This was my random instance _5_ times in a row last night. I pretty much hit the spectrum of players, too.
First group with a chain pulling / charging warrior (was awesome, we finished it before the 15 minute debuff even wore off). Second was a real gem.
We zone in, and get rolling. I start following the warrior who just runs forward and proceeds to tank stuff. Meanwhile the paladin just starts dealing on the warrior. "Dude, wtf are you doing man?"
I'm confused, since he seems to be tanking just fine.
"Dude, wtf man, you are prot? Omg I can't believe this, you are such a noob!"
I ask what the problem is, and the pally mentions that he is supposed to be tanking, and that the warrior was tagged as a DPS for the instance. I check recount, and the warrior is just below me for DPS. I point this out, but they seem to not notice.
The pally keeps going on about how much of a failure the warrior is, and how he and I are what are wrong with the new random instance LFG system.
We get to the crypt, and the paladin proceeds to run to the bottom, without killing anything, then finally drops a consecration. Once the boss was down, they then turn to name calling, while attempting to troll me, and claim that I must be one of those 40 year old losers living in my mom's basement, and get my kicks by picking fights on the internet.
I point out that they were the ones that started a fight, but if they had such a bad grouping experience with me, they could put me on ignore so as not to have to group with me again. They disband from the group, and I followed suit.
This, dear reader, is exactly the kind of humor I was looking for in the random dungeon LFG system. Random people being complete fuckwads for no apparent reason.
The other three times I ran it after this were all good fast runs. One of them the druid tank decided he didn't want to tank, and asked me to. Told him I couldn't (have my -30% threat talent now), but it doesn't really matter, so he went cat form and we just blazed through the remainder of the instance. It's a shame none of these runs count toward my pug or 'the Patient' title though.
I did hit level 31 on the shaman in all of that, however.
Additionally, I fired up a second banker to handle my JC work. I figure I can use that banker to buy the titanium with while buying and selling gems to ensure that I don't sink too much money into the project at one time. I bought 5 stacks of titanium on my main banker and prospected them. It gained me 19 titanium powder, and 6 epic gems. That is an overall net loss, even after the gems were cut and sold. Thus, I will likely do that once per week or so, and simply buy raw gems to cut the rest of the time to fund the titanium purchases.
I am, however, still above 20kg, so things are still not doing too bad.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Level 30!
So, I hit level 30 on the shaman this weekend, mostly through BG runs. Hooray Windfury! Of course, using a 3.8 speed Axe, I rarely get to see the graphic, since it will generally 1 shot whatever it is I'm trying to kill at the time, so I don't even get the animation. My target just falls over in a very anti-climatic way.
That said, the holidays are here, so play time is at a minimum. I haven't raided since I last wrote about our lack of attendance on progression nights. Thus why my shaman has been seeing the majority of the playtime.
I have, however, kept up an inventory of enchants so far, the most popular of which are Crusader selling for ~300g, Blood Draining going for 800-1000g, Blade Ward selling for 6-700g, +8 stats to chest selling for 75g (a 200% profit) and Enchant Weapon - Greater Potency selling for 60g (also a 200% profit).
Finally, reselling Arrows and Bullets continues to be a booming business.
After buying mats to replenish my inventory on the AH, my banker is sitting at just over 20kg. Still a long way off of the gold cap, but progress is still being made. I may start to recycle some of the cash from enchanting into Jewelcrafting so I can buy some of the more profitable recipes. The problem with this, is there are always so few raw epic gems on the AH, that I could only get a few at a time, so it may not have a very solid ROI, and I may be better off simply concentrating on Enchanting for making money right now, and do JC right once Cataclysm comes out.
That said, the holidays are here, so play time is at a minimum. I haven't raided since I last wrote about our lack of attendance on progression nights. Thus why my shaman has been seeing the majority of the playtime.
I have, however, kept up an inventory of enchants so far, the most popular of which are Crusader selling for ~300g, Blood Draining going for 800-1000g, Blade Ward selling for 6-700g, +8 stats to chest selling for 75g (a 200% profit) and Enchant Weapon - Greater Potency selling for 60g (also a 200% profit).
Finally, reselling Arrows and Bullets continues to be a booming business.
After buying mats to replenish my inventory on the AH, my banker is sitting at just over 20kg. Still a long way off of the gold cap, but progress is still being made. I may start to recycle some of the cash from enchanting into Jewelcrafting so I can buy some of the more profitable recipes. The problem with this, is there are always so few raw epic gems on the AH, that I could only get a few at a time, so it may not have a very solid ROI, and I may be better off simply concentrating on Enchanting for making money right now, and do JC right once Cataclysm comes out.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Aversion to Progression
So, this is something that I have observed lately, and find it baffling.
People who like to call themselves the hard core raider, don't actually like to do progression fights. Oh, they love seeing new content, they just don't want to have to work with a steady group of people on learning said fights. They would much rather the encounter be nice and smooth, without a learning curve, and get angry if any mistakes are made.
Myself, I love the challenge. Our first two Heartbreaker (25) kills, were post enrage, with me healing wildly, popping all my CDs to keep people alive for that last 100k damage to tick and get the kill. Those kills were damn exciting, and a lot of fun. Our third kill was finally pre-enrage, with 24 people left alive at the end of it. The fight was no where near as fun, since it was no where near as challenging once everyone knew what to do and where to go.
Now we are progressing into ICC25. Our first raid night, we ended up having to sit a couple of people, simply because we had such a turn out. Everyone wanted to see the new content. We downed Marrowgar after a few of the new people got used to the mechanics, then moved on to Lady Deathwhisper. This was as far as they made it last week during my move. We wiped a few times as people were again getting used to the mechanics of the fight, and learning to CC the MC'd target's not kill them (I took to cycloning them, as it kept them out of the mix, and prevented people from killing them).
Next we move onto the Gunship Loot Machine, and one shot that, although a bit sloppily. The sloppiness was to be expected, since a number of people hadn't even seen the encounter yet. We move to Saurfang, but only have about 30 minutes left in raid at this point. We get three attempts in and try to change things up a bit with what we learn from each attempt. There was a little progression in the attempts here, but ultimately we ended up with Saurfang still up.
That was Wednesday. Yesterday, we log in at raid time, and there are 17 people online, we end up having to pug 8 people, and even have to do free roll for loot. Worse yet, there is no way we are taking 8 PuGs to ICC25, as it would simply be an exercise in futility. Thus, we find ourselves in 25ToC, and proceed to one shot all the encounters, in a truely boring and Farm like matter.
The point of all that is I find it interesting that people who pride themselves on being raiders, will come to the nights that easy fights are going to occur, and suddenly have shit to do on the real progression nights. These are the same people who will constantly guild jump. As soon as a brick wall is hit, an actual challenge for the guild, they will jump to another guild that has the encounter on farm. I can see the logic in jumping guilds if your current one is full of slackers that can't get their shit together. I don't see the point in missing out on the guild first kills, just so you can have an easier time in getting your purple pixels.
What about you? Do you find the joy of the game in getting the gear upgrades? Or in the challenge of the raid, and the thrill of the close kills?
As a side note, I finally got Vezax hard mode done on 10 man, and got my Rusted Proto-drake on Ditto. Now to get the drake on Becoming, and the Algalon key for Ditto.
People who like to call themselves the hard core raider, don't actually like to do progression fights. Oh, they love seeing new content, they just don't want to have to work with a steady group of people on learning said fights. They would much rather the encounter be nice and smooth, without a learning curve, and get angry if any mistakes are made.
Myself, I love the challenge. Our first two Heartbreaker (25) kills, were post enrage, with me healing wildly, popping all my CDs to keep people alive for that last 100k damage to tick and get the kill. Those kills were damn exciting, and a lot of fun. Our third kill was finally pre-enrage, with 24 people left alive at the end of it. The fight was no where near as fun, since it was no where near as challenging once everyone knew what to do and where to go.
Now we are progressing into ICC25. Our first raid night, we ended up having to sit a couple of people, simply because we had such a turn out. Everyone wanted to see the new content. We downed Marrowgar after a few of the new people got used to the mechanics, then moved on to Lady Deathwhisper. This was as far as they made it last week during my move. We wiped a few times as people were again getting used to the mechanics of the fight, and learning to CC the MC'd target's not kill them (I took to cycloning them, as it kept them out of the mix, and prevented people from killing them).
Next we move onto the Gunship Loot Machine, and one shot that, although a bit sloppily. The sloppiness was to be expected, since a number of people hadn't even seen the encounter yet. We move to Saurfang, but only have about 30 minutes left in raid at this point. We get three attempts in and try to change things up a bit with what we learn from each attempt. There was a little progression in the attempts here, but ultimately we ended up with Saurfang still up.
That was Wednesday. Yesterday, we log in at raid time, and there are 17 people online, we end up having to pug 8 people, and even have to do free roll for loot. Worse yet, there is no way we are taking 8 PuGs to ICC25, as it would simply be an exercise in futility. Thus, we find ourselves in 25ToC, and proceed to one shot all the encounters, in a truely boring and Farm like matter.
The point of all that is I find it interesting that people who pride themselves on being raiders, will come to the nights that easy fights are going to occur, and suddenly have shit to do on the real progression nights. These are the same people who will constantly guild jump. As soon as a brick wall is hit, an actual challenge for the guild, they will jump to another guild that has the encounter on farm. I can see the logic in jumping guilds if your current one is full of slackers that can't get their shit together. I don't see the point in missing out on the guild first kills, just so you can have an easier time in getting your purple pixels.
What about you? Do you find the joy of the game in getting the gear upgrades? Or in the challenge of the raid, and the thrill of the close kills?
As a side note, I finally got Vezax hard mode done on 10 man, and got my Rusted Proto-drake on Ditto. Now to get the drake on Becoming, and the Algalon key for Ditto.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
ICC and Algalon
So, I finally got to raid last night.
We did ICC10 and put in our hour on Algalon. I healed ICC10 on Becoming, along side a Holy Priest. Overall the instance wasn't too bad. I didn't do it last week, so I can't comment on the change to Marrowgar's tank damage at all. That said, the fight wasn't hard at all, and we easily one shot it.
Next up, Lady Deathwhisper. We went with the strat that has all DPS switching to the adds, to blow them up quick, and allow more DPS (people) on the boss when adds weren't up. I'm not sure how many add waves we had while we were draining her shield, however, it didn't seem like too many. I'm looking forward to trying the 25 man version of this fight tonight, since it adds the MC and a few other neat tricks that should make it a touch more interesting. That said, for last night, we had a pretty easy one shot of her as well.
We move on to the Gunship Battle. While this seems neat in theory, overall it was just a little silly, with not much to it. DPS ship, mage spawns, jump over, heal, heal, heal, jump back, rinse / repeat. I did end up dying just before the last jump over. I got a battle rez, and it unequipped my jet pack. I tried to jump over again, and it was too late, as the tank over there was dead, but so was the mage and the rest of the away team had made it back.
Finally, we reach Saurfang. A neat intro to the fight to start off, though annoying that you have to go through it each time you start the encounter.
When we started out, we were just going at things like we normally do. That being healing assignments of "all healers, heal everyone who needs it". This was made worse by having two raid healing spec'd healers. So, the first couple of attempts went great until the first mark went out. Once it did healing went from boring to OMG WTF IS HAPPENING!
We tried switching roles around a bit, with me on DPS, our pally tank going heals, and the bear solo tanking it. It did not end well.
Back to original roles, I switch back to resto spec, and we work out actual healing assignments, with me on the Marked targets, and the priest on the tanks. We trigger the start, and the priest notices that she has the Mark debuff on, I look up and so do I. We all run back to the boat and reset the fight, and the debuff fades properly.
We attempt again, and it goes well. We ended up with 1 mark out (on me), no one died, and we got the kill.
After that we moved over to Algalon. Since that fight wouldn't happen without a real tank healer, I logged into Ditto to tank heal. We picked up Unbroken by not repairing during FL without any towers, killed Razorscale for the daily. On XT we accidentally triggered Hardmode, but downed it without any issues. As an aside, I got to use the new Divine Sacrifice, and it was nice. Incoming damage to myself was noticeable but very healable.
It is then that our priest says that she all of a sudden isn't feeling well, so needs to go, because she won't be able to make it through an hour of Algalon attempts. I end up switching to Becoming to raid heal, while our Pally tank switches to heals, and one of our Warrior DPS switches to tanking. We had a couple of rocky attempts at the beginning of the fight, and our best attempt was barely about half way past the first Big Bang. Our DPS was on target to enter Phase two just after the second Big Bang, but people kept getting hit by Cosmic Smash, or our star killer would kill one while it was standing over two people, and call it out after it already died.
Hopefully we can get a steady group for this, as I wouldn't mind getting the fight done, even though we do overgear it by an insane amount by now.
We did ICC10 and put in our hour on Algalon. I healed ICC10 on Becoming, along side a Holy Priest. Overall the instance wasn't too bad. I didn't do it last week, so I can't comment on the change to Marrowgar's tank damage at all. That said, the fight wasn't hard at all, and we easily one shot it.
Next up, Lady Deathwhisper. We went with the strat that has all DPS switching to the adds, to blow them up quick, and allow more DPS (people) on the boss when adds weren't up. I'm not sure how many add waves we had while we were draining her shield, however, it didn't seem like too many. I'm looking forward to trying the 25 man version of this fight tonight, since it adds the MC and a few other neat tricks that should make it a touch more interesting. That said, for last night, we had a pretty easy one shot of her as well.
We move on to the Gunship Battle. While this seems neat in theory, overall it was just a little silly, with not much to it. DPS ship, mage spawns, jump over, heal, heal, heal, jump back, rinse / repeat. I did end up dying just before the last jump over. I got a battle rez, and it unequipped my jet pack. I tried to jump over again, and it was too late, as the tank over there was dead, but so was the mage and the rest of the away team had made it back.
Finally, we reach Saurfang. A neat intro to the fight to start off, though annoying that you have to go through it each time you start the encounter.
When we started out, we were just going at things like we normally do. That being healing assignments of "all healers, heal everyone who needs it". This was made worse by having two raid healing spec'd healers. So, the first couple of attempts went great until the first mark went out. Once it did healing went from boring to OMG WTF IS HAPPENING!
We tried switching roles around a bit, with me on DPS, our pally tank going heals, and the bear solo tanking it. It did not end well.
Back to original roles, I switch back to resto spec, and we work out actual healing assignments, with me on the Marked targets, and the priest on the tanks. We trigger the start, and the priest notices that she has the Mark debuff on, I look up and so do I. We all run back to the boat and reset the fight, and the debuff fades properly.
We attempt again, and it goes well. We ended up with 1 mark out (on me), no one died, and we got the kill.
After that we moved over to Algalon. Since that fight wouldn't happen without a real tank healer, I logged into Ditto to tank heal. We picked up Unbroken by not repairing during FL without any towers, killed Razorscale for the daily. On XT we accidentally triggered Hardmode, but downed it without any issues. As an aside, I got to use the new Divine Sacrifice, and it was nice. Incoming damage to myself was noticeable but very healable.
It is then that our priest says that she all of a sudden isn't feeling well, so needs to go, because she won't be able to make it through an hour of Algalon attempts. I end up switching to Becoming to raid heal, while our Pally tank switches to heals, and one of our Warrior DPS switches to tanking. We had a couple of rocky attempts at the beginning of the fight, and our best attempt was barely about half way past the first Big Bang. Our DPS was on target to enter Phase two just after the second Big Bang, but people kept getting hit by Cosmic Smash, or our star killer would kill one while it was standing over two people, and call it out after it already died.
Hopefully we can get a steady group for this, as I wouldn't mind getting the fight done, even though we do overgear it by an insane amount by now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
