Reports of my demise...

Well, hello there – remember me?

I’m aware that the answer to that question is a resounding “probably not”, but with that borne in mind I’m going to splat out and post something irrespective of where I’ve been in recent times. That having been said, given the length of time I’ve been absent, I think it’s fair that a small explanation (at least) is provided.

Basically, I moved job. That might sound innocuous enough, and I guess it is, but this change of job meant that I had to complete a four month training course on top of other commitments both in game and out. So while I was being educationally topped up, my time took a hit and these issues were further compounded as my personal life also took a very dramatic change that needed some pretty significant resolution.

Long story short? My life turned upside down since the last time I posted and it’s only now that some semblance of normality has started to return. But what has that meant for my WoW time?

1) I started Mists of Pandaria on the Sha’tar, in what was meant to be a raiding guild.
2) Said raiding guild decided on an “everyone shall raid policy”. It didn’t work.
3) We tried to run two separate raid teams; does anyone know if that’s EVER worked?
4) Bad management and a broken social system caused me to relocate to Argent Dawn.
5) Diabolical and I took control of again and set it up for raids.
6) I met Spinks and raided with Kadomi – was a bit of a treat, I must admit. :D
7) Unfortunately, raiding on Argent Dawn was extremely difficult; there’s a dearth of raiders.
8) After continually replacing geared people with un-geared people, we moved.
9) Now, after everything, we hit Twisting Nether and started officially raiding last night.

All in all, it’s been a jumble of ruined evenings and stuck periods where we either didn’t raid or raided with players who simply weren’t capable for normal modes. A lot of this wasn’t their fault; they simply had no experience of real endgame, and it took time to figure this out in some cases and give decent people a fair shake. But we’re now on Twisting Nether, renamed to 'A Time of Angels', and genuinely hoping we can finally make it work. We want to clear the normal modes of this tier at least, which should be achievable, and hopefully gear everyone up a bit before 5.2 lands.

As for me personally, it’s been a bit frustrating. Given the roster issues we had, I started off tanking only to make the move to main spec Fury after about a month on Argent Dawn because we recruited another tank and my partner couldn’t play DPS (a warning sign I didn’t fully heed, truth be told). Now, given a couple of problems with our healing set up, I’m back to main spec tanking, which is fine, but with a significant waste of valor points in tow trying to maintain currency with two specs in guilds that weren’t really raiding successfully, or getting much luck with drops.

The biggest disappointment is the fact that Diabolical chose not to make the jump to Twisting Nether, as he always said Argent Dawn was going to be his last server. I don’t mind saying that he was the best officer I ever had, and I’ve already felt the pinch of him not being around to this point; here’s a public thank you to “The Doctor”!

As for actually playing warriors in this expansion…

Alas, function has come before form. All the little idiosyncrasies and “imperfections” that skilled warriors worked through have gone. The days of Unrelenting Assault and Warbringer are now past, and we shan’t see their like again. Warriors are a perfectly strong class, comparably the strongest they’ve ever been while tanking, but they’re simply not fun anymore and the talent system is, quite honestly, horrendous. In an expansion where Blizzard have done a heck of a lot right, the class design really lacks in imagination and flair. If you played a warrior in WotLK and then jumped to Pandaria, you’d literally wonder what they did with the class and hope you’d accidentally logged into the wrong game. Fury and Arms are too similar, with both specs being too dependent on cooldowns and an Execute catch-up in order to be viable. What compounds this is that warriors are the worst tanks in the game DPS-wise, yet are being nerfed in 5.2; you could barely make it up.

In any event, I’m still enjoying the game because the content is good and a lot of what Ghostcrawler has been saying recently strongly implies he’s learned a lot this past year and a bit. I’m hoping this trend continues and that he shows an erstwhile absent resistance to forum crying.

So that’s my catch up. Hopefully, I’ll be able to start actually contributing to meaningful debates again this week (assuming some believe I ever did), so stay tuned. I’ve missed writing, and being read, so it feels a bit like coming home.

Let me get the kettle on. :)