With the expansion fast approaching, there isn't really much to do progression-wise so I've been taking care of some things I've been working on for a while - most of it on the Alliance side.
I've decided that I want to get one of the Dranei mounts for Gifteye. I don't know why. It just seems fitting. So that means getting to exalted with Exodar. Even with the human 10% bonus, that's proven time consuming - but it was a blast running around the Dranei starting area at level 70. You don't get much for gold for the lowbie quests, but they still give full rep. Next will come a couple thousand turn-ins in AV to make up the remaining 5k or so.
I've gotten both of my Alliance 70's to exalted with Shattered Sun Offensive. Gifteye is exalted with the Scryers. I've been doing some quests that have been in the Alliance toons' logs for well over a year. I've also collected enough gold between them to get one of them an epic flying mount. It would bankrupt me... But I'm thinking about it.
The Brewfest boss has been a pleasant distraction. I've run it 11 times now and it's a good way to kill an hour or two. It's something the guild can do with small numbers and minimal time commitments... Plus it's guaranteed gear that is equivalent to the 41 badge trinkets. I've already picked up a couple of them.
The one thing that I've been doing to help prepare for the expansion, however, is to try to get some legitimate weapons for my paladins. They have decent one handers but the best two hander they have is the axe you can get at revered with SSO. They _can_ kill things... It just takes a while. So I've been PvPing to get the Meciless Gladiator's Greatsword for both of them. That means a lot of time in Alterac Valley...
And maybe it isn't this way on EVERY server but it's like the difference between night and day. On my horde server, the horde wins occasionally but when they do, it's a somewhat protracted affair. They do the same thing every time and they lose and lose and lose. Every rushes to kill Balinda. Someone will tap Stonehearth Bunker and Icewing Bunker and then abandon it to fight for Stormpike Graveyard. Every time they see someone on the road, they stop and fight them. They pull the NPC's by the Aid Station flag EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's the classic definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I think someone might have won once with that "strategy" and then told everyone about it so often they horde thinks it's the only way to win. Needless to say, the horde honor grind can be quite frustrating.
The Alliance, on the other hand, is methodical. Brutally efficient. Half the squad goes to kill Galv. A bunch goes ahead and taps towers while a token force stays back to slow the horde down because that's all it takes. When they tap a tower, 3 to 5 people will stay there until it caps. They go back and recap towers the horde has tapped. They skip horde along the way and go straight for the game objectives - usually the Frostwolf Relief Hut. And you can tell that they've thought it through... You want to know how I know that? Because if you cap Frostwolf Graveyard before the Relief Hut, you are called all kinds of names... I mean... Really bad names. It isn't done.
The logic is simple. There are 4 major objectives in the horde base: two towers, a graveyard and Drek. If you cap FWGY before the RH, any horde you kill will respawn back in the base. This means that they can throw themselves at the Alliance in waves. But if you cap the RH first, they spawn... Elsewhere and they have the base to themselves. They thought it through.
Plus there's a whole different attitude. Everyone is pleasant. They say please. They say thank you. No one is yelling at anyone (who doesn't cap FWGY before FWRH, of course). They don't really even give directions or discuss strategy. Everyone knows what the plan is.
And it works... Today I went 18-1. Most of the games were 10-12 minutes and we only got less than 400 bonus honor points twice (a 399 point win and 357 in a loss). The one loss was a protracted affair where they had a lot of people respawning at FWGY and they repeatedly wiped us on Drek. And I think I only had one loss on Saturday - and that was to a premade. We still came up with 252 points and still almost pulled it out.
Not only has it been a fun experience ("I love winning. It's, like, better than losing." - Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh) but I think I've gotten a little better at tanking as a paladin. My Alliance paladin doesn't have anywhere near the gear that my horde paladin does so I have to really push my abilities to generate threat and to stay alive.
When I tank for my horde guild, I generally open with Seal of the Crusader and built additional threat that way. But in the battlegrounds, people don't necessarily wait. They just open with their biggest nuke so I have to have a big threat lead to maintain aggro. That means loading up Seal of Righteousness, popping my wings, throw Avenging Shield and then judge Righteousness on my way in and then drop a consecrate at the back. That usually allows me to keep the boss on me for the duration of the fight. But I have to keep an eye on my holy shield to compensate for my gear... But I have to keep consecrate up and keep judging righteousness to keep threat... It's a lot of work.
At about 500 honor points per game, I'm just 8 or 9 games away from a new toy. Here's hoping the horde doesn't think it through in the next 18 hours... What am I saying? Of course they won't... Sometimes I'm not sure if they can.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
The Obligatory "The Expansion is Coming" Post
Blizzard recently announced that the Wrath of the Lich King will be released on 11/13/2008. There's a lot to look forward to including but not limited to: Death Knights and a new profession, Inscription.
Inscription will allow you to modify certain spells and abilities through the use of Glyphs. One of the first ones that was announced was the Glyph of the White Bear. This glyph changes your bear form to that of a polar bear.
Whoopie.
Yes. I've been staring at the unpleasant end of a bear for the better part of the last year and a half... With some off and on time before that. But one of the big complaints about druids is that... There's no variation between forms. Some of us have worked very hard to improve our gear or to grind rep and there's no way of showing that. Every single bear looks like every other bear. Alliance. horde. Doesn't matter. My level 58 female night elf druid in blues in greens looks just like my level 70 tauren druid in Arena and badge reward epics.
But now we have the option to get Glyph of the White Bear....
Whoopie.
Now there will be exactly two types of bears running around. Granted, it's a 100% increase over the previous two and a half years that I've been playing but... There are millions of druids out there.
I'm not (necessarily) advocating that Blizzard find a way of displaying gear when druids are in forms. That would be a tremendously difficult task... But I remember back in the day when my Alliance mage was walking around in 7/8 Tier 2. You KNEW where he'd been. You KNEW how much work he'd done. And, if you were a warrior, you KNEW you should start running now (or should have... Some of them _still_ got out their epeens and gave it a shot).
Not so with my druid. He's a fierce tank. He's done some crazy, crazy, impossible things. But he's also done some really, really tedious things. I single pulled mobs in Steam Vault for about 6 hours to get to exalted with Cenarion Expedition to get my Earthwarden. I wear their tabard with pride. It says: "Yeah... I've done the work. If you have me as your tank, you know I'll have one of the top mitigation/threat generation weapons in the game."
But you don't know that most of the time. All you see is bear. And maybe you don't remember that when things go wrong. Maybe you forget that I've got the gear and that you should just take a deep breath because as long as I've got a healer (and sometimes if I don't) we'll get through this.
And to top it all off? They're also introducing barbershops... So that every other character can change their appearance. Sure... I've got a female rogue who has a nose ring I'd like to lose. But I never play her. I only rolled her because I was having such a hard time with them on my mage so I wanted to see what rogues could do. Well, that and open lockboxes... But I'm going to be doing instances again and I'm the tank. I'll be back to the same form I've had for years... Or maybe a polar bear.
Whoopie.
So here's what _I_ would like to see. That mark on the shoulder of bear form... How about that changes to whatever is on the tabard you had equipped when you went into bear form. So... When I'm tanking, maybe you'd see something like this:
It's a simple thing and it would allow druids some more choices for customization beyond brown or white. I'm just sayin'.
Inscription will allow you to modify certain spells and abilities through the use of Glyphs. One of the first ones that was announced was the Glyph of the White Bear. This glyph changes your bear form to that of a polar bear.
Whoopie.
Yes. I've been staring at the unpleasant end of a bear for the better part of the last year and a half... With some off and on time before that. But one of the big complaints about druids is that... There's no variation between forms. Some of us have worked very hard to improve our gear or to grind rep and there's no way of showing that. Every single bear looks like every other bear. Alliance. horde. Doesn't matter. My level 58 female night elf druid in blues in greens looks just like my level 70 tauren druid in Arena and badge reward epics.
But now we have the option to get Glyph of the White Bear....
Whoopie.
Now there will be exactly two types of bears running around. Granted, it's a 100% increase over the previous two and a half years that I've been playing but... There are millions of druids out there.
I'm not (necessarily) advocating that Blizzard find a way of displaying gear when druids are in forms. That would be a tremendously difficult task... But I remember back in the day when my Alliance mage was walking around in 7/8 Tier 2. You KNEW where he'd been. You KNEW how much work he'd done. And, if you were a warrior, you KNEW you should start running now (or should have... Some of them _still_ got out their epeens and gave it a shot).
Not so with my druid. He's a fierce tank. He's done some crazy, crazy, impossible things. But he's also done some really, really tedious things. I single pulled mobs in Steam Vault for about 6 hours to get to exalted with Cenarion Expedition to get my Earthwarden. I wear their tabard with pride. It says: "Yeah... I've done the work. If you have me as your tank, you know I'll have one of the top mitigation/threat generation weapons in the game."
But you don't know that most of the time. All you see is bear. And maybe you don't remember that when things go wrong. Maybe you forget that I've got the gear and that you should just take a deep breath because as long as I've got a healer (and sometimes if I don't) we'll get through this.
And to top it all off? They're also introducing barbershops... So that every other character can change their appearance. Sure... I've got a female rogue who has a nose ring I'd like to lose. But I never play her. I only rolled her because I was having such a hard time with them on my mage so I wanted to see what rogues could do. Well, that and open lockboxes... But I'm going to be doing instances again and I'm the tank. I'll be back to the same form I've had for years... Or maybe a polar bear.
Whoopie.
So here's what _I_ would like to see. That mark on the shoulder of bear form... How about that changes to whatever is on the tabard you had equipped when you went into bear form. So... When I'm tanking, maybe you'd see something like this:
It's a simple thing and it would allow druids some more choices for customization beyond brown or white. I'm just sayin'.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
You _can_ go back again... But not for long
In 1999, I made a trip to Detroit to see Tiger Stadium before it was gone. I've never been a Tigers fan, nor have I ever really liked the pictures of the stadium but it had been around since 1912 and was a big part of baseball history. So I dragged two friends through Canada (the fastest way to get to Detroit from Vermont) and in 42 hours, we drove to Detroit, had some car trouble in Toronto rush hour traffic, stopped by Niagara Falls, caught a ball game from the right field porch and returned home.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not equating a World of Warcraft instance that, admittedly, few people ever saw, but the feelings I have about Naxxramas are similar. I only went there maybe 8 times pre-BC and we only ever downed 2 bosses but I have vivid memories of it. I remember grinding Argent Dawn rep for hours... There are a handful of mobs in the Eastern Plaguelands that give rep even at honored. I killed them by the hundreds. I bought my arcane crystals as soon as I learned that we were going to go to Naxxramas because I knew that 40-50 people trying to buy them at once would really drive up the price. When we finally got 40 people attuned, we went in and we wiped on Anub'Rekhan for hours. Three of them on a Sunday afternoon. We never got him past 55%.
But we kept plugging and plugging. We got the locust swarm transition down. We downed the adds faster. We learned the range of the spikes (it turns out that a fire mage can just stand there and not worry about the spikes... Max range is one yard outside their range). When someone died, we dropped everything to down the little scarabs. And then one week, we downed him. It probably took us 8 hours over 4 nights for our first kill. Then we moved on to the Instructor.
He was easier... We downed him in about our 9th attempt. He was easy mode. But I do remember a lot of talk beforehand about getting the priests to the spell hit cap so their mind control wouldn't be resisted. I remember running back and forth around that bannister to get out of line of sight of his shout. That's when things got complicated.
We never downed another boss in Naxxramas. We tried the other two bosses in the Spider wing but we couldn't keep the tank up through the stun on Maexxna and the adds always gave us trouble on Grand Widow Faerlina. So Naxx nights became two sets of trash clears to do the same two bosses over and over followed by repeated wipes on trash and two bosses that had our number and punctuated with a hefty repair bill - and this was before daily quests. If you were in epics, you had to spend a lot of time farming just to raid... And with 3 official and two unofficial raid nights a week, that didn't leave much time. We actually had one person get kicked out of the raid because he couldn't pay the repair bot.
So... On Naxx nights, people stopped showing up. Sure they were on for Blackwing Lair. We had that place on farm. We cleared it in 3 hours every week. They showed up for AQ40 because you were guaranteed a shot at a drop from at least 5 bosses... Then 6. Then 7. People even showed up for Molten Core. Sure it was a lot of alts and people were usually pretty drunk and there were only 33 of us, but we still killed Ragnaros every week. At one point, we had two full MC raids going a week... But Naxx? That died for Crucify.
And that made me sad. The four boss fights I'd seen were the most interesting, most challenging I'd seen save for Twin Emperors and C'thun. I'd always wanted to go back.
But now they're tearing it down....
Well... Not literally... They're repurposing it as the first level 80 raid in Wrath of the Lich King. They're making a 10 man version and a 25 man version and removing the 40 man, level 60 instance. I hear it has the same dimensions but it feels empty with just 10 people there. A lot of the mechanics are similar but it's lost it's epic feel.
That's why I was so pleased when I heard that a horde guild on my server was running Naxxramas every Saturday night... Of course, I wasn't attuned. Hell, none of my characters were even honored. So I took a Friday night and started doing the quests. I got my Barov Peasant Caller. I got my Argent Dawn trinket. I got the key to the city. I got to honored. Then I started running Strat Undead. I found that with some careful stealthing, minimal clearing and a LOT of really good gear, I could solo 45 minute Baron runs. With fragment turn-ins and with me getting all the scourgestones, I got to revered with Argent Dawn by 11 pm that night.... WAY faster than I thought I would. I bought a nexus crystal on the AH and bummed an arcane crystal (I already had one) from a friend I've done some favors for and waited. When the time came, the raid didn't happen. Another guild had poached a few raid members and they didn't have the numbers... That ended up being a really good night because I got my Champion of the Naaru title so it all worked out. That was two weeks ago.
On Friday, WoWinsider.com posted a rundown of the beta version of Naxx-10 and I started thinking about the old 40 man instance again. I went to the realm forums and the same people were hosting another Naxx run. On Saturday, It took me a few whispers but I got an invite. I was still resto from Arenas on Friday night so I went as a healer. We ended up with about 28 people, 4 of whom were at or around level 60.
I'll admit, it's a little less challenging with 24 level 70's but the some of the fights are still very interesting. We were a little light on DPS but we still overpowered the spider wing. We stomped Patchwerk and Grobbulus. We wiped a couple of times on Gluth but we finally figured it out. We didn't have the DPS for Thaddius but it was interesting to see where the mechanic for the first boss in Heroic Mech came from. We downed Razuvius pretty easily - with a player tanking him instead of MC'd adds. But we didn't have enough melee and tanks/healers for Gothik because people had left or gone to bed so we just cleared some trash in the plague wing to complete the first quest and we called it a night at about 1 am.
All told, we killed the two bosses who stopped Crucify cold and three I'd never seen before and I got to see two encouters I'd never seen before. The fights were so much fun. Very different from your typical tank and spank. I'm glad I went and I think I'll be going again... I may even try to recruit a friend.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not equating a World of Warcraft instance that, admittedly, few people ever saw, but the feelings I have about Naxxramas are similar. I only went there maybe 8 times pre-BC and we only ever downed 2 bosses but I have vivid memories of it. I remember grinding Argent Dawn rep for hours... There are a handful of mobs in the Eastern Plaguelands that give rep even at honored. I killed them by the hundreds. I bought my arcane crystals as soon as I learned that we were going to go to Naxxramas because I knew that 40-50 people trying to buy them at once would really drive up the price. When we finally got 40 people attuned, we went in and we wiped on Anub'Rekhan for hours. Three of them on a Sunday afternoon. We never got him past 55%.
But we kept plugging and plugging. We got the locust swarm transition down. We downed the adds faster. We learned the range of the spikes (it turns out that a fire mage can just stand there and not worry about the spikes... Max range is one yard outside their range). When someone died, we dropped everything to down the little scarabs. And then one week, we downed him. It probably took us 8 hours over 4 nights for our first kill. Then we moved on to the Instructor.
He was easier... We downed him in about our 9th attempt. He was easy mode. But I do remember a lot of talk beforehand about getting the priests to the spell hit cap so their mind control wouldn't be resisted. I remember running back and forth around that bannister to get out of line of sight of his shout. That's when things got complicated.
We never downed another boss in Naxxramas. We tried the other two bosses in the Spider wing but we couldn't keep the tank up through the stun on Maexxna and the adds always gave us trouble on Grand Widow Faerlina. So Naxx nights became two sets of trash clears to do the same two bosses over and over followed by repeated wipes on trash and two bosses that had our number and punctuated with a hefty repair bill - and this was before daily quests. If you were in epics, you had to spend a lot of time farming just to raid... And with 3 official and two unofficial raid nights a week, that didn't leave much time. We actually had one person get kicked out of the raid because he couldn't pay the repair bot.
So... On Naxx nights, people stopped showing up. Sure they were on for Blackwing Lair. We had that place on farm. We cleared it in 3 hours every week. They showed up for AQ40 because you were guaranteed a shot at a drop from at least 5 bosses... Then 6. Then 7. People even showed up for Molten Core. Sure it was a lot of alts and people were usually pretty drunk and there were only 33 of us, but we still killed Ragnaros every week. At one point, we had two full MC raids going a week... But Naxx? That died for Crucify.
And that made me sad. The four boss fights I'd seen were the most interesting, most challenging I'd seen save for Twin Emperors and C'thun. I'd always wanted to go back.
But now they're tearing it down....
Well... Not literally... They're repurposing it as the first level 80 raid in Wrath of the Lich King. They're making a 10 man version and a 25 man version and removing the 40 man, level 60 instance. I hear it has the same dimensions but it feels empty with just 10 people there. A lot of the mechanics are similar but it's lost it's epic feel.
That's why I was so pleased when I heard that a horde guild on my server was running Naxxramas every Saturday night... Of course, I wasn't attuned. Hell, none of my characters were even honored. So I took a Friday night and started doing the quests. I got my Barov Peasant Caller. I got my Argent Dawn trinket. I got the key to the city. I got to honored. Then I started running Strat Undead. I found that with some careful stealthing, minimal clearing and a LOT of really good gear, I could solo 45 minute Baron runs. With fragment turn-ins and with me getting all the scourgestones, I got to revered with Argent Dawn by 11 pm that night.... WAY faster than I thought I would. I bought a nexus crystal on the AH and bummed an arcane crystal (I already had one) from a friend I've done some favors for and waited. When the time came, the raid didn't happen. Another guild had poached a few raid members and they didn't have the numbers... That ended up being a really good night because I got my Champion of the Naaru title so it all worked out. That was two weeks ago.
On Friday, WoWinsider.com posted a rundown of the beta version of Naxx-10 and I started thinking about the old 40 man instance again. I went to the realm forums and the same people were hosting another Naxx run. On Saturday, It took me a few whispers but I got an invite. I was still resto from Arenas on Friday night so I went as a healer. We ended up with about 28 people, 4 of whom were at or around level 60.
I'll admit, it's a little less challenging with 24 level 70's but the some of the fights are still very interesting. We were a little light on DPS but we still overpowered the spider wing. We stomped Patchwerk and Grobbulus. We wiped a couple of times on Gluth but we finally figured it out. We didn't have the DPS for Thaddius but it was interesting to see where the mechanic for the first boss in Heroic Mech came from. We downed Razuvius pretty easily - with a player tanking him instead of MC'd adds. But we didn't have enough melee and tanks/healers for Gothik because people had left or gone to bed so we just cleared some trash in the plague wing to complete the first quest and we called it a night at about 1 am.
All told, we killed the two bosses who stopped Crucify cold and three I'd never seen before and I got to see two encouters I'd never seen before. The fights were so much fun. Very different from your typical tank and spank. I'm glad I went and I think I'll be going again... I may even try to recruit a friend.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Know your enemy: rogue
Alterac Valley weekend just ended and I'm pretty much burnt out. I spent the majority of the day yesterday on my Alliance mage grinding honor (It's crazy how fast the Alliance can get honor in AV) but I did do a few battlegrounds on my druid.
Alterac Valley is a big enough map that even with 40 people on each side, there are still significant opportunities for one on one combat. At one point, I did a few with a guild mate and he came to tower point to find me dueling a warrior and both of us under 1000 health. It was funny really. He was on _his_ druid so he topped me off and I said "I woulda had him".
What he _didn't_ see was the druid I found in cat form at 60% health and the rogue who caught _me_ in cat form before I could finish the other druid off. Both were long dead and the tower had still burned but the warrior and I were still going at it. My friend's druid is getting to be pretty well geared but he still seems to marvel at how easily I handle some classes. He shouldn't. There are some classes that a feral druid can absolutely school. Take, for example, rogues...
Rogues are leather wearing, sneaking around, stabbing you in the back, stun locking, running away if things don't go their way, good for nothing wastes of oxygen who can't heal themselves. I mean that. That said, they also seem to be intended to be chew toys for feral druids...
There are three basic ways an encounter with a rogue will start:
1) They are stealthed and get the jump on you.
2) You are stealthed and get the jump on them.
3) Neither of you are stealthed.
If you get the jump on a rogue, you want to open with a pounce. Not only does this give you a chance to front-load some damage, it puts a bleed on the rogue and bleeds will, eventually, pull a vanished rogue out of stealth and cannot be removed by Cloak of Skill. Furthermore, bleeds still do damage during Evasion. Then I like to follow with a rake and a rip (even if it's only a 2 combo point rip) and then drop into bear form before Pounce wears off. 'Tis better to leave combo points on a rogue than to be stunlocked in cat form.
For scenarios 1 and 3, you want to get into bear form as soon as possible... OK. Maybe you don't... But I do. You see... rogues are a crit happy, melee damage class. Bears are designed to soak up crits and melee damage with insanely high armor.
If you get caught in cat or caster form, you want to hit Barkskin. You can cast it while stunned or feared and it will help you ride out the initial stun and mash your "Rawr bear!!" button repeatedly.
Once I'm in bear form, I like to open with Feral Faerie Fire. Not only does it reduce their armor, but prevents them from going into stealth - and that's a major objective because rogues have a number of very annoying abilities while stealth. Vanishing during a fight is a large portion of a really good stunlock. As an added bonus, FFF will frequently get a rogue to burn cloak of skill.
After FFF, I like to use Mangle to do a mess of damage and to increase bleed damage and then Demoralizing Roar. Not because it does much but because it's annoying... And if I'm at half health or more and the rogue doesn't have any friends, I'm going to win... It's just going to take some time. I'm going to use this time to annoy the rogue.
At this point, you're just tanking the mob... I mean rogue... So next come the lacerates. I like to do two or three and then mangle again and hit FFF every now and then just to make sure it doesn't run out. If there's an enemy healer nearby who might help the rogue out... Pull the mob... I mean rogue... Around a corner or a long way away from the healer. You're going to want privacy for this...
If the rogue tries to run away, I'll Feral Charge them to catch up to them and root them. Maybe bash them if it's up and cyclone them during the bash. That should eat up most of the duration of the sprint. Or... If I know dash is up, I'll go cat form and use that - if we're outside, I'll catch up to him eventually... Or... If they're low on health, I'll moonfire spam the runners.
If things aren't going my way... There's Frenzied Regeneration. If I know I'm going to be using that soon, I'll stop using special attacks to to build up some rage and make sure I get the full benefit. I've got macros that allow me to cancel form, pop a health potion and a charged crystal focus and then drop back into bear form. It's instant cast - you just have to make sure that your global cooldown is up or you'll get caught in caster form. And then there's the classic bash and heal. You might, say, Bash and hit rejuvenation, Lifebloom and then drop into bear form. For extra style points, move away from the rogue while you're doing this. It will take them a couple of seconds to catch back up, giving your HoTs a chance to kick in.
Why does this work? Well... Feral Faerie Fire removes a lot of a rogues most damaging abilities and bleeds draw them out of stealth if they get out of FFF. Bear form increases your armor by 400% (~440% for a properly specced tanking druid) and PvP armor has insanely high amounts of armor (I use at least 3 pieces for every day tanking because it's so awesome) and the Merciless Gladiator's gear is available to everyone through battleground honor points. In all Merciless gear (with season 3 and 4 PvP gear thrown in), you should be pushing 20k armor - which would absorb 60-65% of melee damage coming in. PvP gear also has crazy amounts of agility which increases your chance to dodge (probably upwards of 25%) and increases your chance to crit... And when you crit, you get 4% of your health back (effect not happening more than once every 6 seconds)... And in bear form, your max health goes up by... My estimates put it at around 63% with the right talents. Which means you're healing for 4% of... A lot. It adds up.
I've used these techniques to solo a cheat death rogue with dual warglaives who got the drop on me _before_ the cheat death nerf. It was close but I think we both knew that he'd need some lucky procs to win... He didn't get them.
So... The next time you "encounter" a rogue, don't panic. Just tank them.
Alterac Valley is a big enough map that even with 40 people on each side, there are still significant opportunities for one on one combat. At one point, I did a few with a guild mate and he came to tower point to find me dueling a warrior and both of us under 1000 health. It was funny really. He was on _his_ druid so he topped me off and I said "I woulda had him".
What he _didn't_ see was the druid I found in cat form at 60% health and the rogue who caught _me_ in cat form before I could finish the other druid off. Both were long dead and the tower had still burned but the warrior and I were still going at it. My friend's druid is getting to be pretty well geared but he still seems to marvel at how easily I handle some classes. He shouldn't. There are some classes that a feral druid can absolutely school. Take, for example, rogues...
Rogues are leather wearing, sneaking around, stabbing you in the back, stun locking, running away if things don't go their way, good for nothing wastes of oxygen who can't heal themselves. I mean that. That said, they also seem to be intended to be chew toys for feral druids...
There are three basic ways an encounter with a rogue will start:
1) They are stealthed and get the jump on you.
2) You are stealthed and get the jump on them.
3) Neither of you are stealthed.
If you get the jump on a rogue, you want to open with a pounce. Not only does this give you a chance to front-load some damage, it puts a bleed on the rogue and bleeds will, eventually, pull a vanished rogue out of stealth and cannot be removed by Cloak of Skill. Furthermore, bleeds still do damage during Evasion. Then I like to follow with a rake and a rip (even if it's only a 2 combo point rip) and then drop into bear form before Pounce wears off. 'Tis better to leave combo points on a rogue than to be stunlocked in cat form.
For scenarios 1 and 3, you want to get into bear form as soon as possible... OK. Maybe you don't... But I do. You see... rogues are a crit happy, melee damage class. Bears are designed to soak up crits and melee damage with insanely high armor.
If you get caught in cat or caster form, you want to hit Barkskin. You can cast it while stunned or feared and it will help you ride out the initial stun and mash your "Rawr bear!!" button repeatedly.
Once I'm in bear form, I like to open with Feral Faerie Fire. Not only does it reduce their armor, but prevents them from going into stealth - and that's a major objective because rogues have a number of very annoying abilities while stealth. Vanishing during a fight is a large portion of a really good stunlock. As an added bonus, FFF will frequently get a rogue to burn cloak of skill.
After FFF, I like to use Mangle to do a mess of damage and to increase bleed damage and then Demoralizing Roar. Not because it does much but because it's annoying... And if I'm at half health or more and the rogue doesn't have any friends, I'm going to win... It's just going to take some time. I'm going to use this time to annoy the rogue.
At this point, you're just tanking the mob... I mean rogue... So next come the lacerates. I like to do two or three and then mangle again and hit FFF every now and then just to make sure it doesn't run out. If there's an enemy healer nearby who might help the rogue out... Pull the mob... I mean rogue... Around a corner or a long way away from the healer. You're going to want privacy for this...
If the rogue tries to run away, I'll Feral Charge them to catch up to them and root them. Maybe bash them if it's up and cyclone them during the bash. That should eat up most of the duration of the sprint. Or... If I know dash is up, I'll go cat form and use that - if we're outside, I'll catch up to him eventually... Or... If they're low on health, I'll moonfire spam the runners.
If things aren't going my way... There's Frenzied Regeneration. If I know I'm going to be using that soon, I'll stop using special attacks to to build up some rage and make sure I get the full benefit. I've got macros that allow me to cancel form, pop a health potion and a charged crystal focus and then drop back into bear form. It's instant cast - you just have to make sure that your global cooldown is up or you'll get caught in caster form. And then there's the classic bash and heal. You might, say, Bash and hit rejuvenation, Lifebloom and then drop into bear form. For extra style points, move away from the rogue while you're doing this. It will take them a couple of seconds to catch back up, giving your HoTs a chance to kick in.
Why does this work? Well... Feral Faerie Fire removes a lot of a rogues most damaging abilities and bleeds draw them out of stealth if they get out of FFF. Bear form increases your armor by 400% (~440% for a properly specced tanking druid) and PvP armor has insanely high amounts of armor (I use at least 3 pieces for every day tanking because it's so awesome) and the Merciless Gladiator's gear is available to everyone through battleground honor points. In all Merciless gear (with season 3 and 4 PvP gear thrown in), you should be pushing 20k armor - which would absorb 60-65% of melee damage coming in. PvP gear also has crazy amounts of agility which increases your chance to dodge (probably upwards of 25%) and increases your chance to crit... And when you crit, you get 4% of your health back (effect not happening more than once every 6 seconds)... And in bear form, your max health goes up by... My estimates put it at around 63% with the right talents. Which means you're healing for 4% of... A lot. It adds up.
I've used these techniques to solo a cheat death rogue with dual warglaives who got the drop on me _before_ the cheat death nerf. It was close but I think we both knew that he'd need some lucky procs to win... He didn't get them.
So... The next time you "encounter" a rogue, don't panic. Just tank them.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
I Love It When A Plan Comes Together
I know I talk about PvP a lot, but I'd rather do PvE any day. I've seen all the PvE maps. There are only so many flags you can capture (by my estimates, I've capped the flag over 300 times in WSG on various characters). I've been working on the tier 4 title line. As of last night, I still had down Magtheridon and to run Heroic Slave Pens to turn in the quest to kill Nightbane and Gruul.
I'd spent a large portion of Friday night trying to get to revered with Argent Dawn (it turns out that I can solo a 45 minute Baron run because I can stealth large portions of it) so I could get a cheaper attunement for Naxxramas because I'd seen a PuG run advertised on the forums. The raid starting time came and went and none of the three toons who were the post said to contact were on at the time. So I decided to do my own thing. And... Wonder of wonders... Slave Pens was the daily heroic.
There were two groups looking for a tank and one of them had already downed the first boss. I looked up the person who was asking in the armory. He was a holy priest with 1900 healing. With my tanking stats, his healing and the relative easiness of the instance AND the fact that they'd already done one of the bosses promised a really quick run. So I whispered the priest and away we went.
I nubbed up one pull and I tried to pick up the sheep target (although some might argue that a good mage would never let a sheep break in the first place - frostbolt - frostbolt - sheep - frostbolt - frostbolt - sheep) when it got loose and hit it again after the mage had resheeped it. It was a MCing mob and I ended up killing the mage. We also had another wipe near the end but they were pretty easy going about it because their previous tank was really, really bad. But I did get to turn in my quest. Not only did I complete the quest but I picked up 4 quick badges and got two bag slots back. On the whole, it was a good night.
About 10 minutes after that instance was over, I got a tell from one of the leaders of Band of the Hawks asking me if I wanted to tank Mag. It's like he'd been watching over my shoulder. Hell yeah I did!!!
I've done one other Magtheridon PuG and it fell apart after about 3 attempts. I'll never understand who people can give up on a PuG raid after one attempt. It's a PuG people!!! Most of these people will never have seen the fights before. We're going to wipe a time or two... And these petulent people don't have the decency to leave the raid. Instead, they mysteriously disconnect immediately after the first wipe while everyone else is running back. I'll never understand that... But I digress... My point was that I'd never completed Magtheridon's Lair and now I was being asked to main tank it.
I also convinced his holiness, Pater, to join us as one of the five healers. He ended up dying on the first two trash pulls. Whoops... Good thing there are only 4 pulls total.
The first attempt was a pretty quick wipe while the clickers got things figured out. Then we had a good attempt. Then a huntard pulled early on the third attempt... That one ended pretty quickly... Although we did down the adds and get Mag to about 80%. We were having a little trouble timing the clicking of the cubes because Deadly Boss Mods seems to be a little off so a decision was made to pretty much eat the first blast wave to make sure we interrupt the majority of them.
By now it's getting close to midnight. Two people (which was strangely low... weird... No one was bailing on a PuG...) had to leave - including the person who formed the raid originally... An off tank who didn't have vent. We replaced them and made another attempt. By now we had 6 paladins... 3 tanks and 3 healers... I'm serious. We had EVERY pally buff.
I was tanking the third add and the boss. On the fourth attempt, a hunter died during the first two adds. After my add went down, I had a couple of seconds between my add going down and Magtheridon releasing so I battle rezzed the hunter. Normally, I wouldn't rez a non-tank/non-healer but I was the only druid and I was the main tank so I wouldn't have a chance to use it later.
This time felt different. The clicking was going well. Yeah... We took one blast wave but _only_ one. It was going well... But at 60% one of the clickers - a paladin healer - went down. But we communicated it and someone else took over their cube. We got to the cave-ins at 30%. The raid was weakened. A couple of people died. We lost Pater and another clicker. But we adjusted...
At about 8% everyone was OOM. There were no heals to be had and our casters weren't doing any damage any more. I got down to 4k health... It was looking bad. I've used my frenzied regeneration and my potion macro - so I had about 20 seconds left before I could use it again.
And then... Miracle! I got hit with a 15056 heal. A paladin hit me with a clutch lay on hands... Probably a tank from the size of it. We're back in it!!! Then another lay on hands... And another!!! We had 6 paladins in the raid and 5 were still up and they were chaining their one hour cooldown, instant cast, drains all their mana heals to get this done... 3%... Healers are regenerating a little mana. Heals are trickling in. 1%... Come on... Come on...
And... Finally... He was down. At the end, only about 14 people were still standing. I was below 30% health (that's still 6k with raid buffs though). All of the healers were under 500 mana. It was an absolutely epic fight. I'm sure that it was a first kill for 20 people in the raid so to have _that_ fight being your first... That's a fun memory. People were very excited.
We rezzed the dead (including Pater twice... Who managed to stand in a fire after he was rezzed). Loot was given out. Pater even got the 20 slot bag. He seemed happy. But not happy as I was...
I first went into Karazhan in October of last year... And that was on my paladin. Hiahotah didn't go into Karazhan until Arena season 3 started (because our then main tank repecced Boomkin) so I had to take over tanking... Which, incidentally, was when we really started having success in Karazhan...
But to get into Karazhan, we had to run Shadow Lab, Steam Vault, Arcatraz and Black Morass. It took us months to get to a point where we could down Shade of Aran and loot his book so we could move on in the quest line to get the urn to summon Nightbane. We did a heroic Shattered Halls without a paladin tank, without any CC and a paladin who had 27 point in prot healing because that was who was on. Then we did heroic Sethekk for someone's epic flight form quest. I'd already done mine, but I tanked it so I could do this quest and be able to summon Nightbane.
Then came the PuGs... Somewhere along the line - maybe in August of last year, I'd done the Cipher of Damnation quest line - including the 5 man group quest at the end - which unlocked the heroic dungeon "Trial of the Naaru" quest lines. We'd done Shattered Halls as a guild but that still left Steam Vault, Arcatraz and Shadow Labyrinth.
We tried heroic Steam Vault one day but couldn't finish because we had two healers and couldn't down the tanks on the last boss fast enough. I ended up helping a PuG once for that one. They skipped a lot of mobs by going along the right wall of the first area... But that led to a few wipes because you had to be careful about where you fought and where you got feared.
I did a PuG heroic Arcatraz. I remember that one going pretty well. For Shadow Lab, there was one day when a group was looking for a tank for one of the heroic Tempest Keep instances. But I only had Shadow Lab left for the Trial of the Naaru lines... They wanted to do a heroic and there were no other tanks on so they agreed to do Shadow Labyrinth. We wiped quite a bit to start. People went AFK for 5-10 minutes at a time. But... People stuck around and we found a rhythm. The priest didn't quite get that he had to be in the circle for the Murmur fight on heroic. So we wiped a couple of times. We actually got lucky and downed him on the second attempt - even though the priest hadn't learned.
All of this... Plus countless hours to get gear (including about 8 hours single pulling Mobs in Steam Vault to get my Earthwarden)... Numerous runs through Karazhan for badges... Culminated in this:
Hiahotah, Champion of the Naaru... I haven't been this excited about a title since Gifteye got to Lt. Commander. I've been pecking away at this for a year now. I've endured horrible, horrible PuGs (I've also met a few people who aren't horrible). Yeah... They nerfed Magtheridon... But I'm still ecstatic. Hell... I'm writing about it on a Sunday morning instead of doing dailies.
Plus... Now I don't feel like I should go for the "exalted with all battleground factions" title... At least... Not with Hiahotah...
I'd spent a large portion of Friday night trying to get to revered with Argent Dawn (it turns out that I can solo a 45 minute Baron run because I can stealth large portions of it) so I could get a cheaper attunement for Naxxramas because I'd seen a PuG run advertised on the forums. The raid starting time came and went and none of the three toons who were the post said to contact were on at the time. So I decided to do my own thing. And... Wonder of wonders... Slave Pens was the daily heroic.
There were two groups looking for a tank and one of them had already downed the first boss. I looked up the person who was asking in the armory. He was a holy priest with 1900 healing. With my tanking stats, his healing and the relative easiness of the instance AND the fact that they'd already done one of the bosses promised a really quick run. So I whispered the priest and away we went.
I nubbed up one pull and I tried to pick up the sheep target (although some might argue that a good mage would never let a sheep break in the first place - frostbolt - frostbolt - sheep - frostbolt - frostbolt - sheep) when it got loose and hit it again after the mage had resheeped it. It was a MCing mob and I ended up killing the mage. We also had another wipe near the end but they were pretty easy going about it because their previous tank was really, really bad. But I did get to turn in my quest. Not only did I complete the quest but I picked up 4 quick badges and got two bag slots back. On the whole, it was a good night.
About 10 minutes after that instance was over, I got a tell from one of the leaders of Band of the Hawks asking me if I wanted to tank Mag. It's like he'd been watching over my shoulder. Hell yeah I did!!!
I've done one other Magtheridon PuG and it fell apart after about 3 attempts. I'll never understand who people can give up on a PuG raid after one attempt. It's a PuG people!!! Most of these people will never have seen the fights before. We're going to wipe a time or two... And these petulent people don't have the decency to leave the raid. Instead, they mysteriously disconnect immediately after the first wipe while everyone else is running back. I'll never understand that... But I digress... My point was that I'd never completed Magtheridon's Lair and now I was being asked to main tank it.
I also convinced his holiness, Pater, to join us as one of the five healers. He ended up dying on the first two trash pulls. Whoops... Good thing there are only 4 pulls total.
The first attempt was a pretty quick wipe while the clickers got things figured out. Then we had a good attempt. Then a huntard pulled early on the third attempt... That one ended pretty quickly... Although we did down the adds and get Mag to about 80%. We were having a little trouble timing the clicking of the cubes because Deadly Boss Mods seems to be a little off so a decision was made to pretty much eat the first blast wave to make sure we interrupt the majority of them.
By now it's getting close to midnight. Two people (which was strangely low... weird... No one was bailing on a PuG...) had to leave - including the person who formed the raid originally... An off tank who didn't have vent. We replaced them and made another attempt. By now we had 6 paladins... 3 tanks and 3 healers... I'm serious. We had EVERY pally buff.
I was tanking the third add and the boss. On the fourth attempt, a hunter died during the first two adds. After my add went down, I had a couple of seconds between my add going down and Magtheridon releasing so I battle rezzed the hunter. Normally, I wouldn't rez a non-tank/non-healer but I was the only druid and I was the main tank so I wouldn't have a chance to use it later.
This time felt different. The clicking was going well. Yeah... We took one blast wave but _only_ one. It was going well... But at 60% one of the clickers - a paladin healer - went down. But we communicated it and someone else took over their cube. We got to the cave-ins at 30%. The raid was weakened. A couple of people died. We lost Pater and another clicker. But we adjusted...
At about 8% everyone was OOM. There were no heals to be had and our casters weren't doing any damage any more. I got down to 4k health... It was looking bad. I've used my frenzied regeneration and my potion macro - so I had about 20 seconds left before I could use it again.
And then... Miracle! I got hit with a 15056 heal. A paladin hit me with a clutch lay on hands... Probably a tank from the size of it. We're back in it!!! Then another lay on hands... And another!!! We had 6 paladins in the raid and 5 were still up and they were chaining their one hour cooldown, instant cast, drains all their mana heals to get this done... 3%... Healers are regenerating a little mana. Heals are trickling in. 1%... Come on... Come on...
And... Finally... He was down. At the end, only about 14 people were still standing. I was below 30% health (that's still 6k with raid buffs though). All of the healers were under 500 mana. It was an absolutely epic fight. I'm sure that it was a first kill for 20 people in the raid so to have _that_ fight being your first... That's a fun memory. People were very excited.
We rezzed the dead (including Pater twice... Who managed to stand in a fire after he was rezzed). Loot was given out. Pater even got the 20 slot bag. He seemed happy. But not happy as I was...
I first went into Karazhan in October of last year... And that was on my paladin. Hiahotah didn't go into Karazhan until Arena season 3 started (because our then main tank repecced Boomkin) so I had to take over tanking... Which, incidentally, was when we really started having success in Karazhan...
But to get into Karazhan, we had to run Shadow Lab, Steam Vault, Arcatraz and Black Morass. It took us months to get to a point where we could down Shade of Aran and loot his book so we could move on in the quest line to get the urn to summon Nightbane. We did a heroic Shattered Halls without a paladin tank, without any CC and a paladin who had 27 point in prot healing because that was who was on. Then we did heroic Sethekk for someone's epic flight form quest. I'd already done mine, but I tanked it so I could do this quest and be able to summon Nightbane.
Then came the PuGs... Somewhere along the line - maybe in August of last year, I'd done the Cipher of Damnation quest line - including the 5 man group quest at the end - which unlocked the heroic dungeon "Trial of the Naaru" quest lines. We'd done Shattered Halls as a guild but that still left Steam Vault, Arcatraz and Shadow Labyrinth.
We tried heroic Steam Vault one day but couldn't finish because we had two healers and couldn't down the tanks on the last boss fast enough. I ended up helping a PuG once for that one. They skipped a lot of mobs by going along the right wall of the first area... But that led to a few wipes because you had to be careful about where you fought and where you got feared.
I did a PuG heroic Arcatraz. I remember that one going pretty well. For Shadow Lab, there was one day when a group was looking for a tank for one of the heroic Tempest Keep instances. But I only had Shadow Lab left for the Trial of the Naaru lines... They wanted to do a heroic and there were no other tanks on so they agreed to do Shadow Labyrinth. We wiped quite a bit to start. People went AFK for 5-10 minutes at a time. But... People stuck around and we found a rhythm. The priest didn't quite get that he had to be in the circle for the Murmur fight on heroic. So we wiped a couple of times. We actually got lucky and downed him on the second attempt - even though the priest hadn't learned.
All of this... Plus countless hours to get gear (including about 8 hours single pulling Mobs in Steam Vault to get my Earthwarden)... Numerous runs through Karazhan for badges... Culminated in this:
Hiahotah, Champion of the Naaru... I haven't been this excited about a title since Gifteye got to Lt. Commander. I've been pecking away at this for a year now. I've endured horrible, horrible PuGs (I've also met a few people who aren't horrible). Yeah... They nerfed Magtheridon... But I'm still ecstatic. Hell... I'm writing about it on a Sunday morning instead of doing dailies.
Plus... Now I don't feel like I should go for the "exalted with all battleground factions" title... At least... Not with Hiahotah...
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Tarren Mill
I'd played almost exclusively Alliance until my guild broke up 2 months into Burning Crusade. I'd gotten a taste for doing instances and raiding so I wasn't going to go back to just doing the solo content and PvP by myself (I was as surprised as anyone to find out how social a game World of Warcraft is. It's not nearly as sad as I thought it would be) but I didn't want to start over with a new guild or PuG instances. I decided to pick up my horde character and level him to 70 so I could play with people I knew.
That was a year and a half ago. From time to time, people in my horde guild complained about the mean old Alliance who ganked them once or twice. I suggested in no uncertain terms that they level an Alliance toon to max level on a PvP server and get back to me. Oh man... Did that ever start a flame war... And the lynchpin of their argument was ALWAYS Tarren Mill. Tarren Mill this. Tarren Mill that. I would tell them that if they didn't like it, they could go somewhere else. Hell... There were still active quest I could pick up in the Barrens (horde territory) when I ran through there at 29. There were level 28 mobs there. If you didn't want to be ganked, you could go all the way to 30-31 without leaving a safe zone or going into an instance. It might take a little longer because you'd be grinding mobs instead of questing but it could be done.
It's not quite that simple on the Alliance side. The highest level mob I can think of in an Alliance territory is at most a level 18 or 19. There might be the odd level 20 or 21 out there but, for the most part, once you hit your 20's, you're out in contested territory. The first time I was ganked was at level 19 in Redridge Mountains. A level 20 rogue was patroling the road out of town to the south... Just camping lowbies and getting his jollies out. He was there for hours until a bunch of people banded together and started camping him.
That, at least, was plausible. However, it was not uncommon to see a raid of 6 or 7 level 60's one shotting lowbies from the roof of the inn there. And then there were the near daily raids on Darkshire - also frequently with people ganking lowbies from a roof. And the roving gank squads in Stranglethorn Vale (which I came to call Ganklethorn). Raids on Southshore. About 2 out of every 5 horde I saw jumped me all the way up to 60. The Netherwind Regalia was, at the time, the WoW equivalent of red markings on a snake... But even then, I still got jumped from time to time. Mostly I blinked or sheeped and ran away (a skill that came in very handy in Warsong Gulch) but after I started getting crazy gear I got a little bolder.
Don't get me wrong, the Alliance was guilty of this to a certain extent (hell... I have over 21k HKs on my Alliance mage and a good solid 300-500 of those came outside of battlegrounds (what can I say... Crucify would sometimes delay raids if there were horde between Cenarion Hold and Ahn'Qiraj)) but it never seemed like it was as mean or as organized. It _seems_ (and this may not be the case, but that's certainly how it appears) that the horde attracts a certain type who identifies with the evil/darker side and they take it seriously. When I started making my first passes through Ganklethorn on the horde side, you'd see it in general chat: "Let's kill/rape/murder these fuckers/assholes/pussies" (Hell... People in my guild have said as much in guild chat) or "Let's form a raid on Darkshire" were things you'd see almost daily. People frequently come into a zone and ask in general "Any Alliance around?".... OK... Not 'Alliance'. They call them 'allies'. It seems derogative when they say it. These were things I've never seen once on the Alliance side. Maybe it's the culture of the servers I'm on and a sample size of two isn't large enough but the general rule is: That nice Alliance character is going to leave you alone or even help you if you get in trouble. That horde is going to kill you as soon as you pull more than one mob or you let your health or mana drop below 50%. Count on it.
I've actually bailed a horde who made an ugly three pull out and gotten myself in trouble and had them kill me because I was vulnerable.
Over the last year and a half, I've leveled 3 toons to 70 and one to 50. The level 50 has been ganked a total of maybe 5 times. These four characters (including a mage) have been attacked fewer times total than my Alliance mage was ganked sucessfully in just over a year. They've never been camped and they've only run into 4 or 5 raids on horde outposts - most of which were easily broken up by a single feral druid.
With the coming of WotLK, there's no real point on working on my horde 70's. At best, they'll get incremental upgrades for several hours of work. So I've been working on my Alliance mage a little. Mostly grinding his SSO rep to exalted for the neck piece. In three days on Isle of Quel'Danas, I've been ganked 5 or 6 times and people have made another 10 or so attempts. I've been ganked by a warlock, a shadow priest, a rogue and a hunter. I've been camped by a shadow priest and a hunter... Which is one thing... But...
The hunter was a total asshat about it. I mean... You can usually tell from the names. Anyone with blood, death, kill or the like (also anyone with a name that replaces and 'er' with 'a' like 'playa' or 'killa') is going to be an asshat. In this case, the huntard's name was Hulkamania. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that this guy was looking for a fight... But one he already knew the outcome of. So let's run through the sequence:
1) I pull a warlock and his imp right next to the "second" quest hut in IoQD. Huntard shoots me in the back (as is their way) and kills me.
2) I run back to my corpse and wait for the huntard to get bored, mount up and ride away far enough away that I could rez and get back to "relative" safety.
3) I rez. Run to safety. Huntard shoots me and continues doing so as I run around the building.
4) Huntard gets killed by guards.
5) I pick a slightly different location and start to pull again. Huntard comes back and shoots me in the back... Again.
6) But this time I get away... And get back to the guards again.
7) I sit down in the doorway to the second quest hut and eat and drink while surrounded by about 8 guards.
8) Huntard finds me and sits outside the doorway on his mount waiting for me to come out.
9) I sit there.
10) Huntard starts saying something in /say. I assume it's insulting. I assume it's something along the lines of "come out and fight" when he really means "come out and let me shoot you in the back again because you're an undergeared mage and I haven't gotten enough jollies off of you yet".
11) I sit there.
12) Huntard does a /spit
13) I sit there.
14) Huntard says a bunch more things.
15) I sit there.
16) Huntard rides off.
17) Huntard rides back 12 seconds later like, somehow, I was fooled by him riding off.
18) I sit there.
After about 3 more minutes he finally runs off. Time out of my day... Eh... I had left work at 10:30 because I wasn't feeling well, so this was bonus time and there was good stuff on the TV so nothing really. But it was 10 minutes when I wasn't plowing through dailies. So I did the two bombing quests because I'd be safe for a few minutes and he'd have found a new victim.
But it does make me wonder what is wrong with his medula oblongata that he'd spend 10 minutes trying to grief me and then act all mad at _me_ when I wouldn't grant him the satisfaction. Is he a bully? Was he bullied in school so he gets his ya-yas out by picking on people in a digital world? Does he just have a small epeen in real life?
Don't get me wrong... I ganked people before. Those who really deserved it by griefing me (or others) multiple times were camped. There was one time when a hunter ganked my mage a couple of times and when I couldn't find him again, I killed everything that moved in the Arathi Highlands - I'm talking players and, well, pretty much all of Refuge Point (I was pissed... He must have /spit on my corpse. I have no patience for that kind of behavior) in an effort to call him out. But I have never, ever once in my life gotten pissed at someone who had done nothing to me other than deny me a chance to gank them a second time.
But my point... My point... There _was_ a point, right? Oh yeah. Yes. Tarren Mill can be bad. Boo. Hoo. At least the horde can avoid Tarren Mill (or... Just go there on weekend mornings or early in the evening before it gets bad. The Alliance can't avoid... Umm... Pretty much everything. You just have to know that there's an undead rogue, a hunter or a warlock out there somewhere just waiting for you to pull three mobs at half health. So... Stop whining about Tarren Mill until you've seen how the other half lives and can honestly say it's not ten times worse. Seriously... I'll wait.
That was a year and a half ago. From time to time, people in my horde guild complained about the mean old Alliance who ganked them once or twice. I suggested in no uncertain terms that they level an Alliance toon to max level on a PvP server and get back to me. Oh man... Did that ever start a flame war... And the lynchpin of their argument was ALWAYS Tarren Mill. Tarren Mill this. Tarren Mill that. I would tell them that if they didn't like it, they could go somewhere else. Hell... There were still active quest I could pick up in the Barrens (horde territory) when I ran through there at 29. There were level 28 mobs there. If you didn't want to be ganked, you could go all the way to 30-31 without leaving a safe zone or going into an instance. It might take a little longer because you'd be grinding mobs instead of questing but it could be done.
It's not quite that simple on the Alliance side. The highest level mob I can think of in an Alliance territory is at most a level 18 or 19. There might be the odd level 20 or 21 out there but, for the most part, once you hit your 20's, you're out in contested territory. The first time I was ganked was at level 19 in Redridge Mountains. A level 20 rogue was patroling the road out of town to the south... Just camping lowbies and getting his jollies out. He was there for hours until a bunch of people banded together and started camping him.
That, at least, was plausible. However, it was not uncommon to see a raid of 6 or 7 level 60's one shotting lowbies from the roof of the inn there. And then there were the near daily raids on Darkshire - also frequently with people ganking lowbies from a roof. And the roving gank squads in Stranglethorn Vale (which I came to call Ganklethorn). Raids on Southshore. About 2 out of every 5 horde I saw jumped me all the way up to 60. The Netherwind Regalia was, at the time, the WoW equivalent of red markings on a snake... But even then, I still got jumped from time to time. Mostly I blinked or sheeped and ran away (a skill that came in very handy in Warsong Gulch) but after I started getting crazy gear I got a little bolder.
Don't get me wrong, the Alliance was guilty of this to a certain extent (hell... I have over 21k HKs on my Alliance mage and a good solid 300-500 of those came outside of battlegrounds (what can I say... Crucify would sometimes delay raids if there were horde between Cenarion Hold and Ahn'Qiraj)) but it never seemed like it was as mean or as organized. It _seems_ (and this may not be the case, but that's certainly how it appears) that the horde attracts a certain type who identifies with the evil/darker side and they take it seriously. When I started making my first passes through Ganklethorn on the horde side, you'd see it in general chat: "Let's kill/rape/murder these fuckers/assholes/pussies" (Hell... People in my guild have said as much in guild chat) or "Let's form a raid on Darkshire" were things you'd see almost daily. People frequently come into a zone and ask in general "Any Alliance around?".... OK... Not 'Alliance'. They call them 'allies'. It seems derogative when they say it. These were things I've never seen once on the Alliance side. Maybe it's the culture of the servers I'm on and a sample size of two isn't large enough but the general rule is: That nice Alliance character is going to leave you alone or even help you if you get in trouble. That horde is going to kill you as soon as you pull more than one mob or you let your health or mana drop below 50%. Count on it.
I've actually bailed a horde who made an ugly three pull out and gotten myself in trouble and had them kill me because I was vulnerable.
Over the last year and a half, I've leveled 3 toons to 70 and one to 50. The level 50 has been ganked a total of maybe 5 times. These four characters (including a mage) have been attacked fewer times total than my Alliance mage was ganked sucessfully in just over a year. They've never been camped and they've only run into 4 or 5 raids on horde outposts - most of which were easily broken up by a single feral druid.
With the coming of WotLK, there's no real point on working on my horde 70's. At best, they'll get incremental upgrades for several hours of work. So I've been working on my Alliance mage a little. Mostly grinding his SSO rep to exalted for the neck piece. In three days on Isle of Quel'Danas, I've been ganked 5 or 6 times and people have made another 10 or so attempts. I've been ganked by a warlock, a shadow priest, a rogue and a hunter. I've been camped by a shadow priest and a hunter... Which is one thing... But...
The hunter was a total asshat about it. I mean... You can usually tell from the names. Anyone with blood, death, kill or the like (also anyone with a name that replaces and 'er' with 'a' like 'playa' or 'killa') is going to be an asshat. In this case, the huntard's name was Hulkamania. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that this guy was looking for a fight... But one he already knew the outcome of. So let's run through the sequence:
1) I pull a warlock and his imp right next to the "second" quest hut in IoQD. Huntard shoots me in the back (as is their way) and kills me.
2) I run back to my corpse and wait for the huntard to get bored, mount up and ride away far enough away that I could rez and get back to "relative" safety.
3) I rez. Run to safety. Huntard shoots me and continues doing so as I run around the building.
4) Huntard gets killed by guards.
5) I pick a slightly different location and start to pull again. Huntard comes back and shoots me in the back... Again.
6) But this time I get away... And get back to the guards again.
7) I sit down in the doorway to the second quest hut and eat and drink while surrounded by about 8 guards.
8) Huntard finds me and sits outside the doorway on his mount waiting for me to come out.
9) I sit there.
10) Huntard starts saying something in /say. I assume it's insulting. I assume it's something along the lines of "come out and fight" when he really means "come out and let me shoot you in the back again because you're an undergeared mage and I haven't gotten enough jollies off of you yet".
11) I sit there.
12) Huntard does a /spit
13) I sit there.
14) Huntard says a bunch more things.
15) I sit there.
16) Huntard rides off.
17) Huntard rides back 12 seconds later like, somehow, I was fooled by him riding off.
18) I sit there.
After about 3 more minutes he finally runs off. Time out of my day... Eh... I had left work at 10:30 because I wasn't feeling well, so this was bonus time and there was good stuff on the TV so nothing really. But it was 10 minutes when I wasn't plowing through dailies. So I did the two bombing quests because I'd be safe for a few minutes and he'd have found a new victim.
But it does make me wonder what is wrong with his medula oblongata that he'd spend 10 minutes trying to grief me and then act all mad at _me_ when I wouldn't grant him the satisfaction. Is he a bully? Was he bullied in school so he gets his ya-yas out by picking on people in a digital world? Does he just have a small epeen in real life?
Don't get me wrong... I ganked people before. Those who really deserved it by griefing me (or others) multiple times were camped. There was one time when a hunter ganked my mage a couple of times and when I couldn't find him again, I killed everything that moved in the Arathi Highlands - I'm talking players and, well, pretty much all of Refuge Point (I was pissed... He must have /spit on my corpse. I have no patience for that kind of behavior) in an effort to call him out. But I have never, ever once in my life gotten pissed at someone who had done nothing to me other than deny me a chance to gank them a second time.
But my point... My point... There _was_ a point, right? Oh yeah. Yes. Tarren Mill can be bad. Boo. Hoo. At least the horde can avoid Tarren Mill (or... Just go there on weekend mornings or early in the evening before it gets bad. The Alliance can't avoid... Umm... Pretty much everything. You just have to know that there's an undead rogue, a hunter or a warlock out there somewhere just waiting for you to pull three mobs at half health. So... Stop whining about Tarren Mill until you've seen how the other half lives and can honestly say it's not ten times worse. Seriously... I'll wait.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Level 1 N00b
The first... The absolute very first character I ever rolled on the day I installed the game over two and a half years ago was a troll hunter. I don't remember what server it was on or what his name was but I have a distinct recollection of shooting stuff with a bow. I had no idea about mob levels were. I had no idea that the mob text color was significant. I had no idea about being PvP flagged. I was a level 1 n00b.
I did a few quests with him and started poking around and I could kill pretty much everything. I still wasn't quite sure what was going on. Sometimes I could shoot stuff with my bow and sometimes I couldn't. But I was getting along.
One of the quests sent me to the southern end of starting troll/orc zone. I found something called "The Hidden Path". Which took me out over a bay... With a boat. I don't know if I fell in or climbed down but I found myself swimming along the bottom and investigating a sunken boat. And then there was a dock. There was some stuff that I could shoot so I shot it and boy howdy did it kill me. Again and again. I finally couldn't even move out of the water. I got so frustrated I just deleted the character (that and I didn't really like the play style and I didn't like the starting area one bit. It was sandy and boring).
Last night I had to turn in a quest in the second quest hub and I thought about that character. I explored a little and found the Hidden Path and looked out over the ocean on the other side. It turns out that area I had found was Booty Bay. I'd probably been shooting the neutral dock guards.
I've done a lot of things in this game: I've leveled 5 characters to 70, raided Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ40, Naxx, Karazhan, Gruul's Lair and dipped my foot into Zul'Aman, I got to rank 10 in the old PvP ranking system AND held down a full time job AND trained for triathlon. I've tanked. I've healed. I've done ranged damage. There hasn't been a calendar day in the last 2.5 years that I haven't logged on for at least 5 minutes... But I almost packed it away on that first day because it was too confusing.
But here's the thing... That wasn't the last time I felt like a complete and total noob. I didn't use fireblast until I was about level 37 because it did less damage than other fire spells I had. Then I was questing with another mage and he was walloping the mobs with "something" but I couldn't see him casting it. That was the day I learned about instant cast spells. Then there was the time I fell for a hunter's feign death. It wasn't the last time but none of the times since have been even close to how noobish I felt when I thought I'd killed him and he shot me in the back when I engaged another mob. And then one day, I found the auction house... This list of noobish things I've done goes on and on and on.
Fast forward to... This morning and I was going to cook some fish on the bonfire by the Consortium guys who give out the daily dungeon quests. I have been holding onto a heroic quest so I went to check what the daily quest was... The daily quest was for Arcatraz to kill some of the Sentinels... Now I pass those guys a few times a day and I had never noticed that not only do the images in the projectors next to the quest givers change - but they change to the quest mobs they want you to go after.
N00b.
I did a few quests with him and started poking around and I could kill pretty much everything. I still wasn't quite sure what was going on. Sometimes I could shoot stuff with my bow and sometimes I couldn't. But I was getting along.
One of the quests sent me to the southern end of starting troll/orc zone. I found something called "The Hidden Path". Which took me out over a bay... With a boat. I don't know if I fell in or climbed down but I found myself swimming along the bottom and investigating a sunken boat. And then there was a dock. There was some stuff that I could shoot so I shot it and boy howdy did it kill me. Again and again. I finally couldn't even move out of the water. I got so frustrated I just deleted the character (that and I didn't really like the play style and I didn't like the starting area one bit. It was sandy and boring).
Last night I had to turn in a quest in the second quest hub and I thought about that character. I explored a little and found the Hidden Path and looked out over the ocean on the other side. It turns out that area I had found was Booty Bay. I'd probably been shooting the neutral dock guards.
I've done a lot of things in this game: I've leveled 5 characters to 70, raided Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ40, Naxx, Karazhan, Gruul's Lair and dipped my foot into Zul'Aman, I got to rank 10 in the old PvP ranking system AND held down a full time job AND trained for triathlon. I've tanked. I've healed. I've done ranged damage. There hasn't been a calendar day in the last 2.5 years that I haven't logged on for at least 5 minutes... But I almost packed it away on that first day because it was too confusing.
But here's the thing... That wasn't the last time I felt like a complete and total noob. I didn't use fireblast until I was about level 37 because it did less damage than other fire spells I had. Then I was questing with another mage and he was walloping the mobs with "something" but I couldn't see him casting it. That was the day I learned about instant cast spells. Then there was the time I fell for a hunter's feign death. It wasn't the last time but none of the times since have been even close to how noobish I felt when I thought I'd killed him and he shot me in the back when I engaged another mob. And then one day, I found the auction house... This list of noobish things I've done goes on and on and on.
Fast forward to... This morning and I was going to cook some fish on the bonfire by the Consortium guys who give out the daily dungeon quests. I have been holding onto a heroic quest so I went to check what the daily quest was... The daily quest was for Arcatraz to kill some of the Sentinels... Now I pass those guys a few times a day and I had never noticed that not only do the images in the projectors next to the quest givers change - but they change to the quest mobs they want you to go after.
N00b.
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