You know you've been out of the loop when you find out a day late that Phase 5 of TBC Classic will drop next week.
My first thought was.... Really? Really?
I think I should have known Blizz would do something like this, but I'm still quite surprised that they're pushing this hard for TBC Classic to be over so quickly.
The original length between TBC's release and Wrath's release was 22 months. If my belief that Wrath will drop in August is true, that means the Classic version between releases is 15 months, and the vast majority of that time was spent in Phase 1 and Phase 2.
Losing 7 months because the "meta slaves", as one of my fellow Monday raiders put it, were able to stomp the previous content isn't a good way of managing the Classic environment. And Classic's problems aren't encapsulated by Blizz releasing things too slowly, but rather failing to handle balance issues between the huge population servers and the small population servers.
Myzrael-US is down 50% from the high point of September/October 2021, according to Ironforge's Classic WoW Population website, and while there's potentially a lot of causes to that, I know quite a few raiding guilds left for the larger population servers, shrinking the pool of available raiders*. Several people I know on Myz faded away from raiding and/or playing in general, and those I was able to keep in contact with did not say "gee, we're just spinning our wheels with the same raid on farm" as a reason for leaving. Far and away the largest reason for leaving TBC Classic was burnout from trying to chase the Meta as fast as possible, particularly when there's real life going on.
It's as if Blizz and the proponents of the Meta are expecting everybody to chase a server World First all the time, and there's real life saying "Hey, remember me? Those bills won't pay themselves, and the family is expecting you to be around for things."
Perhaps that's the biggest mistake that the big players surrounding Classic have made: the expectation that people will be in a pandemic oriented and shut down world indefinitely, which did not happen.
I personally think this rush rush rush mode will blow up in the Classic team's faces, because people will get discouraged and stop raiding if they feel there's no chance of completing Sunwell before Wrath drops. When you throw that lighted match into the tinder of the arguments over the automated LFD tool, I think that the Classic team had better cool their jets and make sure they know what it is they're doing before they bow to the "rush rush rush + I'm bored" crowd.
***
Well, there's certainly no reason for me to try to catch up now, even if I was able to miraculously get into a current raid and get every single drop in my favor --not damn likely given DKP and random rolls and whatever-- I'd still be behind on gear if Sunwell is available on next Thursday. So I'm just going to focus on doing whatever I want to do, and I guess that sometime in June or early July Karazhan will close up shop as the Meta crowd start prepping for what to do in Wrath.
I do know the Monday raid team isn't ready for Sunwell. They haven't cleared Hyjal and Black Temple, because they've been trying to catch up on gear just to get to the point of clearing both raids, and I have to believe they won't be the only team saying "Yeah, we're gonna take a pass on Sunwell for some weeks, Blizz. Nice try."
*And bodies for things such as Classic instance runs that are actual runs, not boosts.
"I have nothing to declare except my genius." --Oscar Wilde at the New York Custom House
In the middle of all of my internal drama, I missed one semi-important event.
Stylish gear courtesy of seventyupgrades.
I knew that once Neve made it to L60 I wanted to take her across the Dark Portal, but I also bowed to reality and that she was simply not going to get into a Classic instance even remotely close to her actual level.* That meant that I was going to have to use quest and/or crafted gear to get her ready for Outland, and so I spent considerably more time than I typically do to get Neve ready by leveling her Tailoring.
Thankfully, I knew which Runecloth crafted gear to make by having done this back in the day, but it was nice to have it confirmed courtesy of seventyupgrades.com. There's plenty of Fire and Frost centric Cloth gear I could craft, and in Neve's case I went strictly Frost.
As ready as she'll ever be.
I also knew that her gear would get replaced fairly quickly, so I wanted to have a set that wouldn't take me a great amount of effort to create. Frostweave and Runecloth pieces came to the rescue, giving me the extra damage that I needed out of merely green gear to keep Neve alive for those first few quests.
When I crossed over to Outland, I caught myself heading to the Alliance side and sighed. Old habits and all that.
Walking like a boss, because Sindorei.
"Neve Dawnweaver reporting in, Sir."
Having dealt with the shenanigans that Garrosh and his ilk dumped on the Horde from a post-Wrathgate and post-Cataclysm Azeroth, it was nice to work with Horde who understood the value of hanging together against a common foe. And heading north instead of south along Hellfire Peninsula was a refreshing change of pace, too.
Not a dragonhawk, but they'll do.
Still, it was good to get Neve to Thrallmar and report in to Nazgrel. When "Advisor to Thrall" was a real thing. Nazgrel needs to lay off the Winterfall Firewater, however.
It feels good to be back.
While I wasn't planning on a Letters from Outland for Neve, I may yet do something along those lines.
Like my other toons, Neve has her own mind. And boy, does she have her opinions. Lots of opinions. My toons are gonna get me committed to an asylum if they keep it up.
*Sorry, I was NOT going to boost her. The cost involved for a brand new toon on a new faction was too high for me to even consider it, even though I have philosophical issues about doing that myself.
I guess it says something about me that I get motivated to do something in an MMO when somebody else needs an assist. If it were purely a thing for me, such as working on Cardwyn toward L68 by not leaving Azeroth, I'd not be very diligent about it.* Likewise, just doing a daily here and there on Brig for a couple of gold has pretty much evaporated about a week after I settle into it, because... Well...
Pick One:
It doesn't hold my interest.
There's no relevant goal to strive for.
I did it already back in the day in Retail, so why do it again?
There's no directive from leadership saying I have to do something specific. (In which case I'll bitch and moan but still eventually do it.)
The most famous example I could give was that I was the only Mage on the AQ40 and Naxxramas raids that didn't have the Briarwood Reed trinket --although it was eventually superceded by Neltharion's Tear when the damn thing finally began to drop in Blackwing Lair-- and after a near brush with obtaining it once** I just kind of shrugged and said "if it drops, it drops".
I was in a group run for something or another --maybe it was an UBRS run, maybe it was a BWL or Naxx run-- but the subject of the Briarwood Reed came up. Over the course of the conversation, I admitted I never got it.
"Card," one of the other Mages replied incredulously, "You never got it?"
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"I just never spent any time hunting for it."
"Well, we need to fix that, and we'll get some runs together so you can get your Reed."
Since I really didn't care about whether I got the Reed or not I never personally followed up on that suggestion. And to be fair I think the other Mages forgot as well, so I conveniently let the matter drop.
But that's pretty much how it's gone for me; I might have some interest in doing some self improvement, but unless there's an external motivation involved, I'm not really concerned about this sort of thing long term.
Contrast this with my questing buddy, who I swear must spend a lot of her waking hours plotting out what her gear needs are going to be a Phase or two in advance. For example, when she found out that our Mage lead was going to respec to Fire she was positively giddy, because that meant she could go back to respeccing her Warlock to Fire Destro as well.
***
I can stick with a goal if I bring an external motivation to bear on something, whether or not it was the smartest thing in the world to do. And once I get started on something with that external motivation, well, I kind of develop tunnel vision.
For example, my current interest in leveling Blacksmithing on Linna is solely driven by needing some gear so that I can bring her to what I'm informally calling Pallyzhan, which is a follow up to Bearazhan from two weeks ago,*** we're going to get an all-Paladin Karazhan run together. I told one of the Mages from the Classic team that if she brought her Pally, I'd bring mine.**** Using Blacksmithing to gear up kind of sucks as far as getting to max skill level is concerned, but at least I can get some okay-ish blue gear made so I won't suck too bad in instances.
But when I got together on the weekend with my questing buddy, she knew I had to get Linna geared up if I was going to make Pallyzhan.
"So," she began [paraphrasing], "what do you need to get geared? We can run instances and get [one of our Monday raid tanks] to tank for us."
My "oh shit" fight or flight response kicked on in my body. I did not want to be the focus of attention, particularly when I saw people chain run instances for hours to get gear drops, and I was not about to drag anybody along just because I needed help gearing. I had a plan --okay, a very very poor plan-- but it was something I didn't have to ask people to drop what they were doing and help me when they'd rather do something else.
"Uh," I finally responded, "how about we just quest for one of your toons? There's enough overlap there that I'm sure it'll help me out."
I could almost hear her exasperation in the "Okay, fine" response she typed out.
We then went out questing --with me assisting her-- but throughout the evening I was restless. I felt like I'd let her down, and that my cancellation of Zul'Aman earlier that evening didn't exactly help matters any. But a big part of me wanted to tell the truth to her. That it was not about her or my refusal to accept help because I was "manning up" or something macho like that, or that I had to cancel Zul'Aman that night and I was upset with letting people down. Or even that it was even some misplaced pride on my part that I just had to do everything myself.
It was that I feel like a fraud when the spotlight is on me, and that I hate hate hate it when I am the center of attention for any reason at all.***** If this was to help Linna get geared up, the spotlight would totally be on me, and my lack of gear and polish in playing a Ret Pally for the first time since roughly 2011 would be a total embarrassment to me and my friends.
***
I almost never talk about my job for good reason, but in an informal chat with my boss yesterday she heard my response to a question she posed and cut me off, saying that I have Imposter Syndrome.
There is no formal diagnosis for Imposter Syndrome, because it's not officially recognized as a mental disorder, but it is loosely defined as "an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon do not believe they deserve their success or luck."#
Boy, did that sound familiar.
Do I think I have it? Well, let's just say when I first read it I thought so, but my mental gears instead switched to "that's a cop out for my real issues, which are not being very good at what I do."
And then I thought Waitaminute.
Yeah, like that. From giphy.com.
I suppose it's nice to know that it's common enough a phenomenon that my boss --of all people-- pointed it out to me, but that doesn't make things easier for me. I began reading the "how to deal with it" on websites today and I had to keep telling myself to stop trying to talk myself out of even just reading about it.
If there was a truer way of understanding what is going on in my head, it's that.
***
So, what to do?
I owe my questing buddy a big apology for copping out on her like that on Saturday night, because I do need help. But I don't know how to ask for it --and, more importantly, accept it-- without wanting to crawl away and hide.
The more I've read on this, the more I realize just how screwed up this has impacted my life. Things that I've suspected suddenly came into crystal focus, and I can't believe I missed out on admitting it for so long. But if you'll notice, I kind of beat around the bush, even after editing this post a couple of times, because I still can't just come right out and just say it.
And some things I likely will never mention to some people in my private life, because I've already gotten the impression that they don't really care or really understand.##
But... To borrow a line oft repeated in What About Bob?:
Baby steps.
*For the record, Card is sitting at L65, about 1/5 of the way to L66, and grinding away at the Wintersaber Trainers reputation. She might make it to Exalted before she hits L66, but I'm not sure. I only get on her about 2-3 times a week, if that, so there's no guarantee for her to make it to L68 before Wrath drops if Wrath Classic drops before September.
**That was a very infamous UBRS run, when I wasn't paying attention to the drops while drinking and rebuffing and yes, the Reed actually dropped. This was back when I didn't look at BiS lists or anything of that sort, so I kind of eyeballed it and decided that it wasn't that much better than what I was carrying at the time, so I passed. The player who put the UBRS together went absolutely bananas and was constantly hounding me, whispering me "How could you pass on a BiS piece like that?"
I was totally honest about it and that I told him I wasn't paying that close attention and just passed on it.
"How could you not know what your BiS items are?"
When you don't play to acquire BiS items, I thought, but I didn't say in reply. I just repeated what I said and said that I wasn't paying attention, which was also true.
But nooo... The person wouldn't let it go, and pretty much told me I was a terrible player for not even doing the basics, and it was likely never going to drop for me again.
Whatever. At least he got that last part right.
***Bearazhan was glorious. We got nine Druids together for the run with
the sole "honorary Druid" being our Rogue, Lostinsleep. We nicknamed the
group "Goldie Lost and the Nine Bears", and it certainly took some effort for
the team to complete Karazhan, but with nine battle rezzes available
it's amazing how unorthodox strategies work out. For the record: I
watched a Twitch livestream of the raid, and listened in on Discord. I loved every
minute of it.
****Oh crap, did that little statement blow up. On last week's Karazhan, I was checking with another player who was leveling a Paladin as to when she thought she'd be ready for Kara, and I mentioned that I knew we'd get at least 5 Paladins as "I'd talked to Exile and told him that if Raike [his wife] brings her Pally I'll bring mine."
There was dead silence for 5 seconds.
"Cardwyn? When did YOU level a Paladin?"
"Oh, uh, well... Since I wasn't doing much of anything..."
"What's their name?"
"Um... I have one on each faction, but the Horde one is pretty much a glorified bank alt right now, as he spends his time chatting up the Innkeeper in Falcon Watch."
"Okay, fine, don't tell us their name."
I figured if I did, I'd never have any peace as people would just add Linna to their Friends' list, and I'd rather there be a reveal later.
While this whole exchange went on, my questing buddy was enjoying every moment of it. I apparently stunned everybody by having this toon that nobody knew about, just flying under the radar. But once Pallyzhan happens, my cover will be blown and I won't be able to get onto Linna late on Monday raid nights on those days I can't sleep.
*****For raids, being a raid leader doesn't bother me, because I'm not a tank and therefore not in the spotlight.
#From Wikipedia, which did a better job of summarizing it than several other websites. Some of the websites overemphasized the "achievements" portion of the syndrome, which made me feel distictly uncomfortable.
##Which doesn't exactly help much, but there it is.
Last Saturday I had to cancel my Zul'Aman run due to a lack of a tank and two DPS.
The Saturday before that we barely filled out a group, but we had two Warriors as the tanks, and one of the Warlocks was filled with green gear.
Where did the people go?
Well, it seems that another guild that ours partners with on occasion --and some people on the other raid team (the 2x/week one) raid with on their alts-- has a pair of Zul'Aman raids on Sunday. And I discovered tonight while just messing around on Linna that quite a few guildies were in those ZA runs.
Sure, it could just be the Saturday night nature of the runs, but I'm also thinking it's the lure of a quick warbear try that is also pulling people away to those Sunday runs. Which is all the more ironic that if they were on their mains and in the Saturday ZA raid, we'd likely have been able to breeze through and get the warbear timer met.*
Once again, it's a lot about who you bring to the raids that determines success when you're talking about a raid that's not on farm.
So....
I think that my Zul'Aman adventures are going to be coming to an end fairly soon, because if I can't keep a Saturday evening ZA run going I'd rather not go back to the other raid, the Saturday afternoon ZA run, instead. I know my gear is kind of borderline, and I could go and use my accumulation of badges to get some better gear, but then I'd have to gem them and enchant them. And I'd still be stuck with the weapons I have, which aren't very good for Phase 4. As good as they were for Phase 1 raids over the pre-raid gear, they're even farther behind where they should be coming out of Black Temple and Hyjal. And I have no recourse except to run arenas, and.... No thanks. I'm not doing that treadmill.
***
That leaves the Karazhan raid as the only raid I have. And it's now starting to become harder to get people to sign up for that raid too, as until we got an additional player at the last minute we were going to go with 9 people this past Friday.
This raid is beginning to fall victim to the 2x/week raid team as well, as one of the people there is switching to a Resto Shaman spec and wanted to run Karazhan weekly to try to get the healing totem that drops off of Maiden. Since Karazhan is on a weekly lockout, he's getting people to show for his "limited scope" raid on Thursdays after their ZA runs, further cutting into the available pool of people. He could have come to my raid and we'd have accommodated his attempt by having him join right before Maiden, but...
I knew this would eventually come, but my raiding days are about to be numbered. In a bizarre way it's a relief, but it still is annoying that there are these activities and they're being ignored while someone else says "Hey, let's do this!" and people flock to them. My questing buddy tells me that she's sure it's not because of me, but when I realized about the Sunday ZA's tonight, I think it is a matter of cliques and who hangs with who. And despite people saying "hey, we should run together", they don't show for the raids I sponsor; actions speak louder than words.
Unlike Shintar's guild basically fading away in a death of a thousand paper cuts, this guild continues on.
And I don't see any real reason to remain in it much longer.
*Yes, their mains are all Hyjal/Black Temple geared.
Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. --Sir Isaac Newton
I guess ol' Isaac never played video games.*
Even though this is a rotation for the Enhancement Shaman circa 2016, I laughed. (From Reddit)
Playing a video game for any length of time is an exercise in managing complexity. Even the simplest of games, such as Tetris, get complex the farther along you play. (Or faster you play, in the case of Tetris.)
But the scope creep of video game complexity, particularly in MMOs and other games that require multiple moves and an ever evolving amount of complexity to play at a high level, is very much a real thing.
I thought about this even before I saw posts from Shintar and Bhagpuss on their blogs, but their posts certainly did push these thinky thoughts into the forefront. And rather than contemplate the state of Briganaa's and Linna's gear** I'd much prefer to instead poke that roadkill that is theorycrafting.
***
On the face of it, theorycrafting deconstructs a video game into its component parts --numbers and data structures-- and attempts to make sense of it all. The overall goal is to find the "best" way of doing things, which can be both bedeviling and satisfying at the same time.
Yes, there is both a good and a bad to the meta.
The bad is that the meta becomes all consuming to a not-insignificant number of gamers, to the point where if you're not doing it perfectly there's bound to be problems.
Totem twisting as an Enhance Shaman in TBC Classic. Thankfully, I've never had to deal with very many of these types. (From Reddit.)
But the good... Well, the good is that you still have to execute the meta to make it work. Just showing up with the correct gear might be 3/4 of the battle, but you still have to play well.... in a group.
I highlighted that last part because what works out in the field while questing in a solo format may not work well in smaller groups, and that may not work in raids.
For example, Linnawyn is a Retribution Paladin, and one of the hallmarks of Ret Pallys is that they need water to regen mana. Lots and lots of water. When I go out into the world to quest with her, I typically carry 80 food and 80 water with me, and that doesn't last nearly as long as I'd like. I also have to freaking drink after every pull --my questing buddy can tell you allllll about that-- so any way to improve my mana efficiency and keep me able to fight enemies longer is a welcome thing.
If you read up on Ret Paladin rotations and whatnot, you constantly hear about keeping the Seal of the Crusader judged on the enemy you're attacking --I'm not even going into the Seal of Blood/Martyr part, as I'm keeping this simple-- but all of this costs mana and will suck you bone dry. So... Enter Seal of Wisdom and judging that Seal while out in the field. Sure, my DPS takes a hit, but I can handle twice as many enemies before stopping to drink, which is more important when questing as opposed to simply killing something quick and then having to drink far more often.
I suppose someone could calculate the timing difference between taking a few seconds longer to kill an enemy versus the extra downtime spent drinking, but my admittedly "winging it" feel to the game seems that I gain a bit more uptime when judging Wisdom rather than Crusader.
However, I get to spend more time doing what I want to do --questing and exploring-- without as much downtime spent drinking, so my modification to what is "supposed to be followed" is based on my solo questing experience on Linna.
Yep, that's me. From etsy.com.
But.
This simple explanation about the best way to play a Ret Paladin goes totally off the rails once you start talking about maximizing DPS in raids.
There's the "Basic" option of Judging Crusader and keeping that going with Crusader Strike, and then keeping Seal of Blood/Martyr going to maximize DPS at the price of your own health, not to mention keeping the Judgements going as soon as it comes off of CD. Oh yeah, and there are other attacks to sprinkle in there, but that's the Basic option.
The "Advanced" option, however, is Seal Twisting, where you try to get two Seal effects within a single melee strike. So you have to have a swing timer to get that just so that you can hit that second seal in the last 0.4 seconds before a melee swing engages. Oh, and did I mention that even sites such as Icy-Veins say it's a very advanced tactic that is very hard to do, but you can seriously up your DPS if you get it right?
Well... guess what version progression raid teams want your Ret Paladin to do?
I mean, the numbers don't lie, but can you execute it?
I know my answer to that question: I can't.
From the comment section of the Reddit post of that Windfury pic shown above.
It doesn't make me a bad player, despite what the hardcore crowd might think. I just simply can't do it. Maybe a decade ago I could, and if I'd the time to practice a lot maybe I could pull it off even now, but given the stress of totem twisting + shock twisting + AOE totem twisting***, I'm just not interested in dealing that stuff.
I suppose it's a matter of the old saw about how "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink," but despite all the numbers pointing toward an optimal method of doing something you still have to execute. And the numbers can't make someone execute if they don't want to.
In case you think I'm picking on WoW, here's a rotation posted on MMO-Champion on a thread titled "Do All Classes Require 15+ Buttons Rotations?" for FF XIV. Makes the Enhancement rotation at the top look quaint.
The thing is, most people will figure out a basic rotation without needing all of the theorycrafting, just on feel alone, and will come pretty close to something that the numbers say works. If you just play and fiddle around with what seems to do the best mix of efficiency and damage, you'll get probably about 75-80% of the way there.
So yay, common sense.
***
But let's talk about the other part of theorycrafting: gear + enchants + gems + whatever.
You know, the part that might or might not fall into your lap during a dungeon run or a raid.
That's not quite true: you can buy some stuff using gold and/or badges (or whatever), and having a ton of gold does solve quite a few ills. Art truly does imitate life in this regard.
The irony about Classic WoW was how far off the tier sets were compared to what gear popped out as the "best" gear when crunching the numbers.
Which is how you ended up with this Holy Pally meme in Classic. This is why Cardwyn never had her head slot visible: that damn pre-raid BiS turban looked incredibly stupid. (From Reddit.)
Crunching the numbers to find the best gear makes sense.
But understanding what is the best gear for you, that involves nuance.
For example, our Mage Lead recently told me that he was going to switch back from Arcane Specialization to Fire, even though Arcane had more DPS. "I just like Fire more," he told me. Because of that, he's going to optimize his gear for Fire Mages.
So what if it's a pencil and paper RPG thing. It's still fire. From displate.com.
Or for me with Neve, I have no designs on taking her raiding beyond maybe Karazhan and/or Gruul/Mags, so I'm planning on sticking with Frost for her. If you listen to the guides and theorycrafters, the DPS isn't optimal and the gear is different, but if you go with what you like you can still find what works for you (and what's optimal gear for that specialization).
Now obviously Fire Mages aren't that off the top of the damage meters compared to Arcane Mages, and they have the additional bonus of giving Destro Warlocks who specialize in Fire an additional DPS boost. So it's not like you walked up to the raid leadership and said "Hey, I want to suck at DPS but since I like it you have to live with it." There's a tradeoff here. And when I was recruited into AQ40, it was explicitly stated that I'd have to switch to being a Fire Mage, because even if my DPS personally sucked, my presence would boost the DPS of the rest of the Mages. But still within the realms of reason you should be able to do what you want to do, and what works for you, and still find a way to do well within that paradigm.
***
So what am I getting at?
Well, the TL;DR here is that while theorycrafting does a good job of identifying what the meta is for a specific class and/or build, telling you what rotation and gear are both optimal, you can't simply be a slave to it. You have to do what feels good for your enjoyment in a game, complexity or not. Some people love their meta, and some people have their own way of doing things. Telling people "yr doing it wrong" isn't going to win you friends and admiration of your peers.
People will figure things out on their own if you give them enough time and a basic understanding of how a game works. Even when it may seem counterintuitive to do so, just letting people learn at their pace does wonders for their enjoyment in a game. It's when you try to accelerate the process artificially --such as the race to max level when the Dark Portal opened-- that people stop having fun and become slaves to the meta, because they don't have the time (or inclination) to figure it out for themselves.
Of course, that sort of idea kind of flies in the face of "how to play an MMO correctly", but that's the crux of the thing: there is no one way of playing an MMO correctly.
That's the entire point of an MMO: to allow people to play the game their own way. If you want people to just "play it right" by following the meta, then why have all this extra crap lying around in the first place? Because it's "how things are done?" No, all of the extra stuff in an MMO isn't there to bedevil the people who tinker with the meta, it's to allow people to have options. Perhaps too many options in the case of Retail, where it frequently feels like you have to do all the things in order to satisfy the meta, but those options are there for people who want to play and figure things out for themselves.
Or just hang around and fish all day.
*Or tried to solve the Schrodinger Wave Equation for the Hydrogen atom, for that matter. Admittedly it's the easiest of the elements to solve, but I remember it taking at about a month in my Atomic and Nuclear Physics class to go through it for the first time. When we commented on the difficulty involved, my professor told us about this one grad student he knew who decided that his dissertation was going to be solving one of the higher level elements --I think an atomic number somewhere in the 80s-- and we all just kind of shuddered.
**Maybe in another post, but not now. I'd prefer to pretend that we're still back in Phase 1, where Karazhan + Gruul/Mags gear was the best you could get, because the reality of where I am versus where seventyupgrades says I could be is pretty damn depressing. And that's just for Brig; Linna is still entirely in quest greens, having not poked her nose into a BC instance this entire time.
***And moving around. Don't forget that part. Throughout Karazhan, Gruul/Mags, Serpentshrine Cavern, and The Eye, I've yet to find a melee friendly raid like there were in Classic. There might be a boss or two here and there, but when you're constantly on the move your totems ain't worth crap once you move out of their range. At least Ret Paladins do have that advantage over Enhancement Shamans in that their Judgements are on the enemy, not a specific place on the ground, but still, the mana costs do add up.
Five months ago, I spent my Thanksgiving looking out the window from Good Samaritan Hospital while being treated for congestive heart failure. While this date may not be the traditional six months/half a year mark, I figured I ought to fill a few people in on what's been going on in my (non-MMO) life.*
Good ol' Ozzy. Still the Prince of Darkness (since 1979).
My heart hasn't killed me yet.
I mean, well... duh. I'm still here.
I haven't exactly been raising hell or anything like Mr. Osbourne has, but after my little
"adventure" my heart has settled back into it's typical non-existence.
Last
week I had an echo cardiogram as a follow up from my hospital stay, and
the cardiologist was extremely pleased with the results. My heart, she
informed me, is back to pumping at its proper capacity. There is a
slight leak in one of the valves, but that is not a new event so she
isn't concerned about it. That leak is more of a matter of "It might
have always been there, so we'll just keep an eye on it and go from
there."
The way forward for me is to maintain my current drug
cocktail and then after a six month follow up scheduled for October we
might begin to wean myself off of some of the drugs. The cost isn't that
problematic (yet), because my highest drug costs come from monitoring
my diabetes as opposed to everything else.
I have more energy now than I did for most of 2021.
This has taken some getting used to, because I wasn't expecting this.
Yeah, my hospital stay had flushed out a lot of built up fluid from my congestive heart failure, so you'd think that on the face of it I'd have some improvement in my energy levels, but I didn't expect it to be quite like this. Part of the additional energy likely comes from managing my diet, because my blood glucose and blood pressure were definitely not in a safe zone, but I also think that there's more to it than that. I also believe that there's a direct impact from...
I've taken some steps toward getting back in shape.
I'm not about to tell you that I've gone crazy or anything, because I've seen the Peloton memes. And thankfully I've not been bombarded by people trying to tell me how great spin classes and Peloton are, because even if I were interested in trying it out --I'm not-- the fervor of the True Believers is closer to what you'd see out of Twilight's Hammer than anything else.
Yeah, this.
Regardless, my reality consisted of two problems: my muscles atrophied during the course of my congestive heart failure in 2021, and I was in bad enough shape that I couldn't even put the outdoor Christmas decorations back on the shelf there they reside. I knew I had a long road to go to get this fixed.
So I began walking.
A view from Cincinnati Nature Center in early February.
And walking.
The pavilion seen through the trees at Ault Park.
Until my knee --the one I'd injured back in 2020-- said "Fuck you!" and refused to behave.
So while my knee has been recuperating, I began to lift weights. Not anything nutty, to be sure, but just some barbells to try to get some muscle back in my arms and shoulders. For people who haven't lifted weights before, one of the oddball things about exercising this way is that muscle weighs more than fat, so when you initially begin lifting, you actually gain a few pounds. That's because you're converting some fat to muscle, so it's quite common to see an initial bump in your weight before you start losing pounds.
Well, I didn't have a bump in weight, but I didn't lose weight either. So I was a bit confused about all this until I spoke with the Diabetes team about it on a recent check-up, and they went through my diet and found quite a few hidden calories that I could cut out and maintain my current low-carb + low-salt diet. It's one of those scenarios where playing it smart adds up to some real results in the long run.
But despite my not "losing weight", I have lost volume. I can now fit into clothes I was unable to back in 2021, and I've actually had to buy jeans two sizes smaller than where I was in 2021. To be fair, those jeans are starting to look large on me as well, so I get the feeling that I'll be getting these jeans replaced in a month or two.
So at least there's that.
Dealing with a low salt diet is MUCH harder than dealing with a low carb diet.
No, I'm not talking about the prevalence of Atkins and Keto dietary stuff lying around helping out, because those diets deal with things such as "net carbs". As a T2 Diabetic, I can't play around with numbers like that; I have to have a laser focus on total carbs, whether I like it or not. My current target is 60 grams of carbs per meal. No 'ifs', 'ands', or 'buts'. I can't trade carbs between meals like you can with total caloric intake, either. When a nutritionist visited me at the hospital on my first day there, she drew a circle on the paperwork in front of me.
"This," she said, "is a plate of food for a meal. You have 60 grams of carbs to work with."
She then portioned off 1/4 of the plate. "This is for meats and other proteins. Aim for about 15 grams of carbs from this section."
Another 1/4 of the plate was portioned off. "This is for root or starchy vegetables. Aim for about 15 grams of carbs from these."
Finally she circled the half of the plate that remained. "And this," she said with a tone of finality, "is for leafy greens. You can eat as many of those as you want. If you want to add something such as a roll or a slice of bread, fine, but you can't go over 60 grams total. And be wary of things such as salad dressings and other items in salads, because they'll add up fast."
But I've discovered that handling 60 grams of carbs per meal is actually fairly easy when compared to a low salt diet.
This is my life now. Look at the amount of sodium in a cup's worth of generic spaghetti sauce. The "low sodium" option isn't much better at probably 66% of that, and I'm supposed to aim for around 1000 mg of salt per day.
Things like this chart above show how hard it is to find truly low sodium options in a world where salt is freaking everywhere. For this example, I'm lucky in that I can find "no salt added" tomato sauce that I can work with and season the way that I prefer, but for many other items you simply can't avoid salt unless you have to take the bull by the horns and make it yourself.
Once you've figured out how to manage a truly low salt diet, then you discover just how salty everything tastes. Much to my chagrin, a low salt diet has truly become a double edged sword.
I keep hearing how great I'm doing, but I certainly don't feel like I'm doing anything special.
Okay, so this is gonna sound a lot like me discussing MMOs and whatnot, but I've had this conversation with both the Diabetes team and my cardiologist, who have all assured me that I'm doing very well.
"But I'm doing what is being asked of me, and I haven't exactly been hitting my salt targets that well. It certainly doesn't feel like I'm doing a lot."
"You have to understand," one of the Diabetes team members told me, "you doing just that means you're ahead of a lot of people who have Type 2 diabetes."
"But--"
"When just getting people to admit they have to change their diet is a chore, what you're doing is fantastic. You've never complained or bitched; you just went and did it. So just keep doing what you're doing, and you'll be fine."
"Oookay...."
I'm really lucky in that I've got a good team in my corner.
I simply can't sing the praises of the Diabetes Team loudly enough. The same goes for my cardiologist, whom I simply adore. I completely trust their judgement, and I've hopefully had it reciprocated by my trying to follow their instructions to the letter. That's not to say that there haven't been complications --there have been, and I'm not prepared to talk about those right now-- but they're a very good team and I know I'm in good hands.
I think the biggest take away that I have had over the past 5 months has been that this is a process. I'm not going to "solve" my health issues in a simple one-off solution. I could wake up tomorrow and discover I've become allergic to one of the medications I take, or that I could have a stroke while goofing around on WoW. None of this is easy, but in the end I hope to be kicking around here a bit longer.
Can't get rid of me yet.... From magicalquote.com.
*My life has, overall, taken a turn for the better by keeping my Facebook usage to an absolute minimum once the pandemic began. I think it says a lot about the state of Facebook when Reddit gives me less stress.
In case you watched the World of Warcraft reveal and said to yourself, "This is great but there simply aren't enough DRAGONS in there!"
Well, have I got a deal for you:
There's plenty to unpack here, from the reintroduction of Spelljammer (last seen in 2e if I recall correctly), to Baldur's Gate 3, to a collection of new adventures, to some cool designs for tabletop enemy sets, to even a new Starter Set with a new adventure.
But for me, they did save the best for last. At 26:26, they lead into the big reveal.
