Putting points in the IRL Subtlety tree

I enjoy playing pranks in real life, and especially at work.  A good prank can really lighten things up once in a while.

For instance, a fellow co-worker and I have been having a mini prank war for about the last 4 months.  He's done things such as steal my staples out of my stapler every day for a week straight, or completely tape up my office chair, or competley rearange my desk drawers.

I, on the other hand, have done things to him like stolen all of his pens every chance I get since the day he started here, applied superglue to a bar of staples every day for three days so a lump of solid glue was on the bottom and watch him get confused why the stapler wasn't working, to even applying glue boards (the kind you use to catch mice) to the underside of his desk and chair (it works GREAT if you put the board right about where you reach natrually to adjust your chair height... just put the glue board there, and lower the chair all the way).

Or adding a command in one of his imaging scripts to just echo a text line that states "dan is a douche."  And also adding a line to his local hosts file that redirects his favorite guitar website (he runs a heavy metal guitar forum) to guitarhero.com (which he HATES).  That one actually got him to call up his buddy and tell him they've been hacked, LOL!
And the more subtle you can get, the better.  For instance, I'm standing in line today buying my lunch and the gentleman ahead of me is acting rather jittery.  He's buying an energy drink, sugar, cigarettes, large bag of chips, and 5 hour energy pills.  The cashier asks him "do those pills really work?  They don't mess with you at all?"  To which jittery guy goes "Yeah, they don't make you jittery at all because there's no sugar."

I coudln't help but actually LOL.

So how does this tie into gaming?

Heroics can be rather boring, and bringing some levity to them can really be a fun change of pace. 

The setting:  Halls of Reflection (Heroic)
The setup:  My DK, A fellow guidee Pally tank, and a Fellow guildee on his DK Alt all que up as tank and dps for a random heroic.  We then proceed to argue who's going to tank through out the whole first half of the dungeon, complete with taunts flying all over the place, Armies of the dead going nuts, and a boss who's too busy ping-ponging everywhere to actually do much of anything.  We really put on a good show.

The truly funny thing though, that was the smoothest run I've ever had of that place.

So this week I'm challenging you to do something unique in a random dungeon.

**Edited in more co-worker pwnage.

Tank Etiquette

Okay, this is a question to the tanks out there. (I guess that means Souldat, but you never know who else might be reading.) When a monster drops an AoE on the floor -like the Reanimators in Drak or the Maiden of Grief in HoL- is it considered proper etiquette to pull the monster away from the middle of the floor? I've seen in several runs this past week where the tank just lets the monster or boss sit there while they wail away, but I have to split and then watch remotely after unloading my distance attacks. I know Soul will pull them out of the center, and I've seen plenty of other tanks that do it too, but the batch I got this week either don't understand that melee DPS can't stand around in the black stuff on the floor or don't care. Or maybe they have tunnel vision and don't notice, which is something I've been guilty of when I've done healing.

Sloppy Sloppy

One drawback to improving my gear is that I've discovered an alarming tendency to get sloppy at the wrong times. The old mantra "gear is no substitute for skill" is still alive, and a Halls of Lightning run this morning (::checks clock:: okay, last morning) highlighted that.

Halls of Lightning = iron dwarves with whirlwind attack

I know it; I've sure lived it. But that didn't stop me from wiping on it.

For the first two or three pulls with the iron dwarves, our group obliterated them before they could whirlwind. So I got careless, thinking that we had these metal monstrosities down pat. The very next pull, we take a bit longer, and they whirlwind. No problem, I bubble and keep on wailing, and we take them out.

Then the next pull comes, and I don't have a bubble and the dwarves whirlwind. What do I do? Keep wailing just a bit too long.

I wipe.

::sigh::

I should have known that was coming.

The moral of the story is, you can't let your guard down. Internalize things. Don't be an uber-geek about them, but you have to be aware of your surroundings. Like not dying by standing in the green stuff.

And using the remote attacks like Exorcism while the Maiden of Grief is standing in the middle of the black stuff on the floor. Sure, you could go run and stand in it, but that's stupid and taxing to the Healer.

Seems Like Old Times

Last night was the first night in a couple of weeks that I was able to hook up with Soul for a good batch of runs. Although Soul's wife was unavailable, it was good to get back into the swing of running some instances with the old Death Knight again.

The runs this past night were very enjoyable; I'd snuck in a Culling of Stratholme run just prior to hooking up with Soul, and I discovered that I was pulling threat from the tank. I knew I outgeared the tank -a Warrior- by a minimal amount, but I suspect it was the boost that Paladins get from attacking undead and demons that was causing the problem. Therefore, I was in an uncomfortable position of having to slow down my attacks a bit and keep a careful eye on the threat meter.

You know one good thing about running instances with Soul? He doesn't lose threat much -I can't say "at all", since I've seen it happen with Boomkin every so often- but I don't have to worry so much about losing threat and can pay more attention to important things. Like, say, that puddle of green goo I'm standing in.

Our first run, through The Old Kingdom, turned out great. The early morning runs for some reason avoid two of the bosses and head straight for Ye Olde Herald, so it was refreshing (not to mention nice for the achievement) to actually hit all of the bosses in the instance. The PuG was great and worked well together, and when this run was over four of us stuck around for Violet Hold and Drak'Tharon. The Warlock, Mikaya (sp?), did a great job without overloading on threat, and the Priest Cezz was great too. There was one point in Ahn'kahet where I thought that Soul might have pulled too much at once as I saw his health teeter below 10K and heading rapidly in the wrong direction, but Cezz pulled him back. Having been a healer, I was impressed.

Mik split after the Drak run, but we ran an instance of Forge of Souls afterward. By mistake it was a non-Heroic run, and I had to split for bed before they queued up for a Heroic version.

All in all, an enjoyable night. I didn't wipe -always a good thing- and I got to see some real skill in action. Mik didn't talk too much, so I didn't get to tell her what a good job I thought she did, but Cezz was very chatty and easy to work with. As I told Soul afterward, it's too bad that she is on The Underbog server, because you can never have enough good healers.

To do:

I've been accomplishing quite a few things on my "things to get done before Cataclysm" list.

Kill all of the Alliance faction leaders and obtain a black warbear
Become a grand master in fishing
Become a grand master in cooking
Raise unarmed weapon skill to 400
Get the classic raider achievement completed
Get the classic dungeon master
Get the outlands dungeon master
Get the outlands raider achievement completed - need a bunch still

Get the Champion of the Frozen Wastes completed

Get the Glory of the Hero Completed

Do a successful OS 3D - had some very very close attempts

Obtain any color Protodrake

Get the of Orgrimmar title
Get the Orgrimmar tabbard
Kill the Lich King - Working on it though!
Find a guild to experience current raid content with
Get my exploration achievements done - so much stuff I missed out on exploring while leveing being a DK


So, what's on your to do list?

Brain... Hurts...

Today, Quintalan has met the enemy, and it is us.*

I had a bunch of good 5-man runs this morning, so when I took a late lunch I figured I'd squeeze in an extra 5-man PuG. Out pops Halls of Lightning, and I figure that'd work; it typically takes 1/2 hour to get the run in, and that'll fit perfectly into my lunchtime.

What I failed to accommodate for was a tank running absolutely wild. You know those entrance passages that have the General wandering around in them? He pulled. And pulled. And pulled. He almost literally pulled everything in that area -including the General- together at once.

I died. The mage died. We both ran back in to help finish the job before everyone else wiped.

We get to the second boss, and we lose the mage again. Because the tank keeps pushing forward, the healer and I can't rez the mage until there's a slight gap in the trash. We then proceed to have a full party wipe twice on said trash.

Somehow we survive the third boss, but then the mage, DK and I wipe twice on trash again. By this time, the mage had had it, and split. The replacement pops on in the middle of the fight and dies. He leaves. We get another replacement, who's spending the entire last part of the run saying stuff like "OMG!" in the party chat.

By this time I'm cursing heavily under my breath, but I want to finish this; we're so close. Then I get a glimpse of who the tank is: he starts talking about his World Cultures teacher, which means he's in high school, and he's probably on spring break.

/FACEPALM

We zap Loken, and I get the hell out of Dodge.

As I got up to get some ibuprofen, I kept thinking to myself, "Six Emblems of Triumph weren't worth this.**"



*Yes, I paraphrased the old Pogo comic strip.

**Four Badges from the run itself and two from the FLG tool.

News Flash

Quintalan learns to switch auras! Film at eleven!

Seriously, I never gave much thought to the aura I'm on when I was running an instance. Just turn on Retribution Aura and have at it. Okay, I've also been known to ignore the Crusader Aura that's been left on while flying around when the summons comes. And yeah, I occasionally forget to turn Crusader Aura on when flying.* (Stop laughing, Soul!)

But intentionally switching auras during an instance? Not on your life.

There were three pivotal moments for that in my aura education: taking out the Sons of Gruul; a forgettable Pit of Saron run; and perusing the details in the recount stats.

The sons of Gruul weren't an instance run. For those of you who quest, you already know that they're 5-man quests found in Blade's Edge in Outland, so why is this doing here? Because when I soloed those quests, I decided I needed more armor than what I was getting with all the buffs I was using, so I switched to Devotion Aura just prior to launching my attacks. Okay, my decision was also made in hindsight, because I felt that the first time I tried and failed to kill the first of the Sons of Gruul it was due to my taking too much damage. Since I wasn't about to simply replace my trusty old Sword of Justice (aka the tuning fork) that easily, I switched auras instead. That little boost seemed to do the trick as I was able to survive all of the encounters with the Sons of Gruul. Translation: even a Ret Pally can use Devotion Aura from time to time.

My second big learning came from a Pit of Saron run that didn't go quite so well. In that run we had one well geared tank who was taking a bunch of people new to the instance, and I was only on my second run at that. Well, we met Garfrost, and he had us for lunch. Twice. After that second wipe, I got tired of watching the frost stacks add up and switched on Frost Resistance Aura to help mitigate the frost damage. Between that and not having to run halfway across the area to find a boulder to break the contact for the frost debuff, we managed to survive that third time. (I believe the tank said "We have to find a boulder to break contact, don't scatter so broadly!" Hey, I was following the tank around. Me no dummy.)

That success with Garfrost gave me the insight that maybe it was better to switch auras more often, like when running up toward the final fight with Tyrannus. Or when the proto-drakes in Utgarde Keep start blasting fire.

My tweaking of the auras still bothered me, because I thought I was losing significant DPS just so I could mitigate the damage. On some of these high end instances my DPS count doesn't look very flattering, so I was wondering if I was hurting myself further in that area by switching out of Retribution Aura. Well, perusal of the recount data proved to me that I need not worry. Damage from Ret Aura was down in the pack after the Seals, Melee, and Divine Storm. With that knowledge in front of me, I felt better making smarter use of my Auras to help the team.

And besides, anything to help the healer works well with me.


*I have my excuses when farming for ore; Crusader Aura plus an epic mount mean that I zip by ore so fast it will occasionally not register in the searching. I've learned to leave Crusader Aura off when farming for Titanium.