Monthly Archives: July 2010

The First Time

Posted on July 30, 2010 by
Minds out of the gutter, I’m talking about the first time you entered WoW.

As I was writing my post about “The Good Old Days” I was thinking back to when I first started playing WoW. It was April 2006 and my brother had finally convinced me to give it a go. Since he was horde I went through all of my options of races and classes and settled on an Undead Priest. I named her Braithe.

Braithe fighting worgens

When you’re new in WoW everything is awesome. Before WoW I hadn’t played any games for a while, not more than the odd Zelda (always loved those games) or Baldur’s Gate. A few years prior I had spent a lot of time in a MUD (multi-user dungeon) – which is basically like WoW, only it’s all text based. So I understood the theory behind it. Kill stuff, get experience points and level to gain new skills and abilities. That was all the same. But now.. with graphics!

I definitely fell in love with WoW from day one. As you’re new and learning the game seems extra awesome. The graphics seemed astounding and I took screenshots of everything all the time. Sadly I don’t have many of them left since I forgot to back them up when I changed computers a few years back. I would show said screenshots to my two old friends who had played the MUD with me, and managed to convince them to play with me.

Silverpine Forest is still one of my favourite zones. At night with the stars sparkling above it looks absolutely beautiful, if a little haunting. The Worgen were always interesting to me too, and Shadowfang Keep remains one of my most loved low-level dungeons.
While new expansions are always fun, and I’m definitely looking forward to the new world in Cataclysm (not so sure about some of the other changes yet) – it can never quite recapture the initial crush you have when you start the game for the first time.

Braithe in Silverpine

That enchanted feeling of wanting to look at everything and experience everything. It’s never quite the same. I definitely want to explore the old world post-Cataclysm, but it’s not with the same eager anticipation and rose-tinted goggles that I had when I was running through Silverpine Forest for the first time.

My first time flying


I remember getting my first flight path at the Sepulcher and as my bat soared high to take me back to the Undercity I was just staring at the screen in amazement. This was beautiful! How could I ever go back to a text-based game (albeit fun) when THIS existed? And I couldn’t… I’ve played WoW ever since and never looked back.

What are your memories from when you first started to play the game?

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Posted in My Adventures/Characters, Random Ramblings | 9 Comments

“The Good Old Days”

Posted on July 27, 2010 by
Every so often some of the old school players will grumble that things were so much better in the good old days. To be honest it reminds me of my grandfather who is quite fond of saying the exact same thing – and he’s generally quite wrong about it too.
I admittedly haven’t been here from the very start of the game, I started playing in April 2006 so the original game was already in full swing. But I did get to experience raiding and the joys of what we not refer to as Vanilla WoW. While I did love the game – I think we may be fooling ourselves slightly when we keep saying that things were better then.
What I Liked About Vanilla
First of all the game was new to me and of course that meant that everything felt a little bit extra awesome. Raiding was something new to me, while I had played multi-player games before there was nothing in them that could compare to the feeling of you and 39 other people venturing into the lair of a big boss trying to beat them. To this day Onyxia (original) is one of my favourite encounters. There’s just something about dragons…
Since raids have scaled down I have to admit that being 40 people gave a certain epic feeling that 10 or even 25 people just doesn’t quite bring. That being said - the game was a different game back then and I think 10 and 25 man raiding are great fun.
After all the bosses I’ve worked hard on and slain since, the deafeat of Ragnaros is still the one I remember the fondest. I couldn’t tell you why, because we’ve worked just as hard on other bosses, more difficult bosses.. but there was just something special about that one. Maybe it’s because it was my very first end boss that I killed at the time. Then of course there was BWL and Naxxramas, but I never got to complete those due to re-rolling Alliance when my guild had just started BWL.
The not-so-good points of Vanilla
Hybrid classes weren’t so much hybrid as they were Healers who could do something else when not raiding. And since there wasn’t dual-spec that meant having to pay to respec whenever you wanted to do it too. And gold wasn’t as easily come by as it is today. If you were a druid, shaman or paladin – you were a healer in raids, no discussion.
Shadow Priests were disputed. Sure, you might bring one to your raid if you could be convinced it was worth it – but you’d definitely never bring two or more. Really, we’d prefer if you were Holy.
Shamans were Horde only and Paladins were Alliance only. Alliance considered Shamans overpowered in PvP. Horde considered Paladins a joke in PvP. They’d bubble and you’d go /lol and then kill them when bubble wore off. However we considered them overpowered in PvE. (Can you tell I was a horde mainly in Vanilla?)
PvP was even more of a grind than it is today – however I admittedly enjoyed it a lot more back then. There was no resilience – and awesome PvE gear was… awesome. It did end up slightly unfair though since a well-geared person who did end game raiding could often kill anyone else. Now PvE gear and PvP gear are two different things (most of the time, let’s not discuss 2-shotting shamans and mages.)
You had a limited amount of debuffs that you could put on the bosses. Yes, you heard me. We got to put up a total of 8 debuffs and had to choose which ones because if you applied more it would over-write the existing ones. Eventually they did up it though, to 16.
Your first riding skill came at level 40 and cost you a nice sum of 100 gold. Trust me, at level 40 you weren’t very likely to have 100 gold unless you’d been insanely lucky with some drops you could sell – or you’d farmed with the intention of getting enough gold. Most of us, we just leveled… and you got to level 40 and realised that you couldn’t get that lovely mount after all.
Everything was a grind. If you wanted to raid – you had to grind. There were resistance sets to get. Most guilds had you help grind materials for potions and elixirs. This of course because, you know, you’d generally not get healed as a dps and you had to bring with you a load of bandages and health potions if you wanted to stay alive. If you wanted a PvP Title – you had to grind honorable kills.
Bosses weren’t all that difficult. A lot of people say that the game has become too easy. While that might be true, bosses definitely doesn’t fall into this. If you look at tactics from Vanilla compared to now I’d say that the current ones are a lot more work. Sure, we can use more debuffs, threat isn’t as big a deal and similar things. But the Vanilla tactics were more often than not tank and spank with the occasional “Run away from the raid, you’re a bomb!” and similar things – while these days… Just look at the Lich King fight… or last boss in Ulduar. Or the fact that we have vehicle fights (while not necessarily difficult – it’s pretty cool with a change).
Some things I bring with me from Vanilla – that I wish others would learn

Help Yourself (and by extension your party/raid). If you have a health potion, self-heal or bandages. Use them! People who used to play in Vanilla know this because it was the only way they survived. These days people just expect the healer to heal them, forgetting that the healer may not be well-geared, inexperienced… or simply busy healing the tanks.

Threat Management. Back in Vanilla rogues used Feint pretty much every cooldown, it was worked into their rotation. Because if you didn’t – you’d most likely get aggro and you’d die. People had to wait for five sunders on the boss before they even started dpsing. Oh, and a lot of the bosses were taunt immune. So pulling aggro was bad bad bad. These days, I see people pull aggro and not even try to lose it. Hunters don’t even feign anymore. Rogues don’t pop Vanish. They just stand there and pretend to be tanks expecting to be healed through it until the tank can get the boss back.

Raid Etiquette. Because you needed 40 people, you would often have 50-60 guild members all of which wanted a spot in the raid. To get your spot you had to do well, you had to be on time. Preferably outside the instance 10 minutes before the raid started. If your raid started at 20.00, you were online 19.30 to fly there, make sure you had your potions, bandages and everything. And you’d be in the designated spot 10 minutes before the raid started only to find out if you’d get a spot. There was no, “I’ll move there when I know if I have a spot” - it was “If you’re not there you won’t get a spot”. These days I see people still doing PvP or Heroics when raid is meant to start. They expect to be summoned. And god forbid they don’t get “their” spot.

You can still /lol at Paladins. Nuff said.

Gnomes Are Evil. Everyone should know this and we should all join together and make them extinct.

The TL;DR
Vanilla wasn’t all that. It was a new game and we were in awe. Some things are better now for sure, but I miss some of the player attitude/philosophy that has been lost.

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Posted in Random Ramblings | 14 Comments

Weekend Ramblings

Posted on July 24, 2010 by

As with many things summer makes WoW a bit slow. We all have vacations, family visits and just less time playing because we might want to be out and enjoy the sun.

I’ve definitely been playing less, but I’ve also been making some changes to my character list. I don’t know if I’m going to go through with my “one 80 of every class” idea – but we’ll see. I’ve made sure to keep one of every class on my list at least, and then I’ll have to see what I feel like.

I ended up deleting a 71 druid, a 49 shaman and a 48 rogue to make space for a new level 1 horde druid (previous one was alliance) that I’m leveling with some guildies through dungeons. It’s going slow though because we’re all busy with other things. I’m tanking of course – big bear butt on the way! (Yes that also means I deleted the new blood elf paladin, since I decided I didn’t want two paladins on the same server in case I did go for my little personal achievement.)

Current Character List

I now instead have a 27 shaman that I’m trying to catch back up to the 49 one I deleted. If you wonder why I made this odd choice it’s because I’m way too nice and my brother asked me to level something with him. List was full – so I re-created something. Go me…

My old horde rogue from back in vanilla has been transferred to replace the 48 one – because I missed her and wanted her around!

Nothing else is new really. I’m just playing my low levels when I’m around and doing some Heroics on my prot paladin to get her some retri gear.

As a side note, I have tried something other than making forum signatures in Photoshop. I made a wallpaper for my brother following a tutorial I found. It’s not awesome or anything, but it was fun to give it a go.

Wallpaper

I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend !

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Posted in My Adventures/Characters | 6 Comments

Account-Wide Achievements?

Posted on July 21, 2010 by
During a recent Q&A with Blizzard the question of account-wide achievements was posed and Blizzard’s response was
It’s an idea we definitely want to do, but it’s pretty challenging technically, so it’s not on the immediate horizon. We can’t promise anything obviously, but I wouldn’t feel the need to get difficult Achievements on more than one character on the same account.

Since this some people have been commenting on the issue. You can read Larísa’s argument against it here, and You Yank It, You Tank It pretty much agrees with her. Priest with a Cause has a different opinion.
I have an opinion on my own on the matter. While I can see everyone else’s opinions as valid opinions, I just don’t agree with them myself on a personal level. Or as the kind of player I am I suppose.
Clarification of what I want
First off, I’m not interested in gaining access to the Kingslayer title or anything such for every lowly alt of mine. I also don’t think what this is about. The way I look at it is to have a pane somewhere that shows you the achievements made by the Account – not the particular character. This would allow you to link an achievement from your Account to those pesky raid leaders who won’t take you unless you show an achievement (but you don’t have it on this character).
That means that any character other than the one who did the achievement doesn’t necessarily get the title, just allows you the possibility to show that you’re not a new player and you do know the tactics.
Of course when it comes to other titles such as the Explorer, the Exalted etc. it would be nice to get it when you switch to a new main. But not necessarily at level 1 because that doesn’t necessarily make sense. Why not just have it that you can transfer or claim the titles once you hit max level?
I would also love to be able to get the special mounts and pets. If I spent one year on getting the Violet proto-drake, but then end up switching my main character – it would really suck having to start over again. Not just because it’s a grind but because it takes a full year to do. This goes for similar mounts/pets as well. While others may not agree or understand my point, I really would like to have my pets and mounts on whichever character is my main.
Where I’m coming from
I know there are people out there who rolled a main and has stuck with it. Be it for 5 years since they started or 2 years if they started later. I can definitely understand that these people don’t see the point in account wide achievements, because most likely they never had to feel the sense of loss that you do feel when you switch to a new main and end up without your favourite pet/mount.
As a player I started out as an Undead Rogue in Vanilla. I raided MC, Onyxia and a bit of BWL. Then my brother decided to go Alliance, and since I had started the game to play with him I had to do the same. I rolled a Night Elf Priest and I missed my dark whelpling and other pets I had received on my Rogue.
I stayed Priest at the end of Vanilla, got some ZG going and a bit of AQ20. And a whole bunch of pets because I do love my pets. As we entered TBC I wanted to be a Shadow Priest, but since my guild was low on healers I was always forced to be Holy. Eventually I grew annoyed with this and re-rolled a Warlock because they still did shadow damage but no one could look at me with puppy-eyes and go “please heal tonight”.
My warlock ended up joining another guild and doing most of the content (sadly no Sunwell). She went into WotLK with the same guild and did all the achievements, pets and mounts. As the guild hit Trial of the Crusader we were starting to have problems with lack of tanks. So I ended up switching to a Warrior and have been playing it since. On the warrior I’ve re-done the pets and the mounts and some of the achievements. I’ve started over on the World Events in an effort to get my violet proto-drake.
As WotLK is ending so is my love for the warrior. I have realised that while wanting to help my guild I don’t actually love warrior or tanking as much as I do dps. I’m at a crossroad and I have to decide if I stick with her because she has managed to get at least most of the achievements, pets and mounts that my warlock has (minus of course the TBC raid achievements), or switch to a class I enjoy playing more – but I have to start all over again because I want the mounts, pets and everything. Not to mention gearing them up will be hell since while most of us in the blog-world say GS sucks and people who use it are idiots – if we are honest with ourselves I think we all know that the people that run PUGs do require it – as well as achievements – so as much as we can nobly say that; it won’t get us into any groups.
Does this mean that if I switch I have to just abandon all that hard work?
Some of the arguments – with my personal opinions below
“It doesn’t make sense when it comes to RP. What difference is there between your characters if they all have the same achievements!”
First off, I don’t personally care to have a level 1 running around with a Kingslayer title. But I also have to say that while I don’t RP, my characters all have their own stories and personalities in my mind – and it has absolutely nothing to do with whatever achievements they have. It’s all about their class and/or their personality and little back-story that I have in my head. The achievements to me isn’t based on the character. Because if that was the case I’d have to go out of my way to make sure that certain characters don’t receive certain titles because it would “ruin” their “image”. In short – achievements to me have nothing to do with the character and everything to do with the account (ie. player). My warlock may have the First Aid achievements – but she’s definitely not someone who would run around and bandage people. Does that mean I should not learn First Aid since it would ruin her RP image?
“You spent so and so long doing some really long grinding, difficult achievements.. but you want to switch mains and you’ll miss the achievements. Get over it.”
Excuse me, but no. Why should I have to forget/get over the fact that I spent all that time doing that and then just have to leave it on some character I never bring out anymore? I do the World Event quests because I love my pets and mounts, and the violet proto-drake is really neat. Every new main of mine would have to spend a full year doing it – how is that fair? It’s not something to just “get over”. Sure, I’d know myself that I’d done it – but I’d no longer be able to enjoy the mount. And the mount is the whole reason I’m doing it.
“It will infringe on privacy if people can see everything that every character of yours has done.”
That could be the case depending on how they do it. Personally I want it to show as an account achievement – I don’t even want it to list the character it’s been done on. Because quite honestly, I don’t think it matters. If I did all of the World Events – just show on my account that I did and let me have a BoA violet proto-drake and I’ll be happy.
“It’s all just about e-peen and bragging rights”
Not for me. I just want to have access to the mounts and pets that I’ve accumulated through achievements and events. Also, I want to be able to somehow show the annoying raid leaders that I’ve done certain bosses etc. so that they will give my alt a spot even if that particular alt hasn’t done it. (I don’t mean give my green-geared recent 80 a spot – I should still have decent enough gear to do it, just lacking the achievement.)
“But just because you tanked/healed/dpsed a fight doesn’t mean you can do it on your alt!”
How tunnel-visioning must you be if you’ve done fights several times as a <insert type here> and didn’t pick up the general tactics of the fight? I may have tanked my way through ICC – but that doesn’t mean that when I went in there on my hunter I was a total noob. I still listened back when my raid leader gave tactics. I still knew that you know, standing in fire was bad. That you attack such and such mobs on Deathwhisper, that you kill spikes on Marrowgar, that you move for spores on Festergut and so on and so forth. If you know how to play your class (which I expect you to do if you’re geared enough to enter ICC) then it doesn’t matter if you were there as a healer/dps/tank – I expect you to not have been an idiot and paid attention to all the tactics.
“You don’t need to link achievements to get into a PUG, just tell them that your main has done so and so and in the worst case they can look you up on the armoury or ask you a few questions”
That argument only works for – well, never. Okay, maybe on very very few occasions when the PUG leader isn’t a GS-looking, achievement-loving random. Which they tend to be 99% of the time. Thing is, most people who are starting a PUG are in it for the fast run – they want to get going. They’re not going to stand there and ask you questions, nor are they going to waste time to go look you up on the armoury. No achievement – no PUG. They don’t care if your main has done all the bosses, because they’re not going to waste the time to find out. Hence it would be nice if you could link an account achievement to prove that – hey, I know these bosses!
“It’s nice to be able to surprise people with my skills when I’m on an alt”
Yeah, sure – I don’t argue with that. But if your gear is worse than theirs (and you still do better!) - your skills are rather obvious anyway whether you have the achievement showing or not. If we have account-wide achievements they just know you’ve done it on A character, not that one. If you can do better than them with lesser gear – I think that’s more of a surprise factor than if you’d done the boss before on another character. Let’s be honest – I can meet someone who openly brags about being a Kingslayer on their main and they can still suck even in full T10 equivalent gear. I’m more impressed by someone who might still be a Kingslayer on their main, in blues.. and still whoop people’s asses.
The TL;DR
Switching your main sucks and I miss my mounts and pets! Gief my mounts and pets please and I’ll be a happy monkey.

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Posted in Random Ramblings | 8 Comments

Getting Defense Capped

Posted on July 16, 2010 by


Since I’m a big advocate of tanks being defense capped before entering their first Heroic instance I figured I should show you how you can easily become so.

To tank Heroics you need 535 defense (which is about 664 rating). If you get gear that gets you above that though, don’t fret – defense is always a valuable stat (though above 535 you’d not prioritise it over anything else – so at that point don’t gem for it or anything). Remember this is for Heroics – if you want to raid you need 540 (~689 rating). This guide is just about how to get you ready to tank Heroics however.

The quickest way of course is to craft some epics or even blues, but that costs you a little bit more in gold and materials. The slightly longer option – but the one which will also allow you to get some experience tanking – is to get some gear from quests and instances.

Below is a list by slot on where you can get tanking pieces without setting foot in a Heroic. This should get you defense capped and ready for your first Heroic!

Please note that this is mainly directed towards Warriors and Paladins since it’s plate gear. However Death Knights can use it and just find other weapons. Druids sadly can only make use of the rings etc. however I’m not too worried cause there are a lot of Druid sites out there! (And of course you get defense capped from talents alone anyway, you lucky….)

I’ve listed some items that can be crafted from Blacksmithing as well. Some of them you can find for a pretty decent price on the Auction House – or they can be crafted without much cost of materials. I did list a couple of the epics as well though, it’s all about how much you want to spend. Ironically though the blue Tempered Saronite set is usually the one with the most defense rating – which makes those pieces a really good choice for any slot where you didn’t get anything from a quest/instance.

Trinkets are a problem, but they very seldom award defense anyway, so don’t worry too much about those. I’m sure I’ve missed some items from my list – but I’ve tried to include anything easily obtainable from outside raids and heroics. Together with enchants and gems I think you should be able to get yourself defense capped.

(There are a lot more “tanking” items out there that I didn’t list since the point of this is to get you defense capped, so I’ve skipped any item that’s a “tank”-item, but doesn’t actually have defense. I also didn’t include the newer instances loot even on normal because they are a lot more difficult than the older ones and I’d not suggest going in there before being defense capped.)

Back

Head

Shoulders

Chest

Waist

Wrist

Gloves

Legs

Boots

Neck

Trinkets

Rings

Weapon

Shield

Ranged

Ways to boost your defense rating further:

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Posted in Warrior | 10 Comments

Respect Your Tank

Posted on July 13, 2010 by

There are a lot of discussions about tanks – especially when it comes to Heroics. Anyone who’s ever queued for a random Heroic knows that the wait time is on average 15 minutes or so. For a tank it’s pretty much instant. (Healers are somewhere in between, I think on average I wait 5 minutes as a healer.) Everyone is complaining about there not being enough tanks.

Aside from the obvious – there’s a lot less tank classes than dps classes, including all the tank classes that go for their dps spec rather than their tank spec – it’s not so strange that we don’t have a lot of tanks. Any time someone tries to get into tanking whether it’s a new level 80 or someone who is respeccing their dps/healer, they are met with abuse.

There is no support for new tanks. People are too spoilt by the 40-50k health tanks that are mains and get their gear from raids. When a new tank with maybe 25k health enters the instance they are instantly met with dismay, sometimes told from the get-go that they fail. They don’t even get to prove themselves without people whining already.

Apparently we’re all supposed to be wearing full epics, have 40k+ health and be awesome before we tick the Tank box when signing up for a Heroic.

Guess what, that’s why there are so few tanks.

People seem to forget that those awesomely geared tanks don’t need anything from Heroics, most likely if they run Heroics at all, they run one per day for their Frost Emblems. That’s it, one per day. So if you’re thinking you’re gonna have an awesomely geared tank for your every Heroic, that means that you’ll most likely have to wait until tomorrow because there aren’t enough well-geared tanks to go around.

Of course we see awesomely geared dps and healers in Heroics as well – they’re most likely also in it for their Frost Emblems. Overall, the only people that will run a lot of Heroics are the people that still need gear from Emblems of Triumph – which means they’re not going to have awesome-awesome gear.

But people who are well-geared already seem to forget this and expect everyone to be as geared as they are – especially the tank. Even dps that are similarly geared to tanks seem to expect the tanks to be awesomely geared.

So you’re a new tank. You got yourself defense capped. Maybe your stats aren’t awesome, but you’re defense capped and you probably have 25k health or so. So you queue up for a Heroic, you’re nervous because it’s your first time or one of the first times tanking. And people rip you to shreds. Will you go back and try tanking again? I doubt it.

I keep feeling that if we were more supportive of our tanks maybe more of them would stick around and we’d not have to wait quite as long for our queues.

We could give them constructive feedback if there’s something we see that they could improve. Not rip them to pieces and tell them to get better gear. I’m sure they’re already wanting better gear – in fact, I suspect that’s why they’re in the Heroic in the first place.

As a side note, I just feel that I want to make it clear that when I say to respect your tanks that doesn’t include the asshat tanks that think they’re God because they’re tanking. This is about encouraging the newer tanks and good tanks – the people that want to learn and the people that respect you back.

What about you? Have you tried to tank and been turned off by your reception as a less-than-awesomely geared tank? Or are you one of the people who treat new tanks badly? What’s your reaction when a lesser-geared tank enters your Heroic?

Another side note by the way, this does not mean that we should encourage new tanks who enter Heroics without being defense capped. I don’t care if your gear isn’t quite there yet – we all need to start somewhere – but you really really must be defense capped before you enter Heroics, and it’s easily done without getting gear from them. You might be defense capped with 24k health – but at least you’re defense capped! (And again, obviously I don’t mean that if someone comes into your Heroic who is not defense capped you cuss them out. Just be polite and explain that it really is in everyone’s best interest if they work on it before the next time they queue.)

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Posted in Random Ramblings | 27 Comments

Approaching Thunder Bluff

Posted on July 13, 2010 by

Following the Blood Elf (mis)Adventure I actually decided that two Paladins were enough and that I should try a Druid. I since re-rolled a Tauren Druid and I have to say that Mulgore is a beautiful place. As I approached Thunder Bluff for the first time I simply had to take a screenshot.

The first one I love, the second one I failed on because I forgot to remove the displayal of NPC names /facepalm

You can of course click the images if you want to see them bigger.

Approaching Thunder Bluff

Fail Pic, but loved the lighting

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Posted in Screenshots | 4 Comments

Ranting

Posted on July 11, 2010 by

I know I shouldn’t post a rant post, but I’m just so ticked off right now.

My friend and I went in to do our daily Heroic on our alts (mine’s an 80 prot Paladin and his is an 80 rogue). We obviously queue as tank and dps. As we enter the instance and start going forward I react to the fact that the only person in there capable of healing is a druid – and it just switched to Moonkin form.

We go through a few packs, with no healing at all. I’m at about 60-70% health and we’re approaching the boss so I ask if there’s no healer? Feeling a bit uncertain cause the LFD was acting a bit oddly, so who knows.. And the moonkin goes “lulz healing in a heroic?”

Ok, first off – I’m sure that going with friends and all ICC geared people you can mess about and you can go as 5 dps or 5 healers or 5 tanks to a Heroic and you’ll be fine. However, I don’t think that’s necessarily what you should do with randoms.

1) You queued as a healer – so you should heal. I don’t queue as a tank and then decide that “lulz it’s a heroic we don’t need a tank”, and go dps. I honestly don’t care if you think it can be done without healing – I need heals to get some mana back and I need mana to tank. I also don’t feel comfortable being at 50% health and seeing the group at about 15% health.

2) You are now dpsing, saying we don’t need heals.. and you decide to pull before the tank? Seriously?

3) Not everyone doing Heroics is ICC geared from 25 man ICC. My alt most definitely is not. While my ICC tank may have 50k+ health my Paladin only has 35k. With enough stuff beating on me I’ll still die with no heals. And sure, I could stand there and chuch out 1500 flash heals on myself – but then who will tank?

Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m sure that if he’d bothered to get out of Moonkin form to heal during fights we would have been fine. It was the attitude that bothered me. If you don’t intend to heal – then don’t queue as one.

The group had to be nearly dead for him to bother coming out of Moonkin form. At one point Idoubted he would come out at all. Quite frankly I just didn’t want to be in the group with him since when I asked if he’d heal he just gave me the superior attitude of it not being necessary.

So I guess in the end my problem isn’t that you don’t have the right spec – with the gear he had he would have healed fine without respeccing to Resto. I just wanted him to, you know… actually heal.

Had his attitude been better when I asked – had he said something like, “don’t worry I’ll pop out and heal you when it’s needed“, I think I would have been fine too.

Did I over-react? Possibly. But I just can’t stand people with an attitude.

Have you had any similar cases? I just have a big problem myself when people queue as one thing when they actually either have no intention of doing it or they just aren’t equipped to do it. I would have been similarly frustrated over a Fury warrior queueing as a tank. I just can’t get away from the sentiment of; Do your job, and do it right.

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Posted in Random Ramblings | 12 Comments

New Design

Posted on July 10, 2010 by

As you can probably tell I’ve updated the blog design. I didn’t get it exactly the way I want it (php/css noob) – but at least I got it switched to lighter colours – which was the goal. If I can figure out how to fix the last few bits I might do so, in the meanwhile – please enjoy the new design :)

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Posted in News | 12 Comments

Just Eat Something Already!

Posted on July 9, 2010 by
This week’s shared topic over at Blog Azeroth is about when a healer should let someone die. The topic was suggested by Ecclesiastical Discipline.

Now, first off I will freely admit that my main is not a healer and I have not had a healer as my main since Karazhan. Before that I was only a healer towards the end of Vanilla when I had re-rolled alliance and we never had time to do more than ZG and a bit of AQ20. My priest (the one that’s been around since vanilla) is still one of my 80s though and I do play her every now and then – always as holy. From time to time I even get rather crazy about her and I’ll play her a lot doing Heroics. I still would love to get into a PUG other than VoA – but I’ve been a little hesitant since I still feel a bit rusty on raid healing.

Anyway, my point being – I can still have a say on when people can die, right?

Admittedly I take pride in keeping everyone alive – idiot or not. However, due to being rusty or perhaps a bit of lack of gear (or a combination of both) there are times when people DO die on my watch. Halls of Reflection is generally the place where this happens.  There is so much damage going around and I end up having to prioritise the tank over dps (because let’s face it – a dps dies and we might still make it.. tank dies and we’re all definitely dead).

As most healers I have a priority list on who gets healed first.

Tank>Me>Dps>Dps who stand in stupid

Putting me in the second spot is a bit odd though. I’ve gotten better at it, but I will admit that there have been times when I’m so busy spam healing everyone else that I forgot to look at my own healthbar. Fortunately with the downloading of Grid I now don’t have to worry about that, but my healthbar is right up there with everyone else’s.

What annoys me a lot is when people don’t try to help me out as a healer. Why are we so stuck in our “roles” that we can’t do something else as well? If you’re a ret-paladin, what makes you think that hitting that cleanse button is something you don’t need to do? If you’re a mage – why not decurse people? Because guess what, your healer possibly can’t decurse/cleanse that particular thing on your party.
So why not help out?

I was in a Heroic run where people were taking insane amounts of damage and I was spam healing. There was a shadow priest in there as well as a paladin and I politely asked if they could help me dispel during a very debuff heavy fight (and yes, I know it was stuff they could dispel). Do you think they wasted a single GCD on helping me? Of course not. Because they’re DPS! They have to DPS! Right? Wrong.

If you have the ability to help in some way. Do it. Don’t assume someone else will. Help the healer help you.

On my Paladin tank I will still cleanse when it’s safe for me to spend a GCD or two on it (which to be honest is most of the time). I can do it, so why shouldn’t I?

I don’t understand dps that don’t even seem to try to avoid dying. No using of a health potion, no bandaging, no self healing if you’re a class that is actually capable of it. Mages who don’t ice block, rogues who don’t vanish, hunters who don’t feign.

I’m sure these are the people that don’t know how to play. I think anyone who has played any of the above classes (as I have) would say that someone who doesn’t do any of those things is just a bad player. I just don’t understand why it seems the majority doesn’t do any of this.

I get especially annoyed with well-geared people who act as if they’re too good to do Heroics. You’re in there – that means you’re not too good. If anything I’d expect you to go that extra bit.. to do remove that poison from the party because you have a spell that can do so and it hurts them insanely (and your healer is a priest who actually can’t remove it no matter how much they want to).

Also, what is this aversion to sit down and just friggin’ eat something??? I sometimes enter a Heroic and for whatever reason everyone is at 50% health already. I buff everyone and I sit down to drink. Do they sit down to eat? Of course not! They stand there while I drink… I get up, heal them all to 100% and then I have to drink again. We would have saved so much time if they’d just have sat down to eat. Same if someone dies and you resurrect them. Even if you’re low on mana you apparently are meant to heal them and then you drink, instead of them just eating something or bandaging.

It doesn’t save time. Because the healer ends up drinking for everyone. Maybe if the healer is awesomely geared with awesome mana regen that is not an issue. But that is not me. So folks, please… Eat your damn food!

You died! lulz


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Posted in BA Shared Topic | 14 Comments