Double Vision, Tunnel Vision

(photo by Jill Fehrenbacher, part of her "Tunnel Vision" series LINK )

Alas, this is my usual vista when I play WoW. I tend to get very focused (or zoned out, if you think about it) and I will often miss things. Part of it is the often mind numbing aspect of RetPal DPS (hounding the action bar to hit spells *just* as they come off CD) or trying to avoid the fire/slime/bad AND DPS, etc etc, and I just don't see what's going on

• Twice with one group in Forge of Souls I was last man standing, and didn't even realize it.


• Similar things at least once a week, that I just don't recall.


• "Stealing" ore from someone else because I didn't see them in a struggle, 5 feet away trying to mine, but getting nabbed by a mob.


• Etc etc etc

Now, As a "mindless DPS", you can usually get away with this, ESPECIALLY when you out gear whatever content you are doing. But if you get into anything challenging, either personally or as a group, it will cause problems.

A brief sojourn off the path (did I mention I distract easily as well?)

Last night for our frost run, we (Kattastrophe & I) went into Violet Hold. WOOHOO! Fast easy run!

Well, Until the first boss, yes: Xevozz.

Now, keep in mind: I am geared pretty well. About 5,400, with pretty good itemization, gems and enchants. Kattastrophe is 5,700 +, and is healing through Sindragosa in 10 man.

The tank is knowledgeable and does his job, but he's rather low geared (3,200 GS, or there abouts). A few times, I wasn't paying attention and yanked aggro off him, but with Katt's healing, it went well enough. There was a boomkin with us that was keeping pace with me in DPS as well, and a third DPS I am completely unaware of who/what they were.

Regardless, aside from the tank, and maybe an extra DPS, we outgeared the crap out of that place, and neither the boomie or myself really had much chance to get into our rotation before most mobs died.

Yeah, there were a couple mobs I'd have to scoop up that went away from the tank when they spawned, but other than that, easy peasy.

Until Xevozz. Did I mention him?

I've fought him once before. I think. (I have the VH achie, so I must have, but I have zero recollection of it)

So, we start the fight against Xev (he's the first boss we get) and it's going a little slow. Even with nearly 10k total DPS, he's barely dropping in health.

BOOM! - tank's dead

BOOM - I'm dead

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! everyone else is dead.

huh?

"Ah, according to wowwiki, the tank needs to kite the boss away from the orb things."

Try again.

A little bit better on DPS, then-

BOOM! - tank's dead

BOOM - I'm dead

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! everyone else is dead.

Now, this isn't just me getting too much damage and not paying attention. It's pretty darned near instant (faster than I could see the damage and try to click something - 29k health gone, in less than a second or two) This time the tank simply had trouble getting the Boss to follow him.

Last attempt, I put on my tank gear and Righteous Fury, and they have me try to kite him.

It worked better, even though I'm having to taunt every time my taunts come off CD. I die, but the rest ended up dropping him.

The best we could figure is that the tank was just so low geared that he had trouble maintaining enough threat to kite, especially with 2 strong DPS, PLUS I'm not sure at that low GS if the tank was def capped (regardless, Katt said he needed a LOT of healing - he was a squishy tank) so that he also had to fend off a CRAPTON of healer aggro as well.

Not a fault of the skills of the tank. He did quite well overall, and the rest of the heroic was uneventful, aside from everyone thanking everyone else for sticking it out (and a couple big shoutouts to Katt for some awesome heals)

Back on message (sort of)

So after our frost run, Katt wanted some help levelling her mage. For her, (at level 69 or so) the LFD queues have been >>20 minutes (if she even gets into one) so we decided to run through one of the Zangarmarsh instances. (Steamvault)

Overall, uneventful, but I hadn't noticed that the final boss could really hit hard on occasion. Well, I was just rolling, BOOM! I got killed. (He was less than 1%, so Katt's mage was able to finish him off)

Katt calls it a night, and one of our online buddies asks if I could give her a hand getting a little exp and rep with Honorhold. (She's on her lvl 74 Prot/Ret pally)

We go into ramps (reg) and I pretty much steamroll the place. The only downside is that she didn't get any rep. (she wants to buy epic flying, so rep discount would be nice)

So, she buys the key, and we decide to run it in Heroic. Now, I've tried to solo the place before in Heroic, and I *know* it's more than I can really handle solo. So, I ask her to DPS when she can, but heal as much as possible.

Overall it worked, but we BOTH suffered from not paying attention.

- Me, I wouldn't notice that she was taking damage (or had died) and I just kept on doing the 969, and tabbing between mobs.
- Her, she would focus on healing me, and not notice that she was OOM, or that she was really low on health, and would get popped.

Now, there was only one or two cases where I simply didn't have aggro and she got attacked. Those I should have taunted off, and she would have lived. The rest? Neither of us were sure, but probably a combo of a few things that led to her deaths (4 or 5 times I think)

- The instance is really near the limit for a tank of my skill and gear
- Neither of us are all that skilled at the class/role we were each doing. She's a good priest healer, and I'm a pretty good Ret Pal. I am less than skilled as a Protadin, and she's not all that familiar with RaidRet.
- Tunnel vision on both our parts

Now, the good thing, was that we both improved. I actually started to get the hang of keeping up 969, Sacred Shield (SS) and Divine Plea (DP) and keeping things moving, target switching and such. (the darkcasters in there are a major pain. The layout isn't great to LoS, and 3 or 4 together of them hit like a truck) She also got better (or learned about) using repentance and such.

The one thing I never thought to ask/mention/suggest was for one of us to Judge Wisdom, and the other to Judge Light. I use Wisdom as a habit. If I were to guess, I would think she did as well. Much pain might have been avoided if we had been careful.

Regardless, we cleared the place without a wipe, though fighting Vazruden and Nazan was a close thing.

Our combined single target DPS wasn't all that great (I'm a bit less than 2k in Prot spec, and she was well below 1k - remember, she was healing too), so that Nazan landed before we had killed Vaz. By this time, I was having mana issues (not sure why) and by the time my friend died (Nazan was at 33% or so) I was essentially OOM.

My health was REALLY low, mana was barely there, so it was a race to the death and I wasn't sure how it would end. I kept adncing and moving to avoid as much fire as I could, kept judging wisdom as it came off CD (or I had enough mana to even cast it) and casting Divine Storm to get a bit of health back (which sucked the mana well dry). Finally the scaly bugger dropped, and we relaxed.

While I'm still not back to my "A" game, the challenges of playing a VERY different spec and playstyle, as well as a fairly challenging environment (H Ramps was, for me at least) definitely sharpened me a bit.

I may even try tanking heroics in LFD now. (though I am still petrified about getting an instance I will get lost in, or one that has a tank/kiting/etc mechanic fight that I'm unaware of) ButI really need to stop running heroics as Ret: it's mind numbing, boring, and teaches me to not think or pay attention.

I... Don't Wanna Work.. I Just Wanna Bang on the Blame All Day...

Another Friday post for me... as things slow down here at work, I have a few "free" bits of time to expound on the aetheric, and wax poetic about the pointless. there are fewer people here to notice me wasting time, and even fewer folks reading the blogs in the next couple days.



So be it.



Last night was a tad lazy... I ran the LFG "daily" to get my Frost badges, ran most of the Argent tourney dailies (I never joust anymore) and did a couple other random ones. I got a handful of Champion Seals and a couple hundred gold, so it was reasonably productive, even if it were a tad boring.



I was in no mood to grouch my way to more Triumph badges, so I had to think a bit for stuff to do, so I could procrastinate on going to bed. The only thing that came readily to mind was to look into getting another 2 tabards for the "wear 10 different tabards" achievement. (I currently have 8) I am not sure which ones I *do* have, but I', certain I have all the following:



Ebon Blade
Wyrmrest
Guild
Kurenai
Kirin Tor
Sporregar
Tabard of the Hand
Tabard of the Explorer

(thanks to having somewhat recent upload of my bank & bags at rpgoutfitter.com I was able to find 3 I had forgotten about)


I do NOT have:


Honor Hold
Aldor
Argent Dawn (if there is one)
Undercity
Cenarion XYZ (circle, expedition or any of them)
any other rep tabards
any tabards that cost Champion Seals

Me being the Outlands n00b I am, I had wondered if I could just buy the rep tabards and then run more Northrend Heroics to get exalted.

Um, nope.

Turns out that Outlands Tabards are the REWARD (or being able to buy them) for becoming exalted. Alas, I am only (barely) honored with the Aldor and Honor Hold, so nothing easy.

*sigh*

WAIT!!! I know you get rep with Honor Hold for all kills in Hellfire Heroics! I'm a moderately geared 80, this should be a breeze! Easy Peazy!

*Flies off to Ramparts and enters the Heroic*


I walked towards the room with the 3 groups of mobs, and at the end of the entrance hall, there are 2 guard mobs sitting like reputation gifts.

I pull one, Repent (crowd control stun - "CC") the other, and burn them both down. WTF?!?!? My health is way below half?!?!? I've got 14k armor and 21k health. WTF?!?!?!?

Oh, and I received 15 reputation points each.

hrm....

I pull the group of 3 mobs farthest to the right, stun one, and just get to work. Kill the first, hammer *BUBBLE!* the whelp and finally -WAIT!!!!!!

*mana up and heal*

and kill the third.

?

Holy shit, for "only" being level 70 elites, these are some nasty effing mo-fos!

I switch to my tank gear, but stay in Retribution spec.

I move on to the next group of 3.

The extra armor & health helps mitigate the damage I take, but since I now take a LOT longer to kill them, and it is basically a wash as far as how close to being killed I am.

I rinse & repeat this until I clear that room at the base of the stairs. I got maybe 200 rep points with Honor Hold and a 1.5 gold repair bill.

Yay.

So I go back to Honor Hold to get the small repair and sell off the little bit of loot I grabbed. While there I see that "Stadium is under attack by the Horde!" (the other 2 places had just been captured as well)

I'm not in the mood to PvP, but I AM in the mood to be a pest (ie, not flag myself or attack, but stand there, simply being a geared 80 alliance toon, and try to be as intimidating as I can.

I fly over and there's a Horde v Alilance 1 on 1 battle going on. One of them is a DK, and one is (maybe) a Paladin. With things running around like they are, I have no clue which is which.

I land,

hit [tab] to select the Hordie

then

-WHAM

-BAM

-SPLAT!

There's a dead horde (unreleased) and an Ally DK . I feel good about helping the guy out.

Until he starts corpse humping/Teabagging the Hordie.

Ugh.

I wave to the Horde corpse and bow (it still hasn't released) and head back over to Honor Hold to ponder my next waste of time/diversion.

Upon arrival, there's some Horde over there killing all the NPCs. Looks like it's 2 level 80s. A Priest and a Rogue. I *think* I kill the Rogue and the Priest bugs out. (actually it was a Pally) because there was a non-flagged Priest sitting there.

How do I know there was a Pally? Because he returned a bit later (with the Rogue) and came after me. I had hurt the Rogue and nearly killed the Pally when I died. The remaining 60s & 70s chased them off.

I respawned at the grave yard, took the 5-10 steps to my corpse and came back. By this time a couple other 80s had arrived (one was the alt of the DK I had helped)

The Hordies had cleared the area so I logged.

No, there's no real point to this post... just sorta rambling... though I *could* bring up a couple semi-relevant points about it all:

The Outlands (Hellfire in particular) 5 mans are where Kattastrophe & I 2-manned several dungeons. this is where I learned to use my CC, use corners ("LoS" - line of sight) to force casters to get within my melee range, and to have to sit and plan out attacks.

I've read a lot from folks that were doing end game content back in the "BC" (Burning Crusade)days, and all of them are melancholy about the challenge those dungeons represented. Mainly because crowd control was an integral part of the game, and was some actual utility that DPS players could bring to the table. (other than simple DPS) Now, sadly, most dungeons are a DPS Tank-n-Spank race to kill the boss before the next enrage. DPS just needs to bring the hurt.

Which (per Big Bear Butt) is another possible source of DPS hazing...

I wanna go home... only another 3-4 hours left here at work. Hope you guys have a good weekend!

:P

We Made it Through a Ring of Fire

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t quest or do raids/dungeons/instances with a guild or anything. I have only partially pugged Deadmines once, and that’s the extent of my real “real group” type playing in WoW. It’s normally just me & Kattastrophe.

This has ZERO effect on the simple/regular quests (actually it makes them easier since most quests are doable solo; they become MUCH easier in a duo. However, this arrangement makes it impossible to really be able to do instances, dungeons or raids, at least not until we level up a bunch. Often this has been where we are ~10 levels above the top recommended level.

At level 67, we decided to try Hellfire: Ramparts (aka “ramps” ) which is a 60-62 level, 5 man dungeon. Kattastrophe had been walked through it once by a level 80, so she knew a *little*, but we were essentially walking in blind. (she did remember which guys to pull first though) For the first two guys, we just ran in & killed them: (Watchkeeper Gargolmar and Omor the Unscarred)

Before the “final” Boss and we then watched a youtube vid of the fight so we had an idea of what to expect. It was tough, but we made it through!!! We didn’t even wipe! (we did come close on one occasion where we pulled too many trash mobs, but that was it) Vazruden & Nazan was an interesting, tough fight.

YUSS!!!

Nazan the Dead

A few days later, at level 68, we decided to give Bloodfurnace, (a 61-63 level, 5 man dungeon) a try. This was a *slightly* different story. For starters, many of the mobs are SIGNIFICANTLY tougher. The damnable Shadowmoon Technicians in particular are nasty if you aren’t prepared. They plant bombs under your feet that do 1,800 damage. YOUCH!!! We wiped once when we pulled two of them and a Fel Orc. We didn’t know about the bombs, so we just stood still and fought. And died. Once I read the battle text and saw the bomb planting bit, and read up on them, we came up with a simple strategy: I pull and gain aggro, Kattastrophe THEN plants her totems, then I just sort of kite them around. The only time they got REALLY tough was when you were in a confined place and couldn’t run. BOOM! was the result of that. (and if it’s only 1, we can easily survive/heal through it)

The Bosses were a bit more challenging as well. (actually the first Boss, “The Maker” wasn’t that bad at all, and with a little preparation, the last one, Keli’dan the Breaker, wasn’t either) But the middle boss, Broggok, was a bit of a pain.
We read up on him, the progression of the fight and the mobs involved. The sources we read said that all the pre-Boss mobs were regulars with a couple elites thrown in. Nope. They are ALL elites. We found this out the hard way when we were trying to save mana and not be too aggressive, and we got wiped with the first group.

So, we wiped twice, but got through Bloodfire furnace a two-some!

WAHOO!!!

Kel'idan the not so tough...

I can say I’m a bit proud of doing that. We weren’t really very over-leveled (in fact we got exp for all the fights) and only having 2 meant it was a LOT tougher, since we each had to dual purpose our fight: I had to tank and DPS, and Kattastrophe had to DPS and heal. And it worked out well!

Then we found out that we could then run the Heroic level. We grabbed the needed key, and headed over, with our newly dinged level 69 toons.

Ouch.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

Our first attempt, I tried to pull just a walker. We got him AND two guards. We were dead within 5 seconds.

Our second attempt, we avoided the walker, and just tried to pull the guards; with me using Repentance to stun one, while we focused on killing the other. The only problem was that we miscued. I stunned one, and then Kat attacked him, breaking the stun. We died very shortly after that.

Our third attempt, we did what we wanted: stun one, and focus on the other one. It was going ok, except that the guy is WAY tough and has a boatload of health. It got a LOT worse when Kat somehow ended up with aggro, and the guy focused on her. I cast Hand of Reckoning (which is usually enough to regain aggro and deal some damage at the same time - also, I have Righteous Fury on all the time) It had no effect, and by the time I can click Righteous defense, she's dead. Now I'm 1 v 1 with this guy, and it's no contest; I die while he still has ~30% health, even though I bubbled and laid hands. I never even thought to bubble Kat because it just happened so fast. WIPE.

Only later did I find out that the Heroic mode is INTENDED for 5 level 70, geared players.

We have since dinged level 70, but I don’t think we’ll be heading back any time soon. We’ve got Northrend on our plates, as well as saving gold for epic flight, grinding rep to get a cool epic flying mount (Netherwing Drake) and just plain levelling up.