In celebration of six months of Jaded Alt, Windsoar proposed a challenge to her commenters: Do whatever I say. Yep. Quite the taskmaster, that one. Responding to the whip appeal, I am tackling the topic she suggested for me:When I first visited your website I was absolutely blown away by your theme–the artwork, sidebars and even the fancy script. I know you were also kind enough to donate a beautiful button to A Healadin’s Tear for a blogging contest.
I’d like to know more about the artist! Is it a hobby, a passion, something you learned just to set up your blog? (haha)
I've always maintained I am a much better writer than an artist, but you folks have indulged me with kind words, so I'm posting a bit more. The answer to that question would probably take a lot more explanation, but here's the basic rundown: It is a hobby, one I've dabbled in for years, starting rather young and becoming a bit more serious about improving in high school.The digital art is my favorite medium, so I'll discuss that mainly, I suppose. I use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator CS2 - Photoshop is for the majority of the images in this post, Illustrator is what I use for the RSS icons and other vector images. I initially would make a sketch with Col-Erase pencils (love those things, especially the photo blue one) and scan it in, then do more with it in Photoshop. But once I scrounged together the money for a decent tablet (I use a Wacom Graphire 8x8) I started sketching in Photoshop with a custom brush that's set to emulate a fairly hard sketching pencil. I've tried a lot of different styles and it's difficult for me to say which I like best. They've all ended in some interesting pictures. Cel-shading is fairly easy - I could knock out a portrait for a tabletop game in 3 hours start-to-finish - but I also like the quick, loose lines of speed-painting. And there's a nice sense of completion in a full-on painting that you've spent over 20 hours working on. 
My explorations in digital art started when I was playing EQ2. That eventually turned into a modified DnD game, and I made character portraits for most of the main characters. More tabletop campaigns (I think we went through Werewolf, Mage, Shadowrun, DnD... mind-changing GM is mind-changey <.< ) and more portraits later, I decided I really liked making things for friends. Unlike writing, art provides fairly instant gratification, and I could finish a piece without spending days, months, or years writing and proofing. In 2006 I decided I liked it so much that I would enroll in a Game Art and Design program. I graduate from that in May (yay!) with a Bachelor's, and it's certainly been an interesting ride. I've been exposed to so many different mediums I thought I would hate but have very much enjoyed. Photo manipulations, for one, are an absolute blast. Bringing a ton of stock images together to form a cohesive image with a solid theme is a lot of fun. Most of my recent 'art' work has been done in 3D Studio Max. I've done everything from creating simple polygon meshes to building a full game level mock-up, complete with textures done in Photoshop. Which, for the record, seems boring but is also a lot of fun. Turning a flat block into a brick wall just by applying a nice texture with appropriate bump and spec maps is an exciting process to me, and something I'd like to explore in the future. 
Unfortunately, I've lost my tablet in this mess I call an apartment, or I'd still be sketching and painting. It's good stress relief, and these days I can use every ounce of that, so I may try to dig it out one of these days and fire up the drivers.
Gypsy gives me way too much credit. She probably thinks I started blogging with some lofty goals to help people and be an approachable member of the WoW community. Really, I just like to hear myself talk. Or write. I only like to hear myself talk when I'm severely inebriated and everything is just so damn funny.But I've been blogging for a few months now, and I intend to stick with it. I've fallen into a looser schedule than I would like, but I am still writing and still thinking of new things to write and share. They say the first couple of months is the hardest, and I've gotten past that particular hurdle, coming out on the other side with 155 subscribers as of today and a couple hundred views a day. That's... just mind-boggling to me, honestly. I've been linked by WoW.com three times already, and linked repeatedly by long-time bloggers I respect the hell out of. It makes me think I must be doing something right.So why do I do it?
Despite the snarky opener, I really don't blog for myself. If I did, I'd be done with it now. There's only so much of myself I can stand, really. The truth is, I started this blog to show myself that I could. I'm very good at starting things strong with plenty of enthusiasm, but I become easily distracted by other projects and tend to lose motivation. It's why I have a hard-drive full of short stories, but no completed manuscript, despite working on the same one for about five years now.I love paladins. Always have, always will. And I feel like I am fairly competent at playing one. So I wanted to share what I've learned with a community that I've found to be surprisingly warm and receptive. Without the community, I wouldn't be here. That's plain and simple and it's never going to change. Even if I don't keep up with responses for every comment, I do read them all and appreciate every one, even (and especially) the ones that disagree with me. Show me a new way of seeing things and I will take a good, earnest look. I don't believe this makes me less confident in my own view, just better able to understand those around me.
I intended this to be more of an informative blog, but that just isn't me. I'm way too fond of sarcasm to be serious all the time. But I'm also not nearly interesting enough to blog about any random thing on any given day. So I write with the hope that I can get people to laugh or nod in empathy while learning something new. I poke fun at my own mistakes because no one should ever take themselves that damn seriously, and hopefully someone out there can learn from my idiocy.
Despite working retail for five years, I like people. I like meeting new people and learning their point of view and where they're coming from. And that's really what blogging is, to me. I have blogs in my reader from classes and playstyles I would never enjoy, but the authors of said blogs are entertaining and present well-phrased ideas that even I can understand. I have folks that I have read for years with whom I now share a common hobby as well as the drama that comes along with it. And as common sense as it should be - no one wants to blog into a void, after all - most every blogger wants to converse with their readers. These are the unofficial Warcraft community representatives with whom you can actually talk, one-on-one, in a laid-back environment.I suppose that's what I aspire to be. It's cliche, and I'm ripping off Gypsy here too, but there's really no better way to put it: If one person says to me 'Thanks, your writing made me smile / helped me / got me inspired to blog' then I've done my job. That's what I write for.
I need to tell you guys a secret. Sometimes, when things aren't going too well and we spend four hours in an endless wipefest, I get a little cranky. I know. Hard to believe. But it happens. And since we've been banging our heads against Blood Wing (10) and Festergut/Rotface (25), I'd begun to dread the weekend and its jam-packed ICC schedule.Let me bring it back a little bit; break it on down for you folks, old school. Well. Not that old school, just back to Ulduar when my tank was my main raid character. See, once upon a time there was this girl who had never really raided before. She'd done Molten Core - 5 minute blessing and cleanse bot for 40 people, no less - and Karazhan, even some Zul'Gurub back in the day. But not much else beyond that. Then when WotLK released, she got into some Naxx 10 runs and had a blast. When Ulduar came out, she was recruited into a second ten-man to work on the content. But it was slow going, and while she liked tanking, it was hella stressful. She started to get super bitchy - a real downer for her team - when everything just kept going to hell. She didn't have much faith in her team. Really, not much faith in herself. Didn't really help that she had someone echoing those feelings every Friday and Saturday night, as well.
So she took a break from raiding. Got her paladin to 80, geared him for holy. Rejoined her team in ToC, which in and of itself was a huge morale boost. She started making an impression, and felt better about herself and her approach to raiding. By the time ICC came out, she was feeling great, finally gaining some confidence in her abilities and her usefulness to the team. But then said team lost a tank. And a DPS. And someone else every other week. Things got rocky. She considered joining another team, but she stayed, determined to make it work. With every night of silly mistakes, though, she felt herself getting more and more frustrated.That brings us to present day, more or less. I've admitted before that I can be a control freak. I have a tendency to try and lead things when I don't have any business doing so. And I'm sure my personality clashes with several others. Also, I can just be a bitch. But I don't like wiping over and over and feeling like I am one of the few putting in an effort. I know that's not true, even if my teammates are easily distracted. But it sure does feel like it sometimes.
A few people have been talking about the 5% buff, calling it a pity buff. In some ways, I agree. I see where folks are coming from. But... I'm never going to be a hardcore raider. I come from a 'carebear RPer lolololol' background. The only reason I'm raiding now is because WotLK has made it accessible and my guild has made it fun. I enjoy the accomplishment. The teamwork reminds me of my days playing youth sports. But boy howdy is it frustrating sometimes.So I don't mind getting a nudge to compensate for the fact that folks like to stand in fire or yammer on in Vent when they should be paying attention. I'd like to get the Lich King down while we still have the 10% buff, at most. But other than that? I'm good. Because on Friday night we blew through Lower Spire and Plague, getting our third ever 10-man kill of Putricide almost flawlessly, then Saturday we beat down the Blood Council and Queen Lana'thel, a fight none of us had seen prior to that night. I still felt like I worked for it, because we had to make a good many adjustments. And it was still satisfying to see the achievement spam at the end. On Sunday, after a good month plus of trying, we hammered both Rotface and Festergut down on 25, getting our ret paladin her Shadow's Edge, and 5 more frost emblems from the weekly which we... inadvertently cheesed. Apparently if someone is outside the door during Rotface and happens to be targeted with Mutated Infection, he will despawn, allowing folks to have the Rotface and Festergut residue, thus completing the quest. <.< This weekend, I plan to kick Valithria in the teeth. Or heal her in the teeth. Whatever. Maybe even get some solid attempts on Sindragosa. Hell, maybe even get Putricide down on 25. We got him to Phase 3 last week, which was great! And I feel better about raiding than I have in a long while. I'm actually looking forward to this weekend, rather than counting the hours before I can go back to RPing. So, yeah. It may be a pity buff for some. For me, it's a little nudge in the right direction. A morale boost that will help me enjoy PvE again and make me less of a bitch. And I'm okay with that. On a side note, the Rotface video will have to wait for a bit, I'm afraid. Not everyone was comfortable with it and I have to respect that. However, I am open to suggestions for other videos that may help folks!
Author's Note: I always write these with a very loose outline, typing into Word before posting here in Blogger. This particular post spiraled far away from where I had intended, but I feel compelled to post it anyway. I have a feeling it needed to be written.
I find myself in a bit of a conundrum.
I enjoy raiding. I’m enjoying ICC. But at the moment, we’re not really making any progress, and I know we could be. It frustrates me and I inevitably feel responsible in some way. Usually after the end of a bad raid, I really don’t want to even think about PvE. So while other folks go off to do their random dailies or regroup for Vault, I have another escape: Roleplaying.
Writing has always been cathartic for me, and roleplaying especially allows me to channel my energy into something – and someone – else and actually have an outlet for my irritability that won’t get me a swift kick in the ass and a guildban. I mean as it is, I’m already rolling out of 1000 for being snarky! If people saw half of the things I whisper to others, it would be, you know. OVER NINE THOUSAND. (That was sarcasm.)
I guess this is where I get personal, then go and cower somewhere for a while. But I think it needs to be said, because I know there are a lot of folks who can relate. I didn’t start roleplaying heavily until after my grandfather passed away in 2003. I’d certainly roleplayed before that, in tabletop and Everquest. Even had a very fun play-by-email game going for a while through high school. But that just… I don’t know. I hadn’t experienced the death of someone close to me before, and the kicker was my grandfather and I weren’t particularly close. I was shy as a kid and he was fairly intimidating. In a good way, but still. It was sort of the ‘admire from afar’ kind of thing. So when he passed away, it was a sudden shock, even though I knew it was coming. I found myself feeling angry, more than anything. We take these things for granted, and inevitably they don’t last forever.
So I started working that into the backstory of a couple characters. Not the exact details – nowhere close – but fragments close enough so that I knew what they meant, but I could play them out of context. My first paladin in WoW was a young woman who had lost her father to illness. She was furious with herself for a long time; felt she should have been able to save him. I’m sure I don’t need to point out the correlation there.
The thing about my grandfather that I probably respect and admire most is that he spent his life doing so many amazing things. He raised a family and moved them out to a flat plot of land in Eustis, Florida, building a home and a farm with his own two hands. He was in the Navy for a time, then worked as anything from an engineer to an electrician before finally retiring. He helped support his wife and her daughter through nursing school. Helped my mother to a Master’s in Education. At his funeral, at least ten people got up and told stories of the same magnitude.
I can only hope to have even a few people speak so highly of me after I’m gone. I know I’m never going to do the same things he did. I’m not going to enlist. I’m never going to build a house. I doubt I’d ever have the courage to move my family across the country. I’d be far too distrusting to offer help to anyone and everyone.
But you know what? My characters will.
As writers we generally tend to be fairly solitary, rather introverted people. Most of us exist more inside our own heads than anywhere else, living vicariously through our characters while we work a boring 9 to 5 and try to forget how much our real life sucks. I know I’m generalizing. I’m sure there are plenty of writers who are social and well-adjusted. I have yet to meet one, but I’m sure they exist.
You may not understand how we as roleplayers and writers enjoy the game the way we do. Why on some nights we would rather play pretend than go out and be social or even participate in a guild function. Why we log without a word after a raid, only to hop onto an alt and drag someone off to blend in with the scenery of Dalaran for a few hours. Why we look forward to writing a good thousand words every day.
Roleplaying is our escape, our solace, and our indulgence. And you know what? You can point to any character of mine, past and present, and I can tell you exactly what part of me and my life they represent. It may seem sad to you, but if this is going to be my legacy – well-developed and memorable characters that have lived and experienced life as an amalgam of my choices and experiences – then I’m okay with that.
So the above picture, yet again, doesn’t have much to do with my post. Beyond the fact that there’s some sort of mage conspiracy going on. Precious’ Ribbon finally dropped this weekend. Not once, but twice. And who should win them? Not me, naturally. No, the only two mages who consistently raid with us. However, one was Gypsy, so I really can’t grump too much.
Now, for the actual post – a day late because allergies are kicking my butt.
I don’t like to rant. (lol inorite) At least not publicly. That can generally be accomplished just as easily by whispering a friend and blowing off steam. But Sunday night really got to me. So much, in fact, that I’m still thinking about it.
Our 25 man is a bit behind on progress compared to the two 10s we run. One 10 is almost done with the Dragon wing, the other is… well. We won’t talk about that. If I see another sparkly vampire I’m going to bite someone. Just.. not like that. Because it would be too vampirey.
But the 25 has been consistently stuck at Lower Spire, unable to down Festergut or Rotface. We’re getting close, and I think with our regulars there we can get Fester. But our regulars weren’t there, not entirely. So we spent our last half hour poking at Rotface.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I do the cleanses for this fight. In fact, in 25 I do very little else. And for once we had a pretty balanced healing team – two druids, a shaman, a priest, and two holy paladins. So that wasn’t a problem, but for people standing in the way of Slime Spray.
What was a problem is that on our best attempt, chatter erupted in /raid and Vent about the fact that cleanses were being dispelled too quickly. I did agree with that, but had to point out the principle of the thing. Because I’m a pain in the ass, and the person who brought it up, while polite, wasn’t the only one. Oh, and also? Someone else decided I wasn’t cleansing fast enough. And someone else decided I wasn’t healing.
I tried to play it off. Really, I did. I even talked to the other holy paladin about getting some help on healing targets with Mutated Infection once he dipped below 30%. I know I could have done better, and I absolutely don’t deny that. We all need to tweak what we’re doing to succeed. But here’s my problem with all of this:
The loudest complaints on a fight almost always comes from someone who has never healed it.
I realize your DPS rotation coupled with moving out of shit is very difficult – and let’s be honest, I’m only pushing three buttons, right? – but trust me, you don’t know a raid boss until you’ve healed it. We heap the blame on ourselves in spades, and I assure you not all of us are as arrogant as we might appear. I’m just as insecure about this game as I am about everything else. I know we need you. I know you’re trying your best.
But stop being such an insufferable prick. And if you’re going to be that way, roll a healer, gear it to raid, and come do my job for a night.
Thank god for RP therapy.
Putricide makes me crazy. Not like completely batshit crazy, or even foaming at the mouth crazy, just… crazy. I realized after a raid one night, when I had to take a drive to calm down, that some fights just bring out the worst in me. Those little personality flaws I’d rather not mention. Of course now I’m mentioning them to all of you lovely people, so clearly that idea went right out the window.
Here’s how it is: Team-That-Was got used up. We moved out – built up a replacement team. Some, rich and flush with raiding experience. Some… not so much. The core raid group – them as formed our crew – decided all members had to join up and hit the Plagueworks.
There was some disagreement on that point.
After the Lower Spire, many of the disgruntled badgers who had fought and lost drifted along with the rest, far from the Blood wing. Out here, people struggle to get the hell out of the slime. A bouncing goo will make you look like an idiot, an unstable experiment will help you stay that way.
A healer’s goal is simple(ish): stay out of the green shit, don’t get hit by goo… and keep healing.
Yes, I fully admit to being one of the disgruntled badgers. I wanted to duck into the blood wing because I figured we might have an easier time of it there. Alright. I’m lying. I wanted to duck into the blood wing to throw stuff at the sparkly vampires. But the raid leader decided we should work on plague again, and I followed to do my cleansing duties.
We got to Putricide after some rough showings on Rotface and Festergut. [Rotface still makes me feel like a possessed squirrel on meth, for the record] Unlike the last week we did this, we only got him to Phase 3 twice, and both times it was a fairly insignificant dent.
And let me tell you, I was wigging the fuck out. I’ve gotten used to being able to heal someone out of trouble, and there’s just too much going on during the Putricide fight for me to manage that. Even on Rotface I can control the main mechanic of the fight – the slime spawn. Putricide I can do… what? Beacon the abomination so they stay up long enough to do their job. Sacred Shield the experiment target. Lay on Hands one of the tanks during the third phase. Move my own butt when I’m supposed to move. And heal… anybody and everybody, really. All of our healers were putting out insane HPS.
So every wipe I’m getting more and more stressed. I’m giving it my all because we only have one day and limited attempts, and no matter what I tweak it just doesn’t seem to help. And there’s nine other people I can’t help tweak and it, as I mentioned, wigs me the fuck out.
I realized about an hour after the raid that the Putricide encounter really brings out the control freak in me. The part of me with the ‘I’ll just do it all myself’ attitude. I really don’t like that part of me. She’s a bitch who has no friends. So I apologized to my raid-mates, and took the night off.
But that fight (and a healthy daily dose of LFD) has helped me realize a few things. I’m not the raid leader. I’m not a class lead. I’m not an officer. I did not write the book on raiding. I don’t even think I’m mentioned in the third appendix. And I’m sure as hell not anybody’s mother.
The more I worry about people sniping my cleanses or not kiting the gas clouds, the more I get hit in the face with Slime Spray and Malleable Goo. The more I obsess about people getting back on time and buffed up, the more likely I am to forget my own buffs. And the more I bitch about the fact that a disc priest is tanking better than the paladin who signed up to do it in Maraudon… Wait. No. I’m not letting you have that one. That disc priest was awesome, and that paladin was an extra special brand of snowflake.
But for the most part, getting bent out of shape about these things just makes me into more of a useless ass than I already can be at times. And while I’m sure the control freak in me would have a field day with that, I’m trying to remember what my mom tells her second-grade class: The only person you need to be worrying about is you.
71% overheal for ICC25. As high as 75% on certain fights. Initially I was pretty bummed by this. 75% overheal means only 25% of my heals are actually effective healing, which to me meant I was only putting in 25% of the work I should be.
But then I took a look at all the 25 man logs. Since we’ve been doing ICC, my overhealing has been a consistent 70%+. My lowest overhealing was 63%. So either I’m really good at consistently sucking, or there’s more at work here.
Healing Style
You can see, at a glance, that I favor a Holy Light healing style. In almost every log I’ve examined, Holy Light and Beacon of Light account for at least half of my total healing, which is a healthy level. Holy Light, unfortunately, has two sources for overheal: Beacon of Light and Glyph of Holy Light. Neither of these abilities discriminates against a target that is at full health versus one who actually needs healing.
There’s also the fact that I was tank healing for most of the raid. And in my worst overheal fight, Gunship Battle, there isn’t much need to toss gobs of healing onto anyone but the tanks, specifically the tank jumping to the other ship. So with six healers, at least three of them are probably tossing heals onto the same tank I’m healing, and my beacon is overhealing the tank the others are healing. Maths are hard, so I’m not going to go into the statistics of that, but it’s fairly easy to see the reason behind the overheal there.
Healing Synergy
I love my guild. Really I do. But on any given Sunday (I see what you did there…) we have four holy priests. Four. One is dual-spec’d disc, but he only breaks it out for Deathbringer Saurfang. The only other healers, for the most part, are myself and a resto druid.
Assuming the druid is running foundation HoTs and the holy priests are getting spillover from AE, not to mention the priests also healing the tanks, hell yes there’s going to be overheal. I’m not entirely sure what would help that, aside from having a resto shaman and a permanent disc priest in the raid.
For my part, however, I would like to learn more about how our guild’s healers work. I can stare at logs all day, but it doesn’t really tell me much. Perhaps I’ll pass along a healing survey to get a general idea and then look at the logs with that in hand to see what I can do to improve team synergy.
Abundance of Healers
I’m noticing it’s not just me that has a fairly high amount of overhealing. Everyone is fairly high. Without considering if people are healing the right targets and using the right spells for the right situations, that tells me we may be running too many healers. Or again, too many healers of the same type doing the same thing.
I’d be curious to try it with 5 and see how it goes. I don’t see Plague happening with less than 6, but Lower Spire should be completely doable with just 5. And then I don’t get stuck in the group with the snarky warlocks, ostracized from the other healers.
In Summation… Nobody Cares
Here’s the thing about overhealing: nobody cares. Well, let me refine that a bit. Nobody cares, unless you’re running yourself out of mana or people are frequently dying while one target just keeps getting healed past full.
Fighting overheal as a paladin is a losing battle. We have excellent throughput, but very little in the way of smart healing. You can avoid some overhealing snafoos by using your spells appropriately – you probably shouldn’t be using Holy Light on a warlock that’s just Life Tapped – but in a fast-moving raid environment, you may not have the luxury of time to determine whether or not that warlock just lifetapped, or if he’s taking sustained raid damage. Waiting for him to get hit again may cause his death.
Assuming you have some sort of monitor for incoming heals (Grid, for example) and know how best to utilize your spells, you’re better off worrying about other things. We can afford to be a bit sloppy about overhealing. Hell, part of our near bottomless mana pool is caused by the overhealing of crits.
So if you’re not running out of mana and people aren’t dying: Nobody cares! And you shouldn’t either.
Friends
