PvPug

New Project ctd. - Picking a Main for Cataclysm

2010-06-10T10:37:00.001-04:00

After a long hiatus, I've decided to start the blog back up.

For the past couple months, my play time has been even less than before. I'm getting married in August so wedding planning is taking up most of my weekends and during the week I've been logging in basically just to post some auctions and log back off. Quietly, I'm trying to reach the gold cap but since Ive only been posting auctions 5-6 times per week it's a slow process - I think I'm at around 50k gold currently.

I've also found a new focus for this blog. In preparation for Cataclysm, I've begun a mini adventure - choosing a main for Cataclysm. As of this post, I'm considering all my characters higher than level 40 to be in the running. But I'll quickly eliminate some of them right now.

The contenders:
Jasari, level 80 Blood Elf Paladin.
Profs: 450 Mining, 450 JC, 450 Fishing, 450 Cooking
Epeen Perks: Tutle Mount, 1 Thunderfury Binding
She was my main during my WotLK raiding career. This included raid leading through Naxx, Malygos, Sarth + Drakes, and Ulduar (with some hardmodes). The release of ToC coincided with the disbandment of my guild and the end of my raiding career for this expansion. Since then I've pugged raids here and there but never really gotten back into anything remotely serious. I haven't really played her much since my guild disbanded and for whatever reason don't find myself very interested in dusting her off more more than a JC vending machine.

Tuwei, level 80 Troll Priest
Profs: 450 Tailoring, 450 Herbalism, ~425 Fishing, ~425 Cooking
Epeen Perks: ZA Bear Mount, "Hand of A'dal title"
He was my original main. I raided with him through BC, including Kara, SSC, TK, Hyjal, and BT before I quit the game while I finished college and my honors thesis. My greatest WoW memories are with him. Downing Vashj and Kael for the first time (pre 2.3). Getting a beautiful Zul'Aman Bear mount. Sporting the epeen boosting "Hand of A'dal" title. From a purely, "this character makes me feel cool" perspective, Tuwei is tough to beat. And while I love raiding as a shadow priest, I can't stand running 5mans if I'm not a tank. Additionally, the main reason I enjoy DPSing in raids is that it's easier to find pugs that way and I tend to not get as annoyed with retards because I can find some satisfaction in topping the meters - even if the raid is ultimately a failure. Tanking is more rewarding when you're in a good group or a good guild, but it's infuriating when you're in a pug with a bunch of idiots. Tuwei's definitely a contender but his lack of tanking ability may cost him the title.

Tooee (soon to be Mahalo), level 80 Tauren Druid
Profs: 450 Alchemy, 450 Enchanting
Epeen Perks: None
He was originally created a casual alt long ago. Even his name is meant to sound like "Tuwei". I never dreamt he'd actually become my main, but when 3.3 introduced the new LFG tool this druid inspired the creation of this blog through his pug tanking antics as I leveled him up. I absolutely love the versatility of druids. A druid in the right hands can do so much for a raid. Battle rez, and innervate continue to be overpowered raid buffs brought exclusively by druids, and a feral druid can DPS or tank decently regardless of whether they're spec'd more toward kitty or bear. The fact that I'll be able to change is race (and name) to Troll (and Mahalo) in Cataclysm is a huge bonus as well. Tooee (Mahalo) is probably the front runner right now, the one drawback I see is that I'm probably going to have to find a guild in need of a tank, which is usually more difficult than finding a guild in need of a DPSer.

Ventulus, level 80 Undead Warlock
Profs: 450 Engineering, 450 Inscriptions
Epeen Perks: None
Originally name Tuwie, this was my level 39 twink through most of BC. I leveled him to 70 right before WotLK released and then leveled him to 80 when I wasn't raiding on Jasari. I changed his name when I transferred him to another server to play with a friend of mine. I do enjoy playing him and I like what I've seen for Warlocks in Cataclysm. But if I'm going to be choosing a DPS class, Tuwei is still the current favorite.

Ritzenhein, level 79 Troll Shaman
Profs: None
Epeen Perks: None
While I was leveling Ritz, I was sure he would take the spot of my main for Cataclysm. I liked the idea of DPSing through BC, Tanking for WotLK, and Healing for Cataclysm. The problem? As soon as I hit 79 I suddenly lost interest. He's seriously been sitting at level 79 for months, I just don't have any desire to play him anymore and I'm not sure why. I leave him on the list because should I have a sudden change of heart, I do have a high level shaman who would be easy to switch to. The fact that he doesn't have any professions yet, does hurt his chances though.

Rono, level 56 Orc Rogue
Profs: ~150 Enchanting
Epeen Perks: None
Toward the end of BC I was leveling him with the intent to raid on him in WotLK. But ended up finding a guild that needed a tank so Jasari took center stage instead. Since then I never really god around to leveling him. I think as a melee class, Orcs look awesome which does give Rono some cool points. But honestly, now I see his as a druid that's permanently stuck in cat form (no offense to rogues out there).

Ventulus, level 49 Orc Warrior
Profs: None
Epeen Perks: None
I just started leveling this guy on a server with some college friends. Warriors have always appealed to me because their mobility is awesome. They're also OP at low level tanking. It's painfully obvious that they were originally the only class that was meant to tank. Even at level 49, I have most of the skills I need to tank anything effectively. With BoA gear, I'm doing close to 60% of the total damage of the group and that's not exaggerating at all. This is probably the most OP I've ever felt in the game. At 80 I know everything else catches up but I do enjoy the warrior's play style. If I do choose a tank for Cataclysm I think it'll probably be Ventulus (the warrior not the warlock), or Tooee (Mahalo). Right now it's a tossup. I love the versatility of the Druid but I love the charging, thunder-clapping brutality of the Warrior.

Current Rankings:

Front Runners: Druid, Warrior, Priest
Contenders: Paladin
Back of the pack: Warlock, Shaman, Rogue
Out of the Running: None.

New Project?

2010-02-24T09:57:00.002-05:00

I've basically gotten bored again. Still playing some on my Druid because I hate running heroics as anything except a tank. I'm brainstorming some kind of new project to blog.

Stay tuned...

The Return of the Shadow Priest

2010-02-08T09:33:00.000-05:00

So over the weekend a couple things happened.

First, I did a 25man ToC with my guild. I came as feral DPS and did decent for my gear ~6.5k DPS. But I realized something during the run. I don't enjoy playing melee DPS very much. One of the reasons I "rerolled" druid was because I wanted a class that could tank 5mans, since I get extremely irritated by piss poor 5man tanks, but one that I could have fun DPSing in raids. I never enjoyed ret on my Paladin, but I thought it was because ret's rotation is pretty boring. Cat DPS is more involved and I thought it'd be more interesting for me. It definitely is a difficult class to master and I'm far from mastering it, but I'm finding that I just don't like melee. Things feel too hectic when I'm up the boss's ass. I prefer the methodical nature of caster DPS. The obvious solution would be to go boomkin, however I find boomkin to be a hideous sight and I can't ever imagine myself playing one.

So while I was considering what I would do next, I figured I'd level my shadow priest some more. If you've read my first blog entry, you'll know that my Shadow Priest was my first ever main. He's who I played when I killed Kael and Vashj and scored a ZA bear. When I had the time to raid 20+ hours a week, it was my priest. My shadow priest was my first love.

So I logged on Tuwei, bought dual spec and cold weather flying and start leveling. I had left him at 73 a while back when I'd play him occasional between raiding on my Paladin. I went with a holy off spec for now just because it's nice to heal the occasional instance while leveling since it doesn't take much effort or energy.

I healed a couple runs, ran a couple quests and then decided to finally queue just as DPS so I could remember what it felt like to melt faces. It felt good!

My priest is still wearing mostly T5 and some heirloom gear. I only ran a couple Hyjal runs before I quit back in the day so I don't have any T6, but I have the sweet pink mace from there. The gear is about on par with level 75-76 blues it looks like but I'm raping damage meters against people whose "gear score" is considered higher than mine. And it's fucking fun. Especially after getting Mind Sear. My experience when tanking is that ret pallies and DKs usually dominate 5man meters. But it really seems like shadow preists have excellent tools for 5mans. Mind Sear is one of the best mass AOE spells in the game, and with multi target dotting, SPs can dominate on 2-3 pulls too. I really can't tell you how fun it is to play my priest again and how many memories it brings back.

I don't know yet whether I'll actually raid on Tuwei when I hit 80 or if this is just a temporary fun little tangent. But I think I might be done with my Druid for now. I know I'm going to miss being able to raid on a consistent schedule when I hit 80 though so there's a good chance the fun will only last until I'm fully geared from badge/heroic gear.

334: Vault of Archavon

2010-02-04T09:17:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I finally got to try to new boss in VoA.

First I tanked 10man. Our group tried two healing it which caused us to wipe once but we got it on the second try pretty easily. As a tank the fight's extremely easy, you just taunt back and forth with the other tank at 3-4 stacks while making sure to let your debuff fall off. You'll want to pull him toward the back of the room some to give DPS room to spread out and kill the orbs that spawn.

Later I got to join a group as kitty DPS. They said "5k minimum" DPS. 5k is pretty low in a 25man and I was confident I'd be fine but I still don't have a full cat set - had to use my tanking cloak and one tanking trinket. Before I joined the group I had been practicing on a target dummy and was consistently between 4.1k-4.3k. Since raid buffs make a huge difference, especially for crit levels which cats are extremely dependent on I knew I'd be a lot higher in a raid.

Before we pulled the new boss, the raid leader said "If we wipe and anyone's low on DPS I'm going to boot you. If two people are rolling on the same item and one person is at least 2k DPS higher than the other person, I'm giving it to them." Again, DPSing is easy and people are idiots so I thought even with my sub par gear I'd be okay. But since I'd never really DPS'd on my Druid before I was a little nervous.

We pulled once and wiped because tanks didn't pull him back far enough and DPS were dying. But it was a fast wipe so not enough to really judge DPS. Our second pull went fine and the fight was simple enough. I was pleased to see myself #5 for DPS at 6.4k. This isn't exactly worthy of flexing my epeen, but for only having about 50% crit unbuffed, under 1k ArP, a tanking cloak and one tanking trinket, I thought it was solid. The cat "rotation" is also starting to feel a lot less awkward - it helps when you have a warrior to keep up the 30% bleed debuff.

I didn't end up getting any loot from any of the bosses but the extra frost badges were nice. And it was good to see that my DPS is coming along. I think gear is holding me back more than skill at this point. There's definitely still room for me to improve but I'm getting decent uptimes on rip/rake now (I'll start posting WoLog reports soon). And when I get some more gear - particularly the trinket from H FoS things will really start coming together.

One final thought - I'm considering getting some the i245 DPS craftables made. Crusader orbs are going for a cheap 160g nowadays and they'd be HUGE upgrades. The main thing holding me back is that even 10m ICC has drops better than them. My DPS doesn't seem to be too terrible but we'll see. The higher gear score will make it easier to get into pugs so that's something to consider.

Opinion: Gearing from Pugging

2010-02-02T09:48:00.000-05:00

My previous post included my current gear list that I obtained almost entirely from 5mans. I thought I'd do another post that replaced the few raid items I'd gotten with gear from badges/5mans. Now, I haven't looked closely enough to insure that this is truly a "BiS 5man" list, but it's very close. There are possibly upgrades to the i200 items on the list but this is a set that's good enough to past most raid pug's gear checks.

Keep in mind that there are quite a few easy to obtain upgrades to this list that can be snagged from very puggable raids such as Onyxia, ToC 10, and even Ulduar. This should serve as just a baseline for what you can go after while pugging.

Here's a wowhead profile of my recommended gear: http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=20771511

Note that you're easily hit capped, but still about 3% away from dodge capped on expertise. This is definitely acceptable as feral cat is one of the few specs where hit and expertise aren't always your best stats below the cap. You also get the 2pc T9 which is pretty good and sit at 531 ArP without any procs. This is low, but again all this gear is obtainable from badges or 5mans so that number will shoot up as you start doing raids. The idol is the frost badge one, but any of the other idols are decent too.

312: Ready for ICC?

2010-02-01T10:39:00.001-05:00

Over the weekend and got a lot of playing in. My tank set is basically done for now. I'm in full epics, mostly i232+ with just a couple i200, i219 left. It's more than enough for heroics and VoA which will be the main places that I'm tanking for pugs. In addition I've almost completed my kitty set as well. I farmed reg ToC5 a bunch last night and finally snagged the ArP trinket. This gives me enough ArP from gear to make it the best stat to gem for, which is a huge step because I was trying to hold off on gemming too much of my kitty gear because I knew I'd have to replace all that agility with ArP pretty soon.

My cat set isn't quite complete though, there are still a couple items that I'm looking for from the new ICC heroics:

Needle-Encrusted Scorpion from FoS. This will be tough because there is almost always one other person rolling on it and I haven't even seen it drop yet.

Band of Stained Souls from PoS.

Choking Hauberk

Barbed Ymirheim Choker from PoS or Broach of the Wailing Night from badges. The Choker is slightly better but if I don't see it drop soon I'll just buy the badge one.

Chewed Leather Wristguards from PoS.

There are a couple other minor upgrades from some of the reg ICC 5mans (upgrading my i200 to an i219 but I don't think they're worth the effort. According to wow-heroes my gear is ready for ICC10 so hopefully I'll start running that and fill in a couple of the worse slots.

Picking up those last few items mentioned above will give me the following profile:
http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=20767916
These items were obtained almost entirely through 5mans. The only exceptions being my weapon (from XT 25) and my gloves (from ToC 10). Both of these have suitable replacements - there's actually a better weapon in H HoR and plenty of decent gloves replacements. There are only a few "bad" items - the cloak and belt are in serious need of upgrades and the boots are "kinda bad". But in general the gear is good enough to progress through the newest content in the game (on a 10 man level) and enough to not contribute some even on a 25man level.

153: Almost "Done"

2010-01-25T10:47:00.000-05:00

Well, I've now killed ~150 heroic bosses. I have the i245 headpiece, tanking ring, dps ring, shoulders, and the i232 T10 feral chest piece. I have some bracers from 25man Flame Levi and a staff from 25man XT. I still have a couple blues and a couple i200 pieces, but it's safe to say I overgear all the non-ICC heroics. It was extremely fast and super easy to get to this point but now I'm at the point where I'm looking toward raids - I'll probably be kitty DPS for those.

My DPS is pugs is picking up. Pushing ~2.8k now and hopefully I'll be breaking 3k before long. One thing I was worried about when switching from my paladin was that I wouldn't be able to stroke my epeen as much on the damage meter in heroics, but it's looking like I had nothing to worry about. Ferals do solid damage and when I'm no longer in blues I'm sure I'll be able to give my paladin a run for her money.

Now, there are a few heroics I want to talk about:

Forge of Souls
I've gotten thrown into the first two of the new ICC heroics for the first time this weekend. They were actually a lot of fun and definitely more challenging that anything blizzard has given us so far from a 5man perspective. Forge of Souls was easy from a tanking perspective but there was significantly more damage flying around than in other heroics so I was glad to have a solid healer. The packs with a couple casters are fun because I group up on one caster, throw a few swipes/mauls and then charge/interrupt the other to keep aggro and keep damage intake down a bit. It's not a huge deal, but it's always fun to throw in a few little tricks to make runs even smoother.

Pit of Saron
I hadn't read up on these new heroics before getting into them as I was expecting to need a little more gear before I'd get assigned them. So I always had to ask the party to let me know anything important. Pit of Saron was a lot less intuitive to me than Forge of Souls. The huge open landscape had me wondering where I was supposed to go, but luckily the group pointed me in the right direction. The trash and first two bosses are super easy though even though I was intimidated by the bigness of it at first. They really don't need any explanation besides "hide behind a rock when he runs away" and "stay out of bad shit and run if he chases you". They were both easy one shots. The trash leading to the last boss was a bit harder for my first time there. I didn't get a good explanation of the collapsing tunnel and wiped once because everyone sprinted ahead of me who didn't know it was a gauntlet type thing. I'm fine taking the blame though. After one run through that stuff I'm sure it'll be easy the next time now that I know what the expect. The final boss wasn't bad, the only explanation I got was "he does evil stuff" so I just stood still and tanked him and he died. Later I heard that I was supposed to kite him as some point but that didn't seem to be an issue at all.

Halls of Reflection is the last instance to check off the list, but I still need better gear before it'll unlock for me so that'll be for another time.

Occulus
Finally, I want to mention Occulus. This is now the easiest and one of the fastest instances in WotLK. Anyone who says otherwise has not run it recently. If people know how to avoid the trash dragons, you only have to kill 1-2 the entire run and even if people are idiots, you should only have to kill 5-6. Every boss leading up to the last one takes less than a minute to kill and the trash can be done without a healer. Yesterday I had a group in which the healer left after the first boss and we proceeded to 4man the rest of the instance without him. I hotted myself up before each pull but probably didn't even need to. Everything dies ridiculously fast and you even get 2 bonus badges at the end along with some gems. I still haven't seen the blue drake, but I'm sure it'll show up eventually. But the point is, people should not be afraid of this instance, it's one of my favorite to get because of how fast it is and how many badges you get.

59: I killed XT and all I got with this lousy staff

2010-01-21T09:28:00.000-05:00

I joined a guild with a lot of people I used to play with during Burning Crusade. Their raiding schedule isn't great for me, but I told them I'd fill in when I could. Well turns out I was able to fill in last night.

I was jsut about to go to bed when I got asked if I'd come in and kill Flame Levi/XT real quick for the weekly raid quest. Keep in mind, I'm still mostly in unenchanted blues at this point. Furtunatly the rest of the guild outgears the content so it was all a faceroll and since I was the only person that needed any gear from there, I was able to snag a pair of bracers from Flame Levi and got Twisted Visage from XT. Needless to say it was a massive upgrade over my Witch Doctor's Wildstaff that I had been using.

I've continued to level enchanting at a decent pace, I'm up to 225 skill level now and going strong. And am plugging away at heroics.

0-24: "Please put your tanking gear on"

2010-01-19T09:30:00.000-05:00

I wish I had the screen shot of it, but in my first heroic as a tank the healer told me, "please put your tanking gear on". I didn't notice it until I was watching the video again. The quality is bad on the youtube version so you can't really see, but it's right after I start pulling. Obviously the run ended up going fine and since I proved I wasn't an idiot and he was able to keep me alive it didn't end up being a big deal.

The numbers the prefix my blog now stand for how many badges I've acquired. I was going to use my gear score, but it wasn't intuitive enough. Keep in mind, these are badges awarded from kills and does not include the bonuses from using the random dungeon tool. So in reality I've snagged a lot more than that, somewhere around 50ish.

The gearing up process has been really fast. Yesterday I ran a quick random heroic to get the daily out of the way and then I started farming regular ToC for The Black Heart. It took seven kills in total for it to drop which was longer than I was hoping, but I was able to grab a few other upgrades from there in the process so it wasn't a complete waste. My gear has gotten to the point where it's no longer that tough to keep me alive but my threat is shaky at times. I'm generally able to hold on to everything but it requires that I actually pay attention. Hopefully a weapon upgrade is in my near future. VH and ToC (heroic obviously) both have solid upgrades, as does regular Forge of Souls I just don't want to farm another regular instance and waste time that could be spent getting badges. Heroic Halls of Reflection has a great one that I'll be able to get eventually but I think my gear level still locks me out of there. Also Onyxis drops some nice polearms. So I guess we'll see what happens, my weapon is definitely the slot that could use some love the most.

As far as professions go, I've started leveling up enchanting. I got to 125 last night. Judging from prices on the AH I'll probably have to head to Outland to do some farming at some point since Arcane Dust are going for 10g each.

And finally I thought I'd end with a screen shot from an H UK run I did last night. This was after I'd had to chance to get some more gear so I wasn't super squishy anymore. The healer was a holy priest who healed almost exclusively with Holy Nova spam and was able to put out almost 1900 DPS. And yes, sadly that was more DPS than I did, everyone point and laugh.

Video: Heroic Old Kingdom

2010-01-18T18:25:00.000-05:00

79-80: Ding!

2010-01-18T16:39:00.000-05:00

Well I finally hit 80.

The journey really wasn't too bad. Between the LFG tool, swift flight form/cold weather flying at 71, +10% XP heirloom bonus, and Blizzard's built in quest helper, it went by faster than ever.

The first thing I did after dinging was to start setting up my UI. I'll have a detailed post about that later, but basically I started moving things around and positioning them in such a way where I wouldn't have to manually change anything when I switched between my tank and DPS spec. One of the things I hated about my Paladin was needing to turn on different addons depending on if I was tanking or healing. So I wanted a UI that would dynamically change based on my spec - more on that later too!

So while I was setting up my UI I decided to queue for a random heroic as a DPS. I knew if I queued as a tank I'd get a group instantly and wanted to have to time to set things up. Plus I figured it couldn't hurt to try to snag a drop or two being carried as DPS rather than fighting my way through as an undergeared tank. The queue popped after only 5ish minutes so I didn't even completely finish my UI. But I jumped in as a kitty and actually wasn't too bad. Keeping Savage Roar up and swipe spamming was sufficient to put me just below the tank and above a warlock in the group at about 1900ish DPS. Yes, in reality it's pathetically low, but I'm in unechanted i180 blues and only half a UI. I did end up getting some i200 blue bracers from the run which was decent.

Thus far, I've titled my blog posts as "LEVEL": "TITLE" unless it was a video or opinion piece. To track my progress now, I'm going to start using my gear score (from wow-heroes).

75-79: Are we there yet?

2010-01-17T13:36:00.000-05:00

As I've approached level 80 everything has started to feel more and more "grindy". The LFG tool is still fantastic and breaking up the monotony of questing but due to the range in group skills they can sometimes be painfully slow. I'm definitely getting that anxious feeling of wanting to just be at the level cap so I can focus on gearing up and maxing out my professions. At the time of writing this, I'm about 85% through level 79 but stopped playing to watch the NFL playoffs.

When I finally ding 80, I've come up with a basic gameplan. First, I'll enchant some of the crappy blues I have so that I'm at least geared enough to tank heroics without people leaving as soon as they see my HP. It's looking like I'll be somewhere between 22k and 23k HP unbuffed, which is about where I was on my pally when I first hit 80. I'll try to snag the tanking trinket from reg ToC first since it should be pretty easy and I might snag another drop or two while I'm there - I haven't actually looked at the loot lists but I'm sure there's at least an upgrade or two. From there it'll be pretty much constant random groups. There are upgrades everywhere so I figure I'll just farm badges for my good gear and pick up whatever i200 stuff to fill in gaps on the way.

As far as professions, I think I'm going to go with enchanting and either leatherworking or alchemy (I already have JC on my paladin). I'll pretty much buy all the mats for enchanting unless something looks way to expensive. I imagine it might be worthwhile to solo farm ramps or something. I'm leanding toward alchemy for my second prof but we'll see how I feel when the time comes.

Professions will be secondary to heroic farming though. I expect to make decent money just from farming heroics and it'll be nice to use that to powerlevel professions when I need a break.

74: Black Circles are Universally Bad

2010-01-13T09:35:00.000-05:00

The above dialog is from a DTK run I had last night. If you don't remember, the first few pulls in DTK will put big black "void zones" on the ground that deal a decent amount of damage while you're in them, even on normal difficulty. There was a priest in my group who was standing in one of them spamming heals on himself while also trying to keep me alive. You'd think the fact that his health was plummeting would have been an indicator to him that something was wrong. Or the fact that there was a giant black circle under his feet. But no, he just stood there and died, excusing his performance with a casual "it's been a while since I've been here".

Now, this is one of the more obvious times where a player completely lacks situational awareness and needs to be told that black circles are bad. Even though for most of us, if you're standing in something that looks bad and you're taking damage, chances are you should move. But in my adventures through pug world, I've encountered a lot of people who need to be explicitly told to do something that seems painfully obvious to most people.

Silencing casters.
This is painfully obvious in Old Kingdom with the spell flingers who have a ridiculously long cast but deal a lot of damage. My only interrupt as a bear is on a one minute cool down so I can only interrupt one of these casts ever couple pulls. In one run, I marked the spell flinger with a skull to make it really apparent that it was a threat and should die first. I then faerie fire to pull, but can't charge in because I don't want to aggro a second pack. I could have run way back and LOS'd them but since we had a mage in the group I figured he'd do the intelligent thing and CS it. Well he didn't. Instead he stood there blasting away at it while it charged up its spell basically shouting "please interrupt me, I'm slowly but surely casting a spell over here". Finally I yelled "WTB counterspell". But by the time the mage realized what I was wanting, I had already decided to screw it, charge in and bash. It was about that time that I saw the counterspell animation go off on the spell flinger - while the mob sat there still stunned from my bash.

Killing rifts.
The "rift boss" in Nexus... I'm too lazy to look up his actual name. He occasionally goes immune and summons some rifts. If you've already discussed that you're going for the heroic achievement then I can understand if you don't want to kill them. But I can't even count the number of times I've seen somone continue to attack the boss long after he's gone immune and the rest of the party is off killing rifts. Even if it's your first time ever doing the instance, wouldn't you take a hint when you see "immune, immune, immune" over and over while the rest of the party has moved on to killing something that isn't immune?

Tremor Totem.
In a pug I don't think I've ever seen a shaman use this on his own initiative. It usually takes several pleas in party chat and some yelling (which reminds me how frequently I get annoyed that I can't do raid warnings in 5 mans anymore) before they take the hint. And usually by that point the mob(s) that fear(s) are(is) dead. Specially, see the T-Rex and the last few pulls in DTK.

Buffs, especially those of paladin origin.
When did we start needing to request buffs? Before 3.3 I remember people buffing as standard procedure in 5 mans. Sometimes you wouldn't get the Paladin buff you wanted, but you'd at least get something. I see priests do this sometimes, but mainly it's paladins. Probably 50% of all the paladins I run into won't buff anyone unless they're ask to, and then they'll just give a 10 minute ghetto buff. When the shitty buff runs out you'll need to request a refresh which will usually take 2-3 pulls to get, while the paladin presumably rumages through his spell book to find it. When I'm in a group with a paladin and see a 30 minute kings over my head it feels like a luxury.

73-74: Some numbers

2010-01-12T08:53:00.000-05:00

I didn't get to play much last night as I had some other stuff going on. But I was able to ding 74. I thought it'd be interesting to look at exactly how much instancing I've done in Northrend so far.

Number of times I've finished each of the WotLK instances so far:
UK: 13
Nexus: 7
AN: 5
OK: 3
DTK: 3

Those numbers sound about right, but I'm almost certain I've only run DTK once. I don't think it was available until level 74, and from what I remember I only did one run last night since dinging.

Regardless, it's a fair amount of instancing, far more than I'd ever done while leveling any of my other characters. Since I imagine Blizzard spends a fair amount of time developing these leveling instances, they're probably happy that people are finally experiencing them instead of just rushing to 80.

Opinion: Druid vs Paladin ... so far

2010-01-11T13:23:00.000-05:00

Now that I've gotten to tank some Northrend dungeons on my druid, I thought it'd be a good time to do a quick Druid vs Palain comparison of my experiences so far.

Clearly both classes are fully capable of tanking any content in the game. They each have their strength and weaknesses, but Blizzard has done a good job of balancing the various tanking classes. One could argue about slight imbalances here or there, or how a certain class is better for hardmodes than another class. But for 99% or raiders out there, any class can tank any encounter.

That said there's no doubt that there are differences between the tanking classes. People can talk all they want about how homogonized the game is and how the tanks are soon going to be the exactly the same with different attack animations, but the truth is that they all feel quite different when you're playing them, at least that's my experience so far playing a druid vs a paladin.

So here's my comparison, keeping in mind this is only in reference to 5 mans. I'll do a raiding comparison after I hit 80.

AOE THREAT
A paladin's staple AOE move is consecration. It has an eight second duration and an eight second cooldown. It's fantastic to standing still and burning things down. But it gives the paladin terrible mobility. Druids on the other hand have swipe, which has no cooldown and since 3.2? has the same range as concecrate. In order to keep threat, druids have to spam it, but they're able to move around while doing so. In 5 mans, it's nice to be able to move from pack to pack without keeping on eye on your consecration cooldown. Obviously, paladins will have Hammer of the Righteous, which is great for tagging three mobs, and the new Seal of Command which cleaves mobs left and right. But they require more targetting and precision than swipe. On my druid I can just run in circles spamming swipe without targetting anything and no that I'm going to have aggro on everything. Both classes have great AOE threat, the main difference is that as a paladin you have to think a couple seconds ahead and plan accordingly. On a druid some foresight helps, but if things start going to hell you can just run around swiping everything and you'll be ok.

SINGLE TARGET THREAT
This is more of a factor for raids and since I'm still only level 73 on my druid I can't talk to that point. I've been able to keep single target threat without a problem so far :)

MOBILITY
Paladins don't have very good mobility but they make up for it by having two ranged taunts, Avenger's Shield, and to a lesser extent Exorcism. Druid have decent mobility with charge, but only one ranged taunt and Faerie Fire in their toolbox. This makes the two classes have very different playstyles. When I'm tanking stuff on my paladin, I usually make the mobs come to me. On my druid I'm fine with a caster hanging out 15 yards away for a little while while I'm tanking another pack because I know I can charge in to interrupt his cast anytime I want.

UTILITY
Each class has good group buffs. Paladin blessings/auras can't really be topped by anything, but Mark of the Wild is a solid all around buff. Paladins shine in their ability to cleanse while tanking. It really comes in handy in five mans when you can rarely depend on pugs to get rid of debuffs on people. Druids can't dispel anything without shifting out of bear form, which makes it tough to do while in combat. But between pulls or during phase changes on boss fights, they're able to really shine. On the last boss in UK for example, I've been able to battle rez people, innervate the healer, and tranquility to top off the entire group.

RESOURCE
Mana vs Rage. Before WotLK introduced mana regen from BoSanc and Divine Plea, mana sucked for prot paladins. But now I'm farily certain I prefer mana over rage. It's nice to start off fights with a full resource bar and you shouldn't ever go oom except if you completely outgear content and are only pulling one pack at a time. Rage is nice because if you're constantly pulling you shouldn't ever need to take a break but on boss fights it can often be a limiting factor for your threat during the first few seconds. As I'm getting more used to using rage it's definitely growing on me but it can be frustrating how fast you can go from 100 to 0. At the end of the day, they both serve their purpose. Warriors probably have more to complain about but that's not within the scope this blog.

CONCLUSION
From a 5 man perspective both classes make fantastic tanks. I'm loving my druid right now and prefer him to my paladin, but a lot of that is because he's new and because Blizzard has won be over with the new LFG tool. I will say that I can't wait to be able to race change to a troll though!

69-73: Leveling is actually fun

2010-01-11T09:33:00.000-05:00

For the first time since I leveled my very first character, I'm really enjoying the experience of leveling. Usually it's just a necessary annoyance in order to get to max level and start raiding and running heroics.

The thing is, questing is generally still better XP/hour. If you have a fantastic instance group who's able to chain pull with no mana breaks or random AFKs, I think instancing is competitive but it's rare to have a group that doesn't have at least 1-2 players who are either only doing 400dps or are a healer who somehow manages to go oom every pull even though no one is taking much damage.

I've started getting into a good routine of finishing a group of quests, usually 5-6 that all take place in the same area. Then I go turn those in and queue for a dungeon. The tank queue has been just a couple minutes so usually by the time I grab all the new quests and start heading out in their direction I get teleported to the instance. It's made leveling very fun and hasn't felt like a grind yet.

Here's what I've been getting:

69/70: UK
71: Nexus and all of the above
72: AN and all of the above
73: Old Kingdom and all of the above

It's really great because the one thing that does get old is if you have to run the exact same instance over and over. They're all fun, but not when you run them 4 times in a row. So now at level 73, I queue up and really do get a good mix of stuff to run.

The other thing that I've been getting a wide variety of is the quality of pugs. I was in a Nexus run over the weeked where the healer just kept saying "pull more, pull more" and wasn't having any mana problems so I was pulling entire halls at the time - in the snowing hall leading up to Ormorok I didn't even stop moving, I just kept running from pull to pull, spamming a couple swipes and charging into the next pack while AOE finished off the previous one. It made me realize one of the awesome things about druids is their Infected Wounds talent. I got it for the attack speed reduction, but the movement speed reduction is awesome because mobs can't keep up when you're charging off to the next pull and they're foced to slowly waddle through a mage's blizzard, a few seeds of corruption and a divine storming ret pally.

But I haven't only gotten good groups. I was in a UK run with a Shaman who spammed the damage meter after the first couple pulls. Usually I don't mind this too much because at least if someone cares about 5man meters, they're doing good DPS and making the run fast. But then we get to the first boss and I get frost trapped right as the skeleton adds spawn. So I'm sitting there, yelling for someone to break me free so that I can pick up the skeletons and stop them from destroying the healer, but the shaman just keeps on tunnel visioning the boss and the healer dies while I'm still waiting out the ~20 second or so ice trap. We ended up wiping so I made fun of the shaman for ignoring me and therefore letting the healer die and he goes "you're the tank, it's your job to pick up the adds". At that point I knew he was just clueless. Granted, I probably wasn't overly polite when I told him off, but based on his response he couldn't even comprehend what had happened. He obviously wasn't looking at anything that was going on besides alternating between his action bar and the damage meter. He probably had no idea that the boss even put people in ice traps.

And I think that's the defining difference between "good" players and "bad" players. Anyone can put out good DPS. But good players have situational awareness while simultatenously doing good DPS. In so many of my runs, I'm the only one breaking people out of ice traps or web wraps, or moving out of poison clouds, fire, or void zones. The problem is that normal 5mans are so fogriving that a half decent healer can keep an entire party alive even if they're all standing in a firey poisonous void zone while the tank is web wrapped. What I'd like to see in 5mans, or even raids, is more accountability for DPSers and more tests of situational awareness in general. But now I'm starting to get off on a tangent that is probably best used for another blog entry in the future.

Suffice to say that 69-73 has been enjoyable and the pugs are getting much more interesting.

66-69: "This is way easier than I remember"

2010-01-08T09:32:00.000-05:00

At 67 Sethekk Halls finally got into my random dungeon rotation. It's an interesting instance because the first half of it is ridiculously easy, a whole bunch of 2-3 pulls. But then in the final two rooms before the boss you're faced with a series of ~5 pulls that contain some nasty mobs. There are Sethekk Prophets who will chain fear the entire party if you're not careful, Time-Lost Shadowmage who will target a random player and pelt them with a handful of shadow bolts, Avian Warhawk who charges random party members and knocks them down, and a handful of other bird/human hybrids who want to kill you.

Having a shaman in the group makes everything a lot easier since a Tremor Totem trivializes the fear. But if you don't have a shaman, you're going to have to rely on good dps to burn down everything quickly (or CC, but who uses that these days?). My typical kill order is Prophet -> Shadowmage -> Bird. The Prophet dominates you the most because when the entire party is feared no one can do anything. The Shadowmage presents the biggest threat to randomly gibbing your healer so he's next. The Bird is really only a threat because he will knock down your healer for a couple seconds, but if the prophet and shadowmage are dead, this isn't a big deal.

I enjoyed Sethekk halls more than Crypts or Tombs because it was faster and better XP/hour. The big groups went down pretty fast, partially because I was fortunate enough to get grouped with good DPS, and I actually had a shaman in most of my runs.

Dinging 69 meant I was finally able to queue for "Random WoTLK" dungeons. I consider this step the "beginning of the beginning". I can finally start getting some badges, two per day for running a random WotLK dungeon, which means I'm starting the gearing up process. Leveling with pugs hasn't been as bad as I expected, there were a few rotten eggs here and there. But I think pugging heroics will be the most interesting part of my journey.

Leaving Outlad without getting to run any of the Tempest Keep instances, or Shattered Halls is a little disappointing. Those were all really fun heroics at level 70. Just like how the pre BC level 59-60 instances are being forgotten, I think the level 69-70 BC instances will have the same fate.

64-66: Mobs that do stuff

2010-01-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

In the mid 60s I've still been getting assigned the occasional SP or UB, but the majority of my instance runs have been either Mana Tombs or Crypts. These two instances are some of my most hated in BC. They're just annoying. I hate all the mana burns and I hate possessors, although the later are a non-issue on normal mode. I remember needing to explicitly yell at pug DPS to switch to the possessors sooner on heroic difficulty but I've found that I'm able to easily kill them on my own now - they only have 1300ish hp.

In other news, I've now switched to leveling almost exclusively through instances. I didn't even spent my last two talent points for my DPS spec for a long time. As an aside, for anyone who looks me up on armory and wants to make fun of my gem choices - I basically just buy whatever's cheap and I see first when I'm scrolling through the AH. I know my crit/stam gem is retarded but it was like 2g I rather than continue scrolling through for something else I just bought it and jumped back into an instance. Min/maxing is for when you're at the level cap, not for gems in gear you're gonna replace in another couple hours of play time.

The one time I did head back to bang out a couple quests, I noticed that it's actually a lot faster for leveling than running Tombs/Crypts. I think questing will always come out a little ahead because the reward XP is ridiculous and with flying mounts be available at level 60 now, quests take no time at all. But when the ranom instances are Tombs/Crypts I'm not able to bullrush through the way I can in something like SP. As you can see from the video in the post below. SP is an isntance where you don't really have to care if the group gets feared into the next pull. All the mobs are nonthreatening and you can AOE several pulls at once. In Mana Tombs you can't do this because of the mana burns, the healer will run OOM before you're able to kill everything if you pull too much. And in Crypts you can't just round everything up because a possessor might be able to snag someone, and there are so many casters that the mobs won't neatly gather in a pile for you to AOE.

All in all, I'd say this is one of the least fun stretches in a while. I'm just not a big fan of the instances I'm getting assigned. Unfortunatly, I don't think I'll ever get to run Shattered Halls, Mechinar, Botanica, or Arcatraz, which are some of my favorite BC instances. I assume random Northrend dungeons will be available at 68 or 69 and I'll be running those instead.

Video: Slave Pens

2010-01-04T21:19:00.000-05:00

59-64: Home Sweet Home

2010-01-04T17:35:00.000-05:00

In BC, I tanked a lot of heroics on my Paladin. A whole lot. I didn't start playing her until after 2.4 had introduced nearly BiS badge gear so by the time I hit 70, heroics were basically the best use of my time. Additionally, I had a good friend who played a holy priest and the two of us could chain run heroics for hours. Suffice to say, I can run BC instances with my eyes closed.

So when I finally hit Outland on my Druid, instances became a breeze (not that they were difficult before). I knew every pull, I knew which mobs feared, which stunned, who hit hard, yadda yadda yadda. This made runs go really fast and provoked countless "awesome tanking" comments from the group. And it was all a ton of fun. By the low 60s, Druids have acquired almost all of their tanking tools (with the exception of Lacerate) and have enough talent points to pick up virtually all the important survivability and threat talents.

Ironically, having all these talents and abilities means I'm able to spam one button almost the entire run... Shift+R which I have bound to the following macro:
/cast Swipe (Bear)
/cast Maul

The rest of my party can just AOE everything down and unless I'm chain stunned or something, threat has never been a problem. If rage becomes an issue then I just hit "R" which is bound to simple Swipe (Bear); it still generates decent AOE threat.

One downside to Outland was that instance queues were no longer instant. I'm guessing this had to do with DKs showing up.

Those Silly DKs:

Queues were still generally under 5 minutes, but healers were now the limiting factor instead of tanks and when I was trying to queue in the morning on Saturday I was getting some annoying waiting times.

Through level 64, I was getting a mix of Ramps, BF, SP, and UB. All of which are pretty quick and with almost no noteworthy obstacles. The final few pulls of BF might be worth mentioning though - these are the pulls with two felguards and a warlock. The trick is that the felguards will randomly drop aggro and charge a party member. The best way to deal with these is to have the entire party stack up on the tank so that no one is far enough away to be charged. However, in pugs it's usually not worth the effort to try to explain this to the group so I tend to just deal with the aggro dropping and charging. Here's how I do it:

FFF the Warlock to establish some aggro and start the pull.
Mark one of the felguards as skull and first target to die (this means hopefully 1-2 of the DPS will get the clue and DPS it first).
While DPSing the felguards, be ready to taunt either of them who decide to charge one of the other party members. If taunt is on CD then charge and mangle to grab aggro back.
Toss FFF on the warlock occasionally to make sure the healer doesn't get aggro.

None of the mobs hit hard enough that you should ever be at risk for wiping on these pulls, but having a bit of a gameplan going in makes sure no one dies and it makes you look like a better tank.

55-59: I've never been here before

2010-01-04T09:23:00.003-05:00

At level 56 I started getting Dire Maul East from the random LFG tool. Not only had I never been there before, but in virtually every group I was a part of, there was at least one member who had never seen the instance either. In a way we were experiencing new content even though it'd been around for years, and I think that speaks volumes to what makes the new LFG tool so much fun - players get to enjoy old instances that are completely deserted.

The instance itself is easy and straight forward. The hardest part of my first run was figuring out that we needed to kill the other bosses and then talk to the tree guy to go break down the door to the final boss. The trash pulls that stunned were occasionally a pain because as a druid I can't generate any AOE threat while stunned, it definitely made me miss consecrate. DM East is different from a lot of the high end vanilla dungeons in the sense that its very linear and the trash pulls are straightforward and intuitive. It's not like BRD, Strat, or Scholo where there are clusterfucks of mobs all over the place and if it's your first time there you never know how many mobs are going to come when you grab one of them. With how easy AOE threat is nowadays, pulling a bunch of mobs isn't really a problem; but I still tend to prefer trash that hangs out in neat little groups.

Interestingly, I didn't get any other parts of DM or Strat or Scholo during my high 50s. When I dinged 58 though I immediately went to Outland and at 59 I was finally able to queue for random BC dungeons. I also finally bought dualspec (my primary spec had been focused on cat dps) and picking up the rage generation on dodge talent made swipe + maul spam much easier on AOE trash.

0-55 ESPN Highlight Reel

2009-12-30T12:10:00.000-05:00

To bring this blog up to speed on where Tooee's at right now...

Last night I dinged 55. I plan to normally do more involved posts with funny clips of my adventures and actual quotes from players I've encountered. But since the idea to blog about my experiences in the pug world didn't occur to me until now, I'm going to do a quick ESPN-like highlight reel of leveling thus far.

0-20: Did most of this pre 3.3 and the new LFG tool so no real pug experience to speak of. But I will say that leveling a druid sucks until cat form and is excruciatingly painful until bear form.

20-30: My first random dungeon ever was BFD. It was the second time I'd ever been there and it sucked as much as I remembered. All that swimming just took forever to get anywhere. After that I had a mix of RFK and Gnomer. Gnomer was terrible as always but RFK was fun. The quality of players was pretty decent but these instances are virtually soloable so I probably wouldn't have noticed if some of them were on auto-follow the entire time.

30-40: Great mix of dungeons here. I love RFD and all the SMs. At some point I encountered a warrior who insisted on "helping me tank" which amounted to taunting random mobs off me and then losing threat back to me from a couple swipes. I also met a shaman who explained that we needed a plan for the final boss in Cath because "tons of adds will come when you aggro him". Clearly the last group he was in didn't clear the cathedral before pulling him.

40-50: Here we had a retarded order of instances. I started getting Maura: Orange, meaning killing the lasher boss when I was level 41 and the mobs were level 44-46. Then I got ZF when I was a higher level than the instance, then Purple Maura at some point followed by the princess part of Maura. Blizzard definitely needs to revisit what levels it assigns to these instances even though they're all easy even when bosses hit you with crushing blows.

50-55: BRD. Love it or hate it, it's big. At low 50s, I was getting assigned "Lower BRD" which required the group to kill this chick, taking all of 5-10 minutes. It was a pleasant surprise since I was so used to wandering around the gigantic labyrinth for hours back in the day. But at about 53 or 54 I started getting "Upper BRD" where you have to actually kill the emprorer in order to complete the "quest". It's not as bad as I remember but still annoying enough that I never want to requeue right after completing it. I'm doing a fair amount of questing in WPL right now to try to get to Outlad ASAP.

Supposedly I'll start getting DM soon which would be fun, but mostly I'm looking forward to Outland instances. Call me crazy, but I enjoy the short, straight forward nature of BC and WotLK.

I know this update is pretty boring, but I thought it would have felt weird to start talking about stuff at level 55 without at least a brief summary of how I got to that point. I anticipate the true excitement will come at 80 when I start gearing up in heroics and get shit for having fresh 80 gear. Pugs tend to be nicer, even if they're dumber at lower levels.

A Druid Was Born

2009-12-30T11:26:00.000-05:00

I've played WoW since December 2006 at various levels of hardcore-ness. My first character ever was a Troll Rogue who only made it to level 29 before I rerolled with a group of friends.

My first real main was a Troll ShadowPriest (Tuwei) during BC where I raided through SSC and TK, including killing Vashj pre 2.3 and Kael just after 2.3. We also cleared the first few bosses in Hyjal and accomplished ZA bear runs. It was a ton of fun, but all great things must come to an end. A couple weeks into T6 progression I took a break from raiding and from WoW. I didn't have the time to raid much anymore and playing casually during BC didn't appeal to me at all.

Not long after 2.4 was released, I reactivated my account and finished leveling a Blood Elf Paladin (Jasari) that I had sitting around 60ish. I knew I didn't have time to raid very much but figured it'd be fun to gear up a new character, particularly a tank and just play casually for a while. The new badge gear implemented in 2.4 made it entertaining enough to farm heroics, Kara, and ZA with my friend who played a holy priest.

With the launch of 3.0 and WotLK, my priest buddy and I joined a casual guild with similar interests as us. None of us really had the time to devote to 25man progression raiding but were able to take advantage of 10mans that were introduced with the new expansion. With a new and improved prot paladin as my main, I tanked for the guild as we quickily cleared Naxx, Sarth, and after some trouble downed Malygos. We were on the verge of killing Sarth 3D when Ulduar was released and stole our focus. Ulduar wasn't much of a problem for us either and we had quickily cleared it along with several hardmodes before the guild started to crumble. Right about the time 3.2 was released the guild had disentigrated and I again found myself bored of the game and took a leave of absence.

With the release of 3.3 I came back to the game with my characters spread across several servers. I had an 80 warlock off on Hakkar to play with my Holy Priest friend, who was now playing a Holy Paladin. My Paladin tank was over on Bleeding Hollow in what ended up as a failed attempt to revive our old BC guild, and my many alts were piled on Blackwing Lair where my home had been since the start of BC. Since I didn't have a lot of time to devote to raiding I decided to just do whatever felt like fun, which was playing my level 12 Druid.

So that brings us to today. I'm casually leveling a Tauren Feral Druid named Tooee, pronouced "2 E". It's a blast, especially with the new LFG tool introduced in 3.3. I'm doing about a 50/50 mix of questing and instancing. The fun part is instancing, and not just because running old and forgotten dungeons is kind of cool. The really entertaining part for me is dealing with the pugs. At low levels I've encountered everything from a player who is leveling their very first character and who "has never seen a druid tank before" to the alt of an elitist prick who "wants to try to solo this boss".

This blog will be about the adventures of pugging in the crazy world of warcraft.