LFR

Two and a half months into the expansion, I finally ran LFR for the first time.  I ran on my resto druid because that is who I am raiding on, currently.  Just did the first three bosses in Mogu’shan Vaults.

It is a cakewalk, but not a total faceroll because a lot of people don’t know the fights.  Our LFR group didn’t explain the fights to anyone.  The tanks just ran up and pulled.  For the first fight, that was not a problem.  Everyone can clearly see stuff not to stand in.  On the second fight, it was a little tougher as people didn’t know what to do when they got the fire debuff.  The third boss actually caused a wipe, as no one knew to go into the spirit realm.

My druid healing is not great these days.  The priest and paladin in the raid totally blew away my healing numbers.  I can’t tell if its me or the class – I’ve heard people saying that druid healers are not too effective right now.

The loot system was disappointing.  On all three fights, all I got was a bag of gold.  I would prefer to see what dropped so I had some sense of closure on the boss.  That’s the way boss fights go – we show up, we do our thing for five minutes, then the boss dies and there is epic loot.  Without the loot at the end, it seems so anticlimactic.

So I got nothing from my run, and I didn’t see what other people got.  This does not inspire me with excitement to go back again.  I guess I will, but not with any real excitement.

Professions covered? Check.

I got my sixth toon to the level cap this weekend.  I really had no desire to level through Outland, Northrend, and Cataclysm zones again.  I did it because I needed one more toon to complete my set of tradeskills.

Now I have these toons:

• 85 rogue (main) – skinning, leatherworking
• 85 priest – herbalism, tailoring
• 85 paladin – mining, engineering
• 85 rogue – jewelcrafting, alchemy
• 85 mage – inscription, enchanting
• 85 druid – mining, blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is the last one I was missing.  At the moment, I might be able to scratch out some profit on belt buckles, but I don’t expect much in the tail end of Cataclysm.  Since the main focus of my playtime is now goldmaking, this puts me in a position to take advantage of whatever markets open up when Pandaria comes out.

As a side note, I leveled my druid almost entirely as a healer with short queues in LFG.  I found druid healing to be more fun than priest healing.  Most of my alts are just bank/crafting toons that never leave Stormwind.  However, I do think I’ll actually play the resto druid and get it geared.

raid tank?

My protection paladin so rarely gets called into service.  I keep him in reserve in case the guild needs a tank for a raid, but I don’t try to make him a primary tank.

Why?  Laziness, I suppose.  I learn all the fights from a dps perspective on my rogue.  Its completely different from a tank perspective – especially if you have to mark targets and determine a kill order as a part of tanking.  Its not that I can’t do that.  I just have a long-time habit of focusing on the dps side of things.

Still, my tank toon has managed a few accomplishments.  I tanked a significant portion of Ulduar back in the day when that was current.  I tanked Arthas in our first ever Lich King kill.  In Wrath tanking was easy.  Gear flowed like water and threat was a non-issue.  It was easy to gear up with badges and farm content.

Not so in Cataclysm.  Gear does not fall into your lap as rapidly.  Due to my aversion to tanking heroics  I have not accumulated enough Valor or Justice points to be of use.  And yet, I need this character to be ready in a pinch if the guild is short on tanks.

So I geared through the Auction House.  Ring, both trinkets, gloves, epic boots, epic belt, relic, cloak, sword, and neck were all BoE items purchased from the AH.  My last few pieces were filled in by quest items, and I made my helm with engineering.  That investment (about 25k or so gold) got me to a 340-ish item level… good enough to start raiding.

Admittedly, I am a bit squishy for a raid tank.  My raid-buffed health is 152k – good, but not great.  I’m not so concerned about that.  What concerns me is that I have not tanked a whole bunch since Cataclysm started, so the abilities have yet to become second nature.

This week we brought a new raid group into Bastion of Twilight.  One of our tanks bailed, so I stepped in on Derence.  I got the job of tanking the drakes (Nether Scion and Slate Dragon), along with tank swaps on Halfus due to the stacking Malevolent Strikes debuff.  (Its not the first time I have tanked this raid, but this time was harder due to the drake combination)

Despite my relative lack of practice, everything just clicked for me.  I managed to use every cooldown in the paladin’s toolkit to stay alive.  The timing was great.  Every time my health dropped to 15% or less, I had a damage-reduction ability that was available just in the nick of time.  I even threw out Lay on Hands on a dps when the raid damage was making things dicey.

My healers probably don’t feel as good about it as I do, since they had the job of propping up my yo-yoing health bar.  Still, I’m really happy with the results.  Tanking in Cataclysm is more challenging than it was in Wrath, and it was an enjoyable experience.  My cooldowns were not a luxury, but were a necessary part of survival, so it was important that I knew when and how to use them.  (answer:  whenever they are available!)

Most importantly, I got to help the guild by filling that important role.  If I hadn’t been willing to step up to the plate, the raid would have been canceled and a whole group would have lost the change for their first raid boss kill.

And the best part is that I didn’t have to slog through heroics to get there.  It makes me glad that I pulled in all that profit on inscription back in the good old days.

At my gear level there are limits to how far I can go as an emergency tank.  I could certainly hold my own through Magmaw and Omnitron, but I don’t know if I could get much farther than that without some more gear upgrades.  And without tanking raids my gear upgrades are limited.  Time to check the auction house again…

Using the LFD to level part 2 – the home stretch

I made an earlier post detailing my project to level using only the LFD system. Its gone well up to this week.  However, I’m now concerned that I won’t have the persistence to finish.

What changed?  Two things, and I’m not sure if they are related.

1. I hit level 70 and am now queueing in Wrath instances
2. Queue times have spiked up to 30-40 minutes

Now that I’ve reached current content in Wrath, the amount of XP it takes to level has jumped.  To get from level 69-70 took a little over 700k XP.  To get from level 70-71 takes over 1.5 million.  Twice as much XP means twice as many instance runs needed to level.

Yesterday I did a clear of UK, and it earned me 12% of a level.  At that rate I would need around 8-9 instance runs to gain a level, compared to 3-4 runs per level previously.

This was not unexpected, as the XP needed to level is not a secret.  However, in the past few days I have seen the queue time go from 15-20 minutes up to 30-40 minutes. Why has this happened?  Are there fewer players in the 70-72 range?  Or has this happened across all levels?  I’m hearing from people that queue times are high all over.

If I need 8 instance runs to level, and each run involves waiting 30 minutes in queue, that is four hours of downtime sitting in Stormwind doing nothing just to get one level.  Whew… what a great way to make use of my $15 per month.

The obvious solution is that I should go out and quest during the downtime.  That’s not the point of this project, though.  If I give in and quest to fill the time, then I will consider this project a failure.

For the moment I’m sticking with it.  I’m going to make sure that I only play when I’ve got a lot of rested bonus built up.  That means a couple of days off in between each attempt at running instances.  Also, I’m going to try and latch onto a level 72 tank in my guild and see if I can queue with him for faster times.  Still, at this rate I cannot imagine how long it will take for me to get to 80.  I think it may take as long to get from 70-80 as it took to get from 25-70.

The Fun of Showing Off

Backgroud: I never raided in vanilla WoW, and I was behind the progression curve in BC.  My gear was never the best.

Back in the days when epics were rare, I used to like to inspect people in Stormwind (in vanilla) and Shattrath (in BC) and check out their epics.  In those days, the higher-tier gear really stood out from the normal quest/instance blues.  You’d be running through Shattrath City and say “Whoa!  Look at those cool shoulders!  They have eyes looking around in them!  That’s awesome!”  Then you’d /inspect and see what they were and get a bit envious.

I’m not advocating for the people who /afk on the bridge in Ironforge just to show off.  That kind of narcissism is a little sad.  But still, it was always neat to see something unique that jumps out at you.  Do you remember the first time you saw someone with Terestian’s Stranglestaff?  Or, if you go back far enough, seeing a rogue in full Bloodfang armor?

I had the fun of this experience this week.

With the current powerleveling that is going on, players have very few opportunities to pick up epics on their way from 1-80.  Going through instances with the LFD system you have almost no chance of seeing epics (unless you do some BC heroics at level 70), and there are very few quests that give epic rewards.

Last week my guild did a quick run through Blackwing Lair for some people  who had never seen it.  It was fun (except the Suppression Room, of course) and quick.  Since we had 10 level 80s doing it, they let me drag along my level 64 mage for some XP and loot.  In the course of the run, I managed to pick up the Ebony Flame Gloves from Ebonroc, Ringo’s Blizzard Boots from trash mobs, the Netherwind Belt (T2!  woot!) from Vael, and the Staff of the Shadow Flame from Nefarian.

The next day, as I went through my pug instances using LFD, I got repeated comments about my gear.  The staff in particular is cool-looking, with a nice purple glow and so it attracts attention.  I’ll admit, it was enjoyable to get oohs and aahs for my gear.

Maybe I should go /afk on the bridge in Ironforge now.

Seriously – it makes me hope that in Cataclysm the epics might be a little harder to get, and maybe a little more rare at first.  In Wrath, with people running Naxx within the first couple of weeks, epics flowed like water.  I no longer even notice people’s gear because its all epic and all blends together.  I like gear that stands out, even if I’m not the one who has it.

Using the LFD to level

I’m down to about a post every week and a half.  Sorry about that.  I’ve been busy lately, and when my time is short and I have to choose between playing WoW or blogging about WoW, I’ve chosen playing.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was leveling my mage using only the LFD tool.  I’ve done no quests except the occasional “talk to this guy” or to turn in a “This Item Begins a Quest” drop that I picked up in an instance.  I started this project in January with him at level 23.  He’s now at level 60.

Pros and Cons -

The best part about this is that I have not had to spend any time running back and forth across zones.  Also, since this is my fourth toon, I don’t have to do the same quests that I have already done three times already.  Most importantly, I won’t have to level through Outland again.

I”l be honest.  There are plenty of downsides to this method.  First of all is gold.  Without running quests, my income is severly limited.  If I didn’t have a main with a lot of gold it would have been a problem.  I’ve needed to get gold from my main for training, leveling professions, and my mounts.  If you’re leveling your first toon then this is not the way to go.

Its also not as fast as questing.  My friends in the guild who started their toons around the same time as me are already at 80.

Another problem is gear.  Since my only source of gear are boss drops and greens from trash mobs, upgrades are few and far between.  At level 60, I’ll still running around with a couple of pieces I got in my 30′s.

Here’s my rundown of the instances that I’ve done so far:

When I started this project in my mid-20s I got Razorfen Kraul repeatedly.  This was pretty easy, so the runs went smoothly.  Gnomeregan, though, was terrible.  If anyone left the party, the replacement couldn’t get to us from the entrance because of random respawns, so we would give up if a single person dropped.  I only finished Gnomer once in about 8 attempts.

In my upper 20s and low 30′s I got Scarlet Monastery Graveyard many, many, many times.  That was fast, but it got old.  A couple of levels later and I got SM: Library and Cathedral a few times.  Cathedral was fun… a good tank could round up about 30 mobs and we would AoE them down.  I never got Armory in the random dungeon.  All the SM instances were great.  We rarely wiped, and when we did the wipe recovery wasn’t too bad.

In my late-30s and early 40′s I got Uldaman a few times.  This was a blessing and a curse.  It was so big that a single run could give me almost a full level of XP.  Unfortunately, it was so hard to nagivate that a single wipe usually meant the group would disband rather than recover and restart.

Early level 40s brought Zul’Farrak – one of my all-time favorite instances.  Those runs were good.  Again, we rarely wiped.  Wipe recovery wasn’t terrible because you could mount inside the instance so the run back was quick.  I completed every ZF run that I got in the random LFD, and they gave a load of XP.

The mid-late 40′s brought Maraudon and Sunken Temple.  Both of these are HUGE.  They are terrible for LFD.  Every wipe resulted in the group disbanding.  No one wanted to run all the way back.  For Maraudon, most people can’t even find the instance entrance because of the maze of caves before it.  Sunken Temple is even worse.  The multi-level layout makes the minimap useless.  Both of these instances were a real chore to finish.  Fortunately, I only got assigned to Sunken Temple a few times.  Maraudon, though… I’ll have nightmares of that for months.

The 50′s got even worse.  Blackrock Depths is a great instance, but not with LFD.  The run back from the graveyard is tremendously long.  A wipe resulted in a 20 minute recovery, and so people would drop group.  There is tons of trash and inexperienced tanks could really get themselves in trouble.  Further, if no one has the Shadowforge Key then you are limited in what parts of the instance you can do.  I drew BRD in the random dungeon dozens of times, but only completed it once.

The late 50′s brought Dire Maul, which is not too hard but no one really knows where to go.  We only did DM East, which was OK.  DM West was much harder.  I liked DM, especially when compared to the horror of pugging BRD.  But then in level 55-57 I got Lower Blackrock Spire a bunch of times.  LBRS had the same problems as BRD… really big, hard to navigate, and really far from the graveyard.  In all of my LBRS runs I never got to more than one boss.  Eww.  (funniest was when one tank ran into UBRS by mistake.  Oops!)

Other than Dire Maul, level 50-57 was terrible for pugging.  Just when I was starting to despair and consider giving up on the LFD leveling method, I hit level 58.  It all gets better at level 58.  Why?  All the Death Knights join the game at level 59.  Sure, they are often noobs and sometimes can’t play the game worth a darn.  But the shortage of tanks goes away, and the queue time drops from 20 minutes to about 6-10.  Also, you get to start the Outland instances, which are better designed and easier to recover from wipes.

So far I’ve done Hellfire Ramparts several times.  Its quick, easy, and even a noob DK can tank it.  And that’s where I am now.

Edit:  Since I wrote this post, I have made it to level 69.  The Outland instances were a breeze compared to the late vanilla dungeons.  Most runs went well, until I started getting Sethekk Halls and Auchenai Crypts, which are obnoxious.  I’m a little sad that I only got to see a handful of the Outland dungeons on this toon.  I never drew Shadow Lab using LFD, or any of the Mechanar=Botanica-Arcatraz trio. That’s a shame.

Lack of posts reflects lack of activity

Haven’t posted in almost two weeks.  That’s mostly because there has been nothing going on.  I took a week off from WoW (due to work, not by choice) and have had limited time otherwise.  So, here’s a generic “what have I been doing” post.

Raiding: not much.  We’re being pulled in too many directions.  Since we aspire to run 25-man raids, and we are a casual-friendly guild, we are committed to doing as much 25-man content as possible and getting everyone involved.  One night a week we do the weekly raid quest for everyone online.  Then one or two nights a week we do 25-man ToC or something similar.  We aren’t able to handle 25-man ICC at this time, so we’re surfing behind the progression curve.

Our 10-man team is capable of ICC, but its hard to find time.  Three nights are already accounted for as listed above.  We spend one night each week clearing lower ICC.  Honestly, most of our raiders are not into raiding more than four nights a week.  That has kept us from having any serious time to work on upper ICC.

Solution: unknown.  We could stop running organized weekly raid quests and let people pug them, which would free up another night for progression raiding.  That’s not optimal.  We could only dedicate one of our scheduled guild raid nights to 25-man raids, since we can’t do anything more than ToC anyway.

Guild: generally good, but could be better.  We’re still hovering around 20-24 regular raiders.  Every time we get one geared, someone else stops playing or leaves.  Then we bring in a new recruit with no gear or experience and have to work them in.  Our core is still great, though, and generally happy.  I am certain that there are a few who are a bit disgruntled at our lack of progression, though, so I’m not sure how long the peace will last.

My main, Dinaer (rogue): not so good.  I barely play him anymore.  I log onto him and do a random dungeon each day for my two emblems, and that’s about it.  Sometimes I raid with him, and sometimes I raid on my pally.  A month ago, Dinaer was one of the guild’s best geared players and easily the top dps.  Now there are many players who outgear him and I’m no longer a top damage dealer.  I’m close to getting my 2-piece T10 bonus, so maybe that will help.

My alt, Derence (prot pally): Not bad.  He’s in fairly good shape, gear-wise.  He’s been able to tank whatever content he’s encountered.  I just don’t play him enough to get him new stuff.  He’s geared at the T9 level, mostly, with two ICC pieces.  I just got him enough emblems to buy his 2nd Emblem of Frost item.  I really only log on this toon when he’s needed, though.

My other alt, Metius (disc priest): Honestly, I gave up on this character.  The Zen of Discipline healing just wasn’t coming to me, so I stopped.  Now he’s just my tailoring toon.

So what have I been doing?  Leveling a mage, using only the LFD tool.  No, its not as fast as questing.  Other people in my guild have outleveled me greatly.  But the fact that I never have to run/ride from one end of a zone to the other and back for a quest is so worth it.  Currently at level 48.

My favorite part of playing the frost mage is survivability.  Often, during an AoE trash pull, my Blizzard will pull aggro from the tank (oops).  Then its Cone of Cold to slow them, Frost Nova to stop them, Blink to the other side of the tank, repeat until either the tank picks them back up or they die.  That’s fun.

My other favorite part of playing the mage is that I don’t have to move when the mobs move.  As long as they stay in range, I can stand still and blast away.  Soooo much different than the positioning problems with a rogue.

Other endeavors: I’m trying to do more Auction House profiteering.  I’ve done a great Arctic Fur trade and a sell lots of Netherweave Bags.  I also do well with crystallized fires, although I fear that market is going away with the next patch.  I’m not a hardcore AH player, so I’m happy making a fair amount in excess of the gold it takes to support two raiding toons.

I’m also leveling inscription and enchanting on the mage.  I’ve never had a scribe before, so this is new.  We’ll see if its as profitable as they say one I max it out.  Enchanting is just for convenience in enchanting my other toon’s gear and disenchanting their usless loot.

Aaaand that’s all.  More as details emerge about the next patch.

Pugging at Low Levels, part 2

As far as pug groups go, I’ve had a mix of good and bad pugs so far.  The tanks have generally been good.  Even at level 25-30 we’ve been able to group up the mobs and AoE them down.  We’ve had a couple of weirdos, but mostly smooth.  I’d say the number of obnoxious jerks is higher in my low level runs so far than in my level 80 heroics, but its too small a sample size to draw a conclusion.

My big obstacle has been Gnomeregan.  It creates a problem that interrupts the smooth operation of the Dungeon Finder system. The problem is that mobs just inside the entrance respawn fairly quickly.  Lets say your group is 3/4 of the way through Gnomer, and someone drops from the group.  You re-queue and get a replacement, who is ported in at the entrance.  Unfortunately, there are elite mobs between him and you.  Your only choice is to run back and re-clear some trash.

In the efficiency-at-all-costs environment that exists in the game right now, most players are not willing to make that effort, and so the group falls apart.  This has happened to me 4 of the 5 times I was put into Gnomeregan as a random dungeon.

What will happen when I am high enough level to do Maraudon?  Or BRD?  Those places are enormous and mazelike.  I can imagine someone getting ported in as a replacement, seeing that they need to make a 20 minute run from the entrance to the group, and just dropping out.

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Another interesting thought.  When you run instances at level 80, you have the expectation that the other players in your group have learned their abilities through the leveling process.  That’s why level 80 players who only do 1k dps are often disparaged or insulted.

What about at level 25?  If there is a player who clearly doesn’t know how to play the class, what do you do?  It *could* be a brand new player.  Or it *could* be a guy with five 80s who is on his 12th alt, and should know better.

In one of my runs a staff dropped with +spellpower.  I indicated in party chat that I was going to roll Need.  The druid healer started yelling at me!  He said that spellpower was no good for a mage because it only gave +crit and mages didn’t need that.  I replied that Intellect gave crit, and that spellpower was good for any caster class.  He rambled on and on… wrong the whole time.

If this is a new player, this kind of misunderstanding is understandable.  If its an alt of a high level toon, its terrible.  How to react?

I simply passed on the staff (knowing that there are many more such weapons in the game that I can get without loot drama).  I told him to mouse over his intellect stat and see what it says about crit.  And I dropped it.  Maybe he learned something there.  Maybe he is long past learning such things.  I don’t know.

I could take a teacher-like approach here and share my game knowledge in hopes that I make some difference in their game experience.  Or I could just sit quietly and allow the ignorance to contiue, especially since they are not even players on my server so I’ll never hear from them again.

Pugging at Low Levels, part 1

With little to do when I’m not raiding, I’ve picked up another long-forgotten alt.  Ages ago, I had leveled a mage to 23, then let him sit.  At that time, I had three level 80 toons and I swore that I would never level another alt because I was tired of doing the same quests over and over again.

The new Dungeon Finder has completely changed that.

I’ve got him wearing two pieces of heirloom gear for a 20% boost in xp from killing mobs.  With that bonus, questing cannot even come close to instancing as far as xp/hour.  At level 25 I got into a pug for Razorfen Kraul.  I started the run having just barely dinged 25.  I ended the run 20% of the way through level 26.  A second run of Razorfen Kraul got me halfway through level 27.  Cleaning up a few quests in my log got me to 28.  Three levels in about 3 hours online.  Wow.

I expect that I will level him almost entirely in instances.  For me, that’s perfect since I have already done most of the available quests multiple times.

For a player new to WoW, this is a COMPLETELY different game than the one I played.  When I leveled in vanilla WoW questing was the way to go.  I ran each instance once, a few twice, to complete the quests that brought you there.  I spent a great deal of my playtime running from place to place between quest hubs (no mount until level 40!).  Even the times that I ran instances required the time spent getting there, assembling the group, and then running back when finished.

For a new player today, once he gets high enough to do Wailing Caverns/Deadmines/Raging Chasm/Shadowfang Keep he can level without ever leaving his home city.  Sit at the auction house, pop into the dungeon, pop back to the AH when done.  And forget doing quests for gear rewards – the Satchel of Helpful Goods reward from the pug gives nice blue items.

I’m not judging whether this is good or bad.  I’m just pointing out that this is not even remotely like the game I played 5 years ago.  I really liked the immersion that old WoW gave.  If I started the game today, I’m not sure how I would react, or if it would suck me in the way it did then.

From the point of view of a mage, this changes the leveling game completely for clothies.  One of my biggest frustrations when solo leveling the mage was my terrible squishiness.  If I let the mob get close to me I was in trouble, and accidentally aggroing two or three was certain doom. Now, in instances, I have a tank to protect me and healer to heal me and my squishiness is a non-factor.  This is a HUGE change in the leveling experience for mages.

It will be interesting to see in few months what the new players are like when they reach the level cap.  For us grizzled veterans, we we forced to learn our classes thoroughly through the long leveling process.  Sometime during BC and into WotLK, things changed so you could powerlevel a toon through only soloing, and not really learn to play it in a group.  Nowadays, new players can do nothing but instances the whole way up.  Will they be better prepared for the endgame?  Time will tell.

Loot Torture

One of my guild’s main tanks is on a bit of a sabbatical as his school semester has started.  For us to run ICC, then, we needed to bring in another tank.  We have two top tanks, and after that our next level of geared tanks are all alts of core raiders.  Last night in ICC it was my turn to set aside my main and take on tanking duties as a prot pally.

We got through the first four bosses pretty handily.  Other than a few hiccups on Lady Deathwhisper, the run went very smoothly.  We even one-shot Saurfang, despite it being the first time seeing the fight for a few of the players in the raid.  We managed to earn the I’ve Gone and Made a Mess achievement for those who didn’t already have it.

On the plus side, this was a good week for me on my paladin.  Most of my tanking experience before this was in heroics.  In the past week I have tanked 25-man Ignis for the weekly raid, and 10-man ICC (through Saurfang) twice.  I got Titanguard from FL25, received the first rep ring from Ashen Verdict and now have enough Emblems of Frost to buy the tanking trinket.

But there was loot torture aplenty in our ICC run.  Since I wasn’t on my rogue, I had to stare in horror at this debacle…

First, Marrowgar drops the Shawl of Nerubian Silk.  I have coveted that on my rogue.  It went to a hunter.  That was like a stab in the heart.

Next, Deathwhisper drops the Chestguard of the Frigid Noose.  There was no leather wearing dps in the raid, so it also went to the hunter.  Rip my lungs out, why don’t you?

Finally, Saurfang dropped the Scourge Stranglers.  I don’t even remember who got those – either the hunter again, or the druid tank.  At that point everything was all hazy through the tears in my eyes.

So the thrill of successfully tanking ICC was blunted by the disappointment of seeing all MY gear go to other players.  As if its not bad enough seeing hunters pass me on the damage meters, now they are taking my leather gear!  Loot rage !!!! lol