Challenges

It's been a while, but I've been busy. First- some good news! We've finally started challenge modes, and got a silver on our first (well, first complete one- we reset it several times) attempt! Yay team! I had to go for something else I had signed up for, so I'm a little sad I couldn't get us to gold.

I know I tend to place the blame on myself/give myself more importance than perhaps I have, but I was healing. And people died. That's pretty simple there. I am sure there are several things I can do to increase my efficacy and performance. For one (and this is probably the most noob-like I've felt since I realize that guy when was third on the healing meters was the DK tank and we were 2-healing- halfway through the Naxx run) I've set my party frames to look like raid frames. My biggest difficulty is noticing DPS health loss. That helped a lot, the next deaths came from all of us standing in bad stuff cause we pushed the boss a bit faster than expected. But we've since gotten 2 golds!

I also intend to learn how to better use HotW, if I can. I fistweave, I can darn well learn to heal and DPS on a resto druid. Anything that can shave off seconds should help, right? Alternatively, I'll just pop NV on cooldown the whole run. I've got a decent set, I think. I'd like to get a neck and cloak with sockets, but I'll work on it. I was great on mana- only OOM 2 times, when I had to pop tree and spam regrowth.

I am anticipating golds in the future :) Sadly, I have learned the the Shado-Pan meta achievement does not count account-wide achievements, so I either have to go back and finish them on my druid or get my monk set up for challenge modes. Still undecided there.

Next, raiding- Icon is setting foot in SoO this Friday! I've been raiding enh, steadily enough with this other group. Still need to talk to the guy running it to see if it would be possible to do both raids. Not sure who I'd bring to which. He's moving house this week, and raiding with them has been cancelled so I can put it off another week. Both toons are equally geared- in fact, due to Ordos' love of my druid and dislike of my monk, Elay has passed Ren in ilevel. 

And back to school, which complicated the raiding issue- can I raid 3-4 nights a week, work on challenge modes another, with 2 flex days, and still study for all my tests? The answer is yes, IF I actually start working harder. But do I want to? Still not sure. I managed to ace the pharm test, whoo! A little worried about virology on Friday, but if I work towards it I'm sure I can pull up my grade. This stuff is interesting, finally diseases! But the presentation and test format, not so good.

And I will end on gnomes. The running of the gnomes was last Saturday, I talked 3 guildies into coming with me, and my BF logged in to come as well. We had a blast, even if one could hardly move. So far the only number I've heard is a tentative 944 gnomes and escorts showed up to run.

Here's a picture of the heart in Booty Bay. Those aren't my guides, just some random gnomes and me, dancing on the bed.

Why Do I Fight?

Why do I raid?

Even before I finally downed Garrosh in flex and got the quest that led to Lorewalker Cho's "why do we fight?" cutscene, I'd been wondering that.

I spent just about every waking hour on Saturday in a raid. I woke up at 10, went into a flex at 11, left that at 3 to join a guild flex, finished that at 6 and took a nap til 8, then had another flex at 9. Why? Why do I like to raid? 

I don't do it for the gear (at least not entirely)- by the time my guild run came around, my 2 main toons had run flex 1-3, and the toon I brought to that raid could gain no gear and very little valor since I was almost capped. I just brought her because I like to play my monk, even though I have 4 other 90s, 2 even with the gear to not shame me in there, who could have gotten rewards.

I like to do things with friends, that certainly plays a part. My guildies are good people, usually cheerful and fun to talk to. But that's clearly not all of my reason- most of my groups were PUGs, and I still had fun, and plan to sign up for more on OpenRaid in the future.

I'm also perfectly happy to spend hours killing dinos for bones, or farming ore, or fishing. So why then do I try to raid so much?

The reasons are a bit varied. In part I think it's because I feel raiding is the end-game for me. Collecting pets and achievements is fun, but my goal is always to complete raids. Some of it is to get gear. I am very competitive and like to top meters even if I don't crow about it. I rarely play DPS but when I do, I like to be able to hold my own with the regular DPSers. I like to be able to out-heal everyone when I try. I know it's not important and meters don't tell the whole story of a raider (and certainly not a healer) but who doesn't like to see their name first? 

So I raid because I enjoy group activities, enjoy a the challenge raiding give our groups, to get better gear to play at a competitive level, and because for me, raiding is the goal.

On another note, I think OpenRaid is bad for me. I have had some bad experiences in LFR, so I tend to avoid it lately and find PUGs on OpenRaid. Which means it is very easy to sign up for ALL THE THINGS and have no free time to study.

Darkmoon Faire

Moonfang! Some new reason to be on the Darkmoon Island. This is a bit late, but here she is, surrounded by 2 people with the mount, and me ruining their shot. I'm the panda in red. 

I did end up with the pet, on Friday night. It was a great day for pets- finally got my darkmoon eye, 2 extra Dandelion Frolicker from 1 sprite killing spree, and Moon Moon! Thanks go out to my fruit friend, who offered to kill Moonfang with me to help with my chances of getting the pet. 

I basically parked a toon out there, logged on ever hour to forty-five minutes to check for wolves, and alert a few friends also hunting the pet.

I did have 1 bad moment at the fair this past week. Not my many deaths to moonfang (I only lived through 1 fight) but with the PvP thing there, for the trinket. Clearly you can tell from that comment my PvP knowledge/ability = almost 0. I was mistweaving ( to try to stay alive against moonfang) and the announcement went out. I got there, 2 other folks came in, and we proceeded to fight. Me mistweaving, a pally beating on me, and a resto druid. I managed to kill the pally,  and me and the tree fought til the pally rezed and ran back in. I thought it was fun, had a grand ole time. The druid got the trinket, but I lived, killed the pally again and his warlock friend he brought along (I assume- from the same guild) At the end, I made some comment like "that was fun" and got a "#*&! you" in response. It really made me sad. I felt it was uncalled for. If he was truly in it for the achievement, and had whispered me asking about it, I would have let him get it and helped kill the druid. I was just there for fun, and to work on the achievement but it's not that important to me. I think my big problem was that he was in a guild I had friends in and admired. 

On a side note- I keep the profanity filter on. Makes it fun, guessing what people are saying sometimes. Do you know they bleep out LSD and semen? Perfectly legitimate comments about class, bleeped out. 

Undecided

I've finally had a chance to dip my toes in on SoO normal. Another guild was short a healer, and asking around in chat. I offered to come, and have gone in with them again this past week to shoot down the first 4 bosses. The raid leader approached me about joining the raid.

I'd love to! They seem nice, our guild hasn't had a normal raid since a few weeks before the patch dropped. They raid early, and end at what is a very nice time for me, both pre- and post- daylights savings, when it comes.

Here are the issues: one of their raid nights, I have a study session. I can't afford to miss it. Right now, it ends an hour and a half after they start. After daylight savings, that'll be only half an hour. I told the guy I'd never be able to make Monday raids, but now I realize I could- if they were ok with me being late.

The other 2 issues with Monday night- it's my board game with friends night. We may be able to move it to another night, which would probably let a few more friends who don't like to be out from 8-10pm on Monday come along, but I'd have to talk to them about it. It's very informal, so I think they'd be ok with it. The second issue- my guild runs a flex raid Mondays. Maybe I can talk the raid leader into moving it to Wednesday or Thursday, or even Friday. I'd have to ask, but I feel weird skipping a guild flex run since I was recently promoted to an officer. Especially to run normal with another guild.

I also feel a little weird running with another guild if it would prevent us from running normals. I have another healer I can bring, and I'd love to play my druid more. I still think of myself as a tree, even though I am getting used to being called Renala instead of Elaylda. I have no idea if this would stop us, last time I mentioned raiding to our guild's raid leader he said I was the only one who had approached him.

So my dilemma- is it ok to raid with another guild, as an officer? On one of our guild flex nights? Do they even need a healer anymore, or have they found one?

I think my course of action, at the moment, is to wait until Tuesday. If I am invited back to raid again, I will talk about joining up if they are ok with me being late on Mondays. If I hear from them early on Tuesday for an invite, I will talk with my guild's raid leader. We are very laid back as a guild, and have another officer who does more serious progression raiding on his horde tank. I don't think it will be a problem with anyone, but I worry. I feel a little guilty missing flex as a healer, but our guild never makes flex mandatory and they have done just fine when I have had to miss flex before.

My biggest worry is that this would affect normal raiding for our guild. It would limit the nights I can run, and since I'm one of the most reliable healers (from an attendance perspective) that might hurt us. That's 2 nights out. I'm not worried about the toon, I have my druid equally geared. And truthfully, if I'm on my druid I will recommend giving two healing a shot.

I just keep going over this in my head, probably making a big deal out of nothing. It might be a moot issue, they may have found a replacement healer. Hopefully I can get this all straightened out on Tuesday and quit worrying.