Lo-Quality WoW

It’s been awhile but I just haven’t been playing WoW.  Life has just been busy.  Plus, I picked up a PS3 which has been distracting me for awhile.  I would log on here and there, but I barely did anything and then logged off.  So my characters have just lingered in limbo for awhile.

Then again, when Cataclysm showed up, I wasn’t in a big rush.  Learning from both Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, the first couple of days just plain suck.  It’s either almost impossible to kill that one mob you need for a quest or you’re in a place with so many people that the spawn rate is absolutely insane.  And for both of those expansions, I actually didn’t even pick them up until a few days after came out.  This time, I did the digital download thing and I still didn’t log in for the first week or two.

So eventually I did login.  But those were still just me being on for maybe an hour or two where I really wasn’t rushing myself to get leveled.  I didn’t hit 85 until the day after Christmas.  And even then, I was mainly concerned in seeing the new content, playing with the new Archaeology profession skill, and going through the quest chains.  In general, I was doing everything but getting myself “raid ready”.

Then my guild started doing heroics.  And I couldn’t join in because there’s now a gear level requirement to even do heroics.  Or at least the random ones.  And for the most part, the new gear I was seeing was still worst than my Wrath raid gear.  Which meant either finishing some of the longer quest chains and hoping for decent rewards, doing faction reputation for rewards, auction house, or running random normal instances.

Now, I’ve made it clear, I more or less hate random instances.  Because all it takes is one asshole group to ruin your fun, even if you’ve pounded out 10 great runs in a row prior.  And with most of the guild sort of focused on heroics, I felt guilty trying to ask them for normal runs.  I was at an average iLvl of 309 and I needed 329.

But if I want to get myself prepared, it’s what I need to do.  So I made a major effort to finish up several quest chains, which netted me about half of my gear.  I used my Justice Points for a couple more pieces.  Found an item or two in the auction house that wasn’t that expensive.  Even picked up a faction item that wasn’t half bad.  And still I was short several levels, now I was at around 325.  Which meant I had to bite the bullet and do instances.

But first, I needed to study the instances.  Most random groups are alright with the fact that you hadn’t been to an instance, there’s an assumption that you either did it already on another toon or you studied up on it.  Most will however, get very mad if you ask them to explain each and every boss, unless you mention it right from the start.  And I like being prepared.

Now in the normal PvE environs, I noticed I had to repolish my old kiting skills.  And surprise, surprise, kiting and crowd control has returned in importance to instances.  Fortunately, my skills weren’t too rusty because our guild has an odd habit of giving the hunters all the odd jobs in a fight.  But as I read up on the instances, it became very obvious that several of the fights, boss and mob ones, have been designed to get back to those “basics”. 

Now I did get in one guild run a few days back, where we did Vortex Pinnacle.  That I had gone in completely cold.  No idea what I was doing.  It mainly became an issue on the last boss Asaad where he does this odd grounding field and you needed to step inside it to avoid an aoe attack.  Well, our DK hadn’t been their either and when I saw everyone move but him, I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to go and that hesitation got me killed. 

Fortunately, he was DPS for this instead of a tank.  However, both of us were doing better DPS than our third, which was a random pickup, so it meant the fight ended up being longer than it should.  The DK did apologize when I mentioned why I hesitated, but like I said, I hadn’t studied, so it really wasn’t his fault.

Anyway, I did read up on the instances.  All of them.  And frankly, it all blended together in my head after awhile.  But at least I had some sort of idea what was going on.  I did watch a few videos, but I’m the type that it doesn’t quite make sense until I actually do it myself. 

The first random I did was the Lost City of Tol’vir.  For the most part, all those fights were mainly straightforward.  Actually, it was stuff any decent raider should be able to do cold.  Stuff like, if some odd graphic appears under your character, it’s probably a good idea to move.  And come to think of it, I really don’t remember the fights.  All I remember was that there were absolutely no drops that I wanted. 

Of course, my next random ended up being the Halls of Origination.  Why is that important?  Because this one has seven bosses and even some of the mobs require special handling.  Fortunately, since the tank specified at the start “trap the square” I already knew what I had to do, even if he had to remind me to use Camouflage.  For the most part, that wasn’t too bad, I did my job and the only hiccup was one time where we had a miscommunication and I ended up kiting a mob around the room until the others cool kill everything else.

Now the very first, Temple Guardian Anhuur, requires a little extra in terms of mechanics.  In the fight, he does this Shield o fLight thing which has to be deactivated by jumping to either side and pulling a lever.  Fortunately, one guy volunteered for one side immediately, which reminded me of the mechanics and I was able to do the other side.  I did slip up a little in that I ran the wrong way in trying to get back up to the main fight but the healer saw me screw up and moved to get me back into healing range. 

The rest of the fight it was a game of watching what everyone else did.  Avoid certain things, or kill certain mobs.  Can’t quite just target the tank’s target anymore because sometimes they’ll switch temporarily to get more aggro on something, but if you figure out what is dying the fastest, you concentrate on that.  Which became important for the fight against Isiset where you need to kill her aspects in a particular order and I couldn’t remember what it was.

And in all of that, there was only one drop I wanted, which I loss against the Rogue!  Still it gave me some experience for the fights and I’ve learned that Blizzard has become very good at developing fights in the various dungeons that train you for some of what you’ll have to do when you hit a raid instance. 

So I was still short, but found another item in the auction house and finally went around getting some gems and enchantments in place.  And I still ended up at exactly 328 of the 329 I need!  So tonight will be trying to find that one last piece of gear that will tip me over the edge so I can start running heroics with the guild.

Why is this important to me?  Because randoms are just that, random.  You don’t know who’ll you’ll get, in terms of personality, skill or gear.  The iLvl requirement helps somewhat but I’ve known guys with great gear who just didn’t know how to play their character.  So going in where you know most of the group, can count on them, is very big.  Plus, you sort of learn people’s tendencies and can work with that.  For instance, when I started running with a few groups, the tanks learned that having a mob slip through towards the healer wasn’t an emergency situation because more often than not, I’ll gladly grab the aggro from that mob and do everything to keep it distracted until they can deal with it.  One less worry for them, and a less stressful run overall.  Of course, I still need to do randoms tonight.  We’ll see what happens.