Arena for the hell of it

Azashane, a good buddy of mine (70 Feral) asked me if I wanted to join his 2v2 team. Ironically, I started the team back in the days with someone else, handed it over to him after I got bored with it, he handed it over to a buddy of his and Azashane ended up with it.

Anyway. I know Ferals SUUUCK in arena, but I decided to join him with my Feral. Who cares?

Scenario: 2 stealthed Druids, 2 stealthed Rogues… “WHERE THE HELL IS EVERYBODY??”

Mt. Hyjal! SSC! I am a noob! Fun? Not so much.

<RANT>

Went to Mt. Hyjal for the first time ever last Friday night! I was excited! And I wiped the raid! And people look at me now with an ‘OMG’!

I went tanking with my Druid. Ran the Druid too far up the hill before a wave, the Necromancers aggroed too far back, couldn’t CC them, wipe ensued. Why did I run up? There was a sheep and I thought “hey, I should pop that sheep and get him before the next wave comes down” - big mistake. Don’t think. Don’t pretend you have the faintest clue what you are doing. Listen and follow the Raid Leader.

We went there for the first time. 3 wipes and it was called, last wipe was attributed to me. Although, I saw a different problem (aside from me trying to think) - we don’t have enough DPS.

Yes, I said it. Took way too long to get those waves down, and at wave 6-7 we would have too many mobs to kill. Mobs, mind you, that one-shot everything that is not constantly covered by heals like a tank.

Then, we went to SSC to down the Lurker. I was tanking again (tanking to protect melee on the inner circle, and to take adds that head that way), towards the end of the fight I was stuck in the water after a spout, moved away from my spot under water to get back up and ended up on a different spot on top of the platform.

Heared a collective ‘here he goes again *SIGH*” “dude, where are you”, “dude you are in the wrong spot”, “duuuuude”. Then, as I was heading back to my assigned spot, got grabbed by a fountain w/e you called it and got kicked out about 1/2 mile. Literally, 1/2 a mile. I could barely see the platform I was so far away. After Lurker was downed, RL said “rez the noob”. That did hurt, I can tell you.

Well, so it happened. I made a mistake (or maybe 2 within 2 hours) and I paid for it. But there is no reason to get treated like you are an idiot and you don’t know what you are doing.

This is a game. People interact with each other. Too many people are jerks. If you are in a guild, that guild needs to treat you with respect.  Otherwise, it is too much like real life — sometimes I feel like I don’t get respected at the job I am doing either. So, what do you think my gut reaction is if I get treated like that in the game? I get pissed. Damn straight. I was very close to sending out that /gquit “- screw you guys, I am going home”.

I did not. Why? One of the reasons has been that I don’t want to miss out on raids, badges and loot. Now that I wrote that, I started thinking that maybe that is the wrong reason.

I do miss the casual guild that I used to be in, before it changed, fell apart and people scattered all over the place. People were friendly to each other, friendships developed, good times. But they were casual. A Kara run would still be crazy fantasy, even these days. I wouldn’t be able to deal with that either.

So, 30 minute Mags and Gruul runs and 3 hour - full Kara clears sound good? Yeah, it does. Am I selling out my principles for that? I don’t know. I will have to find out.

One guy (the only real guy I know from before, used to be a nice guy, untl he started raiding in this guild and became an officer recently) sent me a tell after the SSC run. “You need to pay more attention. Lol.”

I replied with “I got stuck under the platform etc etc”, to which he responded with “then you should practice jumping.”

OK, I can take a little bit, but that blew me up. I have been feeling like that the GL and RL don’t really care too much for me being in the guild lately anyway, so I said if they have a problem, because if they do, I should maybe consider moving on. To which he responded “you are alway taking this sooo seriously.”

Ever heard this, or “it is just a game”? Yeah, sure, a game. No big deal. What-the-fck-ever.

There are people you deal with, stress situations, drama, a whole slew of things that you encounter that take this game way past the actual game character. Ever met a person that gets you riled up on purpose, punches your buttons and then just says “hey, just kidding, calm down”? Those are the kind of people that I would like to suckerpunch and tell them, hey man, just kidding, calm down yourSELF.

Anyway. Will see how this raiding thing turns out. It is cool to be in TK, SSC and all that, but after all, the raids always burn down to:

Encounter  = ( special abilities ) + ( this is how we deal with it )

Every. Single. One. It is always just about memorizing (click the cube zomg, jump from the platform before quill zomg, don’t aggro while he changes forms zomg, BAD INFERNAL MOVE) and repeating.

I like being part of a raid. I like learning encounters. I like the bragging (I have been to Mt Hyjal). I like the phat lewtz.

I don’t like having it to do with 9 or 24 other people. LOL. I want to be in a raid where people have FUN.

The guild I am in doesn’t have fun. They execute strategies and move on. Sound boring? It is. They may succeed in getting me to get tired of it.

Gah.

</RANT>

Tanking trinket! + 62! + Destro Lock!

• Waldengel was lucky on her 2nd heroic MGT run: the Commendation of Kael’thas dropped (+57 sta trinket)! Never again will I _have_ to run it!
  Raid buffed she is at 20k+ hp and 32kish armor now with 35+% dodge!
• Heilerin hit 62! She is an awesome healer and does a good bit of damage (around 300 dps) to boot. I really like that spec.. with healing gear, she is at around +500 bonus healing with around 7.2k mana Definitely a viable healer. I tried healing on a SP PUG, but she was 61 at the time, and the first boss is extremely healing intensive. Going to have to practice that more.
• I respecced Deutscher! He is now a 0/21/40 Destruction Lock. The gear blows — although all epics (Shadoweave set + Battlecast set + other nice stuff), it SUCKS for Destro.. Destro is all about spell hit + crit. He needs to hit the 202 spell hit cap and get up to about 25% crit with basic buffs (not full raid buffs) before this spec is seriously useful. He gets NICE 5-6k shadowbolt crits (and believe me, after 1 year as Affliction lock a fat crit popping up on your screen is something that you really really get excited about ), even had a 4.4k immolate crit last night, but in a raid environment with other locks geared in s2/s3/t5 gear, it is far from being viable. :-(.Anyway, I am excited, because I know that the spec has a TON of potential.. after all, he does the same dps output now as he did as affliction, so I am on the right path. He is my ‘project’, so to speak. Went to Mags and Gruuls last night with him, he lost the rolls on both T4 chest AND legs. GAH! Ah well, another time. He also hit honored with Shattered Sun Offensive and got the VoidShatter enchant. That’s nice, but useless, since he needs a runed Eternium rod to do the enchant. Which in turns costs around 5-600g to make. So, screw that. At a later date maybe, but even with voids going for 25g and 1 large shard going for 25g, it won’t be worth it.

I like the other method a lot better. But I ain’t telling, because then everyone is gonna do it!

UPDATE: the new 2.4.2 patch will reduce the Void Shatter enchant to 0 cooldown. This means that people will be cranking out the Large Prismatic Shards like there is no tomorrow before the price will drop. Which will happen. So, get rid of those shards while you can.. in 3-4 weeks time, I predict that the average price of 1 shard will be no more than 10g. Quote me on that. Or not, since no one reads this blog.

I R survived Heroic Magister’s Terrace

I went in there last night, tanking for an excellent group of people: a hunter who could double-trap, a rogue with insance DPS, an excellent mage and an awesome Pally healer. We cleared that place out, 1 wipe due to me overseeing a Blood Knight hiding in the corner when I marked one room (duh!). 4 learning wipes at Kael — there is no way to kill that shield before he shoots his 50000 hp pyro at me. That is a hard encounter for a druid.. Wowwikie says: “Druid tanks are out of luck”.

The key would be to drop the threat, so rogue would get targeted, then he can cheat death and avoid pyro. Or, with a Pally, he can BOP and prevent it as well.

I told those guys (awesome group) that I will be running this instance once a day now until I get my tanking trinket off 3rd boss. I will try to see if I still have Hypnotist’s Watch laying around in my bank — or any other threat-reducing trinket.. I could also try to Cower in cat form, but switching to cat + hitting cower in time + possible resist… not sure.. I’ll just have to try it.

We did clear MGT after about 4 attempts. We decided to just stop healing me once he starts casting his pyro and save the Pally’s mana.. I also threw an innervate on him right before I died — I am SO nice! Hah!

The non-caster DPS trinket dropped off 3rd boss btw. Nice trinket, I would have used it for cat, but I let the DPSers have it.. eventually, they will already have it if it drops again, and I will GRAB it.

My characters - Armory links

I realized I never published the armory links:

Waldengel, 70 Druid
Deutscher, 70 Warlock
Heilerin, STB 70 Priest

Druid: 4xT4 Baby — +1400 armor!

Ran Mags + Gruuls with my druid last night, 2x T4 Chest piece dropped and the guy who won the roll passed on it — I was 2nd in line and I got it!!

Now Waldengel has the gloves, the helm, the shoulders AND the chest, which means that she is getting to reap the benefits of the 4-piece-set bonus: +1400 armor! Waldengel has over 32400 armor now in bear!! /evilgrin.

With over 34-something dodge in bear, I can solely focus on building up her stamina.. yesterday, full raid-buffed, she crossed the 20000 hp threshold. That made me feel pretty dang invincible

Even ended up tanking Gruul for a minute or so towards the end — MT got killed, I was 2nd-highest on threat (on purpose)..

I will hone my skills in heroic MGT from now on - I need to practice the multiple-mob-tanking a little bit more, and heroic MGT is THE place to be for that. With up to 6 mobs that need to be controlled at one point, there is a lot of tanking to be done. The more mobs I can reliably control, the less CC we have to worry about.

Plus, there is a very nice drop for me waiting as well: the +57 stamina trinket off the 3rd boss. That would be a SWEET addition to the gear.

As far as the new badge gear is concerned, the only items of interest are the druid staff and the dps leather waist piece — those 2 offer the biggest improvements stat-wise. I could probably replace both DPS mace (PVP S1 mace) and Earthwarden with this one weapon, most definitely the DPS mace though. Almost +500 AP - RAWR :-). This will take me a while to get though, at a cost of 150 badges. Well, at 22 badges per Kara run, this would be about 5-6 runs. Not that bad after all, I guess.

At first I was going to pick up the tanking ring for 60 badges, but after I got my 4th T4 piece and the armor set bonus, I decided to collect 15 more badges and just get the DPS waist piece instead, then start over and get 150 for the weapon.

Fun times.

Double-Druid-tanking FTW!

Just posted this on BBB’s site (yes, I am lazy, talk to the hand )

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Double-druid-tanked Kara last night. Me on Waldengel and another fellow druid. He MTd, I OTd. We cleared Start-Opera in 1 hour, pull after pull after pull, skipped Illhoof and had 1 shot at Prince.. unfortunately, the infernals locked us into a corner where we got ravaged by Prince, and then MT had to log (was almost midnight, I was overdue as well). This was probably the most fun Kara run I ever had.

This gives me WAY enough kicks to enjoy the game. I had fun. First time in a while.
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Seriously though.. do a speed clear of whatever instance if you want to fell an Adrenaline rush. It’s amazing.