Anatomy of a Healer: Peripherals

When I first picked up a copy of World of Warcraft (after much badgering by Marnas), I was under the mistaken belief that it would be like every other computer game I'd ever played. I'd played strategy games like Rise of Nations and role playing games like Prince of Persia. I'd even played Warcraft (the original) and Diablo. But the largest number of people I'd ever played those games with was four. I thought I'd load the game on my system and that would be it. I never dreamed that three years later I'd own a special keyboard, a gaming mouse, be constantly seeking a more comfortable (but affordable) headset for vent, and have upgraded not only the memory and graphics card in my computer, but also have purchased a new system--and even have upgraded that.

To start off my Anatomy of a Healer (because really we are a totally different animal than tanks or dps), I thought I'd start by discussing some Peripherals I use now.

Keyboard:
As I have become more and more focused on PvE endgame, I have sought ways to decrease my reaction time. Despite being a typing teacher's daughter and taking a full year of the course in high school (back when we actually used--gasp--typewriters), I fully admit that I have never really mastered the number keys. On a regular keyboard I can hit 1 to 6 fairly reliably. The rest are really beyond me. Especially when my right hand is on a mouse. So for a long time any spells or abilities bound to 7 through = could only be accessed by clicking them. This wasn't necessarily a problem back in 40 man raids when my priest mostly just needed 1 for renew and 2 for flash heal, but as I learned more spells (and went shadow) I needed to be able to hit more keys more quickly.

I currently use the Merc Stealth Gaming Keyboard from Ideazon. And I must say I love it. It combines a regular keyboard with a special keypad. The keypad is offset at a slight angle that has eliminated some minor wrist pain I was experiencing. The number keys are arranged in two rows making it possible for even me to hit all of them when needed. The software allows you to bind keys to any series of strokes you want, making it possible to press one button instead of a complicated series of keys. It takes a little getting used to, but the main drawback I have found is not being able to function on other people's keyboards. I kinda suck on the regular kind now.

Mouse:
I splurged about a year ago and purchased a Razer Diamondback Gaming Mouse. I spent some time looking over the options at a couple of computer stores before making my purchase. The main feature I wanted was a thumb button for my vent bind. I know a lot of other people get fancier with their buttons, but for the most part I'm old school with the mouse. I just wanted it to fit my hand (I have pretty small hands and a lot of the big gaming mice felt awkward to me) and have the thumb button. I appreciate the responsiveness of the Diamondback, and I haven't regretted buying it at all.

Headset:
A few members of my guild often gripe that the Officers don't read Raid Chat. Although I do try to read most of what scrolls through my chat screen, I don't always manage it. And I'm convinced a couple of the other Officers don't really even try. We're vent people, and we'd much rather explain a fight or discuss a problem on our Ventrilo server than try to type it all out. Because of this, I spend at least 11 hours a week wearing a headset. I think I have a permanent indentation on the top of my head where the band sits.

I'm not completely satisfied with the Logitech USB Headset I use, but the microphone doesn't usually make my guildies yell at me, and the sound quality is good. It isn't incredibly comfortable, but that is probably due to the fact that I don't wear it correctly. I run game sounds through my speakers and only use the headphones for vent, so I keep the left earpiece behind my left ear rather than on it. I'm on my second set of similar headphones; they seem to last pretty well even through my rough treatment. I tried using a bluetooth headset for a while, but evidently I sound much better through this headset, and I'm vain enough to not want to sound horrible.

Gaming Peripherals have become big business. Everytime I step foot into BestBuy or another computer store I am amazed at the number of new products taunting me from their shelves. Although I can't bring myself to spend $300 on a headset, I do think the makers of gaming accessories fill a niche in the marketplace. I spend enough time playing, researching, and thinking about WoW to justify making my experience in game comfortable--maybe not $300 comfortable, but even that isn't really absurd. I remember my dad having headphones for listening to his records that I wasn't allowed to touch...I think I once got a spanking just for looking at them. I guess spending big bucks to enjoy your hobby isn't anything new after all.

Minutiae

• I still have thoughts percolating about an Anatomy of a Healer series of posts. They will probably continue to percolate since I'm too tired to actually write much of anything tonight. Maybe tomorrow night I'll finally write something of substance.
  
• My job sucks lately. I know that doesn't matter much, but it's of consequence to me, so there it is. WTB office leadership that can make non-idiotic decisions.
• I caved to peer pressure today and signed up for Twitter. @tambarke is me. Not entirely sure why I let Srom and Silver talk me into it, but I did.
  
• We one-shot Heroic Sartharian + 1 for the first time tonight. It was ridiculously easy. I had more challenge in the series of heroic dungeons I put together afterward than in the actual raid. That's sad. I'm jumping on the "I want Ulduar!" bandwagon.
• I read Matticus's post today about becoming a successful blogger. Then I ignored it all. Just thought you should know I read it even though I then threw it out the window.
• OMG. I need sleep. I almost posted this with the last line reading "I then through it out the window." Ugh.
  

How to Win Friends and...or not

Ok, so here's another of those real life posts where I rant about my life even though I know this is supposed to be a WoW blog. I promise that I have something WoW related planned for weekend writing, but today I just have to explain the "boss man say wha?" kind of week I've had. (Yes, I've seen Hannah Montana, wanna make something of it?)

I work in a professional office. Lawyers abound, support staff everywhere, all that stuff. This week has seen the arrival of a new lawyer, we'll call him Lawyer D, and next week Attorney E will start work on Monday. Now, Lawyer D took the only office that was available, so the powers that be had to find a way to open up an office for Attorney E. Assistant 1 had an office that was just perfect. So they have moved Assistant 1 and Helper 2 to two desks previously occupied by Secretary 3 and Admin 4. This made sense because Assistant 1 and Helper 2 both work on the same cases and being in the same area will make things easier. Secretary 3 went to an empty desk in the basement which is fine since she is the newest employee. She can live over the smell.

The making sense stops now...

Admin 4 didn't get Helper 2's now empty desk, instead she is moving to where Aide 5 had been sitting and Aide 5 is taking Helper 2's desk. Clerk 6 and Typist 7 are switching places as well. So, on the support staff side, 7 people have been displaced in order to empty one office.

You'd think that would be enough, right? And Attorney E would move into Assistant 1's office and call it a day. Wrong.

Prosecutor C is taking Assistant 1's office, and Attorney E is moving into Prosecutor C's vacated office on Monday. Counselor A is switching offices with Esquire B. Of all these moves, only Prosecutor C is getting more room and a better location. Esquire B is getting a decent location (damnit I didn't want to move!) but the office isn't any larger. Counselor A (me) got screwed.

In order to get Attorney E an office, 10 people have moved.

And we're supposed to ensure that justice is efficient...

Balance.

We all need it. And we all struggle to find it. In our families. With our friends. At work. In our guilds.

Marnas retracted a post about our guild and the way raid spots are filled. A friendly, if somewhat bumbling, melee dpser caught me tonight with some complaints. Other friends and guild members have expressed (sometimes vehemently) their feelings about raid invites. Not surprisingly, these conversations generally happen when they are not confirmed for a raid.

Why do they talk to me? Well, for one I am an Officer, and my name often shows up on our website as the one confirming people who have expressed interest in attending the raid. Although I am the one clicking the confirm box, not all the decisions are mine alone. In fact, I am usually in communication with at least one other Officer, sometimes two or three, as I click. Why else do they talk to me? Probably because I let them. I let them blow off steam, and I listen to their concerns. There may not be anything I can do about it, but I try to listen anyway.

So what do we look for when confirming people to raids? Balance. But not just a balance of classes, or even a balance of roles. We also have to balance the conflicting desires of the people in the guild and the entire guild as a whole.

In the Burning Crusade, we made the conscious decision to focus on progression, which changed a lot of how we did things. Those changes have carried over into Wrath. In vanilla WoW we were a casual guild that raided. Confirmations were made on a first come-first serve basis. It usually worked out that the dedicated and talented players signed up first, so they were confirmed, but if you forgot to sign up for Molten Core early, you were likely to sit out, no matter how dedicated and talented you were. In Burning Crusade, we tried to make that same system work, but with fewer people allowed in the raids and the difficulty amped up in the early encounters, we quickly found that that did not work. Since then, our confirmations have been based on more elusive things than signup order. And of course, this doesn't always make our decisions popular.

Skill. Dedication. Preparation. Reliability. Availability. Loyalty. These are easy to type, but not always as easy to measure...especially in oneself. It's easy to say, "Soandso's been to two raids this week and it's not fair!" It's harder to acknowledge that Soandso has quicker reflexes than you do and only needs a fight to be explained once. It doesn't always seem fair, and I'll admit that often it isn't, that someone who is hateful and annoying gets to raid because they do more damage than someone who is nice. But when the focus is progression, sometimes the abrasive but skilled win out over the friendly, but bumbling.

In addition to the idealistic qualities listed above, the truth is a raid confirmation may also hinge on who you know. I know that sounds bad. But it doesn't make it less true. I'm not saying that the entire raid roster will be filled with people getting special treatment because they are related to or friends with an Officer. But if a decent player has the ear of an Officer, he or she is more likely to get into raids than a decent player who doesn't. Maybe these are truths that I'm not supposed to share. Maybe I'm breaking some oath of confidentiality by telling it like it is, but honestly, that is how the world works. I've gotten my last three job interviews based almost exclusively on the recommendation of someone I already knew working there. My qualifications got me the job (or the offer of a job) but the word of someone the employer already trusted got me the interview.

I know we sometimes trip and fall, but for the most part, my fellow Officers and I try to keep a balance between people and progress, guildies and friends, the guild's casual atmosphere and getting things done. We're walking a tightrope. And we're doing the best we can.

Shave and a Haircut?

I left zoo court yesterday afternoon a little after 4:00 and decided to take my lunch hour instead of heading back to the office. I had an appointment at a salon in the mall scheduled for 5:00, so I headed over early to shop for a few minutes. After buying some work related clothes and a couple of books, I went into the salon.

I didn't have to wait very long for the stylist to be ready for me, which was a good surprise since she had been slow the other time I saw her. She asked if I liked my haircut from before, and I made pleased noises in response. She planned out the session saying she'd shampoo and condition my hair, wax my eyebrows, and then put me under the dryer for the deep conditioning to work. She stopped the sentence there, but I didn't think anything of it at the time. We headed back to the sinks and started the process of making me beautiful-ish. She worked on my eyebrows for what felt like a century and seemed surprised that my skin turned red. (Lady, I'm fair-skinned and you are torturing me with tweezers and hot wax...what did you think would happen?) After making my skin brighter than the Red Raider's hair--so red that it was difficult to actually see my eyebrows--she handed me a mirror and asked what I thought. Again with the pleased noises.

She wrapped a string of cotton around my head almost like I was getting a perm and sealed my hair under a shower cap. Then she led me to the row of old-fashioned hair dryers and told me to sit. Despite the novel I held in my hands, she tried to foist some outdated fashion magazine on me that I practically had to bat away with the aforementioned novel. As she adjusted the dryer over my head, she dropped the bowl thing too quickly so it bashed my head. Oops. She quickly righted it and set me to cook for another 10 minutes.

Finally I was done. But it took a few more minutes for her to free me from the dryer and take me back to her station. On the way she asked if I wanted her to style my hair or leave with it still damp. As it was approximately 15 degrees outside and I had planned on getting dinner after she finished, I opted for the style. I didn't fancy having icicle hair. (Why does styling hair cost extra? Seriously, they are using hot air and hot metal to make my hair go in strange directions. Usually, they use so much product "styling" my hair that it appears that I am at least two inches taller than when I came in. Why do I have to pay extra for poofy?)

At this point, I fully expected her to break out the scissors and start trimming my hair. Granted, it didn't need much, but with fairly short hair, stylists generally prefer to trim it often so it keeps its shape. The bangs at least could have used a little attention. After all, my hair grows incredibly fast. But instead of grabbing scissors, she picked up her hairdryer and started attacking my hair. Within 5 minutes she had it dry and styled (no product at least). I mostly sat there speechless wondering what had happened. How did I go in for a haircut and end up with deep conditioned hair (that I never asked for by the way, but whatever) that looked exactly the same as when I walked in? What cue in the conversation slipped past me without me catching on that I was supposed to say "Aren't you going to CUT my hair?" Whatever it was, at this point I mostly wanted out. So I kept my mouth shut even as my mind kept up a litany of "WTFs."

After she finished styling it she said "It's getting a little long in the back, are you planning on growing it out?"

...

So yeah...I'd rather have a goblin give me a shave and a haircut next time.