This bloglike thing is becoming decidedly less Toes-y, I realize. There is just very little to say on the levels 32-40, I realize; me and comrade healing stream totem wage our silent battles, on some dungeons we get tanks, on other dungeons we tank with frost shock to get the remaining two dps groupmembers to get off their arses and nuke. I mean we in the sense of me and my totem, and me and the group in the latter examples.
I am neither British, nor a queen.
Liking the color pink is an entirely seperate matter.
Okay, I admit, that last bit was moderately entertaining, though. The tanking, not pink. Warrior-tank-orc left RFC after picking up some choice mail item, dead mage-san departed after receiving a nice cloth belt, leaving me, a kitty and a hunter. Go zookeeper me. The hunter had extremely.. experimental communication skills, but was competent. The druid had zero confidence in his bear skills initially, but was also competent.
Two competent but reluctant groupmembers? Good enough! Run in, totems, fire nova, frost shock, and start healing; the funny part being that I did not even have to heal every pull. It worked, though, and the cat got confidence to go bear (or was disgusted by my gross incompetency as shaman tank). Result was a slow, but extremely xp-licious run. 98% of a full level, making me 1.12 levels off 40 and chain heal.
I still dread getting Uldaman ever again, though.
Showing posts with label instance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label instance. Show all posts
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Friday, 26 February 2010
Ninety-Four Percent
Strangest things happen. This post is actually not tagged as interlude, nor anything else silly!
This is a post about Toesies the resto shammy doing an instance.
I'm scared, too.
Well, in truth, it started with an unsuccessful run in RFD. Or, rather, it was an excellent run until the first fork in the road.
One minor (unconscious) disagreement later, we had neatly and half silently (I could not type as I had to spamheal the tank who was fighting a boss) split into two neat fighting parties, one without any dps, one with a strong absence of healing and tanking.
The Half Full Party(tm) might want to portray it as two vivacious parties, one given to great dps, and one with excellent tanking and healing abilities!
One wipe later, the remaining warlock and I agreed to simply requeue for another dungeon. I figured, hey, RFD will be deprioritized now, odds are I'll get something lighter. SM is nice and bite-sized!
Or Uldaman.
Level 37 snuck up on me, and to me this meant "SM Cath soon, right?".
Not so much.
Sadly, the astute and presumably gentle reader will have realized that little truly interesting came of it.
We did, however, have an asshat rogue who needed on everything, plate included*, and proceeded to helpfully pull as much of the instance for us as he could - before vanishing and leaving them on us.
I think he could smell the kick coming.
[SadWarrior]: Seriously, can I have those shoes and that shield? Please? You can't even use them!
[Rogue]: Care. 200g?
[Toes]: Don't worry about that asshat, the kick lock expires in 2 min.
I think someone tipped him off. Competent Tank handled it, though, and the party went on.
Beyond this? My opinion that They Just Don't Make Them This Way Any More - as a fact, not as sadfaced nostalgic /wristfodder - was reinforced. Proof that Blizzard design philosophy has changed:
15 second sleeps.
Mobs with high passive spell reflect.
This guy.
While, then and there, I bashed my head against the keyboard, (I didn't. Keyboards are highly unhygienic) in hindsight, it's a nice change of pace. Next time, I'm also doing a tremor totem before that infernal sleep.
Still think I prefer 6 second cast shadow blasts, lethal flame strikes and suchlikes, though.
Final verdict: 7/10 will (have to) do again.
*I thought the system prohibited this, but this dashing swashbuckler ran off with plate boots and a shield.
This is a post about Toesies the resto shammy doing an instance.
I'm scared, too.
Well, in truth, it started with an unsuccessful run in RFD. Or, rather, it was an excellent run until the first fork in the road.
One minor (unconscious) disagreement later, we had neatly and half silently (I could not type as I had to spamheal the tank who was fighting a boss) split into two neat fighting parties, one without any dps, one with a strong absence of healing and tanking.
The Half Full Party(tm) might want to portray it as two vivacious parties, one given to great dps, and one with excellent tanking and healing abilities!
One wipe later, the remaining warlock and I agreed to simply requeue for another dungeon. I figured, hey, RFD will be deprioritized now, odds are I'll get something lighter. SM is nice and bite-sized!
Or Uldaman.
Level 37 snuck up on me, and to me this meant "SM Cath soon, right?".
Not so much.
Sadly, the astute and presumably gentle reader will have realized that little truly interesting came of it.
We did, however, have an asshat rogue who needed on everything, plate included*, and proceeded to helpfully pull as much of the instance for us as he could - before vanishing and leaving them on us.
I think he could smell the kick coming.
[SadWarrior]: Seriously, can I have those shoes and that shield? Please? You can't even use them!
[Rogue]: Care. 200g?
[Toes]: Don't worry about that asshat, the kick lock expires in 2 min.
I think someone tipped him off. Competent Tank handled it, though, and the party went on.
Beyond this? My opinion that They Just Don't Make Them This Way Any More - as a fact, not as sadfaced nostalgic /wristfodder - was reinforced. Proof that Blizzard design philosophy has changed:
15 second sleeps.
Mobs with high passive spell reflect.
This guy.
While, then and there, I bashed my head against the keyboard, (I didn't. Keyboards are highly unhygienic) in hindsight, it's a nice change of pace. Next time, I'm also doing a tremor totem before that infernal sleep.
Still think I prefer 6 second cast shadow blasts, lethal flame strikes and suchlikes, though.
Final verdict: 7/10 will (have to) do again.
*I thought the system prohibited this, but this dashing swashbuckler ran off with plate boots and a shield.
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Realizations
You don't need a tank to run an appropriate-level instance. Two pallies with 1300 hp and RF on is sufficient for SM Armory.
IRL, liberal amounts of candles will enhance any experience.
Non-Norwegians should mourn the fact that they don't have a source of bamsemums, daily.
Healing Stream Totem is a fairweather friend who shrinks back the second real work needs to be done; see above example on zero tanks.
I still dread Uldaman. I felt relief when I had to decline going Uldaman with my competent Armory group, because of time constraints.
Proof of magic in the real world: Newly made bed + good food late in the evening = 12-14 hours of unconsciousness.
Trolls wear both dresses and goggles best.
Aymee draws hunter t10 better than the game proper.
I Am Sugar.
IRL, liberal amounts of candles will enhance any experience.
Non-Norwegians should mourn the fact that they don't have a source of bamsemums, daily.
Healing Stream Totem is a fairweather friend who shrinks back the second real work needs to be done; see above example on zero tanks.
I still dread Uldaman. I felt relief when I had to decline going Uldaman with my competent Armory group, because of time constraints.
Proof of magic in the real world: Newly made bed + good food late in the evening = 12-14 hours of unconsciousness.
Trolls wear both dresses and goggles best.
Aymee draws hunter t10 better than the game proper.
I Am Sugar.
Friday, 12 February 2010
Outdated Models
I realize that the Scarlet Monastery is old.
I realize that the revamp of instance loot (Back in TBC was it?) was about shuffling stat points around, not about re-doing whole instances and changing the original intent of a boss's drops.
I realize that Library hardly holds the greatest collection of mail physical loot.
Herod is still an ass.
This also means I've access to SM Armory at last, and despite the little whinge there, the xp from the mobs is great. It's also pleasant in the sense that a decent tank will take nearly all the damage there is to tank - very little random damage in my experience.
Perhaps I finally have a chance of beating the sixth partymember. At the moment we usually fight for first place on healing done, I'm not even joking; last Lib it was 45% done by the totem.
Maxed out healing way and a new rank of healing wave equals ~1k heals. Sadly, this also means that trying to use it efficiently, meaning with no overheal, is the same as begging the tank to start crying "omg heal!" when they frequently have 1.5-2k hp.
Also realized the derivative glyph heal can crit. I am dreaming of double crits, but with my 7%ish crit chance, it's not likely to happen soon. And even less likely to happen when I need that 300 heal.
But when it happens, I will notice, and I will go into the kitchen and grab a soda to celebrate.
Because I never drink sugary beverages unless I've deserved them.
Now if you're done haranguing me about my sugar-ethics, I'll postpone the discussion on how a 0.49% chance occurence is a celebrationable occurrence on my part, and instead go grab a drink. I woke up over an hour ago and there's no sugar in my system.
I realize that the revamp of instance loot (Back in TBC was it?) was about shuffling stat points around, not about re-doing whole instances and changing the original intent of a boss's drops.
I realize that Library hardly holds the greatest collection of mail physical loot.
Herod is still an ass.
This also means I've access to SM Armory at last, and despite the little whinge there, the xp from the mobs is great. It's also pleasant in the sense that a decent tank will take nearly all the damage there is to tank - very little random damage in my experience.
Perhaps I finally have a chance of beating the sixth partymember. At the moment we usually fight for first place on healing done, I'm not even joking; last Lib it was 45% done by the totem.
Maxed out healing way and a new rank of healing wave equals ~1k heals. Sadly, this also means that trying to use it efficiently, meaning with no overheal, is the same as begging the tank to start crying "omg heal!" when they frequently have 1.5-2k hp.
Also realized the derivative glyph heal can crit. I am dreaming of double crits, but with my 7%ish crit chance, it's not likely to happen soon. And even less likely to happen when I need that 300 heal.
But when it happens, I will notice, and I will go into the kitchen and grab a soda to celebrate.
Because I never drink sugary beverages unless I've deserved them.
Now if you're done haranguing me about my sugar-ethics, I'll postpone the discussion on how a 0.49% chance occurence is a celebrationable occurrence on my part, and instead go grab a drink. I woke up over an hour ago and there's no sugar in my system.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Told You
Told me. Now we've seen the first multi-day pause, because I broke it by posting something unrelated-ish, serious and boring.
Sorry.
Since I make it my point to mention every single run I go to, let the scribes note that I have gone to SM GY, yet again. It netted me a horrendously insignificant un-chunk of xp, and served no purpose except to give me cause to post.
A warrior may or may not have asked a hunter to turn pet growl off.
A hunter may or may not have done so without further drama.
It's just how the mechanism that operates this blog works: I instance, then I post. Post about the instance? Not necessarily.
It's very opaque to me too.
Uneventfulness aside, I did notice one thing. Or, rather, I thought of one thing, but nothing made me wake up and "notice" it. I guess you could say it was remembered? Is it still noticed if nothing brings it to mind except its continued presence?
I still have the pleasant bright blue text. That's the thing I noticed. Or didn't.
It doesn't matter who I am on, and what I queue for; I have 2-4 roles*. Healer and/or tank and/or dps. Plus leader.
Well, "Guide", as they so diplomatically rename it in 3.2.2.
I never imagined myself wearing a tour guide cap or badge. But standing atop the mountains yelling "For Darnassus/Stormwind/Mulgore/Da Echo Isles, Mon!"? Definately!
No, not that, either. That was a joke.
I don't particularily like mountains, either. It's not that I dislike them, but it's the same with the sea; I appreciate the aesthetical and artistical quality, but they do not appeal to me on a personal level.
Whup, that was irrelevant. Curse my decision not to use backspace.
Why, then, do I always queue as leader?
Do I love tossing orders around?
As much as I love the sound of my own voice, I often shy away from responsibility.
Faster queue times?
I doubt it does as much, and research is still inconclusive**, but as I delight in the wait time farming minutes as dps, and always get instaqueue when I heal or tank, so no.
Am I trying to seperate myself from the others, pretend to be a cut above the rest?
Were I that deluded, it would still collide with me generally being quiet until provoked.
Faith in encyclopaedic knowledge of all instances?
"Yes", except as above, I don't really speak up unless someone asks or obviously doesn't know what they're doing.
I notice, but never care if the shiny bright blue text - new theory, vanity? Aha! - is mine or not, but I realize that if it actually worked; if the average player was more clueless and less afraid of asking questions for fear of being ostrachized, I would queue as "Guide" in a heartbeat.
Now, I do it because the color is pretty, apparently.
Moral of the 4am post***, beyond that I seriously need to stop using multiple stars to denote ridiculously unecessary footnotes; Guide/Leader system gives shiny text, is not being used as the name suggests because of passive hostile PuG environment.
And I truly wonder if the namechange will actually do anything. It's not so much critique and /"omg blizz" as it is
curiosity.
*1d3+1, the PnP Rp'er in me insists.
**I make a point of learning how the LFD system works, and I'm actually making good progress. May make a post on this?
***Had I a remotely normal sleep pattern, this would act as an excuse.
Sorry.
Since I make it my point to mention every single run I go to, let the scribes note that I have gone to SM GY, yet again. It netted me a horrendously insignificant un-chunk of xp, and served no purpose except to give me cause to post.
A warrior may or may not have asked a hunter to turn pet growl off.
A hunter may or may not have done so without further drama.
It's just how the mechanism that operates this blog works: I instance, then I post. Post about the instance? Not necessarily.
It's very opaque to me too.
Uneventfulness aside, I did notice one thing. Or, rather, I thought of one thing, but nothing made me wake up and "notice" it. I guess you could say it was remembered? Is it still noticed if nothing brings it to mind except its continued presence?
I still have the pleasant bright blue text. That's the thing I noticed. Or didn't.
It doesn't matter who I am on, and what I queue for; I have 2-4 roles*. Healer and/or tank and/or dps. Plus leader.
Well, "Guide", as they so diplomatically rename it in 3.2.2.
I never imagined myself wearing a tour guide cap or badge. But standing atop the mountains yelling "For Darnassus/Stormwind/Mulgore/Da Echo Isles, Mon!"? Definately!
No, not that, either. That was a joke.
I don't particularily like mountains, either. It's not that I dislike them, but it's the same with the sea; I appreciate the aesthetical and artistical quality, but they do not appeal to me on a personal level.
Whup, that was irrelevant. Curse my decision not to use backspace.
Why, then, do I always queue as leader?
Do I love tossing orders around?
As much as I love the sound of my own voice, I often shy away from responsibility.
Faster queue times?
I doubt it does as much, and research is still inconclusive**, but as I delight in the wait time farming minutes as dps, and always get instaqueue when I heal or tank, so no.
Am I trying to seperate myself from the others, pretend to be a cut above the rest?
Were I that deluded, it would still collide with me generally being quiet until provoked.
Faith in encyclopaedic knowledge of all instances?
"Yes", except as above, I don't really speak up unless someone asks or obviously doesn't know what they're doing.
I notice, but never care if the shiny bright blue text - new theory, vanity? Aha! - is mine or not, but I realize that if it actually worked; if the average player was more clueless and less afraid of asking questions for fear of being ostrachized, I would queue as "Guide" in a heartbeat.
Now, I do it because the color is pretty, apparently.
Moral of the 4am post***, beyond that I seriously need to stop using multiple stars to denote ridiculously unecessary footnotes; Guide/Leader system gives shiny text, is not being used as the name suggests because of passive hostile PuG environment.
And I truly wonder if the namechange will actually do anything. It's not so much critique and /"omg blizz" as it is
curiosity.
*1d3+1, the PnP Rp'er in me insists.
**I make a point of learning how the LFD system works, and I'm actually making good progress. May make a post on this?
***Had I a remotely normal sleep pattern, this would act as an excuse.
Monday, 18 January 2010
Found it.
Found what? Since I don't have car keys to lose, nor any dignity to speak of, I am naturally speaking of that insubstantial "challenge" I've chased since I realized Gnomeregan is ridiculously easy, falling damage aside.
No, tabbing back and forth between browser and WoW every sixth second does not constitute challenge.
I found a proper challenge in SM Library.
Naturally, this means I dinged 30, which was fantastic; Earthliving weapon is nice, a second glyph slot is very nice, and nature's swiftness is twice as wonderful as I thought it would be. That two minute cooldown really makes it a different spell than the druid version.
Oh, and grounding totem. God damn it is hot, and having access to something that can eat a spell without the potential of missing is great.
All in all, though, dinging didn't change too much. Despite these new toys and ranks, my healing toolkit is still rather limited, and the lack of chain heal and riptide* is quite well pronounced now. As ever, I lean on my healing stream totem to cover the splash - lil' thing's ticking for 25 now!
But yes. New Toes, the L30 edition, proper healing imbue on weapon, thus set out to fill her second glyph slot. Let's browse the potential candidates, discarding LHW, ES, CH, Mana Tide and Riptide, as I don't have the relevant spells for those yet.
That's a long list.
Earthliving, Healing Wave and Water Mastery.
That, however, is a short list. Color me unimpressed. I've no idea what color unimpressed most resembles, but I think it's something vaguely fuschia.
Being a manly man, I have no idea what a fuschia is, or how it tastes, by the way.
Lacking any proper active AoE healing, feeling that 4.5 mp5 wasn't terribly exciting, I opted for the healing wave glyph, and set out to conquer the Scarlet Monastery, now with new and improved Library taste.
If you're one of those people who read every line, you may already have received some hints as to whether or not I was challenged, but of course, the fun doesn't end there! We must analyze and overthink!
First, the dramatis personæ of these two Lib runs in rapid succession;
The Paladin Tank; An important character of the first part of the story, this handsome chaps buffs with a smile, does a smashing job of tanking, and occupies the dark, handsome silent type personality. He is a blood elf.
The Mage In The Background; Delivering fantastic dps, buffing, and never standing in the fire, this heroine is as competent as she is a feature of the scenery. In the hardcover book version of this story, she has a scene wherein she utters a word. This word did not make the cut to the blog adaption. She is also a blood elf.
The Druid DPS And Tank And Healer; Towards the second chapter of our story, this lovely female bovine becomes the main driving force of our likely** band of heroes as stellar dps, tank of the second half, and healing when our main character suffers under the curse of Oom. Being a tauren female means mad love, too.
The Warlock; At once occupying the realms of comedy and tragedy, this third blood elf takes the reins of comic relief, as well as sparking a devastating intra-party conflict between the two acts. He is naturally a blood elf as well.
The Second Warlock; After the Warlock's departure, this replacement, apparently the identical twin in all but color on Recount of The Mage In The Background, does actually know how to play.
Our Hero; On a quest to discover who she really is, and test out a really slick new glyph, this restoration-specialized shaman is terribly skilled and good looking to boot.
Act One
Party, except for Warlock: Hi, excellent looking and no doubt fantastic people***!
Warlock: go go go go go go go go go go go go
Warlock: go go go go go go go go go go go go
Our heroes bravely vanquish the first dozen of soldiers in a monumentally big battle wherein grounding totem proves its worth numerous times. Toes discovers to her pleasure that the glyph of healing wave proves perfect for situations where there is heavy tank damage and some casters have aggro on her.
Toes: Mana break, please
Warlock: k
Warlock: k
Warlock: k
Warlock: k
Warlock: k
Party, except for increasingly disliked Warlock: please stop spam?
Warlock: k
Warlock: k
The party continues to smash apart the Library wing of the Monastery, destroying many thousands of gold coins worth' of books, something that would have saddened Toes if she could read. The eminent healer notices that the warlock, possessed of slightly more than half her hit points, has a penchant for hellfiring regardless of the number of enemies faced. This causes her much consternation.
Toes: Warlock, could you please cut down on the hellfiring when there's lots of damage going around?
Warlock: okay i dont do hellfire
This would turn out to be a lie. Faced with such skullduggery, Toes remained resolutely silent, noticing that the Druid was shifting out to assist healing far more often as a result, which, while appreciated, was making her wonder if they thought her a bad healer.
The warlock proved his mettle, or lack thereof, by judicious amounts of standing around afk as his companions yelled for help, and by helpfully running into new rooms and around corners to die. He was much appreciated by the party for this.
So much, in fact, that they decided that the warlock, after such an intense effort, could have a break, and let them do the rest.
Not, however, before the last remaining human in the Library was slain, where Toes learned to appreciate the newer expansions where 8-10 second silences are considered a little rude.
Party, except Warlock who just got a one way ticket out of party: We like eachother, and we will do this again.
Party, still not including warlock: Yes we do!
Act 2
As Act 1, minus warlock, with druid tanking instead.
End.
On a more sincere and straightforward note, it is fantastic to heal, pulling every trick (and grenades) out of your bag, and realize at the end of a fight that if I had not been a troll, with my fantastic 20% haste panic button, the tank would have splatted.
The glyph did nearly 60% overheal, but I still consider it highly useful.
Nature's swiftness saved our arses more often than I thought, and was always off CD when I needed it.
If anything let me down, it was earthliving - I didn't really know what to expect, and 2-3% healing done isn't bad, but I suppose it's more a chain heal + blessing of the eternals thing than it is tank healing condusive.
Last, I've finally met a "bad" player of the kind you always talk about. I'm not pleased about it, nor displeased: He didn't hurt our run too much. If anything, I'm a little sad that he got kicked, all things said. I think that's for another post though. This is already ridiculously long, so I'm gonna end this riiiiight-
Here.
*Not that I have healed a lot on my 80 shaman, but I have tried it and I know the holes when I see them.
**We queued through the LFD. It doesn't get likelier than that.
***This may be a slightly liberal transcription.
Goddamn footnotes.
No, tabbing back and forth between browser and WoW every sixth second does not constitute challenge.
I found a proper challenge in SM Library.
Naturally, this means I dinged 30, which was fantastic; Earthliving weapon is nice, a second glyph slot is very nice, and nature's swiftness is twice as wonderful as I thought it would be. That two minute cooldown really makes it a different spell than the druid version.
Oh, and grounding totem. God damn it is hot, and having access to something that can eat a spell without the potential of missing is great.
All in all, though, dinging didn't change too much. Despite these new toys and ranks, my healing toolkit is still rather limited, and the lack of chain heal and riptide* is quite well pronounced now. As ever, I lean on my healing stream totem to cover the splash - lil' thing's ticking for 25 now!
But yes. New Toes, the L30 edition, proper healing imbue on weapon, thus set out to fill her second glyph slot. Let's browse the potential candidates, discarding LHW, ES, CH, Mana Tide and Riptide, as I don't have the relevant spells for those yet.
That's a long list.
Earthliving, Healing Wave and Water Mastery.
That, however, is a short list. Color me unimpressed. I've no idea what color unimpressed most resembles, but I think it's something vaguely fuschia.
Being a manly man, I have no idea what a fuschia is, or how it tastes, by the way.
Lacking any proper active AoE healing, feeling that 4.5 mp5 wasn't terribly exciting, I opted for the healing wave glyph, and set out to conquer the Scarlet Monastery, now with new and improved Library taste.
If you're one of those people who read every line, you may already have received some hints as to whether or not I was challenged, but of course, the fun doesn't end there! We must analyze and overthink!
First, the dramatis personæ of these two Lib runs in rapid succession;
The Paladin Tank; An important character of the first part of the story, this handsome chaps buffs with a smile, does a smashing job of tanking, and occupies the dark, handsome silent type personality. He is a blood elf.
The Mage In The Background; Delivering fantastic dps, buffing, and never standing in the fire, this heroine is as competent as she is a feature of the scenery. In the hardcover book version of this story, she has a scene wherein she utters a word. This word did not make the cut to the blog adaption. She is also a blood elf.
The Druid DPS And Tank And Healer; Towards the second chapter of our story, this lovely female bovine becomes the main driving force of our likely** band of heroes as stellar dps, tank of the second half, and healing when our main character suffers under the curse of Oom. Being a tauren female means mad love, too.
The Warlock; At once occupying the realms of comedy and tragedy, this third blood elf takes the reins of comic relief, as well as sparking a devastating intra-party conflict between the two acts. He is naturally a blood elf as well.
The Second Warlock; After the Warlock's departure, this replacement, apparently the identical twin in all but color on Recount of The Mage In The Background, does actually know how to play.
Our Hero; On a quest to discover who she really is, and test out a really slick new glyph, this restoration-specialized shaman is terribly skilled and good looking to boot.
Act One
Party, except for Warlock: Hi, excellent looking and no doubt fantastic people***!
Warlock: go go go go go go go go go go go go
Warlock: go go go go go go go go go go go go
Our heroes bravely vanquish the first dozen of soldiers in a monumentally big battle wherein grounding totem proves its worth numerous times. Toes discovers to her pleasure that the glyph of healing wave proves perfect for situations where there is heavy tank damage and some casters have aggro on her.
Toes: Mana break, please
Warlock: k
Warlock: k
Warlock: k
Warlock: k
Warlock: k
Party, except for increasingly disliked Warlock: please stop spam?
Warlock: k
Warlock: k
The party continues to smash apart the Library wing of the Monastery, destroying many thousands of gold coins worth' of books, something that would have saddened Toes if she could read. The eminent healer notices that the warlock, possessed of slightly more than half her hit points, has a penchant for hellfiring regardless of the number of enemies faced. This causes her much consternation.
Toes: Warlock, could you please cut down on the hellfiring when there's lots of damage going around?
Warlock: okay i dont do hellfire
This would turn out to be a lie. Faced with such skullduggery, Toes remained resolutely silent, noticing that the Druid was shifting out to assist healing far more often as a result, which, while appreciated, was making her wonder if they thought her a bad healer.
The warlock proved his mettle, or lack thereof, by judicious amounts of standing around afk as his companions yelled for help, and by helpfully running into new rooms and around corners to die. He was much appreciated by the party for this.
So much, in fact, that they decided that the warlock, after such an intense effort, could have a break, and let them do the rest.
Not, however, before the last remaining human in the Library was slain, where Toes learned to appreciate the newer expansions where 8-10 second silences are considered a little rude.
Party, except Warlock who just got a one way ticket out of party: We like eachother, and we will do this again.
Party, still not including warlock: Yes we do!
Act 2
As Act 1, minus warlock, with druid tanking instead.
End.
On a more sincere and straightforward note, it is fantastic to heal, pulling every trick (and grenades) out of your bag, and realize at the end of a fight that if I had not been a troll, with my fantastic 20% haste panic button, the tank would have splatted.
The glyph did nearly 60% overheal, but I still consider it highly useful.
Nature's swiftness saved our arses more often than I thought, and was always off CD when I needed it.
If anything let me down, it was earthliving - I didn't really know what to expect, and 2-3% healing done isn't bad, but I suppose it's more a chain heal + blessing of the eternals thing than it is tank healing condusive.
Last, I've finally met a "bad" player of the kind you always talk about. I'm not pleased about it, nor displeased: He didn't hurt our run too much. If anything, I'm a little sad that he got kicked, all things said. I think that's for another post though. This is already ridiculously long, so I'm gonna end this riiiiight-
Here.
*Not that I have healed a lot on my 80 shaman, but I have tried it and I know the holes when I see them.
**We queued through the LFD. It doesn't get likelier than that.
***This may be a slightly liberal transcription.
Goddamn footnotes.
Friday, 15 January 2010
They say a picture says more than a thousand words
Frankly, I think that either means you have a cluttered UI, a very talented junkyard photographer with a wide angle lens, or a very, very bad writer prone to repetition.
Nevertheless, I took my buddy, Healing Stream Totem(tm), as you may recall from earlier hit classics such as "I glyphed my totem and then she left me lonely" and "Three talent points and half my life".
Now the hussy went and backstabbed me.
By outhealing me.
In all sincerity - a commodity with which I've little experience, truth be told - I did try to see how hard I can lean on that totem nowwalevels, though never so bad that any partymember ever said something along the lines of "omg heal?!?"
That was yesterday's Gnomer, though. One marked change in my healing now is that I got a new rank of LHW, which suddenly makes it my most efficient heal until I get a new rank of HW. Or a few levels on when I spec healing way.
I'm technically one day behind, writing wise, or a day ahead, dungeon wise, but I'm confident nothing noteworthy will happen tonight, and that the run will be efficient and dull.
This isn't me baiting fate.
No sir.
Late night edit: Success. Gnomeregan, balance druid in bearform, wipe due to another L24 druid peering over the edge in one of the tunnels and pulling a Gnome Train of Doom. Three people talking in their own language severely enraging fourth partymember. Disband after wipe. Good things come to those who pray, and those who tempt fate, well. We get this.
Nevertheless, I took my buddy, Healing Stream Totem(tm), as you may recall from earlier hit classics such as "I glyphed my totem and then she left me lonely" and "Three talent points and half my life".
Now the hussy went and backstabbed me.
By outhealing me.
In all sincerity - a commodity with which I've little experience, truth be told - I did try to see how hard I can lean on that totem nowwalevels, though never so bad that any partymember ever said something along the lines of "omg heal?!?"
That was yesterday's Gnomer, though. One marked change in my healing now is that I got a new rank of LHW, which suddenly makes it my most efficient heal until I get a new rank of HW. Or a few levels on when I spec healing way.
I'm technically one day behind, writing wise, or a day ahead, dungeon wise, but I'm confident nothing noteworthy will happen tonight, and that the run will be efficient and dull.
This isn't me baiting fate.
No sir.
Late night edit: Success. Gnomeregan, balance druid in bearform, wipe due to another L24 druid peering over the edge in one of the tunnels and pulling a Gnome Train of Doom. Three people talking in their own language severely enraging fourth partymember. Disband after wipe. Good things come to those who pray, and those who tempt fate, well. We get this.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Two Instances, One Troll
Realizing that most, if not all (count on me being able to lose track after five or six runs) instance runs so far have been done past midnight, I decided to mix it up with a morning run!
Morning, for me, can be anything before six pm.
Sadly, this changed very little. Gnomeregan, competent warrior tank, omnipresent paladin, warlock who existed only to summon the almost-equally-omnipresent hunter after the token mage had a mainstream disconnect.
See how much more dreary that sounded with a few sneaky words before each class?
Disappointed, but not surprised - it is a very small statistical sample - I figured that I felt like chasing that elusive Challenge. I missed doing SFK at an appropriate level, something I am really sad about, so perhaps we can cheat a little? Queue for a specific instance?
You won't rat me out, I am sure.
I don't even know who you are.
Grab a beer after work?
I don't even drink, you insensitive bastard!
So I decided to queue for SM Graveyard, apparently having just gotten high enough to lick the minimum level of its queue bracket with my freakishly long tongue. Atleast I have a theory I have one such, but until Blizzard finally realizes the full potential of the /rasp emote, we will never know.
My first SM GY experience was great for my professions. Rather; the lack of my first SM GY experience, which occupied an impressive timespan, was. While I do make an effort to minimize out-of-instance xp, some kills are unavoidable, such as when mining in Thousand Needles/1KN/Wonky Need-Less.
On topic of 1KN: I am considering making an alert when I gain the "daze" debuff triggering the sound of waterfalls and wind through long grass. It's a last ditch effort to keep me from rerolling warrior and setting all my keybinds to bloodrage.
Graveyard truly was like an embarassing tumble in the bushes. Quick. Silent. Noone asked if we should go again.
But I did find a challenge.
If I have to enter groups where everyone is orange and red to me, where mobs smell my fear and come charging towards me as if we were connected by inch-thick rubber bands, all to get a challenge, I will.
I just don't want it to have to be SM GY, I realize now.
Place's as linear and boring as trash novels of the worst kind.
Morning, for me, can be anything before six pm.
Sadly, this changed very little. Gnomeregan, competent warrior tank, omnipresent paladin, warlock who existed only to summon the almost-equally-omnipresent hunter after the token mage had a mainstream disconnect.
See how much more dreary that sounded with a few sneaky words before each class?
Disappointed, but not surprised - it is a very small statistical sample - I figured that I felt like chasing that elusive Challenge. I missed doing SFK at an appropriate level, something I am really sad about, so perhaps we can cheat a little? Queue for a specific instance?
You won't rat me out, I am sure.
I don't even know who you are.
Grab a beer after work?
I don't even drink, you insensitive bastard!
So I decided to queue for SM Graveyard, apparently having just gotten high enough to lick the minimum level of its queue bracket with my freakishly long tongue. Atleast I have a theory I have one such, but until Blizzard finally realizes the full potential of the /rasp emote, we will never know.
My first SM GY experience was great for my professions. Rather; the lack of my first SM GY experience, which occupied an impressive timespan, was. While I do make an effort to minimize out-of-instance xp, some kills are unavoidable, such as when mining in Thousand Needles/1KN/Wonky Need-Less.
On topic of 1KN: I am considering making an alert when I gain the "daze" debuff triggering the sound of waterfalls and wind through long grass. It's a last ditch effort to keep me from rerolling warrior and setting all my keybinds to bloodrage.
Graveyard truly was like an embarassing tumble in the bushes. Quick. Silent. Noone asked if we should go again.
But I did find a challenge.
If I have to enter groups where everyone is orange and red to me, where mobs smell my fear and come charging towards me as if we were connected by inch-thick rubber bands, all to get a challenge, I will.
I just don't want it to have to be SM GY, I realize now.
Place's as linear and boring as trash novels of the worst kind.
Would you rock the boat?
My first idea for the title was "Don't rock the boat", the second impulse/idea was "We don't go to Razorfen Kraul". Shortly following these was a brief realization that they were both bad titles, one was a simple saying, the other a done-to-death rehash of a quote.
Now I'm counterproductively munching sugar-based consumables to try to calm down before this goes two steps further and I end up in a nihilistic mindset and ragedelete this all.
I hate titles.
Today's late night dungeon was Razorfen Kraul - the clever reader may already have guessed this - and thoroughly pleasant. Now to destroy that pleasure by overanalyzing it!
This is where I expect myself to say "Just kidding", but I'm not quite sure.
I even took notes.
In truth, I've been anticipating RFK for a bit - I saw it as a potential challenge what with the totem forests, mana burns and potential for "whoops" in all the z-level fun, Gnomeregan edge-peek style.
Sadly, and I think I may be sincere in that regret on some level, we got a tank. Descendeth onto Azeroth from high heaven, this titan of a warrior showed uncanny dedication to his role. Heck, just staying in defensive stance would have sufficed, but he went all the way. The champ even used an elixir.
And he was an obvious keyboard-turner and clicker.
Now, I don't mean this condescendingly, but god bless his little massive enraged heart for it. At this point, it doesn't really matter, and good enough is good enough. I'm hardly an example of perfection myself. My faults mainly come in form of mental inhibitors that won't let me heal if it's gonna be an overheal, even if my mana is full. Among other things. Sounds like a post of its own, actually.
To end the major detour here; As a result of this, it was decidedly not a challenge. Aggro was mostly on the tank, the dps knew what they were doing, sans hard-cast pyroblasts so nothing to comment on there, but chat was unusually active.
In Greek*.
See, I didn't mind at all. Me, the silent warrior and the even silent-er ret paladin were just running around doing our thing, and this mage and hunter combo would suddenly stop and fire off a stream of unintelligible letters, then carry on. They were perfectly capable of either whispering eachother if it was private, or using English if it wasn't.
Obviously I was missing something. Noone said "English plz", though, and judicious ding'ing was rewarded with grats'es from them, and when I commented that the tank was doing a great job, they pitched in with praise in as understandable Engrish as any.
Some annoying bats and pigs later, the final boss went down, and there was this air of expectation as we stood before the jump down to the escort quest. The second I asked, three yes'es and a stoic, agreeing silence confirmed that we liked eachother enough to attempt an escort quest together.
Truthfully, it's not even remotely hard. It's just a thing most people have for escort quests.
Or rather, a thing they have for not doing escort quests.
Suddenly, party chat became a lot livelier. The air of "We are signed up together do do a dungeon" dispersed and was replaced by a pleasant fume saying "We're an instance group doing a quest together", which was far more condusive to chat!
That, or people were fat and happy with their loot bags. Go third pair of enhancement gloves!
Jokes about pork roast, me being forced to make a song while I mined an iron vein, the next five minutes were an unusually jolly time. And then;
Mage: how do you say when you need pause for mana?
Me: Just saying "mb" or mana break usually does the trick
Warrior: Yeah :)
Wait. One. Minute.
These weren't just "new to the game" or a little eccentric. Or bad.
They were actual, real new players.
I've teamed with so many heirloom-bedecked people by now that when I see a person, I immediatly assume it's an alt. When I see badly geared lowbie, I think poor/underprioritized alt. Here, there was a decent chance that they didn't even know how to whisper.
I wish that bit of the story had a more interesting end than my surprise.
That's pretty much it. "Wow!". Also, it was nice to know people still join the game from scratch and seemingly enjoy it. End of.
Of course you didn't stop reading when I said go away.
Actually, if you're not reading this, you're either very gullible, very polite, or extremely easily distracted.
If you just needed a break, that's fine too.
My to-write-list had one final note. And the title still doesn't make sense, does it? Of course it doesn't, it's a question.
Among friends, I am probably known for two rather contradictory traits; Lootwhoring and shying away from taking loot. Well, more than that, hopefully, probably and sadly, but among traits, two that are relevant, except for my sexy droning dulcet voice.
I am probably the first person to browse datamined raidloot, to find what I want, and to obsess about it. "I hope that item drops.", "Damn, no item today either."
I'm also extremely quick to roll for offspec. Commonly I roll before it goes to offspec and have to apologize for my finger slipping. That /roll is ready before I see what the item even is.
Lastly, I am the first to pass if anyone else needs something. If it's a bigger upgrade for someone else. If someone else has not had loot for a while. If I've already had loot. I'll pass.
Not trying to blow my own horn here, I'm making a point.
Besides, I'm not that stretchy.
Loot in low level instances is a sketchy affair. There are daggers with spirit and no spellpower, there are robes with so much pure crit that a hunter is tempted.
When you then have an obviously new player, know that very few people take too kindly to too much advice in one helping, and are pressed for time, my stance becomes that of "Don't rock the boat."
Sorry. This linking thing is a disease.
I did not lie when I said I started writing for myself, but asking questions into thin air seems part of it, then; Would you rock the boat?
Those robes did in fact drop. The hunter and the mage both needed (triggering the longest stream of gibberish moonspeak yet), and while I'm an avid follower of the "stick to your damn armorclass you ninja!" stance, my current chestpiece is the second-to-last remaining piece of enhancement loot*. And it's ugly as sin***.
Would you need and try to explain that they are in fact Good For You(tm), or would you rather not have that discussion? Requeue time as a healer is hardly an issue, but it's all theoretical.
*This may be an application of "Greek" in the sense of "I've no freaking idea", but I think it may actually have been Greek.
**Not an excuse, I know.
***This, however, is.
Now I'm counterproductively munching sugar-based consumables to try to calm down before this goes two steps further and I end up in a nihilistic mindset and ragedelete this all.
I hate titles.
Today's late night dungeon was Razorfen Kraul - the clever reader may already have guessed this - and thoroughly pleasant. Now to destroy that pleasure by overanalyzing it!
This is where I expect myself to say "Just kidding", but I'm not quite sure.
I even took notes.
In truth, I've been anticipating RFK for a bit - I saw it as a potential challenge what with the totem forests, mana burns and potential for "whoops" in all the z-level fun, Gnomeregan edge-peek style.
Sadly, and I think I may be sincere in that regret on some level, we got a tank. Descendeth onto Azeroth from high heaven, this titan of a warrior showed uncanny dedication to his role. Heck, just staying in defensive stance would have sufficed, but he went all the way. The champ even used an elixir.
And he was an obvious keyboard-turner and clicker.
Now, I don't mean this condescendingly, but god bless his little massive enraged heart for it. At this point, it doesn't really matter, and good enough is good enough. I'm hardly an example of perfection myself. My faults mainly come in form of mental inhibitors that won't let me heal if it's gonna be an overheal, even if my mana is full. Among other things. Sounds like a post of its own, actually.
To end the major detour here; As a result of this, it was decidedly not a challenge. Aggro was mostly on the tank, the dps knew what they were doing, sans hard-cast pyroblasts so nothing to comment on there, but chat was unusually active.
In Greek*.
See, I didn't mind at all. Me, the silent warrior and the even silent-er ret paladin were just running around doing our thing, and this mage and hunter combo would suddenly stop and fire off a stream of unintelligible letters, then carry on. They were perfectly capable of either whispering eachother if it was private, or using English if it wasn't.
Obviously I was missing something. Noone said "English plz", though, and judicious ding'ing was rewarded with grats'es from them, and when I commented that the tank was doing a great job, they pitched in with praise in as understandable Engrish as any.
Some annoying bats and pigs later, the final boss went down, and there was this air of expectation as we stood before the jump down to the escort quest. The second I asked, three yes'es and a stoic, agreeing silence confirmed that we liked eachother enough to attempt an escort quest together.
Truthfully, it's not even remotely hard. It's just a thing most people have for escort quests.
Or rather, a thing they have for not doing escort quests.
Suddenly, party chat became a lot livelier. The air of "We are signed up together do do a dungeon" dispersed and was replaced by a pleasant fume saying "We're an instance group doing a quest together", which was far more condusive to chat!
That, or people were fat and happy with their loot bags. Go third pair of enhancement gloves!
Jokes about pork roast, me being forced to make a song while I mined an iron vein, the next five minutes were an unusually jolly time. And then;
Mage: how do you say when you need pause for mana?
Me: Just saying "mb" or mana break usually does the trick
Warrior: Yeah :)
Wait. One. Minute.
These weren't just "new to the game" or a little eccentric. Or bad.
They were actual, real new players.
I've teamed with so many heirloom-bedecked people by now that when I see a person, I immediatly assume it's an alt. When I see badly geared lowbie, I think poor/underprioritized alt. Here, there was a decent chance that they didn't even know how to whisper.
I wish that bit of the story had a more interesting end than my surprise.
That's pretty much it. "Wow!". Also, it was nice to know people still join the game from scratch and seemingly enjoy it. End of.
Of course you didn't stop reading when I said go away.
Actually, if you're not reading this, you're either very gullible, very polite, or extremely easily distracted.
If you just needed a break, that's fine too.
My to-write-list had one final note. And the title still doesn't make sense, does it? Of course it doesn't, it's a question.
Among friends, I am probably known for two rather contradictory traits; Lootwhoring and shying away from taking loot. Well, more than that, hopefully, probably and sadly, but among traits, two that are relevant, except for my sexy droning dulcet voice.
I am probably the first person to browse datamined raidloot, to find what I want, and to obsess about it. "I hope that item drops.", "Damn, no item today either."
I'm also extremely quick to roll for offspec. Commonly I roll before it goes to offspec and have to apologize for my finger slipping. That /roll is ready before I see what the item even is.
Lastly, I am the first to pass if anyone else needs something. If it's a bigger upgrade for someone else. If someone else has not had loot for a while. If I've already had loot. I'll pass.
Not trying to blow my own horn here, I'm making a point.
Besides, I'm not that stretchy.
Loot in low level instances is a sketchy affair. There are daggers with spirit and no spellpower, there are robes with so much pure crit that a hunter is tempted.
When you then have an obviously new player, know that very few people take too kindly to too much advice in one helping, and are pressed for time, my stance becomes that of "Don't rock the boat."
Sorry. This linking thing is a disease.
I did not lie when I said I started writing for myself, but asking questions into thin air seems part of it, then; Would you rock the boat?
Those robes did in fact drop. The hunter and the mage both needed (triggering the longest stream of gibberish moonspeak yet), and while I'm an avid follower of the "stick to your damn armorclass you ninja!" stance, my current chestpiece is the second-to-last remaining piece of enhancement loot*. And it's ugly as sin***.
Would you need and try to explain that they are in fact Good For You(tm), or would you rather not have that discussion? Requeue time as a healer is hardly an issue, but it's all theoretical.
*This may be an application of "Greek" in the sense of "I've no freaking idea", but I think it may actually have been Greek.
**Not an excuse, I know.
***This, however, is.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Handicap
In the sense of eating and watching/listening (mostly watching, truthfully) to MLG's HD stream.
Yak yak beastcleave blah blah protwarrior etc, this really isn't the place/blog for that.
I love beastcleave.
Sorry.
What it did do was add a real element of challenge to this fifth run, being another Gnomeregan. Being short on time I was silently praying "Not Gnomer" as I queued up.
Which was folly as that is the surest way in which to get a queue to Gnomeregan, if you follow leading pessimist theories. This one had a few differences;
-Complete lack of even a semblance of a tank. We had a paladin with RF on, but that was about as far as it went.
-"Out of Combat" did not exist as a term.
-Noone knew where we were going.
Try connecting the dots and see what you think the resulting run looked like.
The word chaos springs to mind. And then builds a weekend palace.
The lock went through more VW sac shields than I could count and did not understand the function of single target damage. This was handy because the enh shaman was very proud of his new fire nova aoe, too. The paladin tagged along, and we ran around with the pure, single-minded determination of the truly clueless.
Quoth the shaman when we found ourselves having run to the back entrance of Gnomeregan, "Lol".
And then you realize something that I have known but never offered a lot of thought before. You really, really don't need a tank. This isn't a "With a competent healer, an enh shaman/moonkin/other mid-armor class can tank". The warlock did most of the tanking. We weren't very overleveled, we didn't employ any CC. Pure damage.
Not quite sure what to actually make of this realization though, all it means for me is that when the tank is, hm, to put it diplomatically, "suboptimal*", the run isn't a wash. This is good.
Except during queueing. Think about it. Most of times you queue, you will sit there with that lonely dps blip for a bit, then you get two friendly dps blips joining you and all is merry. Until it gets boring. You consider leaving, perhaps, after far too long in a queue, and then, like a ray of purest light from the heavens, a healer descendeth upon thee. Now you just need the tank. Surely that can't take too long?
If you didn't laugh, bitterly or in earnest humor, or atleast smile, I don't think we're gonna get along very well.
Point is, healers are rareish, but tanks are far rarer. For low level dungeons, as long as you don't have four mages**, tanks really are optional. Why not reflect that in the queue system and make groups without a tank?
Of course, the counterargument is that warrior and paladins and whatnot of the dps persuasion can just queue as tank as well and let the twohanded swings fly.
I wish more people did that.
Until I ding 80, at which point I'll castrate them with my claws.
*Not 2h enh shaman PvE suboptimal. "I like spell pen" ret pally suboptimal.
**Unless they're good kiters. Hmm. This deserves more thought.
Yak yak beastcleave blah blah protwarrior etc, this really isn't the place/blog for that.
I love beastcleave.
Sorry.
What it did do was add a real element of challenge to this fifth run, being another Gnomeregan. Being short on time I was silently praying "Not Gnomer" as I queued up.
Which was folly as that is the surest way in which to get a queue to Gnomeregan, if you follow leading pessimist theories. This one had a few differences;
-Complete lack of even a semblance of a tank. We had a paladin with RF on, but that was about as far as it went.
-"Out of Combat" did not exist as a term.
-Noone knew where we were going.
Try connecting the dots and see what you think the resulting run looked like.
The word chaos springs to mind. And then builds a weekend palace.
The lock went through more VW sac shields than I could count and did not understand the function of single target damage. This was handy because the enh shaman was very proud of his new fire nova aoe, too. The paladin tagged along, and we ran around with the pure, single-minded determination of the truly clueless.
Quoth the shaman when we found ourselves having run to the back entrance of Gnomeregan, "Lol".
And then you realize something that I have known but never offered a lot of thought before. You really, really don't need a tank. This isn't a "With a competent healer, an enh shaman/moonkin/other mid-armor class can tank". The warlock did most of the tanking. We weren't very overleveled, we didn't employ any CC. Pure damage.
Not quite sure what to actually make of this realization though, all it means for me is that when the tank is, hm, to put it diplomatically, "suboptimal*", the run isn't a wash. This is good.
Except during queueing. Think about it. Most of times you queue, you will sit there with that lonely dps blip for a bit, then you get two friendly dps blips joining you and all is merry. Until it gets boring. You consider leaving, perhaps, after far too long in a queue, and then, like a ray of purest light from the heavens, a healer descendeth upon thee. Now you just need the tank. Surely that can't take too long?
If you didn't laugh, bitterly or in earnest humor, or atleast smile, I don't think we're gonna get along very well.
Point is, healers are rareish, but tanks are far rarer. For low level dungeons, as long as you don't have four mages**, tanks really are optional. Why not reflect that in the queue system and make groups without a tank?
Of course, the counterargument is that warrior and paladins and whatnot of the dps persuasion can just queue as tank as well and let the twohanded swings fly.
I wish more people did that.
Until I ding 80, at which point I'll castrate them with my claws.
*Not 2h enh shaman PvE suboptimal. "I like spell pen" ret pally suboptimal.
**Unless they're good kiters. Hmm. This deserves more thought.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Tomatoes, cucumber, salami and bread.
In a non-special special, today threatened to be incredibly boring, pulling my second Stockades run so far. It was a depressingly simple thing, meaning it incorporated all the things you expect of a lowbie run; disconnect, subsequent fourmanning, and me and two dps staying behind to kill another pull to grab that ding - 25 in my case!
Probably initially subconsciously, after having read Pink Pigtail Inn's recent post on the anonymity and businesslike manner of pugs, I endeavoured to make it a little chatty.
Which failed horrendously seeing as how a Stockades "run" takes about eight minutes.
Those quotation marks, should you be curious, are saying, in a sort of indignant and probably high pitched voice, oh so it's all just beeline to the important boss nowwadyas eh, well, when I was young..
Voice doesn't have much of a point in an instance that has not yet grasped the concept of loot, though. The only real drop from Stockades* is from a rare spawn.
I realize by now that I've spent half a page saying that there was nothing to say.
Not sure what to make of that.
I'm halfway watching/listening to MLG's saturday thing.
So I figured, let's do another. There has to be something more interesting out there. Something to write about.
Like Gnomeregan.
You just know when that loading screen - which I have not seen before - pops up, that there's gonna be a story. Or multiple ones.
Problem is, catastrophies are good reading, success stories aren't, apparently.
You sick bastards.
No, sadly, I got a tank - 5 copper if you can guess which class - who clearly knew what he was doing in every sense, i.e. taking charge and pointing the way through the entire instance, choosing some funky paths I am pretty sure never existed before he gazed upon them. It may have been a space-time continuum tunneling bear.
The other option being that someone knows anything in this game better than me - even Gnomeregan - is clearly not even half as likely.
Toss in two stable dps, and one unstable dps in a pally who heroically involunteered** to find out how much damage the explosion on the cave collapse event does (answer: enough to kill a 1200hp pally) to be replaced by a warrior of the stable, silent variety. End result is a 30 minute Gnomeregan clear.
There's not a lot to say about any specific happenings in that run, since the druid tank calmly handled every sticky situation admirably. No deaths were had, not even when the warlock peered over the edge in one of the tunnels, rewarding us with a Train of Doom. It was a rather social and nice group with "Nice healing!" and "Nice tanking!" being outnumbered only by polite grats'es on dings. Instead of commenting on minutinae with no relevance, I thought I'd say a few words on the state of healing as a resto shammy at this point. The point, currently, is L25.
First off: I have no AoE heal. For a shaman, specifically, this means I lack my laser heal. Since, while mana cost scales smoothly with level now, - as a step taken to prevent downranking - I pretty much prefer whichever heal of LHW and HW is the recentmost upgraded, rankwise. For me, this means I am sitting around waiting for someone to take 450 damage so a HW doesn't overheal.
The result here, I expect, will be that people sit around 70% and cry "omg heal!". It hasn't happened yet, but it damned well will. Walk it off, soldier, I say!
Of course, it's not that bad. Enter healing stream totem!. I went so far as glyphing it, and I am prioritizing talenting it too. Having a passive 12 hp per tick, 6hps, partywide for a pittance of mana does wonders to patch up the wounds that an actual heal would partially overheal, destroying my mana.
I love the damn thing.
And yes, I generally forget to bring drinks, so mana is a concern for me. I'm sure this makes me a bad healer, but so far I've managed fine by the occasional drink I loot. Today I found two melon juice during the run, and I tell you, I was never happier for an epic than for those two consumables.
Another interesting aspect of relying on Healing Wave, as my most efficient heal at the moment, is that I actually find myself spending a lot of time in combat, out of the five second rule. Spirit is actually helping a damn lot, and as an mp5 caster, it feels very wierd but a little good and funny too. Were this at 80, I would probably be dps'ing if I had a ten second period where no healing was needed.
Instead, I stand around looking doing my best impression of a deer caught in headlights, then killed in the crash, but gently, so that the hobby-taxidermist who ran it over is able to save it, and places it in Gnomeregan, for some reason.
Point is, doing nothing can be damn comfortable. It may be my motivation for pumping that talent to 3/3 as soon as possible.
Four down, still only one death, still no horrible experiences, and at least one downright pleasant run. I'm almost disappointed, but plenty more dungeons to go at any rate!
*Meaning: With a pleasant blue color.
**Volunteered, involuntarily. Basic wordsmithing.
Probably initially subconsciously, after having read Pink Pigtail Inn's recent post on the anonymity and businesslike manner of pugs, I endeavoured to make it a little chatty.
Which failed horrendously seeing as how a Stockades "run" takes about eight minutes.
Those quotation marks, should you be curious, are saying, in a sort of indignant and probably high pitched voice, oh so it's all just beeline to the important boss nowwadyas eh, well, when I was young..
Voice doesn't have much of a point in an instance that has not yet grasped the concept of loot, though. The only real drop from Stockades* is from a rare spawn.
I realize by now that I've spent half a page saying that there was nothing to say.
Not sure what to make of that.
I'm halfway watching/listening to MLG's saturday thing.
So I figured, let's do another. There has to be something more interesting out there. Something to write about.
Like Gnomeregan.
You just know when that loading screen - which I have not seen before - pops up, that there's gonna be a story. Or multiple ones.
Problem is, catastrophies are good reading, success stories aren't, apparently.
You sick bastards.
No, sadly, I got a tank - 5 copper if you can guess which class - who clearly knew what he was doing in every sense, i.e. taking charge and pointing the way through the entire instance, choosing some funky paths I am pretty sure never existed before he gazed upon them. It may have been a space-time continuum tunneling bear.
The other option being that someone knows anything in this game better than me - even Gnomeregan - is clearly not even half as likely.
Toss in two stable dps, and one unstable dps in a pally who heroically involunteered** to find out how much damage the explosion on the cave collapse event does (answer: enough to kill a 1200hp pally) to be replaced by a warrior of the stable, silent variety. End result is a 30 minute Gnomeregan clear.
There's not a lot to say about any specific happenings in that run, since the druid tank calmly handled every sticky situation admirably. No deaths were had, not even when the warlock peered over the edge in one of the tunnels, rewarding us with a Train of Doom. It was a rather social and nice group with "Nice healing!" and "Nice tanking!" being outnumbered only by polite grats'es on dings. Instead of commenting on minutinae with no relevance, I thought I'd say a few words on the state of healing as a resto shammy at this point. The point, currently, is L25.
First off: I have no AoE heal. For a shaman, specifically, this means I lack my laser heal. Since, while mana cost scales smoothly with level now, - as a step taken to prevent downranking - I pretty much prefer whichever heal of LHW and HW is the recentmost upgraded, rankwise. For me, this means I am sitting around waiting for someone to take 450 damage so a HW doesn't overheal.
The result here, I expect, will be that people sit around 70% and cry "omg heal!". It hasn't happened yet, but it damned well will. Walk it off, soldier, I say!
Of course, it's not that bad. Enter healing stream totem!. I went so far as glyphing it, and I am prioritizing talenting it too. Having a passive 12 hp per tick, 6hps, partywide for a pittance of mana does wonders to patch up the wounds that an actual heal would partially overheal, destroying my mana.
I love the damn thing.
And yes, I generally forget to bring drinks, so mana is a concern for me. I'm sure this makes me a bad healer, but so far I've managed fine by the occasional drink I loot. Today I found two melon juice during the run, and I tell you, I was never happier for an epic than for those two consumables.
Another interesting aspect of relying on Healing Wave, as my most efficient heal at the moment, is that I actually find myself spending a lot of time in combat, out of the five second rule. Spirit is actually helping a damn lot, and as an mp5 caster, it feels very wierd but a little good and funny too. Were this at 80, I would probably be dps'ing if I had a ten second period where no healing was needed.
Instead, I stand around looking doing my best impression of a deer caught in headlights, then killed in the crash, but gently, so that the hobby-taxidermist who ran it over is able to save it, and places it in Gnomeregan, for some reason.
Point is, doing nothing can be damn comfortable. It may be my motivation for pumping that talent to 3/3 as soon as possible.
Four down, still only one death, still no horrible experiences, and at least one downright pleasant run. I'm almost disappointed, but plenty more dungeons to go at any rate!
*Meaning: With a pleasant blue color.
**Volunteered, involuntarily. Basic wordsmithing.
Posting for Pain and Profit
Or, "Things never change", or "Speak not, lest you have something to say".
Or, "Lookit those totems go".
Actually, I was saving that first title for something more painful, but this will have to suffice for now - first PuG death came at the second instance, BFD being the main course for the evening, and I finally screwed up.
Now don't get your panties in a horsey bunch or something; it was a well-intended screwup! I had a fairly nondescript, regular BFD with a druid tank who had a very hands-off approach to tanking (literally, I believe he did not have his hands on the keyboard at all) and some dps who were too good at what they were doing.
The result was smooth sailing, until the druid tank dinged and promptly, immediatly left.
This'd be a blow if, you know, he was actually tanking. He was more of a moderate-aggro dps. Think bad ret pala with RF on.
In line with title suggestion #2, we were immediatly treated to a second druid, who did a very good job; yet again, progress, until the room where Twilight Lord Kelris lurks. If you are familiar with the room*, you will probably, hopefully anyways, assume that we did funky pulls and wiped. We didn't. We did sensible (double) pulls, the boss went down like a sack of food based on unleavened dough.
Um. And yes, we clicked all the four braziers at once.
Wait! I'm confident we could have handled that despite those severely overpowered elementals. I know this because we pulled everything at once after that excruciatingly slow resrun, and proceeded to kill them all.
God I love wind shear.
The astute reader may also have observed my love for linking to wowhead stuff.
Still here?
Not deterred or distracted enough to forget that I wiped us?
Damn.
These here pants dropped from the boss, twelve seconds prior. As the warlock had kindly let me grab the cloth belt from the previous boss, I was very cautious to ask if he needed that, but I pounced when I saw him greeding. It went something like this.
Toes: You don't want those either? Mind if I nab them?
Warlock: Just take them.
Spirit schmirit, I had pants with enhancement stats on them, go Toes, go need!
Warlock: Spirit isn't good for lock.
[Warlock casts lifetap.]
At this point, we have multiple problems. The first one is that he's wrong; sure, Fel Armor isn't exactly right around the corner for a L22 warlock, but spirit tap has a 400% spirit coefficient, and if he thinks I am a bigger fan of spirit at this point than him, then clearly I have to let him know. I'm not such an ass as to simply take it and chalk it up to his loss.
You may have notice I said multiple problems, and that this is hardly a problem.
Well, first problem is that people generally don't like being told how to play. Being told how to gear is remarkably similar, even if it's the reverse of people claiming gear they don't want.
Me: Actually, I don't like spirit that much either, but it has good int and sp, if you want them I can trade them over np!
The second problem is a result of these being very many letters, and a little thoughtwork. I'm a rather fast typer, but you know what's faster than this process?
Tank: OH GOD MY I CAN SEE MY SPLEEN!
This is not a literal transcription anymore, by the way.
The answer is; Clicking four braziers and running to the other side of the statue.
Now, noone complained too loudly except at the length of the resrun from southern Darkshore, I said out straight that I was sorry about it all, mentioning LoS to soften the extremely hard edge of blame on myself. Shameless, I know.
Last boss was a laugh, I have a new belt and pants. Sidenote, which almost deserves its own post; Call of Water is a long ass quest. First time it was exciting, but now, less so. Considering glyphing healing stream totem though. Tomorrow I shall look into it. Two dungeons completed, one wipe!
*And have become so without an overleveled char nearby.
Or, "Lookit those totems go".
Actually, I was saving that first title for something more painful, but this will have to suffice for now - first PuG death came at the second instance, BFD being the main course for the evening, and I finally screwed up.
Now don't get your panties in a horsey bunch or something; it was a well-intended screwup! I had a fairly nondescript, regular BFD with a druid tank who had a very hands-off approach to tanking (literally, I believe he did not have his hands on the keyboard at all) and some dps who were too good at what they were doing.
The result was smooth sailing, until the druid tank dinged and promptly, immediatly left.
This'd be a blow if, you know, he was actually tanking. He was more of a moderate-aggro dps. Think bad ret pala with RF on.
In line with title suggestion #2, we were immediatly treated to a second druid, who did a very good job; yet again, progress, until the room where Twilight Lord Kelris lurks. If you are familiar with the room*, you will probably, hopefully anyways, assume that we did funky pulls and wiped. We didn't. We did sensible (double) pulls, the boss went down like a sack of food based on unleavened dough.
Um. And yes, we clicked all the four braziers at once.
Wait! I'm confident we could have handled that despite those severely overpowered elementals. I know this because we pulled everything at once after that excruciatingly slow resrun, and proceeded to kill them all.
God I love wind shear.
The astute reader may also have observed my love for linking to wowhead stuff.
Still here?
Not deterred or distracted enough to forget that I wiped us?
Damn.
These here pants dropped from the boss, twelve seconds prior. As the warlock had kindly let me grab the cloth belt from the previous boss, I was very cautious to ask if he needed that, but I pounced when I saw him greeding. It went something like this.
Toes: You don't want those either? Mind if I nab them?
Warlock: Just take them.
Spirit schmirit, I had pants with enhancement stats on them, go Toes, go need!
Warlock: Spirit isn't good for lock.
[Warlock casts lifetap.]
At this point, we have multiple problems. The first one is that he's wrong; sure, Fel Armor isn't exactly right around the corner for a L22 warlock, but spirit tap has a 400% spirit coefficient, and if he thinks I am a bigger fan of spirit at this point than him, then clearly I have to let him know. I'm not such an ass as to simply take it and chalk it up to his loss.
You may have notice I said multiple problems, and that this is hardly a problem.
Well, first problem is that people generally don't like being told how to play. Being told how to gear is remarkably similar, even if it's the reverse of people claiming gear they don't want.
Me: Actually, I don't like spirit that much either, but it has good int and sp, if you want them I can trade them over np!
The second problem is a result of these being very many letters, and a little thoughtwork. I'm a rather fast typer, but you know what's faster than this process?
Tank: OH GOD MY I CAN SEE MY SPLEEN!
This is not a literal transcription anymore, by the way.
The answer is; Clicking four braziers and running to the other side of the statue.
Now, noone complained too loudly except at the length of the resrun from southern Darkshore, I said out straight that I was sorry about it all, mentioning LoS to soften the extremely hard edge of blame on myself. Shameless, I know.
Last boss was a laugh, I have a new belt and pants. Sidenote, which almost deserves its own post; Call of Water is a long ass quest. First time it was exciting, but now, less so. Considering glyphing healing stream totem though. Tomorrow I shall look into it. Two dungeons completed, one wipe!
*And have become so without an overleveled char nearby.
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Foreword
Which is completely and utterly daft since, with the way blogs work, this will quickly become the aftword. But I feel I am entitled to a little daftness inbetween my incredibly sensible choices.
Such as rolling picking up an old, forgotten L22 shaman on a server where I no longer know anyone, after reading Pugging Pally. I am not quite sure whether this counts as plagiarism and bad form, or if I can chalk it up to being inspired - truthfully, I'm counting on the latter.
At any rate, and in the end, I mostly write for myself. And seeing as how I had half an hour to spare earlier today, the misadventures of Toesies the shaman begun!
I have an 80 main; In fact, I have several. More than you can shake an unwieldy and large portion of a tree vaguely shaped as a stick, at. I play a lot, and I alt a lot, and the consequence is that I've done quite a damn few instances. I do not like fresh-out-of-my-bum estimates and such, but I'm surely up to three digits since 3.3 in pure PuG as far as heroics done go.
After the dreams (and nightmares) detailed by other people so unfortunate as to have characters below 70, I was not quite sure what to expect, queueing up for a random dungeon as healer and dps. I was expecting and hoping for something that wasn't a 13 minute L80 heroic, at least.
In that, at least, it delivered.
Don't get me wrong; it went swimmingly, and in ways I had not anticipated, but it went so damn smooth that I feel I should queue and queue again until I have a sufficiently wierd/bad experience! Alas, for now, I had time only for one instance, as mentioned, and said instance was Stormwind Stockades.
I'm quite sure that's the full name, and it certainly deserves capitalization.
Or is that Capitalization?
The first druid tank was good enough, in that I neither went oom nor did anyone else die, and the dps consisted of a barely-comprehending/comprehensible warrior with true fury in his blood.* The last two spots were taken by a duo of warlocks slightly overlevelled (and thus overaggroing) for the instance.
First thought: Mana Matters. The ten drinks I thought I had espied upon opening my bags quickly before accepting the port turned out to be something quite different. The two warlocks were lifetapping merrily, and it turns out that even "resto specced" - I use quotation marks because I don't feel I got a lot of return for those 12 talent points - I take approximately 8 healing waves to go oom. That or 13-14 LHW's.
A minor adjustment (telling the locks to please bandage or eat up, or I'd have to port for drinks) later, that was solved. Go diplomatic me, eh. Then the tank left, with no warning. It'd gone perfect up until this point.
I feel the paranthesis to my double dots flipping around, but without hesitation the locks, who for the record I would have pegged for a dualboxer if they had not chatted with eachother**, suggested we go voidswalkers and carry on.
Voidwalkers are summoned, the raging warrior is caught up with and healed, bless his eager heart, and we are nearly done when a druid joins us. I realize with a little mental frown that healing his 2k health from zero to joyfully full would take me 60% of my mana pool.
Boss, or bosses - it's Stockades, who can tell - are killed, loot is not had, as it is still Stockades, and goody bags reward the druid with moonkin leather, me with feral/enha leather, and the group disbands, but not before someone comments, "Quickest goody bag ever".
That's when I had my second thought for the day. This really isn't something I'm used to. I usually hop on new stuff in WoW on day 0, and I'm almost always the guy with the tacs. This? Alting old world instances? Not my field, and god damn is that ever sweet.
Stockades cleared, ding 23, and Toesies says "Hi!" while glancing nervously at big scary bear. Apparently.
*This was evident when the first tank left, when he hardly seemed to notice, and kept charging on.
**Schizophrenic dualboxers are notoriously rare.
Such as rolling picking up an old, forgotten L22 shaman on a server where I no longer know anyone, after reading Pugging Pally. I am not quite sure whether this counts as plagiarism and bad form, or if I can chalk it up to being inspired - truthfully, I'm counting on the latter.
At any rate, and in the end, I mostly write for myself. And seeing as how I had half an hour to spare earlier today, the misadventures of Toesies the shaman begun!
I have an 80 main; In fact, I have several. More than you can shake an unwieldy and large portion of a tree vaguely shaped as a stick, at. I play a lot, and I alt a lot, and the consequence is that I've done quite a damn few instances. I do not like fresh-out-of-my-bum estimates and such, but I'm surely up to three digits since 3.3 in pure PuG as far as heroics done go.
After the dreams (and nightmares) detailed by other people so unfortunate as to have characters below 70, I was not quite sure what to expect, queueing up for a random dungeon as healer and dps. I was expecting and hoping for something that wasn't a 13 minute L80 heroic, at least.
In that, at least, it delivered.
Don't get me wrong; it went swimmingly, and in ways I had not anticipated, but it went so damn smooth that I feel I should queue and queue again until I have a sufficiently wierd/bad experience! Alas, for now, I had time only for one instance, as mentioned, and said instance was Stormwind Stockades.
I'm quite sure that's the full name, and it certainly deserves capitalization.
Or is that Capitalization?
The first druid tank was good enough, in that I neither went oom nor did anyone else die, and the dps consisted of a barely-comprehending/comprehensible warrior with true fury in his blood.* The last two spots were taken by a duo of warlocks slightly overlevelled (and thus overaggroing) for the instance.
First thought: Mana Matters. The ten drinks I thought I had espied upon opening my bags quickly before accepting the port turned out to be something quite different. The two warlocks were lifetapping merrily, and it turns out that even "resto specced" - I use quotation marks because I don't feel I got a lot of return for those 12 talent points - I take approximately 8 healing waves to go oom. That or 13-14 LHW's.
A minor adjustment (telling the locks to please bandage or eat up, or I'd have to port for drinks) later, that was solved. Go diplomatic me, eh. Then the tank left, with no warning. It'd gone perfect up until this point.
I feel the paranthesis to my double dots flipping around, but without hesitation the locks, who for the record I would have pegged for a dualboxer if they had not chatted with eachother**, suggested we go voidswalkers and carry on.
Voidwalkers are summoned, the raging warrior is caught up with and healed, bless his eager heart, and we are nearly done when a druid joins us. I realize with a little mental frown that healing his 2k health from zero to joyfully full would take me 60% of my mana pool.
Boss, or bosses - it's Stockades, who can tell - are killed, loot is not had, as it is still Stockades, and goody bags reward the druid with moonkin leather, me with feral/enha leather, and the group disbands, but not before someone comments, "Quickest goody bag ever".
That's when I had my second thought for the day. This really isn't something I'm used to. I usually hop on new stuff in WoW on day 0, and I'm almost always the guy with the tacs. This? Alting old world instances? Not my field, and god damn is that ever sweet.
Stockades cleared, ding 23, and Toesies says "Hi!" while glancing nervously at big scary bear. Apparently.
*This was evident when the first tank left, when he hardly seemed to notice, and kept charging on.
**Schizophrenic dualboxers are notoriously rare.
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