Really?!?

Most of the PuGs this week have gone quite well. There have been occasional hiccups where I’ve zoned into dungeons already in progress and expected a bad run, only to have everything move along without any problems. The vast majority of runs have been populated by people being nice and having fun. It has been great from a gameplay perspective, but it doesn’t leave me with anything to rant about here.

I did spend a good fifteen minutes in the DPS queue on my mage, only to zone into The Oculus where I had to wait another ten minutes to get a full party. When I got there, the first boss was dead and the rest of the party was at the drake cages. By the time I had gotten to them, the healer had dropped. Then the tank dropped group. After a minute another DPS dropped. I mounted my bronze drake and waited with the other DPS.

After the long wait we were rewarded with a healer that mounted another bronze drake. We suggested that he would be better served on a green one and he swapped it out. Our new tank had done this one several times in a row, and the last DPS had never run this particular dungeon. What could have been a horrible experience was instead fun and a helpful learning experience for the DPS that hadn’t been here before. We stayed grouped together for another random run after we easily downed Eregos. We breezed through Gundrak before I had to call it a night.

On my druid, I hit the jackpot. In my party was the stereotypical WoW jackass. It was a deathknight named Blood (with special characters in place of the o’s). He was not the tank. He pulled the first group of mobs before we even got the preliminary buffs out. During pulls, he would either death grip more adds or death grip one of the pack the tank was trying to round up. I don’t know why the tank didn’t say anything, but I stopped healing his stupid. He managed to stay alive, and when he let the tank initiate the pulls I started healing him again. I figured that he learned his lesson.

I was wrong.

When we got to the Maiden of Grief, he rushed in a got aggro on the boss. The tank managed to pull the boss off him before he died, and he must have used death strikes to get his health back up because I wasn’t about to heal him. When the bad stuff hit the floor, I popped hots on the entire melee – including the jackass. The tank pulled the boss out of the bad and to my surprise the jackass didn’t continue to stand in the bad. He did, however, back up and death grip the boss.

I let him die. I had given him a battle rez earlier in the run before I comprehended the totality of his jackassiness. The tank didn’t taunt the boss back. I guess he had finally had enough as well. After we drop the boss, I rez the jackass and we move on. He manages to pull agro on the last few mobs before the final boss, but is able to stay alive without my healing him. The intellect plate pants drop off the final boss and everyone rolls greed (no disenchanters on this run). One of the other DPS wins the roll. In chat the jackass says “give them to me”. The DPS that won just \lol’s at him and drops group. I resist the urge to verbally abuse him, and just silently thank him for making it easy to add him to my ignore list.

Ding! x2

I finally got around to hitting 85 on my priest and rogue this weekend. The priest was pretty easy, all it took was the daily fishing and cooking quests to put her over the top. The rogue to a bit more, as I still had about 65% left to go. With SotA as the weekend battleground, I managed to get some easy victories. It seems that if the horde doesn't get to the relic, they just give up. One time I managed to make it all the way to the relic chamber and click on the relic without getting attacked by a single opposing player!

I actually don't mind playing my rogue in PvP mode, mainly because I have some control in when I'm going to be in combat. I must admit to much guilty pleasure in killing off Horde rogues while they have their attention on attacking another player! I compared the XP and honor/valor gained by doing PvP versus PvE random runs, and I gain more doing random dungeons than battlegrounds after the first battleground win. I out of the six dungeon runs, I only saw Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle.

One Vortex run, the tank was completely new to tanking, allegedly, and made for an interesting run. No one got mad or rage quit, and we slowly made our way through. I was able to vanish on most of the wipes and save myself a little repair bill. We had 3 CCer's, but he didn't seem to notice. Several times he attacked either my sapped target or the mage's sheeped one. The hunter didn't even bother after his first frozen target was hit by the tank. The healer was nearly OOM after every big pull, and an inspection of the tank showed little to no tank gear - it was almost all DPS gear.

We discussed his gearing choices and resources he could get info via friendly chat, and it wasn't a show stopper unlike my first run of Vortex. After the first few pulls, the tank said that it wouldn't work with this healer and to kick him (the tank). This was followed immediately by recriminations by the healer, after which they both dropped group. Whe the other DPS and I were waiting for a new tank and healer, I checked the armory on the healer. Now I know what the tank saw. I don't play a holy paladin, but I don't think you can do very well as a healer with a combination of PvP DPS gear and PvE tank gear. It might work in pre-Cata runs, but not past level 80. I think he had one piece of INT gear and less mana than the paladin tank.

My last run of the night turned into a non-run. I zoned into the Stonecore. While still waiting on the other DPS to zone in, I noticed that the tank was the same "new" tank from one of my Vortex runs earlier in the day. I say allegedly "new" to tanking, because there was just something "off" about this guy. I don't know if he was honestly just learning, real young, or just trolling. Earlier I could only inspect about half of his gear in the UI. I also noticed that I couldn't seem to use Tricks of the Trade on him during my previous run. I had no issues with any other tanks, only him. I still could only inspect about half his stuff before the UI stopped popping up info, and again only on him. I don't know if there's an add-on that can block your stats from other players, but it just seemed weird to me. We were still sitting at the entrance five minutes later waiting for the last DPS to zone in, and the tank wanted the group to kick him, which they couldn't do because to the timer.

I finally got fed up with the antics and dropped group. I spent the deserter debuff doing archaeology, and filled the last two XP bars that way. The "noob" tank joined the PvP healer on my ignore list, and I logged out of my latest level 85 character.

10x85:
Hunter 85
Deathknight 85
Rogue 85
Priest 85
Warlock 80
Mage 79
Druid 76
Warrior 55
Paladin 58
Shaman 0

Summer's End

The last wekend of the summer was spent mostly traveling for a cookout with my family and a birthday/going away party with my wife's family. I took off Tuesday for a longer holiday weekend, but I didn't spend very much time playing. The weekend call to arms was Warsong, and I pretty much hate that battleground. I only did one, and even though we won I didn't enjoy it. I did a random on Tuesday, and after a lopsided loss in EotS and a confusing loss in Alterac I managed to get a win in a pretty quick Alterac match.

I don't think I can do more PvP than trying for a win on a daily random as I don't really enjoy it at all. I went back to healing PuGs and did six of the seven for the week. All that XP, plus a new set of bracers to boot! I did the Stormwind daily fishing and cooking quests, which pushed me up to level 75. The previous night I powerleveled jewelcrafting using supplies from my army of alts. I was going to finish and max it out, but mother nature had other plans.

We were just finishing dinner, when we heard a loud bang and the lights went out. I looked outside and saw something odd in the middle of the road. Closer inspection revealed it to be an insulator used to keep the power lines separate and supported on the main steel cable between the poles. There was another one on the ground, and a trail of them up and down the street. Further down the street, I could see a tree had fallen taking out the power lines and a parked car. Fortunately there were no injuries.

We had a supply of flashlights and candles and such from the hurricane prep last month, but there would be no WoW that night. After being serenaded to sleep by the dulcet tones of the neighbors generators and the power company's chainsaws, the lights came back on around 4 AM. Say what you will about the power company, they've been doing one heck of a job lately. After the hurricane, more than a million people were without power, and they manged to get it resolved rather quickly. They manged to get power restored to my street in little over eight hours, in the dark during a storm. Epic win in my opinion.

10x85:
Hunter 85
Deathknight 85
Rogue 84
Priest 84
Warlock 78
Mage 75
Druid 75
Warrior 55
Paladin 54
Shaman 0

After the Storm

We managed to make it through the hurricane without any issues, although there are several places in my town and the surrounding area where the wind took down trees and the runnoff flooded and washed out several roads.

10x85 Standings:

Hunter 85

Deathknight 85

Rogue 84

Priest 84

Warlock 78

Mage 75

Druid 73

Warrior 55

Paladin 54

Shaman 0

The PVP leveling is nice to break things up a bit, but it gets tedious quickly for me. I may just do a random battleground daily for the bonus and then go back to PUGs, questing, or boosting during the week. I did like the gains I made during the Call to Arms weekend, but I don't really enjoy PVP all that much.

Week in Rearview

I didn't get as much time to play this week as I would have liked, but I did get some quality time in the battlegrounds for my mage and druid. Even my lock got a little PvP done.  I managed to finish leveling my deathknight by leveling my archaeology. I'm still running Northrend dailies to pick up the last few peices of heirloom gear, along with the Firelands dalies on my main during the week.


10x85 status:

Night Elf Hunter (main) 85

Human Death Knight 85

Night Elf Rogue 84

Night Elf Priest 84

Gnome Warlock 77

Human Mage 75

Worgen Druid 72

Tauren Paladin 50

Worgen Warrior 49

Undecided Shaman 0 (currently throwaway bank mule)

Rainy Days and Mondays...

I've run a bunch of LFD pugs on my Paladin, with most of the groups being pretty decent. The occasional DPS that pulls is the exception instead of the rule. As I approached level 50, I decided to try a little PvP to shake things up. I'm not a PvPer, but I might change that up a bit. I'm not going to do more battlegrounds because it's something I really enjoy, but because it breaks things up from running the same dungeon over and over. It also seems to be the best way to acquire gear for level 85 unless Blizz stops being stingy with the Justice Points for WoTLK content. Why do Utgarde Keep seven times for 84 JP when one battleground will give the equivalent in honor on the weekend?

I will more than likely use the battlegrounds a lot more on my DPS toons because of the shorter queue. The LFG queues are just so damn long on them. I even ran a bunch of battlegrounds on my druid healer to test the waters. It was a lot more fun than several of the LFD runs, which had tanks who felt the need to speed pull through leveling dungeons. Maybe I'm just cranky and the only one who wants to loot or meet a quest objective. It's not fun for me as heals or DPS to have the tank out of line of sight and pulling the next group when I pause for a second to loot. The last few have been so bad that I can't find a pause to ask them to slow down. I guess I need to make a macro or just let them die once or twice. I don't feel like making a macro, so I guess it'll be the latter. At least as DPS in those situations, I have the luxury of not needing to be right back in action. Meh.

Looking at my roster, I did make some progress over the past two weeks on my 10x85 project:

Night Elf Hunter (main) 85

Human Death Knight 84

Night Elf Rogue 84

Night Elf Priest 84

Gnome Warlock 77

Human Mage 72

Worgen Druid 68

Tauren Paladin 50

Worgen Warrior 49

Undecided Shaman 0 (currently throwaway bank mule)

I will most likely do the 7 weekly LFD pugs on my tanks and healers just to keep in practice and for the bonus XP and gear, but I'll be doing a lot more battlegrounds on weekends to cap my honor and JPs. I'm still trying to decide what race to roll as my shammy, leaning towards a Goblin though because I don't have one on this server on any of my three accounts.

Holy Cow

I spent the past week mainly leveling a new Tauren paladin. I decided to try and have one of each class on my main account, which meant deleting my level 23 Troll druid. The only other Horde character I had on the server was another lowbie on one of my other accounts. I ended up deleting my 73 Ally deathknight and rerolled as an Orc. The deathknights' purpose is two-fold: acting as an AH mule and boosting through some content to finish quests and gear drops from dungeons.

I'm leveling this paladin as protection-spec, trying to use the LFD. I sent my DPS plate heirlooms to my new deathknight (you can use the mailbox in village in the phased starting area) and quickly got through the initial area, arriving in Orgrimmar just shy of level 60. I few down to the neutral AH and transferred some gold to my new mule.

The first thing I did after creating my new paladin was to mail my tanking gear, along with a one-handed and two-handed heirloom weapon. I used the two-hander for questing and the one-handed for tanking. WTB an heirloom shield - there was nothing on the Horde auction house, and the quest drop was pitiful. I managed to transfer one over via the neutral auction house without it getting snatched up. I quested up to level 15 rather quickly getting extra XP from the heirlooms, mining, and herbing. I made my way over to Orgrimmar and took up fishing and cooking for the daily quests.

I queued up and instantly got the LFD window. Ragefire went pretty smooth, and we finished with no problems. I used my booster/mule to run through a few more times to get a specific drop. I started to queue for a specific dungeon (Deadmines) to pick up a few more drops and because I knew it inside and out. The first run was interesting, as I zoned in to a dead first boss. It seems the last tank did not have a protection spec, sucked horribly, and was either booted or dropped group. We proceeded to finish the run without any problems. I re-queued again to pick up the quests, and had another run without any real issues.

I picked up my level 20 class quest, and boosted myself through Shadowfang Keep with my deathknight. I got a nice shield drop, but there was no way I could wear it with the Ally lion on it. BOA shield ASAP please!

On Friday I queued and got Wailing Caverns. Everything was going well until we dropped the first boss. I found myself sitting in the dark as the power went out. I went upstairs and watched the storm outside - lightning, thunder, massive wind, torrential rain. I later found out there was a funnel cloud spotted less than a mile from my house! the power eventually came back on, and I logged onto my main and ran a raid on Bastion of Twilight.

We did pretty well considering that the raid group was mainly ungeared alts. Between the nerfs and the experience of the raid lead, we one-shot our way through with one wipe on Captain Planet. We made several good attempts on Cho'gal, getting him to 80k on our best attempt. Considering that most of the raid had never done the fight before, and our melee heavy group it was pretty good.

The rest of the weekend was spent on the paladin. I tanked a successful run of wailing caverns, which is now much more linear than it used to be. I queued up again and got Stockades. The horde is left out in the cold as far as quests go there, like it was for my other non-Horde toons in Ragefire. I queued up again and got Blackfathom Deeps. I zoned in and we were already past the first boss, so my spider-sense was tingling.

We make our way to the second boss, and I notice the hunter pulling. I don't say anything, but I also don't help him. I figure if you're going to pull it, you can tank it. I just keep it in my sight in case it pulls off to the healer. We drop Gelihast, and start making our way up the hill. As we're moving along, I'm healing myself more than the healer is. He starts typing a "knock-knock" joke as we go, ending with "who's there", "not me" and dropping group. I added the ass to my ignore list and queued a replacement. One of the DPS had gone on ahead and gotten killed. One day he'll learn not to pull without a healer. Today was not that day.

We get a druid healer, buff up, and continue. We make it to the next Kelris, and I'm trying to control the pulls so we don't get swamped with adds. I have one AOE spell at my level, and it's on a 2 minute cool-down. I pull the boss, figuring that I can handle him and the two adds that are still up. I most likely would have had no problem, except the druid also lights one of the torches spawning a set of water elementals. We wipe.

We zone back in, and I say in chat that I have no real AOE at my level and to please let me initiate the pulls. We get back to the boss room, and I sneak around behind and grab the water elementals. I bring them back and we burn them down. We also burn down the last add that was walking around the room, and I ask the druid if he is going to heal or stay in kitty form for the rest of the fight. He shape-shifts back and says he'll heal. I pull the boss, and he lights the rest of the torches causing mass chaos and another wipe. I yell at him in chat and someone initiates a kick, which quickly passes. One of the idiot DPS also drops group. A new DPS zones in on me in the boss room (I ran back), another DPS drops. The last DPS is in another zone for almost 5 minutes. I let the new DPS now just what kind of fools he's playing with and re-queue us.

We get a mage and a priest, and the last DPS finally comes back. The mage kites some of the adds, while we focus down the rest. We continue on and drop the final boss. I still have some unfinished quests, so I grab my deathknight and run it again. Hopefully the next time I queue up, I won't get so many asshats.