Monday, December 14, 2009

Gnomer and the AH

So, this weekend, I gave the random queue a shot again, and pulled Gnomeregan.  There were two different groups I had for this instance.  The first was terrible, the second was a rockstar group.  So, I'll concentrate on the first here :)

I zone in, and am patiently waiting for others to arrive.  I adjust some gear, set my totems up (soooo can not wait for the 1 button for 4 totems thing at level 30), and am still waiting for people to show up, when poof, in comes a hunter.  Ok.  Seems like people are just slow going.

Then I check the minimap, and notice the other three are already running ahead.  Apparently this was a group where a couple people dropped out.  No biggy, I run up to the rest of the group, and start smashing faces.  We get to the tunnel with the stairs down to the cleaning room, and the 'tank' charges past it to the next mob.  Ok, so I figure they may be new, and need some help figuring out where to go.  I help kill the one they are on, and inform them the way to go is back through the previous doorway.

They summarily ignore me, and charge up on the floating gear thing in the middle of the top platform.  I figure they are after the chest that spawns up there, which seems silly, but hey, perhaps they need some gear out of it, so we keep killing stuff up there.

Once everything is dead, everyone starts jumping down.  But not in the proper place to jump down.  No, instead they jump down in the spot that allows you to survive with like 5HP.  Fun.

So I end up healing the tank and myself, since the healer got eaten right away, and the druid missed the jump as did the hunter, so they just went splat.

We finally finish killing the mobs that were there when we had dropped, so I start res'ing people.  As soon as I res the priest, the warrior charges something else.  Since I didn't get put into combat, I just keep res'ing people, since at this point, I don't particularly care if the warrior gets smashed, since he's the reason we are in this predicament anyway.

After the druid and hunter were res'd, we caught up with the warrior, and were able to save him from being a floor decoration.  We kill Viscious Fallout, and he drops the Hydrocane.  The druid asks if he can need it since it is a big upgrade for him.  Now note.  This is a weapon with 26.x dps on it, and a breath underwater while equipped ability on it.  In otherwords, it's terrible for a druid, since they can already breath underwater, and ideally shouldn't be meleeing with a staff anyway, and one with any sort of caster or dps stats would work much better for them.

Whatever, I don't need it so doesn't matter to me either way, I pass, he gets the staff.

The warrior charges another mob, in the complete opposite direction of where we need to go.  We follow, I ask him where he is going.  He informs us that he is looking for the named boss down there (you know, the one we already killed?).  We remind him that we just killed it, and he starts to follow.  He then asks ( and I wish I had screen shotted this, I'll have to do that more often) "So who is the tank here anyway, I seem to be taking a lot of damage".

If the earlier part of the run didn't let me know how the rest of it was going to go, this certainly did.

A bit after that I hear "Hey, where is the hunters pet?", shortly followed by an alarm-o-bot and his 15 friends. As expected, we wipe.  The warrior, priest and myself all release and start to run back.  We zone in, and wouldn't you know it, the mobs at the beginning have respawned.  The warrior leaves the group.  The priest and I figure we'll start to clear some stuff while we wait on the others.

"Hey, can you res me?"

I look at my group frames, lo-and-behold, the hunter and druid are still laying on the ground, dead.

... Are you serious man? We all died, why would you expect a res?

The priest then left the group, and I figured I would follow suit.  Let them find their own res.

On the upside, after a couple of battle grounds, I joined another Gnomeregan group, and it was awesome.  Shaman healer, actually coordinated totems, and a warrior tank that started off saying "I don't want to spend an hour doing this place, so I'm going to be pulling so long as the shaman has mana".  Very smooth group.  The shaman went AFK once, I healed in the mean time.  Then I had to go afk, and just put the shaman on follow.

This experience highlights one thing.  We often say that a group is made or carried by a healer or a tank.  Truth is, the whole group needs to be at least reasonably decent (read: not retarded), or they can easily make an otherwise smooth run, a complete wipefest.

In other news, with the release of ICC, comes a new round of people needing to enchant weapons, gem gear, etc.  To say it another way its $$$$$ time.  In addition to the standard Blade Ward / Blood Draining enchants, and Runed / Bold Cardinal Rubies (among others, not worth listing them all out here), I have also started to take advantage of those who can't pay attention to simple details.

For instance, buying the Iceblade Arrows and Shatter Rounds that are in the AH in stacks of 1000, then relisting them for ~9x as much, in stacks of 100.  People buy them up, thinking they are getting a killer deal, because they can't be bothered to look at how many are being sold in that stack.  So I buy a stack for 35-50g, and sell it for 350g.  I then take that profit and buy the mats for a Blade Ward and flip it for 800g.

I think I may make a real attempt to reach the gold cap.

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