Lo-Quality WoW

Going into a maintenance night is always a bit goofy. There’s last minute raids or other runs since it’ll all reset in the morning. On the flip side, these are also people that for whatever reason, wasn’t in a group or guild that did it earlier in the week. i.e. they’re not always the best or know how to play well with others. There’s also the knowledge that you have a hard time limit to get things done.

As such, I ended up signing up for a Vault of Archavon 10 with a raid leader who, well, sucked. Granted he wasn’t as bad as the clown who picked up two priests and a druid and assumed they were all healers. (Back before dual-specs). But in the first 10 minutes we rotated through 15 different people and at the end of it, we only had 5 people. We were short two healers and three dps. Eventually we got one healer and one more dps, leaving three slots. The one healer says he knows two dps and asks for assist so he can invite them. The raid leader ignores him, keeps calling for dps and asking the raid if we knew anyone and then suddenly picks up a dps from somewhere. Naturally, the healer leaves in a huff and the raid leader goes “What’s his problem?”

I should know better, but I’m tired and don’t care as much. Finally we get two healer and another dps and gather. Or at least I do. Now it’s taken 30 minutes to form the raid and apparently only three of us made it to the stone. Now the raid leader says “start summoning. Oh yeah, summon me too, I’m lazy.” Considering he was sitting his ass in Dalaran, just outside the portal to Wintergrasp, again I should have known this wasn’t going to go well. We summon everyone and the MT and OT (the OT being the raid leader) we start clearing. Second mob, the OT pulls the aggro and dies. Fourth mob, the MT dies. Not a good start. And I should have been worried that I had been sitting in my Viper Aspect yet I still managed to top the dps chart easily.

So we go to Emalon. And without checking, the MT goes forward. Naturally, I follow in and within two seconds, the MT is dead and the little hunter in Viper (me) pulls the aggro and gets slapped hard. So wipe. Then we go back in and one of the healers goes “sorry guys, I’m too tired for this.” A couple of us try to convince him that it should only take a few minutes but he decides to disconnect. So does the shaman in our group. So someone asks the raid leader if he’s gonna replace them. Nothing. Until two minutes later the raid leader goes “What the? A healer d/c?” I point out that the guy had said he was going to leave a few minutes ago. Then the other healer leaves the group. So at this point, it’s 15 minutes to the next wintergrasp battle and we don’t have any healers, so we start leaving. Just before I leave the group I see the raid leader “DAMMIT, DON’T LEAVE!”

Now, besides the raid leader being an idiot, me doing top dps damage while in Viper and tanks that seemed to die at the drop of a hat, I finally examined my recount. And shuddered. The warlock and myself accounted for 50% of the total damage! Our pets were doing more damage than some of the players. Heck, there was another hunter and she was doing less than 1K dps. She was a BM hunter and my cat still did more damage than hers. (Actually, I’m not even sure she was using her pet considering the numbers I saw.) Okay, general wisdom for Emalon is that you have 5 to 6 dps and each of them needs to be putting out a minimum of 2K damage. We were nowhere close to the necessary numbers. I just never learn…

Anyway, I decide to join the Wintergrasp battle. We were defending, which is always interesting. And we outnumbered the horde. Now, when one side outnumbers the other, the group with fewer players gets a buff called “Tenacity” that increases pretty much all their stats and abilities. This buff stacks depending on how badly outnumbered they are. Well, the horde was badly outnumbered. Enough so that an orc hunter, aptly named “Elfmurderer” was blasting me for 5k auto-shots, non-critical ones. Now I did look him up and he does outgear me but no way I would die that fast against him normally. But it was still a fun battle, we won, and I spent a few minutes wandering around aimlessly trying to remember where the guys I need to turn the daily quests into are.

After that, I still had about an hour left before shutdown. So I figured I work on my Lower City reputation some more and went into Shadow Labyrinth again. Up to the first boss, Ambassador Hellmaw, the only interesting point was when I managed to aggro 9 Cabal Ritualist and a Fel Overseer, all at once. And believe me, getting whammed by 10 lvl 70 elites still hurts.

But I get to Blackheart the Inciter’s room. Which I forgot several very important points about. The first is that there’s these annoying assassins who are stealthed and have an annoying habit of popping out and attacking when I’m concentrating on something else. I got through that when I saw the 15 minute warning for server shutdown. So I figure that I have half the room cleared, I’ll just go for the boss. This is where I forgot the little fact that attacking the boss, aggros the ENTIRE ROOM! So once I get out of my feign death and rez poor Fluffy, I clear the rest of the room. I’m still sitting with 6 minutes left so I decide to go ahead and attack Blackheart. Now, Blackheart does this little mind control thing, which would be interesting with only myself and Fluffy in the room. So, the fight begins normally when the first control hits. And what does my mind-controlled self does? First I cast “scare beast” on Fluffy, making him run around the room. Then, I shoot a Volley at him. Which he then runs out of after one second since he’s still under the effects of the scare beast. And all I could think of was “I don’t think this boss ever plays a hunter.” The second time under the mind control was a bit better, I dropped a freeze trap that never got triggered but did get an explosive shot off on Fluffy. Either way, Blackheart went down with 4 minutes left until server reset and I called it a night.