Everything I Need to Know I Learned in PuGs

This list was inspired by my daily run this morning, when I was ported smack dab into the middle of the Garfrost fight in Pit of Saron.  One moment I'd landed on a mountainside away from any mobs in Icecrown, and the next I'm seeing the "Saronite Rock on You -- Move!" on screen.

That was not an inspiring feeling that went through my system, let me tell you...

• Don't be a Jerk.  You'd think this goes without saying -Golden Rule and all that- but I never cease to be amazed at the number of pure idiots out there who think they can get away with bad behavior.  The anonymity that they feel they get in a cross-battlegroup PuG works both ways, pal, and the Kick option is a powerful one.
• Expect the Unexpected.  Just when you've got everything down to a science, Karma has a way of throwing you a curveball.  Like a disconnect in the middle of a boss fight.  Or the healer going down when you least expect it.  In other words, don't assume things will always go the way you think they will; plan for a rainy day.
• Don't forget Proper Nourishment.  Sure, you can slog through for a while without stopping to eat or drink if you're overpowered for a 5-man run, but that won't work if you're level appropriate for the instance.  Eventually, it catches up to you and you'll fail the team at a critical point.
• Remember to Share.  If you can bring something to the fight that will help a run -a Fish Feast, a Felstone, etc.- sharing that skill will help the entire group.
• If You Don't Know, Ask.  It goes without saying that a good sized portion of the wipes I've been part of are due to someone not knowing what to do.  If the person involved -and yes, I include myself in this- had only asked beforehand, we wouldn't have gone through the wipe and run back.  Bluffing your way through an instance only works when you are so overpowered you can solo it, and even then you still can mess up.
• If You Want Friends, be a Friend.  I know that in the age of the LFD tool you can get away with not having to pester Guildies or people from your Friends list to join a run --and you just know the raid version of the LFD tool is coming-- but WoW is a social game.  Yes, you can play it solo, and yes, I do all my questing solo, but you can't really hide from everybody else in the game.  I know that people randomly asking you to duel or join a guild is annoying, but if someone asks for help, why not help out?  That way, when you need help others can assist you as well.  That includes PuG runs, when someone asks if they can work on an achievement or for the group to not skip any bosses.

Feel free to add to the list!

(Oh, and that Pit of Saron run?  Apparently the Pally DPS dropped group right at the beginning of the Garfrost fight, but they got me quickly enough that we survived the fight.  We had one wipe on the trash right before the tunnel, but after the runback we refocused and made it through.)

Duelling Crusaders

I'm lousy at duels.

I tend to think in terms of PvE, not PvP, and duels --especially spur of the moment ones-- emphasize that.  I think the first duel I ever accepted I ended up running away from, because the warrior involved was absolutely crushing me.  (I now realize he probably had heirloom gear, but still...)  I'm one of those people who motor through the front gates of Orgrimmar so I don't have some enterprising young whelp challenging me.

So, it was with some trepidation this morning that I was doing my Argent Crusade dailies and I received a challenge from a Tauren Warrior while in the Valiants' Ring.

My mouse cursor hovered over the Decline option of a good five seconds or so, but I had second thoughts.  Oh, why the hell not, I thought.  We're both mounted and technically pretty equal.

We started out the duel matched evenly: both of us with our shields up and on full, and exchanging equal blows.  I was thinking that he hit me first, so if it came down to a complete war of attrition, I would have to do something to sneak ahead of this guy.  From experience, I knew the first one who broke would be at a disadvantage, but I didn't know what else to do.

Then all of a sudden I started watching the Tauren's lifebar plummeting toward zero.  He'd forgotten to keep up his shields.

He panicked and tried to run, and I was able to run him down and get a good joust in before the fight ended.

Yay me; winner by TKO.

I hung around to finish up my daily, and the Tauren reappeared.  "Give a guy an achievement?" he whispered to me.

Oh hell.  I was feeling generous.  Particularly so since I'd not actually won a duel before.  I became a sacrificial lamb, left my mount's damage in place without healing it, and just let him beat me.  (To be honest, that wasn't that hard of a thing to do, since I'm not the greatest mounted jouster either.)

Feeling pleased with having done a good deed for the day, I went back to grinding some quests in Stonetalon.  I pulled into the Horde outpost there, and while I was catching my bearings the magical duelling flag popped down.

You have got to be kidding me.

I hovered over the Shaman, and discovered she was L31.  Apparently she must have discovered my level at exactly the same time, because she scooted away as quickly as possible.

Sometimes, it's good to be the 80 in a low level area.

EtA:  Oh, and I almost forgot.  I finally got that Azure Whelp pet to drop in Azshara.  Time to go buy a lottery ticket!

Which Way to the Deadmines?

Tomakan dinged 20 last week, acquiring Flash of Light in the process.  I'd promised myself that once he got FoL, I would be ready to try my hand at healing PuGs.

I also promised myself I'd ease back into this by getting Ragefire Chasm first.

For a Horde player, Ragefire is the first instance you go through, although Wailing Caverns is a close second.  For me, Ragefire typically wins out because it's so easy to get to:  there's no "just how do I get there?" moments while trying to traverse the hills in The Barrens.  (Alliance players take note:  Ragefire is smack dab in the middle of Org:  you see a path heading down, you take it.)    You also don't have a 8-10 deep quest chain that takes you into Ragefire, either.  You can pick up a one-off quest in The Undercity, or if you go about 4-5 quests into a chain started by Thrall you have your excuse as well.

So, I dialed up Ragefire before it disappeared from my radar, and away I went.  (I'm used to queuing as DPS, but instant gratification has it's advantages too.)

I was admittedly overpowered for Ragefire, but I was perfectly fine with that.  This was the perfect intro for me, since the last time I tried healing any instance was that ill-fated Trial of the Champion --with four or more wipes on Confessor Paletress without so much as denting her armor-- before I dropped healing for good.

Ragefire went as smooth as possible:  the pulls were one at a time, Flash of Light was my mainstay, and I hardly had to drink at all.  The tank told us to yell at him if he got lost, but I didn't need to say anything.  For the first time in Ragefire in a group and not as a loot monkey, the instance was as easy as pie.  I breathed easier, knowing that I could handle this.

Thus emboldened, I just decided to let 'er rip on the LFD tool.

An unfamiliar instance picture popped up on my screen.  Okay, I thought, Deadmines or Stockade, which is it?

It was Deadmines.

Before I even got my hello out of the way, I confessed this was my first time through Deadmines.  "I typically play Horde, so this one is new to me."

"Not a problem," the tank said.  "This is my favorite instance."

"I play Horde too," one of the two (!) Gnome Warlocks said.  "This is only my second Alliance character."

(Note to Souldat:  You were wondering about the friendliness of the Alliance side?  It's the Battlegroup.  I guess the others we've been on are more cutthroat.)

We started in through the Deadmines, and I have one thing I'm grateful for:  there's a single path through the instance.  No multipath instances like Halls of Stone here.  However, that first set of trash set my teeth on edge:  one after the other after the other.  I had to keep Judging Wisdom on the first trash pulls just to keep my mana up.  Once the room was clear, only then could I drink.

This was more like what I was used to; the Watcher sequence in A-N, but quicker.

After that first room, things got easier.  I settled into a pattern:  Judging Wisdom once the tank had aggro to keep my mana up, and using FoL on everyone who needed it.  When someone dropped around 50%, I brought out Holy Light.  (I'd made a point of picking up the Holy Light Glyph, so the extra spam heal it gave was a godsend.)

I pulled aggro by healing more often than I preferred, but the tank was typically able to yank it back.

However, things weren't all sweetness and light.  With not one but two Gnome Warlocks, I kept having to heal them because they'd use me as their gas tank when they swapped health for mana.  Yes, I know that's a class perk for Warlocks, but I'm a Holy Spec Paladin Healer.  My specialty is in healing tanks, not every single caster who decides I'm his meal ticket and doesn't have to stop and drink.  I don't have AoE heals.  (Yet.)


The Locks also ran OOM frequently during a fight, and I made a point of laying down Consecration when my mana pool could swing it so we weren't down to one DPS on those longer fights.

We survived fairly well until we got to the bottom of the spiral slope before you get to the boat areas.  We not only had the regular trash mobs but the Overseer mob as well, and I could see things were pretty bad.  I kept up spamming the tank with everything including the kitchen sink (Gift of the Naaru), but it was just too much.  The tank bit it, and I did shortly thereafter.

You want to know who survived?  The Gnomes, naturally.

Anyway, I discovered the joys of running back to get to The Deadmines.  "Where the hell is the entrance?" I asked, frustrated.

"It's in the barn," the tank told me.  "Go upstairs and head down into the mines."

I went to the barn.  Looked pretty open to me; only one floor too.  Oh.  He meant that barn over there.  I followed his instructions and found myself in the caverns before you get into the Deadmines.  "Naturally, the entrance to a set of mines is in the second floor of a barn."

I then got lost in the caverns before the instance entrance itself.  "This is worse than Uldaman," I said.

"No, Uldaman is still worse."

Finally, after about 10+ minutes trying to find the darn place I got back inside and we hooked up with the rest of the group.  In the intervening time the most annoying of the two 'locks split, so my life was instantly made easier.  We then proceeded through the instance, wiping only on the plank heading to the top of the ship.  The comedy of errors continued on the runback, not because I didn't know the way, but because the hunter and then the tank kept wiping on respawning trash, thus necessitating further runbacks.  We lost and gained several DPS in the process, one at least asking why I couldn't Rez the tank.

"He already released."

"Oh."

The Van Cleef fight was almost anti-climatic at that point.

So, what did I learn? 

• That Blizz figured out how to make instances easier to find by the time the two expansions hit.
• Low level Warlocks can be just as annoying as their high level Boomkin counterparts.
• That I see a male Night Elf, and the first thing that pops into my head is "Where's the Weed, man?"
• That the entrance to a major mining and processing operation is through the second floor of an abandoned barn.
• The ICC 5-man instances are nice and straightforward compared to this.
• I'm going to need more mana potions if I'm going to do this.
• Oh yeah, one more thing:  that I can heal instances.

530 Levels

So seeing as we've been doing the "What have you been up to" posts, here's mine.

I've pretty much stopped playing my DK raider, except when he's needed by the guild for a random dungeon run or needing a raid slot filled on the regular Saturday / Sunday nights.  I still like death knights, but haven't felt the attachment to the class I once felt.  Mostly, I think, because I'm anxious about the retuning of the class mechanic and restructuring of the talent trees.  I'm sure Death Knights will come out overpowered like mad and then be nerfed constantly while they fine tune everything. 

Even if they come out on top, it won't FEEL the same as I'm used to, which I quite enjoyed the "push something every GCD" button mashing style.

I have been playing my warrior recently.  He's finally 80 and geared up in PVP gear with a Tyrannical Beheader, and slowly working on PVE gear.  This late in the expansion I don't really want to gear up another tank and plunge into the dungeons yet again.  In fact, I've been queuing up as DPS and trying out a fury build for fun.

I also joined up a 2v2 arena team on my warrior.  My first arena match ever was on the team I had helped build up to a 1300 rating.  We won the match (boy was I nervous), and I promptly got the "Step into the Arena" achievement.  HAH!  That other team had to feel just a little emasculated...  Not only did they get beat, but by a guy who's never done arenas on a particular character, and in a bracket that he didn't belong in.  My arena team mate and I got a good laugh out of that.

And I've also been busy feeling guilty about not rolling a lowbie alliance alt to play with Redbeard.  I don't think I have the gumption to level anything in this current expansion.  I added it up, and to date, I have gained 530 character levels through out most of my characters and alts.  I have 5 level 80s, and various alts (two of the 80s are Death Knights, so I only counted 25 levels each).  There's no other class (beyond the current 80s I have) that I feel a need to have, and leveling another of the same classes I already have feels pointless to me.

Once Cataclysm hits and teh old world gets a new face and lots of new quests I may want to level through it again, but for now I'm burned out on leveling.

How many total character levels have all of you earned?

omghai2u

Just thought I'd check in and give a little update on what is goin' on with Sat.

Well... since the drama that happened, I've been sitting back and just taking things easy. I'm still server transferring to Tichondrius, but its going to have to wait a couple of weeks. I'm making a trip out to Arizona so the xfer will happen either shortly before I return or shortly after.

I leveled a Death Knight to 80. She's specc'd Blood. I have the rotation down - its actually pretty simple. It is rather odd to go from a squishy healer to a plate dps class, but its fun. I leveled her mainly to farm. She'll be comin' with Satyana to Tichondrius =)

On another note... The guild that shall not be named that I was in is pretty much dead. I spoke with someone in the guild and was told that just about everyone was pissed I was g-kicked and everything went downhill rather quickly. My "replacement" just didn't seem to cut it. The pally healer we ran with every week said that I pretty much carried him through the raid and when i was gone he realized how much I really did in keeping the raid alive. People stopped logging in for raids - key people too. My friend told me the guild message of the day read "Its been a good run. Thanks to everyone who participated." I admit, I did do a /who on the guild a few times and each time, there weren't many people on. Just a couple at a time if any.

I don't want to sounds mean... or bitchy... but I feel somewhat vindicated. I'm hoping that now they are realizing that I did help hold that guild together and handled things that no one else wanted to. I was even told by a couple of people in the guild that I ran that guild and should have had the GM title. It felt nice to hear that the members of the guild appreciated the things I did even if the other officers didn't.

Well anyway... since I'm in between guilds/servers, I haven't done much of anything else on my priest. Just giving her a break for a bit. She'll be back in the action in a couple of weeks. A short hiatus is needed. After my trip, I'll be back to watching health bars and keeping folks alive and I'll be reporting on what its like to be in a high end raiding guild - #3 on Tichondrius, World ranked 627.

Until then, Adieu.

Not Much.... You?

I'd like to say that there's something important or earth shattering that prodded me to post, but... not really.

Oh, I don't have the summer doldrums or anything, but there's not much to report.  I'm still grinding through Loremaster, I'm still getting comfortable having an Alliance alt, I'm still prepping for migrating some more toons over to Ysera.  Even the random "Join Guild" requests I get on my alts seem to be dying down.

So there's a whole lot of "not much" going on.

However, there are a few tidbits I've discovered over the past week that I want to share:

• I don't know about your server, but on the Area 52 Auction House, the Moss Agates and Jade are going for more than Dream Shards and Infinite Dust.  A matter of supply and demand at its best; nobody is mining/prospecting the low level stuff, and it shows.  When you've got 5+ pages of Dream Shards, there's too much supply.
• For the PuGs I was in, Amber Void was harder to achieve than Ruby Void.  Admittedly, I don't ask if anyone wants to go for the achievements; that's almost a guarantee for someone to drop, especially in the early-morning-before-work runs.  But when someone else is interested -and I have the spare time- I'm happy to accommodate them.  I finally got some people interested in trying for Ruby Void in The Oculus, so we did it in near record time.
• I have bad luck in getting those rare drops.  Here's a running total of drops that I haven't seen since, oh, January or February:  Reins of the White Polar Bear, Tiny Emerald Whelping, Azure Whelping, Dark Whelping, Reins of the Blue Drake, and Battered Hilt (only once, the second time I went through Pit of Saron, and haven't seen it drop since).  Perhaps I was spoiled in getting that Tiny Crimson Whelping to drop in 45 minutes worth of grinding...
• I really enjoy the Draenei starting zones.  Of the starting areas I've played in so far, I like the Draenei starting zones better than all save for the Blood Elf starting zone.  I still find it fascinating that the Blood Elf starting zone makes absolutely no mention of Draenei at all; in fact, if you hang around the Bazar enough you'll find some commoners debating whether or not the Sin'dorei should abandon the Alliance and align with the Horde.  (Wouldn't that have been entertaining, the Draenei go to Azeroth to find the Alliance only to discover that the hated Blood Elves are in the Alliance?)
• I'd forgotten how funny the BE representatives at the various Horde locations are.  There's the Magistrix in Tarren Mill is in trying to keep her obvious disgust over the Forsaken from showing:  "It's our duty to help these... these... people."  The Advisor in Stonebreaker Hold:  "I must have made a misstep somewhere to be assigned here."  The Magistrix at Freewind Post in Thousand Needles:  "What’s a sin'dorei doing standing on the top of a windswept butte in Thousand Needles instead of the halls of Silvermoon?"
• I saw something I'd never thought I'd see:  A Hordie attacking the Goblin Flight Engineer at Ratchet.  My guess is that he was going for the Exalted with the Bloodsail Buccaneers, but no guarantees there.
• I was under the impression that the people in my guild had forgotten that I came along with Souldat and Millalyn in transferring from Stormscale.  Nobody said anything, and I didn't feel like pouring lemon juice in people's wounds in reminding them about how things ended up.  Well, I was surprised on Friday when a couple of guildies asked me how Soul was doing, and whether I still hook up with him or not.  From the discussion that ensued, I was under the impression that they still liked ol' Soul; I guess he still has that charmer in him. ;-)
• Speaking of guildies, I've gotten used to being the only one on early in the morning when I do most of my WoW activities.  However, these past few weeks there has been quite a few new people logging in and playing before work.  I don't think I started a trend, but they all seem to be IT people as well; for them, the odd hours aren't that big a surprise.

Anyway, there you have it. 

So.....  Whatcha been up to that hasn't made it into a blog post?

PVP Changes in Cataclysm

This topic is rather old, but I think it's interesting.

"■Honor points: These are the lower-tier PvP points, and will be gained from most PvP activities. There will be a maximum amount a player can have, but no cap on how quickly they can be earned.
■Conquest points: These are the higher-tier PvP points, and will be awarded from rated battlegrounds and arenas. There will be a cap on both the amount owned as well as how quickly they can be earned."

So what does this mean exactly? It means pretty much the same system as now, with the exception of rated battlegrounds giving you conquest points.

This brings up one major concern for me now.  Rated battlegrounds will more than likely increase the number of battleground AFKers, because who wouldn't want to earn free arena points?  Even though I'm sure you'll either get MORE points if you win, or none at all, people will still do it.

Additionaly, seeing as I'm Alliance now, I'm screwed on rated battlegrounds. /facepalm  Why are all of you content to just hand a victory over to the Horde?  Because they win more and you automatically assume we're done for the moment you zone in? 

I did a number of random battlegrounds on my warrior last night and EVERY time, one group of 3 people to mage tower, one group of 3 people to the dranei ruins, and THE REST OF THE TEAM ON THE FLAG..ZOMG GET THE FLAG!!!  This strategy is stupid and guarantees a loss, because as the horde will typically do, take their two points, leave the flag alone, and launch an attack party at a third base.  Which, myself being one of the three people at said control point, start swearing up a storm because the rest of the Alliance is still content to get the ZOMG SHINY FLAG, MUST GET!!!  Well hey, that's great.  You've got the flag, and nowhere to capture it.

There is some good that will come of the changes to the pvp system though...

"Most PvP items will have their personal rating requirement removed."

This opens the previously unattainable high end pvp gear to players who may not like arena, or may not perform well in arenas.  Also, and most importantly, this opens weapons to those players who do not have access to higher end raid content weapons due to either not raiding or the position you fill in the raid not affording you the chace to aquire the weapons you need (i.e. sword and board tank wanting a sweet two hander..well assuming the weapons have the ratings removed).

Source

Back on the topic of rated battle ground for a parting note:  If there's going to be rated battlegrounds, I want an R rated one.  A panty raid on silvermoon.  Well, actually, that's more than likely a BAD idea.  Who knows what the male butt elfs wear.  *shudder*