Keep the fun and focus with a fake enrage timer

A lot of players seem to be affected by the pre-expansion blues. Not all, but many of us, judging from the comments on my The World has changed post a while ago.

Where we used to fly forward, full of adrenaline, passion and fighting spirit, we now seem to be stuck in chewing gum or slowed downed by the chilling effect of a well placed frostbolt.
It’s boring and frustrating for all of us who are used to get our kicks by raiding.

Unless you want to have a break from the game, you must find new ways to challenge yourself.

I think we need to start to think like high jumpers. We can’t rely in Blizzard raising the difficulty for us by offering new instances. We need to challenge ourselves and try to break our own records.

One way to do this is to put up strict time limits for yourself and your party - to make a fake enrage timer. This is what this post is about. I suggest you to start to play against the stopwatch.
A new experience
The heroic instances nowadays aren’t really any challenge for many players, geared as we are, in badge items or PvP rewards if nothing else. But do it quick and dirty and I promise you’ll see it from a new side.

Being under time pressure you’ll limit your marking to the most necessary. You’ll keep cc:ing to a minimum. You won’t wait for full mana regain after every single pull. You’ll take more risks and play on the edge in order to break the record.

Recently I made Black Morass in 18 minutes and I had more fun there than I’ve had in a long time. It was full speed from the beginning to the end, except for the two forced-on-breaks after the bosses (very annoying).

If you rush the chances are bigger that you’ll make a tiny mistake and then get the opportunity to deal with the consequences and improvise.

Now, unfortunately, except for in Zul Aman, Blizzard hasn’t any special loot to award speedy players. So it’s up to you to motivate yourself:

• Put yourself into the state of mind that there’s an enrage timer that you’re fighting. To your aid you’ve got the new Stopwatch feature that was introduced in the last patch. You get access to it by typing /sw. Let everyone in the party start it at the same time and make sure that you’ve got the same goal.
• Be hard on yourself if you fail. And cheer if you succeed. The more seriously you take it, the more you put your heart into it, the more fun you’ll have.
• Keep record of your achievements. I wish there was some kind of addon where you could keep track on how quick you’ve done an instance historically (maybe there is one I’ve just missed?). But a paper and pen isn’t a bad alternative. Take notes and put up golden goals for yourself.
• Compete. If you’re really lucky you may find another five man-party to fight with. Who will clear the daily heroic instance in the shortest time? Or which party could make the most number of badges in 1 hour?

An exemple
I think most instances could be brought back to life using this technique.

Karazhan, for instance, is pretty dull after running it so many times, at least if you do it slowly and carefully, not taking any unnecessary risks. But let’s make an illusion. Imagine there’s a gnome-engineering experiment going on in a secret cellar below the animal bosses. In fact the whole place will explode in 2 hours unless you clear the place, turning the pretty nearby Stormwind into a ghosttown. You and your party are the last hope, you’ve got to clear the place quickly to stop the process.

Do you feel the pressure? Do you feel the pulse? Good. Switch on the stopwatch and enter. Let’s rock, let’s sweat, let’s conquer, let’s have fun. Just as we used to.