For my unannounced good bye, and for anyone who gives a shit, here’s why:

Grandma was hospitalized, and she was the closest thing I have to a mom (my mom’s alive, she’s just a terrible mom). She’s back home now, I’m raiding, but not like I used to. I cook and clean and am getting a job with the state to take care of her.

Gogo.

I’m closing down this blog. Some things will be saved for Summit Noobz, but I’m mostly closing down.

I recently announced to my guild that I’m leaving raiding. I’m not sure if it’s true or not yet, I have to play life by ear atm. In a nutshell, life’s changed.
Cheers.

Sick. In pain. In the hospital. No internet because Comcast is terrible. Gimme a few more days.

Edit: due to the loss of two exceptional tank healers, I’m now forced to stay on my holy priest… for now.

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I covered this topic a bit in All Apart of the Game. To sum it up, when we were progressing through t7, I switched from holy to disc to holy to shadow to holy.

This time, the name of the site might be changed to “selorinne.com”. To put it simply, I hate the priest class right now. Tons of people would disagree with why I do and try to convince me I’m just bad at the class, but I’m not. I may gear differently than you do, but holy is very ambiguous like that. You have a lot more options than other healers do in your gearing and spec choices. Granted, there are still stupid choices, but I performed well. Dare I say to my class’s potential.

And yet, I think both holy and disc is boring.

I left the decision in the hands of my fellow officers. I gave them a choice; let me main switch to Selorinne, my resto druid, or let me change spec priority on my priest to shadow. They know that I am skilled at both and just have to spend little more than a week outside of raids to gear up either.

Officer 1: Shadow.
Officer 2: Resto.
Officer 3:
Officer 4:
Officer 5:

None of that “whatever you want to do” shit. If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.

AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHA!!!! Mallet from World of Matticus replied to one of my piss-poor entries!!! I FEEL LIKE A REAL BLOGGER NOW.

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….. Weekend WTFery incoming. I swear.

I’ve been accused of a lot. One of the most unfounded accusations is that I treat my friends special in raids. Ie; let them slide on assignments, award them extra dkp, don’t dock them when they ditch, favor one person for raid composition over another.

News flash: if I am treating this person as special, I will fucking let it be known public.

“WTF? Drakke left us for a better guild and got rejected, and comes back so you let him back with no consequences whatsoever?”

You know nothing of Drakke. Watch your mouth.

Obviously, I do favor Drakke to respond so passionately. The facts are:

• He left the guild then transferred off server.
• I told him I would keep his DKP if he came back.
• He came back 3 days later, no penalties.

Wait, what?! No penalties?! ::gasp!:: The whole reason he left, the whole reason I offered to keep his DKP, the whole reason he came back? He left because his job hours are harsh. He raids with us as much as he can, gets 6 hours of sleep, works, comes home, raids, then sleeps again for 6 hours. He found that once he left, he valued us more than his sleep.

And honestly, I don’t give a shit if you think that’s unfair; Summit has ALWAYS been subjective with each case of a guild return. If you contributed as much to this guild as Drakke has, and you leave do to RL scheduling, you’ll be let back under the same circumstances. Oh, and about me giving him his full dkp fore the night and third hour even though he leaves every night 15 minutes early? It’s just 15 fucking minutes.

Oh, there is more. Much, much more. But I’m not gonna fan that fire now.

First things first; I recently came upon the news that the author of dwarfpriest.com has passed away. I wish her family and friends the best.

Gimme a moment.

Since releasing Summit Noobz, I’ve decided it’d be best to stop posting about guild issues and guides here and move it on over there. So what does that leave eristhan.com with? Rants? Well, I’ve decided to make it into a….

…wait for it…

I don’t know yet. It’s gotta be WoW-related though. Thoughts?

On Monday, September 28th, at approximately 8:40pm PST, <Summit> got Yogg-Saron into phase 3 on his 25-man normal mode.

Sure, we’re making progress… or are we? I read The Illusion of Success over at Gray Matter a few nights ago, and have been digesting the article. I’ve come to the conclusion that in Summit’s case on Yogg-Saron, I agree.

He cited three things that contribute to a guild’s failure on a boss attempt; lack of focus/execution, lack of knowledge/experience, and the infamous RNG. The RNG (Random Number Generator) has been blamed for many a wipe. These include, but are not limited to:

• A Constrictor Tentacle grabbing you just before you make it to your portal or as they become available to click;
• Lag (of any kind) that results in some kind of horrendous error;
• Which way the clouds are moving as you move the Guardians closer to Sara;
• Why can’t I click the goddamn portal!?

We’ve seen it all happen. And we all hate it. But when the RNG works in our favor, we forget all about it. To quote Gray Matter:

…not all of your successes are due to a full understanding of the situation or proper execution. Sometimes you get lucky and do better than you should….Did your later attempts backslide or did your earlier attempt overachieve?

You see, when Summit downs a hard mode or gets closer to killing Yogg, we all pat ourselves on the back. “Gee, we’re awesome!” We say. Then we get pissed off to high hell when we don’t progress that far again or down a boss with the same composition we had the week before.

Summit’s caught at an awkward place. Each week, we lock Ulduar to make more attempts on Yogg. Sometimes, we wipe all night on phase 1. Other nights, we make it to 31% before wiping on phase 1 again and calling it. Our raid leader is determined to see the boss go down, but at what cost?

…If your guild over values its successes the impact of your failures will be more significant and hurt your progress.

I do not think that Summit has what it takes to kill Yogg-Saron without both heavy carrying and spectacular RNG working in our favor. There, I said it. I know some of the guildies read this, and I know you’re going to QQ to either Hiro or Loveth. I stand by what I said; I don’t think we can do it right now.

I think so. A lot of it is honestly Blizzard’s fault. All that came with patch 3.2 in its entirety is

• Trial of the Crusader
• Onyxia
• Koralon

One new instance, one revamped instance/boss, and one additional boss to VoA. All in all, had there been no connection issues, the guild would get all three of these down in one raid night. That leaves three nights of Ulduar, which is fine by me. We get the Siege and Antechamber on the first night, always. We normally get a Keeper or two down, but if we don’t, then the third raid night of the week we’ve got them and Vezax down. We get a whole night to dedicate to Yogg-Saron.

Rinse and repeat, only this time, don’t reset the Ulduar instance. So you get one night of easy badges, and three nights of Yogg-Saron.

Oh yes, Summit does promote burnout.

There are several types of positions depending on the type of guild and environment. There’s the guild leader, raid leader, class lead, role lead, dkp manager, recruitment manager, event coordinator, site manager, guild chat moderator, and others I’m sure you can think of. And if you actively want the position in your current guild, I’m gonna slap you in the face with a fish.

Why do you want to be an officer?

Let’s say that your guild is falling apart at its seams. People have lost interest in role-playing/raiding/pvping/whatever and it’s your sincerest wish to just help. You have made great friends in this environment, and don’t want to let go of what you know. It’s okay, I understand. I was once in the same position.

What difference is there from being an officer and a member in this situation? Sadly, once you get past all of the excuses, there is none. If it’s an attendence issue, there’s nothing you can say to those people to make them show up if you were an officer. All you can do is kick the bads and try to recuit to fill the gaps. And yes, as a member, you can recruit. It’s the inviting part that the officers do.

In case two, your guild leader happens to be your best friend/lover/spouse/pet dog, and you feel entitled to a position of power. Any less proves to you that you’re untrustworthy, or they believe you’re too irresponsible for the position. Or in one case of extreme paranoia I’ve seen, you have an unfounded belief that he or she is cheating on you with another officer in /o.

While the extreme case above turned out to be true, chances are, it isn’t. Chances are, you’re insecure in other parts of the relationship, whatever it may be. It may have nothing to do with your capabilities; it may have everything to do with your capabilities.

If you’re denied officership on the grounds that you’re not “capable” of the position, take a second before it becomes personal. I wish you luck with your self-evaluation and reconsideration of friends. That’s a different blog for a different day. Final note: Being an officer won’t fix these issues. Especially ones this personal.

Let’s get back to those good reasons to being an officer. Let’s say there are awesome reasons you want to be an officer. Some people are simply natural leaders and do not have the perfect flow in life if they are in a follower role. That’s understandable. If this is you, you have 3 options:

• Start a new guild. This might be the hardest to do because of the sheer amount of work involved. Recruiting could be an issue due to a low population server. You may have a hard time convincing others to join your guild over others. I suggest reading the Matticus Doctrine for ideas on building your new guild.
• Talk to your current guild leader about an official position. You understand all of the responsibilities that come with being an officer. All the QQ and dirty work will be yours to deal with. If there are simply no positions open, then do the next best thing.
• Raid lead optional/weekend raids for alts or PuGs. Not much else to say here.

So, what about you?

This post has been in the works for a while now, but took a liking to the back burner when Summit ran into problem with it’s officers (severe burn-out). When I got back to this post, I was an officer.

“Oh shit,” best sums it up.