Aggro Issues

Grrrrr

What do you mean I have aggro issues? *sigh*

My biggest frustration with my DK at the moment. Don't get me wrong, it's not all the instances, it's not all groups. But it seems the new stuff, H-PoS and HoR are causing me major tanking woes.

Even on normal, Halls of Reflection is causing me aggro issues. The fight is a pain, credit given. But are other tanks having these aggro issues with the waves of trash that come before boss 1 and 2? It seems I can't get and hold aggro on all those mobs for the entire pull.

It goes something like this. Our last group make up was myself, Eto (as enhancement), a disc priest, arms warrior and a mage (sorry don't remember the spec). We did everything we were suppose to. Ran into the corner on the left. The mobs would make their way to us, I'd drop Death and Decay, toss out a Howling Blast to try to give a little extra glue to the mix, then start my normal rotation. Icy Touch, Plague Strike and then pass Pestilence, rinse and repeat with a blood boil thrown in here and there when it's off cooldown.

Even doing everything listed, I'm still loosing aggro on one mob or another. Normally, it's early on. I wish I could say I was loosing it to the super mage AoE or to the warrior spinney attack but I was even loosing it to Eto's off spec attacks. He's not the worst enhancement shaman but his DPS isn't that great. Not enough that I should be loosing aggro to him.

I have commonly had issues with aggro against dps in pugs that pull 6.5K or more. I've had issues with pugs that start their rotation with AoE or a big crit. Those things I can understand. I don't like them, but I can understand them.

So my concern becomes what to do now? My gear is pretty good. I have the dodge, parry, health and armor to tank but the aggro issues blow my mind. Sheesh, there has to be something I'm doing wrong.

Elitist Jerks has always been my go to for tanking troubles. But the DK tanking post is leading me to believe I've hit the content level that is going to require me to go duel wield in order to maintain my aggro level. Seriously?

Anyone that knows me knows what a creature of habit I am. Changing spec or rotation or whatever is required to duel wield, will be like learning a new character all over again. I had just gotten to the point where I thought I knew my class. Two-handed, frost tanking. That's what I am, that's what I know. Please don't' tell me I have to change to keep up.

So lay it on me. Give me your thoughts. Tank in need of a little help here!

Another Alliance gone bad...

So, not much WoW been going on in my world lately. A kiddo in the hospital over Christmas didn't leave much time for relaxing and the little time I was home there was no time for the game.

However, got to spend the night at home last night and made a pretty big change in my toons.

My very first toon, my very first 70, my first 80, my pride and joy...the toon that has server transferred with me twice, my beautiful Draenei priest is now an Undead. Yep, I made the faction transfer.

Mainly because Eto transferred over his Druid to try out tanking as a bear and when he does I can heal him. But to another level of thought, because it doesn't look like I'll ever be going back to playing the Alliance.

My heart will always be blue, through and through. I'll always be an Ali girl at heart. However, the guild, my DK and my love of the goblins, will keep me Horde side for a very long time. Realizing that finally pushed me to make the jump. I will admit, I did cry when I changed her over. She went from pretty and regal to undead and sneaky. But she's still cute.

I'll post new pics as soon as I can get back home to my computer.

On other news.

Hopefully, we'll be into ToC and Ulduar in the next 2 weeks. Our warrior dps and disc priest are almost 80. I still can't believe how fast they leveled through RaF.

Well, that's it for now, sorry for the lack of post. Late Happy Holidays to all!

Damn Gear Scores...

*sigh*

One of the things that I wish I knew nothing about. This seems to be the bane of every players existence right now. To get a heads up, to be just a little better then the others...

Even in my own guild, in my own relationship...it's rearing it's ugly head. My fellow guildies, healers, tanks, even my fiance...they are all striving to be better then the rest, to be on the top of the charts.

Is it really THAT important? You MUST do the daily, you MUST do the weekly raid..it's EMBLEMS OF FROST! Feeling like you have to run that last heroic, that last boss fight...just to keep up. Forsaking everything else...

I'm starting to resent the guild chatter about how "so-in-so is only 5 points from being the highest score in the guild" or "omg, he is out scoring me". Starting to find myself getting upset that it really matters that much to people.

Yes, I've always known about gear scores. I've always used it as a "jumping off point" to determine if someone is getting close to being ready for this raid or that. But not to the point that the game is longer enjoyable because it seems everything is a constant battle. A battle for your place...in a game?

So yeah...

Falling Victim

Looks like on or both, Eto and I, are falling victim to the "oh, meh this is below our content level, we don't really have to try" bug.

What do I mean by this? I'm sure most of you have done it at times too. You go into a heroic or lower level raid that you have done more then a few dozen times and don't pay attention, fly through, over pulling, under healing, being distracted, etc.

Maybe it's because my gear has gone up tremendously or because I'm getting 'too easy to heal' or just because I'm overconfident in myself, but it never fails it seems in at least 1 heroic a night one of us royally screws up.

Last night it seemed to be me. On 2 heroics, UP and HoS, we wiped a total of 4 times. I can't even remember the last time I had a group wipe in a heroic.

Granted, I had never done HoS on heroic because I think that place is the devil, but still..gah! The first wipe was do to a bad pull on my part so I aggro'd 3 groups and the second was a "near" wipe, somehow the mage survived long enough to end the event with the Dwarf. Have I mention I HATE the cooldown on D&D. *sigh*

No, UP I had no excuse for. Both wipes came on the Gauntlet boss. Eto wasn't healing in the beginning we had a druid healer from the guild. Now I may do this differently then most but I run half way, kill the mobs, the gather up the rest and run into the room at the end of the hallway. Because if D&D is on cool down it's easier for me to have the mobs in a confined room so that I can blood boil and pick them up. The druid couldn't see in the room so he stayed outside. We had Eto picking up the harpoons and when he finally got the guy down on the ground the healer was out of mana so we lost the entire group. Rinse and repeat again before Eto switched to his healing gear and we downed the boss with little to no problem.

Sadly, it again puts a doubt in myself and my ability to hold threat. *sigh*

So chalk it up to silly mistakes because we are over confident in ourselves or because we're not paying attention or even because we're tired I suppose, but it's never really a good thing for the ego.

On a bright note, I ran into a guildie from the Alliance side last night on his Horde toon. He is one of the MTs in Whispers of the Fallen on his warrior and also the raid leader. he took the liberty of inspecting my gear and I was pleasantly surprised when I got praise from him. Why did this delight me so? Well awhile back I wrote about how he had politely and kindly implied that my lock's gear wasn't "good enough" to throw at their T9 progression group. So getting compliments on my gear from him was a nice change of pace. He made a couple simple suggestions, like switching out my belt, which I did and tada...Blizzard's LFR Finder says I can queue up for ICC10. You know, if I ever decide I need to commit suicide.

Besides that? We've got 9 of our 10 spots filled for our raid team! Yay! It's possible we might have the 10th spot as well I just need to talk to a guildie to find out if he is going to raid with us. The break down goes like this:
TANKS:
Kalyara - Main Tank (DK)
Kiwalski - Off Tank (Warrior)

HEALS:
Etolani - Tank Heals (Shaman)
Savilla* - Tank Heals (Disc Priest)
Raggy - Party Heals (Druid)

DPS:
Merkit - Ranged (Warlock)
Shayloah - Ranged (Hunter)
Kat - Melee (Paladin)
Crobin* - Melee (Warrior)
Reyfentasma - Melee (Rogue)

* - These toons are level 65 and very quickly leveling their way up

Happy Tuesday!

Dungeon Dummy Finder

I have officially determined the new LFG system has a few major perks and a major downfalls.

PROS:
1 - I can pug a random heroic or dungeon and have little to no wait time. I think the longest I've waited for a group is 1 minutes 12 seconds.
2 - Easy way to gain extra emblems. Gaining 2 extra emblems on every heroic as long as you do random is crazy! That makes every run 5 - 7 emblems each.
3 - Getting gear is too easy!! I've gotten my second T9 piece and I'm only 19 emblems away from my 3rd. That's with me not really "grinding" the heroics. I do a couple a night then head off to do other things. So, if someone wanted, and I know a couple who have done so, they could have their entire T9 set in just a couple days of long heroic grinds.
4 - The groups are pretty well balanced. I have only had a couple groups where we've had one person be seriously over our gear level or slightly under. Meaning, we've had one or two groups where someone is pulling 2K more dps then everyone else and only 1 or 2 where someone is way under on dps.
5 - Meeting new people!

CONS:
1 - LFG Random allows idiots to get groups when everyone on their normal server has already blacklisted or put them on ignore. (examples to come)
2 - Getting gear is TOO easy! That's right, it's a pro and a con. I've seen too many people with good gear, good emblem gear, that still don't know how to play their class. Cause you know, gear can only get you so far. If you're decked out in all emblem gear and still only pulling 1K - 1.5K dps, then it's not the gear, is the player.
3 - Everyone thinks their a rock star! Or better yet they get the power of Group Lead and think they are the Almighty. (examples to come)

So, anyone else seeing these things? Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love the new LFG system because it makes getting into chain heroics no longer require you to find 4 other people that want to run them back to back and then waiting 20 - 30 minutes while people afk or while you look for replacements when someone has to go.

Now, as I said LFG seems to be Blizzards way of throwing idiots, who would not normally get to run instances/heroics, off on the rest of us who work our butts off to get where we are and did it by being NICE and knowing how to play. Why do those "idiots" not normally get to run? Because everyone on their server has already put them on ignore, won't run with them, won't guild them, etc.

Why are other players doing this to them? Because those idiots are just that - idiots. They are the mouthy, know-it all, holy-er then thou, rude, abrasive, bossy players that have no clue how to play their class.

To the other extreme, you have those people that have super dps but are only worried about pushing those high numbers and don't care what they have to do to get it. They have no regard to threat at all. They will start their rotation, pop AoE or toss their highest crit attack without waiting to make sure the tank has aggro.

These extremist, in most cases, are worse then the idiots we've found. I've had Paladins pulling 6.5K dps that pay no attention at all to their treat. They will randomly pull mobs, lay the smack down before I even have time to pass pestilence or even mistarget and decide they need to OT one of the mobs. Not to mention the mages and warlocks that will down one target and instead of loosing the proc that will ensure them the massive crits, turn and automatically cast it on a group that I haven't pulled yet, just because it's too important not to loose that boosted arcane barrage or incinerate.

So, we have the extremists and the idiots. Now I won't spend a lot of time on the ones that have just decided that having a random group of people they will never see again means they can be rude and abrasive. Those are the ones that have no courtesy and think that they don't need to watch their language or that downing other players is acceptable. This group is also where we find the "I have the power!" players. These are the ones that got designated party leader in the random build of the group and think that this give them the ability to boss everyone around, pull the mobs and bitch when the tank doesn't pull them off. This is the crazy dps Paladin pulling 896 dps in ToC who took it upon themselves to start every encounter without allowing time for the healer to get mana, etc. Sorry dude, group lead doesn't make you God!

Seriously, people! Just because you're in a random group with other players you are likely to never see again doesn't mean you can act like complete morons! What happened to courtesy and patience? If anything, having the random LFG system should reinforce that. We have to explain these fights, we have to mark the mobs because we're not use to running with each other and I'm not use to your spiky damage that may pull aggro so give me a chance to build up some cushion!

*sigh* Think I'm going to need the ability to ignore more then 50 people Blizz.

Gear Score Junky

So I've officially depressed myself. =P

Gear scores are the devil! Even to those of us who use to use it to judge content level ability.

So my DK's WoW Hero's score is 2361. Her BeImba! score is 537. Not too bad, or so I thought.

Until I made the mistake of checking another frost DK on the sites. Now I greatly respect this player and consider her a friend. She's a reader of my blog and a member of my guild (on an alt) but OMG, her gear score is 2710!!

Now, don't start screaming at me. I know I really can't compare my gear score to another toon who is doing much higher content then me. But, seriously, thats enough to humbled someone! =P

Oh, well, so I've been humbled for the day. *sigh*

Happy Friday!

Like Mother...Like Son?

So, I'm so extremely excited about the Christmas present that Santa is bringing to my oldest son this year. Any guesses?

He's getting a laptop! Why does this excite me so much? Because I can play WoW with him!!

I have no idea why I am so giggy excited about the idea of rolling another lowbie toon to play with him but I am.

I know this will probably be a toon I never get leveled past 20ish and seriously will never see level 80, since he will roll his toon on Eto's RaF account which doesn't even have BC, but I'm still excited. The idea of being able to spend time with him (he's 9) in the game, showing him around and seeing the world through his eyes, is awesome!

Update:
The guild is doing awesome. We got the 80 Party Heal Druid and the wonder boy OT warrior into the guild last night. Sav and Cro are into their mid 40s on their RaF toons. That puts us even closer to being able to raid consistently.

We lead our first random raid last night. It was the first time I've been a raid leader since BC. Kind of excited and scary at the same time. We only did FL and XT, since XT was the weekly raid. However, just doing those was awesome! Oh, and guess what...we did FL on HARDMODE! Yay, go us.

Afterwards Eto, Merk (the warlock), Raggy and Kiwi (druid and warrior) hit up the new 5 man instances.

Let me just they...the first time through, Blizzard really made it feel like an epic encounter. Forge of Souls and the second dungeon are pretty simple. The Gauntlet run through the tunnel in dungeon 2 can be a little tricky but otherwise pretty easy. And Merk was right Lady Sylvanis did show up to save him and us while she was at it.

HoR on the other hand was a totally different story. I HATE that place. In the first round you're in a room doing a battle similar to VH. You get 5 rounds of mobs, containing mages, priests and hunters. Sheesh, does Blizzard just hate us tanks? Then on round 5 and 10 you get a boss. The bosses are pretty easy but it's the casters that really hurt you.

Then it's off to fight a few more trash mobs on your way to save Lady Sylvanis. After you finally find her, it's another gauntlet run but this time...(shield eyes if you don't want spoilers) you're running from the Lich King. It makes for a totally epic feel to the fight. You have to periodically stop and fight while Lady Sylvanis breaks downs some wall. The whole time Arthas is coming towards you, spawning Abombs and Witch Doctors.

I highly recommend that everyone follow the dialogue on these instances your first couple times through. It's totally worth it, even if you're not so into the lore.

Icecrown 5 Mans

Done some research and I think I'm about as ready as I can be to go into the new 5 man instances. Granted, no where near ready for the raid but the strategy on the 5 mans content won't be totally overwhelming for me.

Thought I'd share this research with you guys. Now I don't claim to have done these instances myself, so this is jut what I've read.

Forge Soul: There are only 2 bosses in the first encounter of the 5 man citadel instances.
Bronjahm the Godfather of Soul
This is the first boss encounter in the new 5 man content. From everything I've read he kind of works like the guardians in Ulduar with the spark that goes between thm.

Bronjahm needs to be kited around the round slightly. he will randomly rip a spirit soul from a player and draw this to him. The Tank will need to kite the boss away from the soul while the DPS focus on taking it down. If it does reach him, it will heal him for a substantial amount of health. When he reaches about 25% health he will start doing AoE damage to the entire party so this is the time to pop your cooldowns. bloodlust, etc.

Devourer of Souls
Seems the second boss encounter in the instance is going to be a little more tricky then the first.

First off, he does a "Mirrored Soul" attack. This will share any incoming damage dealt to the boss with a random party member. Luckily, it seems he will jump targets from the tank to the member who will be his victim a few moments before he casts the spell. This should give healers a heads up and allow them to focus their heals on the target.

Secondly, he will call forth dozens of intangible spirits that will attack the entire party. Sadly, there is nothing that can really be done about these because they are not targetable. So, keep your party up as best you can and carry on.

The biggest annoyance for this boss, or so it seems to me, is that he, like C'thun's Eye and Mimiron's Lasor Barrage, shoots a pew pew beam that travels counter clockwise around the room. This needs to be avoided at all costs.

Pit of Saron: There is 3 fights in the second encounter.
Forgemaster Garfrost
The first thing for tanks to be aware of is that the boss has several adds near him that when pulled, will trigger the fight.

Now this fight seems to be very similar to Volkhan in Halls of Lightning. Surprise, surprise Blizzard likes reusing their stuff, who would have thought!

He has three major things to take into consideration. He does a knock back ability, a stun and AoE debuffs that stack and increase vulnerability to frost.

The dps and healer can clear the debuff stacks by standing behind the large saronite boulders he throws at them. However, the tank can only clear his/her debuffs when Garfrost punts them backwards so that he can run to the forge to get another weapon. At this time, the tank needs to run behind the boulder in order to reduce the number of stacks he/she is holding.

Krick the Ick
Yay for the Ick.

This guy is very straightforward. Don't stand in the nasty pools of ick on the floor and run away from his bombs. How simple can you get? Just be sure to pay attention as the bombs do AoE damage when they explode, otherwise tank and spank!

The Guntlet/Scourgelord Tyrannus
So I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about why you do what you do here because it could be considered spoilers. But here is the general run down.

The tank is going to really have to prove himself/herself here. Every will be running to avoid falling objects, the tank will have to pick up the mobs while running and pull them along in order for the party to escape safely.

It is important here for the DPS to remember the tank does not have time to build sufficient aggro so DON'T DPS, just run. The same applies to the healer, heal as little as possible to avoid pulling aggro on yourself. If the tank is geared well enough, avoid Renew, Earth Shield, etc. This will reduce the amount of heal aggro generated.

Once out and adds are killed, Tyrannus becomes the focus of your dps. It's another DPS race, pop your heroism if you have it and kill him as quickly as possible otherwise your group becomes overrun with undead zombies and will be a wipe.

Well, that's the insight I have into the first two encounters in the new Icecrown Citidale 5 man. There is one wing left, Halls of Reflection, that I will update on later.

Until then, have fun!

Patch 3.3 - Changes

Looks like Blizzard confirmed 3.3 will release today.

So I decided it was time to take a in depth look at the patch notes to see how they will effect me.

Just from a brief overview here is my thoughts:

•Army of the Dead: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Army Ghoul damage dropped by 50%. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Omg, I hate this and love it at the same time. I love that they are dropping the cool down from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. This is totally awesome. It's much easier to hold off 10 minutes after wiping on Black Knight because you burned you army on phase 2 not knowing you were lacking the DPS to get down his 3rd phase. Yeah, yeah...you can lecture me on better ways to do this later.

But I hate that they are reducing the army's damage by 50%! That's huge! Really couldn't they reduce it by 20% or even 30%. I don't do a lot of damage as it, I'm a TANK! but there has been a time or two that army has saved us from a wipe with a low DPS Pug group.

•Rune Strike: Threat generated by this ability increased by approximately 17%.

•Glyph of Icy Touch: Instead of granting additional runic power, this glyph now causes Frost Fever to deal 20% additional damage.

Now these I can't complain about at all. All I can say is "Thank you Blizzard!" /salute A change that actually helps us and doesn't hurt us.

•Groups using this tool will be able to teleport directly to the selected instance. Upon leaving the instance, players will be returned to their original location. If any party member needs to temporarily leave the instance for reagents or repairs, they will have the option to teleport back to the instance.

Another awesome change. You can teleport back to town for repairs or whatever and the teleport back to the instance without begging a lock to waste a soulshard to summon you!

Now I'm sure this will have it's downfalls as well. There are always people that abuse the ability and make it horrible for other people. But hopefully everyone is adult enough to use this wisely.

•Bind-on-Account Items: Players can now mail Bind-on-Account items to characters on the same account and realm regardless of faction. Please note this only applies to Bind-on-Account items. Other items or gold cannot be sent via mail to characters on the same realm and account if they are from differing factions.

This, is my all time greatest gift ever from Blizzard. Lots and lots and lots of love being sent to all the Blizzard folks this Holiday season. You guys are awesome! Finally I can send that BoA gear over to my new main Horde toons.

This is something I think EVERYONE will be happy about!

Other interesting points to be excited about:
•Occulus got some changes, so people may actually do the instance
•Players no longer need to kill the final bosses in all four wings of Naxx in order to teleport to Sapphiron. Teleportation orbs have been added to allow players access back and forth from Sapphiron's lair.
•Quest tracking may eliminate the need for Carbonite? Sweet!
•Weekly raid quests implemented. May actually see people putting together Naxx pugs again!
•Remember the ring upgrade system from Kara, well it's back for ICC now!
•New LFG system is going live. PUG pet! Yay!
•Meeting stones only require that a player be at least level 15, which means you can someone anyone over level 15 anywhere. Yay, for summoning your level 80 friend to run you through Deadmines...*sigh*

So ends part 1 of my patch blog. I am currently working on details and notes on the 5 player instances. Mainly for myself. but I hope to have that posted today as well. So, just an insight on strategy there. Stay tuned!

Excited

Let me say...tonight has been a good night.

Had more fun chatting in guild with our new members then I've had in a long time.

I am so very glad to have you all!!

/wave to all my new friends.

Secondly, I got a pretty mount!

*sigh* Happy Kaly!

Shameless plug!
If anyone is interested in rolling horde side, transferring or just looking for a happy home for your alts, Faded Delusions will always welcome you with open arms. We are a fun loving guild, dedicated to keeping the game fun and the drama out. As of tonight we are a very couple friendly guild but accept members of all levels/races and experience. Looking to fill spots in our raid team as well. No prior experience needed, because everyone has to start somewhere! Why not start with us? We have experienced raiders/players willing to help you learn! Come give us a try. =)

The Birth of a New Hero

Yay, what a fun, fun weekend!

Eto and I got sucked into the Refer a Friend train.

Yeah, yeah, I have no idea why. Apparently, we were bored and it sounded like fun. We have two new guild members (/wave to Crobin and Saville) that joined us from the WoW_Ladies group over on Live Journal. They responded to my plea for casual raid members and decided to roll toons on our server with their RaF account.

Now, after only a few hours of play (spread across 3 days) they went from level 1 to 24. Total play time is maybe...5 hours? Yes, RaF is crazy!

A few posts back I had mentioned wanting to try out tanking on a Paladin, since secretly, I've always wanted to play one but never leveled one up. So, when Eto and I started talking about this we immediately decided to try out the RaF to see just how fast we do level.

Thus was born, Arialana, a tiny female bloodelf and Aurael, a quirky little undead priest.

Eto and I rolled a mage/shadow priest combo on an European server a few months back and abandoned as the draw to come home, to Shadow Council, proved to be too strong. We had debated transferring those toons over with us but since I plan to roll a mage goblin when Cataclysm hits, he decided to humor me and roll the shadow priest on our RaF account.

Our progress so far? We hit level 16 last night after about 3 (none consistent) hours of play. None consistent in the fact that we spent a lot of time messing with our UIs, logging in and out trying to get Eto's account to report as a normal and not a trial account, toon hopping to get gold and bags, hearthing back for skills and just randomly AFKing for food, drinks, talking etc.

I have found at least 3 issues so far with doing RaF account leveling.
1. You out level your zone before the quests are nearly done. - Example, we were out of the Undead starting area after doing only 4 quests. The quests in our log are yellow when we pick them up and then green or grey by the time we turn them in. We've had to abandon our entire unfinished quest log on several occasions and move onto the next zone just because all the mobs we are killing have gone grey. Yes, you really do level that fast in the beginning. I suppose this will probably start to level itself out as we start getting into the higher levels.

2. You out level your gear faster then you can change it. We're both, for the most part, in the white/grey gear we got from the early starting quests/drops. With the exception of a couple of lowbie greens I had in the bank our gear is horrible. It doesn't exactly make since, at this stage at least, to spend money on getting gear from the AH, since in an hour or less we'd be back buying more.

3. You can't level professions. Not enough time. Looks like we'll have to go back and power level them once our RaF boost is over. And you can't afford to pay for your skills without the help from your other toons. You just don't loot or make enough gold to keep up with them. Thankfully, I can send gold from my other toons for us.

Now the biggest problem we are having is that we can't seem to get Eto's 2nd account to drop the temporary account restrictions. So, as of now we can't add him to the guild, I can't trade with him and he has limited chat functions.

I totally understand why Blizzard does this. It prevents account hackers and gold spammers/sellers from using the free trial accounts to aid in their misadventures. But we've paid the 19.95, which I assume is for us to get the actual game and we've set it up on a monthly subscription, what's the hold up? *sigh* Hopefully, this will be fixed by the time we get back online tonight.

**EDIT** Per Blizzard's forums, it appears that upgrading from a trial account to a standard acccount can (and usually does) take up to 72 hours for the billing department to verify payment and lift restrictions on your trial account. IF you buy the game in a retail store and have the new, unused, key code for the game it is almost an instant lift of restrictions. But since we did everything through Blizzard we are going to have to wait it out to get all but the leveling restrictions lifted. He can, at least, continue to level without the level 10 cap. Just an FYI for anyone thinking of doing RaF.

On to other news:
Spent Saturday morning leveling my city rep with Org and the Trolls. DKs really have a disadvantage when it comes to rep grinding. Having done almost no quests on either of the "Old World" continents, left me with very little in the way of starting rep for any of my factions. But I did manage to get exalted with the Trolls (yay for FINALLY getting a raptor mount on one of my toons!) and nearly exalted with Org.

However, the biggest squee for me came by way of Koltira's Pauldrons of Conquest. I finally ran enough daily heroics to save enough emblems for my T9 shoulders!

So, to feed my gear score junky side for a moment. I am super excited that my Be Imba score has gone up to 534 and my WoW Heros score is 2353. Now to just replace those pesky legs, belt, gloves, ring, trinket and cloak. /facepalm

It's a never ending battle!

-Shameless plug-
If anyone is interested in playing Horde side, rolling new toons, RaF, transferring, etc, Faded Delusions has open doors and we'd love to have you aboard. We're still in need of a few more core raid members for a very casual, very laid back raid group. But if you're just interested in a mature, fun, couple friendly, laid back, place to play and have fun look us up as well. We're dedicated to keeping the game fun and the drama out. Play your toon, your way, we'll make room!

Possible DK Tanking Changes with the Patch

So I found this in a "blue" post on MMO-Champion:

Effective Health and Tanking
Too many of you are using EH (which is a very powerful concept for purposes of trying to decide how to gear your tank) as the number that indicates tank awesomeness. The higher the EH, the better tank I must be. It's just not that simple.

I have yet to see any data that suggests warriors wipe relatively more than other tanks. What so many of these posts say are:

1) I wipe a lot. It must be my class.
2) Because my EH is lower, I am guessing that I wipe more often.
3) I'm not sure if I wipe more often or not, but please just give me a buff so I feel better.

The only argument I have seen so far that seems at all reasonable is that stamina scaling or other factors might eventually lead to warriors (and DKs) having a problem, and that "eventually" could happen in Icecrown. Unfortunately that's impossible to prove or disprove at this stage since it's all speculation. It's definitely something to keep an eye on though.

So the part that is of concern is highlighted in the last paragraph.

"The only argument I have seen so far that seems at all reasonable is that stamina scaling or other factors might eventually lead to warriors (and DKs) having a problem, and that "eventually" could happen in Icecrown."

It appears from reading through the post, a lot of warriors are complaining that their tanking ability isn't as high as Druids, Paladins and possibly DKs.

I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with that statement. I believe all tanks have perks based on their class. Druids have ungodly amounts of health and armor. Paladins have great AoE ability and not to mention Lay on Hands. Deathknights have Death and Decay combined with Pestilence and Rune Strike. Warriors have shield bash in the mix of other class specific abilities.

So I'm not sure I agree with the logic behind the complaints but what does worry me is that they are talking about stamina scaling us?!? Seriously, we don't have any more stamina boost than a Paladin has. We sure don't have the amount of boosts that a druid gets.

Yes, Frost Presence does give me an added 6% boost to my stamina. 6%! That really isn't that much! I've picked enchants and gems to help it boost where I can. I currently have all epic stamina gems in my sockets...that gives me +32 stamina each. I am using 2 dragon's eye gems for stamina that gives me +52 stamina each and I have a couple stamina boost enchants.

Rightfully, I've worked hard to get my health pool up to 32,000+ self buffed. Compared to many of the other tanks I pass in Dalaran and near summoning stones for raids...I'm not nearly as high as most of them.

So with that being said, if you "scale" my stamina boosts too much, that nice little health pool that I've been trying to build up could drop back below 30,000.

I'm not sure what boosts warriors get but I'm sure they wouldn't be too happy to see their health pool dropped either.

On the reverse of this. Deathknights do have a large mitigation percentage. The idea for me is to NOT get hit but when I do, to have the health to buy time for a healer to recover me.

With a druid, their avoidance is much lower, but they can take more hits and still recover.

Paladins and warriors have the ability to block. This is a stat that I can't get. I don't have the ability to carry a shield. Not to mention Paladins want to get hit in order to help them gain threat.

All things being said and considered, this could be a big downfall for DKs more so then warriors I think. It's not unusual now to see "LF Tank for xxxx (no DKs)" in the looking for group channel. Lowering our stamina could make this even more common. We're already classified by many of our fellow gamers as "dumbknights", why give them another reason to doubt our abilities?

Maybe it's time for me to rethink the idea of rolling a Paladin.

I may be totally off here and they are talking about the nerfs that have already taken effect, and I hope that's the case. Maybe they aren't leaning towards nerfing our stamina pools again. If that's the case, then I'm ok with where my stamina pool is now, just don't lower it again!

...

Looks like I can't think of a single thing to post on today...

We missed Ulduar this week. Were down a healer for the Tuesday night raid and Eto has the flu so we didn't go for Weds night either.

Haven't been able to do the daily heroics so the three days I needed for my T9 shoulders is still 3.

Logged on long enough to help a friend do the Amphitheater last night and then it was back off again.

May go beat on some ZG trash on my own tonight, who knows.

Been a lonely week.

Maybe I'll have more to discuss later.

Happy Thrusday all...

Hello...whoooooo are you?

I read an interesting blog the other day. Karatheya over at Cold Comfort wrote a thought provoking article on how much we invest in the growth of other players. That starting me wondering.

The key point that I got from the article was simple. Investing in random pug players today may save us some time tomorrow.

There are several ways you can look at this.

1. His/Her point - They could be the recruits applying to your guilds in the future thus they need less work when they join then they would have if we didn't invest time to help them out a few weeks/months prior when we pugged with them.

2. They could be tank/healer/dps we find ourselves pugging with on a semi-regular basis.

3. There are only so many people you can place on your ignore list. And if we ignore every player that didn't live up to expectations....it would be a lonely, lonely place.

Pugging is a daily routine for Eto and I. We both like to do instances and like to raid. But as history, and previous blogs have shown, growing a guild isn't going so well. This leaves us needing to pug at least 3 dps every night when we do the daily heroic. Not to mention we pug for every Ulduar raid on a weekly basis.

Our Alliance toons have the benefit of not needing to pug. They are members, in good standings, of a well established, decent progression guild. This allows them to see the end content, heroics and events without ever having to pug for them.

Eto and I also tend to be the type of people that enjoy helping other players. We don't mind spending time talking gear, rotation, stats or strategy with another person that's trying to learn. But just as often as we find a player that wants help, we find just as many that don't.

So many puggers we run into really don't care that they are rolling on gear with the wrong stats for their character, or putting the wrong enchants/gems into that gear. Then they whine and complain because the other hunter/mage/warrior in the group has DPS that is twice as high as theirs and they just don't understand why. Thus, I'm sure, the reason they are pugging and not off raiding with their guild.

But for those few that do care, that really want to know why and what they can do to improve, taking the time to invest in them could save us all some time in the future.

Save you some time when they do eventually gear up and apply to your raiding guild and save me some time when they show up in my raid/heroic pug.

This has been the case with my 2 recent projects. The demonology warlock and the prot warrior. When I first met them both they were in the wrong type of gear, having issues with their gear and heading in the wrong direction. Both were new to instances, afraid of pugging because they were being ridiculed. But really, they just needed a little guidance.

I'm proud to say the little warlock previously under my wings is now pushing over 3,000 dps, as demo...that's saying ALOT. The warrior...well, he's now up to par to OT Ulduar and continuing to grow.

Either of the players are an asset to any group they join now. They are no longer a hindrance but an asset. So if you get them in your group, remember they once were the players you would have put on ignore and now they are the ones you want to have around when you need a good player to fill your pug spot.

Take a little time and help out those who need it. You will find, in the end, it benefits us all.

Murloc!!!!!

This made me giggle! Enjoy!

Times they are a'changin

Or so it seems.

After a conversation last night with a blogger friend that randomly decided to roll on our server and spend a little time in our lonely guild, I realized things really -have- changed in my beloved game.

From days gone by, when I was priesting my way through the Burning Crusade, healing my beloved boyfriend tank and all the guildies that I held so dear. Watching the fall of Kara and Zul'Aman. Flying over the vast plains of the Outlands. Proud created of remotely well known guild. Enjoying my place, my friends, my time...

To the adventures of a lovely little demonology lock determined to hold her own against all odds and prove she could raid with her Felguard. Everyone tried so hard to convince me that demonology locks are not meant for raiding. After some time I did come to realize they sadly, were right and thus my adventures into lockdom ended abruptly.

Now the present, a tiny little DK tank from the other side of the tracks. A little bloodelf that once I would have shunned because she came from the "dark" side. A skinny little, bouncy chick with an attitude. Constantly fighting to hold her place in the big bad world that is known mainly to the men in the game. Tanking isn't a girls job...or so she is told...

From a priest to a lock to a death knight...

From a healer to the tank...

From Alliance to the Horde...

From progression raiding to duoing the places we once loved...

From a guild full of friends, fun and excitement to a silent, lonely place.

Things they are a'changing.

What does this mean? I'm not really sure.

I miss my small, close knit guild. I miss the Alliance side. I miss healing. I miss planing the raids and celebrating the small advances. I miss the excitement of vent when we would succeed. I miss doing it all with friends. I miss the things you just can't get from a pug.

I love tanking. I love my deathknight. I enjoy the new people I meet. I like being able to duo the old content I loved so much. I like being able to slow down and enjoy things with Eto that we couldn't before when the guild took up 95% of our time.

Yes I know I can continue to progress with the pugs...but will that ever be enough? Probably not. I miss the people and try as we may, rebuilding that is not going so well. It's just not the time or we're not in the right place to build it up.

Holy Hiatus...

Wow, I haven't updated in an entire week! What's wrong with me? I've been on vacation.

Though, not totally from WoW.

I did spend a lot of time trying out The Sims 3. Which, I will say, is pretty dang awesome. I was a long time Sims player, well before I found WoW. Played the original Sims and then The Sims 2 but waited a long time before trying the third one. To say the least, I am very impressed and LOVE the game.

Though my week long vacation did entail it's fair share of WoW time. Especially over the weekends while Eto was home with me.

Where to start....

Bountiful Harvest Festival -
I got my DK from 1 - 350 cooking doing nothing but cooking the silly Thanksgiving food! Wow, Blizzard must really want to give people and easy way to up the skill. Not that I'm ungrateful, just seriously in shock. I leveled my lock's cooking the old fashion way and was a little annoyed that pretty much anyone can get max cooking skill with little to no work.

Yeah, you have to kill level 1 critters to get the turkey but that's it. Then Bam! level 350 cooking and you're on your way to the Northrend stuff. Enough said.

Kalyara also got her dumb title and the crazy turkey pet. **Let me just say, standing around watching a DK kill 3 guards, in a no stat dress and hat, waiting for her health to get down to 15,000 before flagging yourself and commencing to pull out your wolves, fire elemental and your JC boar in order to prove how awesome of a Shaman you are...is so totally cool!**

Yeah I may be a little bitter about that. I had done nothing to all the Alliance toons running into our cities to sit at our tables. But then it was my own fault, as I had gone to the wrong place thinking it was the IF table causing myself to aggro three guards that I had to kill in order to sit at the table. But waiting for my health to drop, pulling out all your cooldowns and then only managing to kill me because you got the heal off before I could silence you...nice. Though I will give her credit for being smart enough to run into IF for safety before I could recover my body.

Ulduar Updates:
We actually got another fight down during last weeks Ulduar raid. We managed to get Razorscale down as well as our normal FL and XT. I'm pretty sure we could have gotten further but had a healer that had to bail on us. We had no wipes up to that point. I was very impressed and curious to see how far we get this week.

We did what?!?:
So, Eto and I had this crazy idea to attempt Kara, just for fun, with only the two of us. Well..I was very surprised that we not only managed to clear it, we managed to clear it with only 2 wipes. Neither of which, were on Price. We had a little trouble with Curator, before finally getting Eto to switch to his healy spec and then we had a little trouble figuring out how to manage Morose.

But otherwise, it was a blast!!! Thankfully, Morose was nice enough to give me Mongoose on my first attempt! =)

Next adventure....Zul'Aman. /nod

We're now adding Kara to our weekly duo raid/rep grind. Still trying for the mounts in ZG.

Well I'm sure there is stuff I am forgetting but I'll think of it later.

Ohh...3 days away from getting my Tier 9 shoulders!

and the beat goes on...

Looks like it's been a few day since my last post.

Interestingly enough, I haven't played much over the past 4 days but what little I have played has been productive.

First on the Warrior-Wonderboy front:
It's a little odd who you end up making friends with. Eto and I have spent a lot of time with our new warrior tank and his boyfriend the awesome "Party Healy Druid" from the Ulduar raid.

Seems that we actually kinda like these guys. Once I spent some time talking to Raggy (the druid) I found out they were fun and interesting people. So when I said we somehow managed to lock ourselves to helping Kiwi (that's not his toons name, it's something like Kiwlaski or something but Kiwi is what I call him) get his tanking gear, I mean we locked ourselves to helping them.

Which I won't complain out. It's actually been kind of fun and I'm very proud of his progression. It's taken a little bit of education and some coaching from Eto but he's getting some really decent gear.

So far we've been using the shopping list located over on the Tank Like a Girl blog. Since I'm not a warrior and have never played one, I wasn't sure exactly how much like DK tanking warriors were. Thanks to Kadomi's shopping list we knew exactly what to start looking for.

He's gotten the helm for H-ToC, I've made him the Titanium Earthguard Ring and he's gotten enough emblems for his T8 chest. We've enchanted (properly this time) and put nice epic gems in the gear as well. I'll be excited to see what kind of gear score he has now...as soon as he logs off in his Prot gear and not in his Fury gear. =P He may just be Ulduar ready by this weeks raid after all!

So, as for myself? I got my T8 head last night. I'm pleasantly surprised at my own stats lately. My avoidance, stamina, hit, defense..they are all pretty good. I'm a little below my hit cap. Still need to work on that. But my total avoidance is over 40% now and Eto is complaining that I'm getting boring to heal.

We took the weekend off from raiding. Since we did end up raiding 4 nights last week. Naxx on our lower 80s on Monday, Ulduar on Tues and Weds and then Ulduar on Thursday with out Alliance toons.

Ulduar on Thursday went pretty well. Our Alliance side guild has most of Ulduar on far. We downed 7 of the bosses this past Thursday. The only thing they have issues with...Yogg, of course. But still it's fun to go in with them and just have some fun. Definitely, less stressful then Ulduar Horde side.

Our break from raiding, wasn't a true "break" really. We spent Sunday night 2 manning ZG. So still a raid but without the stress. And I did solo Hakar, well after I killed Eto anyway.

He has decided that getting out toons to exalted with the Zandalar tribe is a good goal to hit before Cataclysm. With the idea that we get the nifty shoulder enchant and put it on the heirloom shoulders we plan to give to our Goblins. Even though this enchant won't activate till they hit 55, but oh well. Still something to do.

Happy Thanksgiving! And have an awesome week!

The Continuing Saga...Oh, the drama!

Ulduar - Part 2

The night fell, clear and cold in Northrend. Kalyara was feeling a little weary from her previous failures the night before. She couldn't let this hold her down. She had done her best, she had held her head high and done her part. She couldn't, no wouldn't, keep beating herself up. No Sir! She was going to go back in there and show them!

Maybe, just maybe tonight she would have stronger allies, surely it would go better tonight...surely...

We'll skip past the painful group formation of this raid. Since previous history proves that our raid leader, from here out known as Dr. Don't-Know, is seriously unable to form a decent group because he's trying to play the "nice" raid leader and take anyone and everyone, regardless of gear or skill.

Fast forward to the first mob encounter. Again, we're in the same position as last night, posed to try to get to Ignis because Dr.Don'tKnow read on line that we need to pull one of the Molten Colossus all the way back to XT-002's door to prevent the healers being silenced by them both back to back. Yay! No big deal right?

*face palm* The OT, our beloved, well skilled though under geared, warrior from the previous night isn't paying attention and I end up dragging both the monsters towards XT's door. Now I realize I have them, I avoid all multi-target damage so that I don't build too much aggro on the second one and stop moving. Finally, our warrior-wonder-boy, finally realizes and taunts off me but only to die an almost instant, painless death because his health is still way too low.

Now, insert the Full-of-himself-retardin, and I use this term lightly. Normally, I avoid using acronyms for any class, I don't believe in retardins, huntards or dumbknights. But this guy's attitude, if nothing else, earned him this beloved title.

Mr. Retardin, looses his patience, after one pull..which I can't blame because I was begging Dr.Don'tKnow to try to find us another OT and let Warrior-Wonder-Boy dps instead. I just did it somewhat tactfully in whispers and not openly in raid chat. And I didn't blast his gear and tanking abilities to the rest of the raid either.

So, Mr. Retardin, has a tanking set. Wow! Nice to know now, could have told us last night before the wipefest! And...it's not a bad tanking set. His stats are pretty good for a tank. Maybe..maybe...dare I say...will we make it after all?

We successfully pull the Molten Colossus and manage to kill them both with no problems! Mr. Retardin goes back to his ret set and leaves the off-tanking to our warrior-wonder-boy. The rest of the trash is no problem and we are ready to pull Ignis.

Dr.Don'tKnow, goes through is explanation, we remind him of a few things he didn't know about and I pull the boss. I'm not having any problem with Ignis himself but I'm also getting and holding the aggro on the Iron Constructs. Not surprisingly, we wipe.

No big deal, that's alright. Now the group has seen the fight. We know where to move, when to move and we got him down to 78%. My hopes are up.

*Release and run back into the instance*
Raid Warning: Let's move on to the Antechamber, we can just skip these harder bosses

What?! We are going to give the boss one attempt and pass him up for more trash and an attempt at another boss that people have never seen? Ugh! I'm all for progression but sheesh, give it at least one more go before giving up.

On to the Antechamber, trash clears go fine. We make it to the Assembly of Iron. Again, Dr.Don'tKnow explains the fight. I'm going to take on Steelbreaker while our warrior-wonder-boy takes on Stormcaller Brundir because "he'll do the least amount of damage in the first phase". I have my instructions...pull the boss to the right of the door keep him out of the blue circles, avoid getting close to the other guys, etc. Once Steelbreaker goes down I need to pick up Runemaster Molgeim. Got it.

Goes something like this -
Kalyara runs in, grabs Steelbreaker and kites him to the right of the door.
Warrior-Wonder-Boy runs in....dies...two shots.
Healers die.
Kaly dies.
Raid Wipes.
Release and run back in.
"So I guess I'm going to have to tank this too, huh?" - Mr. Retardin
"OMG, I'm sorry but there are two people in this group that I never care to play with again"
Druid Party Healer leaves the group.
Warrior-Wonder-Boy leaves the group.

Thus the drama begins to unfold...
Now to this point, Mr. Retardin had been tanking the trash, which I was unaware of. But did explain why the trash pulls leading up to the Iron Council were going so well.

As for the Druid Party Healer apparently she is the real life girlfriend of Warrior-Wonder-Boy and didn't like the fact that Mr. Retardin and the other druid had commented on him not being geared well enough to be tanking this far into Ulduar.

If that's not enough, now we have Dr.Don'tKnow pulling the drama queen (king)/oh poor me routine. "I can't handle this right now", "sigh, sorry that I took up everyone's time", "I don't pick people based on their purples, they have skills" and my favorite "if you want to be an elitist jerk then feel free to leave".

I attempt to make the point to Dr.Don'tKnow that we're not being elitist jerks but that he has thrown warrior-wonder-boy to the wolves. He knew his gear was bad. But still he brought him into something well above his gear ability and expected him to OT.

His gear was barely good enough to do heroics with. He was defense capped but that is about all he had going for him. His health pool was extremely low, 23,000 buffed, his gear score was only 355 and he was not enchanted or gemmed.

Now I'm not saying anything was wrong with the warrior. Honestly, I like him as a player. He has the potential to be an awesome tank. I commend Dr.Don'tKnow for wanting to help him gear. That's awesome but that's also what heroics, emblems and crafted gear are for. You can't bring a seriously under geared tank into something above his level.

It's easier to carry dps and even one healer, if the tanks and main healers are well geared. But you can't do that when you're the tank. Not when you are that far below.

So, thus ends our Ulduar group for the night. A few angry people because they are now locked to Ulduar and didn't down a single boss. A couple more angry people because they feel like they have been shunned. Then a few that just think the entire group is full of dumb asses.

I get a whisper from the Druid Party Heals shortly after getting back to Dalaran. Wanting to know my opinion on her boyfriend's tanking. I kindly tell her what I honestly believe. He has skill, he has potential, that's not easy to find. Now he needs the gear to back it up. That's the easy part.

And somehow...I've committed myself to helping him learn and get that gear. *sigh*

Happy Thursday!

Ulduar - Annoyance and Excitement

Eto and I got hit up, by the same weekly PUG group last night, to come tank and heal for their Ulduar run.

Don't get me wrong I was very leery of going along with this guy for various reasons.
1. He doesn't really understand balanced group make up.
2. This is the group that I had the problems with Oingaboinga the previous week.
3. They did Ulduar 2 nights last week and only downed FL o.O

Now granted they had bad tanks the week previous and on the second night ended up running with 4 warriors but still. Oingaboinga was not on the line up for the night so I agreed to main tank it as long as Eto was my healer.

*sigh*

We ended up with a brand new level 80 Disc Priest. When I say brand new, I mean he hit 80 a few minutes before joining the group. The Armory still showed him as 79.

The OT that we had was "a great warrior" the RL found. Who sadly had a gear score of 355. He was pretty squishy and ultimately, ended our progression for the night when he had to start actually tanking things.

So this is how the night went:

Take 30 minutes after the group fills to finally get everyone inside the instance. Had one person afk and never come back. Wait another 15 minutes to get a replacement and get them summoned. The RL begins explaining the the FL fight and instructs people to just pick a vehicle it doesn't really matter. Who cares that gear score of the driver plays a part in the amount of health of the vehicle? "That only matters in hardmodes" so says the RL. After 3/4 of the group wipes on the trash while trying to take out the towers, we finally get to FL. Now I realize that the newbie priest and warrior are teaming up for a demolisher. The Priest informs the group that her gear may be playing a part in the health of the machine. But again the RL insists it doesn't matter. We shoot down the pyrite. Not nearly enough if you ask me but he instructs us to pull.

We pull the boss, the first two pursuits go pretty well then he goes after the priest/warrior vehicle, they die after one hit from him. *sigh* We're down a demolisher and the pyrite is gone. Insert wipe number 1.

Rinse and repeat...6 times! We wipe 6 times on FL before some how Finally we convince the RL that we MUST HAVE MORE PYRITE! Eto and I some how manage to keep FL pissed off enough that he pursues us 3 out of the 4 times, allowing everyone to finally down the damn thing.

Sheesh, Flame Leviathan really should not be this difficult.

Moving on to XT-002. I love this fight. I'm not sure if it's her silly animations and voice overs or the mechanics of it. But I love the XT fight.

The RL does his run down of the boss fight and we get started. Things go pretty smooth, loose our RL/Mage pretty early on but manage a battle rez and he's back up. The OT is keeping the bomb bots occupied, heart takes considerable damage and then boom, we loose the OT and a couple DPS.

Now we have her down to about 16% when the RL automatically starts talking about what we need to do differently next time. He wants to wipe it and start again, but did he forget we have an all powerful, all amazing feral druid among us. Now this is why I love druids! He quickly switches from kitty to bear and rounds the bomb bots back up.

XT has eaten a couple by this point and gained some of her health back but we're not giving up. I refused to give up as long as Eto was alive and keeping me up, we had a few good dps and a 3 minutes left on the enrage timer.

It's slow going, gain a little, loose a little. The druid is putting forth an amazing effort to jump between bear and kitty. Tanking the bots when he has too and still trying to dps as much as he can. We're down to about 10% and a minute or so left before she goes ape shit on me.

At this point I don't see any reason not to burn everything we have. Pop the ghoul, pop the army, burn your cooldowns, if we don't beat the enrage timer I'm toast and it will be a wipe. We have two healers up, Eto and a Resto Druid. 3 of our dps are still going at it. We can do this..we can do this....


WE DID IT!! And the awesome thing? We did it on our first attempt. This is what you call people being on the ball. The few people that knew the fight and knew their class...they were the ones that made this one possible!







Now I wish I could say we had as much luck with the rest of the attempts we made in Ulduar last night but sadly we didn't. The lack of AoE dps made Rasorscale pretty much impossible. We didn't have the DPS to down the Dark Rune Sentinels, plus the other adds, quick enough so the dragon wasn't taking enough damage while on the ground. We wiped this one 3 or 4 times, never getting him below 72%, before the RL decided to move on.

Ignis. What can I say about this one? Sadly, we couldn't make it to him. The OT didn't last more then 2 hits from the guardians before he was down.

With all that being said, I wouldn't call it a waste. People got to see a couple bosses fall and I did get the tank bracers off of FL! =)

So, we'll try again tonight and see what happens. Though I'm pretty sure I'm in for another couple hundred gold in repair bills! Fun time with Ulduar, oh my!

Weekend Revolutions

So it seems I didn't spend much time in the game this weekend. Think I'm starting to hit the burnout wall again. Actually, I'm pretty sure of this since this is not the first time I've mentioned it here.

Honestly, I don't think I played more then an hour or three over the entire course of my 3 day weekend.

Most of my time was spent playing my baby Hunter. She's been my "project" since I started the game, nearly 3 years ago. She was my first toon and is now proudly sitting at level 56. It's not that I don't like her, just that I changed servers, changed toons and jumped around so many times that I completely forgot about her for awhile. Since moving her to Shadow Council, I've found a new interest in her.

I think part of my problem is she is in the dreaded "between zone" levels. I hate the 55+ zones in the old world but she's too low to go to Outlands yet. *sigh*

Anyway...I've learned this weekend that don't enjoy playing the game nearly as much as I use to when I play alone. I've gotten so use to playing with Eto that solo play is just not as interesting.

I've realized, Elemental Shaman are unGodly awesome. The one in my H-CoS pug last night was pulling 3500+ DPS!

I've realized that tanking gets really boring when you're doing the same things over and over and over again.

I've realized, I'M READY FOR SOMETHING NEW! Give me new content already. How many times can I possibly run the same instances over and over? How many Alts can I level before I want to scratch my eyes out?

So tell me...what is everyone doing lately to help them through the rut between content patches? Help me find something new and exciting to work on before I loose interest in my beloved game!

Gnome Therapy

I have met a lot of really good players throughout my time in Azeroth. People that know how to play their class, know the ins and outs of the perfect rotation, the perfect gear stats and can talk to you for hours about how to tweak your character to gain that added half a percent to your damage output.

Of those people very few have the personality it takes to leave a lasting impression on me and even more so, very few become what I would consider to be a "friend".

There is, however, a few exceptions to that statement. Eto for one. Who everyone knows I love and adore. He didn't hit me with the "in my face" lasting impression when I first came into contact with him. It was more of a gradual, though quickly progressing, relationship.

The second exception to that rule is a past guildie. He's a tiny pink haired, big ego, low temper, highly comical, demon wielding warlock that I've known for practically my entire gaming life in Azeroth.

This guy not only knows his class, how to play it and play it well, but also has been known to keep all of our guild chat and/or raid chats in stitches. It's not often that I would be involved in a group with him that I didn't find myself laughing until my face was hurting. He had a way of calming people down in the worst of wipe situations, kept them motivated and did it all while keeping us entertained.

When Last Call started falling apart, we lost our beloved Warlock to bigger and better things. Eto and I left the server to try to rebuild ourselves and loose the stress that being Guild Leaders had left on us. After a month or so on another server, I logged back onto my toons on Shadow Council. The first "zomg, where have you been whisper" came from this guy. I'm not sure if it was his overwhelming persistent personality or the "there are no Sedges on no Oceanic servers, get your ass back over here where you belong" speech I got that ultimately brought me back home again. But in the end Shadow Council proved to be the place I belonged.

He's been known to keep me "grounded" on more then one occasion. When raids and guild drama would drag me down he was there to pull me back up again. Recently, this therapy has carried itself over into the real world.

Through email and chat, I now have "Gnome Therapy" on a pretty regular basis. Not only does he have a way of making people around him laugh but he does it in an amazing artistic manor. His gift with words and writing styles is enough to keep even the most professional of English majors interested.

So, my thanks goes out to him. There had been many times that I am sure I would have quit playing if it weren't for the comedy support I get from him. But also there are many days I just feel like screaming and end up laughing at some off the wall, crazy email I get from him.

To say the topic of my blog today is a little obscure would be an understatement. But for anyone that knows Sedge, they would simply laugh and agree.

And for those of you needing a laugh today, this was a conversation we had about the process of my horrible day at work:

Sedge: Hell of an attitude to do interviews with, miss.
Me: o.O I just complain to you cause you are here, I have to be sweet perky and authorative
in the interviews.
Sedge: Psh, I should move there. You could hire me, then I could do cubicle stuff.
Me: Cubicle stuff? I'm not sure what cubicle stuff is...
Sedge: Me neither. But you do cubicle stuff for a living.
Me: I do? That's interesting I need to put that on my list of qualifications on my resume.
Sedge: And apparently you're also a cubicle supervisor who does interviews. Impressive stuff.
Me: I'm proficient in cubical stuff. Ohh, my new title...."cubicle Supervisor". I sound
important
Sedge: Everyone knows that's not how you put it on the resume.
Resume's are fancy. You call it....
"Quadratic Operations Specialist. "

Now, if everyone had the joy of reading his adventures with the copy machine and the post-it notes, you'd spend the rest of your afternoon smiling!

Have an awesome day!

The Perfect Pug?! *sigh*

Ulduar last night didn't go so well.

This was the weekly raid group, Horde side, that Eto and I were approached to join. A little background information on this group may be helpful. It's a new guild leader, never before raid leader, trying to build a raiding guild. As we all know, if you read my blog, recruitment on Horde side is a pain in the ass since there are so many new guilds.

Anyway, we pick up group and the RL starts inviting the 6 people that signed up to attend. The OT was suppose to be another Dk that we had ran Ony with the week prior. Well he informs the DK that she could DPS tonight since Oingaboinga was going to come along to tank. Oingaboinga was the warrior tank the RL had told us about before. He joined his guild, yada, yada, yada Well a couple days after joining the RL's guild, Oingaboinga did a ninja quit to join another entry level raiding guild.

So I said whatever and went about my business fishing stuff for Eto to make Fish Feasts for the raid. A couple minutes later Oinga joins the group and automatically starts instructing the RL on what classes we "must" have and advises that getting a Bear or Paladin MT needs to happen and no more DK dps.

Well, I politely advise that I am not DPS and if he is a tank then we don't need anymore tanks. This turns into a huge one way debate on his part about how we must have a druid, a paladin and a priest in the party cause we can't do Ulduar without their buffs. I switch from my fishing pole to my tank weapon to bring my health back to it's normal unbuffed state and kindly advise we are geared well enough for entry level Ulduar and that this is a pug and we can't be super picky on what classes we accept.

In the mean time the RL invites another Shaman to join the party. Oinga asks if he's DPS and is informed no he's a healer. The "I'm too awesome for you" warrior attitude continues to get worse and he insists having two of the same class healer is a waste of space so the RL boots the shaman from group...YES HE BOOTED HIM!

I was shocked. I don't even think shocked is the right word for it. Seriously, we just turned away a well geared healer because Mr. I'mtooGood thinks having two shaman healers is stupid?

Next strike against the warrior, he begins debating that the two healers we have, a priest and a shaman, need to be party heals and that we have to bring in a Paladin for MT healing. *sigh* This is what really gets me started.

I can't stand a know-it-all in the group that thinks he know exactly how every single class plays and stereotypes them based on their class. "A shaman is not MT heals, cause they can chain heal..he's on party". "A holy priest is not built for MT healing, he's on party".

Again, I advise that my holy priest does awesome at MT healing and if you don't' play the class don't assume you know what the person is good at. When it comes down to it, the class build plays a minor part in the performance of the player, yes. But in the end, it's really what the player is use to doing.

I have always healed MT as holy. Yes, my mana conservation is not as great as a Disc priest. My damage mitigation to the tank is not as awesome but I know how to conserve my mana and when to start healing the tank. Priests drop huge heals all at one time. If we know how to time those heals with our HoTs, they are better spent on a tank then tossing around in party.

This debate continues on and on, while the warrior continues to insist we get a Druid (boomkin, he doesn't want a druid healer) and a Paladin (for healing not for DPS). Now it doesn't' matter what position in the group those two classes play if you're wanting them simply for their buffs.

My entire point in this whole argument was that the group is a 100% pug. We don't have the room to ensure that we have only one of every class in the group. If we have two shaman, two druids or two DKs, so be it. As long as we have the numbers to down the bosses and keep moving, it really doesn't matter. If your gear is so dependant on the buffs of other players that you can't preform with out them...YOU DON'T NEED TO BE IN A ULDUAR PUG!

If the truth be known, which I never brought up, Oninga's gear score was only 480. He was the lowest scored member in the raid. Yes he had stamina. He had 1000 more health unbuffed then I did. But if you're valuing health over other stats, you have a more serious problem then getting paladin auras and druid buffs in the raid.

Needless to say, I politely excused myself from the raid group, wished them all luck and went back to playing my lowbie Alliance hunter.

I play this game to have fun, not to listen to a big headed, bossy ass, want-to-be raid leader turn my fun game into a job.

Wanna know what really gets me pissed off...assumptions. If you don't know the class, don't play the class and don't know the player...don't assume cause you're making and ass out of yourself!

Memories from so long ago....

Well, I took Kalyanna (priest) into Naxx10 last night. It brought back a lot of memories I wasn't expecting to face again.

The raid went well. After I finally figure out my buttons, healbot and how to conserve mana. That took only about the first half of the first wing.

We started with Plague Quarter. It was suppose to be a "fun run" with the guild. It started about 30 minutes late and consisted of a few normal raiders and ton of alts. So no one was taking anything too seriously.

The first pull resulted in two deaths and a Gargoyle that wouldn't die. Lots of laughs were had by all.

We got to Heigan, as everyone knows, my favorite Naxx boss. But there was a catch to this fight. The raid leader had brought a ton of "drinks" for everyone and the point of the fight was to try to finish it completely smashed (in game of course). So we all drink the stuff, attempting to do the fight through blurry screens and messed up directional movements.

It doesn't go so well. All the melee dps (which we were very heavy in) died before the first teleport. The healers and one dps quickly follow suit and find themselves face first kissing the floor before we finish the first round of dancing. Release and run back to your body, buff up and drink again. We manage to down him the second time. Still loosing a few people along the way but Heigan goes down to a drunk raid none the less.

I managed to pick up a couple upgrades along the way. Due to the late start and the "fun" everyone was having we only cleared Plague, Spider and Military before it got too late and people had to call it a night.

Good time and good company. It got the guild back together as a group which is an improvement over the raiding they have attempted to do through September and October. They have 2 more raid night scheduled this week and hopefully the turn out for those work out as well.

I had forgotten how much I loved my priest. Healing is much more stressful then tanking or DPS but still, it's something I did for so long and quickly fell back into the routine I was so familiar with. Sometimes, dusting off and old toon is like finding an old friend.

I won't be making either of the other two Fallen raids this week but I am scheduled to tank Ulduar tonight for the Pug raid group Horde side. I'm pretty excited about this one. I've done Flame Leviathan before. That's how I ended up tanking with Ironsoul. But that's as far into Ulduar as I've taken my DK. We'll see how it goes tonight but I have high hopes of at least seeing a couple bosses down.

Now if I can just get use to the late nights and early mornings, we'll be doing good!

Weekend Adventures

I tanked Ony Friday night!!!

Actually successfully Off-Tanked Ony. The pug weekly raid group I have mentioned before started Friday night with "Dragon Slayer Friday". Meaning every Friday they will do one of the short Dragon raids. This week it was Ony and we got her down on the 3rd try.

Not too bad for a pug group. I feel the need to mention though, that I HATE the whelps. But once we got people running back to the middle when they spawned, so I could pick them up easily instead of running all over the room trying to catch them, it was much easier.

Seriously, if you are DPS and doing Ony, please remember your tank is only one person and if you are spread out all over the room with the whelps spawn, you are going to get beat on.

I won the gem bag from her and Eto got a nice...something...I can't remember. The fight is a lot of fun. I'm very glad I got a chance to see it from the level 80 view since she's been my favorite dragon since I started playing.

Got pulled into a ToC10 man run Sunday morning. That was interesting. To say the least the person putting it together had no clue what was going on. He had me as MT and another DK, who's gear score was 350, as OT. Sadly, I had to bring this to his attention and give instructions on the fights since most people had never been to the raid. We replaced the 350 tank with a paladin with slight better gear. I say slight, her gear score was still only 468. We got through phase one on two attempts and would have gotten through the second phase except said "raid leader" got angry at 3 wipes and dropped group. *sigh* If you can't handle pug raids...DON'T PUT THEM TOGETHER! Seriously guys, pugs have a huge learning curve. You can't get angry at your pug if you have never done the raid either. Sheesh, patience people!

On other news. Eto's account finally got restored Saturday night. All his toons, both of my Guild Master toons and the GM from Whispers of the Fallen, received mailboxes full of stuff to replace. Sadly, he didn't get everything back. Mainly we noticed he's missing all his ruined orbs and his arctic fur. The Alliance side guild bank from our bank toons didn't get the 1200ish gold that was taken and the 500ish from the Horde side bank. But all in all I was impressed that he got back as much as he did.

He did, which I was surprised, also end up getting 32 Abyss crystals, 13 Dragons Eyes and got to keep all the PvP gems that his Paladin had in the bank when he gained control of him back. I assume, since he didn't have this before the hack, that it was the mats they got from DEing his epic gear and from trading in all his JC tokens. Blizzard also refunded back all JC tokens, emblems and his champion marks.

Started playing my holy priest some more this weekend as well. Looks like I'm taking her on Fallen's Naxx run tonight. Normally, I would be terrified to try to heal a raid with her but seeing as it's a "fun run" for the guild, everyone is already Ulduar or beyond geared, she should be fine. I might even get a few drops for her.

I've missed playing my priest. Being a healer was something I was incredibly good at in BC. Hitting the burn out stage put a quick end to that about the time Wrath came out. I haven't played her much since then. Enough to get her to 80 and level her professions. Otherwise she's sat in Dalaran, nearly forgotten. I'm looking forward to dusting her off some and seeing if I still have it in me to be an awesome healer.

Last bit of news. The Horde side weekly raid group is set to do Ulduar on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. "Dragon Slayer Friday" for a short weekly raid and then Naxx for people that need it on Sundays. Eto and I aren't interested in doing Naxx but are signed up for Ulduar. The Fallen's Ulduar night is Thursday so if we stay committed to what we have, we could be raiding 3 - 4 nights a week between our Horde and Alliance toons.

With all that being said, I doubt we will stick with that schedule. We've both agreed that we need to focus more on things outside the game. I see us possibly doing both Ulduar raids every other week and then one or the other on the opposite weeks. Conflicting real life schedules and needing time for things other than WoW would burn us out quickly if we stuck to doing 4 - 5 raid nights a week.

Happy Hunting!

Pets for real money?

Looks like I'm going to hold off a little longer on making my beloved warlock into the cute adorable little gnome I've always wanted her to be. I had the intentions of race changing her this weekend. My visions of a teeny tiny little gnome followed by her massively huge Felguard as they journey around Azeroth. Him protecting her when the Cataclysm hits, yada, yada, yada.

I'll still get around to it I'm sure but instead of the race change I purchased the Mini K.T. and the Pandaren Monk. I wanted to do something special for Eto. After all he has had a pretty rough week, getting your toons stolen and all. Not to mention a (potential) new job. I wasn't sure which one he would want so I purchased them both and let him pick. Of course he picked the Mini K.T. (which was secretly the one I wanted) and I now have a cute little Kung Fu Panda that loving follows me around and randomly decides to karate chop invisible foes.

With that being said, it seems the topic of buying these pets has been pretty popular around the forums, in trade chat and such. So here is my thoughts on the subject.

Blizzard has already stated they will not be selling, for real world currency, any item that has a substantial impact on game performance. You're not likely to be able to buy yourself into the highest end game gear and weapons. That would be an unfair advantage that most players would gawk at.

Yes, you're paying money for these cute little pets. But they aren't effecting game play any. You don't have to do it to enjoy the game.

Why did I do it? Well, unlike the author of Greedy Goblin, who seems to think, I'm buying them to keep up with the masses. I don't feel that my financial status is being evaluated if I don't have them. I don't think people are going to look down on me. I just like the pets.

Seriously, I found for awhile that was the main focus of my game. To collect any and all of the pets I could find. I even, for awhile, spent time collecting the playing cards in hopes that I would find one of them there. But to no avail. So I'd much rather pay $10.00 (US Dollars) to get the pet I want then to randomly buy playing cards that may not contain what I am looking for.

Then the question becomes...How is buying these pets any different then the other "options" Blizzard offers to it's players? They allow me to pay to change my name and my server. Is that different? Maybe. I can pay to change my Draenei into a human and gain the beneficial racial bonus allowing me to increase reputation with my factions faster. Then if I choose, when it's done, I can pay to change her back. Sheesh, I can even level my toon on a PvE server get them maxed level and then transfer to a PvP server and go about my ganking business without having to worry about being ganked myself while leveling. Not to mention I can decide at any minute I want to play Horde instead of Alliance and pay Blizzard to change the factions of any toon I want. So you tell me. How is this any different then allowing us to purchase special pets or mounts? None of the things listed are required...who does it hurt?

With that being said, I do think Blizzard is again exploiting a market in their game to generate more money for their huge empire. But do I blame them? No, not really. They have found a niche into a massive community and now most other gaming companies can't even touch it.

So, if you are buying the pets to "keep up with the Joneses" then you may have problems. If you're buying them, and can afford them, because you love the little guys then I say go for it! Whatever (legally) makes your game fun.

Play your way!

UPDATE: Hacked!

Well, Eto now has access to his account. As of last night, he had gotten his password changed and could log in.

The state of affairs is rather sad:
Etolani - Toon has his full healing set (which he was wearing last time he was played) All bank contents and bags were emptied and the toon was used for something, and left logged out in he middle of a random zone. We think, since he is a maxed level miner, that they were using him to do the underground mining. Why they didn't strip him of his healing set, I'm not sure, but we were thankful since it did allow him to at least be able to do dailies for some gold.

Ythane - Hacker was attempting to transfer the toon to another server, Blizzard was able to reverse it before it completed. His bags and bank were full of a few missing items from the guild and a TON of PvP gems and other PvP items. Sadly, he was not holding any of the gold that I assumed he would be. My thoughts were they were using him as the pack mule to get the gold
to another server. Since the transfer didn't make it through I was hopeful that he'd still have some of the stuff on him. But my curiosity is peaked as to why he was carrying so much PvP stuff since we checked the AH and most of it didn't appear to sell too well. Interesting indeed. Wonder what his final destination was suppose to be.

Rhatid, Deadkyn, Kynthia, Vessanna - All toons were stripped, left wearing any gear that couldn't be sold, mainly their PvP gear and tabards. Their bank and personal bags were stripped and sold as well. Kynthia attended the mandatory guild meeting last night in her PvP robes and no shoes, it was very sad.

Papagnome (banktoon) - Currently MIA. We assume this toon, as well as another level 1
name holder toon, had been deleted. Eto made a plea to Blizzard last night to get his bank toon back, since he was pretty fond of the name Papagnome.

Other Toons - None of his other toons, on any other server, had been touched. He had a couple of toons left on Bronzebeard. Mainly his level 71 Druid and a bank toon. These two were not touched. As I'm sure they weren't worth the hackers time since they didn't have anything worth much in their possession.

He did spend some time last night speaking with an in-game GM and was assured it had been escalated to a specialist for restoration. Normally, they advised, it takes between 3 - 5 days for a complete restore and all items, including guild bank items taken, can be restored. They will also investigate any missing characters so there is a chance he can have Papagnome back. Hearing this seemed to put him in a slightly better mood. I think with the addition of the authenticators we purchased yesterday, he may continue to play afterall.

Thanks for all the advice and support from here and the WoW_Ladies forum on livejournal. I do appreciate you all!

Oh - And welcome aboard Askver. We were so glad to meet you in game last night. Hope your raid went well and that we'll see you around occasionally!

Circle of Tanks

So I was tagged for this one....(thanks Askevar!) This should be fun.



Circle of Tanks?
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Kalyara, Frost DK, 15/51/05

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
10 man raids, heroics

What is your favorite tanking spell for your class and why?
Wow, this is a hard question. Honestly, I love all my DK tanking abilities. My all time favorites would have to be Unbreakable Armor, Death and Decay, Obliterate and Bloodboil. Why? Well obviously Death and Decay allows me to get aggro on multiple mobs at one time and in an AoE friendly game, that's important. Unbreakable Armor because with my already high Dodge/Parry percent and that added armor I feel the ultimate power when I watch my health meter NOT move. Obliterate because even as a tank...I can generate some decent damage every now and then. Bloodboil..because it's fun! =)

What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?
Tanking spell...hmmm. Not sure I have a specific tanking spell that I use the least. I love my Army of the Dead but sadly only get to use it and my ghoul (glyphed for of course) in last ditch efforts.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?
We do not need rage or mana!! Enough said. No down time for a DK tank!

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?
This one is a hard question for me. I haven't played any other tanking class personally. I have very little to compare it to. In my opinion, from what I do know of other tank classes, DKs are pretty well balanced in the AoE and single target fields. We do decent damage and generate decent threat from it. We also have respectable Dodge/Perry numbers even if we can't get the Block value. I'd say we have few weaknesses that I have come across.

In a raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
I think this depends on the other tanks in the group. Sadly, DKs make decent OTs because we can AoE tank. I hate this. I hate people assuming we have to be OT because we can AoE tank when the warrior/druid can't. But we do also make great one target tanks. I have ran VoA and other raids with a warrior/druid who held the adds easily while I MT the one target boss. So, we can go either way...as long as people don't "assume" we have to be the OT because we can AoE tank.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?

I am going to pick a DK of course. Since playing my boyfriends Paladin once or twice in a heroic doesn't really count as tanking experience, DK tanking is all I know.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?

If I had to "guess"...I don't like the idea of having to play a warrior or a druid tank. Mainly because the idea of having to get rage before I pull sounds like a pain to me.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
Forgetting my cooldowns. Yeah I'm really bad at that. I rely on Eto (my personal pocket healer) alot when it comes to saving my ass. My second worse habit...the yank ability. It drives people crazy. I'm pretty yank happy.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
Face pulling...dps pulling..."oh I can tank it". I get very angry if we have dps in the group that decide to pull for me. I also get aggravated when other DKs decide to yank something. You know what. I'm tanking, loose your yank button unless you're pulling off the healers/casters. I might also get aggravated with trigger happy DPS. *sigh* I have a lot of tanking pet peeves.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?
Yes. We're not as simple as Paladins but I think we're all pretty equal in the end. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. That's what makes each of us an asset.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
Omen. I leave and breath Omen and grid. I want to know if I'm loosing threat before it happens. I also rely on Eto a lot to let me know if someone has aggro since he stares at grid most of the fight, he knows as soon as some else gets the aggro indicator on their name.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
Death Knights are a "give me" class. They assume all DKs are worthless noobs. That makes me sad. I agree to some degree that getting a freebie level 55 toon gave us a lot of level 80s that have no idea how to raid/instance etc. But some of us really spent the time to learn the class and how to play it well. I hate when people assume everyone in a certain class is the same. Kind of like the "Huntards"...you can't group everyone together...we're not all the same.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
I think DKs have a disadvantage on this front. You start at level 55 and do not have as much time to get use to your spec as other classes. For this reason I think it's very important for a tank DK to start and level with the spec they intent to use at 80. Learn it and live it. It's the only way you can really understand it in 25 short levels.

Effective Health or Avoidance and why?
I like to balance between the two. But in the end I love health!

What tanking class do you feel you understand least?
Druids. I have played DKs, have a boyfriend that played a Paladin through BC and was guild leader for a warrior tank that needed a lot of help. So I've read a lot on warrior tanking. Druids...they just confuse me.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
Defense, defense, defense. After that I try to balance them out. I love Dodge more then parry, not sure why. In the end I tend to lean towards stamina a lot for gems. I figure if I am defensed capped and I have a decent avoidance rate then leave the rest up to my stamina. Give the healers a little extra room when I do get hit to heal me back up.