Friday, March 19, 2010

I got gonged and I liked it.

Gong Show took me in, gave me some loot and then shat me back out. Although I thought I did an acceptable job as a DPS paladin, they thought otherwise. Halfway through my trial, another paladin came in and eventually took my raid spot after about 3 bosses worth, and I thought he was a friend of an officer but I could be wrong. It was a pretty shady transition and after talking with the other paladin. I guess he applied to GS before I did, but couldn't join because he still wanted to raid with his previous guild. He had better gear than I did before I joined, and did more DPS than me on those few encounters, but not by a very big margin. My exodus from the guild may not have been entirely performance based, especially since these world ranked guild go through recruits like kleenex.

Gong show keeps a thread where raid members make comments about your raid performance, and here is how mine read:

Poor communication skills
Popped tons of ghosts on DW
Pulled aggro on beasts on Saurfang
Got hit by an extra block on Sind p3
Almost faceplanted an orange slime on a Putricide hard attempt and said he was fine when I asked him about it because he had rocket boots
Pretty bad at princes
Overall just dies a lot to random shit it seems, and a ret should be able to pull a little bit better numbers

Any criticism is good criticism so let's break this down.

-Poor communication skills.

I am still scratching my head about what this means, but I think this means in raid communication, i.e. raid chat and vent chat. I started to speak more towards the end of my trial as opposed to the beginning, but that's how it goes when you join any guild.

-Popped tons of ghosts on Lady Deathwhisper (HM).

Tons of ghosts apparently means 1 per attempt, and just as much as the other melee were failing on them. Granted recruits are under a microscope, but if it is happening as much as the other member melee, isn't the bar set there?

-Saurfang Beasts.

There is a bug where if you have Avenging Wrath active, it will bypass the AOE reduction buff that the beasts get. My AW buff was expiring heading into the beasts phase and I got hit by a blood beast, which in Hard Mode is a big deal; the raid is trying very hard to starve Saurfang of runic power in any way possible (BoPs on boiling blood raiders, tight taunt transitions, efficient killing of blood beasts.)

-Got hit with extra ice block on Sindragosa P3 (HM)

I never ever ever got hit with an extra block unless we were already wiping. In fact I never died to a phase 2 ice bomb, or screwed up a block position. I am scratching my head on this one as well.

-Orange Slime (Putricide HM)

This one aggravates me more than any other. I was trying my best to be proactive at killing the orange slime when the raid leader says he wants some initial damage on the ooze, and I had the foresight to use my rocket boots if the ooze picked me to chase. It did, I did. Is wiping to a bomb going off a more preferable option than using a cooldown to prevent it?

-Pretty bad at Princes (HM)

Guilty. It took me a few kills to get this one right. Shadow Prison is pretty tricky especially when there is nowhere to go when a non-empowered shock vortex goes off in the middle of the raid, or when all the melee gets a movement speed debuff right before an empowered one; this formula equals a huge pile of melee corpses and usually the ranged had to finish off the fight.

-Overall just dies to a lot of random stuff

I don't think I died any more than anyone else during attempts. The only two preventable deaths I could think of are:

1. Standing too close to the choking gas bombs a couple times when they went off

2. Vile spirit spawning right on top of the melee, waiting about 5 seconds before using any sort of AOE and promptly getting punched in the face. 5 seconds is more than enough time for a misdirect or a taunt.

-Low DPS

I was consistently in the top 5 in fights where you had to stand still and kill stuff, just what DPS paladins are good for; we have a severe penalty for switching targets. Fights where target changes happen often (LDW, Putricide, Blood Princes) I was usually hanging in the low middle range of the other melee in the raid.

Taking this criticism for what it is worth, I know where I need to improve. I also know how thin the line is between acceptable and unacceptable mistakes in world class raiding guilds. Part learning curve, part raw deal. GLHF Siqwence.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Posting topics

My brain is full and I want to put some of this in the cloud.

-Getting kicked out of Gong Show
-New Guild - Big Crits!
-Economy WTF
-US political system
-Entitlement inside and out of WoW
-The aversion to original ideas or why the remake/reboot is so comforting.

More as I get time to write.