Shapeshifting Inclinations

In the last couple of weeks I have been healing on both my druid and my paladin.  My Druid at this point is as well geared as I can be without raid drops.  My paladin has not farmed as many heroics and is obviously not as well geared as the druid. 

However, the paladin is a more powerful healer even with the sub par gear.  I can pump out some massive HPS on my druid, but the main problem is I have a very limited ability to heal more then a single target well.  As long as I keep 3 stacks of LB on a tank I can keep that tank up, but the problem is when the raid itself starts taking damage or I need to heal two tanks.

Since rejuv costs so much mana it is not really useful except on the tank or a character that is very low health.  Even then though on a fight like Magmaw anyone under 40% HP is in danger of dying in a few hits so putting a rejuv on someone say at 30%, you cannot afford to just let it tick, you need to immediately HT or Nourish that target to keep them out of danger of dying.  So that is at least 2 GCD’s to keep that 1 raid member up and doing so also puts you in danger of losing the LB stack on the tank.  So the choices you have as a druid healer are not ideal at all.  Where as on a paladin with the ability to beacon and cast strong direct heals, and in emergencies bubble a target you can keep people alive so much easier with much less effort.  Even taking AOE healing into effect, druids used to excel at this but now Holy Radiance blows Wild Growth out of the water.

Druids do get a lot of free heals from clear casts, but this also does not compare to the free instant cast heals from a paladin.  Word of Glory is an instant free direct heal, it does not need to tick unlike druid heals over time.  So in essence Paladins have more instant heals, stronger and faster heals, they can heal two tanks very effectively while the druid is limited to one, their AOE heals are superior and they bring damage reduction which the Druid has none.

I find myslef working twice as hard while healing on my druid then I do on my paladin.  I have healed Magmaw on both and by far the Paladin even in sub par gear is the superior healer.  I have actually been swapping out my druid for my Paladin in a lot of fights simply for progression sake.

Seeing as they are both hybrids it makes no sense to me why one would be so much more powerful then the other.  Also I am more skilled in my druid healing since I have been doing it for 3 years, I still find myself stumbling to remember certain keybinds on my paladin because I have not healed as much on this character.  However, even with my myriad of mistakes on my paladin and the sub par gear, I can still outheal my druid with ease and keep more people alive in the raid when it matters the most.

I hope that with the changes to rejuv and improvements to nourish will give the druid better group healing.  We still won’t have damage reduction or superior AOE healing, but at least we will be a bit more powerful in our direct healing which may actually make us competitive once again. 

Overall though, even with the healing issues on the druid, healing is so much more challenging and enjoyable then it has ever been in this game.  I might have to continue to swap out my druid for my paladin as my raid progresses but eventually my tanks and dps will take less damage as they learn the fights and the druid will remain a solid choice in our raid.

The past few weeks have been brutal in game.  I have always tried my best to treat everyone around me with respect regardless of skill level and to make sure that I never cuss or rant at my raid members when I get upset.  I thought that if people were treated with respect they would offer the same respect to me in return, boy was I wrong.

I was reminded again that most people in this game pretend to like you and respect your opinions and decisions if it is in their best interest only.  The moment one of your decisions or a series of decisions is not to their liking you are suddenly enemy number one.  It sucks when you try to do the best for the group as a whole and you end up getting burned for it.

I stepped down as raid leader and now I just sit back and bite my tongue as I spam my healing keys so fast my hands hurt.  We killed the first boss in BWD this week after two weeks of wiping and unlike in the past when I was really excited about first kills, I was actually just worn out.  I had to work so hard as a healer to make up for our low raid DPS that when the fight ended and the boss fell I just felt tired and not excited one bit.  As soon as the fight ended I had to step away from the computer and shake my hands they hurt so bad, it was awful.

I guess it is just a sign that my days of playing Wow are coming to an end.  I love playing competitively but I can’t seem to find enough people who enjoy the same without having to spend every night of the week raiding.  Apparently asking anyone to put any effort into their characters outside of raid time is me being an elitist jerk.

The sad thing is I really like the new healing model now that I’ve had a good month and a half to get used to it. It is challenging and fun to play when you run with folks who put in the same effort into their characters and master the mechanics.  However, when you have group night in and night out with folks who feel it is ok to put minimal effort into the game and still feel entitled to maximum rewards it is just brutally painful.  I don’t think my hands have hurt this much since I tanked the green wave boss in Naxx for 27 minutes.

If every fight is going to be this difficult and this taxing it is just not worth it in the end.  I still love the people in the guild and I harbor no ill feelings towards anyone, but unless I start having fun soon it is just not worth playing anymore.

It sucks to put so much time and effort into your play and to in turn get nothing for it but pain.  I know I can’t keep this up.  I think the best bet for me will be to just try to start pvping competitively and if I can’t find a couple of folks with similar time schedules to do it with I should finally just put wow on the shelf for good. 

At the end of the day this is probably best.  I can spend more time reading at night instead of playing games and spend more time at the gym.  I’ll certainly miss all the fun times I’ve had in Wow over the years but it might just be time to close this chapter in my life and move on.

Yesterday on a whim I decided to take on a tanking spec on my main since our guild has been struggling as of late to have tanks on that are capable of tanking heroics.  I had a full set of feral heroic gear I had picked up as a kitty, so I dropped about 1500 gold regemming and re-enchanting it to transform the gear into a decent tanking set.  What a mistake!

I tanked 1 heroic and found that bears had not changed at all since Wrath.  1 added ability, pulverize, and the rest was the same.  I was completely, utterly bored.  1 instance was enough with me, I respecced back to boomchicken and will drop some gold soon to re-enchant and regem my feral gear back to cat.  I was actually thinking of making my Horde druid a bear/cat, but after experience how completely boring that spec is I am going to stick with dps or healing over there as well.

I think a lot of my perspective has to do with the fact that I have tanked mainly on a warrior and a bit on a death knight.  Both of interesting abilities and decent choices for tanking.  On my warrior I can shockwave, devestate, shield block, shield slam, rend, heroic strike, commanding or battle shout, thunderclap, etc, etc, etc.  On my bear it is mangle, maul, lacerate, mangle, maul, lacerate with an occassional swipe or pulverize thrown in there.  But honestly there is just no choice, nothing to make it interesting. 

Tanking in itself is pretty dull, you spend most of the time backed up into a huge mob you can barely see around, and if you run with decent dps and healers you don’t have to worry much about taunting mobs or losing agrro.  So there is just no way I can handle bear tanking.  I will tank on one of my pallies, warriors, or death knights before I ever go Bear on one of my druids.  Hopefully one day they will make it more interesting.

One of the things that Wrath of the Lich King did was devalue the role of hybrids in groups and raids.  Wrath was a spam fest, we aoe tanked, aoe dpsed, and aoe healed.  Most fights did not require multiple tanks or even healers.  The game was dumbed down and as it was dumbed down the magic of the hybrid classes were lost in the mix.  Thankfully Cataclysm has restored some much needed difficulty to the game and now hybrids have opportunities to shine again, particulary druids.

I have been doing heroics since the first week Cata was released.  I noticed right away that being a kitty druid is a lot more fun then it ever was in Wrath.  Almost every dungeon I am rooting something, sleeping something, battle rezzing, popping tranquility, and even disenraging mobs.  Sometimes the tank dies prematurely and I pop into bear form and hold the boss as the dps finsh him off the fun of hybrids have returned!

In Wrath people brought dps druids to raids for two reasons, battle rezzes and high dps.  In Cata I think the druid class will begin to shine as a hybrid, we will be brought to raids because a good druid is simply amazing.  We have so many abilities that can change the outcome of the raid.  The challenge will be however, to move out of the dumbed down just another dps role into the role of a true hybrid.

Good druids will recognize that their most important contribution to a raid fight is not the numbers they put up on recount.  Sometimes we will need to pop out of form in mid dps rotation to battle rez a fallen comrade, to heal ourselves, to pop tranquility, to soothe an enraged mob, to root a broken CC, to innervate a struggling healer, or even to go bear and taunt a loose mob off a healer or clothie.

I am planning to play two druids this expansion, one on the horde side and one on the alliance.  My alliance druid is already raid ready with a 346 gear score and two specs (resto & kitty) heroic geared.  My horde druid is currently level 83 and is a few weeks away from being ready to raid.  I am hoping to play opposite specs on each druid, so my horde will likely end up being a tank/dps.  I will probably switch my alliance over to resto/boomkin because I have a feral druid already in my 10 man raid.

I am hoping between these two toons I will be able to share a lot of experiences on this blog about the druid class in general as well as dive into some theory crafting in all the specs.  Overall I am excited about Cataclysm and I can’t wait to hop into the new raids!

I first rolled a druid in Burning Crusade.  My first druid was a Tauren feral druid and I rolled it on Bloodscalp.  A friend of mine rolled a warlock and we leveled up on this server and started a guild there.  We were still playing our other characters on other servers so these toons were just side projects so to speak.

However I found myself really liking the druid class.  Meanwhile back on Feathermoon where most of my toons were at I was regulary doing 5 man arenas on my hunter and our team struggled anytime we went up against another team with a healer because we were running 5 DPS.  So I made the decision to level a druid for arenas.

I leveled to 70 in a month, I leveled as feral and then when I hit 70 I respecced to resto and hit the battlegrounds.  I had never played a healing class before, I had tanked and dps’d only.  I learned how to heal in the battlegrounds and grinded out lots of pvp gear. 

At that point in the game pvp gear could be used in PVE raids so I ended up healing in raids as well.  The crash course in healing I learned in the battlegrounds made me a good healer in raids.  I excelled pretty quickly in the pve content because healing in pve was so much more simplier then in pvp.

I healed Karazhan, SSC, & TK plus I continued to heal in Battlegrounds & arenas.  When we decided to roll horde I abandoned my geared alliance druid and transferred my old feral druid to our new server.  Shortly after I found myself healing Kara again with out newly leveled 70′s right at the end of Burning Crusade.  My role as a healer had been firmly established.

I hated PVE healing though, I found it boring and too easy.  Tanking and dpsing is where all the excitement seemed to be at.  So literally a few weeks before Wrath was released I leveled a Tauren warrior and vowed to never heal again.  I became the main tank for my guild in Wrath and tanked up until mid Ulduar.

In Ulduar it became apparent that we really needed strong players doing healing, so I asked my two best dpsers to change roles.  My boomkin became a bear tank and took my place, I switched to my druid and started healing, and my top DK dps changed to his shaman as a healer.  This formula allowed us to be quite successful. 

I really loved my warrior, but I found that the versatility of the druid class just made for a better toon for me to play since I was a GM/raid leader.  I have stuck with my druid ever since.  In Wrath I established myself as a good healer in both pve & pvp and I quickly mastered the art of covering up others players mistakes.  I found that if I healed my heart out I could almost solo carrry a raid through an encounter.  The other healer would die early on and I would manage to keep the raid up.

I pugged a lot of raids and even being undergeared I found myself able to keep up and out heal some of the best druids on the server.  When I disbanded my guild and moved to Blackrock the same held true.  I pugged with some of the best guilds on the server and I held my own. 

Going into Cata I was hoping to phase myself out of healing because I still enjoy tanking and dps more.  However in this first week of Cata it has become apparent that good healers are going to be needed probably more then any role in the game. 

Healing has changed so much that many people are giving up.  Healing is no longer boring it requires more focus then tanking and better timing then dpsing.  It also requires very thick skin.  Just like in wrath when players would pull aggro and blame the tank for being bad, now the trend is for players to take excessive damage and blame the healer for not keeping them alive.

I know several close friends who are good healers that have shelved healing and either rerolled or respecced their characters.  So now more then ever I am needed as a healer.

I have had to completely relearn healing.  I had to do a lot of reading on various forums and blogs to figure out a formula that worked.  I am a long ways from perfecting it, but I understand the new model and am learning to use the right healing tools.  Wipes are still happening but I don’t feel as powerless as I did when I first started healing in Cata.

I’m sure with time I will just get better.  Over the next few days I will share some of the things that I am doing that are working and some of the things that are not.  I think the more that we druids share our successes and failures the quicker it will take us to master the new art of healing.

Healing is and probably always will remain a thankless job.  At the end of the day most people will not respect their healers.  However as in life so it is in game, these thankless jobs are often the most important ones.  I’m old enough now where I don’t mind not being recognized when I do something, I do it because it is needed.  So in Cata I plan to dps for fun but my real job will be keeping the guild alive.  I welcome this new challenge.

I was lucky enough to have some vacation time left that I needed to spend before the end of the year so I was able to take the last week off.  Literally it was a Wow vacation, I practically played Wow non-stop.

I ordered the digital download so that I could play right at 12:01am when the servers went live.  I knew I would be off of work and I thought a few people from the guild might be up so I organized a “Midnight Madness Team” so that we could all grind some dungeons together.  I put up the guild event and ended up getting about 12 people signed up.  Monday night around 11:30pm we all got on vent and ended up having close to 20 people online chatting and excited about the launch.  It was crazy, to be up at midnight with people from all over the world waiting to try out new game content.  Some people had driven in snow to Game Stops for the midnight release and others had the digital download like me.

There were surprisingly tons of people on our server Feathermoon who had the same idea.  Literally hundreds of toons were parked in front of the flight master in Stormwind it was crazy to see the sea of names and people jumping around waiting for the new areas to be opened up.  We got organized into a couple of 5 man groups with a tank/healer in each so we could beat the crowds in the initial questing zones and  just grind out our first few levels in the instances.

Each new instance required that you discover the portal before you could q for it, so I spent the last few minutes of Wrath guiding guildies to the entrance in Blackrock mountain.  I had also prepaid for a race change to Worgen!  At 11:59pm we all simultaneously logged out and waiting 2 minutes to log back in.  Not surprisingly the log in server failed since there were probably millions trying to log in at the same moment.  Most of us didn’t successfully log in until around 12:45 am.  We spent some time training our new skills for flying & professions then when we were all online we qued up for our first instance!

We ran Blackrock Caverns probably 4 or 5 times and due to the quests at the start and the extra XP gained from tagging mobs before Raz killed them we found ourselves dinging 81 quite quickly.  After a few hours we decided to discover the new instance in Vasjr and so we all headed on the boat to the underwater world.

Vasjr required you to participate in a very linear quest line so naturally there were 100′s of people trying to kill the same mobs and collect the same items.  I think it took us a good 45 minutes to do the first 10 or quests that led to the Seahorse.  I could not stand it anymore and ventured off to find the instance and most of my group did the same.  We vowed to not quest at all if we could help it because it was just crazy to compete with all those people.  I also found that my glyphed seal form was just as fast as the seahorse and more convenient to use as well.

We did our first run in the Blackfathom Depths and I personally found the instance very annoying.  We got our first exposure to the multiple cuts scenes that were added in Cata.  My first thought was am I watching a movie or playing a game?  Aside from the Lich King movie and a few short scenes in other encounters WOW has been pretty free of long “mini-movies” within the gaming environment up until Cata.  Now it seems they are shifting in the other direction.

We spent the rest of the night and the greater part of the morning running the two new instances and when I finally crashed around 7:30am due to lack of sleep I was pretty close to 83.  A few from my group went on for a few more hours, and one guy in our guild literally did not sleep for at least a day, LOL!

After about 6 hours of sleep I was back at it mid afternoon on Tuesday.  I went out to Deepholm to start doing a few quests and the area was literally empty as most people were still level 80 and in one of the two starting zones.  I completed a few quest lines while I waiting for my guildies to wake up so we could do some more instances.  I discovered several of the new instance portals and in a few hours were back to grinding instances for XP.  We took a few breaks here and there and I think I ended up going to bed around 1 am and at that point I was halfway through 83.

Wednesday morning I headed out to Uldam and this was the first area I completed the majority of the quests in.  Again it was fairly empty as I was way ahead of most people on the server, we started seeing a lot of server first achievements being hit Wednesday, obviously those folks had not slept at all!

Uldum had some decent quests but they like all the quests in the other areas were very linear.  I do not like this new questing model nor do I like all the cut scenes added into the quests.  There is no option to skip the cut scenes and if you miss or abandon a quest in a this new linear model you cannot get other quests.  It basically forces you to complete entire quest lines instead of giving you options to complete only quests that award the most XP.  Making the game more linear also forces you to compete with other characters in the area for the same drops.  They compensated for that during the early launch by upping the spawn rates.

I really wish Wow would move away from the “must quest to level model” and allow us to level in other ways. They did add XP to gathering professions but sadly I don’t have one on this toon so no extra XP for me which is odd.  Why not grant XP for crafting items, surely this is more work then collecting the mats for them!

I would have loved to see a viable option for leveling in the battlegrounds, but sadly this still is only possible in the lower levels and only during the WSG or AB holiday weekends, the rest of the BG’s just do not award enough XP to justify that as a legitimate leveling vehicle.  Basically we now have to do the linear quests or grind dungeons, and at the higher levels dungeon grinding XP is not on par with quest XP.

Wednesday night I was halfway through 84 and I was doing a few instances with guildies and questing in between.  I moved into Twilight Highlands and by about 10pm server I dinged 85.  My achievement for some reason lists 12/09 as my ding date which is disappointing because I actually hit 85 Wednesday night.  The only thing I can think of as to why this happened is that lately since they have been merging servers our server time has been jumping from east coast to west coast throughout the day.  So apparently when I dinged it was on east coast time, but oh well at least the grind was finally over!

I slept well Wednesday and when I started playing Thursday afternoon we were pretty much running instances non-stop.  The new 84-85 instances were quite challenging at first.  Trash hit really hard and the bosses had some interesting mechanics to overcome.  I am trying to run as feral main spec and resto off spec, but due to the shortage of healers in the guild I will likely end up gearing my resto set first.

Feral is totally awesome.  Bleeds tick for a lot, the priority system is a bit more forgiving and gearing is more straight forward.  Even tanking seems nice though I have not done a lot of it.

Resto on the other hand was a complete struggle for me at first.  I was going oom every pull and struggling to keep the group alive.  The new healing model was definitely challenging.  When I started doing heroics on Friday night I practically was ready to completely give up on healing, I could not heal through certain boss fights.

Over the weekend I respecced several times and did a lot of reading on druid healing.  By Sunday night I figured out what I had been doing wrong and I got to the point where I could heal somewhat successfully even in heroics.

The new healing model basically forces druids to lose much of their mobile healing ability and completely nerfed to the ground our AOE healing effectiveness.  Healing is more of a triage then a race now.  I liked the race better.  I have to admit healing is now actually not boring but it is definitely not as fun as before.

I think in general at least in my case a lot of people play healers to feel like they really helped a group succeed on an encounter.  In BC it felt like this, we did not have unlimited mana but we were able to heal differently from the other classes and bring a specific niche to a raid group.  Right now it just feels like we are just another healer class who now has to depend on having decent dps & tanks in order to make it through an instance.  The only class that is really shining when it comes to healing is the pally class, which is no surprise, Blizzard loves the paladins.

As much as I love to play feral I know now more then ever the guild is going to need solid healers, so I will definitely being doing my share of healing this expansion.  I will be pvping as feral for the most part though so I will get a healthy dose of both specs and I will also try to use my bear & chicken specs from time to time as well.

It was an exciting week and overall aside from the new questing model and the homogenized healing classes, I like the direction Cata is taking this game.  The AOE fest/DPS races are gone and we have returned to more skillful play.  The heroics actually feel heroic and the regular dungeons are actually useful training grounds now.  I don’t like having to spend two hours doing a heroic or should we now call them “mini” raids, but perhaps with time and more gear we will get these runs down to a decent time amount.

The new season of PVP starts today so I am looking forward to having to grind for PVP & PVE gear.  As well as finishing out leveling my professions and making some of my gold back!  I will have plenty to do over the holiday season until we start raiding in 2011.  I also plan to update this blog more frequently and to start delving into more theory crafting and yes I will be updating the pictures as I am not longer an ugly ass night elf!

In a few hours we finally get to experience the new expansion.  It has been a long wait.  Now that I will be actively playing my druid again I plan to keep this site up to date with all the latest and greatest things going on in the world of warcraft.  My first post will likely be after I am 85 which will probably be sometime tomorrow!

For now enjoy this great video from Blizzard!

Last night like most dedicated Wow players I logged on last night to check out all the new changes to the world due to the Shattering.  I was highly disappointed when I logged onto my Alliance character.  Stormwind was basically rearranged with a few craters here and there.  The areas around Stormwind also were relatively uneffected. I checked out westfall, stv, and blasted lands.  Really not much had changed there either, a few new features here and there but nothing spectacular.  The train of murlocs in blasted lands seemed ridiculous.

Then I logged onto my Horde toons.  Orgrimmar looked completely different, it was like stepping into a new city.  Then it dawned on me, Blizzard really likes the Horde.  So much so it was obvious they had spend most of their time and effort redoing the Horde centric areas because they were amazing. 

Last week I had also experienced the elemental invasion of Stormwind & of Orgrimar, and in my opinion the invasion of Orgrimmar was just so much cooler and fun the that of Stormwind.  The Horde had gates with spikes throughout the city whereas the humans used sandbags?  I think the further this game progresses the more obvious it becomes which side the designers favor. 

The only saving grace for the alliance is the addition of the worgen, but other then that if it wasn’t for the guild I am in I would not be playing Alliance at all.  The fun factor just isn’t there.  Everything on the horde side including the quest lines are just so much better.

Last night we ran our last 25 man raid as a guild.  In Cata we are planning to run 10 mans exclusively.  Although I’d like to say we went out with a bang it was more like a fizzle.  I have enjoyed large raids since the beginning of the game.  When Burning Crusade came out and they announced there would no longer be 40 man raids I thought it was horrible.  However BC proved to be a very frustrating expansion on the raiding scene for me.  Every 25 man raid I was in had attendance issues, and I ended up having the most fun in 10 man raids.

When Wrath came out I was determined to run a 10 man raiding guild.  Which I did for some time and we progressed quite nicely.  However since better gear was available for the 25 man content there was always pressure for us to pug a 25 man raid or try to merge with another guild so we could run our own.  Ultimately this lead to the guild’s demise due to all the drama it caused.  Finally in Cata we will have a chance to run the smaller raid format and to obtain the same rewards.  Personally I can’t wait!

Although I will miss the larger raid sizes from time to time, all in all the smaller formats are much more enjoyable.  You get to know the people you are raiding with better, and there is more a sense of teamwork in the smaller format.  I’m sure not having as many raid spots available in the guild will cause drama, but at the same time I think it will also build up the importance of people teaming up to work together.

Last night after our 25 man raid was called there were some of us who decided to form up a 10 man and attempt to get some of our fellow guildies the Kingslayer title.  We wiped for about an hour and finally the GM had to head to bed he was tired.  We pulled in another guildie and worked on it for another hour and got those folks their Kingslayer.  I heard everyone on vent encouraging each other, laughing about our mistakes, and talking about being determined to kill him.  It was a great night and a great moment in the game.  I am so glad to be a part of this guild and work together with other folks helping them achieve their goals in the game.

One of the main reasons I stopped being a GM was that I grew tired of dealing with drama.  For some reason there are certain people in this game that seem to thrive on creating drama between players and within the guild.  Nothing seems to take the wind out of your sails more then having to deal with these clowns.

I have to admit for the last 6 months I have had to deal with very little drama.  I took over my 10 man raid I was in when the raid leader bailed on us because I felt like if I didn’t the raid would probably fold and I would have to search yet again for a raid to be a part of.  However, I knew in the back of my mind that when I did take over I would be exposing myself to the drama mamma’s of the game so I was reluctant at first to take on the job.  The raid did have one emotional night when we were all frustrated with our progress on Lich King and that was difficult to deal with, but in the end I made it through that and continued to push forward until last night.

A few weeks ago I had started a fun raid for a few folks to get our drake out of Ulduar, we’ve been running one night a week completing various hard modes.  As is typical in my guild, attendance is horrible, all the folks who said they were up for it do not show up and are rarely on time.  I try my best to manage the roster and so last night knowing I would be down a few folks, I tried to recruit some subs via guild chat about an hour and a half before the raid.

I happened to also be cooking my dinner at the same time as is typical on nights when I lead raids.  I work all day and so having to log on early to recruit bodies to fill a raid usually means I skip dinner or try to multitask.  Last night I was multitasking and I missed a guild members offer to help out on the raid when I was checking on my food.

I will call him Mr. Special because he seems to feel he is entitled to attention.  I don’t know him very well at all, I joined the guild long after he had left it, sort of.  Apparently last year, Mr. Special was the main tank in a guild raid and then he took some time off, came back and found himself replaced by another guild tank who I will call Mr. Iamspecialtoo.  Mr. Special was upset that Mr. Iamspecialtoo was given his tank spot and Mr. Special went out and found another raid to run with outside of the guild.  Mr. Iamspecialtoo eventually left the guild and Mr. Special continues to tell old and new members how he was wronged by the guild because the guild chose Mr. Iamspecialtoo over Mr. Special when clearly that was a wrong choice.

I have no idea why Mr. Special who feels the guild did him dirty and continues to stick around.  He claims to be in the guild so he can talk with a “few” choice friends he has left.  In reality we all know with real id you can talk to anyone in the game on any server so the excuse is poor at best.  My guess is his spot is not entirely solid in this other raid he is with and he is hoping to someday we awarded a main tank spot witin my guild.

At any rate Mr. Special felt I ignored his offer for help.  When I came back to the computer later, I scrolled up and caught what he had typed out.  He announced that he was leaving to play another game since he had been ignored, apparently by me.  Myself feeling bad about the situation decided to send him an in game mail and let him know I was not ignoring him.  Two fellow guildies whispered me and told me not to bother because in their words, this guy was an “asshole”.  I decided to take the high road and replied to both of them that part of being a leader is dealing with assholes.  I should have listened to them.

His response to my in game mail was to proceed to tell me how I ignored him twice in game and that I have ignored him in the past when he had offered his “advice” and “assistance”.  After two excanges he basically told me to fuck off and that he did not like nor respect me and that I was “good for the guild but not good for his future in the guild”.  WTF is that suppossed to mean?  Luckily I was able to contain myself and I politely replied back, but when I signed off the game last night I couldn’t help but feeling that I don’t want to deal with these kinds of people.

The only comfort I have is that I know I am not the only person in the guild he rubs the wrong way.  I had even defended his behavior in the past, but after last night I see I was completely wrong about him.  Mr. Special is the same type of character as Mr. Iamspecialtoo was and in the end they are both just sour grapes.

I grew tired years ago of dealing with these kinds of people and I was reminded again last night exactly why I stopped volunteering to run raids and organize activities within guilds.  Characters like Mr. Special ruin it for the other people who log on every day and contribute positively to the guild.  My patience is very thin due to past experiences and I am half afraid he has already worn through it.  I reached out to the GM last night for his assistance in the matter so we’ll see what happens, but I am half tempted to just take myself off the target board and let someone else deal with the sour grapes of the guild.