Back in the Saddle

Finally! All is back up and running. I have been off work for a few days to get the house move sorted, but finally, we are all in and settled. Apart from my one cat who thinks he still lives at the old house (which is only about 200metres away), so he keeps going back there and obviously wondering why we aren’t there, even though he has only just seen us across the road. Strange creatures. I’m sure he’ll get the point soon though when his belly starts rumbling. Our other cat has settled right in at home and has already began to start his plan for world domination by beating up all the local cats.

More importantly than all of that, my internet is working again. Back online and last night hooked up with my raid gang to hit the Underfoot Depths. They had started the instance on Monday and had taken down the first named encounter, so that left us starting at Rathgar. The fight was a lot of fun and although it took quite a few pulls to get it down pat, we eventually killed him in a very smooth fight. It was good to get my first notch on my belt for an UD named and I was eager to get on to the next encounter, The Three Blind mice. I really wanted to get these guys down as the enccounter drops a really great Brawler weapon. Sadly though I think we were all a bit tired as the fight didn’t go as planned and we couldn’t get them down. I’m not really sure what the problem was, aside from the mouse we were trying to kill (Maarkat I think) kept one shotting me as tank, and had previously done the same to our SK. I need to do a bit more research but I reckon by boosting some of my arcane and physical resists we should be ok.

One thing that did happen during the fight was I get ported by the named. One of our healers made comment on this and asked me to stop running out of heal range. I understand that running out of heal range is a quick way to die especially when you are looking at a raid mobs dps. Heals are required, as simple as that. So running out of range is bad. But the script for the fight in this circumstance makes it tough to stay within range all the time when you are ported by the mob out of range. Wasn’t too much of an issue though as when we got our positioning sorted our healer was more than capable of keeping distance once we had a plan.

I was a little peeved off though that one of our raid members who has been with us longer than I have, but irrespective of that has raided with me a huge amount, actually thought I would just go off running round willy nilly during tanking a fight. I mean what sort of idiot would I have to be to do that? I did make a bit of a snide comment in group, which I ‘m not proud of now. I said something like “Do you honestly think I just decided to up and go for a jog halfway through the fight? Get my Nikes on like?”. I don’t like stuff like that so when I do it myself (yes, I’m human) well I was a little ashamed that I let it affect me like that and that I was a little bit rude to another player who I like greatly. But I really couldn’t understand why anyone in their right minds would tank a mob then just run around with it for the hell of it. Man, if I acted like that raiding at this level, I really would not deserve my spot on the raid force. That’s like tanking 101. Anyhow, to my fellow raid member, I apologise for the cheeky comment I made, but please don’t underestimate me. I may not be the best tank in the world, but I’m still pretty good and down with the job, I promise ye. If something like that happens, it’s gonna be down to the mechanics of the fight.

Having said all that, it was right to bring it up. What raid progresses if they don’t discuss what got us wiped? I guess it was the instant jump to ‘Volt was out of range, therefore must be his fault’, line of thinking that got my goat, coz if it was true it would have been a crazy noob mistake from me. Yes it needed to be raised as it was a reason for the wipe, but .... OK. I have just realised I have laboured this point way too much and now am nudging the realms of sounding anal about it. Nuff said. Move on.

Tonight. Yes. Looking forward to tonight. Udrath is going to be heading out to adventure with his buddy Merecraft and we are going to be finishing some HQs and having some general merriment. I’m looking forward to it, yeah. I must admit I am enjoying earlier content much more than end game at the moment and when it’s with old friends / family it’s all the more fun. If I see Jahf online I tonight, I’ll poke him too. I tried to convince Ema to come along with us, but I keep forgetting she’s ‘L££T’ and we probably don’t move fast enough for her. I reckon within 5 minutes she’d be pulling her hair out with boredom!

Be well.