AKA, this is where the shit hits the fan.
We got our first taste of heroics last night and...well, it went pretty miserably. In about 2 hours, we managed to down all of one boss. We had countless wipes and some attempts that were nowhere even close.
My priest hit 85 last week and I've spent quite a bit of effort getting her geared up. Within a few days I had her tricked out in a mix of rep gear/JP gear and some BoEs to get an item level of 346, just the minimum for the Zandalari heroics. Of course I wasn't about to set foot in there with the bare minimum, but I was able to heal through two heroics dungeons without any problems. Perhaps I had a good group, but I the characters I inspected mostly had the same ilvl as I did. My mana only dipped about halfway during boss fights. DPS knew the mechanics and everyone was pulling 10k or so, and both runs went very smoothly with only one wipe (hunter pet pulled boss while we were on trash).
So I felt pretty good about my healing and felt prepared for heroics. I really should have remembered that you can certainly carry one undergeared/bad player through a heroic. You MIGHT be able to carry two with a really good tank and exceptional single DPS. But you certainly cannot carry three undergeared players who do not know mechanics.
I think my friends were in for a rude awakening during the first boss in throne of the tides when they both stood in the geyser and promptly found themselves dead. Sure, you can stand in bad stuff in normal and it's really not a big deal, you can heal through that. But you do that in heroics and it WILL one-shot you.
This is exactly the thing that I'd been harping on and on about ever since our first dungeon crawl. I've been trying to teach the mechanics to them because I knew that while mechanics seem trivial at first, they will wipe the group in end-game. I knew from personal experience that the step-up in difficulty from normal to heroic is HUGE. This isn't wrath anymore and heroics aren't a joke anymore. This is Cata, where heroics are, in fact, heroic mode difficulty. The mechanics are brutal and very, very unforgiving. You can screw up once, maybe twice, but more than that and chances are the group wipes.
Even after the mechanics issue was more or less sorted out (people finally learning not to break CC or stand in bad shit), we kept wiping because the fights were dragging on too long. Cata is also very hard on healers in general; we can't just spam our biggest heals on tanks anymore because mana management is a big part of cata healing. We can't afford to top everyone off to full all the time, healers need to conserve mana as much as possible and mainly do triage. Even with meticulous management if the DPS requirement isn't there, the group will inevitably wipe as the healer's mana ticks down to zero. After about 5 attempts it was clear it just wasn't going to work. The adds were eating up everyone's HP because they weren't being killed fast enough, no one was interrupting a damn thing, and CC kept getting broken. The fight was going well past its normal duration and I was completely oom even after shadowfiend and hymn.
Next we tried Lost City, which went no better to be honest. We wiped twice on the first boss because people weren't watching their feet and stepping all over bombs. When you step in one bomb it tosses you into - you guessed it! - more bombs. It was like learning how to do that boss all over again, this time on heroic difficulty where you REALLY cannot step on any bombs. You know, kind of like normal mode where you can sort of step on a couple bombs, but this time you REALLY REALLY can't step on ANY bombs. Sigh.
After a bit of struggle we did down him, but Lockmaw proved too much for us. People seemed to be doing better with mechanics (although do be honest I was too busy healing to really notice), but the DPS simply wasn't there. The baby crocodiles need to die very quickly otherwise it will chew up whoever it's fixated on, and they just weren't getting killed quickly enough. The AoE DPS just wasn't there (in which case they should've been focused down one by one, which was also not happening).
At the end of the night two problems were very obvious to me:
1. Mechanics are not being followed. This excuse is valid on the first attempt, but not the second. You should know by the second try to get out of the fire, to avoid tornadoes/bombs, to NOT break CC on adds, etc. The culprit is confusion, panic, and tunnel vision.
2. DPS is just not there. People generally consider 7k to be minimum for heroics, but that's assuming all THREE DPS are pulling 7k. And just because you pull 7k on a target dummy, it doesn't mean that you will on a boss. During these movement-heavy fights, your sustained DPS is likely well below 7k, which is what the group needs to make sure the healer doesn't go OOM or beat the enrage timers. If two guys are barely sustaining 6k and one isn't even doing 4k, then it just won't happen. The culprit? I could write a whole blog post on why your DPS is low, but I'll refrain since I don't know every single class inside and out. I do know this:
Bad Spec: the difference between a good DPS spec and a jumbled, crazy weird spec can be as much as 1-2k. The more talent points are wasted, the larger the gap gets. Those 2% DPS boosts really add up as you put more and more points into a spec.
Bad itemization: Seriously, this shouldn't be hard. If you're 85 you should know what stats you want and what to avoid. The whole "OMG it's an upgrade because it's blue and I can wear it" mentality has to go out the window. Know your class, know your stats. So often I see bad players saying "well this isn't technically for my class but it's a lot better since I'm only wearing a green ilvl 308 and this one is blue and is ilvl 333." Ignore the item level and see what you're gaining versus losing. If you're a warrior do you really think you're upgrading anything by gaining 100 intellect at the cost of 100 strength? All you're doing is upgrading your item level so you can cause more wipes in heroics.
Subpar or no glyphs/reforge/gems/enchants: A fully gemmed, chanted and reforged character can pull a few thousand more DPS over the same exact character in the same exact gear with none of these things. One of the biggest reasons DPS is low as a fresh 85 is that you're not getting hit capped. If 20% of your attacks are missing, you can be doing 20% more DPS by reforging/gemming/chanting until you get hit capped.
Rotation, rotation, rotation: This is SO important. If your rotation is perfect, you can most definitely pull 7k even in shitty cata greens. You know how I know this? I was pulling 7k in wrath dungeons when I was 80. And my gear back then had nowhere the stats as the gear in the cataclysm starter zone. You can, for a fact, be decked out in ilvl 282 gear just from the Mt. Hyjal quest rewards and still pull 7k. It is doable, but requires perfect execution. So if your ilvl is good enough for heroics, and your itemization is correct, it is a rotation problem. Go research your class. Go read what your moves should be (some classes have a set rotation, others have a priority list). Set your action bars to reflect what the rotation should be and go practice at a test dummy.
Ack, I'm getting horrible images of bashing my head against the wall trying to clear heroics back at cata launch. It was awful, just awful. So many people who were all so collectively confused...
Monday, August 22, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Don't stand in the fire!
Honestly people. If you can manage to do this one thing and one thing only, that already makes you better than 50% of the players in wow.
It took me a while to learn this important fact: if you stand in something, 99% of the time it hurts you. Back when I was a noob I stood in all sorts of things - poison pools, fire, lava, void zones, ominous circles that are surely a sign that something will fall on you. I didn't know better, and to be honest I rarely ever noticed what was under my feet. I was too busy looking at my DPS and looking at my next cooldown.
When I began raiding was when the concept of moving out of fire was drilled into my head by the raid leader screaming "GET OUT OF THE FIRE" several times over the course of a boss fight. Because in dungeons, you can still stand in fire and not die. The healer will heal you through it, or you might just die and wonder what happened. It's not until you hear a 17 year old nerdraging at you over vent that you really get it. Fire is bad, don't stand in it.
The most dangerous thing that can happen to you in a fight is getting tunnel vision. God knows I've wiped my share of raid bosses by getting too excited about using my cooldown, too excited about seeing my DPS climb up on recount, too excited about nearing the last 10% of the bosses' HP, too excited about DPSing hard to pay attention to anything else. And before I realized it, I was dead, or worse yet, I had killed the raid by standing in some kind of explosion.
This is what really separates a noob from a quality player. A noob only cares about DPS. A noob only looks at the number and only cares who did the most damage. A noob will constantly link recount info and /flex, never mind that fact that he drained the healer's mana completely by ignoring fire circles and poison pools. A noob doesn't even realize how bad he is for standing in all sorts of baddie pools of bad.
A quality player on the other hand, is always vigilant and aware. A quality raider knows where he should be and where he shouldn't, when he should re-position and when he needs to step around a fire patch to get there. A quality raider is watching when the next poison pool will drop and watching his feet. A quality raider knows that he's contributing his best to the team not when his DPS is amazingly high, but when he doesn't take avoidable damage, gets the interrupts, and brings down the boss without anyone dying or triggering a heart attack from the healers. A quality raider has flawless situational awareness.
Now that's not to say that I'm the latter. Far from it, I still get tunnel visioned from time to time and stand in the bad. But usually after one or two deaths I get it, and I'm able to focus again. I could care less that everyone is out-dpsing me. If that hunter pulling 25k dies halfway through the fight and I stay alive while pulling 18k through the whole fight, I've won.
As the levels get higher and dungeons and raids get tougher and tougher, it's not so much about killing things as much as staying alive. Things will die sooner or later, but everyone has to stay alive long enough to make that happen. Unless you're dealing with a strict enrage timer (which is most often just a gear check anyways), survival trumps DPS. A dead DPS is useless to the group. That scrappy guy who's pulling 8k but never taking a tick of poison and interrupting like clockwork, that's the guy you want in your raid.
I feel like a broken record but I see so many stupid DPS who refuse to strafe two yards to avoid fire. I didn't notice it so much until I started playing a healer, and it would send me into a rage spiral to see dumbass DPS just standing in bubbling poison or a ground tremor. Sure, I could heal them, but that is effectively just me carrying a bad player. Once I get into heroics I'll be too busy doing triage healing to be topping off every bad player who wants to stand in fire.
Just to drive my point home (not that I think I really need to, it's just fun to flex my wow knowledge), here is a list of all the times where standing in something is bad (and can kill you!) in cataclysm. I'm sure there's many more but this is all I can muster off the top of my head:
Almost every boss in ZA/ZG has a ground mechanic:
High Priest Venoxis - breath of hethiss, poison maze
Bloodlord Mandokir - devastating slam
High Priestess Kil'nara - wave of agony
Zanzil - zanzil fire
Jindo the Godbreaker - shadow spike
Akil'zon - lightning cloud
Jan'alai - fire bombs, flame breath
Hex Lord Malacrass - D&D, consecrate
Tier11 raids:
Omnotron Defense System - fire, poison, arcane pools
Atramedes - fire, sonic rings
Nefarian - um, how about that thing where the entire room FILL WITH LAVA
Valiona & Theralion - twilight swirls, twilight fire, twilight meteor
Ascendant Council - fire pools, glaciate patches, ground/air debuff mechanic
Cho'gall - that black shit that makes you puke if you stand in it, yeah, that thing. It hurts.
And of course, Firelands:
Shannox - immolation traps, crystalline traps, ring of fire
Rhyolith - fire pizza of doom!
Alysrazor - Swirling fire tornadoes of death, brushfire, worms' firebreath
Majordomo - seeds of fire
Ragnaros - Sulfuron smash, engulfing flames, magma traps
The mother of all "don't stand in that shit" mechanics has got to be the lich king's defile. It's probably the single reason why it took the top guild on my server a month to down heroic 25man LK. The damning thing about defile is that the longer you stand in it, the bigger it gets and the more damage it does. If you don't move out of it literally the moment it happens, you'll find that it's covering the entire little platform your raid is standing in and everyone is dead.
But seriously folks, just watch your damn feet!
It took me a while to learn this important fact: if you stand in something, 99% of the time it hurts you. Back when I was a noob I stood in all sorts of things - poison pools, fire, lava, void zones, ominous circles that are surely a sign that something will fall on you. I didn't know better, and to be honest I rarely ever noticed what was under my feet. I was too busy looking at my DPS and looking at my next cooldown.
When I began raiding was when the concept of moving out of fire was drilled into my head by the raid leader screaming "GET OUT OF THE FIRE" several times over the course of a boss fight. Because in dungeons, you can still stand in fire and not die. The healer will heal you through it, or you might just die and wonder what happened. It's not until you hear a 17 year old nerdraging at you over vent that you really get it. Fire is bad, don't stand in it.
The most dangerous thing that can happen to you in a fight is getting tunnel vision. God knows I've wiped my share of raid bosses by getting too excited about using my cooldown, too excited about seeing my DPS climb up on recount, too excited about nearing the last 10% of the bosses' HP, too excited about DPSing hard to pay attention to anything else. And before I realized it, I was dead, or worse yet, I had killed the raid by standing in some kind of explosion.
This is what really separates a noob from a quality player. A noob only cares about DPS. A noob only looks at the number and only cares who did the most damage. A noob will constantly link recount info and /flex, never mind that fact that he drained the healer's mana completely by ignoring fire circles and poison pools. A noob doesn't even realize how bad he is for standing in all sorts of baddie pools of bad.
A quality player on the other hand, is always vigilant and aware. A quality raider knows where he should be and where he shouldn't, when he should re-position and when he needs to step around a fire patch to get there. A quality raider is watching when the next poison pool will drop and watching his feet. A quality raider knows that he's contributing his best to the team not when his DPS is amazingly high, but when he doesn't take avoidable damage, gets the interrupts, and brings down the boss without anyone dying or triggering a heart attack from the healers. A quality raider has flawless situational awareness.
Now that's not to say that I'm the latter. Far from it, I still get tunnel visioned from time to time and stand in the bad. But usually after one or two deaths I get it, and I'm able to focus again. I could care less that everyone is out-dpsing me. If that hunter pulling 25k dies halfway through the fight and I stay alive while pulling 18k through the whole fight, I've won.
As the levels get higher and dungeons and raids get tougher and tougher, it's not so much about killing things as much as staying alive. Things will die sooner or later, but everyone has to stay alive long enough to make that happen. Unless you're dealing with a strict enrage timer (which is most often just a gear check anyways), survival trumps DPS. A dead DPS is useless to the group. That scrappy guy who's pulling 8k but never taking a tick of poison and interrupting like clockwork, that's the guy you want in your raid.
I feel like a broken record but I see so many stupid DPS who refuse to strafe two yards to avoid fire. I didn't notice it so much until I started playing a healer, and it would send me into a rage spiral to see dumbass DPS just standing in bubbling poison or a ground tremor. Sure, I could heal them, but that is effectively just me carrying a bad player. Once I get into heroics I'll be too busy doing triage healing to be topping off every bad player who wants to stand in fire.
Just to drive my point home (not that I think I really need to, it's just fun to flex my wow knowledge), here is a list of all the times where standing in something is bad (and can kill you!) in cataclysm. I'm sure there's many more but this is all I can muster off the top of my head:
Almost every boss in ZA/ZG has a ground mechanic:
High Priest Venoxis - breath of hethiss, poison maze
Bloodlord Mandokir - devastating slam
High Priestess Kil'nara - wave of agony
Zanzil - zanzil fire
Jindo the Godbreaker - shadow spike
Akil'zon - lightning cloud
Jan'alai - fire bombs, flame breath
Hex Lord Malacrass - D&D, consecrate
Tier11 raids:
Omnotron Defense System - fire, poison, arcane pools
Atramedes - fire, sonic rings
Nefarian - um, how about that thing where the entire room FILL WITH LAVA
Valiona & Theralion - twilight swirls, twilight fire, twilight meteor
Ascendant Council - fire pools, glaciate patches, ground/air debuff mechanic
Cho'gall - that black shit that makes you puke if you stand in it, yeah, that thing. It hurts.
And of course, Firelands:
Shannox - immolation traps, crystalline traps, ring of fire
Rhyolith - fire pizza of doom!
Alysrazor - Swirling fire tornadoes of death, brushfire, worms' firebreath
Majordomo - seeds of fire
Ragnaros - Sulfuron smash, engulfing flames, magma traps
The mother of all "don't stand in that shit" mechanics has got to be the lich king's defile. It's probably the single reason why it took the top guild on my server a month to down heroic 25man LK. The damning thing about defile is that the longer you stand in it, the bigger it gets and the more damage it does. If you don't move out of it literally the moment it happens, you'll find that it's covering the entire little platform your raid is standing in and everyone is dead.
But seriously folks, just watch your damn feet!
Sweet sweet new gear
I have a pet peeve about matching my armor sets to my hair color and tabard color. I have so many tabards actually that I usually just pick one that goes the best with my armor color, then dye my hair to match. For the past six months I'd been sporting the tier11 set which comes with gigantic swirly blue shoulderpads.
Oh dear god how I hated those shoulderpads. I was so excited when shoulders finally dropped for me, even if it was non-tier. Then when I equipped it...my jaw just dropped. It was so ugly. And so disproportionately huge! I looked ridiculous, and from certain angles it just looked like I had some bizarre mummy bandages floating above my torso. Just plain hideous.
But anyways, they were blue so I dyed my hair to match, and dug up some tabards. I had several choices to pull from my collection of tabards (30+ and counting):
Darkspear (light blue/gray with red motif) - not quite the right shade of blue
Undercity (Dark blue/black) - creepy looking face in the middle
Alliance (blue/gole) - I'll never wear alliance scum gear! How did I even buy this in the first place??
Sporeggar (dark blue/purple) - not quite the right shade. Also not a fan of a mushroom logo.
Ebon Blade (navy/black) - too dark and emo
Ramkahen (blue/gold) - reminds me too much of the alliance tabard
The one I picked, which was the exact perfect shade of blue as well as being pretty bad-ass looking, was the frostwolf tabard. It's blue/white and matches perfectly with the shoulderpad, and the touch of white is a nice contrast to the general bleakness of the rest of the armor set. I dyed my hair blue and voila - I was a coordinated (and pretty!) troll once more!
Then of course, I switched guilds, meaning that I started back from 0/3000 neutral rep. I decided to wear the tabard to speed up the rep gain, which meant having to re-coordinate my outfit once more. I dyed my hair red to match and luckily the new tabard was exactly the same shade so that looked quite nice. But those big ugly blue shoulderpads! I just couldn't look at them without cringing, especially when they contrasted so hideously with the new hair and tabard!
But then yesterday, after we one-shotted majordomo (a really fun fight in my opinion), the vanquishers shoulder token dropped! And as luck would have it, I was the only person in the entire raid who could use them!
With the new tier shoulder upgrade (can't remember the last time I had tier shoulders...I think it was back in ICC), I could finally equip my new tier chestpiece I had bought two weeks ago but hadn't been able to use because I didn't want to lose my set bonus. So BAM, that's two new tier pieces which comes with a sweet fire damage proc set bonus! And now I could also equip the gloves from the molten front dailies since I didn't have to worry about the tier 11 set bonus anymore! Gear gets really complicated sometimes...
AND just as icing on the cake, the Domo also dropped some sexy rogue boots! So now pretty much everything I'm wearing is either tier 12 or off-set, which are of course all matching in design and color (except the helm, which I never show anyways). It's not red, per se, but it's a dark brown-rusty color with red bits which goes very nicely with the new red hair and tabard. The point is, I look great once more!
The game is way more fun to play (not to mention I keep checking out armory to admire my awesome gear) when your character looks great. That's the worst part of leveling, is that you generally look like some sort of clown in all sorts of mismatched weird crap.
The latest news is that you will be able to customize what your armor looks like in the upcoming patch, so while you keep the same stats, you can look like you're wearing tier 2 or pvp season 5 or whatever you want! I can't wait till I can strut about in full nightslayer or bloodfang...I'm gonna look SO. FREAKING. BAD. ASS.
Oh dear god how I hated those shoulderpads. I was so excited when shoulders finally dropped for me, even if it was non-tier. Then when I equipped it...my jaw just dropped. It was so ugly. And so disproportionately huge! I looked ridiculous, and from certain angles it just looked like I had some bizarre mummy bandages floating above my torso. Just plain hideous.
But anyways, they were blue so I dyed my hair to match, and dug up some tabards. I had several choices to pull from my collection of tabards (30+ and counting):
Darkspear (light blue/gray with red motif) - not quite the right shade of blue
Undercity (Dark blue/black) - creepy looking face in the middle
Alliance (blue/gole) - I'll never wear alliance scum gear! How did I even buy this in the first place??
Sporeggar (dark blue/purple) - not quite the right shade. Also not a fan of a mushroom logo.
Ebon Blade (navy/black) - too dark and emo
Ramkahen (blue/gold) - reminds me too much of the alliance tabard
The one I picked, which was the exact perfect shade of blue as well as being pretty bad-ass looking, was the frostwolf tabard. It's blue/white and matches perfectly with the shoulderpad, and the touch of white is a nice contrast to the general bleakness of the rest of the armor set. I dyed my hair blue and voila - I was a coordinated (and pretty!) troll once more!
Then of course, I switched guilds, meaning that I started back from 0/3000 neutral rep. I decided to wear the tabard to speed up the rep gain, which meant having to re-coordinate my outfit once more. I dyed my hair red to match and luckily the new tabard was exactly the same shade so that looked quite nice. But those big ugly blue shoulderpads! I just couldn't look at them without cringing, especially when they contrasted so hideously with the new hair and tabard!
But then yesterday, after we one-shotted majordomo (a really fun fight in my opinion), the vanquishers shoulder token dropped! And as luck would have it, I was the only person in the entire raid who could use them!
With the new tier shoulder upgrade (can't remember the last time I had tier shoulders...I think it was back in ICC), I could finally equip my new tier chestpiece I had bought two weeks ago but hadn't been able to use because I didn't want to lose my set bonus. So BAM, that's two new tier pieces which comes with a sweet fire damage proc set bonus! And now I could also equip the gloves from the molten front dailies since I didn't have to worry about the tier 11 set bonus anymore! Gear gets really complicated sometimes...
AND just as icing on the cake, the Domo also dropped some sexy rogue boots! So now pretty much everything I'm wearing is either tier 12 or off-set, which are of course all matching in design and color (except the helm, which I never show anyways). It's not red, per se, but it's a dark brown-rusty color with red bits which goes very nicely with the new red hair and tabard. The point is, I look great once more!
The game is way more fun to play (not to mention I keep checking out armory to admire my awesome gear) when your character looks great. That's the worst part of leveling, is that you generally look like some sort of clown in all sorts of mismatched weird crap.
The latest news is that you will be able to customize what your armor looks like in the upcoming patch, so while you keep the same stats, you can look like you're wearing tier 2 or pvp season 5 or whatever you want! I can't wait till I can strut about in full nightslayer or bloodfang...I'm gonna look SO. FREAKING. BAD. ASS.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Oh herro priest
Ah, time for a new background. I went with a tried-and-true flames motif, to fit in with all this fire in the latest wow patch. I honestly feel so sorry for fire mages. I don't think all the mobs are immune to fire damage (or maybe they are, I don't know) but everyone is pretty sick of fire at the moment. Just like how we were all really sick of frost damage back in ICC...
So my latest project (oh I have so many) is a priest alt. My alt projects have a tendency to fizzle out a lot, but this one has managed to keep the momentum going for a few months. She's 84, and it looks like I'll have my third 85 in a matter of days.
I haven't really carried through with my lofty goals for my other alt, my prot pally, the way I had intended. I wanted to deck her out in tanking gear and become an off-tank for raids, but that never really happened. Tanking wasn't so much a challenge as finding the time to do anything with alts. There was always some achievement, some rare mount, an old-school raid to pug, city raids, holiday events that I wanted to do on my main and by the time I was done with those, I never really had time to chain-run dungeons on my alts the way I had planned.
But this priest has been coming along quickly thanks to the RAF friends we've been leveling with. I had made a druid to heal our little 4 man group, but switched to a priest when we had to start from scratch due to tank swapping issues (this is why you should roll a hybrid...).
I picked shadow to level and holy as off-spec to heal dungeons. The beauty of it was that I didn't need a whole new set of gear like I had with my resto/feral druid. I mean, I know I'm supposed to prioritize hit for shadow and spirit for holy, but shadow priests gain hit rating from spirit anyways, so we're a pretty unique hybrid in terms of itemization. Hit and spirit are both good stats for me whether I'm holy or shadow. And besides, intellect trumps both hit/spirit anyways so my itemization is pretty simple. Best of all, I'm not constantly carrying around extra gear for an OS or swapping out all the time.
The shadow priest rotation seemed pretty simple for single-target. Once I learned how to manage my mana using glyphed shadow word: death and shadowfiend, things were pretty easy. It was only in aoe situations that I was at a loss, at least until I picked up mind sear. Spreading DoTs around on everyone was a bit annoying but overall I had respectable multi-target DPS and pretty damn good single-target DPS.
Now as for holy spec - it's been amazing. My aoe heals are off the charts. One moment everyone in party is bleeding health and their bars are dropping into the red zone, and the next minute they're back up to full. All I have to do is spam flash heal on the lowest (or tank) to proc prayer of healing, cast that followed by circle of healing and everyone's topped off. EJ tells me I shouldn't be worrying about PW:shield but I find in 5 man parties it's a nice way to crank out some extra DPS. Just pop a shield + renew on the tank, and I have like 10 solid seconds to heal other people or smite away at the mob. I even almost out-dpsed a pally as a holy spec healer! Now that's pretty pro.
It's been a lot of fun and really different from the melee characters I usually play. I'm halfway to 84 and I can't wait - I have a bunch of BoE epics I can wear at 85 and I'm planning to jump right into heroics!
So my latest project (oh I have so many) is a priest alt. My alt projects have a tendency to fizzle out a lot, but this one has managed to keep the momentum going for a few months. She's 84, and it looks like I'll have my third 85 in a matter of days.
I haven't really carried through with my lofty goals for my other alt, my prot pally, the way I had intended. I wanted to deck her out in tanking gear and become an off-tank for raids, but that never really happened. Tanking wasn't so much a challenge as finding the time to do anything with alts. There was always some achievement, some rare mount, an old-school raid to pug, city raids, holiday events that I wanted to do on my main and by the time I was done with those, I never really had time to chain-run dungeons on my alts the way I had planned.
But this priest has been coming along quickly thanks to the RAF friends we've been leveling with. I had made a druid to heal our little 4 man group, but switched to a priest when we had to start from scratch due to tank swapping issues (this is why you should roll a hybrid...).
I picked shadow to level and holy as off-spec to heal dungeons. The beauty of it was that I didn't need a whole new set of gear like I had with my resto/feral druid. I mean, I know I'm supposed to prioritize hit for shadow and spirit for holy, but shadow priests gain hit rating from spirit anyways, so we're a pretty unique hybrid in terms of itemization. Hit and spirit are both good stats for me whether I'm holy or shadow. And besides, intellect trumps both hit/spirit anyways so my itemization is pretty simple. Best of all, I'm not constantly carrying around extra gear for an OS or swapping out all the time.
The shadow priest rotation seemed pretty simple for single-target. Once I learned how to manage my mana using glyphed shadow word: death and shadowfiend, things were pretty easy. It was only in aoe situations that I was at a loss, at least until I picked up mind sear. Spreading DoTs around on everyone was a bit annoying but overall I had respectable multi-target DPS and pretty damn good single-target DPS.
Now as for holy spec - it's been amazing. My aoe heals are off the charts. One moment everyone in party is bleeding health and their bars are dropping into the red zone, and the next minute they're back up to full. All I have to do is spam flash heal on the lowest (or tank) to proc prayer of healing, cast that followed by circle of healing and everyone's topped off. EJ tells me I shouldn't be worrying about PW:shield but I find in 5 man parties it's a nice way to crank out some extra DPS. Just pop a shield + renew on the tank, and I have like 10 solid seconds to heal other people or smite away at the mob. I even almost out-dpsed a pally as a holy spec healer! Now that's pretty pro.
It's been a lot of fun and really different from the melee characters I usually play. I'm halfway to 84 and I can't wait - I have a bunch of BoE epics I can wear at 85 and I'm planning to jump right into heroics!
Monday, August 15, 2011
Back home again
For the past three weeks or so raiding has been a real bust. One week we had 15 people on, but only 2 healers and not one person had an off spec or an alt that we could bring. Some guilds can down Firelands content with 2 healers, but we knew we had no chance with our setup and gear.
Luckily I still have good relationships with my old guild, so when the GM asked if I could come in to raid with them (filling in for a cancellation) I immediately accepted the invite. They were on Rhyolith, which was a fight I'd only attempted a few times but luckily for melee DPS the job is pretty simple (stab right leg...now left...back to right...rinse repeat) and we downed him in 2 attempts. Might I add that the fight isn't so easy for an assassination rogue since our damage builds up over time, and getting that first turn was a bit difficult. But after the first 10 seconds of the fight it was no problem.
We then spent a couple hours wiping on Alysrazor. I made a few mistakes, never having seen the fight before and also due to the fight being sort of, um, INSANE. Phase 1 is fine, then phase 2 is something I can only describe as OMG GIANT FIRE TORNADOES ARE ALL OVER THE PLACE AMG THEY ARE CHASING ME HELP HELP HELP IM ON FIRE.
Once I figured out how to zoom out my camera all the way and also learned to pick up the feathers for the speed boosts, I had it down pat. The first few wipes you can blame on me, but the last few were certainly not from my mistakes.
We did not down Alysrazor sadly and called it a night, but I was still happy to have gotten some good experience on two bosses my guild had never downed. I was ready to start raids up next week and attempt Rhyolith with my own guildies, not as a borrowed PuG. But I was in for a huge letdown...again, no-shows and lack of healers. We had a new recruit that we were able to bring in and scrap together 10 people for a really unbalanced raid composition (melee heavy, new tanks and new healers). It went downhill reeeeeal quick.
The new healer was clueless, and was obviously 12 years old and had a bad attitude. We wiped over and over on Shannox (come on! Shannox! He's like the marrowgar of Firelands) until we finally had another healer come online and we swapped him out. Then we had a soul-crushing series of wipes on Beth-tilac. We literally were banging our heads against the wall, not even able to get to phase 3 and losing people left and right during phase 1 and 2. DPS got aggro, accidentally went up in phase 2, got cleaved, healers got chewed up by adds, couldn't keep up with the damage output, tanks lost aggro, wouldn't taunt down adds, you name it. It seemed like a different thing went wrong each time until we finally sat out a melee DPS in favor of a hunter and finally downed the damn spider. After that we were all too tired to do anything else.
Later in the week I got invited to run with my old guild again - this time for Baleroc and Majordomo. Not being saved to those bosses of course I accepted, and had a blast. I did not screw up once for Baleroc - a very simple fight that just requires you to watch your stacks and put out good DPS. We didn't make the enrage timer once but got it the second time. Majordomo also went exceptionally smoothly. Despite never having seen the fight and only hearing a 2-sentence explanation (Stand with the tank and face the scorpion except when your seed pops. Oh, and kill adds) we 2-shotted it. My DPS was on the low side but what do you expect, bringing an assassination rogue who's not allowed to stand behind the boss? I don't stack expertise and I can't do much about 30% of my attacks getting dodged.
We put in an hour's worth of solid attempts on Ragnaros. It's a tough fight but it's really encouraging when you see the wipes start to pay off and you make a bit of progress, little by little. The first few pulls people couldn't avoid the lava waves and we couldn't make it past phase 1, but after some practice we were getting to phase 2, and by the end of the night we were starting to make it to phase 3 (unfortunately we kept wiping right at the phase transition). But hey, that's progression!
After the raid I asked the GM if I could rejoin the guild. I'd actually been considering switching guilds for some time due to the lack of quality raids at the current guild. We have some good people, but they were also not reliable in terms of raid commitments and scheduling. We had some reliable people, who were in turn not the best at learning new mechanics. I didn't want to spend 3 months of Firelands clearing only 2/7. I wanted to see a Rag kill before the next patch. Besides, I had noticed a long time ago that the overall maturity level in the new guild was not on par with the old one. I just didn't fit in quite as perfectly as I had.
I waited till the next day to tell the old GM's girlfriend in person (well, in whispers) exactly why I was leaving and where I was going, and that I really enjoyed getting to know her. We had bonded a bit during the few months I was there and I was genuinely sorry to say goodbye to her - she was a nice person and a quality raider and I knew I would miss her. She was sad too but she understood, we had cordial, friendly words and I announced in guild chat I was leaving. I mentioned I was going back to my old guild to raid with old friends, that everyone had been great and that I would miss them. In my opinion it was a lot more cordial than how some other members had quit - typing in /gquit without a single word of explanation.
I saw some sad faces in gchat after I said goodbye, but I was absolutely stunned at what the other rogue said to me in whisper after I quit. "You suck I hate you now". There was no smiley face, no JK - he was dead serious.
I was in total shock over this. I mean, what was so horrible about what I had done? I no longer enjoyed raiding with this guild, is it so wrong that I want to leave? I hadn't done a disservie to the guild in any way - I never took anything out of the guild bank, I always showed up on time for raids, I stayed through painful wipe sessions without complaining, I helped others in the guild, I never swore at anyone, I was nice, I made jokes, I helped them progress. It's not as if I joined the guild, raided for two weeks and won a bunch of items then quit. I stuck around for 8 months, helping their progression and being active and dedicated.
What also kind of flabbergasted me is that this rogue has applied to a more hardcore raiding guild on our server. I know this because I've seen his app - I was considering applying as well! He hasn't switched guilds, but the fact that he apped shows that he's not all Mr. Loyal to the guild either! What right does he have to criticize me for switching?
Anyways, I'm not terribly concerned with all that anymore. It was upsetting to hear that from someone you've been on good terms with (we used to discuss rogue strategy and help each other out with enchants, flasks, etc). But now I'm in a better guild with better people, and I've decided that raiding isn't going to become a huge priority anymore. I have a very serious alt these days that I'm spending a lot of time on, and I've decided raiding is fun occasionally, but it's not something to obsess over or make a fuss over. If I get to raid a lot, that's great, and if not, I can do other things.
Though I'd still love to down Rag before the next patch...he's down to 40% and we're still pushing!
Luckily I still have good relationships with my old guild, so when the GM asked if I could come in to raid with them (filling in for a cancellation) I immediately accepted the invite. They were on Rhyolith, which was a fight I'd only attempted a few times but luckily for melee DPS the job is pretty simple (stab right leg...now left...back to right...rinse repeat) and we downed him in 2 attempts. Might I add that the fight isn't so easy for an assassination rogue since our damage builds up over time, and getting that first turn was a bit difficult. But after the first 10 seconds of the fight it was no problem.
We then spent a couple hours wiping on Alysrazor. I made a few mistakes, never having seen the fight before and also due to the fight being sort of, um, INSANE. Phase 1 is fine, then phase 2 is something I can only describe as OMG GIANT FIRE TORNADOES ARE ALL OVER THE PLACE AMG THEY ARE CHASING ME HELP HELP HELP IM ON FIRE.
Once I figured out how to zoom out my camera all the way and also learned to pick up the feathers for the speed boosts, I had it down pat. The first few wipes you can blame on me, but the last few were certainly not from my mistakes.
We did not down Alysrazor sadly and called it a night, but I was still happy to have gotten some good experience on two bosses my guild had never downed. I was ready to start raids up next week and attempt Rhyolith with my own guildies, not as a borrowed PuG. But I was in for a huge letdown...again, no-shows and lack of healers. We had a new recruit that we were able to bring in and scrap together 10 people for a really unbalanced raid composition (melee heavy, new tanks and new healers). It went downhill reeeeeal quick.
The new healer was clueless, and was obviously 12 years old and had a bad attitude. We wiped over and over on Shannox (come on! Shannox! He's like the marrowgar of Firelands) until we finally had another healer come online and we swapped him out. Then we had a soul-crushing series of wipes on Beth-tilac. We literally were banging our heads against the wall, not even able to get to phase 3 and losing people left and right during phase 1 and 2. DPS got aggro, accidentally went up in phase 2, got cleaved, healers got chewed up by adds, couldn't keep up with the damage output, tanks lost aggro, wouldn't taunt down adds, you name it. It seemed like a different thing went wrong each time until we finally sat out a melee DPS in favor of a hunter and finally downed the damn spider. After that we were all too tired to do anything else.
Later in the week I got invited to run with my old guild again - this time for Baleroc and Majordomo. Not being saved to those bosses of course I accepted, and had a blast. I did not screw up once for Baleroc - a very simple fight that just requires you to watch your stacks and put out good DPS. We didn't make the enrage timer once but got it the second time. Majordomo also went exceptionally smoothly. Despite never having seen the fight and only hearing a 2-sentence explanation (Stand with the tank and face the scorpion except when your seed pops. Oh, and kill adds) we 2-shotted it. My DPS was on the low side but what do you expect, bringing an assassination rogue who's not allowed to stand behind the boss? I don't stack expertise and I can't do much about 30% of my attacks getting dodged.
We put in an hour's worth of solid attempts on Ragnaros. It's a tough fight but it's really encouraging when you see the wipes start to pay off and you make a bit of progress, little by little. The first few pulls people couldn't avoid the lava waves and we couldn't make it past phase 1, but after some practice we were getting to phase 2, and by the end of the night we were starting to make it to phase 3 (unfortunately we kept wiping right at the phase transition). But hey, that's progression!
After the raid I asked the GM if I could rejoin the guild. I'd actually been considering switching guilds for some time due to the lack of quality raids at the current guild. We have some good people, but they were also not reliable in terms of raid commitments and scheduling. We had some reliable people, who were in turn not the best at learning new mechanics. I didn't want to spend 3 months of Firelands clearing only 2/7. I wanted to see a Rag kill before the next patch. Besides, I had noticed a long time ago that the overall maturity level in the new guild was not on par with the old one. I just didn't fit in quite as perfectly as I had.
I waited till the next day to tell the old GM's girlfriend in person (well, in whispers) exactly why I was leaving and where I was going, and that I really enjoyed getting to know her. We had bonded a bit during the few months I was there and I was genuinely sorry to say goodbye to her - she was a nice person and a quality raider and I knew I would miss her. She was sad too but she understood, we had cordial, friendly words and I announced in guild chat I was leaving. I mentioned I was going back to my old guild to raid with old friends, that everyone had been great and that I would miss them. In my opinion it was a lot more cordial than how some other members had quit - typing in /gquit without a single word of explanation.
I saw some sad faces in gchat after I said goodbye, but I was absolutely stunned at what the other rogue said to me in whisper after I quit. "You suck I hate you now". There was no smiley face, no JK - he was dead serious.
I was in total shock over this. I mean, what was so horrible about what I had done? I no longer enjoyed raiding with this guild, is it so wrong that I want to leave? I hadn't done a disservie to the guild in any way - I never took anything out of the guild bank, I always showed up on time for raids, I stayed through painful wipe sessions without complaining, I helped others in the guild, I never swore at anyone, I was nice, I made jokes, I helped them progress. It's not as if I joined the guild, raided for two weeks and won a bunch of items then quit. I stuck around for 8 months, helping their progression and being active and dedicated.
What also kind of flabbergasted me is that this rogue has applied to a more hardcore raiding guild on our server. I know this because I've seen his app - I was considering applying as well! He hasn't switched guilds, but the fact that he apped shows that he's not all Mr. Loyal to the guild either! What right does he have to criticize me for switching?
Anyways, I'm not terribly concerned with all that anymore. It was upsetting to hear that from someone you've been on good terms with (we used to discuss rogue strategy and help each other out with enchants, flasks, etc). But now I'm in a better guild with better people, and I've decided that raiding isn't going to become a huge priority anymore. I have a very serious alt these days that I'm spending a lot of time on, and I've decided raiding is fun occasionally, but it's not something to obsess over or make a fuss over. If I get to raid a lot, that's great, and if not, I can do other things.
Though I'd still love to down Rag before the next patch...he's down to 40% and we're still pushing!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The Straggler
Leveling with other people can be such a pain in the butt. It sounds like a great idea in the beginning - hey we can do quests together! We can do dungeons! We will be invincible!
But inevitably level gaps start happening. Either someone charges off into a much higher level and complains that no one else is catching up, or someone just falls behind and everyone else has to wait for them to catch up.
The problem gets exacerbated when you try to play with someone who has fallen behind. Most quests have a level requirement, and chances are if you're tackling a quest that is orange or yellow, that person who is 2-3 levels behind you will not be able to pick up that quest. Experience is also capped by your level and thus if you're doing dungeons that are too much beyond your level, your experience gain will be slower compared to the other people. All of this means that if you're behind, you will likely stay that way or even fall further behind.
What do you do in that situation? There's nothing to do except catch up!
The best way to level quickly in my opinion, is without a doubt questing. If you hate questing, too bad. It's the quickest and most reliable. Some say dungeons, but that's only if you're a beast tank leveling with a beast healer. Otherwise there's a fair chance you'll get stuck with a bad group and end up spending a long time in a dungeon with very little to show for it. There's also a good chance you'll get stuck in some low level dungeon and not get much xp out of it compared to what you would get if you had spent that time questing.
The best place to quest are where there are a large number of generic "kill this many of that" type quests in one hub. The worst thing you can do is do one-off quests over and over - you'll waste a lot of time just travelling back and forth. You want to be able to do at least 3-4 quests in one round without having to go back to turn them in.
It takes some experience to figure out where the best questing zones are. Some of my personal favorites are (in no particular order): Feralas, Un'goro Crater, Western Plaguelands, Stranglethorn Vale, the Hinterlands, Nagrand, and Borean Tundra. You will find a big cluster of quests in one questing hub and be able to knock out at least a couple levels in an hour.
And let me just take the time to say that if you're a completionist and feel like you have to do every single quest, even ones that have fallen beyond your level, then save that energy for when you hit level cap. When you're pre-85, your biggest goal should be to get to 85, not to dawdle here and there and try to get the loremaster title or whatever. Quests in the Azeroth zones take a mere fraction of the time when you're 85 than when you were level 45. If you really want that stupid loremaster, focus on leveling to cap then going back. Trust me, you will save yourself so much time that way and I honestly don't know anyone who actually got loremaster during the leveling process.
Some things that give absolutely garbage experience relative to the time you would spend doing them:
- gray level quests that you couldn't do 10 levels ago
- daily quests (most dailies are meant to be a level-cap grind anyways)
- escort quests
- any azeroth quests once you're past 60
- any outland quests once you're past 70
- any northrend quests once you're past 80
Some things you should be actively doing to speed up xp gain:
- gathering tradeskills - mining, herbing, skinning all give xp now, so when you see that node, go get it. It's usually 1.5-2x the xp you'd get for a creature kill, plus you get something nice out of it. Don't ignore nodes.
- always logging out at an inn
- skipping a quest if you just can't solo it, or if some ally is camping you. It wastes time, just don't do it.
- have a spec that minimizes downtime - you can always respec to raid if you're so inclined later on. Pick talents that maximize self-healing, mana conservation, burst damage and what have you so you can glide effortlessly from mob to mob getting your shit done.
- try to level your cooking - not because it helps you level faster, but it's one of those things that's a bitch to try to go back and do later on. At the least save all the meats and mats you're collecting.
Again, these are things you don't learn until you've leveled a toon up to 85 and kind of get a feel for what works and what doesn't. Just as a comparison, my rogue took over 6 months to get to 80, whereas my 2nd character paladin took less than 2 months. You just know better the second time around.
But inevitably level gaps start happening. Either someone charges off into a much higher level and complains that no one else is catching up, or someone just falls behind and everyone else has to wait for them to catch up.
The problem gets exacerbated when you try to play with someone who has fallen behind. Most quests have a level requirement, and chances are if you're tackling a quest that is orange or yellow, that person who is 2-3 levels behind you will not be able to pick up that quest. Experience is also capped by your level and thus if you're doing dungeons that are too much beyond your level, your experience gain will be slower compared to the other people. All of this means that if you're behind, you will likely stay that way or even fall further behind.
What do you do in that situation? There's nothing to do except catch up!
The best way to level quickly in my opinion, is without a doubt questing. If you hate questing, too bad. It's the quickest and most reliable. Some say dungeons, but that's only if you're a beast tank leveling with a beast healer. Otherwise there's a fair chance you'll get stuck with a bad group and end up spending a long time in a dungeon with very little to show for it. There's also a good chance you'll get stuck in some low level dungeon and not get much xp out of it compared to what you would get if you had spent that time questing.
The best place to quest are where there are a large number of generic "kill this many of that" type quests in one hub. The worst thing you can do is do one-off quests over and over - you'll waste a lot of time just travelling back and forth. You want to be able to do at least 3-4 quests in one round without having to go back to turn them in.
It takes some experience to figure out where the best questing zones are. Some of my personal favorites are (in no particular order): Feralas, Un'goro Crater, Western Plaguelands, Stranglethorn Vale, the Hinterlands, Nagrand, and Borean Tundra. You will find a big cluster of quests in one questing hub and be able to knock out at least a couple levels in an hour.
And let me just take the time to say that if you're a completionist and feel like you have to do every single quest, even ones that have fallen beyond your level, then save that energy for when you hit level cap. When you're pre-85, your biggest goal should be to get to 85, not to dawdle here and there and try to get the loremaster title or whatever. Quests in the Azeroth zones take a mere fraction of the time when you're 85 than when you were level 45. If you really want that stupid loremaster, focus on leveling to cap then going back. Trust me, you will save yourself so much time that way and I honestly don't know anyone who actually got loremaster during the leveling process.
Some things that give absolutely garbage experience relative to the time you would spend doing them:
- gray level quests that you couldn't do 10 levels ago
- daily quests (most dailies are meant to be a level-cap grind anyways)
- escort quests
- any azeroth quests once you're past 60
- any outland quests once you're past 70
- any northrend quests once you're past 80
Some things you should be actively doing to speed up xp gain:
- gathering tradeskills - mining, herbing, skinning all give xp now, so when you see that node, go get it. It's usually 1.5-2x the xp you'd get for a creature kill, plus you get something nice out of it. Don't ignore nodes.
- always logging out at an inn
- skipping a quest if you just can't solo it, or if some ally is camping you. It wastes time, just don't do it.
- have a spec that minimizes downtime - you can always respec to raid if you're so inclined later on. Pick talents that maximize self-healing, mana conservation, burst damage and what have you so you can glide effortlessly from mob to mob getting your shit done.
- try to level your cooking - not because it helps you level faster, but it's one of those things that's a bitch to try to go back and do later on. At the least save all the meats and mats you're collecting.
Again, these are things you don't learn until you've leveled a toon up to 85 and kind of get a feel for what works and what doesn't. Just as a comparison, my rogue took over 6 months to get to 80, whereas my 2nd character paladin took less than 2 months. You just know better the second time around.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Rise of the Zandalari
Since the recent valor to justice point conversion, dungeons have gotten much easier. Before Patch 4.2, I tried the Zandalari dungeons once, and swore I'd never go back in there until it was nerfed to wrath level.
I beat each dungeon exactly once just to get the damn achievement and stayed far, far away from them since. Every time I even thought about queuing up for one, I recalled the nightmarish run of Zul'Gurub I did with 4 people from the same guild who were constantly laughing at me over my numerous deaths (although they weren't jerks to me nor did they kick me - they just lol'ed at me a lot).
It was a really, really horrible run. I had read up on the encounters and came prepared with potions and foods and whatnot, but I was far from ready for this place. The damage output was off the charts - most special abilities were simply one-shot mechanics where if you don't move a split second fast enough, you will die. I mean, there is just no way to survive a ~40k damage tick without moving out of the fire pre-emptively.
All in all, I think I died around ~20 times or so. Thank god there was a repair NPC right at the entrance. Every single boss fight I got 2 b-rezzes - one from the druid then another from the DK. I managed to stay alive for a whole whopping 30 seconds on the panther boss but on all the other ones I was pretty much dead as soon as the fight started. The fights were lightning fast-paced, the damage was practically unhealable, and the mechanics were unforgiving and relentlessly brutal.
Zul'Aman wasn't nearly as bad, but we did go through about 4 different tanks and healers just to clear it. After spending 2 hours in that place I also had no desire to go back in there.
Besides, I didn't need the extra valor points anyhow - my guild was clearing enough raid content for me to cap out my VP every week, and my gear was already full 359. The only use I had for VP was to buy the BoE boots and give them to my paladin, or sell them. Heck, towards the end I was trading them in for conquest points to buy epic PvP gear.
With the new patch came the conversion, and everyone could now buy tier 11 gear with justice points. It also brought tier 12 gear which I desperately wanted, and in order to buy them I knew I would have to repeat the gruelling dungeon crawls to cap out my VP every week. But I did notice everyone's ilvl was generally higher than they had been pre-patch, and heroic dungeons were getting noticeably easier. People weren't CC'ing meticulously like they used to, and more often than not a beast tank would come in and chain-pull an instance in about 30 minutes.
I figured I'd stick to regular heroics, but in the end I wasn't happy with earning half the VP cap for the week and decided to give the Zandalar dungeons one more try. My first attempt went badly when I died during the boulder toss gauntlet. In fact, I kept dying to it and finally left out of frustration and embarrassment. I mean, come on, what kind of bullshit mechanic is that? Is this frogger or is this WoW?
My next attempt went quite smoothly, however. I managed to get dropped in right at the Bloodlord Mandokir fight, thankfully having skipped the dreaded venomancer (in my opinion he's there to weed out people right at the start) and the stupid boulder toss. One person died here and there but overall no wipes occurred for the rest of the fight. With the help of DBM screaming at me and telling me where to go, and by watching what everyone else was doing, I managed to stumble my way through all the encounters and even put out some decent damage.
I marveled at the fact that as long as you just avoid that single one-shot mechanic every boss has, the rest of the fight becomes more or less trivial (with the exception of the venomancer). For instance with the Bloodlord, as long as you avoid the devastating slam rupture lines, you're fine. the bloodletting mechanic ticks off a lot of hp, but it's unavoidable and it CAN be healed through, whereas the slam damage is a bona-fide one-shot. For the Zanzil encounter, as long as you grab the poison resist buff cauldron before he does the poison spray, you're good to go - the rest of the phases are easily healable.
As I mentioned, the venomancer is an exception - you need to avoid ALL his abilities because all of them are more or less one-shot killers. Everything is poison-based, so if you get hit you'll be taking a few ticks which can be lethal. The toxic link can certainly be a one-shotter if you're unlucky and get linked with another melee right next to you. His breath is particularly dangerous in that he can cast it in any direction, not necessarily at the tank. Combine that with the fact that stepping in any of the myriad of poison pools on the ground which start exploding throughout the fight - you'd better have a hair trigger on your mouse.
Anyways, I gained some confidence from clearing ZG relatively easy. Zul'Aman was also much easier with everyone having better gear and better knowledge of the encounters. There also aren't quite as many one-shot mechanics in ZA - mainly the ones to watch out for are the flame breath during the dragonhawk encounter (you can survive one or two ticks, or three with a great healer who's on the ball), and getting the proper charge order set up during the bear encounter. Other than that the only part of ZA that might be tricky is if the final boss Daakara decides to shapeshift into the Lynx. But as long as the tank knows when to taunt it's not a big deal.
Now I know I can cap my VP each week running a combination of ZG/ZA and a few heroics (maybe toss in a couple raid bosses too). But it still has me missing the good old days of wrath when a dungeon would take 15 min from start to finish...
I beat each dungeon exactly once just to get the damn achievement and stayed far, far away from them since. Every time I even thought about queuing up for one, I recalled the nightmarish run of Zul'Gurub I did with 4 people from the same guild who were constantly laughing at me over my numerous deaths (although they weren't jerks to me nor did they kick me - they just lol'ed at me a lot).
It was a really, really horrible run. I had read up on the encounters and came prepared with potions and foods and whatnot, but I was far from ready for this place. The damage output was off the charts - most special abilities were simply one-shot mechanics where if you don't move a split second fast enough, you will die. I mean, there is just no way to survive a ~40k damage tick without moving out of the fire pre-emptively.
All in all, I think I died around ~20 times or so. Thank god there was a repair NPC right at the entrance. Every single boss fight I got 2 b-rezzes - one from the druid then another from the DK. I managed to stay alive for a whole whopping 30 seconds on the panther boss but on all the other ones I was pretty much dead as soon as the fight started. The fights were lightning fast-paced, the damage was practically unhealable, and the mechanics were unforgiving and relentlessly brutal.
Zul'Aman wasn't nearly as bad, but we did go through about 4 different tanks and healers just to clear it. After spending 2 hours in that place I also had no desire to go back in there.
Besides, I didn't need the extra valor points anyhow - my guild was clearing enough raid content for me to cap out my VP every week, and my gear was already full 359. The only use I had for VP was to buy the BoE boots and give them to my paladin, or sell them. Heck, towards the end I was trading them in for conquest points to buy epic PvP gear.
With the new patch came the conversion, and everyone could now buy tier 11 gear with justice points. It also brought tier 12 gear which I desperately wanted, and in order to buy them I knew I would have to repeat the gruelling dungeon crawls to cap out my VP every week. But I did notice everyone's ilvl was generally higher than they had been pre-patch, and heroic dungeons were getting noticeably easier. People weren't CC'ing meticulously like they used to, and more often than not a beast tank would come in and chain-pull an instance in about 30 minutes.
I figured I'd stick to regular heroics, but in the end I wasn't happy with earning half the VP cap for the week and decided to give the Zandalar dungeons one more try. My first attempt went badly when I died during the boulder toss gauntlet. In fact, I kept dying to it and finally left out of frustration and embarrassment. I mean, come on, what kind of bullshit mechanic is that? Is this frogger or is this WoW?
My next attempt went quite smoothly, however. I managed to get dropped in right at the Bloodlord Mandokir fight, thankfully having skipped the dreaded venomancer (in my opinion he's there to weed out people right at the start) and the stupid boulder toss. One person died here and there but overall no wipes occurred for the rest of the fight. With the help of DBM screaming at me and telling me where to go, and by watching what everyone else was doing, I managed to stumble my way through all the encounters and even put out some decent damage.
I marveled at the fact that as long as you just avoid that single one-shot mechanic every boss has, the rest of the fight becomes more or less trivial (with the exception of the venomancer). For instance with the Bloodlord, as long as you avoid the devastating slam rupture lines, you're fine. the bloodletting mechanic ticks off a lot of hp, but it's unavoidable and it CAN be healed through, whereas the slam damage is a bona-fide one-shot. For the Zanzil encounter, as long as you grab the poison resist buff cauldron before he does the poison spray, you're good to go - the rest of the phases are easily healable.
As I mentioned, the venomancer is an exception - you need to avoid ALL his abilities because all of them are more or less one-shot killers. Everything is poison-based, so if you get hit you'll be taking a few ticks which can be lethal. The toxic link can certainly be a one-shotter if you're unlucky and get linked with another melee right next to you. His breath is particularly dangerous in that he can cast it in any direction, not necessarily at the tank. Combine that with the fact that stepping in any of the myriad of poison pools on the ground which start exploding throughout the fight - you'd better have a hair trigger on your mouse.
Anyways, I gained some confidence from clearing ZG relatively easy. Zul'Aman was also much easier with everyone having better gear and better knowledge of the encounters. There also aren't quite as many one-shot mechanics in ZA - mainly the ones to watch out for are the flame breath during the dragonhawk encounter (you can survive one or two ticks, or three with a great healer who's on the ball), and getting the proper charge order set up during the bear encounter. Other than that the only part of ZA that might be tricky is if the final boss Daakara decides to shapeshift into the Lynx. But as long as the tank knows when to taunt it's not a big deal.
Now I know I can cap my VP each week running a combination of ZG/ZA and a few heroics (maybe toss in a couple raid bosses too). But it still has me missing the good old days of wrath when a dungeon would take 15 min from start to finish...
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Another day, another patch
Patch 4.2 Rage of the Firelands is here!
Which brings with is a new raid, new loot, a few new pets/mounts, and a new daily questing hub where you will spend the next few months grinding miserably to earn marks to trade in for loot.
Do you detect a hint of bitterness? Well, I am a little bitter that there are no new dungeons released along with the raid. How hard would it have been to throw one together, no matter how sloppy? People are tired of the same 7 or so dungeons that came out with the cata launch, and most people really hate the new (or should I say old) zandalari dungeons. No one likes one-shot mechanics, I'm telling ya.
If you look at the patch history of wrath, with every new patch came a new raid and also new dungeons. The ulduar patch came with it 2 new dungeons, both normal and heroic, the ToC raid came with just one lame little dungeon which was still kind of fun, and ICC brought a whopping 3 new dungeons and an epic raid which kept people entertained for nearly a year.
And then look at cata. Patch 4.1 brought just 2 recycled old dungeons. Patch 4.2 brought a new raid and a new questing hub, but people hate doing dailies over and over. We enjoy the challenges and intricacies of new dungeon encounters and accessible loots. We do not enjoy grinding the same quests day in and day out, saving up tokens for that one epic loot we're going to purchase 5 months in the future.
Sigh, well that is enough QQing for now. We attempted firelands last night and brought Beth'tilac down to 9%. It's a fun fight as melee, and I'm glad that blizzard stopped the recent trend of royally screwing over melee. Spider goes down, you go up, spider goes nuts, you go down, rinse and repeat. Pretty fun fight.
I'm looking forward to the new raids but I do feel a bit overwhelmed at all the new stuff to do. Whenever a new patch hits there's that frenzied feeling of wanting to explore all the new content and getting all the new achievements and unlocking all the new features, and it just seems like there aren't enough hours in the day to do it all. Just need to breathe, and remind myself that it will all be done in a couple months and I can go back to assuming my pseudo-bored "been-there-done-that" veteran wow player identity.
"Oh, the new dailies? Nah, man, I've done them all too many times. Oh, that new achievement? Nah, man, I got them already. Oh, wanna run dungeons for valor points? Nah, man, I got all my gear...I'm just gonna go farm outlands rep."
Which brings with is a new raid, new loot, a few new pets/mounts, and a new daily questing hub where you will spend the next few months grinding miserably to earn marks to trade in for loot.
Do you detect a hint of bitterness? Well, I am a little bitter that there are no new dungeons released along with the raid. How hard would it have been to throw one together, no matter how sloppy? People are tired of the same 7 or so dungeons that came out with the cata launch, and most people really hate the new (or should I say old) zandalari dungeons. No one likes one-shot mechanics, I'm telling ya.
If you look at the patch history of wrath, with every new patch came a new raid and also new dungeons. The ulduar patch came with it 2 new dungeons, both normal and heroic, the ToC raid came with just one lame little dungeon which was still kind of fun, and ICC brought a whopping 3 new dungeons and an epic raid which kept people entertained for nearly a year.
And then look at cata. Patch 4.1 brought just 2 recycled old dungeons. Patch 4.2 brought a new raid and a new questing hub, but people hate doing dailies over and over. We enjoy the challenges and intricacies of new dungeon encounters and accessible loots. We do not enjoy grinding the same quests day in and day out, saving up tokens for that one epic loot we're going to purchase 5 months in the future.
Sigh, well that is enough QQing for now. We attempted firelands last night and brought Beth'tilac down to 9%. It's a fun fight as melee, and I'm glad that blizzard stopped the recent trend of royally screwing over melee. Spider goes down, you go up, spider goes nuts, you go down, rinse and repeat. Pretty fun fight.
I'm looking forward to the new raids but I do feel a bit overwhelmed at all the new stuff to do. Whenever a new patch hits there's that frenzied feeling of wanting to explore all the new content and getting all the new achievements and unlocking all the new features, and it just seems like there aren't enough hours in the day to do it all. Just need to breathe, and remind myself that it will all be done in a couple months and I can go back to assuming my pseudo-bored "been-there-done-that" veteran wow player identity.
"Oh, the new dailies? Nah, man, I've done them all too many times. Oh, that new achievement? Nah, man, I got them already. Oh, wanna run dungeons for valor points? Nah, man, I got all my gear...I'm just gonna go farm outlands rep."
Friday, June 24, 2011
Mountain O' Mounts
Last night was a big night for me. For starters, I finally finished up the last of my holiday achievements (Midsummer Festival) and earning the achievement "What a Long, Strange Trip it's been". Oh, and that achievement came with a beautiful, shiny violet proto-drake.
Which now put me up to 99 mounts, and I knew if I just got one more I'd get the achievement "Mountain O' Mounts". I'd been doing the argent crusade dailies to get all the mounts, but I realized this would take several weeks. 5 mounts at 100 champion's seals each, and I can only earn ~15 seals a day doing all the dailies. It's a long-term goal. But I wanted another mount NOW!
So I went and dropped 15k gold on a mechano-hog. It put me below 100k (NOOOO) but man, this thing is sweet! It's so much more badass than the goblin trike, and it does this awesome bounce animation when you jump on it. AND it has a side-car! I gave some lowbie friends a ride in it and they loved it!
Getting the mechano-hog put me up to 100 mounts, which awarded the achievement and as a reward, the red dragonhawk mount as well. While it's a pretty mount to look at, I hate actually flying on the dragonhawk. It does this bizarre up-and-down motion that gives me a headache.
Anyways, all this achieving actually put me on top of the achievement point leaderboard in our guild! I'm kind of amazed that I'm the nerdiest person out of an entire guild full of nerdy people...I'm not sure if I like it at the top.
Which now put me up to 99 mounts, and I knew if I just got one more I'd get the achievement "Mountain O' Mounts". I'd been doing the argent crusade dailies to get all the mounts, but I realized this would take several weeks. 5 mounts at 100 champion's seals each, and I can only earn ~15 seals a day doing all the dailies. It's a long-term goal. But I wanted another mount NOW!
So I went and dropped 15k gold on a mechano-hog. It put me below 100k (NOOOO) but man, this thing is sweet! It's so much more badass than the goblin trike, and it does this awesome bounce animation when you jump on it. AND it has a side-car! I gave some lowbie friends a ride in it and they loved it!
Getting the mechano-hog put me up to 100 mounts, which awarded the achievement and as a reward, the red dragonhawk mount as well. While it's a pretty mount to look at, I hate actually flying on the dragonhawk. It does this bizarre up-and-down motion that gives me a headache.
Anyways, all this achieving actually put me on top of the achievement point leaderboard in our guild! I'm kind of amazed that I'm the nerdiest person out of an entire guild full of nerdy people...I'm not sure if I like it at the top.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
This is how noobs do it
It's so funny, the things I hear sometimes when I give advice to other players. I mean, I understand that not everyone MUST think exactly the way I do, but like, some things just don't seem like common sense to anybody's mind.
Take my husband, for instance. Despite having played the game for 2 years now, he is quite noobish at times. He has a morbid terror of putting points into the wrong talent. Every time he gets a new point he will go online and look up the most popular spec before spending that point. Or worse, he will hold onto several points until he's had time to do this research. He's level 50-something, a point in the game where it really isn't that big of a deal where your talents go into. Yes, it matters a lot more than when you were level 20. But it's not going to make or break your character in any way, you know? Might I also remind you that you can re-spec at any time? Like, when you hit 85, maybe? The first time you respec it costs like 30 silver, and the maximum you pay for a respec is only like 35g, I believe. That's not a lot of money.
Then yesterday, I noticed a friend on his new DK with 0 talent points. I pointed this out, having done a similar thing myself (when they reset points for cata, I forgot about my DK and played her with 0 talents, thinking, "why are things taking so long to die???"). His excuse was that he didn't want to commit to a spec without doing the research first. My response was, of course, ???? Seriously, it takes all of 15 seconds to fill up your talent tree. Even if they're the shittiest talents, your dps and survivability will improve 100%.
Well there I go again, sounding like an elitist asshole. My point is that, I just don't get why people are so afraid of this. Maybe they're still stuck in Diablo mode where you couldn't re-do your talent trees and so you had to get it right the first time. Yes, I will scratch my head and go "huh?" if you have a weird talent tree. But trust me, it's much worse to have no talent tree. It's like gimping yourself for no good reason when it's 1. completely reversible, 2. helps you level faster, and most importantly, 3. helps you learn that class all the better.
My approach to talents is pretty simple. Some good general guidelines to follow are:
1. Anything that boosts the damage (or healing if you're a healer and mitigation if you're a tank) of an ability you use frequently is good. ie, things like Improved Shadow Word: Pain, Improved Sinister Strike, etc. Make sure to max out these talents, but ONLY if it's an ability you use frequently. If it's some pvp talent you'll never use, don't waste points in them.
2. Distinguish between pvp and pve talents. If you plan on pvp-ing, use your secondary spec. Don't try to combine pve and pvp in one spec because you'll suck at both. Talents that reduce CC effects on you are almost certainly pvp talents. Other talents that are not exactly for your role (ie, damage reduction for anything but a tank, increased speed effects for ranged DPS) are also more or less pvp talents. Some trees have more of these talents than others, and they are generally THE pvp talent tree of choice. Trust me, you'll never see a subtlety rogue in a raid. If you do, he is terribad.
3. Talents that increase your core stats such as agility, stamina, critical strike, hit rating etc, are almost always worth the points. Obviously if you're a mage you odn't want increased stamina, but a talent like Piercing Ice - improves the critical strike chance of all your spells by 3% - that's fantastic. Especially since frost mages have some spectacular crit chances.
4. Max out your talents! If a talent gives you 2% increased damage/healing/stam per point, MAX IT OUT! Don't just stick 1 point here and 1 point there. The effects scale non-linearly, and you'll get a much greater benefit from maxing out a good talent over spreading it out over different ones. The only exception to this is if you're trying to max out a tier so you can put points into a different tier. If you just need 1 more point in something to get to the next tier, then by all means invest it in something without maxing it out. Or after filling out all your trees you only have a couple points left, stick it in the most useful talent you can find without worrying about maxing that talent. You can't, you have no more points.
When I level I just fill out my own talent trees using these guidelines, and most often when I compare them with the "optimum spec", there is very little difference. Another thing to remember is that the optimum spec you find on the internet might not be suited to you for whatever reason. If you can do your job well, no one will say "lol why do you have 2 points in this talent instead of 3". Maybe you're not interested in hardcore raiding and want to farm low level dungeons. By all means, spec for that purpose. Maybe you want to do arenas exclusively with a certain group composition, by all means spec to suit that specific group.
It's really not the end of the world to put a point into the wrong talent. It is good to research so that your leveling pace is faster and you can learn your class better. But really, this morbid fear of speccing incorrectly is quite beyond my comprehension.
Take my husband, for instance. Despite having played the game for 2 years now, he is quite noobish at times. He has a morbid terror of putting points into the wrong talent. Every time he gets a new point he will go online and look up the most popular spec before spending that point. Or worse, he will hold onto several points until he's had time to do this research. He's level 50-something, a point in the game where it really isn't that big of a deal where your talents go into. Yes, it matters a lot more than when you were level 20. But it's not going to make or break your character in any way, you know? Might I also remind you that you can re-spec at any time? Like, when you hit 85, maybe? The first time you respec it costs like 30 silver, and the maximum you pay for a respec is only like 35g, I believe. That's not a lot of money.
Then yesterday, I noticed a friend on his new DK with 0 talent points. I pointed this out, having done a similar thing myself (when they reset points for cata, I forgot about my DK and played her with 0 talents, thinking, "why are things taking so long to die???"). His excuse was that he didn't want to commit to a spec without doing the research first. My response was, of course, ???? Seriously, it takes all of 15 seconds to fill up your talent tree. Even if they're the shittiest talents, your dps and survivability will improve 100%.
Well there I go again, sounding like an elitist asshole. My point is that, I just don't get why people are so afraid of this. Maybe they're still stuck in Diablo mode where you couldn't re-do your talent trees and so you had to get it right the first time. Yes, I will scratch my head and go "huh?" if you have a weird talent tree. But trust me, it's much worse to have no talent tree. It's like gimping yourself for no good reason when it's 1. completely reversible, 2. helps you level faster, and most importantly, 3. helps you learn that class all the better.
My approach to talents is pretty simple. Some good general guidelines to follow are:
1. Anything that boosts the damage (or healing if you're a healer and mitigation if you're a tank) of an ability you use frequently is good. ie, things like Improved Shadow Word: Pain, Improved Sinister Strike, etc. Make sure to max out these talents, but ONLY if it's an ability you use frequently. If it's some pvp talent you'll never use, don't waste points in them.
2. Distinguish between pvp and pve talents. If you plan on pvp-ing, use your secondary spec. Don't try to combine pve and pvp in one spec because you'll suck at both. Talents that reduce CC effects on you are almost certainly pvp talents. Other talents that are not exactly for your role (ie, damage reduction for anything but a tank, increased speed effects for ranged DPS) are also more or less pvp talents. Some trees have more of these talents than others, and they are generally THE pvp talent tree of choice. Trust me, you'll never see a subtlety rogue in a raid. If you do, he is terribad.
3. Talents that increase your core stats such as agility, stamina, critical strike, hit rating etc, are almost always worth the points. Obviously if you're a mage you odn't want increased stamina, but a talent like Piercing Ice - improves the critical strike chance of all your spells by 3% - that's fantastic. Especially since frost mages have some spectacular crit chances.
4. Max out your talents! If a talent gives you 2% increased damage/healing/stam per point, MAX IT OUT! Don't just stick 1 point here and 1 point there. The effects scale non-linearly, and you'll get a much greater benefit from maxing out a good talent over spreading it out over different ones. The only exception to this is if you're trying to max out a tier so you can put points into a different tier. If you just need 1 more point in something to get to the next tier, then by all means invest it in something without maxing it out. Or after filling out all your trees you only have a couple points left, stick it in the most useful talent you can find without worrying about maxing that talent. You can't, you have no more points.
When I level I just fill out my own talent trees using these guidelines, and most often when I compare them with the "optimum spec", there is very little difference. Another thing to remember is that the optimum spec you find on the internet might not be suited to you for whatever reason. If you can do your job well, no one will say "lol why do you have 2 points in this talent instead of 3". Maybe you're not interested in hardcore raiding and want to farm low level dungeons. By all means, spec for that purpose. Maybe you want to do arenas exclusively with a certain group composition, by all means spec to suit that specific group.
It's really not the end of the world to put a point into the wrong talent. It is good to research so that your leveling pace is faster and you can learn your class better. But really, this morbid fear of speccing incorrectly is quite beyond my comprehension.
Monday, June 13, 2011
I'm HEALIN over here!
Get it? It's the line from Midnight Cowboy. I didn't know how to quite capture a New Yorker accent in terms of spelling...
Yes, I've been furiously leveling a healer for our little 4-man party of me, my husband and 2 RL friends. I started out with a druid who mainly just sat around most of the time except for healing a dungeon once a week. Recently our friend the tank decided to go DPS so my husband took up the responsibility and leveled a warrior. I told him when we started, "pick a hybrid in case one of them wants to switch". I mean, that's why I rolled a druid and lugged around 2 completely different sets of gear...but no, he just had to play a hunter. Well, now he was rolling a warrior. A little goblin warrior at that.
Partly to keep him company and to keep him motivated on his grueling sojourn, I rolled a new priest alt. Our friends were well into 40s, almost pushing 50s when we started our alts. And I'm amazed that we actually made it to our goal - level 50 in a week. It was a goal that we joked about as we donned every heirloom we could get and began our trek, him starting out in Kezan and working his way through Kalimdor and me tackling on the Eastern Kingdoms from Silverpine to Hillsbrad to Hinterlands. Level 10, 20, 30, and 40 rolled by in a matter of hours as I chain-completed quests and dungeons.
One thing I noticed about playing a shadow priest is that it's a lot like my warlock. My lock rotation was usually: curse, bane, life drain x 2-3 until dead, and shadow bolt when it procs. With the Spriest, it's the same deal: devouring plague, shadow word, mind flay x 2-3 until dead and mind blast when you proc shadow orbs. My damage output was very good except for the fact that I was going oom. Constantly. When leveling I was sitting down to drink pretty often which was alright, but in dungeons it was a problem. Sometimes my que would pop as DPS and I would spend the whole dungeon struggling to get mana regen, resorting even to wanding to sustain at least some semblance of DPS. Finally I figured out I can get mana back by using shadow word: death and that vastly improved matters.
Last night I healed Zul Farrak and about half of Blackrock Depth, which was a lot of fun. ZF was pretty easy and I actually healed part of it in shadow spec because there was hardly any incoming damage. The mobs in BRD was the perfect difficulty level for our 4 man group. The tank was taking enough damage where I wasn't just sitting around twiddling my thumbs, but not so much that I was struggling to keep up.
I do have to say that threat generation seems to be a constant problem. I don't know if it's a problem with the DPS or with the tank, but sometimes it felt like literally healing 3 tanks. The DPS were constantly getting bashed by mobs and eating a lot of damage. It was fine with the pally DPS, what with wearing plate and all, but when a rogue is trying to tank, it makes for a headache. Luckily we had no serious problems, and it actually kept me busy without draining my mana too much.
I can definitely start to see the side of healing everyone gripes about, which is that it's more or less a thankless job. Everyone's too focused on DPS meters to realize that while they're off killing something, the healer is sometimes sweating bullets pumping out heals. People end up pulling an entire room and say "oh we're doing fine" and that's kind of a big weight on your shoulders as a healer. And when people die you feel like you didn't do a good job. It's definitely stressful, though in my opinion tanking is more stressful when you're dealing with DPS who like to pull threat. Unless you're a pally who can drop consecration every time, aoe threat is pretty difficult especially at low levels.
All in all, I'm enjoying healing and BRD was quite fun. That place is freaking huge though! There's no way any group can get that done in less than 3 hours. Split that shit up!
Yes, I've been furiously leveling a healer for our little 4-man party of me, my husband and 2 RL friends. I started out with a druid who mainly just sat around most of the time except for healing a dungeon once a week. Recently our friend the tank decided to go DPS so my husband took up the responsibility and leveled a warrior. I told him when we started, "pick a hybrid in case one of them wants to switch". I mean, that's why I rolled a druid and lugged around 2 completely different sets of gear...but no, he just had to play a hunter. Well, now he was rolling a warrior. A little goblin warrior at that.
Partly to keep him company and to keep him motivated on his grueling sojourn, I rolled a new priest alt. Our friends were well into 40s, almost pushing 50s when we started our alts. And I'm amazed that we actually made it to our goal - level 50 in a week. It was a goal that we joked about as we donned every heirloom we could get and began our trek, him starting out in Kezan and working his way through Kalimdor and me tackling on the Eastern Kingdoms from Silverpine to Hillsbrad to Hinterlands. Level 10, 20, 30, and 40 rolled by in a matter of hours as I chain-completed quests and dungeons.
One thing I noticed about playing a shadow priest is that it's a lot like my warlock. My lock rotation was usually: curse, bane, life drain x 2-3 until dead, and shadow bolt when it procs. With the Spriest, it's the same deal: devouring plague, shadow word, mind flay x 2-3 until dead and mind blast when you proc shadow orbs. My damage output was very good except for the fact that I was going oom. Constantly. When leveling I was sitting down to drink pretty often which was alright, but in dungeons it was a problem. Sometimes my que would pop as DPS and I would spend the whole dungeon struggling to get mana regen, resorting even to wanding to sustain at least some semblance of DPS. Finally I figured out I can get mana back by using shadow word: death and that vastly improved matters.
Last night I healed Zul Farrak and about half of Blackrock Depth, which was a lot of fun. ZF was pretty easy and I actually healed part of it in shadow spec because there was hardly any incoming damage. The mobs in BRD was the perfect difficulty level for our 4 man group. The tank was taking enough damage where I wasn't just sitting around twiddling my thumbs, but not so much that I was struggling to keep up.
I do have to say that threat generation seems to be a constant problem. I don't know if it's a problem with the DPS or with the tank, but sometimes it felt like literally healing 3 tanks. The DPS were constantly getting bashed by mobs and eating a lot of damage. It was fine with the pally DPS, what with wearing plate and all, but when a rogue is trying to tank, it makes for a headache. Luckily we had no serious problems, and it actually kept me busy without draining my mana too much.
I can definitely start to see the side of healing everyone gripes about, which is that it's more or less a thankless job. Everyone's too focused on DPS meters to realize that while they're off killing something, the healer is sometimes sweating bullets pumping out heals. People end up pulling an entire room and say "oh we're doing fine" and that's kind of a big weight on your shoulders as a healer. And when people die you feel like you didn't do a good job. It's definitely stressful, though in my opinion tanking is more stressful when you're dealing with DPS who like to pull threat. Unless you're a pally who can drop consecration every time, aoe threat is pretty difficult especially at low levels.
All in all, I'm enjoying healing and BRD was quite fun. That place is freaking huge though! There's no way any group can get that done in less than 3 hours. Split that shit up!
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Anxiety Attack
We recruited some RL friends to wow and they've been steadily leveling their characters. And I have to admit I feel like such a nosy jerk/elitist whenever I check my friends' armory profiles.
Of course my first impulse when they started was to give them all the advice I could on how to play their class, learn mechanics, acronyms, gear and stats, etc etc. I've been trying my damn hardest not to give TOO much information right off the bat though. I know it can be completely overwhelming given how vast and complex wow can be. I also know that there are things you shouldn't worry about learning before you hit max level since you will pick it up eventually anyways. But there's that part of me that feels like a mother hen watching the baby chicks venture out of the nest for the first time and I feel so goddamn worried!
Like, what if some big bad ally ganks them? What if they accidentally vendor an item that's worth a lot of money? What if they choose the wrong gear? What if they do a random dungeon and get called noobs for not knowing how to play?
I'm mainly worried about the last item. I would hate for my friends to get cussed out in a random dungeon for not knowing how to play! People in dungeons these days are such asshats as it is, and low level dungeons are especially bad since no one even pays attention to any mechanics anymore.
One thing that bothers me to no end is that my nooby friends don't seem to know what stats are important on gear. The last time I checked everything seemed in order, but when they first started...it nearly gave me a heart attack to see a rogue decked out in half spirit/int gear and a paladin equipping a stam/int piece over a stam/str piece. "But it has more armor..." they said to me. "Armor is useless unless you're tanking!" And yet I'd see them rolling need on something that has 2 more armor but 10 less of a stat they need, and saying "woohoo an upgrade!".
Am I being a obsessive elitist bastard? You bet I am. But I'm just so worried because the biggest source of contention in this game is over loot. If my friends were to walk into a random and inadvertently ninja something from another class that rightfully needs it, the drama and cussing and harassment that will ensue is just...too ugly to think about. Plus, you see people in level 85 dungeons ninja-ing shit all the time - do they do it because they're just assholes or do they seriously not know what's good for their class? I don't want my friends to end up like one of those clueless dipshits that everyone cusses at.
Oh god, and their talent trees. Every time I see it I would scowl as if in pain. 1 point into every single talent in a tier...points in pvp talents...skipping all the crucial talents...
I did point them towards elitist jerks, and it seems like they've ironed out the kinks for the most part. But when I used to look at their butchered and mangled talent trees, some part of my soul would weep.
Am I taking this game too seriously? I think so.
I've been coping by remembering that when I first started, I did more than my fair share of nooby things. I used to think stam was the most important stat and would stack it above agi. I used to have a fast main hand and a slow off hand. I used to spend all my gold on potions and only use them for healing (ever heard of eating?). Le sigh.
I just have to remember that knowledge comes in due time. It's nice to have a friend holding your hand but really the best lessons are perhaps the ones you learn the hard way - eg, getting screamed at by some douche in a dungeon.
Of course my first impulse when they started was to give them all the advice I could on how to play their class, learn mechanics, acronyms, gear and stats, etc etc. I've been trying my damn hardest not to give TOO much information right off the bat though. I know it can be completely overwhelming given how vast and complex wow can be. I also know that there are things you shouldn't worry about learning before you hit max level since you will pick it up eventually anyways. But there's that part of me that feels like a mother hen watching the baby chicks venture out of the nest for the first time and I feel so goddamn worried!
Like, what if some big bad ally ganks them? What if they accidentally vendor an item that's worth a lot of money? What if they choose the wrong gear? What if they do a random dungeon and get called noobs for not knowing how to play?
I'm mainly worried about the last item. I would hate for my friends to get cussed out in a random dungeon for not knowing how to play! People in dungeons these days are such asshats as it is, and low level dungeons are especially bad since no one even pays attention to any mechanics anymore.
One thing that bothers me to no end is that my nooby friends don't seem to know what stats are important on gear. The last time I checked everything seemed in order, but when they first started...it nearly gave me a heart attack to see a rogue decked out in half spirit/int gear and a paladin equipping a stam/int piece over a stam/str piece. "But it has more armor..." they said to me. "Armor is useless unless you're tanking!" And yet I'd see them rolling need on something that has 2 more armor but 10 less of a stat they need, and saying "woohoo an upgrade!".
Am I being a obsessive elitist bastard? You bet I am. But I'm just so worried because the biggest source of contention in this game is over loot. If my friends were to walk into a random and inadvertently ninja something from another class that rightfully needs it, the drama and cussing and harassment that will ensue is just...too ugly to think about. Plus, you see people in level 85 dungeons ninja-ing shit all the time - do they do it because they're just assholes or do they seriously not know what's good for their class? I don't want my friends to end up like one of those clueless dipshits that everyone cusses at.
Oh god, and their talent trees. Every time I see it I would scowl as if in pain. 1 point into every single talent in a tier...points in pvp talents...skipping all the crucial talents...
I did point them towards elitist jerks, and it seems like they've ironed out the kinks for the most part. But when I used to look at their butchered and mangled talent trees, some part of my soul would weep.
Am I taking this game too seriously? I think so.
I've been coping by remembering that when I first started, I did more than my fair share of nooby things. I used to think stam was the most important stat and would stack it above agi. I used to have a fast main hand and a slow off hand. I used to spend all my gold on potions and only use them for healing (ever heard of eating?). Le sigh.
I just have to remember that knowledge comes in due time. It's nice to have a friend holding your hand but really the best lessons are perhaps the ones you learn the hard way - eg, getting screamed at by some douche in a dungeon.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Alliance Scum!
Well, it has finally come to this. I have started a (semi) serious alliance alt.
Oh, believe me, I've tried it before. I don't think any of my alliance alts have made it past level 15 up till now. I just get so bored of questing with no bags, no mount, no money, that after a few levelups I just end up deleting them to make room for another horde alt. But this time I stuck through with it.
I made a human mage - originally a night elf but ugh, I just can't stand those self-righteous night elves. Same with the dranei - so haughty and smug. I considered gnome but I have to admit they do creep me out, plus gear just looks so ridiculous on them. Worgen was another serious candidate but I decided in the end I wanted to look pretty (don't I already have numerous scary-looking horde characters?) and so I went with a human.
Luckily I had room for another alt on my main's server, so I gathered up all the caster heirlooms I had (which is...all of them - chest, shoulders, cape, hellm, staff, two trinkets) and sent them to her. I couldn't send any bags or money, both of which are kind of crucial in expediting early questing/training, but oh well.
Compared to my very first character's leveling experience, things have been like night and day. Being decked out in great gear right off the bat really trivializes any content below level 10. Within about 10 minutes I was already out of Northshire in search of higher level mobs and quests. Within about 3 hours I had hit level 20 and was scraping together enough gold to purchase a mount!
Things improve SO much when you finally get that mount. No more tedious running everywhere, that mount just makes a world of difference.
Aside from gear another thing that really helped me out was my general experience playing the game. I was dirt poor when I made the character about a week ago, and now she's level 34 and already has 250g in her pockets. Even questing in a low level zone you pick up things here and there - maybe a tailoring recipe, cooking ingredients, some cloth or a couple gems - that you would've just vendored had you not known better. For instance when I had a stack of wool cloth instead of making bandages (I can always go back later to get my first aid skill up when I had plenty of money) I sold it for 15g each. When I got a stack of clam meat (always in high demand to raise cooking skill), instead of using it myself I just sold it for 20g and farmed other mats to raise my cooking. It was little things like that here and there that really helped out - 20g can buy you a few 12-slot bags, and you have no idea how nicer they are than the 6 slot ones.
And then of course when I got my professions started I made even more money. I think inscription is definitely the way to go for a new alt, unless you just got for two gathering professions. But my, that gets so boring very quickly. There is just not as much fun or satisfaction on simply mining, gathering, skinning over and over without making something out of it. Any gathering profession is always a money-maker, whereas the production professions require some strategy to actually generate any profit.
Inscription is so economic compared to the other production professions since you can raise your skill levels very easily just by making glyphs. Glyphs require some parchment (cheap from vendors) and a couple of inks (milled from herbs).
Compare that, for instance, with blacksmithing, where in order to raise a few skill points you need several stacks of ores and expensive gems, sometimes even random things like cloth or leather. Even after spending all those resources to craft something, you normally end up just vendoring or throwing out all the crafted items because the AH is usually so flooded with random low-level green items, and most people just rely on quest rewards or dungeons to gear up anyways. It's not until you start crafting level 85 stuff that you'll make any money.
But glyphs, if you make the right glyphs, will sell for quite a bit. The popular glyphs sell for 50-100g, which is very good given that all it cost you was a parchment and a couple of inks. Of course the trick is knowing which glyphs sell well and which don't, and figuring it out may take a few trips to the auction house or some trial and error.
Not to mention all the other nice perks inscription gets you: you can make darkmoon cards, which always sell for a few gold or if you can make a whole deck yourself, will sell for ten times that. You can make scrolls to buff yourself at very low cost. You can make scrolls of recall which is basically a second set of hearthstones, a very handy feature when you're leveling and have to do a lot of going back-and-forth to turn in quests and whatnot.
Ah, this topic has been derailed. Enough about inscription, back to my mage. Despite my hatred for casting delays, it actually hasn't been that bad. I chose frost so I could get good survivability and I've put talent points into reducing as much casting delay as possible, which has helped. I can wait through a 1.2 sec cast frostbolt, which will usually take a mob down to half its health. Then arcane missiles will usually pop, finishing off the mob. Otherwise I just ice-lance (instant cast!) the mob to death. If it gets close, I frost nova (another instant cast) and blink away. I generally cast nothing else.
I realize that I'm wearing so many heirlooms that mobs die quickly and quests are a breeze. This is fine with me - I don't have anyone to keep pace with and now that I have experienced the ally starting zone, I'm not interested in spending hours doing all the same quests I did as horde. I might try my hand at pvp once I'm high level. Or maybe I'll just faction switch once I hit 85. Or I could always have a high level alliance alt standing by to gank fellow hordies I don't like!
Oh, believe me, I've tried it before. I don't think any of my alliance alts have made it past level 15 up till now. I just get so bored of questing with no bags, no mount, no money, that after a few levelups I just end up deleting them to make room for another horde alt. But this time I stuck through with it.
I made a human mage - originally a night elf but ugh, I just can't stand those self-righteous night elves. Same with the dranei - so haughty and smug. I considered gnome but I have to admit they do creep me out, plus gear just looks so ridiculous on them. Worgen was another serious candidate but I decided in the end I wanted to look pretty (don't I already have numerous scary-looking horde characters?) and so I went with a human.
Luckily I had room for another alt on my main's server, so I gathered up all the caster heirlooms I had (which is...all of them - chest, shoulders, cape, hellm, staff, two trinkets) and sent them to her. I couldn't send any bags or money, both of which are kind of crucial in expediting early questing/training, but oh well.
Compared to my very first character's leveling experience, things have been like night and day. Being decked out in great gear right off the bat really trivializes any content below level 10. Within about 10 minutes I was already out of Northshire in search of higher level mobs and quests. Within about 3 hours I had hit level 20 and was scraping together enough gold to purchase a mount!
Things improve SO much when you finally get that mount. No more tedious running everywhere, that mount just makes a world of difference.
Aside from gear another thing that really helped me out was my general experience playing the game. I was dirt poor when I made the character about a week ago, and now she's level 34 and already has 250g in her pockets. Even questing in a low level zone you pick up things here and there - maybe a tailoring recipe, cooking ingredients, some cloth or a couple gems - that you would've just vendored had you not known better. For instance when I had a stack of wool cloth instead of making bandages (I can always go back later to get my first aid skill up when I had plenty of money) I sold it for 15g each. When I got a stack of clam meat (always in high demand to raise cooking skill), instead of using it myself I just sold it for 20g and farmed other mats to raise my cooking. It was little things like that here and there that really helped out - 20g can buy you a few 12-slot bags, and you have no idea how nicer they are than the 6 slot ones.
And then of course when I got my professions started I made even more money. I think inscription is definitely the way to go for a new alt, unless you just got for two gathering professions. But my, that gets so boring very quickly. There is just not as much fun or satisfaction on simply mining, gathering, skinning over and over without making something out of it. Any gathering profession is always a money-maker, whereas the production professions require some strategy to actually generate any profit.
Inscription is so economic compared to the other production professions since you can raise your skill levels very easily just by making glyphs. Glyphs require some parchment (cheap from vendors) and a couple of inks (milled from herbs).
Compare that, for instance, with blacksmithing, where in order to raise a few skill points you need several stacks of ores and expensive gems, sometimes even random things like cloth or leather. Even after spending all those resources to craft something, you normally end up just vendoring or throwing out all the crafted items because the AH is usually so flooded with random low-level green items, and most people just rely on quest rewards or dungeons to gear up anyways. It's not until you start crafting level 85 stuff that you'll make any money.
But glyphs, if you make the right glyphs, will sell for quite a bit. The popular glyphs sell for 50-100g, which is very good given that all it cost you was a parchment and a couple of inks. Of course the trick is knowing which glyphs sell well and which don't, and figuring it out may take a few trips to the auction house or some trial and error.
Not to mention all the other nice perks inscription gets you: you can make darkmoon cards, which always sell for a few gold or if you can make a whole deck yourself, will sell for ten times that. You can make scrolls to buff yourself at very low cost. You can make scrolls of recall which is basically a second set of hearthstones, a very handy feature when you're leveling and have to do a lot of going back-and-forth to turn in quests and whatnot.
Ah, this topic has been derailed. Enough about inscription, back to my mage. Despite my hatred for casting delays, it actually hasn't been that bad. I chose frost so I could get good survivability and I've put talent points into reducing as much casting delay as possible, which has helped. I can wait through a 1.2 sec cast frostbolt, which will usually take a mob down to half its health. Then arcane missiles will usually pop, finishing off the mob. Otherwise I just ice-lance (instant cast!) the mob to death. If it gets close, I frost nova (another instant cast) and blink away. I generally cast nothing else.
I realize that I'm wearing so many heirlooms that mobs die quickly and quests are a breeze. This is fine with me - I don't have anyone to keep pace with and now that I have experienced the ally starting zone, I'm not interested in spending hours doing all the same quests I did as horde. I might try my hand at pvp once I'm high level. Or maybe I'll just faction switch once I hit 85. Or I could always have a high level alliance alt standing by to gank fellow hordies I don't like!
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Am I all alone?
Someone in my guild pointed out to me the other day that you don't see many girls playing a rogue. "A decent rogue who actually knows what she's doing", he added.
I haven't really given it much thought until now, but yeah, it's more or less true. Racking my brain in search of all the wow players whom I know for a fact are females (vent confirmation), I can't think of a single rogue amongst them. In fact, if you just search for rogues on my server, I'll bet you most of them are male characters OR female blood elf characters. And when you see a female blood elf, 95% of the time it's actually a dude playing that char. Yeah, shocking but true.
So I've gone and made a list of all the characters I've seen/know of that are played by actual females, and here's the breakdown (counting only mains, unless they have a pretty actively raiding alt as well):
3 Shaman - all were resto/ele. No enhancement.
2 Paladin - Both dedicated holy spec. No prot/ret.
3 Warlocks - I believe either demo/affliction spec, not that it's important.
4 Mages - frost/arcane? Again, not important as all specs are DPS specs.
3 Druids - 2 bear tanks, 1 balance.
5 Priests - 1 dedicated shadow, the rest holy/disc.
No warriors, no DKs, and no rogues.
The conclusion that I draw from this is that:
1. Most girls prefer casting over melee. Not a single enh shammy, ret pally, DK, warrior, or rogue indicates that smacking things with a sword does not appeal to the ladies.
2. Girls like to heal. God, that's such a stereotype and sexist but it's true. In every guild I've been in the 1 or 2 girls we had were always healers. What is up with that?
I understand that the population I sampled isn't exactly the most comprehensive, but seriously...it is rather disturbing that not a single girl I know who plays wow enjoys tanking or meleeing. Just shocking. Apparently I'm an oddball - I LOVE playing my rogue, I love playing melee characters (am I the only one in the world who enjoys playing an enhancement shammy?), and I enjoy tanking, to a degree.
I hate casting, too. I hate waiting for casts to finish (yes, 2 seconds is just too long for me) and I hate relying on mana. I hate being far away from the action and having to worry about mobs getting too close. I like to charge in and kill things, not nuke it from a mile away.
No, but seriously, what gives? Not a single rogue? Really??? I mean, REALLY???
I haven't really given it much thought until now, but yeah, it's more or less true. Racking my brain in search of all the wow players whom I know for a fact are females (vent confirmation), I can't think of a single rogue amongst them. In fact, if you just search for rogues on my server, I'll bet you most of them are male characters OR female blood elf characters. And when you see a female blood elf, 95% of the time it's actually a dude playing that char. Yeah, shocking but true.
So I've gone and made a list of all the characters I've seen/know of that are played by actual females, and here's the breakdown (counting only mains, unless they have a pretty actively raiding alt as well):
3 Shaman - all were resto/ele. No enhancement.
2 Paladin - Both dedicated holy spec. No prot/ret.
3 Warlocks - I believe either demo/affliction spec, not that it's important.
4 Mages - frost/arcane? Again, not important as all specs are DPS specs.
3 Druids - 2 bear tanks, 1 balance.
5 Priests - 1 dedicated shadow, the rest holy/disc.
No warriors, no DKs, and no rogues.
The conclusion that I draw from this is that:
1. Most girls prefer casting over melee. Not a single enh shammy, ret pally, DK, warrior, or rogue indicates that smacking things with a sword does not appeal to the ladies.
2. Girls like to heal. God, that's such a stereotype and sexist but it's true. In every guild I've been in the 1 or 2 girls we had were always healers. What is up with that?
I understand that the population I sampled isn't exactly the most comprehensive, but seriously...it is rather disturbing that not a single girl I know who plays wow enjoys tanking or meleeing. Just shocking. Apparently I'm an oddball - I LOVE playing my rogue, I love playing melee characters (am I the only one in the world who enjoys playing an enhancement shammy?), and I enjoy tanking, to a degree.
I hate casting, too. I hate waiting for casts to finish (yes, 2 seconds is just too long for me) and I hate relying on mana. I hate being far away from the action and having to worry about mobs getting too close. I like to charge in and kill things, not nuke it from a mile away.
No, but seriously, what gives? Not a single rogue? Really??? I mean, REALLY???
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Damn you warlocks
Sigh...ever since patch 4.0, ie ever since the immediate pre-cata launch and the subsequent cata patches, warlocks have been a thorn in my shoe. Is that an expression? Yesterday I described a coworker as having "a fork in everyone's pie" - I think I made that one up. Anyways...
Before the cata patches hit, rogues were tops, at least in my guild. No one could top me in single-target DPS. Not even the most seasoned veterans, not even ret pallys, not even arcane mages, not even kitty druids. There were two other rogues in the guild (we did 25mans) and the three of us were always in top 5 damage for most boss fights (obviously not fights like gunship or valithira).
And that made sense, you see. Rogues can't really do anything else but DPS. We have no raid-wide buffs, we have very weak slows/traps/CCs, not that anyone used those in wrath. We have tricks of the trade and that's about it. Compare us with any other pure DPS classes like mages, warlocks, and hunters - we bring very little to the table. No mage food, no arcane intellect buff, no soulstones/healthstones, nothing. All we do is stab people but we are good at it!
Since the latest round of patches, however, warlocks seem to be dominating charts. And it's not even a small margin, whenever there's a warlock in the group the gap between the lock's damage and mine (always #2 behind the lock) is over 5% of total damage done. This just doesn't seem fair to me. There's nothing I can possibly tweak in my rotation, gearing, spec, gems, etc at this point to overcome that much damage difference. Maybe if I was decked out in heroic raid gear, but at the same gear level as the lock I feel like I should be doing close to equal damage. But that's not the case.
Which is why I'm kind of happy when there are no locks in the group. Then I get to see my name at the top of the DPS chart once more and I can rest easy knowing that even though I bring very little to the table, at least I'm doing 25% of the damage.
Maybe I should roll a warlock...oh wait, I have one...hmm. Time to dust off those heirlooms again perhaps?
Before the cata patches hit, rogues were tops, at least in my guild. No one could top me in single-target DPS. Not even the most seasoned veterans, not even ret pallys, not even arcane mages, not even kitty druids. There were two other rogues in the guild (we did 25mans) and the three of us were always in top 5 damage for most boss fights (obviously not fights like gunship or valithira).
And that made sense, you see. Rogues can't really do anything else but DPS. We have no raid-wide buffs, we have very weak slows/traps/CCs, not that anyone used those in wrath. We have tricks of the trade and that's about it. Compare us with any other pure DPS classes like mages, warlocks, and hunters - we bring very little to the table. No mage food, no arcane intellect buff, no soulstones/healthstones, nothing. All we do is stab people but we are good at it!
Since the latest round of patches, however, warlocks seem to be dominating charts. And it's not even a small margin, whenever there's a warlock in the group the gap between the lock's damage and mine (always #2 behind the lock) is over 5% of total damage done. This just doesn't seem fair to me. There's nothing I can possibly tweak in my rotation, gearing, spec, gems, etc at this point to overcome that much damage difference. Maybe if I was decked out in heroic raid gear, but at the same gear level as the lock I feel like I should be doing close to equal damage. But that's not the case.
Which is why I'm kind of happy when there are no locks in the group. Then I get to see my name at the top of the DPS chart once more and I can rest easy knowing that even though I bring very little to the table, at least I'm doing 25% of the damage.
Maybe I should roll a warlock...oh wait, I have one...hmm. Time to dust off those heirlooms again perhaps?
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
We be trollin trollin trollin
Recently a couple of good RL friends have joined us on our Azerothian adventures. My hubby and I started some low level alts to play with them and show them the ropes and such. So far we've been doing some low level dungeons together and I must say I'm quite enjoying my new role as a healer.
I rolled another troll since, well, I just love trolls. The title of this post refers to the fact that I got rather drunk one night while clearing Scholomance with my friends and ended up trolling trade chat briefly. Very briefly. But it is nevertheless shameful.
The real POINT of this post, however, is to express my regret at how easy dungeons are. There's just no real challenge. Yes, I am wearing heirlooms, as is my husband. But we're not completely decked out or anything, just a few pieces. And let's not forget that we're 4-manning most of these dungeons, which I think should make them at least 20% more challenging, no? Not to mention that two out of the four players are relatively inexperienced, and one of them is a tank. This is my first time healing. This is my first time playing a druid. We normally tackle dungeons that are 3-4 levels above us. All of these factors should make a for a challenging, gruelling dungeon run, right?
Not really the case, sadly. I realize low level dungeons are supposed to be sort of roflstomped anyways, but I really expected better than this. All of the dungeons we tried from 15-35 or so have been disappointingly easy.
It was only until we got to Scarlet Monastery that things got a little trickier, and it was only because mobs were running into other packs and pulling the whole room. Yet, we managed to survive most of the time. It was only by trying to fight 10 mobs that we were actually able to feel the challenge. How pathetic is that? In a cataclysm heroic, pulling even one extra mob can mean a wipe, whereas 4 noob-ish level 30s crawling into Scarlet Monastery can handle 7-8 mobs at the same time? A little ridiculous if you ask me.
Scholomance was challenging, but again only because we would inadvertently pull the whole room by mistake. The only boss we wiped on was the one that summons like 30 mirror images and we had no idea how to handle it. None of the other bosses even presented a minor challenge - as a level 40 healer I could outheal all the damage without even losing half mana.
The good news is that things seem to be getting a bit tougher. We tried Dire Maul West which was quite difficult (although that may have been because we were all inebriated). I'm hoping that once we hit Outland things will get even more challenging. Otherwise why even bother going into a dungeon? It's supposed to be a big scary place with sparkly epic rewards that only the bravest of souls venture into. Not just some 15-minute roflstomp loot vending machine.
I rolled another troll since, well, I just love trolls. The title of this post refers to the fact that I got rather drunk one night while clearing Scholomance with my friends and ended up trolling trade chat briefly. Very briefly. But it is nevertheless shameful.
The real POINT of this post, however, is to express my regret at how easy dungeons are. There's just no real challenge. Yes, I am wearing heirlooms, as is my husband. But we're not completely decked out or anything, just a few pieces. And let's not forget that we're 4-manning most of these dungeons, which I think should make them at least 20% more challenging, no? Not to mention that two out of the four players are relatively inexperienced, and one of them is a tank. This is my first time healing. This is my first time playing a druid. We normally tackle dungeons that are 3-4 levels above us. All of these factors should make a for a challenging, gruelling dungeon run, right?
Not really the case, sadly. I realize low level dungeons are supposed to be sort of roflstomped anyways, but I really expected better than this. All of the dungeons we tried from 15-35 or so have been disappointingly easy.
It was only until we got to Scarlet Monastery that things got a little trickier, and it was only because mobs were running into other packs and pulling the whole room. Yet, we managed to survive most of the time. It was only by trying to fight 10 mobs that we were actually able to feel the challenge. How pathetic is that? In a cataclysm heroic, pulling even one extra mob can mean a wipe, whereas 4 noob-ish level 30s crawling into Scarlet Monastery can handle 7-8 mobs at the same time? A little ridiculous if you ask me.
Scholomance was challenging, but again only because we would inadvertently pull the whole room by mistake. The only boss we wiped on was the one that summons like 30 mirror images and we had no idea how to handle it. None of the other bosses even presented a minor challenge - as a level 40 healer I could outheal all the damage without even losing half mana.
The good news is that things seem to be getting a bit tougher. We tried Dire Maul West which was quite difficult (although that may have been because we were all inebriated). I'm hoping that once we hit Outland things will get even more challenging. Otherwise why even bother going into a dungeon? It's supposed to be a big scary place with sparkly epic rewards that only the bravest of souls venture into. Not just some 15-minute roflstomp loot vending machine.
The Journey so far
Introducing my latest title....Defender of a Shattered World!
That's right, folks, our guild downed Nefarian last night! The xpac has been out for a while and all, but lots of people, I would say the majority of guilds on our server, have not downed Nefarian yet. Last time I checked (which was moments ago), we are one of the 25 guilds on our server who have down all normal mode raid bosses. Oh, did I forget to mention that we got Al'Akir a few weeks ago? Hmm, must remember to update more...
Anyways, it was a fun fight that kept you on your toes for the first two hellish phases. Unlike some of the other boss mechanics, I think phase 1 and phase 2 really required everyone to be on the ball and be responsible for surviving and ensuring others are alive as well.
Phase 1 requires high DPS output, but a CONTROLLED high DPS output. For instance you can't just go on stabbing Nefarian willy nilly - every 10% of his hp he shocks the raid for 100k damage. Yeah, that's not a typo. 100k is about 80% of my health pool and about 60% of the tanks health. When you see the boss nearing 91%, 81%, etc, EVERYONE needs to be watching health bars. This is not the time to get tunnel vision or be an idiot DPS. Healers need to top everyone off to full so they can survive it (defensive cooldowns are VERY helpful), and DPS needs to watch their output so you can push the lightning shock at the right moment. I have to admit it's been a long time since I've clutched my mouse staring in panic at the boss's health bar, waiting for just the precise moment to use my finisher and immediately hit my defensive CD. Phew!
If you thought that was bad, welcome to phase 2...lava jumping shadow damage hell. You have to get on top of a platform since lava starts rising up. You have about 3 seconds to make it before you're burnt to a crisp. Jumping is easy, you say? You'd be shocked to see just how many people can't scramble onto a platform. Not to mention that if you don't get up there immediately and start interrupting the adds that come out, they will kill everyone in the whole room with a blast nova which has unlimited range. Oh, did I also mention Nefarian is shooting shadow bolts (25k per hit) which are unavoidable, uninterruptable, cast every 2 seconds at random members in barrages of 3? Yeah, welcome to a healer's nightmare. I was using potions, healthstones, even bandaging myself just to stay alive. Oh, and you're still pushing Nefarian during all this so that 100k damage shock is still happening.
Phase 3 I can't really say what was happening. My job was to stab the boss, and stab hard. I think we had 2 offtanks kiting a bunch of adds around, there was range DPS rooting and shackling them or something. All I know is that the minute we landed back down for phase 3, I heard the raid leader scream, "BLOODLUST NOWWWW" and I knew it was my cue to go balls out deeps. There was fire all over the ground, adds were running around smashing our offtank, healers were doing all they could to heal through the shocks, and before I realized it, half the raid was dead...but so was Nefarian.
It was indeed an epic battle rivaling the lich king fight! And certainly one of the more fun fights in this new expansion. It combines all the aspects of raiding into one nicely packaged fight: controlled DPS, CC'ing adds, good positioning, intensive raid-wide damage, and of course my favorite, the balls-out DPS phase. I think the fight provides a fun challenge for every role and I'm super proud that we got him in only a few weeks!
I'm also very happy, in a shameful petty way, that none of my old guilds have progressed this far. My old guild, the one that used to be pretty good, have just downed Al'Akir a week ago. I have a sneaking suspicion that they're bleeding guild members left and right (like most of us these days), but also that they're not even bothering to push progression. I feel sorry for them, but at the same time they really brought it upon themselves. What were they expecting people to do when they said "no more raiding!". People will leave, one by one, in search of better guilds.
Next up...hardmodes! Time to go practice bashing my head against a wall...
That's right, folks, our guild downed Nefarian last night! The xpac has been out for a while and all, but lots of people, I would say the majority of guilds on our server, have not downed Nefarian yet. Last time I checked (which was moments ago), we are one of the 25 guilds on our server who have down all normal mode raid bosses. Oh, did I forget to mention that we got Al'Akir a few weeks ago? Hmm, must remember to update more...
Anyways, it was a fun fight that kept you on your toes for the first two hellish phases. Unlike some of the other boss mechanics, I think phase 1 and phase 2 really required everyone to be on the ball and be responsible for surviving and ensuring others are alive as well.
Phase 1 requires high DPS output, but a CONTROLLED high DPS output. For instance you can't just go on stabbing Nefarian willy nilly - every 10% of his hp he shocks the raid for 100k damage. Yeah, that's not a typo. 100k is about 80% of my health pool and about 60% of the tanks health. When you see the boss nearing 91%, 81%, etc, EVERYONE needs to be watching health bars. This is not the time to get tunnel vision or be an idiot DPS. Healers need to top everyone off to full so they can survive it (defensive cooldowns are VERY helpful), and DPS needs to watch their output so you can push the lightning shock at the right moment. I have to admit it's been a long time since I've clutched my mouse staring in panic at the boss's health bar, waiting for just the precise moment to use my finisher and immediately hit my defensive CD. Phew!
If you thought that was bad, welcome to phase 2...lava jumping shadow damage hell. You have to get on top of a platform since lava starts rising up. You have about 3 seconds to make it before you're burnt to a crisp. Jumping is easy, you say? You'd be shocked to see just how many people can't scramble onto a platform. Not to mention that if you don't get up there immediately and start interrupting the adds that come out, they will kill everyone in the whole room with a blast nova which has unlimited range. Oh, did I also mention Nefarian is shooting shadow bolts (25k per hit) which are unavoidable, uninterruptable, cast every 2 seconds at random members in barrages of 3? Yeah, welcome to a healer's nightmare. I was using potions, healthstones, even bandaging myself just to stay alive. Oh, and you're still pushing Nefarian during all this so that 100k damage shock is still happening.
Phase 3 I can't really say what was happening. My job was to stab the boss, and stab hard. I think we had 2 offtanks kiting a bunch of adds around, there was range DPS rooting and shackling them or something. All I know is that the minute we landed back down for phase 3, I heard the raid leader scream, "BLOODLUST NOWWWW" and I knew it was my cue to go balls out deeps. There was fire all over the ground, adds were running around smashing our offtank, healers were doing all they could to heal through the shocks, and before I realized it, half the raid was dead...but so was Nefarian.
It was indeed an epic battle rivaling the lich king fight! And certainly one of the more fun fights in this new expansion. It combines all the aspects of raiding into one nicely packaged fight: controlled DPS, CC'ing adds, good positioning, intensive raid-wide damage, and of course my favorite, the balls-out DPS phase. I think the fight provides a fun challenge for every role and I'm super proud that we got him in only a few weeks!
I'm also very happy, in a shameful petty way, that none of my old guilds have progressed this far. My old guild, the one that used to be pretty good, have just downed Al'Akir a week ago. I have a sneaking suspicion that they're bleeding guild members left and right (like most of us these days), but also that they're not even bothering to push progression. I feel sorry for them, but at the same time they really brought it upon themselves. What were they expecting people to do when they said "no more raiding!". People will leave, one by one, in search of better guilds.
Next up...hardmodes! Time to go practice bashing my head against a wall...
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
It's a hard knock life...for noobs
The dreaded event, Children's Week is finally here!
Let me just say that Children's Week is the reason why I didn't think I would ever get the violet proto drake. Sure, I didn't even know about the world event achievements back when I was a noob (I recall brewfest was going on right when I joined and I thought it was part of the game all-year round). I didn't even realize you got a drake mount for completing all of them. So for my first year or so of wow the world events came and went and I managed to earn a few achievements here and there, simply by sheer luck.
Then I kinda got hardcore, and began to systematically check them off whenever each event rolled around. Then I saw the children's week one, and said forget it! The pvp achievement sounded absolutely nightmarish for someone who avoided pvp like the plague!
This year I decided to give it a solid attempt. I was encouraged by the fact that my husband, with his crappy computer that barely runs at 5fps, managed to complete all the BG achievements. It wasn't easy, he said, but I was further encouraged by reading a few forum posts talking about how horde and alliance will cooperate and help each other out just for the sake of getting the achievement.
So I steeled myself for the inevitable frustration, collected a few piece of pvp gear and marched my merry way into the battlegrounds. I had about ~1.5k resil and an arsenal of stuns, aggro drops, and most importantly, movement speed enhancements to help me out (ie glyphed sprint, preparation + sprint again).
The first one I managed to get into was Warsong Gulch, my least favorite BG ever. I saw most of the people also had their orphans out as well, so I knew I was at least in good company. I parked myself right in our flag room, and waited along with the 5 or so people assembled there. The alliance made an all-out zerg for the flag room and I died within minutes. By the time I had rezzed the flag was in the middle of the BG. I chased it down, dying a few more times in the process, until finally they capped it. I went back to the flag room, and to my surprise and joy I found another rogue in the middle of stunlocking an alliance player holding our flag! I helped finish him off and clicked that flag like a madman! And miraculously I got credit for it!
Next was eye of the storm, which made me nearly burst into tears on the first attempt. There was a shaman who had clearly come into the BG to grief the achievement seekers, by repeatedly throwing people off the flag platform with thunderstorm. I logged off, got my shit together, and on the next BG I managed to cap the flag not only once but twice!
Arathi Basin was a piece of cake - I happened to walk in on a poorly defended gold mine under heavy assault from the horde. I clicked the flag, got interrupted by a persistent paladin a few times, but in the end I capped it.
Alterac Valley took me three tries. The first was a fail - I had no idea where the stupid bunkers were, nor did I know where the flags you're supposed to click inside of those bunkers are. The second AV I managed to come into battle just as the horde were losing. On my third one lady luck was with me - I was deep in alliance territory, wondering what the heck to do now since both towers were capped, when I noticed that a tower near the horde base was repeatedly being capped and traded back and forth. I knew there was some alliance guy helping out. So I started to run back, but on the way I found a tower that was contested. I popped sprint and managed to get at the flag a split second before a mage did, and after a tense few seconds I capped it, earning the achievement [School of Hard Knocks].
Now only the Midsummer festival stands between me and the drake!!!
Let me just say that Children's Week is the reason why I didn't think I would ever get the violet proto drake. Sure, I didn't even know about the world event achievements back when I was a noob (I recall brewfest was going on right when I joined and I thought it was part of the game all-year round). I didn't even realize you got a drake mount for completing all of them. So for my first year or so of wow the world events came and went and I managed to earn a few achievements here and there, simply by sheer luck.
Then I kinda got hardcore, and began to systematically check them off whenever each event rolled around. Then I saw the children's week one, and said forget it! The pvp achievement sounded absolutely nightmarish for someone who avoided pvp like the plague!
This year I decided to give it a solid attempt. I was encouraged by the fact that my husband, with his crappy computer that barely runs at 5fps, managed to complete all the BG achievements. It wasn't easy, he said, but I was further encouraged by reading a few forum posts talking about how horde and alliance will cooperate and help each other out just for the sake of getting the achievement.
So I steeled myself for the inevitable frustration, collected a few piece of pvp gear and marched my merry way into the battlegrounds. I had about ~1.5k resil and an arsenal of stuns, aggro drops, and most importantly, movement speed enhancements to help me out (ie glyphed sprint, preparation + sprint again).
The first one I managed to get into was Warsong Gulch, my least favorite BG ever. I saw most of the people also had their orphans out as well, so I knew I was at least in good company. I parked myself right in our flag room, and waited along with the 5 or so people assembled there. The alliance made an all-out zerg for the flag room and I died within minutes. By the time I had rezzed the flag was in the middle of the BG. I chased it down, dying a few more times in the process, until finally they capped it. I went back to the flag room, and to my surprise and joy I found another rogue in the middle of stunlocking an alliance player holding our flag! I helped finish him off and clicked that flag like a madman! And miraculously I got credit for it!
Next was eye of the storm, which made me nearly burst into tears on the first attempt. There was a shaman who had clearly come into the BG to grief the achievement seekers, by repeatedly throwing people off the flag platform with thunderstorm. I logged off, got my shit together, and on the next BG I managed to cap the flag not only once but twice!
Arathi Basin was a piece of cake - I happened to walk in on a poorly defended gold mine under heavy assault from the horde. I clicked the flag, got interrupted by a persistent paladin a few times, but in the end I capped it.
Alterac Valley took me three tries. The first was a fail - I had no idea where the stupid bunkers were, nor did I know where the flags you're supposed to click inside of those bunkers are. The second AV I managed to come into battle just as the horde were losing. On my third one lady luck was with me - I was deep in alliance territory, wondering what the heck to do now since both towers were capped, when I noticed that a tower near the horde base was repeatedly being capped and traded back and forth. I knew there was some alliance guy helping out. So I started to run back, but on the way I found a tower that was contested. I popped sprint and managed to get at the flag a split second before a mage did, and after a tense few seconds I capped it, earning the achievement [School of Hard Knocks].
Now only the Midsummer festival stands between me and the drake!!!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
NGS
Short for a little something I like to call...New Guild Syndrome.
Every time you switch to a new guild, you tend to feel a bit left out. It's nothing intentional on anyone's part, but of course when you join a group of people who have been in the habit of doing things together (such as tank X always does a random heroic with healer Y and DPS Z) you can't be expected to be included in everything.
It's been a little over 2 months since I joined this new guild. To be honest I simply switched to this guild because 1. they raided at the times I could make, and 2. had a decent progression. I loved my old guild, but when official raids died, only to be replaced by a secret "by invite only" raid, I said my goodbyes. I play to raid, and when I'm not raiding I'm a sad panda.
Here in the new guild we DO raid. They are official guild raids and usually everyone is invited - heck, we're often short a couple people so sometimes we bring in pugs or ask one of the social members to come along. So basically if you want to raid and have decent gear, you get to raid.
The trouble is we only raid once a week. Officially there are three guild raids on the calendar for the week, but people seem to only show up for the first of the three nights. So we manage to fill up 25 spots for that night, then subsequent nights it's usually just a 10man run. Tuesdays (the first night) are generally farm nights, where we just kill the same 6 bosses until we call it a night. Wednesdays and Thursdays, the 10man nights, are the true progression nights where we down end-game bosses. We've already got Cho'gall down and pushing Al'Akir!
It was a real bummer for me at first because I didn't get invited to these 10mans. There are a few reasons and none of them are personal, so I didn't take it personally. Blizzard decided to make it so that the hard fights require a lot more ranged DPS than melee. Basically there are only 1-2 spots for melee available in these fights, and since the guild already has another rogue, I generally don't get a spot. The raid leader is nice enough to ask everyone in the guild if they need loot from any specific bosses before forming a group, which is very kind of him, but since I don't need any gear, I also can't speak up and ask to go.
The first month had me regretting my decision - why did I switch guilds to avoid getting excluded when the same thing was happening here?
But after seeing the 10man group beat their heads against the wall for 2 hours without downing a single boss made me realize that it wasn't such a big deal. Call it progression if you want, but at least now instead of wasting 2 hours and 500g of repair bills and flasks, I can work on achievements! I can farm mounts, I can work on my reputation gains, I can do archaeology!
Sure, it would be great to get a spot but if I don't there's always plenty to do. I know I'll eventually get to kill these bosses at some point, whether it be in the next major patch or the next expansion. And once the current 10man have gotten their gear farmed up, they do offer their spots to other players. I finally got to even go on a council fight the other week when the other rogue gave up his spot for me, which was pretty cool.
Most of all, I still get one solid night of raiding - that has been pretty consistent throughout my time here. It's not an uncertainty either, I'm pretty much guaranteed a spot. And that makes all the difference in the world for me. I would rather get one night of raid per week for sure, than sit around aimlessly wondering week after week. That was really what bothered me most about the old guild.
A couple nights ago though they invited me on Al'Akir! We didn't down him but we got him pretty low. I think it's a good sign since 1. now I'm one of the people who has experience on the fight (making me a more likely candidate next time we're pushing progression), 2. I stayed for the entire three gruelling hours of wipes, which shows that I don't just bail on progression, and 3. it helps cement my place in the guild as a "regular", increasing my chances of getting in on future runs as well. So things are looking up for me. The first couples months were rough, what with the NGS and all that, but I guess now I'm finally settling in...
Every time you switch to a new guild, you tend to feel a bit left out. It's nothing intentional on anyone's part, but of course when you join a group of people who have been in the habit of doing things together (such as tank X always does a random heroic with healer Y and DPS Z) you can't be expected to be included in everything.
It's been a little over 2 months since I joined this new guild. To be honest I simply switched to this guild because 1. they raided at the times I could make, and 2. had a decent progression. I loved my old guild, but when official raids died, only to be replaced by a secret "by invite only" raid, I said my goodbyes. I play to raid, and when I'm not raiding I'm a sad panda.
Here in the new guild we DO raid. They are official guild raids and usually everyone is invited - heck, we're often short a couple people so sometimes we bring in pugs or ask one of the social members to come along. So basically if you want to raid and have decent gear, you get to raid.
The trouble is we only raid once a week. Officially there are three guild raids on the calendar for the week, but people seem to only show up for the first of the three nights. So we manage to fill up 25 spots for that night, then subsequent nights it's usually just a 10man run. Tuesdays (the first night) are generally farm nights, where we just kill the same 6 bosses until we call it a night. Wednesdays and Thursdays, the 10man nights, are the true progression nights where we down end-game bosses. We've already got Cho'gall down and pushing Al'Akir!
It was a real bummer for me at first because I didn't get invited to these 10mans. There are a few reasons and none of them are personal, so I didn't take it personally. Blizzard decided to make it so that the hard fights require a lot more ranged DPS than melee. Basically there are only 1-2 spots for melee available in these fights, and since the guild already has another rogue, I generally don't get a spot. The raid leader is nice enough to ask everyone in the guild if they need loot from any specific bosses before forming a group, which is very kind of him, but since I don't need any gear, I also can't speak up and ask to go.
The first month had me regretting my decision - why did I switch guilds to avoid getting excluded when the same thing was happening here?
But after seeing the 10man group beat their heads against the wall for 2 hours without downing a single boss made me realize that it wasn't such a big deal. Call it progression if you want, but at least now instead of wasting 2 hours and 500g of repair bills and flasks, I can work on achievements! I can farm mounts, I can work on my reputation gains, I can do archaeology!
Sure, it would be great to get a spot but if I don't there's always plenty to do. I know I'll eventually get to kill these bosses at some point, whether it be in the next major patch or the next expansion. And once the current 10man have gotten their gear farmed up, they do offer their spots to other players. I finally got to even go on a council fight the other week when the other rogue gave up his spot for me, which was pretty cool.
Most of all, I still get one solid night of raiding - that has been pretty consistent throughout my time here. It's not an uncertainty either, I'm pretty much guaranteed a spot. And that makes all the difference in the world for me. I would rather get one night of raid per week for sure, than sit around aimlessly wondering week after week. That was really what bothered me most about the old guild.
A couple nights ago though they invited me on Al'Akir! We didn't down him but we got him pretty low. I think it's a good sign since 1. now I'm one of the people who has experience on the fight (making me a more likely candidate next time we're pushing progression), 2. I stayed for the entire three gruelling hours of wipes, which shows that I don't just bail on progression, and 3. it helps cement my place in the guild as a "regular", increasing my chances of getting in on future runs as well. So things are looking up for me. The first couples months were rough, what with the NGS and all that, but I guess now I'm finally settling in...
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
You know you're a baddie when...
You fail at ganking me. Me. ME.
I'm the mother of all baddies when it comes to pvp. I won't list all the humiliation I've suffered while getting ganked, trying to gank, getting ganked while trying to gank, getting ganked while running away from being ganked, getting ganked while AFK, getting ganked while flying, getting ganked in Tarren Mill, getting ganked at the graveyard, getting ganked right before getting ganked and getting ganked right after getting ganked.
My point is, I am really bad at pvp and I avoid it like the plague. My main is a rogue and I think it's arguably the best and worst class at pvp. If you can catch someone by surprise, we are awesome at taking them down (unless they wear plate...). We have stuns, we have burst, we sneak around. But getting caught unaware, especially by a kiter, is a miserable experience for a rogue.
But enough about that, I'm not here to talk about my rogue. I'm here to talk about my pally. My protection-specced tank pally.
I'm doing the dragonmaw dailies a few nights ago. I had just pulled the high shaman (level 84 elite) and like 4 of its adds. I'm sitting there fighting 5 mobs, one of them elite, when a ghoul starts beating on me. I ignored it but sooon an ally DK comes over and starts whacking on me as well! So I started to fight back. And killed him before I went right back to fighting the 5 mobs who politely waited for me to finish pvp'ing.
Mind you, he got pretty close - got my hp down so low I had to use lay on hands! But you silly DK, don't you know that I can heal myself using WoG, which consumes no mana but uses holy power, which I generate just by attacking you? Silly DK, don't you know that I can heal myself through autoattacks alone? Silly DK, don't you know you can't kill a prot pally?
I looked him up on armory and lol'ed even harder - nearly full pvp gear, and over 10 item levels higher than mine. Better luck next time!
I'm the mother of all baddies when it comes to pvp. I won't list all the humiliation I've suffered while getting ganked, trying to gank, getting ganked while trying to gank, getting ganked while running away from being ganked, getting ganked while AFK, getting ganked while flying, getting ganked in Tarren Mill, getting ganked at the graveyard, getting ganked right before getting ganked and getting ganked right after getting ganked.
My point is, I am really bad at pvp and I avoid it like the plague. My main is a rogue and I think it's arguably the best and worst class at pvp. If you can catch someone by surprise, we are awesome at taking them down (unless they wear plate...). We have stuns, we have burst, we sneak around. But getting caught unaware, especially by a kiter, is a miserable experience for a rogue.
But enough about that, I'm not here to talk about my rogue. I'm here to talk about my pally. My protection-specced tank pally.
I'm doing the dragonmaw dailies a few nights ago. I had just pulled the high shaman (level 84 elite) and like 4 of its adds. I'm sitting there fighting 5 mobs, one of them elite, when a ghoul starts beating on me. I ignored it but sooon an ally DK comes over and starts whacking on me as well! So I started to fight back. And killed him before I went right back to fighting the 5 mobs who politely waited for me to finish pvp'ing.
Mind you, he got pretty close - got my hp down so low I had to use lay on hands! But you silly DK, don't you know that I can heal myself using WoG, which consumes no mana but uses holy power, which I generate just by attacking you? Silly DK, don't you know that I can heal myself through autoattacks alone? Silly DK, don't you know you can't kill a prot pally?
I looked him up on armory and lol'ed even harder - nearly full pvp gear, and over 10 item levels higher than mine. Better luck next time!
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Nerfbomb this
Come on Blizzard. Nerf this already.
Now I don't want to join that huge throng of people QQing about how hard this expansion is. Most of these people are complaining about how hard heroics are, which I don't agree with. Yes, in the first 2 months of the xpac heroics are hard, and I imagine they're still hard for undergeared people and especially healers. But I can't remember the time I failed to complete a heroic (or even bothered to do one...). As expected, once you get the gear and some practice things are almost as easy as the Wrath shit.
But raids are a different story. There are basically no pugs going on, ever, due to the sheer difficulty of these so-called "entry-level" raids. Difficulty that is almost irrelevant to a player's gear level, might I add. These are one-shot mechanics we're talking about here.
Back in Wrath, Naxx was the entry level raid. How tough was that? Sure, some of the bosses towards the end were tough but there were a few raid bosses even a disorganized pug could easily get down. Hell, even in ICC pugs were routinely clearing 1/3 of the raid in the first few months.
Take for example now the cata raids: first bosses in Blackwing Descent are Magmaw and Omnotron. I would love to see a pug of inexperienced people downing Omnotron. That takes a skilled guild to coordinate. There are no one-shot mechanics but it does require very high raid awareness. Magmaw is ridiculous - even in a guild group we have idiots jumping on magmaw and going, "huh wuhappen?" and wiping everyone. What part of "no one but these two designated jumpers jump" do you not understand?
Bastion of Twilight: Halfus is a crapshoot. It could be the easiest fight or a nightmare - god forbid you get the mortal strike/time drake combo. That's pretty much heroic halfus right there and even guild runs fail on hard more halfus.
Throne of the four winds - possibly doable with a pug, but again you still have idiots falling off platforms and missing jumps. You need people with gear and at least some experience to override the forced enrage at phase 3.
What really ticks me off is the fact that even organized, geared guilds are having trouble with fights because of the stupid mechanics. One stupid move can screw up the whole raid, which in a 25man means there are 25 people who can wipe you. And they do.
Look at Maloriak - one bad interrupt screws up add sequence, off-tank dies, raid wipes. One mistimed spellsteal and boss heals 20%, you miss enrage timer, raid wipes. Look at Atramedes - one mistimed gong click, searing flame wipes the raid. One bad turn of the boss, breath attack drives up your sound bars, half the raid wipes.
Chimaeron is the absolute worst. As a dps it's one of the most boring fights. You just sit there as your hp ticks to 1 and pray to god someone throws you a heal before the next massacre hits. Then in phase 2 everyone is the healer - instead of stabbing face I'm sitting there popping potions and bandaging myself. Basically you go from having absolutely no control over your survivability to being exclusively responsible for your own survivability. And this just goes back and forth and the last phase is yet another stupid dps race. It's like a heart attack for your healers and a borefest for the dps. All it does is force people to off-heal since you need so much freaking healing, then the off-heals are not good enough to keep everyone up so you just wipe over and over again, people start blaming healers, healers blame dps for splash damage and everyone goes home upset.
It's really no fun for anyone if microsecond reflexes become more important than actual skill.
Now I don't want to join that huge throng of people QQing about how hard this expansion is. Most of these people are complaining about how hard heroics are, which I don't agree with. Yes, in the first 2 months of the xpac heroics are hard, and I imagine they're still hard for undergeared people and especially healers. But I can't remember the time I failed to complete a heroic (or even bothered to do one...). As expected, once you get the gear and some practice things are almost as easy as the Wrath shit.
But raids are a different story. There are basically no pugs going on, ever, due to the sheer difficulty of these so-called "entry-level" raids. Difficulty that is almost irrelevant to a player's gear level, might I add. These are one-shot mechanics we're talking about here.
Back in Wrath, Naxx was the entry level raid. How tough was that? Sure, some of the bosses towards the end were tough but there were a few raid bosses even a disorganized pug could easily get down. Hell, even in ICC pugs were routinely clearing 1/3 of the raid in the first few months.
Take for example now the cata raids: first bosses in Blackwing Descent are Magmaw and Omnotron. I would love to see a pug of inexperienced people downing Omnotron. That takes a skilled guild to coordinate. There are no one-shot mechanics but it does require very high raid awareness. Magmaw is ridiculous - even in a guild group we have idiots jumping on magmaw and going, "huh wuhappen?" and wiping everyone. What part of "no one but these two designated jumpers jump" do you not understand?
Bastion of Twilight: Halfus is a crapshoot. It could be the easiest fight or a nightmare - god forbid you get the mortal strike/time drake combo. That's pretty much heroic halfus right there and even guild runs fail on hard more halfus.
Throne of the four winds - possibly doable with a pug, but again you still have idiots falling off platforms and missing jumps. You need people with gear and at least some experience to override the forced enrage at phase 3.
What really ticks me off is the fact that even organized, geared guilds are having trouble with fights because of the stupid mechanics. One stupid move can screw up the whole raid, which in a 25man means there are 25 people who can wipe you. And they do.
Look at Maloriak - one bad interrupt screws up add sequence, off-tank dies, raid wipes. One mistimed spellsteal and boss heals 20%, you miss enrage timer, raid wipes. Look at Atramedes - one mistimed gong click, searing flame wipes the raid. One bad turn of the boss, breath attack drives up your sound bars, half the raid wipes.
Chimaeron is the absolute worst. As a dps it's one of the most boring fights. You just sit there as your hp ticks to 1 and pray to god someone throws you a heal before the next massacre hits. Then in phase 2 everyone is the healer - instead of stabbing face I'm sitting there popping potions and bandaging myself. Basically you go from having absolutely no control over your survivability to being exclusively responsible for your own survivability. And this just goes back and forth and the last phase is yet another stupid dps race. It's like a heart attack for your healers and a borefest for the dps. All it does is force people to off-heal since you need so much freaking healing, then the off-heals are not good enough to keep everyone up so you just wipe over and over again, people start blaming healers, healers blame dps for splash damage and everyone goes home upset.
It's really no fun for anyone if microsecond reflexes become more important than actual skill.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
This is why I was never in the Chess Club
Because Chess sucks ass.
Last night I soloed yet another raid all by my lonesome - what started out as a "I'm bored I'm gonna do Kara to see if the horse mount will drop" turned into a 2 hour solofest culminating in a near-full clear of Karazhan, a 10 man entry level BC raid.
I honestly expected it to be a lot harder - I recall going into Kara with a few level 70-80s back when we were Naxx geared and almost wiping on the Curator. We had a scrub level 70 paladin tank who was dying (and also had no threat generation whatsoever in the face of level 80 dps) and I ended up taking over and screaming "HEAL ME GODDAMNIT" as we downed him. But this time around I downed him in the blink of an eye with hardly a scratch.
The best part of the Karazhan solo was the sheer amount of netherweave cloth that dropped. I've been half-heartedly farming some heroic level BC instances to get enough cloth to level tailoring on my warlock alt, and only managing 3-4 stacks per run. Well by the time I had cleared the first half of kara, I had over 15 stacks. Later on in the instance I didn't get so much because the mobs weren't undead humanoids, but there was still a good amount of greens to shard (BC level chanting mats sell for quite a bit these days).
What almost stopped me from clearing Kara was the stupid Chess event. It's dumb, gimmicky mechanics like this that make soloing very difficult no matter what gear level you're at. Granted, when you're actually trying to clear the raid at the appropriate level I admit the gimmicky stuff can be fun, and is usually easy (ICC lootship anyone?). But when you're trying to do this stuff with a 1 person raid...it's a nightmare. Try soloing Malygos, no matter how badass your gear is. I dare you.
What really killed me was the 10 second debuff you get in between each chess piece move. I couldn't just hop in and out of pieces, I had to wait while my king stood in the fire or the alliance pieces were nuking down my healers. The strategy that finally worked for me was to move the pawns in front of the king out 1 space ASAP - this way when the "medivh cheat" occurs and fire drops on your king, you can quickly move him. I also moved the demons out near the king so that the AOE could nuke down the alliance king. In the end, it was a combination of luck and a little practice that finally got me through that stupid chess game.
I ended up skipping a couple nonessential bosses because, well, Karazhan is so freaking big and I had no idea they were even there. But I killed all the required bosses and got the achievement! The raid lockout resets today so I think I'm going to go for a full clear this week, including all the side bosses. It's totally worth it for the dusts, essences, cloth, rep, BoEs, and sheer bragging rights. "oh yeah, Kara's easysauce bro, I solo that shit every weekend..."
Though, should I really be bragging about how I spend every weekend playing wow? Hrrmmm...
Last night I soloed yet another raid all by my lonesome - what started out as a "I'm bored I'm gonna do Kara to see if the horse mount will drop" turned into a 2 hour solofest culminating in a near-full clear of Karazhan, a 10 man entry level BC raid.
I honestly expected it to be a lot harder - I recall going into Kara with a few level 70-80s back when we were Naxx geared and almost wiping on the Curator. We had a scrub level 70 paladin tank who was dying (and also had no threat generation whatsoever in the face of level 80 dps) and I ended up taking over and screaming "HEAL ME GODDAMNIT" as we downed him. But this time around I downed him in the blink of an eye with hardly a scratch.
The best part of the Karazhan solo was the sheer amount of netherweave cloth that dropped. I've been half-heartedly farming some heroic level BC instances to get enough cloth to level tailoring on my warlock alt, and only managing 3-4 stacks per run. Well by the time I had cleared the first half of kara, I had over 15 stacks. Later on in the instance I didn't get so much because the mobs weren't undead humanoids, but there was still a good amount of greens to shard (BC level chanting mats sell for quite a bit these days).
What almost stopped me from clearing Kara was the stupid Chess event. It's dumb, gimmicky mechanics like this that make soloing very difficult no matter what gear level you're at. Granted, when you're actually trying to clear the raid at the appropriate level I admit the gimmicky stuff can be fun, and is usually easy (ICC lootship anyone?). But when you're trying to do this stuff with a 1 person raid...it's a nightmare. Try soloing Malygos, no matter how badass your gear is. I dare you.
What really killed me was the 10 second debuff you get in between each chess piece move. I couldn't just hop in and out of pieces, I had to wait while my king stood in the fire or the alliance pieces were nuking down my healers. The strategy that finally worked for me was to move the pawns in front of the king out 1 space ASAP - this way when the "medivh cheat" occurs and fire drops on your king, you can quickly move him. I also moved the demons out near the king so that the AOE could nuke down the alliance king. In the end, it was a combination of luck and a little practice that finally got me through that stupid chess game.
I ended up skipping a couple nonessential bosses because, well, Karazhan is so freaking big and I had no idea they were even there. But I killed all the required bosses and got the achievement! The raid lockout resets today so I think I'm going to go for a full clear this week, including all the side bosses. It's totally worth it for the dusts, essences, cloth, rep, BoEs, and sheer bragging rights. "oh yeah, Kara's easysauce bro, I solo that shit every weekend..."
Though, should I really be bragging about how I spend every weekend playing wow? Hrrmmm...
Monday, March 21, 2011
Ragnaros & BWL
Well, I gave it a shot...I solo'ed Molten Core!
I must say, after all the trepidation it was pretty anti-climatic. I re-specced to a "survival" combat spec, ie putting all the points into health regen, damage reduction, defensive skills. I even put a healing enchant on a sword just for molten core! After all that prep, everything was shockingly easy. The only part I had some trouble with (but didn't die!) was the packs of core hounds right before Magmadar. Who knew they would all respawn unless you kill them within 10 seconds of each other? Once I figured that out I just pulled one group at a time and everything went very smooth.
All in all, took me about 1 hour to kill every single thing in there. It was annoying having to run around since all the mobs were so far apart. I didn't use a single potion or bandage, and just healed myself through recouperation. Sadly, no [Bindings of the Windseeker] from Garr or Baron Geddon. But tons of old-school epics (including a piece from the nightslayer set! Rogue raid tier 1 here I come!), some still-valuable trade mats, and even a couple of BoE rares from Ragnaros himself. He was stupidly easy, btw. He just had more health than everyone else, I suppose, but my hp barely ticked past the 80% mark the whole fight.
Then I tried to do Blackwing Lair...big mistake. Apparently that's one of the few raids no one can solo, ever. It requires a complicated mind-control mechanic which means you need an absolute minimum of 2 people to clear that encounter. Very annoying. Which means I will have to drag someone else in there with me if I'm ever to collect the mats I need for my legendary weapon....maybe I'll just go buy them. It feels like cheating to say I soloed it when I had a healer with me...
I must say, after all the trepidation it was pretty anti-climatic. I re-specced to a "survival" combat spec, ie putting all the points into health regen, damage reduction, defensive skills. I even put a healing enchant on a sword just for molten core! After all that prep, everything was shockingly easy. The only part I had some trouble with (but didn't die!) was the packs of core hounds right before Magmadar. Who knew they would all respawn unless you kill them within 10 seconds of each other? Once I figured that out I just pulled one group at a time and everything went very smooth.
All in all, took me about 1 hour to kill every single thing in there. It was annoying having to run around since all the mobs were so far apart. I didn't use a single potion or bandage, and just healed myself through recouperation. Sadly, no [Bindings of the Windseeker] from Garr or Baron Geddon. But tons of old-school epics (including a piece from the nightslayer set! Rogue raid tier 1 here I come!), some still-valuable trade mats, and even a couple of BoE rares from Ragnaros himself. He was stupidly easy, btw. He just had more health than everyone else, I suppose, but my hp barely ticked past the 80% mark the whole fight.
Then I tried to do Blackwing Lair...big mistake. Apparently that's one of the few raids no one can solo, ever. It requires a complicated mind-control mechanic which means you need an absolute minimum of 2 people to clear that encounter. Very annoying. Which means I will have to drag someone else in there with me if I'm ever to collect the mats I need for my legendary weapon....maybe I'll just go buy them. It feels like cheating to say I soloed it when I had a healer with me...
Friday, March 18, 2011
I swear I won't use it just for trollin'
So I'm thinking about getting myself a [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]. I've never had a legendary before, and this will be the easiest of the legendaries to get, I think. Here is my rationale:
Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker
Pros: Stylish lookin'. Rogues can equip it. You can link it in trade chat for hours on end.
Cons: Requires multiple runs of Molten Core. Requires either $$$ or hours of farming in Blackwing Lair.
Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros
Pros: BoE, so technically can be purchased for shitload of $$$.
Cons: Oh so many. First off, 2H mace, unequippable by rogues, and therefore will not reward the Feat of Strength achievement. Requires multiple MC runs due to very low drop rate from Ragnaros (RNG mechanics.../rage) for required item. Requires extensive farming or $$$.
Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian
Pros: No longer obtainable in the game...so extra points if you somehow get it!
Cons: Um, no longer obtainable. Also unequippable by rogues as 2H staff. Looks like a giant chicken drumstick.
Twin Blades of Azzinoth
Pros: Serious style points. This looks SO. BITCHIN. Especially on a dual wielder like a rogue, this looks incredibly badass. Also, no need to collect materials, as it simply drops from Illidan Stormrage.
Cons: Very low drop rate from Illidan, final boss in Black Temple - end-game BC raid. Hence un-soloable by a rogue, no matter how badass. Very low droprate. Need to get both of the warglaives to complete the set.
Thori'dal, the Star's Fury
Pros: Again, really badass looking. Drops from Kil'Jaedan in Sunwell Plateau.
Cons: Nice looking, but how often do rogues whip out a bow? It's not normally displayed on your char...Very low drop rate from a boss that's unsoloable by a 85 rogue.
Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings
Pros: Rogues can equip it, it's sparkly!
Cons: Err...caster mace, hence useless (not that you obtain legendaries for utility, but just sayin'). Requires multiple clears/farms of 25man Ulduar. Not even close to soloable by a rogue, probably need at least 10-15 really geared people to clear Ulduar even at this point.
Shadowmourne
Pros: Badass axe. Nuff said.
Cons: 2H axe, cannot equip *sadface*. Also requires multiple clears of ICC & a pain-in-the-ass extended questline. Cannot solo, not even close.
So yeah, given that I want to be able to get all these without having to resort to pugs, I'd say the post-BC weps are all out of question. Ideally I'd love to get the twin blades of azzinoth but there is just no way I can solo black temple. Even with the help of a healer I just don't think it will happen - I believe there's a mind control encounter which means I'll just get MCed and kill the healer. Whenever there's MC you need to either have 1 person or more than 2. This is why we couldn't solo Hakkar in ZG - that damn MC mechanic.
So I suppose I will have to stick with Thunderfury. I didn't think it possible since MC is still quite tough, but I found some videos of a 85 rogue soloing MC! His gear was pretty good, although not full epics, and he came close to dying at the last boss. I think it can be done. Thunderfury here I come!
Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker
Pros: Stylish lookin'. Rogues can equip it. You can link it in trade chat for hours on end.
Cons: Requires multiple runs of Molten Core. Requires either $$$ or hours of farming in Blackwing Lair.
Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros
Pros: BoE, so technically can be purchased for shitload of $$$.
Cons: Oh so many. First off, 2H mace, unequippable by rogues, and therefore will not reward the Feat of Strength achievement. Requires multiple MC runs due to very low drop rate from Ragnaros (RNG mechanics.../rage) for required item. Requires extensive farming or $$$.
Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian
Pros: No longer obtainable in the game...so extra points if you somehow get it!
Cons: Um, no longer obtainable. Also unequippable by rogues as 2H staff. Looks like a giant chicken drumstick.
Twin Blades of Azzinoth
Pros: Serious style points. This looks SO. BITCHIN. Especially on a dual wielder like a rogue, this looks incredibly badass. Also, no need to collect materials, as it simply drops from Illidan Stormrage.
Cons: Very low drop rate from Illidan, final boss in Black Temple - end-game BC raid. Hence un-soloable by a rogue, no matter how badass. Very low droprate. Need to get both of the warglaives to complete the set.
Thori'dal, the Star's Fury
Pros: Again, really badass looking. Drops from Kil'Jaedan in Sunwell Plateau.
Cons: Nice looking, but how often do rogues whip out a bow? It's not normally displayed on your char...Very low drop rate from a boss that's unsoloable by a 85 rogue.
Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings
Pros: Rogues can equip it, it's sparkly!
Cons: Err...caster mace, hence useless (not that you obtain legendaries for utility, but just sayin'). Requires multiple clears/farms of 25man Ulduar. Not even close to soloable by a rogue, probably need at least 10-15 really geared people to clear Ulduar even at this point.
Shadowmourne
Pros: Badass axe. Nuff said.
Cons: 2H axe, cannot equip *sadface*. Also requires multiple clears of ICC & a pain-in-the-ass extended questline. Cannot solo, not even close.
So yeah, given that I want to be able to get all these without having to resort to pugs, I'd say the post-BC weps are all out of question. Ideally I'd love to get the twin blades of azzinoth but there is just no way I can solo black temple. Even with the help of a healer I just don't think it will happen - I believe there's a mind control encounter which means I'll just get MCed and kill the healer. Whenever there's MC you need to either have 1 person or more than 2. This is why we couldn't solo Hakkar in ZG - that damn MC mechanic.
So I suppose I will have to stick with Thunderfury. I didn't think it possible since MC is still quite tough, but I found some videos of a 85 rogue soloing MC! His gear was pretty good, although not full epics, and he came close to dying at the last boss. I think it can be done. Thunderfury here I come!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Ok, one more ragetoon...
True story. Happened to my husband!
(BTW in case it wasn't clear, I made all these ragetoons. (Credits for the original ragetoon template goes to ragetoon.tumblr.com)
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