Rumours Of My Demise

…have been greatly mistaken.  Rumours of my laziness, however, have been right on target.

Post soundtrack: “Still Alive” from Portal

It was nice taking a break from writing and just levelling up my shiny new gnome rogue, but I guess enough is enough, time to get back to it.  So hello again, I’m back and…  well, still lazy.  But I’ve managed to level a character to 80 who isn’t a dwarf, which is something of an accomplishment.

Meet Pringle, mutilate rogue.  Although still under-geared (she’s only been 80 for a couple of days, after all), she’s well up to the task of taking names and kicking errant posteriors.  (Incidentally, I discovered this wonderful collection of rogue levelling tips after Pringle hit 80 – my timing is, as always, superb)

Today she managed to finagle her way into both VoA-10 and VoA-25, and performed to an admirable standard for someone who was (at the time) still wearing 7/8 pieces of crafted blue PvP gear.  In fact she managed 3.2k dps in 25-man, and 3.3k in 10-man.  Sure she was only in 16th place in the meters for the 25-man, but for such low-level gear I’d say she’s right on track to definitely not suck.  (On a side note, it’s the first time I’ve been in there since before Toravon joined the throng in there – that would have to be the most underwhelming boss fight I’ve seen)

I’ve also been doing a few battlegrounds (in between LFD heroics) and a couple of Wintergrasps, and Pringle’s now not only wearing two pieces of T9 (shoulders and gloves) but also has the relentless PvP boots (saving for a PvP cloak next).  It’s proving pleasantly fast to earn badges, and the honor from running random battleground is also not bad (apart from Strand of the Ancients, which I find to be even less fun than I remember WSG ever being – oddly enough, I’ve yet to have WSG come up so far).

I’m undecided about what to do next – continue gearing Pringle up as an intellectual exercise (with no idea of whether there any raids in her future), or move on to levelling my other priest or my shaman.  However, after the length of time I spent with Pringle, it’s a lot more tempting to put together the badges to buy heirloom gear before much levelling is likely to occur.

I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the lack of drama in the LFD dungeons I’ve run through – no loot drama, and players who are new to a dungeon have been open to explanations of fights and suggestions on how best to get to the end.  But then thanks to the way LFD assembles groups I suspect I’m the notional under-geared nub who’s supposed to get carried by the other, much better equipped and more experienced players.

I’m tempted to start looking for a guild to join, as I’ve been feeling nostalgic about raiding after remembering back to my old Tempest days after writing my previous post about the changes coming to Cataclysm raids, but the difficulty in finding a suitable guild along with the possible (probable?) cost of character transfers if it requires moving server are quite discouraging. 

But I guess at the root of it, I’m just afraid that Tempest was a case of the right group of people at the right time, and isn’t something that is likely to reoccur.  (Hopefully that’s just me being pessimistic)

On the off-chance that one of my readers know of a mature (I’m not looking for drama) yet easy-going guild (ideally professional in their approach to raiding) which is either looking for a disc priest (I’m only average as Shadow, and was pretty dire at holy for the brief period I was an involuntary holy priest in early ICC) or a rogue (currently Mutilate, but raided as combat-swords back in TBC from TK/SSC into early Sunwell) on Dath’Remar-US (where most of my older characters are) or Argent Dawn-US (where I’ve been lately), drop me an email.

For now, though, I’m just taking it easy.  Gearing up is (still) kind of fun, but I can’t help but wonder if somewhere out there is a group of people who need me but just don’t know it yet.

/wave

Cataclysm Raiding May Not Kill 25-Mans

Post soundtrack: “The Ewok Celebration Song” by Crackerjack Junction

Yes, I’m still here; I was just being lazy.  Anyway, here’s a little opinion piece about the latest Cataclysm preview.  Enjoy.

So there’ll be no more separate 10-man/25-man raids in Cataclysm?  It sounds good to me, and while in the near term the effect may be cataclysmic (see what I did there?), it’s quite possible there are blue skies on the horizon.

From what I’ve read, reaction to the changes (announced here) seem to be divided into four camps:

1. Oh no!  25-man raiding is doooooomed!  No-one will do it if 10-mans offer the same rewards.
2. Yay, 10-man raiding will no longer be raiding-with-training-wheels!  Equality at last!
3. …
4. Profit!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Seriously though, I’m not usually an optimist but I’m finding myself leaning towards the thought that these changes could be a good thing for raiding in future, and here’s why.

I think that, while 25-man raiding will be facing quite a shake-up (probably equivalent to the transition from 40-man in vanilla WoW to 10- and 25-man with TBC) there will be a new equilibrium after the dust has settled, and there’s a good chance it might leave 25-man raiding in a stronger place (albeit with a smaller population).

At the moment 25s are driven (progression aside) by the fact that the best gear is exclusive to 25-man raids, and because of that it’s where the majority of players are going.  Not just the good players, but also the…  shall we say, “less than talented.”  (Incidentally, a lot of complaints I’ve read about the current state of recruitment for 25s currently seems to revolve around the difficulty in finding (and keeping) competent players, often leaving a number of raid spaces being taken up by people whose lack of skill acts as a drag on the genuinely capable players but who are almost guaranteed a space because they show up for raids)

With 10s and 25s sharing the same level of rewards I suspect there will be a sudden drop in the number of players willing to carry others in order to acquire epics for themselves.  Soon after Cataclysm launches (when the population of 85s starts to stabilise) I’m pretty sure there will be a sudden increase in the number of 10-man raiding guilds, as like-minded players will start to gather together.  It’s also possible that these new 10-man guilds will start forming earlier, when the pre-launch 4.0 patch goes live, if the promised guild-leveling mechanic is launched with it.

The side-effect of 25s no longer being mandatory for top-shelf gear, is that players looking for easy loot may find themselves doing 10-mans more often.  And with a smaller pool of players wishing to do 25s, it’s not impossible that they may find themselves combining forces (without the less skilled players who now focus on the convenience of 10-mans) to focus on 25-man raiding.  It might be too early to say that Cataclysm could be a new ‘golden age’ for 25-man raiding like TBC was, but if the random factors align it could happen.  (my fingers are crossed on this one)

The downside to this will be that players who aren’t as skilled will find themselves having to work harder for a raid space, or will come to rely increasingly on pugs.  Fortunately Blizz have said that the initial raids will be balanced toward players in blue gear, so pugging them shouldn’t be too much more difficult than Naxx 2.0 was.  After that?  Well, there will be badges which will likely be farmable in heroics and the beginner raids.  Time will tell, I guess.

I like what I’ve read so far, and it’d be nice to get back into 25-man raiding with a group of like-minded players.  Am I being foolishly optimistic?  Maybe.  But I’d like to think this could be the expansion that brings dedicated raiders back together.