Flask of the North killed raiding.

Well, on second thought, I suppose it could be worse. A Flask of the North is better than a flask on the nothing, isn't it? Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just my own mentality toward this game. Maybe it's the fact that a good number of other individuals don't share my mentality toward this game. Or you know, maybe it's the fact that I carry flasks on me at all times. The real flasks. The expensive ones.

While the Flask of the North isn't the end all be all to raiding, I think it summarizes quite well my issue with most raids (read: 25 mans) that I end up doing in my free time. It went down something like this: We've been pulling this rag tag group of casuals that call themselves a guild through 25 man ToC. Hard stuff I know. There are some individuals in the raid that take it all quite seriously. I mean, they do their research, they eat some buff food, and they wear real flasks, but then...there are those like this guy. We had been wiping on Anub'arak for a good hour or so because the raid DPS was just so terrible that even if I could Titan Grip as a retribution paladin, there was just no way we could catch up. We were hitting Anub'arak's enrage timer over and over again, and things were starting to get a little strained. Our raid leader, out of spite, or maybe just to make a point ran his Big Brother buff mod through our guild chat. What was the result? At least half of the raid had neglected to flask up for the fight and at least another third had no buff food on. When this was brought to the attention of the raid over ventrilo, one man responded by saying, "That's shit, I've got my Flask of the North on."

Oh lord. Flask of the North. You go.

It's responses like that that just...completely blow my mind. For starters, Flask of the North doesn't even begin to match up against some of the standard raid-viable flasks, and then after that, you're going to argue about it? Now I understand that we're running some kind of charity bake sale by hauling most of this guild through ToC, but come on, welfare only does so much. At least help pay your taxes or something by bringing a real flask of you own.

What this comes down to for me is a sense of casual versus raider mentality. When I raid with my 10's guild, I expect everyone to be flasked and have buff food. I don't check, because I know we are all on the same page. We don't like wiping on the same thing over and over, and we sure as hell don't like to wipe on the same thing due to enrage timers or a general lack of DPS. We all know what to expect from each other--we expect each other to give a damn. Some of these people in the 25 man runs just aren't there mentally. It blows my mind, and I am constantly reminded of how much skill this game doesn't take to play and still be considered "decent" at it.

The 25 man runs are fun in the sense that I get to really open the floodgates and blow some mediocre DPS away with my 12k showings on Twin Valkyr or what have you, but honestly...it's no fun to blow people away wipe after wipe because we can't break a shield. Two weeks ago the Twin Valkyr healed four times before enraging and destroying us all. It's just...terribly frustrating to me.

It's like herding cats.

If you want to play with the big boys, play like a big boy. We know your gear isn't the best. We know you might not know all the intricacies of the fights. We know you might die early on for no real reason. But please, at least look the part and make sure that when I mouse over you I see a real end-game flask on your character pane followed by a delicious well-fed buff.