So What's Been Happening to Me?

It has been quite some time since I sat down to write anything. I have been busy: we moved house, and officially everything is out of the townhouse and in the new house. And my motivation to unpack has just plummeted since we got the last big pieces of furniture in place. The garage is full of boxes, a lot of which have been in storage for years because the townhouse was smaller than the previous house, so we got a storage shed. Then I had an apartment in college, and didn’t want to throw anything away, so I got a storage shed. Eventually they were combined, along with my brother’s (my family can’t throw anything away) but now all of that is in our garage at the new house. That’s my goal for the summer: clean out the garage. We’ve made some progress by giving back to their original owners anything that didn’t belong to anyone currently living in the house. 

The other thing keeping me busy is my dogs. One is unwell. Poor girl, and now she isn’t eating at all. I’m worried about her, but I hope the cytology from the visit to the internist shows something. I’ll have to look up or ask if eosinophilia from  mast cell tumors can come and go, otherwise that’s what I am thinking it might be. Unfortunately the nearest internists are about an hour away in opposite directions, so taking her up there was an all day thing for me. I did discover (eventually) where the library was, so I’ll have something to do if I need to go back, as well as a Sweet Frog and a great bakery, so I know where to hang out and eat while she’s there, if we have to go back. Aside from not eating and diarrhea, she still acts mostly the same, perks up when you grab the leash or a tennis ball, which is keeping my worry a bit a bay. I should hear back by Monday, hopefully with some news.

On the WoW front, my rogue is 1 runestone away from her cloak, and my horde druid is about halfway done with runestones. Our test horde challenge modes went pretty well. I blame a lot of mistakes on myself for being so tired, but we got 1 done and likely would have gotten another if we had enough invis pots.

Raiding this week was kinda bleh. My Tues/Thurs group worked on heroics a bit, but only took out Norushen before switching to normal to clear the rest. And nothing like cutting it close- we killed Norushen, and he turned around and killed us right back as he died. Probably should two-heal that for less dramatic kills. My Wed/Fri group worked on Garrosh on Wed and ended up canceling on Friday due to missing people. Probably a good thing, I just really really want to get him down and kill him so I can stop raiding with them. I’m not sure how many of the group know that’s my plan. I told the raid leader and guild leader, as well as 3 others. I have a feeling the guild leader told the other 2 officers, which leaves only 2 people I am uncertain about. None of them have said anything to me, so either they get where I am coming from or don’t want to try.

It makes me sad and relieved, the idea of leaving that raid. I like hanging out with those folks, but at the same time I put a lot of time and effort into raiding and get really frustrated when I feel others aren’t even trying at all. I do think they can rebuild- they are losing 3-4 people (not sure about 1 person, but I have a feeling she might step back too) after Garrosh, but I already listed a handful of names as replacements when I first mentioned leaving. 

I read Balkoth’s post about his experiences before starting his blog, and it sounded a bit like my reaction to this situation. I push and push and push sometimes to be heard, and I know it irritates people sometimes, especially when I disagree. I’ve told people if they tell me to shut up, I will. (At least for a little while.) With this raiding issue, I didn’t give up or decide to leave lightly. I had 2 meetings with the guild leader, wrote 2 incredibly longer than needed e-mails, was trying to set up a third meeting to make myself clear once again when I realized it was pointless. I was saying one thing and she was hearing another. In theory I like her idea- a no stress, social raid, but in practice I want people to be held to certain minimum standards. Things it never occurred to me you would have to explicitly tell people who raid, simply because I do them well before raid even starts. Like look up fights, be on time, and learn how to play your class.

I started raiding as a resto druid, and at heart I still consider her my main, even though right now all the raids I do as a druid are PUGs. I ended up switching to my monk back in MSV because we were cutting it really close on an enrage timer- like 3%, so I figured that tiny extra DPS would push us over, and the other healer we had was a resto druid, so I stayed monk. I was really happy to be raiding on both of them for a while, but then we got to Garrosh and I figured double resto druid (especially since counting it up, we had very few interrupts) was tougher than needed, so I grabbed the shaman. But before I switched to these toons, I made certain I was confident healing normals on them, that they had great gear, and that I understood my spell, rotation,  CDs, and how to use all of them. It’s why I ended up on the shaman (and not so show off the pretty transmog) instead of the priest (who also has a nice transmog, and got a race/name change in anticipation of raiding). I had a few people who told me I should bring priest over shaman, but left the decision up to me.

Well, I was switching to get an extra interrupt mostly and disc priests? Not so many interrupts. Yeah yeah, druids have glyphed faerie fire that works, but swapping to bear is a pain, and time consuming when I could be healing. (it does work in p3 Garrosh- I did test that) But I did some test runs in flex on the priest, and even though she was 545 with the cloak, I was struggling way too much. My horde druid at 535 without the cloak heals better. I just don’t quite have enough of a disc priest healing grasp to heal normals, so along came the shaman.  

And the point of that was to illustrate that I make sure I can play my class before trying to raid on it. The exceptions are spur of the moment groups my friend sometimes puts together where he tells me to grab a DPS, which I only have 2 that aren’t healers or otherwise committed to other raids. And I love my mage (fire! all the fire!) and have been playing my rogue more often lately, I know I am an awful DPS. I just don’t practice it enough. And he knows that before he asks me to bring one along, and I go because they’re friends.

So anyway, that’s what’s been going on, plus some ranting. I guess I’m still sad to be leaving that raid, even though I know 2 others are leaving with me and are relieved to be doing so, and will do so regardless of what I do. And I have gotten accustomed to having them around, and certainly don’t want to raid without them there.