It’s been awhile but I just haven’t been playing WoW.\u00c2\u00a0 Life has just been busy.\u00c2\u00a0 Plus, I picked up a PS3 which has been distracting me for awhile.\u00c2\u00a0 I would log on here and there, but I barely did anything and then logged off.\u00c2\u00a0 So my characters have just lingered in limbo for awhile.<\/p>\n
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Then again, when Cataclysm showed up, I wasn’t in a big rush.\u00c2\u00a0 Learning from both Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, the first couple of days just plain suck.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 And for both of those expansions, I actually didn’t even pick them up until a few days after came out.\u00c2\u00a0 This time, I did the digital download thing and I still didn’t log in for the first week or two.<\/p>\n
So eventually I did login.\u00c2\u00a0 But those were still just me being on for maybe an hour or two where I really wasn’t rushing myself to get leveled.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t hit 85 until the day after Christmas.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 In general, I was doing everything but getting myself “raid ready”.<\/p>\n
Then my guild started doing heroics.\u00c2\u00a0 And I couldn’t join in because there’s now a gear level requirement to even do heroics.\u00c2\u00a0 Or at least the random ones.\u00c2\u00a0 And for the most part, the new gear I was seeing was still worst than my Wrath raid gear.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Now, I’ve made it clear, I more or less hate random instances.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 And with most of the guild sort of focused on heroics, I felt guilty trying to ask them for normal runs.\u00c2\u00a0 I was at an average iLvl of 309 and I needed 329.<\/p>\n
But if I want to get myself prepared, it’s what I need to do.\u00c2\u00a0 So I made a major effort to finish up several quest chains, which netted me about half of my gear.\u00c2\u00a0 I used my Justice Points for a couple more pieces.\u00c2\u00a0 Found an item or two in the auction house that wasn’t that expensive.\u00c2\u00a0 Even picked up a faction item that wasn’t half bad.\u00c2\u00a0 And still I was short several levels, now I was at around 325.\u00c2\u00a0 Which meant I had to bite the bullet and do instances.<\/p>\n
But first, I needed to study the instances.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Most will however, get very mad if you ask them to explain each and every boss, unless you mention it right from the start.\u00c2\u00a0 And I like being prepared.<\/p>\n
Now in the normal PvE environs, I noticed I had to repolish my old kiting skills.\u00c2\u00a0 And surprise, surprise, kiting and crowd control has returned in importance to instances.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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”.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now I did get in one guild run a few days back, where we did Vortex Pinnacle.\u00c2\u00a0 That I had gone in completely cold.\u00c2\u00a0 No idea what I was doing.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fortunately, he was DPS for this instead of a tank.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I did read up on the instances.\u00c2\u00a0 All of them.\u00c2\u00a0 And frankly, it all blended together in my head after awhile.\u00c2\u00a0 But at least I had some sort of idea what was going on.\u00c2\u00a0 I did watch a few videos, but I’m the type that it doesn’t quite make sense until I actually do it myself.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first random I did was the Lost City of Tol’vir.\u00c2\u00a0 For the most part, all those fights were mainly straightforward.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, it was stuff any decent raider should be able to do cold.\u00c2\u00a0 Stuff like, if some odd graphic appears under your character, it’s probably a good idea to move.\u00c2\u00a0 And come to think of it, I really don’t remember the fights.\u00c2\u00a0 All I remember was that there were absolutely no drops that I wanted.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n