Dear random pugs from over the last week or so that my priest has been in,

If I join a group and I’m shadow that means that I made the choice to eat a full length DPS queue because I wanted to DPS.  My priest who is level 84 atm will be my 4th 85 and my 3rd healer to 85 and of those three healers she is the only one with a DPS offspec that I love (I used to hate shadow back in wrath but I love it to pieces these days) but if I pick healer plus DPS you can imagine how often I actually get to DPS…never.  So sometimes I do decide to pick just DPS and and tab waiting to hear my queue pop.

What this means is that if we zone in and the healer drops straight away it is not ok for you to try and bully me into healing so we can just go.  I don’t care if you think I should be dual specced heals (which of course I obviously am) or hell even if you go and armoury me and come back with incontrovertible proof that I have a healing spec (something I never lied about btw, I always just say I’m here as DPS today) I am still not healing if I don’t want to.

It is doubly not ok for you to start abusing me and calling me selfish because we have to wait 5-10 min for another healer to replace the one that bailed.  Nor is it ok for you to threaten to kick me, to use you ‘power’ as the almightydouchebagtank to try and get the other dps to start in on me as well (and it is always the tank who starts with the priest can just heal crap, I’ve never had a DPS instigate it) and other DPS grow a fucking backbone tanks are not irreplaceable -_-

I will put you on ignore, I will not leave the group and get a debuff (if you really find my non healing presence so offensive you can kick me and I will just requeue, possibly even as a healer but not before putting you all on ignore) and I will not heal you – I have had some interesting groups lately where the only person I didn’t end up putting on ignore was the new healer.

Current Mood: bitchy

It’s a clear day here, very cloudy, but still bright, and windy like you wouldn’t believe!  I went out in the back garden with Charlie to play ball for a bit, and nearly got blown down the path.  That’s what I call impressive!  Also, rather cold.  *shiver*

Mum just called to check the colours of the clematises that I purchased for her from the cheap shop in town.  (Myself I’d rather get nice ones from somewhere like thompsonandmorgan.com!).  My phone kept cutting out when she was talking to me – apparently it needed to be recharged.  This was silly, as I tried all 3 of the house phones, one of which was on the charging station already and therefore should’ve been charged but wasn’t. Bah.

I have just taken a delivery from Purlfrost, which I am very impressed with.  When I placed the order 2 days ago they said to allow 10 working days, so this is good.  If you scroll the page down to just before halfway, it’s the one called ‘Brocade’. http://www.purlfrost.com/decorative-window-films.php We just need to install it now…

Lenluv from Altar of Storms; Boxing from Thrall and Yallu of Tanaris:

Kixil is my fifth, yes, FIFTH, 85 and you three gave me the most frustrating and definitely the worst experience I’ve had yet in the RDF. I zone into H Stonecore and before we’ve been buffed by our kitty DPS (Woosty from Haomarush!) and our priest healer, Lenluv pulls the entire first group without CC. Woosty dies, and before everyone is topped off mana and health wise, he pulls the second group in the same fashion. Woosty dies again, and Lenluv off before Woosty is rezed. We make it to Corborus, and he pulls before our poor priest has a full mana bar.

We wipe, because people weren’t aware that his tunneling is deadly on heroic and die. I give tips, we get him to 3% before we die again. The priest leaves, mostly because, I suspect, you have so little regard for your healer.

You tell us we all suck horribly, and I’m the worst hunter around because I can’t get the shards down with ZERO FOCUS. Yeah, my error, but Kix is new to H Stonecore and misjudged when she’d need to shift to aspect of the Fox for regen. My bad, I admitted it. You continue to call us all terrible, terrible players, say the rogue (who was silent the entire time) and Woosty had crap for DPS anyway. I mention we lost the priest likely because you were a crappy tank pulling everything without CC without a word to anyone, especially your healer. You said it doesn’t matter what anyone else needs, you can zerg the content. If you can zerg it, run it alone or with your guild, otherwise, you’re just a dick. Someone initiates a vote kick after we get in Yallu, the new druid healer.

Then we get the pleasure of you, Boxing from Thrall. You ask what happened, and Yallu says immediately the DPS sucks, and that’s why we’re here with a new tank in front of Coroborus. You, Boxing, immediately demand lead so you can kick anyone who doesn’t do their job and get the crystals down. Actually, your first words after Yallu calling us all bads was “wtf dps do ur job”.  You spend FIVE minutes telling us how if we’re really that bad, you’ll just kick us until you find people who can do the job. Woosty, a DPS like me who’s spend upwards of 40 minutes in the queue, keeps asking you to just pull the boss. You don’t. After two more minutes of you and Yallu wanking about how bad the DPS is, and me telling you to just pull and you can’t kick anyone right now because we’d JUST USED IT ON THE LAST JACKASS TANK, Woosty says if you don’t pull, he will. And he does, which I admit is a bit of a dick move, but he warned you.

After we all run back in (except me, Feign Death for the MFing win), you refuse to do anything. You demand we kick Woosty (you won’t initiate it, or even try), or you won’t be doing anything at all. You say you’re going for a bio and Woosty better be gone by the time you get back. You’re obviously back and doing something to avoid going AFK, and we spend 15 more minutes waiting for you to man up and pull, or leave. You leave.

After that, Woosty D/Cd after requeueing and I just gave up. I’m so disgusted by the behaviour you two tanks displayed, and the behaviour of Yallu. Just because you’re the tank, or the group lead, doesn’t mean you make or break the group. We all work together, and my best PuG runs have always been ones where people work together to accomplish the task (in most cases, killing bosses for shiny loots). Every time I’ve had a bullheaded, jackass, mean-spirited party member, I’ve questioned why I play this game and PuG.

So here’s a big, huge, shiny and bedazzled FUCK YOU to all three of you.

Kixil, who hit 85 two days ago and can pull 12k in a heroic run. I’m not the bad you think I am.

To cut a long story short, my mother is in hospital and had an operation yesterday. I was very worried, because she’s extremely frail. (The operation went well and she seems to be recovering OK.)

Yesterday, coughingbear walked me to the station after Ash Wednesday mass, and told me to accept hano ‘s offer to come over and keep me company in the afternoon. I did and he did. I was grateful. My next-door neighbour L, who is eighty-six and housebound for the moment, has just rung to find out how my mum is. She said that her carer Mary, whom I have met once when we couldn’t get L’s front door open, was also anxious to know how I was and how my mother is.

I am now complete choked up. You know, much about the world is rubbish but, mostly, people are good.

Dear Tank in SFK:

I’m a real healer. I don’t mean to sound elitist or a prick, but I am. I’ve been healing since before Wrath made everything super easy, stayed on the Holy side of things when The Shattering shattered the bottom of my [Endless Mana Bar] and mana started leaking everywhere (I’ll fix it, I promise. Gimme a few tiers.) and I’ll be healing long after. I know my spells. I know what to do in an emergency, and trust me when I say this: I’m more familiar with your healthbar than you ever will be. I fill her up in ways that you can only imagine.

Furthermore, this is Heroic SFK, not a progression fight. I’ve been here a hundred thousand times before, and I know how hard mobs hit, what mobs to keep interrupted (yay baseline interrupt!), and what groups are going to wreck your face in less time than it took for your queue to pop. In a similar fashion, the first couple of pulls of that place when done without CC are a very good test of how much damage you’re going to be taking throughout the dungeon, so I have a pretty good idea of how much of my attention you’re going to need. So when I leave you, Mr. Mostly-Purples with nearly 200k health sitting at 80% health and I decide to throw out a couple of guarantee crit Exorcisms so I can amuse myself watching crit numbers bounce on my screen…you are FINE. You are in no danger of dying and I don’t feel like casting a Holy Light while waiting for my Shock to come off CD. In fact, we’re on the wreck-your-face pulls before Walden and I’m still keeping you up with nary a dent in my mana pool and there hasn’t been a moment, short of scripted ones, where you were anywhere CLOSE to dying. Say it with me now: I am fine. Really. Trust in your healers. We’re your friends. It’s those threat stealing DPS dicks you gotta worry about. >:3

And speaking of scripted near-death experiences (andthreatstealingDPSdicks*):

Dear Magetard:

You know why I didn’t respond to you when you yelled WTF HEAL ME after one of Ashbury’s Asphyxiates? I was too busy looking for the Healer icon next to your name, cause strangely enough, last time I checked it was next to MINE. OH WAIT! IT STILL IS!

I’m not going to heal you to full. I’m not going to heal you to half. I’m probably not even going to heal you to 30%. You’re fine, you’re not going to die. Shut up and DPS. What’s really funny is how you call me out for “lol l2p” when I nicely decided to explain to you afterwards why I wasn’t healing you to full after every Asphyxiate…and then you die because you forgot how to play Red Light/Green Light on Walden, and you die because you don’t Decurse on Godfrey. The irony in that is just so delicious, there’s no way it’s calorie-free.

Signed,
Your soon-to-be former Blood Elf Paladin Healer. Farewell, Horde. *sniffles*

PS: Dear Daybreak and Eternal Glory procs: I love you. I do. I love it when you come together. The two of you are so absolutely decadent together that it’s like an orgy of instant low-mana cost heals. It’s so amazing that I feel like I need to go to confession everytime the two of you proc.

XOXOXO,
Cy

*don’t take me seriously at 7AM. I’m feeling snarky. I love you guys. Really!…in the non creepy way of course**
**unless you want to be loved that way…cause I’m always open. >.>

So, we’ve been doing a D&D4 campaign for a little over a year now, at an event a month, and I’m beginning to lose track of what’s happened between sessions, so I’m going to try and remember to do writeups.

( The Story So Far )

This entry is really part of the Dreamwidth peninsula of the Aquarionic empire, copied here for your comfort and convenience. There are comments on the original entry over there.

The census form arrived last night, so I guess its my turn to do the census meme:

March 2011
Working at the Computing Service at Cambridge University. I have just become bye-fellow of my college and am teaching Palaeolithic Archaeology in my spare time. I live in a detached house in a village near Cambridge with my cat, Angus. I can read Archaeological French quite fluently, and apparently speak it with an upper class Belgian accent whilst putting the wrong stress on most syllables. I have spent the last few months committing snippets of mediaeval Latin to memory so that I can perform a ceremonial role for my college.

March 2001
Working at a dot.com, having left academia 6 months earlier. Living in a semi-detached house in a village near Reading with my two cats Mallory & Angus. Feeling somewhat out of my depth in the world of IT and wondering if I have made a terrible mistake.

March 1991
I’m six months into my D.Phil. at Oxford. I’m preparing for a week long trip to Belgium to visit museums and people to establish whether there are any palaeolithic collections I can work on. The trip is because no-one has answered letters asking about visits/sites/collections. I later learn than no-one in Belgian archaeology answers letters. The trip is successful and I find, amongst other things, the lost collections of Edouard Dupont which will become the core data set for my doctorate. My French is very rusty, but I am learning many new words that mostly mean ‘sediment’. I am becoming strangely grateful for learning French from a text book published in 1898 as my primary sources are amongst the easiest French I have had to wrangle.

March 1981
I live with my parents in north-west London. I’ve just started my O-Levels. My school average is 3 passes at O-Level, and the only famous alumnus is Sue Arnold, whose main claim to notoriety was being expelled for infringements of the school uniform code within a week of arrival. I am sulking because the school has refused to allow me to drop French (my worst subject) and is forcing me to do 10 O-Levels, double the number of anyone else in my year. My father is teaching me ‘the insurance business’ at weekends by making me come and work in his office, and is telling me that once I pass my O-Levels a bright future selling insurance awaits me. I am increasingly determined to have nothing to do with the insurance industry.

March 1971
I live with my parents in north-west London. I’m in infants school learning my times tables and how to read. The school has expressed concerns to my parents that I may have learning difficulties and they may not be able to cater for me. This is because I have recently been trying to read backwards and have been getting very confused. It transpires that this is at least in part due to the Hebrew classes I have been attending at weekends and these are stopped. My father has bought a copy of Asterix and Cleopatra to encourage me to read. I am starting to learn about history and the Romans, and becoming fascinated by it. Later in the Summer I will be left unattended in the house, and my parents will return to find part of their back garden de-turfed and my first archaeological excavation in progress.