Archive for the ‘Instances’ Category

I hopped into a PUG last night and ended up with an… interesting group in Utgarde Keep. We wiped fighting trash mobs in the drake pens, and we were unable to discern who was at fault. Our healer claimed they were getting hit while trying to heal, so the tank finally took blame. Our mage – who later turned out to be a bad apple – made fun of the tank for losing aggro, but we moved on. We cleared the rest of the dungeon with little fanfare and dropped Ingvar the Plunderer’s two forms lightning quick. Once he fell, that mage I mentioned earlier (named Shiifty), needed on everything and once he got them quickly dropped group. We agreed that he was the problem from before and peacefully went on our way. He had been making rude comments and mocking everyone the whole run, so we should have seen it coming. In the end, none of the loot at the end was useful, so he didn’t get away with anything, but I’ll remember him later.

Now this is more like it. I queued for a Heroic today, and after 10 minutes of waiting and one failed group (the tank declined his invitation), I got to go into the Nexus today. This, for once, is a dungeon I’m familiar with. I’ve healed it before and I’ve done DPS here, so there’s a comfort zone in place. I was last or next to last in DPS for all but the last fight when I reached 2nd highest. Our mage was putting out almost 3k DPS and I was second with 1.8k. Not great, but I’m still rusty. Anyway, when Keristrasza fell, she dropped the Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle, and I won it on greed. It’s not better then my Girdle of Arrogant Downfall (especially since I just socketed it with a Bold Stormjewel – vice a Bold Scarlet Ruby – from today’s Bag of Fishing Treasures), but it’s nice to actually have a memento from my adventures.

Talk about time poorly spent. I queued up for a random Heroic this afternoon and spent 15 minutes waiting for a group. When I got in to Drak’Tharon Keep, I saw bodies. Not my party… dead bodies. Of everything. These folks were at the back of the dungeon, killing the final boss. So, for 15 minutes of waiting I saw zero action and got no gear – just the two frost emblems that come with running the daily random Heroic. Yeah, that was worth my time. Not allot of fun if you ask me, and the only thing that could have made it worse would have been dying in the process. Oh well, the frost emblems were what I queued for, and I got ‘em. That’s all that matters, I guess.

This is just a quick update on current events. Gav ran two random heroics yesterday with some guildies, the first one (Utgarde Keep) with two guildies and the second one (The Nexus) with three. The random healer in our second group had to feel left out. In any case, we cleared both in no time, and I never died. I got some disenchanted gear’s regents, which I promptly put on the auction block.

On another note, I went and bought the XP-bonus shoulders for Gleave, my death knight. With a gryphon and XP shoulders, he’s about as happy at 63 as a death knight can be.

Later, all.

I entered my first random heroic dungeon tonight with a true pick-up group. I signed into the Dungeon Finder, and ended up with a cross-server crew in the Halls of Lightning. Well, if it was lightning, we were thunder. Our tank (a death knight) knew just what the hell he was doing, and we effin’ blitzed the place. We nabbed the Shatter Resistant and Timely Death achievements as we cleared it. We steered clear of unnecessary fights, thanks to our tank’s know-how. The sad part is that I died twice. Dammit! It amounted to 16g in repairs back in Dalaran. I only got The General’s Steel Girdle for my trouble. I saw the Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver drop before me, but I didn’t get it. Damn. Oh well, I did get two more frost emblems. Yay!

I was in Stormwind on New Year’s Eve, and got – for whatever reason – a desire for the croc pet from the Outlands fishing quest. I’d read about it in the Warcraft Magazine online preview, and decided it sounded easy enough to get. Rather then waste my hearth to Dalaran just to get to Shattrath, and rather then pay a mage to port me there, I used my ‘ultrasafe’ transporter. Ultra safe my foot – it turned me into a Night Elf for an hour! When I got to the fishing quest dude, Old Man Barlo, luck was with me as he was handing out the Crocolisks in the City quest that night. Yes! That quest was reported to have something like a 70% drop rate in the reward bag of a croc pet, so I was psyched. I took the portal to Stormwind and fished my crocolisk up in short order. While I was headed back to the mage’s tower so I could take the Blasted Lands portal, a level 17 paladin stopped me. He wanted someone to help him get the head of Bazil Thedd from the Stockade Riots. I agreed and we swept the place quickly. My Hand of Reckoning – my taunt – was killing mobs. He got what he came for, and as we were leaving he stopped to ask how I got to be a Night Elf paladin. I laughed and told him, ‘transporter malfunction.’ He just said, ‘oh,’ and left.

I took the Blasted Lands portal, went through the Dark Portal, and flew to Old Man Barlo near Shatt. Turning the quest in, I got my Bag of Fishing Treasures, and inside, was Snarly’s Bucket, home of the pet (Snarly) I started this whole process for. Hooray! To wrap up a good night’s work, I watched the New Year’s fireworks in Shattrath.

Happy New Year, everyone.

A recent topic on the Blizzard forums has gotten me thinking. DPS is currently at odds with healers and tanks. Tanks and healers seem to have garnered a serious ego problem. They think, since DPS is dime-a-dozen, we’re noobs, losers, and poor players. I’m a DPS pally, as everyone who reads here knows, so this obviously stung. This is my response, away from the runaway train wreck the original topic has become.

DPS are common because they are the best leveling and soloing class. Also, every class has a DPS spec they can go in to. Can warriors heal? Can priests tank? No. Therefore, healers and tanks are a specialized breed, only available from certain classes, played by players of a certain mindset. You have to want to tank or heal, and you can only learn to tank or heal in a group. We’ve all been DPS, to some extant, leveling from 1-80. You may group allot, but you’re going to find yourself on your own sometimes, and healers and tanks have it rough alone. DPS is the cruise control of leveling; just line up the bad guys and watch them fall.

My opinion of instance groups, as it pertains to this topic, is that we NEED each other. Personally, as a ret pally grouping as DPS, without a tank, I’m dead. Without a healer, I’m dead. We DPS are not alone in this symbiosis (if only by definition of the word); you tanks can get the crap beat out of you without us DPS to drop those mobs you aggro’d. Healers are either going to be bored or dead ithout some DPS between themselves and the tank, depending on if the tank ever kills his draws or if he eventually gets killed. Likewise, tanks and DPS alone can’t get very far. Just DPS and healers are usually a fatal combination. People, we’ve gotta work together.

DPS players are often disrespected – especially us retribution paladins – because we’re so many, and as such we have more bad apples. Believe me, I’ve had poor tanks that can’t hold aggro, and healers that got every one killed because of their ineptitude. I know healing is hard, I’ve done it a number of times. It’s a headache, and that stress is a primary reason why I dropped my holy spec in favor of a PvP one. I’ve never tanked, and I don’t intend to. Tanking, in my experience, requires some degree of instance knowledge and experience to manage pulls – something I’m usually unable to bring to a group.

Unfortunately, I’m a bad example. I usually describe myself as a hammer; a simple, blunt tool for breaking things. Point me at a target, tell me when and how hard to hit it, and I’ll do my job. That is my level of DPS skill. I don’t ruin runs, and I’m compliant and amiable, but I give DPS a bad name just with my extremely basic approach. This can lead others to see me as stupid or a newbie when I just have a basic, working strategy for success.

This is a really touchy subject for some people. There are folks who would swear that there are no ‘real’ players who play DPS, and there are others who would claim that all healers and/or tanks are jerks. I think of it this way: we’re all DPS at heart. DPS is like any other role; you have to work at it. If you’re healing, it’s to keep those who put effort into maxing out their DPS alive so they can kill your enemies. If you’re tanking, you’re also doing it to keep the dedicated DPS out of harms way so they can clear the way to success. I saw a few slandering quotes on the original topic that spawned this post. One that struck me was ‘tanking is a job, healing is a passion, dps is a game.’ I see it more like what it was probably intended as – a concentrated war effort. You need the heavy tanks to clear the way for the soldiers, you need the soldiers to kill the enemies, and you need the technical staff to keep both the tanks and soldiers on the front lines. If any part of that harmony falls out of place, the battle can quickly go belly up. So remember, you’re standing by your allies so they’ll stand by you… and if you want to be selfish about it, remember that if they’re not standing by you, you’re dead. Period. Doubt me? Go solo ICC and lemme know how that goes. The rest of us (who can and will play nicely together) will be waiting for you at the top.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated you folks on Gavelier’s status, so here’s a summary.

• My new guild has talked me into getting on Vent with them, but I had no microphone – or so I thought. I managed to jury-rig my Xbox 360 headset through my Xbox 360 Controller for Windows, and whadya know; I’m chatting. The funniest part was listening to a conversation and piping up finally, prompting a girl to ask – in a very quiet voice – “who’s that…?” Everyone said, “It’s Gav, don’t worry.” I’d been on vent earlier in the day when we went soul searching.
• By ‘soul searching,’ I mean that we went into (non-heroic) Forge of Souls, the new 5-man instance. It was an incredibly smooth run, aided by our kick-ass DPS and the voice chat. What a difference that makes! Anyway, I came out of there with the Plated Grips of Korth’azz for my trouble, and the bosses were pushovers. One more note; with out group we fielded in there, we goofed and pulled a few more baddies then we should have at times, but we never died. Go team!
• Unfortunately, that adventure in the Forge of Souls came after we got our asses kicked in Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom. We barely made it to the first boss (wiping twice on the way), and he killed us easily three times before we called it off.
• We also ran The Oculus tonight for our (mostly ‘my’, guess) random heroic of the day as well, and completed it, netting me two Emblems of Frost. Yay! We wiped on the final boss three times before we lost one of our random members. We replaced him with a guildie and beat the ever-loving tar out of Ley-Guardian Eregos. Well, my guildies did. Like my last trip in there with my old guild, I died before the boss was dropped. Oh well.

Well, that’s about all Gav’s been up to. I lastly wanted to point out that about a month or so ago I netted the ‘Crusader’ title, so I am now Crusader Gavelier. Nice ring, ne?

Tonight was my first random dungeon run, and it was with an all-guild group. We landed in Utgarde Pinnacle, and it was an experience. We didn’t do bad through the first part, but the first ‘gimicky’ boss was a trick. Skadi the Ruthless was tough, and I almost died twice; once via the ice his dragon spat on the walkway and once from his whirlwind attack. But hey, we kicked his ass. Onwards to the next and final boss, King Ymiron. He was a pushover of epic proportions. He ran through his four ‘boat’ abilities in no time and then died at our feet. Hence, we cleared the dungeon. No big deal. I didn’t do too bad, but I did almost get myself killed while walking to the group and accidentally aggroing a series of baddies. Not the best long-life plan, I know.

The scene: a paladin enters the monster’s lair with his allies, set on her destruction. The monster, however, is aware of his approach and engages him in conversation before the battle.

• Cyanigosa: “You again. Returning to the site of your greatest victories? What more have I that you want?”
• Gavelier: “Your head, fiend. I’m here to put an end to you once and for all!”
• Cy: “That’s a fool’s errand, boy. You and your allies are doomed here, and my guards will see to it that you will never even get to me!”
• Gav: “That’s the only way you could survive, beast; hiding behind your minions. You always were a coward.”
• Cy: “I still remember the cold pain of your blade from the last time you were here, oh so many months ago. Where have you been, young champion?”
• Gav: “Err… off. Off on great adventures. Conquering other mighty beasts. Yeah. In… other games.”
• Cy: “What?! You would forsake your life and duty here to ‘play’ in other lands? Ha! I doubt you could even get off a Divine Storm before I slay you!”
• Gav: (mumbling) “I’m not here as ret, actually. I’m healing. See? Blue armor? Small sword? Glowing shoulder-thingies? I’m the healer.”
• Cy: *guffawing* “You’re screwed. Don’t make too big a mess wiping, and close the door on your way out.”

Cyanigosa was right: I was screwed. My group (consisting of one guildie and a handful of his friends) died three times on Ichoron, twice with a Death Knight who was doing under 650 DPS and once with a good boomkin Druid doing around 2k DPS. Once we cleared that hurdle, we died on Erekem before calling it quits. I never even saw that accursed dragon. The bad part was, with patch 3.3 dropping today, that was my last chance to do and turn in the Heroic Violet Hold daily, and I failed. I did net Dehydration the time we dropped Ichoron, though.