Mr. I Know Everything

I sometimes think no matter what my guild situation is, I will never be perfectly happy with it. And I don't think that's necessairly a bad assumption or something to be looked down upon. Obviously, I would rather be happy with my guild all the time, but the fact is that guilds are made up of, well, different people and if your mode of communication is guild chat (pixelated words without tone or inflection) then things are sometimes going to come off wrong and people are going to be miffed or hurt or defensive. I go through a cycle of these feelings with my guildmates all the times, even the ones I feel really close to so I think a state of "never quite completely perfect" is natural, most of the time.

That being said, lately I have been feeling the loss of not being an officer anymore. I have been with the guild since it started and only stepped down from being an officer about two months ago due to my hectic work schedule and slight burn out. Stepping down was definitely the best choice. It took so much weight off my back and it was nice to log on and not really have any "responsibilites". I could do what I wanted, when I wanted!

Now that work has evened out though and I'm no longer traveling on business, I miss having the authority to smack people down when their being borderline idiotic or thoughtless. We have a mage in our guild now that is essentially Mr. I Know Everything There Is To Know About WoW. He offers advice when it's not needed or wanted, he has a thousand and one ideas of how to do things bigger and better than what we've got in place now, he feels the need to try and tell everyone how to be better, get better gear -- wait, that all doesn't sound so bad, does it? And it's not, it's really not. It's the way he presents these ideas and opinions.

The other day one of our hunters asked in guildchat where she could buy tier gear. We told her she could go to Dalaran or the Argent Tourney for Tier 9 and suddenly Mr. Mage pops up.

"Hold on, let me RAWR you and tell you exactly what you should get."

I would have said, "Hey, if you want, I can run RAWR real quick and you can see which pieces might be better for you." If I say it like that, it's more of a question, a suggestion really, and my guildie would not be under any obligation to listen to me if she didn't want to. This is what bothers me about this guy - he doesn't present things as options, it's more "here's what I think and here's why I'm right" or "we did this in my last guild and it was awesome so we should it here", etc, etc.

Sadly, after he looked up our hunter (who is rarely online and doesn't raid) he blurts out in guildchat, "WHOA, you really need to get some gear!"

This just burned me up. Our guild does not focus on gearscore. We're there to have fun and we very often carry people through raids that are not geared for the content. We do NOT carry lazy folks who don't bother working on their toons, but we certainly don't mind bringing a slightly ungeared guildie along so they can get some loot they'd actually use.

To me, it was entirely inappropriate for Mr. Mage to pass judgement on the hunter's gear in guildchat. If he wants to talk to her about her gear, fine, lovely, but do it in whispers. Our hunter did not respond to the above - probably either embarressed or annoyed, I'm not sure which - but I did. I just couldn't help myself.
My exactly reply was:

"Hey now, gear isn't everything. :)"

I put the smiley in there so he would know I wasn't yelling at him, but trying to subtly make a point for him to drop it. He replied:

"I never said it was, GeeBee," but he used my full name as if he were scolding a five-year-old. I had to zip my mouth shut after that or risk saying something regretable but it made me wish I was an officer again just so I would have been able to whisper him to tell him we do not address an individual's gear issues in guildchat - or at all, really, unless it's hurting the group as a whole, which it was not. Was what he said really wrong? Not really, it's just the way he comes off - as sort of superior, I guess - that makes me want to take him down a peg or two.

The reason I'm telling you all this is because of a post made by Tam recently. It got me thinking about things that irritate me within my guild, about how the way people say things can really affect my perception of them. Mr. Mage is probably a perfectly nice human being. I just wish he would think a little more before opening his mouth, make an attempt not to sound as if he's deigning to help those less fortunate than himself.

What's possibly more uncomfortable is that I want to like him, I really do, I can see where he's trying to be helpful - but it's his presentation of his help that always ends up rubbing me the wrong way. Probably doesn't help that I'm the boat-rocker, the one who can't keep her mouth shut and has to call people out when they're being ridiculous.

And maybe that's my own annoying habit - Miss Can't Keep Her Mouth Shut And Go With The Flow. I'm not mean about it, but like with the mage, I thought his remark was careless and so I responded. I felt I had to say something so that our hunter would know that we didn't care about her gear, we liked her and knew she didn't have a lot of time online and that was okay with us.

So, Mr. I Think I Know Everying and Miss Can't Keep Her Mouth Shut. I'm sure we make quite a pair.

Whether or not I will become an officer again remains to be seen. I've been told I'd be welcomed back at any time but I'm not sure the pros outweight the cons on this one. Not yet, at least. Until then, I guess I just need to learn how to deal with those who aren't always as polite as I think they should be. Who's to say I'm any better anyway?

In slightly better news, I wanted to report that things with the other holy pally in my guild are going... alright. I have not spoken to her about my concerns. I sort of wanted to see how things played out, but our exchanges have seemed better and she responded to something I posted on our forums with laughter, which I thought was a good sign. I'm hoping things on that front are slowly improving. It's not all patched up yet, but I think it's getting there. If it gets worse, I'm taking everyone's advice and talking to her, until then though, I'm sorta hoping she gets over it on her own.

Ah, guilds. Without them, what would I have to post about?

In Your Raid, Stepping On Your Toes

So, I've been traveling for the last month and hadn't been online much, either to play WoW or do anything else really. Needless to say, I returned to my guild happy as a clam that I could actually relax and play a little in comfort.

However, another person was not so happy.

Let me preface this story by saying that my main is a holy pally. I'm not going to link her amory or reveal her name in the interests of protecting my guild, but I may eventually, if I feel comfortable enough to do so. My guild is a relatively small, casual guild that does a variety of things - PVP, raiding, RP, etc. Because of that, we're not really focused on one thing. For instance, raiding. As a guild, we have never cleared ToC 10. Mostly because we've never had enough members geared enough to do it. Right now I would say that we have 6-7 ICC geared folks but we can never get all of those folks together on the same night to do anything. In any case, this is not too much of a problem for us as we are not inherently a raiding guild. Lot of our members PUG the raids they need, as do I. In our guild we have very few mainspec healers. In fact, I believe it's just myself (the holy pally), a disc priest and a holy priest. Before I left for my month of traveling, I was the only geared mainspec holy pally but I had been helping a fellow Ret pally to start a holy set. Well, she did. Guess who was not so happy to see me back?

Our guild is small enough to where I've always been the "go to" healer. It's my main spec, it's what I prefer doing. While I was gone, apparently my friend became the sort of "go to" healer. When I returned, I easily slipped back into my old place, not really aware of at first all the changes. Needless to say, there has been some stepping on of toes.

She has not said anything to me personally but there is a kind of... frosty air about our exchanges now, a sort of passive-agressiveness on her part. This saddens me because I've always thought of us as friends, and when I was encouraging her to make her offspec Holy, I sort of felt like I was mentoring her and was proud of all her achievements. Now I feel as if someone is glaring into the back of my head whenever I'm asked to heal something.

On Saturday night, a group of us went to Ulduar. I love that raid (I go Rambo on those Iron Dwarves, man). So I and a PUGged second holy pally healed (my guildie was not signed up for this raid). Actually, I'm being gracious. We stopped at Freya but for the entire night I had been grumbling about the other pally. Many times I would catch him just standing there, not casting a thing and my blood pressure would rise. Two holy pallies in a 10man is not my preferred setup anyway and my job was made doubly as hard with SLACKER!pally. At the end of the night, I had near 5k hps and he had about 1.3 hps. I was furious. The meters show me doing about 75% of the healing. Mysteriously, right at Freya, our two pugs (the SLACKER!pally and his moonkin friend) disconnect so we pause to see if we can find another healer. We do a switcheroo instead and one of our tanks gets his healer and one of our DPS switches to his tank set.

We clear some of the trash before Freya and my guildie logs on. We ask her to come on in but I notice that no one specifically tells her she would be coming in as a DPS. She thinks about it and then, a minute later...

"Who's healing?"

I answer, "Myself and [insert priest name here]."

Not a word. No response.

For my part, I feel as thought SHE feels that I'm trespassing on her territory which, at least in my opinion, seems crazy. She's not the only holy pally in WoW, obviously, she can't get upset everytime there's another one in the vicinity of her. Furthermore, I always thought we were friends, some competition is always healthy of course, but not to this extent. I feel now that we can not both be healing the same raid, the tension between us makes me too uncomfortable. For now I'm going to let her choose which role she wants and I'll do the other but I'll not go head to head with her in a healing match. I think doing so would only make things worse since my goal is for her to feel comfortable again and to stop feeling like she has to compete with me.

I don't know really. The whole situation saddens me. The fact that I even have to contemplate it saddens me. Have any of you ever had to deal with this sort of situation? A guildmate being territorial? How did you solve it?

Until then, I guess I"ll just have to ride my sparkle pony to make myself feel better.

Do You Know Where Your Healer Is?

I ask this because I've been noticing something curious as I've been leveling Olateria. Now, she's not a healer, but she has been called on to heal a few times - and maybe it's just me, being as it's been awhile since I've leveled a baby character, but it seems that the new trend in LFG is that, if you're a healer and you need mana, you tell the group that you need mana and plop your butt down to drink. It used to be, at least for me when I was leveling my main, that one of the tank's responsibilities was to watch his healer's mana bar and to pause accordingly to let them drink when they got low. I'm guessing this is no longer fashionable and that it's now the healer's responsibility to pipe up if they're parched - which is fine, don't get me wrong, I'm the first to scream "MANA" when I'm scraping the end of the mana bucket - it just seems like a curious change to me. But maybe I was just spoiled when I leveled the first couple of times around. After all, we didn't have LFG and if you could actually find a healer (or a tank) you held on to them with a grip like a vice.

It's an interesting situation to me and it prompts me to ask - if you're a tank out there in the LFG system now, do you watch your healer's mana bar?

I'm guessing that answers would be mixed. I would expect more "yes" from the people who had 80 tanks (or perhaps even ANY 80) before LFG came out and more "no" from those that didn't. I can say though, that everytime I'm in a group (whether as DPS or heals) that if a tank pauses for the healer to drink before they ask or tells the group "mana up" before a boss, that my loyalty and admiration jumps like a gazillion points. I will follow you anywhere, Mr. Tank, and mercilessly kill anything you ask!

Hmmm, I wonder if there is an addon out there that would announce a healer's low mana to the party? I'm guessing there probably is one, I just don't know about it. I have MSBT set up to play a little chime sound when I get low on my main, but how much more awesome would it be if it would also post something in party chat like, "Olateria is below 20% mana. For the love of all that's holy, let her drink!"... or something similiar. Obviously, I would only want it to do that if I was healing. I never expect a tank to stop and let me drink if I'm DPSing. I always figure I'll just drink and catch up when I'm done.

The new LFG has obviously brought a lot of changes, both big and small. For the most part though, I really do love the system. Ola is wearing so many more blues now than she ever would have before. I almost don't even miss heirlooms!

Well, almost.

Learn Your Role, Noob!

Everyone, meet Xswedish - probably, no, not probably, THE rudest person I have ever grouped with.

He and I met last night during a random group in Wailing Caverns. I was playing Olateria, level 19, doing my shadow-priesting thing. I zone in and the party is already down a ways, meaning some DPS left - not always a bad sign, but not a good one, in this case. As I ran to catch up it was clear that the tank and the healer were already fighting. Xswedish (the healer) blessed us with phrases like:

"Learn to tank and hold aggro, you fuckin noob."

The tank and healer went back and forth about this through the next several pulls, the healer blaming the tank that he wasn't holding aggro, and the tank blaming the healer that he wasn't healing him. I was keeping my mouth shut since I was just a DPS and had nothing to do with their fight anyway. Until Xswedish decides to turn his fearsome wrath on us as well.

"*spams Recount* Gawd, learn to DPS, you fuckin noobs."

I think I was third on the meters. I'm not really sure because I had only arrived in the middle of the pull and had barely had time to do ANY DPS after passing out buffs. Plus, I didn't really care. DPS meters at that level really mean nothing to me.

I ignore the healer who, by this time, has worked himself into a righteous rage and is constantly yelling at the tank to "FUKING TANK", etc, etc. As far as I can tell, the tank IS tanking but the Xswedish is out to prove a point. In the next mob he gets aggro and, instead of running towards the tank, he simply stands there and let's it beat on him.

"HAHA, I got aggro not doing shit and you're not doing a fucking thing."

By that time Xswedish's health was pretty low and either the tank hadn't noticed he had aggro or didn't care. I'm leaning towards didn't care after all the abuse he had given him. Either way, at that the tank wearily made his way back over to taunt the mob. As he was running back, I slapped a shield on the tank (who Xswedish was not healing) and on Xswedish himself who's health was dropping dangerously low.

Biggest mistake of my life apparently.

"Olateria, WTF. WTF you doing?"

I'm honestly perplexed. He's calling me out for shielding him? "Saving you?'

He then proceeds to link me all the spells he has in his arsenal that would have saved his life - Lifeblood, Stoneclaw totem, etc. My instant thought was, well, then why aren't you USING them? I don't reply to him because I feel he's just being over the top. He's actually complaining that I was looking out for him? How ridiculous can you get? But he's not done yet.

"What is this, like your first instance? You roll as DPS, then just fucking DPS. Learn your fucking role, noob!"

There was more to it than that, but that's the gist of it anyway. I was astounded. I was getting yelled at for shielding the healer when he had aggro. My shield is instant. It's not like it really took time away from my DPSing to slap it on him. And, I admit, I'm prone to keep an eye on the healer and tank when I'm not healing just because it's second nature to me. My main is a healer so I usually feel a kind of kindred spirit with them. Not so with this guy. The tank felt he had to say something too.

"You know, he's got a point, Olateria."

I felt utterly betrayed. I'd shielded the tank too, to keep him from dying while the healer proved whatever point he was making. After all the verbal abuse, I was astounded the tank would side with the healer. Bitter, by this point, I reply.

"Wow, okey dokey, I won't shield anyone again. I will DPS without any concern for the rest of you."

Here's my question for you all though: was I right or wrong? To me, being in a group means working as a team. If people are dying all around me and the healer is being an asshat or is dying himself, shouldn't I slap some shield or heals on them if I can to avoid a wipe? Xswedish was saying I should not. That I was there to DPS and nothing more. To me, that's wrong. We're there to work together, no matter our roles. Of course, yes, my main job is to DPS, but in dangerous situations, I don't think me throwing a shield on someone to keep them from death is a sin the likes of which no one has ever seen before.

His verbal abuse continued for the next few pulls, pissing off the other two DPS and causing them to drop. The tank dies twice because the healer's too busy on his tirade to heal anyone. Finally, the tank drops and I go as well. I'm not even sure why I stayed as long as I did. Well, no, that's not true, I do know why I stayed. I stayed to watch the tank die twice. Both times I could have slapped a shield on him and saved him but by then I was angry and was doing nothing but DPSing. I was determined not to save anyone else or do anything that might be considered "non DPS".

Honestly, most abusive group I have ever been in.

So, everyone, learn your roles! If you're a DPS and have healing/damage mitigation spells - don't use them! At least, don't use them on anyone else! You're there to DPS, not heal, noobs!

Welcome to my ignore list, Xswedish.

Screenshot of the UI

Just thought I might share what my UI looks like for prosterity. It will probably never be this clean and organized again.



I use Tukui and it's pretty amazing. It replaces your entire UI and is extremely lightweight, which is good for me because I don't have the bestest of computers. I thought I would log in last night and find it all broken due to the new patch but Version 9 still works perfectly so far, though Version 10 was just released. I supposed I will have to upgrade. One day. When I'm not really lazy. ...Yeah.

Full-sized image here.

Like Taking Candy From A Baby (Tank)

I really do feel for new tanks trying to level through LFG.

Last night I played my wee baby shadow-priest, Olateria, certified member of SAN. (/curtsey) I've been trying not to heal with her, mostly because I'm a healer at heart and every toon I roll ends up being one so I thought, hey, I need to do something different with this girl. So she's going Shadow, though she has healed once or twice when our current healer dropped/died/lost their mind, etc. In any case, she is a budding level 18 and is totally fixated on getting to 20 so she can get her kitty mount. (Ola is the first Night Elf character I've ever rolled and stuck with so the kitty mount is uberly exciting to me. )

So there I was, full of epic, shadowy glory (except for the part where I can really only, like, spam Smite over and over and over...) and I get into a group for RFC. Immediately upon zoning in the tank, an unheirloomed paladin, says, "Bear with me, this will be my first time tanking."

Hunter pipes up, "Sure!".

And proceeds to pull.

The hunter's pet bear basically tanked the entire instance. (And is it just me or is the initial bear roar really annoying? Love me some druids, but bear pets? Argh, shut up already!) I don't think our poor, newbie tank actually made a single pull. Our mage spoke up once in regards to the hunter pulling, but it was hard for me to take him seriously as he was pulling just as much as the hunter was.

Up until this point, I'd been trying to keep my mouth shut. If someone is being an asshat, I will usually call them on it, and usually because I'm healing and said asshat is making my job harder in some way. Sometimes this is good, sometimes it's bad. Bad because sometimes, if I'm defending someone else, that someone else is fine with just sitting there and taking it and doesn't particular want me to jump to their defense. Or just doesn't care either way.

So, Ola was a little hesitant to speak up. I was a DPS quietly doing my thing, targeting my tank's target, etc, and the tank was speaking up at all so why should I say anything? He could have stepped up and told the hunter to stop pulling for him but he didn't. Of course, my intention to say nothing wore thing right before the boss and I had to say something, though I was a bit more nonchalant than usual.

"It might be a good idea for us to let the tank pull so he can get some practice."

This remark was met with silence and the hunter running off to pull the next pack. The tank said nothing, healer said nothing, no other DPS spoke up. I let it go. No skin off my nose then. If the tank wants to run around taunting off the hunter's bear, well then, that's his happy fun time. And maybe that worked for him, took the pressure off him to make the pulls himself.

It's a mildy frustrating situation however, at least for me. It irritates me to no end when party members can't seem to fulfill their proper roles. I'm glad your bear can tank, Mr. Hunter, but save it for when you're soloing. Even if the tank was totally alright with the hunter's pet tanking for him, it's not like it will be possible for him to do that at 80. He's not getting any experience tanking in a group, watching his healer's mana, threat, etc. I know it's less important at these low levels, but it's still irritating for me. I guess, though, I should just be quiet and be glad we made it through alive and I escaped with my satchel of goodies clasped tightly in my hands. (A strength/agility cloak, really? I mean, really?) It's disappointing though, to see that hunter decked out in all heirlooms, just pulling away. If you've got heirlooms, you've got an 80 and should know better.

I had a rogue in another RFC the other day who pulled extra groups of mobs because he thought, I'm sure, that, hey, he was all decked out in heirlooms and the tank wasn't pulling enough for him - oh look, more mobs! That time, however, I WAS healing because there wasn't another healer in LFG and I let him die the third time he did this, after asking him once to to please stop pulling extra mobs. He ignored me so I let him eat dirt. At 16/17 my mana pool was practically nonexistant, having to heal two "tanks" was running me dry in seconds. And Ola is not in heirlooms, since SAN resides on a totally different server than my main. She's on her own for money, upgrades, etc.

Rogue calls me a "retard" and then asks for a rez. I, obviously, am not going to rez him but the shaman in our group does so I don't get the satisfaction of making him walk back.

But, uh, anyway, where was I? Oh yes, baby tanks. I think this whole "lol the tank's a newbcake, I'll pull" thing happens alot, from what I've read elsewhere. I felt sorry for the baby tank the entire run but he never said anything, never gave any indication that the group's behavior was irritating him. I could never do it. I tanked once on my baby warrior and immediately felt my blood pressure rise everytime a DPS would pull for me or shout at me to "gogogogogo". I don't know how you do it, tanks, I really don't, but I feel for ya. Oh, do I feel for ya.

Probably why I stick to my healers. I can stand in the back and grumble under my breath and not draw any attention to my murderous rampages.

What's the Cereal Doing in the Fridge?

Hmmm, first post. I'm feeling some pressure to be witty, charming and funny here. Unfortunately, I think I'm suffering from some sort of performance anxiety (it's not you, it's me!) so I'm actually just going to be brief and get all the boring stuff out of the way here so we can get to the good stuff next time.

First of all, hello, my name is GeeBee and I'll be your host here at The Fridge. GeeBee is actually just a way of writing out the initials "GB" which I will leave you all to ponder over what those actually stand for. In any case, I've finally gathered my courage to start a WoW blog. I've blogged on a personal basis for a long time but found I can't really put WoW things in my personal blog because the audience is massively different. Most of my friends there would have no idea what I was talking about and would be bored to tears or sending me their therapy bills, hence I've started to open this place.

I've named it "The Fridge" for a reason, mainly because I'm going to blog about a cornucopia of WoW related things. I won't focus on any one class or race or faction because I suffer from a horrible, horrible affliction called Altoholicism. Oh yes. My cure for burnout these days is to roll another toon so be prepared to meet several of my split personalities lovable characters.

I've also been reading blogs for a long time. In fact, I would say I was more of a reader and less of a blogger, so I imagine that won't change much. I doubt this place will be updated daily, probably more around a post or two a week depending on how much play time I get in. Mostly, I think I will just enjoy having a place to put my WoW-thoughts that won't mingle in with my personal blogging. Keep milk in the fridge and cereal in the cupboard, and all that jazz.

So, hope to see you here again soon! Next time, I'll have snacks, I promise.