Finally dandy with the me inside
So this is me now. A Human Paladin on a European, PvE roleplaying server. Excusing the fact that I'm still tanking, everything is as opposite to what I used to play as possible - exactly the way I wanted it. For me to be able to function within WoW as I used to, I felt it was necessary for me to take these steps. It probably wasn't but then I have no regrets. And no, I don't roleplay, nor do I have any intention of ever doing it. In fact, whenever anyone around me does I almost freeze up as if I feel I should respond to it accordingly but have no idea how. It's as if seeing a spider crawling on my desk! I actually ended up on Argent Dawn due to some lobbying on my Benefactor's Bar post by two natives named Tectonic and Verin. The latter would become an important figure for me in the coming months.
Leveling up for me was extremely swift. Following Jame's ridiculously efficient leveling guides, as I always do, combined with the changes in 20-60 leveling speed and my already vast knowledge of the game allowed me to hit 62 in just thirteen real life days of consistent play. I'm not sure what the /played was but seeing as the only help I got from all that leveling was from the odd instance "boosts" (as they call being powered through on EU servers) thanks to one of Verin's alts, I was quite happy with my progress. Though Bluetonberry and Linearhaze would join me later, the vast majority of my leveling was done with no guild and no private channel. My only real source of companionship was through sending tells to Verin. Even doing this made me self-conscious. I couldn't shake the mental image of Edna telling Fry about all the menial things she did throughout the course of her day in 'Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?' so I attempted to hold back. Still, I never really felt lonely and allowed the silence to create a level of stoic concentration when going through the worst parts of grinding.
I always knew I was going to switch to Protection, I could just never make up my mind when. I felt that the early forty's was the most optimal time to do it but ended up staying as mind-numbing Retribution until 60 due to lack of funds for fancy shields and spikes. Switching over in outlands was quite scary. I wasn't exactly rife with the gear to do it though I did know what I was doing. Before I even starting playing as Paladin, I read an incredible amount of literature to clue myself up. After all, on my Warrior, I didn't even know why Tiberion thought The Unbreakable Will was a bad tanking weapon in Hyjal a month before I quit. I was like a kid slowly learning how to swim, pushing the envelope further and further until I learned my limits. To be fair, the biggest obstacle I faced in early outlands was the fact that my one handed weapon skills were so grossly underskilled rendering Reckoning, and, consequently, my ability to grind, useless. After a few hours doing some quests that frankly should've taken a fraction of the time, I felt confident in my grinding skill as Protection and that I had learned my limits.
At level 62, I took a two week break off the game for a reason I'm not going to go into in a public entry (those that I'm comfortable knowing, know). The only thing I selfishly did in this time was grind out the Sporeggar rep for Petrified Lichen Guard and painfully level Engineering up to 350 for Tankatronic Goggles. Patiently spreading this over a few minor time slots would allow me to focus back on leveling completely once my wonderful break was over.
When I came back, I decided it was time to put my instance grinding model into effect. The premise of this is simple; instead of making quests my main focus for leveling, I do instances. These give comparable EXP, better items, valuable early reputation and they allow your quests to backlog so far that at 70 you have a ton of resources to draw on to afford epic riding skill. If you're confident in dealing with people and looking for groups, which isn't exactly hard on a high population server, there are absolutely no negatives to leveling this way yet mind blowing positives. As I would discover though, the one thing I hadn't really considered coming out of this was kinship.
The one person that I believe I owe an untold amount of credit to on Argent Dawn is a Paladin called Cleppel. Or, to credit his main, a Mage called Griph. Our paths accidentally crossed during a Slave Pens run and I think I left an impression on him with a joke I made about not using greater blessings. There's also the fact that I'm a helluva great tank! Hey, I'm not going to be modest seeing as I tanked as a Warrior every day for over year and worked out the kinks and nuances to Paladin's tanking through hours of research and two full levels of experiencing it solo. Besides, enough people told me as much, which isn't really surprising when almost everyone carries the mentality that each and every member of a pick up group is going to be mentally retarded and the whole thing will fall apart on the first pull.
The next day when I was grinding in Nagrand, he sent me a tell and asked if I remembered him and if I wanted to do another instance and it just built from there. When you have a good tank and a good healer, which is essentially what Cleppel and I formed, the framework of a successful instance group is there to be built upon with smart use of the Armory. We pretty much ran multiple instances every single day until we were at the point where we needed nothing else and had to make the step up to heroics. Before that though, during one of our Steamvaults runs, he informed me he was doing Karazhan that night with his usual circle of friends. I pretty much begged him to let me join and he said he would see what he could do.
This is where I made one of my only mistakes on this character.
I wasn't confident of getting in to his group in the slightest and, as time was getting on, I decided to just see what was going on in Looking for Group. It took me precisely four minutes to join a group that was already at the Opera Event. Why that didn't already set alarm bells off for me, I don't know. The stupidest thing I did was zone into their partially cleared Karazhan (thus binding me to it) before the group had even been recompiled. Before a single mob had been pulled, Cleppel informed me that I could indeed go with his group. Let me tell you, standing inside Karazhan with a dysfunctional PuG while somebody who had become a good friend is granting you permission to go with his group of friends that'll clear it in three hours without trying was gut wrenching. I was so annoyed with myself over what such a stupid, impatient decision had cost me. Pretty much the only thing I remembered from the PuG I was in was that there was no priority on loot. If a shitty DPS Warrior with 61 points in Arms wanted to roll on a piece of tanking plate over the tanks, that was okay. In hindsight, it was a PuG, thinking it'd be any different was silly but at the time I was floored. Incredibly, when The Curator died, he dropped Wrynn Dynasty Greaves and I won the roll. Even that wasn't enough for me to get over what I'd given up with Cleppel though.
In the following weeks, Cleppel and I would run heroic and heroic, day after day and I would eventually slot into his weekly Karazhan run as their main tank, a role I performed as recently as last night. The other key people I've met in my time are Saitoh, Tannenberg, and Sain. Sadly, the first two have disappeared, though I can't say I'm surprised. Tannenberg, a Retribution Paladin, had re-rolled here with his girlfriend Saitoh, a Restoration Druid, from a horde guild that sounds like they were half way through tier 5 content. From all the conversations with him, he seemed to get more and more frustrated that he couldn't bust into raiding as soon as possible. Not that I have anything bad to say about him, he just didn't follow the same logic and do the same groundwork that I did to get to where I am. Do normal instances till there are no upgrades left, do heroics and try to get into Karazhan until there are no items left you need, then apply to a guild. Saitoh just seemed to be along for the ride. She was a good healer. Hopefully the pair of them will reappear when WotLK comes out.
Sain, is a totally different story. I don't remember how we met or why he left a good impression on me, but him, Saitoh, Tannenberg and I would run instances together quite regularly. When those two disappeared, I begun to implement him into my pact with Cleppel, which had already very happily impregnated Bluetonberry into it. As I always held high standards with everyone I invited and Sain fell a little below that, Cleppel, who could be occasionally outspoken, accidentally asked in party chat what my obsession with this blue Mage was instead of guild. Sain didn't care, he shrugged it off with a joke about being a green Mage. I don't know what it was about him but he exuded this attitude of wanting to better himself and learn all he could to improve. That's the sort of attitude I thrive on and I did what I could to put him in the right direction. I'm really happy with where he is right now and he's become as close of a friend as Cleppel has, the sort I will do anything for if they should ask. The real tragedy is his week on, week off work schedule condemns him from joining a raiding guild. A terrible shame for someone with so much potential.
The final friend who I'm very proud to give a mention here is Mimis. Yes, Mimis. When I thought I was going to go back to FFXI, I dug around trying to find any way of contacting him I could in the hope of a reconciliation after our less than amicable split. It was really a shot in the dark, I had no idea whether he still used such an old e-mail address but after a few days, he replied. We got speaking from there and it turned out that he now played WoW casually around the grueling new job he wishes he doesn't have. When he discovered we were Alliance, he said good bye to his guild mates and transferred his Druid over. From the minute us three were all speaking again, it was like old times. Like we both silently realized what a fucking waste of a good friendship our stupid argument was. It was odd, I felt like a girl overwhelmed with emotion that I had this friend I valued so highly back in my life. Excusing Artica, Mimis was the only person that was ever able to truly break into the bond of friendship holding BTB and I together.
As outlined earlier, my goal was to get every non-heroic item, move onto heroics and Karazhan until I had every drop and badge item from those, then apply to a raiding guild. That process took me about two or three months. Devilshark Cape took four runs, Figurine of the Colossus took fifteen. The step up from normal instances to heroics was really rough. It's ironic that it was easier doing Karazhan in between that and the gear from that made heroics much easier. To me, it doesn't seem that's how it should work, but alas.
I feel pretty confident when I say that Verin would've got me into the current best guild on Argent Dawn, Lonely Adventure Guild. He was an officer within it, and, by all accounts, a somewhat powerful figure on the server. He'd treated me very well and hinted as to what his intentions were. I would've been that twenty-fifth member you wince and carry through Hyjal and Black Temple that gears up fully inside two weeks and becomes a pretty decent member to be relied upon. But that didn't happen. Before I was even 70, the guild broke up due to the leader quitting. That was that, then! Consequently, this thread is a good indication of how things really are for a re-roller.
Once I'd got all my badge and heroic gear and the majority of tanking stuff from Karazhan, the final road block for me was heroic Magister's Terrace. My God, this place is hard without an optimal set up as I found out too many times. Whenever I would go for a group, I would grill them until I was sure it wouldn't be a waste of time. The first time I did it, we couldn't get past Vexallus because a Paladin healer isn't optimal for it. The second time, we couldn't get past the Delrissa arena event because our lack of CC wasn't optimal. Though I was the optimal tank for the place, trying to get together the right group of people wasn't easy. One night when I was about to log, I got a tell from some Druid asking me if I wanted to do it with his perfect group, which I jumped on. The entire run took 35 minutes and it was awe inspiring how this group of people carried themselves. Though the perfect group will obviously help more than anything, it became apparent to me that having good players who knew how to react to a variety of situations without panicking was pretty crucial too. In total, it took six runs before Commendation of Kael'thas and Cudgel of Consecration dropped, amazingly, in the same run.
At this point, I was confident of looking for a guild.
During one of the few runs without Cleppel by my side, I picked up a healer called Darra who's Vestments of the Avatar excited me on Armory. The daily heroic was Black Morass, which is what we did. After the run she sent me a whisper that was along the lines of "you're so good, I think you should apply to my raiding community". I was flattered but, at this point, I hadn't yet reached the point of completion outlined above. By the second heroic (Shattered Halls) I did with her though, where she continued to prod me into applying, I was. The next day, I checked out their site and, incredibly, they were looking for a Protection Paladin. After putting together a truly epic application and going through their intimidating and slightly contrived theory and practical examinations, I was accepted.
The key thing to note about Redemption is that it's a community and not a guild. I couldn't quite get my head around this at first but I see the reasoning for it. Where as you'd usually join a guild then use a private channel to keep up with friends, this is pretty much the opposite. There are pros and cons to it, but hey, it works and people seem to respect the fact that they can remain in their guilds.
To be honest, the first few raids I did with them, I felt no bond. Whether it was because of not being in an actual guild, still finding out who people are or whatever, I felt like I was going to be one of those people that just raids to collect items without ever really breaching the bonds of friendship on show. It also agitated me a little that I was seemingly the last tank to have to step up, as if they felt a Paladin was unable to hold their own in a one on one battle. Thankfully, that changed in my first Hyjal run. Feeling incredibly useful and valued really made me feel better. Being part of their first Archimonde kill and then in a successful Zul'aman group that almost made the fourth chest on out first run together really put me up there and I started to feel part of something.
Yeah, the community isn't perfect, but which one is? It's strange really. Sometimes I sit there slamming my head into the keyboard while hearing the strategy for the next boss meticulously explained to the group of people that were all seemingly there the week before wondering why we're not fully concentrating our time on getting as much as done as possible. Then, because all twenty-five people have utter respect for each others time and are all trying on trash (the true time burglar in raiding) it feels like we're actually going pretty fast. There's also two other people in the guild that have done all the content as I have that I've formed a strong bond with. Sometimes us three will make a "suggestion" for how something could be done better only for it to get ignored or butchered. For example, in saying that all the Shamans should drop their Earth Elemental totems for that awful Aqueous Spawn pack after Naj'entus to trivialize the pack, that idea somehow how got bastardized into a Shaman basing the entire pull around the Earth Elemental doing the pull. That was then dubbed a terrible idea to try and we're made to look foolish. I mean, I don't get it, how is dropping a few pets that are immune to the damage to peel them off the tanks after the pull a bad idea? How can it even possibly be a bad idea? Sometimes it feels like our efforts to better the raid are diluted down to an unnecessary "them vs me" situation out of some fear of control loss.
So, that's where I am now after a few months of not posting here. I'm happy with the friends I'm surrounded by, happy with the raiding community I'm in and happy with the progression my character has made.
Lets hope it continues.