Returning to the Blog

So, needless to say, I’ve been a little busy the past couple of weeks. In RL, I have applied to Grad school, and last week out of town with a good WoW and RL friend while waiting to interview for the program.  During this time, I met a lot of new RL people, interviewed for my hopeful future alma-mater, and played some WoW. And then, the day before my Grad interview, I found out that my grandpa passed away. Fortunately, he and I were not close, so it wasn’t a major blow to me, but I felt bad for my father—anyway, long story short, I’ve been pretty busy.

However, during my weeklong stay out of town, I did get pretty far along my Elder achievement line (I really want that title). I’ve completed the Kalimdor, Ally, Horde and Eastern Kingdom elder achievements, and I am now getting ready to finish the dungeon ones.

So one thing that has been coursing through my mind is this concept of when you have two healers in a group,  one is better geared, more experienced, and the other is a noob to healing, less gear etc., who do you let heal? I was running with my guildies, and the situation arose in which I was the better geared of the two healers, but my gear wasn’t suitable for tanking, nor was I spec’d for kitty DPS. But, the other person (whom is no longer in our guild) had recently thrown a fit about how “no one in the guild supported him, and he couldn’t grow as a healer if he was never allowed to heal.” Ok, fine. I let him heal, with the understanding that if healing items dropped (since I wasn’t going in as either of my specs, I pretty much just ran as a kitty) I would role on them… to which I was met with the remark, “Well, you aren’t healing…” To which I replied, “no, but I’m not tanking either, and I’m not spec’d for DPS, and my MAIN spec is healing… so therefore, if I see any upgrades, I should be able to roll on them.” Well, needless to say, I didn’t end up rolling on the one item that was healing, because then the punk healer started making me feel bad as when I compared our items, my stuff was all better than his, despite the fact that the trinket was a huge upgrade for myself. 

So, what dictates Guild etiquette when it comes to healing? Obviously, yes, it is important to get some experience, to learn the fights, to know how to heal them. But then again, if you’re running it as a random, as a daily, and are spec’d for either healing or tanking, at what point is it important to override the other person? When I ran with my guild in other instances, when I was lower geared, I would often secede from my healing option so that the better geared healer could control it, finding that sometimes it was more important for me to recognize the mechanics of a specific boss from a DPS standpoint. But, now that I have made the decision to be spec’d as a Healer first, and then a Tank (my gear scores are about equal on both) but not DPS spec, or availability of a DPS spec (damn the hybrid nature of the druid sometimes!) what am I supposed to do when there is another healer who is better geared than me, or another tank that is better geared for me… my DPS isn’t up to par, if I was in a LfD group, I’d be dropped in a heartbeat.  Suggestions?

Holy Violet Citadel Batman!

I donned my Batman suit (Tanking Gear), and ventured into the deadly lair of Kite Guy and Voidwalker Thing. There I was met with a rather nice PuG—a really nice (aka patient) healer, an extremely Newbie Deathknight (didn't know what "kiting" meant) and a decent array of DPS. My sidekick was absent for the day (I need to hold auditions for a new sidekick). Anyway, parked the batmobile mammoth at the entry and started the instance. It went rather well, until we incurred the wrath of Kite Guy. Kite Guy (Xevozz) wiped us (due to the orbs which pulled me in, and then promptly terminated my life), so we entered it again, this time with more success. The only hard part was the DK continually pulling from me (it wasn't an aggro issue on my side, the DK was taunting by pulling, etc).  Voidwalker Thing (Zuramat the Obliterator) was really easy—we really had awesome DPS—and the end boss was a no brainer. All in all, the instance went really well.

Potential outage this weekend… No WoW for me! Tear!

Moving in RL this weekend across town… second move in a month, so wish me luck. This means though that I will be internet less  for the entire weekend! Oh the misery! I think assuming I get everything moved I can probably go to my parent's to "watch the superbowl" aka use their internet.

Got my fourth piece of the tier 9 gear last night. One more piece and most of my tanking armor will be 232.

 One of the blogs that I read often (Feral Instincts) got me thinking  about taking WoW too far… when does it become a job instead of a game? Some of these people take is to seriously. So then, I step back and ask, ok, so am I just a bad player, or do I have a life? Will this change when I go into Grad school? I take breaks often enough that I wouldn't be surprised if I do. I read about these people who have schedules, and spread sheets, and so on—and that's all cool and dandy, but how much is too much?

Recently I have run some pretty harsh instances with some pretty bad PuG members—people who were too impatient to wait for the Druid to rez someone, or get someone healed. My life is pretty simple. I live alone, I have a dog and a job, and that's about it. I think about WoW a lot. I read a lot of WoW blogs. I almost went as far as to buy the WoW comic. But at no point to I ever get impatient with a group to the point where I leave a random group because someone isn't "moving" fast enough. Heck, I've wiped non-stop sometimes three times before the group as a whole finally called it quits. But I have to wonder if these  people who are leaving barely before a fight is over, the ones who won't even greet a party, etc. if those are the ones that keep schedules, spreadsheets, etc. I'm not saying that if you do that you are necessarily a bad player, or even a jerk, but it does make me wonder, as stated earlier, how much is too much?

Meta Logo?

Heroic #2: Yay for Misdirect

Tanked Heroic Drak'Thron Keep last night with some guildies, and my new protégé healer. It was relatively smooth—until we hit the dino boss. It's rather difficult to gather all of those adds—but for a fresh lvl 80 priest, and a rather under geared tank you should probably kill them all before you attempt the boss. It wasn't an epic fail, just a delay.  I wiped them once, and the priest wiped us once (I know this because I was the first one to die, thus telling me he wasn't able to keep up).

The thing that excited me the most was that I was keeping up with the threat put off by one of my Guildie hunters (he's such an awesome player, three characters completely decked out in armor). He informed me later that he was using MD—something which FollowOtherness had suggested on one of my previous posts. The little rogue in my group, one of my good friends, was on the floor a lot… not necessarily because of my tanking, but because the healer couldn't keep up with me and everyone else. She wasn't even pulling aggro, she was more or less one shot--or "insta-death" as our healer put it. At any rate, it was a great run--a few deaths, but fortunately we had a patient PuG member, so it was relatively easy going.

Hey, Who’s the Tank Here?

Ran Regular Culling of Strathholm with a friend of mine last night. We were in a pickup group of course, and he was healing, and I was tanking—or so I thought. Not only was I the only 80 in the group, I was also the most experienced. This became evident to me quickly as the warrior in the group started the instance without checking with anyone, and then proceeded to charge forward. He ran non-stop from one group to the next—finally forcing me to shout out—"Who's the tank again? Oh yeah. Me."

Not only was I que'd as the tank, I was also the group leader—but this warrior punk was even marking focus items, before I could even get there. So, Resto (the healer) and I pressed on.

It wasn't until we had finished all three of the beginning wave bosses, and were trudged on to Mal'Ganas (letting the wanna-be tank die three times) when the warrior shouted, "If we hurry, we can try for the mount!" and charged past Mal'Ganas.

"No point—we're on regular." I said. "There is no mount on regular."

"Yes there is, just hurry." Resto and I stayed behind. Waiting for him to realize that he was wrong. "OH!" he shouted. "We missed it."

The fact that we were all in human disguise may have aggravated me more, especially since I couldn't actually kill the little punk, but I continued to remind myself, that the kid was probably 10 years old, and trying to show off to his friends (they were all from the same server).

Hall of Reflection… Say What?

So I'm probably not into the lore of WoW enough to understand the reason for which this dungeon has been named the way it has. But I take issue with it. I guess it's perhaps because the two fights "mirror" each other at the beginning.  

Anyway, that tangent aside, I healed it last night for the first time—actually, I healed all of the heroic  ICC 5 mans. The entire experience was rather fulfilling. I got a nice 235 trinket, and some good experience despite the lag I was facing. After the never-ending waves (10 Blizzard, really?) we continued on, and I wiped for the first time when doing that run at that part of it. One of the pickups was like "I've never survived this last part--it's so hard." And sure enough, we died.  I was confused, what had I done wrong? And then it hit me—in the past when I had run it with my guildies, we kept ahead of the Lich King—but this tank wanted to tank behind him. After we had all rez'd and were back and ready to start the fight, I begged—"Please, could we stay in FRONT of the LK?" "I guess," the tank replied. "We could try it."

So we did, charging forward. And it worked. We completed it within minutes, quickly traversing all of the barriers, and ending right where we needed to. When we had finished, the pick-up had all received the "We're Not Retreating; We're Advancing in Different Direction" achievement.

Epic Failure as Tank

Well, I did it. First, I ran my first Heroic Dungeon—and I survived it (Hall of Stones). Of course, it helped that I was with a good team (two of my guildies, and then a couple Pick-ups). And then again with a few more of my guildies on Hall of Lightning. It built up my confidence. I was feeling good about it. And then it happened. Utgarde Pinnacle.   Known hereafter as Epic Failure. I survived the first two bosses. But it was horrible—I couldn't hold aggro to save my life. Three people died, and I had an all out wipe. I wish I could blame my armor, but I couldn't. I don't really know what I was missing—I think I need to create a few macros which will act kind of as a "save all" button. Some which I can click and rush the target to bring it back to my aggro. All I do know is that it is difficult for me to hold aggro—the hunter and mage were just too much DPS for my threat to keep up with. Any suggestions?