The state of raiding
So, i don't know if any of you have noticed this or if its just my perception, but I've found myself logging onto warcraft less over the past few weeks, now this week it may just seem that way due to a change in shifts, I'm working 9-5 Monday to Friday, whereas I'm used to having a full Thursday and Friday with nothing to do, so I'm normally on warcraft. Now it's possible that the fact I'm not spending near enough a full day logged on makes it seem like I'm on less, but what I've found is that when i do log on, I either don't know what i want to do, or can't really be bothered to do anything.
The only reason i log onto Warhawkzero is for the ICC prog run at the moment, it's rare that i can bring myself to PuG 25-mans (ToC being the one exception) throughout the life span of Wrath of the lich king I've run Naxx 25 once i think, and this was in the few days before ulduar was released, I've never even been in Ulduar 25 and I've run ICC 25 once, and that group fell apart after the 1st quarter. So there isn't really much else i can do on hawk short of putting some effort into gearing his dps spec, which i don't really use anyway.
Now when it comes to my alts i the 2 that i consider to be my main ones, are Lorian (paladin) and ianus (mage) my hunter (falconite) remains untouched in T7 gear. recently I've found it hard to get the motivation up to gear them, and this has been since one day a couple of weeks ago when i had a rather bad day in terms of raiding, not in terms of my own performance in the raid, but more a rather disappointing experience of what pug raiding has become. Throughout the day I joined groups for a number of raids on my paladin,
First of all a ToC25 run which fell apart at the first boss, 2 dps dead as we started engaging the worms, not too bad, however people started leaving mid fight, and i don't just mean a couple of people, by the time we'd wiped on the boss, there we're 10 people left.
After this i was in a ToC10 run which fell apart after 1 wipe on faction champs, which occurred because the raid leader was unwilling to listen to other people. His 'tactic' for the fight was 'Kill the healers, then the dps. go!' now if you know the fight you would know that this wouldn't work, no matter how over geared you think you are. i repeatedly tried to tell him this, and that we needed some form of CC in this fight, but he wouldn't listen, he just popped army of the dead (if you know me you'll know that this only made me angrier at him, i don't normally mind it in this fight, but because i was already mad at him it just made it worse), started the encounter and a wipe fest ensued, without even 1 of the enemies down. we could have at least had the druid down but once the paladin bubbled him all the dps disappeared and started attacking other random targets. Another group falls apart.
Later in the day I'm in VoA25, i make a big point of repeatedly asking the Raid leader if we're gonna be doing toravon and koralon, he assured me we would and told the raid that if you were only there for 1 boss you should leave now. However once toravon is down, people start leaving, once people saw there was no loot for their class they left, then once the loot had been done, quite a few more left, including the raid leader, which rather annoyed me seeing as he had made such a big point of telling people to leave now if they only wanted 1 boss.
After this i then got into a VoA10 class run, (the first person to be invited to the group might i add, one of those ones where you're looking for a group and get a "want to start a group" whispers) the group begins to fill up quite quickly, only to find myself suddenly kicked from the group. i whispered the raid leader to ask for an explanation and got no response, now i like to consider myself quite a calm person, but i was so annoyed at this blatant lack of manners, combine that with the annoyance that had built up from the previous raid groups, i continued whispering him, getting more and more annoyed, however he only responded when a few profanities made their way into my whisper, when i finally got a response it was 'i found a better ret paladin mate, simple as.'
Later in the day i logged onto hawk and decided it was about time i ventured into ICC25, i saw someone advertising in trade so i whispered him, i went and found him in dalaran so he could inspect my gear (which i was pleased with as he did not once mention gear score) now, as much as i despise using the addon as a criteria for getting into a raid group, at this point i was at about 5730gs, and linked my achievements for the 1st 2 wings+dreamwalker on 10 man, and assured him i knew the tactics. However he refused to invite me as i did not have the 25man achievement, which confused me as i knew the tactics, and was geared for the instance, however he only wanted people who had done it before on 25 man. normally i would think 'fair enough, his raid, his rules' but i had already had such a terrible day in terms of raiding i logged off in frustration at about 5 O'clock, and did not log back on until the following afternoon
I know this seems like a whole lot of random ranting but i am about to make my point. People in warcraft nowadays are obsessed with perfection, and having an easy ride. They want to blitz through the most recent raid content without having to work for it, and in doing so prevent a large section of the raiding community from progressing as far, simply because the groups that start only allow people who have already been there to join, leaving those who haven't left out, even alts of people who may have completed it are unable to get into groups. Personally i blame the change in style of instances/raid in wolk from what they were in TBC, i pinpoint it down to 1 fundamental change, The lack of CC in runs.
Now people may think that this change was only a minor one and would not have much impact on the game, however what it meant was is that groups became so used to the 'brute force' approach it made them unwilling to work at instances/runs. it's all basically 'tank pull as much as you can, healer, heal the shit out of him, dps, mass aoe!' even in ICC, the trash packs are all like this, i don't have much TBC raiding experience but even kara trash needed CC. It's meant that being able to survive raids is more about your gear than your personal skill level. I know this is a point that has been raised many times before, but in my eyes it is one of the main reasons i find myself losing interest in the game. Everything is about getting more loot, now personally i enjoy getting purples as much as the next guy, but people want them with as little effort as possible which creates a very unenjoyable raiding atmosphere.
It has even had an effect on other areas of the game for me, mainly levelling. I find myself unable to bring myself to level my druid (which is currently at level 50 parked in un'goro) which i do really want to level to fill my empty 'healer character' spot, as i have become bored of paladin healing, simply because i know that as soon as i get it to level 80, the long hard slog for gear begins, and to get the gear, that means pug raiding.
I know that this has been a long post, but its something that I've been wanting to get of my chest for a while, if you did have the patience to read the full thing i thank you. Feel free to post any comments/Share your own feelings on the matter.
The only reason i log onto Warhawkzero is for the ICC prog run at the moment, it's rare that i can bring myself to PuG 25-mans (ToC being the one exception) throughout the life span of Wrath of the lich king I've run Naxx 25 once i think, and this was in the few days before ulduar was released, I've never even been in Ulduar 25 and I've run ICC 25 once, and that group fell apart after the 1st quarter. So there isn't really much else i can do on hawk short of putting some effort into gearing his dps spec, which i don't really use anyway.
Now when it comes to my alts i the 2 that i consider to be my main ones, are Lorian (paladin) and ianus (mage) my hunter (falconite) remains untouched in T7 gear. recently I've found it hard to get the motivation up to gear them, and this has been since one day a couple of weeks ago when i had a rather bad day in terms of raiding, not in terms of my own performance in the raid, but more a rather disappointing experience of what pug raiding has become. Throughout the day I joined groups for a number of raids on my paladin,
First of all a ToC25 run which fell apart at the first boss, 2 dps dead as we started engaging the worms, not too bad, however people started leaving mid fight, and i don't just mean a couple of people, by the time we'd wiped on the boss, there we're 10 people left.
After this i was in a ToC10 run which fell apart after 1 wipe on faction champs, which occurred because the raid leader was unwilling to listen to other people. His 'tactic' for the fight was 'Kill the healers, then the dps. go!' now if you know the fight you would know that this wouldn't work, no matter how over geared you think you are. i repeatedly tried to tell him this, and that we needed some form of CC in this fight, but he wouldn't listen, he just popped army of the dead (if you know me you'll know that this only made me angrier at him, i don't normally mind it in this fight, but because i was already mad at him it just made it worse), started the encounter and a wipe fest ensued, without even 1 of the enemies down. we could have at least had the druid down but once the paladin bubbled him all the dps disappeared and started attacking other random targets. Another group falls apart.
Later in the day I'm in VoA25, i make a big point of repeatedly asking the Raid leader if we're gonna be doing toravon and koralon, he assured me we would and told the raid that if you were only there for 1 boss you should leave now. However once toravon is down, people start leaving, once people saw there was no loot for their class they left, then once the loot had been done, quite a few more left, including the raid leader, which rather annoyed me seeing as he had made such a big point of telling people to leave now if they only wanted 1 boss.
After this i then got into a VoA10 class run, (the first person to be invited to the group might i add, one of those ones where you're looking for a group and get a "want to start a group" whispers) the group begins to fill up quite quickly, only to find myself suddenly kicked from the group. i whispered the raid leader to ask for an explanation and got no response, now i like to consider myself quite a calm person, but i was so annoyed at this blatant lack of manners, combine that with the annoyance that had built up from the previous raid groups, i continued whispering him, getting more and more annoyed, however he only responded when a few profanities made their way into my whisper, when i finally got a response it was 'i found a better ret paladin mate, simple as.'
Later in the day i logged onto hawk and decided it was about time i ventured into ICC25, i saw someone advertising in trade so i whispered him, i went and found him in dalaran so he could inspect my gear (which i was pleased with as he did not once mention gear score) now, as much as i despise using the addon as a criteria for getting into a raid group, at this point i was at about 5730gs, and linked my achievements for the 1st 2 wings+dreamwalker on 10 man, and assured him i knew the tactics. However he refused to invite me as i did not have the 25man achievement, which confused me as i knew the tactics, and was geared for the instance, however he only wanted people who had done it before on 25 man. normally i would think 'fair enough, his raid, his rules' but i had already had such a terrible day in terms of raiding i logged off in frustration at about 5 O'clock, and did not log back on until the following afternoon
I know this seems like a whole lot of random ranting but i am about to make my point. People in warcraft nowadays are obsessed with perfection, and having an easy ride. They want to blitz through the most recent raid content without having to work for it, and in doing so prevent a large section of the raiding community from progressing as far, simply because the groups that start only allow people who have already been there to join, leaving those who haven't left out, even alts of people who may have completed it are unable to get into groups. Personally i blame the change in style of instances/raid in wolk from what they were in TBC, i pinpoint it down to 1 fundamental change, The lack of CC in runs.
Now people may think that this change was only a minor one and would not have much impact on the game, however what it meant was is that groups became so used to the 'brute force' approach it made them unwilling to work at instances/runs. it's all basically 'tank pull as much as you can, healer, heal the shit out of him, dps, mass aoe!' even in ICC, the trash packs are all like this, i don't have much TBC raiding experience but even kara trash needed CC. It's meant that being able to survive raids is more about your gear than your personal skill level. I know this is a point that has been raised many times before, but in my eyes it is one of the main reasons i find myself losing interest in the game. Everything is about getting more loot, now personally i enjoy getting purples as much as the next guy, but people want them with as little effort as possible which creates a very unenjoyable raiding atmosphere.
It has even had an effect on other areas of the game for me, mainly levelling. I find myself unable to bring myself to level my druid (which is currently at level 50 parked in un'goro) which i do really want to level to fill my empty 'healer character' spot, as i have become bored of paladin healing, simply because i know that as soon as i get it to level 80, the long hard slog for gear begins, and to get the gear, that means pug raiding.
I know that this has been a long post, but its something that I've been wanting to get of my chest for a while, if you did have the patience to read the full thing i thank you. Feel free to post any comments/Share your own feelings on the matter.
posted by Hawk at
17:34
3 Comments:
hurrah hawk..totally 100% agree with you on yr rant..it is very disheartening to be knocked back,kicked etc in the ways you have..and i do agree the way things have been changed has steered people towards this, gs obsessives,achievement whores are creating problems for everyone..tbc had a good idea of rep and key getting for certain raids/instances..at least you had to make an effort for it
Tai here... ignore the funny name, i haven't got round to changing it...
I completely agree with Mort and therefore you hawk.
I had a nice long spool of text here waiting to be commented... but then the site failed and it's all lost =(
Short and sweet. Mage Raid Leader doesn't let me in a VoA25 group, purely 'cos I'm a Mage. I get no reply from them, but I know it's this because my GS and Achievement were enough for the job. Aidith's in the raid, and they are desperate for a ranged DPS, but they have no Mages other than the leader...
People like this will suffer in Cata. PuGs will be MUCH harder, as they bring skill and the glorious CC back to the game. If you're an idiot in a PuG, you might be removed from your guild... and being in a guild is MOST beneficial..
That's the short and sweet version =P
PuGs suck, they really do, I'm glad powers coming back to the guilds with requiring some skill.
I miss healing AND shackling, that was challenging, now its a matter of how fast I can spam or play the whack a mole game.
I'm having fun levelling my Pally atm though, its keeping me going, but Cons in a lull where I DO pug the 25 man stuff, but don't really enjoy it. So playing with Scully should be nice. This far into the expansion, a lot of us have done the stuff there is to do and are hungry for more content (not just raids but professions, races etc.) Until then its just a power-through job.
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