So... The guild has been a little weird lately. We went 2-3 weeks without doing more than the daily heroic as a guild because of poor attendance. Raid night would come and we'd have 3-7 people on so we'd bag it. Two weeks ago, we decided to switch raid night to Thursdays because there were fewer conflicts. I also made the decision to fill out with PuGs once if we had at least 6 people on.
So the first Thursday of the new schedule, we had 8 people show up for Naxx. It was a couple of alts and some people who hadn't been out in a while. So at 8:30, I grabbed the first two people who responded to:
"LF2M DPS Naxx 10. Must need gear."
Funny how it only took me 2 minutes to fill the slots. It turns out that the people we got knew what they were doing and didn't _really_ need gear. We started plowing through the instance. Along the way, our idiot tank and our even dumber death knight showed up... Oh. Sorry. We're full. Raid time is at 8 and I even gave you 30 minutes on top of that... But I digress...
We had some people doing new things. We had some alts. Our only mage (who gets played) was on his priest and healing. We had a healer DPSing. A DPS/PvP death knight who has a decent tanking set was doing the off tanking. We had a hunter who had never seen any fights other than Sapphiron and KT... And the two PuGs.
But we rolled the spider wing. So we decided to do the construct wing. And we wiped on Patchwerk but that was two failures of communication. After that, we stomped him. And we had some people leave poison clouds in the middle of the room on Grobbulus but we got through it. Our first timer hunter (my brother... If that matters) was the best candidate for kiting on Gluth and he didn't really get what had to be done the first try. But he clearly "got" it on the second attempt. Mind you, he was one of the first to bite it on Thaddeus.
We lost a DPS after Thaddeus and it was hard to avoid picking up the idiot tank... And we couldn't stop because I'd warned them that if we picked up any PuGs, we would be clearing more than just two wings and that we would go until we started making mistakes. So... We pressed on to the Plague Wing. Rolled Noth (why is he even a boss? There's no danger of screwing that one up... ever. I've even considered doing it with one tank). We only had one death on Heigan (a new guild record) and that was the first time hunter. Then we lost our main healer. So we had a priest and a paladin go to their healing specs to cover for her. But the idiot tank wanted us to fill out with his idiot friend dk. But people were getting twitchy so we decided to run the gauntlet to Loatheb without him. Unfortunately, the mage turned priest dropped a heal about half way through and died in a spot where we couldn't rez him. So we had to run back. People died... We ran back in... The dk showed up... Blech. But we got through the gauntlet and dropped Loatheb.
People were getting punchy... I already had them about 45 minutes later than they like to raid. So we decided to pick it up on Monday.
Over the weekend, the dumb as... Well... I can't think of anything that would be a fair comparison... The idiot dk had his account hacked. Had his gear vendored and large chunks of the guild bank were cleaned out. When I heard we'd been hacked, I could have guessed who got hacked in two... If pressed, I would have gotten it in one. Fortunately, there wasn't anything that we couldn't replace easily in the guild bank and now he didn't have the gear to raid for a while. I decided to call it a win.
On Monday, one of the two warriors was available so we grabbed them and 9 guildies. We had some confusion on Raz. The idiot warrior tank's Understudy just "disappeared". Funny... I've done that fight 20 times and that's never happened to _me_. And he's on at least his 5th time tanking and he _still_ hasn't figured out that he has to dismiss the understudy. He just waits for the channel to end and picks it up again... Which means that he can only be the second tank... But I digress.... Again...
We wiped on Four horsemen because I forgot to mention the void zones in the back to our druid healer and she stood in one. She got it the second time though. We had a flawless attempt on Sapphiron. One shot. Boom. KT was a little more... Exciting.
And then the next day, we had 10 on so we did Vault. It was the first time some of them had ever downed Koralon. And we did it with a tank with just 30k health. No problems. So on Thursday, we decided to try our hands at Ulduar. And we rolled Flame Leviathan... And XT... And Razorscale. So in eight days, we went from taking 3 weeks to clear the entry level raid in WotLK to clearing it in one lockout period and starting on the next one. The next week, we got those three and Kologarn and Ignis... The Ignis fight being very interesting... Both tanks died at less than 1%. We were riding high.
But then the next week, we only had 8 people on and could only do Flame Leviathan. And then people stopped showing up altogether. That was at about the time when 3.2 came out and so now we could get Tier 8 and 9 gear by running heroics. So I ran the daily heroic at least once per day on my druid and if anyone in the guild wanted to go, I had a backup tank. And that was OK. At least people were getting gear. Onyxia came out about a few weeks later so I PuGged that for a while... And now the guild has done that about 3 times on 10 man.
I, on the other hand, decided to take a shot at TotC on the druid while the guild stagnated. I watched videos of all of the fights. I read the strats... And I got myself into a run as a tank in a PuG... And we cleared it. So the next week, I did it on 10 and 25. Last week I actually found myself in a Trial of the Grand Crusader run... That's.. Wow. A lot of fun. Stressful, but fun. We only cleared the first 4 bosses but I learned a lot more about the encounters. And I started gearing my mage. Got lucky in a 25 man Vault run and got two pieces. I parlayed that gear into an Ony 25 run... And I won an iLevel 245 caster dagger. And then I did an Ony 10 and got the helm... One that is identical to the one I wore for about a year on my Alliance mage back in the day... And now my horde mage has cleared TotC 25 as well.
And now that I've seen TotC several times, I figured we could run the guild through it. It seems perfect for us: No trash. Only five fights to learn and you're done in under two hours... But on raid night, we only had one tank. We tried the first fight with an offspec dk tanking... It didn't work out. So we ran Ony again. And then our other two tanks logged on. It was bed time for everyone else but now they were suddenly gung ho to run TotC. Too late... We were done for the night. Raid time is raid time.
I believe that patch 3.3 is coming on Tuesday and hopefully with the changes to the emblems, the entire guild will be able to get gear by running chain heroics... Maybe then we can do the current content. As for me, I have every intention of PuGging Icecrown Citadel as soon as it comes out. I appear to have the gear for it.
Time to move the laundry...
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
It's that time again...
It seems like the only time I update this blog is while I'm doing laundry. I started a few posts but never really thought they were going anywhere so I bagged it.
And there is news to report... The guild _finally_ cleared Naxxramas. I know, right!!! It took us a total of 6 nights across 3 raid lockout periods, but we got it done. The first two nights were pretty much clearing everything but four horsemen. We had the people to do 4 horsemen on the second night but three pulls from the boss(es) we had three people disconnect and they never came back. So it sat for another night. The next time in, we took down the 4 horsemen in one shot. Everyone did their jobs flawlessly.
So we moved on to Sapphiron... And wiped a good solid 4 times. So we called it... And came back another night... And we took him out in one shot. This was due in large part to a change in tactics... Namely, instead of letting our idiot warrior tank it, I tanked it on my dr00d. With 45k health (it's almost up to 50k with full raid buffs these days), it made things go a lot smoother. So we moved on to KT... And wiped a few times.
So we came back on a Monday and we had the "right" people and... Another one shot.
You'd think I'd be happy... And I am... Sort of. But the next night, we tried for OS 10 with one drake up... And we barely even got off the ground. We have people standing in void zones and getting tail swiped and hit by flame waves. After 3 or 4 attempts, I tried healing it... But our idiot warrior tank turned the boss the wrong way and basically the entire raid got tail swiped and stunned and killed by a flame wave. Ironically, when we finally threw in the towel because it was "too hard", he turned the boss the "right" way. I could scream.
And now that Naxx is clear, people are talking about moving on to Ulduar and they're getting pissy when I say "we're not ready". I say this because, we're not. No amount of gear is going to help if people do dumb things. On the Sapphiron wipes, the idiot warrior tank was told "turn the boss slightly to the right". He turned it about 100 degrees... At least he got "right" correct. So I showed him the line I wanted it tanked on... Same thing. We had one healer die three times on the successful Sapphiron kill - every time by not being close enough to an ice block. On KT, we have one paladin who Failbot saw as failing at Void Zones 6 times - 5 on the night of wipes and 1 on the successful kill. Just last night, we pulled 4 packs of mobs that we generally try to leave up. Someone (OK.. A death knight... One dk did it three times and another got the last group) wandered a little to close or backed into them. And, of course, the warrior tank couldn't figure out how to release his understudy on Rasuvious so we wiped on that a good solid 4-5 times before we got lucky and got him to 4% before he killed the other understudy and we were able to kite him around long enough to down him. Did I mention that the other tank has done this 3 or more times already. He spent most of his time not tanking staring at a wall while my bone shield was down. At one point, I took three rotations in a row. But I digress...
I could go on and on with specific examples of how we're not ready. Fortunately, less radical voices in the guild have been saying similar things. We're back to storming through Naxx. I'm back to cringing when they do something incomprehensible. I'm weaning them off the bear because... He just makes things too easy. It will force them to slow down and figure stuff out. I've started telling them that certain mobs have whirlwind abilities (I should mention that we can usually only field one or two ranged DPS out of 10 because the others are all rogues, warriors, dks or ret paladins) and suggesting that they try to interrupt the whirlwinds so they don't all get instagibbed. In Heroic TotC, I've been insisting that the warrior tank pick up ALL of the adds and not just the melee ones (that actually didn't go over well... He informed the party that he was the tank so we were going to do it _his_ way. I let him. It failed miserably. But we got it after about 6 tries. And then on the Black Knight, you're supposed to kite to _avoid_ the desecrations... Not kite for the sake of kiting and CERTAINLY not directly INTO them). I've been pointing out which mobs can be skipped and screaming into the ether when they pull them. I've been running failbot so they can see why they're dying. I've been actually paying attention to Recount and checking that against their specs. We have one death knight who put 66 points into the unholy tree but without a specific plan. He put 2/5 into important things, but 5/5 into something that is clearly a tanking talent. And when you compare that to the battle logs, he put a point into Scourge strike but only used it 48 times in two wings of Naxx... One third of his damage comes from melee and another 25% comes from Death and Decay (which led to a few early deaths when he popped it first... Still doesn't learn though... "causes a large amount of threat"... /sigh). Sometimes I think I may have to try to teach him a dps rotation of some kind... But other times I say "what's the point? He won't learn". I mean... The guy has 4 pieces of tanking gear, two rogue pieces and a spell power enchant on his melee DPS set.
But it's going to be a long road and I don't know that I'm patient enough to make them into better players. We've never been a guild who told people how to play... But if people want to progress, maybe I'll get some traction to let me set up a "raiding" spec for some of them. Take them to a target dummy and show them how their way isn't working... Like in Days of Thunder. Then again, I may just stop running with them and just PuG everything. It's actually a lot less stressful for me.
And there is news to report... The guild _finally_ cleared Naxxramas. I know, right!!! It took us a total of 6 nights across 3 raid lockout periods, but we got it done. The first two nights were pretty much clearing everything but four horsemen. We had the people to do 4 horsemen on the second night but three pulls from the boss(es) we had three people disconnect and they never came back. So it sat for another night. The next time in, we took down the 4 horsemen in one shot. Everyone did their jobs flawlessly.
So we moved on to Sapphiron... And wiped a good solid 4 times. So we called it... And came back another night... And we took him out in one shot. This was due in large part to a change in tactics... Namely, instead of letting our idiot warrior tank it, I tanked it on my dr00d. With 45k health (it's almost up to 50k with full raid buffs these days), it made things go a lot smoother. So we moved on to KT... And wiped a few times.
So we came back on a Monday and we had the "right" people and... Another one shot.
You'd think I'd be happy... And I am... Sort of. But the next night, we tried for OS 10 with one drake up... And we barely even got off the ground. We have people standing in void zones and getting tail swiped and hit by flame waves. After 3 or 4 attempts, I tried healing it... But our idiot warrior tank turned the boss the wrong way and basically the entire raid got tail swiped and stunned and killed by a flame wave. Ironically, when we finally threw in the towel because it was "too hard", he turned the boss the "right" way. I could scream.
And now that Naxx is clear, people are talking about moving on to Ulduar and they're getting pissy when I say "we're not ready". I say this because, we're not. No amount of gear is going to help if people do dumb things. On the Sapphiron wipes, the idiot warrior tank was told "turn the boss slightly to the right". He turned it about 100 degrees... At least he got "right" correct. So I showed him the line I wanted it tanked on... Same thing. We had one healer die three times on the successful Sapphiron kill - every time by not being close enough to an ice block. On KT, we have one paladin who Failbot saw as failing at Void Zones 6 times - 5 on the night of wipes and 1 on the successful kill. Just last night, we pulled 4 packs of mobs that we generally try to leave up. Someone (OK.. A death knight... One dk did it three times and another got the last group) wandered a little to close or backed into them. And, of course, the warrior tank couldn't figure out how to release his understudy on Rasuvious so we wiped on that a good solid 4-5 times before we got lucky and got him to 4% before he killed the other understudy and we were able to kite him around long enough to down him. Did I mention that the other tank has done this 3 or more times already. He spent most of his time not tanking staring at a wall while my bone shield was down. At one point, I took three rotations in a row. But I digress...
I could go on and on with specific examples of how we're not ready. Fortunately, less radical voices in the guild have been saying similar things. We're back to storming through Naxx. I'm back to cringing when they do something incomprehensible. I'm weaning them off the bear because... He just makes things too easy. It will force them to slow down and figure stuff out. I've started telling them that certain mobs have whirlwind abilities (I should mention that we can usually only field one or two ranged DPS out of 10 because the others are all rogues, warriors, dks or ret paladins) and suggesting that they try to interrupt the whirlwinds so they don't all get instagibbed. In Heroic TotC, I've been insisting that the warrior tank pick up ALL of the adds and not just the melee ones (that actually didn't go over well... He informed the party that he was the tank so we were going to do it _his_ way. I let him. It failed miserably. But we got it after about 6 tries. And then on the Black Knight, you're supposed to kite to _avoid_ the desecrations... Not kite for the sake of kiting and CERTAINLY not directly INTO them). I've been pointing out which mobs can be skipped and screaming into the ether when they pull them. I've been running failbot so they can see why they're dying. I've been actually paying attention to Recount and checking that against their specs. We have one death knight who put 66 points into the unholy tree but without a specific plan. He put 2/5 into important things, but 5/5 into something that is clearly a tanking talent. And when you compare that to the battle logs, he put a point into Scourge strike but only used it 48 times in two wings of Naxx... One third of his damage comes from melee and another 25% comes from Death and Decay (which led to a few early deaths when he popped it first... Still doesn't learn though... "causes a large amount of threat"... /sigh). Sometimes I think I may have to try to teach him a dps rotation of some kind... But other times I say "what's the point? He won't learn". I mean... The guy has 4 pieces of tanking gear, two rogue pieces and a spell power enchant on his melee DPS set.
But it's going to be a long road and I don't know that I'm patient enough to make them into better players. We've never been a guild who told people how to play... But if people want to progress, maybe I'll get some traction to let me set up a "raiding" spec for some of them. Take them to a target dummy and show them how their way isn't working... Like in Days of Thunder. Then again, I may just stop running with them and just PuG everything. It's actually a lot less stressful for me.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
August Laundry Day Update
Whoa... Been a while... What's happened since I posted last? Let me think:
I finished leveling my shaman. Got a dual spec. Went resto. Let me tell you... If you're a loot whore, roll a caster shaman. I did a couple of heroics and got enough gear to heal Naxx 10. Got enough gear doing that to heal Naxx 25 and Vault 25 the next week. In two runs through Naxx 25, I came away with 4/5 tier 7.5 and the tier 8.5 gloves... And then I got bored with him. I'll do vault every now and then but I pretty much shelved him.
I picked up my first character: an Alliance mage called Gifteye. Man... I've missed playing him. I did a LOT of Wintergrasp and pretty much leveled from 76 to 80 doing Argent Crusade, Ebon Blade, Argent Tournament and Sons of Hodir daily quests. He'll be an exalted champion with all 5 factions in 8 more days, exalted with SoH and Ebon Blade tomorrow and Argent Crusade probably later in the week. He's starting to get to a point where he can two shot most level 80 mobs... But he's on a low pop server that uses the Trade channel to form groups... Which means I have to lurk in cities and do nothing to _maybe_ find a group for something. Not my style... So I don't do instances. I'm considering moving him to a higher population server... Maybe even my Horde server now that we can have toons of opposite factions on the same PvP server.
I've finished Naxx 25 on hiaHoTah... Still wearing a couple of blue pieces in my healing set. The changes to emblems from heroics should remedy that. I'm a couple of days of "doing a few heroics" away from a tier helm token.
Summer came and has pretty much stopped all guild activities. We're lucky if we can get 4 people for a heroic and PuG a fifth. The last two days, our _other_ druid tank and I did a heroic with three PuGs. It's nice to run with DPS that doesn't stand in fires but still... I'd rather run with our crew. Even the new 5 man instance isn't really bringing people back... And it drops epics like crazy - even on regular mode.
The last two times we've raided, we did OS-10 with 8 and we tried Vault 10. We got the Less is More achievement but... Oy. We had two death knights. One of them was _barely_ pulling 1k dps and each death knight got hit by the lava waves at least 14 times. If we go back in there, I'm setting failbot to announce to the guild. Maybe that will shame them into... Well... Being at least half awake. On the Vault run, we had to PuG two DPS and we wiped on Emalon for about an hour and a half. While I respect their grim determination... It was still frustrating. We were right on the edge with DPS so we couldn't bring in another healer but the healing couldn't quite keep up with the death knights getting hit by lightning nova. One slip would cause a wipe.
5 people moved at the end of June. Two of them still don't have internet access yet. One should get access Monday.
2 people have had children... In the last two weeks. This includes our second best healer. This means that I'll end up healing if we ever start raiding again... And our tanks will be someone who means well but... He plays a warrior... And we know how I feel about warriors... And the other can't see ground effects... Like fire. On the plus side, we'll be able to extend raid lockouts... Which means we may actually finish Naxx 10 now.
The 3 toons I play on the horde side now have healing specs and decent healing sets and I spend most of my time healing.
Say what you want... But I stand by my assertion that the horde are much bigger douchebags than the Alliance. I have been ganked (or at least had people try it... I'm pretty slippery) more times in the last week on my mage than happened on my horde druid, paladin and death knight from 70 to 80. There's one huntard who either camps the Sons of Hodir base or keeps the exact same hours I do. Total pussy about it to. Won't attack me if I target him first. Will only shoot me in the back... When I've engaged a mob... DESPITE the fact that I've never ONCE gotten him below half health. And that time I rezzed and mounted... He flew away.
But things are looking up. Summer is ending. My brother is making noise about starting up again. We're gettiong one of our leading voices back. He's excited to have new druid feral forms. The healer's new baby is "ez mode" compared to the twins he had two years ago. If that continues he might be back raiding in another 2-3 months. I'm hoping Patch 3.2 will be very good for us.
I finished leveling my shaman. Got a dual spec. Went resto. Let me tell you... If you're a loot whore, roll a caster shaman. I did a couple of heroics and got enough gear to heal Naxx 10. Got enough gear doing that to heal Naxx 25 and Vault 25 the next week. In two runs through Naxx 25, I came away with 4/5 tier 7.5 and the tier 8.5 gloves... And then I got bored with him. I'll do vault every now and then but I pretty much shelved him.
I picked up my first character: an Alliance mage called Gifteye. Man... I've missed playing him. I did a LOT of Wintergrasp and pretty much leveled from 76 to 80 doing Argent Crusade, Ebon Blade, Argent Tournament and Sons of Hodir daily quests. He'll be an exalted champion with all 5 factions in 8 more days, exalted with SoH and Ebon Blade tomorrow and Argent Crusade probably later in the week. He's starting to get to a point where he can two shot most level 80 mobs... But he's on a low pop server that uses the Trade channel to form groups... Which means I have to lurk in cities and do nothing to _maybe_ find a group for something. Not my style... So I don't do instances. I'm considering moving him to a higher population server... Maybe even my Horde server now that we can have toons of opposite factions on the same PvP server.
I've finished Naxx 25 on hiaHoTah... Still wearing a couple of blue pieces in my healing set. The changes to emblems from heroics should remedy that. I'm a couple of days of "doing a few heroics" away from a tier helm token.
Summer came and has pretty much stopped all guild activities. We're lucky if we can get 4 people for a heroic and PuG a fifth. The last two days, our _other_ druid tank and I did a heroic with three PuGs. It's nice to run with DPS that doesn't stand in fires but still... I'd rather run with our crew. Even the new 5 man instance isn't really bringing people back... And it drops epics like crazy - even on regular mode.
The last two times we've raided, we did OS-10 with 8 and we tried Vault 10. We got the Less is More achievement but... Oy. We had two death knights. One of them was _barely_ pulling 1k dps and each death knight got hit by the lava waves at least 14 times. If we go back in there, I'm setting failbot to announce to the guild. Maybe that will shame them into... Well... Being at least half awake. On the Vault run, we had to PuG two DPS and we wiped on Emalon for about an hour and a half. While I respect their grim determination... It was still frustrating. We were right on the edge with DPS so we couldn't bring in another healer but the healing couldn't quite keep up with the death knights getting hit by lightning nova. One slip would cause a wipe.
5 people moved at the end of June. Two of them still don't have internet access yet. One should get access Monday.
2 people have had children... In the last two weeks. This includes our second best healer. This means that I'll end up healing if we ever start raiding again... And our tanks will be someone who means well but... He plays a warrior... And we know how I feel about warriors... And the other can't see ground effects... Like fire. On the plus side, we'll be able to extend raid lockouts... Which means we may actually finish Naxx 10 now.
The 3 toons I play on the horde side now have healing specs and decent healing sets and I spend most of my time healing.
Say what you want... But I stand by my assertion that the horde are much bigger douchebags than the Alliance. I have been ganked (or at least had people try it... I'm pretty slippery) more times in the last week on my mage than happened on my horde druid, paladin and death knight from 70 to 80. There's one huntard who either camps the Sons of Hodir base or keeps the exact same hours I do. Total pussy about it to. Won't attack me if I target him first. Will only shoot me in the back... When I've engaged a mob... DESPITE the fact that I've never ONCE gotten him below half health. And that time I rezzed and mounted... He flew away.
But things are looking up. Summer is ending. My brother is making noise about starting up again. We're gettiong one of our leading voices back. He's excited to have new druid feral forms. The healer's new baby is "ez mode" compared to the twins he had two years ago. If that continues he might be back raiding in another 2-3 months. I'm hoping Patch 3.2 will be very good for us.
Friday, April 24, 2009
The Bear is Back!!!
One of the nice things about my life is that I have so much vacation time stored that if I don't take, on average, a half day a week off, I'll go over the limit of vacation days that you can accrue. So, I decided that rather than taking "on average" half a day off a week, I'd take exactly half a day off per week. I still have enough time of that if I decide I want to spend a month or two in Europe, I can but it also means that when it's 75 degrees outside and the first truly spectacular afternoon of the year, I'm sitting in the sun instead of sitting at work wishing I was outside.
Now mind you, the day star is so bright that I can really only make out black writing on a white background - meaning that I can't play WoW, but that's a cross I'm willing to bear.... So to speak...
But speaking of speaking about bears... I have REALLY enjoyed having Hiahotah as a bear again. I enjoy Wintergrasp more. I find the abilities far less constricting than death knight tanking. I've missed the feeling of nigh-invincibilty I used to have back in BC. But it's also nice to know that I have a powerhouse healer at the ready with just the click of a few buttons... And I won't have to reset all of my toolbars... That's the big perk for me.
I've also been enjoying being able to take my druid out in public without worrying I'll be ganked by two lowbie rogues working together. I had a plan a few months ago to heal for tanking loot and, for the most part, that plan has worked out. I've gotten any number of instance drops that fell to me because I was the only one who could equip them. I also picked up a TON of emblems of heroism to augment my tanking set.
I've also been enjoying questing in cat form. That's something I've missed. And Wintergrasp is fun again. I can actually participate a little more actively than I could just standing and healing "whoever was close by". The other day, I solo'd a ret paladin when he caught me at 75% health. It felt good (incidentally, they're harder to tank than warriors and rogues. You can still sort of do it but you have to be smart about when you use your stuns and frenzied regeneration).
The one complaint I have is with the improved Mark of the Wild. Two ranks and they not only improve MotW, but they also increase all of your stats by 1% each. Which means, I pretty much _had_ to take it for tanking. No choice really. You really have to take it. More stamina. More dodge. More attack power. More mana. Faster regeneration (even though only nominally). Yes, please.
The problem is that I had to give up either two points in Furor or two points in the feral tree. I opted to give up two in furor in favor of "potentially lowering melee speeds". But now I'm sometimes caught without rage. It's fine if we're stringing together fights, but last night trying to do a timed CoS run, we had to wait a full 2 minutes for Arthas to show up (which ultimately cost us the drake) and all of my rage decayed. So when I couldn't generate threat on the first three mobs in the Town Hall, one of them wtfpwned a consecration happy paladin.
Druids really only have swipe and demoralizing roar for AoE threat generation and they require rage. It's fine once the fight had gotten going, but at the start, it can result in dead dps. I've had to resort to using Enrage... Something I've never really done.
It's not a real problem and the benefits outweigh the costs... It's just something new to adjust to. And maybe I'm not even the one who has to adjust... Maybe I'll just let the dps figure out my rage generation problem on their own.
Now mind you, the day star is so bright that I can really only make out black writing on a white background - meaning that I can't play WoW, but that's a cross I'm willing to bear.... So to speak...
But speaking of speaking about bears... I have REALLY enjoyed having Hiahotah as a bear again. I enjoy Wintergrasp more. I find the abilities far less constricting than death knight tanking. I've missed the feeling of nigh-invincibilty I used to have back in BC. But it's also nice to know that I have a powerhouse healer at the ready with just the click of a few buttons... And I won't have to reset all of my toolbars... That's the big perk for me.
I've also been enjoying being able to take my druid out in public without worrying I'll be ganked by two lowbie rogues working together. I had a plan a few months ago to heal for tanking loot and, for the most part, that plan has worked out. I've gotten any number of instance drops that fell to me because I was the only one who could equip them. I also picked up a TON of emblems of heroism to augment my tanking set.
I've also been enjoying questing in cat form. That's something I've missed. And Wintergrasp is fun again. I can actually participate a little more actively than I could just standing and healing "whoever was close by". The other day, I solo'd a ret paladin when he caught me at 75% health. It felt good (incidentally, they're harder to tank than warriors and rogues. You can still sort of do it but you have to be smart about when you use your stuns and frenzied regeneration).
The one complaint I have is with the improved Mark of the Wild. Two ranks and they not only improve MotW, but they also increase all of your stats by 1% each. Which means, I pretty much _had_ to take it for tanking. No choice really. You really have to take it. More stamina. More dodge. More attack power. More mana. Faster regeneration (even though only nominally). Yes, please.
The problem is that I had to give up either two points in Furor or two points in the feral tree. I opted to give up two in furor in favor of "potentially lowering melee speeds". But now I'm sometimes caught without rage. It's fine if we're stringing together fights, but last night trying to do a timed CoS run, we had to wait a full 2 minutes for Arthas to show up (which ultimately cost us the drake) and all of my rage decayed. So when I couldn't generate threat on the first three mobs in the Town Hall, one of them wtfpwned a consecration happy paladin.
Druids really only have swipe and demoralizing roar for AoE threat generation and they require rage. It's fine once the fight had gotten going, but at the start, it can result in dead dps. I've had to resort to using Enrage... Something I've never really done.
It's not a real problem and the benefits outweigh the costs... It's just something new to adjust to. And maybe I'm not even the one who has to adjust... Maybe I'll just let the dps figure out my rage generation problem on their own.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Shaking off the rust...
It's Laundry day.. Again... So this is my first real chance to sit down with "nothing to do" since Patch 3.1 came out. Here are my early impressions:
1) I'm really disappointed with the Argent Tournament. It seems to be a combination of the worst parts of The Oculus (mounted combat) and "just making sure you have an epic flying mount". It really is just a lot of flying around. Fly to Crystalsong Forest. Fly back. Fly to Crystalsong. Fly back. Fly to Crystalsong Forest and then fly to Howling Fjord and then... Wait for it.. Fly back. The early dailies aren't interesting or even challenging. At least when they came out with the Shattered Sun dailies you had a chance at getting a badge of justice every now and then. If nothing else, you got a lot of BoE greens that you could vendor, AH or disenchant. And while the Netherwing dailies seemed... "Grindy", there was a kickass reward at the end of the table. I suppose you could grind for a very long time and get a new flying mount but... Eh. I've got as many flying mounts as I need. I'm hoping it picks up in the future but so far, I'm not optimistic.
2) Mana regen and the lifebloom changes - I'm not loving the mana regen in 3.1. While _some_ people may have had so much regeneration they had seemingly endless mana pools, I did not. I find I run OOM a lot faster... And so does our other resto druid. When we went to Naxx with two resto druid healers who hadn't really done an instance yet, it took us a while to figure things out. It was pretty sloppy to start... And... Well... I'll get into that later. The cost of lifebloom doubling hurts but the number you have stacked on a target affecting the bloom is nice. I saw more than one three stack crit for over 14k. Sadly, you can't really time that when you need it. I found out about halfway through the run that the way to manage mana is to just let the lifebloom stacks bloom and put them up again. It helps but it's not quite enough. I guess next time we'll have to make sure that we have replenishment and a paladin for blessing of wisdom.
3) Dual specs - This is the game changer for me. I play a druid, a paladin and a death knight. I had one healer, one DPS and one tank. Now I have two of each and I can swap them around a little without having to leave the instance. It's not like I oculdn't afford to respec one toon for whatever was needed, but... I hate setting up the buttons all the time. This was 3k gold well spent. Now the druid is a tank and healer. The paladin is primarily a DPSer but can heal if needed. And the death knight can tank or DPS... Sort of...
4) I'm pretty sure they nerfed death knight DPS. Before the patch, I was doing about 1.7 dps with a tanking spec and dps gear. Post patch, I'm only getting up to 1.5k on the training dummies. Maybe that will go up on mobs but I'm not holding my breath.
5) I'm not a big fan of Savage Defense. That combined with the overall druid tanking nerfs has really hurt one of our main tanks. He used to run at about 29k health unbuffed but on Thursday it was around 26k. And he was a lot more fragile. He just didn't have the mitigation he used to. He would take huge spikes in damage... Not good when you have two druids rolling HoTs and not really watching for spikes. We will now...
With #5 in mind, I took Hiahotah out in his new bear spec (it's nice to be able to go out in public without worrying about being ganked by level 72 and 75 rogues working together while you're out fishing... Don't worry... The paladin made them pay for their transgressions...). Cat DPS is low but then again, nothing lssted long enough to really build up to anything. As for tanking, I use the level 81-82 elite Pustulent Horrors (I'll check the spelling later... Maybe) just inside Icecrown (there are 5 on the dam) to check migitation and damage. I went in and killed the first one witout taking more damage than Improved Leader of the Pack could return (so no more than 4% health every 4 second). I was pleased to find that I was on the quest to kill those guys so I did some more. The second and the third were the same story. So I pulled two at once. I took a little damage before the first one was down. But after I got down to just one, I got back to full health... OK... Time for something harder.
I'd planned to pull a pack of 8-10 melee, but I stumbled across the elites in the Bombardment. I pulled 3 level 80 elites. I got down to 15k health (from 29k to start) before the first two were down. I didn't use Berserk or Frenzied regeneration or anything, really. Just made sure I remembered where the swipe button was. So now I'm thinking that our other druids problems are gear related. Time will tell, I guess.
That was last night. This morning I tanked a heroic Violet Hold with a dk I know (from a previous PuG) who could sustain 3k dps. He was a challenge threat-wise because he has no patience and there's one spawn location where the mobs go different directions that is still problematic - particularly when I have no rage. But it worked out. Cleared the instance, nobody died. I'm calling it a win.
And it would seem that I have another 17 minutes before the first load comes out of the dryer... So...
On Thursday, we had 8 level 80's on, but only 1 person who had a tank and one person who had a healer who wouldn't be tanking. So we gathered up some of the newbies to do heroic Gundrak. About halfway there, two of our tanks logged on. OK... Impromptu Naxx... Which was fine because we hadn't gotten a chance to raid on Tuesday because the servers were down and then unstable. But I hadn't healed on my paladin yet, so I stuck with my druid. It was a little sloppy at first while people got used to new specs and subtle changes to old spells but we got rolling eventually. We one shot Razuvious, Anub'Rekhan, Faerline and Noth. Not bad with two first timers, a nerfed bear tank, no paladins, no voice chat (not sure what was wrong there... But we typed what we needed to. We did Karazhan that way towards the end... No biggie), and two nerfed resto druids. I didn't think we had the co-ordination for Maexxna so we opted for Patchwerk.
Patchwerk is both a gear check (even with that crew, we had the gear, thank you very much) and nightmare for resto druids. It goes against everything we're used to. We wiped twice because we couldn't keep the tanks up using "commone sense"... So we assigned tanks. That worked better but it was really, really tough and drained out mana. I think the other druid went OOM at the end because her tank dropped like a stone at 1% during the soft enrage. After the melee went down, our druid tank was eating the hateful strikes too so it was tough to keep him up. He hovered at 0% for what seemed like an eternity. But we downed him finally and had to call it a night. After Patchwerk, a lot of what's left is getting people to move at the right times. I think we can clear all of Naxx if we can just find the time. At least people are getting excited about it again.
Oh. Laundry's done. Gotta run.
1) I'm really disappointed with the Argent Tournament. It seems to be a combination of the worst parts of The Oculus (mounted combat) and "just making sure you have an epic flying mount". It really is just a lot of flying around. Fly to Crystalsong Forest. Fly back. Fly to Crystalsong. Fly back. Fly to Crystalsong Forest and then fly to Howling Fjord and then... Wait for it.. Fly back. The early dailies aren't interesting or even challenging. At least when they came out with the Shattered Sun dailies you had a chance at getting a badge of justice every now and then. If nothing else, you got a lot of BoE greens that you could vendor, AH or disenchant. And while the Netherwing dailies seemed... "Grindy", there was a kickass reward at the end of the table. I suppose you could grind for a very long time and get a new flying mount but... Eh. I've got as many flying mounts as I need. I'm hoping it picks up in the future but so far, I'm not optimistic.
2) Mana regen and the lifebloom changes - I'm not loving the mana regen in 3.1. While _some_ people may have had so much regeneration they had seemingly endless mana pools, I did not. I find I run OOM a lot faster... And so does our other resto druid. When we went to Naxx with two resto druid healers who hadn't really done an instance yet, it took us a while to figure things out. It was pretty sloppy to start... And... Well... I'll get into that later. The cost of lifebloom doubling hurts but the number you have stacked on a target affecting the bloom is nice. I saw more than one three stack crit for over 14k. Sadly, you can't really time that when you need it. I found out about halfway through the run that the way to manage mana is to just let the lifebloom stacks bloom and put them up again. It helps but it's not quite enough. I guess next time we'll have to make sure that we have replenishment and a paladin for blessing of wisdom.
3) Dual specs - This is the game changer for me. I play a druid, a paladin and a death knight. I had one healer, one DPS and one tank. Now I have two of each and I can swap them around a little without having to leave the instance. It's not like I oculdn't afford to respec one toon for whatever was needed, but... I hate setting up the buttons all the time. This was 3k gold well spent. Now the druid is a tank and healer. The paladin is primarily a DPSer but can heal if needed. And the death knight can tank or DPS... Sort of...
4) I'm pretty sure they nerfed death knight DPS. Before the patch, I was doing about 1.7 dps with a tanking spec and dps gear. Post patch, I'm only getting up to 1.5k on the training dummies. Maybe that will go up on mobs but I'm not holding my breath.
5) I'm not a big fan of Savage Defense. That combined with the overall druid tanking nerfs has really hurt one of our main tanks. He used to run at about 29k health unbuffed but on Thursday it was around 26k. And he was a lot more fragile. He just didn't have the mitigation he used to. He would take huge spikes in damage... Not good when you have two druids rolling HoTs and not really watching for spikes. We will now...
With #5 in mind, I took Hiahotah out in his new bear spec (it's nice to be able to go out in public without worrying about being ganked by level 72 and 75 rogues working together while you're out fishing... Don't worry... The paladin made them pay for their transgressions...). Cat DPS is low but then again, nothing lssted long enough to really build up to anything. As for tanking, I use the level 81-82 elite Pustulent Horrors (I'll check the spelling later... Maybe) just inside Icecrown (there are 5 on the dam) to check migitation and damage. I went in and killed the first one witout taking more damage than Improved Leader of the Pack could return (so no more than 4% health every 4 second). I was pleased to find that I was on the quest to kill those guys so I did some more. The second and the third were the same story. So I pulled two at once. I took a little damage before the first one was down. But after I got down to just one, I got back to full health... OK... Time for something harder.
I'd planned to pull a pack of 8-10 melee, but I stumbled across the elites in the Bombardment. I pulled 3 level 80 elites. I got down to 15k health (from 29k to start) before the first two were down. I didn't use Berserk or Frenzied regeneration or anything, really. Just made sure I remembered where the swipe button was. So now I'm thinking that our other druids problems are gear related. Time will tell, I guess.
That was last night. This morning I tanked a heroic Violet Hold with a dk I know (from a previous PuG) who could sustain 3k dps. He was a challenge threat-wise because he has no patience and there's one spawn location where the mobs go different directions that is still problematic - particularly when I have no rage. But it worked out. Cleared the instance, nobody died. I'm calling it a win.
And it would seem that I have another 17 minutes before the first load comes out of the dryer... So...
On Thursday, we had 8 level 80's on, but only 1 person who had a tank and one person who had a healer who wouldn't be tanking. So we gathered up some of the newbies to do heroic Gundrak. About halfway there, two of our tanks logged on. OK... Impromptu Naxx... Which was fine because we hadn't gotten a chance to raid on Tuesday because the servers were down and then unstable. But I hadn't healed on my paladin yet, so I stuck with my druid. It was a little sloppy at first while people got used to new specs and subtle changes to old spells but we got rolling eventually. We one shot Razuvious, Anub'Rekhan, Faerline and Noth. Not bad with two first timers, a nerfed bear tank, no paladins, no voice chat (not sure what was wrong there... But we typed what we needed to. We did Karazhan that way towards the end... No biggie), and two nerfed resto druids. I didn't think we had the co-ordination for Maexxna so we opted for Patchwerk.
Patchwerk is both a gear check (even with that crew, we had the gear, thank you very much) and nightmare for resto druids. It goes against everything we're used to. We wiped twice because we couldn't keep the tanks up using "commone sense"... So we assigned tanks. That worked better but it was really, really tough and drained out mana. I think the other druid went OOM at the end because her tank dropped like a stone at 1% during the soft enrage. After the melee went down, our druid tank was eating the hateful strikes too so it was tough to keep him up. He hovered at 0% for what seemed like an eternity. But we downed him finally and had to call it a night. After Patchwerk, a lot of what's left is getting people to move at the right times. I think we can clear all of Naxx if we can just find the time. At least people are getting excited about it again.
Oh. Laundry's done. Gotta run.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Just Because You're Wearing a Shield...
... That doesn't mean you're a tank.
There. I said it. Somebody had to. We were _all_ thinking it but why is it always me who has to be the one who actually says it. No wonder everyone hates me.
I ran heroic Nexus on my secret death knight alt last night and I should have seen the warning signs right away. The warrior tank couldn't hold aggro to save his life. Lost aggro twice on the first pull... Which consists of one mob. The second pull was... Peculiar. I took a lot of damage from "somewhere". I'm guessing the two dogs that were flanking the humanoid.
The first three pull, however, was the really telling on. He locked onto a mob and never looked at the others. So when they healer did his job, they went straight for him. I was trying to lock down a healing mob when I saw that there was a mob on the healer. When I taunted him, I had _two_ mobs on me. In DPS gear and in blood presence, I dropped pretty quickly. It was enough for us to get through that fight but we wiped on the first boss because of the same issues.
It was shortly after that when I said "screw it" and put on my tanking gear and frost presence. I'm not a tanking spec on that toon but my gear is good enough that I can fake it on trash. I can at least make sure that the healer is OK... But here's the thing:
I ended up tanking everything... ALL of the trash. Even the mob the warrior "tank" was on. I mean... Maybe, you lose a mob here or there. But to not notice that your target isn't attacking _you_? That's too much.
I died on the mage boss during the second split because I was in my DPS gear and had two of the three copies on me... At least two. We wiped on Anomalus because the warrior lost aggro (and I was in my DPS gear/blood presence) and mashed the squishies... Tanking gear back on for attempt two. I ended up tanking him about 40% of the time. But I couldn't do the damage to the rifts so... It was dicey. The rock boss was about the same as the second attempt on Anomalus: Dicey, I tanked about 40% of the fight, but we got through it... Come to think of it... That's how the last fight went... But with a twist. The shaman (who was geared and a good player) had started putting earth shield on me instead of the warrior. He knew what was what.
I was so frustrated that I actually remembered the warrior's name and looked him up this morning. He's fully Fury and Arms. Not a single point in prot. While it is irresponsible to tank a heroic in his gear without a tanking spec... There's more to tanking than just a spec and a shield.
Tanking is an indelicate balance between keeping aggro on all of the mobs while maintaining a lot more threat on the target mob. While a proper spec helps with this, so does reading your tooltips and looking for abilities that "generate additional threat" as opposed to your normal DPS rotation. Yes, damage does generate threat, but Sunder generates more. You should know where your defensive cooldowns are and which to use when. You should know which talents are good for mitigation and which are good for threat generation and you should choose those over talents that generate more damage. Which is to say, you should be familiar with your class.
Tanking means knowing the fights... And I'm not saying "all the fights"... But you should have played enough to know what mobs look like healers and which are ranged because most tanks are made the de facto party leaders for marking purposes. And you should pay attention because most trash mobs are repeated through an instance. Which is to say, you should know the game.
Tanking also requires situational awareness. This is a trap I've seen too many tanks fall into. They lock down one mob while 3 others are allowed to do whatever they want. Not only does this cause wipes, it fosters frustration within the group. You need to be aware of when CC breaks and doesn't get applied. You need to keep an eye out for mobs moving in odd ways. And you should also tab through the targets to make sure that every one of the mobs is looking at you. Which is to say, you should be familiar with your role.
No matter how good your gear is... No matter how cookie cutter your tanking spec is... If you fail in any of those areas, you're going to be a bad tank. And that may be fine if the people you're running with _know_ you're a bad tank because you told them. But if you sign up to tank a heroic with people you don't know, the expectation is that you'll have at least a passing familarity with the instance, with your abilities, with the role of a tank and that you've got at least _some_ points in tanking talents.
This guy from last night... Had none. But he did, however, have a shield.
There. I said it. Somebody had to. We were _all_ thinking it but why is it always me who has to be the one who actually says it. No wonder everyone hates me.
I ran heroic Nexus on my secret death knight alt last night and I should have seen the warning signs right away. The warrior tank couldn't hold aggro to save his life. Lost aggro twice on the first pull... Which consists of one mob. The second pull was... Peculiar. I took a lot of damage from "somewhere". I'm guessing the two dogs that were flanking the humanoid.
The first three pull, however, was the really telling on. He locked onto a mob and never looked at the others. So when they healer did his job, they went straight for him. I was trying to lock down a healing mob when I saw that there was a mob on the healer. When I taunted him, I had _two_ mobs on me. In DPS gear and in blood presence, I dropped pretty quickly. It was enough for us to get through that fight but we wiped on the first boss because of the same issues.
It was shortly after that when I said "screw it" and put on my tanking gear and frost presence. I'm not a tanking spec on that toon but my gear is good enough that I can fake it on trash. I can at least make sure that the healer is OK... But here's the thing:
I ended up tanking everything... ALL of the trash. Even the mob the warrior "tank" was on. I mean... Maybe, you lose a mob here or there. But to not notice that your target isn't attacking _you_? That's too much.
I died on the mage boss during the second split because I was in my DPS gear and had two of the three copies on me... At least two. We wiped on Anomalus because the warrior lost aggro (and I was in my DPS gear/blood presence) and mashed the squishies... Tanking gear back on for attempt two. I ended up tanking him about 40% of the time. But I couldn't do the damage to the rifts so... It was dicey. The rock boss was about the same as the second attempt on Anomalus: Dicey, I tanked about 40% of the fight, but we got through it... Come to think of it... That's how the last fight went... But with a twist. The shaman (who was geared and a good player) had started putting earth shield on me instead of the warrior. He knew what was what.
I was so frustrated that I actually remembered the warrior's name and looked him up this morning. He's fully Fury and Arms. Not a single point in prot. While it is irresponsible to tank a heroic in his gear without a tanking spec... There's more to tanking than just a spec and a shield.
Tanking is an indelicate balance between keeping aggro on all of the mobs while maintaining a lot more threat on the target mob. While a proper spec helps with this, so does reading your tooltips and looking for abilities that "generate additional threat" as opposed to your normal DPS rotation. Yes, damage does generate threat, but Sunder generates more. You should know where your defensive cooldowns are and which to use when. You should know which talents are good for mitigation and which are good for threat generation and you should choose those over talents that generate more damage. Which is to say, you should be familiar with your class.
Tanking means knowing the fights... And I'm not saying "all the fights"... But you should have played enough to know what mobs look like healers and which are ranged because most tanks are made the de facto party leaders for marking purposes. And you should pay attention because most trash mobs are repeated through an instance. Which is to say, you should know the game.
Tanking also requires situational awareness. This is a trap I've seen too many tanks fall into. They lock down one mob while 3 others are allowed to do whatever they want. Not only does this cause wipes, it fosters frustration within the group. You need to be aware of when CC breaks and doesn't get applied. You need to keep an eye out for mobs moving in odd ways. And you should also tab through the targets to make sure that every one of the mobs is looking at you. Which is to say, you should be familiar with your role.
No matter how good your gear is... No matter how cookie cutter your tanking spec is... If you fail in any of those areas, you're going to be a bad tank. And that may be fine if the people you're running with _know_ you're a bad tank because you told them. But if you sign up to tank a heroic with people you don't know, the expectation is that you'll have at least a passing familarity with the instance, with your abilities, with the role of a tank and that you've got at least _some_ points in tanking talents.
This guy from last night... Had none. But he did, however, have a shield.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Stop and smell the roses
I was doing the Argent Crusade quest lines on my new Alliance death knight the other day. Now that I'm on my fourth trip through these quest lines and know where everything is and basically what the story line is, I have more time to look around at the stuff that's going on around me... Well that and my last go round is on a PvE server so I don't have to worry about that social misfit... I mean rogue that's lurking around because they can't find a party for anything... Last night, I got to the one where you get ported to moonglade from Icecrown to collect three acorns and then get ported back. With time to smell the roses, I had time to appreciate the portal...
That's exactly the kind of portal a druid would make. All green with ivy creeping up the sides. Then I started thinking (and yes... I know... This is where most of my trouble starts)... Druids have Teleport: Moonglade spell. And I've always been OK with it - until I really examined the portals that were part of that quest line. Now I want Teleport: Moonglade to leave one of those. It's like the first time I learned that you could deep fry a grilled cheese sammich. I'd never thought of it before... But now that I know it can be done... I want it. I want it like a rogue wants a girlfriend and to move out of his parents' basement.
Death Knights get the totally awful Death Gate spell that _they_ can use to port to their base of operations and they leave them EVERYWHERE. I'll be walking around Dalaran, turn a corner and... Blech. Death Gate. But imagine if you were out strolling around the wastes of Icecrown and you came across a portal to Moonglade... Maybe with some flowers around the base for flair. It would brighten your day...
Unless you were on a PvP server. That could just be a precautionary measure put in place by the druid who is about to thrash you. If it goes poorly... He's Moonglade-bound. Yesssss.... We wantss it. Gives it to us. Nasty little Hobbitses.
That's exactly the kind of portal a druid would make. All green with ivy creeping up the sides. Then I started thinking (and yes... I know... This is where most of my trouble starts)... Druids have Teleport: Moonglade spell. And I've always been OK with it - until I really examined the portals that were part of that quest line. Now I want Teleport: Moonglade to leave one of those. It's like the first time I learned that you could deep fry a grilled cheese sammich. I'd never thought of it before... But now that I know it can be done... I want it. I want it like a rogue wants a girlfriend and to move out of his parents' basement.
Death Knights get the totally awful Death Gate spell that _they_ can use to port to their base of operations and they leave them EVERYWHERE. I'll be walking around Dalaran, turn a corner and... Blech. Death Gate. But imagine if you were out strolling around the wastes of Icecrown and you came across a portal to Moonglade... Maybe with some flowers around the base for flair. It would brighten your day...
Unless you were on a PvP server. That could just be a precautionary measure put in place by the druid who is about to thrash you. If it goes poorly... He's Moonglade-bound. Yesssss.... We wantss it. Gives it to us. Nasty little Hobbitses.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Naxxramas... At last!!! (Sort of)
I've been watching a lot of college basketball lately and haven't felt motivated (read: I've been at my
computer but I've been playing and watching TV) to post. But today is Laundry Day so I'm... Bored.
The guild has finally crept up to 13 people at level 80 or higher. While this increases the likelyhood
that we'll have 10 people playing on raid night, it also means that they're not as geared as some of
the people who have been 80 for 4 months. But we've also been running the daily heroic almost every day
so people have been getting badges and gear and can reasonably expect that if they log on, we'll do
something. This has lead to a significant increase in the total number of people who are playing on any
given night which has lead to an increase in the amount of stuff we can do... It's a good cycle.
I've been tanking on my death knight frequently so she's gotten pretty well geared. With her gear and
my increasing familiarity with the class, she's become an effective tank. I still miss a few cooldowns,
get caught without runes up (and forget about the 5 minute reset) or caught without an AoE ability
available when there are adds but I'm getting better and I feel like I could tank every heroic and most
of Naxx on her.
Two weeks ago, we had 8 people on so we PuGged two people for Vault. A PuG rogue quit after 3 pulls. So
we 9 manned it. And given that there were two people who disconnected during the fight, we essentially
8 manned it. We thanked the PuG for joining us and he moved on. But that left us with 8. Too few to do
a raid and too many to do a heroic...
So we decided to "take a look" at one of the bosses in Naxxramas. We chose Anub'Rekhan because, well...
It's the first boss Crucify downed in Naxx40 back in the day. We wiped on it for about 12 hours before
we downed it... So I know the fight pretty well. Plus, since we weren't expecting to down anything, it
was a good one to look at the mechanics for next time.
Frankly, I didn't think we'd get past the trash. But with a poison cleansing totem, those trash pulls
are a lot easier than I remember - particularly because it's raid wide now. We tried the boss 4 or 5
times and we never made it past the first transition. We even tried bringing in a couple of different
alts for raid composition but we just didn't have the timing down... And by we, I mean me.
So we called it and talked about it during the week. People watched videos and had a better idea what
was going on in them because they'd seen it for themselves... So it wasn't a complete waste of time.
However, during that week... One of the guys who just pushes my buttons started popping off in the
forums. Normally it just pisses me off, but he's recently switched from his completely geared out prot
warrior to a rogue. He's offered to tank "anything" for us but hasn't tanked squat. And this rogue
doesn't have anywhere near the gear, doesn't bring any buffs, etc... So when he plays it, I can't bring
my paladin who does way more damage and has way more buffs to bring to the table.
The short version is, he started stroking his epeen in the forums about how he's the top DPSer in the
guild. Now... This guy wears on me and I hate... Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate damage meters
because they promote exactly that kind of e-preening. So I laid into him. I allowed that he has topped
a few heroics in total damage done because 1) I've been chain pulling instances and the mana users have
to stop and drink periodically so they have less total DPSing time 2) he has been ignoring all markings
so that he can get all his combo points in 3) he's been getting a huge buff from the death knight tank
that doesn't benefit the mage in the least and 5) he's started attacking almost before the tank does -
which leads to aggro problems down the road. I also pointed out that he just lead in total damage done.
The mage was about 300 dps higher than he was. In short, I accused him of being a self-involved epeen
stroking... Well... rogue. Probably not the most mature thing I've done but... He crossed about 6 lines
that day (that wasn't his only inflamatory post). I mean... He cut down one of the more helpful members
of the guild for missing a raid when he was sick when he missed the previous two weeks including the
previous week where he logged off 15 minutes before raid time, didn't log back on until 2 hours after
raid time (thereby insuring he wouldn't have to participate) and started trying to get people to run
him through heroic Gundrak. Really, really pisses me off.
I went on to say that while he tops the heroics in damage done by a small amount, my paladin (who I
can't play when he's on his rogue because we need _someone_ to tank) tops that same mage by about 25%
in total damage done and by about 100 in DPS - while providing buffs that help (*gasp*) others, spot
heals, in combat CC when necessary (like Heroic VH... That one 3 pull where two mobs go one way and one
goes the other), off tanking, AoE, cleansing and all of those other things that a paladin does. Also
not the most mature thing I've done but.. Of the 13 80's we have now, 3 a rogues and our next 80 will
probably also be a rogue. Fan-freakin' tastic. Plus... That guy pissed me off. I mean... So much that I rolled a new Alliance Death Knight on a PvE server (which I've found very relaxing... Not just the fact that there aren't rogues lurking around every corner to gank you but also because I'm playing Alliance and they're so much nicer than the horde generally are) to hide out from him and the guild.
Since then I've ignored him in the forums and have instructed people to tell me if he makes a post that
is in any way constructive... Or can even be considered non-negative if you took words out (but left
them in the same order). For the record, I had to go back 7 posts before I could find one and that one
pretty much blasted the whole guild for not being prepared. But I digress...
I guess what I'm saying is that we had a tumultuous week in the guild. But on Tuesday night, we had exactly 10 level 80's on-line at raid time... And the rogue wasn't one of them. We abandoned the Heroic Violet Hold run we were on and formed a raid. We decided to do Vault first even though with travel time, etc. it takes about 30 minutes. After vault, we decided to do a boss in Naxx. We had seen Anub'Rehkhan but now that we had 10, I thought Razuvious would be easier for us because we really only need one tank for it and I could bring in my druid to heal. Fortunately, one of our members had been fishing in the Dalaran fountains so he had a coin to flip. The coin chose Razuvious.
Which turned out to be a good choice. It took us 3 attempts but we did down him pretty easily. Now that we've seen that, I'm certain that we can do that in one shot, every time. Plus, people had fun and were feeling pretty optimistic and looking forward to next week.
I know it's not much and that PuGs routinely steamroll that place but... They're an extremely casual guild and this is a huge step for us.
computer but I've been playing and watching TV) to post. But today is Laundry Day so I'm... Bored.
The guild has finally crept up to 13 people at level 80 or higher. While this increases the likelyhood
that we'll have 10 people playing on raid night, it also means that they're not as geared as some of
the people who have been 80 for 4 months. But we've also been running the daily heroic almost every day
so people have been getting badges and gear and can reasonably expect that if they log on, we'll do
something. This has lead to a significant increase in the total number of people who are playing on any
given night which has lead to an increase in the amount of stuff we can do... It's a good cycle.
I've been tanking on my death knight frequently so she's gotten pretty well geared. With her gear and
my increasing familiarity with the class, she's become an effective tank. I still miss a few cooldowns,
get caught without runes up (and forget about the 5 minute reset) or caught without an AoE ability
available when there are adds but I'm getting better and I feel like I could tank every heroic and most
of Naxx on her.
Two weeks ago, we had 8 people on so we PuGged two people for Vault. A PuG rogue quit after 3 pulls. So
we 9 manned it. And given that there were two people who disconnected during the fight, we essentially
8 manned it. We thanked the PuG for joining us and he moved on. But that left us with 8. Too few to do
a raid and too many to do a heroic...
So we decided to "take a look" at one of the bosses in Naxxramas. We chose Anub'Rekhan because, well...
It's the first boss Crucify downed in Naxx40 back in the day. We wiped on it for about 12 hours before
we downed it... So I know the fight pretty well. Plus, since we weren't expecting to down anything, it
was a good one to look at the mechanics for next time.
Frankly, I didn't think we'd get past the trash. But with a poison cleansing totem, those trash pulls
are a lot easier than I remember - particularly because it's raid wide now. We tried the boss 4 or 5
times and we never made it past the first transition. We even tried bringing in a couple of different
alts for raid composition but we just didn't have the timing down... And by we, I mean me.
So we called it and talked about it during the week. People watched videos and had a better idea what
was going on in them because they'd seen it for themselves... So it wasn't a complete waste of time.
However, during that week... One of the guys who just pushes my buttons started popping off in the
forums. Normally it just pisses me off, but he's recently switched from his completely geared out prot
warrior to a rogue. He's offered to tank "anything" for us but hasn't tanked squat. And this rogue
doesn't have anywhere near the gear, doesn't bring any buffs, etc... So when he plays it, I can't bring
my paladin who does way more damage and has way more buffs to bring to the table.
The short version is, he started stroking his epeen in the forums about how he's the top DPSer in the
guild. Now... This guy wears on me and I hate... Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate damage meters
because they promote exactly that kind of e-preening. So I laid into him. I allowed that he has topped
a few heroics in total damage done because 1) I've been chain pulling instances and the mana users have
to stop and drink periodically so they have less total DPSing time 2) he has been ignoring all markings
so that he can get all his combo points in 3) he's been getting a huge buff from the death knight tank
that doesn't benefit the mage in the least and 5) he's started attacking almost before the tank does -
which leads to aggro problems down the road. I also pointed out that he just lead in total damage done.
The mage was about 300 dps higher than he was. In short, I accused him of being a self-involved epeen
stroking... Well... rogue. Probably not the most mature thing I've done but... He crossed about 6 lines
that day (that wasn't his only inflamatory post). I mean... He cut down one of the more helpful members
of the guild for missing a raid when he was sick when he missed the previous two weeks including the
previous week where he logged off 15 minutes before raid time, didn't log back on until 2 hours after
raid time (thereby insuring he wouldn't have to participate) and started trying to get people to run
him through heroic Gundrak. Really, really pisses me off.
I went on to say that while he tops the heroics in damage done by a small amount, my paladin (who I
can't play when he's on his rogue because we need _someone_ to tank) tops that same mage by about 25%
in total damage done and by about 100 in DPS - while providing buffs that help (*gasp*) others, spot
heals, in combat CC when necessary (like Heroic VH... That one 3 pull where two mobs go one way and one
goes the other), off tanking, AoE, cleansing and all of those other things that a paladin does. Also
not the most mature thing I've done but.. Of the 13 80's we have now, 3 a rogues and our next 80 will
probably also be a rogue. Fan-freakin' tastic. Plus... That guy pissed me off. I mean... So much that I rolled a new Alliance Death Knight on a PvE server (which I've found very relaxing... Not just the fact that there aren't rogues lurking around every corner to gank you but also because I'm playing Alliance and they're so much nicer than the horde generally are) to hide out from him and the guild.
Since then I've ignored him in the forums and have instructed people to tell me if he makes a post that
is in any way constructive... Or can even be considered non-negative if you took words out (but left
them in the same order). For the record, I had to go back 7 posts before I could find one and that one
pretty much blasted the whole guild for not being prepared. But I digress...
I guess what I'm saying is that we had a tumultuous week in the guild. But on Tuesday night, we had exactly 10 level 80's on-line at raid time... And the rogue wasn't one of them. We abandoned the Heroic Violet Hold run we were on and formed a raid. We decided to do Vault first even though with travel time, etc. it takes about 30 minutes. After vault, we decided to do a boss in Naxx. We had seen Anub'Rehkhan but now that we had 10, I thought Razuvious would be easier for us because we really only need one tank for it and I could bring in my druid to heal. Fortunately, one of our members had been fishing in the Dalaran fountains so he had a coin to flip. The coin chose Razuvious.
Which turned out to be a good choice. It took us 3 attempts but we did down him pretty easily. Now that we've seen that, I'm certain that we can do that in one shot, every time. Plus, people had fun and were feeling pretty optimistic and looking forward to next week.
I know it's not much and that PuGs routinely steamroll that place but... They're an extremely casual guild and this is a huge step for us.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Right in the Epeen
They've already offered transfers off the new server because it's too crowded. We were considering moving but it looks like enough people have moved off to make it tenable (ironically, Garithos has been showing up as a medium population server for the last couple of days. The only time that ever happened was right after the 3.0 patch and Garithos was one of about 8 servers that was up).
However, I'm not sure I like the culture of Scilla. For one thing, on Bloodscalp people might ask for your stats but on Scilla, they ask for stats and they want you to link the achievement for the instance they are trying to run... Which is to say, you can't do it unless you've already done it. It's quite mad.
But beyond that, there's the ganking. And it's not the quanity... It's the quality. On Friday I was leveling my shadow priest and I was doing some furbolg quests in Winterspring. At level 56, I got ganked by a level 80 Shadow priest named Insaetia. Now I don't normally call people out for a ganking. Hell... I've certainly ganked more lowbies than I've been ganked. But this was different.
I rezzed and went about my business. Clearly this priest was grinding Timbermaw rep because he found me about a half hour later and ganked me again. A one shot. I'm so impressed. But then he stood on my corpse. He hit me with three emotes. Jumped up and down on my body. Then he started pulling mobs and fighting them on my body.
OK Jackass... You earned it. I logged off my shadow priest and logged on my paladin. I was in Everlook a few minutes later and was actually right behind Insaetia who was heading back to the furbolg camp... Perfect!!! I judged justice. It crit. So did Seal of Command. Hammer of wrath was up before he could even fear. Which he did but I bubbled and nuked him with HoW and boom. Dead. I followed with the same three emotes and started _my_ camp.
But he didn't rez... But I'm sufficiently pissed now. I'll wait. 5 minutes later and I'm still waiting when a mage - Devasteight (of the Shattered Sun... OMG!!! I am so impressed at your ability to do daily quests!!!) showed up and the two the them WTFPWNed me. /golfclap
So I rezzed, healed, etc. and went out looking for them. And they WTFPWNed me again. Completely thrashed me. And this time they started camping me. I mean campfires and beach umbrellas and the whole bit. But I'm not an idiot so I was able to rez and get away. Clearly I'd touched a nerve and he'd gotten a big brother to protect him. So I logged onto my priest with the intention of moving to another area. But as soon as I'd mounted, I was hit with Shadow Word:Death. Boom. Dead.
It was the shadow priest... Again. And the mage. And they'd set up shop again. But now they've been joined by a warrior - Vassilico. Take a look at his armory... I'll wait. Currently, he's Fury and dual wielding Ebon Blade rep rewards. He's got an agility gem in his boots. A +24 stamina gem to get a +4 strength bonus. And he's rocking the +72 attack power trinket (level 70) from the Brewfest event. Grats on your epic fail, n00b.
But I've been tired all week. So I take a nap. I wake up 25 minutes later and they're still there. I went to cook dinner. I ate dinner. Still there. I LOGGED OFF and played an alt for a half hour. STILL THERE. Three level 80's camping my level 56 clothie in crappy gear for at least 90 minutes and I've been asleep, afk or on a different character and they're still at it. At this point, it's gotten sad.
At some point the server rebooted... After which, I was able to log onto my shadow priest, finish the quest chain I was on and head over to Silithus. I get that I'd kicked that guy square in the epeen and that this assault on his manhood could not go unavenged. But... Seriously... I mean... REALLY??!?!? An hour and a half for one piece of payback for something YOU started?!?!? GROW UP!!! And the extent of it... A single level 60 of any class would have been sufficient to keep me locked down for hours. Did it _really_ warrant three level 80's - one of which was decked out from head to toe in epics?
And what about your two friends? How sad is it that you would actually waste an hour and a half of your lives doing NOTHING for an "offense" against someone else? It makes me sad for you... And your sad, pathetic, shriveled, little manhoods.
However, I'm not sure I like the culture of Scilla. For one thing, on Bloodscalp people might ask for your stats but on Scilla, they ask for stats and they want you to link the achievement for the instance they are trying to run... Which is to say, you can't do it unless you've already done it. It's quite mad.
But beyond that, there's the ganking. And it's not the quanity... It's the quality. On Friday I was leveling my shadow priest and I was doing some furbolg quests in Winterspring. At level 56, I got ganked by a level 80 Shadow priest named Insaetia. Now I don't normally call people out for a ganking. Hell... I've certainly ganked more lowbies than I've been ganked. But this was different.
I rezzed and went about my business. Clearly this priest was grinding Timbermaw rep because he found me about a half hour later and ganked me again. A one shot. I'm so impressed. But then he stood on my corpse. He hit me with three emotes. Jumped up and down on my body. Then he started pulling mobs and fighting them on my body.
OK Jackass... You earned it. I logged off my shadow priest and logged on my paladin. I was in Everlook a few minutes later and was actually right behind Insaetia who was heading back to the furbolg camp... Perfect!!! I judged justice. It crit. So did Seal of Command. Hammer of wrath was up before he could even fear. Which he did but I bubbled and nuked him with HoW and boom. Dead. I followed with the same three emotes and started _my_ camp.
But he didn't rez... But I'm sufficiently pissed now. I'll wait. 5 minutes later and I'm still waiting when a mage - Devasteight (of the Shattered Sun... OMG!!! I am so impressed at your ability to do daily quests!!!) showed up and the two the them WTFPWNed me. /golfclap
So I rezzed, healed, etc. and went out looking for them. And they WTFPWNed me again. Completely thrashed me. And this time they started camping me. I mean campfires and beach umbrellas and the whole bit. But I'm not an idiot so I was able to rez and get away. Clearly I'd touched a nerve and he'd gotten a big brother to protect him. So I logged onto my priest with the intention of moving to another area. But as soon as I'd mounted, I was hit with Shadow Word:Death. Boom. Dead.
It was the shadow priest... Again. And the mage. And they'd set up shop again. But now they've been joined by a warrior - Vassilico. Take a look at his armory... I'll wait. Currently, he's Fury and dual wielding Ebon Blade rep rewards. He's got an agility gem in his boots. A +24 stamina gem to get a +4 strength bonus. And he's rocking the +72 attack power trinket (level 70) from the Brewfest event. Grats on your epic fail, n00b.
But I've been tired all week. So I take a nap. I wake up 25 minutes later and they're still there. I went to cook dinner. I ate dinner. Still there. I LOGGED OFF and played an alt for a half hour. STILL THERE. Three level 80's camping my level 56 clothie in crappy gear for at least 90 minutes and I've been asleep, afk or on a different character and they're still at it. At this point, it's gotten sad.
At some point the server rebooted... After which, I was able to log onto my shadow priest, finish the quest chain I was on and head over to Silithus. I get that I'd kicked that guy square in the epeen and that this assault on his manhood could not go unavenged. But... Seriously... I mean... REALLY??!?!? An hour and a half for one piece of payback for something YOU started?!?!? GROW UP!!! And the extent of it... A single level 60 of any class would have been sufficient to keep me locked down for hours. Did it _really_ warrant three level 80's - one of which was decked out from head to toe in epics?
And what about your two friends? How sad is it that you would actually waste an hour and a half of your lives doing NOTHING for an "offense" against someone else? It makes me sad for you... And your sad, pathetic, shriveled, little manhoods.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
How is that better?
So... The server move is complete. It was three days of scrambling, setting up interfaces and not having enough guild members on the new server to do anything but we've moved. And now that we're here? There's a longer queue earlier than there ever was on Bloodscalp.
So many people transferred to Scilla that it has gone from a low population server to a high population one. People are logging on at 8 and complaining about queues. Wintergrasp is so crowded it's unplayable. Dalaran is so crowded that I'm reluctant to check mail there.
Which is to say... We actually _did_ trade all of my friends for another bloodscalp with earlier queues but a faster ping time. Fan-tastic.
So many people transferred to Scilla that it has gone from a low population server to a high population one. People are logging on at 8 and complaining about queues. Wintergrasp is so crowded it's unplayable. Dalaran is so crowded that I'm reluctant to check mail there.
Which is to say... We actually _did_ trade all of my friends for another bloodscalp with earlier queues but a faster ping time. Fan-tastic.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
To Parts Unknown
/sigh
So... The guild switched servers this weekend. I'm not happy about this. Quite the opposite, in fact.
When my Alliance guild broke up, I decided to play with people I knew. It took me several weeks of hardcore leveling to catch up to them because I'd already leveled my Alliance mage to 70. I also tried to keep a toon at about the same level as my main group... Which meant I leveled one character from 35 to 70 and at the same time, one from 1 to 35.
They were behind me progression-wise in vanilla WoW so it was no surprise that when I got to 68, they were still trying to get past the second boss in Shadow Labyrinth. We developed a comfortable group of five people and learned all of the new instances and taught them to the rest of the guild. I even got them started on the Karazhan key quest lines. When others in the guild wanted keys, I tanked the instances for them. No questions asked. Nine months after Burning Crusade came out, we had 7 people with keys and decided to try to make a Karazhan run. We all got together for a party and I helped two people finish the last two legs of the key quest. We downed Attumen that night and everyone was ecstatic... After all, we're talking about a guild that had never even been into Upper Blackrock Spire as a group.
Over the next few months, we got further and further. Curator, a big stumbling block for a number of guilds, was a joke for us. The only times we ever wiped on him were when we tried to 8 man him... And even then it was close. We got all the way to Chess but never got any further. These people had jobs and children... So people got bored. They stopped coming out.
I was still interested, however. So I started PuGging for people who needed a tank. Some of them were terrible... But some of them were pretty good. I was the first person in our guild to down Prince... And Nightbane... And... Well... Pretty much everything after Maiden/Moroes. I took everything I learned back to our raids every time there was an uptick in Karazhan interest.
But something happened I hadn't expected: I made friends. I didn't talk to them every day but it pleased me to see them running around and to /wave at them. Maybe throw them a buff or two. If I ever saw them looking for people, I'd always sign up because I knew I'd have a good time.
Interest in WoW waned after the expansion was announced. It wasn't uncommon for there to be only one or two other people in the guild on-line at any one time... One of them even quit WoW for the summer. But I was still playing and "doing stuff". I even went so far as to download a mod that kept me in the Looking For Group channel all the time. Along the way, I earned the Champion of the Naaru title... Something of which I was really proud because, without guild support, it had taken a lot of work on my part.
When Wrath of the Lich King came out, I was the first person in our guild to hit 80... By about two days. Three more followed in the next couple of days but then no one. All this fabulous new content and I had no one to expore it with. One of the 80's pretty much only logged on to do Wintergrasp. So I turned to the LFG channel again.
After I had gotten to exalted with Sons of Hodir, I spec'd Hiahotah resto because there were more people looking for healers than tanks. I found that I could run pretty much any instance I wanted at pretty much any _time_ I wanted. One of the guilds I used to run with in Burning Crusade invited me to a Naxx run early on. I was undergeared but consider that at the time I hadn't even done a heroic, I think I held my own. I collected badges and got upgrades... We still only had 4 level 80's... In fact, the fifth 80 in the guild was my death knight. My paladin was the 8th.
Two weeks ago, I filled out a slot as a healer for a guild Naxxramas run. It was their first time in Naxx so many wipes were expected. I'd seen a number of the fights back in vanilla WoW or during that time I did it at 70 before the expansion or during that one run. I let them wipe a couple of times on each boss and then made suggestions as to how they could do it better and they would down the boss. It was fun learning the content and coaching a guild through the fights. They invited me back the next week and we got further faster. Learning had taken place. We actually cleared all four quarters and even took a few shots as Sapphiron. A couple of them would whisper me during the week to see if I was coming out on Friday. It was a young group but willing to try and learn. It was a satisfying experience. They filled out their healing roster so they didn't need me any more... Which was great. I can always find a group.
Then this week, we got our 10th person to 80. We did our first all guild heroic in weeks. It was an ugly run through Halls of Lightning but it was the Daily Double so we ground through it. And after about 4 wipes on Loken, we finished it. Great!!
Well... Not really... You see... One of our members (the one who quit for the summer) who has been hot to transfer off Bloodscalp noticed that there were free transfers to Scilla for horde. While all this exciting stuff was going on for the guild, people were talking about moving.
We've been through this before. The guy who quit wants vast fields of mobs all to himself for farming purposes. Some claim they get disconnects and lag. Others don't want to worry about mean old Alliance lurking around every corner waiting to gank them. I tried to argue that there were more horde on Bloodscalp than Alliance (by a 2:1 margin) so it's mostly the other way around for the gankings and that the disconnects were largely due to poor internet connections (the one with the most disconnects uses his neighbor's wireless connection) and the lag was due, in part, to inferior video cards (one guy can't see the statues in the pit in Halls of Lightning... If you've been there, you know what I mean... Basically it's about 20 feet away and he only sees gray mist). As for the vast fields of mobs... Does that really compare with my ability to find stuff to do when the rest of the guild isn't on line? Apparently it does.
The discussion went something along the lines of:
"We want to leave."
"I have friends here."
"We want to leave. There's lag."
"EVERY server had lag during Wintergrasp. It's been better since they made the orb instantly clickable."
"We want to leave. There's a queue."
"For, like, 5 minutes if you log on after 9:30 and, frankly, when you people log on after then, you don't really _do_ much, do you?"
"We want to leave."
"THere's enough of a population here to support PuGging. Something that _I_ enjoy when you're not around. I've played on a low population server before. It's painful watching someone begging for a tank in LFG for two hours. They don't allow transfers to high population servers."
"we want to leave."
I've checked the new server. There are about one quarter the number of the people in the LFG channel that there are on Bloodscalp. Have you checked to see if the lag and disconnects are any better on the new server?"
"We want to leave."
"Look... I'm being asked to give up something that is a large portion of my enjoyment of the game. If you can prove that your technical concerns are valid, then I'll drop my objections."
"Just move one of your characters then."
"I have a whole mini-economy going. I'd hate to leave one out in the cold."
"Just roll a new character and level it to 80."
"Screw you."
"This isn't a democracy. You don't have to move." (Read: We're leaving.)
"One of my friends just transferred from there to Bloodscalp. He says it sucks."
"We left."
So... To me it feels like I've lost a lot for a vague hope that any server would have to be "better". No one is able to define what that means or prove that things are less "unbearable"... And things that I just haven't had a problem with. I think it's safe to say that I play more than anyone else in the guild and I've not had a problem with any of the things they complain about. Maybe there are the odd, 2 to 3 second lag spikes but I think it's a small price to play for a LFG channel full of people who are also looking to "do stuff". So this move has limited benefits for me and a huge downside. For them... I don't know. I don't know what was wrong with Bloodscalp and what makes them think a new server would be better... I guess I'll find out.
Now my (horde) characters in a queue to move to server unknown and I'm locked out of being able to play them for 48 hours. I have no idea what will happen... But those asshats had damn well better be available for instances when we get to the new server or I'm going to be super-extra pissed.
So... The guild switched servers this weekend. I'm not happy about this. Quite the opposite, in fact.
When my Alliance guild broke up, I decided to play with people I knew. It took me several weeks of hardcore leveling to catch up to them because I'd already leveled my Alliance mage to 70. I also tried to keep a toon at about the same level as my main group... Which meant I leveled one character from 35 to 70 and at the same time, one from 1 to 35.
They were behind me progression-wise in vanilla WoW so it was no surprise that when I got to 68, they were still trying to get past the second boss in Shadow Labyrinth. We developed a comfortable group of five people and learned all of the new instances and taught them to the rest of the guild. I even got them started on the Karazhan key quest lines. When others in the guild wanted keys, I tanked the instances for them. No questions asked. Nine months after Burning Crusade came out, we had 7 people with keys and decided to try to make a Karazhan run. We all got together for a party and I helped two people finish the last two legs of the key quest. We downed Attumen that night and everyone was ecstatic... After all, we're talking about a guild that had never even been into Upper Blackrock Spire as a group.
Over the next few months, we got further and further. Curator, a big stumbling block for a number of guilds, was a joke for us. The only times we ever wiped on him were when we tried to 8 man him... And even then it was close. We got all the way to Chess but never got any further. These people had jobs and children... So people got bored. They stopped coming out.
I was still interested, however. So I started PuGging for people who needed a tank. Some of them were terrible... But some of them were pretty good. I was the first person in our guild to down Prince... And Nightbane... And... Well... Pretty much everything after Maiden/Moroes. I took everything I learned back to our raids every time there was an uptick in Karazhan interest.
But something happened I hadn't expected: I made friends. I didn't talk to them every day but it pleased me to see them running around and to /wave at them. Maybe throw them a buff or two. If I ever saw them looking for people, I'd always sign up because I knew I'd have a good time.
Interest in WoW waned after the expansion was announced. It wasn't uncommon for there to be only one or two other people in the guild on-line at any one time... One of them even quit WoW for the summer. But I was still playing and "doing stuff". I even went so far as to download a mod that kept me in the Looking For Group channel all the time. Along the way, I earned the Champion of the Naaru title... Something of which I was really proud because, without guild support, it had taken a lot of work on my part.
When Wrath of the Lich King came out, I was the first person in our guild to hit 80... By about two days. Three more followed in the next couple of days but then no one. All this fabulous new content and I had no one to expore it with. One of the 80's pretty much only logged on to do Wintergrasp. So I turned to the LFG channel again.
After I had gotten to exalted with Sons of Hodir, I spec'd Hiahotah resto because there were more people looking for healers than tanks. I found that I could run pretty much any instance I wanted at pretty much any _time_ I wanted. One of the guilds I used to run with in Burning Crusade invited me to a Naxx run early on. I was undergeared but consider that at the time I hadn't even done a heroic, I think I held my own. I collected badges and got upgrades... We still only had 4 level 80's... In fact, the fifth 80 in the guild was my death knight. My paladin was the 8th.
Two weeks ago, I filled out a slot as a healer for a guild Naxxramas run. It was their first time in Naxx so many wipes were expected. I'd seen a number of the fights back in vanilla WoW or during that time I did it at 70 before the expansion or during that one run. I let them wipe a couple of times on each boss and then made suggestions as to how they could do it better and they would down the boss. It was fun learning the content and coaching a guild through the fights. They invited me back the next week and we got further faster. Learning had taken place. We actually cleared all four quarters and even took a few shots as Sapphiron. A couple of them would whisper me during the week to see if I was coming out on Friday. It was a young group but willing to try and learn. It was a satisfying experience. They filled out their healing roster so they didn't need me any more... Which was great. I can always find a group.
Then this week, we got our 10th person to 80. We did our first all guild heroic in weeks. It was an ugly run through Halls of Lightning but it was the Daily Double so we ground through it. And after about 4 wipes on Loken, we finished it. Great!!
Well... Not really... You see... One of our members (the one who quit for the summer) who has been hot to transfer off Bloodscalp noticed that there were free transfers to Scilla for horde. While all this exciting stuff was going on for the guild, people were talking about moving.
We've been through this before. The guy who quit wants vast fields of mobs all to himself for farming purposes. Some claim they get disconnects and lag. Others don't want to worry about mean old Alliance lurking around every corner waiting to gank them. I tried to argue that there were more horde on Bloodscalp than Alliance (by a 2:1 margin) so it's mostly the other way around for the gankings and that the disconnects were largely due to poor internet connections (the one with the most disconnects uses his neighbor's wireless connection) and the lag was due, in part, to inferior video cards (one guy can't see the statues in the pit in Halls of Lightning... If you've been there, you know what I mean... Basically it's about 20 feet away and he only sees gray mist). As for the vast fields of mobs... Does that really compare with my ability to find stuff to do when the rest of the guild isn't on line? Apparently it does.
The discussion went something along the lines of:
"We want to leave."
"I have friends here."
"We want to leave. There's lag."
"EVERY server had lag during Wintergrasp. It's been better since they made the orb instantly clickable."
"We want to leave. There's a queue."
"For, like, 5 minutes if you log on after 9:30 and, frankly, when you people log on after then, you don't really _do_ much, do you?"
"We want to leave."
"THere's enough of a population here to support PuGging. Something that _I_ enjoy when you're not around. I've played on a low population server before. It's painful watching someone begging for a tank in LFG for two hours. They don't allow transfers to high population servers."
"we want to leave."
I've checked the new server. There are about one quarter the number of the people in the LFG channel that there are on Bloodscalp. Have you checked to see if the lag and disconnects are any better on the new server?"
"We want to leave."
"Look... I'm being asked to give up something that is a large portion of my enjoyment of the game. If you can prove that your technical concerns are valid, then I'll drop my objections."
"Just move one of your characters then."
"I have a whole mini-economy going. I'd hate to leave one out in the cold."
"Just roll a new character and level it to 80."
"Screw you."
"This isn't a democracy. You don't have to move." (Read: We're leaving.)
"One of my friends just transferred from there to Bloodscalp. He says it sucks."
"We left."
So... To me it feels like I've lost a lot for a vague hope that any server would have to be "better". No one is able to define what that means or prove that things are less "unbearable"... And things that I just haven't had a problem with. I think it's safe to say that I play more than anyone else in the guild and I've not had a problem with any of the things they complain about. Maybe there are the odd, 2 to 3 second lag spikes but I think it's a small price to play for a LFG channel full of people who are also looking to "do stuff". So this move has limited benefits for me and a huge downside. For them... I don't know. I don't know what was wrong with Bloodscalp and what makes them think a new server would be better... I guess I'll find out.
Now my (horde) characters in a queue to move to server unknown and I'm locked out of being able to play them for 48 hours. I have no idea what will happen... But those asshats had damn well better be available for instances when we get to the new server or I'm going to be super-extra pissed.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
The Joys of PuGging
So... There I was minding my own business... I'd just gotten to a convenient stopping point in doing dailies on my paladin (who is 80 now... As is my death knight) when someone asked for a healer for Heroic Nexus in LFG. Hiahotah (who is resto now... Man... It's been a while. Whole other story...) was sitting on the daily from the day before so I logged onto him and said I'd go. I wish I'd thought that through...
The first warning sign was when they started calling each other by real life names. It turns out that three of them were from the same guild. Oh good. A guild that can field three players but can't find a healer. The second warning sign was when one of them asked how to get to the instance... Which was THE NEXUS!!! It's the first damn instance 80% of people do!!!
The group consisted of a prot paladin, ret paladin, boomkin (the guildies), a rogue and me. We managed to down the first mob with only the ret paladin dying. (Seriously?) The tank didn't consecrate or taunt so when the ret paladin body pulled and then fought back... It was over pretty quickly. Yes you're in plate but you're still not wearing a shield. We wiped on the second pulls. The paladin _still_ didn't consecrate on a 3 pull. Very, very bad sign. I thought about leaving but decided to give them another chance. I figured that with 2k spell power I could make up for a little nubitry.
I wish I'd thought that through. It turns out there were two skinners in the party but one of them didn't have a high enough skill level to skin the mob. Oy. You got to 80 and didn't level your skinning? Oh come on!!! At this point, one of them said he had turned his microphone on. I shudder to think that these guys were actually communicating with each other.
We got to the "optional" boss. And wiped because I couldn't keep the melee up... And because the tank backed up into me just as I was trying to heal him and just as the boss did his whirlwind. That's when I decided I wouldn't be using any more buff foods. I gently suggested that the melee needs to run away from the whirlwind. I should have said that they should run away as soon as they see it and stay out until it was over. My bad. In any event, they were nominally smarter and we got some lucky fears just before whirlwinds so melee was out of range for a couple of them. We downed him with only one death. The druid got the achievement for looting his first emblem of heroism. Another ominious sign. But now I was saved to this instance so I was in for the duration.
We had a couple of deaths before the mage boss... One of which was me. The paladins seem to have misplaced their resurrection buttons so I ran back. The mage boss can be very chaotic during the splits. Things happen. This time, the ret paladin - the one who was leading and seemed to have some reasonable gear and doing the most damage - died about half way through the fight. It happens... When you consecrate and the tank doesn't so you end up with two of the adds on you.... And people aren't focusing on one of them. So I battle rezzed him... He didn't take it until the boss had about 10% health left. There are TWO druids in your party. One of them knows what he is doing. You don't go AFK after you die. You just... Don't. Wait for the battle rez.
The clear to the next boss... And the next boss, for that matter, went mostly without incident. No... Wait. Scratch that. The tank ran in just before the second boss and pulled 6 mobs but didn't consecrate... But he needed heals so... I healed him. The 5 mobs he hadn't generated threat against me... Killled me dead. The boomkin and the ret pally managed to heal him through the fight. And one of the paladins found a rez button after about two minutes of me not releasing. We did down the rift boss without too much trouble. It was around this time that I started looking at their gear. Among other things:
1) The boomkin was rocking a staff that had +242 spell power, a pile of int and some spirit. A two hander with +242 spell power? There's a level 78 one hand rep reward with +314 spell power. Sure you have to be revered with the Kalu'ak but... Who isn't revered with the Kalu'ak? I mean... They look like Wilfred Brimley!!
2) It wasn't enchanted. Throw in an off-hand that has a modest +25 spell power and you're looking at another 147 spell power. Things will die faster. As it was... I was running out of mana and having to use innervate in what is generally considered an "easy" heroic.
3) The tank had 22k health... Buffed. I've got a death knight who has that much unbuffed and I wouldn't even _think_ about tanking a heroic like that. So I inpected his gear. Helm. Tempered Titansteel helm. Good. But... Two gem slots... Both empty. Throw in a +32 stamina meta gem and a +24 stamina gem and with blessing of kings, we're looking at over 600 extra health. Or maybe throw in a +21 defense +5% shield block value meta gem in there. Either one will make things a little easier on your healer. One will provide a little extra cushion, the other will improve your mitigation. Can't go wrong with either one.
4) The helm didn't have an enchant on it. If you're going to be remotely serious about tanking... You get to revered with Argent Crusade so you can buy the head enchant. Even if you aren't serious about it... Do it anyway.
5) The tank had attack power trinkets equipped.
6) The boomkin had level 65-66 healing idol equipped. I know idols are hard to come by... But... Still...
7) The tank was wearing his Blood Knight tabard. Maybe he wants something from Horde Expedition but... Damn man... Slap on an Argent Crusade tabard. Get to revered. Get to revered with Wyrmrest for the two sweet tanking pieces.
On the way to the rock giant boss, the rogue bailed. We joined LFG for about 2 seconds and resumed clearing. Just before we got to the boss I asked if we were looking for someone. They said yes and I said that "a hunter in my guild was willing to go but we'll have to summon him". The hunter was actually my brother but I wasn't going to tell them that. They invited him and kept clearing to the boss... And, yes, it was in the hallway respawning plants... So we had to fight all the way back to a safe spot. And we'd taken the long way around, so we had to run all the way back through the instance to summon and then once again to get back to where we were... And then we had to clear the hallway... A third time. We did, however, down the boss with no deaths. It was hard as hell to keep that paladin up through the enrage though. Cripes. I'm guessing he isn't defense capped.
We wiped on the end boss. The ret paladin body pulled, got insta-gibbed and the prot paladin never did pick her up. The second time went a _litte_ better. There was still one death but that's mostly because it took so damn long. I had to make a choice between healing myself or healing some DPS with healing spells of their own. I didn't really need any of the loot but the boomkin rolled need on everything (it was cloth and leather so... Whatever) including the Frozen Orb. Now I had 4 on me but that was a PuG and 3 were guildies. He had a 60% chance of getting it. The orb is one of those little niceties that you give PuGs a chance to roll on... Particularly when you've been carried by one of them through the entire instance.
So... The short version is... I won't be doing any (heroic) runs with that guild any time soon and if I do, I'll check for gems and enchants first. Don't get me wrong... Things like that make me a better player but... It really stressed me out. My chest was actually tight for about a half hour after it ended. I don't need that.
The first warning sign was when they started calling each other by real life names. It turns out that three of them were from the same guild. Oh good. A guild that can field three players but can't find a healer. The second warning sign was when one of them asked how to get to the instance... Which was THE NEXUS!!! It's the first damn instance 80% of people do!!!
The group consisted of a prot paladin, ret paladin, boomkin (the guildies), a rogue and me. We managed to down the first mob with only the ret paladin dying. (Seriously?) The tank didn't consecrate or taunt so when the ret paladin body pulled and then fought back... It was over pretty quickly. Yes you're in plate but you're still not wearing a shield. We wiped on the second pulls. The paladin _still_ didn't consecrate on a 3 pull. Very, very bad sign. I thought about leaving but decided to give them another chance. I figured that with 2k spell power I could make up for a little nubitry.
I wish I'd thought that through. It turns out there were two skinners in the party but one of them didn't have a high enough skill level to skin the mob. Oy. You got to 80 and didn't level your skinning? Oh come on!!! At this point, one of them said he had turned his microphone on. I shudder to think that these guys were actually communicating with each other.
We got to the "optional" boss. And wiped because I couldn't keep the melee up... And because the tank backed up into me just as I was trying to heal him and just as the boss did his whirlwind. That's when I decided I wouldn't be using any more buff foods. I gently suggested that the melee needs to run away from the whirlwind. I should have said that they should run away as soon as they see it and stay out until it was over. My bad. In any event, they were nominally smarter and we got some lucky fears just before whirlwinds so melee was out of range for a couple of them. We downed him with only one death. The druid got the achievement for looting his first emblem of heroism. Another ominious sign. But now I was saved to this instance so I was in for the duration.
We had a couple of deaths before the mage boss... One of which was me. The paladins seem to have misplaced their resurrection buttons so I ran back. The mage boss can be very chaotic during the splits. Things happen. This time, the ret paladin - the one who was leading and seemed to have some reasonable gear and doing the most damage - died about half way through the fight. It happens... When you consecrate and the tank doesn't so you end up with two of the adds on you.... And people aren't focusing on one of them. So I battle rezzed him... He didn't take it until the boss had about 10% health left. There are TWO druids in your party. One of them knows what he is doing. You don't go AFK after you die. You just... Don't. Wait for the battle rez.
The clear to the next boss... And the next boss, for that matter, went mostly without incident. No... Wait. Scratch that. The tank ran in just before the second boss and pulled 6 mobs but didn't consecrate... But he needed heals so... I healed him. The 5 mobs he hadn't generated threat against me... Killled me dead. The boomkin and the ret pally managed to heal him through the fight. And one of the paladins found a rez button after about two minutes of me not releasing. We did down the rift boss without too much trouble. It was around this time that I started looking at their gear. Among other things:
1) The boomkin was rocking a staff that had +242 spell power, a pile of int and some spirit. A two hander with +242 spell power? There's a level 78 one hand rep reward with +314 spell power. Sure you have to be revered with the Kalu'ak but... Who isn't revered with the Kalu'ak? I mean... They look like Wilfred Brimley!!
2) It wasn't enchanted. Throw in an off-hand that has a modest +25 spell power and you're looking at another 147 spell power. Things will die faster. As it was... I was running out of mana and having to use innervate in what is generally considered an "easy" heroic.
3) The tank had 22k health... Buffed. I've got a death knight who has that much unbuffed and I wouldn't even _think_ about tanking a heroic like that. So I inpected his gear. Helm. Tempered Titansteel helm. Good. But... Two gem slots... Both empty. Throw in a +32 stamina meta gem and a +24 stamina gem and with blessing of kings, we're looking at over 600 extra health. Or maybe throw in a +21 defense +5% shield block value meta gem in there. Either one will make things a little easier on your healer. One will provide a little extra cushion, the other will improve your mitigation. Can't go wrong with either one.
4) The helm didn't have an enchant on it. If you're going to be remotely serious about tanking... You get to revered with Argent Crusade so you can buy the head enchant. Even if you aren't serious about it... Do it anyway.
5) The tank had attack power trinkets equipped.
6) The boomkin had level 65-66 healing idol equipped. I know idols are hard to come by... But... Still...
7) The tank was wearing his Blood Knight tabard. Maybe he wants something from Horde Expedition but... Damn man... Slap on an Argent Crusade tabard. Get to revered. Get to revered with Wyrmrest for the two sweet tanking pieces.
On the way to the rock giant boss, the rogue bailed. We joined LFG for about 2 seconds and resumed clearing. Just before we got to the boss I asked if we were looking for someone. They said yes and I said that "a hunter in my guild was willing to go but we'll have to summon him". The hunter was actually my brother but I wasn't going to tell them that. They invited him and kept clearing to the boss... And, yes, it was in the hallway respawning plants... So we had to fight all the way back to a safe spot. And we'd taken the long way around, so we had to run all the way back through the instance to summon and then once again to get back to where we were... And then we had to clear the hallway... A third time. We did, however, down the boss with no deaths. It was hard as hell to keep that paladin up through the enrage though. Cripes. I'm guessing he isn't defense capped.
We wiped on the end boss. The ret paladin body pulled, got insta-gibbed and the prot paladin never did pick her up. The second time went a _litte_ better. There was still one death but that's mostly because it took so damn long. I had to make a choice between healing myself or healing some DPS with healing spells of their own. I didn't really need any of the loot but the boomkin rolled need on everything (it was cloth and leather so... Whatever) including the Frozen Orb. Now I had 4 on me but that was a PuG and 3 were guildies. He had a 60% chance of getting it. The orb is one of those little niceties that you give PuGs a chance to roll on... Particularly when you've been carried by one of them through the entire instance.
So... The short version is... I won't be doing any (heroic) runs with that guild any time soon and if I do, I'll check for gems and enchants first. Don't get me wrong... Things like that make me a better player but... It really stressed me out. My chest was actually tight for about a half hour after it ended. I don't need that.
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