While digging through my screen shots this morning from my favorite add on Multishot I found the below achievement that I hadn't realized that I had gotten.

Ready to Raid? Really, cause I certainly don't feel it. The achievement is gotten from not getting hit by the swirly fire things during the Glubtok battle in Heroic Deadmines. Some developer at WoW seems to have made a play on the “don't stand in the crap” mantra of raiders out there everywhere. In fact lately I have actually had to yell at people to stand in the crap on the floor when using effloresence. I guess that is merely another of Blizzard's sick jokes. I can see it now “Hey guys, for years now we have been hearing 'Stay out of the shit on the floor'. Let's give all of the healers a shit on the floor to confuse and frustrate!” This was very quickly followed by “Yeah Bob, good idea!” The Champagne was passed around and there was much slapping of Bob on the back as he laughed maniacally.

I digress. My real point here is how you determine that you are ready to raid. I know WoW gives us ilevel to make that determination and the lovers of Gearscore are out there too. I think it's more than that, and I'm not going to put out the standard “experience over gear” conversation. That's annoying and isn't helpful to anyone, particularly idiots like me who have some gear, but no experience in Cataclysm raids. After running a heroic Throne of Tides last night and healing it without issue, I begin to think that maybe it can be done, but I know that 1 Heroic does not make a raider. Maybe If I can pull off healing a Heroic Stonecore then I know I'm ready to raid.

How do others decide they are ready to raid. From an argument that went on in front of me the other night, I don't even think the leadership of GIP has a good way of determining whether or not someone is ready to raid. That friends and neighbors is a story for another day, once a few things happen, including tempers cool and I decide if GIP is the place to stay.

Healing Heroics as a Tree

I've been trying to heal heroics lately on Paci in my spare time. Interestingly, I find that they seem to consistently fall into one of a couple of different experiences. Either I have am able to do it, and do it pretty well, and other times I can't seem to do it and either get frustrated and leave, or get kicked out. Reading other blogs, talking to other people, and just sort of ruminating I find that I am pretty much alone in this aspect. Either you can do it, or you can't.

To try to figure out why I am bouncing back and forth I spent some time in the land of Elitist Jerks Druid forum. I've read their resto guide along with a number of post Q&A's. Gear: Check, got it. Gems: Check, got it. Spells: Check, got it. Enchants: Check, got it, though they could use some work. I've never really thought that enchants will be the game changer that goes from making things hard to easy, but it is an interesting thought that I will need to explore further at some point.

Also, I took some time to review the different instances to see if there was anything I was missing in the way of mechanics. Do certain bosses mess me up? Am I standing in the stupid? Is there something I can do that will make it all go away? Nothing immediately pops out there, but it doesn't hurt to do some research now and again. Also it's kind of need to see how people do different things. I have seen in the past raid videos and I think it might be nice to actually get similar for heroics.

Interestingly, thus far I have not found the "magic bullet" that will help me turn the corner on healing, so for now my search continues.

And I thought Leveling was hard

Someone once told me that WoW is 2 games (at least in 1). The first game is the leveling from 1 to 80. This we all know is a mixture of quests, instances, grinding, what have you. I have done this successfully twice now. I did it first by leveling a character to 55, then took Michelinea to 80. Then went on and did other things with her in "Game 2".

After a while I got bored with that and seriously began working on my Alt Toon 1. Paci the stupendous (she's the Night Elf in the banner above). Over time I have slowly but surely gotten her to 80 through a series of fits and starts. Now she is 80 too, which led me into my second foray into Game 2.

Now, when Mich made 80, I didn't know what I was doing, so I really botched up and kicked around working on getting myself going Game 2. Game 2 is really the gearing up of your fresh level 80 out of the mass of random junk gear that you have acquired as you leveled, and begin getting yourself the EPIC gear that comes next making you one of the cool kids in whatever you decide you want to do now that you are 80. Me, I like doing PVE type stuff, so that is where I have focused my efforts both time, any PVP gear that I've picked up along the way has been pure coincidental.

Back when I was doing it with Mich, I had no idea what I was doing to start with, that coupled with the fact that it was much harder to do it back then it took me a very long time to get "epic" gear. I spent months and months attempting to get gear and floundering all over the place.

With the advent of the LFG and LFR tools in their current iteration it is significantly easier to get gear, particularly now where everyone and their sister is so full of gear that they just are willing to let a new 80 need on just about anything that they want. Add to that the fact that you can just queue heroics over and over for triumph badges, and you have a recipe to near immediate Tier 9 gear.

It has taken me to date less than 2 weeks of fooling around to have 3 of my 4 piece bonus in Tier 9. Add to that several purple drops randomly in Heroics and poof, I'm up over 3300 Gear Score. I know that 3300 seems low, I mean Mich is up over 5700 as of last check, but I think it proves that it can be done. New players coming up through the ranks, take heart, your gear will come to you, older players will help you, and keep your chin up when you get that random tool who feels that he should berate you for being new. Put him on /ignore and go on with your life, you too will soon be trying to kill the Lich King and joining the ranks of the uber leet.

Heroics, Have we come so far

So recently I was in a random heroic with a couple of guild mates. We were all trying to get our Frost Emblems for the day so it didn't really matter to us what we got. Now, as a bit of background, of the DPS (which was the three guild members) I was the lowest GS with 5104. I was also the newest to WoW, and the least experienced in general though I have been playing and doing heroics for well over a year. The other two folks I see doing ICC runs all the time, and when I glanced at their gear I could only drool at the amount of 264 and 277 stuff they were wearing. It makes my 232 and 254 stuff look sad.

Anyway, we didn't get one of the new WotLK heroics, we got Gundrak. A quick buff up and we were on our way. The tank began by taking a few seconds to mark the first mob to attack with a Skull. No big deal I thought and for the first couple I tried to kill that one first, but unfortunately I would get there just in time for it to die. The one time that I got there first I three-shot the skull and happily moved on to whatever monster was closest to me, never thinking anything of it.

After a few pulls in party the tank made a comment that took me at least by surprise. I am taking the time to marking mobs, DPS please take the time to kill them first. Wow. Umm, I thought we were. One of the other DPS made the comment quickly after this stating that the things were dying too quickly for him to hit the skull first. Anyway, I can understand why the tank wants us to kill what he says first, I suspect that he probably comes from a group of players not quite at the level of experience/gear that we are used to. Looking at his gear, I felt somewhat affirmed in my feeling. First his GS just barely broke 4100, and looking at it, the gear mostly comes from heroics, no raids or tier gear.

This got me to thinking, have some of us gone too far. With the obvious exception of the WotLK heroics (most notably the Halls of Reflection) just about every person I play with is hugely over geared and over experienced for the instances. Things that I have seen in other MMO's don't really apply right now.

As an example of things that don't apply. I don't think I've seen a Mage sheep a mob, a priest shackle a mob, a hunter trap a mob in a heroic in just about forever. The general process for heroics for me, and likely many others is tank grabs aggro in one of a couple of ways (run in the middle of a group of mobs, deathgrip a mob to bring him over, or charge a group of mobs, then dropping AOE as fast as possible). Then the DPS haul off with whatever they have at hand. Typically the highest AOEs that they have, or at least things that will cause the most damage. From there we burn everything down as fast as we can paying little to no attention to anything other than the amount of DPS being done. In fact, it's not unusual to see healers dropping Starfall, lightning totems, Smite, Wrath, Holy Nova or whatever offense they have (As a Resto-Druid, I know this is because it is a way for us to stay away from passing out from sheer boredom). This is then a rinse and repeat process with almost no interaction from the players running the instance until the end where the obligatory "ty for the run" party message as you hit the leave group option from the drop down.

Is this the way the game is going? No interaction required, just run and gun as fast as possible for anything other than the most end-game content? I hope not, and in fact I don't think it is. If you look at the WotLK heroics that were added with one of the 3.x patches they require something more than go kill junk fast. Particularly I point to things like the PoS hill of hell that has rows of casters behind rows of melee. Go ahead, next time you are in that instance and try to just burn those suckers down without paying attention to who is killing who/what. I suspect you will find you and your party dead, and probably not pleased with you. It is probably the first time I saw some serious thought and discussion on how to get through a heroic. Similar with other places such as the Halls of Reflection first room. The first few times I did it it with a random heroic group at least one person didn't believe or understand the idea of line of sighting that junk so they don't tool on the group. In fact it seemed to take about two months to really get the hardest of the hard heads to understand and not just wholesale kill us right off the bat.

That being said, it makes me wonder what is really in store for us with the Cataclysm roll out. All these things about class changes, pretty pictures of new zones, etc don't really tell me what the game will really play like. Maybe we will get more of the new WotLK type game, or maybe we will get more of the old WotLK game. either way I look forward to seeing what Blizz has in mind for us next.

All Good at the end...

So, last night ended up being more enjoyable than it started by a long shot. Getting Caralee and Jisao into heroics to help Alydar and myself was a stroke of pure luck. There is nothing like discussing whether or not an asshat is a tiny top hat that you put on your bum, or how Jisao likes it when boss mobs give him oral sex. Don’t ask me, I don’t know how he knows either. I think the best part is the reminder that Alydar and I don’t totally suck, because I was starting to feel that way.

The night started out rough, with Alydar and me queuing into the LFD for some heroics. First one we get Pit of Saron, in my opinion the hardest Heroic out there. In my mind, PoS is truly a POS. In fact it is worst than a POS, it’s a whole shit sandwich forced down your throat while you are held down by four big burly guys who want to shove other things in your mouth when you are done with your sandwich. Get a visual yet? Good.

So we start clearing our way to the first boss with no major problem other than me forgetting that Aly is still new so I can’t open up right away until he establishes the hate. Then we come to the first boss, the guy that throws the rocks? Well yeah. We got our asses handed to us. The craziest thing I’ve ever seen happened, the rock that you are supposed to hide behind when he goes crazy disappeared right at the beginning of the hide your pansy ass phase. Result? Dead Party, Laughing Boss.

Ok, we zone back in to do it again. Same result, though this time the rock was there, we just died. At this point the finger pointing began. While there was no one who was awesome, it seemed that someone decided that Aly couldn’t tank this. No reason, just decided and dropped after telling us so. This leads to mass exodus with Aly and I sitting in PoS wondering WTF…

Next we go to Hall of Stone. OK, another sucktastic Heroic. We were just on a roll last night. It went well and we got through the first boss easy as pie. We drop down and head out to the hall to begin moving forward again. The healer walks out into the middle of the hallway and starts drinking. Well all the mobs turn, see her and think “MMMmmmm Fresh Meat!” and proceed to start gnawing on her face. Being the gallant Death Knight that I am, I jump out and Taunt, Death Grip, DnD them all onto me good and hard because Aly was drinking to fill Mana. Here I made my fatal mistake. I assumed the healer would, you know. Heal me. WRONG! She proceeds to start bitching out Aly while I die, then she dies, then Aly…well you get the idea. End of it all, She drops party, and then her buddy DPS drops party leaving Aly, Me, and a rogue in greens trying to decide what to do next. Instead of queuing to fill the party we drop party and start again.

Culling of Stratholme. Finally! Something I can get behind, and we proceed to beat it to submission with minimal issue other than some carping from the way over-geared super uber cool healer. About half way through Cara came on and I got talking to her, and she threatened to withhold sex from Jisao if he didn’t come help us too.

Not to say that the heroics were perfect from here on out, but it didn’t feel like work. Also, I know I felt better going through with friends who could provide good offering of advice to me as well as Aly.

Note to self: Grip the casters in BEFORE Jisao charges. He gets crabby otherwise.

Life of a PUG Addict

Hello, My name is Michelina, and I'm a PUG-aholic. Yes, yes it is truth. I do everything I can to get in more and more PUGs In fact I've already gotten the Perky Pug on one of my characters, and am working on testing the viability to level a character through the instances entirely if possible. I haven't yet decided if it is going to work well, but it does seem to be fun so far.

We will see how it continues over the next several days.

Life in the Daily/Heroic Grind

So, for my first post actually about WoW, I figure I'll talk about what I did last night. It wasn't really a very interesting night, but I guess it's a good place to begin. I logged on and began working my way through my the daily quests in the Argent tournament. I am working on trying to get through the third of the 5 factions that show up for the Alliance.

Essentially there are 4 daily quests I do on a regular basis there.

The first is to go right outside the tent where the quest giver is and joust NPCs, and beat them. Each time you win, you get a valiant token. Your goal is to get three. OK, now I know a lot of people complain about this and any other quest that requires you to use a "vehicle", saying that they didn't level up X character to 80 so that they could be a horse, or a siege engine or whatever. To all of them, I say Boo on you! I love the idea of doing these kind of different quests, they are a nice change from the typical button rotation that most people master.

I have at this point gotten pattern down for jousting, so it is merely a situation of talk to the guy, hit the 3 key when he runs away, chase him until he stops, mash the 1 key until he runs away, hit the 3 key, chase, mash 1, repeat until victorious (Usually takes about 3 minutes per NPC).

The second quest is to go out into the ice of Northrend and kill 10 "converted heroes". For the lore buffs out there, I think these guys are supposed to be people that Arthas turned to his side when he burned his own ships stranding his army in Northrend. For more info about the lore read "Arthas: Rise of the Lich King" by Christie Golden; Good book. For a fully geared level 80 Death Knight this is really a lesson in how many of these guys can I pull at once more than a challenge. Some days when I'm in a good mood I'll find some random rogue or clothie doing this quest, group them and see if I can take on all 10 at once. As long as I'm not stupid, I can usually pull all 10 and kill all of them without even bringing out my ghoul.

The third quest is similar to the first, except that I have to fly to the base of some gate and kill a bunch of dead things on a horse. This one is the challenge for me because there is a mixture of a lot of different bad things all grouped up here, and I don't really have a good pattern on how to do this one yet. Usually I just flail around randomly until I either a. finish it, usually dying at least a few times in the process. b. get completely frustrated at the multiple deaths, and impending repair bill and dump the quest for the day.

The last quest isn't really a daily, it is one of a cycle of quests that seems to randomize every day. Yesterday it was go to a place, pick some flowers, go to another place, "use" them. That makes essentially the WoW version of the maiden of the lake appear and give you a sword called the fiery brand that you bring back to the quest giver. Easy quest when you know where to go, nothing to kill no one to bother you as long as you don't happen to be tagged as PvP.

After that I did what I enjoy most right now. Joining the Random Dungeon finder. As I waited for the requisite 10 to 15 minutes as a DPS, I pretended to figure out how to continue my inscription leveling beyond where it is stalled. My problem there? I have no idea where to get the ink. At some point, I'll break down and look it up on one of the walkthroughs on the net. Until then, I'll just wander aimlessly in hopes that I find what I'm supposed to do next.

Finally I got my invite into the dungeon. Either Utgarde Keep or Utgarde Pinnacle (I always forget which is which). It was the one with the forge at the beginning, and the battle at the end where the guy is raised so you get to kill him all over again. When we first hopped into the instance, while everyone was going through their pre-run ritual buffing and asking Kings or Wisdom, etc I did my pre-run ritual of mousing over every person's portrait to see what they were playing as a class, what buffs they have, and most interestingly to me their Gear Score.

OK, for the non-WoW initiated, GS is an add on that someone wrote that has caused all kinds of hoopla among players on the forums of just about every WoW site I read. There is a huge battle of whether a person's ability can be boiled down to a single number. I happen to agree with the nay-sayers when they say you can't. What I disagree with though is the idea that it doesn't have some value. Instead of deciding if a player is good because of their GS, I can tell usually tell if they are going to want any of the gear, and also get a bit of a gauge of how fast the instance run is going to be, because usually higher GS = more damage output = faster instance run.

Now this isn't a law or anything, because there are lots of crappy players with high GS (though for the life of me I have no idea how they get past about 4500 GS since to do that you need to be in 10 and 25 man raids typically). There are also lots of great players with low GS, as they are gearing up or whatever.

Anyway, I digressed there for a bit. Looking at the group I was in last night, I was lowest on the list with a 4494 GS, while everyone else was in the 4800+ range. I'm immediately thinking OK, this will likely be a fast run cake walk. Right?

Well yeah, mostly. We didn't start off too well, I think the healer forgot they were healing on the first pull because when the tank engaged the first set of baddies, he didn't do anything. With 4-5 monsters attacking him, he stood his ground as long as he could before succumbing to the pain and dying. Seeing the things scatter and begin attacking the rest of the party (which was a lock, a priest, and a Shammy) I decided I'd better take on the tanking role for at least this battle. I hadn't yet realized that the healer (Shammy) didn't feel the need to heal yet. So I Dark Commanded (taunted, a threat builder), dropped death and decay (AOE damage and threat builder) and POOF! They were all on me. I beat them down along with the priest and warlock, finally knocking down the last one with less than 3k HP left. This was when the Shammy seemed to realize that he was supposed to do something and began healing me. I think his hint was when the tank (a Warrior) said in party chat "Dude, who's healing this instance? The DK cause if so he sucks". For the record, I'm the DK and I have no healing ability.

Anyway, after I was full up again, the warrior was raised, and we all rebuffed, we ran through the rest of the instance without ever stopping, the entire thing took less than 20 minutes even including the time where we had to fight one man down and the raising, buffing, etc. So, other than starting out rocky it worked out.

Moral of this long winded heroic story? To all you players out there who drop party the second anything goes wrong, Don't. you never know what good may come.