Throne of the Four Winds (Picture by MMO Champion)

I hopped onto WoW last Friday night expecting to do some BC raids in preparation of the next patch and transmogrification.  Instead I found myself heading back into the raiding game thanks to an old raiding buddy, Dopz, who was determined to help me get some gear and up my average item level (post Friday it was sitting at 330 which I believe is one step above abysmal). Unfortunately we didn’t have any tanks online who were willing to help so we had to PUG them + 1 extra DPS.  And that’s how I found myself sitting in front of some genie dudes in Throne of the Four Winds ready to heal some big baddy bosses in my extra fail gear.

What I discovered pretty quickly was that gear or no, healing is like riding a bicycle – it doesn’t matter what the blizzard developers change once you’ve done it long enough it’s all muscle memory.  After healing for what feels like forever, I was back to my old ways in no time.  Even after 9 months I could still remember all my click casts in Vuhdo (well except for dispelling but that’s another story!) and it became clear to me that I still love raiding and drove home how much I miss it.

We started the first boss which is 3 (I only ever saw 2 but I’ve been assured there were 3) little genie/efrit things and we wiped.  This was sad, but the good news was that I wasn’t the cause hooray! We subsequently came back (after I accidentally flew to The Vortex Pinnacle) wiped again, and I was probably part of the cause this time.  We had changed platforms and I was now on the dude that does steady AOE damage.  This was much harder for me to keep up purely because my gear was well below optimal and I ran out of mana!  Our raid was not going smoothly so far and I could feel impatience from the PUGs – we were at our limit of issues before we lost someone.  And typically that’s when the baby woke up and needed a feed.

Roughly the same time Caitlin woke up, Angelya from Revive & Rejuvenate’s little Sproutling woke as well.  I think the two of them had planned it in advance it was that well timed! I felt terrible but I had to AFK – babies and their tummies come first.  My partner knowing how much I had been enjoying myself, wipes and all played as me just to keep things going and while Caitlin had a marathon 30+ minute feed I discovered on Twitter that they did kill the boss and the 2nd one without us nursing mums. I even got a nifty new belt – Gale Rouser Belt of the Wavecrest and a Spiritcaller Cloak which I think the guild “donated” to me or was a gift from Goodiemania?  I’m not quite sure it was getting late by that stage and I’d just been in a dark room for the last 30 odd minutes so was half asleep myself but either way I was grateful for it!

As we got ready to do a heroic dungeon, we were all set and Caitlin woke again this time needing a nappy change and full bedtime routine to calm her down again.  And that was the end of my night.  I felt really bad – I had managed to pick up loot without actually doing anything other than make people wait around for me.  I had become that player.  Every guild/PUG has one and in my past life as a heroic level raider I couldn’t stand them.  In fact players like these were exactly why I joined a raiding guild in the first place – who wants to PUG a raid just to stand around waiting for that tank to get the phone, or that healer to brb?

Now I don’t have one of those dream babies that go to bed at 7pm and wake up again at 7am in the morning.  I don’t have a bub that is remotely like that and most of the time I and quite ok with it – I know it won’t last forever.  Occasionally though it would be nice to know that I could definitely play for a 3 hour period straight without having to worry about getting up to give her a feed.  I know there are a lot of WoW players with babies that managed to keep up raiding while looking after their young ones and I am in awe, unfortunately I am just not one of them.  So I’m not quite sure where that leaves me.  I got a taste for raiding and its going to be hard to go back to farming old school raids/dungeons now, but I can’t commit to any type of raiding schedule without being the player that makes everyone sigh in frustration.

I guess its back to leveling and solo play for Lath again.

Caitlin has also been participating in some baby boss fights as part of Nymphy’s Cutest Little Babies in the World of Warcraft series.  Anyone wanting a few moments of pure squee should check out their adventures here:

The Cutest Little Babies in the World (of Warcraft)

The Cutest Little Babies in the World (of Warcraft) – Part II

And because I’m a proud mum and its been about 8 months since I posted a photo – here is my little girl @ 9 months.

Caitlin rocking the 80s vibe (photo taken by Instagram)

LFM Sindragosa + Lich King only.

Beru’s post, The Anti-Gear Score Experience, was one of the most inspiring things that I have read since I started blogging.

I love the idea of sharing an experience that I love (raiding) with people who might have been left out. I value determination and a good attitude above pretty much everything else when I raid. So I was almost envious of Beru’s crappy-geared but tenacious, quiet, attentive and eager group of players.

About six months ago I brought up the idea of running a “goodwill” raid on behalf of the guild – mostly to see if any other guildies were interested in helping me help someone else. Nobody was interested. Someone kindly explained that the idea was “pathetic” but mostly I got the feeling that others felt it was unnecessary. I put the idea aside.

I was listing some auctions last Saturday when I noticed that a continuation 10 man ICC group in Trade Chat was looking for players to help them kill Sindragosa and the Lich King only. Perhaps here was a group desperate to kill The Lich King before the expansion ended. Perhaps here was a group that needed my help!

I whispered the raid leader to offer my time. I figured: 10 man Lich King and Sindragosa with a 30% buff should be a breeze. Get a tank out there and keep him alive long enough and I’ll do the killing. Simple.

The 10 man

I joined the 10 man – a mismash of four or five guilds – but linked, I think, by friendship. They swapped characters around until they had enough tanks and healers. It’s been so long since I pugged anything that this run was a bit of a shock to the system.

One of the tanks wasn’t quite ready so we waited about 20 minutes while Sindragosa flew around in circles. I mean, in a guild run, if someone isn’t present and ready, it’s because the player isn’t actually at their keyboard. So I assumed the tank that we were waiting on in our raid group, in Ironforge, was AFK. But it turns out, no, he was doing important things in Ironforge instead of flying to Icecrown Citadel.

I was patient and bit my tongue. I didn’t contribute to raid strats and didn’t offer advice. I figured this was their show and I was just there to help out. I also believe that it’s more of a challenge for me to adapt to someone else’s raid strategy than forcing 9 other people to follow mine. And, honestly, is there anything more annoying than some stranger coming into your raid and telling you “you’re doing it all wrong!”? Frankly, a lot of the time “wrong” equals “different to what I’ve done before”.

Sindragosa

Our raid leader was in turns very encouraging and motivating, coming up to reasons to explain each and every wipe and reminding us “we’ll get it next time, I’m sure!”. He was also really, really, nasty when someone made a visible mistake, for example, not running to the designated spot when they were marked for Frost Beacon even though they were well away from everyone else. A couple of people were called some pretty horrible names.

Within a couple of attempts we had managed to push Sindragosa into the last phase.

I think the first time I attempted Sindragosa with my guild we wiped on her for an entire night before coming back and killing her the second evening. In comparison this group was doing very, very well and we were making sure and steady progress. I knew that we were well on our way to earning a kill – in fact I think we did it in 4 or 5 attempts.

It was encouraging to see everyone around me get their achievements. And I positively fed off the excitement from my teammates. This was why I had joined!

The Lich King

It took an incredibly long time to even start our first attempt on the Lich King. Several members of the raid had never seen the fight before and our tanks, while knowledgeable about the fight, had never tanked it.

I raised my hand and offered to cure the Necrotic Plague in the first phases. In Vitare we almost always assign cleanse duties to DPS (isn’t this why Ret Paladins exist?) so our healers aren’t distracted from, you know, healing. Less tank death equals faster progression in my opinion. Our Raid Leader asked the Discipline Priest to do it instead.

The first attempts were surprisingly messy. The first phase of the Lich King encounter is really very easy compared to the rest of the encounter. Tanks were dying and ghouls were all over the place. I started to have my first doubts about whether or not the group would be able to do it.

The Discipline Priest started to get on my nerves. He had already begged for gold in order to repair (I guess he was flat broke) during our wipes on Sindragosa. I also thought he was cleansing too early. Although, to be fair, the raiders were still a bit slow to react and run to the Shambling Horrors when they contracted the Plague.

But I was still enjoying myself. Raiding with this group had its own challenges: I was threat capped (and had been during Sindragosa) for most of the first phase and casting to maintain my threat at about 120-130% of my tank’s threat isn’t something that I have practiced much this expansion.

The time between attempts started to drag out longer and longer. At least two or three members of the raid were incredibly lazy about running back and almost always had to be resurrected. During the down time the Discipline Priest made a game of seeing how far he could run around the Frozen Throne using Levitate. Of course, he died at least three times experimenting (eventually he would fall off the edge), and we would wait while he ran back.

Yes, this was the player who couldn’t afford their repair bill.

The job of curing Necrotic Plague was transferred to me. I campaigned for it really. I couldn’t cast every cooldown anyway, so I figured it was more important to get heals on the tanks. Unfortunately I wouldn’t cure players until they were in range of the Shambling Horrors… and this lead to a death or two. Combine this with a few joking comments to the Discipline Priest made via whispers like this:

Cassandri: I’ll be fine with dispels… if I remember to do it at all LOL.

And I think this Discipline Priest started to have doubts about my ability to, you know, play.

We started to consistently get into the transition phase. The Shambling Horror tank died twice because I didn’t successfully cleanse them after their last add had died. I found this pretty distressing: I was failing at my assignment. And I was trying! It wasn’t until the second death that I identified the problem: the silence (magic) from the Raging Spirits was covering up the presence of Necrotic Plague (disease).

The Discipline Priest started getting more vocal about my (in)ability to handle the dispel assignment. Obviously he was well and truly convinced that he could do a better job than I.

Disc Priest: Fuck it. I’m taking over dispels again

I was perplexed: I’d never come across this problem (Magic covering up a Disease debuff) in all our guild attempts on the Lich King since the release of ICC. Even though dispelling isn’t normally my assignment, it’s something that I will keep an eye on in case I’m called in to take over after an unfortunate death.

I turned off all my settings that display Magic effects and we kept going. Soon enough we reached Phase 2. And then regressed and stumbled as DPS died to Raging Spirits (if you don’t let a tank pick them up they will kill you).

The times between attempts got longer and longer.

Another player in the raid asked the tanks to change their positioning during the transition phase. Until then I hadn’t really paid too much attention to their positioning: I was more focused on staying behind the Raging Spirits as they appeared and watching over the Shambling Horror tank. Once our Raging Spirits tank was facing a set direction (and well away from our Shambling Horror tank!) the magic and disease debuffs were also kept separate. I tell you it was a relief to solve that mystery!

We saw Phase 2 and Defile was handled very well. Our raid leader was very vocal about when to spread out (right before Defile) and when to stack just off center (right before Val’kyr). A couple goes at Phase 2 and unfortunately the transition into Phase 3 caught most of the group off guard and we wiped it since so few of us had reached the safe zone in time.

Then we waited about 30 minutes so that our tank could go and eat dinner. Our Disc Priest ran out of gold (again) and eventually disconnected when nobody would give him any. Our Mage left. There was talk of giving up and calling it.

Calling it?! No way!

I’ve been with groups that aren’t progressing. I’ve been in raids when you know that you’re not going to get it that night (try… say… every single H LK attempt I’ve ever been part of) and your only aim is to play just a little bit better than you did the night before.

And this group certainly wasn’t stuck. They had everything that they needed to earn the kill and we were seeing excellent progress in a short amount of time. Yes, there were some regressions but overall we were doing well.

Yet they were sluggish. Demotivated. Why? I can’t figure it out.

I was prepared to beg every single DPS on my friends list or in my guild in order to get that kill. Perhaps my tenacity was infectious (or more likely they were able to fill the Mage’s spot with ease) and they found replacements for the lost Disc Priest as well. They had to swap to different characters but we ended up with two tanks and three healers and five DPS.

Success

We killed him!

The very first time we got into Phase 3 we killed him. I was quietly confident: we were at 25%, 10/10 alive, and the Lich King’s health was slowly going down. And the healers were able to keep up with the damage from exploding Vile Spirits and Harvest Soul. Whoever was sucked into Frostmourne improvised really well, too. Our raid leader was yelling instructions out over Vent as it happened.

I’m glad I did that PuG. I helped 8 people earn the title Kingslayer (although a few might have been on alts) and I think the other players in the group were really thrilled at what we’d achieved.

I’m constantly surprised at how raiders underestimate what they can do. It was really surprising to see how discouraged the group was after only a few wipes.

Is this why your typical ICC PuG doesn’t really try to get beyond Saurfang? Of course there’s a learning curve when you’re doing a new boss. That’s to be expected. But often there’s a small chance that you might just kill it the very next pull. Or the one right after that!

I’ve also got a new appreciation for the time I spend raiding with my guild. We’re not perfect – far from it. But we don’t give up. And we’ll 21, 24 man it if we have to. Everybody tries to fit in as many attempts as we can into our raid time even if real life wants to get in the way.

I think I ought to develop a slightly thicker skin. I really let that Disc Priest get to me. And, really, he wasn’t as offensive or obnoxious as I see other players treated. Mind you, I’ve tried to respond better to criticism for the last 10 years of my life. Probably not going to happen now simply because I’d like my PuGs to be more enjoyable!

Did I really do a good deed?

I think I was actually wrong about this one. On Barthilas, where ICC PuGs are happening 24/7, I’m fairly confident that any player who wants to see Icecrown Citadel has the opportunity. Yes, you might need a reasonable Gear Score from 5 man heroics, but that’s about it. When I wanted to start raiding years ago I felt that it was closed off to me. I was projecting that feeling on to players now. But this is a different expansion, a different game. Raiding is so accessible now, if you want to raid, you will.

If I really wanted to find 9 people who had never been inside ICC, but wanted to, I’m not even sure I could!

I also think that I envisioned myself in some kind of tour guide role: showing players who may have only seen a couple bosses all the fun stuff there is to see at the end of the raid zone.

This is, in hindsight, ridiculous! People don’t want a guide. Actually most of the players in the 10 man seemed almost cynical or ambivalent about the bosses. Players soaked up the tactics as though they’d seen it all before. If Beru’s group was eager or carefully polite (so careful so as not to wreck their ICC experience) my group was certainly… not. Nobody danced on The Lich King as he sat on his Frozen Throne. Nobody made fun of his speech or Sindragosa’s smoker’s voice (as I certainly did when we were first wiping – er, still do for that matter).

I had to dig this picture out of my archives - damn extended maintenance!

Like many raiders I stopped throwing myself into the Dungeon Finder to complete my Random Northrend Heroic several months ago. If it wasn’t the day that I realised that I didn’t need Emblems of Frost anymore it was the day after. Probably that same day.

I have a new reason to re-queue the daily heroic using the Dungeon Finder now (but that’s the topic for another post). And two of my friends have just returned to the game and are now playing brand new level 80 characters: a Mage and a Hunter. Queuing up together seems like a good idea.

But this doesn’t even feel like the same Dungeon Finder that I remember. Is it settling down? Is this what it’s going to be like forever after?

The first thing that I’ve noticed is that I never have to wait out the Average Wait Time. I almost always get an invitation in about half the expected time when I queue on my own as Damage. If I’m with the brand new Mage and Hunter as the third Damage dealer we need to wait a bit longer.

Unfortunately that first invitation is almost always a bust. Someone will decline and I’ve started to have serious doubts about the statement “You have been returned to the front of the queue.” I know that the Dungeon Finder must be able to match up parties within seconds. I’m not sure what the average groups-per-minute rate is but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear someone say that the Dungeon Finder, per Battlegroup, matches up 20 groups per minute. Maybe it’s more. Maybe it’s less.

But I don’t understand how going to the front of the queue can turn into an extra 5 minute wait either. That’s not the front of the queue. That’s the front of the queue with didn’t-you-read-the-small-print?-conditions. I think that means that they wait for the next possible group that doesn’t already have a Priest, the next group where the Tank has a purple shirt on, the next group where at least one member has the Jenkins title switched on and… god knows what else.

The biggest improvement that I’ve noticed is that, by and large, the groups are made up of only people who genuinely need Emblems and even – omg – drops from the instance itself. These are people who are just starting out, although probably not playing their first character, and trying to gear up. People who are struggling to generate enough threat, struggling to put out the DPS and struggling to keep green bars full. This is who the Dungeon Finder was made for!

One of the other things that I’ve noticed, or am sensitive to, is that GearScore seems to be everywhere. Most of the time nobody is crass enough to come right out and talk about GearScores but occasionally a comment is made and you realise that pretty much everyone is running the thing. It’s been so long since I’ve had occasion to PuG lately that I’ve managed to avoid the entire phenomenon. I’m not sure what numbers mean what – what is good and what is average and what is bad.

Of course, these days, every boss that can be skipped will be skipped. Months ago I was disappointed to find that Halls of Stone had become a 2 boss run. That trend has well and truly crossed into other dungeons. I was excited to get Utgarde Pinnacle yesterday – I get excited when it’s anything other than Halls of Stone – and was immediately informed by the Dungeon Guide that “we’re skipping beasts”. I didn’t complain – the beast event thingy is really only one of the four bosses in Utgarde Pinnacle. To my dismay however the tank ran right past the first boss while she launched into her monologue. Obviously this is standard operating procedure now. Nobody bothered to announce we were skipping her, too. Perhaps I should feel grateful that we stopped to kill Skadi instead of intentionally bugging/resetting him and running right through. Or perhaps Blizzard just fixed that part.

The second boss in Azjol-Nerub, the spider guy, is always skipped. And he’s not really meant to be optional – groups just bug him out and run past as he’s resetting. Don’t get me started on Old Kingdom: The Instance In Which All Bosses Will Be Avoided. Well that’s not completely true. It’s pretty hard to skip Prince Taldaram. Which is kind of amusing because we have to go kill him all the time in Icecrown Citadel, too.

I found myself in Oculus today. There’s something about Oculus that just brings out the worst in people, I think. The Dungeon Guide (which turned out to be the healer) immediately opened party chat with:

[Dungeon Guide] I was just thinking “please be Oculus”
[Dungeon Guide] 6 emblems in here

Finally, a run with people who like to do proper, full clears! Unfortunately the Dungeon Guide turned out to be an annoying jerk. A few seconds later they just had to throw in:

[Dungeon Guide] DK tanks are the worse

Our tank was a Death Knight of course – appropriately geared and skilled for the instance. By which I mean he didn’t have awesome gear or health or threat. I still didn’t think telling him he sucked just for playing a Death Knight tank was really the right thing to say. But I let it pass.

Our intrepid Dungeon Guide was also of the “go go go” mentality that has also become prevalent in Dungeon Finder groups of late. This hasn’t really started to bug me as much as I know it has other bloggers. I find it kind of silly. I mean, you’re in the middle of your play time and you’re trying to get it over with as fast as possible. Frankly I don’t care if a dungeon takes 5 minutes or 40 minutes as long as I enjoy it.

Pushing the group too quickly through Oculus was causing us quite a few problems. There always seemed be at least one drake latched onto us as we dismounted on each platform. On one memorable occasion only the healer/Dungeon Guide and myself were dismounted, right on the edge of the platform, while the rest of the party were clearing additional drakes behind us on their own drakes. The mobs on the platform pulled somehow (I’m not sure how – I didn’t see anything strange) and immediately swarmed over the healer. I pulled a quick Mind Sear > pull threat > Disperse > Bubble > PoM > Shadowform to save the healer’s life while we waited for the tank to come in and take over. We survived and I was pretty damned thrilled that nobody had died.

Unfortunately the healer/Dungeon Guide felt differently

[Dungeon Guide] l2p

I couldn’t leave it alone. First off, if this healer could actually see what had pulled the group or had caused the problem, good. But at least man up and call out the individual responsible and explain what they did wrong. Telling the entire group that they should “l2p” helps nobody. It’s the kind of thoughtless as-long-as-I-look-good crap that pisses me off.

[Cassandri] You do realise that by saying that you’re not helping anybody, right?

[Dungeon Guide] I never said I was here to help

Welcome to my ignore list, buddy! What a total dick. Why even play a social game at all? Go play some single player campaign or something where you won’t be inflicting your personality on anyone else.

[DPS 1] Hey when someone with 6k gear score tells you to be nice maybe you should pay attention

[DPS 1] They’re usually the worst

This is the point at which I realised that everyone is running GearScore. I didn’t reply because by then I had the Dungeon Guide on Ignore and I wasn’t 100% sure that the person with “6k gear score” was actually me and that I was still following the thread of the conversation. And wouldn’t that have been embarrassing if I had defended myself … only to find out they were talking about someone else altogether.

I did end up going to WTFismyGearScore.com after the run to check my GearScore. And yes, that other DPSer was talking about me. Which is a shame because I’ve also come to realise that there’s a stereotype floating around that people with high gear scores are total assholes (worse than our Dungeon Guide even!). I wish I had replied in that Oculus run. I know exactly what I would have said:

[Cassandri] Then you haven’t met anyone in my guild. And I can pretty much guarantee they have higher gear scores than I do.

If only I had said it!

It does disturb me to think that perhaps a lot of the well geared players running around on the battlegroup are giving the rest of us a bad name. I think people are generally pretty decent, regardless of gear. But perhaps those “elitists” are only treating me nicely because I’m like them or something. And when I’m not around they go around treating everyone else like scum.

I like to believe that Chastity’s theory of the wanna-be hardcores (who act elitist and put others down to elevate their own status) are the rotten core ruining it for everyone else. Vixsin perception/argument for the Elite mirror my own thoughts and experiences too closely. So don’t judge someone based on their GearScore, please!

Because my Hunter and Mage friends are so poorly geared at the moment we’ve been getting all the easy dungeons like The Nexus, Utguarde Keep and Culling of Stratholme. And because they’re both playing DPS classes when the three of us get together I’ve been queuing as a Healer to try and speed up our acquisition of Emblems. I looked like a total idiot when I waltzed straight up through the Inn and along the road to Stratholme of the past. Yes, it turns out that you can just talk to Chromie and be ported right inside now. Oops. At least nobody actually died by the the time I got there.

I healed a Nexus run in which the Dungeon Guide – and tank in this case – despaired of our group’s gear:

[Dungeon Guide] Great. Only our healer has decent gear
[Dungeon Guide] This is going to take forever

Of course it didn’t take forever. 30 minutes perhaps. The tank’s own gear was frankly pretty decent in my opinion – not only was it over 22k but he was pretty damn easy to heal and took damage in pretty reasonable, and predictable chunks. I amused myself by trying to figure out how I had set up my Power Infusion macros. But the group won my praise when we approached the first boss.

[Tank] Let me pull right back
[Tank] Otherwise fear is going to be baaaaad

And, you wouldn’t believe it, but the third damage dealer in our group, a melee DPS of some flavor, kept trying to run out of the boss’s whirlwind. Of course he took damage but he was really trying not to.

[Cassandri] There’s nothing I like better than seeing people do encounters properly

[Tank] Why do you say that

[Cassandri] You planned for the fear in advance instead of just ignoring it
[Cassandri] Which is what most groups seem to do
[Cassandri] I like it

I really enjoyed that run.

And you know what I like the most about the Dungeon Finder these days? You can find groups and be teleported straight in to do holiday bosses like Lord Ahune! Now that’s what I call convenient. It also means that I’ll never have to worry about this ever again.

The Pick Up Crowd, the /wave folks, gather at Eventide

By Raiding Alliances I don’t mean “LOL lets go kill the Stormwind Auctioneers!” I mean, when people talk about being part of a “collective” or a raiding group bigger or outside of their guild, how does it function?

How many people are in it? Do raids run at scheduled times? Is everything just /roll-ed on? What’s the incentive to join a raiding collective over a regular or casual raiding guild? Do they have a website?

And, most importantly, how the heck does it differ from your typical Pick up Group?

I sincerely hope that you didn’t come to this post looking for answers, because I have none. I’m hoping that some of our readers might be able to fill me in.

How do I find out if there’s a collective already running on my server, or even if there’s one on another server if I was willing to transfer?

In my mind I picture some loosely formed private chat channel “BarthilasCollective” or some such rubbish (you could call it “FluffyPinkBunnyRaiding” of course – actually lets stick with that) where, if you happen to be online at a time when some intrepid soul is willing to Raid Lead, you might see something like:

[5. FluffyPinkBunnyRaiding] LFM ICC25 – healers especially

Looks a lot like your average Trade Channel spam. Of course the members of the collective probably don’t need to be worried about having their loot ninja’ed right out of their hands, and there’s probably some assurance that the group will comprise of fairly skilled players.

But, at the end of the day, isn’t it a glorified chat channel and the luck to be online at the right time?

I swear I’m never online at the right time. Since Thursday last week, when I missed my guild 10 man ICC run by 20 minutes, I’ve been keeping an eye out looking for a promising PuG run.

80% of PuGs forming advertise like so:

[2. Trade] LFM ICC10 – need 1 tank and 3 geared healers!

About 10% read like so:

[2. Trade] LFM ICC10 – need 3 healers and 2 ranged (hunter prefered)

And about 10% read like so:

[2. Trade] LFM ICC10 – need all!

I usually try and weasel my way into those 10% of Pick Up Groups still looking for ranged DPS when I’m PuGging – and try and convince them that although I’m clearly not a Hunter, I do a pretty good job anyway. I tried to do that last night by asking very politely:

To [Slippy]: Do you have any room for a Shadow Priest in your run?

On this occasion I actually got a reply, which is a step up from being ignored:

[Slippy] whispers: No sry

Which I was fine with until I spotted Slippy’s ammended macro:

[2. Trade] LFMICC10 – need 3 healers and 2 ranged (pref hunter, lock, mage, boomkin)

I kid you not. He listed pretty much every single ranged class except Shadow. I took a deep breath. No, Cass, the other kids don’t want to play with you today.

I assume that there was another Shadow Priest already in the run, or even more likely a Shadow Priest forced to heal, who would have had a tantrum if another Shadow Priest was invited to the group. I can understand that. If they’d just given me a chance I would have assured them that I would happily pass on all drops… just for a chance at the Emblems.

So I monitored Trade chat for a bit longer and noticed a Warlock trying to do the same as me – find a 10 man Icecrown run:

[2. Trade] Geared lock, 5.4GS, LF ICC10!

I thought about whispering him, trying to either recruit or piggyback my way into whatever 10 man he stumbled in to, but decided that might be a bit much to ask of a perfect stranger.

So I decided instead to follow his example. I’m a smart girl! And I used to work in marketing, I should know how to sell myself (er, you know what I mean) and get noticed from all the fluff in Trade chat.

First off, I decided to advertise in LookingForGroup. That’s what the goddamn channel is designed for after all. Mistake. Oh yeah, I don’t have GearScore and have absolutely no freaking idea what my gear score would be anyway.

[4. LookingForGroup] [Cassandri] Shadow Priest of unknown GearScore LF ICC10 – I promise not to steal all the clothy drops

Unfortunately I got no reply in that particular channel, so I dropped principles and readvertised in Trade. I guess you could argue that I was offering up my time in exchange for loot and emblems – that’s still something of a Trade.

[2. Trade] [Cassandri] Shadow Priest of unknown GearScore LF ICC10 – I promise not to steal all the clothy drops

I really just wanted Slippy and his Shadow Priest to reconsider me for their raid. No go. I didn’t even get people offering to tell me my GearScore.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned “not stealing gear”. Does it make me sound suspicious? Like I’m trying to counteract a reputation for ninja-ing?

A bit deflated by all this lack of attention I logged off and came back to try again a hour later. This time I skipped the runs wanting every ranged class except for Shadow Priests and jumped on the “need all” type groups.

It started off with 3 people when I joined. 30 minutes later we had 4 and a half (someone was disconnected – hopefully temporarily). Another 15 minutes and the Raid Leader, the guy who invited me, left the raid. I gave up.

If something exists between the totally organised, you-know-what-quality-you’re-getting guild run, and the randomness of PuG raids, I want to know about it!

***

By the way, I thoroughly apologise for using that hideous tan pale pink colour on this website. I don’t know what Blizzard were thinking when they set the default chat channel colour to such an awful pastel. The only good thing is that you can re-colour them. And you should.

* All character names are totally made up, not to protect the identity of the player, but because I honestly don’t remember who said what.

When the silence gets to you...

I once wrote that one of The 15 things You Should Know About the Dungeon Finder was

the less said, the more successful the run will be

Little did I know that would turn out to be the norm, not the exception. I hate that people are too afraid or too lazy to speak up and chat during instance runs these days. I hate that people only talk when something has gone wrong, someone has died, or someone is doing something seriously wrong.

When you run the same dungeons over and over again for a year (and counting) the only things that differentiates one run from the next is the group that you’re with. Some kind of chat also alleviates the boredom of healing. Well it does for me, anyway. I could sit here and complain that nobody talks during my dungeon runs and do nothing to change things. Fortunately, I’m not that kind of girl. There’s really only two ways to start a conversation in my experience. Do something so socially embarrassing that people can’t not say something. Or say something yourself. For the last few weeks I’ve been making a more concerted effort to start a conversation in my dungeon runs. Most of the time I’ll just keep talking (and typing) to myself. But sometimes… it works.

In business networking circles I’m sure they’d say that I was using “icebreakers”. But the word gives me bad vibes so I try not to think of it like that. Here are some things you can say in your next PuG to either:

• (a) Start a conversation
• (b) Change the topic when the conversation goes south
  Note: Any discussion about how bad someone’s gear is or how cool someone’s main is probably bad.

There’s really only the one way to measure success or failure. If you can get just one other person to respond to you in Party chat it’s a success. An Emoted reply does not count as success. Even one response other than “go go go” or “shut up” counts.

Conversation Starters and Rates of Success

1. What are you listening to on iTunes?

I would have thought this would open up all kinds of friendly chat. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy some music to liven up their daily heroic? I consider it mandatory, and even included it as part of my buffing/readycheck mental check list. Prayer of Fortitude? check. Music? check.

However I’ve yet to receive anything but silence to this question. I’ve tried it out about 5 times. In hindsight, I think it might be a bit broad and people are always hesitant to name their favourite band only to find out that other people have never heard of them. I also think a heck of a lot of people like Britney Spears and are too scared to admit it. I’m sure she didn’t sell millions of albums all to one person, but whatever.

Or, perhaps, nobody but me uses iTunes.

*Update* Ooooh I just remembered running into a Rogue by the name of “Octavarium”. I asked him if he chose his name because he likes the Dream Theatre album, and then asked the party to wait while I switched my iTunes playlist. I guess some people have built in conversation starters

2. Poking fun at NPCs or complaining

If you said “Brann is a fuckwit” you might not get a response. But I almost always make some remark about how short Brann is, how he talks too much and how he ought to learn how to run* when I’m in Halls of Stone (ie. every second day). And I always get some kind of reply.

So that one counts as a success. The quality of the reply might be pretty poor and it might not really start an actual conversation. But it’s better than silence, right?

3. Ragging on the 1 DPS that’s outperforming everyone else

See that Warrior in your party pulling 8k DPS? Don’t kiss their feet. Don’t suck up or /bow (that’s plain creepy). Instead try:

“Gee I don’t know. I think we should kick Bladez since they can’t reach 10k. It’s just not good enough for a heroic.”

Even though you might only get a few chuckles and “LOL”s out of your other party members, I like this one because it combines conversation with a compliment cleverly woven right in. So this one counts as a success in my book.

4. Greeting your fellow players with “Morning” or “Afternoon” instead of “hi”

Perhaps this only really works on the Bloodlust battlegroup since we’re a mix of American and Oceanic servers but at any given time chances are someone in your party is actually playing at the complete +12hour opposite time of day to you.

Opening with “Good morning” at 11am in the morning can net you some surprising results. If you’re lucky it can lead into other players disclosing what country they’re playing from. You might even be able to compare latencies (although, as an Aussie I believe you’re generally better off just not knowing).

This one is a bit hit or miss. But it definitely pays off when you come across that rare individual that doesn’t realise the world is round.

5. How much are Dream Shards selling for on your server?

This is my favourite conversation opener. And I’ll ask it the moment someone chooses to “Disenchant” a rare Axe that vendors for 15g. Based on what the 10 or 15 people who have replied so far… nobody has any clue. Most people give reasons like “I use the Shards” or “I give them to my mates” and most common “I dunno”.

Wake up people! Dream Shards on the Barthilas Auction House are 3g 50s. Some of the prices quoted from other servers have put them at 5 to 8 gold. Most blues in dungeons vendor more than 5g and weapons in particular can vendor for over 20g.

Check the vendor price and choose Greed and vendor the valuable drops. Bracers and Gloves are usually the only armor pieces that vendor for 3-5g and should be converted into Dream Shards. If you still want more Dream Shards, just buy them cheap from the Auction House.

This has been my most successful conversation starter because it generally leads to a proper conversation of up to about 6 lines of chat (oh my god!). And its always gotten me some kind of response.

* Apparently, Brann has learned how to run which should speed up the escort part of the Tribunal of Ages in the next patch. Shame that it’s not going to speed up the actual Tribunal of Ages event. When you have to drop totems twice in one instance boss fight – it’s too long.

Would you jump? My queues are quick, but they're not that quick!

In this modern age of Dungeon Finder, Dungeon Finder, Dungeon Finder I can tell you who holds all the power: Tanks.

I know we talk about instant (insta) queues. I’ve seen tanks prostituting themselves and their skip-the-queue in Trade chat for the price of 50g. I’ve heard all about “Tank Roulette”: a game in which the tank stands at the edge of Krasus’s Landing, queues using the Dungeon Finder as a Tank, jumps off the edge and either:

• (a) ends up safely in a dungeon before they die a horrible death from falling.
• (b) or – there’s a small chance – that they might hit the ground before they are matched with a party.

I laughed when I heard about Tank Roulette. And I started waiting a good 20 seconds before accepting my invitation… *evil laugh*

But I figure tanking isn’t probably the most fun job in the game so, why not? Let the tanks get some kind of bonus for all the crap they have to deal with. Every time you’re waiting in a queue what you’re really waiting for is for a tank out there on your Battlegroup to say “ok, I’m ready to tank something now”. And that’s power.

Deciding Vote

When you set the pace, when you are the reason that the group is a functioning group at all, that can lead to all kinds of bad behaviour.

A tank chooses what bosses, if any, are killed or skipped. And the group has little say in the matter unless they wish to spend another 5-10 minutes at the “front” of the queue waiting for a new tank. Lathere and I queued quite a few heroics when she was gearing up her level 80 Mage, and I my level 80 Shaman using Emblems of Triumph. We didn’t want a super quick, 2 Emblems of Frost, run. We wanted Emblems from bosses.

However, whenever we entered Halls of Stone or Old Kingdom the tank would often open up with “Not doing optional bosses, ok?”. Well Lath and I soon learned that the question mark was only there out of politeness. If we spoke up and asked to do a full boss clear for Emblems the tank would just drop party. Before we’d even started. We stopped asking and just started hoping not to arrive in those dungeons after our 20 minute wait.

I’ve been on the other side of course. When I queue dungeons as Cassandri I’m thrilled when I get to come in half way, or sometimes, just for the last boss. 5 minutes later and I’m done! But if the tank decides to do a full clear, or decides to do an achievement, that I’d prefer to just skip, I just have to go along with it.

And most interestingly of all, if other members of the party are debating whether or not to do an optional boss, or an achievement, the debate will continue until the tank either says “yes” or “no”. Once they put forth their opinion, the debate is over.

Abuse of Power

Perhaps the worst abuse of “tank power” that I’ve experienced so far occurred late at the end of a raid night. As we left Icecrown Citadel for the night a few guild members spoke up on Vent “who still needs to do their daily heroic?”. Two and a half parties formed. One full group, including our Feral Druid tank, and the group I was in: Lathere was healing, and we had 3 Damage dealers (including myself) but no-one able to Tank. I mean, we didn’t even have a Plate wearer: Shadow Priest, Mage and Moonkin.

We waited patiently for a Tank to join our group while the other group started clearing out Heroic Forge of Souls. We stayed to chat on Vent. Eventually we were placed in Old Kingdom with a pugged tank. They immediately dropped the group.

I found this pretty disappointing. Lath is an excellent and geared healer. The rest of us DPS in the group know how to play defensive and smart. But we can’t take the kind of hit that someone with a bit of defense rating, armor and a shield can take. We just needed someone who could take a beating. We wouldn’t have bitched about gear, threat or skill. But the tank didn’t give us a go, and left. We waited for a second tank as the other group approached the first boss in Forge of Souls.

Eventually we were paired up with a new Tank. We greeted him and buffed up, keen to get started. He picked through the first couple mobs slowly. Then, after standing around after killing the first Spellflinger group for few minutes we realised the tank had either disconnected or had afked. He wasn’t moving. I checked over my chat screen and he hadn’t said anything about going AFK. VuhDo didn’t mark him as Disconnected, either.

We started gearing up for a clothy-style pull to fill the time. Full HoTs on our only Leather wearer, my cursor hovering over Dispersion, carefully edging back to give us room to maneuver. We did it, just. The tank still hadn’t moved, but he also hadn’t come up as Disconnected yet.

I typed “are you there?” followed by “maybe we should just kick him?” comment in party chat. To my surprise, he responded immediately afterwards “nah don’t do that” and proceeded to start clearing left towards the first boss. I guess he wasn’t AFK or disconnecting.

Then 2 pulls later, at the bottom of the stairs and half way to the first boss he stopped pulling. Again. Another unannounced, unexplained break?

By now the guild run has finished Forge of Souls and we’re starting to get pretty pissed off. Lath started dressing him down in Party chat. I think I made a comment to this effect:

You’re here to tank. We’re here to do our jobs and we can’t do them unless you start tanking.

I think his response was something like “jeez, whatever”. We decided to kick him over Vent when a guild tank offered to come in and replace him. Unfortunately we soon discovered that, even though we had lost our 15 minute Dungeon debuff, the tank still had 5 minutes still to go. At least he started tanking again. Slowly.

While all this had been going on the first group had queued a second Heroic, and after being placed in Old Kingdom too, had overtaken us.

The moment the tank’s debuff expired, we kicked him. Just because you’re a Tank doesn’t give you the right to waste the rest of your group’s time while you eat or Alt-tab out of the game. The same behavior in another party member – Healer or Damage – would get you kicked really fast. Don’t queue until you’re ready.

Corrupted

One night, bored out of my mind, I agreed to run a few heroics with a guildies’s fresh level 80 Ret Paladin. Not for the 2 Emblems of Frost – I’d already completed that daily chore. Just for kicks. And one of our guild main tanks was coming along. And since I was there for the kicks, I was queuing as Shadow (that is, Damage only).

Bam! Loading screen. Talk about instant queue.

I didn’t even have time to say my “not HoS today, please” prayer. I was already in Azjol Nerub.

We had a pug DPS (a Druid, I think) and a Holy Priest. I looked at that Holy Priest and had a slightly guilty sucks to be you thought and that could have been me immediately followed by a you never know, maybe he likes healing.

Now I’ve played with excellent tanks who are thorough. I’ve played with excellent tanks who like to lead and enforce a kill order. And I’ve played with tanks who like to go fast. Fast, as in, getting a good threat lead and then moving onto the next pull while the previous mobs trail behind screaming “hey, we’re not dead yet!”. Well that was the kind of fast run we were doing.

By the time we finished off the second boss the Holy Priest asked if they could DPS since they didn’t really need to heal and we both ended up completing the last boss in Shadowform.

Our tank announced that we were going to queue again and invited the two PuGed players to stick around. We were already killing the first group in Gundrak when I realised that the Druid has disappeared, a Shaman has joined the group and was back at the entrance (probably still waiting for buffs) and the Holy Priest was still in Shadowform.

I dropped Shadowform to heal off some of the poison and started to get a bit annoyed. That was his job. The Holy Priest was taking this “you don’t need heals” thing a bit far.

Then I scrolled back through my chat pane. Yep, the formerly Holy Priest had requeued as Damage only. The new Shaman in the party was our new, pugged, Healer. And it hit me: This Priest was as bad as me! He had queued as a Healer to get into a daily heroic. But the minute you pair us with a tank and our choice of role? With a guaranteed instant queue? We refuse to heal and switch to DPS.

And, oh my god, it’s so much more fun.

We treated our pugged Shaman healer terribly and barely gave him a chance to land one heal before we were off and running to the next pack. Half-empty health bars make for anxious healers, trust me, I know. We went off in different directions at one point. We asked him to switch to a DPS spec for the Less-Rabi boss and then didn’t give him a chance to switch back and drink. If I was that Shaman I’d have been pretty pissed off.

Meanwhile, I was having a great time. I didn’t need to worry about threat. Things were practically lying down in surrender as we approached. The formerly-Holy Priest challenged me to a DPS race (whatever that means) but I think we were both trying to dish out as much pain as possible, as quickly as possible.

Was I corrupted? Absolutely! If my Priest could tank, would I queue as a Tank? Absolutely.

Electromagnetic Gigaflux Reactivator: more Epic than actual Epics

The last couple of weeks have been lazy summer holidays for me. During this time I probably should have been PUGing ICC 25 and 10s on Lathere and making sure I logged in to complete the daily heroic each day. I instead decided to be a bad little tree and not worry about my Emblems of Frost and did what I felt like doing: unwinding with some solo game play and leveling.

I finally leveled my Mage to 80. I paid to move her over from Horde to Alliance at level 70 the day faction transfers came out. And yet since then I’ve given her very little of my attention. So I’m happy that I reached max level.

And now Cass and I have started a pew pew Gnome duo. Cass is playing a little Mage and seeing I already had a Mage and a Priest figured I better give a Warlock a go. Plus this way I get even more use out of my cloth and spellpower heirloom items!

Pixii and Caesandra were born, or as Cass and I refer to them, ”The Littlies”. Our littlies aren’t being powered leveled or boosted, we’ve instead been slowly questing about the place whenever we were both bored and had some spare time to play. We’ve had a few hair-raising adventures, one particular standout memory involved me learning when Fear is not a good option, and I couldn’t forget the multiple arguments over whether I was to blame for putting Corruption on that mob before Cass marked it for sheeping or after (I promise you it was always before!).

And when our little Gnomes reached their 20s we decided to take the plunge into the world of PUG dungeons.

Pixii and Caesandra’s Tank Tour Of The Bloodlust Battlegroup

Because we normally queue with a couple of friends who have DPS toons around the same level, we’re having great fun meeting the young, upcoming tanks of Bloodlust and, dare I say, the future of tanking.

Overall I have to say I’m quite impressed. Let’s just forget about the Warrior who need rolled and then wore a cloak with intellect, or the tank who thought it was quite ok to pull half of SM – Graveyard in one pull. I believe these guys have been the exceptions.

Worst Thing I’ve Discovered

The one part of the new dungeon finder that I’m a bit sad about is that if you find a good group and you want to all stay together and farm instances, requeuing as a group never seems to work. I’m not sure if this is Blizzards way of ensuring the “good” players aren’t being hogged or if it’s something to do with being on different servers. Whatever it is, it’s quite sucky.

Best New Discovery

An item that inspired the title of this article. Its  also the reason I have now decided Gnomeregan isn’t half bad. I remembered Gnomeregan being long, painful and a waste of time. Not only does this dungeon seem fairly easy now, I’ve discovered that the final boss drops what has to be the best item I have ever won since I started playing World of Warcraft.

Pixii is the proud owner and wearer of Electromagnetic Gigaflux Reactivator. This has to be the craziest looking head piece in the game. It makes the Druid Tier 10 briarthorn headpiece look boring in comparison. The Electromagnetic Gigaflux Reactivator not only looks cool, it also shoots lightning out of it every 30 minutes!

I can’t believe I have been playing this game for over 3 years and have never been introduced to this marvelous item. It’s so cool it ought to be an Epic, not a Rare.

And yes, Cass is jealous.

Are there any items in the game that you personally think of as Epic? I’m sure there have to be other wonderful items lurking about out there!

What would you pay?

I’ve seen the Battered Hilt that leads to Quel’Delar drop twice. The first time I was playing Cassandri with some guild members. I passed. Quel’Delar, in any form, is not an upgrade for me. I was genuinely thrilled when one of our Mages won it. I’d raided with him in the past but he hasn’t played much since Trial of the Crusader was released. And I think he could really use the upgrade. Definitely a heart-felt “grats!” moment.

Then I saw it again. Playing Xata in a random heroic that took us to Halls of Reflection. I won the roll. But I traded it to another party member. I’m starting to wonder if perhaps I may have made the wrong decision.

Not long after patch 3.2 was released, and with it the ability to trade Bind on Pickup items between eligible players within 1 hour, I joined a Serpentshrine Cavern (SSC) achievement run. Because we were there for the achievement we didn’t kill all the bosses in the raid just the final boss. The final boss also happens to drop the Priest/Warrior/Druid Tier 5 helm token.

One day I would very much love to own all of the Priest Tier armor sets. Unfortunately the set that I’d most like to own is the Priest Tier 5 Avatar set – it’s my favourite. I say unfortunately because Tier 5 raid content has to be the most hated and least revisited raid content in the game. Sure you can occasionally find a PuG for Kael’thas and his coveted Ashes of Al’ar but the rest of it… no chance.

We went in and killed Lady Vashj. Most people left immediately afterwards, happy to have completed their SSC achievement. I stuck around. My helm token had dropped. When it came up only a few of us rolled but I still lost the roll. I was disappointed and contemplating how long it might be before another SSC run would come around.

I must have made a comment in raid chat about being sad for losing the helm because when I arrived back in Dalaran I received a whisper from the Warrior who won it:

“How much would you pay for it?”

I was incensed! I would have been thrilled to own that helm. Yet this Warrior was prepared to get rid of it. It seemed so unfair that the person who truly valued the helm (me) didn’t win it and the person who obviously couldn’t care less did (him). I know that Lady Luck operates on randomness, but I still thought there is some kind of meaning to rolls. Like, if I didn’t win, it wasn’t mean to be. Destiny.

I think I replied with something like “I’m not going to trade you gold for it just because you won the roll”. But what I was really thinking was:

If you didn’t want it, why did you roll and take it away from someone who did?
Did you roll for it only because, through trading, it has some inherent gold value?

After I refused to buy the token from the Warrior I started to doubt myself. Gold isn’t really money. I have more gold than I need to do what I want in WoW. If I really wanted the helm, why didn’t I just pay him for it? I can only think that it was a combination of:

(a) it’s the principle (he shouldn’t have rolled in the first place if he didn’t want to keep it)
(b) being undecided as to the value of the item

Even if I did decide to buy the helm from him, what value does it have? I find that most players have a different perspective on what is and isn’t a lot of gold based proportionally on how much they have (funny, that’s true in RL too of course – if you earn $10 an hour you probably won’t want to pay $30 for dinner out) He doesn’t know how much gold I have, and I don’t know how much he has.

You can put a value on items based on their usefulness. And, of course, any item that actually has a sell price on Auction House. For example I think that starter ilvl 200 crafted epics sell for about 300g on my server. Reasonable BoE weapons might sell for 1000-2000g. Enchanting and gemming an item alone might cost you 500, so any useful (stat-driven) epic has a value of about 800-2000k gold in my mind.

But what about a vanity item? A collectors piece? Isn’t that what the Tier 5 Priest helm is to me? I can’t wear it to raids. I might not even complete the set in full which lowers its value further. 500g? 200g?

I still don’t know what I’d be prepared to pay if I decided to barter with that Warrior. But I remember how angry I was at his behavior. In a perfect world you would:

1. Only roll and win items that you really value
2. Treat those items with respect and keep them gemmed and enchanted
3. Never, ever give them away and
4. Only vendor/disenchant them when you were certain you would not wear them ever again

and I would go as far to say

5. Only roll for items that you earned (just being present when they drop is not enough)

But I feel that the Warrior rolled on that helm for its potential profit. Perhaps even for the vendor value. Or perhaps he was just an opportunistic son of a bitch.

Fast forward to patch 3.3. The Mage in our guild wins the Battered Hilt during my first or second Heroic IC instance. Not long afterwards I find out that the Battered Hilt item is Bind on Equip, not Bind on Pickup like I had first thought. It’s selling on Auction House for 7000g. I’m a little perplexed and amused.

Sure it’s a good weapon, but it’s not a great weapon. We don’t even know what weapons will drop in Icecrown yet! The only thing that really interested me about Quel’delar was that they tried to force non-sword wielding casters, ahem Shadow Priests, to take an Mp5 mace instead. It’s like Naxxramas and Ulduar all over again.

A few days after seeing my first Damaged Hilt I queued the random heroic using the Dungeon Finder for my Restoration Shaman (the undergeared one). The loading screen for Heroic Halls of Reflection appears. My worse fears are realised. I type to the party:

“I’m sorry but I’m not geared enough to heal this instance. Good luck, I’d better just teleport out.”

There were /sighs and “NEXT” comments in party so I guess this wasn’t the first healer who had refused to give it a go. Or perhaps not the first healer who hadn’t been capable. I afked for 20 minutes before joining the random heroic queue again. Guess what loading screen pops up?  You guessed it! Halls of Reflection. Surely, this is a sign.

Fortunately it wasn’t the exact same group as the first time (how mortifying that would have been). I explain to my new group that I don’t think I’m geared enough to heal Heroic HoR. But this group convinces me to stay and give it a go. It turns out they’re all from the same guild and, as they put it, “we’re not bads”. We wiped a lot, especially in the lead up to the 2nd mini boss and the first time we made it to the 2nd mini boss we did so when I had no mana and Mana Tide Totem on cooldown. We wiped.

But the group remained really positive about it. We’re all making small mistakes (at one point the Warlock didn’t run into the corner in time to line of sight them and got “one shot”) but everyone is being patient and willing to try again.

During one of our more promising attempts, the Battered Hilt dropped off one of the trash wave mobs. Mid combat, I followed the rest of the group’s example and chose Need.

And I won it! I kept healing but the 2nd mini boss stunned me right after a fear (which can’t be counted by Tremor Totem I discovered) and the group died.

I know they’re thinking “I can’t believe the PuG won it!” But I consoled myself with the thought of just how big an upgrade Quel’Dalar would be for Xata.

But they’re quite good-natured about it (after a brief silence that I’m sure was filled with furious guild chat) and congratulate me.

The tank asks “Would you be interested in selling it to me?”

“Well actually I was going to keep it for myself”

Now the positions are reversed. I’m carrying an item of value that I could trade to others and profit. I can’t help but think to myself how little play time I spend on my Shaman and start to question if I’m willing to go to the effort of doing the quest chain (which I hear requires a fair bit of work).

And then I start to think about my other party members. And I realise how much owning Quel’Delar would mean to them. They’re in good, not great, gear. But almost none of it is from raiding. Quel’Delar would probably be pretty special in their eyes and not something that they’ll replace any time soon if at all for the rest of this expansion.

“Look this is an alt anyway, if you really want it reroll and I’ll trade it” I just couldn’t bring myself to put a gold value on it. Even though it might sell for 7k on the Barthilas Auction House I couldn’t turn to a party member and demand that on the spot.

But even asking for 100g would have made me feel dirty. How would that make me any different from the Warrior who rolled and won a helm for it’s inherent gold value? In my mind, it would be just as wrong.

I don’t think the other party members really believed me but they all rolled again anyway. The Death Knight in the party was forbidden to roll by the other other guild members because he was playing an alt. That alone made me feel confident that they were taking this seriously. In the end the Warlock rolled the highest and I handed it over.

Perhaps Lady Luck smiled at us because we didn’t wipe again after that. We got through the trash and killed the 2nd mini moss and I wasn’t feared or stunned once. Arthas chased us but we got through the gauntlet first go (of course, there were some close calls).

I think I did the right thing. What do you think? Was I a fool to give it away?

See Rules #6, #7 and (unofficial) #16

Guess which feature of 3.3 had me the most excited? Not Icecrown Citadel (a gated raid instance launched at the start of the holiday season?), not hasted Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch. The new cross-battlegroup Dungeon Finder matching system.

Since yesterday I’ve been queuing them pretty much non stop. Some on my Shaman, because my Priest was swallowed whole by the glitchy new dungeons in Icecrown for hours on end and couldn’t be retrieved.

I don’t know if I really have any conclusions about the system just yet. But I do think it’s like going from an organised Battleground premade into well, the normal bg queue. Lessons learned so far:

1. Anonymity makes me act like a jerk (usually I hide how impatient I am)
2. Even though you get ported to the instance you’ll spend more time waiting for your teammates than you should have to
3. If you queue as a hybrid say goodbye to DPSing cause it’s never gonna happen
4. Participants probably won’t meet entry level heroic requirements in gear
5. Participants won’t meet entry level common sense requirements either, forget about skill
6. The less said by your party members, the better the run will be
7. Groups are either terrible, or fantastic (see image above), there is no middle ground
8. You will end up in the one or two dungeons that you goddamn hate
9. The Party Leader will be forced to confess mid way that they actually know nothing about the instance
10. Each person’s role is branded into their portrait (and into VuhDo, I should add) so you’ll know what’s what when you arrive
11. Not all Heroics are equally difficult
12. If you’re an Enchanter be prepared to create Shards and Crystals against your will
13. You can only win gear of the highest armor type that you can equip
14. You can’t trade with party members from another server so don’t get caught without water!
15. Replacing a lost party member is a breeze, even if you are half way through
16. (Unofficial rule) All tanks are Paladins

*Update* I can’t believe I didn’t think to include these:

17. One DPS will always be a Death Knight

18. Your group will be diverse. Two Mages in 1 party? Highly unlikely. My Priest has never been grouped with a Shadow priest. And the one time I refused to check “Healer” the healer picked wasn’t a Priest either. My Shaman healer has never been grouped with an Ele or Enhance Shaman.

When I used to form a heroic group, the old fashioned way, I used to go about it in one of two ways. Sign myself up as a healer and scout out a tank (preferably from a guild of good reputation) or talk a guild tank/healer duo into coming with me. I didn’t care if DPS in the party did 2k. I didn’t care if they’d never done that instance before. I didn’t much care if the tank wasn’t in 25 man raiding gear. I thought I was pretty open minded.

The new Dungeon Finder is a heck of a lot more random than that. And perhaps it’s just because everyone wants to try out the new system but even I was dismayed by the two extremes: excellent group, or dismal group. I thought that in a group of 5 you’d get a nice cross-section of the different gear and skill levels of all players ready for heroics. Instead what I found was that a lot of people who wouldn’t be invited to a heroic showed up anyway.

Xata – The Nexus

Let me explain my very first experience. Cassandri was AWOL – she didn’t even have a location on the login screen – after we ran into some pretty heavy duty bugs in our first ICC Heroic (not sure which one, the one on the left of the Summoning Stone maybe) so I logged into Xata. Now Xata hasn’t gotten a new piece of gear since the day that Ulduar was released. And she’s got quite a few rares still equipped. And I’m pretty rusty. I waited about 2 minutes before being prompted that I had been assigned to heal a dungeon.

I hit the confirmation button… Culling of Stratholm loading screen. We arrive and I’m a bit concerned that the Paladin tank has the same health as the DPS warrior, but I let it go. Just as we finished the 5 crates quest I was prompted to join the queue and choose my role. Again. And Again. After doing this about 5 times our whole group is ported to the Nexus.

Good, The Nexus, easy way to start. The run goes ok, but the leader seems to be very lost. We do the bosses in the wrong order. The Warlock in the party seems incapable of avoiding cleave and whirlwind damage. But they leave and are replaced by a Hunter. And when we requeued to replace that missing member it was so convenient to just wait for them to run to us. Nobody had to summon. Nobody had to explain that we were 2 bosses in already.

But I didn’t have any water on me (I’ve been ruthless about her bag space in preparation for a server transfer) and nobody could give me any. That sucked. I probably could have ported out of the dungeon to buy some and just port straight back in. But at the time it was just easier to heal less, and huddle closer to my Mana Spring Totem.

The real problem with the group was that the overall DPS was just awful. No, it’s not okay that you only do 900 DPS (I thought Death Knights were meant to be easy?). It’s even worse when the other 2 DPS are doing 1.5k.

The Hunter’s pet caused havok as we shortcutted by jumping off the platform on the way to Anomalus – any qualified “Party Leader” should have seen that problem before it happened but as I typed “dimiss pet!” it was too late. At least I stuck around to keep him alive while we fought the pack – the rest of the group were long gone.

Oh yeah, thank god for Frost Resistance Totem. When you have terrible DPS Keristrasza takes a really really long time to die. And even with all the changes to MP5 I just don’t have the mana pool to go on all that long.

Cassandri – The Oculus

I was able to retrieve Cassandri after my Nexus run and wound up in, you guessed it, a half completed Oculus.

“What drake do you need me to take?”

Ended up with a long argument between the party members. The party leader ended up saying:

“I think we lost a DPS drake”

Not a good sign. Confidence, please! Let me get this cleared up:

“Do you have 2 Emerald? It’s much easier to complete with 2″

“Take whatever.”

Sigh. Another leader who has no idea what they want their party to actually do. I take an Emerald drake. We 4 man the Arcane Nova-y boss because someone’s friend had to AFK and because it’s someone’s friend the rest of us can’t vote and succeed at kicking him from the group. The fifth member of the group shows up as we get to Ley-Guardian Eregos.

Ok, for any readers who just aren’t really sure of this fight or this place, but is determined to get the Party Leader reward anyway, this is basic, basic strategy to win:

• 1 player takes a Ruby (red/tanking) Drake. Ruby drakes are the only drake that can AOE kill the Whelps – and Whelps will spawn pretty damn quick
• 2 players take an Amber (orange/dps) Drake. Amber drakes have the Time Stop ability which stuns the boss + whelps on command. 2 Amber drakes can alternate to freeze the boss when he enrages periodically throughout the fight.
• 2 players take an Emerald (green/healing) Drake. Emerald drakes leech life off the boss back to themselves, but can also funnel their health into another party member, healing them up. Because the Emerald player will lose a lot of life healing others, then need to swap back to hitting the boss to regain life, it’s really easy to alternate between 2 Emerald drakes so the healing is more constant.

I’ve done nearly all the Heroic achievements in Oculus which means we experimented with all kinds of weird setups, including none of one type of drake (actually if you’re playing with friends 5 Amber is incredibly successful – but you need to precisely time your Time Stops in succession). The combination above is the winner for a PuG. Trust me.

Anyway we die horribly to Whelp overload. Oh right. Nobody took a Ruby drake.

“Is there a reason we don’t have a Ruby drake?” I ask.

We return, this time with the combination I described above, and killed him nice and quick. You see, it doesn’t matter how much they nerf Oculus, people will still suck at it because either:

• (a) They don’t know what they’re doing, but won’t confess
• (b) They can’t coordinate
• (c) Nobody is assertive enough to tell them what to do

At least I only came in half way I suppose. I wonder if their previous healer really did “disconnect” or if it was a rage quit.

Cassandri – Gundrak

This time around the random dungeon was Gundrak. Which I actually like, as an instance. The party was silent. The tank and DPS were all reasonably well geared and without much ado got right down to chain pulling and doing their jobs.

The snake wrap boss was first, and was surprising difficult to heal (I don’t quite understand how you’re meant to deal with the snake wraps, but I don’t remember it being as difficult as it was). The rest of the run went on practically without a hitch! A lot of poison, such is absolutely awful as a healer I can tell you, but I was paired with a knowledgable Ele Shaman and Paladin tank this time who covered some of the cleansing.

Then for no apparently reason I was struck with a pretty damn awful bout of lag at Eck. I hate saying it, but I felt I had to explain:

“I’m lagging really bad, can we just wait a few minutes?”

I guess the tank was as skeptical of players citing lag as an excuse as much as I am because he replied with:

“You heal pretty convincingly for someone who has lag”

“Flash Heal spam. Thank god it worked”

We make our way to the last boss. Every time I enter combat my screen freezes. Then speeds to catch up. Then I’m stuck casting a spell for 10 seconds. I just spam my buttons (my cooldowns keep ticking, how weird is that?) hoping that they’ll get through. I suspect that the reason we survived the last boss was a combination of the Shaman’s Chain Heals and the tank’s Hand of Protection when I was impaled.

But they were very nice about it. Actually the entire run restored my faith in PuGs everywhere and this new system.

Xata – Trial of the Champion

Before returning to another round of punishment I actually successfully used the Dungeon Finder to find a Heroic group for Halls of Reflection (by choosing a Specific Dungeon). Unfortunately half way through the first boss we all disconnected and Cassandri went AWOL again and couldn’t be retrieved.

Back to Xata. I couldn’t be more dissapointed than seeing the Argent Tournament Colosseum loading screen flash up. I hate this place. I hate this instance. I actually dislike it even more than Oculus. Jousting sucks. And it’s really hard to heal. Remember how I said Xata didn’t have very good gear? Well I don’t think she was quite ready for Trial of the Champion. I prepared for the inevitable wipe and prepared to desert my first heroic of the day.

Surprisingly, I’m grouped with a pretty decent group of players. That’s the only way we got through it. I healed my little heart out, but I’ve never taken the Shaman to ToC5 before. My DBM (I just got the latest version for ICC and it has warnings for ToC5 apparently!) is screaming at me to Dispel Renew and Dispel this and Run Away. I’m practically talking to my computer:

“Hello? I’m here as a Shaman, not a Priest? I don’t have Dispel Magic”

So I ignore the warnings and go back to non-stop healing trying to keep the party alive. Then during the Paletress trash pulls it all goes haywire. One DPS dies really quickly and suddenly we have 2 groups of mobs and monks, not just 1. Then all the mobs are on me. I’m running towards the tank, but it’s too late, I die. I watch for a few seconds and the tank seems to have them again, so I used Reincarnation and was able (just! no mana) to get through all the mobs without offically wiping.

To make matters worse, I get blamed (politely) for the wipe:

“You’re meant to dispel that btw Xata”

I felt like yelling “What are you talking about?! I’m NOT PLAYING MY PRIEST” but I held back the urge, the group had been nice so far, and start thinking instead.

“Was I meant to drop Tremor Totem? Does that work?”

“Probably”

I don’t even remember there being a Fear. Or a Mind Control (I think that’s actually what happened, but I can’t be sure). But fortunately it didn’t happen again. I dropped Tremor Totem for the rest of the trash just in case. I also didn’t point out that as a Paladin the tank could have helped too.

The actual boss fight wasn’t too bad and once I got used to ignoring Deadly Boss Mods’s announcements to *Dispel Renew* we got through it with no deaths. Chain Heal, I love you. In hindsight, I’m sure I’m meant to substitute the DBM terminology of Dispel for Purge, but I just totally forgot about Purge. DBM is overrated.

The DPS was great so killing the Black Knight wasn’t as bad as I expected it would be. And I Chain Healed my way through without too much pain. I was so happy that we got through it when the first item (and a major upgrade for me), a spellpower piece, dropped that I dearly wanted. Trouble was, it was cloth.

“Ok if I take those cloth boots?”

By then everyone, including the Mage, had chosen Disenchant about the same time I discovered that I couldn’t actually hit the “Need” option – it was disabled. So the boots got sharded. What a waste. At least I know I can heal that instance on my Shaman now.

Cassandri – Halls of Lightning

Not much to say about this one. I was grouped with a fantastic over geared group of players (who said nothing of course) and a tank that knew how to keep a good pace, and push the group to take on as many mobs as we could comfortably handle. I spent the second half of the run on the phone and even paying half attention to what was going on my screen we breezed through the place.

I actually forgot about this run altogether until I spotted a screen capture on my desktop (above).

Cassandri – Draktharon Keep

Draktharon Keep has to be one of the easiest Heroics in the game. Well it should be. Not for this group. This was the only Heroic that I deserted during the entire day. That’s how bad it was.

The Party Leader, a warlock, confesses immediately “actually I’ve never been here before” and passes Leader to the tank. We start pulling.

And I watch in awe as:

• (a) the DPS pulls agro from the tank
• (b) the tank doesn’t attempt to retrieve the mobs running rampant and tanks 1 target
• (c) everyone, except me, stands still in the black voids

“Don’t stand in the black holes, pls” I type, thinking perhaps they just don’t know the 1st rule of PVE play.

No improvement. It’s actually really hard to keep healing my way to the first boss. I have to Fade constantly because I keep pulling threat. The Mage and kitty Druid are each tanking a mob. I’m actually grateful that I don’t have Recount set up, because I suspect that they DPS is very very slow. Just before the first boss the tank says he has to AFK “for a while” because his daughter is crying.

Now, I’m sympathetic, but in the space of time that it’s taken us to start, buff and clear to the first boss, 15 – 20 minutes, I’d have expected us to have finished the entire instance. At the rate we’re going I’m never going to leave this place. I start to wonder how mean it would be to leave when there’s a baby crying somewhere out there. The other party members are making “you’re such a good father” comments in party chat so I definitely can’t vote to kick him and hope to win support.

He’s back within 10 minutes and we kill the first boss. Up the stairs into the first spider pull. I shield the tank before the pull. He pulls a spider or 3, I shield the Mage when they pull threat and get attacked by a spider… a couple spiders run off into the corner and spawn more… I get aggro on 6 spiders. I’m doing more tanking that the goddamn tank! For shielding twice! The spiders eventually wear me down, perhaps I should have hit Pain Suppression, but I just didn’t see the point. The tank didn’t pick them off me that’s for sure. He was happily chasing one that ran off into the dark. We wipe.

I run back and zone in and call it quits:

“I’m sorry but I think this run is going to take more time than I have tonight. Good luck you’ll get a new healer soon enough” and ported out of the dungeon and left party before I saw a response.

I hate being the fussy group member who drops the party after the very first wipe. But honestly, if you can’t tank, don’t say that you can when you’re asked to define your role. If it had been a group from Barthilas I think I would have been nicer. Or I would have tried to help more, but I just didn’t think this group was going to succeed no matter what I said. They weren’t ready for Heroics, they should have been honing their craft in Normals first where losing threat on all but 1 mob in a pack isn’t going to kill the healer.

Back for More

So I had some good groups, and some bad ones, and nothing in between. When I play Cassandri I’m scared to be queued for one of the new Heroics because I know that I’ll be chosen to Heal. And the new Heroics aren’t a walk in the park, especially not at this time while everyone stumbles through unsure of the best strategy to minimise damage.

Xata is even worse – there’s just no way her gear is good enough (Naxx, Tier 7 isn’t the base standard anymore) to do the new Heroics as DPS or as Restoration.

But I’m still going to queue the Random Heroic. I just hope that I get lucky: good group and good instance.

When she was good, she was very very good and when she was bad...

I logged in on a hot lazy Saturday afternoon expecting to do a bit of leveling with Cass. We have taken the plunge and started a summer project: to level a Gnome Warlock and Mage together.

Little did I know that I would end up doing Trial of the Crusader 25 on not one but two of my characters!

Run 1: GDKP Run, 1.5 Hours, 2k Gold

While we were leveling a friend asked if I would be interested in joining him for a GDKP run of 25 man ToC. Both of us had missed our guild’s weekly clear of ToC. The GDKP run was ready to start – they just needed a healer. A geared healer, a “seller”. And since I was looking for an excuse to get out of Loch Modan (evil Troggs) I agreed to go along and find out what it was all about. I had no idea what a GDKP run was until yesterday and to be honest I didn’t really understand how it was going to work until we were a couple of bosses in.

There is a fantastic post on Elitist Jerks which outlines very clearly how a GDKP run works. I’ve copied the “in a nutshell” explanation below to briefly explain it for those who haven’t heard of the term:

GDKP stands for “Gold-DKP”. It can also be known as “Gold runs”, “GKP runs”, “Cash runs”.

It was a Korean concept. It is well established and extremely common in some regions, only recently introduced on some servers, completely unheard of on others.

Items which drop in your run are auctioned off in raid chat. The highest bidder receives the item and the gold they pay is added to “The Pot”

Profession Patterns, BOE’s, Crusader Orbs, Disenchanted Shards etc are all auctioned off in this manner as well. Everything that drops.

“The Pot” keeps growing in value until the end of the run

“The Pot” is split evenly at the end of the run to all 25 players in the raid present when the final boss dies. Everyone gets an equal share.

There is no mainspec > offspec priority, it’s gold which determines who gets what.

This week was the second week that Gigantor, the top Alliance guild on Barthilas has run a GDKP TOC 25. From what I could tell, the group consisted of approximately 15 geared players and 10 under geared players. Although even the under geared players weren’t that badly geared and I didn’t see a Gear Score number below 4500 in the raid.

Many of the under geared players, the loot “buyers”, were Gigantor alts, however there was also a number of other smaller, less progressed guilds represented as well. These players were expected to bid gold for items – essentially earning their right to be carried through the content by more geared (and perhaps more skilled) players. For the most part this worked really well. We had good loot luck and saw 3 coveted weapons drop. Each sold for between 3000 – 7000 gold.

Some of the under geared buyers were just after 1 item, while others in the run were happy to bid on pretty much anything. One Shaman in the raid purchased 2 pieces of cloth spell power gear because they were better than what he currently had, even though they weren’t really itemised for his class. Players like this really make the GDKP runs work. We also had a Restoration Shaman in the raid who had joined as a lesser-geared “buyer” who didn’t bid on anything even though a fantastic pair of bracers dropped from Anub’arak. It’s people like this who I doubt will ever be invited back.

Without a single wipe, we finished Anub’arak and the pot was announce at being just under 50k. The raid leader traded each person 2k gold, even those who had bought items with gold, and then removed them from the raid. It was all over very quickly and I was 2k gold richer for very little effort.

If GDKP runs are not currently organised on your server and your guild is clearing normal TOC without any problems I would very strongly suggest looking into this. Guildies that are currently bored with TOC will be more likely to come along because of the monetary incentive and instead of the majority of gear being wastefully de’d, you’re helping out lesser geared alts and wealthy mains still wanting that 1 great drop.

It’s also a lot of fun playing with people you don’t normally get to play with and shaking things up a bit.

Run 2: Guild Alt/PUG Run, 2.5 Hours

While I was finishing my smooth GDKP run, some guildies started to put together a Vitare alts/PUG TOC 25. By the time I finished killing Anub’arak they were up to Faction Champions and things were going ok, not great, but ok. A player had dropped out and they asked me if I would be willing to bring in my Discipline Priest.

Now let me tell you a bit about my Priest who I haven’t really talked about on this blog ever. In the last couple of weeks I’ve been taking her to the occasional guild 10 man when they are desperate for a 10th player. And they’d have to be pretty desperate to take my Priest.

Alexria must have the best loot luck of any character that I’ve ever played. With only an Ony 10, half an Ulduar 10 and 2 x TOC 10 runs under her belt she has replaced all her greens and is only wearing 3 blues.

Even though her gear isn’t that embarrassing anymore, the truth is I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing as a Disc Priest. Both Cass and Nysander (our guild’s full time Discipline Priest) have given me some advice. But I wouldn’t count on Alexria to make a massive contribution to the success of any raid she is invited to. But I digress….

I joined the alt run at Faction Champions with Alexria. The healing team consisted of a couple of very geared Holy Paladins and a Restoration Shaman so I immediately started to worry. How was I, a tank healer, going to be of any use? They didn’t need another tank healer. The only option, as far as I can see it, is to raid heal with Power Word: Shield aka bubble spam. This might be a reasonable healing method but I soon discovered that it isn’t exactly mana efficient.

The Horde Champions die without incident. By the way, being a Priest in this fight is incredibly boring – all I ever seemed to do was Mass Dispel!

Then we reach the Twin Valk’yr. A whole stack of people forgot to switch colours and died in addition to those raid members who thought they could “tank” the orbs and then had the audacity to complain that they weren’t healed! The Resto Druid in the raid just doesn’t seem to be cutting it on the raid healing so I concluded that bubble spamming was going to be a neccessity with this bunch.

We did get Twins down that next attempt and I was surprised that I still had mana at the end of the fight after all that bubble spamming. I am amazed at how much mana my Shadowfiend regenerated for me. Add that to some mana from Hymn of Hope and a mana pot and I was ok.

Anub’arak time. This is where it all starts to disintergrate. We hit the enrage timer and wiped twice. The DPS blames the healers for doing too much healing (for those interested this was completed BS – people in phase 3 were low!) and the healers blame the DPS for being… well, shit. A couple of people leave in a huff. We stand around waiting for replacements only to try again and regress. Players are struggling to kite in the burrow phase and we wipe again. After about 10 attempts a group of annoying Red Sun alts leave in a huff and we call it.

A Night of Trial of the Crusader

When I started my first TOC run – the GDKP run – I was a amazed that people would be willing to pay anything for this gear, especially the Trophies, considering the rumors of patch 3.3 hitting live servers next week.

Now I find that I’m considering taking my Priest to the GDKP run next week as a “buyer”. That way I can get the achievement for completing TOC 25 and buy some good pieces – if they drop.

The way I see it, sure I might spend 5000g if some good Priest cloth items drop, but I’ll also probably get 2000g gold back if its anything like this week’s run. Assuming that they keep inviting me (as a buyer, Alexria, or as a seller, Lathere) at some point I’ll have recouped my gold entirely!

And it sure was a much smoother run than our traditional PuG alt run turned out to be.