I have been invited to be a part of a Resto Druid round table tomorrow night with the Waffle Cast crew. It will be at 7:00 pst, and will be live streamed if you would like to listen/participate. You can also head over to the Waffle Cast website and post any questions that you’d like to have addressed during the round table. The participants for the round table are as follows:

Arielle: Moderator
Diziet: Tournament Player (most recently WCG 2011 in Korea)
Beruthiel: 25m Heroic Raider from Falling Leaves and Wings
Hamlet: EJ Math/Theorycrafting Guru and creator or Tree Calcs
Synergy: Multi Season Gladiator
Lissanna: Restokin and Druid Class MVP

There is a very diverse list of participants, so don’t hesitate to ask any resto druid questions you may have on your mind and tune in to hear all things resto!

Put your torches away, and let me explain what I mean before you decide to torch me.

WoW has changed significantly since I first pulled those five CDs from the vanilla box and installed the game on my computer. One of the things that have changed for the worse, at least in my opinion, has become this focus on the progression “race” – which is heavily perpetrated by guild ranking sites like WoW Progress and GuildOx. But I’ve opined on that previously, and I don’t really want to go into a rant on my thoughts here as I’ve done that previously. However, I do think it’s important to acknowledge this change because it plays into what I do what to discuss: The “equality” of 10 man and 25 man raiding, or more specifically why there is such a push to make them equal.

When Blizzard announced that they were going to share raid lockouts between 10 and 25 man raids, that they were going to share loot and that they were going to “equalize” the difficulty between the two raids, a lot of eyebrows were raised. The question asked was how, exactly, was it going to be possible to tune these two versions “equally”. And as we sit in the final instance of this expansion the  answer is clear – it’s not possible. In looking through the three progression tiers of this expansion, Blizzard’s failure to deliver on this equality is written all over the history of each tier. The back half of T11 was significantly more difficult on 10s, where the back half of T12 was significantly more difficult (and killed many guilds) on 25s. And to date, this trend seems to carry through T13 where a good number of the encounters can be cleared with greater ease with significantly less strict requirements in their 10 man iterations - yes, I’m looking at you Yor’shaj, Ultraxion and Spine.

And while this probably wouldn’t have been a huge deal, it became one when Blizzard in no uncertain terms indicated that these raids would be of equal difficulty and did everything in their power to try to hammer that home to the playerbase.

The illusive server first.

In an effort to prove that they were serious about tens being a viable option for progression raiding and that they were going to be of an “equal” difficulty when compared to 25s, Blizzard removed the distinction between clearing zones based on your raid size, and included 10 man kills into “server first” feats of strength. Which probably would have been fine – had 10s and 25s truly been of an equal difficulty. But they weren’t. What happened is that many 10s never had an opportunity to snag the titles in T11 due to strict class requirements and mechanics that were more challenging to overcome with only 10 players, and many 25s dropped down to 10s in T12 just so they didn’t miss out on the achievement due to a significantly more challenging end encounter. And the raiding community blew up as those running the “race” bickered at who had “legitimate” kills and who “cheated” by taking the easier road to see faster/smoother progress.

Sadly, those aren’t the only consequences of the changes. The community watched long standing guilds crumble under the pressure of the oversaturation of guilds, and the lack of skilled, dedicated and driven players to fill seamlessly never ending holes in all of those progression rosters – something that burned out leadership teams of both raid sizes. Tensions mounted in guilds (including mine) as arguments over progression vs community arose - and whether one should take the “easy road” when it presented itself rather than burning out on more difficult content offering the same rewards. And to be fair, it’s really hard to say “we are not going to bench 2/3 of our raid roster just to ‘win’ faster” when you look at the significant differences seen in some of the encounters. And the larger the differences were/are, the harder it is to justify.

What is wrong with just having different options?

I honestly  don’t know what Blizzard was thinking when they were sitting down in the dev meeting where the thought they could effectively make two raid sizes “equal”. While I’m sure their intentions must have been in the right place, the technicalities involved in undertaking such a feat should have been seemingly impossible, even on paper. There are just too many differences and challenges to overcome to realize true equality. In the end one raid size simply receives overtuned bosses while another receives undertuned bosses (and this varies between the two raids) – and in the end it’s the player that suffers from the attempt to find “equality”.

Honestly, I think the 10/25 experiment was one of the worst things Blizzard did to the game for a myriad of reasons (some of which are listed above). I was very much hoping that they’d just settle on one raid size moving forward and spend their time developing quality content for that one raid, rather than splitting it between trying to make one equal raid for two sizes. A task that still daunts them after an entire expansion. However, since that is not something that is coming down the pike, I do have some thoughts on how to smooth things out a little bit.

• Give up on equal. It’s never going to happen. It’s just not possible – there are too many moving pieces and parts. Just acknowledge that there are going to be two raid sizes and that they are both viable progression options, offering difficulty appropriate to challenge players. Keep loot the same, who cares, just focus on making fun encounters for each respective raid size and stop worrying about equalizing them. Just make them an appropriate challenge for a raid of 10 people or a raid of 25 people.
• Get rid of server firsts; alternatively offer them for each raid size. If server competition is so important, make a 10s and a 25s version of this achievement.  Having one server first available when all things are not equal is just folly and causes nothing but stress and drama for guilds who are vying for this achievement for whatever reason. Either can the idea entirely, or create a representative achievement for each raid size so there is an equal opportunity for guilds to compete for them.
• Either give up on homogenization or give into it completely…and then design encounters accordingly. While this is something far more apparently in 10 man raiding, it’s certainly not absent in 25 man raiding. How many people have bemoaned not having a barrier, or a beacon of light, or this buff or that buff? Encounters either need to have an equal chance at success without such tools, or all DPS should have bloodlust and every healer should offer a barrier. I understand that class tuning is a challenge – but I have a really hard time believing that the devs didn’t know that raids lacking a BL or a barrier, as an example, wouldn’t struggle more than raids that had them available.
• Stop making legendaries.  Sure, orange is cool, but they have caused nothing but trouble since the first Thunderfury was crafted. I mean, they had to nerf TF at the start of TBC because it was still the most powerful tanking weapon. And, I mean, honestly, how many Dragonwrath’s does one need to kill Spine of Deathwing on 25s? If you can’t balance around the weapons, just stop putting the damn things in the game. Or make them trivial items like tabards.

In the end, I’m OK with just being different. I mean, everyone in the community already looks at 10s and 25s differently, why shouldn’t Blizzard acknowledge that and work harder at making better encounters for everyone involved, rather than continue to attempt making equal encounters when it’s clear that it’s  just not possible to achieve such a feat? Let people pick what they’d like to do based solely on what raid size they prefer, and not on the false presumption that the challenges that they face will be the same.

It’s been a little quiet. There are many reasons for that, but one of them is that the Seattle area just had a big dumping of snow that kept both Brade and I house bound for 3 days. As such, rather than doing things like working on a Hagara guide or finishing one of the dozen blog posts in my draft folder, I spent some of that extra time with Brade. Amongst other things we discovered the glories of Castle and navigated our way through the first season. When he opted to play Star Wars, I spent some quality time curled up with the puppy, drinking tea and reading People. And…I enjoyed it.

Anyhow, we received 12 inches of snow, if the weatherman is to be believed – which is a ton for the Seattle area. We only lost power a few times, and in flickers, so we were fortunate on that front as many people in the area lost power for days (and some still don’t have it back). There was so much snow that after we walked the dog, we had to carry her back to the tub and use hot water to get the clumps of snow off of her feet.  Here are some pictures of what it looked like at the end of last week.

On How I’m Doing

I’ve had a few people ask me how I’ve been – and the honest truth is I don’t really know. I’ve kind of curled up into a little protective shell and I’m just trying to work through how I’m feeling. My life outside of the game has been great – and Brade has been nothing short of wonderful. However, I still feel like I’m trying to pick up my bootstraps and keep moving. A good number of people in the guild have been very supportive, which is encouraging. We’ve made a few more changes in the guild recently, and I think only time will tell how they work out. I think they have the potential to be very good, but like all things with potential, that potential has to be realized – so we will see how it plays out when all is said and done.

As for me, I’ve done quite a bit of baking the past couple of week. Which, of course, means I have to sample that baking to make sure it’s edible. We wouldn’t want to have anyone eat something that isn’t tasty would we?! Brade and I are also planning a small holiday at the end of the month, which I think will be very healthy and that I’m looking forward to very much. Just some time away for a few days, where all we have to worry about is what time to get up in the morning and where we should have dinner.

(yes, those are as delicious as they look)

On other random things.

I’ve still been plugging along with A Dance with Dragons, and I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit. I’m moving through it slowly, but that’s more because I’ve been doing a little less reading and a little more of other things right now (like having wonderful lunch chats with Keredria and Tikari, both of whom have been absolutely amazing these past couple of weeks, even if Chicago import K was highly amused by Seattle’s reaction to Snowpocalypse!). I also have a list of things in my “to read” column right now that I’m looking forward to reading, so I may have to make a few “date nights” with good ol’ George here soon.

In the couch potato field, (as I mentioned above) I’ve discovered Castle and wondered how on earth I missed this show. It’s really quite good – and I got some quality snuggle time in with Brade during Snowpocalypse as we were both drawn into the show. I dare say that the dog quite enjoyed this snuggle time as well. Did you know that petting your pets is a known stress reducer?

If some of the changes that we’ve made with the raid end up working well, I’ve been thinking about taking some classes. What kind of classes you ask? Well, I wouldn’t mind a gym class of some sort. When I was in college I took a PE class every semester just to make sure that I got out and had a scheduled exercise time. I think I’d like to explore something similar again. I’d like to do something with Brade, but I think he’d prefer a yoga type class where I think I’d rather a something a little more…active. Does anyone have anything that they’ve really enjoyed and would recommend?

I think I might like to take a class or two that keeps my hands busy – like a pottery, photography or cake decorating class. My mom used to do pottery type things with us as kids, and I still have a Dopey piggy bank that she made for me when I was a kid. I always enjoyed it when I got to go with her, so it might be something worth exploring. Something else that I used to do as a kid was cross stitch. I’ve not done it for, well, let’s just say a very long time. But my mother was very adept at it, and I wasn’t half bad, so it might be something to think about. One other thing that I’ve thought about – and you have to promise not to laugh – is picking up a Bob Ross Painting Kit and seeing how I did at making happy little trees. Just something to keep my brain and hands active, I suppose.

I’d love any suggestions people may have! If there is some activity that you love and would recommend, let me know! I have plenty of books, movies and video games – but I think I wouldn’t mind exploring outside of those comfort zones a little bit to try something new. I know there’s not a lot of “game” updates in this post, but that’s because I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to recover from the past couple of weeks – I hope you all understand. I do have intentions of getting a Hagara video up soon, and doing the guides are something that I really enjoy (and have missed a bit in all of the stress), I’ve just needed some time to sort out myself and my thoughts. I’ve truly appreciated everyone’s support, insights and suggestions. And I thank you all so much for them.

The Great Four Piece Debate

There is a lot of speculation about how valuable four piece T13 is for resto druids. Unfortunately, I don’t have a solid, analytical answer for that question. What I can tell you, however, is that I’ve been playing around some with the set bonus. To date, I’ve not been successful at finding how often timeslip procs in the logs - or how much of the casted spell is overheal. What I can tell you is that on the two heroic fights I used the bonus on this week I did marginally better than the prior week, and had slightly more rejuv healing. However, without definitively knowing how much of that is attributable to timeslip, I don’t know that I can say anything definitive regarding how much of an impact the bonus had.

What I can say definitively is that I still prefer the extra mana gain from 2 T12/2 T13 for progression attempts – with heroic Yor’shaj being the only exception to that rule. I find that the extra mana return far outweighs any value from “timeslip”. It gives me more leeway to learn how to heal the encounter and let’s me be a little more aggressive during learning attempts. I started our Heroic Ultraxion attempts with 4 T13, and quickly swapped back into my 2/2 set and found myself significantly more comfortable. That being said, once I am familiar with an encounter and the damage patterns in the encounter, I’ve had no issues swapping over to the 4 T13. However, I am still uncertain of the overall value outside of just increased stats on the gear.

What is up with your spirit and haste?

I’m glad you asked! My question to you would be “what was I wearing when you armoried me?!”. Because I’ve been toying with the 4 T13 bonus, but most of my gear is shared outside of the set items, and I want to be able to flip between the two seamlessly, I’m limited in what I can do with reforging on my sets. My 2/2 set sits at exactly 2005 haste, which means that I can’t tinker with any of those items when dealing with my 4 T13 set. This limits what I can do with reforging and means that my spirit in this set is a little high (2700) and I have roughly 80 more haste than I need. My mastery also takes a bit of a dip in the T 13 set.

Until I can decide what I’m going to do with the gear, I imagine that my 4 T13 set is going remain a little off stat wise. In time, I am sure that I will go straight T13 and be done with it. But for now, I’m not ready to give up the extra regen from the 2/2 set and want to continue having it as  an option for progression.

As far as spirit is concerned, I can tell you that I’ve upped mine from T12 somewhat significantly. I ran roughly 1700 spirit by the end of T12, but found that was not sufficient for my healing style in the T13 content. As such, I’m currently running around 2400 spirit and feel comfortable. I’m not yet to the point of having a surplus of mana left at the end of encounters, but as gear increases, I imagine that I will get there – and when I do I will be reforging some it back off and likely back into mastery. As far as spirit is concerned overall, you just need to find a number that works well for you.

And that is what is up with my gear! Please keep that in mind if you are running an armory on me. I’d love to know if anyone has found a way to track timeslip in WoL. Additionally, I’d love to hear any experiences that you may have with the set bonus and what you think!

Please note that this video will be best viewed at one of the higher resolutions.

A few tips!

• Don’t stress the mana void! I talked about this in the video, but forgot to mention one thing: when blue is out it’s a license to go nuts with your mana. The mana void is going to drain it all from you anyhow, make good use of it before it’s gone! Additionally, I forgot to mention that I always save my mana pot for a back to back blue void as the mana void tends to take a little longer to die due to not having as much time to DPS it down between voids. I found that a well timed mana pot could work wonders. Additionally, many of the blue combinations are the easiest! Learn to love seeing that blue slime creep in towards the boss.
• Love your melee. One thing that we learned was that as long as all of the ranged and the healers were at range, the melee were never targeted with  the green ooze. This made it significantly easier on both the melee and the raid. Let your melee pile right in and have the range eat all of the green.
• Purple, Shmerple. The only really challenging purple combination is a black/purple. The rest of them are fairly easy to navigate once you get a feel for them. The biggest piece of advice I can give for surviving the purple is to make sure you raid is topped up before the purple ooze hits.
• Who is healing MY group?! We used 6 healers and assigned one to the tank and one to each group. During purple phases healers were given very strict assignments and did not heal outside of their group. We used a shaman on the tanks, with a paladin who healed group 1 bouncing Beacon of Light between the tanks (more below).
• Deep Corruption. Make sure your raid frames show deep corruption stacks. No matter how good you are, when things get hairy it’s easy to forget if you healed that person 2 , 3 or 4 times.
• What do you mean I can only heal the tanks FOUR times! Tank healing on this encounter gets tricky, and requires a combination of good communication and smart cooldown usage. We had one healer assigned to heal the tanks directly during the purple phases. When the tanks would taunt, our paladin would beacon the non-active tank (who had four stacks of deep corruption) and go nuts to keep him up, while our tank healer would swap to the new tank. Once that tank became unhealable, our paladin would swap his beacon again to deal with the damage the new damage on the tank. We utilize both tank cooldowns and external cooldowns (Hand of Sac./Pain Suppression/LoH) to help keep the tank up during the sticky parts where they could no longer receive  direct heals but were still taking heavy damage. Additionally, towards the end of the purple phase, stay with the tank and time a heal to hit the second deep corruption drops off to get the tanks back in order for the next phase. There will be a fair number of tank deaths while you work through what needs to be done to keep the tanks alive during the purple phases, it’s just part of the learning curve as your tank healer and paladins work through finding the perfect combination of timing heals, swearing and prayer.
• ToL/Tranq. Unless you are trying to wipe your raid, never utilize Tranq during a purple phase. I panicked once and did this, and the raid was dead before Tranq finished casting. Oops. Additionally, save your ToL for a Red/Black/Blue or a Red/Yellow/Black phase were the extra healing and can be useful. While I suppose you could test it out during a purple phase, I feel that is a lackluster time to utilize it due to the nature of Lifebloom and your limitations on healing during that phase. I tend to favor mine on the Red/Black/Blue because LB is dirt cheap, but will also utilize it on the Red/Yellow/Black phase should we see that one first.

Please do not hesitate to let me know if you have questions!

Please note that this video will be best viewed at one of the higher resolutions.

A Few Tips!

• How many healers did you use? We heal this with seven healers. Our first kill was 2 druids, 1 paladin, 3 priests and 1 shaman. Our other druid healed one of the tentacle tanks during the black phase. We’ve used any number of combinations since then and been successful.
• Oh God, my mana! This is an extremely heal intensive encounter, and mana will be very tight. I opted to run with 2 T12 and 2 T13 while learning it so that I had extra regen for the encounter. Additionally, I found that, for myself, if I didn’t innervate before the first black phase things were so hectic and every GCD in the black phase was so precious, that I often forgot to innervate until we came out of the phase and I was often sub 50% mana. As such,I try to make a point to innervate before entering that first black phase to maximize my innervates through the fight. Additionally, don’t forget to maximize your trinkets if you have additional  regen focused trinkets so that you can utilize them  the maximum number of times in the fight.
• Love Nature’s Grace. I can’t stress this enough! Whether you are solo healing a group or healing with a partner, make smart use of Nature’s grace so that you have it available during heavy damage phases to help boost the healing you can do during those times.
• Tree of Life. As I stated in the video, I preferred to use ToL while the debuffs were active so that I could do more effective healing for less mana and it ensured that I could maximize ToL twice in the encounter. I, personally, found it somewhat lackluster for dealing with the black phase damage and found that I often reverted to rejuv/regrowth even if I was in ToL so it made the most sense for me to use it as more of a conservation tool to help support the aggressive healing needed in the black phases. This worked very well for me, but you will need to play around with it to find the best time for you and your raid team – you may well find that you like it better at a different time in the encounter.
• Tranquility. Also as stated in the video, I favored using Tranquility during the first and third black phases. This meant that I had it available for two of the phases where the healers are spread out and have to focus on keeping their group alive. I found this imperative for solo healing a group, and extremely helpful when working with another healer. While it meant that I did not have it available for the final push – we had many mitigation cooldowns available to get us through those final seconds of the fight during that fourth black phase where you ignore everything and just burn through the boss.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help. When your raid is first learning this fight, navigating the black phase as a druid is brutal. Our tool kit lacks any burst AE healing, which means that you need to do a lot of prep for the black phase and smartly utilize your cooldowns and toolbox to navigate through it. If you also 7 heal, one of your groups will have 2 healers in it – and if you are struggling with the black phase do not hesitate to ask to be placed in the “team up” group. We found that priests of both specs were especially adept at solo healing a group, and that paring up our shaman and myself made life a lot less miserable for the both of us. Asking for help doesn’t mean you are a bad healer, it just means that the black phase sucks and our toolkit isn’t the most adept at navigating the damage. By our third kill, with some gear upgrades and the raid more familiar with the fight, I had no issues solo healing a group – but during progression trying to solo heal it was one of the worst healing experiences I’ve ever had.
• Mitigating Damage. Something to keep in mind is that the gaze from the eyestalks can be brutal when all 8 of them are active (especially in those 5-10 seconds the flails are alive), however, those buggers can be interrupted! You probably don’t want to make it a priority to interrupt each and every one, DPS can (and should) interrupt the ones they are DPSing to help the black phase damage be more manageable. While they do not have a cast bar, you can easily tell when they are casting because they “squat”. Additionally, everyone in the raid with damage mitigating abilities should be sure that they use them during black phases.
• Raid Cooldowns. You absolutely want to have a raid cooldown rotation for the final black phase “push”. (This would be the part in the video were we made a mistake and blew up). We set up PW:B rotations, as well as Aura Mastery and 4 piece tank cooldown rotations. Once you hit that phase it’s pure survival mode. Cycle your cooldowns and keep as many people alive as you can. I might also recommend prayer.  Additionally, we used Aura Mastery and 4 piece tank cooldowns during the black phases, and PW:B throughout the fight while the debuffs were active. We found that having a PW:B as the debuff comes out immediately after your first black phases to really help keep the raid stabilized - as that set of debuffs occurs almost immediately upon entering the light phase and many people are still low life from the black phase.

There is a lot going on in this encounter, so I may well have forgotten to address something.  Please do not hesitate to let me know if you have questions!

Until one of them hits close to home.

It wasn’t until a couple of nights ago that we were listening to a commercial for an arthritis drug called Celebrex that something clicked. We’d seen the commercial a million times before, because it’s heavily advertised, and I’d always thought “thank god I’m not taking that medicine for my hands!”. But this is the first time that a light bulb went off in my head as the commercial played. As they started listing off the possible side effects of taking the drug, one stood out to me. Depression.

Now, I’ve always been a person who wears their heart on their sleeve. I’ve always been honest and frank about my emotions. And I do have (plenty of) emotions – both highs and lows. I mean, I’ve certainly had my moments. But for the past few months there have been a lot more lows for me, an uncharacteristic amount that have occurred for prolonged periods of time as of late. Small things that I would have previously shrugged off started to eat at me. Large things that have always been difficult to deal with seemed impossible. Challenges with running the guild and raiding became mountains to climb. Dealing with my family over the holidays had me in tears every day for two weeks leading up to Christmas. Stress at work started to overwhelm me. I simply felt incapable of handling the everyday things in my life that I had been so deft at navigating previously.

As we watched that commercial I started to wonder. I brought my recent emotional state up with Brade and asked him if he felt I’d been more emotional the past few months than normal. I mean, I’ve always had challenges with my family during the holidays – but they never kept me down and controlled me like they did this year. There have always been challenges with running a raiding guild – but they never pushed me to feel like I was incapable of holding it together. And he agreed, I’d had a lot more lows, for extended periods of time, over the last few months. And so together we started talking back through them to see if we could pinpoint the time when it all started.

After discussing it some, and looking back through my writing here on the blog, the prolonged periods of feeling like the world was throwing more at me than I could bear, lined up fairly cleanly with when I started the medication for my hands. Maybe this was a coincidence, and a giant shit storm landed on my lap about the same time I started new medication. But considering that watching NCIS last night made me burst into tears, or that Brade didn’t want me to make fudge on Monday night because I was already upset and he was worried any extra stress (like not timing the mixing of ingredients well when making candy) would have me inconsolable, I don’t know that it is coincidence and do wonder if something more is wrong.

And so, like any good geek, I went to the internet.

Because the drugs that I’d been prescribed for my hands were very similar to Celebrex I started to wonder if it was possible that depression was a potential side effect for them as well. I mean, I always read through that list that the pharmacist provides me with the “do not do this while taking this medication” warnings. I always look at the major warnings. But I rarely take the time to do more than just gloss over the small print. And so to the internet I went, in search of all of the potential side effects of the Meloxicam. And there is was, listed in the side effects:

abnormal dreaming, anxiety, appetite increased, confusion, depression, nervousness, somnolence

So naturally my next thought was “coincidence, I’m not depressed! I’m tough and strong and can handle anything”. Except as of late that’s not even close to the truth. The truth is that not only couldn’t I handle anything, I feel like everything overwhelms me. Even the smallest things seem like insurmountable hurdles that keep being placed in front of me to ensure my failure.

So off to the internet I went again.

This time to find out, exactly, what depression is and what the symptoms are. I mean, I’ve always kind of considered myself a fairly upbeat person and while I had periods of time when I was sad I’d never really considered depression as something I’ve ever had to deal with. And as I read through the symptoms it was like running through a check list of my life the past few months.

Symptoms of depression can include:

• Agitation, restlessness, and irritability (Yup, I’ve felt this)
• Dramatic change in appetite, often with weight gain or loss (eating anything not nailed down and putting on 15 pounds in the past 3 months? You bet!)
• Very difficult to concentrate
• Fatigue and lack of energy (Wanting to just “veg” and not deal with things? Did you SEE how much TV I’ve watched lately?)
• Feelings of hopelessness and helplessness (You’ve read my blog these last months, right?)
• Feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, and guilt (Just trust me on this one. Ask Brade if you don’t want to.)
• Becoming withdrawn or isolated (Check.)
• Loss of interest or pleasure in activities that were once enjoyed (I think this one has been…obvious.)
• Thoughts of death or suicide
• Trouble sleeping or excessive sleeping (And here I thought it was because Brade kept the bedroom like a sauna every night!)

Depression can appear as anger and discouragement, rather than feelings of sadness.

The more I read, the more it seemed like this was truly something that I should be considering and something very real that I could be dealing with. I talked with Brade again about it some more, and he told me “talk to your doctor” – which I’m pretty sure in Brade talk was “I agree, let’s get it fixed and get you back”. And, honestly, I felt a little bit relieved. That maybe this emotional roller coaster ride I’ve been on – that I thought was a direct result of Heroic Rag and Guild stress weighing me down and bleeding into my life - may actually be something more real and much more serious.

I saw my Rhuemetologist on Monday, before I’d had this revelation. During the visit she prescribed me new medication, which was a change of treatment as the Meloxicam was assisting with some symptoms but not alleivating all of them. We picked up the new medication and the first thing I did was pull out the small print and specifically look at all of the side effects. Sure enough, there it was in the new medication as well:

Nervous System: anxiety, asthenia, confusion, depression, dream abnormalities, drowsiness, insomnia, malaise, nervousness, paresthesia, somnolence, tremors, vertigo

Now, the information that I read about depression indicated that a chemical change in the brain is one of the things that is a leading cause. So, assuming that the prior medication was, in fact, causing depression, does not mean that the new medication will react with my body the same way. And I am hopeful that is true, but uncertain as it is a similar medication treating a similar malady. However, I am also going to see how I feel over the next month on the new medication, and if there is no change, or I still feel so overwhelmed that I can’t deal with even the smallest things, I will absolutely be talking to my doctor and exploring if I am experiencing one of the side effects of the medication.

I’ve never really felt this way before, or even considered that I may be suffering from depression. Sure I’ve had off days…but what do you do when you feel off for months? And to be honest, I’m not really sure where to go from here. I do know that talking to my doctor is a good place to start, but I also think that waiting to see if the change in medication has an impact is also important. I guess what I need advice on is what to do in the interim. How do I deal with the almost constant lows? How do I get my feet back under me? How do I even know if this is truly what is wrong and I’m not just having some sort of mid-life crisis deal and should start looking at sports cars?

I’d love to hear thoughts from people who have experienced and lived through depression, or helped a loved one struggling, but I also know that it’s a deeply personal subject – so please do not hesitate to email me rather than comment if you’d like to give me your thoughts and feedback, and know that it will be held in the deepest confidence. For now, I’m just going to start the new medicine and try to take things one day at a time, placing one foot in front of the other to see where it takes me. I’m a little bit uncertain and a lot scared, but hopeful that just maybe I’ve stumbled onto something that’s been troubling me for the past few months.

I remember the first time I went by the shop, and there was the giant Stetson advertisement, and I sort of figured that it mainly sold cowboy hats – and while I didn’t really see a lot of cowboy hats around town, there must be a popular market for them in the Seattle area. Maybe Bill Gates was a huge fan of the Stetson or something. In the window next to the cowboy hats were “old man hats”. You know the ones I’m talking about, with the flat bill and the button that snaps down. My Great Uncle Ray used to favor them when he went out. But then came something I wasn’t expecting. In the window next to the old man hats were some of the most lovely ladies hats that I’d ever seen. I was mesmerized by the array of woman’s hats in the window. (And I had flashbacks of the Disney short, you know, the one with Alice Blue Bonnet and Johnny Fedora).

Anyhow, every time I walk by the hat shop now, in addition to wondering how the shop thrives, especially in this economy, I always look at the ladies hats in the windows. Not only the hats, but the hat boxes. I’ve never had a hat that requires a hat box or has warranted a hat box upon its purchase. In fact, I didn’t even know that hat boxes still existed. But the hats are beautiful and have so much personality and panache.

Today as I walked by the hat shop, I again stopped and looked at the ladies hats in the window. And even though I’ve never really worn hats (unless you count the baseball cap I threw over my bed head on the way to class in college as I was running out the door…), I decided that I’m going to buy a hat from that front window. One that warrants a hat box.

I haven’t picked one out yet, but just because I’ve never worn hats before, doesn’t mean I can’t wear one now. And I intend to wear my new hat gracefully, with personality and panache.

Amongst other things, I had it out with one of our officers last night. And after feeling like I was being placed as a scape goat for everything, I flat out told him I would offer a simple solution: I would leave. I mean, let’s face it, I haven’t been happy in months, I’ve noted that in multiple venues, including my guild forums - if people were truly unhappy with me it seemed like a win/win solution for everyone. I advised him I wasn’t being melodramatic about it, I was truly miserable, tired of dealing with it and I wanted to leave. And I was told that if I did that everything would fall apart and I was needed to keep the guild alive. I found this odd, considering that I was supposedly at the root of all of these problems we are seeing in the guild at the moment.

Which lead me to wonder: If I’m not a replaceable member of our leadership team, why am I treated so poorly by the people I work so hard for day in and day out? Why is it that when I tell people that I’m at the end of my rope, and what is causing me to be there, they continue to perpetrate the exact things that drove me to where I am right now? Why do I feel unappreciated and outright disrespected by many members of our guild? Why do I not feel like I am not welcome or wanted any longer?

I was left with a heavy decision that I thought about while I was showering this morning, as I drove to work and as I booted up my workstation at the office. I was leaning heavily towards leaving, as I removed a few more of the “pros” from a pros/cons list that I’ve been building in my head for the past two months. And then came the PM that should have never been sent.  From a raider that is equally, if not more, emotional that I am at times. A person that I had specifically directed to Brade because I couldn’t deal with it anymore. And my resolve eroded.

I wanted out. Now.

I responded less than charitably, because, well, I’m fresh out of charity to give. I’m tired of putting my feelings behind others, often to my detriment. And I’m tired of putting everyone’s needs and feelings ahead of mine. I’ve been doing it for seven years – and people (that I willingly invited into our guild) have unintentionally done to me what a group of people who set out to destroy our guild couldn’t do: they have made me want to leave my guild and look for a new place to call home.

I quietly closed my office door and started to weep in earnest. Ashamed and embarrassed that I was this upset over a recreational activity and couldn’t control my emotions enough that it was impacting my ability to work – especially when I have always prided myself on being able to bifurcate my personal life and my professional life when I stepped into the office.

I called Brade, looking for direction and advice. Hoping that the person who lovingly strokes my hair as I cry myself to sleep would offer me some semi-objective opinions. When he told me I should leave because I am clearly unhappy, I cried harder. The truth is, I still don’t know what I want to do. We talked about it a bit (well, mostly I cried and he tried to make me feel better), ultimately, effective immediately, I abdicated myself from all raid leading responsibilities going forward. (And you are probably learning about this change before half of our guild).

I haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to stay and see if things get better with the guild or not. The truth is that my head knows Brade is right – when it gets to the point that I am crying myself to sleep at night and locking myself into the office for the same reasons, it’s probably time to move to something that is more healthy for me, regardless of where that leaves the guild.  But my heart, lord my heart. It wants what it wants. It slaps on those rose colored glasses and romanticizes about the change that will happen with me stepping back, and tries to convince me that everything will be better now. It doesn’t want to walk away and abandon something that I’ve nurtured for so long.

I don’t know where I’ll land when this storm settles.

I know that I’m not done with WoW yet, but I do not know if I’ll be finishing out my love affair with the game with Monolith. Which is, quite honestly, not something I’d ever thought I’d say and may in the end kill WoW for me, as my guild has been a driving force for me in the game for so long. I have a lot of emotions and thoughts to sort through before I find an answer – and I strongly suspect the atmosphere of the guild over the next few days will play heavily into that decision.

In the end, is it so wrong to want to be happy and have fun again?