Category: PVE

Mists of Pandaria

Askevar is 90… hit it Friday in fact [with Venoym].  This was the fastest and hardest we’ve ever pushed to level.  I know a lot of people like to savor initially, but we both prefer to just get our main to 90 and worry about savoring later with alts.  That’s why they exist after all?  Anyway, Askevar’s main set is going along well.  I do a couple scenarios a day as well as a heroic or two in the evening.  All my pieces, save a 442 blue ring, are 450 or better, with several 463 items.  I’m doing my daily rep grinds and I’ve maxed all my professions both primary [Inscription/Jewelcrafting] and Secondary [Archaeology, First Aid, Cooking, Fishing] and I got access to the end food for the Way of the Oven [aka the tank tree].  I also have all my on server alts parked at Halfhill to farm various veggies to max the other ways or to create the max Oven food.  By the way, if you do this, the Outpost Zhu flightpoint in Krasanger is the one that connects the Jade Forest initial town to Halfhill.

For that matter, I’ve now maxed out every profession on my account except Blacksmithing and Skinning.  Suffice to say, our guild has the heirloom legs already, and not just through my efforts either.  Sadly they are only good through 85, which I think is a little silly, but I was able to buy a pair for my level 20 monk.  Oh, we also have the guild shirts because a group running scenarios last night saw we were only two away and decided to finish.  They’re kinda cute but you can’t see it with my armor on [as it should be for a tank].

My offset gear is crap [its unholy now, gave up frost] and a quarter to half the pieces are still level 85 stuff that I need to replace, but, on the flipside, I’m quite a hardy tank right now.

Honestly, I don’t see any of my alts getting to 90 very quickly.  I’ve got 2 at 86 – my bank alt/gatherer and my horde pally [the horde pally would net me 2 account achievements].  With our guild not even discussing raiding for another two weeks, I might get one leveled but who knows?  My main priority, as always, is going to be getting Askevar’s tank set raid ready – everything else is bonus.

Sundays have become achievement night and due to lack of interest from our guild [a lot of people are still busy leveling and that’s alright], we’ve been pulling from cross realm friends.  We’ve gotten a lot done though and we’ve had a blast doing it.  We even managed to 9 man Heroic Chimaeron just before MoP hit – with 3 healers, 2 tanks and the rest dps – and that’s what we managed to get… we had intended to 2 heal, but with everyone wanting to try out their mainspec, extra heals never hurt :D.

 

I will admit, at times the dailies feel almost endless, but once I get the reputations to max, I’ll be gold.  I’m already revered with Order of the Cloud Serpent and well into honored with most of the rest so it’ll get there 🙂  And I’m not finding these dailies near as painful as some have been in the past either.

 

Goldwise – I’ve already spent a ton between buying the Grand Expedition Yak and speed leveling some professions.  Despite that, I’ve actually managed to make money on Askevar and I’ll make back the rest and then some when I level the alts, so it’ll all work out.  Hey, don’t look at me that way… I saved and ground for that Yak for several months before MoP dropped and I’m darn proud of it!  There is nothing like achieving a goal you set out to complete.

 

Speaking of achievements, for the first time since I was maining a warlock, I have finally passed my husband in total achievement points.  Now, so it’s said, that won’t last as he’ll do all those achievements and catch right back up… but for once it’s nice to be ahead!

The Old Becomes New Again…

One plus about this point of an expansion is that while I may exhaust options on my main, I also usually end up rediscovering toons I enjoyed in the past once again.  And thus is my current project…

 

Aulao – my gnome mage, currently fire.  I pulled her out and dusted her off and did a few HoT randoms and got enough gear to hit LFR quite quickly.  I wasn’t top of the meter by any stretch of the imagination but I was middle of the pack.  Typically, since BC I have not enjoyed playing caster dps toons.  I love healers, but not big on caster dps, so I was surprised to find myself enjoying it very quickly.  She still needs a bit of gear [she’s sitting there in transmogged Tier 1 from Molten Core].

So now, I’m wondering what toon I might discover I enjoy once again.  Will it be one of my forlorn forgotten disc priests?  Or rediscover that feral kitty is teh awesome?  Or will I finish leveling my druid healer and give that a whirl?  Or head back to Star Wars and ding another level in the forties on my Jedi Knight?  We shall see.  I’ll go where my notions take meh.

Random Thoughts…

Well, I took part of my morning and cleaned my account of most of the extra toons.  I kept a few on servers where I have friends [ie the Effers] but other than that I went through and deleted all the extras…  I still had level one toons that have been sitting for two years and never even played.  I deleted total about 20 toons.  The lowbies just got deleted and all the extra death knights picked someone at random and traded them the gold they had.  Someone might as well use it right?  And with the BoAs supposedly becoming bind to BattleNet, I may want to roll some new toons at some point, or develop the ones I have on other servers first :P.

My priest is 3 Tol Barad commendations away from having her spirit trinket.  It’s a little frustrating as we’re sure not to win today again.  The win quest alone would get me what I need.  But alas, I shall get the trinket tomorrow for sure.

Cardboard Tanks
I’ve discovered a new phenomenon.  The “Cardboard” tank.  We all know what a tank is, and what a “dps tank” is.  But what is a “Cardboard tank”?  They are a special breed with decent gear and appropriate tanking specs that are insanely squishy – as in, I have to dump most of my mana bar each pull – on just the tank.  When I run across one of these on my healer, I just bow out of the instance.  To be fair, I always give them to the first boss, then politely bow out.

Now how can someone have the right spec and gear but still be squishy as a tank?  It’s very easy!
1. Don’t use your cooldowns – AT ALL.
2. Stand with your back to half the mobs
3. New tank.  [not a bad thing to be new but new tanks do tend to be more squishy]
4. Don’t take the talent in your tanking tree to be uncrittable
5. On top of any and all of the above – refuse to use CC.

Now your healer is dumping BIG heals on you and draining their mana each pull to keep you alive.  Even worse, Cardboard tanks RARELY watch healer mana.

On an aside, Lost City of Tol’Vir is also the bane of my existence as a disc priest because of the aoe damage, especially on the third boss.

Why I Hate Oculus Now.

No, I don’t dislike the mechanics.  Nor do I mind the time consumed by hopping on and off drakes.  The instance itself is now short, provides extra badges, a chance at a mount and the gems that I use for transmutes.

What I do hate is the fact that I go through an average of 5 tanks if I’m on a dps or a healer.  It’s been as few as 2, and as many as 10.  I have no problems if I happen to be on one of my tanks when I get it.

I don’t begrudge the occasional tank leaving an instance.  After 5 times in one day of getting Halls of Stone, I was ready to leave it the next time I got it – and did.  Halls of Reflection – it’s to be expected.  But seriously?  Oculus iz hard rite?  I have so many tanks leaving when I’m in there that it’s very tempting to just leave myself.  With my alt army, it wouldn’t matter a bit.

And the tanks I do get, demanding achievements – often multiple voids – is ridiculous.  Every single time I give in and go along with the voids, we wipe on the last boss at 75% – at best and I end up either getting kicked, sitting and wiping or leaving and having wasted the last 20 minutes of my life.  If you’re going to demand achievements – know how to do them and know how to explain them.  It’s not hard to wowhead it or wowwiki it.  I’m not there to do achievements.  And it’s not my job to explain it, especially after getting laughed at every time because it’s LOL EASY and we don’t need a strategy.  “It’s just heroics”.

We lost a uber geared pally tank once because he was demanding voids and I flat refused – as the healer.  No one else seemed to care either way.  We got a bear tank with 25k health – BUFFED.  Guess what?  I healed them with nary a problem.  The biggest problem we had was the dps were ICC25 gearing and the bear was mostly blues and greens.  They had to be careful, but we got it done – and the bear got the Make it Count achievement.

I guess I don’t really have a point here – other than my personal irritation at the situation.  The sheer number of tanks dumping that instance staggers me.  I’ve been kicked from it once for refusing to go along with a “wipe till we get the achievement I want” marathon of a guild group.  And I’ve dropped it once when I had a group of all sub 200 gearing people who were collectively doing about 2k dps with a healer who couldn’t keep me alive – but that just happened to be Oculus – I would have dumped that group in any instance I got.

How to make the PVE’ers do what you want in PVP… [or what worked on me]

The first day of Children’s Week, EotS was a nightmare.  Every time I entered it consisted of PVE’ers getting screamed at by PVPers.  “Who cares about your stupid achievements, I care about winning, so play my way or else”.  Most of the PVE’ers replied “Blame Blizzard.  We don’t want to be here any more than you want us here.  We get done and we’re out of your way”.   *Cue sniping back and forth*

So for most of my toons I waited until Monday morning to get EotS done.  And it worked – most of them I got first shot and most of them Alliance won!  Why?

On Monday, as I entered most battlegrounds, there was a PVPer saying “Okay guys, I know you’re here for the achievement but we’ve got to take and hold 2 towers so you have somewhere to take flags to.  Let’s take those and you guys can run the flag”.  So more than half the PVE’ers would rush toward the Draenei Ruins [DR] and Mage Tower [MT] to take them.  Several PVPers then came and helped us hold the middle.  I even had an instance where I got the flag, was almost back and died.  One of the PVPers killed the pally who killed me, picked up the flag and held it until I rezzed then dropped it for me to cap.  I sent him a thank you tell – “I love you!  Thank you!” and then instead of afking out as I would’ve the day before due to the verbal abuse, I did my level best to help others cap the flag…  Heck, I even zerged and killed the pally that got me!  And we won, EASILY!!!  We held 3 towers most of the battles [though as soon as we got the third one, they started attacking and we quickly lost one of the other two]

The battles where PVPers were screaming or holding the flag to prevent us from capping?  Most of those were lost because the PVE’ers had NO motivation to do anything and no direction – so they just sat in the middle or ran around aimlessly and got ganked left and right by horde.

So, for minimal EotS interruption?

1. Recognize that PVE achievements are as important to the PVEers as winning the battleground is to the PVPers.

2. Recognize that the two purposes are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

3. Give the PVEers some direction to accomplish their goal – and to help you accomplish yours.  You PVPers are more experienced here.  But it is all in the presentation.  Like it or not, your battlegrounds are invaded this week.  You can yell and scream OR you can teach the PVEers something about how to play.   Who knows, you might even entice more people to learn to play!  I know I’m a bit intrigued on my disc priest – who actually has a PVP set and spec I don’t use much.

4. Recognize that some PVEers are jerks.  Just as some PVPers are jerks.

We Beat the Odds!

After a disatrous raiding weekend last week [we literally only got Flame Levi down – the weekly on Saturday and slogged through ToC25 on Sunday], we came back with a vengeance this week.  One shot of every boss in ICC25 first wing – Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Gunship, Saurfang… and even the frost giant weekly!!!  So I’m just going to write off last weekend as a fluke…  Every guild has their down weeks and such.

This weekend however, we were down several of our main healing crew and had to bring in an alt, an offspec and a pug healer [who were all awesome].  So, to one shot it all…  Just wow…  Healing, which has occasionally been a weakness seemed more solid than ever.  DPS was out of this world!  Tanking was great! 

I will say though, it may have something to do with being a guild and a family…  My co-treasurer was hacked yesterday – early morning and predictably, they took most of our Guild vault.  They also appear to have deleted her toon and slapped an authenticator on her account.  Needless to say, we’ll get it all back, we’re more concerned about her account – because it could take a while to sort it all out.  We don’t rely on the guild vault much for day to day function… pretty much sell donations to keep up our gold to cover raid repairs.  Several people donated enough gold to cover the guild for a bit, and our enchanters are offering their personal stockpiles of chanting mats, our alchemists have been even more generous with their flasks…  People are rising to the occasion and banding together… and despite the circumstances, it’s a lovely thing to see, I must admit.  All guilds have drama come to them, or within them… it’s how we handle it and how we deal with it that matters.

One thing we also do after raids, is to have a debrief… what went wrong, what went right, whose performance is problematic and how we can help them and who has improved and really made an impression.  These usually devolve into regular conversation [we ended up talking about a tv show called Human Target last night… which is a rather good show!].  But anywho, on nights like last night we end up spending five minutes talking about how awesome everyone did!  We saw so much improvement in people…  Whether they were determined to avenge the hacking via boss kills, or just determined to kill stuff, I honestly don’t know 🙂

Anyway, well done WaR!  Well done!

ICC:10

We actually made quite a bit of progress.  We’d only gotten Marrowgar down once before, and we took Christmas off of course.  The leader of the other group came with us this week [one of our regulars was out] so she could get a look at the fight.  We managed to down Marrowgar, then Lady Deathwhisper [skin of our teeth] and 2 shot the gunship battle.  So our team is quite stoked about all the rewards.  We’ve been working together for a while so we’re gelling quite well.

Hubby got the tanking sword off Marrowgar, and I scored the defense chestpiece off of Deathwhisper.  I don’t think anyone got two pieces and none were sharded, so it was an amazingly even distribution.  Hopefully something will drop for the other people next week and we’ll get the second guild team to Marrowgar at least and it can only get better from there 😀