Garreth is a very perceptive guild leader.

You're totally right, I do have a dissatisfaction with the guild and people in it.  The main person on that list of dissatisfaction is myself.  I pretty much feel sometimes (as you've all noticed in other blog entries) that I'm not maximizing my potential within raiding.  I felt it quite keenly on the 1% council wipe.  If I had switched targets to the mage and started chain dotting every council member while waiting to get my face smashed in after pk had died, I'm pretty sure I could've pushed the 1% to a kill instead of a very painful wipe.

 Garreth has created an excellent site which I utilize in blogs, which for some of you may be shocking to see what I think.  I usually just log or run heroics after raid, and I'm sure most of you thought I was the quiet kid in the corner who did his job, went home and didn't complain much.  That's usually me, but suffering from insomnia (check the time on this post) has made me horribly irritable and snappy. 

All of you that have raided with me for years, yeah, I'm the same guy.  Don't think you're not my friend if I call you out for something, or rant about this or that, it's just me flexing my emo muscle in paragraph form.

Shihli:

You're probably the person I work best with in our little virtual world, but sometimes our views clash about certain things.  It's cool, it's healthy, don't take offense or think that I'm hating on you for any reason, much love for my leiderhosen wearing raid leader.  Also, don't take things so seriously, if we're both high strung, who's gonna bring us down if nuit's not online? yeah, exactly.

 Epat:

So, an interesting trend has started to appear in our vent channels, nifty little things called "phantoms" they join channels silently, alert no one to their presence and provide all sorts of numlicious gossip to those who use them in channels with unwary users.

My view : This is akin to picking up a telephone in your house quietly so that you can hear what people are saying on the line. If you phantom into a channel, you know you're not part of the conversation. You didn't knock on the door to their chat. They don't know you're there. You're eavesdropping. It's rude. if you want to listen to them, go into the effing channel as yourself and not your phantom. say "hey guys, watcha talking about"? Not everything is fluffy bunnies and happy gnome punting. if they want to include you in the convo, they will, if not, they'll politely ask you to leave the channel so they can continue their discussion in private.

I'm not one to take out my frustrations in public, so sometimes I go into a private channel and complain about things that I don't really care about to people that I trust to keep their mouth shut and just listen. They know I'm not serious when I'm ranting. They know I don't mean the sometimes downright nasty things that I say because, let's face it, we all have horrible thoughts that sometimes we just need to let out in a non constructive way. I make really bad jokes that have no foundation in seriousness, but a phantom doesn't know that. A phantom only knows that things are being said about so and so.

There are only a few acceptable uses of thee phantom in my opinion:

1. monitoring a raid in case they need you while doing other things (i.e. pvping, running an instance, what have you)

2. going into a music channel as a phantom to listen to w/e the dj in there is playing.

Little checklist/update/whatever I want thing for my traitor pally

3/6/08 Hit 40 tonight after I almost lost my temper in raid.  Got on my pally and started killing stuff...I'm currently alt tabbed while flying in hopes that Bloodelfs get the same free mount at 40 that ally pallys do. I also got pulled into an uldaman pug with a seventy, and everything that dropped was pally, so I kill stuff much faster now.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thaurissan&n=Epatrick

Yep, I get my mount, so now I can go faster and kill things quicker :) huzzah for free class skills that save you mount training!

3/06/08 evening:

Paladining is hard when bitch ass alliance poop on your face

3/11/08

I hit 43!!!! now I get to kill murlocs for hours on end looking for a quest drop...yay? :(

No longer tanking instances til all hours of the morning with pug healers in t2.  It just makes me angry at the world, especially when I'm wearing my good gear to try and compensate and still die.

Epat

So, in ZA last night I got one of the few remaining pieces of gear on my wish list out of things that aren't BT. Ancient Aqir artifact is gonna fit nicely into my mitigation/boss tanking set. :) So, that kind of leaves me at an impasse with what I'm going to do with pudo.  Do I continue hoarding badges in anticipation of sunwell? Do I pimp pudo out to nightly SH lps runs? or do I start a new project? I've been slowly gearing my priest for healing (healing non heroics is wicked easy) and have picked up enough to start healing heroics/kara with a piece or two more.  while I like the idea of pimping pudo out, the last few SH runs I've been on have actually LOST me money, as well as an embarassing finish that missed the timed event.  right now i have enough gold on all my chars to sustain myself through a raiding heavy repair bill month without doing dailies...barely and dailies for me right now aren't worth their gold as I'm not able to pay attn enough to finish them in a timely manner. 

I really really like this fight for a few reasons

• Awareness of surroundings (forces all classes to actually look at the game, be aware of their surroundings and make a large effort to not stand in the shit that hurts)
• Situational awareness (watching grid to see if you're going to get a heal or need to pot, is that rogue running at me, where the hell can I stand to maximize dps but still land my required kick/CoT/CS)
• Self Sufficiency (I love love love the fight for this reason, and this reason above all else)  I ate nine envenoms over the course of attempts, and that again or more of divine wraths, random AoE's and my own lifetaps/reflective shielded dots.  I never died, honestly, unless I had just lifetapped and/or gotten caught in an aoe before a poison, I never needed heals.  My HS's sat unused for the first 3/4 of attempts because I simply didn't need more than drain life/death coil/or the fast reflexes of our healers.  This right here, this reason, is what will separate the good raiders from those you say "fuck, I want that guy on my wing when it's go time" 

This is the iron man contest of wow.  "do you have it in you to dps/heal/tank for fifteen minutes totally self aware/sufficient/sustained while contributing in a stellar manner"  This is the hard core.  Illidan to me, meh.  five stages, learn a phase, move on, new stage.  Illidari is "these are horrible things happening all over the place, can you adapt, survive and conquer".  We've had a pretty easy learning curve up until now, everyone has fights they're required to perform above standard at, but this fight requires EVERYONE to be THAT good.