Brand New Year, Same Old Tricks

If you've been wondering where I have been (and I know you've missed me... it's been over 10 days since I've been around! How did you ever survive?), I was in Florida!

Florida, by the way, is just south of Un'Goro. The raptors are just a bit smaller, but still everywhere. And don't get me started on the size of the pterrodax's!

Anyway... so it's a brand new year. Have you guys made your Resolutions?

I made mine in November, shortly after my birthday. How am I doing with that? Meh. The wagon has fallen off the beaten path, but it's still stubbornly chugging along. Had to fix an axle here, a wheel there, but it's still plugging along.

But enough about the boring real world... how about in WoW?

Just because it's a virtual world doesn't mean you can't make resolutions for it, too.

Want that Traveler's Tundra Mammoth? Is your resolution to farm an hour (or more!) a day for funding?

Drooling over some piece of gear but feel you'll never be able to get into the instance it drops in? Have you decided to work towards bettering your character and your gear in ways you can?

Are you a DPS class that's getting outDPS'd continuously by the tank? Have you looked into what's going wrong? Do you have recount? Do you have appropriate gear for your class? Etc.

Since I'm perfect, I have no Resolutions in WoW.

(I'm kidding.)

We've started to hit Heroics with our Paladins (by 'we', I mean Boon and Kvasira) and ran our first two last night - Heroic Violet Hold and Heroic Culling of Stratholme.

We're going to be venturing into 10-man Naxx this weekend, just for a looksee and to see how many times in one night we can die. Any wagers?

I'm guessing we wipe at least 5 times. On our way to the first boss.

My shaman dinged 78 yesterday and so naturally I made Seraphelia (Boon's Blood/Frost DK) tank CoS at 78 too.

We made it through with only one true wipe. We had people die here and there, and I had to pull out all my tricks to keep my mana up. And at one point, I was tanking when Seraphelia died on a pull. Why did Seraphelia die? Because I thought it would be funny! (No, I'm kidding.)

It was very fun, in my opinion and I think Seraphelia did just swimmingly. The only true wipe was on Mal'Ganis, because no one realized he had a frontal arc AoE and I just couldn't keep everyone alive. (Bad shammy, BAD!)

Seraphelia however, kept giving me the hairy eyeball because we had three 78's in the instance. ("What part of 80 instance do you not understand, K?!")

*giggle*

Oh, it's good to be back.

Gimmicky Bosses and You!

It's a love/hate relationship. We all know the gimmicky bosses, where it seems luck is the major deciding factor on whether you survive or not.

Prince in Karazhan is one such boss. No matter what method you pick of fighting him, the post, the door, moving, the back wall, whatever... there's a component of luck. We've all had that happen, where the infernals just seem to follow your pack of DPS... or your tank.

You can be doing everything EXACTLY right and still wipe multiple times due to sheer random gimmick!

I have encountered another gimmicky boss! The first time for me, though I've done Violet Hold maybe three times?

That's right. I'm talking about Zuramat the Obliterator.

(There he is, right above. Look at the evil glowyness of him. JUST LOOK IN HORROR! (and how I wish Bargrave looked like that!))

For those not in the know, he's a void walker boss that's found in the Violet Hold instance within Dalaran.

He summons little void sentries, who are invisible unless you are the lucky person he gives the void shifted debuff to.

These sentries do a shadowbolt volley every few seconds unless the person who is void shifted kills them.

The boss also does Shroud of Darkness, which can stack on a player up to 5 times, for 20/40/60/80/100% reduction in healing recieved, if you hit him while he has this activated.

We had a poor group for this. We had THREE melee (tank, two DK), one caster (warlock) and one healer (my shaman).

The first time around, he kept void shifting ME. (As the healer, I'm a little busy trying to keep people alive.)

After that, he shifted the warlock a whole bunch of times, the other DK a whole bunch of times, the tank once and never Seraphelia (Boonybaby).

We wiped ... 4 or 5 times on that boss.

The super-frustrating thing? These little void sentries have 500 hit points. Yeah, even I could kill one if I wasn't otherwise occupied trying to not let the tank or the DPS die.

I wasn't the DPS, and I wasn't watching what everyone was doing (busy healing, kthx!) but I would imagine that as long as they were vulnerable to AOE damage, Rain of Fire, Unholy Blight, Shockwave, Thunderclap, Death and Decay... all of that should work to knock out a bunch of them if you're one of the types of 'dps' (I include the tank in that) targetted.

But it's a gimmick. It's as much luck of who gets debuffed as it is skill.

A hunter gets debuffed, easy! Volley, Multi-Shot, hell, even auto-shotting would kill them, they just need to auto-shot, tab, auto-shot, tab, auto-shot, tab...

Finally, the tank calls it and I say, "Let's try to reset the instance, maybe we'll get a different boss?"

And the other DK says, "Yeah, it will."

And I look at him and say, "Why did you not tell us this important pertinent and worthy piece of information before now?"

His answer?

"I thought you wanted to kill this boss." ... which while true, I DO want to kill this boss just so I can jump up and down on his corpse and crow with delight and glee, take screenshots and kick and spit on it a few times... but I'd also be just as happy to never ever have to fight him ever ever again.

Hate gimmicky bosses!

I'm not bad, I'm just specced that way...

(Obviously, I stole the line from Jessica Rabbit...)

Pre-BC, hybrid classes could do just about any of their roles without having to be specially designed. A shadow priest, with appropriate gear, could heal. A retadin could, with a sword and board, tank. And yes, they obviously won't be as good as people who are designed to do those roles, but they can get the job done decently and adequately. Even well, if they're a good player and have appropriate gear. (ie: don't try to bear tank in cloth healing gear)

Once you hit the Burning Crusade and Outlands, it becomes a slightly different story. You start getting to where you're expected to be the spec that you are impersonating. Can you still switch-hit? Yes, sure. And probably still do a good job. But you start to get to where you need to have the special abilities and spells that deep in particular trees may give you.

Hybrid Class roles that overlap:

There are a few hybrid class roles that can overlap (with the caveat that the secondary role is not as good as someone whose primary role it is) and they can overlap well with good players.

Boon, the healadin, can become a tankadin. His paladin is specced such that with a simple change of gear, and being the awesome player that he is, he can main tank the 70 instances (regular). He's even OT'd in Karazhan leading up to Curator when we had one of our tanks step out to allow more DPS in on the Curator fight. He can hold aggro well, provided that the DPS classes understand that he is not a tankadin and thus does not have Avenger's Shield and some of the nifty abilities that help them generate threat. He has to build threat slightly different, but he does it well.

However, he doesn't delude himself into thinking he can main tank a heroic, or main tank Karazhan, or even OT Karazhan for more than a single pull here or there. And when people say 'Hey, we need a tank, Boon, come tank for us!'... if it's a heroic, he says "Are you nuts?"

Feral Druids can be either melee DPS or tanks. This involves mainly a gear change, and maybe 3 points swapped about, but with little other need for changing their talents around, they can do both respectably.

I'm sure there are others -- Chickens masquerading as Deleafed Trees, Lightning Casting space goats pretending to be Healing Wave surfers. The question is... can they pull it off? Not merely the spec that they don't have, but the gear, the ability, the understanding?

I think they can, if they have the ability to understand what they lack and how to make up for what they lack. No Earth Shield? How do you get around that? No Swiftmend? How do you get around that?

And most importantly, if you're playing 'offspec', let the other members in the group know it. Don't surprise them one pull from the final boss, after an instance rife with 'damn, I died again.' moments, say 'I'm specced elemental.' (which I suppose is at least better than 'I'm specced enhancement.')

Impressions given but not intended...

I have an issue with things. Shocking, I know. My issue today is something that happened last night. I HATE being made to feel bad. I hate being made to feel bad by making someone else feel bad. Hate hate hate.

So. Who did I make to feel bad? Why do I feel bad for making them feel bad?

A friend wanted to do heroic Underbog. I say, sure. I need badges. I like heroic UB. It's fun. She needs one more DPS and a tank. I sign up for the DPS. Now the tank.

Another friend offers to tank it. He's a new 70 druid. He only just hit honored with CE. He's only tanked 3 or 4 other instances. I wasn't in charge of the group or I'd have said no... Unfortunately, the person in charge and the other people wanted to do a guild run.

We didn't even get up the ramp before Hungarfen before we called it. Someone died on every. single. pull. Usually the healer. Usually me and the other main DPS too.

Underbog gets a bad reputation and people think it's an easy heroic because UB is a low level instance. And it's short. And it's sweet. And with few exceptions, you don't have big massive pulls -- a four pull is the most you have to handle at once.

And people think they can tank it without any problems with gear that they could tank regular Slabs or SH with. You can't. The giants hit like trucks. If you're shy on CC, you have multiple car-hitting mobs on the tank or healer or wherever the hell they decide they want to be. Even with appropriate CC -- hunter, mage, warlock (my preferred grouping for CC in UB) -- there are pulls where you can't CC and you have to tank multiple truck-sized monsters. A newly keyed, newly 70 tank probably can't handle it.

Some of it was technique. He's a new tank. Some of it was over-geared-DPS in the form of an elemental shaman and myself. We unfortunately didn't take into account his newtankness and acted like he was an established firm tank and didn't let him establish good aggro before we started dotting and casting. Some of it was healer aggro. The tank gear wasn't the best, so he took a lot of damage, so the healer had to heal lots, so the healer got aggro, and the tank didn't have a good hold on aggro, and.. you probably see where this was going. So did we.

Now, I have a druid tank. Granted, she isn't the best druid tank out there, but I've tanked many times with her. I've tanked the HH, the CE, the TK... you initial it, I've tanked in it. (I don't think I've done Shattered Halls or one of the TK's, but I don't recall what ones.) So I was trying to give him tips on aggro, how to up his aggro, how to lower healer aggro, how to hold initial aggro on multiple mobs when the healer is getting lots of initial aggro.

Unfortunately, I think that made him feel bad. :( I didn't mean to have him feel bad.

I have a feeling. I think a lot of people think I'm a snob or mean when I give them /tells with suggestions. I'm not being an elitist. I'm honestly trying to help solve a problem that I see. And I try to do it without shouting it in ventrilo or party chat. I'd hope someone would do that for me if they see me doing something wrong. But I fear it gives the impression that I'm an elitist. It's an impression that is no doubt strengthened by the fact that I took my warlock out of my old guild to raid, even though my old guild is trying to become a raiding guild. This had little to do with a vast majority of the people in the guild and more to do with a few very particular not going to go away issues I had with the way the raids were run and organized.

But I think people think I'm ... an elitist. A mean bitchy snob.

I know I give that impression. I'm a good warlock. I'm a good player. I have alts in every walk of life so I can usually toss my three cents in on any situation that is going on. And it gives that impression.

I'm sure after I left the group (after it was called, and I had to go to bed) that those particular people were talking about how evil I was. :( Well, I'm not SURE, but my paranoid side (what warlock doesn't have a paranoid side? It's the left and right sides of our personalities) insists that they were just waiting for me to leave before they started to talk about me. :(

Things like this make me not want to party with my old guild. Not because of them, but because of me. I'd rather party with a PUG because if I make that tank feel bad by well intentioned advice, or any other person in that group, I don't feel bad if they feel bad!

Right now, I feel terrible. Like I kicked a puppy.

How to Kick Ass and Take Names (in pre-BC instances)

So recently my husband asked me to run his shaman through Maraudon. I said sure thing, no problem.

And then he said 'Can you do it by yourself?'.

I nearly wanted to weep. Can I do it by myself? CAN I DO IT BY MYSELF? What does he take me for, a warrior or priest or mage or some such like that?

My secret is siphon life. And seed of corruption. Especially in combination. Toss out a SoC (or two, two is good, three is better, after that, you're usually being hit too much to cast a timed spell, so now switch to instant casts!) and then siphon life + corruption, tab siphon life + corruption, etc. By that time, the SoC has likely gone off, setting off the other SoC, and you've done a gazillion points of damage and everything is dead (oversimplification, but not by much).

For instance... They do 100-200 damage to you with every hit. Siphon life heals for 400+ damage every three seconds. So, in three seconds, from five mobs, you take, maybe 600-800, maybe even 1k damage.

In three seconds, from five mobs, your siphon life heals for maybe 2k. (I'll have to go into an instance and actually count this number out. I'm curious now about exact numbers.) Depending on the instance and your particular spell damage and spell healing bonuses, you may gain or slowly lose life through the course of the fight.

This is why Shadow Embrace (set bonus from Frozen Shadowweave set) is nice to have -- 2% of the damage you deal is returned to you. So, not only does your siphon life heal you, but while it's damaging and healing, it does more healing! It's a beautiful thing. And the burst damage/healing from SoC is also a nice thing to see go scrolling through your screen.

Now, to be honest, I haven't solo'd an instance above Sunken Temple (and my 'solo' did include a group of high 40's/one 50, but I could have solo'd it without an issue). I have trio'd Scholo though. And I'm wanting to try an experiment and toss a SoC on a few mobs and then on Mograine before clearing the cathedral and see if I can do it! I know a holy paladin (Boon) who can clear the entire cathedral without dying, all at the same time.

My most favorite instance of all time? VC -- You don't stop. You just siphon life + corruption EVERYTHING (non-elites, just siphon life, that's all it takes), life tap, keep going, and just life tap whenever your life starts to get full. And let someone else pick up the loot. You literally, quite literally, do not need to stop going. It's a rush. :)

Some other fun ones -- the temple scene in Zul'Farrak -- again, siphon life, life tap. I haven't been in there recently, so I'm sure SoC would be fun to try. And those beetles! And Antu'sul. Mmm.. crispy basilisk. Nummy.

The Scarlet dudes that come running in after Herod dies. One SoC and BAM. It's fun. They die all in the same motion. It's like synchronized swimming... only with death.

The statue sequence in BFD -- all at once!

The whelps in ST -- toss a SoC on a whelp and on an elite, dot the elite, dot the other elite, watch two SoC's go off and all the whelps die. It's beautiful. Except that it's dragons dying, which is sad. :(

Oh, and pissing off a skinner by running around, dotting everything, keep going using my patented siphon life / life tap method, and not looting, so he has to loot everything AND skin and eventually say "I HAVE NO MORE BAG SPACE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP KILLING AND LOOT SOMETHING!" -- which isn't really an instance, but was fun anyway. :)