WoW Rest Stop

What do you do when you aren't having fun? I've been playing this game for over 5 years now and I've noticed it is starting to be a bit stale. When I first started the game everything was new and it was fun even though I didn't know what I was doing. One of the best things about the game at that time is I banded together with a bunch of other people to form one of the biggest guilds on the Khadgar server. We were all learning the game, exploring and just enjoying playing the game. The problems arose when we hit max level (60 at the time). My first toon was my paladin Henna and I distinctly remember hitting 10 man Scholo with the guild and getting owned. The issue was we were a bunch of noobs but didn't realize it so our guild slowly fell apart as we figured out that we all wanted different things. It was at that time that I started leveling Shribryn again who I left at level 37 when I started leveling Henna and decided because our guild was lacking in dps to create both Kelyn (mage) and Lemhi (warlock that I've never been able to get to max level - now at level 54). This happened to many of us in the guild and we soon found that we were spending more time with people outside the guild so we slowly disbanded. After I gquit I focused mainly on getting Shrib to 60 then realized that now that every guild was concentrating on Molten Core so I started working on getting my Wildheart set. I tried to do the same thing with Henna but soon realized that 1) paladin dps was terrible 2) paladin tanks didn't exist 3) Paladin healers weren't accepted 4) buffing 15 people every 5 minutes sucked and 5) the competition for plate armor was tough. On the flip side no one was playing druids at the time so it only took me a month or so to get my tier 0 armor (Henna never got a single piece). Now I was ready for the big time and i bounced from guild to guild never really finding a good fit or any fun. When the option to change servers happened in January 06 I decided to take the opportunity to jump ship and move to Eitrigg. Moving to a new server is always difficult but it was a bit exciting because it was a new beginning. My first guild didn't work out because I found out pretty quickly that they left their previous server because everyone hated them. They were working on a similar rep on Eitrigg so I joined some friends from Khadgar in a guild they had just joined called Requiem at the beginning of March 2006. I had finally found a home of likeminded people.

I have been in Requiem for 4 years and in that time I was a main raider in Molten Core to an officer in Blackwing Lair/AQ. I went back to raider for a short time until we started Gruul Lair then was a recruiting officer from that point through Sunwell. After 3 years raiding I decided to take a break when WotLK was released and have spent the last year PuGing and focusing on increasing my money. At this point I'm sick of PuGs and I'm well on my way to hitting the money cap but no desire to spend any of the money.

I've been waiting for my desire to raid to come back but I think it is gone and may never return. I do know that I'm not having fun and it makes me wonder why I continue to play. I think it has something to do with the fact that this is one of the first persistent world games I've ever played. It's not like when I finished Baldur's Gate that I had anything to do. The bad guys were beaten and I moved on to the next game. With WoW that will never happen and the treadmill gets to you after a while. There is no doubt in my mind that helping put a team together that did a server first kill of Vashj and Kael then being the only guild in Black Temple for a few months was the most satisfied I've ever felt in a game. The thing is the game moves on and raiding is stressful.

So what to do? I'm really not sure. If I'm not having fun I really shouldn't play but I worked pretty hard to get where I am and I'd hate for the time investment to feel like it was all for nothing. The thing is I know that is irrational as I've spent a lot of time in other games and had no problem walking away. I am thinking of moving a few toons to another server/guild to see if that helps but if things keep on the way they have lately my days in WoW are numbered.

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.

Sometimes the frustrations of WoW are so great you wonder why anyone would play the game. I have been on a raiding break for over a year now and don't really miss that aspect of the game. I do like the challenge of learning a new class and playing it until I have a good understanding of all the nuances. The name of this blog is Resto Stop because that is the character I raided Molten Core to Sunwell. I know druid healing in my sleep and the buttons are pretty much second nature. I think -- I heal -- I know the class. It takes a long time to become proficient at a class at a high level. A high level raider not only knows the pro's and con's of every spell in the book, they also have obsessed about every talent point on every tree to make sure that they are getting the most from their character that is possible. In the last year I have spent a lot of time on all of my characters and of my 5 non-druid level 80's I feel that I'm almost a B grade as a paladin, mage and deathknight and nearing an A on my hunter and rogue. This didn't come without taking the time to study, learn, and spend countless hours in the Heroics learning how to play each class.

It is funny that I've taken so much to 2 pure dps classes as I really avoided dps'ing for a long time. When I started the game I played mainly my paladin and was a hybrid dps/tank. When that guild broke up after about 6 months, I went from guild to guild and found that healing was the easiest way into a guild and soon I went from paladin leader to druid healer and stayed there for the next 3+ years. I always avoided the pure dps classes as I felt that was the domain of the fast-twitch 12 year olds and I was better suited to sitting in the back and healing/managing.

I like playing my rogue and my hunter because they are much more than just hitting a button over and over. As a healer you control the fight by keeping health bars in the positive. As a dps, your job is to kill things but there are secondary jobs like misdirecting, trapping, and tricks'ing that are almost as important. Still, the best thing about playing a dps class is seeing the big numbers on your screen as you pull off good combo move.

Anyway ... today I ran a PuG on my hunter Saelle. The "looking for dungeon" option has made it really easy to find groups in the game. The problem is I now remember why I only ran heroics with guildmates. Don't get me wrong -- most of the people I group with are great and most of the runs are error/stress free. Still, the idiots can suck the fun out of an otherwise good day. This morning I queued to LFD for my daily heroic. About 5 minutes later I'm in Gundrak. Immediately the tank says, "I need a moment". This is a bit annoying but it's no biggie. In some ways it is a relief as most tanks start running the second they get into a dungeon and this gives me a chance to get in my hunter mood. I have realized that one of the bad things of having so many alts is I need to reset my mentality when I switch characters. Druid healing is different from Pally healing just as Rogue DPS is different from Hunter. Whenever I go into a fight I have to remind myself of the class as playing a class is like playing the piano -- you need to be able to hit all the buttons without thinking. The way I do this is go through a mental checklist of important hunter items. I am doing this -- "Hawk aspect - check", "Pet Growl Off - Check", "Focus on Tank - Check" ... when after about 15 seconds the rogue says ... "pull plz". No one responds as we are waiting on the tank to return. Another 15 seconds ... "omg! pull plz". I respond with "we are waiting for the tank to return." About that time the tank returns and asks if everyone is ready to go. The rogue gives the tank grief for making him wait to which the tank responds "sorry" and the rest of us interrupt them so we can start the run. I have seen many instances fall apart at this point due to little silly arguments and frankly who needs the grief.

The funny thing is I was already feeling a bit self-conscience about this run because I had just hit 80 the day before and this was my first heroic (this is my second 80 hunter :P). I had hit the regular instances pretty hard the day before and had gotten quite a few upgrades I was still sitting at an average gear level of 190 while the rest of my group was in the 230 range. I have seen people get kicked for gear before so I was a bit nervous at the start especially considering the rogue's attitude so far. Pugs are an interesting dynamic because in many ways it is just like dating and the first pull is like a first date. Trash mobs are never a good way to judge results but I always try to do the best I can on the first group as it sets expectations for the rest of the dungeon.

The tank pulls the first mob. Misdirect ... Hunter's mark ... oops pull back the pet due to close mobs ... Multi-shot ... and I try to AoE the rest of the way down. This was a mistake because there is a tunnel between the first pull and the tank and I have trouble getting the shot off due to Line of sight issues. First mob goes down and the rogue puts up the Recount for the first mob. Rogue - 1200dps ... Me 500dps (I'm only going to list our numbers but the mage was around 3500dps and the warrior around 2000dps the entire instance). Rogue says in party ... "wtf huntard?" If you've played a hunter for a while you will be called a huntard at some point. This wasn't my first experience with the term and I've grown to consider it a term of endearment so I just typed. "lol--line of sight issue". The tank pretty much ignored us and had already moved on the next mob. I run into the next room and put up a belated AoE on the tanks mobs and see my results are little better than the first mob due to our chatting. The rogue didn't even try on the second mob but instead decided to take the time to say, "i don't got all day. you need to pick up dps." This pissed me off. Trash mobs aren't a good way to judge dps and they guy makes a snap judgment that I suck on the first pull. Frankly I wasn't very impressed with his 1200 but I didn't say anything and just sat to get mana while the tank pulled the third (and last) mob before the first boss fight of the instance. Once my mana was full I helped the tank finish the third mob, then ran to catch him as he immediately engaged the boss. Boss fights are where dps is the most important and I'm immediately into my rotation - Misdirect ... Hunter's mark ... Explosive shot ... and I'm soon into my hunter groove. The thing I love about dps'ing is the differences between it and healing. When you are healing you are waiting for something bad to happen before acting and you have milliseconds to act or someone will die. As dps ... you still need to have millisecond timing but instead you get good positive damage that happens. It is so much less stressful and fun. After you've dps'ed a class for a while it is just a matter of making sure you stay aware of your surroundings while keeping an optimal rotation going. The first boss in Gundrak isn't going to be confused with Arthas any time soon but I treated it like it was the world's first kill. A few moments later the boss died and we gathered our loot.

I sat to get some mana back and looked at my recount. Rogue ... 900dps. Me ... 2800dps. I smiled to myself. The funny thing is I knew he knew but I didn't say a word. I didn't have time to gloat anyway because the tank was halfway to the next mob by the time I was finished getting my mana back to full. I certainly didn't want to get into the same trap as the rogue and start talking smack after only looking at one boss (and in the rogue's defense that boss does incapacitate people). We steadily make our way to the next boss and this time -- Rogue ... 800dps Me ... 3100dps. His dps actually got worse but in his defense that boss is a bit tough on melee as they have to move around quite a bit so it really wasn't fair to judge him on that either. We move on to the 3rd boss that is pretty much a straight dps race and this time -- Rogue 1100dps ... Me 3500dps. He did better but so did I and at this point I was really starting to enjoy myself. The rogue had to know the numbers he was posting as he had posted Recount earlier. I crossed my mind that perhaps he was just afk/autoattacking but his recount log showed mutilate damage so he was pressing buttons. It is times like this that I like the fact that I play multiple toons and my rogue's gear is almost the same of this one and I know I've hit well over 4000dps on a single target in heroics (it really depends on the buffs and group makeup). Anyway as we make our way down the stretch run to the final boss and I feel like I'm Luke Skywalker in Episode IV as he walks up the red carpet to get his medallion from Princess Leia. Perhaps I'm overstating the importance of my dps to the groups success (frankly the tank could have solo'ed it with the healer) but I was really enjoying my victory. No one had said a word since the rogue called me a huntard back at the beginning. By this point I've realized that the tank is really talented and so is the other dps so everything is going down without a problem. We get to the final boss and soon enough Gundrak is complete. I look at my recount to see the final tally -- Rogue 850dps ... Me 2900dps. At this point of every instance there are always a few moments of small talk before everyone drops group. The tank says... "good group". I'm considering posting my recount for spite when I see that rogue dropped group right after we finished the instance. Perhaps he did have somewhere to go but I think he knew what was coming and didn't want to face the music.

Heroics these days are a joke as they were made for people in 180 level blues and they are being done by people in level 230+ purples. There is certainly going to be skill differences between all players and people aren't always going to get along. But to have epic gear, to be a bad player, and to be a jerk all at the same time is a difficult feat. After I noticed the rogue had left the group and feeling down that never got the chance to respond, I made the general comment to the party.... "Interesting rogue". The tank responded, "He was an idiot."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

With the advent of Patch 3.3, many player that would have never gotten groups are now able to find them thanks to the new Dungeon Finder system. This has created quite a few issues as newer players learn the dungeons and veterans try to deal with the "noobs". I have had varied luck with this new system ranging from "OMG .. this PUG has renewed my faith in humanity!" to the "OMG .. I want to delete this game from my machine!" This morning I had one of the latter....

One thing about having 6 80s is it really helps me understand the mechanics of the other classes. When I woke up this morning I decided I wanted to play my Paladin since she needs the most gear of all my toons.

Queue Dungeon finder for Hall of Reflection ... 5 minutes later ... in the dungeon ... 15 minutes later ... Done!

Nice! Perhaps this is going to be a good day! Queue for Pit of Saron ... 5 minutes later ... in the dungeon.

I look at the group. Warrior Tank (4200 GS) as party leader, Rogue DPS (4700 GS), DK DPS (3500 GS), Hunter DPS (4800 GS), and my paladin healer (4800 GS). ((For those that don't know -- GS is gearscore which rates the gear of each player. I have never booted anyone nor quit a group due to gearscore but use it to figure out what kind group I have so I can put together my strategy)) Interesting group. A bit melee centric and I'm not going to get DPS/Tank plate drops but not bad. We cruise through the first two bosses pretty easy with the exception that the hunter aggroed 2 groups by mistake because he didn't see the patrol coming. We now approach what I like to call the "Hill of Death". I've been in many groups as DPS and Healing and it isn't easy for anyone. There are 5 enemy in front of us - 1 humanoid elite with direct caster damage, 2 undead elite with aoe damage, and 2 undead elite with melee damage. The killer is when the AOE stack on top of each other with the caster attacking because it is almost impossible to keep your tank alive. The typical strategy usually involves DPS/CC the two AOE/, then the caster, then the melee. We really didn't talk strategy, the warrior just marked the caster for attack and then charged. The tank gets aggro on the caster, but almost immediately I notice that the rogue has aggro on one of the AOE and the hunter has aggro on the other. I start putting 2 big heals on them back to back to save their lives when I see a melee charging for me. I can't heal if I'm dead so I heal myself twice then switch back to the hunter/rogue in an attempt to save them as they are starting to take more damage. As I am casting, I get hit again and die and 10 seconds later everyone is dead.

Silence....

I respawn and fly back to the instance and begin the run to my body. This isn't a long instance so I am back to my body in a minute. I notice the rogue hasn't released while everyone else is running through the instance. I should mention at this point that this is a big pet peeve of mine. I don't mind rez'ing people if they ask beforehand but I get real annoyed when someone is being lazy and expecting me to do it (I also hate when people don't heal themselves between battles and expect me to get them back to full health -- I'm especially looking at you warlocks). This annoys me because his body is sitting halfway up the hill under one of the AOE casters and while I probably could have gotten in range to rez him, his laziness puts 4 other people in danger of dying again. I stood there for a moment, thought about it, then said,

"I hope you aren't expecting a rez"

Silence....

A few moments later he says, "You need to learn to heal" to which I respond, "Learn to not aggro". Bingo! ... Yes, we have now entered 3rd grade recess! A few moments later we see the message,

"Rogue has left the party".

The tank had gone afk for a bit and came back a few moments after this occurred then said, "Who left? Oh the Hunter ... good ... he was an idiot." At this point the next message we see is,

"Hunter has left the party".

The Death Knight types, "LOL" and we both are met with the message,

"Warrior has left the party".

At this point it is just me and the undergeared Death Knight so I tell him ... "Oh well ... it was a nice try" and leave group.

As I sat in Dalaran I thought about the how quickly the group went from domination to failure. I definitely was the catalyst to the disband as I probably could have just rezzed the rogue. As I calmed down, I realized the issue with the group wasn't healing or even the dps attacking the wrong target. The tank had issues from the beginning holding aggro and we all had to cover for him in every fight. The rogue was tricking, the hunter was misdirecting, and I was overhealing to keep people alive and we still had aggro issues. The "Hill of Death" is tough on PuGs that are unfamiliar with each other and that combined with my comment killed our group .

PuGs are an amazingly fragile thing. I know I have held my tongue a hundred times because I would rather get loot than cause a disband. Today my attitude in a PuG caused a disband. I hope everyone learned something from the incident because if we do then ultimately the Dungeon Finder will be a better place for groups and WoW as a whole will have better players.

As for me, I hate holding my tongue for lazy people but this may cause me to pause in the future. There is a fine line between being nice and being taken advantage of and the key is to know the line and when to take your shots. As for this morning I would probably do it again even knowing the outcome. I still believe I was correct and I'd rather group with a bunch of noobs that work together than a group of vets that don't.

In the last few months I have seen a disturbing trend of guilds needing more players on the Ravencrest server. At present this is the guild rankings on Ravencrest:

1. (A)Requiem [ 09/01/2009 ] [B-J-C-V-A] [ 10/27/2009 ]
2. (A)Tide [ 09/02/2009 ] [B-J-C- - ] [ ]
3. (H)Consilio et Armis [ 09/01/2009 ] [B-J- - - ] [ ]
4. (A)Departed [ 09/01/2009 ] [B- - - - ] [ ]
5. (A)Roll for Blame [ 09/07/2009 ] [ - - - - ] [ ]
(A)Reckoning [ 09/08/2009 ] [ - - - - ] [ ]
(A)Ruin [ 09/09/2009 ] [ - - - - ] [ ]

It is almost 2 months since TOC was released but our server has only had 4 guilds down even one boss on the 25 man heroic raid. The 50th ranked US server has 11 guilds that have downed a boss (7 of them on Anub) and the 1st ranked server has 33.

A look at the Ravencrest forums has an even more alarming trend. Look at the recruiting posts from the top 2 guilds:

Requiem -- Looking for Boomkin or Shadowpriest, Hunter, Mage, Rogue, Warlock

Tide -- Looking for DPS/Tank DK, Feral Druid, Holy Pally, DPS warrior, 3-4 Ranged DPS

The entire server only has 4 guilds that can clear content while others have many times that and guilds can't find people to fill their ranks??? How is this possible?

Blizzard has always created their instances so that the optimum way to clear content is to have a good mixture of all classes for obvious reasons. When I was the recruiting officer for Requiem I always used the theory of recruiting a minimum of 3 players in each class and adding a few hybrid/ranged dps to fill out the roster. The goal was 35 active players so we could have attendance of 70% and still be able to field a full raid. I know Requiem has been raiding with about 28 players since 3.2 was released and unless the above situation is addressed there is a real danger of them not being able to raid as attrition will occur (you can expect at least 1-2 players a month to leave a guild due to RL,etc). From the looks of the Tide post it appears that they have the same issue.

Why is this occurring? Here are my possible answers:

School - I know in the past there is a bunch of turnover that occurs when school lets out and when school gets back in session. We should be well past that so I'm pretty sure this isn't the issue.

Reputations - Both Requiem and Tide are known for having high standards and people may be afraid to apply. There may be some truth to this as both guilds have well deserved reputations as tough and I know from past experience that players in Requiem have tendency to be extremely critical of people that don't do things optimally. What many don't realize is the passion most raiders are about game mechanics and their frustration when other don't take the time to understand the fundamentals. I have always wished that some members would be a bit more political in sharing their opinions but what most people don't see is what happens when someone applies to the guild. If you bring an open mind and the willingness to improve, the application process make any player (even a failed app) better. All members take a very proactive stance in helping a trial succeed because without new blood the guild will ultimately fail. Of course it helps if you get to know members before you apply but if an applicant shows they are willing to put in the time and they have a reasonably good understanding of their class, the recruitment process is easy. Still, it is possible that this is why people aren't applying to the guild.

Effort not worth the reward - Raiding is time consuming. If you want to be a raider you can expect to spend (4 hours a night) x (4 nights per week) or 16 non-stop hours a week raiding. This doesn't include any time you would spend on farming, gemming/enchanting/glyphing gear, playing with alts, or running heroics/pvp. A raider can expect to spend at least 25 hours a week on the game. This isn't realistic for a majority of the game population due to other obligations. In Vanilla WoW I remember hitting 60 and having difficulty finding a raiding guild. My main was my paladin and I remember looking at awe at the Lawbringer geared paladins in Ironforge and wanting to do whatever I could to get that armor. These days you can get similar gear by doing a few 5 man TOCs and grinding a few heroics. The bottom line is the 25 hour/week time investment just isn't worth the return anymore.

Server - Ravencrest!!! I have always defended the server but if you have ever tried to run the 5 man Herioc TOC you will find your group made up of 1-2 Deathknights / paladins / warriors and yourself. Occasionally another class will show up but a majority of new players go with these 3 classes because they have the best survivability for leveling/pvp and raiding guilds do not need these classes. The bottom line is the Ravencrest player base is bad and as we continuously lose the few good players to known progression servers our player base slowly gets worse.

I think the combination of a low server player base along with easier loot has put us in the current situation and I don't think the situation is going to improve any time soon. My solution would be for Blizzard to realize that they have 3 types of players: PvP, PvE-Hardcore, and PvE-Casual (RP servers are mainly a joke). When Cataclysm hits and they recreate the whole world they should let everyone transfer to the realm of their choice and make it easy for guilds to transfer as a whole. The path they are on right now seems to me to only lead to more frustration by a player base that can't get good players and an eventual jump to another game where they can start fresh.