Friday, December 18, 2009

Hotplate the Patient

Last night I only had time to run one dungeon. Really I didn't have time for even that, but the night before I didnt' even get to log in so I didn't want to lose out on yet another 2 Emblems of Frost and 3-4 Emblems of Triumph.

I hit the Dungeon Finder ( my new WoW best friend =) ), and within 5 seconds was transported to Caverns of Time: Culling of Stratholme. The group had already killed the first boss. Looking at the clock, and the fact that I've never tanked this dungeon ( and its been months since I DPS'd it), I knew the drake was out of the question. I did my best to catch up with them and start making the pull. First pull on trash and I'm facedown on the ground. Not a good start. I get a battlerez from the druid and slowly ( because I wasn't healed up yet) start gaining back aggro. We finish the pull and I ask the group what happened.

"Dunno, apparently you died" remarked the Paladin healer. Thanks sherlock. Trying to be nice I asked if I was just taking too much damage. "Yeah, when you rush in like that". At this point I'm about ready to drop group, but I figure I'm already in might as weel try to see how they handle a boss.

I continue to pull, keeping a closer eye on when my cooldowns are up and using them much more liberally. We're able to down the two bosses without incident. We get to the gauntlet and everything goes pear-shaped. Arthas dies halfway through so we have to fight our way back to them. Everyone dies at least once, but not at the same time so I guess its not a wipe.

Looking at the DPS meters, its showing that on trash I'm #1 DPS with 1.5k, followed closely by the feral druid, and the dps warrior. Lagging far behind at an embarassing 800dps is the hunter. A check of his gear reveals that he's in mostly blues and a few epics. He should be pulling atleast 1k dps, if not more. The amount of time its taking for mobs to go down seems to confirm that my meters aren't off by too much, if at all.

We get to the final boss, he goes down without too much effort, just longer than usual. As the loot is being handed out, the hunter asks if he can NEED on the epic mail leggings that drop. I say go for it, mainly cause I don't care. He says it won't let him, so I take a look. Its clearly a shaman casteer ( possibly healing ) mail piece. The hunter insisted that the piece was better than what he had. I pointed out that he was giving up 130AP for 80+ Spellpower that he couldn't utilize. At that point I left the group.

Rewind a bit, and when that boss went down, the dungeon was technically complete. At that point I earned the [Looking For Many] Achievement. This involves completing 10 random dungeons and also completing random dungeons with 50 random people. This earned me the title Hotplate the Patient. I feel that with that last pug, I truely earned it.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Tanking Fail

Tanking Fail

Last night was the first time I was called "Fail". Can't say I was too surprised, Anh'kahet: The Old Kingdom is quickly becoming the bane of my tanking-existance. I think its partly because I don't know the instance, only having run it a few times as DPS ( and probably once as healer), coupled with the natural tendency ( probably due to self-preservation instincts) to religously follow the tank wherever he/she may lead.

On a brighter note I was able to get my Tier 9 shoulders for Hotplate. She is now my first toon get Tier 9. Bob, my warlock has a piece of Tier 8 and Hooff the Pally has a complete 2pcT7 for both Retribution and Holy. While Hotplate has the highest piece of iLevel gear, I think that Hooff is still the best geared. Though if I keep running heroics that may change soon as well.

On a related note, because my gear score is steadily climbing, I'm noticing that I'm being paired with DPS and Healers that are more geared. While this may seem like a good thing, I've found that once in a while its a double-edged sword. It seems that for some people, their arrogance is directly proportionate to their gear score. The more geared the DPS, the less tolerant they are of mistakes.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Loving the Dungeon Finder Tool

So far Patch 3.3 has been a hit, specifically the new Dungeon Finder tool. Without hyperbole I can safely say it has revolutionized the how I think of, and do heroics. In a way, its changed how I play WoW completely.

Before the tool, PUG was a 3 letter, 4-letter word. Looking to run a heroic went something like this.

1. Find three heroics to join the LFG for.
2. Spam Trade and LookingForGroup channels.
If you're a DPS, expect to repeat this for the next hour before any finds you, or try to catch someone "LFM DPS", which I'm told happen but have never personally seen.
If you're a tank, expect to be invited within about 15-20 mins,then wait another 45 mins looking for a healer.
If you're a healer, expect to be invited within 10-15 mins, then wait another 45 mins looking for a tank.
3. If the stars align and 5 people are gathered, expect to wait another 10-15 minutes while everyone is running to the meeting stone. At least, this is what everyone is saying, in reality only 1 person is actually flying to the meeting stone, the rest are waiting for a summon.
4. After everyone is gathered and the instance is started. One of the following will happen, and contribute to the wipefest
a. Tank blames healer for not being geared enough for this heroic.
b. Healer blames Tank for not being geared enough for this heroic.
c. DPS not geared enough, healer OOMs.
d. DPS over-geared to the point where the tank can't hold aggro. "Slow down" dps request by tank met with "MOAR DOTS" reference.
e. One DPS comments on how "fail" the other DPS's spec/gear/sexual preference is and a 10 minute argument insues.
f. A male character starts flirting with a female character, finds its actually a male player, hilarity ensues. <-- this one is always fun.
g. A male character starts flirting with a female character, finds it really is a female character, and the rest of the dungeon is an assorment of posturing, flirtation, and requests for "boob shots".
h. A female character flirts with male character in order to get more gear. True gender of players involved make no difference.
5. If somehow you're really blessed, you finish the dungeon, collect your emblems and swear you'll never go through this crap again.

How it is now:

1. Queue up in Dungeon Finder, Random Heroic
a. If you're a DPS expect a 10 minue wait
b. If you're a tank expect a 10 second wait
c. If you're a healer, I haven't tried this but i'd assume about 10-seconds like a tank.
2. Once everyone has accepted, you get PORTED to the dungeon.
3. Everyone is pretty comparably geared, so if you're a new tank you'll have newish people as well. This seems like a bad idea but I've found that it actually helps with making runs smoother. People that are just starting out, gearing up, are more tolerant of mistakes. The DPS isn't as high so its easier to keep aggro. The healer doesn't have as big a mana pool so chain-pulling isn't as mandatory to keep everyone happy.
4. The people you meet are generally farming heroics for the new emblem gear and generally know the fights ( even the undergeared, alts probably).
5. Collect your emblems and gold, wave bye.

In the time that 3.3 has been out, I've been able to get enough triumph badges to get Hotplate the BiS tanking Sigil, and enough for the T9 shoulders ( have yet to buy).

All in all, i'm loving this new dungeon system.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

PUG Fail

A week or so ago I got Hotplate up to 80. Since, I've been focusing on trying to get defense capped ( 540 +def) in order to start doing higher level regular dungeons, and some of the beginning heroics. Unfortunately defense capped != ready to tank.

Last night I queued up in LFG for the two starter heroics ( Utguarde Keep and Nexus) as tank/dps and also queued up for regular Trial of the Champion as a DPS. 10-15 mins later I got a whisper asking me to TANK Trial of the Champion, they said they just needed a tank. I said I'd give it a shot, hoping that their healer was up to the challenge of keeping a newb tank up. We got to the 3v5 fight, and got the Shaman, Rogue and Warrior. We did better than I expected, dropping the Shaman before I went down. Apparently the group had already wiped a few times, so they decided to reset and try for an easier group. That meant going through the jousting portion, which is the most boring part of the instance, and doesn't even drop loot. After resetting we ended up getting THE SAME three. We tried again, and wiped. At that point the group fizzled and I was left looking for another group.

About 10 more minutes later, I'm invited to tank Heroic: Ank'haet The Old Kingdom. For this I figured I would at least have a shot. I tanked Heroic Nexus a few days ago, and while I took quite a bit of damage, I finished it without too many wipes. After a long walk, I found that they were again, already halfway through the instance. I opted to accept being saved to the instance just to get the bad taste of ToC out of my mouth. On the first trash pull, I ask if everyone is ready. A few people said ready and I made the pull. Ten seconds later I was on the ground. Turns out the person that wasn't ready was... the healer. Another long walk, and an accidental aggro ( by said healer) and the group breaks up AGAIN. I'd like to say that I was upset that I was saved to a failed instance without even a single kill, but I wasn't. The night had gone so horribly wrong that it just seemed to fit.

The healer and a dps stayed in the group, and wanted to try to reform for another dungeon. I passed lead to the healer, mainly cause I was so sick of trying to find people. A well geared druid tank was found ( 37k health wow!), and I switched to DPS. Another two DPS were found, a hunter and another DK with much better gear. The run went smoothly enough after that, the DK was a bit trigger happy and died a lot. He had much higher dps than I did, at some points topping 3k to my 1.8k. But because he died so much, I was ahead in overall damage done. At the end I grabbed http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37167, even though they were plate. Slapped some cheapo +12str gems in them and logged off.

I'd like to think the failure was mostly due to my gear not being up to the job, but I'm sure that my complete ineptitude for popping cooldowns at appropriate times contributed to our failures.It feels like I'm behind the gear curve. There's that point where you have enough gear that you can get into the good instances, and acquire the better gear quite easily. It feels like I'm just behind that curve.

I think I have to rethink my strategy. I've been avoiding crafting the Titansteel epics to save money, thinking I should just be able to get some nice quick upgrades from ToC. Its much harder to get gear than I imagined. Its frustrating being on my healer and not being able to find a tank, then getting on my tank and not finding a healer. No wonder people dual-box!

I've started gathering the materials for a titansteel destroyer, mainly cause I can use it for both my DPS and Tanking sets ( Runeforging ftw). After that I will get a Tempered Titansteel Helm made, then maybe a Spiked Titansteel Helm made also. If i'm buying gear I might as well go full out.