“I just want to be a fighter. I just like to win fights.”
Holly Holm
Xavius Down, Now What.
We killed the final boss (on Normal). Woot, good job, /highfive, we did it! It felt great, I even tamed a Dream Whelpling. Satisfaction as a game-player abounds but you know that as a raider, we’ll continue doing the same content; of course we will.
The Halls of Valor opens on November 8th, a “side raid” with three bosses and the next big raid will likely open in January. We have time, a ton of it. A raiding content lull, so to speak, but I think our raid is following the game design path to the letter — we didn’t blow through it, thank Elune.
My Raid Leader surprised me by asking us what we wanted to to next; re-run Normal and get our easy pieces that we don’t have or throw ourselves at Heroic (I had simply assumed Heroic, btw). I am open to either, we killed the final boss; as far as I’m concerned any path is viable once we’ve done the game-task.
Yay us.
Over-Geared
If we re-run Normal for a while, we’ll be over-geared. I often see in Trade or the Forums a sort of cynical eyeroll or even derision when players do content while over-geared — but, I ask you:
…isn’t that the point?
In life, we might get a college degree early in life so that we are over-geared for employment content. We exercise and eat right so we can easily get through a day on the job or home tending the kids without being exhausted. We (try) to save our money so we are over-geared in retirement and can take a cruise ship vacation.
When you are over-geared, you can step back from the narrow focus of the success goal and all of the options open up. You can look up from your rotation and see the game play out, you can carry a friend, you can enjoy the much broader picture and experience.
We spend much of our lives wanting to be over-geared. We want our cars to go faster than the speed limit, we want more than luxury; we want the ease of navigating life and to enjoy the grand scheme instead of the daily grind.
Constant struggle in life or in game is challenging and can be rewarding. Still, I think I’ll choose over-geared every time. The mechanics are still there, lets try to do more than simply survive.
Peace
Coffee Cakes and Crits 
Wow, excellent point about being overgeared *being the point*! Love the analogies you’ve used here. I, for one, am 100% in favor of raiding while well-equipped to deal with it, especially since everyone won’t have gotten everything they want out of the first few runs. It also has the benefit of “gearing up” those raiders who can only come intermittently which you will be glad for if you end up having to rely upon them later.
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I think it is inherent in the design with many avenues to getting gear!
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Grats on clearing 🙂
I’ll take over-geared any day of the week. And with the way loot RNG is at the moment with the chance to proc war or titan – there’s no reason not to be running content just because your ilvl matches or exceeds what might drop.
Tbh though.. why choose only 1 path? We raid(ed we’ve dropped normal atm) both tiers for a while, clearing normal first for extra pieces for missing slots then going to heroic for progression for the rest of the time. Best of both worlds!
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I think we’ll be doing that too. Tho, tonight we blew through Normal; so we are on Heroics because … well … that is what is available!
Our Raid Leader had us practicing the heroic strats tonight!
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