Deep in the geek

Yes this post delves deeply into the crazy world of WoW.  Bail if you like or read on if you want a better understanding of it all.

So like I mentioned awhile ago, I hooked back up with some guys I started out playing WoW with.  The goal was to get all of us to 80, the new level cap so we could start running “heroic” instances.  An instance is a dungeon that a group of players goes into.  The group can be anywhere from 5 to 25 players big.  Inside of the instance there are various “bosses”.  Bosses are bad guys that are typically very hard to kill.  To do so requires teamwork from all players involved.  If one person screws up you can screw everyone else as well.  The rewards for your effort is typically good items that drop from the boss.  Well a HEROIC instance is a much harder version of this concept. Every enemy inside a heroic instance is much tougher than in a normal instance.  The rewards for completing these instances is better of course.

Through out all the years I have been playing WoW I have pretty much steered clear of raiding and instances.  There are several reasons.  Players that consistently do instances are many times the type of WoW players that I don’t particularly enjoy hanging with.  They are the hard core players, they are the ones that take great pride in their virtual achievements, the players that get a rise in the shorts if they get a piece of gear that adds 3% to their “crit”.  I never felt comfortable around these folks.

So anyway, my paladin was my first guy to reach 80 over the weekend.  I retrained him to be a healing specialist to go into heroic dungeons.  Sunday night I went into my first heroic and failed miserably.  My gear wasn’t up to snuff and as a result I was unable to heal well enough to keep the group alive. 

There are two KEY people in any raid group, the “tank” which is normally a heavily armored played.  The tank’s job is to keep the focus of the bad guys on him and off of the other players.  It can be a very demanding job.  The healer is the one that keeps everyone alive.  Healing can be equally stressful.  All I do is watch player’s health bars and throw healing spells on them in a non-stop barrage.  I also have the ability to cure them of disease as well.  If players die the blame almost always falls on the healer if it is justified or not.

So although I did a rotten job of keeping people alive in my first try, the players in my group were all cool about it.  They understood I was green behind the ears in this aspect of the game.  After the entire group dying 6 times they even agreed to drop back to regular mode so we could go through the instance without all of the pressure so I could learn the fights.

So last night I was at it again.  We went into a different heroic instance.  Earlier I was able to upgrade my gear a bit so that I wouldn’t have as many problems.  For the most part it worked.  We were able to clear the entire instance but the group still died 3 or 4 times along the way.  Our group had a very good tank in it, however he also is one of those guys that is way into WoW.

He was getting on my nerves several times.  Before one fight he started attacking as I was doing something else.  As a result I was late getting heals onto him and he died.  After he died he is like “What happened there??!!” followed by him reviewing his combat log.  He reads off the multiple hits he took before he received his first heal to make a point of my mistake.  I said that I was late getting the first heal off plain and simple.  Throughout the experience there were multiple little smart ass remarks that rubbed me the wrong way.

So after spending maybe an hour and a half to two hours we killed the final boss, barely.  I was doing a miserable job of managing the chaos in the final fight.  Everybody needed healing, everybody needed cleansing including myself.  The players all were dead including me. However I had a “soul stone” on me, meaning I was able to magically instantly revive from the dead. I resurrected and luckily the dragon only had a sliver of health left.  I hit it once and it dropped.

For my efforts I received one piece of gear that was a slight upgrade to what I have.  The tank that was giving me a hard time said I did a good job with all things considered. I didn’t believe him.  I logged out of the game somewhat sweaty and stressed out.  I didn’t feel good about it at all.  I don’t need to get stressed out by WoW, I have plenty of real life things that can do that for me.   

Things might get better as time goes on since shortly Charlie will be joining us.  Charlie is as easy going as they come.