Status

I have had a couple posts floating around my head in various unfinished stages. One of them isn’t really floating; it’s a post on Jana’s background that perhaps is a third of the way done and incredibly long already. Another post is on a very interesting feature of Saxsy’s gear, in that reforging according to static SimCraft stat weights would be a mistake. I apologize for not getting those posts out sooner.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and usually that means I’m on a vacation of some kind or I haven’t had any ideas of what to post. This time that’s not true. It’s that what I am thinking about posting are things that, for various political reasons, I probably shouldn’t post.

I won’t be vague. I haven’t had all that much fun in the game lately. A part of that is certainly because of Saxsy’s legendary inability to get loot. To illustrate how bad it is, she is at ilvl 386 equipped right now. She has run every A team Dragon Soul raid our guild has been in, and has been part of the first kills of seven of the eight bosses in Dragon Soul (our guild hasn’t gotten the last boss). Jana, in contrast, has been in exactly one Dragon Soul raid, that to sub for a B team member for all of an hour. She has downed two bosses and gotten nothing from the instance either. Her item level? 386.

Yes, Jana and Saxsy are more or less equivalently geared right now. When I announced this to the guild some people offered their congratulations. I would far rather have the character that is actively raiding be better geared than the character who is not.

This is not fun.

But there are other things going on, and they’re more important. I hesitate to even bring them up here because I know that it will probably just make things worse. In fact, I really don’t want to get into them much. I’ve talked to my guild leader about them but there’s only so much talking you can do before you have to take action of some sort. Talking doesn’t change the situation.

I imagine that if I stopped raiding the reaction from a fair amount of my raid team would be “Great, that’s one fewer person on my token. Let’s get a hunter or a warlock in here.”

I imagine this despite the fact that I have never won a single tier token nor have I even won a single piece of loot.

Is it true? Probably not, after several minutes of reflection. But I think that sums up the attitude of a fair part of the people on my raid team. They view characters as interchangeable parts and what is more important to them is loot balance (as in, having three or four people on each raid token) rather than who is actually raiding with them. 

Our last week of raiding should have been a smashing success. We got past two new bosses, and made several reasonably good attempts on the last boss of the raid instance. Instead it was marred by people fighting over loot — particularly loathsome to me when said people are talking about the third or fourth piece they’ve gotten in the past two weeks and I’m sitting there having never won a roll, my third piece of T13 loot sitting in my bags for over a month for an inability to get a fourth.

What does this all amount to? I don’t really feel welcome in my raid group anymore. I don’t feel like I’m part of a team.

Could this all be minor squabbles blown out of proportion by the fact that I’m not feeling well generally? Sure. But I think when I’m not having fun it really makes sense to try to figure out why I’m not having fun. Beyond that, it’s not like there are a shortage of things to point to and say “This is not fun.”

I felt like I’ve been here before.

Long ago, Jana was indisputably my main. She was the character I raided with, the character I wanted to progress with, and so forth. But along came Traxy and despite her lesser opportunity, she eventually passed Jana in gear. Obviously the comparison is not perfect because back then I was raiding with Traxy and Traxy is a different class than Jana. But it underscores the greater similarity.

Back then, I wasn’t happy with my guild. There were all sorts of reasons for it. Some of them are present now, some of them are absent now. But the feelings are similar. I am not happy where things are. I feel like I have to make a change.

So it was that last night I logged into Traxy, for the first time in a long time. Through a combination of her own 4000 justice points, donations from guild mates, and a couple runs through old heroics, she jumped her ilvl from 317 to 347 (although that 347 is an odd mixture of dps and tank gear). The idea is that she may once again tank for Storm, a guild that has downed heroic Morchok, who apparently needs a tank, and whose professionalism in raiding is unparalleled. In theory I can do this and still RP on Jana and Saxsy and even raid on Saxsy on the weekends (some people who do raid hardly log in other than to raid).

In practice, though, it’s a credible alternative. It’s one thing to say “Hey, look, unless things change within our raid group, I’m leaving.” It’s quite another to be able to point to an alternative and say “I’m going to raid over here. It’s more fun.”

Maybe things will change, and maybe raiding on Saxsy will become more fun. As I said, there’s nothing in practice that would stop me from raiding on both Saxsy and Traxy. But maybe things won’t change. Maybe the feeling of being unwanted will be confirmed by people complaining about how crowded my token is and wanting a generic hunter or warlock in my place.

At least then, I’ll have somewhere to go.