Lathere and I face down Akil'zon with the help of our guild

If you follow Lathere and I on Twitter you probably read our despondent tweets a few nights back where we lamented the general sea of impatient and unkind players found via the Dungeon Finder.

After being carried through Throne of the Four Winds Lathere was wearing purple coloured glasses (if you can imagine such a thing). And the best place for us to get gear right now? The Heroic Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub dungeons. And before we can qualify for the Z Heroics we need a bit more gear from normal Heroics.

Isn’t it odd how even between dungeons, normal or heroic, there are still different shades of difficulty?

And fresh from a 6-9 month gap, we had forgotten how unfriendly and punishing other players can be.

We queued for a Random Cataclysm Heroic and landed in Blackrock Caverns.

Step 1
Blackrock Caverns: Heroic but easy

We made a big mistake: we behaved like ourselves. This means that I, mistakenly, took time to say hello to people in our groups. Lathere almost immediately announced:

“This is the first time I’ve done this Heroic”

Or words to that effect. I chimed in:

“Me too. So any tips or reminders would be great.”

What I really wanted to say was: I will probably remember most of the boss tactics – from normal mode that is – after we’ve pulled each boss but having a quick little reminder before we pull will help me recall and perhaps do a better job. And I’d like to be told what is different on normal mode.

Our tank’s response was simple:

“Then we’re fucked.”

I thought that was a little extreme. Perhaps we should be grateful that he didn’t just leave the party immediately? No, wait, I think I would have preferred that.

Lath was quick to defend us “We’ll be fine. We’re not idiots!”

He went on to say something like “if DPS don’t know how to handle the beams on the second boss there’s no point”.

I was on Vent with the third member of our party, a Mage from our guild, so asked him what the tank was talking about. I did actually remember that boss – Corla, Herald of Twilight – quite well from normal mode when I was leveling:

In normal mode she she has two Zealots – one on each side of her – and when the fight starts they get struck by a steady, continuous beam (the purpose and origin of which escape me). The beam can be intercepted by a player simply by standing between the source of the beam and the NPC.

If the beam is not intercepted properly the Zealots turns into a giant ugly Patchwerk looking thing and promptly eats your healer – face first – and then the rest of the party.

I remembered this fight well and also remembered intercepting the beam back at level 80/81. Two players are required to intercept two beams.

In Heroic mode it’s three Zealots and three beams. Ideally you would have two ranged DPS intercept the two outermost beams and someone in melee intercept the middle one. If you only had one ranged DPS – or a more capable healer than melee DPS – you could ask your healer to take a beam, too.

I asked my friend, our Mage, over Vent:

Don’t you just have to watch stacks of something? Like you can’t take 100 or something?

I should point out here that our friendly Mage was on an alt and usually plays DPS as a Warrior. His advice was something vague about “get out before 80″.

This seemed straight forward enough and I was optimistic as I volunteered to take the far right beam on as my responsibility. The tank took the center one and my friend, our Mage, took the leftmost beam. I played cautiously and – since those stacks of the debuff ticked up so fast – strafed out just after 60. Taking in lag meant that my stacks were close to 80 before the beam broke from me.

Soon as it wore off I was back in there. And out before 80 again. That’s when things went wrong: my Zealot morphed into something big and scary. I knew something had gone wrong. And that it was my fault. But I was perplexed: exactly what should I do differently next time?

We wiped. I tried to explain what I had done over vent – hoping for someone to quickly grasp my mistake and fill me in – while we ran back.

Too late. Our tank left the party but not before leaving with a word of advice parting shot:

I suggest you learn how to do this before doing it on heroic.

How maddening! We replaced him and tried again with a new tank. This time around I had a chance to read the tooltip of the debuff and adjusted accordingly. The limit was 100, not 80 and getting out at 80 (not before) was a breeze.

Solved! Much easier than juggling Netherspite’s 3 beams, that’s for sure!

Am I behind the learning curve? Am I to be expected to get it first time? Am I expected to read up and study for each Heroic before I queue?

Maybe. That’s a shame. Learning first hand is so much more memorable. I don’t think I would even remember if I just read about it.

Starting the Heroic like that wasn’t enjoyable. I don’t think I relaxed completely until it was finished.

Afterward I found myself staring at my list of dated, but otherwise hard won titles from the last two expansions. Just to remind myself that I am a good player even if I am a little rusty and inexperienced with the ways of Cataclysm.

Step 2
Grim Batol: Normal but as difficult as normal gets

For the next few days we scaled back to queuing for the Random Cataclysm dungeon (non heroic that is). At level 85 “Random Cataclysm dungeon” means apparently means “Grim Batol“.

Lathere and I are overgeared for it and there’s not one upgrade for us there. But I diligently tried to pay attention to each boss ability, storing it away as practice for Heroic Grim Batol (which Ive actually done already a few times right after hitting 85).

These were straightforward runs. I rejoiced in the no-pressure but party-friendly use of Psychic Scream and Psychic Horror. Lath stopped paying attention to her mana: she had more than enough to play comfortably.

Step 3
ZulAman: Heroic and difficult

When we approached Heroics again Lathere chose the dungeon for gear (Zul Aman and Zul Gurub) on the proviso that our group and our tank were from our guild.

With a small amount of nagging and peer pressure we were able to talk some “old school” guildies into a ZA run (I say old school because these are the tiny percentage of players that were in the guild when Lath and I raided).

Oh my what fun!

I was mad keen to see what had happened to ZA: had they mangled it? Split it into pieces?

There’s no easy answer except to say: it’s so much like before. I actually know that instance better than I know any of the Cataclysm content. Which is saying something: I was no expert at ZA the raid and I’ve forgotten a lot in the last 3 years.

Most of the boss abilities seem to be similar although there is some rather major differences between old Nalorakk and new Nalorakk. I guess that makes sense: that fight was very much about two tanks working in tandem and juggling their threat at key points. Now players juggle their distance from Nalorakk to juggle occasional charge/swipe attacks from him.

Akil’zon doesn’t just force you to react to a Thunderstorm anymore – now his swooping birds actually try and pick players up. I’m pretty sure they didn’t do that before.

I teased Lathere something fierce as we approached the gauntlet to the Jan’alai boss. In the Burning Crusade we called on Lath to trap approaching Scouts before they could run to their drums and summon extra groups. Her timing was always so poor (like casting it after multiple, alarmed requests from us over Vent, usually by then they had already reached the drums!) we eventually took the responsibility away from her. Crowd Control is probably not her strongest point.

In saying that, I nearly wiped us on the Jan’alai boss simply because I didn’t realise the Hatchers would die with so little damage. I one shot on the Hatchers while our Shaman was killing the other and then saw our tank running towards my side to tank the hatched birds. Well the birds that would have been hatched if I hadn’t accidentally killed the Hatcher so fast!

Hex Lord Malacrass was a breeze and those Spirit Bolts made me itch for Circle of Healing.

Zul’jin has been replaced by a new last boss Daakara. The concept was much the same however in that the final boss channels the ability of each of the four animal avatars – bosses – already defeated.

Anyway, to make a long story short (too late!) ZA was so much fun. And I felt so comfortable there. In my element. I felt powerful too, although I’m sure that’s because my teammates were doing most of the damage, but that’s a topic for another post.

Oh yeah, and Lath healed just fine!

Step 4:
Zul’Gurub – Heroic and damn difficult

The following night, fresh from our success in Zul’Aman, Lathere and I queued for a Random Z. I’m going to call it the Random Z queue from here on out since both of the instances start with that letter and I can’t remember exactly how they are grouped.

While Lathere and I had some experience with Zul’Gurub (we used to run it with guildies before they were ready for Karahan just to get the raiding hook in) we didn’t run it at level 60.

What I do remember of the instance seems to have been changed completely anyway. You could argue that there are still Trolls in ZG but I think that’s where the similarity ends. Fortunately we dragged a third guildy, Velidra, along with us and asked him explain the important stuff over Vent. I think he may have regretted his decision by the end of the night and I do feel quite bad about that.

I can only think about how much worse it would have been without him!

Lathere confessed that we were new to the instance. We followed along closely and I stuck to my Dungeon 101 basics: kill what the tank is killing. I also clicked all those cauldrons. Because it seemed to be the Thing To Do.

The bosses all blur together in my memory now but I’m quite confident that we avoided the common mistakes/pitfalls. Sure, if I was more familiar with the instance I could have played better. I probably avoided stuff that wasn’t that harmful and took spell casting gaps where I need not.

Our tank left group without a word after the first boss. Coincidence? I hope so. Our replacement tank left after the second boss. As did a Damage Dealer. Coincidence? I doubt it. But he didn’t say anything either so I don’t know if it was something we did wrong (or something we weren’t doing… like high enough DPS?! I’m getting anxious thinking about it).

Our third and final tank decided to stick it out. We also picked up an Enhance Shaman to finish the run.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle before the Zanzil when I raced right past a group of enemy Trolls and pulled them without seeing them and realising it. I take the blame for that: it was absolutely my fault and hopefully one I won’t make again. This caused us to wipe entirely – Lathere and her heals were miles behind and our tank was quite far ahead of me.

We wiped on a trash pull soon afterwards again. And we really, really struggled to get the last boss Jin’do the Godbreaker.

I understood the concept: Chains that need killing, but first you have to lure the ugly giant to jump on you (while standing near the chains) before you can harm the chains. I didn’t quickly grasp the danger of what I think of as Shadow Crash (but everyone in the party described them as fire which confused Lathere and I just a bit) and also didn’t immediately understand that standing on a Chain inside it’s immunity bubble makes it impossible to see that you’re being pelted by Shadow Crash.

Lathere was even more in the dark and on each attempt just got wiped out by incoming damage and adds (spirits/ghosts) half way through.

After our second wipe the tank typed:

Do you know how to do this fight heals?

Lathere was pretty frustrated and I was pretty upset (I find referring to someone by their class or role is incredibly lazy and rude – they are real people after all). We explained that we were new to the dungeon and having it explained on Vent.

I think his reply was:

 zzzzzzzZZZZzzzzzz

And we got it on the next go.

From the Achievement spam it turned out that our Enhance Shaman, myself and Lathere were all new to the dungeon.

Step 5?

I thought we did pretty damn good. But even Velidra seemed a bit frustrated by the run “that took a lot longer than it should have”.

I am sincerely grateful for the help from guild members. I am sincerely grateful for the patience of other players who we encounter in the Dungeon Finder. I am even somewhat grateful to the impatient and rude players we encounter in the Dungeon Finder.

But I’m really, really tired of feeling this way in my groups.

I’m tired of feeling like I’m not good enough, or somehow am the weakest part of the team, somehow dragging down the run into something slow or hopeless or pathetic. I hate feeling as though I need to be carried. Feeling as though I am being carried.

I want to feel as though I contribute my fair share towards our success.

I need the gear from these Heroics. I’m using the Dungeon Finder to get that gear. I’m open to suggestions and encouragement and instructions ”priest, you take the right beam and get out before 100 stacks” but there seems to be precious little of that going around.

Nobody wants to tell me what to do. They just want me to give up and get out of their way so they can be finished – and rewarded – faster.

The shoe is on the other foot

Part of the agony of being in this weak, pathetic, pleading position is that I’m just not used to it. For years I’ve landed in dungeons as the most geared, experienced, knowledgeable player.

But I can promise you I never, ever, treated my fellow team players with disrespect or impatience. No matter how green they were (like being asked where my Tier 8 came from from a fresh 80 when Ulduar was the new big thing!). I knew that the dungeons I was in were designed for new level 70s/80s (as the case may be) and not for raiders. I was trespassing on their territory and not vice versa.

I like playing with new players. They bring enthusiasm to the game. It’s easy to get jaded when you’ve seen the inside of the dungeon a million times. A new player brings a fresh look and often gets you to see something odd that you never noticed before.

Playing with a new player is a chance to pass on your own tips and shortcuts.

Am I in the minority? Has it all been spoilt by raiders who are forced to run these dungeons because of the (presumably still relevant to raiders) rewards?

I refuse to believe that. Raiding doesn’t turn you from a patient person to an impatient person. Raiding doesn’t make you rude to strangers. If anything it should make you value teamwork over all else, it should make you better at networking and social situations. It should make you patient.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I can feel myself becoming more and more isolated and unwilling to play with strangers.

I was anticipating the launch of the Raid Finder but, honestly, I don’t think my ego could cope with it right now.

Something changed when I got close to level 70...

I remember how impossible it was to find a tank in the Burning Crusade. And I remember how hard it was to find healers early in Wrath of the Lich King. I remember how long the Dungeon Finder queues were for DPS when the Dungeon Finder was first introduced.

I remember how we worried that the Dungeon Finder made us too anonymous. That it encouraged players to behave like jerks. And that it was ruining the sense of community that you can just barely feel right now on your own realm.

Now I’ve almost leveled all the way to 80 on my Mage using the Dungeon Finder. And I’m starting it all over again on my Warlock. And I think like all things, the community will balance out all on its own.

ps. Lath is super excited and asked me to include this message: Vitare are currently looking for a second Resto Druid to join our raid team!

I could see a light at the end of the tunnel towards the end of the level 60-70 bracket. It wasn’t so much that my wait times as a Damage Dealing Mage were faster. They weren’t.

I remember how desperate we were for a tank when Pixii and I were stuck around level 50 running Sunken Temple. Not only were the tanks terrible tanks but everyone kind of put up with it simply because the time to replace a tank was horrendous. Thirty or forty minutes. This wasn’t much of a surprise, we had been inevitably waiting for tanks since we started way back in Ragefire Chasm through to Gnomeregan. Scads of damage dealers, quite a few healers and just not enough tanks to go around.

Around the time we started queuing the Burning Crusade dungeons, and as we got further towards level 70, there was a noticeable shift in available classes/roles. There wasn’t enough healers to meet demand. No longer did the tanks have absolute power over the group.

A part of me wonders if this drop off in available healers can be attributed to healer burnout courtesy of terrible Death Knight tanks that plague the level 58-65 bracket.

I remember running one of the Auchindoun instances, Mana Tombs perhaps, with a Shaman healer that just wasn’t coping. We barely got through the first half of the instance alive. I felt that every pull we were flirting with death. I think the tank did die a few times. Most interestingly of all, to me anyway, was that not one person complained about it. That is, not one person said anything until the healer typed “got to go sry” and left the party.

Even though we were stuck in a fairly long queue waiting for a replacement there was a silent sigh of relief going around the party. Eventually someone said what we’d all been thinking:

He wasn’t a very good healer anyway.

In the same way that we handled our Sunken Temple tanks with such care, treating them like special snowflakes, careful not to upset them in any way, we now treated our healers the same!

When we lost the majority of pugging players to the Random Wrath Dungeon queue at level 68 the pool of available players for Steamvaults, Shadow Labyrinth, Shattered Halls and the Tempest Keep instances shrunk significantly. The pool of available players was so small that every single member in every single five man dungeon I joined from level 68-70 was valuable. Tank, Healer of Damage Dealer: each was important. And not just to me – almost every single player in the group valued their teammates.

I joke to others that I sweet-talked my way to Outland Dungeonmaster. But the truth is, I’ve never been treated so nicely by my PuG teammates.

I spent almost 2 hours in a cross-battlegroup party that had fallen apart one pull into Shattered Halls. The healer left – this would normal force a group to disband. But we all teleported out of the dungeon, too reluctant to lose our group and requeue as individuals. And we chatted while we waited. I think I’ll always think of that party when I’m picking Fire Leaf (how I spent the queue time).

I remember the healer that I found in an unsuccessful Steamvaults run. I remember that we requeued at least six times in that night, slowly picking up extra party members until the final group of 5 of us ran about three BC dungeons back to back working on each other’s Outland Dungeonmaster achievement.

I remember the level 70 tank that was determined to replicate his old Druid’s reputation and gear set (Sunwell gear and all!) and ran Shattered Halls with us back to back. When the third DPS dropped out we just kept going. It took almost an entire SH run – 20 minutes perhaps – before we were able to find another Damage Dealer using the Dungeon Finder. Because even Damage Dealers for that instance are rare and valued.

The sense of community, that human connection, was definitely coming back into my Dungeon Finder runs.

I have stumbled across two or three Barthilas players in my runs that have made it onto my Friends list. Whenever we can Pixii and I try to invite them before joining the Dungeon Finder queue. And there are times that I really really wish I could friend players on other realms and even group up with them before joining the queue.

When I first joined the queue on my level 17 Warlock I was surprised at how fast I was matched with a group. 20 minutes? Hell no. 6 minutes? (about the time Cassandri would get into a level 80 heroic queue as Shadow) Hell no.

Try 1 minute.

A 1 minute queue at level 17 for Damage Dealers. I’ve queued and completed about five or six dungeon runs since as my Warlock and the longest that I’ve waited has been 5 minutes. We had one player drop out of the group in Shadowfang Keep and had to wait a good 5 minutes or so for a replace. And they were DPS.

I think this is a sign. Way back before I started playing the introduction of battlegrounds forced faction population balance. Back when only world PVP existed players talk about the faction imbalance as though Alliance out-numbered Horde 2 to 1. When players, Alliance and Horde, joined the first battleground queues the system matched them up 1 to 1 (or 10 vs 10, 40 vs 40 etc). This meant that Alliance players had almost double the wait times of Horde players to PVP.

The Horde PVPers got twice as much game time, twice as much honor and twice as much gear in the same amount of time. So what did all the Alliance PVP lovers do? Rerolled as Horde of course!

I think we’re seeing the same effect in our dungeon groups now. If your chosen class can tank or heal why wouldn’t you? And classes at level 15 aren’t too difficult. It’s much easier to pick up how to tank/heal at level 15 than waiting until level 80. But even more than that, I think players are rolling alts in order to power level as a tank or healer.

A tank that Pixii and I played with in Zul’Farrak had reached level 80 about a week after our ZF runs together. While we were waiting for a group for Sunken Temple. Getting to max level so quickly is a strong incentive.

Give it another few months – perhaps around the time the first Cataclysm raids have been well and truly cleared and players are rolling new alts yet again – and I think the waiting time in queue for all three roles: Tank, Healer and Damage Dealer will be near evenly matched.

Perhaps it will take a minute or two to match up a good class composition (mixture of different armor types, different classes, some cleanse ability, some crowd control ability) but I think it will be that fast.

• 20% of players will queue as Tanks
• 20% of players will queue at Healers
• 60% of players will queue as Damage Dealers

And the more players who choose multiple roles (say Damage or Healer), and collect gear for multiple roles, the more likely we’ll find that perfect balance. Remember, once you reach level 40 you can purchase Dual Talent Specialization for your alts. That makes multiple roles even easily to fulfill. And it’s about at that point where you might find it difficult to heal with Shadow talents as a Priest, or tank with Fury talents as a Warrior etc.

What this means for end game I’m not sure. If 10 man raiding is the way of the future (and I believe it is) the balance is more like:

• 20% Tanks (2 out of 10)
• 30% Healers (3 out of 10)
• 50% Damage Dealers (5 out of 10)

We might be in for a slight healer shortage.

That said, I remain convinced that the next wave of players will be better hybrids and more knowledgeable about tanking and healing than I. And that’s exciting!

A successful WC run ends here: where Naralex's Disciple either (a) turns Naralex into a Murloc or (b) draws a Murloc out of Naralex's dreams. Never really got that one.*

Wailing Caverns is designed to be a low level Horde instance (15-25). In the big picture view it’s the second instance that Horde players visit, after hacking and slashing their way through Ragefire Chasm. Wailing Caverns is technically tucked under some rocks in The Barrens but thanks to the Dungeon Finder it’s just one button away.

Because it’s a Horde instance I’d only run it a couple times at level 80 on various characters in order to earn the achievement. And each time I’d gotten hopelessly lost.

Now, at level 17, my baby new Warlock – pitifully decked out in common white and grey items with no resources over on Argent Dawn – has had her first Wailing Caverns (WC) experience. Surely this time, with four others and a nominated Dungeon Guide, I’d be okay and wouldn’t get lost?

Not a chance.

The Map

Wailing Caverns Map. Bosses and paths marked.

To download the image go to: http://www.hotsdots.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/WailingCavernsMap.jpg

The bosses are:

1. Lady Anaconda
   She can be found in any one of the three locations marked. Once you’ve killed her you can jump down into the river – don’t keep clearing the upper floor.
2. Kresh Optional.
   Kresh is a turtle that patrols along the river in this central cavern. He’s neutral, but attackable and drops rare items.
3. Lord Cobrahn
4. Lord Pythas
5. Skum Optional.
   He’s optional but he’s like right there on the way. Might as well kill him and break up the long trip to Lord Serpentis!
6. Lord Serpentis
   Once you’ve killed Lord Serpentis, or the last Lord, you’ll see that the Tauren Disciple of Naralex who was hanging out back at the start of the instance will yell out to you. This means that you’ve unlocked the event to complete the instance – good work!
7. Verdan the Everliving
8. Matanus the Devourer Escort/Event
   You need to talk to the Disciple of Naralex at the very start of the instance and he’ll escort you to the final event and summon Matanus (a giant murloc). The best way to do that, in my opinion, is to get everyone in your group to use the Dungeon Finder icon and Teleport Out of the Instance. And then Teleport to the Instance. This should bring your group back to the start and the Disciple of Naralex. If you’re not using the Dungeon Finder, you can jump down the hole in the group behind Verdan and track your way west through the river back to the start.
   

The Run

Slowly, yet painfully, we cleared the main cavern upper floor. This is the easy bit and netted us 1 boss kill and our first blue item. At this point things seemed shakey. Nobody knew where to go. Not our Dungeon Guide, either.

I had a vague recollection that we had to follow the river … so my group followed me as I headed east. Almost half an hour later we were still slowing making our way through the winding path without sight of a boss. I noticed a few things:

1. The Druids in Wailing Caverns like to heal themselves. And nobody in our group seemed to be armed with a silence or interupt at such low levels. Actually, we did have a Rogue, and I think that Rogue had some form of stun (Gouge maybe?) so maybe there was something we could have done about it. Mostly we just ignored it and wore them down again.

2. Nobody really has AoE before level 20. I’ve discovered that there’s nothing more frustrating than coming across a group of 5-8 non-elite vipers hissing at your ankles when you can’t really wipe them out with one spell. For me it was a case of dot, tab, dot, tab etc. Actually our Warrior tank’s Thunderclap seemed the best ability at hand: two or three of those would get them.

I was also witness to my first loot drama. An uncommon piece of Mail dropped which the Warrior tank Needed on. The Rogue took issue with this and started a fight with the Mage in the group because they ought to be using Plate. After a few seconds we were able to unravel the actual accusation: that tanks should only roll Need on Plate armor.

Considering that I haven’t actually played either a Warrior or a Hunter I tried to sound knowledgeable “I don’t think Warriors can wear Plate armor until level 40″ and “I think it’s the same for Hunters and Shamans and Mail armor”.

This seemed to settle to argument. It was also a handy reminder that not everyone knows everything at low levels. In fact, it’s quite a refreshing change from the know-it-all Barthilas/Bloodlust mentality that I’ve become accustomed to!

Unfortunately we wiped before we could reach the second “Lord” boss… defeated by trash and the effort to retrace our steps to our bodies. We gave up. I was relieved – I’m pretty confident that we were going around in circles.

I swapped over to my level 80 Rogue, did a bit of research and headed over to the Barrens to work on this guide. Now that I have a map I’m looking forward to my second Wailing Caverns run. And next time I’ll be taking the lead!

* BTW I thought it was both cool and amusing that a level 20 Elite had his own die hard followers already. What is he? The leader of a leveling guild?

Queue times are fun times!

One of the things that brings me back to my Mage time and time again is the prospect of revisiting the Burning Crusade dungeons. The Dungeon Finder has other ideas: it wants me to queue for a Random Wrath Dungeon. I don’t want to do that. So my wait times in queue have been really, really long.

Last Saturday evening I waited over three hours in a queue for The Botanica. I’ve started to get a bit creative about using that time.

There’s really only one rule: don’t, whatever you do, join a party with a friend (or sell a Mage port, or take a Mage port) or log out or otherwise quit the game. You can enter combat (and still accept a dungeon invitation, I believe). You can die (but you won’t be auto-teleported to your dungeon whilst in spirit form).

1. Gather herbs or mine

Let’s start with a productive use of your time. I’m pretty confident that it’s impossible to reach 450 Herbalism and 450 Mining just by gathering nodes found in dungeons. So while I’m in queue I tend to gather herbs. To that end, I tend to have my hearthstone or live in an Inn near a convenient source of herbs. When I was short on Mountain Silversage I lived out in Silithus and trekked around Silithus and Un’goro in search of that particular herb.

This only really works if you need to collect a herb that grows around creatures in your level range, or lower. As much as I’d like to start gathering Adder’s Tongue there’s just no way I’d survive out in Shalozar Basin at level 70.

So gathering while you’re in queue is a good way to catch up on your gathering profession.

Alternatively, once you’ve caught up and your most desirable herbs at out of your level reach, you could go and herb the most profitable herb available to you. For example, I could go back and herb Mountain Silversage and probably sell it, buy Adder’s Tongue and make a tidy profit.

2. Play the Auction House

In hindsight there’s really no reason why I couldn’t have made Caesandra one of my working bank alts. Or, for that matter, perhaps I should gift my Level 1 Warlock a few Bind on Account items, speed level to level 15, and then return to Ironforge and spend my time browsing the Auction House in queue. I could even wear my banker’s suit right until I’m inside the instance and just swap them over using Equipment Manager.

You’d probably need to be a bit careful about how you manage your inventory. I like to know that every item found in my bank alt’s possession is to be listed on the Auction House. With all the junk, and potentially useful-at-some-later-stage, items you pick up in dungeons things might get a bit confusing.

3. Level your Professions (even the weird ones)

I only have 1 gathering profession so time in queue is also often spent sorting out Alchemy, and less frequently, First Aid. I should go a step further and also pick up Fishing and Cooking. Actually, Fishing would be an ideal method to while away the time – especially if you park your character in Dalaran.

You can fish all the way from level 1 to level 450 without leaving the city!

4. Travel and Collect Flight Paths

One of the most obvious disadvantages of leveling through dungeons and not by questing is that you won’t pick up Flight Paths as you travel the world. However, collecting level-appropriate Flight Paths is an excellent way to spend time in queue. It’s even better if you can combine that with a gathering skill.

The lengthy run from Stormwind to Menethil Harbour is well known to all Alliance players and something I would consider to be a necessary evil in the 20-30 level bracket range. How about the run from Darkshire to Booty Bay? A deadly, also necessary, chore (and that was before they put in that new flight path in the north west corner of Stranglethorn Vale).

Now I look at the gathering of Flight Paths as a trivia game: what flight paths exist in zones of my level? what’s the most efficient way to reach them by foot? what’s the safest way to reach them by foot?

It’s a bit tricky to predict how important, or irrelevant, Flight Paths will be in Cataclysm. On one hand we’re returning to Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor but on the other hand we’ll be able to use flying mounts. Hmmm… it’s a mystery.

5. Try and Sneak into Dalaran

I must admit that once I reached level 68 I was a bit impatient to get to Dalaran and make it my home. Surely once I’d reached Northrend I could run up and use that stupid triangle transportation device in Crystalsong Forest? As it turns out… no (see fail picture above).

WowWiki is full of interesting suggestions on how to get to Dalaran. I think, if you’re playing the game as intended, you quest in the lower half of Northrend until you reach about level 74 and then a bunch of NPCs (depending on where you are) offer you a flight to Dalaran. If you’re impatient and don’t want to wait until level 74 you’re going to need to try something else.

Since I was already several hours into my Botanica queue at the time I thought I would attempt the Death In Crystalsong Forest Method. The idea being: once you release your spirit in Crystalsong Forest you can fly up to the city on your spirit form griffin. Log out, and then log back in, and you should be in Dalaran, alive.

Unfortunately I missed a critical step: once you’re in Dalaran as a ghost you have to run down to the doors of Violet Hold and talk to the Spirit Guide and resurrect with Resurrection Sickness. I’m not sure why you have to log out at all actually.

I didn’t talk to the Spirit Guide. But I did log out. So I returned to Caesandra still dead, in Dalaran, and now back to the end of the Dungeon Finder queue. I jumped out a sewer pipe (still ignorant of the Resurrection Sickness step) in order to get back to my body.

6. Write Tickets to Blizzard

You could go argue on the World of Warcraft forums, but since the whole Real ID thing was announced, I’m boycotting the official forums. Actually in general I try not to waste my time and I don’t believe any useful feedback could survive the trolling on the official forums so I tend to keep my complains as posts on this here blog. Or as “Report a Problem” tickets.

Fortunately, you can write tickets and talk to GMs while you’re in queue! Unfortunately you can only write one ticket at a time.

My long waits for Botanica, coupled with my terrible, terrible match-ups with players who give up at the first hint of trouble, were the cause of several tickets to Blizzard. I haven’t really gotten much out of the GMs who were tasked with replying to me except:

If other players choose to leave it’s their right to do so.

Of course it’s their right. More of the time it’s a healer or tank that quits (mid-1st-boss pull and leave party is a common occurrence) and the entire party disbands. Which means you can’t requeue under the promise that “you are at the front of the queue”. Instead a tank/healer drops the group, 3 others follow and suddenly you’re at the back of yet another hour+ queue. I think I deserve some time of priority when I queue the next time. Surely when you have a perfect record – well except for that one time in BRD – for staying in parties until they fall apart or you’re left alone you shouldn’t have to wait yet another hour for the next group.

And then:

The Dungeon Finder wait times are a result of the number of players available to do those instances.

And this is where I take real exception. It’s not that only 5 people in three hours are willing to run The Botanica. I don’t believe that. The problem is that the Dungeon Finder makes it very easy to choose, in fact it’s the default option, the Random Dungeon. This would be fine except that this option is entirely replaced (at level 68 as far as I can tell) by Random Wrath of the Lich King Dungeon. At level 68 you cannot choose Random Burning Crusade Dungeon.

Why are players in the level 68-72 player range not given both choices? Instead we end up overdosing on Utgarde Keep and half of the Burning Crusade dungeon content isn’t experienced at all.

Eventually you’re grouped with a bunch of level 68 players trying to clear Magister’s Terrace (not easy) as part of their Outlands Dungeonmaster achievement. It’s not just DPS waiting a long time in these queues either. Tanks and Healers often have to wait 30 minutes to an hour. There’s just not enough players because they’re cut off once Utgarde Keep is unlocked.

7. Watch TV (Online)

The trick to watching TV while you wait for your queue is to boost the sound volume in World of Warcraft high enough that you will hear the Call-to-Arms/Alert sound effect when your queue pops up over the sound of your TV show. Then you need to make sure that, about once every 10 minutes, you tab back into World of Warcraft and jump around so that you don’t automatically log out from inactivity.

8. Catch up on Your Reading

Of course there are a whole bunch of other things you can do online to occupy your time. I like to catch up on the blogs that I read (all listed on our blogroll of course!). And check my email.

So, are you in a queue right now as you read this?

You’re not? Well, why not?!

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.

Blackrock Depths Prison satchel time!

When the Dungeon Finder was released Blackrock Depths was one of those ridiculously long Classic dungeons that became split up into more manageable pieces. Unfortunately, someone decided that the best way to chunk down an instance that spans 12 character levels (48 – 60) and includes 20 bosses was to split the zone into two parts: Prison, covering 1 boss, and Upper City, presumably covering the other 19 bosses.

Makes no sense to me either. But we’ll work with what we’re given.

After struggling through Sunken Temple it was something of a relief to be dropped into Blackrock Depths to complete a super quick run and receiving a satchel 5 minutes later. Then I, and my groups, became dissatisfied. These one boss BRD Prison runs were just too short. I started dragging my groups off to kill some of the bosses wandering the corridors nearby.

This guide will actually cover the starting area of Blackrock Depths and should give you a nice, quick, four boss run with minimal trash kills. We’re going to clear the Halls of Law, Ring of Law and then finally head south and kill High Interrogator Gerstahn for a satchel.

The Map

Blackrock Depths: Prison - bosses and travel path marked

1. Lord Roccor Optional.
   This giant rock elemental patrols the Halls of Law – look out for him.
2. Houndmaster Grebmar Optional.
   Drops a sweet caster cloak by the way!
3. Ring of Law Optional.
   Make sure your entire party is well within the gate before you speak to the NPC and start the event. The gate will close and lock party members out of the fight if they’re not inside the arena. The bosses summoned during the event are random, but waves of adds will come out of the east gate and then north gate first.
4. High Interrogator Gerstahn
   The final boss. Congratulations on your Satchel!

The Run

If Sunken Temple showed us the low of the low: tanks who couldn’t tank, healers who couldn’t heal and DPS that did nothing, Blackrock Depths: Prison showed us the opposite. We were grouped up with efficient killing machine style tanks. Bind on Account gear was the norm, not the exception.

Even the tanks that struggled to hold threat against the full brunt of mine and Pixii’s AoE were excellent and well in control of their character and the enemy mobs.

Actually, the reason I wanted to put this guide together was because I ended up queuing one night on my own and was fortunate enough to be grouped with a very experienced tank/healer duo in BoA gear that knew BRD back to front. These guys weren’t content to kill one boss. At level 50 and 51 they were ready to do a full instance clear. It was this pair that showed me that Houndmaster Grebmar and Lord Roccor are just around the corner from the starting area and these two players that patiently explained all the tricks to successfully clear the bar without wiping.

Unfortunately not all of our runs were as blissful. It was in a Blackrocks Depths: Prison run that I played with the absolutely worst player that I’ve ever played with. Yes, it was that bad. Yes, it was a tank.

A bot could have done a better job.

I can only assume that this particular Warrior had been hassled by their Hunter friend to try out tanking. The pair were from the same guild, the Hunter was quite skilled and did their very best to compensate for their friend’s performance by laying traps like crazy and misdirecting non-stop. Unfortunately this Warrior had an epic DPS weapon, no shield and just ran in and auto-attacked. No thunderclap, no taunts, no shouts, nothing. I’m serious, it was like watching a brand new player run around Northshire Abbey right clicking on boars.

One pull in and a DPS left the group. We replaced them. Another two pulls and another DPS left the group. We replaced them. But when the healer left a couple minutes later I gave up too. I’ve never been so glad to get out of a party before.

Still Want More?

There’s no doubt about it, even doing a “full” four boss clear, Blackrock Depths: Prison is a really short instance. It’s not uncommon to be standing over the body of High Interrogator Gerstahn still wanting more.

If your group is keen, and you’ve already killed the four bosses on the map, I suggest that you extend the run out to almost double the length and turn it into a “Shadowforge Key” run. Unless you’re a Rogue (with Pick Lock) you’re going to want to earn your own Shadowforge Key before you reach the Blackrock Depths: Upper City level bracket (51 – 61).

To start the quest chain you need to spirit run back into Blackrock Depths, talking to a ghost quest-giver in the heart of Blackrock Mountain (just near the summoning stone, in the center rock hanging suspended from 2 metal chains) on the way. So if you do happen to wipe in Blackrock Depths: Prison make sure you use that spirit run back to pick up the quest. Alternatively you can accept the quest from another party member if they share it with you.

I’m going to write a separate guide for the Extended Prison Run, so keep an eye out. When it’s released I’ll come back and link to it from this article.

The Corpse Run

Everytime I’ve wiped or died during a Prison run of Blackrock Depths I’ve released and ended up near Thorim Point in northern Searing Gorge at a graveyard. However, Blackrock Mountain sits rights at the border between Searing Gorge (to the north) and Burning Steppes (to the south). There is a small chance that you will end up in the northeast graveyard in Burning Steppes depending on where you die inside Blackrock Depths itself.

It’s unlikely, though. So I’ve covered the trip back from the Searing Gorge graveyard to the Blackrock Depths entrance. This is also how I would travel there if you’re not getting summoned or teleported straight in.

The basic directions are:

1. Travel south from Thorium Point/The Graveyard, in the general direction of your corpse marker on your minimap
2. As you enter the southern half of your map start looking towards the southern border of the zone for a set of wooden slats which form the path up to Blackrock Mountain. Take that path (I think it’s a bit further east than where your corpse marker on your mini map).
3. Enter through the giant doors. Blackrock Mountain can be navigated via a giant ring path. The northern door opens out to Searing Gorge, the southern door opens out to Burning Steppes. If you enter from Searing Gorge, turn left and travel a short distance along the ring road.
4. Climb up the rubble onto the giant chain that links the ring road to the floating rock island in the middle of the mountain. Walk onto the chain, turn right and head down the chain towards the summoning stone (going left takes you to Blackrock Spire – upper and lower).
5. Walk into the building, the tomb, via either door near the summoning stone. Head down through the center rooms until you come out the other end. Don’t walk off the edge.
6. Turn right and you’ll see that the path spirals down until it meets a second chain bridge.
7. Cross the second, smaller chain bridge and walk up towards the blood elf (this guy exists to port attuned players directly into the raid zone – Molten Core) but just before you reach him, take the right open doorway.
8. Welcome to the Grinding Quarry. Head north east, weaving between the giant rocks, until you see a wide bridge due north.
9. Cross the bridge and you’ll see the Blackrock Depths zone portal tucked into the rock face on your right.

Jerks never seem to realise they're behaving like jerks.

I was reading Tamarind’s post a while back about the number of jerks that seem to thrive in the Dungeon Finder system and whether or not a harsher penalty for deserting a bad group will punish the jerks or their victims. The dungeon deserter debuff is now a 30 minute ban from using the Dungeon Finder instead of 15 minutes.

I like that the penalty is being increased to 30 minutes. I like that the penalty for leaving a dungeon is longer than the time it takes to complete your average heroic. I like that the penalty – which is exactly the same for tanks, healers and DPS – is longer than your average 20 minute DPSers queue time.

The Jerk in Blackrock Depths

That said, I don’t think the actual penalty is 30 minutes.

Pixii and I (as Caesandra) ventured into Blackrock Depths and then Dire Maul using the Dungeon Finder on the weekend. The queues were amazing – the longest wait was 10 minutes – which really was a relief because the long queue times – upwards of 40 minutes – were becoming a real drawback to our leveling plan. Neither group was particularly pleasant.

The first group, for Blackrock Depths, seemed quite nice and everyone played reasonably well at the start. A few bosses in and things started to unravel. The Rogue commented that they still hadn’t received a Satchel every time we killed a boss – and the tank started to snap “I told you it’s from the last boss – the king”. Unfortunately I had been a bit too AoE-happy and forgotten about Ice Block altogether and had gotten myself killed once or twice. At one point I also wandered a bit too far forward and pulled a pack. I apologised immediately. The tank chastised me for wasting his cooldowns.

Then we reached the Manufactory and the atmosphere deteriorated even further. The feral tank ran into the left hand room – and Pixii and I followed – only to turn around and run back out into the corridor. Recognising that this was meant to a Line of Sight pull, we quickly followed him right back out. I had hit Blizzard and had my giant green AoE circle hovering over the floor when I several of the mobs started taking swings at me. I never dropped my Blizzard. The green circle was still hovering over the floor when I died.

The tank made some comments about how I didn’t know how to LoS pull and pretty much accused me of lying when I replied that I hadn’t cast anything at all. A few pulls and he was having a go at our healer when he ran ahead and pulled a group out of range and because the healer didn’t flag themselves as /afk.

Eventually we reached the Grim Guzzler and the tank dragged us to the upper level, into the storeroom and very sternly told us “do NOT move and, whatever you do, do NOT AOE!”. He then turned around and ran back out. Through the wall I can see that the bartender’s nameplate has turned red and slowly all the bar patrons also turn from Neutral to Angry. The tank drags the bartender into the room and we kill him and his sidekicks – without AoE, of course. Then the tank looks out and perhaps realises for the first time that all the bar patrons are pissed. Pissed off, that is. We’re backed into a corner. A minute passes.

“Which moron did that?”

“Er you did. When you pulled the bartender.”

At this point if he’d been willing to just start pulling, clearing the room, I wouldn’t have a problem. But no, he wanted to stand around and argue about it.

“I didn’t do it. The rogue fucking did something”

Maybe he was right. But neither Lathere or I saw the need to stick around and waste our evening arguing instead of earning XP. We left the party. And only had a 4 minute debuff called Hoarse. So much for the 30 minute dungeon deserter debuff?

More Jerks in Dire Maul

We requeued and found ourselves in Dire Maul. With our first Death Knight tank from the Dungeon Finder. He wasn’t actually as bad as I expected – but my expectations were pretty low. The group wasn’t particularly pleasant but the most surprising thing was the other three party members were disturbingly, well… raw. How you can reach level 55 that inexperienced, I’m not sure.

The Death Knight asked me straight off the bat:
“My brother wants to know what level you get the water pet”

And I replied:
“It’s from a talent. I haven’t had him very long”

“Where?”

“In the Frost tree” I thought that was more than enough information. Surely the Mage brother could just go and look at his talents the next time he logged in.

“Where?”

“Summon Water Elemental.” Blizzard and nonsensical talent names. Complicated stuff, you know! I then did my standard greeting before the first pull:

“Trade me for food/water”

I usually spend my queue time conjuring enough food and water for my party. If you want it, you click on me and open up trade. It’s an etiquette thing I’ve noticed since playing the Mage myself – if you want food/water, you’d better come to me and open the trade window yourself. My offer of refreshment was met with two types of responses:

“You can’t trade items in here” and “Water please.”

Neither is the correct. I didn’t bother responding to the first incorrect comment in chat. I simply opened up a Trade window with the smart ass Shaman and successfully traded him a stack of conjured food and water. The other two parties members didn’t seem to understand how to go about opening up a Trade window on their own, so I eventually gave up and traded them what they wanted. Since they said “please” I figured I’d cut them some slack.

One member of the party, the Dungeon Guide actually, was a Druid DPS. I should explain: I have to refer to him as a DPS Druid because one third of the time he was in Druid form, one third of the time he was in kitty form and one third of the time he was in Moonkin form and whether he was melee attacking or casting spells seemed to be totally unrelated to the type of form he was in. Lathere was horrified. Regardless, there were a few occasions when I witnessed the Druid running up to a group of mobs off to the side, pause to cast a spell, then run after the rest of the party 50 yards ahead of us.

“Help!”

At first I thought this was amusing. I’ve considered “accidentally” pulling extra groups when I want to get extra XP out of a run so I happily told Lathere over Vent, “the Druid just pulled an extra group”.

“I don’t think it was intentional” she replied when we nearly wiped trying to recover. The Druid was the first to die.

At the first boss the tank got extremely excited when a green of the Monkey sword dropped. The kind that you can pick up on the Auction House for a few gold. He announced that he was Need-ing the sword for an alt (screenie above). I found myself wondering how it was possible that the tank had managed to qualify for starting a Death Knight. No way was this Death Knight his second high level character.

Perhaps the Death Knight gave the Druid ideas by Need rolling on an uncommon sword. At the final boss a pair of rare boots dropped and they were Mail. When the Druid rolled Need, the Shaman, who had also rolled Need, said

“You can’t wear Mail armor”

“No, they’re for my very good friend” I scrolled up, surprised to find a Bind on Equip boss drop.

“They’re Bind on Pickup.”

It wasn’t until that point, and when I looked back at the screencapture from the first boss that I realised he had Needed on every single blue item that had dropped. Ninja.

A Better System

A friend once told me “I’d rather group with nice people who can’t play than dickheads who can”. I agreed. But it’s not quite that straightforward. We seem that we rank our fellow party members in two ways:

Personality

• + Are they nice, kind, well-spoken and polite?
• – or are they rude, impatient, demanding and lazy?

Performance

• + Do they keep up with the group, succeed at playing their role (tank, damage or healing) and never cause wipes?
• – or are they always way behind or AFK, unable to do their job (hold threat, deal damage or keep green bars full) and cause deaths?

Obviously players who perform well and are nice will be treasured party members that you’ll hope to come across again. In turn players who are nasty and perform poorly should be added to your /ignore list ASAP.

But what if the Hunter is nice but his performance is abysmal? What if the healer is fantastic but is a total jerk and spends the entire run bitching at others?

How many times have you read blog comments that essentially say “Hey, as long as the guy is pulling 8k DPS I don’t care if he’s a total asshole”. These are people who value Performance over Personality.

Personally, I don’t think there’s any excuse for behaving like an obnoxious jerk in a group setting – even if the group setting is a virtual one in World of Warcraft.

There is some excuse for performing badly. A lot of performance mistakes are made in total ignorance – most of my mistakes are caused by this! – and is usually solved by time and practice. Some poor performance has to stem from pure laziness though. And that shouldn’t be encouraged.

I just don’t see how, if Blizzard are tracking things like:

• Number of Vote Kicks initiated by the player
• Number of Vote Kicks cast by others to kick the player
• Number of times player left an incomplete dungeon

They can really make judgments on who are good grouping players and who are not. Perhaps that’s what Tamarind is getting at – it’s not just the total assholes with awful personalities that get Vote Kicked. Players who under-perform can get Vote Kicked too. Players who stand up for their principles, but cause conflict while doing so, get Vote Kicked. It’s not just jerks with poor personalities that leave dungeons – nice people leave dungeons all the time. And I think it’s the most assertive player in the group who initiates a Vote Kick – and that is a personality trait that can be found in both nice and nasty people.

Hopefully Blizzard will gather all their data and come up with some winning formula that distinguishes the good from the bad. I already know what I want the solution to be, I just don’t know the best way to get there. This is, in my mind, the only solution to the problem we currently face:

The problem: Players who value a nice Personality > Performance are often grouped with players who are total jerks. These jerks can ruin the Dungeon Finder experience.

The solution: Jerks should only be grouped with other jerks. Nobody else can stomach their behavior and conversation.

How do we get there? Clearly we need to flag who qualifies as a Jerk so we can, for the most part, group them up with other like-minded individuals. Well I have one idea:

The eBay Rating System

Why can’t we steal eBay’s idea and form a rating system for players who group with strangers using the Dungeon Finder? I’m not saying we should take the 5 star rating system and display it under their unit frame in the Party interface or anything like that. I mean, allow players, at the end of a successful Dungeon Finder run, to provide negative and positive feedback about the players they were grouped with. In the same way that buyers and sellers on eBay rate and comment on each other at the end of a transaction.

I think you ought to be prompted with a small, totally unobtrusive and optional survey at the end of a run. Perhaps a button to fill it out could be tucked away in the corner where they stash that “You have an open ticket” button.

Dungeon Finder Group Survey

1. Tankodeath, Death Knight, Tank
   Performance: o Poor o Unremarkable o Excellent
   Behaviour: o Poor o Unremarkable o Excellent
2. Shamhealy, Shaman, Healer
   Performance: o Poor o Unremarkable o Excellent
   Behaviour: o Poor o Unremarkable o Excellent
3. Caseandra, Mage, Damage
   Performance: o Poor o Unremarkable o Excellent
   Behaviour: o Poor o Unremarkable o Excellent
4. Pixii, Warlock, Damage
   Performance: o Poor o Unremarkable o Excellent
   Behaviour: o Poor o Unremarkable o Excellent
5. Samshots, Hunter, Damage
   Performance: o Poor o Unremarkable o Excellent
   Behaviour: o Poor o Unremarkable o Excellent

I don’t think the results of the survey should be made visible. I think the data should be as secret as the data they’re already collecting about Vote Kicks.

I do think that when forming groups players who are often reported as having a record for poor behavior (jerks) should be grouped together whenever possible. Players who are also flagged as poor performers should also be grouped together whenever possible. If you’re still learning to play, even once you’re geared at Heroic dungeon levels, you’ll learn more by being grouped with others like you. You won’t steamroll through Heroics, that’s true, but I think you’d get more opportunities to step up when the other four party members aren’t covering your mistakes before you even realise you’ve made one.

I think the only way this system would work though was if it was a totally optional survey. The problem with the eBay system is that it forces you to provide feedback even when everything went according to plan and the transaction was so unremarkable that you end up writing meaningless nonsense when you give feedback. Remembering nothing about an eBay transaction is the same as remember nothing about the last 4 people you grouped with in the Dungeon Finder: if it’s unremarkable it’s good.

But sometimes you come across a jerk and the occasional how-the-heck-can-he-only-manage-900-DPS? players that you’d do anything for a way to pass that information to future party members: Beware of this one!

If I queue as a Healer my future group is going to miss out on this.

Sometime during the last month I stopped queuing as a Healer/Damage for the daily random Heroic. Now I just choose Damage.

Yes, now I have much, much longer queues to get into Halls of Stone (which I get about three times more often than any other dungeon). I was trying to pinpoint the moment when I unchecked that “Healer” checkbox. The long wait for a dungeon as Damage – 10 to 15  minutes – seems like a reasonable trade off compared to completing the dungeon as a healer.

I think I know when things changed: when I won Muradin’s Spyglass and, the following week, completed my 4 piece Shadow Tier 10 set. It was when my Shadow set suddenly became awesome.

My healing set is still a mishmash of +hit items with 2 piece Tier 9.

I started choosing Damage so that I could run Heroics and enjoy my new gear. To try out my new gear in a familiar setting to see how it performs – and after a Target Dummy, a Northrend Heroic which I’ve run a billion times is where I conduct my second test drive.

After a few days of patiently queuing as Damage I had a particularly busy day outside of WoW – one of those days where you leave the house and realise 12 hours later that you’re not getting home any time soon. I got home right before midnight, mentally calculating if I had time to do the random Heroic before the day “ended”. In Blizzard time I think this is at either 1.30AM or 2.30AM server time. To speed things up I queued as Healer/Damage and was dropped into – you’ll never guess – Halls of Stone to heal.

The DPS was agonizingly slow. The tank and 3 DPS were all still in the gearing-up stage where Emblems of Triumph are the goal. We did a full clear. I didn’t complain. But I felt that this group needed me – needed me as a Shadow Priest. They gained a healer, yes, but at the cost of a significantly faster run. I tried to help out with the damage but I’ve never really mastered DPSing while healing as Discipline. It’s certainly not like DPSing once you’ve talented into the Shadow tree so I’ve never really been compelled to try.

There was once an argument covered on WoW.com: Who should heal in battlegrounds? And the answer was: anyone who can, should. Whether you think that’s true of PVP or not, I don’t think that’s true in PVE. Asking damage dealers to queue as their weaker/less geared Tank or Healer role does presumably get groups matched up and started faster. But you’re losing a whole bunch excellent damage dealers in the process.

Futhermore if it’s true that the Dungeon Finder evaluates you on the gear in you possession, whether it’s in your bank, bag or equipped, then I’m being chosen as though I’m a first rate ICC25 geared and experienced healer – which I’m most certainly not. Yes, I’m still qualified to heal a heroic. But there’s only so much “carrying” that I can do.

As my guild clears the Icecrown Citadel bosses my Damage and Healing gear sets will continue to get further and further apart. My DPS set is excellent. And why shouldn’t my future party members benefit from it? What’s the point in spending thousands of DKP to get Dislodged Foreign Object only to let it gather dust in your bags?

So now I queue as Damage only. It’s the role that I’ve perfected. I’m not one of these slackers who queue as Damage wearing full healing gear and request that everyone else passes on healing gear – if you’re one of those: get out of my party or start doing your “main spec” job now.

I have a new understanding for why so many Ret Paladins, DPS Warriors and DKs queue as DPS only when they could be tanking.

The path to Princess Theraras in Maraudon: Pristine Waters

Pristine Waters (levels 41-53) begins south of where a Purple Crystals (levels 39-49) or Orange Crystals (levels 41-51) run would end.

Pristine Waters is the easiest part of Maraudon to get lost in. This is also where you’ll find the most beautiful scenery in Maraudon. There are many winding paths that loop back and over each other at different levels.

When I create these guides I aim to put together comprehensive boss runs – guides that ensure you kill all the bosses in quick succession and give you a satchel at the very end. Unfortunately that’s just not possible in a Pristine Waters run.

This guide will take you on a loop that kills all four bosses. But you’re going to get your satchel midway when you kill Princess Theraras. To kill Princess last would require a lot of extra clearing and backtracking. This run is much shorter, but you may need to convince your party to stick around for the two optional bosses in the run.

The Map

Maraudon Pristine Waters Map with bosses and travel path marked

The bosses are:

1. Landslide
   He’s at the very top level of a long winding path. Once you’ve killed him, backtrack halfway down the path and take a right.
2. Princess Theraras
   Technically she’s the final boss of the instance and will award you a satchel. The path from Landslide logically leads you to Princess and all the groups that I’ve been in have instinctively traveled this direction. I’m not going to buck the trend here!
3. Rotgrip optional, recommended
   There’s absolutely no reason not to kill Rotgrip after Princess. No mobs lie between the two. Face away from Princess and jump off the left side of the path into the water and wait for Rotgrip to swim to you.
4. Tinkerer Gizlock optional
   There’s a bit of clearing in order to get to Tinkerer Gizlock and I’ve yet to find myself in a group willing to kill him. Perhaps his loot isn’t very good? Swim east after killing Rotgrip then follow the path clockwise, over the bridge then north west.

I really did try and figure out a good, logical clearing order which would bring your party to Princess last. I promise, I tried. However the amount of stuff that needs killing between Landslide and Tinkerer Gizlock is a real bummer.

And there’s just no good way to kill Rotgrip before killing Princess T – you’ll be standing on the bridge facing Princess and trying to convince your party members to take a one way detour to kill Rotgrip and Gizlock – I just can’t see that happening.

The other kill order I’ve seen suggested is:

1. Tinkerer Gizlock (there’s another way to get to him on the way to Landslide – taking a route north east off the path. Follow the dotted line marked on this map – thanks Shrike!)
2. backtrack then go up to Landslide
3. go off to kill Princess
4. then fall in the water and kill Rotgrip

Personally I hate the amount of trash you need to clear by taking that route to Tinkerer Gizlock. I know that my path looks really long on the map but most of it is clear of mobs – it’s just a long run with a couple packs in the way. And I can never find the turn off to get to Gizlock along the path marked yellow.

The Run

I’ll admit it’s been weeks and weeks since Pixii and I ran Pristine Waters. I’ve been trying to get my mind around how to do this guide. Unfortunately that means that I don’t remember much about the pugs themselves.

I do remember that all the diemetradons cast a Sonic Burst silence on casters that accidentally get into melee range and it’s just not worth trying to get a Frost Nova off. I remember that the rock elementals break down into smaller rock elementals upon death. AoE ftw!

I do remember that almost every run includes a 2 minute interlude while the party members speculate on just how ugly Princess Theradras is. And on that topic, I’m convinced that the only reason we give her so much grief is because she has the word “Princess” in her name and we start thinking of Snow White, Cinderella or maybe even celebrity princesses like Paris Hilton. Tiny, cute and blonde she is not.

Lathere is convinced that Princess ought to come to Northrend and meet Patchwerk, Rotface or Festergut. I think it’s better she stays single:

Ages ago, Theradras and Zaetar, first son of Cenarius, began a relationship. The offspring of their time together became known to the people of Kalimdor as centaurs, who promptly slew their father for his part in their misbegotten creation.

The Corpse Run

To recover your body after dying in Pristine Water you’ll need to run back to the instance portal in Valley of the Spears, Desolace. However there is no Pristine Waters instance portal – you need to take either of the two Maraudon portals like you would for a Purple or Orange Crystals instance run.

I would recommend following the path to the Purple Crystals portal found at the end of this guide.

*** ps. Next up: the dreaded Sunken Temple **

Plate is shiny

I’m currently in the process of putting together a list of Bind on Account, aka Heirloom, gear list for a baby Paladin. I’m thinking of leveling a Paladin, not because I have any intention of playing a Paladin at max level but purely for leveling fun.

I’ve been enjoying leveling the Mage using the Dungeon Finder but I’m getting just a bit tired of the lengthy dungeon queues. Time to roll a hybrid.

I’ve been doing some research. I want to make sure I buy the very best BoA items around for my Paladin. Eventually – around level 40 – I expect I’ll need a tanking and healing set. I won’t be queuing dungeons as Damage, so I don’t really intend to put together a high DPS Retribution set. If I go out in the world to complete a few quest, well, I’ll have to just wear my tanking/shield gear. I somehow doubt that there’s much difference between DPS and tanking items at lower levels.

In doing my research I was quite surprised to find a lot of conflicting opinions about the best weapon and best enchants. I think this is mostly because some of the newer weapons (the Maces in particular) were released sometime after Wrath of the Lich King. Anyway, here’s what I consider to be the most suitable items. I’d really love to hear what some more experienced Paladins think.

Both of the weapons are 1 hand weapons which frees up my Offhand item slot for an appropriate Shield. Is it worth purchasing a 2 handed weapon to equip if I need to complete a couple quests on my own?

Tanking set

I was surprised at how poor the trinket choice was for melee DPS and tanking characters. There is no Attack Power trinket. The Inherited Insignia would be somewhat handy to get out of nets and other movement impairing effects (although I think I’m going to be playing a Human, so there’s no need). The Swift Hand of Justice haste trinket is useful for all classes to some degree.

Would I be better off equipping the spell power trinket? Do Paladins benefit from equipping spell power for dps or tanking?

The enchanting options are quite interesting and I imagine the choice comes down to personal taste. Fiery Blaze Enchantment is a great option, I believe, but you need to complete a quest around level 40 to earn it. Until then you can either choose to remain enchant-less or you can choose one of the other options that I’ve listed. Most comments that I’ve found seem to favor Lifestealing over Crusader and then recommend choosing the flat stat gain from Agility or Strength after level 60 (the point at which Lifestealing and Crusader being to diminish in power).

I think I’m going to aim for the Fiery Blaze Enchant just because it’s something that I would never have thought of using. Furthermore, it won’t cost you any gold.

Healing Set

Fortunately for me I have both the Mail spell power shoulders and the spell power mace from when I leveled my Shaman. It may seem like a lot of effort to purchase gear for 2 sets but, to be honest, I have nearly all the items for my healing set already.

Also, if you’re an excellent fisherman the Dread Pirate Ring awarded to the winner of the weekly Kalu’ak Fishing Derby would complement either set. But somehow I doubt I’m going to win this event!