I have an aversion to ToC (5 man heroic).
Part of this may be due to my getting kicked from a group on this instance, or it may be due to the need to joust at the start. Or it could be that it is one of the most godawful, boring and monotonous instances I've seen.
Most likely, it's a combination of all of those.
Last night, at my usual late log-in time (9:30 or so, server/local time) I start to collect my dailies and grudgingly include myself in the LFG queue.
A new guild memeber that had also started queueing asked me and another guilide to join, so we went in as 3 DPS. (me on Ret, him on an ele shammy and a third as Warlock)
When we got our notice, we all groaned when we saw ToC. The good thing is that it *is* relatively short and usually not too diffficult.
We finish the jousting with a *little* difficulty and then proceed on the the next fight, with the Shaman, rogue and one other.
We're going through, and half my bittons aren't working. *CRAP* I STILL HAVE MY LANCE EQUIPPED!. I open my bags and don't have any luck seeing my weapon, so I open up "C" (character screen, which is where my equipment manager "Outfitter" button is) and switched to my DPS items. *no change* AARGH! So I hit my tank gear, just to get SOMETHING with an actual weapon selected.
I did this in a hurry, without thinking all that much, or even remembering it much.
We finished this fight, and the next group, though I was staggered by how bad my DPS was.
We go into the last fight (Paleetess? the one with the summoned shadow thing) And things go bad. I'm not sure what happened, but from what I understand (from their own description)the tank & healer got out of sync, or lost aggro or something.
Anyhow, I noticed when the first of us dropped, another DPS, but I didn't worry too much. Next thing I know, it's me and one caster (the healer I believe) and the shadow dood is chewing on her face. I taunt and bubble and *sort of* help. The only problem is that with me bubbled, my DPS drops even further and my threat/aggro drops through the floor. (I hadn't thought to turn on Righteous Fury to increase my threat) So the baddie loses interest in me, and chews the face, neck and upper torso off the healer.
Eww.
I sit there clobbering away, well aware it's a lost cause. (the shadow dude still has ~30% health, and the other boss is STILL left after that)
I finally die and we all run back and start buffing. At this point, the HEALER said (right as I noticed something strange about the looks) "OMG, I still have my lance equipped. No WONDER I went oom!!"
I laughed. HARD. And then typed: "ROFL, no worries, I did that for the first part of the first fight too! lol".
We all laughed, buffed and got ready for the re-match.
So the Bear tank pulls, and away we go. And my DPS is STILL crappy. WTF?!?!?!?
We kill the boss pretty quickly this time and in comes the Black Knight. First phase is a breeze, but MAN my DPS is STILL sucking. And then I notice the shield on my back.
ARGH! Tanking gear. I had forgotten that I had done that earlier. /facepalm
So I switch over and the we all do our thing. My DPS is still crap, but this time it's beacuse I'm keeping the adds off the healer, which is slow & bursty. *shrug* Keeping healers safe during this phase is my self assigned task when I run this so that's cool by me.
The best part? I got these:
Vambraces of Unholy Command
It's only an i219 piece, but that's an upgrade (both numerically and "really") from my previous i200 bracers. w00t!
The only downside was "upgrading" them. I smithed on the gem socket with spare mats, so not a big deal. However, the cost of getting the enchant (greater assault) 350 gold, YIKES. I used honor points to buy an uncut gem, then paid 20g to get a strength gem made.
Ah well... Every little bit helps.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
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Do you have a guildie that enchants? That is a lot of gold for a simple enchant.
ReplyDeleteWe do enchants free for guildies, as long as we have mats in the bank or mats provided.
We do have enchanters in our guild, and I could probably use a mat or two from the guild bank, if I don't already have them. Unfortunately I am not online at the same time they are. (well, we are on weekends, but that means waiting a few days for it)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I swallowed kinda hard at that price, but I'm not poor, so no worries. This is the first wrist enchant I've bought in a looong time, so
I haven't had the chance to notice/look etc and get them at a "bargain". (I have a few "spare" enchants I picked up at good prices)
Vellum and enchant scrolls for the win! I simply can't imagine having to enchant the old way. Ick.
Paletress is a tough cookie, but she's well worth it, as her loot table contains some sweet stuff on both normal and heroic version (caster dps trinket and melee dps trinket on normal, tanking shoulders on heroic). The problem with her is the random spell casts, she has no aggro table per se, much less in the phase where the shade is out, so it's basically the healer's challenge to keep everyone alive. Even though it may look like the tank loses aggro, he can't really control the confessor, she'll just cast around randomly.
ReplyDeleteMore than that, her spells are not reflectable (as opposed to Ambrose Boltspark, which can be tanked with spell reflect alone), but they are interruptible, and her holy fire can be dispelled. When i ran toc with my priest, i asked my rogue friend to stay on top of her and interrupt as much as he can, and that took a lot of pressure of me as a healer. It's quite a mana draining fight, so i guess a disco priest should shield everyone at all times, a pally healer should have glyph of holy light, a shaman should spam chain heal on players while they're bunched up, and a druid shouldn't waste any gcd and keep hots on everyone. This is really a healer's challenge, imo.
Yeah ToC still gives me nightmares. You're right, the only good bit is when you suddenly realise it's all over and actually went by pretty fast.
ReplyDeleteBut jousting? Yuck.
Grats on your new bracers - unfortunately I find that on my server it's just cheaper to buy mats and have a friend do the enchant. Unless you're getting Blade Ward or Blood Draining on your weapon all the enchants are easy to learn (trainer taught) so any high level enchanter will have the receipe.
@ Kensai - I know there are a couple items I could use, both trinkets: one for DPS and one for tank. It's just a rare Heroic to me. I think I've only run it 3 or 4 times. And you abundant info about tactics/etc in your coment highlights one sad thing for me: I don't learn a damned thing in most LFG runs. And, since I over gear most of them, there's not even any real incentive to dig around to learn them. I just run around killing stuff, while hoping the tank can do his job, and hoping the Healer can keep up.
ReplyDelete@ Cass I'm not really sure why I dislike t so much. My feelings about WoW have been somewhat irrational lately. *shrug*
I'd happily have a friend do the enchant for me, but none of my late night compatriots do enchanting. Yeah, it costs me some gold, but money isn't really an issue for me...