It seems that the RNG gods are displeased with the goats I have been sacrificing to them asking for holy plate, and have, instead, in their infinite wisdom, showered me with DPS and Tanking plate instead. This is wholly depressing since healing is my thing that I do. I heal stuff. I heal stuff when I am ret as well. Although, apparently I also Tank stuff when I am ret too.
This is not all bad. Ret is stupid fun. And when I say stupid I mean it. My screen lights up like a christmas tree whenever I get into the thick of it and I am madly pressing the current glowing button and waiting for my combo points to hit 3 before I do something with them (or sometimes less if my "hit shit harder" timer says that buff is about to run out).
You see, I always loved playing rogues. My first toon was a troll rogue and I played the hell out of that character, until I was convinced to reroll alliance with work mates. So, you can imagine how damn excited I was to find out that my holy rogue is just as much fun to play!
Now, 4.0.6 will be a big change to ret. I am looking forward to the change in mastery. I might actually start stacking that at some point! I am going to have a look this week at numbers and things that I can produce (I have about ilvl 333 average gear, and seem to be able to produce about 8k average DPS on a boss if I dont have to cover tanking or healing), which, for someone excited by the shinies on her screen, are some quite respectable numbers... for ret. Yeah, I put the caveat for ret on there because no matter what I do, I seem to be about 1-2k behind people with similar levels of gear to me. Which is kind of depressing, really.
But my guild are lovely, and they take the broken holy pally along as ret to try to farm for heroic gear anyway. That said, I actually mostly hold my own these days. There really isn't a lot to ret; keep your hitty harder buff up, judge and crusader strike/divine storm when they are off CD, use your holy power when it gets to 3 on either the hitty one or your buff (or use word of glory if things are looking a little dire) and whenever one of your abilities glows, use it! Use all your CDs on bosses. That's the guts of ret. There are some ideas of rotation and start ups, and there is finesse in choosing which proc to use when many proc at once, but really, those are not too important to people who are not at top end raiding just yet. For most of us, venturing into our first raid, or gearing up in heroics, the finer ins and outs of decisions as to which proc to use when is not a life or death situation. Not standing in the poop will yield much greater results. That extra 100DPS just doesn't matter to us at this stage. I am not saying it won't soon, but it doesn't yet.
It's not quite the faceroll it used to be, but it is a lot shinier on the screen!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
I have been quiet a while
But I promise you it is for good reason!
[ Tangent alert - Non WoW related commentry below, feel free to ignore ]
Last week, I got married.
Yep.
After 10 years of being with my partner, we finally got around to standing up in front of people and saying emotional stuff to one and other with the sole purpose of making people cry. Well, he made people cry, I made people laugh. But that is us.
So yeah, I now have a heirloom ring for leveling up with, and so does he.
Things have been a bit crazy, my WoW time has been rather limited. Well, my time on the internets in general has been limited! I am only just getting back into the swing of things this week.
And I'm still sick as a dog. But I should have results on why and how in a couple of weeks - had some blood tests last week and having a scan next week. After that, the doc should know exactly what is going on. We do have a pretty good idea at the moment, but I'm not going to say anything until exactly what is going on is confirmed. I have had to come off the MS meds just in case, and that is making life a little bit interesting.
So only being capable of lolling around on couches feeling awful has also cut into my motivation to do things other than feel sorry for myself. That said, I am back at work this week, so we will see how well I cope doing that.
[ Tangent over - wow related stuff to follow ]
[ Tangent alert - Non WoW related commentry below, feel free to ignore ]
Last week, I got married.
Yep.
After 10 years of being with my partner, we finally got around to standing up in front of people and saying emotional stuff to one and other with the sole purpose of making people cry. Well, he made people cry, I made people laugh. But that is us.
So yeah, I now have a heirloom ring for leveling up with, and so does he.
Things have been a bit crazy, my WoW time has been rather limited. Well, my time on the internets in general has been limited! I am only just getting back into the swing of things this week.
And I'm still sick as a dog. But I should have results on why and how in a couple of weeks - had some blood tests last week and having a scan next week. After that, the doc should know exactly what is going on. We do have a pretty good idea at the moment, but I'm not going to say anything until exactly what is going on is confirmed. I have had to come off the MS meds just in case, and that is making life a little bit interesting.
So only being capable of lolling around on couches feeling awful has also cut into my motivation to do things other than feel sorry for myself. That said, I am back at work this week, so we will see how well I cope doing that.
[ Tangent over - wow related stuff to follow ]
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Mojo Found
Very quick update between the craziness of work.
My mojo is definitely back! I am currently bemoaning the fact that I wont be able to properly play until the weekend due to life and organising a wedding (I just realised 2 weeks left of the *cough* ... oh dear, I have a lot of work to do!). I hope to get back into everything properly in February when my health should be settling down and the wedding done and dusted.
My mojo is definitely back! I am currently bemoaning the fact that I wont be able to properly play until the weekend due to life and organising a wedding (I just realised 2 weeks left of the *cough* ... oh dear, I have a lot of work to do!). I hope to get back into everything properly in February when my health should be settling down and the wedding done and dusted.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Losing your mojo
What on earth do you mean, run out of mojo?
I have lost motivation to play! Apart from going and smacking a few trolls and stealing theirs, it's a question we all face in some way or other at some time. And there are a few things you can do if you love playing WoW, but are not really motivated at this point in time. Usually, it is due to circumstances in and/or out of game.
What happened?
Personally, I have a rather good out of game reason for mojo-loss that I wont go into for the moment (one day I will explain it, no it's actually not MS-related but that is part of the issue) that will probably eventually stop me playing in any way shape or form that is considered "regular". This was making me play less and have less energy to put into my guild, which consequently suffered, meaning that I was not enjoying the time online that I was spending, because I spent it feeling guilty that I was not motivated to run the guild.
So, what have I done that is keeping me going?
It isn't really worthy of a lot of blogging, but I have gone back to the beginning. I have managed to convince my fiance to play (yes, my boyfriend didn't play WoW! He didn't get me into it, I am annoying HIM to play. Although, he is a massive minecraft fan ans once I showed him the mining and blacksmithing professions he got inordinately excited) and we have decided to play on Proudmoore, where quite a few of my RL friends hang out. It is also the guild that my RL friends have been pestering me to join for a couple of years now.
So, I moved a couple of alts across as well as starting my worgen with my fiance (druids are fun, for the record) and started playing over there when I felt the need for company and easy levelling. My mage has been a great joy to play (I really love all the procs you get in fire spec, it is so exciting and compelling to keep on going on a hot streak!) and I played more and more over on Proudmoore, less and less on Brang and Frosty.
Until this weekend I realised something - I had not logged onto Brang in over a week. I had recommended that me and my partner start on Proudmoore, not Frosty. This was a massive realisation for me that perhaps I should go there too. So, I was mulling this over while happily exploding mobs on my mage and I made a decision. I was going to move.
Now, this guild on PM is a much more "casual" guild, but playing in a guild just for the raiding that I didn't necessarily get along with the people in it made me realise something earlier last year. I don't raid to raid. I raid for fun. I found out last year that I don't care if I wipe over and over and over as long as the people are GRADUALLY improving and the conversation is entertaining. This is leisure time, it's supposed to be FUN! not stressful.
After talking to the PM guild, and my GL, I transferred last night.
Only to have a name change fail. *sigh* so, 1 GM ticket later, we will see if that gets fixed up.
Who is the PM guild that made you leave your home?
Southern Wardens. You may have heard of them. They have been around for a very long time across a couple of MMOs - the WoW guild was formed in 2004 (yeah, they have been going that long). Their guild leader is the writer of Banana Shoulders, and there is at least one other blogger from Hunters Rhok in there too.
So yeah, that's why I have been a bit quiet; dealing with my health (which at the moment is a full time job yeesh!) and losing my mojo.
Here's to hopefully finding my mojo again and some more strategy writeups - but certainly not at the pace I was doing it last year. I'm going to try to add in some more paladin theory crafting as well.
I have lost motivation to play! Apart from going and smacking a few trolls and stealing theirs, it's a question we all face in some way or other at some time. And there are a few things you can do if you love playing WoW, but are not really motivated at this point in time. Usually, it is due to circumstances in and/or out of game.
What happened?
Personally, I have a rather good out of game reason for mojo-loss that I wont go into for the moment (one day I will explain it, no it's actually not MS-related but that is part of the issue) that will probably eventually stop me playing in any way shape or form that is considered "regular". This was making me play less and have less energy to put into my guild, which consequently suffered, meaning that I was not enjoying the time online that I was spending, because I spent it feeling guilty that I was not motivated to run the guild.
So, what have I done that is keeping me going?
It isn't really worthy of a lot of blogging, but I have gone back to the beginning. I have managed to convince my fiance to play (yes, my boyfriend didn't play WoW! He didn't get me into it, I am annoying HIM to play. Although, he is a massive minecraft fan ans once I showed him the mining and blacksmithing professions he got inordinately excited) and we have decided to play on Proudmoore, where quite a few of my RL friends hang out. It is also the guild that my RL friends have been pestering me to join for a couple of years now.
So, I moved a couple of alts across as well as starting my worgen with my fiance (druids are fun, for the record) and started playing over there when I felt the need for company and easy levelling. My mage has been a great joy to play (I really love all the procs you get in fire spec, it is so exciting and compelling to keep on going on a hot streak!) and I played more and more over on Proudmoore, less and less on Brang and Frosty.
Until this weekend I realised something - I had not logged onto Brang in over a week. I had recommended that me and my partner start on Proudmoore, not Frosty. This was a massive realisation for me that perhaps I should go there too. So, I was mulling this over while happily exploding mobs on my mage and I made a decision. I was going to move.
Now, this guild on PM is a much more "casual" guild, but playing in a guild just for the raiding that I didn't necessarily get along with the people in it made me realise something earlier last year. I don't raid to raid. I raid for fun. I found out last year that I don't care if I wipe over and over and over as long as the people are GRADUALLY improving and the conversation is entertaining. This is leisure time, it's supposed to be FUN! not stressful.
After talking to the PM guild, and my GL, I transferred last night.
Only to have a name change fail. *sigh* so, 1 GM ticket later, we will see if that gets fixed up.
Who is the PM guild that made you leave your home?
Southern Wardens. You may have heard of them. They have been around for a very long time across a couple of MMOs - the WoW guild was formed in 2004 (yeah, they have been going that long). Their guild leader is the writer of Banana Shoulders, and there is at least one other blogger from Hunters Rhok in there too.
So yeah, that's why I have been a bit quiet; dealing with my health (which at the moment is a full time job yeesh!) and losing my mojo.
Here's to hopefully finding my mojo again and some more strategy writeups - but certainly not at the pace I was doing it last year. I'm going to try to add in some more paladin theory crafting as well.
Monday, December 20, 2010
The Cataclysm levelling experience so far
Well, I wanted to post this a week ago, but it seems Life and Work have smacked me around the head a lot, and I have had minimal time to log on recently. I am currently half way through 84.
Previous expansions (including vanilla) I charged to the level cap, and was assisted to get as much XP as possible to get to endgame as fast as possible. As I get older, more cynical and with more alts, I am finding I want to actually level this time. I want to experience the story of the Naga, of consorting with ancients, or really smelling what uldum smells like.
I have completely finished Hyjal, and I loved the epic feel to it. I felt important, I felt like I was making a difference. Pity we had to go undercover again, I felt they ruined that section of the story with the pre-events. But apart from that, the Hyjal story line was engaging, the questing was useful (if there were "go get me 6 of these" it was clear that they had a reason). I was tricked, duped, sent up trees to save baby bears, used, abused, stuck on hippogriffs and dragons, had molten bore jokes thrust in my face and so on and so forth.
Vash'ir wasn't the amazing experience it was sold to me as. I found the quest tricks annoying rather than engaging (to the point that I spent over 45 mins trying to figure out why my seahorse kept despawning, only to discover it was my vanity pet after about 30 attempts, then to have arrows shown on my screen and have my action bar mod fail so I spent another large amount of time screaming and wondering why hitting the REAL arrow keys wasn't working... yeah, not a happy camper). I also gave up on the zone about 2/3 of the way through it. The story was LONG, the quests not engaging (the only really interesting thing was the naga phasing story) and I wanted to get levelling. So Vash'ir went bye bye.
I skipped deepholme and went to Uldum. Now, I had heard mixed reviews of uldum, that it was not linear, the quests were terrible, the cut scenes were annoying and so on and so forth. However, I am finding the quests interesting, the cut scenes FUN! and the xp very nice. I'm only half way through Uldum, but I hope to finish it as I hit 85.
I think this is the longest time it has taken me to hit level cap ever. Someone give me some of their spare time please? I am missing mine. I won't get to log on for at least another 2 days either. Yeesh, talk about getting the twitches.
And my poor guild needs recruiting and some love, MMOLeader needs some of my attention and my blog here needs some time too.
I have some opinions on Holy Pally healing as well, but given the state of flux the class/spec seems to be in at the moment, I might wait until it settles. Suffice it to say that holy light is still your go to spell, with the odd flash, shock on CD, and get in there and hit those mobs. No matter what anyone says, a free heal is a free heal, use those Holy Power points!
Previous expansions (including vanilla) I charged to the level cap, and was assisted to get as much XP as possible to get to endgame as fast as possible. As I get older, more cynical and with more alts, I am finding I want to actually level this time. I want to experience the story of the Naga, of consorting with ancients, or really smelling what uldum smells like.
I have completely finished Hyjal, and I loved the epic feel to it. I felt important, I felt like I was making a difference. Pity we had to go undercover again, I felt they ruined that section of the story with the pre-events. But apart from that, the Hyjal story line was engaging, the questing was useful (if there were "go get me 6 of these" it was clear that they had a reason). I was tricked, duped, sent up trees to save baby bears, used, abused, stuck on hippogriffs and dragons, had molten bore jokes thrust in my face and so on and so forth.
Vash'ir wasn't the amazing experience it was sold to me as. I found the quest tricks annoying rather than engaging (to the point that I spent over 45 mins trying to figure out why my seahorse kept despawning, only to discover it was my vanity pet after about 30 attempts, then to have arrows shown on my screen and have my action bar mod fail so I spent another large amount of time screaming and wondering why hitting the REAL arrow keys wasn't working... yeah, not a happy camper). I also gave up on the zone about 2/3 of the way through it. The story was LONG, the quests not engaging (the only really interesting thing was the naga phasing story) and I wanted to get levelling. So Vash'ir went bye bye.
I skipped deepholme and went to Uldum. Now, I had heard mixed reviews of uldum, that it was not linear, the quests were terrible, the cut scenes were annoying and so on and so forth. However, I am finding the quests interesting, the cut scenes FUN! and the xp very nice. I'm only half way through Uldum, but I hope to finish it as I hit 85.
I think this is the longest time it has taken me to hit level cap ever. Someone give me some of their spare time please? I am missing mine. I won't get to log on for at least another 2 days either. Yeesh, talk about getting the twitches.
And my poor guild needs recruiting and some love, MMOLeader needs some of my attention and my blog here needs some time too.
I have some opinions on Holy Pally healing as well, but given the state of flux the class/spec seems to be in at the moment, I might wait until it settles. Suffice it to say that holy light is still your go to spell, with the odd flash, shock on CD, and get in there and hit those mobs. No matter what anyone says, a free heal is a free heal, use those Holy Power points!
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Leadership Failure
Happy Shattering, all!
In celebration of WoW 2 dropping into Azeroth today, I am not going to write about it. Instead, I am going to pop up a post I wrote on MMOLeader about how you can deal with leaders that are not performing up to your standards.
--
What happens when a leader is not up to the task? Not only does your sanity as the leadership team suffer, but the group being led will almost certainly be suffering as a whole. You will often observe this with a drop in performance of the group and socially, morale will start to plummet. Perhaps people will start griping at each other, there might be some infighting or the most disastrous one, your group will start hemorrhaging members. If it is moved to the latter stages, you might be too late. That said, it is never too late to stop, regroup and rebuild.
Failure Behaviour
So, what are some of the things a leader might be doing which could be identified as an issue?
The first, most damaging and usually most obvious one is mutiny. They openly and actively go against what the leadership team agrees to be doing. This may be publicly, or it might be in the privacy of the leadership team communication channels, or it might be subtle undermining of the leader, the level of mutiny can vary.
A loss in time available to play the game can be another way that a leader can be identified as an issue. Being a leader is taking on responsibility above and beyond just gameplay, and in order to be an effective leader, that leader needs to have the time to do what needs to be done. If circumstances change, it is quite valid to mark a leader as having to be replaced simply because the work is not getting done.
Making the wrong decision to promote someone to the leadership team is another reason to remove them. Everyone makes mistakes, and some people just don't fit what is required to be a leader. Perhaps they didn't realise what was entailed in the job and are simply not up to the mark. Perhaps you didn't realise that the person was missing a trait you consider vital to being a leader in your group. Perhaps they just don't gel with the established leadership team.
The last reason I will mention is attitude. A change in attitude from the leader in question can trigger a removal of an officer. They might be doing everything else right, but if their personal morale has dropped for any reason, this will negatively impact your team. Or simply, your group doesn't like this person's style.
Incident Management
The very first thing you should do after you have identified an issue is take reasonable steps to try to rectify the situation without making any changes. Identify the issue and take immediate steps to minimise the impact of the actions. This can be enough to buy you some time to deal with the leader in question. Talk to your other leaders and see if you can get them to cover any responsibilities that are missing, or patch up any relationship problems in the group as they see them (which, really, they should be doing anyway. Sometimes people need a little prod to get moving as they worry about stepping on other peoples' toes in situations like these).
Problem Management
Talking to the leader in question about why they are behaving the way they are is leadership 101. Communication is always key. Take the leader aside and have a chat, find out what is going on with them to cause the problem. Talk to your fellow leaders and not only inform them of the problem, but see if they can help resolve the issue or perhaps shed some light on why the leader is behaving the way they are. Do your best to figure out what can be done to help the leader in question. Support, redistribution of duties, argument mediation... all of these things and more could be used to try to keep your officer in place and functioning again.
Problem Resolution
From all this you will have 3 likely outcomes, which could be the following
Leader stays
Structure changes are best kept to a minimum, so if you can negotiate a way for the leader to stay, then this is the best outcome. Giving them a chance to rectify the issues, work on them and grow as a leader is a good chance to develop not only your own management skills, but the leadership team's skills as well. Make sure that feedback is given to the leader and support is maintained during this probationary period. Everyone should be given a chance to show they can rise to the occasion in my opinion. Make sure that the entire team is supported if there has been any strain on the team relationships and especially if there has been a redistribution of responsibilities or changes in positions to accommodate new working parameters.
Leader leaves by choice
It might be that, after all the negotiations, it becomes apparent that the leader in question doesn't think they can stay in the job or doesn't want to stay. This should be relatively easy to have a transition period in which they stay in their job until a suitable replacement can be found. The leader can then drop back to whatever they feel they can do at this stage in time and the group can move forward together and clearly with no hard feelings.
Leader needs to be removed
During negotiations it might become apparent that the leader needs to be removed, but is not willing to step down of their own volition. This is the most tricky situation to mediate and will require super-amazing communication skills in order to execute without causing too much upset to the team. Try to keep everything as transparent as possible, and be as reasonable as possible. The leader's personal relationships will become a sticking point in all this, especially if there are some strong loyalties or friendship ties within the group to this person. More especially if those ties are to you. Be careful - there is no easy way to do this. You have my sympathy if it has come to this point.
At the end of the day, don't forget that you are playing a game. If it is no longer fun you are doing something wrong.
I have had to remove leaders before, and demoting friends who decided that leadership was no longer their thing is easily the hardest thing (emotionally) I have ever had to do. Even declaring that I was done leading and thus the team stopped functioning was easier than removing friends from office (especially when those friends then drifted out of your life). This is emotional, and anyone that tells you different is not a good leader.
In celebration of WoW 2 dropping into Azeroth today, I am not going to write about it. Instead, I am going to pop up a post I wrote on MMOLeader about how you can deal with leaders that are not performing up to your standards.
--
What happens when a leader is not up to the task? Not only does your sanity as the leadership team suffer, but the group being led will almost certainly be suffering as a whole. You will often observe this with a drop in performance of the group and socially, morale will start to plummet. Perhaps people will start griping at each other, there might be some infighting or the most disastrous one, your group will start hemorrhaging members. If it is moved to the latter stages, you might be too late. That said, it is never too late to stop, regroup and rebuild.
Failure Behaviour
So, what are some of the things a leader might be doing which could be identified as an issue?
The first, most damaging and usually most obvious one is mutiny. They openly and actively go against what the leadership team agrees to be doing. This may be publicly, or it might be in the privacy of the leadership team communication channels, or it might be subtle undermining of the leader, the level of mutiny can vary.
A loss in time available to play the game can be another way that a leader can be identified as an issue. Being a leader is taking on responsibility above and beyond just gameplay, and in order to be an effective leader, that leader needs to have the time to do what needs to be done. If circumstances change, it is quite valid to mark a leader as having to be replaced simply because the work is not getting done.
Making the wrong decision to promote someone to the leadership team is another reason to remove them. Everyone makes mistakes, and some people just don't fit what is required to be a leader. Perhaps they didn't realise what was entailed in the job and are simply not up to the mark. Perhaps you didn't realise that the person was missing a trait you consider vital to being a leader in your group. Perhaps they just don't gel with the established leadership team.
The last reason I will mention is attitude. A change in attitude from the leader in question can trigger a removal of an officer. They might be doing everything else right, but if their personal morale has dropped for any reason, this will negatively impact your team. Or simply, your group doesn't like this person's style.
Incident Management
The very first thing you should do after you have identified an issue is take reasonable steps to try to rectify the situation without making any changes. Identify the issue and take immediate steps to minimise the impact of the actions. This can be enough to buy you some time to deal with the leader in question. Talk to your other leaders and see if you can get them to cover any responsibilities that are missing, or patch up any relationship problems in the group as they see them (which, really, they should be doing anyway. Sometimes people need a little prod to get moving as they worry about stepping on other peoples' toes in situations like these).
Problem Management
Talking to the leader in question about why they are behaving the way they are is leadership 101. Communication is always key. Take the leader aside and have a chat, find out what is going on with them to cause the problem. Talk to your fellow leaders and not only inform them of the problem, but see if they can help resolve the issue or perhaps shed some light on why the leader is behaving the way they are. Do your best to figure out what can be done to help the leader in question. Support, redistribution of duties, argument mediation... all of these things and more could be used to try to keep your officer in place and functioning again.
Problem Resolution
From all this you will have 3 likely outcomes, which could be the following
Leader stays
Structure changes are best kept to a minimum, so if you can negotiate a way for the leader to stay, then this is the best outcome. Giving them a chance to rectify the issues, work on them and grow as a leader is a good chance to develop not only your own management skills, but the leadership team's skills as well. Make sure that feedback is given to the leader and support is maintained during this probationary period. Everyone should be given a chance to show they can rise to the occasion in my opinion. Make sure that the entire team is supported if there has been any strain on the team relationships and especially if there has been a redistribution of responsibilities or changes in positions to accommodate new working parameters.
Leader leaves by choice
It might be that, after all the negotiations, it becomes apparent that the leader in question doesn't think they can stay in the job or doesn't want to stay. This should be relatively easy to have a transition period in which they stay in their job until a suitable replacement can be found. The leader can then drop back to whatever they feel they can do at this stage in time and the group can move forward together and clearly with no hard feelings.
Leader needs to be removed
During negotiations it might become apparent that the leader needs to be removed, but is not willing to step down of their own volition. This is the most tricky situation to mediate and will require super-amazing communication skills in order to execute without causing too much upset to the team. Try to keep everything as transparent as possible, and be as reasonable as possible. The leader's personal relationships will become a sticking point in all this, especially if there are some strong loyalties or friendship ties within the group to this person. More especially if those ties are to you. Be careful - there is no easy way to do this. You have my sympathy if it has come to this point.
At the end of the day, don't forget that you are playing a game. If it is no longer fun you are doing something wrong.
I have had to remove leaders before, and demoting friends who decided that leadership was no longer their thing is easily the hardest thing (emotionally) I have ever had to do. Even declaring that I was done leading and thus the team stopped functioning was easier than removing friends from office (especially when those friends then drifted out of your life). This is emotional, and anyone that tells you different is not a good leader.
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