Oh the Monotony!!!

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.

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. 

Tanks and Their Need of DPS Gear

You guys stress me to no end.  no really, you do.  please learn to outfit yourself with tanking gear. 

Last night, me and my girlfriend ran a few level 85 dungeons to try to reach 85 by the end of the night.  I am 20% away from dinging while she dinged during the dungeon. 

We added a friend who jumped from her home server to play with us.  She was happy to be playing with friends, at least, and we did several dungeons together.  on the last dungeon we did before we went out to dinner, we got Grim Batol and got a tank from the same realm.  he was 85, trying to gear up i guess, and didnt know the instance.

First off, the instances are dumb easy now.  they were hard six months ago.  it was fun. it was interesting.  and it was frustrating all in one. it made the game good.  now its almost a snorefest.  and on top of that, we had drakes that killed more than half of our trash packs for us anyway.  so it was triple easy even for level 84's doing level 85 dungeons.  and we get this tank, from our own realm no less, with almost all dps gear and a +int cloak.  at least he was spec'd blood to help with some of the mitigation. 

how did he do in the instance?  he did fine. he did fine only because he was being healed by my gf.  she's working on her holy paladin healadining toon and was healing him non stop.  but otherwise, he was horribad. granted, he did say he was new, so i ended up narrating half of the instance for him, boss fights and then some trash packs. also, i had to remind him that we needed CC in certain trash packs.  he would then wait for me to give to go ahead if no cc were needed.  honestly, having cc makes everything easier.  i dont know why tanks like to grab entire groups and spend just as much time on all the mobs.  our dps will remain relatively the same whether we down a group all at once or a couple at a time.  the only real difference is, would you rather wait for the CC to land, or would you rather wait for the healer to drink after the fight?  normally, waiting for the hunter to set his trap takes much less time than waiting for the healer to drink because she spent all her mana healing stupid pulls.

and so we got to the first boss where EVERYONE and their dogs knew to leave the malignant trog alone so he can be cc'd.  nope.  didnt happen.  i tried terribly to pull him out but he stuck. so my dps was halved for the fight, but we did get through it.  Second boss comes almost right after the first, with a few trash to pull.  it didnt go smoothly at all.  I had to tell him that the big guys are usually the decoys and the ones you need to focus on are really the small caster mobs.  i then began explaining the second boss fight, throngus, or something, and he pulls right after i said something like, if he picks mace, kite.  i had to yell KITE several times when he did pick his mace.  fortunately, this was a normal instance, my gf is an awesome healer, and the tank was at least in the right spec.  we one-shotted the boss.

from then on, CC was common unless i stated that cc wasnt necesasry.  we got through the trash and then on to the dragon fight.  every flame called that was placed on me was kited (just one, lol).  the rest, well they all kinda blew up.  the one that went to the tank blew up.  it was damage, but it wasnt anything we couldnt heal through.  still, bad play is bad play.  amazingly, when my gf said she was out of mana, the dragon dropped the boss and fled.  we cleaned him up with one more flame guy to take care of.  of course, the flame guy picked the tank.  we ended up beating that boss without trouble and went on to the last boss.

the last boss was fun. i put a mark on me to show everyone where the center of the storm will be.  lo and behold, the tank missed it twice.  the only time he was in it was when it spawned right on top of him.  shadow gale sucks ass on normal, so my gf healed through it.  the adds were easily killed.  nothing was out of the ordinary except for shadowgale and we downed the boss with no problems.  then a ring dropped. a dps ring.  my dps paladin friend rolled need.  she was the only dps who needed that ring.  there was a rogue, but he was looking for agi, im sure.  and then the tank rolled on the ring and won.  now i had to yell at him.  and i did.  my gf added her input since she's been there and have been ninja'd by many tanks in the past for her dps upgrades.  and so for a couple of minutes we tried talking this guy into giving the damn ring to the dps who actually needed it.  and how it would just annoy other healers if he did use dps gear to tank.  he didnt see it that way but said that an upgrade is an upgrade and then left. 

well that didnt turn out too well, but maybe he did forget one thing that night.  we were in the same realm.  so once i got out and back into org, i did a trade announcement to "warn" others not to play with him.  in my own fashion, i added his guild.  Y player of X guild is a ninja, please avoid playing with him, thanks.  a few replies in chat were basically affirming that X guild isnt pleasant to play with, etc. 

I'd figure that will be left at that. at least a couple of people from our realm will know that Y player doesnt have great character and should be avoided.  but to my surprise, i had two people whisper me, co-guildleaders, i assume.  who said that this behavior will not be tolerated and that they will talk to him when he logs back on.  i mentioned the person who did lose the roll was on our realm too, and they talked to her as well.  overall, it was nice to know that guilds do care, at least guild leaders, do care about their own guild's reputation within the realm.  through all of this, i hope that the tank will learn a few things.  grim batol is easy. but heroics are a pain, especially with dps gear.  ninja-ing gear that doesnt help you one bit only makes you a bad player.  you might have all the skill in the world, but when rolling on clearly off-spec items make sure no one else actually really needs it. 

character>gear. 
skill>gear. 
lots of things are > gear. 

gear is just a means to an end.  but it doesnt make you play better.  nor does it make you a better person than the next guy.  and dps gear surely doesnt help you tank.  now thinking about it, one of the bosses did drop a caster cape.  the tank did mention that it was better than his cape.  i wonder if he secretly wanted to need on that too.  who knows. 

one last thing regarding the new tank.  i wanted to put him on ignore to avoid playing with him again. but then i also wanted to chat with him in the future if he did change his ways.  i'd rather see someone change for the better than never play with him again.  maybe one day he'll be an great tank.  but until then, who knows.

One last last thing.  i also think it would be an improvement to the rolling system if we can roll for offspec gear.  it does assume that people know what their offspec is, and that blizz would somehow link certain gears to offspec.  although this might be reasonable, there can be other builds/specs/combinations that might be necessary for certain things. i dont know what, but there might be. 

much like how i dont mind casters, say, shamans rolling on cloth gear if no one needs, i dont mind tanks rolling for offspec gear if no one needs.  key words: IF NO ONE NEEDS.

So rolling priority will be like so:  Main spec need > Main Spec type need > Offspec Need > Greed.   where type is the type of material of the item (cloth, leather, mail, plate).  of course, if the drop is a ring or a necklace or a mace, etc, the type will not come into play. and if you totally cant wear it, say a dagger and you're on a paladin, then you get the Greed option only.

or maybe that's too complicated. who knows.  but i still like blizz' way now.  it leaves the interaction, the decisions, and how we impact society and this mmo up to us, the players.

The Joys of Healing Heroic PUGs

First one, Heroic Vortex Pinnacle!

I picked up healing once again!  yay.  now this blog can actually be useful for once (if you can read through all the QQ, that is).  my first experience was with a few guildies and one pugger, which wasnt so bad.  we had a raiding healer with us but she was asked to dps so i can practic some healing.  we zoned into vortex pinnacle with me, my gf in her dk, a guildie tank, and a guildie shaman who's dpsing the fight.  it was pretty intense up through the first boss.  my gf took minimal damage, the tank took a lot of damage (and fell off the ledge several times) and the guildie shaman was doing pretty well as dps.  after the first pull, i was pretty much OOM.  everyone was alive, but i was OOM.  You know that pull with the air elementals? all five of them?  one was bound, so there were four at once hitting the tank.  luckily, he was probably able to heal himself. 

I got a little better with mana conservation after the first pull.  We go down the first ramp, with each pull costing me about half my mana instead of all my mana.  we slowly pushed towards the first boss and i actually drank, took mana potions and innervated myself after each pull.  oh the fun of being mana starved!

at the first boss, i was at 50% mana going in.  apparently my guildie figured i needed extra healing stress on my first time back!  in any case, the damage was normalized after the first cyclone pull, and no one died.  i was sitting at <10% mana for half the fight, but during that half of the fight, i really didnt need to heal much.  I didnt even need to go treeoflife either, which is good because they look sooooo goofy healing.

anyway i was having a blast keeping the tank and the group up.  it seemed that, not only were my heals hitting for a lot less and the mana costs were a lot more, the tank and group were taking a whole lot more damage than what i remembered in wrath.  or maybe it was because everyone was overgeared in wrath. now although i was constantly healing in wrath dungeons (ABC of healing--Always Be Casting), i would usually never drop below 50% mana and my healing usually compensates for a lot of aoe damage that happens even in dungeons like H.HoR, or H.PoS.  But in Cata heroics, my healing spells feel weak and overpriced, even for a decent group, where the tank knew how to tank and the dps knew how to stay out of bad, i still felt that my nourish wasnt helping much, my swiftmend (which used to be emergency) didnt do much, and my swiftness+HT (my other emergency) didnt really put much health back at all.  i am not one of those who think tranquility is an emergency spell.  sure it might be for 5-mans and some druids love it, but i find it very limiting.  the amount of healing might be lovely, but channeling the spell limits me so much, i find it almost unusable, especially when i tried using it for a while, i'd break the channeling prematurely to do another, more important heal.

But anyway, my healing sucks, my mana efficiency sucks and my hope in all treekind began to erode.

and then the tank tells us he was tanking in healing gear.  <.<
(oh and that i was also doing a great job for the first time back... right.)

So after he put his tanking gear back on, healing felt a lot better.  even though i had craptastic healing touch and swiftmends, i found it a whole lot easier to heal.  the fights became more mana efficient where i was able to heal several pulls without having to drink (except for those two pulls where we attack swirling wind things.  its just fun trying to keep everyone up because damage was just everywhere. 

Overall, boss fights were easy to heal, trash was a bit harder to heal and tanks in healing gear is pretty hard to heal... but not impossible. I welcome all the dps-geared tanks to come and give me a workout.  well okay, maybe not.  but at least i know if there are some who do come to tank with a couple of pieces of dps gear, i guess its okay.  we'll be fine so long as they know how to tank. 



And then, there is Heroic Stonecore. 

After my first (mainly) successful stint at healing again, i decided to try my luck without my guildies.  i grabbed my gf and we went on our way to another random heroic queue.  My second try at healing heroics turned out to be stonecore.  now every instance has their own bane, but this one has seven.  yes seven.  Four bosses and three types of trash groups that really makes this difficult. the first type is the group of five trash with Millhouse Manastorm.  The second is the trash rock elemental.  the third is the cultist trash after slabhide.  add to that the meandering sentinels and the ogre and you have some of the most hated trash pulls in all of Cata. 

First thing's first, the tank did not want to CC anything.  after every pull, i was pretty low on mana.  however, he did mark Millhouse with a Skull, so he wasnt completely clueless.  but even there, i had to let one guy die.  sorry ele shaman.  you were good. but i cant keep everyone up. 

on to the first boss and i was actually glad we were done with trash pulls.  the boss was great until he did his crystal spit thing and out came the shards.  my gf tried to blood boil them but did not get any help from any of the other dps.  it all seemed like they were focusing on the boss.  Death and decay has a long CD, so my gf could possible DnD down every other group of shards, but not every group.

So the first boss fight ended up with a wipe.  first my gf dies, then one of the dps, then the other.  the tank was last to die.  he completely ignored the shards, or any other of the borers that were still running around.  i dont know if he knew his team was in trouble.  but i kinda figured he didnt like saving the day much.  in any case, with nothing to save me from the shards, i died, then him. of course, he left the group.  but that's okay.  he wasnt a great tank anyway. someone who cant call out cc after the first pull, seeing that the healer was OOM, or help pick up deadly flying geods doesnt really deserve to move on in the instance.  There wasnt even a word about who should do what.  in any case, we figured most of it out for the second pull, which happened about 4 minutes later due to waiting for another tank.  the short wait continues to prove my point that queuing while already in a dungeon is faster than queuing after you leave the group. but people still leave group whenever a tank would leave.  too bad for them.

in any case, now that we know the shaman and priest (the other two dps) will not be assed to help with the geod shards, my gf decided to blood boil them on her own.  any stray ones left will not pose much of a challenge to me.  our second try was successful with a new warrior tank.  people stayed out of the rumble/dust on the ground and adds were picked up pronto.

Anyway, moving on to the next trash pull.  No one knows how to jump, aparently.  Well i guess no one really knows that earthquak sucks.  but then the priest got reminded that he can levitate people and so damage on the second rock dude was a bit less.  still, the melee still took a lot of damage.  but this wasnt due to the earthquakes as much as it was due to the shards.  it looks as if these guys are able to summon one shard at a time, which blows up and kills people.  but alas, the ranged dps, both of then, werent keen on this and we ended up getting hit by those shards several times.  i actually spammed moonfire to get rid of two. 

The dragon boss was easy peasy.  everyone know crystal storm.  everyone knew to get out of lava.  everyone knew to stay away from the stupid shadows that shows you where the stalagmites will drop.  and somehow, most of the people i was healing were in my LOS!  a smooth fight, to say the least. 

And then we get on to wiping on trash before Ozruk.  I know ozruk.  he's no softy. but the trash before him is pretty annoying.  sentinels, omg they suck.  so the first pull ended up being a two-group pull.  how often does this happen?  like every time i go there.  someone always figures there's plenty of time to kill the sentinels.  well one was able to get away and call for help.  So two groups and two dead dps.  not sure who anymore, but i knew there were some casualties.  Oh and THAT pull forced me to finally pull out my tree form.  Wow, the ugliness. You know my first post on this site ever?  i take it back.  I dont wanna be any kinda tree, ever.

So anyway, we get to Ozruk and the tank proceeds to "learn" the fight.  obviously, only the tank was learning the fight.  the other two ranged dps (magic dps right??) were not learning jack.  they were paralized the whole duration of paralysis, which caused them 50k damage each time.  and how often does he cast that? before every shatter, right?  so each fight had a LOT of damage.  the dps would suck below 5k dps because of the duration of the paralyze and the melee having to run out of shatter.  so this was going to be a long fight no matter.  what's very interesting is that each time i did a moonfire to get a dot on me, it didnt work.  What i found out was that warriors' shield slam is able to dispell the spell reflect from Ozruk.  well that was probably what caused the wipes all five times.  Then i said im done and left.

At the end, the tank did learn to tank Ozruk well.  The healer, well he figured he'd read up on why we failed (and found out).  And the ranged dps who kept getting paralized?  well i hope they find better groups where the healer and tank werent clueless to the mechanics. 

I remember now why i stopped healing (and tanking) for a while.  The job is almost a chore.  i do like tanking and i do like healing.  but when it comes to relaxing every night after work, i'd like to relax.  and even if i die several times in an instance as dps, it's not as stressful of a death since, more likely than not, my existence in a group is trivialized by 67% anyway.  and if you count total DPS, probably 80%. 

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.

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!

Practice in Oblivion

I just had to write a post today just to get this out of my system.  Actually it is already out of my system, as many issues seem to fall off of me like water rolling off a duck's back.  and i am writing this when i should be following up on a couple of closings and working on several reports actually say something--its not rolling off my back as it should. You guessed it, rant/story incoming!

Well me and my gf were out there gear-leveling our alts, me on my rogue and her on her DK.  I barely had enough ilevel to enter heroics, 329 to be exact, as does she and we qued for our second or third heroic on those toons last night (the first we ever did on the rogue/dk set was throne of the tides with no other that i can recall of.  so i am thinking this is our second heroic). 

We sit for 30 minutes in queue, waiting, patiently.  Actually i was trying to put together a computer fan, a box from ikea, a used USB cable, and make it into a cooling solution for my xbox.  We were all a little occupied doing various things.  Anyway, the queue pops and we get Deadmines.  Back in the days we used to abbreviate it VC, for Van Cleef.  but i am not sure if we're still using that term.  Maybe DM, or Dire Maul fell off the face of the earth and no one mentions that as DM.  DM.  Anyway, lots of tangents today. sorry.

We zoned in and i checked out the three puggees.  They were all from Sisters of Elune, tank had mainly tanking gear with some dps pieces (no no right there), healer had good gear but nothing fancy.  spec looked OK but with no pain suppression? whaaa?  oh and fury warrior was speced... fury, of course. 

In we go, after the first readycheck (omg really?) we pulled the first ogre and his kobold.  After the first pull i can tell we werent doing too well.  Me and my gf were at 7k dps. pretty decent for entry level heroics, i thought.  then i saw the warrior's dps at 3.2k.  oh noes.  But maybe he wasnt ready.  plus, no one died.  so off to the next pull and i jumped into the cannon. I shot everything up so the second pull, which included a whole bunch of kolbolds and an ogre was a farce.  the cannon did all the work and the dps could have just stood there.  that's fine.  the next pull were the two ogres before the first boss.  i couldnt sap so we pulled them together.  take fell to about 15% health twice but recovered.  healer went OOM.  warrior did 3.4k dps! an increase, yay!

Then our first boss fight occured. again, me and my gf were doing about 6-7k dps while running around in circles, avoiding the fire wall and the electro-zones.  actually i got caught in electro bomb zones several times because there was really no where else to go.  I had to help the tank pick up adds with Tricks/FoK, which really really helped centralize damage.  After about 20 seconds of fire wall, the warrior dies.  then the healer.  then the tank and everyone else.  the tank asks what went wrong.  no one replied.  actually it was pretty obvious. healer died so we all died.  duh, right?  the 3.2k dps warrior could have just been dead since the start and it wouldnt have mattered.

Second attempt went better.  Me and my gf both got the [Ready for Raiding] acheivement.  i think a chestpiece dropped for me, which i was pretty happy about since it replaced a level 312 chest.  we move on to trash.  death happened when we pulled the two casters which i expected was bound to happen.  but we rebounded because the second attempt had less mobs!  on one pull, the healer died to a monkey.  the tank died to the monkey too.  then i realized what was happening and i clicked on the ball and chain to make the monkey turn friendly.  after that, the tank made it an effort to make all the remaining monkeys friendly.

We get to the lumber room with the oaf/goblin and, of course, took two attempts.  the first attempt was a little dull.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened.  we would have survived if the oaf didnt pick the healer to slam into the wall.  besides that, the only real complaint i had was that no one picked up the goblin to attack. i guess it doesnt matter either way. but after the first wipe on him, the tank said hmmmm.  and i replied with, "healer died in that attempt, if oaf picked someone else to ram into the wall, we would have been okay."  the healer replied with "so blame the healer for everything".  well, i call it like i see it. its nothing personal. anyway, i replied with basically instructions on how to do this well.  "avoid the bombs, dps down the boss, switch to goblin when he jumps off, and if you're below 70% health when you get slammed in the wall, you die."   the tank replies with "so you know everything about this fight".  i took that as a snarky remark and said, "totally".  no reply. 

we went ahead and killed him this time.  again, me and my gf were tops in dps.  brand new heroic rats doing about 7k dps.  and again, warrior was at 3.2k dps.  tank was doing abotu 5k. healer was OOM.

We went on to wipe again.  On trash.  Once we got to the forge, it was it for me.  we were there for a little over an hour and anything bullshit that anyone gave me will have me reply with less than pleasant words.  We were at four wipes already, maybe more bc i could have lost count.  but at least four.  twice on boss and at least twice on trash. 

We proceeded down the circular ramp towards the first reaver.  The tank asked who wants to use the robot.  i asked if anyone knows how (much better question, dont you think?).  there was no reply. i asked my gf not to jump on the reaver, even though she has an idea of how to use it.  i knew how to use it too, but i wanted the warrior, who was doing crap ass dps to get on the reaver.  at least we'll maximize our potential that way.  after a couple of minutes of just standing around, the warrior got the hint and jumped on the reaver.  after we killed the enemy reaver, i would hop on to it to help out the fight before it self destructs.  what i found out was amazing. the warrior stood with the tank, thereby receiving the cleave damage.  by the time we got to the third reaver, the warrior's reaver bot died and he had to dps on foot.  he also used steam jets or whatever that ability was to knock me back several times.  i countered with a charge that stunned the enemy reaver.  easy enough.  after the last reaver died, the warrior got into his robot and the tank pulled Reaper. 

Now things were going quite smoothly for the first 30 seconds of the fight.  yes, it was bliss for that long.  stay out of harvest, stay out of overdrive.  easy.  we did that.  most of the fight was us running away with intervals of dps. this is how the fight should be.  then from behind i get a slag attacking me, then i died.  upon hitting my face with the keyboard, i saw several more slags moving up the ramp.  good job warrior.  We wipe, of course. 

As i was zoning into the instance again, for the sixth time, the tank posts the dps meters. then says, i dont think we have enough dps for this fight.  i was in disbelief that this guy could actually say that after we topped meters the entire fight.  and his warrior buddy was on a reaver, so his dps didnt quite count.  also, this is a heavy movement fight and dps is secondary to survival (a misnomer, since dps should ALWAYS be secondary to survival, but this fight exemplifies it).  in any case, i replied with, "this is a two-dps fight".  the tank replies with, "i know that but i dont think our dps is good enough".  no shit.  the dps cant dps with slags flowing in.  in any case, i replied with something like this, "you're right, i do think you guys need to learn to play better before you queue for heroics again. peace out. "

then i left.  my gf saw the rest of them leave so she left too.  no one replied to me.  no one could say much i guess. 

in any case, why is this a problem? and why is my blog post title about another game?  It is because the tank completely disregarded the fail of his teammates.  as if, it was completely forgotten.  of course, him and his friends could do no wrong and every little piece of failure that his team produced was lost to oblivion. 

i dont know what planet these guys were from, but from the "dont blame me" attitude of the healer, to the snarky comments from the tank, to the utter disregard of incompetence from these three people or the ridiculously low dps from the fury dps warrior (you know the class that usually tops meters with their whirlwind?), i could not imagine the only response from the tank was that maybe the dps wasnt good enough for this fight.

No, the dps did suck. but it didnt suck because the rogue or the dk was doing bad dps, or that our total combined 15k dps (5k split between three people). the dps sucked because the warrior sucked donkey nuts.  total was about 15k for all three dps.  but the tank was doing 3k.  we were doing 6k each. im sorry, but we can only carry so much fail.  after a while it becomes a matter of, Gevlon told you so.  and yes, im sitting there watching how M&S cannot figure out that maybe they are the problem and not the good players.  It's people like these that make us wish we could play with our guildies more.  at that time, it was 10pm PDT, or 1am EDT, so most of our guildies were sleeping.

Not once did i see a penance from the disc priest.  not once did i see a prayer of mending fly around.  very little will i see a PW:Shield come flying my way.  I never saw a power word barrier, never saw hymn of hope, never saw inner focus, never saw a renew. the healer's major heals were greater heal and power word shield. no archangel either, tho he was specc'd into it. 

The warrior was doing mainly auto-attacks (40% of damage) heroic strike and colossus smash. yep, that's it.  maybe rend every once in a while and a thunder clap.  but that's it. 

The tank, on single bosses, hammer of the righteous (crusaderstrike, no?), little judgments, and very few shield of the righteous.  add to that no inquisition.  i cannot comment on whether he did use divine protection or ardent defender.

but how can a bunch of fail players get together and pretend like they're good without seeing that other people are doing amazingly better than them. yes, amazingly better compared to how they play.  i mean if somoene was doing twice my damage, sometimes 3x my damage, wouldnt i want to know how he does it? maybe i can reproduce what he did next time around.  that's how i see it.  and how can i play a class and not take criticism? i mean the healer's response was basically, "yea blame the healer for everything."  What's even more striking was that the tank would often say, "thats my fault" when it really wasnt his fault.  it was the healer.  i could come up with my own theories of why that is, but let me keep my theories to myself for now. 

now i dont care if someone is bad as long as he is willing to listen to reason and learn from those who are doing better than him.  five wipes before we get halfway into the instance is NOT good.  and thinking that maybe its everyone else except for me is not "reason" or reasonable.  perhaps it is you especially if the dps arent being stupid.  maybe its you.  or maybe its one of you.  stop defending your failed friends.  protecting them will not make them better.  pretending that they are great players will only make them great players in their own world.  but in a world where people are playing with each other, there is a matter of truth that must be accepted by all.  you cant relegate all oberservations that's critical to you or your friends to oblivion.  thus, i will not relegate your actions to mere disregard.  i will regard your actions, your playstyle, your abilities and your replies to me.  i will not pretend you guys dont suck.  and i didnt.  please do the same to your friends.  you're only fooling yourselves and eventually, it will cause headaches for those unfortunate to party with you.  i should have put you on ignore when i had the chance.  too late now as i forgot all of their names.  i only know them as the idiots from Sisters of Elune.

to you, poor souls, i pity you. 

The More Things Change...

As the old saying goes, the more things change, they more they stay the same (or it stays the same, or whatevers).  The point is clear.  its all the same.  everything is recycled.  rant time?  yes.

The problem is, yet again, dungeons.  Oh i loved the first few weeks of Cata.  The dungeons were hard.  Every dungeon was difficult.  Every dungeon had wipes.  At the end of the night, i had to redo some macros, or prioritize differently than before. 

I started cata with my warrior, Ithacus.  he's an orc.  they're pretty no-nonsense type of warriors bent on killing things, usually by overpowering them as opposed to out-maneuvering them.  i'll leave the finesse for dainty night elves and blood elves.  but the human counterpart in the world of azeroth are the orcs.  and they are fierce.  they rush into a fight with zero regard for their own well-being with the one purpose to obliterate their foes.  Ithacus was one of them.  he would charge+shout, rend, drop a thunderclap, then cleave+sweeping strikes and bladestorm til he died.  this happened on every wrath heroic between 4.01 and cata launch.  imagine the fun i was having with ARMS warrioring.  =P  yes.  arms... i said it.  Fury my ass.  anyway, moving along...

(to accomplish the above, i had two macros.  one for charge/shout, which had me tap the button twice.  once to charge, and again to shout while i was in the middle of a charge.  easy.  second is the sweeping strikes macro'ed to cleave.  since i only use cleave for multiple mobs, adding a sweeping strikes to it always makes it worthwhile.  especially in wrath dungeons.  you need sweeping strikes on as much as possible, because that's how the game was played. i rend once per fight, so that's not macroed anywhere.  i thunderclap often, so that's its own separate button)

Then Things Changed
Enter Cata.  Life was gleeful.  every dungeon was rough, especially when i was asked to tank for half of them. i was essentially learning two players at once. but overall, i was learning to wait a little to dps.  I was using pummel or body slam or whatever it is.  i forget.  having two specs make it difficult to remember.  but i know i was using my interrupts more.  i found that in the battle between slam and heroic strike, heroic strike wins. i finally started using colossus smash and not just when the "thing" procs.  you can tell i have no idea what the name of the proc is, but i know what it looks like and press colossus smash accordingly.   i even back up and hit intercept now, whenever something needs to be stopped, like a heal from this Adepts in Vortex Pin. 

Overall, pulls were thought out a bit more.  There's more consideration to each class' CC abilities.  I have learned quite a few things about CC, like who can CC what, and who should CC first, etc. I also know that no boomkin has ever used hibernate on a dragon.  none.  the more obvious CCs are usually a hunter's trap and a mage's polymorph.  no one figured maybe you can bind an elemental, or banish it.  or hey, let the boomkin entangle roots and hiberante.  two in one. yay!  several paladins couldnt find Repentance, but they found them eventually.  rogues often use distract before they sap and deathknights.... well they're pretty much useless for now.

Apart from the crowd controls, there's the other obvious good things that changed about the fights themselves.  Mobs lived longer, did more damage, had better abilities and caused a little more trauma. thats great!!!  no seriously, my wrath-era-yawns turned into, "oh hey!! something new!"  i had to watch my surroundings more, had to interrupt more whirlwinds and AoE casts and all that good stuff.  The healer would be OOM after almost every fight.  YAY!!!! that's so awesomesauce.  people were at half health, or less, after every fight too.  awesomesauce with added tobasco!  and at the end of pretty much every fight, it felt like i actually earned that kill.  awesomesauce that's better than Hooter's 911 chicken wings!!


But They Stayed the Same
After leveling my warrior to 85 and getting a few dungeons in, i started leveling my deathknight with my girlfriend's priest.  we leveled through hyjal, deepholm, the ramhaken part of uldum and finally twilight highlands.  While leveling, we did queue for all the dungeons along the way.  What my girlfriend felt was that she had better mana efficiency, which is good. she didnt lose much of the difficulty in healing each fight, but she did find it less stressing when her mana bar was twice as full as usual.  she has two priests, both 85 now. leveling the first one 80-85 was omg hard.  leveling the second one 80-85 was a lot eaiser.  i guess blizzard made a few tweaks. but i am sidetracked.... lets get back to the subject.

I noticed something when i was dps (Arms Warrior and Frost DK), that somehow not a lot of people knew how to dps.  really?  yes. now i dont mean CC, or interrupts, or even moving out of Bad, which is required.  but many of them were doing less dps than me.  there were hunters and boomkins doing 3k dps.  just 3k, at level 83.  they may have had to CC, which was obvious if the tank asks for them, but they did not know how to interrupt spellcasts, dont know how to deal with adds, dont know how to avoid bad stuffs.  many folks are learning, true. but how many times does it take for a summoned elemental to shoot a beam at you before you realize maybe you should kill it before it reaches you? slow it down. run away. kill it or else a gigantic pillar of fire will spawn from your feet and kill you?  how many times???? OMG!!  ARRRRGHGHHHHH.

But my god the dps is crap. on my warrior, i was really miserable at level 81 doing 4k dps inside Throne of Tides.  Then it jumped somehow at level 82 to a whopping 6k.  and if things are done correctly, i can hit 8k+ on some fights.  but that's it.  averaging around 6k and we're not even talking heroic geared.  on my deathknight, who has a lot more AoE tools, she's able to do 8k normally, in her sleep. and 10k+ if i decide to actually do more (like turn on AMS and IBF while bad AoE is happening, etc).  and what is everyone else doing?  half.  yes, half. no not half 10k, half 8k.  some are doing more, yes, but some just cant cut it.  and what bugs me even more, is that these are heroics.  you know the heroics where you have to have an average ilevel of at least 329.  this is where the learning should have already happened.  i had to drop a heroic deadmines run because a hunter was doing about 3-4k dps.  the last boss is harsh if you cannot get him down before the healer was OOM.  and the lock and i were doing 8k dps each.  we go the boss to about 30% each time we wiped.  and we wiped because the healer was OOM.  another 4k dps would have helped.  it may have even prolonged the healer's mana supply because there would be less damage taken overall.  but we couldnt do it since there just wasnt enough dps output.  this is just one of many examples.  i only had one, ONE experience where everyone was about 10k dps.  we were in vortex pinnicle and all the dps were spot on.  my girlfriend had zero problems with healing and things moved like clockwork.  i actually had competition in the interrupt meter. 

Lately, i've been running dungeons without the dps meter on display.  it's on, but not displaying damage.  its switched to interrupts.  and even there, im at the top, usually.  shamans dont windshear, paladins dont rebuke, warriors dont pummel, deathknights dont mind freeze, rogues dont kick, mages dont counterspell, warlocks dont fear (get the glyph), and s.priests dont silence, or fear (again, get the glyph).  i'd like a little competition with the interrupts and i only get it sometimes with the tanks.  everyone else do not.  also, if anyone can suggest a spell for moonkins (besides bearform+bash and typhoon) please comment. =]  but overall, my experience in dungeons are somewhat a mixed bag of fun with minimal challege.  there's not a lot of people to compete with really.  whenever there's a rogue who actually kicks, i find it very challenging to keep up with the interrupt counts.  but more often than not, this is not the case.

Just this past weekend, i decided to level my druid again.  this time, she's going to be boomkin (respec'd and ready, with the pvp healing spec removed) instead of healing.  she deleted much of her pvp gear and upgraded from her mixed t8 and t9 gear to cata "greens".  then went on over to Hyjal, Vashjir, Uldum and Twilight highlands to farm herbs.  im sure she got about one whole level's worth of experience from just picking herbs.  while picking herbs, she's queued in the dungeon finder.  now when i first started this, i knew zero about being a moonkin.  actually, redhawk, graylo and sunfyrre were awesome resources at helping me understand boomkin dps. thanks guys!! =]  and i quickly understood the basics of boomkin dps.  dont ask me what eclipse is for, i just know that i start spamming another spell when it does happen. =P

most of the weekend was used to adjust to the style of dps.  honestly, its kinda different from any other dps styles i've ever played.  as a caster, sure, Shooting Stars procs are like anything else, but the whole sun/moon eclipse mechanic was completely new to me. by the end of the holiday weekend, three levels and about 10 random dungeons, i was able to go from 3k dps to 6k dps.  im sitting pretty at level 83, almost 84, doing "the most" dps in most groups i run with. most, until the last two.

Again, keep in mind that not a lot of people interrupt and there are still some folks who still stand in bad.  i battle rez people for the sheer sake of not wanting to be yelled at (although i would love to have the group wipe sometimes) later on.  also, sometimes its the tank that needs to be b-rez'd during a boss fight, so that's quite important to rez them in that case.  but anyway, i've encountered, finally, a repeat of wrath. here's what happened.

Tank: So someone mark CC please.
Healer:  you dont need any CC.
Tank: oh right!

We were in normal stonecore. The tank was level 85.  the healer was level 85.  aparently they were running their ret paladin friend who was level 83 doing 3k dps, max. yes. that's all he was doing.  i was the only one there doing more dps than the tank.  although he was level 85, he was pulling just about 6k dps.  in this instance, there was zero crowd control.  everything was AoE'd down.  most of the dps were doing less than the tank, no one was focus-firing and no one was interrupting.  sounds like wrath of the lich king all over again, doesnt it?

i know some 85s are newly ding'ed 85s with some gearing up to do, but there are others who are really beyond normal vortex pin or stonecore.  and even when running your friends through instances, at least have your friend make some effort to try to do well.  at least practice good play by incoporating cc's and interrupts and even pull carefully.  maybe?  all youre doing is making a bad, lazy, inexperienced level 85 who will end up being useless in heroics.  and i've gone through one instance where we failed miserably because two of the dps were doing 3-4k, and the tank was doing 3k.  and i was doing 9....

in any case, my arms are tired from all this carrying.

Post Patch 4.0 Musings - Resto Shaman

I am bored.


I really am.  Of all the changes made to every class (some catastrophic, others not so much) i find that the shaman falls into the category of not so much. 

What i did before the patch:
On me - water shield and earthliving weapon.
On tank - earth shield.
I am missing a few totmes.  but that's ok.  my elementals are there.  my bloodlust is there.  i'm missing the tidal something waves spell that gives my spells crit in emergencies. but that's fine.  now its a little more built into a talent so that if my guy's low on health, i do some auto-crits anyway.   that takes the thinking out of that. They played around with my healing waves a bit.  now i dont even use lesser healing wave.  or that instant spell they gave me that ate up my mana (kinda like what every healer gets now, right?).  No, now all i use is riptide and healing wave.  greater healing wave is new to me and is added for those ohsht moments where i forget that we're in a dungeon. 

i am glad they took away a few buttons and gave me a few more that i'll never use.  but whatever. now i am back to healing almost exactly as i did in the previous patch.  the names of some spells might have changed, but the whole shaman healing mechanic remained relatively unchanged.

Before Patch:
Earth shield the Tank (or whoever).
Riptide for insta-heals (trigger tidal waves).
Cast tidal wave hasted Healing Wave x2
Riptide for insta-heals
Cast tidal wave hasted Healing Wave x2
repeat repeat repeat.

Sometimes i add in a chain heal if i feel like changing things up a bit.
Earth shield the Tank (or whoever).
Chain heal on lowest dps with most strategic position (trigger tidal waves).
Cast tidal wave hasted Healing Wave x2
repeat x2139482303.

After the Patch:
Please see above.



So what did change?

What i noticed first and foremost was that i never run out of mana.  actually, i am healing on my shaman at level 70 last week (currently 74) and i almost never go below 90% mana even at the most demanding of times.  my mana regen is almost off the charts.  its completely crazy. 

Second thing i notice is there's a lot less DKs tanking now.  THANK ELUNE!!!!  and when i do get a DK, they're actually tanks and not DPS wannabee making our lives harder bs crap shit bitch yadayada people who cant be assed to wait in queue. 
Oh wait, this post is about my shaman.  sorry.

Honestly, besides the addition of Greater Healing Wave and the removal of that one CD i almost never used and cant be assed to look it up, NOTHING has changed in regards to Shaman Healing.

Oh and my talents got wiped and several new talents were added, things were removed, etc etc etc.  if you want more resto shaman healing detialed stuff, find a resto shaman blog.  as far as i can tell, the talent trees were blah and the new healing mechanics are even blaher.  See why im bored now?

Post Patch 4.0 Musings - Intro

It has been about two weeks since we all received our can of whoopass haha learn2play patch and i feel a little overwhelmed still with all the new changes to every single friggin class there is.  so i guess this calls for a little series i would call Post Patch 4.0 Musings.  And it will be regarding pretty much every class i play. 

So i am thinking of first, since this is supposed to be a healing-centric blog, i would write a little about healing.  That's coming shortly.  also, since this supposed to be a blog about druid tree form whatever it is called now, i may as well do the dreaded deed and log on to my druid healer to relearn druid healing.

my schedule is pretty rough these past couple of weeks.  I work at a different office now, so my commute is completely different.  same company, same position, just different office.  i have a few more responsibilities and find that my downtime is very little apart from the long lunches with the coworkers or with clients.

i might have to stop playing for this weekend tho.  aparently it seems that all the quality players are stuck in the OC attending this thing called Blizzcon while im here at home stuck with stupid, idiotic and jerky players.  really, the quaility actually went down several notches AND the wait times have increased slightly for randoms.

yes this is a rant hidden within the guise of an "update".  anyway, lets hope my future posts arent full of rants, but actually full of useful info about Shamans, Druids, Paladins, Death Knights, Warriors, Mages, Warlocks, Priests and even rogues.  yes, rogues get a little love here and there too.  just dont expect me to write about huntards.  ugh.  /wrists.

okay enjoy your day and thanks for dropping by!

its past 11pm pacific time... and im still installing this patch.  =[

FML???  oh hell no.

im not that emo /wrists kinda guy.  practicing my peggle moves and stuffs. =P

Swift Backhand of Justice

The Swift Hand of Justice is a trinket.  It improves haste rating.

Like all other heirloom gear, the haste rating incrases as you level up.  Now imagine using this at level 20, healing through some very bad pugs.  this haste increase, at that level, does nothing for my cast time.  actually, my casting time is exactly the same unless i do a resurrection (which takes 9.9 whole seconds). 

At level 40 somewhere, i notice that my casting speed has increased by 0.1 seconds.  yay for haste improvements!!

so now my lesser healing wave takes 1.4 seconds. and my healing wave takes 2.4 seconds.
and its been sitting there ever since.  im now level 62 and i still dont see an improvement.

I know haste rating is great, but at lower levels, it doesnt do jack.  it isnt until much later on where i can actually see a difference in my cast time.  i know 50 haste at level 80 isnt a whole lot, but almost zero haste at level 20 sure doesnt help one bit. its illogical. haste doesnt work the same as spell power.  it doesnt work the same as stamina.  the scaling is different.  if the trinket gives me hast by percentage, then that would make sense.  i'd like a 15% haste to my spells at all levels.  that would rock.

On dying slowly... but still dying.

I die slower.  I dont die less. but i die slower.

Devynity has gotten a few more pieces of PvP gear, you know, the intro stuff you can get from emblems of triumph? yea, those.  and also, has enough honor to get the libram and a pair of bracers.  Next up would probably be some rings, necklace, trinkets and cape. The belt and boots require some arena points, so im just going to see if i can get comparable gear from WG or honor only. although they arent better, something is better than nothing.  I'm getting closer to 600 resilience (and 2k spell power!), which is helping me to live just a little longer, allowing me to pull off another heal or two.  in WG, its great. but i still have to remember to beacon myself, use righteous fury and remember all of my special spells for pvp and healing.

I tend to run low on mana quite often.  i do not know why as i dont really pay much attention to the mana bar as im fighting.  i always shield myself, holy shock whoever i can, and flash heal as much as i can.  i have been seeing dismal numbers when i do flash heal though, so i would switch to holy light.  this is a great heal and one i'd like to continue using, if it werent for the mana costs and things, i do like to use this spell.  whats even cooler, is that my casting is sped up by my sacred shield.  sacred shield is the awesomeness.

My damage sucks. i mean im a healer right? but still, wouldnt it be nice to have some attacks like every other healing class?  no.  those attacks need to be talented.  Here is what i can use to attack as holy:
1. Holy Shock, which does crap damage.
2. Judgement, which also does crap damage.
3. Shield of the Righteous, yes i do wear a shield, and this ability does crap damage (since its really a protection ability and my equipment has almost no strength, cos you know, im a healer).
4. Consecration.

Here is what other classes get as damage spells if they need to:
Priests: Devouring Plague, SWpain, mindblast, smite, penance if speced.  notice how almost all of these spells are available to the healing priest in all specs?  notice they're modified by spell power?
Shamans: Shocks, any shock, lightning, chainlightning, fire totems.  Note that the shocks and ligthning spells are what other shaman classes use as well.  notice that they are modified by spell power?
Druids: cancelform and start casting your balance spell attacks, starfire, moonfire.  notice how moonkinds also use starfire and moonfire.  notice how they're spells, so they get modified by spell power.

Notice that the DPS spec for paladins is RET. it has nothing to do with spell power.  we get STR gear as ret.  we use it to kill things and increase our spell power and damage via STR.  when we reduce our str to zero, and put all our attacks into holy, shield of the righteous does squat.  consecration does some damage, but its as impressive as making the ground glow.  but whatever helps right? Then there is the judgements, which is on an 8 second cooldown, or 10 if you're not specced.  and of course, why would you be specced for that? holy shock has a 6ish second cooldown. but the problem with that is that its 6 seconds.  twice to four times longer than many of the other spells mentioned above.  i can fill that time up with countless moonfire spams, or wrath spams. lightning bolt spams with frostshocks weaved in, or dot up a player then mindblast/smite after i fear them.  actually no, im exaggerating. but my point is that i can do more "stuffs" on my other characters than on the paladin if i need to kill something (you know, when you're the only one left and there's a big seige engine beating on your wall).

See the difference?  on the other hand, when you back a holy paladin into a corner, they will last for a while. but they most certainly would not have been able to take out any dps type class. heck, put him in there with a tank and they can duel for 30 minutes with no winner.  put him in there with a priest and you get a duel that will last until cata. 

what do i want? another offensive spell.  also, a better control spell... hammer of justice is great every 40 seconds, but thats every 40 seconds.  how else will i keep them away from me?  consecrate and stand in the middle of it?  lol. jump off a cliff? thats about it.

This is hard work

Black Rock Depths is hard work.  It's long.  So long, in fact, that it took a group of us over an hour to do the first half of the instance.  Yes.  just a tad over an hour.  Not only is the place super confusing, but its laid out in such a fashion that doesnt have any real path for the raiders to go (especially if we zone in for the random, "Prison" section of the instance, no one really knows where the hell that is). 

Of course, since its so long the first half of the instance got me one whole level, i still find the place a horror to run through (even if i know the paths).  I still get confused and lost at times.  And in an instance where i'd like to play and relax a little, i find myself stressed, annoyed, delayed quite often, especially with corpse runs.  cant they make graveyards a little closer? At least it will help alleviate the length of the instance.

Holy Paladin is hard work.  They do crap dps. Yes, they do. I was in my pvp holy gear trying to figure out how to do nessingwary's quests (really, i just wanted the kungaloosh recipe) and did a few of them in sholazar.  My dps meter shows a whopping 400 dps.  kills were annoyingly long.  but i did come away from that experience with 100% health and usually 75% mana. Judge, Holy Shock, Consecrate and Auto Attack.  those were my three spells.  although i should have just turned on Ret aura and let that tick as well, the core of my attacks are from the above four things.  Lets just say i felt like i was beating a horse.  i could probably live for a while, but i would also be doing my 15th holy shock on the mob before it dies.  i know leveling as holy/resto/disc is hard since you have all the healing capabilities in the world but zero damage, but i really do wish that more of our healing spells can be used for damage too, on enemies.  i know we have penance and holy shock, but there should be more.  just my thoughts.

Healing is hard work... until we get chain heal, circle of healing or wild growth.  and paladins get this half baked version of it called beacon of light (whose duration should be a whole lot longer, even when glyphed). But seriously, its hard work for a healer to try to heal tanks who are in a hurry, dps who are in a hurry and dps with pets who are in a hurry.  i know some hunters who love to pull a mob away from the pack and have their pet handle the mob.  it makes healing a little easier since the tank is not taking as much damage. but it does require that i also heal the pet (which i do anyway, but still).  when i see a tank shoot an arrow to pull mobs, then seeing those mobs get hit by some AoE before the tank even does his thunderclap (need i remind people that the tank needs to attack and be attacked before he can even thunderclap?) i build a little bit of rage.  when i see tanks running around grabbing mobs with their face and thinking they'll get healed, i roll my eyes a little.  Please note that a heal would bring all aggro to me, yes.  that's how it works if you facepull.  stop, do some damage, then move on. that works much better.  tanking is an art, and if you cant do it then learn to do it.  at level 50 you should already know how to do it.  but no, there's stupid play everywhere i go.

Tanking is hard work.  Especially with an AoE happy mage in heirloom gear thinking she (he, 14 y/o, irl) can tank it instead because he's so special. and the healer that keeps healing stupid? come on. stop it. i know you want to get through this instance, but its a 10 minute instance. really. just kick the dumb fuck. its fine and we'll get through it even without his sorry ass.  anyway, i won the roll on the boss drop and left.  no need to be idiots in an instance.  sure, rfc isnt that intensive.  but do that in ramps and i'll let you eat floor the whole instance. 

Rolling greed is hard work.  especially for a group who doesnt know where the greed button is.  and then to have them tell me its just a game, things drop in here all the time, its just level 35, give it a break. and when ninja looter ninjas what you actually needed, then left?  thats poetic justice (at work, dont have time to relay the whole story, sorry).

And running alts is hard work.  no really, i dont know who really loves doing low level stuffs at all.  it is an archaic style of leveling (it was novel in 2005, but its 2010 and its not a new game) that needs to go.  i know cata expansion might fix it, but still. life today sucks because leveling alts through levels 1-58 is tedious.  and i have to do it four times in the past three weeks.  please, for the love of god, level to 80 first. i dont want to level four characters through at the same time.  do you know what that means?  instead of running mauradon 15 times to level up, i have to see that fucking place 60 times (4x15).  yes, 60 fucking times.  is that fun? no. sunken temple?  i dont ever want to see that place again.  SM? scarlet monastery sucks, especially when there's FOUR sections, with FOUR characters, and each character needs to go through each section about 10 times each.  4x4x10= 160 friggin times.   so instead, we're going to do some quests and find out the story behind all of these instances.  problem is, we level so fast now we only get half (or 1/4) of the story before we move on to the next sets of instances with their own stories.  really annoying dont you think?  I declare WotLK version of WoW officially broken for leveling. 

Shadow Priests

Why are priests, the dps kind, so low on the dps charts as I level through content?  currently, I am at my mid 40s with my shaman and I've not seen a shadow priest beat my totem in dps. 

This actually kinda start when I started SM:GY and for 15 levels, I've been noticing the same thing.  my magma totem gets dropped, it pulses. and, if I have enough mana and don’t need to heal much, will blow it up. once, I was top dps. but that was just once.  other times, I've usually been very conservative in using my nova. I would place my magma totem down and let it pulse.  at the end when everyone's about to die I would hit nova just to finish everyone off before they start running too far.  this happens a lot in SM.  everyone runs away in fear.  its so annoying.  but this helps. 

What I don’t understand is why the shadow priests (and its every single shadow priest I tell you) do so much less damage than everyone elses (not just me, although I do enjoy being second to last, I don’t mind being last on the charts)?  in fact, once I posted the meters and asked everyone to please do more dps than the healer, and the s.priest decides to tell me to stop dps-ing.  in which I replied, I wasn’t, it was my totem.  yes, the only dps totem I have. one totem… can beat your sorry ass in dps.  and when the instance was all over, everyone beat me on dps and total damage.  except for the s.priest. 

Now I want to know a few things about these shadow priests that maybe I never considered.  I played one a long time ago and got bored of it quickly.  although there are "dots" to apply and some dark beam with a ripple effect thingey you guys do, I figured that's really all that's needed for dps in level 40 content anyway, correct?  I don’t even see mindflay (which was their signature move years ago) but now I see Deviouring Plague, SW:P, then Mind Sear.  Shouldn’t that rock the dps charts?  perhaps these guys arent into the whole AoE frenzy.  but that's not the point.  the point is to do the most damage given the situation, correct?  so if you see four mobs together, you bust out your Mind Sear.  If you see one, you'd be stupid to pull out mind sear.  correct?

Just like me on my paladin, one boss, Seal of Corruption.  four adds? Seal of Command.  easy to understand. one mob or boss, cast lightning bolt.  four mobs, cast chain lightning, drop magma totem and nova. chain lightning on cd.  for mages, one boss/mob, cast fire/frost bolt or arcane missles.  more than two, arcane assplode, blizzard, fire ground thingey.

see?  its very easy to differentiate between single target, and multiple targets.  you just have to… erm…. COUNT.  and then adjust your rotations accordingly. 

Am I totally missing something?  is it because the s priest was going to use up all his time alternating SW:P that by the time he was ready to mindsear, everyone's dead?  maybe.  mobs do die pretty fast. but so adjust!  I do this often with my warlock.  there are many times I know that my dots will not last its full duration.  and what do I end up doing? I improvise.  I only use one dot, then switch to some AoE if I can (seed of corruption/rain of fire) and woot! dere it is.   

So I do not know.  someone please enlighten me to shadow priest dps.  is there no other AoE alternative than to use DP, then SWP on everything, then Mind Sear?  I know this does take a while to actually accomplish, but am I correct to say that Mind Sear would still do a decent amount of damage even if everyone isnt "swp'ed" up? Am I treating shadow priests unfairly?

screenshots or it didnt happen?

I am Rambling

I made a shaman, an orc shaman to be exact. His name is Rockdarr. He is a Rock... DARRRR!!!!!

Yes, battle cries after a person's name is awesome.  Take, for instance, my girlfriend's paladin Krisseven.  Wouldnt it be way better to add a battlecry after that name?  like... Waaaahhhhh!!  Krissevenwaaaah. yes.  it would be awesome.

Grrrrrrraaaaa!!!! *swings wildly with sword*


see?  awesomeness. 


Anyway.  My shaman.  Rockdarr.  DARRRRRRRRRR!!! getouttamaway!!!! will be a healer.  yes he's got give points in faster healing waves and some points in mana savings when healing. so im guessing he's a healer.

i'd so rather have an enh shaman. but what's the use of an enhancement shaman of nothing's enhanced? you got two clubs?  no.  you got mealstrom?  no... but i have windshear!!

rockbiter or flametongue?   rockbiter.  on your offhand?  what? i get an offhand?


yea so there's a few key elements to being enhance that doesnt come into play until level 30. or 40.  i've QQ'ed about this before. i know. but lets beat the dead horse some more.

So i've given up on trying enhance now that im healing.  actually having one healing spell and two totems rock my socks.  not only are every instance easy to heal (stoneskin totem, healing wave x1000), i find myself using windshear on every mob i can that's casting anything.  its awesome.  so much fun.  and yet i do jack shit in the group.  when priests are learning lesser heal, greater heal, renew and power word shield, im learning.... windshear? wtf?  how broken is the shaman class at level 18? how broken?  very.  although i realize that we wont be there long, and that much of our lives are spent at level 80, i still would like to get a few spells like the priests... to you know, help the group?

im sure shaman healing will be a little better when the levels increase, but i just would like to feel like i am a healer RIGHT NOW.  but right now, i feel like nothing that im doing is better than an elemental or enhance shaman.  of course, at lower levels, theres very little differentiation and the 5-10 talent poitns really dont do much noticable difference for any class.  but still.... i'd like to feel like a healer, dammit!!


im rambling, i know.  and i really dont have much to write about besides the aweful planning of the specs at the early levels.