Sleeping With the Enemy*

It would be nice to have some stability from time to time.

Oh, I'm not talking about personal stability, as I'm pretty sure things are going okay for the moment in real life, but rather in MMO life.

While the scenery may only change for the lead dog in a dogsled team (like I referenced a few posts ago), it would be nice if the raid composition was stable for a couple of weeks.

Our progression raid is a once per week raid, and that's by design from the beginning. Not everybody can commit to a progression raid multiple days per week, and to be honest a lot of our raid team is perfectly happy committing to only one day per week. Still, that doesn't make it easy when we have multiple people on the raid team wanting us to switch to a multiple day progression raid. 

Oh, and one of the people who either want us to go to two days or just stay with SSC, farming it week in and week out? She's one of the raid leads for the OTHER progression team that does raid twice a week.

So yeah, there's some conflict there. 

***

I was originally going to post this mid week last week, but ironically enough some of the conflict worked out in the end, as a few people split for 2 day progression raids from other guilds while the rest remained with our raid team.*8 While that means we have to acquire a few more people for our raid team, at least those who decided we weren't doing things fast enough (or whatever) have moved on and are no longer a drag on the raid team. Sure, several of them were really good raiders, but at this point I'd rather have stability than precision. I personally am happy we only raid progression once per week, because that gives me the time and space to back off when need be. And I suspect we'd lose even more people than we did just now if we really DID go to two nights per week of progression raiding.

But such is progression raiding life.

***

Still, I was disappointed when our raid's lead team felt pressure from the other raid's leadership about expanding our raid nights. If there was any reason for us to believe that our raid is perceived as the "second string" or the "farm team", it was then. And you know what? I don't care what they think. They're not downing Kael'Thas or Vashj, so it's not like they've left us in the dust. And the people on our team that aren't very good raiders? They've gradually fallen by the wayside, so we don't have issues like that.

We're good at what we do and we're moving at our pace.

***

The Friday night Karazhan run? Well, when the raid lead got back from vacation, she pulled me aside and let me know that she didn't want to keep that raid going. (Burnout, you know.) She said that if I wanted to keep it going, she was happy giving me the reins. I was flattered by her trust in me, and I accepted managing that Friday raid.

It wasn't a big deal, I figured, since we had two other Kara raids: one on Wednesday and one that hits only a few bosses (for BiS gear) on Saturday.

Well..... It looks like we hit a wall on our Kara runs. 

The Wednesday run decided to bow out first, and then the Saturday run bailed as well.*** So mine is suddenly the only Kara run that's running consistently. 

(No pressure. None at all.)

However, the other progression raid's lead team decided to throw a Kara run for yesterday (Sunday), which more than one person raised their eyebrows over. "I don't get it," one person whispered me the other day. "There were already 3 Kara raids, why not fill up one of them?"

"No idea," I replied, but to be fair I have my suspicions. After all, I'm on the "other" raid lead team, and am arguably based on experience the least likely to actually lead a raid. I also am managing this Kara raid very informally: if you need gear and it drops, roll MS/OS. No biggie. The other progression raid, however, uses Loot Council to distribute loot, so my laissez faire attitude would run headfirst into a "who needs/deserves it more" mentality. Finally, there isn't a Kara raid specifically from the "other" raid lead team, so making their own fits the bill.

I'm not sure if this was just a one-off, but we'll see. I get where people are burned out, and I understand where Friday doesn't work for everyone, but I suspect that there's some rivalry mentality at play as well. Which annoys me to no end.

*Yes, the song from Roger Hodgson of Supertramp's first solo album. I loved his solo debut, In the Eye of the Storm (1984), but what also sealed the deal for me was that he played almost all the instruments in the album. I knew Prince had done it, but Roger? No, that was news to me.

**Yes, the other raid lead team members who are on our raid (playing alts) left for other progression raids. We weren't surprised.

***The Saturday run seems to have revived as one person needs a BiS weapon out of Kara, and she's singlehandedly keeping it going. Once she gets that weapon, however, she'll likely kill that raid off.

EtA: fixed the exact timing on when I reference the "lead dog" quip.

A Brief Glimmer

Shintar, over at Priest with a Cause, posted today about her experiences lately in TBC Classic. In their own way, they provide a counterweight to my own impressions of the expac, given that while I started from L1, she was able to go to Outland from the moment the Dark Portal opened only to discover some of the same feelings of FOMO that I was experiencing. But as she explained in her post, what she thought initially was just FOMO has turned out to be something else, where her relationship with her guild has not been what she thought it would be when TBC Classic dropped. In its own way, her guild and my own are doing similar things, where they spend most of their time working on their individual checklists rather than enjoying the game as it is. 

And in both of our cases, it can be an alienating experience, realizing that your relationship with your guild isn't where you thought it was.

In her case, she feels she's treated as just another flavor of the month Hunter, and some people in guild can't even remember her name right. That matches a similar situation I find myself in, where people can't remember that Card is no longer my main. 

Once every couple of days I get a whisper from somebody saying that they miss running or raiding with me, but then in the next breath they say they're just too busy with other things. Well, out of game issues I understand, but in game? That's a choice that you make. You can make yourself feel better by a drive by hello, but the reality is that you have control over what you do in game. To have all of your boxes checked prior to entering Gruul's Lair or Karazhan is placing a lot of pressure on yourself.

Of course, there are limitations to that. A Mage will have to acquire tanking gear before they step foot into Gruul's Lair, and a tank will have to get enough of the right type of gear to make it even worth their while entering into the Phase 1 raids. But chasing 9/9 pre-raid BiS slots with a vengeance? Or getting all the patterns for Enchanting? Or who you hang with in game? That's a choice you make.*

***

I have some friends in game that I miss, not because they're not playing or anything, but because they server transferred. I was assured that they left because they felt the larger server would work better for them, but I can't help but think that if I had the chance to spend more time with them they might not have considered transferring so much.

At the same time, there's only so much of me to spread around. I have to make decisions based on the time I have, and I have to live with them.

***

I was contemplating all that when we were preparing for last night's Karazhan raid. We had almost enough people for two raids, but we ended up having to get a couple of puggers to fill the last two slots. We were trying to find a healer when I ran into one of our regular raiders from our Saturday Night Blackwing Lair runs. We hadn't spoken since the series of raids had ended, so we were catching up on what we'd been up to and I noticed that she was at L70, so I asked if she'd gotten into Kara yet. 

"No," she replied, "I'm geared and ready to go but no luck."

I blinked. 

"You know, we're in need of an extra healer for Monday night," I said. "Would you be interested?"

Her reaction was somewhere along the lines of "hell yes!", so she hopped onto our Discord and immediately signed up. 

Shortly thereafter another regular from our BWL and AQ20 runs also hopped on to sign up as melee DPS. 

Problem solved.

But as the raid approached, I grew nervous. This was not only going to be my second time entering into Karazhan, but a first as an actual lead for the place. And you can only read/watch so much before you have to go out there and actually get into the raid and do it. Thankfully, however, the overall lead was the lead for all of those ZG/AQ20/BWL raids I'd done over the last several months, and once we started I began to relax. It wasn't the same raid, but it was the same person. 

She did a fantastic job distilling a fight to the most basic components, and while it was a learning experience for about close to half of the raid, it felt so much better and smoother than last week's run. Even when a disconnect zapped my macro for handling loot, we just rolled with it.

We got what is supposedly hardest opera event, the Wizard of Oz, and wiped twice, but the third attempt was as smooth as butter. We accidentally pulled Moroes early and wiped, but we recovered the next time. 

And there was one memorable trash pull where everybody went down except for the Warrior tank, the Pally healer above, and me. We had three of those arcane creatures on us, and the tank kept aggro while the Pally healer kept him alive, and I improved my positioning enough that I didn't take damage so I could DPS down the trash. "I thought we were going to have a wipe," the raid lead admitted. 

"I thought so too," I replied. "But that was an awesome job tanking!"

"An awesome job healing, you mean," the tank replied.

"Hell yeah!" And if I hadn't run into her randomly out in the Old World, that pull would have turned out completely different.

At the end, we hung around late --because of some trash wipes-- and we killed the Prince on our second try. It felt.... well... like we knew what we were doing. Even though I'll admit that I didn't.

Afterward, I sent the raid lead a message via Discord that she did a great job, and that I really missed this over the past month of leveling alone. I got a thanks as an acknowledgement, but really that message was as much for me as it was for her. I really had missed our regular raids together, with some of the regulars across several guilds, and how we came together and had fun.**

***

It felt... good.

Like I wrote to the raid lead, it was the best I felt in game in a month.

It doesn't cover up a host of faults I've discovered about this expac and how people are pursuing it, but it did provide a welcome respite from the in-game shenanigans. It also gave me some hope that perhaps I won't have to take the drastic route and leave the guild (at minimum) just to find my place in TBC Classic. There's still a couple of months of Phase One ahead of us, but this is the first glimmer of hope I've had in a while, and for now I'm holding onto it.

*One of the people I knew from Classic, upon hearing a gratz aimed at everybody in his guild who made it to L70 within two weeks, quipped about "that was only the 'no life' crew that sprinted to L70." To which I laughed.

**This doesn't mean I suddenly started liking Karazhan; I haven't. It's just that I liked the raid itself rather than what we were raiding.

A Bucket of Cold Water

For some reason that I can't fathom, people fawn over Karazhan.

The fact that it was the residence of the Guardian of Tirisfal, which is on the other side of the continent, for pete's sake, doesn't truly enter into it. Lorewise, yadda yadda yadda, whatever, doesn't change that it was designed as a "catch up" raid in as much the same way as Zul'Gurub and AQ20 were, to be run in conjunction with Gruul's Lair* and Magtheridon's Lair, so that people who ran Naxx in Vanilla would be on the same footing as those who didn't raid at all. If you look at the entire focus of The Burning Crusade, which is Illidan and the Burning Legion in Outland, it seems pretty silly to have both Karazhan and Zul'Aman as part of the same expansion. Neither of these 10 person raids are directly part of the story; while you could make an argument that Zul'Gurub and AQ20 were built up to in Vanilla as part of extended storylines, neither of the TBC 10 person raids could lay claim to the same level of build-up.

And no, attunement to Karazhan doesn't count.

But regardless, people who played TBC back in the day seem to have a universal love of the place, and just about any conversation I've had with friends in TBC Classic has led with "Are you raiding Kara yet?"

The attunement to Karazhan itself is pretty much a bare minimum if you want to consider yourself "caught up" in TBC Classic, it seems, as guilds have made a concerted push to get into Karazhan and to get as many bodies into Karazhan at all costs.** 

***

I knew that by the time I reached L60 that people in guild were already attuned to Kara, and a week later they were already going into the place. As one of the raid leads I also knew that there would be a push --once I reached L70-- to get me attuned as well.

Another add-on the guild has been promoting --and WoWhead as well-- has been Attune, which keeps track of the various attunements needed in TBC Classic. That's nice and all, but by default it announces in Guild Chat whenever you've accomplished an attunement. 

Which drives me nuts.

If this was all it did, I would be using it myself.
From the Attune Curseforge site.

 

Yes, you can go into the settings and turn that off, but the blatant spamming and wink-wink advertisement --by default-- by the add-on only serves to irritate me. Maybe it's my Midwest upbringing shining through, but the "look at me!" nature of the add-on only served to remind me that I was not with the cool kids. And to make matters worse, you could configure the add-on so that you could see where everybody in your group was on attunements so you could "keep track" of them.

It just had to get more invasive. I work
in IT Security, and this set off alarm bells
in my head. Just what else under the hood
is going on? From the Attune Curseforge site.

 

So what have I done? 

I've ignored any and all suggestions to use the add-on --or any other add-on that keeps track of things and reports/collects them without my knowledge-- and am using my own noggin instead. Just like knowing that Guild Roster Manager is watching for any changes to my information, and that even my birthday would be registered if it were known***, I've been trying to keep as minimal a footprint as possible within the guild itself.

No changes, no updates, no snooping. 

I've strongly considered keeping only my main in guild, which means Briganaa, and pulling Card. After all, she's my disenchanter right now, and will remain so for the time being. I may do that once I settle into Phase One raiding at the end of July, because by then everybody and their grandmother had better be aware that Card is in semi-retirement.

***

Regardless of how it was tracked, I knew that I would need to get attuned to Karazhan. And given that I got to L70 my way, I was going to get attuned my way as well. The Friday that I dinged, I'd already done every single quest or instance that I could perform without flying being required.**** This meant that I had the first two Tempest Keep instances to be run to get the parts for the key for the third instance (The Arcatraz) and then I also needed a Black Morass run to get the key 'approved' by none other than the past version of Medivh himself.

I still think a Shivarra would make a great
around the house assistant. Imagine the
amount of repair work that could get done
with six arms!

 

Yeah, bear with me on this, because there's absolutely no reason --in game or out-- to think that Medivh would be so stupid as to provide his imprimatur on a key to his stronghold to someone he didn't know. This is the case where Blizz' careful story building completely falls apart, and they pretty much handwave that obvious flaw in the story to just say "Hey, you got to see some lore firsthand, isn't that cool?"

/sigh

While I was watching the livestream of the Gruul attempt on June 25th, I was pinged by my Raid Lead. She was already dead in the Gruul attempt (I think), so she had time to chat. She apologized for missing that I dinged L70 (see my previous post for my standard answer), but she asked if I thought I could get attuned by Monday's Kara raid.

Only four instances to run and 3 days to do it? I told her that sure, I could get attuned.

I had only one requirement about joining Monday's Kara run: that I not bump anybody. 

Just because I'm on the raid lead team doesn't mean that I should bump someone who had been waiting to raid Karazhan. I don't get to jump the line just because of my rank; I'd much rather have someone else go who was ready before me, especially since the Raid Lead and the other two members of the lead team were already signed up.

I was assured that yes, there was a spot for melee DPS as the raid was short one already.

Then she dropped the bomb: "How do you feel about off-healing?"

Well, crap.

"I haven't healed an instance since 2010, so I'll need to practice."

"We'd only need you to off-heal on the later bosses in the run, as we can get by with two in the first half."

"Okay, I'll do it."

***

You have to understand something about my relationship with instance healing: it ended badly.

I still remember the run as clear as day. It was an at-level Halls of Stone LFG run, with me on Quintalan in Holy Spec. The tank zoned in and while the rest of us were getting ready he took off. After the first couple of pulls I was sucking wind on mana and constantly having to drink. Of course, I know now that a Holy Pally drinking constantly is pretty common, but he wouldn't wait. Still, I'd done this instance before so I knew what to expect. 

It was then that the tank started harassing me, asking me "Do you even know how to heal?" 

"Of course," I replied.

Then he posted "Divine Plea", "Arcane Torrent", and told me "Use them." 

That was great and all, but if I was going to use Divine Plea, I'd ideally use it while he wasn't in combat, which was, well, never. Back then at least (I can't tell you if/how it works in Retail now), if you healed while Divine Plea was active the outgoing heals were severely handicapped, so you'd preferably use it while out of combat. Such as, you know, drinking. And besides, Arcane Torrent's minimal amount of mana regen isn't exactly a panacea for constant pulls like the tank seemed to think it was.

Then, right after the first boss, before I had a chance to get unstoned, the tank runs up to a trash mob, pulls, and immediately after dropped group and left, the others following shortly thereafter.

I sat there for a long time, staring at the screen, thinking that maybe he was right and that I didn't know how to heal. Maybe he knew things I didn't, and I simply didn't measure up.

And I thought about all the stress that I induced by simply trying to heal an instance --which was considerable-- and I decided it wasn't worth it. I could go Ret, treat healers with respect, and probably do a much better job overall than what I was doing. If the healer went down, I could pick up the slack by sliding Healbot into view and just start casting. In that scenario nobody was expecting heroics out of me, so I could relax a bit.

So I said screw it and switched off to Retribution on a permanent basis.

With the benefit of almost 12 years of MMO experience, I now know that was just a bad pug, and that instead of a complete overhaul I likely needed to tweak things a bit and get more heal specific gear. But then, when I was still feeling my way through WoW the first time, that was a gigantic and crushing blow to my ego. I'd had the benefit of running with Deftig as tank for months, and he made my healing a lot easier because he was a skilled tank. Oh, and he was overleveled for a lot of these instances, which made a big difference.

Still, my belief I was a bad healer persisted through the decade, and I avoided healing like the plague. 

And now I was going to have to confront that belief, whether I liked it or not.

***

I finished my attunement in a semi-guild Black Morass run on Sunday. I say 'semi' because the tank was an ex-guildie who he and his friends from our AQ40/Naxx raids had gone back to their original guild when TBC Classic dropped, but they remained friends overall. So there was me, a couple of guildies, and our ex. The run wasn't put on for my benefit; the tank wanted some rep and I happened to be on at the right time. Considering a few hours earlier a Black Morass pug had ended in abject failure (the Pally tank was unable to keep threat even though I was doing non-crit white damage) these two runs ended pretty much as I expected. 

Another thing that Black Morass is
good for is farming Netherweb Spider Silk.
And leveling Skinning.

 

"Hey, I get to group up with the world famous Cardwyn," one guildie quipped when we hopped on Discord.

"It's not like I've not been around," I replied, a touch irked.

"I know, but the thing about this guild is that if you don't completely keep up with the latest you get left behind."

Tell me something I don't know, I thought. "I won't lie and say it hasn't been rough, because it's been rough for all of the leveling Shamans, watching everybody else being where we want to be while we struggled alone. And now, once I get attuned, I'm going to be tasked with off-healing on Monday, which is something I've not done in over a decade."

"The thing is, Card, that sometimes you're too nice for your own good."

"I find it hard to believe that treating people with courtesy and kindness is considered too nice."

"Amen to that." One of the leveling shamans had hopped on Discord and chimed in.*****

I realize that he meant well, but I wasn't going to change who I am just to play the way I want. If there was going to be a choice about it, who I am versus what I want to play, I will always choose being true to myself.******

So when Monday came around, I got some practice in learning how to create and use mouseover heal commands, and I set off for Deadwind Pass. 

I'm still not used to some of these empty
places in Wrath being active and busy.
Much like how Silithus was in Classic.

 

***

I can describe Karazhan in four words: Shadowfang Keep on acid.

If Shadowfang Keep is Worgen heavy with a decent helping of ghosts along the way, Karazhan is a haunted house where the ghosts have decided the party never ends and the entertainment borders on the bizarre. 

Courtesans? Check.

Wanton Harlots? Check

Opera? Check

/record scratch

Opera? Yep, there's an "opera" in there, but Aida it ain't. We're talking stuff like The Wizard of Oz, The Big Bad Wolf, or Romeo and Juliet, and it's a boss encounter. Our raid got the Big Bad Wolf --a Worgen, naturally-- who turns a random raider into Little Red Riding Hood, and you have to kill Wolfie before he kills off Red and the rest of the raid. It's hell on totems, let me tell you. I was constantly throwing down Tremor Totems while chasing Wolfie around, because he fears (again, naturally).

Other people in the raid loved it, but I was kind of meh about the whole thing. Part of that was that I practically went out of mana just tossing down those freaking totems, but part of it was also that I wasn't amused by the shtick. 

Nor was I amused by the Chess event, which was obviously a Blizzard homage to Harry Potter.

"Ron, you don't suppose this is going to be like . . . real Wizard's Chess, do you?"

"Yes, Hermione, I think this is going to be exactly like real Wizard's Chess."

Probably part of the reason why I was not amused by the Chess event was that two players in a 10 person raid were going to be stuck with being pawns. What's the fun in that?

Let's see, some other highlights....

There's a giant woman dressed in Roman garb as a boss, because that's apparently a thing Blizz does. See: Uldaman, Myzrael, Halls of Stone, Halls of Origination (Egyptian garb here), etc. For all I know someone on the dev team has a thing for Giantesses.

I died three times on one boss, the Shade of Aran, because he requires constant heals while on the run, and guess what class' off-heals doesn't have instant heals? Shamans. So I had to constantly stop to try to get a heal off, and that put me behind this boss' blizzard. And not being on a Mage, I couldn't blink out of the blizzard either. 

Oh, and did you know that there was a ghost dragon in the upper halls? Well, if there's Chess and an Opera, sure... Why not have a ghost dragon?

Or that the end boss was a demon,******* in an impossibly large roof area of netherspace? I am shocked... Shocked, I tell you.

***

As you can tell, I wasn't altogether thrilled about the experience.

Healing wise, I think I did okay. I didn't have too much to do, but I filled in where I could. I can confirm that Chain Heal is really nice, but if not a lot of people are taking damage, the quick heal is much more efficient.

DPS wise, I was called out for my positioning, and the tank was absolutely right. My positioning sucked. I had issues trying to figure out which direction the ghosts were pointed, because you can see through them, so I didn't have the visual reference of knowing the tank was on the other side or not. And that was on me. 

I suppose I'll get better at my melee positioning, having played Card for so long, and as far as mechanics goes I'll get better with practice.

But what I think won't get better was my impression of the place. 

I've a friend who is an English Lit teacher, and she went bananas about all the Enlightenment references in there. There are other friends who came to TBC Classic just so they could run Karazhan again, because it was such a touchstone on their WoW careers. Still there are others who think Karazhan was the best raid that Blizzard ever produced for WoW.

I just... No, I just can't think that.

For me, Karazhan was neither epic nor special. I never went there until I was L90 --and soloed the place-- so I didn't have the pull of nostalgia. Its mere existence in the southern part of a continent for a Guardian who was named after the northern part is off putting to me, lore be damned. If nothing else, it feels like a very pretty "look at what we can do!" showpiece that is out of step with the rest of TBC. Now, if this raid were a bridge between TBC and Wrath, some judicious reworking of the bosses could let this fit right in as a prelude to Wrath. But TBC? The only thing it's got in common with TBC is that there's a demon at the end. And that the last occupant opened the Dark Portal back in Warcraft 1.

I mean, I'll still run it, but it doesn't have the same feel or pull that the Classic raids did. Even if you took the 40 persons and converted it to 25, the Classic raids would have a greater sense of purpose and awe than Karazhan has. And while Karazhan does make a 10 person raid feel like a raid, that's not saying a lot given that if you treated both Upper and Lower Blackrock Spire as one dungeon --which it can be treated as such if you choose to-- Blackrock Spire would feel pretty epic in its own way. And be more integrated into the WoW Classic story than Karazhan is to TBC Classic.

Even Gruul's Lair looks more like a regular raid to me than Karazhan does.

***

I suppose I ought to brace for the commentary telling me I'm full of crap, but after the Death March to L70 and the subsequent push to attunement, I've more than a bit of buyer's remorse. 

I busted my ass for this?

*I still don't get why we're picking on poor Gruul Dragonslayer. I thought the Black Flight were the enemy, after Onyxia and Nefarian made pretty plain. 

**That 'all costs' reference continues to bear fruit, as I've seen some acquaintances decide to pass on the raiding scene in TBC Classic entirely, getting off the treadmill just as they should be getting ready to roll. Ironically enough it hasn't been any of the Leftovers, although we could be forgiven for jumping off the raid train, but people for whom real life has trumped any game playing. 

***Sorry, I'm not gonna put it out there. I'll just say that it's already happened in 2021, which means you've got half a year to guess. 

****Technically speaking, if you had a Warlock in the group you could get summoned to the platform of a Tempest Keep instance prior to running inside without being L70, but I knew that wasn't an ideal situation. Or, bypassing the Arcatraz key, if you had one person in group with the key plus a Warlock, you could skip two instances entirely. But like I implied, you're going to need that key eventually, so why not take care of it now?

*****I couldn't decide whether she agreed with me or the other guildie, but I'm going to assume given she said it after my comment that she meant my opinion.

******Somewhere upwards of 25-30 years ago, my father was involved in a disagreement with his boss at work. From what I remember, the disagreement stemmed from activities that his boss would do --and encourage his underlings to do and then expense-- when they went on business trips. Dad thought the activities were unethical and said so, and the resulting tiff led to my Dad getting reassigned. Well, the people who worked for my dad --his entire department as he was a middle manager-- effectively revolted and told senior leadership that they would all quit en masse if Dad didn't get his old job back. Because of that pressure, my Dad's boss was reassigned instead and Dad put back in his former position. My dad and I frequently didn't see eye to eye, but I never forgot that moment. 

*******Whom we defeated on our third try. Or was it fourth? Either way, the RNG gods smiled on us and we were able to defeat the Prince before the summoned hellfiring demon that wiped us in previous attempts appeared.