I Love These People

I had to whisper some serious props to the tank in this LFR - he/she solo tanked the fight from start to finish after the second tank left just before the pull, only dying right at the end and surviving long enough for the DPS to finish Lei Shen off.

Makes a very nice change from your average PuG tank!

I almost didn't heed the call

But then I did.

Hooray for people calling rare mob spawns in General Chat!

A Change of Pace

Due to Infamy not raiding anymore, I've been playing casually, filling my stables with rares and getting back into pet battles.

One of my former Southern Wardens guildies, who joined a different guild to me when the Wardens stopped raiding, offered a place on their raid team for the week.

They're rather behind where I was in the progression stakes; their 2nd raid of the week was only the 3rd boss in ToT normal, where Infamy would normally be working on the 6th heroic kill, whichever boss that happened to be.

Since I had a "free" week, however, I accepted... and actually didn't mind the change of pace. It's been quite awhile since I've been the most experienced one in the raid - in Infamy I always felt like I was scrambling to keep up, but with this group I helped them get their first Tortos kill and make some decent progress on Megaera to boot.

Sure, I could see it getting frustrating wiping on fights that I'm used to doing either on heroic or in half the time, but for this week, it was cool. Not as boring-ly easy as LFR (which I still have to do because of my incredibly bad luck on Titan Runestones), but not as stressful as heroic.

I'm not sure how long I'll last as a casual - I tend to like more of a challenge when playing computer games - but until I decide to go searching for yet another guild, chilling out for awhile isn't such a bad idea.

Silence! I keeel you

Hunters have been getting a lot of attention lately as Blizzard tries to tone down PvP utility and burst but still keep PvE DPS viable.

One of the newest changes on the 5.4 PTR is the addition of Counter Shot, a baseline ability to interrupt spells.

I think this would be a great change, although I'm not sure if it would make it into the game in its current form. After all, an interrupt is pretty powerful, which is why PvE and PvP hunters alike felt forced to take Silencing Shot as their 2nd tier talent.

If we did get Counter Shot, I would definitely feel free to take either my old favourite spell, Intimidation, or most probably Wyvern Sting (due to the shorter cooldown and CC potential) instead... which makes me wonder, if we *did* get Counter Shot, would we have the opposite problem that we have now, where no-one takes Silencing Shot rather than everyone?

We've always been a rather odd class to handle - jack of all trades, master of none. Probably the most versatile class for any one role (PvP, PvE, farming, soloing) with heaps of utility, but none of the raw killing power of the other classes.

Really don't envy the Blizz developers trying to sort this one out!

Full Circle

Firstly, no, it didn't take me a month to write this post. I've had internet issues this past month and haven't been able to log on.

When I finally do manage to log on, I find that not only have I missed 3 heroic boss kills, it is also the last week of raiding for Infamy - there aren't enough of us to keep a 10m raid team going.

Considering I only just joined the guild 3 months ago, this is incredibly annoying. I hate to go back to being a non-raider after the challenge of heroic raiding, but I may have to - there are very few Oceanic guilds left on Proudmoore (or at least, ones that can at least clear ToT).

Blizzard may be bringing in more casual players by promoting LFR, but damn it's killing the raiding scene. It makes me wonder how many people now are doing heroics - surely a lot fewer now than previously.

I used to know and PuG with so many people from familiar guilds; now my friends list is almost empty and those guilds have fallen apart with very few new ones to replace them. All the inter-guild banter going back and forth about which guild killed which boss, Trade Chat filled with guilds picking up PuGs to fill raiding slots - gone.

I feel I'm back where I started, way back in Vanilla - no permanent home, no ties, just casual playing. Not terrible, but I was playing WoW like a single player RPG, subscribing on and off to make the most of the monthly fee.

Perhaps it's worth it to Blizzard to change the playerbase to mainly casuals, but I'm not so sure... hardcore fans will pay any price for what they want (just ask Apple); casuals will go at the drop of a hat... and now that there are games out there that look and feel less dated, it's not a good sign.