Why I'm a casual raider

For this post, I had been working on this long bit about my entire WoW history, but right around the third paragraph I realized nobody wants to read stuff like that, so I instead decided to make this post about why I'm a casual raider, and what that term really means. First off, I remember distinctly being told when I first started raiding Molten Core that the higher you progress, the less you actually end up playing. At the time of course I thought this was nonsense, as I could not imagine why a player with so much content available to it would end up playing less than a person just starting out. Nowadays, though, this turns out to be the case (to a degree).

The guild I'm currently in, The Cut Throats of Windrunner, is a fairly well progressing guild of about 40 or so raiders. We're ranked about 680 or so in the US, but I like the setting we're in. Our time is currently split 2/3 into farming for upgrades, and 1/3 trying new content. We've got Hyjal and Black Temple on farm, and are 1/6 in Sunwell to show we're not too bad. The reason I consider myself to be a casual raider is from the way the guild is set up. Because there are obviously more raiders than there are raid spots at any given time, people of a given spot switch around for boss fights. And as I am one of two DPS warriors in the guild, usually we only have one of us in the raid at any one time due to our guild not being as melee-heavy as some others might be. So yeah, we raid five nights a week, but I'm not actually in the instances half of the time. I used to think this was a bad thing, as I had always been in a guild where I was the only DPS warrior in the guild, but once we get to a certain point in progression (i.e. where there are no more new bosses we can kill at the moment), this setup becomes a luxury. Half the consummables, half the effort, but all of the glory of being in a pretty damn good raiding guild. On the flip side it gives me time to do other things on "raid nights" like read and have dinner, instead of being glued to the computer for four hours straight. Sure I might not get the epics I want as fast as I could if I were in another guild, but it also means I can see new content and get loot without being burned out or being completely poor.

That being said, to me there is most definitely a difference between a casual raider and a casual player who raids. A casual raider may not have the time or desire to raid 20 hours a week, but she does have the ability and the motivation to do the best she can whenever she is raiding, while a casual player would probably view raiding as just a different component of the WoW that she plays. A casual raider will always have consummables ready at all times, and might even use them for trash mobs, while a casual player who raids will probably see potions and flasks as unnecessary and "not a big deal", even for boss fights. A casual raider would have a desire to min/max her tanking/dps/healing, while a casual player would normally not be inclined to do so. Whether you fall into the first or second category really depends on how you want to spend your time in-game. I, for one, spend a lot less time in-game than I used to, but I would say I'm more into theorycrafting and optimization than before, and I'm pretty confident in knowing more about my class/spec than at any other time, despite spending less time in raids. In short, just because you don't spend every day raiding doesn't mean you shouldn't still be good at it ;)