So, after a couple of discussions with different members of GIP I decided to take up feral on my druid to offer tanking as well as healing. In general, it just seemed that it would be nice to be able to give a bit more in the way of utility to the guild as well as give me something to do different. Also, a nice added benefit was that I found a hybrid kitty/bear spec that looked pretty promising. This way I could fit any need in any situation. I like the ranged DPS of the Moonkin but the guild as a whole seems heavy on ranged DPS, and I could really just push one of my other toons (Crabby or Orkette) the rest of the way to 85 if I really wanted to have a ranged DPS toon to add to the stable of things I can do.
Anyway, I have taken a couple of shots at tanking so far and I've learned quite a bit. First, as always gear is important. Also, paying attention is important. I took some of the info from Elitest Jerks to make sure that I wasn't doing everything wrong. From there I read some stuff on WoW Insider to get some more details. To be fair I think the Insider author was the same as the EJ author or one read the other because there wasn't much different between the two.
As I have been working up on gearing I've noticed something I haven't been able to figure out yet, and haven't found the answer to anywhere. How in the hell do I pick up groups of mobs and keep hate on all of them. I mark each pull, use Faerie Fire to pull 1 then use other abilities to pick up the second, but after that if there are more than 2, I'm screwed. Without fail, they will run by me and attack someone mushy in the back field somewhere. I turn and run to pick them up only to lose the aggro of at least one if not both of the mobs that I already had aggro on me. This then leads to a wonderful job of running back and forth like a chicken with no head (or is it bear?) trying to keep up hate on everything.
I have tried using Thrash/Swipe to help this but it does not give the huge boost of hate that I think I need to keep the things squarely on me. I have also tried the whole tab method of picking things up, but I am missing something because without fail someone is always getting their face beat in by the time I have tabbed back to whatever mob they were fighting (often the one I have marked appropriately).
It is actually pretty interesting to tank though, as it gives me a new perspective of the game. I grew up in FFXI as a tank, and the world of tanking in WoW is just entirely different. In FFXI I had to worry about keeping one thing focused on me while everyone else was doing their best to pull it off of me. This does me some good when I am doing single mob tanking, but lets face it there just isn't all that much single mob tanking out there.
Suggestions are appreciated to help my fail tanking stop.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Will the last one out....
In the few years that I have been playing World of Warcraft I have been a member of quite a few guilds. In my time I have ended up out of a guild for a number of reasons. I've been merged into another guild, been kicked out because of guild drama that I made the mistake of getting involved in, I've left on my own for what I thought was greener pastures, I've left for actual greener pastures, and I've watched a guild die.
While I was trolling Blog Azeroth for the firs time in a few months the other day I stumbled across the shared topic for this week, and it called out to me. What happened when a guild dies? What do you do?
They say that hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, I find in this case it really is true. At the time I didn't see many of the signs that would have alerted a more observant man than me that not all was well in the world. The first rumbling of the end came months before the true end. The guild had been spending its raid time running twenty-five man Ulduar. Running is a nice way of saying we were killing 1-2 bosses consistently and then wiping over and over. The guild was not well geared, people weren't great listeners, and only a few of us were doing things outside of the raid night to make ourselves better.
A few of the higher end members began running a ten man Trial of Champions on the night prior to our Ulduar run. They were becoming more and more geared while others, like me were falling further and further behind even though we had behind. Comments began to be made about members in the Ulduar run. Some were fair, others not so fair. The guild became more and more split. The split continued to grow as more and more people got tired of being harassed by the "elite ten" as they came to be known. People began to leave the guild for places where they would be more respected, others just stopped logging in. Soon it was hard to fill the Ulduar raid. Tempers flared. More frustration built. The "elite ten" split off and raided more nights, including our original night for Ulduar. The end had come, I just didn't know it.
Then, one day I logged in to a mail from the guild leader to the entire guild, telling us we had twenty - four hours to fnd a new home because the guild was closing. This was the first time I had ever heard of the command /gdisband. I dropped guild immediately and began to look for a new home, but learned a valuables lesson.
From this I learned that respect is the most important part of a guild. It doesn't matter whether you always agree with the other members of a guild. It does matter that you show respect to the people of your guild, and you help them as opposed to attacking those below you. This is a lesson I have taken into every guild I have gone into since, and has helped me to avoid many a guild, and even leave a guild.
Respect, it isn't just a song by Aretha Franklin.
While I was trolling Blog Azeroth for the firs time in a few months the other day I stumbled across the shared topic for this week, and it called out to me. What happened when a guild dies? What do you do?
They say that hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, I find in this case it really is true. At the time I didn't see many of the signs that would have alerted a more observant man than me that not all was well in the world. The first rumbling of the end came months before the true end. The guild had been spending its raid time running twenty-five man Ulduar. Running is a nice way of saying we were killing 1-2 bosses consistently and then wiping over and over. The guild was not well geared, people weren't great listeners, and only a few of us were doing things outside of the raid night to make ourselves better.
A few of the higher end members began running a ten man Trial of Champions on the night prior to our Ulduar run. They were becoming more and more geared while others, like me were falling further and further behind even though we had behind. Comments began to be made about members in the Ulduar run. Some were fair, others not so fair. The guild became more and more split. The split continued to grow as more and more people got tired of being harassed by the "elite ten" as they came to be known. People began to leave the guild for places where they would be more respected, others just stopped logging in. Soon it was hard to fill the Ulduar raid. Tempers flared. More frustration built. The "elite ten" split off and raided more nights, including our original night for Ulduar. The end had come, I just didn't know it.
Then, one day I logged in to a mail from the guild leader to the entire guild, telling us we had twenty - four hours to fnd a new home because the guild was closing. This was the first time I had ever heard of the command /gdisband. I dropped guild immediately and began to look for a new home, but learned a valuables lesson.
From this I learned that respect is the most important part of a guild. It doesn't matter whether you always agree with the other members of a guild. It does matter that you show respect to the people of your guild, and you help them as opposed to attacking those below you. This is a lesson I have taken into every guild I have gone into since, and has helped me to avoid many a guild, and even leave a guild.
Respect, it isn't just a song by Aretha Franklin.
Monday, January 3, 2011
With the coming of a new year
So with 2010 officially over and 2011 just beginning, I think it is time to begin to look forward to what I want to do in the new year. With Cataclysm having been ou for almost a month, I think it is a good place to start.
I, like many others, have already sped through leveling a chracter to 85. I have even begun to gear herup to run heroics and eventually raid. Our guild is looking to be able to attack rais by the end of January. I think its a plausible goal, and I want to make sure I am one of those ready to do it.
With Paci's race to 85, I feel that I probably missed out a lot in the rush, particualarly in the way of quest lines. This isn't to say that I am one of those people who didn't read the quests, but sometimes I find that I don't remember part of the story after I've gone through it. One thing I thing can give the folks at Blizz without fear a doubt is their ability to spin a great story through their quest lines. One example in cataclysm is the Naga quest line in the new aria Vash'jir. With out giving away any spoilers, the game developers have out done themselves on capturing the feel of a good war story. Usually I don't think much of the quest lines that don't have me play the character that I have put my blood, sweat, and tears into, but this time I just didn't mind.
World of Warcraft wasn't the first MMO I played, Prior to WoW I spent my time playing Final Fantasy XI. I can safely say that the quest lines in FFXI were often to disjointed to make sense, or if they were clear, they quickly became so absurd that I didn't want to bother doing them.
On to other things to do in 2011:
1. Bring my professions up to max. This was on my list in 2010, but just never got done.
2. Get in and do some old Raids. I know this is lame to some, but I had a great time plowing through Naxx a bit back, and would like to do some of the others.
3. Work on the blog to bring it up to date. Too much has gotten old, stale, and just out right wrong.
4. Try my hand at a guide. We'll see. I don't know if this will go anywhere, but we will see.
5. Be more consistent with my posting. Again, we shall see.
I, like many others, have already sped through leveling a chracter to 85. I have even begun to gear herup to run heroics and eventually raid. Our guild is looking to be able to attack rais by the end of January. I think its a plausible goal, and I want to make sure I am one of those ready to do it.
With Paci's race to 85, I feel that I probably missed out a lot in the rush, particualarly in the way of quest lines. This isn't to say that I am one of those people who didn't read the quests, but sometimes I find that I don't remember part of the story after I've gone through it. One thing I thing can give the folks at Blizz without fear a doubt is their ability to spin a great story through their quest lines. One example in cataclysm is the Naga quest line in the new aria Vash'jir. With out giving away any spoilers, the game developers have out done themselves on capturing the feel of a good war story. Usually I don't think much of the quest lines that don't have me play the character that I have put my blood, sweat, and tears into, but this time I just didn't mind.
World of Warcraft wasn't the first MMO I played, Prior to WoW I spent my time playing Final Fantasy XI. I can safely say that the quest lines in FFXI were often to disjointed to make sense, or if they were clear, they quickly became so absurd that I didn't want to bother doing them.
On to other things to do in 2011:
1. Bring my professions up to max. This was on my list in 2010, but just never got done.
2. Get in and do some old Raids. I know this is lame to some, but I had a great time plowing through Naxx a bit back, and would like to do some of the others.
3. Work on the blog to bring it up to date. Too much has gotten old, stale, and just out right wrong.
4. Try my hand at a guide. We'll see. I don't know if this will go anywhere, but we will see.
5. Be more consistent with my posting. Again, we shall see.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
And with Cataclysm New Interest is Piqued
So, I sort of petered out for a while there before Cataclysm was released. I still logged on to play, but mostly just farted around. Nothing particularly interesting done, no great conquests, no wins to speak of.
Let's see in no particular, I created a gnome priest to play with, tried out the horde side again, randomly leveled alt toons no one knows about, fooled with ICC, taking a completely unprepared Paci in to heal, and got her 11 of 12 and even saw the LK before he smooshed us like pancakes a few times. Oh, and I found a new guild. To be fair, I didn't find a new guild, it found me. A friend of mine suggested that I try out the guild he was in one day when I was complaining to him about my guild. I got an alt accepted on a whim, and never went back. In fact, I recently brought Michelinea in, though she has taken a back seat as an alt instead of main.
So, for now Paci is my main, healing primarily with a side of boomkin when damage is needed or I am questing. She's 85, and already has an ilevel of 332. I have spent some time in instances, but not a whole lot. I will put together some of my experiences in a future post, though I don't really want to go down the failpug road that I have seen and ranted on in the past. We'll see what comes of it...
Let's see in no particular, I created a gnome priest to play with, tried out the horde side again, randomly leveled alt toons no one knows about, fooled with ICC, taking a completely unprepared Paci in to heal, and got her 11 of 12 and even saw the LK before he smooshed us like pancakes a few times. Oh, and I found a new guild. To be fair, I didn't find a new guild, it found me. A friend of mine suggested that I try out the guild he was in one day when I was complaining to him about my guild. I got an alt accepted on a whim, and never went back. In fact, I recently brought Michelinea in, though she has taken a back seat as an alt instead of main.
So, for now Paci is my main, healing primarily with a side of boomkin when damage is needed or I am questing. She's 85, and already has an ilevel of 332. I have spent some time in instances, but not a whole lot. I will put together some of my experiences in a future post, though I don't really want to go down the failpug road that I have seen and ranted on in the past. We'll see what comes of it...
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
More on Guild Alliances
When last I left you, dear reader, I believe the folks at Soulbound had entered a guild alliance to attempt to complete the 25 man version of the Ice Crown Citadel. Things had gone very well in the combined group’s foray into the despised home of Arthas, the Lich King. Many bosses were downed (all the way through Professor Putricide in fact), loot had been given out, and people generally seemed happy to be moving forward. There was a feeling by me at least, that maybe this would work.
Fast forward, if you will to the next night, Wednesday. I was actually looking forward to going raiding again, which is not something that I have been able to say in a long time. I wanted to beat more bosses in ICC, and maybe get through Sindragosa finally. If people were on their game as they were the previous night, I fully believed and expected that it was going to happen that day.
I logged on at about the same time as I had the prior night, and was immediately picked up for the raid. All was going as was expected. There were a few less people from Soulbound on, but that wasn’t unexpected since several people said that they could not make it to the night’s raid for multiple different reasons.
Coming up on raid start time, I expected that we would start getting members of the other guild coming into the raid, and one or two had trickled in; just not as many as I expected. At some point during the waiting, we heard that we were waiting on a 10 man to finish their attempt at Arthas. So we waited, and waited, and waited. There were spatterings of discussion about the fact that the 10 man was trying a couple of more times because they were getting so close. On our side, we talked about breaking raid and doing dailies, heroics, etc. At about 35 minutes after raid start I was good and thoroughly annoyed. I told myself if in 10 minutes they were not ready to start pulling I was out of there. The 10 minutes went, and I told the RL at the time that I had waited as long as I was willing to, and was going to call it a night. I then proceeded to drop raid.
About 10 minutes later, they began to get mobilized and offered my spot back, but I had already decided to do something else. Turns out it was a good thing. The raid went well I guess, but there was loot drama for one of our more respected thieves. I am glad I was not there also because I guess there was some…disagreement on handling of different things including communication and the like.
They are trying it again this week. I have decided to bow out and let others who are more annoyance accepting take my spot. Personally I am of the opinion, I would rather fail miserably with people in my guild that I happen to care about than succeed with people in another guild. I guess I now have 2 choices, I can pug (which is at least me being completely mercenary about my gear gathering), or give up on my dreams of taking out Arthas. Who knows which way I’ll go.
Fast forward, if you will to the next night, Wednesday. I was actually looking forward to going raiding again, which is not something that I have been able to say in a long time. I wanted to beat more bosses in ICC, and maybe get through Sindragosa finally. If people were on their game as they were the previous night, I fully believed and expected that it was going to happen that day.
I logged on at about the same time as I had the prior night, and was immediately picked up for the raid. All was going as was expected. There were a few less people from Soulbound on, but that wasn’t unexpected since several people said that they could not make it to the night’s raid for multiple different reasons.
Coming up on raid start time, I expected that we would start getting members of the other guild coming into the raid, and one or two had trickled in; just not as many as I expected. At some point during the waiting, we heard that we were waiting on a 10 man to finish their attempt at Arthas. So we waited, and waited, and waited. There were spatterings of discussion about the fact that the 10 man was trying a couple of more times because they were getting so close. On our side, we talked about breaking raid and doing dailies, heroics, etc. At about 35 minutes after raid start I was good and thoroughly annoyed. I told myself if in 10 minutes they were not ready to start pulling I was out of there. The 10 minutes went, and I told the RL at the time that I had waited as long as I was willing to, and was going to call it a night. I then proceeded to drop raid.
About 10 minutes later, they began to get mobilized and offered my spot back, but I had already decided to do something else. Turns out it was a good thing. The raid went well I guess, but there was loot drama for one of our more respected thieves. I am glad I was not there also because I guess there was some…disagreement on handling of different things including communication and the like.
They are trying it again this week. I have decided to bow out and let others who are more annoyance accepting take my spot. Personally I am of the opinion, I would rather fail miserably with people in my guild that I happen to care about than succeed with people in another guild. I guess I now have 2 choices, I can pug (which is at least me being completely mercenary about my gear gathering), or give up on my dreams of taking out Arthas. Who knows which way I’ll go.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
A Guild Alliance to Complete ICC.
So, I’ve been a member of Soulbound on Malygos for a while now. And if you are a reader of my blog, you probably have noticed that it hasn’t always been the best of trips for me. It started out rocky, and on occasion I have had disagreements with the way things are done. In general though, nothing has ever happened that made me so frustrated that I decided it was time to go. Still hasn’t really, though things seem to be taking a bit of a rough turn. I actually have started playing on a different server most of my time because of this, though I really don’t feel it’s my home. I know I’ll go back to Paci and Michelinea, just not necessarily today.
Now, for a while SB like just about every other guild out there that I have heard of or read about has had some trouble filling their 25 man ICC runs. I have to say I completely understand it. There are many days lately where I know its raiding night but I just don’t want to do it. Dying over and over to Sindragosa just is not fun to me anymore. At this point I feel like I’ve been there, done that, and don’t want to do it anymore. Most weeks, I will raid once or twice out of the three scheduled nights as long as I’m not working. Usually it is a matter of I log on at the appropriate time, get invited to the raid, and wait until 15 minutes after the start time before it is called so we can go do something else. Clearly, this is not what many of our harder core members want.
As an attempt to get things moving again, early last week a post went up on our boards that started a bit of a stir. Another guild posted asking if we were still raiding 25s and did we have trouble filling them. Someone answered yes to both questions, which then caused a post to go up on the member forums asking whether the guild officers were thinking about a guild alliance to get through to the end of content. The answer was yes it was being discussed, but currently was in the very earliest stages.
Tuesday rolls around and I log into guild about a half hour before the first pull time for raid and got invited into raid. As has become the pattern, we were about five or six people short of filling the raid. Suddenly around the first pull time, someone mentioned that we were looking at adding the other alliance people to fill the raid. Being the somewhat patient person that I am not, I decided to hang around and see what happened. So after about forty-five minutes of negotiations, several members of the other guild joined our raid, and we went off into ICC, with a fresh run. It went very well! We did significantly more in less time than we had a history of doing in the past when we filled the raid. In general, just about everyone was on their game and things were going well. In fact when we called it, several people stayed around to do the weekly. Something I had not seen done in a long time.
This assuaged some of the fears that I had about this idea of a guild alliance. The other time I had seen it happen, it completely ripped the guild apart. If only the story remains so good.
Now, for a while SB like just about every other guild out there that I have heard of or read about has had some trouble filling their 25 man ICC runs. I have to say I completely understand it. There are many days lately where I know its raiding night but I just don’t want to do it. Dying over and over to Sindragosa just is not fun to me anymore. At this point I feel like I’ve been there, done that, and don’t want to do it anymore. Most weeks, I will raid once or twice out of the three scheduled nights as long as I’m not working. Usually it is a matter of I log on at the appropriate time, get invited to the raid, and wait until 15 minutes after the start time before it is called so we can go do something else. Clearly, this is not what many of our harder core members want.
As an attempt to get things moving again, early last week a post went up on our boards that started a bit of a stir. Another guild posted asking if we were still raiding 25s and did we have trouble filling them. Someone answered yes to both questions, which then caused a post to go up on the member forums asking whether the guild officers were thinking about a guild alliance to get through to the end of content. The answer was yes it was being discussed, but currently was in the very earliest stages.
Tuesday rolls around and I log into guild about a half hour before the first pull time for raid and got invited into raid. As has become the pattern, we were about five or six people short of filling the raid. Suddenly around the first pull time, someone mentioned that we were looking at adding the other alliance people to fill the raid. Being the somewhat patient person that I am not, I decided to hang around and see what happened. So after about forty-five minutes of negotiations, several members of the other guild joined our raid, and we went off into ICC, with a fresh run. It went very well! We did significantly more in less time than we had a history of doing in the past when we filled the raid. In general, just about everyone was on their game and things were going well. In fact when we called it, several people stayed around to do the weekly. Something I had not seen done in a long time.
This assuaged some of the fears that I had about this idea of a guild alliance. The other time I had seen it happen, it completely ripped the guild apart. If only the story remains so good.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
80 Number 2 Woo HOO!
As a few folks on the server can definitely attest, I have had some significant trouble with trying to get Paci up to the 80 level. The run from 1-65 or so was really pretty easy. I had picked Paci as my second character to 80 because I wanted to do something that was really versatile and relevant. Being a Druid, I could play Paci as a tank, a healer, or a DPS.
Since my original main character (Michelinea) is a DPS, I decided to fool around with either the tank or healer route. This also made more sense to me since my entire MMO experience I have been playing as either a tank or healer. This stems from my days playing Final Fantasy XI (FFXI), where I started out as a Paladin (tank) and then later played the White Mage (Healer) for the group of people I played with on a consistent basis.
Thinking that I started as a tank and loved it in FFXI, so I would go that route instead of healer to start. This was awesome during the very early levels (Ragefire, Deadmines, etc), I was an awesome tank, mostly because at that low level you don't need a tank. No one is wimpy enough yet to worry too much about dying as long as everyone is fighting generally the same baddie mob. But then it came. I got to the Sunken Temple or Gnomergan or something. And it happened. I couldn't keep hate, and I needed to. People were dying all around me. People dropped party constantly, the new people kept dying. It was ugly. It was frustrating. It was depressing. Here I was, a guy who prided myself on my tanking ability and here I was failing miserably. Off I went to every website I could find, to read where I was screwing up. I found that for the most part I was doing what the theorycrafters were telling me to do at my level. The problem being that I was too low a level for a lot of the things that were talked about. Few people seemed to try to tank pre-80. Or if they did it, they didn't talk about it. What's the first rule of fight club....
Anyway, since I blew large boulder sized chunks as a tank, I reworked my spec (yes, I did a spec change somewhere between level 30 and 40) and decided to try to heal. *insert choir of angels here* Yes, I healed, and healed, and healed. I was good at it, mostly because it is so easy. I never found myself stressing on whether or not people died, because they rarely did. I went from 30 to 65 without any trouble at all other than the obvious occasional douche who sometimes is in the group trying to make everyone's life miserable. Typically I spent my time ignoring them, first as a person, then if that didn't work as a healer. Its amazing how finding yourself on your back over and over as the rest of the group moves on through the instance works as an attitude changer. If I ran into a particularly ugly douche, I would make them run back. That seemed to be the perfect solution to the people you really want to be rid of.
Yes, after reading that, you have determined I'm an asshat healer. I'm sorry, I try not to be, but if you are rude, obnoxious, or hurtful to the team as a whole or individuals in particular I often take it upon myself to make your life miserable until you a. learn, or b. leave me and the other people around alone. Obviously, if you don't like it, you can leave, and some did. Yes, it sometimes backfired on me, but I don't care that much. I am not perfect, I screwed up too, and I was a jerk too. On those occasions I needed attitude adjustments, and I got them. Still do get them in fact.
Since my original main character (Michelinea) is a DPS, I decided to fool around with either the tank or healer route. This also made more sense to me since my entire MMO experience I have been playing as either a tank or healer. This stems from my days playing Final Fantasy XI (FFXI), where I started out as a Paladin (tank) and then later played the White Mage (Healer) for the group of people I played with on a consistent basis.
Thinking that I started as a tank and loved it in FFXI, so I would go that route instead of healer to start. This was awesome during the very early levels (Ragefire, Deadmines, etc), I was an awesome tank, mostly because at that low level you don't need a tank. No one is wimpy enough yet to worry too much about dying as long as everyone is fighting generally the same baddie mob. But then it came. I got to the Sunken Temple or Gnomergan or something. And it happened. I couldn't keep hate, and I needed to. People were dying all around me. People dropped party constantly, the new people kept dying. It was ugly. It was frustrating. It was depressing. Here I was, a guy who prided myself on my tanking ability and here I was failing miserably. Off I went to every website I could find, to read where I was screwing up. I found that for the most part I was doing what the theorycrafters were telling me to do at my level. The problem being that I was too low a level for a lot of the things that were talked about. Few people seemed to try to tank pre-80. Or if they did it, they didn't talk about it. What's the first rule of fight club....
Anyway, since I blew large boulder sized chunks as a tank, I reworked my spec (yes, I did a spec change somewhere between level 30 and 40) and decided to try to heal. *insert choir of angels here* Yes, I healed, and healed, and healed. I was good at it, mostly because it is so easy. I never found myself stressing on whether or not people died, because they rarely did. I went from 30 to 65 without any trouble at all other than the obvious occasional douche who sometimes is in the group trying to make everyone's life miserable. Typically I spent my time ignoring them, first as a person, then if that didn't work as a healer. Its amazing how finding yourself on your back over and over as the rest of the group moves on through the instance works as an attitude changer. If I ran into a particularly ugly douche, I would make them run back. That seemed to be the perfect solution to the people you really want to be rid of.
Yes, after reading that, you have determined I'm an asshat healer. I'm sorry, I try not to be, but if you are rude, obnoxious, or hurtful to the team as a whole or individuals in particular I often take it upon myself to make your life miserable until you a. learn, or b. leave me and the other people around alone. Obviously, if you don't like it, you can leave, and some did. Yes, it sometimes backfired on me, but I don't care that much. I am not perfect, I screwed up too, and I was a jerk too. On those occasions I needed attitude adjustments, and I got them. Still do get them in fact.
Friday, July 16, 2010
The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated
Thank you Mark Twain for so succinctly saying what I was thinking when I started putting together this post.
Yes, I know you dear reader must have been thinking:
"Bring out your dead!" (including Michelinea)
Well, guess what....
I'm not dead yet. I think I'll go for a walk.
Nor am I hoping to be going away any time soon. I am still alive, and playing. I just have been hammered by a lot of work over the last few months. I only hope that I am coming up at the end of it. I had thought it would have ended last month, but it didn't. I hope again now that it is the end of the time of pain.
I have played a little off and on, mostly leveling Paci up. Hopefully a better post will come soon.
Yes, I know you dear reader must have been thinking:
"Bring out your dead!" (including Michelinea)
Well, guess what....
I'm not dead yet. I think I'll go for a walk.
Nor am I hoping to be going away any time soon. I am still alive, and playing. I just have been hammered by a lot of work over the last few months. I only hope that I am coming up at the end of it. I had thought it would have ended last month, but it didn't. I hope again now that it is the end of the time of pain.
I have played a little off and on, mostly leveling Paci up. Hopefully a better post will come soon.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
My 50th Post
OK. So I'm currently writing my 50th Post, and I don't really have any cool thing to fill it up with. *big sad face*
As you may have noticed dear reader, I have not posted in a bit. I thought that reading this today summed it up:
Sorry for lacking posting but I’ve been having sex with a llama.
Work continues to keep me on the road traveling to places significantly more often than I have had to in the past. Considering that travel, it causes a significant lack of WoW time. I have gotten a few random things done here and there when I have a moment or two, but they tend to be small things for the most part...Except!
I got FOR THE ALLIANCE! the other night on what has to be the easiest run of it that I ever have had the pleasure to work with on such an undertaking. As most people can attest, getting 40 or so monkeys together to follow the directions of 1 or 2 people is as likely as...well...beating the odds in Vegas. Maybe a bit more likely than Vegas, but not much.
Anyway, here you go. Proof I'm cooler than....well those of you who haven't done it yet.
Since Flame Leviathan came up as a weekly again for about the millionth time.
Enough for now. See you in game....
As you may have noticed dear reader, I have not posted in a bit. I thought that reading this today summed it up:
Sorry for lacking posting but I’ve been having sex with a llama.
Work continues to keep me on the road traveling to places significantly more often than I have had to in the past. Considering that travel, it causes a significant lack of WoW time. I have gotten a few random things done here and there when I have a moment or two, but they tend to be small things for the most part...Except!
I got FOR THE ALLIANCE! the other night on what has to be the easiest run of it that I ever have had the pleasure to work with on such an undertaking. As most people can attest, getting 40 or so monkeys together to follow the directions of 1 or 2 people is as likely as...well...beating the odds in Vegas. Maybe a bit more likely than Vegas, but not much.
Anyway, here you go. Proof I'm cooler than....well those of you who haven't done it yet.
As you can tell if you play the game, these are in no particular order. The order went: Warchief, Bloodhoof, Dark Lady, then the long trek up to Quel'Thalas. FOR THE ALLIANCE! As soon as we downed the Warchief with 0 deaths (other than the level 40 something we dragged along), I knew we had this in the bag. Thanks to Lilliana and that other guy (sorry forgot your name man) for leading us through it.
What else have I done lately, you ask? Well I finally got:
Enough for now. See you in game....
Monday, May 24, 2010
In which Michelinea speaks of Random Topics
So, I learned a few things recently. Many of them are probably pretty clear to anyone who is smarter than me (which includes about 75% of the known universe, or so I feel some days).
One of the first things I figured out is not to say you are going to post more often and then immediately be asked to travel for work a bunch of times. It really cuts into not only your play time, but your writing time. While I enjoy the challenge that comes along with travel, I certainly would rather be at home. I learned that saying your going to post more often is a lot like the 120 pound man walking into a biker bar looking for a fight, your mouth and body are writing checks you just can't cash.
I also learned that while I like to think I'm ma pretty smart cookie, I really am not that smart. This comes from attempting to get into a VOA run the other night. I saw someone asking for DPS for a run. I figured, what the heck, and let them know I was interested. They responded with the normal question of What's your gear score. For once I was confident that I was OK, and let them know it was 5.1K. To which I was told "Sorry, too low." OK, clearly I'm not nearly as smart as I thought. I figured having ICC gear would over-gear me for such a simple thing as VOA, particularly when I was running it and doing fine in tier 9 (and even lower). Oh well, 2 seconds later another call went out in trade for a VOA run, and I was immediately picked up no questions asked. Smacked it too. While I was out-geared by many, there were others below me too. Guess maybe I know a bit more than I thought.
So, a couple weeks ago I saw the beta-test for the Auction house addition to Wow Armory, and immediately thought how cool that would be, hopped out to see that, yep, my server wasn't included. *alligator tears* Too bad, because it could help in my sales. Last week the thing went out saying that it was open for all servers but I was traveling *long dramatic sigh*. I figured out that it was all servers quite by accident on Friday night. After surfing around it getting the lay of the land I decided I would try posting things. OK, this is easy I thought to myself as I proceeded to post a bunch of different glyphs. Then something happened. Something that proves that I needed to RTFM as opposed to learning by doing. During beta they are allowing only 20 posts a day. Not nearly as cool as I could have hoped. I guess for an additional $3 a month, at some point I will be able to post up to 200 a day. Too bad even that it a limit. I guess they have to put some limit for some reason, so better than nothing right? Not sure I want to pay anything extra a month for it since I don't see it replacing my logging on and just selling, but we'll see.
OK, with Paci, I have gotten to 70, which gets me into the LK instances. I think I've said this before. I also think I've mentioned that it has gotten very hard to heal these instances. I may even have crabbed that healers get blamed for failpugs even if it isn't their fault. Well, last night I proved my point, to myself at least. In 11 attempts, I only had 2 successful runs, and both of those were with the same level 80 tank. I know why too. As a healer, I'm expected to get gear that helps me heal better. As a DPS, I am expected to get gear that helps me hit better. WHY IN GOD'S NAME do people think that they can TANK without getting gear to mitigate damage! I saw all kinds of things as I inspected each of the failtanks I had the displeasure of trying to heal. To be clear, I never dropped party without at least attempting to heal these tanks, even the idiot Paladin who was tanking in a mixture of leather and cloth. Please tanks out there, listen to me. GET GEAR TO TANK!
Now, I understand I'm no tank. I've never picked up a piece of tanking gear for my druid except what fell to me by greed and my paladin is somewhere in the low 20's and not able to keep hate to save my life. Come on people please listen to me. By the time you are level 70+ one would think that you have at least the concept that if the healer is getting hit, and you aren't you screwed up, and it needs to be corrected right away. All you wanna-be tanks out there, a little hint for you, if my rejuv's are pulling hate off of you, you need to stop playing as a tank. You can't do it. Go be a DPS, I'm sure that your sub-par damage will make you the life of many parties.
One of the first things I figured out is not to say you are going to post more often and then immediately be asked to travel for work a bunch of times. It really cuts into not only your play time, but your writing time. While I enjoy the challenge that comes along with travel, I certainly would rather be at home. I learned that saying your going to post more often is a lot like the 120 pound man walking into a biker bar looking for a fight, your mouth and body are writing checks you just can't cash.
I also learned that while I like to think I'm ma pretty smart cookie, I really am not that smart. This comes from attempting to get into a VOA run the other night. I saw someone asking for DPS for a run. I figured, what the heck, and let them know I was interested. They responded with the normal question of What's your gear score. For once I was confident that I was OK, and let them know it was 5.1K. To which I was told "Sorry, too low." OK, clearly I'm not nearly as smart as I thought. I figured having ICC gear would over-gear me for such a simple thing as VOA, particularly when I was running it and doing fine in tier 9 (and even lower). Oh well, 2 seconds later another call went out in trade for a VOA run, and I was immediately picked up no questions asked. Smacked it too. While I was out-geared by many, there were others below me too. Guess maybe I know a bit more than I thought.
So, a couple weeks ago I saw the beta-test for the Auction house addition to Wow Armory, and immediately thought how cool that would be, hopped out to see that, yep, my server wasn't included. *alligator tears* Too bad, because it could help in my sales. Last week the thing went out saying that it was open for all servers but I was traveling *long dramatic sigh*. I figured out that it was all servers quite by accident on Friday night. After surfing around it getting the lay of the land I decided I would try posting things. OK, this is easy I thought to myself as I proceeded to post a bunch of different glyphs. Then something happened. Something that proves that I needed to RTFM as opposed to learning by doing. During beta they are allowing only 20 posts a day. Not nearly as cool as I could have hoped. I guess for an additional $3 a month, at some point I will be able to post up to 200 a day. Too bad even that it a limit. I guess they have to put some limit for some reason, so better than nothing right? Not sure I want to pay anything extra a month for it since I don't see it replacing my logging on and just selling, but we'll see.
OK, with Paci, I have gotten to 70, which gets me into the LK instances. I think I've said this before. I also think I've mentioned that it has gotten very hard to heal these instances. I may even have crabbed that healers get blamed for failpugs even if it isn't their fault. Well, last night I proved my point, to myself at least. In 11 attempts, I only had 2 successful runs, and both of those were with the same level 80 tank. I know why too. As a healer, I'm expected to get gear that helps me heal better. As a DPS, I am expected to get gear that helps me hit better. WHY IN GOD'S NAME do people think that they can TANK without getting gear to mitigate damage! I saw all kinds of things as I inspected each of the failtanks I had the displeasure of trying to heal. To be clear, I never dropped party without at least attempting to heal these tanks, even the idiot Paladin who was tanking in a mixture of leather and cloth. Please tanks out there, listen to me. GET GEAR TO TANK!
Now, I understand I'm no tank. I've never picked up a piece of tanking gear for my druid except what fell to me by greed and my paladin is somewhere in the low 20's and not able to keep hate to save my life. Come on people please listen to me. By the time you are level 70+ one would think that you have at least the concept that if the healer is getting hit, and you aren't you screwed up, and it needs to be corrected right away. All you wanna-be tanks out there, a little hint for you, if my rejuv's are pulling hate off of you, you need to stop playing as a tank. You can't do it. Go be a DPS, I'm sure that your sub-par damage will make you the life of many parties.
Monday, May 17, 2010
When real life interjects itself
So lately I have been traveling quite a bit for work. This makes it hard to get in the play time I might want to. Thankfully I don't have too many obligations either.
Over the last week I have been working on getting frost badges on Mich so I could get my second piece of tier 10 (Oh yes, I also got my first piece of tier 10). I took the body first since it was the highest number of pieces. I also wanted to skip the hands/shoulders on the off chance that some VOA run I get lucky and can pick up the pieces from a random drop. That means that legs will be next, though I also have been drooling over the trinkets in the Frost vendor at Dal.
Also, I have been spending time getting Paci to level 70. I finally did it Saturday night, which is a nice thing as well. I may have mentioned this before, but it has REALLY become a challenge for me now that I am in the WoTLK instances. I just cannot seem to keep up with the healing and for a while I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Someone in guild commented that the issue could be the players I was with particularly the Tanks. I started looking at the gear of the tanks I was running with and it dawned on me. Most of the people trying to tank these instances are using DPS gear at best, spell gear at worst. I really thought that I hit level 69 and forgot how to heal, but considering the amount of damage that is being taken by these tanks, I suspect that it is a mixture of their gear and mine. To be fair, I am using a full set of heirlooms and then whatever spell gear I have been able to pick up. I could probably purchase more gear, but I don't see the value. I'm sure the tanks I'm with probably are thinking the same thing, though I would at least try to get the defensive heirlooms if they really plan on tanking long term.
Hopefully I'll get through these last 10 levels soon so I can move on to the fun of starting to gear up my healer/lightning chicken.
Over the last week I have been working on getting frost badges on Mich so I could get my second piece of tier 10 (Oh yes, I also got my first piece of tier 10). I took the body first since it was the highest number of pieces. I also wanted to skip the hands/shoulders on the off chance that some VOA run I get lucky and can pick up the pieces from a random drop. That means that legs will be next, though I also have been drooling over the trinkets in the Frost vendor at Dal.
Also, I have been spending time getting Paci to level 70. I finally did it Saturday night, which is a nice thing as well. I may have mentioned this before, but it has REALLY become a challenge for me now that I am in the WoTLK instances. I just cannot seem to keep up with the healing and for a while I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Someone in guild commented that the issue could be the players I was with particularly the Tanks. I started looking at the gear of the tanks I was running with and it dawned on me. Most of the people trying to tank these instances are using DPS gear at best, spell gear at worst. I really thought that I hit level 69 and forgot how to heal, but considering the amount of damage that is being taken by these tanks, I suspect that it is a mixture of their gear and mine. To be fair, I am using a full set of heirlooms and then whatever spell gear I have been able to pick up. I could probably purchase more gear, but I don't see the value. I'm sure the tanks I'm with probably are thinking the same thing, though I would at least try to get the defensive heirlooms if they really plan on tanking long term.
Hopefully I'll get through these last 10 levels soon so I can move on to the fun of starting to gear up my healer/lightning chicken.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Cataclysm Alphagate
At first I wasn’t really going to write about the whole Cataclysm Alphagate affair, but it got me to really thinking about it, which can be a bad thing. At first I was amazed at how long pictures were allowed to be left up as well as how they even seemed to be added to on a couple of occasions. The more I thought about it, the more questions I began to have:
That last I thought initially was the most likely, but the more I think about it the more I think I was wrong. This is the conspiracy theorist in me I am sure. While it makes a great image in my head of smoky, dimly lit rooms in the Blizz headquarters with trench coat wearing men and women sitting around a small table lit only by a desk lamps “Bob, here is what you are going to do. You are going to take these pictures and leak them out to MMO-champion. Tell them you are part of the Alpha…” *winkwinknudgenudge*
Now the more I think about the whole situation, I suspect that it wasn’t any of my initial thoughts. More likely, based on my limited experience in the business world there needed to be several meetings to determine if there was a risk, and if there was one, what was the damage caused by it. After that was done, a risk register was needed. From there a Decision tree was followed to decide if it was a high risk/high probability issue (Since it already had happened I bet it was at least a high probability issue). Once that was all decided an email was sent to someone in legal to get their take.
The legal-monkey was in court that day, and his blackberry was turned off, so a paralegal got it, looked at it, yelled “Oh shit, we’ve got problems,” and promptly hid their head in the sane. After the legal-monkey returned he read the email proceeded to in his or her well mannered way yell “Oh shit, we’ve got problems”. From there they decided to send an email to say we need to do something about it, but were in email jail so had to clean out a bunch of things first, at which point a finance-monkey called saying that their foursome for golf had room for one more, and off the legal-monkey went.
At about two in the morning when the legal-monkey remembered what they were doing before hitting 3 hole-in-ones on the links, they are back at their computer cleaning out email so they could get out something saying “Take those pictures down, tell us who gave them to you or risk being dragged through a long and boring, completely counter intuitive back-assward court proceeding that will cost you lots of money and you’ll still pull the pictures down.”
Next thing you know we have Alphagate, and all of us bloggers have something interesting to write about for at least two weeks (which is about what it is now and I’m just getting around to putting fingers-to-keyboard).
- Was Blizzard unaware?
- Did they not care that this unofficial fansite had gotten stuff it wasn’t supposed to?
- Was their NDA so poorly written that they were stuck?
- Was it a clever marketing ploy to build interest and demand for a product that in all likelihood was still months away?
That last I thought initially was the most likely, but the more I think about it the more I think I was wrong. This is the conspiracy theorist in me I am sure. While it makes a great image in my head of smoky, dimly lit rooms in the Blizz headquarters with trench coat wearing men and women sitting around a small table lit only by a desk lamps “Bob, here is what you are going to do. You are going to take these pictures and leak them out to MMO-champion. Tell them you are part of the Alpha…” *winkwinknudgenudge*
Now the more I think about the whole situation, I suspect that it wasn’t any of my initial thoughts. More likely, based on my limited experience in the business world there needed to be several meetings to determine if there was a risk, and if there was one, what was the damage caused by it. After that was done, a risk register was needed. From there a Decision tree was followed to decide if it was a high risk/high probability issue (Since it already had happened I bet it was at least a high probability issue). Once that was all decided an email was sent to someone in legal to get their take.
The legal-monkey was in court that day, and his blackberry was turned off, so a paralegal got it, looked at it, yelled “Oh shit, we’ve got problems,” and promptly hid their head in the sane. After the legal-monkey returned he read the email proceeded to in his or her well mannered way yell “Oh shit, we’ve got problems”. From there they decided to send an email to say we need to do something about it, but were in email jail so had to clean out a bunch of things first, at which point a finance-monkey called saying that their foursome for golf had room for one more, and off the legal-monkey went.
At about two in the morning when the legal-monkey remembered what they were doing before hitting 3 hole-in-ones on the links, they are back at their computer cleaning out email so they could get out something saying “Take those pictures down, tell us who gave them to you or risk being dragged through a long and boring, completely counter intuitive back-assward court proceeding that will cost you lots of money and you’ll still pull the pictures down.”
Next thing you know we have Alphagate, and all of us bloggers have something interesting to write about for at least two weeks (which is about what it is now and I’m just getting around to putting fingers-to-keyboard).
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Banner! I have one!
As some of you might know, or might not for that matter I have been trying to make my blog look more...I don't know what the word is, correct.
To that end, I wanted a banner, but I am picture deficient. Nothing I did looked like something a four old hadn't drawn. To that end, I enlisted the help of my good friend Judd to put together something cool. He did. And it's above. Ogle at it, Oooh at it, Aaaah at it, Come one you know you wanna!
To that end, I wanted a banner, but I am picture deficient. Nothing I did looked like something a four old hadn't drawn. To that end, I enlisted the help of my good friend Judd to put together something cool. He did. And it's above. Ogle at it, Oooh at it, Aaaah at it, Come one you know you wanna!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Blog Azeroth Weekly - leveling from 1 - 10 (Continued)
So, I have been kicking around for a while the idea of posting more than once a week. I often have more to talk about in a week than one post, and I on occasion will have drafts backed up that I could use to make my updates more often. To that end, I am going to try to shoot for two to three posts a week and see if I can keep up that schedule. I will see how this goes and decide if this is worth it, or if it is just me and too much hot air.
A while back I started the Blog Azeroth shared topic of leveling from 1-10. you can find it here. I decided to take some time with BlogMonkey and see how it went. I started out by continuing to run around the Draenai starting area. In about a period of forty-five minutes I had gone from 3-10 by only following the quests that I found as I went. I also picked up fishing, mining and tailoring along the way and started on my path to making millions of virtual gold.
I am not really going to go too deep into individual quests, paths to follow, and the what not because I found much better written by others with a simple Google search. What I want to talk about instead is what I think a new person may feel through these beginning stages.
First, I have to make some assumptions. I wanted to try to give myself the closest to "real" feeling. I decided I would try to mimic the feeling of new-ness that people who join WoW without being dragged in by a friend or ten.I did a few things to try to simulate that for myself. While I couldn't get rid of my knowledge of WoW as a game mechanic wise I could "forget" other things to make it more realistic.
I purposely did not tell anyone I was doing this, and did not send any tells to friends (in fact I never even put anyone on my friends list). I also didn't get myself into my guild. I decided that any people I met/talked to for the length of the experiment would be completely new people. Along that line, I didn't really get to meet anyone or talk to anyone until well into level 8. Now, that isn't for lack of trying on my part. Right from level 1 I tried talking to people I ran into around the world. Often I got no response, or if I did get a response it was clipped and short. At level 8 though I did get a hunter to work with me on a couple of quests. Looking at his gear, he clearly is a vet player since he had a full set of BoA's. Either way he was nice enough, and we were able to plow through quite a few quests in a very short time.
I also did not provide BM (eww, she will not be called that ever again) any BoA gear pieces or gold to get herself started. In general I never felt a want for gold as I played, nor did I feel that I was unreasonably rich. I didn't really do anything special other than selling junk I picked up from the quests and mobs and quest rewards. I never asked for a hand out, nor did I ever play on the Auction House at all. This was a balance that I was really impressed by. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to do, considering I always felt poor in my early days in Final Fantasy XI.
I did not use any of the "quest guides" that circulate around the net as addons or specific sites, nor did I read anything ahead of time. I tried hard to go in as blind as I could to the area and the quests. As I went through and ran the quests, I really enjoyed the stories. Many of them are as deep and interesting as I have seen, particularly considering these are starting area quests that often are there mostly to get you started in the game. To expand on that, I have to say Blizzard does a fantastic job with their lore throughout the game. I love doing quests even now that I am level 80 just to read the stories.
But, there is a negative here that I noticed and was sad to me. There really was no challenge in the new "easier" quests. All of the early quests are against non-aggressive mobs that ignored me as I beat up their friends to get whatever it was that I needed. Even once I got into the realm of aggressive monsters after about level 5 or 6, I never really had a fear that anything I was fighting would truly hurt or kill me. A while back, before the dumbing down of quests for new players I had a friend who did the 10 day trial. He did not like that death had no meaning, and in fact that he could use it as a strategy to get some quests done. I can understand his feeling even though I know that death does have a meaning, though it is more monetary and time at higher levels. Now, death has even less meaning, and it isn't needed as a strategy. I didn't die once in the time from 1-10, and never for a second worried that I would die. The quests have become too easy in my eyes. Between the quest helper map, dumbed down quests, lack of aggressiveness, and overall counts of mobs in areas it is very simple for a new player to advance along without any pain.
I actually find that last negative, fairly large from a personal standpoint. I think that if I were a new player plowing through these first 10 levels I would not make it the whole length. I'd get bored and go do something else that was more of a challenge to me. I believe the pendulum has swung too far, making early levels too easy.
The other way the easy 10 levels to start with can be taken is to give a false impression of one's own worth.A new player is just that new. As they fly through the first 10 levels, one could come to believe that the entire length of the game is the same way; as many of us will attest, it is not. Often things are a struggle, and can be a down right bitch. Once a person makes level 11 or so, they may find themselves being smacked around like the proverbial red-headed step gnome, causing dis-satisfaction and a reason to quit.
All in all, I think I learned a good bit as I went through this experiment. I was helped along the way early by a number of people so missed out on some things that I noticed this time around. I also got to see some of the genius of Blizzard as well as at least one place where they can do some more work.
A while back I started the Blog Azeroth shared topic of leveling from 1-10. you can find it here. I decided to take some time with BlogMonkey and see how it went. I started out by continuing to run around the Draenai starting area. In about a period of forty-five minutes I had gone from 3-10 by only following the quests that I found as I went. I also picked up fishing, mining and tailoring along the way and started on my path to making millions of virtual gold.
I am not really going to go too deep into individual quests, paths to follow, and the what not because I found much better written by others with a simple Google search. What I want to talk about instead is what I think a new person may feel through these beginning stages.
First, I have to make some assumptions. I wanted to try to give myself the closest to "real" feeling. I decided I would try to mimic the feeling of new-ness that people who join WoW without being dragged in by a friend or ten.I did a few things to try to simulate that for myself. While I couldn't get rid of my knowledge of WoW as a game mechanic wise I could "forget" other things to make it more realistic.
I purposely did not tell anyone I was doing this, and did not send any tells to friends (in fact I never even put anyone on my friends list). I also didn't get myself into my guild. I decided that any people I met/talked to for the length of the experiment would be completely new people. Along that line, I didn't really get to meet anyone or talk to anyone until well into level 8. Now, that isn't for lack of trying on my part. Right from level 1 I tried talking to people I ran into around the world. Often I got no response, or if I did get a response it was clipped and short. At level 8 though I did get a hunter to work with me on a couple of quests. Looking at his gear, he clearly is a vet player since he had a full set of BoA's. Either way he was nice enough, and we were able to plow through quite a few quests in a very short time.
I also did not provide BM (eww, she will not be called that ever again) any BoA gear pieces or gold to get herself started. In general I never felt a want for gold as I played, nor did I feel that I was unreasonably rich. I didn't really do anything special other than selling junk I picked up from the quests and mobs and quest rewards. I never asked for a hand out, nor did I ever play on the Auction House at all. This was a balance that I was really impressed by. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to do, considering I always felt poor in my early days in Final Fantasy XI.
I did not use any of the "quest guides" that circulate around the net as addons or specific sites, nor did I read anything ahead of time. I tried hard to go in as blind as I could to the area and the quests. As I went through and ran the quests, I really enjoyed the stories. Many of them are as deep and interesting as I have seen, particularly considering these are starting area quests that often are there mostly to get you started in the game. To expand on that, I have to say Blizzard does a fantastic job with their lore throughout the game. I love doing quests even now that I am level 80 just to read the stories.
But, there is a negative here that I noticed and was sad to me. There really was no challenge in the new "easier" quests. All of the early quests are against non-aggressive mobs that ignored me as I beat up their friends to get whatever it was that I needed. Even once I got into the realm of aggressive monsters after about level 5 or 6, I never really had a fear that anything I was fighting would truly hurt or kill me. A while back, before the dumbing down of quests for new players I had a friend who did the 10 day trial. He did not like that death had no meaning, and in fact that he could use it as a strategy to get some quests done. I can understand his feeling even though I know that death does have a meaning, though it is more monetary and time at higher levels. Now, death has even less meaning, and it isn't needed as a strategy. I didn't die once in the time from 1-10, and never for a second worried that I would die. The quests have become too easy in my eyes. Between the quest helper map, dumbed down quests, lack of aggressiveness, and overall counts of mobs in areas it is very simple for a new player to advance along without any pain.
I actually find that last negative, fairly large from a personal standpoint. I think that if I were a new player plowing through these first 10 levels I would not make it the whole length. I'd get bored and go do something else that was more of a challenge to me. I believe the pendulum has swung too far, making early levels too easy.
The other way the easy 10 levels to start with can be taken is to give a false impression of one's own worth.A new player is just that new. As they fly through the first 10 levels, one could come to believe that the entire length of the game is the same way; as many of us will attest, it is not. Often things are a struggle, and can be a down right bitch. Once a person makes level 11 or so, they may find themselves being smacked around like the proverbial red-headed step gnome, causing dis-satisfaction and a reason to quit.
All in all, I think I learned a good bit as I went through this experiment. I was helped along the way early by a number of people so missed out on some things that I noticed this time around. I also got to see some of the genius of Blizzard as well as at least one place where they can do some more work.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Battleground PvP Sad Times
So I think in my last post I pointed out that I was enjoying PvP again after having done a few battlegrounds because of the Children's Week Achievement. Last night I had some free time so I decided to queue up for some head bashing and see if I can get a few Arena points out of the deal (not that I am really sure what I'm going to do with them). Queue time was pretty quick, I think I got picked up after about twenty seconds of waiting. Arathi Basin. Awesome! Nothing like trying to hold the Lumber Mill from the likes of those stinking Horde!
Off I went, content in my ability if not my gear (I noticed that I hadn't gemmed or enchanted a good part of my gear). That will need fixing, but that's another story for another day. While we waited for the pink hold us back fence to drop I saw someone say in BG "I'm just here for the achievement, will anyone help me?" Feeling a bit sympathetic, I sent him a whisper telling him to follow me to the lumber mill, I'd help him get it. Pink fell, and we were off. He and I ran up the hill and low and behold a single Tauren was there, trying to Cap. How he got there before me I'll never know, but it didn't matter, 1 Death Grip later and the guy was dead, in about 5 seconds. He didn't even seem to fight back. The guy I was helping (I wish I remember his name, If it was you, Send me a note) ran over to the flag capped it and must have spooged all over his monitor. He couldn't stop gushing about how he finally had gotten it. He couldn't believe it. I chuckled, patted him on the head and went on my merry way to go help out at the farm. Seeing a HUGE number of red names I changed direction and ran to the Horde main building instead where a lone warlock was standing. Immediately I start seeing "xxSepth offers you a truce." spammed in my chat window. Oh god. Another Children's week person.
Feeling remotely sympathetic since clearly some other Hordie had capped this, leaving the poor guy to fend for himself I nodded and capped the flag, then proceeded to let him Cap it back. He emoted a bow and off he went. I capped it a second time and ran off to find some fight. Somewhere. Anywhere. Right now to me even the big mess of a farm looked good. Just as I said that to myself two Horde members came up the hill toward the flag I had just capped. Off I went, ready to kill a few horde members. I landed between the two just as they were reaching the flag and proceeded to pounce on the one that looked like she was wearing cloth. Again, killed her in about 5 seconds. At least this one tried to fight back, I saw a cast bar begin a smite. Umm WTF? SMITE? With me standing on top of you? Ok. You deserve to die. In the mean time the friend had begun to cap the flag. Nope, not happening. Death coil (Have I said lately how much I love death coil?) to the head to stop the cap and I proceed to smack him. Down. Hard.
Isn't this like shooting fish in a barrel? No, I don't think so, I am definitely not geared and strong enough to be winning these fights so quickly. Either way, just as I finish mounting up and deciding where to go next, these two come waltzing back to the flag. And then I see it. Something I now have learned to dread "Blahblah offers you a truce." UH HUH! I may be slow and dim, but I can figure this out. More people looking for the achievement. *sigh* I did just kill these two. I might as well help them. Yes, I am too nice, but I really feel bad for these people who clearly don't want to be here, and is it really fun to kill people who so seriously don't want to be here? I am really not that big an ass, though some days I want to be. A bow emote later, and a cap/recap and they are on their way.
Just as that was finishing, a Horde Death Knight comes waltzing up. The other two mount up and run away. "I'matotaldouche offers you a truce." *shrug* I bow to him showing he can cap it too, at which point he totally beats the everliving crap out of me. One second I am bowing and stepping away the next I am looking at the gray screen asking me to release. I had been snookered, clearly that guy was just out for beating the crap out of me, never wanting to do the achievement. (Yes, I is smart and junk). Just as I am waiting for the last 8 seconds to elapse in the graveyard so I can go find Mr. Douche the win splash screen popped up. I guess that'll have to be good enough for me, Mr. Douche, whoever you are I hope that you get your ass handed to you by every single alliance player out there until you are so black and blue you never, ever, ever want to do another battleground again.
The rest of the Battle Grounds I did last night were much of the same. I was not going to let I'matotaldouche ruin it for all of the other hordies out there. Anytime anyone offered a truce I provided them with what ever it was they needed to get the achievement. Through it all though, I died a little inside. I couldn't wait until today so Children's Week would end and I could actually have fun playing in BGs again without having to feel bad for all the people out there who wouldn't enter one if it wasn't for the event.
Off I went, content in my ability if not my gear (I noticed that I hadn't gemmed or enchanted a good part of my gear). That will need fixing, but that's another story for another day. While we waited for the pink hold us back fence to drop I saw someone say in BG "I'm just here for the achievement, will anyone help me?" Feeling a bit sympathetic, I sent him a whisper telling him to follow me to the lumber mill, I'd help him get it. Pink fell, and we were off. He and I ran up the hill and low and behold a single Tauren was there, trying to Cap. How he got there before me I'll never know, but it didn't matter, 1 Death Grip later and the guy was dead, in about 5 seconds. He didn't even seem to fight back. The guy I was helping (I wish I remember his name, If it was you, Send me a note) ran over to the flag capped it and must have spooged all over his monitor. He couldn't stop gushing about how he finally had gotten it. He couldn't believe it. I chuckled, patted him on the head and went on my merry way to go help out at the farm. Seeing a HUGE number of red names I changed direction and ran to the Horde main building instead where a lone warlock was standing. Immediately I start seeing "xxSepth offers you a truce." spammed in my chat window. Oh god. Another Children's week person.
Feeling remotely sympathetic since clearly some other Hordie had capped this, leaving the poor guy to fend for himself I nodded and capped the flag, then proceeded to let him Cap it back. He emoted a bow and off he went. I capped it a second time and ran off to find some fight. Somewhere. Anywhere. Right now to me even the big mess of a farm looked good. Just as I said that to myself two Horde members came up the hill toward the flag I had just capped. Off I went, ready to kill a few horde members. I landed between the two just as they were reaching the flag and proceeded to pounce on the one that looked like she was wearing cloth. Again, killed her in about 5 seconds. At least this one tried to fight back, I saw a cast bar begin a smite. Umm WTF? SMITE? With me standing on top of you? Ok. You deserve to die. In the mean time the friend had begun to cap the flag. Nope, not happening. Death coil (Have I said lately how much I love death coil?) to the head to stop the cap and I proceed to smack him. Down. Hard.
Isn't this like shooting fish in a barrel? No, I don't think so, I am definitely not geared and strong enough to be winning these fights so quickly. Either way, just as I finish mounting up and deciding where to go next, these two come waltzing back to the flag. And then I see it. Something I now have learned to dread "Blahblah offers you a truce." UH HUH! I may be slow and dim, but I can figure this out. More people looking for the achievement. *sigh* I did just kill these two. I might as well help them. Yes, I am too nice, but I really feel bad for these people who clearly don't want to be here, and is it really fun to kill people who so seriously don't want to be here? I am really not that big an ass, though some days I want to be. A bow emote later, and a cap/recap and they are on their way.
Just as that was finishing, a Horde Death Knight comes waltzing up. The other two mount up and run away. "I'matotaldouche offers you a truce." *shrug* I bow to him showing he can cap it too, at which point he totally beats the everliving crap out of me. One second I am bowing and stepping away the next I am looking at the gray screen asking me to release. I had been snookered, clearly that guy was just out for beating the crap out of me, never wanting to do the achievement. (Yes, I is smart and junk). Just as I am waiting for the last 8 seconds to elapse in the graveyard so I can go find Mr. Douche the win splash screen popped up. I guess that'll have to be good enough for me, Mr. Douche, whoever you are I hope that you get your ass handed to you by every single alliance player out there until you are so black and blue you never, ever, ever want to do another battleground again.
The rest of the Battle Grounds I did last night were much of the same. I was not going to let I'matotaldouche ruin it for all of the other hordies out there. Anytime anyone offered a truce I provided them with what ever it was they needed to get the achievement. Through it all though, I died a little inside. I couldn't wait until today so Children's Week would end and I could actually have fun playing in BGs again without having to feel bad for all the people out there who wouldn't enter one if it wasn't for the event.
In which I talk about PVP and Continuing on my way to the elusive Proto-Drake
So while I hemmed and hawed, bitched and complained about the Battleground achievement in the For the Children Meta-Achievement, I still went out and did it.
I have to say, I was annoyed that I had to do it, and I didn't really want to. I hadn't done battlegrounds in a long time. I was crabby about it. I admit it. I did some of the standard bitching on guild chat about it, and even stormed off in a huff a couple times. But, I did it. I finished it.
Somewhere along the line I even started to enjoy it. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed some battlegrounds and it got me to want to do them again. With a stipulation. I really didn't like doing battlegrounds where my goal is to not win, but instead meat some weird criteria (cap a tower, capture a flag instead of a base, etc). I even found myself doing some battlegrounds yesterday after I had completed the Achievement, just for the fun of trying to punk some Horde. Coming from a MMO that had little to no PvP in it, I didn't think I would ever get into it. The only other MMO experience I had ever had that included PvP was Eve online, which consisted of dying to people so far beyond my level of equipment that I never had a chance. With WoW, that really isn't the case, gear is important, but dying doesn't cause me to lose everything I have worked hard to gather. Instead it is more a pasttime of fun, not work.
Now, I will never be a PvP god/whore/monger, but it definitely is a bit of fun to do when I get tired of leveling, questing, cooking, raiding, exploring, crafting, playing the Auction House, or just chatting with whomever is around.
Somewhere along the line I even started to enjoy it. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed some battlegrounds and it got me to want to do them again. With a stipulation. I really didn't like doing battlegrounds where my goal is to not win, but instead meat some weird criteria (cap a tower, capture a flag instead of a base, etc). I even found myself doing some battlegrounds yesterday after I had completed the Achievement, just for the fun of trying to punk some Horde. Coming from a MMO that had little to no PvP in it, I didn't think I would ever get into it. The only other MMO experience I had ever had that included PvP was Eve online, which consisted of dying to people so far beyond my level of equipment that I never had a chance. With WoW, that really isn't the case, gear is important, but dying doesn't cause me to lose everything I have worked hard to gather. Instead it is more a pasttime of fun, not work.
Now, I will never be a PvP god/whore/monger, but it definitely is a bit of fun to do when I get tired of leveling, questing, cooking, raiding, exploring, crafting, playing the Auction House, or just chatting with whomever is around.
Monday, May 3, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Terror of ICC
This is the post I interrupted for yesterdays breaking news:
Sunday night I got the chance to raid with the guild in 25 man ICC. They are currently working on Sindragosa. off I go, totally prepared, food, flasks etc to spend a wonderful three hours wiping to that bad ass Undead Dragon. Now, I had watched the video of the battle on youtube a while back, so had some clue of the fight, even if I didn't really know that much about it. The rest of the guild has been dying on this guy for at least a couple of days, so had a definite advantage over me. When it comes right down to it, I knew the first two phases, but had no clue of the third.
Anyway, once I got up to the room I started looking around at the others in the raid. Man, was I out of my class. First thing I notice, even the priests had more hit points than me. Second thing I notice, I am seriously under-geared. I know that to be true based on the fact that people standing around me are in i264 and i277 gear while I'm sporting i232 and i245 gear. First thought that goes through my head, "I hope I can at least hit this thing". Turns out I can hit it, though not nearly as often as I'd like. Being at hit cap just isn't enough. The good thing about not being able to hit that often is that I don't really often have to worry about getting too many stacks of the debuff, if I can't hit Sin, I don't get debuff, and not attacking scrubs the debuff stacks off so when I do hit the dragon and get the debuff my misses remove it!
I also noticed that even though I "know" the fight, I really don't KNOW the fight. the first couple of battles I died at the first Blistering Cold attack. Sad when you think that a DK who has things like Anti-Magic Shell (which I forgot I had until someone whispered to me I had it) dies to a magic attack you can run away from.
I also noticed I was terrified. I knew that with all the trouble I have had with the guild leadership and their lack of belief in my abilities that I really needed to wow them (which I didn't) if I want to be invited again. There was some discussion a couple of days prior about what it would take to get out of the trial phase since I've been in the guild since last November. That's another story for another day, but truly it is clear to me that I will never get out of the "acolyte" trial status that I am in. I've come to grips with it, and will just find my fun in my own time.
I also realized I was terrified because people were counting on me. Not only were they counting on me, I was in a place where I didn't really belong. I've never done any of the plagueworks, Crimson Hall or Frostwing halls at all. I have only done the Lower Spire on the 10 man setting with the buff on. These people were playing on 25 man had done all those things and had the buff off. They knew where it was and what was going on. They had all worked together in the past many, many times. I had worked with a few of them on rare occassions. They didn't know me, I didn't know them.
As we went through it, I followd directions and did everything I could to be successful, and make the group as a larger whole successful. I will tell you honestly, as the directions got more complex I became more worried that I was causing some of the failures. I even began hoping and praying I died early in the battle so I didn't cause the team to fail. Thankfully, I never did, and I did all the things I was supposed to when I was supposed to, but there were times there where I thought it may be better for me to die so that the bigger whole didn't have to deal with me.
Over-all it was a good night, once I got past the initial fears, and later fears, and end fears, it all went OK I guess. Sin didn't die, but the group seemed to feel they did very well.
Sunday night I got the chance to raid with the guild in 25 man ICC. They are currently working on Sindragosa. off I go, totally prepared, food, flasks etc to spend a wonderful three hours wiping to that bad ass Undead Dragon. Now, I had watched the video of the battle on youtube a while back, so had some clue of the fight, even if I didn't really know that much about it. The rest of the guild has been dying on this guy for at least a couple of days, so had a definite advantage over me. When it comes right down to it, I knew the first two phases, but had no clue of the third.
Anyway, once I got up to the room I started looking around at the others in the raid. Man, was I out of my class. First thing I notice, even the priests had more hit points than me. Second thing I notice, I am seriously under-geared. I know that to be true based on the fact that people standing around me are in i264 and i277 gear while I'm sporting i232 and i245 gear. First thought that goes through my head, "I hope I can at least hit this thing". Turns out I can hit it, though not nearly as often as I'd like. Being at hit cap just isn't enough. The good thing about not being able to hit that often is that I don't really often have to worry about getting too many stacks of the debuff, if I can't hit Sin, I don't get debuff, and not attacking scrubs the debuff stacks off so when I do hit the dragon and get the debuff my misses remove it!
I also noticed that even though I "know" the fight, I really don't KNOW the fight. the first couple of battles I died at the first Blistering Cold attack. Sad when you think that a DK who has things like Anti-Magic Shell (which I forgot I had until someone whispered to me I had it) dies to a magic attack you can run away from.
I also noticed I was terrified. I knew that with all the trouble I have had with the guild leadership and their lack of belief in my abilities that I really needed to wow them (which I didn't) if I want to be invited again. There was some discussion a couple of days prior about what it would take to get out of the trial phase since I've been in the guild since last November. That's another story for another day, but truly it is clear to me that I will never get out of the "acolyte" trial status that I am in. I've come to grips with it, and will just find my fun in my own time.
I also realized I was terrified because people were counting on me. Not only were they counting on me, I was in a place where I didn't really belong. I've never done any of the plagueworks, Crimson Hall or Frostwing halls at all. I have only done the Lower Spire on the 10 man setting with the buff on. These people were playing on 25 man had done all those things and had the buff off. They knew where it was and what was going on. They had all worked together in the past many, many times. I had worked with a few of them on rare occassions. They didn't know me, I didn't know them.
As we went through it, I followd directions and did everything I could to be successful, and make the group as a larger whole successful. I will tell you honestly, as the directions got more complex I became more worried that I was causing some of the failures. I even began hoping and praying I died early in the battle so I didn't cause the team to fail. Thankfully, I never did, and I did all the things I was supposed to when I was supposed to, but there were times there where I thought it may be better for me to die so that the bigger whole didn't have to deal with me.
Over-all it was a good night, once I got past the initial fears, and later fears, and end fears, it all went OK I guess. Sin didn't die, but the group seemed to feel they did very well.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
We Interrupt this Post...
So, if you could see my drafts, you'd see that I actually was in the process of putting together a post on my recent first ICC 25 experience, and the terror that is involved in running with a group of out geared out experienced people. But, last night something so unusual happened that I just felt the need to write about it.
As a few people know I have kicked back and forth at trying DK tanking for a while. I never have seriously done much with it other than buying 4 pieces of the tier 9 tank set since I had a plethora of Triumph badges and have a deep seated need to not have any badges hanging around since they could be gear that fill up my bank.
Anyway, last night one of the guild members was lamenting that he couldn't get an ICC 10 run together because of a shortage of tanks, and how he was working on getting himself to a point where he could tank, building a tank set and what not. This got me to thinking, I have a tank set, I could work on leveling Paci, or I could see what I have. So off I went to the bank to look at what I had. Seeing that I had most of the slots filled with purple, I decided why not, and pulled it out, switched spec and took a look at what I look like. Notice that I didn't say I switched to Frost Aspect, because you know, I didn't.
Anyway, liking what I see (504 DEF, 26K HP) I decided that I was good enough to try tanking non-heroic dungeons, so queued up and got the insta-pop. OK, this is awesome I said to myself. Tanks really do get instant invites. Halls of Lightning. It started off OK, going through the first few batches of trash mobs (yes still without Frost Aspect turned on), and we came to the first boss, and almost instantly wipe. WTF? Oh, the Healer had to go AFK, but she/he didn't tell us. OK, well that happens it is a PuG. Back in we go, back to the boss, Wipe again! What? Ok I feel the need to tell people I'm new and do so. The group seems amenable and in fact the Warrior who is DPSing sends me a whisper pointing out my error of Frost Aspect ( at which point I realize I'm good an truly a Noob), and offers a couple of suggestions on tanking that I immediately put into practice. He also pointed out that both times the wipe was not me, it was the healer not healing. We get through the first boss (though I was down to 800 HP at the end. I swear the healer was AFK most of that fight too) and continue on our way, and die at the very next trash pack. OK this is getting annoying, maybe I shouldn't be tanking. At this point I see a thing flash across Party from the healer "Sorry guys, I have to go. Too much to do to heal this instance". Healer drops party. At which point the DPS all say, "Too much to do? you mean like heal?". So we waited a few minutes for a new healer who actually healed. We were able to fly through the rest of the instance without a single death, including an occasion where I went the wrong way and pulled a bunch of crap. You'd think that after the thousands of times that I have run these instances I'd know my way through them. Sheesh.
Feeling good at not totally sucking (and having gotten another piece of gear for tanking) I did it again. This time Culling of Strat came up. Sweet! easy one. This time I pointed out right away that I was new at tanking. We flew through it with almost no issue. A couple of times people died because I am still not quite up to snuff on tanking, but I definitely have it getting down.
Anyway, two PuGs successful in a row when we were not ridiculously over-powered for the content is a great thing. Hopefully there are more, we'll see soon because I plan on doing more of these for the heck of it. One thing I do need to do is figure out the rotation if there is one. I was just button mashing through most of my tanking experiences.
As a few people know I have kicked back and forth at trying DK tanking for a while. I never have seriously done much with it other than buying 4 pieces of the tier 9 tank set since I had a plethora of Triumph badges and have a deep seated need to not have any badges hanging around since they could be gear that fill up my bank.
Anyway, last night one of the guild members was lamenting that he couldn't get an ICC 10 run together because of a shortage of tanks, and how he was working on getting himself to a point where he could tank, building a tank set and what not. This got me to thinking, I have a tank set, I could work on leveling Paci, or I could see what I have. So off I went to the bank to look at what I had. Seeing that I had most of the slots filled with purple, I decided why not, and pulled it out, switched spec and took a look at what I look like. Notice that I didn't say I switched to Frost Aspect, because you know, I didn't.
Anyway, liking what I see (504 DEF, 26K HP) I decided that I was good enough to try tanking non-heroic dungeons, so queued up and got the insta-pop. OK, this is awesome I said to myself. Tanks really do get instant invites. Halls of Lightning. It started off OK, going through the first few batches of trash mobs (yes still without Frost Aspect turned on), and we came to the first boss, and almost instantly wipe. WTF? Oh, the Healer had to go AFK, but she/he didn't tell us. OK, well that happens it is a PuG. Back in we go, back to the boss, Wipe again! What? Ok I feel the need to tell people I'm new and do so. The group seems amenable and in fact the Warrior who is DPSing sends me a whisper pointing out my error of Frost Aspect ( at which point I realize I'm good an truly a Noob), and offers a couple of suggestions on tanking that I immediately put into practice. He also pointed out that both times the wipe was not me, it was the healer not healing. We get through the first boss (though I was down to 800 HP at the end. I swear the healer was AFK most of that fight too) and continue on our way, and die at the very next trash pack. OK this is getting annoying, maybe I shouldn't be tanking. At this point I see a thing flash across Party from the healer "Sorry guys, I have to go. Too much to do to heal this instance". Healer drops party. At which point the DPS all say, "Too much to do? you mean like heal?". So we waited a few minutes for a new healer who actually healed. We were able to fly through the rest of the instance without a single death, including an occasion where I went the wrong way and pulled a bunch of crap. You'd think that after the thousands of times that I have run these instances I'd know my way through them. Sheesh.
Feeling good at not totally sucking (and having gotten another piece of gear for tanking) I did it again. This time Culling of Strat came up. Sweet! easy one. This time I pointed out right away that I was new at tanking. We flew through it with almost no issue. A couple of times people died because I am still not quite up to snuff on tanking, but I definitely have it getting down.
Anyway, two PuGs successful in a row when we were not ridiculously over-powered for the content is a great thing. Hopefully there are more, we'll see soon because I plan on doing more of these for the heck of it. One thing I do need to do is figure out the rotation if there is one. I was just button mashing through most of my tanking experiences.
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