Gearing game is one real bag of surprises: at one time you are really in the dumps for lacking emblems or money to replace your obsolete gear, and the next moment you're hilarious over a piece of gear which drops from the daily heroic you're running with your guildies. Like yesterday, we had a lovely -though I saw it as messy on my tanking part- run through the daily Halls of Lightning, which really elevated my spirits and made me love certain guildies even more. Ok, the one PUG member we had -a rogue- made his contribution too, whispering me that he thought I did remarkably good tanking effort, for in his guild their main tank/guild leader cannot hold his aggro in Onyxia from this rogue, whereas I could keep the aggro through the whole instance.
I tank. Really!
The dumps came from the fact that instead of costing 25 Emblems of Triumph my Holy Grail -Clutch of Fortification- costs 35... Cursed be my excellent, though short, memory!
As I was sitting in the Lagalan Dalaran, I read some posts in the general chat: something I have woved not to do anymore. I dare to take the chance now, as I'm getting more confident over my skill, though my gear is at the moment disagreeing with my ambitions (below def cap again with immensely better gear, go figure...). And I understood what had been bothering me for a while already, something my brother Förgelös had said way back when earlier.
As an explorer I enjoy more about learning the steps than dancing in some other's steps.
Currently Laiskajaakko (prot warrior) is stuck in the gearing game by running heroics, heroic dailies and ToC. Mostly that is a mental barrier, because the other -not necessarily more profitable- option would be to PUG the raid instances like Naxx, VoA, Onyxia or normal Ulduar. This poses the problem (and explains my earlier sentence): entering the entry raids I would have to learn the boss encounters and know them before I even see the boss! In our Shadow Labyrinth run the most fun we had was when we had to figure out how the bosses should be handled and the reward was -instead of leet loot- the downing of the said boss. Now the 'gratification' factor would be to be able to follow the steps someone else has laid out before the instance hit gold.
I agree that most of the heroics I run now would have required some ideas on how they work, but the overpowered guild teams I run them with lower the barrier of the lacking knowledge a lot. Like yesterday.
This wasn't enough for me to realize: If I was to enter the entry raiding PUG's, I would be required to know ALL the boss dances before entering the PUG! Let's see what I would have to memorize to be even slightly comfortable with them (and not making myself the village idiot, loser and noob in the group):
- Obsidian Sanctum, no drakes would be a start... and what the heck does it even mean?!
- Naxx, all wings, 15 boss encounters, 18 bosses
- Vault of Archavon/Koralon, two bosses
- Ulduar (Don't even know where to start!!)
And in signing in to a PUG to run Naxx for example, I wouldn't know even which wing to start with...
Perhaps it is easier for a new player just to skip the obsolete raid content and aim for the highest content available, gearing through emblems and loot piñatas. I fear not, because someone will be doing an addon which tells you what happens when and what to do (DBM and BigWigs are on their way to this direction) in no time. And if there is another way to experience the content as it is (in addition to the Goblin way of purchasing the raid), I would be happy to hear about it and tell the world.
Because for the moment I'm not too happy to start learning the steps before knowing whether I even get to dance. This is effectively the same as being invited from the local soccer team of friends to play in a world league team without prior notice, only to be standing in the field and being pushed aside during the game.
That would not be fun at all.
