Back to my Roots

In July 2012, I wrote this post about changing my role in raids. Looking back, I'm glad I made the decision I did.

I was a main tank for my guild all through Mists of Pandaria. It was fun, challenging and I accomplished a lot. I tanked challenge modes and got the gear to prove it. I made the calls for the Stone Guard in Mogu'Shan Vaults. I tanked Rik'kal. I kited the meteor into Heroic Garrosh. I loved tanking with my boyfriend and I'll never forget that experience.

A few weeks after killing Heroic Garrosh, I took a break from raiding entirely. Close to 600 attempts on a boss really takes a toll on your mental state. I was sick of my guild and I hated the game. Eventually I came back, got my scorpion mount on one of the last kills we ever did and kept playing.

I wish I could say I was still tanking for my guild, but a number of factors caused me to make another role change. *

First, I changed classes at the beginning of Warlords. I chose to level my paladin tank, and leave my druid behind. I was tired of not seeing my transmog, or toy effects and I wanted to try something new.

It went well. I tanked Highmaul and Mythic BRF with a warrior and another paladin tank. I don't feel as comfortable with my paladin. It's not easy to explain because druid tanking came naturally, while paladin tanking is work. Paladin tanking for me is constant vigilance. If I slip up, I die. If I use a cooldown at the wrong time, I take more damage than I should. If I'm tired? Forget it. I could tank on my druid with one hand. With my paladin, my hand is gripped so tight on my mouse that I have physical pain in my thumb after a night of progression.

It may sound like I don't enjoy paladin tanking - I do! But the style is very different from my druid and I don't think it suits me.

Second, there were things I started to notice after a while that started small but chipped away at me. My suggestions or observations were often ignored on voice chat but then repeated by another and considered. My statements were interpreted as questions. If I mentioned a mechanic, people would jump to explain it to me. The tanks were continually asked to pull faster, to move the raid along through easy pulls for a faster night. I tried, for a while. When I told the raid I was pulling trash, I was met with silence. When the other tanks announced it, people answered. So I stopped talking. If I had a suggestion, I asked others to relay it. I stopped trying to lead.

It's puzzling, and frustrating how someone else can slip into your role so easily. I felt like I had to claw and scrape my way in, to prove to myself and everyone else that I was good enough. I'm still terrified of screwing up somehow, and when I first started tanking it was like having a giant weight above me. I do think I'm a good tank, and I do think I'm capable but I'm tired of being talked over, or ignored. I'm tired of feeling small.

A miserable part of me thinks that maybe people just don't care to hear me on voice chat. Or that they tuned me out. Sure, sometimes I can be loud but in my role as a main tank, I need to be heard. Another part of me thinks that the loss of the other lady tank hurt more than I thought.

I started dreading logging on to tank and I hated feeling that way. I was constantly reminding myself that it's just a few hours and then the raid will be over. I volunteered to sit more often, or I asked to DPS - though, admittedly I'm not very good at it.

I feel like I let myself down and I hate it. I feel like I should keep tanking to prove a point, but I don't need to prove myself to anyone but me. I need to play the game for me, again.

To bring this all around, I stopped tanking for my mythic group as of February this year. Instead, I swapped back to my druid to heal. Before I did this, I was healing on my druid with another guild on off nights and it was easily the most fun I have had all expansion. Partly due to the atmosphere (more laid back, but still gets the job done) and the role I play. Healing (like druid tanking) is a natural thing for me. It's comfortable, it's easy and it's familiar. I follow the tanks and the raid and I keep them alive.

Things got very stressful and I was going into raids upset and continuing to be upset for the night. We lost people I care very much about to new guilds and real life. The atmosphere became hostile (as it does when content becomes stale and progression isn't happening fast). In addition to some poor communication about raid plans and goals that exacerbated my feelings, I decided that raiding for three hours until midnight EST for three nights a week was no longer for me. As of May 2015 I ceased all mythic raiding with Apotheosis.

This brings us to right now where I'm healing full-time for Business Time on Moonrunner doing heroic modes. Admittedly, I already miss mythic raiding but taking it easy on heroic isn't a bad thing for me. Now we're starting Hellfire Citadel and the first foray into the new content was an absolute blast. I'm really enjoying the encounters we've seen so far (I actually squealed out loud when Kromok pulls the weird creeping ooze from the different coloured pools).

I'm going to play Warcraft a little more casually and it feels weird to say. I don't think I've ever been casual about WoW until this year. I'm looking forward to maybe just fooling around and seeing the world again and playing on my own time.

* If you're interested, I was a guest on TankCast and spoke with other women regarding tanking in WoD! http://www.theincbear.com/podcastgen/?name=2015-06-27_tankcast20.mp3

Transmogolympics: Introducing The Exodar

Image from Amateur Azerothian

 

I've thrown my hat into the ring for the Transmogolympics! The idea stems from JD at Amateur Azerothian because with the Summer Olympics around the corner, what better way to pay homage than to host a competition of our own?

There are 24 total entrants as of this post. Each entrant must create 10 outfits total, and there are rules about what each outfit has to have to be able to participate. The first outfit is your faction's Flagbearer, because every country always has their flag in the opening ceremony. The rest of the "events" are as follows:

• Archery – Build an outfit around your favourite bow.
• Cycling – Build a biker outfit to compliment the Chopper.  It must be either Leather or Mail.
• Discus – Build an outfit around one of the shield skins seen here
• Equestrian – Build an outfit to compliment one of the horse mounts in the game.  (Faction limitations apply, so no Orcs on a Stormwind pony)
• Fencing – Time for some swordplay.  Build your best outfit around the 1h sword of your choice.
• Javelin – Build an outfit around the polearm of your choice.
• Hammer Throw – Build an outfit around your favourite two-handed hammer.
• Wrestling – We’re going to deviate from olympic wrestling and go to the sports entertainment aspect instead.  Using one of the “championship” belts, design your own Azerothian pro wrestler.  Think of the oversized belts, such as the Firemend Cinch seen here.
• Freestyle – Build your own NPC. Could be an innkeeper, could be the Green Orc Lantern.  Doesn’t matter.

With all that in mind, the very first (and only) outfit I can reveal is my faction's Flagbearer. Each entrant was randomly given a faction, and I drew The Exodar! Fitting for me, since my main (before the race change) and most of my characters have been from the Exodar, I am excited to represent them.

When I picture Draenei in the Exodar, I think rich purples and golds, and of the strong connection to the light that the Draenei paladins have. I went to the Exodar to get a little inspiration, and Velen's guards gave me some ideas. I also traveled up to the Argent Tournament to find out how the Exodar represented itself in the past.


This time, the Exodar representative will look like this:

At home, in the Exodar.

I ended up going with some very recognizable paladin gear, but I wanted to mix and match the sets, so there's some t4, t5 lookalike, and t13 in this set. The shield (not visible in this image, but see the final image in this post) is the one that Velen's guards carry. The tabard is part of the requirements for the Flagbearers, so I chose to make that the stand out, since she's representing her city.

Checking out the Argent Tournament.

My item list is on WoWHead here: Exodar Flagbearer

Head: Glorious Headdress
Shoulders: Pauldrons of the Argent Sentinel
Chest: Justicar Chestpiece
Gloves: Gloves of Radiant Glory
Belt: Girdle of Valorous Deeds
Legs: Justicar Leggings
Boots: Boots of Valiance
Main Hand: K'iru's Presage
Shield: Emperor Shield

Armor type: Plate
Restrictions: Paladin


I hope everyone enjoys the sets that we'll be putting together, I can't wait to see what we've all come up with. Good luck to the other participants!

Home

The ladies

This post is coming a little later than I wanted it to, but since Cynwise posted “On Revelations” before a field trip, I ended up forgetting about it until just recently. I originally wanted to reply to Cyn's post in the comments but it ended up morphing into something much larger.

Reading Cynwise and Vidyala’s stories (here and here) about what they enjoy playing, and figuring out what they want to play was very interesting to me. I play a priest, and have played her for a long time; first as shadow back when we only did 1400 dps but returned mana for the mages and warlocks, and now as a healer. I also play a druid tank, who has been around as long as the priest. I've had many internal battles over which character I wanted to play, but there's just something about those two roles that I can't quite get anywhere else.

Adventures "on the other side"!

I have a paladin. Not JUST any paladin. A level 85 blood elf with pigtails, red hair and a metric ton of sass.

My paladin trials started a long time ago. I would create a human paladin (I've done this at least 5 or 6 times) and get to the point where I would get the resurrection spell questline and then my interest would die and the pally would sit on my character screen until I took pity enough to delete the poor thing.

I decided later to create a draenei, since I liked the starting zone. I leveled her to 23, put her in a Lovely Black Dress and Ruby Shades and forgot about her. Then I transferred to Windrunner, got bored and decided I wanted my pally there too. My interest stuck until about level 45 when I got bored again. 

Level 43!

Then I transferred to Eldre'Thalas. Then Cataclysm hit. Then we started raiding. Then I leveled my Kalbear, shaman, and hunter. Then I got bored again. My boyfriend, Chronis, decided he'd pay for his warrior to be transferred along with my pally -  if we went Horde. *shudder* I wasn't entirely okay with this, but he was paying and we could level together with me healing and him tanking.

Well, for some reason that I can't recall now, Chronis got way ahead of me level-wise and I was left to fend for myself in the low level Dungeon Finder as I quested along. I leveled ret/holy, and had an absolute blast ripping apart mobs in my BoA gear. During my leveling, Chronis and I discovered an old friend from Bronzebeard had made her way to E'T and we got an invite to her guild (hooray perks!!).

Level 57 - ALONE in the LFD :(

It didn't take too long to get Kalaura (formerly Auragasm) to 85, and it took even less time through guild perks to get enough Justice Points to be geared up enough for heroics! Pally healing is a BLAST. Kalaura is now Holy/Holy (one spec for PvE, one for PvP) and aside from how much fun I've been having lately with Beast Mastery huntering, it's one of the things I most enjoy right now in the game.

When I hit 85 on Kalaura the first thing I ran to do was train my ANGRY MAAAAN! What is the Angry Man? Technically, he's the Guardian of Ancient Kings, but that's too formal. I can't help but yell out "Summonin' mah ANGRY MAAAN" whenever I summon him, too. It really bugs Chronis, but it makes it more fun.

Ms.Sass with her Angry Man

I mentioned PvP too. PvPing Hordeside has been strange; I get turned around in AV, I try to cap Stables and hang around that area in AB, and I generally futz around until I get my bearings on the map. Blood elf holy paladins are particularly deadly in PvP I've noticed. Here's what we have; Arcane Torrent, Rebuke, HoJ. If you're prot you can have the Silence Frisbee as well. How scary(AWESOME) is that? I'm like, a pro CC'er/Silencer on Kalaura now, mwahaha!

Kalaura's nearly decked out in Bloodthirsty and occasionally comes across Kaleri's guild members in Tol Barad. Sometimes she runs like a little girl, other times she stays and dies spectacularly to people like Merkavah, Void, Merlee/Srsbusiness, and Gneiss/Fog. Most of the time my inner dialogue goes like this:

MERK! Cool! I can PvP with Merk! Oh shit. It's Merk. shit shit shit shit *bubble* *Void's Shattering Throw* shit shit shit /try to flee  shiiiiii-dead

It's amazing and hilarious. and at the same time very frightening. The other day Ludde put a bounty on my pally's head (sadface) and I think Void ended up getting 500g for killing me.

LOL RAWR

Kalaura's also the proud owner of a Scorpion mount, by virtue of Apotheosis (Alliance) being a Level 25 guild and the mount being Battle.net Account bound. (Which I think is kind of cheating, but LOOK at how awesome that frigging scorpion is!)

Since the introduction of the Troll Heroics, Kalaura's received enough gear to be able to do some alt runs with the horde-side guild as well! It's been a lot of fun to see another healing class' perspective on certain fights, and let me tell you, there are times I miss having things like Aura Mastery and my bubble on my priest.



All in all, I've been rather pleased to have an alt on the Horde. I enjoy seeing things from a different perspective and the questlines have been wonderful. I still try to go places where I shouldn't, and occasionally Kaleri suffers because I'm used to going to a different flight path, or zone, but it's all in good fun!

There was a rather touching questline during Children's Week that I'm angry I didn't take a few screenshots for, but your Orc Orphan asks you to take him to Cairne's resting place. Once you arrive, Baine gives a small speech and you see the ancestors of the Tauren and Thunder Bluff welcoming Cairne. I really liked it, and after years of Alliance Children's Week quests it was a relief to do something completely different.

Maybe I'll level another Horde character...

For the Horde!






 I mean...


Derp.