The exodus

It's that time of the year where guilds slowly begin to fold. I'm talking about the exodus of players that occurs a few months before the launch of a new expansion.

Last night I heard that one of the better progression guilds in the server are more or less closing shop. No one is disbanding, but as the number of consistent raiders slowly decline, raid teams begin to shut down one by one until even the best guilds have trouble finding 10 people to push progression.

I joined the game in wrath and back when ICC was first released, there were definitely more hardcore progression guilds. Off the top of my head I can count maybe 10 or so guilds who were pushing heroic modes in ICC at a much faster pace than the rest of the server. About half of them was horde, and the server first guild also happens to be a US-top 20 guild.

Then came the waves of nerfs to ICC and more people were clearing heroics. Finally there came a point where everyone was doing at least half of the heroic modes and the best guilds on the server only had heroic LK standing between them and a full clear (with the exception of our server first - they were the only ones to down heroic LK pre-cata).

And then you saw the best guilds fold, one by one, as raiders got bored and frustrated. Some of them bled people left and right until raids were no longer sustainable, some of them collapsed overnight when the GM server-hopped. Some struggled till the end to recruit with no avail.

My guild was no exception to this. First came the disbanding of 25 man raids. Some people left while some continued on with 10 man raiding. We made it through till the end, finally downing 25 man LK before cata hit. That was a big moment for us, and I think our guild fared much better than others in that we retained most of our people in the transition from wrath to cata.

Then came cata and with it came the permanent disbanding of 25 man raids. I think many of the folks who had been around since BC and pre-BC were burnt out. Attendance problems and unforseen absences got the better of everyone and so raids came to a halt. But within a month or so 10 mans began to pick up and during firelands, the guild was a lot more like what I had remembered from wrath - we had a surplus roster and people actually had to be rotated out! Everyone was excited and eager and we pushed hardmodes with zeal.

And now, a few weeks into dragon soul, we are again having trouble filling a 10 man group. Two of our longest-residing members have left. One had quit the raiding scene a month ago, and now has decided to quit the game. Another had been sporadic about attendance ever since we completed her legendary, and now has faction transferred. I don't know how the rest of the guild took it, but their departure was a shock to me.

This kind of problem seems to be server-wide, as longtime members take temporary or permanent breaks and everyone is falling short on their attendance rosters. Many people, having cleared DS normal, want to take a break until the next expansion. Some have quit the game for good (or so they say) in favor of new MMOs such as SWOTR. Some have just simply burned out, or have new RL commitments and can't raid anymore.

The first group of people are to be expected - it is what inevitably happens during the long lull between the end of an expansion and the start of a new one. The second happened to come at a bad time. It just so happened that a direct competitor to WoW (and pretty much a sci-fi clone, might I add) would launch at a time when WoW's gamer base is bored and looking for something new. The third, well, that is a small minority and there is nothing that can be done about RL problems.

So where do we go from here?

I hope we can stick it out. Recruiting is difficult, but at the least I hope we don't lose any more people than we have already. I hope we can bump up some of the non-raiders in our guild to raider status permanently. I hope that the experienced raiders who want hardmodes can learn to live with a slower pace of progression - we might just have to wait for nerfs at this point. I hope that things do pick up when MoP drops. I, for one, would at least like to give MoP raiding a try before deciding that pandas was a childish idea. Maybe it will be, fun, I don't know.

Things look grim at the moment, but I have faith. I have faith that the people who are currently sustaining our rosters are not the type of people to suddenly up and quit. I think we'll make it. We just need patience to ride out this rough patch.

Bye bye Mr. Lich King Guy

A long long time ago
I can still remember
How that raid used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my epic loot
I could give Arthas the boot
And maybe I'd get his epic mount

But December made me shiver
When Cataclysm was delivered
Deathwing on the world map
I couldn't even cast sap
I can't remember if I cried
When I read that Cairne Bloodhoof died
But something touched me deep inside
The day...that Deathwing flied

Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town

Did you pay the forty dollars
And do you have faith in ghostcrawler
If blizzard tells you so
Do you believe in DBM
Will it get you banned by a GM
And can you teach me how to win Tol Barad
Well I know that you love to pvp
'Cause I saw you in that one AV
You both zerged right to Vann
Man I dig that speed boost enchant
I was just a lonely low level scrub
Wearing all quest gear I was a nub
But I still got my Hyjal bear cub
The day...that Deathwing flied

Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town

Now for two years, we've been on our own
And moss grows fat on our hearthstone
But that's not how it used to be
When that lich king used to wipe the raid
Many a repair bills were paid
With the gold made from running dailies
Oh and while the raid was looking down
Bolvar stole his icy crown
The new lich king was born
We all felt a bit torn
And while the raid lead explained the fight
The pallys gave us blessing of might
And we practiced late nights
The day...that Deathwing flied

Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town

Slice and dice and mages' ice
Getting chain-CCed isn't quite so nice
Our healer could use a peel
No one likes a noob who carries the flag
And we all know it's not just the lag
Don't you have better gear in your bag
Now the Eye of the Storm was almost done
One more cap and it would be won
We all got up to zerg
But we didn't have the nerve
The allies tried to take the mid
But the defenders refused to give
Do you recall if anyone lived
The day...that Deathwing flied

Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town

Oh and there we were all in Mt Hyjal
A generation going through withdrawl
With no gear to start again
So Thrall be nimble, Thrall be quick
No one wants to get another gkick
And fire is Deathwing's only friend
Oh and as I watched him in Dragon Soul
I sometimes couldn't help but lol
This dragon born in hell
Died to Dovahkin's yell
And as I saw the loot pile up high
There was nothing that I could call mine
It all got sharded with a sigh
The day...that Deathwing flied

Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town

I met an orc who sang the blues
I asked him to please avoid the ooze
But he just ignored me and died
I went down to the quartermaster
But the gear was so lackluster
And the man there said I wasn't even honored
And in orgrimmar the raiders raged
Because they got kited by a mage
But not a nerf was spoken
pvp was still broken
And the three bosses I love to kill
Lich King, Marrowgar, and Lana'thel
Caught the last train to razor hill
The day...that Deathwing flied

Embrace the shadow

Technically my priest's main spec is shadow. By technically, I mean that my primary spec is shadow and holy is my secondary talent tree. But this was simply a result of my old leveling days - it's nearly impossible to level as holy, after all. I consider myself a holy priest with a bit of DPS on the side.

My shadow spec has remained almost entirely unused since I hit 85. Healers get much quicker dungeon ques and we sometimes even get a satchel for our efforts! Plus, I've never been comfortable enough with my off spec to try my hand at dungeons. Besides, I enjoyed healing and found it a lot less stressful when I didn't have to interrupt bosses.

Anyways, I was asked to come heal for one of my guildmate's "off-days" guild. IE, he's the GM of another raiding guild that he sort of manages "on the side". They were short a healer and asked me to come in for a quick dragon soul run.

I was nervous about healing a raid since my healing experience has mostly been limited to LFR and dungeons (although I have healed firelands with this guild before, which went reasonably well). But I also knew that this particular guild wasn't as geared or as progressed as mine, so their expectation also wasn't as high. I would, for instance, be scared shitless to try to heal for MY guild - especially when our GM is the main healer and I would've looked pathetic in comparison.

Despite my worries, I was happy to find that I could keep up and do just as much healing as the main healer, who is better geared than I am. Even in my inferior LFR gear, I had more than enough spirit to spam flash heals and throw out my biggest AoE heals without running oom. Even during heavy damage phases my holy word: sanctuary, circle of healing, and divine hymn kept everyone at full HP. I have to say that I really love a holy priest's ability to mega-heal an entire raid full of people. Pure quantity over quality!

The hitch came when after a few bosses, we lost someone to computer troubles. There was a lot of shuffling of specs and we finally found someone, another healer. Which meant I was asked to go shadow. Gulp.

As expected, I was last place. Just a few notches above the tanks, around 15-16k or so. What I felt was the biggest issue was gear. I hate to go blaming crappy gear for my crappy DPS but that's where I felt my biggest limitation came from.

I actually don't even have a proper shadow set. Given that holy and shadow both prioritize "sort of" the same stats, and I rarely played shadow anyways, I never bothered to collect a shadow-specific set. I prioritized int and spirit on my holy gear with haste as the preferred secondary stat. While this is ok to apply to shadow, you will never top DPS charts or even remain competitive with other DPSer's who are actually prioritizing stats correctly.

Second only to int, haste is king for shadow priests. Spirit is good too, in that it is converted to spell hit rating, as well as the passive mana regen. But the spell hit cap is only 17%, whereas in my holy gear I was well over 30% spell hit due to my prioritizing spirit. And my haste was vastly lacking since I don't prioritize gear or reforging for it. The main component of spriest damage is DoTs, and DoTs scale with haste, so having a little bit of haste vs. a lot of haste means a world of difference.

Now of course no one blamed me for my low DPS. You can't just bring in a main spec healer and expect them to pull fantastic numbers in their off spec. Especially when they're helping you fill a roster gap - at that point you're just thankful for the 10th person being there. But I still felt kind of bad about it.

I've played my rogue for almost three years and practiced endlessly and perfected the rotation to a point where every move is muscle memory. I can easily break 35k on most DS fights even on bad days. Seeing my poor little shadow priest struggling to break half of what I can do so easily on my rogue just made me feel kind of crappy. I wasn't expecting to top charts or anything, but still, it wasn't a good feeling to be last place. To add insult to injury, there was a rogue in the raid who kept making little hints about how good he was. Oh how I wished I could've brought in MY rogue to teach him a thing or two.

I went about fixing this right away. I can't do anything half-assed when it comes to wow. I can't just start an alt - I have to collect an entire set of heirlooms, bags, and a great name before I do that. I can't just collect a few pets, I need to go for the "all the pets in the game" achievement. So I decided I wasn't happy playing a half-priest. I wanted to be a rockin healer and a competitive DPS too.

I dug out a few pieces of gear that I had received during dungeon runs, but had discarded as I got better pieces with spirit on them. I bought a few more with VP and JP scraped together among a couple other characters. I even did LFR and won a nice pair of boots. Throw these all together, and I had a half-holy half-shadow set that I could work with. I gemmed and reforged all the new pieces to get as much haste as I could, while not touching any of the holy gear I was still using. By the end I had about half the spirit I started with, my hit rating was just at the comfortable 17% mark, and I had about 6% more haste. Not bad.

The improvement in DPS was pretty drastic. Whereas I was struggling to break 10k on a target dummy in my holy gear (self-buffs only, no food/flask), I was easily getting to the 15k mark. Not wasting stat allotments on overcapping hit and upping the haste really did the trick! I think fully raid buffed with the food/flask, I should be able to do 20k easily. While this isn't anyone's definition of "awesome DPS", it should make me at least competitive with other people. It's certainly good enough in LFR, where the average seems to hover at 17-20k.

Next step is of course, practice practice practice. I know that the really good shadow priests out there were doing much more than 20k before DS came out, wearing only firelands gear. Getting the rotation down perfect is where there is the most room for improvement, it just takes a lot more time than acquiring gear.

But I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Managing the empowered shadow buff correctly to maximize uptime seems to be a critical component. Timing and refreshing my dots correctly will be important too, and probably a bit tricky given that I've never played a DoT class to this level before. But overall I think it will be a fun journey. I might never become THE shadow priest in a raid, but maybe just once beating a pure DPS at his own game would be fun.

Top 5...reasons to hate rogues

An alternate title to this post would be...they see me rollin', they hatin'.

Yeah, yeah, rogues are OP, it's imbalanced, unfair advantage, vanish needs to be nerfed, we've heard it all. I hear it everyday on the forums, I see it in BG chats, and at least one person makes a snarky comment every raid "they need to nerf backstab QQ".

Most of the hate is of course from the pvp crowd, as rogues are arguably the most pvp-oriented class. Here are the top 5 reasons why people hate rogues so much (based on observations gathered from forums QQs, trade chat, and an angry husband who has been kidney shotted for the 12th time in a BG):

5. Ambush is OP

I hear this a lot, and I've experienced this first-hand. At the low levels, a fully heirloom-geared rogue can 2-shot almost every other class with ambush. It's simple, really. Step one: get decked out in heirlooms. Steph two: stealth and wait for prey in a low level BG. Step three: sap anyone stupid enough wander close to you. Step four: ambush. Profit!

Ok, but let's be realistic. Low level pvp means diddly squat. It's like questing, it's just something you do to learn the class and earn some xp. Everyone knows that the real pvp action is at max-level BGs, and I guarantee you that no one is two-shotting anyone in those situations. I mean, unless someone tries to BG naked, two or three-shotting a level 85 player is simply impossible.

Here's the deal: I rarely even use ambush in pvp. It's an OP ability at level 40, not so much at 85. People usually have so much resilience that my role in a BG isn't so much damage as control. So my opener out of stealth is usually cheap shot, to incapacitate my foe. Which really brings me to my next point...

4. Stuns are OP and annoying

Yes, they are annoying. But have you ever been on the giving end of this? Like, have you ever seen someone about to cast a greater healing wave, and then ran up to them, and punched them in the face so hard that they stopped casting? Yeah, that's how good it feels.

In all seriousness, rogues are the best at stuns. And yes, it's really annoying especially if you're a caster and you're getting stunned almost continuously. But remember that stuns are now on diminishing returns, so that each successive application of a stun is shorter and shorter. Realistically, I can only stunlock someone for maybe 10 seconds straight, and that requires me to blow all my CDs. It's annoying for sure, but I mean...that's like, our thing. Deal with it. I don't see anyone complaining about how hunters get pets, because that's totally their thing. Our thing is to stun people.

We also like to sap people randomly on the road. I'm not gonna, lie, that is really annoying. But my god, it's so much fun.

3. Recuperate is OP

Ok, well the thing is...

Actually, you know what? Recuperate IS really OP. No argument there.

2. Vanish is OP

I actually agree that vanish is probably the most useful tool in a rogue's arsenal. The only thing even close to this is hunter's feign death, but that really only works in pve. No one is ever fooled by an FD in pvp. Night elves have shadowmeld, which is kind of like a really really weak and crappy version of vanish. Again, little utility against anyone of actual skill.

Vanish is great, because it literally lets you drop combat and escape with the last tick of your HP remaining. When used in conjunction with cloak of shadows, it also wipes your dots so that your stealth doesn't break right away. The only thing that can really prevent vanish is bleed effects, which many classes do have so it's not like vanish is useful all the time.

But it really is nice. You can use it, for instance, to drop combat, run away and bandage yourself and thereby escaping a tight situation. I often use vanish to sort of "reset start of combat". A rogue's best and strongest abilities require you to be stealthed, so being able to re-enter stealth is a huge advantage. For example, if I really wanted to keep someone locked down, I would start from stealth -> cheap shot -> kidney shot -> vanish -> cheap shot, etc etc.

Of course it is on a long-ish cooldown timer so it's not like we can spam it. And as much as people complain about it, no one has yet to complain when I use vanish to survive a wipe and mass rez people.

1. Rogues fight dirty

Um, yeah. We're ninjas, remember? Who said we had to fight fair? So what if we can stun you, sneak around undetected, drop combat and go invisible, heal ourselves back to full with recuperate, all the while doing insane amounts of damage in pve? As long as we win we don't care.

And honestly, it's not that hard to deal with rogues. We are, at most, really annoying pests. I never saw anyone who was like, "oh no a rogue is coming my way! Run!" It's always more like, "ugh that goddamn rogue is back again". We don't really pwn anyone. We just annoy the crap out of everyone.

Just brush it off, folks. You got griefed a little. Move along, now. Nothing to see here.

Me and the Cappin' makin it happen

There is a huge book of wow-related Murphy's Laws hidden somewhere in the deep mysterious dungeon known as Blizzard HQ. It must be coded into the programming language somehow too.

My most hated battleground is Warsong Gulch, followed closely by its almost exact carbon copy, Twin Peaks. And it seems like whenever I que for a random, I almost always get one of these two, causing me to just drop group and eat a 15 min deserter debuff half the time.

Why do I hate them so much, you say? I think it all stems from way back when the very idea of pvp made me want to throw up. Being a wow noob, I had no idea what I was doing, and the very first battleground I ever tried had me running away with my tail tucked between my legs, wondering what fun anyone could ever derive from repeatedly getting tossed around between two death knights playing keep away with you, chain-stunned and eaten alive, and finally getting graveyard camped for 10 minutes.

Then I started doing some more pvp, and while I was aware of how awful I was at it, I found that in larger battlegrounds, such as Alterac Valley and Wintergrasp, it was easy to "blend in" with the crowd. Just run around and look for a group of 5-6 people from your faction ganking one dude, join in the fun and get a couple hits in, and tada! You now have an honorable kill and maybe the feeling that you contributed something. Even though you didn't.

And then as I got better I started to learn some strategies for some of the 15-person BGs as well.

In Arathi Basin, for example, I usually play defense because it's safe, it keeps your death counter relatively low, and still lets you contribute to the game. I mean, yeah, it's important to go farm those HKs and take bases, but someone has to sit at the farm calling out the incoming rush, right? Plus as a rogue I'm pretty perfect for the job since I just sit there stealthed and enemies come running in never suspecting that I'm just waiting to sap them.

For Strands, I always either kill demos or drive demos. It's really the only way to go, and avoids the need for any actual pvp. Eye of the Storm, I dislike due to its similarity to WSG, but I usually sit on a base and defend, which seems to work for me.

WSG and Twin Peaks, however, I still do not have the hang of. Yeah I get that you get flags and stuff, but there is really no way to avoid constant pvp in a battleground that small with that few people. There's no way to hide in the crowd, really. And if one person is stupid, clueless, or plain bad, then it really brings the whole team down.

So anyways, the real point of this post is this: I recently got into a twin peaks. And I kicked ass.

The score was 0-0, both sides has each other's flags and the FCs were tucked into their own bases, well covered by DPSers and healers. What else does anyone expect from the first 2 minutes of these matches? Usually what happens next is a painfully drawn-out back-and-forth tug of people trying to kill the FCs.

I rushed out to the enemy base, stealthed, and checked out the situation. A DK had the flag and was well guarded with a shammy healer, a paladin, and a hunter. I waited for reinforcements to arrive before opening up straight onto the DK. I knew it was useless to try to kill the shammy without a coordinated attack so I just went right for the FC. I stunned her, dropped a smoke bomb to prevent healing for a few seconds, popped my CDs and dug into her like crazy. Her hp dropped fast but not fast enough, and sure enough when smoke bomb cleared the shammy was on her.

Then someone else had locked down the shammy and the DK knew she was in trouble. As I whittled down her hp she made a very stupid mistake - she jumped off the platform and briefly went out of the shammy's healing range.

I almost couldn't believe it as I landed the killing blow and she dropped our flag. I returned it, and the next instant our FC capped. Score was 1-0.

What happened next was probably the crowning moment of my entire pvp career.

Everyone seemed kind of confused, or maybe it was just me. We sat there, our assault force and their defense, attacking each other kind of absent mindedly. Then the flags reset. I saw it, sitting in the base right next to me, and I thought...do I dare click this thing???

Well, I did. My HP was barely at half and the moment I picked it up a paladin fixated onto me. He hammer-stunned me, I trinketed out, hit him a couple times for combo points and popped sprint and ran out of that room as fast as I could. On the way I used recuperate to try to bring my HP back up a bit. As soon as sprint ran out I hit preparation to reset the CD and sprint again. I had a good lead on my chasers, but they were now mounted and catching up quick.

When they caught up I popped evasion and hit the shammy a couple times to start recuperate ticking again. I could see the bridge ahead now, and lo and behold a horde shaman was closing in on me. I knew that as soon as I could get within healing range of him, I was safe. My HP was dangerously low, hovering around the 5k mark. One good hit would kill me for sure.

Evasion ran out and I was still running. I popped combat readiness and chugged a potion as a last ditch attempt. My HP still drained from the relentless assault, and then the next instant - I was up to half HP. The shammy was healing me! He slapped earth shield on me and I cheered and ran. I saw the shammy getting pummeled and I stopped quickly to peel off his attackers. I used combo points for recuperate. My HP started falling again but more reinforcement were arriving. Soon a druid had put HoTs on me and a paladin Lay on Hands me. I left them all to fight it out as I made a beeline for our base...and within seconds I was there and I had capped the flag.

Score was now 2-0. And all this within 5 minutes of the start of the BG.

The allies, discouraged by our early lead, seemed almost to give up. Almost immediately our horde pally picked up the flag and capped again, with practically no resistance. And the battleground was won.

This doesn't happen to me often. I just wanna put that out there. But it felt good.

Really good.

Killing you Subtly

On Tuesday I finally collected the last of the shadowy gems I needed for stage 2 of the rogue legendaries. Luckily we cleared the entirety of Dragon Soul that night so I knew I had the rest of the week to work on getting stage 2 without resorting to "AMG RAID STARTS IN 5 MIN AND IM STUCK ON THE STEALTH PART!!!" type of panic.

I read a few guides that suggested combat or subtlety for the stage 2 boss, Nalice. I can't stand playing combat (tried it, pulled decent numbers but I hated it) and I personally feel like subtlety has more survivability and neat "tricks", so I fixed up my spec, loaded up on bandages, potions, food, and got prepared to tackle the next stage in the quest progression.

I had watched the video so I knew the stealth part would be significantly easier than Creed. Creed was an absolute nightmare, and it took me close to 20 tries before I realized I was never getting in through the front door. Whereas with Nalice, within 10 or so tries I had made it to the boss. There are quite a few mobs, but way fewer pats and the behavior seemed a lot more patterned. With Creed I swear mobs literally jumped out of nowhere to ambush me.

So anyways, Nalice. I was ready to wipe more than a few times before I actually got in, and well...it was a long fight to be sure (maybe 5 min or so? That's pretty long for an unscripted, solo fight). But in terms of difficulty? Cakewalk.

It all came down to using the right "rogue trick" at the right moment. When she uses her weapon, disarm or stun her. When she casts, kick. When she enrages, shiv off the enrage. When she puts up armor, expose armor. As long as you take care of each boss buff/debuff mechanic, things were pretty smooth sailing. I had recuperate up the entire time for self-heals but honestly I think I could've managed with just a potion and a bandage. My health barely got below 90% the whole fight, and she hits like a wet noodle.

It also made me recognize that subtlety has a lot more potential than I previous gave credit. I was prepared for a really long drawn out fight as a pvp-survival subtlety spec, but surprisingly I was pulling 11-12k DPS (considering that I had no raid buffs and was facing the boss the whole time, this is pretty good). With a more DPS-oriented spec, for instance putting the points into Honor among Thieves, I think those numbers could be much higher. The rotation was not too onerous, and if I didn't have to worry about saving energy for disarm, kick, gouge, etc, I think it's very manageable. Just get the slice n dice & recuperate rolling and it all comes down to good energy management.

The DPS cooldowns for subtlety are not as straightforward, I'll admit. With mutilate basically you just coordinate the timing so that you can use all of your CDs in conjunction. Which mainly comes down to vanish -> garrote -> vendetta -> racial buff. Whereas with subtlety, the main DPS CD comes from shadowdance which should be used in conjunction with shadowstep, not only for the added buff but because positioning is so crucial to effectively utilize shadowdance. There is basically no point in popping shadowdance unless you're in a position to ambush, which require you to be behind the boss. With practice and maybe a couple macros, it should not be a huge challenge, I bet.

One thing about subtlety is that I won't be seeing huge 50k crits like I do with mutilate spec. But there are many upsides, such as a vastly increased survivability, faster energy regen, quick combo point regeneration, and excellent mobility. I also won't have such a huge dependence on poisons as a main component of my DPS, which is not really an advantage but more of a personal preference. I think it's weird that my poisons hit harder than daggers. Doesn't that seem backwards?

With that said, managing the buffs are trickier than mutilate for sure. And subtlety has such as huge dependence on positioning to maintain competitive DPS - on fights like Ultraxion I'd be a sitting duck, unable to utilize my strongest DPS CD. And who knows, maybe after a while spamming hemo might get just as old as spamming mutilate.

It's also hard to try out something else when you're doing so well in your current spec. I'm usually top DPS or #2 on most fights, and I'd obviously drop down as subtlety until I really master the spec. That hurts the raid, which sometimes does depend on me to pull through during DPS check encounters (I'm not carrying anyone, but I will say that we still struggle to meet the enrage on Ultraxion, and every little extra I bring helps). Not to mention the pride factor here - I like being #1.

But we'll see. Maybe once the content becomes easy enough and we go on farm mode, I can attempt a transition.

Love the one you're with

I like the peruse the wow forums when I have spare time, and my favorite section is always the "raid and guild leadership" forum.

People air their woes, either from a raid/guild member standpoint or from a raid/guild leader standpoint. If you can get past the fact that this is all over a video game, the discussions people have are always interesting. As a guild member, I always find the guild officers' opinions insightful. They deal with issues that I'm happily unconcerned with and do a surprisingly amount of work to get a group of different people to get along and work together.

I have never raid led or been an officer, nor do I want to. Sometimes I get snippets from the officers or GM about the drama they have to deal with, and my reaction is always "what drama???". I guess a lot of drama unfolds itself through private vent channels and whispers, and that's something I'm glad to not be a part of. As far as I'm concerned, I show up on time, do my best, and get some loot. Don't we all do that? Isn't everybody happy?

The most frequent complaint I see on the forums is this: "my guild isn't a 100% match with what I want out of this game. Should I leave my guild?"

It's a silly question, really. It's a video game, you should do whatever you want. If you're not happy, leave and explore greener pastures.

But speaking from experience, I have to say that guild loyalty pays off. What does guild hopping really get you in the end? If you have the mentality that your guild must change to suit your needs, than you're really looking at it backwards. Guilds change and evolve (and sometimes devolve) with time and it's not "them" that needs to adapt to your wants, it's you who has to adapt.

Believe me, I learned my lesson when I left a beloved guild because we switched from structured, progression-driven 25man raiding to casual 10man raids. It seemed perfectly justified at the time, but I ended up coming back in a few months because I missed my old crew. That was when it hit me that it wasn't the format or the content that made raiding enjoyable - it was the people. The PEOPLE!

I mean it when I say that I'd rather be clearing dragon soul farm content with my current group every single week than pushing heroic progression with some die-hard group of elitists. It's the friendships and connections you make with like-minded people that really adds the "fun" component of a raid. If the thrill of killing bosses was enough for me, why wouldn't I be playing Zelda?

Yeah, I know it's a game and I know there are people out there who will say, "LOL go find some real people to hang out with". And if others want to be close-minded and continue to believe that the only "real" interaction in this digital age is face-to-face interaction, then that's fine. Eventually they will need to get their heads out of the sand. I speak to these people a few hours each week. I recognize their voices when they speak. I know what they look like, where they live, what they like and what they're into. I know that when I make some stupid obscure reference about Skyrim or Star Wars or Family Guy, that someone will chime in and laugh. To me that's as real as any "real life" friendships can get.

Oh dear, this post has become inadvertently sentimental. It's the weather, I swear. My point is, when you find a guild with great people that you have fun with, stick with it. The shiny epic loot is tempting, but just remember that in a few months it all gets replaced by even shinier, epic-er loot anyways. Because when you find 9 other people who know what you mean when you say "I demand a Shrubbery!" and continue to quote Monty Python for 15 minutes, that's a beautiful thing. Love your nerdy friends and love the guild you're with.