/who's out there???

Sometimes I wonder about WoW. Lots of times. Most specifically when pondering raiding.

So we set into a new Raid week. The guild is all a-buzz with nervous and giddy energy. You've got the people on Team 2 anxious for their first raid as a real team. You've got the people who unfortunately were not able to be included in Team 2 because we've got just a few more players than raid slots. You've got the brand new guy to the guild demanding loudly in gchat that he will be raiding or leaving. Aside: his farewell was greatly celebrated :-)

And then you've got the people on Team 1. We're probably the most nervous group of the bunch. We've lost 2 healers over the last few weeks due to a work shift change and a several month hiatus/journey through foreign lands. Add to that, our third healer went on a 10 day vacation. Add to that, our Team 1 Rogue has his Pally alt as a tank on Team 2. So we're short 2 or 3 healers, plus a DPS-er.

Right at the same time, Team 2 starts up and our pool of substitute players is now locked into their own Raid ID.

We did a nice job recruiting a new Holy Priest, and I've got a solid Holy Paladin on my friends list who likes raiding outside his own guild (go figure).

So I found myself sitting in Deadwind Pass with 9 players in the raid. Hoping for a third healer, but perhaps willing to go 2 heals/6 DPS if we found a good enough 6th damage dealer.

/who

I absolutely hate doing this, but I was desperate to keep the team feeling confident that we can co-exist with Team 2. The last thing in the game I need is for T1 to become threatened by T2 and then spiraling downwards from there.

See a Druid on /who not in a dungeon. Check him out on the armory. Resto. Sweet.

/pst Hi, sorry to bother you , I'm a random stranger who spied upon you and saw you have the class and spec I need. Now I'm randomly cold-calling you and want to borrow you for 3 hours. Care to join us for kara?

Nope, gotta log. sorry.

FINE!!! BE THAT WAY!!!! ok, no problem. thx for your time, sorry to bother you.

Refresh /who

Another Druid. Armory says Resto. /pst? Hell's yeah, only issue is I gotta log off at 11:00.

NP, we end at 11:00.

She's never been to kara before, but armory shows gear that's good enough to start out, given that we have 2 other healers and a nice solid veteran Tank and DPS corps. Lets give it a whirl.

We gave the place our usual whoopin, one shotting everything from Attumen through Shade of Aran, including The Crone which had only been experienced by 5 of the present raiders before. Outstanding job, great team chemistry. Honestly, my most fun raid in ages because we had very unknown expectations at the onset and we just had a blast.

Shade goes down at 10:55, we /cheer and head our separate ways.

So PUGs are like a box of chocolates, and this one turned up a snickers bar. Not one of those crappy orange marmalade jelly filled dark chocolate stupid ones with the sprinkling of coconut slivers on top. The kind you take a bite out of and put back half eaten in the box.

Leads me to want to slap Blizzard silly.

They've got an audience of players wanting desperately to find eachother and enjoy the game. Here we were, nearly ready to call the raid kaput before we even started, and a pretty random process of me bugging strangers turned up a perfect match. I luckily found a mature, patient, able to follow instructions, not saved to a Raid ID yet, player who's got a decently geared entry-level 70 toon of the class and spec I needed, who happens to have time availability that matches our raid schedule.

Talk about the stars aligning? This could have quite easily gone in a totally different direction and just sucked the big one.

Give us better tools to find eachother!!!

Why the Raid Leader should Keep his Fat Mouth Shut

Wednesday night. First night of Karazhan for the guild. Riding the wave of a recent discovery of a few excellent players, we're closer than ever to having a realistic Team 2, rather than just using the first half of the dungeon as mostly subs, then the core team for the upper half.

Wednesday's roster has only 3 ppl from the veteran team, which means they're in for some excitement, and the rest of us are looking for something to do.

Wanting to spite everyone and all the drama, I played on my alt for a bit, but then figured I needed to make an appearance and try to parley a /g-re-invite for my buddy so I log over to Amava.

Heroic Blood Furnace anyone?

F you all, i'm a cranky b1tch, but sure, why not. I can't cuddle with spite forever and gotta get back on the guild horse sometime.

Already have a recruitable/PUG healer, and need to PUG a tank. LFM finds us a Prot Pally.....


have you run heroics before?

yeah, never bf, but did ramps and shat halls

Shattered Halls? Heroic?

yeah

kk, lez rock


First pull. Avenger's Sheild comes out. Prot Pally doesn't show up on Omen. I open up with auto shot only. After two non-crit shots, pull aggro. Uggy. FD. With the two mobs on him, tank goes down. Fast. Condoleezza starts to growl and gets misdirected and tanks the remainder of the pull. She's a trooper like that.

You're a tank who has done heroic shattered halls, and you have no threat meter installed? And you're critable?

Like Condie, the tank's a trooper and agrees to go install Omen. Muchas Gracias.

So, although we did have a Prot Paladin, we really were not in the business of multi-tanking. Sap and Trap, FTW!!!! Gnome rogues look so funny stealthing up to distract n sap. The daggers are bigger than the rest of the toon.

The dungeon continues, and it was the smoothest run you've ever seen with a PUG tank and a nearly PUG healer from there on in.

Tanks gear was a bit poor, but as I always say, lol, reasonable people trump gear or spec.

Lots of fun was had.

No wipes, slow and steady progress. Good communication and people doing their jobs on some of the more complex pulls.

Pretty much no special shots, just auto attack, but with tank's new Omen installed, I was able to know when to throttle and when to pour it on.

Then we get to the last little room before the final boss. With a Warlock to banish a fel guard, this is a cake walk.

BUT.....

The party leader had to go ahead and say "You know, this is going really well. We haven't wiped yet."

Doh.

Its like a goalie hanging onto a shutout with 1 minute left in the third period.

Just don't say it.

Well, a wipe fest ensued in that room and on the last boss.

Not sure how many times we died, but my armor was at 6% when we finally killed the boss guy.

So new rule....don't ever mention wipes or lack thereof until the Badges of Justice are in my bag.

And the Pally Tank had such a good time, he asked to join the guild.

Lemme see...

Pretty good basic skills and fundamentals of tanking? Check

Listened to constructive feedback and made positive changes during the run? Check

Kept his cool during painful wipefest? Check

Uncritable? Uncrushable? Not so much, but, gimme those first three Checks and we can fix this last one.

Welcome aboard!!!

And remember that Condoleezza wants Might, not Light.

Not PuG'ing as much of late

Some mental meandering today, as I've only got a little BG story from yesterday to tell that is of any real interest.

As always, Tobold's blog inspires some thought, and today's entry is about Improving PuGs.

He does a cute little analysis of risk/reward/communication that are all barriers to effective PuGs in WoW. Much of the ideas hit home, most notably how Blizzard could encourage more group activity simply by boosting how much XP you get while in a party. I couldn't agree with this more.

Recently, I've been pondering the concept of my friends list.

When grouping up for Kara, we are in the fortunate situation that when we need to fill slots to complete the team, it is nearly always DPS that we're looking for. Our two tanks are generally available for our runs, and out of our pool of three healers, we typcially have two if not all three ready to rock.

If there's nobody in the guild who is available and not yet saved to a Raid ID, we look to the friends list.

Almost always, nobody's got any available DPS'ers on their friends list. And honestly, how many DPS players do you have on your list? My list is nearly exclusively healers, with a couple tanks mixed in.

Then I got to thinking, my friends list hasn't really changed much in a month or two. Why?

I haven't been pugging. I've reliably been getting groups from within the guild, in large part from Kara Team 1, with some in-guild PuG groups.

This is a big contrast to a few months ago, where I was PuGing all the time.

What Happened?

1. Starting raiding has really cemented a team of folks who like to run together as frequently as possible. Very rarely do we need to fill in a pug slot for a 5-man.


2. I'm at the point where regular mode of most dungeons is silly, and unless its for somebody's Kara Attunement, I pretty much only run Heroic mode. Who wants to PuG a heroic? Not I, said the fly.


3. One big change has been a friend of mine dropping out of the game. He was from another guild, and to escape guild dramas and what not, the two of us would group all the time. He was a healer, and had a tank who we'd also group with. So we would consistently use LFM to find two DPS'ers, as we specifically were trying to avoid "friends". He had some RL stuff that caused him to stop playing mid-january, and this has left me looking for PuGs much less often.

I'm of the opinion that a stagnant friends list is not a good thing. If for no other reason than to be recruiting talent into the guild, you've got to be out there running with different folks.

Happened the other day. Looking to run heroic mechanar, we were shy one DPS. Tank had a friend he said he'd bring along, a Boomkin. Sure, sign him up.

The guy did awesome. We ended up bringing him in for a Kara run where we killed Curator, delivering some nice DPS. I hope we can bring him into the guild because he'd be a great addition to our Team 1, you won't hear me complain about Mark of the Wild or Leader of the Pack, especially if he's willing to be a sub at first, since that's really what we need until we figure out how to beat Moroes and The Crone without a third tank.

Bottom line, meeting a wider variety of people is a good thing, and having too much fear of the PUG is a sure way to limit your options for getting the groups you want.

BG PuGs do not count. Those suck, will always suck, ad infinitum. I gotta try out a pre-made, if for no other reason than to see what its like.

Joker's Wild

Ran Botanica again. I haven't checked out the Sha'tar quartermaster to see if he's got anything I like at various reputation levels, but I was one half of a rep bar away from Revered, so why not? Plus, there's a chance at a Beast Lord Curiass, so I'm game. I hope to keep running dungeons that drop Beast Lord stuff until I get my 4 second trap reduction for the 2-piece set bonus.

I was the only party member who had been to Botanica before, so I was party lead. Really pretty basic stuff, with only 1 or two tricky pulls.

We had a Captain America Paladin tank consecrating, a Mage sheeping, and me trapping, so 4 or 5 mob pulls were no brainers. Plus a Shadow Priest DPS'ing and off-healing, so it was basically a 1-shot, with me dying once due to stupidity on my part, and the SPriest dying once due to stupidity on his part.

One thing was a little puzzling, or bothersome or perhaps just food for thought.

Three of us on the team were friends, and 2 of the members were PUGs. One of the PUG'ers was from one of the top 3 progressed Alliance guilds on the server.

This guy (from henceforth named Joker), to be honest, was brutal. After the first pull of 2 mobs, Joker asks if anybody's got a damage meter. I stayed silent, because I really didn't want to encourage any pissing contests.

Second pull is a single mob patrol. After that guy is down, Joker asks if anybody's got DM again. So like a chump, I dump the results out to the party.

I couldn't care less, but it shows a certain BM hunter we all know and love doing about 60% of party damage at this point, and the other two DPS'ers roughly even with eachother.

Joker chimes in on party chat "that's f-ing b.s. reset that sht, cheeter". Admittedly, I had been grinding some warp stalker guys for warp burger ingredients near the summoning stone after forming the party but still waiting for people to be ready, so I think my DM had that data in there to give me a head start. I was planning on making a WWS report of the run, so I wasn't going to be looking at DM at all and didn't think to reset it.

And, it was late, and I really wanted the run, and it had taken a little while to gather this group, and I really didn't want to have to find a replacement, and if it were any earlier, fancy raiding guild or not, he'd have gotten the boot for that. My friend really wanted this run, I also wanted it, I bit my lip and reset the data.

Two pulls later, Joker asks to see the new un-tainted data, I'm on top, only a hair away is Not-Joker, and then not too far, but more than a hair away from us two is Joker. He chimes in with "not gonna stay that way for long, time to get serious" or some other comment leading me to believe that its gonna be a roller coaster ride from here on in. Time to get serious, indeed.

Things go pretty nicely. The 3 pulls are cake with a pally tank. The larger pulls, also cake with pally tank and mage and hunter. We're moving along nicely.

Joker asks again for DM. I publish it again and say "last time until the end". Similar to before, me and Not-Joker right close to eachother, Joker doing well, but a little bit of a gap from the 2 other DPS'ers. Another random comment indicating that he had expected to be on top.

Have you ever run into one of these players? DM stuff aside, Joker is doing reasonably well in the DPS and other utilities of his class. But there's just this edge. He's always standing a step or two ahead of the tank when I'm examining the pack and marking icons. When somebody says something in party chat, he doesn't outright fight them or insult them, but he just has a certain edge that is palpable.

There's a hallway with some rogues in it, and I'm firing flares so we can find them. The rest of the party is standing on my flare, but Joker's got to run up into the hallway to body pull them before we detect them.

All mobs in the kill order are dead, and the turkey is sitting there frozen nicely. Usually, DPS waits for the tank to break the trap. Not joker. He's got to get that extra couple hundred damage in on the mob by hitting first, so he can top out the damage meters.

There's a section where you've got some careful multi pulls. And once those are clear, you've then got a simple 2 pull left in the same vicinity. During the setup of the multipulls, Joker is nicely waiting and then respects the kill order. But then on the last 2, he's got to start casting early or try to body pull. He must put extra starch in his cloth armor to help it protect him :-)

And then there's loot. When we're debating the Prot Pally taking some Healing Pally gear, the whole party is saying to take it in case you ever re-spec, but Joker's got to be chiming in with "DE and roll" remarks the entire time. Pally passes, gear gets DE'd, we roll, Pally wins roll. Karma :-)

It truely was a pally night...later a nice stamina/resilliance cape drops. Good tank gear, but also good PvP gear for anybody. Pally and Healer ask to group "mind if i need?" Joker says "i'm needing too". Little things like that, all night long. Pally wins roll :-) Karma again. I love good tanks, he can have everything if it were up to me. Joker chimes in with "loaded dice".

Warp Splinter goes down. Cape perfect for a Pally Tank drops. He's gotta "need", and nobody else can use this one. And its unfortunate that the first cape was BoP, becuase I know this guy, he's got a warm heart, and definitely would have given up the first cloak. But it's too late. I fully stand by him taking the second cloak as well. And you know it. Joker's all over the party chat with comments. If the tank had gotten this piece first, I have no doubt he'd have passed on the PvP/Tank one. But, outside of the Caverns of Time, I've got no ability to manipulate the cosmos that way.

So in general, the party is performing well and we're stomping the dungeon. But there's just this edge, both in play style, and personality/chat that rubs the rest of the party wrong.

I found it eye opening to observe this type of behavior from a member of one of the top hardcore raiding guilds on the server. I suppose if you take a cross section of any group of people, you're gonna have some Jokers and some Not-Jokers, but really, it just felt like general personal consideration and a little discipline and self-control.

Damage-wise, and lack of wipe-wise, it was by far my best run in Botanica, and maybe even of any lvl 70 instance besides Black Morass. But it did have me wondering if this guy gets to be in a hardcore raiding guild simply by playing a class that's more in demand, and by having copious amounts of free time, rather than being a team player.

After the final boss was down, Joker asks for the DM. I post the results. Me and Non-Joker are about two Steady Shots away from eachother (as stewie would say....victory is mine. /wink, not that I care), with Joker doing well, but a decent chunk behind the other two.

I started counting on my hand to see how long it would take. Wait for it. Wait for it. "that's because i was doing..." such and such utility that my class brings to the table.

YES. YOU WERE. AND THE PARTY DID AWESOME, THANKS IN LARGE PART TO YOUR NON-CHART-TOPPING-DPS AND ALSO YOUR OTHER UTILITY STUFF THAT WAS A HUGE HELP. SO STFU AND STOP WHINING ABOUT YOUR DM RANKING AND START /DANCE'ing TO CELEBRATE OUR COLLECTIVE AMAZING JOB IN HERE!

Then the icing on the cake. He actually says, and I quote, "who wants to put me on friends so i'll put you on friends".

I actually was glad for that last remark. It gave me closure on the whole event. I sat back and basked in the warm glow of kicking Botanica's butt. And the fact that Joker will never, ever be added to my friends list.

Kill Boss, Leave Party

After my resto druid buddy got done with a run in kara (/jealous), we formed up a team and headed over to Mechanar for some normal mode action with our other friend, the elemental shammy. PUG'd the tank and other dps.

Wiped on maybe the second pull. In normal mode :-(

I'm still adjusting to all the new equipment that dropped for me this weekend, most notably the increased shot speed of the Skyfire Hawk-Bow, and the giant attack power increase of more than 400 points, up to 1522.

Tank couldn't hold aggro against my white damage. He had no threat meter installed, so I had to judge for myself through trial and error. Mostly error.

After that wipe, we got into an OK rythem and I figured out more or less how much Steady Shot I could weave in there and let him keep the mobs.

I occasionally check the Damage Meter report during a run. Once close to the beginning, just to see if anything's really strange right off the bat. And usually hide it and glance back at a boss, or here and there, just to see if the pattern on the first few pulls was a fluke, or if its consistent through the run.

After the first room was clear, I check the meter. I was doing 56% of party damage while chain trapping, and we were definitely struggling. At this point, I know that my data is a bit skewed, as I don't think DM incorporates damage from the warlock's pet, but it does give a general feel for how things are going.

We limp along, doing reasonably well through the trash. Hammer the first named elite without too much fuss. Proactive Feign Deaths, FTW!!!

Get to the first boss. His big thing is some pretty nasty bombs he drops, more or less right at his feet, so melee players are toast. The strat is to have the tank slowly kite him around so the bombs are always going off a bit behind the boss and hopefully anybody in melee range is safe.

Silly PUG tank doesn't want to move, and just stands there. My pet dies, I think from the very first bomb, if not, nearly instant. It happened so fast, I didn't even notice, and when I try to fire off Bestial Wrath, I'm there in wonderment at why it won't go. Glance up at my unit frame and see poor dead Cringer. I don't think I even got a shot off yet. Wipe followed pretty quickly so the pain was minimal.

Couple more tries, no movement from the tank. Grumblings of "party over" and he says ok, he'll try to move.

Before the pull, he actually goes on party chat:

Tank: we need more DPS, put your immo trap overe here [jump] [jump] [jump]
Me: what's my trap gonna do?
Tank: damage
Me: what? give him athletes foot? we havent gotten this guy down past 60% yet, get in position, i'm misdirecting
Tank: lol [fires pull shot]

Tank moved around, the boss ate dirt. Cringer died again, a little later this time (had enough time for BW). Probably due to the pet AI attacking from behind putting him right in the path of the bombs. Gimped my DPS, but we got the job done.

I ran a WWS of the run. Of particular note, on the named elite, with Cringer at full glory, 820 DPS. My name is Titan in the report.

Full Report: http://wowwebstats.com/vk6k5zwkrpd4e
Elite Fight: http://wowwebstats.com/vk6k5zwkrpd4e?s=1191-1259

I went to bed after that boss kill, with my head killing from a bad case of tanky frustration.

EDIT: after writing this, I ran Mechanar again, this time with a successful group. Must be that the named elites allow for a bit more damage than normal bosses. This time I hit 1112 DPS for that same mob. For bosses like Pathaleon the Calculator, I had a more reasonable 718 DPS.

Heroic at Honored

I had a bunch of other stuff to write about from the weekend, and actually did write up blog entries, but proably won't post because its just a boring recap of how I grinded through a bunch of normal and heroic instances in Hellfire Peninsula to get to Revered with HH and get the Hellforged Halberd. And some drama along the way.

Then I read over at World of Matticus, a guest post on the impact of lowering the entry to Heroics from Revered to Honored. The article goes on about how people show up in Quest blues/greens, and since Honored is easy to reach by the normal questing and just a few normal mode instance runs, people then get access to Heroic mode.

I like to read World of Matticus, and I like the guest bloggers that he's got filling in for the short term, but there's one concept on a recent entry that I have a perspective on. My rant here is not really aimed at disagreeing with Matticus or his Guest, but rather at the general atmosphere among the bloggers regarding Honored Heroics. Reading Matticus simply triggered my response.

The author (a guest writer, not the normal Matticus, not that it matters) goes on to explain how rough a time you have with Heroics now that the entry level is Honored, specifically when PUG'ing, largely due to inexperienced and undergeared players.

I'll totally agree with PUG's being like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. Normal or heroic, you really just roll the dice when you accept unknown players into your group. And with the margin for error being much smaller in Heroic mode, the impact of getting a fool or a good-but-undergeared player in your group is much more painful.

I suppose that when the entry barrier was Revered, you at least knew the person had run enough instances to grind that rep. Sure, they could have ridden on the coat tails of other players who carried them in normal mode dungeons, but it did weed out some of the painful folks. Plus, during all that instancing, there's a better chance that they did get some nicer gear, so even the good players were probably on average, better geared than those at Honored.

Ok, I can buy that concept, and see some of the logic there.

But here's my view as a player who very recently levelled up to 70 right around the time when they lowered the requirement to Honored. For me, this is an outstanding opportunity. Here I am, me and a small group of friends. Freshly minted 70's. Some of the friends have a piece or two of PVP epic gear. Most of us are in nicely enchanted quest or AH blues/greens. I just got my first piece of the Beastlord set this weekend. In general, poorly geared.

We are running heroics. Granted, we're wiping up a storm in there. But we're doing it.

And you know what? I think the exact thing that the author of Matticus' article dislikes, is actually the benefit we're going to acheive from this.

The difference between entry at Revered and entry at Honored is one of where the learning curve occurs.

Most people who've ranted about this entry to Heroic mode say that people learn to play as a team and get gear from Kara and other 10- and 25-man raids. And that prepares them for Heroics. People shouldn't show up to run a heroic dungeon unless they meet some arbitrary stats that are impossible to achieve without the gear from the nice raids.

The new age is here and us n00b 70's are going to do it exactly the opposite. We're going to learn real teamwork in Heroics and gear up in Heroics. That is where we're going to prepare for Kara.

If you think about it, this makes more sense. Levelling up, you can run instances. There's some focus on ensuring the well-armored team members take most of the damage, but in the end, if you fail to master tank/healer/dps, just come back in a level or two and pwn the dungeon anyways.

Even the end game normal mode instances can let some of this slide, and leave lots of room for slop.

Then you get a group of 10 people together and enter Karazhan. And learn the hard way that plate is a lot stronger than cloth, and all the fun ways to ensure that plate takes the hits while cloth (and leather and mail) deliver the damage. In this rather complicated environment, with all the logicstical challenges of organizing 10 keyed players of appropriate class distribution, you waste a lot of time as those 10 folks (or more, to allow for subs or absence) learn that holy trinity of tank/healer/dps.

Patch 2.3 came and went. The new 70's are learning this concept by "wasting" only 5 people's time. In Heroics. Sometimes PUG'ing to fill slots.

As we start to hit Karazhan, we're going to be better for it, even if the olde time "Heroics at Revered" crowd thinks we did it backwards and painfully.

LFG

Is there anybody out there on the Terokkar server who wants to set up a fixed time, one or two nights a week, to run level 70 5-man dungeons?

Could be a guild that has set times.

Could be just a group of friends who set up a time, call it 8:00pm server time on Tuesdays.

Nothing hardcore. Perhaps not even heroics, yet. But I do want to try heroics.

Maybe some aspirations towards Kara, but no huge rush. Let's gear up first, and grind faction rep by running dungeons, which will then let us gear up further through faction rewards.

This has proven to be the hardest thing for me to find, and honestly, other than my silly boots dexterity enchant that I can't find (I think I'm gonna get a t-shirt printed up with the tooltip for that), reliable 5-man groupings with a little bit of schedule regularity, is the main WoW concept giving me beef (ignore my previous post about BRK's search. My feelings on that one are fleeting, and will go away soon. My desire for casual scheduled 5-man stuff will not).

I'd love nothing more than to look forward to running a dungeon at a specified time, allowing me to prepare for it, research the bosses, gather consumables, alter my pet's talent spec, and so on. Knowing that a group was waiting for that magical time when we start the fun.

Are you guys out there on Terokkar? If so, pst Amava.

p.s. If you can apply Boots - Dexterity or +35 2H Weapon or Savagery, I'll be your best friend. But I'll love you just the same if you want to have a casual fixed schedule for 5-man content.

Burned out Main

Like I said earlier, Amava saw only a tiny bit of action this weekend. I logged in, and finished a few Sporegarr quests in Zangarmarsh. Then sat there wondering what to do. Literally, just sat there, totally stunned into inaction. I decided to go sniff around Shattrath City for a little bit. Stumbled upon a gem vendor, and bought 3 gems for my leggings. 6 gold well spent. I think. Wandered around Shattrath some more, getting lost and trying to find my way randomly around. Got bored.

I know I need to just abandon a bunch of my old Azeroth quests to make room for a new zone like Terokkar Forest or some such, but I just had zero motivation to play Amava.

Why not try to get a run through Blood Furnace? I've got 2 quests in there and I've never been inside. 5 people from the guild were running BRD, and there was a couple of guildies on who weren't in there. So I threw the idea out to the rest.

Immediate response from a Holy Priest, which makes my day. Then a warrior responds. Outstanding. In my experience, getting the tank and healer are the tough parts. I was in the fortunate position of now needing just 2 DPS'ers. Not usually tough to find. And I'm excited to run with at least 3 of us from the guild. One of the guys knew a rogue who wanted in. Then I used the LFM thing and found exactly 1 person who wanted any of the level 60-65 outlands instances. Only 1. And this is in a pretty prime time for playing. Shadow priest. Had a bit of a discussion with the Holy priest who didn't want the other priest, but I was able to parley it into an invite. And we made the roles clear that the Shadow guy was here for DPS and the Holy guy was here for tanking.

Ok, kidding, but I think you know what the holy priest was here for. Shadow guy was totally on board with the idea.

How pathetic am I (rhetorical, no need to answer)? I was so excited to even find 4 others who wanted to run. I think either me or my server must be messed up. Maybe its me, who knows. But on the general channel, there were people complaining all weekend about how messed up the server is, whether about the economy being screwy, or the lack of good guilds (besides the hardcore raiding guilds), or the lack of people wanting to group up. Oh well, more about that on my alt-itis post to come later.

The holy priest says he's been through blood furnace lots of times, so I make him leader so he can mark the targets.

Basic plan is to use rogue sap where possible, with my freezer traps as necessary. Icons are assigned and communicated out by the leader.

That's cool so far. I'm glad to just be around a few other people who consider it important to talk about even this tiny bit of strategy before entering. Rock n Roll!! I did ask about pulling, but there was no real plan there. Hmmm?

We enter the instance.

Upon entering, you've got two relatively closely packed groups of humanoids. Icons go up for the pack to the right. Rogue stealths and starts to approach...WHAM...warrior charges and starts the fight, before the sap. 3 wipe and 2 of us leave the instance.

Ok, perhaps it was an accident, or maybe the tank just doesn't know that sap has to happen before the target mob is in combat. So we politely let him know.

Back into the instance. Icons go up, rogue stealths...WHAM...warrior charge. We wipe.

Now the party chat is a drop less polite.

Attempt 3. Icons go up, rogue stealths....WHAM...charge. Walk back from grave again (perhaps the only time that I'm glad I'm a night elf, as I run past all my party mates and get to my corpse fastest).

This time the leader is pretty far from polite. Ok, we're going to try 1 more time...don't charge until you see "PULL" in party chat.

You can see where this is going. 4th wipe and disband group. But not until after the Holy and Shadow priests give the tank a 15 minute text beating. Really unfortunate, but this guy had no clue, either about WoW, or about basic listening skills. I can forgive the WoW knowledge part, perhaps he just didn't know. But the listening part, well, that wasted 45 minutes of my time.

On the lighter side of things, I did spend a while after that questing with the shadow priest and rogue. I had already completed all those quests (pretty much done with non-instance quests on Hellfire Peninsula), but I was trying a new philosophy of just being self-lessly helpful for these guys. Had some fun, and got on the friends list of another healer, which is always good in my mind. Also learned who NOT to go into an instance with, which is also good. Too bad he's in my guild.

On feeling wanted...

Logged in the other night, with the intention of checking auctions, and probably questing around Zangarmarsh or farming some herbs or grinding to collect unidentified plant parts for Cenarion Expedition rep.

A few minutes after logging in, my favorite healer, Drake, whispers me for a Stratholme run. His guild has a group of 4 and he told them to invite me. I was thinking it was a bit close to bed time to be starting an instance, but...oh hell, sure I'll do it. I like instancing, and he's great to work with, so I'm willing to suffer a bit of fatigue the next day. I mean, after all, it probably affects my co-workers more than it affects me, because they're the ones who have to deal with the cranky tired guy.

I was in Zangarmarsh at the time so they try to summon. Nope, stone maxes out at 60 so I can't summon. Ok, quick run on my swift mistsaber over to Shattrath, portal into IF, then fly to Light's Hope Chapel in EPL. There's another guy coming that way too, so I have a few minutes and take my time gathering Plaguebloom and Arthas' Tears on my way.

Finally make it to the instance. Pretty cool looking area, I've never been there before.

Then I think to look at my party members. Ugh. Hunter, Hunter, Shammy, Rogue, Resto Druid. No tank. I make some jokes about wanting to make a quick hop back to IF to train up in Plate armor, but nobody's laughing. Oh well. I've never partied with a Shaman before, so I'm excited about that.

Next thing I see the party turn into a raid. Blechkkkkk. For some reason, my spine cringes anytime I see a group change to a raid when heading into what should be a 5-man instance.

But then again, I'm a guest of their guild run, so I'm on my best behavior. Then they say, they want to invite 1 more. "Sweet," I think, "a tank'll be joining." Yeah. You wish. Mage, lvl 70. And we're all 60-63, so the added beauty that the mage'll have aggro even if he throttles back.

So now we're at 7 people. But only 6 are in the area. Head into the instance, the other guy will catch up. Strange. So we go in. Somebody says "have the pets tank". I ask what we're going to do to keep the other mobs that we're not directly attacking off of the healer when he starts healing. Somebody says "we'll AoE them". Huh? So I ask how we're going to keep them off of you once you start to AoE them. Bunch of us wear mail, and the other wears leather and doesnt have any AoE's that I know of. At least the Shammy's holding a shield.

That one gets the answer of "just attack and we'll figure it out". Then somebody says "oh man, too bad we don't have any CC, this is going to be rough."

We have 3 hunters in the raid group. No CC? I was a little surprised that he knew enough to be talking about CC, but had no worries of lacking a tank, and also doesnt consider 3 hunters as a decent CC capability.

But like I said, I was a guest, so I'm on my best behavior. Next thing you know, one of the guys disconnects, then one says he is going to run with a different group, and then a third says he's buddies with the other guy and would rather run with him. So we're down to 4...Hunter, Shammy, Hunter, Druid.

So we decided to see how long until we wipe. We did the first pull, which is all non-elites. As you can imagine, total chaos. But we survived. Then somebody says to change the group from a raid back to a party. Next thing you know, the other guys get teleported to IF, and I'm all alone in the instance, so I hearth'ed back to Zangarmarsh and thanked them for the invite and maybe it'll work out next time.

I was totally fine with the hour wasted on getting into the instance. In fact, I was just happy to be invited and viewed as a potential useful addition to their party. I had had pretty laid back plans for my night anyways. And who knows, maybe this weekend, I'll get an opportunity to run with them and be successful.

But it was a pretty standard experience, from what I'm seeing. And what was the deal with the teleportation to IF? Is that something that happens when you downgrade a group from a raid while in an instance?

WoW Threat Management Training

I'm not sure if this is a request for Blizz to include, or if its a question to the readers to see if this already exists in some form or another. Any hoo, here it is...

I would love it if there was an instance a 5-man group could go to that is pretty much purely for practicing keeping aggro on a tank. I'm talking about a dungeon that has very little trash to deal with, very little complex pulls (or any pulls besides bosses). I don't care about loot in here.

Just a series of bosses that add in a twist as you get to each next one. And either Blizz or some third party could write up suggested "lesson plans" for a team to run through.

First boss - just a total tank and spank. One mob, no adds. Very little movement or special attacks. Only attacks 1 target, the highest on his threat list. His hits are moderate in strength, but he's got tons of health. The purpose of this guy is to allow a team of 5 (or maybe more, but I want to start basic) to practice the most basic threat management skills in a very simple environment. The lesson plan for this guy could include ideas about allowing the tank to solidify aggro before DPS goes nuclear. Perhaps a Q&A review at the end where the team asks itself "did anybody besides the tank take any damage during the fight?" Since its a hugely simplified environment, just for practice purposes, that should be feasible, unlike real instances where there is much more complexity.

Second boss - Similar boss to first fight, but some relatively weak adds show up.

Third boss - Maybe mix in an attack that will stun the first person on the threat list and switch attack to the second person on the threat list.

Fourth boss - Add in some movement or terrain complexity.

And so on.

Is this just something that a player and team of players just sort of go through during normal instancing? My experience has been that the instances start you off with just a hair too much complexity to allow n00bs like me to really build strong fundamentals.

Maybe it'll just come with time and repetition with the same players, and good communication with those players.

This past weekend was the first time I've ever had a party with other players who use a threat meter. Up to this point, its only been me and my pet on the meter. Now that I'm running more instances in Outlands, many or even all the other players are also running a meter, so my Omen shows a big chunk of the party. Funny, because on one run, everybody except the tank had it installed, making it pretty useless :-)

Being new to seeing other players on my meter, I was not really able to pay attention to the meter, plus chain trap a mob, plus try to keep pouring DPS on the proper targets according to our specified targeting order. Lots of data to process and adapt and react to. I'm hoping that it'll just come with time and practice. And that's what spurred the idea in my head of a hugely simplified environment to allow a team to do a doggy paddle in the kiddy pool first, rather than plunging into the pool to learn to swim.

Pugga Bugga

I'm gonna switch up the order on you here, because I wanted the negative toned posting to be first, so if you read these in chronological order, you'll hit the happy one last and hopefully leave with that taste in your mouth.

As I described, I was all gung-ho about running Hellfire Ramparts. On one level its a cool instance with only a few complicated pulls, and its pretty short, so its not a huge time committment like some other dungeons I've been in. On another level, I was obsessing about that pair of leggings. In summary, I wanted to run Ramparts as many times as I could.

I ended up doing 6 runs through Ramparts over the weekend. Each can technically be considered a PUG because no run had more than 3 guildies. And even those guildies, it was my first or second run with them, so practically a PUG. Along the way, I did work several times with a certain Resto Druid who I'll mention more about later. He and I got a decent rhythem, so that made it feel less PUG'ish.

But either way, this was really the first time I was ever getting into PUGs. My instancing previous to this had always been with my former guild, and was pretty limited. And in Azeroth, I've had 0 success at finding a group via the LFG thingie.

Luckily there's the voice chat system now. That totally makes things easier. Still doesnt fix bad attitudes, but it does cut down on the communiation problems, whether in a guild event or in a PUG.

On this one PUG run through Ramparts, we didn't have voice on for some reason. So all coordination is going by text. The group leader was a good druid tank, and he was good at target selection and icon assignment and stuff. He also was good at timing the pulls. So there's good potential.

But we've got this warlock who joins the group. You ever have one of those moments where you can tell in a split second, i mean, just a fraction of a nanosecond, you just get a vibe from someone? I don't remember exactly what he said to start things off, but you could just instantly tell he's not going to be someone you want around.

We head into the dungeon. Before first pull, group lead texts out "skull=kill, x=kill next, moon=freeze". Then he pops up the icons, and pulls. This all happened within about 2 seconds. I barely had time to drop my trap, let alone allow the cooldown to progress a bit. We make it through the first 2 guys and the patrol that jumps in on Ramparts, just to keep you on your toes and to ensure that all PUGs suffer immediately. I ask him to slow down a drop to allow my traps to work better, and he's a good group lead, so he listens to me and the next pull, waits for my signal that i'm ready.

Cool. So he pulls the skull, I then shoot the moon (I kept thinking of hearts on every pull), only to see the moon stop and start casting at me. Oh, man. Moon is a caster and has no intentions of running into my trap. Ok, we tap dance and off-tank with my pet, and the fight goes pretty well. I let the lead know that I'd prefer a melee mob for trapping until we're in a hallway where I can do a LoS pull on a caster to freeze him. Again, he's a good lead, so he listens to me and on next pull, moon is a nice melee mob.

Pull skull, I shoot the moon. Moon nicely changes direction and heads right to my trap and just when I expect to hear that "whomp" of the guy getting frozen, I instead hear myself getting smacked. Hmmm. Must have resisted the trap. Ok, since I had been playing the cooldowns properly, there was just a few seconds before my trap was ready again, so I scoot to the side and drop another trap. Again, no "whomp" and I'm getting hit. So I look and I see "Immune" across my screen? What? I didn't even know you could have that happen. I know traps can be resisted, but not total immunity. So for the rest of this fight, I have to off-tank with my pet. Luckily my Resto Druid friend is awesome, so he kept my pet alive, in addition to the rest of the party.

So after the fight, I let the party know for future reference, that particular mob is immune to traps, so we should select a different melee mob from that pack for the freezer.

With all this communication between me and the group leader, our little warlock buddy who joined the PUG is interpreting this as complaining and whining. So on the next pull, we get things totally right, skull and x are both dogs who pack big punch but burn down easy, moon is melee mob who, as far as we know, is not immune to my traps.

Pull skull, shoot moon. Moon gets to freezer and WHOMP, nice block of ice. So I switch targets over to skull and begin the DPS fun, while scooting over to where I'll drop the next trap. Next thing I know, warlock's minion runs from the skull, over to the moon, takes 1 swing, and then runs back to the skull.

So our little friend thinks its cute to purposely break the trap.

Trying to remind myself that its just a game, I give the friendly "pls dont hit moon until its the last mob left" remark.

Next pull, same thing.

Luckily, our healer is outstanding, and has some good awareness and was watching, so he says "do that on purpose again and no heals for you".

Next pull, same thing.

Now it erupts into big fight where this warlock guy is accusing everyone of being a ninja and complainer and whiner and on and on.

Just keeps going and going.

So we try 1 more pull, and the guy just sends his minion down the hall to aggro everything, says "have fun" and quits the group.

What a winner. I just don't get it.

Luckily, one of the other guys in the group knew a warrior who wanted in, so he joins and we one-shot the rest of the instance, in pretty good harmony and teamwork.

What a piece of work though. And before I remembered /ignore, I had already forgotten the exact spelling of his name, so too late for that.

Quick Pick in Un'Goro

Collecting super sticky tar in northern Un'Goro yesterday, I stumbled upon a random other guy. We both needed to kill dinosaurs for some quests, and he wanted some leather, so we grouped up. He said "lets head to the center of the volcano for some valuable fire stuff".

Ok.

We spent 40 minutes or so farming the volcano, I got my 9 pieces of ash for a quest, 4 hearts of earth, a whole bunch of rich thorium veins (mining up to 282, thank you very much), and assorted other stuff. Mo Money!

I don't know if you consider it a PUG because it was just two of us and we weren't in an instance, just out farming/grinding. But it was pretty cool. Really quickly, we got into a rhythem and worked pretty well together. Ended up playing together for about 3 hours or so, grinding away and collecting gatherables and drops.

Plus, while we were out there, Teddy turned 50, so I taught him Growl 6. Very nice, I have a tough time stealing aggro from him now. I can do it if I lay pretty heavy on the arcane/multi shots, but for just plain autoshot, he mostly holds aggro. BRK's post for today is all about growl/claw/bite, so I might experiment tonight with turning claw off to see if it gives Teddy more focus for more growls, to hold more aggro so I can hit harder to make up for the lost DPS of the bites. Did I get that right? I'll have to try it out. When I turn into the Big Red Me, and really lay into the special shots with the discounted mana charge, I tend to steal aggro from Teddy, but then I just tank for a drop until I turn back into the Little Purple Me (keep your mind out of the gutter), and then stop attacking & hold still, and then Teddy regains aggro.

Of course, continuing on my quest for more structured 5-man instances before I turn 70, I asked the guy about his guild. He said they're pretty laid back, and run instances when people ask. Meh. Ok, so no scheduled events. He said there's about 4 of them in their 50's in the guild, so maybe I'll pst him tonight to see if they want to run ZF. I want my carrot on a stick.

Oh yeah, and I dinged 800g! Double Gatherer, FTW!