Through a Newbie 80's Eyes

I'm still playing, but WoW's starting to slip from my mind a bit. Guild's doing all right. We just downed H Putricide last night, placing us 10/12 for Heroic ICC and #60 on the World 10-man Strict. But I find myself taking more breaks to play other things, read more books.

Still, a topic came up recently at my work (which is filled with WoW players), that reminded me of my old post Tanking Isn't For Everyone.

There are a fair number of coworkers who are all in the same guild together on Alliance and I talk with them a lot (usually about non-WoW stuff, but WoW does come up frequently with a few of them). One of them is probably my favorite way to get a perspective of what it's like to be a newbie. And I mean a real newbie.

She just hit 80 for the first time a couple weeks ago and has a particular playstyle she's grown attached to over her long trek to max level. (She has been playing since vanilla, but didn't hit 60 before TBC came out and didn't hit 70 before WotLK.) The quirky thing about it is that her favorite playstyle while leveling was prot, on her warrior. Not that leveling prot is a bad thing, but she has primarily been a solo-player and enjoyed prot for the survivability, even back when prot was horrible as a leveling spec.

Now that she's 80, she's becoming more interested in group play, and since she's in a guild with all these other coworkers, group play is theoretically in the cards. But she's very, very new, and while she has the basic notions of what a tank has to do, she rarely, if ever, tanked while leveling up. She didn't like running instances with strangers and being a tank she could only perform her party role if her friends along for the ride were the same level (because anyone giving her run-throughs would just dps and not let her tank). But she can't prot dps her way through heroics without being laughed at (though she says she's fine with people laughing about her poor gear as long as they're not being outright rude), so her guild gave her the suggestion of going fury while accumulating prot gear.

She did. And though she was laughed at for her poor dps, she made do, and the folks at work pointed her to sites like Maxdps and Wowhead, so she could play around with the tools and learn more about her class. They suggested a spec for her, gave her advice. I gave her what limited knowledge I had of how to play a fury warrior, but realized I couldn't advise her to learn the way I do when I'm learning a spec. Elitist Jerks? She needed to know rotations and how to pick gear, but she didn't need BiS lists, which raid trinkets to wear, the merits of a standard meta gem vs. an unorthodox one, or how a run speed enchant enhances dps.

Her needs are much more basic than EJ. She's a person who's still learning how to function in a 5-man.

Over the past couple weeks she has diligently been gearing towards the magic 540 to be defense capped (and she's hit it!), but she didn't know of this number until we told her. There's nothing that tells a player in game that they are now good to go.

Just today we found out she hit another pitfall. She had enough emblems to go buy her first two pieces of T9 and because she was working on her fury set, she intended to buy two pieces of the dps set, which Maxdps had recommended to her. Problem was, nobody told her that there are actually two sets for warriors. (Think about it, if you're a newbie and you rarely read anything outside of game, how are you supposed to know there are two sets with near identical names?) She just saw "Wrynn" which she knew was the warrior T9 set, and bought the first legs and shoulders she saw and promptly socketed them with Strength gems, which she knew were good for warriors.

Unfortunately, she didn't read the bonuses so she didn't realize until after she'd socketed them that she'd purchased the tanking pieces. Fortunately for her, she at least got two pieces of tank gear instead of one tank and one dps so she now has a set piece bonus. And she really wants to tank instead of dps.

She loves having a shield and Spell Reflection is one of her favorite warrior abilities. If that's not an endearing thing to know about a budding warrior tank, I'm not sure what is.

But she still needs to learn how to tank, because here's the kicker.

This coworker's guild wants to go to ICC. They're a small guild, just short of having ten people to do an all guild run (they're trying to remedy that by bribing me to bring an alt over) and have never stepped into ICC as a unit. Most of them fall into the non-raider category, though a few have mains in a raid guild.

My dear coworker wants to go to ICC, because she's never done anything like this before. And she has no problem with the whole gearing concept, as in working on running heroics to get emblems to get gear, but there's a lot she's missing just because she has never been exposed to the raider mentality of being prepared before even setting foot in the instance.

She's with friends, so nobody's too harsh on her, but I told her quite flatly that the tank has one of the most important jobs in the raid and a tank's gear has to be in tip top shape. More than anyone else, a tank can't slough off on gear. She's at 23k health in her tanking gear at the moment (despite being defense capped) and initially I was shocked while going over her armory with her, but then I quickly found out why.

No enchants. Gems weren't of the highest quality (and the Strength gems in her T9 tanking pieces didn't help). Even though she'd bought her dual spec she hadn't set up her second tree for prot yet.

If she fixed that just on her current gearset/spec she probably could push up to 25k. A defense enchant on her shield and chest would let her remove one of her defense trinkets for something like Essence of Gossamer or The Black Heart. Still a long ways for being ICC-ready, but she'd start looking respectable. I know some people can raid ICC in blue gear, but she doesn't have the skill to do something like that.

And then there's the tanking itself. She hasn't tanked many instances yet. I don't think she's confident enough to do it for a pug, and had a rough experience just with a guild group in a non-heroic. Practice makes perfect, but I'm not sure she understands just had hard it will be in a raid, especially what will amount to progression tanking for this group. She just has nothing to gauge it against, being so new to 80.

I think if she manages to get into ICC she'll be surprised by how hard it is, how progress is measured by bosses, or even phases of a boss, and many guilds still have not finished. Will she be able to react quickly enough to get out of a Defile on Lich King? Will she be able to manage tanking swaps on Sindragosa? Could she possibly kite slimes on Rotface?

I might be overreacting, because everyone has to start somewhere and goodness knows I had my share of being a nub, but she's got a long road ahead of her. I wouldn't have the patience for her in my own guild, and I don't mean that to be mean. My guild has a very different focus than hers, and I know we're not newbie-friendly. Everyone's at a different place in the game and our expectations are different. I couldn't conceive of training someone who's never tanked before (especially one on their very first 80!) to where they can do ICC.

But you know, I want to see if she can do it.

2010 Blizzard Global Writing Contest

The Blizzard Global Writing Contest is open again. There is some confusion about the deadline though that I'm hoping Blizzard will answer. On the main contest page it says the contest ends by July 30th, but the official rules page says it does not end until August 23rd.

That's quite a difference. Three weeks' worth.

I'm hoping it's the latter since that will give me more time to refine my story, but a part of me wants it to be the former since I'm going to be quite stressed about that time of August since I will be heading off to the Writing of the Future workshop for the contest I won earlier this year. I would not be able to take full advantage of the extra time, but extra time is extra time and I'd be able to use most of it.

Unlike last year, I've found what I'm going to write almost off the bat and there will be less brainstorming involved. Last time a fictionalized version of Gillien, my paladin, went on a mission to find and execute his sister, who had joined the San'layn, but he ended up sparing her at the end of the story when he realized she hadn't been entirely subsumed by evil.

It wasn't my best work (I was so stressed, I was doing revisions up to 3am the night before), but good enough to garner an Honorable Mention.

Now that WotLK is coming to a close I think it's time to return to Gillien and his sister and find out what happens as he joins the war effort against Icecrown Citadel.

I suppose my primary concerns would be that if Gillien's story wasn't interesting enough to be selected as first place or a runner-up last time, why would it this time around? Or, what if Blizzard feels like they've read this story before, since it will involve the siblings meeting up again?

There are a lot of particulars I need to figure out too. Since this is a short story I feel it's important to end on a powerful message. Why is this story being told? Why does it matter? Why will the reader remember it long after the story is over?

And the answers are: I don't know yet. My last story was titled "By Whatever Means Necessary" because that's what Gillien had believed when it came to his mission, and in the end he comes to realize another (less ruthless) meaning in those words. I would like to do something similarly meaningful with this story.

I have a couple working titles already in mind that could tie into a couple potential themes, but I'm not sure where I'm going with them yet. I guess I still have some time.

I'm undecided whether Hana will come back as a character this time around. She served as Gillien's conscience in the last one, but after his awakening at the end of the last story I'm not sure he needs one anymore.

Want to Raid with <Be Your True Mind>?

Our ret paladin is being overtaken by his real life, and has been kind enough to give notice so we can start searching for a replacement. While the preference is for a replacement ret paladin with a prot off-spec, we may also be open to a fury warrior also with a prot off-spec.

A little about <Be Your True Mind>. We're a 10-man strict guild, currently 8/12 in ICC hard modes. We raid just twice a week, Mondays and Saturdays, from 8-11pm Pacific (server time).

We run a very narrow roster of 11 raiders, with the odd-person out being rotated as needed. This means that benching is extremely rare, while also allowing for a person to be absent every now and then (because real life should come first and people sometimes have work, weddings, birthdays, etc. to go to). This also means that the hybrids in our guild often devote both their specs to PvE so that they can perform as a tank, healer, or dps depending on what the fight needs or who is available that day.

I can say that I have dpsed and healed every fight in ICC and tanked everything except Lich King. If you take pride in being able to raid in more than one spec, this isn't a bad place to be, because you'll likely get your chance.

Our guild chat is a bit rowdy, and probably not for the easily offended, but it's all in good fun, and in that respect probably isn't too much different from other raid guilds.

You do not need to qualify for 10-man strict in order to apply to us (we have some wiggle room to take people with ICC 25 experience), but if you are currently 10-man strict we expect you to keep that qualification for the time you are with us.

If you think you may be interested, please visit our guild site where you can fill out an application or ask any questions you may have. Note: If you send an application through the GuildLaunch system it will go directly to our private forums where you won't be able to see it. Don't panic! If you post it in the public area it will be immediately visible to all.

Selling Myself Short

I don't know if other people who have multiple 80s ever run into this problem, but I've been habitually regarding my feral druid's dps as "crappy."

This is the first expansion I've had more than one max level character with a main spec as dps, and being that I raid, I have a good idea of what feels like good dps and what feels... underwhelming. I know meters aren't everything, but they're a good tool for evaluating one's own performance and as a feral druid I've gotten used to feeling inferior to when I'm on my moonkin.

But then again, it's inevitable that given less gear and less time invested, that whatever my feral does should feel pretty "poor" against my main.

Then today I went on an ICC 10 pug on my feral. It was a good run, clearing out two wings before people failed on Blood Princes (between a lagging healer and an inexperienced range tank it wasn't so good). One-shotting Putricide was definitely a highlight though. After the raid was over and people were leaving, the raid leader thanked me for my "leet dps."

I was stunned.

My crappy dps alt? The one with virtually no drops from ICC until that [Whispering Fanged Skull] dropped today?

But going by Recount I had set a new personal best for dps on Saurfang. I was either #1 or #2 on almost every fight, even crappy ones for cats like Rotface. I was pleasantly surprised. I wasn't the worst geared in the raid, but not the best either. Definitely middle of the road in that pug.

On a whim I decided to take my dps and compare it to the benchmark of my own guild, using the World of Logs report for our most recent raid. As in, if I was applying for an open feral spot in my own guild, would I take me?

I stack up better than I thought I would, but I can't say my feral compares to our rogue and our ret paladin, her gear still isn't there yet (get rid of those ToC 5 leather boots!), but I think if she was full ICC 10 geared she could be competitive. I would consider her as a backup raider if someone wasn't able to make it.

So maybe I'm not so bad after all. Maybe for my gear I'm actually doing just fine.

[Paladin] How I've Missed Arena

Ever since my Season 6 3v3 team broke up, I've haven't been able to hit my arena stride again. My S8 3v3 team was doing so-so, but it wasn't a good comp and communication between our two dps was lacking. Target switches weren't being called out in time, CCs weren't being coordinated, and the team lead doing the callouts wasn't always that aware whether or not it was possible for his orders to be carried out.

That's not to say he was a horrible player, I think he would have been fine as someone on my S6 5s team, but I don't think he was the right personality fit for the hunter I normally play with, especially as the lead dps making the call-outs. And then he decided to transfer to another server, which ended our 3s run.

So last night my long-time hunter teammate and I resuscitated our 2s team. We've spent portions of Seasons 4, 6, and 7 playing 2v2 together, so it's safe to say that even if we're not the best duo around, we at least have a good idea of what we're capable of.

For instance, if I'm the focus and I can reasonably take the hits, I don't try to LoS any melee on me. I do stay in motion, but I keep them right where my hunter can hit them. If they catch me while I'm hiding I'll kite them over and around obstacles to bring them in view of my hunter, because the less he has to move the more damage he can do.

Similar he always lets me know where he drops a trap so I can get opponents off of me.

I'm not sure what the plan usually is for a hunter/holy paladin duo, but we seem to work well as an endurance team. We don't burst anyone down unless they're undergeared, but the longer the match goes on, the more likely we're going to win. If we're fighting another dps/healer combo I usually gauge our progress by the other healer's mana bar. It might not feel like we're winning when our focus target keeps getting healed to full, but if my bar's at 90% and they're a third from empty I know we're going to make it.

We didn't run into any decent resto druids last night, which pretty much meant that none of our matches ended up being a half hour long, but we did run into a bunch of double dps and a horrible ret pally/holy pally duo. We only had a couple fights where we just got worked, and they seemed to follow the pattern of: "If we can survive the initial burst, we're probably going to win."

I think our most memorable matches were against an unholy DK/holy pally duo and a feral druid/ret pally combo. The DK/holy pally match was fun for me. It didn't end very quickly, and had a couple scary moments, but I got to kite the DK all over the Dalaran arena until his healer ran out of mana. I pretty much kept mashing my Cleanse button to keep diseases and Chains of Ice off me, maybe a Hand of Freedom every now and then, maybe stun the DK to give myself a little breathing room to heal if Holy Shock every five seconds wasn't enough.

I admit I like the feeling I get when I imagine my opponent seething "I just can't kill this holy pally!"

The match with the feral druid/ret pally combo was memorable because we had so many close calls. Though we ultimately won, it felt very much by the skin of our teeth. The feral druid wasn't shy about using his interrupts. I was Cycloned a lot, and he knew enough to go to bear and hit me with a Feral Charge after the second or third Cyclone wore off so he could lock me up for a longer than he would have gotten with diminishing returns.

The truly annoying thing about Cyclone as a paladin is that you can't bubble out of it. Trinket is the only way.

But communication was good between us. I liked that I was able to call out the Feral Charges before they happened, I was never surprised by them, and my partner managed to Deterrence or Disengage out of the worst scrapes, since he was their focus fire target. I don't know how, but he always managed to have something come off cooldown just when we needed it the most.

It was a long fight considering our opponents were double dps, but we managed to whittle down the druid before he could get a heal off (because he was good about healing himself) and then from there it was just recovery mode. We both had less than half health, my partner nearing the 25% danger zone, but I managed to heal him just enough to stave off any immediate chance of death, and then as the fight continued and his health bar rose it became apparent our remaining opponent wasn't going to have a chance.

I could relax.

I also have to say that my Divine Favor + Holy Shock macro saved our butts so many times. If I only had a split second between CCs, it would still be enough to heal over half my hunter's health bar and then I'd have an instant FoL the next time I got out of CC. I have it bound to the tilde key so it's very close by for those emergency moments.

I'm not sure we'll play again this week, but it felt good stepping into the arena again.

Abandoned By LFD

Did you know that if everyone leaves your dungeon group before the end of the instance and you requeue to find replacements you're placed back at the start of the queue rather than being listed as a dungeon in progress?

Good job.

I had queued as dps on one of my alts and arrived at a particularly unpopular (but totally doable) instance. After waiting for 18 minutes I was raring to go. Everyone zoned in, shuffled around a bit looking at where we were, and then before buffing started, our paladin tank bailed.

That was unfortunate, but whatever. I once went through three tanks in a Sunken Temple run, so having a tank bail because they didn't like the instance wasn't exactly unheard of. I started the requeue process.

All the dps selected their roles, but the druid healer canceled the check, and then bailed. Then one of the dps bailed. I asked the second dps if he was going to bail too, and I didn't get a reply. He just teleported out of the instance, and then bailed.

I sighed and requeued by myself, and found myself looking at another 18 minute wait.

Good job, guys. Good job.

Remembering My Roots (Not a Resto Pun)

I started playing my feral druid again and decided to try getting in on some pug raiding action. After a couple attempts to get into an ICC 10 and an ICC 25 that fell apart before I even got in the instance, I finally got a positive response. But before I got the invite, the raid leader whispered me asking if I was fine with doing just Lower Spire. Going further than that would depend on how the raid looked.

Though I would have liked to go further, I realized it was Sunday and my guild raids on Monday so the chances of me getting into a different ICC raid were looking pretty slim. Besides, I might get a drop or two that would boost my gear score on a server that's obsessed with "you must be this tall to ride." So I agreed.

After the invite I found myself in a group for ICC 10 that consisted of a group of 7 guildies and 3 puggers.

In terms of gear, the guildies were a group that would have been laughed out of any "respectable" raid. They were not undergeared though. They were just perfect for starting out ICC 10. The worst of the puggers was on par with their best, I was a little better (though still with no ICC 10 or 25 gear), and the best had quite a few pieces of ICC 10/25 gear.

We cleared Lower Spire with only a couple wipes on the optional raid weekly, Securing the Ramparts, which the pug hunter repeatedly moaned about. Only after being reminded that the reward was five Frost Emblems, worth two and a half boss kills, did he finally consent to a third attempt, which ended up being successful.

The guildies seemed to be in good spirits though. Friendly bunch. If they complained it must have been in their private guild chat or vent because they were nothing if not civil.

We wiped once along the gauntlet to Sister Svalna, but otherwise got her Frost Emblem. Then we went over to Festergut and they admitted that they'd never done him before.

Since I rather liked the group, they made good time, no extended AFKs, no complaining about wiping, I offered to explain the Festergut fight to them. Though I will have to say that I never want to type out an explanation about Festergut again. I've done Festergut as a tank, healer, melee dps, and ranged dps, and it's a fight where each group has different things they need to be aware of.

We gave Festergut a shot, and wiped not very far in. He'd only managed to get to the third inhale. I couldn't tell for certain, but I don't think the healers were equipped for two healing all the damage in Festergut. I remember having to heal my eyeballs out when my guild first got there and we had three healers, though granted we did not have a 15% ICC buff at the time.

When a second shot didn't produce better results, the hunter said no more, he was out of ammo and he was leaving. (I found it amusing that not bringing enough ammo was his reason for leaving.)

I thanked the group for the run and said that if they usually ran at this time on Sundays and needed a spare I'd be happy to go. They said they would keep me in mind and I dropped group.

The raid leader then whispered me saying that he was surprised that someone who outgeared his guild would be so patient with them. Most geared raiders won't give them the time of day.

I replied that I really wasn't that much better geared than them, so I understood their inability to get into raids of their chosing. Goodness knows I started responding to LFM ICC with the fact I've cleared the LK and five HMs on my main since my feral's own achievements aren't anything to write home about.

Apparently this guild was a group of friends that wanted to raid together, and while not mind boggling stellar players, they seemed a good, disciplined group whose primary fault was lack of gear due to their coming on the raid scene so late. Again, I was much impressed with the pace of trash clearing and the lack of AFKs.

Playing with them reminded me of my early raiding days in TBC, when everything was still exciting, and back before people got jaded and short-tempered around "scrubs" who couldn't plow through content while overgeared. Back when giving a boss a couple good shots was all that was really expected.

My current guild started ICC 10 with about the same gear score they did, so this guild, coming late to the game as they are, is perfectly well geared for the content they're doing, and they seem to realize that. They're not disappointed by not clearing farther and they're not having any mammoth screw-ups. They know the fights they've done and they're learning for the fights still to come.

I don't know that I'll get a chance to raid with them again next week, but even if they don't clear 3-4 wings in a single night, I think they're a fine bunch to run with and I could do a lot worse.