Now I Remember Why I Hate LFR…

And why tanks have an instant queue…

Iron Qon is the fight causing said issues.  Every week the LFR group has this idea of how it’s supposed to be tanked.  Last week the group demanded we basically teleport the boss [ie kite him whilst he’s casting dead zone] away from the spear.  The week prior to that the group freaked out at the prospect of tanking him at the back because it could reset and waste their time.  Another LFR group essentially demanded he be kited in phase 3 and placed in the middle for the final phase…  And these groups are willing to wipe than try another strat.  The group this week demanded that we tank him at the back and force the healers to just heal through the aoe.  In point of fact we wiped twice because they stood at the back and refused to move.  Out of anything.  That “isn’t their job”.  We finally gave in and tanked it where they said and it was pretty rough on the healers but it got done.  Of course it was all entirely our fault because we don’t know how it’s supposed to be done.

 

Knowing how it’s “supposed to be done” in LFR is hard when every group seems to EXPECT and DEMAND that it be done their way.  I’ve seen some pretty far out demands and as a tank it’s better to just go along with it… heck I’m tempted to ask what they want… because they won’t adapt or change for anyone.  I have no idea which strat is typical.  Most of them work when people are trying.  But even if we go in and do what we want there’s always one person who knows how to do it better.

 

When I position the boss in phase one so that melee can be behind it without being in the fires and half the raid still is… I don’t think that’s a problem with me.  Tanks really truly can’t win right now.  And I do take the nasty words personally – where I shouldn’t.

 

Us hitting berserk on the second boss was apparently the tank’s fault too.  None of the dps were willing to run the patterns.  We had a couple of our ranged try it [their mains are melee however] when we were getting on toward berserk and it was taking forever.  But none of them got used.

 

And apparently it was our fault too that the Lei Shen kill was messy.  I mean obviously we’re at fault for people standing in lightning whip and thunderstruck every single time they hit.

 

You know what?

 

I honestly don’t need this.  My main needs no tanking gear and I don’t need to have a geared DK tank alt.  Or heck, I could throw some blue crafted dps gear on her and just dps for the tank gear.  Only I feel the need to defend the other tanks when it gets done to them…

 

Just… the fatigue and stress of the last week have not been pleasant.  Add big life changes and then this on top of it… yeah I really don’t need it.  And had I not been with guildies, I would have left.

 

And honestly, at this moment, I never want to tank LFR again.  I know I will.  I know that’s an emotional overreaction in this moment in time.  But seriously… think about it… Why would ANYONE want to deal with this?

The Funniest Thing I’ve Ever Seen in LFR

We did the back half of LFR tonight and got in there, got to spine.  We realized then that one of our “healers” was dpsing rather than healing.  Another healer DC’d and never came back and I think a third one died.  We had like 3 amals get killed  without exploding because dps wouldn’t stop and ultimately wiped.  Our guild asked for a raid kick on the healing priest being shadow as well as the dc’d healer, so we could move forward.

This priest then begins to bless me out for “being the last healer”

Cut out duplicate lines and the rest of the healing meter in my SS:

 

I do realize that six heals can be OP for some fights… but you really should do the job you’re queued for and queue for the job[s] you’re willing to do.  Because what happens when a healer dc’s mid fight or one dies freakishly?

And you may want to know who you’re screaming at when you rage.  But thanks for the giggles.  The guildies that were with me were cackling madly at this.

How NOT to Treat a Tank

I’ve been sick the last few days… sick enough that I didn’t log onto WoW till late in the day.  I felt like crap so I decided to queue as dps for VP… that way in case I did have to make a sudden exit/afk I’d be less of a hindrance to the group or could easily leave and not cause a problem.

Zone in – Halls of Origination.  The tank’s first words are “OMG I HATE THIS PLACE”, followed by “brb phone” and then he suddenly had to go.  I actually feel sorry for the people that actually happens to because I’ve seen that song and dance too much to actually believe it, but what the hey… we requeue and get a pally tank to replace him about five minutes later.  Not bad… until neither the tank nor the dps knew how to do the first boss… we managed it.  Me doing 25k didn’t hurt I suppose… and killing the snakes and hitting a lever… etc.  The tank naturally drops after that.

Well… I’m feeling okay at this point, so eh, I respec and requeue as tank.  We pick up a dps dk and continue.  We pull the next couple packs and get to the next boss room… where the healer is going  “WHO IS THE TANK?!?!?!?!”.  Okay, well maybe addons are screwed up or something.  I indicate I’m the tank now.

So we tackle the boss room with little issue and then come to the boss.  He does a decent aoe as he comes in that destroys all the troggs but also damages the party.  I give the healer, who has had a lot of mana trouble thus far, a moment to put it right and get their mana back [I sit and eat as well].  The healer then jumps on me about how now I need to be pulling the boss and gogogo!  He’s at half mana… which is not nearly enough… but okay.

I pull… he dies in the first set of alpha beams.  I rez him and get snarky comments about “threat fail”.  I’ve had the boss the entire fight… solidly… no moment of the boss running off right at the start or nothing.  But yeah, he dies again to the alpha beams and naturally that’s my fault.

I manage to finish the fight… through a very creative series of CD uses and Death Strike [how I loves that ability!].  Everyone else survives and the boomkin [doing a very decent 12k] drops party.  Okay, regroup and I attempt to vote kick the healer whose healing is subpar, but he’s become abusive.  Vote kick fails.  Fine.  I take the group to the last boss…  cue the 4k dps dk having a fit.  Not ASKING mind you for us to tackle the other bosses.

After all this, heck if I’m staying one second longer than I have to…  I’ve got an abusive healer who dies to bad and blames me for “threat fail” when the boss isn’t even near him or on him…  I’ve got a 4k dps dk who doesn’t have a clue and is becoming abusive…  And the hunter was decent, but nothing to write home about either.

Well the new person dies on the first inferno leap on Rajh… easiest VP they ever got.  The other dk either can’t be bothered to rez them or doesn’t know to and mine is already on CD from popping the healer back up.

Guys, seriously… if you want a full boss run, I’m one of the more accomodating people you’ll find.  But when I’m already feeling sick, waited a dps queue to tank and on top of that, am getting abusive language from the party for things that are beyond my control?  Yeah, not staying for that mess.  Good luck finding a tank who will.  The only reason I stayed as long as I did was because the rest of the party was happy for Rajh.

Maybe I’ll just stick to running instances with hubby from now on like he suggested…  At least I’ll have one ally then.

Why Guildies Kick People And Bring in Guildies

Yesterday I was sitting and leveling my shaman and on vent hanging out with guildies.  They were doing a regular random and got Grim Batol [2 enh shaman and a holy priest] with 2 pugs – a boomkin and a dk tank from different servers.

The dk tank was doing the now normal run into a pack and expect it to A. magically stay on you and B. that the dps know the order to kill stuff and C. No CC.  The holy priest, a guildie of mine related asking the tank repeatedly to use CC because it was rough going for him.  It didn’t help that the tank was a bit squishy.  Even the boomkin was asking for CC.  The tank flat refused and just kept dashing ahead headfirst into groups.  At the second boss, he rushes a group of adds as the boss is patting back and dies.

It was painful enough at that point that they elected to kick him and asked if hubby or I would bring a tank to come help them finish the run.  I hopped over to Askevar as hubby was finishing some dailies and they kicked the dk and invited me.  We kill the second boss, and move quickly through, using CC.  I probably could’ve taken most groups without it, but they needed the chance to practice their CCs and there’s no need to stress a healer and hey, I don’t mind a relaxed pace myself!

We get to the group right before the third boss and the boomchicken runs ahead and face pulls.  I drop a DND and round up what I can.  One of my guildies died because I literally couldn’t see what was hitting them but fine recovery.  Now to the boss fight.  I pull the boss.  Boomchicken gets an add and goes and stands on top of a dps and explodes.  He does the same to a second dps and then the healer.  I mean, seriously?  After the first explosion they’re screaming at him to move away from the people with the add.  I watch him specifically get on top of the healer and BOOM.

By this point, all the kicks allowed to a group have been used [they’d gone through a drunk dps  and a dps tank before this I think they said].  Well, a couple of us dropped group [one of our people was the lead] and he refused to requeue until the boomchicken left – and left immediately.  We were invited back, picked up hubby on his offspec and breezed through the rest of the instance.

It took us NO time to finish the rest of the instance, especially with a heroic geared tank and a group of people who are working together well.  Why in the world would you go out of your way to wipe the group and give up your chance at a quick, relatively painless finish?  Especially after having been in the instance a bit?

Lessons from Lowbie LFD or how to get on your healers bad side.

1. Never watch your healer’s mana.  And then whine at them if you die.  Bonus points if you give them a long speech about how it’s their responsibility to let you know when they need mana, despite you not reading party chat.

2. Post meters and make fun of your disc priest for doing 36 dps.  When they ask if you’re for real, call them a crybaby and jump group despite them having supported you against the rude dps [looking at you Epicdruid of Elune].

3. Don’t have a tank spec.  Resto druid in bear form ftw!  Bonus points if the healer asks you to pull smaller since you’re squishy and you call them fail heals and use how awesome you are at tanking in resto spec as proof.

4. Demand that your priest cleanse poison [priests can’t].  Bonus points if you’re a class who can.

5. When your healer says they’re drinking and to not pull, pull anyway.  They have a hundred mana – that should be fine right?

6. Run out of the healer’s LOS repeatedly.  Be surprised when you die.

Many Random Things…

Had a few interesting things go on this week.

LICH KING:
First off, we got the Lich King down to 30%.  We’re making progress every week and we can all taste it so badly it’s not funny.  Right now the second transition phase throws us off balance.  And whoever gets taken into the sword seems to just die.  It can be frustrating wiping for a few hours but it’s also exciting… because we’re working on the end boss of an expansion for the first time!  We have been scheduling a second night when we can manage but it’s dependent on everyone showing [I’m not going to replace someone and cheat them out of a LK kill].

RAID ID CHANGES SUCK
The change to the raid ids seemingly killed our 25 man but several people are showing interest in doing an alt version.  Hubby and I don’t have time [or more likely energy] to wrangle a whole new set of toons together, but we’ll see how it turns out.  Worst case, we may have enough alts to do another temporary ten man on Saturdays.

LOWBIE LEVELING
I have been leveling a lowbie disc priest again.  [Wow is anything not OP at low levels right now?].  It’s been fun and mostly drama-free.  It did become a little frustrating hitting SM- Graveyard because the tank never seems to be willing to leave combat… and that can be rough on the mana regen.  In fact, one group wiped because I simply ran completely out of mana, despite me saying OOM a couple times.  Naturally, it was my fault.

The only other drama I had was in SM-Library – a boe tanking shield dropped.  The tank, naturally, needed on it – as did the druid and lock in the party.  I took a notion/chance and needed on it myself, won it and then traded it to the tank – which wasn’t a popular move with most of the party, but the tank appreciated it and equipped that thing immediately.

HALLOW’S END
At the beginning of Hallow’s End, I had 5 toons that needed either the squashling, the helm or both to complete their violet protodrake.  Thanks to some lucky trick or treating [none was completed via the HH daily], I have finished four of the five of them now.  Only my pally remains incomplete… so I shall be working to get that for her.  I will be helping hubby as well.  One of his toons is short by toothpicks of all things…  And a couple more need the helm.  So I’ll be hitting those to trick or treat some during the day for him.

HORSEMAN’S MOUNT
My shaman and Askevar2 have both gotten the horseman’s mount.  My mage has snagged it as well – twice.

TANKING
Tanking on my DK is feeling better and better – probably as I get more practice :P.  Rune regeneration isn’t a problem any longer [annoyance if that].  I am probably going to swap my paladin’s main spec to ret and her offspec to prot…  I no longer enjoy pally tanking.  If anyone thought DK rune regeneration was bad… go try pally tanking…  Sitting there and WAITING forever for abilities to come up so you can have something to do and praying you hold aggro is annoying.  I have yet to really test druid or warrior tanking.

PLAGARISM
is bad mkay?  See this and a few other most recent posts on treebarkjacket.

LINKS TO STUFF
BBB has a great post musing on the expectations we had for the quality of 4.01.  Though he got a troll or two [what blogger doesn’t occasionally?] the discussions and concerns raised in the post and the comments are worth reading.

Don’t miss Bee Pit Bingo over at Murloc Parliament.  Given that I’ve got a lowbie toon again, I might have to make more bee pit jokes…

NoMoreNoob has the work around macro for the Horseman DC issue.

For those still working on their candy buckets, Revive and Rejuvenate did a candy bucket tour post for the alliance for Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.

And this post is a couple weeks old, but it doesn’t get old “How Leading a Raid is Like Coaching Little League” over at Forever a Noob.

Priest With a Cause created a worksheet where you can tell just how fail your Halls of Lightning Pug is…

I also wanted to put forth Looking for More’s suggestion for November activities if you’re bored with WoW.  Nanowrimo is definitely fun and worthwhile!  I’ve participated in it several years myself and it’s fun.

Dear Blizzard,

Please stop giving Askevar2 Halls of Reflections every time I queue nowadays…  I mean seriously?  Back to back queuing for a random nets HHoR both times?  She needs nothing out of the instance and I’m sick and tired of dealing with the stupid that goes on in there.  My usual 2 wipe without progress limit has reduced to one wipe at all.  It’s bad enough that I told the group this morning that I kept getting HHoR and that if we wiped I’d be out.

No love,

kthxbai.

ETA: I’ve been randomed into it about 10 times in the last 2 days… literally.  Only one of those netted an easy instance.  In the other nine, I was top dps and often times the only person doing higher than 2k dps [I was in the 3.5-4k on trash and 4-5k on boss fights].

I Belong in the Bee Pit…

I queued for a random this morning, got put in H-HoL, an annoying instance to be fair.  I could see trouble immediately.  The tank was blue-geared and the healer was a paladin with 42k mana…  And the dps [other than I] were sporting uber-titles.

This is naturally, a recipe for disaster.  Especially when as the warrior pulled the first mobs, the holy pally runs off and snags the next group, which the warrior tank [already having rage issues] can’t get a hold of.  The warrior tank asks “why’d you do that?”

Holy pally replies “Because I can handle it” as he charges off and pulls another group.  The mage and boomkin follow him and they vote kick the tank [I voted no] and initiate a requeue.  I decline to requeue and sit at the entrance where I’d stuck with the tank.  Hubby’s looking over my shoulder at this point because I have that “I hate stupid jerk pugs look” on my face.

They initiate a requeue again and I just sit there… and toss out a random vote kick on the mage which fails [he’d been screaming gogogogogogogogogogo].

The pally and mage start ragging on the boomkin, who was decent but apparently he was the reason the three of them couldn’t handle the first boss and wiped.  I admit, I was cackling at that point, but said nary a word.

Holy pally drops group; mage drops group.  Boomkin remains.  I finally select the dps role, we get a group in moments and continue.

Probably a fine example of Bee Pit Democracy

That is the Risk You Run…

I was in Icecrown, working on some quests with my hunter to finish up Northrend Loremaster.  All of a sudden, I get an NPCscan ding…  Putridius is active.  I fly over and find a spot to ambush him where I won’t have to deal with other mobs.  I see no one around.  He is untagged and in the middle of nowhere.

I engage Putridius.

All of a sudden, a level 78 arms warrior comes from the other direction, stands behind me and starts rude gesturing me.  Which eh, shows his level of maturity.

I shoot him a whisper to chill out, that I engaged the mob first, fair and square.

Now also, keep in mind that Putridius the Ancient is a level 82 elite mob.

No one else is around.

He shoots me a few choice whispers… well… most of it was caught by the profanity filter but the gist of it was that he’d been following Putridius for a long time to kill him.  And I was basically a meanie-poohead for daring to kill the elite rare.

Eh… I’ve had them snitched from under me too…  I don’t usually fire off emotes and cuss words at the others.  That’s the risk you run, especially when you can’t take him on the spot and others can.

After I got told to “bug off” in more creative language, I simply thanked him… that I always enjoy getting new blog material.  Because ain’t it sweet?  I got a whole blog post out of it!

Dear little warrior, if you’d been following him as long as you said, I’m sorry… but I saw no one nearby and I could take him on the spot, whereas you couldn’t… and to be honest, I have my doubts about you being able to kill him at all solo.  Had you been following him, as you say, you probably would have seen me following him but you came from the opposite direction.  Had you whispered me, I’d have even gladly helped you kill him.  Heck, had you been nice, I’d have even given you the nice plate bracers he dropped that I’m sure you could have used.  Yeah, despite the fact that I shouldn’t have, I felt a little bad… at least until you unleashed the stupid on me.  Welcome to my global ignore now though… and since I’m stepping up my random running, that might actually affect you come level 80.  I like to think so anyway 😉

Happy hunting!

Operation Gnomeregan Bug

Since no one in game can be bothered to listen to directions or prevent Mekkatorque from bugging, here’s a basic explanation here so you don’t make the mistake.

When Mekkatorque gets to the front entrance of Gnomer, stay with him or behind him… Let the bad evil troggs and such come hit him.  If you go in the tunnel and zerg them down without letting mobs get out and to him, he will bug and not finish the event.

If you bug him, you’ll have to wait for him to reset [aka the time for finishing the event] and then wait the 6 minutes to start the next round of it.

Every alt I’ve run through tonight has had to do it twice simply because no one can be bothered to listen or understand.  When I’ve tried to explain to stay with the king so he doesn’t bug, I get a “QQ more, idc, I’ll just do it again” reply.  Most of my alts are going to end up waiting till tomorrow morning to finish it.

When he yells “Sweet baby titans!  That’s got to be the biggest trogg I’ve ever seen!  Keep firing… take it down!” you should be good and past the point of concern.

And guess what?  This bug was known in the beta.  And it’s in the release.

Inspires confidence doesn’t it?

And for those who like to pop up mammoths and stand on questgivers?  I have tickets with your name on them. ;).  I know perfectly well how to get around what you’re doing but there’s still no excuse.  I think Shepherd Book in Firefly said it best…  something about a “special hell”.