Thursday, July 12, 2012

Alts, Pugs, and Trinkets

After finishing my 10x85 project, and getting 9/10 through LFR, I started playing around on some of the other servers that I have characters on. I went back to Medivh, where I had a small personal guild and characters in another guild that belonged to a friend of mine. He hasn't played in over a year, and I've just been logging on there to keep control of the guild if he ever decides to come back. I rolled another druid, and started getting used to leveling while healing pugs without the benefit of any heirloom items. I managed to hook up with a nice level 25 guild, and healed a full clear of Gnomer with a guild group. It went a lot smoother than any pug run I've ever been on.

I had read Stubborn's post about his pugging woes, which gave me another excuse to roll some alts. I haven't rolled an alt on a new server in quite a while, and I had forgotten just how expensive everything can seem when you are just starting out. The first character that I rolled was a hunter. I went with a dwarf this time to check out the changes Cata brought to the low level areas. I was level 15 in very little time, even without heirlooms, and started pugging. Most of the runs seemed to be controlled chaos, where DPS chain pull mobs or "tanks" aren't in a protection spec. On some runs, there were people that would need on everything. Sometimes they would get called out, other times no one said anything. The queue times weren't too bad, about 7 to 8 minutes, which gave me time to work on leveling my professions as I waited.

Only needing on items that were an upgrade for me, I haven't had any issues gearing up. Between dungeon quests, satchels from pugs, and a lucky boss drop or two, I've steadily replaced almost all of my gear with blue items. I even have a pair of mail bracers in my bag for when I hit level 40. The only thing I haven't gotten yet are trinkets. There just aren't any low-level trinkets that either aren't profession specific or from PvP. The first one that drops from a boss is the dog whistle from Houndmaster Loksey. I think I ran that wing four times, and the whistle dropped twice. It isn't anything that would make a significant difference to my DPS, so I only rolled greed on it. When I finally got into Maraudon and killed Noxxion, the other low-level trinket dropped.

While the stats are nice for a tank, it isn't anything that can't be used by another class. As it is the only other trinket in the game that isn't profession specific, PvP, or heirloom, I don't see a problem with anyone rolling need on it. I rolled greed, because if it doesn't increase my DPS I couln't care less. The tank and one of the other DPS rolled need on it. The tank didn't win. The tank proceeded to just stand there. Didn't move, didn't D/C, didn't say anything, just stood there. After a few minutes of this, I initiated a kick. if you want to protest a roll, say something. Don't just sit there and waste my time. Especially for an item that has a 1 in 3 chance of dropping.