MMORPG Archives - Page 298 of 306 - Tales of the Aggronaut

The Messy Breakup

December 10, 2013 by Belghast

Winter Wonderland

Over the night we got another dusting of snow, and as a result I had to once again dig my jeep out before coming to work. Firstly… Cold is not one of those things that Belghasts do best… especially a 70 lb lighter Belghast. This morning as I was getting ready the weatherman said something to the effect that it has been over 150 hours since we had been above freezing. As I was clearing my vehicle it was 20* outside with a wind chill of significantly less. I realize this is nothing like the –27* that my Canadian friends have been experiencing this week, but still… it is in the realm of “effing cold”. I have been wearing a fleece jacket and then a big winter coat on top of that.

All of the car clearing caused me to get up and around significantly later than I had planned, and as a result I am getting this started significantly later. Supposedly we will experience some melt this afternoon as temperatures finally go above freezing. Thursday is supposed to be in the 40s… which seriously feels like short and t-shirt weather as compared to this. There is no way I could actually survive in a Winter climate. The irony is… as much as I dislike snow in real life, I tend to love zones that have a winter theme in games. I love Winterspring, Icecrown and Storm Peaks. I feel like I would enjoy snow if it were not for that whole cold thing.

The Messy Breakup

The other day I talked about how I may have been wrong to avoid the looking for group tool and pugging in general. From 71 to 80 I had a really great run of 26 dungeons without much issue at all. It was a clean and efficient way to level. However upon entering the Cataclysm dungeon queue system that all changed. The first group I got was Blackrock Caverns. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing, and was more than geared enough for the content. As a result it went quickly and smoothly and I thought that maybe just maybe my luck would hold until I was able to level into the Pandaria content. This however was not the case, or at least not the case for very long.

My next queue was Throne of the Tides, and within moments of stepping through the doors we began a horrific wipe fest that ended with most of the party rage quitting after the tank failed miserably at the first boss encounter. As a rogue I ended up tanking most of the adds, and was able to pop cooldowns and all that wonderful stuff to at least down both of the casters. However the tank just seemed to lack the hitpoints and avoidance/mitigation to survive in the instance. It was not until the third, fourth and fifth bad queue of Throne of the Tides that I started to notice a pattern. They were all wearing the 1-80 Heirloom gear.

Public Service Announcement

Simply put… the heirloom gear that caps out at level 80 is simply not viable for tanking the cataclysm instances. The problem is that Heirloom gear is itemized for the previous expansion. At 80 it is itemized like it is a low ilevel Wrath of the Lich King blue, which is significantly worse than the lowest ilevel Cataclysm green. Essentially the quested gear you get early on will be better than anything but epic gear from Wrath, and even then on most of my characters I was changing put purples for greens left and right, especially for tanking where the stamina matters so much. The above image shows the Polished Breastplate of Valor as compared to Hardened Obsidium Breastplate.

Taking away the fact that the Valor breastplate contains zero tanking stats, it has 391 less armor and 100 less stamina than a Cataclysm tanking green. The tanks that I see rolling into the level 80 dungeons wearing full heirloom gear simply do not have enough hit points to survive the level of damage that is being dealt by the encounters. That is even with getting out of all the things they are supposed to be getting out of. Essentially if you are reading this blog and leveling an up and coming tank, please god do not queue as a tank until you have switched out your level 80 heirloom gear with green quest gear at a minimum. Granted I am generally more diligent than the average player, and I did not queue at all for ANY dungeons until I had swapped my heirlooms out for quested items.

Gear Changing

To be truthful I logged in my leatherworker and crafted a full set of gear, and logged in my smith and made two blue axes… but that is probably going above and beyond what anyone should be expected to do. However in each expansion, that first zone gives you a complete set of gear including weapons and trinkets within the first few quests. Over the course of the evening you can go from relatively crappy gear to greens that are better than most of the raid content gear from the previous expansion. You can maybe limp by as a dps, but especially as a tank, the Cataclysm content is brutal on anyone who has not shifted out their entire set of items.

I seriously doubt that any of the offending tanks I ran into will actually read my blog, but here is hoping that maybe I catch a few people who simply did not realize that heirlooms are not itemized as the new expansion until you ding 61/71/81/86 etc. This is the problem with the “mudflation” that has set into blizzards system, there is always a massive jump in stats between expansions, and in the case of Wrath to Cataclysm… it is simply not sustainable for dungeon running. Hopefully in the post “Item Squish” world the change between expansions will not be nearly as traumatic to the player base. I am hoping once I managed to get to the next tier of dungeons this problem will for the most part go away, and I can once again return to leveling through instances. However in the meantime… I am questing my way through Hyjal for what feels like the billionth time.

A Tale of Two Raids

December 9, 2013 by Belghast

Ending Hibernation

I had to vary up my morning routine today, as today is the first day back after snowmageddon. Until yesterday afternoon we had not left the house since Thursday evening. Mostly we got out yesterday just to see how the main roads were. If we based things on our neighborhood we would think the world was still under a solid sheet of ice. However as we got out and about we saw that the majority of the major roads were well travelled. That is not to say that I did not drive slightly under the speed limit on the way in, and not to say that I still did not slip and slide quite a bit. However I made it into the office without issue.

It is funny how quiet the office is. I expected to see more people here, however it is just me and one of the server techs. The irony is that while we are both in the office, we have been chatting over our in office instant messenger rather than face to face. I guess that is a sign of our lines of work, we are used to doing everything remotely. Had they not made a big deal about having “no remote work” policy, I would have simply worked remotely on Friday, and potentially this morning as well. However as to not give the impression that I was getting away with something untoward… I simply took a day of vacation on Friday. Not wanting to take a second one, I made the commute in this morning.

A Tale of Two Raids

Last night was a pretty interesting night. Since we had not really left the house since Thursday, I lost all touch with what day of the week it was. I had been living in a haze slowly poking away at leveling my rogue, which ended the long weekend almost 82. So when I was messaged by my raid leader to ask if I would be attending the raid, it was honestly a bit shocking. I had completely lost track of the fact that it was in fact Sunday, a night that we normally raid. Earlier in the week it was uncertain if we would even be able to make the raid happen, but we managed to pull in a friend of mine to dps for us. While a bit rusty she is improving with every single boss fight.

Stalwart has had something odd going on with raiding for some time. Essentially the guild has been a Tale of Two Raids. The non-guild-based raid group Duranub, had a pretty even mix of extremely high performing serious players, and not serious at all players that just wanted to raid for the sake of having fun. This lead to more than a few dramatic moments, so as 25 man raiding dissolved the groups fractured along those lines. During Cataclysm, we had no less than 5 ten mans that ranged from the super hardcore to the super casual. As attendance waned and folks left the game, myself included… the two groups that managed to hold together were that of the super hardcore, and the super casual.

When Pandaria released I quickly leveled Belgrave and Belgarou, and when it came time to raid I chose to bolster the super casual raid with my dps. The problem with that notion was the fact that the super casual raid lacked any form of reliable tanking. That unfortunately is one of those roles where you need your most talented players. Without a solid tank you get nowhere at all, and that is precisely what happened… they made little to no progression for a very long time. Seeing this floundering from a distance was a bit heartbreaking, but at that point I just did not have the patience to stick around and try and help out. I left wow once again, but this group persevered through sheer will of heart alone.

Warrior Returns

In the time I was away from the game, the Leftovers as they call themselves managed to recruit a stable tank Gamad, and the progress they have made was entirely thanks to her determination… and much drinking to manage to get through the struggles of working with the non-effective tank. Upon coming back I thought to myself… of all the groups that could use my help it was the Leftovers. So I have worked my little butt off to get geared enough to take a primary tanking slot. At this point I am sitting at 522 ilevel and for the most part can handle tanking almost anything out there right now. In the time I have been tanking with the group we have now cleared two new bosses, and are starting too work on a fourth. While we are still working our way through Throne of Thunder, it is nice to see steady movement forward again. At this point we are now done with the first wave of the dungeon and started work on the Tortos encounter last night.

This progress however might not have been. The under performing tank is back and available for raiding… and due to seniority and the fact that Gamad can out dps a good number of our dps… the Raid leader decided to put me with the under-performing tank for the night. Now I have to say, that the tank has some medical issues and is heavily medicated at all times. That said… it was still like trying to tank an instance with an easily distracted toddler. He was always off doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, and when it came time to do the first tank swap on the Troll Council fight… he was off dpsing something else. I have so much renewed appreciation for Gamad and what she has struggled with to this point. I have to say that if I have to co-tank with the other warrior very often, I will probably stop raiding. I knew it was bad, but I guess I had forgotten just how bad it was.

Slow But Steady

Thankfully the raid leader also saw how untenable the situation was, and quickly swapped the warrior to dps and Gamad back to tanking. From there we made a few attempts, each with their own adjustments and managed to kill the Troll Council. During this time sadly, the warrior had swapped specs but not gear… and ended up fury dpsing with a sword and shield. Basically when you are this inattentive it is time to just hang up your spurs and bow out of raiding for the good of the group. The leader whoever has struggled to make the group about family and friends, but there comes a point where keeping certain individuals hurts the overall spirit and morale of the whole. This is the sticky stuff that made me hate being a raid leader. There were many nights when I slotted people I didn’t really want to slot for the sake of social reason… not wanting to make a wife raid without her husband etc.

To be truthful this level of stress over variables you cannot quite control is much of the reason why I refuse to be a raid leader anymore. I got my fill of it over the three years I did it, and I commend the raid leader of Leftovers for his diligence to this point. That said the warriors return was a comedy of errors, and essentially if he is unable to pay enough attention to keep from charging headlong into the boss while we are clearing trash, it is probably time for him to stop raiding. That is not to say that I don’t think we should start doing something else that he CAN attend. I am thinking maybe a world boss night would fight the bill of letting the people who just do not have the ability to pay attention during raids, to feel like they are making progress along with family and friends. I don’t think we will ever be a progression based raid group, but without two stable tanks we might as well just do something else with our evenings.

A Positive Note

I feel like I have dwelled a lot on the bad during this post, but I want to end it on a positive note. Since my time in the raid we have completed two brand new encounters, and while we failed miserably at the fourth, we will do some adjusting next Friday and hopefully beat it in the face. Each of the wins has felt like it was sustainable. On the try we downed the council, no one actually died other than the hapless warrior. We completed it a man down, and everything felt very maintainable. This is a testament to just how good the high performing players in Leftovers are. I have no doubt that we will continue to progress our way through Throne of Thunder and hopefully complete the instance, gearing each of us to a state where we are ready to take on Seige of Orgrimmar before the expansion is released. I am personally pretty happy where we are, and how successful we have been.

Matter of Perspective

December 8, 2013 by Belghast

Unexpected Route

Yesterday I set out with the mission of running the rest of my characters through LFR, but after some frustrations with a couple of bad tanks… I decided to retreat into the comfort of leveling. The problem is… leveling through Wrath content feels extremely slow. The way they lay quests out just is not conducive to burning through them. I began the day at 71 and after a few hours I had finally dinged 72, so I figured I would take a break and run a dungeon. Apparently somewhere along the way I had forgotten just how good Wrath era dungeon experience was. I quickly shifted from questing my way across north rend to chain running dungeons.

I am generally the most anti-pug person you could imagine, but for whatever reason as I said the other day… if I am dpsing I have the patience of a saint generally. What I found surprising however was just how painless the whole event was. We had one tank rage quit because we did not clear the optimal number of mobs, and someone aggro’d one pack too many. After calling us all noobs and leaving we got another tank within seconds and completely the dungeon without issues. We had another tank that did not know which way he was going in Gundrak and after going swimming with the angry fishes for an extended period of time several of the people afk’d out of the dungeon, and I joined them. Other than those two instances… I had 26 instances of success.

At times the group was chatty, other times they were utterly silent. In all cases however we succeeded without much effort. It feels like they have nerfed the dungeons to the point at which anyone can run them without much thought. As a rogue I pretty much spammed Fan of Knives as we pulled huge packs of mobs. I found it surprising how quickly I hit 80. Thanks to the handy dandy statistics inside of World of Warcraft I know I ran exactly 26 dungeons to get from 72 to 80, which was the better part of a day. However this is definitely the express elevator through wrath content, and I feel like I will do this with pretty much all of my alts that have yet to clear that hurdle. In fact I am considering today once I have gotten a bit of gear, to do the same with the 80-85 climb.

Matter of Perspective

Maybe my fear and loathing of pugs is unfounded? Maybe it really is a simple and efficient way to level? Maybe chain running LFR has just given me a perspective on what I should expect from others? In any case it was not nearly the traumatic experience I had expected. I figured I could stomach anything for a single group, however I found the experience rather refreshing. It may simply be that at this point everyone knows the wrath instances like the back of their hand, and can pretty much run them on autopilot. In any case I might have to revise my opinion of pick-up groups. That’s one of my good traits however is that none of my opinions are so intractable that they cannot be changed. After all I had sworn off World of Warcraft for years, and now find myself enjoying the hell out of it again. Just like everything in life, I feel that it is all a matter of perspective.

Transmutation

December 7, 2013 by Belghast

Trolls of Thunder

Yesterday went pretty much as I had intended it. I hung out around the house and ran first my Paladin and then my Shaman through a bunch of LFR. Things went a bit slower than intended since I kept getting in on the end of a run and having to queue again to catch the first boss or two. I managed to get both characters up into the 480ish range. Still no real luck with the weapon drops, which seem to be the issue with catching characters up enough to be able to do Siege of Orgrimmar. As a result my warrior, paladin and shaman are all using 450 level weapons still, and I have not really had much luck with getting spirits of harmony on the smith to be able to bump those up to 463.

Of the options I have at my disposal for weapons, none of them really seem palatable. I could queue for heroic dungeons and have a random chance of getting the dungeon that drops a weapon… and a random chance on top of that of getting the weapon to drop. This would only take me to 463, so not really great in the grand scheme of things. I could farm timeless isle coins, but it takes 10,000-20,000 to be able to purchase a weapon… and in those cases the weapon is only 476 which really doesn’t help that much. So the best option still seems to be to queue for Throne of Thunder each week and hope, all the while trying to accumulate Spirits of Harmony for the smith.

Transmutation

With all of my crafters going, I have really felt the lack of my alchemist. There are some pretty sweet items you can make as a blacksmith that are 502 ilvl but they require lots and lots of Living Steel. Once again the only way to get living steel is to get it transmuted by an alchemist. As a result I have been directing my extra effort towards leveling Gloam my rogue high enough to be able to raise his way through the Pandaria alchemy. Currently he is capped out at 450 and cannot progress again until I level 75. As a result I have been working on quests out in Borean Tundra and I almost have him up to 72. Thinking about just making a serious push to try and get him to 90.

Rogues are way squishier than I remember, and while they have recuperate it doesn’t seem to offer the level of survival I am used to with my other characters. As a result leveling the rogue has been less than enjoyable. I am not really a stealthy person, and I have always played my rogues more like a swashbuckler than an assassin. However the only time combat goes really smoothly is if I make sure I stealth up and get my opening attack. Hopefully with time I will get back into the swing of playing one, as in the past… burning crusade especially my rogue was my favorite alt.

The thing I find most humorous is that Paladins now kinda play like rogues. I have been doing a lot of Retribution paladin, and the mechanics are almost exactly like a rogue. Thing is in many ways it works better. Instead of everything being based on 5 combo points, all of the attacks seem to be based on 3 even though your bar can fill to 5. I keep thinking that rogues as a whole would benefit if most of the combo point dumpers capped at 3 as well. I think this is why I enjoyed my warrior in rift so much as opposed to my rogue. The three mechanic just seemed to work better, it made the game play feel more “in the moment”.

Too Many Choices

Right now I feel absolutely deluged with choices anytime I play the game. At this point i have yet to run Siege of Orgrimmar LFR on Belgrave or Belgarou my two best geared characters. I am 4 coins away from getting all of my sigils of power and wisdom, so I would not mind finishing that off so I can continue down the legendary cloak line. I have not even begun to work on Belghast, so in theory I could get his gear in order and start doing heart of fear or something like that to get him high enough to queue for Throne of Thunder. Additionally I really do want to get my rogue up so I can have a transmute spec person again. I spent a good amount of last night prior to our 10 man catching his herbalism up so he can now at least harvest whatever I come across in northrend.

In the past when I have quit the game I feel like it has been because I lost sight of the things I wanted to complete. I feel like I almost need to create a World of Warcraft Bucket List. There are so many little things that I forget about that I do want to complete. There are so many pets and mounts that I could be spending my time farming. The entirety of all of this is really almost overwhelming. I have never completely loremaster for example, and that’s a thing I have always wanted to do. I doubt I will ever work on the Insane title like Rylacus, but I am sure there are hundred of other little bullet points that I would actually enjoy. I feel as though if I had a list of these all, it would be much harder for me to lose sight of the progress I am making towards the total.

As a result I think I am going to add a new section to my site, similar to my beta list for my WoW Bucket list. As I think of more items I will add them to the list and then as I complete them… I will check them off the list. Probably will keep it as a google spreadsheet for ease of use. I’ve seen a few other players with these and I thought they were pretty cool. All I know for certain is that I am having a blast with all the players that seem to be back from their own hiatus. It is wierd to see my battletag/realid lighting up with players I have not seen in years. At the end of the day, this game really is about the people you play it with.