Lack of Rundowns
Over the last few days the whole post rundown concept has simply not been sustainable. As I said yesterday I have had a whole bunch of technical issues with my two primary machines, leading me to be super late with my blog post. As a result the whole rundown thing just hasn’t been in the radar. At this point since I am having to edit them back in later, I am wondering if it really is sustainable for me to keep doing. My morning blogging ritual gives me thirty minutes to an hour of time to work in a blog post. The verification and retrieval of the links takes almost that long as well because ultimately I end up reading the posts as I go. So on the week days I simply do not have enough time to keep up the practice.
The first few days I simply edited the list in at work over lunch, but the problem is my work world has gotten significantly busier as well. All of this frustrates me since I want to find a way to showcase all of the awesome posts other than my ubiquitous retweets. What I really want to showcase is the fact that out of the 45 or so participants… 35 of those have not missed a single day. Then we have another batch that is also awesome of bloggers who started late but have been faithful ever since. My biggest hope is that this spirit of community and shared purpose extends past the month. I know the Newbie Blogger Initiative as it has run on, has gotten to be that way… in that I am still in regular contact with a lot of the people I mentored during the month. I posted awhile back about the lack of community out here in the non-game-specific space… but hopefully we are changing that one blog at a time.
Running for Grand Prize
- House of Witches
- Blue Kae
- Lock and Bolt
- Murf Versus
- XP Chronicles
- Star and Shadow
- Hello Cynical Badger
- Gaming Conjecture
- Alternative Chat
- Ash’s Adventures
- Me vs Myself and I
- JVT Workshop
- The Keen Gamer
- Chris Sanders
- Aggro Range
- Irrelative Collection
- Missy’s Mojo
- Contains Moderate Peril
- The Mystical Mesmer
- Beyond Tannhauser Gate
- I Have Touched the Sky
- Shadoe’s Miniature Adventures
- Simcha’s Many Lives
- MMO Quests
- Bio Break
- Echoes From the Abyss
- Welsh Troll
- The Ancient Gaming Noob
- Herding Cats
- Healing the Masses
- Power Word: Remix
- Life of a Pleasant Gamer
- Thalen Speaks
- I Has PC
- Leaflocker
Began Late but Not Missed a Day Since
Belghast the Healer
Yesterday I managed to get to level 16 on my conjurer, the required level to start the Duty Roulette process. Now you have to realize that I have not really healed anything in years, at least not a dungeon. Probably the last time I regularly healed was during the Burning Crusade on my Paladin in World of Warcraft. That was roughly seven years ago, and it is a role that I tend to shy away from. The reasoning is my very first MMO experience was as a Cleric in Everquest, and it pretty much burned me on the role from that point out. That said I like to always have at least a healing option in my stable of alts, and since I now have every possible role other than healer… I figured it was time to do something about that. So I channeled all of my bravery and queued for the Duty Roulette… there is honestly something about that name that is so much more fitting than “finder”. When you hit the button you really are taking a huge chance on what exactly you are going to get in the process.
Thankfully for my very first dungeon I got an amazing group. I seriously probably could not have assembled a better “starter” dungeon group than I ended up with. We had dps that never pulled aggro, and a tank that managed to pick up every single add without fail. There was never a point at which I drew healing aggro on anything, and I literally did not have to heal anyone other than the main tank. In the back of my mind I knew this was a rarity as far as random dungeon groups went, but I was thankful to have it as my “breaking in” period. For the most part everything went smoothly and we made it to the end of Tam-Tara Deep Croft in what felt like record time… without skipping any content in the process. I was thinking to myself that yeah, I could maybe do this healing thing.
Reality Sets In
So if I got the idyllic situation for my first run, my second run was the absolute worst possible situation. We get started and the tank is the only one of us not communicating at all. Like people tend to be pretty friendly and I open every dungeon run with a simple “Hey Folks, How Goes It?”, which usually starts up some chatter as we do the dungeon run. The tank was completely silent, and sat there for a few minutes and then suddenly lurched forward without warning and pulled. My immediate thought was console player, since they tend not to respond to anything… ever… or if they do they respond in very short single character replies. It was a gladiator tank and he proceeded to start beating on a single target, and ignoring everything else in the pack. The moment I cast a single heal it all magnetized to me and I essentially became the main tank at that point. Problem was that the target he was on… he wasn’t really tanking either and the first time a dps started attacking it they would pull it off of him.
After a few pulls like this the tank proceeded to AFK, at which point the group kicked him and we cleared the way to the first boss without a tank at all. It was me, a thaumaturge and a pugilist and I healed through the damage. When we got another tank it this one was wearing most of the relic armor set, so my hope was that she would do all of the things that the other tank wasn’t. Turned out that she was an extremely competent tank and the rest of the run went smoothly. By the time group three had rolled around I was starting to feel my wheaties, and thought I could take on anything. I didn’t really struggle last night until I encountered my first group wanting to use weird tactics at the expense of the healer. In Halatali on the final boss, there are these adds that need to be killed before they get to the fire in the center of the room. If you don’t catch one it does an AOE burst on the entire party. My group ignored these completely and as a result I had to heal through constant AOE burst damage… Medica was my friend.
More Chill Than Tanking
The long and short is that I am embracing this new role and enjoying myself. In the video at the beginning of this block I heal three different dungeons and all of the groups go relatively smoothly. I am glad that my party cannot hear my stream of consciousness commentary, because it would likely piss a lot of them off. Ashgar was talking about getting commendations so much faster as a healer, and I can see that to some extent. During one of the dungeon runs I got three commendations, meaning that I got every one available. However there are multiple dungeons I have walked out of without a single one, which is something that is super rare for me as a DPS. I feel like tanking is the flashy job that everyone appreciates… not dying is significantly less tangible. As a tank I have always appreciated my healers, because they are the lifeline that allows me to do the batshit crazy things I do. I feel like there isn’t as much appreciate for healers from the general public. You only notice the healers when they are doing a poor job.
Writing Prompts
I’ve been stressed and busy the last few days and as a result I have not added any new prompts to the stack. However as I have seen a few people dipping into them I thought I should add a few more to the pile.
- What is the most thankless job in gaming? I am trying to keep this broad on purpose because I am not meaning the holy trinity. There are so many roles from ore farmer, to sniper that are played in various games. What one gets the least credit?
- What is your favorite appearance item or set of items? Everyone has something that they keep in their inventory just because they love the look of it. What is yours?
- What does MMO mean to you? This term gets used broadly, but doesn’t really have a firm definition. What does it mean to you and where do you draw the line between traditional online games.
#Blaugust #FFXIV #Conjurer
Tanks asspulling is an art in itself, Shadoe!
I miss the days when the tank was not the puller. When the puller cold go grab the mob and then just drop it at the tank. EQ Monk Feign Pull FTW! a long lost and much missed mechanic
In Tales of the Healonaut—http://t.co/oHINGOy5pM—@belghast chills out in the back while filling a bit rundown.
#Blaugust #Aggronaut #FFIV
RT @belghast: Updated this mornings post including list of the 35 awesome individuals still in running for #Blaugust grand prize http://t.c…
Belghast the Healer http://t.co/dsIOuRaEgk via @@belghast
RT @belghast: Updated this mornings post including list of the 35 awesome individuals still in running for #Blaugust grand prize http://t.c…
Updated this mornings post including list of the 35 awesome individuals still in running for #Blaugust grand prize http://t.co/iXCasLrKhF
RT @belghast: Belghast the Healer http://t.co/zGeMS9u5Rd #Aggronaut #Blaugust #Prompts #FFXIV #Conjurer
Belghast the Healer http://t.co/zGeMS9u5Rd #Aggronaut #Blaugust #Prompts #FFXIV #Conjurer