Wednesday, September 9, 2009

September Edition: What I've Been Doing.

I can't seem to get a post to the point where I want to post it. Is it still considered a post if it isn't posted?

Last week, my focus was on gearing up my mage, renamed Dinnaeh and moved to my friend's server. I would log in, check to see who in the guild was online and where they were, and ask if anyone wanted to run anything. Being a new 80 and new to the guild, I was hoping to find a few people who would be willing to take me along on some heroics. After all, everyone's running them! I wasn't asking for a free ride. I had taken some time and gold to assemble some nice epic crafted items and a few good bind-on-equip blues, and was still trying to get into regular instances for some of the items I might need. As I was working on my arcane spec, one of the guild mates offered up his mage as a model and taught me what my cast sequence should be. I'm not lazy. I had already been looking on WoWPopular for a good arcane build and the glyphs to go with it. I had also another tab open looking for cast sequence. But I took the information, and headed to Darnassus to play with the dummies, right after I took my hubbies start out nuke macro from him (It's a doozy. If you want it, I'll share it!). I found she was putting out a decent bit of damage (around 1700 is not bad for a starter mage, right?) So, I joined the LFG channel, as noone in guild was biting, and got into a regular Trial of the Champion. The first group was horrible. The heals needed help, then the tank had to go, then we wiped several times on the nightmare encounter. The group fizzled. I rejoined lfg, started doing the dailies in the Tournament, since I was out there. She got into another group, this time whizzing through the instance twice. She got a trinket, but passed on the ring that dropped when I saw that the healer needed it. The healer and one other promptly degrouped, and I silently flogged myself for not having needed the ring. From there on, it was a mess of people dropping and trying to find replacements. I had signed up with this group to do four runs, and I had every intention to stick it out. An hour went by, we struggled through oiur third run, but wiped on the nightmare encounter. We lost another group member. I decided it was time to hang up my hat for the night. I apologized, wished them luck, and logged off.

The frustrating part of all that was not so much that I couldn't keep a good pug group going, but that my guild, of the at least twenty that were on, only one answered when I was looking for a healer, and noone answered when I was asking for people to run things with. I looked. There were a couple in instances, but for the most part, they were hanging out in major cities. I'm wondering if I had been a healer, or a tank, if they would have been more inclined to run things with me.

This week, done with the frustration of looking for groups with a dps character, I logged in to say hi to my guild mates on Shadowsong. Guild chat here is always hopping, people are in ventrilo chatting at peak times, and it's just a friendly place to be. The second I logged in my bank character, I got a tell from one of them saying hi. After finishing the banking, I logged in with Halinka. I set myself up to heal a regular Trial of the Champion. I failed miserably. We did fine on the first part, killing all the horde combatants. I could not keep everyone up during the nightmare phase of the Paletress encounter. The group broke up, and I set to doing the dailies over there. Somehow, I got into a regular run again, this time as dps, to help gear someone's mage alt. It went from that to running a 25 man Vault of Archavon, then a 10 man Vault of Archavon, then a race through Gundrak on heroic with two teams, to end in a 25 man Obsidian Sanctum. Halinka got a nice pair of pvp pants and a robe to go with it, and she got a nice pair of pve pants, too. She spent a few badges and bought herself a nice belt. Then, she went and gemmed and enchanted the whole lot.

What is great about this last few days is that, this guild does things together, and not just on raid night. If someone needs a hand, all you have to do is ask, and if they can't it's usually because they are truly busy. The difference between this character and the other? Not much , really. Sure, Halinka could heal, if she had the gear. They are both dps at heart. Halinka, thanks to an active and very social guild, is getting crazy upgrades (i-level 245 pants to replace i-level 200!) Dinnaeh needs to get to know her new guild a little better, I guess. Or switch to her bank alt paladin and level a healer. Because noone seems to want another dps on that server. Things may take a turn for the better when the cross server lfg system goes into place.

Tonight is raid night for my Shadowsong guild. I might pop over and say hi to the other guild. After this daily...

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