Jaded Alt blogged this week that she’s ok with not capping out her Valor Points every week right now. That if she’s “doing it wrong” as a raider, it’s ok.
Week one of 4.2 I capped my vp because I was bored and had nothing better to do. Week 2 I came close. This week? If I get any valor at all I’ll be shocked. Reversion got a little VP last week, none the week before, because he was traveling for work.
Today we leave for my sister’s wedding, and we won’t have playtime until next Tuesday night. That’s a whole week of no valor, probably no dailies. No boss pulls, and since both our raid tanks and myself will be at this wedding, no raid at all. So not only are we blocking our own progression, we’re slowing down the whole group.
Three weeks with no actual progress on new bosses is a bit depressing. But you know what? Life works that way sometimes and life is more important than World of Warcraft. If I ditched my sister’s wedding for raiding there would be something wrong with me.
Oestrus was the one who inspired Windsoar’s post and she responded this week. I liked what she had to say. I’d say she’s one blogger that I have very little in common with but that doesn’t mean what she says doesn’t make sense. But I swear, looking at her schedule makes me tired. Yeah, I play WoW that much. Why does having it scheduled out like she does look like it takes the fun out of things?
I wonder, people who schedule their WoW time and run heroics for VP on a tight schedule, do you get annoyed with me when I have to afk for two minutes to change the toddler’s diaper?
Does it let down my raid when I let little things like our main tank being out of the country slow down our progression? Maybe if I’d pushed harder we could have gotten Shannox down. I didn’t; that meant the other guild raid is ahead of us right now. Heck everyone on the planet is ahead of us.
But you know what, I raid to have fun. There’s a tradeoff for me between the place where wiping on bosses is no longer fun, and where being super hardcore isn’t fun. Joking around with our raid and letting Log die is fun, but if we’re still wiping on Shannox three weeks from now, it’s not going to be as much fun. Before we get to that point I’ll have re-evaluated my tradeoffs. Probably I’ll work harder on getting VP, and getting other raiders to come along for their own. Might even schedule some runs for us.
So. I’m going to try to spend the next few days not thinking about raid, or work (ugh don’t think about work) or the state of the house when we come back to it. I’m going to enjoy myself.
And I’m going to look like a pumpkin. Seriously. Four bridesmaids and I’m the ONLY one in orange. What the heck is up with that?
We haven’t got Shannox yet either. Partly because we spent our first night on Beth’tilac instead. But you’re not alone!
We did about 6 pulls on Shannox the other night, with a rusty unfamiliar off-tank and one “standby” dps. I don’t think it’ll take us long to get once we’re back in there with Reversion tanking. I like the look of that fight.
We just tried this method last night and downed him. It was our 3rd night, and this was waaaay easier. Maybe it’s how you’re doing it.
Just burn Rageface to stop his Face Rage happening randomly, then you can ignore that mechanic. Then have even dps on Riplimb and Shannox. At 40% to 35% on Shannox, burn Riplimb the rest of the way. Then burn Shannox before he gets too many spear slams in the final phase. Dropping tank stacks worked about the same, but coming into the final phase, anyone with threat shifting abilities (Misdirect ot TotT) did so to the OffTank so he was the 2nd to die and dps stayed up longer. Healers didn’t worry with bubbling the main tank in final phase either…just straight heal him and do it til he dies.
We’re not hardcore and this worked like a dream. Everyone was alive in the end and this only took us 5 attempts to get it smooth.
It’s also kind of annoying that you have to run the Troll heroics to get beyond 480 (or so) Valor per week. I don’t mind doing Cata heroics as they are fairly ok now and so I can have fun doing them. Whereas the length and difficulty of Troll heroics seriously puts me off.
I do hope Blizzard don’t add another set of dungeons in 3.3, and make you have to run those to get half your valor in 3.4, run Trolls for 1/4 of your weekly valor and only let you get 1/4 of your weekly valor from normal heroics. That would be basically keeping the level of grind quite high from patch to patch, whereas I liked that in Wrath the content got easier and easier in each patch. Maybe I was the only one :)
The last time I capped out my VP was before there was a cap :D
I get flack all the time from the peanut gallery about how I never work on my gear because I don’t run randoms. Personally I am not a huge fan of heroics. I guess I’ve gotten spoiled by raids and the long fights that are a result of them. Fights that take 2 mins aren’t that fun to me.
As for the scheduling thing, different strokes for different folks. I will agree with you though, it just sounds like you are sucking the fun out of your recreation time when you have to schedule it.
Exactly. There’s a difference between almost always doing something at the same time, like “we almost always run dungeons in the evening” and “you should schedule two hours on nights you don’t raid where you WILL do dungeons”. What if I want to go archeologize instead? This is a game…
You *are* going to send me pics of the pumpkin dress, right? ^.^
I may have to post it here on this blog. Just to give Blizzard some inspiration. Give me back tree, and turn the current TOL cooldown into “Pumpkin Heals Explosion” time.
I mean, just the fun one could have with – bang, I’m a pumpkin!
[…] 13, 2011 by lonomonkey Everyone talking about it , wether or not you should be capping you VP every week so you can get better gear so you can get […]
I consider the game a way to relax. If running a heroic one night is just going to make me angry because no one seems to understand the basic mechanics of CC, not standing in bad, and waiting for the healer to have mana, then I’m not running the heroic. Of course, running with Ado, Kerick, Rev and Ana- that’s always a good time : )
But…. last few times we’ve stood in bad, not done cc, and not watched mana – bad Rev! Of course I no longer need mana and Kerick can’t actually run out if you try….
And we haven’t stood in that much bad.
But you guys are different- I like all of you!
I think the strongest “un-fun” factor of the troll dungeons is that there are only two of them. If you don’t like one and had your share of the other, you’re screwed. 100% chance of getting one you don’t want.
But that’s no problem for me, they have both enough diversity on their own. What infuriates me are baddies. And as I’m currently forced to run dungeons mostly on my own…
What’s a Valor Point? ;)
Play how you wanna play is what i say. You wanna cap you do, if you dont wanna dont. :)
But if you are not capping and gearing up to slow, it may affect your performance and your raid at times. But then again that would be at the highest level of performance for raiding (top world guilds)
Besides, if you down everything in the first two weeks, what motivation have you to play until the next patch? ;)
“Heck everyone on the planet is ahead of us.”
Oh they’re not. My guild has done one proper raid in Firelands so far and only got Beth’tilac down. 4.2 managed to drop when one of our main healers was getting married and having his honeymoon – and a couple of other people are away on vacation, one is moving house. Needless to say, our raiding is currently at a standstill.
Which is frustrating, but one of those things that you can’t do much about. It’s not like we’d ask our healer to not get married, or people to skip their summer vacations or not moving house. In a way, it might be a good thing it’s all happening at once, then hopefully we can have some weeks of uninterrupted raiding once everyone is back.
I feel pressured to cap my VP every week (not from the guild, but from myself), but haven’t been able to yet due to family visits and just not having the energy. I play a ds and while the queues are lower now they’re still not fun, and I’ve been having a weird schedule and not been on when other guildies are *sigh* Maybe one week I might cap it…
[…] 4 More is firmly on the side of less tightly-structured play: “I wonder, people who schedule their WoW time and run heroics for VP on a tight schedule, do […]
Life should come before WoW. WoW should be fun. Those two sentences sum up my feelings on the matter. If, in your case, running dungeons to get Valor capped would interfere with life and fun then obviously you shouldn’t stress out about getting it done. Will you gear up a bit slower? Of course. Will you hold back your raid group on progression? Possibly… It depends on the group’s attitude toward such things. If you were in a hardcore progression guild working on server/world firsts it might not fly with them, but from what I’ve heard it seems many of your guild mates have attitudes similar to your own and probably wouldn’t care much. If someone were to find themselves in a situation where they were willing to put in significantly more or less into the game than their team mates, that could cause issues… but then I think it might be time for that person to find a group with more similar priorities.
I think that, when it comes to raiding, everyone should try to do as well as possible. Emphasis on “as possible”, and I mean that what is possible will differ for every individual and each unique raid group. Everyone on my raid team puts in as much effort as they personally can in terms of gearing and playing well, and as a team we do as much progression as possible. For us, right now, that means that we’re at 2/7 in Firelands normal. Other raid teams find it possible to do heroic Firelands, others have yet to down a raid boss. That doesn’t mean that anybody is slacking or not trying, just that circumstances dictate what’s possible for any person or group. There isn’t one right decision to make about priorities for gaming.
Personally, part of what makes the game fun for me is having good gear, even though it’s not the most important or most fun thing. I also have a lot of free time on my hands at the moment and I honestly enjoy running random dungeons. There’s also a lot of Valor Point gear that I want. Those things combined mean that I have strong motivation and ample opportunity to get Valor capped each week.
Is it “better” to get VP capped each week? If you only consider the game, then yeah, sure it’s better. But if you take life, priorities and personal preferences into consideration, it’s certainly not “wrong” if you don’t.
(Also, long comment is long. Sorry!)
No one even invites me to trolls anymore….yes, I’m that bad :(
On the bright side, weddings are much higher up the “fun” list – even if you have to wear a “pumpkin” dress ;)
I am not even sure it is that important for progression. I was one of the first people in the guild to get head to toe epics in the previous teir and I did that with only 1 badge piece. Getting lucky with raid drops fills up things pretty fast. I am pretty sure a raid where everyone is maxed for non heroic raid gear from the last teir they can down at least the first couple bosses and get started in firelands.