Lo-Quality WoW

Nobody wants my hunter apparently. I usually put myself in for a couple of raids and the heroic daily. So far, I was denied a 10-man Trial of the Crusader since I haven’t been past the first fight (and ironically, I had better gear than everyone else in that raid) and a heroic that apparently couldn’t find five people short of rolling up another account and alt.

I did get into a 25-man Ulduar run last night, although that was more from a guildmate than any effort of mine. He normally runs his druid as a healer and gets pulled in usually on the Agency runs when they need additional heals. But he finally got his shaman to 80 and started running things with her. Last week she was on an Ulduar run with another guild, called Destinis Lords. I guess they needed more people for a 25-man run for this week so he gave them the names of a few PKTs as possibles.

A little ironic since I know for the longest time I was the main PKT slipping into higher level instances and then pushing other PKT. Not that I mind, he’s putting the hours into it and I’m not. And I guess it doesn’t help that I’m dps which is usually the easiest spots to fill. And there’s still a bias against hunters in general. Having played with hunters who seemed to have no idea what to do, I can understand it to an extent. It just makes my life harder. Nothing like a guy whispering you after a run saying “man, you’re the first hunter I’ve ever seen that didn’t suck.”

Back to the main story. So it was a shaman, a priest, and my hunter representing the PKTs on this run. It was interesting since I had mainly run Ulduar with the Agency. And even the combined Agency/PALIDRONS run had the same Agency “feel” to it. Running with Destinis was with a group I don’t even really remember running anything with. I didn’t recognize anyone other than my guildmates.

Starting off at Flame Leviathan, I made sure to grab a chopper this time around. Which was interesting since you’re pretty close to the ground and it’s a little harder to see stuff at times. I mainly concerned myself with picking off mobs that had aggro on the siege engines and demolishers while they focused on the big mobs and buildings. Granted, the small mobs usually wouldn’t do much to them but every little bit helped.

Now here’s where I first noticed a difference between this run and past runs. For one thing, there wasn’t really any coordination I saw. I know a siege engine, demolisher and chopper had gone and taken the tower in the lower areas by themselves. I assume another got the tower up on the upper areas. Also, when aerial units came in, nobody was shooting them down. Or they would, but only after several units had taken a pounding. Since I’m usually a gunner, I’m used to watching out for their distinctive attacks and gunning them down as soon as I notice them. Of course, I didn’t realize I could have attacked them on the bike, I was only told that by my guildmate this morning.

Then we got to the area for Flame Leviathan himself. We had gone into Ulduar 3 or 4 people short and we had just invited another person. So I was waiting for that person to get to Ulduar and in a vehicle when I hear that the pull has happened. What? I turn around to see the two mobs that trigger FL when they die being engaged. And at least one of the groups to the side totally unengaged and I wasn’t sure if they would despawn once FL came in or not.

For the most part, the FL fight was pretty easy. My duty was to race between FL and it’s target and lay down oil slicks. Which was harder than I thought it would be, mainly because from my point of view, it was hard to identify which vehicle FL was actually chasing. Once or twice I either misplaced the oil slick or the chased vehicle would angle him away from it. But FL died with a few casualties on our side. I also nabbed my Three Car Garage (25 player) achievement.

Then it was on to XT, whereas on Agency runs Razorscale is usually next. No big deal. The XT fight I’m used to and I know that my main duty is to watch for bomb bots and take them out. Here’s where I don’t know if it was a tactics thing or what not. But one of the paladins would help to take the mobs out, except what he would do is stun the bomb bot. Which meant that by the time I blew him up, the scrapbots were far enough away that they weren’t killed, making the fight a bit harder than it should have been. One of the mages did notice and would start focusing aoe attacks on the scrapbots while I stayed focused on the bomb bot itself.

Actually, one thing about the fight that I hope a group I go with starts doing is setting up a directional orientation on call outs. When people yell out “mobs on the back side” I’m not really sure which direction they’re talking about. Fortunately my graphics settings are enough that I do see the complete room but it still takes me a second or two to figure out where the mobs are and then run over there.

XT goes down and then it’s on to Razorscale. Here’s where I learned something new. With the 25-man, you need all 4 harpoons to bring Razorscale down. I was under the impression that all 4 had to be fired relatively soon to each other or Razorscale breaks free of them. But I found out you can fire the harpoons whenever they are ready and just wait for the last harpoon before Razorscale comes down.

We did wipe on the first try but that was a combination of things. One was that melee were getting involved with the fight on the sentinel instead of leaving it up to the ranged dps, which meant a few of them died when they shouldn’t have. The other was that the person on harpoon duty died somehow and that left the 4th harpoon. I and another person raced to fire the last harpoon. I saw the other person was ahead of me so I turned back to dps. The problem was, that person didn’t wait for the sentinel that was up to die or the mobs to be thinned out more, they just fired. Which meant Razorscale came down in the middle of the furball and the chaos where some dps switched to Razorscale and some didn’t caused major issues. Also it didn’t help that all three tanks tried to grab the sentinel when it popped up which left the other mobs a bit more free than normal.

Second try went better. It also helped that we didn’t even see a sentinel until the first time Razorscale landed. We had one tank designated for the sentinels and both the rogue’s Tricks of the Trade and my Misdirection made sure he had it’s attention.

Here’s where I ran into another difference from the runs I was used to. In general, even on the big 25-man raids, I’m in the top 5 total damage and dps. Here, I was closer to 8th or 9th. Which meant there were more people putting out more damage than me. Yet, the fight actually took longer than normal. How do I know? In my other runs, usually we had Razorscale permanently grounded by the second time she was harpooned. This run, she almost lifted off on the third harpooning, we just got her under the threshold right when she was about to take off. Since there were more people doing better damage than I was, I’m not sure why it took longer.

Ignis was next up and that fight was typical. A couple of wipes just from plain bad timing on when the flame jets hit and just losing too many people after a while. Plus I think the main tank died on two of the tries and ran through the rest of us. Especially me since I seemed to be pretty high up on the threat meter each time. We didn’t do the easy way on the ledge but I know when we finally did down him, myself and at least half the raid was dead.

Oh, I probably should mention that Razorscale had dropped this nice hunter pants and that Ignis dropped a nice hunter helm. And since I was the only hunter in the group (another indication of how well hunters are regarded, how can I be the only one in 25 players?) I would have made out like a bandit. Except I already had the Tier 8.25 head and leg pieces. And even if it wasn’t a “sideways” upgrade for me, the 4 piece set bonus gives my steady shots a chance to grant me 600 attack power for 15 seconds. That’s an awesome set bonus and one I’ll be reluctant to give up anytime soon.

Anyway, we went on to Kologarn. At this point, we had already started losing people. It was midweek for several of us and getting late. But we figured we’d give it a few tries at least. Again, here was a slight difference in strategy. They actually had us line up on certain marks on the floor. And depending if you were in the first or second ranged rank would determine where you would run if you had the eyebeams on you. Which was nice even if it didn’t quite work out properly.

In this case, it was usually people forgetting that the eyebeams follow the shorted path to you, not the path you have just travelled. So, since I was on the left side, front rank, what would happen is that the eyebeams would start behind someone and they would run forward and across me. The problem was that instead of the beam going to the front rank and then crossing, it would just take the shortest path which was through me. Fortunately, I noticed and jumped out of the way but it was still a bit dicey. Also, again since I was on one of the ends, I would run and I’d have to get all the way into the corner and still the eyebeams didn’t despawn until they were uncomfortably close to me.

Either way, we were doing well and then suddenly wiped and I’m not sure why. On the second try, we felt this was it for the night. And this is where I did the most idiotic thing. I accidentally attacked Kologarn. If you might recall, I’d done something similar once before on another Ulduar run. That time, I still don’t know how I did it. This time, I remember moving my mouse then hearing my bow go off. “Huh? Did I just right click? Uh-oh…” I was about the Feign Death when I hear “oh well, I guess we’re starting” and everyone rushed forward before I could reset it.

Again we wiped but nobody blamed me for that last wipe, which I was grateful for. I think they just realized I and several others were just tired and not effective at that point. (I actually yawned into my mike at one point which my guildmate called me on.) Of course, I didn’t hear if we were going to start again tonight or if this was a once a week deal or what.

Oh and one of the things I had forgotten was that our priest hadn’t been in Ulduar before. His first comments on getting out was “man, some of those fights are intense.” It totally did not dawn on me that it was his first time. I know he’s done a full Naxx run with us before so I guess I forgot he hadn’t been on the Ulduar ones. But I’m glad he had a chance to experience them. We’re a casual guild and we just don’t push for the higher level content, but it’s nice when one of guildmates gets to try some of that stuff out for the first time. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if he won anything or not.

Well, that’s it. I know I didn’t finish my dailies from last night and will try to get them in tonight. I’m still trying to build a nice solid gold reserve. Okay, I admit it, in addition to being an Achievement Whore, I’m Greedy as all heck. So sue me.