So whatcha gonna do about it?

I've always been a big fan of working as a team. Finding ways to complement eachother's strengths, mitigate eachother's weaknesses. Sacrifice personal glory to achieve collective goals.

To a point.

There's a fine line between mitigating weaknesses, and carrying dead weight. I've never been a big fan of being carried, you never know where people are gonna put their hands.

Here's my self proclamation: I will not be dead weight.

At work we call it cholesterol. These are the folks who can't be billed directly to our customer, people in support or administrative jobs. Just like real cholesterol, a certain amount of the right type is a good thing, but too much of the wrong type is deadly. To the human body, to a profit-driven organization, and also to a raid.

Re-proclamation: I will not be cholesterol. The bad kind.

Ok, good for you. Whatcha gonna do about it?

I'm supposed to be a DPS machine, and a DPS machine I shall be. Here's the plan...

Step 1) Talent Spec. Pressed for time, I took the BRK 53/15/3 spec, and flung the 3 survival points into Focused Aim for 53/18/0. The hunter I raid with now, who basically doubles my output, swears by Readiness. I suspect that Thursday's raid will find me trying a new spec, likely a carbon copy of this guys, with perhaps a personal twist, depending on hit rating.

Step 2) Glyphs. Steady Shot is a no brainer. I've been using Viper, which might be silly. I've also been using Serpent Sting, since it complements the Steady Shot one reasonably. I've got a feeling that Viper and Serpent have gotta go.

Step 3) Chesty Le'franze. Argent Crusade has a verah nice chest piece, my current one is green and awful, taken nearly exclusively for hit rating. I'll be their Champion until she be mine. Also need to check Wiki for other avenues to grind their rep.

Step 4) Badge Crossbow has got to go. She's served me well, but its time to hang her up. I really don't think the Nessingwary bow is an upgrade, and barely a sidegrade when all stats are taken into consideration. Heroic Utgarde Keep is the place. Drake-Mounted Crossbow. H-UK like crazy, which serves double for grinding AC rep.

Step 5) Shoulder Inscriptions. Not a massive upgrade, but its a slow steady process to grind the rep out. Do the Hodir quests daily. Review Wiki's guide at each new level of rep to see if new quests or turn-ins open up.


The plan doesn't stop there, however, if I try to lump in more than that, I'll just blow it all off. These are some very do-able goals, with only #4 subject to the Random Number Generator.

Makes me wish Blizzard gave us a "custom achievements" screen where we could enter a piece of gear and track some stats about what it took to get the piece. How many H-UK runs will it take? How many dungeons wearing Argent tabard till chest piece? How many days of grinding Hodir? Twould be a fun little twist of tracking the effort we make to accomplish some of our in-game goals. But I digress.

Will these steps make me win at WWS? Surely not. But that fine line between supporting the team and being carried must be put out of the picture.

Repeat after me...

I will not be dead weight.

I will not be cholesterol.