6...9...6...9...6...9...6...9...6...9...6...9...6...9...6...9...
Is that really the truth to it? Not quite. The 9696 rotation is the staple of any paladin tanking, but to think that there isn't anything else is to be severely mistaken. First off there is a constant consideration about where to start your rotation depending on what type of pull it is, and where to start it off again after say, a stun. Then there's the consideration of which parts to drop to interweave Hammer of Wrath in execute range, and while I can answer such questions when it's calm, it's another piece of gum when you're in the middle of a boss fight. Luckily the 9696 rotation fits together quite seamlessly even when you introduce another 6-second cooldown, or even when you need to start weaving in interrupts (there's three, though only two use the GCD) every now and then. It's pretty much failsafe and idiotsafe - even if you just mash everything as soon as it comes off cooldown, you'll be looking at decent survivability and threat still.
This is a reason for what irks me the most about paladin tanks. They are currently the Flavour of the Month because of their advantage in simplicity in play and greater effective health compared to other tanks (oooh, and built in Guardian Spirit). We have a slightly smaller toolbox (maybe not smaller, but a hell of a lot more situational and therefor it rarely sees use), but if you get along just fine with or without a protection warrior (who, arguably, has the bigger toolbox) then what's the problem? Sure, it may be easier to bring someone who has two two-minute cooldowns to cycle for Vezax's Surges, but 1. They nerfed him to the ground 2. External cooldowns, on-use trinkets and AD work just fine as substitutions for own on-use. Plus, you can glyph to get a 20% damage reduction cooldown as well if you want to. 3. That doesn't mean it's an insurmountable hurdle to pass by bringing something else.
Another area where paladin tanks shine is utility. We have it coming out of our ears, with Kings buffs, extra crit and the splendid Divine Sacrifice just to mention a few. The previously mentioned smaller toolbox consists mainly of our Hands, with Hand of Sanctuary most probably being the most useful one (very helpful for warlocks, who put out ridiculous amounts of DPS and only have one threat reduction cooldown), but Hand of Protection on the other tank to clear stacks of Impale after Gormokk is dead to ease the healers' load during the first bit of the Jormungar duo is not to be sneezed at.
It may well be a case of grass being greener on the other side of the fence syndrome, but I sometimes regret not going with my warrior for my tanking alt. I may well level him to 80 before Cataclysm comes (but make no effort in gearing) so that I may reach my goal of 5 level 80's by the time Cata drops (it used to be 6, then Blizzard announced that they would make troll druids a reality, which just makes me all giddy inside - trolls are after all the epitome of shapeshifting and animal worship - ZG, ZF, and ZA all attest to this together with Gundrak. Also, trolls are my favorite race of the Warcraft universe and has been since Warcraft II). For now, I will use my paladin and have fun while doing it. She may lack the mobility and lockdown capabilities of warriors, but when it comes to eating those big hits, she's just incredible.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
New posts incoming
Yeah. So I kinda fucking neglected this place. I've also lately been on a huge-ass guilt trip for being an arse to a lot of people in-game lately, both random people not important to me and people I consider friends and important. Frantically grinding the daily even when you don't need any gear sort of fucks you up, apperantly. PuG:ing week in and week out also took it's toll and frankly, it wasn't beautiful in any way - I hope the person I told to "stfu and heal" will accept my apology and that the person from whom I ninja'd (yes, I bullied the raid leader into giving me stuff, that counts as ninjaing) the Anub caster shield will come around, even though the ticket didn't go through. What I'd become turned me off the game for a bit. A break was long overdue and we counted the amount of raids I'd done that lockout in /o and reached a two-figure number. While I can honestly say that doing 12 of 14 raids in a week isn't so horrible because you can easily reach eight by doing both versions of VoA, Onyxia-10 and Coliseum on two characters for a total time of maybe four or five hours, the amount of energy poured into drudging the daily heroic on two characters combined with the incredibly frustrating task of leading some 2-4 PuG's a week (I'd typically be the leader of the VoA PuG's and the guild CC-10 runs, and organised one or two 25 man Coliseum PuG's on top of that) for weeks on end will utterly and completely fuck you up. I should have seen it coming, but I didn't, and now I pay for that. It'd been worse if I'd kept it up with three characters.
Sorry for the language, but I can't think of anything else than "fucked up" to describe my current WoW-situation. Instead, I've been catching up on some reading (re-read some Pratchett stuff. Not constructive and it kept me from reading school stuff, but it's a 'not WoW' activity), getting back onto the university volleyball practises and generally trying to find my normal social life. I missed the first 'almost guild only' Onyxia 25 kill ('almost guild only' enough to make the guild front page) and I don't regret it one second - not only because I'd already downed the broodmother several times, but because I took a very good friend to the student's pub, where I had a burger and we had a few beers and caught up on stuff.
I went to the Coliseum ten man run yesterday, if only to keep in touch a bit and fill a spot. I got a new caster dagger for my mage, which makes me able to relax even more as that was one of few upgrades I have left. Overall gear stress really went away - this is what made me into a bully about the shield - the prospect of not having to care about gear for a bit was more interesting than the shield itself. I got on today (technically yesterday) to fill a spot in an Ulduar ten man run continuation. Background: We decided to give some new folks (hi Tam! Hi Iust!) a classic Absolution welcome introduction by dragging them through a horrible horrible scary raid, where they were sure to shit their pants and die, while the rest of us cruised through and were liek "lol we just totally sixteen manned XT". We've done this so many times, I think we should start using it in our advertisements.
Absolution! We throw you in at the Deep End™. Bring clean underpants.
Anyway, as a token of friendship we made an Ulduar ten for those people a couple days after the 25 man shock, where they could enjoy the more social atmosphere of Absolution and relax and learn the fights. Sure, ten-man is more individual responsibility, but it's so much easier to teach and learn in that environment, and wipe-recovery is faster, and with some rocket DPS, the bosses go down real quick and easy as well.
My trail of thought is fucked up. I was supposed to fill a spot in an Ulduar ten man today, remember? Well, said raid didn't happen. I got on a short while a couple of hours after giving up on that endeavour cause I had some auctions that expired (that totally sold, woop woop) and then went off again. I don't intend to get on until the raid wednesday, if even that. I know I have my cloth cooldowns coming off tuesday that I may or may not log in to craft. I'm at 60+ Ebonweave, 20+ Moonshroud (after handing 12 to a guildie) and 20+ Spellweave and don't need neither cash nor materials for any crafted stuff, so I don't see why I keep doing it, and as part of my 'reform' I intend to not hunt that cooldown. Not cause I in any way was obligated to do it before, just to prove to myself that I didn't keep doing them cause I had to, only because there was no good reason to not do it. I know I am not addicted in any way, but sometimes you may have to prove it to yourself and others - said others are probably the thing I am addicted to, if any - not game mechanics.
I was just gonna get on and tell you guys that eventually are reading that there will be posts, stemming from my extra time and energy, and the fact that I have tanked all bosses the game has to offer (except heroic Coliseum beyond Beasts plus Vezax and Yogg) on my incredibly pimped paladin tank (her gear, and Vorla's, came at a terrible price, as mentioned), so there's plenty of experience to pour from. Instead, here I sit pouring my heart out. Maybe I needed this more than I thought. More subjects include the noob (we brought him to Ulduar 25 man as his first raid as well, much sadistic fun was had), my thoughts on the gear system and the 'new' raid bosses in the Coliseum[sic!] and their fun and replayability in game design values, and maybe some thoughts about what has been known about Icecrown. Icecrown feels so much smaller now that Blizzard has already announced Cataclysm (which contains the most retarded shit I've ever heard of - they are truly destroying their intellectual property not only in the metaphorical sense but also in the literal).
With reassurance,
Vorla, Audacity and Togtok
Friday, August 7, 2009
Project Noob - The update
I haven't updated in a while, mainly cause of being busy at work but also from having a short break from WoW and raiding. At this very moment I'm on the last leg of this weeks marathon to reach level 80 on my paladin. My noob is level 52 now, and have been playing the auction house while having troubles finding good places to level. 50-60 is a drudge and I was blessed to do it with Recruit-a-Friend this time around.
I also haven't updated cause the noob expressed some interest in writing a piece of his own and I was kinda holding out on that. I also have made contact with another noob friend who is doing WoW tourism and asked if she would be interested. Apart from not quite knowing what to write about she sounded interested, so you might want to keep an eye out.
I also haven't updated cause the noob expressed some interest in writing a piece of his own and I was kinda holding out on that. I also have made contact with another noob friend who is doing WoW tourism and asked if she would be interested. Apart from not quite knowing what to write about she sounded interested, so you might want to keep an eye out.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
A few thoughts on "normal" servers
THEY AREN'T NORMAL.
Srsly. People on those servers were probably dropped on their heads repeatedly when they were infants. I knew I did the right thing, rolling on a RP server back when I started, cause I figured there'd be a smaller amount of idiots. I rolled on a normal instead of RP-PVP cause I didn't want to be ganked. After levelling a warrior to 60 and a paladin to 70 on a normal PvP server I can say that I was right about the idiot part, but wrong about the ganking part. I've only ever been ganked once, and that was just outside of Blackrock depths by some rogue who probably was just bored waiting for his group and I was at half health. I ganked a bunch of gnome warlocks while riding through Duskwood though, the class/race combo makes me rage. Otherwise I find little pleasure in oneshotting lowbies, since I myself wanted to avoid exactly stuff like bored 60's killing me just cause they could.
Instead, while catching up on professions and class quests I'd missed while rushing through the levels (RAF is silly fast), the orange text "CONTESTED TERRITORY" actually made my tummy tingle a bit with excitement. I had to be on constant lookout and I encountered similarly levelled Allies while questing and we'd have a standoff with both of us coming to the conclusion that it wasn't worth it, and we left each other be. Kinda pussified on a PvP server, but it represents the tension between the factions a lot better than "zomg a dorf must keel it". I may have had the upper hand some of the times being two toons at once (although I'd not be able to PvP effectively on both of them at the same time anyway, but the Allies couldn't know that) but it was still interesting.
Anyway, along to the stuff that struck me about the PvP server I spent some 100 hours the last couple of weeks on, Shattered Hand:
1. There's a lot of PuG:ing going on. The server's population is a lot smaller than Argent Dawn's, but there's a remarkable amount of PuG spam in trade. This leads to dirt cheap Runed Orbs, epics and enchanting mats.
Said PuG's do not advertise for roles, but classes ("need resto shammy, kitty druid" etc) leading me to think that they are doing "class runs" in other instances than VoA. Reserving gear is also very frequent - "LFM FL-10, Firesoul reserved" is common, as is PuG's where only a set amount of bosses (often the easy ones) are targetted. There is also almost always a gear check and achievement link requirement to join regardless if there's just a FL run or not. Orgrimmar bank roof is full with the people spamming trade, cause that's where they gather to do the gear checks.
People will even start their spam advertising, and keep it up for hours, while being the only person in the group. "LF1tank, 1healer, 2DPS HC VH". Quite the optimist - on AD, people go to LFM/Guild/Friends list when there's a last few spots to fill, not straight away. More often than not are groups of 5 DPS in trade going "LF2tanks 3 healers Naxx-10 be skilled have gear link achiv"
2. The trade spam is truly spam. People will copy/paste their message over and over and over again, and in a culture like that, the only way to make yourself heard is in turn spamming, contributing to the vicious cycle. Trade is not just trade - it's LF Arena partner, LFM, Guild recruitment and also a source of some entertaining bickering and accusations of ninjaing (people will come out of PuG's with BoE epics, go to a capital city, spam trade to sell it, and people from that PuG will show up in trade calling them on their ninjaing ways).
3. The economy on the server is, probably in large cause of 1 and 2, completely batshit insane. With ten PuG's to 25 man Ulduar killing 2-3 bosses and FFA rolls for the Runed Orbs instead of them going to a guild's gearing up efforts each night, they go for next to nothing on the AH. I fled Shattered hand with my warrior with 6 runed orbs that I paid 1200 for in total. The BoE epics are since long aquired by everyone who frequent these PuG's, and therefore they only run it again to get another BoE to sell for some easy gold, and since everyone is selling them, the prices are way low. At this moment, I'm waiting for a few auctions to sell (some things still sell well, mostly the stuff you can't farm by PuG:ing end game content - Netherweave cloth is well expensive for example), and before I leave, I might have three or four ilvl 213+ epics for my tanking set straight off the bat, just from money I earned while levelling and selling the stuff that dropped. Emblem of Valor bracers? 200g-500g. On AD they go for 600g a good day. Relics of Ulduar sell for 1g at most, 200-stacks go for 150g more often than not.
I also suspect there's a lot of gold buying going on, Ratchet is fairly often full of higher level guys just standing around, and once when I was transferring my questing from 1k Needles to Stranglethorn, there was a fucking queue to do face-to-face trades with some level 1 orc warrior with a name with only consonants in it. I stood around and looked in horror for a while...
The faction specific auction house will sometimes contain really low-level items for very high prices too - I don't know if this is a case of "I hope some idiot presses the wrong button" or a way to avoid sending gold in the mail (which Blizzard apperantly monitors quite close - I've read up on the subject cause it started to fascinate me) between farmer and buyer, but either way it's not healthy.
While I'm not entirely sure how gold buying and extensive farming by chinese gold selling agencies affect a server's economy, my gut feeling tells me it should raise prices, not dump them (more gold to go around to inflate the market), but I guess people just buy gold for their money sinks (Hogs, epic flying, mammoths and stuff) and that it doesn't make it's way onto the Auction house.
4. People have some serious issues with naming. I've become truly jaded - all of a sudden "tommypala" is a perfectly acceptable name to me. "Twofish" or "Toothache" might have their place on a RP realm since there might be a reason why someone would be called that in game, but next to "Angrymama", "Eranikús", "Drunkdrood" and "Steakheals" (authentic examples I just picked up) in the spam fest that is trade, and on top of that, in fucking Swedish, they are just widely out of place. I just cannot relate to this in anyway. Even when I was 16, playing the epic grind fest that was Diablo II, this kind of naming was fairly rare, here it's commonplace.
5. People will whisper and pester you about all sorts of inane shit. Being a mage in Orgrimmar leads to the occasional whisper on Argent Dawn - people can't get enough portals. But being pretty much anyone, anywhere on Shattered hand will lead to you being spammed by lowbies (I only remembered this cause I just got whispered by a level 16 rogue to boost him in SFK - I told him to gain a few levels and find a real group and play the game the way it was supposed to. Didn't go down too well.) asking to be boosted or wanting to buy your services killing some alliance dude ganking their asses. People will randomly whisper you asking for your PvP gear and if you are willing to boost them in Arena for gold. It's absolutely mental.
6. Related to number 5 - people are twinks. No exception. There's level 19's, 29's, 49's and God knows what all running around with ilvl 25 blues with Mongoose on them. This is the easiest to relate to - twinking and voluntarily staying at a lower level bracket may make for a more interesting game, I for one would never play D&D 4th Ed. above level 10 (or at least never above 15) for my everyday gaming needs so I can kind of understand it. This is very rare on Argent Dawn. I'll see one every now and then, but standing around in Orgrimmar usually only yields people's mains and bank alts doing business at the AH while Undercity, Thunder Bluff and Silvermoon City is shockfull of them.
7. This is barely it's own section, but people use Swedish in their spammages and character names all the time. Shattered hand does have a predominantly Swedish population and as such, it's accepted by everyone there, and the rest can just go fuck itself as far as the probably 15-year old Swedish population is concerned.
The really sad part is that the people acting like they are in their early teens probably quite often are in their early 20's and that my prejudice towards young people in part is wrong, and the people on Shattered hand simply are idiots in large.
It will feel so good to finally have all my alts on RP servers again (huntard and rogue on Steamwheedle will probably stay there for a long while, don't intend to play them again) and level with the soft embrace of Absolution's guild chat close by. I love you guys.
Srsly. People on those servers were probably dropped on their heads repeatedly when they were infants. I knew I did the right thing, rolling on a RP server back when I started, cause I figured there'd be a smaller amount of idiots. I rolled on a normal instead of RP-PVP cause I didn't want to be ganked. After levelling a warrior to 60 and a paladin to 70 on a normal PvP server I can say that I was right about the idiot part, but wrong about the ganking part. I've only ever been ganked once, and that was just outside of Blackrock depths by some rogue who probably was just bored waiting for his group and I was at half health. I ganked a bunch of gnome warlocks while riding through Duskwood though, the class/race combo makes me rage. Otherwise I find little pleasure in oneshotting lowbies, since I myself wanted to avoid exactly stuff like bored 60's killing me just cause they could.
Instead, while catching up on professions and class quests I'd missed while rushing through the levels (RAF is silly fast), the orange text "CONTESTED TERRITORY" actually made my tummy tingle a bit with excitement. I had to be on constant lookout and I encountered similarly levelled Allies while questing and we'd have a standoff with both of us coming to the conclusion that it wasn't worth it, and we left each other be. Kinda pussified on a PvP server, but it represents the tension between the factions a lot better than "zomg a dorf must keel it". I may have had the upper hand some of the times being two toons at once (although I'd not be able to PvP effectively on both of them at the same time anyway, but the Allies couldn't know that) but it was still interesting.
Anyway, along to the stuff that struck me about the PvP server I spent some 100 hours the last couple of weeks on, Shattered Hand:
1. There's a lot of PuG:ing going on. The server's population is a lot smaller than Argent Dawn's, but there's a remarkable amount of PuG spam in trade. This leads to dirt cheap Runed Orbs, epics and enchanting mats.
Said PuG's do not advertise for roles, but classes ("need resto shammy, kitty druid" etc) leading me to think that they are doing "class runs" in other instances than VoA. Reserving gear is also very frequent - "LFM FL-10, Firesoul reserved" is common, as is PuG's where only a set amount of bosses (often the easy ones) are targetted. There is also almost always a gear check and achievement link requirement to join regardless if there's just a FL run or not. Orgrimmar bank roof is full with the people spamming trade, cause that's where they gather to do the gear checks.
People will even start their spam advertising, and keep it up for hours, while being the only person in the group. "LF1tank, 1healer, 2DPS HC VH". Quite the optimist - on AD, people go to LFM/Guild/Friends list when there's a last few spots to fill, not straight away. More often than not are groups of 5 DPS in trade going "LF2tanks 3 healers Naxx-10 be skilled have gear link achiv"
2. The trade spam is truly spam. People will copy/paste their message over and over and over again, and in a culture like that, the only way to make yourself heard is in turn spamming, contributing to the vicious cycle. Trade is not just trade - it's LF Arena partner, LFM, Guild recruitment and also a source of some entertaining bickering and accusations of ninjaing (people will come out of PuG's with BoE epics, go to a capital city, spam trade to sell it, and people from that PuG will show up in trade calling them on their ninjaing ways).
3. The economy on the server is, probably in large cause of 1 and 2, completely batshit insane. With ten PuG's to 25 man Ulduar killing 2-3 bosses and FFA rolls for the Runed Orbs instead of them going to a guild's gearing up efforts each night, they go for next to nothing on the AH. I fled Shattered hand with my warrior with 6 runed orbs that I paid 1200 for in total. The BoE epics are since long aquired by everyone who frequent these PuG's, and therefore they only run it again to get another BoE to sell for some easy gold, and since everyone is selling them, the prices are way low. At this moment, I'm waiting for a few auctions to sell (some things still sell well, mostly the stuff you can't farm by PuG:ing end game content - Netherweave cloth is well expensive for example), and before I leave, I might have three or four ilvl 213+ epics for my tanking set straight off the bat, just from money I earned while levelling and selling the stuff that dropped. Emblem of Valor bracers? 200g-500g. On AD they go for 600g a good day. Relics of Ulduar sell for 1g at most, 200-stacks go for 150g more often than not.
I also suspect there's a lot of gold buying going on, Ratchet is fairly often full of higher level guys just standing around, and once when I was transferring my questing from 1k Needles to Stranglethorn, there was a fucking queue to do face-to-face trades with some level 1 orc warrior with a name with only consonants in it. I stood around and looked in horror for a while...
The faction specific auction house will sometimes contain really low-level items for very high prices too - I don't know if this is a case of "I hope some idiot presses the wrong button" or a way to avoid sending gold in the mail (which Blizzard apperantly monitors quite close - I've read up on the subject cause it started to fascinate me) between farmer and buyer, but either way it's not healthy.
While I'm not entirely sure how gold buying and extensive farming by chinese gold selling agencies affect a server's economy, my gut feeling tells me it should raise prices, not dump them (more gold to go around to inflate the market), but I guess people just buy gold for their money sinks (Hogs, epic flying, mammoths and stuff) and that it doesn't make it's way onto the Auction house.
4. People have some serious issues with naming. I've become truly jaded - all of a sudden "tommypala" is a perfectly acceptable name to me. "Twofish" or "Toothache" might have their place on a RP realm since there might be a reason why someone would be called that in game, but next to "Angrymama", "Eranikús", "Drunkdrood" and "Steakheals" (authentic examples I just picked up) in the spam fest that is trade, and on top of that, in fucking Swedish, they are just widely out of place. I just cannot relate to this in anyway. Even when I was 16, playing the epic grind fest that was Diablo II, this kind of naming was fairly rare, here it's commonplace.
5. People will whisper and pester you about all sorts of inane shit. Being a mage in Orgrimmar leads to the occasional whisper on Argent Dawn - people can't get enough portals. But being pretty much anyone, anywhere on Shattered hand will lead to you being spammed by lowbies (I only remembered this cause I just got whispered by a level 16 rogue to boost him in SFK - I told him to gain a few levels and find a real group and play the game the way it was supposed to. Didn't go down too well.) asking to be boosted or wanting to buy your services killing some alliance dude ganking their asses. People will randomly whisper you asking for your PvP gear and if you are willing to boost them in Arena for gold. It's absolutely mental.
6. Related to number 5 - people are twinks. No exception. There's level 19's, 29's, 49's and God knows what all running around with ilvl 25 blues with Mongoose on them. This is the easiest to relate to - twinking and voluntarily staying at a lower level bracket may make for a more interesting game, I for one would never play D&D 4th Ed. above level 10 (or at least never above 15) for my everyday gaming needs so I can kind of understand it. This is very rare on Argent Dawn. I'll see one every now and then, but standing around in Orgrimmar usually only yields people's mains and bank alts doing business at the AH while Undercity, Thunder Bluff and Silvermoon City is shockfull of them.
7. This is barely it's own section, but people use Swedish in their spammages and character names all the time. Shattered hand does have a predominantly Swedish population and as such, it's accepted by everyone there, and the rest can just go fuck itself as far as the probably 15-year old Swedish population is concerned.
The really sad part is that the people acting like they are in their early teens probably quite often are in their early 20's and that my prejudice towards young people in part is wrong, and the people on Shattered hand simply are idiots in large.
It will feel so good to finally have all my alts on RP servers again (huntard and rogue on Steamwheedle will probably stay there for a long while, don't intend to play them again) and level with the soft embrace of Absolution's guild chat close by. I love you guys.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Tanking cherry popped!
So yeah, I just got out of Blackrock Depths after tanking my first instance. I feel like a noob all over again. And I love it. We did good, but in the beginning I just mashed buttons randomly (I read a prio list but my bindings were perhaps not that great) and managed to hold aggro just fucking fine.
So yeah. I was in LFM because I needed a group for Sunken Temple, for warrior class quest about some fucking feathers or something. And someone randomly whispered me asking if I wanted to come to BRD. Now, I remember that instance to be really hard, but I mostly ran it on my shaman with what was most probably undergeared groups. But I figured, how hard can it be? I outlevel the instance and I have decent gear in almost all slots, and can probably fill the rest while we are down there (I got a few greens and blues, not exactly something that's made me excited before but I went "Woo! New tanking shoulders!" out loud >_>.
I made sure to tell them that I'd never tanked before. Never tanked a warrior, never tanked BRD, never. They seemed fine with it and I figured it'd be OK since most people were around 55. Turns out all of them were Swedish (for some reason they all went SWE!? almost right away). We slugged ourselves over there, me and a priest got there first and started summoning people and in we went. I wanted to show how awesome I was so I chainpulled the miners that are in the antechamber thingie, making sure my rage was optimal and just generally being badass. Inside the instace things were about as easy except for one thing: THE HUNTARD. Yeah, a PuG with a stupid hunter, who'da thought. He kept pulling out of impatience when healer was low on mana and did not turn off his pet's growl. And the damn pet kept ripping mobs off me and kept taking damage and he kept nagging the priest and ret paladin to heal his pet. I swear to God, I had a full playing board of PuG bingo right there. We told him to turn the taunt off, he told us his pet in fact did not have a taunt. At least we weren't wiping so we made do with simply not talking about it anymore. We went around randomly first cause noone had the key (epic confusion throughout the run since there are a gazillion types of keys to keep track of) and the other four had never been there before. I felt big and manly when I walked around with only a vague idea about where the first three bosses were, but we did the Law circle thing and managed to progress. Turns out the hunter was 15 (he said he was turning 16 tomorrow when the paladin said he had to have a quick afk to eat cake with his grandma cause it was his 17th birhtday...), the priest was 29 and the warlock probably somewhere around my age (he called the rest "kids"). Go figure.
I noticed being rage starved pretty much all the time until I figured out the key: CHAINPULL MOAR. Not that I thought rage would be pouring in as fast as a mob looked at you, but having two of them beat on me only allowed me to do shield slam as often as it came off CD basically. Having figured that out, I reached tanking heaven when controlling packs of 8-10 mobs at the same time, moving them according to my slightest whim. Trying to peel off and kick my healer's ass? Not on my watch! Taunt! Shockwave! Fuck yeah ain't going nowhere bitch. Playing a warrior as opposed to a mana class is a completely different game, I got that figured out. But actually tanking, playing the threat game, it just blew my mind. The first group fell apart somewhere around us ninjajumping to the entrance to Molten Core and realizing we were stuck cause noone had the key.
Me and the priest found three new DPS and came back, made sure we hade the key quest and even though the PuG really sucked (worse this time, there was a impolite mage, a really stupid paladin (who was 48 so he had the biggest aggro range with hilarious results) who refused to stay close to me and a DPS warrior with a tanking complex) I stuck around because I was enjoying it so much. I still don't know if it was because it was something completely fresh or because I genuinely enjoyed tanking and will keep on liking it, but I will keep going until I find out. I befriended the priest and we've agreed to do Strat and Scholo someday this week. Will be nice to get some more tanking experience under my belt before I venture into Outland for levelling and the hopefully harder instances there. Still refreshed from the experience I ventured back to my home server, where people don't have guild names that are "potatodruggies" or "chase a naked man" or character names that are "iamalock" or "elitepala" or "dillfather" or "cheesesandwich" or "gandálf" or "hateful" or "unnecessary" or "pelledruid" NYAAAARHRG. Time to sort the lineup for tonights Ulduar-25. Tanks and healers as always but lacking DPS. Comfortable problems.
So yeah. I was in LFM because I needed a group for Sunken Temple, for warrior class quest about some fucking feathers or something. And someone randomly whispered me asking if I wanted to come to BRD. Now, I remember that instance to be really hard, but I mostly ran it on my shaman with what was most probably undergeared groups. But I figured, how hard can it be? I outlevel the instance and I have decent gear in almost all slots, and can probably fill the rest while we are down there (I got a few greens and blues, not exactly something that's made me excited before but I went "Woo! New tanking shoulders!" out loud >_>.
I made sure to tell them that I'd never tanked before. Never tanked a warrior, never tanked BRD, never. They seemed fine with it and I figured it'd be OK since most people were around 55. Turns out all of them were Swedish (for some reason they all went SWE!? almost right away). We slugged ourselves over there, me and a priest got there first and started summoning people and in we went. I wanted to show how awesome I was so I chainpulled the miners that are in the antechamber thingie, making sure my rage was optimal and just generally being badass. Inside the instace things were about as easy except for one thing: THE HUNTARD. Yeah, a PuG with a stupid hunter, who'da thought. He kept pulling out of impatience when healer was low on mana and did not turn off his pet's growl. And the damn pet kept ripping mobs off me and kept taking damage and he kept nagging the priest and ret paladin to heal his pet. I swear to God, I had a full playing board of PuG bingo right there. We told him to turn the taunt off, he told us his pet in fact did not have a taunt. At least we weren't wiping so we made do with simply not talking about it anymore. We went around randomly first cause noone had the key (epic confusion throughout the run since there are a gazillion types of keys to keep track of) and the other four had never been there before. I felt big and manly when I walked around with only a vague idea about where the first three bosses were, but we did the Law circle thing and managed to progress. Turns out the hunter was 15 (he said he was turning 16 tomorrow when the paladin said he had to have a quick afk to eat cake with his grandma cause it was his 17th birhtday...), the priest was 29 and the warlock probably somewhere around my age (he called the rest "kids"). Go figure.
I noticed being rage starved pretty much all the time until I figured out the key: CHAINPULL MOAR. Not that I thought rage would be pouring in as fast as a mob looked at you, but having two of them beat on me only allowed me to do shield slam as often as it came off CD basically. Having figured that out, I reached tanking heaven when controlling packs of 8-10 mobs at the same time, moving them according to my slightest whim. Trying to peel off and kick my healer's ass? Not on my watch! Taunt! Shockwave! Fuck yeah ain't going nowhere bitch. Playing a warrior as opposed to a mana class is a completely different game, I got that figured out. But actually tanking, playing the threat game, it just blew my mind. The first group fell apart somewhere around us ninjajumping to the entrance to Molten Core and realizing we were stuck cause noone had the key.
Me and the priest found three new DPS and came back, made sure we hade the key quest and even though the PuG really sucked (worse this time, there was a impolite mage, a really stupid paladin (who was 48 so he had the biggest aggro range with hilarious results) who refused to stay close to me and a DPS warrior with a tanking complex) I stuck around because I was enjoying it so much. I still don't know if it was because it was something completely fresh or because I genuinely enjoyed tanking and will keep on liking it, but I will keep going until I find out. I befriended the priest and we've agreed to do Strat and Scholo someday this week. Will be nice to get some more tanking experience under my belt before I venture into Outland for levelling and the hopefully harder instances there. Still refreshed from the experience I ventured back to my home server, where people don't have guild names that are "potatodruggies" or "chase a naked man" or character names that are "iamalock" or "elitepala" or "dillfather" or "cheesesandwich" or "gandálf" or "hateful" or "unnecessary" or "pelledruid" NYAAAARHRG. Time to sort the lineup for tonights Ulduar-25. Tanks and healers as always but lacking DPS. Comfortable problems.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Sartharion with three drakes up
Sweet Jesus, that fight is worse than Mimiron. We tried zerging it a couple weeks back to no avail - Sarth goes invincible when Shadron activates, leaving only 75 seconds to burn him. Even with all DPS doing an average of nearly 7k DPS (using 6 DPS:ers) I think some mechanic stops Sarth from being killed without the drakes going down first.
We came back hoping to do it right - surely we'd have the DPS to burn the drakes in between each phase, and healers + tanks good enough to deal with the adds so we could burn them down during transitions.
HELL NAW. And it's not like we brought the light hitters. The people in the raid group generally perform well on meters during raids, that was not the problem. People dodged flamewaves, the adds got tanked (on the last tries anyway, more on that later) and DPS was decently consistent. Second drake lands. BOOM. We blow up. When the adds were supposed to be tanked by the drake tank they frequently came loose and blew the healers up. When the adds were tanked properly we didn't have the DPS to burn Tenebron before Shadron landed, and we even struggled to do this after having killed Shadron - we had 90 seconds to burn her, and keep control of the adds, and still Tenebron would be up when Vesperon landed, and in that transition, we'd blow up. We ended up biting the bullet and killing him with just one drake up because of people having to leave (mostly me, had been up for quite a while) and repair bills stacking (and I was cloth and got off easy - it's just we'd been having wipenights for a few raids in a row, which takes it's toll even on the wallet of a reasonably rich mage).
All in all it was a great experience, because it tells me that some encounters still almost require a certain composition. We had no rogue to deal with the adds, we had no shaman to provide blood lust, and we weren't stacked for physical or magic damage but instead had a bit of both. Every little thing helps (or in this case, hinders) and correctly stacked we would have had a better shot at doing it. We did have good tankage and good healage. If you read this, well done!
We came back hoping to do it right - surely we'd have the DPS to burn the drakes in between each phase, and healers + tanks good enough to deal with the adds so we could burn them down during transitions.
HELL NAW. And it's not like we brought the light hitters. The people in the raid group generally perform well on meters during raids, that was not the problem. People dodged flamewaves, the adds got tanked (on the last tries anyway, more on that later) and DPS was decently consistent. Second drake lands. BOOM. We blow up. When the adds were supposed to be tanked by the drake tank they frequently came loose and blew the healers up. When the adds were tanked properly we didn't have the DPS to burn Tenebron before Shadron landed, and we even struggled to do this after having killed Shadron - we had 90 seconds to burn her, and keep control of the adds, and still Tenebron would be up when Vesperon landed, and in that transition, we'd blow up. We ended up biting the bullet and killing him with just one drake up because of people having to leave (mostly me, had been up for quite a while) and repair bills stacking (and I was cloth and got off easy - it's just we'd been having wipenights for a few raids in a row, which takes it's toll even on the wallet of a reasonably rich mage).
All in all it was a great experience, because it tells me that some encounters still almost require a certain composition. We had no rogue to deal with the adds, we had no shaman to provide blood lust, and we weren't stacked for physical or magic damage but instead had a bit of both. Every little thing helps (or in this case, hinders) and correctly stacked we would have had a better shot at doing it. We did have good tankage and good healage. If you read this, well done!
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Ding! 20!
Sometime today, my noob dinged 20. He promptly asked for new quest areas since he was tired of the Barrens. Why, oh why, if you are undead, do you go to The Barrens to quest? Guess he is a proper noob after all. If you read this, go to Hillsbrad foothills. You can get far into the 20's fast there and the higher level quests are kinda easy too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
