Ever since BC Raiding, there has been a website that people refer to constantly. Questions like ‘Am I ready for Kara’ or ‘What enchant should I get?’ have been met with the same response (and depending on how many times the person has asked the same question, with the same expletives). That site?

be.imba.hu

I’m sure you’ve heard of it, somewhere, from someone. This is the site that (when it isn’t banned from the Armory) trawls through your Armory page, casting it’s ever-judgmental eye over your talent spec and gear. This is the site that will display to you exactly what it doesn’t like about your character, although it does give some options on how to get into it’s good graces.

I have never, on any of my characters, been able to satisfy it.

Until now: http://be.imba.hu/?zone=US&realm=Saurfang&character=Shasmo

A little bit of enchant gloves here, and a little big of Wisdom-to-Cloak-style action there and presto! It likes me!

I feel … justified now. If someone asks me if I can heal something, I can now say ‘of course! wait … where?’

Of course, I have had no problems healing anything lately (although I always seem to die on the snake boss in Heroic Gundrak), and I have been pretty confident in healing OS with the guild, but now one of the popular stat-sites is there, getting my back.

And I also feel broke, lol. The mats for Wisdom alone took the money I had in my bags, and now I have only the gold on my bank alt to get me by. *sigh*

Note: the following is a rant that will most likely not make sense to anyone reading this. You will not miss much if you stop here.

On the subject of ‘the guild’ …

The guild I am in currently, FrostFire, is billed in the recruitment macro’s as: a levelling/social guild who raids. 65+ only. This is all well and good, they are great to talk to in /gchat, and the majority of people in the guild are in Northrend, levelling up. Us 80’s to tend to help when asked, and we also have a fair few guild-only Heroic runs.

But they want to get into raiding. And herein lies the problem.

I like raiding. I can’t think of a better WoW-time for an evening of banging our heads against a boss’s flanks in frustration as an encounter is learned. I willingly go wipe after wipe after wipe for weeks on end, it seems, just for the satisfaction of seeing that boss fall to the floor, all sparkly and shiny with our rewards for a job well done.

I raided in BC on a pure-DPS character, and Shasmo was able, before the pre-patch nerf, to tank Karazhan with her awesome guild on Dath’Remar, and post-nerf she was an OffTank in Mount Hyjal. I understand the pressures that come with raiding, with having 9/24 other people relying on you to do your job, just as they know that the others are relying on them to do theirs. I know how frustrating it can get when everyone does things as they should, only to have one little tiny mistake cause the boss to insta-gib everyone.

Raiding, itself, is stressful. Unless you are on farm content that you can do whilst half asleep and on the train, it’s stressful. You want to try and go into the actual raiding itself with a minimum of stress, so that you don’t reach your ‘peak’ too early and flip your lid.

What has this got to do with my guild? Well, there has been forum thread after forum thread about our expletive deleted loot system. People are up in arms about it, polls have been run and re-run and re-re-run over what system we should be using. And it’s spilling over into /gchat, where people are arguing and arguing over the difference between Suicide Kings and DKP.

It’s gotten so bad that people are refusing to raid with other guildies who support a different system. This issue has held up raids, and it’s causing stress levels to rise before people even go through the portal.

I believe that, for a guild who is beginning to raid, and has roughly the same team each week, that a simple Master Looter Need/Greed system is easiest. The Raid Leader assigns one trusted person to be ML, and when a shiny purp drops, then people who need it do a /roll. Highest roll wins. If no-one needs, then offspecs can roll, or people who can wear a higher armour class (ie Druids on cloth, Hunter/Shaman on leather, etc). Tier gear: just a /need roll if it’s for your class.

This is how we did it back on Dath, and it was amazing. It took the stressing out over how many points you had to bid, or where you were on the ladder over someone else. You showed up, you did the job, then you got to roll. if you lost, no biggie, do a /grats to the winner and hope it drops next week. With it being the same people each week, this worked wonders.

I can understand that SK/DKP is a better system for bigger raids, or where you have 18 people to pick a group of 10 for a raid, but we are not at that stage just yet. They have cleared only Spider Wing once, and as a result of that, declared it ‘on farm’ (I am not joking).

I don’t want to come across as having a holier-than-thou attitude, but these guys are going about things the wrong way for how I like. It’s gotten to the point that I have cancelled my forum account and refuse to sign up to raids with them. They seem to be total noobs at raiding, and I don’t want to get caught up in it. I don’t want to be stressing about it in Real Life, and I don’t want to take it out on my family when I get upset.

So, I believe that I will be looking for another guild soon. I like the social part of this guild, but when the raid crap gets bitched about in /gchat and makes everyone feel like crap (some people have been calling out the other 80’s for ‘not raiding and being morons and pikers’ (their actual words)), then it becomes a not-nice place to be.