Wrath made 10 mans an option where as before there was really only one or two raids and they didn't have the same sense of progression that the 25 man content had. Still popular opinion places 25-man content higher in the pecking order and those who choose 10 man content over 25 man content are not taken as seriously and probably openly mocked in a PUG environment.
The idea of 25 man content providing better rewards never really made sense to me. For the most part 25 man content is as easy if not easier than 10 man content. I attribute that mainly to the diminished effects of a single raiders performance effecting the outcome compared to a ten man where people are not only more responsible for their chosen role, but may also be asked to fill a second role at times often on the fly.
The main argument of why 25 mans should provide better rewards is one of logistics, it is harder to get 25 people together. That added investment of time and effort is only made by a few people out of the 25 involved though, most players in a 25 man have less responsibility that they would of had in a 10 man. So if it were feasible it should be the organizers of the raid getting the extra rewards, not everyone.
So the recently announced changes for Cataclysm are much closer to how I think things should be, but if it were me I would provide proportional rewards in 25 man, but not any more per person than 10-man content. So more item and more gold, but not more badges since they are given to everyone and don't get shared.
If 25 mans become less popular as a result that only means that people were running for the rewards and not because they preferred them over 10 mans. Most of them weren't the ones actually organizing the runs anyway and I bet that those who organized runs in the past will continue to do so whether it be a 10 man or a 25 man run.
I think the next step for Blizzard will be to further equalize the two and perhaps scale content to a variable number of players even if it is only done for each 5 players. Having the ability to run with 10, 15, 20 or 25 for the same amount of reward per person would further emphasize the bring the player idea by allowing people to bring everyone they wanted without having to bench someone or search for fill-ins. That is two more levels of content to balance around, but it would be just an interpolation of the 10 and 25 man versions.
I'm pretty sure I will be running 10 mans pretty much exclusively in the next expansion and only run 25 man content for things like raid quests (assuming they continue them) where there are a lot of people interested in one boss/raid that wouldn't normally be. The best part of that being that I can play with the small group I prefer and not feel held back in the sense that I can't get the better rewards.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
I'm Obviously an Egg Ninja
I did all the Noblegarden achievements yesterday since my new thing is to get the long strange trip meta for the 310% flying speed in flight form. That meant a lot of egg gathering which in turn meant lots of competition for a limited resource. Luckily for me few can compete with a feral druid when it comes to hunting, no matter what the quarry. We are fast, we are sneaky and we have a 30 yard range omnidirectional instant to tag stuff.
I chose the night elf starting area since I figured it would be less popular than most any I like the scenery there. Pop on the Buffy musical soundtrack (hadn't heard it in forever) and it is go time.
First I flipped to my PVP gear for the 4 piece 15% outdoor speed boost which when combined with travel form puts me at 61% faster than everyone else without any speed enhancement. When anyone uses their 60% speed boosting egg basket I am still just a little faster. Next, as if that weren't advantage enough, I enabled auto loot for one click egg grabbing.
Only cat dash and rogue sprint were faster and are on such long cooldowns that it wasn't a concern. Mounting also provides a speed advantage but with the frequent stops remounting becomes more of a burden than the benefit of additional speed (you may beat me to one egg, but I will get the next two).
So after a few laps I am getting really good at it as I learn all the spawn locations. I'm raking in eggs faster than I can loot the chocolate out of them. Around this time I get a whisper, "u ass". Certainly not a very nice greeting so I replied, "If you move faster, you'd see less of it." Then they responded something along the lines of, "whatever you rude something or other".
Sure I beat them to an egg, sure they clicked on the same one I did and sure I clicked on the second one there before they did as well, but is that wrong? I certainly didn't insult anyone when they beat me to an egg, I just moved on, after all I can't be everywhere at once and neither can anyone else.
By far my favorite eggs to grab were from pseudo AFK players camping one spawn and obviously doing something else to keep them occupied. Usually I avoid an egg with someone next to it, but after a few rotations it was easy to pick out the folks that were just sitting there and there was much less competition for those eggs as most would assume those eggs would be gone by the time they got to them.
Usually even I would consider it in bad form to grab something that someone is obviously waiting for, but in this case there are two groups of people: those that are content to watch a single spawn or small cluster and watch a movie and those that put all their attention toward egg gathering and just want to get it over with. I fall into the latter category obviously. If you don't want to put in the effort to notice you have an egg in front of you before I run over and grab it then I have no sympathy.
I feel a little bad for the folks that are trying and just don't have the speed and/or reflexes of a hasted melee veteran (caster types don't usually have that skill set as developed), but there are plenty of eggs in the sea; go the other direction, don't pick on me for using every advantage I have available to me. My absolute favorite egg snatch was a cat charge through the air onto a rabbit critter right next to an egg.
Still I got pretty bored of egg gathering by the end and am happy that I will not have to do it again (queuing for a random in the middle was a nice diversion). I'm sure many others are happy I won't be snatching eggs out from under them as well, but there are other druids out there and druids are a pretty savvy bunch when it comes to making the best use of their class. I can say one thing though, it wasn't nearly as bad as the Turkinator.
I chose the night elf starting area since I figured it would be less popular than most any I like the scenery there. Pop on the Buffy musical soundtrack (hadn't heard it in forever) and it is go time.
First I flipped to my PVP gear for the 4 piece 15% outdoor speed boost which when combined with travel form puts me at 61% faster than everyone else without any speed enhancement. When anyone uses their 60% speed boosting egg basket I am still just a little faster. Next, as if that weren't advantage enough, I enabled auto loot for one click egg grabbing.
Only cat dash and rogue sprint were faster and are on such long cooldowns that it wasn't a concern. Mounting also provides a speed advantage but with the frequent stops remounting becomes more of a burden than the benefit of additional speed (you may beat me to one egg, but I will get the next two).
So after a few laps I am getting really good at it as I learn all the spawn locations. I'm raking in eggs faster than I can loot the chocolate out of them. Around this time I get a whisper, "u ass". Certainly not a very nice greeting so I replied, "If you move faster, you'd see less of it." Then they responded something along the lines of, "whatever you rude something or other".
Sure I beat them to an egg, sure they clicked on the same one I did and sure I clicked on the second one there before they did as well, but is that wrong? I certainly didn't insult anyone when they beat me to an egg, I just moved on, after all I can't be everywhere at once and neither can anyone else.
By far my favorite eggs to grab were from pseudo AFK players camping one spawn and obviously doing something else to keep them occupied. Usually I avoid an egg with someone next to it, but after a few rotations it was easy to pick out the folks that were just sitting there and there was much less competition for those eggs as most would assume those eggs would be gone by the time they got to them.
Usually even I would consider it in bad form to grab something that someone is obviously waiting for, but in this case there are two groups of people: those that are content to watch a single spawn or small cluster and watch a movie and those that put all their attention toward egg gathering and just want to get it over with. I fall into the latter category obviously. If you don't want to put in the effort to notice you have an egg in front of you before I run over and grab it then I have no sympathy.
I feel a little bad for the folks that are trying and just don't have the speed and/or reflexes of a hasted melee veteran (caster types don't usually have that skill set as developed), but there are plenty of eggs in the sea; go the other direction, don't pick on me for using every advantage I have available to me. My absolute favorite egg snatch was a cat charge through the air onto a rabbit critter right next to an egg.
Still I got pretty bored of egg gathering by the end and am happy that I will not have to do it again (queuing for a random in the middle was a nice diversion). I'm sure many others are happy I won't be snatching eggs out from under them as well, but there are other druids out there and druids are a pretty savvy bunch when it comes to making the best use of their class. I can say one thing though, it wasn't nearly as bad as the Turkinator.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Something New!
After reading a few web comics I have new found confidence in my skills as an artist. Well not so much that as I have realized that comics can be funny even if the drawing is simplistic. Anyway enjoy!
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
More Interesting Gear Coming in Cataclysm?
Well for starters the cataclysm changes that were revealed in a blue post not too long ago came as a bit of a let down to me. I think a lot of it is that they just aren't telling us everything yet and in those hairy details are where my concerns lie.
First off, one thing that bothers me currently about a lot of stats is there isn't a good way for your average player to figure out how much of a certain stat they need without going to a third party source. It is fairly easy to discern which stats we want, like agility is really nice for feral druids, but when it comes to things like expertise and hit there comes a point where intuition has diminishing returns.
The mouse overs do a good job of explaining what the stat does and hitting more and getting dodged or parried less sounds wonderful, but shouldn't there be some indication that your chance of missing or of being dodged or parried is reaching zero? It is a good thing there are people that have nothing better to do that play dress up and whack things for hours to find out something blizzard already knows. Doesn't sound much fun to me, but then again I'm not much of a theorycrafter. Metagaming kills immersion and all that jazz.
The main problem with showing some concrete percentages is that those values are a moving target depending on what you are hitting. But it just so happens that Blizzard made monster avoidance based entirely off of level, targets of lower level are easier to hit and targets of higher level are harder to hit. So unless some oddball creature out there breaks with tradition displaying meaningful data to players is sort of trivial.
Show the lowest chance to miss, be dodged or be parried along with the level that percentage is based on. This way you know that anything of a lower level you are guaranteed to hit, not be dodged or not be parried and anything with a higher level would have a larger chance. It's not really important to know an exact number for every level so long as there is enough information there to know if you've hit a cap or not and about where you are. Along with that % in the tool tip keep the arbitrary stat values more or less (more on that next) as they are convenient for quick comparisons with known values once those known values are derived.
This type of information would be especially handy on the fly while leveling where there isn't a whole lot of information available since all the thoerycrafting is done at max level. Sure there are a few formulas derived that can be applied to lower levels, but who is going to do that?
The second issue I have with the current system of stats aside from all the values given being completely arbitrary is that there is not one, but sometimes two and often three arbitrary values for the same thing. Hit rating, melee hit and spell hit for example. If you count arbitrary percentages that is four arbitrary values.
I can accept that casters require more hit rating even though I am not sure why that needs to be the case, but what I don't understand is why there needs to be a second value to represent hit rating in another form. What this leads to is one stat on my gear which I have to convert to figure out what the end result will be on the final stat. This is easy enough with gear when you just try it on, but when you are trying to figure out which gems or enchants to place on your gear it quickly becomes overly tedious. In addition to a simple addition/subtraction there is an extra multiplication/division by some arbitrary conversion factor which once again must be derived or obtained by a third party.
With any luck Blizzard thought of all that and just didn't tell us, but I doubt it. Lets get back to what they did think of though.
I like the removal of armor penetration, attack power and spell power. Trying to remember for each class which stats had a 1 or a two conversion factor from base stats was never easy, especially when it changed. It is also nice to compare apples to apples rather than weigh the pros and cons of two stats that basically do the same thing in a different way. Those changes are really nice. Spirit and MP5 fall into the same category. Now if only hit rating, melee hit and spell hit all became simply hit.
Removing defense was nice for bears, but I'm not sure it really mattered for anyone else. Bears lost defense because they were tired of making defense leather for one half of a talent tree of one class. I'm surprise they haven't found a way for holy paladins to heal with strength and regen with stamina. Anyway, as a result of not needing defense there is a lot of gear with defense on it like necks and rings that we bears would rather see with straight up dodge. So if all the defense on ring and necks or at least on more items is turned into dodge, bears win! If they convert it into a mix of dodge, parry and block then it is a wash. I would imagine a lot more bear friendly gear comes out of this change though.
The other main part of the changes was there is a whole lot less choice as to what gear people should be wearing and with that lessened choice there is a lot less work for Blizzard to do in coming up with loot. My guess is that nothing much will come of that besides less gear to chose from considering the emphasis that has been placed recently on how many different pieces of gear were created. I am hoping though that that effort usually required to appease a few specific classes/specs will be put toward making more interesting procs and effects for everyone. I've seen a few blue posts promoting weapon and trinket procs as something they enjoy playing with, maybe procs on armor could be next, who knows.
It could just be that the reduced workload on gear will be redirected towards other things like the world being blown apart. The world only blows up once though so those content patches have the opportunity to have some really neat stuff.
First off, one thing that bothers me currently about a lot of stats is there isn't a good way for your average player to figure out how much of a certain stat they need without going to a third party source. It is fairly easy to discern which stats we want, like agility is really nice for feral druids, but when it comes to things like expertise and hit there comes a point where intuition has diminishing returns.
The mouse overs do a good job of explaining what the stat does and hitting more and getting dodged or parried less sounds wonderful, but shouldn't there be some indication that your chance of missing or of being dodged or parried is reaching zero? It is a good thing there are people that have nothing better to do that play dress up and whack things for hours to find out something blizzard already knows. Doesn't sound much fun to me, but then again I'm not much of a theorycrafter. Metagaming kills immersion and all that jazz.
The main problem with showing some concrete percentages is that those values are a moving target depending on what you are hitting. But it just so happens that Blizzard made monster avoidance based entirely off of level, targets of lower level are easier to hit and targets of higher level are harder to hit. So unless some oddball creature out there breaks with tradition displaying meaningful data to players is sort of trivial.
Show the lowest chance to miss, be dodged or be parried along with the level that percentage is based on. This way you know that anything of a lower level you are guaranteed to hit, not be dodged or not be parried and anything with a higher level would have a larger chance. It's not really important to know an exact number for every level so long as there is enough information there to know if you've hit a cap or not and about where you are. Along with that % in the tool tip keep the arbitrary stat values more or less (more on that next) as they are convenient for quick comparisons with known values once those known values are derived.
This type of information would be especially handy on the fly while leveling where there isn't a whole lot of information available since all the thoerycrafting is done at max level. Sure there are a few formulas derived that can be applied to lower levels, but who is going to do that?
The second issue I have with the current system of stats aside from all the values given being completely arbitrary is that there is not one, but sometimes two and often three arbitrary values for the same thing. Hit rating, melee hit and spell hit for example. If you count arbitrary percentages that is four arbitrary values.
I can accept that casters require more hit rating even though I am not sure why that needs to be the case, but what I don't understand is why there needs to be a second value to represent hit rating in another form. What this leads to is one stat on my gear which I have to convert to figure out what the end result will be on the final stat. This is easy enough with gear when you just try it on, but when you are trying to figure out which gems or enchants to place on your gear it quickly becomes overly tedious. In addition to a simple addition/subtraction there is an extra multiplication/division by some arbitrary conversion factor which once again must be derived or obtained by a third party.
With any luck Blizzard thought of all that and just didn't tell us, but I doubt it. Lets get back to what they did think of though.
I like the removal of armor penetration, attack power and spell power. Trying to remember for each class which stats had a 1 or a two conversion factor from base stats was never easy, especially when it changed. It is also nice to compare apples to apples rather than weigh the pros and cons of two stats that basically do the same thing in a different way. Those changes are really nice. Spirit and MP5 fall into the same category. Now if only hit rating, melee hit and spell hit all became simply hit.
Removing defense was nice for bears, but I'm not sure it really mattered for anyone else. Bears lost defense because they were tired of making defense leather for one half of a talent tree of one class. I'm surprise they haven't found a way for holy paladins to heal with strength and regen with stamina. Anyway, as a result of not needing defense there is a lot of gear with defense on it like necks and rings that we bears would rather see with straight up dodge. So if all the defense on ring and necks or at least on more items is turned into dodge, bears win! If they convert it into a mix of dodge, parry and block then it is a wash. I would imagine a lot more bear friendly gear comes out of this change though.
The other main part of the changes was there is a whole lot less choice as to what gear people should be wearing and with that lessened choice there is a lot less work for Blizzard to do in coming up with loot. My guess is that nothing much will come of that besides less gear to chose from considering the emphasis that has been placed recently on how many different pieces of gear were created. I am hoping though that that effort usually required to appease a few specific classes/specs will be put toward making more interesting procs and effects for everyone. I've seen a few blue posts promoting weapon and trinket procs as something they enjoy playing with, maybe procs on armor could be next, who knows.
It could just be that the reduced workload on gear will be redirected towards other things like the world being blown apart. The world only blows up once though so those content patches have the opportunity to have some really neat stuff.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Where is the Paladin Buff Overhaul?
Shamans got their totem groups implemented recently which took the tedious process of manually putting down the same sets of totems over and over and turned it into a think about it, set it up once, and reuse what you've already decided type mechanic. Something add-ons like TotemTimers had been doing for players before that. Shamans always had it easier than paladins though since totems are not nearly as heavily scrutinized as blessings. People can be downright snippy when you let a blessing lapse or not give them the one they wanted regardless if you can even cast it or not.
Paladins without add-ons are still back where shamans were, having to make the same decisions every few minutes. It isn't an interesting decision either like certain totems are more useful for different fights. The same classes/specs always want the same blessings fight after fight. Add-ons like pally power mask the problem, but that doesn't make it go away.
Paladins need some mechanic to make a choice with each group they are with and reuse that decision repeatedly throughout the raid. Something like a prayer ability that refreshes all of the paladin's active blessings would be a start, but blessings do fall off when people die at the very least. The next step would be to have the prayer not only refresh, but restore the previous blessing the paladin used last on each person. A unique buff or debuff could be used to indicate that a blessing was used and is no longer active on affected players so it wouldn't seem so out of place compared to existing game mechanics.
Once it is easy to refresh blessings on an entire raid the next logical step is to remove the longer class wide versions of blessings and make all blessings last a half hour, or even leave them at 10 minutes. Longer is better, but it really doesn't matter; look at warriors and death knights with their 2-3 minutes buffs to refresh. Rebalance reagent and mana cost around whatever duration is decided.
The blessing refreshing ability should be made available right around the time the paladin is starting to group with others in instances, somewhere around level 20 at the latest. Too soon and it is added complexity, too late and grouping is frustrating.
That would be a nice way to get paladins more in line with everyone else in terms of clicks to buff as well as simplifying an overly complicated set of abilities with a clunky by class mechanic and at the same time keep that unique paladin feel.
I should not be required to use an add-on to play one specific class effectively.
Paladins without add-ons are still back where shamans were, having to make the same decisions every few minutes. It isn't an interesting decision either like certain totems are more useful for different fights. The same classes/specs always want the same blessings fight after fight. Add-ons like pally power mask the problem, but that doesn't make it go away.
Paladins need some mechanic to make a choice with each group they are with and reuse that decision repeatedly throughout the raid. Something like a prayer ability that refreshes all of the paladin's active blessings would be a start, but blessings do fall off when people die at the very least. The next step would be to have the prayer not only refresh, but restore the previous blessing the paladin used last on each person. A unique buff or debuff could be used to indicate that a blessing was used and is no longer active on affected players so it wouldn't seem so out of place compared to existing game mechanics.
Once it is easy to refresh blessings on an entire raid the next logical step is to remove the longer class wide versions of blessings and make all blessings last a half hour, or even leave them at 10 minutes. Longer is better, but it really doesn't matter; look at warriors and death knights with their 2-3 minutes buffs to refresh. Rebalance reagent and mana cost around whatever duration is decided.
The blessing refreshing ability should be made available right around the time the paladin is starting to group with others in instances, somewhere around level 20 at the latest. Too soon and it is added complexity, too late and grouping is frustrating.
That would be a nice way to get paladins more in line with everyone else in terms of clicks to buff as well as simplifying an overly complicated set of abilities with a clunky by class mechanic and at the same time keep that unique paladin feel.
I should not be required to use an add-on to play one specific class effectively.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Drop of a Hat
It's amazing what people will drop a 5-man pug over and even more what they won't. The run that best illustrates this was one I had recently in the Pit of Sauron. I lost 4 people that run which is quite a lot for any run and the odd part was this was a well geared fast group.
I queued for the instance since I needed to grab some quest items for my battered hilt chain and reforge a sword there. So first thing I did when I zoned in was buff everyone and then run around for ~20 seconds tops grabbing a couple infused saronite bars right at the entrance area. Then I headed over to the first pull skipping along on the right like most PUGs do, made sure everyone was with me and pulled. A DPS immediately dropped and the healer followed.
I guess they were insulted that I would take 20 seconds of their time to grab a quest item, the very reason I was there in the first place. In any case they caused the rest of the group to die which was pretty lame. So I zoned back in and whoever happened to be the leader requeued. I mentioned that the last healer left the group at the start of the first pull so there wasn't any confusion as to why everyone was running back. Maybe I should of mentioned I was grabbing quest items before that, who knows.
We're trucking along just fine, first boss goes down and we are headed towards Krick and Ick when hilarious disaster strikes. I charge an ambushing geist and it jumps at me at the same time. We meet in the middle which just happened to be just over the side of the cliff. The hunter in the group jumped down after me, he must of been crazy, and the rest of the group stayed up top while the other three tanked a loose geist that jumped on the party in my absence.
After the initial oh crap I remembered the poison slinging add that I tend to miss walking up the ramp out of the pit and decided to head over that way and see if I could get out there as well. Turns out I could and I brought that poison slinging add with me. Rounded the corner I had to grab that poison guys cousin and closer to the group I had to grab the rest of the geists and grab that one that was hitting people while I was away.
Took a couple of cooldowns to keep myself up going around the long way without a healer, but I made it and no one died surprisingly. No one left the group either.
I keep pulling the rest of the nasty poison mobs before the next boss when a DPS asks for a short break, which I responded that it was just a couple trash mobs and he could take a moment as we continued. Then the healer asked for a break as well, turns out he got a nosebleed and needed to take care of that.
I can only imagine it was a direct result of falling out of his chair laughing at the tank that flew off the cliff. I quipped that if anyone should of gotten a nosebleed it should of been me; that got a few lols. Healer is back and ready to go pretty much right away and we take out the boss. Couple people die standing in stuff, we rez, no big.
Since everyone is standing around still rezzing and waiting to loot I made the mistake of mentioning that we could skip the next two trash pulls (the two most annoying in the whole place) if we mounted and ran past them as they walked down the ramp. Everyone agreed that would be a pretty cool thing to do. I'd only heard about it in rumors from other PUGs and never gotten to try it since someone always runs ahead and starts the event.
So four of us are mounted and the last dude to rez was still drinking and eating. I head toward the ramp and turn around to wait for the last guy as he was just mounting. The other three kept going right to the top and it was just me and the other guy stuck at the bottom as it was too late to run up.
That didn't stop him from trying though, he ran right into those mobs at the bottom and died. I wasn't in combat so I just flipped to kitty and stealthed thinking I'd sneak up to the other three and clear the way back down backwards. The group on top had other plans and ran back down pulling everything on thier way and died. So there I am, all alone waiting for everyone to come back, two people leave the group. The guy I waited for stayed and the healer stayed.
We got two more right away of course and finished the instance without further incident. So those two that left ran ahead without making sure everyone was with them and killed themselves then quit what was an otherwise smooth run up to that point. Yes I jumped off a cliff, but that was a mighty smooth recovery. Who does that?
Three badges and potential 232 upgrades in less than 10 minutes opposed to a 15 minute deserter debuff and 15 minutes in the queue as DPS on top of that. Both from different servers so it's not like they had something else come up right at that moment.
For the best though I suppose, not the type of person I'd probably want to run with anyway and wipes are a fairly convenient time for people to drop since new people just joining are running in at the same time as everyone else.
I queued for the instance since I needed to grab some quest items for my battered hilt chain and reforge a sword there. So first thing I did when I zoned in was buff everyone and then run around for ~20 seconds tops grabbing a couple infused saronite bars right at the entrance area. Then I headed over to the first pull skipping along on the right like most PUGs do, made sure everyone was with me and pulled. A DPS immediately dropped and the healer followed.
I guess they were insulted that I would take 20 seconds of their time to grab a quest item, the very reason I was there in the first place. In any case they caused the rest of the group to die which was pretty lame. So I zoned back in and whoever happened to be the leader requeued. I mentioned that the last healer left the group at the start of the first pull so there wasn't any confusion as to why everyone was running back. Maybe I should of mentioned I was grabbing quest items before that, who knows.
We're trucking along just fine, first boss goes down and we are headed towards Krick and Ick when hilarious disaster strikes. I charge an ambushing geist and it jumps at me at the same time. We meet in the middle which just happened to be just over the side of the cliff. The hunter in the group jumped down after me, he must of been crazy, and the rest of the group stayed up top while the other three tanked a loose geist that jumped on the party in my absence.
After the initial oh crap I remembered the poison slinging add that I tend to miss walking up the ramp out of the pit and decided to head over that way and see if I could get out there as well. Turns out I could and I brought that poison slinging add with me. Rounded the corner I had to grab that poison guys cousin and closer to the group I had to grab the rest of the geists and grab that one that was hitting people while I was away.
Took a couple of cooldowns to keep myself up going around the long way without a healer, but I made it and no one died surprisingly. No one left the group either.
I keep pulling the rest of the nasty poison mobs before the next boss when a DPS asks for a short break, which I responded that it was just a couple trash mobs and he could take a moment as we continued. Then the healer asked for a break as well, turns out he got a nosebleed and needed to take care of that.
I can only imagine it was a direct result of falling out of his chair laughing at the tank that flew off the cliff. I quipped that if anyone should of gotten a nosebleed it should of been me; that got a few lols. Healer is back and ready to go pretty much right away and we take out the boss. Couple people die standing in stuff, we rez, no big.
Since everyone is standing around still rezzing and waiting to loot I made the mistake of mentioning that we could skip the next two trash pulls (the two most annoying in the whole place) if we mounted and ran past them as they walked down the ramp. Everyone agreed that would be a pretty cool thing to do. I'd only heard about it in rumors from other PUGs and never gotten to try it since someone always runs ahead and starts the event.
So four of us are mounted and the last dude to rez was still drinking and eating. I head toward the ramp and turn around to wait for the last guy as he was just mounting. The other three kept going right to the top and it was just me and the other guy stuck at the bottom as it was too late to run up.
That didn't stop him from trying though, he ran right into those mobs at the bottom and died. I wasn't in combat so I just flipped to kitty and stealthed thinking I'd sneak up to the other three and clear the way back down backwards. The group on top had other plans and ran back down pulling everything on thier way and died. So there I am, all alone waiting for everyone to come back, two people leave the group. The guy I waited for stayed and the healer stayed.
We got two more right away of course and finished the instance without further incident. So those two that left ran ahead without making sure everyone was with them and killed themselves then quit what was an otherwise smooth run up to that point. Yes I jumped off a cliff, but that was a mighty smooth recovery. Who does that?
Three badges and potential 232 upgrades in less than 10 minutes opposed to a 15 minute deserter debuff and 15 minutes in the queue as DPS on top of that. Both from different servers so it's not like they had something else come up right at that moment.
For the best though I suppose, not the type of person I'd probably want to run with anyway and wipes are a fairly convenient time for people to drop since new people just joining are running in at the same time as everyone else.
Just When I'd Given Up Hope
Yes ICC heroic runners, there is a battered hilt. I managed to run Forge of Souls the day it came out and have run it pretty much every day since along with Pit of Sauron and occasionally Halls of Reflection. Until this weekend I had not seen a single hilt drop. Actually I didn't see a single hilt drop this weekend either technically, I saw two drop.
The first I saw drop I actually won and that was on my hunter who is my least geared 80 and queuing for the ICC heroics while I mine ore to level up blacksmithing on my death knight. Ironically it dropped off a mob I body pulled since I wasn't looking behind me.
It was Pit of Sauron and we has skipped the first few mobs by skirting along the right side. We even skipped the caster pat with its skeleton minions and just went straight into the boney worker types. As you've probably guessed we didn't kill the skeletons before that pat came back and guess who the hunter in the back was.
By the time I pulled it the tank had already jumped down and couldn't get back up to me so I was left to my huntery devices to feign, and proceed to misdirect everything onto the tank before I or the healer went splat. It all worked out and much to my surprise I looted to find a completely foreign graphic, it was a battered hilt! Everyone rolled need, I won, we moved on to complete a very uneventful instance. Bet that tank that left right after zoning in felt a little bummed and didn't know why.
After that I immediately sent that quest item to my druid and began the quest chain for my Lightborn Spire. That quest chain is easily one of the best in the game, it's a shame so few will get to experience it.
The first I saw drop I actually won and that was on my hunter who is my least geared 80 and queuing for the ICC heroics while I mine ore to level up blacksmithing on my death knight. Ironically it dropped off a mob I body pulled since I wasn't looking behind me.
It was Pit of Sauron and we has skipped the first few mobs by skirting along the right side. We even skipped the caster pat with its skeleton minions and just went straight into the boney worker types. As you've probably guessed we didn't kill the skeletons before that pat came back and guess who the hunter in the back was.
By the time I pulled it the tank had already jumped down and couldn't get back up to me so I was left to my huntery devices to feign, and proceed to misdirect everything onto the tank before I or the healer went splat. It all worked out and much to my surprise I looted to find a completely foreign graphic, it was a battered hilt! Everyone rolled need, I won, we moved on to complete a very uneventful instance. Bet that tank that left right after zoning in felt a little bummed and didn't know why.
After that I immediately sent that quest item to my druid and began the quest chain for my Lightborn Spire. That quest chain is easily one of the best in the game, it's a shame so few will get to experience it.
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