Okay, Quasi has requested a new thread to be started, since the old one was kicking his computer’s silicon butt.
Link to the old thread, if anyone needs to find it
Have at it, folks!
Could the problem be Internet Explorer trying to background prefetch every link on a page? These WoW threads do contain a lot more external links (to achievements, Armory, screenshots, etc.) than most threads around here. Cuz the board doesn’t serve up the entire thread at once - it just serves one page at a time, so the length of the thread shouldn’t be clogging things up.
So soon? The last thread barely made it to 12,000 posts!
At least I’ll feel like I’m in on the ‘beginning’ of the discussion this time 
I feel slightly offended at the new thread. The old one was starting to feel like a second home. I’m sure I’ll get over it though. 
So tonight was about the most eventful night I’ve ever had on WoW. I have a lot of drama to share, so I’ll put it in a spoiler box to keep from spamming:
[spoiler]I wasn’t sure what nights the guild raided on when I signed up, and when I logged in I discovered Tuesday was one of the days. (Sunday is the other 10-man and Thursday is the 25-man.) I’m usually a bit leery about diving into activity the very first night, but I wanted to make a good impression, so I hung around. 14 guildies showed up by the appointed time, so 10 of us went into one raid, while the other 4 started a second raid and PUGged the rest of the group. I was in this group. Makes sense; I’m totally expecting to be B team for a while. I told the raid leader, “Hey, just to drive it home, I’ve been doing some reading but I’ve never been in ICC before.” “No problem man, you’ll be fine.”
So the RL started pulling together a group, including a PUG tank he’s run with before and liked. Said tank gets on Vent and immediately talks and Does. Not. Stop. Sounds like a teenager, really. I have personal theories about people who can’t stand to be silent for more than a second or two, but I generally prefer to keep them to myself. Talky Tank yammers on and on, and somewhere in there he asks the RL if he can apply to the guild. The RL points him at the website, the guy cracks some juvenile jokes while filling out the app, and the officers invite him in on the spot. I’m not really comfortable with the guy, but hey, I’m new too. Not my place, not my guild to run.
So the group finally gets everyone into ICC and buffed up, and we start pulling the trash in front of Marrowgar. Long story short: we wipe. Twice. I don’t know what was happening, but folks just kept taking ridiculous amounts of damage. The Deathbound Wards (the giant skellies) and Servants of the Throne (the ice mages) were hurting us way too badly. On the third attempt, we actually lost some DPS who quit midbattle. I’m pushing for everything I’ve got healing-wise, and we finally finish the fight with 5 people still standing, and me the only healer.
I want to stress that. The other healer died and I managed to keep everyone else alive to finish the trash spawn. I stress it because when Talky Tank started bitching about the healer who was under 5k Gearscore (me), my mouth just fell open. “You mean Caliphax?” “Yeah, him.” “The one who kept as many people standing as possible?” He then started critiquing my current gear, telling me nothing I didn’t already know and have planned for my gear advancement. I was just flabbergasted, but I tried to tell myself that he didn’t know that the officers already knew about my gear situation and were giving me a shot regardless. I tried to interject, and he just switched to his Holy set and went, “Dude, dude, look at me. Copy all that down.”
I really didn’t have anything useful to say, and the useless stuff I could have said would have been completely inappropriate. So I just kind of fell silent, but I was honestly stewing. I really didn’t like the guy; I had joined this guild precisely to avoid the hardcore progression junkies who measured their ePeens by Gearscore. I didn’t want to play with him, and it offended me that he should join the same day I did. But what could I say? So eventually Talky Tank turned his attention to the raid leader and asked a question, but the raid leader didn’t respond. I didn’t pay much attention at the time, but the raid leader must have changed Vent rooms to talk to the guild leader, because after a couple minutes of Talky Tank going, “Hellooo? You there?” I see in rapid succession:
TT has left the raid group.
TT was kicked from the guild by GL.
[RL] Raid Leader: Sorry about that guys, he won’t be bothering us any more.
[RL] Raid Leader: Let me take a smoke break to regroup and we’ll try this again.
And then blessed silence on Vent.[/spoiler]After that little bit of drama and sheer Win from the guild officers, we put together a new PUG and proceeded to one-shot every damn boss all the way up until Festergut, who took a whole two tries because I didn’t realize just how hard I needed to pour on the tank heals after a certain time had passed. We only stopped there because it was an hour after the raid was supposed to end and folks were falling asleep. And, because everyone in the PUG was already an experienced ICC raider, nobody needed any of the caster gear. All told, my takings from the run were:
Coldwraith Bracers
Boots of the Frozen Seed
Leggings of Unrelenting Blood
Drape of the Violet Tower (I was at 37 Frost badges when I started ICC today and earned enough to buy this)
Ashen Band of Wisdom (I went from 0/3000 Neutral to a couple bars into Friendly by the time we stopped)
Nobody wanted any of that stuff, not even the resto druid! After regemming, I gained over 3000 more mana unbuffed, and I’m sitting at 34k mana with Kings on.
More importantly, though, I had fun. Maybe it was just fun because it was easy (ICC-geared teammates + 20% buff = lowbie gettin’ carried), but I still contributed and worked hard during all the fights. The PUG was a solid, professional group, and we’re going to see if we can reconvene on Thursday to continue the attack.
And I’ve got a 5k Gearscore now, bigod. 
ETA past the edit window: Holy plate gloves also dropped off Festergut, but I guess the RL didn’t give them to me. Just as well; I had just bought my T9 gloves and I wasn’t really eager to replace them so soon.
Sorry for the three posts in a row, but it looks like my memory was wrong. The raid leader didn’t kick Talky Tank out of the group; TT made some excuses about how he had to leave after the wipes, and that’s when the guild leader booted him. Either way, it was extremely satisfying.
Ahhhhh new thread freshness…
Grats Bosstone glad it’s working out do far, a night where you gain that much gear is awesome. Do you bless yourself Kings or Wisdom?
Looking at the AH to gear up myself and seriously considering some mail pieces, I promised myself I’d always wear plate but some of the crafted mail gear is Holy Pally perfect (yellow gem slot and haste? yes please…) and more importantly pretty cheap.
Erm the above should be ‘so far’ not ‘do far’
Bosstone started the multiple postings so don’t look at me…
Blizz is holding an essay contest for Cata beta keys:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/contests/cataclysm-beta/index.html
This could be a great ticket to getting a head start if you’re an able writer.
Fresh thread!
I’m currently gearing up an alt. It’s about my 152nd alt (I exaggerate, but only a little) but I’ve actually managed to get this one up to level 50!
I’m levelling another resto druid, like my main, which is the source of a fair amount of ribbing in the guild, but the reason I’m levelling an alt is to be a professions gatherer so that my main can have two crafting professions (currently Enchanting and I’m thinking of picking up Jewelcrafting). I figured doing a role I knew how to do would be the quickest way to level!
I must say, levelling through the dungeon finder system is brilliant. I’ve done very little questing on my alt and the higher level I get, the better the PuGs are.
I’m now at the dreaded Blackrock Depths, was running with a fantastic group yesterday but unfortunately had to leave for an appointment. (With the Dungeon Finder, longer dungeons are split into sections, and we’d already done the section we were in there to do, so I wasn’t dropping group as such). It was a shame, cos I’m sure we would have made it all the way through to the end. Ah well, will try again another day!
Yeah, the upper-50 PuGs are about the best in the game, IMO; things are difficult enough to be a challenge (unlike with most heroics nowadays), but most of the players are pretty on-the-ball. Once you hit Outlands, average PuG quality drops precipitously and takes a while to recover as you level up.
And grats on the raid & gear, Bosstone. I was feeling pretty chuffed about getting into three quick PuGs for 9 Frost badges (VoA x2 and the weekly) plus a pair of PvP gloves, but your night pretty much blew that away.
If I’m the only Pally in a group, Kings. The trouble with a Holy Light build is that you have so much mana that MP5 is kind of lacking. Divine Plea does most of the mana regen. For example, BoW does 92 MP5, or 1104 mana per minute. That’s the cost of a single Holy Light for me. Divine Plea does 25% of your mana pool over 15 seconds and can be used every minute, so if I have 34k mana and use it on cooldown (which is admittedly not the wisest thing to do) that’s effectively 8500 mana per minute. No comparison. It’s more useful to use Kings to increase your Int and therefore the effectiveness of DP plus all the other little perks a Pally gets with more Int than gaining straight MP5.
If there’s multiple Pallies, then Kings and Wisdom both, certainly.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. Blizzard decided that critical strike rating would be the most important secondary stat for Pallies and haste would be most important for Shamans. But since Holy Light builds need haste almost as much as they need Int, some mail pieces are more useful than some plate.
Hey, it’s all good. The only reason I could do so well is that I came in very late to the raiding scene.
Yeah, I was actually thinking that when I hit Outland, I’ll do more questing. I seem to remember that the quests gave a heapload of XP in order to help players hit the new level cap at the time.
Very nice Bosstone. It makes me eager to get back into ICC after missing last week.
Not tonight though: tonight is the Burning Dog Legion weekly alt dungeon, and we’re tackling The Botanica. I read up on the bosses last night and a couple of them look tricky. As a bonus, I should be hitting level 70 tonight.
Someone asked me how many dungeons we have left. By my count we have two more BC dungeons after Bot: Arcatraz and Magister’s Terrace. Then we move on to the Northrend dungeons (at which point we’ll probably just queue randomly each week, to get the extra xp and emblems).
When I hit Outland at 58 in my holy pally I quested in between random dungeon runs. I ended up hitting level 68 and moving to Northrend before I even finished Hellfire Peninsula (but it was close). That was with the two +XP heirloom pieces of course. It went by fast.
Woo! Great run last night. After several weeks of wiping on Heroic LDW-25 (the guild had killed her back on Trollbane, but not again since transferring), we got her down easily after only a few attempts (and a couple of the wipes involved important people DCing). We knocked out eight bosses on Heroic before calling it for the night because of the time. I have a good feeling that H-PP is going down this week.
It was also a great run for me personally. I was sitting on a nice stack of DKP since I hadn’t actually won anything yet that would have cost any, so I was able to pick up both the pieces that dropped that I wanted. So now I have my Heroic (277) T10 helm *and *a 277 chest. Finally pushed my GS (serious business) over 6k, and (more importantly) my unbuffed HP is getting awfully close to 48k. (If you count my Mixology flask bonus, it’s probably there already.)
Holy shit yes. I can’t believe how long it took me to start using it. Note, too, that it’s highly tweakable (which I suggest doing). It’s even useful for DPS–you can see where your threat is at on all targets, which is insanely useful for AOE packs. It’s also a godsend in a fight like Rotface–last night, I missed the alert that told me I had the disease, but I could see the big red health bar above the little ooze that told me it was aggro’d on to me.
Check settings? Sounds like there’s some weird option set. Otherwise, reinstall. I never have that happen.
*Defense to cap (535 for Heroics, 540 for raids)
*Meta gem (Use the Austere Earthsiege: Stamina + Armor)
*Nightmare Tear in the non-blue slot with the best Stamina bonus (probably your other helm socket) to activate that meta
*Everything else Stamina
Anytime, Quas.
Oh, the guild has killed her plenty of times. I just haven’t been in the raid for any of them. Unless we start on PP tonight, that’s where we’ll be headed, too.
Oh, sure, nothing to it! Just complete an achievement that the best guilds in the world are still hammering their heads against, that I can’t even begin to attempt until we down two more bosses on Heroic.
Oh, I’m not as mercenary as all that. I just want a certain minimal level of progression. Because I’ve been in guilds with *very nice *people who just aren’t that dedicated to raiding, and it’s driven me completely fucking insane.
I’ve done something similar in ICC. After Deathwhisper, before Lootship, there’s some trash to clear where you have friendly NPCs helping. Like in Gundrak, these mobs are in combat before you reach them. One time, I wasn’t paying attention and thought everyone else was up there already. So I charged in, pulled a bunch of things, and promptly died.
Dunno if the new thread will solve any of the problems, Quasi, but I hope you give it a shot!
Part of it is now the <Robot Death Panel> MOTD.
The giant skeletons are the ones that spawn when someone breaks a trap. They shoudln’t *ever *be up at the same time as the other trash. The Servants should always be kept pointed away from the raid and interrupted as much as possible–the only people taking damage from them should be the tanks.
That’s awesome! I mean, *your *part of the mess. 
I take that as a *very *good sign about the new guild.
He hits harder with every stack of inhale. At three stacks, the tank should pop a CD, then another one when that wears off and/or an external CD. Heals need to be really heavy on top of the CDs.
Grats on both counts!
Special note to any Alchemists: This is the dungeon you need to run for Potion specialization.
The problem with waiting until level 80 to even start running NR dungeons: forgetting to loot the boss at the end.
Now that my human pally is down to long waits between upgrades because only Frost badges are going to upgrade her now, and my draenei mage also has several pieces of Triumph gear, I’ve turned my attention to running heroics to gear my poor, neglected blood elf paladin, Keliraeda. She, like my other two 80s, pretty much skipped all the NR instances while leveling (now that I’m finally comfortable with grouping for instances, I intend to change this bad habit with future toons that make it to NR), so all those quests that require entering an instance are still out there for her.
So a couple days ago the random dungeon finder plopped Keli into heroic Drak’Tharon Keep. Toward the end, the trolls in there started dropping Enduring Mojo like crazy, and that’s when I realized she still had the Cleansing Drak’Tharon quest sitting in her quest log. So once The Prophet Tharon’ja was down, she wandered over to the brazier and summoned Drakuru (fortunately, she happened to have Drakuru’s Elixir still sitting in her bags). While Drakuru was doing his RP with the Lich King, the group decided we’d worked so well together that we’d queue for another random together… and I clicked “Enter Dungeon” before talking to Drakuru to actually complete the quest. I didn’t realize my error until I noticed that the Guru of Drakuru achievement didn’t pop up (Keli had completed the Betrayal quest some time ago). By that time we were already in H:HoL, and there was nothing I could do :smack:
Then last night the RDF put her in heroic Utgarde Keep. Again, it was her first time in there. In the entrance area I noticed a stealthed blood elf with a “!” over her head, and I accepted the Disarmament and Ingvar Must Die! quests from her. And then, once Ingvar was down, I forgot to run over there and loot his head, so now I have to wait until the next time she kills him :mad:
The problem is that I’ve gotten so used to the tank looting the bosses and the roll frames popping up, and any loot I win automatically appearing in my bags without my ever needing to manually loot the bosses myself.
The other issue is successfully completing the quest and then forgetting to run back to turn them in (where the questgiver is actually in the dungeon, like with that dwarf in Utgarde Pinnacle). Granted, if the turn-in NPC is outside the instance, I’m going to have to fly back anyway, since leaving the dungeon after a “random” run is going to teleport me back to wherever I was before I entered.
On the upside, Ingvar dropped the Staggering Legplates and I won the roll on them. They were a nice ret-spec upgrade that will serve well until I can buy the T9 pants. They replaced the blue tanking pants she’d won off another boss and was wearing as a replacement for the crafted Savage Saronite Legplates she’d been wearing for a while.
I also took the time last night to finally make Keliraeda a true Ret-spec clone of my human paladin, Eilyssana. Until yesterday she’d been using a slightly different spec, built around Seal of Command instead of Seal of Vengeance/Corruption, and I’d found it inferior. I also re-glyphed with the same glyphs Eilyssana has. Then I took a screenshot of Eilyssana’s UI layout* and duplicated that on Keliraeda. I use the Dominos action bar replacement, so I just copied Eilyssana’s Dominos profile to Keliraeda, and then had to manually lay out where all her abilities went on the buttons. Keli’s primary combat abilities were already laid out the same on the hotkeys of Bar 1, but many of her secondary abilities that require clicking on buttons were in different places, which was leading to some confusion when switching between the two characters (“GAH! Where’s that damned Cleanse button?!”).
- There’s also an “invisble” action bar in the lower-center of the screen (but a couple inches above the visible bars). That bar is where I drop temporary, quest-specific items and macros (the bar’s only invisible until I put something on it) so that they’re in plain sight/easily clickable, and I remember to get rid of them when I’m done with them instead of leaving them sitting on my regular bars. For example, the net and fish for that Kalu’ak daily where you lead the bull sea lion to a cow), the drake summoning thing from Oculus, my frog-kissing macro for that one Valiant daily, and my targeting/spear-chucking macro for Get Kraken!.
ETA: Had one bit of aggravation yesterday when running H:PoS on my draenei mage: Scourgelord Tyrannus glitched when we started the fight, and he hopped back on Rimefang and just sat up there, untouchable, shooting at us with Rimefang’s breath weapon. We had to deliberately wipe/suicide to reset the fight :mad:
Only one Alch in the alt group, I think (my pally), and he’s working on Elixir spec. (Need to go back into the Morass one more time, then pick up the potions or recipes he doesn’t have).
That’s awesome. I’ll have to check it out tonight.
That’s what I suspected, especially since both times the Rogue was the first to die. I figure El Awesomeo Tanko was being a total retard about facing.
Agreed. The officers seem to have their heads screwed on and most of the folk seem to be fairly mature and laid back. It doesn’t seem like the kind of place where drama is tolerated by anyone. It’s still too early to tell, but it looks exactly like the kind of guild I want to be in.
Yeah, that was entirely my fault. What was worse, one of the DPS made sure to explain to me what would happen and what I needed to be prepared for, and I still wasn’t on top of it. We also weren’t on top of the spores in the first attempt, so Pungent Blight kicked our asses (but I think one of the tanks was already dead by then, or shortly after). Second try, I was ready, and we did better with the spores. Good thing, too; by the time the tanks did their first switch-off, I had already bottomed out on mana. My heals are more than strong enough; they do 14-21k in ICC. What I need is sustainability. I spent the second halves of both the Gunship Battle and Festergut desperately fighting not to go OOM.
Almost forgot:
Well, yes. I thought that was implied in “I can’t figure out why it’s happening.” 
Deleting the directory and reinstalling is probably a good idea, though.