I promise that the rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. Quite honestly, as you can probably tell if you are a longtime reader I have been going through a bit of a rough spot. My posts have become less informative and more emotional over the last few weeks. This week many things seemed to come to a head and I just flat out exploded on some unintended victims. While sorting through the rubble I came to the decision point that I needed to take a much needed break.
Life in the Wasteland
So I spent most of the weekend determined not to log into WoW, and for the most part this was successful. I tanked one minor runs with my closest friends, but otherwise only logged in to do the fishing daily a few times. I have to say the break was pretty revitalizing. I needed time away from the politics and emotions that being a guild and raid leader tend to bring to the surface.
Where did I spend my time you might ask yourself? I aimlessly roamed the capitol wasteland. I had honestly never really devoted enough time to the game Fallout 3, and used this weekend as a chance to get hopelessly addicted to it. I was a huge fan of the two prequels by Black Isle, and can still easily replay them with the full amount of enjoyment I did the first time around.
I was more than a bit skeptical about the titles move into the world of three dimensions, but after a few hours the game “felt” like the original 2d click to move adventures. Granted I am not playing the game like I am “supposed to” in a very quest centric style. Honestly the quests DO feel different, and I think this is a lot of the issue many of the fallout diehards had with the game. However if you are like me and just want to equip some gear, and roam the wastelands finding whatever you can along the way, the game plays EXACTLY like the original.
This is my Boomstick
I am not sure what it is about the shotgun, but for some reason this is the weapon I rely on in ALL games. It doesn’t matter if I am playing Doom, Quake, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, or in this case Fallout 3… I always end up gravitating towards the shotgun and the glory of one shot kills. I have laser rifles, sub machine guns, and assault rifles in my inventory and more than enough ammo to choke a mule… but at the end of the day the ONLY weapon I care about is the trusty combat shotgun, or currently the rare upgrade… The Terrible Shotgun.
I get perverse pleasure as I draw a bead on a radroach scurrying its way across the floor, and with a single catastrophic shot cause it to explode in a juicy fountain of vitreous. I find that blowing up ants in the many infested buildings is an equally disturbing pleasure for me, as well as the ever present headshot. I find it bizarre that blowing off a Protectron head exposes something that looks much the same as blood and guts. I guess part of me just finds it so appealing to blow things to bits with such a relatively simple weapon. Some previous co-workers can attest to the annoyance of my addiction to this weapon, in our lunch and after work SoF2 matches (which I might add is still probably my favorite LAN game).
Ground Control to Major Tom
Sunday evening my space capsule had a forced re-entry as I had planned to lead a 25 man Naxxramas for alts, under geared guildies, and friends of the guild. This was without a doubt the most horrendous mindfuck I have dealt with in awhile. I don’t want the people who participated to think that I was meaning the raid, because it went really well. I am meaning being pulled back into raid leader role, on a character I had not really played for two weeks, while being barraged by 10-15 tells at a time with each and every person having a valid question or need of me. To go from the pleasant cocoon of non-interaction that I had wrapped myself in all weekend long, to the stark reality that every single member of the raid needed some of my attention was more than a bit of a culture shock.
We managed to down 3 wings and 2 bosses in the time allotted. I feel that overall this was a pretty smooth run giving the facts that we had several periods of afk-ness, and scraping around to find extras to fill holes as people needed to leave. We had more than our share of issues with the Death knight wing. Most of this really comes from the fact that the assembled group represented 4 different 25 man naxx raids, with 4 different sets of strategies. In my reeling mind, I was doing a less than adequate job of explaining our intentions. So many of the fights in that wing particularly took a few attempts for us to come to a compromise as to the method we would handle each boss.
The real win of the night however is the fact that we only walked away with 4 Abyss Crystals. That means that many items found new homes in much needed main and offspec sets. Any night you down a good number of bosses, see a lot of loot, and very few of the pieces go to DE is a massive win in my book. It helps to justify the fact that we did in fact have a need for a Naxxramas 25 man run. In the case of Duranub/Stalwart, we have been in need of some fresh blood, but the majority of our good prospects were not geared well enough to be able to perform adequately in Ulduar. It was my hope that by running a few weeks of this, that we would manage to fill out the gear sets of these players.
Getting Council-ed
Since the events that lead me to take a break happened Thursday evening during our raid, and I never got up the “oomph” to make a post Friday, I missed my normal Thursday night raid synopsis post. We started the evening doing a little bit of cleanup, and going after Razorscale. In stark contrast to last week, we pulled off a near flawless victory, with the only mishaps happening during the very tail end of the fight. It was just a combination of me with too many debuffs, and I believe healers transitioning to the second tank before he had aggro. However this bobble happened at 10% and really had little effect on the overall outcome of the night.
We proceeded on to the Assembly of Iron, otherwise known by almost everyone as the Iron Council (blame black temple and the Illidari Council). On our first attempt we made some solid progress getting Steelbreaker down to under 60%, which made me very hopeful for our shots at downing the encounter. We made some adjustments, and over the course of 3 more attempts we managed to push our way through Steelbreaker, and down Molgeim and Brundir as well. Other than Flame Leviathan this was without a doubt our fasted time to learn a new encounter. I don’t want to jinx us, but after the pure horribleness that was weeks 4 and 5, week 6 redeemed the raid as a whole and I think maybe signals us finally being back on our game.
will add loot later – since our lootmaster neglected to upload the file and my memory is crap this morning
More Indestructible
Iron Council also managed to drop us our 6th Runed Orb, and in the hopes of increasing my general “not dying-ness”, and the fact that I put in the first request… they went to craft the insane new tanking belt. During one of my trips into wow to do the daily fishing quest I managed to catch one of the crafters on Argent Dawn that actually have the pattern (thanks Riotus). Special thanks go to all the people I pinged in the guild to do titansteel transmutes, and Rylacus who is freakin amazing for helping me with half of the bars I needed to craft the final product. I love you man, and I totally DON’T want your Bud Light.
Indestructible Plate Girdle with 3x Solid Sky Sapphire for max stamina
Hopefully the week ahead will go smoothly, and I will be able to maintain the “better” mindset that a weekend of NOT playing Warcraft awarded me. For anyone that I have had an unnaturally short fuse with these last few months, I want to post a very public apology. I am hoping that the fact that I realize how much of an asshole I have been lately, and taking a bit of a break, will allow me to back down from the Raid Nazi mode I have been slipping into.
I couldn’t wish for a better group to raid with