I’d Rather Be Wowing!

Last Thursday and Sunday, our raid alliance set foot to Ulduar for the first time. We killed Flame of Leviathan after three pulls. It might sound bad for not being able to one-shot him, but it was mostly because we pulled before destroying the towers, sending the wrong characters up to the turret, and things like that. Let’s say, bad research :). I have no doubt that we won’t have any problem the next time we fight him.

But then, everything went downhill. We wiped many times on the Ragers guy on the way to Ignis (which was a bad idea to start with), spent many attempts on Razorscale, and finally moved on to XT-002 (and wiped for 3 times) before we called it.

But it weren’t the wipes that frustrated me the most from this week’s runs, as I  fully understand and accept wipes during progression raid. There were some changes during this week’s raid and I’m not yet certain that as a raid group, we have fully adapted to these changes. We lost the leader of our raid alliance due to real life issues about 2 weeks ago. Our guild’s leader, who is usually 2nd in command, took over. And to accommodate for less than full attendance, we merged with another raid group from our ally’s guild (this guild has 2 raid groups, only one run regularly in the original raid alliance group - but now the other raid group wants more consistent group as their number is also dwindling down).

Yesterday, the raid leader from this group was leading the run as our “usual” leader was not available. And I felt like being in a PuG.  The raid members from our guild have nobody to represent us. Worse, when we tried to chime in the raid chat before pulls or after wipe to address our concerns about the strategies we were using, there did not seem to be any indication that the raid leader was even acknowledging them. We don’t know the raid leader enough, the only person who has interacted with him was our GL, which wasn’t there.  The members from their guild that were in the original raid alliance, do not seem to speak up often. Not in the raid chat or vent, at least.

To make matter worse, people, especially from the “new” raid group - but there were some people in our old raid alliance that were guilty for this as well - came into the raid without being ready with flasks. Do they think we are on farmed fights? Or do they think that we don’t even have the chance that it’s not even worth popping some flasks? The excuses were: “I’m broke”; “I didn’t know that I will be going in today’s run” (but nobody except one was invited at the last minute, and that’s because he was in an instance and we waited for him for more than 5 minutes to find replacement — it’s as easy as porting to an AH to buy some flasks); and the best excuse from them all — “I don’t need a flask, healers are keeping me alive anyway, only when dps were dropping that I died.” And guess who’s that coming from. Suddenly the other excuses make sense, if you have a raid leader who does not even think it is important to make the most preparation, how can you expect the members to do the same?

I mentioned earlier that we did some attempts for Razorscale  before moving to XT-002. The decision seems to be prompted from being tired of wiping. Hence, the question of the post, when to move on to another boss in case of wipes?

I have to say that I’m slightly disappointed that we moved on, though it’s probably a good move in general as XT-002 seems to be more doable than Razorscale (at least in strategy). I understand wipes from not having the right tool in the group — too low of dps, not enough healing, not enough gears — or other circumstances like lag during Heigan’s dance. Basically, we know that because of that lackness, no matter how many times we attempt to do it, it is unlikely to succeed. But because we know it, we can make changes to it.

But yesterday, when we decided to move on, I couldn’t pinpoint what we were missing and I felt without it, I don’t know how we can improve as a group. Is it because our strategy is not working? Then, why don’t we work on gelling the strategy for next week. Do we just not have the right make-up of healers? Are we too low in DPS? Are people not dodging fire fast enough? It is making me worried when venturing here again this coming week, that we will repeat the same mistakes.

/rant

The WoW’s entity that governs all loots and rolls and I - we don’t get along very well. Simply explained, he has his favorites, and I’m not it. I am getting tired of his old routine like putting my much needed upgrade in my least favorite heroics (i.e., Heroic Loken) or end bosses, making me runs countless heroics with only repair bills and pug stories as my reward, and when he “choose” to let me see the shiny loots that I desperately wanted, he made me choke on my rolls.

How can it be more obvious? You keep dropping the leather caster loots that only one person in the group can ever use or the mail caster loots that just end up to be sharded. It’s like you look at our group composition, find out which class/spec we don’t have (or the minority), and decides that it will be that class/spec “day”. Again.

Or how you make the loots that I need drop along with half people of the group that want it (and let it be won by someone who run it for the first time). Or decides that the two same persons win rolls 90% of the time - and make these people shares tier token AND gear category class with me. Tell me what they do for you so I can be one of them, for once.

***

I hate the “luck” aspect of this game - where you don’t get rewarded based on your effort but based on your luck.

/rant

Saturday morning, a friend whispered me and asked if I wanted to go for Naxx25 that he was about to form. The group was going to be mostly pug. I was in his pug group several times before, and yet, I didn’t know most of the people in this pug group.

We were attempting 3 wings and he wanted to start with the Military wing. I look at the roster. Hmm 5 priests, but I was the only shadow. I shuddered. That means that I’m going to be given the MC-ing duty. Oh, did I mention that this was my first Naxx25?

You should know from the post’s title - the outcome of attempts. I was the first priest to MC. First pull - Hmm what are all these buttons do? I took too long in initial taunting, MT was downed, and the other priest didn’t have a mic, and I must have missed his msg in raid chat to taunt it over. Why do they have the “cancel” button if it didn’t work for actually dismissing the MC?  Second pull - Raz was distracted too far from the MC-ed guy. As I was going to be in the range for taunt, I broke my MC because I went too far. Upon recovering, the other priest and I were not coordinating our taunt correctly.  Third pull - the other priest asked to be relieved from the duty, so another priest took over. The pull was ok - but messy - because we sometimes have the bone armor on cooldown when we were tanking. Two of the understudies were killed because of that. We just couldn’t recover from it. Fourth pull - things started really nicely. Except…I was following the suggestion to dismiss the understudy after tanking twice. That didn’t work so well. By the time I was asked to taunt the 2nd time, there were less than 15 sec left in my MC. To make matter worst, when the other priest tried to MC to take over my understudy, it broke because he wasn’t hit capped. Note to self - follow what you read in shadowpriest forum and not what people told you. By then, we gave up and went to another wing.

So we ventured to spider wing, one shotted the first boss. Crap…I was going to be asked to MC again. I was totally nervous by then, feeling that I’ve already let down people too many times. I was only half clear on what I was supposed to do. First frenzy - yes, I was ready, hit the button, we were good. Second frenzy - another successful MC. Upon third frenzy -  I had my MC target on focus. By the time they called out for 15 sec before frenzy, I had MC-ed him. All of a sudden, my MC broke. I know that it’s not because it expired. Could it be that I was on the Rain of Fire area? Oh crap. I re-mc-ed the target but nothing happened. Again. And Again. Tanks were dropping like flies. All of a sudden it was over. We managed to burn her down. Someone then told me that when MC breaks, the underlings become immune, and I had to pick another one. Duh…I’ve read about it, I just didn’t remember it :(.

We managed to clear the two wings. I was feeling low the whole the entire time. After the last boss in Plague, some people had to leave. So the raid leader, my friend, was looking for replacements. While we were having a break, the first MC-ing priest wrote in the raid chat that we should find more shadow priests that know how to do crap. I simply commented “Ouch”. I know that I’ve disappointed some people, but that still seems a bit harsh of a comment. What comes afterward was a bit more stingy. He then wrote that he didn’t know I was still there. Another rogue backed him up and indicated that I deserved it because he couldn’t figure out why I kept failing when MC-ing.

So here comes a bit ranty part of my post.

I know that I failed. I could try to come up with a bunch of excuses to justify my poor performance. In the end of the day, more than anything else, I was the one that disappointed at myself for not being able to do my task correctly. But I wish that people can understand that there are always margins of error when it comes to MC (as with anything else). And having to be that person to be responsible for the one breaking point is just too much pressure.

/sigh.

Another note to self: don’t attempt to do something that involves high amount of responsibility in a pug when you don’t know how to do it.

One thing I noticed as I gained a level higher is that mana regen plummeted as well. I initially started with the talent build that picks up the good stuff (aka dps enhancing) in the shadow tree up to Dispersion, before going to Disc. At lvl 75, I still don’t have enough points for Meditation. During levelling, I don’t find it to be too troublesome. With spirit tap after every single kill, rotating shadowfiend and dispersion whenever they are up, I could kill things fast and usually don’t have to stop and drink. There’s also enough traveling between locations that my mana will be full in time for me to start another batch of quests.

While instancing, however, the lack of mana regeration is much more noticeable. I noticed that I am the only one from the group that usually needs to sit and drink after 2-3 pulls - seeing that my GL/MT never wants to wait between pull, I often end up resorting to less mana intensive priorities. Darn those warlocks and their life tap. Replenishment doesn’t really do squat for me, with my crits rating plummeting as well, the frequency of spirit tap to proc is less and less, and I need to time my shadowfiend and dispersion so that I don’t have them in cooldown in time for boss fight.

Afterward, I respecced and grabbed all the 3 points of Meditation before going into the shadow tree. At my level, I am able to go all the way to Dispersion while only sacrificing the talent that gives more crit chances and other utilities (VE, threat reduction, and shadowfiend cd reduction). This spec works quite as well during levelling and it provides more longevity during instances. But I found that it’s still not enough.

From the 5 instances that I’ve done (Ut Keep, Nexus, Azjol-Nerub, Ahn’Kahet, and Drak’tharon), there are at least 1 boss fight that involves repeated phases, where in each of the phase, you would have to redo all your dots (think Lurker). For example in Ut Keep, the last boss will die and ress back, so you need to re-apply your dots all over again. This is probably the least taxing example of this type of fights. In the latter 3 instances I listed, it is common for a boss fight to go as long as 3-4 repeated phases.

In Azjol-Nerub, the 2nd boss that you encounter consisted of 3 “pulls” of trashes before the boss appears. It is not really a pull per se, however, as you are placed in combat from the moment you pulled the first trash until you killed the boss. So even when you just sit around waiting, you cannot drink up in between. The last boss of that instance repeatedly burrows himself, spawning a bunch of trashes, and come back up - each time the period in which he stays above the ground becomes shorter. During these types of fights, I’ve been so challenged in managing my mana that even with drinking pots, shadowfiend, and dispersion, I can end up oom toward the end of the fight.

Granted that I still use much of my lvl 70 gears that are sorely lacking in spirit (I think only 1 piece has spirit in it, and I replaced one of boots with one that has spirit). I remember when some people in beta are complaining about this, GC simply said for us to equip more spirit based gear. But most of the time, spirit-based gears don’t really have other good stats, such as crits, hits, and hastes (this actually a bit more common than the previous two).  Well, maybe I just need to suck it up, put more spirit-based gears even if I need to sacrifice some of my spell power.

Warning: This is a long ranty post!

When I first read about achievements, I was excited. It was truly a challenge for the completist side of me. The achievements system makes it easy to keep track what are the things that I’ve done, but more importantly, the things that I haven’t done. Fast forward to now, although I still appreciates the achievement system (mostly for its tracking functionality), I have to admit that I am starting to dislike what the system made me feel. (And no, I don’t really mind the constant spamming of achievement in the guild chat, which I just learnt today can be turned off :)).

If you are reading the forum these couple of days, you would find many posts requesting the removal of the Sinister Calling from being in the requirement of obtaining the Hallowed title. While I understand and appreciate Blizzard’s decision and thinking, being one of those poeple who can’t seem to get a break in RNG even if their lives depend on it, I have to be in many posters’ side. You may argue that it is too soon to even criticize the drop rate of such items, and I agree with that. The issue is really the reliance on some of the achievements on RNG, not just limited in this particular achievement (or title). For myself, I dread the RNG type achievement because no matter how hard or how long I spent the time working on it, I know that I am not guaranteed in getting it. It takes away something that is supposed to be fun and surprising, like opening the treat bag that you get from your innkeeper, especially when you are getting lollipop for the 3rd time in the row :).

Another example of how achievement managed to suck the fun out from the event is with the Halloween’s wand. It is becoming rare the case where people would turn other people just for giggle and laugh, now some people would hoard the wands just so that they can sell it to other people trying to complete their achievements. Or they will only use theirs in exchange with other people’s wands. It is a valid business opportunity, and I don’t blame them for it, but I missed the days where people do things really just because they can.

More importantly, however, I feel that these achievements manage to bring greediness and nastiness in people. I was running AQ40 for achievement yesterday, and we have agreed that whenever that crystal to summon the mount drop, unless you already have one, you are allowed to roll need on it. If you don’t know, this drop (which has a variety of colors) counts toward your mount achievement. Soon enough, this simple concept and courtesy got thrown out of the window. People who already got one just kept rolling need on the item. People start pointing fingers to other people who they think have already got one, and yet still rolling for another one. And I am in on one unpleasant ride. Another example of this is the people who pretends that they have summon, when they actually don’t, or ones that do not bother to state the fact before asking you to join the group (I know that this is partially my fault for not asking, but you would think people have enough courtesy to do it).

I know that all the examples I pointed out are probably still there regardless if there are achievements or not. But I do think that their frequencies are aggravated by the existence of achievements.

Our raid alliance is a progression raid group. When we started moving into this concept of progression, a set of 25 core raiders were selected, in addition to some back up raiders. From these core raiders, the raid leader asked for one things: to let the raid officers know in advance if you are not planning to show up. This request stems from the combination of the need to maintain the casualness of both of the guilds (we are, after all, social guilds) and to allow the raid officers to find replacements without scrambling or resorting to PUG at last minutes. In a sense, maintaining a somewhat consistent raid group. Absent from the raid without notice will “earn” you a strike. When you get 3 strikes, you would be placed to a back up position.

In theory, this is nice. But it doesn’t seem like it’s working out quite so well for us. The main issue is that we don’t have enough raiders, especially healers and tanks, to make the system works. It has been several weeks now that we have the situations where people are not coming to raid days without informing the raid officers. And if they do, they gave them notice only a day (if lucky) or one to two hours prior the raid form up. But because the lack of people in the rosters, being in a back up position, especially if you have main roles in the raid, is not much different from being in the core group. You will get into the raid whenever you decide to show up on that day. This also create a double standard between tanks/healers and dps-ers.

Furthermore, because of the last minute scrambling, often we will have “new” people in the. We use a zero sum dkp and obtaining several items can easily put you in negative dkp for a while (considering how little dkp we usually earn during one run). While it is easy to argue against this dkp system, the system is there to allow “new” raiders to have the chance to win items as well, giving them incentive to join the raid. Also, given a consistent set of raiders, this system should not give any problem because the same people will see the same raise and drop in their dkp.

But what happened is that, newer people would have higher chance in winning an item because their dkp is in the positive. Meanwhile, the core raiders would stay a long time in negative and lost on the roll with the new people, end up being disappointed and less likely to show up in raid consistently. So, what we have is a snowball effect.

I wonder if there’s a better way to encourage people to be more discipline in raiding?

Monday - ZA cancelled because our MT/RL had other appointment. Our other tank in the guild weren’t online. Nothing worse than having to pug an MT.

Tuesday - TK cancelled because we don’t have enough people (esp. healers). With school starting, a lot people is getting busier. We heard this story before, so not worth repeating. Anyway, after 1 hour later from invite time, we were still missing one more healer The temporary RL (the usual RL was out of town) felt like he had enough and called the raid out. Although disappointed with the outcome, I can totally understand since I was scrambling along with him to find some subs.

Wednesday - SSC was very closed to be cancelled because of the lack of people. We got a sudden cancellation from one of the healer and a few “regular” healers were a no show. But the same temp RL pulled some string and get some friends of his to come along.

First stop, Hydross. Imagine everything that could go wrong in Hydross - that would cause a wipe - and those happened yesterday. Well, I may be a bit exaggerating there. But hey, we usually one shotted this guy. First wipe - totem aggro, one of the raider must have forgotten no offensive totem or they need to recall them during transition. Second wipe - nature resist tank dc-ed right after they move Hydross to her. Third wipe - someone got too closed to Hydross before MT engaged him and pulled him across the line. Fourth wipe - someone either healed and regen some mana/energy while during transition (not exactly sure there, apparently people insist that they didn’t dps him at all during this time). Finally, we got our act together afterward. Pretty darn demoralizing.

Fortunately we ended the raid in a high note. There was a bit of problem with a rogue naga that rampaged one of the satellite island. Then whirlwind took a chunk of the melee dps. But we managed to recover nicely and got him down.

Let’s hope for a better raid time this coming Sunday.

***

On another note, after donning Ruby Drape of the Mysticant for way too long, and not seeing Shadowcaster’s Drape in sight anytime soon, I finally broke into E’s badge bank to get Cloak of Arcane Alacrity. Right now E is 1164 +Spell damage unbuffed with 8% spell haste rate. Although that’s barely 1400 with all the food/flask/wizard oil buff, I am tempting of getting Corrupted Soulcloth Pantaloons to alternate with Pantaloons of Arcane Annihilation for pure spell damage set. I wonder if that would be worth it?

I have been pushing levelling Vhe a bit more lately. Hopefully by WotLK, Vhe can hit 70. She is currently sitting at 45. On the prep for WotLK too, I’m planning to shuffle the profession of Val and Vhe. Val is herbalist and enchanting (I know weird combination right? - only reason is so she can stock up herbs for Ast). Vhe is herbalist and skinning. The plan was for Vhe to drop herbalist and took in inscription. She was just a herbalist to stock up on the herbs for inscription. But since mining will get significant buff on stamina and herbalist is just getting some healing to self passive buff, also since stamina will be converted to spell damage for Val (prot pally), it makes sense for Val to pick up mining. It will beat having to look for ores in AH too. So, at this point, the plan is for Val to be a miner and enchanter, Vhe will be a herbalist and an inscriptor. Of course with that, I need to save up for Vhe’s epic flying mount for efficient farming. So many things to do…so little time :(.

I’ve always tried to look at things in positive light. Even with all the complains and disappointments that plague shadowpriest forum toward all the underwhelming changes that we are receiving in the upcoming expansion. But seeing the new glyphs targeted for shadow priests, I don’t know why I even bother.

Especially compared to what Blizzard has been giving to every other specs. From totem (wrath of air) that would blow our misery talent to oblivion (6% +damage, 3% +crits, 1% spell haste from glyph). From elemental water that would put a joke to our VT (still party wide instead of raid wide) and dispersion talent. It’s weird, all these cool things that could have also easily been added for us, but they weren’t, and I just don’t get it.

Quite truthfully, I’m jealous. I’m so jealous that I’m fuming. I’m not asking for nerf in their end, I’m asking for buff in our end. Make us to be able to speak with glee and anticipation to the new things that the game that we all love would bring.

To be honest, and this shouldn’t be viewed as an ultimatum - just a simple rant to release the frustration, if none of these got changed or improved, I don’t think I will be playing a shadow priest anymore other than just as a leveling spec. I, for sure, do not want to be a dead weight in the raid.

I don’t know, are we shadow priests just too quiet upon receiving blows after blows? Should we be like our fellow druid campaigning and banding together to make our voices heard? That seems to work for them.

I still hold a glinting hope that everything will magically be better in the end. This shadow priest, regardless, is not ready to hang her shadowy mantle quite just yet.

Monday (ZA)

I had the rare opportunity to bring E along for ZA, with the cost of not having an optimal raid group. It happened because one of our ret pally couldn’t come and one of our newer warrior tank expressed his interest in coming along for the night. Thinking that our pally healer would show up (he didn’t), we agreed of taking the warrior as our off tank, at the end completely having 0 number of paladin. The set up was proven to create a bit of a chaos during the Eagle’s gauntlet - as we have gotten used to having Val to take care of birds and warriors - although not something we couldn’t handle. G, on the other hand, gave me a hard time for wanting to bring E along (and making his life harder I suppose).

Regardless, we got through the first timed event. However, an unexpected turn of event prevented us from getting the 2nd chest. G accidentally pulled the next set of mob before everybody is ready, even when he was nowhere near them. It was a costly wipe, considering that we have lost significant time on the Eagle’s gauntlet. Although disappointed due to failing the 2nd time chest, we moved along and one-shotted the Lynx boss.

From the 4 bosses, Jan’alai is the only one that still give us a lot of problem. The last 3 times we were in ZA, we got stopped by him. E switched to Val for just this encounter. The fight usually dictates by whether or not Val could competently avoid all the bombs. (Which is really really suck. Cause sometimes I swear I was already in the middle of empty space, yet the range of the bomb still got to me.) That day was a bit different. Birds were handled without much problem. But toward the end, healers couldn’t seem to keep G up. We wiped twice because of that. The third time, the same thing almost happened. Birds were all cleared (even when the rest of them hatched the same time). But suddenly our priest healer went down because of bomb leaving only the druid and shammy. As Jan’alai health approaches 1%, G’s health also went down rapidly. With a quick Lay of Hand from Val that replenished G’s health to almost full, we got him down. It’s a good feeling to be able to say (and having other people acknowledged) that you just prevented a wipe.

We proceeded to Hex Lord, gave him 3 unsuccessful attempts because of cc problems, and call it the night. In my previous post, I wrote how E wanted the hood that is dropped from him, and how because we usually full of dps and missing an off-tank Val had to sub in - we finally agree that we can do with just 1 tank and having E on that fight would be more beneficial since the shackling duty can be relegated to her instead of the priest healer. So, I am pretty happy that I can at least get a shot in getting that hood.

Mantle of Ill Intent drops (from first chest), along with other melee weapons and gears. Aside from E, there were also T (a destro warlock) and Ast (mage). I was a bit hasty with thinking that the shoulder is an upgrade from my set (it is and it is not - a lot of haste, but still lower in term of spell damage conversion - the extra stam is pretty nice though - it is still useful nonetheless). So I expressed my interest in rolling for it. As you probably have guessed, I lost it to T.  Except…G said that he should consider giving it to me since E cannot come to ZA every week while T (and Ast) pretty much has a regular spot in ZA. Well T and Ast agreed, saying how E haven’t gotten new gears (compared to everybody else) for a while, so I got another addition to my spell haste set :).

Tuesday (Mag/Gruul)

I wasn’t having a good time on this run at all. It started pretty good. We had a smooth fight against Mag. Although we had several unfortunate incidents where earthquakes very closely coincided with Blast Nova, we pulled through. But then, Eye of Magtheridon drops, which Sx, one of the warlock from our guild, rolled for it. I told him about the resist part of the trinket, and made sure that he really wants that trinket as an affliction lock. I should have kept my mouth shut. Well, it turns out that he has really bad trinkets - one pvp trinket and I forgot what was the other one (for reasons that just escaped me) and he couldn’t buy the badge trinket because he’s saving his badges for fire resist set for Leo; and…he is switching to destro.

The whole thing made me sound like I was not happy for him, which really was not my intention at all. The thing was that G often gave him a hard time about him using his dkp for items that are not really an upgrade, to the point that G practically yelled at him about it. So when I questioned him about it, instead of getting a calm explanation to all the reasons (which I would happily acknowledged), I got quite an opposition, funnily from another person in the guild. Next time, I should let other people worry about their own gears, unless specifically asked about it. Oh well.

But, what happened was that it changed my mood completely, and one shouldn’t play the game when feeling like crap. We wiped once at Gruul, because we were giving another tank a practice and we had really bad shatter that killed a bunch of healers. On the second go, since I was feeling pretty aggressive, I kept on using SW:D, even right before shatter. To complete my night, I got thrown to a spot very closed to 2 other people, all trying to escape to the same direction. As expected, the druid and I died (I could have not died if I wasn’t gotten hurt by SW:D to begin with), but he got battle ressed and I just lay there for the remainder of the fight, contemplating my own stupidity. And this was 30 sec into the fight. And with it, my plan of testing my dps when using my new shoulder gear went down the drain.

Wednesday (SSC)

Still not feeling the best from the previous day. The run, however, went pretty smooth. We two-shotted hydross, because someone pulled aggro during transition. But we handled lurker pretty well. Considering that we had so much problem with him just a week before, everybody was pretty happy. Until…Morogrim.

Since we only have 2 hour runs on Wed, we couldn’t get so many attempts on him. But I am sad to say that none of our three attempts were any good at all, heck they were not even long enough for me to put the tips from Isisxotic and Rick (thanks by the way, I appreciate it) to practice. We definitely have healing problem here. The first two tries, main tank died and the last try, the murloc’s tank died. Looking at WWS, nobody was healing the murloc’s tank. So, I’m afraid until the healers figure out what they need to do, we are going to keep on wiping on him.

Yesterday, our alliance group talked about new Kara scheduling and who still wants to be in regular Kara runs. On one hand, I am tempted to put Val’s name (she still needs some badges), but on the other hand, I don’t want to put another day committed to a raid. I ended up opting out of it, noting to the organizers that I would be available as back-up just to help out in case of absences. I was still torn up about it during the run yesterday, for the prospect of lacking regular flow of badges, until at the end of the run, where I realized that I am making the right decision.

I love running Kara, regardless how many times I’ve done it. Except the fact that it is just too darn long, especially if we want to get a one day clear. We usually started around 8:30 pm. If we are lucky, we breezed through it. But if not, it runs until almost to 1 am (plus the chit chat afterward). This may be okay except the fact that I have to get up by 6 am, usually very grumpy and tired :). But what I also realized is that, I can put up with afk-ers and brb-er less and less, although I fully understand that most of the them did it because they really had to. It’s very simple really. As a main tank, I don’t have the luxury to stop and catch up with the group, especially if I want to finish it in a reasonable time. If the run gets longer, more chance people would have to leave, and guess who would end up searching for a sub or calling the run? On the other hand, dps and healers (as long as not too many of them at the same time), can leave several times without impacting the run so much. Plus, I have to keep track who are not there and decide if we can do the next pull successfully (which we had a wipe because I didn’t think that there were too many afk-ers for a pull). Call it being bitter, but double standards annoy me to no end.

So that’s that. With that I have freed one more night on my schedule to do farming (yes, I do enjoy farming), trying to get my Timbal’s Focusing Crystal (I lost my last roll to a fire mage >< Did I tell you that I’m lousy with drops that I truly want/need?), pug ZA with my shadow priest, run any choice of heroics, and etc. And if I choose to run Kara, it would be when I’m mentally prepared for it. I may not be overflowing with badges anymore, but at least I’m stress-less. That’s a good trade-off, don’t you think?