Kleps and Jarik Suck at Arena

So, I was sitting around this weekend when Kleps throws me an IM asking, of all things, if I wanted to do arenas. Once upon a time, back in season 5 or so, we had formed a 2v2 team of Arms and Prot-healing called whatislovebabydonthurtme, and had sucked our way through a bit of arena, but we hadn't touched it in six months or so, so I thought, "what the hell" and said yes.

Initially, I thought that a Holy-Ret team would be more successful than an Arms-Ret team, so I went in as healer with a grand total of about 250 resilience and a PvE holy spec, and we proceeded to get facerolled. After 5 games, we were 1-4, including a game we really should have won, but I was terrible and died right as their prot pally healer went OOM. We encounted the same double rogue team twice in there, both times enjoying a front row seat to "dying without being able to move." When a pair of rogues can kill you while keeping *both* teammates CC'd, then their crowd control probably needs sharper diminishing returns. I concluded that Arms-Ret couldn't be any worse than this, since Jarik has actualy pvp gear and a pvp spec, so I switched over.

We did marginally better, I think we were 2-3 for the second half of the night. Including a victory over those damn rogues. They did their thing, trying to blast the crap out of me while kleps was blinded, but the "group up and burst them down" plan runs into a major snag when I trinket and pop bladestorm before they can stun again. They still killed me, but I knocked them down to 50% each. With all their cooldowns blown, kleps was able to finish them off. Of course, we ran into them a fourth time and died, at which point we said screw it and stopped, but it was still nice knocking them down a notch, even if it was only once.

Maybe it's just a product of 2v2, and our complete lack of PvP gear, but it really wasn't as fun as it was back in season 5 and BC. There was either a rediculous amount of burst that I couldn't keep up with as a healer, or we were just locked in place until we died. I guess it's fun if you're the locker, but when the only defense against a strategy is "have enough gear so that you survive the initial burst," it really just raises the question of, "why did we even try?" Rogues in particular get brought up in this, because their pvp mechanics are entirely based around being cheap and locking you up. And they need this, because rogues who get caught in the open die. But rogues who make it to you undetected and unleash everything can't be stopped. There's no middle ground, and the middle ground is where it's fun.

But then again, maybe it's just because we suck

Why Should We Raid?

I saw this on the WoW forums today:

Q u o t e:
thought you people learned by now. And you would think that having to progress and gear up as you progress like the rest of us did all those months with those horrible zones (besides Ulduar ) would actually matter for something.

So tell us again why should we raid?

It came out of one of those discussions that goes something on the order of, "gearing up is too easy now, and they're going to hand everyone T9 when 3.3 comes out."

I think this highlights one of the constant conflicts of vision between a certain type of player and the Devs that's come from the (relatively) recent shift in design which has been branded as "catering to the casuals." As Blizzard views it, which is the point of view I agree with, World of Warcraft is a game. It is supposed to be fun, something you enjoy. And they're trying to make it easier for everyone to enjoy it together. Just hit 80, all your friends are working on TotC? It's ok! You can go run heroics for conquest badges and even some triumph badges so you can get caught up and raid with your friends! Prefer PvP? Well, you can use those conquest and triumph badges to buy last season's arena gear, so you don't have to spend months being destroyed by everyone around you in order to get enough gear to actually survive more than five seconds at a time! I switched to my paladin, who was freshly 80 in blues and quest greens, during 3.1, and I would have killed to even be able to get valor badges from heroics. Instead, I had to go back and run naxx again in order to start pulling my weight in Ulduar.

But that certain type of player, they don't see it this way. Warcraft isn't a game, it's srs bsns. For them, progression, and the gear that comes with it, is a measure of their self-worth. "Look upon my full set of tier 9, and see how it indicates my greatness! Also, it shows that I am well endowed, because no one with a small penis could ever accumulate this much epic gear! All you noobs must go through the same harrowing progression I did in order to try to prove that your penis is this big, but by the time you would accomplish this, I will have a full set of tier 10, proving that mine is even bigger than yours!"

And then, in accordance with their stance on this, Blizzard will make all dungeons below icecrown drop emblems of triumph, allowing those among us who recently hit 80, or are slightly behind in progression, to reach a certain level of gear with relative ease, so that we can all join in for the final assault on icecrown. Because that's their goal, to make the raid content accessable, to give newly dinged 80s a chance to experience the battle with Arthas before the next expansion comes and pushes us to new frontiers. But to those players whose self-worth is all wrapped up in their epic gear, this is intolerable. They're letting anyone have gear as awesome as theirs, and then no one will look at their gear and think they have a big penis. So, they ask the question that originally sparked this: if raiding won't prove to people that I'm awesome and have a huge penis, why should I raid?

Well, you should raid because it's fun, because it's something you enjoy. And honestly, if your self-esteem has become this wrapped up in a game, you really need to find something else going for you. And while I'm not going to deny that getting upgrades and having uber gear is part of the fun, you really should raid because you enjoy raiding. And if you really need people to think your penis is big, go do something more traditional like buy a sports car and let the rest of us enjoy our game in peace.

More True Stories: The Stupid Things People Do

So, we were working on Yogg the other night, and finally seem to have phase 1 under some semblance of control, and one of our raiders, after having listened to our raid leader explain phase 1 four times in the past month, and hearing me yell "stop dps!" 30 times that night, and watching our tanks run the adds down to Sara over and over again, heard someone say something about the explosion hurting Sara. And then, they said, "Wait, aren't we trying to save her?" Keep in mind, we had made it to phase 2 before, and heard his "Hey, I'm a god of death, bow down, bitches!" speech, so it's not like the fact that Sara is Yogg's avatar was still a big secret.

On a side note, I would like to take a moment to pause here and call for the public humiliation of the overenthusiastic coincidence finders who posted on wowwiki that Sara was likely a reference to Lovecraft's mother, who was named Sarah. It's a freaking pun off Saron! Come on, people, think occam's razor, don't try to make things more complicated.

Anyways, back to the story. I'm not judging this person for missing the story elements of the fight, it's a bit crazy trying to pay attention to them all while still dodging clouds and everything, but I don't think we could have stated any more clearly: "We need to make these adds blow up next to her in order to hurt her." If they thought we were trying to save her, why did they think we kept calling for stopping DPS? This person has a reputation for being slow on the uptake sometimes, but this was missing the whole basic premise of the phase. It'd be like asking, "Why is that dragon destroying all the eggs?" on Razorgore.

Anyways, as I said earlier, we finally seem to have phase 1 under control (though watching the first add get pulled down with 6% health and a full stack of dots because people can't stop dps always makes me freak out a bit), so we were working on phase 2. Discovering that the channel on diminsh power could be interrupted was a huge thing, it took us from not being able to kill a single crusher tentacle to actually being able to keep up with them for a bit. But the really fun part was how almost every single brain phase, half the melee came running out at us, swinging for the fences. "You have one minute, don't get greedy," apparently translates into, "OMG, if I beat on the brain some more, I can be teh winnar of teh meterz!" The damage you lose by not taking those extra 2 seconds of dps time so that you can make sure you get out of the brain are nothing compared to the wipe you cause by getting MC'd and not only losing all the damage you would have done for the rest of the fight, but also forcing the rest of the raid to divert damage for killing you. It's not worth it, really.

Oh, also, if you get DC'd during Yogg, apparently you log back in with zero sanity. True story.