Having Fun? Maybe after 4.3 hits....

I keep asking myself that question. Too many times I find I'm getting onto WOW just to pass some time, but with a patch coming soon™, I find I am loathe to try to skill up any professions or make much of anything as it will be nigh but obsolete after the patch hits.

Once 4.3 hits, then it's another story. I'm hoping my tailor will be able to make higher item level PVP gear for skillups. if they don't sell I can always disenchant them - enchanting was why I took up tailoring on my rogue so many years ago. Poor fella was loitering at level 19 since...oh, sometime in BC. He's been my default 'banker' for much of that time. In the last few months I've gotten him to 85, had a quite a bit of fun doing it, too. Rogues, I have discovered, are quite a fun class to play.

I even used him to lead a pickup group raid on Garr up in Mt. Hyjal. We wiped a good number of times, learned a few thing (you can zerg him). So despite a REALLY high repair bill for the adventure, it was a rather fun little diversion - and a chance to work with a tank I'd worked with in raids in Wrath.

My most recent tanking outing was one I did with my Paladin in Zul Gurub. I've been there a handful of times and have a rough (VERY rough) idea of what to do in the fights. The last boss was the biggest challenge - particularly in the 2nd phase when you have to pick up the big guys and let them trash the chains. I'm still foggy about dealing with the ghosts, but despite a number of wipes while I was learning things and having our dps lineup change a few time, we finally defeated him (Jin'do I think it is...). I kept getting shispers about needing better gear, but I think most of the people who said something realized I was there to GET better gear. I did get a better tanking weapon out of the deal.

I've got until the 21st of December to get that toon upgraded and then that account is going dormant for an undetermined period of time. I can't justify having 3 active WoW accounts when the game is in the doldrums and I'm not terribly enthused about playing right now.

FIRST CATACLYSM RAID!!

I off-tanked for a group doing BH. It seemed like a group of folks that knew each other, i was to excited and worried about doing OK that I didn't notice guild names.
Among the more humorous things about this tanking endeavor is that I did it on my Paladin, Suitthang (pronounce it like sweeth-thang) my 'youngest' overall tank. I was in the middle of buying the t11 Paladin tank legs and gemming them when I answered a request in trade chat for a tank for BH. Once I got there they asked is I knew the fight.
I said that some big baddie was gonna try to do mean hurtie things and I should get it to pick on me instead of everyone else. Wasn;t sure if there were sighs or chuckles on Vent (yeah,we were using vent - quite useful, that Ventrilo), but they gave me a a quick explanation - something about taunting after some effect, then we were going.
Yeah. Wipe #1. They were very cool, explaining correct positioning for me in relation to the MT, then we were off again. For wipe #2. Didn't hear the call for the taunt, MT died, I died, raid died. Lesson learned there. Upon deciding that a louder call for me to taunt would be useful for me, and my repeating back wast was expected we went at the the Eyeball beast yet again. Got him to about 2%, and oddly enough I was just about the last person to die and I was trying to figure out any and all CD's I could pop that were available, in the off hope I could get that last little bit. No go. Wipe #3. Thisone was not on me. PHEW!
Next attempt was like clockwork. Communication was great, I was getting the hang of when to taunt and down he went. Of course no tank drops, not that I'd have had a chance at them anyway, but no big deal. First raid boss tanked succesfully. For good measure we went down and tackled Argolath (I thik thats his name). Goa fast but good explanation and we went at it. My previous experience in raids was useful when the fire phase hit and I knew to GTFO. No wipes, taunted when asked, all the usuall tankish stuff. My DPS was the suck compared to everyone else, but considering I was wearing about three green pieces of gear and still haven;t changed my glyphs to some more effective tankie glyphs for pallies, the event was quite a success.

Just MAYBE, i might stand a chance in the troll instances. Would prefer getting upgrade for those greens, particularly the weapon! LOL

I _REALLY_ hate heroics!

I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record, but I really do still have a rabid dislike of heroics.
They add all these raid inspired mechanics into fights that you THOUGHT you knew, so now you have to put up with dying umpteen whatever times to learn a fight if you are like me and mentally, as a result of a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) thanks to a drunk driver, have difficulty adjusting to dramatic changes or too much "stuff" going on at once. Problem is, most LFD groups do not like wiping multiple times.

So 9 times out of 10 when I queue up for a heroic there are multiple wipes on some boss, a lot of mutual bitching about "do this, not that" and "don't stand in the bad stuff" and the group falling apart, or I just give up because I'll get too frustrated if I keep trying and failing. I move out of 'bad stuff' but the problem is, the damage is so great that if you get hit by even a little bit of the 'bad stuff'' then you are toast.

I get frustrated at the people in Blizzard forums who love to call people "baddies" who just want to be carried if they post something like this blog post. I've never wanted to be carried.
Then they accuse you of calling for encounter to be nerfed. I've wished some encounters would get nerfed, but I'd rather LEARN them!
I had some great experiences in Wrath with raid groups doing Naxx. The people leading had patience. Patience to EXPLAIN things. Patience to keep at things because we were improving.

People love to suggest I watch encounter videos on tankspot or whatever. Watching videos doesn't cut it, doing the encounter is the best way I learn how to do encounters on any given class. If watching videos was enough, I'd be able to play guitar or hit a baseball, but life don't work like that.

Blizzard is under some misguided notion that the cataclysm heroics will self-nerf as people get higher item level gear. I suppose with some classes, there may be some truth to it. Not with my mage. Poor squishy troll has serious issues living through many of the heroic encounters in Cataclysm. /sigh

Non-social versus anti-social

A post on story about some "War" Game feature being added (or already in WOW but unknown) on the WOW Main page led me to reply to someone as follows:

you mean asocial (Avoiding or averse to the society of others; not sociable) rather than antisocial? Goodness knows there are enough anti-social people in the game already, most of whom are progression raiding types. I've never been a very social type, and everything I heard about raids back in Vanilla WOW really turned me off the idea of large progression raiding guilds. That and a lot of people who had no interest in sharing knowledge about game mechanics, encounters, etc. I really dislike that WOW has gone back to a Vanilla feel in that regard: Raiding has reverted to a "know it already or GTFO" mentality again, meaning there are going to be a lot of non-hardcore progression types who may never see some content until long after it has become obsolete.

I have yet to go into Gruul's Lair, Tempest Keep: The Eye or Coilfang Reservoir: Serpentshrine Cavern and have only fought trash in the Black Temple when some guild was farming Hearts of Darkness in BC on mobs before Mother Shahraz, and made one failed attempt with a guild member or 2 at taking on Hellfire Citadel: Magtheridon's Lair (it did NOT go well, lol). I've only popped into Caverns of Time: Hyjal Summit with my one of my level 85 toons just to try out taking on the trash mobs there. Boring, and even though I could take the packs of mobs down it was just boring. I got into the ORIGINAL Naxxramas when it was still in the Eastern Plaguelands back during BC. Right after I did the attunement quest I popped in and, to my chagrin, discovered 2 things.
#1 I could NOT take on two aboms on my own and live,
and more importantly
#2 was that there was NO EXIT from the original Naxx!
Needless to say my tank died upon learning those 2 things. A month or so later someone got a group together to PUG Naxx and I went. That place was hella-Hard! We only tried to go for Anub'Rekhan and got toasted BIGTIME! The trash even gave us a helluva time before we ever got to the boss. While it was kind of fun to at least get into Naxx and have a go at the boss, I am not a fan of the kind of killer "you must be perfect" mechanics that they had in Vanilla Naxx, and now in heroics and raids in Cataclysm.

Just because I am not a fan of them does not mean I do not think they should exist. Obviously there are players out there who thrive on that sort of challenge. I have a disability that affects how well and how fast i can process information in new situations, it's even harder if I am under stress. So far in Cataclysm I've gotten to where I am ....somewhat...accustomed to a few fights in heroic mode. Lost City for some reason seems to be about the easiest of the heroics for me (and quite frankly there are still aspects of the various fights I do not fully comprehend. I've learned enough to at least be able to keep from getting myself nuked, even of it does lower my dps.I contribute and we get the boss down. So I do not have the best DPS, I can live with that. Once I have enough experience doing various fights. I have to DO the fight in any given class to really know how to do it, watching a video is not the same for me - they are nice for getting a general idea of what happens, but being there and fighting a boss on a hunter is different than being there as a DPS warrior or as a caster.

Instance runs go so much faster when people know them and when gear is not so much of an issue. I saw that a lot when I would pug raids in Wrath and still see it now when doing instances on my lowbie toons. I love being able to get into a group for Nexxus or Utgarde Keep and rolling thru them very quickly - people may die on occasion, but no one stresses over it and people are almost universally cool about needing on gear when you need it. A fast 15-20 minute run thru UK beats the hell out of a 2 hour long heroic with people dropping from having multiple wipes and people being snotty toward one another. I'll take easy and fun in a game over long, stress-filled bitchfests that heroics tend to be these days.

Battlegrounds!

I just read a post on the Blizzard forums about fail Battlegrounds (BGs) with the title "Why not just let them win?"

I have been in enough BGs when early on it seemed like it would be hopeless only to have things turnaround and become very worthwhile matches.
I've felt the same thing many time, that the BG was a complete wreck, but have learned you just have to either gut it out and stay till the bitter or glorious end, or else just bail and take the debuff. Eye of the Storm is a BG where I've seen a turnaround happen many times. Not so much with Warsong Gulch, commonly known as WSG.
Ah, WSG, now there is a BG with which I have a deep tolerate/hate relationship. The one thing I love about WSG is they put in a time limit on the darned BG. before they did that there were times I was in WSG longer than some old school Alterac Valley battles, and they used to have AVs that went for days! Not saying WSG went that long, but 90 minutes in WSG was too darn long. Sometimes 20 minutes is too long. I've gone thru periods where I would do great in PVP as a tank back in Wrath, even had at least one battle inside WSG that can still make me laugh.
I was in our flagroom along with a druid healer (pretty sure it was a druid) and got into it with a human paladin. We had out own little battle going for a good 5 minutes with me getting healed until the pally switched to the druid only to have all my Prot stuns screw with him then he'd switch to me, and between my stuns and reflects along with my pocket healer we finally downed him. Then he comes back for more! Horde ended up losing that one - it was probably one that seemed pointless, but at least 2 of us on the losing side had a tremendous amount of fun.

Imagine that, playing a game and having FUN!?!?

Still cannot stand heroics

I have a very well geared mage, better than my tank. Decided to try a heroic. Got H BRC. Did okay even tho we wiped once on the first boss because the tank failed to clear mobs next to where the boss walks up to ...what is it, a pit or something?.. that he then paths away from. We got extra mobs, wiped, went back, cleared the extra mobs, killed boss, continued on. When we got to the 2nd boss, we tried skipping the mobs at the top above where the boss is, except for the first pathing drakkonid. Didn't work for some reason cause when we went for the boss it seemed like we got the 2nd drakkonid and the mobs from up top. Got back, cleared the top, tried for boss. By this point I think we'd replaced one person who left for some reason between the 1st and 2nd boss. I have a hard time with this fight. Timing on this is a pain in the ass. I was blocking one stream and popped out at around 80 stacks, watched for the debuff to wear off but other drakkonids got summoned/converted whatever and wiped us. We gave it another shot after losing at least one person, wiped, then decided to pass the boss and move on. We got to a bridge where Raz is supposed to pop out and kill all the the mobs on the bridge. Didn't happen, wiped again.
Lost almost everyone. While I was debating on bailing we had a full party again, and had to go back to try the 2nd boss again. I was game for another shot. Next try I ended up popping back into the stream about one tick too soon, got converted to a drakkonid but didn't seem to be doing anything, everyone else got killed, I reverted so I ran back up the ramp to wait for everyone. I think we might have tried one more but wiped again and I just figured screw it, and bailed. Total time spent probably around 2 1/2 hours and only got one boss down - and this on a toon that has gear that can get him into the "new" troll instances, and got thru H SFK on my first run thru it with minimal wipes or deaths.

My feeling here is that I cannot be solely to blame for the wipes, not when I was at #1 0r #2 on the damage meters on boss fights. Heightened difficulty is one thing, but this far into the expansion you would think people could clear heroics a bit easier, hell we did in Wrath and even in some of the BC heroics. Cataclysm heroics an inconsistent mix of difficulty and are not conducive to have me queue up for heroics very often. I can't wait for 4.2 when getting higher gear MIGHT make beating heroics easier.

My First Video Blog

My first shot at a video blog entry. I needed more sleep when I did this, LOL.