World of Warcraft General Discussion

The Game Room
7841

Sorry, dude. You definitely got dissed, and unfortunately not without reason.

  1. Retribution is not a survivability spec. Believe me, I’ve tried tanking as Ret, and despite the plate you still get chewed up like any other squishy.
  2. Retribution’s talents are geared toward two-handed weapons. Equipping a sword and board hampers your effectiveness.
  3. Overleveling a Lich King dungeon by a couple levels isn’t going to make a big difference, especially if you don’t have the proper tanking talents and gear (and believe me, just equipping a shield isn’t enough).
  4. The healer in the group appeared to be the druid. A druid’s primary healing comes from Heal-Over-Time effects, which are a little bit of healing doled out over a long stretch of time. You would have been taking so much damage that there is simply no way the druid would have been able to heal you effectively, as it would just be burst after burst after burst.
  5. The tank, more than anyone else in the group, needs to know the dungeon and what to expect, as they’re the front line. They have to control the enemies and interact with them, kiting, stunning, and building threat as necessary. The fact that you went in with Retribution spec and gear suggests you weren’t aware of what you’d need to do in the dungeon (and the fact that you told us just now that you’ve never run any).

I can pretty much guarantee you guys would not have gotten past the first wave of trash. They saved themselves that headache and repair bill.

The early dungeons, like pre-level 30, are pretty forgiving. After that, you really need to have the appropriate spec and gear to perform your role.

That all said, you made a mistake, but don’t let it discourage you. You can definitely do dungeons as Retribution; just pick Damage instead of Tank. If you do want to tank, I strongly advise either respeccing or buying a dual-spec, then pulling together a basic set of tank gear. Read up on the dungeons and their bosses so you know what tricks to expect, as well as the basic stats and gear you need for tanking. Tanking is a tough job, and a lot of work and preparation goes into doing it effectively, but when you do do it effectively, it’s very rewarding.

My overall advice, though, is to run dungeons as Damage. You have the spec and gear for it, and your role in the group isn’t nearly as pivotal as the tank. You can learn how the dungeon works without being put in the do-or-die position, and you get the same rewards for running the dungeon as Damage as you do as Tank.

7842

Okay, this is pure win. Somebody on the WowHead forums linked to this hilarious bit of smartassery from last year:

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/12/9957005708-catering-to-casuals-again.html

7843

Mark of the Valiant:

WTF is going on here? Do these Valiants get tougher each day you go against them or something? I figured out my jousting techniques the first day, and the first two days I beat my opponents relatively easily. Today the Stormwind Valiant has kicked my ass something like eight times in a row so far. I’ve beaten an Ironforge and a Gnomeregan Valiant today, one on the first attempt and the other on the second attempt, but the Stormwind Valiant has me completely stymied.

I’ve figured out that I take a lot of damage if I get hit from behind and so I’m trying to make sure I keep my opponent in front of me. But one big problem I’m having, and I don’t know if this is some sort of bug or what, is every single time I perform a Charge, at the instant of impact I’m suddenly going in precisely the opposite direction and my opponent is ramming his lance up my backside.

So I don’t know if I’m doing something incorrectly, or what.

7844

Yet another attempt to PUG with my 80 holy/disc priest. I ended up in a group with a warrior tank, and DPS as warlock, mage, and DK. We get sent to Heroic Old Kingdom. :smack: At least this was a new group. We start clearing, and when we enter the first chamber, a caster spider is nuking from afar and there’s too much damage on the warrior with all the adds for me to keep up. He goes down. The DK isn’t yanking the spider in. We manage to finish them off and I rez the warrior. Rebuff, move forward.

We get to the first boss, the one where he becomes invulnerable when adds come in. The tank stays on the boss at all times, and I get zero help when adds beat the crap out of me, even though I helped the mage when she got adds. I die when the boss is nearly dead, heal through my Spirit of Redemption, then release when that’s up. (Oh yes, no soulstone on me - I’ll be generous and assume the timer wasn’t ready.) I’m running back in and the tank bitches that someone’s got to pick - yes, they looted while I was dead. I zone in and the loot option pops up. I hit DE and say that you can’t loot when you’re dead. He says yes you can, and I say ‘well, I was running as a ghost and I couldn’t, but got the option on zoning in’ and he goes ‘oh oops.’

Run up to the first area - oh hey, some of these spiders patrol and … splat. We hadn’t killed the patrollers. Run back. I make it through safely, and they’ve gotten to the steps just past the boss, on the way down to the mobs on the way to the next boss. I’m half dead yet and unbuffed. One of the DPSers drops a fish feast, I say thanks and barely start eating when the tank, who is down the steps and over across the room at the adds, pulls. Rapid death ensues since I can’t even get in range of him before he dies.

Group breaks up. I forget any idea of trying that again today.

The sad part is, he even had really good gear, so he shouldn’t be such a newb.

7845

Well, first, as far as I’m aware you take the same amount of damage no matter which side you take the hit on, front, back, side, whatever. Are you keeping your shields up? It’s absolutely crucial that you have three green shields constantly around you. If you let them drop – and it is easy to forget to attend to them – you will lose extremely quickly.

I don’t know what’s up with the charge thing, though. A charge should take you through your opponent, although the camera might swing around as you pass them.

7846

very possible, didnt they just change the timer on soulstones?

7847

Thank you. I have been fiddling with Grid to get a good way to show this myself and never thought about doing it this way, this looks great and is very obvious. Superb

Yay me, ding 70! I have my wings and can finally wear my full Cobalt Armour set I made almost a month ago. I spent about an hour levelling up in Borean Tundra last night, fun and picked up a Healing mace which is the last piece needed for my starter Holy set so dual spec and healing in BGs here I come.

7848

Yep down to 15 minutes from 30. I got caught out farming silk in Scarlett Monastery the other night, my lock has just switched factions and I hadn’t noticed but I lost the the Power Aura warnings I had set up when she was Horde. I’m 51 so usually don’t have a problem in SM but the Houndmaster can sometimes be a pain and he killed me but no worries thought I, soulstone created just before I went in…arse, new cooldown.

It’s a good change though, often on tricky fights you’d use it up then want to try again soon after if you failed and now we only have a maximum of 15 minutes to wait.

BTW any locks here use Power Auras? I want to set it up so that I get a warning when I don’t have a Healthstone in my bags but can’t work out how to do that? I want an ‘item usable’ option sort of thing.

7849

Yeah, the cooldown on Soulstones is even shorter than it used to be so I was being very generous with my guess there. Then again, we didn’t have Healthstones, either.

Sorry, I use Necrosis. It has a cooldown bar on-screen for timers on various lock spells, and a little menu (click the “More Information” tab at the bottom and then click the “Necrosis LdC sphere” photo) which shows you when you have a firestone, spellstone, healthstone, or soulstone in your bag by coloring in the appropriate icon on the ‘sphere’.

7850

Forgot to add that those icons also let you summon the appropriate item by clicking it, once it is summoned you can click the icon and use the item, and the other icons pop out menus to cast other spells. I don’t use it for damaging spells or for gulping down a healthstone, but do use it for item and demon summoning.

7851

Thank you I’ll check it out, I used to use Forte but found that was too clunky and a memory hog.

7852

One quick (n00b) question - what exactly does ‘run chain heroics’ mean?

7853

It just means doing a lot of heroics, one right after the other, with the same group so you can get lots of badges.

7854

A Heroic is a level 80 dungeon, more difficult than normal dungeons, but they also give decent rewards for level 80s. It’s a way to keep progressing even after you hit max level. Chaining heroics simply means you jump into a bunch of dungeons one after another to get a lot of items and badges in a relatively short period of time. It can be demanding, especially since a poor group can cost you a lot of time and money in repair bills, but with the new Dungeon Finder it’s pretty easy to do these days.

7855

Play time has been limited lately (trying to finish my daughter’s dollhouse by Christmas), but I at least try to do one random daily on my priest for the Frost emblems. I’m never getting the new dungeons, though; always seem to end up in CoS or VH. If I play tonight I’ll have to specifically choose those ICC dungeons so I can get some practice.

I’ve also been running random dungons on my (now) 28 warlock. Each random run nets me a free blue gear item at the end, and I’ve picked up the belt, gloves and necklace “of the sorcerer” which adds +Int, +Stam and +SP. So my gear is pretty decent (also have the heirloom items). And I’m almost level 30 and have not even handed in any Hillsbrad quests yet.

The downside is that my last four runs have been Gnomeregan. I am so sick of that place.

7856

Well, you should level into the monastery pretty soon.

Sadly, it looks like there’s no way on God’s green Earth I’ll have the time to do the Naxx run tonight.

7857

Trade you. They’re all I seem to get, and I have to admit I prefer facerolling for badges in VH and the like. At least the last couple of times I did Random were Forge of Souls, which I’m decently geared for healing through. Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection are still too tough for me.

I did get H TOC yesterday, though. That was fun. Good group, there wasn’t a single death. I’ve always wiped at least once in TOC 5, usually on the champions.

7858

I forgot about that! Thanks for the reminder. I hope I can get online by 8:00. Sorry you can’t make it :frowning:

Speaking of guild runs – there will be no classic dungeon run this Wednesday 12/23 – at least, I won’t be starting one. Going out of town for Christmas. Next scheduled run will be 12/30.

7859

When I saw it was an OK story, I was sure hoping the idiot tank wasn’t a DK, 'cause then it might have been me. I’ve had all sorts of fun with that instance. I’ve finally got the timing right on interrupting the damn spell flingers, and I haven’t let the big giants down on the second tier fear me into any groups lately, but I still have a hard time pulling the trash down in the lowest level without getting more than one group at a time, which unless the healer is awesome usually spells “wipe”.

I’m also not sure any more when I should be explaining fight mechanics to people; I’ve started to just explain them every time if it’s likely to cause a wipe (like with the Guardian hatching in the first OK boss.)

7860

Pretty good weekend for me. As an aside, has anyone else noticed that they almost always seem to get their least favorite instances as random heroics? My three least favorites are Oculus, Old Kingdom, and Halls of Stone (the latter to tank–don’t mind it as DPS). And which were the first three randoms I got? Oculus, HoS, and OK. sigh. I have a theory–I think everybody’s least favorite instance include some subset of that, and the reason I get them so often is that I’m the recipient of a whole bunch of people taking one look at the instance, going “no way!”, dropping group, and then the next DPS in the queue is put in.

My DK tank alt is getting pretty good these days (about time–it took me forever before I was confident enough to tank regularly). He’s done ICC 10 twice now, tried ICC 25 (we got Marrowgar but couldn’t get Deathwhisper–mostly because the DPS wasn’t strong enough, though I’m sure I made a few blunders as well) and then Saturday night I got back from dinner and got a whisper from a guildie asking if I wanted to go to ToGC 10. I said, sure, and asked if they wanted my tank or my mage. “Come as the tank,” they said. “Our regular tank hasn’t shown up–if he does, you can bring your mage.” Only after I agreed did they tell me that they were going for Tribute To Insanity (doing the whole place with all 50 attempts left).

Eep!

I’d never even tanked ToGC10 successfully through to the end!

I told them this, but they said come anyway–they didn’t have another tank. Ah, well, I figured. They know what they’re getting into. My hope was not to be the one to wipe them, at least.

Imagine my surprise when, about an hour later, I was staring in amazement at the “A Tribute To Insanity” achievement badge on my screen! We did it! And I even got an amazing tanking cloak out of the tribute chest (I’d been using a level 213 badge cloak). I was so happy I hadn’t messed up the run.

More surprises to come, though–they were getting another Insanity run together, and asked if I wanted to bring my mage (my main, who didn’t have the achievement yet either, though he’s done TOGC10 many times). “Er…sure.” We had several alts, a couple of folks who only wanted to continue if we didn’t wipe, and a fairly low amount of hope that we’d get it. Ah, well. Free badges, at least.

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

Shortly thereafter, I’m staring at yet another shiny new Tribute to Insanity achievement badge! Two in one night!

Didn’t win the mount on either toon, but that didn’t bother me, since I don’t really like wolf mounts that much. The folks who won them were very happy.

This was a good weekend for me, WoWwise. Now if I could just get that damned Battered Hilt to drop…