First time one got close enough to shake my screen, I was horribly startled, but I still had time to look around and see the giant feet stomping toward me, then summon my horse to ride away, and it never chased after me.
Drat. I usually keep the sound down pretty low, and I run a fan often, so no wonder I don’t hear them. (I already turned off the music since I find it more distracting than anything else) Up with the sound, I guess.
Is it wrong that while I was pleased to get better melee weapons (for all that I use them, being a hunter), I was slightly displeased to no longer have a matching pair? Both the swords I’d been using use the same model (rather scimitar-like) so they look matched, but my two new ones are a dagger and a sort of straight-bladed sword. They look weird.
Last night was a blast. Our guild looked around, realized we had 5 60+ folks on at the same time, and decided to pull together an Onyxia pug. We had 2 80s (both DKs, I think) and a bunch of good 60+ people.
I was somewhat anxious since this would be my first raid ever, plus you know what they say about DPS – if we die it’s our own damn fault. 
Our RL rocked hard – he kept 15 people going in the same direction with clear and concise directions, most of who had never set foot in there before, and nobody died.
Got Onyxia, took requisite screencaps, had my first experience with master looting, which took a long time to do with people kibitzing on the rolls and so on.
Then the raid reformed with people coming/going, and we hit UBRS, rocked that plus a bunch of us including me got the Jenkins title after several attempts.
Tonight we’re going to see if we can pull together a BWL raid, should be interesting. (We tried that last night since we had no clue what was in there – the RL went to bed – unsurprisingly, we got roflstomped)
I’m also eager to see how I do with my upgraded gear, although I wish we had better ammo options. 
Welcome to the beginning of Clown Suit Syndrome. Blizz has tried to mitigate this in the latest xpac, but now everyone complains that everything is boring/bland/uses the same model. :rolleyes:
lizardling, I don’t know where your toon is at, but Hunters are actually going to be getting a buff to their high-end weapons (I forget if it’s the T7-equivalent stuff or just the new Ulduar gear) to compensate for not getting new ammo.
Oh, and BWL isn’t the kind of thing you can just blast through. There are a number of fights that require strategy even at 80. Yay for content that stays interesting even when you’re 20 levels over what it was designed for.
I finally got the Seeker title for completing 3000 quests! My actual goal is the Loremaster title, for completing a certain number of quests in each zone. The Seeker and Ambassador titles are partial credit :p. I still have about 40 quests left in Icecrown before I finish Northrend, about 10 left in Netherstorm for Outland, and 30 to finish Kalimdor. Icecrown should be easy to finish, with maybe a few group quests I’ll need help with. Netherstorm will be harder; I think I have to do several dungeon quests still. I’m not sure what else I’m missing. And Kalimdor is going to be a total pain. I’ll have to do the other centaur quest series in Desolace, grind up furbolg quests in Winterspring, and hopefully get a few Kalimdor quest credits for doing Stratholme and Scholomance. If I’m still short, I’ll have to start the AQ raid series, I think.
Grats, Pleo!
As I didn’t play WoW when that strip was published, I didn’t understand it at all.
Now I do.
Anyone ever play Dungeon Siege? Crap game, but the clown suits available there put anything WoW could come up with to shame.
Oh, I’ve been clown-suited for ages, but at least my swords matched. A tiny spot of non-clowniness that is now lost to me. It could be worse, though. I recall my SO’s priest and his pajama-like outfit. It matches, yes, but it also looks ridiculous.
Or the mindset, which is as important if not more. I’ve tanked as both a rogue and a hunter (yeah, the rest of the group was weird too); the rogue tanking was Heroic Underbog.
Initial group composition:
1 (one) Prot warrior with Mo’ Purples Than Thou. As one of the priests remarked “dude was more purple than me in shadowform!”
2 (two) shadow priests, doing DPS.
1 (one) elemental shaman, who drew the short straw and therefore was our healer.
1 (one) rogue with no particular good gear, as I enjoy my rogue for soloing but not so much for instances, I’d grouped on a whim.
The tank refused to take the lead and mark. Then he wouldn’t follow the marks agreed. Then he let rip at the healer. Then it turned out he didn’t know what taunt was. Then I ran a quick consultation, got three “ayes” and kicked him out of the group. Then we invited in the person in LFG, a Frost Mage, and said “let’s see how far we get!” Amazingly enough (rogues have no taunt-like ability, so all I could do was try to pump out as much damage as possible while the rest tried to avoid over-threating me) we did it all and had a lot of laughs doing it. Oh, and the warrior? He got banned while we were still mid-run, apparently getting four simultaneous “ebayer ahoy!” reports sticks in GM’s craw 
Yesterday I had a group that blew goats: my priest (healing), a DK (tanking), two hunters (from the same guild as the DK and me), a PUGged rogue. The ones I wanted to kill? My guildies :o The DK was very much crittable, had very low hp (23K, my priest has 19K in her “thin” clothes!), and kept running ahead while I was drinking; several times he had the wrong aura on. The hunters wouldn’t heal their own pets and, when the pets died (I heal people over pets, as pets don’t have repair bills and have people who can heal them), would forget to rez them.
Then I had my first two raids as a healer (I’m so proud!), OS and Naxx, with people from our guilds coalition and a few extra friends, and the only ones who managed to go splat occasionally were a mage who still hasn’t grasped the concept of “don’t tank while in cloth” and… and… oh yeah, and that same mage. Seriously. The tank who was my main target was a DK, identical spec as the other one, but with proper armor and something like 38K hp - the biggest thing I had to cast on him was a Flash Heal
I’m not even grasping the effing language y’all are using, dammit!
So… solo from here on out: I’m just taking quests I won’t need anyone’s help with.
I know it will take me longer to level, but fuck this shit.
I try to explain, but it still gets me kicked out???
JSYK, I posted all of this on WoW’'s community site, and most were helpful, but a lot more considered me a nuisance.
Q
I’ve been playing a Troll Rogue lately. He’s 15 now. It’s been a lot of fun since I got dual wield. I joined a guild called Red Tusk Tribe, which has a lot of lowbies having fun (the leader is at 70, but the rest are under 20).
I ran Ragefire Chasm for the first time last night. The healer had an attitude and was constantly correcting people and got into an argument with a Retr. Paladin who healed the tank when the healer got behind on things. She got upset with the paladin for wasting her precious mana points and eventually left before the last boss (but not before implying that we would never make it without her)
We were four to start with anyway and it ended up being three. But the tank was a 19 warrior, and the Pallie switched to healing for the last boss and we took him down. I put the healer who had left on ignore, I have no desire to deal with someone who creates so many drama for such a minor instance run. On the plus side, the warrior has offered to forge me a sword if I ever need it, and I’ve added him and the pallie to my friends list.
It was fun fighting some foes that lasted a bit longer. Duel swords has been so much more fun than the daggers that I’ve used in the past with rogues. Plus I can afford to upgrade my weapons more often because I’ve gone Mining/Skinning with the rogue.
I can’t wait to try some more of the horde side instances that I’ve barely done much. Ragefire was shorter than I would have hoped. I guess I’m spoiled by how long and how much gear Deadmines provides.
I’ve gone for Duel Wield and now Precision with talents so far. I hate seeing that “miss” word floating next to my swords, so I want to get as much to-hit as I can.
Sorry, love.
Wanderer, you have duAl wield, you… you… rouge!
The official WoW forums, in general, are a load of suck. There’s far too much PvPer strutting and dick-measuring, way too much “Cry more, noob!”, way too many little kids acting like delinquents…I never go there anymore.
Here’s one thing to remember, Quasi:
As a tank, you are only responsible for two things: Keeping the attention of the mobs and keeping the healer alive. You are not responsible for other people in your party in any real way…it’s THEIR responsibility to not steal the mob’s aggro from you. If they die, it’s their fault. You can’t control how much aggro they grab from the mob, you can only try your best to keep its attention.
There are a couple of your abilities that are really useful for this…one called “Thunderclap”, one called “Taunt” and one called “Sunder Armor” (at least at the lower levels). “Thunderclap” is really good for keeping the attention of multiple mobs, because it’s an Area of Effect ability. “Taunt” is really good for grabbing attention back from the healer…if one of the mobs you’re fighting gets pulled off of you by healing aggro generated by the healer, you can Taunt it and it’s forced to pay attention to you again for so many seconds, which time you use to Sunder Armor and Thunderclap it back up so you’re at the top of its hate list.
Don’t stress so much about the situation you found yourself in. Everybody makes mistakes…this was your first time tanking. The rest of the party had no room to talk because at this stage, there hasn’t been a lot of tanking opportunities…Deadmines is the first Alliance dungeon there is. There’s nothing lower level than it.
Sorry, dual wield. I always mispell that.
As far WoWs forums, I stay away, they are depressing and annoying to read.
My rogue does have red hair, so maybe I’m a rouge rogue?
While Rogues aren’t officially a tanking class, they used to be used as “evasion tanks” for some fights in progression raiding in BC–the Rogue in question would basically max out abilities and gear so that they would have a 100% chance to avoid any incoming melee attack–lots and lots and lots of +Dodge plus some Parry. (Obviously, this only works against a boss who does all or mostly physical damage.) I’m pretty sure the talents necessary got nerfed around the time Wrath came out, though, so you won’t see Rogue tanking much anymore. If anyone is curious, you can check out an (outdated) WoWWiki article about Rogue tanking here.
For an example of another clever way people used game mechanics to their advantage, this one in Wrath, try doing a search on YouTube for “Voidwalker Sartharion 3D.” Before Ulduar dropped, just about the hardest thing you could do was kill Sartharion (in Obsidian Sanctum) with all three mini-boss drakes still alive. The tank of Sartharion takes a LOT of extra magic damage, so the encounter pretty much had to be tanked by a DK (more resistant to magic damage) or a Druid (bigger health pool to soak it). But then some clever person figured out that (again with the right talent spec) a Warlock’s Voidwalker could tank Sarth–all you had to do was give it enough time to build up the threat it would need so that your DPS wouldn’t pull the boss off. It’s been nerfed now, of course.
I roffled.
This is not 100% true… Especially when you get to higher levels, you *can *be doing things wrong (in terms of spec, stat choices with gear/chants/gems, and ability rotation/priority) such that it’s your responsibility to learn how to generate more threat so the DPS don’t have to hold back after you should have established aggro. And even when they do pull aggro through doing something stupid (running ahead, not giving you a couple seconds to establish aggro), it’s still going to be in your best interest to peel the mob off them before it kills them. (Unless you’re trying to teach them a lesson, of course. But if they don’t learn the lesson after the first death, why not just boot 'em from the group?)
But, in general, the rule of thumb is:
If the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault.
If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault.
If the DPS dies, it’s their down damn fault.
At least for 5-man content. The rule does tend to break up a little more in raids, where just about anybody’s death could be just about anybody else’s fault, depending on the fight mechanics.
I made a post about this recently on another WOW board, and while that rule of thumb is correct more often than it’s not, it’s usually only really true with simple tank and spank situations, it’s important to not to use it as the sole justification to blame someone. Many times I’ve died (as a healer) when it wasn’t the tank’s fault, or the tank has died and it wasn’t my fault. Besides, assigning blame doesn’t really help as much as figuring out what the problem is and how to fix it. Sometimes a healer can compensate for a poorly geared tank, or DPS with a high amount of brain-lag. Sometimes a skilled tank can cover for a poorly geared healer or DPS that like to go apeshit right after the pull. Sometimes DPS can kill a mob before a poorly geared healer goes OOM or a poorly geared tank gets smushed. Sometimes you just need to adjust people’s responsibilities.
If the tank “stands in the fire” (generic term for standing in a spot you shouldn’t be), if he turns his back when trying to move the mob, doesn’t position correctly, or doesn’t use a cooldown when he’s suppsoed to, it’s his own fault. If the DPS need to do a certain amount of damage, or avoid doing a certain amount of damage, or need to switch targets, it’s their fault if the tank dies. And sometimes the tank just gets an unlucky mitigation streak (5-6 hits, rapidly, without a parry/dodge/block), or an unlucky set of cirumstances (like Rune of Power on Stealbreaker, immediately followed by a Fusion Punch before he can move him out), it’s nobody’s fault.
If the healer “stands in the fire”, isn’t watching his own health, is too busy watching the health bars to dodge easily avoidable damage, it’s his own fault. If the DPS over aggros and pulls mobs into the raid, or fails to kill adds in time, or is standing in the wrong spot, it’s the DPS’s fault. And sometimes a healer just gets unlucky (like two Arcane Barrages in a row during a Deep Breath on Malygos), or he happens to get a heal off right when an add spawns and the tank can’t get threat fast enough (there’s lots of untauntable mobs), then it’s nobody’s fault.
If a DPSer dies because he pulls threat when there’s a strict enrage timer, or because the tank did a poor job picking up adds, it’s the tank’s fault. If there’s avoidable, predictable, or otherwise healable AOE and a DPS doesn’t get heals, it’s the healer’s fault. Sometimes a DPS just gets an unlucky circumstance (like my example of Arcane barrages), in which case it’s nobody’s fault.
My point is just that if you want to be successful, look at the situation and figure out what’s going wrong and try to address it directly.
Quasi, I wish you had found us on the Burning Dog Legion back when you started (I remember you looking). I feel having people know you (even if the connection is simply through sdmb) would make the game much more enjoyable for you.
Also, the easiest role I’ve found is dps. ranged dps especially. I really like my mage. He did so much damage while leveling fire.
DPS has only one thing to worry about in lower dungeons. Staying under the tank’s threat. Which is very easy to maintain if you have the Omen2 addon.
Tanks, as was mentioned a bit upthread, have to take charge and be a little more aggressive and controlling (think leadership skills)
Healers - when I heal I find myself watching peoples health bars more than the actual fight. This takes away from the gameplay for me. I want to see the big monster animations.
As for other DPS, I can’t seem to get the hang of pet-classes. Maybe it’s because I usually play in windowed mode and the ctrl-fX keys don’t work, so I need to remap all my pet commands.
But either way, I found mage to be the easiest class for me to play. Rotation was simple, I could run away with the best of 'em if things got too sticky, and dungeons were fun. Plus free food and water!
I’ll admit that some quests got difficult, but having friends/guildies in-game makes everything simpler and more enjoyable.