Been very quiet around here, lately, and for that I apologize. It all started with that bad ToC10 and got worse with the semi-fail Ulduar that followed. There is a certain bit of healer burnout in the air, and until I face that down here, I don’t think I can write about anything else.
So, burnout.
Actually, it’s escalated from healer burnout to raiding burnout. I’m of a mind not to raid.
There. I said it.
I’m not talking about healing. I’m talking about raids, in general.
I’ve asked the GM to find a replacement. We have several DPS peeps dual specced to heal, and we can fill in DPS more easily than healz, any day. Do the math.
This is not an effort to get Grimm or Flora into raids. Quite the contrary. I desire to be done with the entire framework of raiding. More precisely, being an officer in the guild during raids … taxes me. It taxes the GM, too, but she made her own life choices. This is mine.
We might even PvP to prove the point.
Note: I will not abandon my friends. Until a recplacement is available, for now, I will fulfill my implicit obligations. For now.
OK, that’s it for that. As big an element it is, I still don’t want to dwell on it.
Moving on.
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Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about what’s happening in-game. For, beyond my traitorous desires to just play the game and have fun, I do have loyalty to what we do as a guild.
- Ulduar progression is coming along. We were dead-ended for a while because we couldn’t go more than a certain amount of time, and that got us as far as Auri. This week we got that far on the first night, and the second night we got a substitute tank to come in (our Warr tank had GF aggro) and she walked us not only through Hodir but Thorim as well. More on these in a moment.
- The ICC five-mans have been thoroughly roflstomped by our core raiders in standard mode, and we got the first instance done in Heroic by accident with no sweat.
- Ony can still stomp us hard if we don’t do it right. For whatever reason, the last attempt failed in Phase 2 every time. Part of it appears to be that some people were not following instructions and focus firing on the same target as everyone else. There were points where I just said “fine, you’re going down, I’ll heal the ones that are where they are supposed to be.” And naturally, I ran into deep breaths myself, too. Overall, bad deal.
- ICC 10 was attempted on the 2nd night – with Marrowgar at 25-man strength. As you can guess, we wiped as many people did. If I must raid, I’m interested in seeing how we fare now that they’ve adjusted him.
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Back to Hodir / Thorim. Both of these fights require a ferocious amount of group healing. The MT is hardly taking any damage, usually, so the hardest part is keeping everyone else up and alive, and our Shammi is hard pressed to do so. We actually had our boomkin druid swap to tree as well.
I finally found a good use for my talents though. I focused on two tanks and two healers as my priorities, and they focused on everyone else. Seemed to work. Maybe in the future I’ll just swap to shadow for those fights, and let the tree and shammi keep us alive.
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Two new members of the clan on other servers.
First, Grimmtooth the Third – who was rolled on Kael’Thas for the Raid for the Cure charity drive – has renamed to Dvorkin1. If you are on K’T and care for such things, there ya go. Also, LFG. My sweetie is there as well so I am looking for a very casual guild here. In the time since RftC I have advanced to level 33 without trying too hard, and given sufficient impetus, could be 80 in a very short time. I’ve done it before.
Second, Yardiff Bey – or more properly, Yardifbey – on Bronzebeard is my Belf flower-picking Warlock toon, recently hitting level 11. I rolled him to hang with my sweetie who is in DotH on that server. Also LFG as my sweetie’s guild will not admit non-female members. So I’m on mah own.
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Okie. For good or for ill, silence is broken. We all apologize for this, regardless of who “we” is at the time.
Ooooooh. And it’s published. I’m committed.
- ”Dworkin” was taken, but if you follow my pet naming convention, this makes perfect sense. If not, I recommend to you the collected works of Roger Zelazny as an example of some of the finest fantasy and SF you are likely to encounter for quite some time. [↩]
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Breaking the silence will be for good!! It might not feel like it but it’s a positive step towards changing things for the better – or at least, that’s what the optimistic angel on my right shoulder tells me. Let’s not talk about the other angel…
Seriously, I wish you patience while you wait for your replacement and I applaud your loyalty for sticking by until that replacement is found. Two traits that are sometimes so hard to find in the game!!
Thanks for the encouragement. I still fee bad / guilty about it in some way, but I just can’t blog anything else with that elekk in the room. Here’s to the optimistic angel, may it be right.
The other angel, by the way, appears to have a bottle of Yukon Jack and a huge hangover.
Glad to see you back here. I totally understand the burnout thing so as far as I’m concerned do what you want to do in game. If raiding isn’t fun for you right now then by all means do something else. Its still a game and we are all trying to have fun amiright? You ever wanna group up for anything or just want to run some dungeons on any of your toons let me know. Heck, I wouldn’t even have seen the inside of Ulduar without your help. So definitely keep up the blogging and we’ll find the fun in other places besides raiding
I know the feeling – I hit a major burnout myself just before Xmas. I definitely think it’s good that you’re blogging about it, if nothing else it’ll give you a space to be honest about how you’re feeling, and help you deal with it – whether that means stopping raiding entirely for now or going to off to become a fisherman in Azshara for a while.
For what it’s worth, even though I’m not an officer or a RL or, in fact, have any responsibility at all – I do find raiding with m’guild stressful. There’s a lot of pressure to perform and so on and so forth. To remember I enjoyed raiding I had to go out and PUG.
It isn’t the competiveness that bums me, it’s the backroom chatter in officer’s chat that rubs me wrong. Let’s say some of it is not my style and move on.