Sunday, February 24, 2008

Why hello there! Or, a rant about why I hate entry-level raids.

Hello, my name is Cly and I'm an altaholic...

All jokes aside, I do play far too many characters. My account holds two 70s, three more toons between 60 and 70 that I'm actively working on, and a myriad of alts below those. I've acted as class captain for rogue, druid, warrior, and priest, been a guild leader and a raid leader, and now I'm raiding casually and preparing my various alts for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. (Provided I stick around that long.)

But anyway, on to the topic. I absolutely hate entry-level raids. Back in The Day, it was MC. Friggin' hate MC. Healed it on my druid, tanked it on my warrior, and DPS'd it on my rogue. Saw Rag's dead ass a few thousand times...but there is nothing more boring than doing the same instance over and over and never getting past it. (My druid was the only toon to advance into Blackwing Lair, which I deeply regret.) I suppose you can count AQ20 as an entry-level raid as well, but in my humble opinion it was a much better designed and more interesting instance than MC. ZG was alright. Except I hate the Panther, because she never dropped my druid's staff once in God-only-knows-how-many runs.

< / rant >

Now, there is Karazhan. I used to enjoy Karazhan. I have run it on my druid and priest, my former roommate's mage, and will probably have to run it on my hunter. It's getting old. Yes, it's wonderfully organized so that you don't have to clear -every- boss to fight the final Big Baddie. Yes, it drops two pieces of tier 4 and many good items. Yes, you get a ton of badges per clear. Yes, you can clear it in four hours or less if you're good.

No, it is NOT fun the five-hundred and seventy-eigth time.

I realized this after DPSing and off-tanking a four and a half hour Karazhan clear on my druid, then hopping over to my priest a day or two later for her guild's Kara attempt. Three hours to get to Opera. Opera event downed at three and fifteen. I leave to go eat dinner. Come back, do some alting, and the raid's at prince. Get a request from our GM to come emergency heal - they lost someone.

"Sure, I'll come" I say. Nevermind that I'm undergeared for the latter half of the instance, I assume he's thought of that.

I log over, get the summon, run up to Prince, and find the holes in the group have been patched with members of a tier 5/tier 6 guild one of our friends is in. (Uh oh.) One attempt at prince, one wipe later, one of them immediately starts pinning the blame on me - my healing style, my spec, my gear, etc. (If you want me to 'keep the tank topped up so the other healers can deal with spike damage', yes I'm going to overheal a ton. I never went below 3/4 mana and I was spamming rank 1 Greater Heal, which did the job nicely for my gear level.) Blah blah, I'm a skill-less noob, blah blah blah.

Or maybe I don't hate entry-level raids for the fact that they're entry-level raids. Maybe I hate the people who assume that because you're still doing them, you don't know jack.

Here endeth the rant. Next up: My beloved hunter alt, the imminent dissolution of the guild I helped found, and druid PVP.

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