a crab stole my kill

Monday Night is progression night. Actually, so is Thursday. But this is a story about Monday night progression, two nights ago specifically, in which a 25 guild has put in many, many attempts on Majordomo Staghelm.

Or, as Lux affectionately named him, Majordomo Laghelm.

Now, Laghelm gave us fits. I'll admit, I was a part of the problem as I tried and failed getting healer cooldowns in some sort of order. I'm not as good at calling out things in voice chat as I'd like to think I am. I wavered between too many too early and trying to save too many too long. I was inconsistent and jumbled up timing. But anyways. We finally got the hang of it last week.

Our best attempt on Monday night was 140k, less than 1%. It was so to-the-wire that someone missed their seed and it was over just like that. A shaman even popped in the vain hopes that dots would kill the boss in the 1-1/2 seconds he borrowed to extended the encounter. But no, it was not to be, and that was our last attempt for the night.

So... well, likely you see where this is going. Enter some nerfs. We kill the first four bosses with absolutely no problems. Alysrazor is so much of a joke now that during the second tornado phase I tried to run into a tornado and I still didn't take any damage.

We one-shot Majordomo. And I couldn't even bring myself to congratulate the healers on a job well-done. Normally I bug the RL to give us EP for good first or early kills but I could only joke about it.

I didn't roll on the healing trinket, either. I wasn't sure that I wanted it (the mana regen ones win out in theory-crafting though I feel so far removed from that this tier I don't know), and on top of that, I couldn't bring myself to be excited about loot. Why bother? We totally didn't earn that.

I've been deflated.

And the worst part is, we'll be going after Ragnaros tonight but I can't get excited. At all. Because if it's anything like the nerfed Domo and Alys, then I'll never even know how that fight is supposed to feel.

So yeah. We'll be onto heroic modes soon enough, which is nice because that's what we were before Cataclysm came and made 25s hard to fill. But then, HMs are getting nerfed too. I can't say I'll feel like I've earned anything from here on out.

I wonder about the future of raiding. I understand that this mid-tier nerfing is likely a test run of Looking For Raid, but if we can look forward to more mid-tier nerfs, then there's a lot less motivation. If you can't stay cutting edge, there's no sense in trying in the beginning. Why just make some half-assed attempts in the first few months, waiting out until you can get your loot on a platter? How am I going to analyze our new healers if there's no trying fights, and does it really matter since we can probably 4-heal anything now?

Oh, cynical Enlynn is cynical. Pardon me. I assure you, the angst in the first half of the post was earned. This isn't the end of me raiding or playing WoW...

But for the first time ever, I just don't care. That, I think, is a very bad sign. I was disappointed by Cata only being three tiers and this tier only having 7 bosses. I'm not ready for Deathwing to be in the next patch. I'm not ready to think about leveling up and learning yet another paradigm.

And I'm certainly not ready for loot on a platter when our progression was actually going just fine, thank you very much.

nerfed content is nerfed

I'm glad I at least got the first three bosses down before they nerfed them so I could learn them and all. But it was pretty noticeable, having said bosses on wary-farm (in theory we can one-shot, but will we have 25 tonight without calling in someone's brother or aunt?) to suddenly they feel so easy, I have to remind myself they weren't like this a few weeks ago.

Also, less time on stuff we've done is more time on stuff we haven't. Last night was allll progression and it feels pretty good to be doing a bit better each fight.

I am trying something different this week, too. Before I've relied on Holy Light spam because I had lost so much spirit to go full-on mastery. But after a few upgrades my spirit is back to where it was so I have really pushed the "how much mana can I make this fight" game to spam more Divine Light. And holy cow, bigger bubbles, especially since said upgrades bring me to a 27% bubble. I've been bugging the other healadin in my raid to see her stats and it turns out for direct heal casts, we're not that far apart for cast time, though her crit is considerably higher.

But with mastery smoothing out spikey tank damage, I appreciate a crit but I find I don't wish for them as much (unlike before where the tank's health dropped and I prayed for a crit so he wouldn't die). So I have sacrificed some stats, but seriously... Bubbles were 24% of my healing. And my overheal is less than when I started fiddling with this spec (though to be fair, I've stacked the deck in my favor since I do the healing assignments. I put two and three healers on one tank and solo-heal the other for Alys).

Dangit, this was not supposted to be a mastery post! Nerfed content is nerfed. We have apps. We have recruits. We're still recruiting (shamans, that means you!) We're raiding. Life is good.