Category: lfg

Huntard Sighting

Kurn / / facepalm, hunters, lfg, ramblings

I ran my daily random heroic on my shammy today and was greeted with Old Kingdom. They’d already done the first two bosses (although I don’t believe the dungeon finder told me it was already in progress) and were going down to the fungus boss, with Jedoga and the last guy both still up.

Honestly, every time I see a huntard, a tiny part of me dies.

We got to Jedoga after the fungus guy. To refresh your memories, Jedoga Shadowseeker is the one who summons volunteers to make their way towards her and we have to kill them, lest she get a buff from them that can, in many circumstances, kill a tank. So I remind them, as the healer, to not stand in Thundershock and to kill the volunteers when they become active.

We have no problems downing the volunteers and the boss, so we go on and finish up the instance.

But then, out of curiousity, I checked my recount’s damage and facepalmed. Here’s the damage from the Jedoga fight.

Top DK was DPS. The pally was DPS. The second DK was the tank. And right there, above me (thankfully) is the huntard.

Just low DPS isn’t my problem. Nope. I don’t care about low DPS. We killed the boss with no issue. My problem is this:

So hang on a second here. He did 3013 damage to THE THREE VOLUNTEERS? His PET did more damage to volunteers than he did? As if that wasn’t bad enough… he used Volley. I’m sorry. VOLLEY. On a single-target fight? VOLLEY?

Here’s his breakdown. On the whole fight. 11 autos, 4 hits of Volley (so one cast, it looks like), 3 steady shots and FIVE, count ’em, FIVE concussive shots. Conc shot is on a 12 second cooldown. So… I’m sorry, did he nail all three of the volunteers with it (I’m not sure that even works, to be honest) and then hit the boss with it? Twice? Even though bosses are immune? What the hell was he doing, just standing there?

It makes me want to cry.

Problems with all this:

1) Not enough focus damage to volunteers. Although we can give him the benefit of the doubt and maybe, MAYBE Concussive Shot works on them and MAYBE he was focused on slowing them down. But that’s your first global. Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Hit Arcane Shot, Multishot. ANYTHING to up the damage on the volunteer. DROP A TRAP, for crying out loud! (He’s BM, so he has no Chimera Shot, no Explosive Shot and also isn’t specced for Aimed Shot.)

2) Don’t use Volley for single-targets. Had it not been his SECOND kill of Jedoga, according to his armory, I wouldn’t fault him for using Volley once. But of all the abilities to use on this fight, Volley is the stupidest one. In the first place, there is no point in the fight where you fight more than one mob. Period. In the second place, if you’re using it on a volunteer, yay, EXCEPT the volunteer moves OUT of your Volley circle.

3) Even BM hunters have a shot rotation. According to the Warcraft Hunter’s Union (written by Frostheim, who now does Scattered Shots at wow.com), it is this:

  1. Put Hunter’s Mark on target (usually before combat begins, or as part of a macro)
  2. Send pet in to attack
  3. Put up Serpent Sting (reapply to boss when it goes down)
  4. Arcane Shot
  5. Hit Steady Shot or Multi-Shot/Aimed Shot until Arcane is off cooldown

Didn’t notice HM either way, but he did use his pet. But there’s no Serpent Sting damage, there’s no Arcane Shot use, there’s just auto, steady, conc and volley. Don’t even look at his armory. It’s even more painful than his poor play. IT HURTS, PEOPLE. IT HURTS. :(

Granted, he just dinged 80 on January 12th, according to the armory. So, okay, yeah, he’s still learning. But WHY is it so difficult for people to do even the slightest amount of research on HOW TO DO SOMETHING before they wind up in my groups? In your groups? In anyone’s groups? (I also had a fail bear tank in my UK run today on my hunter and a fail pally tank in my DTK run on my mage today. Sigh.) Take an hour. Read up on your talent spec, your glyphs (huntard is missing a major glyph), your gems, your enchants, your gear and YOUR CLASS ABILITIES and how to effectively merge them all together to become one kick-ass killing/tanking/healing machine.

Please.

The Decline of Random Group Quality

Kurn / / dungeons, facepalm, general, lfg, ramblings

I’m getting increasingly worried by what I perceive to be a trend. That trend is the lack of quality in random groups.

I pug a lot. I have the pet pug on all four of my 80s. When the new 5-mans came out, I pugged them constantly. I’m now down to pugging four times a day on my 80s (plus the weekly raid, but that’s a whole other story), once on each of the four for two Emblems of Frost each.

Increasingly, people suck.

In the last 24 hours, I have four stories of failure. Not necessarily to mean that the group didn’t finish the instance, but failure nonetheless.

Continue reading “The Decline of Random Group Quality”

Whew.

Kurn / / facepalm, lfg, raiding, ramblings, weekly raids

All my 80s have done the weekly raid quest, which was for XT in Ulduar this week. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to get a group, particularly on my mage, because I had no achievements for her in Ulduar. She didn’t even have the flight point. ><

But I got the pally and hunter done early this week (on Tuesday?) and then got the mage and shaman tonight.

I was on the mage and in a siege engine as the passenger (my preferred vehicle spot in the awful fail that is Flame Leviathan) and my driver took a detour to Hodir’s tower and basically wailed on it until it died.

The raid leader was saying stuff like “who started the event? Do we need to down towers?”

No response from anyone. But I had a bad feeling about it. Brann had kept pointing out each tower and its abilities as we passed them by. Was this normal or was this hard mode?

Well, we engage FL and, wouldn’t you know it, Orbital Countermeasures are online.

Some jackass, most likely the idiot huntard I was in the siege engine with, had started the event on hard mode by talking to the mage instead of Brann.

“lol you guys didnt destroy the towers?” my huntard asks.

“If some idiot hadn’t started hard mode, we wouldn’t have needed to,” the raid leader responded. Or something along those lines.

So we wipe, obviously, then go back and destroy the three remaining towers, then kill FL and then XT. I was just glad to have gotten in on my mage. And I didn’t suck, either!

The grind for Emblems of Frost continues! I’ve missed one random daily on the mage, 3 dailies on the paladin and one week of 10-man ICC on the paladin. Eh. That’s a lot of Emblems lost when I think about it like that. But I honestly don’t know how much longer I can keep doing 4 randoms a day and ICC both 25 and 10 every week on my paladin. Blah. At least I have my 2-piece set bonus on the pally and she’s wearing her new boots that I was able to craft for her on Kurn, without spending any of her own emblems.

Dear DPS…

Kurn / / druids, dungeons, facepalm, lfg, ramblings, tanks

Dear DPS,

I know we’re in levelling content and that you’re anxious to get your bonus XP from the random dungeon and move on to another one. I get that.

I further recognize that, as it’s levelling content, people’s gear basically sucks and so DPS can be low.

But these two facts do not combine well. If you want to get out of the dungeon faster, please do not pull. Let your tank pull. Please do not CC mobs when your tank is trying to move them or execute a line of sight pull. Please do not stun mobs randomly for extra DPS (ret pallies, I’m talking to YOU about Holy Wrath) because it’s really freaking annoying. (Similarly, anyone with a knockback, if you use it, I will kill you.)

The fact that I have to go around chasing things that didn’t follow me because you CCed it or stunned it does not make for a faster run. The fact that I have to blow Challenging Roar because you ran into a group of mobs and dropped Consecrate ALSO does not make for a faster run.

To continue, Mana Spring Totem is secondary in terms of priorities when your healer is a priest and your ret pally doesn’t know where his Cleanse button is. Drop Cleansing Totem, please, shammies. Pallies, LEARN TO CLEANSE. Every paladin who doesn’t cleanse magic, disease or poisons when their healer is unable to cleanse one of those and there’s no totem, is IMHO, a FAIL. And you make me embarassed to raid as a paladin.

But perhaps you’re just unaware as to who can cleanse what. SO LET’S CLEAR THAT UP, SHALL WE?

1) Paladins can dispell: Diseases, Magic Effects and Poisons with one button – CLEANSE.

2) Druids can dispell: Curses and Poisons with three buttons – Remove Poison, Abolish Poison, Remove Curse.

3) Priests can dispell: Magic Effects (both offensively and defensively) and Diseases with three buttons – Dispell Magic, Mass Dispell and Abolish Disease.

4) Shaman can dispell: Curses, Poisons and Diseases (and can purge Magic offensively using Purge) with 1 button – Cleanse Spirit. Plus the Cleansing Totem removes Poisons and Diseases on a pulse. (Note that all shaman have Cleansing Totem and all shaman can remove poisons and diseases, but only resto shammies can remove curses.)

Do the math. If I’m a paladin tank with a priest healer and 3 non-cleansing DPS classes and I get poisoned, I WILL CLEANSE MYSELF. Get Decursive. Learn to cleanse when needed, people.

Please do not boast to me about your DPS numbers. I do not care. As long as the boss dies or the mobs die, and I can get the hell out of your group, that’s all that matters.

Having said that, the next time I have to tank Jedoga Shadowseeker and my DPS fails to kill the volunteer not once but TWICE, thereby buffing her damage 200%, I will be very, very cranky. Let’s just say I’m happy that I have Barkskin.

First volunteer: Barkskin, Survival Instincts.

Second volunteer: Enrage, Frenzied Regeneration, Lifeblood (go go herbalism) and Barkskin when it came back up.

And to the ridiculously mouthy, braggy ret paladin from my Old Kingdom group, who, it must be said, buffed us with Greater Blessing of Kings… I am SO glad I put your dumb self on ignore. If you want to tank, GO AHEAD AND FREAKING TANK. Do NOT just attack at will. Also, Divine Storm at the START of your rotation, before some of the mobs have even become aware that I, the tank, exist? BAD CALL, BUDDY. Finally, learn to use Every Man For Himself and your bubble to get out of fears before you pull another Faceless One, kk?

No love,

Your Tank

This post brought to you in part by frustration, annoyance and by the fact that I just tanked Old Kingdom on my druid for the very first time.

PUGs, Azjol-Nerub and Free Loot

Kurn / / facepalm, lfg, ramblings

I had what was possibly the strangest PUG experience I’ve had to date when I was on my hunter today. I queued up for the random and went mining in Icecrown as I waited.

So finally, after about 13 minutes, up comes my random, which is already in progress. No big, I figure, at least it’ll be a faster two Emblems of Frost than normal, right?

I port in and the first thing I see is the party leader saying “OH NOES WE LOST 1100 DPS” and someone else saying “QQ”.

Whatever, I figure they wiped on the second boss or something.

So I hit Aspect of the Cheetah and run on down.

Problem 1: There’s Hadronox trash.

So I’m like “Dudes, there’s trash here at the second boss.”

“QQ”

… okay, so do they– wait a minute. The ground is shuddering. In fact, I recognize that animation. That’s Anub’arak’s spike animation. Not only have these guys not waited for me and pulled the last boss, but I’m subjected to his mechanics and there’s TRASH between me and the group.

What the flipping hell is going on here?

My group informs me I should stay above for my free badges. Not being entirely convinced, by a group of people who appear to have deliberately bugged the second boss, that I WILL receive badges, etc, if I don’t participate in the fight, I consider my options.

After about 10 seconds or so, I pop an Invisibility Potion that I still had on me and run past the trash, jump down the hole and am at least put into combat by being on the staircase leading down to Anub’arak’s area. And there are still spikes trying to impale me. :P

The fight ends, I get 1 Emblem of Triumph, 2 Emblems of Frost and the gold I normally do. I, like all the others, hit greed on the Orb and disenchant on the epic and the blue.

15 seconds later, I am the proud new owner of a Frozen Orb, an Abyss Crystal and a Dream Shard.

I put the “QQ” person on ignore, as well as the group leader. I honestly don’t ever want to run into these people ever again.

But I will admit, that was a hilariously small amount of effort for my daily random.

Random Dungeon Tank Failure

Kurn / / facepalm, lfg, tanks

I had two bad tanking experiences today while running my typical four random dungeons on my four 80s. And no, one of them was not while I was tanking, thank you very much. ;)

The first one was while I was on my hunter. Apart from the appallingly open racist comments from the group at large (three were from one guild and all of them were being racist and otherwise emitting perjoratives), the tank couldn’t hold aggro worth a damn. I mean, I really wonder if the dude was in Defensive Stance. Every class apart from warriors allows you to plainly see if the tank in question has their threat ability on — Frost Presence, Righteous Fury, bear form — but not warriors. Anyways, even after misdirecting mobs to him AND assisting him for DPS targets, I still ended up climbing the aggro list extremely quickly.

Of course, we blew through heroic UK without any real issues, so that’s not a huge failure. Clearly a mediocre tank, though, and I put him and his guildies on ignore so I wouldn’t get stuck with them on this toon again.

Moral of the story: l2threat.

The second tank failure was actually a very good tank, in that he used cooldowns and held aggro. Except that he was a total failure at keeping an eye out for me, his healer (on my shammy). He was basically running off through heroic Forge of Souls without me, not paying attention to either my mana pool (which only dipped low once, but not even a PAUSE before running into the first boss encounter). At one point, I stopped to drink and he ran off and some mob has AOE damage so one of the rogues died before I got there. So I healed, the mobs died, I tried to rez the rogue.

Tank runs off into a room and it takes me forever to get there and I blow my cooldowns. “You realize I was out of range because I was rezzing the rogue, right?”

Rogue who died: “I ran back it’s okay.”

Tank: “y did the rogue die in 1st place?”

Me: “Because you ran off without waiting for me to drink.”

No response, obviously.

Then on the first boss, they didn’t kill the corrupt soul thingy. Which, okay, no big deal. They all needed on the bag he dropped, so I did, too, although I typically greed on that stuff.

Thus far, just another dumbass tank who doesn’t care about anything, right? Nothing to worry about too much if I keep up with him. Well, on the last boss, when they practically killed the tank through the mirror effect thing, I got concerned. I was already hating the tank and the group, but clearly, they didn’t understand the mechanics of this fight if the tank was almost killed by the mirror.

The rogue who’d already died on trash died on the last boss because of the mirror, a little later on.

And so did I, when I got the mirror afterwards.

I think my PRECISE words were:

“Wow, l2 stop dps.”

Not another word after that. I didn’t pop my reincarnation until after the boss died, then started rezzing the rogue.

Whereas I would normally greed on the Frozen Orb, I needed, after they all did. And I hit disenchant for something (and won the shard). And lo and behold, the Needle-Encrusted Scorpion dropped. One of the rogues had it already and automatically passed, but the three others, INCLUDING THE PALADIN TANK, hit Need.

“Well, screw that,” I said to myself, and hit Need. I have an enhancement set and spec and this entire group, all belonging to the same guild, had made the run extremely unpleasant for me.

So when I won it, I grinned to myself and left the group. Turns out I also got the orb, meaning I won everything off that boss. Why can’t my paladin have my shammy’s rolls?

Anyways, I promptly scrolled up in my chat log and put the idiot tank on ignore so as to never group with him again.

Moral of the story: Tanks should keep an eye on their healer’s mana AND their physical proximity to them.

I honestly wonder what the hell I posted about before the random dungeon/LFG feature came out…