Tag Archives: pugs

That New Content Feeling

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Patch 4.3 couldn’t have come at a better time. With NaNoWriMo over and done with on Tuesday and my most recent book review written and published (that’s important because it took me a few hours to get right), I logged into my Priest happily to play around with void storage and do a few of the new 5 mans with the manface. Aren’t they great? While I was waiting, I got myself a Glyph of Shadow, which is awesome, and played around on my new horse. I was accused in guild of liking boys because I like the Tyrael’s Charger but I of course slapped that down with a great big, “Yes, I do like boys, and why does it matter?” And then continued to enjoy my pony.

The new instances gave me a distinctly familiar feeling. I’m awful at remembering the names because it has been so many months, but the first instance reminded me of one of the mid-level instances in Rift, the last part reminded me of the desert zone, and the third one reminded me of one of the later Rift instances. No, not being all, “They clearly copied Rift!” Just an observation. I loved them. They’re new content with new gear and the storyline is interesting. What’s not to love? Plus that second one has really made me appreciate Night Elf Shadow Priests…

And something seems a little off about Tyrande…

And how could I not include this one? Possibly my favourite of the new bosses and it looks freaking cool.

We did a few with the same Rogue and healer who we met in a pug and were both competent and friendly and that’s a pretty rare event. It’s always nice when you do get those kinds of pugs. I may have awwwed a little when the healer left with, “Nice to meet you.” I thought that was a little adorable.

I got myself a new wand, finally netting myself Cataclysmically Epic after a year.. though it did put my achievement points back into the 5s! And my first pair of dropped non-blue shoulders, and a helm, 2 rings, an offhand, and the tier 12 chest, getting me upto 369 ilvl from 361. I’ll be good for the raid finder in no time! Then today I picked up the staff from the last instance so I can finally use Anathema *squee* (and knock my ilvl upto 370 but that’s less important, right?). *strokes the pretty*

After, we ran through Black Temple with a friend and another guildy (the non-douchey variety, hooray), not only did I gain about 1,000 gold from that run but it was fun. We just finished a little later than hoped but oh well. I transmogged my gear fully and went off to bed.

I am absolutely in love with this set. I never got the chance to wear tier 4 when it was current because I was a Tailoring Shadow Priest *grumbles* and for those of you who weren’t around in Burning Crusade, the Shadoweave set (shoulders, chest, and boots) you made with tailoring was best in slot until tier 6. Obviously that’s just the shoulders but I do also have the robe in void storage.

How are you enjoying the new content? Or are you perhaps disappointed thus far?

Fantasmical Friday #4

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Honestly guys, this is one of those weeks that has simply passed me by. I start browsing the internet and then “Whoops! Where did the day go?”

Earlier in the week I played my Hunter a fair bit. I’d decided that while she’s still Alliance, I should get Old Ironjaw to save messing around in Ironforge when she’s Horde. I installed Fishing Buddy, configured it and off I went. It took me about 150 casts and then I fancied a bit more fishing, as I’d also tried the STV fishing contest the same day and failed miserably to a Druid who fished in everybody’s pools *grumble*, so I had the fishing bug and went off to try and get a turtle. That didn’t last too long. I tried out Marksman in a couple of dungeons and it was okay but I found it a little frustrating after playing Survival, and I wasn’t completely feeling Survival either, so I tried Beastmastery and hooboy was that a good fit. I wanted something that would quickly kill things while levelling as opposed to waiting “patiently” for Aimed Shot to cast yet again, and this was just.. wow. I love it! Plus I can now use Loque’nahak (or BLUE GLOW KITTY as I affectionately call him) finally who I named Ailuros after a cat in my NaNoWriMo story. So that was some fun.

I also boosted Dan in Blackrock Spire to get us both the two pets and sod it, while we were there, some whelps died too. Kalithe has a title - yay!

And last night as Dan had finally got up to level 60 ish, I did a couple of instances with him on my Mage (that would be ‘Twylite’). I did mention this on twitter but you don’t all follow me there or catch everything I ever tweet, so I’m specced Arcane. I wanted a taste of how overpowered it is before it’s hit with the nerfbat (read: very). I think personally the fun in Mage is actually the utility rather than the playstyle. Having various survival cooldowns, buffs, dps cooldowns, Mirror Images, polymorph (I have an animal lottery macro for that), the ability to make free food, portals, that’s where the fun lies. The great damage is just icing. Anyway so there was this Rogue in the party. He’s doing about a third of my damage and obsessing over how Dan has 10k health on his level 64 tank and basically calling him sad for having 30 stam gems in his gear and such, and suddenly after the first boss tells me that I should go Frost. If there are two things I dislike, it is being called by my class (which he did but I let it slide because I still prefer ‘mage’ to ‘Twylite’), and being told what I “should” do. The guy was very difficult to understand and eventually asked if anybody speaks Swedish and spammed “hor” in party chat about twenty times before he was vote kicked and the Shaman informed us that it meant whore in Swedish.. Whether it did or not we don’t know or particularly care but yeah, he was rather odd. Thankfully the rest of the party was lovely. It was a shame Dan had to leave else we’d probably have done one or two more with those guys.

I’m still focusing on my Hunter though, despite the Maging, I just want her to be a Goblin already! I am quite glad that she already has the Midsummer pet and achievements because we’re going away on the 23rd til the 28th or 29th so we’ll miss a week of it, and probably the beginning of 4.2 as well. I’m not too worried about that though.

World of Ponycraft

Designing and sharing ponies on the pony creator (enjoy your new addiction!) became a bit of a thing on twitter last week and since then Norm has written a post over at Flavor Text which fantastically looks at the comparisons between our ingame characters, why a lot of us choose fanmade art, and the pony creator. Kamalia made a response post as well.

I also made my Blood Elf Death Knight, Kalithe:

I don’t want to make Fae as her Draenei self because I don’t want to get too attached to her before she goes Goblin, but trust me, she’s on her way to being short and green.

Screenshot of the Week

Somebody always has to get in the way of the perfect picture. Always.

Linkies

Another handful of awesome posts!

And finally, a blog I came across this week that’s worth following:

  • Tome of the Ancient – A fun blog to read! I also happen to think that [they] are great with photoshop.

Happy Friday!

NICEST Pug

4 Replies

I’m bored of my Priest. I don’t want to reroll, I’ve done way too much with the character to just drop it. It isn’t the achievements so much, it’s the mounts and pets and all of the help I’ve had getting to the point she’s at. But I’m bored of her and I don’t enjoy healing enough. I’ve been pottering around with my alts – levelling the Hunter here and there doing instances with the other half on his Goblin and playing around a bit with Soupdragon, who is another character I’m quite attached to, my Night Elf Death Knight on another server – and it made me realise that I enjoy Death Knight dps a lot more than I do Shadow dps, which isn’t so much enjoyable any more as it is comfortable. The trouble with my Death Knight is that she is on a server on which I don’t really know anybody so I thought it might be an idea to level the Death Knight on my main server instead.

This Death Knight, who happens to be yet another Blood Elf, is actually older than Soup but at the time I decided I’d try out the Alliance side quests on a PvE server and play around a bit. Kalithe, the Blood Elf, has come close to being deleted a few times but I’m kinda glad I didn’t now. She still had some leather/mail gear equipped, her talents were blank, her glyphs were out of whack, needed to send over heirlooms from 4 different characters, train things and tidy up her bar set up a bit, but I didn’t have to do Outlands again!

I did a fair few instances when I got around to playing her yesterday, nothing that really stuck in memory at first. Bad tanks, average groups, the usual silence. And I’d been selecting instances I needed rather than letting it random me in Old Kingdom/Azjol Nerub over and over.. which it does. So when I got a Drak’tharon I was pretty happy, and when I saw the Orc Hunter wearing a pink dress, naturally, I took a screenshot. The group was very nice, and despite the Hunter deciding to tame a raptor that you can much easier get from Outland and parts of The Barrens, we let him tame a silly raptor and had a joke about the name and it was all very nice.

Then I got Drak’tharon again. I was running around with my Windrider Cub out because he’s adorable and the Enhancement Shaman whispered me asking where it’s from. I always find it quite nice when people notice something small like that and point it out or ask about it, just a moment of recognition from other players. So we kept on. The tank was good, the healer was good, the Warlock confused me with his big purple circles on the floor (I kept moving out of them), and the dps Shaman was fairly chatty. The instance was finished in no time. Painless and fun. So somebody asked if we wanted to do some more and well, why not.

This is the point in which I had to endure randoms, but it was experience and fun with a friendly group, which are pretty rare so I wasn’t going to complain when we got Azjol Nerub followed by Old Kingdom (what’d I tell ya?). I had only planned to do the one more after Drak’tharon but these runs were taking maybe 10 minutes and they were genuinely fun. The thing that got me thinking was when the Shaman said, “You know what gets me? After this, I’ll probably never run with you guys again.” Awww. It made me think, yet again, about the idea of some kind of cross-server preference list. I’m not sure how it’d work really. Similar to an ignore list, I suppose, except you could add people that you enjoyed playing with and if you were queuing at the same time, perhaps it could do its best to put you together in future. Bit of a weak idea, but we already have Real ID so I wouldn’t expect a cross-server friends list. Not only would it not happen, but even if it did somehow you’d have to pay for it of course. It is sad that I’ll never group with them again, but I’m also glad. After several terrible pugs that really put me in a bad mood over the weekend, it was like a breath of fresh air to group with a bunch of nice, competent, chatty and funny people. So okay, maybe it wasn’t the “nicest” pug I’ve ever had, but it was up there, and it was definitely the nicest pug I’ve had in the past couple of weeks since I came back.

So This Hunter Alt

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We’d been saving the name Fae since I transferred Fae the first off to Terenas, just incase I ever brought her back and I really love the name. Dan held on to the name for me because I didn’t have a space, but I did have a Rogue I wasn’t sure about. It’s quite nice having Fae the Hunter on Vashj again, even if it isn’t the real Fae. I decided to make her a red haired Blood Elf (who looks scarily like my Rogue, the one on Argent Dawn, in Hunter gear) instead of a Goblin, which was my original plan, purely because I knew I’d feel more comfortable with her. My Warrior and Shaman are both Goblins so no worries, eh?

The first thing I did was sort out her heirlooms. I had the sword and a dagger lying around, so she got those. They were enchanted with Crusader so I switched them both to +15 agi. I sent her the leather shoulders and chest to start with until I can get the mail stuff, which I figure is worth getting because I can then use it on my Shaman too. So far I’ve managed to get the chest but I still need about 2k points for the shoulders. I grabbed the helm and cloak from the guild vendor, and farmed a few points which got me the bow, which I can use on my Warrior afterwards, and chest so far. I threw on a few enchants (+15 agility on weapon, 8 agility and 8 dodge on cloak, +3stats on chest because I can’t do +4, +2 damage scope on bow) and got her a guild invite (we’re level 22). That’s a 45% experience increase, plus with the bow and all of the awesome stats, I’m basically one-shotting everything in my path. I have never levelled so fast.. I went from level 8 to level 18 in just a few hours. It’s nuts! So basically, my pet is there to look pretty and be awesome in instances. At the moment I’m mostly using a cat because the buff they do is nice.

I’d already known I wanted to get her the rare fox from Loch Modan, and Dan had mentioned the polar bear in Dun Morogh which we’d gone and got for Fae the first when she was a lowbie Hunter, and he offered to dragon me off to get it again. I checked Petopia for any other pets I might like and spotted an awesome rare cat from Darkshore, Shadowclaw, and asked if we could pop off to get that too. He threatened to drop me on a random mountain when I started RPing on his back (Fae the second really doesn’t like dragon turbulence), but you know, give a guy the evils and he wouldn’t dare. The polar bear is named Patrick after my beloved, giant cuddly polar bear that lives on the bed. The cat is named Shadow, just because it was originally called Shadowclaw so, why not. And the fox is called Sashi, as I realised I’m not using the name for a pet any more and it’s a lovely name.

So last night I decided to level a bit more, to catch up with Dan’s Goblin, and I got 21 to 27 (very close to 28) in a couple of hours. Started off by heading to Hillsbrad. There are some nice rewards there if you do a fair chunk of the zone, however, I also decided I might as well instance. The trouble with instancing is how much experience it gives, especially if you haven’t done the quests, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to skip past every questing zone I start. Each one is giving me one or two levels. I headed off anyway after getting my mining up to Tin level and some of it was nuts.

There was the SFK run that was just the last boss and we almost wiped on him but the dps was high enough, thing is, the Rogue (who at the beginning was spamming ‘go’ on every line while we waited for the Warrior to catch up) then started demanding a res… from a Warrior and a Hunter.

Next I got a Stockades. This one actually managed to confuse me a bit. The healer was called “Nksgfdhsfslksnksk” or something to that effect and was afk-ish. The Rogue felt the need to announce, “this is a random” okay, congratulations? I never did work out why they said that. The Mage started pulling and calling the afk, apparently gold farming, healer a fag. I made some comeback about him pulling without the tank, and he replied about the fag name Fae. Yeah, okay, I’m also a Blood Elf. At least I’m not called ‘Borntbwild’.. The Warrior whispered me telling me not to help him kill, he was trying to get him killed. It took us 5 minutes to get started and then the healer didn’t have water and went oom a lot, and I realised the Mage and Warrior were in the same guild. We’ll just brush that one under the carpet..

I specificked (ok, I know that’s not really a word, but how the hell would you spell it?) an SFK to do my class quest and the instance quests, picked up the bracers from the [4th?] boss, oh and one of the cow Paladins was called Chezus. He totally got plus points. Hope he knows I was thinking of Glee’s ‘grilled cheesus’ when I complimented his name. After that I got a BFD in a random that had me flailing about because the tank wouldn’t stop pissing moving and I was trying to Steady Shot my focus back ._. However, we got the place done pretty swiftly and I did the first couple of quests in Northern Stranglethorn and then decided to give it a rest for the night. One of these days I’ll level her Engineering and give her more bank space, honest.

Perhaps she’ll get upto more interesting antics soon, who knows ;)

Forgive Me For I Have Sinned..

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It’s been 9 days since I last posted ((though I’m ecstatic that my last post seems to have been so useful for a fair few of you!)), and I haven’t exactly had writer’s block, I’ve had plenty to blog about, a list of topics ready to be written. I’d planned to do a little post about how I was enjoying levelling my Mage upto 60 to get the Tome of Polymorph Piggy, and how I started levelling my Druid upto 70, so that I could get the epic flight form quest done to make mine and Dan’s Raven Lord runs a lot easier, and that I’d rediscovered how awesome Druid healing was, I even had a little bit of link love for some newly discovered blogs. All of the passion for these subjects came and went, I was either too busy getting things done, levelling said alts, seeing friends, reading, (whatever it is I do outside of blogging), or I simply wasn’t in the mood to write, which admittedly made up a large part of it, and I guess it still does, which is why I’m rambling a bit now.

The thing is, a friend of mine moved his Paladin over to Terenas a while back, where my Alliance alts live, and while helping him with group quests I logged into Soupdragon, my Night Elf Death Knight, because I figured a plate class would be easier to murderise elites than a Hunter who I haven’t played in months, and playing her reminded me of how much I loved the character, and the fact that I still needed to gear her up and improve my playstyle a little.

Now he’s got himself to 80, we’re doing a few heroics to gear him up, and in the meantime, I might be gearing myself up a little too. I already had a Ghoulslicer sitting in my bank, so when I got a Black Icicle I decided it was time to try out Frost dps (I’ve almost always been Unholy), and honestly, it’s taken me a few days to get the hang of it and really get used to it, for a while it felt weird as I’d been Unholy for so long, but I’m really starting to enjoy it now and finding it to be a much better spec for my dps as well. I find Frost has a fair few more buttons to play with, for single target, and for AoE. I guess it’s also important to note that I’ve never really been a big fan of Blood, it’s great for soloing things but I find it a little too “spammy” for my preferences. Frost is perfect, really, and I’m trying to get my hands on another Black Icicle – though if I got my hands on a decent 2hander upgrade I wouldn’t say no to going Unholy again.

I’m sitting on about 4.7k gearscore at the moment, and I’m pulling off anywhere between about 5k-7k dps depending on which boss and the group setup, which I think is perfectly fine for the first few bosses in ICC 10 but I’m not even going to try until I’ve finished my BiS heroic gear set, which also seems to include 3 crafted pieces (chest, wrist, boots) for a total of 8,000g, and 2 parts of tier 10 – the Sanctified legs I paid a guy in Vault 5,000g for because I really badly wanted them, luckily he was happy to trade for the gold, the shoulders I earned through many weeklies and a few random heroics (well, I say that, I’ll have them by Sunday).

I have had some really awesome pugs in this battlegroup, and on this server, which sucks a bit that it’s not going to be my main server because it is my favourite of the 3 I play on, but everybody I’ll be playing with in Cataclysm wants to stay on Vashj so I’ll be keeping my Alliance alts there, definitely. There was the Icecrown geared Warrior tank who kept apologising whenever anybody died, despite it not being his fault, more likely the healer’s who seemed to have a problem with dispelling. We stuck with him for another random because he was pretty cool, but after he called my friend “palladin,” he wanted to leave and reform, so we did. There have been many pugs where the group have complimented each other, stuck together after wipes and had a bit of a laugh while we waited for new members, people making mistakes and not being berated for it, and it’s just been a pleasure, a real breath of fresh air to get away from “omg noobs!”

Mind you, I’ve also had a couple of terrible pugs, giving me people to add to my ignore list, though by this point I think my Rogue had around 10-15 people on hers. One where the tank was so terrible that I decided to gather myself a tank gear set when I finish my dps gear set, just because I know I can do much better than they did. It was the kind of tank who ignored patrols, let people die a lot, stood around staring at the next pull, just jumping around for no real reason except perhaps to see their Night Elf twizzle in the air.. I don’t mind people who are clearly new to tanking, but I tanked more of that instance than they did. Another in which the tank insulted my friend, the Mage, and the healer for not being good enough. They kept dying, and doing around 2k dps, in Halls of Lightning heroic, each with about 3k gearscore, honestly they were doing good with what they had. I was in a particularly bad mood and really laid into the guy, I hate egotistical twats who treat other people unnecessarily nastily. After I was finished with him, he shutup and carried on, until the healer, a Paladin, struggled to heal Loken because they kept being one shot by the Lightning Nova. The tank left with a “omg you fucking noobs” and the Mage got in his much better geared friend and we got it down. The other one that stuck in my mind was more of a case of I’d had a terrifically bad few days, and the guy wearing heroic Dawnbreaker’s taking the normal Forge of Souls boots (which I’d greeded on hoping to win them to replace my blue ones, but didn’t want to need on them because I thought it was rude for the Death Knight to take Shield Block boots for their offspec.. well yeah you can see where I’m going with this), the guy took them. I asked why, he said “cause I can”, I said “a little dickish”, he said “good job I’m a dick” and left. I was not a happy panda, so it’s a damn good job I’d pugged with some lovely people earlier on, and the following heroic wasn’t quite so bad, else I’d have ended the night with a really bad taste in my mouth.

I also decided to get her a few of the easier achievements, like ‘the Explorer’, and ‘Ambassador’, it gives me something to do and gets Soup a couple of titles that aren’t ‘the Patient’, which I really don’t think suits her. The reason I’m spending so much time and effort on her? No, I haven’t rerolled again, it’s just that all my Priest really has to do at the moment is grind and PvP which aren’t particularly exciting activities to me, I mean, once in a while I don’t mind, but every day, every week and it becomes a chore, so I thought I’d play my Death Knight a little, to give me something to do in the meantime while I’m not reading, or watching anime.

And here’s the link love I mentioned.

The past few weeks I’m come across a few blogs who I added to my reader, and I feel they’re well worth sharing, check them out and go and say hello!

WTB Friendly Tanks

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The way I figure it, all tanks are dicks. That’s what my time on the Argent Dawn battlegroup is proving to me at least. Last night, the rest of the guild’s 80s were busy in the 3 Icecrown 5 mans on normal mode so I figured while I did a few quests to get some money and my Argent Crusade rep up a little I’d chain some randoms.

The first one I got was Drak’tharon Keep, I figured great! I have a quest here and King Dred drops a pretty nice trinket upgrade. I asked if we could break a few of the webs in the spider room so I could find the Troll for my quest, which surprisingly they did for me, that was nice, I picked up the next quest, and then the tank ran through the room saying, “skip”. Well, I need the emblems but I can’t solo it, so I ran through, killed some bats, realised I needed that boss for my quest but figured oh well I’ll get it next time, at least I was able to pick it up. Running past King Dred, “skip”, yeah okay now it’s just annoying, so from the whole instance I got 3 emblems. Whoopidoo, what’s the point in doing it as a random if that’s all you get?

The next one was Utgarde Keep, yay a nice quick, easy one. Can’t skip anything either. We zone in and the tank immediately says, “buff”, and after a few seconds, “buff priest”. This pushes my buttons. No hello, no please, and I’m pretty sure the Priest wasn’t called ‘priest’. Either way, we carry on, get to the room with the proto drakes, the tank skips a load pulls the pack at the end, I accidentally pull one more proto drake which is easily Tricksed onto him, and I believe the Priest’s Mind Sear pulled another pack, which of course wiped us. Then the Priest left. This is an attitude I never understood, the guy who causes the wipe always seems to blame anybody but themself, usually the tank or the healer. When you mess up, you recognise you’ve done so 9 times out of 10. Anyway, he was replaced by a Warlock who was fairly decent, but twice pulled things by accident and got us wiped. The tank felt it necessary at this point to say, “ebay lock” which was entirely pointless of course. Oh well, we finished and the Warlock ninjad the blue legs from the last boss (he had Tier 9), I didn’t quite get that either.

Then Utgarde Pinnacle popped up and as expected, the tank skipped all but 2 bosses. He was quite up himself, but nothing out of the ordinary to report, just the usual, “WTB DPS”, and “chop chop I don’t have time for this”.

I believe I then grouped up with a couple of guildies who had either come online or finished their instances. We queued up while I murdered some spiders and bats in Zul’drak, and luckily got Forge of Souls heroic! Great, I’d already done this one earlier as a specific, this gave me an extra chance for the trinket. We zoned in, killed a pack, and our healer left, we fairly quickly got a new healer, carried on, and everything was going just fine until I disconnected. My net went down. I knew my guildies weren’t about to vote kick me, but I didn’t want to hold them up, so I reset it, was offline for maybe 5 or 10 minutes, and came back online to an argument. Now, I’m not particularly fond of elitist bastards, especially when they’re being nasty to people I like. I came back online part way through something I think, but:

I did try to vote kick him but apparently the healer didn’t like this so we had to finish the instance with him and queued for one more, hoping to actually get lucky and have a nice tank. Might I add where he says “you dont know tactic”, we hadn’t even reached the first boss yet and did kill the adds and move out of the shit accordingly, whilst he was running the boss around the room in circles meaning it was pretty difficult for 2 of us to get any dps off on the boss for the first phase. At least after this little exchange he shutup and continued being punched in the face.

This time we got Azjol Nerub and the tank and healer didn’t seem too bad. We killed the first boss, and then the tank started asking me to reset the second boss. First off, I’m not comfortable with this method. I’m not hot on how to do it, and there is a risk of me fucking up and dying. I might have given it a go just to make the tank happy except he started being a bit bossy about it. The second he said, “just do it”, I decided no, I really won’t ‘just do it’. With a “fine”, he pulled the boss, we moved on, and around the part of the instance where you jump down the giant hole (which I always always angle my camera down to avoid water walking or path of frost death from the TotC 25 days), one of my guildies disconnected. Either the tank or healer tried to vote kick him but that didn’t pass. He didn’t come back so I guess his net went down. We had one wipe on Anub’erak because the healer and other dps was hit by pound, to which the tank replied, “you guys fail”. Then ran back in, killed it, and decided at this point that that was more than enough dickheads for one night.

I really hope the entire battlegroup isn’t like this, because gearing my Rogue is going to become quite a chore without guildies soon if this continues. Aside from all of this, I am enjoying it. I’m able to join in with guildies now we’re at the same level and play something new. It’s nice to be able to chill and take a break from grinding reputation and mounts for a bit. Oh, and a note, I don’t honestly think that all tanks are dicks, I think I’m damn unlucky, but I did grab your attention didn’t I?

A Rant About Tanks 2: Electric Boogaloo

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Jae’s Note: Guest post. Again I’m sorry, but you all seem to love them anyway, enjoy.

Warning: I swear, a lot.

Recently, between the time I’ve been levelling my new rogue in WSG (mother FUCK hunters), playing random Xbox games I’ve rented from Love Film, finding out ‘Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’ or ‘Dragonball Z: Star Wars Edition’ as I call it is a boring, twitchy, rush written sack-o-crap that made me sad to my core. Playing KoTOR again to feel less sad about the Star Wars franchise, before sadly re-watching Episode One and remembering there is no more hope or God in the world, watching all 6 series of Hell’s Kitchen USA because the idea of a show where an insane OCD Scotsman with anger issues shouts at Americans is like Christmas and Ramadan rolled into one. Shouting at people in call centers who for some reason think EE sounds like 13D due to the fact their parents must have been drinking a mix of paint and powdered idiot when pregnant with the little cock smiths and generally being annoying to my poor dear girlfriend, I’ve been subtlety that it’s rude to put “part 1” on something then proceed to ignore it while I play Mass Effect again as Renegade (“this girl appears to have deep emotional scarring and is mildly psychotic, shoot her in the face with a  sniper rifle before I beat you to death”-Commander Kari “Skullfucker” Shepard).

So anyway, back to the point, I think I had one – AH YES, Tanking. I’ll be looking at a few of the aspects of tanking when I can be dragged away from the nothing I normally do. Today I look at the joy that is dealing with you arseholes in the greater world, no I’m not insulting anyone in particular, just most DPS and healers don’t seem to know the cardinal rule that is at the heart of all the good tanks out there, one of the two simple rules that deal with everything we do and stand for in the World of Warcrafts, these rules are simple:

  • Use your hurty attacks to make the mean people not kill everyone.
  • Every last healer and DPS is a wanker.

Rule 2 is the rule I will be explaining today (mind at some point if I get fed enough white chocolate cookies I might do an in-depth guide to rule 1 when levelling your new paladin).

On the WoW forums at the moment there are several topics complying that most tanks think they’re some kind of perfect being, and that anyone else is lesser scum only fit to bask in our almighty glow. Now in my case this is correct, but for the rest this is just a misunderstanding. I won’t judge the tanks who I will call “DPS that respecced for an instant queue” or “death knights” as they’re known, most tanks are simply just jaded, hate-filled husks bored of dealing with “them”. What’s “them” I hear you ask random person reading a blog who never actually said that but I will ‘cause it keeps the post flowing? It’s that DPS/Healer that ruins everything, it’s that being whose mere existence is enough to make me so angry I could punch all Hannah Montana in her stupid fucking face and then eat her empty Disney owned soul, it’s the person who has 2 DPS settings, slow and offline. If you still don’t know what I’m on about, it’s you.

If you’re still struggling with this concept, you’re an idiot, here’s a guide.

Please note, this is also a cheat, if you are a DPS, please replace the word ‘Tank’ with ‘DPS’ and if you’re a healer, sorry mate you’re on your own, LOSER.

1) GOGOG Gang.

I realise this is a bad place to start, this is meant to be a sarcastic take on what people do, not an all out rant, but fuck you guys, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I usually pull my heroics at a speed that closely resembles sonic on meth, but even then I get told to gogog by the DPS which I’ve covered below. How is my 20 seconds to buff and get a food buff going to affect your day of queuing and whacking off to drawings of the Lost cast, you annoying temple of arse.

2) ‘How do I mine for fish???’ Brigade.

They say you should gear for what you want to do not what you do, which is why I’m wearing crotchless pants. These are the people from whom the concept of learning while levelling, or just the basic concept of learning is as foreign as the concept that caps doesn’t make you sound louder when reading it. The people who manage 1400 DPS with t10, the people who spam AoE on single targets, the tanks with 20 parry gems, healers with 10mp5 gems, the 0/0/71 specs and the meleeing hunters. The people who when you question them say they’ve played since classic and they have Heroic Lich King on their full Heroic sanc geared mains in Paragon(see 7) and that you’re just a scrub to him, these fucking wastes of sperm.

Okay don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of these people are just new or don’t know better, who when told so will change or learn. Not these people, I like them, they’re blank pages for me to print my horrible manifesto of pain and hatred upon, to further my dark plans for this smeg pile of a planet. I mean the fucking idiots who can learn, but are so far up their own arses that they are at least 30% Nickleback. ((JAE APPROVES OF NICKLEBACK MOCKING)) I don’t care if you’ve been playing since classic, it just means you’ve been shit at something for 5 years, now stop using Arcane Missiles as your main DPS spell and sod off.

3) Need offspec cunts.

Ask, ASK, “Hey, anyone need this? I could use it for my offspec.” Don’t just blindly need, if the tank that has been farming that trinket in normal Trial for weeks and you need it ‘cause you “MIGHT do some tanking at some point but probably not”, then well done, you’re worse than Hitler.

4) <AFK>

Not a word is needed. If you do this I hope a fox eats your child. (too soon?)

5) No speaka the engalnds.

I’m not going into BNPesque “YOU IN OUR COUNTRY SPEAK OUR LANGUAGE”, but you’re on an English server – pony up and stop speaking moonspeak before I start spamming Welsh, AND YOU DON’T WANT THAT, TRUST ME, IT SOUNDS LIKE A COW IS EATING AN APPLE.

6) XxKillerDKSweXx

Not Swedish people but “these” names, the people with names that have their nationality or are the same names as ANYONE from a Shounen Jump manga or the names that features more than one of the same letter unless that’s the make up of that word, need to fuck off, have a proper name like me, Ryyus…

OH SHI…

7) My main has/is X.

No it doesn’t, it has t9 and at the most ‘of the Nightfall’. Go away.

8) ^_^ =DDD!!!! <3!1

Ah smilies, I know this has nothing to do with DPS, but you know what, this is my blog post so if you feel like complaining, BLEH.

Stop it, just, stop it, you’re not a cat, you’re not Kirby, you’re not Asian, if you are, you’re not an Asian cat. If you say something sad, or happy, or zany, you don’t need to then back it up with a rough estimate of your face if you were to over act your current emotion while having a stroke. If I wanted to see that I’d watch a Michael Bay film. ((JAE APPROVES OF MICHAEL BAY MOCKING))

I don’t know if it’s just me and my cold, dark, dead heart, wanting to threaten puppies in front of their owners and spending my time looking for Derrick Bird jokes, but this concept annoys me.

Simcraft)Simcraft

SIMCRAFT

SIMCRAFT

SIMCRAFT

SIMCRAFT

SIMCRAFT

SIMCRAFT

Sorry that last one is nothing to do with anything, but on the whole if you come under any of these groups, then you are a bad person. How bad? Derek Smart bad. If you look at any of these arcetypes and think, “This represents me.” Then you are a terrible person and will die alone.

Oh, wait, I’ve said literally nothing about tanks… This is probably the worst post about tanks since the World of Raids paladin tank guides.

Anyway that’s me done, this has been fun, well I say fun, it’s been good, well I say good, it’s been bearable, well I say bearable – Kill me with a hammer.

To paraphrase Mr Brooker: There’s the post, now Go away.

Ryyu

Banning Ninja Looters

16 Replies

A few nights ago, with it being the night before the reset, I took a leap and joined a pug to ICC 25. I haven’t pugged it before without knowing who was running it, so I was a little scared I was going to be kicked for low gearscore or low dps. The leader was asking for 5.5k gearscore and the achievement, I think I had 5.1k and no achievement to link, therefore I had to say “best gear I could get before ICC” and “have cleared all upto Syndragosa on my Hunter” and I managed to get in with that, I did fairly decent dps in there too. Grabbed a new belt and a new helm and I won the roll on the Conqueror mark too! Except that the raid leader looted it to himself and fake disconnected. Can’t complain too much, I also got the achievement for the first 4 bosses from this run.

However, I remembered at this point that there has been a slight change to the rules, ninja looting is now against the terms of service, classed as a scam, and heck, I’m damn happy with my upgrades but I won’t abide by people being selfish dicks, whether it’s me affected or somebody else. So I reported him. When I mentioned in raid chat I was doing so, there were a couple of responses, “Why bother? They won’t do anything!” “Ninja looting is a bannable offense now.” Which made me realise that this isn’t a widely known game rule yet.

It took 30 odd hours to receive a response to my ticket, and when I did the GM told me that the raid leader never stated the loot rules and therefore there is nothing they can do. Seems an odd way to instate a rule, if the raid leader never states the loot rules they can ninja all they want, which brings me onto what I’m trying to say.

The full article explaining Blizzard’s policy on ninja looting is posted here, and these are the important bits if you’re too lazy to click-through ;) :

While some looting disputes may be a social faux pas and can tarnish a player’s reputation, they are not a violation of any in-game rule. Scams, however, are a violation, and may occasionally accompany a looting dispute.

In terms of loot, making and then breaking a clear in-game agreement on the way loot will be distributed by a Master Looter can be considered a scam… players who disregard the original agreement and then take (or give away) loot in a different way are potentially violating our Scam Policy. If you believe you have been scammed, please contact In-Game Support… Please note that if In-Game Support is able to determine a scam has taken place after a clear in-game loot distribution agreement is made, any items involved may be removed from their current owners.  In cases where a “rightful” owner can be proven, these items may also be transferred; however, loot will be left unassigned if a “rightful” owner cannot be identified.

If you join a pug and you don’t know the raid leader, ask them to explain the loot rules. If they don’t, ask again. If they refuse to tell the raid the loot rules, then it may be time to get out of there before you get yourself saved because if something does happen, there’s then nothing you can do. You’ll want them to state the rules on spec priority, armor priority, how things will be rolled for (raid rolls, 1-100), if anything is reserved, and if there’s something extra like a mount or Trophies, then ask how they will be distributed specifically. So long as the rules have been put out there, if anything is ninjad, then you can get them a temporary ban at least and it gives you chance to pug with a peace of mind.

Dragons and Pilla’s

3 Replies

PUGs

My evening last night began with me joining the Looking for Random Dungeon tool (LFD) and then being teleported off to Blackrock Depths. Unlike every other time when I’d been plopped in next to the instance portal, I was part of the way through the instance and half of the party was dead. A new feature in 3.3.3 which I adore: if you join an instance already in progress, you will be teleported to where your party members are, rather than the beginning of the instance. Lovely!

All but the healer, who happened to be from Argent Dawn also, left the group. I had no reason to leave, he seemed to be a nice guy, so we requeued with the Hunter who’d joined not long after me and seemed to be a sandwich short of a picnic but hey, win some, lose some. The new Paladin tank who joined, seemed okay, if just a little clueless. I asked if we could do the Ring of Law, a nice, quick, easy boss with something for everyone, depending on the boss that spawns, which really is half of the fun. The healer replied, “That’s fine by me.” The tank replied, “which way lol xD.” The hunter pinged the map a lot and said, “xD anywere.” Slash sigh.

Thankfully, the healer led the way. We went down one of the many corridors at the beginning of the instance (I don’t think I will ever know my way around BRD properly, I always, always get lost in there) where the tank had a blast running off, chain pulling each pack of Dwarves. When we reached the Ring of Law, we stopped and the healer tried to point out that there was “A quick boss here.” The tank carried on his merry little way, and died. Of course he blamed the healer, it couldn’t possibly be his fault for running off, right?

We eventually convinced him to head back and do the boss, and halfway through the fight he bubbled. I didn’t notice until me and Mr. Mageypants died from aggro and at the end of the fight, the tank said, “Oops, I bubbled, sorry!” Pfft. Better be. I left after that one. The healer was a nice guy but the tank and the hunter were a little bit moronic. That and I didn’t really fancy clearing every individual little room.

Quests

Afterwards I decided to quest for a little. I’d swept through Searing Gorge the night before on Fae, to get a bit of Loremaster done, and I’d never really noticed what a nice little quest hub it is. You pick up about 10 quests that you do in the same area, I especially liked the ones in the underground Cauldron, it doesn’t take too long to do them and nets you maybe a level or more of experience depending on your level, amount of heirlooms, and rested experience. Not to mention a Landin’ Pilla and a pile of Thorium Brotherhood rep.

I headed down to the bit where you pretty much have to kill a load of pink dinosaurs and this level 54 Orc Rogue was doing the same quest, so he invited me to a group. The first sign of a polite person! He smiled, he said hello, he asked how many more I needed, to which I told him, “8 more, you’re free to leave when you’re done,” and he said goodbye! This is very rare, I’m too used to my own server which seems to be very much ‘first come, first serve’ when it comes to killing mobs, maybe a ‘thx’, and I’d forgotten that people can sometimes be friendly.

After we’d finished, I had a nosey check of Recount to see what spec he was, noticed he was using Ambush, which made me curious. I spotted ‘Hemoarrage’ and couldn’t resist whispering him again, “How are you finding Subtlety by the way? :) ” As it has been buffed in the patch and I’d been thinking about testing it out to compare it to my current build. We had a nice chat about the differences, he mostly told me that it was, “a little less damage, but more utility.” So, basically, great for PvP and questing, but Assassination still seems to be the most fun for levelling in my opinion, it’s still more damage, and more burst. I was considering staying Combat for a while because of all of the lovely energy regenning talents and Blade Flurry, but I’m a Mutilate convert it seems.

Boosts

Whilst I was finishing my quests, I received a whisper from somebody I didn’t recognise. Usually, this is a whisper from somebody asking for a SAN invite, but they were asking, “want a free BRD boost?” I did a quick /who and saw it was a guilded level 80 Warlock, nobody I knew. I don’t like to impose on people, even when they ask and I didn’t know this person, so I asked, “Are you going for the achievement?” They replied, “No, boosting my alt.” Fair enough, I guess that makes me the follow monkey. They put their alt on follow, and I just have to keep up and not get them killed or stuck behind things.

I inspected their Paladin alt after I’d died and run back in (picked up the quest to get the Shadowforge key though, not that I need it on my Rogue) and saw that they were wearing the cloth heirloom chest and shoulders, no neck or helm, grey level 2 bracers, some really crappy stuff. This was obviously a ‘recruit a friend’ boost. I asked if they were going for the zebra mount and they replied, “nope.” I guess they didn’t want to talk, so I figured I’d stay a little while and bail out after a bit. Following somebody quietly while they kill stuff isn’t really my idea of fun. Their plan seemed to be to clear most of the prison area, the first boss and reset. I’d rather quest, though after I’d dinged 53 she bailed out anyway. I gained about 50% of a level from joining them, can’t complain. Afterwards, I finished off in Searing Gorge, where, for the second night in a row, the damn dragon scared me half to death.

Note to Self

Argent Dawn is not like Vashj, there *is* such a thing as a nice person. I always said that if you expect stuff to suck, when it doesn’t you’ll have a pleasant surprise! Does that make me an optimistic pessimist?

Positive PuG

4 Replies

Shared Topic courtesy of Kin at Altoholics Anonymous. You can find other responses in this post at Blog Azeroth.

I’ve been playing my mage, Twylite, a fair bit lately. It’s fun when you’re feeling a bit blah about the game to pop on an alt you haven’t really explored yet, get her spec, glyphs, gear just right, and attempt to top the meters in every random you do as Frost. Maybe that’s just me, I like damage meters, they make DPS classes fun for me.

Well, when I was about level 35 and Scarlet Monastery was all the rage, I queued, got in a group and lo and behold the warrior tank could hold aggro! I Blizzarded my little Blood Elf heart out, and we started chatting, the tank, me and the druid healer. We decided to stick with that group and re-queue for a few. The druid healer was a really nice guy, he gave both me and the tank some friendly advice, not the kind of advice you expect to find in a pug these days. He told me to try single targeting the mob with the most HP in a pack of 4 or less, I think it was along those lines, I’ve since adapted it anyway, and it has helped me in dungeons with my mana issues.

It was a lovely group and unusual to find that and have everybody want to stick around, well, everybody who counts. The silent hunter left at the end of the first one. The warrior was on my server, I added him to my friends list and chatted a little after we had finished. Shame he hasn’t really been online at the same time as me since because it would have been quite cool to queue up again together. Keep trying guys, there are good pugs out there!