WoW Rest Stop

One thing I hate about WoW is when you are off your game. It's really silly because the game really is all about pushing the same 5-10 buttons in some sort of sequence over and over. You'd think with practice that after a while your performance would be consistent. On my hunter for example there are some days I crushing the charts with 5k dps and others I struggle to hit 4k. It has been a problem in the past and I'm not really sure why it occurs. The reason is probably similar to why a pro athletes have streaks. I know that in the past when playing golf or shooting hoops I get into a zone where my mind tells me ... "I can't miss" and my play is markedly better. The power of positive thinking is a huge advantage when playing any activity. The issue is reverse when you have doubts and that happens to me whenever I switch between one of my 6 80s. I've always hoped that playing these other classes that after a time I'd get to the point that I could switch back and forth seemlessly but to no avail so far. I do seem to have less issues switching between my druid/pally healer but my method of healing is very similar for both so that isn't a very good comparision. DPS is another matter altogether and that is where I run into issues (my advice is to stick to a max of 3 80s -- any more and it is just too difficult to switch back and forth).

I've played my deathknight for the last 10 days and have gotten decent at playing that class. Deathknights are fun to play in some respects, especially as an off tank that can dps. Still I have come to the conclusion that the class just isn't for me as it just feels boring after a while. So I've decided to stop playing the DK and switch back to the dps classes I enjoy - hunter and rogue. Unfortunately both have been unmitigated disasters that I can only attribute to my lack of attention and poor play.

A good example - this morning I decided to run my hunter in a random daily. I know the hunter class better than 95% of the WoW players due to playing the class quite a bit along with lots of reading. I hit a dps plateau about a month ago as I had mastered all the 5 man content but knew I wasn't ready for 10 man content. Part of the issue is a few gear upgrades but the main issue is that I've always been a mouseclick caster as a hunter and knew I needed to change it. I have gotten away with it in the past because I knew all the content and picking a target then mouse clicking on a button was good enough. You can't really do this in 10/25 man content because good dps has to watch their threat along with watching the fight so they can't divert their eyes for the 1-2 seconds it takes to mouseclick. I overhauled my keyboard to use it to cast all my spells and I'm in the middle of learning where I've put each of the functions on the keyboard. This morning's run was against Azol'Nerub .... an instance I know very well. As soon as we are summoned the paladin tank is running down the hill towards the first mob. As a hunter I've always hated the first few mobs because they are made up on 3 types - a named watcher, a caster, and a melee. I'm the past I have usually just focused on the tanks target and dps it down until all 3 are dead. This morning I start to do this and almost immediately pulled the mob off the tank. "Dammit!", I said to myself. "Forgot to misdirect." I quickly look at my new keybinds at the bottom of my screen and find the misdirect button is now Q. As I'm looking for my focus button to cast the spell I see the rest of the group finish off the first group and head for the second group. I find that focus is set to H so now I have my misdirect working so I cast it then start dps when I realize my pet is sitting next to me. A quick look at my key set up and I've send my pet in to attack and then put him on defensive. I am starting to settle down into my rotation when someone yells for a tranq shot on the skirmishers. Now I'm off to look for where I bound my tranq shot key when I am wrapped in a web. I now have plenty of time to watch the fight and I see the tank has aggroed 2 other mobs and I see the message "Tranq!" in chat again. I try to find the skirmishers but have trouble targeting them before the other dps has killed them. During the encounter, 2 of the other dps died but the tank decided (or accidentily) pulled the boss. I cast misdirect and fire off two quick high powered shots when I see my abilities are all greyed out. I look at my mana .... damn ... all gone. I click (yeah I mouseclicked) on my Dragonhawk/Viper macro and went back to dps'ing the boss. The other dps came back into the instance and we downed the boss about 30 seconds later.

I look at the results - my dps was about 3.5k while a mage was at 7k and the warrior was at 4k. The pally tank and priest healer were under all of us. I was surprised at my dps because I felt out of sorts on every phase. I'm sure that being able to AOE a bit helped my damage. I start going through my post fight checklist when the priest says .. "WTF hunter?" "Ever heard of Viper?" I look at my mana and it is still at 0 and look at my aspect and it is still on dragonhawk. Then I remembered that on bad thing about my Aspect macro is that the first time you press the button in an instance it goes to dragonhawk no matter what aspect you are in currently. The priest goes on, "Where was the tranq shots, hunter?" "Do you know what the FUCK you are doing?" I had answers for all these questions. I know the instance better than 99% of the playing population, I'm just not used to my new keyboard setup and it is not only killing my play but my ability to think positively and proactively. I thought about it a half second and realized that someone as abrasive as that on the first boss of an easy instance didn't want a bunch of excuses so I simply typed, "Sorry guys. I'm having issues and I'm sure you will find another dps quickly. Good Luck." and left the group.

I wasn't really pissed when I left the dungeon because the priest brought up some valid points. The points are still valid right now. The thing that annoys me is I need to change my style of play if I'm ever going to make the transition from click casting to key casting. The only way to do that is to practice until it is second nature. The dungeons that have been created for learning is the 5 man heroics which is where we were. Certainly my hiatus to Deathknight for a week didn't help me as my fingers were used to a totally different keyboard setup. The thing that makes people successful in WoW is the ability to set up the next attack/shot/heal and I was totally lacking in that area. Having said all that, I am really tired of people not being patient in heroic dungeons and wish that Blizzard did away with the frost badge daily heroic as it seems to do nothing but cause issues.

I have found myself looking back to the Vanilla days of WoW alot and thinking about how much better the game was back in the day. I am quite aware that Blizzard has made many improvements to the game and know they want to give people an incentive to run heroics so that they aren't empty. The bottom line is that when you put a level 80 in greens/blues doing 2k in damage with current raiders at 8k+ in damage there are going to be issues. That means the content that is meant for people to learn to play eventually will lead to a high end raider telling them they are playing like a tard. And that isn't fun.

I remember when I first started playing this game 5 years ago that people went out of their way to help one another and since we were all noobs that no one looked at how other people played but focused mainly on killing the enemy. I'm sure the fact that at the time no websites existed to tell everyone of the proper specs or that dps meters hadn't been created had a large part in this. Contrast that with today where if you want to run a heroic, many people expect huge dps and the tanks to chain pull with a goal of a 15 minute clear. If that doesn't happen then the drama starts.

I have been both a hardcore raider and a casual pugger. To me there is a definite line for when dps meters should come out and that is in the 10/25 man content (with the possible exception of the 5 man ICC stuff). It annoys me that people turn into idiots in the 5 man heroics but today I had a first, a hardcore idiot in a level 60 regular dungeon.

I am leveling a deathknight and decided the best way to do this is by grinding and running dungeons. My DK is currently level 61 and so this has meant that I am primarily running Hellfire Citadel and Blood Furnace. It has been a long time since I ran these instances but I know the heroic versions very well from my BC days. Most of the runs were very clean which surprised me as these days many people leveling don't often learn how to play in a group until max level. I credit the dungeon finder for part of this as it has made it much easier to find lower level groups which hasn't happened since the vanilla WoW. Unfortuately every group can't be perfect.

My run in the Blood Furnace started pretty well as we had a pretty decent group makeup of Warrior Tank, Warlock, Rogue, Deathknight (me), and Shaman healer. After the first pull I realized a few things. 1) the tank couldn't hold aggro very well, 2) the rogue didn't have great dps, and 3) the lock was a bit of a loose cannon. The other thing I remembered is that Blizzard has really dumbed down content in WotLK compared to Vanilla and BC. Mobs in the older dungeons are very close together and one of Blizz's favorite tricks is to have patrols go in between two mobs which aggro multiples. The timing of pulling mobs was a lot tougher back then and it is especially true when you have noob tank and a lock that can't control aggro. We blast through the first area and get to a truly hard part with a pat and two mobs. As we approach the lock's imp casts a fireball at one of them and so all 3 mobs are active (7 total enemy). The warrior does his best to bring the mobs together but the mobs consist of ranged casters which are tough to move into melee range and melee that are easy. The tank focused on the melee and 1 of the casters but that let other casters target whoever got the highest on their aggro table. This usually means it is the healer and in this situation the best course is if possible for the dps to Off tank the ranged dps for the tank. Deathknights are ideally suited for this purpose so I chainpulled one to me and attacked another ranged and quickly killed them. Then I ran back to the group to help the tank. It went off flawlessly and I was a bit happy with the result. The healer started complaining about the tank's inability to hold aggro. Nothing was said about the lock so I asked him, "Can you put your imp on defensive?" He answered, "Se puede ... " and I lost interest after this as it has been too many years for me to remember my high school Spanish. For what it is worth, the dps on this fight was something like DK (me) 600, lock 500, rogue 150, and tank 100. We continue on past a few more easy mobs and get to a real tricky room with 3 3 man packs and a pat and again as we approach the imp casts at a real bad time and we get all 4 groups. I try to do my trick from before but this time there are too many and soon some of the ranged casters are pounding the healer. The healer does a great job keeping himself alive but unfortunately the lock is soon dead as he decided to max DoT all the groups pulling some of the melee to him. The healer is typing in chat, "someone get these things off of me" and after I get the ones I initially targeted I kill the 3 targeting him. The whole process doesn't take more than 30-40 seconds and then only the melee are left that are beating on the warrior. A bit later and they are dead and as the shaman is rez'ing the lock he makes the comment, "can't you hold fucking aggro?" I'm just stunned as I was in the middle of typing, "Nice heals" when I changed it to "Tank aggro wasn't the issue on that pull". He replied, "Bullshit, I got hammered the whole fight." The tank remained silent so I responded with "The issue was the lock pulled and did it a a supremely bad time which surprised the tank and he had difficulty rounding up the mobs." What I didn't say is AOE tanking is a relatively new concept, it is especially hard for warrior tanks, and the way Blizz had the mobs set up in this dungeon made it even worse. The healer responded, "That wasn't the issue." to which I replied, "Then you are an idiot and don't understand the mechanics of the game". The healer responded "Fine!" and quit the group.

If you have read any of my past articles you will see a trend here as this is probably the 4th time in the last month I have caused someone to leave my group with only my words (I felt bad again which is partially why I'm writing this as penance). The healer was right that the warriors threat generation wasn't as good as I'd expect in a heroic or raid. But we weren't in a heroic as we were in a level 60 regular level dungeon. I saw the same things as the shaman and while my hardcore side was annoyed by it, my casual side realized we were in a regular dungeon pug and this was just par for the course. The healer decided instead of asking a question to be very aggressive and my nature is to respond in kind. 5 man dungeons are for learning and frankly as I don't know much about warrior tanks I couldn't help him much. I could help the lock and despite our language difficulties I realized his issue wasn't his pet setting but that he had autoattack set on and after I explained how to set it off we didn't have a repeat of the surprise pull.

After the drama we re-queued and waited about 10 seconds to get another healer and we were off again to finish the instance. I'm sure the shaman was sure that the group would disband without him but our replacement was good and I was quietly proud of our teamwork. I was especially encouraged that by the end the warrior was marking targets and telling us to stay back while he pulled the mobs to us. It was obvious that he was learning and using the skills he will need if he ever wants to raid. Isn't that what 5 mans are all about?

Someday I'm going to stop writing about idiots soon but this stuff just drives me crazy.

Tonight I had a PuG Heroic Pit of Saron going with Saelle and it was a decent run. The group was decent but not great. I think everyone was in the 220 range for gear which is plenty for that instance (fwiw I am at 210 now). The tank (paladin) was reasonably competent but didn't build threat quickly, the other 2 dps (warrior/deathknight) had good gear but were in the 1800-2200 dps range, and the healer (shaman) seemed a bit slow with his heals. OK ... perhaps the group was less than average but I have found that a good hunter (and I feel I am getting there) can help a bad group through any instance.

We started off pretty good taking down the trash mobs pretty easy. The good thing about trash mobs is you get an idea of everyone's ability. The bad thing is the fights can be very misleading since healing isn't very heavy and many dps classes don't shine until they get all their buffs up (rogue is a good example). We get to the first boss with little issue and during the first fight I pull 4k dps and the others are under 2k. I died near the end of this fight and it probably was the healers fault as he seemed to be falling behind. I have been in the shaman's shoes a few times and it is a difficult fight to heal so I didn't think much of it.

We move on to the next boss and this turns in to a bit of a disaster. This boss has about 4 different abilities and you need to do different things to combat each ability. Hunters really have an advantage here as we can pretty much stand at a distance and dps for all of the phases. The other 2 dps died pretty early to the AOE poison and then the chase mechanic but the tank, healer and I slowly took down his health until he was at about 10%. I noticed my aggro was high so I feigned death but noticed that it didn't take so I misdirected to the tank and continued to attack. When target is under 20% health, I can get some really good proc's with Kill Shot so I'm enjoying myself just pounding on the boss when suddenly I realize he is headed right at me. I quickly hit my Explosive shot then disengaged and waited the half second for my Kill Shot to cool down before hitting it. I barely got it off and the boss died at my feet. I looked up and saw that the tank had died which made me feel good because I thought perhaps my MD didn't work and I pulled aggro. Healer says to the tank ... "Sorry, you went out of my line of sight." I could tell the tank wasn't buying the story but I just moved on to the next pull.

I call the next part of PoS the "Hill of Death" and I have written about it in previous posts. It is really difficult for a healer and especially if aggro isn't controlled. Someone marked the mobs while the tank had to bio so he remarked when he returned, "Who marked the mobs?" No one responded so the tank just charged. I misdirected to the tank then attacked the skull target when I realized that someone had chosen the Melee dps as the first target which is actually opposite of what should happen. I could see my aggro building quickly so I switched to the correct AoE mob when the first marked target charged and killed me. Seconds later... the whole party was dead. When a wipe happens the first thing I do is look at the Recount logs to recreate the event. From what I could gather, the tank died first, then me, then everyone else. The tank asked in partychat .. "What happened?" I know from my longtime healing experience that the healer is about to be blamed for the wipe. I looked at the recount death log for the tank and see that about 4 seconds from death the tank got a 2k heal and then another 2k heal at 2 seconds. Unfortunately the tank was taking a lot more damage than that. No one responded to the tank's question so he made the statement, "I didn't get heals." Bingo! I saw that coming. 2 seconds later the option to kick the healer from the party pops up on my screen. I start to type in chat to discuss it when I see the message, "Vote passed ... Healer kicked" (it doesn't really say that but I'm paraphrasing).

I'm big on teaching. If someone is struggling to do something I want to figure out why and help them improve. It doesn't matter to me that I will probably never group with this person ever again but I get enjoyment from helping people play better. When the vote came on the screen I was typing something to the effect of, "The mobs were marked wrong so we focused on the wrong target, the tank needs to get more aggro, and the healer needs to use his bigger heals". Instead I am stunned as the healer is now gone. He wasn't great but he was friendly enough and seemed like he would have listened. My half written sentence is on the screen and I'm not sure what to say at this point. I could complain that the tank has pretty high demands for someone that doesn't have great aggro generation. Or that since a kick has to be a majority that the other 2 dps voted to kick the healer as well ... the dps that were barely doing 2k dps and died to simple fight mechanics on the previous boss that should have been avoided. I knew my arguments would be fruitless as the deed had been done and I wouldn't teach these idiots anything. So I did the idiot thing myself and dropped group.

I needed two items from the last boss but I felt good about my decision. Since we can't chat cross-realm the healer would never know I stood up for him but maybe the next time the idiot tank would think twice before rashly kicking someone. Even though I wasn't there to witness it, I'm pretty sure this story ends with the tank looking up the "Hill of death" with 2 subpar dps and no healer so he did what all idiots do when faced with adversity and he left the group as well. Is it possible that someone came in and carried them to the finish? It's possible but that's not how the story ends in my mind and that is all that matters. And if the story ended as I expect I don't feel bad for any of them as they sealed their fate when they all voted to quick-kick the healer with no discussion.