Exposed! (A Tree Grows in Azeroth – Part 3)

This is my high school nightmare all over again.

I’d love to start this post by saying that I cleared up my noob-tendencies once I hit 70, and everything ended happily ever after.

Then again, if that was the case, this post sure would be short. Good thing for me (as a blogger), I was still floating through Durotan blissfully ignorant about most things WoW.

Did I care? Nope! I was having fun messing around, and doing the odd run-through for random peeps. Of course, they saw my greatness:

 

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

Of course, I didn’t think I was the best player ever, but I never thought I was bad. It was just a matter of getting into some stuff and gearing up, if I felt like it.

I had started to make friends in the game, and they started to invite me to various shenanigans. After a patch put in Don Carlos’ Famous Hat, they all wanted to go get it. Yay for fun hats!

Everyone started heading over to Caverns of Time, and I mentioned I’d have to be summoned… as I didn’t have the rep to be ported from Shatt. That should’ve been the first warning sign, of course.

Well, they summon me over, and we set things to Heroic, and walk into the instance. Well, they walk in, I can’t. So, it begins:

What? You don’t have enough rep for the Key of Time? You’re terrible!

So, I did what made sense at the time. I attributed my lack of rep to my lack of free time to play. Of course, this is a complete lie, as I just goofed around all of the time. I just didn’t know how to grind faction rep in dungeons.

So, I pathetically sat outside the instance entrance, stewing. Every once in a while, one would come out, show off their coyote companion from the hat, then pop back in.

I was so disappointed about being left out, I finally started to do research into things… I wanted to figure out how to do a lot of the fun things I may have barely heard about, but never did. I actually started to pay attention to reputation, not just to get into heroics, but for upgrading my woeful gear. My gear was still a shameful mishmash of greens, blues and a few welfare-style epics. My exposure as a noob wasn’t complete, however.

 

You are not prepared! Oh wait, wrong instance.

My friends from the CoT fun were restarting their 10 man guild, and said I could go along and Moonkin it up in Naxx. I was excited to go, as this was my first big-boy raiding experience.

Let’s ignore the fact that I’m still not really raid-ready. I didn’t know about fight guides (and even boss mods). I went in there blind.

Honestly, as an officer and raid leader now, I wouldn’t have let me raid being that unprepared. But, let’s fast-forward to Patchwerk, the meter whore’s dream fight.

I was horrible. I didn’t do a decent rotation, I didn’t watch my HoTs at all… I was doing so much less than the tanks. It’s not like we were outgearing the fight, either, so I really was being a drag on the raid. So, I stepped out.

I forgot to leave Vent, however, only to hear:

WOW! This is so much easier this time with some REAL DPS!

SHHHHHH. He’s still in vent. *laughter*

Of course, I felt like a total turd after that. At first, I had the attitude that, “Well, all I need is gear and I’ll do better DPS, but if you leave me out, how can I improve my gear?”

I find it ironic that I don’t accept that excuse from guildies complaining about not getting raid spots. Well, it’d be ironic if I didn’t quickly reassess myself and find that yes, I am the problem. Sure, the gear makes it harder, but it all comes back to the player in the end.

The thing is, I wanted to help the raid out, and actually get to experience some content. So, I did some self-evaluation, and looked at our raid makeup, and asked them if it’d help if I went Resto. They were dubious, but I said I wanted to help out however I can, and this is the best way.

That decision marked my turning point from hopeless noob to trusted raider. But, that is for another day.

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Dear Diary..? (A Tree Grows in Azeroth – Part 1)

I hate introductions.

I’ll say, “Hello, nice to meet you.”

They say, “Hi there.”

Then we sit, and I pray that a fire breaks out.

*click… click… click… (damn lighter)… whooooosh*

Ah, now that there’s a nice distracting fire, I can be more myself.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a resto Druid deluxe by the name of Rezznul. Along with my Team Sportscoat guildies, I heal my way through the treacherous Bloodscalp progression rankings *cough*.

However, I’m not here to guide you on healing, or raid leading, or even running a guild. There are plenty of guides out there, lord knows I’ve read them all.

You see, I’m a hopeless noob. Sure, I cover it up quite well, but beneath my crunchy raid-tested coating, there’s a tasty center of noob-nougat that seeps out at times, like a defective Three Musketeers bar.

A friend of mine, you may know her, she has this little old blog called Disciplinary Action. I seemed to amuse her at times on Twitter (duh, I’m hilarious), and she convinced me I should give blogging a try.

As I was leveling yet another druid on Liala’s server, I remarked how easy it was to level now that I know how to play a druid. That sprung into a discussion of how I just can’t help but do things the hard way, and some of the embarassingly noobish things I’ve done in my WoW life.

With that as an inspiration, I at first was going to have the “Red Noob Diaries” be a featured column of the blog, but I like the name so much, I had to go for it.

I suppose I am going to be providing a guide.  It’s just going to be an Anti-Guide — do the opposite, and you’ll be great.

All right, I need to go put out the fire before I burn the place down.