Maximum Wages?

I’m not the only one with an eclectic posting habit. Tobold, posting on his MMO blog site, brought up the topic of fair distribution of profits, citing a Wall Street Journal article drawing attention to the compensation that bankers have been receiving in the wake of the banking crisis. The problem with the article isn’t his contention (that banker compensation seems more generous than other professionals receive), it’s with his conclusion:

But what really makes many people angry is that while bankers get so much more money than other employees, a lot of other people actually lost a lot of money to the banks. If you bought bank shares in early 2007, you probably lost most if not all of your investment. And then many banks got propped up with taxpayer money. That all looks like paying somebody else to play in a casino for you, with him keeping a good part of the winnings if he wins, and you still having to pay him a lot if he loses.

So while there is a lot to be said against the state dictating how much people should earn, I do think that both minimum wages and maximum wages have some justification as long as they aren’t too restrictive, and are just designed to prevent the worst cases of excess.

This kind of proposition always starts with “the worst cases of excess,” but if you give people a hammer, they start seeing nails. Pretty soon wage caps abound in an attempt to even out pay scales, and the winners and losers become determined by political contest rather than being linked to actual production. Once you decide that appropriate pay level is a political question, every future move down that road is a matter of degree. No, the limited government controls on compensation is a good thing, and not the problem at issue here.

Guess what? In that quote above, Tobold even catches the real problem. Let’s zoom in on that quote a little [emphasis mine]:

And then many banks got propped up with taxpayer money. That all looks like paying somebody else to play in a casino for you, with him keeping a good part of the winnings if he wins, and you still having to pay him a lot if he loses.

The problem is that people have already confounded economics with politics. If the banks had been allowed to fail, the bankers would have been out on the street competing with each other for lower compensation, just like everyone who wasn’t saved by a bailout. The “excessive” compensation is a result of past political meddling, not an excuse for more. People should be reflecting on the damage already done by the government throwing its weight around in the business sphere, not looking for more easy answers from politicians.

I realize it’s easy for me to talk tough about letting those companies fail, since it isn’t my house or my job, but guess what? I know more people that lost their home anyway than I know people who benefited from all the stimulus and bailout money. Anecdotal sure, but there’s a reason why bad businesses have to fail. If you prop them up, then bad business practices continue, market corrections are not made, your economy suffers, and it drags down everyone without the connections to get preferential treatment. If the figures on the WSJ page offend you, blame the politicians for spending your money to prop up that segment. Don’t encourage them to make things worse.

The Retreat Dividend

Charles Krauthammer has a new piece in the Weekly Standard that is, quite frankly, an amazing read to understand what is before us down the road the liberals are taking us. As he says, Decline is a Choice. And the agenda of the liberals in charge is exactly to choose decline over renewal.

It seems like a harsh charge. Calling the opposition “anti-American” is an easy slur, used by both Conservatives when Bush was in office trying to win support for the war in Iraq, and now by Liberals with Obama in office trying to push through significant changes in the American economy and Health Care system. The reality is more nuanced. The reality is that liberals are pursuing an agenda of reduced American influence in the world, and declining economic preeminence, while conservatives push for a more dynamic, open domestic environment and a foreign policy deliberately designed to secure a stable world system. Neither one is a direct assault on America per se, but an attempt to remodel America to match their vision. The liberal vision however, depends on the decline of American power and influence.

[T]he ultimate purpose of [New Liberalism's] foreign policy is to make America less hegemonic, less arrogant, less dominant.In a word, it is a foreign policy designed to produce American decline–to make America essentially one nation among many. And for that purpose, its domestic policies are perfectly complementary.

Domestic policy, of course, is not designed to curb our power abroad. But what it lacks in intent, it makes up in effect. Decline will be an unintended, but powerful, side effect of the New Liberalism’s ambition of moving America from its traditional dynamic individualism to the more equitable but static model of European social democracy.

This is not the place to debate the intrinsic merits of the social democratic versus the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism. There’s much to be said for the decency and relative equity of social democracy. But it comes at a cost: diminished social mobility, higher unemployment, less innovation, less dynamism and creative destruction, less overall economic growth.

Liberals want to trade our current incarnation for one modeled on Western Europe. The first question is “Do we want to be like Europe?” Certainly we all have different answers, depending on our own situation and the particular trait we’re looking at. “Free” health care sounds great to some. Others don’t like the sound of having hired goons going around checking our trash bins to make sure we’re recycling. We don’t necessarily get to pick and choose what we want. It tends to come as a package deal. The second question has to be “What is it going to cost us?”

There is always a cost. Economics refers to “opportunity cost,” the value of the next most desirable alternative. Cost can sometimes be measured in monetary terms, but money is not always the next most desired option. Regardless, there is always some alternative that is forsaken to get anything. The next most desirable alternative is this case is most obviously what we have now.

Growth provides the sinews of dominance–the ability to maintain a large military establishment capable of projecting power to all corners of the earth. The Europeans, rich and developed, have almost no such capacity. They made the choice long ago to devote their resources to a vast welfare state. Their expenditures on defense are minimal, as are their consequent military capacities.

I can’t put it in better terms than Krauthammer does. Heed these words well:

There is no free lunch. Social democracy and its attendant goods may be highly desirable, but they have their price–a price that will be exacted on the dollar, on our primacy in space, on missile defense, on energy security, and on our military capacities and future power projection.

But, of course, if one’s foreign policy is to reject the very notion of international primacy in the first place, a domestic agenda that takes away the resources to maintain such primacy is perfectly complementary. Indeed, the two are synergistic. Renunciation of primacy abroad provides the added resources for more social goods at home. To put it in the language of the 1990s, the expanded domestic agenda is fed by a peace dividend–except that in the absence of peace, it is a retreat dividend.

And there’s the rub. For the Europeans there really is a peace dividend, because we provide the peace. They can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they can always depend on the United States.

So why not us as well? Because what for Europe is decadence–decline, in both comfort and relative safety–is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink, and be merry for America protects her. But for America it’s different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us?

This is not a new struggle. This has been the struggle of the conservative movement against the liberal movement of the past half century. In the words of the late great Ronald Reagan, spoken during the campaign of 1964:

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

The promises of the liberals, on health care, the economy, their foreign policy, are all based on a lie. They are trying to promise the security and comfort of Europe, when we’re the ones footing the bill for their security right now. If we stop picking up the tab for maintaining the world system, who’s going to step up to the plate?

Make no mistake, someone will come forward, but not to fill the same role the US does now. Regardless of our decision to abandon our leading role in the world or to defend it, there is always a power in the world striving to contest the power of the current hegemon with an eye toward remaking the global system to suit their vision. The international institutions that form the basis for international relations are all a product of hegemonic power, first of the British Empire, and since WWII a product of US power and design. The UN, NATO, the World Bank, etc. that institutionalize foreign relations are all a product of US hegemony, not an independent successor if we should step away. They are an incarnation of US power, not a power source. The League of Nations failed precisely because every entity in the world that had some power to make it work either abandoned it (as the US did) or challenged it (as Germany and Japan did). The previous hegemon (Britain) was in rapid decline and either would not, or could not order or enforce world system. The breakdown of the 1930s happened largely because of a refusal of those with power to play a constructive role in the world.

The world system authored by the US in the wake of WWII, and modified to suit the needs of the Cold War, represented a departure from the world system authored by Britain. Britain and other American allies (the “First World”) endorsed the new system designed by the US and lent it additional power. Those who challenged it (mainly the “Second World” of the communists) never achieved the power to supplant it with their own design. If the US steps back, and abandons their dominant role in the world, we can not assume that our allies will increase their contributions to maintain the status quo. If that was their intent, they have had ample opportunities to contribute already, but their contributions are diminishing instead as their power diminishes, traded away for comforts. If the US is supplanted as hegemon, we certainly can not assume that our successor will endorse a similar system to the one that currently operates. There may emerge a new dominant power with a radically different vision of global order (China and Russia would be the current leading contenders here). We could also enter a new era of instability as contenders move to fill a perceived power vacuum, as an echo of the situation in the inter-war period that culminated in WWII and the Cold War.

The suggestion that we can step aside, reduce our role in securing and ordering the world, and somehow collect a financial windfall to support a European style welfare state is an outright LIE. Europe could only do it with the US provided security, and a US structured world system. Who would provide security for us to do the same? Try to find a global entity with the will to power and sympathies toward the current system. If you disregard the US (which may or may not have the will at this point), there exists no such thing.

All of this brings us back to Voegeli’s Claremont article I referenced in June. To reiterate:

The danger liberalism poses to the American experiment comes from its disposition to deplete rather than replenish the capital required for self-government.

The liberal program isn’t simply an attempt to redirect or redistribute a vast quantity of wealth in America toward an unproven social experiment. It’s an attempt to deplete exactly the capital that has supported the freedom and prosperity of western civilization. This is the political struggle of today, to determine the shape of the world tomorrow. Keep it well in mind next time you have a chance to weigh in.

Healer Comparison

This is the first of my class comparisons I intended to do as my personal project in WoW, and that I promised to write in my last post. My healers at the level cap all have comparable gear, and I have reasonable time healing 10 man raids and heroics on all of them. I intend to write about tanks too, but I’d like more time and better gear on my DK before I do so, so I’m starting with a comparison of my healers. This is from my personal perspective, not based on meters or spreadsheets. It is all my own opinion and I welcome comments and rebuttals from those with different viewpoints. I don’t pretend that any of it is definitive.

Long Post ahead.

Before I start talking about classes, I need to discuss a little bit about healing theory (at least from my viewpoint). Healers don’t really have spells to be compared against each other. They have different “toolkits”, or abilities that healers combine to perform a “task.” An example of a task might be tank healing or raid healing, the most common two listed (never forget that there might be more to do! My Resto Shaman managed 90% of the interrupts on one ill-fated Assembly of Iron attempt). A toolkit for tank healing might be a “small heal toolkit”, built around supplementing a steady diet of a smaller, faster heal in the spellbook, or a “large heal toolkit”, built around making heavier use of a larger, slower, more expensive heal. Raid healing is primarily focused around “AoE healing” where you apply smaller amounts of healing to many raid members at once, and “spot healing” where you apply more small to moderate amounts of healing to selected members of a raid. Direct comparisons of spells don’t really matter. It’s all about how (and how well) you accomplish the tasks assigned to you, and the quality of your toolkit to perform the task.

Paladins

I have to start with Paladins. My main is a Pally, I started healing on a Pally, and I have the most hours in on my Pallies (they are my #1 and #2 /played toons individually, nevermind combined playtime). Fact is they are clunky. They have limited healing options that amount to selecting between a small hammer and a big hammer. No AoE healing at all makes them extremely limited at raid healing. This isn’t an accident. They are specifically designed and designated to be tank healers.

Their toolkit is a mixed bag for even that. They have the most efficient small heal in the game, Flash of Light. It’s got good scaling, but starts, and stays, very small compared to other healers’ small heals. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t get much help. You can throw Sacred Shield (an absorbent shield that absorbs small amounts over a longer duration) on only 1 target at a time. Flash of Light on the target with SS places a Heal-over-Time (HoT) spell on that target that’s based on the size of the FoL (and is therefore also very small). That’s pretty much it for the small heal toolkit. It’ll cover 5 man tanking and raid fights that are less tank focused, but it just won’t cover all your tank healing needs. Fortunately, for the large heal toolkit, Blizzard pulled out the stops. Holy Light is expensive (all the big heals are), but it’s also fast, especially when you chain it. More importantly, Paladins have the best toolkit to generate the mana to keep throwing it. Divine Plea cuts healing in half while it’s active (15s) but regenerates 25% of your mana pool on a 1 min cooldown (CD). Seal of Wisdom gives a chance at a hefty chuck of mana when you hit a target (usually around the cost of a HL every time it procs!). Divine Illumination cuts your spell cost in half for a short time (nice to pair with DP above so you can spam HL to keep up without spending everything you regened). Illumination, even after the recent nerf, returns 30% of the mana spent on all heals that crit. What their small toolkit lacks in power is made up for with a powerful large heal and the regen to use it.

Raid healing is likewise a mixed bag. No AoE heal spells at all. They have an AoE effect from Glyph of Holy Light, but that requires you to cast the expensive spell, has strict range requirements, and isn’t smart about picking its targets, so no guarantee that the people who need healing get it. Spot healing is another matter. Beacon of Light has been buffed since its introduction to become a Pally’s signature spell. Simply place the Beacon on one target, and it will produce a “copy” on that target of any heal you throw on any other nearby group member. This gives you the ability to freely apply spot heals on group members without interrupting healing on the tank. It allows you to hit two tanks at once. It also copies heals from up to 60 yards away, while normal heal range is 40 yards. It doubles the raw healing of just about every heal you throw. Beacon has its limits, but it can be very powerful.

Bottom line for Pallies is that they are clunky,wielding their spells like hammers to shove massive amounts of health onto group member. It really shows in 5 man content where you have to make the clunky toolkit cover all scenarios. They work, but they work poorly sometimes and they’re not much fun. They have real power in raids though. Not once, but twice (OS+1 and Ignis) I turned a set of wipes into a kill just by switching to my Pally healer, and then just to get the range and dual target healing boost of Beacon of Light. The raw healing of Beacon + HL may be unmatched, in the healing you can apply, the speed you can apply it, and the speed with which your mana pool plunges when you do it. Pallies usually worry much more about their mana recovery afterward than they do about being able to lay down the healing. Add in all the utility and CD stuff in their spellbook and they shine in raids, especially 10 mans where you have a small core of healers that can balance each other’s weaknesses, but need to be able to produce rapidly in a crisis.

Druids

Druids are famous as HoT healers. Almost every spell they throw is/has a HoT. They are the Neocon healer. It’s all about the preemptive strike. Preempt comes from the latin phrase “to buy beforehand.” That’s exactly what druids do. If damage lands and the target doesn’t already have a HoT on them when it lands, you’re doing it wrong. A lot of the HoTs you throw end up as wasted healing. Their cost and effect is set knowing this, to encourage you to keep throwing them. They are meant to be used liberally. Throw heals around like Dick Cheney would throw around the US arsenal and you’ve got the basic premise.

Their tank healing is all about the small heal toolkit. Their small heal is Nourish, larger that FoL, and only slightly more expensive. Not only do they have a plethora of HoTs to go with Nourish (Rejuv, stacking Lifebloom, the HoT portion of Regrowth, Wild Growth), it even scales upward with the number of HoT effects on the target if you glyph it. The varied and limited duration of the HoTs makes refreshing them all a tricky business sometimes, but in 5 mans, you can stack so many HoTs you can often omit the small heal altogether, and if you’re tank healing in raids you can stay focused on the tank to keep it all going. Large heal is another story. Swiftmend lets you drop a good chunk on a target with a HoT up already (buy beforehand!) on a short CD (15s), but the spamable large heal (Healing Touch) is too slow to be worthwhile (or not a large heal at all if you glyph it for speed). Most druids keep it around coupled to the long CD Nature’s Swiftness (2m CD) as an emergency measure.

Raid Healing is more their forte though. Cheap Rejuvs on individual members, short 6s CD Wild Growth to throw a 7s HoT on 5-6 people with 1 cast, and a reasonable base healing on Nourish for spot healing make them great raid healers. Their utility comes from the ability to throw Innervate on others for mana regen (note that Pally regen is only for themselves), and the ability to Rez a fallen raid member in combat to finish the fight.

The plethora of cheap HoTs makes them good, if busy, 5 man healers and very good raid healers, especially in 25 man raids where they can really focus on the raid. They can handle tank healing, but their limit is on pure Heals-per-Second (HPS) when it hits the fan. They’re better at buffering incoming damage during a long fight than handling damage spikes in a shorter window during the fight, especially on multiple targets. You definitely stay busy on a druid, and the HoTs help maintain control over a fight, but it can be hard to recover on a fight if you’ve lost control. Regen is so good on a druid that they mostly ignore it. They generally can’t spend mana fast enough to worry about draining their pool all that quickly, and their regen covers a pretty reasonable amount.

Shamen

Compared to those two accounts, Shamen are the balanced healers. Better buffering than Paladins (for tanks and raids); better recovery than Druids. Their toolkit is well tuned to handle a variety of situations. They worry about regen like Paladins, but mostly at the gearing level, by stacking MP5 and Crit (for Water Shield). Their only major move for regen during a fight is Mana Tide Totem, restoring 25% of your mana pool, and everyone else in your party, on a 5 min CD.

A good example of their flexibility is their small heal toolkit. Earth Shield offers a buffer for a single target (basically a tank) and also boosts the healing on the small heal (Lesser Healing Wave) when glyphed. It has charges that fire off a small heal when the target is hit. There’s an internal CD on having charges go off, so it ends up being a periodic effect that needs refreshing only occasionally, like the Pally’s SS. They also get Riptide, which offers a small jolt of healing, and has a 15s HoT after it. Works for spot healing, but also provides a HoT for buffering and it works like that on every target, not just the one with ES. They also have procs built in. Any heal has a chance to proc Earthliving, which places another HoT on the target, and all Crit heals place Ancestral Fortitude on the target, reducing incoming damage by 10% for the next 15s. That’s a lot of damage buffering, mostly with little effort, and not all of it limited to a single target like Paladins. LHW itself is again larger than FoL too, but also notable more expensive. The large heal is mostly worthless like the Druid’s, attached to a CD as an emergency and ignored from there.

For raid healing, their iconic heal is Chain Heal. Hits 3-4 targets if they’re group together, giving a moderate heal to the 1st target and tapering off. This is a good recovery heal. In 1-3 casts you can easily clean up moderate damage on the whole group. They also get Healing Stream Totem. Often ignored, it pulses for 300-400 healing every two seconds on all party members. Lasts for up to 5 min. That’s right. If you’re not running around too much, you can can put a 5 min HoT on your party in a 5 man. It’s only about 1/4th what Wild Growth will give you, but it requires a refresh only if you move, something destroys the totem, or 5 mins elapses since you dropped it.

Oh yeah. You drop other buff totems for the raid. They care about that too. And Heroism, the unique shaman buff that boosts raid output (dps and healing) for 45s. I popped it for Loken in Heroic once with Windfury totem down in a group that had me, a Warrior tank, a Hunter, and 2 DKs. We dropped him in 34 seconds. Heroism outlasted the fight by 10 seconds. Add Tremor Totem to remove fears, Cleansing Totem to remove poisons and diseases from the whole (5 person) party at a time; the list goes on. Shaman have great, and unique utility.

Shaman get a bad rep as the most mediocre healer in raids. They may not top meters much in raids, but good recovery healing and flexibility make them valuable. Their biggest worry is their limited mana regen and the cost of their spells, which tends to hover in the same cost territory with no super efficient moves like FoL or Rejuv. Where I love mine most though is in 5 man heroics. On any fight, ES the tank before the fight, drop HST plus your other totems at the beginning of the fight. Riptide the tank as soon as he takes enough damage for his bar to drop (ES may eat the 1st hit on its own). If you get lucky, it’ll crit, you’ll get the 10% damage reduction, and the healing from HST, ES, Riptide, and Earthliving (if it procced) will cover all the damage from the fight. Go make yourself a sandwich. Check back before you mix your drink, in case you need to refresh ES and throw another Riptide on the tank 1st. Healing heroics on a shaman is embarrassingly easy when the group doesn’t screw up. Even when they do, you just start hitting people with Chain Heal until the fight is over. It’s dead simple.

Priest

One day I’ll finally finish leveling my Priest and be able to comment on them. Until then, feel free to leave your perspective in the comments.

Summary

Overall, all the healers work, despite occasional advantages and disadvantages. They work best in raids if you blend them, instead of stack them. That’s a good thing. Their differences show most in 5 man content where you can’t blend. You have to handle it all by yourself. They do each have their own flavor in 10 and 25 man content as well though.

Ultimately, I like all of them enough to stick with them, and I don’t plan to “retire” any of them from healing. They’re all fun. I tend to avoid 25 man raids though, and do mostly 10 man raids and heroics, so that has to affect my preferences.

I can’t argue with the results of bringing my Pally. Either I’m just too experienced with him or he just brings that much to a 10 man raid that I can’t help but keep him as my raiding main. He’s simply missed too much when there is no other Holy Pally in the raid.

For 5 mans, my 1st choice is the Shaman, because they’re just so easy. =) Nothing like facerolling a heroic quick to unwind. My druid is my 2nd choice for 5 mans, and the better option if you start to get bored. Their preemptive nature keeps you busier.

Druids probably shine better in 25 mans where there are lots of targets for WG and Rejuv, but in 10s I tend to miss the raw power of my Pally or Shaman, especially during a damage spike where I have to spam Nourish to keep up anyway and feel like a neutered Paladin. Unlike 25 man raids, 10s tend to require you to handle both tank healing and raid healing at the same time. Lucky (or bored) is the healer in a 10 man raid that has no tank assignment, so the druid’s raid healing ability can’t always show itself off as well anyway.

Class Comparison

Yeah, another WoW post. This is technically still a personal blog and not a WoW blog, but there’s not a whole lot else going on in my life right now, so I’m not going to fight it anymore.

This is mostly a background intro to explain what my purpose is here. The actual comparisons will be posted later.

My first toon (and my main once again) is a Paladin I leveled as a tank. My thought process when I rolled him was “survivability first” and a plate wearer with healing capability fit the bill. When I got talents at level 10, I did some research, and decided he was a tank. He would be built entirely around the ability to take a hit and shrug it off.

I didn’t have any level capped friends on the server, so I took my time leveling, slowing down to work on my Blacksmithing (both my skill level and the quests involved – I still have the trinket that summoned my first epic at level 40), and especially running every dungeon I could. I was specced for tanking, but I often found people asking me to heal, and I found I could do that too without much difficulty.

So after I did hit 70 (cap at the time) I turned around and leveled another Pally to heal. After I did that, I found some of my friends that had joined since were leveling, and I hopped on my neglected Druid to level with them. He also reached 80. I had a harder time adjusting to his healing (which was much less straightforward than the Pally), but I did take to his tanking.

Thus began the project. Having marveled and thrilled at exploring the differences between the classes for tanking, I decided I wanted to try them all. That soon expanded to healing as well, as I got better at healing on both hybrid classes and found myself doing it more. In more defined terms, I wanted to have all 4 classes to cap, geared, and skilled enough to handle heroic 5 man content (you can’t keep up multiple raiding toons without excessive effort; I tried).

I’m not there yet. My priest (Holy/Shadow) is only 63 and healing Outland content. My Warrior (Prot/Fury) is only 42 and has only tanked Deadmines and Scarlet Monestary. I’m not going to draw conclusions for those classes when I don’t have full access to their abilities yet. Wouldn’t be fair. I do however have the previously noted Paladins and Druid, as well as a Shaman and Death Knight leveled to 80 since I envisioned the project. Since I have no idea when I will actually start working on the Priest and Warrior again, I might as well lay out my experiences with the different classes thus far.

[EDIT] The Healer comparison is now posted HERE. A comparison of tanks will come later when I have a little more experience with my DK.

Back to Raiding

Finally got back into Raiding this week, mostly in Ulduar. I do have to say I’m a little bit jealous. We took Mama along at first. She got the Energy Siphon off FL (which I didn’t care about), but it meant that Pureity wasn’t there to bid against me on the Pulsing Spellshield (which I badly needed) from XT. I paid her back though. I reminded her that she wanted the trinket off Razorscale, and she switched to Pure. It dropped, she suicided from almost the top of the list and got it. Looked up the loot lists and she switched back to Mama for Kologarn, and sure enough, the Spirit Trinket dropped. Pure picked up the crit trinket she wanted, AND _two_ nice iLevel 219 trinkets for her new priest as well. I’m not jealous that she got gear I wanted (Energy Siphon and Eye of the Broodmother are both sidegrades for my Pally, I’m happier they found a good home with Mama), but that she somehow got lucky enough to have them all drop for her. I’m lucky if I see a decent item drop (and I do consider myself lucky to get the shield I needed so badly). At any rate, we dropped the 4 easy bosses, put in a wipe on Auriaya, and called it a night for Tuesday.

Wednesday didn’t go as well. First they wanted to go into ToC 10, with 2 healers no less. I need to segue into a complaint here.

There’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed a lot since the patch. Elitist hardcore raiders like to complain about casuals/socials/M&S wearing good gear from easy to obtain badges. They claim that it ruins the raiding experience by putting said casuals/socials/M&S on the same level as those who actually work for their gear. The reality is that badge gear actually makes it harder on competent casuals and socials (M&S is always going to benefit from easy gear and make the lives of those around them miserable). It means that people gear up faster than they skill up. It means that people have no gear upgrade outside progression raiding, so they insist on going to the hardest content when they and/or their groups aren’t prepared for it. Wearing gear they haven’t “earned” isn’t a status issue, like the elitists make out. Skill isn’t about good or bad. Wiping on “easier” content doesn’t make you M&S. It means you’re learning. Avoiding that content by using badges doesn’t make you bad, but if you find yourself skipping hard fights and gearing off easy ones, you’re not going to be ready for progression content. Hardcore raiders don’t suffer much. They figure out quickly if a recruit can’t hack it. It’s the casuals and socials that deal with the gear/skill mismatches.

Based on that rant you can guess how our night went. We wiped over and over on the Northrend Beasts in ToC. We only made it to the 2nd phase once, and we were racing to finish phase one with 6 dps in the group. We barely made the dps race with 6 dps. The rest of our attempts were too tight on healing. One snobold on a healer left the other one to handle the tank and the whole raid. We had no safety net, and the group wasn’t tight enough to run without one. When I got a snobold on my back, and announced it in Vent, it stayed on my back for a long time.

After failing miserably there, we moved back to Ulduar. It only took us a couple couple wipes to drop Auriaya (surprisingly), but we wiped a few times on Ignis (even with 3 healers) and called it a night. One boss. Just over two hours, and only one kill. No one in the raid was bad, but we weren’t prepared. If people don’t take their tactics and their rotations more seriously than their gear, we’re not going to succeed at raiding. We need to work on Ulduar, our current _skill_ level, not ToC, our current _gear_ level. It would be easier with a more consistant group, but that’s one of the first casualties of casual raiding. Hopefully our next foray in will be better.

Abandoned again

With the effort to get back into blogging, I thought I’d try to snag the latest copy of Windows Live Writer, since it worked well enough last time I tried it, right down to supporting my OS when their other free downloads didn’t.

Well sucks to be an MS customer. In moving it out of Beta, they decided to drop support of XP x64. Still support the much older XP 32 bit. Support Vista 64. But apparently they just like to stick it to us XP x64 users. Yet another reason that no matter how Windows 7 turns out, I won’t be upgrading. MS won’t get any more money from me until they start supporting all the products they’ve sold.

MTBI and Wow

Pink Pig Tail Inn recently posted regarding a survey of the MBTI of wow players that I found fairly interesting. Certain types clearly dominated the population, and you could clearly see why they would be fond of the game. As the noted at PPTI, “Alexander the Great (ENTJ) raided Persia; Napoleon Bonaparte (ENTJ) raided Russia; INTJs raid Ulduar.”

What mystified them was the strong showing of INFP. They reasoned that they were essentially drawn in to be with people that they already have a relationship with, and that maintaining that relationship matters more to them than the game itself. I don’t think that’s completely fair. The IN_P portion alone would support interest in the game (of the “IN”s, only INFJ had a low result). Still, it’s an interesting question as to why anyone plays, and this one hits closer to home.

Most tests that I’ve taken (admittedly not professionally administered) rate me as INFP. One example:

INFP – “Questor”. High capacity for caring. Emotional face to the world. High sense of honor derived from internal values. 4.4% of total population.

Free Jung Personality Test (similar to Myers-Briggs/MBTI)

I use that example because it helpfully provides a more detailed breakdown:
Introverted (I) 73.53% Extroverted (E) 26.47%
Intuitive (N) 70% Sensing (S) 30%
Feeling (F) 51.35% Thinking (T) 48.65%
Perceiving (P) 58.33% Judging (J) 41.67%

So the ‘F’ isn’t a particularly strong result, but it does dovetail well with my recent experiences with the game. We’ll come back to MTBI, but we need to cover game news first.

I didn’t get to game much while my parents were in town, and during that time they released a patch that changed the emblem system. The details aren’t important, but the general result is that it became very easy for people geared soley from the easier raids to improve their gear up to where the more advanced raiders were at (they in turn advance a level in gearing in the new content, so they maintain their edge). Having gotten back in the past few weeks, I find myself behind the curve in gear. Before the patch, I was one of the well geared people who did runs they didn’t need to help others get gear. Now I’m one of the people that needs the runs to get the gear.

Therein lies the problem. Getting those runs is like pulling teeth. No one wants to go. I keep getting my arm twisted about going along on the hardest runs we do by people who can only get upgrades in that content, yet few will go through the old easy stuff to help me catch up. I’m left feeling a little used by those who I helped before, because most of them have not reciprocated.

An associated issue is the differing play schedules. It’s a west coast server, and many live out there. Some people are only on sporadically, or have disappeared from the game altogether. So the few friends I can count on to log in regularly at all log in at their usual times, run whatever is scheduled (usually a progression raid that everyone else wants to do) and then either they or I have to log off for the night. I’m not really getting to run with any friends at all unless I just show up for the runs they want to do. That doesn’t help the situation.

But all that comes back to the MTBI discussion above. That ‘F’ result is weak because I do tend to analyze quite a bit, but the game situation reveals why it’s a ‘F’ to begin with. I didn’t start playing the game to play with strangers, I joined to play with friends. It’s not the gear that’s the issue here. The only gear concerns I’ve ever had relate to having sufficient stats to bring success wherever I happen to be (mostly because wiping over and over is frustrating and painful). I don’t even care if it’s hard or easy content. As long as I have to gear to run it and I’m with decent people I’m happy (finding decent people is much harder than getting gear). But I’m not doing that anymore. I have to listen to people I can’t stand try and stir up interest in runs I’m not ready for or interested in. I’ve been frustrated for the last month now because the game isn’t fulfilling my ‘F’ needs any more. Frankly, I’ve been feeling neglected.

So the problem is that my friends aren’t on to play with me, right? Actually, I’ve reached a different conclusion. The problem lies with me. The lack of a better outlet has found me once again using WoW as a crutch. The people who only log in for a few hours every night and do what they want are the ones doing it right. I’ve been working a lot harder at being flexible enough to get what I want (runs with friends) and spending too many hours making myself available just to get there. Where I need to be is the point where I can also log on for just a few hours, run only what I want, with only people I like.

Getting there has been more effort, which isn’t what I intended, but I’ve definitely scaled back on my commitments in the game and I’ve toned down my friendly helpful impression a bit. The bigger issue is finding something to devote myself to outside the game to soak up my attention. Ultimately, this will hopefully be a new job. In the mean time, blogging again will be a good start. =)

Jumping ahead in WoW

Last night I finally got my Shamen on Velen to level 80. That’s the current cap, so it’s time to get geared and start doing heroics and raids. She’s my 6th level 80 toon, and my 3rd level 80 healer, so this isn’t an urgent project, but to some degree I’m really looking forward to trying out a new style. I set a goal to level every class of tank and healer to get to know the ins and outs of all the different styles, but as I actually get there on each of them, I’m still amazed at how different they all are.

After I hit 80, I spent about an hour gearing, and checked to see what the rest of the guild was up to. They’d just finished their OS 25 run (that I’d opted out of due to a headach), but they wanted to drop Flame Leviathian in Ulduar. OS (Obsidion Sanctum) is a starter raid that demands little in the way of gear or skill to run (in standard mode; hard mode is a different story). Ulduar is the most recent raid, rought 2 levels of skill above OS. Its not a place to take a fresh 80, even with ample crafted gear and full enchants. That meant they were going to lose a few people, so I offered to grab a different level 80 toon.

They opted instead to take my fresh 80 shamen. Turns out our usual Shamen was running her ‘lock instead, so rather than waste potential drops, they decided to carry me instead. As I kept saying in vent, “this is so wrong.”

We set standards on gear score to avoid undergeared people sabotaging runs through poor performance. To top it off, the Raid Leader decided to have me thrown up on top as the healer on the boss. Granted, my gear score made my dps terrible and useless anyway, but I actually wound up doing my main spec job (healing) after all, depite being woefully undergeared.

I was able to do a passable job, despite wasting a lot of mana from inexperience with the spells, but I felt awkward about being there when I was probably worse geared than others left out at times. Sure, I have a lot of experience with other toons, and that counts for something, but should it count for that much?

As I said, we were successful on the 1st attempt, and I accomplished my mission, so I probably shouldn’t feel too bad. And they were right about one thing. Shammy gear did drop, and it would have been wasted if I hadn’t been there.

That’s right, not only was my first badge at 80 and Emblem of Conquest (current highest badge in the game) but my first loot at level 80 was an iLevel 226 healing Totem, to replace my iLevel 93 totem from a dungeon in the last expansion. Looked wierd seeing the purple next to my green weapon and shild (both replaced lated in the night), but maybe that’s par for the course when you come along later. My first 80 (my druid) was one of the first 80s in the guild period. I think I was 4th or 5th to hit 80. We ran regular dungeons while leveling to learn, and worked carefully through easier heroics to get gear to raid.

But maybe that just isn’t feasible when you come along late. Everyone wants to run more challenging content. They want to gear you faster, so that they can get farther. It seems so wrong to me, but maybe it’s inevitable at this point.

Why I heal

My main in TBC  (when I started playing WoW) was a Paladin I leveled as Prot from 10 to 70. I didn’t even touch a ret spec until WotLK launched and I gave a serious look at leveling to 80. That toon still has 40 days of play time. Forty freaking _days_. That’s a lot of time. I was a pretty decent tank, at least judging by the quality of the healers and dps that put me on their friends list (I miss you Blessed). When LK hit, I leveled my Druid first, since I was willing to tank or heal with that toon, and I wanted to be ready the moment the guild started to raid. By the time they were, I had my Paladin healer (different toon) to 80 as well. I wound up tanking the earliest guild heroics before settling into a solid raid spot as a healer (on both the Paladin and the Druid), taking the occasional tank spot with my former main when I can get it, and trying to snag a dps spot for Joel’s Ret Pally whenever I can to keep his gear current while he’s deployed (I miss Joel. A lot.) and to check a few egos by crushing everyone else (including top geared people in the guild) on the damage charts. =)

I miss tanking a lot somtimes, and to some degree, it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m healing not so much because I like it as much as that most other don’t. That would make me the guild bitch (well, one of them). Not very heroic. Sure, being decent at the hardest job in the game brings some pride, but being the bitch sucks the pride out pretty quick.

One of the reasons I like tanking was because you went face-to-face, toe-to-toe with the bad guy. Sure melee dps were in the thick of it, and you lived and died strictly by how well the healers did their job most of the time. But when you went to kick that ugly brute’s ass, he wasn’t staring down the healer, or the mage, or the rogue hiding in the corner. He had it out for you. The only thing standing between the rest of the party and an ugly death was you.

That’s heroic. Healing doesn’t often feel all that heroic. You plack whack-a-mole with raid frames. Even playing the game’s melee healer (Paladin), you stay behind him and count on the tank to keep him off you. Is that heroic? Maybe it is:

Healers are your sugarmommas. They’re your doctors. I’m not talking about some pussy dentists who sit in air-conditioned offices all day. They are Airborne Ranger Combat Medics who are all up in the frontline crossfire with you. They’re applying a 4-point tourniquet to your leg while giving CPR to the fading warlock next to you with bombs exploding all over the place. Give them the proper respect they deserve. AR EE ES PEE PEE CEE TEE find out what it means to me.

You know what? I’ll take that. I ain’t no one’s bitch. In fact, when I watch the tank do a pull on a boss, the closest person behind the tank as he makes his move? That’s his healer. That guy who’s getting hit by adds and not fighting back? That’s his healer putting his plate to good use and putting his heals on the tank. Fact of the matter is, when I’ve been on fights where you can reset the boss and the fight goes bad, the ones who send everyone else to safety while they hold off the bad guys is the tank. Dps are vanishing, feigning death, or shadowmelding in the corner. Others just run. The tank stays. His healer stays with him. All the same sacrifice. All the same attitude. Little of the glory, but a badass just the same.

I realize it’s just a game, but sometimes life just sucks too much to bother with. At least we can still chase glory and honor is some virtual worth.

Obama: Master of Irony

There’s another great article up on Powerline that shouldn’t be missed. The greatest irony though, comes from our own current President:

“”I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya. As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference.”

Of course, what you’re not supposed to understand when you read that quote, is that the Honduran military expelled President Zelaya by order of the Honduran Supreme court, as he sought to circumvent the law, and hold an illegal election to stay in power, with assistance from Venezuela.

Lets look at that quote again, with a little more ink:

“”I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya.”

No surprised that Obama lines up to support the same people as Chavez, Castro and the other Latin American dictators.

“As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference.”

Obama doesn’t need to call on Honduran patriots or their political actors to do any of this. They’re already doing it by removing Zelaya before he consolidates power and becomes a true tyrant. The Honduran military is taking their cues straight from their Supreme Court and elected legislature. It’s the exact reverse of the old military dictarships. This time they’re defending the people and their rights.

Someone’s defending the people’s right to free government? And it’s the military no less? There’s two reasons why Obama is pissed off. The rest of us should be cheering them on, and disgusted by our own government.