How I learned to lose the hate and love the PUG

Posted on October 31st, 2009 by Cila

LFG? Yes, please

Several weeks ago, if you ever wanted to hear me curse like a truck driving sailor, get me into a PUG. I would be amazed at how much people not knowing how to play with frustrate me.

Am I an elitist? Probably.

I assume that people research as much as I do. And I know fully well that it’s not the case, but I forget. The fact is that most people treat WoW like any other game and don’t give 2 thoguhts about it when they not in game.

It’s going to take time, but I’ll adjust.

The fact of the matter is that my guild is made up of friends. All long term players who have been around for years… And close friends if mine for well over a year now. I love my guild and the people in it.

But, like a lot of long term players, we go through periods where we dint play. Avid gamers have a tendency to see the newest console games and drool… Me included. And it’s THAT time if year. Ever comapny and there mother are releasing games in time for the holidays…

Thing is… I don’t have a PS3 or XBox 360. And, I don’t have the budget this year to buy games anyway.

So, I have WoW. And an empty guild.

I sense that there was some burnout as well, but it’s come to head this year, and it’s bad. People that would log on nightly are logging on every 4 or 5 days.

Guild runs are rare now and I’m kind of stuck.

So what do I do? I do the thing that I swore I’d never do again. The thing that frustrates more than anything else.

I’m PUGging. I’m finding the folks that aren’t burned out on the game or playing Brutal Legend.

It started with the daily and it just went from there. Today, I got into a group of achievement junkies and had a blast trying to get some if the harder achievements. I actually had a hard time leaving.

And they all knew how to play. And they all had friends lists of people that knew how to play. And it was fun.

Of course, there’s a downside. I may never see these folks again. They probably won’t remember me. I didn’t get to bitch about life on vent with them, which I enjoy, but I did get through a few podcasts.

I know that not ever PUG will be great. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. But in the meantime, I can out my alt levelling down and just concentrate on having some fun.

At least until my guild gets back.

Tags: groups, instances, pug

Random Achievements

Posted on October 22nd, 2009 by Cila

Stop Taunting Me!

Every time Blizzard makes achievements based on the random number generator, a puppy dies.

Cila, my achievement toon is now on year #2 of trying to the Hallowed title and achievement. My problem… the Sinister Squashling. This thing is giving me more problems than is possible to imagine. What’s frustrating is that I have every other thing done. I got all my toothpicks. I did the battleground achievement. Everything… But that Squashling would not drop for me no matter how much I ran the Horseman.

This year, it’s even more frustrating. I logged my druid in yesterday and did one Trick or Treat with her. Bam! Squashing. This would be wonderful if that was my achievement toon, but it’s not. And I’m not about to start doing the rest of the stuff required just because she got the pet to drop the very first time.

Instead, like a moron, I’m logging my warlock in once an hour when possible and getting penny bags and turned into a ghost and whatever else. I’m running the Horseman every night and not seeing it drop for anyone (except once the first night — I lost the roll).

Sorry, I’m really not much to QQ about these kinds of things, but I think any achievement based on the RNG is just ridiculous. Achievements should be about skill and dedication to doing things outside the bounds of the normal game. Logging in every hour and praying to Elune that you get what you need is just tedious. It’s not dedication… it’s asking too much.

I’m lucky that I’m in a situation where I work from home in front of a computer, so logging in every hour isn’t too much of an issue. But for people with a real job and lives, it’s just not possible.

Seriously, if the Squashling keeps me from getting the title for the 2nd year in a row, I might have to just give up on the Strange Trip. *sigh*

Tags: achievements, cila, hallowed, qq, warlock

Another 80 in the Stable

Posted on October 13th, 2009 by Cila

Breylyn, my hunter, has finally hit 80. It was actually a little frustrating at the end, to be honest. 79 was a very quick level, which was a first for me. Usually 79 might as well be two levels. I generally do it in Storm Peaks, but I dinged in Zul’Drak, so went to the Basin instead.

Armed with my trusted Tour Guide, I proceeded to run through Sholazar as quickly as possible. I’ve never done Sholazar as far as I did this time around, and it was pretty enjoyable… and then with 5% left, I hit Returned Sevenfold. This quest is REALLY hard for a hunter to do. Unfortunately, it was the only quest I could do in Sholazar, so I attempted it 4 times before giving up.

With nothing else to do, I had to head off to start Icecrown for my last 5%. This took about 10 minutes.

I immediately went to Stormwind, got my dual spec, and talented up my second spec. I decided to go with the most popular Survival spec out there, the 0/15/56. I grabbed all the proper glyphs (Explosive Shot, Kill Shot, Serpent Sting, Feign Death, Revive Pet and Mend Pet) and some 80 blues off of the AH.

I then went to Crystalsong, tamed myself a 78 Sinewy Wolf, specced him with a solid PVE spec and was on my way.

I was ready to go and run an instance to figure out this new spec and see what kind of DPS I could do… but no one in the guild was on so I was stuck just logging off and going to bed.

*sigh*

I’ll let you know of my progress with Survival. It should be fun to learn something new.

Tags: breylyn, ding!, hunter, sholazar, survival

Son of a…

Posted on October 12th, 2009 by Cila

Yeah, I really haven’t been paying attention much as of late. Between life, work, a new baby and all of the other things that go on, the little thigns start to lose my attention.

I generally consider myself a min/maxer of sorts. It’s not that I’m a hardcore raider… hell, I haven’t raided even VoA since I got on to the Alliance side. But I, like the Dyson commercial says, like “to do things properly”.

When I decided to jump into a Destruction spec (0/13/58), I didn’t even think twice about the fact that Suppresion was no longer in my talents. Basically, 3 points here equals a free 3% on my hit rating.

As it stands for raiding at level 80, you need 17% hit in order to never miss a boss. With each percentage equalling 26.23 hit rating, I’d effectively need a 446 hit rating to never miss. That’s a hell of a lot, especially since you really don’t see a ton of +hit on 200 gear… it only really starts to show up when you get to 213 and higher stuff. The way around it is with gems, enchants, and sometimes trading a high +hit piece of green gear for a shiny purple.

Now, I generally raid with more than one Draenei, so that’s a free 1% +hit buff with Heroic Presence. That means that I need 16% (420)… still way too much.

Suppression, then, is pretty much required for anyone that isn’t sitting with a ton of incidental +hit on their gear. This is usually someone who’s decked out in Tier 8 or higher and has all the bells and whistles. However, since I’m still working on getting 200′s in every slot, I need every piece of +hit I can get.

Suppression gives me a whopping 3% of +hit on every spell (even though it’s in the Affliction tree). This means that I need a +hit of 13% (assuming Heroic Presence), which equates to 341. This is a LOT more manageable.

Some people might not agree with the fact that I feel +hit is #1 or #2 in the “most important stats” category, but it is for any DPS worth their salt. If you’re not hitting the boss, you’re going to do 0 damage. Whereas, if you’re missing 20 spellpower instead, it’s going to mean a lot less. Spreadsheets might prove me wrong on this, of course, but it just sounds correct to me.

Luckily, I can do some testing of this theory the next time I run. I have a general idea of what my DPS is with my current gear and spec. Before I run anything, I’m going to respec into a 3/13/55 spec to get my much needed Suppression and see how I fare. I’m betting that my DPS increases, even if that means I have to give up giving everyone Replenishment.

It’s totally a fair trade.

Tags: +hit, cila, suppression, Theory, warlock

Breylyn Hits 78

Posted on October 7th, 2009 by Cila

My little “hunter that could” hit 78 last night in Zul’Drak. To celebrate, I headed off to Valgarde and got myself a shiny new Sawed-off Hand Cannon. Might as well put some of that rep to use… though I have to admit that I wish I had grinded more of the 4 main factions. There really are some decent upgrades to be had once you hit 78, and I’m not eligible for any of them.

I’m really getting psyched about the idea of running some 80 content with her.  I REALLY love the hunter class.  They really get a bad rap, but if done right, it’s done of the most nuanced and toughest classes to play “correctly”.  I’m still undecided on whether or not I’ll do Survival or Marks on my second spec…  I’m assuming Survival, since I won’t have the Armor Pen. (not to mention how it was nerfed anyway) to get competitive DPS.  Plus, having another toon with Replenishment doesn’t hurt either.

On another note, I’m finding the west side of Zul’Drak to be some of the buggiest quests in Northrend. I think they tried to do too much. I basically had to look up the “right way” to do the Drakuru quests in Wowhead because they were either obvious or bugged. It took me about an hour to get 5% of a level because of this.

In the end, I just skipped the rest of the quest chain and moved on to Argent Stand… and lo’ and behold, I got 5% more in about 5 minutes. I don’t think I’ll go back there, since this isn’t my achievement toon.  It’s bad enough I don’t have the Zul’Drak quest achievement on Cila — no way I could do it twice.

Tags: breylyn, hunter, levelling, zuldrak

ToC Heroic — Down

Posted on October 6th, 2009 by Cila

The Other Side has gotten into this habit of farming ToC.  Since we’re trying to gear up some of our new 80s, it’s the perfect place to do it.  Since we have this place down and have demolished most of the other heroics in WoTLK, we gave it a shot.

Wow, what a wake-up call!

The first bit is pretty much the same.  Jousting the non-elites is no problem, especially if you have an order.  We always do the left one first, get him down in about 5 seconds, and then move on to the other two.  There’s no coordination on those, but with only two, it’s not a problem to get them down quickly.

The jousting bosses are a little tougher.  They definitely have more HP and seem to be using their cooldowns a little more.  I got into a situation where all three were ganging up on me, so I didn’t make it through the fight.  Luckily the other guys did, so it wasn’t a problem.  Then they dismounted and reset.

We had the Tauren, Troll and Blood Elf.  As usual, we took the Tauren first because he’s the healer.  Wow, was this guy tough…   he was just healing himself almost as fast as we could hit him.  Really, it was an issue of not having the interrupts that we needed.  Class makeup didn’t exactly allow for a lot of options, so we just steamrolled it and evetually got him down.

After that, the other two were very easy.  Gamaken (our tree) got an incredibly nice upgrade from that fight, so it was worth it.

Ok, next phase.  Again, the packs of 3 were pretty much as easy as they are on regular.  However, then Argent Confessor Paletress was up…  and we started to feel the sting of it being a heroic again.  She’s actually a pushover, but when she summoned the Memory of Onyxia, that’s when it went horribly wrong.  We did wipe, but what we didn’t realize is that she casts a heal on the Memory — so again, the lack of interrupts was giving us issues.

Second time in, I pulled out my Fel Puppy who can do a little bit of interrupts, and Thorvash (our mage) made a focus macro for casting Counterspell.  No problem getting them down this time.

So, so far we’ve realized that not having a rogue or shaman in the party makes this much harder…

Last up, was the Black Knight.  I have to say, this is one of the hardest heroic fights I’ve been in.  It’s amazing how much this ramps up in difficultly between regular and heroic.  I lost track of the number of wipes that we had, but I have to guess it was around 5.

In a way, it was fun.  It’s nice to have a challenge and not just push an encounter over the first time.  It actually required us to figure out how to handle it and find a good strategy.

Phase 1 is pretty easy.  We had our hunter pet and DPS run immediately to the add, and knock him down quickly, then everyone of the Black Knight.  He went down quickly.

Phase 2 was a little harder, but we got it after a try or two.  It came down to just using AOE on all the ghouls first, then moving on the Black Knight.  We didn’t do that originally and they were just overrunning us.  Once we took 2/3 of the ghouls down before touching the BK, there was no problem in the least.

Ugh, Phase 3.  There’s something about this phase that I just don’t get.  It seems like there should be a trick, but there isn’t.  It’s literally a healer’s mana vs. DPS vs. boss fight.  There really is no way to do this without just pushing through, and that’s where we had our issue.  I think it came down to just a bit of lack of DPS.  Both our Hunter and Mage are pretty new 80s, and while they’re awesome, it probably wan’t quite the numbers that were required.

We were literally dying and running back in, getting off a few spells, and repeating.  But, in the end, we did it.  I was expecting an achievement…  oh well.  I didn’t keep track of the drops, though I should have.  All I know is that I had about 40g worth in repairs (cloth!!!) by the time it was said and done.

After that, we ran it two more times on normal.  It was all of the sudden, SOO easy.

Tags: 5man, cila, toc, warlock