Nothing to See Here

There's commercial during football season where a guy dressed as a ref compares the distance to first down. If the distance is a couple of inches away, it's "drama". A couple of feet away, and it's "change the channel."

"Drama."

"Change the channel."

I was thinking about that when I was reading Righteous Orbs today about Guild drama. When you join a group organized around a common goal, human nature will eventually cause some conflicts. In Tamarind's case, I'd followed the drama from his previous guild through his posts until his own entries came back to haunt him.

Tam's posts brought home the issues of blogging about guilds. Blogs are by nature public endeavors, and even though we very rarely get a comment from someone other than ourselves, you can't assume that nobody is watching. (On my personal blog, I've been constantly surprised by who stops by.)

Why bring this up? Well, my old guild consisted of myself, Soul, Soul's wife, one of Soul's coworkers, and one other guy who was on maybe once or twice. If that guild was Mayberry, my current guild is more like Chicago; the 180+ members listing is inflated by alts, but even if there were three alts per person the guild would have roughly 60 members. Sure, it isn't the size of some of the huge guilds out there, but it's far larger than what I'm used to seeing. When you're walking through Dalaran on an evening, the crowd size actually helps you become anonymous; Quintalan is just another Blood Elf out for an evening stroll between the JC house and the Sunreavers pavilion. Nothing to see here, move along. In a moderately sized guild, however, there you are. You might as well be Norm walking into Cheers.

Even if the guildies don't know about this blog, you can't assume that will stay that way in the future. Guild business (and any guild drama) ought to remain in the guild, and airing dirty laundry in public like this does no good. What's good for Tamarind is good for him, and that's fine as far as it goes, but I'm not Tam. I try to keep my observations about WoW based on things that happened out there in the public realm, so if you're looking for guild drama, you won't find it here.

That said, I will post one item that happened shortly after I joined the guild. I was on early in the morning and I had just finished my Jewelcrafting Daily. Even that early in the morning, Dalaran was busy and Gen Chat was crazy. I was just hitting the logoff button to switch to my bank alt when I saw a "do a /who Grey Death Legion" scroll by in the chat.

Wait.... what?

Before the screen could disappear on me, I saw the following exchange:

"what's a grey death legion?"
"a guild that won't let you cuss in gchat"

My first thought was to log back in as Quint and say something, but the sleepy logical part of my brain caught up with me and overruled that idea. There's no sense in wrestling with a pig in Gen Chat, and people believe what they want to believe. Besides, if that's the worst thing that someone can say about my guild, then things are in fairly good shape.

(Hell, I can rip loose a good stream of profanity quite easily, but I have no problems whatsoever working with a group that frowns on that.)

My UI

I haven't posted this yet, so I thought I would mention my user interface.

Addons I use:

• AtlasLoot - Lets me see who drops what gear as well as crafted gear and the materials to make them
• Chatter - Chat window mods that make it much smoother and look better
• Dominos - Get rid of the ugly standard wow hotbars and lets you gain more screen real estate
  
• MikScrollingBattleText - I like this one better than the build in version of this
• Omen
• PitBull Unit frames - clean looking and very customizable.
• Recount
• SexyCooldown - seen just above my hot bars, it gives a nice indication how long until skills are usable again
• Threat Plates - turns name plates green, and shrinks the size of them when I have aggro, and when I don't have aggro, it makes them large and red. Great mod for a tank to yank back a runner (this is an option for Tidy Plates)
  
• Tidy Plates - Cleaner looking name plates
  

Basic layout


UI in action:

Fun and Excitement with Questing

I was catching up on Darth Solo's posts on WoW Alone when he commented in this post about how he couldn't stand questing in the Old World (Classic WoW's locations), and how much better Outland and Northrend are by comparison. That got me to thinking about my own questing experiences; while I can see Darth's point, there are plenty of quirks out there that balance out the questing throughout the WoW environment.

It's no secret that I'm a bit of a quest whore -as Souldat calls me- and I've an ultimate goal of having Quintalan reach that Seeker achievement. I'm roughly 600-650 quests away from Loremaster, and from there only about 100 or so to reach 3000 and the Seeker. For my alts, I'm not planning on being so thorough; there's no need, really, with the exception of the class specific quests. (By comparison, an achievement such as Explorer on a PvE server isn't nearly as impressive as on a PvP server; there aren't many Alliance gankers you have to worry about when exploring on a PvE server.) Nevertheless, there are some major differences in how the quests were designed to push a character along in Classic WoW vs. the two expansions.

Blizzard designed the quests in Classic WoW to push a player from region to region when the appropriate quests opened up. This is still used in BC and Northrend, but instead of viewing each expansion continent as a whole, Blizzard focused more on individual regions. You can see that in the quest achievements themselves; in the Old World, the quest achievements are for each continent, not for completing quests in a given region. BC and WotLK have achievements for clearing each region which add up to the Loremaster meta-achievement.

It seems that in the Old World there were more options for leveling in a specific range, say for the 20s: you could go to Hillsbrad, Thousand Needles, Ashenvale, Duskwood, Stonetalon, Wetlands or even Stranglethorn if you're feeling brave. The breadth of locations to work with means that you can work on your questing as, say, a Tauren and never have to visit the Eastern Kingdoms at all. Blizzard seems to have compensated for this by putting in these oddball quests that have you traipsing back and forth between two continents just to talk to different specific people, who then tell you to go hunt for stuff in an instance. For example, you're in Arathi and you stumble on the quest chain that leads you to Tarren Mill, the Undercity, Senjin Village, Zul'Farrak, and lord knows where else. It's clever on the face of it, but without flying mounts you have to make more connections than trying to get from Atlanta to Anchorage on Jet Blue. The travel time gets to be tedious, and you often start to wonder whether the quest chain is worth it.

Outlands quests narrowed the scope to a more manageable level -and the addition of flying mounts helped tremendously- but there still is a maddening tendency to insert cross region dependencies on some quest chains. This wouldn't be that big of an issue unless you're trying to reach the Loremaster of Outland achievement, where you find you're perpetually short of quests in a region (Nagrand and Hellfire Peninsula are two big offenders) until you come across a quest in Shadowmoon Valley that sends you to those regions.

With Wrath of the Lich King, the quests evolved further. The maturing ability of Blizzard to mix in an overarcing quest chain with the more narrowly focused ones really kept the pace brisk. That was most felt in Dragonblight (Wrathgate), The Storm Peaks (Thorim and Brann Bronzebeard), and Icecrown (Argent Crusade and Knights of the Ebon Blade). Blizzard's fancy phasing tech has a tremendous impact here as well; no more equivalents of killing Dar'khon and then finding him respawn a few minutes later. "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Necromancer?" (Apologies to King Henry II for that little quip.)

I must admit that the phasing technology has me biased toward the Northrend quests; I found them much more interesting than some of the grinding you feel like you're doing on the other regions. Ironically enough, I like the Outland quests the least. Perhaps it's because the changes were half baked, but I often felt like I spent hours hunting around Outland for an individual quest that would put me over the top for an achievement, and I would spend an equal amount of time perusing thottbot and wowwiki as well.

Classic WoW has a bizarre sort of appeal to me. It was by design big and broad, and the concept of trying to check out everything is a daunting task. The things that Blizzard put in place for Classic WoW may have made sense when they designed it, but the creakiness of the Old World is pretty apparent these days. Yes, I hope that Cataclysm will bring a Northrend style focus to old Azeroth, but I've a certain amount of fondness for the meandering (and maddening) nature of some of the Old World questing.

Interesting

This morning I had something happen to me that I wasn't expecting.

I pulled aggro in the Pit of Saron.

On a DK tank that was well over 5000 in the gear score, with over 40k health.

Yes, Quint and his half epic/half blue gear managed to pull aggro. I was the most undergeared of the bunch -I checked- but I somehow managed to perform that feat.

I did apologize afterward and kept a closer eye on the threat meter, but I still shook my head about it later. I figured that with the Hunter and the DK similarly geared the Hunter had a better chance of pulling aggro -and he did, I might add- but I was still shocked when I managed it.

Dear NCAA

Thanks for putting most of the local teams on television today. Because of that, I was able to take a half day off and make up for the time I wasted waiting for a tank and a healer who actually wanted to run Ahn'kahet this morning. I was talking with another Guildie today who also gets up early, and we both agreed the tanks haven't been that great in the random PuGs this past week.

I don't suppose ol' Soul would mind waking up at 5 AM? ;-)

Tanks for the Memories

Everytime I play WoW, I learn something new. Sometimes my enlightenment is simple, like finding a new location where Titanium Ore could spawn. Other times, it's an admonishment that you're not quite there yet, like the spanking I got when I tried to solo the Rider of Frost in Northrend. I personally prefer the last variety, where I surprised myself by being able to do something -like the time I buzzed Teldrassil collecting the coins of Ancestry with four 80's on my tail and roughly 1k of health left. (Have I mentioned lately that I love Crusader Aura?)

Today's last early morning run through the Halls of Stone produced one of that third variety.

The run didn't start out that interesting; three of us had just finished a Culling of Stratholme run, and I had about 45-50 minutes available. That CoT run was unremarkable, which is always a good thing. (Well, the Druid healer had an annoying tendency to run ahead of everyone else, but I guess he figured I'd rez him if he wiped.) After CoT finished the tank suggested a last run, and both the Mage and I were fine with that.

Our group for the HoS run consisted of: Warrior (Tank), Priest (Healer), Mage (DPS), Warlock (DPS), and Quintalan (DPS).

The first trash mob went okay, but during the second and third a few problems became apparent:

• The tank had issues keeping threat. The Dark Iron dwarves stuck with him, but the Stormforged had an annoying tendency to overshoot him and go after either me or one of the others, which meant I had to lay off of some of my attacks, drawing out the fight a bit further.
• The lock was a Boomkin. The tank had enough problems, but everytime that Boomkin laid an attack in, about a third of the trash would peel off after him.
• The Priest was struggling under the strain. I didn't get the time to inspect him, but I think he had some other issues in addition to constantly running out of mana. The tank told him to let him know if he needed to drink, and then he would only drink just enough to get to 40% before the tank would take off again.

On the fourth trash mob everything hit the fan. The Boomkin had the Stormforged aggro on him, the Warrior tank peeled away from the trash to go chase the Stormforged. The trash didn't follow the tank and aggroed on me instead. The Priest ran out of mana, my bubble expired, and both the Boomkin and I wiped. Everyone else followed suit.

When we all ran back inside, a big fight broke out. The Priest accused the Warrior of being a terrible tank, and the Warrior shot back about the Priest's poor healing. The Boomkin kind of kept quiet, which was smart for him given that he was pulling aggro so much. And me? I filled up my coffee mug, settled in, and watched the show. I had a little over a half an hour left, so I knew that if I dropped I might not squeeze in another run. Besides, it was nice to not be in the middle of a Tank/Healer spat.

Eventually the Warrior had it, and floated a resolution to kick the Priest out. The Priest split before everyone could vote, so we queued up for a replacement. Thankfully, this one was seriously overgeared (I checked), so at least one of three problems was solved.

We survived the rest of the dungeon until we got to Sjonnir. If I had a dollar every time the Boomkin pulled aggro on that boss, I'd have enough for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Even the overgeared Priest couldn't keep up, and the tank and Boomkin both wiped.

That's when I became the tank.

Sjonnir started chasing the Mage and Priest back down the entrance, and I overtook him from behind, pulling aggro back on me. All we had to do was last about 10% of the boss' health, and I turned on Righteous Fury and just started wailing away, using Lay on Hands to bring myself back to full health. The Mage turned back and zapped Sjonnir a few times and I just kept going with as many Holy spells as possible until he fell over.

Considering that I was the only melee person left, it made sense that I'd pretend to be a tank for a few desperate minutes. If Sjonnir had more health we'd all probably have wiped, but he didn't. If I had to hunt for Righteous Fury instead of having it on one of my bars, it could have gone bad as well. (Don't ask why I stuck it at the bottom of one of the bars, I had it in the "just in case" corner I usually stick the "summon drake" from The Oculus.)

I once mentioned in a previous post that if you're the only melee in the group left, you become the tank by default. I'd written that when I was doing PvP in Warsong Gulch, but I didn't really internalize that with 5-man instances. I've been in enough groups where the tank wipes and the rest of us follow suit, so having a group survive a tank death in a boss fight is kind of a surprise. By comparison, Quint has less than half of the Health that Souldat has, and even if Quint had similar gear levels but for Ret Spec he'd still be well under Soul's health level. Such a disparity is not good for the fill-in tank, but it doesn't need to be for emergencies. All you have to do is survive.

That is about as much exposure to being a tank as I want. The amount of trust a tank must have in the healer makes me nervous in a PuG. You're much better off being overgeared than relying heavily on an unknown element. However, the point of the group is trust; you trust everyone to do their job so that the team can survive. And you have to trust that if someone fails, they learn and get better for the next run.

Random Musings

None of these rise to the level of needing a separate post, so here they are.

• I've discovered the Joy of Kiting. Paladins aren't really made for kiting, since you preferably want a ranged attack that you can slow your opponent with. My current spell list for a Shadow Priest isn't the greatest for kiting either, since the spells that I've got with a speed reduction (Mind Flay) end once the spell ends. A mage -more specifically a frost mage- is much better suited for this fun little pasttime with Blink, Frostbolt, Ice Nova, Ice Barrier, and Frostbite to play with. I spent a half an hour yesterday kiting bears and whatnot into the range of the Tarren Mill Deathguards while I was in between coats of paint, and although I don't have it quite down yet, it's rather fun watching the Deathguards hack the spiders to bits. (Yes, I was doing this instead of watching paint dry on the front door.) I've read stories about groups kiting bosses all the way to major cities, and I can definitely see the appeal.
• Shadow Priests are more mana efficient than Fire and Frost Mages. I expected a Shadow Priest to be more mana efficient than a Fire Mage, but the Frost Mage surprised me. That Spirit Tap comes in handy more than I care to admit. I haven't tinkered with an Arcane Mage, but I suspect that at this level (low 20's) it doesn't really matter.
• A Mage -particularly one with Ice Barrier active- handles damage better than a Priest. Yes, I know that Priests have the healing spells, but in a PvE questing environment that Ice Barrier spell keeps a Mage's cloth armor (or a sissy robe, as Tamarind on Righteous Orbs puts it) nice and clean.
• Running a Paladin is easier than either a Priest or a Mage. A Paladin -particularly a Ret Spec or a low level Holy Spec version- is a "run up and hit something" type. There's not a lot of variety to the Pally's attacks in the 20's. A Shadow Priest or a Mage, however, has a wider arsenal to work with. Keeping track of those extra spells can be quite a challenge if you're not ready.
• That little Emerald Boar trinket comes in awfully handy soloing 5 man elites in Outland. It's rather nice getting a virtual tank for 30 seconds, allowing Quint a short breather from the steady flow of damage. Too bad the sucker isn't an epic level trinket.