DISCOVERY! K has discovered Groups of Words!

This is one of the beautiful thing about blogs and reading other people's blogs. Occasionally, you find something great.

Or at least involving hot engineer sex (and truly, that's what made me go read! Who could pass up hot engineer sex?... though I must ask, is it hot sex (as in the room is a sauna) or hot sex (as in romance novel quality shagging) with an engineer, a hot engineer (as in cute) or a hot engineer (as in, his (or her!) internal thermostat is set at 100 degrees) sex? So many permutations of that phrase!)

Yet again, I find myself wishing I could write blogs the way that Bremm or Groups of Words do. More put together rather than my rather rambly method.

At least I can enjoy reading them.

Anyway, Groups of Words recently posted a few things dear to my heart. Namely damage meter spam, group roles and end content raiding.

Let's start! It's Tuesday - I have tons of time to spare. (housework? What's that?)

Given that this is technically a warlock-blog, damage dealing is what I do. And I'm pretty decent at it. I'm also bad at screen shotting and the ability to host and link pictures, so I have no proof other than what other people report in writing on my blog (do you hear that, Owaru and Boon, tell these lovely people that I'm a good dps'er!).

I will admit (oh so embarassedly! (that's a new word)) that in the beginning days of my getting good gear and raiding, I was an avid viewer of my damage meter. I'd usually only spam it if the other DPSers in the group and I were having a contest. Given that I usually ran with friends, this was frequently. In fact, this past-time gave rise to the K Game. (I just posted a link that goes to my own blog! I am teh aw3s0m3!!1!) How much damage can I put out without pulling threat from the tank? This served two purposes.

1: I started to evaluate my own cast rotation, spells, etc. I became a better player.
2: The tanks I ran with had to up their own abilities at holding aggro and pushing to their limits to enable the DPS to play the game.
3: (I lied about there being only two purposes) I learned a lot about tanking against people like myself.

However, I've stopped using the damage meter as a point of pride and I've started to use it to make sure I'm doing my job. Based on what my damage meter reads, I know if I'm slacking, or if I'm kicking ass. It enables me to evaluate changes in my gear or cast rotation.

Our guild, Knights of Utopia (and Groups of Words posted about guild names too... to be fair, I didn't name the guild!) doesn't care as much about damage meters as anything but a raid utility. We use it to evaluate if our newer 70's (or even established 70's!) are ready to hit Karazhan with us. When someone says 'post the damage meters!' we reply 'get your own' and 'no public posting'. Now, on officer channel, we're posting and comparing and saying 'Wow, given his gear, he should be doing MUCH better!'. But that's the perogative of officers. :)

Enough Damage Meters! Onto group roles! As you can see, I've got a bad case of altisms disease. But what this means is that I can typically fill whatever role my group is needing. This makes it very handy for me to be able to do whatever I want. Now, granted, if I want to get a DPS item out of an instance and they need a tank, it doesn't always work quite like I planned, but at least I can get to go.

What's even nicer, is that several of my friends that I group with on a regular basis also have a slight case of altisms and between the four of us, can put together any group we need, so that I can get that DPS trinket one time, or put together a group so someone else can go after that same DPS trinket.

K: DPS, Tank or Healer
Owaru: DPS, Tank or Healer
Boon: DPS or Healer
Absitively: DPS or Tank

I think you can easily see how given the four of us on at any given time (or even just one or two of us), making a group becomes a lot easier.

(Eventually, Neshura will join that list, but right now, she's DPS, DPS or DPS.)

I didn't make a healer though, or a tank, because I felt it was a role that needed to be filled. I did it because I have altisms. Hello, aren't you paying attention?

However, a lot of people do make an alt to fill a percieved role. This is all well and good, unless said person isn't very good at that role and it frustrates them. Now, every role has a learning curve and WoW, of almost any game I've played, does an awesome job with letting you learn as you advance in levels. (and this is mainly one of my chief problems with purchased accounts, other than it being against the EULA. If you BUY your end-game protection warrior and have never been a warrior before... you're going to suck. And it's false advertising to be walking around in your T5 or whatever armor when you suck that badly.)

Now, I do admit I have a few biases. DPS classes that can't Crowd Control are one of them. I don't like them and I'll try to avoid having them in my groups as much as possible. My perception is changing slightly, given that I'm going to be doing a DPS Paladin in here soon, and uh... yeah. Anyway.

DPS Warriors, Enh/Ele Shaman, DPS Paladin and in most instances, DPS Druids.

Now, considering that they do have the abilities and the talent trees that lets them be DPS, have at it. But they need to understand that sometimes, they will be looked over for a class with more consistent crowd control abilities. Especially in Heroics, where sometimes appropriate Crowd Control is the difference between a wipe fest and a successful run. One non-CC DPS in a group is probably doable, but if the entire group is made up of a tank, a healer, a warrior, a paladin and a shaman... uh, I hope the paladin and the warrior are okay with offtanking, because that's the only form of CC that they have! (And I still maintain that OT is a form of CC. Sometimes harder to do than other times, but still a form of it.)

But I digress, as I often do.

Last but not least... end game raiding. As Groups of Words stated, there are various levels of end game raiding. KoU is in EndGameA. I'm guilty of guild-hopping with Kikidas. I will, however, say in my defense that when I guild-hopped with Kikidas, I was way ahead of the curve of the guild and I didn't leave as they were trying NEW content, I left as they were wiping on OLD content that they should have been able to mop the floor with. After that, I didn't guild-hop as much as simply keep trying to find a new guild that wasn't on it's way out! I think, as long as Resolve stays around, that I'm there to stay. I like the people and I'm content with the raiding that I'm able to do with them.

With the new management of KoU, we've managed to mop the floor with Karazhan. In fact, we managed to do it when 8 of our "core-raiders" left the guild. What does that tell you? Tells me that it wasn't an issue of we couldn't do it, but for whatever reason, wouldn't do it. Anyway...

KoU, at it's heart, is a social casual raiding guild that is casual about all things, but raiding. When we raid, we're serious, we have the gear, the know how, etc. The difference is that we raid once or twice a week instead of 4-5 times a week.

Additionally, being in Resolve has opened up a new avenue for a few of our KoU members. Based on what Resolve needs, I can get our better geared and able KoU members into their raids, letting them see some new content without needing to leave. Now, granted, I'm not talking SSC, BT or MH, I'm talking Gruuls and Mags. More than KoU could ever manage on its own, given that we have probably 13-15 able 70's that are never able to be on at the same time! :)

Where was I? This is what I mean by my inability to write a blog that is anything but rambling!

Oh yes, end game raiding. We have Kara on quasi-farm status now, though we're still having to pug one or two people per raid. And I hope that KoU's next step is to see about venturing into Zul'Aman.

We shall see. Thank you, Groups of Words, for a few blog ideas. Maybe I should blog about each thing separately? But what fun is that?