I spent my weekend not doing much in terms of Beta and doing very little in terms of reforming my guild.
I think I logged on to Beta twice. The first time, I got into a Stonecore (regular) run wherein the first boss absolutely ruined us. Well, no, the trash ruined us and THEN the first boss ruined us. Five deaths and I was done. Either I was doing something horribly wrong or the group’s DPS wasn’t capable of downing the boss. Even using Mr. Grumpy Man (my guardian), Holy Radiance, Light of Dawn, keeping beacon up, keeping Judgements of the Pure up, none of it did anything. Yes, I used Lay on Hands, I made great use of WoG and Holy Shock and even sp0t-healed with Flash of Light and made use of Divine Light. And we all still died. I don’t get it. Every time I lose a person, I feel like that was my bad, although it probably wasn’t. I’ve done the Stonecore before. That boss was more annoying, not HARD. Now I’d have to say that, with the group I was with (82-84, then me at 85), that boss was hard. The group broke up. And I didn’t get a chance to heal the other time I was on beta, so… that was beta for you. (Yes, I have 13066 post coming.)
In terms of guild stuff, I was more productive. I snagged us a healing priest who’s relatively new to the game, but is very experienced in Wrath and seems like just the kind of player we’re looking for. The transfer will, I’m sure, be closer to Cataclysm, but it’s nice to know I have a commitment from at least one person to be a healing priest. That gives us, uh, one priest! ;)
On Friday, my brother pestered me to go to ICC10. And basically to lead it. Because he doesn’t know the instance well enough.
So I did. On my hunter.
We started out with 10 guildies, then lost one who wasn’t feeling well after Marrowgar, replacing her with a holy paladin. (Oh God, oh God, so much fail!) We also lost a guildie after Marrowgar due to GF aggro and pulled in someone who was in LFR who actually turned out to be the GM of another guild, a guild some of my old peeps had spent time in during Wrath. Hah. I really need to research the politics of Eldre’Thalas before I do that again.
We did 7 bosses (clearing Plague) without issue. All were one-shots. Everyone got at least one upgrade, which was sweet. The failadin even got Lockjaw. At least they were smart enough to know Lockjaw is good!
It was pretty awesome to one-shot Putricide. I actually got disconnected at the start of P3, but it worked out okay anyways and we got him down. Once again, the key is to have a clean transition to P3 with no adds up. My calls to stop DPS, burn the add and then burn the boss were basically right-on (I probably could have stopped DPS on the boss a little bit later, but anyways) and we trigged the tear gas just before the Gas Cloud would have dropped. Beauty.
We couldn’t do Blood Prince Council, though. Why is this?
The first two attempts were due to my brother dying to Empowered Shadow Lance (he was the Keleseth tank and had been last week, too). It just looks like the Dark Nuclei kept falling off him.
The third attempt, the bear who was tanking Valanar and Taldaram just up and died. Why? Well, it appears that the failadin wasn’t listening to my instructions.
There is one thing that pisses me off beyond all measure when I’m leading a raid or when I’m healing lead. That is people not listening to my instructions. If I tell you to beacon the paladin tank and heal the druid, that is what I expect you to do. I do not want you to beacon the druid and heal the paladin. I do not want you to beacon yourself and heal the raid. I want you to beacon the flippin’ paladin and heal the druid.
The failadin in question beaconed the druid and healed the paladin tank (and themselves). They let beacon fall off. They barely touched the druid for the remainder of the fight, it appears. Their most-used spell was Flash of Light. They did not judge a single time. This is also the paladin who didn’t have pally power AND DID NOT BUFF. I mean, we had to plead with them to buff kings. PLEAD. I basically just said “fuck it” and hit my drums now and again. It’s a team activity. Be an active member of the team or GTFO of my raid.
So we called it after 4 wipes on Blood Prince Council. We tried having the warlock (hi, X!) be the Keleseth tank on the last try, and Empowered Shadow Lance got him since 3 of his 5 Nuclei had fallen off or died.
… okay, I just looked more in-depth at the logs.
The holy paladin pug did not judge even ONCE. NOT ONCE in all my log data. That’s Deathwhisper, Saurfang, Festergut, Rotface, Putricide and 4 attempts at Council.
They used Sacred Shield… twice.
THIS is what is wrong with the players of today. I don’t care if there’s a 30% buff. I don’t care if it’s 10-man normal. If you’re not doing the very basics your class allows you to do (proper buffs, from kings on people in your raid to keeping JotP up and Sacred Shield)… then you have no business being in a raid instance. None whatsoever.
ANYWAYS.
I also did Blackwing Lair a couple of times this weekend. Our very own Football is going for Thunderfury. He has both bindings and we’re now farming him up Elementium Ore, which his pally, my shaman and my brother’s hunter can now all smelt. We cleared the room with the technicians twice and the second time we went all through the instance. Can I just say three things about Blackwing Lair?
1) No way, no how, no chance in hell could Fated Heroes have done Razorgore. Ever. Even if we could have, there is absolutely no way we could have gotten Vael. EVER EVER EVER.
2) The Suppression Room sucks beyond anything else I could have possibly imagined in this game and I cannot express how happy I am that I never had to herd 40 people through that craptastic place.
3) Nefarian is quite large. And I forgot to bring a second bow. Melee huntard ftw!
Having done that, I did manage to turn in my Broodlord’s head quest to the Cenarian Circle over in Silithus. Once Football was like “I need to do BWL” I was like “THERE IS A BWL QUEST. I MUST GRAB IT!” So I did. And I turned it in. And now I can rep grind with the Brood of Nozdormu.
Percent chance of me actually repping up with the Brood: 0.17%.
Honestly, I really do miss the epic quests and epic feel of classic World of Warcraft and getting the Agent of Nozdormu is a part of those huge quest chains. Did you know that in order to get the gates of Ahn’Qiraj open, you had to do a STUPIDLY long quest chain? I knew it was a really long chain, but had no idea how involved it was until a couple of years ago, well after BC had launched. The chain included grinding to exalted with the Brood of Nozdormu — without AQ actually being open. The next time you see your friendly, neighbourhood Scarab Lord, congratulate them on the grind. I still can’t even fathom how long that quest chain was, and I’ve helped a friend of mine on parts of it.
Percent chance of me seriously considering trying to do the Scepter quest chain: 43.2%.
Percent chance of me actually trying to do the Scepter quest chain: 0.17%. (see: grinding rep with Brood)
Percent chance of me considering farming some Silithid Carapace Fragments for money: 62.8%.
Percent chance of me actually farming some Silithid Carapace Fragments for money: 7.3333%.
Anyways. That’s just me being silly. I have too much stuff to do in-game ALREADY. There’s still a retrospective screenshot project I want to do, some old dungeon runs I want to record and narrate, not to mention a requiem for Zul’Gurub. Plus I should probably do another Holy How-To at some point, and then there’s beta stuff.
And on that note, I have a lot to do today, so I leave you all with an admittedly random, yet handy-dandy, “Which Edge of Madness Boss Is It?” calendar:
Hey, I’d join you if you weren’t, ya know, Alliance. :P
I was down to two nuclei? Huh. Was I grabbing them with Corruption or Searing Pain? Either way, I realized that I should have down-ranked whatever I was using, so they wouldn’t die. I’ll do better next time. ;)
*looks at Scepter of the Shifting Sands in bank*
*is smug*
Sweeeet. I feel special now. I’m famous on the internet!
Oestrus – But… but… I will shower you in compliments? ;D
xmolder – Yar, the parse is up on the forums, so you can see what happened. :)
Mattias – hat’s off to you! Well-done. :)
Numinous – haha, NOW you are, since you just gave away your name. ;) Ladies and gents, my sole healing priest thus far! ;)
I have to admit Blizzard expects a new Player (Your Failadin) to know macros from the get go. I was a healer for a months before I used a addon and tried macros with little success. The problem as I see it is Blizzard offers so little help to the player for addons and macros as to be worthless.
It would be like a computer OS company not telling you 75% of your OS is not on the Disc you bought, it is all online and you have to search for it. Or guess where the company put it.
Very unfriendly for a new player, I have trained so many people as a guild master I just quit in disgust.
I am a REPWHORE I grind rep like I am making wine or beer to drink. The Brood rep is only equaled by Steamwheedle cartel for instanity.
I hope to soon see your review of 13066 on Holy Pally.
Shower me in Starbursts and gummy worms and you have yourself a deal! I would probably go for a Worgen priest or a Dwarf priest, as I have stated before that I think it’s mighty cute how the pigtails whirl around like helicopter blades when the females cast. Love it!
:)
I’m definitely one of the more easy going and permissive RL’s you’ll run into, but I would have dropped that paladin so fast he’d have left a dent in the floor. Never mind the log performance. His armory shows Spirit and Spell Pen gems. Either that or he has a second set of PvP gear so horribly configured that I’d bet he has Spirit gemmed in his PvE gear too.
I applaud Blizzard spending more time updating in-game information, but any paladin gemming in this fashion is suffering from horrible reading and logic skills, is overly trusting of a ‘friend’, or would be shocked to discover their web browser has a search field in the toolbar. This has nothing to do with macros or addons. Basic knowledge fails this character and earns the boot as soon as his existence in my raid is discovered.
Richard – Alas, I don’t think it’s a lack of macros and addons that got him, although he clearly had no pally power or clcbpt or BOLT or anything of the kind. I think the major issue was that he clearly had no idea why these things were important.
Why is it important to judge, not even counting the judgement debuffs on the mobs? Haste. Why is haste important? Throughput. Why is throughput important? Tanks can die within a single GCD.
Why is it important to keep Beacon of Light up? So you can heal more than one target. Why heal more than one target? To allow other healers to be used in other ways, like focusing on the raid or another tank. Why is it important to allow other healers to be used in other ways? Allocation of resources. Why is the allocation of resources important in a raid? Because that way, everyone has a job to do and the raid leader has usually given out those jobs for specific reasons, allocating their resources wisely according to the raid makeup and the encounter and if people don’t stick to that, you’re probably going to fail.
Why is it important to keep Sacred Shield up? To mitigate some damage and put a hot on the target. Why mitigate some damage and put a hot up? Because tanks can die within a single GCD and every bit of mitigation you have is that much less to heal.
These are the questions a paladin SHOULD ask themselves, or at least understand the answers to.
Does the casual player know about half this stuff? No. That’s why, when I led raids in BC, I was usually long-winded (hah, like that’s a surprise!) and very detailed. “Don’t move when flame wreath is cast because you will blow up the raid!!” as opposed to “don’t move when flame wreath is cast”. Or “get out of death and decay when he casts it because it ticks for a lot of damage and we can’t heal you through it” versus “gtfo of death and decay”.
I like for my raiders to understand WHY they should do what it is I’m telling them to do.
If someone is new, that’s fine — I’m okay with that. But they better be willing to listen. I will happily explain every single combat mechanic I know of in order to help them, but if they don’t listen, I can’t deal with it. :)
As to repping, yeah, Brood rep sounds interminable, hahaha.
13066 later today! I have lunch plans, but should be back in the afternoon.
Oestrus – I love the dwarves. I’m partial to the male dwarves, but that’s just from levelling my brother’s priest from 47-70. My shammy is definitely going male dwarf from female draenei. Although I WILL miss the height of the draenei, I’m going to love the cast animations again and the emotes. :D “BRILLIANT!” :D
So, uh, seriously, if you want in, you got it. I’ll UPS you all the Starbursts and gummy worms you can eat! ;D Email me at kurn [at] apotheosis-now [dot] com if you’re serious. :)
Joe – I deliberately didn’t inspect him or armory him when my brother snagged him. I couldn’t do it. I knew that if I did, I’d throw him out and we’d already gotten him saved and I thought MAYBE, just MAYBE he wouldn’t be total and complete fail. When he said he didn’t have pally power, I knew we were in for a long night. And no, that was what he was wearing on the run and his offspec is ret, so… yeah, that’s his PVE gear.
He was matching socket bonuses, doesn’t understand why spirit is bad and has 454 or some such haste and that’s AFTER getting Lockjaw. I honestly didn’t look at him because I knew he was awful, so I just factored that in to my decisions and hoped my guildies could get through even with him there.
It’s people like THAT who make me write my holy how-tos and why I try to make this site a somewhat valuable resource to holy paladins. NO ONE should be so fail. It’s literally a google search away. Even if my site doesn’t come up on the first page for “how to gem a holy paladin”, there are SO many resources.
Okay. Blood pressure rising. Taking deep breaths.
Better. :D
I do believe that Blizzard should install a link directly into WoW that you click and goes to the Forums or Q & A section of WoW Main sites. I had a buddy I talked into starting WoW and did not like to text so he just played 23 levels as a Night Elf Rouge. One day I went to his place and saw that he had used Shadow-meld as his invisibility for 20 levels and did not know the icon for being invisible and moving was the same as Shadow-meld. He had leveled from 1 to 23 by just being like a warrior.
Like I said the help you get with WoW is pretty small. Support for new players is really bad. I spend several hours explaining how things work.