Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Mad, Mad World of Warcraft

I thought about linking the Gears of War video instead, but live seems to feel better...

Anyhow, as of late, my time in WoW has been a tad melancholy. I dread queueing for the Sanity Tap ® and have gone about my business on many days without even bothering. I'm barely raiding, and overall, any progression I've made has been really slow.

Looking for Dungeon

I'm not sure why, but going into here for my daily heroics stresses the crap out of me. I'm putting my tanking project on hold, so this really only relates to me playing DPS, which I seem to be pretty good at. I'm just terribly leary of people taking things the wrong way, me gaffing something up, or just general asshattedness of the randoms. A couple examples:

- I get put into a group starting Pit of Sauron. Nobody is near the entrance area, and the NPCs are already running. I start moving away when I see a flame hooved horse go running by. I run to follow and seem him/her jump a ravine and stand off to the side. Not knowing wtf is going on, I try to jump over and miss. And fall down into a group of mobs. Or, 3 groups.

Someone drops down to help, and we both die. Someone else yells "real pro". Another asks "WTF happened?"

As I am flying back, I try to explain, and I appologize. I can see from the health bars that some are still in combat and taking LOTS of damage. I applogize and upon entering the instance I appologize again and leave group.

- I'm with a guildie, and we get put into one of the appostrophe'd instances. (Zul 'drak, Gur'ub or whatever the fuck it's called. It's the one with the spiral staircase down in the beginning and lots of snakes) We fight a couple trash mobs, and I end up having to Lay on Hands. It's not that I'm taking a lot of damage fast, it's just that the healer is doing NOTHING. The tank isn't marking and is switching targets, so that I'm pretty much guaranteed to be getting some aggro and taking *some* damage.

Shortly after, we have to wait while the tank says brb and goes afk. (not that long, but a couple minutes)

Then the healer gets pissed off that RankWatch whisped him that one of his spells is low rank. I replied "ok, gimme a minute and I'll shut it off". To do this, I have to log off. Normally this isn't a problem, and I don't drop group. I pop back in and get teleported out f the instance. My guildie informs me that I got vote kicked. She drops group and we go elsewhere. My guildie mentions "That healer wasn't healing AT ALL."

So there are my sad, sad tales of woe and misery in the LFG. Honestly, it wasn't THAT bad... especially when compared to some of the crap other bloggers are dealing with. It's just getting to me. Hell, the very next run, my guildie & I got Oculus with a good group, and we ended up getting both the speed and the Amber Void achievements.

This less than ideal LFG/LFD thing just gets compounded when I think about raiding; which I'm not able to do. even though I have access to my guild and Kattastrophe's guild, the amount of 10 man raiding I've done is approaching an asymptote: Zero.

I can't really blame the guilds. After all, there's nothing forcing me to stay associated with them. That said, it's a tad frustrating that both of them only seem to do raiding at 4 pm server time. (weekdays) I guess my guild did some "real" 10 man content this last week, but I was out of town.

Now, I'm not only carping about it. I am trying to be pro-active and try to organize things my self; I've posted in our guild forums and had a whopping *2* views thus far. (and no replies - posted 3 days ago)

Now, since I'm not running any raids (not even the weekly easy one) and I'm not getting all my weekly 14 LFG frost emblems, this pretty much ensures I'm not able to buy any new gear. This in turn leads to:

I'm not progressing.

As I mentioned in my last post, I *did* get a new set of bracers. And yeah, going from i200 to i213 is an upgrade and all the stats ARE better. How much? According to the melee info, I am getting an extra 2.5 DPS. That's not a typo. That is: "two point five damage points per second". And I think I got an extra 50 health points.

*blink*

Heck, I still haven't even hit Honored with the Ashen Verdict yet.

The one upgrade that I know for certain that I *can* get are the Rings of Kirin Tor. The first purchase is the only really big one (6,400 gold) and I'm at nearly 5,000 right now. If I do a *little* bit of grinding, plus my dailies, I should have enough in another 4 days or so. Then it's just another 2-3 days for each upgrade over that.

Then if I'm still feeling badly undergeared, I can farm another 10k-15k gold to buy a couple Titansteel razorscale armor bits.

So what then?

I think uch of my time for the forseeable future may be just grinding out some achievements. Big Bear Butt mentioned a grindable pet that would get me a bit closer to the Salt Lick and would occupy my time.

I'm not sure, but I think I have about 60 Champion Seals, so I plan on getting more and using them to buy some Argent pets. (BTW, the Argent Crusader Tabard KICKS ASS! A free teleport for the win!)

I recently got my Eastern Kingdoms explorer achi, and will probably spend time running around Kalimdor to finish everything off.

I think I'll start gathering honor points and marks so I can put together a set of PvP gear. Not that I really care to PvP, but having the gear should certainly make it less painful to do it.

I have about 500 stone keeper shards, so I can also get a bit more Heirloom gear for my alts. I'm not sure I really feel like running them, but getting the gear should at least make things easier.

And, I hope that I get out of this funk, maybe get one or two raids in, and, if all goes south, maybe look for a new guild. Alas, my needs are pretty specific (casual, friendly, active mainly weekdays between 8pm and 11pm server time, familiar with EJ, and related sites enough to know what they're doing, but not so much that they suck the fun out of the game)

Oh, and I need to watch Donnie Darko one of these days.

8 comments:

  1. That song is the best thing about Donnie Darko... it's still a cool movie though (I'm also quite fond of the original Tears For Fears version, as well, I think because the cheery 80s tune belies the heart-breaking lyrics). We had a guild karaoke a while back and The Indecent Healer sang it - he has a very deep, melancholy voice that really suits the song, and, well, I'd had more than a few so I was weeping into my vodka... anyway.

    About the melancholy stuff.

    People can be shitty in LFG, it's the way of it. I had something very similar happen to me in that very same instance. It's remarkably easy to pull the mobs if you just jump down a little bit awkwardly. So I died but I managed to keep the group alive the tank was like: "Grats." And I so quit the group. I know it was minor but it pissed me off. It's the equivalent of dropping a plate and having everyone in the room screaming at you.

    WoW can sometimes grind you down. When it gets me down, I either try to find a new project in the game (maybe a new alt, or an achi, or something) or I take a break.

    Also I'd seriously consider looking for a new guild - your's sounds dead in the water. An inactive forum is a symptom of that. Also your needs don't sound that outlandish to me - in fact, they sound pretty standard. It'll take a while of jumping around feeling like you don't fit in anywhere until you find somewhere.

    (Alternatively find another blogger who seems to be a nice guild, pester them, cling to them, server hop and join them - that's what I did :D!)

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  2. I'd start putting out feelers into other guilds that run on the time schedule you need or want. I'm surprised that on a PST server the guilds are running so early. That is the one complaint I have about my guild I'm on a CST server and my raid starts at 6 for me so I have to run from work to make it.

    Some ppl I LFG are just jerks all the time. I overgear nearly all the heroics and can probably heal most of them with one hand behind my back and blindfolded, but even I get yelled at. Tank pulls too many, I hear it, Mage pulls aggro I hear about why didn't I heal them. /sigh. Sometimes you just get rotten apples.

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  3. Don't give up your tanking project !

    Being a tank is one of the most fulfilling experiences you can have in WoW. It grants you POWER and CONTROL. You're the MAN while you're tanking. You're taking a beating and you still stand. Eight angry vrykuls are chewing your face, cutting your knees, stabbing your guts and it only makes you more pissed. When you're the tank, basically, what you say goes. You're new ? No problem, set the pace the way you feel comfortable with it. Don't let anyone get you down, as long as you warn them you're just starting out with the tanking, it's their fault if they don't MD, TotT, fade etc.

    Not enough gear ? People ran the first un-nerfed heroics with tempered saronite items, a hp pool of 26k and a total combined avoidance of under 30%. It's not hard. Know your strength: you're a paladin, your aoe threat generation is incredibly powerful - after your inital aggro, you'll get aggro just because the mobs are hitting your Holy Shield, casters are a cake to pull with Avenger's Shield, Hammer of the Righteouss hits 3 mobs, in a word, the paladin tank is one of the best tanks to run heroics with.

    Gems and enchants a problem ? Not for you ! Save everything, the saronite you mine, the greens that drop while questing, the mats you win in disenchant rolls in dungeons. Prospect the saronite, DE the greens, if you don't have a friend online to do that, try trade chat and offer 10g for prospecting/DE services, trust me, no one will say no to 10g for 3 mins of spamming their mouseover de/prospect macros. Don't buy anything from the AH, there's always alternatives, find an alchemist to transmute epic gems, an eternal air is what you get from two titanium nodes, a sky sapphire is what you eventually get from prospecting saronite. 15g to a transmuter, 10 to a jc, and voila, 30 sta for the price of 25g and a bit of footwork. Screw over the sons of hodir and buy the 30 sta 15 resil enchant for 10k honor (3 weekly quests in WG) and you got a perfectly good shoulder enchant for tanking with zero gold spent.

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  4. Now. I'm a spec nazi, so i'm about to go spec-krieg on your arse. I'm not an advocate of EJ copied specs, you
    should really play what you want to play.. but some talents are very well worth having. The most important one you skipped being Touched by the Light. See, here's the thing, most of your threat comes from holy damage actually. Everything scales with spell power, some abilities more than others. Avenger's shield, 7%, not that much. But seal of corruption/righeousness ? 33% ! Judgement ? 24%. Consecration, 15% last time i checked. Multiply that by 80% from righteous fury and it seems like a lot of TPS you're skipping. Pursuit of Justice is another must have talent for me. It's real important to be able to move faster than that trigger happy dps and pull before he does. In a raid enviroment, there are tons of situation where movement increase is actually "passive tps", the faster you get
    to your target, the better: razorscale adds, ignis adds, kolo adds, freya adds, thorim gauntlet in ulduar; jaraxxus adds, faction champs, anub adds in toc; marrowgar, lady deathwhisper adds in icc and the list goes on. Getting to them 15% faster can mean a lot of TPS.

    So, in a nutshell, i'd take the points from divinity and move them to touched by light and judgements of the just respectively, and move the points from vindication to pursuit of justice and you're rock solid. Again, this is just what I would do, but just try TbtL, and you'll see what i mean by "tons of aoe threat". Also, you probably know this, but i've seen countless tankadins do it, while casting you
    have zero avoidance. Never use exorcism while in combat, use it only to pull. Divine Shield drops all your threat, but combined with Divine Sacrifice, it can be a saver. Divine Protection is your 2 min CD shield wall and it's an awesome tool if you feel you can't take the punishment or you just want to take some pressure off healers.

    Wow, i wrote quite a lot again. Sorry if i bore you, but you're kind of ok. For an ally. And a paladin. And i want you to TANK.

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  5. Exorcism and Hammer of Wrath are 15%, Consecration is 32% (4%/sec), i just checked.

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  6. Oh and in all that stroking myself for being so knowledgeable, i forgot the ugly part. No, not your blue tentacled face, i mean being a paladin. You're going to have to overcome a lot of prejudice. For many, the paladin class is a faceroll class. You dps by facerolling, you tps by facerolling, you hps by facerolling. Of course, only the dps part of that is true (HUR HUR), it takes a lot of thinking to plan your tank and a lot of concentration and pre-acting to do your job as a healer, but nonetheless, pallies are the lolclass nowadays. I admit i'm one of those kinds that discriminate based on class, i.e., if you're a pally, you're an abomination and you just want to faceroll through both pve and pvp.

    So finding a guild that actually wants a ret pally might be a tad hard. You don't really bring much to a raid aside dps. Maybe Divine Intervention. Sorta useful on Saurfang jr. My rogue's contender for the best dpser in the guild is a ret pally, and he's very good at that, but just last night after an unfortunate wipe on lady deathwhisper he tells me to interrupt her frostbolts, i reply with "no you", he obviously says "i don't have a 10 sec CD" to which i smugly reply "fine, i guess i'll carry you through this one as well". Yes, yes, i'm such an ass. But the way things are now, many guild leaders/officers have to weight any new application with "what can this guy bring to the raid aside dps ?"

    And this is where you come in with your prot offspec. The fact that you can switch between pulls to your tanking spec and set, because you know someone's gonna die when stinky decimates... well, that's your niche. And you'll appear as someone willing to take a lot more responsibility than doing a rotation.

    I mean it. When the Titans created Azeroth and Draenor, they looked down upon individuals with balls carved out of Stone and they declared "Thou shalt tank". YOU must tank.

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  7. I know, you can't help that you're horde... nobody's perfect ;) lol

    Anyhow, thanks for all the input. I *barely* put thought into my tank spec, and I know that I have 1 point too many in Imp Judge (an 8 sec cooldown doesn't help the 969) as for the rest, cool!

    Also, I'm not giving up tanking, just putting it on hold for a bit. To be honest, I kinda suck at tanking trash, and I need to build up some self confidence (and some more experience) before I inflict myself on others.

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  8. Oh, as for a guild change - I think I'm already reasonably well qualified for the type of guild I want to join: ie pretty casual.

    If a guild has a "we don't need any Retpals, we need a destro warlock and a disc priest" type of requirement, chances are they are WAY more serious than I am.

    Oh, as far as my current guild: we have 5 raids scheduled in the next 2-3 weeks. BUT they are all set for 3 pm server time.

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