The Guild That Blogs Together…

I’ve had the pleasure for a while at reading the entries from members of BoO… a guild with many that blog including their GM.  So, I’m now quite proud to introduce a couple of my blogging guildmates.

[Un]holy randomness – The blog of my best friend IRL, as well as fellow guildie.  She’s proud to play a holy pally and a facemelting DK and has made this blog to share her insights with us!  She literally JUST created the blog yesterday, but I’m so thrilled to have more guildies in the BLOG world!  SQUEE!!!!

Inquatitis’ Blog – Inq, also known by many other names, is Wrath and Ret’s GM.  He plays a DK tank/dps, Warlock, Hunter and even has a rogue hidden somewhere and a baby priest [though the idea of him healing has people shaking for some odd reason].  He’s quite opinionated, but it serves him and the guild well imho.

Extended Maintenance is Extended…

I was a bit annoyed this morning, when hubby told me “oh servers are up, no patch, no maintenance message” and a couple hours later, I logged in to find all servers down with NO message.  But eh, I don’t really expect to play Tuesday mornings anyway, and get a lot of work done around the house in the interim, post the Ugly Pug weekly blog and what not.

But yeah, extended maintenance always causes much interesting QQ on the forums.  Good for a laugh if you’re bored enough.

As hubby told me, extended maintenance without an obvious patch usually means they did a server side patch that screwed things up pretty badly.  They want it back up probably worse than we do [I mean I seriously wouldn't want to be answering their phones right now], so while an annoyance [and trust me - I know.  By the time the servers are back up, my son will probably be up from his nap], there’s not much we can do beyond being patient.

Ugly Pug Volume 3

Stories are a bit thin this week, partly because I slacked off on instancing except for my main, to do some of the holiday stuff.

GOGOGOGOGOGOGO!!!!!!!: An “Angry” Tank rant.

Frequently this message, or some variant of it, is the first thing I see when I zone in an instance as a tank.  Heck, it’s often the first thing I see in any role, but more directed at me on one of my tanks.

And you know what?  I’m getting sick of hearing it.  I don’t zone in thinking “OMG I want to take 2 hours to do this measly instance”.  My goal is always to do an instance as quickly as possible, group permitting.  There are any number of reasons I will hesitate to pull, or pull slower than I’d like.

1. Ability on Cooldown
2. Healer has no mana
3. Group isn’t working well together
4. Two dps are under 1k dps

And on and on and on.  I know my job.  I know how to do my job.  Let me do my job, or I promise, I’ll make yours harder.  Like the rogue who kept tricksing mobs to me.  Pally bubble solved that one   Also dispelling the tricks before he even went in.  I have and will do that.  Or just standing there, until the “uber rogue/hunter/whatever” passes me on threat.

I truly hate the rogue class.  I hate playing my own.  And with about 3 exceptions, I don’t know any skilled ones.  Rogues, generally speaking, seem to have ego problems and an inability to work together with a group.   I know that’s an unfair statement, and one a lot of people make about dks and I’d never kick someone from a group simply because they’re a rogue, but still…

Now, let me explain why yelling at the tank to gogogo is a bad thing.

1. Tanks hear it constantly.  We’re tired of hearing it, seeing it, whatever.  You saying that isn’t going to make me go faster.  In fact, if I’m on my pally tank, it’s the short way to not get buffs, as I will refuse to do buffs, so I won’t waste my mana and can gogogo, or I may just decide to slow it down massively.

2. I will purposely make you wait.  I will.  And if you pull for me, you and/or the group will pay for it.  I ALWAYS take the first few pulls easy, to check out my healer and see what the dps is like.  Then I can set the pace.

3. You pulling for me is really bad.  Even if you can tricks or MD me, you’re throwing me off.  Hence I may miss a pickup.  If you don’t have a misdirect of some sort, it’s very very bad.  My AOE might very well be on cooldown, then where do they all go?  The healer!  That’s not going to do you any favors all the way around.

4. Piss off tanks enough, and we’ll start queuing as dps.  Been there, done that.  I have the time for the 10 minute wait most of the time.  Or conversely, I’ll run only with guildies.

5. You persist in being a jerk and I’ll sit down and refuse to tank.  And you make it awful enough for me with your filthy mouth?  I have plenty of alts to play until the debuff goes away and I have no qualms with popping up a second account and having a chat with one of your guild’s officers.  I’ve had that pleasure several times already.

In short, I’m here to take abuse from mobs and bosses… not other players.

Ugly Pug Version 2

I apologize for the skip last week.  So you get two weeks of stories in one post

The Lich King is Dead. Now What? DK Version

Today, as most of you are aware, is the patch and the opening of access to the Lich King’s domain himself.  The cinematic for the Fall of the Lich King is already out there on youtube [not linked - but it's quite easy to find].  And no, there won’t be spoilers in this post, other than he dies.

What is this going to mean for the death knights?  What purpose will we have with him dead?  Our entire focus has been working to end the one who betrayed us.  With him gone, what more is there for us?

Are we to remain among the living?  Because we are dead.  We have worked with them to end this, but we’re not ever going to be them again.  Nor are they likely to understand where we’re coming from.

Main Tank is a Thing of the Past!

No, I’m not resigning from tanking. Yet something I knew and couldn’t quantify has finally been thrown in my face. Not a bad something – but a revelation!

Main Tanks are a thing of the past. Tanking Teams are in now.

Perhaps I overlooked this for so long because my hubby and I are a tanking team. We sit next to each other and swaps are made with split second timing in our ten man. We’re so used to anticipating each other and knowing what’s going to happen before it does. It was only a matter of time before we found our 25 man counterpart – who is an equally geared, equally played warrior.  Learning the fights together is interesting, I must admit. Because we ALL have to be in there, we all have to be together, and we all have to have some decent split second timing [particularly on Marrowgar].

Hubby has been rotating the three of us through the tanking roles… sometimes I’m tanking Jaraxxus, sometimes it’s the warrior [he always feels that as a pally he's better placed on the adds]. He picks two of us for the twin Valkyr, and we swap like crazy on the beasts.   I figure when we get more in ICC25 we’ll be doing some more of that, but for now – Marrowgar requires all three of us.  This requires all three of your tanks to respect and trust their fellows and not permit ego to get in the way.

But yes, the awesome uber Main TANK position of Burning Crusade? Gone. To progress well in current 25 man content – you need a three person tanking team. All three of them have to take the same beating right [ie Marrowgar]?

Meta Guild Group Leaves WaR :(

We have a group of people, the main portion of whom resided in WaR that made up sort of a meta guild coaltion.  They run 10 man content early on weekend mornings.  Ven [the hubby] and I have been proud members – even led the second 10 man at one point in time.  We made dozens of bars of titansteel for them, back when it was 500g a piece.  We donated mats and I even gave them quite a bit out of the GV as treasurer.  Until last night.

During an officer meeting, which we had in relation to an old member’s “heads up” who is now their ICC tank, we were trying to find out if there were problems in guild with relation to elitism.  Every accusation we received seems to have happened within their meta guild channel…  something we cannot, nor should be responsible for moderating.  Which seemed strange to us… they want autonomy but they want us to be supportive at the same time.  They’re frustrated with negativity, on their channel, none of it started by us and yet it’s somehow our responsibility.

What it ended up boiling down to was that apparently all our contributions and work were nothing… their new ICC tank is god, and we’re elitist a-holes.

What followed apparently in their channel was bashing us and WaR…  something that got back to us through friends.  We had a surprising number of people whispering us letting us know that they support us, which I suppose we shouldn’t be overly surprised at given that the meta group’s server reputation has begun to slide.  I’d be very interested to know what outrageous statements my husband Ven supposedly made, but eh, maybe it’s best I don’t know.  I don’t take bashing my husband very well.

DPS and Healers: You’re shooting yourselves in the foot.

I have 7 toons I try to run through their daily heroic for their frost badges.  One of those I run as a healer.  One I run as a tank.  Five I run as dps [and 2 of these have tank sets].  This morning, I’ve been through 4 heroics already and every single one had a healer with attitude – and at least one dps in each.  I’m not kidding.  Every Single Healer.

“Gogogogogogogo”

*pulls group of mobs for tank, while tank scrambles to gather them back up*

“Tank, you suck, go to tank school”

“We’ve been in here almost 15 mins!  Too SLOW!  GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO!”

*healer goes boomchicken and pulls everything to try and outdps everyone as a healer with a low threat tank* [causing my enhancement shaman self  and the ret pally in group to throw tank heals and trash our dps on the meters and get laughed at - not fun].

That has been my morning.  And at least 2 of the tanks were new tanks who told me after the fact that they should have just gone dps because they obviously sucked.  [One of these was quite good - the other needs a lot of practice].

I know that bad tanks exist – I’ve seen them and blogged about a few.  But seriously people – if you want more tanks to ease queue times then how about not freaking out if the run takes an extra five minutes?  Or if the tank needs to go a little slower?

In my own guild – LOTS of our members are starting to work on tank sets, but are too terrified of this kind of crap to go into the Dungeon finder as anything but dps.

Ding Dong The Bug is Dead!!! And the Bone Guy!!!!

Last night we finally KO’d Anub on ToC25!  And tonight, we downed Marrowgar on 25 man for the first time!