Raiding as Retribution

Last night my guild went to Icecrown Citadel again, and I actually had the time to tag along as well. For whatever reason, we had eight people confirmed who are often healing (even if some of those eight also often tank or dps). Which left us in a funny position. It seems we did Marrowgar with seven healers and three bear tanks, and only after this we really realized how many of us were healing... when the healing signups were posted and I was not mentioned and therefore only fit into "Remaining: ffa". I said "uhm, sure. Pally as raid healer?", but we had already started the Deathwhipser fight. We swapped healing around a little in mid-fight, and one-shotted her. After that, though, I only healed on Gunship, and then switched to dps. I had often gone Retribution on Deathbringer Saurfang, since that is a dps race and does not require much healing if the group has the dps, but I never really did dps on trash or Rotface as well. And I must say, I had a lot of fun. I did a little under 6k dps, which is not perfect, but then, this is my offspecc, and my gear is in everywhere between item level 213 and 232, with one piece at 245. Not bad at all, me thinks, and I really hope I get to do this more often. Maybe NOT winning Trauma and the Marrowgar healing shield yesterday was a sign - but then, I never have luck with those slots. I still use Shield of Assimilation from Naxx-25 and Seethe...

Level 20!

Yep, my highest in-game character is now level 20 since last night. Of course, that cannot be WoW though, since I am happily exploring Icecrown Citadel on Lisandra right now (Rotface down).

No, last night I played a little Lord of the Rings Online again, on my hunter. I really enjoy that while the game has a similar interface and level of polish as WoW, it feels completely different, at least for me, since it is much more of a world simulator than a game. The areas just feel wider, more lived in. As an example: last night I was venturing north from Bree, around the Old Greenway Fort, and the horse farm northeast of that location just is soo different from everything in WoW... it is a couple of houses, lots of horses in fenced-in pastures, as opposed to the typical single-house, single-animal farms in WoW that are just symbols for a farm, if you wish.

Since I do not know anyone on my server (EU Laurelin, I think it is called), I just play it as a solo adventure, but it is much fun... might play it more often... But I would really love a way to get some money. I really have trouble to pay for repairs and skillups most of the time...

Great day for raiding

Due to work, I hadn't really gotten to raid much in the last weeks. I was present for my guild's first kills of all four bosses in the first wing of Icecrown Citadel 25, but then, for weeks, I was only able to come on Sundays, which was raid progression day. Start raid at 20:30, clear some trash, wipe at Rotface until raid end time.
Yesterday was another of those days... except it wasn't. When I got home in the late afternoon, I logged in, planning to do an interview or two with applicants to the guild, and do a daily Heroic, but I was whispered pretty much instantly if I wanted to replace another Paladin healer in Ulduar, they were doing hardmodes. Of course I said yes! I already had some done back when we did Ulduar regularly, but still several missing. Last night then I got [Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood], [Crazy Cat Lady] and [Nerf Engineering]! We did some more which I already had (Thorim, Kologarn) and the others did Flame Leviathan and Razorscale before I joined, but now I basically "only" need Firefighter, Smell of Saronite and the hard mode Yogg kill for the drake. And Starcaller is actually not that far away now either, especially since I managed to turn in two of the fragments last night. Freya was actually not even really hard. Sure, we had some people die, but we nailed her in the first try, and I remember how much we struggled with that back then...
And then, later... we finally downed Rotface as well! Was a great day for raiding, all in all, considering we actually trained on that boss like it was TBC again (wiping for weeks)...

That time of the year again

Off to spend the rest of the holidays with my girlfriend and her family, but I just thought right before I leave I could leave some words here...
Last night I finished the first wing of Icecrown Citadel 10, seeing Lady Deathwhisper for the first time... after wiping on her for two hours the night before in 25, we took her down on our second try now, and only due to some mistakes during the first try. The two fights barely resemble each other, it seems. On 10, it is rather easy, moderate healing, 3 adds or so around, and the mana shield goes down fast. On 25, not so much. 6 adds all the time, usually, 3 tanks couldn't cope with them, dps was so intent on nuking adds that mana shield was hardly going down. We managed to get it down to 15% or so in our best try, but that is still a long way to go. I don't know, I'd prefer it for balance sake, if 10 and 25 were more or less equal in terms of difficulty, but then you couldn't have the bigger version have better loot, and most people wouldn't bother to sign for that anymore, I guess. But that difference was more between a normal and a hard mode, not 10 vs 25...

Oh, and I am also a Twilight Vanquisher now, finally found a PUG for zerging it. Yay! Been waiting ages for that, almost logging in every day and immediately setting my status to "LFG Sarth +3" in LFG tool...

Off now. So - happy holidays!

Raiding: 10 vs 25

I usually prefer 25 men raids over 10 men raids, just for the added people. It's just more going on everywhere - more chat, more avatars running over the screen. It just feels more alive.
But since the summer break my guild has not really gotten back into raiding (although we are slowly picking up again), and I have therefore more 10 men versions behind me than 25. Last night was such a case - we did a more or less impromptu Onyxia-10 run (impromptu because GC screwed up and posted different start times for different people, so we had to improvise for some spots), and when we were done, it was 20:00. Well. Early. Three people had to go then, for RL reasons.
"Anyone for a TotC-10 wipefest? Need healer and tank and dps". And ten minutes later we were on our way to the Tournament Grounds. Where we continued to have fun, really. It felt like our old progression raids in TBC for me. Sure, we were less people, and had even filled the OT spot with a good non-guildie, but the atmosphere and the overall communication when a wipe happened were just like back then. Most of us had already completed TotC-10, and in TotC-25 we are only missing Anub'arak, but we still wiped some times, and did tactics talks. But it felt... more real than blasting though Naxx-10 or even Ulduar-10, and I even got new pants ;)
All in all, a very successful evening for the little missus - 3 lootz, and awesome experience, for the fun of raiding itself. Hope more of this comes our way...

Tankt!

Finally... I tanked Utgarde Pinnacle with Lisandra last night, since it was both the Daily Heroic and the Daily Dungeon, and we couldn't find a tank. Since my tanking gear is very adequate now, I said "why not" and respecced.

So yes, I tanked my first WotLK Heroic last night, and then even on a paladin (I tanked Heroics and the early raids in TBC with Vorgas, my warrior). We had one death from the Whirlwind on Skadi the Ruthless, but apart from that, it was a smooth ride. I might actually try and tank some more now, and also offer tanking a Naxxramas maybe. Was quite fun!

On a related note, we downed Onyxia (10) on the day the patch hit the servers, and I managed to grab the new Judgement Helm for Retribution Very nice item!

Dying in Fire: why?

Via Tobold I was directed to another blog today and read an excellent post about keyboard turning vs. mouse turning (the original article on Tobold's blog was about reflexes needed in WoW's combat for different classes and consequences of the class design, and the comments quickly latched onto an offhand remark that Tobold still uses the keyboard to turn). The blog post on Tales of the Aggronaut basically states that using the slower keyboard turning can very much be a cause for deaths in raids and therefore wipes, and goes on to explain how to master the better mouse turning. Tobold in his blog post (which is not a response to the other post, he just mentions it) goes on how WoW is an RPG and not an FPS, and therefore shouldn't need "twitchy" reflexes.

And that is where I fail to follow Tobold. See, WoW is generally called a MMORPG, which indeed has the letters R, P, and G in the genre. And I must say, yes, indeed, it is at least a G. It also lets you play a role within certain boundaries. But nowhere does it state on the box that you do not need reflexes, and for a very long time now computer roleplaying games try to move away from just copying pen and paper rulesets and instead use the different options that the medium computer provides (I also do not think that accumulating stats via leveling is what makes a game a roleplaying game, as many people think, so no, Diablo is not a roleplaying in my book, but hack'n'slash, but I disgress). Even Baldurs Gate had some semblance of real-time combat by making the original D&D rounds shorter and simply allowing you to (auto-)pause at certain events, like when your turn started etc. In an online game, that is not an option at all, so it more or less has to happen in real real-time - you cannot make the other players wait while you cannot decide if move A or move B is better now, or they would get bored silly, and not come again to play with you, and ultimately might leave the game, if situations like these happen too often.

Does that mean that the games are twitchy? Not at all. You usually have a second or two to get out of the fire, or cast a reactive heal, or target the mob heading for an overaggroing damage dealer, and time enough to react. Play a FPS and you will see that these are much less forgiving. But giving you some time to get out of the fire or whatever you need to do is just fine, even if you are Argos, stalwart and rightous defender of Stormwind, in your shiny golden armor. Roleplaying a character does not mean that your character does not have to move and say "But alas, this fire be burning hot!" first. Just get yer ass outta there please. Raids and Heroics an be fine for roleplaying, but only if the whole group agrees on the principle that RP > fight mechanics for the given run. If not, then sorry, but play the game. Or don't, if that doesn't float your boat (and yes, I used to be in a small roleplaying-only guild).

And back on the topic of mouse turning - it is not hard to learn, really. A friend of mine who came from Doom and transitioned to Quake back then finished the whole game with keyboard turning, not even realizing there was an option to use the mouse. On our first Quake-based lan party we just collectively wiped the floor with him. Now, he is an even better FPS player than me, simply because he said "whoa, I didn't even know that was possible, lemme try it before next time." And he tried, and lo, he mastered. Especially since there is not much to master. Just use the mouse, and there you go. As others have said, tweak the sensitivity. Play with the key and mouse button bindings. Check if inverting the mouse helps (moving the mouse away from you, is that "look up" or "look down"?). But give up on the whole concept of much improved spatial awareness because you couldn't be bothered to learn it for an hour or three? You miss out on so much that follow...

• click to move: you right click on terrain and your character moves to that location. Doesn't really work if you cannot move the camera around (and camera moving is exactly the same as mouse turning, only a different button pressed)
• instant turning: you look into a different direction that your character is facing, and press the left and right mouse button at the same time. I can't even understand how you want to get away from say Murmur in time if you don't use that. Or rather, now that I am made aware that people actually use the keyboard to turn I am finally able to understand why PUGs wiped there so often...
• looking and running in different directions. Yes, I (the healer) run towards the boss / away from incoming AOE / out of the fire while facing the tank to see if he gets hammered by cool-boss-ability before I see a drop in his health bar. It helps a lot in my spatial awareness if I can control my toon with all possible input devices, and not just one.

Seriously, try it out again. These games are not hard to control. Maybe in many cases even not with keyboard turning. But you miss out on a whole different view of the game world without proper mouse control. And it is not hard to learn. At all.