A New Week

With the start of a new (calendar) week, I get to ponder the possibility of the new raid lockout. As I previously mentioned, I only really raid once a week. Every Tuesday I get to go in with our 10 man group to kill the first six Firelands bosses. This week it’s looking like I’m going to be in more of a DPS role. Using three healers on basically any of the first six (or seven if you’d ask me) bosses is a joke. Our disc priest ends up smite healing most of the time if I don’t go DPS. On the whole Cereal Killers has a very strong healing roster, so I’m always excited when three of us show up on a Tuesday.
Ret DPS isn’t terribly entertaining, but it’s a nice change of pace from healing. Whether or not I feel ret is broken is a bit up in the air. This is mostly because I don’t do damage in raid all the time. Our ten man group typically averages DPS numbers around 20k for most fights, some higher, some lower. Jack can definitely keep up with that. I’m still sporting two pieces of t11 since breaking it up will mean -10% damage from TV. The sum total of the fights I’ve actually been a button masher on can easily fit on one hand. So far my best contribution is a 22k Baleroc kill. That seems decent to me. I’m in a handful of offset pieces from FL, with a 378 weapon. I still have the ZA shoulders and a couple of Molten Front epics. Hopefully I’ll be able to best that number this week.
I AM looking forward to the upcoming ret changes. A lot of people (read: PVP’rs) cried when the crit chance bonus to HoW was removed from Avenging Wrath, but I’m not too worried. Apparently they’re making judgments hit harder, and that along with the passive band aid attack power fix for melee should be a distinct quality of life improvement. The AW nerf will reduce our execute-phase DPS a bit, but the other buffs should compensate for that as well. For my AW/Zealotry burn phase it was always pretty awkward trying to weave hammer of wrath into the equation anyway. I could more or less count on ignoring it if heroism was up. As is, ret is too reliant on procs and our rotation is clunky as hell. Hopefully the incoming changes will smooth things out for us. I for one don’t really like doing 90% of my paladin’s dps on my ilevel 358 geared warrior alt either, so I’m welcoming a buff.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to a new week of potential FL drops. Hopefully some of the bosses will stop being so stingy with the plate DPS gear. Also, although I don’t like Mastery, I’d like Beth’Tilac to drop my t12 look-alike shoulders. We roll with too many paladin/priest/warlock players for me to even dream of getting the tier token. Out of the six or so Majordomo kills I’ve been in raid for, only one PPW token has dropped anyway, and our main tank got that one. I’m semi-optimistic still. A new raid lockout is full of possibilities.
P.s. I posted this at work from my phone. Ignore any failures herein.

A Bit of History

My journey through the World of Warcraft started in 2007.  At the time I lived in a home with two good friends who just happened to have very similar gaming tastes.  WoW came into the house through a fairly unlikely means.  Oddly enough, the catalyst that got us playing was the Warcraft episode of Southpark.  On that fateful day I rolled a hunter named Lighthawk, which was my gamertag of choice back then.

In the following four years I've enjoyed my time playing quite a bit.  The two friends I started with hung around, sometimes in the same guild as me, sometimes not.  Among all the reasons I've ever cited for "why I play World of Warcraft," the friendships I've forged with other players is always the first.

Over the course of the last four years, I've played a lot of Warcraft.  Raiding is absolutely the end objective of all my efforts.  Out of all 12 (soon to be 13) tiers of content, the only ones I've actually successfully cleared are 4, 7(25 man), 9(25 man), 10(10 man), and 11(10 man.)  Of the four guilds I've belonged to, none of them could be categorized as progression guilds.  For me, that's okay.  The kind of player I'd like to be is generally at odds with the kind of social life I'd like to have.  Again, I'm okay with that.  Mostly.

Out of those five tiers of content, I've raided as a marksman hunter, a resto shaman, an elemental shaman, an assassination Rogue, a holy paladin, and a ret paladin..  As the banner on this blog suggests, my current main is a holy paladin.  I named him Jacklalane after the late and quite famous "Juice Man."  Lalane was a fitness/health buff, so I find it a fitting tribute (if I can call it that) to play a healer with his name.  Most people don't realize the reference, but that's cool.  It's nice and easy for people to say "Jack" on vent, so that works for me.  My first real raiding main was a hunter named Kiadimundi and NOBODY could say that name on vent.  I ended up with the nickname "Kia" as a result.

At present I'm an active member of an (Alliance) ten man raiding guild On Kael'Thas called Cereal Killers.  The guild was created by a guy I've known in game for almost the entirety of my experience.  We're a patchwork of players who are generally pretty profane and always fun-loving.  CK is another guild that I wouldn't call "bleeding edge," but we're doing all right in Firelands.  Some may laugh at our 6/7 normal-mode progress (especially after nerfs,) but all things considered I think we are proud of our success.  Membership is low and most weeks it's a crap shoot as to who will be participating in raids.  I myself am only currently raiding one out of three days a week.  We're making progress on Rag, but it's difficult because we generally don't have a lot of stuns and knockbacks.  If not for the add phases, I'd say we would have the firelord on farm by now.

Despite the fact that we're not running hardmodes, I always enjoy my raid time with CK.  Healing as a holy paladin suits me so well.  Post Firelands nerf I've started contributing more as a DPS in raid, which I also love.  For me raiding is somewhat of a competition against others in the group who have similar roles.  That might be why I've never really gravitated toward tanking.  Contributing toward kills while excelling (read: topping meters) vs other players is a big part of the fun I have raiding.

The purpose of this blog is going to be simple and straight forward.  I'm just here to share my thoughts.  I don't really theorycraft or get into lore.  That said, Warcraft has been a big part of my life for the last few years and I do enjoy the blogging community that has grown from the game.  I'd very much like to be a part of it.  Although I'm not a member of a wildly successful guild, I hope I can contribute something to the WoW bloggersphere.  Please always feel free to comment, but if you're here to troll, put people down, or contribute negatively, don't expect anything other than removed comments.  This is about fun, sharing, and collaborating.  I hope to see at least some traffic, and maybe some comments.  If you've come this far, thank you.  I hope this space embodies something interesting for those players who are like me. 

A New Endeavor

I have wanted to make a World of Warcraft blog for some time now.  Herein I will share some of my thoughts and activities concerning Blizzard's MMO.  Topics and information shared will be geared toward readers that already have a working knowledge of WoW.  It's past 4 A.M., so I should probably turn in.  It just didn't feel right to bring a blog into the world and leave its pages barren.  Stay tuned.