The Times They Are a-Changin'

Yesterday, I left the guild I have been in for three years. It was a hard decision to make, but I didn't really see any other options.

The guild introduced me to raiding back when Karazhan was new. I had played the game since its release, but never really gotten into the raiding scene until TBC.

The raiding days in TBC were a lot of fun. The guild was far from cutting edge, but we had fun while raiding, and slowly made progress. I know it's easy to forget the hard times, but I have a lot of fond memories from those days.

The main reason for leaving was that 25-man raiding had become a lot less fun. The raiding atmosphere was bad, raid morale was low, and I didn't agree with the leadership style of the raid leader. The state of raiding was so bad that we barely got enough signups to go raiding at all.

All guilds have their ups and downs, and during the three years I was a member in this guild, I stayed and helped the guild through bad times before. This time, however, I don't see any change for the better anytime soon, and I no longer have strong enough emotional ties to the guild to be prepared for a long haul.

Many of my in-game friends have left the guild, and other people I respect and enjoy playing with have either stopped raiding or play alot less than they used to.

It came to a point where I realized that logging on my paladin wasn't as much fun as it used to be. So I decided to leave and start afresh someplace else.

Will the grass be greener on the other side? I hope so. Only time will tell.

To my former guild mates I'd like to say: "So long and thanks for all the fish feasts!"

Hot-fixed Paladin Stamina Nerf

Several paladins noted the other night that their health suddenly dropped. I must admit I didn't notice it myself, but I can imagine the confusion it must have caused.

Blizzard did an unannounced hotfix where they, in short, nerfed paladin stamina with 4%, while buffing death knight stamina with 2%.

The official announcement came out later:

Paladin

• Sacred Duty now provides 2 / 4% Stamina, down from 4 / 8% Stamina. The cooldown advantages of the talent remain unchanged.

Death Knight

• Frost Presence now provides 8% Stamina, up from 6% Stamina.
• Icebound Fortitude now provides 30% base damage reduction, up from 20% damage reduction. For a geared tank with high defense, this translates to 50% damage reduction, up from 40%.

It's a nice buff to death knight tanks, who have been a bit of an underdog for a while now.

For paladins it's of course never nice to get nerfed (especially not unannounced), but the comments from blue posters seem to indicate that the nerf to stamina makes it less likely that they will nerf Ardent Defender, the source of endless QQ from other tanks.

Since I prefer a fully functioning AD to 4% stamina, I'm all good.

Now we all have to wait and see about that AoE threat nerf that seems to be incoming...

First Time for Everything

Since the raid leader for the ICC10 raid I was in left the guild and did a faction change (he didn't like the state of raiding in the guild, and I don't really blame him), I decided to do some raid leading on my own.

I've never been a raid leader before. It has never really interested me to take the responsibility to get people together, finding replacements, explaining tactics, and police/guide the members of the raid. It just sounds too much like WORK to me, and it is stuff I do eight hours a day, five days a week already. Doing work on my spare time as well didn't sound all that compelling to me.

But since I want to do ICC10, and since my wife has been shut out from 25-man raiding, and since I knew there are a couple of great players who do not have the time to raid several days a week, but still want to do some casual raiding, I got ten people together and went into Icecrown yesterday.

Getting healers for the run turned out to be harder than getting tanks, and since I wanted to have a shaman in the group, I decided to go on my resto shaman instead of my paladin tank.

I have to admit, it was a challenge to raid lead for the first time while being a healer instead of a tank (which I have a lot more experience with). As a tank, I always have to be aware of the mobs and the surroundings, which means it's easier to guide the rest of the raid. As a healer, I was focusing on health bars and sometimes got tunnel vision staring at the colored squares in Grid. Well, at least I could be certain to what hurt or killed anyone in the raid...

Four of the people in the raid hadn't done ICC before, so I had to explain all the fights in detail, which slowed down the pace a bit. But even with almost half the raid being new to the content, we only had one death on boss fights up until Festergut. On Festergut we had our first wipe, but we downed him on the second attempt.

Rotface turned out to be too hard for us this time. With so many newcomers, healers not used to the fight, and a tank who hadn't done the kiting before, our tries quickly turned messy.

It was getting late, and we had four tries on Rotface before calling it and going to Naxxramas to do the weekly raid instead. With more practice, both for the kiting tank and for the rest handling the small oozes, and with stricter healing assignments, I have no doubt we will down Rotface as well next time.

It was a fun raid. I enjoyed leading it since the raid members were doing what they were supposed to, even though they've never done the fights before.

Next time, there will be a lot less explaining of tactics, and we will be able to steam roll the Lower Spire and get more time on the rest of the instance.

Thanks to the people who joined the fun and didn't make me look too bad :)