I have no trouble keeping friendships with ex-guildies who leave in a classy way and it seemed like he was going to do that.

Fast forward to this morning (less than 48 hours later). I went to our guild forums and found a good-bye message from someone else, a friend of this guildie. The friend was quitting because the guildie who I had talked to had already left the guild and the friend didn't see a reason to stay around. Now, what gets me is that the friend, who is a non-raider, bothered to stop by and leave a good-bye message and the guildie did not. I shouldn't have to find out second hand from the guild web site that this guildie who said he wasn't going to leave until he was sure we were in a good spot has already left the guild!

I was not on Wednesday night since I have a weekly RL get-together, so pretty much he could not wait more than 48 hours to tell me before jumping guilds? Am I wrong for being upset?

A part of me wants to not only tell him how disappointed I am that he didn't wait, but that because of his actions I don't think it would be appropriate to extend him an invite to future raids even if we are short a raid spot. But he was well-liked in guild, and since I haven't been on since Tuesday night I don't know how other people feel or if anyone was even on when he left. Maybe they're less upset and more forgiving. He'd only talked to me about sticking around until we were in a good spot.

I have a suspicion that he doesn't actually think he's doing a bad thing. He might not have even been trying to sneak out. My thinking is that when I told him it was okay to start looking around he put in an app, got accepted right away, and the 25-man guild extended him an invite with the expectation that he would immediately join them (since that is usually the way of things) and he did. He probably figured that if he saved his 10-man raid IDs for us he could still be available "as promised" while enjoying his new 25-man guild.

I don't think he's being a jerk so much as he's being thoughtless, which in a way is more hurtful. Because if he was a jerk we'd sign off on him. But this way makes it harder. For instance, do I keep his alts in the guild or do I kick them? Will there be fallout with the other guildies for kicking his alts?

Then there are the logistics in that we will have to replace him. I hate recruiting, but we'll need another dps now. We can't have anyone be absent at this point or we just won't have enough to fill our dps spots. This was not in any way a good time for him to quit!

[Paladin] Saving on Repair Bills in 3.3!

Come on, I can't have been the only paladin to look at the latest patch notes and think about how I can now save on repair bills once every 10 minutes!

Divine Intervention: Cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

I've made good use of this during pug raids. I had nights where after four or five wipes I've only had to pay a single death's repair bill thanks to judicious use of DI by myself or other paladins. With the ability to use it every 10 minutes I'm going to have to stock up on Symbol of Divinity.

It's practically a given that if the raid's going to be a wipe I reach over for that Divine Intervention button and give it a click.

Okay, maybe I wasn't always that bad.

Back when I raided reasonably often with Gillien it seems I hardly ever used it. When it was a guild run things typically went well, or I would give everything I had because I had faith that somehow even when things went crazy we could make a recovery, and sometimes we did.

But now that the vast majority of raids I go on with him are pugs, it seems like I've been clicking DI way more often than should be healthy. Considering I die every time I cast it, maybe healthy really shouldn't be a word for it anyway.

My most amusing failed ToC 10 pug went something like this:

Attempt 1: Fail. I DI and save a repair bill.

Attempt 2: Fail. I eat it.

Attempt 3: Fail. I DI and save a repair bill.

Attempt 4: Fail. Bubble hearth and save the repair bill!

I would've felt bad about the last one except that as we were wiping the raid leader called it and other people were trying to hearth out as well. I was a little slow getting my cast started, so I had to bubble first, and by then I was the only one still alive and in the room. It's actually pretty scary seeing Acidmaw and Deadscale looming over you when you're a healer, but bubble lasts just a smidge longer than a hearthstone cast so off I went!

It still feels a bit like I'm a horrible person for bubble-hearthing out of a raid, but it makes for a good story. :)

[Paladin] Healing Survey

I haven't been tagged with this to my knowledge, but Bellwether of 4Haelz said to consider her readers tagged if they hadn't been already, and why not contribute to the greater knowledge of healing?

This questionnaire was put together by Miss Medicina and you can find links to everyone's answers here.


What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Gillien, Holy Paladin.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

Pretty much whatever I can get into these days. Typically a mix of 10-mans, 5-mans, and arena.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

Without a doubt it's Holy Shock. I know the typical bread and butter spells are Flash of Light and Holy Light, but really that's just cheap, fast, small heal versus expensive, slower, big heal.

Holy Shock is instant sexiness. No cast time and I have the cooldown glyphed to 5 seconds, mostly for PvP purposes, but it doesn't stop me from leaving the glyph on while I raid. It's even better when paired with Divine Favor to make it an automatic crit. It's like getting an instant Holy Light on damage that also boosts your next heal by making it instant (if FoL) or giving it a higher chance to crit (if HL).

I first started healing back in TBC when Holy Shock was still too expensive to use regularly, but now I use it all the time and I can't imagine going back to just FoL and HL. In fact I tend to get very disappointed when I look at other paladins' healing parses and see that they don't use it. You can really save a player from the brink of death with one of those.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

It's a bit sad to say it, but I would probably say Holy Light. I know, I know, I'm a paladin, but I don't go on progression raids these days so most of my casts are FoL. I need to face some tougher content to really get back into HL bombing. I'm just not in a situation that warrants it often enough.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

This is probably going to sound odd, but I think it's that we can be competent tank healers while simultaneously contributing to overall raid healing. Yes, I'm looking at you, Beacon of Light. Ever since the change was made to allow overhealing to contribute to the Beacon there's no reason a paladin shouldn't be helping out with the raid while still keeping the tank up. Being able to help raid heal without risking the survivability of the tank (because all heals are copied over to him via the Beacon) is a fantastic ability.

It still boils down to us being great tank healers, but I've always wanted to be something more than just "the tank healer." Beacon of Light lets me do that.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

I think quite a few paladins would say the lack of an AoE heal, but really that doesn't bother me. Beacon already lets me heal one other person without risking the tank, and I'm fine with what Blizzard considers the paladin "kit" for healing. What does bother me is when I have to move, because if I'm moving I'm not casting. It's another reason I like Holy Shock, because I can use it on the go, but even glyphed, those 5 seconds are murder when you need it and it's on cooldown.

Tank healer got a snobold at a bad time? Tank healer had to move out of the fire at a bad time? I do use Lay on Hands from time to time, but sometimes it ends up being "Aw crap…" with the tank dead and I just LoH-ed myself because I was a second too slow. I think our biggest weakness as a healer is having a safe way to protect our targets when we can't cast. The best we have is Sacred Shield, but I would like a stronger bubble, maybe one with a longer cooldown so we only use it in those kinds of emergencies.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

Without a doubt it's tank healing. Beacon one tank, heal the other. Heal the raid if there's only one tank. When Naxx was still newish it was a lot of fun healing Patchwerk because it was so built for paladins with Beacon.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

Probably a holy priest, due to fond memories of duo-healing Karazhan with a friend of mine, but really anything that can raid heal is good company.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

Another paladin. Seriously. It's mostly because there's less room for an additional tank healer than an additional raid healer. It used to be only one Beacon of Light would work at a time so two paladins meant that they would be overwriting each others Beacons if there was only one tank, and even now there's some overwriting of Sacred Shield. I've yet to figure out a way to display my Beacon of Light (and mine only) on Grid so sometimes I think I have Beacon of Light up and it's someone else's.

It's not so bad in an organized raid, but in pugs it's not uncommon for paladins to end up stacking Beacons. One 10-man VoA pug I ran with even had three holy paladins at once, which was a bit much.

What is your worst habit as a healer?

Reactive healing. Most of the content I go to now is too easy. FoLs all over the place. 90% of the time reactive healing is okay and proactive healing is just wasted effort. But because I don't have a solid group I regularly raid with I don't know my tanks' capabilities, so I have a tendency to get blindsided when I suddenly find out that the tank isn't as sturdy as I thought he was.

I can deal with wind-up boss moves, because DBM will let me know when they're coming, but sometimes the tank just gets plastered faster than I expected and I won't have an HL ready because I didn't realize it was going to happen.

I'm admittedly a bit concerned that this habit is going to get ingrained if I don't heal something harder soon.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

People who complain about the healing. Sometimes it's a legitimate concern. If the dps are doing everything right and are dying to unavoidable raid damage, then something's wrong with the heal team or the healing assignments. But usually the complaint comes across as very personal as in "Why didn't I get heals?" as if saving that one person's butt would have made all the difference.

I remember one run, which was only a 5-man, in which we got adds and the tank was too slow to pick them all up. The healer died first and one of the dps had the temerity to ask (as we were running back to the instance) why he didn't get heals. I promptly told the guy that the healer was already dead by then, at which point he said, "oh." /facepalm

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

I don't think of paladin healing as being balanced with the other classes due to the fact we have a particular niche that the others don't (except possible disc priests). It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes us different in that the other three classes can more easily shift between raid healing, perhaps even tank healing, whereas paladins are pretty much tank healers first and do so-so with raid healing. It's doesn't mean that a good paladin can't raid heal, but it's not in the class design.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

I use a mix of Recount and World of Logs. When I raided with my old guild on Gillien I always had WoL reports to look at, but since I don't take my paladin to guild raids anymore I usually just stick to Recount.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

That we're only good as tank healers. Yes, it's our specialty, and skill being equal a druid, shaman, or holy priest is going to beat the pants off me raid healing, but it doesn't mean I can't raid heal. I know I just mentioned that it's not in our class design, but a good player can still perform adequately.

Back during TBC, I ended up solo-healing Moroes in Karazhan when my priest friend died to a loose add, and this was back before Beacon of Light existed. I ended up healing nine people using single target heals (all with cast times, because Holy Shock sucked at the time) and we somehow got out of it alive. It's not particularly pleasant, but it can be done.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

It's hard for me to center on any one thing, because there are a lot of things that a good holy paladin should be doing in a fight, so I'd probably say anything other than casting Holy Light and Flash of Light. Multi-tasking is the word. Paladin healing is supposedly simple, but there are actually other things that a good holy paladin should be doing.

Judging from what I've seen in raids, one of them is refreshing Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield. I knew one paladin who was particularly bad about it. He would do both at the start of the fight, and maybe he would refresh them later on, but more likely he wouldn't, and because he was a tank healer, he usually healed the Beacon target, which meant that every advantage he could have gained by Beaconing the tank in the first place was generally lost.

Another issue is judging. I judge every free moment I get that it's not on cooldown. Aside from maintaining the Judgement of the Pure buff, if we're short paladins the better uptime I can keep on JoL or JoW the more health or mana the raid gets.

Finally, it's recognizing and using Holy Shock. Some paladins don't seem to use this spell at all. Perhaps they never got in the habit of it, but as a clutch heal I don't see how a holy paladin could ever totally ignore it. Nothing's going to beat its speed, and though it's more expensive than a FoL, mana is rarely an issue for a paladin.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

They'd see a lot of overhealing for certain. I tend to sport somewhere in the ballpark of a 50% overheal ever since patch 3.2 landed. This is partially because of the change to Beacon, but also because I tend to use Judgement of Light now that it's no longer based on attack power.

The casual observer will probably think I heal just fine since I'm normally #1 on the meters for pug raids. I have my blindspots of course, but meters have been very kind to holy paladins post-3.2, so it looks very good to those who don't know better. I do take a bit of joy though in destroying other healers on the meters if they're meter braggarts though. It's probably the wrong attitude to take (my dps heritage I suppose), but it's satisfying.

Haste or Crit and why?

I used to really love Haste, but I think I have enough of it now that Crit is more helpful. From a healing standpoint (and not a paladin one) I can't count on getting a crit unless it's from my Divine Favor macro, so if I get more healing it's just a bonus. It's more important that I land the heal when I need to than for the heal to be big. Bad RNG will give me several normal heals in a row, so wouldn't it be better for those heals to be faster?

But my Haste is pretty good now so I can afford to give Crit another thought. For paladins Crit tends to be nice for the mana return aspects of it, but I generally don't have mana issues so I haven't felt the need to focus on it.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Priests for the most part. It's the only healing class I haven't played. I have a rough idea of all their core abilities, but I can't rattle off their spell names the way I can a druid's, paladin's, or even a shaman's.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

I have a Divine Favor + Holy Shock macro that I love for raids and arena. It gives me a big instant heal and then an instant Flash of Light or boosted chance for a crit Holy Light. I've tried a couple other macros, but really that's the only one I keep using regularly.

As for add-ons I use Grid, just by itself, without Clique. I try not to be too add-on dependant, though more of them seem to be creeping into my Add-Ons folder than I would like. I've been thinking of adding some of the support modules to display raid specific debuffs and mana bars, but I've been too lazy to do so at this point.

Generally I just pay attention to DBM for raid specific healing needs like Incinerate Flesh and the like.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

I prefer a balanced approach, because I'm not raiding enough where I'm exposed to a particular need that will always be there. I do have a bit of a preference towards spellpower on my gear, just because I tend to FoL heal so much, but it's just a mild preference. Lately I've been adding more Int than I have in the past, but it may be a moot point if I can't get into any pugs doing hard enough content for me to need the regen.

Cross-Realm LFG

I find I'm really looking forward to cross-realm LFG. Sure, there are bound to be some issues, such as an inability to filter people based on the reputation of their guild, or if there's a preferred class for an achievement run (I'm looking at you Less-Rabi), but imagine how much better this will be for alts! It's not unheard of to be the only person on the server sitting in LFG hoping to find more people interested in doing Sunken Temple. Or maybe there's only two of you in group and you spend half an hour or more trying to find another three.

But that's just on one server. Cross-realm LFG will open up the entire battlegroup. That's another seven or eight servers perhaps. Even if only half of the other servers have people similarly looking for Sunken Temple at that moment, it'll be enough for a full party. There still may be issues finding a healer or a tank, but it should prevent some of those "LF1M all we need is a dps!" moments when the party has to decide whether or not they can 4-man it or they really do need a fifth.

I suppose the biggest drawback may be finding the healers or the tanks. Let's say that at a given moment on a particular server, there are 2 tanks, 1 healer, and 6 dps looking to do the heroic daily. After the party forms there are 1 tank and 3 dps left over in LFG.

We open this up to cross-realm LFG and there are now eight times the number of people in LFG. There are 16 tanks, 8 healers, and 48 dps. After eight parties form, we are left with 8 tanks and 24 dps without groups.

The number of groups are the same as if they'd stayed separated on their original servers, but I wonder if the wait for dps #48 will be longer than if he didn't have to share with another realm. Those 8 tanks and 24 dps won't get groups until a new healer enters the system, and depending on how long that takes, it could be while. Dps #48 would only be dps #3 on his own server, so in theory he would go with next group to form, but here he would have to wait until the eighth healer to come along.

If his server is starved for healers, it may very well be that even waiting for the eighth healer it would still be faster than waiting on his own server. But if his server has a lot of pugging healers, then he may be waiting longer than usual because his server's healers will be going to other groups first.

I primarily play hybrid classes, so as someone with a tank spec on both my 80s and a heal spec on one of them, I don't think I will have much of a problem finding a group. If anything it'll be easier to get a group since those two roles are in higher demand and now there will be an even larger surplus of dps looking for them.

It does make me wonder though if I will ever pug as a moonkin. I rarely do anyway, though for the moment it's largely by choice. Most of the time I'm forming the group, so I automatically assume I'm going to tank. It saves me the trouble of looking for one. If the system is choosing my role for me, based on what I say I can do, I have a suspicion I'll be chosen to tank as well. It just makes sense when there are less of them.

But running a dungeon is better than not running, which is why I like playing hybrids. It's why I've done things like tank while holy specced on my paladin, or tank while moonkin specced on my druid. (Somehow it doesn't feel as impressive when I say I healed on my moonkin when we lost a healer. It's almost expected.)

I'm curious whether or not Looking For Raid will be cross-realm as well. If there's one thing I envy about Dark Iron (where my feral alt is) vs. Skywall (where my 80s are), it's the raid pugging situation. Skywall's not well progressed so raid pugs for anything other than Naxx have a horrible failure rate. There just isn't a large enough player base that knows what it's doing.

For example: I went to a 10-man ToC pug on my paladin where I knew the raid leader and she was asking that everyone be both geared and to know the fights. We got in there and found out that the OT's idea of knowing the fights was that she got up to Acidmaw and Dreadscale the last time she was there. We gave it a few shots, but she either couldn't or wouldn't follow instructions and a ToC pug is no place to learn how to tank a raid boss. FACE THE WORM AWAY FROM THE RAID AMG!

If Looking For Raid is cross-realm then I might be able to get into a pug raid with people from more progressed realms where pugging ToC or even ToGC happens on a regular basis. Of course, there's always the possibility that those people will be extremely snotty and won't take me because I haven't finished Icecrown on hard mode. Heh.

Edit: It's been clarified that Looking For Raid is realm-only. Ah well.

[Druid] Did all the bears go moonkin?

This post should have been posted last week, but somehow I forgot about it and left it with the rest of my drafts, but it's still pretty relevant, so I figured I'd post it now.

I was reading an article on WoW.com about the dearth of bear tanks, and the column looked into why there might be fewer bear tanks. I'm not exactly sure why there are less these days, though the article does give a few reasonable speculations, but it's something I've noticed. On my server, the vast majority of tanks I've seen in pugs have been paladins followed by DKs. I might see a warrior, but I can't remember the last time I'd seen a bear, if ever. If there's a bear tanking for my group it's usually me.

The WoW.com column presents various reasons why there may be fewer bears than there used to be; same boring bear butt no matter your level of progression, having to fight with rogues and other dps classes for gear vs. the abundance of plate tanking drops, looking like a clown wearing a mix of rogue and druid gear with a hunter weapon slung over your back… But the reason that stands out most to me is the flexibility inherent in the druid class. We are the only class that can be tank, melee dps, ranged dps, and a healer. It's honestly viable to be full-time cat in Wrath of the Lich King.

Look at bloggers Jacemora and Runyarusco, both TBC-era tanks, who now blog about kitty dps.

When Blizzard came out and reinforced during the WotLK beta that it was not going to be possible to be a good cat and a good bear with the same spec I even thought of making my feral alt primarily cat at level 80, just because I remembered having so much fun with it while leveling. Real cat dps? Nice!

So where did the bears go? Well, if bloggers are any indication, the love of being a dps kitty can finally be fulfilled, so ferals who were both bear and cat just because they came part and parcel in the past are now able to go with the form that suits them best, so I would not be surprised if a fair number of them are now indulging themselves as the cats they always wanted to be in TBC but couldn't.

I've mentioned before that there are now a lot more moonkin than there used to be. I hadn't really thought where they had come from before, but now that I do… could they possibly be former ferals? The WoW.com article points out that the druid population hasn't plunged, so the druids are still playing. They're just different specs.

When TBC came out suddenly a bunch of druids, freed from the necessity of going resto for end game, were feral. Now with WotLK and moonkin being viable, are those druids now shooting their owlkin lasers?

So I decided to check out my favorite armory dataminer and see what data he'd pulled for level 80 druids.

According to this data from August 2009, we are split 25% balance, 36% feral, and 39% resto. By that measure we're still over a third feral, which leaves the question of where the heck did all the bears ago. But, if we look at dual specs, we can start getting a better picture of our level 80 druid population.

The most popular dual spec combination? Balance and Restoration at 31%. Feral and Restoration is close behind at 30%.

Given that almost 40% of the druid population has a resto spec this is not surprising. Unfortunately there is no way to tell whether the feral specs are cat or bear, but there is one more interesting data point.

Percent of the population with two feral specs? A mere 9%. And this is important, because the traditional feral tank keeps two sets of gear; one for bear and one for kitty. If a mere 9% of the druid population behaves as the TBC-era feral tank then it's no wonder that they're so rare!

It's entirely possible that a balance/feral or a resto/feral has a feral tank spec (I do), but due to the fact the gear sets do not easily overlap it's probably less likely that any of them primarily function as a tank for their guild. A feral who regularly tanks probably has a kitty off-spec because it's easier to function as both in a raid where they tank one fight and dps the next (and there's less gear to collect). In the case of a resto main spec, the feral off-spec could easily be for questing and doing dailies.

I do see druid tanks on my server. I can think of at least two progression guilds off-hand that use them, but when it comes to pugging they just aren't out there, which says to me that a bear tank either finds a guild that wants her to tank on a regular basis (in which case we never see her out in the wilds of pugging because she's always in a guild group) or she specs for something else.

What I don't understand is why there aren't more off-spec bears. I generally pug as a bear because it gives me more control. The first thing I do when I open LFG is search for a healer, and then round up the dps to fill out the group. It saves time when I don't have to hunt for both a tank and a healer. And if I'm a dps with a crappy tank or a crappy healer there's not much I can do to save the pug, but if I'm the tank, I can better deal with a crappy healer because of my cooldowns, my gear, and knowing how to play.

Of course, the same could be said for pugging as a healer, which I regularly do on Gillien, and maybe that's what the druids are doing, a good 40% of them. Maybe they're happier to pug as a healer than a tank.

There was a rogue I pugged with and a ring dropped. I wasn't certain it was an upgrade, so I only greeded it. The rogue greeded and won, but then shortly thereafter whispered me asking if it was an upgrade for me. I told him I wasn't sure and that's why I only greeded it. He opened up trade and told me to take it just in case. He said that he really liked bear druids but he hardly ever saw them around. I suppose it was his way of encouraging me to keep playing a bear, but it saddened me that he thought that we were that rare.

This was several weeks before the WoW.com article ran, so I didn't think about it much, but looking back on it now, I guess bears really are rare. I'm guessing many of them went completely cat, went moonkin (because there definitely are more of us now), or went back to tree; especially because there are so many tanks out there now. I've seen as many as three tanks idling in LFG for the heroic daily at once, tanks are scrounging for guilds to join (my guild has had at least two tanks inquire even when we weren't recruiting for them), and maybe in that kind of environment it's easiest to just respec and run as something else.

Maybe There's Hope for Garrosh

Most Horde players don't like Garrosh Hellscream. First he was this mopey orc sitting around in Nagrand whining about how he wasn't fit to lead and how he was a horrible person, not through any fault of his own, but because he had the shame of being Grom Hellscream's son.

Through a long and involved quest chain we managed to bring Thrall to Nagrand and he felt duty-bound to enlighten the sulking Garrosh and show him that hey, Grom redeemed himself. It's not shameful to be his son. Garrosh gave out a big ol' orc battlecry, buffing all Hordies in the zone with Hellscream's Warsong, and it seemed all was well in the world. Garrosh got his spirit back.

But then the next time we saw him he was talking smack to Thrall about taking out the Lich King and even challenged Thrall to combat. He was bloodthirsty and impulsive, and when we finally got to Northrend we found out he was the Overlord of the Warsong Offensive in Borean Tundra. Not only that, but he was dismissive of Saurfang's extremely valid concerns about their war effort.

Garrosh became headstrong and warmongering, concerned with glory in battle more than practicality and the need to find a peaceful resolution when peace could be found. Garrosh became everything that Thrall wasn't, but Hordies like Thrall, so we don't like Garrosh, and we especially don't like that he's going to become our new faction leader come Cataclysm.

But Blizzard has said:

Garrosh is a character with a lot to prove. I realize there's a great deal of consternation out there concerning the tales of what's to come, but I want to reassure you that we understand that concern. We know where you're coming from.

Why are we still going this route? With all respect, you haven't seen the entirety of who Garrosh is. You've seen a great deal of his faults, certainly, but people grow over time, and you may find, come Cataclysm, that he is not quite the disaster you portend. :)

(Mind you, that doesn't mean he's Thrall, either.)

Now, this is all that people generally consider when they think about Garrosh; just the basics, the highlights. Nagrand was a long time ago. But because I have been leveling my feral druid, I had the opportunity to revisit that quest chain this weekend, and you know? I do think we're missing something of Garrosh, that there is hope for him yet.

Take this dialogue from Greatmother Geyah:



He [Garrosh] just needs to believe in himself. He fears so much... He fears so deeply that if he lets himself go, his rage will consume him and all that would be near him.

Doesn't that sound familiar? Isn't Garrosh's rage at that point now that we're in Northrend? Perhaps Garrosh had a right to fear what he would become.

But at the same time, Greatmother Geyah believes in him, he is described as both strong and wise. The spirits approve of him, and from what we know of the spirits the orcs believe in, they're not exactly a bunch of warmongers either. They must be seeing something that we're not.

And when I talked to Garrosh during part of the quest chain, he had something more interesting to say now that we know what happens in Northrend.



He says: I will not... I cannot become the second Hellscream to damn the orcs.

I think prior to Cataclysm Garrosh will be hit with a wake-up call that will make him more sympathetic to the Horde player. Somewhere between the two extremes of warmonger and mopey warrior is the leader that Greatmother Geyah and the spirits believe in. He cares and at one point he cared so much that he felt that doing nothing at all was better than damning his people.

In Northrend he's may be doing the exact thing he wanted to avoid, and perhaps something will happen between now and Cataclysm that will cause him to realize, "Hey, this isn't such a good idea! We're going to lose out here!" After all, the Lich King has to be enjoying the Horde and Alliance fighting each other instead of him, and Garrosh probably won't like being a player for the Lich King's amusement.

That's a possibility for the future though. In the meantime nothing's going to stop me from doing this:



Maybe it'll help knock some sense into him later.

Halloween Shenanigans

Skywall is a PvE server, so PvP is by choice and complicated by the fact some people hate world PvP and griefers can just wait for their flag to wear off before trying again. But that said, Skywall does enjoy a bit of world PvP from time to time, and we had a good run the other night in Brill, where some Alliance decided to kill the orc matron quest giver so people couldn't get or turn in the daily for fighting the Headless Horseman fires.

There were maybe 6-8 Alliance, and they were decently persistent. I wasn't going to get involved initially, having just ridden back to UC after a Headless Horseman piñata run, but a former guildie of mine whispered me saying that the Horde could fight them off if they just got organized. Since he was out there, I went there as well. I was on my paladin and nothing helps unorganized PvP quite as much as a healer.

At some point the Alliance realized that too.

I'm not sure if it's because they realized I was healing or because I ran in there with my Challenger title on (thereby marking myself as potentially hot stuff), but it seems that half the time if I was targeting Alliance they were targeting me right back. Pally heals are good though, and so are bubble and Hand of Freedom. Though I got stunned, frost nova-ed in place, and other expected shenanigans, the Alliance weren't organized enough to kill me. Such is free-form world PvP.

They did kill the orc matron one more time after I arrived, but we managed to beat back 2-3 more attempts before they gave up and went over to the Bulwark. I didn't chase them.

I'm not big fan of world PvP, but there a few things that will trigger the Horde vs. Alliance aggression in me:

1) Attacking a Horde settlement with the intent to harass other players. Killing quest givers is annoying. I've had it happen to me as a lowbie, even on my carebear server, so I defend towns if they're attacked for that purpose. (If it's just an Alliance blundering through a Horde town and killing some guards that chased him on the way out I don't really care.)

2) Raiding my capital city. I always work to foil attempts at killing one of my faction leaders. It just makes sense.

3) (during WG or on a PvP server) Attacking first. Generally I will warily regard members of the opposite faction and just make sure they're not going to attack me. I don't go out of my way to do the "it's red, it's dead" thing, but if they attack first and I beat them or I know I can beat them if they didn't take me by surprise, they're on my list for the night and I will kill them repeatedly. This also goes if I witness them attacking other Hordies first. I saw a druid that was trying to kill a semi-afk mage waiting by a meeting stone, so I killed him. And then when he rezzed, I killed him again. I figure if you started it, you should be willing to eat it.

4) (during WG or on a PvP server) Taking my mobs. Okay, they're not really mine… yet… And I don't kill Alliance indiscriminately for them. If there are enough mobs for everyone or they're making an effort to leave some for me, then I leave the other faction alone. Limited number of mobs or an elite quest mob though? They'll have to fight me for it. But if cooperation is beneficial I'm up for helping, even while flagged for PvP. I actually helped an Alliance pally on my PvP server with a quest because it didn't matter who killed the waves of adds as long as they died to spawn the NPC that would accept the completed quest. Both of us needed it and it was hard to solo, so it just made sense. (And we parted without killing each other. I'm not all bad!)

As long as none of those four things happen I'm generally a nice enough Hordie. ;) On rare occasions on a PvE server if I run into a flagged Alliance in some random location I'll take that as permission to engage (because if you flag on a PvE server you must be interested in participating in such things at that very moment), but generally I'm good with the live and let live method.

Now quit raiding Brill. There are some lowbies trying to do a daily.