Sick of 'See You In The Cataclysm'

In many ways, I curse Blizzard for ever announcing the forthcoming Cataclysm expansion before Icecrown even hit the PTR. In many ways it gave people the perfect "jumping off" point. The figure raiding doesn't matter when they can see the reset button coming in less than a year.

Anyway, Smart Casual's been hit by a rash of them recently. Lots of folks getting tired and wanting to leave for a while, each saying they'll be back when the expansion comes round. In all case, I'm left in two minds. On one hand, they're friends, people I would happily choose to play with. On the other, in order to keep raiding in the here and now, I'm forced to replace them, and whilst I may not always be crazy about the folks who do replace them, it's not like I'll be able to turn around to them in six months and say "sorry, but it's time to make way for the guy you replaced."

If you're gonna quit, quit, but don't say "see ya in the next expansion" like I'm supposed to hold a door open for you.

I Hate Summer

I have massive hay fever and a propensity for wearing black, so I'm naturally ill-disposed to the few weeks of the year where the sun dares to shine on the Northern Hemisphere. In recent years, my annoyance has been compounded by the fact that it also means that people I can otherwise rely upon would rather be outside than playing.

Now before you call me a total no-life jerk, I'm not suggesting they stay shackled to their desks when the sun's blazing, but it baffles me that they're mostly unwilling to spend 3 hour a night 2-3 times a week indoors.

I'd hoped that this year, with the guild in place the situation would be mitigated, but it appears my hopes were in vain. Sign-ups are in the toilet and conservative recruitment during the busy times has lead to a deficit of raiders. We've had cancelled raids several times in the last few weeks and this is a pattern I can see continuing.

Ultimately, i don't see a way out of it. I dislike resenting people for enjoying the summer, but damn it, if you can't be where you said you'd be then why did you say it in the first place?

All in all, I've pretty much had enough of it.

Smart Casual Recruiting

I don't normally like doing this, but I figure I'll throw this out there and see if it attracts anyone:

Well Summer's upon us, and like a lot of guilds, we're sufferring from people losing interest or going on holiday. Since we're currently working on Yogg-Saron in 10-man, we need bodies to keep up momentum.

1 Tank (We currently have a Warrior, Paladin and DK MT team and a Boomkin who offspecs Feral, so we'll consider most decent tanks).
1-2 Melee DPS with short-CD interrupts (Yep, we're thinking about General here.)
1 Holy Priest (Our healing team's relatively well-stocked, but it lacks a full-time dress-wearer)

We may also consider 1-2 ranged dps with good gear.

What we expect:

*Gear ready to start Ulduar 10. You should ideally be in at least full Naxx10/Heroics gear as a minimum. DPS should be hit-capped, Tanks should be uncrittable with about 28k health minimum. All gear should be enchanted and gemmed to a decent standard. Decent offspec gear is a bonus.

*A decent standard of written English. We understand that for a lot of people in the EU, English isn't your first language, but that's no excuse to use txt/l337 speak!

*Attendance: We run three progression raids per week from 19:30 to 22:30 server time, invites go out at 19:15. You should ideally be signing for at least two of those raids.

*Guild Membership: We ask that any raiding toons you have join the guild. You're welcome to keep any alts in whichever guild you want.

What we offer:

A fun, friendly atmosphere to raid ten-man content. I know the requirements above sound strict, but to keep the group effective with our casual hours, we need everyone giving 110%.

If you're interested in applying, please head over here and read the "Read this first" thread.

On timing...

So Blizzard release 3.1 and suddenly I go from scraping eight people together for Naxx to having 13-15 signs for each day. If I wasn't already a withered, bitter lump of Scottishness I'd go on a rant against human nature. Instead I'll complain about how this patch hits just after the beginning of the financial year, so I'm pretty busy at work, and spending all my spare time doing Guild admin for my freshly-interested guildies.

Further to my last post, I've revised my planned Protection spec to a slightly more cookie-cutterish 0/53/18 after being convinced of Crusade and Conviction's superiority over Seals of the Pure. I'm not getting rid of Pursuit of Justice though.

A New Direction, or just a Diversion

I've been hitting my head off the notion for the last month and a half that I have nothing really to write about. The first tier of 5-10man content has proven to be trivial (with the exception of Malygos and Satharion +adds), and strategy guides for each of the bosses fill the interwebs. I have no special insight to offer about most of them.

There's no deep mystery about tank gearing either. You get the Defense minimum, you get enough Effective Health to survive the bosses burst potential and then you stack avoidance and threat stats as appropriate. It's effective, but also bo-ring and again, the internet has lots of guides on this. I might write a post at some point listing my preferred stats in order, but that'll be a wee bit down the line.

The only thing I can talk about that I haven't really covered to date is my experiences in leading a small casual guild, which has been something of an eye-opener. I have no intention of making this blog AngryRaidLeader 2.0, but hey, it'll give me something to write about until something interesting happens (like the 3.1 patch hitting the PTR)