Non-social versus anti-social

A post on story about some "War" Game feature being added (or already in WOW but unknown) on the WOW Main page led me to reply to someone as follows:

you mean asocial (Avoiding or averse to the society of others; not sociable) rather than antisocial? Goodness knows there are enough anti-social people in the game already, most of whom are progression raiding types. I've never been a very social type, and everything I heard about raids back in Vanilla WOW really turned me off the idea of large progression raiding guilds. That and a lot of people who had no interest in sharing knowledge about game mechanics, encounters, etc. I really dislike that WOW has gone back to a Vanilla feel in that regard: Raiding has reverted to a "know it already or GTFO" mentality again, meaning there are going to be a lot of non-hardcore progression types who may never see some content until long after it has become obsolete.

I have yet to go into Gruul's Lair, Tempest Keep: The Eye or Coilfang Reservoir: Serpentshrine Cavern and have only fought trash in the Black Temple when some guild was farming Hearts of Darkness in BC on mobs before Mother Shahraz, and made one failed attempt with a guild member or 2 at taking on Hellfire Citadel: Magtheridon's Lair (it did NOT go well, lol). I've only popped into Caverns of Time: Hyjal Summit with my one of my level 85 toons just to try out taking on the trash mobs there. Boring, and even though I could take the packs of mobs down it was just boring. I got into the ORIGINAL Naxxramas when it was still in the Eastern Plaguelands back during BC. Right after I did the attunement quest I popped in and, to my chagrin, discovered 2 things.
#1 I could NOT take on two aboms on my own and live,
and more importantly
#2 was that there was NO EXIT from the original Naxx!
Needless to say my tank died upon learning those 2 things. A month or so later someone got a group together to PUG Naxx and I went. That place was hella-Hard! We only tried to go for Anub'Rekhan and got toasted BIGTIME! The trash even gave us a helluva time before we ever got to the boss. While it was kind of fun to at least get into Naxx and have a go at the boss, I am not a fan of the kind of killer "you must be perfect" mechanics that they had in Vanilla Naxx, and now in heroics and raids in Cataclysm.

Just because I am not a fan of them does not mean I do not think they should exist. Obviously there are players out there who thrive on that sort of challenge. I have a disability that affects how well and how fast i can process information in new situations, it's even harder if I am under stress. So far in Cataclysm I've gotten to where I am ....somewhat...accustomed to a few fights in heroic mode. Lost City for some reason seems to be about the easiest of the heroics for me (and quite frankly there are still aspects of the various fights I do not fully comprehend. I've learned enough to at least be able to keep from getting myself nuked, even of it does lower my dps.I contribute and we get the boss down. So I do not have the best DPS, I can live with that. Once I have enough experience doing various fights. I have to DO the fight in any given class to really know how to do it, watching a video is not the same for me - they are nice for getting a general idea of what happens, but being there and fighting a boss on a hunter is different than being there as a DPS warrior or as a caster.

Instance runs go so much faster when people know them and when gear is not so much of an issue. I saw that a lot when I would pug raids in Wrath and still see it now when doing instances on my lowbie toons. I love being able to get into a group for Nexxus or Utgarde Keep and rolling thru them very quickly - people may die on occasion, but no one stresses over it and people are almost universally cool about needing on gear when you need it. A fast 15-20 minute run thru UK beats the hell out of a 2 hour long heroic with people dropping from having multiple wipes and people being snotty toward one another. I'll take easy and fun in a game over long, stress-filled bitchfests that heroics tend to be these days.

Battlegrounds!

I just read a post on the Blizzard forums about fail Battlegrounds (BGs) with the title "Why not just let them win?"

I have been in enough BGs when early on it seemed like it would be hopeless only to have things turnaround and become very worthwhile matches.
I've felt the same thing many time, that the BG was a complete wreck, but have learned you just have to either gut it out and stay till the bitter or glorious end, or else just bail and take the debuff. Eye of the Storm is a BG where I've seen a turnaround happen many times. Not so much with Warsong Gulch, commonly known as WSG.
Ah, WSG, now there is a BG with which I have a deep tolerate/hate relationship. The one thing I love about WSG is they put in a time limit on the darned BG. before they did that there were times I was in WSG longer than some old school Alterac Valley battles, and they used to have AVs that went for days! Not saying WSG went that long, but 90 minutes in WSG was too darn long. Sometimes 20 minutes is too long. I've gone thru periods where I would do great in PVP as a tank back in Wrath, even had at least one battle inside WSG that can still make me laugh.
I was in our flagroom along with a druid healer (pretty sure it was a druid) and got into it with a human paladin. We had out own little battle going for a good 5 minutes with me getting healed until the pally switched to the druid only to have all my Prot stuns screw with him then he'd switch to me, and between my stuns and reflects along with my pocket healer we finally downed him. Then he comes back for more! Horde ended up losing that one - it was probably one that seemed pointless, but at least 2 of us on the losing side had a tremendous amount of fun.

Imagine that, playing a game and having FUN!?!?

Still cannot stand heroics

I have a very well geared mage, better than my tank. Decided to try a heroic. Got H BRC. Did okay even tho we wiped once on the first boss because the tank failed to clear mobs next to where the boss walks up to ...what is it, a pit or something?.. that he then paths away from. We got extra mobs, wiped, went back, cleared the extra mobs, killed boss, continued on. When we got to the 2nd boss, we tried skipping the mobs at the top above where the boss is, except for the first pathing drakkonid. Didn't work for some reason cause when we went for the boss it seemed like we got the 2nd drakkonid and the mobs from up top. Got back, cleared the top, tried for boss. By this point I think we'd replaced one person who left for some reason between the 1st and 2nd boss. I have a hard time with this fight. Timing on this is a pain in the ass. I was blocking one stream and popped out at around 80 stacks, watched for the debuff to wear off but other drakkonids got summoned/converted whatever and wiped us. We gave it another shot after losing at least one person, wiped, then decided to pass the boss and move on. We got to a bridge where Raz is supposed to pop out and kill all the the mobs on the bridge. Didn't happen, wiped again.
Lost almost everyone. While I was debating on bailing we had a full party again, and had to go back to try the 2nd boss again. I was game for another shot. Next try I ended up popping back into the stream about one tick too soon, got converted to a drakkonid but didn't seem to be doing anything, everyone else got killed, I reverted so I ran back up the ramp to wait for everyone. I think we might have tried one more but wiped again and I just figured screw it, and bailed. Total time spent probably around 2 1/2 hours and only got one boss down - and this on a toon that has gear that can get him into the "new" troll instances, and got thru H SFK on my first run thru it with minimal wipes or deaths.

My feeling here is that I cannot be solely to blame for the wipes, not when I was at #1 0r #2 on the damage meters on boss fights. Heightened difficulty is one thing, but this far into the expansion you would think people could clear heroics a bit easier, hell we did in Wrath and even in some of the BC heroics. Cataclysm heroics an inconsistent mix of difficulty and are not conducive to have me queue up for heroics very often. I can't wait for 4.2 when getting higher gear MIGHT make beating heroics easier.

My First Video Blog

My first shot at a video blog entry. I needed more sleep when I did this, LOL.

I cannot tank heroics...successfully...yet

Gave a shot at tanking a heroic again a day or so ago. I got popped into Grim Batol. I actually like GB, but have done it so few times that I do not have a really great understanding of what all is going on in boss fights. Despite having done the instance several times on a few different toons as DPS in both normal and heroic I was dubious about how I'd fare.

Not good.
We wiped a couple times then the group just fell apart. To be fair, someone was saying they were going to have to leave soon right as I got in - and I came in at the first boss! I gotta say, I was rather confused about what all was going on in terms of adds showing up along with trying to maintain aggro on the boss. Just what you want to hear from a tank, right? Maybe tankspot will have videos that will help, seeing as how I'm going to be doing these instances eventually and I do like tanking. Notice I didn't say love?

Apparently I _CAN_ tank heroics...

...despite having several pieces of gear that are green and lower than item level 333.
I got on my main tonight and figured I'd give another shot at doing a heroic as DPS. I think it was Halls of Origin, but my shaky memory fails me after deciding to do a regular random as a tank this time. We got Grim Batol and it went so well about 3 of us from that group queued up for another regular random, back to Halls of Origin. I think we got a nice chunk of rep since people were cool with taking out extra trash mobs. After we got done one of my guildies got on and we queued up for a regular random, but I did UI refresh right after queuing - so of course while it was refreshing the queue popped and we missed it. I hit the button to requeue us, but failed to make sure it was a regular, so we ended up in Heroic Blackrock Caverns. OOPS!
My equipped gear level going in was iffy at best, after a couple pulls that went OK I decided the heck with lower level tank trinkets and switched to some of my higher level DPS trinkets, putting me at an averaged equipped iLVL of 338, even with a few green pieces one being a 333 level helm and some 318 gloves I seriously need to replace. My blue 316 legs also need replacing ASAP, but I did at least upgrade to some new justice point shoulders right before we queued up.

I might actually be getting back into a tanking mood for WOW again, go figure. And no, the new call to arms for tanks has nothing to do with it. As I'm learning what is happening and what to watch for, the more I experience it the better I'm going to get - especially with better gear popping up and becoming available with rep and BOE drops showing up for low(ISH) prices in the auction house. I think the biggest challenge is going to be getting used to getting trashed by being surprised by completely new elements that have been added to heroic instance boss fights.

So despite my personal misgivings, I stuck with it and I tanked our way through 2 bosses in HBRC despite 2 wipes to the second boss, Corla, Herald of Twilight, the 2nd attempt on her was tanked by a DK in the group who claimed he could do it better than I did. He didn't. I switched back after he left following the aftermath of HIS wipe, I adjusted where I tanked the boss and we took her out ...dare I say this...easily? It took work, and paying attention to pummel some big hurtie spell she she does, but everyone was up to the challenge, including me and we achieved a sweet success. My guildie Cenvai took home the Signet of Transformation (of course I lost the roll, but I'd have probably just given it to him anyway).

Still hating Heroics, BUT....

Oddly enough, as much as I HATE heroics - my view of them in general is that they took most of the annoying aspects of original Occulus to help them design the Cataclysm heroics. For as many times as I've had my @ss handed to me in GB, for some reason I find this to be a rather fun instance. The only boss there I find truly atrocious is the last boss. I would be...chagrined to get that over and over and over again when queuing for randoms as some folks have been posting about on the WOW forums. Kinda glad I haven't been queuing for them.
I've done GB a handful of time in regular, once in heroic mode on my warrior doing DPS as Arms (with decent DPS I might add, not uber great, but cart topping on occasion or close, even in single mob/boss fights). Did not finish 'cause my reactions times along with my gear level at the time, shall we say, were sub-optimal. I got kicked right as I was going to bail out so I wasn't butt hurt about it.
With the new troll instances heroics reworks, I took my just barely geared enough mage into a random (got Zul Gurub) and after some hairy encounters and a number of wipes once we got to fighting Zanzil (not to mention one or two wipes getting there...) I finally decided that Illidan was right, I was not prepared. I told the party then left.
One nice thing about the new instances is that GOOD gear is becoming available at lower prices, and I've able to fidn some reasonably priced epic upgrades so maybe, just MAYBE, more heroics will be in the future. And if they frustrate me too much, there's always Fallout 3: New Vegas!