These past two weeks have been a little boring for me.
I get home from work around 7pm pacific and log on to my JC'ers. yes, it's plural. grab the successful sales and relist the gems i didnt sell. i sell four gems at a time, but since i have most of the cuts, my acutions usually end up being about 100 total. (i get annoyed when a new seller decides to put 50 fractured amberjewels up, only to be undercut in 3 minutes by someone else. its annoying yet funny. they dont add anything to the market besides dropping prices. people are so impatient these days.) anyway, back to my topic. i then will not log on to any of my 85s to see if anyone will do the harder dungeons with me. instead, i log on to my worgen hunter alt (created two weeks ago) or my goblin shaman alt (created a month ago) to level up. and i have to tell you, its pretty boring. its soooo boring i dont know what to tell you. actually i do. here.
low level grinding goes like this: getting a level appropriate quest, which leads me to level appropriate mobs and quest objectives, which leads to boredom. it was this way before but it seems really bad now. on my hunter, i've only died once. the battle starts off with a steady shot, followed by a concussive shot and then some arcane shots. serpent sting doesnt even last that long so i skip it. then, by the time i am halfway done with a zone, my five levels higher, ready for another zone or two. its pretty bad. its pretty dull. there's no challege. the only challege i have is to figure out where my new spells will go on my action bar. seriously. that's it.
I also queue for dungeons hoping that it will give me some challenge. However, it only exacerbates the problem by giving me a whole experience bar's worth of experience in ONE dungeon. but even then, its a little more difficult. for one, there's random people of random experience trying to work together. sometimes it gels well. sometimes its a total disaster. most of the time we work through it. i'd say 25% disaster, 25% awesome groups and 50% not optimal. the not optimal groups will have a combination of undergeared tank, healer with no water, mage that does half the usual damage/dps, afk'ers, people getting lost, at least a couple of wipes, etc. you get the picture. there's room for improvement, it its not a total disaster. so 75% of the time i'm having a decent time. but it's still boring.
after getting my rotations together (yes, hunters still use a rotation even though we have "priorities".) rotations only comes out a certain way because i am trying to do two things. 1) regen focus. 2) maintain haste buff. the remainder just comes in between. its easy. its pretty boring. its still somewhat fun to learn, and fun to adapt to the situation. but honestly, the challenge isnt really the dungeon or the bosskill. the challenge is really dealing with the various groups i've been in.
that's the real challege. it tests my patience and challenges me to use my defensive cooldowns. that's the only fun times i get. so far, i have disengage and fiegndeath with wingclip and concussive shot to keep the guys away. i'll get a few more abilities soon. i need to start using my traps more. but yes, rotation is boring. maybe that's the way it was designed. by now i have my rotations down and i dont really need to think about it. i still need to keep my focus and buffs up. but that isnt hard to do at all.
I was talking to a guildie yesterday who told me that hunter dps was boring to him. he has one at high levels but it's still very boring. maybe i was just "new" to this hunter thing and it kept me going for a while. i still think its fun to be a hunter but totally boring to go through content, again and again with zero challenge. maybe that's the issue. we're bored. we go through too much easy content. i went through scholomance yesterday with my girlfriend. we were both dps. we had a decent tank and healer combo and we carried the last dps. it was new to go through the whole experience with a tank that actually line-of-sights mobs to avoid grabbing the whole room. it's very refreshing to see the tank talk in chat that certaim mobs are immune to this or that. wow. challenge! sort of. we still facerolled everything. boring.
My guildie also said something that i thought should never be the case. he auto-shoots most of the fights and still wins. i was not going to try that in the groups i was in, mainly because i figured trying to be as good as my gf in dps requires more than auto-shots. but overall, the feel is the same. i can go through the entire dungeon doing auto-shots and still come out OK. i mean the mage we carried through the dungeon with 1/2 the dps me and my gf were doing was doing OK. i mean i could have just dropped my dps to almost nothing too and still benefit the same. but then, i'll be even more bored.
and i am trying. i really am. i am trying to keep sane but i have no desire to go through another night of mindless dps. i have no desire to sit there for four hours thinking how maybe i should add a new shot into my boring rotation. heck, i might as well level using the target dummies. because that's how it feels right now.
So here's the story. i made a new shaman to learn to dps as enhancement. im learning the spells and stuff and its going well. i am just dreading the next 60 levels because it will simply be the same thing over and over again. the only challege will be trying to work with bad groups. the shaman is also a guild leader in a guild that i was hoping to form and make better. but my girlfriend had different plans. that's OK i guess. but she went ahead and made some alliance characters. now there's a problem. we cant play together if that's the case. and to top that, its on a different realm. so what's the point of playing an MMO of we cant play together? right. so i just put the guild project on hold so she can level her toons. i guess. i dont know why i am even playing alliance. so i picked the best looking alliance character (they're all dumb looking, really they are.) and ended up rolling a worgen. female. the males are dumb looking. as an afterthought, i guess i could have rolled a dwarf, but i figured that's too close to the true american human form it makes playing a dwarf a little creepy.
so i made a worgen hunter to play with my gf over on Ravenholdt US. i figured why the hell not. it's new. its not as dumb looking (excluding the casting animation), and its got that "horde" feel. you know that feeling where you're the underdog, the outcast, the refugees? well that's basically the horde. the more refined, civilized and cultured peoples with broomsticks in their asses? that's the alliance. so with that reasoning, i picked a worgen. they're outcasts, misunderstood and fighting for survival as a people and as a species, i guess. they're made refugees after the whole ordeal with the forsaken, and that's when it began to become boring... because somehow we become night elves and played along helping them in darkshore, ashenvale and stonetalon. yea. pretty epic. /sarcasm.
So back to the grind i go. uninteresting lore. uninteresting quests. uninteresting everything. doing the worgen starting quests was great. levels 1-14 done. it was fun. now i have to go through a new world of dullness because someone put the difficulty on too low. honestly, i enjoy a good challenge. i really like working hard to figure out a dungeon or a boss. i get way more satisfaction from spending time learning to beat a boss with a group i am given than dinging four times in one night. dinging four times might be great, but i did almost nothing to get it (in all honesty, leveling in and of itself is an illusion of progressing, almost to the point of delusion in WoW). killing a boss that wiped the group five times? that feels like an accomplishment. maybe i need a break from leveling. it's just THAT dull. or maybe i need to find a new game.
Showing posts with label lfd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lfd. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
I can be an ass too
So here's what happened last night. I zone into a random instance with my girlfriend (stonecore, of all places) and met up with three other random puggers. I was tanking with my bf healing. There was a rogue and paladin in the group. the thrid dps was forgotten due to what happened after we zoned in. The first pull was always kill millhouse, CC the stoneshapers earth summoning dude that causes a lot of aoe madness and confusion. anyway.
i marked the guy with a star and asked the rogue to sap him. he didnt. then i asked again and he replied with "dont tell me what to do". and then followed by, "im just here for the jp".
well being here for the jp, he should be able to understand that CC makes being "here for the jp" a lot easier. but instead, i took his lead and left the dungeon. no one was gonna tell me what to do either (namely, forcing me to play without cc). The rogue said he could cast repentance on the mob if i wanted to. but i said i'd rather it be sapped (because it would be that i initiate combat, and not the paladin). overall, it would be an easier pull if i had all the initial aggro anyway.
So the third, forgotten dps left. then i walked over to the couch where my toddler daughter was and sat there for about 15 minutes. i came back to see that all the dps left. my gf told me that the paladin repented the mob i wanted sapped but then got chased out of the dungeon. she ran out with him. once i got back, we requeued and got infinitely better dps.
lesson: if the tank wants you to CC something. CC it. you're not the tank-- you dont dictate play. true story.
earlier in the week i had a warlock who couldnt be assed to fear anything. and when he did it was the wrong mob. after a while, i kicked him. there really is no reason to be bad at cc. what part of CC the diamond did he not understand?
in any case, being an ass is propbably the best way to retain order in this game. it's what happens when you play with 16 year old kids. or 46 year olds acting like 12 year olds. same difference. overall the idea is the same. sometimes you need to put your foot down to get your point across because half of these guys need to be punched in real life.
i marked the guy with a star and asked the rogue to sap him. he didnt. then i asked again and he replied with "dont tell me what to do". and then followed by, "im just here for the jp".
well being here for the jp, he should be able to understand that CC makes being "here for the jp" a lot easier. but instead, i took his lead and left the dungeon. no one was gonna tell me what to do either (namely, forcing me to play without cc). The rogue said he could cast repentance on the mob if i wanted to. but i said i'd rather it be sapped (because it would be that i initiate combat, and not the paladin). overall, it would be an easier pull if i had all the initial aggro anyway.
So the third, forgotten dps left. then i walked over to the couch where my toddler daughter was and sat there for about 15 minutes. i came back to see that all the dps left. my gf told me that the paladin repented the mob i wanted sapped but then got chased out of the dungeon. she ran out with him. once i got back, we requeued and got infinitely better dps.
lesson: if the tank wants you to CC something. CC it. you're not the tank-- you dont dictate play. true story.
earlier in the week i had a warlock who couldnt be assed to fear anything. and when he did it was the wrong mob. after a while, i kicked him. there really is no reason to be bad at cc. what part of CC the diamond did he not understand?
in any case, being an ass is propbably the best way to retain order in this game. it's what happens when you play with 16 year old kids. or 46 year olds acting like 12 year olds. same difference. overall the idea is the same. sometimes you need to put your foot down to get your point across because half of these guys need to be punched in real life.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Tanks and dps
I noticed lately that there are a lot of new tanks using the lfd tool. Actually, since the last weekend, and barring any guild groups that i may have joined, every LFD pug group comes with a new, or barely new tank. Some are new tanks due to switching specs, and learning the ropes on a character that normall DPS or heals. others are leveling up thier 80 and are slowly learning the fights from the point of view of a tank. this is great.
What i can deduce from this trend is that more and more dps will finally get to see what its like for a tank in a heroic setting. Although some dps may only see tanks as, simply, another dps with less damage but more armor. okay, less damage in most cases. but definitely with more armor. dps do see tanks as more like them and less like healers. in a way, this is true. and it brings a lot of people to switch specs or finally level that level 80 warrior they havent touched in six months.
but what does this all mean to the rest of us? this is not an influx of new tanks. no, if it was an influx to the already flowing and always dynamic tanking population of our battlegroup, then i am sure the dps queue times will drop from 30 minutes to 20, or even 15... maybe 10! but it hasnt. "always dynamic" is key, since i believe the population flow of tanks using the whole LFD tool adheres to the FIFO method of inventory management. or whatever accounting-related methodologies relates.
FIFO is simply an acronym for first-in-first-out. to help me illustrate, let's backtrack several months. shortly after the expansion hit, there was a big shakeup in the community as to who does what role. really, as some wrath tanks found out that they just arent the tanks they're cut out to be in wrath (and subsequently rolled dps) or the healers who had infinite mana in wrath simply couldnt handle the increased difficulty of healing Throne of the Tides... normal, people began switching around specs and characters in order to find the right fit for them. Some, however, moved from wrath to cata without much of a problem, including tanks and healers. DPS adjusted from spamming AoE spells to actually using a priority system. The planets may have alligned sometime during the past few months, but i was unaware. People were actually doing what they're supposed to--what they're designed to do. And those were the ones first in.
The tank would walk into a dungeon as a tank, with a tank's mentality and skillset. The same goes for the healers, who have since learned to cope with limited mana, expensive heals and sometimes stupid dps. The dps, likewise, learned that some folks really had to be crowd controlled, standing in bursting purple crap is bad and damage reduction cooldowns are just as important as damage increasing cooldowns. Interrupts skyrocketed to an all-time high. They played through the instances, got gear, got better, understood fights, learned what their limits are, when they can stand in bad and when they need to really run away. They learned fight mechanics and figured out what they had to do in their own role to make the encounter a successful encounter.
Then they moved on to heroics. Random dungeons that used to take 15 minutes in wrath now take about an hour in cata... or more. in any event, these guys eventually get better gear, earn rep gear and fill out the remaining slots with justice point gear. they move on to raiding or slow down on the heroic grind. they dont need anything else from JPs. they might need chaos orbs or something to improve their offspec gear, but the end result remains--they slowly stop running heroic pugs. they are the first outs.
The first ins and the first outs are one and the same. The process is cycled through so that the tanks, who started off with some 300-333 tanking gear became fully geared with 345's, some 359 rep and raid gear. And eventually, running the same heroics over again will not give them any significant gain. There is nothing left to upgrade through heroics or justice points. and so they leave the LFD population. they may end up coming back on an alt just to dps, or to heal. or maybe even to tank. but they do come back one way or another.
Let's assume for a moment that the rate of flow, or flow of tanks coming in (and ultimately going out) to use the LFD system is faster than the flow of DPS going through the system. i believe this to actually be the case due to the population imbalance of tanks to dps. lets use tanks to dps as our only comparison. you can also use healers in this, but the result will still be the same. tanks, who usually get instant queues will ultimately gain all the gear they need faster than healers or dps, even if they get absolutely zero drops from heroic pugs, they'll still get JPs which will turn into gear eventually. a tank can usually just gear himself up through the LFD in less than a week of play. no waiting. so they gear up and leave the population, a dare say, 200% faster than a dps who has to wait 30 minutes in the queue (and i wont even talk about the wait if the group turns out bad, its a double penalty for the dps).
So after a week, the tank leaves the LFD population. but the DPS is still there. see the problem? He'll be fully geared in about two weeks if he diligently waits. Maybe longer if he walks away to pee, only to come back and find out that he has missed his queue. then, he has to start all over. but lets not count all the little variables prolonging the dps' plight. lets just say he takes 2x longer to gear up. then, he'll be out of the LFD population cycle. okay. that's not so bad. but lets not forget the initial problem as to why he has these long waits in the first place. the entire wow population using the LFD is not exactly 1 tank for every 3 dps. its 1 tank for every 30 dps. or more. 30 is my guess.
Tangent: One solution to this is to change the group composition. Instead of three damage dealers, we can have four or five. this will make the groups a 6 or 7 man duneon experience. now 6 has a nice ring to it because it's an even number, but 7 is a little more obscure. we like multiples, and the fact that 7 is a prime number makes it that much more of an odd choice. in any case, this can solve the "flow" as well as the population imbalance in regards to dungeon groups.
Back to the topic at hand. what is the topic, btw? who knows. i was trying to talk about the significance of how the new tanks now are really just that, new. and i was trying to show how this came about, with FIFO and flow rates and population ratios and things like that. okay. got it.
Anyway, i am on my fourth DPS to level up to 85 (and consequently, to gear up until i cant go any further with heroics) and running her through normal dungeons. its a mage, level 81, tearing up the place with her sheep and blast wave and all that great stuff. but just for the orbs, i run heroics on my dps. the 30 minute waits remain. when we finally do get the group, half of the time the tank will say they're new, or learning, or never done this as tank or in a heroic. etc.
What i see is this. That after about six months since the expansion, the dps pool has finally cycled and they have now finally begain to gear their alts (some of which are tanks). Now this dps pool will include all the people who are comfortable as dps, leveling their various dps characters, and having finally run out of dps characters, are willing to finally level that tank they never had a chance to touch (because dps is sooo much fun, or that tanking is soooo much work, or whatevers).
I know... all that typing just to illustrate a flawed analysis and faulty hypothesis. but hey, its thursday, my boss is out of the office and i have nothing to do. have a great day everyone!
What i can deduce from this trend is that more and more dps will finally get to see what its like for a tank in a heroic setting. Although some dps may only see tanks as, simply, another dps with less damage but more armor. okay, less damage in most cases. but definitely with more armor. dps do see tanks as more like them and less like healers. in a way, this is true. and it brings a lot of people to switch specs or finally level that level 80 warrior they havent touched in six months.
but what does this all mean to the rest of us? this is not an influx of new tanks. no, if it was an influx to the already flowing and always dynamic tanking population of our battlegroup, then i am sure the dps queue times will drop from 30 minutes to 20, or even 15... maybe 10! but it hasnt. "always dynamic" is key, since i believe the population flow of tanks using the whole LFD tool adheres to the FIFO method of inventory management. or whatever accounting-related methodologies relates.
FIFO is simply an acronym for first-in-first-out. to help me illustrate, let's backtrack several months. shortly after the expansion hit, there was a big shakeup in the community as to who does what role. really, as some wrath tanks found out that they just arent the tanks they're cut out to be in wrath (and subsequently rolled dps) or the healers who had infinite mana in wrath simply couldnt handle the increased difficulty of healing Throne of the Tides... normal, people began switching around specs and characters in order to find the right fit for them. Some, however, moved from wrath to cata without much of a problem, including tanks and healers. DPS adjusted from spamming AoE spells to actually using a priority system. The planets may have alligned sometime during the past few months, but i was unaware. People were actually doing what they're supposed to--what they're designed to do. And those were the ones first in.
The tank would walk into a dungeon as a tank, with a tank's mentality and skillset. The same goes for the healers, who have since learned to cope with limited mana, expensive heals and sometimes stupid dps. The dps, likewise, learned that some folks really had to be crowd controlled, standing in bursting purple crap is bad and damage reduction cooldowns are just as important as damage increasing cooldowns. Interrupts skyrocketed to an all-time high. They played through the instances, got gear, got better, understood fights, learned what their limits are, when they can stand in bad and when they need to really run away. They learned fight mechanics and figured out what they had to do in their own role to make the encounter a successful encounter.
Then they moved on to heroics. Random dungeons that used to take 15 minutes in wrath now take about an hour in cata... or more. in any event, these guys eventually get better gear, earn rep gear and fill out the remaining slots with justice point gear. they move on to raiding or slow down on the heroic grind. they dont need anything else from JPs. they might need chaos orbs or something to improve their offspec gear, but the end result remains--they slowly stop running heroic pugs. they are the first outs.
The first ins and the first outs are one and the same. The process is cycled through so that the tanks, who started off with some 300-333 tanking gear became fully geared with 345's, some 359 rep and raid gear. And eventually, running the same heroics over again will not give them any significant gain. There is nothing left to upgrade through heroics or justice points. and so they leave the LFD population. they may end up coming back on an alt just to dps, or to heal. or maybe even to tank. but they do come back one way or another.
Let's assume for a moment that the rate of flow, or flow of tanks coming in (and ultimately going out) to use the LFD system is faster than the flow of DPS going through the system. i believe this to actually be the case due to the population imbalance of tanks to dps. lets use tanks to dps as our only comparison. you can also use healers in this, but the result will still be the same. tanks, who usually get instant queues will ultimately gain all the gear they need faster than healers or dps, even if they get absolutely zero drops from heroic pugs, they'll still get JPs which will turn into gear eventually. a tank can usually just gear himself up through the LFD in less than a week of play. no waiting. so they gear up and leave the population, a dare say, 200% faster than a dps who has to wait 30 minutes in the queue (and i wont even talk about the wait if the group turns out bad, its a double penalty for the dps).
So after a week, the tank leaves the LFD population. but the DPS is still there. see the problem? He'll be fully geared in about two weeks if he diligently waits. Maybe longer if he walks away to pee, only to come back and find out that he has missed his queue. then, he has to start all over. but lets not count all the little variables prolonging the dps' plight. lets just say he takes 2x longer to gear up. then, he'll be out of the LFD population cycle. okay. that's not so bad. but lets not forget the initial problem as to why he has these long waits in the first place. the entire wow population using the LFD is not exactly 1 tank for every 3 dps. its 1 tank for every 30 dps. or more. 30 is my guess.
Tangent: One solution to this is to change the group composition. Instead of three damage dealers, we can have four or five. this will make the groups a 6 or 7 man duneon experience. now 6 has a nice ring to it because it's an even number, but 7 is a little more obscure. we like multiples, and the fact that 7 is a prime number makes it that much more of an odd choice. in any case, this can solve the "flow" as well as the population imbalance in regards to dungeon groups.
Back to the topic at hand. what is the topic, btw? who knows. i was trying to talk about the significance of how the new tanks now are really just that, new. and i was trying to show how this came about, with FIFO and flow rates and population ratios and things like that. okay. got it.
Anyway, i am on my fourth DPS to level up to 85 (and consequently, to gear up until i cant go any further with heroics) and running her through normal dungeons. its a mage, level 81, tearing up the place with her sheep and blast wave and all that great stuff. but just for the orbs, i run heroics on my dps. the 30 minute waits remain. when we finally do get the group, half of the time the tank will say they're new, or learning, or never done this as tank or in a heroic. etc.
What i see is this. That after about six months since the expansion, the dps pool has finally cycled and they have now finally begain to gear their alts (some of which are tanks). Now this dps pool will include all the people who are comfortable as dps, leveling their various dps characters, and having finally run out of dps characters, are willing to finally level that tank they never had a chance to touch (because dps is sooo much fun, or that tanking is soooo much work, or whatevers).
I know... all that typing just to illustrate a flawed analysis and faulty hypothesis. but hey, its thursday, my boss is out of the office and i have nothing to do. have a great day everyone!
Friday, April 8, 2011
Thoughts on a few topics
On Looking For Dummies:
Er... i mean dungeon. LFD has been nice to me as of late. My groups have been wrought with much annoyances, mostly from guild groups. What i mean is this. I zone in with my gf to a random dungeon group and find three people of the same guild. of course, we're queueing as DPS b/c tanking and healing roles are ridiculously unrewarding (we feel like babysitters, really).
Now these guild groups will do one of two things. They either really suck, or they're really good with a chip on their shoulders. Both experiences suck hairy donkey balls. For the suckage teams, they usually either all quit when they cant do the first boss, or, continue to press on. After about five wipes or so, they declare that the two dps who arent in their guild must suck because we're not carrying them enough. In both cases everyone drops group. the first case better than the last because at least, we wouldnt have wasted our time after five+ wipes just to get to boss #2. I would have waited the three minutes to wait for a new random group of strangers if they were going to quit anyway.
The group of assholes who will check your gear, spec and credit report will continually chat while playing. they'll tell you that your gear sucks (why am i doing heroics anyway? to get gear, moron), or that our talent spec isnt optimal (for what? EJ's suggestion for raiding? dont be a tool, use your brains). These are the groups who have tanks that cannot keep their healers alive, ignore any kind of CC's and even some very obvious mob/boss mechanics. It also can include pets who aggro, mages who dont realize their sheeped mob has them on top of their aggro meter, boomkins who like to use typhoon for no fucking reason other than "its cool," and hunters who still dont know how misdirect works.
A little bit of background on why i like dps: It's less stress. It's fun, actually. and i do play this game for fun. The whole reason why it's fun is because there is less blame, basically, when anyone dies. there's less responsibilities. If i miss an interrupt, the healer needs to work harder. If i miss a decurse, the healer needs to work harder. If i stand in bad, the healer might have to work harder. And if i die because i stood in poop, well, it's my own damn fault. I know that. I do not have any responsibilities to anyone really. Even though i have CC duties, decurse duties, aggro responsibilities, etc, they are not as pressing as a tank's or healer's duties.
For the tank, he has to make sure all the mobs that are supposed to be tanked are on him and not on others, that there is a kill order and that nothing touches the healer (treat the healer like your wifey, basically). Variables such as bad CCer's, CC breakers, and randomtargetingHuntard or rainoffireonlyLock or noMindFreezeDK makes this difficult. The 5k dps, fully geared ilevel 246 dont know how to play their class or with a group damage dealer is a little bit of dead weight but can be worked around. but being stupid like the above may cause more stress than enjoyment.
For the healer, same as above. but it is as so much a problem if you dont mind letting a few of the dps die sometimes. however, the first comments from the dps isnt that it was their fault or that they were being dumb, but that it was the healer's fault for not healing them when they do stand in bad.
In any case, the main problems the tanks and healers have are with bad dps. that's basically it. And when me and my girlfriend went dps, we actually wanted to improve the quality of some of the dps'ers out there who pug. But its a chore still and is mainly due to the random groups mentioned above. Now there are idiot tanks and idiot healers out there still. Far more idiot tanks than there are idiot healers though.
So what was i trying to say? Oh yea, LFD has been relatively good to me recently. but now i feel there's a dark cloud looming (cliche, i know).
On Call to Arms:
I have many thoughts regarding this new feature. I've mentioned my thoughts on what will happen through this system in another blog entry, but i wanted to think out loud for a bit right now regarding what i'll personally do with this feature. Although is it somewhat of a nice feature, i'll probably not use it when queueing for random heroics. Here are some of my reasons:
1. I have to queue by myself. Most of my play is with my girlfriend and half of the time i'd rather play with my guildies anyway. queueing up by myself robs my guildies of the benefits of being in a guild. they're there for the social, group aspect of the game. These have many benefits including grouping with people you know or like. In this situation, i will not be doing that. I cant if i want the goodie bag.
2. A feature like this will only encourage the hybrid spec'ed classes to switch from their usual dps or healing role and queue as a tank for the benefit (or detriment) of those they dont know. This, to me, is faulty reasoning. You're putting chocolate flavored bandaids on an infection. It's not the right treatment for the problem. Although we'll get shorter queues, there will be people who will queue as tanks and not be good at it. Although we can say they're just learning, maybe they will be better off learning in normal dungeons. at least there, there's a little more room for mistakes and overall noobery. In any case, there will be a huge influx (i may be exaggerating here) of dps'ers, who not only will have quick queue times but will now have even more incentive to queue as tanks, who will know almost nothing about tanking running into the instance, wiping the group several times, then leaves, only to really waste everybody's time. I am not saying there arent people who will learn to be good tanks. Maybe some will learn to be awesome tanks. But grouping with a good tank, or a decent tank learning more about their role is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. I do hate to drop group just because the tank sucks and no /kick attemp are successful, but hell, if the penalties for dps to drop group isnt already bad, this will just make it almost unbearable to the point where i might find a 30 minute deserter debuff PLUS a 30 minute queue after that very, very desirable.
3. The hybrid class also will exacerbate an already-existing proplem of ninja rolling on offspec gear. I've been to many dungeons where the paladin tank rolls on healing gear, the DK tank rolls on dps gear and the DPS warrior rolls on tanking gear. and this happens even when the guy with the main spec rolls need on an item. sometimes the person who actually needs the item wins it. Sometimes not. i'll get angrier if the ninja gets it, but its a bad experience whether the ninja gets it or not. Ninjas are still ninjas. Successfully ninja-ing something doesnt make it different. In any case, now we have people who's main specs are DPS, queueing as tanks, and rolling on DPS gear. Although this has happened many times to both me and my girlfriend before, i can predict that this will happen even more once Call to Arms get implimented.
I know. the new system gets a whole lot of QQ from me. and basically the entire blog entry today is one big qq session big enough to fill up a lake with all these tears. but....
I am trying to find good things to say about playing this game. And i end up with not much.
On Counting:
One thing i see across the internet is this silly little breakdown of groups:
In a 5man dungeon setting, 1 of the five players are tanks. that's 20%.
In a raid setting, 2.5 of the players are tanks. Whether its 10man or 25man, its usually the same. so 25% or 10%, your pick.
And then they conclude that there are only so many tanks, blah blah blah. and that's why the world is full of dps and short on tanks.
On those who count this way, please stop. There's NOTHING to keep these tanks, who tank in raids to dps in heroics for points. There's nothing to keep the DPS in raids to switch to a tanking spec and tank heroics. There's also NOTHING that will keep 100% of the raiders from jumping on their alts and playing whatever class, sometimes tanks, they like when they're not raiding. Please dont do these stupid calculations and say that the role population distribution of the whole MMO is based on the role population distribution of the raid.
On Common Sense:
And just because someone doesnt tank doesnt mean they cant. Although, many people who choose to DPS do so because they cant heal or tank, some dps may actually prefer damage dealing and some dps may actually do better as damage dealing, although their ability may span across several roles and classes. There are some excellent DPS out there who do well as tanks. There are some excellent DPS out there who are excellent tanks. There are some craptastic DPS out there who are excellent tanks. Perhaps the role they chose isnt really linked to ability. I am not trying to contradict my own blog post, but although there are people who may be encouraged to tank, and they probably are very good at it too, there will be those who will screw up the whole experience for them. Again, i just dont think blizz has it down right when deciding on this new Call to Arms thing. Sure, it will encourage those who havent tanked in a while to tank, but i do believe it will cause more problems than it's worth.
Er... i mean dungeon. LFD has been nice to me as of late. My groups have been wrought with much annoyances, mostly from guild groups. What i mean is this. I zone in with my gf to a random dungeon group and find three people of the same guild. of course, we're queueing as DPS b/c tanking and healing roles are ridiculously unrewarding (we feel like babysitters, really).
Now these guild groups will do one of two things. They either really suck, or they're really good with a chip on their shoulders. Both experiences suck hairy donkey balls. For the suckage teams, they usually either all quit when they cant do the first boss, or, continue to press on. After about five wipes or so, they declare that the two dps who arent in their guild must suck because we're not carrying them enough. In both cases everyone drops group. the first case better than the last because at least, we wouldnt have wasted our time after five+ wipes just to get to boss #2. I would have waited the three minutes to wait for a new random group of strangers if they were going to quit anyway.
The group of assholes who will check your gear, spec and credit report will continually chat while playing. they'll tell you that your gear sucks (why am i doing heroics anyway? to get gear, moron), or that our talent spec isnt optimal (for what? EJ's suggestion for raiding? dont be a tool, use your brains). These are the groups who have tanks that cannot keep their healers alive, ignore any kind of CC's and even some very obvious mob/boss mechanics. It also can include pets who aggro, mages who dont realize their sheeped mob has them on top of their aggro meter, boomkins who like to use typhoon for no fucking reason other than "its cool," and hunters who still dont know how misdirect works.
A little bit of background on why i like dps: It's less stress. It's fun, actually. and i do play this game for fun. The whole reason why it's fun is because there is less blame, basically, when anyone dies. there's less responsibilities. If i miss an interrupt, the healer needs to work harder. If i miss a decurse, the healer needs to work harder. If i stand in bad, the healer might have to work harder. And if i die because i stood in poop, well, it's my own damn fault. I know that. I do not have any responsibilities to anyone really. Even though i have CC duties, decurse duties, aggro responsibilities, etc, they are not as pressing as a tank's or healer's duties.
For the tank, he has to make sure all the mobs that are supposed to be tanked are on him and not on others, that there is a kill order and that nothing touches the healer (treat the healer like your wifey, basically). Variables such as bad CCer's, CC breakers, and randomtargetingHuntard or rainoffireonlyLock or noMindFreezeDK makes this difficult. The 5k dps, fully geared ilevel 246 dont know how to play their class or with a group damage dealer is a little bit of dead weight but can be worked around. but being stupid like the above may cause more stress than enjoyment.
For the healer, same as above. but it is as so much a problem if you dont mind letting a few of the dps die sometimes. however, the first comments from the dps isnt that it was their fault or that they were being dumb, but that it was the healer's fault for not healing them when they do stand in bad.
In any case, the main problems the tanks and healers have are with bad dps. that's basically it. And when me and my girlfriend went dps, we actually wanted to improve the quality of some of the dps'ers out there who pug. But its a chore still and is mainly due to the random groups mentioned above. Now there are idiot tanks and idiot healers out there still. Far more idiot tanks than there are idiot healers though.
So what was i trying to say? Oh yea, LFD has been relatively good to me recently. but now i feel there's a dark cloud looming (cliche, i know).
On Call to Arms:
I have many thoughts regarding this new feature. I've mentioned my thoughts on what will happen through this system in another blog entry, but i wanted to think out loud for a bit right now regarding what i'll personally do with this feature. Although is it somewhat of a nice feature, i'll probably not use it when queueing for random heroics. Here are some of my reasons:
1. I have to queue by myself. Most of my play is with my girlfriend and half of the time i'd rather play with my guildies anyway. queueing up by myself robs my guildies of the benefits of being in a guild. they're there for the social, group aspect of the game. These have many benefits including grouping with people you know or like. In this situation, i will not be doing that. I cant if i want the goodie bag.
2. A feature like this will only encourage the hybrid spec'ed classes to switch from their usual dps or healing role and queue as a tank for the benefit (or detriment) of those they dont know. This, to me, is faulty reasoning. You're putting chocolate flavored bandaids on an infection. It's not the right treatment for the problem. Although we'll get shorter queues, there will be people who will queue as tanks and not be good at it. Although we can say they're just learning, maybe they will be better off learning in normal dungeons. at least there, there's a little more room for mistakes and overall noobery. In any case, there will be a huge influx (i may be exaggerating here) of dps'ers, who not only will have quick queue times but will now have even more incentive to queue as tanks, who will know almost nothing about tanking running into the instance, wiping the group several times, then leaves, only to really waste everybody's time. I am not saying there arent people who will learn to be good tanks. Maybe some will learn to be awesome tanks. But grouping with a good tank, or a decent tank learning more about their role is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. I do hate to drop group just because the tank sucks and no /kick attemp are successful, but hell, if the penalties for dps to drop group isnt already bad, this will just make it almost unbearable to the point where i might find a 30 minute deserter debuff PLUS a 30 minute queue after that very, very desirable.
3. The hybrid class also will exacerbate an already-existing proplem of ninja rolling on offspec gear. I've been to many dungeons where the paladin tank rolls on healing gear, the DK tank rolls on dps gear and the DPS warrior rolls on tanking gear. and this happens even when the guy with the main spec rolls need on an item. sometimes the person who actually needs the item wins it. Sometimes not. i'll get angrier if the ninja gets it, but its a bad experience whether the ninja gets it or not. Ninjas are still ninjas. Successfully ninja-ing something doesnt make it different. In any case, now we have people who's main specs are DPS, queueing as tanks, and rolling on DPS gear. Although this has happened many times to both me and my girlfriend before, i can predict that this will happen even more once Call to Arms get implimented.
I know. the new system gets a whole lot of QQ from me. and basically the entire blog entry today is one big qq session big enough to fill up a lake with all these tears. but....
I am trying to find good things to say about playing this game. And i end up with not much.
On Counting:
One thing i see across the internet is this silly little breakdown of groups:
In a 5man dungeon setting, 1 of the five players are tanks. that's 20%.
In a raid setting, 2.5 of the players are tanks. Whether its 10man or 25man, its usually the same. so 25% or 10%, your pick.
And then they conclude that there are only so many tanks, blah blah blah. and that's why the world is full of dps and short on tanks.
On those who count this way, please stop. There's NOTHING to keep these tanks, who tank in raids to dps in heroics for points. There's nothing to keep the DPS in raids to switch to a tanking spec and tank heroics. There's also NOTHING that will keep 100% of the raiders from jumping on their alts and playing whatever class, sometimes tanks, they like when they're not raiding. Please dont do these stupid calculations and say that the role population distribution of the whole MMO is based on the role population distribution of the raid.
On Common Sense:
And just because someone doesnt tank doesnt mean they cant. Although, many people who choose to DPS do so because they cant heal or tank, some dps may actually prefer damage dealing and some dps may actually do better as damage dealing, although their ability may span across several roles and classes. There are some excellent DPS out there who do well as tanks. There are some excellent DPS out there who are excellent tanks. There are some craptastic DPS out there who are excellent tanks. Perhaps the role they chose isnt really linked to ability. I am not trying to contradict my own blog post, but although there are people who may be encouraged to tank, and they probably are very good at it too, there will be those who will screw up the whole experience for them. Again, i just dont think blizz has it down right when deciding on this new Call to Arms thing. Sure, it will encourage those who havent tanked in a while to tank, but i do believe it will cause more problems than it's worth.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Bread and Circuses
I heard news today of an upcoming change in 4.1 which made me thought a little. Bliz announced that they will give rewards to the least represented role in an LFD. This reward will probably be in the form of a goodie bag (remember those during your 20th time in SM:GY??) and will include mounts and non-combat pets as possible rewards. Possible, because it doesnt have to be. For sure these least represented classes will be given extra gold. The pets, maybe. the mounts, maybe. So it's good news right?
Well not really. Let me list my reasons why i dont think this will work out well.
1. Call to Arms will always be on. Call to arms is an announcement in the LFD tool that will tell everyone who wants to queue what role is in high demand. Lets not kid ourselves in the least bit and just state the obvious: Call to Arms will always be on. and Call to Arms will state that we have a shortage of tanks. It will never say we have a shortage of healers and, god forbid, damage dealers. And it will encourage those who do not tank to try to maybe tank for the rewards. This means that any tank, or any hybrid/tribrid class that wants to tank will be given the oppurtunity to get a mount or a pet.
2. What this will lead to is, not just more people tanking, but more baddies tanking. The LFD system is already rife with bad tanks, bad healers and bad dps (although sometimes bad healers can be countered with a good tank and bad dps is often carried by good dps) but of the three, the one that carries the most weight is the tank. If we get a bad tank, the group usually stalls after the first pull or two, gets frustrated, and often disbands. There will be some stubborn groups who will hold out until the tank decides he's had enough failure and leaves. It is quite often due to the misconception that we'll have to wait 30 more minutes for a new tank if we kick the current baddie. This is not the case, but often, people are quite reluctant to kick the tank no matter how bad he might be. In any case, we'll have shorter queues because many people will want to tank. But this may not necessarily lead to the same "quality" of dungeon groups we see today. But i guess, being somewhere doing an instance is better than being nowhere waiting for a queue to pop.
3. There is a possibility of gaining a rare pet or mount. This is bad? Hopefully, this will be as rare as getting an Azure drake from the Oculus random some time ago, which did encourage people to actually do the instance (and such an easy instance it was by then, i dont know how people didnt like it). But i am basically QQing about this one. I used to log on to my death knight every other day or so to run through Stratholme for the Baron's deathcharger. I did this for at least six months and one day i decided to stop. Then, on a random day i decided to run through that dungeon once more and BAM!! i got a horse! that's about nine months of farming. although i'd only run it about four days a week, but in those four days are quite possibly 20 runs. I picked up his runeblade three times! Now, when cataclysm hit and people were actually able to do Stratholme as a random dungeon i kinda felt i was cheated. Not only that, the drop rate was increased by a little bit. I felt cheated still. I bet this is the case for all those who gained "Light of The Dawn" or "Bane of the Fallen King" before Cata. They must have felt cheated that every other Joe is wearing their title now. Might as well bring back the PvP titles and the BC titles while we're at it (Hand of A'dal, anyone?). Now we'll have people with what? a blue protodrake? a white hawkstrider? a ravenlord? Midnight? how about that deathcharger huh? These are all the mounts i am currently farming. Deathcharger again? well i do have alts. =P and every other week or so i run with my guild to get the OS3D drake. at least with that one, everyone gets a fair /roll.
4. More tanks = More dungeons being run = more JPs gained by everyone in a shorter amount of time. What else will this mean? a flood of gems into the AH. For the non-jc'ers this might be a good thing since i can easily grab an inferno ruby from the AH at low low prices and have someone cut it for me for a small fee. But this will add to the already sinking JC market where yellow, green and orange gems are already hitting 10g and where Demonseyes are dirt cheap. The only contender still making us any gold? Inferno Rubies, which has dropped almost 50% in the last two weeks. Crazy influx of cheap Elementium FTL. Prices were down by almost 50% last week. So what does this mean for the gem market? people will begin to drop out. cut gems will be scarce again. Even the herbs and cloth and things will not be bought as much as we will buy gems with Justice points. What else would you do when you have all the heirloom gear you need and all the justice point gear you need? you buy gems to enchant your gear or sell for gold. right?
In any case, although Call to Arms may sound like an awesome change to the LFD tool, it will cause a lot of anger, stress and dissatisfaction with the game as we know it, hence the title, Bread and Circuses. Bliz is only trying to make things look good on the surface (shorten the queue times for DPS), essentially throwing bread at us and giving us entertainment. But we all know it will only make things worse. and look, we're already angry at ninjas, stressed at prissy tanks and dissatified with our non-sex lives as it is. lets not make it worse, yea? thanks bliz!
Well not really. Let me list my reasons why i dont think this will work out well.
1. Call to Arms will always be on. Call to arms is an announcement in the LFD tool that will tell everyone who wants to queue what role is in high demand. Lets not kid ourselves in the least bit and just state the obvious: Call to Arms will always be on. and Call to Arms will state that we have a shortage of tanks. It will never say we have a shortage of healers and, god forbid, damage dealers. And it will encourage those who do not tank to try to maybe tank for the rewards. This means that any tank, or any hybrid/tribrid class that wants to tank will be given the oppurtunity to get a mount or a pet.
2. What this will lead to is, not just more people tanking, but more baddies tanking. The LFD system is already rife with bad tanks, bad healers and bad dps (although sometimes bad healers can be countered with a good tank and bad dps is often carried by good dps) but of the three, the one that carries the most weight is the tank. If we get a bad tank, the group usually stalls after the first pull or two, gets frustrated, and often disbands. There will be some stubborn groups who will hold out until the tank decides he's had enough failure and leaves. It is quite often due to the misconception that we'll have to wait 30 more minutes for a new tank if we kick the current baddie. This is not the case, but often, people are quite reluctant to kick the tank no matter how bad he might be. In any case, we'll have shorter queues because many people will want to tank. But this may not necessarily lead to the same "quality" of dungeon groups we see today. But i guess, being somewhere doing an instance is better than being nowhere waiting for a queue to pop.
3. There is a possibility of gaining a rare pet or mount. This is bad? Hopefully, this will be as rare as getting an Azure drake from the Oculus random some time ago, which did encourage people to actually do the instance (and such an easy instance it was by then, i dont know how people didnt like it). But i am basically QQing about this one. I used to log on to my death knight every other day or so to run through Stratholme for the Baron's deathcharger. I did this for at least six months and one day i decided to stop. Then, on a random day i decided to run through that dungeon once more and BAM!! i got a horse! that's about nine months of farming. although i'd only run it about four days a week, but in those four days are quite possibly 20 runs. I picked up his runeblade three times! Now, when cataclysm hit and people were actually able to do Stratholme as a random dungeon i kinda felt i was cheated. Not only that, the drop rate was increased by a little bit. I felt cheated still. I bet this is the case for all those who gained "Light of The Dawn" or "Bane of the Fallen King" before Cata. They must have felt cheated that every other Joe is wearing their title now. Might as well bring back the PvP titles and the BC titles while we're at it (Hand of A'dal, anyone?). Now we'll have people with what? a blue protodrake? a white hawkstrider? a ravenlord? Midnight? how about that deathcharger huh? These are all the mounts i am currently farming. Deathcharger again? well i do have alts. =P and every other week or so i run with my guild to get the OS3D drake. at least with that one, everyone gets a fair /roll.
4. More tanks = More dungeons being run = more JPs gained by everyone in a shorter amount of time. What else will this mean? a flood of gems into the AH. For the non-jc'ers this might be a good thing since i can easily grab an inferno ruby from the AH at low low prices and have someone cut it for me for a small fee. But this will add to the already sinking JC market where yellow, green and orange gems are already hitting 10g and where Demonseyes are dirt cheap. The only contender still making us any gold? Inferno Rubies, which has dropped almost 50% in the last two weeks. Crazy influx of cheap Elementium FTL. Prices were down by almost 50% last week. So what does this mean for the gem market? people will begin to drop out. cut gems will be scarce again. Even the herbs and cloth and things will not be bought as much as we will buy gems with Justice points. What else would you do when you have all the heirloom gear you need and all the justice point gear you need? you buy gems to enchant your gear or sell for gold. right?
In any case, although Call to Arms may sound like an awesome change to the LFD tool, it will cause a lot of anger, stress and dissatisfaction with the game as we know it, hence the title, Bread and Circuses. Bliz is only trying to make things look good on the surface (shorten the queue times for DPS), essentially throwing bread at us and giving us entertainment. But we all know it will only make things worse. and look, we're already angry at ninjas, stressed at prissy tanks and dissatified with our non-sex lives as it is. lets not make it worse, yea? thanks bliz!
Friday, July 23, 2010
Stupid LFD Tool is Stupid
First off, i like the LFD tool. its great. it lets me queue up for instances without having to worry about putting together all the parts. and when its all over, i dont have to stick around and say how good everyone was and hope i do instances with them again. i like being able to get in there, do my thing, get my dose of dps goodness for the day, and leave. im not too much of a committal type of guy to begin with. so what i do have problems with is what keeps happening to me at level... 38, or 42, or 54, 68 and now 78-79.
I cant get into the instances i really want. at 38 i was too low to get into SMGY, so im stuck doing lower instances. then i do SMGY for infinity before i can actually do the other ones. when instances in my LFD tool shows up in yellow, i assume they are doable. but instead, im sent to an easier instance. always. at 42, it was the wait for SMCath. at 54, i was soooo sick of mara and sunken temple, i was waiting for... Strath/Scholo (that NEVER came because blizz figured only level 59 and 60 folks could join those.... but they forget that those people would rather skip all the way to Ramps in outland). yes blizz. the whole LFD system is a bit off. i complained about this in a previous blog, but im going to do this again because.... it sucks THAT much.
at level 68 i'd love to join Utgarde keep. not only will i "miss" and cause "glancing" hits a lot, i'll probably get killed if i pull enough aggro. that's not cool by blizz standards i guess. but guess what blizzard? i've been doing Utgarde keep with all of my toons BEFORE the LFD tool was implemented, and they did FINE (except for my tank, which needed the cobalt gear at 70, and i was rockin). Especially the DPS, they do fine! tanks? thats a different matter. healers? it might be stressful at 68. but really, people should be able to get into utgarde keep at 68. they always have before. why cant we queue up for it now?
And now we get to the point of my post. as Devynity has been leveling up, he's been realizing something. Whether he's 76, or 78, or 79, he'll always (I mean ALWAYS) get Halls of Stone or Gundrak. Last night he was 79, queueing with his friend who's a level 80. we did a random and got Halls of Stone. my god i wanted to cry. but i didnt and sucked it up. then asked the tank if we can requeue for something specific. we ended up getting Utgarde Pinicle. Woot!! the whole trip was awesome. For crying out loud, why couldnt we have gotten a more appropriate instance the first time? instead we got lolHoS.
Thats not the end of it. We requeue'd for a random and got.... GUNDRAK. omg. two level 78, two 79 and a level 80 queing and we got gundrak? W. T. F. thanks blizz. you really know what we like. whatevs.
So we manually picked the last four instances (the level 79-80 ones) and got Oculus. no wipes until Eregos. Wiped once on Eregos and got him the second time. it was rocky, but still pretty easy. The tank and i both dinged 80 in that instance.
So why blizz, why are you doing this to us? why are you subjecting us to this type of mockery? why are we only given subpar instances to do? i was doing gundrak two weeks ago. i dont want to do it again unless you're going to give me emblems on every boss. i dont even get rep. whats wrong with you? at level 79, i only want to do Pinicle, Oculus, Halls of Lightning and Culling of Strath. thats it. i dont want to deal with the other instances because they give me crap exp now. i dont want to deal with the lower instances because im trying to gear up to "skip" to heroics when i hit 80. i dont want to do the four instances i just mentioned at 80, on normal. i want to do heroics dammit. and i want to do ToC, FoS, PoS and HoR when i hit 80. and if i went through the whole LFD and took what you gave me in the ass, instead of demanding something that's actually challenging or fun, i'd still be stuck at 80, locked out of heroics and normal ToC, FoS, PoS and HoR, and forced to do lame normal level 79 instances just to meet YOUR gear requirement for the better stuffs.
So please blizz, i know that you want to keep the easy factor there, but if you've even monitored how my performance is in-game, you'll see that i almost always top dps charts. i've been through these instances over 500 times. i've done every single role there is to do (tank, heal, ranged dps, melee dps). i dont need easymode. i find it very insulting that a bunch of decent level 79's are stuck with... Gundrak(level76). seriously.
I cant get into the instances i really want. at 38 i was too low to get into SMGY, so im stuck doing lower instances. then i do SMGY for infinity before i can actually do the other ones. when instances in my LFD tool shows up in yellow, i assume they are doable. but instead, im sent to an easier instance. always. at 42, it was the wait for SMCath. at 54, i was soooo sick of mara and sunken temple, i was waiting for... Strath/Scholo (that NEVER came because blizz figured only level 59 and 60 folks could join those.... but they forget that those people would rather skip all the way to Ramps in outland). yes blizz. the whole LFD system is a bit off. i complained about this in a previous blog, but im going to do this again because.... it sucks THAT much.
at level 68 i'd love to join Utgarde keep. not only will i "miss" and cause "glancing" hits a lot, i'll probably get killed if i pull enough aggro. that's not cool by blizz standards i guess. but guess what blizzard? i've been doing Utgarde keep with all of my toons BEFORE the LFD tool was implemented, and they did FINE (except for my tank, which needed the cobalt gear at 70, and i was rockin). Especially the DPS, they do fine! tanks? thats a different matter. healers? it might be stressful at 68. but really, people should be able to get into utgarde keep at 68. they always have before. why cant we queue up for it now?
And now we get to the point of my post. as Devynity has been leveling up, he's been realizing something. Whether he's 76, or 78, or 79, he'll always (I mean ALWAYS) get Halls of Stone or Gundrak. Last night he was 79, queueing with his friend who's a level 80. we did a random and got Halls of Stone. my god i wanted to cry. but i didnt and sucked it up. then asked the tank if we can requeue for something specific. we ended up getting Utgarde Pinicle. Woot!! the whole trip was awesome. For crying out loud, why couldnt we have gotten a more appropriate instance the first time? instead we got lolHoS.
Thats not the end of it. We requeue'd for a random and got.... GUNDRAK. omg. two level 78, two 79 and a level 80 queing and we got gundrak? W. T. F. thanks blizz. you really know what we like. whatevs.
So we manually picked the last four instances (the level 79-80 ones) and got Oculus. no wipes until Eregos. Wiped once on Eregos and got him the second time. it was rocky, but still pretty easy. The tank and i both dinged 80 in that instance.
So why blizz, why are you doing this to us? why are you subjecting us to this type of mockery? why are we only given subpar instances to do? i was doing gundrak two weeks ago. i dont want to do it again unless you're going to give me emblems on every boss. i dont even get rep. whats wrong with you? at level 79, i only want to do Pinicle, Oculus, Halls of Lightning and Culling of Strath. thats it. i dont want to deal with the other instances because they give me crap exp now. i dont want to deal with the lower instances because im trying to gear up to "skip" to heroics when i hit 80. i dont want to do the four instances i just mentioned at 80, on normal. i want to do heroics dammit. and i want to do ToC, FoS, PoS and HoR when i hit 80. and if i went through the whole LFD and took what you gave me in the ass, instead of demanding something that's actually challenging or fun, i'd still be stuck at 80, locked out of heroics and normal ToC, FoS, PoS and HoR, and forced to do lame normal level 79 instances just to meet YOUR gear requirement for the better stuffs.
So please blizz, i know that you want to keep the easy factor there, but if you've even monitored how my performance is in-game, you'll see that i almost always top dps charts. i've been through these instances over 500 times. i've done every single role there is to do (tank, heal, ranged dps, melee dps). i dont need easymode. i find it very insulting that a bunch of decent level 79's are stuck with... Gundrak(level76). seriously.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Tuesday Stuff
I've been itching to post. Really i have.
1. The average wait time for LFD PUGS has not grown in length, but has grown to wear me down. Some days i just want to log on and do a random pug, then log off. That's all i want to do. but sitting there in front of the computer with the average wait time at 19 minutes doesnt help. as many of you know, that number is dynamic. and in 19 minutes that number can change to 25 minutes, or 1 second. it all depends on some force i cant understand. but its wearing on me and i feel my patience diminishing. fishing daily? forget it. cooking daily? nope. so there's no "buffer" in there to help with the wait. and if i alt-tab out to do something, i may miss my queue. bad all over isnt it?
2. Once i get into groups. there's a 50% chance someone will drop and a 75% that a second person will drop after the first person drops. there is a 92% chance that the first two people are either a healer or a tank. there is, after the first drop, a 75% chance that the group will fail before the first pull. these numbers are made up. but that's how i feel about the success of a group, especially in normal Old Kingdom.
3. jerkfaces galore. in all instances. in all places. everyone thinks they're in ilevel245 gear running heroics (that require about ilevel185 to even enter, and will not drop anything above 200 anyway) and thinks that a bunch of level 75s can breeze right through gundrak. right. dont forget you're not in purples. quit acting like everyone's overgeared. we're not. you're not being carried anymore so pull some fucking weight, will ya? thanks. if not, i can just drop group. i dont have to deal with this.
so with the 20 minute wait times, the high chance that groups will fail after that, plus the willingness for me to drop group and log on somewhere else just to chat or farm the baron's mount, i find that LDF PUGS are just not worth the effort. they arent. i've been doing less and less. maybe its because i am running as a dps now and much of the success of a group isnt entirely due to my leadership. i am just a dps. i feel a little powerless. maybe even hopeless as to the lack of direction or lead i can give to a group. heck, sometimes i still want to go back to tanking. but not right now.
1. The average wait time for LFD PUGS has not grown in length, but has grown to wear me down. Some days i just want to log on and do a random pug, then log off. That's all i want to do. but sitting there in front of the computer with the average wait time at 19 minutes doesnt help. as many of you know, that number is dynamic. and in 19 minutes that number can change to 25 minutes, or 1 second. it all depends on some force i cant understand. but its wearing on me and i feel my patience diminishing. fishing daily? forget it. cooking daily? nope. so there's no "buffer" in there to help with the wait. and if i alt-tab out to do something, i may miss my queue. bad all over isnt it?
2. Once i get into groups. there's a 50% chance someone will drop and a 75% that a second person will drop after the first person drops. there is a 92% chance that the first two people are either a healer or a tank. there is, after the first drop, a 75% chance that the group will fail before the first pull. these numbers are made up. but that's how i feel about the success of a group, especially in normal Old Kingdom.
3. jerkfaces galore. in all instances. in all places. everyone thinks they're in ilevel245 gear running heroics (that require about ilevel185 to even enter, and will not drop anything above 200 anyway) and thinks that a bunch of level 75s can breeze right through gundrak. right. dont forget you're not in purples. quit acting like everyone's overgeared. we're not. you're not being carried anymore so pull some fucking weight, will ya? thanks. if not, i can just drop group. i dont have to deal with this.
so with the 20 minute wait times, the high chance that groups will fail after that, plus the willingness for me to drop group and log on somewhere else just to chat or farm the baron's mount, i find that LDF PUGS are just not worth the effort. they arent. i've been doing less and less. maybe its because i am running as a dps now and much of the success of a group isnt entirely due to my leadership. i am just a dps. i feel a little powerless. maybe even hopeless as to the lack of direction or lead i can give to a group. heck, sometimes i still want to go back to tanking. but not right now.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Durrrr....
Went and did Escape from Durnhold. or Durnholde. or something. I dont know why there's that "e" at the end of the word, or why i put it there sometimes. it's just that i've seen many names in wow that has the e at the end, but if the word were spelled without it, it would phonetically be the same. phonetic, as in sounding the same. phonics is not about phonetics. sorry, random thoughts.
Anyway, manders and i went to durnhold and kicked butt (although baby aggro was kicking my butt for some of the instance), and actually did the quest to progress through the story. glad i did because right after, i went to see the dragon disguised as a kid (do you even know why they choose to take on humanoid forms?) and he gave me another quest to enter the black morass. a lot of dark butt jokes can be made from that. but anyway, got the quest and for the rest of the night, we basically goofed off. i queued for a random outland heroic, but was short a tank/healer for most of the night. at about the 1 hour queue mark, i dropped queue and called it a night.
I really think the old LFG tool should be added for those who want to do instances within our realms that the LFD tool isnt going to allow us to do. what do i mean from this is that after a certain level, i am unable to queue for certain instances. or at least, i dont know how to queue for them yet. but i did get a random level 80 warlock added to a scholomance group. so how did that happen? what i wanted to do is to just be, say level 75, and be able to group up to run through keepers of time instances to get rep. i just hit "friendly" and will not be getting anywhere close to honored any time soon. this is mainly due to the lack of people doing black morass. although there may be a few who actually do the starting quest to do durrrrn, i find that its almost impossible to do it in offtimes. also, i've never been in an outland heroic yet. this is due to no tanks or healers queueing for them. sometimes i wish i can tank. but i've resolved to level as DPS this time. i do have vuhdo (like grid/healbot) set up to cleanse/purify/taunt and flash of light heal.
So here's why i like using vuhdo. i love using it on Diinky, which is my druid healer. but that's not the reason why i like using it. its a mix of healbot and clique in a nice little interface. what it allows me to do is use any mouseover commands i have when i mouseover their healthbars. also, i am able to healing/dispell while clicking, or scrolling.
So this is how i use my spells with vuhdo on my ret paladin.
Right click - Righteous Defense (taunt. honestly, i'd rather take the hits than the healer, or clothie. at least i'll have a better chance to live plus it gives the tank a little more time to pull the mobs back.
Left click - Flash of Light. now i try to use this only when i have everything else on cooldown and my Art of War has procced. otherwise, i dont use this.
Mouse Scroll up - Purify.
Mouse Scroll down - Cleanse.
That's it for the ret. as far as purify and cleanse go, they cost the same amount of mana, one cleans poisons too. that's it, i believe. why this isnt one spell is beyond me. but there you have it. for dispells, i get a notice on vudo showing my green healthbars are now purple, or blue, or whatevers. this means they need a purify or cleanse. i go ahead and mouseover their healthbar and scroll up. done.
as for taunts, i will know who has aggro when their healthbar gets a red outline. its not a red glow or anything. their names also turn red and they have >> and << around their names on their health bar. so red outline, red name, red lessthan/greatherthan signs, and i will certainly know who specifically has aggro. if its a mess and i see aggro on the healer, i simply mouseover their name, and rightclick. thats it. never seen a cleanse happy dps have you? nope. and in instances, i usually dont see too many cleansing/dispelling healers either. not until i ask, of course. lol.
--------------------
Update on Rep.
Now im trying to get rep with Keepers of Time. Im friendly, but would like to at least get honored to unlock heroics. as of right now, i can do hellfire heroics, auchindoun heroics, coilfang heroics and tempest keep heroics. the last set is the caverns of time heroics, which is just durnholde and black morass. and im sure at 80, i can solo these even in heroics. but i do not want to. actually, i want to do it now. not because i am lazy, but because i am level 71 and am ready to keep doing these instances. i do not want to do them at 80. i seriously do not want to. the challenge isnt as great, although soloing it can be challenging, its not as fun as destroying the instance with four other people. since things have been nerfed to oblivion, why cant we just do these instances, even the heroic versions, at 68 instead? this may help change the face of a dying series of instances. i cant actually uninstall wrath so my experience locks at 70. but for me who wants to do these instances at around 70, it becomes a bit frustrating when i have to limit my leveling in order to actually do these instances before i cant do them anymore. meaning, once i hit a magical level, i will not be able to queue for normal outland instances. once i hit another level, i wont be able to queue for heroic outland instances. and there's some recipes that i'd like to purchase. i really want these stupid, but somewhat useful enchanting recipes, like threat to gloves or dodge to cloak. who uses that anymore? but i wantsss it!!
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Last thought for today, i think.... lol
my girlfriend just got a new laptop. so i might start playing with her. things may get interesting soon. but i'll have to teach her how to play and things. i wont teach her everything i know and i definitely will not show her how to play like i play. some things should be left to be discovered and i think its best to be discovered on your own. although she is more of a social rather than a hardcore player, it will be interesting to at least do a few things with her in-game. she'll definitely be using the dressing room feature a lot, and im sure her pick of clothes and gear will be based a lot on looks. but that's fine. gear design is there for a reason. hopefully, she'll want to play as horde. lol. we'll see.
Anyway, manders and i went to durnhold and kicked butt (although baby aggro was kicking my butt for some of the instance), and actually did the quest to progress through the story. glad i did because right after, i went to see the dragon disguised as a kid (do you even know why they choose to take on humanoid forms?) and he gave me another quest to enter the black morass. a lot of dark butt jokes can be made from that. but anyway, got the quest and for the rest of the night, we basically goofed off. i queued for a random outland heroic, but was short a tank/healer for most of the night. at about the 1 hour queue mark, i dropped queue and called it a night.
I really think the old LFG tool should be added for those who want to do instances within our realms that the LFD tool isnt going to allow us to do. what do i mean from this is that after a certain level, i am unable to queue for certain instances. or at least, i dont know how to queue for them yet. but i did get a random level 80 warlock added to a scholomance group. so how did that happen? what i wanted to do is to just be, say level 75, and be able to group up to run through keepers of time instances to get rep. i just hit "friendly" and will not be getting anywhere close to honored any time soon. this is mainly due to the lack of people doing black morass. although there may be a few who actually do the starting quest to do durrrrn, i find that its almost impossible to do it in offtimes. also, i've never been in an outland heroic yet. this is due to no tanks or healers queueing for them. sometimes i wish i can tank. but i've resolved to level as DPS this time. i do have vuhdo (like grid/healbot) set up to cleanse/purify/taunt and flash of light heal.
So here's why i like using vuhdo. i love using it on Diinky, which is my druid healer. but that's not the reason why i like using it. its a mix of healbot and clique in a nice little interface. what it allows me to do is use any mouseover commands i have when i mouseover their healthbars. also, i am able to healing/dispell while clicking, or scrolling.
So this is how i use my spells with vuhdo on my ret paladin.
Right click - Righteous Defense (taunt. honestly, i'd rather take the hits than the healer, or clothie. at least i'll have a better chance to live plus it gives the tank a little more time to pull the mobs back.
Left click - Flash of Light. now i try to use this only when i have everything else on cooldown and my Art of War has procced. otherwise, i dont use this.
Mouse Scroll up - Purify.
Mouse Scroll down - Cleanse.
That's it for the ret. as far as purify and cleanse go, they cost the same amount of mana, one cleans poisons too. that's it, i believe. why this isnt one spell is beyond me. but there you have it. for dispells, i get a notice on vudo showing my green healthbars are now purple, or blue, or whatevers. this means they need a purify or cleanse. i go ahead and mouseover their healthbar and scroll up. done.
as for taunts, i will know who has aggro when their healthbar gets a red outline. its not a red glow or anything. their names also turn red and they have >> and << around their names on their health bar. so red outline, red name, red lessthan/greatherthan signs, and i will certainly know who specifically has aggro. if its a mess and i see aggro on the healer, i simply mouseover their name, and rightclick. thats it. never seen a cleanse happy dps have you? nope. and in instances, i usually dont see too many cleansing/dispelling healers either. not until i ask, of course. lol.
--------------------
Update on Rep.
Now im trying to get rep with Keepers of Time. Im friendly, but would like to at least get honored to unlock heroics. as of right now, i can do hellfire heroics, auchindoun heroics, coilfang heroics and tempest keep heroics. the last set is the caverns of time heroics, which is just durnholde and black morass. and im sure at 80, i can solo these even in heroics. but i do not want to. actually, i want to do it now. not because i am lazy, but because i am level 71 and am ready to keep doing these instances. i do not want to do them at 80. i seriously do not want to. the challenge isnt as great, although soloing it can be challenging, its not as fun as destroying the instance with four other people. since things have been nerfed to oblivion, why cant we just do these instances, even the heroic versions, at 68 instead? this may help change the face of a dying series of instances. i cant actually uninstall wrath so my experience locks at 70. but for me who wants to do these instances at around 70, it becomes a bit frustrating when i have to limit my leveling in order to actually do these instances before i cant do them anymore. meaning, once i hit a magical level, i will not be able to queue for normal outland instances. once i hit another level, i wont be able to queue for heroic outland instances. and there's some recipes that i'd like to purchase. i really want these stupid, but somewhat useful enchanting recipes, like threat to gloves or dodge to cloak. who uses that anymore? but i wantsss it!!
------------------------
Last thought for today, i think.... lol
my girlfriend just got a new laptop. so i might start playing with her. things may get interesting soon. but i'll have to teach her how to play and things. i wont teach her everything i know and i definitely will not show her how to play like i play. some things should be left to be discovered and i think its best to be discovered on your own. although she is more of a social rather than a hardcore player, it will be interesting to at least do a few things with her in-game. she'll definitely be using the dressing room feature a lot, and im sure her pick of clothes and gear will be based a lot on looks. but that's fine. gear design is there for a reason. hopefully, she'll want to play as horde. lol. we'll see.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Remember last weekend?
Remember last weekend where I decided to level a paladin and got him to level 20 by the end of the weekend? well this weekend I started off at level 26 and ended up level 34. its not the 20 levels from last week, but it is still a significant change. howso? at the start of the weekend I was pretty happy doing 60 dps. now im trying to hit 150 each time through SM:GY. Scarlet Monastery: Grave Yard. Graveyard is probably the shortest of the four SM instances and also the lowest leveled. Not only is it the lowest level instance, it's probably the only instance at level 30. when I started the weekend, I was doing RFK and Gnomers, but at 30, its only SM:GY. only.
sure, I can q for another instance manually, althought the choices are pretty limited (I cant even choose SFK to complete a quest that's green to me), but at level 30-32 I was doing all graveyard runs. and when my group wanted to re-q, we got graveyard again. how random is that when there's only one instance that LFD will pick? Gnomers/stocks/rfk is green? so what, send me there I don’t care. they should really do at least one lockout if we've done maybe the same instance like 3 times in a row. then remove the lockout once we've done a new one. that would work. programming that in would not be so hard would it? how many times do I have to deal with listening to the torturer yelling "Naughty Secrets"? I don’t want to. but sadly, I think im not given much options in the future. next group of instances: Library and… that’s it.
next after that: RFDowns, SM:Armory.
next after that: Uldamon, SM: Cath, Zul Farak
next after that: Maraudon, Sunken Temple
next after that: Scholomance, Stratholme, BRD, BRS: upper and lower.
So honestly, I don’t think I'll even get to do all of the last tier instances before I hop over to outland. those instances are much better planned, better laid out, gives better loot and gives better exp. all better unless I really want to get some kinda acheivement. or that rare enchanting recipe from that rare spawn in brd. I don’t even know what formula it is, I just know its there. So with the list above, I'd say my best chance to actually enjoy random instances is with Ulda/Cath/ZF, or… Scholo/Strath/BRD/BRS. In the early 50's, I'll be stuck with Mara and Sunken Temple. and right now, I will be stuck with Library. just library. until I hit one more level and then I can do RFD. Razerfen downs. So I guess it's not soooo bad. but still.
anyway, so at level 33, I think I was able to get into random SM:Lib. Scarlet Monastery Library. 34, maybe RFD with some SM:Lib still. and then hopefully at 34 or 35 I can start doing Armory. it doesn’t help when most of the gear that drops from armory can only be equipped at 35-38. so for most of my time there, I will probably come across Herod's axe like 10 times, and each time I will roll need on it because I will claim I do not have it. and each time I will save it so I can take a screen shot of how ridiculous Armory is… in terms of drops. its all mail and an axe. so warriors, paladins, hunters and enhancement shamans, this instance is for you, even if you cant use the drop for four levels. hopefully I can run this place long enough to come across all the pieces to the chain set of the scarlet crusade and then the tabard, shield, and a shoulderpiece from herod. I think I'll be all set for two levels. that’s when plate gear kicks in and I'll be switching to that. although I've done this grind before and I really don’t transition out of mail completely until well into my mid 40s or even late 40s. there is no real hurry anyway, as my dps is rockin and my survival isnt so bad when questing "yellow" or "orange" mobs. now have me fight off two orange mobs and I might run low on health. but that’s about it. 3 orange mobs and im basically dead if I don’t BOP and run.
This weekend, I also tried to level my cooking and fishing. fishing was pretty easy actually. I remember the days where I tried to fish at a certain spot and would not be able to because my fishing skill was too low. now I can fish anywhere, but what I catch can either be junk, or a sickly fish. either way, it still increases my fishing skill. and that's really all I am after. really. I can now fish in hillsbrad and catch decent fish without a lure. I still get the occassional junk, but I get more fish than not. also, I try to seek out the pools, which will get me more "good" fish and some junkboxes. those trunks do have nice goodies. I did get a book that taught me how to spot fish pools on my minimap. it hasn’t really helped since im still stuck on "sense undead" haha. but I cant say for sure if its actually helpful. I mean I run along the riverbank and yea, there's a pool. did I need a minimap finder for that? nope. I also discovered there are fish that only live in fresh water, and others that only live in salt water. interesting. I stopped using lures now, but I know I can probably fish better with it. I need to keep it in mind.
cooking isnt so bad either. I started off making the simple sweet bread, then herb baked eggs. this was done last week. I spend about an hour running through the zoram strand the other day for crawler meat, then went and killed the naga for clams. then, I went to hillsbrad and killed the naga there for higher level clams. the naga in hillsbrad drop the zesty clams. then I went and hit 175 and learned to make soothing turtle bisque. so cooking will be easy for now. I do remember the last few items to cook in azeroth were fished, so that might be a problem. but I did read somewhere that cooking was made easier so I don’t have to really deal with having to buy lobsters at 295 in order to reach 300 cooking skill.
So far, everything's stuck at 200-225. I learned to make mageweave bandages, my fishing is almost 200, and my cooking is at 190ish. my enchanting is stuck at 235 and my second profession should be coming right along… soon. yea, soon. I am still tossing up two options. one is inscription, and the other is blacksmithing. I'll ponder more about this later.
One last thing im discovering, if there's a shaman with a mana spring totem, he's usually overriding my blessing of wisdom. which causes smartbuff to go bonkers. I really like smartbuff, but I am having some problems tweaking it, specially with all the other buffs out there and everyone asking for something else. blessing of wisdom and mana stream doesn’t stack. so I just put on kings.
I also joined a guild this past weekend. we're called Durotan's Children. or was it Children of Durotan? something like that. it’s a social/leveling guild. there's some nice people, with lots of "gratz" going on. I really don’t like congratulating people of small acheivements. if its hitting 30, or 60, or 80, then sure. if its for buying an epic flyer then sure. if its for downing some difficult raid boss then sure. if its for getting journeyman mining, then no. no no no. that’s not an acheivement. that's something you would do anyway. but other than that rant, theres a lottery! I don’t know what else is in store for me, but hopefully the guild leader remains in the guild, doesn’t get caught up with real life (or give leadership to appropriate person to lead in their absence), and doesn’t do stupid things. well stupid can be subjective. but anyway, I am hoping for something fun. maybe a bunch of people to level with. I see a lot of people who are level 20, 30, 40, and so on. My DK is still in my other guild with my friend, but she's barely on and almost no one is on in the other guild. so I figured I might as well try a "social leveling" guild for now.
so that’s pretty much what went down this past weekend. hopefully I can post a bit about some of the small details of ret leveling and spec soon. its quite interesting how the same class can level differently based on spec. and how talent choices can matter depending on levels, style of play and just plain ol' preference. of course, pally leveling has changed drastically since a few years back (all for the better, ofc).
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